Most Likely To Succeed

Flash Fiction by Boyd Blackwood

An avid insomniac Internet fact-hunter, he learned how two Dutch security geniuses hacked a way to open S•••••-brand RFID-based keycard locks covertly. The S••••• system is used in three million doors in 13,000 properties in 131 countries.

Including this mid-range mid-western Ramada where now, six floors below him in the ballroom, his 20-year high school reunion is at the embarrassing stage – 175 near-40s trying to drink, dope, and medicate themselves two decades younger to the stylings of an 80s-tribute hair band.

He cracks the encryption of his room’s keycard with the RFID read-write device he bought online for $300. Then he rewrites two cards he palmed from the front desk card return basket.

The waiter’s jacket boosted from the kitchen is shoulder-snug, not ideal if he needs to fight or escape later but it’s go-time and it will have to do. He checks the name badge: “Manolo,” and allows himself a smile – that was one name his desperately partying classmates did not call him back in the day.

“Nerd,” “Loser,” “Doofus,” “Dweeb,” and “Dickweed” they called him. “Fart-breath,” and “panty-sniffer” were at least marginally creative.

But the one time they ever named him something positive hurt the worst. They featured him in the Honors Section when the school yearbook was published. Using the most unflattering picture they could find, they labeled him “Most Likely to Succeed.”

Of course, few in his class thought he would succeed, the poor scholarship kid from the wrong part of town, bookish and socially awkward. This was their last joke – something for his “permanent record,” in a volume his classmates would cherish and refer to all their lives. The party organizers even printed the title and picture on his reunion name tag.

Screw that. Tonight, his name tag says Manolo.

The room service meal delivered earlier is cold; he scrapes congealed rigatoni into the toilet in flushable chunks and returns the metal plate cover to the cloth-draped cart. Checking the list lifted from the committee table, he shrugs into Manolo’s white jacket, rolls the cart into the hallway, and heads for the elevator.

On three, he steers the cart to 334, Patti Noonan’s room. He knew she was miles out of his league when he asked her to the prom, but he had admired her mutely for so long he had to ask before he lost his last chance. He was prepared to hear “no,” he wasn’t prepared for her laugh that echoed through the school hallway, causing people to look.

Turns out, he learned at the pre-dance mixer, Patti is divorced from a Montana land baron twice her age. From the size of the square-cut emerald on her newly freed ring finger, she made out fine in the settlement.

He scans the hallway. All clear, everyone downstairs getting loaded and hearing impaired. He taps one card on the lock and it rewrites a segment of the lock’s code. Tapping the lock with the second card, he’s in.

Damn, look at the mess, he thinks, clothes, shoes, and makeup everywhere. It’s supposed to be casual tonight, why such effort? Tomorrow is the big formal affair, when she’ll want to impress with the rest of her jewelry.

As sloppy as she seems, she may have left the good stuff in one of the dresser drawers. If not, he checked the safe in his room. The hotel’s reset code is the ubiquitous all-zeroes.

Five minutes here, he estimates, then to Robert Rombard’s room, dumb jock bully. Big now in his father’s wholesale liquor business, intel says he throws around beaucoup cash. Let’s see what might be in his safe up on five.

Firearms, high-ticket electronics, $500 sneakers – fascinating what people pack when they travel.

Rolling the cart to the elevator with Patti’s necklaces, earrings, and bracelets safe under the food cover, he figures he’ll most likely succeed in looting six to eight rooms before the dance ends and the fools stagger out.

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Bio: Boyd Blackwood has earned his living from writing for his entire career in the fields of advertising and magazine non-fiction. This is his first published fiction story.

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