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KINGPIN

Max and Kimi had moved to Vancouver, near her family, after his guilty plea. When they returned home, Max wasted no time arranging for White-hats.com and arachNIDS to survive his incarceration. He set up automatic bill payments for his bandwidth and wrote out a list of items for Kimi to take care of in his absence. She was in charge of arachNIDS now, he said, indicating the server squatting on the floor of their apartment.

The couple adopted two kittens to keep Kimi company while he was gone, named for the swords from Elric of Melniboné. The orange boy-cat was Mournblade; the gray female was Stormbringer.

Max spent his last weekend of freedom in front of his keyboard, getting arachNIDS ready for Kimi's stewardship. When Monday came he turned himself in on schedule. On June 25, 2001, he was locked in the county jail pending his shipment to his new home, Taft Federal Prison, a corporate-run facility owned by Wackenhut, positioned near a small town in central California.

As far as Max was concerned, it was another injustice, just like back in Idaho. He'd been sent back to prison not for his hacking but for refusing to set up Matt Harrigan. He was being punished for his loyalty, once again a victim of a capricious justice system. He doubted Judge Ware had even looked at the details of his case.

Kimi was adrift, alone for the first time since she'd met Max. For all his talk about staying with her forever, he'd chosen a course of action that guaranteed their separation.

Two months later, Kimi was talking to him on the phone from prison when she heard a pop! and the smell of acrid smoke filled her nostrils. The motherboard on Max's server had burst into flames. Max tried to calm her—all she had to do was replace the motherboard. He could do it in his sleep. Max talked her through the process, but Kimi was realizing she wasn't cut out for life as the prison wife of a hacker.

In August, she went to the Burning Man festival in Nevada to forget her troubles. When she got home, she broke some bad news to Max over the phone. She'd met someone else.