The manufactory had done it's job well and most of the parts were lying on my desk. There was still one large part to manufacture and I wanted to supervise it closely - I was almost out of plastic #7 and I wanted to make sure the machines material depletion detection would function correctly. So I was stuck in my room sitting next to the machine while it worked. Not much of a bother - just slap on the headphones and turn up the music, but I'd need something to occupy myself. Clearly it was time to plan the next major part of the project: the software.

I pulled out my VR headset, activated the scrambler and hit speed-dial for Phil. The construct I picked was nothing fancy, and when Phil appeared he told me so. "Surely we can go somewhere more interesting than this" he said, gesturing at the featureless walls. I pulled up the world selector and scrolled lazily through it. A few minutes later we were in a green park, done in 20's styling with large grassed areas and a few artfully scattered trees. On the one horizon was a cityscape, on the other some mountains. A pavilion was a short distance away, so we warped to it and sat down.

I pulled up the CAD model of the Detached Storage Device and handed it to Phil. He twisted the handle and slid out the electronics chassis. "Nice engineering" he remarked, "but what do you need me for?"

"At the moment it's just a portable server. It's clean but blank. We need to figure out how to make use of it."

Phil looked at the device critically. "How long can it operate for? What sort of performance and storage are we looking at?"

"I reckon 6-7 hours operation. We've got 2Tb of disk, and it's not up to modern computational standards"

"I guess we're stuck with bulk storage then"

"Unless you've got any other ideas"

We sat there in silence for a few minutes. 

"I've got four ideas" Phil said suddenly, "First, it's just storage for ex-filtration. We take it with us on a job, and transfer data to it. We can then hand it to one of the nerds for data analysis. Second it's a dead-drop. We leave it in silent mode at a known location. People who we've told about it can load it up with data or messages. Third it's a coordination device. When we get the crew together it can be used to develop and trade cryptoware."

He paused

"And fourth?" I prompted.

"It's disappeared from my head. Hopefully I'll think of it again"

"So I guess I'll build something like an old forum-cross-warez site, and we'll run with it from there...."