Limited Edition

Sarah Tott is used to being a slave to her iPod. Every time a new model came out, she was one of the first to pick one up. When the 1 GB turned into a 2GB, she was there. When the 30 GB iPod was trumped in popularity by a smaller and shinier 2 GB iPod nano, Sarah picked one up under the logic that she could run much better with the nano. When the tiny, screenless shuffle appeared, she jumped on it reasoning that sometimes her runs are belabored by the additional few ounces the nano adds. Through iPods and iPhones, Sarah had defined herself with a big white apple.
After spending a day with her iPod touch out in the local street market, she found herself in a small back alley blocked in by a delivery truck. When she realized she could not get around the truck, she swore under her breath and turned back to leave the alley. Dancing Queen kicked in for a second before it began to spark static into her headphones. Ripping the loud distortion from her ears, the ringing drowns out the sound of the back of the truck opening. Looking at the screen, Sarah watched as the album art appeared to melt off the screen and the back light flicker to black. Tapping furiously at the touchscreen, she received no response from the dead bundle of electronics.
"Unlucky break, huh?' The deep gravel voice resonated in her ears and crawled down her spine until her legs felt like they were shaking from the sound. "Sorry if I scared you. Timing was never my thing. Luckily for you, your little problem is my specialty."
Turning towards the truck, Sarah is greeted by a the vision of a six foot five inch man in his fifties. His silver sideburns flow too deeply down his face and connect to an excessive neck beard before rejoining his chin at a point. His hat was a homemade Seattle Supersonics hat with the logo on a tombstone with the year 2008 printed on top. The green and yellow were a near perfect match to the green of his irises and the yellowing of his teeth. The stench of pipe smoke stuck to him like a film of road tar and immediately made Sarah's eyes water.
"I happen to have a special edition iPod touch on my truck as a part of a set of ten going to Electronics Cave here on 2nd avenue. They won't miss one if you can part with $100. I can mark it as stolen off the truck during delivery and the company will just write it off anyways."
Sarah's eyes darted to the back of the truck and doubled in size at words 'special edition iPod'. She vaguely heard the amount. "What's so special about these iPods?" She tried to sound suspicious, but he could have told her Steve Jobs had touched each one with a photo of him holding a random iPod and she would shell out $1000 in a second.
"These are a limited edition iPod touch from the Chinese distributor that made the first iPods for Apple. Each one has 'Touch the World' in Chinese characters on the back and the front is a deep cherry red finish." He reached into the truck and pulled out a red package in the shape of a typical iPod Touch box with a large '#1' printed in the middle of the outline of China. Sarah was digging through her wallet before he even pulled the mp3 player out of the box.
"I must warn you, there's a reason there are only a handful of these from that shop. There was a riot in the test labs before someone torched the warehouse. This handful is about 10% of the total the made it out of the factory. I'll be taking a portion of these to locations in California, Texas and out in St. Louis. I'll be back here with a normal shipment in..." With a slam of the truck door, he turned around to find her gone. The $100 peaking from his pocket was the only proof he had been speaking to anyone other than himself. This is Stan Ernest's first memory of meeting Sarah Tott.