The myth in the market was that a universal "master code" existed, a sequence like *#706611*#

Elias didn't look up. "Every machine has a secret name," he muttered. "The IMEI is just the name the towers use to talk to it. If the tower doesn't like the name, we give it a new one."

"You really think you can wake it up?" the young boy asked, leaning over the counter.

"It has a new name now," Elias said, handing it back. "Just don't go losing this one."

"There," Elias said as the screen flashed. He manually punched in a new string of numbers, derived from an old, broken handset that had been recycled years ago.

Elias, a man whose hands were permanently stained with the ink of old circuit boards, picked up the phone. It was a "brick"—simple, indestructible, and currently, useless. The screen flickered to life, demanding a SIM card that the network refused to recognize. In this part of the world, an IMEI block was a death sentence for a phone, often the result of a clerical error or a forgotten registration.