by Matt Ruff
We met on one of my previous trips to L.A. Dad had told me he had a new girlfriend, but hadn’t said who she was. The first night of my visit, I got up at two a.m. to get a snack from the kitchen and found Bamber raiding the fridge. We were both in our underwear, and even without a motorcycle helmet, I recognized her instantly. Which was awkward for about five seconds, but then we got dressed and made fajitas, and Bamber told me about the exploding hovercar she was building for Fast & Furious 17. We’ve been friends ever since. And of all the women I’ve seen gratuitously naked, she’s the one best suited to help me with my current predicament.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask her.
“Picking up your friend Jolene.” She steers with one hand and keeps an eye on the rearview screen in the dashboard, watching to see if anyone’s following us. “Her plane landed at LAX about an hour ago.”
“What about Mom? Were you able to get through to her?”
“Your dad talked to her on the phone earlier today. She had him put me on for a few minutes at the end.”
“What was that like?”
“Awkward, for him. I don’t think they’d spoken since they broke up. With me she was all business.” Bamber smiles. “Reminded me of my old squad leader in Damascus.”
We’re on Sunset Boulevard now, near Dodger Stadium. It doesn’t look like anyone’s tailing us. Bamber pulls the limo into the parking lot of an Arby’s. “OK,” she says, “let me see this famous collar of yours.” I climb through the partition and sit in the front passenger seat. She checks out the buckle under my chin first, then has me tilt my head forward so she can examine the vial in its metal bracket. “Someone told you this was loaded with VX?”
“Smith didn’t tell me what it was, only that I’d be sorry if I tried to take the collar off. If it is VX, though, or something like that, shouldn’t you be—”
“Wearing MOPP gear? Yeah, probably. Your mom gave me an address to take you to if I decided to go the full hazmat route, and I’ve got a couple auto-injectors of atropine in the glove box. But I don’t think we’ll need those.”
“No?”
“No . . . Keep your head down and hold still a second.” She takes a knife from a side pocket in her jeans and flicks it open. I hold very still. I feel the blade slide up against the back of my neck, and there’s a tug, and then the collar pops loose and falls away.
I straighten up, rubbing my neck. As Bamber turns the collar over in her hands, I see that the LED light on the buckle is still green, despite the ribbon cable being cut.
She holds up the glass vial so I can take a close look at it. “VX isn’t bright orange like this,” she says. “It’s more of a pale brown, and it’s viscous, like motor oil.”
“So what do you think this stuff is?”
“Probably ethanol, with some dye mixed in.”
“Ethanol?” I say. “Alcohol?”
She nods. “That’s why they call it a spirit level.” She balances the metal bracket on her palm; with the vial lying on its side, I can see the bubble in the fluid, watch it move as she waggles her hand back and forth. When her palm is perfectly horizontal, the bubble comes to rest between two thin black lines painted on the glass.
“Oh,” I say, and as I belatedly recognize the level for what it is, I can feel my cheeks get hot.
Bamber smiles, not unkindly. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you never worked a summer job in construction.”
“I was more of a Minecraft guy,” I tell her.
THE NEW SONY PICTURES HOTEL IS ON HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Dad, who is doing some script-doctoring for the studio, has arranged the use of one of the top-floor executive suites. The suite is equipped with a version of the same signal-blocking technology as the limo.
I have the North Koreans to thank for this. Back in 2014, as retaliation for a Seth Rogen comedy that disrespected the Supreme Leader, the DPRK hacked Sony’s corporate network and used the stolen information to embarrass the studio. Those studio execs who survived the resulting scandal became obsessed with data security. To say they are paranoid about leaks is like saying Kim Jong-un has a problem with satire.
Bamber and I take a private elevator from the hotel parking garage to the penthouse level. Dad’s waiting for us at the door to the suite. “What’s the verdict?” he says.
“False alarm on the deadly nerve agent,” Bamber tells him.
“Well, that’s good!” Dad says. “Are you hungry, John? We ordered Lebanese.”
One of the things I like about my father is that it’s almost impossible to freak him out. I suspect he was always like this, but life in Hollywood has given him lots of practice taking weird shit in stride. And as a professional artist, he is inherently sympathetic to trains of thought that my mother would deride as “imaginative,” so he’s not going to try to make me feel dumb for believing a carpenter’s level was a weapon of mass destruction. Which is good, because I’m doing a fine job feeling dumb on my own.
Jolene is inside, finishing up a plate of kafta and rice. I approach her almost shyly, and we both do that staring thing you do, the first time you meet an online friend in the flesh. The close-cropped hair is the most obvious difference between Jolene and her avatar, but it’s little details that really jump out at me: the corkscrew threads of gray at her temples, and the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.
That Jolene is old enough to be my mother is not news to me. But at this point in history, video games have conquered every demographic, so when you play online, you routinely interact with people of all generations, and granting a certain base level of maturity, age just doesn’t matter that much. I mean, not to exaggerate: The internet, as we know, did not eliminate prejudice. But it did create an environment where shared interests can easily count for more. And what strikes me now is how unlikely it is, in a world without the net, that Jolene and I would ever have spent time hanging out with each other.
Score one point for living in the future.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
She smiles, exposing the gap between her teeth. “Don’t mention it.”
“No, I mean it. I just hope I didn’t get you out here for a prank.”
“No matter if you did. Your mom’s got me on loan from my regular job, so my travel and expenses are covered. And besides, I’m as curious as you to find out who Mr. Jones really is.”
“I’m curious who you really are,” I say. “Is Jolene even your real name?”
“My middle name. My first name’s Karen, but only my parents ever call me that.”
“And you’re some kind of federal agent, right? The Colorado law firm is just a cover. What are you, FBI?”
“Treasury,” she says.
“Treasury?”
“It’s a fascinating story,” says Dad, returning from the kitchen. He hands me a plate. “Jolene has been working undercover, investigating the black market economies in online role-playing games. Looking for ties to organized crime.” From his tone, I can tell he is already cooking up a screenplay pitch on this subject.
“It’s not an official investigation,” Jolene clarifies. “Just one of my boss’s crazy pet projects. She saw this 60 Minutes piece about gold farming, and some other report—or maybe it was a Tom Clancy movie—about narcoterrorists using game chat to send secret messages to each other. And by adding two and two to make five, she concluded that the drug cartels might be laundering money through Call to Wizardry.”
Unlike my father, I am quite capable of astonishment. “That’s . . .”
“Batshit, I know. Welcome to my reality . . . Anyway, she’d caught me messing around in VR on my lunch break often enough to know I’m a gamer, so she called me into her office, and long story short, I got drafted into this off-the-books undercover op. It’s not a bad gig, really: She covers my monthly subscriptions and lets me play on the clock when I’m not busy with other things. In exchange, I file reports about any ‘suspicious activity’ I come a
cross.”
“And have you found much?” I ask. Thinking not of money laundering, but tax evasion.
Jolene grins knowingly. “Nothing too suspicious, until recently. My investigation had about run its course when the Mr. Jones thing popped up. My boss was thrilled about that—and she was over the moon when your mom reached out to her. I’m like her star agent, now. So like I say, don’t apologize about getting me out here. I may get a promotion out of all this yet.”
The suite’s doorbell rings. “That’ll be Ray,” Jolene says, as my dad goes to answer it.
“You invited Ray?”
“I didn’t.” This one’s on you, her expression says. Which it is, in a roundabout way: Because I forgot mom’s phone number, Dad, who was still ghosted, had no way to contact her directly. But he’d met Jolene on one of our monthly game nights, so in my texts from the train, I told him to go the Game Lobby and look for her. “Ray was there when your dad found me,” Jolene explains. “We’d both been looking for you and Anja, to find out what the hell happened in D.M. Zed. When your dad showed, I tried to tell Ray to get lost—among other things, his computer’s compromised—but, you know, good luck with that.”
“Dad told Ray everything?”
“He told him enough. Ray got really pissed when he heard about the threat against Anja.” She says this somewhat grudgingly, as if Ray getting angry on Anja’s behalf contradicts her own poor opinion of him. “He wanted to help, and I guess he doesn’t live that far from L.A., so . . .” She trails off, her eyes widening as she looks past me.
I don’t know if this is racist, but I’m much less surprised to learn Ray is a woman than to discover she’s Hispanic. Brown skin notwithstanding, I immediately see the resemblance to her avatar. She’s got the same build, the same eyes. The same hair, too, only longer and with bangs. “Renata,” Ray says, in answer to my opening question. “Renata Calveros.”
“You’re undocumented.” This from Jolene, who’s spent the last thirty seconds trying to work out why her law woman’s intuition pegged Ray as a malefactor. And she’s using the polite term, rather than “illegal,” because she’s worried she’ll be wrong twice.
If Ray appreciates the courtesy, she doesn’t show it. “I don’t have a birth certificate, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Are you a desposeída, Renata?” my dad asks. I’m not familiar with the term, but later when I Google it I’ll learn that it refers to someone who is legally an American citizen but who, for reasons beyond their control, can never prove it.
Ray answers with a shrug. “My mother says I was born here, and the midwife just forgot to register me. I don’t really know. But I grew up in San Bernardino. It wasn’t until I started applying to colleges that I found out I had a problem, and by then, it was a little late to do anything about it.” She looks at Jolene. “Why do you care? You have a day job with ICE you haven’t mentioned?”
“I’m a Treasury agent,” Jolene says.
Ray laughs. “Well then, you’ve got no beef with me. I pay my taxes.”
“And I’m going to pay mine,” I put in. Just to get it out of the way.
THE SUITE HAS A SECURE LANDLINE THAT ALLOWS YOU to make calls even when the signal blocker is active. The five of us gather around a conference table and get Mom on speaker. Jolene recaps what’s happened since my arrival. Then Bamber, who has completed an autopsy on the collar, takes a turn.
“John was right about the microphone and the GPS tracker,” she says. The good news, she adds, is that the microphone is only equipped to transmit, not record—which means that what we say now will remain private.
“Tell me about the manufacture,” Mom says.
“The electronics are all off-the-shelf components. Made in China, but nothing you couldn’t get here—it’s what I’d use, if I were building something like this.”
“What about the spirit level?” I feel a twinge of embarrassment as she asks this.
“The logo was sanded off, but I recognize the brand,” Bamber says. “American.”
“So it would be reasonable to conclude the collar was constructed locally,” Mom says. “Does it seem like something an amateur could build?”
“They’d need some technical know-how, to set up the GPS and mike transmitter, but a skilled amateur could do it, sure.”
“OK,” I speak up, feeling more than a twinge of embarrassment now, “the collar seems like a prank, but what about the money? And what about—”
“What about Anja?” Ray interjects. “Do we know if she’s OK? Have you tried to warn her?”
“Something’s blocking internet access to her house,” Mom says. “My people are working on it.”
“Her parents’ cell phones are down too,” Jolene adds. “Their numbers are both listed, but if you call you get a message saying they’re not in service.”
“What about the local police?” Ray says. “Their phones have got to be working, right?”
“Smith told me he’d have someone monitoring the emergency channels in Paraná,” I say. “If we send the cops or the fire department to Anja’s house, he’ll shut down her life support.”
“That could be a bluff,” Mom says, “but I’d rather not take the risk if we can avoid it.”
“Well, is there someone else you can call?” Ray says. “What about the CIA? They’ve got people all over South America, don’t they?”
“There’s a CIA station in Buenos Aires,” Mom replies. “But I’ve dealt with them before, and they’re not going to want to help with this.”
“I bet I know someone in Buenos Aires who’ll help,” I say. “Anja’s new boyfriend, Javier Messner.”
“Is he a tech guy?” Jolene asks.
“No, he’s a barista. But he’s not stupid. If we send him to Anja’s house, you can talk him through whatever he needs to do to deal with the malware.”
Jolene nods, in tentative approval. “He still needs to get to Paraná from Buenos Aires. How far is that?”
“About three hundred miles, in the real world,” I tell her. “I assume Javier’s got a car . . .”
Dad speaks up. “I might be able to get him a helicopter. HBO’s got a film crew in B.A. right now, shooting exteriors for their Highlander reboot,” he explains. “I know the DP, and I think I can talk him into loaning us a chopper along with one of his tech guys. Then all Javier has to do is convince Anja’s parents to let us in.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jolene says.
On the phone, I can hear Mom sigh. “Not the way I’d normally do it,” she says. “But.”
“We should think about shutting down the Faraday soon,” Bamber puts in. “Smith is going to be wondering where John’s GPS signal went.”
“In a minute,” I say. “First, there’s one more thing I need to mention . . .” I tell them about the nannycam I left set up in my apartment, and about the mystery trio of gun-toting Asians.
“Well,” my mother says when I’ve finished. “That’s interesting.”
SMITH’S XIAOMI PHONE RINGS A FEW SECONDS AFTER Dad turns off the signal blocker. Bamber has handed me back the collar, and I hold the microphone up to my throat as I answer the phone. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Smith says.
“I think you already know that,” I say.
There’s a pause, just long enough to glance at a pop-up screen. “Sony Pictures Hotel. Expensive.”
“I can afford it.”
“Enjoy your money tonight,” Smith says. “Tomorrow, you go to work.”
“Are you ready to tell me what I’m doing here?”
“I think you already know that.”
It’s true, I have a theory. I had plenty of time on the train to think about what a ruthless dictator and kidnapper interested in MMORPGs might want from Los Angeles. But if there’s one thing this evening has taught me, it’s that I shouldn’t be so quick to trust my own conclusions.
“I’m too tired for games tonight,” I say. “Just tell me.” And he does.
Chapter 18
* * *
dude — A passive-aggressive euphemism for “motherfucker.”
—The New Devil’s Dictionary
* * *
So who do you think these guys really are?” Jolene asks.
It’s quarter of ten the next morning, and we are sitting in the limo on the second floor of a parking garage. Our parking spot has a clear view across the street to the world headquarters of Tempest, LLC.
Tempest HQ is a fourteen-story blue glass tower. Extending west from the tower’s base, and occupying nearly twice as much ground space, is a two-story public amusement center and playtest space known as the Arcade. The Arcade opens at ten, and there is already a long queue of people on the sidewalk waiting to get in. Ray and Bamber are both in line. Jolene uses binoculars to scan the rest of the crowd.
Last night while I slept, Bamber performed a second autopsy, this one on my fried gaming rig. Though the motherboard and video cards were slagged, the military-grade hard drive was undamaged. By mounting the drive on another computer, Bamber was able to salvage the footage from my apartment nannycam. Mom’s people are now running a facial-recognition search on the mystery trio, and in the meantime, Bamber printed out some nice mug shots for us.
But “I have no idea,” is all I can think to say in answer to Jolene’s question. I’m feeling much more clear-headed than I was last night, but that clarity just makes it easier to appreciate how little I understand what’s going on.