Quotients

by Tracy O'Neill

A finger circling the rim of his glass. The place was a slow establishment tended by a thick-jawed man who polished rocks glasses and played Irish folk songs out of the jukebox. Now he was sliding quarters in the slot. The slap of song lists could be heard as he arrowed through the browse.

  “I’m hearing about malware that can bury itself in systems. Software, whatever you call it, that can make automated mechanisms fail. Traffic lights. Train signals.”

  “You’re talking about the rumors the CIA planted software that commanded pumps and valves in the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline to operate so fast, build so much pressure, there was an explosion.”

  “No, Barry, I’m not. I’m talking about cyberweapons being built. Not just by com-sci guys ready to get out of the university and rake real coin for once either. Domestics and foreign nationals. Some of them living abroad, possibly even the same exact hackers caught infiltrating US systems. Possibly even groomed by the agencies in the first place.”

  Cain pulled a paper cap off the end of a straw. “The Cold War is over, Michaels. I doubt many resources can be gathered to turn green lights red in Siberia. The speed of telecom means radicalization runs from teenagers in their basements to jihadists in their basements. A defense strategy would need to go online quietly if that’s what you’re asking. Foreign governments do not announce themselves as the directors of hackers. That would involve potential punitive action. Diplomatic disaster. But you know I wouldn’t know anyway. I’m private sector now, just like they wanted.”

  “What about a virus to disable uranium centrifuges? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”

  “Hear where?” Cain asked.

  “Your old apostle Sean McCreight. Can you corroborate?”

  “And where is McCreight these days?”

  “It’s an interesting prospect. It points to other possibilities.”

  “Another cranberry,” Cain said.

  The window was streaky, small, and barred, but Cain looked out at the feet cutting over pavement anyway. His hand lay on a paperback’s embossed letters. Lyle thought of the words the title could be. Pencil. Penal. Penicillin.

  “Glen Close has been directed within the country. I’m hearing about drone strikes. Is it possible we see the same sort of mechanical hacking done in Iran here too in action against citizens?”

  “I’m not exactly on the email list, Michaels,” Cain said out of the corner of his mouth, sucking down juice.

  “Because the appropriations committee.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Cain said.

  “The Def. Sec.”

  “Under the bus.”

  “You became the rogue,” Lyle said.

  Cain smiled. “Maybe I already a little was.”

  “Bastards.” Lyle sat back and rubbed his palms on his face. He had thought he was lucky. The visit. “Can I buy you another drink? Just go over a few of McCreight’s statements?”

  “If you mean a juice, sure.” Cain patted the paperback. “Anything I can do, sure.”

  Lyle turned back through his notes. He liked the gestures of reference, checking his own memory in space.

  Chapter 10

  When Ingrid dropped off Marina, it was different. The thrill quelled. Because idling in the threshold adjusting blankets around Marina, he looked at Ingrid appraising. He could read how she let her eyes fall. The curtain where there should have been a door between the bedroom and living room.

  Lyle looked at Marina. He looked at Ingrid. If you don’t stop now, it will accrue into infinity. They had fallen in love once and Ingrid also out, but he could be different to her. She could see him differently. Change the theorem.

  Lyle asked her to sit, and she didn’t. For a while, he spoke about all the ways the government could poke the fabric of a life, how it would alter shades of intimacy, quiet friendships. There were political repercussions to the platforms too, he continued, deep state flooding Cathexis, and other new weapons. Imagine a world where the only things you heard about were the worst versions of your proclivities. Imagine the polarization. Take it one step further and imagine the way support for wars and policies could be instituted by installing them straight into your Cathexis. It was why the book was bigger than them.

  “I’m the one who can tell it responsibly. I feel responsible,” Lyle said.

  “That the adjective?”

  Problem being: Ingrid had, at her disposal, the declamations of the tenure track. Ingrid had, at her disposal, terms of an employment agreement: produce another film within two years. Two. There were two of them, she told Lyle. And she needed him to mind their daughter more while she shot the documentary in China.

  “This,” Ingrid said, “is what being middle-class parents means: only one of us gets to be the artist. Someone needs to stay home with the kid. You had months, Lyle.”

  He adjusted blankets around Marina. He gave her a popsicle. He could feel something unlatch, and his face was hot. The apartment was. Something was escaping, and he heard his voice reach a harried pitch.

  “I didn’t finish the book yet, so now you’ve won?” he said.

  His arms were somehow above his shoulders, flapping in the manner of a marooned man spotting a plane overhead. Like someone choking for air.

  “Yes,” she said. “I won.”

  Chapter 11

  They’d known each other long enough that Alexandra could picture her desk, white with documents. Legal scholarship. News clips. The woman fired after posting to Cathexis that her job was boring. A mother denied a teaching certificate for a Halloween picture. The German nightclub with years of footage sent straight to the police, and all those scanned IDs.

  Genevieve told Alexandra, “Come to London. The gray will do you good.” But even through the phone, Alexandra could hear that gray alone was not the reason Genevieve suggested JFK to Heathrow, rather than the other way around.

  The man had come to Genevieve pleading.

  Win me anonymity.

  The not anonymous was Gerald Seth, a small man, dark-haired. He’d worn a cardigan sweater. What happened was so many years ago, and it is the first result of me in searches. It is Gerald Seth fraud for pages.

  I am more than who I was then.

  Genevieve’s thought: he had done his time out in the scrutinous open.

  The premise is the burden of history. The premise is we can change.

  What are the repercussions if we can’t lose ourselves? There are laws about the age of imbibing, Genevieve was saying, but not the public permanence of personal information.

  Should I suffer for whom I improved from?

  “An interesting proposition,” Alexandra said.

  The opposition would call witnesses to Seth’s old scams, claim knowing is a public good. But this is not a free speech issue. Let the papers print what they will. Let the papers keep their words, but do not include them in the search engine index. Information does not need to be simple as typing a name. You used to have to know where, what to search. We are after gaining the increment. Just this increment of privacy. Make the mistake harder to find, not impossible.

  The EU Council had adopted the Framework Decision to protect the personal data of individuals cooperating with police and in judicial matters. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights: right to respect of private and family life. There were the Argentine cases. Genevieve thought there might be legs after all.

  “London doesn’t make sense now, and you work all the time anyway,” Alexandra said. “I’d barely see you.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Angeline,” Alexandra said.

  “Since when do you talk to Angeline?” Genevieve said.

  “We’re Connected,” Alexandra said, “on Cathexis, just like everyone else.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right, she’s right, I’m working all the time.”

 
And what if Genevieve had agreed to come to New York? she thought. What then? Alexandra would not have told her about Shel, could not have. Alexandra said, “I only miss you.”

  Genevieve paused. “What’s wrong? Spill it.”

  “I don’t spill. I pour.”

  “All right, I get it. You’re a tall glass of water. But even water babbles. Or brooks do, anyway,” adding, when Alexandra didn’t answer, “Ever thought whoever said silence speaks volumes didn’t have a cell phone?”

  “Have you no respect for the classics?”

  “The clichés. I call it like I see it. Sometimes, the head isn’t big-boned, Al. It’s fat.”

  “Oh, but who doesn’t love the occasional platitude?”

  “I’ve always thought that one ‘suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem’ was a little bonked, you know? If it’s a permanent solution, doesn’t that sound pretty viable? Why not just say that suicide is permanent; problems are temporary?”

  “Because some aren’t?”

  A pause. “Probably being paid by the word,” Genevieve said finally.

  “That guy needs an editor,” Alexandra joined.

  “A Strunk guide,” Genevieve said. Then: “Should I be afraid?”

  Chapter 12

  Lyle was afraid to check the mail, and he was afraid to check his phone. Just one reason: his father called about coming over Sunday. He said all the time it had been. He said there was the game. “Your mother’s making gravy,” he said. “And a baked ziti. It’s been so long, I don’t know does my son remember us.”

  “I need to work.”

  “Work. What work?”

  Lyle paused for composure. “I am involved in some research. For a book.”

  His father said food on the table. He said the Micellis had always worked, always. He said what about come back forty-a-weeks, like the summers.

  “I can’t go backward,” Lyle said.

  “Family business is backwards now?” his father said. “The Micellis would always do what it took. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what. It used to be family meant something.”

  “This book means something too.”

  Yet Fourth Amendment had been done. McCreight thought the story was the work he’d done triangulating calls and emails to target terrorists years before, but it had been reported in newspapers already to quick and small ado, and the more Lyle thought about it, the more he was certain that the American audience would not care for further detail. What he needed was new. What he needed was more about the Iranian centrifuges. Material weapons. Threats that appeared real, or victories. That story arc.

  “I’m talking about Ingrid. She’s a good girl, Ly. And so is Marina.”

  “No one’s talking about Ingrid or Marina.”

  “I’m happy to help, don’t get me wrong. But I worry about my granddaughter,” his father said.

  “And I don’t?”

  Lyle could feel the days closing behind him like doors. He had not forgotten the sums he owed his father, that Ingrid wanted to film a film that would undo official facts in China. He had not forgotten that already Marina had become a girl and would want more, want better. And he would want to be able to give better, to live better, to not bring her to a sad little one-bedroom where sometimes there were bugs and other times rats, and always there was something a little sad and adolescent about the entire setup.

  “Listen,” his father said. “We’ll talk over dinner Sunday. That’s how it’s always been done. We always did it like such. You talk over dinner.”

  Lyle looked at his daughter. She didn’t look unhappy in her sleep. She didn’t look underfed, neglected. She looked tired from their afternoon in the park and eating hot dogs.

  “How it’s always been done was segregation until the civil rights movement,” Lyle said. “That’s what I think about how it’s always been done.”

  “We weren’t teenagers forever,” his father said. “There was respect for work. You didn’t have every other one on a so-called social program, Lyle.”

  “Who is on a social program and what is so-called about it?”

  “I’ll tell you it’s college,” his father said. “Because I look and all I see is protests. Every other day protests on your alma mater campus.”

  “They want the university to divest from private military firms, Dad. What is the problem with that?”

  His father could be heard beeping the car horn. “Jesus Christmas,” he said. “All right, kiddo. All right. Coming in loud and clear. But Sunday. Tell us sooner. You remember how to call.”

  Chapter 13

  They were still years in the past interview-wise when Sean McCreight agreed to a last-minute talk at the warehouse. Lyle disassembled the prepaid, handed it to McCreight to place in the freezer. He looked around the room, a high-ceilinged box with safes in the corner, a folding chair, a mattress, and a couch like a shabby flowered hot dog bun. On a table in the center of the room, McCreight had set up a computer, and throughout the room, there were small speakers, some hung from strings in the ceiling, others on boxes or shelves, and a metal object that looked like an open book springing antennae was set beside three typewriters positioned on the floor where it met the wall.

  “Would’ve thought these were a century or so old school for you,” Lyle said.

  “Would’ve thought but did something else instead. That’s a 1927 Underwood Universal,” McCreight said, turning in the cold buzz of the open freezer. “Remington Noiseless Portable. And the green one there, that’s the Hermes 3000.”

  “Always wanted one of these,” Lyle said, “but whenever it came time to it, a flea market or an antique store sale, I’d think what if I lost the one copy of the manuscript?”

  “You people think the worst thing that can happen is an accident. It is all icy roads and spilt milk,” McCreight said.

  Knelt down, Lyle touched a ribbon and pulled away a black finger to wipe on his pants. He stood and let himself sag the center of the couch. He’d bought a new recorder, five inches, 555 hours of MP3 audio on a twenty-dollar memory card, just-brushed clean sound. At home, on the practice take, he could hear the rustle of his breast pocket. Now, Lyle lay the device on Sean McCreight’s laptop.

  “Smart foreign governments are buying up precautionary antiques. Aren’t prior to telecom exactly, but not networked either. Less hackable.”

  “I see,” Lyle said.

  McCreight turned a metal chair and strung his torso over the back. “Truth is, typewriters aren’t immune either.” He began to talk of how, during the Cold War, the Soviets had bugged US embassies and developed a technique to decipher the clicks of typing. Under suspicion, the NSA launched Project Gunman in the eighties, seized and replaced all communication devices in Moscow, Leningrad. Sixteen typewriters had been compromised. “That’s why the white noise,” McCreight said, pressing a switch so that speaker boxes around the room sent something like audio spray. Then, as though Lyle were not there, he turned up the screen of his laptop and began typing, arms hung toward the table and chin rested on the chair back.

  “All right,” he said. “What does my sister say?”

  “Your sister says she wants to see you.”

  “But what does she say about me, Michaels? What did she say when you told her about Glen Close?” McCreight jittered his feet on the ground, forearms held against his thighs. He moved his hands as though he were cleaning them, and he looked over his shoulder at a clock on the wall. He plucked the recorder up and set it down like a point in front of Lyle.

  “What I said she said. She wants to see you.” Lyle slid the recorder forward. “I wanted to ask you about the hacker project.”

  “What about?”

  “Trojan horses from afar,” Lyle said. “That ostensibly we’re talking about the United States government setting hackers to work on a whole electrical system to disarm wea
pons. Mechanical failure at the level of code. You said maybe already.”

  “And,” McCreight said.

  “Is there someone you can connect me with on that project?”

  “Find sources yourself or give up. How good a journalist are you, Michaels?”

  Lyle removed a stick of gum from his pocket. The disdain was the sort leveled at Cain, but McCreight would want to refute the man, flash expertise. He crumpled the gum wrapper, left it on the table. “Cain is saying he doesn’t know of hacking mechanical weaponry.”

  “What do you mean Cain?”

  “I mean Barry Cain said the Iranian centrifuges sound impossible.”

  “You went to Virginia to see Cain.”

  “Hell’s Kitchen. Here to see his son. Kid’s been working here the last few years.”

  “Cain’s son,” McCreight said.

  “Goldman, I think he said. Does something with finance.”

  “And you’ve looked into him with all your professional channels of peepholes,” Sean said.

  “Cain’s son? No, Cain is a minor character.”

  “Maybe he’d interest you. Maybe he is part of the story. That’s what you call the color, no? Rainbows, gardens. Pink, cerulean.”

  “I’m not saying I doubt you,” Lyle said. “But I need to lock down confirmations. Anyone. Anyone at all you think you could put in contact?”

  McCreight’s eyes narrowed. He pulled himself erect off the seat back. He smiled until Lyle felt his own foolish grin in McCreight’s expression. “Cain doesn’t have a son, Michaels. He has a daughter who came back newly left-handed from Mosul.”

  PART EIGHT: QUOTIENTS

  The only way you find the needle is to remove the whole haystack.

  —Wright

  Chapter 1

  It was all-nighter kind of fun because he had learned of a way he could earn a place with his thumbs. Simple as turn on his console. They are always at in-game chat. They are always saying his aggros are sick. Clap clap clap. He is the most fed Tank in their universe. Like him so much, they invite him to internet relay chat. Keep it down low.