Embarrassed now at their earlier intimacy, Anna dared not look Sadie in the eye.
‘I want to go home, if I can. This place… There’s nothing for me here. Will you come?’
Sadie was nodding. ‘You can leave. All you have to do is to want to.’ She took Anna’s hand, ran her scarred fingers over Anna’s scarred skin. ‘Yes, I’ll come.’
Anna thought about life and all the things she wanted from it. It was the way she always felt when the blue was lifting. Anything seemed possible. Everything seemed desirable. She longed to return now, to have another chance. Sadie would make it easier; they understood each other perfectly and would be able to take care of one another. Anna gripped Sadie’s hand and together they slipped away from the motionless world.
And entered the spectacular theatre of suicide, violence and misery that Mr Pandemonium, ever the showman, had created.
A TEAR IN THE WEB
by Alex Shvartsman
The old man seemed perfectly normal, until he opened his mouth.
He shuffled in at about half past five, pausing by the door to survey the mostly empty rows of computer desks in my Internet Café. There were only a few folks around, checking e-mail. The school kids were already gone for the day, having dropped by for an hour or two to play video games after class. The regulars, who were going to fill up the place until the wee hours of the morning, were just now in the process of escaping from their day jobs. I lounged behind the counter, reading.
The customer looked to be in his late fifties, dressed in slacks and a tweed jacket with elbow patches, like a college professor stereotype in a movie. His outfit was well worn, but clean and tidy. He purchased an hour’s worth of computer time and was about to sit at one of the available terminals, but turned around, and walked back up to the counter instead.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, looking around to see that we weren’t overheard, ‘who handles your servers for you?’
Our ‘servers’ consisted of a single computer that acted as a gateway between user terminals and the Internet. It was at least two years out of date, but it still worked. In a small business you don’t replace stuff until it breaks down. I wasn’t going to explain the facts of life to the old guy though, especially since I had no idea why he cared, anyway.
‘I do,’ I said, looking up from the paperback. In my experience, if you don’t want the conversation to continue, brevity is the way to go. It was going to get busy soon, and I hoped to finish the chapter before then.
‘And are your servers located on the premises, or somewhere else?’ he asked.
‘They are located here.’ For the purpose of this exercise, our server PC was going to be referred to in plural.
‘Does anyone else have access to them?’ he continued to prod.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No one touches them but our staff.’
‘I see,’ said the old man. ‘And who is the owner of this place?’
‘I am.’ My policy of brevity was failing miserably at ending this conversation, but I did not have a better plan.
‘And what’s your name?’
Whoever coined the cliché about customers always being right clearly did not spend any time working behind the counter.
‘Ted,’ I said.
‘Ted what?’
This was getting kind of ridiculous. ‘Ted Ingardi,’ I said, the last vestiges of my patience fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.
‘And you are really the owner?’
I was trying to be polite. In this economy, every customer counts. Still, there are limits.
‘No,’ I said with as much sarcasm as my tone would convey. ‘I am lying to you. I am actually the janitor.’
He got the hint, this time. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to insult you. It’s just that you are so young. I was a bit surprised, that’s all.’
I looked at him, saying nothing. Maybe silence would work better than brevity, I thought. Unfortunately, it had an opposite effect. The old man decided to tell me his life story.
‘I have a computer at home,’ he told me. ‘But I can’t use it for anything important. They broke in to the web on my home connection and are pouring misinformation through the tear .’
Oh, boy. He is one of those.
‘I just can’t trust my computer anymore, yet there is so much important research to be done. I’ve taken to coming here instead. Hiding in the crowd, so to speak. I asked about your servers because I think they might be compromised. Last time I was here doing a web search, I am pretty sure they put in the results they wanted me to see.’
Internet Cafes see more than a fair share of strange characters, so my tolerance for weird is pretty high. There is the guy who constantly tries to convince me to uninstall Windows from all of our computers, and replace it with an operating system he wrote. Then there is the homeless dude that comes in once a month, like clockwork, with several large garbage bags that contain all his worldly possessions. He hands me some change to print out the latest issue of ‘Modern Philosophy’ magazine. And don’t get me started on the pornography creeps who come in asking if we have ‘private booths’. I just point at a ‘Family Fun Center’ sign I have posted above the register, and send them on their way.
I wish I could say this was the first time a delusional paranoid person came in here, but sadly that wouldn’t be true. You see all kinds, over the years. I am no psychologist, but in my experience the worst thing you can do is to contradict them directly.
‘You know,’ I said carefully, ‘the search engines these days are designed to provide you with suggested results that appear as you type. Perhaps that’s what you experienced here last time.’
The old man looked at me, incredulous,
‘In any case,’ I pressed on, ‘our servers are entirely secure. No one has access to them, but us,’ I said with as much conviction as I could.
‘Just remember,’ said the old man, ‘if anyone asks to access your servers, you should not let them do it. Not without a warrant.’
I nodded.
‘You seem like a nice guy,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get involved in any of this.’
‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I definitely don’t.’ I sure meant that.
This attitude placated him, and he finally went off to use a terminal. I got some peace and quiet for better part of an hour, until the evening crowd began to trickle in. They kept me busy enough not to pay him any mind. Not until he rushed past me, in a huff.
‘They got to me here,’ he said, a mixture of sadness and accusation in his voice. ‘They are replacing the search results again.’ Before I could reply, the old man stormed past me, and out the door.
I shrugged, and walked over to pick up the chair he shoved out of the way getting up from the terminal. He was still logged on, and as I was about to end his session, a headline on the screen caught my eye. ‘President Geertsen to Address Angola Crisis,’ it said. Confused, I began reading the article about U.S. troop deployments in Angola. I haven’t heard anything in the news about American soldiers being sent to Angola, but that was not the strange part. Geertsen ran for president two years ago, and got crushed by the other guy. Yet here he was in the article, a photo of him standing behind a podium with the presidential seal.
I checked the web address, but it was just a raw IP – a string of numbers. I scanned through the rest of the article. It seemed pretty elaborate for a hoax. At the bottom, there were links to more news stories. ‘Can Patriots Win Two Years Straight?’ said one headline, even though they did not win last year. ‘Court Battle to Keep Terri Schiavo Alive Continues.’ Except that they pulled the plug in 2005. What the hell was this?
At the very bottom of the page, there was a search window. I sat there, staring blankly at the screen for a good minute. On a whim, I clicked in the search box and typed in ‘Ted Ingardi.’
A page loaded, with a photo of me that I do not remember posing for. I grinned stupidly on the screen, with the Golden Gate Bridge clearly visible in the
background. I had to admit that it was a pretty good shot, considering that I’ve never been to San Francisco.
There were just a few lines of text under the photo. Date of birth, college degree and other biographical details were accurate. It ended with: ‘Ted Ingardi is currently the owner of The At Sign Internet Café.’ I thought there was nothing else, but the screen blinked; the web page refreshed on its own, and there was just one more line of text in small font, at the very bottom of the page:
‘It is strongly recommended that Mr. Ingardi mind his own business.’
I looked at it, dumbfounded. Then the computer beeped, and shut down the browser window, returning to the main screen. The hour of time that the old man had purchased just ran out, and his session had automatically ended. I typed in the administrator password, unlocking the terminal. The browser window displayed the familiar Google screen. I checked the browsing history, but there was no record of the strange news site.
Perhaps I should have chased after the old man. Demanded some answers, if he even had any. In an adventure story, the hero would do just that. Instead, I sat there, an image of the old man warning ‘You don’t want to get involved in any of this’ playing on repeat in my mind, until an impatient group of World of Warcraft players demanded my attention so they could log on. I finished out the evening shift on autopilot, still trying to figure out what in the world happened. By the end of the night I decided that the best thing I could do was close up and go home, to try and get a good night’s sleep.
I planned to come back early in the morning and reformat the server computer. Just in case.
SONS OF THE DRAGON
by Mike Chinn
The moment they heard Wee Dougie’s yelling, everyone grabbed flashlights and ran outside. Sounded like he’d found some vampires after all, Yamyam thought – nothing else could’ve made him howl like that. Seconds later all of them were pissing themselves laughing – except for Dougie. The archetypal Gorbals hard-man: big, broad, with a mouth to match; nobody expected to see him standing frozen, surrounded by dozens of worms. But there he was – caught in the torch-beams like a rabbit about to get flattened by a car; face twitching, eyes popping.
He wasn’t totally rigid: swatting at the slimy little bastards with the spade he’d taken to dig himself a shit-pit; at the same time his feet doing an odd, spasmodic shuffle. Seemed to Yamyam the worms were determined to crawl as far up his jeans as they could – like they knew he was freaked and were enjoying it.
‘Hey, Dougie – that some new kind of Highland dance?’ Teabag called. Wee Dougie was too distracted for his usual short, violent comeback.
‘I’ll never eat chow mein again,’ Dazzler commented.
Eventually the novelty wore off; everyone trailed back to their hut and cold coffee, leaving Dougie to his worms. They’d never heard of worm-phobia; least of all some headbanger like Wee Dougie actually having it. Naturally, no one considered brushing the wriggling things off him. And no one wondered just what so many worms were doing there in the first place.
They were in Romania to help build a motorway. The country’s road system wasn’t bad – all things considered – but it didn’t have a decent motorway. When Romania had rid itself of Ceausescu and wife and joined the EU, Brussels had handed over millions of euros to build an up to date road system – with the help of volunteers from across Europe.
The first time they’d laid eyes on each other was when they stepped off the plane at Bucharest – a bunch of lads from all over the UK. But they’d gelled – a sort of latter day Auf Wiedersehen, Pet: them against the rest of the foreigners. One of them commented there’d been enough East Europeans coming over for jobs back home a few years ago – seemed only fair they repaid the compliment. And once they were told where they were heading, there had to be the usual jokes about vampires and werewolves. The locals smiled and laughed as though they hadn’t heard it all a million times already, and politely waved off the three trucks on its way towards Transylvania.
They were dumped halfway up a mountain, two hours south of the city of Brasov, right in the middle of a dark woodland that would have looked right at home in a kid’s fairy tale. Yamyam thought it was the kind of place Red Riding Hood’s grandmother would get herself gang-banged by wolves.
And they were told to clear it. Simple.
No one seemed to know for sure if the motorway was actually coming through the woods; Yamyam thought it might have been easier and cheaper to just go round. But the pay was good, it got them away from their families for a while, and the Romanian birds were gorgeous. So no one asked too many questions: just drove what and where they were told, picked up their wage packets at the end of the week – then drove up to Brasov every Saturday night to piss it away.
Wee Dougie didn’t come back after making a twat of himself over the worms – just left his spade behind and disappeared. No one took much notice: he had a habit of buggering off mid-week and coming back next morning reeking of the local firewater. They’d filed out into the glorious Transylvanian weather – Yamyam strolling towards his backhoe with Teabag, both of them glancing round the trees for any sign of a rat-arsed Dougie.
‘He must’ve really gone on one last night,’ muttered Teabag, sipping from his industrial-strength mug of tea. Every week a parcel of teabags came from his old lady – just to make sure he never ran out.
‘They’ll give im the boot,’ Yamyam said. ‘Even this dozy lot’ll only take so much.’
‘Aye.’ Teabag took a noisy slurp. ‘Fuckin twat.’
Yamyam climbed up into his cab and powered up. Teabag clambered into his own rig – a red and yellow bulldozer – and turned the engine over. With a wave, they started on another day in paradise.
Today they were working in a section of the woods the tree-fellers had already sawn their way through. All that remained were stumps jutting out of the hard dry ground like broken teeth. It was Yamyam’s job to rip the stumps up. He enjoyed it – there was something satisfying about the work.
He reversed the digger up to a stump, lowered the rear bucket and dug it into ground and tree. With a wrench the stump ripped free, clumps of soil raining off snapped roots. A second later, a mass of worms boiled out of the hole left behind. It was amazing; Yamyam had never seen so many worms in one place before. He had to get down and take a look.
They were large buggers: almost six inches long and quite dark – getting towards blood red in a few cases. Watching them squirm around the hard earth, he was glad Dougie hadn’t come back – he didn’t want to see the big Scot going ape-shit again. After a few moments, the worms started to wriggle back into the hole. By the time Teabag drove his dozer up, most of them had squirmed out of sight.
‘Oi, Yamyam – since when did they pay you to stare at fuckin holes?’ he yelled over his rattling engine.
‘Some more of Dougie’s mates.’ Yamyam pointed at the hole. ‘Big ens.’
Teabag strolled over and peered down. ‘Ain’t many of the bastards…’
‘Pissed off into the ground. There was—,’ he had a think ‘—dunno – couple hundred of em.’
‘Straight?’ Teabag had another look. ‘Weird shit. Well – this ain’t getting the baby washed, mate.’
Back on his digger, Yamyam drove up to the next stump. It came out sweet as a nut – along with another nest of dark red worms. Teabag gaped, all slack-jawed – Yamyam guessed he hadn’t believed up to then. Teabag stared as the slimy gets wriggled back out of sight.
‘All them worms and no fishin,’ he said.
The next stump revealed more of the bastards – and the next.
‘Maybe the trees are diseased – the roots rotting, like.’ Teabag inspected the nearest stump, nudging the roots with a boot cap. Yamyam shrugged.
They finished uprooting all of the stumps well before midday. Almost half of them had worms underneath. Yamyam knew bugger all about gardening and the like, but it seemed to him there were far too many to be normal. What if half the trees in this w
oodland were infested with worms, how many million would that be? What the hell did they live on?
In the afternoon Yamyam went for a walk whilst the others cracked open a few beers and enjoyed the sunshine. Teabag had bulldozed the area they’d been clearing pretty flat; there were no signs of the holes where the stumps had been dragged up – just scalped dirt and caterpillar tracks. Yamyam headed into the woodland a few yards – glad to get out of the heat, to be honest. It was well past thirty degrees.
He didn’t know what he was looking for – or what he’d find: just ambled about pointlessly: smoking a fag, kicking the occasion tree trunk. None of them sounded different, or hollow; diseased, or rotten. But since he was only guessing what a diseased tree sounded like anyway, it was a pretty good waste of an afternoon. The place was peaceful, though. Dead quiet. Just the leaves crackling in a tiny breeze. He stamped his fag end out carefully and strolled back to the hut, considering a quick sunbathe before starting work again.
When the heat had died a little, they got back to it, scraping a bald path through the woods. Yamyam didn’t unearth any more worms; Teabag left the site scoured clean. The felled trees lay alongside the bare earth, pointing towards the chunk of forest that was going to join them tomorrow.
When darkness fell, they jacked it in and filed back to the cabin for dinner. The food was pretty good: paid for by the EU, prepared by local chefs, and brought in every morning with the day’s orders; all they had to do was microwave it. There was a lot of salad – Romanians seemed to be big on green stuff; everyone except Yamyam hated it. Afterwards they passed round the fags, opened more wine and beer and relaxed. There was Teabag, drinking a mug of tea you could stand a spoon in. Dazzler from Middlesbrough – normally the quiet one, although during one Saturday night punch-up they’d found out the fancy rings on most of his fingers weren’t just for show. Dermot Murphy from Cobh, who – for some reason – only answered to the name McCain. Tez from – of all places – Weston-Super-Mare, a man determined to crack the world speed record on caterpillar tracks. Jonno from London – always trying to come on like a gangster, and about as convincing as that fat bloke on EastEnders. And Ravi from Wolverhampton – or Yamyam as he’d been almost instantly christened. He’d been called worse.
Kzine Issue 1 Page 7