The Man Who Wouldn't Die

by A. B. Jewell

  “It’s computer code.”

  “Right, and you’re a geek.”

  “How have you even survived in the Bay Area with all the labels you give people?” He must’ve seen the ire in my eyes and his tone changed. “Anyhow, yes, I read code. But you don’t just read code. You have to program this into a computer and then you have to see what happens.”

  “You mean make it run.”

  “Exactly. Don’t think of this as code, but, rather, think of these as machine instructions.”

  I nodded. It met the smell test. “So how do we do that?” But I obviously knew the answer. We needed a computer. “Floyd, let me put this bluntly: Is this the Spirit Box?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’d doubt it. Maybe. But it’s not very long.”

  It was just three pages. “How long is the facial recognition software?”

  “The what?”

  “The program you’re working on.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Oh, right?” I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve told me that it’s all you can think about, that you’ve been chasing me around to discuss, your damn life’s work, and you just suddenly forgot about it?”

  “Are you saying you want in? You want to invest?”

  “I’m saying I don’t trust you or your story. So I’m changing tactics. I’m going to offer you a deal.”

  “So now you’re starting a company?”

  “Not like that, Floyd. Stop horsing around. It’s much simpler than that. I’m going to drop you off somewhere with a computer—your house, an Internet café, whatever. You’re going to find out what this does and you’re going to tell me and you’re not going to tell anyone else. If you fail to follow these instructions, I’m going to give your name to the police in connection with the murders of Da Raj and Captain Don.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re bluffing.”

  “Maybe. That’s the nature of a bluff.”

  “I had nothing to do with those murders.”

  “That will not be my problem. That will be a matter for the police.”

  “This is insane!”

  “I’ll tell you what’s insane: Insane is the likelihood that you’re following me around so that I can introduce you to Danny or some other prospective investor. Insane is that you happened to see a Tarantula wander through the back door of Bob’s Bags. Insane is that you happened to see the felled Tarantula by the side of the road while we were driving around and I didn’t see him. All these things, every one of them, falls under a heading of something I don’t believe in: coincidence.”

  “It’s called Ben’s Bags.”

  “What?”

  “You said: Bob’s Bags. It’s Ben’s Bags.”

  “Whatever.”

  “There was a Bob’s Bags but it was a pretty classic tale. It was actually first to market, before Ben’s Bags, and the founder—Bob—he was brilliant, an idea guy, of course. But he had no business sense. He had this idea that you could—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Just listen to me. He had a phenomenal idea about how to build market share. He started giving away the bags.”

  “For free. I know, I’ve heard about this—”

  “Just listen, okay. His idea was better than that. He was giving away bags for free and the bags were filled with money. People couldn’t get enough of these bags. They were an instant sensation.”

  “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “What? No, we must not be communicating. He had huge market share. And then, one day, he just went out of business.”

  “That’s because he was giving away money.”

  “What? No! It’s not that simple. He needed professional management. The Founder’s Dilemma. He didn’t know how to manage growth, and then along came Ben’s Bags and just picked up the pieces.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass—”

  “I’m telling you that great ideas come along once in a while, founders who also have business sense. I’m your guy, Fitch. Take a chance on me.”

  This time my uppercut got his full attention. It struck his chin at just the right moment to cause him to bite into his lip. Blood trickled out and he blinked back tears.

  “You are bullshitting me on about five levels, Floyd. Pretending to sound stupid with rambling stories, pretending to be running some start-up. I don’t know why or what your game is, and I don’t care. Now shut your mouth and sit there until I drop you off someplace of my choosing. I’ll pick you up in a few hours and you’ll give me my answer. Or I go to the cops. Got it?”

  I took his whimper for affirmation.

  Twenty

  AT A COPYMART, we made a copy of the computer code. Then I dropped Floyd on a residential corner in Menlo Park, just one swanky town over from Palo Alto. He said I couldn’t take him all the way to his house because, he said, he still lived with his parents and it would be embarrassing for everyone.

  “You’re in your thirties,” I said, guessing. “And living at home.”

  “I’m supposed to buy a place? It costs two million for a shack? The worst part is my parents keep jacking up the rent, trying to; they’re not supposed to make more than a ten-percent rent hike until you move out and then they can go to market rates. They were hippies in the sixties and now they say that capitalist forces are the only true thing, along with fiber. Real misers.”

  “You know the terms: you have a few hours to get me the results or the cops start knocking.”

  He opened the door.

  “Hey, Floyd.”

  “What?”

  “I noticed that you haven’t asked me about your car.”

  “My . . .”

  “The MINI, your new car.”

  “I got it with zero down.”

  “I think you’re into something up to your ears.” I grabbed his arm before he could get out and I gave him a good hard look to let him know I meant business. Then, right before I was going to let him go, I was hit with a question that I didn’t realize had been nagging me until that moment.

  “Tell me about Eliza.”

  “Huh?”

  I’d had this moment of clarity and connection. The Shipper had talked about Eliza and I remembered where I’d seen the name before.

  I said: “When I came into the bag store, you’d written the word on a piece of paper.”

  He took it in, shrugged. He explained what I already knew: that it was an artificial-intelligence program. He claimed that he’d written the word down because AI underlies so much computer code these days, including facial recognition. AI, as he described it, was just an overused phrase, a catchall for much code.

  “I have a stupid question,” I said.

  “There are stupid questions.”

  “What?”

  “Usually people say there aren’t any stupid questions but there are definitely stupid questions. I’ll allow it.”

  I ignored him. “Does Eliza die?”

  He pulled his neck back, almost like he was surprised.

  “That’s actually a fantastic question.” He explained to me why. Artificial intelligence, he said, grows from existing patterns. A computer program makes decisions based on the kinds of decisions that have been made previously. By way of example, he said that there are a million programs that make assumptions about human behavior based on the amassing of tons of patterns, so-called Big Data.

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “Just sounds like that because you don’t know anything.”

  “Fair enough. So does Eliza die?”

  “First of all, Eliza is long since dead. It’s a generic term, really, a placeholder. AI has come so far since that. So forget about Eliza. But, again generically, AI doesn’t exactly die. It can, though, peter out.”

  He explained that over time, an AI program that isn’t refreshed with more data stops being able to accurately mimic future behavior or ideas. I was having trouble following and I wasn’t afraid to admit it to him. The AI programs,
he explained, get stale.

  “Humans get random,” he said. “It’s hard to predict random by its very nature. There is an internal spark, creative chaos, you might call it.”

  “Spirit.”

  This seemed to jar him and he eyed me hard.

  “Maybe.”

  I noodled it.

  “You have three hours to figure out what’s on that paper,” I told him.

  “Three hours, c’mon!”

  “Go.”

  He got out. I followed him two blocks at a distance until he disappeared into a modest ranch-style home that probably did cost $2 million. Only thing I was sure he was telling the truth about: real estate prices here were out of control.

  I GUESS I didn’t think I’d given Floyd the keys to the Spirit Box. My gut told me that wasn’t what was on those pieces of paper. And, even so, I had a copy. And I had the worthless black box in my pocket. Maybe the two things went together—the black box and the paper.

  Regardless, I was at the point in this madness where I had to start taking big chances.

  OUTSIDE A STARBACKS, I called Gaberson but he didn’t answer and I left him a message.

  Inside, I ordered the Moon Roast, which the barista said had enough caffeine to fuel a rocket jet. “No kidding,” she said. I had to sign a waiver saying that Starbacks was not liable if I started looting. I took a few sips and felt the energy coursing through me, the synapses firing, and pulled out my phone. An idea had been percolating, I guess, and it surfaced, the coming together of a bunch of random thoughts: a dolphin; flipping; the high cost of housing; market rents; ketchup.

  I did a search for “Flippers.” No sooner had Gooble returned my answer than I realized I’d probably solved the Pern case. It had come together—the tenant, the lawyer, the Perns desperate for money.

  I let out a fat exhale. Who cared? It might have felt nice twelve hours ago to dispense with that minor mystery and then go home and eat soufflé with Terry.

  There was no joy in this modest revelation, and in fact, I just felt beaten. There was no Terry to go home to. I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes and remembered a story my husband told me about his dad. They’d gotten back from the last Little League practice of the year. Terry would’ve been around ten and his dad was the coach. His dad asked him if he liked playing and Terry said, basically, eh, it was all right. His dad pressed a bit and asked if there was anything he’d miss about the team and Terry said: Johnny Fairbanks was cute.

  They rode the rest of the way home in silence, and when they got home, they opened the front door and Terry’s mom said hello from upstairs and his dad said: “Lenore, I think we’ve got a situation.”

  I laughed every time Terry told the story because the way his dad said the thing was so damned kindly and, if I understand the word correctly, unfazed, like maybe telling his wife that their son had lost a tooth and was growing up. That’s why Terry was such a great guy; he came from great people, straight talkers. He and his dad were best friends and damned if it wasn’t one of the worst days of my own life when Terry’s dad stroked out and I had to see Terry hit the dumps.

  “You want a refill?” asked the barista, who had walked over.

  “No thanks.”

  “It’s locally sourced—from Guatemala.”

  “That’s not locally sourced.”

  “Sure it is. If you buy it there.”

  I growled and she got the hint and took off. I willed from my head visions of Terry being tortured by Tarantulas and I pulled out a pen and did some back-of-the-napkin calculations. On the napkin, I wrote:

  Captain Don

  Mrs. Donogue

  Danny Donogue

  Lester Wollop

  Alan Klipper (the Shipper)

  Da Raj

  Deuce, Tarantula #2

  Floyd

  Law Firm

  Spirit Box

  Eliza

  Froom

  I tapped the pen on the napkin, thinking, processing. I drew some lines connecting various people who were connected and quickly discovered that most of these people were connected in one way or another. Through family or business or both.

  I circled the words “Spirit Box.” That was the thing that connected everybody.

  Everybody wanted a piece of it, it seemed, with a notable exception: Captain Don himself, the guy who created it. I mean, I couldn’t say that for sure—he was dead; dead-ish—but from everything I could tell, he wasn’t that into innovation. From his video, he seemed also to be getting peaceful with the idea of dying. He had something or other and he knew it and he was saying good-bye and urging others to let him go.

  That just nagged at me. So why the Spirit Box and even more confounding: Was it actually working?

  Was the Captain out there?

  What did that even mean?

  My phone rang. The caller ID said: Lester Wollop.

  “Fitch here,” I answered.

  “I got another message,” Mrs. Donogue said.

  “You’re alive.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She’d been tied up last time I saw her.

  “Mrs. Donogue . . .”

  “Tess, please. I’m trying to reestablish my independence.”

  “I thought that—”

  “Something happened with me and Lester. He tried to draw me back in. We had . . . relations, and it was great and all that, but I need to get back to me. I’m taking back my first name.”

  “Tess, did you get attacked?”

  “That’s kind of personal.”

  “Tess!”

  “What? No need to shout. The desal plant is off.”

  “Did you get tied up by attackers, in your house?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tess, please. I need to know what happened. When I left your house, I saw you and Lester tied up. Who did that?”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with—”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “We tied each other up, Fitch. Okay! Leave it alone. Then I guess we fell asleep. I did, anyhow.”

  I wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “What’s the message, Tess?”

  “Message?”

  “From Captain Don. What’s the new message?”

  “‘Yer headed in the right direction.’”

  “That’s the message?”

  Yep, she confirmed. That was the message. Yer headed in the right direction.

  “When did it arrive?”

  “Just a few seconds ago.”

  “Can you send a note back?”

  She didn’t answer right away and then said: “I guess, I never thought about it. What should I say?”

  “‘Say something useful or stay dead, asshole.’”

  And I hung up.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I looked out from the driver’s-side window of the MINI at what even I would have to admit was an architectural marvel. Terry would call it sublime. Snozzwanger, Veruca and Gloop. The law firm at the center of Silicon Valley. It stood at the corner of Onaniversity and El Camino No Real, the thoroughfare that courses through the region. The three-story building, taking up nearly a full block, glowed with low, ambient light that looked like it seeped from the building.

  A storied place. Word was that the salaries of new hires from premier law schools started at $175,000 or more, which actually was the equivalent of double that since the new lawyers worked ninety hours a week and had no time to spend the money. Very lucrative, it was said, if you weren’t one of the ones hospitalized for dehydration. The law firm had living quarters and a scrip store for purchase of office supplies and counseling services. But the thing that had me most intrigued was something I’d not previously heard about, and was frankly shocked to see: a drive-through window.

  It was my only option this late at night. I’d tried the front door and had neither the proper key lock nor any excuse that the desk clerk would buy when I tried to get in to see someone, especially since I didn’t even
know who to ask for.

  The drive-through was to the right of the building, and three cars were lined up in front of me. A sign overhead read: Open 24 Hours. The sedan in front of me moved forward and I followed in lockstep and came across a menu. It showed some items for purchase and then prices in two categories: “regular” and “after-hours.” The prices struck me first, most of them ranging from several hundred to several thousand. The categories included: notary public; make-a-deal; late-night equity round; disclaimers; insta-file-a-patent; insta-patent challenge; instant coffee; protein shake; grab bag.

  In front of me, I could hear a voice come through a speaker. The speaker was located at the mouth in the face of a stately English barrister painted on the wall of the building. “Welcome to Snozzwanger, Veruca and Gloop. My name is Chuck, I’ll be your barristerista today. How may I help you?” the voice asked.

  From the sedan in front of me, a woman stuck out her head. “First Mover Advantage Special, please. I have a GropeOn.”

  “Victoria, is that you?” said the voice.

  “No!”

  “It is too. Victoria. Move along.”

  “This one is great. I know it. Please! I’ll pay in equity.”

  “Victoria. I have to cut you off. Believe me, we’d like your money, if you had any, but you’re not taking care of yourself.”

  “I have one word for you: meditation.”

  “Victoria—”

  “It’s totally inefficient. What if we could speed it up, use technology to make it really zoom? Squeeze out the fat.”

  “Victoria!”

  “What?”

  “This is your third company idea this week.”

  “I’m rolling. I’ve been meditating.”

  “Get out of line or I’ll call your bankruptcy officer.”

  Victoria practically stood in her seat, bringing her face up close to the painted barrister. She had long brown hair and wore a headset. “Hey, asshole, you know what?”

  “What, Victoria?”

  “Someday I’ll have so much cash that I’ll build a robot to dance on your grave until the end of time.”

  “Victoria, we really do appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit.”

  “You do?”

  “We do. But this level of support is not intended to be perceived as a commitment of any kind.”