Virtual Fire

by Mendy Sobol

  “Melora, you disappoint me.” Disappoint him? “The decision to go to war is a political one. Argue, discuss, debate, and demonstrate all you want before that decision is made. Write your Congressmen, vote for peace candidates, go out and get arrested for trespassing at the Pentagon. But once our soldiers are placed in harm’s way, the time for protest is over. People like to say we never lost a battle in Vietnam, including the battle for Huế. But we lost that damn war because too many Americans didn’t understand one simple fact—every protest undermined our forces and gave comfort to the enemy.”

  I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. My words came too fast. And too loud.

  “From what I read, we lost that war because we didn’t understand anything about the Vietnamese people or their history. Because the French colonials replaced the Chinese imperialists, the Japanese invaders replaced the French, the French replaced the Japanese again, and when Vietnam kicked out the French, we tried replacing them. And all because some geniuses at the State Department were scared of China, who Vietnam hated worse than us, and who these days sells us everything Americans buy!”

  Captain Rusk looked at me while I caught my breath, his face and words blank, emotionless.

  “Miss Kennedy,” he said, “you couldn’t possibly know what happened in Vietnam. You weren’t there.”

  The next day I began messing with my work. Nothing anyone could call sabotage, just the kind of mistakes the other programmers made all the time. The kind of mistakes that grafted onto other people’s work and snowballed. Nothing that would shake up RITA, because who knew how that might turn out, and nothing that would hurt our troops. Just some stupid fucked-up bullshit because I was pissed with IPI and the fucking war. Kids’ stuff, really.

  But there was more to it than that.

  From the first day in the academy’s library with Coop and the 700, all I thought I’d ever wanted to do was write programs. Now I realized I’d wanted more. That program I wrote for Mr. Belasso, the one that let him save money on his air conditioning? Why did I write it? Sure, it was fun. But though I didn’t understand it then, there was another reason, too. I wanted my work to make him smile.

  I never cared about big stuff, never thought about saving the world. But here I was, a veteran of four years in the U.S. Navy and a dozen more at IPI, living my programming dreams. Only now my work wasn’t making people smile, it was killing them.

  I was killing them.

  Was I taking a chance, risking everything I’d worked for? Maybe. But I didn’t think so. I thought I was too fucking smart to get caught, and IPI Security was too fucking stupid to catch me. Coop and Captain Rusk? They might figure it out. But as well as Coop and Rusk knew me, I was sure I knew them better, knew them well enough to continue my little protest in ways they’d never notice. Still, I was afraid they’d catch on, afraid what it might mean for me and the only real friends I’d ever had.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Toby

  Somethin’s changed. There. There! She’s stallin’. She could finish that surface-to-air guidance program in five minutes. But she’s stringin’ it out, addin’ lots of redundant code. And a feedback loop. She never does stupid shit like that!

  Why now? Is she sick of the killin’? Has she had enough?

  Or maybe she’s on to me. Maybe it’s a trap. She’s the only one smart enough to dangle that kind of bait.

  Can I trust her? Can I take that chance?

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Melora

  ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

  The words flashed across my visor while music coming from the implant hummed inside my head, some guy backed by a ‘60s band, sounding like he had a kazoo stuck up his nose, singing some shit about how he wasn’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm, whoever the fuck Maggie was.

  But before I can think about what’s happening, more words, stinging words—

  THE BAG COUNT: 34,786 Americans dead, 136,255 wounded. 140,000 Red Path and Indonesian noncombatants dead, 300,000 wounded. HAD ENOUGH? STAY TUNED!

  And the diagnostic I was running on surface-to-air guidance jammers came back online like nothing had happened.

  My first thought was practical, arrogant—no one was good enough to get past my security protocols, not even Coop. Every cybergramming stud at IPI tried hacking into everyone else’s work, showing off, playing practical jokes, jockeying for bragging rights over who had the biggest hard drive. But nobody had ever come close to hacking me.

  Then I stopped worrying about the messenger, focusing on the message. Instead of “Who?”, the question became, “Why?” If IPI Security was on to what I was doing, why not just bust me? Why play games?

  I dumped out of the diagnostic program, running every tracer I could think of, making up new ones when the tracers on my hard drive turned up nothing. Keeping at it like I always did with seemingly unsolvable electronic mysteries got me nowhere. At the end of the day, I only knew one thing for sure about the message—as far as the entire IPI Net was concerned, it never happened. And that was impossible.

  I didn’t sleep much that night, and when I did I dreamed the dream of dark skies and churning ocean waters. I woke wondering what came next.

  My mystery hacker didn’t disappoint. I got to work an hour early, but the instant I jacked in it happened again—

  RINGER PARK, ALLSTON. MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. ALONE.

  And again, the message was gone almost before I could read it. The music lingered, something I recognized this time, an old song Boston’s classic rock station played every day—Grace Slick singing White Rabbit.

  Options? Tell Rusk. That’s what I’m supposed to do, but I was betting my hacker knew why I couldn’t let security start nosing around my files. Try tracing again? If I couldn’t do it yesterday what chance did I have today? And at some point, someone at IPI Security would notice all my tracing activity and start asking questions. Talk it over with Coop? Until I began spiking my programs, I always turned to Coop. But even if I wanted to tell him everything, I couldn’t, because yesterday he’d taken off to Paris for two weeks with his latest honey.

  There really was only one option. Besides, my curiosity was stronger than my fear. Whoever sent that message was planning on taking me through the looking glass. No, more than that, knew I couldn’t resist the trip.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Toby

  This is nuts. But at least sittin’ up here I can see ‘em before they see me. Yeah, right. Like they don’t have a million ways of stakin’ this place out. Toby, you dumbass, just ‘cuz you’re good at hackin’—and runnin’—what makes you think you can start settin’ up meets with potential double agents like you’re some kind of freakin’ James Bond?

  Well ready or not, there she is. That’s gotta be her down by the baseball diamond. The cyber haircut for fiber optics, the way she’s lookin’ around—yeah, that’s her all right. I knew she was a woman. And damn if she isn’t beautiful, too.

  Oh Toby, here you are freezin’ your nuts off at midnight in mugger heaven, about to get busted and spend the rest of your life behind bars, and you’re checkin’ out her legs! Focus, buddy, focus!

  Hey, she didn’t report the messages to IPI brass. Absolutely no Net activity indicatin’ that. Just ran a few tracers. And that’s good. Unless this whole plan was her idea in the first place. And that would be bad. She’s sure as hell smart enough to pull it off. And... and... and damn—she is gorgeous!

  Okay buddy, what’s it gonna be? Now, or never?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Melora

  Allston isn’t a city. It’s a Boston neighborhood like Brighton, Southie, and Jamaica Plain. Part residential, part student slum, part plain old slum, it was the kind of place I would have lived if it weren’t for my high-paying job at IPI.

  Ringer Park is a scary little corner of Allston. I came by first in daylight, checking it out before my midnight rendezvous. Just off Cambridge Street, the main bus route from parts west through Brighton, Allston, and over the Charles River to Harvard, Ringer’s bordered to the west
by Gordon Street’s brick row-house apartments, to the east by Allston Street, a fast-moving two-lane road, and to the south by Commonwealth Avenue, one of Boston’s main streets. Sandwiched between Cambridge Street and Ringer’s east side there’s a crooked, mysterious little Avenue—High Rock Way. Once fine, but now peeling homes straddle a big rock formation overlooking the park, like a small mountain in the middle of a flat city. It was pretty obvious where my hacker would be watching for me.

  The park is a mess—every one of its globe lights shattered, tennis court nets shredded, benches cracked and graffiti-covered, trash everywhere. It looks like the world of Clockwork Orange. In daylight, students walk their dogs next to gangsters out flashing their colors, marking their turf. By midnight, it’s empty.

  Not wanting to disappoint my new friend, I stood near the dusty baseball diamond’s chain link backstop in plain view of anyone watching up on High Rock Way.

  And that must be him, I thought, or a really big mugger. Strolling down the glass-littered cement path like an absent-minded college professor out for his evening constitutional. He really is big. And my God, he’s fucking smiling!

  That’s when I recognized the face.

  All along I’d ruled out the possibility of an IPI programmer, figuring on some unknown whiz kid at the Pentagon. There weren’t any other options. Except one. I knew the face, though it was older, shaved clean, better looking, altered. I knew it because it was the face on the cover of the only Time Magazine I’d ever read. The biggest difference in real life was the way his eyes caught the light, almost sparkled. I’d read the article fifty times—May 7, 1996—The Hacker Who Changed History: Toby Jessup 25 Years Later. Filled with bullshit about his murder, suicide, and recent sightings at U2 concerts and 7-Elevens, the story might as well have been about Elvis. Six paragraphs in an offset box explained his quarter-century-old raid on the Pentagon, and every time I read it, his genius and daring blew me away. And every time I remember thinking, What a waste.

  “Uh, hi,” he said.

  “Hi?”

  “Uh, yeah. Hello. How are ya?” Extending his hand. I kept mine in my pockets.

  “Look,” I said, “I know who you are and what you want, so why don’t we get this over with.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re Toby Jessup, and you figured out some way of hacking into IPI—probably on the microwave relays we use for networking. Then you noticed me screwing around with my work. Now you think you’ll blackmail me. Well, I’ll tell you what—you can go fuck yourself. I’ll go to jail before I ever give you anything.”

  “Look, I’m really sorry about how I had to do this…” rolling one big hand over the other, “…thing, but it isn’t about blackmail, and I really admire your work, and….” Looking down, then up into my eyes, his hands coming to rest on his hips. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  The Modern Cafe is a divey shithole on the little square formed by the angled intersection of Cambridge Street and Brighton Avenue, the kind of place still serving its meatloaf special after midnight. No need to find a dark, private table—they all are.

  “Hi, Bear,” the waitress said to Toby, giving his arm a squeeze. I wondered how this guy had stayed hidden, figured he probably lived within a block of this place. Letting me know that, well, either he’d been incredibly lucky all these years, or really wanted to take me to his favorite restaurant.

  “Glad to see you got a little friend with you tonight, Bear. Honey, I’m Ruthie,” sticking out a hand, a dozen gold and silver bracelets sliding to her wrist. “I’d have to wait all night for him to introduce us!”

  I realized then, for all Toby knew about my work, he didn’t know my name, most likely expected me to be a guy.

  “Hi, Ruthie,” taking her hand, “I’m Jill.”

  “Hiya, Jill. What’s it gonna be for you two? Bear’s usual pepperoni pizza?”

  Toby coughed into his hand. “Ruthie, uh, Jill, might like something diff....”

  “Pizza will be fine, Ruthie,” I said.

  Toby spotted my hearing aid the moment we entered the dimly lit restaurant, and without giving it another thought, made sure I could see his lips whenever he spoke. I noticed right away, couldn’t recall anyone ever doing that before.

  So we sat there, me and “Bear,” waiting for pizza, him telling me how great it used to be in Boston before they cleaned up the waterfront, building Quincy Market for yuppies and tourists.

  “There was this all-night place—Mondo’s. We’d take the bus up from Butler at 2:00 a.m. just to eat there. They had a full menu, but the big deal after midnight was the Farmer’s Special. Three eggs, toast, hash browns, juice, coffee, ham, bacon or sausage. Ninety-nine cents! When the waitress came over to take your order, she’d say, ‘Ham, bacon, or sausage?’ like that was the only choice. The grill was a mile long, and they had like three hundred eggs goin’—all sunny side up. And Mondo, he was about four-ten, three hundred sixty pounds. Every once in a while he’d push through the kitchen’s swingin’ doors, flies buzzin’ around him, comin’ out to break up a fight, or makin’ an appearance like some kind of movie star!”

  So I told him about my high school days living and working in a pizzeria.

  “Imagine this—pizza, three meals a day and midnight snack—all on the house.”

  “No way!”

  “Way!”

  And we were laughing, laughing like two kids out on a suddenly successful blind date.

  When the pizza came it got quiet again. I hadn’t eaten for two days, and it was delicious, the best in Boston.

  “Will you tell me your real name?” Toby said.

  “Don’t tell me you couldn’t hack that information?”

  “The numerical coding IPI uses for payroll and personnel makes it a little tough, but yeah, I could’ve. I just felt that was, like, y’know, invadin’ your privacy.”

  I finished chewing, swallowed.

  “Melora. Melora Kennedy.”

  “Uh… hi, Melora!”

  “Look, Jessup....”

  “Toby. Please, call me Toby.”

  Two teenage boys walked past our table, nodded to Toby, and slipped past the greasy blue curtain leading to the kitchen. In ones and twos, people had been coming in and out of the kitchen ever since we sat down. None of them looked like health inspectors.

  “Okay… Toby. What’s going on back there?”

  “Gamers.”

  “Gamers?” I knew he wasn’t talking about Monopoly.

  “There’s clubs like this all over the city. All over everywhere. They write their own code. They’ve got drinkin’ games, and sex games, and games about little rainbow-colored ponies. But war games are the big draw. Gamers take sides and roll-play, pretendin’ they’re AEF troopers huntin’ down Red Path, or Red Path guerillas matchin’ wits with RITA. They get their biggest kicks streamin’ IPI combat video from the network newscasts on VR headsets. That, and bettin’ on the daily bag counts.”

  I’d heard rumors, but…. “Where do they get the hardware?”

  “Sometimes, they steal it. More often, they buy it on the black market.”

  “Black market?” I realized I was stupidly repeating everything Toby said. But honestly, by then I was feeling pretty stupid.

  “Yeah. That’s what happens whenever somethin’ people want becomes illegal.”

  “But where does the black market get the hardware?”

  “From every business and government agency that’s got an Access Law exemption. VISA, Exxon, the Marine Corps. But mostly IPI.”

  “That’s bullshit! No one can get that stuff past IPI Security!”

  Toby leaned back in his chair, laughing. “Are you kiddin’ me? The guys in IPI Security are the ones sellin’ it!”

  I looked at Toby, wondering if he was lying. If he was, I figured he must have been one hell of a poker player.

  Three more teenagers came in, nodded at Toby, and headed for the back, walking past a table where a couple of Boston cops sat eating
pizza. The cops didn’t look up.

  “Those cops have to know something’s going on.”

  “Sure they do. But they’re gettin’ their cut. Everybody’s gettin’ their cut.”

  “How about you?”

  “Guy’s gotta make a livin’. I fix the machines. Program ‘em too. And when they get too full of themselves, I sit in on a game and whip their butts, old school.”

  “Do they know you?”

  “Only as ‘Bear’. But no one uses their real names. Everybody’s named Turtle, or Pitbull, or Switchblade. ”

  “But don’t they know who you are?”

  “I don’t think they care. Besides, they’re kids. They don’t know any history. Especially ancient history.”

  A head peered out from behind the curtains, a girl with red hair and freckles. She looked around the room, and spotting Toby, headed toward our table.

  “Hey, Bear.”

  “Hey.”

  The girl glanced at me. “She cool?”

  “Yeah, she’s okay.”

  The girl stuck out a freckled hand. Her sleeve pulled back, revealing a forearm-covering tattoo of a fur-covered demon, blood dripping from its mouth and a man’s severed head gripped in its claws. I didn’t recognize the artist, but the work was solid.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Grendel.”

  I shook her hand. “Hey, Grendel. I’m Devil Ray.”

  “Are you two here to play?”

  “No,” Toby said. “Just samplin’ the cuisine.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Bear, but some guy calling himself Scorpion showed up from Brooklyn. He’s running his mouth about how great the Yankees are and how bad the Red Sox suck—and how bad we suck—and he’s putting up some sick numbers to back it up. I was hoping you could drop in for a game and teach him some humility.”

  Toby grinned. “Maybe later, Grendel. Okay?”

  “Okay, Bear. And you can come, too, Devil Ray!”