dotmeme

by Mike A. Lancaster

  FOLLOW ALL THE CLUES

  Joe was on another flight, heading somewhere else, feeling like international spying was a pretty tedious affair.

  Okay, he was sporting a bruise on his cheek, a couple of painful ribs, he’d torn some of the skin on his right knuckles. And he was going to have a pounding headache in the very near future because of a scuffle while waiting at the airport, but he hadn’t worn a tux, driven an Aston Martin, or even stopped long enough to check into a hotel.

  After leaving Dorian Interactive, Abernathy had gotten a call and told Joe he was heading back to London, leaving Joe to wait three hours in the departures lounge, only to get on another plane headed to Eastern Europe to follow the trail of a lead that didn’t sound particularly promising.

  “Ani’s made some disturbing headway on the victorious case,” Abernathy had explained. “I need to get back to HQ to see if I can help make any sense of it.”

  “Disturbing … how?”

  “You know the Anonymous masks? The Guy Fawkes disguise popularized by V for Vendetta?”

  “Of course,” Joe said, surprised that Abernathy even knew about V for Vendetta.

  “Well, victorious has just revealed the masks they’re going to be hiding behind this season.”

  “Let me guess: Darth Vader. Too dated. No, wait, Deadpool.”

  “Victor Palgrave.”

  Joe thought he’d misheard. Palgrave’s name just seemed like a non sequitur, as if he’d missed part of what Abernathy had said.

  “I’m sorry, Palgrave masks? Crap, why not just go for Hitler masks and be done with it?”

  “Add ‘ious’ to the former MP’s first name. I think you can see why this just became a lot more serious.”

  A cold feeling played slide guitar up and down Joe’s spine. The hackers had named themselves after a man who had, as far as the public was aware, unleashed nerve gas on thousands of kids at a rock concert, all in the name of a racist ideology that was about closing the UK’s borders to refugees and migrants.

  It was in pretty bad taste.

  Making a symbol of a man like that.

  So Abernathy had needed to fly back to the UK to coordinate things there, and Joe couldn’t disagree with the decision. Did it make him feel a little abandoned? He’d be lying if he said it didn’t. But he still understood.

  They parted at the airport. Abernathy was absorbed in dark, complex thoughts, but shook Joe’s hand, and said, “Take care of yourself out there. It might be nothing, but it might be something. My intuition tells me it’s the latter.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Joe told him. “What about the Shuttleworths?”

  “I was always pretty sure that LA was where we’d make our progress,” Abernathy confessed. “They were a contingency plan for the remote chance that we might need them. I sent them along with some photos of the chip, but I wasn’t expecting anything much.”

  “So why send them at all?”

  “Do you know how many days the Shuttleworths have taken off since the start of the year?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “None. They don’t think personal time is important. So I saw an opportunity to get them some downtime, in Silicon Valley, where they will have to wait twenty-four hours to see anyone at Dorian.”

  “You made them take a vacation?” Joe said, incredulously. “That is some pretty sneaky work.”

  Abernathy shrugged. “They were getting too narrowly focused,” he said. “Not seeing the rainforest for the trees. Hopefully they’ll be back in a couple of days with a new, wider perspective.”

  “When did you last take time off?” Joe asked.

  Abernathy smiled and headed toward his gate.

  When Sebastian Curtiz looked at the chip Abernathy handed him, his brow furrowed.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

  “You recognize it?” Abernathy asked.

  “Of course I do.” Curtiz looked visibly shaken. “This is the new Dorian processing chip, the B23/Heuris. It’s going to be the centerpiece of the new tech for NeWToPia, our next interactive adventure.”

  “You seem surprised to see it.” Joe observed.

  “That’s because I am,” Curtiz said. “Where did you get it?”

  “We pulled it out of some black market computers we confiscated in a raid,” Abernathy said. “Part of an urban slavery ring. Homeless kids kidnapped and forced to assemble computers including this chip.”

  “That’s not possible,” Curtiz said. “This tech is top secret. We have eight of the units they’re central to on premises, and they’re signed out and signed back in every day. They never leave the building.”

  “But there aren’t only eight in the world?” Joe asked. “Where are the rest?”

  “The programmers at our Palo Alto office have more, but they’re treated with the same security measures we use here, and we would know if a single chip went astray. The rest are at a secure location, with even less of a chance of being removed.”

  “And where is this secure location?” Joe asked.

  “That’s a company secret,” Curtiz said.

  Abernathy shifted in his seat, obviously unimpressed with the man’s evasive answers. “Can you at least tell us just what this B23 chip does?”

  Curtiz shook his head.

  “Let me guess,” Abernathy said. “That’s a company secret, too.”

  “There’ll be announcements as we get closer to NeWToPia’s release date,” Curtiz said, brightly.

  Abernathy let out a deep breath. “Perhaps we need to talk to Mr. Dorian, himself. We are, alas, getting nowhere, rather quickly.”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.” Curtiz sounded like he was pleased with his level of obfuscation. “Mr. Dorian isn’t even in the country right now.”

  “Well, where is he then?”

  Curtiz said nothing. He didn’t need to. His job, it seemed, was not to provide information past what you could read in a company brochure, only to deflect questions about the things that you couldn’t read about. Joe understood that corporate espionage was a huge problem, and that information that wasn’t guarded tended to be leaked. He knew that many companies relied on their innovations to keep themselves going, and finding out a competitor has stolen your idea, and has gotten a leg up on you after all of that investment of time and capital, had to be a terrible experience. But Curtiz’s caution was getting them nowhere, and Joe couldn’t tell if it was just the stubbornness of being a company man, or if it was deliberate obfuscation.

  Joe assessed the man in front of him. Curtiz was a top-level executive, with the ego that accompanied such a position. He liked his position, and he would have a high sense of loyalty to Dorian. The ego expansion would be a front, though, and Joe suspected that there was a fair amount of neurosis and self-doubt lurking beneath the manicured exterior.

  Joe accessed the chip in his head and cranked up his pheromone factory, mixing encourage and respect with a high concentration of urgency, a trifecta calculated to make Curtiz open up more than he might otherwise would have, while still feeling important, in control, and—more than anything—needed.

  Pheromone deployment was based on some amazing tech, but its practical use was often more of an art than a science. Joe found that he needed to use intuition, followed by trial and error, to manufacture the right chemicals to get the result he was after. It wasn’t always effective—some people were impervious to its subtle chemical cues—but it was always worth a shot.

  “Is there any way we can catch up with him? It’s pretty urgent.” Joe asked, each word calculated to work with the pheromone flood. “These are some bad people we’re talking about, and we really need to get ahead of them. You’re our only chance.”

  There were a few seconds where it looked like Joe had failed and they were just going to get more evasions, but then Curtiz leaned forward.

  “We have a factory in Eastern Europe,” he told them, almost conspiratorially. “Near Braşov,
in Romania. That’s where we manufacture the chips, and it’s also where Mr. Dorian is now.”

  Joe bought a ticket for a plane bound for Bucharest, and sat down to wait a couple of hours before he could even check in.

  He’d sat there until he got bored, then went to the men’s room, partly to take some pressure off his bladder, partly for something to do.

  He’d stood in the bathroom, did what he’d gone there for, then turned to find the sinks, and had seen three guys in Lakers shirts that he hadn’t heard come in. Big guys, with more muscle than brains, two white, one black, watching him with the kind of cold scrutiny that rarely foreshadowed a friendly outcome.

  Joe had nodded at them. It seemed to be an act so provocative that it required all three guys to punish it. The biggest of the group, a scar-faced white guy with a fist like a brick and a body like sacks of concrete—moved straight at him, while his pals boxed him in on either side.

  “Er … is everything okay, guys?” Joe asked, going for a full New York accent without a hint of colonial Brit. He figured it might just stop the thugs long enough to let him talk his way out of this.

  He figured wrong.

  The three ignored him and kept moving.

  Joe had no idea what breach of etiquette had put him in this position, or why they were so silent without even a little bit of macho posturing or riling one another up. It looked like they were just itching for a fight, and Joe was the unlucky one who fit their criteria: pick a kid, any kid, and bash his head in.

  To be honest, Joe thought he could use the workout.

  Nothing too strenuous and nothing that was going to slow him down or make him miss his flight. It needed to be quick. Minimal damage to his assailants, and without serious enough injuries to get airport security involved.

  As he accessed the fighting programs in his chip, he checked the bathroom for CCTV cameras. He was pretty sure that Congress hadn’t gone totally insane and let them put cameras in restrooms, but the way House members voted these days baffled him. Finding no surveillance, he got himself into position.

  Fighting three people at once was always a hard task, especially when you’re a seventeen-year-old kid and your opponents are in their twenties and built like outhouses. It was a simple equation: two hands versus six hands equals a short fight. But, Joe knew, that he could win as long as he fought them one at a time. Three fights one after another was a more manageable proposition. The three guys were close now, close enough that Joe could smell body odor and beer. And if he let them get any closer, he was going to come out the loser, so he needed to change the dynamic.

  Joe figured the guy on his left was the weakest link. Sure, he was built like a rain barrel and had a brass knuckles on his right fist, but he wasn’t close enough to his comrades, and that meant that there was enough of a gap to buy Joe a ticket out. Joe feigned right and immediately threw himself left, aiming for the space between Knuckle Duster and Concrete Hands. Knuckle Duster lifted a fist, and created a perfect opportunity for Joe to drop to his knees and slide through the gap.

  Joe spun on the ball of one foot the second he was through, and took a second to breathe as he stared at three backs. This was what his fighting instructors had called breaking out—physically getting out of the tight spot you’d been maneuvered into. Now he needed to separate one of the guys from the pack. Joe stepped to his right on a slight diagonal until he was standing next to Knuckle Duster, who’d made the mistake of turning his body so it followed Joe’s escape route. Which meant his back was to Joe, who took advantage of the slip by hammering his fist into where he was pretty sure Knuckle Duster’s kidneys hid beneath his bulk. There was a raw meat thump and a satisfying uuuffff sound and Knuckle Duster stumbled forward into the middle guy as he tried to turn to face Joe.

  But Joe had the three attackers in a straight line now, and that was exactly what he’d wanted. Still, three big guys to fight, yes, but now one at a time.

  As long as he made it quick.

  So quick they didn’t have time to make their numerical advantage pay.

  He bent his knees and popped his whole body forward, slamming his shoulder into Knuckle Duster’s side and pushing hard into his ribs. He felt something come loose in there and rolled off ducking as the thug wheeled his arms around in a panicked attempt to land a blow. Knuckle Duster’s problem was that it’s a lot easier to connect with a target if it’s in front of you.

  If you can see it.

  Joe was making a point of keeping out of the guy’s line-of-sight and moving so fast he couldn’t see what was coming.

  Joe saw an opening to bring some pain to the guy’s calf, and he thought it would be rude not to take it. He dropped low and put his weight behind a swift kick, making perfect contact with the back of the guy’s leg and eliciting a meaty sound. Knuckle Duster fell forward again, slamming into the middle guy. Joe rose to his full height, used Knuckle Duster as a route to his friend, his head becoming a springboard for Joe’s leap, and hit Cinder Block Hands in the face with an open palm.

  Cinder Block Hands let out a string of expletives and swung wildly. Joe was glad to discover that the guys were capable of speaking, even if it was in playground swears that were more embarrassing than threatening. He dodged the hands and prepared to finish him off.

  He was just making sure that the third guy was still on the wrong side of the second when a hand closed around his ankle.

  Joe had thought Knuckle Duster was down for the count—he’d bounced off the guy’s head, after all—but some thugs just had other ideas about lying down and quitting. He held Joe tight and that gave Cinder Block the opportunity to land a couple blows, one to Joe’s ribcage and one to his cheek.

  It was the blow to his face that could have turned the tide of the fight. Joe’s vision swam, but he slammed the chip into rage-mode to compensate, kicked the hand free from his ankle, took Cinder Block down with a two-handed swing to the jaw (scraping his knuckles against the guy’s teeth), slammed Knuckle Duster back to the tiles, and then stared at the final guy with all the intensity that he could manage.

  “Are we done?” Joe barked. “I can see that you’re not really committed to this, so how about you stand down? That way, I’ll leave you standing up.”

  The black guy tried to hold Joe’s stare, but what he saw in Joe’s eyes was too much trouble, all bundled up with a lot of crazy, and he looked away and did as he was instructed.

  Joe stepped over the other two guys, washed his hands in the sink, and left without another word.

  He endured another long haul, with a couple of hours to kill in Munich before his connecting flight, and landed in Romania. He tried to sleep on both flights, but managed fitful snatches at best. As a result, his body clock was trashed, and a combination of exhaustion and pain from the fight back at LAX was making a mess of his body, but he still had another two-hours ahead of him before he reached his destination, Braşov.

  Joe found a cash machine that gave him a handful of Romanian leu notes, grabbed a shuttle bus to the train station, bought himself a ticket, found the right platform, and found the right train.

  The car was neat, clean, and reasonably modern. He had no idea why this surprised him. Was he so ignorant of other countries that the mention of Eastern Europe suggested Communist-era infrastructure?

  Maybe.

  He was too tired to care that much, and the pain in his ribs was a constant nagging drain on his energy reserves.

  Life was blurring around the edges, becoming processes rather than experiences. The visit to LA where he’d seen nothing but airport, Dorian Interactive, then airport again. Now, this dreamlike passage from the USA to Germany to Romania—it was all just noise, without meaning or message.

  He had to get some sleep. He just needed to stay awake on the train, a taxi ride to a hotel, then he’d be able to relax.

  Right now, he felt adrift. The faces he saw on the train were just like the people he’d see on a train in any big city in the world. The language differe
nce, notwithstanding, people were people were people. They did what they did, wherever they were.

  Jesus, man, you really need to sleep. People are people are people? Very profound.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  Looked out the window.

  Bucharest rushed past him, and Google helped him understand what he was seeing: the city’s history told in architecture. From the splendor of neo-classical buildings, through the whimsy and beauty of Arts Deco and Nouveau, through the communist era of high density pre-fabricated tower blocks, into a present of characterless post-communist capitalism. Joe had heard how bad things had been under the iron rule of Nicolai Ceausescu, the communist dictator overthrown in 1989, but had never thought he’d see the city where so much turmoil and totalitarian control had existed for so long.

  Now the city had thrown aside its terrible history, where the Securitate—the dictator’s secret police—had cast a long shadow of fear and violence over the country; now there was a sense of a country awakening from a nightmare. Unfortunately, Google also informed him that nearly sixty percent of Romania’s citizens found the reality of capitalism to be stressful and confusing, and they actually missed the certainty of totalitarian rule.

  Joe found himself dozing as the city gave way to countryside, and it was only when the train arrived in Braşov that he realized he had slept for most of the journey. The sleep hadn’t done him much good, though. His head felt muddy and his body was a patchwork of aches and pains.

  He found a taxi outside the station, gave the address of the hotel that Abernathy had booked him into, and left the driver to do his thing. Joe’s knack for small talk was gone. When the driver tried to engage him, Joe was monosyllabic until the guy gave up and drove in silence.

  Eventually, they arrived in front of a modern glass-and-stone building with a high concentration of neon lighting. Joe paid the man from his wad of notes, over-tipping out of guilt over his own rudeness. The man looked pleased, and Joe guessed that cash was probably more useful to him than the conversation would have been. The man waved as he drove off.