Mind Games

by Alan Brudner

  Hedgehog turned to stare at me.

  "Shutterbug!" I repeated.

  "What kind of prayer is that?" Giraffe asked.

  "It's not," I said. "It's the password."

  Hedgehog turned to type it but Eliza's face appeared on the monitor. She was frozen like a close-up photograph.

  "What the fuck is this?" he asked.

  "It's Mom.ava," I answered. "The virus theft program."

  "A picture of a woman?" Giraffe asked, suddenly mesmerized, staring at the screen, holding onto the gun but dropping his hand to his side. I gauged him a bit too far away for me to make a credible lunge for it. I did manage to pick up the screwdriver Hedgehog had dropped earlier. "Where the hell are all the alphanumeric codes, the CybroSymbols, the script and equations?"

  "They're all there," I said, inching a bit closer to him. "I just wanted a more pleasant user interface."

  "You're full of shit," said Hedgehog.

  "He's actually not," said Eliza, suddenly animated, her image crystal clear, her voice matter-of-fact and very much alive. "Not to mention that this house is carefully monitored, wired and bugged. If you do not begin immediately to listen to Mr. Lightman's instructions, you will be arrested and taken into custody. Or worse."

  My two visitors again made diagonal eye contact.

  "Define 'worse,'" said Giraffe.

  "Just hand Mister Lightman the gun," Eliza said. "Or neither of you will ever leave this house alive."

  "This is a trick," said Hedgehog, his voice almost as squeaky as his big buddy's.

  Giraffe shook his head from side to side. "Never saw a computer program do this," he said.

  "This is not just a program," Eliza said. "You men are on video surveillance. And are being tape-recorded. Duplicates are being made at a location I will not disclose. They'd make great copy for the 7 o'clock news, no?"

  Hedgehog pointed at the optical sensors on top of the monitor and nodded as if he now understood. "What if we leave now?" he asked.

  "I want the big ugly guy to hand Mister Lightman the gun," Eliza repeated. "Then march your butts straight out of his house."

  "It's just a cigarette lighter anyway," the big man said as he handed it to me. It felt heavy for a cigarette lighter. I pointed it squarely at his chest, which for me was eye-level. I told Hedgehog to stand next to him, then told them both to turn around. They did. I dug the gun into Giraffe's backside and the screwdriver into Hedgehog's upper back. They couldn't see which was which. I pushed them as they skulked toward the front door.

  "One of you guys has a screwdriver sticking into him," I announced. "And the other one has a gun." My blood pressure was up, my face red. I trembled and shook as waves of acid spewed out of the pit of my gut, melding together the years of angst about my failure as a pitcher, my guilt about Eliza's accident and my feelings of impotence in my ability to save my son.

  "I am going to pull the trigger," I said, not certain I meant it.

  "I told you it's not real," Giraffe said, his voice wavering.

  "Avery will be pleased," I said. "You did a fine job tracking me down. Most cybercops would have taken more than 24 hours."

  "You gonna show Mister Kord the tape of this session?" asked Hedgehog.

  "You want me to?"

  "Wouldn't mind," he replied, some depth returning to his voice. "A guy needs to do something to distinguish himself in this company."

  "Yeah," said Giraffe. "Virus Busters are a dime a dozen these days."

  "Then I will," I said, jabbing both of them simultaneously. "Now open the door, little guy."

  Hedgehog turned the knob and swung the door open. We stood just inside the doorway.

  "I probably should test your equipment," I said, jamming the gun and the screwdriver into them from behind. The screwdriver dug so hard into Hedgehog I could see a small spot of red blood seep into his white nylon jacket. But even though I desperately wanted to pull the trigger, I pulled the gun away instead. I forcefully shoved them both out the door, kicking Giraffe in the back of the knee on his way out. He tripped over the doorsill and fell so hard he had a limp when he stood back up.

  I locked up and watched my visitors scamper away through a little window next to the door. I noticed a corner of the glass was broken and I figured these guys had done it to gain entry. Not a big job to fix. And it could wait. I had a strong feeling G and H wouldn't be chancing a return trip anytime soon.

  Chapter 38

  I walked back into the den.

  "Nice work, Batman," Eliza said.

  "I think I'm Robin," I said.

  "Either way, we're overdue. And 60 Minutes is going to start soon."

  I walked up to the screen and kissed my wife's image softly. She closed her eyes and I closed mine. In my mind she was real, warm flesh and coursing blood, and I would no sooner forget this kiss than our first one, in Washington Square Park, with a Beatles sound-alike band playing Yesterday for quarters.

  That first night, we went back to my place and watched The Wizard of Oz on t.v. I still recall her remark that the smartest of the group, the scarecrow with his new brain, is the only one who says nothing at all as they kiss Dorothy goodbye and send her back to Kansas.

  I imitated him and remained quiet.

  So did my beautiful, incomparable, wonderful wife.

  I won't bother you with the details of the precise sequence of computer commands I followed.

  Let's just say I clicked a few times, and she was gone.

  Chapter 39

  The first thing that struck me was that Avery Kord was wearing a golf shirt and jeans. Not a suit, like most 60 Minutes guests. When you have sixty or seventy billion dollars, you don't have to try to impress anyone. His glasses were still too big, too. He obviously hadn't talked to an image consultant. Or maybe he had, and imperfection was the name of the game. Without his bank and securities accounts, he could be the boy next door.

  He spoke for a few minutes about computers, how they've changed the world. They certainly changed his world. The show was broadcast live, so to be safe he was obviously starting with material he felt comfortable with—the stuff I had heard him say on the airplane about how entire libraries would someday be downloadable from the Internet, how cars would drive themselves according to pre-programmed routes. How computers were being used to design better heart valves and jet engines, study everything from the universe to the atom, predict the weather and the outcome of a war. He pointed out that he was still a young guy with a lot of ideas that could ease everybody's life in the future—if Congress doesn't hamstring him by putting the kibosh on some of Cybronics' businesses.

  I admired his style—he referred subtly but deftly to the Congressional hearings, deflecting direct questions about his business practices "because this show is not the right forum." He pointed out that the computer business is the most competitive business in the world, and he was sorry so many people suffered from a disease he called CybroPhobia. He also expressed deep remorse about the six people who committed suicide in San Francisco.

  "Who can account for the vagaries of the human mind?" he humbly asked. "A terrible tragedy, but this business sometimes affects people who are so smart, who possess such great gifts, that they cannot cope in traditional ways."

  The formalities out of the way, he started to get more personal. "This is my family," he said, hitting a remote control button that caused a wall-sized screen to pop up. I thought I noticed a small image of a Tiffany's box on the screen, which he quickly flipped off to get the picture he had planned. "My wife Regina, and my daughter Crystal." The pair waved in unison and each spoke tritely. Harry Cardinsky, not surprisingly, wasn't present; although the old man had put on a good face for me, I figured his perpetual anonymity had to hurt. He was watching the show, no doubt, but it must have been bittersweet for him.

  "Before we move on and I show you some of the conveniences we all will soon enjoy," Kord took over, "some of the things we're working on here in our most advanced laboratories at Cybron
ics, let me also mention something nationally that even our friends don't know yet. Regina's pregnant again!"

  "That's wonderful," came the reply of the blonde anchorwoman whose name I forget. I was convinced there was nothing this creep wouldn't do to escape having his business restricted by Congress. "Do you have a name picked out?"

  "Well, I'd rather not tell you if it's a boy or a girl," came the crackly-voiced reply. "Then again," he chuckled, "I suppose I could say Pat or Chris without giving up much. But the truth is, we don't really know yet."

  He held out the remote control and pointed it at the big screen his family still waved on. "This is my living room wall," he said, pushing another button. "Suppose I want to see Van Gogh's Starry Night." Sure enough, the screen was soon filled by clouds of blue and black and yellow. "Or The Scream, by Edward Munch." The image quickly changed to the famous little pained swirling man on a bridge. "Or the Mona Lisa." There was the mysterious smile we all knew. "I can even animate these reproductions, make them talk. Or sing. Leonardo would have loved this."

  He clicked a button.

  "You want to play Clue?" asked Mona Lisa, her mouth moving.

  "What was that she said?" asked the anchorwoman as her eyebrows rose an inch. "I'm not sure I heard her."

  He hit the button again.

  "Would you prefer Monopoly?" Mona Lisa asked, loud and clear. "Or have we already won that one?"

  Kord blushed so deeply I wondered whether my t.v. set needed adjusting. "I guess we still need to work out the kinks," he said, visibly sweating, trying to come back with a forced smile. "Believe me, that was unexpected. Maybe a hacker got into my system." He brushed the hair back from his forehead with a shaky palm. I wondered how many billions he was about to lose in the value of his Cybronics stock.

  "Why don't we go out to your minivan," said the anchorwoman, obviously trying to keep her guest from falling further apart. "We've all been waiting for this."

  "Okay," said Kord. "And I can't tell you how sorry I am about that little incident. Just to protect everyone out there, I guess I won't send out the little Internet gifts I promised. We'll save them until we find the source of the problem."

  They took a commercial break, during which I listened from my bathroom to a Cybronics advertisement in which a happy little kid gets a computer for Christmas. I had seen it before. As he sits in front of the screen and bangs on the keyboard, his smiling face morphs into that of an older man—Albert Einstein.

  I flushed just as the tag line came on. But I had no desire to hear it. Everyone in the world already knew that at Cybronics, they make life worth living.

  When the show returned, Kord and the anchorwoman were seated in his minivan. Kord was in the driver's seat. They pulled out of his driveway and headed down the block.

  "Say I'd like to hear Beethoven's Fifth," Kord announced. A computerized sound system promptly began to play it at a low volume.

  "Vehicles will soon be able to follow verbal commands, read your E-mail to you, make phone calls through the sound system," he said. "And in the future, cars will even drive themselves according to programmed routes. We don't have the roads set up yet to accomplish that. Maybe satellites will send the signals. We're working out the details at Cybronics. But I've created a prototype for several miles around my house."

  He pushed a button on the dashboard and a monitor screen popped up near the steering wheel. It showed a local map. "Let's say you want to go here," he said, pointing to a spot on the screen. "I touch the screen with my finger—" he did—"and that's where we go." A little "X" appeared on the screen where he touched it. "If I wanted to, now I could go to sleep until we arrive."

  "What about traffic?" the anchorwoman asked. "Other cars?"

  "There are sensors built in," Kord replied. "Infrared and radar. And a little digital guide I can talk to. A bot, which is short for digital robot. It acts almost like a human."

  Kord hit a button and a colorful little man appeared on the screen. His t-shirt was tie-dyed, his tanned neck surrounded by puka shells. I knew the mustached face.

  The minivan stopped at a red light. A sport utility vehicle stopped catty-corner from it.

  "This bot reminds me of something out of the Sixties," said the anchorwoman, smiling.

  "What do you think, Bart?" Kord asked the digital robot. "You something out of the Sixties?"

  "Nah," came the reply. "I like to think of myself as a creature of the new millennium."

  The light changed.

  "We're supposed to go right!" screamed Kord, just as his minivan turned left, sped up, and plowed into the oncoming SUV.

  "Shit!" yelled Kord, his face contorting, his eyes clamping shut. The sounds of screeching wheels, shattering glass and crunching metal filled my living room as the televised picture flipped over and around like the drum of a clothes dryer, landed upside down, then went black and was promptly converted into the network interruption signal, a series of horizontal pastel lines accompanied by a loud and annoying whine.

  I hope nobody is seriously hurt, was my first thought, as I realized the accident had been caused by the viruses my wife had infected Kord's systems with.

  Way to go, Eliza! was my second.

  Chapter 40

  Within minutes, the breaking news was interrupting every regularly-scheduled broadcast on all networks. Avery Kord had been in a televised accident. He was in serious condition, as was the 60 Minutes anchorwoman. The accident was caused by faults in his computer network.

  By Monday morning, the focus of the news had shifted. Kord would survive physically, but as a corporate visionary his status had plummeted from high-flier to bottom-fisher. Cybronics was hemorrhaging. Its computers all over the world were failing, making miscalculations. Word processors were unable to spell correctly, or were randomly inserting words, curses, yesses and no's. And systems linked to Cybronics were also experiencing difficulties. A space shuttle flight was delayed because its computers would do nothing but play tic-tac-toe with each other. Lawyers couldn't print out accurate contracts, television and radio stations couldn't control the content of the shows they broadcast. People trying to download the Bible from the Internet received copies of Lolita instead. The world's stock markets had massive problems because of faulty information flows; nevertheless, the price of Cybronics stock fell from $100 a share to less than $1 in a day, meaning that Avery Kord had become a mere million aire overnight. It seemed likely he'd soon be virtually wiped out. In an act of sympathy, Congress voted to delay its upcoming vote on limiting his business. As a practical matter, the issue had become as moot as whether to save the dodo bird.

  I walked into my kitchen to pour a glass of Five Fingers Chardonnay. I raised it to my lips, took in the bouquet. I silently toasted Eliza. Before taking a sip, though, I carefully poured it back into the bottle and recorked it. It was premature to celebrate.

  My son was still missing.

  Chapter 41

  I was putting the bottle back in the fridge when it dawned on me: maybe Eno wasn't trying to be cute when he shipped it to me as Clay Blacker, PI. He knew I used that name when I was looking for my son; maybe he was trying to send me a signal of some kind. In a hurry. I couldn't imagine why else he'd have sent it by FedEx and not through the mails or UPS, which were cheaper. Under normal circumstances, there would be no rush. And he knew I was on the wagon; why not send me the alcohol-free stuff?

  I called the telephone number set forth in small print on the back label of the wine bottle. A digital operator told me politely that it was out of service or had been temporarily disconnected.

  The Taconic Parkway is full of twists and turns, but they all blurred by, along with a deer I missed by an inch. It was already Monday night, so I guess the state troopers were home watching the late football game.

  As I approached the winery entrance, I turned off the headlights and slowed to a crawl. I parked near the gate, a few hundred yards from the main building that housed Eno's office. A bright floodlight lit the are
a near the front door, which was closed like the wooden shutters. The blackboard on the door now announced: CLOSED FOR VACATION. It seemed the lights inside were out; the only illumination emanated from the blue radiance of Eno's computer monitor. Although it was dark and the windows were few and high, I crawled the last hundred feet so as not to take any chances on casting long shadows or being seen.

  I stood on a boulder near the corner of a window on the side of the building and peeked through a crack in the shutter.

  I could make out only the outlines of four people. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see that two of them sat on the floor in the center of the room, each bound at the hands and feet by ropes.

  Schuyler and Scarlett.

  The other two wore white nylon jackets with a big Cybronics "C" emblem on their backs. One, a husky muscular guy with what appeared to be a pistol in his hand, stood a few feet away from them near the head of a long wooden table. A few wine bottles and wine glasses sat on a checked tablecloth, along with several jars of wine jelly and an open box of crackers. On the other side of the table, seated in one of the old wooden chairs, was the fourth person. Harry Cardinsky. He faced Scarlett and my son, and he was holding an open wine bottle. Nearer to me, Eno slumped over his desk. Bottles were broken and overturned all around him, and it was clear he had put up a struggle. But a shiny dark red substance ran in streaks down the side of his face, slickening and matting his hair. He was motionless.

  My muscles taut with fear, I crawled back around to the front near the door. It was an old warped wooden door with a lot of cracks and wormholes, but not enough space for me to see anything. I pressed my ear against it. I could hear Scarlett's nervous voice wavering, interspersed with sobs and loud attempts to catch her breath.

  "You said you were driving me up here to get the money!" she screamed. "I was going to move to France!"

  "I told you that's all changed now," Harry said.