Breaking and Entering

by Jeremy N. Smith

  The ringmaster swung, smashing the cinder block to bits—and dissipating the force of the hammer’s blow. He lifted the top board with a flourish, and Alien gracefully leaped up to wild applause.

  Alien was the youngest resident of The Island and—with a salary of $3,200 a month—made more than twice as much as anyone else. The housemate she became closest to was the oldest, the carpenter, Piñon. Part Hispanic, part Native American, he was somewhere in his early fifties, about the same height as Alien, with nut-brown skin, wiry white hair, a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache, and round frameless glasses.

  Following Piñon’s example, Alien started smoking Eagle 20’s Menthol Gold cigarettes. They grabbed green chili burritos together and spent free weekends hanging out, him taking her fishing, her taking him to cruise for fashion finds at Goodwill. Twice married and divorced, with two adult sons and a Zen demeanor, Piñon was very different from anyone Alien had encountered before. A typical tech guy, if he socialized at all, might loudly explain to you what he knew and you didn’t. Piñon spoke seldom, and quietly. When he did, he was insightful and funny.

  One day, a friend of Piñon’s offered to hook him up with an old black Yamaha motorcycle. Alien clambered onto the back of the black leather dual seat for the test ride. Piñon donned the same safety goggles he used when machining wood. Neither of them wore a helmet, but Alien took comfort in Piñon’s casualness and a half-inch-wide strip of pale pink skin, visibly distinct from the darker hue of the rest of his body, running from neck to waist below his T-shirt. Scar tissue, she felt in this case, meant wisdom of experience. The dividing line between recklessness and the rewards of taking risks.

  The engine started. Vibrations shook her from the rear foot pegs: ankle to calf, calf to thigh, thigh to ass. “Hang on tight,” Piñon said. They shot off loudly. Alien looked down and saw black asphalt spinning wildly beneath her like the end of an old movie reel. By the time she looked up again, trees blurred beside them. Street signs. Rooftops. It felt as if they’d been shot out of a cannon, hurtling through the air entirely exposed. She loved it.

  Wind whipped her hair, fresh purple-painted highlights stabbing backward ten inches behind her.

  “That was so awesome,” Alien exclaimed at the end of the ride.

  Piñon’s reply, when it came, was so soft she had to ask him twice to repeat it.

  “You should get a motorcycle too, sweetie,” he said.

  Alien’s bike, bought used for eighteen hundred dollars—a steal—was a red Honda Nighthawk 750. Alien nicknamed it Pepper. By mid-July, after taking a fifteen-hour motorcycle safety course, she had her license. To celebrate, Alien and Piñon rode to a bike shop, where she purchased a pretty silver Arai helmet, and the local Harley-Davidson dealer for black leather boots, riding pants, and two jackets—one regular, which she lent Piñon, and one with zip-off sleeves, for herself.

  “Want to ride up to Taos?” Piñon asked. Their route would be a fifty-six-mile scenic byway.

  “Sure!” Alien grinned, arms bared, as she shifted into first gear. She closed the throttle with her right hand and then, with her left, pulled in the clutch while toeing downward on the shifter. Slowly trading clutch for throttle, she felt the 470-pound machine beneath her lurch forward with a sudden upsurge in its throaty baseline hum.

  Leaving parking lot for street, Alien upshifted, and then again when she reached the U.S. 285 on-ramp, and again a third time hitting the highway itself. Still, cars and trucks whooshed by on all sides. Each time, Alien’s bike wobbled and shook, which, in spite of all the physical risks she had taken at MIT, she found terrifying. The New Mexico highway seemed far more hazardous than the rooftops and hidden recesses of the Institute. As a novice, she had uncertain control of the motorcycle. And she had no control at all over the other vehicles. “If they accidentally try to move into your lane,” Piñon had said, “kick their door.”

  Alien forced herself to accelerate into fifth gear, as Piñon, visible just behind her in her mirror, nodded encouragingly. Wind whistled. The engine whined. Right and left of the road, grassy dirt gave way to low green brush and cloud-topped mesas.

  Twenty miles in, U.S. 285 met New Mexico 503 in Pojoaque, followed by New Mexico 76 near Chimayó, elevation 6,050 feet. Into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains they climbed, past Córdova (6,950 feet) and Truchas (8,050 feet), among a half-dozen other tiny villages, each with its own artistic specialty—painting, pottery, jewelry, rugs, woodcarving, basket weaving—and centuries-old hand-hewn church. Ponderosa pines and other evergreens hugged the highway now. Far-off mountain peaks appeared to be at eye level. Clouds overhead, cool and smooth as scoops of vanilla ice cream, seemed close enough to touch. The exhaust from hundreds of woodstove heaters filled the air with a roasted-marshmallow aroma.

  Dogs barked. Ravens honked. Pickup trucks whizzed past. The road wound, black arrows in bright yellow signs pointing out a new turn every twenty seconds.

  Alien took a deep breath, trying to relax despite a necessary alertness to her and other drivers’ every possible fuckup. Veer left accidentally, across the center line, and she’d hit oncoming vehicles or the rock walls behind them. Veer right and it was into tree trunks. Stare too long at the distant snow-capped peaks and she’d flip over the metal guardrail, fall off the edge of a cliff, or—maximum irony—impale herself on one of the many garlanded crosses commemorating a previous roadside death.

  Eyes forward, keeping pace with traffic, no more, no less, Alien led them into Taos.

  Drinks followed. A leisurely lunch facing the tree-lined Taos Plaza, serenaded by two street musicians, a guitar and a double bass. “There’s a jail under the plaza,” said Piñon.

  “Really?” said Alien. “How do you know?”

  “I was locked up in there. Back when I was just a kid. I raised hell. Drinking.”

  Afterward, Piñon ducked into a little shop for coffee. Alien sipped free cucumber water. By the time they turned back, it was half past five p.m.

  The ride home was different. Much harder. Taking New Mexico 68, they followed the Rio Grande as it dropped into a narrow canyon. Pepper zipped downhill, but surrounding vehicles seemed faster, closer, and far more numerous.

  Alien cringed, braking reflexively at every corner, unable to see what was around a bend until she was upon it. WATCH FOR ROCKS, said the sign fronting high cliffs hemming her in on her right. To her left, oncoming cars and trucks sometimes edged over the center line. Bullying crosswinds over the arroyo seemed to want to lift her up and off the motorcycle as she flashed by roadside cross after roadside cross, bedecked with beads, flowers, photos, and even shiny sequins, reflecting the glare of the orange sun.

  It was now ninety-five degrees out. Alien sweated, fingers stiff, shoulders locked. Her arms, unused to long exposure, burned. Cars honked, trapped behind her on the pass. Still, Alien couldn’t bring herself to edge over and risk spilling on loose gravel, or speed up from her twenty-, twenty-five-miles-per-hour crawl to the posted limits of forty-five, fifty.

  I can do it, she told herself, only half-convinced.

  Piñon pulled alongside her as soon as the road widened to two lanes.

  “There’s a casino ahead,” he mouthed. “Stop there.”

  Hot pink and turquoise green neon lights blinked in the casino parking lot. Piñon dismounted and went into the casino without a word. Alien could tell he was frustrated.

  After a few minutes, she followed inside. Alien found him feeding dollar bills into a slot machine, one by one. She sat next to him. “I’m sorry,” Alien said. “I don’t know why I’m so scared.”

  Piñon sat looking at the slot machine for a few moments. Then he turned to her. “Your motorcycle is better than mine,” he said. “It’s not safe for you to slow down while you’re turning. You have to get comfortable pushing it. That’s what riding it means.” He paused before continuing. “Let’s practice tonight. Okay, sweetie?”

  Alien nodded, helmet hugged against her chest.

  The tutorial be
gan at two a.m. in an empty Albertsons parking lot near The Island. Piñon mounted Pepper. Alien got on behind and wrapped her arms around his slender torso.

  There was no warm-up. Piñon gunned directly toward the thick concrete base of a towering black metal lamppost. He twisted the throttle, sending the speed and rpm gauges sharply to the right.

  Alien locked her thighs and dug her nails in his leather jacket.

  She screamed and found herself suddenly crying, begging him, “Stop! Please!” at the top of her lungs.

  One foot, two feet, three feet, four—the gray base of the lamppost appeared to thicken as they approached.

  At the last instant, Piñon cut left, hard. The bike bowed way over, so that Alien was sure her elbow and ribs were only inches from the asphalt. Tears clouded her vision.

  They righted briefly, spun around, and slalomed a wooden power line pole, two silver metal cart-return corrals, and a yellow fire hydrant, before attacking the lamppost again.

  “See?” Piñon said in his quiet voice when they were finished. “Your bike is capable of so much. But you have to accelerate if you don’t want to fall.”

  Alien’s arms trembled as she took the handlebars once more herself. Sitting behind Piñon, she must have gripped the exhaust pipe with her boot, she realized, for the heel had melted off.

  “Okay,” she said faintly. Alien took a deep breath. “Yes. Got it.”

  “Good,” replied Piñon, and then he sidled onto the bike behind her. “Okay,” he said gently. “Now it’s your turn. Take us home.”

  Alien roared out of The Island’s ribbon-shaped dirt driveway on Pepper one morning two weeks later, accelerating out of every curve on the way to work. She had nowhere near Piñon’s expertise as yet, but with every ride she was getting closer. When she arrived at the lab, someone’s gray Toyota Camry had taken her imaginary parking space. Alien laughed. A station wagon is tough. A bike is easy. She “invented” a new spot on the other side of the lot.

  That afternoon, Jake paid a visit to the mezzanine. “There’s a journal with a special issue on gamma ray bursts coming out soon,” he told Alien. “Do you want to publish an article about the software you’re developing here?”

  The buzz was instantaneous. As was her assent.

  Alien set to work right away, organizing her ideas until five p.m., when she ran into an unexpected interruption. She was still on the MIT Senior House group email list, which had erupted into a flame war when a sophomore equated Israel to Nazi Germany. As someone taught constantly as a child about the horrors of the Holocaust, Alien couldn’t let that pass in silence. Others responded in kind, and she followed the back-and-forth another hour, until it was time again to join the harriers.

  On the trail that night, David slipped, sprained his ankle, and was told in the emergency room that he would have to walk on crutches for the next five weeks. When Alien drove the two of them to work the next morning, both old and new imaginary parking spots were taken, and they had to make the long limp together from the overflow lot.

  It was a quarter after eleven when she finally got to her computer.

  Her login didn’t work.

  “Does yours?” she asked David.

  He nodded.

  Alien called IT.

  “I don’t know what happened to your account,” the lady who answered told her. “It’s not there anymore.”

  Alien hung up. She remembered keywords from yesterday’s heated exchange.

  Terror networks.

  Massacre. Subvert. Survival.

  Uncle Sam. Israel.

  Nukes.

  Her connection to MIT was encrypted, but she speculated that the lab’s internal security office took the additional step of monitoring everything employees physically typed for certain keywords.

  Now someone would have to find her logged keystrokes, read them, and realize Alien was just in a harmless argument with friends before she was cleared to work again.

  “Jake?” Alien called her boss.

  “What’s up, kid?” he asked.

  “I’m missing,” she said.

  Whatever Jake told the powers that be, by the afternoon Alien’s lab account was restored as mysteriously as it had been deleted. Meanwhile, the gamma ray journal deadline loomed. Mid-morning Tuesday, August 12, three days before the due date for submissions, Alien let out a hearty “Hallelujah!” to see an actual available parking space at work. She toted grocery bags of frozen food from her car to the office kitchen, planning to hole up all week, if necessary, until her paper was completed. U.S. GOV’T PROPERTY, FOOD ONLY/NO CHEMICALS/NO RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS, said signs on the white Frigidaire.

  Alien wrote at her desk for fifteen hours, ate in front of the microwave for fifteen minutes, and then slept four hours on a clear plastic inflatable couch in a corner of the mezzanine. She woke and wrote, ate and slept, and woke to write again.

  As Alien worked early Thursday afternoon, she saw messages on her MIT account from Marie and others on the I/S network security team. A serious new Windows worm—Blaster—was attacking computers across the country. Ten thousand machines at MIT were vulnerable. And infection rates had spiked from two or three systems an hour to one every fifty-five seconds. Come in if you can! Marie wrote everyone. It’s all hands on deck to help.

  “This is incredible,” Alien said, realizing how stressed everyone must be.

  “I know,” said David.

  He did? How? “Are you talking about Blaster?” Alien asked him.

  “No—I don’t think so,” David said. He’d just checked the news online. “There’s a big blackout in the Northeast.”

  “What city?” said Alien.

  “Entire states,” David answered. “Ohio. New York. Michigan. New Jersey,” he read the list aloud.

  “All New York? All New Jersey?” Alien stood. Was it terrorism? The worm? Both?

  David shrugged. “All this article says is that it’s spreading.”

  Alien scanned his screen, making out scattered phrases: “cascading failure,” “widespread blackout,” “millions without power.” Her parents and many of her friends must be affected.

  Power returned to much of the Northeast by late evening, news outlets reported. An alarm system malfunction leading to overloaded transmission lines caused the blackout, they said. But what caused the alarm system malfunction? It might have been Blaster, thought Alien. In any case, the worm had to have distracted authorities during the first stages of the power failure and then complicated efforts to get things back online.

  If she were still on the MIT network security team, maybe she could have detected the worm before it got out of hand.

  Four p.m. Friday, after three straight days in the office, Alien submitted her finished paper. She staggered outside in the dry heat.

  She searched for her car and stopped.

  It had moved. This entire section of the parking lot. Or, rather, the chain-link fence beside it had. Tuesday morning, the eight-foot-tall barrier had been five feet behind her Volvo. Now, Friday afternoon, it was five feet in front of it. Her car was trapped on the other side.

  Alien walked straight up to the fence. She peered through the translucent green mesh canvas covering and then up at three rows of razor wire. Alien then followed the brand-new fence perimeter to a brand-new checkpoint protected by four security police in camo.

  Metal glinted in their hands. Each held a black assault rifle.

  “That’s my car,” Alien said, pointing. A turkey vulture, visible through the slats in the razor wire, spread its wings and let the wind carry it east.

  “May I see ID?” one of the officers asked.

  Alien offered him her badge.

  “Sorry,” he said, checking it. “You don’t have requisite clearance.”

  She could bring proof of ownership or come back under escort by a higher-up.

  The turnstile was bad enough. Having her car impounded at the place where she worked so hard was too much. Alien was sick of clearances. That nig
ht she read an email invitation to a party thrown by her old poker night friends in their apartment and felt a pang of longing to join them.

  Eight months earlier, all Alien had wanted to do was escape MIT. Now she told Jake and David that she missed Boston and was going to go home.

  Marie would hire her, she knew. And with her talents, there would surely be other options in a high-tech place like Boston.

  But she wanted to go back on her terms, and she wasn’t the same Alien who had left.

  “I’m going to take the motorcycle,” she announced to Piñon.

  “You’re crazy,” he told her. Santa Fe to Boston was almost 2,400 miles. “You’re still learning how to ride.”

  “I’ll learn more by doing,” Alien said.

  He shook his head. But as she wrapped up at the lab and moved her things to storage—she’d fly back and get them and her car the weekend of Piñon’s birthday, October 22, she’d decided—he helped prep both their bikes. “I’ll ride with you,” he declared.

  “Deal,” said Alien. She’d pay for gas and hotel rooms. And afterward Piñon would visit one of his sons, who lived in New York City.

  Piñon hedged, however, as the date got closer, saying he wasn’t sure. Now Alien was starting to feel nervous. She hoped he would come but didn’t want to pressure him.

  Sunday, the morning of her departure, Alien woke at seven a.m., ate her breakfast, and then carried a mug of black coffee to the side porch, where Piñon was smoking and replenishing the nectar in a red hummingbird feeder.

  “An opening bribe,” Alien said, passing him the cup. “Or is this good-bye?”

  Piñon drank between drags, typically silent. Then he walked to his room and retrieved a camouflage-patterned heavy-duty travel pack patched with duct tape, which he tossed on the back of his black Yamaha.

  “All right!” Alien said.