Headcrash

by Bruce Bethke

  Joseph shut off the burner, moved the frying pan off to the side, and brought the bacon over to the table. “One million dollars,” he said softly as he slowly shook his head and forked some strips of bacon onto my plate. “What do you think, Jack? Is she nuts?”

  I poured myself a glass of tomato juice, took a sip, and considered my reply.

  “I don’t think so,” I said at last. “This interface she’s talking about is real. I’ve touched it.” And that particular memory sent me off into a wistful, rosy mood that lasted until LeMat cleared his throat.

  “But one million—?”

  MUD

  Multi-User Dimension, remember?

  I shrugged and helped myself to the scrambled eggs. “My guess is she’s some kind of high-powered corporate type who’s done some playing around in virtual reality and on the Net. She seems to know her way around BusinessWorld. And she’s built herself a pretty kinky little MUD down in ToxicTown.”

  “Or someone built it for her,” Joseph pointed out.

  I nodded. “Could be.” LeMat was pouring himself a cup of coffee. I held out my cup and got a refill. “Mmm,” I said, as I savored the bitter, earthy aroma. “Hazelnut?”

  Joseph nodded. “We’re celebrating the moments of your life,” he explained.

  I set the cup down and moved an English muffin to my plate. “Anyway, I figure these files got lifted, and they really are as valuable as Amber says, so her boss turned to her and said, ‘You know the Net. You go get them.’ And suddenly, it wasn’t playing anymore. She had to do this hacking stuff for real.” I looked at the scrambled eggs a moment, realized something was missing, and reached for the pepper mill. “So she read some literature, cranked up this new interface, and went poking around in parts of the Net she’d never been in before hoping to find someone who could actually do all this magical cyberpunk stuff…”

  “And that’s how she found out about MAX_KOOL,” LeMat completed.

  “Yeah.” I’ll confess to a certain smugness at that point.

  “But being basically a naif,” LeMat went on, “it never occurred to her that she was hanging out with a bunch of gamers and posers, and that MAX’s reputation was ninety-percent hot air—”

  My balloon of smugness popped. “Hey!”

  “—that the real shady operators, computer criminals, and cyberterrorists never waste time with virtual reality—”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “—and that in any event, she could probably get a couple of college kids to do the job for her for free.”

  My smugness finished its collapse into a black hole and vanished. “Yeah, you’re right,” I said at last. “I haven’t done any serious hacking in over a year. And even when I was doing it, I was only in it for the fun. The whole idea of getting paid to break into someone else’s computer—” I shuddered. “I mean, that’s a felony or something, isn’t it?”

  Joseph tried a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “But as you said yourself, you wouldn’t actually be stealing anything.”

  “That’s if Amber is telling me the truth. Big if.”

  LeMat leaned forward again and took a bite of his English muffin. “Y’know, Jack, I think you’re looking at this all wrong. You keep talking about it as doing a break-in. I think you should consider it, oh, freelance security consulting.” He bit off another chunk of the muffin, chewed and swallowed it, and chased it with a gulp of coffee. “I think MAX_KOOL should take the job.”

  I turned and stared at him.

  “Furthermore, I think he should cut his old buddy Gunnar in for fifty percent of the action.”

  My eyes went wide.

  “After all, you’ve been telling me for years that you wish you could break into the consulting racket. Sounds to me like you’ve found the perfect first client here. A rich chump with an urgent problem and no clear idea of how to go about fixing it; a guaranteed minimum just for saying you’ll try and almost airtight deniability if something goes wrong; and no matter what happens, you clear some serious cash, and your client goes away thinking you’re a genius.”

  “But one million—?”

  “Never argue with someone who wants to overpay you,” LeMat said. “If I have learned one thing from consulting, it’s that you should never underbid a project. If this Amber is convinced that the job should cost her a million—and God knows where she got that number from, a comic book maybe, or a bad made-for-cable miniseries,” he shook his head, and took another gulp of coffee, “and you come back and say it’s only going to cost ten thousand, she’ll assume you’re a putz who doesn’t know what he’s talking about and go find someone who will take all of her money.”

  I could only toy with my fork and shake my head.

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of consulting, Jack. I mean, let me give you a clue here. This is work, and work sucks. That’s why we don’t call it fun.”

  I looked him in the face, hoping to see some sign that he was joking. A crinkle in the corner of his eye, maybe, or the slight hint of a veiled smirk.

  LeMat returned my gaze with level seriousness, “Personally, if someone offered me a million dollars, I’d do the job, take the money, and skip the country so fast it’d make your teeth spin. Go someplace where they never even heard of quarterly estimated tax returns. The Cayman Islands, maybe.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m serious, Jack. Take the job. If the money angle bothers you, then say you’re doing it because this Amber babe is practically begging to screw your brains out.”

  “But—”

  “That, and eat your damned breakfast! What the hell’s wrong with you? You’ve been pushing food around your plate for the last ten minutes and you haven’t actually eaten a single bite! Now your muffin’s cold and your eggs are congealed and—”

  And after that outburst, we settled down and had a pleasant breakfast, and a nice conversation after. All the wild talk of skipping the country faded away; LeMat promised to find a role for me in his consulting firm as soon as my noncompete contract with MDE expired. (“I’ve always felt that J. LeMat and Associates probably should have at least one actual associate.”) This led us to a brief tour of his combination dining and computer room, where he showed me some new tricks he’d taught ENIGMA, his personal SuperVAX. (LeMat is the only person I’ve ever even heard of who has his own personal SuperVAX—as well as reinforced floor joists to support it, liquid nitrogen tank to cool it, and the LeMat Museum of Obsolete DEC Systems occupying most of what other people would consider to be a basement.) At the end of the tour, as usual, we wound up in his walk-in gun safe, where he proudly showed me the latest addition to his assault rifle collection: a Stoner SR-25. Which I made the appropriate oohing and aahing noises over, even though as far as I can tell these things all fall into three basic categories: the high-tech black ones with plastic stocks, the “normal-looking” brown ones with wooden stocks, and the variations on the AK-47 Terrorist Special.

  By the time we were done with fondling guns and a little lunch, LeMat had me just about talked into taking Amber’s job. Now, the first thing we need to do is rent you an office,” he was saying as he walked me out to my car. “Set you up with power, blocked phones, an OC1 data line—”

  “Whoa.” I stopped in my tracks. “Office? I thought we were talking strictly a one-shot deal here.”

  “You still need an office,” LeMat said. He stopped, turned mound, and looked at me. “What, you want to try doing this from your mother’s basement? I can see it now.” LeMat could do a frighteningly good imitation of Mom when he wanted to. “Jack! Ja-ack! I know you’re working on a million-dollar contract, but your computer is screwing up my TV picture again!”

  I resumed walking toward my car. “Okay, agreed. I need an office. What else?”

  LeMat: ticked off a mental list on his fingers. “Well, phone service, of course. Then high-bandwidth commercial Net access—OC1 at least, OC3 would be better. And a satellite dish probably wouldn’t hurt
. But before that, we need to set you up with some kind of straw-man financial front.”

  We reached my car. I pulled the handle, and the driver’s door opened with a rusty squeal. “A false front? Why? I thought you said—”

  “Uh, Jack?” LeMat’s voice dropped to a low, conspiratorial pitch. “Just in case this Amber babe is not on the up-and-up, it would probably be a good idea if she didn’t know MAX_KOOL’s real name, and if there was no way for her to trace the money trail and find out.”

  I arched an eyebrow and once again reconsidered my involvement in this whole mess.

  LeMat threw a disarming smile at me. “Trust me, Jack, this sort of thing happens all the time in the consulting business. Clients want to stay anonymous; consultants want to protect their subcontractors and confidential sources. As long as we keep good honest records for the IRS and file our returns on time, there is absolutely nothing illegal in what we’re doing.”

  “Well—”

  LeMat smiled again and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Leave the details to me, Jack. I’ll make some calls this afternoon and have the groundwork laid out by the time we meet at the club tonight. Say, about seven-ish?”

  “Sure—” Oh, wait a minute. T’shombe.

  Joseph looked at me with sharp eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  For a change, I smiled. “Oh, nothing. It’s just—I can’t make it. I’ve got a date tonight.”

  And finally, at long last, I learned what it took to put an amazed expression on LeMat’s face. “You sly dog!” he said with a huge grin as he slapped me on the back and nearly knocked me face first onto his driveway. “So you’re gonna do the Wild Thing tonight! Gonna ride the subway tunnel to Paradise! Sail the skin boat to Tuna Town!” He grabbed my right hand and shook it so hard he nearly knocked my wristwatch off.

  “Forget the club, kid! You go out and get lucky, and that’s an order, soldier! I’ll take care of business tonight—but I want a full report on your date tomorrow!” He slapped me on the back again and practically pushed me into the car. I started the Toyota up, backed it around, and headed up the driveway. I watched him in the rearview mirror as I drove away; LeMat was still grinning, waving, hooting, and pumping his fist in the air as he disappeared around a bend in the road.

  Y’know, I will confess that right up until that moment, I was thinking about my date with T’shombe mostly in terms of whether or not I was going to get into her pants. But somehow, listening to LeMat’s macho jocko locker-room banter made me feel, well, cheap. And sleazy. And really uncomfortable at the idea that I was somehow being disrespectful to her.

  DARLENE FRANECKI

  AKA “The Incredible Human Sperm Bank.” Ms. Franecki and I had a steamy relationship during senior year of high school, which began when she failed her algebra mid-term, and ended when she finally realized that mathematical knowledge was not transmitted in bodily fluids. Thereafter she took an interest in hockey and made the team—the entire team—eventually going on to become president of the Future Welfare Mothers of America, Mounds Park Chapter.

  Which is the kind of prudish attitude you’ve always had about women, my sarcastic inner voice pointed out. Which is why in school you got clammy handshakes, while the letterjocks were getting laid. Which is why, if it weren’t for Darlene Franecki, you’d still be a virgin. Which is why that arrogant virtual bastard MAX_KOOL has a sex life, and you don’t. Women lie about it, but they’re all secretly turned on by macho creeps who treat them like dirt.

  Yeah, well, maybe they are, but that isn’t me. I told my sarcastic inner voice to stuff a sock in it and started wondering if I had time to get my sportcoat to a dry cleaner.

  Wednesday evening, 7 P.M.: I stood in the parking lot of the restaurant on the corner of Warner and Highway 61, leaning against the hood of my Toyota, watching the sun sink over the Harriet Island sewage treatment plant and savoring the fertile, earthy smells of a beautiful warm spring evening.

  The breeze was from the east, of course.

  A flock of migrating Harley-Davidsons passed on south bound Highway 61, their unmuffled exhaust pipes rumbling off into the distance. I moved away from the hood of my car, brushed the dust off the seat of my slacks, and checked my watch again.

  7:17.

  It was not like T’shombe to be this late. On the other hand, she had pulled a lot of practical jokes on me in the time we worked together, and there was at least the possibility that this was some kind of weird, final, insulting gag…

  It did not require much imagination to see Frank, Bubu, and T’shombe sitting in the park on the bluff across the river, watching me through binoculars and laughing their damn fool heads off. The idea that T’shombe might stand me up just for a joke actually made me feel a little sick.

  I checked my watch again, then straightened my freshly cleaned and pressed sportcoat, adjusted the casually open collar of my neatly ironed dress shirt, and decided to give her just ten more minutes. Fifteen, tops.

  A sudden squeal of tires got my attention. My head jerked up like a marionette on a string, and I saw T’shombe’s late-model Chevrolet Landbarge come blasting around the corner, up the driveway into the restaurant parking lot, and bouncing over the speed bump without even the slightest hint of slowing. She slammed on the brakes and brought it to a screaming stop just about on the toes of my (freshly polished) wingtips, popped open the passenger side door, and shouted, “Jump in!”

  I did. I barely had the door closed before she slapped the car into reverse, lit up the tires going backward, and took us over the speed bump again with a molar-loosening bounce. We flew down the driveway and slammed into both the street and the bottom limit of the suspension; she slewed us around like a carnival ride, speed-shifted into forward gear, and took off down Warner Road like the proverbial bat out of hell. The Chevy, I couldn’t help noticing, moved out with surprising power, authority, and engine noise, but all the fine handling control of a thirty-foot ChrisCraft.

  “Sorry I’m late!” T’shombe shouted over the roar of the engine as I dug for the ends of my seat belt like my Mom going for a lit cigarette butt dropped into a crack in the couch. “There was some guy in a white Mazda following me, so I had to take a detour to shake him off!” She threw us into a death-defying slalom around a fully loaded garbage truck, then floored it to squeeze the Chevy through a tiny gap between a pickup truck in the left lane and an oncoming double-bottom semi. I took a quick glance at T’shombe then; I wanted to see her face one last time before I died.

  She was hunched over the steering wheel, clutching it lightly with both hands, her bright red lips slightly parted in nervous anticipation. Her dark brown eyes were darting back and forth like chocolate pinballs from the side mirror, to the windshield, to the rearview mirror…

  Her paranoia was catching, I guess. I finally got my seat belt fastened, and twisted around in my seat to look out the back window. Excluding the garbage truck and the guy in the pickup truck who was making grand and eloquent obscene gestures at us, there was no one back there.

  T’shombe took a heart-stopping swerve to the right around a car that was slowing for the Sibley Street light, then floored it to run the Jackson light before the cross-traffic could start moving. “T’shombe!” I yelled. “There’s no one behind us!”

  “What?” she yelled back.

  “The white Mazda! You lost him! You can slow down!”

  “I’m not trying to lose anyone!” She took the corner at Chestnut Street on two wheels and almost got us airborne going over the railroad tracks. “I’m driving like this ‘cause we’re late for church!”

  Thursday morning, 0300 UTC Standard Time. Gunnar slammed his bottle of Kirin down on the bar and stared at me bug-eyed. “Church?”

  Max Kool (me) stubbed his cigarette out in the ear of a convenient Silicon Jungle groupie, conjured another one out of virtual nothingness, and lit it with a red-eyed glare. “Yeah. That was our hot date. Wednesday vespers.”

  Gunnar shook his head, took a slug of his beer, a
nd shook his head some more. “I cannot believe it. You have been talking about this woman for months, and I never even guessed she might be a Jesus bunny.”

  “Oh,” I sighed, “it’s not Jesus. Jesus, I could handle.” The bartender—not Sam, he was offline for a code update that night—brought me a bottle of bourbon and an IV line. I pushed the spike and hose back at him and asked for a normal glass.

  “Not Jesus?” Gunnar prompted. “Krishna? Mohammed?” He paused. “Elvis?”

  “Worse,” I said. The bartender came back with a whiskey glass and filled it for me. I downed it in one gulp and let him pour another. “My lovely lady friend,” I told Gunnar, between deep drags on my virtual cigarette, “is a card-carrying holy-rolling true-believing member of the Church of Vegentology.”

  “The who?”

  “No, The Who was a sixties rock band. I’m t-t-talking ‘bout a bunch of fruitcakes who believe that since plants were here first, they must be superior. In fact, the core idea seems to be that plants created animals in order to have ambulatory servants.”

  Gunnar took a deep slug of his beer and nodded. “I can see why plants would want to create animals. Especially sheep.”

  My cigarette was down to a tiny glowing stub. I crushed it out of existence between my fingertips and fought the urge to light another. “Oh, it makes a certain limited kind of sense. If you’d ever met my Aunt Beatrice, you’d believe she was enslaved by African violets.

  “But the Vegentologist cosmology gets a lot more complicated than that. Eternal wars between good and evil; endless cycles of reseeding and regrowth; life here on Earth as a sort of spiritual R-and-R between the battles on the cosmic fruited plain. The ultimate idea, I guess, is to work through all your past incarnations and find out what kind of plant you were in the pre-Cambrian.”

  Gunnar tried another pull on his beer and found it was empty. “Ferns? They all want to be ferns?”

  A wicked idea occurred to me. “Y’know, Gunnar, if you’re really curious about this church, it just so happens I have around thirty pounds of tracts and monographs in my car, and could be persuaded to loan them to you for a very, very long time.”