Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  Skinner is taking an in-flight magazine from the seat-back pouch.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “He says you’re not viable.”

  Skinner flips past ads for stereos that open and close at the wave of a hand, remote control scale replicas of Formula 1 champion cars, indoor virtual driving ranges, but says nothing.

  Jae’s eyes want to close. She knows she won’t really sleep. Past tired now. She’ll enter a fugue state populated by vivid waking dreams. Unpleasant. But she can’t keep her eyes open.

  She pokes Skinner with her index finger.

  “What’s he mean, not viable?”

  Skinner closes the magazine, puts it back, looks at the small TV screen where a black BMW is entering the grounds of the Bilderberg conference hotel, protesters wearing vampire masks being held at bay by Swedish cops.

  “He doesn’t expect me to last.”

  He might say more, but she doesn’t hear it, her eyes closing themselves on her, and the dreams beginning. Digging a hole that fills itself in again and again, someone at the bottom that needs saving. Each time, she thinks she sees the configuration, the stones that must be moved to clear a way to salvation. Each time, she chooses the wrong one and it all comes down.

  No configuration.

  No survivor.

  She digs.

  maker

  MIAMI MAKES SKINNER think about cities where bombs go off with great regularity.

  The intensity of the sun, the humidity, the accents, the café talk of revolution, the large amounts of cash being transferred in exchange for drugs and guns, the savage consumption of alcohol, beaches defended by uniformed men carrying assault rifles, patrol boats, and the constant trickle of sweat running down one’s back.

  Kabul by the Sea.

  Mogadishu in pastels.

  Ciudad Juárez.

  In their rental, cruising the long ribbon of the Airport Expressway, eight lanes, palm trees, sweat, Jae jittery and hollow-eyed behind the wheel of the rental, Skinner reflects on the good thing about cities like this: There are always plenty of guns to be found.

  The parking lot for the Oasis Condominium Towers is empty but for two overfull Dumpsters hosting a small flock of seagulls at mealtime, and a faded red Mazda Miata with peeling Clear Coat. The towers themselves, matching concrete and glass stacks making an effortful attempt to evoke midcentury style, face one another across two swimming pools. One pool scummed over with algae, the other empty, dry, and cracked. Less than four years old, the towers are in decay.

  It’s dim inside, no less humid than outside, an empty desk with an open guestbook, a bank of elevators, all but one wearing Out of Order signs, and sitting in the middle of a vast sectional, its hibiscus-patterned fabric still bright under the plastic it had been shipped in, Maker Smith, an oddly disproportionate pistol in his right hand aimed at an upper corner of the hockey rink–size lobby.

  Skinner is about to step in front of Jae, but she keeps walking, unconcerned, and Smith doesn’t look at them, let alone aim in their direction, bringing his free hand to the weapon and touching a large button on the side of its ridiculously massive grip.

  “Watch.”

  A soft but intense buzzing draws their eyes to the corner of the room where Smith is aiming, his target, a large X of some kind of plastic hanging from the ceiling by an invisible thread, bobbing slightly in air currents. Then the X turns on its side, shoots toward the wall, ducks down and up through a toy basketball hoop suction-cupped next to a neo-impressionistic psychedelic print that depicts some kind of Aztec ruin, and returns to hover in the corner.

  Skinner’s eyes adjust to the light, just as his brain adjusts to the circumstances, and he sees that the gun is a remote control unit and the flying target a quadrotor helicopter drone.

  Jae nods, points at the hovering gadget.

  “Show me aggressive air stops.”

  His bulk still parked on the sectional, Smith twiddles the control, and the drone flies at Skinner’s head, skimming down in a steep descent, flipping on its side at the last instant, rotors braking, halting fifteen centimeters from his nose, then buzzing back toward the wall, performing a similar maneuver, but striking a small square of Velcro and sticking there, rotors suddenly dying.

  Smith pushes himself up, pulling the tail of his Hawaiian shirt over his hairy stomach.

  “On full lift it will pull itself free of a patch of Velcro that size. Any bigger and it doesn’t have the guts.”

  Jae walks closer to the wall, looks up at the quad.

  “What’s the material?”

  He smiles.

  “ABS.”

  She looks at him.

  “You printed it?”

  “The ducts, mounting plate, rotors, some of the fasteners.”

  Jae emits a quick burst of robotese, jargon so dense Skinner barely recognizes it as language. Smith responds in kind. This goes on for a moment or two before Jae sums up.

  “Fucking cool, Smith.”

  “Dude, I know.”

  He looks at Skinner, squinting against the sunlight pouring through the open door.

  “Who’s your escort?”

  Skinner lets the tinted glass door swing shut behind him.

  “Hi, Smith. It’s me.”

  Maker takes a half step back, hands coming up, as if he is wishing that the remote control in his hand has suddenly been transformed into the huge gun it resembles.

  “Hey, I. Hey. Skinner. I.”

  He lowers his hands.

  “Hey, Skinner.”

  He looks at Jae.

  “Jae didn’t tell me you were traveling together.”

  Jae looks from one to the other.

  “What? Skinner said you guys worked together before.”

  Smith raises his eyebrows, shakes his head.

  “Yeah. Worked together. Right.”

  He puts a hand to his heart, licks his lips, and waves a hand toward the elevator bank.

  “Forgive me for being rude, you know. I’m not used to seeing ghosts. Let’s just, uh, go on up, okay.”

  The elevator deposits them with a gentle exhortation, Eleventh floor, have a pleasant day.

  “I had neighbors in the north tower, Oasis One, but they went Chapter Eleven and ate it. Now I’m the only one left on the property.”

  Down a pastel blue hallway, every third art deco reproduction lighting fixture illuminated, the rest denuded of their bulbs, they pass a door propped open with what looks like a milky white bowling ball. Smith points inside at a workshop of some kind. Carpet peeled and rolled to one end of a living room that has never been occupied, countertop converted into a tool bench, an HP desktop tower and twenty-four-inch monitor on the floor next to a large piece of machinery that makes Skinner think about Erector sets and IV bag stands. A kind of miniature steel gantry supporting a collection of tubes and hoses, all of them mounted on tracks. It’s whirring and clicking, the tubes, nipples at their bottoms, zipping back and forth on the tracks, all pointed at a small object the same color as the ghostly bowling ball holding the door open.

  Smith makes a gesture, hand to head, as if donning a halo.

  “Fabbing up a crown for my niece’s birthday. She’s in a princess phase.”

  Again Skinner is uncertain if he speaks the local dialect.

  Smith waves his hand, shifting topics.

  “The developers here were overcommitted in two thousand eight. Had to finish construction no matter how much they’d been assholed by the collapse. They had fewer than a dozen contracts presold. Moving in here, it was like beach-view ghost town. Everyone looking for loopholes in their leases so they could get their money back and bail. Underwater by eighty grand. Minimum.”

  The corridor, like everything else they’ve seen so far at the Oasis Towers, feels trapped somewhere between incompletion and decommission. An open breaker panel, never-connected wires in taped bundles, surrounding wall an expanse of unpainted Sheetrock, next to a bank of fully stocked vending machines that
have been pulled out, shrink-wrapped, waiting for pickup.

  Maker Smith stops in front of a door plastered with bumper stickers and decals. Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, Evolve, The Force Is with You, several featuring equations that, Skinner is certain, are all puns on well known formulae, a mudflap girl silhouette wearing a space helmet, an Apple sticker with a cartoon worm eating through its middle, Garbage Pail Kids, thick layers of peeling pop culture, insider geek references, tech-hipsterism, and naughty girlie pinups.

  Smith shoves the door open, no key.

  “Minimum security level.”

  He holds it for them, Jae going first, Skinner behind, entering a unit that picks up where the door decoration ended and then carries the themes on to new extremes.

  Smith lets the door slam closed, spreads his arms.

  “Technically I’m supposed to get permission from the board if I want to repaint, but I thought it would be cool to just go for it at this point.”

  One of the walls has been stripped of posters, a heap of Frazetta barbarians and slave girls in a pile, thumbtack tears at the corners. In their place a grease pencil mural layout is half filled in with airbrush. Smith, rendered honestly with his receding hairline, thick neck beard, timpani-size gut, and Day-Glo green Crocs, brandishing a battle-axe in one hand and a video game controller in the other. At his feet, arms wrapped around one of his pale, thin legs, is a swimsuit model in a ripped lab coat and librarian glasses, both of them menaced by a gang of orcs and goblins wearing blood-smeared football uniforms.

  Smith holds up his hands, framing the mural for himself, a director considering the next shot.

  “It’s meant to be ironic. But it’s also kind of based on something that happened when I was in high school.”

  He lowers his hands and looks at them.

  “Artistic license.”

  Jae isn’t looking at the work in progress, she’s staring at Smith.

  He inhales, sighs.

  “I don’t get a lot of people up here, Jae.”

  She’s still not talking.

  Smith pulls a rubber band from his left wrist, raises his hands, and uses it to bind his kinky, graying hair into a ponytail. As he does so, Skinner can see a large measure of antic energy drain from him as certainly as if it were being flushed down a toilet.

  Ponytail in place, Smith points at a hallway.

  “Come on, show you the advantages of living in a zero-occupancy development.”

  He leads them into a bedroom at the end of the hall, a room that has the general feel of college dropout, stoner, game designer.

  “Not, for the record, my room. Just, you know, stage setting.”

  He opens a closet door and walks inside. Jae follows him.

  Smith pushes a line of t-shirt–draped hangers down a bar and reveals another door.

  “You have no idea how much a secret door with a key code lock impresses the clients. It adds fifty an hour to my billables every time I walk someone through it.”

  He flips up a little metal cover and reveals a keypad, enters a hex string, and the knobless steel fire door eases open with a hiss. He squeezes back away from the door, giving them room to pass through first.

  “Drumroll.”

  Skinner follows Jae into a daisy chain of three condos with the connecting walls stripped down to their load-bearing essentials. Poured concrete slab has been exposed in the outer walls and floor, studs sheathed in dull-finish aluminum siding, windows are boxed, all light coming from fluorescent corkscrews jutting from the ceiling. Ranks of servers run down the middle of the room, well spaced to allow their heat to dissipate, cables are bundled, neatly zip-tied.

  Skinner feels that he has stepped onto the set for a midbudget techno thriller featuring a second-tier star. A possible box office sleeper that is expected to make up any domestic disappointments with overseas cable rights sales.

  Smith folds his arms and nods.

  “Mostly it pays off on private consulting with the corporate clients. But I’ve snagged contracts from Customs and Border Protection, Transport Safety Admin, and Homeland. All the post–nine-eleveners, they all love the shit that feels like it’s the movie version of a Tom Clancy book. I have a buddy, set dresser slash aspiring art director, I gave him a concept and he did some sketches for me.”

  He looks around the space, nodding his head.

  “It turned out nice, yeah? And it’s function over form. I specced it for the real work. I’m way under load capacity on the structure. Cooling is an issue. I couldn’t mess with the ducting in the building. So I bought the units above and below these, the whole plant is a nine-unit block. The extra ones, upstairs and down, all they are is insulated cubes with the AC running nonstop twenty-four-seven. Heat sinks to keep my machines comfy.”

  Jae toes one of the bundles of cables running along the base of the outer wall.

  “Where are you drawing power?”

  Smith walks to one of the server racks, pulls up the hem of his Hawaiian shirt and rubs at a smudge.

  “In my dreams I scored one of those fast-breeder reactors based on Soviet-era submarine technology, but they just reached prototype phase over there. Having trouble getting them approved for field tests is what I hear. Besides, seventy-five megawatts would be a little overkill. Truth is, I’m just pulling my juice off the lines that run into Oasis Two maintenance. The wiring won’t pass a code inspection at this point, but even with the cooling units, I’m not sucking up a tenth of what the designers expected the tower to consume.”

  Smith stops rubbing the server, drops the hem of his shirt.

  “But, as I don’t think you’re hear to geek out on the specs of my infrastructure, what the fuck, Jae?”

  She leans against a server rack, arms folded over her chest, shrugging.

  “Information.”

  Smith glances toward Skinner.

  “Uh-huh. Any special flavor?”

  “West-Tebrum power plant hack.”

  Smith raises both hands, showing nothing up his sleeves.

  “I wasn’t in on that.”

  Jae moves her fingers soothingly, massages the air.

  “We just want to know more. You’re the Maker. Everyone comes to Maker Smith for knowledge. And here we are for the same thing. Knowledge about things people aren’t supposed to know about.”

  “Whose dime?”

  “Kestrel.”

  Smith’s jaw clenches.

  “You’re working for Kestrel.”

  He looks at Skinner.

  “You’re both working for Kestrel?”

  Jae looks at her boots.

  “It’s Terrence’s gig. So I’m working for Kestrel.”

  Smith snags a task chair from his work station, rolls it back and forth on its casters.

  “Cross hates me.”

  “Cross doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “You’d like to think.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Smith raises his arms and spreads them far apart.

  “Jae, it’s a matter of scale. Do you understand vastness? Abysses that you can fall into and never get out of. Uncharted territories.”

  He drops his arms and speaks slowly.

  “Persons unknown have attacked the USA with a modified piece of malware that was first discovered after it was set loose on an Iranian local area network that connected with centrifuges used to spin spent uranium as a primary step of converting it into weapons-grade. And, oh, by the way, the people who did that, the people who created that original Stuxnet worm, they were, no one doubts, US and Israeli intelligence. NSA and Mossad.”

  He spins the task chair.

  “So now here it comes, back at us. ReStuxnet, aimed at a US power plant. Telling a lube oil pump to shut down. Is it a probe? Or was it meant to crash the eastern grid and hamstring the entire country? Is this some bullshit black-hat hacker proving he can do it? Is it some Anonymous remnant asshole trying to teach the US a lesson after they flipped Sabu and burned his club
house down? Balkan gangsters showing us what they’re capable of before they begin to blackmail the country? Is it Iranian intelligence letting us know they can fuck us right back with our own dick? Most popular, is it China proving that you don’t have to have a world-class military to be a world military power? Russia being peevish? Tea Party extremists trying to bring down the federal government and put us back on a gold standard? Intelligence contractors establishing a clear and present danger to keep Congress from defunding them during the next round of budget cuts? Whoever it was, every intelligence contractor in the country, from the majors like Kestrel, Mission One, and Hann-Aoki, and right down to Aegis, Triple Canopy, Xo, will be duking it out for the billions of dollars in new cyber security contracts that are going to flood the intelligence industry any second now.”

  He grabs the chair, stops it spinning.

  “And you think Cross doesn’t know you are here? Does that seem likely?”

  Jae rubs her eyes.

  “No. Not likely.”

  She takes her hands from her eyes.

  “Who has you working on it?”

  Smith shakes his head.

  “Nope, not me. Hann-Aoki have been ringing the phone off the hook trying to get me under contract to trace the hackers, but I’m not playing.”

  “Lot of money to leave on the table.”

  Smith’s workstation is comprised of a white-topped catering table, two printer/scanners, a bright orange adjustable Tensor lamp, four DSL modems, dozens of coiled cables hung from hooks on a pegboard mounted on the wall above the table, three power strips on the floor underneath, two carbon-mesh task chairs, an assortment of boxed laptops, most still wearing shrink-wrap, and a bucket of Red Vines.

  He grabs one of the candy ropes and starts to chew.

  “I’m staying on the sideline for this one.”

  Jae pushes herself away from the server stack.

  “Biggest cyber security payday in the history of forever, and Maker Smith takes a holiday.”

  She looks at Skinner.

  “Imagine.”

  Skinner blinks.

  “I am.”

  Smith’s incisors snap through his Red Vine.

  “You guys. Like it’s all money. Contracts. Like you, Jae, like that’s what you do this for.”