by Mazza, Ray
“We’ve received a complaint of disturbing the peace and battery through verbal harassment,” the cop said. “Please cooperate.” They were standing back a few feet, waiting for Trevor to go prone. “Do you have any weapons?”
“No,” said Trevor. As he brought one knee to the ground, he imagined having to strip naked in front of the prison guards and being hosed down, like he’d seen happen on TV.
As he followed through with his other leg into a kneeling position, the following images shot through his mind: getting beaten in prison, having his teeth knocked out on a urinal, being repeatedly stabbed in the gut with a crudely-sharpened piece of metal from a rusty cot, and getting kicked in the groin by a man with a bulbous scar and breath that smelled like a mortuary. He couldn’t go to jail for harassment, could he?
His breaths came quickly and uncontrollably.
The cops stepped closer.
“Hands behind your head and on the ground, now!” The cop yelled this time. The large cop drew his nightstick.
Trevor must be taking too long. As he brought his hands behind his head, he imagined being released from prison in twenty years, ten years, only two years – it didn’t matter – and walking into a world where nobody would respect him any longer. Broke. Homeless. Applying for minimum wage jobs he hated. Ducking out of view when past friends approached. An ex-convict. Worthless.
Then, as he began to lean forward, toward the sidewalk speckled with old gum and grit, he thought of his parents.
His parents. Mom. Dad.
They couldn’t know he was going to jail. It would ruin their lives. They would think they were failures. How could he keep them from finding out?
The cops were almost on top of him now. They’d believe him, right? But Valerie hadn’t. And she had connections and credibility. Friends. Politics. He was screwed.
Mom and Dad.
In one quick motion, Trevor threw his weight forward, sprang out, partially stumbled and caught himself briefly, then half jumped, half clambered over the hood of the cop car – it was searing hot – and hit the street running.
“No, no, don’t do this!” the larger cop yelled as he lunged for Trevor.
He’d felt them frantically swiping at his legs on his way over the car, one caught his pant cuff but lost it, and Trevor made it over and hit the ground running. They sprinted after him.
“You idiot! Stop!” shouted the cop with spiky hair. “You’re going down!”
Trevor’s body was a machine – it moved more quickly than it ever had before. Time seemed to slow as he felt each muscle expand and contract with relentless force. For a very brief moment, he was amazed at the human body and what it was capable of.
Then his chest and legs started to burn.
The spiky-haired cop wasn’t more than eight feet behind. Trevor looked back and saw him pulling something out of his belt.
Oh shit, he’s going to shoot me, Trevor thought, and considered stopping – after all, what the hell was he thinking, running from the cops? They had his name!
Something hit his right ankle with the sound of a baseball bat smacking into flesh. Sharp pain. His feet tripped up, then pavement. His head bounced once on the asphalt, and he rolled over to a stop. His ankle moaned in pain and blood began to fill the over-white divots of missing flesh along his arm.
The cop’s nightstick lay tangled in Trevor’s feet. They were on top of him now. His head throbbed. The big one smelled like coffee, and his crucifix slid out on the end of a gold chain from around his neck and smacked Trevor in the eye before the guy tucked it back into his sweat-stained undershirt.
Trevor blinked, his eye watering, and felt the biting cold of metal handcuffs on his wrists. Then he lost consciousness.
Chapter 9
Incarcerated
Trevor sat on an uncomfortable bench in a holding cell, inspecting his smudged and inky fingers.
He was in the system now.
His cell was just one of a series that lined an angular, drab hallway. Like a casino, it was devoid of windows, clocks, and joy. He was alone and felt lucky because of it, noticing most of the cells were shared by ape-like freak shows whose names were probably things like “Ammo” or “Gutstab.”
Trevor heard a scraping of shoes on concrete, and pulled his gaze up to see the spiky-haired cop leaning on the bars of his cell.
“How’s your ankle?” the cop asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“I can walk okay.”
The cop stared at him, squinting slightly. “You look familiar. You know when you get that feeling that you’ve seen someone before and we’re all connected somehow? Like the world is putting signals into our heads? That’s how I feel right now. Like I’ve seen you. There’s something special about you.”
Trevor blinked.
“No? You don’t know what I’m talking about?” the cop said.
“Uh, I was standing on the steps out front here yesterday,” said Trevor, “and you gave me the department’s card.”
“Oh, right, right,” the cop mused, looking up at the harsh fluorescent lights, “you were tripped out on coke or something.”
“I don’t do drugs. I was nervous.”
“Of course you don’t, my mistake,” the officer said with the tone of a mechanical reflex.
“I was coming to turn in the help note that you picked up from Miss Winters. I bumped into you and the big guy and you kind of scared me, I don’t know why.”
“You looked like you were on drugs,” said the cop. “My name is Officer Fulton,” he extended a hand through the bars.
“Okay,” said Trevor, shaking hands. He wasn’t sure how to respond, but he sure as hell didn’t feel like pleased to meet you was appropriate.
“You know,” Fulton said, “you shouldn’t have run.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Trevor, shrugging. “I’ve never been arrested, I panicked. What’s going to happen to me?”
“You might have been found innocent of the harassment charges, but you definitely tried to evade arrest, and there’s no getting away from that.”
Trevor had realized this. He’d had many “if only” moments in his life – moments where he’d made a decision that was, in retrospect, poor, and that he would like to go back and change. Up until now his biggest one was that he should have gone with his college buddies to travel Europe and Asia the summer after his junior year. Instead, he decided to be practical, and get some work experience writing gene sequencing programs. He began regretting that decision only two weeks into summer, knowing he missed a chance of a lifetime. But now, his top “if only” moment was that he wished he could go back to yesterday, and just have tossed that damn letter in the trash. Or burned it. Or eaten it, or anything other than what he ended up doing with it.
“What can I do?” Trevor said, almost pleading.
Fulton looked at him and slowly shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re screwed,” then turned and walked away.
~
An hour passed, and Officer Fulton showed up outside Trevor’s cell again.
Fulton nodded to him. “Your paperwork will be straightened out sometime tomorrow. As long as you can post bail, you’ll be able to leave.”
“How much?”
“Harassment is ten thousand dollars for first time offenders. Pretty cheap. Plus resisting arrest, another twenty thousand because it makes you a more likely candidate to flee. Still cheap though.”
“Cheap?” said Trevor, “What’s expensive?” He thought he might have enough in the bank to cover this so-called “cheap” bail.
“Oh, it can get up to around a quarter million or so for most forms of homicide.” Fulton played with his spiky hair, thinking. “And it’s two hundred thousand for attempted manslaughter with explosives attached to the body, although I’ve never encountered that. It gets pretty specific.”
Trevor hoped his life wouldn’t lead to such things. But after this, who knew what dark corners of existence he would find hims
elf drawn into? “I see. So I get a phone call, right?”
“Yes, you’re entitled to one. Would you like to make that now?”
“Ah, no, I… have no one to call. I was just checking.”
~
Trevor had been sitting in his cell for close to eight hours. They’d brought him food, but he didn’t feel like eating, especially with the faint smell of burnt oil in the air. He’d instead fixated on the nightmares that he was convinced awaited him in prison. Hadn’t Einstein said that all of time was predestined and laid out, but our human consciousness was only capable of experiencing one moment at a time? Trevor imagined washroom beatings, maggot-infested food, and rusty shivs awaiting in his predetermined future.
After thinking about those things for hours, it became mentally exhausting. He had a headache. And eventually, Trevor became bored. It felt absurd when he thought about it – that he could be sitting here, his life so drastically changed, and yet be bored. Maybe it was just a question of inevitability – you sit somewhere long enough with nothing to do, independent of the situation, you get bored. If you fell down a well into a pit full of gold and jewels and unimaginable treasure, but with no chance of escape, you’d eventually get bored.
He decided to do push-ups. He never went to the gym, but always wanted to go since his job consisted of sitting still in a chair for ten hours at a time, and occasionally breathing. The days that he got the biggest workouts were the days he drank too much water and made more than two trips to the bathroom. And there was the extended workout when he would get to the bathroom only to find it full, and have to trek to a different floor to find a low-traffic bathroom.
Trevor got down on the grimy cement – though it wasn’t dirtier or bloodier than he was – and began his push-ups. Around number ten, they became difficult. He was grunting by fifteen, but kept going. When he hit twenty-one, a few previously unrelated thoughts in his active memory connected, and he had an epiphany.
“Yes!” he exclaimed to no one in particular, standing up and wiping his hands on the sides of his shirt. He understood what the address in the letter was. He’d been trying to remember it, but could only remember that it was NIC and then some numbers, then a B, and then a lot more numbers. Without the numbers there, NIC was familiar to him. It was familiar because it was an acronym for Network Interface Card.
The address in the letter was the unique address of a computer’s network adapter! It must have been the computer Allison was able to send the note from. There were definitely hacker programs he could find that could scan computers and note their adapter addresses. He just needed to get the full address from the note on his memory stick, then he could start by scanning whatever computers were left on his company network – from the letter, it sounded like Allison was definitely being held in the office. But Valerie Winters said she died fourteen years ago? So if this was a letter from before her death, if the computer it was sent from had been at the office – or anywhere for that matter – chances were not good that it would still be around.
This wasn’t looking like it would lead anywhere, except possibly into deeper problems with the law. Trevor felt like banging his head against the wall. Maybe it would knock some damn sense into him. The reasonable thing to do, he thought, would be to forget this.
But he couldn’t. Something nagged at him. There was one fundamental question that made all the others seem insignificant: Why would anyone ever identify their location by their computer’s network card ID? Especially a child? It made no sense... Unless! There must be something on that specific computer.
Something vital.
But what?
Chapter 10
Envelope
Trevor Leighton awoke to a harsh, repeated clanging sound. He had incorporated it into the final moments of his dream where he stared down an oncoming locomotive. Its bell rang, growing louder and louder. His feet had been hammered into the track with large railroad spikes. Stuck. He had no choice but to let the train hit him.
Trevor roused from his dream moments before the engine reached him, but physically he felt like it had collided with him full-force, ten times over. His entire body ached from falling yesterday, the soreness of his muscles finally kicking in.
“Come on, already!” said a guard, who was rapping his nightstick back and forth on the bars of Trevor’s holding cell. The guard saw Trevor notice him and put his club away. He yanked a crumpled envelope out of his tight pants pocket with a meaty hand like an inflated surgical glove. He tossed the envelope on the floor in front of Trevor. “Some guy requested you get this.”
“Some guy?” said Trevor. “Who?” Who would know he was here?
“Uh, a man,” said the guard, “named Snowy... or he was from Iceland... or something like that.” He spoke as if each phrase took more effort than he cared to devote to it.
“Who? What was his name?”
“I told you, Snowy something,” said the cop, laboriously.
Who did Trevor know named Snowy? The only person that even knew he was here was Valerie Wint—Trevor jumped to his feet. “Winters!” he said. “Damon! Was his name Damon Winters?”
“Yeah, yeah, Snowy Winters,” panted the guard. “Probably says on the envelope.”
Trevor grabbed it from the floor. “Is he here now?”
“Could be,” shrugged the guard, and turned to go. “Think so,” he said as he lumbered away.
Trevor looked at the envelope. It said “Trevor Leighton” in blue hand-written ink. Inside was a single sheet of paper. A photocopy of a newspaper article dated December 22, 1998. Fourteen years ago. A black and white picture showed a man and woman in an embrace, looking at the charred, skeletal remains of a house. A fireman stood by a truck parked in the driveway, helmet hanging from his left hand at his side. A second photograph depicted a school headshot of a smiling, young girl with the caption, “Allison Winters.” The headline read, “Fire Devastates Winters Family.”
The article explained that a fire started in a kitchen trash can from a cigarette butt Damon had thrown away. The fire had taken long enough to start that Damon and his wife, Valerie, had been in bed and asleep. They finally woke to the ear-splitting chirps of a smoke detector in their upstairs hallway; the one in their kitchen didn’t have a battery… they’d meant to buy one but never got around to it. Their ten-year-old daughter’s room was closest to the stairs, directly above the kitchen. Smoke accumulated so quickly that by the time Damon and Valerie ran into the hallway, they had to drop to their knees to see anything.
Damon had sent Valerie out, while he went for Allison. He couldn’t see anything at all in Allison’s room, but was able to follow the sound of her coughing. He’d found her hiding under her covers in the top of her bunk bed. Damon managed to carry her out, heroically, minutes before her room caved in to the kitchen.
It didn’t matter. Allison Winters died as a result of severe smoke inhalation shortly after being put on a stretcher, her parents gagging and wheezing at her side.
Their only child.
Taking a deep breath, Trevor leaned back against the concrete wall. He couldn’t help but feel horrible now, for a man whose stature had frightened him and his wife who’d had him arrested. And then, thinking about Allison and the stupid letter, he felt like an ass. The police must have questioned Damon about the strange letter and then realized it was meaningless. Damon must have subsequently sent Trevor this article so he would know what a fool he was being.
Trevor began to fold up the letter, then noticed there was a short sentence written on the back. In tiny letters along the bottom edge it said, We need to talk – DW.
DW. Damon Winters!
What might Damon want to say to him? “You’re fired,” perhaps. Or some kind of lecture about staying out of his family’s business, and then, “You’re fired.” Or if he was especially unlucky, “We’re seeking the maximum sentence for you. Oh – and you’re fired.”
When Trevor heard footsteps, he crammed the article into his pock
et, realizing as he did so that it was unnecessary to hide it since a guard had delivered it to him. Officer Fulton came into view.
“Okay, Trevor, let’s go.” Fulton slid open the cell door.
Chapter 11
A Flash of Poetry
Trevor sat in a chair opposite Fulton at his desk. His was one of about fifteen in the room with various officers and assistants filing papers and barking into phones. A few ate sandwiches on top of flattened paper bags. Trevor noticed the hulking officer that had been with Fulton, now trying to cram the entire cross section of a lumpy meatball sandwich into his mouth. It must be lunchtime. Trevor’s stomach finally started to growl.
“Mr. Leighton,” said Fulton, “Mr. Winters stopped by earlier today. He informed us that you work for him, and that the computer systems at your company garbled much of their electronic documentation and paperwork recently during the mass internet surge. Actually, I’ve heard your company has been cleaning up quite a mess.” Fulton picked up a notepad and leaned back in his chair. He tapped his pen a few times.
“Anyhow,” he said, “Mr. Winters suggests the document that ended up in your possession was most likely the result of some of his personal files getting scrambled with output from a – let me get this right...” Fulton scanned the scribbles on his notepad. “…from an artificial intelligence poetry-generating program. He said he had loads of the stuff saved on his computer. At least, before the surge.”
“Oh,” said Trevor, shrinking in his seat. He knew a lot of work the company did was in artificial intelligence – AI – and various forms of speech generation.