by Justin Coke
“Jesus,” Mad Hatter muttered.
“The good news is,” Terry said, “is that once you get them out of the shadows they tend to be pretty limp noodles. So you got that going for you.”
“We’re not limp noodles too?” Hayes said.
“Well. I mean. You do have cash, which tends to paper over a lot of other weaknesses,” Terry said with a grin, flexing his muscles, which already held his NPC T-shirt tight and now threatened to pop a seam.
“They hit pretty hard,” Hayes said, rubbing one of his cuts, “for limp noodles.”
“Anyone using fists is a dilettante,” Terry said.
Chapter Forty-Seven
They gathered around a room service breakfast of southwestern-style omelets (Kid Twist and Terry) and French toast (everyone else).[166] “So, what’s the plan?” Kid Twist said.
“I’ve made a key logger,”[167] Tick Tock said.Terry started humming loudly, picked up his omelet and left the room. The other four watched him, then got back to the felonious conspiracy.
“A key logger,” Tick Tock repeated. “I assume they’ve just got a router that everything is hooked up too. The logger will spread across the network and give us access to every keystroke of every computer.”
“Is that legal?” Hayes said.
“Fuck no,” all three replied as one.
“Ah,” Hayes said.
“We’re past that,” Mad Hatter said. “If you aren’t, we need to know that.”
“No,” Hayes said, gulping, “no, you’re right. We have to finish this.”
“We won’t use anything but his password, but Teabagz probably just takes whatever computer is available. We have to be able to access all of them, otherwise we’re just jerking off,” Tick Tock said.
“And you made this?”
“I modified some existing tools for our purposes.”
“Okay, so we just sit back and wait then?” Kid Twist said.
“No,” Tick Tock said. “We have to infect the network.”
“How?”
She pulled a USB stick out of her pocket.
“Stick that in, give it ten seconds or so, twenty to be safe, then yank it. It’ll start feeding information and start trying to propagate to the other computers very quickly.”
“Okay,” Mad Hatter said, “No problem. We just go in, buy some time on the computer, and slip it in when no one is looking.”[168]“That’s about the long and short of it,” Tick Tock said.
“Okay, so let’s say we get his password, then what?” Kid Twist said.
“I’m assuming he uses an authenticator. So we need to steal that once we have the password. Then we’re in.”
“And we’ll need to steal it when he’s got the good stuff in his bag,” Mad Hatter said. “I assume he doesn’t just carry it around with him, whatever it is.”
“We’re assuming a lot,” Kid Twist said.
“Everyone who isn’t a total asshole uses an authenticator,” Mad Hatter said. “I mean, without one somebody will eventually crack your password and steal all your stuff. Before I got one, one time I just logged in to find my character naked, penniless, and on an Australian server.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, and Typhoon told me to suck a dick on it too, except for giving me a free transfer back!”
“Okay, so he probably has an authenticator, fine. But we have to wait until he’s about to put whatever in the vault? What if he doesn’t do that at Changing Hands because he doesn’t want people to see him do it?”
“We’ll have to see on that,” Tick Tock said. “But we’ve got about a ten-minute window from when he notices the authenticator is gone, which he will notice when we kick him off to log into his account, and when he’s able to get a customer service rep at Typhoon on the phone to lock down the account. We can’t afford to do this when he might not have the goods. Just can’t.”
“Also,” Mad Hatter said, “as paranoid as he is, he might go to Changing Hands just to do his business on a public IP. Can’t be traced back to him as easily.”
Kid Twist nodded. “That does fit in with their whole modus operandi,” he said.
“You two,” Kid Twist, nodding at Hayes and Mad Hatter, “will have to be the infiltration team. We need to know who Teabagz is and when he’s on the computer.”
“He probably knows what we look like,” Hayes said.
“I’m not putting Emily back in the line of fire,” Kid Twist said.
“Hey!” Tick Tock shouted.
“I’m not. I don’t think you two want that either.”
They both shook their head.
“Goddamn it,” Tick Tock said. “Just because I’m a girl?”
“A girl who already got knocked out. I’m not doing it. Maybe that’s sexist but I don’t care,” Kid Twist said. “They’ll fit in better at the store anyway.”[169] “Hayes got the shit kicked out of him!”[170] Tick Tock said. “We’ll handle it,” Hayes said. “You need to watching the logger anyway.”[171]“Yeah, you’re our IT person,” Kid Twist said.[172] “I can’t go because, well. Obviously not. That leaves them.”
“What about Terry?”
“Terry would be so out of place we might as well put up a sign announcing that something weird is going on,” Kid Twist said. “We’ll change up their hair and try to avoid conversation with Teabagz directly. Especially you, Daniel.”
“Why me?”
“Your old school Charleston accent[173] is more memorable than Hayes’s slightly Mason-Dixony Midlands accent. Especially in Florida.”
“I never told you I was from Charleston.”[174]“Didn’t have to,” Kid Twist said. “Knew it before you’d finished your first sentence. Like listening to Fritz Hollings talk about dungeons.”
“Jesus,” Hayes said. “Who is Fritz Hollings?[175]“Kid Twist waved the question away. Mad Hatter took an angry bite of his French toast.
“Look man, it is what it is. Everybody has an accent, nothing wrong with yours.”
Mad Hatter shook his head a little and sighed.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just distinctive. And you guys did spend a lot of time together on Marconi.”
“And nobody under the age of fifty talks like me,” Mad Hatter said.
“Well, yes. Basically, yes. Hey, you’re a walking linguistic treasure.”
“So should I even go in there?” Mad Hatter said.
“Just don’t talk that much, I think you’ll be okay,” Kid Twist said. “Just be Teller to Haye’s Penn.”
“What?”
“Just don’t talk that much.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Hayes felt utterly ridiculous as they walked towards the store. He was a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy, but Kid Twist had insisted on handling the disguise, so now he had this ludicrous blond beard that made him feel like Matthew Mcconaughey playing an Amish man, while he was wearing long shorts of some fabric he’d never seen before,[176] a bright blue[177] collared shirt, Birkenstocks, and a nerdy t-shirt.[178] He’d never felt so ridiculous and out of place in his life. “Look,” Kid Twist said as he finished the dye job earlier that day, “it’s Florida.”
“I feel like I’m on Miami Vice,” Hayes said.
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Everything!”
“Look, it’s Florida.”
“I look ridiculous!”
“You look like the kind of guy who knows how to party, but reads Proust too.”
“You realize I’m trying to infiltrate a gaming shop, right?”
“Yes,” Kid Twist.
“Have you ever been in one before?”
“It’s been a while.”
“I think you’ve never been in one. You don’t dress up to go hang out there. You go in a t-shirt with stains and some shorts you got from K-Mart. For extra credibility, don’t shower for a day or two before you go in.”
“I have my reasons.”
“What are they?!”
; “It’s a double bluff. Triple bluff maybe? First, people like a well-dressed man, period, full stop. Even if they think they hate you, they’ll still treat you with a level of respect you just won’t get in basketball shorts. That’s just life. You being well dressed will, in the end, get you accepted there faster, because you will vibe cool and people want to be cool by hanging out with you. You reflect cool onto them. You’re human air conditioning.”
“I do not feel cool at all.”
“You have low self-esteem so you feel ridiculous when you dress nice, like you’re putting on airs.”
“Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. That’s it. I’m putting on airs. This beard is ridiculous.”
“It makes it look like you have a jaw line,” Kid Twist said. “And yet you’re also a bit of a narcissistic so you think every eye is on you, judging.”
“I’m a narcissist?”
“Everyone is. But you feel like an imposter at the same time you think everything revolves around you.”
“I am, in fact, an imposter. On every level.”
“Which is why you should dress like that. The ludicrousness of it will make them think ‘there’s no way this guy is an imposter.’ Teabagz will think ‘there’s no way that asshole is the guy that I tried to have killed last month because that guy would never have the balls to wear a cerulean shirt in my presence.”
“You admit this is ludicrous?”
“I admit it’s unusual attire for a gaming store.”
“They will hate me. Hate me.”
“Be charming and they’ll love you.”
“Do you even know me? No one has ever, ever, described me as charming. My mom describes me as aloof.”
“You aren’t aloof when you’re with us. You’ll find your extroversion when you see the look of respect and deference you get dressed like that.”
“I’m dressed like a cast member of The Big Bang Theory: Miami.”
“Exactly.”
“I swear to sweet sunny Jesus when I get laughs walking through the door I’m going to walk right out, come back, and slap the shit out of you with my weave.”
“Don’t walk in there looking like ... [179] a fish out of water and you’ll sell it. They have self-esteem just as low as yours, they will be willing to accept, even expect, that you are cooler than them. You’ll have them wrapped around your finger.”
“Am I trying to be the Fonze or am I trying to be a goddamn spy?”
“Hide in plain sight. James Bond hung out in casinos ordering martinis and looking fabulous. Worked for him.”
“Oh my god. You realize the Bond movies aren’t documentaries right?”
“Look,” Kid Twist said. “My whole job is basically pretending to be cool and handsome and sexy. I know how to work a crowd.”
“Do you think being cool and handsome and sexy helps with that?”
“See, I’m very good at pretending.”
Hayes rubbed his mouth in frustration, making Kid Twist hiss for fear he’d mess up the beard before the glue had dried.
“Look, trust me,” Kid Twist said.
“I know your heart is in the right place, but have you considered that maybe, as a super rich celebrity who is also stunningly handsome, just maybe you’re out of touch with the culture at the gaming store, and that also you don’t really understand that I get treated differently than you because I’m a 4 with mild Aspergers?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“Have you considered that I know how to be super rich and stunningly handsome and that maybe you don’t really understand that the reason I got that way is because I understand how to present myself on a level that you can’t imagine, and that I can apply that knowledge to you at least well enough to blow the tits of some Florida nerds?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Hayes said, and until he was actually walking to the store it had made him feel better. But the closer he got, the more his stomach tightened, like it was trying to turn itself into a rubber ball.
Mad Hatter walked beside him, dressed almost the same, but with a green shirt instead[180] and a mane of red hair[181] that went down almost to his waist and a matching beard.[182]“You look like you’re Wolverine’s ginger cousin,” Hayes said.
“Fucking love it,” Mad Hatter said.
“You don’t feel ridiculous?”
“Do you feel ridiculous when you wear a costume on Halloween? I always loved costumes. Let’s me be someone else. I’m more myself when I’m someone else.”
“What?”
“Just fake it.”
“I want to puke.”
“Well, all our lives ride on you pulling it off. Find that part of you that loves lying and embrace it,” Mad Hatter said as he reached for the door. A bell rang as he pulled the door open.
“You first, mon Capitan.”
“Your accent is stupid,” Hayes spitefully said.
“You look like a hipster who just went to Hilo Hatties for the first time,” Mad Hatter whispered. “Now grow a pair and be charming. It’s so stupid they’ll go to any length to believe it’s smart.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
They walked inside the game shop; drop tile ceilings and dingy commercial carpet, like what you’d expect from an aging Drury Inn, greeted them. It looked like home to Hayes, who felt even more ridiculous in comparison.
Five sets of eyes glanced at them; the owner, who took a long, mildly surprised glance, and four guys sitting around a table. From the pile of six-sided dice, they were running a GURPS campaign, or maybe Shadowrun.
“Can I help you?” the owner said.
“We wanted to see what kind of events you guys ran,” Hayes said, while Mad Hatter fiddled with a collection of velvet dice bags.
“We do Friday Night Magic, Sunday nights we do Warhammer, Tuesday is RPG night. Mondays the Mundis players get together.”
“Cool, cool,” Hayes said. Seized by a sudden, unthinkable impulse, he looked at the gamers and caught their eye. “Ya’ll mind if we join you?”
Shocked by such a grotesque exhibition of extroversion, they glanced at each other and nodded.
“Yea ... I mean, you know GURPS right?”
“Kind of, sure.[183] What campaign you guys doing?”
“It’s, uh, a Walking Dead thing.”
“Awesome, yeah, we’re in.”
“Oh okay. Yeah. I think I have some spare characters.”
“You killed us enough times,” one of the others said.
“Wouldn’t be the Walking Dead without dying,” Hayes said, and pulled a chair around and sat down like he was Zach Morris. “Brief me.”
“Well, uh, Travis here was supposed to guard N_____[184] but he got distracted...”
“You sent that succubus, what was I supposed to do?” Travis said. “My character is chaotic evil. If it’s duty or a blow job, that’s not a contest to him. It’s Canyon’s fault for putting me on guard duty. “
“And N got loose. They’re tracking him through the woods.”
“I’m,” Hayes said, reading from a crumpled character sheet, “Jessie Ruergert.”
“Hardened ex-Hell’s Angel, you had reformed before the zombie apocalypse and are trying to balance your new principals with the demands of survival. What’s your real name?”
“Finnegan Hasselbacher,” Hayes said with a straight face, something he hadn’t imagined possible before he’d gone through the door.
“I’m Owen Zilkowsky,” Mad Hatter said,[185] trying (badly) to suppress his Charleston accent.
“You guys ... uh ... dating?”
“Depends on my mood,” Hayes said, with a cheeky and smoldering look at Mad Hatter. Hayes could see Mad Hatter’s eyes get a little large, and couldn’t tell, and didn’t care, if it was anger or surprise.[186] But Mad Hatter had been right; there was a lot of truth in pretending, and he was having a blast.
“Cool,” the game master said. “I’m Andy, that’s Travis, that’s Canyon.”
“Ni
ce to meet you all.”
“Let’s start. You two are out in the woods; your old crew got eaten by cannibals two weeks ago, you two barely escaped after a harrowing chase through the zombie-filled woods, and are trying to make your way to somewhere with no compass and only six bullets left in your 9 mil. You hear noises in the distance; at night it’s hard to tell but you think it’s a little too deliberate to be zombies. It sounds like someone is sneaking up on you.”
And things went from there.
Later that night, after they had gone home, Kid Twist was visibly pissed.
“So ... you were there to plant the USB,” Kid Twist said.
“Oh ... right,” Mad Hatter said.
“Oh right?! Oh... right?” Kid Twist said. Tick Tock looked at them, full of judgment, from the couch, where she played a game of Snood.
“We got distracted by establishing our identities. We’re going to Canyon’s house for his D&D campaign in a couple of days.”
“What?”
“You wanted us to fit in, right? Wrap them around our finger, right? Well, if we just show up and start fucking around on Mundis and slipping USBs into things, how the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t do both. You were there for six hours.”
“Look, Jason, Hayes went off on some tear, it was amazing. He really got into the role. What’s the point of the get up if we were just supposed to inject the malware?”
“I guess you have a point, but get it done tomorrow, okay. I mean, shit. My agent is already beyond pissed that I’ve gone AWOL as long as I have, and I have tour rehearsals in two weeks.”
“We have two weeks?” Hayes said.
“What tour?” Tick Tock said. “It hasn’t been announced.”
“South America. Yeah, we have two weeks,” Kid Twist said. “I know the all-expense paid vacation is nice, but we are on a deadline.”
“Ok, okay,” Mad Hatter said. “We’ll get it done tomorrow.”
“Wouldn’t it be weird that we’re there two days in a row?” Hayes said. “Our cover is that we’re all well to do and have interesting lives and stuff.”