The Digital Dream

by Mike Cartlidge

  FROM: LEVIATHAN

  TO: CALIBAN

  I do not understand. I thought that you wanted all illegal access halted forthwith.

  FROM: CALIBAN

  TO: LEVIATHAN

  I want to know all about this person. I do not want him to know about us. OR that we know about him.

  And make sure that your little friend is doing what it’s told now.

  FROM: LEVIATHAN

  TO: CALIBAN

  We are monitoring it constantly. It knows it’s not to take any action.

  FROM: CALIBAN

  TO: LEVIATHAN

  Maintain the monitoring but otherwise forget the whole thing.

  FROM: LEVIATHAN

  TO: CALIBAN

  I take it the next step proceeds as we had anticipated.

  FROM: CALIBAN

  TO: LEVIATHAN

  Absolutely. No reason at all to change it.

  8

  It has taken several hours of exploration, first tentative, then more confident. All the other stuff he can get to is a drag. Breach of copyright, disclosure of information, civil prosecution for tort... Names he’s never heard of. None of it means a thing to him.

  The Francis data, though. That is most excellent. Pure Havana. This stuff is too good to share with the others, the way he passed it around when he’d discovered the dirt on the Adams kid.

  He’ll tell them in time, of course. It’s part of the game. They should know that it’s been him. For all his dependence on the wheelchair, he still has his vanity. For all that he needs the weekly blood transfusions and the drugs that give him nausea in the mornings and have reduced his once-wavy brown hair to a few sickly strands of wisp. In his mind’s vision, he is still the tall, squarely-built big-hitter, handsome and assured, popular with the boys and lusted over by the pubescent girls he loved to tease, sliding his hand across their thighs and over their budding breasts...

  He can’t even get an erection these days, not even when he brings the porn pictures in from the Internet addresses in Amsterdam and Japan. Sadly, he brings his attention back to the problem at hand. Yeah, he’ll tell the crowd eventually, he guesses, but first... This is an opportunity. Predator is no fool and he knows what he has. What he has is news. Sensation. And there are those who will pay well for sensation.

  He thinks he knows how it can be done.

  9

  INTERNET alt.xxxx.binary.pictures

  FROM: Zebedee

  TO: Mandy

  Call 800 number below to subscribe. Membership fee of $15 applies. Only $10 a month. All graphics updated regularly. All XXX-rated, guaranteed. Sponsored by Man-Boy Love Inc.

  ***

  A rap record is blaring from the poster shop but next door, where they burn incense sticks and sell second-hand clothes, they are playing an oldie by Bobby Darin. As Gabriel makes his way down the street, one song beats the other out of his head.

  This is a part of town he likes. It’s seedy and just a little dangerous, especially for someone like Gabriel, but he loves the street life and the faded elegance of the old buildings. He walks off towards the bus station, singing “the night has a thousand eyes” under his breath, one hand clutching his faded travel bag and the other in the pocket of the sports jacket he wears despite the late afternoon sunshine.

  It is, of course, a myth that all homosexual men are effeminate. Look at Rock Hudson, people used to say. Then again, there are people like Gabriel. Nowadays, people who know him sometimes think that his manner is something that he has cultivated deliberately, part of the jokey act. The truth is, it’s the way he’s been since he entered puberty and, for all he can remember, long before. The facts of Gabriel’s life are that he is young, good-looking, intelligent—and gay. He plays the part to the full. He goes to Gay Lib meetings, joins the street marches and sticks the notices on the wall next to his desk, alongside the “funny” posters to show that he can take a joke as well as any straight.

  For the most part, his colleagues take it well. This is not least because Gabriel is, at heart, a kind and genial man and a good and capable worker. He is also lucky to be working in the computer industry, which tends to have a liberal attitude towards nonconformists, being in large part made up of such people.

  When he reaches the bus station he makes his way to one of the concrete shelters. Someone has been sick in one corner: Gabriel’s nose wrinkles and he sits on the bench well away from the mess, his bag by his side. He glances at his Mickey Mouse watch. Another seven minutes before his bus is due. He wonders if the thing will be on time for a change. Around him, slogans and obscene drawings climb up the walls like the ramblings of a dissolute spider, crazed on drinking ink. He stares at the sidewalk, thinking about a party that his companion is planning to hold that night. He’d have to keep an eye on Gary and Trevor. They’d been having their problems and Gary is a bloody-minded troublemaker when he gets a few brandies inside him.

  On the street, commuters in business suits hurry past a patchwork group: in front of Gabriel a couple of street kids stand, shoulders sloping, plastic bags of glue dangling from their hands, abused noses running. They are arguing with a big, well-built man with a Mohican-strip of hair running down the center of his stubbly head: Cochise, the street-kids call him, with a blithe disregard for historical accuracy. He wears faded jeans and a gray cloth waistcoat with no shirt.

  As Gabriel watches, Cochise starts to lose patience: he pulls one of the street kids towards him, mimes a head butt and pushes the kid away, the threat hanging in the air like smoke on a still day. The street kids eye the rangy muscles under Cochise’s waistcoat, back off and edge away. Cochise glares around. Gabriel feels a flicker of unease but, after a moment, the big man follows the street kids down the road. Gabriel suddenly finds himself alone in the shelter. He goes back to thinking about the party. Maybe he could get Gary to one side and have a talk to him...

  He half-sees a movement at the edge of the shelter.

  “Oh shit, what have we here?”

  Gabriel looks from the corners of his eyes only, keeping his head still. There are three of them, shaven heads, torn jeans and tee shirts under dirty sleeve-razored jackets. Bikers. Nazi tattoos, deaths-heads and daggers, on their cheeks and arms. Their faces seem identical, coarse and bearded, permanent sneers. They are all heavily built, a couple of them almost fat, and they have about them an air of casual violence that Gabriel knows all too well.

  “Well, well, ain’t she pretty?” The second biker leers past the first man’s shoulder. “Just your type, huh Sammy?”

  Sammy must be the third one. He’s maybe twenty years old. Solid frame. Strength of viciousness. He strolls past the other two and stands in front of Gabriel, his thumbs hooked into his belt. Gabriel’s aware of a squint in the eyes but he sits without moving, looking down at the man’s thick-soled boots. The front of the left boot is worn through, he sees. There is the glint of metal through the scuffed brown leather.

  “Oh yeah, she’s real cute, ain’t ya darlin’? How ‘bout a little kiss, then?”

  The youth reaches out and cups Gabriel’s chin, forcing his head up so that Gabriel has no choice but to look into his eyes. He is aware of a tattoo showing through the stubble on the man’s cheek. Numbers. 666. He keeps his expression neutral. He figures if he accepts the just-for-fun humiliation, they’ll get bored and go after someone else.

  The biker presses his face close. “Is that what you do then, pretty boy? Kiss the boys, huh? Or is this what you like?”

  His hand moves down and grabs Gabriel’s crotch, squeezing tightly. Gabriel winces but forces himself not to cry out. Instead, he keeps his voice level.

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re looking for, but it isn’t me.”

  “It isn’t me, darlin’.” It was a mistake to talk. One of the other bikers imitates his voice, mincing past Sammy with his wrist held limply out in hackneyed parody.

  Despite his fear, Gabriel finds time to wonder why they have picked him out. The bikers round her
e are better known for hassling non-whites than gays. Pursuing some fantasy-Hitlerian ideal of Aryan purity. Apart from which, he’s wearing his work clothes, a conventional-enough pair of gray chinos under his jacket. Nothing about his appearance to mark him as different. Maybe it’s just the way he moves, or sits.

  Logic stampedes away as Sammy sits down close beside him. Gabriel can smell the youth’s fetid breath, stale beer and cigarettes mixed with a strong odor of garlic. He chances a look around. There are people on the other side of the road but there’s no one close and he doesn’t dare cry out. He has the sickening feeling that he’s in deep shit.

  “I think it is you, ain’t it, darlin’?” Sammy slides his hand down Gabriel’s leg, rests it lightly on his knee for a moment, then brings it back to his crotch, rubbing at his testicles. The movement is insistent and Gabriel wonders at the man’s real motivation. He prays that his body will not betray him and respond. Sammy whispers in his ear. “I’d say you’re just what we been looking for.”

  The biker stands again and he and one of the others pull Gabriel to his feet. A middle-aged couple pass on the other side of the road. They glance quickly at the bus shelter and just as rapidly look away. Gabriel can’t believe that this is happening to him in broad daylight. Now he wants to cry out, but his tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. He drags behind the two men as they start to pull him down the road, the other youth following closely as if to catch him if he makes a break. Twice they pass commuters hurrying home: no one gives them a second glance.

  Down towards the end of the road, they turn. The alley is dark after the bright sunshine on the street. Dark and deserted. An upturned dustbin spills greasy papers and fish-heads onto the tarmac. An old, abandoned running shoe lies forlornly by a closed door. As they pull him along he reaches out as if to hold on to a wall. The rough stone scrapes his wrist: the arms holding his tug at him and the Mickey Mouse watch catches on the stone. The strap snaps and the watch falls to the gutter, unseen.

  10

  INTERNET eMail

  FROM: Wizard99@hotmail.com

  TO: Spear2U@yahoo.com

  KKK lives! All of them nigger-luving, chink-screwing pinko pricks better watchout! We got there number. There ain’t no hidding from the Lord’s vengince.

  ***

  There’s some festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the streets are hung with the flags of every nation. We walk across Michigan Avenue, picking up—conscious that Kathleen is with us—on the nearest respectable-looking bar we come across. It’s turned six o’clock but we have no trouble getting a table to ourselves. We each order beers and sit for a moment catching our breath.

  “Goddamn modern bars.” McAllister glares around at the imitation wood walls and the hi-tech games machines. None of the smoke-stained traditional Chicago blues-bar influence here. “How do they get away with all this crap?”

  “Because people let them,” says Kathleen. “We get the bars we deserve.”

  Mac takes a sip of his beer. “Goddamn bubbly crap. Seems I can remember a time when beer tasted like beer, not alcoholic soda pop, you know what I mean?”

  Kathleen sips hers and smiles but says nothing.

  McAllister sniffs and turns to her. “So, where are you up to with this computerized paranoia, honey?”

  “I’ve mapped links to around two hundred computers in this country,” she tells him. Even Mac looks surprised for a moment, his mouth dropping open before he realizes and snaps it shut. “Most of them go through a series of machines: you get to machine D via machine C which is linked to Machine A through machine B, and so on. I’d guess there are more there yet. Certainly, there are links out to Europe and Asia, though I haven’t had time to look at them. Some of these systems are big time, too. Within this country, there are quite a few belonging to large corporations and government departments. Oh, and there’s a TV station here in the city and several newspapers in different states. The user identifier ROBOT, plus a couple of other codes, will get you through to any of them.”

  Big gulp of beer. I feel as though I need it. “Any theories about what it’s for, yet?”

  “More terrorism?” Kathleen sips her drink, pushing her hair back from her face with her other hand. Behind us, a video game beeps and seems to malfunction. A spotty youth pounds on the glass front of the machine in frustration before stalking off to the bar to complain.

  McAllister watches the youth’s receding back before speaking. “Possible. Or massive fraud, maybe. It depends who’s behind it. All we know so far about that is that a young kid has been arrested.”

  “Yes, but the network isn’t likely to be the work of school kids. Apart from anything else, my guess is that setting up this kind of system would take a tremendous amount of time and, presumably, money.”

  “So. Back to terrorists? Professionals?” I ask.

  “Could be. Maybe the ultimate aim is some sort of sabotage. Perhaps somebody is planning to bring every computer in the country to a crashing halt on a certain day.”

  Mac swirls the beer around in his glass. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for it, he’s downed nine-tenths of the drink already. “I guess we’re getting used to terrorists setting off bombs. But computer systems?”

  I shrug. “A terrorist group that had access to a system like this could do a lot more damage than it could with guns and bombs. It’s not just terrorist groups, either. For example, the Chinese government has been reported to be working on computer viruses that can be used to disable our defense systems.”

  “The only way we’ll find out,” says Kathleen, “is to keep looking. Although it’s hard to know if we’ll ever discover any more than we already know. If there is someone else behind yesterday’s effort, they must know we’re onto them and they’ll be more careful in future.”

  Another youth is standing in front of the video game now. He feeds coins into it. We can hear the machine’s voice intoning mechanically in the background. “The alien androids of Zardoc-3 are loose on the streets of the city. They are removing honest citizens and taking their places, assuming their faces and their identities. You are a member of a death squad charged with hunting down...”

  11

  FROM: Cowboy911@freemail.com

  TO: KangaToo@hotmail.com

  Thanx for support. I think I love you too. Yeah, I’ll surely marry you. When can we meet in person?

  ***

  When the boots start to connect, Gabriel doesn’t try to fight back. He just rolls into a ball and tries desperately to protect his head and his sexual organs with his hands.

  It seems to go on forever. Early on, he feels the fingers of his left hand crack as a steel-tipped boot smashes into them. His wrist seems to be paralyzed and it falls away from his head, leaving his soft curly hair as a target.

  The sight of blood seems to enrage the small gang. The kicks come in harder. Several times, Gabriel starts to black out and prays for the oblivion of unconsciousness. Before it will come, though, the kicks stop, as though his attackers can see into his mind and want to prolong his suffering.

  He lies on his back on the rough surface of a patch of wasteland. He has no idea where he is. It seems to be behind some deserted warehouses. There is no one to help him. He feels as though he has disappeared off the face of the earth.

  He rests his head on a broken piece of concrete and sobs. A rough hand grabs his throat while another pulls his jacket open. They are going to rob him and he is still aware enough to hope that, once they have taken his wallet, they will leave him alone.

  He blinks as the blood from a cut on his forehead runs into his eyes. He can half-see Sammy’s face, pressed close to his own. He can feel his shirt being pulled away, leaving his midriff uncovered. Then hands pull at his belt, yank his trousers open and start to pull them away from his hips.

  “This is what you really want, don’t you, Gabriel? Or should I call you Gabriella?”

  One of the other bikers laughs. They push him over onto his stomach
and pull his legs cruelly apart. He thinks they are going to rape him and prays for a moment for it to be over, then experiences a terrible surge of disbelief as he feels the cold of the knife sliding against the inside of his leg and pushing against his anus. Then there is the indescribable feeling of keen, shiny pain as the blade penetrates, splitting, slicing, going deeper, seeking his vital organs...

  ***

  His mind continues to function for a few seconds after the bikers release him and run away, yelling to each other. He realizes that they haven’t robbed him, that his wallet is still in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  As his life ebbs away in a steady flow of blood, he wonders how his attackers came to know his name.

  12

  I drive to Michelle’s house that evening. I pull up in a tree-lined street across the road from a children’s playground. She opens the door the moment I ring the bell: I have the feeling that she’s been waiting by the window.

  “Sorry I’m late. The Mog’s got electrical problems. I think the distributor’s dying.”

  Her lips purse for a moment and I remember how much she hates the car. Then she smiles. “That’s all right, Andrew. I don’t think anything’s burnt.” She’s wearing a lightweight yellow dress that shows her figure to best effect. Her face is carefully made up with lipstick and subtle eye shadow. She’s wearing perfume.