The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination
Page 19
“And, just so you get it, I’ll spell out — the point. Putting a price directly upon the commodity stabilized prices and set product standards. A hallmark of civilized society . . .”
Max gave her a jaundiced frown.
“Anyway! The Quakers were experimenting with something, a new idea. Equality. A dangerous notion in a world governed by the divine right of kings. Guess what happened?”
Max started to make another face, and Molly continued as though talking to herself.
“The Quakers started outselling the Dutch merchants. The Quakers suddenly held the advantage, because the buyers could trust them. They trusted them enough to send their children to market, knowing they wouldn’t be taken advantage of. Ergo . . . the Watchers.
“Soon every merchant displayed price tags, blah blah blah — just as they do today.”
Max thought it over. OK story. Not much to it. He wasn’t sure exactly what the point was, but there obviously was one — it would come to him later.
“I knew you were too thick to get it.” She looked at him with a disappointed face.
Max bristled.
Molly glanced over his shoulder. The clipboard lady was waving to them from the doors. She slipped down from the wall. “I told you — you won’t get it.”
“I got it,” he warbled.
“You got what? The economic ramification of price tags? The value for money proposition? Rational cost benefit? Accumulated advantage? Child safety? Or was this just one more story about — shopping?”
His face blackened. Back in Lily, he was the smartest guy in town, but here he was a, what had Molly called him? A knob.
She tossed the parka to him. “Sorry. Sometimes I’m a little arrogant.”
“A little?! How old are you?”
She twirled in three full circles, tilting toward the front doors. “Twelve!”
A twelve-year-old girl had just kicked sand in his face and called him stupid. Everything here was upside down. He watched Molly fading into the crowd milling about the entrance terrace, and suddenly it came to him. Playing the game doesn’t change the game. If you want to change the game, you have to change the rules.
Molly returned Max’s jaundiced frown, and said sarcastically, “Price tags are rules!”
Camille filled out the registration form, entering camillegager@tuke.net as her new email address. She hit >Enter and became a Player. A citizen of The Tuke Massive. It felt wonderfully subversive. But she was too pie-eyed to watch the tutorial. If Tuke’s so damn smart, she concluded, this should be totally intuitive. If he’s so . . . Damn him.
She was mad at Levi Tuke. That nutcase Quaker-freak was central to her father’s death. If it weren’t for him, Arthur would be alive. Damn him! She knew that was crazy and she blamed Tuke for that, too.
She clicked the red button in the middle of the screen > Continue. An Account page popped up > The Tuke Massive, camillegager@tuke.net.
Damn it! She had used her own name for this email address. Bad idea. What other drunken blunder had she made rushing through these forms? She hated forms. She scrolled down her account page and changed her email address to, denmother@tuke.net. But suddenly her attention fixed on the text field at the bottom >Start New Mission.
She didn’t think twice. Start New Mission >Who killed Arthur Gager >Enter.
But to Camille’s amazement, MISH returned to her screen, cartoon cheerful, digital chic, but in real time! Camille perked up, glad for the company.
“I’m here to get you started,” said MISH.
“OK,” said Camille.
“The Tuke Massive is a platform for collaborative play on a massive scale. Millions play upon it every minute of every day, and everyone can win. Because we battle problems here, not each other. Everyone wins when the problem is solved. Your mission will launch a round of collaborative play that ends when your problem is solved.”
Camille propped her head up with both hands, too tired to figure this out, but MISH stoked some embers. “So we’re going to make a game out of my father’s death?”
“Yes. We’ll gamify it. We’ll incorporate game elements into your murder investigation. Things like rules, points, rewards and leaderboards as incentives for people to participate. We'll turn this work into fun by tapping into the player's natural desire for competition and satisfying achievement. The mechanism of play will take what is extremely serious for you, and turn it into fun for your players. Fun motivates participation, and the decisions made by the individual players will have major effects on all players, maximizing the probability of reaching your goal. Finding out who killed Arthur Gager.”
Camille looked overwhelmed. “I hope there’s no math in this.”
“Don’t worry. The Massive is essentially a decision engine and database. It does all those underlying calculations. I see you’ve already launched >Who Killed Arthur Gager. This Mission has been posted to The Massive’s Open Game Board. Murder mysteries are categorized as puzzles. Players who like puzzles will accept your Mission and begin sending you pieces of the puzzle as they uncover them. At first, tiny little tips that might lead somewhere. Those tips lead to other tips. It’ll take off as the data accumulates and continual enhancement will give it momentum. Data wants to be free. But you’ll have to get it rolling.”
“Me? How?”
“You tell them your story.”
“My story?”
“Yeah. Who Killed Arthur Gager is the question. Now give me a story. Make me want to go along. What’s the context? Possible motives? What’s at stake? Potential villains? Who do you think did it? Sell it. Engage me.”
“A story?”
“Your story. A story. The story. We need a story. Just tell me something that’ll make me want to come along.” MISH opened Camille’s Dashboard. “Here is the >Story Window. You can use text, video, spreadsheets, whatever. It’s fun.”
“My story? Fun?”
“Fun is the hook.”
“I can’t make up a story. I’m no storyteller.”
“Look Camille, either you play or you don’t. Tell me a story that makes me want to save the day. Or don’t.”
Camille searched her memory. Nothing.
“Tell us what’s happened so far.”
“Well, my father was killed.”
“Where?”
“In the mountains. In Pennsylvania.”
“OK. We have a murder mystery in the mountains. Why should I help you figure out — who done it? Why should I care?”
Suddenly, it came to her. “Can I post something I scanned?”
“Of course.”
Camille opened a file on her office server and attached two documents from the courier’s pouch she’d scanned the day before. Her eyes flared. “This might do it,” she said.
Her dashboard showed two new files, both of the Tuke Love Letters. MISH noted it, but continued explaining, “You’ll begin to receive posts from players who’ve read this story, if you hook them. Someone will have some tiny piece of information that’s useful. We’ll build on it, enhance, enhance . . . It‘s best to search . . . I . . .”
MISH was obviously reading the love letters as she tried to talk. “I suggest you develop some very clear search criteria. It . . . it will become . . . clearer as you . . .”
Dead silence.
Camille worried she’d lost the signal, but MISH’s cartoon eyes were moving side to side. Time stood still, and the calm drifted over Camille like a warm kiss. A nap was what she needed, and something to eat.
MISH cleared her throat, and said softly, “Camille?”
Camille’s face twisted into a question mark. “How’d I do?”
“Get ready for a shit storm, girlfriend.”
“It’s good?”
“It’s epic. Absolutely epic.”
28
Efryn Boyne’s transporter backed slowly out of the bumpy parking lot at The Clark Bar & Grill. “Where to, Captain?” asked the Driver, as they transitioned onto a paved road.
The Driver took the bridge over to the Point, then headed up Penn Avenue, right through the middle of downtown Pittsburgh. Boyne loved this route. Penn Avenue had run the full length of the city for over three hundred years. Once they’d escaped the sterility of the high-rent district, they passed into old neighborhoods with a hodge-podge of storefronts shouting for attention in an astonishing number of styles, ethnicities, gimmicks and clever repurposings, decades in the making. Further out, nearing the city limits, they passed the Revolutionary War Cemetery and the petite-gothic First Presbyterian Church, sadly boarded up and missing most of its carved limestone elements. Boyne perked up as the commercial district surrendered to the park-like front yard of the historic Frick Mansion, an eleven-bedroom, 19th century Italianate monstrosity on three prime acres in the best neighborhood in the city.
Boyne paused to admire the Gilded Age estate of his hero, Henry Clay Frick, henchman extraordinaire. Frick, like himself, had survived an assassination attempt by an outraged female — that bond would never break. He kept a framed original front page from a 1905 Ulster Monogram, with the headline:
Frick Most Hated Man In America.
What more could a real man ask for? A man without enemies is not a man!
The mansion and manicured park behind it, with its little museum for Frick’s art treasures, supported Boyne’s theory that only those capable of doing the unthinkable can achieve the unimaginable. He saw himself in this very same light, and he liked what he saw. Frick, fellow Irishman, fellow American, had put his indelible stamp on the American character. He was the very definition of the vaunted Robber Baron. The shit-heel hero of unbridled ambition.
The mansion and grounds were kept in perfect order, exactly as Frick would have expected, although it was currently owned by a Saudi Trade Minister who only stayed there occasionally. They parked in front, then formed a loose phalanx around Boyne and marched to the side of the mansion. A young man in an ankle-length, brushed nickel, hooded robe stood waiting at the servant’s gate. At a distance, the robe appeared to be a sleek ball gown. A very long, gray scarf was wrapped around his neck three times, both ends draped down his back and fastened with a stainless steel and blue tanzanite brooch. These scarves, and especially the pin, were known to be embedded with sensors and tracking devices. Hackers were at the top of the code-warrior food chain, and this kind of high-tech get-up sorted them out from the rented help, the corporate iStooges.
The Driver eyeballed the kid suspiciously.
“He’s a friend,” said Boyne to the Driver. “Knew his father. The ass-hats in New York are pushing this Tuke thing so hard the aces are spillin’ from their sleeves. I don’t know why. This kid will.”
The phalanx absorbed the young man as it passed through the gate and headed into the gardens surrounding Frick’s private museum. Its loading dock was tucked away behind a wall of Norwegian Pines. Boyne used it frequently.
“Nice get-up, bucko,” chuckled the Driver.
Without breaking stride, the kid rotated his eyes onto the Driver, who shivered — he’d seen those eyes before.
“It works.” The kid spat each angst-tipped word.
“Warm? Is it?” the Driver said, turning his rude intro to friendly banter.
“Warm?” the kid sneered. “This coat speaks a tribal dialect. It attracts those I want near me, and repulses those I don’t. Fashion works.”
“Oh. It’s workin’ all right,” said the Driver with a farcical grin.
They secured the loading dock. Boyne and the kid slipped up a short flight of steps, then around a short bend where there was some privacy.
“How’s your mum?” said Boyne.
“Great.”
“Making out OK, are ya?”
“Keeping the franchise alive.”
Only Boyne knew this strange kid was the notorious Plastikmutata, founding member of a highly successful hacker-for-hire clan. To Boyne, he was Olander Boyne, his nephew.
Plastikmutata playfully affected a lyrical brogue. “Just as me dear ol’ dad woulda had it.”
They laughed, and Boyne said, “Let me ask you something, son. Why the funny name?”
“It’s not funny, it’s unique. Searchable. I can append it. What’s funny about it? My name is exclusively mine. Why would I share my name? Identity can be used against you, as you well know.”
Boyne was surprised at how emotional the boy had become. “OK. So let me ask you this: Why Tuke? What’s special about Tuke?”
The boy ignored the question. “Self-appointed names define one person. Just one. Unlike . . . Bob, Teddy, Ralph, Laura, Betty or Ned.”
Boyne tipped an imaginary hat. “Sorry, lad.”
“I don’t want to be like you.”
“Me neither.”
“I know you think hackers are criminals, like you. Kindred spirits. But we’re not. Look at who we hack — banks, insurance companies, predatory retailers, the fucking bad guys! That makes us the good guys.”
Boyne said neutrally, “Tell me about this Tuke fella.”
“He’s the future. They . . . the reptiles, the skid-mark residue of a dead kingdom, your betters — he’s ticked their box for deletion. Tuke is the all-powerful Massive. He hosts the Crowd of Crowds.”
Boyne knew he was counted amongst the despised, but took no offense. “Why haven’t we heard about this — geek army?”
“Geek army,” said Plastikmutata, mildly offended. “You haven’t heard, because it was born in a world you are not aware of. A virtual world. Bionic Vida. Big Data. The deep-web. But believe me, each member of the geek army, as you put it, is a real person. They are right here. In this space — real-time.”
“Who is?”
“Everyone!” shouted Plastikmutata. “Social warriors. Patriots in their own minds. Minds that rule virtual worlds of their own creation. Worlds without thieves and liars and politicians. Worlds a rational society would build, if we were allowed.”
Boyne was taken aback. “All that comes from a game?”
“If you think this about a game . . . he’s won already. The Tuke Massive is not a game. He’s gamed you into thinking it is a game. But it’s not a game. It was, but it evolved into a massive communications network; the unifying force for everyone that’s been shut out of your walled cities. Cities in the final stages of a systemic meltdown. A system suited only to the wolves who designed it . . . wolves who are now consuming each other. Because they ran out of new ideas and new things to consume. They’re eating each other to kill their boredom.”
Boyne smiled at that characterization, but said worriedly, “How did I miss all that?”
Plastikmutata could barely constrain his venom. “You missed it because, when you see a regular person your only question is ‘What can they do for me?’ and as far as a regular person goes, the answer is . . . nothing. So that’s what you see . . . nothing. You're blinded by your greed and arrogance.”
Boyne absorbed his nephew’s invective with a contrite shrug, and asked in a hushed voice, “Weapons?”
Plastikmutata balled up his lips. “Intelligence. Facts. Ideas. Integrity. Good intentions. Tuke doesn’t need weapons; it’s not like you think. He’s simply going to nudge the system over the brink your scaly friends have brought us to. But you don’t bring down a system unless you have a replacement. That power vacuum always gets filled by the most mediocre. So Tuke has lots and lots and lots of really really smart people working on that. The Big Brains. And, of course, The fucking KNim. And there’s always some random actors. Wildcards.”
“Each mind’s a kingdom,” said Boyne.
“Yeah. And we all live in our own bubble,” said Plastikmutata, the mood lightened. “Tuke’s got the best minds on the planet. Many of whom were cast out by your friends — the bloody Caflers.” He drew a long breath. “You’ve always believed that hard work, talent and ruthless ambition was all anyone needed to succeed, right?”
Boyne couldn’t deny it.
“But you were wrong. All it really took was ruthless ambition. The ambitious won. They beat the hard workers and the talented. They took it all. Then squandered a thousand years of accumulated productivity, in a few decades.”
“They are a wasteful bunch,” said Boyne.
“Tuke is not going to play their game. That’s how he’ll win. He’s going to play his own game, which is growing exponentially, while yours is dying. A new member every millisecond. Its sheer momentum will change everything.”
“How so?”
“The Massive is a platform for collaboration on a massive scale. Do you know what that means? Can you imagine, people working together. No winners or losers. Collaboration. The Massive allows its player to join a cooperative, a crowd, a hive mind, and solve a problem. Tuke’s gamified problem solving.”
Boyne scowled. “Everyone wins? Unnatural, that.”
“An abomination. Nonetheless, we’re going to vanquish the bullies and Neanderthals, the frat boys and the unworthy privileged. We’re going to take their toys away and ignore their tantrums. Your fake representatives of that toy government are existentially irrelevant.”
Boyne was thinking these rude but accurate statements over and nodding unconsciously. “Can you shut The Massive down? A little favor for yer dear old uncle?”
Plastikmutata cracked a cynical smile. “Shut ’em down?” He restrained a howling laugh, and said pointedly. “This is no peasant uprising, no nut-job libertarian shoot-out. Tuke’s geek army has no doctrine. It’s not pledged to an ideology. You can’t imagine that, can you? It’s free form. Data wants to be free. They are only concerned with solving problems, with results. They’re not interested in proving themselves right. They just want to solve one problem at a time. Remember: no winners, no losers. No ideology. They live the open-source lifestyle. They adapt as they go depending on the data. They evolve. Their argument . . . is never settled. They stay in the flow. Pure fuego. And! They have lots and lots of money.”