The Hacker and the Ants

by Rudy Rucker

  A grill called Supertaqueria was on one side of the street, and on the other side was a defunct gas station, a Cambodian grocery, and Pho Train, a small restaurant with big glass windows and plastic picnic tables. Pho is the Vietnamese name for a special beef broth with spaghetti-like rice noodles and slices of meat. I ordered a large portion.

  “You call here a few minute ago?” the woman at the counter asked me. With my soup she gave me a small dish of bean sprouts and a little branch of fragrant basil leaves.

  “Yes,” I told her. “My name is Jerzy.”

  “Okay.”

  I paid, sat down, and started to eat. The pho was delicious. When I was half-through, Vinh Vo appeared from behind the counter and came to sit across from me.

  “Hi, Mister Yuppie,” said Vinh in his flatly accented American English.

  “Hi, Vinh. Can we talk here?”

  He nodded and lit one of his unfiltered cigarettes.

  “I need a new passport,” I told him.

  Vinh Vo looked puzzled and disappointed. “But I want to sell you Y9707 chips!”

  “I don’t know that I really need any.”

  “If you won’t buy any chips, I won’t do business with you,” said Vinh. “I need to start unloading them.”

  It occurred to me that it might actually be useful to be able to build some robots of my own sometime down the line. Assuming Vinh’s chips were any good. “Well, okay, I’ll take four of them. Four hundred eighty dollars. Give me a passport as well and I’ll make it a thousand. And if the chips are okay, I might order more of them.”

  Vinh smoked quietly for a minute. “Okay,” he said finally. “I can arrange your passport. I’ll have to drive you to the place. Do you have the money?”

  “I’ll have the money on Friday. But let’s get the passport today.”

  “You’re asking me for credit?” said Vinh Vo unbelievingly. “For a passport? No way, Mister Yuppie. Come back Friday with the cash.”

  “Should I call first?”

  “I’ll be here.” Vinh lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first.

  “I’ll be coming late in the day,” I cautioned. “Around four-thirty.”

  “No problem.”

  Vinh stuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, walked behind the counter, and disappeared back through the kitchen. He moved like a gangster in a stiff ballet. The butt in the ashtray was fuming. My pho had gone cold and gnarly. I went outside.

  If I would be leaving the country soon, it would be a good idea to visit with my family. I drove across town to Carol’s. Carol and Hiroshi were still at work, but Tom and Ida were home from school, peacefully grubbing about. Tom was in the kitchen eating ice cream, and Ida was on the phone with a friend. It did my heart good to see my larvae.

  “Hi, kids!”

  “Hi, Da!”

  “You kids want to do something? You want to go for a last hike with me before I go on trial? Who knows, it might be a long time till we get another chance.”

  “Poor Da.”

  Since we were already on the east side, I drove over to Alum Rock Park. There were lots of teenagers and working class families. We took a loop trail that led past some hot springs and zigzagged to the top of a foothill.

  “Are you scared, Daddy?” asked Tom. He looked so vulnerable with his teenage complexion and his braces. “We talked to Sorrel last night. She wanted to know if she should skip finals and fly out.”

  “For the trial?”

  “Ida and me are going to be there,” said Tom. “Mommy said she’ll get us excused from school.”

  “Carol’s coming to the trial too? Ma?”

  “Yes,” said Ida in her calm, deep voice. “We all love you, Da. Maybe if the jury sees you have a family, they’ll feel sorry for you.”

  “Aw. That’s wonderful. You’re so sweet to stand behind me. I’m really touched. I love you.” I put my arms around them.

  All of San Jose lay spread out before us, and beyond San Jose, Silicon Valley stretched north like a chip-laden motherboard. The great old concrete blimp hangers of Moffet Field stuck up like heavy-duty capacitors. It was such a clear day that, looking farther, we could see all the way up the Bay to the tiny smudges of Oakland and San Francisco. A strong, steady breeze swept down the Bay, across Silicon Valley, and over the crest of our hill.

  “The Lord hates Daddy’s ants,” said Tom presently, and poked me high up under my ribs.

  “Suckling pigs on Daddy style,” intoned Ida, and poked my other side. We laughed and wrestled for a minute, and then the kids let me be.

  “I’m getting to hate the ants, too,” I said when I caught my breath. “If I could find a way to kill them all, I’d do it. They’ve made so much trouble already, and now it might get worse.”

  “Are they going to break TV some more?”

  “Maybe, but what I’m most worried about today is that the ants might infect the software for those new robots I worked on for West West. Whatever you do in the near future, don’t go close to any of those robots.”

  “Is Studly in jail?” asked Ida.

  “Sort of. The police are keeping him for an exhibit in the trial.”

  “Do you think he might go hyper and kill everyone in the courtroom if they turn him on at the trial?” asked Tom, arching his high eyebrows.

  “It might be a good idea not to come for that day of the trial, actually,” I said. “If they don’t stop the trial first.”

  “Why would they stop the trial?” asked Tom.

  “Well . . . maybe if some of the main people stopped coming. The judge or the lawyer or somebody.” I was planning to attend the first two days of the trial and skip the country after I got paid Friday afternoon. I gave Tom a long look, and he got the picture.

  “I’m flying,” said Ida, holding out her arms and letting the breeze beat at her sleeves. “I’m flying away!” Tom and I held out our arms to fly too, and then we ran off, flying, down the zigzags of the rest of the loop trail.

  Carol was home when I brought the kids back to the apartment. I didn’t really want to go in, but before I knew it, Carol had me sitting on the couch with a cup of hot tea.

  “I can’t stay long,” I said. These tête-à-têtes with Carol made me acutely uncomfortable. After all the pain of our separation, I didn’t want to contemplate getting back together with her.

  “Okay, but what should I tell Sorrel about the trial? Why don’t you call her? She’s upset.”

  “Good idea.”

  I dialed Sorrel’s number on Carol’s phone. Someone on her dorm hall answered and trudged off in search of Sorrel. Then my firstborn’s bright voice came through the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Sorrel, it’s Da.”

  “Da, I have a problem. I want to be there for your trial, but I have finals all next week.”

  “When were you originally planning to come home?”

  “June fifth,” put in Carol, who was sitting on a chair next to the couch. “The ticket she has is for next Friday.”

  “Well, don’t change your ticket, Sorrel, it’ll cost a lot more. And there’s no point missing your exams. I’ll just be sitting on a chair in a room with a judge.”

  “But what if you go to jail? I want to take a last walk with you, Da.”

  “I do, too, honey. Actually, they’re revoking my bail on Tuesday, so I might be in jail from then on.” My voice cracked in despair and self-pity. “I’ve got an idea—why don’t you come home just for a day. Fly out here tomorrow morning, spend tomorrow night and all day Friday here, and fly back to school on Saturday. Then you can still study on Sunday and be ready for your tests.”

  “Should I really?”

  “I’ll pay. Get a direct flight into San Francisco and rent a car.”

  “I don’t have to rent a car. Tom or Ida can pick me up.”

  “It’ll be easier all around if you drive.” I was thinking of uses for that rental car. “Just write checks or charge it and I’ll pay you back
in cash.”

  “Great! I’ll do it!”

  “And Friday afternoon we’ll go off together. I already took Tom and Ida for a walk today.”

  We wound up the conversation. Carol got on the phone with Sorrel for a minute and talked about details. It was like old times, thinking and planning together as a family.

  Of course Hiroshi came home then, so I finished my tea and cleared out. Carol saw me to the door.

  “The trial is at the Hall of Justice on West Hedding between San Pedro and Guadelupe,” I told her. “It’s with Judge Carrig on the fifth floor, courtroom 33. I’m supposed to be there at eight-thirty, but it probably doesn’t start till later.”

  “Where’s West Hedding?”

  “Up near First Street and 880.”

  “What was that I heard you tell Sorrel about your bail being revoked?”

  “West West fired me.”

  “Oh, Jerzy. I’m sorry. But if Sorrel will be here with a rental car on Friday, I might work that day. I can’t miss too many days. It’s only Tom and Ida who insist they see every day of the trial.”

  “That’s fine. And thanks for all the support. Bye, kids!”

  Carol closed the door. I drove home to Queue’s and called Gretchen to tell her I was too tired to get together. I went to bed early.

  The courtroom was much smaller than I’d expected; it was just one of thirty or forty courtrooms in the Hall of Justice. In the back were five rows of seats for onlookers, and then a waist-high partition—the bar—with a sign on it that said:ALL COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE PRISONERS

  VERBAL, WRITTEN OR SIGNED

  IS UNLAWFUL WITHOUT THE

  PERMISSION OF THE DEPUTIES.

  Carol, Tom, and Ida were there. On my side of the bar were, from left to right, a desk with a Santa Clara County sheriff with a gun and a computer, a desk with a DEFENDANT sign where I sat next to Stu, a desk with a PEOPLE sign where the District Attorney sat, and, against the right wall, two rows of comfortable chairs for the jury. There was also a desk for the court clerk, and the judge sat behind a big raised pulpit—the bench. The witness stand was squeezed in between the bench and the jury. The judge’s name was on his bench: Francis J. Carrig.

  The first part of Thursday was spent in dealing with the people who wanted to get out of jury duty. Beefy Judge Carrig spoke very slowly and clearly in a slightly overbearing way. He didn’t seem like a guy you’d want to interrupt or argue with. Out of boredom I jotted down some of his more judicious-sounding phrases, and came up with these:

  “Let me finish. I’m asking for your cooperation. I don’t want to have to repeat this. I have the utmost confidence that this case will be completed by June fifth. Let me help you out. I will ask you the same question collectively. Can you be a fair impartial fact finder? Counsel approach the bench.”

  That’s what the judge sounded like. Once he’d found twelve willing jurors, he asked the prosecutor and the defense to introduce themselves. The prosecutor’s name was Eddie Machotka—he was wiry and intense, with a bald pate and big puffs of curly clown hair on the sides of his head. Then the judge read out my name and the charges against me: criminal trespass, computer intrusion, and extreme cruelty to animals.

  “Are any of you jurors familiar with this case?” asked Judge Carrig. Of course they all were—prior questioning had already revealed that everyone on the jury had a TV. So then the judge went into finding out if anyone on the jury was already convinced I was guilty. Could they be objective? As Judge Carrig put it, “We’re not asking you to decide complex technical issues. Just things like: was it up or was it down, was it left or was it right, was it hot or was it cold?” Two jurors got weeded out here, and the judge replaced them with two of the alternates who were waiting in the onlookers’ seats. I turned around and looked at my family every now and then.

  By Thursday afternoon, the judge had finished impaneling a jury that neither Stu nor the D.A. objected to. I spent Thursday night at Gretchen’s. It hadn’t occurred to her to come to the trial, which was just as well. We ordered out for Mexican food and watched a video from Total Video—it was Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis in Sex and the Single Girl. It turned out Gretchen was a big fan of Natalie Wood; she even had a big book about Natalie, with an Andy Warhol portrait on the cover.

  Friday morning, Sorrel was there in the courtroom with Tom and Ida—Sorrel with her short mouth, messy hair, and big cheeks. Judge Carrig began talking about some of the points of law relevant to my charges, and explained that the jury was to decide whether or not I was in control of the actions of Studly.

  After lunch, Eddie Machotka, the D.A., made his opening presentation, followed by Stu’s opening statement for the defense.

  Machotka had prepared an incredibly realistic cyberspace mock-up of the crimes as he thought they had happened. His simulation held a space-time continuum surrounding Jose Ruiz’s block of White Road for the crucial three minutes, and he could observe the running of his world from any position in it, or from any series of positions in it—he could pick any space-time trajectory he pleased. He could even speed up and slow down time, or run time backward—he was the master of space and time.

  As we in the courtroom watched a big Abbott wafer display, Machotka flew us through his world. First he showed Studly standing on the picnic table and me standing next to him talking to him. Jose Ruiz was visible in his house, watching us out his window. The words Ruiz attributed to me appeared on the bottom of the screen like subtitles: “Yes, Studly, now send in the ant viruses!” Then Dutch the dog came running out of Ruiz’s house and I fled, calling back to Studly. Ruiz’s quote of my words: “Studly, kill that dog!” It was quite convincing. Machotka flew us through his world four times, from four different angles. Members of the jury kept glancing over at me and looking away.

  Stu’s presentation was much more limp and legalistic. More than anything else, he harped on the point that Studly had legally been the property of GoMotion at the time of the crimes. Nobody in the courtroom looked like they gave a fuck. Stu insisted that I hadn’t told the robot to screw up the Fibernet, nor had I told Studly to kill the dog, but after Machotka’s virtual reality demo, Stu’s bald assertions carried no force.

  Leaving the courtroom at three-thirty Friday afternoon, I felt sure that we were going to lose. Before the reporters pressed in on me, I managed to say hi to Sorrel and tell her I’d see her at Carol’s in an hour.

  After I shook off the press, I drove to the Wells Fargo in downtown San Jose and found a parking space on the street. My bank balance was indeed thirteen thousand dollars plus. Thank you, West West! Though the teller didn’t like it, I got the thirteen thousand in cash; it made a fat envelope of 130 hundred-dollar bills. I’d decided to give a third of it to Carol for the children, so I asked for another envelope and counted 44 hundreds into that one. I felt grim and sad. I was leaving my country and my poor little family—maybe for good.

  I calmed down a little on the walk over to Pho Train. I ordered the same pho soup again. This time I used the tip of my chopstick to add some red-pepper paste to the broth. With the pepper and the spicy green leaves, the soup was truly delicious. I slurped down as much as I could before Vinh appeared, fuming cigarette in hand.

  “You ready?” he asked. “We can walk from here. But give me the thousand first.”

  “Okay.” I pulled my main envelope of hundreds out of my pants pocket and counted out ten bills for Vinh under the table. His bony hand reached across to take them, and then he passed me a flat plastic package under the table: my four Y9707 chips. I stuck the package unopened in my other pants pocket.

  We walked two blocks to a neighborhood of run-down two-story apartment buildings made of crumbling pink stucco over plywood. The buildings had flat roofs, prefab aluminum windows, and concrete stairwells. All the children playing in the street were Vietnamese—a regular Our Gang of loud little girls, T-shirted toddlers, and watchful boys. Everyone seemed to recognize the pockmarked, chain-smoking Vinh Vo. Vinh knock
ed at a street-level apartment door and a thin young woman holding a screwdriver let us in.

  It was a single-room efficiency apartment with another young woman, fat, sitting down. The windows were hermetically closed off with filthy curtains and venetian blinds. The room was lit by computer screens and lamps; the ventilation came through an antique wall unit air conditioner. There was a great hoard of computer equipment along the walls, and there were loads of books and computer manuals. The chairs had vinyl cushions.

  “Here’s your customer, girls,” said Vinh. He smiled thinly at me. “This is Bety Byte and Vanna. They’re computer science students at San Jose State. They’re the best cryps in our Vietnamese community.”

  Heavyset Bety Byte wore a cyberspace headset pushed up onto the top of her head like sunglasses. She had thick lips, yellow skin, and greasy, permed, distressed hair. Surely she had no inkling that I’d seen her tuxedo in cyberspace—and I wasn’t about to tell her. Pale, slim Vanna wore tight black slacks and a round-collared pink blouse buttoned up to the top. Her glossy hair was cut in a tidy bob. Bety Byte and Vanna didn’t look much like their tuxedos.

  “I recognize this dude from TV,” said Bety Byte, pointing a control-gloved hand at me. The tips of the control gloves were cut off and I could see her fingernails. She wore chipped black nail polish. “You’re Jerzy Rugby!” She spoke with a perfect riot-grrl mall-rat accent.

  “No,” I said emphatically. “I am not. I’m not anyone until you tell me my new name.”

  “He’s incognito,” laughed Vanna. “I think he’s scared.”

  “Do you know how passport authentication works?” asked Bety Byte.

  “Sort of. As well as forging me a passport, you have to put a valid bar code on it. The government uses a secret algorithm to generate long authentication numbers that go into the bar code.”