Altered States: A Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Anthology

by Roy C. Booth

  FRANK ROGER was born in 1957 in Ghent, Belgium. His first story appeared in 1975. Today he has a few hundred short stories to his credit, published in about 40 languages. A story collection in English, The Burning Woman and Other Stories, was published by Evertype in 2012.

  Apart from fiction, he also produces collages and graphic work in a surrealist and satirical tradition.

  Find out more about his work at www.frankroger.be.

  EXTRA CREDIT

  Paul Levinson

  Originally published in Buzzy Mag, July 2012.

  Jon 1

  Jon slammed the piece of mail on the table, knocking off a buttered half of bagel in the process. It teetered on its edge on the floor for a moment, then fell down squarely on the buttered side.

  “Another wrong credit card charge,” he called up to Trudi between curses. “Seems we stayed at the Coach and Chariot Inn last month.”

  “With or without the kids?” Trudi walked in and sighed. She picked up the credit card statement and shook her head. “This is—what?—the third mistake like this since the new year?”

  “Cancel the card.” Jon scooped up the bagel, surveyed the sticky dust, and tossed it in the garbage. “If these people are too lame to get their charges straight, we'll go elsewhere.”

  “We need the credit line,” Trudi said. “I just got a cash advance—”

  “Do whatever you want, then.” Jon waved his hand in disgust. “But let's at least call the company and explain that we were at your mother's house getting heartburn on her cooked-to-death chicken when they say we were in the whirlpool at the Chariot.”

  “Right,” Trudi said, “as soon as I finish with the Motor Vehicles people about why my new registration isn't here yet. And my mother's chicken is manna from heaven compared to your mother's hydrochloric pot roast.”

  The woman on the speaker-phone was about what Jon and Trudi expected.

  “Have you folks moved recently?” she asked.

  “No, been here for four years,” Trudi said.

  “Has your mail been reported stolen recently?”

  “Uh, no,” Trudi said. There was that time several months ago when their mail had been mixed in with several of their neighbors' mail, but nothing had wound up lost as far as she knew. It was pretty funny, though, seeing the kind of pornography that old Mr. Gleason up the street subscribed to.

  “And you're certain you and your husband didn't sneak away for a quickie at the Chariot—”

  “Believe me, we're certain,” Jon replied.

  “Well, I don't know what to tell you then,” the woman said earnestly. “The hotel admits that they have no physical record of your being there—no signed receipts or that sort of thing. But their computer record is quite clear that you were there.”

  “Haven't you people ever heard of computer hackers?” Jon asked. Jeez.

  “Well, of course we have, Mr. Goldman. But what would a hacker stand to gain by charging a room to your credit card, and not using the room?”

  “I don't know,” Jon said. “Look, I'm not Sherlock Holmes—I can't tell what makes a criminal tick. I just want this charge taken off my credit card.”

  “Well, of course. I already told you that the hotel has no physical evidence of your having been there, so of course we'll remove the charge. But we'd like to get to the bottom of this.”

  “So would we,” Trudi said. “What do you propose?”

  “Well, for a start, we're putting a special photo-hold on your card. Starting today, you and your husband won't be able to use your card without showing a photo-ID to the retailer. And of course no mail orders or phone or computer orders will be allowed.”

  “Fine,” Trudi said, sarcastically. “We're the ones getting hacked, but we're the ones being treated now like criminals. Fine.”

  “We're doing this for your benefit, Mrs. Goldman.”

  “For your benefit, too—these credit thefts cost you time and money,” Jon said.

  “Which all comes back to you, Mr. Goldman, because these losses oblige us to raise the interest you and our other card holders pay us. Anything more I can help you with today?”

  Jon rifled through the Saturday morning mail. “Card from Auntie Kira in Florida...bill from the plumber...something from Chandler at MIT, I don't know why he didn't send this to me at the lab—”

  “Any mail for me, Dad?”

  Jon smiled at his eight-year-old son. “Yep, here's a card from Ari. Looks like it has something scribbled on the back.”

  Noah laughed. “It's a code, Dad.”

  “Ah. And here's something for you, sweetheart.” Jon handed a piece of colorful advertising over to Samantha, their two-year-old, who promptly put it in her mouth.

  “No, no, that's not good for you honey.” Trudi leaned over and pulled the advertisement away. “That's good to look at, not—”

  “Goddamn charge again!” Jon exploded. He waved the statement in the air. “This one's nineteen dollars and twenty-eight cents—from the Parthenon diner three weeks ago. We didn't eat there then, did we?”

  “No, and we wouldn't have gotten out of that goldmine for so little if we had.” Trudi took the statement and stared. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and jabbed a number.

  “Look, I know it's a Saturday,” she said tersely into the phone after giving her credit card number, “but I want to speak to your supervisor. Right. It's about the fourth wrong charge to our credit card this year, this time from a diner that we last ate in maybe six months ago. That's right, we have a photo-hold on our card and everything. Thank you.”

  “We should sue them, Mom,” Noah said. “I hate that place—”

  “Shhh!” Jon held up a warning finger. Meanwhile, Samantha deftly pushed her father's plate so that it was just about half over the edge of the table, where it sat with the half-eaten scrambled eggs interrupted by the morning mail delivery.

  “That's right,” Trudi was talking again. “It's getting to the point where this card is more trouble than it's worth—my husband and I have to look at every statement like hawks to make sure we're not being charged for something that—Right. I know there's a lot of this kind of theft going on and you're doing your best to control it. But—”

  Trudi took the phone away from her ear in exasperation and held it out at arm's length. The supervisor's voice was squeaking about people needing to be careful about crooks looking over their shoulders in department stores when charging merchandise. Then he said something about a new retinal scan that the credit card company was introducing—

  “Cancel the card already,” Jon said. “I've had it with this!” He jabbed in the air to make his point. His elbow brushed his plate—and pushed it over the edge. It landed face down on the floor with his eggs. There was something going on here that, given half a chance, was working against him.

  Jon 2

  A very slightly different universe, almost the same as ours in all respects...

  Jon kissed Trudi full on the lips at the front door. “So we're finally making a little progress on the finances,” he said.

  “We're still in debt,” Trudi said.

  “I know, but at least we're starting to move now in the right direction.” He blew Trudi another kiss and walked to his Prius in the driveway. The doors clicked open at his approach. This Prius was one of the reasons they were in debt so deeply. Jon knew this but also felt that the Prius was worth every penny.

  The drive from home to Fordham University was precisely 18 minutes. This was one of the things Jon loved about his job. He parked his car, walked quickly to Everett Hall, and bounded up the three flights of stairs to the Theoretical Physics Digital Lab. He grabbed a cup of coffee from the shiny new machine and entered his little sanctum.

  Eugene, the current grad assistant, was already hard at work, rendering some old analog video clips into digital. Jon clapped him on the back and proceeded to his own workstation. There was a piece of mail on the desk. Jon shook his head.

  “Mail-room brought
it up just a few minutes ago,” Eugene offered. “Another missive from Scott Chandler—you going to just throw it out like the others?”

  Jon played with the envelope and laughed. “You know, it's sad. He says he sends his really important messages through land mail because he's afraid his email doesn't always get read. And now I'm proving that the same can happen to paper mail.” Jon tossed the envelope. It made a neat fluttering descent into the trash basket.

  Eugene chuckled. “It’s the price of your success. You attract crackpots.”

  Jon started up his desktop. No one other than Jon—not even Eugene—knew what Jon had here. Jon scarcely believed it himself. His Russian former graduate assistant, apparently a budding computer genius, had left it in this machine. “My gift to you,” she had told him, “to thank you for being such an inspiring teacher.”

  Jon called up the program, started work on a transaction—

  “Jon.” Jill Barnes, a colleague, was in the doorway. “We're due at that faculty meeting in 15 minutes.”

  “Right.” Jon cursed to himself and logged off the machine. He'd forgotten about the stupid meeting, which he was obliged to attend. He shut off his computer and smiled at Jill. “Let's go then.”

  He took his coffee and waved goodbye to Eugene as he left the office. Eugene thought about it for a few minutes after Jon was gone, then quickly fished Chandler's letter out of Jon's trash.

  Jon 1

  Our universe...

  Jon entered the digital lab, sipping a cup of perfectly brewed coffee. He wrestled his suddenly ringing cellphone out of his pocket, flipped it open, narrowly missing the coffee as he put the phone to his ear and mouth. “Yah, good, honey,” he said to Trudi. “We'll do fine with just the bank card. We did the right thing canceling the Ameri—” He realized he was talking loudly, and Eugene could hear. “Okay, good,” he said quietly to Trudi. He snapped the phone shut, nodded to Eugene and sat at his temporary computer station.

  It had been temporary for almost two months now, and he felt bad about that, not only because he had been deprived of his own workplace, but because his old desk had had Sasha's present upon it. She had given it to him as parting gift before she'd decamped for her doctorate at Cal Tech. “Something very special for your computer,” she had told him. “My gift to you, to thank you for all the extra credit and belief you have had in me.”

  Not a hundred percent comprehensible, but that was Sasha, better at code than words. He looked at the computer now on his temporary desk, his current computer, and sighed. Some student had spilled soda on his computer with Sasha's present the day after Sasha had left. Hey, if faculty didn't follow the no food and drink in the lab rules, why should the students? And he had never had a chance to even touch his original computer since then. It had been out for repair, the techies still not clear exactly what was not quite right about it—

  “Jon.” That would be Jill Barnes, here to walk with him to a faculty meeting as per their appointment. “We're due at the meeting in 15 minutes.” He'd have rather walked himself, but what could he do, he couldn't be rude to a colleague.

  “Right.” He stood and knocked over his coffee. He'd barely had a sip. He cursed to himself but smiled at Jill.

  “I'll clean it up, you'll be late,” Eugene said.

  “Oh, thanks!” Jon said. He turned to Jill. “Let's go then.”

  “Some mail came in for you,” Eugene called out as Jon joined Jill at the doorway.

  “I'll get it when I come back,” Jon said.

  Jon 2

  The slightly different universe...

  “What do you think they'll tell us about the salary freeze?” Jill asked Jon, as they walked across the campus.

  Jon winced slightly in the sharp February breeze. “Won't make much difference to me, one way or the other, given my mortgage.” And also the fact that he'd tapped into the new source of income.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Jill said, referring to the high cost of living.

  Jon nodded. He didn't like talking about this.

  “I just think it's wrong that they increase the number of students in our classes, but keep our salaries on hold,” Jill continued. “I mean, I know the economy's still bad, but enrollment has been up and—”

  Jon's ringing phone interrupted Jill's critique. Jon was grateful. He smiled apologetically at Jill, threw his nearly empty coffee cup into a nearby receptacle and took the call. “Hey, on my way to a meeting,” he said to Trudi.

  “Oh, right, sorry,” Trudi said. “The meeting about the salary freeze?”

  “Yeah,” Jon replied.

  “Well, don't let them intimidate you. You're entitled—”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. I just had a quick question—about a new after-school possibility for Noah. Can you talk?”

  “Sure. More or less,” Jon replied.

  “Well, the school has some wild bird expert who'll be running a special program in ID'ing birds in the New York area. You know how much Noah loves that.”

  Jon nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “But it'll cost us $200,” Trudi said. “I know we've been doing better with that long-range installment plan you worked out for us online, but—”

  “Let's do it.” They'd been doing a lot better with that “installment” plan, which required no payment at all, not even for the purchases themselves.

  “Okay,” Trudy said, mostly happily, but with a tinge of unassuaged concern.

  “We're here,” Jon told Trudi, as he and Jill reached their destination. Jill scowled, in continuing anger at the university administration.

  Jon 1

  Our universe...

  The walk across campus was uneventful. Jill was droning about the outrage of the salary freeze, but Jon had more pressing financial problems to think about. What the hell was going on with his credit card? Okay, he'd canceled the one with the phantom charges, but why couldn't the credit card company get to the bottom of it? And if he was being targeted by some super hacker who had acquired his credit card, what was to stop him or her from moving to another one of Jon's cards?

  His cellphone rang. It was likely Trudi. Jon didn't answer. He needed to think about this more. But he didn't blame his wife in the slightest for being so worried. He supposed the next step would be to go to the police, but Jon didn't relish being an official victim of anything, and the time that would take out of life.

  He and Jill reached the meeting hall. Her talk subsided into a scowl about the university administration.

  Faculty were milling around the hall, breath visible and frosty this early February afternoon. Jon looked them over. He was not particularly close to any of them—he often said he preferred his students to his colleagues—and—

  Wait a minute! Jeez! Was that Chandler? Yes, it was him, and he was walking right towards Jon, and it was too late for Jon to pretend he didn't see him.

  “Jonathan!” Chandler extended a big, beefy hand.

  “Scott—good to see you—what brings you to the Bronx?”

  “I was visiting Liu in the Math Department—we're doing a conference together next year—and I called your office, and your grad assistant told me you were on your way here. I've been trying to talk to you about something for a few weeks now. I'm not completely sure what it means, but—”

  “Why didn't you call or send an email?” Jon knew the answer but saw no advantage in making this easier for Chandler.

  “I don't like talking about these things on the phone,” Chandler said in a conspiratorial tone. “Same thing with email. I was only calling your office to see if you were in, so I could drop by. I have sent you a few letters, by the way—in fact, I sent one just last week, letting you know I'd be on campus today.”

  Jon shook his head derisively. “Mail's getting less and less reliable.”

  Jill, who had been talking to a gaggle of faculty nearby, waved at Jon. “I'm going in,” she mouthed at Jon in exaggerated motions and walked to the entrance way.

 
Jon was glad for the excuse to get to the point with Chandler, who had seen Jill's departure. “Okay, so what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked Chandler. “I'm sure it will be more stimulating than what I'll hear in there.” He gestured to the building. He realized that that was likely sadly true.

  “I ran into a student of yours in California last month,” Chandler's tone was lower and more conspiratorial, “Sasha Humek?”

  Jon nodded.

  “And, well, I guess she had too much vodka,” Chandler continued. “She's brilliant, you know. Her paper on inter-alter-matrices was really something—raised a lot of eyebrows. All hypothetical, of course.”

  “Yes,” Jon replied.

  “But she had had a lot to drink, as I told you,” Chandler said, “and I couldn't completely understand her—you know, between the accent and the drink—”

  Jon nodded again.

  “But I think she said something about actually developing a program that could do that,” Chandler said, “and I've been thinking about that ever since, and it's been bothering me—”

  “Do what?“ Jon asked.

  Jon 2

  The slightly different universe...

  Jon looked around at the faculty walking and talking around the front of the building, like geese honking on a lawn. Jeez—there was that noodge Chandler! What the hell was he doing here, stalking Jon? Jon spun around quickly, neatly, and walked away, to the other side of the building. He thought he heard Jill telling him she was going in. He waved over his shoulder without turning around. He didn't want to risk Chandler spotting him, if he hadn't already.

  Jon thought he knew what Chandler wanted to talk to him about—he had read Chandler's first letter. Jon had thought then that it would be best to avoid this conversation for as long as he possibly could. He had the same opinion now.

  Jon ducked into a side door, then into a men's room, and hoped this would be the last he would see of Scott Chandler. He'd hang out in the bathroom until the meeting got underway, walk carefully to the rear entrance, and look around. He doubted Chandler would wait around if he didn't see Jon either entering the meeting or in the meeting once it had started. Then Jon realized that the safest course of action, if he wanted to avoid Chandler, was to leave this hall altogether, and just go home without attending the meeting at all. Jon knew he could count on Jill to attest that he had indeed been here, even if she didn't see him leave after the meeting. What kind of psycho, after all, would walk all the way across campus to a meeting, only to walk out before it started?