Kill Process

by William Hertling

  Repard looks off into the distance. “They gave away a ZR-1 Corvette?”

  “Two of them. One in July and one in August. I won both.”

  Repard sits upright, and peers at me over his glasses. “How?”

  “I shunted all incoming calls, routed them through my own PBX, and forwarded them on to Z100. When they got to the hundredth caller, I disconnected the caller and took their place.”

  “You have your own PBX?”

  “Dumpster-diving. I picked up a used Merlin.”

  Repard laughs. “Brilliant. But . . . problematic. You can’t hack if you work here.”

  I nod in the direction of his computer. “That was the Federal Reserve Board you infiltrated while I was sitting here.”

  “Yes. They’re our client, and we’re paid to assess their security.”

  “You didn’t just hack them?”

  “No, I performed penetration testing to evaluate potential weaknesses.”

  “You hacked them. I can do that.”

  “You’ve got the skills. The question is, can I trust you to do only your job and not freelance or abuse the power you’d have?”

  “I did what I needed to do to get by. I aced all of my classes, and received a full scholarship my second year. I haven’t . . .” I was about to say I hadn’t done any other hacks, though who knows exactly what Repard might know. “I haven’t done any major hacks since then.”

  “You’re still active on Chatsubo.”

  He even knows the board where I hang out. I don’t even use the Angel of Mercy handle there, not anymore.

  “I stay current.”

  “Good.” He nods to himself. “You’ll want to know all the latest exploits.”

  He turns back to his computer, and gets absorbed.

  Do I have a job or not? What the hell?

  “You could have gotten into the Fed quicker. That was a Cisco 2500. There’s an authentication flaw.”

  “I know, Miss Benenati,” he says without looking away from his screen. “My goal is to find all the vulnerabilities, not only the obvious ones.” He’s silent except for that furious typing again.

  I’m about to clear my throat again, when he speaks up.

  “Still, it is impressive you recognized the Cisco from a few lines of output eight feet away at nearly right angles from the screen. Tell my secretary you’re hired. You’ll be reporting to me. Also, ask her to buy me a privacy screen for my monitor.”

  I wait, but he says nothing else. I let myself out as quietly as possible, and give an air high-five to no one.

  * * *

  “Hacking has a destructive and a creative side,” I say. “And Repard saw that. He wanted me to channel my energy toward something constructive.”

  “He did some breaking in of his own to obtain your college records and find out where you lived. In 1995 that information wasn’t sitting there on the Internet. How do you feel about him prying into your personal life?”

  I shrug. “A little weird, I guess. But it had happened lots of times before, when I was a teenager. I’d done it plenty of times myself. It was . . . uncomfortable, but not unexpected.”

  “You’ve done what yourself?”

  “Doxxing. Assembling information on someone to level the playing field.” My missing right arm twinges, and I briefly recall the hard edges of my Amiga mouse under my right hand, bringing up a CLI or shell window, moving files into directories. I focus on the scratchy feeling of the couch cushion fabric under my left hand. “It was what we all did in the eighties. To survive.”

  Charlotte’s eyebrows raise a little in surprise, and she jots something down. “To survive? Really?”

  “It was the Wild West back then, and we fought each other as much or more than we fought the system. Stupid stuff like getting slighted in a conversation or booted off a system would start wars over turf and reputation. Our electricity and phone lines were shut off several times. We were almost evicted once.”

  “I’m confused how this forced you into hacking.”

  “Someone would have it in for you, they’d mess with your life. You’d hack them back to show them you were more powerful than they were, make them back off. There was no other option.”

  “That’s scary.”

  I remember the fights with my mother, the accusations that I had caused the hell we went through. The ever-present anxiety every day over what new disaster I’d find when I returned home from school, and the panic over whether I’d be able to fix it. I nod in agreement.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  I laugh. “In the eighties? The police had no clue what hacking or social engineering was. They couldn’t do anything. It’s not much better now.”

  “But did you ever try? Even ask? You were being harassed. Did you ask anyone for help?”

  “No.” I don’t like where this conversation is headed. It’s only one step from “Why didn’t you do anything?” to “It’s your fault.” I don’t want the responsibility for this placed on me.

  Charlotte makes more notes in her pad, her pen audible as it travels over the paper. “Why’d you become involved with these people at all? What year was this?”

  “About ’86, ’87.”

  “Pretty unusual to be involved in computers back then, and I’d guess even more unlikely to encounter a bunch of computer hackers. Why not avoid them?”

  “I didn’t ask to be attacked. It just happened. I defended myself.” Fist clenched, my blood pounds thick in my ears. I’m so angry, and I don’t even know why.

  “Let’s take a few slow, deep breaths.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Charlotte lifts her head a little and breathes in through her nose.

  Damn her. I breathe in through my nose.

  We both sit there breathing for a few moments.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t know why I got so angry.”

  “That’s okay. Talking can be uncomfortable sometimes.” She glances at the clock. “We’re almost out of time. Think back to when you came into the office. Remember how you felt, so excited about Tapestry?”

  “Yes.” There’s a little twitter in my heart thinking about it.

  “Dwell on that when you leave here. It’s a happy place for you. Sometimes, when people have emotions that are hard to deal with, they bury those emotions for a long time and never deal with them. That’s not healthy. Sometimes people brood on those emotions forever, and never move past them. That’s not healthy either. There’s a middle ground, a place where we can process more challenging feelings when we’re ready, and when we have the right support. When we don’t feel as ready, or supported, we make an effort to focus on things that are easier for us. It’s a coping mechanism, like grounding or breathing. Give yourself permission to choose what feelings you want to focus on, and to move back and forth depending on how you’re feeling. I’ll see you next week.”

  I leave, more confused than when I went in.

  CHAPTER 18

  * * *

  WHEN I MET Mat a few weeks ago, he offered to set up a weekly coffee with me. Although I didn’t take him up on it, now I want to talk to him. Neither Thomas nor Emily will understand the slightest bit about why micro formats are so exciting.

  I email Mat, and we agree to meet the next morning at Coava coffee on Grand Avenue, halfway between my house and Mat’s downtown office.

  I start recounting the details of meeting Amber earlier that week. I’m barely a few sentences in when Mat holds up a hand for me to stop.

  “It sounds fascinating, but I’ve got a customer call in thirty minutes. Let’s cut to the chase. You’re trying to figure out how much to offer her, right?”

  “Uh, what?”

  “You want to hire Amber. That’s why I introduced you two. She’s a natural fit.”

  “Well, not really,” I say. “I thought I’d go it alone for a while.”

  “What do you mean?” Mat sucks down his pour-over, and I wonder if all
Brits drink coffee the way he does. “You can’t compete with Tomo by yourself. You need to both build the thing and contrive to bring partner businesses onboard. Getting to scale will require special expertise on the engineering and marketing side. There’s only one way to make all that happen in a timely fashion, and that’s with a team. Stop trying to do everything alone.”

  I don’t want to work with other people. I like my space, my boundaries. I’m not even sure I know how to work with anyone else. Other people means having to compromise, spending time communicating instead of doing, having to convince them of what I want.

  I want to spend my time with beautiful lines of code, not messy, complex people. Communication should be through keyboard shortcuts for my text editor. The kind of convincing I like is coaxing information out of tables with one less database hit. I want to sculpt an intellectual Japanese garden: clean, precise, ordered.

  Mat’s staring, waiting for me to say something. I hear his message, I do. The books I’ve read said the same exact thing. The success of a startup is all about having the right team, a broad set of skills. Eventually I’ll need to hire people, but I hoped to postpone it as long as possible.

  Damn it. I squeeze my fist under the table. The idea of working with someone else terrifies me. But I want to succeed. More than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

  “Hypothetically, if I was ready to maybe consider bringing someone else on board, how would I know if she’s the right person?”

  Mat smiles as though he’s won some small victory. “Are you compatible? Can you communicate? Does she have expertise you need? Is she passionate about what you want to do? Can you imagine working side-by-side with her for the next couple of years?”

  Jesus. Years? My mind can’t grasp the concept. I’ve never worked that closely with another person for any length of time.

  Mat’s shifting his bag onto his shoulder and stuffing his napkin into his coffee cup.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Sometimes you take a leap of faith.” Mat stands, begins to walk away. “Offer her 5 percent of the company and the same salary you’re drawing. You can figure out the rest later.”

  I dumbly realize I don’t even know what it means to give her 5 percent of the company. How does one do that? Thomas’s specialty is intellectual property law, but he’s still a lawyer. Maybe he knows. A few text messages later, and we’re on for dinner.

  I stare at my phone, wondering what I’m getting myself into.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  THOMAS AND I discuss hiring Amber at dinner.

  The sum total of the funding for Tapestry is $220,000, the money I’d gotten from manipulating the bitcoin market. With very little savings outside of that, I need that money to live on. If I work alone, it could provide me with more than two years of runtime to bootstrap Tapestry. Hiring Amber means parting with some of my money.

  We review the basics of company structures and control at dinner. As long as I own a majority of the stock, I can pick the directors and in effect control the company. If I give up more than 50 percent of the company to investors or other employees, I’d no longer be in absolute control.

  “Why would anyone give away control of their company?” I ask him.

  Thomas shrugs. “You can have absolute control over something doomed to failure because you don’t have enough money to accomplish what needs doing, or conditional control over something more likely to succeed, in which case, you’ll maintain control as long as you’re doing a good job.”

  “No investors,” I say. I won’t let anyone else have control. It’s almost enough to consider another bitcoin manipulation. I risked fifteen thousand last time and multiplied my money by fourteen. If I did that again, I’d have enough for a team of employees for a couple of years. But like a magician, you never want to repeat a trick. That’s how you get caught.

  “Then you’ll need to start small, and grow slowly.” Thomas spears another bite from his plate.

  I nod as I take a sip of wine. Is there some other financial trick I might try? It’s not really my specialty, and at least one lesson I learned from Repard is that the heat is always hottest for financial crimes.

  Thomas sleeps over that night, but I toss and turn so much I feel bad for disturbing his sleep. I grab my pillow and a blanket and move to the living room couch, where I stare at the stars through the big living room window.

  Hiring Amber scares me, though I recognize that’s an emotional reaction, not an analytical one. She’s smart, she knows the space well, and she’s passionate. I didn’t quit Tomo to do this half-assed. I quit to maximize my chance of succeeding, of actually creating a worthy competitor.

  Bringing Amber on board is the next logical step. If I don’t do it, I’m letting my fears rule me. I turn onto my side and pull the blanket up. I’ll call her in the morning.

  * * *

  Amber and I meet for a very early lunch at a Thai restaurant. We’re in the back corner, the only people there.

  I cut to the chase, and tell her I want to her to work with me. We go back and forth a bit, and eventually settle on her getting 10 percent of the company and a long-term salary comparable to her existing one. Until we take on investment or earn a regular source of income, she agrees to take only as much as my own draw. Now I’ll burn through my pool of money twice as fast.

  Amber offers up her spare bedroom as a place we can work together. I hadn’t even thought of the issue of office space. After lunch, we check it out together.

  That afternoon I contact a law firm Thomas recommended, and one of the partners agrees to meet me the next day as a professional courtesy to Thomas. The paperwork is drawn up, and by the next Monday Amber and I go in to sign the documents together.

  On Tuesday morning we go together to Ikea and pick out furniture, then drive back to her place. I’m screwing a desk leg onto the top using a cordless drill when I notice Amber watching my one arm technique.

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Not so hard. I’m doing it singlehandedly.”

  She laughs and we flip the desk over together.

  “We have an office!” I say, a bit proud of this moment.

  We simultaneously glance around at the mess of cardboard boxes and packing material from the furniture.

  “Let’s take care of that in a bit,” Amber says. “Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Amber comes back in with two glasses. “It’s called Whit Faced,” she says, gesturing with the glass. “Local brewer friend makes it once a year.”

  We chink our glasses together, and I take a sip. It’s crisp with a hint of clove and orange.

  Amber sits on one of the desks. “I was thinking about Tapestry over the weekend. There’s two big pieces of existing work we can leverage. Diaspora was a distributed social network launched in 2010. It’s got the idea of multiple nodes in the network, and they’ve defined protocols to enable those nodes to communicate. And IndieWeb, along with everything it brings: POSSE syndication, notification, micro formats.”

  “IndieWeb doesn’t handle selective visibility of content,” I say. “Everything is either public or private.”

  Amber taps a finger on the desk. “Before social networking, we had the web for public stuff, and forums for discussions.”

  “Which were themselves rooted in the BBSs of the eighties,” I say. “We still have forums. More than ever before.”

  “More in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of all Internet users, fewer than ever. The reason I bring it up is because forums foster a different kind of community, especially in the old days. Most people in a forum knew each other, had social norms specific to that community.”

  I nod. “So forums develop deeper human connection than social media?”

  Amber stands, one finger on her nose, and stares at the wall.

  I glance at the wall, don’t see anything there.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m picturing my bookcase, trying to remember if I
read anything on this.”

  “In my experience,” she goes on, “forums are better at establishing new friendships. How many new friends have you made on Tomo?”

  Damn. Right to questions I don’t like to answer. “None, but I’m weird. Don’t go by me. How about you?”

  She shakes her head. “Not as many as I made in the days of forums. Social media maintains existing friendships, but doesn’t create new ones.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “Forums are more cohesive somehow. Usually they’re closed. They have a common purpose. A moderator keeps the community on track.” She grabs a marker, makes notes on a cardboard box.

  “We need whiteboards.”

  She nods. “Tomo has a groups feature, although, of course, it’s another silo. Since we’re going to be open, we must define interfaces so Tapestry can interact with forums. There are lots of forums out there. Better integration will breathe more life into them.”

  We go back and forth like that, slowly working our way through Amber’s hyper-local beer supply, into the wee hours of the night. Sometime during the late night I realize I’ve not only gained a business partner, but maybe also a friend.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  AMBER AND I work together every day, our energy feeding each other. The weekend comes and goes without a break, and I don’t mind a bit. I’ve never been one to vegetate on a couch watching television, and I’m certainly not going to do it now when we’re making so much progress. I wake each morning tired but excited to return to work at Amber’s house.

  The days turn into weeks. Toward the end of our work days, coding slows down, and we spend our time discussing and arguing until late in the night. Amber works around the clock, with the stamina of a grad student weeks from her thesis. I usually peel off around ten or eleven, after the texts from Thomas peak, then slow down.

  Angie> Not tonight. Working late.