Kill Process

by William Hertling

  There’s a chasm in my stomach threatening to swallow me and I can’t help but look behind me even though I’m in a locked cinderblock room at the bottom of a secured storage facility. There’s nobody in the room. Is there someone outside the door? In the parking lot? Someone with a frequency scanner monitoring my transmissions?

  Angel> You think I’m being personally monitored? People stalking me?

  SysOp> I don’t know. Two weeks ago you weren’t being monitored by the government, and now you are. Does pulling DMV records equal total surveillance? No. But the odds of you being surveilled jumped at least a thousand times higher.

  Angel> Wait. Back when I had to get rid of the VW van, someone compromised my onion network. Do you think that was the government that far back?

  Long seconds go by, and I wonder if Nathan is going to reply. I place my hand on the keyboard to type.

  SysOp> That was me.

  Angel> WTF? You claimed to know nothing about it.

  SysOp> I thought maybe you needed a nudge.

  Angel> You manipulated me?

  SysOp> I couldn’t watch you throw your life away killing people.

  To say my mind reels doesn’t begin to describe my emotions. I’m like a skyscraper toppling in slow motion after having its foundation washed away by a tsunami.

  Angel> You don’t get to decide somebody else’s life.

  SysOp> I don’t regret it, and you shouldn’t either. Look what you’ve built since then. Isn’t it all worthwhile? Besides, you spent plenty of time changing other people’s lives.

  I rub my head, kneading my skull with my fingers. I . . . I just can’t deal with this right now. I’m not sure whether to feel betrayed or saved. Both are true. Fuck.

  Suddenly, I wonder if my connection to Dead Channel is secure. Nathan set up the encryption. It’s running Threefish over Serpent, and even that runs through my onion network, which is Twofish over AES. The keys were generated from space telescope white noise. The whole thing should be secure not merely against the NSA of today, but even the global computing infrastructure of 2045. Yet I’m still looking at text on a screen. If they compromised my hardware, all is mute. The keys, the passwords, all irrelevant. They could intercept my video signal on the way to the display. I can settle up with Nathan9 later. For now, I’ve got to figure out my government problem.

  Angel> What do I do?

  SysOp> Don’t do anything that would compromise you. Or me, for that matter.

  Angel> I need data from Tomo.

  SysOp> Not right now.

  I consider the company’s money situation.

  Angel> I might need to run another financial crack.

  SysOp> No way. You’d never see the light of day again. There’s nothing the government goes after harder than anyone who messes with the sheep’s confidence in the financial system.

  Angel> Fuck.

  SysOp> Be an ordinary person, no more, no less. I’ll keep an eye on your records, and if we go three or four months with no activity, I’ll let you know that it’s safe.

  Three or four months? I’ll be lucky to keep Tapestry running through the end of this month with the tricks Tomo is pulling.

  SysOp> And, I hate to say this, but just in case . . . better not connect to Dead Channel.

  Angel> Damn it. You’re my lifeline.

  SysOp> I know. I’m sorry, you’re a little too hot right now. We don’t want that kind of attention.

  Angel> We’ve been friends for thirty years.

  SysOp> We’re still friends, but we’re hackers first. Hackers don’t burn other hackers.

  Angel> Fuck you very much.

  I disconnect. The goddamn shit. Wait until I need him more than ever, and then cast me out? I’ve done all the field work. Compromised every system at Tomo. Gave him access he never would have gotten otherwise.

  I stare at my other computer. It’s done pulling all of Lewis’s records from Tomo. I carefully disconnect it, store all the data on a triple-encrypted file, and shut it down.

  A tear falls, lands on the keyboard, and I wipe it away with a shaking hand. I lay my face in my hand.

  This is how it ends for hackers. Alone.

  I tried to pretend otherwise. I believed I could have a normal life. Marry Thomas, even.

  How am I ever going to face him? What’s he going to think when they take me away? He’s going to realize he never knew me, the real me. He’ll believe everything was all a lie, doubt the entire foundation of our relationship. I scream at the walls and pick up the laptop, prepared to smash it against the cinderblock.

  Fuck! I don’t even have the money to buy another. I set the laptop down carefully and kick the cardboard boxes in the storage room instead, pounding them with my feet until the room is in shambles.

  My chest heaves when I finally give up and lean against the wall.

  If the government comes for me, they’re going to stick me in prison. Prison is a locked room. A locked room is unacceptable. The thought makes me shake in fear. If they come for me, I will kill myself. I can’t survive being in a box.

  That night, on the way home, I stop about a mile from my house, and park outside a church. It’s a lame excuse if I’m called to account for my whereabouts, but it beats parking at a grocery store. The old church doesn’t have any security cameras, whereas the grocery has plenty, not to mention all the other shoppers with their phones out and about, waving around cellphone cameras without a thought of who might be spying on them. It’s a funny thing, people’s blindness to their cell phone cameras. Maybe one in fifty people are savvy enough to cover their computer webcams so they aren’t spied on, but fewer than one in a thousand take the same precaution with their mobile devices.

  At any rate, I park by the church, leave my electronics in the car, then walk a few blocks to the garage I rent where I keep my electronics tools. It’s here where I assembled my homemade onion router hardware, and where I’ve customized endless laptops and other electronics. There’s very little left except a few partially assembled airborne drones and my locked tool chest. I grab a screwdriver out of the tool chest, and undo the cover on the electrical panel. Once open, I remove two screws from the back panel, and the whole box pulls forward. I hold it in place with my stump and feel behind the box for the leather package. I set it on the workbench with a small thump, and screw the electric box back into place.

  I unroll the leather until the Glock 26 is revealed. I stare without touching the gun. It seemed like a good idea once, though I was wrong. There was no way I could ever use it to kill any of the abuser bastards I was going after. It was too close, too immediate, too loud, too violent. Pulling the trigger myself was out of the question. It was everything I was not. I would curl up on the floor in a ball before I could ever aim it at someone, and so it was useless to me.

  Until now. I know for certain I could shoot myself before I would let myself be imprisoned. Oh, if it came down to that, to the choice between losing my autonomy again or dying, I would not hesitate.

  I pick up the gun, feeling the heft of it. After a moment’s hesitation, I turn the muzzle toward my own head and hold it there. A numbness passes through me in a wave, like some part of me is ready to vacate this body. The edge between life and death is imperceptibly thin, only a squeeze of a finger away. I take a shaky breath, lay the gun back down, and begin the tedious process of loading the magazine with one hand.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 38

  * * *

  AFTER A NIGHT of more nightmares than any actual rest, I come into the office in the morning like a zombie. When David Schwartz calls, my voice is raspy from lack of sleep.

  “I don’t see anything you can exploit in the contract. If you sign, they’re getting control. Don’t sign.”

  My addled brain tries to make sense of it.

  “What about approaching other investors?” I croak. “Or getting a bank loan?”

  “No, on both accounts. You’d need the existing investors to sign, and they’re
not going to do it, not if they want to force you into accepting their terms. You could secure a personal loan, not a business loan, and put your own money in.”

  The idea is absurd. A startup is a money-consuming monster. Our burn rate is four hundred thousand a month. My personal equity wouldn’t cover a single payroll.

  “Thanks, David. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Sorry I don’t have better news,” David says. “Get some rest.”

  Of course I’m going to ignore his advice. I can sleep when I’m dead. For now I need to figure out some way to save this company.

  As soon as Amber and Igloo are in the office, I grab them along with Harry, our finance guy, and convene a meeting in the one conference room without windows. I close the door and gesture for them to take seats.

  “Harry, how much cash do we have?”

  “Cash or liquid assets?”

  “Anything. How much money we can access to pay the bills with, right this second.”

  “About ten k cash, and twenty-five in our line of credit,” Harry says. “The transfer from our investors should show up the day the funding closes. When is that going to happen?”

  “None of the funds from our investors are coming because I won’t sign because I refuse to accept the Tomo offer.”

  “I told you CompEx was a bad idea,” Igloo says.

  Amber punches the table. “Corporate assholes.”

  “Shit,” Harry says. He opens his laptop, stares furiously at the screen. “We’re not going to clear payroll.”

  “I know. We need to come up with a plan. The four of us. We need some way to cover the next couple of weeks, maybe months, to keep us operating. A source of money that doesn’t involve banks or investors.”

  The room is dead silent. Igloo and Amber exchange glances. Harry stares at me, his mouth hanging open. Nobody looks confident.

  I sink into a chair along with the rest of them. “We have to figure out something. Harry, what happens if we don’t pay our rent?”

  “We’re evicted.” The expression on Harry’s face is one of utter dread. I suspect no part of what he signed up for including running finances for a company without money.

  “Yeah, but that can’t happen immediately, can it? It’s not like we’re going to show up tomorrow and the doors will be locked.”

  “Eventually they’ll kick us out.”

  “Okay, your task after the meeting is to stop our next payment from happening. Find out how long before they lock the doors. What about payroll?”

  “We can go without pay,” Igloo says. “If we tell people, they’ll understand.”

  I feel a pit in my stomach at the thought. These are my people. Before we took on Owen as an angel, Igloo was living on ramen. I’ve failed my people if I can’t pay them. I take a couple of deep breaths to keep myself stable.

  I turn to Amber. “You know everybody’s past employment the best. You think everyone can manage if we don’t pay them?”

  Amber shakes her head. “A few are coming from a successful exit. Most are limping along from one early-stage startup to the next and it’ll be hard on them if we don’t pay. We’ll lose their attention pretty quickly once they’re worrying about rent; and worse, if we miss payroll once, they’ll assume it’ll happen again and spend their time job hunting.”

  Fudge.

  “How much do we need to make the next paycheck?” I ask Harry.

  “Excluding us,” Igloo adds.

  Harry looks at me, and I nod.

  “Excluding you three,” Harry says, “we need about a hundred thousand.”

  Double fudge.

  I glance at Amber. “I hate to do this to you, but can you talk to each person, one on one, and see if they’re able to forego a paycheck? If they need to be paid, what’s the minimum they can survive with?”

  Amber rubs her face and lets out a sigh. “You really want to delegate that? You’re the CEO. You’re the one people expect to hold that conversation with.”

  “I have other things—”

  “We all have a thousand other things,” Amber says. “That’s not the point. It’s your job to conduct those hard conversations. If you’re not woman enough to do it, then sure, I will. But it says a whole lot about how much you care about the employees.”

  My blood boils at her accusation. “Fuck you! I care. I have critical stuff I have to do.”

  “What stuff?” Amber says. “You keep disappearing for entire days for no reason. What is this stuff you’re working on?”

  “Can you two please not fight?” Igloo says in a tiny voice.

  “I’m sorry.” I settle back in my chair.

  “It’s like listening to my parents,” Igloo says. “How are we going to handle this if you’re fighting? Let’s work together.”

  I stare at Amber for a few moments, and nod in apology. “I will talk to everyone about payroll.”

  “I can take half.” Amber says, and now she looks a little like she regrets her outburst.

  “That would be a huge help. Thank you.”

  Nobody says anything for a minute as we let the emotions settle down for a bit. Harry looks shell-shocked.

  “Too much estrogen for you, Harry?” I say, hoping the atmosphere can handle a little joke.

  He mumbles something, then stares off into the distance. “I’ve never worked with people who were so open about how they feel.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say.

  Harry points at his computer screen. “We’re forgetting something important. Our cloud bill. It’s about fifteen thousand, and gets charged to our credit card.”

  “We can make the minimum payment, right?” I say.

  Harry shakes his head. “That’s what we’ve done the last three months. We’ll go over the limit if we don’t pay the credit card bill before the cloud computing charge hits. I expected the investment money would be here by now.”

  “Switch the account to my personal credit card.” I turn to Amber. “You need to keep the spend under my credit limit.”

  I stand to stretch my legs. “If that’s it for the immediate expenses, then we’re covered for the next couple of weeks. However, we need a long-term plan to bring in money. If we can’t go to investors or banks that leaves one option. We launch.”

  “That’s not for three and a half more months!” Amber says.

  “No, we launch now. The beta users are happy, right?”

  Igloo nods. “We have almost a thousand users. Engagement is high.”

  Amber looks at me and Igloo, slaps her forehead dramatically. “Please tell me you’re kidding?”

  “No,” I say. “If we launch, we bring in revenue.”

  “Nobody is ready! Marketing and biz dev and tech all aligned on a plan to launch in January, a plan we just pulled up from March.”

  “Then we accelerate it some more.”

  “You’re asking for the impossible,” Amber says. “We can’t solve this problem by launching! Even if we could somehow, miraculously launch today, we’re not going to receive revenue for months, and not meaningful quantities for even longer, six months or a year.”

  “I know. We don’t need to be totally profitable. We just need to change the game enough. Look, Owen says the investors all want to take the Tomo offer. But the moment we launch, everything changes. If there’s dissent among the investors, maybe launching will change the dynamic and win one to our side.”

  “The number one killer of startups is insufficient funding,” Amber says. “Launching will accelerate our spend. Without money in the bank, we can’t run ads, can’t scale servers, can’t run a PR campaign.”

  “The sooner we’re ready, the more options we have. If I miraculously drum up a few hundred thousand and we’re ready to launch, we do it and spend the money to get the word out. If we’re not ready, the money comes in, goes to pay the bills, and then we’re back to square one. Find a way to be technically ready for a full public launch in a month. I’ll convince marketing to develop a
guerrilla marketing plan that doesn’t require any spend.”

  Amber shakes her head in reluctant acceptance. “This is going to be a disaster.”

  * * *

  After our meeting, I go back to my office. I stare at my purse with loathing, then open it and apply more makeup. I’m putting on my jacket to go when Amber walks by and looks at me.

  “I don’t mean to be such an ass about it,” Amber says, “but what is it that’s so important that you have to do?”

  I stare at her for a moment. “Swallow my pride and go beg every person I know for money.”

  “Oh.”

  The silence is overwhelming and awkward.

  “I better get to it, then,” I say, and edge past her.

  As I walk outside my heart aches. Yes, I really am about to beg for money, and putting on makeup to do it is somehow doubly demeaning, an acknowledgement that at the end of the day, every woman has to decide how much to leverage her looks rather than only her brains. I’m so desperate right now that if I were a younger woman, and a whole one, I would consider sleeping with every post-IPO CEO in this town if it would keep Tapestry afloat. I’m filled with self-loathing at the thought.

  That’s not why my heart aches. It’s because even though I’m really going to beg for money now, my answer was a deception, a distraction to keep Amber from asking more questions about where I’ve been in the past days when I’ve been at the storage facility.

  I want to stop lying to the people I care about.

  An old black Lincoln pulls up outside the building. I get in the passenger door.

  “Hi, Danger.”

  “I didn’t expect I’d be seeing you anymore. I gave you the last bitcoin payment months ago.” He pulls away from the curb. “Got something new in the works?”

  “Sort of.” The car’s cracked red leather interior tugs at my memory. “Isn’t this the car from The Matrix?”

  Danger smiles. “I never had much money until the Bitcoin run. Seemed like a worthwhile investment.”