Kill Process

by William Hertling

  Daly comes back into view, and perches on the table next to me. “Well that was fun to watch. I went over there,” and he points to a spot outside my field of view, “to see how hard you would work to free yourself.” He nods his head. “You tried pretty hard. Good job, Angie.” He leans close. “No, I’m not getting you any water. I don’t care if you’re thirsty. Keep talking.”

  I purse my lips, but my mouth is desert dry, not even the slightest speck of moisture. “Please, anything,” I say, my voice hoarse.

  “You want water?” Daly says. “Open your mouth.”

  I open, afraid of what’s coming, yet willing to do anything to moisten my lips.

  Daly spits in my mouth. “There’s your water.” He turns sideways and punches me in the stomach. All the air rushes out of me, and my body strains against the tape, trying to protect itself.

  “That’s for trying to get loose. Now quit stalling. What happened at the airport? Why did DHS come after me?”

  I put my lips together, my mouth ever so slightly moistened by Daly’s spit, and I remember Repard, the early days, before it all got so terribly complicated, and I whistle.

  Daly hits me, pain blossoming across my face, but I don’t stop. I whistle again. He hits me again. I keep whistling.

  After the third time, I don’t have it in me to fight anymore. Any will to resist Daly has left. The pain is vanishing, too, replaced by numbness. This is someone else’s body. I’m not here. This flesh isn’t me.

  “Why did you whistle?” Daly yells. “What the hell was that for?”

  He’s loud, and I’m glad he’s loud. I hope he keeps being loud.

  He glances around, suspicious now. He lifts a length of steel gray pipe up over my legs, and there’s an explosion of pain.

  * * *

  A robotic home vacuum cleaner, even a top of the line model, is not fast. Yes, there are great open source libraries. Yes, you can build features on top of the mobile chassis completely unrelated to vacuuming. Still, speed is not one of its best attributes, and this particular robotic vacuum is heavily laden and driving all the way from the bedroom.

  It’s also not the best driver in the world. This one is both sound and motion sensitive, and at some point its primitive visual sensors will detect active movement and its path will become more focused, but at the moment it’s trying to follow a 1300 Hz audio signal.

  It bounces off the bed, reverses direction. It hits the dresser, backs up, angles off in a random direction. A particularly astute observer might wonder why the bedroom door doesn’t close properly, why it tends to swing open and won’t latch properly no matter how hard you try. It wouldn’t take much to notice the top hinge is not in its original location, and the door has no choice other than to swing open when it leans that way. Fortunately, Daly wasn’t interested in construction, and so the door remains open as it has been designed to be.

  The vacuum passes through the doorway. The 1300 Hz signal is gone; however, once the robot is activated, it will continue its programming using only motion and sound detection. There’s a lot of sound coming from the direction of the dining room, and so the vacuum heads that way after a false start toward the couch and a brief entanglement with the legs of the coffee table.

  Eventually the visual sensors detect motion. This is a very exciting time for the program running on its little CPU. The robot switches modes, stops moving forward, and turns in a circle. It will stop when it reaches the point of maximum detected motion.

  But these are very simple algorithms and the current programming is designed to turn only one way: clockwise. This it does, and after turning 360 degrees it figures out exactly where the most motion is occurring, and then it turns 330 degrees more, almost a complete second circle, and sends an electrical signal to the trigger actuator on the Glock mounted to its weighted top, firing once. The Roomba turns another five degrees, fires again, and repeats this sequence twice more, exhausting four of the ten rounds of ammunition.

  After the code completes, the algorithm repeats again, first detecting motion, then firing four rounds at five-degree intervals around the center of motion.

  With two rounds left in the magazine, the algorithm would run an abbreviated iteration, but when the motion detector runs for the third time, it fails to find any movement.

  The vacuum waits. There is no activity. The algorithms tell the robot to recharge. It plays a short happy tune, and returns to its charging station.

  CHAPTER 46

  * * *

  DALY HITS ME across the thighs and agony shoots through me. With every fiber of my being, I force myself not to scream. I need to be silent. I pray he hasn’t broken my legs.

  Daly does a double-take at my lack of a scream or reaction. He raises the pipe back up to hit me again. Please, God, no.

  Then he glances toward the living room, his eyes searching. I know what to listen for, and I barely make out the whine of little electric motors over the waves of pain coursing through me.

  The shot, when it comes, even though I expect it, is deafening, and my bowels clench. More are coming, and I try, fruitlessly, to shrink smaller, knowing I’m close to Daly and could easily be hit. If a round strikes me, even a glancing wound, I’ll bleed to death strapped to this table.

  Daly’s attention snaps to the robot with the first shot, and at first he’s still, as though trying to come to terms with what he’s seeing. There’s a second shot, and from the way he jerks around, I know he’s been hit.

  “Fuck!”

  He dives left, out of my field of vision, and for a brief moment my heart surges, because he’s moved in the same direction as the robot turns, clockwise. It fires again, and there’s another curse as he’s presumably hit again. I can’t see him now.

  The fourth shot comes, and then there’s silence. I know the robot’s spinning around, crunching video data to find motion, computationally eliminating its own spinning motion from the equation. The fear comes again, because the next shot, the left-most one, is the one most likely to hit me.

  I hear something crash against the wall, and Daly rushes by, his arm overhead as though he’s going to toss the pipe at the little robot.

  Then another four shots ring out, one after another. Metal clangs as the pipe bounces off the tile floor, and a few seconds later, Daly crashes to the ground with a thud.

  A few seconds later the vacuum beeps and plays the returning-to-base sound.

  I take inventory of my body. My thighs are in raging agony where Daly hit me with the pipe, and my stomach and face ache from repeated punches. There’s so much pain, I’m not even sure if I’m shot. I’m as stuck as before. I make a feeble attempt to move, but I have no energy left.

  I pray the robot sent its emails.

  * * *

  I’m startled awake by pounding on the door. Someone yells, but I lack the strength to respond.

  The front door opens with a crash, followed by booted feet running, and a bunch of radio talk that makes no sense to me. Soon two police officers in heavy combat gear are freeing me from the dining room table, while others secure the house and check on Chris Daly.

  The police and paramedics are fighting over me, and I end up on a stretcher, being questioned as I’m strapped down.

  “What happened?”

  I can’t tell which of the officers asks me. Only one thing matters.

  “Is he dead?”

  The officer nearest me nods.

  “He forced himself in, attacked me. He says he was paid to do it, by Lewis Rasmussen.”

  “The CEO of Tomo?”

  I nod. “I have a recording of him saying it, on a hard drive.”

  “A recording?” The officer looks puzzled.

  A paramedic’s arm passes into my field of view, and I flinch, trying to pull away. They’re strapping me down, and I try to resist further panic.

  “Surveillance cameras.”

  The officer raises an eyebrow and shakes his head, before he yells, “Sergeant, call the techs down here
pronto. She’s got the whole thing recorded.”

  The paramedics are in the midst of lifting me when Danger and Igloo rush in, trailed by yet another police officer.

  “You knew!” Igloo’s face is dark and accusing, then her eyes go wide at my appearance. “Jesus. Uh, are you okay?” She catches sight of the body on the floor and recoils.

  “Bruised, mostly,” I say, although the truth is my whole body is one mass of hurt. I hope there are strong painkillers in my immediate future. “If you’d been here, he would’ve killed you. He didn’t need either of you, only me. He confessed. Lewis Rasmussen hired him.”

  “That bastard,” Igloo says.

  “The police will take care of him.”

  “Here we go, ma’am,” one of the paramedics says, and they carry me towards the door.

  “Thomas will call from a payphone,” I say, on my way out. “Let him know it’s okay to come back.”

  Igloo nods.

  “Wait, please.”

  The paramedic facing me rolls his eyes.

  “Come close,” I say to Igloo.

  She bends down, a few inches from my face.

  “There’s a second copy of the video on an SSD in the freezer. Leak it tonight to social media, BitTorrent. There’s no telling how long the police will sit on it.”

  CHAPTER 47

  * * *

  I’M BLISSED OUT on pharmaceuticals when Thomas and Emily arrive at the hospital. I don’t remember much, other than professing my undying love for them. Later they’ll tell me it was four o’clock in the morning when they arrived, driving back to Portland in a rental. Apparently, I mumbled lots of incoherent things at them before falling back asleep.

  When I wake, the intense pain of the night before has been replaced by the dull agony of aches everywhere. I touch my face and immediately regret it. My cry wakes Thomas, who was sleeping in a chair next to the bed.

  “Angie.” He snaps erect. “Are you in pain?”

  I nod.

  He presses a button next to me, and I hear a distant chime.

  “The nurse will be back with another dose of pain relievers. Are you okay?”

  What do I say to that? He probably knows better than I the extent of my injuries.

  He reaches toward me, and I flinch. He withdraws his hand. “Okay to touch your arm?” he asks.

  I try to speak, but can’t open my mouth without choking up.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he says. “The doctors say nothing is broken. Just a moderate concussion and severe bruising, especially on your legs, where . . .” Thomas’s voice breaks. “I’m so sorry, Angie. I should’ve been there for you.”

  I swallow and take a few breaths. “You couldn’t have done anything.” Talking makes me realize how foggy I am. I vaguely wonder what drugs I’m on and how much more pain I’d be in without them. “It had to happen exactly that way.”

  “It never should’ve happened at all. I shouldn’t have let you talk me into going to Seattle.”

  We’ll be arguing this point for a long time, I suspect. I change the topic. “Did the police find the recordings?”

  Thomas nods. “They did, and discovered something about Lewis Rasmussen hiring that monster. The detective told me the California police are bringing Rasmussen in for questioning.”

  “Already?”

  “A judge issued a subpoena for Rasmussen’s communication records already. They’re looking for more evidence linking Rasmussen to Daly. The detective’s here at the hospital, waiting to talk to you when you wake up. Which is now, I guess. You can wait, if you’re not ready.”

  “No, it’s fine. Send him in.”

  Thomas leans over to kiss me, and I turn away, afraid of his touch.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “It’s okay,” Thomas says, but my stomach says it is very much not okay.

  Thomas goes out, and a woman in street clothes comes in and holds out a badge and photo ID.

  “Hello, Ms. Benenati, I’m the detective working the Daly case. I’m very sorry for everything you’ve been through. If you’re up to it now, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  I try to straighten out the hospital blanket around me, like it somehow matters how presentable I am in the hospital, but I’m too befuddled to do more than pull randomly on it.

  “Call me Angie.”

  “Angie, did you know Chris Daly, the man in your apartment?”

  “No . . . I never met him before today.”

  “Really? We’ve listened to the recordings from your apartment. You addressed him by name.”

  “I knew he was harassing me.”

  “Was he behind the blog post earlier this week?”

  I’m impressed. The police did their homework.

  “Yes, but that’s not all he did. He broke into Tapestry’s systems. He was reading our emails, tapping our phones.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I worked in security for years. I found traces of him in our logs, in file change dates, in our network latency. I knew someone was out there.”

  “How did you know it was Chris Daly?”

  This is where I must skirt a fine edge, and my head is still woozy.

  “Anyone who works in computer security needs an alternate profile as a hacker. The only way to stay abreast of threats . . . to be where they’re being discussed. Our company security is top-notch, and there are only so many people with the knowledge and skills to compromise it. I asked around the hacker community, got answers.”

  “You said to Daly, ‘I hacked your bank accounts. Froze them all with automated fraud detection.’ Why did you do that?”

  I freeze, wishing I could remember exactly who said what. If only my brain wasn’t so clouded with drugs.

  “I should talk to my lawyer first.”

  “We’re not here to arrest you. The video evidence clearly shows you were in immediate, life-threatening danger from Daly. The police found you still taped to the table. Daly was clearly a dangerous man, you must have suspected as much. Your actions likely provoked Daly into torturing you.”

  Are the things I say here admissible in court? I’m not sure, but I don’t want to find out after the fact. “I don’t want to answer that question.”

  “You were deliberately antagonizing and provoking Daly. We had your two friends down to the precinct, spent hours questioning them. Cybercrime isn’t my beat, I’m strictly homicide. Still, your behavior complicates things.”

  “We weren’t antagonizing him. If someone attacks me with a gun, and I take the gun away, that’s not provoking them. That’s reasonable defense. Daly was attacking me, and all I did was take away his access to tools he could use to hurt me.”

  “Why not go to the police? Why take matters into your own hands and risk Daly lashing out at you?”

  “What would the police have done exactly? Travel back in time and undo the damage done by the fake article on Monday? Why even ask me this? If you think I was in the wrong, ask Daly why he didn’t go to the police.”

  “Daly is dead,” says the detective, “and you are not.”

  “That makes me the perpetrator and Daly the victim?” I glare back at the detective.

  “I’m not here to judge you. Just to discover the facts of what happened. Tell me about the robot with the gun. Whose robot was that, yours or Daly’s?”

  “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  The detective sighs, looks off into the distance, then back down at me. “I’ve been up since midnight, Angie. I pulled your files, saw the closed records from California, made some calls. I understand you’ve been through tough times before. It must have made it even more difficult to go through last night. Help me understand why Daly singled you out.”

  “Lewis Rasmussen paid him.”

  “That’s what you said last night. We’re pulling records right now, trying to find a connection. You must have had a reason for believing that.”

  “Rasmussen has been interfering with my company, Tapestry,
right from the beginning. He tried to buy us, and when I wouldn’t sell, he tried to cut off our funding, and when that didn’t work, he hired Daly to destroy me, to kill me if necessary. I had to do what I did to Daly to protect my life.”

  “Why does Rasmussen care about you?”

  “Tapestry’s existence is a threat to Tomo.”

  The detective shakes her head. “Not meaning any disrespect to your company. Tomo’s the largest company in the world. It’s hard to believe Tapestry is a threat to them.”

  I tug on the blanket. “Tapestry isn’t a competing social network. It’s a framework that prevents the centralization of power. Rasmussen wasn’t afraid we’d destroy Tomo as much as he was afraid we’d destroy all forms of centralized power.”

  The detective scratches in her notepad.

  “Tomo holds their users hostage,” I say. “You can’t leave Tomo without losing connections to your friends and family. Could you quit today? Ask them about PrivacyGuard. It’s a hoax. A system designed to fool people into believing they have privacy. They track everything you do. Have you seen the data they compile on everyone?”

  Of course she has, she’s a police officer. Although it never seems crazy from their side of the wire. She ignores my question. I’ve wandered too far into the land of the paranoid even if I’ve avoided saying the word “conspiracy.” Jesus, I’m talking too much. I need to stay on message. I blame the drugs they’ve given me.

  Eventually she finishes her questions, and as she talks to me about what’s next, I find myself unable to pay attention and gradually nod off.

  When I open my eyes later, Emily is in a chair on the other side of the room, typing silently but furiously on a tablet.

  “Em!” I feel truly joyous at the sight of her.

  Emily starts and looks at me. “Oh, Angie.” She sets the tablet down and sits next to me on the bed. “Why did you do this to yourself?”

  “What?”

  “You played me and Thomas. You knew this was going to happen.”

  Of course Emily can see through me in an instant. I continue the deception anyway. “I didn’t know . . .”