“Come on up.”
Justin slouches into a chair in Maxine’s office. “It’s about DeepArcher? Remember back just before the attack on the Trade Center, Vyrva must’ve told you, everything got a little weird with the random numbers we were using?”
“Dimly, dimly. Did that ever get back to normal?”
“Did anything?”
“Horst says the stock market went crazy too. Just before.”
“You heard of the Global Consciousness Project?”
“Some… California thing.”
“Princeton, as a matter of fact. These folks maintain a network of thirty to forty random-event generators all around the world, whose outputs all flow into the Princeton site 24/7 and get mixed together to produce this random-number string. First-rate source, exceptional purity. On the theory that if our minds really are all linked together somehow, any major global event, disaster, whatever, will show up in the numbers.”
“You mean, somehow, make them less random.”
“Right. Meantime, for DeepArcher to be untraceable, we happen to need a high-quality supply of random numbers. What we’ve done is create globally a set of virtual nodes on volunteer computers. Each node only exists long enough to receive and resend, and then it’s gone—we use the random numbers to set up a switching pattern among the nodes. Soon as we found out about this Princeton source, Lucas and I were into the site, bootlegging the product. All goes well till the night of September 10th, when suddenly these numbers coming out of Princeton began to depart from randomness, I mean really abruptly, drastically, no explanation. You can look it up, the graphs are posted on their Web site for anybody to see, it’s… I’d say scary if I knew what any of it meant. It kept on that way through the 11th and a few days after. Then just as mysteriously everything went back to near-perfect random again.”
“So…” and like why is he telling her this exactly, “whatever it was, it’s gone away?”
“Except that for those couple of days, DeepArcher was vulnerable. We did our best with serial numbers off dollar bills, which do pretty good as seeds for a low-tech pseudorandom-number generator, but still, DeepArcher’s defenses began to disintegrate, everything was more visible, easier to access. It’s possible some people may have found their way in then who shouldn’t have. Soon as the GCP numbers got random again, the way back out would’ve become invisible to any intruders. They’d be caught inside the program. They could still be there.”
“They can’t just click on ‘Quit’?”
“Not if they’re busy trying to reverse-engineer their way to our source code. Which is impossible, but still they can compromise a lot of what’s in there.”
“Sounds like another reason to go open source.”
“Lucas says the same thing. I wish I could just…” He looks so perplexed that Maxine against her better judgment sez, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Guy’s walking around holding a blazing-hot coal…”
• • •
THAT EVENING, first thing in the door, she notices something sure smells good. Horst is cooking supper. Seems to be coquilles Saint-Jacques and daube de boeuf provençal. Again. Of course, the Guilt Special. By a strange invariance in the parameters of wedlock, Horst lately has been turning, all but insufferably, into a homebody. The other night she came in late, all the lights were off, wham, she’s suddenly assaulted at ankle level by a mechanical device, which turns out to be a robot vacuum cleaner. “Trying to kill me here!”
“Thought you’d be pleased,” sez Horst, “it’s the Roomba Pro Elite, brand-new from the factory.”
“With the spousal-attack feature.”
“Actually, it won’t be released till fall, got this one at an early-adopters preview sale. Wave of the future, honeybunch.”
Irony-free. Unthinkable a year or two ago. Meantime it’s Maxine’s turn now to have these, hmm, undomestic urges. Which, for those to whom balanced books appeal, seems fair. Guilt? What’s that?
Eric and Driscoll are in and out of the house together and separately and unpredictably, though they do respect school nights and an informal curfew of 11:00 P.M. Out any later than that and they make other sleeping arrangements, which everybody is cool with, besides relieving Maxine of some worry. The boys, in any case, like their father, continue to sleep so unperturbed that next to them the average sawmill inventory is insomniac.
One day Maxine finds Eric in the spare room with a 27-ounce spray bottle of Febreze, spritzing his dirty laundry, item by item. “There’s a laundry room in the basement, Eric. We can lend you detergent.”
He drops the T-shirt he’s holding on to a pile of already-Febrezed laundry and remains pointing the bottle at his ear, as if about to shoot himself with it. “Does it come with Downy April Fresh Scent?” Diminishing returns. But he also has a worried look.
Angling an antenna, “Something else, Eric?”
“I was up all night with this again. Fuckin hashslingrz. Can’t let it go.”
“You want some coffee? I’m going to make some coffee.”
Following her into the kitchen, “That hashslingerz money pipeline to the Emirates, remember? banks in Dubai and shit, I couldn’t stop going back, over and over it, what if that was helping finance the attack on the Trade Center? then Ice isn’t only just another dotcom douchebag, he’s a traitor to his country.”
“Somebody in Washington agrees with you.” She gives Eric a quick recap of the dossier that Windust handed her, with his punk-rock cologne all over it.
“Yeah, how about this ‘Wahhabi Transreligious Friendship,’ they happen to mention them?”
“They think it’s some kind of front for moving money into jihadist operating accounts.”
“Even cuter than that. It’s a front, all right, but it’s really the CIA, pretending to be jihadist.”
“Get outta here.”
“Maybe it was the Ambien, maybe it was always there right in front of me and I just didn’t see it, but somehow this time all the veils go droppin one by one, and there’s Mata Hari herself. It’s all been a way to get funds out to different anti-Islamic undergrounds in the region. In return Ice gets to keep a commission on everything moving through, plus some heavy-ass consultancy fees.”
“Why, the man’s a patriot.”
“He’s a greedy little shit,” Eric’s head now in a halo of Daffy Duck froth droplets, “eternity in a motel lounge in Houston Texas with a Andrew Lloyd Webber mix repeating forever on the stereo is too good for his sorry ass. Just totally trust me on one thing, Maxine. I’m gonna fuck him up.”
“Sounds like an exploit in the wind.”
“Maybe.”
“One brush with Rikers isn’t enough already, now you’re planning denial-of-service attacks?”
“Way too good for Ice. If every company with an asshole in charge deserved a DOS hit? be nothing left of the tech sector. But here, let me share with you my latest invention, this is like a hors d’oeuvre.”
He shows her on his laptop. Seems he has recently launched the Vomit Kurser, named in homage to the ill-regarded Comet Cursor of the nineties and developed in partnership with a bruja from one of his old neighborhoods. Via eye-catching but fake pop-up ads promising health, wealth, happiness &c, the Kurser will surreptitiously lay old-school curses on selected targets—click in once, your ass is grass. Somehow, as the Latina sorceress has explained to Eric, the Internet as it turns out exhibits a strange affinity for the dynamics of curses, especially when written in the more ancient languages predating HTML. Through the uncountable cross-motives of the cyberworld, the fates of unreflective click-happy users are altered for the worse—systems crash, data are lost, bank accounts are looted, all of which being computer-related you might expect, but then there are also the realworld inconveniences, such as zits, unfaithful spouses, intractable cases of Running Toilet, providing the more metaphysically inclined further evidence that the Internet is only a small part of a much vaster integrated continuum.
“This will bring dow
n Ice’s system? He’s Jewish, he doesn’t know from Santería, this sounds over toward the woowoo end of the spectrum even for you, Eric.”
“You may chill, it’s not the main event, only a trailer, meantime not only have I been corrupting his malloc(3), I’ve turned it out trickin in the street, years of therapy before it’s straight again.”
“Please just watch your ass, I think I saw the movie, it ends on a sort of vindictive note. Something in the tail credits about ‘is currently serving a life sentence in the federal pen’?”
She hasn’t seen this look on his face before. Scared but resolute also. “There’s no Escape key here. No way back to Game Shark hex cheats and them high-spirited li’l overflow stunts, no more happy times, now the only way left for me to go is deeper.”
Unhappy kid. She wants to touch him but is unsure of where. “Sounds like that could be tricky.”
“All good. Do you have any idea how many large-cap bad guys there are on Ice’s client list? I can at least show other hackers and crackers how to get into some useful places. Be a outlaw guru.”
“And if some of those colleagues turn out to be already bent? and shop you to the feds?”
He shrugs. “So I’ll have to be a little more careful than I was back in my script-kiddie days.”
“Someday, Eric, they’re going to have the time machine, we’ll be able to book tickets online, we’ll all get to go back, maybe more than once, and rewrite it all the way it should have gone, not hurt the ones we hurt, not make the choices we made. Forgive the loan, keep the lunch date. Of course, at first tickets’ll be an arm and a leg, till the product-development costs get amortized…”
“Maybe there’ll be a frequent-time-traveler program, where you get bonus years? I could pile up a lot of those.”
“Please. You’re too young to have that many regrets.”
“Hey, I’m even feeling bad about us.”
“Us, what.”
“That night after we got back from Joie de Beavre.”
“A warm memory, Eric. I don’t think it’s in the criminal code yet, foot-related infidelity? Nah.”
“Did you ever tell Horst?”
“Somehow the moment has never been right. Or to put it another way, why? Have you mentioned it to Driscoll?”
“Nah, pretty sure I didn’t…”
“‘Pretty sure’ you…” Realizing she’s slipped her shoes off and has been rubbing her feet together. At least, you’d say, wistfully.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Maybe…”
“You know, there really are these little tiny people who come out from under the radiator with… with little brooms, and dustpans, and—”
“Eric, no. I don’t want to hear about it.”
32
Next morning Reg Despard calls from over the western horizon. “Watching the Space Needle as we speak.”
“What’s it doing?”
“The Macarena. Are you OK? I would’ve called sooner, right after the towers, but I was on the road, and then when I got finally out here, I was house hunting and—”
“Just as well you got away in time.”
“Came on the car radio, I thought about hooking a U-turn and heading back. Didn’t, just kept going. Survivor’s guilt here.”
“Interstate hypnosis. Don’t overthink it, Reg. You’re out there now in Riot Grrrl country with the wholesome evergreen trees and charcoal briquettes pretending to be coffee and whatever, right? please. Release yourself.”
“All I see is what’s on the news, but it looks grim back there.”
“Lot of grieving, everybody’s still nervous, cops stopping anybody they want to, looking through backpacks—about what you’d expect. But in terms of attitude, life goes on, in the street nothing’s too different. Did you find work yet?”
Hesitation. “I’m temping at Microsoft.”
“Oof.”
“Yeah, the dress code takes some getting used to, all the breathing apparatus and stormtrooper gear…”
“Seen your kids yet?”
“Trying not to push anything, but…”
“You’re from New York, they’re expecting pushy.”
“Got invited over to dinner last night. Hubby did the cooking. Bouillabaisse, local ingredients. Some kind of Yakima Valley chenin blanc. Gracie still has that awesome-new-man-in-her-life glow, like I need to see that. But the girls… I can’t tell you… They’re quieter than I remember. Not sullen quiet, no scowls, no lower lips, once or twice they even smiled. Maybe even at me, couldn’t be sure.”
“Reg, I hope this works out.”
“Listen. Maxine.” Uh-oh. “This phone line we’re on, is it—”
“If it ain’t, we’re all doomed. What.”
“That DVD.”
“Interesting footage. One or two shots you maybe could’ve used a spirit level…”
“I keep waking up at three A.M.”
“It could’ve been anything, Reg.”
“Those guys on the roof, those A-rabs in that closed room at hashslingrz. Training sessions. Had to be.”
“If Gabriel Ice is playing a part in some large-scale secret operation, then… you’re suggesting…”
“Even though the Stinger crew look like private-sector mercs, it would still have to be with encouragement from higher levels of U.S. government.”
“Eric thinks so too. And March Kelleher, well, goes without saying. You’re OK with her posting the video?”
“That was always the idea, I tried to spread around ten, twenty DVDs hopin somebody with the bandwidth would post one at least. Someday there’ll be a Napster for videos, it’ll be routine to post anything and share it with anybody.”
“How could anybody make money doing that?” Maxine can’t quite figure.
“There’s always a way to monetize anything. Not my department. I’m happy enough with the exposure.”
“Build up your traffic, hope that network effects kick in, yes, sounds like an all-too-familiar sad but true business plan.”
“As long as the material gets out there. Long as somebody puts in some HTML that’ll make it easy to repost.”
“You really think Bush’s people are behind this.”
“You don’t?”
“I’m just a fraud examiner. Bush, don’t get me started. The Arab angle, I have these Jewish reflexes, so I have to work to avoid paranoia on that subject also.”
“Hear ya. It’s all good in the brotherhood, don’t intend no disrespect to nobody, too busy workin on my new packaging, Reg 2.0, nonviolent, West Coast and stress free.”
“Just step careful. Send me some footage sometime. Oh, and Reg?”
“Anything, my sister.”
“Think I ought to short Microsoft?”
• • •
NEXT TIME MAXINE AND CORNELIA do lunch, they agree to meet down at Streetlight People. Maxine brings Rocky a Xerox of the hashslingrz file Windust gave her.
“Here, the latest on how hashslingrz is spending your money.”
Rocky scans a page or two with a quizzical face. “Who generated this thing?”
“No-name agency down in D.C., obviously with some ax to grind, but I can’t figure out what it is. Hiding behind some jive-ass think tank.”
“Comes at a good time anyway, we’ve been looking at our exit options from hashslingrz, it’s OK I show this to Spud and the board?”
“If they can follow it, sure, what are you guys thinking these days, recapitalize?”
“Probably, there’s no IPO in the works, no M&A, they got plenty of government work, frankly it’s just time to get out. The cash, naturally, but there’s something else about them over there, like… can I say evil?”
“This is what, Mister Rogers’s neighborhood? I assume you mean IBM- or Microsoft-type evil.”
“You ever had eye contact with this guy? It’s like he knows you know how bad it could be and he don’ give a shit?”
“Thought it was only me.”
&nbs
p; “None of us know how complicated this is gonna get, who they’re really workin for, but if even people in D.C. are gettin worried now,” tapping the dossier, “it’s cash-for-equity time.”
“So I take it I’m off the case.”
“But on my Rolodex forever.”
“Spare her,” Cornelia breezing in. “He’s always telling me the same thing, don’t listen.”
“Git outta here, ya ditzy broads, I got woik ta do.”
Owing to Cornelia’s impression that Maxine somehow observes kosher eating guidelines, they end up at another “Jewish” deli, Mrs. Pincus’s Chicken Soup Emporium. A chain, yet. Everybody seems to be from out of town. Fortunately, the appetites Maxine and Cornelia have brought with them are more for schmoozing than for authenticity-challenged gefilte fish.
Presently Cornelia, with the skill of an accomplished close-up card artist, has out of what seems a randomly shuffled deck of lunch conversation lightly brought them to the topic of families and the eccentrics to be found lurking therein.
“My policy,” Maxine sez, “is don’t get me started, all too soon we’re back in the shtetl with some dark magic in progress.”
“Oh, tell me. My family, well… ‘Talk about dysfunctional!’ pretty much sums it up. We’ve even got one in the CIA.”
“One? I thought all you people worked for the CIA.”
“Only Cousin Lloyd. Well, that I know of.”
“He’s allowed to talk about what he does?”
“Perhaps not. We’re never sure. It’s… it’s Lloyd, you see.”
“Y— Well, not exactly.”
“You must understand these are Long Island Thrubwells, not at all to be confused with the Manhattan branch of the family, and though we have never embraced eugenics or anything of that sort, it is often difficult not to entertain some DNA-based explanation for what, after all, does present rather a pattern.”
“High percentage of…”
“Idiots, basically, mm-hmm… Don’t mistake my meaning, Cousin Lloyd was always an agreeable child, he and I got along well, at family gatherings none of the food he threw would actually ever strike me personally… But beyond mealtime assault, his true gift, one might say compulsion, was for tattling. He was always creeping about, observing the less supervised activities of his peers, taking detailed notes, and when these weren’t convincing enough, I’m embarrassed to say, making things up.”
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