The Egg Code

by Mike Heppner

  “Some other time, I guess.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Most of the guards in here are pretty cool. This isn’t really where they keep the hardened criminals.”

  Again, Gray laughed. Why am I laughing? he wondered. What’s wrong with me? Controlling himself, he asked, “How long are you going to be stuck here?”

  “Who knows? I could use some time off, anyway.” Olden touched the Plexiglas wall, his fingertips turning white where they pressed against the glass. “It’s not that bad, Gray. It’s not luxury living, but it’s okay. Besides, it’s fun hanging out with my dad.” Martin Field, Gray remembered, had been imprisoned here for the past five years. “And I’ll have more energy when I get out. I might even start up a new version of the Egg Code.”

  Gray glanced at the two guards, worried for his friend’s sake, but Dale was too busy picking his teeth with the side of an American Express card, and the guard with the leathery head was more interested in staring at the ceiling, pointing at it first with one finger, then two, then three, then four, then none, then one, then two, then three, then four.

  “I won’t call it the Egg Code, though,” Olden said. “I think I proved my point. Technology can’t change the world. Things are what they are. It doesn’t matter what typeface you use, for God’s sake.”

  Gray swallowed; something hard and shaped like a ball stayed inside his throat. The vague need to apologize faded as the conversation followed a lazy course. Both men enjoyed talking about Scarlet Blessing’s new gig at the Casa d’Freak in downtown North Crane City. Scarlet— another name, like Martin Field, from the not-too-distant past.

  At half past twelve, Dale placed his sheriff’s hat back on his head and tightened the chin strap. It was time to go. The two friends waved goodbye and promised to meet again in a few months. Leaving the room, Olden followed the guard with the leathery head down a hallway illuminated by bright fluorescent panels; one of them flickered far ahead, but the men turned before reaching it and entered a small library, where about a dozen or so prisoners sat around laminated tables, reading law manuals and potboilers donated by the Citizens’ Action League. The librarian was a resentful, ugly man named Curt who warded off conversation by hiding behind a copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde. He spoke with a heavy Swedish accent, and his favorite catch-phrase was “Put the book . . . down!” which he delivered with action-movie zeal at least once every hour. Standing in the doorway, Olden noticed his father sitting at one of the computer terminals near the back of the room. A few of the prisoners looked up from their reading as he walked by.

  “Hey, O-Nice!” said a long-haired prisoner in an orange jumpsuit. On the cover of his book, a cowboy wrangled an angry steed as a woman in a red dress clung to his waist. Smiling, the prisoner bobbed in his seat. “O-Nice . . . eatin’ the rice . . . like sugah an’ spice . . . gonna sell it for a price . . . don’t worry ’bout the mice . . . ’cause he’s got some lice . . . gonna give it to ’em twice . . . his favorite drink is bourbon and Slice . . . when he goes to the shrink, he says gimme some ad-vice . . .”

  “Why are you reading that crap, Cleet?” Olden asked, nodding at the book.

  The man laughed, smoothing the part of his mustache with his pinky. “Yo, we got some sex going on, bay-bee! Love in the fields, know what I’m saying? Love in the fields.”

  Olden shook his head, not understanding. “Love in the fields?”

  “Yeah!” Closing the book, Cleet pointed at the author’s photo on the back cover. “I’m talking about some full-frontal, butt-wild, au naturel, muthafuckin’—”

  Curt’s voice boomed over the rustle of pages. “Put the book . . . down!”

  Cleet glared at the librarian and thumped his chest with both hands. “Ey, ey, ey, I’m talking to my friend! You wanna take that away from me? You wanna take that away from me?”

  Setting aside his copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde, Curt nodded at a pair of his muscle-shirted cronies, who descended on the man and yanked him out of his chair. Cleet kicked with both feet, his long hair making wild, wet-mop whipping motions as he struggled to break free.

  “You are the best!” he screamed, pointing at Olden as the guards dragged him out of the room. “Attica, bay-bee! Attica, ’71!” Raising his fist, he disappeared around the corner, still calling out: “You are the best, bay-bee! I’ma sell you some cigarettes, cuz! I GOT THE HOOK-UP! I GOT THE HOOK-UP! I’ma sell you some cigarettes . . .”

  The commotion faded as Olden returned Cleet’s fallen chair to the table. Another prisoner—a stubby, baby-faced fella with a Revolutionary War–era musket tattooed on his fat cheek—picked up the romance novel and shook his head. “Brother got to know,” he said, “when you start to strut, that’s when you get beat down.”

  Olden nodded and joined his father by the computers. Startled, the older man looked up from his work. Martin Field had changed considerably since ’94. The GC had been right to prosecute, petty as it seemed; the routing tables he’d stolen had ultimately led to thousands of dollars’ worth of vandalism and computerized hijinks. It wasn’t much money, but after so many years, the Gloria Corporation had learned to look after every dime.

  At least being in prison had brought Martin closer to his son, and every few days they would meet in the library to discuss his upcoming release. As the time drew near, Martin’s fears increased. He didn’t want to leave. There was too much unresolved in the outside world. “Don’t worry about it,” Olden assured him. “Mom’ll take care of you.”

  Martin closed his eyes. “I can’t ask her to do that.” As always, he felt nervous talking about this. Even after five years, he still thought about Donna Skye—her legs, her tits, the improbable fact of ass-fucking her in a motel near the airport. “I mean, I feel very bad personally.”

  Olden looked at his own face in the dark computer screen. “Mom admires you a lot.”

  Martin tried to smile; he felt dishonest, even doing that. “You think so?”

  “Sure! I mean, she works for the fucking navy. She knows how this country operates. You did the right thing.”

  Martin shifted in his seat; his son’s political views had never made much sense to him. “Well, to the extent that I did anything at all, I just . . . I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do! You were saying to people, Look, this network is fragile. It’s not what those dipshits were going on about in the early sixties. Paul Baran and all that. Yes, theoretically it’s true. When you have a distributed network, the chances of taking out the entire system in one shot are almost nil. Who cares? That’s the cold-war mentality right there. Yes, it can survive a full-force attack from the Soviets. Most cases of subterfuge aren’t that obvious. These are computers we’re talking about here. There is always going to be an anomaly. That’s just the nature of systems. And it doesn’t matter how fine the margin is. The fact that the anomaly exists renders the whole thing corrupt. That’s what you pointed out. And that’s why you’re here today.”

  His father laughed nervously. “Olden, I’m glad that you’ve taken such an interest in my work.”

  Olden shrugged—a ho-hum expression, maybe yes, maybe no. “Well, that’s just because you finally decided to stop working for the DoD. TCP/IP is the Esperanto of the computer age. It’s economic fascism.”

  “I don’t know, Olden. These are old issues. I’ve lost interest in them. But you’re still quite young, and I would suggest if you feel that something is wrong, then you should devote your energy toward bringing about change. That’s what the people of my generation did, and that’s just . . . America.”

  Olden started to rant. “I’ve already done all I can. I showed ’em— right here in the Midwest! In this stupid town. Why there? Who owns the property? That’s what I want to know. Who owns that tower? Most of the land out there is private, even the little dump I was living in. That all belonged to Bartholomew Hasse. Does he own the tower?”

  Martin looked away; his words traveled over a treacherous ground. “Mr. Hasse owned
several pieces of property in that area, but the tower was not one of them. The tower was the reason why you were out there, because he suspected of the likely candidates, it was our best bet, according to the information we had.”

  “Which you supplied, right? The routing tables. You at least explained them to him. Hasse couldn’t decipher that information on his own.”

  The dangerous ground broke under Martin’s feet. “Well, the actualities are a bit muddled. Mr. Hasse certainly wanted you out there. I don’t think he ever suspected you’d try to demolish the thing. What he needed was a presence. An interested party. Someone on the scene who felt the way he did.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was . . . well, personally I think his only concern was money. To him, the Internet was a threat to his publishing business. But he knew you were idealistic, and that you loved books. I guess those things go hand in hand.”

  Restless, Olden let the conversation drop. Anything was better than hearing his father pontificate about technology and the generation gap. Whatever gap existed between the two of them had nothing to do with generations. Olden’s point of view was informed by a reluctance to identify himself with any of his peers, anything not contained within his own self-ratified constitution. It was a losing battle, but being in prison made it easier.

  Saying goodbye, he waited by the door for an escort, then led the guard with the leathery head down a corridor, past a series of bad smells, to the cell block on the north side of the building. Prisoners held their hands out as they walked by.

  “By the way,” the guard said, hefting his keys. “I put your blue form through.” He unlocked the gate and winked. “You got your light back.”

  “All right, my man.” Olden smiled at the star-badge on the man’s chest. “Hey, what do they call you around here anyway?”

  Gently guiding Olden back into his cell, the guard shut the gate and turned the lock. “You’re not gonna believe this, but—” Down the hall, someone screamed “GIMME MY SHOE!” but the guard just clacked his teeth and said, “Most folks ’round here don’t even know my name.”

  “No?”

  “No sir. Most folks just call me ‘the guy with the leathery head.’ ” The guard’s black eyes glinted under the brim of his wide hat. “You b’lieve that?”

  “That’s a good one.”

  Taking off his hat, the guard leaned forward and said, “My head look leathery to you?”

  Olden shrugged. “Not particularly leathery.”

  “My point exactly.” The guard replaced his hat and started down the hall. A few prisoners called out to him, and someone even yelled, “HEY, SERGEANT—YOU GO HOME AND FUCK YOUR WIFE? YOU GO HOME AND FUCK YOUR WIFE?” but the guard just muttered, “You don’t talk about my wife,” and continued on. Olden climbed up onto his bunk and found something waiting for him on the pillow—a thin book with a simple white cover. He opened the book and held it in his lap. There, under the glow of a bare sixty-watt bulb, a few black shapes burned across an otherwise empty page. Like a blind man, he ran his fingers over the letters. The letters pressed back:

  LIFE IS FAIR

  XXV

  Throat

  The Rightness of Dying

  Approaching the end of my little indulgence, I feel it might be useful to give an account of my parents’ demise, just as a kind of after-dinner liqueur, something dark and weighty to contemplate before driving off into the night. You don’t know much about my mother. Rarely have I written of her, for she is not the point here, and neither am I. The point is you, wonderful you, you with your various grievances, some great and some small, grievances which I have sought to address in my own shallow way over the past twenty-five years.

  My mother, who died in 1972, never had the chance to attend one of my Cheer the Heck Up weekend seminars. The cause of her premature death was a massive knife wound to the stomach. It was a kind of double suicide inflicted upon the same person; having swallowed thirty-seven aspirin tablets, she then attempted to cut them out with a grapefruit knife. I can only assume—for my mother was a peaceful woman who would rather cut her steak with the side of her fork than use a knife—the pain was so unimaginable that it overcame her ability to reason. The instant she felt that horrible burn, all intellectual reservations about suicide were soon forgotten, and she could only think of relief at any cost. In retrospect, the forced-extraction method was probably not a good idea. Well, live and learn. In fact, the method of her suicide has always puzzled me. I can’t imagine her swallowing thirty-seven of anything. My mother was never a glutton. Always left a little on the plate. Good God, she even swallowed the cotton.

  When I was a kid, my mother presided over an assembly of other neighborhood women, serving as their local guidance counselor—an unofficial responsibility, but one which tends to seek out those cursed with the gift. At my age, I was able to eavesdrop without drawing attention to myself, and thus heard many sad tales of neglectful husbands, surly teenagers, chemical addictions: subjects which, in my own chosen profession, would become all too familiar. One summer evening, the ladies decided to buy her a cake, a half-assed token of their appreciation. I remember opening the front door, looking up, then standing aside as they presented her with a plain white box, the name of the local bakery stamped in black. It was a nice gesture—probably set ’em back a buck or two—but when we opened the box, we were horrified to discover a big gash tearing through the various layers of cake and frosting. Someone had stepped on the cake. A few of the women fainted, collapsing splay-legged onto the couch. My mother said something along the lines of Oh, it’s all right, but the head of the committee would have none of it, and in a mad march of indignant rage, the procession stomped out of the house, swearing vengeance on the bakery up the road. My mother and I waited for them to return until well past ten, when she woke me up with a slice of cold apple pie, and we sat there in my room, sharing the slice, sharing the same fork, my mother lying next to me, her legs wadding the sheets, big swirls bunched near the bottom. The incident was quickly forgotten, and unless I’m forgetting a few stray words scattered in the breeze, that was the last kind thing anyone ever tried to do for the woman until the day she died.

  For what ultimately happened was this. I grew up and went off to school, and the month I received my master’s degree from Midwestern University, my father died of a heart attack. Mother spent the first few weeks sitting in the basement, talking to herself, sleeping in a chair. My parents were always affectionate around each other, and shared a passion for board games. There was one game—I don’t think they make it anymore—where if you landed on a certain spot, your opponent got to say “You’re in the dungeon!” Consigned to my bedroom, I would hear this nasty phrase repeated over and over, sometimes well past midnight, the words followed by an interval of soft and sloppy kisses. I quickly decided that the dungeon was a pretty good place to be.

  After the funeral, I moved back to live at home and eventually started taking night classes at U of M, all the while wondering why none of the neighborhood women bothered to stop by anymore, now that the man of the house was gone for good. I sometimes ran into them at the grocery store; in those days I did all the shopping, since my mother was too fragile to leave the house. These women—whose husbands still beat them, but lovingly now, tinged with a hazy awareness of their own mortality— would smile at me in the aisle, and without even mentioning my mother’s name, they would launch into a neurotic screed about their own irrelevant dramas as I stood there with the image of my mother superimposed over the canned goods, my mother politely enduring day-long tales of marital woe in her long, solid-colored dress, offering her best advice, bearing their burdens on her weak, all-too-human shoulders, and I thought, Oh, you miserable cunts, you bitches, you cunts.

  Over time, I’ve learned to suppress my feelings. Even without the grapefruit knife, without the thirty-seven aspirin tablets, surely my mother would be dead by now. Nothing matters in the end. There are some of us who are meant to die viol
ently. Better to do it with a knife than with a pension. My father, when he died—good God, almost thirty years ago—I’m sure he was afraid of death, much as you are. He felt his heart closing in on itself, felt the dizzy weight pressing against his chest every time he got out of a chair. After he died, his body continued to digest the linguine primavera inside his belly for another few hours until finally not even that worked anymore. Knowing my mother, I’m sure she put a little sprig of parsley on the plate—just for decoration’s sake— but I imagine he might’ve swallowed it anyway, a sweet little gesture, something to please the ol’ gal, his last token of love spread out across the walls of his stomach.

  Anyway, he died, and I wonder if there might be a lesson in all of this, some bit of wisdom we can apply to our own deaths-in-the-making. It is my job to find the lesson in everything.

  Um. Okay.

  Here’s a shot. Death is . . . I want to get it perfect. Death is the goal. Death is the right thing at the end of everything. Imagine your life as a fast trajectory moving toward a large, unavoidable target. You’re not going to miss it. There’s no skill involved. Picture it as a literal target, if that helps you to get the idea. A real bull’s-eye, except that the eye is as big as the target itself, and there’s no penalty for drifting off course because there are other bull’s-eyes to the right and left and up and down and even behind you to catch you when you fall. You have nothing to worry about. You want to worry, worry about the dishwasher, and the fact that it hasn’t worked since last month. But don’t worry about death. Because it’s gonna happen. The only thing you’ve got to do is keep looking. Keep looking at death. And to my younger readers, you keep looking too. You especially—you’ve got more time to do it right, to hit death confidently and with class. Keep it in your sights at all times. Learn to like it. No, learn to love it. Never cower. Never fear. Look toward your death, poor people of America—therein lies your emancipation! The target will take care of everything. This is the great one-point plan, the secret I’ve been hiding from you for all these years. Money, sex, frustration—no longer will these things have the power to hurt, to corrupt. Emptiness will become a thing of the past. In this nearby place, the fruitcakes will rule. And I will have succeeded at last.