Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  Thoughts drifted through my head of their accord, big and intangible, as happens in a head that’s stoned. Everything crystal clear and unavoidable. Jessica’s long blond hair hanging from the top steps of the stairway. The look in her eyes that I’d never see again. Only pictures of her. Photos, memories. And a feeling I couldn’t find a picture to illustrate. A feeling that I was no longer who I was. Like when Kurt turned out to be Kirsten and I lost part of myself. Now I had lost something again. Something more fundamental, because Jessica was the link connecting everything I did, the link between the hard work and the absurd obsessiveness. She was the logic between the lust and the chaos. Without her my organizing principle was gone and I was no more than an accidental collection of data. Unstructured data. That was me. There on the little couch in the camper I felt permanently unstructured.

  ‘We’re systems that we ourselves don’t understand,’ Jessica always said, and now I saw that just the opposite was true. We aren’t systems. We need other people to give us direction. Other people aren’t just other people. We all fit together, literally. Family, friends, lovers, enemies. Without Jessica I had become someone else. Now I was alone, or what was left of me, and the prospects were none too good.

  Cautiously I shook my head to break that line of thought. I couldn’t think about Jessica. Not yet. What had happened in her apartment was too threatening. Too dangerous. Death was too immediate. Around me and within me. Hard-nose to hard-nose. Aggression instead of arguments. I had landed in a world I only knew from the news and from the reports that HC&P produced non-stop. Reports I had worked on myself. The cultural confrontation. The difference that having a God makes. Everywhere there were warnings of growing hatred. Violence was already there, on the streets, unexpected. Fear was growing, it was taking possession of our thinking, our actions, slowly but surely. And now I was right in the middle of it all, dragging others along with me. Gijs, my parents, Jessica, Kirsten and Vince. The circle was getting bigger and bigger, the violence worse and worse. But it wasn’t coming from the quarter that everyone was warning us about. I wasn’t being chased by Muslims. The violence came from the people who were always pointing out the nuances, who made the inventories and wrote the reports. This violence came from HC&P, from the consultants, from the party that was no party at all.

  Or was it?

  That was a question that wouldn’t go away. The question was brief but the implications were overwhelming. If HC&P was not an independent consultancy then the firm was definitely partial. The elaborately detailed projects were not the firm’s advice but its opinions, the opinions of HC&P itself. That meant that the confrontational policies being adopted by more and more countries had not been chosen by the countries themselves but by HC&P.

  You have reached the home of Mr. Miller.

  My breath caught in my throat. Apparently very different rules applied in Mr. Miller’s house, rules that only a small, select group were aware of. Rules that were brutally enforced.

  People make decisions based on facts. Data. If you want to influence those decisions, then you have to make sure you control the data. The facts. That’s what Mr. Miller did. With an enormous network of computers it was possible not only to steal information but also to change it. Manipulate it. Adapt it. I had done it myself with Strila’s computer. I had used the network the other way around without even realizing it. And if I could do it, then others could do it, too. Far better than I could. If you don’t want control, then leave the net alone.

  Even my advice to the Minister of Justice on the best way to address the press: that he ought to be firmer, clearer, less circuitous, that he shouldn’t be afraid of calling a spade a spade, that he should offer people security without losing sight of the facts, that he didn’t have to give in to the growing call for harder measures, but that he did have to have ready answers—all that advice was based on facts that I had never called into question, on figures and data produced by the Ministry itself. Inventories, research and reports that were all open to manipulation.

  By Mr. Miller. By HC&P. And it wasn’t until that moment that that it finally dawned on me that my own computer must have an M-drive, too. My laptop itself was part of the network. The reason Huib Breger and his men had been able to find me so quickly was because they could look into my computer via the M-drive. They knew what I had written and what I was reading. What I had been looking for elsewhere had been with me all along.

  That’s how stoned I was.

  The camper drove through an abandoned industrial park in Amsterdam North. This was the part of the city that was on the brink of being ‘discovered.’ Dilapidated warehouses, half-finished new buildings alternating with vacant lots. Here the old businesses had left and the buildings were waiting for new plans. New people. The advance guard was already here. Artists and performers had moved in, and it was just a matter of time before the wealthier studios and creative agencies discovered the neighbourhood. Now it was still dark and abandoned. The street lighting was minimal. There was hardly a soul to be seen.

  I reached over to the other side of the seat and tapped Kirsten on the knee. Annoyed, she turned her head toward me.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You okay?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Then she turned away again and stared out the window into the dark neighbourhood.

  ‘I …’

  ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Anything you might say now would only make it worse. Apparently you have no idea what I had to leave behind tonight. My apartment, okay? You just drop in, and before I know it I’m ripping my nameplate off the door. Why? Because his highness says I have to. Because his highness has done something that suddenly I’m supposed to be part of. But nobody ever asks what I want. You never asked what I want.’

  She fell silent. Her accusations were older and bigger than our helter skelter flight from Hondecoeterstraat. She was shouldering years of misunderstandings.

  ‘There’s no way back,’ I said, and my intentions were good, just as my intentions were always good. But good intentions didn’t count. Not anymore.

  ‘YOU THINK I DIDN’T KNOW THAT?!’ Kirsten screamed. ‘Did you really think that I didn’t know there was no way back? ME? What did you think I’d been doing all those years? The only difference is that I thought long and hard about it before going down that road. Real long. And you? You take a left-hand turn without even bothering to look. And now there’s suddenly no way back. How dare you?!’

  Vince had turned around and was looking at the quarrel with wide eyes. ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘What? You got something to say, too?’ Kirsten spat the question out at him.

  ‘No,’ said Vince. He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know what’s it’s all about. I only wanted to say that we’re almost there. That’s it.’ He pointed to a building in the dark on the edge of the neighbourhood. Behind the building glistened the water of the IJ.

  Bernie carefully manoeuvered the camper onto the yard through a half-open fence. He drove around to the back of the building at a snail’s pace. Light was shining out of the tall windows and was being reflected on the water. This was the glistening we had seen before. A couple of small boats were tied to a long dock. Bernie turned the camper around with its nose facing a large sliding door and honked, once, short.

  Slowly the door slid to the side. Behind it was a large open area, a huge shed. Two men pushed the door further open until the camper was able to drive through. Bernie accelerated and the camper rolled in. The sliding door closed behind us. I heard the lock clank shut.

  Bernie turned the engine off, opened his door and got out. Vince got out the other side. In a little while the side door opened and he came back in. He extended his hand to Kirsten.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  That’s all he said. Kirsten climbed off the bench and followed him inside. From one moment to the next I was lying alone in the camper. On my stomach.

  ‘Hey,’ I shouted.

  No answer.

 
‘Hey, how about me?!’

  Vince’s crazy face appeared again in the door opening. He smiled.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said.

  I slept. In the silence of the deserted camper, on the narrow bench, my arms folded around my pillow, still enough weed in my body to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. Only when someone began to tug at me did I wake up. There were three men standing around me. Kirsten was sitting backward in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Take it easy,’ she said. ‘Keep his back straight, whatever you do.’

  Caution didn’t help. The pills and salves had worn off. All that was left of the weed was a thick, fuzzy head. Every movement cut right through my back. They lifted me from the bench and helped me out of the camper, where a makeshift stretcher awaited me. It was made of a couple of steel pipes and a pair of old blankets. As soon as I was settled on it, each of them picked up a pipe at the far end and carried me through the shed to a door on the other side.

  Behind the door were the old offices of the former commercial premises. They carried me down a long corridor, up a flight of stairs, around a corner, up another flight of stairs and around another corner until we finally entered a room. It was a room with a bed, a table, a chair and a closet. There was a door to the corridor and a window with a view that I couldn’t see, because I was flat on my stomach again.

  45 Bellilog 06.28.04

  Okay. Not okay. It’s not okay. I’m lying here in a room somewhere (it is doesn’t matter where) and K comes in and asks how I’m doing. Just like that, the way people do. A normal question. And she looks at me, at my eyes. She doesn’t look at the bare room, or the old mattress, or the mold on the walls or the paint coming down from the ceiling in strips. She doesn’t look at the total absence of facilities. There’s no heat, no water and no electricity in the room. There’s one lamp that’s connected to an extension cord that gets its power from another part of the building. But she doesn’t look at that. Or at my body, which is so stiff and miserable that I can barely move without piercing pain. No, she looks at my eyes, as if she could peer through those little round balls and see deep inside me, at the havoc I’ve left behind there. Because I’m living outside myself. It’s safer out there. And that’s not okay.

  46 The Pattern

  ‘Where am I?’

  No one responded to my question. Kirsten checked to see if I was comfortable. She pulled my shirt up and felt my back. Her fingers slid down my vertebrae, almost without touching them.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘this is something I can work on.’ She turned to Vince. ‘Do you have that bag somewhere? The yellow one with the pink handles?’

  They both left the room behind me. I heard their footsteps going down the hallway. Silence. In a little while Kirsten came back. She put a glass of water on the small table next to the bed. Vince brought the bag and dropped it on the floor beside her.

  ‘You mean this one?’ he asked.

  She nodded, zipped the bag open and took out the tube of analgesic cream and a package of paracetamol. She gave me a couple of tablets. I swallowed them with water one by one. After the last tablet she took the glass from me and put it away. Then she picked up the tube and began to rub the cream into the spot on my back. Very slowly, very gently, she rubbed the cream into the pain. I shut my eyes, bit on the edge of my pillow and waited until she was finished.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.’

  Vince was sitting on a straight back wooden chair next to the bed.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘And to you.’

  ‘You doing all right?’

  ‘Let’s not overdo it,’ I said. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘At The Pattern.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Actually it’s a commune. An IT commune.’

  ‘An IT commune? Sounds like a contradiction in terms.’

  ‘Because you don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Right. Less than I’d like to know.’

  ‘Seventeen people live and work here,’ said Vince. ‘All of them involved in high-end software design. Not games or other fun stuff that only keep people further away from technology. No. Systems. Operating systems. Content management systems. Security systems. Specialized. The Pattern picks up where WorldWare leaves off. That’s how you have to see it.’

  ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘More than that.’

  ‘But you yourself don’t live here.’

  ‘I do now.’ He laughed. ‘Kirsten may be mad that she had to leave her apartment, but I’m not. I was just about to move here anyway. All I needed was a kick in the butt, so, uh …’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. And if they can’t hack that network here, then I don’t know who can.’

  A jolt of fear ran through me. I saw my newly found peace and quiet disappearing once again. In less than an hour they’d discover this place, too, and Breger and his men would be back on my trail. I didn’t want that. Not ever again. From now on, all channels were closed. That was the only way to keep from being found.

  ‘Whatever you do,’ I said, ‘wait till I’m there. Don’t go near the network without me.’

  Vince looked at me with pity.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘These guys are the best in Holland. We really do know what we’re doing.’

  I shook my head. ‘Maybe you do know what you’re doing, but you have no idea what the others are up to. And I do.’

  ‘It’s the same old song and dance!’ Kirsten’s voice broke through the tension that had built up between Batte and me. ‘He always knows better,’ she said. ‘Even when he was twelve he knew better, and he hasn’t come one step further.’

  ‘Kirsten, please,’ I said. ‘I’m trying …’

  She laid a finger on her lips in an effort to shut me up. Then she bent over and looked at my back.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Now I see it. Vince? Give me a hand, will you?’

  The two of them helped get me out of bed until I was standing upright. Arms around my body. It felt uncomfortable. The pills and the cream had done their work, so I could make certain movements without feeling too much pain. Kirsten stood right behind me.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘Go ahead.’ She slipped her arms under mine and hooked her hands in front of my chest. ‘Just lean back against me and follow my movements,’ she said.

  I relaxed my back against her and swayed along. She began with a slow twist, to the left, backward, to the right, forward. And again. Pain crept from my backbone to every part of my body. The pills weren’t strong enough. I groaned.

  ‘Relax,’ Kirsten said again. And she turned once more. ‘Stay relaxed.’ Finally we found a cadence, a slow rhythm by which the weight of her body moved mine forward and I turned with her, almost effortlessly, with increasingly greater ease and freedom. The pain was still there, but the movement and Kirsten’s softly-spoken syllables almost put me in a trance. To the left. ‘Good.’ And back. ‘Further, further.’ To the right. ‘Relax.’ And forward. ‘Let go.’ To the left. ‘And turn.’

  Just as my whole body was about to turn left, she clamped her arms tightly around my chest and cracked my upper body in the opposite direction. I screamed. All the strength and counter-strength seemed to be concentrated in that one spot on my back. Kirsten paid no attention to my screaming but kept on pushing until she felt a little shock, a click, like a connection that falls into place. At that moment she relaxed her grip. She let me loose, but she didn’t let me go. The pain flowed away, from my back, my legs, my arms. From my head. Like salt dissolving in water and leaving a clear fluid behind.

  ‘Better?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Take it easy for a couple of days and you shouldn’t have any more problems. I’ll be right back to check on you.’ And with those words she walked out of the room. Kirsten. She got her expertise from two different worlds: that of the brilli
ant physics student and that of the manual therapist with remarkably strong hands. Kirsten was a team all by herself.

  Vince’s eyes followed her as she left. So did mine.

  ‘Jesus, how’d you get such a sister?’ he asked.

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘But I’m not the one to answer it.’

  47 If we’re free, we’re lost

  The Pattern worked in one enormous room. Long tables, banks of computers, monitors, a jungle of cables. Keyboards with colour codes to tell you which computer they were connected to. Everything mixed up together. There wasn’t even the appearance of order in the placement of the equipment. It was more like something that had grown organically, an enormous technological fungus with wires, cases and surfaces.

  ‘I thought information technology was all about order,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all about imposing order,’ said Batte. ‘That’s something different. And precision. Not neatness. The important thing isn’t understanding the system. If we were to start in on that, nothing would ever happen. The important thing is that the system works.’ He pointed to the tables and the jumble of paraphernalia. ‘And that works,’ he said.

  We walked past the equipment to a group of five men and women standing around a separate table. As we got closer I saw two dismantled laptops lying there. Mine and Vince’s. Like dead pets. I felt a flash of unexpected pain somewhere in my chest. This was my little computer. In the past weeks it had been my only remaining possession. I had slept with it and worked with it. I had leaned on it, literally, and cradled it in my arms. That night in the tram it had kept me upright. It was my contact with the rest of the world. It was by means of this laptop that Jess and I had talked to each other, when that was still possible. By means of this laptop I had found Huib Breger 2, I had forced the partners of HC&P out of their hiding place and had ended up with Vince Batte. It wasn’t just any old thing, it was a buddy, a friend (although it did have a rotten spot).