by Jim Nelson
“Name the holding corporation.”
Antic Corporation.
“Antic?”
Antic was a big-name Internet company that failed to transition to the Nexternet. Search, web mail, shopping—back in the day, Antic did it all. And then, almost overnight, they went bankrupt, “cratered” as they say, unable to adjust to the next wave of technology. Such are the fortunes in the software sector. If Antic was still in business and purchasing property, it was in name only. No one had used their digital services in decades.
The holding corporation does not manage the Jones Street property. It has assigned management and peripheral assets on a ninety-nine-year lease to a third party. Transfer cost: One dollar.
“Which third party?”
The Chancellor Foundation.
A ninety-nine-year lease at the top of Nob Hill in exchange for a solitary dollar. It was the most lucrative real estate deal in San Francisco history.
“Have you found Leigh’s former address?”
No, the Wiki told me.
“What about her Nexternet ID?”
None found in public directories.
“Search for one, dammit.”
There are ways to keep your Nexternet profile private, for a price. Hiding your past on the Old Internet was almost impossible due to its porous nature. When the Nexternet was designed, it was designed by people who wanted to fix what was perceived as past problems. Being able to control one's history and privacy on the Nexternet was perceived as a design goal available to all—for a price.
“Search for a forwarding address reported in the last two weeks.”
Nothing, the Wiki reported.
“Try harder.” It doesn’t work that way with computers, of course. There’s no try harder with these machines. Computers give all they can, always. It’s humans that give up.
The apartment proved a dead-end. No forwarding address, no notes for the landlord, no leftover mail—no Leigh Blessing at all. At least I had a place to leave the groceries without littering the street. When I first entered, I’d set the bag on the countertop. I left them there.
Downstairs, I popped into the market to purchase a carton of cold sweetened coffee. I paid for it from the change the clerk handed me earlier.
“Did you say hello for me?” he asked.
“To who?”
“Leigh!” He was put out.
“She says hello back.” Not nice to mess with an old guy, especially one so forlorn for a young woman, but there you go, that’s my job for you.
“Big party planned?”
“Intimate,” I said lost in thought.
“I hope she’s not getting bitten up,” he said.
“Bitten?”
“By the mosquitoes.”
“There’s no mosquitoes in San—” I straightened up. “Why do you say that?”
“Last time I saw her, she bought some repellant.” Ho motioned to a display behind me. Flat tins of mosquito repellant in butter form lined the bottom shelf. “She told me she was going to miss Nob Hill for its weather. Can you imagine?” He motioned to the rain dripping from the market’s pied awning.
Using the change he’d handed me, I bought a tin of the repellant butter. I thanked him, tossed the coffee carton in the compost bin, and hurried out to the rain pulling up the collar of my raincoat.
11.
Four areas in San Francisco now suffered from mosquitoes: Lake Merced, Stow Lake, Mountain Lake in Presidio Terrace, and the low waters around Candlestick. Swiping my tablet screen to scroll through the listings my Wiki had gathered from the city's Assessor-Recorder office, I matched the Chancellor Foundation’s holdings situated near San Francisco’s lakes. I found my answer soon enough.
The rain settled to a muggy mist. The California Street cable car terminated at Van Ness, where I transferred to an autotrolley. It would go as far as Park Presidio before it turned around and began its return journey eastward. Swarms of mosquitoes began buzzing my ears when the autotrolley crossed Arguello Street. I smeared the market’s buttery repellant on my neck and face and the back of my hands. I hopped off at Sixth Avenue and walked north. Monarchs and painted ladies swam happy dances through the humidity here. Flocks of ravenous blackbirds made meals of them. When I reached Lake Street, I was as sticky with fatty oil and stinking of eucalyptus and menthol. Light me on fire and I’d burn for days.
The Wiki directed me to an apartment house on Lake and Seventh Avenue outside the Presidio. The vines and flowers of the carved Art Nouveau entranceway, once exotic, were now choked over with a real-life thicket of bougainvillea and kudzu.
At a cafe across Lake Street, I ordered a late lunch of iced tea, a BLT, and French fries. My memex interrupted my ordering and reminded me to substitute a garden salad for the fries. I ate purposefully at a window seat with a wide view of Lake Street. Mosquitoes buzzed into the cafe like military helicopters. The electrical trap at the door snared most of them with a sizzling pop. The remainder I smacked at my ears and waved them out of my face. I nailed one to the table, a fat flying pouch of fresh blood, my blood most likely.
The Wiki kept returning with blanks on Leigh Blessing. The blanks grew more interesting than the details around them. Leigh Blessing had almost no presence on the Nexternet. Most young people livestream their daily existence across the world. They broadcast their lives moment-to-moment. Privacy isn’t dead, it’s been given a new definition. Privacy today is withholding judgment on someone else’s poor taste. Privacy today is muting your memex when you take a crap. The wall of privacy is so diminished now, for some brave souls, if they’re having sex, you can share their orgasms.
Leigh Blessing shared nothing of her life. The Wiki located early traces of her Nexternet history, teenage high school stuff, but her trail went cold at age seventeen. All it told me was she’d been fitted for a memex at an early age and, somehow, avoided getting sucked into the online culture the way most young people do.
Hours had passed, when a young woman swept past the cafe window. She hurried past, leaving me with a rear view of her strawberry-blond hair in a ponytail bobbing with each rushed step. In memex review, I saw she had a pert nose and thin lips and slight bags under her eyes. She was young enough to be my adult daughter, if I had one. A book bag was strapped across her torso, the tooled-leather pouch jouncing against her left hip, its fringe shimmying with each step. She wore floppy sandals appropriate for the steamy heat but not well-suited to being in a rush. The backs of the sandals slapped against her heels with each step.
Ten seconds later, a man older than her passed the cafe window in a rush as well. He wore a scowl the likes I’d not seen in quite a while. Incongruous for the swelter, he wore a dark suit and an ironed shirt, his crisp starched collar fashionably loose. He was built, a weightlifter’s physique and a leading man’s jawline. He trotted behind her, closing the distance between them. It was patent he could have caught up with her if he broke into a jog. At the cafe window, he barked out Leigh! as though ordering her to halt.
She crossed the intersection on the diagonal, pausing only to let the trackless autotrolley pass. He barked again, a single word I could not make out over traffic. It was probably her name again. She pushed the apartment house entry door open and slipped inside, seemingly devoured by the leafy, vine-covered entrance. He caught up with her just then. She did not hold the door. It swung back and out and smacked him. He banged it away with the butts of his palms and marched in behind her.
I deposited the sandwich wrapper and napkins in a compost bin and added the plate and utensils to a tub of dirty ware. I ordered a double iced espresso with a shot of Amaretto and paid in advance in case I had to run. It arrived within a minute. Standing at the counter, I stirred and sipped and pondered what I’d witnessed. Dr. Clift recalled Blessing’s boyfriend brought to the island an unspecified unpleasantness. Up to that moment, I’d never thought of Dr. Clift as being generous in his appraisals.
The swinging entry door of the apartment house s
lammed open. It slammed hard enough to be heard across Lake Street and through the cafe’s window. The man strode with a determined gait away from the apartment house, elbows out and shoulders forward. He’d changed into a polo shirt and casual slacks and walking shoes. In this part of San Francisco, you changed clothes throughout the day. Steamy, stuffy, humid—oppressive.
The man, I now plainly saw, was the hunky man standing across New Montgomery the morning before when I was staring down at Aggaroy's body. I'd mistaken him for the hotel day manager, but with his face visible to my memex and his memex broadcasting his Nexternet ID, it took me a quarter second to establish his identity. He was Gannon Chancellor. My Wiki confirmed he was heir to the fortune behind the Chancellor Foundation.
Outside the café, I made a quick glance up. Leigh Blessing stood in the window of a fifth-floor apartment peeking down through half-drawn drapes. Her attention was on the man striding away. Her face was a dictionary illustration for the word remorse.
No time like the present. I trotted across Lake Street, minding the approaching autotrolley. I wanted a look up close, to hear her out and get a sense if she was the kind of person who could’ve hacked the Old Internet. Not if she was capable of it—I assumed she was, from Dr. Clift's estimation of her technical skills. If she aired a grudge to me, a scowl, exposed a chip on her shoulder—some anger toward her old employers—it would be a red flag.
The apartment house’s surroundings were free of mosquitoes, a sure sign they’d installed ultrasonic abatement devices throughout the building. The lobby was fresh and ice cold with air conditioning. A doorman’s desk sat unoccupied off to the side. A touchscreen mounted to the desk surface displayed feeds from surveillance cameras around the building. On the wall beside the desk hung a bulletin board with flyers indicating planned building maintenance, community events, and the like. Through a rear set of French doors stood a lush garden with winding walkways and a green marble fountain shaped like a chess pawn. Water tinkled from the garden. Chopin played lightly from hidden speakers around the lobby.
Sensing an opportunity, I continued past the empty doorman’s desk and the elevator doors to a wide carpeted staircase. I mounted the first flight, taking two steps at a time, then slowed to the usual pace the rest of the way up.
When I reached the fifth floor, out of breath, Leigh Blessing stood in the hallway. She faced the elevators with one hand on the strap of her purse. Before I could say anything, the elevator doors parted and she stepped inside the car. She was gone.
At each end of the hallway, windows looked out on the overcast day. The window nearest the staircase offered a view of the apartment garden and its pawn-shaped fountain. At the other end of the hall, the window looked down on the cafe I took my lunch in. I waited, hoping to see which direction Leigh walked. I waited long enough to realize she’d left via some other building exit. She’d lost me without even trying. One day, I’ll remember I’m in computer security. Computer security.
It didn’t require much spatial acuity to guess Leigh had been peering out the drapes of the apartment to the left of this hall window. I knocked on the door of 503, wondering what fruit it might bear. It bore none. A modern memex-based lock secured the door. Hacking it was possible, given a six or eight hours of uninterrupted work and physical access to the neurotransmitter housed inside the wall.
I descended the carpeted staircase at a more leisurely pace than I climbed it. Hands deep in my trouser pockets, I called up Gannon Chancellor's personal Nexternet feed. Unlike Leigh Blessing, utterly invisible on the Nexternet, Gannon had cultivated a healthy and prolific online presence.
The Wiki had discovered a long trail of personal updates and public streams from him going back to almost the dawn of the Nexternet Age. It fed Gannon's life back to me in summary bursts. Like most young people, he’d livestreamed his teenage years: friends, school, clothes, music, favorite hypernovels, all embellished with a smattering of personal politics. Unlike most teenagers, his schools were private and exclusive, but I had to read between the lines to put that together. His music and clothing tastes were of a young person attempting to hide their privilege rather than flaunt it.
He’d caught the politics bug in his mid-twenties. He began endorsing candidates and supporting various ballot initiatives using the Nexternet to signal his worldview. In the public discourse channels, he took on politicians and pundits directly, and he cultivated followers for it. His squeamishness with his privileged lot in life faded around this time as well. His Nexternet presence featured him in exotic locales around the globe, although, again, his vacation choices hewed toward developing countries rather than paradisiacal beach resorts. His travel destinations coincided with Nexternet pronouncements on how he would solve the world's problems given a chance.
Gannon was never alone. No matter what he did or where he went, he seemed to have companions at either side. He was a man with no want. Women, money, and friends were at his beck and call. From my quick sampling of his life, Gannon was the center of attention, always. His most recent livestreams were in support of the Samuel Justin senate campaign. The election was in six weeks. As the Wiki fast-forwarded me through Gannon's Nexternet footprints, I realized he didn't merely support Samuel Justin, but was working for his campaign.
When I reached the lobby, the doorman had returned to his post. He eyed me once but said nothing. Air-tight security.
The air conditioning was delicious. Perspiring from my trip up and down the stairs, I loitered to refresh myself. I dabbed away the sweat with a handkerchief and reapplied more of the butter where I'd wiped it away. In a mirror beside the bulletin board, I combed my hair and straightened my tie and squared my jacket. In the mirror, I noticed the security man eyeing these preparations. I'm sure he was taken aback by my face more than anything. My face looked like a swimmer's thumb after an hour in the pool.
Using my memex, I called up the location of the nearest campaign office. It came back with the Northern Districts Center for the Election of Samuel Justin in the Presidio. It was a twenty-minute walk away.
*
The Presidio is a hilly and wooded parcel along the southern lip of the Golden Gate. For over two hundred years, it was an army base, first for the Spanish, then the Mexicans, then the Americans. After the great shift in San Francisco’s climate, the Presidio returned to Mother Nature’s control. Dilapidated officer’s quarters and mess halls were overtaken by the relentless infestation of weeds, kudzu, and wisteria. The mosquitoes were particularly thick here. The evening sky was filled with great flocks of small birds in a feeding frenzy. Later, the feeding frenzy would come from the bats attacking the birds.
I traveled on foot down a path wending between abandoned Army barracks and busted-up maintenance buildings. The lush greenery covered everything like turf. In twenty minutes, I reached the Presidio’s old parade grounds and redbrick military offices. The sun had set behind the kingly trees growing throughout the Presidio.
This campaign center was one remote office among a hundred throughout California. My Wiki informed me the statewide headquarters for the Senate Campaign to Elect Samuel Justin was located on the top floor of the Palace Hotel, a hop-skip-and-jump from Aggaroy’s alleyway murder. That was quite a coincidence.
The Northern District campaign office door was shut. The sign hanging on the frosted glass said Closed, but the door opened when I tried the knob.
No lights burned inside. Windows made a backlit checkerboard across the far wall. The lamps around the deserted grounds outside shone through and made the room navigable by shadow and silhouette. I proceeded on flat feet.
The campaign center was an old basketball court indoctrinated for public service. Long rows of work tables from hoop to hoop were covered with stacks of campaign flyers and pamphlets. The retractable bleachers on both sides of the court had been shut forming thirty-foot-tall walls of stained pine. Every step of my rubber-soled shoes on the hardwood sent squeaks reverberating off the high ceiling and far walls.
“We’re closed,” came a robust voice from the shadows.
Gannon Chancellor emerged from corner shadows. He’d removed his polo shirt. His bare chest glistened around the armpits and under his neckline.
“The center will be open tomorrow at eight sharp,” he told me.
My memex snapshotted him automatically. The analysis software I’d installed estimated his age to be thirty-five and his height at six foot two inches. He rated a white-hot 9.45 on the Téron-Merrick Attractiveness Scale. I wondered if he’d earned a decimal point or two by removing his shirt. The Scale’s not supposed to work that way, but I’m no fool. He carried a dumbbell in each hand. In the light, I saw his bangs were sharpened to points across his forehead, the perspiration flattening his hair into a black crown. His physique was impressive. A Chicago steakhouse could’ve carved up each arm and sold New York medallions all over town.
“I’m not here for the campaign,” I said.
“We’re closed in any event.” He stopped ten feet ahead of me, the dumbbells dangling at each side.
“I knew Michael Aggaroy.”
"Family? Friend?”
“I knew him.”
“I don’t know what arrangements have been made for his funeral. You might contact his office.”
He apparently didn’t know Aggaroy's agency carried exactly zero operatives in his employ.
"You know he worked for us, then," he said.
“Could you tell me about it?”
He emitted a weary, inauthentic sigh. “We’ve made a statement to the police. We consider the matter closed.”
I fished around in my jacket pocket for the waxed pouch of breath mints I’d purchased at the Ferry Building. “What kind of work was Agg doing for you?” I popped one in my mouth and offered him the same. He refused, dumbbells still at the ends of his arms.
“How did you know Mike?” he asked.
“I’m C.F. Naroy. I’m in computer security. In the past, I worked for Agg.”