Someone in Scotland Yard wasn’t out celebrating or keeping the peace that night. Someone was hunting for criminals. And they’d found him.
Had they noticed how Lee Berners continually tried to break the law? Or had they worked out that he wasn’t genuine? Either way, they would soon track down the actual IP address of Michael’s tablet. It might take them a while to unravel the convoluted path he took, but eventually they would locate it. He had to get rid of it!
Wiping cold sweat out of his eyes, he had lifted the hotel room’s fire extinguisher high over the tablet, ready to smash it into pieces... but... it wouldn’t be enough, he realised. The police would examine everything on Lee Berners’s timeline, they’d visit every place he had supposedly been, and conclude it was a completely fake auto. Which is when a routine trace would become a full-on manhunt for the source of illegal blackware.
Then nowhere would be safe.
Michael had stood by the window, watching fireworks explode above London’s skyline. Behind him, the Browning 9mm was lying on his hotel bed. A chunk of slate-grey steel on a floral-patterned duvet.
Only one way out of this. He had to give them what they wanted.
“Ladies and gentleman,” blares a voice across the whole store. Michael pops his head up to glimpse a policeman using one of the security staff’s radio headsets. “Please stay where you are and remain calm. A police investigation is under way. Please cooperate with the officers as much as you can and everything will be fine. Do not use any devices of any kind. All networks within the area have been temporarily suspended.”
Swearing under his breath, Michael checks his tablet. It’s true, no online access at all. They’ve cut him off!
“I... I’ve logged in,” Meena mutters.
He turns back to the cubicle smartscreen, which is now displaying the Autotal Showroom’s admin system. It’s a mess, even more complicated than an auto’s privacy settings. He hasn’t got time to find his way around it.
“Bring up a list of everyone who registered a new auto here today.”
Blinking as if holding back tears, Meena’s hands flick and slide through empty air. The display changes to a list of about twenty names, each with timestamps, serial codes and a tiny picture beside them. Today’s customers. Right at the very top is Eanga Tepaki.
Scanning down the list, a name leaps out at him. Dalmar Xasan Mussa. Male, 34, a Somalian national with a work-permit visa.
Just what he needs: foreign.
Michael stabs at the name and Dalmar Mussa’s account details fill the screen. He was here in the store about an hour ago, upgrading his old Microsoft Curator 6 for one of the new Google Saturns. Obviously a sucker for advertising. Runs rings around other autos!
Ignoring the new one, he instead brings up details of Dalmar Mussa’s old auto, the Curator 6. Inactive. Archived.
Michael taps on a few icons, summoning an input screen, and types out a string of numbers.
Dalmar Xasan Mussa
Microsoft Curator 6.3.7
72646238
Supervisor mode AAA
“What are you doing?” whispers Meena beside him. He doesn’t spare her a glance. His fingers are typing in commands that he should have forgotten about. Passwords and codekeys that he shouldn’t have to remember.
The screen becomes something simpler, outlined in green instead of blue. Something old.
“Is that... the operating system? But how can you – ”
“Quiet!” Michael hisses. He can hear the bootsteps of police as they thud into the store. He doesn’t have long.
And yet... he can’t stop looking in the place where CORECODE used to be. He knows it’s ridiculous, knows it won’t be there, but the impulse is too strong. He wastes precious seconds looking through kernels and modules, wastes more seconds calling himself a moron when it isn’t there, of course it isn’t, what did you expect? Doesn’t matter. He still has access to the auto’s basefile structure. Come on, move!
Michael rests the gun in his lap and taps on his portable tablet, until the fake timeline for the Lee Berners profile is displayed. He holds his hand over the tablet, waiting for the beep, and then makes a drag-and-flick gesture towards the cubicle smartscreen, as if casting ashes to the wind. A colossal column of code streams down it, too fast for the eye to follow.
Then he pulls out. Shuts down Dalmar Mussa’s inactive auto. Logs out of the Autotal Showroom admin system. Hits the full-erase icon on his tablet to wipe it of all data, including its IP address, and pockets it. Turns towards Meena.
She looks like she’s seen a ghost. “How did you... nobody can do that, autos are... they can’t be...”
“Keep quiet, stay calm,” says Michael as he aims the Browning 9mm at her again, “and you might not die in the next five minutes.”
Her jaw clicks shut. Hands clenched in her lap.
Keeping the gun hidden by his body, Michael half-twists in his chair and peers out of the cubicle. Blinks with shock. There’s a giant of a woman striding right towards him.
She’s almost two metres tall, towering over the burly policemen on either side, and absolutely dwarfing the store managers who are trying to talk to her. About Michael’s age, she’s huge and heavy-set, shoulders sloped inside her overcoat, thick legs bulging her trouser suit. Her large, soft face has a square chin and no trace of make-up. She has a frizzy halo of vanilla-blonde hair and is wearing oval glasses tinted strawberry-pink, with a chocolate-brown scarf coiled around her thick neck. For one weird second, Michael gets a craving for ice cream, the multiple-flavour sort he used to wolf down as a kid.
The woman is actually walking with reluctant slowness, as if this store is the very last place on earth she wants to be. It’s only her massive stride that makes it seem she’s powering right towards Michael like a jet airliner.
“...like to let us know exactly what this is about?” one of the store managers is saying as the group approaches. “We weren’t given any warning – ”
“Just need to access your store network,” says the woman. Her voice is husky, but she sounds tired. Exhausted, actually. Like someone who’s –
Been up all night.
Michael shivers. Is this her? Is this the detective who was probing Lee Berners last night, while the rest of the country was celebrating New Year?
Pull your head back in, don’t look at her, don’t let her see you! But Michael resists this impulse and watches as she is led to the first cubicle, on the opposite side of the room. She pulls some kind of portable USB drive from her coat pocket and slams it into one of the smartscreen’s ports, like an assassin delivering a precise knife-blow.
The same log-in screen for Autotal Showroom’s admin system comes up, but is quickly bypassed. The logical, not-scared-shitless part of Michael’s brain is impressed with whatever digital tools she’s using. They look like they could give her access to just about anything.
She doesn’t sit down – he doubts she’d even fit in the chair – but hunches close to the smartscreen, blocking his view of whatever she’s doing.
Michael glances round. Three store managers, all babbling questions. Three police officers. Plus a youthful-looking man in a blue suit who is also part of the force… he’s dark-skinned and clear-eyed, looks dangerously fit and alert. Which one should he shoot?
Meena is trembling beside him and he knows he’d have to grab her first, use her as a shield and hold her tight enough that her struggles didn’t throw off his aim, he might only have one shot, he couldn’t afford to let them get close...
And it crosses his mind that it’s Madam Neapolitan he should aim for. The detective who found him, who might know who he really is. If she’s worked it out then he’ll have to put a bullet through that big lumpy face. He’d have no choice. She’s bound to remember the name Michael Walker, and if she discovers Michael Walker is back in the country, Michael Walker is standing only a couple of metres away…
“We’ve got a name!” she barks loudly. He visibly jumps, but for
tunately so does everyone else, including the police. She swivels around and shouts out the name, even as Michael’s finger slips inside the Browning 9mm’s trigger guard and his legs tense to spring up from his seat –
“Dalmar Xasan Mussa!”
The police officers all start scanning the store, but her young associate in the blue suit tells her “He’s been geotagged.” He scrolls down a list on his own portable tablet. “About a kilometre north east, vicinity of Ealing Broadway Tube station. Looks like he’s leaving.”
“Is he now? Bless. Get TfL to shut down all lines. Turn off local wi-fi hubs.” The enormous woman lets out a sigh, as if disappointed. “Let’s pick him up.”
Her associate looks up with a frown. “You want us to check everyone in the store anyway? Take statements?”
“Why?”
“Well, that’s standard procedure – ”
“Waste of time. We’ve got our man.” She yanks her USB drive free triumphantly, like a gladiator pulling a broadsword out of someone’s chest. “You can’t fool your own auto!”
Without sparing a glance at the store managers, the detective stomps towards the main entrance. Police start shouting at each other, all right let’s get moving people, all units mobilise, all cars to Ealing Broadway Station, move move move!
There’s a clatter of noise as a dozen police officers charge back out onto the street. The sleek cars reverse off the pavement, then swoop back onto the road. The flashing blue lights fade as they are swallowed by traffic, sirens rising and falling, slowly becoming more distant.
Nervous laughter ripples around the store. Confused, bemused and amused expressions from staff and customers alike. What was that all about!
The music starts up again, as Autotal Showroom (Ealing Broadway Branch) gets back to normal.
Michael tilts backwards onto his chair as if in slow motion. His chest is far too tight for him to breathe out with relief. Right now he isn’t convinced he could move a muscle. Not even the ones in his index finger, still curled around the pistol’s trigger.
Meena is gaping at him. She has the expression of a woman who’s just witnessed an astounding magic trick that defies all explanation. Or a murder.
“You... you passed it... your own past... on to someone else!”
She looks at the smartscreen on which she saw him probe deep into the guts of Dalmar Mussa’s old auto, like a surgeon performing the most invasive surgery ever. “You made him the, the criminal!” she stammers. “You set him up!”
There’s a hundred things Michael could say. He just nods.
“But they’re going to arrest him! He hasn’t done anything, that poor man, and the police are going to arrest him!”
Exactly right. The Lee Berners timeline, the whole made-up lot, has been inserted deep into Dalma Mussa’s old auto. Not visible to the outside world – it will look as if it’s been very carefully hidden. But a deep-search with the right tools, like the ones Madam Neapolitan uses, will find it. Digital records of blackware usage, of falsified profiles. Serious breaches of the International Internet Regulations.
He’s tattooed his own moko onto someone else’s skin. On the inside.
“You can’t fool your own auto!” Michael both can and can’t believe he heard the detective say that. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. It’s everything he hates about what this country has become, right there in one stupid, stupid sentence. The way people trust whatever’s digital. Only seeing what the auto shows you, instead of opening your eyes and looking around. Looking at the man sitting right behind you!
Maybe he should be grateful that everyone’s so blinkered and dumb now. But it feels like discovering your once-clever child has grown up into an arrogant moron.
Michael knows the police won’t believe a word Dalmar Mussa tells them, when they arrest him. They’ll think they have stone-cold evidence connecting him to the criminal organisation supplying illegal software. The interrogation will last weeks, maybe months, during which Michael will be free to do what he came back to the UK to do.
Ultimately the Met Police will realise that the poor bastard was set up, and be forced to release him. But even then, Michael knows all too well, Dalmar Mussa will never be considered innocent for the rest of his life. He’ll always be on a register of potential offenders. Today’s events will always be flagged up in his background checks.
Michael knows. Shit sticks. And digital shit never washes off.
It was the only way out, he reminds himself. To give them what they wanted.
“But how?” demands Meena. “How did you know how to – ”
She cuts off when he raises the Browning 9mm, as if suddenly remembering she’s being held at gunpoint. He opens the folds of his overcoat and slides the pistol into the pocket, making it vanish. Meena doesn’t get a chance to relax before Michael leans across the empty space between their chairs and speaks directly into her eyes.
“You’ve seen what I can do.”
She holds her breath.
“If you tell anyone what happened here, I’ll do the same to you.”
She nods shakily.
“But worse. Much worse. I’ll make you look guilty of the sort of crimes nobody ever forgets. The sort of sick shit that makes the news.”
She blinks too much.
“Nobody will believe you didn’t do it. Not your friends, not your husband, not your kids. Nobody. I’ll make you look like a monster.”
She squeezes her eyes shut.
“And I know you’ve seen this happen,” he goes on, surprising himself. “When someone gets accused of something nasty, it gets picked up online like wildfire, doesn’t it? People’s autos Dislike it instantly because everybody’s got ‘moral high ground’ ticked in their settings, haven’t they? And then it gets shared to their Circle, and their autos start adding little messages of disgust or outrage, and then it goes viral and before you know it, everyone’s made up their minds. It doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not, the verdict is in, it’s decided in hours, minutes, and it never goes away, the tags next to your name are permanent, the stain is permanent, and nobody ever, ever forgets whatever you were meant to have done. Trial by auto! That’s how it’s done in this country now, isn’t it? Trial by fucking auto!”
She shudders, a tear trickling down her screwed-tight face.
Michael leans back. Chest rising and falling. Tendons standing out on his neck and tattooed forearms. Right now he probably looks every inch the Maori warrior, worked up for battle.
He forces himself to calm down. He shouldn’t be saying all this, but... Jesus, he just can’t stop himself.
Outside their cubicle, people are moving back and forth through the store, not realising that a customer has just aimed a gun at a sales assistant. A gun far more dangerous than the semi-automatic pistol inside his coat. A weapon of a much higher calibre. Nobody ever survives those wounds.
Michael Walker didn’t.
For a moment, he considers telling her his real name. Just to see the reaction. Just to see if she remembers the news stories from five years ago. Does anyone? Or is his name long forgotten? No, he decides. If she does remember me, she’ll report this to the police the minute I’m out the door, no matter how scared she is. She’ll be more scared of me being on the loose.
It’s been five years now, but no doubt she can recall his shouting face on the news. The debates. The riots. The arrests. And the threats that, briefly, caused the eyes of the entire world to focus on him in absolute terror.
Michael Walker – the man who tried to kill the internet.
He reactivates his portable tablet, which syncs with the cubicle smartscreen. Seconds later, the profile of Eanga Tepaki shines from the flexible memory-plastic. The auto now associated with him will always know his location, and will always make itself available to him on the nearest available device. Everywhere he goes, there he is.
He stands up and shrugs into his overcoat, feeling the pocketed handgun bang against his thigh, and
booms “Thank you very much!” Cook Islands accent. “You have been very helpful. I’m extremely happy with my new auto.”
Meena wipes her face. She isn’t looking at him. In a tiny voice, she says “You’re welcome.”
He looks down at her for a second, wishing... no, no point wishing, that gets you nothing in this world.
“Kia Orana,” he says with a slight bow, almost formally.
Eanga Tepaki steps out of the cubicle and walks across the store, weaving in and out of red-shirted staff members, potential customers playing with gadgets, teenagers singing along to the music. As he walks out through the door, his tablet beeps, announcing the direct debit to Autotal Showroom for the cost of his Macroverse Opportunity auto and accompanying fees.
Setup complete.
It’s New Year’s Day, Saturday 1st January 2022, and Eanga Tepaki has bought a new auto.
Outside the store, cold sunshine hits his face and he inhales it deeply. He smiles, causing his moko to curl upwards, as he strides down the high street. All the people gazing down at their tablets and smartphones, or with the thousand-yard stare that comes from looking at the world through digital eyewear. The tattooed Maori man walks among them. A foreigner, but a legal one, with all the opportunity that brings. He has a lot of work to do, and a company to establish. Katuke Exports Ltd will soon be looking for its first British customers.
He chose the name himself. Katuke. ‘It will be different.’
Eanga Tepaki opens his tablet and starts giving instructions to his auto, looking just like everyone else as he vanishes into the crowd.
Relationship Status
It’s a great relief for Amy, to escape the enforced silent zone of the bar. They’re not installed everywhere yet, thank God, but she expects it from somewhere trendy like Shoreditch, and that’s where her old work colleagues had wanted to meet for a drink. At least it wasn’t filled with bloody couples, like the whole of London seems to be tonight.
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