by Ray Mazza
There were hundreds of computer cabinets in this room, scores of rows… yet every one he opened was brimming with equipment. Why hadn’t Trevor hidden first? It was more acceptable to find Damon up here than him! Jesus! There was no time to switch now.
He heard the conference room door open, and the two men ambled out, still talking.
He couldn’t risk opening any more cabinets, they were too noisy. He could hear them coming closer, walking slowly past each aisle toward the entrance vestibule… they were maybe 4 rows away when their footsteps halted.
Seconds seemed like minutes to Trevor as he scanned the room for an answer. Could he just hide with his back to the far end of the row of computer cabinets? No, too narrow.
He looked frantically around, and his eyes settled on a river of cables that flowed out of one of the cabinets and into a gap in the floor, where a large tile had been set to the side. This floor, like the floors of most technology companies, had removable tiles to access the space below that was primarily used for running internet cables, phone lines, ventilation, and power.
He couldn’t hesitate any longer. Trevor went for the open flooring. It was a two and a half foot square aperture riddled with cables, and he needed to crawl feet-first down through it. Trevor wriggled amongst the cords. When only his head was still protruding, his feet hit something hard. He tried shimmying around it, but whatever it was, it was large. It must be a support for the floor.
Then he heard footsteps again. They’d started walking – slowly, but still ever closer – they would pass his aisle in maybe just five or six seconds. There would be nothing more conspicuous than a human head sticking out of the floor.
Trevor twisted his body until he was sideways, then pulled his head down through the opening and to the side, contorting himself into the fetal position. His movement kicked up some dust from beneath the floor and it got in his eyes. He rubbed them, but his fingers were caked with grime from the sunken floor, which made it worse.
The footsteps were just a few feet away when they halted again. Trevor held his breath, terrified they might have seen or heard him, but he was both blind and out of line-of-sight, so he couldn’t tell. The acoustics of the current positioning worked in Trevor’s favor, and he could make out a good deal of the conversation.
“…but if Mr. Stonefield is as certain as he says he is,” said Paxton, “then you can continue to count on my full support. I will remain dedicated to this project. The country – the world – needs this.”
Was Paxton going to use simulated humans in the government? The thought was too staggering to process. But none of that would matter if they found Trevor and stuffed him in a secret FBI prison camp for spying on the mayor.
Either they didn’t know he was hiding under the floor, or they were pretending to carry on a meaningful conversation while Kane fished around in his pockets for something lethal to inject into Trevor’s neck.
“Of course we’re both certain,” said Kane. “You do your part, sir, and we’ll make sure to do our part. How can you be so convinced… (muffles).” Trevor was losing bits and pieces of the conversation to intermittent harmonic crescendos of resonant computer fans.
“Suddenly you need reassurance?” inquired Paxton.
“Yes.”
“I had to sneak out of my own home to be here, an incredibly difficult task. This isn’t the time or the place for this.”
“Actually,” said Kane, “it is. I need to know. I’ve had... things have been changing quickly around here and I’d like something more solid to go on.”
“All right then,” said Mayor Paxton, “I can feel it. I can sense it in the media, the way they talk about me, the way they smile when they shake my hand. I can hear it in the voices of my supporters and feel it in the words written in their letters… and I can tell the opposition knows, deep down, that they don’t have a chance. I have faith that I will be president.”
Trevor thought he heard a faint snigger from Kane. “You can feel it? Feel it? And faith – faith is meaningless! I’m sorry, sir… sorry about that, but you realize this has to happen, (muffles).” Kane said, “How am I supposed to react to this?”
“I can guarantee my victory for reasons besides faith alone, but faith is the most important component.” Paxton heaved a sigh, but when he continued talking his voice had strength behind it: “Although I tried to resist the notion, I have some extremely… (muffles)… eight elections since I’ve been born, Kane. Listen to what I’m telling you. Eight elections. Five of them – Five... (Lots of muffles)… This is reality. I am part of the inner circle. I know. There were even more before my time. Do you understand what I’m saying? Presidential elections, Kane. (long series of muffles)…”
At this point, Trevor could barely hear anything, as if Paxton had turned away. It was a few minutes before pieces of the conversation became audible again.
“…well then,” Kane stammered, “ahem. Well, I trust what you are saying, as implausible as it sounds. But I also know… (muffles)… So I’ll warn you now: If something should go wrong, we will be forced to take a more decisive action.”
“And, Kane, I trust you will make sure nothing gets in our way, despite the slipups and setbacks so far. I also trust that the machines have been completed, prepped for deployment, and the timing will be perfect, and… (muffles)… bring salvation to the world. (muffles). The cloud –” Paxton stopped abruptly.
“Are you okay, sir? You – ”
Paxton sneezed violently. There was a thump on the floor tiles, it sounded like Kane might have jumped.
“Bless you.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” said Paxton. “It’s colder than a brass monkey’s balls in here. Let’s go.”
Footsteps stamped on tiles until the sound was faint, then nonexistent. Trevor couldn’t hear them leave the room, but assumed they had. He felt like he could finally inhale normally again. His eyes were crusted around the edges from tears washing out the dust.
Trevor attempted to crawl out from under the floor, but his arms were wedged awkwardly among bundles of cords, and he couldn’t use his strength effectively to push himself back out the tile opening. He didn’t want to yell to Damon or make too much noise, so he waited for Damon to wander down the aisle looking for him.
After what seemed like twenty minutes, Trevor gave up and began squirming around, eventually able to get one of his hands out of the hole above his head, then another. With an effort that left him panting on the floor, he managed to wriggle his way back out through the umbilicus of wires over the course of an exhausting five minutes.
Trevor rolled around, helpless and weak, gasping for air, hot despite the frigid temperature of the room. He felt as if he’d just squeezed from the womb of some massive technological she-beast, the afterbirth of trillions of bits of data.
After he finally got up, he found Damon right in the computer cabinet where they’d parted.
Damon rubbed his shoulders as he emerged. “I couldn’t hear a damn thing in there. Pretty soon I was just going to cross my fingers and open the door with the hope that they’d be gone.” Damon looked Trevor up and down. “What in God’s name happened to you? Did you do the run of the bulls while I was in there?”
Trevor was filthy, and his shirt had a tear. He explained where he had been, then they headed into Ezra’s control room for both warmth and to check the building’s security monitors. Although there were no cameras on the hidden floors, they could see Paxton putting on a hat on the entrance floor and leaving the building. Kane was nowhere in sight.
Damon pulled up the door logs. He scanned the last few entries. The most recent one read:
Fletcher, Kane………29 – Neurologic
“Change of plans. He’s in the neurology lab… I was hoping he’d have left with Paxton. Sometimes I don’t even think Kane sleeps. Not sure how much time we have, so we’d better be quick.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure what the original plan was anyway,” said Trevor, “so I f
ully support the new plan… which I also don’t know anything about.”
“Like I said, the plan was for you to see as much as possible in case something happens to me. I’d say we got more than we bargained for. The old plan also was to talk to Ezra so that we could dig and see if she had any hints as to the intentions of Kane and Stonefield, since I’m suspicious of them both. Now I’d say my suspicions are founded.” Damon drummed his fingers on the console, losing himself in thought.
The room looked like it had been built by a technophile on speed. It was lined with high-end monitors, input cameras, and speakers. Two virtual reality helmets dangled from the ceiling. Keyboards and mice shared various surfaces with manila folders bulging with documents. There were even a few custom controllers used to navigate three dimensional spaces. It might make sense to have those if Ezra lived in a larger area than Allison.
“The new plan,” Damon finally continued, “is to remove a communications chip that has been synchronized to Ezra. We can use it with the mainframe that Allison lives on, and it will allow us to see and talk with Ezra, even though her simulation is running here.” Damon squatted down by a bulky safe resting on the floor and worked its dial back and forth. “There are only two of these chips. They allow wireless communication via a highly encrypted signal. They transmit over a radio frequency.”
“What, like cell phone frequencies?”
“We own our own band of the spectrum from 105 to 108 gigahertz. Officially, it’s designated for passive space research signals, radio astronomy, and transmissions from Earth exploration satellites. Unofficially, those things only use the 8 gigahertz of allotment above our band rather than the whole 11 that’s reserved for them.”
“How do you work something like that out?”
“The government – the NSA, to be specific – has their hands in all forms of communication, especially airwaves. They gave us this segment of radio frequency as part of another project. It’s safe to assume they listen in, but even they cannot break our encryption.”
“As far as you know,” added Trevor.
“And we know quite well. Even if they could break it, they don’t have the hardware to run what we’re transmitting.”
Damon finished the combination and swung open the thick, steel door. He reached in and pulled out a compact briefcase. Inside rested two chips, each the size of a quarter. Damon slipped one of the chips inside his cigarette-tin-like case. “I didn’t want to have to take one of these. They can’t be replaced; they’re manufactured at The Valley branch. This chip,” Damon tapped his case, “isn’t supposed to leave the building yet.”
Damon resealed the safe. “This past week we synchronized both of these chips to communicate with Ezra’s simulation. Soon, one is going to be shipped back to The Valley for Stonefield. The other… well, I don’t know what the plan is for it. Kane might notice before we can return it, but it’s a risk I feel we have to take.”
Damon checked the door logs again. Kane still hadn’t left the 29th floor.
Damon yanked at Trevor’s arm. “Let’s go. Quickly.”
An overwhelming tiredness overcame Trevor. He was dirty, sore, and had barely gotten any sleep since the night before. He desperately wanted a shower and longed for his bed. He didn’t even respond, he just got to his feet and turned to leave.
That’s when a blue glimmer caught his eye from one of the work surfaces.
A small sapphire-colored object partially protruded from beneath a folder of papers. He recognized it immediately.
It was his stolen memory stick.
Chapter 24
Questions for the Universe
That was definitely Trevor’s memory stick. What was it doing in Ezra’s control room? And a mere 24 hours after a thug stole it from his apartment?
“Damon.”
Damon turned and looked impatiently at Trevor. “I’ll answer more of your questions later, we need to go. Now.”
“Damon, this is my memory stick.” Trevor held it up between both their gazes, pinching it with his forefinger and thumb.
“I don’t think so. We have all sorts of memory devices around here. You aren’t the only one with a blue thumb drive.”
Trevor twisted it in his fingers until the other side faced Damon. “How many of your company’s blue thumb drives have a double-helix with my initials drawn on them in Sharpie?”
“… You need to put it back. Right now. Leave it just as you found it.”
Fear struck Trevor. Damon didn’t seem shocked by this discovery. His eyes didn’t widen, the pitch in his voice hadn’t changed, he didn’t give it an inquisitive look; he merely spoke matter-of-factly. Trevor immediately felt like he was back in his apartment only feet from the intruder. It hadn’t occurred to him that Damon might be part of whatever this was. Would he have been so careless as to leave the memory stick there and then bring Trevor into the room? No… no, he wouldn’t. Regardless, somebody else here knew of Trevor’s involvement, and that was bad.
Trevor replaced the memory stick. Once he set aside most of his fear that Damon was a threat, Trevor felt strange. Leaving his stolen possession there was a hard thing to do. He’d always had a hatred for thieves… there weren’t many people in the world worthy of hate, but thieves deserved it ten times over.
He’d imagined himself in scenarios where his wallet would get stolen, and he’d chase down the crook, kick him in the groin before tossing him through a plate glass shop window, then retrieve his wallet. Trevor often imagined capping it off by stuffing the robber in a dumpster full of used saw blades for good measure. He’d never be capable of that, of course. He wasn’t a violent person. The most violent thing he’d ever done was throw mashed potatoes at an elementary school bully in the cafeteria (and he’d learned not to do that again), but it didn’t stop his mind from wandering.
So the thought of finding his stolen property and then having to leave it was counter to all instinct. Nevertheless, Damon was right. He left it there, as he’d found it.
~
Damon apologized to Trevor for not getting to see the more intelligent simulants as planned. But this was better – they would soon be able to communicate directly with Ezra from Damon’s home. And as much as Damon wanted to know what Trevor had overheard while hiding under the floor, they didn’t want to risk being found out by Kane, so they both quickly headed off their separate ways.
Damon had said that the next time they met, they would discuss – how had he worded it? – Everything, and then some.
In the mean time, Trevor would continue to spend time with Allison during the day, and Damon would assess the situation at Day Eight and try to learn more about the Mayor’s involvement. Today was Tuesday, and Trevor was going to take the day off to rest. He more than needed it. His entire being felt drained, like his soul had slowly leaked from every pore of his body over the past few days.
At home, Trevor locked his door and balanced a glass on the handle. If anyone tried to get in through it, the glass would fall and alert him, and if he was lucky, would scare off whoever it was. Then he slid his dresser in front of the taped-up window.
~
Damon got home and instead of bed, opted for a stiff drink over ice, half bourbon, half apple brandy. He brought the bottles with him out back. He didn’t often drink alone, but for the first time in his life since his daughter died – no, this was the only time in his life other than that – things were becoming unmanageable. This was a foreign feeling to him. He was used to being in complete control, knowing what was going to happen, when it would occur, and why. And usually the “why” was because of him.
Things were becoming dangerous. Now that he had Trevor’s trust, he could ask Trevor to fix their code problem, which would pave the way to the ultimate goal. They had pressured Damon on this, said it was urgent, but Damon didn’t really need pressuring. He’d been planning on it. He wanted to reach the ultimate goal more than they did. But now things were moving more quickly than he anticipated. And he
was second-guessing his intentions to involve Trevor with Allison, because Kane and the others didn’t know she was here or even alive. Everything was at risk now. But Allison needed care, what choice did he have? He thought using Trevor would be killing two birds with one stone. And a very volatile stone it was turning out to be.
He couldn’t walk away.
Aside from Allison, the ultimate goal was the only thing that he lived for. It would be the only thing that anyone would live for, if they knew. Of all the people in the history of the world, and all those who awaited in its future, he was the luckiest – he would be here when it happened, be at ground zero; he would witness the most important event in the entire history of civilization.
He was sure of it.
He just had to keep things from falling apart until then. After that, nobody would care if he had Allison.
Damon tipped up his glass and downed the rest of the libation. It burned his throat on the way down, but it was a good burn.
He poured himself another and stood barefoot on the grass at the bottom of his porch where a light mist crept over the warm earth of the lawn. He marveled at its fluid motions in response to his moving feet. Then he stood still again, took a large gulp of his drink, and watched the mist tangle around his ankles.
~
Trevor woke up well-rested around 11 am, vacuumed while singing awkwardly, then devoured an order of Kung Pao chicken in front of the news.
First was a horrible story about a nursery’s roof partially collapsing from water damage and killing three infants. That was followed by an update on a teen pop-star’s social shenanigans.
It surprised him how the anchor could so simply change demeanors between clips. One second she was somber, and between sentences, she flipped to jubilance as if the death of infants was simply another item crossed off a laundry list of daily announcements. Just a husk of flesh that the network had hypnotized to report current events, Stepford-style.