“Well, what happens if Peregrine is caught?”
“He doesn’t have the riemanium with him,” Greg improvised. “He’s got it stashed. If he’s caught, well, we can be the ones who recover it for him.”
“If he’s caught, won’t he want to use the riemanium as leverage to spring himself?” George pressed the point.
“Maybe,” Larry said, following Greg’s lead, “He’s a real political person, and this cause is important for him. But even if that happens, what do we lose? Nobody but us knows who’s behind this thing. It’s not like we’re sticking our necks out by putting our name on this. So, if something like that happens in the long run, what do we lose? Until that happens, if it happens, it’s a great opportunity to make a political point.”
“First off,” David said, “We need to decide if we can accept the general spirit of the proposal before us. Do we agree to put together an antiwar ‘context’ for the riemanium?”
They went around the table and each agreed. Only George expressed strong reservations that matters could too easily degenerate into adventurism, but in the end, he too agreed. Beth then volunteered to put together the communique, with Larry’s help, and the suggestions followed hot and heavy.
“Don’t be too specific about how the riemanium was obtained.”
“Use desktop for the type. Better yet, cut words out of magazines, punk style.”
“Color xerox the pictures. Xerox the type over the pictures.”
“Well need a snappy name. I don’t like the one suggested.”
The latter provoked a long discussion, as various proposals were batted back and forth. Finally, the Mexican Revolution Solidarity Brigade was chosen, “brigade” being more militant than “committee” or “organization.”
“Absolutely no fingerprints. Use gloves.”
“Don’t lick the envelopes. Use a sponge.”
“Get a media list from the library. Hit radio and TV as well as the papers.”
“Let the cops get their story from the media.”
“We don’t even have to threaten to make a bomb. The smallest particle of riemanium can cause cancer. We can threaten to dust the City.”
This also provoked debate, over what demands to be made backed up by what threats. They reached consensus to make US withdrawal from Mexico and an end to the war the focus while making the language as non-sectarian as possible. No direct threat would be made, although both the potential for a weapon and a dusting would be outlined in the communique.
“Mail the letters from the central Bay Area. No Alabaster cancellation.”
“Buy generic stationary. Five-and-dime.”
As the rounds continued, Greg leaned back in his chair and gazed up into the green canopy above. His eyes gradually picked out an object he first took for a knot of debris, litter of some sort somehow hung up in the tree. Suddenly, he realized it was a ball of feathers. It was a bird, an owl perched on a branch, its eyes closed, asleep until dusk allowed it to hunt. He glanced back down from the owl to catch Lori staring at him with curious, hooded, hungry eyes, scented smoke escaping her lips. Greg and Larry made their way down the hill after the meeting of this, another “mountain,” a potential volcano, adjourned, only to have David sideline them.
“Larry, Smoke doesn’t know about any of this, does he?” David asked.
“No.” Larry answered.
“We’d prefer you didn’t tell him.” In the background George, Lori and Beth indicated agreement with David.
“Why?”
“‘Cause Smoke is a little, shall we say, erratic. Unpredictable. Not dependable.”
Smoke was an Enrage, and David et al were Jacobin wanna-be’s. Larry and Greg, lost in their own machinations, did not pick up on David’s. Greg walked with Larry to the south parking lot, passing a metal-based ceramic sculpture, a stylized, off-white sperm whale.
“We’re riding the tiger now,” Larry breathed.
“You’ll keep in touch with Beth about the final details,” Greg said, hoping his friend would take the responsibility seriously. “School’s heavy for me this semester.”
“Sure, no problem.” Larry hesitated as Greg reached his car.
“Keep it conservative and general. Nothing we can’t back out of. You know what I want, but if you have any questions about what Beth comes up with, get hold of me. David’s probably going to ghost write on this thing.”
“Man, I hope we’re doing the right thing.”
“You and me both, brother.”
Greg drove home, old broad leafed trees arching over his speeding spitfire in the dusk. The maid, Consuello, was there and the house was spotless. She gave the young man a disapproving look, having had to clean up the debauched remnants of his orgies with Margaret. Consuello was from Panama, on Green Card, with a sister and her family in this country. She worked four days for the Kovinski household as a live-in, helping with her sister’s housecleaning business the other two, to leave the Sabbath holy. He called Margaret, but her female roommate answered.
“No, she’s not home. I don’t know where she is or when she’ll be back.”
He was irritated at not getting hold of her. They had no commitments, no responsibilities to each other, and certainly nowhere near the depth of relationship he had shared with Janet. Yet it irked him that she was not home, waiting on his call. A pang of intense loneliness overwhelmed him. He wanted a lover, not just someone to screw. He wanted a partner with which to share his life.
Greg fixed himself dinner, more pizza and burgers, while avoiding Consuello’s judgmental gaze. And, when she was not watching, he snuck a couple of beers. He ate in his room, doing homework until the beer caught up with him. He slipped on a basic glove and just the goggles to walk through his pc ‘some in MC Escher virtual to figure out the cost of the Hemming’s engine job. He added a materials rough from his on-line mechanics database to his guesstamation of time on the lathe multiplied by $50 an hour. He wrote a letter on his computer, accessed the Einstein in the den downstairs through the home ‘some (set on low key Peter Max by his father), primed the OXO’s fax, and sent his estimation regular priority to his potential customer’s fax message cache.
Then he wandered down to the Einstein, and the stack of new bought software Consuello had straightened up beside the computer. With a couple of his own disks in hand from the house software library, he began the routine install of the NOOSPHERE and GODEL programs into the home ‘some’s compunet. He piggy-backed his own anti-Spook program at the right time onto the new software’s already formidable anti-viral/counter-hacker defenses. Not all Spooks were hackers and not all hackers were Spooks. But when a Spook was a hacker, the individual tended to be a brilliant pain in the butt.
Some of Greg’s friends were Spooks; Spook being where techno went musically. Smart drug-XTC-Acid House-Rave 20th century techno easily evolved into techno’s 21st century masq-digital-Spook-999-brain stim on that relentless neo-disco beat. It was evolution further along in what a few Spooks were calling “digital dreamtime;” the artificial electronic reality they claimed to be creating not only with direct brain stimulation, but also with attachable computer symbiots for mental amplification. And not just with Love 999, but with newer generations of designer drugs as well. Drugs tailored for effect to individual body chemistry, as well as bio-drugs of genetically engineered neural enhancers. The Spook slogan “everything’s digital” meant designing digital audio and video art, and making them mutually translatable; saying “digitized” for stoned and “analog” for straight; developing neural shows; doing deep VR and kything... Spooks had invented Emo-Tech.
Pale as the grave, dressed in pure black so as to disappear by night, some with brainstim sockets; Greg only worried about Spooks when they became kythers, the Spook term for hackers. Greg and his dad subscribed to Internet, AT&T Mail, NoloLine and EcoWeb. The Einstein in turn managed the house phone, modem, fax, fibre and cable via the OXO. A clever hacker could gain electronic entrance into the home ‘some t
hrough these connections to the outside world. Sophisticated compunet software came with killer virus and hacker defenses to prevent just such penetration. Spook hackers, however, walked through electronic walls on digital juju. Once in a computer like the Einstein, an aristocratically arrogant Spook kyther had access to every other networked computer in the house, Greg’s included. The potentially endless havoc and permanent damage that even one such electronic “break-and-enter” could wreck in the home ‘some had grabbed Greg’s attention by the short hairs.
He did not approach it in terms of competing with the Spook. He had no hope to out hack the hacker. Instead, his anti-Spook program was a simple, effective shutdown device that worked on the “seven second delay” principle, on the order of seven nanoseconds. It looped all incoming electronic transmission, in effect creating a time delayed electronic front. A Spook hacker either would start right off cutting into the Einstein’s defenses, triggering a shutdown, or would take notice of the piggy-back program and in disabling it, trigger a shutdown. It was an early warning device, telling Greg to take the Einstein in for diagnostics and some serious discussion of higher level defenses. Larry, who practiced far more stringent prophylactic measures for his home compunet, had turned him on to the two original software templates, which Greg combined and modified for the Einstein’s operating system, lb date, it had never cut in to cut off the Kovinski compunet from any intruders.
He ran diagnostics on his installation, then detached from the cyber reality that he and his father defined with their computers. He grabbed another beer on the way up to his room, downing it as he smoked a joint and listened to Sonic The Jam Death Cult at considerable volume over his earphones. His father would be home tomorrow, and he would have to tell him. He carefully removed all the pictures of Janet from around his room, taking them out of their frames and sliding the photos into a folder in his desk. When, he wondered to himself, when would Janet’s memory stop haunting him?
***
Peregrine entered the dark Gondwana Cafe with ease. The roof trap into the back storage room jimmied easily with his tools. He knew how the business operated and didn’t expect much. The ease of entry and proximity were the benefits. Ferns cast eerie shadows across the floor from street light. The cash register’s safety drawer yielded up $240 some odd in bills. Then, he was gone, leaving any guilt behind.
***
Greg hurried to Remley Plaza after statistics to find the ASP peace rally still in progress. Over two thousand students crammed into the plaza, focused on the stage and PA setup in front of the Student Center. An assistant professor, his prospects for tenure long ago blown by his proclivity for sleeping with his female undergraduate students, droned on about the university as a knowledge factory, students as proletarians and the need for a new type of class consciousness to begin to halt the university’s complicity with the war machine. Close to three hundred flag waving jocks and frat boys, with a sprinkling of girls and the odd skinhead and Null, clustered in front of the library, shouting counter-slogans in a feeble attempt to compete with the booming PA. Most of ASFs peace monitors formed a line between the crowd and the counter demonstrators to prevent trouble. They were supplemented by a half dozen campus cops.
Greg half expected the Movement’s ass-kicking members also to be hanging out near the counter demonstrators, waiting for the chance to rumble, but none were evident. Looking around he found close to a dozen MDRG boys loitering nonchalantly all about the steps of the Physics and Mathematics Building, only one campus cop anywhere near. He had not made any of the ASP “action faction” committee meetings, but he knew something was up.
The speaker finished, the crowd applauded, and an MC took his place at the microphone. As she made several announcements, Greg caught Beth’s eye, standing next to David near the stage.
“We mailed them out this morning, before the rally,” she whispered, “Larry looked it over and approved it before we did.”
Greg had Larry’s faxed copy of the communique folded in his shirt pocket.
The MC said it was time to hear from the next speaker. Smoke bounded on stage, the ever present sunglasses capped by a black toque and underscored by a black and red kaffiyeh. He popped the microphone off the stand and paced the stage, holding the mike like a rock star.
“Ill be real brief with this,” Smoke cleared his throat, “I’m just gonna run down some of the Department of Defense grants and contracts that professors in the P&M Building are working on even as we rally here in this plaza.
“Number one. Professor Douglass Faber is currently modeling the dispersal of factor three volatility” heavier-than-air gas over a given territory of torrid forest vegetation. Read tropical Yucatan jungle for that, and the Pentagon’s new arsenal of ‘non-lethal’ nerve gasses for the other.”
Hisses and boos rose from the crowd.
“Number two. Professors Alden Milikan and Stephen Bullock are currently studying whether coherent, modulated electromagnetic pulse effects can be employed to disrupt advanced mammalian neural activity. We’re talking here about using a side effect of nuclear explosions to paralyze human nervous activity over wide areas.”
More hisses and boos. A chant started: “Stop The Air War! No More Genocide!” Smoke cut in.
“Number three. Professor Kelley Strong is now patterning the more effective pancake dispersal of *high velocity micro projectiles.’ This university is researching how to make more effective anti-personnel bombs, the same bombs we’re dropping all over the Yucatan to terrorize and maim innocent Indian children and other villagers not a part of the Zapata Liberation Front.”
“Lesco! Resign!” the crowd bellowed, this for ASUs president. Peace signs and fists rose to shake in the air.
“All of you,” Smoke yelled over the mike, “Look at your hands. Those of you who are students at this university, your hands are covered with blood.” The crowd started quieting down, the counter demonstrators included. “When you paid your fees to this so-called institution of higher learning, you dipped your hands in the blood of slaughtered Mayan women and children.” Complete silence now, waiting for a pin to drop. “There’s only one way to wipe the blood off your hands. Only one way to stop the rivers of blood flowing through the Yucatan.”
Smoke stood stock still and dramatically raised his right arm, finger extended, to point at the waffled Physics and Mathematics Building.
“SHUT THE FUCKER DOWN!”
The MDRG moved then, up the steps with about fifty other students. The crowd, directed by Smoke’s theatrics to look, responded viscerally and surged forward. The one campus cop was overwhelmed. Within minutes, doors were jammed open and students flooded into the main lobby and down the building’s radiating halls until the entire ground floor was packed.
“Lesco! Resign!”
“1,2,3,4...We Don’t Want Your Fucking War...”
“Stop The Air War! No More Genocide!”
“5,6,7,8...We Don’t Want Your Fascist State!”
Fire alarms rang out, by design. The building’s labs and classes disgorged. The students and professors evacuated through the occupation, many joining though most exited the building to further disorganize the confused squad of campus police trying to get a grip on the situation.
“No Draft! No War!”
“No War, No Way...”
“Peace Now, Peace Now!”
“...No Fascist USA!”
Someone hauled a portable, amplified lectern out of one of the lecture halls and set it up in the lobby. The speeches—rabble rousing, lecturing, inspirational, rhetoric laden—began.
Greg quietly left the occupation around 4:30, past a loose line of cops who had a hard enough time keeping people from casually walking into the sit-in, let alone to arrest or harass those leaving. As he drove home, he shifted gears mentally for what was to come.
“Evening Greg,” Andre greeted his son from the living room.
“Hello Dad,” Greg put down his books, “How was New York?”
/> “Tiring,” the distinguished man, dark hair silvering in streaks, hugged the young man briefly, “I’m glad to be back. I hope you haven’t gotten into too much trouble in the peace movement. Ready for some dinner?”
“Sure.”
Andre selected the Revelle Italian Bistro on the Loop. The father had the linguini in mushroom and clam sauce, and the son had the meat and sausage three cheese lasagna, both starting off with soup, salad and garlic bread. Greg noticed through the window that the Gondwana Cafe across Barbary Park was doing a brisk business with ASU students, despite the occupation on campus.
“Dad, Janet and I have broken up,” Greg announced, between bites of his meal.
“Oh?” his father gave him a glance, eyebrow arched, “How did that happen?”
“She wrote me a letter. She said she’s seeing someone else.”
“Did Janet break it off?” Andre tried to zero in gently.
“She still wants to be friends,” Greg played with the remainder of his salad, “But I don’t know if I can. We had lots of plans. I thought we meant a lot to each other. I really don’t understand how she could do this to me.”
“I see.” Andre used fork and spoon to expertly devour his meal. “It took me a long time to be friends again with Rachel. And I’m still not a very good one, I’m afraid.”
“Dad, is it even possible these days to have a long lasting relationship with anybody?” Greg bleated, “I mean, you and mom. Janet and me. Everybody’s parents I know, most of them have been divorced before. I mean, should I just give up on expecting any kind of long term thing with anybody?”
“My mother and father, your grandparents, are still together,” Andre sidestepped his son’s pain, which struck too close to his own conclusions about male/female relationships in the modern world. After Rachel, Andre’s relationships had been fleeting and unsatisfying; more like brief affairs. Work was his only true solace. Rachel, who now ran an award-winning LA Times city desk, had never remarried.
“But they’re so old. They’re from another time altogether. They came over from Europe after the World War. It doesn’t seem that anybody younger than they are values that type of relationship anymore.”
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