by David Yoon
Pilot had led him out of Noelle’s room and back into the basement, where they jammed some more. Slower, more emotional songs this time. Then Akiko fell asleep, and Shane carried her up and away, and then Pilot called it a night, and after that it was just Max and Brayden scratching out a big noisy shit salad with their instruments. Then Brayden abruptly said bye and went home to sleep.
Max remembered sneaking into Pilot’s office and teetering before the wall of monitors and noticing something weird on one of the screens:
How lovely, Shane!
Had he really seen that?
After that he woke up to see a vee of pelicans sailing by in the sky above.
He wandered the house, through the great room with its floor cushions, past the garden atrium with the glowing snowball stone.
He heard a wind chime. So he followed the sound.
He turned the corner to find a wide blue rectangle of light that led down a corridor of extruded glass. The glass opened to reveal a deck of perfect lines of pale walnut surrounding an asymmetrical aquamarine rhombus—a pool, unlike any pool Max had ever seen—and a crisp white table elaborately set for brunch: eggs, bacon, asparagus, juice and coffee and bread and tea and so on. Max felt his stomach stir.
At the table sat Pilot, staring at a laptop. “He lives,” said Pilot.
Brass bells swayed on a web of twine and made distant gamelan music.
“Bloody Mary?” said Pilot, offering a pitcher of red. “Hair of the dog.”
“Yes, please,” said a voice behind Max. Akiko emerged into the sunlight.
“I’ll just have a dry bagel,” said Max.
Pilot squinted at him with small eyes. “I have artisanal hand-cut bacon and you want a dry bagel.”
“Sorry.”
“I am just playing. Mi casa es su casa.”
“Sorry.”
“Enough with the sorries.”
“I’m still drunk,” said Max, assembling a plate with care. “I don’t even remember texting my parents.”
Pilot started giggling. It was a strange sight.
“What?” said Max.
“That was me,” said Pilot finally. “I figured you would need the assist.”
“Wait, did I hand you my phone?”
“I did it from my workstation. You were very fucked up.”
“You—”
“During your times of trial and suffering, when you saw two of everything before thee, it was then that I carried you. Down the hall. To the guest room.” And Pilot gave him a crushing side embrace.
Max stared at a vague spot on the table and remembered Pilot with both phones on his knees. Taking forever to look up the chords to that Pachinko Seven song. It was one thing to know about surveillance. But it was another to meet the person doing the surveilling. What was the difference?
Consent. The difference was consent.
“Mister Max?” said Pilot. “Mister Max?”
Max stared and stared.
“Oh no,” said Pilot. “You are freaking out because of my phone access.”
“A little,” said Max.
“I am so sorry,” said Pilot. “I just assumed we were a team now. With transparency. Let me make it up to you. I will give you all my creds. I am so stupid.”
Pilot slapped himself hard in the face with both hands, twice.
“Hey,” said Max. “Hey, stop.”
“Hypocrite,” said Pilot, slapping himself. “Hypocrite. Hypocrite.”
“Jesus, Pilot,” said Max. “Stop hitting yourself.”
Pilot stopped all at once. He held Max’s eyes for a moment. “I truly apologize, Mister Max.”
“We’re good, we’re good,” said Max, and he gave a reassuring pat on the back to one of the most powerful tech legends in history. At his house. Hanging out by his pool.
Total insanity.
Pilot had impossibly long smoke tentacles straight out of the Soft Ghost Edition Black manga. He could reach anywhere. He could do anything. Spy on a neighbor, hack text messages. And now Max could call upon that power, too.
For what?
For the next hack, of course.
“Oh Jesus, save me,” said a voice. It was Shane, pushing back the sunlight.
Akiko cocked her neck. “It’s your own fault, duncie.”
She sprang up, kissed him, and gave him a plate. Max watched in horror as Shane piled it high. For Shane was a food-piler: eggs atop bacon atop melon atop whatever the fuck else. Max’s plate, by contrast, was a neat study in object isolation.
“Fire and ice,” whispered Max.
“What?” said Shane, his mouth full.
“So, Mister Max,” said Pilot. “How would you like to proceed?”
“You mean our next hack,” said Max, chewing. “Let’s brainstorm.”
At the far end of the yard a cypress tree rustled. Everyone stopped. For a moment Max imagined agents in windbreakers marked fbi emerging from the greenery. But instead of feds, it was Brayden.
“Mister Markham,” called Brayden. “Did you know you had a backdoor in your wall this whole time? I just discovered it from my side.”
“I knew,” said Pilot to himself. Max looked at him. But Pilot only winked.
“What?” said Brayden.
“I had no idea,” said Pilot to Brayden.
“God, it’s so hot,” said Brayden. “My phone says it’s not supposed to be this hot.”
“And yet,” said Pilot.
Brayden broke into a lazy flailing jog.
“I have to show you guys something,” said Brayden.
Brayden grabbed Pilot’s laptop, but was soon flummoxed. “What is this?”
“My custom operating system,” said Pilot.
“Looks like a Minotaur OS base,” said Akiko.
“Look at you, Miz Akiko,” said Pilot, impressed. “I threw lots of home-brew stuff on top. I like to keep all my interfaces as a single pane of glass.”
“Very nice,” said Akiko, and she fist-bumped the tech legend.
“I’ll just use my phone,” said Brayden. He went to his Wren feed. “So, the like buttons aren’t working here—Version Zero, Big Fix in effect, right? But watch.”
He found a post, copied its link, and switched to a web browser showing a purple-hued site. He pasted the link into a field. He tapped a button. A clone of the post appeared—this time with fully functioning like buttons.
“All my friends are using it,” said Brayden.
Max squinted at the screen. “Man, that was quick.”
“What is it?” said Shane.
“Someone made a workaround,” said Max. “UnfixTheFix.com.”
1.8
Within a half hour, it was on the news.
WANT YOUR LIKES BACK? HERE’S HOW
“When did this drop?” said Max.
“It’s, like, already been fifteen hours,” said Brayden.
“Don’t you mean only been fifteen hours?” said Akiko.
“Tempus fugit,” said Pilot.
“¿No comprendo?” said Brayden.
“What does the article say?” said Max.
“I don’t know,” said Brayden.
“Ah, look at this,” said Pilot, clicking around. “Wren is temporarily partnering with UnfixTheFix while they work on undoing Akiko’s handiwork. And people are signing back up to Wren. All it takes is one click. See?” Pilot showed them a page on Wren with a single button labeled come back, pilot markham.
“Man, that was quick,” said Max again in disbelief. “We need to come up with a stronger hack.”
“How can your name be on that button?” said Brayden. “Didn’t you delete your Wren?”
Akiko laughed, and Pilot joined her.
“What?” said Brayden.
“Nothing ever ge
ts deleted,” said Akiko. “At Wren we just flag stuff as inactive. But it’s all still there in the database. Every photo or post or anything you’ve ever shared. Everyone in tech keeps everything.”
Brayden grew uneasy. “But what about temporary pix?” He was referring to a type of service popular in 2018 that promised to store photos for only twenty-four hours and then delete them, so that users could safely share explicit or “off-brand” photos without fear of soiling their permanent online record.
Akiko laughed again, and Pilot joined her again.
“But that means,” said Brayden, “that means that all the shit I posted under different accounts, all that shit is still on a computer somewhere?”
“You mean, like, under pseudonyms?” said Max. “What kind of shit?”
“Nothing,” shouted Brayden.
“Wait a sec,” said Shane. “So you’re saying my old pix I posted way back in the day like on MyFace.com are still out there?”
“Well,” said Max. “MyFace got acquired by Yello, which got acquired by Wren, so yeah, I bet Akiko could dig them up if she wanted to.”
“I could, honey bear,” said Akiko, drilling a fingertip between Shane’s ribs.
Shane folded his arms. “But I used different usernames, so.”
“But you used the same physical location, didn’t you,” said Akiko. “But you’ve had the same internet company forever, haven’t you.”
“IP lookup,” said Pilot and Akiko, as if it were some fun catchphrase.
“What is I pee look up?” said Shane.
“Wait,” said Max, looking up as if a star had just appeared in the sky. “Brayden, Shane, you just came up with our next hack.”
1.9
We have to go beyond the typical hack,” said Max. “The typical hack just doesn’t last.”
The sun had become microwave-hot, so they now sat under a sail canopy at the end of the pool, dangling their legs in the vitreous bottomless blue.
“As in hacks get patched over, à la UnfixTheFix?” said Pilot.
“As in people forget hacks, like, bam,” said Max, snapping his fingers. “That Gorillagate actress gets hacked, gets destroyed, everyone gets mad for a minute—and then they go right back to normal.”
Akiko nodded. “The Russians hacked our democracy, for fuck’s sake.”
Akiko was referring to a presidential election in the year 2016, where agents from the country of Russia manipulated public opinion through social media, hacked into opposition emails, and blackmailed politicians with lurid surveillance sex tapes to successfully engineer the election of a puppet president in the country of the United States of America.
“True,” said Pilot. “And the people reacted with—”
“Nothing,” said Brayden.
Max pointed: bingo.
“I guess everyone did just go back to normal pretty quick,” said Shane.
“So what do we want people to do?” said Brayden.
Max realized he had never stated an explicit goal before this moment. He pushed up his glasses.
“Did you know that if everyone in SoCal stopped driving their cars for one day, the smog would clear up instantly?”
“No way.”
“Yahweh,” said Max.
Everyone waited for Max to deliver his punch line.
“Here’s the weird thing about all the problems of our world,” said Max. “They need upkeep. Global warming needs that regular stream of greenhouse gases we make when we drive. Income inequality needs One-Percenters to keep hoarding their money. Evil is a habit. Drop the habit, and the problems of the world just lose momentum and stop.”
Akiko laughed weird, because she tended to laugh weird when Max got serious and fired up, and Max loved it. He kept going.
“Imagine if just for one day everyone stopped using the internet. No posts. No scrolling. No notifications. The tap goes dry.”
“Advertisers would freak,” said Akiko. “Then investors would freak.”
“The Mister Cals of the world would freak,” said Pilot.
“Data is lifeblood for our tech bro overlords,” said Max. “As long as we feed them, they can continue their habit of being evil. If we deprive them, suddenly we’re able to demand things change for the better. Or we could just build our own thing, call it Wren 2.0 or whatever, and build it right the next time around.”
“The next time around,” said Pilot, still with that dry sickly smile. It was an odd smile. Max observed it for an extra second, then another, because it was a smile that said:
I know something you do not.
It occurred to Max that Pilot might have reasons of his own for joining Version Zero. The first thing he could imagine was some sort of side business that would profit from an enlightened user base, rejecting the broken old internet and eager for a better alternative.
If anyone could have a better alternative ready to launch in his back pocket, it would be Pilot.
Max’s mind immediately erupted with fantasies of being appointed Chief Design Officer (or something) of an imminent Internet 2 (or something).
He caught himself. Silly me.
“So what’s our next move?” said Akiko. She sculled water with one foot and made Max’s slack legs dance.
“We have to get personal this time,” said Max. “A social eruption in your face.”
“Ew,” said Akiko.
Pilot leaned in. “What are you thinking?”
“Yo, Brayden,” said Max.
“Yo,” said Brayden, his face a scramble of water-light.
“If your friends somehow saw all the weird shit you posted under pseudonyms back in the day, how would you feel?” said Max.
Brayden froze in midtoe. “Wait, what?”
“It’s just a what-if, dude,” said Max.
Brayden spoke without hesitation. “I would deny everything. Then I’d delete, like, all my accounts. Just deadass rage-quit the internet.”
“I like where this is going,” said Pilot. “I like this very much.”
“Now flip the script,” said Max. “What if you could see all the secret anonymous shit posted by a close buddy? And the shit was all evil?”
“I mean, to my buddy I’d be, like, What the fuck,” said Brayden. “But also I’d be, like, Is it true? But also I’d be, like, What is true, even? Did I really know my buddy at all in the first place?”
Max shared a nod with Pilot.
“Anyway, then I would rage-quit the internet,” said Brayden, laughing.
Max laughed, too, and imagined people fleeing as little volcanoes erupted all over the feeds like lights in the dark.
“Why are we even really online?” said Max. “I mean really-really?”
“Pictures of friends’ kids and shit,” said Shane.
“Fear of missing out,” said Pilot.
“It’s funny you ask why,” said Brayden. “For my generation, there is no why. Asking Why are you online is like asking Why do you breathe air. You can’t not be online. You’re online because everyone’s online.”
Max and Pilot looked at one another with astonishment at this concept.
“If I’m applying for a job,” said Brayden, “and I have, like, zero personal brand presence? Employers’ll be, like, What the fuck’s wrong with this guy?”
Brayden frowned, then continued.
“Or like dating. If you don’t have any other shit online, people will think you’re a fake ghost account. So you gotta keep up the act.”
Max raised his eyebrows, frowned. Poor kid.
Brayden sighed. “Real talk? It all just gets really tiring.”
Max and Pilot looked at each other, then at Brayden, this boy who grew up behind a phone.
“How about you, Miz Akiko?” said Pilot. “Why are you online?”
“Shh,” said Akiko.
She held two fingers to her lips. “I’m thinking.”
“About why?” said Pilot.
“About our next hack,” said Akiko.
Brayden sat up. “We’re gonna hit Wren again?”
“Not just Wren,” said Akiko. She knitted her fingers together. “Wren and Knowned.”
1.10
Knowned is the world’s No. 1 trusted guardian of free speech where we can Discover Wonderful Things Together.™ But as in any environment there are safety tips to remember to keep your discussions and sharing safe and fun. Here are some simple things you can do if a troll starts giving you grief.
Learn to identify trolls. Is someone constantly interrupting normal, rational discourse with abnormal, irrational insults or threats of violence or death? You got yourself a troll.
Realize not every jerk is a troll. Plenty of people like to joke around to get a rise out of people. They could be anyone. That’s just the internet! It doesn’t mean they are a genuine troll with malicious intent. Learn to spot the difference.
Don’t feed the trolls. Trolls crave attention. Don’t be their bait! The best policy is to ignore them. Eventually, they will just go away on their own and move on to the next victim.
Name the trolls. Trolls love the power their anonymity brings, but once they’re “outed” that power miraculously vanishes. Some trolls use the same username, profile picture, or catchphrase elsewhere on the internet. A careful search will usually lead to their legitimate blog or work profile. Let them know you know who they are! Repeat this process for the next troll(s).
See something, say something. Knowned has Report Abuse buttons everywhere for a reason. It’s up to you to hit that button anytime you feel threatened. Our team will investigate and respond, usually within 72 to 96 hours.
Upgrade to premium. A premium Knowned membership shows your commitment to free speech, and we show our appreciation with faster response times, advanced abuse filtering, and more. Upgrade today.
1.11
The Wren-Knowned hack would take place in two phases.
For phase one, team Version Zero sat before Pilot’s wall of screens.