Hell to Pay

by Dick Wybrow

  The woman whispered again, "Wait a minute. You're tracking somebody else's phone, ain't ya?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it a man?"

  "Uh, yes."

  Counter Woman crossed her arms. "He your boyfriend? Run off with another girl, maybe took all the cash in the house, gonna blow it on booze at some beachside bar?"

  "Not… really," Sally said. "He's an egomaniacal B-level actor who's been conscripted to assimilate into the inner workings of a hell-affiliated social media empire to help fortify their campaign of world domination."

  The woman blinked. "Was she a younger girl? Don't worry about it, sweetie. It never lasts," she said and sat back, tapping away at her computer. "You just gotta decide if you want him back, truth be told."

  "I'm going to shoot him dead."

  Shaking her head slowly, the woman pulled a piece of drying gum from the top of her monitor and popped it into her mouth. "Well, I expect he's got it coming," she said. "Most of them do. My daddy used to say 'some people just need shootin'.' Course, turns out somebody thought that about Daddy too." She plopped a ticket down on the counter and tapped it with a fingernail.

  Briefly Sally's eyes locked on the tiny plastic jewel in the middle of the woman's nail polish.

  "Now, this here's a ticket to Atlanta," she said. "They got World of Coke there. You get a free one at the end of the tour, any flavor you want."

  Sally slowly grabbed the ticket then went to pull out her billfold and realized the little money she did have was still on the bike. Her eyes went wide, and again, her face flushed.

  "Don't worry about all that, hon," the woman said, slipping her glasses off again. "I'm shift supervisor, so I gave you the heartache discount." She dropped her voice so the couple with the kid waiting in line couldn't hear. "Uh, that's a one-hundy percent discount."

  Sally tipped her hat and smiled. "Much obliged."

  "We ladies got to stick together." The woman smiled and offered a small wave. "Good luck." Her eyes briefly fell on the family that began to trot forward then a quick glance back at Sally. She frowned when she caught sight of the cowgirl's twin holsters on either hip. "Uh, are those…?" she started to say, but Sally just kept walking, staring down at the ticket.

  "Ah hell," the woman said to herself. "Bastard probably got it coming."

  Chapter Nine

  Hood sighed, looking around his R&D room at the eager faces, each like some pimpled-faced baby bird looking to be fed by their momma.

  Daily, a nasty mass of civilians would ebb and flow through the halls of the social media empire's main headquarters. However, that room—and several others—were never on the visitors' tour.

  A handful of programmers poked at their keyboards.

  One chewed a pencil so intently, he burrowed into the graphite. He looked up and smiled a gray-black grin. "Mr. Hood, sir!" he said, and the rest of his colleagues sat up a little straighter.

  Someone near a whiteboard got up and became very interested in some code.

  Yes, this, this was the brain center, the engine of his empire where the magic happened.

  "How is it going in here, my little babies?" Hood asked and forced a smile to his lips. "Pushing for max MX?"

  "Yes, yes," the pencil-toothed employee said and, unfortunately, smiled again. He caught the confused look on his boss's face. "Barclay, sir. Samuel Barclay."

  Hood frowned. "Barclay. Is that Jewish?"

  "Uh, Scottish, I think."

  "Hmm. No drinking on the job, Barclay."

  "What?" Barclay asked, still smiling, and blinked a few times. "No, no, sir. I don't—"

  "Don't care," he said and lowered his voice. "No sign of the whereabouts of our employee-to-be, then?"

  Barclay looked at his colleagues, who each had their eyes down, buried in their work. He shook his head, biting his lip.

  "No matter," Hood said. "In three days' time, he will be compelled to arrive on our doorstep. He's under contract. Nothing can stop that."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Preparations have been made to update the interface, then? We'll need to integrate him immediately."

  "Yes, sir," Barclay said then offered a twitching smile. "It's ready and waiting."

  "Good, good," Hood said, stroking his long chin. "In the meantime, let me see your new behavioral algorithms."

  The two walked over to a monitor that took up an entire wall.

  "You're going to love this." Barclay swelled, beaming with pride. "This will cause misery on a global scale, ramp up the MX like nothing we've ever seen!"

  "Really?" Hood crossed his arms. "More than those infectious pop nuggets our ginger guitar player churns out?"

  "Oh yes." Barclay looked up at the massive liquid crystal display that appeared to prolapse under the weight of the hurricane of data. "Even better than Ed Sheeran, yes, sir."

  Hood smiled to himself.

  "Uh, you wanted to see more of the Level Four beta algorithms?" Barclay asked then added, "Sir?"

  The CEO only nodded.

  "Let's look at the B-category today," Barclay said. "We've got twelve hundred thirty-six B algorithms being tested, but let's look at the three most promising ones already in play," Barclay said, motioning Hood up to the center monitor opposite the whiteboard. "You can see where pilot users are being worked by the algorithm, and here"—he pointed to a secondary screen, just below—"this is how we're tracking their individual misery index, which of course, contributes to the whole."

  "I know how it works," Hood grumbled. "I wrote the original code!"

  Barclay swallowed his smile. "Yes, yes, sir! Of course, sir. We all know that." He swept a hand back toward the screen. "So, as you can, this one… it seems those on Betrayal version Beta 4.792 are responding well to the manipulation."

  "How well?"

  Barclay swallowed. "Which, by that, I mean they are increasingly miserable. We can, as you know, track that by assessing the mood of a user's postings. And, and, and, of course, their buying habits, whether in our marketplace or elsewhere online. Purchases for things like wine, whiskey, and chocolate turtles—comfort foods—spike at every new iteration of the algorithm."

  Hood leaned in and scanned the numbers on the screen. He looked at one name, Tricia Watson of Dayton, Ohio, and saw a recent posting about how she and her husband were currently in a trial separation. On the site's messaging app, she'd revealed to a girlfriend that she'd stumbled upon a correspondence between her husband and an "old friend" recently.

  A digital dotted line marched like virtual ants, linking the correspondence to a picture of a man's semi-erect penis.

  Later that night, a second message—replete with uncharacteristic spelling errors—revealed that Tricia Watson of Dayton, Ohio, was thinking about sleeping with a coworker in her company's warehouse.

  Another marching dotted line, this one strobing in green, pointed to a series of articles that had been pushed to the newsfeed of Tricia Watson of Dayton, Ohio, by the Betrayal algorithm. They all bore the same theme.

  The first was an advice column, someone confessing how "Infidelity Saved My Marriage!"

  The last one was a posting on Reddit entitled, "Sometimes, Ladies Just Need a Little Vitamin D."

  Hood smiled. "Excellent. How long until you're out of beta?"

  A couple of people at their computers cleared their throats. Barclay's eyes twitched, and he turned up his smile another hundred watts.

  "Well, sure, we could take it out of beta now, but I feel it's… not yet ready. Our hit-miss rate not, you know, quite hitting the mark."

  Hood eyeballed the screens to the left and right of the main one. In real time, the feed for Tricia Watson of Dayton, Ohio, showed she was currently trolling through a series of paid ads for breast enhancements.

  Barclay stole a look at his watch then raised his hand in the air with a swiping motion. The heading on the next screen read Bitter 4.121.

  "Oh, this is a favorite," the technician said. "We're able to determine individual prejud
ices, easy enough, and we pour digital petrol on the fires of individual users."

  "Hmm."

  A few more swipes to the lower quadrant brought up dozens of tiny feed boxes. Barclay pinched and spread his fingers to make boxes smaller and larger. "With Bitter, if we've got, say"—pinch, spread—"John Rogers of Maitland, Florida, who doesn't like the Chinese, he'll see posts and news items about, uh, a prominent breakfast cereal company purchased by Beijing. Articles from dodgy groups about dangerous China-made products flooding the US market."

  "I get it." Hood nodded. "Ad for Jackie Chan movies and the like."

  "No, no," Barclay said, shaking his head with a small smile. "Everyone loves Jackie Chan."

  "Hmm," Hood said. "Agreed. He's like Charlie Chaplin and Bruce Lee rolled up and covered in ice cream sprinkles." Hood eyeballed his employee. "One of ours?"

  "Oh, hell no. One of them."

  "Them them?" Scowling, Hood crooked his arms and flapped his fingertips.

  Barclay nodded, frowning.

  "How many of our users are on this beta here?" Hood asked, squinting at the monitor. "Barren 4.82."

  "Well," Barclay said, pointing to a vertical screen on an opposite wall. "This is a list of names, the top fifty or so, and next to them tracks how the algorithm is doing over time." Hood squinted, reading the tiny numbers, percentages of MX up and down. "The users on our social media platform are tracked, not just what they post, but where they go next. That's measured… on this column here."

  "So, Barren 4.82 is working?"

  "Oh yes," Barclay said. "Once we're able to identify those who are having trouble conceiving. The primary function of the algorithm is to drip feed them friends' posts of baby pics. Videos too. You can see there's a sweet spot around thirty-two percent."

  "Thirty-two percent?"

  "Right, so if just under one third of all the posts they see show happy couples cooing to their babies—baby in bath, baby taking first steps, baby spitting up naners—"

  "Naners?"

  "Bananas."

  Hood made a rumbling noise. "Don't ever say 'naners' to me again. Ever."

  Barclay nodded and continued. "The new programming correlates to a whopping four hundred forty-two percent increase in their individual MX!"

  Hood put a curled hand to his mouth, trying to hide a smile. "Very good," he said, his mouth a flat line. "I want to see it at six hundred percent by the end of the week."

  "But—"

  "No buts!"

  "Except baby butts!" The woman who'd been at the whiteboard put a fist in the air then slowly lowered it. "Just, you know, little chubby, dimpled, so cute. I mean…"

  Hood scowled and headed for a door opposite where he'd come in. "How long before we can take some of these out of beta?"

  A sigh from the technician. "Well, there are certain indicators that we've hit the mark."

  Hood pressed his palm against a rectangular plate, which lit up briefly, appearing to show the bones inside his hand. Then the door slid open, revealing a very tiny room—an elevator for one.

  "Indicators. Such as?"

  "Well, like for any of our lifestyle algorithms," Barclay said with a shrug. "It's when any users start making purchases from Goop."

  "Excellent!" Hood stepped into the elevator. Before the doors closed, he looked at the group, all dressed in their white lab coats, staring at him with wide eyes.

  As the doors closed, he said, "Work harder. I'm going to see the big head later tonight, and I want to dazzle him. Hood out."

  Chapter Ten

  When I got nervous, I sweat. Not like a glistening perspiration or dewy kisses across my skin. More akin to some Midwestern engineer on a contract in Afghanistan, after my employer and government refused to pay the ransom, and my Taliban captors were sharpening blades and readying the video cameras. That kind of sweat.

  "Señor, have you been swimming?" asked a man walking his dog as he passed us.

  "High fever, a wicked case of crabs," the Actor said.

  "I don't have crabs!" I shot back.

  Standing in the shaded area of a Brownsville, Texas Mexican restaurant, we were searching for a way to get across the border. While inside minutes earlier, I'd confessed to the Actor that I didn't actually have a passport.

  "How do you not have a passport?"

  "I had one," I said. "When I was like ten or something, but it's not like I do a whole lot of international travel, man."

  "Obviously."

  "Sor-ry for not being a semifamous Hollywood half talent who gets flown around the world to get overpaid in exotic locations."

  He frowned. "What do you mean semifamous?"

  Inside, we'd noticed one person eating alone, a heavy guy wearing a dirty ball cap with the words "Muther Trucker" across its front. Once the Actor had gotten his two insanely large burritos, we'd waited outside for the big guy to leave.

  If we were going to get down to Cozumel to find Anza, we couldn't go by plane with my aforementioned domesticated status. We had Sally's bike and needed that for the trip across Mexico but couldn't ride that over the border.

  While we waited outside, the Actor chewed one tabby cat–sized burrito. The other, he'd stuffed into his pocket. "You know," the Actor said, mouth full of food. "If we could just track down that loser Uncle Jerry. He could fly us down."

  Yeah, I hadn't told him our friend was dead. And in truth, I didn't want to. Not yet.

  Despite the Actor's hard, crusty exterior, I knew he had a soft spot for Uncle Jerry. The old pilot had probably been one of the few who'd always been nice to the guy. Sure they squabbled, but they'd always done so like friends, or the Actor's version of friends.

  Finally, the Muther Trucker guy slipped out of the restaurant. We'd spotted the big rig in the parking lot and, without many alternatives, decided that was an option.

  "Hey, man," I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking. "Uh, which way you heading?"

  It took a moment for the guy to realize I was talking to him. He cut his eyes toward me but kept walking. We followed.

  "You going south?"

  "No," he said, noticing a bit of meat on his shirt. He thumbed it and stuffed it in his mouth.

  "Ah, well," I said, lowering my voice. "Can you go south? We're sort of looking for a lift."

  He kept walking, so we trailed behind him.

  Before I could speak again, he said, "I don't want to hear it."

  "Okay, well… you see, my friend has a lot of money. He's a semi… er… he's a rather famous Actor, and he's willing to pay someone to give us a ride. Just across, you know, the border."

  "Why don't you just walk? There's a line. You can see it—"

  "Well, that's the trouble, see? My house burned down in a, um, a flood. So, all my stuff went with it."

  "Explains why you're dressed like that, I suppose."

  Nice. "And that includes my passport. So, rather than having to go through all that paperwork and all…"

  He reached his cab and shuffled through his pockets. Finally, he came out with a set of keys. He had a lot of keys. "I should report you to the cops," he said and looked at us. "How stupid do you think I am?"

  "Did I mention my friend has a lot of money?"

  The guy wiped his face with the back of his hairy hand, shook his head, popped his door open, and hopped in the cab without a second glance.

  "Nice," the Actor said.

  "What? You were no help!"

  "You don't start with 'can you help us commit a felony?' for Chrissakes. You gotta butter a guy up and come at him sideways."

  "The dude was well buttered with all that taco grease. If you don't like the way I work, you do it."

  The rig fired up, the engine growling to life. We watched as he expertly backed up the truck, coming within a foot of our motorcycle. He never slowed.

  "Shit," I said as the guy pulled away.

  Then the brake lights came on. I looked at the Actor then looked back at the truck.

  Muther Trucker was st
aring at us in the long, vertical passenger-side mirror. He made no motion, just wore a blank expression.

  I looked around and quickly walked up to the window, which lowered as I approached.

  Stepping up onto the runner, I opened my mouth to try again, but he interrupted me. "I'll meet you two a few blocks down. There's a store there called 'The Good Life.'"

  "Okay."

  "And when you get there," he said and dropped the truck into gear, "buy a coffin."

  * * *

  "You think so little of me," I said, staring down at the long wooden box. The best part was that it had that 'new coffin smell' of freshly cut timber. But it all went downhill from there. "It's not even painted. No tiny pillow for my head. I'll probably get splinters."

  The Actor frowned. "You're supposed to be dead, Raz! Who cares about splinters?"

  The driver had told us his name was Simon, but obviously that was an alias for our covert operation. He was slowly backing his big rig down the small alleyway next to the store.

  It was stupid, but I couldn't help feeling slighted.

  "I just thought, you know, we were friends, man. This is what you would bury me in?"

  "You're not being buried!" he whispered through his teeth. "You're being smuggled across the Mexican border in the back of a truck."

  The lights of the truck glowed red as the vehicle came to a stop.

  Simon had said our best chance of getting across would be for me to pose as remains returning to a loved one south of the border.

  "I can't imagine anyone's going to buy that," I'd said.

  "No one's going to look in the coffin," the truck driver said, his voice flat. "Despite being federales, a lot of these guys are pretty religious. Looking at a dead body gives them even more heebie-jeebies than normal folks."

  I got the feeling Simon had done this before. "What am I supposed to do if they open it up?"

  The Actor said, "Don't smile at them."

  "You're supposed to be dead. Don't move and look dead." Simon turned to the Actor. "You got my money?"