Active Memory

by Dan Wells

  “That is exactly what I’m talking about,” said Hendel. “Anyway, thanks for the coffee. Here’s your tip—don’t give any to Pita.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said the waitress. Detective Hendel stood and walked out, and the waitress walked her to the door.

  “She had to know we were here,” said Marisa. “That had to be a message for us, right?”

  Omar nodded. “It sounded like it. She got a lead on our case, and she wants us to follow it up because she can’t, but . . . she didn’t give us anything else.”

  Marisa turned to look at the booth. “Maybe she left us something.” She glanced across the restaurant, but the waitress had gone back into the kitchen. They were alone. She stood up quickly, moving into Hendel’s booth, but all she found was an empty coffee mug and a discarded napkin. “Maybe there’s a thumb drive,” she muttered. She ran her hands over the seat, and lifted the mug and napkin to look underneath, and was about to drop to her hands and knees to look under the table when Omar stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “She’s trying to pass a secret message,” he said. “She won’t go digital—just old school.” He reached for the napkin and flipped it over.

  It had two strings of numbers, hastily scrawled with a pen.

  “That’s a web address,” said Marisa. “The second one’s an ID signature.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Omar quickly, stuffing the napkin in his pocket. He looked up, and shouted across the empty dining room: “Thanks for the eggs, and good luck with those finals!” He blinked, transferring credit. “Money’s in the till; keep the change.” He took Marisa’s arm and hustled her toward the door.

  “Finals?” she asked.

  “You’re great with computers,” said Omar, “but you need to pay more attention to people.”

  Hendel was already gone by the time they got outside. “What’s the hurry?” asked Marisa.

  Omar scanned the street. “For as many illegal things as you do, you suck at thinking like a criminal.” He pulled her toward the nearest corner—away, she realized, from the direction of the police station. “If Hendel’s sneaking around like this, she’s probably being watched. She was careful to never contact us directly, and we don’t want to leave any evidence that she contacted us indirectly, so we’re getting gone now before anyone has time to snoop around.”

  “She’s probably also terrified,” said Marisa. “Two hours ago she couldn’t wait to get us as far from this case as possible. Now she’s pulling us in, which means something big has happened and she’s down to her last resort.” She felt helpless and determined at the same time. “We’re all she’s got.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Sahara and Anja met them in another diner, already bustling with activity. The city was waking up.

  “I want to register my official displeasure at your choice of breakfast companions,” said Anja, staring at Omar with venom practically dripping from her eyes. She had dated Omar for a while until he’d screwed her over, and this was only the second time she’d consented to see him since. She looked ready to tear his throat out.

  “Noted and seconded,” said Sahara. Cameron and Camilla hovered over the booth, filming everything, but she’d turned off their microphones—she was streaming a local band over the feed instead.

  Marisa was crammed into one side of a booth with both girls, because she had sat first, and neither of the others would sit by Omar.

  “I know we have history,” said Omar. “I’m willing to put that aside for now if you are.”

  “How gracious of you,” said Sahara.

  “Girls,” said Marisa, “just listen, okay? This is important. If we find the hacker, we’ll have a clear line from the bioprinter to Don Francisco. We’ll have evidence that he hacked a megacorp—Detective Hendel can’t touch him but ZooMorrow could string him up by his toes if they wanted—”

  Sahara’s eyes were still locked on Omar. “And you’re cool with this? Getting your father arrested?”

  “After what he’s done to my mother?” said Omar. “Give him hell.”

  “All right then,” said Sahara.

  “I thought we already knew who the hacker was,” said Anja. “Andy Song said he got the data from Scary Ramira Bennett.”

  “He said he got the data from a woman, and that she was scary,” said Marisa. “We assumed it was Ramira Bennett.”

  “Exactly,” said Omar. “The good news is, we don’t need to wonder who she is—we can just go find her.” He pulled the napkin from his pocket and spread it flat on the table. “There’s all the info Andy Song had on her—a web address, and an ID tag.”

  “The ID’s almost guaranteed to be fake,” said Anja, scrutinizing the numbers. “No hacker worth her hard drive is going to give a contact a real ID.”

  “The web address might be useful, though,” said Sahara. “Run it through the right software and we could find a physical location. Or at least an approximate one.”

  Omar frowned. “The hacker wouldn’t hide her location?”

  “Of course she would,” said Marisa, “but this web address includes a time stamp.” She pointed at a section of numbers in the middle of the string. “If we can get into the service provider’s archive, we can follow the fake trail she used to hide herself.”

  “But how can you get into the ISP’s archive?” asked Omar. “Just . . . hack it?”

  “You’re so dumb,” said Anja. “Just . . . so, so dumb.”

  “A hack like that would take weeks,” said Sahara, “but we don’t have to go to all that trouble. See this?” She pointed at a different section of the number string. “The ISP is Johara, and we have an inside woman.”

  “How can you read these numbers?” asked Omar. “They’re just . . . gibberish.”

  “I am literally running out of ways to describe how dumb you are,” said Anja.

  “I’m calling Jaya,” said Sahara. “And this conversation is moving to text, because it’s about to get super illegal, and I don’t want anyone listening in.”

  Marisa waited just a moment before the message icon appeared in her vision. She blinked on it, and entered an encrypted chat with all four of them. Jaya hadn’t accepted her invite yet.

  “Maybe she’s still asleep,” said Omar out loud.

  SHE LIVES IN MUMBAI YOU WALKING LAMPPOST, sent Anja. And use the damn chat, that’s what it’s for.

  Sorry, sent Omar. Hijole.

  Jaya’s icon lit up as she joined the group. Hey, girls—oh wow. And Omar. Did you guys know Omar’s in the chat group?

  Hi, Jaya, he sent.

  Yes, we know, sent Marisa. Let’s skip all the insults and explanations and just trust that there’s a good reason, okay?

  No insults? asked Jaya. But I’ve got a good one.

  Gimme, sent Anja.

  Later, sent Sahara. Jaya, I’m going to send you a web address with a Johara marker in it. I need you to find it in the archives and give us the tightest geographical estimate you can.

  I’m not at work, sent Jaya. It’s, like, eight in the evening here—I’m day shift.

  Can you connect remotely? asked Marisa.

  If I call in a favor, sent Jaya. How worth it is this?

  This is the physical location of the hacker who stole Zenaida’s DNA from ZooMorrow, sent Sahara. At this point there’s very little that’s worth more.

  Wow, sent Jaya. Yeah, okay. Let’s do this. Give me a second while I call my supervisor.

  Omar looked up at the nulis, watching them while they waited. Sahara had glued a little top hat to Cameron and a bow to Camilla, so they could tell at a glance which was which. He spoke out loud. “You’re sure they’re not recording us?”

  Anja repeated the words in a low-pitched, bucktoothed voice. “You’re sure they’re not recording us?”

  “That’s super mature,” said Omar.

  “That’s super mature,” said Anja.

  Hey, Anja, sent Jaya. Do you know your dad’s corporate phone number? Anja’s fath
er worked for Abendroth GMBH, one of the biggest nuli companies in the world.

  Yes? sent Anja. But . . . why do you need it?

  I’m trying to run a remote search in our server traffic archive, sent Jaya. I need an excuse or they’re not going to let me in.

  Anja made a face. If this gets back to him with my name attached to it, there’s going to be hell to pay in Anja Land tonight. And I don’t even know what kind of currency they use in hell, so it had better not.

  You said this was important, sent Jaya. Is it or not?

  Fine, sent Anja, followed by a string of numbers. That’s his secretary’s line.

  Got it, sent Jaya. One sec.

  “She’s really pulling some strings,” said Sahara out loud, and looked at Omar. “You’d better be one hundred and fifty-nine percent sure that you’re with us on this.”

  Omar nodded. “I am.”

  “I don’t want you backing out at the last minute,” Sahara pressed. “We are not playing here.”

  “I told you I’m in,” said Omar, and then paused a moment, staring at Sahara for several seconds before shaking his head and looking away. “Look, I know that I haven’t exactly earned any trust with you—”

  “You have in fact earned the opposite,” said Anja.

  “But I’m serious,” said Omar. “I’m in this to the end. I won’t let my father keep doing this.”

  “You never defended me like this,” said Anja. “Where was all this rage when he hurt me?”

  “That was different—”

  “I could have died,” said Anja.

  “You were a fling,” said Omar. “And you were never more serious about it than I was, so don’t look offended. This is my mother.”

  “A mother you barely knew,” said Anja.

  “Do not mess with a man’s mother,” said Omar, and his voice was more serious than Marisa had ever heard it.

  Jaya sent another message: Here’s the data.

  That’s perfect, sent Marisa. Thanks, we owe you.

  You owe me nothing, sent Jaya. Cherry Dogs forever.

  Cherry Dogs forever, sent Sahara, and blinked on the file. She studied it a moment. “It’s here in LA, in Eagle Rock.”

  “What kind of a hacker lives in Eagle Rock?” asked Anja.

  “I like Eagle Rock,” said Marisa. “They’ve got that one place, with the pig.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Omar, “the pig place.” Marisa looked at him, and he looked back for almost three seconds before laughing. “What exactly do you do with these pigs at this place?”

  Marisa laughed with him. “You don’t know the pig place?”

  “Flirt later,” said Sahara. “And call us an autocab to Eagle Rock.”

  “Not yet,” said Marisa, forcing herself to get serious again. “We need a plan.”

  “We go to this address and start breaking fingers,” said Anja. “Done.”

  “We still don’t know whose to break,” said Omar.

  Marisa nodded. “Look at the satellite view of this address: it’s a single apartment building, the size of a city block. It’ll have hundreds of rooms, and maybe thousands of people. We need to know which one is our hacker.”

  “What’s your plan?” asked Sahara.

  “I think we need a honeypot,” said Marisa.

  “Smart,” said Sahara.

  Omar raised his eyebrow. “You want to . . . seduce the landlord?”

  “A honeypot’s not a person,” said Marisa, “it’s a tablet. It’s a computer that can receive traffic, but doesn’t go anywhere or contain anything valuable. Just a dead end, basically.”

  “No one has any good reason to be there,” Anja continued, “so anyone who goes there is, by nature, snooping around where they don’t belong. It might not be our hacker, but it’ll be a hacker.”

  “All we need is some spyware preinstalled,” said Marisa, “and we can trace the signal back to the source.”

  “How can you be sure our hacker will even be snooping around in anything?” asked Omar. “She’s busy breaking into ZooMorrow; she’s not going to bother with some random tablet on the sidewalk.”

  “We’re talking about a thousand people in that apartment building,” said Sahara. “Probably a couple thousand. Those places are notorious for people hacking literally everything they come across—we call it coraling.”

  “Corralling,” said Omar, emphasizing the second syllable.

  “Not corral,” said Anja. “Coral, like a coral reef: the hacker sits there and passively collects data from their thousands of neighbors. They’re not breaking into anything, just keeping an eye out for whatever . . . drifts by, unprotected. ID codes, GPS trails, financial info if they’re lucky. Nothing she catches will be as big of a score as ZooMorrow would be, but you can still get a lot of good stuff, and you can write programs to do it for you, so it’s basically free money every time it turns something up.”

  “And best of all,” said Marisa, “the programs doing the searching are too dumb to recognize an obvious honeypot, so our trap will work perfectly.”

  “What if more than one hacker is ‘coraling’ this apartment?” asked Omar.

  “Then we get to make some hard decisions,” said Sahara. “But first: Where are we going to get a honeypot?”

  “I’ve got systems at home I could sacrifice,” said Marisa, “but I don’t think I could get in and out without my parents finding me—and they are super not happy with me right now.”

  “Use mine,” said Omar, and pulled out his small hand tablet. “I never really use it for anything anyway.”

  “Too obvious,” said Sahara. “We’re looking for a hacker hired by your father—if her software finds a Maldonado tablet in her neighborhood, she’ll freak out and disappear.”

  Omar frowned. “But I thought—”

  “Their crawler program won’t recognize a honeypot,” said Marisa, “but it will recognize ID. We don’t want to take the chance.”

  “I think he should buy a new one,” said Anja. She looked at him with her eyes wide, as if challenging him to say no. “You can afford it.”

  “He doesn’t have to buy a new one,” said Marisa.

  “No,” said Omar, “I’ll buy it. I said I’m in, and I’m in.”

  “We need the most expensive one—” Anja started, but Sahara cut her off.

  “A cheap and dirty tablet will do just fine,” she said. “Call the autocab, and we’ll hit a kiosk on the way.”

  They bought a MoGan Mini at a vending machine by the freeway, and spent the ride to Eagle Rock filling it with spyware and fake data—nothing that would pass a detailed examination, but enough to fool the coral rig software. Marisa found it hard to concentrate on the ride there, with her thigh pressed up against Omar’s on the bench, but what could she do? It was a small cab; there wasn’t anywhere else to sit.

  And she still really wanted that kiss.

  Is there something you want to tell me? Sahara sent her.

  Thanks for coming, Marisa sent back.

  I mean about Omar, sent Sahara. You’re practically sitting in his lap.

  Marisa glanced down and saw that there was almost ten inches of room between her and the door. She glanced at Sahara, who looked at her dryly, and then she scooted away from Omar with a sheepish smirk. She looked at Anja, but she was focused on programming the honeypot and didn’t seem to have noticed.

  This time yesterday you’d have spit on him, sent Sahara. This time last week you would have stabbed him in the heart. What’s going on?

  He’s different than he was, sent Marisa. I think it’s losing his mom. Again. It’s uncovered a different side of him.

  The other side is still there, sent Sahara. That’s how sides work.

  He’s helping us, sent Marisa. He’s changed.

  Just don’t get hurt, sent Sahara.

  Marisa nodded. I won’t.

  Anja told the cab to let them out a few blocks away from the apartment, and Sahara held the honeypot as they got out. “Spoof your ID
s now, so she can’t follow us later.”

  Marisa and Anja nodded, blinking to mask their djinni’s identity markers, but Omar frowned.

  “You say that like it’s no big deal, spoofing your ID.”

  “You are so dumb,” groaned Anja.

  Marisa pulled a headjack cable from her back pocket. “Turn around,” she said. “It’s faster to just do it for you.”

  “Ooh!” said Anja, crowding forward. “Let me!”

  “Like hell,” said Omar.

  “Don’t worry,” said Marisa with a grin. She plugged the cable into his headjack and requested permission to alter his settings. “I’ll make sure the new ID I give him is awesome.”

  “I shudder to think,” said Omar, but blinked and granted her access. She made up a fake name, tweaked a bunch of settings, and unplugged the cable.

  “Done.”

  Omar looked at her warily. “So who am I?”

  Marisa grinned. “You’ll find that out when a confused hacker shouts it at you.”

  “Let’s go,” said Sahara, and they walked the last few blocks toward the apartment, listening for the alert of a foreign network connecting to the honeypot.

  “Eagle Rock’s really gone to seed, hasn’t it?” asked Omar.

  “I like it,” said Marisa.

  “You keep saying that,” Anja told her, looking around at the run-down buildings. “Are you using those words wrong, or am I?”

  “Eagle Rock is great,” said Marisa, though she had to admit that the streets had a lot more trash in them than the last time she’d been there. But then, so did Mirador’s. So did most of LA’s. Sometimes it felt like the whole city was falling apart.

  “Nothing on the honeypot,” whispered Sahara. They looked up at the apartment—just one of several that stretched like giant concrete mountains into the sky. “If the coral rig’s on a higher floor, we might have to go up to reach it.”

  “Then let’s go up,” said Omar. The building looked like it used to have a good lock on it, but these days the door was simply propped open with a cinder block. A scattering of people sat on the front steps, and ignored them as they went inside. Omar hit the up button on the elevator, and when it opened they waited for a pair of old ladies to get out before they stepped in. Omar ran his finger over the buttons. “Thirty floors. We’ll go to fifteen and just . . . walk the halls?”