Ones and Zeroes

by Dan Wells

  “Then they need to eat, too,” said her abuela.

  The food was delicious, and the shower was cold, and Marisa wore her blue dress and walked to church in the scorching heat, watching wavy mirages rise up from the asphalt on the road. Omar Maldonado winked at her, like he always did at church, though this time he managed to corner her as she slipped out for a bathroom break, smiling so widely she thought his head would split open.

  “I saw the dive,” said Omar. His smile became more of a smirk. “How much of that story was real, about the publicity stunt and Sigan being in on the whole thing?”

  Marisa looked at him, her mouth closed tight, trying to decide how much he actually knew and how much he was simply guessing. Better to assume the worst with Omar, but that didn’t mean she had to confirm it for him.

  “We were completely safe,” she said, folding her arms. “We’d been practicing the stunt for weeks.”

  “Sure you were,” he said, leaning against the wall. “What were you really doing at that party? Trying to steal something?”

  “What makes you think we were trying to steal anything?”

  “You had the twins with you: Jin and Jen, or whatever their names are. Wearing identical clothes.” He shrugged. “I know a con when I see one.”

  “I need to use the restroom,” she said firmly, and pushed past him. He stepped aside too late, their arms brushing as she opened the door. She closed it behind herself, and found a stall to pee in.

  Twenty seconds exactly.

  “Welcome to San Juanito!” said her father, opening the doors of the restaurant and ushering the girls inside. “Sit wherever you want! It’s not like we’re going to get any other customers.”

  “Not much of a lunch rush on Sunday?” asked Jaya.

  “Not much of an anything,” said Guadalupe. “Who can afford to eat out anymore?” She saw Anja and shrieked. “Ay, este niña malcriada. How could you do that to your hair?”

  “With a razor,” said Anja.

  “I was thinking of doing the same thing with mine,” said Sandro, and smiled when Guadalupe threw up her hands and stormed toward the kitchen.

  Marisa held the door while her friends filed in, and frowned as a piece of plastifoam garbage went tumbling down the gutter in a low gust of wind. She thought about the filthy streets of Kirkland, and feared that Mirador would soon be the same.

  “This is my favorite table,” said Sahara, leading them to a large round booth in the corner. The Cherry Dogs sat down, and Marisa’s family took the next table over. The center of each table held a touch-screen menu, and Sahara looked at the other girls. “Do you guys like spicy food?”

  “Please,” said Jaya. “I’m from India.”

  “Spicy’s okay,” said Fang.

  “Perfect,” said Sahara. “How about chocolate?”

  “Also delicious,” said Jaya, “though I assume we’re not eating them together.” She laughed, but Sahara shook her head, and then it was Marisa’s turn to laugh as a look of horror crossed Jaya’s face. “What? You eat spicy chocolate?”

  “It’s called mole,” said Sahara, “and I had that same reaction when they first told me about it, but trust me. It’s like the greatest thing ever. Is chicken okay?”

  “I’m vegetarian,” said Jaya.

  “We have tofu,” said Carlo Magno, and started toward the kitchen. “Gabi, come help me get drinks. Horchata for everyone!”

  Gabi glowered at him, and Marisa jumped up quickly to save her sister the trouble. “I can do it, Gabi, don’t worry.” She followed her papi into the kitchen and pulled ice-cold jugs of horchata out of the giant industrial fridge. She counted everyone in her head—eleven people, plus one more if Bao showed up—and set out a plastic glass for each. She sent Bao a quick message while she filled the glasses with ice and poured out the smooth, silky drink, and then carried them back into the dining room on a large tray.

  “I’m impressed,” said Jaya. “I’d drop that entire thing if I tried that.”

  “Years of practice,” said Marisa, handing out the drinks. “My parents don’t like using nuli waiters—they think a personal touch ‘adds value to the dining experience.’”

  “What do you say?” asked Jaya.

  “I say better a nuli than me,” said Marisa, “but here I am.” She gave everyone a plastic straw, and peeled the paper covering off of hers as she sat down.

  “What’s this?” asked Jaya.

  “It’s called horchata,” said Sahara. “It’s like rice milk and vanilla and cinnamon.”

  Jaya took a sip, and grimaced in shock. “Aree!” she shouted. “That’s sweet!”

  “Tell me about it,” said Anja. “Friggin’ Americans.”

  “It’s like bubble tea,” said Fang.

  “Kind of,” said Marisa. She was just glad Fang was talking.

  “The mole’s going to take a while,” said Sahara, and blinked to send her nulis to the far side of the room—they’d record a nice wide shot of the group, but they wouldn’t pick up any audio. With that taken care of, she looked at the group solemnly. “That gives us time to talk about C-Gull.”

  “Why are you talking about seagulls?” asked Pati.

  “Mind your own business,” said Marisa, shooing her back to her own table. She looked at her friends. “What do we know so far?”

  “Fang tried the numbers,” said Sahara.

  Fang nodded. “The number Alain gave us had two zeroes and one one. That’s eight total variations if we assume that some of those numbers are supposed to be transposed.” She looked down, as if suddenly embarrassed that she had talked too much. “None of them work.”

  “Then it has to be something else,” said Marisa. “He clearly tried to give us some sign so we could make sense of the fake number. This is our only lead—it’s got to work somehow.”

  The bell on the front door rang, and they looked up to see Bao come in. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Hi, Bao,” said Pati, grinning like a maniac. Her crush couldn’t be less subtle. He waved politely and sat down in the booth next to Marisa. She pushed his glass of horchata toward him.

  “I did some internet searches for the name C-Gull,” said Anja. “Looks like he’s an underground arms dealer, but I couldn’t find any way of contacting him.”

  “I asked around with some people I know,” said Bao. “Same thing.”

  “Why would he give us the name of an arms dealer?” asked Sahara. “He specifically told Renata that an arms dealer wouldn’t be any help.”

  “Maybe this isn’t about arms dealing,” said Jaya. “Maybe C-Gull has . . . other skills.”

  “He was probably lying to Renata,” said Bao.

  “What about that hand signal?” asked Fang.

  Sahara held up her hand with the pointer finger and pinkie finger extended. She looked at it, turning her hand around. “What could this possibly mean?”

  “Maybe he was just trying to look cool,” said Bao.

  “He doesn’t have to try to look cool,” said Marisa.

  “Maybe it’s a code,” said Anja. She made the same symbol with her hand, studying it. “Let’s assume he gave us the real number, but with one or two digits changed to throw off Renata. This symbol could be a way of telling us what the right digits are.” She looked at it again. “Maybe it’s an eleven?”

  “How could ‘eleven’ help?” asked Jaya.

  “Who’s got the video?” asked Sahara.

  “I’ll play it on the table,” said Marisa, and blinked on her djinni to access the restaurant’s computer system. She found their table, linked to the touch screen, and played the video.

  “I don’t know his ID,” said Alain. The lip-reader data was still there, though this time the words came out through the restaurant computer’s voice, which was modeled on Carlo Magno’s. “He takes messages through an old handheld phone, which he keeps stashed somewhere remote. That way no one can track him directly. The number is 9780062347163.”

  “He flashes the hand s
ignal right at the end,” said Sahara, pointing at the screen. “Right on the ‘one.’ I’m betting that’s important. Maybe we replace that one-six with a one-one?”

  “I think the two lowered fingers have to mean something,” said Anja. “If he just wanted to show us two ones, he’d hold up his first two fingers, but he didn’t. This is more like . . . one zero zero one.”

  “That’s four digits,” said Sahara. “If the replacement sequence starts on the one, we’d be replacing three digits with four—it’d be too long.”

  “I just tried it,” said Fang. “Doesn’t work.”

  “Try the last four digits,” said Jaya. “Change 7163 to 1001.”

  Fang blinked, waited, and shook her head. “No good.”

  “Ha!” Marisa shouted. She looked up at the group. “It’s binary.”

  “How?” asked Bao.

  Marisa made the symbol with her hand. “One finger up, two fingers down, one finger up—that’s 1001, just like you said, but just to make extra sure Renata couldn’t crack the code he gave it to us in binary. He even said it at the end: ‘There are ones and there are zeroes.’ Convert 1001 from binary to base ten and you get seventeen, so if we just replace this one-six with a one-seven, it might work—”

  “It’s ringing,” said Fang.

  The whole table fell quiet.

  “It’s a voicemail,” said Fang.

  “C-Gull’s voicemail?” Bao asked.

  “I can’t tell,” said Fang. “The message is generic. What should I say?”

  “Tell him . . . we’re friends of Alain Bensoussan,” said Sahara. “Tell him Alain’s been captured, and it’s vital that we speak to him as soon as possible.”

  Fang nodded, waited for the beep, and then relayed the message. She sounded far more confident on the message than she had since she’d arrived. When she finished, she blinked to close the call.

  “Wow,” said Anja.

  “Good job, Marisa,” said Bao. “I never would have figured that out.”

  “Now we wait,” said Sahara, “and hope that was really C-Gull’s number.” She tapped her fingers on the table, and nobody made a sound. “I really hate this part.”

  “How long will it take?” asked Marisa.

  “Alain said he only checks it sometimes,” said Bao. “It could be tonight; it could be days.”

  “It’s not like we have forever,” said Anja. “The tournament starts tomorrow—what if we go out in the first round? That’s our only access to the building.”

  “The mole will be out in a bit,” said Guadalupe, bustling up to the table with another wide tray, loaded up with bowls and baskets. She began setting them down on the tables with practiced efficiency. “Homemade chips, homemade salsa, homemade guacamole, and our house specialty: chiles con queso. Also homemade.”

  “The brackets are posted,” said Fang.

  “Who are we playing?” asked Sahara.

  “Thunderbolts,” said Fang, reading the list. “They’re an Indian team, playing for Johara, and very good.”

  “I love them,” said Jaya, but then she frowned. “If we beat them, do you think I’ll get fired?”

  “Whoa,” said Anja, her eyes moving as she scanned the brackets on her djinni. “There’s a bye.”

  “Someone gets a bye in the first round?” asked Marisa. “Please don’t tell me it’s Chaewon’s team. I’m going to punch her.”

  “How is there a bye?” asked Sahara. “There were sixteen teams exactly.”

  “Somebody dropped out,” said Anja. Her eyes refocused on the group. “The Saxon Violins.”

  “What a bunch of douchebags,” said Bao.

  “Why’d they drop out?” asked Marisa.

  “Personal injury,” said Sahara, looking up the data for herself. “Apparently their General, Donny Chu, broke his wrist and arm at their hotel last night.”

  “He was probably drunk,” said Jaya.

  “So?” asked Anja. “You don’t need either of those to play a VR game.”

  “I’m going to call them,” said Sahara. “The Saxon Violins are douchebags, but they’re excellent players—probably the best team in the tournament, after World2gether and maybe MotherBunny. Don’t you find it suspicious that Chaewon’s only real competition just voluntarily dropped out? I’ll patch it through a speaker so you can hear.” She blinked, and they heard a ringing sound coming from a speaker in Sahara’s purse.

  “Hello,” said a cheerful voice on the other end. “Thank you for calling the LA Downtown Marriott; how may I help you today?”

  “I need to talk to Donny Chu,” said Sahara.

  “Do you know the room number?” asked the clerk. She sounded suspicious; now that everyone had a djinni, no one called the front desk unless they didn’t know the person they were trying to reach personally. They probably had a policy against these kinds of calls to help protect their celebrity guests.

  “Tell him Sahara Cowan wants to talk to him,” said Sahara. “He’ll take the call.”

  “Just one moment,” said the clerk, and the speaker started playing tepid hold music.

  “How do you know he’ll want to talk to you?” asked Bao.

  “Because he lurks in my chatroom all the time,” said Sahara.

  “Hey,” said a male voice on the speaker. “Is this really Sahara?”

  “It is,” said Sahara. “I was wondering if you—”

  “Dude, we watched your nuli dive like a hundred times! That was the balls, girl, like, the total balls.”

  Anja mimed strangling herself.

  “Thanks,” said Sahara. “Donny, I was wondering if you could tell me—”

  “So I’ve always wondered,” said Donny, ignoring her, “if you film your whole life, why don’t you ever film yourself in the shower? Like, your subscriber numbers would go through the stratosphere.”

  Sahara ignored the question. “I’m trying to find out—”

  “And you’re a lesbian, too, right?”

  Sahara sighed. “Yeah, so?”

  “Why don’t you ever film that? Our whole team would be, like, paying sponsors—”

  “Listen, you walking sphincter,” said Sahara. “There’s no way you would ever back out of this tournament, injury or not, and we already think Chaewon’s trying to fix the results, so shut up and tell me the truth: Did they pay you off?”

  “Like hell they did,” said Donny. “There’s no way we would ever lose for money. What do you think we are?”

  “Then what’s going on?” asked Sahara.

  “Sweet!” said Donny. “I’m watching your vidcast of you calling us while I’m talking to you—that’s trippy. Are you all listening right now? Hey, girl in the red shirt, you busy later? I’ve got a broken arm but the rest of me works just fine.”

  Each of the girls looked down, not remembering which color shirt she’d put on that morning. Marisa sighed when she saw that it was her, and put her hand over the camera lens.

  “If not money, then what?” asked Sahara. “An injury shouldn’t keep you from playing, so what did they do? Did they threaten you? Is this whole broken arm story just a cover?”

  There was a moment of silence. “It’s really broken,” he said at last. All the bravado was gone from his voice.

  Sahara glanced at Marisa, and swallowed. The tone of the conversation had changed abruptly, and Marisa had a sinking feeling she knew the reason why.

  “Did . . . they break it?” Sahara asked.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” said Donny.

  “You have to tell someone,” said Sahara. “This is illegal.”

  “Do you know how connected Kwon Chaewon is?” asked Donny. “We bow out of this now and she owes us a favor, but if we talk we don’t play in another major tournament for the rest of our lives. She can do that, you know.”

  “She doesn’t run the world,” said Sahara.

  “Maybe I just don’t want any more bones broken,” said Donny. “Dude snapped my wrist with his bare hands—do you have any idea how
much that hurts?”

  “Who did?” asked Sahara.

  “Huge dude,” said Donny. “One of those military eye-plates that covers his whole face—no eyes or forehead, just solid metal.”

  “Park,” said Marisa.

  “Thanks,” said Sahara. She hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  Donny’s sneering voice came back. “Then howsabout a little sympathy show for an injured ma—”

  Sahara blinked, and ended the call.

  “So,” said Anja. “Chaewon’s a cheater, a kidnapper, a torturer . . . and now an extortionist.”

  “Saxon Violins were up against MotherBunny,” said Fang. “Now they have a bye.”

  “No way she lets a team that good have a bye,” said Sahara. “Watch—this time tomorrow they’ll have ‘voluntarily’ dropped out too.”

  “This burns me up,” said Marisa. “This tournament doesn’t even matter—not for her. We’d at least get some notoriety out of it, and that ten thousand yuan could save my family, but Chaewon already has all of that and more. What does she even get out of this?”

  “She gets a trophy,” said Jaya.

  “If she wants one this bad, she could just buy one,” said Marisa. “Why drag the rest of us through this? And why spend so much time and energy on something so . . .” She struggled for words that wouldn’t get her grounded by her parents. “So pinchingly pointless.”

  “You made that word sound way harsher than it has any right to be,” said Bao.

  “You should have heard the word I was going to use,” said Marisa.

  “Some people are just spoiled brats,” said Jaya. “You have to let it go.”

  “I can’t,” said Marisa. “KT Sigan is taking away everything I have, making Chaewon’s family unconscionably rich, and all she’s using that money for is winning a fake tournament.” She shook her head. “I can’t just let it go.”

  “So let’s do something about it,” said Sahara. “People with power don’t get to win just because they have power. We’ve stopped other people, and we can stop her. Rescuing Alain is our top priority, but you know what? As long as we’re there, we might as well beat Chaewon, find Grendel, and—what the hell?—destroy Sigan too while we’re at it.”