Code Flicker

by Marlin Seigman

  “It’s pretty clear who you work for has the resources to do this, and I know you gave me some reasons you asked me, but why aren’t people in your,” he paused, looking for the right word, “organization doing the job? Why get some small-timers to do it? Seems like it’s got a better chance of success if you do it.”

  Johnson gave him his drink. “That may be true. However, we cannot risk that a team from our, I will use your word, organization getting caught and getting traced back to us. The ramifications of that possibility are far greater than the risk that you do not succeed. If you are caught, or worse, we are out forty thousand credits, some of my time, and a few glasses of my whiskey.”

  “What if we’re caught and questioned?”

  “If you were caught and questioned? If you are caught, I can assure you that there will be no record of our meeting. In fact, there will be no record if you succeed. Furthermore, I would say that the likelihood of anyone believing you are telling the truth about an unknown man named Johnson hiring you over the belief that you were simply getting revenge on your former employer is very slim. You could think of our hiring you as a risk aversion strategy of sorts.”

  “Makes sense. And you won’t give any resources for the same reason?”

  “Yes. Resources can be traced.”

  “What about the credits? Can’t credits be traced?”

  “Yes. However, the credits you have received have made a long trip through several blockchains, with no two deposits taking the same route. We have been very careful. I doubt someone of even your skills could untangle the knot they have left behind.”

  He could see they were getting close to The Galleria and his apartment.

  “One last question. Did you know that my friend, Xia, was on the team for this chip?”

  “My dear Mr. Quince, as you know, a good player keeps his cards close to his vest.”

  Chapter 13

  Johnson waited for the car to pull away before contacting Mr. Craig.

  Mr. Craig’s image appeared on the screen set in the compartment divider.

  “Johnson, I assume you have good news?”

  “Yes sir, the target has been acquired.”

  A slightly more relaxed look came over Mr. Craig’s face. “That is excellent. I also assume he was able to convince the other necessary elements to take part?”

  “Yes, sir. He was wise enough to know he would not be able to complete the task on his own, and the other elements acted as predicted.”

  “This speaks to your excellent scouting.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Johnson hesitated. “There is one potential issue. There was a slight shift in the target’s tone near the end of our conversation.”

  “Explain.”

  “He sounded a bit more confident, and he became quite inquisitive.”

  Mr. Craig leaned back in his chair. “What sort of questions did he ask?”

  “They centered on our organization, as he put it, and why we are not handling this task ourselves.”

  “Those seem natural questions, and the confidence is needed for the task. I would say it is a natural behavior for the target and an example of the traits that led to his selection.”

  Johnson nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “However, monitor him closely. If his confidence builds to a level leading him to decide to become too inquisitive for our liking, we will have to take certain measures.”

  “Of course,” Johnson said.

  Mr. Craig cut the feed. Johnson poured himself a glass of whiskey and rolled down the window just enough to let in the cool night air.

  Chapter 14

  “Now I know what a dog feels like when he catches a car,” Gomez said.

  Sandy raised her eyebrows. “What?”

  “My mother used to say that when she got something she thought she wanted.”

  “Make sense.”

  “Well,” Jacob said, “I don’t feel like we’ve even started chasing the car. The dog’s mistake is that he doesn’t have a plan other than chasing. We aren’t going to make that mistake. We need a solid plan.”

  They sat in the backroom of Retro Media, the oscillating images on the security monitors adding a soft glow to the light of the room. After his meeting with Johnson, Jacob decided he would wait until the morning to gather everyone, except Xia. He saw no need to drag her in on planning yet. Besides, she would be at work today, and he didn’t want her to start missing work. She had never missed a day of work in the time he knew her, and he was sure she hadn’t since. If she started missing work now, Your Better Life would take notice and see if she was doing well. Any planning with Xia would have to take place in the evening or on weekends.

  Of course, there was the small issue of creating a plan, and none of them had an idea of where to start.

  “All right,” Gomez said, “let’s think in broad strokes.”

  “We know we have to get inside the building,” Jacob started. “Not just to physically get a chip, but because the network the research data and code will be on is self-contained. There’s no link to the outside and only a handful of access points. It’s essentially a single supercomputer that runs throughout the building.”

  “We know we have Xia in the building,” Gomez said.

  “She can’t do it by herself,” Jacob said.

  “I know, but she is an asset.”

  Sandy said, “Maybe that’s how we start. What assets do we have? We list our assets and go from there.”

  “Well,” Jacob said, “Xia is one. I know the building and have worked on the network, assuming it hasn’t been completely replaced.”

  “I’m sure it’s been upgraded,” Gomez said.

  “That could be a problem. It was already running on a quantum core with an AI OS.”

  Sandy interrupted. “Back to our assets. We’ll get to problems later. Gomez, you know a guy who works security there.”

  “I do. He was on my team at EverGreen Security. We were in Kansas City together and Berlin right before I left corporate.”

  “That’s an asset,” Jacob said. “Can you contact him?”

  “He comes to DeSoto’s once in a while. I’m sure I can make contact.”

  “What else?” Sandy asked.

  “Well, there is us,” Jacob said. “Johnson came to me because of all of us. He thinks we all bring something to the table, so what is it?”

  “Hacking,” Gomez said, “knowledge of pharma-tech code, security experience, Sandy knows imaging tech.”

  “One of the best deep fake artists around,” Sandy said.

  Jacob laughed. “I’m sure that could…”

  Interrupting, Two-Step opened the door and stuck his head in. “Hey, Pigeon Eater is here. He has those flippers you traded for. You want him to bring them back?”

  Jacob stood. “I’ll go.”

  “What’re you guys talking about?” Two-Step asked, not moving out of the doorway.

  Gomez looked at Two-Step. “Get back to work.”

  “I need to get through,” Jacob said when Two-Step still had not moved.

  “Yeah right.”

  Pigeon Eater stood at the entrance of the store, behind him and still in the mall walkway sat a wagon with two boxes in it. “Hey, Jacob.”

  “I’m sorry I forgot to drop by for the phones yesterday,” Jacob said as he made his way toward Pigeon Eater. “I got caught up with something.”

  “No problem, man. I just thought I would bring these by. I didn’t want the debt hanging over my head. That wouldn’t be good.” He glanced around and seemed unsure of how to proceed.

  “I understand. You can wheel them to the back, or I can carry them,” Jacob said.

  Pigeon Eater surveyed the aisles, then took in the size of the wagon. Satisfied, he pulled the wagon through the store, taking his time, making sure not to hit any of the electronics piled along the way. When he got to the counter he stopped. “I don’t think it will fit through there,” he said indicating behind the counter.

  “I
can take it from here,” Jacob said. “Two-Step, give me a hand.”

  After they got the boxes off the wagon, Jacob thanked Pigeon Eater.

  “No problem, man,” he said. “I just don’t get why you guys go so crazy over those things.”

  “Oh, these things are like gold,” Two-Step started.

  “I’m sure Pigeon Eater has other things he could be doing instead of listening to you ramble on about old tech,” Jacob said, cutting him off.

  “Yeah, I’ve got to take some pigeons to The Chaat Spot,” he said. Without saying another word, he navigated his wagon back through the store.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jacob asked Two-Step as they carried the phones to the back room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t need to know they are so valuable.”

  “But they are.”

  “They are what?” Gomez asked.

  “The phones,” Two-Step said.

  “The phones are what?”

  “Valuable.”

  Jacob cut in. “But you don’t want the person trading them to you to know how valuable they are.”

  Two-Step thought for a moment. “I could see how that could be a problem.”

  Sandy rummaged through one of the boxes. “These are great,” she said, taking one of the phones out of the box.

  Two-Step got excited. “I know. I’ve been thinking about them since Jacob said he was getting so many. We usually sell them to people on the pirate LTE network, but with this many, I can use a few for an idea I’ve been working on. I want to see if I can hook up one to a newer network. Maybe a quantum network. I think I can modify them to make a network go crazy slow.”

  “Why would you do that?” Sandy asked.

  “I... Well, for fun, I guess. If I can get it to work, it could cause some serious disruption to a system. I’m sure there are some Black Hats out there who would pay good credits for one that could do that.”

  Jacob looked at Gomez. Gomez nodded. They both had the same idea.

  “How close are you to making this work?” Jacob asked.

  “It’s all theory, right now. The only flippers we’ve had have sold before I could test the theory. But with this many, I could try some ideas.”

  “Would ten of these be enough to experiment on?” Gomez asked.

  Two-Step’s face lit up. “Ten? Yeah, sure.”

  “Start as soon as possible.”

  “What about the Tandy?” Two-Step asked.

  “Jesus, you aren’t done with that yet?”

  “I will be today.”

  “Good. Now get back out in the store.”

  On his way out, Two-Step stopped and asked, “You guys thinking about using the phones for something?”

  “Get back to work.”

  Jacob shut the door behind Two-Step. “If he can get that to work…”

  “We can use it on the Your Better Life network,” Sandy finished for him.

  “Another asset,” Gomez said.

  “But we will need more,” Jacob said. “More than we have. Weapons, for one. IDs that will work.”

  Gomez sighed.

  “What?” Sandy asked.

  “I was hoping to avoid this, but I could get in touch with the SRS.”

  “The Russians and Chinese? But I thought you two didn’t want to work with them again,” Sandy said.

  “We don’t, but they have resources we could use. It would be a damn sight easier to work with them than gathering everything ourselves,” Gomez said.

  “We couldn’t let them know about Your Better Life,” Jacob said.

  “Oh, hell no,” Gomez agreed.

  “You think they would be up for it?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Gomez said.

  Chapter 15

  “We could make a date of it,” Jacob said. “Go to the museum or the zoo.”

  “The zoo depresses me. Looking at clones of extinct animals in man-made habitats is just not my thing,” Sandy said.

  She had the night off and wanted to spend the day working on an art project, an installation piece examining celebrity in politics. At least that is what she told people and what the project was in the beginning. Now it had morphed into something she couldn’t quite explain. Over time, it became directionless, and she felt like dropping it for months, but admitting that was a sort of defeat in her mind, admitting that she was not going to be an artist, that she would be running the visual show at DeSoto’s for the rest of her life. Maybe that was why she agreed to go in on the Your Better Life job. She knew with her cut from the payout, she would have some freedom to work on her art. Or the freedom to decide if that is what she wanted to do.

  “I know you like the museum,” Jacob said. “And this guy we’re making a delivery to will blow your mind. He’s a total weird genius type.”

  She could see he wanted to spend time with her, and she did feel slightly guilty for how she handled the other night at DeSoto’s, so she said, “Fine. What are we delivering?”

  “Some Nicolas Cage movies on DVD, VHS, and Blu-Ray, including Zandalee.”

  “Zandalee? What’s that?”

  “A rare Cage movie. Worth big credits. The professor went nuts when we told him we have it.”

  “The professor?” This was getting stranger.

  “The guy’s a professor at Rice. Philosophy, I think. Anyway, he’s writing a book about the rise of the Church of Cage and how it coincides with streaming media, or something. I don’t know, just ask him.”

  “Well, that sounds interesting.”

  ◆◆◆

  “I hate traffic,” Jacob said, cutting across two lanes.

  “Why don’t you let the van drive?”

  “Because I like driving.”

  “Well, then you have to deal with traffic.”

  “True.”

  “So how did Gomez’s meeting with the SRS go?”

  “They are willing to help, but we have to help them with a few things.”

  “Typical.”

  “I don’t like it, but it’s the way it works. We need some things, and they can get them for us. We’ve worked with them before, so I don’t think it will be a problem. Besides, Gomez says they are trying to get a bigger footprint in the city, and they might be a good ally to have.”

  “Don’t miss your turn,” Sandy said.

  Jacob cut back across two lanes to make the turn.

  “I just don’t know how much they can be trusted,” Sandy said. “They’ve been known to turn on people.”

  “People who were much bigger than we are. We’re small time and not a threat to them.”

  “I hope you’re right. I wouldn’t want to be forced into a working relationship with them.”

  She could see Jacob was thinking about the possibility.

  “That’s crossed my mind,” he said, “and I don’t want to either. Freelancing suits me, suits all of us. I think it’s a risk we have to take, but I have no intention of being an errand boy for the Russians and the Chinese.”

  “Glad to hear it. The bigger question is, do we have a plan yet?”

  Jacob slowed down and entered the university parking lot. He pulled up to the security guard and rolled down the window.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the guard asked, stepping to the van.

  “Retro Media. We have a delivery for Professor Weston,” Jacob said.

  The guard checked his computer. “You can park in the lot to your right. You will want to go to the Humanities building, room 210.”

  “Got it.”

  Jacob was right, the professor had a weird genius thing going on. His long hair looked like it hadn’t been washed or combed in days, his glasses were taped in two places, and his shirt had a stain near the pocket, leading Sandy to decide he had a homeless person look as much as he had the weird genius look. He acted like a little kid at Christmas when they entered his office carrying a box of videos. He got worse when he started going through the box, repeating, “This is amazing,” as
he examined each video. Sandy didn’t see how he could be amazed by a single video, the shelves on the walls were lined with them, stacks of VHS tapes littered the floor and the desk, and she felt sure the boxes stacked almost to the ceiling in the corner of the office were full of them also.

  His expression went blank for a moment when he reached the bottom of the box. A panicked look replaced the blank stare. When he spoke he stammered, “Zandalee? I thought you said you had Zandalee?”

  Jacob smiled and took a VHS tape out of his backpack and handed it to the professor.

  “You did not tell me it is the uncut and unrated version. Oh, this is fantastic,” Weston almost shouted.

  “Is it any good? I haven’t seen it,” Sandy said.

  Professor Weston held the tape with one hand and his long bangs back with the other. “One of the true underrated masterpieces of Cage’s art. He is sublime, as he was so often. Of course, critics of the day did not like it. One could argue that the studio itself did not like it, sending it straight to video,” he said with a dismissive look.

  Sandy wasn’t sure what straight to video meant, but she nodded.

  “Well, we’ve got to go,” Jacob said.

  Professor Weston ignored him and continued. “The critics of the day were such fools. They could not understand what Cage was doing. He took acting to a new level, a new territory. That was his genius. Did Jacob tell you about my book?”

  “He did mention it.”

  “In the book, I argue that Cage was the greatest prophet of the twenty-first century. He foresaw the advent of the internet meme driven culture, a culture expressed and consumed in small bites of disconnected information, a culture where context is no longer as relevant as the moment, but, and this is important, not the moment of creation, but rather the moment of consumption. Because of this enlightened understanding, he made the acting choice of presenting memeable moments in his films.”

  “Well, we’ve got to go,” Jacob said again, starting for the door and guiding Sandy with him.

  “Did you know,” Professor Weston continued, “for a time people were deep faking Cage into other films, often as every role. Many people do not know that he did not play Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter. That is why these old media are so important. They are the original texts.”