Virtual Fire

by Mendy Sobol

  I looked from face to face, not knowing what to say, almost confessing my role in Darin’s death on the spot. “L-look, Mom,” I stammered, but Joey cut me off, holding up his hand for me to stop, turning to look at Tammy Jo with eyes blazing, voice like ice.

  “Now you listen to me, Mom. You’ve always hated Melora because she’s the opposite of you. Everything she’s ever done has been about helping our family. Everything you’ve ever done has been about you. You’re so low you want to make my son’s funeral about you.”

  Tammy Jo started to protest, but Joey continued.

  “Professor, you’re going to put your wife in that car, and you’re going to drive her home. And if either of you ever shows your face around my family again, you’re going to regret it.”

  “Well, I never!” Tammy Jo said, tears suddenly dry as her face flushed with righteousness.

  “That’s right, Mom,” Joey said. “You never.”

  Everyone watched as the Lincoln pulled away, even the chaplain, who looked like he was praying for God to make him disappear.

  Joey took my hand in his. “Chaplain,” he said, “will you please continue? It would mean a lot to my family.”

  The chaplain pulled himself together, reopened his bible, found his place, and began reading.

  “But deliver us from evil,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

  Chapter Thirty-One: Melora

  I met with Toby again the night I returned from Florida. We agreed not to see each other more than twice a week, which was still too dangerous. Then I explained my idea.

  “The first time we met, I told you they were ready for you, expecting you.”

  “I remember,” Toby said.

  “Well, we’re gonna give them exactly what they’re looking for. Because that’s their weakness.”

  “Oh-kay... and the good news is…?

  “The good news is, the programming’s nearly impossible, but the plan’s simple.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The bad news is, we’re gonna need help. The really bad news is, one of us has to get busted.”

  The next morning at work, I was exhausted, but I’d buried my fears with Darin and replaced them with purpose. I stopped sabotaging my programs, and my programming improved, even outdoing my earlier work. IPI was pleased, increasing my salary and status. What they didn’t know was that every other day or so, I embedded tiny bits of code here and there in the IPI Net. Tiny bits of code that one day would electronically join forces, becoming a dinosaur-sized monster. Toby gave the program its name—Godzilla.

  The only tough part for me was avoiding Coop and the Rusks, even making sure I missed them during hospital visits with Professor Sherman. Of course I didn’t want them catching on to what I was doing, but more than that, I was afraid they’d get in trouble if I got caught. Maggie was upset each time I made excuses for missing a dinner party or shopping trip, and that hurt. Coop seemed as set on ducking me as I was on staying clear of him. And that hurt more.

  My twice-weekly meetings with Toby kept me going. His bought, stolen, scavenged, home-built machines were marvels, fascinating me with their ancient monitors and keyboards, junk IPI thought was going in some secure landfill, but was instead being sold on the black market by IPI customers and IPI Security. And while I worked through problems step-by-step, Toby took impatient leaps, like skipping rocks across a stream.

  I liked programming with Toby. I liked his stories, too. He told me about the early days of computing and showed me a program for picking racetrack winners he wrote back in the day with Tesla, his best friend from college. He claimed that one time it was four-for-four at some track, but either his memory was foggy or they got lucky, because I can’t believe even Toby could’ve figured out something that complicated with the crappy computer and code they were using.

  “Bruin was an IBM 650,” he said, “the first mass-produced computer. That was before the Access Law and IPI’s monopoly. IBM made only 2,000 of them in the 1950s. Wellston was lucky to get one.”

  “How many gigs?”

  “Gigs? Bruin’s memory was on a rotatin’ steel drum! Of course Tesla and I made a few, uh, modifications.”

  Most of Toby’s stories came with pictures—photo albums, yearbooks, and newspaper clippings he’d lugged around through decades of running.

  From his high school yearbook, I learned that Toby, like Coop, was a military school kid, tall, awkward, looking way out of place with his more spit-and-polish classmates. One whole photo album was from Toby’s years living underground. Some pages were filled with boring pictures of towers, monuments and museums, and like every tourist who wastes film instead of buying postcards, Toby couldn’t remember where a lot of them were. He did better with the funny ones—“Hey look! That’s me standin’ in front of the statue of Will Rogers and his horse Soapsuds at the University of Texas. The statue’s turned twenty-three degrees to the east so the horse’s ass is pointed at Texas A&M!” Even on the run Toby collected stories like that one, stories he could finally share.

  Another thing he collected was photos of his favorite pizzerias. Every town had its own pizza page, complete with shots of storefronts, freshly-baked pies, and a very happy Toby, his arm draped around the owner. Montreal, Eugene, Austin, Madison, Providence, and Boston. Even St. Francis.

  “Holy shit, Toby—that’s Mr. Belasso!”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Remember how I told you about living in a pizzeria when I was in high school?”

  “Livin’ the dream!”

  “Well you’re not gonna believe this, but that pizzeria was Belasso’s!”

  “No way!”

  “This is incredible! We might’ve seen each other!”

  “I don’t think so, kid. That was before you were born!”

  That was the only time Toby ever called me “kid,” the only time our age difference ever came up.

  “Whatever you say, old man, but I think it was destiny.”

  Another of Toby’s albums was filled with clippings from the Butler Journal, all dated between May 1970 and May 1971. A lot happened that year. Students gunned down at Kent State and Jackson State. Toby’s college, Wellston U., on strike against the war. An arson fire at the Wellston ROTC building with two deaths and unnamed suspects in custody. Vietnam nuked. Nixon dead. One Journal photo showed a young man waving an upside-down flag over a courthouse, another, an old man, cigar clenched between his teeth, holding a dying girl in his arms. None of this was history for Toby. It was real, and his stories made it real for me. So I asked him if he knew anyone in those pictures. “Yeah,” he said, then turned his head and started blowing his nose. I didn’t ask again.

  There were two photos he cherished above all others, the ones he kept framed on his desk. One of Toby, Tesla, and the smiley-face girl after a demonstration, and another of the three of them in the winner’s circle at a long-ago demolished racetrack. When we’d get stuck on a coding problem, Toby would grab them, one in each hand, and stare at them like he was looking into the past for answers. “For inspiration,” he’d say, “and luck.” He had other annoying habits, too. Like talking with his mouth full of food. And it wouldn’t have killed him to try real deodorant instead of the worthless hippie shit he used. But that deal with the pictures was the one thing that really pissed me off.

  Late one Friday we ran into some coding glitches that stumped us for hours. It was taking way longer than it should have because each time we got stuck, Toby had to stop and make goo-goo eyes at those fucking pictures. I was tired, and for the first time since we met I was about to lose my shit. Then, all of a sudden, Toby slapped both pictures face down on the desk so hard I was surprised the glass didn’t shatter.

  “Fuck this shit,” he said. “Let’s go for a drive!”

  With me at the wheel and Toby navigating, we crossed the border into Rhode Island an hour later. Thirty minutes after that we pulled up to a grey stone wall bordering a moonlit beach. A weathered sign read Welcome to
Jamestown. Breakers rolled in from the Atlantic. It was deserted. I rolled down my window and took a deep breath, filling my lungs with fresh, salty air.

  “I remember this place from college.” Toby said. “Wasn’t sure I could find it though. Tesla and I used to drive out here, buy a barbecued chicken and some sweetbread at this little Portuguese snack shack, sit on the seawall, and watch the sunset.”

  “Sounds romantic.”

  Toby punched me lightly on the arm. “Oh it was, Melora. We’d gaze into each other’s eyes and recite luuuvvv sonnets in COBOL and FORTRAN.”

  Toby laughed. Then he unbuckled his seatbelt and moved closer, looking serious. “Oh Melora,” he said, “I’m sorry… but I’ve got to go in!”

  Toby bounded from the car, a big, overgrown, puppy of a man, stripped to his boxers and ran through the sand waving his arms until the breakers swallowed him. This is nuts, I thought. We’re gonna get busted for sure. On the other hand, if we didn’t get busted tonight, we probably never would.

  I got out of my BMW and sat on the seawall watching Toby crest waves as he swam seaward, then bodysurfed to shore. He was an awful swimmer, and a worse bodysurfer. If he’d grown up in Florida he would have drowned before he turned sixteen. In the moonlight, I could see he’d lost his boxers, but I’m not sure Toby noticed. He stood up, and with the surf breaking around his waist, waved for me to join him. So I took off my tee shirt and cutoffs, put my hearing aid inside a sneaker, and slipped into the water beside him.

  “C’mon,” Toby said, “I’ll race you!”

  We swam outward, and within seconds I was thirty yards ahead of him. No big deal, since Toby’s freestyle was just a bunch of splashing. I circled back, hoping I wouldn’t have to rescue him. When I reached him, he was treading water even though it was only waist deep.

  I stood up. After a moment, so did Toby.

  “Damn, Melora, where’d you learn to swim like that?”

  “I grew up in Florida, remember? On the Gulf of Mexico. Where the fuck did you learn to swim like that?

  Toby laughed. “In military school.”

  “Well, whatever you do, don’t join the Navy.”

  The moon broke through the clouds, lighting up our bodies, lighting Toby’s eyes like someone had thrown a switch.

  “Hey, what’s that tat on your shoulder?”

  “It’s a devil ray. They live in the Gulf.”

  “Why a devil ray?”

  I told him the story, the first time I’d told anyone.

  “Cool!” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened with you and the ray, that’s fuckin’ awesome. But what I meant when I asked you why, was what does it mean to you that’s so special you decided to wear it for life?”

  I’d never thought about it before, but I answered without hesitation.

  “It means freedom.”

  “Freedom? From what?”

  I was surprised Toby hadn’t settled for my first answer, or asked me instead, Freedom to do what? I was surprised he knew me so well.

  “You know, freedom.”

  “Aw c’mon, Melora. Cut the shit. There’s more to it than that.”

  This time I answered honestly. I answered honestly because I trusted him.

  “Freedom from all the bullshit,” I said.

  Though I was standing there naked, two feet away from him, Toby only looked at the devil ray tattoo, and though he was naked two feet from me, I only looked in his eyes, with that crazy, sparkly blue reflecting moonlight in a way that made it look like the light was shining from the inside out. I knew that look from long hours programming with him—he was thinking, trying to understand, figuring something out. I waited, and fuck, that silence should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Then Toby began nodding slowly.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I get it.”

  And I knew he did.

  Two nights later I brought my old Windance kit with me to High Rock Way and tattooed a galloping black thoroughbred on Toby’s shoulder. He cried like a baby, and twice I had to wave a snapper under his nose, but he hung in until I finished. And I don’t know where they went, but after that, those fucking pictures disappeared.

  From July to September, everything went so smoothly that, at times, my life seemed almost normal. Other times, I was fucking terrified. That we’d get caught. That we’d fail. That we’d succeed, but the war would keep right on going. That I’d lose my friends, my job, my freedom, my life. That I’d lose Toby.

  And Toby? He was fucking thriving. You never heard a guy laugh so much. Or saw a guy eat so much pizza. I lost five pounds, he put on ten. And every time we met he greeted me with a big smile and a bear hug.

  Except once.

  IPI sent me out to Cal Tech to do some career-day bullshit, so I couldn’t see Toby for two weeks. When I showed up at his place, he looked like he hadn’t slept since I left. He hugged me for a long time, and I could feel that he’d lost the ten extra pounds, plus a few more. This time there was no smile, but worst of all, it was like the light had gone out of his eyes.

  “You look like shit,” I said. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  That brought a quick smile, but not much of an answer.

  “I haven’t slept much, Melora. Lots of nightmares. I’ve had ‘em off-and-on most of my life. And this one about college, it’s the worst. I don’t know what it means. Probably nothin’. Besides, I missed you.”

  At our next meeting a week later, Toby was his old self, programming away while happily singing some crappy ‘70s pop tune about banging a gong and getting it on, whatever the fuck that means. Meeting our November deadline—chosen because the rainy season always brought the war to a standstill—looked likely. But ever since those nightmares, Toby was slowing us down, spending as much time monitoring IPI Security traffic as he did working on our programs.

  “Quit worrying,” I told him. “Everything’s quiet at IPI.”

  “Yeah. Too quiet.”

  Then there was the question which one of us would take the bust. For Toby it wasn’t a question at all—he assumed it would be him. He had lots of good reasons, laying them out for me in monologues, joking, leaving no room for disagreement.

  “It makes sense, Melora. I’ve already got a price on my head. If we do this right you could skip away from the whole thing free and clear. Then when I get out in thirty years you can support me in my old age. I’ll write my memoirs, and after we get our C-ASS exemption, we can open a little mom and pop computer company—compete with IPI!”

  Then he’d get serious, sadness returning to his eyes. “Besides, I’m sick of runnin’.”

  Normalcy ended the day after Labor Day. The day they arrested Coop.

  Staying at work, staying calm, keeping away from Toby that Tuesday were the hardest things I’d ever done. All day everybody was shitting themselves about the arrest. Rumor was that for a long time Security suspected some guy in Programming was sabotaging his work, how they’d traced it to Coop, taking him from his Lexington home in the middle of the night, taking him in shackles. It was bad enough pretending I was as surprised about Coop as everyone else, but at least I didn’t have to face Captain Rusk. He’d been called to Washington where I figured he was getting keelhauled over Coop.

  As soon as it was dark I drove to Allston, parking on Cambridge Street as usual, making my way through Ringer Park to Toby’s. He was waiting for me at the door. We stepped inside and put our arms around each other.

  “God, Mel, I’m sorry about your friend. The arrest, the whole thing, it was all on TV.”

  “I’ve got to turn myself in, Toby, but I had to make sure you’d get away.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Don’t you see? They think Coop’s responsible for what we did. He’s my best friend. There’s no way I can let him hang for this.”

  Toby took my arms from
around him and held my hands in his. “No, Mel, you’ve got it all wrong. IPI Security was pretty slick. They kept the whole investigation off their Net because they suspected someone might be snoopin’. But as soon as the news broke I hacked into Coop’s hard drive. Melora, Coop didn’t get busted for what we’re doin’. He got busted for what he’s been doin’—spikin’ every military program he was assigned.”

  I understood Toby’s words, understanding for the first time Coop’s reaction to my comparison of our war with Vietnam and the way he’d been avoiding me ever since. It all made sense now. Coop was protecting me, as I’d protected him.

  I looked up at Toby. “This changes everything.”

  “I know,” he said. “We can’t wait for November. It’s too dangerous. We’ve gotta roll this week.”

  “Wait till Sunday,” I said. “1:30 a.m. Less IPI security on the weekend, even less after midnight.”

  “Just like we planned, Melora. I’ll launch Godzilla and sit tight.”

  “You’ve got twenty minutes, Toby. Not a second more. I mean it.”

  “Don’t worry, Mel, I’ll get the microwave link open two minutes after Godzilla does its thing and long before they start kickin’ in my door. They’ll get a tap on my phone fast, so you’ve gotta make the call. Wait two more minutes, give the signal, then run like hell. You’ll be in Canada before they know what hit ‘em.”

  And hugging again, holding each other in the darkened apartment, Toby and I said goodbye for the last time.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Melora

  I lied about Sunday.

  1:20 a.m. Saturday, and I’m at IPI, jacked in and ready.

  As usual, Grendel and the rest of the Modern’s gamers are getting in last licks, practicing, frying eyes until closing time.

  Toby’s online, hacked into IPI’s microwave relays, running last-minute checks, looking over his shoulder for Security, getting ready for tomorrow. He doesn’t know about the memory rod I stuck in his computer’s access port while he was on the crapper, doesn’t know it’s stuck in my computer, waiting. One day early, one subvocal command away from... what? I wonder. Ending the war? Maybe. Prison? Definitely. Saving Toby?