Virtual Fire

by Mendy Sobol

  I hope so.

  1:22.

  Fuck, it’s hot in here. I don’t remember it being this fucking hot in Florida. First week in September, I’m in cutoffs and a beater, AC’s blowing right on me, and I’m dying.

  Too bad Godzilla alone wouldn’t be enough. IPI Security needs someone in custody, a way to believe they’ve won, a way to look like heroes, a chance to let their guard down and start the victory celebration. In half an hour they’ll all be partying.

  But not for long.

  1:25.

  When Godzilla blows, the worms I buried will come out of their holes, burrowing their way into IPI’s soul, infecting every program I ever worked on. Banks, credit cards, oil companies.

  Everything except RITA.

  1:30.

  It’s time.

  “Initiate Godzilla.”

  Through my implant, I feel it obeying my command, leaping from the memory rod like a gung-ho paratrooper, dropping behind IPI’s lines.

  1:32

  Godzilla’s going apeshit. A crazed, fucking monster made from ones and zeros breathing radioactive fire on everything we built for IPI. Years of work times dozens of people. Not just people—me, Coop, Ron, Ted, Caprice, Captain Rusk.

  My friends.

  1:35.

  Yeah, Security’s freakin’. Those drones aren’t half bad once you light a fire under their hardware. They’re on Godzilla like silicon on chips.

  Stopping it cold.

  Cutting it to ribbons.

  Following it back to me.

  1:38.

  I can count on RITA. RITA’s fearless. Can I count on Toby?

  What if he went out for pizza? What if he’s taking another shit?

  What if he tries to save me?

  Fuck it’s hot!

  1:40.

  Toby thinks he’s got twenty minutes. I lied about that, too. No sense letting him get comfortable. He’s got thirty, but no more. Me? Five, tops.

  1:42.

  I never told you I loved you, Toby.

  Another lie. I told you once, but you were sleeping. Afraid I’d sound stupid, I guess.

  1:45.

  Boots pounding down the hall. Even at this hour, guards are up and ready to bounce. Breaking down the door? Well that’s fucking stupid. I would’ve unlocked it if they’d knocked. Probably that asshole Smith’s idea.

  Oh, shit—they’ve got live TV newsboys with them?

  I hope my hair looks pretty.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Toby

  1:47.

  What the hell?

  My monitor’s lightin’ up like an aurora! Somethin’ big’s goin’ down at IPI.

  Oh God. No! She didn’t....

  Wait.

  Get a grip. Turn on the TV, find out what’s happenin’.

  Breakin’ News? Anchor’s sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout an arrest. Maybe it’s just some…. Shit! Two guards cuffin’ Melora, beamin’ live into every livin’ room on the planet. And… oh, no! What did those bastards do to her?

  Torn fiber optics streamin’ down Melora’s neck and shoulders. Blood, too! Sendin’ a message IPI? Showin’ everybody how tough you are?

  But son-of-a-bitch—it’s backfirin’! Melora’s lookin’ right in the camera, shoutin’, “Give peace a chance!”

  Why didn’t she wait? We agreed I’d get busted. For Christ’s sake, she promised she’d go underground!

  Melora’s the one who figured it out. RITA and the draft. That’s what keeps the war goin’. And crashin’ the draft will hurt the war without hurtin’ the warriors.

  Not like last time.

  Now all of IPI’s Security jocks are online, deletin’ Godzilla, confident in victory. And for this one moment, while their screens all focus on Godzilla’s siege of IPI, RITA’s vulnerable.

  But only if I move fast.

  Twenty minutes, she said. Twenty minutes! Oh shit—she wasn’t tellin’ me that once I launched Godzilla I only had twenty minutes until I got busted. She meant I only had twenty minutes after she launched Godzilla and she got busted!

  1:49.

  How much time have I got left? Ten minutes? Less? Shit, I’ll never make it!

  Oh, Melora! They’ve got you on your knees, zip-tyin’ your ankles! If they hurt you, I’ll…. And they’ve cuffed your hands so far behind your back your devil ray tattoo looks alive, swimmin’ for its life!

  Freedom from all the bullshit, you said. Oh Jesus, Melora, do you know how deep the bullshit is gonna get?

  Fuck, Toby, you’re losin’ precious time. You screw this up, miss your chance, and she’ll....

  No. Stop thinkin’ about her. Get your eyes off the TV and finish the job, finish what she started.

  1:50.

  Okay buddy, start breathin’, start thinkin’. No way there’s enough time, but I gotta try.

  Grab the phone. Start dialin’.

  One ring. Two. C’mon, c’mon! Pick up!

  “Yeah?”

  “Grendel, it’s Bear.”

  “Duh! Who else calls the back room pay phone?”

  “You ready?”

  “Thought it was goin’ down tomorrow.”

  “Gotta be now. Can you do it?”

  “Fuck yeah!”

  “I’ve got 1:51. Give me two minutes to set up the link, then hit it.”

  “You got it.”

  “And Grendel…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Run.”

  “Like the wind, Bear. You, too.”

  “Count on it.”

  Grendel giggles, then shouts, “Hey gamers—it’s go-time!”

  The receiver clicks.

  Silence.

  1:53.

  Okay. The microwave relay between IPI and the Modern’s game consoles shows active. In another two minutes, I’ll know.

  1:54.

  Grendel’s launched Tet! They’ve been practicin’ that program for weeks. Now c’mon, kids, play the game of your lives!

  1:55.

  All over Indonesia, from the biggest cities to the smallest hamlets, Red Path is attackin’ behind government lines. It’s a Tet Offensive rerun, right out of General Giap’s Vietnam War playbook.

  At least that’s what RITA thinks.

  She’s runnin’ a million checks, lookin’ for confirmation, figurin’ out how to respond, how to put out hundreds of fires all at once.

  1:56.

  Now I’ll give her somethin’ else to worry about—Virtual Fire.

  Check it out, RITA. I’ve hacked into Selective Service. And guess what? I’m downloadin’ all those digital draft records. Names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers. I am Red Path, and I am robbin’ you blind!

  So what you gonna do, RITA? You can’t stop me; you got more important things goin’ on. ‘Copters to launch, troops to deploy, a war to fight with battles ragin’ everywhere. And you can’t ask Security—they’re all busy poppin’ champagne corks.

  1:58.

  Too slow. Too slow!

  I look at the TV. Melora’s gone. Some guy in a suit’s answerin’ reporters’ questions. “There was never any serious threat. This was an isolated incident by an unbalanced young woman, a disgruntled junior programmer trying to get some publicity.”

  Yeah right, asshole. Spinnin’ it already. Bet you had that speech written months ago.

  1:59.

  I’m runnin’ outta time. Eight minutes left to disappear before they come for me. But I can’t leave yet. Gotta see how RITA decides.

  2:00 a.m.

  What’s it gonna be, RITA? You just gonna take it? Or are you gonna be fearless, the way Melora made you? You gonna let Red Path steal those records, or are you gonna….

  And twenty million electronic draft cards go up in virtual smoke.

  PART 5

  MEKONG CLINIC / APPLEWOOD

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Paul

  The message came while I was bandaging a child’s hand. She’d found an old Claymore mine in the paddies, and despite every warning, being a child, p
icked it up. The rusted metal cut her fingers deeply, but by some miracle the mine hadn’t exploded when she dropped it.

  “For The Mother,” Quyen said, appearing noiselessly at my side. Though she was nominally Meg’s government-assigned administrative assistant, everyone at the clinic knew she was an intelligence agent. In her left hand she had a yellow oversized envelope, the type used for military communications. She didn’t hold the envelope out to me, keeping it instead close to her chest.

  Six months ago Quyen’s mother, Lien, came down from the old imperial capital, Huế, visiting her daughter at the clinic. Politeness, protocol, and Quyen’s mother all demanded an introduction to Meg, the famous clinic director, The Mother of Vietnam. Instead of the brief meeting everyone expected, Lien and Meg talked for hours. Bowing goodbye as their conversation ended, Meg noticed the black lesions of chloracne, the mark of Agent Orange toxins, on the middle-aged woman’s scalp. Assuring her everything would be fine, Meg asked Lien to stay another day so Dr. Ke could examine her during his weekly visit. The doctor found a tumor in her left breast, and Meg insisted the clinic pay for the operation needed to remove it. The tumor was malignant, but thanks to Meg they’d caught the cancer early, and Lien’s chances for survival looked good. But if the communist government thought Quyen was still their agent, they were wrong. She belonged to Meg.

  “The Mother’s in Ho Chi Minh City,” I said, tearing strips of adhesive. “You can leave the envelope with me.” Quyen hesitated before setting it on the bamboo table next to the scissors and disinfectant, then left as silently as she’d arrived.

  I poured antiseptic on the little girl’s thin fingers, and she scrunched up her nose at its sharp odor, but didn’t wince or cry out. “You’re a brave one,” I said, though neither she nor her mother spoke English. The white cotton bandage was too large for her hand, so I trimmed it, snugging it tightly with adhesive tape, hoping I’d made a secure barrier against dirt and moisture, insects and bacteria, aware the hand would probably become infected by this time tomorrow. The clinic had used its last vials of tetanus vaccine weeks ago, and the decision makers in Moscow, our prime benefactors, weren’t feeling charitable. I rinsed my hands with disinfectant and bowed to the child and her mother as they bowed to me. Then lapsing into American habit, I waved, and the little girl, giggling, backed out of the clinic’s open doorway waving her bandaged hand at me.

  Without getting up from my U.S. army-issue rolling chair, a relic from the war, I reached for the envelope, tearing through the official VPA—Vietnam People’s Army—seal. A cover sheet addressed to Meg, signed by a government bureaucrat, explained that a message to me from an unknown source had been received on the exclusive military net. The message appeared to be in code, making an investigation necessary, and the Minister of Defence would appreciate “…any light the husband of the esteemed Mekong Clinic Director could shed on the matter.” The memo closed with “…apologies to the esteemed Director for the unfortunate delay.”

  The first thing I noticed when I turned the page was the message’s six-month-old transmittal date. But as a flush of anger at the delay began inside me, my eyes scanned the text, its two short words numbing all sensation—

  TESLA— FMH

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Paul

  Nothing had changed in New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Grime covered every surface of the dingy yellow and black concourse just as it had in 1969, the last time I boarded a bus for Applewood. Worn fluorescent lights cycled slowly, raising eye strain from the subliminal to the fully conscious. The smell of urine and cigarettes would have been stronger if decades of exhaust hadn’t so thoroughly drenched the building. Escalators, lines, lockers, commuters, buses, and bums all looked the way I remembered. Even the DeCamp bus numbers were the same. At the ticket window, I reacted with the instincts of a native despite thirty years of Vietnamese formality and politeness, aware there was no need for either in New York.

  “88 to Applewood. Round trip,” I said.

  I’d slept during much of the flight from Tokyo, knowing I’d need my strength, knowing I didn’t want to think about New Jersey, at least not yet. But images of my childhood animated restless, jet-lagged dreams.

  Somewhere over the Pacific I dreamed of my parents greeting me with warm smiles and loving hugs as I stepped off the 88 in Applewood. Then I woke briefly, hiding tears from a concerned flight attendant as I realized I was only dreaming. My parents’ lives had ended years earlier, the news reaching me in Vietnam weeks after their deaths.

  I drifted off again.

  I dreamed of Columbus School, my old grammar school, the school where Meg and I served as volunteers so long ago. I’d gone there for kindergarten through eighth grade, nine straight years, my longest time in one school, before Vietnam, my longest time in one place.

  I dreamed of my childhood friends, the children and grandchildren of immigrants from Italy and Ireland, Poland and Greece, Russia and Hong Kong. The Episcopalian kids came from families who traced their roots back to the Mayflower, families who viewed themselves as the first Americans, but who were descended from immigrants just like the rest of us. The black kids were descended from ancestors, who, less than ninety years earlier, the span of a human life, were born into slavery. Their parents had migrated north from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the rest of the old Confederacy, looking for factory jobs and freedom from Jim Crow during and after the two World Wars. In dreams my friends were frozen in amber, were still children. In dreams, their names were poetry.

  I dreamed of the local college campus, Hilversum, the Lutheran school that made Applewood its home for over a century, and of Timmy Jorgensen, the dean’s son, a football player, and for years my friend and protector. Together we’d spent whole days and nights beneath Hilversum’s elms and maples, alongside its ivy-covered brick lecture halls and dormitories, playing tennis on its gypsum courts, rooting for its sorry athletic teams, nicknamed “The Flying Dutchmen,” and hanging out with college kids at WFMH, learning there was an attitude called “hip,” which they were, and we weren’t.

  I dreamed of a warm summer night, walking Maria Beres, a professor’s daughter, home through Hilversum’s campus after Independence Day fireworks, stopping at a bench beneath a giant chestnut tree, kissing and kissing until we knew if we didn’t leave, our parents would soon come looking for us.

  I dreamed of walking home late at night through Hilversum, when crime first discovered my town, because for me, its quiet campus was always safe.

  Before the rising sun met my flight in mid-ocean, dreams of New Jersey wavered and melted, then disappeared altogether. Yet as images of Hilversum’s campus faded, there was the Wellston campus, two hundred miles to the north. And there was Toby towering over me and the others in Franklin Hall on a cold May evening, dissuading us from arson, paying with his life.

  Finding myself in New York, so close to the places of my dreams, I remembered how the morning sun streaming through the jetliner’s windows had roused me from sleep in time to see the California coast. I’d stretched, stiff from long hours in an economy-class seat, realizing with a shock that we’d flown far inland before remembering Toby never came to Franklin Hall, remembering he was alive.

  The 88 made its way out of Port Authority past hookers and panhandlers—as much a part of New York’s West Side as Broadway’s famous theaters—through the Lincoln Tunnel, under the Hudson River, out to daylight on the tunnel’s western side, the New Jersey side.

  I was on Route 3, back in the state where I grew up, within the thirty-mile radius of a circle that encompassed most of my childhood. My father’s nine brothers and three sisters populated that circle with more than fifty of their children, the cousins I grew up with in one large, rambunctious, extended family. Tenacious Cousin Harvey, who’d spend hours riding his Schwinn across Applewood, tracking the Good Humor truck on hot summer afternoons, sharing his reward—a peanut-and-chocolate covered vanilla Drumstick—with anyone who asked for a bite. Sweet, smart
, beautiful Cousin Angela, who stole Timmy Jorgensen’s heart the day I introduced them in eighth grade and married him the day after high school graduation. Generous Cousin Alex, four years older than I, whose gentle soul defied his father’s savage beatings.

  Over the years the circle had expanded. Harvey in Germany, Lisa and Timmy in Connecticut, the rest in Canada and California, New York and New Mexico, heirs to a generation-skipping migration that brought grandparents from Europe, rooted parents in New Jersey, sent children off again in a new diaspora. Alex, like me, wound up in Vietnam. His father made him enlist late in 1966, arguing that he should, “Ignore that antiwar crap.” A sniper killed Alex in 1967, two days’ walk from where the clinic now stood.

  Only Uncle Joel, still a bachelor, the baby of the family, the uncle adopted by my generation as one of our own, remained inside the old circle. The 88 would pass within a block of his Bloomfield apartment. As much as I wanted to see him, I knew I couldn’t, knew I dare not take the chance.

  I’d told Meg that after thirty years it was time for me to, “visit the old places and appease the dreams.” She didn’t believe me. But after so many years at the clinic she was too tired, too distracted to confront me or draw me out as she did so often earlier in our life together. I never showed her the message, and though I wanted to immediately answer its call, I resisted leaving for three months so no one would connect my departure with the communiqué’s arrival. I didn’t tell Meg the real reason for my trip because I wanted to protect her. I hoped she sensed that, respected that, but her unquestioning acceptance signaled something more, and something less.

  I’d dreamed so many dreams about Applewood, dreams far fresher in my waking mind than memories of the place left over from my first twenty-two years. I could no longer tell for sure if my recollections of places, people, and events came from concrete reality or from my dreams, dreams that by their nature seemed mythic, slowly changing my impression of the city where I grew up from that of a simple New Jersey town, a blue-collar, gently hardscrabble melting pot of immigrants, to a place where the play of streetlight and shadow made me hold my breath in the moments before sunrise. A mystic place, a magic place, the place of an idealized past and a dangerous present.