by Rudy Rucker
Not that he’s fully an out-of-it zombie. Today he instantly understands what kind of deal is going down, and he gives me a heartfelt look of sympathy.
The Feds yank out power and Ethernet cables from the Dogyears servers, hideously bringing down my ISP. My poor, orphaned customers! Ben yelps in pain and anger. Hearing the intensity in Ben’s voice, The Boss senses the possibility of him turning berserker. He wheels around, his gun magically moved to his hand from his holster. It’s up to him to show Brad how it’s done. Ben returns to his hacking.
As my plugs are being pulled on my top two machines, I notice the power LEDs on the bottom three machines in my stack of five are cycling up and down. It reminds me of the Knight Rider car from that old TV show. That’s my emergency Mummy Bum Cult backup system, watermarking my more recent files into the workers’ porno library on an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea. My list of customers is, like, being tattooed on some Scandinavian Bibi’s boob. Glancing over at Ben again I can see an eye slyly rolled my way behind his honkin’ big glasses. He’s noticing my ongoing backup too. The Pig can try and stop us, but they’ll never ever win.
The Muscle has the Prexy Twins server under one arm, and the FoneFoon hard-drive jukebox server under the other. At first I think they’re going to spare my other servers; I have eight of them to host the Dogyears accounts and some bottom-feeder dotcom outfits who co-locate with me. But now the Boss takes out a conical device with copper windings around it and taps it on the six remaining servers, one by one. A directional magneto cone. Their RAM, ROM, and hard drives are wiped. My flashing LEDs are blank and dead.
As of right now, my customers have no service. They’ll be leaving me for Time-Warner-AOL if this goes on for long. Elephant poo.
-----
Brad accompanies me to Texas on Southwest Air; the others stay in San Francisco. He and I sit in the front row of the first-class section. I’ve never flown first class before. Free drinks and shrimp cocktail. Under us the desert terrain of Nevada rolls by. I have the window seat, and wouldn’t you know it, when we’re passing Area 51, I look up and see a UFO high in the sky.
At first I want to think it’s another plane, but it’s not acting like a plane. It’s a few thousand feet above us, matching our route and speed so accurately that I wonder if it might be some kind of reflection in the window glass. But no matter which way I angle my head, it’s still there, a polyhedral shape, not an airplane shape, a tumbling polyhedron like a pyramid or a cube but with many more sides, rolling over and over and over like a wheel matching our pace.
“What are you looking at, Wag?” asks Brad.
“It’s a UFO,” I say leaning back to he can push his head close to the window.
“I’d rather trade seats than lean across you,” says Brad. “You’re in custody.” He doesn’t want to expose his neck to a felonious karate chop.
So we swap, and Brad peers out and he sees the UFO too. He gets excited and calls the stewardess back to ask her a question or two, and the stewardess goes up to talk to the pilot. Right away the pilot’s voice comes on the speakers, talking that relaxed low-blood-pressure Middle-American drawl. “If you look out to our right, one o’clock high, you’ll see a Nevada weather balloon.”
“Some balloon,” mutters Brad, but he doesn’t want to talk about it any more than that. Instead he jumps to a fresh topic. “You ever had oxblood burger?” he asks. “No? That’s what the president likes to make. Juicy, mmm good.”
In Austin there’s a couple more Men in Black to meet us. A burr-haired one is in charge, and the other one has a neck as wide as his head. To keep it simple for me, I garbage-collect their names and label them with the Boss_tx and Muscle_tx handles. That saves me a couple-three memory clusters in my skull-based neural nets.
The surprise in Austin is that they’ve shipped my Dogyears server with the jukebox-hard drive with us, wrapped up in a government courier bags. It’s the first thing out on the baggage belt. Why exactly will I be needing the sixty terabytes of FoneFoon data for this gig?
The Muscle_tx bundles the massive box under his arms like a notebook. And then we’re out in the hot odorless air, boarding their SUV for the drive to Crawford, Texas.
It’s early evening when we arrive. Pink light filters through thick barbeque smoke in the backyard of the presidential ranch. George is grilling with a NA Beer in one hand and a 3-foot Texas-size spatula in the other. There’s a satellite dish on the ground next to his house, just like any other house in Texas. At first it looks like it’s just George, some SS agents, and a middle-aged guy with flesh-colored frames on his glasses.
“Welcome to my spread, Wag,” says George. He jerks his thumb at the middle-aged guy. “This here’s Doc Renshaw. He’s a neurologian, a brain doctor, an asshole, and a jerk.” He doesn’t sound like he’s kidding. He really doesn’t like this guy. “Renshaw, this is Wag, the fella we been talkin’ about.”
Breathing hard, the president hands the spatula off to Brad and pushes aside the hanging branches of a weeping willow tree beside the grill. Under the willow is a picnic table.
Jenna’s sitting there, blank and drooling. It’s almost like someone’s held a directional magneto cone up to her head. Jenna’s been erased! George and I sit down across from her, the SS guys hanging back a bit, Renshaw peeking in.
“She’s gone to the circus, and she’s not comin’ back,” George says mournfully. “Go ahead and talk to her. She knows when somebody talks to her.”
“Uh, hi Jenna,” I say lamely. Here I finally am with Jenna, and that’s the best I can do? She looks kind of hot with that thin stand of drool dripping onto her pale blue spaghetti-strap sundress. Immediately I have two thoughts: I can’t think that way it’s sick, and I hope I get her alone.
Gathering composure from the thought of getting Jenna alone and really giving her a good scrub with a wire brush, I turn on my charm for the president of the United States of America. I figure it’s better to start with flattering him a little before trying to figure out what to say about blank Jenna. “That barbeque meat smells good,” I say. “Like oxblood.”
“Yep, we’ve got the oxblood burgers,” says George with no smirk, no cocky tilt of the head. He’s just staring at Jenna, looking worried. This isn’t the animatronic George of the news clips. “Let me cut to the point, Wag. Jenna has a problem, hell, you can see that yourself. Amsneezia, asphrasia—those twenty-dollar doctor words. She can’t remember shit, what it is. This scumbag Renshaw says we’re lucky she can still breathe and do her body functions.”
It’s hard to believe I’m right here looking at Jenna Bush. But she’s not looking at me. There’s nobody home. George hops to his feet and returns with two towering burgers.
“Burger, Jenna?” he says softly.
Jenna’s lips move, and she says, “OK.”
George sets the plates in front of Jenna and me; we begin eating.
“All Jenna does is say OK anymore,” says George. “It happened last month. Jenna and Noelle were supposed to attend some big-ass dress show over in, over there.”
Facts are jumping around in my head. I like collecting info and looking for patterns. Noelle was busted for a fake drug scrip the week after the Versace show in London. The scrip was for Xanax, and why would anyone bother getting arrested for a mild antidepressant? Well, Xanax’s street use is as a comedown drug from ecstasy—or crack. The media didn’t report that Noelle and Jenna were in England at that fashion show. In fact, it was the previous first daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who was hanging out with Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow in front of the Versace runway.
“Versace?” I say, just to be sure.
George nods at me, then glares over his shoulder at Renshaw, who’s craning in under the willow tree as well. “See how Wag’s little noggin’s straining to piece together the puzzle?” he says. “Too bad I didn’t have him here to second-guess you turds before you did your thing.” And then he fixes his eyes back on mine, “OK, Wag. Of course all this is hush hus
h, this is Homeland Security Code Orange, but here’s how the story began. Supposedly Noelle had some kind of goddamn pill she wanted to slip Chelsea Clinton, some kind of Mickey Finn. This was Jeb’s idea, he got the drug from the Clik. Clik? It’s the conspiracy elite, the secret government that never goes away. The ordnance labs, the spooks, the Cuban freedom fighters, the Fair Play for House of Saud committee—it’s all Clik. The same crowd that took down JFK, same ones who threw the election my way, same ones who got in so goddamn tight with Osama. We Elephants never shoulda gotten in this deep with the Clik, but it’s too late to back out now. I don’t condone any of this, you understand, Wag. I’m not really that powerful of a man, I’d just as soon be back running the Rangers, watchin’ the games with my two girls.” He pats Jenna’s hand, then wipes the drool off her chin. Her eyes are watching us as we talk, glittering with primitive, reptilian intelligence.
“Anyway, the Clik sold Jeb and me this crock of shit that they wanted to use Jenna as a delivery system,” continues George. “Laura and I had just planned the trip as a spring fling. But Jeb’s Clik handlers, they said Jenna, she’s fun, more attractive, more likely to get close to Chelsea and hand off that goddamn pill. Chelsea’s not likely to talk to Noelle. Jenna’s supposed to tell Chelsea it’s some kind of goddamn party drug, not that I’d call that a party, making yourself sick with a pill. Some new crap the Clik came up with, they call it Justfolx. Supposedly the pill is gonna, the pill somehow makes Chelsea into a real American, so she’ll fight with Hilary, which is good for the Elephant Party, and what’s good for the Elephants is good for the Clik, it’s a win-win. But during the flight Jenna has a few drinks, she’s like I used to be, just high spirits, she gets in a spat with Noelle. Noelle’s always been one to needle her cousins, and Jenna’s easy enough to fly off the handle when she—what was it Jenna said, Mike? Tell Wag the course of events. You were there, not exactly doing your job a hundred percent, I’d say. To frank the truth I wonder why I can’t get them to fire you.”
The Boss_tx and Doctor Renshaw have both sidled under the willow tree with us. “I told you I’m sorry, Mr. President,” says the Man in Black. “I’m sure the Clik, I mean the Fair Play for House of Saud committee, they’ll dock my pay, if it’s called for, not that I feel they should. I was guarding the young women in close proximity, across the plane aisle. A fast-breaking chaotic situation developed. An argument. It seemed the young women were planning to split up when we disembarked. Fine, but then Noelle took out her Justfolx medication delivery system—the capsule. The plan was, as the president told you, Wag, for Noelle to hand the pill off to Jenna to give to Chelsea. And since the young women were seemingly going to split up, it seemed reasonable to me for Noelle to make the transfer at this time. Holding up the translucent red, football-shaped Justfolx capsule, Noelle stated, ‘Can you remember to give Chelsea this, you drunk redneck?’ To which Jenna replied, ‘You dumb-ass pill-popping cracker, I’ll show you how to party,’ and thereupon swallowed the Justfolx pill. I executed a poison-control maneuver, induced vomiting. But the pill had dissolved. Jenna showed an extreme reaction. The plane landed in London, but we didn’t get off the plane, much less did we alert the press. We cleaned the plane up, refueled, and flew back to Texas.”
“The Justfolx pill is supposed to make you an Elephant?” I ask.
“Well it’s not like a pill knows math, is it?” says George. “I understand the treatment was to reduce the…take away the know-it-all Rhodes scholar and so on, the high-horse attitude you’d see with a Hilary or a Chelsea Clinton.”
In sounded like the dosage was designed to make Chelsea stupid enough to be an Elephant. And if you gave it to someone low down enough on the scale to already be an Elephant, well, it would make them into—a vegetable. So Jenna got erased.
Jenna makes a little noise then, kind of like a newborn kitten. “Mew?”
Awww.
“What can I do to help?” I ask patriotically. I’m getting used to Jenna’s drool. She still has those nice round cheeks and clear eyes. I want to get her alone and test her body functions.
“That’s the spirit,” says George. “Working together. Tell him, Renshaw. You’re the head Clik sleazeball here.”
“We’ve conferenced with the FBI concerning your terabytes of cell phone calls from the FoneFoon worm,” says Doctor Renshaw. “Now, as it happens, we know there was a copy of the worm on Jenna’s phone. We estimate that you’re in possession of some six full hours of Jenna’s cell phone conversations. That’s quite a lot, enough perhaps for her to have said nearly everything that she might be expected to believe. The first thing we want you to do, Wag, is to mine those conversations from the FoneFoon data set. Locate them and decrypt them.”
“You mean I could have been listening to Jenna all along?” I burst out, and George gives me a sharp look. “Not that I would if you hadn’t asked me to,” I add.
Though I haven’t actually gotten around to cracking the FoneFoon data yet, I know I can do it. Mining large data sets is a big-brother-type job I did for MegaMedia back at the peak of the dotcom era. They had an automated upgrade feature whose function was to e-mail them a transcript of the user’s command actions for every session in which one of their products was used. With that hack under my belt, I feel sure I can locate every byte of Jenna in the FoneFoon hoard.
“I can find the Jenna conversations for you,” I say. “But why do you want them?”
“We want to use them to reprogram Jenna,” said Renshaw simply. “But you should edit them first. Clear out certain self-defeating aspects of Jenna’s personality. The alcohol problems and so on. It’s our feeling that some fairly simple edits might do it. Remove any obscenity or strong language. Any references to sex, alcohol, or drugs. Just make it a sunny G rating. I’m sure you understand.”
Dubya lets out an impatient snort. “Jenna was fine the way she was,” he insists.
I decide to avoid the dull-ass issue of censorship entirely and cut to the good stuff. “How would I program Jenna at all?” I ask.
“That’s the key, Wag,” says Renshaw, his glasses glinting in the setting sun. “We feel you have the skills to be of help in converting these digital records into what you might call contagious data. Contagious in that if we beam the tweaked call data into Jenna’s Justfolx-treated brain, we might expect the data to take hold and multiply, to effectively recolonize her brain with its former flora and fauna of thought forms. In the Clik weapons labs—we got a little ahead of ourselves with Justfolx. The discovery of the compound was kind of an accident. An anonymous posting on the Clik-front Science Clearing House. Formula, production process, clinical actions, side effects, the works. We could see the potential right away. It seemed bold to start right at the top. What we didn’t tell the president when we suggested the mission was that, given Jenna’s personality profile, we were quite sure she’d take the pill and eat it.”
“Bastards,” snapped Dubya. “Pricks.” Now I get why he has it in for Renshaw.
“Pause,” is the only thing I can think of saying. I look toward the last bit of light on the horizon. My blood pulses, I see ragged checkerboards in my eyes, patterns driven by the rays of the fading Texas sun. “Ready,” I add after a bit. “Tell me more about beaming in the data.”
“The Justfolx medication has the side effect of putting the subject’s cortex into a state of electromagnetic sensitivity,” says Renshaw. “That’s the key clinical action. The aphasia is merely a side effect. The pro forma plan was that we planned to beam Rush Limbaugh shows into Chelsea Clinton after giving her the drug. But the true plan is much richer. Your mission. Find Jenna’s conversations, clean them up, make them contagious, and then we’ll use a 5.4 gigahertz transmitter to beam the info into Jenna’s brain. She’ll be good as new. Better.”
“Bullshit,” mutters the president. He’s deeply pissed at having his daughter be the Clik’s guinea pig.
Renshaw smiles ingratiatingly at George. “Really she’ll be fine, Mr. Presid
ent. And with the personality cleanup, we can put an end to the kinds of stories Wag posts on his Web site. We can bring to a close this regrettable stage of Jenna’s development.”
Me, I’ve got goose bumps from the mention of 5.4 gigahertz. That’s the frequency that the FCC allows anyone to transmit wireless Internet on. That’s also the frequency used in the lamppost repeater boxes that the peer-to-peer cell phone company Ricochet put up before they went down the tubes. Most people think the repeaters are turned off now, but they’re not. The tweakers know.
The potentialities of the hack expand in my mind like a supernova. The Justfolx drug can be dosed into people’s drinking water, they’ll all turn Elephant or vegetable, but that’s not the real point. The point is that once everyone’s sensitized, AOL and the Clik and the Elephants and the Men in Black can start transmitting spam and telemarketing and political advertising right into our brains.
I turn the idea the other way around. A grave danger, but a wonderful opportunity. What if we broke free of the client/server model and went fully peer-to-peer? Let people send thoughts right at each other, with nothing in between. With Ben’s help, maybe I could fix it so people could have direct electronic brain-to-brain contact. Peace, love, and radiotelepathy.
I take a deep yoga breath, broaden my shoulders, and relax. One Nation under a Groove. This is truly a project worthy of my time.
They give me a room at the ranch, me and the Dogyears machine and my laptop and, since I ask for it, a thermos jug of coffee—though it tastes like it’s from a Texas McDonald’s. There’s a big couch upholstered in calfskin with the hair still on it. Black-and-white spots like a Dell computer shipping carton. I’m supposed to get right to work, but for a few minutes I’m just trying to get down enough of their watery, scalding hot coffee to bring my cycles up. Standing at the window looking out at the strange Texas sky.
