The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  “They’re fine. I don’t talk to them much—I’ve been so engrossed in my new project. I usually just e-mail the interns and the new hires when a new project comes in for them to work on. So far, they’ve finished the projects quickly, so I imagine everything’s going well. Don’t worry, I’m working them hard,” Jaan replied with a grin.

  “I hope you’re not burning them out. When’s the last time you met with them?”

  “Atiq, they’re interns. Don’t worry about them. We can always get a new batch,” Jaan joked.

  Atiq wasn’t smiling.

  “I worked with them for a week when they first arrived. They’re up to speed,” Jaan continued more seriously.

  “Jaan, maybe you could meet with them more? It might be a good idea to suggest a few more interesting projects, too. I don’t want them getting bored and doing something pointless for their summer.”

  “Okay, I’ll try to find out what they’re working on. Just let me get a bit further on my project, and I’ll set up regular meetings with them.”

  Management by negotiation—this was all the pushing Atiq could do. Hire the brightest minds and herd them like cats. Push too hard and they’ll leave the company. Ubatoo’s competitors would happily entice them before their resignation letters finished printing. Ubatoo’s culture would never allow for a more direct order to be given, unless, of course, it was from Xiao.

  -THE JENNY DISCOVERY-

  July 15, 2009.

  Within days of the now infamous “JENNY Discovery,” a bulletin board was erected in Jenny’s honor (this bulletin board was real, physical, and tacked to the wall). Although easily misconstrued as inhumane torture for Rob, it was actually created by the other interns to serve as Rob’s public, cathartic, emotional therapy. Its initial incarnation was simply a place for push-pinning printouts of all of Jenny’s e-mail that had even the hint of being, or being misconstrued as, sexy. However, within hours of it being put up in the intern pit, and every intern having read the e-mails, nobody seemed interested in it anymore.

  Kohan, who had taken charge of the board, wasn’t about to let its life end without a fight. Fortunately, scrutinizing Jenny’s buying habits proved to be another source of interest. Even if some of the purchases were innocent enough (dog collar, leash, scarf, leather belt), when seen in the context of the e-mails, they were incontrovertible evidence of a deviant lifestyle.

  In an ironic twist, the only one who was left out of all the ensuing fun was Yuri. Though it was his demo that started this race to discover “The Real Jenny,” the one indisputable fact was that Jenny didn’t search the Web for porn. Her house, despite constant monitoring, never turned pink. For Yuri, the fact that his demo was no longer the center of the action put him in an even quieter mood than pre-disclosure of his project.

  Throughout, Yuri was working on the next “breakthrough.” Just because Jenny’s house didn’t turn pink, didn’t mean that Ben Cappiello, the recipient of Jenny’s attentions, wasn’t a consumer of all manner of lurid pornographic content—and not just the usual mild-mannered bits that were Cinemax worthy, nor even the material that some might try to cover as a business expense in pay-per-view hotel rooms. Ben’s forte was material that could solely be found on the Internet; the legality of it was questionable in parts of Europe, and it was certainly illegal in the United States. But that was just the start.

  When Yuri returned to the intern pit, he did so with trepidation. He walked straight to Rob. “Rob, I think you should see something.” Immediately, Rob, Andrew, Kohan, and Stephen looked up from their computers. “I just sent you a few e-mails I found in Ben’s account that you might want to take a look at.”

  Rob turned on the LCD panels next to him as he opened his e-mail. All eyes turned toward the screen as the image blinked to life. “Whoa!” he shouted as folds of deep pink were projected for everyone to see. As soon as recognition struck, he shut down the monitor as fast as his hand could move. “Maybe you guys could just look at it on my screen,” he said quickly as he scooted away from the desk to make room for everyone.

  “Is that Jenny?” Kohan asked Rob. Rob just glared back.

  “No,” replied Yuri. “Ben sent this e-mail to someone else—Claudine.”

  Rob scrolled past the dozens of pictures—amateurish images of messy, messy close-ups.

  From:

  BenP101@ubamail.com

  To:

  ClaudineRR@ubamail.com

  Subject:

  Pictures

  Claudine, check out your pictures (I attached the best 20). I don’t know what you were shy about . . . they turned out beautifully. You look awesome.

  And don’t worry. I won’t show them to anyone, as long as you don’t either! I can’t wait for our next session (maybe video next?)

  See you tonight,

  Ben

  “Wow, I agree with Ben. She had no reason to be shy. She’s really hot,” Andrew stated matter-of-factly.

  “Yuri, why would you want me to look at this?” Rob asked.

  From: BenP101@ubamail.com

  To: JPeters22@ubamail.com,

  Eddie.Miter@ubamail.com,

  ASingh@ubamail.com

  Subject: Number 14!

  Check out our usual picts page (Here’s the link). Claudine makes 14. I’m tied with you Eddie. Still working her for a video. What’s up with you Singh—3? Hah.

  THE MAN,

  Ben

  Rob followed the link in the e-mail to a private photo sharing page created on one of Ubatoo’s partner properties. It was configured to only allow the four users, BenP101, JPeters22, Eddie.Miter, and ASingh, to enter. Sure enough, Ben’s fourteen girls, Debra, Karen P., Lisa, Monica, Cynthia, Karen S., Jessica, Alison, Chloe, Amanda, Rachel, Leah, Claire, and of course, Claudine, lay splayed for everyone to see. Eddie.Miter had his own list of fourteen, with many more videos. Only Monica appeared in both Ben’s and Eddie’s catalogs. JPeters and ASingh had their section of conquests too, but with only a paltry seven and three girls for themselves—far outpaced by the prowess of the other two.

  Stephen was the first to leave Rob’s desk. Yuri second. Then Kohan, and finally after some not so subtle convincing, Andrew. Long after the crowd had gone, Rob continued to scan the images posted by the four men, as well as anxiously watch all of Eddie’s videos. He needed to make sure his Jenny was nowhere on this site yet.

  A fit of passive aggressive jealousy? A warning to Jenny to see what her friend, Ben, was really like? Or just needing to do something—Rob’s reasons weren’t clear. He reconfigured the settings on which the pictures of the girls appeared. Instead of limiting access to only the four, he made the page publicly accessible. For good measure, he added a few words to each image’s captions and tags as well. Now, when people searched for nude pictures, sex, teens, porn, sluts, they would easily find this page waiting to answer their queries. Twenty-seven people were searching for some combination of those words the very minute Rob made the change. All of them were given a brand new set of girls to ogle over that they had never seen before and who had no idea how their images were being used. That hour, 302 more people. That day, 6,236 in total. Only a few of the 6,236 knew Claudine personally, and only a few of those would eventually forward her pictures to her friends.

  Stephen could already feel his heart starting to skip a few beats. It wasn’t just an expression this time. It was the days and nights of no sleep, of barely moving from his seat, and the fact he had just consumed two shots of espresso.

  “Gilroy is only forty-five minutes away from here. I say we go down and check them out,” Andrew continued. He had been on this train of thought for the last ten minutes. It started when he did more “investigative research” on Claudine and Monica, two of “Ben’s women.” They lived only an hour away from Palo Alto, in Gilroy, CA. “Aren’t you guys curious to see them in person?”

  “Andrew, you’ve got to calm down. Besides, they’re probably already asleep. It’ll be a total waste of time,” Stephen said, rolli
ng his eyes. What he had wanted to say was “Andrew, get a life,” but it probably wouldn’t hold much weight coming from someone who had voluntarily stayed up all hours of the night reading other people’s e-mails and casually perusing their exploits—all for a colleague he barely knew.

  “It’ll be a waste of a trip, for sure,” Yuri replied. “But they are not asleep,” Yuri popped up a map of JENNY on an LCD panel on the wall, showing two houses colored blue. Looks like they are both awake and chatting online.”

  Andrew smiled triumphantly, “Anything else, Stephen?”

  “Andrew, think about what you’re saying. You want to go see them? Think they’ll invite you in? Maybe go to Claudine’s room, have some drinks, take out a camera, or what?”

  “What are you doing that’s so important? You’re sitting here with us, too, you know. Besides, it’ll be fun just to get out of the office for a bit and do something.”

  “He’s right. I’m in, Andrew. I’ll go,” Kohan said. “Besides, it really would be nice to get out of here for one night.”

  “This is the best you can come up with? Just leave the poor girls alone,” Stephen replied.

  “Your loss. Anybody know where I can get a pair of binoculars or something?” Kohan asked.

  “I’ll come, too,” Rob announced. “Maybe it’ll be a perfect night, and we’ll see Ben and Jenny there, too. Stephen, Yuri, coming?”

  “Well, I can come,” Yuri said. “If you would like, maybe we can take one of Ubatoo’s street-scanning vans. They have a nice set of zoom lenses and cameras on them for the high-resolution pictures we’re gathering. If there’s anything that can be seen from the outside, we’ll broadcast it back through our internal network so you can watch it, Stephen.”

  “Thanks, Yuri, but no. I think I’ve seen enough of Claudine and Monica. There’s not much more of them to see.”

  “We can take the van?” Andrew asked excitedly.

  “Of course. I use one all the time for my research. Besides, we’ve never really tested its capabilities in nighttime conditions,” Yuri said. “Who knows, maybe I’ll publish a paper on its performance at night.” Yuri might have been kidding, but it wasn’t clear.

  “I’m ready!” Andrew exclaimed, getting out of his chair fast enough to startle poor Yuri who happened to be standing in front of him. Kohan grabbed his cowboy hat and was already out the door. The rest soon followed the bobbing hat in the distance.

  “Good luck, I guess,” Stephen murmured to himself as he rose from his seat to go back to the café to get something to drink. He needed to start on his project for Sebastin, but desperately wanted another coffee. Then he remembered his heartbeats, especially the skipped ones. “I think I’ve had enough,” he said out loud, but there was nobody left to hear him.

  -I DREAM OF JENNY-

  July 15, 2009.

  Skipped heartbeats or not, the decision not to get more coffee was a bad one. Despite his best intentions to complete his work, the lack of company and the many sleepless nights proved too worthy an adversary. After an hour, Stephen gave up trying to work and decided to call it a night. He stumbled home in a daze, his body still jittery from the fading caffeine, and his head defiantly drooping low, ready for sleep. With each step, his feet fumbled as they found every pebble that had made its way onto the sidewalk.

  When he finally walked through the door of the apartment, Molly was wide awake. She was seated where she always was, at her computer, oblivious to the world around her. He could tell by the way she was sitting, with one hand cupping her chin and the other poised ready to click the mouse, that she was doing what she did for far too many hours each day—repeatedly hitting refresh on her browser, waiting for the next message to be posted to one of EasternDiscussions message forums.

  As he came closer, she started telling him excitedly about a message that had been posted earlier in the day. Andrew’s changes to the ranking hadn’t taken effect yet, so each message posted was still an exciting event. She stopped talking in mid-sentence when she saw Stephen’s already wobbly stance giving way under the weight of his own body. “Come on, sleepy, let’s get you to bed.”

  “I can’t sleep yet, Molly. I have so much to do for tomorrow. One of Atiq’s friends is calling me tomorrow for some project I was supposed to have already done. I haven’t even started it yet.”

  “Can’t you ask Kohan to do it for you tonight?”

  “He’s out tonight. I’ll tell you about it later. That’s a whole other mess with Kohan and Andrew . . .”

  “Why don’t you get a few hours sleep? I’ll wake you in a couple of hours when I come to bed. Come on, I’ll lay with you for a while.”

  He wrapped his hands clumsily around her head and pulled her toward him. “Thank you,” he said, with his eyes and head already sinking.

  “Alright, alright. Come here.” With that, she led him to the bedroom. There, they laid in the dark, curled tightly into each other.

  And in the haze that sometimes precedes sleep and passes like an eternity between the final brief moments of awareness and the oblivious comfort of rest, deep and peaceful, he watched idly as his thoughts interweaved with his days, and took shape as dreams.

  Stephen’s eyes blinked open to unfamiliar sounds from outside the bedroom. Molly was still with him, he could still feel her rhythmic breathing softly on the back of his neck. “Wake up, Molly.” He put his hand on her bare leg, gently trying to shake her awake. “There’s someone in here.”

  Skipped heartbeat. “Molly, wake up. I think someone is in our apartment.” She didn’t move.

  Under the closed door of their bedroom, a flickering blue light made its way into his wide open eyes. The voices from outside grew louder. Just the TV. Nothing to worry about.

  Out of bed. To the door. He pulled it open and stepped into the next room.

  He fumbled for a light switch he couldn’t find. The white flash of a camera. Molly? Another flash. Molly draped with a thin blanket, in a bed, awake, terrified. “What are you doing, Molly? I thought you were asleep in the other room.”

  She didn’t turn her gaze to face him. Another flash of a camera.

  “That’s perfect.” A voice called from the darkness. “Now take off the blanket.” She did as she was told. Hot white skin on cool white sheets. “Molly, stop being so shy.” The voice was familiar. “Come on, Molly, you look great.” She did look great. The voice—it was Andrew’s.

  “Ready,” a voice yelled out. Flash. Flash. “Perfect. Now that is something beautiful,” Yuri was saying.

  “What are you doing?” Stephen thought, or maybe said aloud.

  “Shhh. Stephen.” Molly called to him from the bed. “Come lay with me.” No. No. Another flash. “Yuri is going to turn on the video camera. Come here, with me.”

  Stephen sunk further back into the corner. His hands feeling the empty wall. Where was the light switch?

  “Don’t be afraid,” Molly called soothingly. “They promised not to show them to anyone. These are just for you and me. I thought you’d like them.”

  “Just for you two,” Andrew affirmed. Flash. Teeth gleaming. Damaged grin.

  Four imperfect crescents welled with red in his palm; nails piercing through the skin. “That’s enough,” Stephen ordered in a burst of confidence. The flashes stopped.

  Around him, three LCD panels glowed a dim grey. “Try searching for the pictures, Stephen. Let’s make sure this works.” He found the letters on a keyboard, M-O-L-L-Y. Total: 10,522 results returned in 0.0003 seconds. The center LCD scrolled through message forums probing Molly in depth. Users posting, chatting, and sharing—all about Yuri’s pictures. With a loud click of a mouse, the photographs revealed themselves on the second LCD. Click, videos sputtered to life on the third.

  “The video cameras work well at night,” Yuri exclaimed. The grainy shaky images, taken with an inexperienced yet all-too-willing hand, conveyed their message clearly enough.

  “Stephen. These are your friends. Take the pictures down. M
ake them stop,” Molly pleaded as she hid beneath the blanket.

  The last few steps flew beneath him as he found Andrew. “Take them down. Delete them all. Right now.”

  “Of course.” Andrew pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. The LCDs turned off. The room went black. “All gone.”

  Molly fell back into her pillow.

  “I think you should look at this.” It was Yuri talking.

  A map of the JENNY system, centered on their apartment, slowly appeared on the center LCD. It was black, there was no activity happening online. “It looks good,” Stephen called out. “Thank you.”

  Yuri pulled the mouse back toward him, zooming the map out. The two LCDs on either side of the first, presented the adjacent neighborhoods. With tiny, barely audible clicks, one by one, each house turned from black, green, blue, and any other color—to pink. A narrator with a quirky voice and uneven tone, kindly explained, “Molly found her way to the hearts and homes of all her neighbors.”

  Yuri pulled his mouse back further. Dozens of LCDs covered the walls, extending the map in every direction. Snakes of pink, like flowing water, emanated from each encountered house, branched and divided, until all of the LCDs shone brightly with only one color. The bright pink from the LCDs exposed Molly—still covered only with a thin diaphanous blanket, staring intently at the screens all around; exposed Andrew’s face, inspecting Molly; exposed Yuri, with camera in hand.