by Liza Palmer
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because they’re imperious dicks who could use a bit of a take-down.” I think back to that day in Chris’s office when he made me crawl under that beam. How sure he was that I wasn’t a threat. Meera drains her glass. “That a good enough reason?”
“Yes.” Meera raises her glass, notices it’s empty, shrugs, and sets it down.
“What are you going to do with this?”
“I’m going to write a story about it.”
“You’ve got to find the server farm first,” she says, walking back into the main area.
“We will,” I say, just behind her. She turns around.
“I know you will,” she says. She joins her husband behind the bar, lacing her arm around his waist. “So, I guess I’ll see you guys later, then.” Meera looks at the flight of drinks in front of Thornton, Hani, and Elise. “On the house.”
“See you soon,” I say. I give a nod to Thornton, Elise, and Hani and we say our thank-yous and goodbyes. Once outside, I hold my phone up. And tap Play.
“CAM was never going to be what Chris wanted. He was obsessed. And it broke him. One night I was joking around that we could just do it the way everyone else does and no one would know. We hide a server farm somewhere, set up some ditzy start-up that only talks in inspirational memes, throw in some talk about America and don’t you yearn for a time when you didn’t have to lock your doors, and people would eat it up. No one understands this tech shit anyway. We’d seen it happen a million times.” I press Stop and look up.
“Holy shit,” Thornton says.
“We need to find that server farm,” I say.
“I think I’ve got a lead on that,” Elise says.
“To the Batmobile!” Hani says, running toward Thornton’s car. Elise follows her, along with the sleepy golden retriever. Elise and Hani play with the dog down by the car.
“Hani’s going to want to keep him,” Thornton says. I take a deep breath and it doesn’t catch. I look up at him. Take another deep breath and it finally fills my lungs. Thornton steps in close.
“I want to send you this file in case anything happens to my phone or me,” I say.
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he says. I send him the recording and I hear his phone ding in the pocket of his flight suit. I try to catch my breath again. My shoulders rise, but my breath doesn’t catch. Another breath. Another. He steps in closer. I can’t look at him.
“You were right,” he says. I take a giant deep, filling breath.
“I was right,” I say, my voice so soft. I take another deep, body-filling breath.
“You were right.”
“I was right.” My voice is louder. Stronger. Clearer. I smile and breathe so deeply and deeper still. “I was right.” I want to scream it from this porch and that mountaintop and all along the 101 as we drive back to Los Angeles. Then I’m going to show Chris how much of a threat I am. Once and for all.
Thornton pulls me into him, wrapping his arms around me. So tight. I don’t worry about where to put my arms, I just know how to hold him. And I smile. I smile because I was right. I’m still here, deep down inside all of my brokenness.
I was right.
17
That’s the Good Stuff
We found the server farm three weeks and six days later.
After we returned from Buellton, Elise dove into figuring out how many servers Bloom would need based on the clients they’re serving, as well as the future projects coming down the pipeline. Acquiring this information took way longer than we expected, since everyone in her department is so intentionally siloed. Then, once she had those hard-earned figures, we factored in the buzz on when Bloom would be acquired—now knowing that Bloom going public was probably just another gambit—and approximately how long they’d need to keep up this “CAM actually works” charade.
Elise’s final conclusion was that Bloom’s server farm would have to take up almost a full city block. They’d need expensive cooling systems, massive energy, and a security detail, and the lease would have to run for at least another two years, give or take.
And then, using information that Thornton pulled from Chris’s and Asher’s calendars, plus their expense reports, we were able to use gas receipts and vague blocked-off chunks of time to start to see a pattern. We noticed the same unexplained three-hour blocked-off span of time coincided with the same 120 miles every week. But that wasn’t the interesting part. Those three-hour blocked-off chunks of time and the 120 extra miles only occurred in Asher’s calendar.
However this scam was being run, the division of labor had it so the boots-on-the-ground oversight of the server farm was Asher’s responsibility alone. What that confirmed to us was that—as Meera had intimated—Chris was the brains of this operation and Asher was the brawn.
Then it was my turn. Armed with a one-pound box of See’s Candy milk chocolate Bordeaux and a sampler plate of Peanut Butter Eggs, Chocolate Butter Eggs, and Divinity Eggs, I called on my favorite newly married and loose-lipped real estate connection.
We’d narrowed down our search for the server farm to the Inland Empire—which is an area about sixty miles outside of Los Angeles. Land is cheap there, and Chris and Asher could buy a big abandoned warehouse and no one would think to ask any questions. And according to Asher’s expense reports, he frequented a Starbucks in San Bernardino where we assumed he stopped during these weekly treks.
I plied my real estate connection with See’s Candy, cooing that “ohmygod, yes, I would love to see the entire photo album of your honeymoon!” And in between blurry photos of the happy couple sitting by the pool (not the ocean) I had her run every iteration of Asher Bailey Lyndon and Christopher Villiers Lawrence she could find. Plus, thanks to Hani—and her cloak-and-dagger mission to break into Mackenzie’s desk where she said all she needed were “her wits and a trusty paper clip”—we now had the last four digits of Chris’s and Asher’s social security numbers.
And then, in the middle of a story about her swearing a turtle said “Mahalo” back to her, my real estate connection leapt out of her ergonomic work chair and said, “Now that’s the good stuff.” Hani and Elise were so taken with this phrase that they immortalized it on our long-awaited and much-needed team shirts. Hani designed the team shirts herself: On the front was a crude drawing of a magnifying glass with a sash of four little paper doll friends swathed across it. On the back, the words “Now that’s the good stuff!” in Comic Sans. Hani insisted that her use of Comic Sans was ironic.
The “good stuff” that my real estate connection was so excited about was a one-acre parcel with a one-and-a-half-story building that had been constructed in 2016. The warehouse was owned by a shell corporation called Budz. Thornton argued that Budz was a pot reference. Hani thought Budz was a testament to Chris and Asher’s friendship. Elise just shrugged and said, “I mean, it ends in a z.” But I maintained that it was actually more about them trying to be clever. Everything led back to that for them.
“A bud,” I said over coffee ice cream one night. Blank faces and slurps. “A bud blooms.” Ice cream dripped. “Bloom. Get it?”
“I still think it’s about friends,” Hani said.
It didn’t take much for Hani to find out that Budz was owned by none other than Asher Bailey Lyndon and Christopher Villiers Lawrence.
Once we found the warehouse and identified Budz as the corporation they were using to hide shit they didn’t want people connecting to Bloom, we met with Hugo and he gave us a crash course on Corporate Accounting 101. With his help, we were able to find the security firm they’d hired, as well as the general contractor who built the server farm and even the blueprints he used to do it.
Now all we had to do was see it. And that was what we were doing today.
But neither the investigating, the dead ends, nor the endless hours looking at honeymoon photos were the hard part about the last three weeks and six days. It was when I caught Chris watching me while I stood
in line for coffee. I wanted to walk right over, grab him by the hoodie, and whisper menacingly, “I’m going to take you down, motherfucker.” But I couldn’t. I had to smile and act like he’d domesticated me. That I was no threat. Just like he said. It killed me.
Thornton put this little field trip in our calendars as a “Team Outing.” Kayla from PR found it and wanted to give Thornton $40 for each of us “to cover fun expenses.” She also sent Thornton a few suggestions that had helped other pods build trust and community: a medieval times–themed restaurant, go-karts, a schedule for ferries to Catalina Island, and finally a “lodge” that offers Jacuzzi tubs that rent by the hour.
We’ve taken two cars, because along with our San Bernardino server farm stakeout, Hani’s taking Elise home to meet her parents, who own a restaurant up in Big Bear. To compensate for the fact that we couldn’t all be in the same car, Hani has supplied us with walkie-talkies, as well as hand mirrors (to “send signals”) and a series of colored bandanas that we wave just in case service is spotty and we want to:
RED: change the route;
YELLOW: have to pee (“Get it? Hahahahahaha”);
BLUE: need gas; or
GREEN: just sayin’ hi
Hani has waved the green flag practically every five miles while crackling through the walkie-talkie with “Breaker, breaker, this is Red Otter here with Pink Sunshine, do you read me, over?” When Thornton and I failed to use our code names (Black Fox and Bloodhound One, respectively), Hani repeated her call sign until we did. In the end, it was just easier to refer to myself as Bloodhound One than fight her overwhelming zeal.
The drive to San Bernardino took about ninety minutes, and Thornton and I passed the time easily. That’s the problem with finally finding someone you can talk to about everything. Not only do you never want it to stop, you start unearthing that version of yourself you’ve only seen shadows of. The tiny, joyful me that’s at the core of the Russian nesting doll protective layers of myself that have formed over the years.
I can’t pinpoint what it is about Thornton that so readily accesses that “tells all she knows” center—a state of being I’ve had a hard time revealing even to my family and friends.
Maybe it’s because, somewhere in all of this, I believe that Thornton—and the conversations I can’t seem to stop having with him—are fleeting. That once this story gets written, once I stop working at Bloom, the spell will be broken and we will part ways, the nesting dolls clicking back into place once more. This inevitability has been my constant companion these past three weeks.
Because, while we haven’t held a single hand since Buellton, we’ve been taking these walks and talking. It started when I wanted to ask Thornton about something having to do with the story and the Fortress of Solitude was booked. Instead, he suggested we take a walk around the block. We talked about the story for the first half of the walk, but then I finally told him about that morning in Chris’s office and the fucking beam, which led me right into talking about Tavia, the whole workhorse thing, and why do I only think I deserve lunch drinks, and what did he think it’d look like to train myself to think I deserve lunch, and then he said he did it too and why is he the head copywriter at a company that doesn’t even work, when he has degrees in computer science and physics from Caltech? What are we both so afraid of?
And then we started going for walks every day at 3 P.M. We talked about messy childhoods and if we thought the root of why we’re struggling now is somewhere in the past where our inability to fit into our well-meaning families led us both to believe that there was something inherently wrong with us. Or if the culprit is just the wear and tear of a life lived sitting on the wall—aiming low and playing it perpetually safe.
And somewhere along the way in these past three weeks, feelings crept in that, while Thornton may think I’m smart and hold me in high regard, his attachment might have tipped over into platonic admiration and deep friendship. Which I’m not certain is a bad thing. Because whatever this is or has become with Thornton is the closest I’ve ever felt to being truly seen and understood. Thornton knows me, because I’ve let him know me. And I know him because he’s let me know him. We are the innermost Russian dolls with each other.
I was so ready to look at our stalled physical progress as a sign that I didn’t like Thornton that I failed to see that I might actually be falling in love with him.
And with that startling recognition, I realize that Thornton may be falling in love with me, too, and that real love, for broken people, has to be more careful because it resides in the same place as all of our hurt and pain.
So, would it be so bad if we decided that what we have is a beautiful, loving friendship? Maybe that’s what both of us need most right now in a person.
I guide Thornton off the freeway. Our tone is easy as we wind our little green flag-waving caravan through the streets of San Bernardino in search of a nondescript warehouse that holds a billion-dollar secret.
When we finally pull down the least infamous-looking street in the world, I can tell we’re all just a little disappointed. Bloom’s server farm sits on a street that’s anchored by a strip mall on one end with a coin laundry, a donut shop, a nail salon, and a liquor store called the Come and Go boasting tenancy there. A tidy-looking motel called the Alpine Inn sits just across the street from what appears to be the nation’s most popular tire store.
We flip a U-turn and find parking along with a steady stream of people going about the most mundane of daily errands. Thornton turns off the car just as Hani crackles through the walkie-talkie.
“Breaker, breaker, Black Fox, this is Red Otter, do you read, over.” Thornton looks over at me with a weary smile and I hand him the walkie-talkie.
“Red Otter, this is Black Fox.” Thornton unlatches his seat belt and shifts in his seat.
“You have to say over, over.”
“Red Otter, this is Black Fox, over.” Through the walkie-talkie we can hear Hani giggling and then Elise takes over.
“Black Fox, Pink Sunshine has to pee and also Red Otter maybe wants a donut, over,” Elise says. Some jostling and laughing and then Hani is back on the walkie-talkie.
“Bloodhound One, don’t get mad about the donut, over.” I gesture to give me the walkie-talkie. Thornton obliges.
“Red Otter, I never get mad about donuts, over.” Thornton laughs.
“Bloodhound One, do you and Black Fox want a donut, over.” I look over at Thornton.
“Plain glazed, please,” Thornton says, after a bit.
“Really?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No, it’s…” I nod and smile to myself. “It’s perfect. Red Otter, Black Fox would like a plain glazed and I’d like a maple bar, over.” I look over at Thornton. He’s making a face. “Does that surprise you?”
“No.” He smiles.
“Who’d like a maple bar, over?”
“Bloodhound One would like a maple bar, over.”
“Copy that. ETA on donuts is ten minutes and what’s the ETA on Wolf One, over?”
“Red Otter, Wolf One will be arriving in forty-seven minutes, over.” Hani finally signs off and we see her and Elise running over to the donut shop, craning their necks, and leaping behind cars so they’ll be “inconspicuous.”
Our plan for today is getting photographs of Asher walking into the server farm along with pictures of inside the server farm. The first one is easy, the second one is going to take some patience.
What we do know for sure is that Chris and Asher opted for security rather than security cameras. I imagine this decision had a lot to do with not wanting any photographic evidence of what’s going on—or not going on—at the server farm, come what may in the future. Their security detail is run by a shady friend of Asher’s from high school. Chris and Asher clearly needed people they could trust with a very expensive lie, so it’s not surprising that the people they chose are just as rarified and hypocritical as they are. It’ll be my special pleasure t
o shed light on this web of crooked business practices in my story.
Hani and Elise will get the photos of Asher with Elise’s good camera. They’re going to be positioned on a little cross street just near the back of the Alpine Inn, so they can get a straight shot of the server farm entrance and possibly see if they can get a couple of shots of the inside when Asher opens and closes the main front door.
There was some discussion that this stakeout did not require all four of us. However, when she was apprised of this, Hani argued that “there is no i in ‘crime-solving gang.’” Yet when it was pointed out that there were, in fact, two i’s in “crime-solving gang” she crossed her arms across her chest and said, “Exactly.”
So, here we are.
Once Elise and Hani get those shots, they’ll head up to Big Bear. And then it’s Thornton’s and my turn. We found out that Asher and Chris employ a skeleton crew of seven completely off-the-books Bloom employees to run the servers. Completely off the books, except that those seven employees were given the exact same employee badges we have. So, while there is no record of their employment in any way—no retirement, no onboarding, no shipments of imperfect fruit—we should be able to just walk into the server farm, show our badges to Asher’s bro-y security guy, and have free rein. For a while, at least.
We also know that the security detail goes from four dudes during the day to just one starting at 9 P.M. And, using her tracking prowess, Hani uncovered that the 9 P.M. security guy has a penchant for frequenting a strip club just a couple of blocks over from 10 P.M. to around 11:30 P.M. Meaning, once the security guy checks the badge—we don’t want to scan the badge, thus leaving a digital footprint—we’ll be free to roam without anyone watching.
All of us decided that Thornton would be the one to infiltrate the server farm, given his talents at both computers and people—or as they like to call him, “the Nerd Translator.” He would record everything he sees and hears via a small device Elise developed using a bunch of random computer and camera parts from her workshop. Because of course she has a workshop and of course she basically invented some new spyware in the spare time of her falling hopelessly in love with Hani.
