Shock Totem 1: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  Jake had considered taking down the curtains but the Venetian blinds were missing some slats and he didn’t dare risk letting them spy on him. Not that there was much they missed despite his precautions. There was no doubt in his mind that he was at their mercy, that they were playing with him and could deliver the final blow any time they wished. He wasn’t sure why they restrained themselves. Perhaps they were increasing the pressure gradually so they could determine the precise point at which he would break, throw himself upon their nonexistent mercy, or finally turn in a desperate, doomed effort to resist. Or perhaps they were trapped by their own complexity and were barred from simple solutions.

  Jake went through the mail, setting aside everything except the bills. He found his checkbook sitting on top of the microwave, which sat on the floor in yet another corner, and paid the bills and stamped the envelopes. He carried the waste out to the trashcan by the side of the house, giving a wide berth to the mailbox (which had remained closed this time), then returned quickly to the house after hearing something rustling in the hedges. He would hand the stamped envelopes to the mailman when he delivered the next day.

  Next he conducted an inventory of his supplies, made a short list, and called it in to the grocery store. “Tomorrow morning delivery is fine,” he told them. He used his cell phone. He had ripped the other out of the wall and thrown it into the trash, denying them another entryway into the house. Jake knew his precautions were inadequate at best, but he had to try, didn’t he? He couldn’t just acknowledge their power over him without at least token resistance.

  That thought reminded Jake that he hadn’t conducted his daily clothing inspection. The fourth and final corner of the living room was the most cluttered, if you could call such rigid orderliness clutter. His shirts, all solid colors, neatly folded, stood in two piles, his pants in a third. Underwear, socks, shoes, handkerchiefs, and belts were arranged in parallel rows. None of the separate stacks physically touched another, to prevent cross contamination if they should be infiltrated, and his sweaters—which would not be needed for another month or two—were even further segregated, a full meter from the rest. Jake examined each element of his array in turn, satisfying himself that there was no visible evidence of outside influence. He’d found an ant on one occasion, and killed it immediately. He didn’t think they could use the ant directly, but they could probably follow it back inside if it ever returned.

  Satisfied, he returned to his sitting chair, and sat in it. Centrally located, it allowed him to survey the entire periphery of his domain without having to change position significantly. He always tried to keep his movements slow, deliberate, and silent, so that they would have fewer cues by which to pinpoint his location. He was three quarters of the way through a survey when a sudden buzzing sound made him jump.

  The cell phone!

  Jake had set it on the floor—his pockets were always empty. He had even sewn most of them shut so he couldn’t absentmindedly insert something. He picked up the phone tentatively and, steeling himself, accepted the incoming call.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Jake? Is that you?”

  “This is Jake. Who am I talking to? What do you want?”

  “It’s Darleen, Darleen Thompson. Am I calling at a bad time?”

  Yes, he thought. “Hello, Darleen. How can I help you?” Darleen seemed all right. He didn’t think they were using her, although you never knew. Sometimes people became their instruments without realizing they’d been reduced to puppets.

  “I just wanted to touch base with you. We haven’t talked in ages, and I’m going to be flying into Providence for a few days next month. I thought we might get together, go out for dinner or something.”

  Jake was wary of anything designed to lure him out of his stronghold. “I don’t know, Darleen. I’ve been pretty busy lately. Work, you know.”

  “Are you still working as a programmer at Eblis?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’ve moved on to something else. I’m sort of self-employed, freelance, and you know how it is when there’s no one else to hand the work off to.”

  “So, do you think you might give yourself an evening off? For supper, I mean. For old time’s sake.”

  “Well, I’d like to, Darleen, but I’m going to be really busy for the next six or eight weeks, working nights. I might even be on the road, you never know. There’s a whole lot of things that I have to get done right away in order to build my reputation, establish myself with the clients, you know?” He realized he was babbling, trying to overwhelm her with detail so she couldn’t come up with a counter argument, and then he realized he was playing right into their hands, giving them what they wanted. “Thanks anyway. Maybe some other time.” That was more like it. Simple. Final. He probably shouldn’t have suggested another time, though. It provided an opportunity for another attempt. There was no question about it. Darleen was being used, possibly even consciously.

  She may have intended to say more, but he preempted her. “I have to go. I’ll call you when things aren’t so crazy.” He broke the connection.

  He felt a sudden urge to put the cell phone in the trash outside, but it wasn’t a practical solution. There was no other way to order groceries and other things he needed to survive. It was a small concession. He hated to give way even that much, but he had known all along there was never a chance he might prevail completely. A holding action, he told himself. That’s all I’ve got left. But at least I’ll go down fighting.

  There was another buzz. Jake turned to the cell phone, but it was silent. Puzzled, he stared dumbly at it. The buzz hadn’t sounded right. Then a series of thumps revealed the truth. It had been the door bell, and whoever was outside had just knocked on the door. Could the grocery store have made a mistake, delivered a day too early?

  Jake rose to his feet, checked the immediate area, then the path he would have to follow to reach the door. It was probably safe, but even a small unnecessary risk might be fatal. If he just remained where he was, the outsider would probably go away. Even if this was just another of their ploys, they’d desist once it was clear he wasn’t taking the bait.

  But if he remained unresponsive, that in itself might attract attention. Other people might begin to ask questions, and questions would play right into their hands.

  He walked to the door, trying to remain calm.

  It was Abner Whitfield, his next door neighbor. What’s that old busybody want now? Jake wondered. Maybe he’ll go away.

  Another fusillade of knocks, louder now. Jake sighed. Should he be brusque to the point of rudeness, hoping to drive the man away permanently, or pleasant, agreeable, and compliant? Either strategy had its drawbacks. He would have to improvise.

  He walked cautiously into the hall, glancing around nervously, then opened the door.

  “Oh, there you are. I was wondering if I’d have to leave a note. Say, do you know your phone is out of order?”

  “You know the phone company. It takes them forever to fix anything. What can I do for you?” He had parried that easily enough. If Abner had pursued the matter, raised the level of complexity, it might have been disastrous. There were so many ramifications inherent in even the most simple statement. He might have asked if they had scheduled a repair date, or offered to let Jake use his own phone, or responded in some fashion that Jake could not even imagine.

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about your tree. You know, the one that hangs over my fence.” His eyes kept slipping away from Jake’s face, trying to see what lay behind him, or perhaps he was expecting to be invited in.

  “What about the tree?” All of his senses were on alert. This was an attack from an unexpected angle, and he had no ripostes prepared.

  “I wondered if you were going to do anything about removing it?”

  “Why would I want to remove the tree?” He wouldn’t mind at all, actually. It was an elderly Japanese Maple whose branches intersected with those of the adjacent spruce. The last time he’d been o
utdoors on that side of the house, he’d seen squirrels leaping from one tree to the next, and the interlaced highway had caught him off guard. He’d stood frozen, tracing the intricacies of one branch, following it to where it intersected the next, finding hints of patterns so enticing he had been transfixed. It couldn’t be part of their plan, of course, because the tree and the squirrels were true living things, but they were insidious, and he was not about to underestimate their capacity for affecting their environment.

  “Well, maybe because about half of it split off and fell into my yard during that storm we had last week.” Abner sounded sarcastic and Jake flinched. Sarcasm suggested a conflict between specific meaning and intended effect, and that relationship was necessarily complex. “If you don’t want to take care of it yourself, I can find someone, but you’ll have to pay for it.”

  A three-way business arrangement. Jake had to clench his fists so his nails drove into his flesh to keep from betraying his panic. The complications implied by such an agreement surged against his defenses. Would they accept a check? When would it have to be done? Which tree service would be chosen? What if they wanted to know how much to cut away and how much to save? He felt faint.

  “Are you all right?” Abner was looking at him strangely. “You’re awfully pale. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I haven’t been feeling well.” Jake grasped at the straw, a simple answer to a complicated question, then hastened on. “Nothing serious.” A doctor would have questions, forms to be filled in, symptoms to inquire about. That wouldn’t do at all. “I just need some rest.”

  Abner looked concerned, or was that suspicion? Jake couldn’t read expressions very well anymore. There were so many parts to human faces, and they could alter themselves into countless patterns. “Look, I can arrange to get it done and just send you the bill if you want.”

  “That would be fine with me. And I appreciate your patience.” That was good. Jake was certain that he sounded normal, unsuspicious. He was dealing with this quite nicely, if he did say so himself.

  “Yeah, well, take care of yourself.” Jake watched Abner walk to the end of the front walk. He paused there, glanced back as though he might return, but then shook his head and disappeared behind the hedge. Jake took a deep breath and waited for the muscles in the back of his neck to relax.

  Realization of the true state of affairs had come to him gradually. Prior to that revelation, he had been happy, more or less. He took pride in his work, weaving lines of code into routines, routines into modules, modules into finished programs, and programs into complex systems. The unrealized potentials of the network intrigued him. Why couldn’t the inventory system speak to the purchasing department’s procurement software? If you were going to go to the trouble of creating a personnel database, why not integrate it with the payroll and security programs? He was handed simple mandates by his supervisors and always provided everything they asked for and more. Jake had thought he was doing a good thing, helping make the world a better place.

  That was before he realized he was not the real creator. The interface between the advertising and sales departments had been suggested by a data array that had “just happened” to be identical in both modules. The improvements in the telephone sales interface had been adapted from the inventory control transaction recording screen. Even the shareware game he’d developed at home had been a spiffed up version of a training exercise program he’d previously modified for the distribution department.

  At first, it hadn’t struck him as particularly important. He was considering applying for a job in Providence, because Eblis was clearly on the verge of staff reductions, and he was writing his resume on company time in his tiny office. Although he had typed up a healthy list of accomplishments, a closer look had disconcerted him. None of this was really original work. Oh, he had made some of the programming more elegant, possibly even saved some processing time, but these were modifications he had copied from other programs. None of it was really his work. And the resulting code was so complex that if he left, his replacement would probably scrap large sections and rewrite it rather than attempt to ferret out Jake’s chain of reasoning. His greatest achievement was to have made things more complex than ever.

  That had bothered him and he had started thinking about other aspects of his life as well. He rarely carried his cell phone because he could never figure out how to use most of its features—the camera, the varying ringtones, call waiting, caller ID—and it was embarrassing to explain if someone asked about them. His new television had a row of controls in a flip down box, most of which he had never touched. One morning he was sent off to a conference in Providence and he borrowed one of the company cars, but he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the windshield washer or the parking lights.

  How did life get to be so complex? He thought back to his childhood. Televisions used to have a power switch and a channel selector, and maybe a contrast knob. Radios had AM or FM or both, but what was the difference between FM1 and FM2? DVDs made it possible to watch movies, but should he buy a conventional player, or Blu-ray or some other format? What was the difference between DEFROST and AUTO DEFROST on his microwave? Even the fan on his office desk offered Oscillating or Non-Oscillating, Filtered or Unfiltered, in addition to On and Off and four separate speeds.

  It was as though there was some underlying force or consciousness directing things. Jake didn’t know much about natural history, but he knew living organisms had started out simple, single cells, then multi-cellular, living in the sea and then moving to the land, growing more specialized, more intelligent, more complex. It was almost as though the inorganic world was going through some similar genesis now. Where organic life had been started by a chance accretion of chemicals, sparked perhaps by a stroke of lightning (or the hand of God), could it be possible that the inorganic world was, or had already been pushed across the same gap by the advent of human technology?

  He had laughed it off at the time, but apparently not soon enough to avoid attracting their attention. Jake wasn’t entirely sure who they were, but he was pretty sure he knew what they were. Little things started to go wrong at first. He was paid through direct deposit and somehow the account number got suspended. It took three visits to the bank before that was cleared up. Then he was stopped because his license plate number had somehow been erased from the DMV database. His phone bill had arrived one month demanding $1147.84. The charges from a local florist shop had inexplicably been debited against his account. The fuel injection system on his car malfunctioned, the cable box for his television had refused to unscramble incoming signals, and his programmable clock radio had started resetting at random. He was late for work three times before he threw it out.

  Jake’s suspicions began to grow. The more he thought about the malfunctions—it was only later he recognized them as attacks—the more frequently they occurred. And the more frequently they occurred, the more he thought about them. It was as though some cunning but unsophisticated intelligence was pitted against his.

  He decided to test his theory. One afternoon, at work, he accessed the inventory processing module and altered a few lines of code. The effect would be to delay the transfer of some finished goods into inventory long enough that there would be negative—hence impossible—figures in the on-hand balance field. For the next week, he monitored the reports much more closely than usual, and not once did any item actually show as negative.

  It took almost a week for him to discover the explanation. The error handling routine had an embedded patch that kicked in whenever a negative would have resulted. It adjusted the balance to zero and tagged the item for priority processing in the following batch, which naturally contained the belated transfers. It was very neat and a very nice refinement, but Jake had written the error handling routine himself and he had no recollection of including any such safeguard.

  He tried two more carefully controlled experiments. A glitch in the shipping and billing interface was corrected by part
of the order entry module. A redundant checksum in the personnel management software adjusted a payroll error before the checks were issued. In neither case could Jake remember writing the relevant code.

  And by then his interest had been noticed.

  In April, the month end reports didn’t foot properly. In fact, they showed dramatic profits even though the drop off in sales had deepened. Nicholson called him in and expressed his displeasure succinctly and loudly. Jake spent two days locating the problem, which was well concealed in the backup routine, and by then the production scheduler was screaming because production runs were being routed to machines that were already full to capacity. Jake fixed that one, too, but when the daily production data was found to be corrupted in multiple places, Nicholson exploded. Jake defended himself by claiming it was sabotage, and Nicholson fired him.

  Fortunately, Jake was a man of few desires. Until Eblis had switched to direct deposit, he had been in the habit of accumulating as many as a dozen paychecks before taking them to the bank. He lived so frugally that he figured his bank account would last longer than he did. Which was just as well, because he had a feeling they weren’t going to let him get into another position where he could threaten to expose them.

  Jake began thinking about the situation and realized how easily it could all have happened. A checkered shirt is, in itself, perfectly innocuous, he reasoned. But arrange checkered shirts with striped ones, and you have binary code. Add enough shirts and you have a statement, then a routine, and on from there.