JULIE: I was thinking Dallas.
RICHARD: Dallas? Why Dallas?
JULIE: ONYS have an office in Fort Worth. Plus you passed the bar in Dallas.
RICHARD: You don’t need me. Do it yourself, pro hac vice.
JULIE: Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be my co-counsel.
RICHARD: You don’t want me to co-counsel. (beat) Wait, you want me to co-counsel?
JULIE: It’d be a landmark case, Rich.
Beat. Richard is somewhat persuaded.
RICHARD: I don’t have a problem with the humanitarian stuff, Jules. It’s good for the firm. But if you’re thinking about a class action here, that’s a three, four-year timeline and a helluva lotta resources. It can’t just be a gesture. It has to be … you know. Viable.
THE TRANSLATOR: Profitable.
JULIE: I hear you. Gimme a month. I’ll dig around, see if it’s viable.
RICHARD: Two weeks. And if you have to fly over there—
JULIE: Out / of my own pocket.
RICHARD: Out of your own pocket.
Beat.
RICHARD: Hey, how’s your Mandarin these days?
JULIE: Shot to shit. Why, you know any decent translators?
RICHARD: (knowingly) I mean.
JULIE: Rich. That’s a terrible idea. (beat) Hey. That’s not a terrible idea.
THE TRANSLATOR: D.C., 2012.
EVA: So it’s like—
JULIE: You don’t have to—
EVA: No, but I want to. So.
JULIE: Okay.
EVA: Okay, so it’s like—a foreign citizen, or, I guess, citizens / plural?
JULIE: Right.
EVA:—can file in a US district court, but, only, or specifically if it’s a lawsuit?
JULIE: Well, no, in torts.
EVA: Doesn’t that—
JULIE: It’s—
EVA: No, but a tort means a lawsuit, right?
JULIE: Torts is a whole branch of—Evie, you really don’t have to understand the case.
EVA: But I—
JULIE: Because I’m not asking you / to—
EVA: And—‘in violation of the Law of Nations’—
JULIE: Evie.
EVA: What does that mean, exactly, the Law of Nations?
JULIE: Well, there’s some debate about—that’s why it’s a sort of a loophole. I told you, right, it’s kinda funny, it was actually, what it was intended for, was a way of dealing with—
EVA: Pirates. / Yeah.
JULIE: Yarr.
Beat.
EVA: It just doesn’t seem like much to be going on.
JULIE:… right.
EVA: And if the only evidence is this bullet / point—
JULIE: Actually, Evie, I didn’t come for your legal opinion, okay, I’m a lawyer, I can form my own legal opinion, fuck.
Beat.
EVA: Okay.
JULIE: So can you do it, or …
EVA: You are aware … this is D.C. Like, translators aren’t few and far between.
JULIE: What, does it offend you, that I came to you with this?
EVA: I just like don’t need a bailout.
JULIE: That’s not what this is.
EVA: Like, I’m okay.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘I’m not okay.’
JULIE: It’s not—it’s not a bailout, okay? I gotta have someone I trust over there, we’ll be dealing with some sensitive shit, some anti-CCP shit.
THE TRANSLATOR: Chinese Communist Party.
EVA: I just don’t want you to think, like, because the last time we—
JULIE: No, I’m not—funerals are weird, dude. I’m not—I mean—water under the bridge.
THE TRANSLATOR: An idiom that generally refers to events that have happened in the past and are consequently no longer a source of concern. However, in this case, it means something like ‘I’m still mad at you but let’s not talk about it.’
JULIE: Just, you’re being fucking weird, what is it, Evie? Did I offend you? I just … you kept up with the language and I didn’t, so … that’s all. That’s all. I’m in a position, like I said, I have some new evidence and Richard’s supporting me in this, I mean he’s not exactly supporting me, but you’d get a per diem and shit.
EVA: I don’t know if I can. Timeline-wise.
JULIE: Timeline-wise, what does that mean, timeline-wise?
EVA: With my—you know I, like, applied to programs.
JULIE: Oh, uh.
EVA: What?
JULIE: I mean, it’s—we’ve had this conversation.
EVA: What?
JULIE: It wasn’t programs, you submitted a half-hearted application to Georgetown.
EVA: I might get in.
JULIE: (laughing) I admire your optimism.
THE TRANSLATOR: Roughly, ‘you spent three years at Berkeley getting wasted, there’s no way you’re getting into Georgetown.’
Beat.
EVA: Yeah, so, I gotta go.
JULIE: Aw, what, you can’t take a joke, come on, Evie.
EVA: That wasn’t—you can’t just—
JULIE: Lighten the fuck up, dude, DUDE, it was a joke.
EVA: You can’t just, you can’t just be a dick, and call it farce.
JULIE: Can’t take a joke, Evie, shit.
EVA: This is a tired argument, so.
Beat.
JULIE: So what are you doing, then?
EVA: As in?
JULIE: As in, like, regular human survival shit. Do you have some kind of, I don’t know, revenue stream?
EVA: I’m freelancing.
JULIE: Translating?
EVA: Translating isn’t the only thing you can do with an Asia Studies major.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘I regret my choices and I’m essentially unemployable.’
JULIE: So what, you’re temping? (beat) What are you, being fucking coy? What?
EVA: I don’t wanna talk about it.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘I’m not talking about it.’
JULIE: The fuck, Evie, why not?
EVA: I just … I can’t talk about it.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘I’m not talking about it, to you.’
JULIE: Because it’s me?
EVA: Because a lot of things.
JULIE: Why?
EVA: As I just said. I can’t—
THE TRANSLATOR:—‘won’t’—
EVA:—talk about it.
JULIE: (joking) What is it, illegal? (beat) It’s not illegal. Is it? Is it illegal?
EVA: I’ve said that I’m not talking about it, if that presents a problem to you, then, you know.
Beat.
Fiona Choi (l) and Jing-Xuan Chan (r).
JULIE: Tell me it’s not illegal.
EVA: It’s not illegal.
JULIE: Are you lying to me?
EVA: No.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘Yes.’
JULIE: Okay.
EVA: It’s not.
JULIE: Okay.
EVA: Strictly.
JULIE: Evie.
THE TRANSLATOR: There’s some debate, as to whether or not Eva’s profession is, in fact, legal.
JULIE: Are you—
EVA: This. Is Not. The Venue.
JULIE: Because—
EVA: For this. Discussion.
JULIE: Because I can’t cover you under attorney–client privilege if / it’s—
EVA: It’s—I know this is somewhat impossible for you to believe, but I can take care of myself, I have been taking care of myself, you know, for some time now, I am a person, who functions independently of you.
JULIE: But—
EVA: WILL YOU LIKE TRUST THAT I’M NOT BROKEN,
FOR JUST ONCE IN YOUR FUCKING LIFE, CAN YOU TRUST THAT.
Beat.
JULIE: I don’t think you’re broken.
EVA: Yeah, yeah, you do. But it’s fine.
Beat.
JULIE: It’s Beijing, Evie. It’s just … being there, it’ll be so …
EVA: I know.
JULIE: And so soon after Mom.
EV
A: I know.
JULIE: Just—don’t write it off, okay? I … I would like to do this for you. Okay?
Beat.
EVA: What’s it say?
JULIE: What?
EVA: The bullet point. What’s it say?
THE TRANSLATOR: Dallas, 2015.
JULIE: Could you state your name and occupation for the record?
MARSHALL: Marshall McLaren. I’m the President of China Operations at ONYS Systems.
JULIE: Thank you. Mr McLaren, could you tell us when you had your first consultancy with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security?
MARSHALL: In 2004.
JULIE: And then your contract was renewed in 2006?
MARSHALL: Yeah.
JULIE: And when did you go public?
MARSHALL: Our IPO, was, yeah, the year before that. 2005.
JULIE: You opened at a market value of, let’s see here, $27 billion?
MARSHALL: Pretty cheap, actually. $45 a share.
JULIE: And these days, that number is closer to, what?
MARSHALL: Look, I’m not a ‘market’ guy, Ms Chen, you know, I’m in management, but I got into this as an engineer. So.
Beat.
JULIE: Okay then. (beat) What were you consulting on in 2004?
MARSHALL: ISP Efficiency in Border and Internal AS-Topologies in Greater China.
JULIE: That’s a lot of acronyms, Mr McLaren.
MARSHALL: Not for my line of business.
JULIE: Okay, let’s start with ISP, what’s that?
MARSHALL: Internet service providers.
JULIE: Okay, so ISP Efficiency: you were trying to make the internet faster?
MARSHALL: More efficient, sure.
JULIE: And did you?
MARSHALL: Did we increase network efficiency?
JULIE: Yes.
MARSHALL: I’m proud to say we did that. By around four hundred percent.
JULIE: Congratulations.
MARSHALL: Thanks.
JULIE: Could you be a little more specific about what you mean when you say ‘efficiency’?
Beat.
MARSHALL: No.
Beat.
JULIE: Okay … what aspect, or aspects, of the Chinese internet, were you trying to make more efficient?
MARSHALL: That’s the thing about networks, Ms Chen. It’s all somewhat interconnected.
THE TRANSLATOR: Beijing, 2006.
MARSHALL: The thing with the fucking food, right—
LARRY: I am begging you not to get into this.
MARSHALL: No, because, if every fucking night, we have to sit down to a roundtable with eight ministers—
LARRY: It’s a / cultural—
MARSHALL:—this is the twenty-first—what are we, the fucking yakuza, is what I’m saying—I need my fucking laptop, now they’re giving us this shit—
LARRY: No one’s giving us shit.
MARSHALL: They are, Larry, they’re giving us shit, it’s polite Chinese shit, but it’s shit nonetheless, and what I’m saying is, is—if we could have a meeting, one meeting, in an office, in an office with desks, I don’t need another, another fucking five pots of steamed whatever or a fucking egg that’s been fermented for a hundred years in a silk basket at the foothills of Mountain Fing-fong-fang—
LARRY: They’re actually, they’re quite good, the century eggs.
THE TRANSLATOR: Century eggs are a Chinese delicacy.
MARSHALL: Rotten eggs, Larry.
THE TRANSLATOR: They are not literally fermented for a century.
MARSHALL: They are hundred-year-old rotten eggs.
LARRY: It’s traditional.
MARSHALL: Traditions die, Larry. Traditions, they just, I’m not saying they aren’t nice, and, and quaint, but traditions, sometimes they need to die, and this food thing—this is a thing that needs to die. The, look, the next generation, the millennial Chinese, you don’t see them doing this shit, do ya, you don’t see Samsung China having fucking dumpling meetings. Because the world, this one, that we presently occupy, is a world where meetings happen in offices, in office buildings with wifi and, and, I don’t know, at the very goddamn least, my laptop, Larry, my goddamn laptop.
LARRY: This is the Ministry of Public Security here, okay, these are not tech-savvy people, these are old-guard communists here.
MARSHALL: And now this, what they are calling it, this exhibition?
LARRY: Oh, now you wanna work?
MARSHALL: Woah, hey, you’re the one—
LARRY: No, that was—you just caught me off guard.
MARSHALL: I’m not procrastinating here, I’m frustrated—
LARRY: Sorry, no, you’re—you’re right.
MARSHALL: I’m always right, Larry. So this, uh, the (looking at a document) the Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System. System?
LARRY: I thought it was rude to / correct—
MARSHALL: They not got plurals in Mandarin?
THE TRANSLATOR: They don’t.
MARSHALL: Okay, so, what kinda demonstration are we talking about here?
LARRY: I, uh—the description is a bit … vague.
MARSHALL: (reading) ‘Make efficient and consciously implement system for targeting obscene and harmful materials.’ Lovely euphemism for porn.
LARRY: I think it’s a bit of a mistranslation.
THE TRANSLATOR: It’s not.
MARSHALL: ‘Make efficient.’
THE TRANSLATOR: In Mandarin, the goal of the action is often inbuilt in the verb.
MARSHALL: Jesus.
THE TRANSLATOR: Actually, it’s been suggested by linguists that this reflects two completely different patterns of thought. The Mandarin speaker thinks circularly, in a loop, while the English speaker thinks linearly, in a line. (beat) That’s not strictly / relevant.
MARSHALL: Larry, what happens when the world’s biggest flow of data—the packets of 1.3 billion users—goes through a single filtering system?
LARRY: Uh, it’s—bad?
MARSHALL: Through one chokehold to the world wide web, Larry, what happens?
LARRY: Things get stuck.
MARSHALL: Things that aren’t supposed to get stuck, get stuck. And things that aren’t supposed to get through, get through. What else?
LARRY: It’s slow?
MARSHALL: That’s right, Larry. It’s slow as shit. Because trying to sift through the online traffic of the world’s largest fucking population is a pretty fucking inefficient process, it is in fact a necessarily inefficient—(a realization) Larry.
LARRY: You’re having / a—
MARSHALL: Yeah, I am, I am, Larry, Larry, what if it wasn’t a single filtering system?
LARRY:… you lost me.
MARSHALL: Why did I hire you?
LARRY: I’m the only guy who’ll put up with you.
MARSHALL: I’m ignoring that. Larry, what if we decentralized the firewall?
LARRY: So—wait—
MARSHALL: The chokehold is at the border AS, right? But what if the filtering wasn’t just happening at the national level?
LARRY: Uh.
MARSHALL: Think about it: three-tier structure, right? Local, provincial, national. You’ve got IDS devices at the local router level, you’ve got provincial ISPs doing their own shit, so by the time you get to the border AS—
LARRY: Wait, / Marsh.
MARSHALL:—the packet’s already been through, what, twelve, thirteen different checkpoints. More IP blocking, more DNS hijacking, and you unclog the whole fucking system. And yes, I will accept my Nobel prize now.
LARRY: I don’t know, Marsh.
MARSHALL: Why, cuz their hardware won’t cut it? Yeah, that crossed my mind, but here’s the fucking kicker, Larry: we build the routers. Not just the routers—I’m talking the whole architecture. Data centers, switches, access points. We don’t just sell them an idea, Larry. We can sell them the fucking gear to do it.
Beat.
LARRY: Marsh, I mean—that’s kind of a different ballgame.
MARSHALL:… we’re in IT, Larry. Don’t do sport metaphors.
LARRY: You’re talking about giving them a lot more, uh—
MARSHALL: A lot more … what?
LARRY: You know. ‘Mileage.’
MARSHALL: (not getting it) Yeah. It’s a faster topology. That’s the point.
LARRY: That’s not—
MARSHALL: That’s the point, Larry.
LARRY: But you’re not just talking about, like, filtering out content from the rest of the world, that’s—you’re talking about internal monitoring. At every level.
MARSHALL: Yeah, I mean, that’s the way they’re headed. They’re just doing it inefficiently. We can make it efficient.
Beat.
LARRY: Anyway, you’re talking about a huge overhaul, building them new infrastructure, I mean, jeez, we’re supposed to be consulting / on—
MARSHALL: Larry, need I remind you here, we’re building up to the fucking Olympics here—
LARRY: What / I’m—
MARSHALL:—you wanna talk about ballgames, that’s the ballgame, Larry, the fucking Beijing Olympics, you heard about that little eight-figure ballgame?
LARRY: All we’re contractually obligated to—
MARSHALL: It’s called the Golden Shield Project.
THE TRANSLATOR: ‘金盾工程 (jīndùn gōngchéng)’.
LARRY: They’re just talking about blocking porn, for chrissakes, you don’t need a total overhaul—
MARSHALL: But it’s not called the no-porn project, is it, Larry? It’s called the Golden Shield Project. That’s a pretty fucking superlative name for a no-porn project, wouldn’t you say, Larry? Almost like they’re aiming at something a little more grandiose. And when you see the pharaoh drawing up the plans for the fucking pyramids, it’s probably a good time to get into the brick business.
LARRY: Marsh, all I’m saying is, maybe we just give the client what they’re actually asking for? Like, I’m just saying, you know, if all they’re talking about right now, if all they’re willing to talk to us about, is filtering out some porn, maybe we just deliver some basic ways of, like, filtering out some porn, is all I’m saying.
Beat.
MARSHALL: You know what I dream of, Larry?
LARRY: Marsh—
MARSHALL: No, no, let me finish, it’s a really—it’s a breathtaking dream, Larry, you’re gonna want to hear this dream, Larry. I dream of a man. I dream of a meeting with a man.
LARRY: There are websites for that.
MARSHALL: Let me finish. This man is from State. No, better yet, Defense. And this man comes up to me, and he says to me, in simple, glorious, American English, ‘Mr McLaren, we’d like you to build the most efficient national network topology the world has ever seen. And if you choose to take on this monumental task’, says the man from Defense, ‘in addition to our eternal gratitude, we’re gonna give you a ton of space, we’re gonna give you a round-the-clock team of guys, we’re gonna dedicate maximal resources to this endeavor because it is at the very top of our list, it is our number one national security priority.’ And you know where this meeting happens, Larry?
Golden Shield Page 2
