The Drucker Proxy

by Lior Samson

  Netsky smiled at the choice, a Hassidic expression in Hebrew: All the world is a narrow bridge. A blue light on the capsule blinked repeatedly, then stayed lit; the top left monitor screen displayed a message: Checksums match.

  “Thank you, Coleman, we’re going to let you rest now.” He tapped the pause icon on a lower monitor screen and the crude avatar face above froze.

  “All right. That should do it until we can arrange for a full competency hearing. How soon can you file for the temporary orders, Bannon?”

  “I can have them ready Monday morning. But we have the weekend. There’s no big rush now. This one should be a piece of cake.”

  “Exactly, all the more reason for expediting. Why do you think we moved the hearing ahead in the queue?”

  “Is there something going on here that I am not privy to?”

  “Yes. Just file the papers before we burn through the deposit.”

  Bannon straightened a slim sheaf of papers and restored them to his briefcase. “I get the picture. Should I or my most recent hires be getting our résumés in order?”

  “Not needed if you do your job with all due haste. I’ll be looking for your confirmation that we are good to go before noon tomorrow.” Turning his back on Bannon, he addressed his digital assistant. “Sandria, get me Gerrard Fitchburg on the line. I want to see if we can negotiate an extension on the Cloudastics consolidated services contract for the elastic cloud resources we are using.”

  Bannon felt a buzz in his pocket. He put his phone to his ear and his expression went slack. “Please repeat that.” His eyes closed. “Okay, thanks.” He slipped the phone back in his suit jacket. “We have a problem.”

  “We have lots of problems. We solve problems. That’s what we do, Bannon. So what now?”

  “He’s breathing on his own. He’s still alive.”

  — 13 —

  Becca poured skim milk on her overfilled bowl of cereal—her version of a snack before dinner—then slurped the extra liquid from the edge. “What does this mean, Mom? Is Daddy going to live?” She set the milk bottle at the edge of the breakfast bar so Tandi would be sure to spot it and return it to cold storage.

  “I don’t know. The doctors don’t know. The part of his brain that controls breathing is working again, that’s what it means. They have to do more testing to see whether anything else is working, but they don’t think we should get our hopes up.”

  “Is that awful man and his company still in charge?”

  “No, now with your father breathing on his own, it’s a different circumstance, and we have a basis for challenging them. So we don’t know, but Leah, our personal lawyer, thinks we have a good shot at it. Remember, though, even if I can get my power of attorney recognized again, that doesn’t necessarily solve things. We still have to decide what happens, whether he—his body—is kept alive or not.”

  Becca jumped up off the bar stool. “I don’t like this. I don’t like the idea of deciding whether Daddy lives or dies.”

  “I don’t like it either, honey, but as I told you, the daddy you knew is already gone. He’s not there in that hospital bed.”

  Becca balled her fists in a childish gesture. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”

  “I know, honey. Look, treat yourself to pizza and ice cream tonight and binge-watch your favorite series. I’ll peek in and check on you when I get back.”

  “When is that?”

  “I don’t know. But not too late, I have to work tomorrow.”

  “But it’s Friday.”

  “Yes, and tomorrow is Saturday, but I’m holding down two jobs at the office and I have paperwork to catch up on. Deirdre will be here; you’ll be fine.”

  “Der. I’ll be fine. It’s you I worry about, Mom.”

  “Don’t. I’m a big girl, and I can look out for myself. That’s why I’m taking the night off and going out for dinner.”

  — —

  Dana opened the door to the apartment letting an aromatic wave of warm air wash into the hallway. “Welcome to my humble of humbles. Come on in.”

  Barbra inhaled deeply through her nose. “Mmm, something smells wonderful.”

  “Middle East fusion, from that restaurant. I’m a terrible cook. No, I’m not terrible, just inept. But I’m good at spooning stuff out of corn-plastic containers and into serving dishes.”

  “That’s why we have Tandi. As long as the house has the ingredients and the recipe is in the database, Tandi can whip it up. And she recycles the wrappings and containers, composts the scraps, and does the dishes.”

  “Lucky you. What does that sort of smart house cost.”

  “More than you want to know. But it actually belongs to the corporation. We’re a ‘panel family’—guinea pigs, in other words. We fill out these reports on the ‘user experience’ every three months or whenever there’s an upgrade. It’s just enough to satisfy the tax people that it’s all legit.”

  “Wow, free housing: nice work if you can get it.”

  “I said the company owns it, but we do pay rent and upkeep, which makes it nowhere near free.”

  “Nowhere near is something I can understand. Do you know what this little one-bedroom condo would run if I had to buy it?”

  “You don’t own your own place?”

  “No, Freddy and Aileen do. I don’t know the details, and they said I don’t want to know. But they did tell me it was mine to use as long as I wanted. Some complicated shady deal with somebody way back. I don’t ask questions, I just pay for the utilities.”

  Barbra smiled. “In an odd way, we’re two of a kind, Dana. You realize that?”

  “Oh yeah, I realize that. Like sisters. Look at us. You can hardly tell us apart.” She gave Barbra a quick kiss. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and let me get you something to drink. I have a bottle of champagne on ice, if that’ll do.”

  “Sure. What’s the occasion?”

  “You. You’re here. Now, tell me what’s been happening on the hubby front. Everything. Then I’ll tell you my news.”

  — —

  Over dinner of take-out food, Barbra brought Dana up-to-date on the legal and medical fronts. “So, we don’t know. Everything is up in the air again. The lawyers said cases like this can literally drag out for years. It’s … it’s painful being in limbo. I’m not a widow, but I also don’t have a husband. And what about you? You said you have some news.”

  “Maybe news is too strong a word. Clues. One of my inside guys at Tensora finally dropped a hint about the car. The forensic analysis has been even more complicated than usual and has taken extra time because your husband’s car was a customized, one-off vehicle.” She took a sip from her champagne flute.

  “Anyway, in the car there are dozens of dedicated computers that do all kinds of specialized processing tasks: satnav, road surface analysis, line-and-lane following, bumper cameras, proximity detectors, LIDAR, et cetera. These all feed the master system which integrates this stuff and makes decisions. Even when the car is in so-called manual mode, the driver isn’t actually driving the car. Like modern aircraft, this is ‘drive-by-wire’. The steering wheel, brake, and accelerator just act like joysticks of a sort and send signals to the computers, which actually then turn the wheels, regulate the juice to the wheel motors, and the like. And the master computers are always watching to see whether what the human driver is trying to do makes sense, is safe.

  “There’s also the Vehicle Data and Performance Recorder, the so-called black box. The thing records just about everything directly from the exCANN buss. That’s what serves as the local area network by which all the parts of the car talk with each other. The VDPR, the black box, operates completely independently of the computers that actually run the car. It’s like a brainless court recorder, just taking it all down without regard to what it means. It even noted, for example, that your husband started listening to music just before the accident, track 3, file AF0E11, in folder 2E8913.”

  “You remember stuff like that?”
>
  “No, I just made up the file name, but that’s how the black box records things: all just codes. However, in this case I do know what it translates to. He was listening to ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Whatever that might mean.”

  “It means Todd had terabytes of classical music—and a much smaller and selective playlist of pop music curated by his daughter—loaded on a microSD card he kept slotted in that car. He was a nut for that kind of stuff. Funny. These days I actually find myself missing the blast of horns and the sweep of strings.”

  “Yeah, well, right about the time that track starts playing, the black box shows that the out-going commands from the master computer system and the inputs from the driver’s controls stop matching up. The brake was being applied but the computer was sending more juice to the wheel motors. The computer sent the lock signal to the steering column, as if the vehicle had been parked, even as sensors on the steering wheel were reporting counterclockwise torque.”

  “Wait, so you’re saying the car drove itself off the road?”

  “Yes, and the whole thing is being hushed up.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s some powerful players keeping this under wraps.”

  “Tensora?”

  “Obviously. They don’t want the story out. It would be a financial and PR disaster, but it’s more than that, because the highway safety people and the automotive forensics team and the police are saying next to nothing. However, I’m working on it. Anyway, the Tensora engineers are at a loss, because they can’t find anything wrong with the computers or the programs it was running. They keep running simulations and tests and can’t get it to misbehave.”

  “Wow, there could be one hella monster lawsuit in this if Tensora really is at fault.”

  “Monster is the word. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted if I can get any more out of my Tensora guy. He really wants to sleep with me real bad.”

  “And? Do tell.”

  “The moment I give in, the incentive is gone. I keep the promise dangling before him. And speaking of dangling promises, are you staying the night?”

  “Can’t. But I don’t turn into a pumpkin until midnight. We have a few hours that I bet we could find a way to use.”

  — 14 —

  Dana lengthened her stride as she made a beeline across parking lot C at the Mall of California. “Mrs. Drucker, Amanda Drucker! Have you got a minute?”

  About to slide into her Tesla crossover, Mandi set her packages on the seat. She tensed and turned anxiously, trying not to be too obvious in slipping her free hand into her purse and fingering the stunner stashed there. “What do you want? Who are you?”

  “I’m Dana Carmody. I’m a friend of Barbra Wilson. And I’m working on a story.” She flashed a press pass with her left hand and held out her right.

  Mandi glanced around to see how many other people were nearby in the lot. A bald man with sleeve tattoos was pushing an overloaded shopping cart toward an SUV one aisle over. Four teenagers were extricating themselves from an eFiat halfway down the same row. She extracted her hand from her purse and took Dana’s. “Uh, what’s this about?”

  “I’d like to talk with you. I would have texted or emailed but … well, you don’t have much of an internet footprint and the contact info I did find was out of date.”

  “So, you stalk me and track me down in a mall parking lot?”

  “Sheerest luck. I’m here to shop, just like you.”

  “You could have asked Barbra, you know. She knows how to get in touch with me. That is, if you really are friends.”

  “We are, but I wanted to do this on my own. Full disclosure: she did say something about you being a creature of habit, like going to the mall at the same time every week.”

  “Clever. So, you’re a professional stalker, right?”

  “Press, really.”

  “Same thing. Okay, tell me what you want so that I can decline to comment on it. Let me guess. Coleman Drucker, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We’re divorced. Other than a brief encounter in the hospital recently—well, that hardly qualifies as an encounter, rather one-sided, he being somewhat out of it—we haven’t had much of anything to do with each other in over a decade. Outside of a courtroom or lawyers’ offices, that is.”

  “Yes, I know that, but I wondered about your thoughts on the latest developments.”

  “Developments? Latest? Those are not in my vocabulary. Other than occasionally checking the stock price of the new Drucker Unified, I’m rather out of the loop, I’m afraid.”

  “Stock price?”

  “Well, I do still have a stake in the success of Cole’s ventures, even though that stake is comparatively modest.”

  “But you showed up at the hospital. You weren’t checking stock prices. That says—”

  “Only that we’re through talking, Ms. Carmody. I need to get back to my son, who’s working on a school project for which I am the supply chain. And I have groceries in the back. So …” She pressed her thumb to the keyspot and re-opened the car door.

  Dana held the door. “Can we meet for coffee or lunch—my treat—I really want to get your take on all this. And maybe I know some things that you might be interested in.”

  Mandi pushed the packages over, slipped into the driver’s seat, and looked up through the open door. “You know some things, huh. Like what?”

  “It was no accident.”

  Mandi sucked air through her teeth. “I was afraid that might be the case.” She tensed her hands on the steering wheel. “Okay, we’ll meet. The Cuppa Joe’s on Grand Av in an hour.” She closed the door, then slid the window down. She looked to be on the edge of saying something for several seconds.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Mrs. Drucker. I know you were at the hospital more than once, more than a dozen times. That says it all.”

  “Does it? Okay, Joe’s in an hour.”

  — —

  The coffee shop was crowded but the buzz was subdued. Most of the patrons were heads-down deep into their phones or tablets. Dana looked around for Mandi and spotted her at one of the small round tables tucked in a corner next to a bookshelf stocked with exotic gourmet coffees from the world’s more obscure sources. The currently featured coffees were from Burundi and Cabo Verde Fogo Island.

  “Hi, thanks for agreeing to meet,” Dana said. “I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

  “It’s okay, time I got, now that Toby is occupied with his science project. If we don’t hear an explosion from down the block, everything is fine.”

  “Explosion?”

  “Mom humor. Don’t mind me. I’ll wait while you get coffee or whatever.”

  Dana returned in a couple of minutes with a double espresso. “So, it seems,” she said as she sat down, “you and Coleman are still connected to some degree, despite your denials. How long were you two married?”

  “You already know this from the research you must certainly have done. We were married just long enough to build a company from scratch—three, actually—to have two kids, and for Cole to discover he wanted somebody younger. Some men can do that faster than others. Cole was always fast: fast to fall in love, fast to fall out.”

  “You met in Israel, right?”

  “Yes, Cole was there on a Birthright trip after high school.”

  “Birthright?”

  “You know, one of those get-in-touch-with-your-Jewish-roots song-and-dance tours for young Jews. There are several such programs still going, believe it or not, despite all the changes in the Middle East. It’s all about renewing the corps of young American advocates for Israel. It works, too. Kids come back talking about ‘life-changing’ experiences and ‘new perspectives’ on the Middle East. Cole came back with me.”

  “That fast?”

  “Like I told you, fast is his middle name. It was against the rules, of course, but that never stopped Cole. If anything, telling him he couldn’t do so
mething was like a red cape in front of a bull. I was Dafna Amanda Yadim then, what my program called an ambassador-in-training, on track for a diplomatic position—or a career in Mossad. But I was really drifting, filling time as a glorified tour guide after finishing my stint in the IDF, the army.

  “Even though Cole was several years younger, at that point we were fairly well matched. Whatever the military does to help Israeli young people mature and find direction, it didn’t take with me. Cole became my direction, his dreams were mine.”

  She sipped her coffee. “You know, I still miss Israeli-style coffee. There are a few places in New York, but none out here. Where was I?”

  “Following Cole Drucker back from Israel.”

  “Yeah. He is such a salesman. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t actually have the goods to sell—I think he’s maybe a genius—but it’s always all packaged, wrapped in marketing hype. New products, new love—it’s all about selling something to somebody. I bought. I bought the whole package. We married right after he dropped out of college.” She pushed her half-finished coffee aside. “But look, you said something about new developments that you wanted to ask me about. Enough of strolling down lanes of memories, what is this really about?”

  “Well, Coleman Drucker, of course. It seems there is a three-way struggle over custody of his body.”

  “Three-way?”

  “Yes, there’s his wife on one side, and this Existendia company on the other, both vying for legal control, and Coleman Drucker completing the triangle.”

  Mandi raised her eyebrows. “Cole? What do you mean?”

  “He’s fighting back. Existendia won round one in the courts and had him taken off life support. He refused to cash out, gasped a few times, and started breathing on his own. Now he’s showing more brain activity. Big debate over what, if anything, it means, but at least it means he’s in the ring for the tag-team match.”

  “That is so like Cole, a trouble maker and a fighter to the end. But why are you talking with me?”

  “Because something tells me you’re part of the story. You keep showing up at the hospital, and Barbra tells me you are still in his will. You have a stake in the outcome.”