The Drucker Proxy

by Lior Samson

  Simulated electro-encephalograph tracings mapped out the simulated dream activity of the proxy software on the top monitor. Netsky glanced down at the meter tracking the teraflops of computing power they were using to keep the model running in real-time while the proxy slept. It seemed like a waste of good computing power, but he also knew they had to keep the model mentally healthy. Maybe he should go easy with the simulated seizures, especially as the neuro-psych team admitted they didn’t know exactly what all the effects would be.

  He adjusted a slider down to sixty percent, then edged it to fifty. “Four hours of dreamtime should be enough for you, Drucker. I’ll see you in the morning. You get to dream while I have an all-nighter ahead. I need to see exactly what those simulated seizures did to the connectome components before I try that again. You are so right, Drucker. We need you. All the more if we are being hauled into court.”

  Netsky sent a Slack message to the head of his dev team and to Johanna Ross in neuro-psych to set up an online meeting in an hour.

  Part 6

  There is no complete forgetting, even in death.

  – D. H. Lawrence

  — 33 —

  Dana had not expected the text from Geraldo. It was three words, all caps, no punctuation: “USUAL PLACE NOW.” Her query back went without response. Strange, she thought, nothing was pending. She had the impression they were pretty much finished, what with at least partial resolution on Gwen Seabrook and a solid handle on the Tensora malware.

  At the concierge level of the cinema parking garage, Dana paused in the doorway from the elevator as two cars turned toward the exit ramp. She waited while a young Asian couple dressed in coordinated designer-label pantsuits extricated themselves from their white Maserati and headed to the elevators. She stepped aside. In the silence that followed, Dana’s steps echoed. She stood at the designated spot and waited for Geraldo to make his usual dramatic entrance from behind the pillar. Nothing. She cleared her throat with a stage cough, but there was no response. “Um, is anybody there?” Heart pounding, she weighed her fight-or-flight alternatives and opted to advance toward the pillar with her hand on the illegal Taser she kept in her purse. “Hello?”

  Just beyond the pillar, the exit ramp turned. As she edged forward to get a better view in the shadows ahead, she looked down. It was Geraldo, his head pillowed on a concrete divider, his chin against his chest. Déjà vu hit Dana like a blow to the temple. His skull was smashed, but the blood was black and clotted, and there was no spreading pool on the pavement. She immediately realized he must have been killed somewhere else and the body dumped here, a message to her.

  Someone knew she and Geraldo were connected, and that someone knew the connection was Coleman Drucker. There was no point broadening the pool of the someones who knew by hanging around or calling the police herself. Acting as if she had noticed nothing, she continued up the exit ramp, keeping close to the wall in the vain hope that Geraldo had been right about their particular meeting point and the lack of coverage by security cameras. To avoid looking suspicious in case he was wrong and she was being filmed, she did not look around for cameras. At the next level, she entered the stairwell and fought off dizzying waves of nausea and fear as she made her way out of the cinema complex.

  — —

  “Are you sure?” Barbra was pacing, agitated. “I mean, it was this guy, the one you were working with, not some derelict? You said a parking garage, right? Those places can be kinda dark. You’re sure it was him.”

  “I’m sure. I’ve known Geraldo forever. We met not long after I moved to LA. He was my inside informant at Tensora for my first big tech story about their rivalry with Tesla Motors. It was him in the garage, and he was dead. The back of his head was … well it looked pretty much like Cole’s when I saw him at the Existendia offices. It was not some derelict, and it was no chance discovery. Somebody knew that was our meeting point and expected me—or someone—to show up and find the body.”

  “But you didn’t call the police.”

  “I didn’t. After my last run-in, I keep clear of them. I certainly don’t want to be questioned at this point, what with hacking the phone company and stalking Seabrook, to say nothing of violating the terms of my release on bail. No, me and the LAPD are not on the best of terms, and I prefer to keep the long arm of the law at arm’s length for as long as I can.”

  “Do you think anyone saw you?”

  “No. I mean … maybe. There was this Korean couple—maybe Japanese—coming to the elevators just as I was coming out. And there could be security camera footage. I … I’m fucked. It would be pretty hard to explain walking away from a dead body at the MovieTown Complex with not even so much as a 9-1-1 call.”

  “Well, with the evening crowd, somebody must have found it by now and reported it.”

  “You’d think. We should check the news feeds.”

  Barbra put Tandi to the task of feeding the main cable news streams to the wall screen. “There, should be easy enough to spot, even with the sound off.”

  “It would be easier to set a keyword-search on the internet feeds. Plus, that way we can scan more channels and sources.”

  “Fine, oh geeky goddess, work your coding magic. Do you need a computer?”

  “No, I can do it from my phone.” She thumb-typed for a minute, then opened a wireless bridge into the house system. “There.” The wall screen tiled with a dozen rapidly changing thumbnails of various sources. “It’ll let us know if it finds anything.”

  “I’m impressed. You are pretty fast on your feet.”

  “Off my feet, too, as you discovered that first weekend.”

  “And speaking of ‘off your feet,’ how about we take the lid off the hot tub and let Tandi call us if anything pops up. We can sweat out some of the tension under the waxing moon and enjoy a couple of beers. Or wine, if you prefer.”

  “I’m good with either, as long as it comes with you handing it to me.”

  “It does.”

  — —

  The moon was already setting when Dana and Barbra realized they had not been interrupted by Tandi. Dana reached for her phone and checked the keyword trap. There had been no hits on “MovieTown plus body plus garage” or any of the other search criteria she had set.

  “You know, this is getting weirder and not one bit less scary. I don’t know. Am I losing my mind? Did all those decades of psychedelics take a toll that I’m finally paying?”

  “We could check, do some anonymous inquiries or something. Call missing persons, maybe.”

  “No such thing as anonymous in the digital age, even out among the black hats. If The Man wants to badly enough, he can find you. Besides, I gotta see this with my own eyes.” She climbed out of the tub and grabbed a terry robe from the rack.

  “Now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Now. I’ll use the makeup and shiz from when I was evading the watchers the last time.”

  “You’re serious. Wait, I’ll get dressed and go with you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Remember, we’re a couple now. Help me make myself look like somebody else, and then let’s go to the late-late show. Together.”

  — —

  Big floppy hats would not work for the late showing at the cinema, but Dana figured Hollywood-style semi-dark sunglasses might pass muster. She and Barbra overdressed in layers and wore heavy makeup that changed their complexions and the shapes of their lips. “Will it work?” Barbra asked.

  “How the hell should I know, but it’ll make me … us feel better, more like we aren’t just running around naked.” Dana covered her give-away hair with a beanie and headed for the door.

  At the cinema, they parked on level four, then took the service stairs to the concierge level. They zig-zagged around the few parked cars, following a path that minimized security camera exposure. Once at the elevators, Dana led the way along the memorized route that, according to Geraldo, was not visible to the cameras.

  They approached the
pillar, rounded it, and tried to act casual as they inspected the area around the concrete barrier. Beyond oil stains and old skid marks in the area, there was nothing: no police tape, no sign of something dragged in or out, and certainly no body.

  As she studied the concrete, Dana narrated a cover story out loud. “I could’ve sworn I lost that earring somewhere around here.” She shrugged and retraced her steps back to the elevator. Just short of the doorway, she pulled Barbra aside and nodded toward her sling pack. Standing in the shadows, the two of them shed a layer and stuffed the clothes into the backpack in seconds. Dana removed the beanie, turned it inside out, and passed it to Barbra before slapping on a beret from the outer pocket of the pack.

  “This is fun,” Barbra whispered.

  “As long as we don’t get caught.” She pushed through the door and pressed the button to summon the elevator for the theater level.

  In the ticket lobby, they bought tickets for “Star Wars: Another Reality” and entered Theatre 11, where planet blasters were shaking the seats in Super-Dolby as hitherto unseen aliens raced to penetrate the galactic frontier. After suffering through fourteen minutes of intergalactic warfare and twelve of forgettable dialogue, they donned baseball caps on their way out through the right-front exit.

  They were driving home before either of them said a word.

  “That was … ,” Barbra began.

  “Yes, it was. Weird fun, scary as hell.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Nothing will ever match episodes four, five, and six, the original series. Before my time, but, man, once I discovered them, I must have watched them on my phone dozens of times. The young Harrison Ford was so hot.”

  “I meant …”

  “I know. Just trying to avoid coming to inevitable conclusions. One way or another, I’m in somebody’s gunsights and I’m being played, like a migrating goose being manipulated by a duck call.”

  Barbra howled a deep laugh. “A goose? And a duck call?”

  “Well, my editor will fix that. You know what I meant.”

  “I do. So, do you think Geraldo really was killed? Maybe they faked it.”

  “Why bother when the real thing is so much more straightforward and effective. No, I’m all but certain they off’d him, but I’m not going to risk digging any further to confirm it. In fact, we’re all in danger now because, most likely, they know about you and me, at least that we’ve been together and in communication. You should think about Becca, too. Maybe get away to your hidden hideaway in the Alps—or St. Thomas.”

  “How’d you know? I thought our accountant had kept the real estate deals strictly off the books.” She smiled and winked at Dana.

  “I’m serious, Barbra. I don’t want anything to happen to you or Becca. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do kids, but being one of the grownups to her doing the adolescent thing feels awfully damn good.”

  “And I notice she pretty much has accepted you into her life.” Barbra paused and stared into the night before twisting to face Dana. “Maybe we should get married.”

  “Whoa, I’m dealing with life-and-death here, and you’re talking ’til death do us part? Slow down, you movin’ too fast, girl. Right now let’s work out how we all are going to survive the coming weeks. Months, maybe.”

  Barbra fell silent as they turned into the driveway and pulled into the garage at the beach house. “What I learned in B-school,” she said, as the car parked itself, “was always take it case-by-case. Whatever we may be as a team, I think we need different strategies here. I’ve got this lawsuit coming up, so I need to up security by an order of magnitude at the same time as staying visible, a public figure in the spotlight can be a tougher target. On the other hand, maybe you need to disappear where you can feel safe and are unlikely to be found.”

  “I hate to say it, but your management short course makes a lot of sense. Spaghetti-western wisdom: when you’re being pursued by bad dudes, splitting up is usually a good idea.”

  “So where will you go?”

  “Where Vizini said.”

  “What?”

  “William Golding, The Princess Bride. Before our times and sexist as fuck, but an absolute classic. ‘Back to the beginning.’ I think it’s time for me to be getting some desert air.”

  — 34 —

  The car was new, a loaner from Drucker Unified, a slick burnt-orange Kia electric model with the latest battery technology, a five-hundred mile range, and a HyperCharge plate underneath that allowed it to be wirelessly recharged in under two hours. Topping up the batteries on a road trip depended on smart monitoring by the onboard computers supplemented by Google Maps to flag both the wireless charging platforms and the more ubiquitous plug-and-power stations at service stops. With the a/c cranked and a lead foot on the accelerator, Dana was getting nowhere near five-hundred miles on a charge, and now the center-console display was reminding her for the second time to take a short detour to recharge. Long-distance travel by electric vehicle was getting better every year, but Dana missed the good old days of cross-country road trips punctuated by ten-minute pit stops for gas and a bio break. The real pisser in this case, was that she was less than fifty miles short of Vista Caliente and the only way she was going to make it was to take a detour on the Interstate that would cost her an extra twenty miles. Once she arrived at the remote ranch, she figured her only recourse would probably be a snail-pace recharge from a standard outlet. Better to top up now and be ready for an unscheduled departure.

  The service plaza had both wireless and wired charging, but all the wired spots were occupied. She was stuck for over an hour unless somebody vacated one of the fast-charge hookups. She pulled into a spot near the food canteen and eyed the center-console display to position the car precisely over the charging spot. Her car automatically negotiated the connection and the charge-back to the Drucker credit card account, then shut itself off.

  As she sat in the food court with a portabella burger that could have been made from seasoned dish sponge, Dana contemplated calling ahead, then decided against it. Her CarJax app told her that the Kia batteries were not quite half charged. She did the math—more than enough to get her to the ranch and back to the service area again on the return trip. “Hell with it.” She tossed the half-eaten burger into the nearest composting bin marked “FOOD WASTE” and left.

  — —

  Unless one counted table-flat desert spattered with gray-green scrub as a view, Vista Caliente lived up to only the second half of its Spanish name. By late afternoon the super-heated air above the surrounding sand shimmered like water. Aside from the main building, the ranch was an eclectic mix of temporary structures rendered permanent and eccentric at the hands of decades of ad hoc residents and a fluctuating flow of visitors and hangers-on. Non-native trees, smuggled as seedlings from arid lands on three continents, now towered in the artesian-fed artificial oasis, shading the drive and most of the buildings.

  Dana had not been back since her departure to study at Columbia. In the meantime, most of her contacts with Freddy and Aileen had been text or email asking for a topper to her bank account, and those had stopped years ago. She swung her Kia in next to the battered crew-cab pickup at the end of the row of vehicles lined up alongside the long driveway. At the other end, closest to the clustered buildings, was a vintage VW turtle-top camper in sky blue and cream that Freddy had lovingly restored and still kept polished and in running order but never drove. “Just in case,” he would always say, as if an escape in an under-powered bus back down the one-lane dirt road would be possible in some sort of unspecified emergency.

  She found everybody lazing behind the stone Big House, the largest of the half-dozen structures. It had not been named for its size, though, but for its alleged resemblance to a Mexican jail in which Freddy claimed he had once spent a mushroom-fueled weekend recovering enough mental wherewithal to finally discover that the cell door was unlocked.

  Aileen still had the sweet face and bulk of the young
Cass Elliot, but her tied-back hair was now pure white. Freddy was forever Freddy: rail thin, bald but hatless in the sun, full beard still stubbornly refusing to go all gray. He looked up as Dana rounded the corner, squinted for a moment against the sun at her back, and then pushed himself up from his rocker. “Well I’ll be duck-damned. Hey, everybody, look what the west wind just blew in. It’s Sunflower, our baby girl.” He hobbled his way along the wide porch, nodding as he passed faces that Dana didn’t recognize but that were familiar by their archetypes. She even picked out a young version of the “uncle” who had initiated her when she was twelve. This particular incarnation was a long-haired dancer-type who had a teenager on either side in rapt attention as he showed them how to transition from juggling three balls to four to five.

  Freddy continued in his lopsided half-jog, a souvenir of a youthful encounter with a creditor who had expressed impatience by taking a baseball bat to Freddy’s left leg. He stopped in front of Dana to look her up and down with a mile-wide smile. “Well, ain’t this just somethin’. You are a beauty as ever, baby.” He gave her a bear hug before pulling back to study her face and hair. “Still countering the culture, I see. I guess we couldn’t have done too bad by you. Fresh air, freedom, and funky in the sun, as the song goes.”

  “That’s all far, far behind me … Freddy.” For an instant she had wanted to call him Daddy, but she couldn’t bring herself to start now with a name that had never been used and never fit.

  “Well, welcome back. You’ve always been welcome, no matter what. Come over and talk with me and Aileen. I’ll introduce you to the rest. Don’t worry about remembering names now. They’ll stick with you once you settle in. The pendulum of time is the friend of family, as the song goes.”

  Dana endured an extended round of uncle this and cousin that and dear, dear friend whatever. Freddy was right. Except for the juggler with an eye for adolescents, who shouted out “Just call me Jackrabbit!” without missing a beat or dropping a ball, none of the names stuck in her mind. In a sense, she already knew all of them, having met their predecessors on many occasions in childhood. There were the ones who were clearly on their way somewhere and meant it, and there were the ones who were “just stopping in” but would tell stories and make excuses for years. Maybe Freddy and Aileen could also tell which was which; maybe they didn’t care.