A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  “Fund-raisers have big databases, which means data-crunching applications that I guarantee are in need of scrubbing and polishing. That’s me all over. Mr. Cleanup.”

  He took my elbow and gently moved me back into the hall and toward his office.

  “I can make the introduction, but no guarantees. Sylvan’s a really good guy, but he doesn’t have the bandwidth for micromanagement.”

  Another tacit warning not to act like a crazy person.

  “Read you loud and clear, Cary. You won’t get any blowback over me.”

  “You just owe me one more thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A name.”

  “Stan Lee?”

  “Inventor of super powers?”

  “Something like that.”

  He let me sit in his office while he had a friendly call with Sylvan van Leeuwan, clearly a brother in New Haven’s fraternity of social welfare professionals. He pitched my concept like a seasoned sales pro, and partway through gave me a thumbs-up. Cary McNichol was an easy man to like.

  He made it even easier by walking me south to The People Project offices, which were above a corner restaurant on Chapel Street across from the New Haven Green. A big woman with a colossal head of unkempt frizzy hair jumped up from her desk and threw her arms around Cary, who took it as well as you could expect. Neither her cranberry-colored sweater or matching polyester pants were big enough to conceal her lumpy bulk. She looked me fiercely in the eye when she shook my hand and introduced herself as Finnegan.

  “Geek, huh?” she said to me. “Where’s your pocket protector?”

  “The geek police made us turn ’em in. They’re upgrading our image.”

  Her laugh was mostly a snort.

  “We don’t want any police trouble around here,” she said.

  “Won’t get any from me,” I said, looking around her at her computer screen. “What’re you running for your back-end database?”

  “C-View Plus. I think the plus part means extra aggravation.”

  “Stayin’ current on updates?” I asked.

  “That’s the problem. Every time I update it gets worse.”

  An older, slightly heavier version of Cary came out of his office. The men hugged and traded laughs in the opaque way insiders usually do.

  “Cary has good things to say about your computer skills,” he said, as if just realizing I was standing there. He had the accent of a Dutch person who’d likely spoken English his whole life.

  “I know C-View well enough,” I said, telling him I’d trained on the original open source application that C-View was derived from. The speed with which his eyes began to glaze over was encouraging. There would be plenty of systems work there at The People Project satellite office.

  “What do you know about vacuum cleaners?” said Finnegan. “Havin’ trouble with one of them, too. Kidding,” she added, looking over at Sylvan.

  They told me to come back the next morning so they had a chance to set up my own workstation and decide how to get me started. I thanked them with more gratitude than appropriate, though actually heartfelt.

  Cary walked me back to the big Victorian house.

  “When was the last time you had a regular job?” he asked, as we walked.

  “Depends how you define regular,” I said. “I’ve actually learned a lot more since things have been a little irregular. Necessity bein’ the best of all mothers of invention.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “You’re a fuckin’ shrink, man. You can ask me anything you want.”

  “I know, but I respect your privacy.”

  “So ask,” I said.

  “Did you leave anybody behind? When you left, wherever you left from.”

  “Whoa, Nelly. I didn’t mean you could ask me that kinda shit.”

  “I thought so.”

  We walked in silence for a while, both of us with our hands stuffed in the pockets of our jackets. Bulling along over the tattered but irrepressible New Haven sidewalks.

  “How’d you know?” I asked, eventually giving in.

  “How do you know how to fix computers?”

  That was the last we spoke of it. I left him and went upstairs, through the metal detector and into the big open room where a few of the guys, like me, were in early, taking advantage of the daylight to organize their paltry belongings, sleep off a hit of meds or simply lie on their beds and either ignore or bathe in their respective sorrows and regret.

  CHAPTER 24

  Things come to people in the middle of the night. I’m no different. That night two things came to me simultaneously. In a half dream, I knew how to find Strider, and as I rose up into a much more wakeful state, realized I was being robbed.

  I was lying on my side in such a way that I could see the pale movements of a man with his hand inside the front pocket of my backpack. I stayed still and watched through partially closed eyes, getting my bearings and gaining full consciousness.

  It was the guy who’d just taken possession of the bunk next to me. I’d barely noticed him since the men came and went with such regularity it rarely made sense to get sociable. Though I did recall he had long hair, more haphazard than entirely unkempt. A younger man than me, but not by much. Clearly stronger, judging by the shape of his forearm.

  Hoping he was too focused on the backpack to see me slide the tips of my fingers into the back pocket of my jeans until I felt the bristle end of my modified toothbrush. I slipped my hand deeper into the pocket until I established a firm grip. Then I waited to see what the man would do next.

  I was disappointed to see him move from the front pocket that only held a small notebook, to the zipper that opened the pack’s principal compartment. However, the greater angle forced him into a more awkward position, so that much of his upper torso had slid off his bunk.

  In more or less a single motion, I rolled over far enough to free my left hand, which I used to grab a handful of his stringy hair, and used my right to bring the business end of the toothbrush up under his chin.

  He froze. I growled.

  “Not cool, dude,” I said.

  “Easy, brother,” said the guy, in a near whisper. “Don’t mean to offend.”

  “I’m extremely offended. You think you can steal from me?” I asked.

  “I did, yes. Apparently I was wrong.”

  “No shit. So I shouldn’t shove this shiv up into your brain?”

  “You could,” he said. “Though the prosecution will consider manslaughter a disproportionate response to attempted petty theft. The point of that thing is actually beginning to puncture my skin. What do you say?”

  I pulled back on the shiv and he rolled back onto his bed.

  “At least you’ve succeeded in stealing my sleep,” I said. “What little I get of it.”

  “I can see how that would be. Sorry.”

  “I’m gonna get your ass tossed out of here.”

  “You won’t have to. I’ll go voluntarily.”

  “What did you do it for?”

  “Meds. I like to experiment.”

  “I would’ve given you some if you’d asked,” I said.

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  “By asking. I just said that.”

  “Want to guess what’s wrong with me?” he asked.

  “I’m not into ‘What’s My Disease.’ ”

  “Schizoaffective disorder. How ’bout you?”

  “I don’t want a friend. Especially one who steals my shit.”

  “That’s simply your assumption. Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur.”

  “Bullshit. Animus nocendi,” I answered, despite myself.

  “Lawyer?”

  “Polyglot.”

  “I had my own law firm specializing in intellectual property, and then I lost my mind. Uh? You don’t think that’s funny? They tossed me out of the bar when I got sick. Clearly discriminatory, don’t you agree?”

  “You should get yourself a la
wyer.”

  I lay on my side facing him. I took my pack off the floor and clutched it to my chest.

  “My name is Davis,” the guy said. “My first name, not my last. I have to explain this every time. I think it might be the origin of my trouble.”

  “I’m going to sleep now. Please keep your hands off my stuff.”

  “The threat of death is a decent deterrent, no matter what they say.” He rolled over with his back to me. “You could tell me your name. I told you mine.”

  “Stan.”

  “Compos mentis to all, and to all a good night.”

  THE NEXT day was Saturday. I took the train down to New York and made the quick walk from Grand Central Station to the giant hotel where the Star Trek convention was in its first big day. I had a simple strategy—expose myself, as myself, to as many convention-goers as possible. I might have spotted Strider in the guise of Uhura, Deanna Troi or Captain Janeway, but unlikely. That I also might be spotted by an FBI agent or a known threat like Ian MacPhail was a distinct possibility, but I had no other way to proceed.

  There were thousands of people at the conference. I moved from room to room, standing at doorways when large audiences flowed out of ballrooms, mingled at receptions and coffee stations, hung in the bar and gently avoided attempts to engage me in conversation. It was a long day of studying faces and negotiating crowds of aliens and Starfleet personnel.

  I’d booked a room a few blocks away, and was making one last pass through the bar area before retreating to my hotel room when a small hand took me by the sleeve.

  It was T’Pol, the Vulcan liaison officer. Actually, Strider’s nicely rendered impersonation.

  “You continue to impress, Spanky,” she said.

  The magnitude of my pleasure at seeing her there in the flesh, albeit in modified form, surprised me. I told her as much.

  “I’m happy to see you, too,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m worried about me, too.”

  “Let’s find a dark corner.”

  I let her buy me one of her hurricanes, further proof that I’d become slightly unhinged by the bizarre nature of the day. We clinked.

  “You actually look a lot like T’Pol,” I told her.

  “The one thing these boobs are good for.”

  “Did you just spot me?”

  “This morning. I’ve been stalking you all day. Making sure you’re alone.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “If you were already busted. You’re not, are you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’m off the net. Actually, pretty much off the grid.”

  “That’s why I got worried,” she said. “You disappeared.”

  “Except for the connection I made with you. I had to chance that.”

  “A rare exposure for such a sneaky guy,” she said. “El Timador.”

  “So you know the name.”

  “Whoever hacked your bank account is chasing the handle El Timador. I put two and two together.”

  “So who’s the hacker?” I asked.

  “No hard ID, but I know a few things. Operates outside of the usual crowd. Stays out of discussions except to ask about El Timador. Otherwise, just lurks. No luck so far chasing down his IP. Very good at covering his tracks.”

  “You don’t think it’s a team.”

  “No. He works alone. In fact, a total loner.”

  “So not the government?”

  “No, not at all. Unless they hired him freelance. That could be. Those people are getting smarter by the day. Makes me feel like we’re all doomed.”

  She held her hurricane with two hands and drew a large portion down through the straw. Her fingernails were still chewed up, though much cleaner, as if recently scrubbed.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” I said.

  She smiled at me over the top of her drink.

  “You are such a romantic,” she said. “Look, the next war will absolutely be fought in cyberspace. That means governments are putting the best brains they can buy into hacking each other’s networks, public and private. Talk about an arms race. Or a Cold War. The fun times, when banks and universities and all these other dumb institutions were like naive little lambs any of us could lead to slaughter, that’s ending fast. That’s how I know you got a lone wolf on your ass. If it were a government attack team, you’d already be splatter.”

  I sat back in my seat and tried to process what she was saying. She noticed.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know this,” she said. “You really are off the grid.”

  “I’m a little lost,” I said, surprising myself yet again.

  “I wish I knew your story,” she said. “I can’t help it. You interest me.”

  It might have been the effects of social isolation, Internet withdrawal, or the hotel’s hurricane recipe, but without hesitation, I launched into a description of my past and the path that had led me to that moment. Her face was uncharacteristically filled with wonder.

  “Holy crap.”

  “I have no right to ask for your help,” I said, “but I need it.”

  “Just don’t say it’s a mission. Everyone in this hotel is on a mission.”

  “Okay, a project. Specifically The People Project. Get in there as deep as you can get.”

  “What am I looking for?” she asked.

  “Hidden money. A lot of it.”

  She flagged down the waiter and ordered another hurricane. I demurred.

  “Okay,” she said. “And I assume you’ll be doing the same?”

  “I will. We’ll probably meet somewhere deep in the bowels of their global database.”

  “Thanks for that visual.”

  We talked for another hour, exchanging signals and signs and other ways to identify each other and communicate within The People Project infrastructure and cyberspace at large. We also managed to exchange a few laughs, which made me feel bathed in comfort and understanding.

  By then the hour had grown late and the crowd in the bar had thinned to the usual noisy few. I felt exhausted and overexposed. Strider read my mind.

  “Time to go,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “I’m not inviting you to my room, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t accept the invitation, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you as well.”

  “Good answer.”

  We parted and I made it to my much smaller and cheaper hotel with no incident or occasion to feel any less hopeful or invigorated. It was profoundly odd to enter a room without a computer, tablet or smartphone to obsessively check in on. No e-mails, texts or voice messages demanding an instant response. All I had was a bed crammed into a tiny room, lots of street noise outside and a stream of frantic and unwanted mental images to subdue before I could fall into a deep, yet restless sleep.

  BACK AT The People Project New Haven, I gained a better grasp on their standing within the hierarchy of the organization. Tenuous.

  Their stated purpose was to raise funds from the abundant wealth and charitable impulses within the high-net-worth community along the Connecticut shoreline. The reality was more nuanced. There was indeed a lot of money slopping around the coasts of Long Island Sound, but competition for those dollars was fierce. And the expectations of The People Project home office in Zurich, driven by highly optimistic statistical models, guaranteed that nothing New Haven ever did was good enough. The stress showed.

  Sylvan van Leeuwan was always in the office when I arrived in the morning, and there when I left at night. His pale face had a sheen as if overwork had degraded his basic hygiene. But he was friendly to me, and it wasn’t hard to engage him in conversation and ask him important questions, such as his heart’s desire for his New Haven operation.

  “I want a couple of millionaires who have us in their will to drop dead,” he said.

  “I might be able to help you with that.”

  “Debugging software would be
fine for now.”

  It took a few days to untangle the mess Finnegan had made of the database and fund-raising application that served as the front end. It was satisfying work, but most importantly, I was able to poke around the interface with The People Project’s home network under her administrative password. Eventually, I found a wormhole through the e-mail system. Strider was surely right about the tightening noose of cybersecurity, but the latest precautions had yet to reach the IT department at The People Project.

  I looked over the top of my monitor at Finnegan working just a few feet away. I could see her screen, but she couldn’t see mine. I sent her an e-mail with a list of things she’d need to do as part of the database cleanup.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said over her shoulder. “Do I have to do it now?”

  “It would help.”

  As she bent to the task, I slipped into the servers in Zurich and made a survey of the file structures. I wrote everything out on a pad of paper, tearing off the pages and stuffing them into my back pocket before Finnegan emerged from her labors with a triumphant, “Got it. Done!”

  At the next opportunity, I went directly to Albalita’s e-mail in search of correspondence with Andalusky or Joselito, but whatever might have been there, it wasn’t there anymore. Not just deleted, which I knew how to recover. Gone, like it never existed.

  But I pressed on. Over the next week, I not only gained mastery over The People Project’s global network, I made contact with Strider and set up communications within a folder buried deep inside an administrative backwater. As hoped, she already had burrowed her way through the accounting department, and had deposited a copy of “Audited Financials, Current and Year Prior” into our secret file. I thanked her and loaded the documents onto a flash drive, which I took to an office supply place around the corner and had printed out and secured inside a ring binder.

  On lunch hours I sat on the New Haven Green and lost myself inside columns of numbers and arid financial commentary. Luckily, everything was in English, as required by the people for whom the audit was most importantly undertaken. The Société Commerciale Fontaine, fiduciaries for the US State Department.

  While I could find my way around reasonably well, accounting and finance weren’t strengths of mine. Luckily, they were Strider’s, who revealed to me she had her CPA and a master’s in economics.