Headcrash

by Bruce Bethke

  And that is when my client had her change of heart. Screw forgiveness. She wanted Curtis’ head on a stick! But to prove he’d stolen her book, she needed the original document files from his personal computer. Ergo my mission, if I chose to accept it…

  LeMat toddled by then and peeked over my shoulder at the text on the screen. “Y’know Jack,” he said between bites on a crisp red apple, “I have seen some enormous loads of bullshit in my time, but I think this one definitely takes the cake.”

  “You certainly said a mouthful,” I answered.

  “Of cake, or bullshit?”

  I finished scanning through the mission parameters one more time, then closed the files and leaned back in my blue plastic chair. “So,” LeMat went on. “What do you suppose Amber’s real reason is for wanting those files?”

  I shrugged. “Who gives a rat’s ass? All I know is she wants a copy of Curtis’ new book, and she’s willing to pay us nine hundred thou if we can deliver. I say we go for it.”

  LeMat thought it over and nodded. “Where do we start’? Literature search?”

  “Yup.” The chair started to topple over backward. LeMat caught me and set the chair back on four legs again. “Hard-tech writers like Curtis are always bragging about their personal computers,” I said, when I was no longer in danger of landing on my head. “Check out Bit. Writer’s Lunch. Home Tax Deduction. Let’s see what kind of head start he’s already given us.”

  “Don’t forget InfoPlanet,” LeMat suggested. “And Clankalog. I know he did an interview for them a few months ago.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “You subscribe?”

  He shrugged. “It was the cheapest one on the Publisher’s Packinghouse list. And I may already be a winner.”

  I nodded. “Well, just in case you aren’t, we’d better get cracking on this job.”

  LeMat finished his apple, launched the core at the waste-basket in a twenty-foot fallaway jumpshot, and nailed it dead center. “Consider it cracked,” he said as he walked away.

  There are parts of that week that are still too weird to think about, even now. For example, there was all the time that LeMat, Inge, and I spent designing a new virtual aspect for her, to use at times when it would be embarrassing for Gunnar and Don Vermicelli to be seen nibbling on each other’s earlobes. What we finally ended up with was a sort of Modified Linda Hamilton, but we pumped her pecs and deltoids a little more, trimmed her abs a bit flatter, and gave her a sweet freckled young mother’s face that LeMat and Inge spent close to six hours sweating over. When we finally christened “Reba,” she was Gunnar’s perfect woman.

  So how come, when I popped into Heaven for a little R&R Friday night, I found fat old Don Vermicelli still sitting there, holding court in his usual corner? I strode straight over to the table, determined to demand an explanation. Two trigger boys stepped out to block my way; Don Vermicelli waved them aside. (As if I couldn’t have vaporized them with an unkind word.) I grabbed a chair, parked my butt, and started warming up for a really good yell. One of the Silicione sisters jiggled into view.

  I did a double take, then a triple take. “Gunnar?”

  “Shhh,” he said, touching a perfectly manicured nail to his full, sweet, ruby-red lips. “We haven’t gone public yet. And call me Sophia.

  “Now,” he said perkily, as he straightened up and jiggled his enormous hooters at me, “what would you like?”

  “Some fresh air,” I said, staggering away from the table.

  LeMat and Inge, I should point out, had sex. They had sex in the morning, sex at night, sex for lunch, sex on the rooftop. They tried to be coy about it, of course, but given that the only interior wall in the CompuTech office was a folding Chinese screen we’d fished out of the basement, it was pretty hard for them to be discreet. And after a few days of sex in the shower, sex in the kitchen, and sex everytime I went into VR, they gave up trying and just started counting on me to pretend like I didn’t see or hear anything. If they hadn’t moved the futon over to the west wall, so that I spent my sleepless nights on the Army cot listening to the steady thump-thump-thump of the futon frame against plaster, I might even have managed it.

  But the truth was, I was so jealous, I could have eaten my own liver.

  I understand they tried sex in Inge’s apartment, once, but it was a failure. Something about the excruciatingly anal way she’d decorated her bedroom, and the motion of the bed disturbing the alignment of the dust ruffle. I never did get the full story; LeMat was too angry to talk about it afterward, and because of this incident, they broke up.

  That lasted almost three whole hours. Then I accidentally caught them tearing off a quickie in the freight elevator.

  Once we finally had interfaces for each of us, LeMat brought his VR system from home, and we hooked all three workstations together in a really dandy little local area network. (LeMat did take Inge back to his house for this hardware run, but while his back was turned she started organizing the place, and he swore he was never going to give her the chance to do that again.) Most of the time I stayed out and did biotelemetry duty while Gunnar and Inge/Reba worked out in our local test reality, but every now and then I went online and dove in with them.

  I quickly learned not to do that without warning them. One time, on the spur of the moment, I decided to catch up with them after they’d been in VR for half an hour. That’s how I learned that LeMat and Inge had built a virtual Playboy mansion off in her private memory partition. I found Gunnar sitting in the hot tub, with his elbows on the tub rim, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a large, half-eaten strawberry in the other.

  “Hi, Gunnar!” I said, as I popped in. “Where’s Reba?”

  He just smiled at me and made a weird, strangled noise.

  “Are you okay?” I took a step closer to the hot tub.

  Just then Reba popped up from the foam and bubbles. “Hi, Max!” she called out brightly. She was wearing a gadget somewhat like an aqualung, except that the tube ran to her nose, not her mouth. “Gosh, this work makes a girl thirsty!” She took the champagne glass from Gunnar, downed a gulp, then handed the glass back to him and dove beneath the foam again.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well I’ll just, uh—”

  “Leave,” Gunnar suggested through clenched teeth.

  “Yes, right. Exactly.” I turned my back and exited, just as fast as my little neural interface could carry me. Seconds later I was back in reality, peeling off my video goggles.

  That’s when I noticed the landlord, Jerry, standing over by the freight elevator, with a bucket of paint in his hand and an expression I hope to never see again on his face. I tried to imagine myself in his shoes, and see LeMat, Inge, and myself as he was seeing us. I saw a trio of high-tech drag-queen mimes.

  “Don’t ask,” I told Jerry. “Just don’t ask.”

  By week’s end, our research was starting to turn up useful information about the Franklin Curtis job. None of it was good.

  “I’ve got his Net address,” LeMat said as he dropped a pile of paper on our worktable. “This guy is definitely high-tech. He’s been online since there’s been a line to be on. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a SNID himself.”

  “Curtis?” Inge wrinkled her nose. “No way. Too macho.”

  “Maybe so,” LeMat said to her as he fished a photocopy out of his stack of notes, “but listen to this:”

  CURTIS: I consider myself a ‘method’ writer. I’ve always tried to get inside my characters, to see the world through their eyes and tell the story in their voices. But lately I’ve developed some tricks that help me, well, literally walk a mile in my hero’s shoes.

  CLANKALOG: You mean like, virtual reality?

  CURTIS: No, not like virtual reality. I mean a level of intensity that’s at least one generation beyond what currently passes for virtual reality on the civilian market. I can’t go into specifics—a lot of this stuff is still very classified—but when I was working on my new nonfiction book, RoboCav, I got to
spend a lot of time with the people who are developing the next generation of military simulation trainers—

  CLANKALOG: Oh, you mean like Argus?

  CURTIS: (Suspiciously.) Where’d you hear that name?

  CLANKALOG: I’m not sure. On the Net, I suppose—

  CURTIS: That project is classified. How much do you know?

  CLANKALOG: Not a lot. Only that it’s a joint venture between MDE Biomedical and Rockwell Thiokol, and that it’s about two years over schedule and six times over budget.

  CURTIS: (Draws gun from shoulder holster under sportcoat.) Those are national secrets, mister! How’d you find out? Who’s your contact?”

  CLANKALOG: (Alarmed) Honest, I just picked it up on the Net somewhere—

  CURTIS: (Kicks over chair, lunges at interviewer, presses gun to his forehead.) TURNCOAT! TRAITOR! WHO DO YOU REALLY WORK FOR? THE CUBANS? THE LIBYANS? I WANT NAMES!

  CLANKALOG: (Blubbering.) Nobody! Honest! I’m freelance!

  CURTIS: OH, A DOUBLE-AGENT, ARE WE? WELL WHERE I COME FROM WE KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH SCUM LIKE YOU! (Cocks hammer)

  CLANKALOG: (Hysterical.) I swear to God Mr. Curtis, I’m just a reporter! Please don’t shoot me pleaseGoddon’tshootmepleasepleaseplease!

  CURTIS: (Recovering composure.) Well, I suppose your story could be true, however unlikely—aw geez, man, you wet yourself. Get a grip.

  CLANKALOG: (Mumbling, blubbering, incoherent reply.)

  CURTIS: Okay, I guess I can let you off with a warning this time. But—you’re going to have to eat your tape recorder.

  LeMat set the paper down and looked at me and Inge. “Well? Military simulators? MDE Biomedical? Does this suggest anything to you?”

  I shrugged. “Some possibilities. What does the rest of the interview say?”

  LeMat glanced at the paper. “There isn’t any more.”

  Inge sat up with a start. “That’s it?”

  LeMat leaned forward and looked again. “Except for a little editorial note saying the reporter was hospitalized with stomach pains. They think it was something he ate.”

  I tilted back in my blue plastic chair, stroked my chin thoughtfully, and almost landed on my head again. “So let’s take inventory. What do we know?”

  “Franklin Curtis is richer than God,” Inge said.

  “But unlike God, we know where he lives,” LeMat added. “In both the real world and on the Net.”

  “He’s got some really heavy connections in defense,” Inge noted. “Carter offered him a cabinet post.”

  LeMat’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know that. ‘76?”

  Inge shook her head. “No. ‘96.”

  “Ahh.” LeMat nodded. “No wonder he didn’t take it.”

  I interrupted them and tried to put the conversation back on track. “What about his personal computer? Do we know anything about it?”

  LeMat thumped the pile of magazines. “Personal network would be a better term. He appears to have his entire mansion wired for OC1, with a computer in every room. Including the bathrooms.”

  “You ever read Artifact?” Inge said out of the corner of her mouth. “I can believe he wrote that one in a bathroom—and got confused about which paper to keep.”

  “Topology?” I asked, grasping for straws. “File servers?”

  “Distributed processing,” LeMat said, “peer-to-peer. But the good news is, the primary file server is a Rockwell Thiokol milspec box. Big NASA contractor: those folks are such true believers in top-down authority and rigid hierarchy, I expect they’ll have all the important files there.”

  I nodded. “So we get to run the trench and bomb the main reactor again. Sounds like fun.” I looked to LeMat, and then to Inge. “Anybody have a guess at when’s a good time?”

  “Early morning,” LeMat said confidently.

  “Why?”

  “He’s a writer,” LeMat explained. “Everyone knows writers are night-owls. Heavy drinkers, too. He’ll be too hungover to be working in the early—ooof!” Inge had given him a sharp elbow in the ribs. He turned to her. “Yes, darling?”

  “Gunnar,” she said sweetly, “do you actually know any working writers?”

  He thought it over. “Do poets count?”

  “Only to fourteen.” Inge turned to me. “I do the taxes for LaRue Woolworth,” she said. “Our best bet is if we go in while he’s off doing a signing at a local bookstore.”

  That made me sit up and take notice. “We?”

  “If you think I’m going to let you do this without me,” she said, “you are clean out of your cotton-pickin’ mind.”

  I looked at LeMat; he shrugged. Apparently they’d already discussed this. I turned back to Inge. “But why?”

  She shrugged. “I’m already in for a penny. May as well be in for the pound.”

  I tried to think that through, and finally decided it didn’t bear much thinking about. “Okay,” I said, “that’s our best bet. Do we have a second-best bet?”

  “Even writers have to eat,” Inge pointed out. “If we can find out when he usually takes lunch or dinner, there’s at least a half hour where the system will be up but he won’t be in it.”

  LeMat raised his right hand. “Can I make a suggestion?”

  I looked at Inge, and we both nodded. “Yes. Please.”

  “Sounds like we could really use some recon, right?”

  “Are you volunteering?”

  “Hell, no,” LeMat said. “But with a little work, Thing1 and Thing2 would be perfect for the job. We can launch ‘em tonight.”

  I thought it over, and agreed.

  Later, after the meeting had petered out and LeMat had wandered off to the bathroom, I finally got a chance to talk to Inge alone. “I don’t get it,” I said to her. “Why?”

  “Why am I doing this?” she asked right back. “Why is Inge Andersson laundering money for CompuTech? Why is Reba Vermicelli going to lock and load, and charge right on into the Valley of Death alongside Gunnar Savage and Max Kool?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Why?”

  Inge leaned back, and fixed me with her deep blue eyex, and considered her reply. “Do you know who I am?” she said at last.

  I shook my head and shrugged. “Not really. Should I?”

  “I’m the chubby little frump with the blond pigtails,” she said softly. “I’m the one who sits up at the front of the class, and always raises my hand when the teacher asks a question, and always gets called on when teacher wants to prove the problem can be solved because I’ve always got the right answer.” She smiled.

  It was a very hollow smile.

  “I’m the girl who gets asked on study dates,” she said with a sad edge in her voice. “I’m very popular the week before finals, but can’t get a date for Homecoming to save my life. Even if I put out with no self-respect, I’m the one who always gets a handshake in the end, and a promise that we’ll always be friends.” She shook her head. “We never are.” She sighed.

  “Grown-ups love me,” she said, just when I thought she was done speaking. “I’m so smart, and have such a nice personality, and I’m always so practical and sensible. You can always count on me to do the right thing. Yep, good old, dependable, Inge. Why, she’s never even reused an uncancelled postage stamp!”

  By now she was positively grinning at me. And let me tell you, it was one wicked grin.

  “That’s what virtual reality is all about, Jack. We get to be what we aren’t. I mean, Gunnar, he gets to be dangerous. And you, you get to be hip. And me? I get to be someone who really could pack a suitcase full of bearer bonds and hop a plane to the Cayman Islands! So why am I doing this?

  “Because I wanted to see if I could get away with it!” The tone of her voice was slow, oily, exultant, and frankly, more than a little scary. “Just once, I wanted to do something wild! Something that ‘nice little Inge’ would never in a million years even think of doing! And let me tell you something, Jack.” Her eyes went wide. “IT FEELS GOOD!”

  LeMat h
ad returned from the bathroom sometime in the last minute or so, and he broke into the conversation now. “What, you talking about sex with me again?”

  Inge turned on him with an absolutely carnivorous smile on her face. “Yes!” She stood up, grabbed his hand, and dragged him off toward the futon. “Come along, darling! I’m horny!”

  LeMat sighed, smirked at me, and let her drag him away. “You know, Inge,” he said as they faded into the distance, “you’ve got to stop treating me like a sex object. I’m serious. I mean, thirty or forty more years of this, and I’m through.”

  Sometime that weekend, Inge and LeMat figured out how to do virtual sex and real sex concurrently. That, of course, opened up a whole new world of possibilities. They had real sex; they had virtual sex; they had real sex while Gunnar and Reba had virtual sex; they had real sex while Don and Sophia had virtual sex; I think if they could have swapped genitalia in the real world, they would have tried that, too.

  (When asked later what concurrent sex was like, Gunnar said, “An awful lot like necking while wearing dental braces, sunglasses, and a Walkman.”)

  Monday, the twenty-ninth, came and went. It was now a week since I’d last seen T’shombe (of course, I’d been punching her lights out at the time, and that wasn’t conducive to conversation), and more than a week since she’d last tried to call me. Even the evangelists from the Church of Vegentology had stopped calling—which I wouldn’t have minded, excep I felt there was a connection between that blessed event and T’shombe’s prolonged silence. I kept wondering: how much of me had she recognized, in those few brief moments in the hall way, before I decked her? And just how much negative feedback could a superuser like me pump through a conventional VR headset like the one she must have been wearing?

  Killing Charles didn’t bother me anymore. In retrospect, he got what he deserved: payback, for all those months of cheating at Slaughter. He must have realized his biomedical interface hardware put him at a level far beyond the rest of us. And yet, like a grown-up bully playing baseball with a bunch of Cub Scouts, he never passed up a chance to belt it out of the park, slide into home, or do a victory dance around the plate.