Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

‘You talked to him?’

  ‘Yes, I talked to him. They are capable of rational discussion, you know, the people we employ.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘I bet you didn’t know that Hue Lin has a PhD,’ she said, referring to our Cambodian cleaner.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said.

  ‘You should hear yourself, you racist,’ she said.

  ‘She’s got a Masters, not a PhD,’ I said, before I got the conversation back on track. ‘What did you and the pool guy talk about?’

  ‘Stuff,’ said Miranda, raising her eyebrows.

  I knew exactly what Miranda was doing: the because-I’m-older-than-you-I’ve-got-such-a-handle-on-this-stuff thing. And do you know what? She probably did.

  So I let her get on with the Arthritic Kangaroo or whatever she called it, and I walked back along the edge of the pool.

  As I did I had to admire how clear the water was, how free of leaves. I had to hand it to Seb, he really had it looking great. I walked past the pump room and I heard a noise from inside. Not the usual whirring, pumping sound; this was a sort of electronic beeping.

  Strange, I thought.

  When we were little kids the pump room was absolutely off limits. You could see why, too – with all its pumps, and electronics, and chemicals, it was a good place for a kid to end up dead. And I remembered thinking that when I grew up, when I was allowed, I would so make up for this, so spend serious time in the pump room. But here I was, sort of grown-up, and I’d been in there maybe twice. So when I opened the door to look inside I didn’t immediately think Wow, that’s weird or There’s something not quite right here.

  There was a whole lot of pipes, and a whole lot of electronics, and a whole lot of chemicals, enough to kill a kid.

  But I had this feeling – and that’s all it was, a feeling – that there was something different about it.

  So I took a closer look, my eyes scanning the room, taking in each feature in turn. Firstly the pumps, and the water heater, and the pipes. They all looked pretty normal to me. Then the big plastic containers in which the pool chemicals were stored. Again, they looked pretty normal. Lastly my eyes stopped on the electronic console.

  I guess you had to be a pool guy to really understand what was going on with this, because it was pretty complicated: there were switches, and lights, and meters, and none of them were labelled.

  A spaghetti of wires and cables went in and a spaghetti of wires and cables came out. But as I moved closer I noticed something: one of these wires, light blue in colour, looked newer than the others.

  Although I was no electrician, I could understand what was happening: these wires were supplying electricity to parts of the pump room that needed it. Like arteries carrying oxygen-rich blood to parts of the body.

  When I noticed that the light blue wire ran all the way up the wall and then across the ceiling, I got quite excited. But when it disappeared into a hole, my excitement faded.

  Where’s it gone now? I wondered.

  I went back outside and checked out the roof of the pump room, or what I could see of the roof of the pump room. Because it was flat, not pitched, most of it was hidden from view and I couldn’t see anything except a couple of vents.

  Time to let go of this, I told myself.

  But another part of me wasn’t giving up so easily.

  Another part of me went all the way to the back shed to get a ladder.

  After propping the ladder against the side of the pump room I carefully climbed up it until I had a better view of the roof. But I still couldn’t see anything. So I climbed further, all the way to the second-last rung. My knees resting on the top rung, I leant further in.

  And there it was.

  It was just a small black box, but it looked like it had been recently installed, and I could see the light blue wire going into it.

  And then I thought I heard the scuff of footsteps and the ladder wobbled and I lost my balance and both I and the ladder came tumbling down. As I did I grabbed at the gutter, managing to get both hands on it. So now I was dangling, a drop of about three metres below me.

  Only three metres but more than enough, if I fell, to twist an ankle, to break a leg, to demolish any hope I had of going to Rome for the World Youth Games.

  My fingers were slipping.

  And then, miraculously, there was something solid under my feet.

  I looked down.

  The ladder.

  Holding it up was Seb.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you now, Dom.’

  I climbed down slowly, testing the weight of each rung.

  ‘That was close,’ said Seb. ‘Lucky I came along,’ he added.

  And again, I didn’t know what to think. Had he knocked the ladder over in the first place? Or had it just slipped, and he had indeed just happened to come along at the right moment?

  But further thought along these lines was curtailed by Mom’s voice saying, ‘Dom, you there?’

  And the appearance of Mom herself, dressed up, looking stunning.

  The sort of mum other boys looked at. Said things about, like, ‘Is that seriously, like, your mum?’

  ‘What’s happening here?’ she said.

  There’s this strange little black box on the roof. Our pool guy probably just tried to kill me. My life is a mess. A number of answers came to mind, but that’s where they stayed.

  ‘I was having a look up there,’ I said, pointing to the roof.

  ‘What in heaven’s name for?’

  ‘A pair of swimming goggles,’ I said.

  Mom threw Seb a half-smile and shook her head as if to say, My second-born has gone bonkers, then she said, ‘Your dad and I have got this thing on tonight but I wanted to remind you about shopping on Saturday, okay?’

  ‘Where you going?’ I asked, which was pretty weird because I never asked Mom where she was going.

  Usually, it was like ‘whatever’ meets ‘who cares?’

  Mom was surprised, too, because she gave me a funny look before she said, ‘Ron and Justine’s.’

  ‘Ron as in Ron Gatto?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mom.

  Again, that image, those four men in suits: Rocco Taverniti, Ron Gatto, Dad, and that other man.

  It was like this billboard had been erected in my mind. No matter where I went these days, I seemed to pass it.

  Later that night I was watching a movie on Foxtel. Miranda, carrying a bowl of corn chips, sat down in an armchair, tucking her legs up under her.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  ‘The Godfather,’ I said. ‘The second one.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miranda, and I wasn’t sure if it was an approving or disapproving ‘oh’.

  Because, as far as I knew, all The Godfather films were a Johnny-Depp-free zone.

  Still, she seemed to quickly get engrossed, chomping her way methodically through the chips.

  When the film had finished she said, sort of casually, ‘Oh, by the way, I did some asking around about that Styxx List thing.’

  ‘You did?’ I said, trying for a similar casual tone, but failing miserably.

  ‘Apparently it’s got something to do with the Cerberus, this top-secret new-generation gizmo that Styxx’s supposedly been developing.’

  ‘Gizmo?’

  ‘That’s the weird thing – nobody’s really sure if it’s a phone or not. Actually, nobody’s really sure if they really are developing it or not. Ever since it came onto the market, Styxx has loved playing these sorts of games. Out-Apple-ing Apple, if you know what I mean?’

  Actually I didn’t have a clue what she meant, but I gave a knowing smile anyway.

  ‘Fascinating stuff, actually,’ said Miranda. ‘There’s talk it might even be running Linux or another open-source operating system.’

  I knew from the way she said it that this was a big thing but I wasn’t sure why.

  ‘Wow, Linux,’ I said. ‘That means…’

  Fortunately Mira
nda jumped in exactly where I wanted her to jump in, finishing my sentence. ‘That means that it will be incredibly adaptable. Jailbroken without the jailbreak, if you like.’

  ‘So it’ll be able to run all sort of programs?’

  ‘Just about anything.’

  Okay, I totally got this: a nerd’s dreams come true.

  ‘So if they are developing it, where do they do it?’ I asked.

  ‘The Under World, of course.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The Under World. That’s what their R&D centre is called in the hacker community.’

  ‘R&D?’

  ‘Research and development.’

  ‘And where is the Under World?’

  Miranda shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Not just me – nobody knows. Some people reckon it’s out in the desert. Others reckon it’s on a ship anchored offshore. It’s like the biggest secret there is in computers.’

  No, it’s not, I thought, remembering Nitmick’s emails.

  Miranda continued. ‘They don’t actually make them there, if that’s what you’re thinking. Styxx’s already famous for getting the parts made in different out-of-the-way places, so nobody really knows what they’re for, and then putting all the components together itself.’

  I thought of the PDF titled ‘Authorised Component Suppliers’ I’d seen on Nitmick’s desktop. The one with the Styxx watermark on it.

  ‘So what would happen if somebody got hold of a Cerberus before it was launched?’ I said.

  Miranda rolled her eyes.

  ‘If you really want to be a nerd, you’ve got some big-time catching up to do,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, I’m starting now.’

  ‘If they got the Cerberus, every factory in Taiwan would start knocking out Cerberus clones. The market would be flooded with Cerberuses before they were even released.’

  ‘So this prototype Cerberus would be worth a lot of money?’ I said.

  ‘Little brother, you do have a wonderful grasp of the obvious at times. Yes, it’d be worth a lot of money.’

  ‘Millions of dollars?’

  ‘Gazillions of dollars,’ she said.

  Was Nitmick seriously on the verge of cloning a Cerberus? Could a man who had no obvious waistline, who called his girlfriend Pixel, whose BO had its own passport, really be on the verge of making gazillions of dollars? And as I asked myself these questions, I had this strange feeling that I’d had quite a lot lately: that these thoughts weren’t private, that somebody else had access to them.

  SATURDAY

  CERBERUS

  Mom had been at me for months. ‘Dom, those jeans are so shabby! Dom, you’re growing so quickly!’ She’d arranged about a thousand trips, but each time I’d managed to worm my way out of it.

  Not this Saturday, though.

  This Saturday there was absolutely no way out.

  After I finished my regular run, as soon as I walked into the kitchen, she pounced on me. Cat. Mouse. You get the picture.

  ‘We’re leaving in half an hour,’ she said, an uncharacteristic note of anxiety in her voice.

  First we were going to some trendy café called Latte Day Saints for breakfast and after that we were going to hit the shops.

  ‘Okay, Mom,’ I said.

  ‘Half an hour,’ she repeated.

  Mom didn’t want to drive herself, so she called a taxi.

  What if Luiz Antonio picked us up? I asked myself as we waited. And what if he let on that he knew me? That he’d dropped me off at all sort of dodgy places?

  But when the taxi arrived and it wasn’t Luiz Antonio driving, I relaxed.

  We both got into the back seat, the taxi took off, and Mom put her arm around my shoulder.

  I smelt her perfume smell.

  ‘This is nice,’ she said, and I had to agree, it was nice.

  ‘Tell me about when you acted with Al Pacino,’ I said.

  ‘Not that old thing,’ said Mom, her accent already becoming stronger, more Californian. ‘You don’t want to hear that old thing.’

  ‘Come on, Mom,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  So Mom told the story: how she was a young actress who came to Los Angeles to make it in the big time. How she supported herself by performing at kids’ parties. Then her big break: her role in Charlie’s Angels, ‘Pretty Angels All in a Row’. After that the auditions started coming. One day she was called in to test against the lead man. Mom didn’t know who it was going to be but when she walked into the room, it was him, the great Pacino!

  ‘I was so nervous,’ said Mom, ‘I thought I was going to puke.’

  ‘Can I see the photo?’ I asked Mom.

  She gave me an aw-shucks-not-the-photo look while she opened her purse and brought it out.

  It was only small, like a passport photo, and it was in black and white. I’m not sure how old Mom was in it, maybe still in her teens, but she was really, really beautiful. Movie-star beautiful.

  She did the scene and afterwards the great Pacino said to my mum, ‘You’ve got real presence, babe.’

  To my mum!

  ‘This do you here, lady?’ asked the driver.

  ‘This is fine,’ said Mom, putting the photo away.

  She paid him and she got a receipt because Mom always got a receipt, and we got out and there was a queue for Latte Day Saints that snaked around the block.

  ‘Let’s just go to Macca’s,’ I said.

  I was getting hungry now and wished I’d gone across to Gus’s after my morning run like I usually did for a steaming bowl of ugali.

  Mom wasn’t going to be put off that easily, though.

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, and she pushed past the people in the queue and disappeared into the crowded confines of the café.

  A few minutes later my phone rang. Mom ringing …

  I answered it.

  ‘We’re in the corner,’ said Mom.

  ‘How did you manage that?’ I asked her as I sat down at the table.

  Mom pointed to the shiny-headed man behind the counter.

  ‘Simon’s one of my scholarship boys,’ she said. ‘It’s his café.’

  When Simon saw Mom pointing he flashed a smile at us, a smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on the Gold Coast Teeth Whitening Centre’s website. I looked out through the window at the people in the queue. They looked back at me. I knew they hated me, and they hated my mum, and I couldn’t exactly blame them. But neither did I want to give up my table, to stand in that queue for goodness knows how long with a complaining stomach.

  The waiter appeared at our table.

  ‘My name is Mylanta,’ he said, or something like that. ‘I’m your waitperson and I’ll be helping to make your breakfast experience a great success today.’

  After Mylanta, or something like that, had taken our orders I thought about the work Mom did, how she’d helped all these people through her foundation. I also thought about how it wouldn’t be possible if my dad wasn’t such a money-making machine.

  ‘Mom, did Dad already have a lot of money when you met him?’

  Mom seemed distracted, her eyes darting all over the place, and I had to repeat the question.

  Eventually she said, ‘Your father had gone a long way to laying the foundations for his future success when we first met.’

  Another question occurred to me, a question I was surprised I didn’t know the answer to. But there again, we hadn’t had a lot to do with Mom’s family. Which made sense, really. She was an only child, and both her parents had died in a plane crash.

  ‘What about when you were growing up? Did your parents have lots of money?’

  Again Mom seemed distracted – what was going on with her today?

  ‘Sorry, what did you say?’ she said.

  I repeated my question.

  ‘Lots of money?’ she said, and she had this look on her face as if I’d asked her to travel somewhere that wasn’t that nice. Like Brisbane. ‘No, we didn’t have l
ots of money.’

  At the next table a family was having breakfast, a couple and their daughter.

  The daughter looked about the same age as me, and she was beautiful.

  Beautiful in the way Imogen was beautiful, with the eyes and the hair, and the bones in all the right places.

  But not beautiful in the way Imogen was beautiful, not wholesome, or vibrant, or fresh.

  Maybe she was sick, maybe she even had cancer or something, because she had this haunted look, like death was her bestie.

  Or maybe it was something psychological. Like my coimetrophobia. Only nastier.

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t stop myself from checking her out, from sneaking glances at her.

  I noticed that Mom, too, seemed interested in what was going on at the next table.

  Again, this wasn’t the mum I knew. That mum wasn’t a snoop, or a gossip. That mum had too much going on in her own world to bother herself with what other people did.

  The girl didn’t touch her food, but spent the whole time engrossed in her phone, one of those sexy new Styxx models. Her parents kept trying to include her in the conversation:

  ‘You just loved it in Aspen last time, didn’t you, Anna?’

  ‘We had such a lovely time in Paris for your fifteenth birthday last year, didn’t we, Anna?’

  But when Anna looked up at them, it was with undisguised contempt. And when she looked over at our table and our eyes met, I thought, Here we go, I’m going to get exactly the same treatment.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead I got … I’m not sure what I got. Hey, it was only a look. It certainly wasn’t contempt. Maybe it was sorrow. Or maybe it was pity. But whatever it was, it sent a jolt right through me.

  Could she know? I wondered. Could she possibly know what I was going through?

  Mylanta arrived then, plates in both hands, and our eyes disengaged.

  But when I was halfway through my eggs Benedict, Anna said in a very loud voice, ‘I want a new Styxx for my birthday party next Saturday night. I want a Cerberus.’

  A Cerberus? Had she just said ‘a Cerberus’? No, that just wasn’t possible, it was too goddamn freaky.

  ‘A what?’ said the mother.

  ‘It’s a phone, Mum,’ answered her daughter.

  Her father said, ‘Sweetheart, we just bought you a new phone.’