A Stranger in Paradise

by Edward M. Lerner

  A STRANGER IN PARADISE

  Edward M. Lerner

  THE NIGHT OF THE RFIDS

  My chief of staff stood stiffly, clutching a leather folder. The single sheet of paper inside awaited my signature. Barbara said nothing, knowing the depth of my resolve, but her body language spoke volumes. By any conventional logic this was no way to begin a term of office.

  I never wanted to go into politics. Sometimes we sacrifice our dreams for a greater cause.

  I’ve been hooked on history since the third grade, when I heard about the Lost Colony. Paying for four years of college so I could teach American history in high school was the limit of my ambition—and a daunting challenge. Sometimes events demand more of us than we dare ask of ourselves.

  More than twenty years later, I remember those events as though they happened yesterday. . . .

  Sometime during the night the world had ended.

  With no morning paper to confirm the obvious, my mother refused to believe. Instead, the lack of a Gazette had her full attention—that, and her inability to call anyone to complain. Dressed for work in her waitress uniform, she sat at our rickety dinette table, stymied in her morning ritual.

  Our landline phone had no dial tone. The screen on my cell read: No service. Cable was out, too, and with it Internet access. At least the power remained on.

  Well, Mom could complain to me, and did. I was of the wrong generation to understand getting news on dead trees; I couldn’t have sympathized under the best of circumstances. These were hardly the best of circumstances. And fussing at me did nothing to deliver a paper.

  Mom’s coffee cup was nearly full. Filling a mug for myself and tasting it, I knew why. So much for the new coffeemaker she’d bought the day before. “Who knew Quick-E-Shoppe even sold them?” she’d said. “While I was getting gas, a promo came up on the pump display.”

  Pouring the bitter sludge into the kitchen sink got me the “Timothy Alan Anderson, we don’t waste food in this household” lecture. Impulsive coffeepot buys apparently fell under different budgetary rules. I chalked up the all-three-names broadside to circumstances, still wondering just what those circumstances were.

  I burrowed in my closet for rabbit ears and Mom in her closet for our disaster kit. She won. We listened to a scratchy AM radio station. “. . . Worst across the Carolinas and into southern Virginia. The extent of the outbreak remains . . .” The report dissolved into a staticky hiss. I cranked vigorously to recharge the radio. When I finished, the station had moved on to the weather.

  “Outbreak?” Mom repeated. Her eyes darted to the open disaster kit on the kitchen counter. I was just barely old enough to remember when household disaster kits didn’t include plastic sheets and duct tape.

  The dinette window was open, the gingham curtains billowing in the breeze. If a biological were loose nearby, we were toast. I must not have believed that, because thoughts of toast reminded me I had yet to eat breakfast. “Malware of some kind, I think. You know, like a computer virus. It could explain no cable or phone. I’ll bet that’s why there’s no morning paper. Computers set the type and run the presses.”

  “That’s not so bad,” Mom decided. “If they fix it, I mean.”

  For a while the room was silent but for the ticking of the kitschy wall clock, a black cat that waggled its eyes and wagged its tail in synch. More car horns than usual, somehow more impatient than usual, intruded. Computers down meant traffic lights out. The morning commute would be bad.

  Commuting—and school—after the end of the world seemed so unfair.

  “I’d better go, Tim. I’ll be late for work.” Mom sighed. She made no move for the door until I stood. I had morning classes, the first at eight. As for after school . . .

  Damn the injustice, the obliteration of every computer on the planet would not close Seth’s Secondhand Books.

  Theory had it that community college was preparing me for the university. According to plan, next year I’d put that theory to the test. That presumed I managed to set aside enough money for tuition. It was possible, I supposed. Mom and I might quit obsessing over daily meals.

  I didn’t blame Seth Miller for paying me minimum wage. A used-book store is a calling, not a business model. Every book he sold was a victory over countless no-overhead competitors on eBay. Only that day no one in town could reach eBay. I remember hoping we might see two customers.

  Truthfully, I didn’t understand how Seth afforded to pay me at all. I was too young, when he offered me a job in my sophomore year of high school, to imagine anyone lending a hand. Or to connect that offer with Dad’s recent death in Afghanistan.

  Seth was nowhere in evidence when I got to the store. I was late, traffic lights having all defaulted to flashing red or yellow. Phone service remained out; there hadn’t been any way to say I’d be delayed.

  “Hey, Marc,” I said. Marc Kimball was Seth’s other charity case. However lame I was, a college student (if just barely) stocking shelves with old graphic novels and recycled genre books—Marc was lamer. It never seemed to bother him.

  Marc nodded and kept whistling. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. Despite the John Deere cap and the hair curling up at his collar, I had my doubts he would recognize a bushel basket. He was about twenty-five, and—obvious when he felt talkative—a city boy.

  Seth paid Marc off the books, no pun intended, something I wasn’t supposed to have noticed. I guessed that explained why Marc worked here. He had appeared about four months earlier. When I asked, making conversation, “So where are you from?” Marc’s answer was, “Around.” He was amiable enough, just private. Besides working at the bookstore he did freelance computer repair. Those were cash transactions, too.

  Between customers, which was most of the time, we talked about movies and music and books. Marc spoke fast and flat like my cousins in inside-the-Beltway northern Virginia, for all intents and purposes a Yank. In rural South Carolina that made him a foreigner. The little old ladies who ran the tiny museum for our local Civil War skirmish site—battlefield was far too grandiose a term—still turned away vehicles with northern license plates, smiling sweetly as they claimed their parking lot was full: one more states’ right. Within the museum, the late conflict between the states bore no aspect of civility, and was labeled the War of Northern Aggression.

  Still, I doubted even the Charleston office of Homeland Security considered Yanks illegal aliens. As harmless as Marc Kimball seemed, he was wanted for something, or guilty of something, if only tax evasion. That he was a movie buff was one of the few things Marc freely revealed. So maybe he knew this old movie, too. . . .

  The Fugitive was based on a TV series from well before my time. Movie and show alike were about a man on the lam, escaped from prison, desperate to prove his innocence. The hero’s name was Dr. Richard Kimball. So was Kimball a too-cute alias or merely a coincidence? I’d never had the nerve to ask.

  UPS had delivered a stack of boxes. I sighed, knowing the massive sorting task that lay ahead. Seth purchased whole libraries from estate sales, sight unseen, for pennies a book. At that price we usually overpaid. Still, we’d occasionally come across a gem, say, a rare first edition, worth more than the store grossed in a month.

  “You’re quiet today, Tim,” Marc said suddenly. He was in the Mystery section, shelving paperbacks with enthusiastic taps on their spines and a certain je ne sais quoi—only in hindsight, I can say quoi: scarcely contained exhilaration.

  “Nothing works today!” I snapped. My cell phone was an inert lump in my jeans pocket. A day without texting was . . . unnatural. “Why are you in such a good mood?”


  A shrug: It doesn’t affect me. “What have you heard about the outages?”

  My psych prof commuted from Athens, Georgia, outside the dead zone. She’d listened to radio news for most of her inbound drive, and the class had peppered her with questions. I summarized. “A really nasty virus on the loose. Destructive. Best guess is it’s been dormant, below the radar, for months. Today it’s popped up everywhere, especially widespread in the Carolinas. We’re back in the Dark Ages.”

  Gesturing at the shelves, Marc laughed. “Not quite. We have plenty of books.”

  Then Seth came through the door, huffing a bit. He was middle-aged and heavyset, and the day was hot. “Be of good cheer, gentlemen. Stuff is coming back up. The Exxon station can pump gas again. You just need to pay with cash.”

  Gas pumps, if only standalone. The traffic light outside the store had stopped flashing and now showed green. Maybe the world hadn’t ended, merely been struck stupid. Why was my friend and coworker so indifferent? “A return to normal would a good thing, Marc.”

  Marc shrugged again and returned to shelving mysteries.

  A newspaper came the next morning. The virus taunted us from every front-page story.

  While Mom read, grimacing at her coffee, I channel-surfed. Cable was back—and it wasn’t only basic. Suddenly, we had premium service. Everyone had premium service. Yesterday’s malware attack had trashed the cable company’s customer records. I would enjoy the free HBO while it lasted. Internet access remained out.

  It wasn’t just the cable company. Customer records all over had been scrambled. Like cable channels, things that could be offered to everyone came quickly back online. But credit cards, toll-road transponders, pagers—services involving individual accounts . . . those were hobbled or remained offline. In the CNN screen crawler an endless line of companies forecast their returns to service. I began to have hope when my cell came to life, limited to local calling.

  With one foot out the door, an alert on the local-access channel stopped me in my tracks. The feds had declared the outages a terrorist incident. The National Guard had been called up to seal the area.

  Hadley township sat near the southern end of the quarantine zone. Outside the bookstore, humvees rumbled up and down the street. Choppers flew over a couple times.

  Marc wasn’t around despite what the posted work schedule indicated. I asked Seth about that, and he shrugged.

  Another humvee rolled past the store. “This makes no sense,” I said. “How will soldiers catch a hacker?”

  “No,” Seth answered. “It makes perfect sense—from their point of view.”

  Their. For a mere syllable, it carried a lot of feeling. I remember staring.

  Seth said, “The National Guard can’t be after the hacker, though I wouldn’t doubt there’s a promotion in it for anyone who somehow stumbles across him . . . or her. I’m guessing the Guard is here to keep everyone in.”

  I noticed the hesitation before “or her,” but chalked it up to the odds. Most hackers were male. I had a more basic question. “Keep everyone in? Why? We haven’t done anything.”

  The bookstore subscribed to the morning paper, another facet of Seth’s fierce loyalty to the printed word. Still, I don’t think I’d ever seen him use it for anything but packing material.

  Today Seth was glued to the Gazette. He tapped an article syndicated from the Associated Press. “Have you seen how the bug spread? Through point-of-sale systems. Not just any POS system. Ones that work with toll-road transponders. Electronic key fobs. No-swipe credit cards.”

  Antiquarian leanings are only to be expected in the owner of a used-books store. Compared to Seth, my mother was a high-tech wizard. A cell phone was nothing short of miraculous to the boss. Why the sudden interest?

  “Mr. Seth Miller? My name is Jones. I’m a federal agent.”

  A stranger stood in the open door, wearing a black suit despite the summer heat. He flipped open a leather badge wallet; Seth (and I, discreetly, from a distance—I had good eyes back then) dutifully examined it. Homeland Security Bureau, HSB, what the wags called Homeland BS.

  A fed in the flesh didn’t make me feel waggish.

  “Can I see a warrant?” Seth asked.

  Agent Jones smiled humorlessly. “No need. Just tell me if you’ve seen someone.”

  Seth stiffened. “Who?”

  Jones offered a folded sheet of paper. The fold covered everything but the headshot of a young man in dress shirt and tie.

  Could that be Marc in the photo? I tried to picture my friend with a trim moustache and short hair, without glasses or the John Deere cap.

  “Don’t know him,” Seth said.

  Jones didn’t ask me. I looked young for my age and happened to be holding a graphic novel. He probably mistook me for a customer.

  The grainy image Jones next offered Seth was probably from a security camera. I recognized the Hadley Exxon. And the man at the air pump in that photo, inflating the front tire of his bike? It was Marc, no question.

  “That’s the same guy?” Seth asked. “Sure, I know him. That’s Marc Kimball.”

  “An employee of yours, I’m told,” Jones prompted.

  “Not really. He’s done odd jobs for me.”

  My head was spinning, the least reason for which was Seth’s dissembling. I supposed he lied to avoid trouble about failing to report wages. What could the feds want with Marc?

  Jones took back the photo. “I’d like to speak with him.”

  “Shouldn’t you be doing something about the outage?” I blurted. I couldn’t help myself.

  Jones silenced me with a hard stare, then turned back to Seth. “Mr. Miller, do you know where I might find Kimball?”

  Seth shook his head. “Sorry. What’s he done, anyway?”

  “I’d like to speak with him,” Jones repeated, handing Seth an embossed business card. “If you see or hear from Kimball, let me know.”

  What could Marc have done to merit the feds’ attention amid this chaos?

  Hadley’s lone Internet café was across the business district. That made it a short walk away. They got Internet service by satellite, not cable, so I headed over on the hope they had connectivity.

  They did. I clicked the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives link on the Homeland BS website. From the middle of the list Marc’s picture stared back at me.

  I had one answer, at least. Kimball was an alias.

  Every couple of weeks, Marc and I went stargazing in the county forest preserve in the hills west of town. In hindsight, I didn’t know how often he went. There were always six-packs hidden in the stream, nicely chilled, anchored by water-smoothed rocks. I was sufficiently enamored with access to his beer stash, me being still a few months under age and Mom being strict about such things, that I didn’t wonder what else Marc kept in the woods.

  We’d head out right after dinner, the going being easier before sundown. We’d shoot the breeze while we waited for dark. Thinking back, it’s clear Marc steered the conversation away from himself. That didn’t take great conversational skills—I was pretty shallow back then.

  Sometimes we’d kick around the same topics as at work. Discussing books and movies and music unavoidably touches on politics. Benjamin Disraeli once said, “A man who is not a Liberal at sixteen has no heart; a man who is not a Conservative at sixty has no head.” I was a lot closer to sixteen than sixty, and not shy with my opinion that the country was going to hell in a handbasket. It’s easy to pontificate when you have no interest in getting involved.

  Marc kept his own counsel. I chose to read into his silence that he also had misgivings.

  But mostly we spoke of dreams. Mine involved making a difference—“Those who do not learn from history,” et cetera—by shaping young minds. If Marc saw irony, given my callow youth, he kept it to himself.

  His dreams involved space. Once da
rkness fell, he would point out the International Space Station streaking across the sky, or the Apollo landing sites, or whatever planets were in view. He would talk about the robots creeping across Mars, about the spacecraft exploring the outer planets, and about all we might learn by dispatching robots to Europa and Enceladus.

  Even history majors had heard of Europa, if only that it was one of the moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo. Enceladus was new to me. I learned it was a frozen moon, perhaps with a liquid-water ocean beneath its icy surface, perhaps with life within its oceans, orbiting distant, ringed Saturn.

  Beneath twinkling stars Marc spoke with a wistfulness I didn’t understand. Surely someone with Marc’s computer skills could find employment closer to the space program than Seth’s Secondhand Books. NASA Huntsville was an easy day’s drive from here. He deflected my questions with self-deprecating remarks until even I gathered he was changing the subject.

  Marc being on the lam would explain a lot.

  I tried to imagine my friend as somehow the cause of this madness. Why would he do such a thing? On the most-wanted list, the name beneath Marc’s picture was Zachary Boyer. Googling that name only confused me further.

  What master terrorist keeps a blog?

  Sipping overpriced coffee, I skimmed screen after screen of blog entries. My mind’s tongue kept tripping over the acronym RFID until I began treating it as a word: are-fid. Radio-frequency identification.

  I knew little more about RFIDs than what the plain words behind the acronym suggested, but Marc/Zachary went on and on about them. Jamming them. Spoofing them. Removing them. Comments and link-backs to his blog postings suggested he had a large following.

  Oh yes: The blog freely offered that Homeland Security was after him.

  I had done nothing wrong, but guilt came easily. I could have told Agent Jones I knew Marc Kimball. Hell, I knew where Marc lived. So why had I said nothing? Following Seth’s lead, in part. Maybe a little of my inaction stemmed from an irrelevant memory: In The Fugitive, Richard Kimball was innocent.