by Ezra Sidran
“And that is when Stanhope first broached the subject?” the Authoritarian Man asked.
Yup; that was it. About 2:45 in the afternoon of a blindingly sunny Alabama day in the O-Club at Maxwell AFB. That was the exact moment my life turned to shit. I had thought it was when Gilfoyle fired me but, nope, it was right there at Maxwell.
“A simulation for Homeland Security?” the Authoritarian Man repeated.
Yup.
“That employed the BILL equation?”
Yup.
“Of an assault on the White House and the members of Congress?”
Yup.
CHAPTER 2.2
Well, the backroom deal went down faster than most. It was what my old business manager would have called “a whorehouse deal.” It’s what they call in the oil fields of Beaumont, Texas, “a short-fuse deal.” It’s all the same. He wanted to buy and I wanted to sell and the Devil is always in the details.
“And the details?” the Authoritarian Man asked.
The details? I shrugged as best the restraints would allow. You probably have more of the details than I do; the bank routing numbers, the wire transfers. The twenty grand was a down payment. I was promised another 80 for development and another 100 upon completion. They still owe me 140. Do you know where I can file a claim?
“Sorry,” the Authoritarian Man smiled, “they weren’t working for our side. Now let’s get back to the details. What did they want for the two hundred thousand dollars?”
Well, Jim, just the usual: a million dollars worth of coding for one-fifth of the price, a two-year project done in three months. I got the impression that they had been working on the project with their own people for a while – how long I couldn’t guess – but their code was hopelessly munged. I’ve been called in before under similar circumstances; once by a certain well-known defense contractor infamous for bribing congressmen. They were over budget and behind schedule so they called for ol’ Jake Grant the relief pitcher. For once I would like to get a fat government contract with a reasonable timeline from the git-go and not get the call in the bottom of the ninth when I have to deal with somebody else’s mess.
“Was there anything – now think, Jake – was there anything unusual about what they wanted?”
You mean other than that it was a full first-person shooter assault on the White House and Congress? Oh, and the computer Artificial Intelligence had to be driven by the BILL equation? I paused for dramatic effect. Nah, I guess it was a pretty standard computer game deal, well…
“Yes?”
I mean they obviously didn’t care about distribution; there was no copy-protection in the deal; you know these days every game deal includes a shitload of copy protection schemes (usually fairly stupid algorithms that it’s the developer’s responsibilities to implement). You know I’ve been around this business for longer than I care to think about and I’ve seen them all: manual protection (where you have to look up a word from a booklet they throw in the box), key disk protection, dongles, online registration; they’re all stupid. The only pirates I ever worried about were the fucking game publishers. They never paid the royalties they owed me. I suppose this deal wasn’t any different.
“Okay, aside from the lack of copy-protection, and the BILL equation, was there anything else unusual about this deal?”
You mean other than the circumstances: cutting a whorehouse deal with a fake major general in the backroom of the O-Club at Maxwell? Of course you do. Well, there was one other thing: they wanted us to use their topographical database. You know, their 3D files. I mean, it’s not like I had access to the blueprints for the fucking White House.
“Okay,” said the Authoritarian Man, “please continue.”
Most of the details for the project came from Finley and Jacobson. I’ve worked with them before; I’m sure they’re both legit. Jacobson was at the War College. I’m sure of it. He once sent me a copy of his Master’s thesis on a proposal for an automated Course of Action program.
The Authoritarian Man picked up Jacobson’s brown OMPF (Official Military Personnel File) and started flipping through it. I thought I caught a glimpse of a DD-214 form; that’s a Military Discharge Document. If Jacobson wasn’t active duty and Stanhope was a fraud what were they doing at Maxwell? How deep was this thing?
The Authoritarian Man must have seen me sneaking a peek at the DD-214 because he abruptly snapped the OMPF shut and turned his back to me.
Jacobson was legit, right? He was at the War College, wasn’t he?
“I can’t comment on that,” the Authoritarian Man replied. “What about Finley?”
After the meeting at the O-Club broke up, Finley drove me back to the motel to get my bag and then out to the airport. The same twin-engine plane was already warming up on the runway. That’s about all I remembered about Finley from that day (except the West Point ring: Duty, Honor, Country; USMA Class of 2006).
The journey home is always longer. In retrospect it doesn’t seem that way; you look back and barely remember it at all. But when you’re there, bumping through the clouds, refueling in St. Louis, it takes forever and all you can think of is the homecoming. The new security – since 9/11 – keeps your family far from the jetways and the airport gates. In the old days you walked off the plane and straight into your family’s arms. Of course there was never a time you could have snuck old Bill into an airport arrival gate. Bill as a guide dog; now there’s a joke.
Kate tried; God bless her. She actually found (borrowed? stole?) a guide dog harness from somewhere and tried to pass Bill off as a leader dog for the blind. But you know a dog’s tell, Bill just gave it away, or maybe it was Kate with her designer shades and white cane. I can imagine the security guards forcibly escorting them out and Kate furiously protesting. I found them outside sulking. What a homecoming!
The rusted VW bug was double-parked in a no loading zone. And Bill and Kate and Kate and Bill! I love coming home with a contract; a fat contract in my old red leather attaché. It’s like the case is bulging with money and promise: food, rent, a steak for Bill and a bottle for me. We have beaten the Angel of Death once more. Tonight we’ll feast on the fatted calf.
“Oh, I know that one!” the Authoritarian Man said, “That’s Elton John!”
You know that one? “Bennie and the Jets,” Elton John. All right!
“Can you play that on the piano?” the Authoritarian Man asked sincerely.
Nope. I have a rule: I don’t play “Bennie and the Jets”, “Piano Man” or “Free Bird” and I never do requests unless they’re written on the back of a twenty dollar bill (or a ten if times are tough).
“That’s too bad,” the Authoritarian Man said, “that’s a good song.”
I had an image of the Authoritarian Man singing “Bennie and the Jets” in a karaoke bar packed full of other Authoritarian Men on a Friday night when they were all off duty (as if Authoritarian Men were ever off duty) and I resolved, then and there, that for the good of the world, even if it was the last thing I ever did, I would slip free of these restraints and personally rip his throat out before Bill could do it and then Bill and I would make good our escape through that window that must have led to a formal garden gone to weeds, just outside of my view.
“You were at the airport,” the Authoritarian Man returned to the interrogation.
“That’s right, Jim,” I resumed, “Bill was jumping from one paw to another; doing a little doggy greeting dance. Katelynn was dressed in her finest glad rags; slyly chewing on the earpiece of her shades and giving me her best come-hither look. You know, they talk about ‘falling into each other’s arms’ but that was kinda it. Kind of melting into each other.”
“Jim, you ever have a homecoming like that?” (Oh, what a sly dog am I; trying to tease out something from the interrogator’s past. Maybe he was ex-military; maybe he had been stationed overseas.)
“So you arrived home without incident,” the Authoritarian Man inexorably continued. No sale.
Ye
s, Jim, we arrived home without incident.
Most of my senior Game Design class was there. The party had been going since noon when I called from St. Louis to tell Katelynn that I was on my way home; and, yeah, we had a fat contract and she should call the ‘A list’ from the class because we had a short-fuse deal and this class just flipped from theoretical to practical. They even put up streamers and balloons and a banner that read, “General Grant the sidewalk is built.”
“Why would they do that?”
It’s a reference to General Grant’s victorious return to Galena, Illinois after the Civil War. When he was asked about his political aspirations he replied, “the only office I desire is mayor of Galena so I can build a new sidewalk from my house to the depot.”
“So you taught your students some history, then?”
I taught my students to learn everything you can about anything you can because you never know when it will save your ass some day.
“I would now like to go over a list of those in attendance at this party,” the Authoritarian man said.
I’m sure your list is better than my memory and besides, Jim, I wouldn’t give you any names even if you beat the crap out of me. What is this, the McCarthy hearings?
I immediately cringed in anticipation of the roundhouse left.
The Authoritarian Man hauled off as if to hit me again but at the last moment he pulled up short and gently smoothed the thin fabric of the hospital gown that covered my right shoulder. “You’re right,” he said, “we don’t need any more names; we have them all. What happened next?”
After the congratulations and the hugs and the kisses, when everybody quieted down and Bill got a soup bowl of beer, I outlined the project ahead of us. I divided the group into teams: graphics, game engine, testing, GUI (I pronounced it gooey).
“What is goo-ee?”
Gooey: Graphical User Interface; it’s how the user interacts with the program. For Word™ (you know, the program you use to write up all of your reports on me) it’s the pull-down menus, the toolbars and dialog boxes. Games, by nature, have to have a much more intuitive, obvious, interface: point at a target and click to shoot, move the mouse to go in that direction, that kind of thing.
“Okay, Gooey is G-U-I,” (he pronounced each letter for effect), “got it.”
After I broke them up into teams I explained that we had six short weeks to pull this whole thing off and I told them I would pay them each $1,000 a week for their work.
“That was generous of you.”
It’s what they deserved. Not that they got anything more than the first month’s pay anyway. I did mention I’m still owed $140k, right?
“Yes, you did. What happened next?”
What happened next was Nick Constantine, Katelynn and Bill and I went back to my minuscule office off of the kitchen for a private confab. Katelynn popped the top on another can of Miller Genuine Draft for Bill and poured it into his soup bowl. Bill hunkered down with the bowl between his front paws and attacked the suds with a desperate thirst. You know, Doc Farmer said some alcohol is good for his heart. Bill prefers American beers. I don’t know why. You’d think that a Rottweiler-German Shepherd mix would like a nice Pilsner; a St. Pauli Girl, a Beck’s. Go figure.
The rain had let up. The clouds moved on and somewhere there was a rainbow. “It’s getting late, I’m getting tired and I want to see Bill again, before I say anything more,” I said.
Ten minutes later they led Bill back into the room. He looked better than the last time I saw him; at least he looked dry and he managed a couple of cautious wags with his tail but then he turned towards the Authoritarian Man and I could see the hair rise along his spine and his lips pull back from his teeth.
They let me touch his muzzle before they led him back out and the interrogation resumed and I returned to that night in my house three weeks and two days ago.
“Nick handed me another FedEx envelope that had just arrived an hour before,” I began. It contained a disk and the carbon copy of a wire transfer to a bank account that Stanhope had set up. The disk contained the topographical data for the White House and Congress. I thought I would just volunteer the information to the Authoritarian Men because they had to have the disk by now. It was in a file format that I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t in USGS DEM (United States Geological Survey Digital Elevation Model), DTED (Digital Terrain Elevation Data used by the U. S. Department of Defense), AutoCAD, LightWave, Maya or 3D Studio Max; but there was a readme file on the disk that gave the data structures and the file header format so it wasn’t that big of a deal; at least I assumed it wasn’t that big of a deal. I gave it to Nick to sort out.
The wire transfer receipt I gave to Katelynn and told her that she was now Chief Financial Officer. I put Bill in charge of security.
“Bill is a dog,” the Authoritarian Man said.
“It’s a joke,” I replied.
“It’s not funny to us. If we cannot trust the veracity of your statements, this…” and here he motioned vaguely towards me strapped to the gurney with the IV drip in my arm, “this, is just going to get worse.” He fixed me with what appeared to be his most sincerely apologetic expression.
That scared the shit out of me. I was beaten, restrained and drugged. How was this going to get worse? I didn’t want to find out. “I was just kidding about Bill, okay?”
“Apology accepted. No more jokes, now please continue,” the corners of the Authoritarian Man’s mouth pulled back into a disingenuous smile displaying an impressive amount of expensive dental work and a fragment of romaine lettuce from lunch wedged behind an incisor.
Well, Katelynn objected to being assigned to bookkeeping and she was right. After Nick she was the best student coder I had and she was a damn sight easier to work with in general. She also knew more about implementation of the BILL equation than anybody else. I grabbed my unfinished Ph.D. dissertation off the shelf and threw the heavy binder to her. “Okay, Kate,” I said, “you’re on. The BILL equation has never been used in a full-scale simulation so I guess it’s time to see if I’m completely full of shit or not.” Kate smiled. I appreciated that she didn’t jump on the easy punch line: that I was, indeed, full of it regardless if the BILL equation was valid or not.
Then I sat down and started writing timelines, critical path charts and pseudo-code for each of the groups to get them started and keep everybody on the project on the same page. You know doing a project like this on a hurry-up schedule is like orchestrating the construction of a skyscraper; everybody’s got to deliver their materials at the right time or the whole operation collapses pretty quick. The guys modified my home WiFi, you know wireless, network, added some password protection so baddies parked outside the house couldn’t steal anything and set up everybody’s machine to automatically log in and verify.
“Hold it right there”, the Authoritarian Man stopped me in midstream, “please explain WiFi network and baddies parked outside your house.”
WARdriving.
“Please explain WARdriving,” the Authoritarian man asked.
WAR stands for Wireless Access… uh, something, Routing, maybe, I dunno. I can’t remember all the acronyms anymore. I’ve got a wireless router in my house. It’s what allows my students to show up with their laptops and instantly connect to the network. But, you know, it has a broadcast radius of, maybe, a hundred yards. Anybody within that range can jack into the network if it’s not password protected. WARdriving is the latest fad. Kids drive around with laptops and a receiver – you can make them out of fifteen feet of copper wire and a Pringles potato chip can – and look for open networks. They use a program called Network Stumbler. It detects open WiFi networks. Hey, Jim, this ain’t rocket science.
Even rocket science ain’t rocket science.
I’ve never told anybody this.
I once got a fan letter from a group at NASA. They said they loved one of my wargames. They spent all their free time – and maybe some of their not so free time – playing i
t. They even devoted a backchannel of the NASA network for team play. They wrote to me, “If there are any problems on the next mission you’re responsible because we love ‘Bushido Lords’ so much and we play it every chance we get.”
That was the Challenger team.
Fuck. Blame me for that, too.
“Hey, Jim,” I asked, “look, I’m cooperating with you, okay? How ‘bout if you put me in a wheelchair, tie me up like a Christmas goose, and let me take Bill out for a walk in the garden tomorrow?”
Jim thought about it for a good long while. He got up from his bedside chair and turned his back to me; more conversations between Jim and his unseen Masters on hidden earphones. After what seemed like fifteen minutes he turned back towards me.
“Not tomorrow, but maybe soon,” he finally said. “You keep cooperating and maybe I can arrange an outing,” he said.
Good, I thought. You let Bill and me out into that garden gone to weeds and you, Jim, are a dead man and Bill and I will be long gone before the last of your blood pumps out from the hole Bill is going to rip in your fucking throat.
CHAPTER 2.3
Another day, another breakfast served on stainless steel – the sound of serrated knife on metal plate set my teeth on edge – another day that I got stronger, another day closer to freedom. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I was certain - as certain as any slave of the day of Jubilee - that Bill and I would inevitably be free. We would have our shot, our chance, our roll of the dice. We would take it and we would be free.
And so another day of interrogation began.
“You have just assembled your programming team,” Jim said, “and now what happened?”
I turned my head to see the Authoritarian Man wearing the same black suit, white dress shirt and black tie that he wore every day. Did he have an infinite number of these suits? Were Bill and I prisoners of the fucking Mormons?
