by Grady Ward
But it wasn’t technology that was the key for Sam now. It was people. Diverse, noisy, communicative. Living outside his imagination. Sam heard the honk of a horn in the night; the distinctive three note fanfare of the minibus operator whose corporate motto was “God Bless this Fiat.”
The S/L Motor Drivers Union on Charlotte Street. That is where there was sure to be drivers handing out any time day or night. Sam joined a line of people trudging with their goods at the side of the road heading east. In the bobbing candlelight, Sam saw a lizard with yellow head and shoulders jump off the bed of a handcart fashioned from random planks and an automobile rear axle. With the drivers, he had hope. Maybe some food, maybe they know a charger or computer he could use.
Near the equator, the period of sunrise and sunset was very short. One instant it is light. Then darkness. Then once again, broad daylight as if the gloom had been a dream washed out in a sudden downpour. While it was still dark and only pregnant with the possibility of dawn, Sam felt much more hopeful as he squatted around the brazier that the drivers’ boys kept fired up during the night. He flashed his stolen smart phone as if a membership card and tentatively took a handful of rice and fish from the common bowl. No one challenged his right to share the food.
Dangling the smart phone between two slender fingers as if it were the most commonplace totem in an animism of wealth, he asked the boys if they knew of computers. “Computer!” one said, “Computer!” and then glanced into the darkness at an abacus propped against a cement block wall overgrown with vine.
“No. Machine! Electric machine, computer!” Sam said. The various creoles made communicating a game of ghosts.
“We sell provision here.” One of the boys enigmatically responded. “Computer, there!” the boy pointed at a driver enjoying a pink Elephant brand smoke while lounging against his battered taxi.
Sam rose, sauntered up to the driver, displaying his smart phone and asked “can you take me to a computer. I would like to use the Internet for a few minutes.”
The driver whose lower lip puckered into a trellis of white keloid scars looked at him appraisingly. “Cost money,” he said, “where is your money.” Sam couldn’t tell what tribe the man was from, but it wasn’t Mende. Sam showed him the smart phone from a distance. The driver reached for it, but Sam kept it just out of reach. There were a handful of incandescent bulbs shining in their aluminum reflectors scattered around the Union and sparkles of light were flashing off the smart phone into Sam and the driver’s eyes.
Sam could see the greed grow in the driver’s face.
“OK. I take you to computer, my cousin, you use if you give me that. It work?”
“Battery needs charging. Works fine,” said Sam.
“We charge. We see. If mobile don’t work, you get a machete beating. You deal?”
Sam had no doubt that the driver did have a Chinese machete, patiently honed and oiled with palm oil in a rag mounted on the driver’s door or under his seat. Violence was an element of survival in Freetown. A good driver could drive mostly between the road hazards, fix a wreck, find your food, change your money, get your lady or boy whores with their palm wine—or cut off your head with only the regret that the money and property taken off your corpse would be your last contribution to his welfare.
“My cousin works in hotel, he has computer,” the driver said, “get in the front.”
With the driver chauffeuring him, Sam was once again driving toward the sea. There were of course no street lamps. Pedestrians weaving their way around piles of rotting refuse suddenly loomed out of the dark into the taxis mis-aimed headlights. Both of the headlights worked though after a fashion and the driver was able to get to a dilapidated concrete building in less than ten minutes. There was a torn green awning over the poorly lit entrance that spelled out “Lord’s House Hot.” The driver took his machete and sucking on what was left of his lower lip, directed Sam into the building.
Inside the Hotel, which looked as if it had been decaying even as it had been designed by an impaired imagination, had a single bare bulb shining in the foyer. Beside a thick wooden counter that looked as if the most solid element of furniture that Sam could see, an office with open door and flickering candle showed some movement as a shadow emerged into the lobby.
“Cousin Kena!” the boy emerging from the office said to the driver.
“Cousin MJ!” driver said in return, slapping the boy on his shoulder, “boy want to use computer. He trade mobile that he says works fine,” the driver, MJ, slapped the flat of his machete against his thigh and sucked even more vigorously at his lower lip. Sam showed off the smart phone to the boy, moving it in the bulb’s light to give off a flash. The boy held out his hand for the phone and Sam reluctantly handed it over under MJ’s gaze. The boy took it gingerly, turned it over and weighed it in his hand, then studied it carefully and pressed the power switch. The display lit for a second and then turned off. The boy shook the mobile and said, “Needs charge.”
The driver said nothing but kept slapping his thigh and sucking his lip. Kena, the night manager, said, we have a charger for this. He went back into his office and Sam heard some rummaging around in a box. Kena came out with a tiny charger with a tangled cord. He plugged it into a yellowed wall outlet, took his finger off the mobile’s charging port and plugged it in. As if in sympathetic greeting or imminent execution, the main foyer bulb momentarily dimmed and then resumed its steady unhealthy yellow glare.
“We have power,” Kena said, unnecessarily, “mobile charge in no time.”
Sam knew of course that while the smart phone could be charged and used in some manner the fact that here it couldn’t make calls or browse the Internet might cause an unpleasant confrontation with the driver, MJ, who had not only wasted petrol to give Sam a right to the Lord’s House Hotel, he was wasting time and possibly fares by staying.
Sam said, “Computer?” The boy motioned him into the office. While the boy chatted with the driver, both looking at the polished screen of the smart phone, Sam sat at an ancient PC that was covered with paper ledgers and a ashtray that appeared to double as a spittoon. Carefully moving the stacks of paper and other detritus to the floor, he reached behind the old CRT monitor and pressed the rocker switch on. An amber light started glowing in the front bezel. Relieved, Sam, reached behind the ancient computer box, found a corresponding switch, and rocked it on as well. While there was no lights this time, the box emitted a arpeggio of beeps and a fan hum that seemed to turn in fits as it blew out pieces of dust and lint that had accumulated in the fan ducting.
The PC booted into a version of MS-DOS that apparently predated Windows. In some ways, Sam preferred the command prompt to a shuffle, point, aim, and click interface, and just typed “ls.”
From outside the office the driver shouted, “Boy! What is your name?”
Sam, becoming engrossed in the half-remembered MS-DOS command set, replied “Sam Lion-McNamara.” Too late, he thought that it might have been better to make up a name, but he was absorbed in finding the Internet access application to verify he could get on line. With a few keystrokes, he launched the terminal application program; with the appropriate whistling and hand-shaking the computer used the Sierra Tel lines to get a 300 bps connection. But the connection just echoed a > prompt at him and he couldn’t enter an Internet address. Searching the application directory, Sam found a promising application called WebMan and launched it. It launched a rough graphical user interface that had a box that Sam could enter an address. He entered the web page for Tor and let the ancient PC slowly redraw the screen to the Tor home page. He needed to download a Tor client that would work under DOS.
While Sam was working on these technical problems, the driver and the manager were talking about the smart phone and Sam Lion-McNamara. The driver went back to his taxi where the radio was occasionally blurting out a call from this driver to that, mostly discussing where they could get petrol or cheap wine. He got on the radio and chatted up the ether while
Sam also chatted up his digital version.
While it time seemed to slow and the night turned closer to dawn, Sam was eventually able to log on to his Ouest account in Darknet and oh so slowly read his fresh mail. His world was in computer time now and his mind, temporarily detached from the muggy danger of this decaying hotel, raced to consider the possibilities of what he was reading. A person called Xtance sent him some fresh code and a plea. Sam immediately grasped the significance of the code and what he was asked to do. His mind raced on how best to accomplish what was requested.
Sam emerged from his computer ratiocination and simultaneously became aware of three things. First, that there was some kind of argument among several people outside the hotel, two, he distinctly heard “Lion-McNamara” and over the clipping audio of the taxi loudspeaker and, three, he heard another vehicle, heavy and large by its sound, burst up to the hotel and stop with yawl of tires. Individually, each of these signaled possible danger to Sam; together they caused Sam to react without thinking.
Off the chair, knocking the computer mouse to the floor, out of the office to the surprised face of night-manager Kena and turning away from brilliant headlights outside to the darkness into the depths of the hotel. The last thing that Sam did before he escaped into the darkness was to tear the partially charged mobile smart phone away from its mooring and clutched its warmth in his palm as he sprinted into the blackness.
Chapter 47
“Yes, First Celestial. We are surrounding the building of the computer lab where we believe Baroco is.” Security Throne Cassandra Jones was in the back of a rented Lexis with her laptop open on the right and a WiFi to Internet box on the seat to her left. Her Glock was hard between her thighs. She could see the fresh Crux shaved into the buzzed back of the head of her driver who doubled as her security escort while in Boston. Next to the driver was a liaison from the Boston office of the FBI, Andrew Sahas; Cassandra had specifically recruited Andrew herself among her New York parichoners to apply to the academy several years before. The Church had both physically trained him and, despite Bureau recruitment rules that were laxer than their requirements from the 60’s, the Church qualified him with a J.D. degree from Santa Clara University deep in the heart of Silicon Valley, along with a joint public accounting certificate that he obtained while subsequently in the finance program at Boston University. He worked in legal at Apple Boston while he applied to the academy to acquaint him with high technology patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. He had of course several other Church-based skills that did not appear on his C.V.
Although he was pushing the upper age limit for an appointment, he was selected for the academy on his first try. The background check was a particular lacunae of the Bureau, anything alleged to do with religion was held to be off-limits with respect to an investigation. Besides all the parichoners who were interviewed—and there were none but parichoners who knew him as a child—had only glowing, positive things to say about him. Almost as if scripted, they were so full of praise for this honest, moral, helpful and intelligent young man.
He graduated with special mention before assigned as a Special Agent to the Boston office. But while the Bureau was his sworn employer, the Church was his absolute master. He would do anything ordered by the Security Throne. As a child on the Games Machine, he remembered the phrase “To a truly religious man nothing is tragic.”
“The fix is progressively is being successfully better resolved. “We have the block; we just need the specific building now.”
Cassandra’s car was parked in a fire zone, a plastic Boston Police sticker electrostatically attached to the inside of the driver’s window.
She heard Michael Voide’s voice warped from satellite and encryption phase jitter speak to her as if to a close friend. “The Church needs Baroco dead now. Anyone around him deserves whatever fate hands to them as well. But we need this to happen now. The Church is on the verge of greatness, the very edge.” She imagined him speaking into her ear, warm lips touching, humid breath condensing on intimate folds. She hated him, he was her rapist. She did not give consent, but she could not say “no.”
“Yes, First Celestial. Within minutes.”
Cassandra Jones closed her phone, glanced at her laptop, said “765,” closed the laptop, and addressed Parichoner Special Agent Sahas: “Andrew, we are getting out now. We know the address of the safe house where Baroco is hiding. We are going to stop a terrorist from damaging the infrastructure of the United States and punish an attacker on the Church. Do you understand?”
Andrew looked back at Cassandra. “Yes, Throne. Immediately.” He felt his excitement responding to her direction as he opened the passenger door and stood ready to accompany her into the morning foot traffic. Unintelligible conversations surrounded them in these neighborhoods of mixed warehouse and store fronts that had seen much better days. He had missed that thing since his times with the Games Machine and in interview with Crux staff. Not since the last time he had been ordered by a Church superior had he been so aroused.
Chapter 48
Xtance was fanning herself with her faux stole, tugging on one pigtail, and considering what to do next. She had been alerted by recognition software and web cams strategically placed on the block that a major police action was coming down. The software checked every few seconds and counted the number of Boston police insignia within the view of the wireless web cams surrounding the block whether the shadow lab was located. It had become the highest by a factor of three than the software had ever measured. On the surface, the fact that there was no increase in emergency siren level detected by the cams seems to contradict the logo count, it was worse to her. It meant that in some sense, this operation was somewhat stealthy. Although apparently the need for police units outstripped their need to appear in unmarked vehicles.
Xtance could make a general announcement, but decided against it. She interrupted Baroco and Margaret who were in line for a petit breakfast of coffee, non-gluten toast and some a few sections of grapefruit. “Time to go. There is going to be action here pretty damn quick. I’ll tell you on the way.” She motioned toward the curtained second corner opposite of where Joex had come in. Margaret said, “Get going. I’ll let people know of the Omega.” This was almost a game to the shadow lab. Over the forty-year course of its existence, it had had to move more than a score of times. Sometimes it was the fire marshal, sometimes the police, sometimes the owner or building manager, or sometimes just that its location was becoming too well known by strangers. The Omega was the code name for packing it up and waiting for the lab to reconstitute somewhere else. After a while through personal contact, the word would get out and interested MIT people and their friends would accrete once more as pebbles under the weak but persistent gravity of untrammeled knowledge.
The Omega protocol went something like this: you have minutes to take your personal property out. The prophet who announced the protocol announced the exact number. After that time expired, everything left was trash. In fact, anything left was to explicitly become trash, invited to be destroyed—which in itself was a great deal of fun to the stragglers. The wall that had leaned against it bolt cutters, sledgehammers, and axes constantly reminded everyone of the protocol. It was like a Burning Man festival with computer equipment and random gadgets as the final offering.
Wile Margaret was darting around and personally alerting all that she could see, Xtance herself began the countdown, “OMEGA. TEN MINUTES.” Immediately, as if cued from a script, people started purposefully moving on the floor and shimmying down the wall-ladders. Not surprisingly, most of the bedding and computers were abandoned, but a several laptops were unplugged and removed and hard drives and small electronics were slid out of enclosures to be put into a cargo pocket or backpack. It was presumed that any data storage that survived Omega would be securely encrypted. And paper documents were not so much forbidden or discouraged, but—unstylish. The goal of Omega was to quit the premises in a way that left few clues upon the purpose
or identity of the participants. It wasn’t really a secret that the participants were mainly MIT students and faculty, it was that the reputation and positive relationship of the campus and the city were so positive that the police never investigated too far on who did what to whom despite angry property owners.
It was the dissolution of a rave. After taking whatever personal property you chose to, you merely left and made you way back separately into your public life. By walking, bicycle, bus, or car pool; whether to a dormitory, or to a parents’ home, or to a nameless homeless destination, you were to evaporate to sublime, to become temporarily invisible to the common purpose here at the shadow lab.
Then the trashing party would begin, but even so after a few minutes of wanton destruction—only physical force, personally wielded, was permitted, never power tools, explosives or fire—the final revelers would leave. True, a huge mess would be left behind. But more often than not in the past a neat stack of ten one-thousand dollar United States Postal money orders would be mailed anonymously to the registered owner in compensation of their cleanup. After forty years, a lot of MIT graduates owed their best memories and some portion of their material success to their version of the shadow lab back in their day. MIT, as many institutions, had their fraternity row, their secret clubs and organizations—but in the end, it was the shadow lab that was unique among all the worldwide gatherings of teachers and those who would be taught. The shadow lab is the best picture of the MIT intellect.
