The Devil's Analyst

by Dennis Frahmann

  Cynthia had no problem reconstructing the teenage self that danced the polka so long ago. She had been such a dreamer then. She knew she remained the same person, but she wondered how Danny had changed and whether the Danny that dwelled in her snow globe of nostalgia still existed. Once he had been insecure and easily frightened. Surely he had grown.

  “You always were the romantic one,” Danny said. “I guess that’s why I like having you as my friend.”

  The mantel clock began the first of its twelve chimes.

  “Oh, it’s midnight,” wailed Cynthia, “and Josh and Chip aren’t here. They’ll miss the best moment.”

  “Or maybe the worst,” joked Danny. “Remember Y2K!”

  The twelfth tone sounded. And everything went dark.

  Blackness settled in and the music playing softly in the background vanished. The steady blowers of the furnace . . . gone. The usual drone of the large refrigerators in the kitchen—a sound so low and common that Danny seldom noticed it—seemed ominous by its absence. Danny heard only the crackle of the fireplace, the ticking of the mechanical clock, and the whispers of the wind flitting across the snow outside.

  The flickering light from the flaming logs failed to reach the tall ceiling, so the shadows in the curves of the log walls grew even deeper. The glitter of the tree ornaments glinted reflections to cast a dim galaxy of lights on the walls. Beyond the French doors and the snowdrifts, moonlight still illuminated the icy lake. Far in the distance, on the opposite shore and across a dark sentinel of pine spires, Danny thought he saw a glow from the handful of streetlights that defined Thread’s main square. But he couldn’t be sure.

  “Did it happen? Did the computers fail?”

  While Danny thought a touch of fear in Cynthia’s voice would be appropriate, her questions stayed calm, as though a worldwide apocalypse would be just another day.

  “A tree probably fell in the woods, a leftover from last night’s storm,” Danny proclaimed, even though he wasn’t so certain. He recalled all the predictions over the past couple of years and thought that if indeed the modern world was ending, he was glad to be with Cynthia.

  The clock still ticked. The fireplace still burned. The thick walls of a century old building still protected them . . . no matter what their cell phones, Internet, and the electrical world did. Danny was hopeful that whatever occurred, it would soon be resolved.

  “There’s no need to worry,” Danny added, mostly for his benefit. “The power will soon be back.” He thought he detected a stirring in the far reaches of the shadowy room, nearer the doors to the kitchen.

  Cynthia scoffed, “I’m not worried. Let’s light some candles and I’ll play the piano. That’ll show the world!”

  Sudden laughter came from the shadowy reaches. And with that, the lights flared back, the music returned, and the hum of humanity resumed.

  Cynthia immediately understood what had happened and laughed. “Always joking, Josh, aren’t you? Trying to frighten me into a new year? But why bother? We only have one choice . . . to leap forward.”

  Josh Gunderson stepped into the room. His broad smile spread across his tanned face. From the day Danny met him, Josh had always been the lively spark. Everyone liked him.

  A more subdued Chip, trailing Josh by a few steps, also moved quickly into the room to enclose Cynthia in his arms and kiss her. “Happy New Year, darling.”

  Cynthia looked across at Danny, who seemed to be expecting a similar kiss from his lover. But Josh was still too pleased with his practical joke. As slender and trim as the first time he walked into their lives over a dozen years earlier, Josh wasn’t tall or unusually good looking, yet he always seemed the largest personality in the room.

  She wanted to sigh with exasperation. At times, Cynthia grew tired of playing Wendy to this band of boys who refused to grow up. Perhaps she was being unkind, but she wanted them to change. Josh, always trying to be the trickster, playing his jokes that often weren’t very funny. Danny often teetered on the edge as though he were a tightrope acrobat. And although she deeply loved Chip, he was always too quick to fight the battle against the crocodiles and pirates that might lay in wait for the people of his tribe. These eternal boys were all special to her in their own ways, but it was time to move on. She should become a true mother. She didn’t mean to show her exasperation, but audibly sighed.

  “My idea, a little practical joke,” Josh confessed. “Blame me. This place is so remote that I suggested to Chip we could stage our own little experiment to see how the world would react to a computer meltdown. But, then, Cynthia . . .well, what can I say? You’re a champ. Offering to play the piano. You would have been the first to join the band on deck and serenade the sinking of the Titanic.”

  Cynthia wasn’t embarrassed to think that’s exactly what she would have done. “You boys have had your fun. But it’s past midnight, and we’ve waited too long. Let’s break out the champagne and have a toast.” Cynthia raised the volume on the music. “And don’t think you’ve escaped singing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ At 1:00 a.m., we can pretend we’re in Denver.”

  Josh said, “Let’s do it. I’ve got a couple of bottles of a vintage Dom Perignon in the refrigerator. We can toast to a successful year and the start of an even better one.” His smile seemed alive with joy, but Cynthia considered his eyes troubling, as though he was holding something back.

  Cynthia also noticed that her husband Chip was evaluating Josh. He saw something too; she was sure of that.

  She was equally certain that Danny saw nothing.

  Josh felt the urge for fun. After most of the first bottle was drunk, he dragged Cynthia to the center of the living room to dance some drunken version of American swing.

  “It’s celebration time,” he proclaimed.

  Danny and Chip sank into facing chairs, close enough to the action to watch the dancing pair, but maintaining enough distance to avoid being dragged into the festivities. In his mind, Josh dismissed their action as typical wet blanket behavior. Tonight was a time to celebrate, and he was going to make the most of it.

  At the same time, he made sure to dance near enough to overhear what the other two men were saying. He found it helpful to stay on top of everything and everyone, especially Danny.

  He heard Danny ask, “Did everything go okay tonight? We expected you back sooner. We figured once midnight happened in New York without incident, you’d come home.” Josh wanted to hear how Chip would respond, since he wasn’t sure what Chip made of the night’s activity. Most likely, he would have dismissed it as a prank.

  “There was something odd,” Chip said.

  Josh saw worry flit across Danny’s face. It was amusing how Danny so worshipped Chip Grant. As a teenager, Danny was easily swayed and, of course, the good-looking Chip seemed the hero—the Native American star who rode to the rescue of the American Seasons resort after the stock crash. Tonight, despite his quick downing of a glass of champagne, Chip seemed troubled. Maybe he noticed more than Josh thought.

  “What happened?” Danny asked.

  Earlier that evening, Josh had insisted on going with Chip to visit the headquarters of Lattigo Industries. It was his business and he had a job to do. It didn’t matter that Chip never seemed to care that much for him even though they were in business together. Sometimes, he regretted that he had agreed to contract his own burgeoning web business to be hosted on Chip’s recent expansion into server farms. But Danny had been insistent. He always trusted people from their hometown.

  So if hosting this business on servers in northern Wisconsin kept Danny happy, then Josh was fine with it. Besides, he had total trust in Chip and Lattigo Industries. The guy was honest to a fault, and his company had been in the tech field since the eighties, already duplicating computer disks back when Danny was still in high school. Chip always kept this company one step ahead of technology changes. The Lattigo tribe was lucky to have someone as clever as Chip on their side.

  Josh suggested dropping into the Lattigo headq
uarters on New Year’s Eve because visiting the site always reminded Josh of what was possible. Back when Josh was a kid, his Dad’s farm wasn’t that far from where American Seasons now sat. (He felt a momentary twinge thinking of that farm and how his parents died.) The family homestead had been a poor expanse of weak soil, blueberry bogs, and second-growth forests, next to Indian land with no outlook for success.

  Today no swamps or bogs were anywhere in sight. The land had been drained, scraped, filled, and molded until there emerged the broad building site needed for the extravagance now devoted to gambling and family fun. When Josh returned to Thread in his twenties to settle his parents’ estate and first saw the original outlandish drawings depicting a giant theme park, multiple hotels, casinos and convention center, he judged the concept overkill. Still it would have been fantastic if it had actually been built. But the 1987 recession killed that pipe dream.

  Instead, Chip led the successful, if hostile, takeover of the original company, kept the project alive through the financial downturn as other investors bailed, and redesigned the effort to have a gentler footprint on the natural environment. The resulting American Seasons resort was still a massive place. It attracted thousands each week, as many gamblers to the casino as families to the indoor waterpark with its pools and death-defying water slides. A broad promenade lined with spruce and white poplar separated the casino from the family hotel and its shopping center. On one end was the glass enclosed water park. On the other were the modern mid-rise office buildings of Lattigo Industries that held all of the operations of the resort, including the servers that made Josh’s website run. It was there that the Lattigo programming staff had been working on its fixes to the computer problem of the millennium. Josh loved the place and all it represented.

  Josh, still dancing with Cynthia, swirled in closer to eavesdrop better. Chip hadn’t yet answered Danny’s question, so Danny repeated it. “What happened tonight?”

  “Everything was going the way we expected. For some clients, like you and Josh, your software was all written in the nineties. There wasn’t much likelihood that there would be any problems. The “Y2K” issue has been recognized for at least a decade. But still we needed to consider how programs would interact with older systems. And there was the potential that local infrastructure—we are the biggest user of electricity in northern Wisconsin—might fail.

  “But in reality I was there to support the troops. Long ago we identified the weak spots, programmed patches, and tested them. As New Year’s Day rolled out and moved west through major city after major city, we could already see everything was fine. Josh was the one who earlier tonight convinced me we should go on site.”

  When he heard this, Josh smiled. He enjoyed the rush of getting out of the camp, just as he was now enjoying dancing and eavesdropping.

  “So it was midnight in New York, and all our East Coast operations rolled over into the year 2000 just as they should. It was clear we could come home with a clear conscience and have a glass of champagne. Not just because of success in our computer center, but also because friends should take the time to salute the New Year together.

  “That’s when it occurred.”

  “What happened?”

  Josh knew what was coming. He was quite pleased that he had been there to notice it and set the staff in action. Frankly, he enjoyed the moment of risk that occurred.

  “It was an unexpected anomaly in your firm’s files. Josh spotted the issue. I don’t think we would have. But my guys were quickly on top of it. They isolated your servers and accounts. Something was eating up the data. It was like a snake woke up in the East Coast servers as they hit midnight, and started swallowing data like there would be no tomorrow.”

  “Did you stop it?” Danny asked Chip.

  “We wouldn’t have come home if we hadn’t. Once we saw what was happening, it was easy to backtrack and find the culprit. One of our programmers isolated a computer virus programmed to go live at the turn of midnight.”

  “But why?” Danny asked.

  “Doesn’t make any sense. The virus was so easy to find and isolate, almost as though someone left it as a message. Josh dismissed it as some childish prank. But he’s so cavalier. The truth is that it could have destroyed your records, and your business is nothing but information. But Josh just laughed it off.”

  By then, Josh and Cynthia were several feet away, but Josh had heard the entire conversation. With nothing to worry about, he continued to dance. The smile on Cynthia’s face was broad.

  Josh looked over and saw Danny watching, so he smiled too, to encourage Danny to join in. Danny stood up to pretend to dance, and Josh’s smile grew even broader.

  Tonight, after all, was a new year.

  In the morning, Danny felt happy. The air was crisp and cold. Fresh snow thinly blanketed the grounds. The blue skies promised a bright new century.

  Only the four friends occupied the huge house. There was no need for anyone else. The twenty-first century required no throng of servants to maintain life. Today, Danny was doing the cooking. Some circles considered him a culinary expert. In his heart, he knew that description was unwarranted. His limited skill was occasionally finding a clever way to describe food and amuse people. Just because some of those folks started reading his blog about food and dining in Los Angeles years ago didn’t endow him with any real skills. It was that blog that led to a food fan magazine, or ‘zine, then to a website and eventually to the company called Premios.

  But Midwest holiday meals fell well within his comfort zone. In the abundant sunlight of the early afternoon, he would be ready to adorn the table with a glazed ham, mashed potatoes with raisin gravy, sweet potatoes covered with marshmallows, and a green bean casserole. Readers of his old blog might deem such a menu outrageous, but he found such dishes as comforting as well-worn flannel sheets. He only wished that he knew how to deep-fry the doughnuts that his mother once made. Their taste would have been a perfect kickstart to a new millennium.

  Josh strolled into their kitchen. He wanted it to be the showcase of the house, and it was resplendent with the latest in stainless steel appliances and a large butcher-block island. In the corner a small table was set for dinner. In their designer’s notes, that space was intended primarily as a place for the caterers when they had large parties. But Danny always considered it the perfect breakfast nook, and now he noticed how Josh looked at his festive setup with dismay.

  “We have a dining room, you know. We don’t need to eat in here.”

  “The big room is too lonely.”

  So they ate in the kitchen. Josh never argued with Danny on things that Danny actually cared about. That’s why Danny loved him. The year they first met, when Josh had returned to Thread when his parents died, the two of them started their romance. By the time summer arrived, Josh had convinced Danny that he should leave northern Wisconsin and go to college in Los Angeles. He agreed at first, but then fear took hold. Even though he stayed behind when Josh returned to the West Coast, Josh never abandoned Danny. He knew Danny just needed time, and when he was ready to venture away, Josh was there to help and to make him smile.

  On that New Year’s Day, with the heat and aroma of the food, and the sunlight that streamed across the tile floor, the kitchen was infused with a spirit of optimism. It infected all four of them: Cynthia and Chip, Danny and Josh. They were young. They were rich. They were friends. Everything was surely possible.

  “What were you guys talking about last night?” Cynthia asked, looking at Chip and Danny.

  For a moment, Danny didn’t understand her question, but then realized she must be referring to what happened in the computer center. He wasn’t certain he fully understood so he let Chip answer.

  Chip stared at Josh for a moment before he replied. “I was telling Danny about an incident that happened with their company’s files last night.”

  Josh set his champagne glass down with more force than required, and Danny thought it an odd reaction, especiall
y when Josh said, “Why are you so obsessed with someone’s childish prank?”

  “Do you really think that’s all it was?” Chip batted back.

  “What else? Who would have a reason to mess with us?”

  “Really. You don’t think you have any enemies?”

  Danny wondered what had gotten into Chip. Of course, they didn’t have enemies. The very thought that people might hate them made him deeply uncomfortable. Josh and he were good people. They treated their employees well. Everyone liked them.

  Josh shrugged his shoulders.

  Chip wasn’t willing to let it go. “Your website is full of gossip about the rich and famous. Maybe someone is carrying a grudge, and hired a hacker to go after you.”

  “Because of a shot of a star flashing more than she planned when she stepped out of a limo? Really?”

  “Then there’s the fact that you’re also a successful gay couple. Lots of people don’t like your lifestyle.”

  Danny found this offensive, but Josh just laughed. “There are a lot of gay people richer and more famous than us. We’re hardly worth anyone’s time or attention.”

  Chip was not deterred. “Last night was not random. The world’s full of crazies. Think about that guy who was just caught trying to bomb LAX on New Year’s Eve, the one they call the Millennium Bomber . . . ”

  Danny looked toward Cynthia for help. This was not the point of his holiday dinner. Cynthia, catching his glance, raised her glass.

  “Enough of that,” she said. “It’s time for New Year’s resolutions and celebrating. Now that you own this place, we’ll have no excuse not to spend more time together. I resolve we do this more often.”

  They raised their glasses in acknowledgement, and Danny was relieved the small storm had passed. These three people were his best friends in life. Without them, life would seem empty.