Assured Destruction

by Stewart, Michael F.

  She’s so right—maybe they should be arresting me instead.

  Tule follows the real Ellie on Twitter and her tweets are pretty pathetic tonight: The trip was a surprise for my parent’s anniversary, how’d anyone know?

  Woe is me. Evidently the moving service was actually legit. The real thieves paid for the contents of the home to be moved to a storage company, from where it was subsequently removed. Paid cash. The door was open when the movers got there. To me it seems like the real robber was showing off by clearing the place out so well. Who would want people’s old paperback books and garage-sale knickknacks? Sure, rob the place, but why go to such extremes? It’s like they were trying to send a message, like they knew they had all the time in the world.

  I scroll down through Ellie’s tweets and find what I am really looking for. I grit my teeth. Karl helped clean up. His shirt got all clingy with sweat, and he had this man-smell, I know #YUCK, right?

  So not #yuck. So, so not yuck. I pull at my shirt, which is feeling a little damp.

  In usual Ellie style, the same day she insults me, she asks for help. She’s sent me an email asking for a favor. I really can’t believe her sometimes. She’s such a destructive force, yet so lost when it comes to anything technical.

  Can you believe how Hannah made fun of me? I mean, it was so unfair. My only clothes are the dirty ones from Paris. Can you do something funny to this? PLEASE!? she asks. Attached is a picture of Hannah.

  Boohoo.

  “Paris,” I say and shake my head. Amazing how she managed to slip in her travel destination.

  If I didn’t need to distract myself so badly, I might have told her to go choke on the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps I am inspired by Jonny’s artistry, but whatever it is, I pull the image of Hannah into Photoshop and set to work.

  I’m self-taught regarding most things technical, but if you ask me, this is the stuff they should be teaching in school. I inspect the picture with an artistic eye, identifying her key features.

  I trace around her hair, make a layer, and then apply a filter. Suddenly she has huge, fuzzy hair—check. Balloon pants—check. Let’s see if we can’t make her a little green—another easy filter application. Something—of course—needs to be coming out of her ears. And why stop there? How about her nose? Eyeballs are for pretty girls, and it only takes using the super awesome bloat tool to inflate her from plump to Stay Puft Marshmallow zombie.

  I save the image and reply to Ellie: Anything for you, Ellie, just don’t call me poor again or I’ll makeover a photo of you. Just kidding. Off the image goes! I am not kidding.

  The response from Ellie is immediate. ROFLOL! And sorry I was such a bitch today. <3 Just kidding.

  A cold flush runs through me as I take another look at the new Hannah. The problem with email is that it’s so easy to send yet so impossible to get back. I glance at Tule’s and Hairy’s terminals. I really should be figuring out this Shadownet coincidence, but I also have a chance to rewrite my English essay. I pick up the book and start in on my homework.

  The Bell Jar, I discover, is not an easy book to kick off anything for in one night. I read to the word hullaballoo and I change the title of my essay to “Hullabaloo” and am pleased.

  When it comes to decide whether to use the still-plagiarized Bell Jar essay, Gumps thinks, Time will tell.

  Hairy is staring at me.

  Why would you ever send naked pictures to your boyfriend? You just know boys are going to show them around, if not post them to their Facebook accounts when you break up. Anyways, the whole child porn ring is still quite the hullaballoo on Facebook. Evidently while Harry was arrested for distributing child pornography, Astrid was booked for its creation. Which is ridiculous.

  It’s weird because the Harry I know—and I’m not talking terminal five of Shadownet, featuring Chewbacca as an avatar—Harry would never have shared those pictures. Harry is a smart, quiet kid who runs the chess club. I use his alter ego Hairy to learn about how geeky, late-to-puberty boys think, as well as to play a little chess online without anyone being the wiser. I’m surprised he had a girlfriend at all, let alone one he managed to strip the clothes off of.

  A little guilty about the picture I doctored of Hannah, I have the brain surge that I can help Harry and Astrid. After all, Hairy is family and I don’t leave my family in the lurch, unlike my father. First I need to determine if those pictures came from Shadownet itself, and if not, then I can discover from where. If I’m at fault, they’d be on his drive. A thrill of excitement shoots through me. I can do something.

  The essay moved lower on my list of priorities, I kick over to Hairy, whose bushy face growls back at me, and I log in. Regrettably, the easiest way for me to find the pic is to find the Facebook post. I’m not keen on searching for porn.

  Unfortunately the picture was removed from Facebook, but I remember the guys talking at school about linking to it. I click through Harry’s friends—and I use that term so loosely, he has three hundred and twelve (and I bet a hundred of those just wanted to see the pic)—and finally I come upon one that mentions he’d seen the photo on a porn site.

  Okay, well there are a million porn sites, but I feel badly for Astrid. Once it’s out there, it’s gone, there ain’t no taking it back. Permanent and distributable. I friend the guy who wrote on Harry’s wall and sure enough he accepts me in twenty seconds, becoming his eight hundred and sixty-fourth closest friend. A minute later I’m on his wall and have the link to the porn site. I cringe and click.

  There’s Astrid with a half dozen other girls, naked. I copy and paste the URL. I’ll send it to the cops when this is all over. Astrid is fifteen, this is totally illegal. I also copy the image file and save it. I dig into its properties, learning the file size and type, which is all I need.

  I sigh and open Hairy’s hard drive.

  It doesn’t take long. I sort by file type and then by file size.

  After a few minutes I hang my head. I find the photo in a folder marked Love. Pics, lots of them, but only a few risqué ones. I hit delete, but know that it’s way, way too late for that. I don’t know what to do? I can’t help Harry or Astrid if it makes me look like I’m the one who did it.

  The ramifications wash over me with a cold sweat. Someone may have access to Shadownet. What are the alternatives? Harry’s computer was hacked months ago and the pictures are only posted now? He did do it? What about Ellie’s home break-in and the health clinic’s records? This is way too much of a coincidence. I feel violated. I feel. I guess I feel like every one of these people would feel like if they knew they existed on Shadownet.

  I suck.

  I’m a hack. A crook.

  I need to shut Shadownet down and go to the police. Anyone I ever loaded up here could be a future victim. But who is the enemy? Why would they do this to me?

  It’s already ten o’clock when my mom’s voice comes over the shop PA system. “School day tomorrow, Janus.”

  The proximity alarm goes off—this time it plays the theme music to Jaws.

  I take a hard look at Shadownet. It’s a veritable sinkhole of time. Sometimes I’ll sit down for a minute, and two hours will evaporate. I glance over at the image of my mom, looking like she’s ready to take flight. An urge to surf through pics of my dad strikes me, pictures of him holding me, hugging my mom, laughing. The need surges so powerfully I’m left drained in its wake.

  With my damage done, I climb the stairs to the warehouse and take the elevator up to the offices. The elevator is one of the reasons why we live here. The other being that we can’t afford a home.

  I lay a big hug across my mom’s bony shoulders as she’s reading a book and kiss her head. She smiles without looking up. I’m like Judas, hanging my mom out to dry like this. I have to tell her.

  “Mom?” I ask.

  She glances up from t
he page.

  “I … uh …” I think about the guilt trip I laid on her last night and how she’s struggling as it is. If I add more of my problems to her, she could crack, worse she could get sick again. Stress is a big factor in MS flare-ups. I recall her look of disappointment when she asked about the clinic’s hard drives and don’t think I can handle that. I’ve shouldered a lot so far, maybe I can fix this myself.

  “Any dates today I should know about?” I ask instead.

  She shakes her head. “You?”

  “About a hundred new followers,” I say.

  “Well if you can’t have friends, I suppose worshippers are the next best thing.”

  I laugh and swallow hard. “Followers, not worshippers, but I guess you’re right. Tweeting must be a bit like how a god would feel; you can only really respond to a couple of your followers or you’d get nothing done.”

  Checking the time, I see that two hours have indeed passed, and my eyes are grainy with sleep. I enter my office and crawl into the big bed, pulling the duvet over my head. Something is nagging me about this crazy day, something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s going to have to wait as I drift off into the greatest network of all, my brain at sleep.

  Chapter 7

  Anyone catch the chess battle between grandmasters last night? Hairy tweets.

  @Hairysays Did you actually mean to tweet that? Heckleena replies. I’m going to whack you with the queen if you don’t smarten up.

  @Heckleena they played five hours of genius.

  @Hairysays WHACK!

  @Hairysays WHACK!

  @Hairysays WHACK! Bad pawn.

  People are looking at me strangely as I stroll through the atrium, chuckling at the Twitter feed. Looking up, I see that Harry is back and give him a little wave. Yesterday’s hullabaloo has died down; if anything, the atrium is quieter than normal. I don’t see Astrid, though. Would I go back to school after everyone had seen me naked? The thought brings on a wave of shame as I shuffle to computer science class. Even I had seen her naked and I wonder if that makes me complicit, although I’m way beyond complicity, aren’t I? I might as well have done it myself.

  It doesn’t help that my backpack feels heavy with my still-forged English essay. I don’t have English today, so maybe I’ll be able to swing another day’s grace if I can avoid Mrs. French (ironic name for an English teacher, I know). It’s late morning already, so things are looking up.

  “Muh.” Chippy groans the greeting like a confused cow as I enter the computer lab.

  “Huh,” I say back, and he regards me with fat, strangely feminine lips, which he presses together so that they resemble a cat’s anus.

  I sit at the computer screen farthest from Chippy.

  Jonny sits next to me, and I wonder if he does so on purpose, but he isn’t looking—his hair cascades in front of his face. I know that doesn’t mean much; I look through my hair all the time so no one can tell.

  His notebook is beside him, and I let my hair fall over my face so we can both look without looking. Doodles of aliens and patterns in black, red, and blue ink cover the notebook. It’s pretty. I want to tell him, but Chippy cuts me off.

  “Listen up, everyone, listen up. Calm the self down,” he says in a nasal baritone that stops the chatter. “Today we will be making a circle turn into a square using Flash.”

  I roll my eyes and sigh.

  “Do you have a problem, Miss Rose? Muh?”

  I shake my head. Transforming a circle into a square is as basic as it gets in Flash. And let’s face it, Flash isn’t programming; it’s graphic design.

  “Maybe you would prefer to work in Turing code?”

  I shudder at the smirk on his face and shake my head a little more forcefully. Turing code is like putting training wheels on a tricycle, just as useless.

  “Good.”

  I eye Chippy from beneath my veil of hair. He’s smiling, and I wonder if he knows about Shadownet. Did he hack in and steal the pics? Maybe I should give the guy a bit more respect. It wouldn’t have been easy to crack my firewall. Maybe he’s a Black Hat Hacker, a hacker committed to using his powers for evil. Maybe I should look at everyone a little more closely.

  Jonny tucks his hair behind his ears and fiddles in Flash with various forms of ellipses. I complete the task Chippy set for the class in thirty seconds flat. Jonny looks over at mine and watches it repeat in a loop. I shrug, open a new window, and set about building a small city that will wake with the dawn as the sun rises and cars rumble past. That takes me fifteen minutes.

  “Hmm … hmm …,” Chippy says as he looks at it blandly and turns to Jonny. “Good, Mr. Shaftsbury.” And to me: “Keep it simple, Miss Rose. Try again.”

  I sigh and show him my first attempt. He squints at me, and I see his hands ball into fists before he nods. “Good, you may leave.”

  That’s the one thing I like about Chippy’s classes. If I do it right, he doesn’t waste my time.

  I pack up and leave close behind Jonny; now seems like a good opportunity to determine what his drawings of me are all about. He’s walking quickly, wearing these really ratty, old shoes. One of the soles has peeled back and slaps the floor as he walks. The more I look at him, the more I see how tired his clothes are. Frayed pant cuffs, mended hole in his T-shirt. I think back to his mother with her fox stole and high heels and can’t help but hate her a little more. Why was she recycling a three-year-old computer if they’re so dirt poor? Maybe Jonny just likes to dress like an urban prophet. Who knows?

  “Jonny?” I ask, but he’s got earbuds stuck in his ears and is nodding to the music. I jog after him as he pushes through the outer doors. In my peripheral vision I take in the rather large hump of Hannah who cries on a bench. Her hands clench the side of her face. I look from Hannah and back to the escaping Jonny. I run after him, leaving Hannah behind.

  As he clears the stairs, Jonny’s pace quickens. I already look like an idiot, so I run faster, taking the steps down from the school entrance two at a time. I’m gaining as his hips start to sway like a speed walker’s. He stops suddenly and I bowl into him. Lying on the ground, he’s got one hand still on the shoelace he’d bent to tie. From one dangling earbud thumps The Eminem Show. I love Eminem.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  He’s sorry? I swallow.

  “Where are you going?” I ask and he looks away. Is he skipping? Maybe he’s a smoker. My view of him dims.

  His backpack lies on the ground; spray cans have rolled from the open zipper. Cans with white, black, orange, gold, and red caps are scattered over the pavement. I grin at the sight, realizing now why Jonny is wearing ripped clothes. I can make out the paint on them now. He doesn’t want to ruin anything.

  He just opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

  Maybe it’s the terrible essay in my backpack that I’m supposed to turn in, or all the drama at school; maybe it’s the way his teeth gleam. I don’t know, but I blurt: “Can I come?”

  Jonny blushes scarlet and his scraggly hair reminds me of one of those shaggy dogs.

  “Sure.”

  I start to reach out to touch his hair, but his eyes widen and I stop. Instead I crawl over to him on my knees and tie his shoe. I kneel with his foot between my thighs, and the world goes silent except for the pounding of blood in my ears. I triple knot the laces to give my heart time to slow. His foot presses into my legs and I don’t want to move.

  After I stand up, he’s recovered too, and we stuff the spray cans back in his pack before walking together, not talking about much. I’m wondering what the hell just happened and my mind’s having trouble catching up with what’s going on in the rest of my body.

  “Harry, eh?” he asks.

  “I know, right?”

  “Crazy.”

  “Sad.”
<
br />   “Poor Astrid,” he says, and I smile, liking him more. “Do you think Harry did it?”

  I clear my throat of the lump of remorse lodging there. “No, can’t see him doing that. You like rap?”

  “Not really, just Eminem.”

  “Poetry then.”

  “Yeah, and a ripping beat.”

  “And you like drawing,” I add.

  He flushes red again.

  “I mean, I saw your notebook. It’s covered.”

  “If Harry didn’t do it, then who hacked Harry’s Facebook profile?” he asks. I catch his eye, but can’t read his expression. Concerned? Suspicious? How many other people out there are searching for the answer? How many are going to put two and two together and have it equal me? I shrug in response.

  We’re walking through Brewer Park. Kids slip down slides and monkey about a jungle gym, watched by their parents or nannies. It’s cool and I feel fresher and free. I want to check my various profiles and announce on Twitter how amazing it all is, but I resist. Jonny doesn’t appear to have a phone even. Decidedly low tech.

  “You ever try drawing with a tablet?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  I’d bet he could do amazing things with a tablet.

  As we near our destination, he slows to a shuffle as if he’s just remembered something and is delaying the inevitable. I know where we’re headed: the Underpass. It’s this giant concrete canvas for all of the graffiti artists. A legal canvas. I’ve seen it a couple of times. Each year House of PainT holds a hip–hop competition and these amazing dancers come out and spin on their heads while artists fill the air with paint spray.

  I soon find myself walking ahead of him.

  “What’s up?” I ask over my shoulder. I can’t think what Jonny would be regretting in coming here.