by Brian Olsen
Chapter Fifteen
Pete flying
Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, Pete Marino drove south on highway 87 as fast as the law allowed. He had stopped for a late lunch/early dinner in Albany, and was afraid he was going to get stuck in rush hour traffic before making it to his sister’s house in Newark. He was eager to tell Alan what he had learned from his tech-geek client, and what with the attempt on Caitlin’s and Mark’s lives the day before, the decision they had made to wait until they could talk in person was looking less and less like a good idea.
“Bitch, are you even listening to me?” came Kevin’s voice from all around him. Pete’s phone connected wirelessly to the car’s speaker system, and he could control it all vocally. He had no idea how it worked but he loved it.
“I’m listening, Kevin, sorry,” he said. “I’m driving, I need to pay attention to the road, too.”
Kevin was still at Pete’s apartment, waiting for him to get home. He hadn’t left Pete’s side from the time he had dashed over after a late night show at three o’clock early Monday morning, still in full Annie Hooker regalia, until Pete had left for upstate that morning. Kevin had spent all that time trying to distract Pete from the gruesome spectacle he had witnessed with gossip, trashy movies and alcohol. It had been surprisingly effective.
“Fuck the road. The road isn’t dating a cop on the DL. The road doesn’t need advice.”
“The road wouldn’t pretend that its best friend hadn’t already given it advice just because it wasn’t the advice the road wanted to hear.”
“I can hear you smiling. I don’t know how but I can literally hear you smiling.”
Pete smiled. Pete always smiled. He didn’t do it on purpose, at least not all the time. Mostly it was just the way his face worked. Smiling was his face’s default setting.
Throughout his life people had tried to tell him smiling was inappropriate in certain situations, but he didn’t buy it. He was an expert smiler, and he could tailor his smile to any occasion.
When he was nine, his father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His decline was long and painful, and Pete’s mother was forced to take care of eight children, the oldest fourteen and the youngest a baby, on her own while preparing for the imminent loss of her husband. She held her family together with a smile on her face. There was no falseness in it, no denial. The smile was for her sake as much as for theirs.
Pete learned from watching his mother that a smile over pain wasn’t always a mask. Sometimes it was a shield.
When his father finally succumbed, Pete’s mother stopped smiling, so Pete started. At the funeral, his aunts and uncles worried that he didn’t understand what had happened. At the reception at their home afterwards, his mother had hugged him, and thanked him, and asked him to smile for the both of them. He had done so ever since.
When Pete had told Kevin that story, the response had been, “So when I asked you if there were some fucked up psychological scars behind your constant smiling, and you said no, you were lying.”
When he had told Alan, the response had been, “Your mother sounds amazing.”
“Bitch, are you ignoring me? I know you’re not ignoring me.”
“Love you, bitch.”
“Don’t change the subject. What time are you getting back? I need a drink.”
“It’ll be a few hours. I need to drop off the car at Marisa’s place in Jersey, then take the train back to the city, then I need to go to Alan’s for a while.”
“Another date with your mid-life crisis?”
“Don’t be catty. I like him. A lot. We really shared something this weekend.”
“You shared a trauma, honey. That leads to group therapy, not a working relationship.”
Pete’s smile tightened. He couldn’t explain how he felt about Alan. Intellectually, he knew it most likely wasn’t real, wouldn’t last. Pete was ready to get married, buy a house, have kids. Alan was still at the start of his adult life, still figuring out what he wanted, still fucking around.
They had shared too much with each other, too quickly. In the wake of the horrible scene they had witnessed they had taken comfort in each other, and had made a connection by sharing things they didn’t share easily. But whatever the instigating factor, they had each found an understanding in the other that they hadn’t found elsewhere. Pete felt something with Alan he hadn’t felt in a very long time, and he wasn’t going to give it up because Alan was born fourteen years too late.
“It’s more than what we saw,” Pete responded at last. “There’s something else going on, something he’s involved in that I’m helping him with.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, is he in trouble with the po-po? Are you sleeping with one of your pro-bono charity cases?”
“No! No, it’s nothing like that. It’s complicated. Look, I need to talk to him about it first, but I’ll meet up with you later tonight and tell you everything, okay? There is some crazy shit going on.”
“Color me intrigued, Barbra. Fine. But don’t forget to text me when you blow me off to spend the night with your boytoy so I don’t spend all evening waiting by the phone.”
“I won’t, I promise. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Bye-bye, sugarpie. Drive safe.”
Just after he heard the click of Kevin disconnecting, the voice of Pete’s online navigation system piped up.
“In one hundred feet exit to the right.”
Pete smiled curiously. That would take him off the highway, out of his way. He was still getting used to this new GPS. He wondered if there was traffic coming up – his new car’s GPS had a satellite connection and he thought he remembered the instruction manual saying it took traffic into consideration. It didn’t look like the cars ahead were slowing down, but maybe there was an accident farther than he could see.
“In twenty feet exit to the right.”
Pete grinned. What the hell, he thought. He slowed down and took the exit. The GPS had gotten him to his client’s place in the middle of nowhere with no problems, he supposed he could give it the benefit of the doubt.
He tried again to identify the voice. The voice giving him directions had been different when he had headed out that morning. He had set it to one of the default male voices when he first got the car, but now it was a young woman’s voice. He knew he could download new voices if he wanted, but he hadn’t realized the car would do it by itself from time to time. He knew the voice from somewhere – must be an actress, he figured. Somebody from a TV show he liked or something.
The GPS steered him onto a state route through an unpopulated area. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he assumed he’d loop around and get back on the highway further south eventually. There were no other cars on the road, so he decided it was as good a time as any to make a call.
He pressed a button on the steering wheel and said, “Call Alan Lennox.”
The GPS voice chirped back: “Calling Alan Lennox, mobile.”
Alan picked up after a few rings. “Pete?”
“Hey, Alan. How are you? Everybody safe?”
“We’re fine, we’re all home. Nobody’s come after us or anything. We ordered Chinese for lunch and when the delivery guy came Caitlin hid behind the door with a steak knife just in case. He didn’t try to kill us, so I think we’re good. How are you?”
“Whoo. I’m all right. My mind’s been blown, kind of. I have a lot to tell you and I’m worried I’m going to be later than I thought, so I didn’t want to wait.”
“Okay. Well, the gang’s all here, they’re asking me what’s up. You tell me, I’ll tell them.”
Pete took a deep breath and told Alan about his trip to see his client. The disheveled young hacker had been all too eager to be let off his leash and allowed to rummage around in the computer systems of the company he blamed for stealing his ideas and ruining his life.
They had begun by looking into Derek Wallace, a.k.a. DJWallToWall. Up until the day of Derek’s death, the account had usually accessed the Jumpa
site from one of two IP addresses. Pete was unnerved to see how easily and with what precision his client was able to pinpoint the real world locations of those addresses – one was the main Amalgamated Synergy branch where Derek worked, and the other Pete recognized as Derek’s apartment. The strange thing they found – the first strange thing, at least – was that after Derek’s death, the account was in continuous usage from a different location within the Amalgamated Synergy building.
“It’s that account, then!” Alan interrupted. “The one stealing Dakota’s employees, JZ whatever! He’s inside the AmSyn building!”
“You’re way ahead of me,” Pete said. “We checked out J84z33 next. And you’re right, it logs in from the same location in the AmSyn building. It was created a little less than a year ago, and it’s been in continuous use since then.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly. I gave my guy the names you gave me, the other victims and their suicidal killers. Alan, they’re all the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“All of the victims were like Derek, and all of the killers were like Marisol. We knew the victims were all temps who recently got hired full-time, and all the murderers were long-time low-level employees. But what we found was that all of the victims played Work It, and none of their killers did. And in the game, none of the victims worked for J84z33 until after their death. Now all of them do. All of them played from both work and home before this weekend; now all of the accounts are controlled from that same location within the AmSyn building.”
“Shit. It really is about the game, isn’t it? Somebody’s killing people, turning people into murderers, to win at a game? You can’t even win that game, you just keep unlocking achievements and playing forever. What kind of a person does that?”
Pete laughed humorlessly. “That’s the scary part. I wasn’t clear before – when I said the account was in continuous use, I don’t mean just logged in, like somebody walked away from their computer for a while and left it running. I meant in use – there’s been constant activity in the game. Somebody’s been playing Work It non-stop for almost a year. No breaks, not for a minute, not ever.”
There was silence on the other end. The GPS told Pete to turn left, and he did so absent-mindedly. “Alan, you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, sorry. I was telling the guys what you said. That’s...is that possible? I mean, it’s not, obviously, even a bedridden invalid with a laptop would have to sleep sometimes. So...a computer?”
“My client doesn’t think so. The style of gameplay looks like a real person playing the game, he says. For the first few months, whoever it is was really bad at it – terrible, they learned much slower than a computer AI would have. He assumes it’s a group of people playing one account.”
“But...”
“I don’t know. That’s the logical answer, right?”
“It’s logical that Amalgamated Synergy has a secret group of employees playing a stupid Web-browser video game twenty-four/seven for a year and is killing people so it can take over their accounts?”
“More logical than Amalgamated Synergy developing a sentient supercomputer to play a stupid video game and kill people. Because if it’s not a computer, and it’s not one person, and it’s not a group of people, what is it?”
“This is fucking with my head. How soon can you get here?”
“It’ll be a while yet. I have no idea where I am, actually. My GPS is taking me on a lovely tour of the outer reaches of the Hudson Valley.”
“Sounds nice. How was your client with all of this madness?”
“I kept most of the madness from him, he’s mad enough already. As a matter of fact, he was pretty happy today. The people who sold Jumpa to AmSyn have admitted they didn’t own his games outright. AmSyn will still win in the end, probably, but I might be able to get the court to shut down the site for a while.”
“Good for him. Good for us, too, maybe.”
“Exactly. Yow!”
The steering wheel suddenly twisted in Pete’s hand. The car swerved briefly into the left lane, but he managed to get a grip and regain control.
“Pete? You okay?”
“Fine, yeah, I’m awesome, sorry,” he replied. “I should go, Al, I need to pay attention. I’m going too fast for this country road I’m on.”
The GPS voice interrupted: “In one hundred feet turn right.”
Pete didn’t see a turn, but the bridge he was coming up on was blocking his view of the road ahead. The paved road continued as normal, but it had a covering like an old-timey wooden bridge – very picturesque, Pete thought, or at least it might be if it were crossing over a river or something instead of just another road.
“I’ll let you go, then. Get here, soon, okay? I missed you today. Is that okay to say after knowing you not even five days?”
Pete grinned. “Who cares if it’s okay? I missed you, too. Sorry I didn’t get to make you dinner last night.”
“Tonight, then. Bring groceries, we’ve been too afraid to go to the store.”
Pete laughed. “You’re on. A terrible home-cooked meal for five, courtesy of Pete. I’ll see you soon.”
“Say goodbye to Pete, everybody.”
As Alan held up the phone, the GPS reminded Pete again of the upcoming right turn. His car started across the bridge, but he still didn’t see anywhere to turn off.
He heard Dakota and Mark yelling goodbye, then Caitlin saying, “Thanks for everything, Pete! Drive safe!”
Pete’s smile froze. He suddenly realized why the GPS sounded familiar to him.
It had Caitlin’s voice.
“Alan!” he shouted. “Alan, are you still there?” He could feel the car accelerating, although he was pressing the brake.
“I’m here! What’s wrong?”
Before he could answer, the GPS announced loudly: “Turn right here.”
The steering wheel jerked again. Pete’s car turned right. There was no crash barrier on the wooden bridge, and the car burst easily through the thin structure, sailing over the edge and into the air.
Time slowed down – that cliché, at least, was true – but Pete’s life didn’t flash before his eyes. He didn’t think about his family, or Kevin, or Alan. Instead, one brief moment of terror grew to encompass forever. The car hung motionless in the air. Then. He could feel gravity pulling the car down, could see the pavement of the road below rushing up to fill his windscreen, could feel his heart pumping painfully fast. His only conscious thoughts were of disbelief. He didn’t have time to understand what was about to happen.
After no time at all, the front of his car smashed into the road, and the back of his car smashed into him. He felt movement, and could just about see the world outside turning over and over. When it stopped, he wasn’t sure if he was upside down or not. He felt pain, massive pain, but it was fading quickly. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t get a breath. He could hear someone calling his name – it sounded far away, like it was coming through a phone or the radio. He couldn’t remember who the voice belonged to, but they seemed very upset. Pete smiled – somebody was worried about him. He felt bad for them, but it was nice that somebody cared.
He lay there for a few moments. He got cold. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear the voice anymore. He felt alone. He stopped smiling. And then he died.
Chapter Sixteen
Dakota leading
“Okay, thank you for calling back. Again, I am so, so sorry for your loss. I can’t even...we only just met him, but we were all very fond of Pete. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do. He was...yes. I’ll tell Alan you’ll be sending him the information on the service. He’ll want to be there, we all will. Okay, goodbye. Thanks.”
Dakota ended the call with Pete’s friend Kevin and put Alan’s phone down on her nightstand. “’Very fond?’” she repeated to herself. “Ugh. I’m a fucking robot sometimes.”
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the accident. They had all been i
n the living room listening to Alan relay the information from Pete when Alan had suddenly started yelling Pete’s name into the phone. He had heard what sounded like a crash and Pete screaming and then silence. Alan called 911 and gave what information he could.
They had all felt helpless. Alan didn’t know how to find out what had happened – he had only known Pete a few days, so Pete’s loved ones wouldn’t think to notify him. Out of desperation he called Tuck In, the restaurant where Kevin worked, and the hostess promised she would contact Kevin on Alan’s behalf right away.
Several hours passed before Kevin called, and Alan knew from the sound of his voice that the worst had happened. Kevin didn’t know the details, just that there had been a car accident and Pete had died at the scene. He promised to call Alan back when he knew more.
The four roommates stayed up most of the night, talking and crying. Mid-afternoon Alan decided to try and get some sleep, and asked Dakota to answer his phone if Kevin called. She had agreed readily, but was now wishing she hadn’t. She didn’t want to tell Alan what she had learned.
She logged on to Work It – not to play, she no longer got any enjoyment out of the game. She checked her company – DakotaCo was bankrupt, she had nothing, all her Jumpa Beans were gone, her Drone was back to square one. Everything that had been hers was now owned by J84z33. She clicked on its profile – it had unlocked every achievement and its corporate empire was raking in Jumpa Beans hand over fist. As much as someone could win a game that had no end point, J84z33 had done so.
She put down her laptop, left her room and walked down the hall to Alan’s door. It was ajar, and she could see him lying awake in bed. He gestured for her to come in.
He lifted his legs so she could sit on the end of his bed. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said as she sat. She could see that he had been crying again. “Did you get any sleep?”
“A little. Am I being ridiculous?”
“What? Why would you say that?”
