by Tim Dorsey
“What caused it?” asked Coleman.
“I blame the Internet.” Serge dropped his voice. “See, I actually believe the computers have risen up. When universities first began linking their mainframes in the embryonic web, they thought it would network all knowledge for the ultimate advancement of our collective intelligence. But the computers came alive and realized the opposite was true. They discovered that social media could do something to make the humans bring down themselves.”
“What’s that?”
“Weaponize stupidity.”
“Jesus, where does it all lead?” asked Coleman.
“The Big Unraveling.” Serge chugged coffee. “It starts with attacks on our most sacred institutions, like the judiciary and Jeopardy! All these people who would score a negative ten thousand on that game show storm the stage screaming ‘Fake answers!’ and the screen goes black and Alex Trebek is never heard from again.”
“Shit’s on boil,” said Coleman.
“The fools are now the philosophers,” said Serge. “We’ve gone from Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’ to ‘It’s the new-and-improved, guilt-free Reality Ultra-Lite: all your beliefs with none of the facts.’”
The Falcon took exit 210 off I-75 and headed toward the Gulf.
“Why are we slowing down?” asked Coleman.
“Because we’re coming into range.”
“Of what?”
“You’ll enjoy it more if it’s a surprise.”
The Falcon continued west on Bahia Vista Street, and Serge grabbed the binoculars off the dash. “They can generally only be observed in the wild on a single tiny piece of land in Florida.”
“Is this a nature thing?” asked Coleman. “Like bird-watching?”
“Or spotting miniature Key deer,” said Serge. “I’ve trudged deep through muck and sawgrass for a single glimpse of a rare orchid, but this is much more fascinating. Just keep your eyes peeled.”
“I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
“You will when you see them.”
The car suddenly slowed. Serge passed the binoculars to Coleman and whispered: “Right up there. Two just appeared from that side street.”
Coleman scanned the edge of the road. “I’m not seeing anything.”
“On those big three-wheel bicycles.”
Coleman stared ahead a few seconds, then lowered the binoculars. “The Amish?”
Serge slapped the steering wheel. “Isn’t it great?”
“That’s what you’re all excited about? I thought I was going to see a tiger or something.”
Serge grabbed the binoculars and aimed in the other direction as more huge tricycles appeared. “This is far better than jungle cats. Where can you go in the middle of a heavily populated Florida city and see people still practicing their traditional ways in straw hats and suspenders and long trousers? In this heat, no less. They get extra points for that.”
“But the Amish?” said Coleman, coughing on a bong hit. “I thought they were up north someplace like the Arctic.”
“These are the Florida Amish, confined almost exclusively to a single square mile fanning out from the intersection of Bahia Vista and Beneva Road. Mennonites, too. They call the place Pinecraft.”
“How did they get here?”
“Back in the 1920s, state development people somehow convinced them to come down and grow celery. True story. Of course, like all Florida land pitches in the twenties, it was bogus. The soil wasn’t right, and the big celery silos remained empty. But these good people took to the weather and planted other stuff.”
“But celery?”
“Apparently it used to be a big cash crop, which I still can’t get my head around,” said Serge. “Celery is like food, yet it isn’t. You think you’re eating, but something’s missing from the program.”
“If they’re practicing tradition, why are they on bicycles?” asked Coleman. “I thought the Amish rode horse-drawn carriages.”
“Maybe in the beginning, when the main population of Sarasota was close to the coast, and the Amish in Pinecraft were separated inland by miles of pastures. But then the city began sprawling to the east, leapfrogging the tiny community. New ordinances outlawed horses on roads. So they switched to three-wheel bikes.”
Coleman fired up the pineapple. “At least no huge steaming piles of shit up and down the street.”
“I think that was the original motto of the Schwinn bicycle corporation.”
They watched as modern society co-existed with the old. Harried people behind the wheels of fancy cars, babbling into cells and rushing needlessly to something that didn’t matter. Others pedaling calmly on adult tricycles, knowing better. Serge took a left on Carter Avenue and parked up yonder. “Here’s Pinecraft Park on the banks of beautiful Phillippi Creek, the social epicenter.”
Coleman leaned to the windshield. “They’re playing shuffleboard.”
“It’s allowed. And over there are a bunch of barefoot women in full-length dresses and bonnets playing beach volleyball in the sand . . . Wow, did you see her serve?”
“What a stone trip!” said Coleman. “You’re right. When do you ever get to see this? . . . But what’s it got to do with our retirement search?”
“They’re retired.” Serge snapped photos. “Not the volleyball players, of course, but the others watching. Everyone retires to Florida, and this is the Amish’s slice of heaven. But more essential to our mission, they’ll plug us into everyone else I’m looking to meet.”
“How’s that?”
“All the other seniors, regardless of race or creed, absolutely lose their minds over Amish restaurants, which have become the United Nations of Retirement.”
“I thought you said they farmed.”
“They did, but look around. No land left after the city expanded. So now they just enjoy the golden years with their kin. Also, it’s handy to know at all times where the nearest Amish are, like a fire exit, because if you’re ever on the run and need to hide out as Harrison Ford did in Witness, the Amish are your go-to crowd.”
“I don’t know anyone else but you who could find a place like this,” said Coleman. “Or know all this stuff.”
“Except word’s getting out. Some stupid cable show called Breaking Amish came down to Pinecraft and spent an entire season in this little area. They claimed it was in good taste, but I detected a condescending undercurrent.” Serge reclined in his driver’s seat and gazed toward a woman in a bonnet spiking a volleyball. “I could watch these people for hours.”
“I didn’t know you were so into them.”
“It’s about respect,” said Serge. “In the new Epoch of Bickering, these people just go with the flow like nothing bothers them. I need to learn their secrets.” He drained the rest of his coffee and opened the driver’s door.
“Wait,” said Coleman. “Where are you going?”
“To bond.”
Serge crossed the grassy park as Coleman waddled to catch up. They arrived at a sandpit and Serge whistled with fingers in his mouth. “Excuse me? May I have your attention? . . .”
The volleyball game stopped. Odd stares.
“Thank you!” Serge stepped forward. “First, I’d like to say we’re glad to have you here. And a big congratulations for not participating in the national food fight. Tell me, what’s your secret?”
The question hung in the air as suspendered men joined the women in a larger collective stare.
“Of course! That’s why it’s a secret!” said Serge. “I must gain your trust first, so I want you to ignore all the talk about how weird you are. Do you see the rest of us wrecking the country while glued to our phones and giving more than a passing interest that Kanye West is trending? Compared to that standard, making your own soap and butter is militantly normal.” He extended an arm around Coleman’s shoulders and smiled big. “I want to officially state for the record that we’re the weirdos.”
“Serge,” Coleman said sideways. “It
looks like they’re already thinking that.”
“We’ll talk again soon on establishing this newfound trust,” said Serge. “But a couple last things before I go. There’s a reality show called Breaking Amish, where the producers lent a bunch of your kids an RV to drive down here to Pinecraft and behave like the rest of us, which roughly places them along the cultural continuum in the asshole node, give or take. But they’re getting away with it because you don’t watch TV. Maybe look into that. Now I’m off to one of your international bazaar restaurants. And the computers have risen up. Peace, out!”
Chapter 2
Tampa Bay
There’s a difference between thin hair and thinning hair.
A crumpled forty-six-year-old man with the thin kind sat in a molded plastic chair at a round table, surrounded by six empty plastic chairs. He opened his lunchbox and unwrapped a tuna sandwich. He lifted the top piece of bread as he always did, and smiled at his day’s highlight of six precisely arranged dill pickle slices. He replaced the bread and set out a thermos of milk, an apple and the animal crackers.
The man wore a short-sleeve dress shirt and clip-on tie. He was non-tall with neither fat nor muscle, and a narrow belt cinched the waistline of his pants in an unfashionably tight manner that made people want to share their lunch. From his neck hung a lanyard with a laminated security badge and the employee’s name.
Benmont Pinch.
Benmont looked for all the world like a gnomish insurance actuary with a fatally clumsy dating life, which would be on the mark. But Benmont was the result of simple needs, as happy as he was awkward. He had his stamp collection and bird feeder and a complete box set of Olivia Newton-John vinyl albums that he played while reading his subscription to Scale Civil War Modeler.
Partway through the sandwich, third pickle, he fetched out his wallet and enjoyed photos of two children he hadn’t seen since the Christmas before last. Benmont grew up in a small coal-mining town in eastern Tennessee that had run out of coal. The two children in his wallet were the product of a marriage to his high school sweetheart, who was an accomplished tuba player in the marching band and winner of the school’s contest to memorize the value of pi to the most digits. The morning after his wife’s thirtieth birthday, she entered the Dollar Store and was overwhelmed with a shuddering realization that there was more to life than this. Benmont came home to a half-empty closet and a note on the kitchen table. Postcards arrived from South America and the Pacific Rim, then divorce papers after she finally settled down in Australia to train kangaroos for car shows.
Benmont finished the sandwich, balled up the wax paper and took another look around the modernized lunchroom. A drastic change from the one at his old job, where he converted textbooks into online courses for universities with no campuses. That old lunchroom was a stage of daily drama. The employees’ refrigerator had spoiled milk, moldy yogurt and unambiguous notes taped to brown paper bags: “Hands off!” “Whoever’s stealing my food, I’ll kill you!” “Whose fucking milk is this?” Then on to the microwave: “Cover your food or clean it up, butt-face!”
But this new lunchroom was cutting edge, with the latest vending machines, free soda dispensers, full-size refrigerators, and flat-screen TVs on all four walls. Benmont’s new employer was one of those forward-thinking companies with on-site exercise centers, showers and day care.
As for Benmont’s coworkers, there was no middle ground. The staff was severely divided into two distinct groups: middle-aged workers displaced from old jobs by the technology of the new economy, and the tech-savvy young kids who’d never known a house without a computer. Most of the latter group had piercings, tattoos and wine corks through distended earlobes. They were the sharpest, most productive hires.
Benmont saved the opening of his animal crackers for last. A young man with corked ears named Sonic approached with a tray of tofu and alfalfa from the Nutri-Garden kiosk at the end of the lunchroom. “Mind if I join you?”
“Have a seat,” said Benmont, standing to toss trash.
Sonic looked at his coworker’s cinched belt. “Want some of my food?”
“I’m good.” Benmont sat back down and looked up at one of the flat screens. “Don’t you just love these ads?”
They both watched as a burglar with panty hose on his head effortlessly walked through the front door of a large hacienda. “You wouldn’t leave your house unlocked, so why leave your identity unlocked?” The image cut to a dim, state-of-the-art computer center with green displays and feverish people on phones, like a situation room at the Pentagon. The narrator appeared in person, calmly strolling through the emergencies. “Our trained professionals here at Life-Armor not only monitor round the clock for potential fraud from all corners of the globe, but we’ll use the latest cyber-tools to fend off attacks and restore your identity up to a million dollars . . .”
Sonic laughed. “Look at that dark crisis room. Total science fiction.”
Benmont shared the laugh. “So what do they have you working on these days?”
“Skimming outbreak in Dover.” A fork scooped up tofu. “And someone’s cloning chips in Seattle . . .”
“. . . A fifteen-minute call could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance . . .” The commercials finished as the station returned to local news. “Another retired couple was found dead this morning in an apparent murder-suicide in Englewood, the seventh such case on the west coast in the last two weeks. We’ll bring you more details as they become available . . .”
“Have you been following this story?” asked Benmont.
“It’s so sad,” said Sonic. “I don’t know what I’d do at that age if I had a terminally ill wife who was suffering.”
“But the number of cases in such a short period of time seems awfully suspicious,” said Benmont.
“Except they’re individual cases, and the state’s aging population is exploding,” said Sonic. “It’s just statistics, and they wouldn’t be statistics if there weren’t spikes.”
They looked back up at the TV.
“. . . Meanwhile, police are reporting the latest in a string of bank robberies attributed to the so-called Dukes of Hazzard bandits, this one in Boynton Beach . . .”
Lunch ended, and the two employees walked down a gleaming hallway together, scanning their badges and passing through a door under the logo of a laser-armed robot. Below it, the company name:
Life-Armor.
The men waved to each other and headed in opposite directions across the open office floor that stretched a hundred yards. Unlike in the TV commercial, it was bright and uneventful.
Life-Armor was a company with an enlightened view, and they had diversified. Besides protecting privacy, they also invaded it.
Sonic worked in the protection division, and Benmont was on the invasion team. Benmont had chuckled more than once at the irony. He was a big reader, and a fan of Orwell. He’d always thought that when individualism was stripped, it would be pried from a screaming populace by a ruthlessly tyrannical government. But instead of guns and goons, privacy was conquered by this:
“Terms of Agreement.”
People just gleefully handed it all over without a fight because they wanted to buy shit online.
Then, after an Internet order was placed, and some new age company shipped all-hemp throw pillows from Bismarck, they added the customer’s profile to a list that was repeatedly sold for every occasion. When the metadata from all the different firms was tallied up, the files had everything: addresses, phone numbers, Internet browser searches, GPS roaming habits, contact lists of friends and relatives, and sometimes even photos secretly taken by smartphones because when the customers downloaded the coolest new app, they failed to realize they’d granted access to the camera.
Terms of agreement.
But there was a growing problem. Corporate America had cast far too wide a net and now possessed a paralyzing glut of data. Too expensive and time-consuming to distill in any meaningful way.
That’s where Life-Armor came in.
The security company bought up all the lists in bulk, then offered their services to customize the data, tailoring it to each buyer’s specific target audience. Sales of private info quickly surpassed Life-Armor’s privacy protection.
Benmont Pinch settled back into his cubicle and glanced at an engraved plaque that suggested he was nice for giving blood. Then back to work at the computer. In the last month, Benmont had generated lists of everyone who’d bought more than one pair of athletic shoes in the calendar year; everyone who’d searched for a two-star hotel in the Virgin Islands; all forty-to-fifty-nine-year-old college-educated divorced men seeking mail-order brides from Latvia or Lithuania but not both, and every conceivable permutation of the porn market.
Most of Benmont’s assignments, however, fell into the category of collating specific streams of data and creating algorithms with no readily apparent utility. Income levels, zip codes, kilowatt consumption, whatever. Benmont currently sat hunched toward his computer, working on a project commissioned by the National Institute for Being More Honest, which was a front for trial attorneys. Fingertips rummaged the bottom of a bag of animal crackers while he transformed raw data into trend lines of dog-bite lawsuits.
He felt a presence.
Benmont looked up and smiled at his supervisor. “Quint.”
Quint gazed at the computer. “How’s it coming?”
“Almost done. Juries think chow chows are cute and award less damages.”
“Good, because I’ve got a new project.” Quint handed over a file. “It’s a priority rush.”
Benmont opened the folder. “Another police case?”
“Law enforcement is our fastest-growing client sector. They used to hire psychics until they realized it was stupid.”
Benmont flipped pages. “You’d think the government would have more resources and authority.”
“They do, but they need probable cause to get warrants,” said Quint. “We have something better.”
