by David Yoon
“Noelle,” said Pilot.
“She’s hot,” said Brayden.
“She is my daughter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There are no rules here,” said Pilot. “We are just bros.”
Brayden seemed to accept this, so Pilot continued.
“In your fifties, or so I hear, you let go of even more as you spy the finish line of retirement. And beyond that—sixtiesseventieseightiesnineties—there is the cliff of death approaching, and you shed, and you shed, until there is nothing left but the core of your true self. Only when death is this close are you truly alive.”
Brayden took a long hit and exhaled.
“I wish I had realized all this sooner, Mister Brayden,” said Pilot.
Pilot had said enough for now. He decided to not speak until Brayden did. It took a full two minutes.
“Is what you’re saying is,” said Brayden finally, “is that what it is is what’s key being that we can’t be happy until we’re about to, like, die, in a manner of otherwise speaking?”
Pilot stared at him.
“What I am saying,” said Pilot, “is this: if life is scripted to begin with, why spend it striving for empty egoistic trophies that only become meaningless with the approach of death? Whither hubris then, Mister Brayden?”
“Huh?” said Brayden.
“Hubris is the ever-grasping hands of men, and I want to cut them off.”
Brayden only stared. The boy, Pilot realized, was stupid. It was absolutely fascinating how stupid a person could be and still move through the world in ultimate comfort and privilege. How did someone like Brayden see the world? Was it all just general shape and color?
“How do you feel about your relationship with the internet?” said Pilot.
Brayden seemed to leap a little at this. “I’ve always wanted to make an app that showed, like, the net worth of individuals near you? Then you could see who was truly baller? You could see how you stacked up. I call it UStackd?”
Absolutely fascinating.
Did Pilot sound like this when he was Brayden’s age?
Did they all, when they built the first stretches of the internet?
Brayden continued. “It would revolutionize transparency in personal wealth analytics and we could sell the data to real estate agents, et cetera, and things like that.”
“That is a fecal miasma of an idea,” said Pilot. He inhaled deeply, putting a bookmark in this mental chapter. He stood.
“I like you very much, Mister Brayden. You are a great listener.”
Brayden frowned and smiled simultaneously. “Thank you.”
Brayden drew out his phone.
“Can I take a picture with you?” said Brayden.
“Never,” said Pilot.
Brayden looked as if he had suddenly been impaled by something very cold. Had the boy ever been denied anything? Was this the first time?
“Anyway,” said Pilot, “there is no cellular signal here.”
Brayden became even more incredulous. “What about wi-fi?”
“None,” said Pilot. “Would you mind helping me with a few things? I want plenty of refreshments for when they arrive.”
“Who?” said Brayden.
“Our new friends,” said Pilot.
0.17
Sunday. Max had been lying awake all night. He jittered. He flopped about.
He looked at the panopticon eye of a dollar bill staring at him in the ice-green streetlamp dark. He gave it the finger.
He tried playing video games. He tried reading volume nine in the Sherlock-Z shonen series by screenlight. He could not get sleepy. He played his old electronic drum kit for a while, smacking the mesh pads with his headphones on. Then he cleaned his closet and soon found himself surrounded by juvenilia: board games and old childhood toys and trinkets and key chains from family road trips.
His phone buzzed.
Can’t sleep, said Akiko. work keeps paging me, lol
Max hadn’t thought of that. Wren was probably paging its entire engineering team. Did you answer? he said.
I’ll tell them I went camping, no signal, said Akiko.
Nice, said Max. The like button is still working for me, btw
Btw was an old abbreviation for by the way. For some reason people once considered writing full words a huge chore. Same with capitalization. They considered many little tiny things huge chores.
Give it a few hours to propagate, said Akiko.
I wonder what’s gonna happen, said Max. whats gonna happen whats gonna happen whatsgonnahappenwhatsgonnahappenwhatsgonnahappen
Lol I wish I had a magic eight ball, said Akiko.
Come over, wrote Max, then erased it without sending.
Max closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them it was morning.
He could hear Dad in the kitchen frying his tomatoes and eggs and plátanos and warm thick tortillas and the aroma of something else, cooked rice and sweetness and Christmas spice: horchata.
It was early, before he and Mom had to leave for their afternoon cleaning gig. Mom was sleeping in. All was quiet.
They ate. Max tried to eat slow, but everything was impossible this morning.
“So, I see the front page this morning,” said Dad, peering at an open newspaper. “Your old company got hacked big-time.”
“Oh yeah?” said Max, all no-big-deal. But he was dying to see.
DISLIKE! WREN “FIXED” BY HACKER GROUP VERSION ZERO
CYBERTERRORISTS VERSION ZERO VOW TO FIX “MIRROR WORLD”
Max froze. “Huh.”
There was a terribly dark and noisy surveillance photo of a person all in black, half-obscured by a tall Greek cypress. Not even Max could tell who it was.
“Huh,” said Max.
There was a photo of a person wearing a white mask marked with a large black circle. Behind the person was the Wren logo. The caption read: A Version Zero spokesperson makes a statement apparently from inside Wren headquarters itself.
Max had wanted to find Cal Peers’s office and take a shit on his desk, but Akiko talked him out of it.
“Cal Peers will just have it tested for DNA,” she had said.
Smart girl.
Max smiled and swallowed a bolus of nerves. He checked his phone and tapped a like button.
Nothing.
A quick scroll: All across his feed, friends were posting, getting no responses in return, and growing frustrated. No likes, no comments, no nothing. His feed now resembled a crowd of crazy hermits all shouting at the sky.
“No phone at the table, déjalo ya,” said Dad.
A ball of orange was suddenly growing hot inside Max’s chest, and he wanted to run screaming and laughing in the streets. Akiko had locked the great big user database with some voodoo of hers. Apparently the lock was still working.
Everyone must be freaking out at Wren. Wren’s advertising customers must be freaking out, too. Max wondered how Cal Peers was taking all this.
“Good thing you got out of there,” said Dad. He pointed with a fork. “Don’t let the cyberhackers get to YouPool, okay? You hear me, Flaco?”
Max laughed too loud and for something entirely different. “We’re not big enough. They wouldn’t bother.”
“You’ll get big soon,” said Dad, and he squeezed Max’s shoulder. “There’s these two kids in Ukraine who made a million bucks with this app that turns your head into a big emoji. You’re way smarter than them, so.”
Emojis—a portmanteau of the Japanese words e (picture) and moji (character)—were tiny ideograms that could be typed and sent alongside text. In the year 2018, most people agreed that emojis could say things that regular words could not.
Dad went for more coffee, and Max snuck a message to Akiko and Shane.
Point Whittier as
soon as you can
* * *
* * *
“Hadouken!” shouted Max to the sea, and he sent a fireball from his palms. This time, the fireball was orange. This time, it was a victory cry.
Akiko sat in the open van and scrolled her phone. “They’re calling it the Big Fix. Siliconitis is reporting that six thousand Wren users have deleted their accounts.”
Max jabbed a finger at her. “That’s the thing, right there.”
Akiko smiled. “The thing.”
“We snapped them out of it,” said Shane. He lay in the sand with his eyes closed. “They woke up.”
“We broke the vicious cycle,” said Max.
“Wow, there’s already this great article posted,” said Akiko. “‘The Big Fix: How I Learned to Love Life without Likes.’ I’ll send it.”
Akiko sent it. Max read it.
“I like this,” said Max in a funny voice. He mimicked pressing a button.
“I like your like,” said Akiko in a funny voice, and she pressed a button back.
“I like that you liked my like,” said Max. It was a joke from their late nights at Wren.
“Duncie,” said Akiko.
Max stupidly hoped Akiko would continue the chain like they had always done, with: I like that you liked me liking your like.
But instead, Shane spoke.
“I LOL your likes,” said Shane, his eyes closed. He said it ell-oh-ell. This statement did not really make much sense, and it broke the chain. Max shared a wordless smirk with Akiko.
Old Man Shane.
“You know your Soul Project doc has been downloaded, like, a hundred thousand times?” said Akiko to Max.
“People won’t go back,” said Max. “They can’t, now that they know. No way.”
The surfers surfed and bailed and paddled out again.
“I can’t speak for you guys,” said Max, “but for me this Version Zero thing is the thing-thing right here. I don’t know where it leads. All I know is it’s right. No bullshit. I already can’t stop thinking about what we could do for our next hack.”
Shane opened his eyes and sat up. “Version Zero hacks, baby. I’m in.”
“Me, too,” said Akiko.
There was no hard part anymore. The picture matched the real thing. Max’s eyes were clear perfect lenses of diamond. He smelled every briny note of the sea. He felt the wind and the rotation of the earth. He heard every whisper and splash.
Inside the van, his phone buzzed. There was a long message:
Hello, Version Zero. Like the rest of the world I witnessed your moment musicaux, and I say bravo.
“Who is it?” said Akiko.
“This has to be a joke,” said Max.
“Who is it?” said Shane.
“Pilot Markham.”
0.18
Hello, Version Zero. Like the rest of the world I witnessed your moment musicaux, and I say bravo. For your ingenuity. For your courage. For most of my life, I helped build the broken world you and your generation live in. Then I lost everything.
Never once did I think to demolish my architecture of misery, because I am a fool. I have every resource in the world, and yet all I have done is wallow for three years in self-imposed exile.
Until you.
I would like to invite you to my home. Together we can fix the broken world, and my lifetime of mistakes will have finally meant something beyond my net worth.
I attach my location. I of course invite all three of you: M, A, and S. My invitation remains open for as long as you need.
Yours,
Pilot Markham
0.19
This is crazy,” said Akiko.
She leapt from the van’s open door and took a drag from something: a vaporizer. Max saw Shane give her a look. But they could both see she was shaking.
They were all shaking.
The sun was setting over Point Whittier. The surfers had gone home and the ocean was all chipped obsidian shot through with a streak of magma.
Akiko exhaled sharply. “How does he know my name?”
A search on akiko hosokawa returned nothing—Max knew how meticulous she was about keeping it that way. But Pilot Markham was a different story. Pilot Markham, endowed with kung fu supreme. He probably knew everything about Max. He probably traversed the earth unimpeded, like an invisible floating giant.
Max watched Akiko take another drag and exhale, sending out a long tapered cloud like something from an ukiyo-e painting. Max wondered if such a thing felt calming.
“Fu-u-u-u-uck,” yelled Akiko into the wind. She shot Max a happy glance.
“Fu-u-u-u-uck,” said Max with a helpless glee. “Pilot fucking Markham.”
“Founder, Ethnosys, LakeFire,” read Shane aloud. “Holds ninety-three patents. Vanished from the scene three years ago. The J. D. Salinger of tech.”
“Everyone knows who Pilot Markham is, baby.”
“I didn’t,” stated Shane. “So.”
The sun became a lozenge melting on the horizon.
“What if he’s a narc?” said Akiko.
“Then he would be the weirdest choice of narc ever,” said Max. “A tech legend reemerges after three years just to chase down punks like us?”
“Something must’ve happened to that dude,” said Shane. “You only come out of hiding for something serious.”
“Fully,” said Max.
“Fully,” said Shane.
“Maybe we’re that reason,” said Max. “Maybe he thinks we’re the next Occupy or Anonymous or whatever. I think he’s down with the sickness.”
“Baby,” said Shane to Akiko. “I think he’s down with the sickness.”
Akiko became lost in thought, and Max took the opportunity to stare at her. She placed her fingers on her lips and gazed far out.
The sun had gone away. The first headlights began streaming along the coastal highway behind them. The sky would grow indigo and darken to black and fill with stars, and planes and satellites would etch their hard lines of white and red and green across its canvas as the earth rotated toward another ristolic day. The waves would pound and pound at the shore until rock became sand and blablabla.
If only Max could see around the curve of time. If only he could see what would happen next.
It scared and thrilled the hell out of him.
In the future, Akiko would marry Shane. They would have two kids before she turned thirty. Max also would find a girl to marry and have kids with, and together the four of them would sip cheladas and watch the children dance around a sprinkler in the heavenly dusk of the last real weekend of the summer before it all started up again: school drop-offs, some job, something simple, something he loved, something that would make the world a better place. Something even Dad would understand.
Max would tell his future wife about that crazy day Pilot Markham himself asked to join his little team of merrymakers. It was a revolution, he would say.
And I started it, he would say.
Max watched as Akiko drew from the vaporizer and let out a long stream of smoke, and decided he would try it, too, placing the still-wet tip of the device to his lips and sucking in. It was smooth and raspberry-sweet and did not burn at all.
“That’s enough vaping, you guys,” said Shane.
Akiko immediately stashed the vaporizer and gave Shane a happy shrug: Okay.
Max watched the sky as it quickly cooled from fire orange to aquamarine.
“Fuck it,” said Akiko. She clenched her fingers. “Let’s do this.”
“Tonight?” said Max.
“Pilot Markham invites you over, you go the fuck over,” said Akiko.
Max high-fived her. He high-fived Shane. Shane high-fived Max.
Shane roared the Poolwhip to life, and in a plume of dust they merged to become
another pair of purposeful headlights cruising down the coastal highway.
1.0
1.0
They drove. The Poolwhip rattled and rattled.
Max and Akiko sat in the back, sipping to-go cups of coffee. Shane frowned at them through the rearview mirror.
“It’s too late for coffee,” said Shane, scratching his triceps.
“Coffee’s for closers,” said Max.
“I love that movie,” said Shane.
“It’s weird, but right now I want a cig,” said Akiko.
“No way, José,” said Shane.
“Duh, I know,” said Akiko.
“You guys fight like brother and sister,” said Max.
“That’s just wrong,” said Shane, laughing.
Akiko was not laughing.
Max turned to her. “Oh, I found something for you.”
Max held up a small black-and-white key-chain trinket.
“What is it?” said Shane.
It was a miniature magic eight ball, discovered deep in his closet.
“You get one for me, too?” said Shane.
“I only found the one,” said Max.
Akiko held her coffee between her legs and shook the little ball with eyes closed, turned it over, and opened her eyes to examine the result.
“Signs point to yes,” said Akiko.
* * *
* * *
They climbed to the top of the great Masada.
“Four Avenida Pizarro,” said Max. “That’s it.”
Four Avenida Pizarro was an assortment of huge concrete, steel, and glass cubes tastefully tumbled atop one another. If it were anywhere else, the house would be cover material for architectural magazines. But here, at the top of the great Masada, it was just another mansion in a suburb of nothing but mansions separated by vast stretches of empty sidewalks.
Shane parked them a ways down the street, just in case.
In case what?
Max looked at Shane. Shane looked at Max. Max looked at Akiko.
“Let’s go, I guess,” said Max.
They walked down the street and up to the mansion. They stepped into a tunnel thick with bamboo and found the front door: a heavy slab of rusted iron. On the door was a sticky note.
