Version Zero

by David Yoon

  welcome, max & friends :) the door is open

  Indeed, when Max pushed the door it swung open slowly and without a sound, balanced on a single pivot at its midpoint. Max went in first.

  The house was all dim amber light pooled across stone and wood.

  “This house is sweet,” said Shane.

  “That’s real secure,” said Akiko. She was staring at a sticky note atop a keypad by the front door that read: use code 1111 to unlock

  There was no furniture. No art hung on the walls. Tiny spotlights illuminated the dark house at regular intervals. Tiny spotlights everywhere.

  “Hello?” said Max. He took another step, then another.

  He peered down a hallway with a single sparkling geodesic lampshade. There was a great room, empty but for a small formation of orphaned sofa cushions clustered perhaps as a makeshift mattress. There was another room with a bird’s nest of Ethernet cable in one corner, nothing else.

  Max went farther. As he walked, lights ahead illuminated; lights behind dimmed.

  “Max,” said Akiko.

  He entered the kitchen. It was all white squares, as if it had been made out of a vast sheet of folded graph paper. One square bore a sticky note:

  help yourself

  Max tugged on a corner of the white square to reveal a refrigerator. There were eggs, bread, veggies, nothing weird, no pickled fetuses or human heads. There was beer. So Max took a beer. He handed beers to Akiko and Shane, too. No one opened them.

  Next to the kitchen was a glassed-in atrium containing a little garden of moss, a stone temple lantern, and river rocks the size of melons. One of them glowed from within. It bore the word snowball.

  Some kind of art piece, thought Max.

  Max had a habit of calling a thing he did not immediately understand an art piece.

  There was a staircase that curved up and out of sight, marked private with a small brass plaque. He could not see around the curve.

  “Private,” said Max to no one.

  “Hello there,” said a sleepy male voice.

  Everyone froze.

  “I am behind the brass panel. Just give me a moment to get presentable.”

  And down the dark hall, a glinting panel of hammered brass clicked open.

  “We should leave,” said Akiko.

  “But you just got here,” said the voice.

  “Uh,” said Max. He looked up and around and all about. He could not discern speakers anywhere.

  Shane popped open his beer with his keys and drank. He froze in midswig. “What?”

  “Baby,” said Akiko.

  “Oh, come on,” said Shane. “Beer is sealed. No one can fuck with beer.”

  “I apologize for being so awkward,” said the voice. “It has been eons since I entertained guests. Just one moment, please.”

  From within the brass panel, a light illuminated. Akiko dialed 911 on her phone and held her thumb ready to press the call button.

  “Baby,” said Shane, rolling his eyes. “Okay, look. I’ll text Dad.”

  Shane’s dad was a longtime cop in the Playa Mesa PD.

  Dad, I’m at Pilot Markham’s house can you believe it! Shane

  How lovely, Shane! came the reply.

  “How lovely?” said Max.

  “You have signal?” said a young voice.

  Max turned.

  A teenage Whiteman approached. He had spiky yellow bedhead hair, like that of an anime sidekick.

  “I’m Brayden,” said the boy. He handed Max a bottle opener.

  “Thanks,” said Max, full of wonder.

  “Brayden is my assistant,” said the invisible voice.

  This seemed like news to Brayden. The boy smiled at Max with delight.

  “Brayden, would you please show our new friends around?” said the voice.

  “Yeah, absolutely, Mister Markham,” said Brayden.

  “’Sup, Brayden?” said Shane. They shook hands.

  Max looked at Akiko, who stared at Shane. What? mouthed Shane.

  Brayden stepped through the brass panel and motioned for them to enter. Shane did so without hesitation.

  “Your house is a palace,” said Shane to the air.

  “Glad you like it, Mister Shane,” said the voice.

  Brayden and Shane jogged down a carpeted flight of steps and were gone.

  “Guys?” said Max, and followed them. “I guess let’s go,” he said to Akiko.

  He passed through the brass panel. Akiko put her phone away and followed.

  Inside was a flight of stairs covered in perfect white carpet. The walls, also white, were formed of tiles perforated with little holes.

  What were they called?

  Acoustic tiles.

  They descended. At the bottom of the staircase was a framed, autographed compact disc from an unfamiliar band under a single spotlight. Max noticed the name of the producer: Pilot Markham.

  “Well,” said Max. “There’s his name.”

  There was a heavy thunk from below, and Shane called out.

  “Guys, there’s a whole studio down here.”

  Akiko squeezed Max’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “We notice the slightest thing, we’re out, okay?”

  “The slightest thing,” whispered Max back.

  Max rounded the corner and passed through a heavy, soundproofed door and found himself in a futuristic cavern of jagged sound baffle filled with boom mics, amps, guitars, a piano, and a drum set glinting ice-fresh in one corner. An entire wall was made of thick soundproof glass.

  “Sweet, right?” said Shane.

  Max touched a cymbal with a fingernail, and at once the room resonated with sound. He muted it; the room fell dead silent again.

  They stood in the perfect vacuum, examining and examining.

  “So is the guy here?” said Akiko, arms folded.

  Once again the voice emitted from noise-free monitor speakers and seemed to appear right in their minds.

  “The guy is right here, Miz Akiko.”

  Max squinted. Behind the glass wall loomed a white skull. A pale hand floated up and gave a little wave. Max waved back out of bewilderment.

  The white skull moved. A piece of the baffle swung open on the opposite side of the room. A Whiteman stepped out.

  He wore jeans and a hoodie. Not a regular hoodie, but an ashen, expensive-looking garment, adorned with lakefire in arching logotype bisected by a line of white-platinum zipper teeth. He sipped a large mug of tea. The mug bore the words:

  worst dad ever

  The man was fit and thin, his shaved head accentuating his facial features like a Roman marble bust in a museum. He seemed to have no hair. Just a halo of stubble so light and blond as to vanish, eyebrows so thin as to become invisible.

  The marble bust came to life. The man smiled.

  Max watched as the man extended a hand.

  “I am Pilot.”

  1.1

  Pilot stared at Max with gleaming eyes.

  “About this room: after I sold off LakeFire I thought I would abandon the tech industry and attempt music production,” said Pilot. “I failed. You are Max.”

  “Hey,” said Max.

  “It is an honor. I have met the Big Five CEOs of Silicon Valley, and none of them have your balls. Hm, sorry about the macho sexist metaphor. Bad habit.”

  He shook Max’s hand, and it felt cold and dry like a fillet wrapped in butcher paper.

  “Thanks,” said Max. “I have to admit I’m fangirling a little bit right now.”

  “Oh, likewise, likewise, likewise,” said Pilot, his face neutral. “And you must be Mister Shane, the thinking man’s slugger.”

  “Ha,” said Shane, suddenly shy. It was weird to see him shy.

  Pilot moved on to Akiko, and his f
ace broke open like the sun. “And you are the master architect Miz Akiko. Hajimemashite, douzo yoroshiku.” Accent: flawless.

  “Hajimemashite,” said Akiko, and Max tilted his head with curiosity. She never said anything in Japanese because she could only speak at a basic level. He had also never seen her look so bashful.

  Pilot kissed her hand and then transferred it to Shane’s. He clasped both their hands together like a priest would.

  “You are an extremely lucky man, Mister Shane.”

  “Touch her again, you die,” said Shane, laughing.

  “Death is overrated,” said Pilot.

  They laughed long and loud, and Max could see Pilot’s skinny, crowded teeth.

  “I’m just kidding,” said Shane. He was red. “Touch her all you want. Touch me. Touch Max, too.”

  Max wanted to smoosh his palm into Shane’s face: Shut. Up.

  “Sit,” said Pilot, and he clapped once. “So. You know me, Ethnosys, LakeFire, ancient history. Mister Maximilian Portillo, tell us why we are here.”

  Max glanced at Shane and Akiko long enough for all three of them to smirk. He looked back at Pilot. Pilot was also smiling and waiting. He could wait forever.

  “Um,” said Max. “You liked what we did with Wren.”

  Max’s mind stopped. Was this some kind of job interview? Was he blowing it?

  “A hint,” said Pilot finally. “I am not here to recruit you. I am here to convince you to recruit me.”

  “Nice,” said Shane, and he took three long swallows. Max saw Akiko nudge him: Go easy. She held her beer in her hands without drinking it. She was observing the situation.

  Max took a tiny sip.

  “Mister Brayden?” said Pilot. “More refreshments, please?”

  “You got it, Mister Markham,” said Brayden, and he ran upstairs.

  “So,” said Max. “I’m going to guess. You made your dent in the universe. Buckets of cash. But it’s not enough.”

  “It is the opposite of enough,” murmured Pilot. “It is a curse.”

  “So you’re, like, screw the money,” said Max. “You want to make a statement.”

  Pilot held his chin and listened.

  “And we are that statement,” said Max.

  Pilot slammed his mug down on an amp. Max could smell that it was not tea, but whiskey.

  “You are that statement,” said Pilot.

  Pilot pressed a button on his phone, and the wall behind him ceased to be a wall and became instead a door that peeled ajar.

  “Come with me,” said Pilot. “I have prepared something for you.”

  1.2

  Pilot led them into the darkness beyond the open wall. Inside, he tapped his phone until tiny golden spotlights bloomed from high above. Max found himself standing in a red hexagonal room, flanked on each side by a heavy soundproofed door. There were lounge chairs. There was a watercooler, empty, and a snack machine, also empty. There was a long-dead potted plant.

  “That was studio B; that was studio C,” said Pilot, unlatching each door as he went. “C is my mindfulness studio now.”

  Max peered in. Studio C had no equipment; just a bare, soundproofed space with a single silk cerise floor pillow and a small brass singing bowl.

  “My former wife got me that bowl in Kyoto,” said Pilot.

  “I love Kyoto,” said Akiko.

  “I did not go to Kyoto,” said Pilot with an anemic frown. “I was in a meeting, or on a call, or working late. It no longer matters.”

  He opened the door labeled washroom. “Full shower, fresh towels there.”

  “You could live down here,” said Shane.

  “I mostly do,” said Pilot. He pulled at the snack machine and swung the whole thing open on hidden hinges to reveal a low passage, which he vanished into.

  Shane dove in. “Fucking cool,” he said from within.

  Max looked at Akiko.

  “You first,” said Akiko.

  So Max went first.

  It was a tunnel made of glistening wires, one whose sinewy contours got brighter and brighter as Max emerged into a cavernous oubliette.

  There was a leather couch, a coffee table, a refrigerator, all bathed in blue light. There was a table full of half-built computer components: a little hardware hacker’s paradise, a wunderkammer of gadgetry. High above, Max saw the moon and the night sky framed in a perfect square.

  And he saw a towering wall of monitors showing all kinds of things: security camera feeds in grainy cyanotype, web pages, cable news channels, rainbow-hued Bash terminals filled with cryptic text, computer desktops, and so on, all flickering before him, a muted mosaic of windows into a mad and silent world.

  One showed the man in the Black Halo mask with the Wren headquarters sign in the background, and the sight of it took Max’s breath away.

  “A face with no face,” said Pilot, suddenly close. “Brilliant, Mister Max.”

  Mister Max. Pilot had called Brayden Mister Brayden. Did that already put him in some kind of inner circle?

  “Holy shit,” said Akiko, emerging from the tunnel.

  “Welcome,” said Pilot, “to my sanctum.”

  “This is, like, dude,” said Max.

  There was a heavy flop as Shane dove onto the leather couch with a great deflating hiss. From a nearby bucket he fished out a beer and opened it.

  “Fuck yeah,” said Shane.

  “I am glad you find this impressive,” said Pilot. “But it is nothing compared to what you’ve created, Mister Max. Version Zero is inevitable. It is obvious. It is true.”

  Max felt something inside him begin to relax—a knot of some sort, long held tight. He liked hearing It is obvious and It is true. These were words he had never heard from his dad, with his I don’t know computers and There was this Vietnamese kid with an app and whatnot.

  Max opened a beer. He opened beers for everyone. A golden retriever appeared out of nowhere, rested its snout upon Max’s toes, and looked up at him with a furrowed brow: Where have you been this whole time?

  Max smiled. There was nothing to be afraid of here.

  He glanced at Akiko: This is legit. She stopped clutching her beer with both hands. She leaned back into Shane, who reflexively claimed her by wrapping his arm around her waist—the habit of a veteran couple.

  Pilot raised a toast. “Cheers, Mister Max. Cheers, Version Zero.”

  Pilot moved to stand before a small podium, just a bent sheet of polished steel jutting from the ground, and typed upon a small keyboard without letters. The wall of monitors went to black.

  “Mister Max, you said we sell our souls for nothing,” said Pilot.

  “I sure did,” said Max, thrilling at hearing his own words quoted out loud.

  “Every major era of human culture is defined by a dominant technological paradigm,” said Pilot. “The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. Iron, Atomic, Information. That is a silly one: the Information Age. What is not information?”

  Max smiled, for he was having fun. “So what would you call this age?”

  “The smartphone age,” said Akiko.

  “The social media age?” said Shane.

  “Think bigger,” said Max. “Think beyond the technology.”

  “Ugh, here you are,” said a voice. It was Brayden, his arms laden with yet more beers. “This house is way too big.”

  “Mister Max, you inspired me to think about a name for our age,” said Pilot. “It begs for one. What do you call a period where people willingly tell huge corporations where they are at all times, what they ate for dinner, and so on? If a fool on the street asked for a picture of your girlfriend, would you give it to him?”

  “I’d punch him in the face,” said Shane.

  “But when Wren asks for it, we’re all, like, sure,” said Max.

  “It’s different online,
” said Brayden.

  “How so?” said Max.

  “Because if you don’t post a picture of your girlfriend, then someone else in her squad will, and then your girlfriend’ll be all, like, How come you don’t ever post pictures of me? and your squad will be all, like, What’s the deal with you and your girlfriend, is everything all right?” said Brayden. “You know?”

  Max thought about this. The boy had a point.

  It made Max feel very sad for Brayden.

  “I propose we call this the Empty Age,” said Pilot, looking squarely at Max.

  “Empty as in zero,” said Max.

  Akiko stirred. “That’s depressing.”

  “Truth does not guarantee pleasure,” said Pilot.

  “What do you call an age where we willingly allow huge corporations to let evil go unpunished?” said Max.

  Max held the bottle to his lips in a long, soundless kiss, waiting.

  “I’m talking about Gorillagate,” said Max finally.

  “Gorilla,” said Pilot, choking on the word. “Gorillagate.”

  1.3

  Once upon a time a beautiful teen actress earned a role as the Argent Knight in the next movie in the Gem Saga, a beloved fantasy franchise in dire need of a fresh reboot. Fans grumbled, for she was both a Wo-man and a Brown and the Argent Knight had always traditionally been played by rugged Whitemen.

  In a world with dragons and magic floating castles, is a brown female knight really so crazy? she wrote online.

  Attacks from fans came with berserker fury. First came what was known as trolling: tasteless, cynical pranks designed to provoke a response from the victim. The word troll was derived from a mythical monster and was originally a pejorative, but the moniker quickly became a badge of honor for pranksters online—largely Whitemen—who loved to commit acts with the perfect, frictionless anonymity the internet was built for. Nothing was off-limits for these trolls, not handicaps, not child abuse, not the Jewish Holocaust, and certainly not race (except that of Whitemen). They did whatever it took to get a response.

  Why? Now, that is a question.