Version Zero
Page 19
She pushed with her lips, and an emboldened Max pushed back, and then it was no longer enough and Max pulled her to straddle his lap as they continued.
It was a mess.
There was a bell ringing in Max’s mind: stopstopstop. But Max ignored it.
He opened his eyes and found hers and saw that they were the same as that night by the pool, and that now those eyes were for him.
Max’s eyes darted. For behind Akiko there was a bluish glow filling a room.
The makeshift control room. Max froze.
“Listen,” said Akiko. “Me and Shane, we . . .”
“Wait.”
“No, I’m trying to explain something,” said Akiko. “We’ve just been together for so long, and I think that . . .”
“The cameras,” said Max.
Akiko’s face fell. “Oh shit.”
They sprang apart. “Oh shit,” said Max. “Oh shit, oh shit.”
“No one’s watching, it’s fine,” said Akiko, more a desperate wish than a statement. She jumped to her feet and smoothed her jeans flat.
Max scrambled out of the lounge and into the control room, where indeed the cameras were still on and active. He tapped the keyboard and checked here and there: recording status, broadcast status. They were both set to off.
“Jesus,” said Max, and he sighed a mighty sigh.
“No one saw,” said Akiko.
Max pushed away from the table and rubbed his eyes. His heart was a boulder skipping fast down a mountain slope. His skin felt clammy. If he leapt into the snow outside, he wondered, how far would his hot body sink before finally coming to rest?
“We can’t,” he said. “We can’t do this to Shane.”
“But that’s what I was trying to explain,” said Akiko. She leaned in the doorway, arms and legs crossed, and her very silhouette made Max want to lunge and silence her with another kiss. But surely it would be a lunge straight off a cliff.
“Duncie, you guys have been together forever.”
“But is that reason enough?”
“Come on.”
Akiko unfolded herself and tailor-sat in the doorway’s orange rectangle. She spoke through her hands, maybe hoping her words would somehow be filtered clean as they passed through the gaps in her fingers.
“I love him to death,” she said. “I always will. Without him, my life would’ve been so screwed. With him, I see a clear straight shot into the future.”
“See, that’s why—” Max began, but Akiko cut him off.
She shot him a look. “But I can’t see the future with you. I can’t even see the next sixty seconds. It’s this curve I can’t see around. Do you feel me?”
Max’s heart gave three hard kicks.
“I can’t see shit,” she said. “But I’m dying to.”
Max did not dare move. The snow was deep outside, miles deep, and parts of it probably would never thaw until the end of the world.
“Duncie,” he said. The word felt entirely new to him.
There was a beep.
There was the slightest shift of color against the walls of the darkened room.
Akiko’s eyes shifted, then narrowed. “What was that?”
Max glanced about, struggling to see what she was looking at in the dark, until he noticed Pilot’s laptop sitting open. The green text on the screen twitched and updated.
PORTILLO MAXIMILIAN
CH42 0088 6011 6238 5295 6
PIN 199358101
$1,000,000,000.00
HOSOKAWA AKIKO
CH42 0088 6011 6238 5295 7
PIN 002051584
$1,000,000,000.00
SATOW SHANE
CH42 0088 6011 6238 5295 8
PIN 309915457
$500,000,000.00
TURNIPSEED BRAYDEN
CH42 0088 6011 6238 5295 9
PIN 040001783
$500,000,000.00
Account transfers complete.
Thank you for using Penumbra Global Financial Services Aktiengesellschaft.
Have a pleasant day.
2.7
Holy shit,” said Akiko, breathing hard.
“He really did it,” said Max. “He transferred all three billion to us.”
Akiko found a pen and began writing tiny characters on her fingernails.
“What are you doing?” said Max.
“Copying the access creds.” She finished, then carefully covered her nails with clear office tape. “See? Here’s me, here’s Shane.”
The sound of his name brought a wave of guilt between them.
“Let me do you,” said Akiko. She held his hand—he could have let her hold it all night—and wrote, then sealed it shut with neatly trimmed tape.
“We should close this computer,” said Max.
“We should,” said Akiko.
But Max did not. He turned back to the computer, in fact, just to prolong things while simultaneously distracting himself from doing things he should not even be thinking about.
Akiko looked, too. “What is this beeping window here?” she said. She furrowed her brow. Her eyes became two dancing pinlights.
“Iceland, Norway, Greenland,” Akiko was saying now. “Las Vegas, Bangkok. There’s, like, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty-eight locations here.”
“What’s Compromise Status mean?” said Max. He leaned in, but no matter how hard he squinted he could not decipher what he was looking at. “What’s this Charge State mean?”
“Are these . . . ?” said Akiko. Her eyes narrowed.
Each row had a column at the end with a timecode number. Each number was busy ratcheting down, down, down. At this rate, Max guessed, they would reach zero tomorrow.
“These look like data centers,” said Akiko.
“Not data centers,” said Pilot. “Data exchanges.”
Max jumped. “Shit all over me, goddamn.”
“You scared the crap out of us,” said Akiko. She was no longer sitting next to Max. Somehow she had teleported to the other side of the room.
Pilot stood in the orange rectangle of the doorway, neither arms nor legs folded, just standing there as if he were an ancient statue placed by the hand of God.
“Work stuff,” said Pilot. “I like to keep an eye on my assets.”
He came at Max in the dark with unexpected speed, swung the computer shut, and sprang backward to stand immobile in the doorway once more.
“Big day tomorrow,” he said. “Off to bed I go. Good night, you two.”
He said you two without a trace of conspiracy—he didn’t seem to suspect anything between Max and Akiko—but it was a close enough call, and guilt began welling up inside Max like crude oil. It took a moment for him to get to his feet. He held himself steady with a hand upon the table.
Pilot receded down the hallway, and his door latch clicked shut.
“I should go,” said Max.
Akiko gazed at the floor. “Okay,” she said, as if answering a question.
* * *
* * *
But in the night, as Max lay in his dry, clean bed with a sapphire-clear view of the mountains and the sparkling void above, he sensed the slightest shift in the still air of the room. And indeed—looking over his shoulder at the blue hairline of light beneath the door he could see two little shadows placed shoulder width apart: feet.
Silently the shadows waited. They shifted, vanished, then returned.
Max rose and opened the door a crack, and it was like letting in a ghost, or an insistent wind; for the door pressed itself open and Max, unable to stop it, found himself in her arms again with his heart and brain and every muscle in his limbs screaming pink and purple and orange, bright as the dawn on another world many light-years away.
She turned only to shut and lock the d
oor—quiet as a thief—and without hesitation shed her clothes to reveal the five bright lines drawn by the moonlight upon the edges of her skin: a calligraphy of white light standing before him.
Only, just for a moment.
She leapt. Deep into the sumptuous bed she pinned him, devouring as she went.
2.8
Max saw nothing but blue and white.
Crystals upon crystals—trillions and trillions of them—formed supple peaks everywhere. Millions of tons of dry white powder that sent sparkling devils rising at the slightest breeze against a perfect azure sky. There was no point guessing their age. In summer they melted and seeped through soil and rock to join rivers deep underground. The melted crystals merged with the ocean. They dripped off the wing of a diving pelican. They evaporated, joined the cloud herds above, and migrated to these mountains again to freeze back into shape. Were they the same crystals?
Max’s nose sat inches from a perfect six-sided snowflake stuck to the outside of the glass wall. He pressed his fingertip to the window and wondered if his body heat would melt the flake.
It did not. The glass was an inch thick.
Max had woken alone.
This was fine, and to be expected.
He touched his naked body here and there—his chest, his neck, his penis, his face—and indeed they felt warmer and more gelatinous, as if the cells beneath the skin had relaxed all at once.
He reached for his phone. Still no signal. There sat Max’s last text to his parents:
I love you guys . . . I’ll be back soon <3
With no feeds to read, Max looked through his photos. There was one of Akiko he took in secret—a shot of her from last night, cradling her chin atop her knees as she waited for Pilot to figure out the chords for the next song.
Max squeezed his forehead and stared at the photo of Akiko. She wants to leave him, he thought. She wants to leave him for me.
Max had always thought that Shane, looking the way he did, could get any girl he wanted. And girls, looking at Shane the way they often did, knew that he knew that.
But there was no possible universe where Shane wanted anyone else but Akiko.
There was no universe where Shane’s heart would not be crushed into glass.
And Max could do it. Crush it with a simple press of a fingertip.
In this universe, Akiko would marry and have kids, and Max would marry some great girl and have kids, and—years from now, with Version Zero forever shrouded in mystery—they would gather their families together and barbecue and sing songs and so on.
But they would always wonder, wouldn’t they.
The smooth surfaces of their respective relationships would forever be marred by a tiny gap, wouldn’t they.
The best thing for Max to do was to keep that gap from ever getting bigger, because gaps demanded to be filled with whatever was nearest.
Max’s ears began to beat, beat, beat.
He sprang up. It was not his ears beating, or his heart.
On the horizon there had appeared a tiny black dot, growing and growing.
2.9
Max hustled down the hall. He wore his Disconnect shirt. On the way he high-fived Pilot leaning out of a doorway.
“Ten minutes to arrival,” said Pilot.
“Awesome sauce,” said Max. “I’ll rouse the troops.”
He slapped his metal bracelet on his wrist, aimed it at Brayden’s door, and flung it open only to immediately clutch at his eyes, for he had caught a glimpse of the boy’s hand massaging his pale erect penis.
“What the fuck, bro?” said Brayden, yanking his blankets up.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Max. “Guests are, coming, uh, I mean, they’re on their way.”
“What the fuck?”
“Put on your Disconnect shirt.” Max shut the door and moved on.
At Shane and Akiko’s door, he made sure to knock.
“Guys, battle stations. The marks are on their way right now. Get your tee shirts on.”
Max waited.
“Hello?”
He nudged the door open and smelled smoke. At the foot of the bed sat Akiko, dressed and ready. A limp hand held motionless a lit cigarette.
“You’re smoking?” said Max.
Akiko smiled the saddest smile in the world. “We had a fight. Like, just now.”
Max’s heart rolled over. “About—?”
“Not about last night,” she said. “He doesn’t know. It’s about everything else. He can tell I’m afraid. Of, you know. I mean, I guess last night really messed me up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Akiko. “Last night will probably wind up being a good thing. Last night makes this morning.”
She took a drag and exhaled a long tapered cloud. Max wanted to hear more. He wanted to hear everything. But outside, he knew the black dot was growing.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?” Akiko let ash drop onto the polished concrete floor.
“Pilot said five minutes.”
“I’ll see you there,” said Akiko. She gazed at her empty shoes waiting at the foot of the bed and gave them a smile. How Max wanted to help her with her shoes.
But he moved on.
He walked, then jogged to the bathroom next door, where he heard the splattering white noise of the shower running.
“Shane, battle stations, man,” he said. “ETA five minutes.”
Max could hear Shane stop moving in the water.
“Shane?” said Max.
Nothing.
“Yeah,” said Shane finally. He did not say it normal. He said it like Get the fuck out of my space.
Max dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, took a deep breath, and left.
When he reached the control room, Akiko and Brayden were already there, huddled behind the monitors while Pilot handed out coffee and pastries.
“Bacon,” said Pilot, and tossed Max a strip.
“Estimated arrival in five minutes, ten seconds,” said Brayden.
“You really love saying that,” said Pilot.
“Feels awesome,” said Brayden, nodding. He glanced at Max, shrank a millimeter, then returned his focus to the monitor.
They watched as the black dot drew closer.
“Man, one missile at the chopper and, bam,” said Brayden. “Billions of users would be up for grabs.”
“Who needs missiles,” said Max. “They’re gonna shoot themselves down. Right, Team Vee-Zero?”
“Right,” said a voice.
Shane had entered. He gazed outside, watching the helicopter draw near.
“Hey, man,” said Max carefully, on tiptoe. “You should eat something.”
“Not really hungry,” said Shane, not moving. Akiko bore her gaze into the monitor. Did he suspect anything? Because if he did, their friendship would already be over.
He wanted to get back to Playa Mesa as soon as he could after this was done. Last night with Akiko had been a mistake. But he could fix it.
He would find a girlfriend and muster the discipline to wedge her firmly between him and Akiko. Akiko would give up on Max. Shane would remain his friend, his heart unshattered. And the four of them would go on double dates as normal as can be.
Like last night never happened.
Thirty seconds crept by. Max ate his bacon.
It was time to focus. The most powerful people in Silicon Valley were minutes away. Pilot would do his thing. Then Max would do his.
But Max had one more thing in mind. Right after they cut feed, Max would reveal his face to Cal Peers alone and stare him in the eyes.
Meanwhile, the connected world outside this snowy mountaintop would already be churning with the fallout.
TECH CEOS EXPOSED ON HACKED LIVESTREAM BY INTERNET PRANKSTERS VERSION ZERO
WREN CEO CAL PEERS: “OUR USERS ARE MORONS”
And so on.
And what could Cal Peers do to Max? To any of them?
He could do nothing. Like he said: Cal Peers had come to Disconnect of his own volition. There would still be no hard evidence connecting Version Zero to Max. Pilot could even claim Disconnect had been hacked by Version Zero.
The truth would forever remain missing. A blank spot in a puzzle.
Max looked about the room now. Brayden, giddy as a child. Pilot, eyes shifting here and there, perhaps considering what verbal traps to lay for his prey. Shane in the doorway, unmoving, glaring at Akiko. Akiko stubbornly monitoring the screens, refusing to meet his eye. Everyone nervous for different reasons.
“Bracelets, everyone,” said Max.
They put on their bracelets.
“Pilot?” said Max.
“Yes.”
“Do we have time for a Black Halo speech?”
Pilot smiled. He donned a hoodie over his Disconnect tee. On the chest were the words lake and fire in arching logotype, bisected by a line of white-platinum zipper teeth.
2.10
BLACK HALO: In history there has long been the Bro-man. He walks in. He looks around. He thinks: What do I know that you do not? How can I use that to get things from you? The Bro-man asks the person with no concept of land ownership, who has never seen a glass bead: Can I buy your country, with these glass beads?
Freeze.
BLACK HALO: The goal of the Bro-man is not wealth. It is simply more. More than what other Bro-men have. The Bro-man does this out of a bad evolutionary habit, a survival of the fittest that does not know where to stop. The Bro-man does not realize this. He simply seeks more countries for fewer glass beads, forever.
Freeze.
BLACK HALO: The Bro-man loves the smartphone. Every time you touch one, he gets another chunk of your country—your home of the mind—for glass beads. The Bro-man no longer even has to provide the glass beads. You already do that for him. For you do not realize their value to begin with.
Freeze.
BLACK HALO: There have always been deceitful Bro-men with endless greed. But until the internet, never before could so much be taken so quickly, from so many, by so few. For the next two days, Version Zero has invited these few. To speak candidly. Not knowing you will hear every word they say. But you will hear, and then you will know. And what will you do then?