Version Zero

by David Yoon

  Freeze.

  BLACK HALO: Maybe you will declare that your land—your home of the mind—is sacred and free. The glass beads are worthless, you could say. There is nothing for you here, you could say.

  Freeze.

  BLACK HALO: After these next two days, what will you do?

  2.11

  Four Whitemen and one Whitewoman enter from the swirling cold outside, led by Pilot Markham. Among the five characters are:

  Cal Peers, CEO of the social network Wren, 3 billion users

  River Askew, CEO of the taxi and lodging service Airlift, 250 million users

  Linda Belinda, CEO of the discussion forum Knowned, 300 million users

  Jonas Friend, CEO of the computer giant Quartz, 600 million users

  Hunter Mole, CEO of the retailer A2Z, 400 million users

  PILOT MARKHAM: Welcome to Disconnect, dear friends. Thank you for coming. I wanted to invite the people I trust the most for an uninhibited discussion about the future of our industry totally off the record, without fear of media scrutiny.

  CAL PEERS: Hear, hear. I missed you, Mister Pilot.

  PILOT MARKHAM: I missed me, too.

  CAL PEERS: Ha ha. Group hug. Come on.

  HUNTER MOLE: Group hug.

  RIVER ASKEW: Good to see you, brother.

  PILOT MARKHAM: I cannot breathe, ha ha.

  RIVER ASKEW: You look great.

  LINDA BELINDA: This is such a stunning space you have.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Thank you. It was once a battle station.

  HUNTER MOLE: What battle?

  PILOT MARKHAM: Who cares. They should have fought harder.

  All laugh, except Pilot.

  LINDA BELINDA: You are looking hale and healthy, Mister Pilot.

  PILOT MARKHAM: How is your little one?

  LINDA BELINDA: Just tremendous. I had a nursery put in next to my office, so my sweet little baby Bianca can get oodles of scrumptious face time with her mama.

  PILOT MARKHAM: That . . . must be . . . wonderful.

  LINDA BELINDA: Oh my God. How insensitive of me. I am forever so, so sorry for your loss. We all are.

  PILOT MARKHAM: No apologies necessary. I have been away for a while now.

  LINDA BELINDA: That kind of tragedy could have happened to anyone.

  PILOT MARKHAM: It could have happened to you.

  LINDA BELINDA: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

  PILOT MARKHAM: It still might.

  LINDA BELINDA: Absolutely.

  RIVER ASKEW: Party people. I say we raise a toast to her memory.

  CAL PEERS: Where is the bottle opener?

  PILOT MARKHAM: They are twist-offs.

  CAL PEERS: No matter how big you get you will always be start-up, old friend.

  RIVER ASKEW: So good to see you come out of hiding, Mister Pilot. To Naomi.

  ALL: To Naomi.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Noelle.

  CAL PEERS: What?

  RIVER ASKEW: Blanc de blancs. Mineral, with a low persistent saline note.

  JONAS FRIEND: Lithe. Austere. Austere as fuck.

  LINDA BELINDA: I am guessing Côte de Sézanne.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Honestly, I just pissed in some Sprite and crushed roofies.

  HUNTER MOLE: This guy.

  PILOT MARKHAM: All you motherfuckers drink my piss.

  CAL PEERS: My God, I have missed you.

  PILOT MARKHAM: I am sorry to hear about what those Version Zero punks did to your back-end systems. The nerve.

  CAL PEERS: I want to roast them in a cauldron until their guts burst and you can smell shit burning.

  LINDA BELINDA: Ha ha, tell us how you really feel.

  CAL PEERS: I must say, it is nice to be offline among friends. No mics or cameras or sharing. It is cozy. Is that weird for a guy like me to say?

  All laugh, except Pilot.

  JONAS FRIEND: So what the fuck have you been up to, Mister Pilot? Running a cult or something? Are you secretly in the administration?

  CAL PEERS: I would have heard about that.

  PILOT MARKHAM: The usual. Drinking. Plotting the downfall of the establishment.

  JONAS FRIEND: Cheers to that shit.

  CAL PEERS: You want me to get you a seat with POTUS?

  PILOT MARKHAM: If you want, sure.

  CAL PEERS: He is very supportive of the private-state model. The man works just like a puppet. Which is great, as long as you are okay with sticking your hand up his ass.

  HUNTER MOLE: We could learn a thing or two from this very region. Labor is labor here, you see. Politics never enter into it, you see. And now they have become A2Z’s number one producer of—what is it again?

  CAL PEERS: Small miscellaneous commodities.

  LINDA BELINDA: They are better fed and cared for than if they had just stayed in their sad little country villages.

  HUNTER MOLE: My benchmark for human rights is: if it can be sold and bought, you cannot realistically consider it a human right.

  JONAS FRIEND: Commerce is a fucking two-way street, get the fuck over it.

  CAL PEERS: Cheers.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Like, you would not whore out your oldest daughter for all the gold in El Dorado, correct?

  JONAS FRIEND: You wish, Mister Pilot.

  CAL PEERS: Well, how much gold are we talking about?

  All laugh.

  LINDA BELINDA: Mister Cal, I meant to ask you how your escape strategy is going.

  CAL PEERS: Things are proceeding well.

  HUNTER MOLE: What? You are moving on from Wren?

  CAL PEERS: All I care to say is that things are proceeding well.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Come. Let us take the grand tour.

  HUNTER MOLE: You have to tell me what your next venture is, Mister Cal.

  CAL PEERS: How about we focus on Mister Pilot’s new venture instead? Is that not why you invited us after three years of flaking out on all of us?

  HUNTER MOLE: Oh, right.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Come this way. Right here are your bona fide, official Disconnect conference wristbands. They snap shut—like this—and come apart by pressing this crown here.

  JONAS FRIEND: Fucking tight.

  PILOT MARKHAM: The bands grant access to different areas, including your sleeping quarters, which I will show you later. And they are actually a big part of my new venture, with much deeper functionality that I am excited to share with you.

  JONAS FRIEND: Like what?

  PILOT MARKHAM: You will see.

  JONAS FRIEND: You are being coy as shit, Mister Pilot.

  CAL PEERS: All in good time.

  HUNTER MOLE: That is right, Mister Cal. Mister Pilot will show all of us when he is good and ready. Just do not take three more years to do it.

  PILOT MARKHAM: Leave your luggage wherever, have a snack, have another drink, relax. I would like to start our first powwow in, like, fifteen.

  LINDA BELINDA: I am absolutely thrilled to be here.

  PILOT MARKHAM: And I am thrilled to have you. Welcome to Disconnect, everyone.

  Pilot begins a round of applause.

  PILOT MARKHAM: I am thrilled to finally have all of you.

  2.12

  Max watched, entranced. The Big Five were in the lobby below. Five people, responsible for creating 98 percent of the online world half of humanity lived in.

  A shockingly tiny group.

  “Jesus, just five people?” said Shane.

  “Five is all it takes,” said Akiko.

  “Well, how would I know that?” said Shane.

  “I didn’t say anything about you not knowing that,” said Akiko.

  “
You guys, hey,” said Max.

  “Fucking thinks I’m stupid or something,” muttered Shane.

  Akiko recoiled. “What did you say?”

  “Guys, hey,” said Max. “Come on.”

  Max watched as Akiko and Shane froze into a standoff. She said they had fought this morning. Max wished he could’ve magically known exactly what their fight had been about. He knew it was not about him, which was an awful kind of relief. But what if it was about something worse? What if something had been said that could not be unsaid?

  Did Akiko say she needed someone more her peer? That she was leaving him?

  I really love talking with you, Max.

  I never get to talk about this stuff.

  Max had had a total of four girlfriends his whole life. He realized now that he had held each one up to the light like tracing paper to see if the shapes drawn upon them matched the one set by Akiko.

  It was a terrible, unfair thing to do, to begin relationships that were doomed from the start. Max let them go one by one, each time saying, It’s not you, it’s me. Which was true. The women were fine; the women had done nothing wrong. They would leave in a stricken daze that would later harden into cynical resentment.

  Because it was him: a fool, plagued by longing.

  And this was where his longing had finally led. Akiko, openly smoking now. Shane, a crucible of hurt. And Max literally wedged between them.

  He would fix things. Akiko and Shane could not stay broken forever. Max could not bear that kind of guilt.

  He was distracted by something on-screen: the camera switched to a long-lens shot of Cal Peers, and beneath it appeared a professional-looking lower-third caption graphic:

  cal peers, wren ceo

  The graphic was done in hard grainy black and white, complete with a Black Halo mask logo.

  “Where’d this artwork come from?” said Max.

  Brayden peeked out from behind a monitor. “I made it.”

  “You made that?” said Akiko.

  Brayden nodded.

  “It looks professional,” said Max. “Very nice.”

  “Uh, thanks,” said Brayden. The boy cowered slightly with confusion. He had no idea where all the tension in the room was coming from. Max envied that.

  “Livestream is looking solid,” said Akiko. “I gotta make sure it stays up when it gets reported or blocked. Happened twice already.”

  “Awesome,” said Max.

  Akiko flashed a brittle smile and tapped her ash. Max removed his Buddy Hollys, and her scent on his fingertips was as spellbinding as ether.

  Focus, Max.

  He busied himself with the case of disguises, choosing a stick-on goatee, a clip-on nose ring, and a straight ponytail wig. He took off his glasses, and the world went slightly blurry. But not too bad.

  “Whoa,” said Brayden, peeking out again. “Classic nerd look.”

  “Thanks,” said Max.

  “Welp, I guess I’ll just sit here and pick my ass,” said Shane. “Since I’m apparently not a perfect fit for the role.”

  “Do not fucking put words in my mouth,” said Akiko.

  “Shane, Shane,” said Max. “You could, um, you could monitor press reaction.”

  “Fuck this,” said Shane. He stripped off his Disconnect shirt, shocking the room into silence with a sudden flash of perfect erotic anger, and changed back into his tank top. Then he left.

  Akiko buried her head in her hands.

  “Ughhhhhhhh,” she said. “Fucking baby.”

  “Hey,” whispered Max. “I’m sorry. Last night.”

  Akiko eyed him from behind her hair and hissed like a madwoman. “This isn’t about you, duncie. This was a long time coming.”

  For a nanosecond, Max realized he and Akiko had never fought before. Not once. Not about anything. She saved all her bickering for Shane.

  But just now her voice sounded different. She smelled different. It made Max a little fearful. And to think, Shane saw this side of Akiko and much more.

  Max suddenly felt like he hardly knew anything about her.

  “You guys are gonna be okay,” he said. It was a weak thing to say. But it was the best he could think of.

  “This was a long, long time coming.”

  “You two are important.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Max reached to touch her, but stopped. “I never meant to get between you.”

  “I said it’s not about you. We’ll be fine. We will always be fine, forever and ever, I let things get out of hand last night, blablabla.”

  “Okay.”

  She lifted her face and gazed at him. “I just wish,” she said, touching her lips. She shook off a thought. She rose. “Time to grow the fuck up.”

  She made a face—Here we go again—and left to go after Shane.

  Max and Brayden sat alone in the room.

  “Hey, uh, so,” said Brayden, peering out again with big soft eyes.

  Max straightened. “Yo, Brayden.”

  “We’re up to thirty-five million unique viewers,” said Brayden.

  Max swallowed. “Thirty-five.”

  “Oop, and Pilot’s just given the signal,” said Brayden. “That means you’re up in five minutes.”

  “Thirty-five million, huh.”

  “You got this,” said Brayden, and he gave two tiny thumbs-up.

  Max checked himself in the mirror in the lid of the toolbox.

  “Hi, everyone,” said Max. He angled his voice down. “Hi, everyone.” He tried it a little huskier. “Hi, everyone.”

  That was good.

  “My name’s Maru,” said Max.

  2.13

  HOST: If it can be sold and bought, you cannot realistically consider it a human right.

  GUEST 1: I don’t know, it’s hard to beat How much gold are we talking about?

  HOST: What do you think has been the most outrageous line so far?

  GUEST 2: It’s hard for me to even comment on what’s happening. We don’t even know if this is actually real.

  HOST: If this is actually real? Are you serious?

  GUEST 2: No one knows where this Version Zero video stream is coming from, where it’s hosted; no one knows if those are the real CEOs or just deepfaked actors; there’s been no response from the feds other than We’re currently investigating—

  GUEST 1: So it could all be a conspiracy, or it could be that Version Zero has been planning this whole covert video thing for a long time, and they’re very serious.

  GUEST 2: This is the biggest troll ever. And we’re the ones being trolled.

  GUEST 1: I disagree. It’s the Big Five who are being trolled.

  GUEST 2: There is no way someone like Pilot Markham would allow himself to get hacked.

  GUEST 1: Unless he’s somehow in on it.

  GUEST 2: And I’m the conspiracy theorist? If this was real, why wouldn’t someone just call Cal Peers and tell him, Smile, you’ve been punked on hidden camera?

  GUEST 1: So why hasn’t someone called? Hm?

  HOST: Insta-polling shows eighty-three percent of people believe this Version Zero stunt is the real deal.

  GUEST 2: So if enough people believe it’s true, then it just becomes true. Just forget reason.

  GUEST 1: Ugh, not the reason debate again. Look: there’s been no comment from Wren, or Knowned, or A2Z or Airlift or Quartz. Pilot Markham is unreachable, which is not really a surprise, but still.

  GUEST 2: Lies need oxygen to grow and get credibility, and commenting on them gives them that oxygen.

  HOST: The same poll shows that overall sixty-one percent of current users of all these online products would strongly or very strongly consider deleting their accounts after hearing how these Big Five CEOs have been talking. That’s a majority.
/>
  GUEST 1: Why not quit? It was free to join in the first place, it’s just as free to quit.

  GUEST 2: I simply am in such shock that these huge internet companies can be so vulnerable to the shenanigans of a single group of antibusiness leftist anarchists.

  GUEST 1: That’s what you find shocking? Not that these Big Five CEOs are reprehensible human beings, and that we give them our money and our data every day? Because every day we—thank you, thank you.

  HOST: I guess the audience is agreeing with you.

  GUEST 2: Okay, so let me film you in secret, get you drunk, and ask you a bunch of leading questions. You wouldn’t make a single misspoken syllable or anything, would you, Miss Perfect.

  GUEST 1: That’s easy—I wouldn’t. Because I’m not you.

  GUEST 2: . . .

  HOST: O-o-okay, it’s time for viewer live comments, here we go.

  GUEST 2: That is uncalled for.

  HOST: Settle down, children. Janet from Dallas, Texas, says, My dad’s generation had Watergate, I propose we call this Discogate. Discogate?

  GUEST 1: Disconnect plus gate? Kind of a leap.

  GUEST 2: You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?

  HOST: Aiden from Massachusetts writes, Is it missing the point that I hope this won’t affect free shipping on A2Z? Yes, Aiden from Massachusetts, it is missing the point.

  GUEST 2: A million bucks says this whole thing winds up being about selling some new product or service.

  GUEST 1: Two million says it’s about getting people to wake up and wise up.

  HOST: I don’t know. With all that’s going on these days I find my faith in humanity adds up to a coin toss.

  GUEST 2: People are sheep who will believe anything on a screen.

  GUEST 1: People know who’s really behind that screen, and they will absolutely walk away.

  HOST: We’ll be right back after the break. Unless we get hacked.