by Parker Tiden
Girth took the lead, "Greetings from the United States of America." No reaction. "Uhh... thanks for receiving us. Quite the setup you got here." I couldn't be sure, but it felt like he was looking straight at me, and it made me want to squirm. The silence was unbearable and Girth wasn't showing any leadership skills.
"He's not a fucking Martian," I hissed and turned to Ezio. "I'm Luna. I'm the reason we're here. I was told you could help me."
"Let's make one thing very clear," Ezio said finally, his voice cold like the chamber we were standing in. His eyes were pulsating red dots in the blackness under his hood—a real flair for the dramatic this guy. "We have no interest in helping you."
"But we were told—"
He lifted his right hand to say stop. "Our interest is to hurt, and eventually, destroy this regime. I think you might have information that could help us to do that."
"My interest," I said, trying to match him in his coldness, "is to find out what happened to my father."
"You see a problem where there is none. Our interests are inherently complementary. Helping you will be a byproduct of our efforts." He paused. Those red eyes pierced me. "I was told that you would be bringing with you something of value."
Instinctively, my hand felt for the virtual thumb drive, the only weapon left on my gun belt—a mistake. Ezio held out his left hand with his gloved fingers stretched out, at the same time, I felt the thumb drive vibrate under my hand, and suddenly, shoot through the air into his. Like Vader going after a lightsaber.
Nuffian, Jarno, and Girth all rushed Ezio while grabbing for weapons they no longer had. Ezio coolly held out his right hand and they were thrown backwards into the air, picking me up on their way, and we all came to a sliding stop on the steel floor.
Before we could protest and yell multiple expletives at him, Ezio waved goodbye, and with a smirk on his face, disappeared in a cloud of pixels. We were left dazed and alone in his chamber of steel.
"Thanks a lot, Girth," Jarno said.
"It's not like I knew that was going to happen," Girth said sheepishly.
I just shook my head in disbelief, my dreams of avenging my dad gone in a Russian pixel cloud. How could I have been so stupid?
"We'll find him," Nuffian tried.
Just as we were beginning to think that we might be stuck in this hell forever, the gray steel dissolved around us and turned to green, and we were again in the field where we had found that cow. Our weapons were in piles around us. A consolation for Girth maybe, but sure as hell not for me. We trudged back to our portal in silence and left Russia, vowing never to set foot there again. I was too disappointed to be angry.
The Whistler
It was Wednesday, my third day back at school, and I still hadn't said a word to Sarah. High school wasn't getting any easier, I didn’t know if it ever would. I was a mess, with my dad, Alphacore, and the drive swirling in my head. Even the tournament was taking up a disproportionate amount of space in my brain. Being back in these hallways seemed both inconsequential and momentous. Whatever it was, I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time in the girls' bathroom—just to breathe. This is where it finally happened, where she finally spoke to me.
I pushed through doors to the bathroom, taking in its stillness. I took the second-to-last stall, theory and experience telling me that this would be the least used, and most likely to be tolerably clean. I pulled down my jeans, which came off easily nowadays. I sat down and relaxed, a stream of warmth left me and splashed timidly into the bowl.
"Lil?”
Startled out of my trance, I nearly jumped off the toilet seat while still peeing.
"I know it's you, Lil, I would recognize your pee anywhere," came from the stall right next to me.
"What!?"
"We've peed together so many times, I’d know that sound of yours anywhere.”
"What!?"
"It's like a signature… a fingerprint. I just realized something, if you ever had a dog and you needed it to heal, but your lips had been ripped off by a Tasmanian devil, you could just crouch. You see, there is a slight whistling sound when you pee, and your dog would come running. Piece of cake."
Great, I whistle when I pee, another thing to worry about. I'd been running through my mind what I would say when I finally stood in front of her. All the words that I came up with, all the excuses, all the explanations, seemed so hollow. Now I was on a toilet seat, trying to think of a good comeback, and I was coming up empty.
"Uhh... Sarah..." the toilet in the stall next to me flushed. I waited for the sound to abate, it felt like the longest flush in history. "I'm sorry." Nothing. "I'm sorry I didn't ask for help... God knows I would have needed it... I still need it..." Nothing. She must be so mad, I had seen fury in her eyes when she tried to mow me down with dodge balls. I shut up and listened. Apart from the noise of the school hallway filtering through the door, there was silence. I stood up and pulled up my formally ass-hugging pants, then pushed open the stall door. The other stall doors stood open. She was gone. I was alone again.
Damn Fine Mullet
Tristan was at his desk in the back of the NASA-like control room of the Cyber Gaming Unit. The job had many drawbacks, including a boss with a stick up his ass, a lack of upward mobility, lethargy, and young colleagues with facial hair, but one of the worst aspects were the working hours. Gamers were most active at night, so the CGU was at its most crowded between 9 pm and 3 am. Sure, most of the surveillance was done by algorithms and bots in close cooperation with Alphacore corporate's own intelligence gathering, which dwarfed the governments, by the way. But having boots on the ground was still operationally invaluable. It wasn't uncommon for the kids to take pot shots at law enforcement. He didn't engage, usually, despite an itch to blow everyone to pieces with his bureau-issued hyper weapons. The public relations department would not approve.
FBI leadership wanted the bureau to have a public presence in Alphacore. This amounted to opening up a "front office" in Alphacore's main commercial district. Getting Alphacore corporate to let up real estate required some behind the scenes strong-arming. A federal presence in Alphacore was not popular among the gamers either. The first iteration of the office lasted a day. At first, hackers tagged it with anarchistic graffiti until, finally, a particularly inventive one made it disappear altogether and replaced it with a three-story high fuming pile of pink elephant shit. Alphacore's programmers had begrudgingly rebuilt it, adding stronger protective layers and a few custom upgrades Tristan had requested.
The FBI office in Alphacore was set up with a tripwire so to speak. Any time someone entered the office, a notification was sent to Tristan's team. The team was then provided with a live feed from a virtual surveillance camera—all courtesy of Alphacore corporate. Without this setup, the team would have to constantly pull out on false alarms. Corporate did not give a damn if their platform was used as a tool to undermine democracy. They did, however, care a lot about the perceived threats of increased government regulation to their business model—ergo their willingness to accommodate federal law enforcement, to some extent.
Tristan spawned into Alphacore that night because the trip-wire had been set off, and the avatar that appeared in the office didn't immediately proceed to destroy it. Instead, there stood the ugliest mullet-bearing dwarf he had ever seen.
I was pacing back and forth in Nick’s basement. “Why would you risk going to the fuzz at all?" George asked as he typed yet another unfathomable string of commands into his computer. Jamaal was doing the same on my computer. They had set up George's and my computer next to each other in some elaborate plan to mask my identity. Nick was hovering behind George, almost as nervous as I was.
"What else can I do?" I said. "We need help, and your Russian friend didn't exactly deliver."
"True," replied George, turning red at the memory of that debacle. "Back to the task at hand. The feds will train all their computing power, all those massive mainframes somewhere in a basement in Virginia, on
you. To try to smoke you out, find out who you are and where you come from. You're entering the lion's den and we need to make you invisible."
"We won't be able to hold them for long. You need to be in and out within seven to eight minutes before your cover is blown," Jamaal explained as he powered up Alphacore on my computer.
"When we were in Russia, we used the relatively rudimentary obfuscated server trick. That won't be enough this time since we know that you'll be targeted and the feds have their head up Alphacore's ass," George explained. "There might be some collateral damage on the way, but the goal justifies the whatever," he sighed.
I replaced Jamaal in front of Speed Freak. "What do you mean collateral damage? Who is the collateral?" I slipped on my headphones and lowered the visor.
"No time to get into that now," Nick said, now hovering behind me as the Alphacore logo appeared on the screen. We had decided to take it easy with any Bitcoin spending, but the team had also collectively decided to make one exception for me, and that exception was staring me in the face. An ASUS Rog ultrawide 35-inch curved monitor, for two grand. It was nasty. The colors crackled. George couldn't take his hands off it, petting and talking to it like it was a Golden Retriever or something.
We had recond the FBI office the night before, so we knew which portal to use and how long it took to get from the portal to the office. "T-minus ten seconds," George said, suddenly serious. I put my hands in position on the keyboard and the mouse. "It's a go," I heard George now through my headphones.
I spawned into a side street a few blocks away from the feds, in Achore, the main city in Alphacore. I didn't like it here in the bustle of the city. I felt more at home in the outer rim, with my stream, and with Broccoli. Achore had the trappings of a modern megalopolis, with skyscrapers and pavement, noise and eccentricity, but it was not loved. It was like an unwanted bastard child—dirty, sad, and a pain in the ass.
We had chosen to use a completely new character, Roland, to try to minimize the risk of this all being traced back to me in real life. George had created a dwarf-like mullet-bearing creature. With George's help, I had patched in a voice modulator so that Roland would sound nothing like me when he spoke. I had a new virtual thumb drive on my belt… a replacement of the one stolen in Russia.
I passed a myriad of avatars on my short walk to the office. They all seemed occupied with their own lives, barely noticing me as I neared the office. I pushed open the front door of the fed office. On the inner door in front of me were instructions.
WEAPONS-FREE ZONE. PLACE ALL WEAPONS IN THE LOCKER TO YOUR LEFT. THE LOCKER CAN ONLY BE OPENED BY YOU. And in smaller letters underneath, it said: The Federal Government takes no responsibility for lost or stolen property.
I did as instructed. Roland didn't have much to lose anyhow in the form of valuable weaponry. I placed a handgun and a battle axe in the closet and closed the door. The inner door slid open automatically and I stepped in. The place looked like a cop station from an 80s TV show. Yes, I had seen some of the shows with my dad—Hill Street Blues being a notable favorite of ours. Metal desks were scattered around, together with dingy lighting and rotary phones, and phone books used to whack the perps in the head without leaving a trace.
Right in front of me was an unmanned reception. A small sign next to a big red button read: Press For Agent. Well, that's exactly what I did, and then I waited, and waited, and waited some more. No one ever said that the federal government was efficient. I needed to strike the right balance between keeping the rhetorical advantage and hurrying things along to get out within the time set for me by George.
"Yes," I heard someone say right behind me. I spun around. There, in front of me, stood an FBI agent, or at least what I suppose was an FBI agent. Of course, I could never really know for sure. He had a smirk on his face—this did not bode well.
"What, the federal government couldn't afford a decorator?" I said.
"As far as the decoration goes, it really is out of my hands. I kind of like the retro look though, thank you very much," the agent sighed. "Is there anything I can help you with? Got a crime to report or something? Maybe someone insulted your haircut? Although, that's most likely not a federal crime. Had they insulted your height, then we might have had a case with the federal Americans with disabilities act and all."
"You've got a badge or something?" I said.
"I must have left it at home."
I don't know what got into me, but I went for him. I just went ahead and jumped him. I got two blows to his head. The rest was a blur. Somehow, the guy did a Keanu Reeves move and dodged my third punch with some karate voodoo. He got me in a classic cop chokehold.
"Christ, I think the polite thing to do would have been to introduce yourself before, you know, sucker-punching me,” the agent said.
"Fine, fine, your place is the deal, you can let go of me now. I was just making sure you were legit. That move you pulled is not something they teach in your standard Alphacore classroom."
I heard George's voice in my headphones, "They are coming at us hard, you need to wrap this thing up."
The agent finally let me go and I could see his face again. He looked like the guy I had seen on some TV show my dad wanted me to watch from the last millennium, about two FBI agents hunting for aliens or something—was it Skulder or Mully?
"Okay, spit it out, what do you have to sell?"
"I don't want your shekels. I have information. I'm not sure you deserve it though."
"What you got?”
"I'll give you partial information. Prove to me that you’ve acted upon it, and I’ll give you the rest,” I said, trying my best to sound like I knew what the hell I was talking about. I had no idea where my moxy was coming from, I had, after all, been a paragon of meekness for the past months.
"You're hardly in a position to make demands," he scoffed.
"Forget it," I said, making as if I was about to turn towards the door. "I shouldn't have come."
"Fine, whatever. Shoot. What is your partial information?"
JRN had collectively decided to put onto the drive a copy of the file that contained the code neither of us could understand, but that was probably some sort of key. With one important modification, we removed digits in certain random places in order to render the code operationally useless. It was a crapshoot, for sure.
I unhooked the drive from my belt and placed it on the metal desk in front of me. "Enjoy," I said and started for the door.
"Wait! What is it? How can I reach you?" he asked.
"I'll be back here in 24 hours, you better have something for me then," I stepped towards the inner door and it slid open. I got out of on the sidewalk and breathed.
"No time to rest, you need to get to the portal now,” I heard George's now frantic voice say. "They’re closing in!"
I turned and started to run the three blocks to the portal. "Come on!" I heard Nick shout behind me. "You have 20 seconds." I slalomed between the avatars on the sidewalk, even knocking one of them over. But before they had time to react, Roland reached the portal and was out of there. My screen went blank. I ripped off my headset and looked up. Nick had pulled out the electrical cord powering the whole setup, effectively cutting off all communication.
Boys Will Be Boys
Tristan flipped off his headset and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and index finger—he still hadn't gotten used to all this screen time, which could give him splitting headaches. He turned to Maria next to him. "Got a sec?" he asked.
"Sure, boss, just let me switch to bot mode," she typed in some commands on her keyboard and rolled her chair over so they could see Tristan's screen.
He had already taken a look at the file the dwarf had left him. At first glance, it didn't make any sense to his non-geek eyes, but for some reason, he didn't dismiss the dwarf's information outright. The dwarf had, after all, gone to a lot of trouble to get the information into his hands.
He clicked on the file and the number
s—hundreds, if not thousands of them—tumbled out. Maria studied the stream of nonsense. "Looks like some sort of encryption key," she said. "I don't have the skills or hardware to squeeze anything useful out of it," she took her eyes off the screen and turned to Tristan. "Send it to Intelligence. They should be able to figure it out."
The recoil from the Glock pounded through Tristan’s arm and into his upper body. It felt good. The rounds punched hole after hole in the target 50 feet from him. Underneath the main operations room, with its rows of computers and giant screens, someone had the foresight to dig out a shooting range. It was small, with only three shooting stalls, but that didn't matter. Every now and again, he forced Maria and Frank to come down there with him in the hope that he'd make real agents out of them yet, but mostly, he was there alone. Tristan tried to get down there at least three or four times a week. It was better than any pills or talk therapy.
Tristan had just fired off his fifth 15-round magazine, the sweet smell of gunpowder lay thick, when the door to the range opened behind him. Richards peeked in his silly little head, with his silly little smirk on it. Supervisory Special Agent John Richards, head of the Cyber Gaming Unit, was Tristan's boss. Richards was fast-tracked right out of Stanford Graduate school, just as the FBI was creating CGU. Tristan guessed that part of that fast-tracking involved giving Richards pay on par with the private sector. In other words, multiples of his own pay, and the guy couldn't be much over 25. He was practically in diapers when the towers fell and the world changed.
