Fear itself

4

In the fall of 1999, with the dotcom bubble distended to the bursting point and the prick of the first market corrections still in the future, the SoMa area, south of San Francisco’s Market Street, was the location for cyber-entrepreneurs. Spiking rents had driven most of SoMa’s previous population of struggling artists and leather-clad bondage-and-discipline aficionados from their lofts and warehouses, and every storefront big enough to hold a few PCs, a server cabinet, and an espresso machine now housed an IPO in posse.

Kenny Strum, nicknamed Zap by admiring fellow hackers for his ability to reduce your hard drive to an expensive Frisbee if you pissed him off or if he just happened to be in the mood, had occupied his Brannan Street loft for three years; his five-year, pre-dotcom lease was the envy of his neighbors and the despair of his Indian landlords. He had made some improvements to the place, though-if your idea of improvement includes the installation of case-hardened steel grilles on the windows and a double-doored airlock-type front entrance complete with a security camera.

It wasn’t that Strum was paranoid, just realistic: since his return from Amsterdam in the early nineties, he’d been involved with some awfully shady characters. Ironically enough, setting up and hosting phobia.com for one of those shady characters, Simon Childs, was one of Strum’s legitimate operations, providing him with enough declarable income to keep the IRS off his back. Their connection would have been entirely legitimate if he hadn’t also been Simon’s most versatile and reliable supplier of illicit substances, including, but not limited to, super-sinsemilla by the ounce, solubilized Rohypnol by the bottle, and one lonely little blue suicide capsule.

Strum, a pudgy, pungent thirty-year-old with unhygienic-looking blond dreadlocks, had been hitting the bong hard all morning while he awaited Childs’s arrival. If only half the things he’d heard on the news were true, Simon Childs was a dangerous fugitive-but a dangerous fugitive who needed Zap’s cooperation. He told himself not to worry, but when the door buzzer sounded, he had to take one last billowing toke to allay his nerves as he checked the security cam. Quick double-take: the change in Simon’s appearance was so startling that Zap almost didn’t recognize him at first.

“Love the new ’do, dude,” he drawled from his state-of-the-art Aeron desk chair, as Simon climbed the open staircase leading up to the loft, carrying a big leather satchel. “I ever start to lose this-” He patted his tawny dreadlocks affectionately. “-that’s how I’m going, too. Much classier than a comb-over.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Simon. “It’s a disguise.”

“Just yanking your chain, dude.”

“Well, don’t. I’ve had a hard couple of days.” He looked around for a place to light, settled for the saddle-shaped footstool next to Strum’s chair. “And quit calling me dude.”

“Sorry, dude.” Zap offered the bong to Simon. “Want a hit?”

“Maybe later. What do you have for me?”

“Plenty-what do you have for me?”

“What you asked for.” Simon patted the satchel on his lap.

“Bitchin’.” Strum reached behind him, twisting in his chair so as not to break eye contact with Simon. There was something almost hypnotic about those eyes, those lashless, browless, naked eyes: you didn’t want to stare into them, but you didn’t want to look away either. He removed a ten-page printout from his printer tray.

“I started with your basic Google, got three, four hundred hits. News stories, FBI press releases, conspiracy theories, the usual crap-I saved you a couple highlights. But there was one item caught my eye-a press release in Publishers Weekly on-line, that St. Swithin’s Press had bought the rights to Pender’s autobiography, and he’d be working with a freelancer named Arthur Bellcock.

“Now, to tell you the truth, dude, when I sat down last night I didn’t think there was a chance in hell I’d be coming up with much. Kind of data you’re looking for, the real personal shit, you’re just not gonna find on-line, unless the guy’s some kind of freak or something. But I figured what the fuck, a name like Bellcock’s unique enough to be worth a shot.

“Sure enough, I found his e-mail address, went in through the usual Microsoft Swiss cheese firewall, and downloaded his hard drive. He doesn’t appear to have started writing anything yet, or if he has, it isn’t on his computer-there aren’t even any notes.

“What there is, though-bada-bing, bada-boom! — is a complete list of contacts Bellcock had to have gotten from Pender himself, dating back all the way to his childhood. Friends, family, names, addresses, phone numbers-” Strum waved the printout over his head. “-it’s all in here. I were you, I’d start with the sister.”

“I appreciate the advice,” said Simon. “This Bellcock-would there be any way for him to tell he’s been hacked?”

“Guy with a system like that? He wouldn’t even know he’s got mail, the little bell didn’t go ding-dong. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot-I also have that other address you wanted.”

“What other address?”

“Skairdykat at Netscape?”

“Right, right. It slipped my mind, what with everything else going on.”

“I can dig it,” said Strum. “Here you go, free of charge, as promised. Now, where did I-Oh, yeah.” Zap reached behind him, unpinned a rainbow Post-it from the corkboard on the wall behind his desk, and handed it to Simon. “The name on the account is the same as the screen name, but according to the ISP file, the phone line is registered to somebody named Gee-the address is on there.”

“Thanks.” Simon slipped the Post-it into his pocket without looking at it. “Now, about that printout?”

The two men were sitting face-to-face, almost knee-to-knee. Strum gave Simon the printout with one hand, took the satchel with the other, opened it, glanced in, nodded decisively. “Mercy buckets-a pleasure doing business with you, dude.”

“Likewise,” said Simon. “I do need the bag back.”

“Sure thing.” Zap twisted around in his chair again; as he started to dump Simon’s getaway money-ten thousand dollars in rubber-band-bound stacks of worn, nonsequential twenties-out onto his desk, he felt something hit him in the right side, just below the rib cage.

Zap’s first thought was that Simon had punched him. “Dude!” he murmured reprovingly. Then he raised his right arm and looked down past his armpit to see what looked like a piece of dark wood protruding from his side. Confused-it had felt like a dull blow at first-he tried to lift his shirt for a closer look, but it wouldn’t lift; the fabric was pinned against his side by what he now realized was a wooden-handled steak knife. “Fuck, dude!”

Simon, torn between drawing back so as not to get any blood on himself or the printout, or drawing closer so as not to miss anything, settled for shielding the printout with his arms as he leaned in to search Strum’s eyes for the first traces of fear. Instead there was only hurt and confusion.

“Nothing personal,” Simon explained, as Strum clawed awkwardly at the serrated knife lodged in his liver; it must have been extremely painful, thought Simon. “I just can’t take the chance. You know what I look like, you know where I’m staying, and you know where I’m going. And I will be needing that cash-you did get greedy there, you have to admit that.”

“I’m sorry,” Zap gasped, truthfully; he hadn’t a drop of irony left-just regret. He was sorry about having been greedy, sorry about dying, sorry about the whole bloody business, but most of all, he was sorry about the pain, which was so all-enveloping by now, so much larger than himself, that it was like being sorry for all the pain in the world, not just his own, but everybody’s.

“It’s okay,” replied Simon. He watched Strum sag in the chair, heard the wet fart and saw the stain spreading across the crotch of Zap’s orange cotton drawstring pants as the sphincters relaxed in death; he’d turned away in disgust even before the light had finished fading from those stoned, red-rimmed eyes.

“I think I will take that hit now, though,” he added, reaching for the bong. “Dude.”