Strange Flesh (13 page)

This ostracism feels strange to me. Normally any number of people would be willing to make nice with someone like Billy simply due to the gravitational pull of his bank account. Although his name-change indicates that he was tired of that sort of attention and wanted to be taken on his (apparently dubious) merits. After about a month, almost all of Billy’s appearances consist of his entering at the front, going down to his workspace in the POD for a few hours, and leaving without speaking to a soul.

One of the most recent feeds shows him carrying a stepladder down the hallway outside my office. He stops right in front of my door. His other hand holds a tiny piece of electronics, which he carefully places on top of the doorjamb. Then he checks his iPhone’s screen and makes a twisting motion with his finger on the gear he’s setting up. Finally satisfied, he departs.

Looks like the surveillance gamers aren’t the only ones installing
hardware around the building. And if a wireless camera was sitting on my doorjamb, then it must have been pointed at the door behind which Garriott is currently working. The one Xan seemed slightly nervous about when I chose my office.

So Billy was eavesdropping on Garriott? Now, why would that be?

I gathered from their group champagne bath at the party that Olya, Garriott, and Xan are working on some joint endeavor. And if Billy’s paying them special attention, so should I.

Hours pass as I sift through more results. I linger on a selection that shows a cocktail party for the summer’s new residents, at which there is a lot of handshaking and convivial chatter. I see Olya has already made friends with Xan and Garriott, and the three stand in a circle conversing. Billy steps into the frame, causing them to stop talking. Olya glares at him like an angry wildebeest, while the other two look away in discomfort.

As Billy shuffles off, shoulders slumped, a small brunette puts her hand on his arm. She says something in his ear and then kisses him on the cheek before skipping away. Billy’s gaze follows her, abject devotion in his eyes, his face growing a fragile smile.

I rewind and zoom in on the girl: Gina Delaney.

So Billy had at least one friend, though evidently there’s some bad blood pulsing in from PiMP between Billy and Olya. Yet in the clip it seemed like he was trying to edge closer to his former classmate. That’s not surprising given her gale-force sexuality. But she despises him. So maybe it’s something else between them.

Which brings me back to that guy who accosted her. He said, “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it.” And tried to give her that necklace. The street asylum of New York is replete with Delphic utterances and aberrant behavior, but the guy following her just as Billy starts his new game? And sidewalk crazies don’t normally employ cameramen. Is it possible that Billy would have recruited someone to attack one of his colleagues as an opening move? For a guy willing to create a dangerous stampede in a haunted house, I’d have to say, “Sure.” But if so, why?

Then I realize I’m looking right at the answer. I zoom in again on the shot of Gina kissing Billy and sharpen the area around her neck. Hanging
there is a purple twenty-sided die. So the necklace I found was either Gina’s or a replica of one she used to wear.

What’s the implication? That the necklace was some kind of trophy?
Maybe “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it” was an accusation. But of what?

It’s clear I’m going to have to crawl inside Billy Randall’s head to get through his game. Digging into what goes on in this building will help. But where he made mostly enemies, I want to make friends.

I get my first opportunity half an hour later when I hear an outburst of plummy cursing through the door of Garriott’s work space. After a brief interval of quiet, there’s some keyboard banging accompanied by “Bloody arseing swine-fucker!” The bump of his chair being kicked against the wall. I go to his door, which opens slightly at my knock.

“Everything okay?”

As I step into the room, I see it’s a raw but spacious studio dominated by five large worktables arranged in a U shape. Garriott is bent over in front of his computer clawing his head. Hearing me, he jerks upright. “Oh, yeah. You know these damn retromingent machines.”

I have no idea what that means, but I ask, “Anything I can help with?”

Garriott resumes his seat, and I notice one of his windows minimizing without him touching the keyboard. He’s got a series of foot pedals below his desk. These are used by very serious programmers to replicate the CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, and TAB keys.

“Oh, I’m okay, it’s just—” He examines me with a sense of desperation. I can see him mentally dismiss my offer as coming from an ineffectual “video artist.”

He says, “That’s all right, mate. I think only God can help me at this point.”

I nod slowly, reading the code remaining on his screen. On a hunch, I say, “Okay. But you know our God is a jealous God and responds to the recursion of fathers by dealing buffer overflows unto the third and fourth generations.”

He looks from me to his monitor. “Wait, what? How do you know that?”

“I don’t. But it’s often a problem when you’re starting from scratch.”

“I’m a bot jock. This networking shit . . . How is it you know so much about—”

“I wasn’t always a video drone. Mind if I sit?”

Garriott pulls over another chair, and I start scrolling through his code. For someone who’s spent the better part of thirty years getting reluctant or even hostile systems to follow orders from a distance, it’s pretty elementary. I haven’t done much real programming in a while, but I’m sure I can assist him.

“What’s all this for, anyway?”

“Sorry, mate. Can’t really say. I mean,
I’d
tell you, but my team is sensitive to—”

“You’re working on this with Xan and Olya?”

“Yeah,” he says with a slight wince at the disclosure.

“Right on. Well, I respect that. Sometimes things need to gestate until they can spring upon the world fully formed.”

“This brat is like to kill her mother in the process.”

“Anyway, all this stuff is pretty abstracted. I’d be happy to help you with it.”

He’s clearly torn, but I guess the late hour and his frustrating lack of progress combine to force his assent.

A little after two
AM
, Garriott hits the compile button and says, “It better work this time.”

We’ve scrapped most of his original code, and I put him onto an open-source library that rigorously implements the bulk of what he’s trying to do.

We see our test data start whizzing through various monitoring programs. After about a minute, we cut it off and get a readout of “exceptions: 0.” This elicits more keyboard banging, but now in unrestrained joy. These are the occasions engineers live for: when hours of tedious effort result in a lone number that means success. Seeing that simple flag come up is better than all the slot machine cherries in Vegas. Because you know your baby has taken its first step. Garriott slaps my back.

“Thanks, mate. That could have taken me weeks.”

“No problem. It’s nice to stay sharp on this stuff.”

He checks his watch. “Well, I’m not going right to sleep after this; why don’t you let me stand you a—I mean several—pints?”

So here’s the perfect chance to establish trust with someone using the most time-honored of methods: get drunk with him.

“Done.”

We walk over to Foo Bar, an underground cocktail fetishist’s joint south of Delancey. Garriott texts for part of the walk, perhaps extolling his recent triumph. As we enter, it’s clear that he spends enough time in this place to have achieved a Vulcan mind-meld with the staff. A waitress delivers three Guinnesses just after we sit down.

A minute later, Xan slips into our booth. She says, “My fierce warriors retire to the mead hall to sing of their great victory.”

Garriott raises his glass. “I propose a bumper to it!”

Guinness isn’t my normal choice for high-volume drinking, but I follow the other two in draining my glass. These children of the Commonwealth were probably fed stout in their baby bottles. I prepare myself for a long evening.

Shots of Jameson and more beer appear unordered. Garriott and Xan grin at each other and then make a series of hand gestures: first a V-sign, then they point at themselves, and finally, a pinkies-extended pantomime of sipping from a cup. Then they drop their shots into the beers and chug them. They look at me, and I do the same, finishing with a contented gasp as the ethanol and oxygen deprivation set about working their sweet magic.

“I take it y’all served in some kind of alcoholic militia together.”

Xan says to Garriott, “I’m sure we’re not supposed to tell him.”

“Luv, tonight he earned the juice, and it has to be consecrated. So, he might as well do it properly.”

“What does it mean?” I ask.

Xan repeats the gestures, saying, “Two, I, tea. That’s the toast.”

“I like Information Technology as much as anyone—”

“No, no. Not the acronym. The neuter pronoun: ‘it.’”

“I’ve never lifted my glass to grammar. Why do we do that?”

Xan says, “We mean ‘it’ in the sense of ‘the thing of the moment,’ like an it-girl. Or the sui generis, if you will. As in, ‘That is
it
!’”

I shake my head. Their toast lacks the gravity of “God save the king” or “
Viva la revolución.
”

Garriott explains, “Mate, you know Dean Kamen, right?”

“Yeah, the famous inventor; he made one of the first insulin pumps.”

“So remember back in 2002, there was all this buzz coming out of his shop in New Hampshire that they were about to unleash a new device—something that would totally change the world. Which they code-named ‘IT.’ And the net went nuts theorizing about what ‘IT’ was.”

“Yeah. IT was the Segway. Big deal.”

“Exactly. A
scooter
. I mean, where’s my fucking
jet pack
?”

Xan adds, “Now, granted, it was the greatest scooter ever made, and they had all these bollocks theories about how such a thing might change urban transportation, yea, even the very fabric of our cities—”

“But it was all just hype,” I say.

“An
Attack of the Clones
–level disappointment.” Garriott winks at the waitress, calling for more whiskey.

Xan continues. “So GAME is this rare place where you get paid to do whatever you want. And yet somehow we end up with all this derivative metagame crap. So we’d sit around bitching and ask ourselves why we weren’t working on something really amazing.
Game changing,
if you will. Something that would be worthy of the name ‘IT.’”

Garriott says, “Xan and I spend my first months there arguing about what might fit the bill. Eventually Olya comes to us with this idea—”

“Cold fusion?” I ask.

Xan giggles. “No.”

“A laser death ray?”

“Nope.”

“Total enlightenment delivered in a convenient suppository?”

She and Garriott stare at each other, obviously contemplating whether or not to tell me.

Suddenly there’s a bang on the table that makes our glasses jump. We look up to behold Olya wrapped in the type of leather trench coat favored by Hollywood SS officers. Her eyes blaze with fury.

“So, I must find you drunk and gossiping like peasants? What is this?”

Garriott closes his eyes in sorrow. Xan hits a button on her phone and groans, saying, “My Foursquare. I left it on auto check in. Sorry.”

“Oh, so you think you must hide from me? Why is this, little ones? What is it that you are doing?”

Garriott musters himself. “We are celebrating the birth of our primary network interface.”

“And this tiny bit of code is such heroic feat that you need a videographer?” she asks, eyeballing me.

Garriott breaks the tense silence. “Our man James here is the finest net-coding documentarian GAME has ever seen. We’re buying him a couple rounds in thanks. So stop glowering and join us.”

I try to soothe things. “Hey, guys, I’m going to go ahead and take off. Let y’all have a meeting or whatever.”

Olya puts a firm hand on my shoulder. She gives me an almost warm smile. “No, no. Please stay. We are very grateful for . . . all of your assistance.” She motions to the waitress, who’s already on the way over with a round. A glass of neat vodka for Olya. She makes an impatient sketch of their toast, murmurs, “
Na zdorovye,
” and downs it at a smooth draw. The other two look askance at their fourth round but bear up and get it down. I just sip mine.

Olya raises her empty glass. “Mr. Pryce, thank you . . . But I think now you must not do the work of the little ones. In English you say something about lazy people and Satan?”

“Idle hands make the devil’s work.”

“Just so.” She slaps a crisp C-note on the table and glares at her teammates. “So now we have nice party. Tomorrow, I think we meet at seven in the morning, yes?”