Turing's Delirium (23 page)

"Smarter than I thought," Rafael says. "You found me. At times I didn't think you would, that the message from Ridley to Erin was too cryptic, that you wouldn't realize it was really a message for you, et cetera."

"If you know as much about me as you think you do, then you should have a little more faith in me," Flavia replies, now sure that one of the things she finds most attractive about Rafael is his sonorous, masculine voice. She could never fall in love with him just in Playground, but maybe soon you won't have to type to communicate there, you'll be able to chat out loud, like talking on your cell phone. So many technological breakthroughs, and yet we write more and more; it's a bit old-fashioned if you think about it.

"There's no time to waste. If you got here, that means they could read the message and find us too."

"Who are they?"

"The Resistance."

"You could've arranged to meet in a less obvious place."

"I picked a place like this precisely because it is obvious."

"What does the Resistance have against you? And what does the Resistance have to do with the Restoration?"

Rafael takes a deep breath. The chair squeaks.

"The Resistance and the Restoration are the same thing. The Restoration was a virtual group that came together to stage resistance in Playground. The people who controlled the avatars were hackers, who then formed the Resistance, to make the leap from virtual space to reality."

Flavia furrows her brow, trying to understand. Steps can be heard outside the cubicle. Rafael puts his right index finger up to his lips. The steps fade away.

"Man, you're paranoid," Flavia says.

"I know them well—I was one of them. For me, it all started out as a game. Maybe it never stopped being one, and that's my problem. It's just the way I am. It's hard for me to take things seriously. Even if it's a matter of life and death. That's why I spent hours and hours in Playground. Because in a sense, everything on screen becomes a game. And because I could get information there. You know I'm a Rat, right, or if you didn't, you suspected. A good Rat, the honest kind."

"You're not a hacker?"

"A means to an end. I do it to get information, as a last resort."

Rafael looks at her as if he has neither the time nor the patience to explain everything in detail. Flavia wonders what she can do to help him. She also realizes that this feeling is new, touching a man's hands and not being overcome by hostility. When she was fifteen she tried dating, went to the movies and parties with a few different boys, but she hadn't been able to go too far. As soon as they touched her, she felt repelled as if by a negative force.

"It all started out as a game," Rafael continues, "until I let myself be charmed by BoVe. And I became part of the Restoration."

"In Playground."

"Exactly. It was sort of a test, to attack the government of Playground, develop a model of resistance that would later be put into practice in the real world. Sure, it wasn't easy to figure out the model—there's no direct correspondence between one world and the other—but at least we tried. I became part of Kandinsky's inner circle in the Resistance. Because, as I'm sure you figured out, BoVe was Kandinsky's avatar in Playground. I was the one who could get things in Playground that would later be sold on the black market to finance our activities. Don't ask me how I did it. Let's just say it's one advantage of being a Rat.

"Our bad reputation is well deserved. One of the things we do is extort from people who work at the company in charge of running Playground, get them to tell us how to obtain valuable objects like extra lives, magic cards."

Rafael stands up and places his hands against the wall behind him. Flavia can sense the exhaustion in his gestures. She is trying to understand, but something about his explanation does not quite fit.

"So that's how it goes," Rafael continues. "The truth is that later, when the Resistance began to operate in the real world, I wanted to meet Kandinsky in person. I couldn't. I realized that not one of the main hackers—the inner circle, if you will—had met him in person. It was a justified tactic to avoid being turned in, and, of course, so that the myth could grow. No one knew the great hacker but everyone had a story about him. So the myth that started in Playground about the avatar named BoVe made its way into the real world about the person known as Kandinsky, who was in charge of the avatar BoVe. Sound complicated? It isn't."

"And what's my role in all this?"

Rafael sits back down. Restless, he bounces his legs. He rubs his chin.

"The media, even the most critical ones, have surrounded Kandinsky with this aura. Here's someone from the third world who has managed to bring big corporations to their knees. He's the most vivid expression of resistance against a government that has savage neoliberal policies. And yes, Kandinsky is all of that. But he is not a god." He pauses, clearing his throat.

"He's just as fallible as the rest of us," he continues, his voice booming even though he's speaking quietly. "He got to the top not only because he's able to manipulate technology or because of his charisma but also because he's ruthless, crushing any dissent in the organization. The Resistance doesn't tolerate internal resistance. The power behind his struggle against the government and corporations is based on a fundamentalist approach that doesn't allow internal debate. Through my avatar, Ridley, I began to suspect something in Playground. It all became clear to me when a couple of members of the Restoration turned up dead and they wanted us to believe the government was responsible. But it was way too much of a coincidence that it was exactly the two people who had opposed BoVe at an earlier meeting."

He is speaking quickly, as if he has only a few minutes to make his case.

"Something similar happened in the real world a little while ago. Two hackers wound up dead."

"Vivas and Padilla."

"Right. Both of them belonged to the Resistance. And, not being ready to accuse Kandinsky, I decided that you were the person to make the accusation public. Your site is about hackers, so I decided to tell you everything I knew. Of course, I had to pretend that I was warning you about the danger you were in if you continued investigating Kandinsky's identity. They were watching, and one wrong step could mean the end of me."

"So then it was you..."

"Yep. And I was impressed by your courage, publishing everything. Well, almost everything. You didn't mention that it was Kandinsky..."

"I needed more concrete proof. I insinuated that it was. A word to the wise..."

"I'm not reproaching you at all. I felt bad, like a coward, because I had put your life in danger. That's why I was following you. I felt responsible for you and wanted to protect you."

Flavia looks at him with astonished eyes. She doesn't know what to say.

"Ridley contacted Erin in Playground," Rafael says, "because he was afraid for her life. I'm doing the same thing with you right now. Maybe they'll get rid of me, but at least you know the story and you'll take care of making it public."

"There's not much I can do if I don't know who Kandinsky is."

"Not even we Rats can help you with that."

Rafael kissed her on the lips. It was a kiss that began sweetly, then turned passionate. Flavia put on a surprised expression; what really surprised her was how long it had taken. She had thought their meeting would be a purely romantic one; she hadn't suspected the complicated plot that would unfold in her presence.

"I'll stay in touch, either here or in Playground," Rafael said. "You leave first. Don't turn around for any reason. As soon as you're on the street, I'll leave the cubicle."

They kissed again. Flavia left the cubicle, walked quickly down the stairs, and went up to the counter. She gave the number back to the redhead, saying that she hadn't used the computer. The girl looked at her strangely and checked her screen to verify that fact.

As Flavia left, she saw two men in dark glasses get out of a dilapidated red Honda Accord. It seemed strange to her that the Honda remained next to the sidewalk in front of the café with the motor running. By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. She turned back into the café just as shots were being fired. Rafael, who had started down the stairs, fell face down and rolled until his body was stopped by the metal handrail. As the men in dark glasses ran out of the café and disappeared in the car, Flavia, immune to the panic around her—students screaming under tables, clamoring in search of nonexistent emergency-exits—ran to where the body lay, the blood soaking his white shirt, his heart beating, beating, no longer beating.

R
UTH STOPS IN FRONT
of the door to her office, on which there is a photo of Bletchley Park and Mafalda and
The Far Side
comic strips. Her feet hurt; her high heels have become intolerable. She takes them off and leaves them in the hallway next to a garbage can. The soldier looks at her curiously, expectantly. He has buttoned his jacket, making him appear more formal. Ruth feels that she is a little calmer. Her nose has stopped bleeding. Can veins burst like a stream when it floods during the rainy season? And can they then return to their course just as unexpectedly? What geological faults are opening up day after day in her aging body? What will her tired cells reveal in future endoscopies, colposcopies, laparascopies?

She takes out her keys. Whatever might be happening inside her, she will try not to be overcome by panic. She will not be like her mother, who in the face of the inexorable deterioration of her body decided to end her life in the blink of an eye, imposing the horror of the spectacle on Ruth.

She hands a few peso notes to the soldier. He seems dissatisfied, holding the bills up to the light as if to confirm that they are real. In the soldier's suspicious gaze and coppery complexion, in his defiant stance, legs spread apart, body leaning forward, Ruth perceives the social distance that separates them. But what can she do? It's not her fault; she will not fall into that trap. She has fallen into it many times before—when she saw the varicose veins on her maid Rosa's legs and made her go to the doctor, paying for the treatment, or when Rosa told her that she was saving to buy a television and Ruth helped her with a few extra pesos, only to find out later that Rosa had given the money to her ex-husband. She has learned that no well-intentioned action will fix the unfixable. Everything she does simply clears her conscience for a few minutes, an afternoon, at best a whole day.

Ruth hands him another few pesos and goes into her office. The soldier remains outside, watching her out of the corner of his eye through the half-open door, his hand to his cap in a frozen gesture, as if posing for a photograph.

The office smells of jasmine and black tobacco. She lights a cigarette, looks absently at the papers on her desk—lecture notes, others for an article on the role of the NSA in the Falklands War (the NSA had managed to decipher the Argentine army's codes; it contributed 98 percent of the information that the English had at their disposal during the war); the books on the shelves—histories of cryptanalysis by Kahn, Singh, Kippenham; videos of movies relating to cryptanalysis for her class next semester—
U-571, Windtalkers, A Beautiful Mind, Enigma;
the Degas prints on the wall.

She unlocks the bottom right-hand drawer of her desk and takes out the manuscript. She used so many different codes in it. The one she is proudest of is a polyalphabetic substitution code she herself created based on Vigenère, which had not been deciphered for centuries. Even the title and her name on the cover page are in code. People might say hers was a sick obsession. That was normal; it was the only way of relating to the codes. At least she had turned her dedication into an inoffensive curiosity. At least she had had the necessary integrity to realize where her work at the Black Chamber was heading and to resign in time.

"May I make a phone call? To my doctor. You can dial if you like."

"Go ahead. Just hurry."

Ruth dials the number. The secretary tells her that the doctor hasn't come in because of the blockades. Ruth asks for her test results. The secretary replies that the lab is closed, so please call again tomorrow.

She leaves the office pressing the manuscript against her chest. She and the soldier walk through the deserted patio on their way to the main entrance. They can hear shouts and explosions; the soldier, however, walks as if he is in no hurry. Ruth matches his stride. At last, she thinks: She will hand the manuscript over to Cardona, and that will be the end of Miguel. She will go home to pack her bags and tell him that her lawyer will soon be filing for divorce. She will take a taxi to her dad's house in the northern part of the city. Perhaps she will look for an apartment or, better yet, decide to leap into the abyss, resign from her job and move to La Paz. She is worried about Flavia. Will she go with Ruth or stay with Miguel? Perhaps neither of those two options. She is so independent.

"What's in those papers that's so urgent?" the soldier asks without looking at her.

"It's part of some research I'm doing. I'm a historian. I didn't want to be without it in case this goes on for a while. Now at least I can work at home."

"Me, it'll be a long time before I get back home. We're confined to barracks when there's a state of emergency."

"Where do you live?"

"In Tarata. Uh, that's where I'm stationed. But I'm not complaining. They gave me a new rifle. I didn't even have a revolver before."

"What happened to yours?"

"It was stolen a month ago."

"And they didn't give you another one?"

"They have to take it out of my paycheck. They only give me a new one when it's paid off. But that can take months. And thieves don't wait. Luckily, nothing happens in Tarata. Sometimes drunks get into fights—that's about it. And you can earn a bit in tips from the tourists who visit President Melgarejo's house. It's really ugly and small. They used this horrible cement during the restoration. Students who come always feel let down."