Pepper's Ghost by MarkRAnderson

Pepperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Pepper's Ghost Mark R. Anderson

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a) the product of the author’s imagination, b) descriptions based on research, or (c) used fictitiously. Unless otherwise noted or acknowledged, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, products, technologies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no representations that the use of the products or technologies in the manner described in this publication will not infringe on existing or future patent rights, nor do the descriptions contained in this publication imply the granting of licenses from either the manufacturers or from the United States government to make, use, or resell equipment in accordance with the description. Copyright ©2009 by Mark R. Anderson All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission. For more information, please contact the author at author@peppersghoststory.com Microsoft, Windows, Exchange, SQL Server, and Outlook are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Sun Solaris, Java, and Java Virtual Machine, are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation, SCO UnixWare, and SCO OpenServer, are registered trademarks of the SCO Group, Telepresence is a trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc. Musion Eyeliner is a registered trademark of Musion Systems, Ltd,

Pepperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

ÂŠ2009

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Chapter 1

October 20, 2011: 3rd Harmonic, 3500th Cycle; 5th Harmonic, 2100th Cycle I got Dad‟s first email about a year and a half after he was killed. All of us were fine now for the most part, but the timing on these things is never very good, is it? Doesn‟t matter whether the invisible hand hitting the Send button is scripted or ghosted--- your day has just been blindsided, and you‟re suddenly down a road miles from where you thought you‟d be. Guess the man was right: it really ain‟t over until it‟s over. And what‟s over here is not what‟s over there. They are two completely separate networks. Only now an email had slipped through, something that both God and man had sworn would never happen, and there was no telling what kind of hell would break loose. The timestamp said 538PM. I had just gotten yanked onto a concall with a CFO let‟s call Arev, who works for a client let‟s call ShadowBox, Inc, when my Droid whistled Old Spice to alert an incoming message. ShadowBox‟s management team was in a conference room, and wanted to know how quickly we could turn around a term sheet for some Middle Eastern investors. They were pushing me very hard. The credit crisis had pretty much dried up any appetite for equity. Investors were hiding under their desks, and that giant sucking sound you were hearing outside was digits turning into cargoes---gold and silver, 5

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precious stones and pearls, wine and olive oil, flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, heavy machinery and tractor parts, and bodies and souls of men. ShadowBox had a hot IT product that had gotten traction in DoD and the intel agencies. They wanted to turn it into a commodity before it was too late. Prime contractors like Lockheed, Northrop, and CSC were banging on the door trying to get them to sell the company when stock prices were cheap. Arev didn‟t want to sell. He wanted an IPO. This had been his dream since he left Wall Street. Only now all his first-round investors were losing interest: “Why invest with you at $6 a share when I can put that money on something that doesn‟t depreciate or become obsolete?” Sure it made sense, but not the kind of sense Arev wanted to hear. Arev had grown up Armenian in Lebanon, gone to school in the US, and become a citizen, back when it was much easier to do that sort of thing. He was also a native Arabic speaker, so he got on a plane and spent a month scouring Mideast capitals tracking down friends from former lives. They were overjoyed to see him. It had been over twenty years, and they kissed him on both cheeks. Yes they were all fine, yes they wanted to hear what he was doing now, yes they wanted to invest in it. What do you need? Five hundred? A billion? “David, we need to move quickly,” he was explaining in his Fertile Crescent accent.. “There is no appetite for risk whatever in the venture markets in US, Europe, or Japan. We are being forced for our very survival to look at alternate sources of funding, and we are running out of time. We‟ve got ninety days left before we are forced to take on debt that will force layoffs to maintain the growth our shareholders are demanding." “Understood.” I was waiting for the message to pop up in my Outlook. “Where are these guys from?” “This is a group of very sophisticated Middle Eastern investors, Arev answered, “with holdings in multiple countries--- oil, real estate, banking, and infrastructure. I have known them for a long time, and 6

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all are in cabinet and senior ministry-level positions that would be compromised if their associations deviate even a millimeter from official policy. This is the equivalent of having our chairman of the Federal Reserve, Secretary of Defense and Speaker of the House invest in ShadowBox.” “But what color are their passports?” “I am told that won‟t matter in this case,” Arev reassured. “And you will agree as soon as you see who the parties are. They are cleared to engage in discussions of national security at the highest level, and the documentation is included in case you have any questions. Their identities need to be kept confidential, so I‟m going to send the paperwork over with Moby. Mark it up and get it back to me by Friday, since I need to be back in Dubai on Saturday so we can close this on Sunday.” Arev‟s marketable skill was passing himself off as that big, kindly-looking gentleman you couldn‟t dislike, and putting you completely at ease. He was the most approachable person in any picture, and had instant credibility in any boardroom. Men trusted him, women adored him--- on sight. But he could throw the high heat when needed, and I was falling behind in the count. “And they can kick in a billion without blinking? I‟m thinking KSA.” There was a slow pause. “Actually, these gentlemen are of Lebanese origin.” “But they‟re Saudi nationals?” There was no way they couldn‟t be. “Listen, Arev, it doesn‟t matter. KSA is okay, as long as you‟re okay kissing NSA goodbye. That‟s the policy. We‟ve been over it. NSA doesn‟t deviate a millimeter, and the Office of Inspector General doesn‟t hear vendor protests involving selections based on national security. Bring in the Saudis and you are giving your business to the Israelis. I don‟t care how good your shit is: unless you‟re Microsoft, the government will just find someone else to do it. You can spend a 7

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lot of time and money with us, but you‟ll probably lose, and you‟ll definitely derail your IPO.” There was some animated conversation at the other end. The email still hadn‟t shown up in my Outlook. I looked down at my phone, and froze. The message was from Dad‟s dotmil address. I shook my head, blinked, and looked again. “Subject: Pls contact. Message preview: Hijacker wanted to fly to Afghanistan continued from 1A identification of the body...” I slowly touched the message to open it, and for several minutes there was no other sound, and no other light in the room except for a glowing, grainy photo of FBI agents crawling in the cockpit window of a hijacked Northwest 727 on the runway at Portland Oregon International Airport, and the accompanying newspaper article about a 20 year-old drifter they‟d shot dead because he said had a bomb and needed to get home to his wife and kids in Kabul. “What the---??” I had no idea how to complete that sentence. I panned around the page. There was an article about President Reagan going for a second term and blaming the 10.8 percent unemployment rate and a projected deficit of $190 billion on the policies of his predecessors. Dateline Friday, January 21, 1983. “David, are you still there?” It was Arev, speaking now in ultimatums about needing to find solutions, not problems, about paying us very handsomely--- perhaps even too much--- because of the premium ShadowBox placed on our relationship. I was still a bit out of it, so I defaulted to my own pre-recorded statement of gratitude on behalf of Steiger, Black, and Wolfowitz for the continued opportunity to provide counsel to our valued client, and for my sincere apologies at having to take another call. “No problem, my dear David,” Arev rejoined, now cheerfully, “and my apologies for catching you at a bad time. Moby will be over with the package within an hour. I know you will do an excellent job turning this around for us.” By the time it occurred to me to ask what exactly what that meant, and why they needed their best engineer to hand deliver a package, the receiver was back on its hook, the lights back in their 8

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sockets, and Midtown traffic back on the street outside. I looked down at the smartphone, still in my hand, still opened to page 8A of the Daily Star-Ledger. The headline read, “Portland Police Gun Down Lone Hijacker. The story had been filed the previous day. A white male upset with what he claimed was a US failure to do anything to assist the Afghans against the Soviet invasion had commandeered a Northwest Orient Boeing 727-200, using a shoebox supposedly containing a bomb. Flight 608 was enroute from Seattle to Portland OR, but the hijacker pulled aside a flight attendant and demanded to be flown to Afghanistan so he could see his family. The suspect was identified as Glenn Kurt Tripp, a high school dropout from Arlington, Wash. He was on probation for trying to hijack the same flight two years earlier. This time he wasn‟t so lucky. While the parties were negotiating, an FBI agent crawled in through the cockpit window, entered the cabin, and killed Tripp with a single shot. All thirty-five passengers and six crew members escaped unharmed. During the standoff, Tripp said he had been in prison, and that it wouldn‟t hurt the folks on the plane to sit with him for a while. I read that one and hung my head. So someone hacks into a top-secret email account just to send me article about a random loser who got himself roadkilled nearly thirty years ago? And pls contact who? Dad had died in an aircraft accident outside Baghdad last May. Or had all that been something out of 24, with characters getting killed and showing up in another season? It made no sense, and besides, it wasn‟t mine. I found the message in my junk folder, forwarded it, typed, “This came to me,” and sent it off to the custodian‟s drop-box at US Department of Defense General Counsel. Immediately I received a form reply, giving me instructions for disposal. I had deleted the message from my mailbox, and was about to delete from cache when a sharp rap on my desk jolted me out of my seat, and I looked up to behold none other than the flower of the Gotham data center standing before me in unspeakable Nubian splendor.

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What came out was a cry of relief that shouldn‟t have sounded as comic as it was. “Hey, Moby!” I whipped myself back in my chair and spun it around, better to behold one of enterprise computing‟s finest creations. “Come in, sit down--- I mean, sit down--- since you are already in. Arev said you would be by. You look like you are on your way back from a customer install. Tell me, how did it go? Did you blind them them with your science? Did you leave them gasping by the server racks?“ “Partial credit,” she parried with a practiced laugh. “Install and training tonight.” “Really? Where?” “One of your competitors,” she hummed, took a USB stick out of her pocket and handed to me, all business. “Arev says you need to work on this tonight. He needs it back in the morning.” “I thought he said COB tomorrow.” “He got a call right after you hung up. He needs it sooner.” She looked at me, let a strand of shiny hair cascade into one eye, and waited for me to take the stick. “Arev drives a hard bargain,” I was impressed. “And wow does he know how to package the deal! Is he willing to pay for the expedited service?” “You‟d have to ask him.” “I‟m asking you. He sent you over here instead of emailing it to me. I take that to mean he figured you knew better what it would take to get the job done.” Moby is one of those women I wish every day I was not professionally related to. She turns more hot stares into revenue than Arev can forecast, and everybody else is supposed to pretend it‟s the product and not Moby that‟s flying off the shelves and working like a champ at whatever account she visits. This is by no means to insinuate that she adds no value. Moby is always better looking, better trained, better prepared, better dressed, and better expressed 10

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than anyone else in the room. And when she beats the geeks in predicting how applications such as email, Oracle, and SQL use enterprise data storage, she can name her price as long as she does the followup training. Rumor has it that a couple of CIO‟s have proposed, but most of the guys down in the data centers are ecstatic just to have her sit and talk with them for a while. Moby‟s trained response was to flipped her klieg-smile directly into my eyes. “Take it, Dave. Please, I need to go.” Okay, okay I‟ll let you off easy. I need two things so I can get these terms out by morning. First, I need you to look at an email that I deleted off the server. How do I get it back?” “Did you delete it out of your destktop search?” “Don‟t think so.” clearance is still good?”

I checked.

It was still there.

“Your TS

“To December 31, 2013.” I turned my laptop around at her. “This message came to me less than an hour ago and I need you to look at it, because it is very important that I know where it is from.” “Oh, absolootely!” Moby seemed almost relieved to hear this. “Noooh problem! Let me just expose the header …Yes, here we go. The message originated from MX4DPM.mi.ds.army.mil, through mi.ds.army.mil domain servers at Fort Monmouth and Fort Belvoir, and went straight to your carrier.” It didn‟t sound right. “No spoofing?” Moby scrolled through the header again. “It went from dotmil directly to carrier. It‟s clean. Oh, I see the sender mailbox name is Robert Jorgensen. That‟s your...” “Yeah--- my dad.” “David, I‟m so sorry,” Moby frowned at me for several seconds, then brightened. “Here, let me try something. Give me back your pc for a minute?” I spun the laptop around. “Let‟s try pinging that server 11

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and see what it comes back with. Just so nobody starts asking questions we‟ll do it through a proxy.” Moby‟s star-spangled nails clattered across the keyboard. Another one bites the dust, I thought to myself. She was going to show an IT department how to get servers into the shadow and play with them. All they were going to talking about for the next two weeks was how they would play with her if they could get her into a shadow. I‟d heard Arev was letting Moby keep all her training revenue since her onsite hours always resulted in more shadowbox sales. Better than a lawyer‟s wage, plus she was getting a nice chunk of shares in return for letting herself get passed over for Director of Technical Services in favor of some industry greyhead. Moby‟s real name is Metasebiya. It means “remembrance” in Amharic. Her father is an Ethiopian who fled the toxic Marxist regime there in the late 70‟s, with nothing more than the shirt on his back. He made his way to Egypt where he met his wife working as a tour guide at the pyramids, and was granted asylum in the US. He settled in DC, became a parking lot attendant, and later started programming government computers. His daughter got a tech school degree, and security clearance, but she what she really wanted was to be an actress. She came to New York, got a few advertisements and bit parts, but it wasn‟t paying the bills. She was struggling as an afterhours tech support specialist until she ran into another female who had given herself a guy‟s nickname to gain the customers‟ confidence and then take them completely by surprise. Moby tried it out, and found the role of a lifetime. She would open the case via email, and get them hooked. As soon as she picked up a phone or went onsite it was game over. They thought they were getting one of the boys, and not only had she exceeded expectations, but their wildest dreams as well. She built a book of business, took it to ShadowBox, and recast herself as sub-Sahara‟s answer to Lara Croft, venturing alone into hazardous, byzantine datacenters around the city.

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“Look, David!” Moby spun the laptop back to me and leaned over the screen. “Click here and you‟ll see that Belvoir is valid, but that Monmouth and MX4DPM return „BOGUS or expired ID.‟” “Meaning?” “You can‟t get to them.” “Right. I figured that much.” “You could be denied access for a variety of reasons--- server name changed but not updated in directory, network restrictions, etc. We know two things---one, that the servers are not bogus because you just got an email, and, two, that the server software on MX4DPM is SB_XEN 5.1.22. That stands for ShadowBox Xen, which means that MX4DPM is hosted in a ShadowBox environment that is represented by a different IP address which has been masked.” “How do you find that out?” “The proxy service told me” “So it‟s not spam, and not spoof?” “Unless someone is doing it from inside a top secret network in a way that is going to very traceable internally. Here‟s what I think it is. The server software is the version that had been released only to DoD. MX is the typical naming prefix for Microsoft Exchange email servers. Someone has inadvertently shadowed off an Exchange database for testing ---with your dad‟s account and contacts still in the system--and they are running tests not knowing there is a live address in the address list. You forwarded that back to DoD, right? Some poor GI Jane or Contractor Charlie is probably getting their butt chewed as we speak.” I should have had more questions, but when I looked up, Moby‟s face hovered one ultimate degree from mine. Either that, or I could have bitten off the second button on her blouse. As soon as she saw my eyes drop, she pushed herself back into the chair, crossed one leg and smiled at me wickedly. “I like feedback. How did I do?” 13

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“Pretty bad” I shook my head and pretended to write on a pad, “‟‟Superior technical ability but needs more work on closing skills.‟ Want to try again?” She nearly doubled at that one, eyes bright now. “But does it make you feel better?--- I mean, does my explanation make you feel better?” “Yeah.” I smiled knowingly. “I feel better now.” “Good!” Moby chirped. “You said two things. What else?” “I need you to come with me for a drink and meet some very normal people you will never forget." “But I haven‟t been to the gym today,” she objected, “and my training starts at 9PM downtown.” “Great, there‟s a vegetarian menu, and we‟ll have you there in a taxi by 845.”

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Chapter 2

Same day As long as I can remember, Nick and Yumiko have been doing Thursday Night Club. At least once a month their third floor walkup off Washington Square shapeshifts into an after-hours sushi bar, and you show up and eat sushi and whatever else been flown or carried in by neighbors and friends. Nick prepares the food. Yumiko does everything else, like making sure the video games are working and the guests are mixing. Nick is in charge of the music, which are invariably old jazz piano recordings. Jazz helps Nick concentrate and cut the fish. Cutting and slicing fish comes very easy to Nick. He works at a company in Queens that does specialty crystal growth. His job is cutting, slicing, and finishing the crystal components to be sold to military contractors like those Dad used to work for would buy. The stuff is much more expensive per pound than raw fish, and you can‟t hide your mistakes. You need to be able to stay totally focused for long periods of time. This is what Nick is really good at, which is probably why he is the only white man whose sushi I will eat.

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Many people told Nick that he looks like the Verizon guy, and that he should open up his own sushi bar, because he would draw a lot of customers. Nice sentiment, but the problem is that Nick also needs to drink beer when he is making sushi. And talk loud. And shriek uncontrollably at his own jokes, which are either very funny, or very septic. And at others‟ jokes, which may not be so funny or septic, but seem that way because of the outrageous humor Nick finds in everything when holding a glass of Guinness which he is constantly diluting from a bottle of Budweiser. While this is what TNC regulars make the pilgrimage for, first-timers can be a bit taken aback. After they meet Nick and see what a gentle soul he really is, they are okay, but as a business model, it probably wouldn‟t work. Even Japanese, who love their drinking and their drinkers, don‟t want their sushi prepared by drunks. So we keep Nick happy by showing up at TNC and bringing new friends, which he reciprocates with even more hilarity. They had a pretty good crowd going by the time Moby and I got there. Everybody was straight from work, and standing around the dining room table which was covered with sushi, sashimi, and chirashi platters I‟d forgotten the names of. Nick was warming up in the bullpen, and you could hear him all the way from the first floor landing. He stood on the other side of the kitchen bar, looking down at what he was doing and talking to the guests as they came by to say hello. Every few minutes, he would put down the knife and start screaming and pounding on the counter at something that was incredibly funny. Then he would quietly pick up the knife and resume talking, slicing, and rolling as if nothing had happened. Seconds later he would be doubled over shrieking and stamping his feet, sometimes at the same thing. Yumiko was in the living room playing Wii tennis with some of the regulars. Yumiko is not hard to spot in a crowd. She is usually the only platinum-blonde Japanese woman in the place. She has a low center of gravity, is always tanned and genki, and looks like she has been hiking in the mountains for the last couple of weeks. That 16

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last is mostly true, since she gets dragged around the planet to do hair for a lot of model photography---places like Lake Titicaca, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands---because the magazines like to do their shots in exotic places. When she saw me she came over, gave me a big squeeze, and asked about Mom. “She‟s great, she‟s happy. Hey, I need to introduce you. Yumiko this is Moby, Moby, Yumiko. Yumiko runs a hair salon on Bleeker Street.” Moby stared at her. “No! YumiYaz?” “Yes! “ Yumiko sparkled. “Do I know you?” “You do my best friend„s hair! She is always trying to get me to come see you” Moby and Yumiko started trading hair talk, which rapidly became technical. I stopped it by stepping between them, holding my cameraphone at arms length and snapping a picture of the three of us. “My screensaver tomorrow!” I announced to the world. I was pummeled with female fists. “No! Stop! Wait!” I cried, turning to Yumiko in desperation. “My model/actress-friend‟s diet is about to be compromised, and I am sore afraid! Moby has to go to work in a few minutes and needs a low-cal plate to keep her away from the Snickers. Please assist!” “Unfortunately, I know nothing about sushi,” Yumiko apologized with mock seriousness. “I‟m just normal Japanese. You had better talk to Nick. Nicky! Nicky!” she called. “You need to come out here!” Nick was out of control again, but when he heard Yumiko he placed the knife carefully in its container block, removed his apron and hung it gently behind him, washed up, and came out wiping his hands in a towel, blinking attentively. Nick greeted me warmly and shook hands with Moby, and looked very intently at us both as Yumiko explained the situation.

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Nick took over once he was sure he understood. “Everything is very fresh. Your best bet if you want to keep it around 500 calories is pick what you like from the bara sushi, the mixed platter over here. Everything you need: tuna, ika, octopus, ikura, tangy greens all laid over a bed of rice soaked in sweet vinegar. If you go with the rolls or the norimaki, you‟re going to feel obliged to eat the rice and you don‟t want to load up on the carbs. Does that make sense?” Nick looked at Moby, with an intense look of concern as if he might have insulted her. “Yes, absolutely!” You could tell Moby loved the spotlight. “I‟m so GLAD!” Nick was beside himself with relief. “If you don‟t mind, I‟ll tell you about the hamachi. Would you like to hear about the hamachi?” “I‟d love to hear about the hamachi!” Nick squealed in delight, and turned to me. “She wants to hear about the hamachi!” He caught himself mid-thrill and continued. “It‟s also called yellowtail, and you can tell it by the pink-white meat with the red and black skin. They farm it in Asia, but catch it wild in the Atlantic. It‟s as tasty sometimes as the toro, but it‟s very lean--VERY lean! I mean less than 30 calories per slice!” Nick paused to let that sink in.” Moby nodded slowly in appreciation. “The guy brought it down this morning on a truck from Maine. Can you believe that? He drove all the way from MAINE!” You would think that Maine was a vast storehouse of delight from the visions of sugarplums dancing around Nick‟s head. “Have you been to Maine?” he asked Moby suddenly. “No, I haven‟t.” “Neither have I. But I think I‟d like it.” Then he said, “George Bush lives there.” “Poppy,” someone said, “Not Dubya. We sent him back to Texas!” A few perfunctory cheers went up around the room. 18

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“Oh, right.” Nick said in obvious disappointment. “He didn‟t like broccoli. And he didn‟t like their fish, either. He puked all over the Japanese prime minister. It was on television. You can see it online. They say it was the fish. It was farm-raised.” Nick nodded seriously. “Not my fish, though. All my fish is all ocean-raised.” “Ocean-raised is definitely better.” “Well, at least they have a chance.” “They can change the channel,” someone yelled. “CHANGE THE CHANNEL!” Nick shrieked. I LOVE IT! But Poppy Bush didn‟t have a chance. He didn‟t know what the hell they were feeding him. Any you know what the Japanese did afterwards? They trained street monkeys to imitate him puking! I‟m totally serious. Yumiko and I saw them when we were in Tokyo two years ago. Throw them some money and they do the Bush for you.” He imitated an American president puking, and broke into hysterics, “THAT‟S… SOOOO… BAD!!!” But the crowd was eating it up.. Nick suddenly turned and went back to the kitchen. “I have to make something special for Moby. It‟s her first time here.” Moby tried to stop him, but he would not hear it. “Grab something and come sit at the counter. You need to try my Village Roll,” he said excitedly. When we got our plates and got to our seats, Nick had rolled up a towel and tied it around his head. “Now I look like a real sushi guy, neh? “Dave, you‟re very quiet tonight. Is that because I‟m doing all the talking? Tell me what‟s going on in your life. It feels like a hundred years since we last spoke. How have you been the past century?” “Well, we got a new century?” I said lamely. “Yeah?” Nick looked up briefly. “And how‟s that working out? How‟s things at the office” “Same old, same old.” I said. “Oh, and today I got a weird email. I thought for a second it was from my dad.”

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“From your dad?” Nick didn‟t even look up. “Isn‟t he… like… you know… dead?” “That‟s right.” “So how did he send you an email?” “I don‟t know. But Moby told me it‟s not spam or someone spoofing the address. Right, Moby? But it‟s still pretty weird.” “It‟s fucked up,” Nick agreed. “Here, try this.” He placed two plates on the countertop. Each had a conically rolled sheet of seaweed containing vinegared rice, kiwi chunks, cucumber strips, shredded shiso leaves, and fermented natto soybeans. We both tried it, while Nick watched intently. Moby rolled her eyes approvingly, “Very interesting,” she said. “It‟s like something … Mexican!” “All the elements offset each other and, with my secret ingredient-- a little reduction made from Hennessy Prive--- create a flavor that otherwise would not exist. Like straights and gays. That‟s why I call it the Village Roll!” He howled hysterically at the ceiling. “I‟M… SOOO... BAD!” “It‟s great,” I agreed. “You should publish it!” Nick liked that. “Don‟t worry, Dave,” he comforted. “It‟s a prank, that‟s all. The email, I mean. It‟s definitely a prank. They‟ll figure it out. You‟ll be all right.” “Thanks, Nick, I really appreciate that.” “It‟s amazing the stuff they can figure out these days. Stuff like you wouldn‟t believe. I just heard this yesterday. They wish they could fire my ass but I know too much. Anyway, they have figured out how to do time projection now through crystal.” “What‟s that?” “They can replay past events using a proprietary crystal structure. You can already do it with live events now. There‟s a guy is in San Jose, and Cisco makes it look like he is in Mumbai. You

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can‟t tell the difference unless you try to touch the other person. It uses a phenomenon called Pepper‟s Ghost.” Moby understood what Nick was talking about. “Two identical spaces with a piece of glass between them,” she explained, drawing on a napkin. “The glass is angled at forty-five degrees to the viewer, who cannot see the second space. You shine light on an object placed in the second space and it appears in the first space.” “Since the 1850‟s,” Nick confirmed solemnly. “They‟ve been fucking with people‟s minds since at least the 1850‟s. The latest thing they‟re doing is playing with the space dimension by using the INTERNET, oh my God, to funnel the light to the mirror, so you can have people on other sides of the globe sit across the table from each other without traveling. Off-the-shelf, commercially available but still basically the same idea--- you see what‟s happening now, just not here. What is really mind-blowing is now they can alter the optics to change the time dimension, so what you are seeing is happening here but not happening now. It could be something in the past. As long as there is a spatial reference point, that‟s all you need.” Nick leaned across the counter and stared at us gleefully. “Now is that just sick, or what?” “So you could---“ I looked around the room for an example. “Exactly!” Nick couldn‟t wait. “Shoot the bad guy and bring him in for questioning later. Don‟t keep waterboarding the sonofabitch until he can remember something. As long you can positively confirm one place that he‟s been--- scene of a crime, cell meeting, mosque, whorehouse, whatever---you‟ve got him!” With a single deft motion Nick swept up the scraps of the Village Roll in a piece of wax paper, flung it into a garbage can behind him, and glared at us---”Disposable forensics! Virtual justice! No Miranda rights, no due process, no Fifth, no Gitmo, no food allergies, no Korans in the toilet. Just replay the ghost --- because the ghost can‟t lie--- and record it. You have perfect knowledge of everything that happened. So the poor bastard died?" Nick grabbed 21

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my arm theatrically. “Hey mon, LISTEN! I‟m SORRY. It was an accident. We don‟t mean it. We‟ll never do it again!” “But can they change outcomes?” Moby jumped in. “Can they replay an event and intervene? In the bank robbery, suicide bombing, whatever?” “Incident Revision is in Version 2,” Nick footnoted automatically. “On the roadmap, but they didn‟t want to discuss it. “Who‟s „they‟?” I asked. “Government guys. You know--- they wear dark sunglasses and drive Fords with blacked out windows.” “When did this happen?” Some of the other guests had moved over to listen in. “About a year ago. They came to visit us. Sat right in the conference room. They asked us to do the optics… AND WE TURNED THEM DOWN! Can you BELIEVE that?” Nick lowered his voice and frowned. “Management didn‟t want to get sued. Everything was going great. We‟re profitable. Nobody pays attention to us. So our attorneys said, „Just lay low, and don‟t get greedy. Let someone else build it for Jack Bauer, and see what happens. If the coast is clear, they‟ll need more than one supplier. And the rest of DoD will want it, and then law enforcement, and then consumers will want it for stocking stuffers.” “That's what happens when they bring in the lawyers." Two of Yumiko‟s customers, a blonde with black eyebrows in a flame dress, and her rough-shaven pinstripe boyfriend had joined us at the bar. “You‟re absolutely right,” Nick agreed cheerfully. “Meet Moby. She‟s an actress. And Dave. He‟s a lawyer.” Neither statement was remotely true, but both Moby and I have learned how not to let the facts get in the way of a good story. “Oh, we‟re so sorry!” They started looking about desperately, as if for something to wipe me off. 22

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“Sorry that I‟m a lawyer?” I grinned. “Now I really like you guys! Can I buy you a drink?” It was all they could do now not to fall over the bar looking for napkins. We chatted for a few minutes and it turned out that Gavin and Wendy were both from the same entertainment companies but from different Jerseys--- Gavin from the Channel island, Wendy from Turnpike Exit 17. “So get this,” Nick continued. ”They let the sales manager go last month, and brought in a golf buddy of one of the board members. He was pissed. This guy built our entire government business. They promised him VP and stock. Instead they fire him for this new guy. So get this: he‟s going around the plant floor introducing himself and he comes up to me and says I‟m Bill So-and-so. I come from the chip industry. Chip industry? Okay that‟s interesting. Which manufacturer were you with---Intel? Motorola? AMD? No, the guy says, the kind you eat. I sold Frito-Lay to hotel chains.” Nick shrieked. “The POTATO chip industry!” I CAN‟T BELIEVE IT!” “So does the guy they let go want to sue?” I asked helpfully. “I think they‟re going to settle,” Nick shook his head. “But he showed me the spec! We could have done it. I know exactly how I would have grown the crystal and cut it. And Version 2 could be designed right on top of Version 1. It would have taken us three months max.” “So then why isn‟t Gitmo closed?” Moby asked. “There‟s only one other company that can make this stuff and they‟re delayed by supplier issues. Even if they had enough raw material they could probably only build one unit a month, because the crystal yields are so low--- you have to throw away so much good shit out before you get one that hits spec. That‟s what keeps the price so high and delivery times so long--- not the cost of what you actually make, but the cost of what you have to throw in the garbage. “But think about it. You don‟t even have to buy one of these things. Just build an amusement park. Or rent it out for parties. All these people out there who walk around believing they have missed 23

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their big chance, made some huge mistake that cost them their career or marriage or net worth. If you could go back and do one thing over, what would it be? And how much would you pay for THAT?” Nick eyes were in Candy Land. “That would be huge business. HUGE! Even if you could just SEE it again, people would pay for that. They want to know what it was really like--- the best AND the worst things.” “Like the first time you got laid?” winked Gavin. “Oh I‟d love to see THAT again,” Nick grinned, “but I don‟t think Yumiko would.” “Anything you would change about it?” Wendy egged him on. “No, not really,” Nick said thoughtfully. “The experience was very pleasant. Maybe I‟d change the beef burrito and the refried beans I had for dinner that night. I should have gone with the chicken. Never have sex after eating beef burritos. Your sphincter starts making peculiar noises. It can be very embarrassing.” Moby was laughing with her mouth closed, trying not to inhale the last of her Village Roll. “You don‟t believe me!” Nick accused, looking hurt. “Try it sometime! Tell me if you don‟t hear this noise…” he puckered up his face in his best anatomical representation and began emitting quick, balloon-like bursts of air. We were all rolling on the floor now. Nick was howling so loud you had to be able to hear it out in the street. He would pause for another blast, and shriek some more. Some new guests had appeared at the door. Moby had managed to climb back up the bar and looked at her watch. “Oh, I need to go…now! Nick, thank you for everything! The food was wonderful. The folks are fabulous! And the jokes are--- well I just won‟t be able to try them at Cadwallader tonight. But maybe some other time!” We said goodbye to Yumiko, whom Moby promised to call for an appointment, clattered down the stairs, and got a taxi. She rolled down the window, and grabbed my sleeve. “Dave, that was 24

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fun! Let‟s come here again! Don‟t forget the documents for Arev--he needs them tomorrow.” I stared at her blankly. “I have no idea what you‟re talking about.” “Forget it!” she scolded. “Just pretend I kissed you--- it‟ll ruin my makeup!” The window closed and the taxi sped off to catch the light. I turned around and saw Nick standing beside me in his shirtsleeves, his hands sunk like small weights into his trouser pockets. You would think he had nothing else to do. “I sure hope she meant that,” he said sadly. “You mean, about the kiss?” “Sometimes I get carried away and become pretty raunchy. Yumiko says it can make people uncomfortable. Do you think she felt uncomfortable? I don‟t mean it, you know that, but I guess you have to treat people like dynamite. I‟m really sorry.” “Stop apologizing. She had a great time. I‟ll make sure she has Yumiko do her hair.” Nick brightened. “That would really mean a lot, Dave. It really would. You‟re such a good friend--- you and Steve, and your Mom and Dad. You‟ve all been there for us. Always” He gazed down the street. “But I don‟t know what the hell I would do.” “About what?” “If I could go back and do one thing over,” he said. “I‟ve really fucked it up, mon--- my education, my job, my family--- my whole goddam life. I don‟t know where I would start.”

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Chapter 3

November 19, 2011: 3rd Harmonic, 3510th Cycle; 5th Harmonic, 2106th Cycle No response from DoD GC’s office to the email I forwarded to them last month, so I’ve been taking advantage of time zones and football halftimes to see what remains of Glenn Kurt Tripp. I’m afraid there is not much to report. Tripp got his fifteen minutes of media attention---twice--- in his short life. But aside from the coverage of his airborne achievements, I’ve been able to find nothing--- no birth, death certificates, no transcripts, no place of burial, no next of kin that picks up a phone--- no primary source confirmation that he even existed. Not that I’m surprised. It was, after all, thirty years ago, and everyone else has either moved away, forgotten about it, or died. I’m sure the evidence is out there buried in county document repositories, but as the one ferociously indifferent reporter I managed to track down pointed out, “This is so prehistoric, why is this even worth your time? Are you supposed to be on some kind of medication too?” I’m pretty sure about the second question. It’s the first question that’s giving me trouble. Maybe it’s because, like Dad, Tripp was killed in an aircraft-related incident, and there is a certain unreality surrounding things that happen on takeoff, at high altitudes, and landing. Lives can suddenly and completely disappear, leaving little more than a smoking fuselage, a floating seat cushion, or some flowers stuck in a chain-link fence at the end of a runway. The 26

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spokespeople say the same things over and over because no one on board was special: everybody met with the same fate. Sorry, they’re just not there anymore. And I think maybe it’s getting an email from someone who is not there anymore, at an account that’s been deleted, on a server that’s been taken offline, asking me to pls contact someone who may have never existed--- it all disappears when you try to touch it. Your hand goes right through. I think that’s the real cause for the wondering inside my head. If something here just existed, if I could touch it, I know it would all go away. That being said, it’s surprising that we know as much as we do about Glenn Kurt Tripp, who made aviation history not only as the youngest person to ever hijack an airliner, but as the only hijacker to take over the same plane twice. He was the youngest of fifteen children, born in Escondido, CA. His father was twenty-four years his mother Lena’s senior, and their first child was born when she was seventeen. Glenn was epileptic, and would go into seizure under emotional distress. He was also learning disabled, and was eventually placed in Riverside County’s special education program in Ramona, where he was classified as educable-mentally retarded. Tripp went through vocational training and counseling to prepare him for a career in menial labor, but discovered petty theft when he was twelve. At fourteen, he spent a year in a detention home, and in 1979 at age sixteen had maxed out of Riverside’s special ed program. He started to drift. One of his teachers at Riverside, Larry LaCaille, was familiar with Tripp’s abusive domestic situation, and had stayed in touch. When he heard that Tripp was getting pulled toward the edge, he enrolled the boy in a youth work training program in Seattle, where he now lived. Tripp left home for good just after Thanksgiving, and moved into LaCaille’s apartment. Seattle’s fast-paced environment overwhelmed the boy. As a psychological evaluation at one of his court hearings would later show, Tripp was not only dangerous to society but to himself as someone “open to exploitation and impressible”. He was robbed twice and stabbed once in less than six months, and responded by 27

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retreating into a fantasy world that revolved more and more around DB Cooper, the name most often used to describe an unidentified man in a dark suit, black clip-on necktie, and mother-of-pearl tie pin who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 in mid-flight between Portland and Seattle on November 24, 1971. Cooper received his demand for $200,000 in unmarked bills, parachuted out the rear exit door of the Boeing 727 somewhere over southwest Washington State, and was never heard from again. Despite extensive manhunts by both FBI and National Guard, a suspect has never been identified, and the incident remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in US aviation history. For years, it seemed as if Cooper had disappeared without a trace, until February, 1980, when an eight-year old boy on a camping trip on the Columbia River, near Vancouver, WA, dug up three packets of the ransom cash, deteriorated but still in the serial number order in which they were delivered to Cooper. Tripp was excited by this development and told LaCaille that he wanted to become a hijacker, too. He would talk about how he could make a lot of money by bluffing or using a fake bomb. He was going to use the money to go where no one would find him, and there were no mean people. LaCaille said this was not the way the world worked, and that he should put the idea out of his head. He started driving Glenn out to work on a horse ranch over the weekends. This was something the boy enjoyed. He would get up at 5AM, work until 3PM, and then ride horses for a couple of hours. But when Tripp was let go from his janitorial job on Thursday, July 3, and over the holiday weekend was told by a girl he had a crush on to leave her alone, all that came apart. He accused LaCaille for telling the girl to ignore him, and threatened LaCaille with a knife. Police were called and Tripp was evicted from the apartment. Still hanging on the refrigerator door were two typewritten pages of what appeared to be the beginning of Tripp’s autobiography, and his personal calendar, completely blank for the month of July except for the 11th, which was circled and marked “Payday.” LaCaille thought nothing of this until the following 28

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Friday, when someone told him that a hijacking was taking place at the airport. He turned on the TV, heard the negotiations on policeband being re-broadcast live, and recognized Tripp’s voice. According to accounts provided, Tripp commandeered Northwest Airlines Flight 608 as it taxied toward the runway shortly after 1PM, claiming he had a bomb in his briefcase, and held the Boeing 727 on the tarmac for ten hours. He demanded $100,000 and two parachutes, saying that he was going to jump from the plane in mid-flight. An FBI negotiator was brought in, and convinced Tripp via radio to let all 52 passengers and the flight attendants leave the plane. The negotiator then convinced Tripp that his original plan was too dangerous, because since the DB Cooper incident all Boeing 727 rear exits were now welded shut, and that he would be killed by the engine blast if he jumped from one of the cabin exits. Tripp asked for a twin-engine plane, but eventually, he settled for a fast rental car, three cheeseburgers, and a head start. He was tackled by FBI agents as he dashed for the car. The briefcase contained only a light jacket. Tripp was tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree kidnapping and one count of first-degree extortion. Tripp’s limited mental capacities were taken into consideration. At the sentencing, the judge agreed to defer a 20-year prison term in favor of closely supervised treatment for five years at a vocational training facility for developmentally disabled young adults. A prison sentence would be reconsidered if any problems arose. “Your are accountable for your own behavior,” the judge told Tripp. “You must keep that in mind.” Tripp was admitted to Victoria Village on November, 1980 and discharged in December, 1981. During the following year, he lived alone in a rented house outside Stanwood, WA. His means of support during this time is unknown, but he met regularly with his probation officer, and said he was taking classes at a local community college. According to his mother, he had been sinking into a depression since not being allowed to attend his father’s funeral during his treatment. “Mama, what good is life for if I 29

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can’t even see my folks? I’m better off dead,” he allegedly told her. Lena later theorized that her son’s second hijacking attempt was an attempt to carry out that wish. By late 1982, Tripp had become obsessed with the idea that someone was trying to kill him. He was scheduled to appear in court to answer to an obstruction of justice charge regarding a false report he had filed with the police, but instead on January 20, 1983 he again boarded Northwest Flight 608 from Seattle to Portland, dressed in a dark suit, black workboots, and carrying a shoebox. At about 130PM, when the plane was about 60 miles from Portland, Tripp got up, walked down the aisle to a cabin attendant and told her to get on the phone. No money, no parachutes, just fly me to Afghanistan. The flight landed at Portland International Airport at 145PM PST, and things began to unravel from there. This time Tripp adamantly refused to release any of the passengers or crew, but it was pretty clear that at some point they would have to change planes. The maximum loaded range of the Boeing 727 is 2400 nautical miles, meaning they would need a 747 if the flight was not going to refuel in Soviet territory. They would then have to switch back to a smaller body plane because there were no mujahideencontrolled airstrips in Afghanistan that could accommodate a 747. Also, instead of routing through Anchorage, Tripp was insisting on a stop in San Diego, presumably to see his mother. He would yell incoherent attempts at slogans in a thick imitation accent, talk how he had not seen his family in years, and how his father had been killed with a bullet through a window. As it became increasingly clear that the hijacker mentally did not have both oars in the water---and probably nothing in the shoebox--- several of the passengers and crew came up and tried to persuade him to surrender. The Feds were also on the radio in the cockpit trying to get him to do the same thing remotely through a negotiator. Confused by all the voices talking at him, Tripp ordered passengers and crew to the back of the plane. As soon as he had done this, two armed men burst through the cockpit door and yelled “FBI---Freeze!” Tripp is reported to have 30

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made a sudden motion as if to throw the box at the agents, one of whom fired a single shot from a .38-caliber pistol into Tripp’s chest, killing him instantly. All 35 passengers and six crew members slid down an emergency exit chute to safety. The FBI later stated they did not know the identity of the hijacker and, if they had, would have handled the situation differently. A Multnomah County grand jury, however, concluded that the fatal shooting of Glenn Kurt Tripp was absolutely necessary, and praised the agents for their actions. One question that has never been answered is how Tripp could have managed to pull off both hijackings alone. Tripp has been described by nearly all who knew him as operating at the mental level of a 9-12 year-old. As an educable-mentally retarded person, his teachers and counselors say he was incapable of making a decision that involved any kind of planning. “If you put him on the curb in front of any large airport,” one of his special ed instructors stated, “Glenn would have a difficult time even finding airplanes.” While this assessment may oversimplify the matter, nobody has satisfactorily explained how Tripp, who had never flown in a plane before and had extreme difficulty learning the skills necessary to sweep floors, could figure out how to get to an airport, find the terminal, purchase a ticket, find the gate, board the plane, get to his seat, and know when and how to advise the crew that he was hijacking the plane. I’m not a grassy knoll kind of guy, but this kind of lightning does not strike twice without some kind of premeditation, and Tripp could barely premeditate himself to show up for work on time. “He is not capable of having planned out what happened by himself,” his courtappointed lawyer said. “Somebody had to have put him up to it.”

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I wrote that late on a Friday evening, and let it sit for a couple of weeks. I‟ll do that when I‟ve been drilling myself into hole that‟s coming up dry. Whether he could have helped it or not, in the end Glenn Kurt Tripp was turning into just another kid who had stepped off the curb one time too many. The more I learned about him, the less there seemed to be worth knowing. And there he would have stayed for maybe another thirty years if Mom hadn‟t decided she wasn‟t coming back for the holidays. She had been invited to stay with college friends and go to one of the hot springs resorts out by Mt. Fuji, and impractically asked if my brother Steve and I could join her. She thought it would be a great idea. I didn‟t think so, but she is my mother. So I called up Steve, who lives out in Santa Cruz, to see if we coordinate a talk track that would make her happy and keep our holidays merry and bright. He actually picked up the phone, something Steve does not do on Saturdays, which he usually spends surfing. Steve is a programmer. He surfs and writes device drivers for a living--- in that order. He is one of those industrial libertarians who believe Windows is not the work of the devil, just unnecessary. Why would you want to outsource your thinking to people in Seattle? Aren‟t the waves doing your thinking, I would reply. You‟re just along for the ride. Some people prefer not to build their own house, car, or computer. Surfing is different, he would reply. The source code is exposed. You‟re plugging into the only visible manifestation of the harmonic principle by which all time and matter is composed and recycled. This was too California for me. Steve had gotten his start in all this through an internship Dad set up for him one summer, writing UNIX device drivers for a software company in North Jersey. He got himself out to a few code-fests, and then got himself hired away to work on a project at Lawrence Livermore Labs. He did a lot of work with Sun until they got bought, with SCO, Santa Cruz Operation, until they went bankrupt, and with Silicon Graphics until the Japan quake slowed things down. He was now doing mostly Linux projects and mobile apps. People can pretty much tell we‟re brothers, except for 32

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the extensive tattoos and the prematurely white shock of hair, which he blames on lack of sunshine and a non-hereditary deficiency of chronic stress. “Hey man, what‟s going on?” “Not much,” I said. “Just wanted to see what was happening for Thanksgiving.” “No plans, really. I‟m preparing the stovetop stuffing, so if you want to help out and bring the herb-crusted smoked turkey and the buttermilk mashed potatoes, you are more than welcome.” “Thanks, but don‟t think it will fit in the overhead luggage compartment. Nor will I be able to keep my tray table up, and my seatback in the full-upright position on takeoff and landing. But everyone here sends their love.” “And a big West Coast boo-yah right back at ya,” he monotoned. Then, intently, “So what do you want to say?” “Simpler is better,” I thought out loud. “Nobody takes two weeks of vacation in this economy and expecting to come back to a job. Otherwise it‟s three calendar days and jetlagged all the way.” “But she wants to introduce us to all her friends so she has something to brag about. When else is she ever going to get a chance to do that?” “I don‟t know,” I confessed. “It‟s just not at the top of my todo list.” Suddenly I asked,” You know anybody in Escondido?” “I thought you were going to say Albuquerque,” Steve laughed nostalgically, and then paused. “Why? You get an email about a hijacking?” “So you got it. Did Mom get it, too?” “No---she would have been calling both of us immediately.” “It totally weirded me out,” I admitted. “I had a cleared engineer look at it before I deleted it. She said the physical server is 33

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offline, and someone is probably doing some testing on a shadow machine.” “Well Mom definitely would have got something if it was a test--she was on his contact list too,” Steve squashed that theory. “But the message didn‟t come to my personal account. It came to the Gmail account I‟ve been using since I went independent in January this year. A long pause on that one: Dad had been killed last May. “So... what are you telling me, Steve?” “Not sure, so I‟ll stick to what I know and what I‟m pretty sure of: (A) I don‟t know anyone in Escondido, and (B) I‟m pretty sure Northwest 608 is the flight she was on.” “Who? Mom?” “Pre-Mom. The girl Dad was dating when he first got sent overseas. She went over to see him. Her connecting flight back got hijacked. It was the end of their relationship.” It had never occurred to me that either of my parents had existed prior to meeting each other. “What do you mean it was the end of their relationship?” “That was all he said.” “He told you this? When?” “Last spring, April I think---just about a month before he was killed. He came in to see me after heard Zandra and I broke up. He was worried I was going into a tailspin.” Yet another first. Dad hadn‟t come home, or even contacted Mom or me let us know he was back in the country. And now a preMom. I wondered what else I was missing here. “So, let me get hits straight,” I had slipped into attorney-client mode, “You also get the email. It comes to your new email address. Dad was in a relationship with someone on that flight. He was back 34

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in the country a month before he died. And you wait until now to tell me all this?” “Hey man, shit happens,” Steve brushed aside my annoyance. “You weren‟t exactly on texting me, either. Here‟s what happened: two emails sent directly to us from an inactive machine sitting out there on SIPRNET. How did it happen? We don‟t know. Someone or something that knows how to find us got into Dad‟s email account. It might be a deathswitch script plugging into a law-enforcement directory search. It might be a hacker. Or paranormal activity. Bottom line: until someone can get onto that server and look at the logs, we don‟t know. And we may never know since all this is now classified government property, including those emails. You‟re a lawyer, so you tell me, Dave. Should we even be discussing this on an unsecured phone line?” I took the hint, apologized, and changed the subject. Steve was all I had left for family on this huge continent, and he‟s always been there through thick and thin. We talked about the weather, made some predictions on the Giants and the „Niners, and placed some bets on the Bowls. I just could not see Steve waiting on the long screaming lines at the airport to cram himself into a seat for hours just to eat a depressing turkey on a freezing day with me, or sit in a hot spring tub on the other side of the globe. We decided to see if we have Mom come to California in the spring---maybe head down to Santa Monica or something--- and pretty much left it there. After we hung up, it struck me that in spite of how intolerable his presence could sometimes be, Dad‟s absence had held us together. His loss had now scattered us. This holiday season I would be in New York, Steve in San Jose, Mom in Tokyo. We were all doing well, on speaking terms, still close, but the Jorgensen family had essentially been liquidated. It was one of those unanticipated costs of national security which, in terms of net outcome, consisted in things we were not supposed to know. There were quite a few things Dad had apparently chosen for us not to know, judging from the size and terms of the settlement Mom had received. I thought 35

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about the picture of the plane with the FBI agent crawling through the cockpit window, and how someone might actually have photographed the final minutes of something we never knew existed. Somewhere on that plane sat a woman he would never see again. I tried to imagine her, but she had disappeared, leaving only a dotted outline on a seat. Twenty-seven years later, Dad also boarded a plane and disappeared, leaving a wife and two sons holding a benefits package and no closure. Not even, I was beginning to suspect, for himself. He had signed it all over. Everything he ever knew, loved, heard of, or dreamed about in this world and in worlds to come---whether in physical or electronic format--- if it touched DoD networks in any way, it belonged to the United States government. Even the meaning of this tiny untraceable signal from cyberspace: Pls contact. It won’t hurt you to sit with me for a while. Steve‟s reaching for the measured, rational response was both correct and protective. Anything that would jeopardize what Dad had left us was unwise. Despite Steve‟s somewhat fearsome appearance, he is temperamentally better suited for the law that I am. In his world, everything, including time, snaps together and stays in place. I probably would have been happier as a surfer. More impressible and open to suggestion of the next new new thing, I tend to keep an eye on the horizon. As I saw it, a fundamental barrier had been breached. People, places, and events that no longer existed, and were no longer bound by any law or order were pepperghosting themselves at us through a rogue machine named MX4DPM. You couldn‟t see it: it was the invisible image of a physical server that once was and is no longer. You couldn‟t touch it: it was nothing more than a swarm of zeroes and ones floating around a secure network. But it was out there, like a massive, diagonal plate of dark glass, and whatever it reflected would disappear when you tried to grab it. Just who was turning it and what they meant by it we were not allowed to ask. All we could do is wait until they made their next move. Unless we could figure out what they were really after, and get to it before they did. 36

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It came to me later that evening. It was one of those things you convince yourself you didn't hear out of the corner of your ear, and then fool yourself into forgetting. Years later, you‟re rummaging around your head looking for something else and out it falls, like a lost lover‟s letter from an ancient textbook, or an uncashed check from a beloved relative long dead. Once again, the words spoke, and the spell was broken. I knew who was putting me up to what I was about to do, what they wanted, and how I would get them to talk.