Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (29 page)

The friar just stood there grinning while Auggie pulled out a rubber ball attached to a horn. But instead of toots, the horn seemed to produce three hymn-like organ chords. A new figure appeared at the door to the bar. This one was dressed as a nun, with a black habit and a large white headdress that partially hid her face. With one hand, she hiked up her skirt and struck a pin-up pose, then wiggled her hips as she came toward the friar.

awgy>u 2 shd hv a fin ol tim 2 nit.

But the friar did not respond. Now the nun had reached the bar and her face was visible. It was the face of a middle-aged woman with startling blue eyes. A few tendrils of gray hair escaped the elaborate headdress. In her hand she carried a ruler. The friar figure snapped around, turning his back on the nun.

jon>u monster. how did u no?

awgy>mi frends usually tel me wut they lik, whut it is they reeeley want.

jon>how dare u. that was my private memory

awgy>it was yr faaantaseee & ooobviosly not so private, after al.

Pritchard punched Maisie in the arm, saying, “Lookee, these guys have a cyberfight brewing up.”

“That’s nothing new for Auggie. He has his noisy little disagreements with lots of people.”

“Yeah,” Pritchard snickered, “but look at what this one’s over.”

awgy>u just sed u’r having a grat tim being a reeelijus figger.

jon>this wuz supposed 2 b just a game. ure supposed 2 b just a cartoon. NO—this is getting far too personal. you have no business poking around in my mind.

awgy>u gav me sum of yr seeecrets & i gav u sum of min. but thers much more, mi frend. much mor. i thot u wer 1 uv the speshul 1s. i thot u aaaalmost unnerstud the tru natr of reeeality.

jon>i don’t know how u did it. but 4get it awgy. 4get about evrything. you won’t ever see me again. not here. not anywhere.

Two things happened then in rapid succession: Auggie threw his drink in the face of the friar; and the friar, brown trickles running down his face, vanished from the bar. Apparently his operator had turned his computer off.

Did you see that?” Maisie asked.

“Yeah. Auggie’s drink splashed all over that guy.”

“He’s not supposed to be able to do that. One cartoon character’s not supposed to be able to touch another one in Ernie’s.”

“Tell me about it,” Pritchard said. “No, tell that to Auggie.’

“You know,” Maisie said thoughtfully, “Marianne said that her friend and the clown used to argue a lot. Maybe we
should
be keeping track of his tiffs.”

Pritchard said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the screen.

Auggie sat down at the bar and ordered another drink. He told the nun to go back to Aphrodite Escorts. As she wiggled her way out the door, he raised his glass to her. The clown’s synthesized voice said aloud, “Glug-gluggles!”

Pritchard let out a snort of laughter, “Hear that, Maisie? Know who that is?”

Baldwin Maisie looked blank. “What? I was watching the nun make her exit. What happened?”

“The clown just said, ‘Gluggles.’”

“So, what does that mean?”

“Remember—‘glug-gluggles, don’t get caught in the bottleneck’?”

“You mean that little wizard who was always so irritated with the von Neumann bottleneck? What was his name?”

“Zo-o-o-o-mer,” Pritchard said. “That’s
gotta be either ol’ Zoomer or some fan of his too stupid to make up his own lines. Zoomer used to put messages on bulletin boards everywhere, bitching about digital computers—complaining about all those little ones and zeros trotting along single file through the binary bottleneck.”

“Sure, I remember him now,” said Maisie. “He said information shouldn’t have to stay in line, that millions of operations a second isn’t fast enough. He was crying for a parallel processor by the time he learned to talk.”

“Zoomer’s a very, very bright guy. He coulda done it. I mean, all this stuff that’s been happening up on Insomnimania. Zoomer coulda gotten around our programming in Ernie’s. He coulda invented the Snuff Room. He coulda set up the files on his snuffs so that anybody who downloaded only got a loop.”

“Is he a super phone phreak?” Maisie indicated the caller ID box. “We got a Chicago number on the box tonight. Zoomer’s still in L.A., right?”

“Last I knew. I don’t imagine he’s gone anywhere.”

“We’ve been recording addresses and numbers from all over the country. Could he have logged in from here and made it look like he was coming from somebody else’s connection in some other state?”

“I don’t remember him having that deep a background on phones. But I’d be willing to bet he could figure it out if he really wanted to.”

Maisie considered for a moment, then asked, “What do you think? Should we tell the cops?”

“Zoomer sure didn’t sneak up and kill anybody.”

“Let’s let them figure that out for themselves.”

“Are we gonna get him into trouble?”

“Don’t see how it could. We know he didn’t do any murders.”

“They’re gonna hassle him, though.”

“Pritch, maybe he knows something. Maybe he can give them a lead in the direction of the guy who
did
kill that lady’s friend.”

Ned Pritchard squirmed on his stool. “I’d hate to turn a hacker over to the cops.” He was silent for a few moments. “But it
was
murder. Two of them, maybe. I guess they won’t bother Zoomer too much, once they get to see him.”

“Know where he is now?”

“Probably still living at home with his parents. Like he always did. In fact, I think he actually joined Insomnimania—legitimately even. We probably have an address for him.”

Maisie punched a few keys, calling up membership information. “Yeah, here he is. He’s legit—the old boy’s slowing down. One alter listed. Named Gargantua. Yeah, that’s the gorilla we see around sometimes.”

“That’s curiouser and curiouser.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve seen Auggie
talking to
Gargantua. Do you suppose Zoomer’s getting schizo in his old age?”

Baldwin Maisie dialed the police station and asked for Detective Grobowski.

*

This is almost like taking your clothes of for the first time with a new man.
Not that Babylonia had cause to be timid about revealing her body. This was what she was made for. It was the lack of subtlety in the situation that made Marianne feel awkward. But none of that shyness showed in Babylonia as she waited in the Motelibido room that Auggie had reserved for them.

Auggie had been in Ernie’s Bar when Elfie got there tonight. He greeted the elf and asked her to join him, but he had not seemed in the mood to continue their previous conversation. In fact, he wasted little time before suggesting Pleasure Dome activity. Marianne was glad that she had made preparations.

The door opened and another figure entered the motel room. Marianne thought it must be Auggie, because only he knew the location of their private liaison. Only he would know the code to open the door and enter. But if this was Auggie, he no longer resembled a clown. Marianne stared at the screen.

The image that stepped forward was almost androgynous. An indication of the standard male genitals was visible on the completely naked figure, but the body was slender and unformed, smooth and characterless, and completely hairless. The face was expressionless. The whole figure was a simply sketched line drawing—black outlines with no color at all within.

It’s as though he just took off
the clown costume and makeup and this is what’s left.
She had hoped that Auggie’s Pleasure Dome alter would give her some clue to the personality behind the clown, but this image looked unfinished, like a doll or a cheap mannequin.
This ... this dummy ... could put on another costume and be something else entirely.
A familiar phrase ran through her mind:
You
ain’t got nothin ’in there
. She giggled nervously.
How could this be Auggie?

“My name is Mr. Zero,” the figure said aloud, moving tentatively toward Babylonia. His programmed voice was almost a whisper, without inflection.

baby>so glad to met u, handsum man. mi nam is babylonia.

The pale figure stood gazing at Babylonia, the features unchanged, looking blank and disinterested. Finally he spoke aloud again, in the same uninflected voice. “Ah, yes. You and I are going to have a fine time together.”

Marianne thought his voice sounded more like a sigh than anything else. But now Mr. Zero was continuing, this time typing his lines.

0>welcom, babylonia. let me see. ah yes, of cors, she of babylon. i m inded honord bi yr meting me her 2day.

baby>& i have long wantd 2 get 2 no u, awgy.

As soon as Marianne had typed her words, she realized her error.

I called him Auggie.

She wondered if a tantrum would ensue. Instead, she sensed an almost palpable gentleness in Mr. Zero’s typed response …

0>we shud 4get abt r rel livs 4 now. awgy & lfy arn’t her now. u, babylonia, u r her now. u r the 1 i want.

As he spoke, the pale slender figure approached Babylonia and reached out to her. But what should Babylonia do? She opened her arms to wrap them around the man. Marianne was vaguely aware that the erotic handicap she had given Babylonia would affect her interactions with Mr. Zero. In fact, she had experienced the result of the handicap earlier in the hot tub scene, when she had found herself dominant over both of the characters she joined.

But now she was amazed when Mr. Zero wrapped his arms around Babylonia and threw her down on the bed. Marianne giggled nervously. There was no doubt who had the higher aggression quotient here.

Babylonia struggled briefly, but then Mr. Zero produced ropes, apparently out of nowhere. The whore was swiftly bound and tied to the bed, her arms stretched upward, her legs spread. The clown said:

0>now u’ll njoy it much mor, mi love.

Marianne gasped. Her mind reeled into panic. How had he known that this had sometimes been her fantasy? Had she told him? When could she have told him? This was an image that had occasionally flickered into her mind in years gone by—certainly not anything she had ever wanted to act out.

Now Mr. Zero stroked Babylonia’s hair. He punctuated his typed words with his verbalized whispers. “How lovely.” “Such a beautiful woman.” And, “Ah, yes. You and I are going to have a fine time together.”

Marianne relaxed a little.
After all, bondage is an extremely common female fantasy. For all I know, he has all this preprogrammed and uses it automatically every time he meets someone here.

Androgynous as he had seemed before, there seemed no doubt of Mr. Zero’s masculinity now. He stroked Babylonia. He removed her two purple veils and pushed her skirt aside. There were no more typed words—only a soft stream of sighs, compliments, and endearments was audible. Occasionally Marianne tried to direct Babylonia’s responses, but it was as though her alter insisted on simply following Mr. Zero’s lead. Then she saw that the ropes binding Babylonia had apparently melted away. The whore was tied down no longer.

To Marianne’s amazement, the two characters simply folded together, made a fairly prosaic sexual connection, undulated, and emitted something like a purring noise. How easy it looked. How easy it was.

She found the scene quite fascinating. There was none of the bizarre activity she had witnessed in the beam of Elfie’s flashlight. This was even simpler than her earlier experience in the hot tub. She felt a great sense of relief. She realized how much she had dreaded the possibility of seeing Elfie brutalized, even thus disguised as the Whore of Babylon.

It was increasingly hard to believe that the person who had created Auggie and Mr. Zero could have been involved in two murders, much less that he might be the murderer himself. He certainly knew how to act the part of a gentle lover. The cartoon activity on the screen indicated a person who was—what?
Seductive. Auggie knows how to be quite seductive.

Then her whole body stirred with a physical memory so potent that it overwhelmed the images on the computer screen. It was as though Nolan was on top of her again and she felt her body move to receive him, without thought, without hesitation, her knees rising on each side of him, her arms wrapping around his great warm body.

*

The pale man moved his arm, pixels tracking across the screen in rhythmic strokes, both characters moving tirelessly, the whore’s red clothing and gold jewelry flashing with every motion.

*

Nolan entered her and drew a deep sigh, beginning a gentle motion. She realized contently that this was going to last a long time.

*

Babylonia’s red lips that would not smear formed a round “O,” her long black hair that would not tangle spread in curls around them. The pale lover moved ceaselessly.

*

Marianne became aware that Nolan was stroking the side of her face, kissing her eyelids, her nose, stroking her hair as it spread out on the pillow. All the while he moved gently, rhythmically. She reached up and ran her hands along Nolan’s hairy arms, his sweaty body, relishing the absolute reality of him.

10100
HACKER

As Clayton drove the squad car slowly up North Figueroa, Nolan watched for the cross street. On any weekend, the park on their right would be full of picnicking families. Now some kids, probably a class from one of the neighborhood schools, were kicking a soccer ball around.

Nolan remembered driving by that park after one of the more serious earthquakes. Many Mexican-American and Asian-American families had moved out into the park, setting up their tents and cooking out until the aftershocks were safely over. It had looked like some sort of fiesta.

“Turn left at the next corner,” Nolan said. Clayton turned and headed into the lower edge of Mount Washington. Nolan directed them through a few more turns, and they wound their way steadily up the steep hill. Houses were packed along narrow roads that rambled through hairpin curves and steep grades. Many of the houses were old, some of them small and worn, but most shared an excellent view—at least when the view could be seen through the smog. Here and there, new houses were shouldered into the landscape, with bold decks jutting out precariously over the hillside. Nearer the top, the houses were larger with more space between them. Those belonged to Mount Washington’s more affluent inhabitants. However, nothing here looked much like Beverly Hills.

They had to turn around and backtrack through a honeycomb of old lanes before they found the address Maisie had given them—a tall narrow house on the uphill side of the street. There was no driveway, just a slight widening of the road in front of a small garage. Clayton pulled the car as far over to the right as he could to avoid being in the path of other traffic coming down the hill. The detectives made their way up flagstone steps to the front door of the house.

“If this guy tries to break and run, I don’t think he’ll be able to get out of here very fast,” Nolan muttered.

“Maisie seemed sure he wouldn’t run,” said Clayton. “In fact, he’s positive this guy isn’t violent at all.” He knocked several times before a middle-aged Latina opened the door.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Nolan said, showing his badge. “I’m Detective Grobowski with the Los Angeles Police Department. And this is Detective Saunders. Are you Mrs. Ramos?”

The woman nodded, showing no interest.

“We’re here to see Mike Ramos,” Clayton said. “Is he your son?”

“Mikey is sleeping,” she said, nodding. “He works late at night.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to wake him up,” Nolan said firmly. “We have to ask him some questions on a very urgent matter.”

The woman just stood there, looking as though her attention had simply wandered off. Nolan said, “Mrs. Ramos?” She turned and walked back into the house. Nolan and Clayton followed.

“Is anyone else at home?” Nolan asked.

“My husband is out,” the woman answered, without looking back.

The inside of the house was dim. The windows were overshadowed by foliage and partially covered by heavy drapes. But Nolan could see that the place was very clean and that the living room furniture looked quite new.

“He’s up here,” the woman said, mounting a staircase at the side of the room. Nolan and Clayton followed her up. When they reached the second floor, she walked down a short hallway and opened a door.
“Miguel, despiértate,”
she yelled into the doorway. Nolan could see that another flight of stairs, much narrower than the first, went up from there.

Although there was no sound of any kind from above, Nolan pushed past the woman and started upward. He could hear Clayton responding to her muttered protests. Carefully, Nolan moved up the stairway, his hand on his revolver. When he reached the door of the room, he waited for Clayton to catch up with him. Nolan edged carefully around the doorway, then relaxed at what he saw.

A fully-clothed, slender young man occupied a rumpled bed. His slight snore did not change as they entered. It looked to Nolan like the whole top floor of the house had been finished off to create this one large room. The ceiling rose to a peak in the center, following the roof line. Lining the low side walls were tables and desks cluttered with electronic equipment that reminded Nolan of the Insomnimania headquarters. Magazines and comic books were strewn about the bed and desks. A couple of soft drink cans littered a table next to the bed. A motorized wheelchair was also beside the bed.

Light filtered in through shades drawn over two dormer windows. At the far end of the room was a door. Casually looking over the place, Nolan noted a storage area with clothes hanging among bundles of cables, and also a large full bathroom set up for wheelchair access.

Mrs. Ramos shuffled into the room, giving the detectives a reproachful glance. She turned on a lamp and shook her son’s shoulder repeatedly until he emerged into resentful wakefulness. Then the slow, sturdy woman helped the young man into his wheelchair—an exercise they had clearly performed many times. Both the woman and the young man ignored offers of aid from the detectives.

Finally, Nolan found himself facing Mike Ramos. The woman collected the drink cans, gave the detectives one last sour look, and disappeared down the stairs. She still demonstrated no curiosity at all about the reason for their visit.

Small motors whirred as the slight young man turned his wheelchair around to face the detectives directly. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “just why are you disturbing my family and my sleep?”

Nolan could see that Mike Ramos was a bit older than he had first thought—at least in his mid-twenties. Asleep on the bed, Ramos had looked like an adolescent. Now he sat rather majestically in his chair and nodded his head solemnly at them. His dark hair fell limply across his forehead. His manner was polite. His diction was careful and somewhat stilted, although it did not sound like an accent. It was more as though Ramos was not accustomed to using spoken language. He simply wasn’t the kind of person who liked talking to
anybody.

Nolan identified himself and his partner to the young man, whose expression did not change.

“Mr. Ramos,” Nolan said, “we want to ask you some questions about Insomnimania.”

The brown eyes stared back with a slight spark of interest. “Why Insomnimania?” the young man asked. “It’s an interesting network, but only one of many.”

“It’s expensive, isn’t it?” Nolan asked.

Ramos backed up in his wheelchair, putting slightly more distance between himself and the detectives. “Whatever you might guess from appearances here, I do make a pretty good income.”

“How do you do that?”

“I write custom programs for businesses. It’s all handled through a company here in town. They do the legwork. Obviously. They have some regular programmers in their office. I do the really difficult stuff for them. But it’s easy.”

“What’s the name of this company you work for?”

Ramos reached into a desk drawer and handed Nolan a brochure. “Complete Programming Services” was printed on the front.

“So you’re able to support yourself with this kind of work,” remarked Nolan.

“We all live comfortably, yes.”

“We?”

“I contribute to the support of my parents.”

“You’ve certainly made the most of your disability.”

“My disability, as you call it, has nothing to do with what I am today. I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing right now if could walk. I’d be living exactly as I’m living right now. In fact, I have all the physical access to the outside world that I want. I even have a van, but I very seldom drive it.”

Nolan detected no defensiveness in Ramos’ voice. He simply sounded as if he meant what he said. Indeed, he seemed so sedentary, so strictly cerebral by nature, that it wasn’t hard to believe him. He probably
would
have arranged his domain in just such a manner whether he could walk or not. He probably
would
have chosen to live on the top floor of this house and come down into the world of lesser mortals as infrequently as possible. Other people overcame similar detriments in order to participate fully in society, but Ramos was not interested.

“You work here at home?” Nolan asked.

“Always. I set my own hours. I sleep a lot during the day. Usually.” There was a moment’s silence. “I’m very good at what I do,” Ramos added.

“I’m sure you’re an excellent programmer, Mr. Ramos. In fact, we know that you actually programmed a participational area on Insomnimania called the Snuff Room. Baldwin Maisie said you originated it.”

“Yes. It was simple. I just made some of Insomnimania’s animation software available in a somewhat newer but still limited way. The Snuff Room is a standard feature now, available to all alters. Lots of different characters present snuffs there.”

“We’re particularly interested in one specific character—the clown named Auggie.”

“And what is Auggie up to these days?” Ramos asked blandly.

“That’s what we’d like to find out from you.”

“I see him on Insomnimania sometimes. I have very little to say to him.”

“Don’t play games with us, Mr. Ramos. We know that Auggie is your alter.”

“No, I am afraid you are mistaken. My alter is named Gargantua. Not Auggie.”

“We have reason to believe that you also log on as Auggie. That you were, in fact, logged on as Auggie just last night.” Nolan knew that last night’s connection had apparently been made from Chicago, and he didn’t know if Ramos had been logged on at all. But he wanted to push the issue a little.

“Why?” Ramos asked.

“Baldwin Maisie said it was you.”

“Why would he say that? I am sure they have records to show what my tag is. Sometimes in the past I have created other alters, but lately it’s just been Gar.”

“Gluggles,” said Nolan.

Ramos just stared back, making no response at all. Nolan felt more than a little silly.

Clayton broke into the silence, “Auggie said that. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

“Yes. It’s my little slang for the von Neumann bottleneck—my private way of saying, ‘Don’t get stuck in a rut,’ or ‘Have a nice day.’ I guess he learned that from me.”

“Who learned that from you?” Clayton asked.

“Auggie.”

“Don’t you mean the person who logs on as Auggie?” said Nolan.

“If you say so.”

“And who is that person?”

“I have no idea.”

The hacker stared back silently. His eyes were dark and expressionless. Nolan was getting impatient.

“Please remember, Mr. Ramos,” he said, “we may very well be able to show that, at the very least, you’ve used other people’s credit cards to log Auggie on. We can bring charges that would allow us to confiscate your equipment and disks and hold them as evidence.”

“I really don’t think you can prove any of that, Lieutenant,” Ramos said, “for the simple reason that it is not true. I’m not a teenage cracker playing with other people’s credit cards. However, I do know that in the past a number of hackers have had their property confiscated by law officers who had no idea what they were looking for or what they were taking. Those officers made fools of themselves and ended up being charged in a civil suit.”

“That happened to the Secret Service and the FBI,” Nolan said. “The law enforcement community has learned some things in the meantime, believe me. Even in our division, we have specialists who prosecute computer crime. These guys know their business.”

“Good. Then I won’t have to deal with a lot of utter stupidity. Please keep in mind that if you put me out of business, you will interrupt important work under legitimate contract. You will hold up operational changes in several large companies. It could cost them a great deal of money. You would certainly hear from some very unhappy CEOs.”

“We hope nothing like that will become necessary, Mr. Ramos,” Nolan said. He shifted awkwardly, aware that he was using the wrong tactics with the young programmer, but unsure how to proceed. “We’re here because two members of Insomnimania have been killed, and both of their murders were replayed by Auggie in the Snuff Room. This is a very serious business. We want to know the connection between these two murder victims and whoever is behind Auggie. We won’t hesitate to make an arrest if we find that you are involved in some way.”

“The simple truth is, I am not the one who creates Auggie’s Snuff Room scenes,” Mike Ramos said. “I am not the one who goes on Insomnimania as Auggie. And I do not know who does.”

Now the hacker looked strained and hostile. There was a whirring sound again as he turned his wheelchair a few inches to the left and then to the right.
The equivalent of pacing.

“I really have nothing more to tell you gentlemen,” Ramos said. “If you wish to persist in questioning me, I think I should have my lawyer present.”

*

Standing there listening, watching Ramos, Clayton remembered his own exhausted hallucination a couple of weeks ago, when he’d thought he’d heard somebody shout at him in the detective’s bay—“Snap out of it!” The world was a place of sensory overload at times. Clayton often wished he could put up some kind of shield against the world around him.

Ramos is like that, too. Only he’s
got
an actual shield—one made out of networking cables and computer screens.

For a moment, Clayton actually envied Ramos. On a computer screen over the phone lines, Ramos could be whoever or whatever he wanted to be, and nobody could get close enough to him to contradict him. It was his world, surely more real to him than this attic room.Clayton sat down on the bed, putting his eyes level with those of the young man in the wheelchair. “It’s like going into a comic book, isn’t it?” Clayton asked Ramos.

“You mean Insomnimania?” Ramos turned to look at the black detective.

“Yeah. It’s a whole new universe—freer than this one.” Clayton thought about his own kids talking about adventure fantasies. He tried to recapture a thirteen-year-old’s sense of wonder.

“Yes, you’re right. It
is
like going into a comic book,” Ramos replied. “An animated one. Except that Insomnimania is far more interesting than any regular cartoon.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you’re not outside the pages, not outside the screen. It’s a place you go and meet other people. Do you like Insomnimania?”

“I’m fascinated by it.”

“What’s your favorite place?” Ramos asked.

Clayton scrambled for an answer. He had spent very little time actually logged into Insomnimania. “I like Ernie’s Bar,” he said. “And I’d like to play around in the casino.”

“Aw, those are standard,” said Ramos. “They’re animated better on Insomnimania, but lots of game sites have places like that.”

“I haven’t had a chance to get to much of it,” Clayton replied. “What’s your favorite part?”

“Some of the games. ‘Chaos Syndrome’ calls for serious strategy. ‘Implicate Order’ is my favorite—linear logic doesn’t work in that space.”

Ramos looked as though he might continue, but then he suddenly backed his wheelchair a few inches—again moving away from the detectives. Watching the young hacker, Clayton said, “You know, what I’d really like to do is get out of your way right now, let you get your sleep, and phone you later. Would you agree to talk to me over the telephone for a little while?”