Looking for Jake (17 page)

Aykan wouldn't answer his phone. A week and a half later he called me.

“Man!” he shouted at me. “Go back to the bastards,” he said. “I was . . . you know, I jumped the gun last time. Wasn't particularly clever, right? But it was like a fucking, what do you call it, I was doing a
reconnoitre.
But go back now, click the bastard button all you can.”

“What did you do, Aykan?” I said. I was at work, and kept my voice neutral.

“I don't know how long it'll last,” he said, “so get
all
your fucking friends to go visiting. For a
short time only
the shit-licking sponsors are going to be making a reasonable fucking payout. Ten bucks a fucking click, my friend, none of this half a cent bull. So go give generously.”

It's impossible to say how much of an impact it had. Certainly for the next day or so I proselytised zealously. An End To Hunger kept it very quiet, when they found out. I like to think that it took the businesses in question the best part of a day to realise that their pledged donations had gone up by around 200,000 percent.

I wondered when Aykan would get bored of these games.

We spoke for a long time on the phone, one evening a fortnight or so later. He sounded exhausted.

“What you up to?” I asked him.

“Waging war, man.”

I suggested that he was wearing himself out, that he should apply himself to other things. He got angry and depressed all at once.

“It really got to me, this one,” he said. “It really
got to me.
I dunno why, but I can't . . . This one matters. But . . . I keep hitting the wrong enemy. ‘Corporate sponsors don't actually care!' ‘Big business is hypocritical!' That's not news to
anyfuckingbody.
Who doesn't know? Who gives a fuck about
that?

“Do you ever stop to think about them, man?” he said. “Them in the AETH office. What must that do to your head? Like some kind of ghouls, man. What's that got to do to you?”

I changed the subject several times, but it kept coming back. “I dunno, man . . .” he kept saying. “I dunno what to do . . .”

It may have been the next day that he decided, but it was a good three weeks before he could make it work.

“Go and visit A* E** T* H*****,” the email said. “Click and send the poor starving masses a present. See what happens.”

I went to the site. Apart from a few minor updates, nothing seemed to have changed. I looked for some clue as to what Aykan had done. Eventually I clicked the “Give Food” button and waited.

Nothing happened.

The usual little message, thanking me on behalf of hungry people, appeared. I waited a couple more minutes, then left. Whatever Aykan had planned, I thought, it hadn't come off.

A couple of hours later I checked my email.

“How the fuck . . .” I said, and paused, shaking my head. “How the fuck, you insane genius bastard, did you do that?”

“You like that?” The connection was terrible, but I could hear that Aykan sounded triumphant. “You fucking like it?”

“I . . . I don't know. I'm very impressed, whatever.”

I was staring at the message in my inbox. The sender was listed as “Very Hungry Foreign People.”

 

“Dear Kind Generous Person,”
it read.
“Thank you so much for your Generous gift of half a cup of wet rice. Our Children will treasure every grain. And do please thank your Kind Organisers at An End To Hunger for organising their rich friends to throw rice at us—that is the advantage of employing Sweatshop labour and trade union busting. That way they can afford rice for us poor people. Whatever you do, do keep sitting back and not asking any questions of them, keep them happy, don't agitate for any corporate taxes or grassroots control or anything like that which would threaten the large profits that allow them to buy us Cups of Rice. With humble love and thanks, The Hungry.”

 

“Every motherfucker who clicks the button's going to get that,” Aykan said.

“How did you do it?”

“It's a fucking program. I stuck it on the website. It scans your fucking hard disk for what looks like your email address, and sends off the message when you draw attention to yourself by clicking. Try pressing ‘Reply.' ”

I did. The return address listed was my own.

“It's very impressive, Aykan,” I said, nodding slowly, wishing someone else had written the letter, made it a bit subtler, maybe edited it a bit. “You've done a real number on them.”

“Well it ain't over yet, bro,” he said. “Watch this space, you know? Watch this fucking space.”

My phone went at five the next morning. I padded nude and confused into the sitting room.

“Man.” It was Aykan, tense and excited.

“What the fuck time is it?” I said, or something like that.

“They're onto me, man,” he hissed.

“What?” I huddled vaguely on the sofa, rubbed my eyes. Outside, the sky was two-tone. Birds were chirruping imbecilically. “What are you on about?”

“
Our fucking philanthropic friends, man,
” he whispered tersely. “The
concerned folk
over at Feed The World central, you know? They've rumbled me. They've
found
me.”

“How do you know?” I said. “Have they contacted you?”

“No no,” he said. “They wouldn't do that—that would be admitting what the fuck was up. No, I was watching them online, and I can see them tracking me. They can already tell what country I'm in.”

“What do you mean?” I said. I was fully awake now. “Are you intercepting their email? Are you crazy?”

“Oh man, there's a hundred fucking million things you can do, read their messages, watch who they're watching, bounce off internal memos, keep tabs on their automatic defences . . . Trust me on this:
they're looking for me.
” There was a silence. “They may even have found me.”

“So . . .” I shook my head. “So leave it alone. Let it be, get off their back before you piss them off any more and they go to the police.”

“Fucking
pofuckinglice
.
.
.
” Aykan's voice swam in scorn. “They won't give it to the police, the police couldn't find their own thumbs if they were plugging up their arses. No, man. It's not the police I'm worried about, it's these Hunger motherfuckers. Haven't you clocked what kind of people these are? These are
bad
people, man. Major bad ju-ju. And anyway,
man,
what the fuck you mean
leave it alone?
Don't be such a shit-eating coward. I told you, didn't I? I told you this was a fucking
war,
didn't I?” He was shouting by now. I tried to get him to shut up. “I'm not looking for
advice.
I just wanted to let you know what was going on.”

He broke the connection. I did not phone him back. I was tired and pissed off.
Paranoid prick,
I thought, and went back to bed.

Aykan kept sending his obscure emails, advising me of some new change to An End To Hunger.

The letter to donors did not last long, but Aykan was relentless. He directed me to their sponsors page, and I discovered that he had rerouted every link to a different revolutionary left organisation. He created a small pop-up screen that appeared when the “Donate” button was clicked, that compared the nutritional value of rice with what was rotting in European food mountains. He kept hinting at some final salvo, some ultimate attack.

“I keep watching them, man,” he told me in one of his irregular phone calls. “I swear they are so on my tail. I'm going to have to be really fucking careful. This could get very fucking nasty.”

“Stop talking rubbish,” I said. “You think you're in some cheap thriller? You're risking jail for hacking—and don't shout at me, because that's what they'll call it—but that's all.”

“Fuck you, bro!” he said. “Don't be so naive! You think this is a game? I told you . . . these fuckers aren't going to the police. Don't you fucking
see,
man? I've done the
worst thing you can do
.
.
.
I've
impugned their philanthropy!
I've fucking sneered at them while they do the Mother Theresa thing, and that they can't fucking stand!”

I was worried about him. He was totally infuriating, no longer even coming close to conversing, just taking some phrase of mine or other as a jumping-off point to discuss some insane conspiracy.

He sent me bizarre, partial emails that made almost no sense at all. Some were just a sentence: “They'll love this” or “I'll show them what it really means.”

Some were longer, like cuts from the middle of works in progress, half-finished memos and snatches of programming. Some were garbled articles from various encyclopaedias, about international politics, about online democracy, about computerised supermarket stock-taking, about kwashiorkor and other kinds of malnutrition.

Slowly, with a stealthy amazement and fear, I started to tie these threads together. I realised that what looked like a patchwork of mad threats and ludicrous hyperbole was something more, something united by an extraordinary logic. Through these partial snippets, these hints and jokes and threats, I began to get a sense of what Aykan planned.

I denied it.

I tried not to believe it; it was just too big. My horror was coloured with awe that he could even dream up such a plan, let alone believe he had the skills to make it work.

It was utterly unbelievable. It was horrific.

I knew he could do it.

I bombarded him with phone calls, which he never picked up. He had no voicemail, and I was left swearing and stalking from room to room, totally unable to reach him.

An End To Hunger had been ominously quiet for some time now. It had operated without interruption for at least three weeks. I was going crazy. There was a mad intensity to everything, every time I thought of Aykan and his plans. I was scared.

Finally, at ten minutes to eleven on a Sunday evening, he called.

“Man,” he said.

“Aykan,” I said, and sighed once, then stammered to get my words out. “Aykan, you can't
do this,
” I said. “I don't care how fucking much you hate them, man, they're just a bunch of idiot liberals and you cannot do that to them, it's just not
worth it,
don't be
crazy—
”

“Shut up, man!” he shouted. “Listen to me!” He was whispering again.

He was, I suddenly realised, afraid.

“I don't have any fucking time, bro,” he said urgently. “You've got to get over here; you've got to help me.”

“What's going on, man?” I said.

“
They're coming,
” he whispered, and something in his voice made me cold.

“The fuckers tricked me,” he went on. “They kept it looking like they were searching, but they were better than I thought—they clocked me ages ago, they were just biding time, and then . . . and then . . . They're
on their way!
”

“Aykan,” I said slowly. “You've got to stop this crazy shit,” I said. “Are the police coming?”

He almost screamed with anger.

“
Godfuckingdammit don't you listen to me?
Any fucker can handle the police, but it's this
charity
wants my fucking head!”

He had invited me to his house, I realised. For the first time in years, he was ready to tell me where he lived. I tried to cut into his diatribe. “I know shit about these bastards you wouldn't
believe,
man,” he was moaning. “Like some fucking
parasite
.
.
.
You got no curiosity what kind of fucker lives like that?”

“What can I do, man?” I said. “You want me to come over?”

“Yeah, man,
please,
help me get my shit the fuck away,” he said.

He named an address about twenty minutes' walk away. I swore at him.

“You been close all this time,” I said.

“Please just hurry,” he whispered, and broke the connection.

Aykan's house was one in a street of nondescript redbricks, and I was staring at it for several seconds before I saw that anything was wrong. The front window was broken, and fringes of curtain were waving like seaweed through the hole.

I sprinted the last few feet, shouting. No one answered the bell. I pounded the wood, and lights went on opposite and above me, but no one came to his door.

I peered in through the hole. I grabbed careful hold of the ragged glass frame and climbed into Aykan's house.

I stood, my breath shallow, whispering his name again and again. The sound of my own voice was very thin. It frightened me, such a little sound in that silence.

It was a tiny flat, a weird mixture of mess and anal fastidiousness. The bed-sitting room was crowded with Ikea-type shelves wedged tight with carefully ordered magazines and software, all exactly lined up. In the corner was a collection of extraordinarily powerful hardware, a tight little network, with printer and scanners and modems and monitors wedged into unlikely angles. The coffee table was revolting with ashtrays and unwashed cups.

I was alone.

I wandered quickly through all the rooms, again and again, back and forth, as if I might have missed him, standing in a corner. As if he might be waiting for me to find him. Apart from the shattered window, there was no sign of trouble. I waited and moped, but no one came.

After a few minutes I saw a green light winking languorously at me, and realised that his main computer was on sleep mode. I pressed Enter. The monitor lit up, and I saw that Aykan's email program was running.

His inbox was empty, except for one message, which had arrived earlier that evening.

It was listed as from AETH. I felt a slow surge of adrenaline. Slowly I reached out and clicked on the message.