The following morning (just a couple of hours later, actually), Sascha and Jonathan were tossed out of the MIT police station with the edict that this was absolutely the last time they would create a ruckus on campus. They were now official Personae Non Gratae around the Great Dome; if they didn’t keep their heads low, they would be arrested, booked, and fingerprinted.
I woke when I heard them banging around the Marshalls’ kitchen. Wendy was already up, arguing with them about something, judging by the tone of her voice. Starchild was wandering around the hallway with a modem in one hand and a plastic spoon in the other. She sidled up next to the bed. I felt bad about being naked, but she didn’t seem to care. She handed me the modem and the spoon. "Open modem?" she asked. "Like Daddy?"
"Like, is this a sign?" I heard Sascha grumble as he walked down the hall towards the bedroom. "Are we supposed to be learning something?"
Sascha, Jonathan and Wendy came into the bedroom with a tray full of packaged cinnamon-raisin waffles and glasses of orange juice. It all looked a little sickening to me. Sascha sat down at the foot of the bed and polished off three waffles, covered in sticky syrup. He looked pretty bad, too, and his glittery molecule T-shirt had probably witnessed a bit of a scuffle.
"The waffles are great," he said with a full mouth. "Thanks for heating them up, Wendy. By the way, how are you feeling this morning, Sara darling wife of mine?"
I considered this. My veins felt like they were filled with poison. My nerve pathways were itchy. But I still wanted to smile lovingly and benevolently at everyone, as if they had all been in a wonderful, epiphanic dream I had just awoken from. What had happened to me?
"Physically? Like shit. Otherwise, like---oh, I don’t know. Like a new person. Is that the right answer?"
"That’s what everyone’s first time should be like," said Jonathan. "Minus the bust, though. I don’t think it was my fault, but if it were, Sara, I’m sorry as shit." He grabbed Starchild as she was bobbling by and swung her onto his lap. "This is her own personal modem," he explained. "She likes to watch it being taken apart. But it’s only a 14.4k baud, so if she breaks it, no biggie. As long as she doesn’t eat the microchips."
"Seriously," insisted Sascha. "Seems like we’ve been getting a lot of oracular signs lately. Are they right? Should we be handling ourselves with more maturity?
"Fact #1: We’re losing our customer base because we’re perceived badly. Fact #2: ExCom is in a lot of trouble and we just lost a whole night to sin and dissolution in order to get two---count ‘em---recruits. Fact #3: Chronologically, at least, we’re getting to be the big O. As in O-L-D. Maybe we just shouldn’t be attempting this kind of shit anymore. Maybe we should give up and put on suits or something...devote all of our energies to Windows NT...shut down... Shit. I don’t know. God, I hate entropy."
"Didn’t we go through this six or so months ago?" said Jonathan. "Didn’t we decide we were going to clean up our image? Whatever happened to that?"
"I don’t know what’s going on," said Sascha. "But when I saw that idiot from Technology Today snapping pictures of us outside the CPs’ headquarters and asking us all those asinine questions about what happened, I felt like a mobster, not a hacker. How’d he find out where we were, anyway?"
"Look, I didn’t invite him to follow us around," said Wendy, looking significantly at me. "Ask your wife about it, Sascha. It’s her job to know about this guy’s whereabouts. Plus control them, I thought."
"I didn’t tell Peter about the rave," I said defensively. "Why do you think I’m so buddy-buddy with him?"
"Well, it seems like you have been," Wendy retorted. "It’s not just that you’re his contact person for us. I saw the two of you exchanging floppy disks and laughing the other day. You even said to him, ‘Be gentle with the line edits! My undergrad advisor gave it an A,’ or somesuch. You guys probably get together when no one else is around and read poetry or something. Talk about how great it is to be an English major even when no one will hire you to do anything but secretarial work."
I felt caught. Sascha didn’t think the particulars of this exchange were even worth listening to. "I’m trying really hard to fit into your little scene here---please excuse me if I sometimes think about things other than programming and who’s sleeping with whom."
"Oh yeah," Wendy shot back. "You were displaying such---oh, how can I put it---dignity---last night. I can tell you were thinking really deep thoughts that had nothing to do with sex."
"Ordinarily, I’d love a good catfight," said Sascha, setting his tray on the floor and curling up with his head in his hands. "But I feel like death. Neither of you two were being harrassed by the cops at 4 a.m. while you were coming down off 130 mg of MDMA with a secret one-half tab of LSD booster. Correct me if I’m wrong."
Jonathan rested his magnificent, although dirty, hair on the bed. "Sometimes I’m sorry I ever got started with the drugs, you know what I mean? Like it was funny ten years ago; now there’s a little voice that goes ‘don’t do it! Your body’s tired of it!’ The damnedest thing is that I don’t stop. Like what if this really is the last time and I’ll be missing the greatest trip of my life if I don’t drop? The big irony is that I’m so habituated that nothing really gets me off anymore. Except ‘natural’ things like mountain biking and time with my family."
"How’s my aura?" Sascha whimpered.
"Your aura looks like it wants you to take it home and put it to bed," I said.
"No, seriously," he said, sitting up. "We have a problem. I don’t have a solution." He turned to Wendy. "Where are your Tarot cards? You want to throw the I-ching? Maybe we should call up Elia and get her spiritual advice. Can you hand me the phone?"
Jonathan abruptly set aside Starchild and stood up. His face was red. "That’s another thing I’m fucking sick of." The uncharacteristic anger in his voice was a little scary. "Can’t you bootstrap yourself like a real man---sorry, like a normal human being---instead of relying on all this pussy Priestess of Isis shit all the time? I remember you when you were an undergrad. Seems to me you finished your degrees just fine without having to consult The Tree Spirit or pop any ‘cognitive enhancers.’"
"Don’t harsh on me," said Sascha. "You were living on Jolt and candy bars, just like me."
"You got Wendy into this otherworldly shit. I got into it just to please her. You know how many damn years I waited for her, man. I would have shaved my head if she wanted me to, even when she was fucking you. I even introduced her to you, because she wanted to meet you. Now I’m trapped in this little soap opera. It’s like when I was twelve and someone volunteered to make me an altar boy and I couldn’t say no. Can’t we all act normal for a while?"
I was suddenly acutely aware of being naked again, and I shrunk under the Marshalls’ clean white sheets. Shouldn’t I be defending my husband? Problem was, I couldn’t tell who was right. A couple of months ago, even, I would have been even more irritated with Sascha than Jonathan was. Now, I was beginning to see the appeal of a warm, all-embracing belief system that for many people balanced the severities of machines and numbers. After interminable hours struggling with minutiae in front of a screen or behind a microscope, Gaia was there with her green trees and nymphs and fauns and endless nights of revelry. It sounded good.
"Nobody’s making you believe anything, Jonathan," I said. "If you don’t believe it, don’t do it. Simple? I don’t think Sascha cares whether you’re lighting incense or have crystals or whatever. I hate to use someone else’s words, but Be Free."
Jonathan shrugged, still clearly pissed off. "Whatever. Why don’t you guys get out of here before anyone picks any more fights."
"I need your help, Wendy," I said. "I can’t possibly wear those silly uncomfortable rave clothes home. I know it’s only a few blocks away, but when was the last time you wore plastic bell-bottoms? Can I borrow something of yours?"
Wendy smiled her nurse’s smile. "Take whatever you want. I’m not going to be able to fit into half of it for the next six months or so, anyway."
*
I was still a little wavery going down the stairs from the Marshalls’ condo, but once I hit the outside air, it was much better. I was even hungry. Sascha went to get a couple of espressos to go, and I ran across Mass. Ave. to the 7-11 for one of their spectacularly gross do-it-yourself plates of nachos. We met on the lawn of Cambridge City Hall, across the street from the Y, and sat down on the grass with our grub, watching the punks, drunks, and crazies wander by.
"Should I have defended you?" I asked.
Sascha picked the melted cheese out of his nails. "Dunno. Depends on what you believe. I’m not going to have you defend me just because you’re my wife. A lot of people have beaten up on me, and I’ve turned out pretty successful anyway. By the way, I ordered a two-gigabyte external drive for my machine. Do you want my internal one-gig for yours? Also, do you want a bigger monitor? I’m thinking of switching a bunch of them around, and maybe even buying a new one. I haven’t faced up to the company’s finances yet, but maybe I can take some money out of my personal account..."
"Please. Let’s talk seriously for a minute. I’ve got all the computering I can take right now. The programming book you got me is sitting on my desk, and yes I am going to read it cover to cover and do all the exercises so you can prove how any liberal arts idiot can join the tribe. Anyway, sometimes I think we got married without talking very much about important things. So tell me this, Sascha Strathmore: What do you believe in? What do you value? And sex, drugs, and Unix don’t count."
"Why are you so interested in my inner life? I don’t think about stuff like this. It’s a waste of time to sit around thinking about your principles. You do what you believe in. I do it automatically, I guess. I don’t even understand what you’re talking about, anyway, so you’ll have to take your turn first."
I sighed. "Fine. I value...I value self-honesty. People who are brave enough not to delude themselves. I value moderation. I believe the body is the temple of the soul. I admire people who have their shit together, and still have enough energy left over to support those in need. Does that help?"
Sascha frowned and put his pale woolly head on my shoulder, so I couldn’t see his face. "I think competency is important," he said. "So is being adventurous. So is giving whatever you can to other people. So is community, and so is love." He paused. "I don’t think I like this game anymore. I think we should go home and get to work."
As we walked back towards Casa Deus, Sascha’s pager went off. "We better hurry back," he said, looking at it. "It’s from Drexler. He’s at the house, I have the feeling there’s a big problem."
Drexler opened the big front door for us. The living room was dark and haunted-looking even with the bright afternoon outside. "You got a phone call," he whispered. "You probably have some email too. I’m surprised they didn’t page you."
"No, but you did," Sascha whispered back. "What’s happening?"
"A guy from the CIA called. There’s been some big financial mess. The person who handles buying ExCom found an anonymous FTP file in his home directory. It was our financial records."
"What?!"
"The Big Guys don’t think much about the way we run our business. Financially, we’re obviously a mess. Plus the Agency doesn’t want to work with any company that has such poor security. Makes ‘em nervous. I don’t think it’s any of their damn business, honestly, but they’re the CIA and they can do whatever they want."
"What?! Who the fuck sent our finances to them? That’s outrageous. That’s treasonous. No. Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s the same person who’s been doing all the other shit, right? This is so scary. I feel raped. What are we going to do? I can’t be in charge of this anymore. We need our lawyer to step in or something."
"One thing we should do," said Drexler, who obviously had been thinking about this for a while, "is get the fool from Technology Today off our backs. He’s going to start reporting some things we really don’t want revealed. I mean, he came out here to do puff work, and he hasn’t gotten any puff since he showed up. It’s going to look really really bad for us. I don’t feel like getting a new job."
Sascha turned to me. "You seem to be the point person for Peter these days. Why don’t you tell him to go home?"
"Don’t blame him on me," I said defensively. I felt very loyal to Peter all of a sudden. I felt that he and I held a deep bond: people of words trying to tag along after people of numbers. "I never suggested that you get him in particular. I just thought it was a good PR move; now you think I’m so good at PR you’ve ‘hired’ me to do it in my spare time. By the way, I’m feeling nice and mushy towards both of you today. I’d like to keep it that way."
Sascha shrugged. "Fine. I don’t want to deprive you of your afterglow. But just in case you have some special inroads with Peter Greer---if he’s willing to bend his grand White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ear in your direction---see if you can convince him to quit while we’re ahead. I won’t do it. It looks really bad for us if I do.
"Anyway," he continued, "we’ve obviously got this huge security breach. Why have I never been more up on this stuff? Like I need another personal failing right now. I’m going to page Ian to come over. Meanwhile, I’m going to go upstairs and look at the system."
Drexler and I trailed him up the stairs. Sascha was probably not the pinnacle of rationality right then; after all, he, like Drexler, had spent the darkest part of the night tripping in a police station.
On the other hand, I had no idea what planet Drexler was on right then. "Hey Drex," I whispered compassionately, "how are you?"
Drexler shrugged. "Great, I guess. I just feel past my prime, you know? I mean, you were really cute last night, but it’s taking such effort to blast me up now, and I always feel like such shit coming down."
"That’s exactly what Jonathan said this morning. Maybe you guys should...I don’t know...cool down...or something, before something bad happens."
"Eh, we’ve made our million, let’s just die young and happy while we’re still on top."
We watched Sascha finish dragging himself up the stairs. He teetered at the towering shelf of computer books in the boardroom. "Security, security, let’s see," he said, craning his neck. He grabbed the long pair of tongs meant for reaching inaccessible books (a relic from the Strathmore ancestral home) and knocked down a couple of computer textbooks.
"Hmm, Practical Unix and Internet Security. Drex, you know the guy who wrote this? Top security man. Think we could get him to work for us?"
Drexler snorted a little snort. "He graduated with us, you know. Ran with some other technopagans Elia knows. Anyway, I’ve met him---and I wouldn’t put the two of you in a room together for five minutes, because one of you’d be dead."
"Fuckit, we have an intruder! I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep this sneaky little cracker out. This is a deliberate terrorist campaign. It is a smear against my name and the name of my company. Money is no object if it’s going to save Deus Ex Machina."
"Why do you think it’s a cracker?" I said suddenly. "I mean, why do you think it’s someone from the outside trying to break in? Why couldn’t it be, oh I don’t know, someone who works for the company, a ‘disgruntled employee’ maybe, someone who’s got it in for you? Sascha, you’re the one who’s always saying ‘Don’t trust anyone.’ Who’s to say that the person or people doing this aren’t coming from the loyal ranks? Why do you trust your friends?"
Sascha fidgeted. "Maybe it was Toby and Crete still doing this, then. Maybe they’ve hacked their way back in. I should have been more careful about making sure that Ian locked them out."
"But those guys didn’t go to MultiMediaWorld. And there was certainly a lot of mischief being perpetrated there anyway."
"What are you saying, Sara? Are you saying that..."
"All I’m saying is that you should entertain the possibility. You’re a good scientist. You know about checking out all the variables. Or do the variables not matter when it comes to people you like?"
Sascha slumped down in one of the chairs. He was really grungy. Drexler had at least managed to go home and take a shower. "I’ve been up all night," he complained. "Held against my will because of my chosen lifestyle. Now you’re telling me that maybe some of my fellow detainees are responsible? Drexler? Are you the evildoer? Sara, now don’t you think that that sounds pretty ridiculous?"
Drexler had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout our exchange. "Wasn’t me," he said sincerely. "Hacking your own stuff is like committing slow suicide. I don’t have any beefs with you, Sascha. You’re a prick sometimes, but you are paying for me to live, as you put it, my ‘chosen lifestyle.’" He scratched his beard. In the middle of this, I wondered if he still had his nipple ring in. "On the other hand, you know I’m not a complainer. But there are some folks who are, if you know what I mean. I won’t name any names. Maybe they don’t even come complaining to you. But they might let out their frustration by, oh I don’t know, commandeering ExCom’s file system or something." He tilted his head and looked hard at Sascha, silly and serious all at the same time.
I looked right into Drexler’s eyes. We were on the same wavelength. Sascha was not. This wasn’t something he could even bear to understand.
"Everything is happening all at once!" Sascha moaned, staring up at the elaborately moulded ceiling. "Probably the next thing I’ll find out is that Sara’s pregnant."
I laughed shortly. "Not anytime soon, if things keep up the way they’re going. Or don’t keep up, as the case may be..."
Sascha looked insulted. "What are you talking about? Just because I don’t..."
I put my hand on top of his hair. "My mad pale angel, why don’t you go to bed already? You stay up one hour longer, and no one’s going to want to deal with you at all. C’mon. Ian’s coming over, he’ll watch the system for you. Drexler will call Hank, and he can guard the front door, or something. I’ll go upstairs with you and put you to bed."
I dragged Sascha up the stairs to our rooms. Almost literally dragged; I had him by the arm and he was protesting all the way up: "No! I have too much work to do!" "No! What if something terrible happens when I’m asleep!" "What if that son of a bitch Peter Greer comes over to ask about all this and I’m not awake to do any damage control!" "I need to post an ad for a real security person! Our security sucks! It’s my fault!" "What if I overdosed and I die in my sleep?"
"Lift your arms over your head," I said, like an irritable mother. Sascha abruptly stopped protesting and did as he was told. I kissed the hollow of his neck, then the crystal dangling below it, then the pale wiry hair on his chest. He slipped his hand onto the back of my neck, underneath my hair.
"I really enjoyed dancing with you last night," he murmured.
"Me too."
He closed his eyes. "Expressing myself like that with you...in front of all those people...so beautiful. We should make an effort to do that more often."
"In private. Without the plastic pants. Here. Climb up to bed. Sleep for six hours, then get up and take a shower. If I see you before then, I’ll have to kill you."
But I was actually more horrified about what was going on than Sascha was, simply because he was too tired to process. If someone could hack our financial records, what else could they do, especially if it were someone from the inside? And when would they do it? Worse, in all probability we were going to lose our best, most loyal, and most powerful customer. If our systems were insecure, there was no way the ultimate secret organization would trust our software to be anything different. If the CIA had been watching DEM before---it was common knowledge that all our phones were probably tapped---what would it do to us now? In any case, the ramifications would be much worse than being busted by the MIT campus police.
I made my way back to the second floor. The programmers’ room was dark. Drexler and Ian were at Drexler’s workstation, staring at the softly glowing screen.
"Hi," I said. "How’s it going?"
Ian just grunted, but Drexler glanced up at me, fully earthbound by now. His dark eyes looked hurt around the edges. "Is Sascha still up?" he asked.
"No. He’s in beddy-bye."
"Good. Don’t let him up until he’s good and ready for this." He continued to look at me without speaking. He and I both had the same fear. And it was so bad that neither of us could talk about it.
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