Shimmer (11 page)

A young man entered the office, trying to hand a number of papers to Perry. I glanced out the door and caught five heads leaning out of nearby workstations, saw another five people standing near a printer, all staring into Perry's office.

“A critical delivery,” Perry said to the young man, smiling slightly, taking the papers without looking at them. “Documents that could not wait. That had to be given to me in person, right now.”

The young man nodded awkwardly. “Well,” he started, pausing, glancing at me. “Yes. I guess.”

I slowly uncrossed, then recrossed my legs, carefully leaning to the left in my tiny chair, gradually removing myself from the young man's
reach. I was sure I could see him hesitate, unprepared for my shift in position, quickly rethinking his previously planned effort to touch me. For a second I thought he might even pretend to stumble and fall.

And for that same second I envisioned myself moving out of the way as he hit the floor.

Fortunately, he left Perry's office without any sudden motions or feigned accidents.

I was suddenly very aware that I was sitting on the floor.

“I think Trevor might be evil,” I said to Perry. “I think something might be wrong with him.”

“You've said this for as long as I've known you,” he said, his head tilting right as he followed the information on his screen. “Why are you saying it again now?”

I shrugged. “With every acquisition, he throws out another forty, fifty, even sixty salespeople.”

“And so because of this you're worried about him?”

It was a moment before I found an answer. “I'm worried one of these people might hurt him,” I said.

“No, you're not,” Perry said, then tilted another monitor toward me. It showed a three-dimensional color graph floating in the center of the screen. “Watch the green bar,” he said, and for now we wouldn't talk about Trevor.

Perry alone could do this to me. He took me out of my world. Although, maybe, with Perry alone did I let it happen.

Perry's eyes squinted eagerly as he spoke. “We're about to take an upload from a regional Medicare office in Tulsa. There'll be a massive spike in the DMZ,” he said.

“DMZ?” I asked.

“The control center,” Perry said, referring to the main control center for Core's entire network.

“Apparently,” I said, part comment, part question as I reflected on this new bit of company lingo, “apparently
control center
was just too simple.”

“Too clear.”

“Too boring.”

“Too obvious.”

“How do you know it's coming?” I asked quietly, absently, but staring at the screen, now beginning to study the multicolored bars.

Perry tapped a mouse. A second color graph appeared in a corner of the screen. “This program here,” he said. “It tracks the historical patterns of our clients in order to create a predictive model for upcoming data transfers.”

Again my voice was rising. “And why are you able to get in here?” I asked. “This is a new, highly classified system. You shouldn't have access to this.”

He shrugged. “I know people in the DMZ,” he said. “They'll do me favors.”

“In return for . . .?”

He shrugged again. “There are a lot of favors being exchanged in this company,” he said. “In many ways, favors are a currency more valuable than purchase orders, budgets or signed supervisor memos.”

“More powerful than me?” I asked, smiling slightly.

“Sometimes,” he said, “favors are even more powerful than Whitley.”

I turned back to the graph, had taken the mouse from Perry before I realized it, rotating the image to the left, then down, studying the patterns shown in the colors. “I can imagine you doing a lot for this kind of access,” I said.

He shrugged again. “There are all kinds of favors. I've heard of high-end computers being delivered to a particular employee weeks ahead of schedule. I've heard of Swedish-designed desk lamps appearing, unannounced, on a programmer's desk. I've heard of extended oral sex in Unoccupied Territory. I've heard of fries and an orange soda brought in for dinner.” He turned to me for the first time. “Sometimes it doesn't take much.”

I was suddenly aware of how close we were, just a few inches apart.
One of those moments in an office, physical self-awareness in the fray of talking and thinking and things so removed from your body, your motions.

Perry was still turned to me. His eyes a violet from the light of the shining screens. I wondered for a moment if my eyes were white and shining too. “You're worried about something else,” he said.

I shifted in my small chair. I crossed my legs. I realized I was extremely comfortable. In a moment, I nodded.

“No one's going to hurt Trevor,” Perry said, sitting back easily in his chair.

“No.”

“That's just a story for you, some quip about how a disgruntled former employee might go postal on Trevor, taking him hostage in a conference room.”

“Right,” I said.

“There's something else,” he said.

“There's something else,” I said.

I'd first met Perry that night three years ago. The night Trevor had told me the truth about the Blue Boxes. The night when, already, I was telling myself the decision to continue Trevor's lie was made for me, around me, a course set out for us before I even knew what had happened. Any number of people could have happened to call me that night, asking to join the company. But it was Perry I talked to. He called because he wanted to get in on what we were doing. He didn't care about salary, about perks or a title, about anything except the opportunity, the idea, the limitless potential of Core Communications.

There were so many people who'd shown that kind of commitment to this place, that kind of confidence in what we were trying to do. But Perry was the one who called first.

“I'd love to bring you on,” I'd said to him on the phone, staring vaguely toward the wall behind my desk. “Because these Blue Boxes, it's amazing what they can do.”

I looked at Perry now, seeing in him all the years of late nights, of new projects and expansion, seeing the memory of those longest six
months when we'd first launched the company, and as I looked I saw in Perry some kind of real-life mirror, my tiredness, my worry and my success all sitting in a low chair in front of me.

I stood up now, moving slowly, staring for a second at the child's chair so far down on the floor. “Join the staff,” I said to Perry.

He turned back to the first screen. He shook his head. He smiled and there was a look like he'd just been told the smallest of jokes. An easy, glad look.

I have had a lot of friends in my life. But at this point, Perry was my only close friend.

Although, in the last year and a half, I'd seen him outside work just once.

“It's amazing, Perry,” I said, already stepping back toward the door, seeing the words I would say, knowing they would be nothing more than some partial truth, one more distraction from what I really wanted to tell him, what I wanted to tell everyone. “It's amazing,” I said, “the things Trevor gets away with.”

Perry turned to me again. Staring. Nodding. Still with that look, easy, the joke still funny, retelling it to himself. And for a moment it was as if he knew what I was thinking, as if he'd broken into one more system at Core, this time trading untold favors for complete access to my thoughts.

And for that moment, I just smiled.

I sat in my chair. Staring at the names.

It was Wednesday still, late morning. I'd left Perry's office wanting to track Trevor down, to try and force him not to fire the sales team in Omaha. I was ready with my arguments—performance histories for each salesperson, the potential legal ramifications of such a complete purge, the financial and morale risks a dismissal like that would entail.

Then I found a note from Trevor on the chair in my office. He'd left New York. And he'd called Omaha himself to fire the sales
team over the telephone.
Open Season,
his note ended.
The Omaha Massacre.

Sixty names.

I sat down in my chair. I stared at the names of each of the salespeople who'd been fired. And, after a minute, I put the names in a file. Put the file in a tray, where it would be taken away by my assistant. Feeling something like anger toward Trevor, feeling something like sadness for the people in Omaha. But, more than anything, feeling a sense of resignation. Resignation that, inevitably, Trevor always got his way. And resignation that, inevitably, I let it happen.

I stood up. Walking out of my office. Out into the noise and people and paper and meetings. Moving again. On my cell phone again. Asking Julie to meet me in the mailroom to discuss production goals among the motion and light of those huge copying machines. Wanting to lose myself once more to the rhythms of the company.

It was a few hours later that my phone clicked. A text message. I read the words. And I almost dropped the phone. Almost spoke out loud.

No.

The message was simple. An automated notice from a server in Budapest.

Server security scan begins.

It was an unscheduled security check. A check of the most detailed and severe kind. A check on a facility that housed machines not just for the real network but also for the shadow network.

Security scans had been done many times before. But today the scan would be different. Today Whitley had found another rogue section. And this one was in the DMZ, the most critical, most secure area of the company.

I called Leonard.

“So you're conducting some checks on the system,” I said to him.

It was a moment before Leonard responded. “You heard about my
rogue section,” Leonard said slowly. “SWAT says they did no damage.” He was quiet for a moment. “But Whitley wants me to run major checks on any systems that the rogue section recently touched.”

It was the worst response he could have given me. This was a check that could quickly reveal whole parts of the shadow network.

“That's good,” I said, trying to breathe easily, trying to keep my voice slow, normal—even as I turned toward the nearest staircase, making my way back to my office as quickly as possible. To my office and to Shimmer. “Good to be safe,” I said.

I could see Whitley, across the floor, standing near an office doorway. Watching me as I all but ran toward the stairs.

I had to get back to my office and move all traces of the shadow network off the servers in Budapest. And I had only a few minutes to get it started.

Leonard was quiet, and I thought maybe he'd hung up. I almost ended the call, but in a moment he spoke.

“There's something you didn't ask me,” he said. “About this rogue section.”

I was slightly breathless as I came out of the stairwell onto the twentieth floor. “What do you mean?” I asked, moving past metal desks and glass conference rooms toward my office.

I knew Leonard was upset about this rogue section. A group of three working in the DMZ. Leonard's DMZ. We were calling them a rogue section. But they weren't. Because they hadn't been working on some fake project. Hadn't been playing some joke on each other or their boss.

These three had simply been doing nothing. For months.

These three had simply burned out. Completely.

“You haven't asked why they did it,” Leonard said. “The rogue section. Why do I think they did it.”

Into my office, past the couch and chairs and conference table, up a step and to my desk, near the window, almost pushed against that window.

Leonard wasn't going to respond to his own question. I pulled back my chair, starting my three monitors, asking him, “Why do you think they did it?”

“I know these people,” Leonard said. “I hired them. Each of them.”

I was launching Shimmer, already searching for an available facility. Some place that could immediately accept the work being done in Budapest.

“I realize that,” I said to Leonard. “I do.”

“I think they were afraid,” Leonard said, and I paused for a moment. Stopped my search.

“I think they were afraid they were about to fail,” he said.

And I knew I had to keep searching. Had to reroute data, had to destroy and erase the shadow network from Budapest. Now. But I needed to listen. Wanted to know. Wanted to hear Leonard.

Leonard was quiet. I thought maybe he wouldn't say more.

The colors of Shimmer spun, a fading mix of numbers and motion.

“Fail at what?” I finally asked.

“Fail,” he said.

“Why would they fail?”

“They were part of the group,” he said. “My group trying to come up with an alternate Blue Box.”

In his first few months working for Core, I'd started to think Leonard might figure out how to make a Blue Box really work. That he might see a way around the shadow network. And so I'd given him that task, asking Leonard and Perry to create a group dedicated to building a better Blue Box. I'd framed it as an internal challenge to the assumptions behind our current system, an attempt to prevent us from becoming technically complacent, an effort to find new ways to work with the Fadowsky Formula.

The group they'd formed was made up of some twenty-five of the best programmers and network administrators in the world. They worked in the DMZ and in a private area on the eighth floor, not far
from Perry. They were freed of distractions. They were highly paid. They had no limit on their resources or budget.

Two years later, they still had no idea how to create a Blue Box that worked.

Now I had Shimmer in front of me. But I had heard something in Leonard's voice. His own fear. Leonard's own fear of failure.

But I was moving again. I had to be moving. I pointed Shimmer at Eastern Europe. Then Asia. Then America. And saw it. Saw where to move the information from Budapest.