The Cube People (13 page)

Being back in the office, it seems like I've joined a secret club that only fathers can understand. You don't really know what it means to have a child, the sleep deprivation, the emotional influx, until you go through it yourself. I pass by Bob Roland on my way to the coffee room. Bob has three kids. “How's it going, Colin?”

“Pretty good. Tired.”

“Don't worry, you'll never sleep again,” he laughs. “But seriously though, don't worry, it will get better in three months or so. Oh, and you'll never sleep again.”

He walks off la
ughing. “Thanks Bob, thanks for that.”

I walk into the coffee room and there's Barry, Bruce and Dexter. They all turn their heads and look at me. I think they're going to say congratulations, or be jovial or something, but instead Barry says “Colin, we need to see you this afternoon in my office.”

“Um, sure, what's it all about?”

“We'll discuss it then.”

“Okay, what time?”

“1:30.”

“Okay, see you then.”

Dexter Peterson is in his fifties. He's a Tech-4 or Tech-5, I'm not sure which, but he knows everything. He's the guru's guru, the man behind the curtain, the mainframe god. Dexter stories are legendary around the office. He has appeared in people's cubicles and told them that their programs are using too much CPU, then rips their code apart leaving them decimated. You never want to see Dexter.

This little encounter leaves me shaken. I wonder if Dexter is part of the “we” in “we need to see you?” Maybe it's just Barry using “we” to mean “I?” It's probably just about my family leave or something. Still, I wonder if one of my programs I took over from Dan is sucking up too much CPU? I know there's some spaghetti code that I still need to fix. Perhaps I'm too paranoid?

Powering through the thousands of emails that have accumulated, I arrive at one with the subject line “No-Email Day.” Clicking it open, a message from the Commissioner greets me.

To All MRC employees:

In today's rapidly growing technology age, information is coming at us at an almost incomprehensible rate. We have less and less time to get on top of the data that we are being bombarded with on a daily basis. Hours of each and every day are wasted sifting through email while the real work continues to accumulate. The excellent level of service to the national taxpayer is being hindered by email. It has to stop. We are going to be implementing a No-Email day so you have time to get to the real work. We live in challenging times, but working together we can be a glowing example for others of what a forward-thinking Agency we continue to be.

– Bill Crow, Commissioner of the Ministry of Revenue Collection

I smell disaster. I delete the email and move on.

I have lunch with Phil at Sunshine Valley. He and Zoe apparently had a big fight last night and we have to sneak by First Choice. I tell Phil the news about my book and he becomes more animated than he normally is. I can't believe how excited he gets. I love his reaction.

On the high about the book (Phil's contagious enthusiasm pushing it to the heights of Everest) combined with the secret-club-of-dads sensation I'm carrying, I feel electric. With this emotion radiating from my being, I waltz into Barry's office at 1:30 on the dot. Barry, Bruce, Dexter and two men in dark jackets who could quite possibly be from the cast of
The Matrix
are standing there looking like they have all eaten one too many serious pills.

“Whoa, what's up?”

“Please take a seat and shut the door,” says Barry. I do. “This is Detective Bellows and this is Detective Waters from the RCMP,” offers Barry.

I nod. Everyone is quiet, solemn. “What's up?” I ask.

Waters begins. “We're investigating Peter Cann for fraud. Do you know anything about it?”

“Fraud? No,” I say.

“Do you recognize these?” asks Dexter, shoving a piece of paper at me. I take it.

“These are our test SINs.”

“Test SINs?” inquires Bellows.

“Yeah, we use these social insurance numbers to test our system in production, in our live system. We use them all the time.”

“Do you know what Peter was doing with them?” asks Waters.

“I don't know, testing the system?”

“He was filing them,” says Dexter.

“What do you mean filing them?” I ask.

“With some of our calculations, we round down to the dollar. Peter was accumulating all the rounded cents that get dropped. This kind of fraud has been committed by many others in the computer programming field before; however none of them were this good. He put logic into place to hold the money in queues, which he would drain out every six months. It must have taken Peter at least ten years to put it into place, all the programs and logic in hundreds of programs needed to bypass all the checks,” says Dexter with a hint of pride in his voice, as if only one of his own could be smart enough to pull it off.

“Wow, how much did he take?”

“We've been working with Dexter here to determine just that,” says Waters. “We're estimating in the millions, maybe even upwards of a hundred million dollars, stolen from the government. If we catch him, and we will, he's going to be put away for a long time.”

“Jesus, I can't imagine Peter doing something like that. It's crazy,” I say. Now, that's what I say, but I'm thinking that Peter Cann is even more brilliant and more courageous than I imagined him to be. I'd been working beside a master criminal for years and never even knew it.

“The reason we wanted to see you Colin,” says Dexter, “is your user ID is on some of the programs that we suspect Peter wrote.”

“Really?” I stammer.

“Do you know how to code in Assembler?” asks Dexter.

“No, but I'm sure I could learn,” I say.

Dexter looks at the two detectives and says, “I don't think he did it.”

“Did what?” I ask. Jesus, I feel my face flush, my palms are sweating. Shit, I think about all my writing I have saved on the LAN. I think about the marker I took home to mark those boxes when we moved. I think of the extra fifteen minutes I took at lunch the other day. Jesus, has Peter set me up as some sort of fall guy?

“Help Peter,” says Bellows.

“No way guys, I didn't do anything.”

“Why is your user ID on a bunch of Assembler modules in Production?” asks Waters.

“Yeah, why?” pipes in Bruce. The joy that I had been radiating turns to irritation and I'm overcome with a desire to slap Bruce in the face, hard.

“I don't know. Maybe Peter did it under my user ID?”

“Colin, what we know is this. Peter has had his fingers in lots and lots of code. Pretty much everywhere he's put in bypass logic for these test SINs. Nobody's ever questioned what he was doing because they were just test SINs, and Peter is a well-respected and very smart man. None of the programs that we suspect he wrote have his user ID on them. He was good at covering his tracks. The other reason I don't think you did it is because Dan's user ID is on some of these programs. He could never write code this sophisticated, plus he wasn't physically at work when some of these programs were put into Production,” says Dexter.

“So what do you want with me?”

“Well, we can't prove Peter did it
yet
. We also can't prove you didn't do it,” says Waters.

“I didn't steal anything. I didn't code any Assembler programs. I don't have a clue what Peter did, but I'm telling you right now that I had nothing to do with it.” I was nervous, not scared out of my mind, but nervous. I knew I'd done nothing wrong, but still, tell it to David Milgaard.

“Would you be willing to come down to RCMP Headquarters and make an official statement to that effect?” asks Bellows.

“Sure, sure thing,” I say.

“Would you be willing to submit to a lie detector?” asks Waters.

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Colin, until this mess is sorted out, you're going to have to leave work. I'm officially putting you on leave with pay until we find out more. We can't have you touching any code until you're cleared,” says Barry.

“Mr. MacDonald, we're going to escort you out of the building. Would you be willing to come with us right now to Headquarters to make that statement?” asks Waters.

“Uh, what? Wait a minute. Did you say leave with pay?”

“Yes, that's right, you'll still get paid, but you aren't allowed to come into the office until you're cleared. If you've done nothing wrong, then there's nothing to worry about,” says Barry.

“Okay, that's not so bad. Sure, let's go make that statement then,” I say, standing up.

On my way out, Bruce in front of me, Waters and Bellows in tow, I notice that Suzy Scratch's desk has been cleaned out. “Where's Suzy Scratch?” I ask Bruce.

“Didn't you hear? She won it big. Two hundred and fifty thousand. She left the next day.”

“Son of a gun,” I say.

I ride in the back of the cruiser. Waters and Bellows are quiet the whole ride there. The grey Kafkaesque building greets us with an impersonal politeness that I would only expect from a prison. We go inside, clear the security gate, and walk down a long hall to a windowless room with a camera mounted in the ceiling corner and a table and two chairs in the centre. On the table rest some paper and pens, a tape recorder, and some cords.

“Is that thing recording?” I ask, pointing to the camera.

“Yes, it is, Mr. MacDonald.”

They clip a little microphone to my shirt. I flash to
Dateline
and all the false confessions that I've watched innocent people make during interrogations. Will they break me for something I didn't do? My heart is a jackrabbit being chased by a fox. Waters sits across from me. Bellows remains standing, arms crossed. I recognize it's their job to make people nervous, and because of this fact, I relax, just a little bit. They ask me all sorts of questions about myself, about my job, my education, Sarah, where we met, how long we've been together, etc. Then they grill me on Peter. Everything you could imagine. Did we ever go for lunch together? Did I ever see Peter outside of work? Did Peter have a dog or a cat? They ask me about Bruce, Dan, Brita and Carla. Finally Waters says, “Well I think that'll do for now.” I look at my watch. I've been in here for almost three hours.

“Remember,” says Bellows, “if you've lied about anything you've told us, you could be in serious trouble.”

I sign an affidavit that what I've said is true. Then they drive me home.

Sarah's sitting on the couch when I walk through the door. She sees me and the tears erupt. “You okay?”

“I've got some bad news for you, Colin,” she says.

“Is that why you're crying?”

“No, that's just hormones I think. I don't know, I just feel bad.”

“Well I have a crazy story for you. I think mine will take a while to tell, so you tell me your bad news first.”

“I think you're going to be upset.”

“Lay it on me. It couldn't get much worse for me today.”

“A woman, Nona I think her name was, called from Black Forest Editions.”

My heart sank. “Oh God, don't tell me. They don't want to do it, Marcus changed his mind?”

“Not exactly. Marcus is in the hospital.”

“What?”

“Marcus had been acting rather oddly and he was committed to the mental hospital.”

“You have to be shitting me? Committed? What the fuck?”

“Sorry baby, Nona told me that all new publishing projects are being put on hold until they know what's happening with Marcus. She said it's a small press, that Marcus
is
Black Forest. She said she'll let us know.”

“Is he going to be alright? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“Sorry baby.”

I see Sammy in her chair. Her face contorts, turns a light shade of red. She is taking a poop.

“Could you change her? I've done five today already.”

I wipe Sammy's stinky butt clean. I get a beer from the fridge and slump down on the couch beside a weeping Sarah.

“I'm going to be home for a while,” I say.

“What?”

“Christ, what a day,” I say and take a swig.

PO Box 1230

Toronto, ON

M5T 7H7

May 20, 2007

Dear Colin MacDonald:

Sorry for the lengthy time in responding; however, we are working with a skeleton staff. We are unfortunately not able to accept any new manuscripts at this time as we are booked up for the foreseeable future.

Best of luck with
your writing.

Sincerely,

James Johnston

Editor, Winter Rain Press

Sarah is taking the train to Toronto with Sammy for the weekend to visit her mother and her Aunt Molly. I was going to go, or at least protest strongly that I needed to go, that she couldn't take the baby by herself, but all I said was okay when she suggested I stay home. I'm hoping that this little trip will do
her some good, snap her out of her funk. I wait with them at the train station until they board. I kiss Sarah and a sleeping Sammy goodbye. Sarah's on autopilot, as if she's sleepwalking. I remind her to call me day or night if she has any problems.

Now they're gone and I'm alone. Standing here in the vast emptiness of the train station makes
me
feel like crying. I immediately regret my decision not to go with them. I find my cell and call Phil. He says he'll be over later with beer. He sounds so fucking happy. Maybe I've made yet another bad decision?

Arriving home it feels as if I'm in somebody else's apartment. It's so quiet. I'm acting out somebody else's life – single with no kids.

I sit down on the couch and stare at my most recent rejection letter. It's lounging on the coffee table, waiting to give me a paper cut, the little bastard. Involuntarily my mind flashes to an image of Marcus Jackson. I picture him red-faced, hair wild and knotted, screaming in a straitjacket of a padded cell, the pages of
The Cube People
littering the floor around him. Maybe I can't write? I hunt down a copy of my manuscript from the closet to have a read. I haven't looked at it in over a year. When I hit page twenty, my guts feel like they're spilling out onto the floor. Suddenly it hits me: I can't write worth a fart. I'm horrific, and not in a good Stephen King kind of way either. No, the prose that lies here before me is awful. Has anyone actually read it and thought it was good? Just Peter Cann and Marcus Jackson: a thief and a mental patient. How long have I wanted to be a writer? I go to the closet and pull down my shoebox of rejection letters. I don't know why I keep them – maybe in the hope that one day I'll be able to say, “Ha! Look at all the fools who rejected my genius!” But sadly I'm realizing that maybe I'm not a genius, not even close. Suddenly I'm exhausted; my limbs are heavy. I go lie down. I fall asleep.

I open the door to Phil holding a two-four of Moosehead.

“Were you sleeping?” asks Phil.

“Yeah, I was lying down,” I croak. “What time is it anyway?”

“Five. Shit man, you look like
Night of the Living Dad
, he blurts, barging his way past me. “Fatherhood got you that tired?”

“I don't think I can write,” I tell him, following him toward the kitchen.

Phil opens the refrigerator door, pops the top of the beer case and unloads the beer into a crisper drawer. “What are you talking about, writer's block or something?”

“No, I'm talking about the fact that I suck donkey nuts. I can't write a fucking sentence.”

“I don't understand. Here, have a beer,” he says, unscrewing a cap and thrusting a bottle toward me.

“My publisher was committed to the nuthouse.”

“Fuck off, really?”

Over the course of a couple of beers, I explain what happened to Marcus, and that what little optimism I had from publishing a couple short stories and a poem was now completely gone. Phil tells me this is total bullshit, that I can write the pants off of a mannequin on layaway. I don't understand what Phil says sometimes; I just go with it. He grabs my manuscript, thumbs through it, and reads aloud from a few pages in a Shakespearean actor voice. When Phil is reading, it doesn't sound half bad. Maybe it's not awful, just not very good.

Sarah calls to let me know that she got in safe and asks what I'm doing. I tell her and she playfully scolds me, warning me not to get too drunk. I ask how she's feeling. She says good and tells me she'll call me tomorrow. I'm not sure whether to believe her or not – about the feeling-good part that is. After more beer, Phil says we need to order pizza from “the best goddamn place in the entire city.” So we do. Then he roots around in his backpack and wrenches out a mighty plastic bag of his so-called “boom weed.”

“Listen man, I don't think I can smoke that. I haven't smoked pot in ages.”

“Dude, this shit is crazy, you'll love it. Plus look what I brought over, the latest cut,” says Phil, holding up a DVD of one of my favourite films,
Blade Runner
. Despite my protests about my inability to handle pot, Phil grabs his rolling papers and rolls himself a larger-than-cigarette-sized joint. “Listen man, you're not going to get a chance to light up for a long while, now that you're a responsible dad and shit. So, take full advantage of this weekend and party your ass off. Besides, tomorrow you can sleep the whole thing off.”

I'm just finishing off my fourth beer. I feel great. A little pot. What's a little pot? Pizza, beer, a little pot, and
Blade Runner
: a winning combo. “Fine, but we have to smoke it out on the balcony.”

“Let's roll,” says Phil.

I inhale the first toke deeply, then proceed to expel smoke through a series of coughs and hacks for the next several minutes. I feel no effects. “I thought you said this was strong stuff,” I wheeze.

“Just wait till it kicks in,” says Phil, taking in a series of tiny sucks.

He passes it back and I take another hit, but this time I don't inhale as deeply. Again I repeatedly gag and choke as I exhale. As we approach the end of the joint, I hear the doorbell. It's the pizza guy. I leave Phil to finish it and run to get the door. As I open it up, I experience a strange sensation at the back of my neck and head, a warm heaviness crawling up the inside of my skull and wrapping itself around my brain. There before me stands a six-foot Rastafarian, a mass of dreadlock hair wrapped high above his head in what looks to be a beehive made from the Jamaican flag, boosting his height to almost seven feet. I realize at this moment that I'm stoned out of my tree. High as a tree, a tree with a kite stuck in it. High as a kite… is that where that comes from?

“'Ere be your Pizza pie man,” sings the Rastafarian with a warm deep voice that reminds me for some strange reason of Ricardo Montalbán, even though he's Mexican. I stand in awe, feeling slightly dizzy, my heart picking up speed. His nostrils twitch ever so slightly as he sniffs the air. If I hadn't been stoned I probably wouldn't have caught the nostril flare.

“'Ey man, are you getting groovy with the night?” he asks me. He must realize I'm stoned, must be able to smell the pot – groovy with the night? I'm groovy with the night. I glance out the window and it's still not dark yet, not night. “Groovy, yes,” falls out of my mouth, like a small child trying to throw a bowling ball
, kur-thump
.

“Excellent, mon. Dat will be twenty-two dollars, mon.” Twenty-two dollars. The words echo around my head. Twenty-two dollars. Money. I reach into my pocket for money. My heart is doing jumping jacks.

“Rasta Jack!” yells Phil, appearing next to me.

“Philip, my mon, whatcha doing here?”

“Getting groovy with the night, my brother,” says Phil. At this comment, Rasta Jack laughs. I can see all of Rasta Jack's teeth when he laughs. Little marshmallows. One of them is gold. Maybe he's a Jamaican pirate?

“This is my buddy Colin,” says Phil, introducing me.

“Fantastic mon,” says Rasta Jack, smiling and laughing. All I can do is nod my head. I'm shaky. My heart is doing a whole callisthenics routine. I need to remain calm. I need to go sit down.

“Colin, you gonna give him the money?” asks Phil. Money? All I can think about is how to express that I'm having a heart attack, but the words aren't coming out. Too much detail. I can't believe how fast the dope took effect. Money? Rasta Jack is looking at me strangely. I look to Phil for help.

“In your hand. Give Rasta Jack the money that's in your hand, dude.” My hand extends involuntarily: somebody else's hand, an actor's hand.

“Tank you mon,” says Rasta Jack, taking the money and passing Phil the pizza. “You need change?”

Change? I'm going to die standing up. How fast can a human heart go before it explodes? “Keep it,” says Phil, coming to my rescue.

Phil invites Rasta Jack to smoke another, but Rasta Jack says he's got to deliver more pizza pies. I manage to stagger over to the couch and fall back into its exquisitely comfortable fabric. My heart's doing a heavy-metal drum solo. I'm trying to stay calm. I'm trying to focus on the juiciness of the couch.

“You want a slice now, or do you want to wait a bit?” Phil asks. I shake my head and he says he'll throw it into the oven on low to keep warm. My mind is racing. Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump my heart is going. Phil comes back into the living room. “It's wild shit eh?”

I nod.

“Want to watch
Blade Runner
?”

I nod. Phil puts the movie on and sits down beside me grinning from ear to ear. I wish I could express to Phil how much detail I'm processing at an incomprehensible rate. I'm a rollercoaster. I'm the Flash. I'm light.

As the movie plays, I try to calm myself down, try to relax. We watch Harrison Ford running around in a dark and rainy future. I think about artificial intelligence. I think about my character Setrac Sed from
The Cube People
, about how he too doesn't know that he's just an android. Maybe I'm just an android? Maybe I just got here and all of my memories are implants? Maybe I'm going to have to be committed to the hospital like Marcus Jackson? Maybe it was
The Cube People
that pushed him over the edge? Maybe my writing is so bad that it drives people insane? My heart had slowed, but now it's picking up speed again. I ride the next giant wave of panic. My thoughts are contorting, looping around on themselves. How can I think about my thinking? Can I not think about thinking? Where's the choice?

I grab my beer and swig. It doesn't seem very cold. I glance over at Phil who's wearing a perma-grin like the Joker. I can see every tiny pore on his face. He looks insane. My eyes move back to the TV and I get lost in the movie and in my own mind. As I watch Daryl Hannah do screaming back flips, I realize I'm absolutely famished. “I need to eat,” I croak.

“Thought you would never ask, let alone talk again,” says Phil, running to get the pizza. When I take a big bite of Rasta Jack's pizza pie, I'm sure there are angels weeping. If God could be found and eaten in the form of cheese, sauce and dough, then I've found God. He's in my mouth.

“I think my tongue just had an orgasm,” says Phil, chewing a mouthful of pizza.

“The bacon, mushrooms, and onions are having group sex in my mouth.”

“Fucking what I told you dude, best pizza in the goddamn city.”

I devour four large slices of pizza as we watch the movie. Phil jumps up when it's over and is talking a mile a minute about what a fucking genius Ridley Scott is. He tells me we need to go to the 7-Eleven for gum and chocolate. When we arrive, the lights of the store are blinding and Angie the freaky cashier is working; her hair is now dyed a dark shade of pink. The whole thing is making my heart thump and bump in the most horrible way. I tell Phil that I need to wait outside.

It's 2 a.m. and I've finally come off my high. My mind feels like it has been birthed out of Amy Winehouse's vagina. Now I'm just drunk and tired. Phil thanks me for the night and says he's gotta split. He and his buddy are going rock climbing in the morning and he offers for me to join them. I say no, thanks, as I'm going to try to get some writing done. That's probably not true. I just don't want to go rock climbing.

I awaken but keep my eyelids closed, letting the fog of sleep evaporate slowly. I can smell Sarah on the bedding. Opening my eyes, I see the framed photograph of myself holding Sammy at the hospital on her first day of life. My father had one just the same, holding me. I remember the day my father left us: I went to my parents' bedroom and took that photo. My mother was downstairs in the kitchen crying. I snuck outside. She caught me trying to set it ablaze in the backyard. She smacked me across the face. With mascara running down her face she told me that my father was my father, that he was sick and needed help, and I needed to love him anyway. We never spoke of the incident again.

The phone rings. It's Sarah. “Are you still sleeping?”

“Ah, yeah, just getting up.”

“Christ, it's almost noon. Sammy had a horrible night.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“My mother's a witch,” she whispers.

“What happened?”

“Same old shit. Tell you when I'm back. Listen, I'll call you later. Sammy's crying, I have to go. Pick me up tomorrow?”

“See you then.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” I hang up. A metallic taste lingers in my mouth, my guts are full of air, and my head is throbbing. Thankful that I don't have to deal with a crying baby in my rotten brain state, I wander out into the living room in my underwear, rubbing my temples. The sun is pouring in through the window, illuminating the debauched contents of the coffee table: an empty pizza box, empty gum wrappers, beer bottles with the labels peeled off, the
Blade Runner
DVD case, a half-eaten bag of salt and vinegar chips, rolling papers, my shoebox full of rejection letters and my printout of
The Cube People
. It all sits there, a big heaping pile of stupidity and failure.

This is not somebody else's life. This is mine.