Modern Rituals (33 page)
Joe traced everything.
He giggled like a small boy, cracked his knuckles and banged on the Pi’s keyboard.
“Oh, James…what have you gotten yourself into?”
8
Olivia waved goodbye, careful to avoid hitting her head on the door as she climbed into the back of a black SUV parked by the front steps of a grey building in the middle of nowhere. James waved back, as did Trevor. A warm, fuzzy feeling expanded in her chest and she watched James crack a joke and elbow Trevor in the stomach.
I trust James. Trevor too, I think.
James had a brotherly quality—the kind of brother you wanted to introduce to your girlfriends, to proudly gush about. She liked that. She needed that. And, who knew, maybe James had a brother of his own she could meet. It dawned on her she didn’t know anything about him.
All in due time.
She anticipated the next few weeks would reveal to her many surprises—new discoveries about herself and about the world around her. She thought on Anzabar’s technique, and wanted to begin practice then and there, though she convinced herself to wait at least until she returned to London. These thoughts brought a smile to her lips.
Olivia slid onto the soft leather cushion of the SUV’s backseat and enjoyed the sensation of tension leaving her body as the seat slowly enveloped her. Her eyelids grew heavy and she dreamed of an unlocked future.
9
James awoke with no idea where he was and the distinct feeling that any movement would result in agonizing pain. He twitched a pinky finger.
Ouch.
Sleep took him again.
Hours later, he came alive in a familiar bed. He hazarded moving the same finger, finding it perfectly ambulatory and pain free. He courageously bent his elbow, then his shoulder, his opposing arm, his neck, his ankle, his knee. He gritted his teeth and clenched his abdomen, then pulled himself upright. Though dizzy, sore, nauseated and somewhat out of breath, there was something else: hope, evidenced by a tug at the corners of his lips. Oxygen from four or five deep breaths rejuvenated his acidic muscles, restoring a sense of homeostasis, and enabled him to amble out of bed.
Is that my coffee table? And my kitchen counter? Home!
White curtains, drawn the length of a floor-to-ceiling, panoramic skyline, blocked sunlight from entering his studio apartment. As to what time of day it was, he supposed that was the business of those outside—he dared not open the curtains lest the light sear his eyes and trigger a migraine.
Then the cacophony of recent events slammed against his brain.
He tumbled over a pair of worn jeans strewn on the floor. His breath fled from his lungs, offering no sign of return. The dim room’s walls suffocated him—and minutes or maybe hours later, his consciousness braved a second look at his surroundings.
Holy shit. Was it all a dream?
The daylight that seeped through his curtains had dwindled into dusk. He flung them apart. Chicago’s skyline greeted him, like it did every night, picturesque. Buildings loomed over tiny streets, and the soaring towers sparkled under romantic moonlight. James’ nightstand lit, surrounded by blue light and shadows that melted into the wall. His cellphone had received a message.
Where the FUCK are u? TXT ME NOW!
We are worried—this isn’t funny :(
xo J
It was a text message from Jessie, James’ sister, preceded by thirty-four others. This stark dose of reality threw James for a loop. Yesterday (the day before? He wasn’t sure), he’d been dealing with undead creatures and secret societies. Or had he? James reached for the phone, but a banging on his front door interrupted him.
He checked the time—10:47 p.m. Placing one foot in front of the other proved more difficult than he imagined, but he made his way to the door and peeked through the peephole.
Joe Johnston
.
James turned the door’s handle, and Joe pushed his way into the apartment and took James by the shoulders.
“Careful…” James said, but Joe didn’t hear him amidst his yelps of “Oh my God, bro!” and “You’re alive!”
“Careful!” James said again as Joe bumped his head against the wall.
“Oh, damn,” Joe said. Sorry, man. I was worried about you. Caught a flight out here to make sure you were okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” James said. Was he? “I feel like I got hit by a dump truck, though. What’s up?”
“What’s up? Are you serious? I can’t even begin to describe what the last twenty-four hours have been like. Where the hell were you?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
“Oh man. Oh man. James! You are one sly bastard,” Joe said, looking into one of James’ eyes and then the other. “Do you remember? The email you sent me?”
“Uh…I’ve sent you lots of emails.”
“I see the problem here,” Joe said. “Come on.” He led James into the kitchen and sat him down in the breakfast nook, then set about grinding a precise amount of Peruvian coffee—James kept a delectable and varied stock on hand.
After a few minutes, Joe handed James a mug. Once a barista at a snobby coffee shop, he knew how to craft a fantastic pour-over cup of joe.
“Drink dude—I need your grey matter switched on.”
James sipped, the hot liquid’s bitter first bite attacking his palate. As the beans’ delicious flavor washed over his tongue, he felt a smile form on his lips.
“Oh, damn, I needed this. Thanks,” James said, then the fridge caught his eye and his mouth watered. “Hold up, I need some food.”
James devoured a pound of sliced turkey, a bag of asparagus and a bowl of frozen blueberries.
“Dear God, that is so much better.”
“Okay, glad to see you’re back on earth,” Joe said. “James, listen to me carefully. We have a situation.”
“Yeah, yeah… Something about an email?”
“Don’t play stupid with me—you sent me an email twenty-nine hours ago from an untraceable IP, along with a backdoor.”
James snorted his coffee.
“Holy shit! I did! Oh my God. It
did
happen. Joe, you gotta forget about it. I shouldn’t have involved you.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” Joe said and smiled.
Shit.
“Joe, be straight with me. What did you do?”
“Straight? Well, you know I can’t be
straight
.”
James rolled his eyes. Joe was gay.
“You’re hilarious. This isn’t a joke,
what did you do?
”
Joe leaned back in his chair and folded his hands.
“James, you’re the one who gave me Pandora’s box—you know I’m not the type of person who can leave it shut,” he said. “So, I tried tracing the IP address. Got nothing—total dead end. The traceroute just stopped, like there wasn’t a connected node. Thought it was a DNS glitch, but I confirmed that you did send it from that IP. So, I started snooping around, and um…what’s Magnus?”
James felt the blood suck from his head. He shut his eyes, steadied his hands on the table and drew a concerted breath.
“Joe…we gotta burn that computer. It was your Pi wasn’t it?”
“Funny—like I’d ever let anything happen to my baby,” Joe said. “Anyway, it was a relatively weak backdoor, so I tried reinforcing it by scanning around for other open ports—no such luck—but I
did
come across a strange SSH tunnel. Then I found a hashed private key after snooping around the box I was on, ran it through some custom cryptography—my new stuff is genius, by the way—and uncovered the key which let me into the tunnel. Jackpot! And, boy oh boy, what did I find?”
“What?” James said.
“James, exobytes—not terabytes—
exobytes
of data on all kinds of weird mythological shit. Dragons, zombies, killer clowns, aliens, you name it—but the weird part is the amount of data. It’s staggering—each creature covered in the widest range of detail imaginable. Psych profiles, tissue samples, 3D scans, life-cycles, breeding habits—it’s amazing.
“Then I did a search on your name. I found a dossier on you and it was ridiculously detailed—kinda weird, really. But, I digress. Do you know what this is? What this means?”
James stared.
“This must be one of the golden three’s computer! The originators of Comic-Con: Shel Dorf, Ken Krueger, and Richard Alf? It’s their computer or something, isn’t it? Only nutty bastards like them could possibly amass information like that. Magnus must be their codeword!”
A heavy sac of flour fell off James’ chest.
“Wait, let me get this straight. You flew all the way out here because you thought I hacked into some dead alpha geek’s computer?”
“Totally! Do you know what kind of power we can wield with this access?”
“Listen, buddy, you know I love you. But, I gotta ask you to let me rest. Forget what you saw, or thought you saw. Let’s sync up for breakfast in the morning. I promise I’ll go into more detail then.”
From the look on Joe’s face, somewhere, somehow, a puppy had just died.
“Are…are you serious?”
“Yup. Please, you know me better than anyone. We need to revisit this some other time.”
“Okay, tomorrow morning then, promise?”
“Promise.”
“Can I…uh, crash here?”
“Of course, grab the couch in the upstairs loft. Sorry man, but I gotta hit the hay.”
James watched his friend move sloth-like from his kitchen, lumber upstairs, then plop on his couch. Joe would be all right—his inner geek had a way of overriding his inner genius. Comes with the trade.
The text message.
Dammit! Jessie must think I’m dead!
James rushed to his phone, flicked open her message and replied, “all is well—don’t worry or notify the police. will explain in the morn. love J”
The marrow ached within his bones. As he went to set his phone to do-not-disturb and slid a foot under the corner of his bed sheet, he received another message from an unknown number. Somehow, James knew exactly who had sent it.
Game on in two, maybe three weeks.
The mouse is coming out to play.
Get some rest, we are watching.
Two contacts came attached with the message: Olivia Young and Trevor Banks.
James, though weary, clenched his fists as he allowed sleep to overtake him, and just as the sleep faeries sprinkled their dust—those were real now, he knew—he reached inside himself in search of that dark void, that missing piece to his happiness, which had plagued him for so long. It had gone and left a purpose—a newfound resolution—in its place.
James was damn-well going to live up to it.
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J.S. Leonard
resides in his birthplace, Las Vegas, Nevada, where he slings words, code and colors into remarkable experiences. He is married to a pretty rad chick and has two crazy young boys. No, he doesn’t gamble. Yes, people actually live in Las Vegas.
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