Vaporware (19 page)

“What
are you doing, Ryan?” Michelle turned, puzzled. I couldn’t help noticing that
she was pressed up awfully close against Leon as she did so. “He’s not going to
answer someone else’s phone.”

“He
will if it keeps ringing.” I hit redial. Onscreen, Terry put his head down in
an obvious attempt to concentrate.

I
hit redial again. “And ringing.” Terry looked left, looked straight ahead, then
looked left again, longer this time.

“And
ringing.” Another press of the button. A jerk of the head, definitely annoyed,
and he leaned forward to crank the speakers on his system.

“Now
I’m really glad we don’t have sound,” Michelle said. “He’s probably cranking
some old Floyd B-side they recorded in a cave while tripping on acid,”

“And
grooving with a Pict,” Leon finished. “But I still don’t get what you’re trying
to do.”

“I
do,” Michelle said, and flipped open her phone. “Two phones are harder to drown
out than one.” She dialed, hung up, redialed. I grinned and redialed.

And
just like that, he stood up, glanced left and right, and stomped off-camera.
“Now, Leon!” I shouted as I killed the phone connection. I could see Michelle
doing the same  as we zoomed in on the center screen.

“Maximize
it, you idiot,” Michelle said. It jumped to fill the entire screen. “Are you
getting screen caps?”

“Screw
that,” Leon replied, intent on the laptop. “I’m capturing the feed. We can look
at this later to see what he’s working on. Though I can tell you right now,
that looks an awful lot like the detection algorithm from Blue Lightning.”

“The
code’s got to be commented,” I said. “Can you read any of it?”

He
peered forward. “Yeah, good call. That’s what it is. He’s running with Shawn’s
stuff and—oh, crap.”

Terry’s
shape filled the screen as he hastily adjusted the volume on his speakers. I
looked over to see Michelle’s thumb poised over her phone. “Don’t,” I said. “We
got what we need.”

“Aww,”
she said but put the phone away. “That was pretty sneaky of you.”

I
kept my poker face on. “I don’t like doing this any more than you do. I figured
the faster we got it over with, the faster we could stop. The phone thing was
just a way to speed things along.”

Leon
half-turned around. “But now that we have the evidence, what do we do? I mean,
we could go over there right now and tell him to cut it out.”

“How’s
that going to help?” Michelle asked. “He’d be angry at us for spying, or he’d
hear us coming and hide what he was doing. Short of scrubbing his machine while
he sat there and then disconnecting it from the network, how exactly could we
stop him from telling us to get screwed and getting right back to it?”

I
raised my hand. “We don’t need to do anything tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to
the appropriate folks and we’ll sit down and have another little chat with
Terry. Nothing serious, nothing that’s going to make him think he’s about to
get fired because he’s not, just a friendly request to ease up on the hours on
the black project. Or else.”

Leon
snorted. “Horseshit. He’s hiding this for a reason. We say one word to him
about it and he’s going to freak out. And when he freaks out, he’ll go back to
doing exactly what he’s doing, just even more so, because he’ll think he’s
running out of time.”

I
sighed. “Look, Leon—”

Michelle
interrupted me. “Guys.”

Leon
waved her off. “Don’t ‘Look Leon’ me. I know Terry,  and—”

“Guys.”

“Michelle,
we’re trying to have a discussion here, and—”

“Guys!”

We
stopped, mouths opened, and turned to look at her. She was pointing at the
screen. “I think this is important,” she said.

I
looked at the screen. The image of Terry’s back was still maximized, but now it
was silhouetted, framed in a brilliant white glow. Streamers of light fanned
out around him, like the sun’s corona during an eclipse.

“You
still have the side views open?” I asked softly. Leon nodded. “Good. Minimize
this one.”

He
did so. And we stared.

The
angle that showed it best was the window in the lower right, and Leon quickly
maximized it. On it, we could see Terry in profile. He sat there, hunched forward,
hands still on the keyboard. In front of him was his work setup, speakers
pushed well back, monitors positioned to ergonomic perfection.

And
leaning out of the monitor was the shape of a woman.

Not
all of her, at least, not all that we could see. What I could see was a face
and perhaps as far down as halfway to her waist. Her features, what I could see
of them, had a faintly Asian cast to them, while her figure was slender and her
breasts small. She wore no clothes that I could see, and her hands gently
stroked Terry’s hair and face.

That’s
what I think I saw, anyway, because she was made of fierce blue-white light.
Shot through with static, flickering toward darkness for milliseconds before
blazing more intensely than ever, she leaned forward. Her eyes, pure black and
empty, closed as her mouth half-opened.

Terry
pulled his hands off the keyboard. One flew up to clasp hers as she stroked his
cheek. The other drew her closer, pulling her into a kiss. Or perhaps she did
the pulling, white fingers laced with sparks tangled in his hair.

Their
lips met, and for an instant, I could have sworn the light was in Terry, too.

“Oh
my God,” Michelle breathed. “This isn’t happening. We can’t be seeing this.”

Onscreen,
the woman had emerged further from the monitor. I could see the beginning of
the curve of her hips, even as she drew Terry’s face down to bury it between
her breasts. His hands moved over her back, tentative at first, then more and
more confident. One slid around to her belly and down, reaching to the edge of
the monitor where woman-shape met cold glass.

“Turn
it off.”

 I
tore my eyes away and looked at Michelle. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide
with horror.

“I
said turn it off,” she said. “I can’t watch this. I don’t want to watch this!”

Leon
shuddered and shoved the laptop away as I saw the tips of Terry’s fingers start
to ripple into nothingness. A low moan, the tinny quality of the laptop’s
speakers doing nothing to disguise the raw need in it, the sexual power, filled
the room.

“We
don’t have sound,” I said. “Leon, you said we don’t have sound.”

“We
don’t!” He turned from me to Michelle to the screen. “I swear, I didn’t hook up
any mikes!”

Terry’s
hand sank into the screen, fingers splayed as it trailed down into the imagined
shape of womanhood. Her head was thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open, and the
groans of desire we were hearing were coming from her lips.

“I
said stop it!” Michelle lunged for the laptop. Her fingers hit the keys, disabling
the connection.

And
the woman onscreen opened her eyes.

Turned.

Stared
straight into the camera.

And
smiled.

“No!”
Leon snatched the computer away. The image of the woman stared out at us, her
moans still echoing in the corners of the room. For a long instant the picture
hung there, and then suddenly, abruptly, the machine powered down.

The
screen went black, and I found I could breathe again.

“We’ve
gotta go,” Leon said. “I don’t know what the hell we just saw, but we have to
stop it. Get your coat. I’ll drive.” He stood, visibly shaking, and the laptop
fell out of his fingers to the table. There was a sharp crack, and he stared at
it. “Goddamn,” he said reflectively, then more emphatically. “Jesus goddamn
fucking hell shit!”

I
was already heading for the door. “No. I’ll go to the office and make sure
nothing happened to Terry. You stay here and see if you got any video capture
of that…thing. Michelle, stay with him and make sure he doesn’t do anything
stupid.”

She
opened her mouth to argue, but saw the look on my face and nodded instead.
“Call if you need help.”

“I
will,” I said, and went out into the night.

Chapter 16

The
parking lot was empty when I got there. Terry’s car, a gunmetal-gray Chevy
Impala with some rust along the sides, was gone. The only lights I saw were the
red of emergency exit lights and the dim yellow of the hallway fixtures. There
was no dancing light to give away the presence of someone playing a console
game on a television, no monitor glow leaking out the windows. There was just
silence, and darkness, and a feeling of desolation.

I
sat there in my car, a feeling of dread seeping into my bones. I knew I had to
go inside to check on Terry. I knew I had to see, to make sure he was all
right. But the thought of doing so, of walking in on more of what I’d seen,
terrified me.

My
phone buzzed. I grabbed it, thankful for the interruption. “Yeah?”

Michelle’s
voice crackled over a bad connection. “Well?”

“Well,
what? I just got here. I can tell you that his car is gone, though.” I found
myself snapping and not caring that I was doing it. “I’ll go inside as soon as
I finish doing a circuit around the building.”

“Uh-huh.”
The doubt in her voice was plain. “In this of all things, Ryan, don’t be
chickenshit.”

“I’m
going, I’m going,” I groused. I cut the connection before she could say
anything else hurtful and true. Killing the engine, I stepped out into the
night.

“You
did a shitty parking job,” I told myself as I marched to the front door.
Somehow, I dug the keycard out of my wallet and waved it in front of the
sensor. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the loud thunk of the lock
disengaging. The door swung open a half an inch. I grabbed it before it could
re-engage, or before I could change my mind, and went inside.

*  
*   *

The
building was empty.

There’s
a certain feeling an uninhabited office has, a sort of echoing purposelessness
that bounces off the walls and can only be assuaged by the return of the
workforce in the morning. Only then does the building acquire its proper hum
and vibe, the right level of chatter and argument bouncing through the halls.
Until then, the office sits and waits and feels sorry for itself.

There
was none of that when I went inside. Instead, there was a nervous energy that
didn’t belong, a feeling of something that had been interrupted, unhappily.

I
had a feeling I knew what that was.

The
lights were dim, providing enough glow to see but not enough to do anything
useful. It gave the hall a sinister air, yellow light on dead-orange carpet and
taupe walls. Termites would feel right at home, I thought, and headed for
Terry’s team room.

It
was dark, but it was always dark. The shades had been drawn to make sure no
stray light—whether from street lamps, stars, or that old devil sun—ever made
it inside. This room was made for huddling over your work and getting it done,
plain and simple, and night did not improve its character or sociability one
bit. Green and amber lights shone off monitors and dev kits, making scattered
constellations here and there. 

 “Terry?”

I
didn’t expect an answer. He was gone, and frankly I wasn’t exactly sure what
I’d say to him in any case. “Getting any from your monitor lately?” didn’t seem
like a good start to a potential conversation, and the other openers I had were
worse.

“Hello?”

I
stepped inside. The room smelled odd, with the sharp crackle of ozone layered
over the usual aroma of stale bodies and snack food. I’d been half expecting
the place to smell like sex, but there was no hint of that at all. There was
just the sharp tang of electricity, as if there’d been a spring thunderstorm,
one of fearful intensity but short duration.

“Terry?
If you’re here, pal, let me know.” His desk was halfway down the room and on
the left-hand side. I passed other desks slowly, hesitantly. It may have been
my duty to try to find Terry, after all, but that didn’t mean I wanted to run
into whatever he’d been communing with.

Another
step forward, and something gave a hesitant crunch under my foot. Pulling out
my phone for light, I eased back a step and took a look at what it might have
been before I’d bigfooted it.

That
part was easy. It was a webcam, one of Leon’s. A length of wire jutted out of
the back, maybe six inches’ worth, before it had been melted clean through. I
held up the phone and looked around. Other black shapes lay on the floor,
little tails of wire sticking out behind them.

The
phone buzzed, and I nearly dropped it. Another chirp, and I felt sufficiently
recovered to answer. “What?”

“What
yourself?” It was Michelle. “Where are you now?”

“The
team room. He’s gone, all right.”

She
didn’t sound satisfied with that answer. “What about the other…thing? Is it
there?”

I
glanced around the room. No electronic enchantresses met my gaze, and from
where I stood, the monitors on Terry’s desk looked deeply unerotic. “Not that
I’ve noticed. Though you may want to tell Leon he’s going to need some new
webcams.”

She
chuckled nervously. “He’ll be thrilled to hear that.” In the background, I
could hear Leon moaning, his anguished voice asking after the fate of his
equipment. Michelle shushed him, then turned her attention back to the phone.
“Have you checked his desk yet? There might be something there.”

I
opened my mouth and swallowed back a double shot of annoyance. “Gawrsh, I never
thought of that, Michelle. I was on my way there when I had to stop and answer
my phone. Maybe when I’m done talking, I’ll be able to get back to it.”

“Uh-huh.”
She sounded unconvinced. “It’s been twenty minutes since I called you in the
parking lot, Ryan. How long does it take you to go down a hallway?”

I
blinked. “That long? No way. I just got in here.”

“Whatever.
Tell it to your girlfriend. She’s gotten used to your interesting time sense, I
hear. In the meantime, how about you walk over to that desk and use your camera
app to take some pictures and send them back here. I’d like to see what the
hell happened.”

“Then
you should have come yourself, or were you too busy comforting Leon over his
poor widdle webcams?” My bitterness surprised me. I hadn’t thought I’d cared
what she did with herself these days, or who she did with herself, for that
matter.

It
didn’t surprise Michelle, though. “We can argue about our personal lives later,
thanks. Just see if there’s anything weird at Terry’s desk, then go home, all
right? I’ll be happy to have a screaming fight at work tomorrow.”

“Can’t.
Too many meetings scheduled. Can we have the screaming fight on Thursday?” That
was a joke, a weak peace offering. Silence told me she was considering it.

“Just
go look at his desk, and don’t tell me if there’s anything sticky there, OK?”

Offering
accepted, sort of. I didn’t say anything further, not wishing to push my luck,
and instead pocketed the dead webcam before walking to Terry’s desk. Michelle
kept quiet, too, though I could hear faint echoes of Leon providing worthless
suggestions and advice.

Something
had happened there, I saw when I reached it. Terry’s chair was flipped over,
backwards, on the floor. It looked like he’d left in a hurry. His desk was a
mess as well, speakers on their sides and monitors turned at angles that would
have been damn near impossible to use for work.

“Ryan?”
Michelle’s voice, hesitant.

“Not
now,” I answered. “Hold on one minute.” Slowly, I leaned forward to examine the
new angle the monitors made. Something about it triggered a thought…there. A
look over the top of one confirmed it.

I
was staring at a desk that had a length of cable dangling off of it. That
cable, I was quite certain, had previously been attached to a webcam. He’d moved
the monitors for privacy, which meant that he’d found the webcams.

A
memory struck me, the woman-shape Terry had been caressing staring directly
into the camera and smiling. No, Terry hadn’t found the camera. Terry hadn’t
been in no shape to notice anything. She’d done it. Maybe he’d moved the
monitors, but that was all.

And
now he was gone.

“All
right,” I breathed into the phone. “He was here, he’s gone, and he left in a
hurry. I’ve also got circumstantial evidence that he and Miss Zinger, or
whatever that thing was, did something after our connection shorted out. What,
I’m not daring to speculate.”

“Ewwww.”

“Your
guess is as good as mine on that,” I told her. “But he’s gone. Do you still
want pictures?”

She
thought for a minute. “Yeah, not that they’ll do any good. But give it a shot.”

“OK,”
I told her, and started snapping away. Monitors, chairs, speakers, dead
webcams, you name it. A thought struck me, and I put the phone to my ear. “Hold
on a minute,” I told Michelle. “I want to try something.”

“Nothing
stupid,” she said, but I was already putting it down on the table.

Terry’s
system was off, unlike most of the others in the room. It had most certainly
been on earlier, and I was curious to see whether it would still boot up or if
it had been fried by his encounter. The case was under his desk, placed there
to save desktop footprint, so I dropped to my knees and hit the power switch.

Nothing.

I
pressed it again, and held it. Still nothing. Faintly, I could hear Michelle
demanding to be told what the hell I was doing. I ignored her, and pressed the
button. Third time was the charm, or so the story went, and I pressed and held
it for a full ten seconds.

There
was a shriek of static from my phone, and Michelle’s voice halfway through
calling my name before it was abruptly cut off. White light flooded the room
over my head, and I debated for an instant whether it was worth it to look and
see what was making it.

Brave
man, that’s me all the way. The light grew brighter. I peeked up over the edge
of the desk.

I
didn’t see a woman, at least, and that was a plus. No face, no anomalous
features, no static shaping itself into something I’d rather not see. Instead,
there was just light pouring out of the monitor, light so intense that it could
only be described as pure.

One
by one, the other monitors in the room started showing it as well. Beams of
brilliance shot out, one to the next, and the brightness was a sudden knife to
my eyes. My fingers jabbed at the power switch on Terry’s system, but it didn’t
do any good. More and more light poured out while the whine of the fan inside
his CPU case reached an agonizing pitch. All across the room, the process
repeated until it sounded like the computers were screaming, howling in agony
at what they were being forced to do.

I
couldn’t see any more. There was too much light, too much brilliance.
Everywhere I looked was white. I shut my eyes, but it did no good. The webwork
of veins in my eyelids stood out, bloody pink against the brilliance behind
them. Part of me wondered if this was going on all over the building; the rest
just wanted to know how much of it I could take before I went blind.

My
hand slipped off the power button and I let it. Instead, I reached along the
case. I could feel it shuddering, bucking under my hand. Inside, the grinding
of the hard drive provided an ominous counterpoint for the scream of the fan. I
got a faint whiff of the burnt peanut butter smell that always accompanies a
computer flame out, and that spurred me on to panic. Blinded, in a room full of
burning computers? No thank you.

The
back of the system was unpainted metal, not plastic or enameled aluminum, and
it was hot to the touch. I jerked my fingers away, burned, but quickly shoved
them back, my hand splayed against the machine as I looked for what I needed.

It
was there, right where it was supposed to be: the power cord. “When in doubt,”
I whispered, “pull the goddamned plug.”

I
pulled. It came out easily, the half-melted plastic painfully hot under my
fingers. I let it drop to the floor, somehow heard it hit, and realized that
I’d been able to hear it because everything else had stopped.

Cautiously,
I opened my eyes. Black spots the size of dinner plates swam in front of them,
masking the deeper darkness that I hoped was just the usual gloom of the room.
It was silent, silent and dark, and there I was on the floor under Terry’s
desk.

“Well,
goddamn.” A little later, I added, “What the hell?” and made a game effort to
stand up.

And
promptly banged my head on the underside of the desk, causing me to drop to the
floor like I’d been shot. I lay there for a moment, breathing in plasticky
fumes and laughing because I was still alive.

It
took me a solid three minutes before the last snickers were out of my system.
With my unburned hand, I grabbed my phone, which had fallen as I’d fallen down.
I made my standard, reflexive check for messages, or tried to. Once again, all
the power was gone.

“All
the pictures, too, I’ll bet,” I told myself with a groan, and rolled left
before heaving myself to my feet. Dead phone meant a couple of things, but the
most immediate was that whoever might be calling me—like, say, the woman who’d
heard an agonized shriek from my phone just before it cut off—would be getting
the sort of voicemail message that said “dead phone.” And since dead phone was
in this case equivalent to suddenly dead phone, I figured I could expect either
Michelle and Leon riding to the rescue or the cops, and I really wasn’t up to
either.