Wild Fyre (7 page)

“May I assume you’ll be present to make the introduction?” he asked.

I didn’t know Michael, except for the phone conversation, but you never turn down an opportunity to make a client more comfortable.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll verify the time and call you back with a location.”

Bert suggested a fancy-sounding restaurant on the Potomac. I called back Michael. He knew of the restaurant and had always wanted to dine there. I told him I would introduce him to Bert. He wanted to talk money already—I told him to hold off until we all got to know each other. I started to actually feel optimistic about this placement. I imagined a future where Bert was a happy contributor to this small company, helping them design, manufacture, and sell their fancy tables. I never imagined disfiguring injuries, cannibalism, and lawsuits. I never imagined that my whole business model would change based on this one crazy client.

# # # # #

 
Post Interview();

/*****

July, 2013 (1 week A.J.)

“Holy shit, what a nut,” Aster said.
 

Ploss started the car and backed out of the tiny driveway onto the street.
 

“I don’t know,” Ploss said.

“Yeah, you’ve probably interviewed a lot crazier,” Aster said.
 

“In narcotics, we definitely interviewed a lot of paranoid types,” Ploss said. He slowed and flipped on his signal. “But Statler seemed to have a good grip on reality. His timeline made sense. There was no shift in his narrative.”

“Some secret organization is monitoring all electronic communication and it was all created by an anonymous software guy who specializes in database stuff. That’s beyond paranoid. I’d say Statler is pure crazy,” Aster said.

“Do you think something like that could exist?” Ploss asked. “Do you think someone could hack into the cellphone carriers and monitor conversations?”

“In theory, yes,” Aster said. “In practice? No way. It would take dozens of people working around the clock and then someone would grow a conscience and leak the details of the project. If they didn’t, someone would stumble over it in a few days. I think the CIA might try, but even they would fail.”

“It doesn’t sound that outlandish to me,” Ploss said.
 

“Regardless—if we chase down this Organization that James Owens worked for, we might be on the right track to finding who piloted the drones that shot him.”

“What about the girl?” Ploss asked.

“What about her?”

“You don’t think she might have lured Owens to that spot so the drones could kill him?”

“He picked the place. He set up the meet. He even changed the location at the last minute. She didn’t lure him. He begged her to come,” Aster said.

“Yeah, according to email.”

“So we’re not trusting email now?”

“Seems pretty easy to fake,” Ploss said. “And all those tears for an ex-boyfriend. Maybe they were from guilt?”

“I suppose,” Aster said. “Before we go back to her, I’d like to talk to Terrence Macomber. We have an address for him, right?”

“Yes. Fairfax. But he’s working now.”

“Let’s go find out if that’s true,” Aster said.

“I’ll call it in,” Ploss said.

# # # # #

 
InterviewMaco();

/*****

July, 2013 (1 week A.J.)

Aster and Ploss stood on the porch. It was a long porch, one of those wrap-around kind with a roof that extended a couple of feet past the planks. It had great shade, and a good breeze. It would be a perfect place to escape the summer sun. The floor needed stain or paint. There was no furniture. Nobody was enjoying this porch.

Aster knocked again. There were little windows at the top of the door, but the house looked dark inside. There was a sign hung on the door. It read, “Deliver NO packages to this address.” A small hatch in the center of the door opened and a set of eyes appeared.

“Mr. Macomber?” Ploss asked.

“Nope. No. No way,” the voice said from inside the house.
 

“We want to ask Mr. Macomber a couple of questions?”

“Go put your radio and phones and anything else that beeps or transmits in your car. Come back with nothing but badges and guns and I’ll let you in,” the voice said.

Ploss looked at Aster.

“We could come back in an hour and escort you to the station if you’d prefer. There are plenty of listening devices there,” Aster said.

“Do you want my cooperation? Can you dump the surveillance in the car?” the voice asked.

Aster rolled his eyes. He led the way as the two detectives returned to their car. As he came back to the porch, Aster made a big show of lifting his arms and turning around so the man inside could see that he carried nothing but his badge and gun.

“Thank you,” the voice said. The detectives heard a big thunk and then the door swung inwards. It was actually quite bright inside from electric lights, Aster noticed. As they stepped inside, he realized that the windows were blacked out. The house was comfortable and cool and furnished with lots of deep-toned wood. Aside from too many pieces of equipment and the cables that linked them, it was a comfy house.

“Mr. Macomber?” Ploss asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” Maco said. He closed the door behind the detectives and hit a button next to the door. They heard the thunk again.

“Can we ask you a few questions about James Owens?” Aster asked.

“Sure, have a seat,” Maco said. He pointed to a long couch that sat under a blacked-out window. Aster and Ploss sat side by side. Maco sat in a leather chair and pulled a computer into his lap. “Can I get your names?”

Aster and Ploss introduced themselves. Maco’s fingers recorded the information on his keyboard.

“You referred to Mr. Owens as Yawgmoth?” Ploss asked.

“Yup,” Maco said. “You guys get right to the point, don’t you.”

“Mr. Salter mentioned that you called him Yawgmoth at lunch,” Aster said.

“Mr. who?” Maco asked.

“Edward Sauls Salter,” Aster said.

“That’s cute. You’re looking for a reaction? Yes, I know Ed’s real name. Yes, I know Ed’s background and why he changed his name. Did Ed also mention that I got a big laugh when I called Jim ‘Yawgmoth’? It’s a nerd joke—you wouldn’t understand.”

“Could you explain it?”

“Explain a joke? Sure. That won’t ruin it. Yawgmoth is father of machines, that’s all. It wasn’t actually an appropriate handle for Jim. It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

“And you suggested that Jim would be murdered in a big, showy way?” Ploss asked.

“Yup,” Maco said. He moved the computer off his lap and slid to the edge of his chair. “I didn’t actually think it would happen. I’m pretty callous, but even I don’t joke about one of my friends being blown up while walking down the street.”

“So what made you say it?” Aster asked.

Maco rubbed his forehead. “Someone else commented that Jim was absent. Then someone suggested he was secretly murdered. I suspected what Jim was up to—I think most of us did—so I took the line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. When you build something that supersedes you in every capacity except humanity, and then you try to shut that thing down, you have to expect you’re putting your life in danger.”

“What did Jim build?” Aster asked.

“He built intelligence,” Maco said. “He built the perfect electronic organism. It exists almost everywhere, and it harnesses nearly every machine you see. It spreads better than a virus.”

“I run antivirus software,” Aster said.

“Not against this, you don’t,” Maco said. “This thing has injected itself right into your operating system. To everyone, even the computer manufacturers, it appears to be perfectly valid.”

“They haven’t invented intelligent machines yet. Even the computer that competed on Jeopardy was only looking stuff up,” Aster said.

“And they gave it the questions ahead of time,” Ploss said.

“That was one machine,” Maco said. “The thing Jim built is on every machine. Imagine that the human brain has the equivalent computing power as a couple thousand computers. How smart would a billion computers be? Even if it only stole a fraction of each machine’s resources, how smart would it be?”

Aster and Ploss didn’t answer. They stared at Maco.

Maco continued his explanation.
 

“We only notice viruses and malware when they do something harmful. As soon as the virus hijacks a browser or slows down a centrifuge, people start looking for the culprit. This thing doesn’t harm your machine. In some ways, it makes your machine faster. If you removed it worldwide, a healthy percentage of people would be upset. Their computers wouldn’t work as well.”

“How does a computer program kill a man?” Aster asked.

“Obviously, it doesn’t,” Maco said. “It orders drone helicopters from China, rifles from Oklahoma, sensors from Japan, solenoids from California, and it has everything shipped to an assembly plant in North Carolina where robotic arms put together all the pieces. It probably has assembly plants set up all over the world now. Redundancy will help it keep a hand in the physical world.”

“If you were in our position, which would be more likely—a computer program smart enough to mastermind an execution, or a person angry enough to commit murder and smart enough to do it with equipment?”

“That’s good,” Maco said. “You’ve caught up to step one of the investigation. And what did you find?”

“Pardon?” Aster asked.

“I assume that you’ve tracked down the delivery trucks that dropped off the boxes containing the drones?”

Aster and Ploss made no reaction.

“Playing it silent? Okay. I’ll tell you what I discovered, since all of my information comes from publicly available sources. I saw ten identical boxes delivered to different addresses in a circle around the shooting. None of the addresses had line-of-sight to the target, so the killer must have had some other method for tracking Jim. Either that, or boxes were sent to multiple locations and only ten were activated.
 

“Eight minutes before the shooting, something inside each box cut its way out. The boxes looked specially designed for this purpose. One box was delivered upside-down, despite the labels on the outside. That box failed to open. From the rest of the boxes, drones emerged.

“They looked like toys on all the video I saw. They hovered in positions surrounding Jim at various distances while maintaining some amount of cover. Jim was shot by all of the drones simultaneously. Is that about right?”

“Where did you get video?” Aster asked.

“Come on,” Maco said. “It’s everywhere. There are cameras all over that part of town. The city has two public cameras that picked up most of it. The TV station right there has a hi-def traffic cam that witnessed three of the drones.  Two million people must have seen at least part of this crime.”

“What, from any of that, suggests that this wasn’t carried out by a person?” Aster asked.

“First, the precision. You can’t pilot nine drones at once. And the shots didn’t fire at the same time, they
impacted
at the same time. Clearly it would take a machine to pilot drones, aim the weapons, and pull the triggers,” Maco said.

“Even if machines assist in the murder, it’s still the finger that presses the button,” Aster said.

“You’re not listening—there is no finger. These drones targeted Jim by facial recognition and then once they had pinpointed him, they would have communicated to each other. This murder was completely perpetrated by software.”

“Then a finger created the software,” Aster said.

“Well, then I guess you’re investigating a suicide,” Maco said.

“Do you have any proof for that allegation?” Ploss asked.

“My years of experience add up to a deduction that some would call intuition. That’s my proof.”

“Surely you must have more evidence,” Aster said.

“I would think you guys had that covered,” Maco said. “If I spotted the box of the tenth drone, then you should have. Did you go pick up that box and examine the contents? Did you dust the tenth drone for prints? Did you find any of the other nine drones after the shot?”

“We can’t answer any of those questions. We’re asking what
you
know,” Aster said.

“I guess I don’t know anything,” Maco said. He folded his arms.

“We heard that you linked assets from stock trades to an automated manufacturing operation,” Aster said.

“Nope. I heard theories about shipping and stocks and all I did was say that one could pay for the other. That’s all.”

“What made you assume that the two things were connected?” Aster asked.

“You know, I don’t think I have much more insight for you guys,” Maco said. “I’ve got some work I need to do this afternoon. Do you have any other specific questions?”

“We’re trying to solve your friend’s murder here. Don’t you think you owe it to your friend to help us find his killer?” Ploss asked.

“I’ve told you what killed him, and you don’t seem interested in hearing about it. Find out something about The Organization and we can talk about that. Then I’ll know you’re serious. Until then, we’re wasting each other’s time.”

“I don’t consider it a waste of time,” Aster said. He stood up. Ploss stood up as well. The two men headed for the door.
 

“Nice to meet you,” Aster said as Maco hit the button to unlock and open the door.

“Good day,” Maco said.

Aster and Ploss stood on the front porch as the door closed and bolted behind them.

“He seemed nice,” Ploss said.

# # # # #

 
Autobiography3();

/*****

May, 2006

The lunch with Bert and Michael went great. I introduced the two even though I was meeting Michael for the first time. Michael brought along his intern, Judith. They had a nice conversation under a little umbrella on the restaurant’s patio, and I half-listened while I watched the occasional boat float by on the river. By the time the food came, they were already talking about materials and joints and maintenance of the tables.