For The Win (60 page)

"OK," he said. "I'll talk to them."

#

Now it was Jie's turn to watch Wei-Dong, as he typed furiously at his keyboard, reaching out to hundreds of Mechanical Turks who'd said, "Yes, yes, we're on your side; yes, we're tired of the crummy pay and of always having the threat of being fired over our heads." He reached out to them and what he told them all was:

Now

Now it begins, now we are ready, now we move. He sent them links to the YouTube videos of the protests in China, the picket lines in India, the workers who'd begun to walk off the job in Indonesia and Vietnam and Cambodia, saying, "Us too, us all together, us too."

Only it wasn't working the way it was supposed to. The Mechanical Turks had been happy enough to seed a little disinformation, to pass on some weird-sounding stock-tips or to look the other way when the Webblies were fighting the Pinkertons, but they balked at going to Coke and saying, "We demand, we want, we are all one." Just from their typing, he could feel their fear, the terror that they might find themselves without a job next month, that they might be the only ones who stood up.

But not all of them. First one, then five, then fifty, and finally over a hundred of his Turks were with him, ready to put their names to a list of dues-paying Webblies who wanted to bargain as a group with Coke for a better deal. That was only 20 percent of what he'd bargained for, but they still accounted for 35 of the top fifty performers on the Webbly leaderboards.

He kept up a running account for Jie, muttering in Chinese to her between messages and quick voice calls.

"Now what?" she said. She was jammed up in a corner of the room, resting on her sweater, which she'd spread out over the filthy mattress, eyes barely open.

"Now I call Coke," he said. He had talked this over with Big Sister Nor a dozen times, iterating through the plan, even role-playing it with The Mighty Krang playing the management on the other end. But that didn't mean that he was calm -- anything but, he felt like he might throw up at any instant.

"How is that supposed to work?"

He closed his eyes, which were burning with exhaustion and dried tears. "Are you hungry?"

She nodded. "I was thinking of going upstairs for some dumplings," she said.

"Bring me some?"

She got up and walked unsteadily to the door. She pulled a compact out of her purse and looked at herself, made a face, then said, "Tea?"

He'd drunk tea for years, but right now he needed coffee, no matter how American that made him feel. "Coffee," he said. "Two coffees."

She smiled a sad little smile. "Of course. I'll bring a syringe, too."

But he was already back at his computer, screwing in his borrowed earwig, dialling in on the employee-only emergency number.

"Co' Cola Games level two support, this is Brianna speaking," the voice was flat, American, bored, female, Hispanic.

"I need to speak to someone in operations," he said. "This is Leonard Goldberg, Turk number 4446E764."

"Hello, Leonard. Can I have the fifth letter of your security code?"

He had to think hard for a moment. Like the name Leonard Goldberg, like his entire American life, the security code he used to communicate with his employers seemed like it was in a distant fairytale land. "K for kilo," he said. "No, wait, Z for Zulu."

"And the second letter?"

"A for alpha."

"OK, Leonard, what can I do for you?"

"I need to speak to someone in operations," he said. "Level four, please."

"What do you need to speak to operations about, please?" He could hear her clicking away at her screen, looking up the escalation procedures. Technically it wasn't supposed to be possible to go from level two support to level four without going through level three. But the entire escalations manual was available in the private discussion forums on the unofficial Turk groups if you knew where to look for them.

"I, uh, I think I found someone, who was, like, a pedophile? Like he might have been trying to get some kids to give him their RL addresses?" Kid-diddlers, mafia, terrorists or pirates, the four express tickets to level four support. Anything that meant calling in the federal cops or the international ones. He figured that a potential pedophile would have just the right amount of ick to get him escalated without the call being sent straight to the cops.

Brianna typed something, read something, muttered "Just a minute, hon," read some more. "OK, level four it is." She parked him on hold.

Jie came back with a styrofoam clamshell brimming over with steaming dumplings and a bottle of nuclear-hot Vietnamese rooster sauce and a pair of chopsticks. She picked one up, blew on it, dipped it in the sauce and held it out to him. He popped it into his mouth and chewed it, blowing out at the same time to try to cool off the scalding pork inside. They shared a smile, then the call started up again.

"Hello, Coca Cola Games, level four ops, Gordon speaking, your name please."

Leonard went through the authentication routine with Gordon again, his password coming more easily to him this time.

"All right, Leonard, I hear you found a pedophile? One moment while I pull up your interaction history --"

"Don't bother," Wei-Dong said, his pulse going so fast he felt like he was going to explode. "I made that up."

"Did you." It wasn't really a question.

"I need to speak to Command Central," he said. "It's urgent."

"I see."

Wei-Dong waited. This Gordon character was supposed to get angry or sarcastic, not quiet. The pause stretched until he felt he
had
to fill it. "It's about the Webblies, I have a message for Command Central."

"Uh huh."

Oh, for Christ's sake. "Gordon, listen. I know you think I'm just a kid and you probably think I'm full of crap, but I
need to speak to Command Central right now.
I promise you, if you don't connect me with them, you'll regret it."

"I will, will I? Well, listen, Leonard, I've been looking at your interaction history and you certainly seem like an efficient worker, so I'm going to go easy on you.
You
can't talk to Command Central. Period. Tell me what you want, and I'll see that someone gets back to you."

This
was something Wei-Dong had prepared for. "Gordon, please relay the following to Command Central. Do you have a pen?"

"Oh, this is
all
being recorded." There was the sarcasm he'd been waiting for. He was getting under his skin. Right.

"Tell them that I represent the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web, Local 56, and that we need to speak with Coca Cola Games's Chief Economist immediately in order to avert a collapse on the scale of the Mushroom Kingdom disaster. Tell them that we have two hours to act before the collapse takes place. Did you get that?"

"What? You're kidding --"

"I'm serious. I'll hold while you tell them." He muted the connection and immediately dialled back to Singapore and told Justbob what had happened. She assured him that they'd get their economist on the line as quickly as possible and put him on hold. He bridged both calls into his earpiece but isolated them so that they wouldn't be able to hear him, then told Jie what had just happened.

"When can I interview you about this for the radio show?"

He swallowed. "I think maybe never. Part of this story can probably never be publicly told. We'll ask BSN, OK?"

She made a face, but nodded. And now there was Gordon.

"Leonard, you there, buddy?"

"I'm here," he said.

"You're logging in from a lot of proxies lately. Where exactly are you located? We have you in LA."

"I'm not in LA," Wei-Dong said, grinning. "I'm a little ways off from there. You don't need to know where. How's it coming with Command Central, Gordon? Time's a-wastin'." Keep the pressure up, that was a critical part of the plan. Don't give them time to think. Get them to run around like headless chickens.

"I'm on it," Gordon said. He swallowed audibly. "Look, you're not serious, are you?"

"You saw what happened to Mushroom Kingdom, right?"

"I saw."

"OK then," Wei-Dong said. He'd been warned not to admit to any wrongdoing personally.

"You're serious?"

"You know, 15 minutes have gone by already."

Another swallow. "I'll be right back."

A new line cut in, different background noise, chaotic, lots of chatter. Gordon had probably been a teleworker sitting in his underwear in his living room. This was different. This was a room filled with angry, arguing people who were typing on keyboards like machineguns.

"This is William Vaughan, head of security for Coca Cola Games. Hello, Leonard."

"Hello, Mr Vaughan." Leonard said. Be polite. That was part of the plan, too. Real operators were grownups, polite, businesslike. "May I speak with Connor Prikkel, please?" Prikkel's name had been easy enough to google. Wei-Dong had spent some time watching videos of the man at conferences. He seemed like an awkward, super-brainy academic type run to fat. He typed a quick one-handed message to Justbob:
Got cmd ctnrl, where r u?

"Mr Prikkel is away from the office. I have been asked to speak with you in his stead."

He had prepped for this, too. "I'm afraid that I need to talk with Connor Prikkel personally."

"That's not possible," Vaughan said, sounding like he was barely holding onto his temper.

"Mr Vaughan," Wei-Dong said. He hadn't spoken this much English for weeks. It was weird. He'd started to think in Chinese, to dream in it. "I don't know if uh, Gordon told you what I told him --"

"Yes, he did. That's why you're talking to me now."

"Mr Prikkel is qualified to evaluate what I have to say to him. I'm not qualified to understand it. And no offense, I don't think you are either."

"I'll be the judge of that."

Justbob sent him a message back:
5 min
.

"I've got a better idea," Wei-Dong said. "You get Mr Prikkel and call me back. I'll leave you a voice-chat ID. You can listen in on the call."

"How about if I just trace where you're calling
us
from and we call the police? Leonard, kid, you are working on my last good nerve and I'm about to lose it with you. Fair warning."

Wei-Dong tisked. He was starting to enjoy this. "Mr Vaughan, here's the thing. In --" he looked at the clock -- "about ten minutes, you’re going to see total chaos in your gold markets. All those contracts that Coke Games has written for gold futures are going to start to slide into oblivion. You can spend the next ten minutes trying to trace me, but you're not going to find me, and even if you do, you're not going to be able to do anything about it, because I am an ocean away from the nearest police force that will give you the time of day." The security man started to choke out a response, but Wei-Dong kept talking. "I'd prefer
not
to destroy the game. I love it. I love playing all these games. You have my record there, you know it. We all feel that way, all the Webblies. It's where we go to work every day. We
want
it to succeed. But we want that to happen on terms that are fair to us. So believe me when I tell you that I am calling to strike a bargain that you can afford, that we can live with and that will save the game and get everything back on track by the end of the day." He looked at the clock again, did some mental arithmetic. "By tomorrow morning, your time, that is."

He could almost hear the gears turning in Vaughan's head. "You're in Asia, somewhere?"

"Is that the only thing that you got from that?"

He made a little conciliatory snort. "You're a long way from home, kid. Ten minutes, huh?"

Wei-Dong said, "Eight, now. Give or take."

"That's some pretty impressive economic forecasting."

"When you've got 400,000 gold farmers working with a few thousand Mechanical Turks, you can do some pretty impressive things." The numbers were all inflated. But Vaughan would assume they were. If Wei-Dong had given him the real numbers, he'd have underestimated their strength. He liked how this was going.

2 min more
from Justbob.

"OK, Vaughan, here's how Mr Prikkel can reach me. Sooner, rather than later." He named the ID and the service, one that was run out of the Mangalore Special Economic Zone. It was pretty reliable and easy to sign up for, and they supported strong crypto and didn't log connections. He'd heard that it was a favorite with diplomats from poor countries that couldn't run their own servers.

"Wait --"

"Call me!" he said, and gave him the details once more.

They'll call me back
he typed to Justbob.
Our guy wasn't there.

Justbob called him right away, and he heard The Mighty Krang and Big Sister Nor holding another conversation in the background. "You hung up?"

"It wasn't the right guy. I think he was away, maybe on holidays or something. They'll get him on the phone. no worries." But Justbob sounded worried, and he didn't like that. He shrugged mentally. He'd done the best he could, using his best judgement. He'd been shot at, seen his friend killed. He'd smuggled himself halfway around the world. He'd earned some autonomy.

He ate some of the now-cold dumplings and tried not to worry as the time stretched out. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Justbob sent more and more impatient notes. Jie fell asleep on the disgusting mattress, her sweater spread out beneath her head, her face girlish and sad in repose.

Then his computer rang.

"Hello?" Texting,
Phone.

"This is Connor Prikkel. I understand you needed to speak to me?"

Now
he texted and clicked the button that pulled Justbob and her economist onto the call.

#

No one in Command Central would meet Connor's eye when he came back into the office, his nose swollen and his eyes red and puffy. He grabbed a spare computer from the shelves by the door -- smashed laptops weren't exactly unheard-of in the high-tension environment of Command Central -- and plugged it in and powered it up.

"The markets are going crazy," Bill said in a low voice, while around them, Command Central's denizens -- minus Kaden, who seemed to have been removed for his own good -- made a show of pretending not to listen in. "Huge amounts of gold have hit the market in the past ten minutes, and the price is whipsawing down."