Kill Process (30 page)

There’s no VW bus anymore, no sneaking out of the house, and while there are secrets, they’re now about the past. If anything I’d done was going to be exposed, it would have happened by now.

There’s no reason not to marry Thomas except that I’m in the middle of starting a company, surrounded by venture capitalists and investors and hounded by my employees and work at all hours of the day and night. Damn it.

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

I lean across the table to kiss Thomas.

“Excuse me, hot plates,” the waitress says just before our lips meet. She pushes her way in between us, setting food down on the table.

I laugh as we wait for her to leave, then come around the table to kiss Thomas. “I love you.”

O
N
M
ONDAY
morning, I stop at Coava for a pour-over on my way into work. I’m in the office crazy early and spend a couple of hours catching up on emails and code commits. Between our night on the mountain and investor calls yesterday, I’m way behind on the actual running of the company. Still, I’ve reviewed every git pull request since I brought Amber on board, and I’m committed (pun intended) to continuing. I start off by approving an expansion of the beta program from five hundred to a thousand users, then get into code changes.

My eyes glaze over when I review the presentation layer changes, a mess of Javascript in what passes for one of the new presentation frameworks the kids like these days.

I scrutinize the ORM commits twice as hard to make up for my cursory skimming of the Javascript. There are countless queries I know could be written better in pure SQL, but I hold myself back from recommending changes. I’ll drive my engineers crazy with that level of attention. I single out one schema change I know will come back to bite us later, and comment on it. Otherwise I settle for merely reading the changes.

Shit. When was the last time I actually wrote code? I check my own git history. It’s been six weeks and two days since I pushed code, and that was a mere fifty-line Python script to query cloud server usage and predict future costs.

Is there something I could add to, where I could work a few hours a week and make a useful contribution?

Everything changes so fast, and the demands on my time would make it
so—

“Boss? You coming to staff?” Amber gestures toward the conference room. “It’s ten now.”

Exactly my point. There’s no way I can do anything without getting interrupted. “Be right there.”

Amber nods and leaves.

I shove my laptop into my bag for the short journey to the conference room to free my hand for my coffee cup, and make it halfway to the conference room before I realize I’ve forgotten the coffee. I go back for my cup, and arrive to find to conference room full.

Igloo must have had the band in over the weekend, because we’re in the big conference room, and there is space for us all now.

I set my laptop down and connect wirelessly to the big screen. I look up at the room, and the talking dies down.

Wow. There are forty-two of us here. I only know the number because headcount growth came up in the investor briefing yesterday. Technically we don’t have employee numbers, because Igloo complained that monotonically increasing identification numbers contributed to the male-dominated, hierarchical management paradigm, so we all have SHA keys instead.

“Where is Igloo?” I ask Amber.

“Not here,” Amber says.

“Igloo’s never missed a day before.”

“She’s probably hungover,” a friend of hers calls out.

That might be, but still, Igloo has never missed a day. Oh, I’ve discovered her on the couch in the break room, reeking of alcohol and pot, but actually not in the office is disconcerting. Still, everyone gets sick eventually.

The meeting passes without incident, and I give the presentation about our plans for the next couple of weeks, including our major development themes. I introduce the new guy, our third business development hire. Afterwards, I’m sidelined into a debate over third-party testing and validation, which goes right through lunch, which I’d planned to use for a series of phone calls, and then I’m into a string of afternoon meetings with marketing.

Dinnertime comes, and half the employees are still here. A call goes round for Mexican takeout orders, and they make the new guy go pick up the order. When the food shows up, everyone gathers in the break room. I grab my burrito and make a hasty exit. I hear the distant thud and the sound of laughter as they try to load a new keg into the refrigerator. I wonder if Igloo’s band has been taking advantage of the free beer. If so, that might be pushing things a bit. I’ll talk to Igloo about it when she gets back.

I think back to the commits I reviewed this morning. I didn’t see anything from Igloo in the last few days. It was the weekend, but this is Igloo we’re talking about. She must be really sick.

I grab my phone, hesitate a second, then dial Igloo.

The phone rings and rings.

“This is Igloo. If you are not the man, leave a message.”

“Hey. This is Angie. I wanted to check to see if you were okay.”

I send the same message by text.

*     *     *

I show up on Tuesday morning, a bit late after meeting with Mat. I’ve got a heavy buzz from an over-caffeinated coffee, and I’m hyper when I arrive at the office. I greet the first few employees with way too much enthusiasm.

“We IPO already?” Amber asks. “You’re sure excited.”

“No, I just drank a mutant coffee bean.”

“Eat some protein. There’s fried chicken in the fridge.”

“Will that help?”

“Not really. I was mostly suggesting it for the placebo effect. Also, I wanted to see if I could make you eat fried chicken for breakfast.”

“Is Igloo in?”

“No.”

“Have you heard from her?”

Amber shakes her head. “Give the girl a break. She works twelve, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Everyone needs some time off.”

I nod and head to my desk. I send another quick message: “Hope you’re feeling okay. Send me a message and let me know you’re still alive.”

It’s another grueling day at work. The Series B funding is in the last stage of wrapping up, with everything in the lawyers’ hands. There’s nothing I need to do, but knowing what’s happening in the background doubles my tension.

In the late afternoon, I go for a walk, and when I come back, the smell of leftover fried chicken is overwhelming. I check my messages again. The lawyers are waiting on one last set of supposedly minor tweaks from CompEx, then we’ll have an agreement to sign.

I pace back and forth in my office, still worried about Igloo. I can’t do this. I need to get out of here.

Sitting in my car, I tether my laptop to my phone, and check HR records to get Igloo’s address. She lives in an apartment complex on the East Side, off Sandy Boulevard. I drive over and park outside her building, feeling foolish, like an overprotective mother.

She’s an adult, right? She doesn’t need me watching her. It would be a great way to spoil a perfectly good employee relationship if I act weird. Still, my gut aches.

I shut off the engine, brainstorming excuses for why I’m visiting her at home. For all I know, I’m breaking some employer law. I hit the intercom for her apartment, and wait without getting an answer.

I stare at the front door, noting the lock mechanism and intercom model. I’m fairly certain I had some exploits for this model, back when I had my . . . hobby. My tools are backed up, heavily encrypted, sitting on random hard drives, including a server in Germany, in case I need them again. Not easily accessible at this moment.

I hit buttons for other apartments. It’s a modern system that uses an autodialer to ring their phone, and can only dial one person at a time.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, I’m at the door.”

“Me who?”

“Sorry, wrong button.”

It takes six tries before someone buzzes the door open.

I find Igloo’s apartment on the second floor and knock. No answer. I knock louder, my knuckles complaining. Still no answer.

Ten minutes later I’m back in my car, still staring at the apartment building.

I drive along Burnside, looking for an open coffee shop. I park outside one, and take out my laptop. I change the MAC address, using a bit of shell script to store the old one and generate a new one. I shut down everything I can that might connect to the net and leak any data about who I am. No browser, no email widgets, no Dropbox, no software update tools. When there’s nothing left except Firefox running in incognito mode, I connect to the wi-fi, and download TOR. It’s compromised, but better than nothing.

I make a couple of configuration changes from memory, and log into A Dead Channel. I page sysop.

SysOp> Back from the dead?

Angel> Long story. Been busy.

SysOp> I know. Been watching. You want a locate on your friend?

I know Nathan keeps tabs on me, and I’m fine with that. We’ve been friends a long time, and it’s good to have people watching your back. I didn’t realize he was keeping
that
close a watch, though. He is blind, so at least I don’t need to worry about him watching my video feeds. But if he can do this, who else can?

Angel> Yeah, her mobile geo would be nice.

SysOp> Hold on.

Two minutes go by. A few people go into the coffee shop. A cop drives by.

SysOp> In her apartment, in the SW corner.

Angel> You sure? I was just there.

SysOp> Yes. You want history?

Nathan could tell me everything about what Igloo’s done online and in the physical world, probably inside of ten minutes. Is it worth that level of intrusion into her privacy? I can’t operate that way anymore.

Angel> No, I’m good. Thanks. Owe you one.

I disconnect everything and power down the laptop. It’s not perfect, although it’s the best I can do without other tools handy to ensure no traces of my connection to the board is in memory.

Back at Igloo’s apartment, I do my thing at the door again, starting with apartment number seven, until someone buzzes me in. I go back to Igloo’s, knock on the door, and then text her. “I know you’re inside. You don’t want to open the door, you don’t reply to messages. I’m worried about you. I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

I sit down on the floor, wrap my arm around my chest, and wait.

A few minutes later I hear footsteps near the door, but it doesn’t open.

“I’m still here,” I call out loudly.

“Go away, Angie.” She talks through the door, her voice muffled.

“I’m worried about you and I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’m fine.”

“You haven’t committed any code in five days. You’re not fine.”

“Can you please leave?”

“No. Let me know what’s going on. We can talk.”

“I’m sick. I don’t want to infect you.”

“I’ve already lost an arm. I’m not afraid of germs.”

Nothing. I keep waiting.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

The deadbolt turns and the door opens.

“You can come in.”

I practically jump to my feet. At least, what counts as jumping for a forty-five-year-old, out-of-shape computer programmer. I inspect Igloo’s face. It’s red, and she’s got bags under her eyes. Nothing I can see looks like bruises, although she’s mostly covered up as usual, under layers of clothing and regular baggy white hoodie.

I couldn’t admit it to myself before, but I was worried she had gotten into trouble with a man. It doesn’t appear that way, at least not obviously. I let out a small sigh of relief.

I follow her into the apartment. It’s small. A tiny, gloomy living room and kitchen, and through an open door, I see a bedroom, brightly lit.

Igloo turns on the living room light and clears her throat. “See? I’m fine.”

“I thought you were sick.”

“I am.”

“You look okay.”

“You’re not my mother. I didn’t want to come into work, okay? Is that such a problem?”

“You’ve never not come into work before. I wasn’t even sure you had a place to live outside the office. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

We’re standing awkwardly, facing each other across the living room. In the kitchen, dishes are piled up, garbage on the counter.

“It’s nothing you can help with.”

There is something. I knew it.

“Is a guy bothering you?”

She shakes her head.

“A girl?”

“No. It’s not about me. It’s my sister, Claire.”

“What’s going on?” I take a seat on the couch, hoping Igloo will follow suit.

She slumps into a chair across the room.

“She, ah . . .” Igloo runs her hands through her hair, then pulls apart a greasy tangle. “Aw, fuck. It’s complicated.”

I nod and wait, suddenly feeling like my therapist.

“Claire took pictures of herself and her girlfriend. My mother doesn’t know about the girlfriend.”

I’m confused about where this is going. “How old is she?”

“Fourteen.”

“Your mom saw the pictures?”

“No.” Igloo takes a deep breath, and I realize she’s on the verge of crying. “Someone messaged Claire. They hacked her phone and had the photos. They threatened to share the photos with everyone. You know what it’s like? When you’re different, and everyone gossips about the slightest thing.”

Now Igloo does cry.

“What’d they want?”

“More photos. Naked pictures.”

Oh, crap. I know where this is going. “Did she?”

Igloo nods and wipes her face with her sleeve.

“And then they wanted still more,” I say, “and they used each new round of more compromising photos to blackmail her.”

Ratters, possibly the most villainous scum on the net this side of Mos Eisley, use remote access tools to invade their victims’ phones and computers and toy with them. A subset of the more manipulative and cruel assholes keep escalating their demands, obtaining ever more incriminating photos and videos, until they turn their victims into their personal online sex slaves.

“They won’t stop,” Igloo yells, her voice choked up. “Why won’t they leave her alone?”