Mad Worlds Collide (6 page)

Gill poured water into his ice filled glass. "General, as you and your friends here should know, I’d get my balls cut off if I did anything against the MicroIntel Anti-Trust Agreement."

"Mr. Applebee, we have the two major agencies, and even the President on board.  As you said yourself in the press, you do well fighting the Justice Department."

It was true, Gill thought, that he had found government anti-monopoly lawsuits against MicroIntel could be delayed for years by paying ex-government lawyers small sums of cash.  By the time a case finally reached court the old technology was worth peanuts. Remaining competition died like a mouse swallowed by a boa constrictor; slowly and painfully.  But the latest deal was toughand it was designed to protect people’s rights.

"General, in case you haven’t read Time’s Man of the Year issue, It wasn’t me, it was Mr. Robert Davichi who invented all this shit. He’s a pain in the ass but the smartest engineer I’ve got. There is no way I’m going to get him on board.  He’s the manager of that department and I know he won’t break the Justice Department agreement"

"Where is he?  Can we speak to him?" The General’s men had been secretly looking for Robert for two weeks. The man had disappeared into thin air.

"He’s on his way to Japan to fix a system there.  He just got back from a recent vacation. He really needed one, he’s been really stressed lately." Robert hates the military more than I do, Gill thought.  If I give them Robert I’ll never close the deal; the guy’s too honest and smart.

The General looked at the fat man eating chocolates. "Don’t you have a few people we could use to change the chip while Robert’s away?"

"Yeah we do. But we’re going to need some of Robert’s DNA and we going to need someone to steal his Crypto-Code in order  to log in," said Victor.

Gill looked at the fat man.  He sure knows a lot about our system. "Victor, where did you study the Big Blue Neural Tech stuff?" asked Gill.

"Victor’s got a Ph.D. in computers at Berkeley.  He’s the best in the NSA.  I’ve got the fullest confidence in him," said the General, "but we’ll need some DNA for the code."

Probably worked on the prototype we sent to Berkeley, thought Gill. "I’ve got a blood sample, but the Crypto-Code…that I don’t have, that’s in Roberts head, and he changes the code weekly."

"Just send us the DNA sample, I’ll see what my boy in the CIA can do on snooping out the Crypto-Codes."

Gill did not like the situation. These were powerful men who should all be in jail. He looked out the window as another black bird landed on a branch. "General, if you don’t mind me asking---why do you want to change the CIA and NSA chips? I already gave you a backdoor to the system last year and that already broke part of the Justice Deal—you should already be able to snoop on everyone now. What’s going on?"

The light brown man in sunglasses spoke. "Mr.Applebee, the CIA has discovered that all our agencies are being spied on. Only the President and a few close advisors have this knowledge. The project Net-Chameleon has backfired and we can’t figure out what to do. We think there is something wrong with the chips, but if we do this through regular channel, then the Net-Chameleon project becomes public. We can’t let that happen."

"What’s Net-Chameleon?" asked Gill

The General looked at the CIA Director of Psycho-Net Strategy and frowned. The CIA Director now realized that Gill was not informed of project Net-Chameleon: a dumb mistake.

The General put down his coffee and pushed up his glasses. "Mr.Applebee, you’re going to have to trust us on this one—it’s a matter of National Security. Upon orders of the President I cannot discuss this subject, and neither can anyone else in this room." The General looked at Jones.

Gill saw the black bird shit a white ball that fell to the ground. Great timing, he thought. Really got to get rid of these birds, and these military pukes---where does this all stop?  They got me by the balls. Don’t do the deal and find some poison in my coffee some day. Do the deal, get caught, hold the bag and fight the Justice Department. Hell, at least Justice doesn’t have a bunch of idiots studying ways to kill people.  They’re the lesser of two evils.  Just go after the money, these pukes will understand that.  All they’ve read is that I’m after money. They don’t understand it’s the thrill or running shit, owning things.

"Well if it’s national security I can understand. What I would like to know is how much MicroIntel gets for doing the deal?" asked Gill, keeping a straight face.

General Schwartz smiled. "I told the men you were a simple guy Mr. Applebee.  Look, I can’t promise money but I can promise that we’ll use our military connections in Japan to make sure the Japanese accept your AD 2100 product. Once that’s online, the President will push through legislation to run the whole US infrastructure on this system and we’ll have control of everything. The people in this room, along with President, will run the US like it should be run."

"Sounds interesting General…you can count on MicroIntel."

Gill thought to himself: Another day, another deal.

Date:             February 10, 2021

Place:             Earth

Location:        Davichi Home

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. "
- Bertrand Russell

"640K ought to be enough for anybody. "
- Bill Gates in 1981

Susan loved Paris—although she had never been there physically. Her books were love stories. Robert read one entitled Mon Amour Phillipe. The story started out with a woman named Michelle falling in love with a man Phillipe whom she’d only met once on a train to London.  With Michelle it’s love at first sight, and she follows Phillipe back to Paris.  She entices Phillipe into a relationship but realizes he is a perpetual cheater: loving, lying and loving again. Michelle decides to kill the other woman Phillipe is dating, using explosives. She car bombs the other woman, thinking this will woo Phillipe into loving only her. Eventually she kills Phillipe with a pressure sensitive bomb under his toilet seat because she cannot attain his true love. Before being caught by the French police she blows up the Eiffel Tower and a French Airport. 

According to sixty-six publishers this new type of explosive love novel was ahead of its time.

Robert went to Paris three times at the request of MicroIntel. The French government had required the French division of MicroIntel to remove all English Web site information from the French MicroIntel Web Site (which was actually hosted in the US). It required the company to do all business in French, even though half of the engineering staff were Americans and spoke only broken French, or none at all. Robert was against the move but the French put a 15% tax on all MicroIntel Software.  Compliance to the "French Recommendations" removed 10% of the tax. The Internet was a losing battle for France, forcing them to become proficient in English. It didn’t matter to the French government; both American hamburgers and MicroIntel Software had special 5% sin taxes. Gill was infuriated by this new connection of MicroIntel’s software to hamburgers.

On a trip to Paris both Robert and Gill were hit with cream pies. The two men throwing the cream pies yelled:  "Viva La France---stop speaking Anglish, parlez francais, you hamburger software imperialists!"

Andre Voulopontif, a top French academic expert on the US said that McDos and Gill Applebee are the "ideal scapegoat for people who no longer know what they are defending themselves against."

Buddy, Lisa, Jimmy and Susan organized the move to Tokyo with the help of MicroIntel. Gill ordered a staff of five and a moving company called FedExPat to organize the whole trip.

During the week before the flight to Tokyo Robert received another e-mail from the Cult Hacker. He couldn’t trace it, but didn’t tell anyone. The hacker was good but Robert knew he would get him somehow.

The week of packing, saying good-bye, and buying last minute clothes ended quickly. The Davichi family boarded the Japan Airlines 747 in Seattle with only a minor problem: the animal inspection center had trouble finding a cage large enough for Buddy.  The door of the first cage wouldn’t close  as Buddy’s rear end stood out about ten inches.

The center ended up using a zoo’s gorilla cage, with the extra charge sent to MicroIntel.

Buddy entered the oversized cage after eating his anti-gas pill laced dinner. Susan bought the extra strength pills from a toothy Chinese doctor named Chen, who said they might cause some constipation, but added that in broken English, "No gas, we stop gas—give horse two, big dog one."

Susan fed Buddy two pills, one over the recommended dosage, and put the bottle in her travel bag.

Robert settled into his seat next to Susan. Jimmy and Lisa sat separately, toward the back; they didn’t want to speak to their parents for any length of time.

Susan waved over a stewardess. "Excuse me, miss, oh miss, may I have a tonic water please?"

A young Japanese woman gracefully walked over, " One moment please." Her English was clear but definitely non-American.

Susan looked at Robert who was pretending not to notice the slim, pretty stewardess. 

"Too bad we couldn’t get a NorthStar flight…we could talk to Ellen."

"I think this plane would cramp her style." Robert laughed to himself.

"What do you mean by that?"

Ellen was Susan’s friend from College who worked on the Asian-Pacific routes. She was five foot three inches, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, divorced, forty-three years old and reminded Robert of a large swollen potato with red hair that smelled of strong raspberry perfume.

"Nothing honey, hey check out the seats."

Susan looked at the soft seats, the list of twenty-four movies available on the twelve-inch MicroIntel WebTele system. She clicked on the menu button and saw that the Japanese teriyaki steak dinner that was rated extremely healthy.  It had a GE Steak Health Rating of A-plus
.
Susan admired the soft leather seats, the wide assortment of drinks and food  much nicer compared to NorthStar she thought. "Maybe Ellen should try and work for JAL, everything here seems so nice."

"I don’t think so." Robert reviewed the movie list.

"Why not? She works the international route for NorthStar."

"Did you ever notice the age of the women working the Asian Pacific route for NorthStar? They’re all over forty, honey, and it’s because of their seniority that they get that route.  Besides, she’s got a great job."

"Well then she should be experienced enough to work at JAL too."

"Not so.  JAL only hires women under twenty-seven."

Susan grimaced and took a sip of her drink. "That should be illegal. Someone should complain or sue. We should use a different airline."

"It’s Japan.  There’s a lot less lawyers and the Japanese business travelers prefer JAL."

"What about you? Do you prefer JAL?"

"Only for the seats honey." Susan looked at the seats—she agreed.

In the Japanese Travel Directory, Happy Beautiful Organic Travel Life, the NorthStar Asian Pacific route stewardesses were listed as overworked, stressed out, culturally challenged women who hated their husbands, who they saw only two days too many per week because of the Airline’s busy schedule. "Instead take Japan Airlines," wrote the magazine reporter, Taro Takebe, in an "Airline Shootout" listing various airline services.

Happy Beautiful Organic Travel Life was owned MellonBank Publishing Enterprises who also owned 45% of Japan Airlines. 

Robert sat back and closed his eyes. He recalled the time he had taken a NorthStar flight to Japan.  Ellen was working the flight and he could never forget seeing Ellen take a beer from a Japanese business traveler named Shin Samaki who she thought had too much to drink. The guy was trying to order a drink in broken English for his friend and Ellen didn’t understand what he was saying, so she took his beer away. The two Japanese guys looked at each other, puzzled. One lit a cigarette, which was quickly pulled from his mouth by Ellen. "No smoking on NorthStar," said Ellen.

Shin Samaki then started to read his magazineHappy Beautiful Organic Travel Life which Ellen also took away. It had a picture of a semi-naked girl advertising Barnacle Bill on the back.  Barnacle Bill was banned in her home state of Utah.  (Let it be known to the reader that Shin Samaki based his whole view of Americans both on this experience, as well as one he had with Barnacle Bill in Hawaii.)

Ellen had never told anyone but she’d been part of a group of stewardesses flying from London to New York with the famous London soccer team, United Spirit. The team was shit-faced drunk on sheer spirit before they ever boarded.  During the flight Ellen refused to serve a fullback named Klunk.  Angry words were spoken and Klunk eventually grabbed Ellen’s liquor cart and passed out drinks to his friends. Ellen grabbed Klunk by the neck and pushed him into a seat.  Klunk fell and got his shoes stuck up Ellen’s dress. Other stewardesses saw the commotion and came to help.  They started beating up on Klunk with beer bottles.  Klunk, bleeding, ran to the rear of the plane, where he was subdued by an Olympic wrestler using a sleep-hold.  On arrival at JFK, the FBI arrested both Klunk and Ellen.   Ellen was subsequently transferred to the Pacific route where things were "more polite".

"Honey, I need to relax. Could you get me a Valium from my bag?"

Robert went into the overhead cabin and searched through Susan’s purse.  He found a brown capped bottle and took out a pill. He sat down and handed it to Susan. Susan put the pill in her mouth and swallowed some tonic water. As the pill was going down her throat she knew something felt wrong.

"Robert…which pill bottle was
that
?"

"I got it from your purse."

"I asked you to get that out of my travel bag, not my purse! The dog’s pills are in my purse!"

"Bag…purse, how am I supposed to know?"