Omnitopia Dawn (52 page)

Out on the South Shore of Long Island, a man in a windbreaker stood alone on the beach in the evening light, staring out at the charcoal-colored sea and listening to the sound from a video playing on his PDA.

“—interesting day,” Dev Logan’s voice was saying as he stood up in front of a news channel’s cameras outside the gates of Omnitopia, his hands in his pockets, looking both casual and focused, “but no worse than that. Our system has been restored to normal operation in Europe and most of North America: the Asian servers were hardest hit, but will be restored to full operation by ten a.m. local time.”

An immediate clamor of voices went up from the surrounding press corps. “Is this going to interfere with the rollout of your new product tomorrow night?” someone shouted.

“No,” Dev said. “Our senior staff members tell me they’re confident that all the new features will be ready to go as scheduled, despite other people’s best efforts to interfere.”

“How much money did you lose last night?”

“You’re going to have to ask my CFO about that,” Dev said. “I’ve had my eye mostly on system management issues today. But I’m informed this evening that our losses were much less than originally thought, as many of the fraudulent transfers were either stopped by our own accounting systems, or identified as suspicious and frozen by banking security systems elsewhere. We expect to recover a significant portion of the illicitly transferred funds, between sixty and seventy percent, within twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The rest we’ll have more news on within a few days.”

“Can you tell us anything about the involvement of the FBI and local law enforcement in discovering the source of these attacks on your system?” shouted another voice.

“We won’t be commenting on investigations that are under way,” Dev said.

“There have been rumors in the blogosphere that rival game companies may have been involved in the attacks,” said another voice. “Would you care to comment?”

There was a pause. Phil looked down at the PDA. “On rumors? Hardly,” Dev said. But his glance swept directly across every gathered pool camera. “I will say this, though. There are always people who’re much more willing to believe gossip, especially nasty gossip, than are willing to wait for the truth to unfold itself.”

The clamor of voices started again. Phil let out an annoyed breath, turned off the PDA and shoved it into his pocket.
That was meant for me,
he thought.
Pretending to hold out the olive branch even though he knows damn well what’s going on. Damn him, I’m tired of the self-actualized act! Why won’t he just get up and punch back when he’s been punched? Why won’t he call me and just tell me off to my face? That at least would be a jumping-off point. We could finally get straight with each other, we could start to—

His phone rang. Phil swore, pulled it out, glanced at the name that came up on the screen, punched the talk button. “Yes?”

“Where is our payment?” said the disguised voice on the other end.

“Pending,” said Phil, “while I find out how much I actually got of the service I paid you for.”

A long silence followed. “You knew how the operation was going to be carried out,” said the voice. “If when we first came to our arrangement you had any second thoughts about what results it might produce, or how the markets might or might not move as a result, you should have made them known. You got exactly what you paid for.”

“I did not,” Phil shouted, “because I paid for those servers to be wiped clean! And what do I get? Nothing but four measly hours of downtime and more positive publicity for the guy who’s supposed to be drowning in negatives and losing his shirt right now!”

“If their system was more robust than you gave us to understand,” said the voice, “that’s your error, not ours. We expect payment within the agreed time window.”

“Or what?” Phil said. “You’ll report me to the Better Business Bureau?”

“Or we’ll find out if your game’s servers are as robust as Omnitopia’s,” said the voice and the receiver clicked loudly in Phil’s ear.

He stared, unbelieving and furious, at the phone, then hung it up and shoved it into the other pocket.

His damn luck again,
Phil thought, looking out at the darkening sea.
This is just not fair. Not fair at all.

Where can I go from here? What do I have to
do
to win?

He turned his back on the sea and headed back for the beach house to consider his options. Dev being Dev, he would mistake the present outcome for a triumph.
Give him a few weeks,
Phil thought,
let him think everything’s settling down—and then see what else we might hit him with. This expansion of his is too much too soon. Some weak spot will reveal itself.

The check-in lines at the international airport in Atlanta were never exactly enjoyable, but it seemed to Danny that they were moving more slowly than he’d ever seen them do. The place was thick with people even on a midweek midafternoon, the time that Danny had been advised to fly to avoid delays or unwanted attention.

Ahead of him, the people in the line inched forward toward the uniformed woman up at the counter. Danny sighed and inched forward with them. As advised, he’d packed nothing but a carry-on. He’d be able to dip into his new bank account to buy what he needed when he got where he was going. He was already carrying a healthy wad stuffed into his wallet, what would have been almost a year’s salary for him. It had been difficult for him, when he’d looked into the bank account yesterday morning, to leave the remainder of the money there—an amount that was more like a lottery win than anything else.

The other people, those who’d set this deal up for him, had already taken their cut. Danny had been notified of the amount by e-mail, and that figure too had been one that had taken his breath away. But even after their money came out, he still had a ton more left. The people at the other end had advised him not to withdraw too much while he was still at home; that could make the bank suspicious. But nothing had happened so far, and as the line inched forward again, Danny smiled to himself.
Finally. Finally it’s happening . . .

He hadn’t bothered to say good-bye to his boss, or even to tell him what was happening. Danny simply hadn’t gone to work today. His apartment was already empty of everything that mattered to him, all the things that counted stuffed into a storage place last week, and the key stuffed into his landlord’s mailbox along with the torn- up lease. They could keep his security deposit: Danny didn’t care. In his wallet he had the address for the hotel he was staying at in the Keys until he flew out to Bermuda and beyond a few days from now. All his thoughts now were on mint juleps and white beaches, and Danny smiled as the line inched forward again, leaving him with only two people in front of him, a husband and wife who were arguing under their breath about something as they waited for the next counter to open up.

The phone in his pocket was mercifully quiet. For all Danny knew, his boss Ricardo was calling his old number every five minutes, demanding to know where he was. But that phone was now at the bottom of the wretched scummy little lake between the old strip mall and the FedEx depot. Standing there last night under the yellow sodium lights, throwing the phone in and hearing it splash, had been one of the happiest things Danny had ever done. He smiled again to think of Ricardo railing at his voice mail, threatening Danny with firing and worse.
There’s a voice I won’t ever have to hear again,
he thought.
Thank you, God.

The married couple were waved forward to the counter in front of him. Danny had just time enough to pull out the printout of his e-ticket and his new passport when the lady at the counter over to the left called, “Next!”

He headed over to her, handed her the e-ticket. She smiled. Danny smiled back: she was definitely pretty enough to be worth smiling back at. “Heading for Key West—” she said, and started tapping at the keyboard.

“That’s right,” Danny said.

“Can I see your ID, please?” she said, still tapping away.

Danny handed it over. “Kind of busy today,” he said.

She glanced at him, glanced at the back page of the passport, tapped at the keyboard again, and pushed the passport back to him, smiling. “It’s always busy these days,” she said, turning her attention back to the monitor behind the counter. “Vacation time . . . everybody’s going away . . .” She shook her head, frowned slightly at the monitor, and typed some more. “How many bags are you checking?”

“None,” Danny said. “I’ve just got the carry-on. Is the plane full?”

“Yeah,” the counter lady said, “pretty full, shoulder season’s just about over . . .” She peered at the monitor for a moment. “Here we go. Aisle or window?”

“Uh, window,” Danny said.

She typed for a few moments more, then pushed him across a tag for his carry-on bag. “Just put that around the handle,” she said, and a moment later slid his boarding pass across to him. “Twelve- F, gate D16, boarding time is ten forty-five.” She circled the boarding time on the pass with a colored marker and put a slash through the seat number. “Probably you should just go straight through.” And she smiled at him again. “Have a nice trip!”

“Thanks!” Danny said. “Enjoy your day!” And he headed for security, where he handed the bored-looking blue-shirted Homeland Security agent his passport and boarding pass and glanced at the long line of resigned-looking people in various stages of taking off their shoes and belts.

That was when he realized that the woman in the blue shirt was looking over his shoulder at something else, her expression still bored, as she held his boarding pass up. Danny looked over his shoulder and saw two burly guys in Atlanta police department uniforms coming along, staring at him with great interest.

The Homeland Security agent handed one of the policemen Danny’s boarding pass. “They flagged him four- forty at the desk,” she said, then to Danny, “Sir, you need to go with these officers.”

“What?” Danny said.

“We have some questions for you about your travel today, sir,” said one of the policemen, taking the boarding pass as his partner took Danny’s elbow. “Did you buy your ticket yourself?”

Danny’s hair was standing up on the back of his neck.

“Uh, yeah—”

“And did you buy it with your own money, or money someone gave you?”

That was when Danny knew it was over. “It’s not fair,” he said as they walked him away; “they said no one would notice!”

“Sir,” one of the cops said, “I have to tell you that you’re under arrest on suspicion of fraud and receiving stolen goods. Please listen while I tell you about your Miranda rights. Anything you say may be used against you—”

And they led Danny off toward one of those nondescript doors that every traveler sees in every airport. Danny had occasionally seen these before and wondered what was behind them. Now, though, one opened before him, and it occurred to Danny that whatever else might be behind this one, mint juleps—now or later—were not going to be on the list.