The Celestial Instructi0n (20 page)

Joex awoke to someone fellating him. From above him billows of
nylon cloth were attached in a tractrix grid of gathered lines as if parachutes
deployed upside-down. He realized that he nested in a heap of random down
jackets, sleeping bags and duvets on some sort of platform up in the ceiling
space of the shadow lab. The heat collected as it rose. It was comfortable,
cloudlike, almost ethereal. It was quiet but not lonely and could not quite
make out the susurrus of the conversations below.

He was tired and aching, but didn’t move so as not to disturb the
attention he was being given. He reached out his arm to guide the shoulder of whoever
was his personal satyr. Looking down the length of his body, he saw that his
warm nakedness was dappled with down garments. Margaret was articulating his
debauch with gentleness and specificity. She was using a rectangular plastic
bag in a frugal expression of prudence, and looked as if she were prepared to
spend as much time as needed performing her art. When Joex touched her,
Margaret glanced up, the corners of her eyes wrinkling into a smile and reapplied
herself silently to her slow glissades.

Joex finished with a sigh, clasping Margaret’s shoulders with his
hands. Margaret uttered a little laugh and asked, “Did you have a nice sleep?”

Joex gently craned his head down to the top of Margaret’s and
kissed it.

Margaret drew back, sat up, criss-crossed her legs, and put her
palms on the floor beside her shoulders. She launched into technical analysis
as if she were an engineer returning from a lunch break.

“So, this is what is happening. While you slept, the prophets looked
at your code. Your correspondent, Ouest, Sam, was right to point out the coactive
buffer overrun. It is amazing that this was never found in all these years.
But, then Sendmail was a bug breeder for the first twenty years of its
deployment. Its original generality turned out to be a weakness when only
required to do the narrow task that the Internet eventually required of it.

“Dickie—the prophet with the high albedo—wants to alert the
community immediately, with a pithy email to select security mailing lists both
in the industry and with some players he knows at Ft. George Meade. Of course
the players insist they work for the Credit Union, and their encyclopedic
knowledge of cryptography and covert channels is a happy accident. But.”

“But?” said Joex.

“But—assuming you are not a delusional schizophrenic—the context
is that the Crux is really trying to take you out. The footage from last night
was persuasive. I am so sorry about your sister! She paused. But even the Crux
are reputed to act with efficiency and relentless, but deliberate, haste. Xtance,
who you also met, and the third prophet, Lex, who you haven’t, think that their
extreme measures mean that we are running out of time. And not coincidentally
Lex thinks you may be a danger to us and would like to move you out of here to
an even less public house.” She paused as if weighing the possible effect of
her next sentence.

“And, yeah, the coactive is probably embedded in over ninety
percent of commercial switches. And has been for the last twenty years. So
whether you are delusional or not, there is a clear and present danger. I have
no idea how much damage could be caused, especially to the United States, but I
suspect a lot. In fact, a huge amount.”

Though confirming his suspicion, paradoxically Joex felt his chest
flutter in relief as he felt as if his nightmare was finally shared and
understood. He felt as if he were floating away. At least a few others now had
his information and in fact had confirmed it was knowledge.

Margaret went on, “the simple act of communicating this externally
may precipitate its exploit. The time to code, test, and issue a patch over so
many platforms and corporate entities will be almost certainly too long given
the time we likely have.”

“So, is there anything to do to reduce the threat? What are we
going to do? What can I do?”

“We call it ‘denaturing’ the production code to keep its
properties while lessening its appeal to vandals. Yes, this is the plan. We are
writing our own exploit for the error, that is actually the easy part after
someone has pointed out where to look in the first place. In fact, they may be
testing it now in one of the sandboxen. Then we distribute it ourselves into
the wild. What we want is to prevent others’ from exploiting this while we or
others write definitive patches. Sterile fruit flies. We need time. Any mistake
on our part might be as bad as the intent of the Adversary. The distribution is
the key—universal and soon. But first, this fix has to be as perfect as we can
make it.”

“Do we bring in the government, say, the military or the TSA?”
Joex asked.

Margaret brayed—how else could it be described?—“the government
doesn’t work in the domain of time. The government has immense resources and
some kind of organizational perseverance. But insight and tempo are qualities I
would not associate with them. We must summon a monkey jump, a divine move. In
hours or sooner if possible—not days or weeks.”

“And what you can do, beyond help to think about how to distribute
this patch as quickly and universally as possible, just stay the fuck alive.
Bringing us this information is sufficient for one heroic lifetime. Oh yes, it
is sufficient. The virtual of the shadow lab is that is can find the people who
can best use your knowledge as quickly as possible. In fact, that is the most
important purpose of the entire Internet. And maybe the whole culture.”

Joex sat up and felt the weight of lack of sleep on his chest. “At
least I can look over your shoulders and maybe help. And, Margaret,” he looked
at her with a tentative expression, “don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Sure do. Outside our virtual worlds, we have jugglers, jongleurs,
and gamahuchers. I’m one of those.” “No hard feelings,” she smiled and
playfully made to slap at Joex’s naked groin. She stood up and motioned with
her head toward the wooden ladder on the wall. “If you can find your clothes, let’s
go down together.”

In a way, Sam had been lucky that the smart phone’s battery had
failed. Along with the failure of the communication function, the phone’s GPS
tracking which was logged and monitored whether the smart phone was switched on
or off was also terminated. But Sam did not know this, nor did he know whether
or not his last message had been successfully transmitted. His first priority
now, after keeping out of the sight of security men—especially Cousin Robert’s
go-boys—was to obtain Internet time. The smart phone might be parlayed into
such time, or perhaps recharged and used again surreptitiously near the
communications building. Spotlights had been turned on at the apex of the
building and Sam could see the dishes aimed straight up as if prayerful hands
toward a God that was both technologically sophisticated and unimaginably
distant.

But it wasn’t technology that was the key for Sam now. It was
people. Diverse, noisy, communicative. Living outside his imagination. Sam
heard the honk of a horn in the night; the distinctive three note fanfare of
the minibus operator whose corporate motto was “God Bless this Fiat.”

The S/L Motor Drivers Union on Charlotte Street. That is where
there was sure to be drivers handing out any time day or night. Sam joined a
line of people trudging with their goods at the side of the road heading east.
In the bobbing candlelight, Sam saw a lizard with yellow head and shoulders
jump off the bed of a handcart fashioned from random planks and an automobile
rear axle. With the drivers, he had hope. Maybe some food, maybe they know a
charger or computer he could use.

Near the equator, the period of sunrise and sunset was very short.
One instant it is light. Then darkness. Then once again, broad daylight as if
the gloom had been a dream washed out in a sudden downpour. While it was still
dark and only pregnant with the possibility of dawn, Sam felt much more hopeful
as he squatted around the brazier that the drivers’ boys kept fired up during
the night. He flashed his stolen smart phone as if a membership card and
tentatively took a handful of rice and fish from the common bowl. No one
challenged his right to share the food.

Dangling the smart phone between two slender fingers as if it were
the most commonplace totem in an animism of wealth, he asked the boys if they
knew of computers. “Computer!” one said, “Computer!” and then glanced into the
darkness at an abacus propped against a cement block wall overgrown with vine.

“No. Machine! Electric machine, computer!” Sam said. The various
creoles made communicating a game of ghosts.

“We sell provision here.” One of the boys enigmatically responded.
“Computer, there!” the boy pointed at a driver enjoying a pink Elephant brand
smoke while lounging against his battered taxi.

Sam rose, sauntered up to the driver, displaying his smart phone
and asked “can you take me to a computer. I would like to use the Internet for
a few minutes.”

The driver whose lower lip puckered into a trellis of white keloid
scars looked at him appraisingly. “Cost money,” he said, “where is your money.”
Sam couldn’t tell what tribe the man was from, but it wasn’t Mende. Sam showed
him the smart phone from a distance. The driver reached for it, but Sam kept it
just out of reach. There were a handful of incandescent bulbs shining in their
aluminum reflectors scattered around the Union and sparkles of light were
flashing off the smart phone into Sam and the driver’s eyes.

Sam could see the greed grow in the driver’s face.

“OK. I take you to computer, my cousin, you use if you give me
that. It work?”

“Battery needs charging. Works fine,” said Sam.

“We charge. We see. If mobile don’t work, you get a machete
beating. You deal?”

Sam had no doubt that the driver did have a Chinese machete,
patiently honed and oiled with palm oil in a rag mounted on the driver’s door
or under his seat. Violence was an element of survival in Freetown. A good
driver could drive mostly between the road hazards, fix a wreck, find your
food, change your money, get your lady or boy whores with their palm wine—or
cut off your head with only the regret that the money and property taken off
your corpse would be your last contribution to his welfare.

“My cousin works in hotel, he has computer,” the driver said, “get
in the front.”

With the driver chauffeuring him, Sam was once again driving
toward the sea. There were of course no street lamps. Pedestrians weaving their
way around piles of rotting refuse suddenly loomed out of the dark into the
taxis mis-aimed headlights. Both of the headlights worked though after a
fashion and the driver was able to get to a dilapidated concrete building in
less than ten minutes. There was a torn green awning over the poorly lit
entrance that spelled out “Lord’s House Hot.” The driver took his machete and
sucking on what was left of his lower lip, directed Sam into the building.

Inside the Hotel, which looked as if it had been decaying even as
it had been designed by an impaired imagination, had a single bare bulb shining
in the foyer. Beside a thick wooden counter that looked as if the most solid
element of furniture that Sam could see, an office with open door and
flickering candle showed some movement as a shadow emerged into the lobby.

“Cousin Kena!” the boy emerging from the office said to the
driver.

“Cousin MJ!” driver said in return, slapping the boy on his
shoulder, “boy want to use computer. He trade mobile that he says works fine,”
the driver, MJ, slapped the flat of his machete against his thigh and sucked
even more vigorously at his lower lip. Sam showed off the smart phone to the
boy, moving it in the bulb’s light to give off a flash. The boy held out his
hand for the phone and Sam reluctantly handed it over under MJ’s gaze. The boy
took it gingerly, turned it over and weighed it in his hand, then studied it
carefully and pressed the power switch. The display lit for a second and then
turned off. The boy shook the mobile and said, “Needs charge.”

The driver said nothing but kept slapping his thigh and sucking
his lip. Kena, the night manager, said, we have a charger for this. He went
back into his office and Sam heard some rummaging around in a box. Kena came
out with a tiny charger with a tangled cord. He plugged it into a yellowed wall
outlet, took his finger off the mobile’s charging port and plugged it in. As if
in sympathetic greeting or imminent execution, the main foyer bulb momentarily
dimmed and then resumed its steady unhealthy yellow glare.

“We have power,” Kena said, unnecessarily, “mobile charge in no
time.”

Sam knew of course that while the smart phone could be charged and
used in some manner the fact that here it couldn’t make calls or browse the
Internet might cause an unpleasant confrontation with the driver, MJ, who had
not only wasted petrol to give Sam a right to the Lord’s House Hotel, he was
wasting time and possibly fares by staying.

Sam said, “Computer?” The boy motioned him into the office. While
the boy chatted with the driver, both looking at the polished screen of the
smart phone, Sam sat at an ancient PC that was covered with paper ledgers and a
ashtray that appeared to double as a spittoon. Carefully moving the stacks of
paper and other detritus to the floor, he reached behind the old CRT monitor
and pressed the rocker switch on. An amber light started glowing in the front
bezel. Relieved, Sam, reached behind the ancient computer box, found a
corresponding switch, and rocked it on as well. While there was no lights this
time, the box emitted a arpeggio of beeps and a fan hum that seemed to turn in
fits as it blew out pieces of dust and lint that had accumulated in the fan
ducting.