dis first chapters.docx

7/30/2019 DIS First Chapters.docx

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In general from the speech of a man good or bad angels are created, according to hisdeeds.

-from Shaar Ruach Hakodesh I by Chaim Vital

I think this place is full of spies. I think Im ruined. Didnt anybody Didnt anybody tell you? Didnt anybody tell you this rivers full of lost sharks?

-The National, Secret Meeting

Only a machine can appreciate a sonnet written by another machine"

-Alan Turing


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BOOK ONE:The Hermit & TheHanged Man


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ONE: I Read the News Today (Oh Boy)

I.

So you understand what youre signing up for?

Aaron Zeitlin leaned back in his chair and tented his index fingers on his stomach,

a posture he believed made him look relaxed although in truth, nothing made him look

relaxed. His tendency to slouch when standing and slump when sitting only accentuated

a perpetual tenseness in his body, as if even at twenty seven, he still hadnt burned off all

the energy hed possessed as teena ge boy. He watched the potential client drum on the

knuckles of his left hand and sweat. Chicagos July heat and the broken AC in the

stifling third-floor office were partly to blame, along with his weight, which, like most

of Aarons potentials, was above average.

I mean, yeah, the potential said, I came all the way out here, right? And you

were pretty clear on the phone and all. His voice sputtered out of him, weakly, as if

from a punctured tire. Middling height, slightly balding, quiet and unassuming.

More and more these were the people he dealt with: reductions of actual men. He

wondered if this was the function of the Internet as Old Testament god, reiterating the

Genesis narrative. Through a series of Biblical miscommunications, lifespans were cutfrom the Methuselan to a paltry hundred year upper limit. Through a series of

technological overestimations, maybe the human race was being scaled back to

quiverers, blubberers like this potential sitting in front of him.

What was your name again? Aaron asked abruptly.

Harry. Harry Lime.

Aaron chuckled a little and the potential stared at him. Thats funny, Aaron said.

Whats funny about it? the potential asked defensively.

Harry Lime was a character in The Third Man , Aaron explained.

I dont know what that is.

Its a movie Orson Welles was in before he got He paused.

Got what?

Fat , Aaron thought.


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Older, Aaron said. He paused, took a deep breath and fixed the potential with a

stare he hoped was full of meaning.

She must be pretty special, he said, dipping back into the script. This is what the

script was for, why he had set it to memory: a limited branching program that always

funneled towards a sale. On paper, it was glorious. It was immaculate. It even

occasionally worked in practice, if his brain could run the fucking software.

The drum solo stopped. The sweat reabsorbed into his brow and the potential lit

up like Aaron was playing his favorite song. The script is holy,he reminded himself, the

script is scripture .

Helens all the world to me. He grinned, and corrected himself. I mean, part of

the world, he said .

As though he were taunting a snagged fish with a last moment of freedom, Aaronlet the line of his questioning go slack. This moment too was part of the script.

You could include a provision in your will, he shrugged, looking out the

window. On the street below, Vietnamese kids held down stoops with their collective

weight and glared defiantly into the heat haze. They did not sweat. They pointed cell

phones at one another menacingly, like Star Trek phasers, texting to those three stoops

away that nothing was happening here and nothing was likely to happen.

The law is still fairly arcane, Aaron continued, turning back to the room, but a

lot of attorneys are more savvy in dealing with these situations than you might think. The potential made a study of his shoes, which Aaron had already noted looked

cloddish and uncomfortable. Like hooves, reinforcing Aarons image of him as ovine.

Maggie and Imy wifewe made our wills together. We have the same lawyer and

everything. Total transparency, thats what marriage is all about, right?

Rilke says its about protecting one anothers solitude, Aaron said, and instantly

wished he hadnt.

Im sorry?

I wouldnt know, Aaron admitted, feigning a sort of embarrassment. Havent

been lucky enough. Yet.

That sounds hypocritical, doesnt it?

Theres no judgment here, Aaron said.

I know in a certain way it makes me a bada bad husband? A bad person, even?


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But when I met Helen The potentials eyes went vague and dreamy.

On a tech support site, Aaron read off the paperwork on his desk. This prompt

redirected towards the core of the script: the open space of confessional into which the

potential was to step. Once there, the potential would relate a highly personal, highly

unique story that was nearly identical to every other potentials story, within a few

variation factors, all of which the script took into account.

A Mac forum, the potential sighed, lovesick. Its the old story, you know? Id

upgraded to Snow Leopard and it was glitching every time I went to a site with any

Flash in it. Id been on hold with the Apple store for hours, this was after the launch

when it was still buggy. I mean, not beta buggy, but. I thought maybe on one of the

sites, people might have run into the same thing. SheHelenshe isnt even like a M ac

Genius or anything. She was so kind, you know? Walked me through the command line

stuff, waited to see if it unglitched. I know it was wrong to send her a follow-up email. I

mean, to say thanks, right? But then she asked maybe I wanted to meet up in Earth-2

sometime

Youre only a man, Aaron said.

And when it started to becomeexplicit, he continued. We had rules, you

know? She, I think, has someone else too. Someone she didnt want tohurt. But we

agreed, all of that, all of our lives, stayed out of it. It was like we were a whole world,

the two of us. The potential looked down at his shoes again. Two halves of our ownlittle world.

Thats very romantic, Aaron deadpanned. He could imagine the romance of it.

Sweaty fat man, knuckles shuffling desperately under the desk while his wife snored

away upstairs. Seeking that moment he could look back on as some sort of communion

with another, but an annihilation of self. La petite mort .

Aaron rubbed once at his eye before forcing his hand back down.

And if something were to happen to mein this world, the potential was

prattling, I wouldnt want her not to know. Or to think Id abandoned her

someho w. All of this fell comfortably within the script. If anything, the potential had

played his part better than Aaron had.

Well, thats what we do, Aaron said confidently. We statements, he found, made

the potential feel there was a whole company involved, a team of experts, rather than


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just Aaron. The script was rife with we statements. In the unfortunate event something

happens to you, shell be informed exactly according t o your wishes. And obviously, this

will be completely separate from any arrangement you and your wife Aaron let this

trail off, but it still sparked a mild panic in the potential. He looked over one meaty

shoulder, then the other, as if his wife might have been crouching behind one of the

filing cabinets the whole time.

She wont know at all?

We pride ourselves on discretion, Aaron smiled. All we need from you is your

signature.

Usually, this was the moment the potential relaxed and entered into the familiar

ritual of signing a document. But the potential began a new routine of fidgeting, a

convulsive and repetitive gripping of one hand in the other.Thats it? the potential asked? I mean, how does it work?

The piece of sand in his right eye was on the move again, Aaron was sure of it. He

wanted a drink. He wanted to scream at this little blob of a man that he was already

fucking here , so why not sign the fucking contract already? His mood of minor

annoyance, with its tendency to snowball and accrete other annoyances onto itself,

turned into anger. Aaron rose from his chair, keeping one hand on the desk for balance.

With his free hand he gripped the scrub pad of dark hair and straightened himself out to

his full six feet of height. This adjustment of posture left him towering above thepotential. The little fat man cowered in exactly the way Aaron had hoped he would.

We use a piece of proprietary software, engineered by myself, which, once you

sign that paper, will run a constant search for your name and any known aliases

I dont have any

in death certificates and obituaries from every hamlet, township and city in the

world. If you died on a riverboat in Kuala Lumpur, wed know about it by the time your

body washed to shore.

Do they have rivers in Kuala Lumpur?

No idea. But if they did, and you were to drown in one, Mavet would find you.

Thats thats unsettling, the potential stammered.

The likelihood of drowning during a boat trip is surprisingly low, Aaron said.

Not that. I mean, the idea theres a program out there running all the time,


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hoping to find me dead.

Aaron sat on the edge of the desk, looking down on the potential like a teacher

reprimanding a pupil. Its a program, he explained. It doesnt hope for anything. I t

does. If you die, Mavet tells us.

Mavet?

Aaron put his thumb and middle finger to the farthest points of his eyebrows and

squeezed. He drew a sharp breath through his teeth. In certain traditions, when a child

is named, the name goes on a list held by an angel named Malach-ha-Mavet. The, well,

the angel of death.

Thatsthats even worse, said the potential, looking at Aaron beseechingly.

Aaron replied with a smile Alice used to refer to as his rictus.

We here at Death Information Services like our little jokes.

Was that one of them? the potential asked, wiping sweat from his upper lip.

It was, of course. When hed started the company three years ago, Aaron had

jotted a dozen ominous sounding acronyms on a legal pad. END. CRYPT. GHOST.

Electronic Notification of Death. Cover or Remove Your Private Things. Getting

Hacked Offers Spiritual Terminus. He felt like Ian Fleming concocting evil spy

organizations. But he chose DIS. Not only because it was the name of the capital city of

hell, but also because it was the counter to all the language of social networking sites, a

language hed helped create. DIS undid connect. It was the anti -like. Some of the bestrebellions are quiet and personal.

I dont mean to rush this, Aaron said, changing tack, a nd I can understand if

youre uncomfortable with the workings of the Mavet program. If it seems, to you, like

the Welsh hand of death.

The Welsh whatnow?

On the cover of Sgt. Peppers? Aaron said. The Beatles album? Theres a hand

over Paul McCartne ys head. Some people said it was a sign he was about to die. Or was

already dead.

Ive never heard that.

No shoes on Abbey Road ? I buried Paul? Still no response. Aarons brain was

switching into random access mode, pulling facts from deep in the banks. He wanted to

stick to the fucking script, but the script had become a hyperlinked mess, every word


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tying itself to another concept, pushing off into useless digressions. He thought of a

fifties movie robot droning does not compute , smoke beginning to pour from the

ventilator shafts of its ears as every connection met every other connection in its

circuitry and shorted out.

Its a whole thing, Aaron said, waving his hand and returning to his seat. The

point here, were all going sooner or later. Mavet isnt going to bring that about any

faster, nor is keeping your name off the list going to prolong your life. But if you sign

this paper Here Aaron shoved the contract towards the potential. and, god forbid,

something does happen, well know about it. And well be able to inform Helen in a way

that is both discreet and compassionate. The way you want it. The way youve asked us

to do it.

The potential leaned forward, looking at the contract. Then he looked up atAaron.

But first, you need to sign.

II.

One nice thing about a bad intake was the likelihood that the next time Aaron had

to deal with the client, said client would be dead. Since opening Death Information

Services three years before, Aaron had become skilled at handling the dead. In the daysand months following a persons death, their ghost wandered the internet restless and

lost. Their profiles haunted InterEm and Holler. Their old blog posts, ownerless and

authorless now, manifested in search results like unquiet spirits rattling tables and

guiding planchettes. Without Aarons guidance, many of these ghosts would never find

peace. He tidied up their corpses, removing unsightly files and browser histories. He

bequeathed passwords to otherwise lost and locked accounts. More importantly, he

protected their loved ones from the bedeviling digital echoes of them. He whispered to

them in code and laid them to rest. But in all that time, hed never gotten any better at

dealing with clients while they were still alive.

Aaron shut the office door behind him and locked all four locks, working from the

top down. He made his way down the stairs and out onto Argyle, with the Red Line

stop depositing its daily delivery of itinerant lunch enthusiasts in the heart of Viet


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Town. The locals, who mostly tol erated or disregarded the presence of Aarons office

above the Cathay Bank branch, stayed off the streets during lunch hour. Aaron decided

to treat himself to a drink at My Lai. Dac, the owner, made far and away the best pho in

Chicago, but only worked the lunch shift, preferring to spend the evenings with his

family. In the years hed known him, Aaron had never determined what number of

people this term encompassed. My family served as a linguistic shell around them,

keeping them distinct and indeterminate. Once, Aaron summoned up the nerve to ask

Dac why hed chosen the name My Lai for a Vietnamese restaurant. We massacre

hunger, Dac informed him inscrutably.

From what Aaron had been able to gather, Dac had learned to cook from his

father, a chef and single father in Hai Phong; Dacs mother having passed away from a

disease Dac would only refer to as something very mysterious. After a period of

mourning that stretched blackly across the boys childhood, Dacs father had fallen for a

minor bureaucrat in the US embassy whose kitchen employed him. The kind of

buttoned-up grey statesman who peopled Graham Greene novels. The bureaucrat had

brought father and boy back to the States after the fall of Saigon, but the State

Department in the late seventies wanted all its homosexuals good and bearded. Forced

to choose between love and country, the bureaucrat chose the latter and, armed with a

pocketful of hush money, Dac and his father drifted across the country, finally settling

into its middle.All this Aaron had pieced together from occasional autobiographical snippets over

their four years of acquaintance, usually in the form of new commentary. Troop

drawdowns in Tengistan prompted a tale of Dac and his father air-lifted out of Saigon

as part of Operation Frequent Wind, Dac crammed under the trembling arm of no less

than Graham Martin, US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. A

presidential candidates comments on health care led to a description of Dacs mother

and the mysterious illness that so desiccated her a young Dac tearfully insisted they put

her into the tub so she might re-inflate like a dried out sponge. A statewide public

proposition on gay marriage, defeated by a wide and virulent margin, evoked stories of

those short-lived halcyon days in suburban DC when Dac once had again found himself

with two loving parents.

My Lai was in a basement with small windows near the ceiling to let in weak


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shafts of daylight. It was a serviceable place to start drinking in the early afternoon. One

thing he liked about Dac was that their lack of a shared culture made all social

interaction reliably awkward. Aaron wasnt entirely sure how well Dac spoke English

and how much of his terse cadence was affect, but there was a comfort in neither

needing nor expecting to be understood by the person to whom you were speaking.

Aaron assumed everything he said to Dac seemed as much of a non sequitur as

everything the proprietor said to him.

Dac poured him a drink without asking and Aaron nodded in thanks.

Behind the bar were three large televisions, beaconlike in the dim. Dac kept the

news on each of them during lunch and the TVs were arranged from right to left to

correspond with Dacs assessment of the news channels political views. CNN sat dead

center with the sound up, while Fox News raged silently to the right and MSNBC lip-

synched ineffectively to the left. Patrons who didnt want to hear about it sat at the

booths, out of earshot, but Aaron made a point of sitting at the bar. Partly for speedy

drink service, but als o to hear Dacs running commentary on the headlines. Dac

followed the news like Aarond followed certain soap operas in college, with a sense of

distance and irony.

News not history, hed told Aaron. When news happens to people, they call

hotline, show up on channel, witness to incident under their name. When history

happens to people, they never know about it. People in your towers, history crashed intothem, they never knew.

The news anchor was tanned like a catchers mitt. He delivered the war rep orts

and entertainment news with perfect equanimity. Frank Sinatra would be great news

man, said Dac. On weekends, hed have gig dancing on Cronkites grave.

Walter Cronkites not dead, Dac, Aaron informed him.

You keep telling yourself that, Dac replied.

The alcohol spread a warmth through him, melting the jagged edges off the

mornings intake and leaving him feeling confident again. The anchor came back on

with the hours human -interest story. The president of Kandaq had joined InterEm,

claiming it was a good way to keep in touch with his people. The anchor delivered this

news with the smug assurance that only the president of Kandaq, whose name he

repeatedly and variously mispronounced, would attempt such a clumsy piece of media


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manipulation. InterEm, the anchor informed them, now had over five hundred million

members, meaning if it were a country, it would be larger than Japan. The anchor

delivered this bit of information as if to say, in your face, Japan,and mispronounced the

president of Khandaq s name. The president of Khandaq had five thousand friends on his

page within the first hour.

Real news for the day, Dac said. President of Kandaq has friends.

Turn that shit off, Aaron muttered, his mood soured at the mention of InterEm.

Days earlier, the European press had reported on the liquidation of a newspaper office

outside the Khandaqi capital of Shiruta. The president had long since claimed all

businesses and citizens as assets of the country, allowing the euphemism liquidate to be

applied to property seizures and assassinations. The story hadnt made it to the US

press; they were busy reporting on the presidents InterEm status updates. He could seeKandaqi soldiers, standing with guns cocked behind a row InterEm users at their

terminals, screaming at the users to click the like button. Aaron downed the rest of his

drink, crunching the ice cubes between his molars, and tossed a twenty on the bar

before walking out.

III.

Aaron stepped out of the bar an owl in the daylight. His hand found brick and he guidedhimself along the front of the building, willing his pupils to pinhole. Halfway down the

block objects rose out of the milk of his vision: the shapes of cars, the sheet-draped

ghosts of passersby. Colors slowly tuned themselves in and Aaron, half-drunk in the

midafternoon, rejoined the world.

It was of course changed. The street seemed to throb, its browns going red, its

blacks gulping light in rhythm with Aarons pulse, which announced itself in his

temples. He should have eaten something; the alcohol had shot through his stomach and

was coursing in him. The office, a chair, a nap, he thought. Goals, aspirations. A half-

remembered song thrummed in his head, something old and psychedelic, all reverb,

stretched vocals and swirling guitars. Baby, your phrasing is baaaaaad, and its driving me

maaaaaad .


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Opening the door to the office was like stepping into a lungful of smoke. He fell

into his chair, letting it lift him up, keep him off the floor. His head lolled back and he let

it. He put his hands to his lips as if in prayer, then pressed his long nose into the small

gap formed by his thumbs, letting his palms cover his face. He spread them to break the

contact between the meaty butts of his hands and exhaled spent alcohol.

It was only then he noticed the fax machine was beeping. The one wired to

Mavet.

One more soul claimed by the Angel of Death.

Baruch dayan emet, Aaron muttered as he rose from the chair. For the past

three year, the fax machine had been the only true judge Aaron could comprehend. One

of the first programs hed ever written, Mavet was never wrong. The program had

started as a joke. In high school, Aaron had devised a search protocol that could trawl

the internet constantly for certain criteria, alone or in combination. Eric would realize

and capitalize on the practical applications of this, mostly in allowing people to

perpetually search for mentions of themselves, and a version of Mavet, renamed Mirror

Mirror, would become one of the premium services InterEm offered its users. But when

he came up with it, Aaron decided the best use would be to enter in a massive roster of

B-list celebrity names and have Mavet search for news of their deaths. Mavet would

then cue a messenger program, called Yophiel, to send out a mass email notifying

people. The idea of thousands of strangers receiving an email informing them thatBuffalo Bob Smith or Harry Caray had died struck a teenage Aaron as the height of

comedy. Years later, with most of his programs stolen from him, he still had Mavet.

With a little tweaking, the program was the kernel from which DIS grew. Now Mavets

near blank faxes pronounced final and unarguable judgement.

Aaron picked the paper out of the tray. The letters were tiny on the vast white of

the page.

Jaime Martinez, Mavet informed him.

And all the air went out of the room.


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CONNECT ONE

Its such a simple word and Terrys making it so complicated for himself.

What does it take to get people to like you? What does it take to like someone?

Does he, after all, like his mother? Certainly he loves her, in the abstracted and

resentful way a nineteen year old should, but does he like her?

He likes his bandmates, especially Marnie, their drummer, who hed like to like in

a more substantial way if she wasnt t otally into Bruce, which was so typical for girls to

go for the singer and never the bass player even though in the reality of the band, it was

him and Marnie who were the rhythm section, who were a team.

But even there, like spirals out, becomes like like , becomes is totally into , becomes is

on a team with . Where are those options? Where are the buttons for all of those?Its the binary of it hes having trouble with. The Vowels of Pain have never set

out to be a likeable band and now he is trying to present them to the world as a likeable

band. The relationship with an audience is so much more complicated than that. He

knows that even from the handful of gigs theyve played. The audience is supposed to

experience this whole spectrum of emotions towards the band, from the band, in fucking

proximity to the band.

And then somehow theyre supposed to go home and just like it?

But the booking guy at the Doug Fir, who sometimes hires locals to open forbigger out of town acts, said he never hires a band with less than two hundred likes . And

Terry is the only one with any skill on computer stuff. Not that this is really computer

stuff.

So he makes a guess at their genre and immediately regrets it when the other

options turn from black to grey. He picks out pictures of the band: Bruce spitting into

the crowd at a basement show. Marnie breaking her sticks on her floor tom. He makes

them look as pretty as he can, as like -able as he can. And Terry waits.


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TWO: I Saw Her Today at the Reception

There are deaths that are unthinkable not because they are impossible or even

implausible, but only because we havent thought of them. Jaime had belonged to what

Aaron thought of as his old life, a phrase that incorrectly assumed hed constructed a

new one since. It wasnt that Aaron never thought about those days, but he didnt think

of them as susceptible to change. He could fathom the four years since hed last seen

Jaime, since theyd spoken about anything other than affidavits and depositions. But he

thought of Jaime as somehow in amber the whole time, imagining he could pick up the

phone at any point and pick up their friendship again mid-conversation. Yesterday that

might have been true. Hed lost Jaime four years ago, but only now, with Mavet

mercilessly printing out deta ils of Jaimes death, did he realize the loss.

The University of Chicago had made them roommates and it was more effort to

not talk to him than to become friends. In the beginning, Aaron had thought about

accessing the Residence Life computers and getting himself a single room, but he to

admit Jaime was a sweet kid. Aaron equated Jaimes dark skin with health, his slight

Spanish accent as infinitely more cosmopolitan than Aarons own Midwestern nasal.

Jaime was endearing in a way that bordered on clingy and Aaron recognized a certain

desperation in the way Jaime made friends. There was a need to be liked in him that

Aaron sympathized with, even if he wasnt able to admit it as a quality they shared.Unlike Aaron, Jaimes need to be liked resulted in social success: he was well known and

well liked by seemingly everyone on campus, although, like Aaron, he was permanently

without a girlfriend. Unlike Aaron, Jaime never had a bad word to say about anyone.

Although he came from money, he never made an issue of it. Aaron, with his

abysmal transcripts and off-the-chart test scores, had earned a special scholarship at his

admissions interview. Halfway through the interview, he came around the interviewers

desk, displacing her from her ergonomic chair, and, in under twenty minutes, designed a

program that effectively automated two-thirds of the undergraduate admissions process.

The strange thing was, if this program had been used to sort Aarons application, hed

be languishing at a state school instead of sharing a dorm room with a trust fund kid.

Despite their economic disparity, Aaron found himself won over by Jaimes largesse and

spent more nights eating extravagantly out in Chicago on Jaimes dime than gagging


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down the dining hall fare his meal card afforded hi m. Just as Aarons presence at U of C

depended on keeping up his grades for the scholarship committee, if Jaimes GPA were

to drop, bank accounts would freeze faster than the edges of the lake.

Theres no word for failure in Spanish, Jaime told him once.

Fracaso, Aaron said.

Well, replied Jaime, theres no word for failure in Chilean.

The rest of the report came in on a second fax. The Chicago Police Department

responded to a report of a gunshot fired in a high end apartment building on

Schoepenhauer. Ten minutes away this whole time, Aaron thought. A jump on the El. A

long afternoons walk in the summer heat and they could have been having a beer, four

years gone in four miles. A neighbor heard a bang in the middle of the night, followed

by a thud. Door broken down on suspicion. Victim found in bedroom. Self inflicted

GSW, upper palate. Pronounced dead on the scene by the officers. No attempt made to

resuscitate.

Theres no word for failure in Spanish , Aaron thought, dropping the paper and

letting his face fall into his hands.

II

After locking up the office early and catching a near empty El train home, Aaronfumbled for his keys as . cried plaintively inside. Coming, honey, he muttered as he

opened the door, shutting it quickly before the corpulent silver tab could slip out into

the street. She banged her head against the door in her frustrated attempt, mewing at

him before following him into the kitchen.

It was a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. It was more house than he needed.

These were the ways he thought about the house to avoid thinking about the money

that bought it.

Aaron checked Rambams food dish, which was perpetually half-full. Aaron

imagined there was a layer of food at the bottom of the dish that had never been

touched. The slightly pudgy kitten had grown into a massive hunk of cat under Aarons

care, which made him worry about his potential skills as a parent.

He moved to the living room and Rambam trotted along at his heels with the


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pendulum of her belly dusting the hardwood floor. He shoved a stack of books off the

coffee table and onto the floor, where they joined other stacks of books and papers. The

papers were reams of code Aaron now and then turned his mind to in the same way one

might decide to pick up an old calculus textbook. The books had no theme to tie them

together. Delmore Schwartz and Oliver Sachs. Sartre and George R.R. Martin. A

biography of Mayor Richard Daley and an analysis of Jewish songwriters in the big

band era. Brewers Phrase and Fable and Surely Youre Joking Mr. Feynman . The DSM IV

and the Harlem Book of the Dead .

Aaron wished he had pictures. More than that, he wished he were fundamentally

the kind of person who needed to be surrounded by pictures of friends and family

staring at him approvingly from the walls. The house only showed evidence of Aaron,

with the occasional artifact of Alice deep in the strata. Rambam, he thought as the cat jumped heftily into his lap, was maybe the best proof Aarons life had ever crossed with

anyone elses.

He adopted Rambam at Alices insistence. Given that she was allergic to cats, it

should have been the first sign the relationship was coming apart, but looking back on

it, Aaron often wondered if the whole nine months theyd been together wasnt a series

of signs the relationship was coming apart, right up to the day he came home to find

shed removed all of her things from his apartment. Shed said a cat would give him a

way to talk to himself out loud without feeling like a crazy person. Aaron had initiallydismissed the idea. He argued it was morally wrong to bring another life into the world,

as if this theoretical cat didnt already exist but would be brought into being by Aarons

need for feline companionship. Whenever Aaron moved a personal decision into the

world-impact stage, Alice went into the kitchen and poured herself a drink.

Theyd argued about every aspect of getting the cat. Alice pushed fo r a pet store,

but Aaron would only adopt from the SPCA. Alice liked the Siamese with the shifty

eyes, while Aaron fell for the pudgy tab who pissed on his sweater. Once they got her

home, they put the kitten on the living room floor and sat together on the couch to

come up with a name.

Maimonides, Aaron stated proudly. The kitten looked up at him puzzled and

Alice crossed her arms.

What kind of name is that?


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He was a Jewish philosopher in the twelfth century, he explained. Alice was

unimpressed. A Guide for the Perplexed ? He got up to find try to find his copy on one of

the shelves.

First of all, shes a she. Secondly, what would you call her for short?

Aaron tried diminutives of Maimonides in his head (Deez? Mami? Moni?), none of

which seemed to work. He remembered Maimonides had also gone by the name

Rambam, which, if nothing else, was much cuter, and offered it to Alice. She rolled her

eyes and shrugged.

Rambam? he asked the kitten. She mewed in affirmation. See, she likes it.

You two will be perfect for each other, Alice said, then walked into the kitchen

and poured herself a drink, making a point of slamming the cupboard door.

Aaron tried to remember Jaimes face exactly, but any detail he could some in onforced another out of focus. He could think of the angle of Jaimes nose perfectly, but the

resolution of his eyes or chin fell off in proportion. He could remember the timbre of

Jaimes voice, the slightly hitched rs that were nearly ready to roll, but not anything

hed ever said, and when he could recall quotes, they were flat and toneless. If hed been

at the office, a quick search of InterEm would bring up dozens of images, assuming

Jaime had never taken down his profile. But there were no computers in the house and

Aarons memory was corrupted. If, as he suspected, the brain worked like a hard drive,

information was never lost, barring some catastrophic physical damage, but Aaroncouldnt retrieve the files for his friends face.

He began to read over the additional documents hed printed out about Jaimes

death, which he noticed, danced carefully around labeling it a suicide. Everywhere in the

documents, Aaron could see the deft hand of Jaimes family already at work, hushing

things up. No funeral home or church services had been publicly listed, although a little

digging revealed that Jaimes body was at Smith Corcoran Funeral Home on Cicero and

that the Hernandez family had reserved St. Clare of Montefalco on Washtenaw for a

service the next morning. The police were not following up on the incident, and in the

digital version of the report, the self -inflicted gunshot wound had become officially

accidental. An uninvestigated gunshot wound. A hole no one would look into.

It occurred to Aaron Jaimes death was being kept so quiet, Alice probably

wouldnt hear about it. Everything Jaimes family was


19/46

Alice its me. I dont know. I hope you know. Jaime. Jaimedied. I think the

family wants it quiet. So we dont talk about how it happened. But Im going. And if you

want to go, heres where it is.

III.

After several hours outpaced by drinks, Aaron called a cab. The cabbie balked when

Aaron gave him the address, but Aaron promised to add twenty bucks to the tip. The

funeral home was in a part of town Aaron had never been. Despite the late hour, the

lights were on, so Aaron asked the cabbie if hed wait. Aaron tried the door, but it was

locked. He knocked sternly a few times on the glass, then put his hand to his face and

turned back to the cab. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, then walked slowly

back and stood up against the door. He waited a moment, then began banging on the

glass with his open palm. The cabbie got out of the car and called to him across the cars

roof.

Theyre closed, man, he said.

I know, Aaron said. I know. As he started back to the cab, he heard the key in

the lock. It seemed incredibly loud in the quiet street. He turned back and saw a small

pale man framed in light.

Enough with the pounding, the man said from the doorway, Im working here.As if to prove it, he was wearing a spattered white apron and long black latex gloves. A

pair of safety goggles rested on his forehead. Can I help you? the man asked.

I want to see my friend, Aaron said. The man looked at him.

Is it Mr. Hernandez? he said after a moment.

Yes, Aaron said.

You squeamish? he asked.

I dont think so, said Aaron. The man nodded and seemed to size him up.

Come in, he said. Im almost done working on him. Aaron started towards the

door.

What the fuck, man, called the cabbie. Am I supposed to wait here?

Pay your cab, the man said.. Well call you another. Aaron paid the driver in

cash with the promised twenty dollar tip, then followed the man into the funeral home.


20/46

You know viewing hours arent until tomorrow, the man said as he led Aaron

down the hallway.

I know.

And theres no viewing.

Its closed casket?

Itll be open for the family before the service, but closed by the time it gets to the

church. Youre not family?

No. He was my roommate in college. My friend.

The man nodded and pulled open a heavy door. You look a little too pale to be

family. Of course, at the moment, he looks a little too pale to be family. He stopped

with the door halfway open. Are you sure you want to see him? Im alm ost done, but

Im not quite.

Id like to see him, Aaron said.

Its not a good idea, he said, beginning to shut the door. I could get in serious

shit.

I wont tell anyone, Aaron said.

Ah, what are they gonna do to me? the man said, shrugging. Make me spend all

night with a bunch of dead bodies? He opened the door into a room that was entirely

metallic. Cold blue fluorescents hummed from the ceiling and caromed off every surface.

Jaimes body lay on a long table, a white sheet covering him up to his mid -chest.Hell look better by tomorrow, the man said. Im a bit behind in my work. You

hear the one about the undertaker in a hurry?

No, Aaron said.

Ah, its more of an industry joke, you know? There is one, though. So, theres this

Jewish couple, elderly. They save up their whole lives for a trip to the Holy Land. And

they go there and she, the wife, she dies. And the undertaker says to the husband, Well,

you can have her shipped back home to Boca for five grand. Or we can bury her right

here in the Holy Land for a hundred fifty bucks. And the husband says, right off , Lets

ship her home.

So they make the preparations, they ice her up for shipment and all. And the

undertaker s ays, I gotta ask. Why is it you wanted to spend all this money to send her

home when you could have had her buried right here in the Holy Land? And the


21/46

husband says, Two thousand years ago, they buried a guy here, and three days later, he

came back from the dead. I couldnt take that chance.

Despite himself, Aaron let out a little laugh.

Its not bad, right? said the man. I feel like I need to shave three more beats off

it. Originally the punch line was I felt like I couldnt take that kind of chance, but I cut

it down. Not quite there yet. Anyway, he wont be so pale tomorrow.

He was never pale like that, Aaron said. His hand floated above the body, afraid

to touch it. His skin. His skin was so much darker than mine.

Its the exsanguination, the man explained while rearranging bottles on a shelf,

his back to Aaron. You wouldnt think it would necessarily affect someone with darker

skin, but it does. Not as much as it will you or me. But still.

And he wont tomorrow?

Be so pale? No, Illbe applying bronzer in a little bit. A little blush over that.

His eyes are closed. I thought dead peoples eyes were always open.

Its one of the first things I do. Seal the eyes. Gives me a better sense of what Im

working with, what Im working tow ard. But yes, the natural state of the eyes is to be

open, even in death. Something to that, I suppose.

How did it happen?

It didnthappen , the man said. Hedid it. I mean, the gun didnt jump into his

mouth, did it? Guns dont kill people and all that. You want the truth? He wouldnt begetting a Christian burial if his family wasnt rich. Im sorry, I shouldnt say that. The

family, theyre very Catholic. Although I suppose no ones a little Catholic. Sort of an all

in proposition. Theyve had it put down as an accident.

How did he do it?

Here, he said. He took Jaimes face in one hand and lower jaw in the other and

gently pried them open. He pulled a penlight out of his pocket and shined it into Jaimes

mouth, encouraging Aaron to peer in, like some first year dental student. There in the

middle of the upper palate was a small void, no bigger than a nickel. The skin around it

looked freshly blistered.

Small caliber, he said. Which is risky. Sometimes the bullet lodges. Bounces

around. Only takes out non-essential parts of the brain, leaves a live drooler. Your


22/46

friend was a lucky shot. Through the soft palate, into the medulla oblongata. Med-oooo-

la , he sang, oblong-aahhhhh-ta .

He looked around nervously.

Sorry, he said. Ive always thought that had a musical sound to it.

He took Jaimes head and jaw in his hands and worked it shut.

Jaw muscles are a bastard, he said. Lockers. He took a moment to make sure

the molars in Jaimes mouth matched up, massaging the jaw until it clicked.

Its the biggest choice a person can ever make, he said, and theyve taken it from

him. Theres so much caught up in it. Shame. Anger. But his life had become a burden to

him, so he let it go. No fault in it. But now its their burden. Yours, too. And the y all say

If only hed asked us for help . But hes asking now. Hes saying , I couldnt carry my life

anymore. I need you to carry it for me . He ran his hand along the cold surface of Jaimes cheek, then suddenly pulled his

hand back.

More often than not, he said, they dont. They carry the death with them and

no one is left to carry the life. He looked at Aaron with the same appraising look hed

given him in the doorway.

Give me your hand, he said. He put Aarons hand against the crown of Jaimes

skull and pressed it there. The spot had an odd feel to it, a give like a large piece of

stryrofoam. Aaron thought of a babys fontinelle, how you were never supposed to touchthe top of the babys head where the skull wasnt yet there.

You feel how strange that is? How its not right? he asked. Aaron nodded. He

wanted his fingers back, he wanted to not be touching this, but his hand was held there

against the back of Jaimes head.

Its not skull, said the man. I made that. I built that. The bullet left an exit

wound almost four inches across. Most of the brain was gone when he got to me. No

skull in the back.

Why are you showing me this? Aaron asked. He knew that hed asked for it, that

hed banged on the door to be let in. Once in, he was wondering what door he could

bang on to be let out.


23/46

Im showing you his death, the man said. Which I worked . I prepped it. No one

else will see it, because tonight, after you leave, Ill finish covering it up, so that none of

them will have to face it. Tomorrow, theyll see him sleeping, not dead.

Aaron looked at Jaimes face. It looked nothing like his friend; it was a play upon

his friend. Variations on a theme.

The man grabbed his hand and laid it on Jaimes chest. The skin was cold, fishlike.

The man held Aa rons hand there.

This is his body. This is his death. They will say nice things about him, he said,

about his life, and they will bury his life and they will all carry his death out with them

into the world.

He ran Aarons fingers along the y -cut, a jagged tear in the chest sutured with

thick dark stitches. He dragged Aarons hand down to the base of Jaimes stomach, ranit up the chest and traced both lines to his shoulder blades.

I want you to see his death, he said. To know that it is here, in th is body, that in

two days will go into the ground. I will take his death and I will keep it and I will hide

it. Its mine now.

He took Aarons hand off Jaimes chest, pressed it against Aarons own chest.

Aaron felt his heart beat against his own fingers.

I want you to carry his life, the man said.

III.

Aaron wasnt sure hed ever been in a church before, but St. Clare of Montefalco

restored his faith in the sci fi fantasy trope of compression. Doctor Whos TARDIS,

Harry Potters Platform Nine and Three Quarters, all made sense after hed stepped

through the storefront door sandwiched between Deluxe Hair & Nail and a pawnshop

specializing in useless electronics. It led into an ornate isthmus that opened into the

narthex of an inconceivably large Catholic church. Given the height of the vaulted

ceilings, Aaron couldnt believe hed failed to notice it looming behind the blocks retail

establishments.

There were a few people entering the church in front of him and each of them

dipped fingers into a bowl of what Aaron assumed was holy water, crossing themselves


24/46

and leaving dabs of moisture on their shoulders. After doing this, they looked to the

rafters as if waiting for someone to acknowledge what theyd done. Bypassing the

fingerbowl, Aaron hung his head sheepishly for a moment on entering, pausing to see if

some divine wrath would be visited on the back of his neck. When none came, he kept

his head down so none of the other mourners would notice his, he thought, obvious

Jewishness attempting to sneak under the Catholic radar.

Aaron twitched inside his suit, which had fit perfectly when Jaime had bought it

for him, insisting hed need it for some high end business meeting that, when it finally

came around, both of them had been excluded from. Aaron must have stood taller and

held his shoulders wider back then, and now he looked like a teenager going to prom in

his fathers suit, except around the middle, where the cl oth pulled taut.

At the front of the church, near the dark mahogany casket, Jaimes parents were

greeting mourners. A line of people stretched back to the middle of the pews. Aaron

noted how composed they both were. They stood next to one another in front of the

coffin like a wall protecting their son from the rest of the world, now when he needed it

least. Aaron remembered the first time he met Jaimes father, moments before hed met

Jaime. His father had come into their dorm room on move-in day lugging large box and

betraying no indication it might be heavy. Aaron was sitting on his bare mattress

reading a book and Jaimes father set the box down to glare at him.

What are you doing here? Jaimes father had asked. I live here, Aaron said. Jaime, carrying what looked like much lighter packages

came into the room after, followed by his mother, carrying nothing but her purse. A

discussion ensued switching so rapidly that Aaron couldnt keep up. Jaime paused the

conversation to explain things to Aaron.

Sorry about this, he said. I guess I was supposed to have a single.

You will have a single, his father insisted.

I dont know dad, Jaime said, it might be nice to have a roommate.

Jaimes father sized Aaron up. Hell be a distraction from your studies, he

concluded. Aaron had never been described as a distraction before. The conversation

lapsed back into Spanish, but ended with Jaimes fathers face set in the same expression

he wore now, a resignation to the fact his sons decisions and their consequences belong

to Jaime alone, as much as his father might have wished it otherwise.


25/46

Aaron was about to join the line of people giving their condolences when a

woman stepped in front of him. She was nearly as tall as Aaron, standing with her arms

folded across her chest. She had Jaimes dark eyes, but her face was sharp where his had

been softly rounded. Jaimes younger sister Inez looked at him like a mother wondering

how many times shed told her son the very thing she was about to repeat.

What the fuck are you doing here, Aaron? she asked, immediately crossing

herself after the cursing. Aaron had met Inez over Christmas break freshman year when

Jaime, learning that Aaron was planning on staying in the dorms for the holiday, invited

him to spend Christmas with the Hernandez family in a chalet in Wisconsin. Aaron had

explained that as a Jew, Christmas was not the nexus for family and emotional stress it

might otherwise be, but Jaime had insisted in the gentle way that Aaron had already

learned he was powerless to refuse. Jaimes only stipulation was that Aaron not bring

any marijuana into his familys house, which seemed reasonable. It was Aarons first

encounter with withdrawal since hed started casually smoking pot in high school, and

giving up what had become a once or twice daily habit resulted in a simultaneous

resurgence of Aarons libido and the return of dreams to Aarons sleep. Alone in t he

guest room at night after an evening spent chatting around the fireplace like a Rockwell

painting recast for the coming century, Aaron found himself beset by vivid and prurient

dreams about Jai mes skinny sister, then a junior in high school and the kind of tomboy

who doesnt yet realize her sexual power over men. As a direct result, he found it nearlyimpossible to make eye contact with Inez for most of his stay, instead focusing his

attention on the one part of her that seemed innocent enough, a half-healed scab below

her right knee, still angry and red against the deep tan of her leg. But even this focal

point had failed to derail his thoughts, and Aaron made excuses to leave the room

whenever Inez entered, agonizing on those occasions they ended up next to one another

on the couch.

Aaron shot a look at Inezs knee below the line of her black dress to see if he

could discern a scar, to see if the scab that had haunted his dreams still haunted her skin,

but there was nothing there.

Im here to pay my respects, he said, still failing to hold eye contact all these

years later. Inez had grown up, Aaron wondered if he could say the same about himself.


26/46

Her expression softened, and she closed her eyes slowly. Thats very sweet,

Aaron. He would have wanted you to be here. He talked about you a lot. Not about the

case, but about you.

Did he Aaron tried to find the right way to put it, but every combination of

words he came up with sounded awful and self-serving.

We didnt know, Inez said. I knew he was having a tough time of it, but

nothing this bad. Id been trying to get him to let the case go for the past year. Dad

refused to pay any more of the legal bills, Jaime was handling it all on h is own.

He should have come to me if he needed money, Aaron said.

He never would have asked you for money for that. You madehe knew how

you felt about it. I dont think it was about the money anymore. Inez looked nervously

over her shoulder at her parents, who were shaking hands and allowing themselves to

be hugged. Aaron, you shouldnt let them see you.

Should I leave? he asked. A petulance rose up in him, like hed gotten all

dressed up for nothing.

Stay in the back, okay? Your other friend is back there. She pointed to the

corner of the church and Aaron turned quickly to look, half expecting to see Eric.

Sitting alone in the back, with her hair like fireworks launched from the black of her

dress, was Alice.

IV.

The church was near the school where Alice taught, so when the service let out,

Aaron and Alice slipping out the back before the priest finished the benediction, she was

able to find them a bar. A happy hour crowd was beginning to filter in, and Aaron fit

right in with his rumpled suit and loosened tie.

I think were supposed to tell stories about him, Alice said from behind her first

beer.

I cant think of any story about Jaime you wouldnt have been around for, Aaron

said. Or at least heard before.

Its what youre supposed to do, she said, already annoyed with him, the way she


27/46

often was when he failed to exhibit what she thought of as normal human behavior.

You start, she said.

Aaron tried, but none of the stories he could think of seemed appropriate to the

situation. Alice showed him how easy it was, reminding him of the time the three of

them had snuck into a broken down ambulance behind Doctors Hospital on Stony

Island Avenue with a bottle of wine for each of them, and how before they left, Jaime

had been careful to wipe everything down with his shirt, not to eradicate fingerprints

but germs. Which reminded Aaron of the time theyd stayed up all night watching every

episode of The Prisoner and how Jaime had fallen asleep in the middle of an exam the

next morning, even though the marathon had been his idea. They talked about playing

whirlyball against a group of Pi Kap meatheads and getting kicked out of trivia night at

Lotties for being underage, ending a two month winning str eak. The stories they chose

tended to be from the early part of their friendship, before theyd met Eric, but after a

few drinks, they eased into stories that included him as well.

Alice was telling about the July Fourth the four of them had spent running around

a baseball diamond in Riis park, holding roman candles like magic wands until they spat

fire into the night, when Aaron noticed something on the TV behind the bar.

Hold up a second, he said. He asked the bartender if he could turn on the sound,

and since there didnt happen to be anything on the jukebox then, he obliged.

CNN was showing footage of a flashmob at the World Trade Organizationheadquarters in DC. It brought a lump to Aarons throat the kids still thought the

Internet would save them if they could only embody it, bring its spontaneity and play

into the real world. Inflict one reality on another.

Aaron waited to hear what damage had been done to the building or how many

cops had been injured to warrant news coverage, but nothing came. From what he could

tell, it had been an assemblage of bodies. Back as far as the Boom you could barely ride

the El past Wicker Park without thirty hipsters opening umbrellas in unison for some

obscure political purpose. But this was near the top of the hour, tucked in with the real

news. Police were looking for the organizer, who went by the nom de guerre Iktomi. The

anchor described him as a known anarchist and hacker, pronouncing the word like a

neologism (Hah-kerr) and following it with an explanation th at Aaron found

reductive.


28/46

A hacker, the anchor explained, is a person who uses computers to gain

unauthorized access to data. Aaron had self -identified as a hacker for most of his

twenties, and it depressed him how the anchor omitted the element of skill from this

definition. As hed seen it, a hacker was an artist who chose information as their

medium, elegance and efficiency as their aesthetics.

The news went on to display a quote from a statement by Iktomi, emailed to the

head of the WTO an hour after the DC police had dispersed the mob. The letters

appeared on the screen in red and the newscaster read them with suitable contempt.

They look for a way to unify us under something meaningless. Race. Class.

Nation. Nation, the most meaningless of the m all. The one thats empty without another

signifier. So they offer us one nation under a flag. But they soak their flags in blood. So

offer us one nation under the dollar. But the dollar can only buy narcotics. It cant give

us anything we need. So someone else steps in. A salesman, another trickster. They

point to something else. So they offer us a nation of affinity. They claim it will be yours.

But its theirs. Nations are always theirs. And weve seen what their nations do.

The newscaster moved on to celebrity gossip. Alice ordered another beer and

looked uninterested.

Friend of yours? she asked.

No, Aaron said. Its strange theyd be reporting on it at all.

You know the internet has become very popular these days, she told him.Something had broken, the easy flow of stories between them had been cut off and now

it was Aaron and Alice again. For a few hours it had been like Jaime was with them,

making everything better, but hed left them and they were sitting in the bar alone with

each other.

Hows Rambam? she asked.

Shed good, he said sullenly. Shes getting fat.

You overfeed her.

She whines if she doesnt get fed, Aaron said, signaling for another beer.

She whines because she knows youll feed her if she whines. Id thin k a feedback

loop would be within your understanding.

Thats an Aarons a robot joke, right? She smiled indulgently as if she knew

he was going to say that.


29/46

You know you told me within five to ten years you wouldve been able to record

someones consciousness into a computer? A program that would give grieving families

a reasonable facsimile of their dead loved ones to talk to?

And did you tell me that would be ghoulish and awful?

Five to ten years. She mused on this, twirling her beer by th e neck.

Ive always been an optimist.

But you saidwouldve been , she said, as if she were now realizing it. You were

always saying wouldve been .

What tense is that? Future imperfect?

Woulda shoulda coulda.

You didnt just say that, Aaron said. Alice turned on him.

So you wouldnt want some Jaime program to talk to right now? The truth was he wanted Jaime there right now more than anything. Jaime with

his unflappable calm. Jaime with his shrugging conviction that everything was headed

towards being all right. The truth was he couldnt reconcile the Jaime hed known with

the body hed touched the night before, couldnt imagine how that much hope had been

exhausted. His own giving up made sense to him, but he couldnt make sense of Jaime

giving up and wished he were here so Aaron could ask him why. If there was anyone he

could share his frustration with, his anger, it was Alice. But if he let that go, Aaron

wasnt sure what hed have left. He was alive the past four years I didnt talk to him, Aaron said defiantly, not

looking at her. The only time I ever heard from him was whenever he wanted me to

testify.

Which you never did.

He wanted to go off and Quixote didnt mean I had to Sancho Panza after him.

That and you wouldve forfeited your blood money, Alice said.

Dont call it that, Aaron told her as if shed referred to him by some childhood

nickname.

You always called it that.

My bloody, my money, he said. They both turned to their drinks. Someone had

put money into the jukebox and the opening chords of The Dream Police filled the


30/46

bar. As far as Aaron was concerned, the only thing more ridiculous than playing Cheap

Trick in a Chicago bar would be playing Chicago in a Chicago bar.

If hed lived another five years, Alice said, maybe youcoulda sent him a

program of you to testify in your place. As good as the real thing.

Better, probably.

In your case, probably.

Do you understand how little people expect from their interactors? Aaron said,

sitting up straight for what felt like the first time in hours. A dull ache awoke in the

small of his back. Im talking here computer, other person, shitzu, whatever. Minimal.

They built a program in the sixties based on Rogerian mirroring therapy. Thats when

you talk and you say I was thinking about x the other day and the therapist says How

do you feel about x? And back and forth. The computer looked for the keyword in thesentence, then formed a question around it, some vague flipping of the statement. On

every fifth prompt, it affirmed the statement the patient gave. People ate it up. Talked to

it for hours. Thought of it as a friend.

No one would fall for that for hours, she said. He raised his eyebrows to signal,

oh yeah?

My record was two hours, fourteen minutes, he said.

You used the program for two hours fourteen minutes?

Iran the program for two hours fourteen minutes, Aaron said. I used it onsomeone. Its a set of conversational protocols, a person can run it as well as a computer.

Better, p robably. In my case.

Bullshit.

I used it on you, he said.

Dinner, he said. Square Kitchen. Two weeks before we broke up. I started on

the walk over, stopped when we started making out in the cab home.

Asshole, she said, shaking her head.

You were annoyed with your manager at Blick. Debbie something. She made

checklists. It reminded you of when you had to stay with your aunt when you were in

high school. Lists of chores broken down by day, by week. And they both made a tsking

noise. You hate d that. You went on about it for a while.


31/46

You never fail to disappoint, do you? she said, grabbing her purse from the

hook under the bar and rising from her barstool on legs that slightly quivered. Have a

good night, Aaron.

Aaron soaked in the useless glory of winning an argument, the bitter victory of

hurting her one more time. Does this mean Im buying your drink? he asked, trying to

sound smug but only coming off as tired and sad.

You can afford it, Alice said, reminding Aaron that, as usual, he hadnt won

anything at all.


32/46

CONNECT TWO

We are all Aabam Sallah

Video of peace protester Aabam Sallah being brutally tortured in police custody. Please

repost. How much longer will we allow the Bakamar government to torture its citizens,

even while the governments policies keep her people poor? Today it was Aabam Sallah.

Tomorrow it could well be you or me.

July 24 at 7:23pm Like/Unlike Comment/Share


A Khandaqi who is almost 60 years old has cut his hand veins today in front of the High

Court. He works for the government and he earns 67 Khandaqi pounds a month (about12 dollars a month) and he has not been paid by the government for four years!!! Some

corrupt Khandaqi government officials own whole islands and have millions of

Khandaqi pounds. Khandaqi government corruption has no limits.



Very Important: We will be doing a FULL live coverage of protests in Khandaq and all

other protests that are taking place worldwide to support Khandaqi protests todayTuesday 25th. Please follow me on Holler (#aabamsallah) and on the InterEm page

here. If you haven't already invited all your friends, please do this now. 25th July is our

big day.



Now: Groups of youth are walking around the area shouting slogans: Freedom and

Bread are every Khandaqi request.

July 25 at 5:25am Like/Unlike Comment/Share


Large crowd in front of the High court in Shiruta now


33/46



Three marches have started now from: Shiruta Univ Bridge, Magra residential district

and the central police station, all towards the city square



Protesters at the High Court break down the Police siege and run towards Shiruta

square. Our reporters say: Amazing scenes there.



Protesters moving to opera house from Shiruta square. Their number is well over 1000.



Very large crowd. Police cordon is broken and police are now surrounded by protesters

for the first time in Khandaq's history.



If you are in Shiruta and you were waiting for something real to happen for you to

decide to go to the protest. It's happening. Time now to join protest.

July 25 at 7:33am Like Comment/Share


34/46

THREE: Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad

I.

One of the nice things about weed was its tendency to reinforce routine. Aaron woke up

the morning after Jaimes funeral , face buried in his pillow, one leg hanging off the side

of the bed, and Rambam exerting her considerable weight on his upper back. For a few

minutes he lay there, thinking about everything hed said to Alice the night before and

resigning himself to the fact he wouldnt be getting up u ntil Rambam decided to let him.

Eventually she did and Aarons first decision of the morning was to pack a bowl and

take two solid puffs from it. Mildly stoned by the time he hit the shower, Aaron found

the prospect of facing the day much more manageable. It was shaping up to be another

armpit of a day and as he pulled a teeshirt over his head, it clung wetly to his skin.

At the office, he argued feebly with the air conditioner, then set about working on

a project hed been putting off but knew would take several days of his attention. He

began sorting through years of blog entries by a client, a Chicago bike messenger whod

met his end on the front grill of a Goose Island Beer truck two months ago on one of

the first hot days of the season. The entries ranged from diatribes on traffic patterns and

the certain collapse of any city designed primarily for automobiles rather than people, to

a slothropian mapping of secretaries and administrative assistants bedded across thecity, although more often than not it wasnt a bed involved but the bosss desk. Not one

to kiss-and-tell-everyone, the client had kept the blog mostly private, but he had

apparently been more worried about his own honor than that of his paramours. His

contract with DIS called for the entries to be collected into a manuscript to be printed

and shipped to several prominent publishers in New York. Aaron read each entry and

ruminated on it until he found a classification for it. Chapters formed in his mind.

Conceptual Failures of the Radiant City. Polyamory in the Age of Interconnectedness. Fractures,

Scrapes and Sprains. Tesseracts of Downtown Chicago. Introduction to Bicycle Maintenance.

The Kama Sutra of the Ergonomic Office.

After he clocked out each day, usually an hour or so before the sun crept into the

lake, Aaron went home and smoked himself up again. He threw himself into massive

reading projects. He fell asleep reading Shakespeares history plays with The Kinks are


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the Village Green Preservation Society playing on the stereo. He fell asleep reading Proust

in the Lydia Davis translation with Serge Gainsbourgs Histoire de Melody Nelson on the

stereo. He fell asleep reading the DSM- IV with Pink Floyds Saucer Full of Secrets

playing on the stereo. Each night, a different tome slipped through his fingers and fell

open on his chest as he dropped into the shallow, dreamless sleep of the habitual pot

smoker. Rambam, jealous of any physical object other than herself that might get to

sleep on Aaron, shoved each book onto the floor with her forehead. Aaron woke each

morning with his weighty literature replaced by a weighty feline, and the needle

scratching rhythmically against the record label.

With this regular application of weed and work, Aaron managed to avoid thinking

about his dead friend for exactly six days. On the seventh day, he opened the drawer of

his nightstand and found the Ziploc bag that had been full of pillowy buds at thebeginning of the week was empty but for stems and resin. The drawer held a skunky

smell like the ghost of the drugs, but Aaron had let his supply dry up.

He showered and brushed his teeth, amazed at how violent these processes turned

out to be. The washcloth scourged his skin and the toothbrush scoured his gums. He

spat a mouthful of blood and saliva into the sink and stared down at the pink spiderwebs

on the ceramic. He searched the medicine cabinet for floss and, finding none, realized

lack of dental diligence had brought on some scurvy-esque gum bleeding affliction that

would probably cost him his teeth. He fled the bathroom mirror and dressed in a panic,and as he locked the door behind him, Aaron realized he was heading into work with

absolutely nothing to do. Hours of idle thought stretched out like a chasm before him

and the nerves that held the pain of Jai mes death in them began to tingle malignantly.

II.

When he reached the third floor, there were two men waiting for him outside his

office he knew were not potentials. Wearing matching grey suits and dark shades

despite the dim of the hallway, the pair screamed law enforcement, federal level. One of

them, taller than Aaron and half again as wide, had the rigid at ease posture and close-

cropped haircut of former military; the other, short, stocky and grey-haired with rimless

round glasses and a pencil mustache along the edge of his upper lip, stood slightly


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behind the larger man, arms akimbo. He reminded Aaron of a flaccid Teddy Roosevelt.

Aaron Zeitlin? asked the larger man as Aaron approached. A flight response

flooded his limbic system, his mouth full of slick, coppery saliva.

Who wants to know?

Agent White, said the larger man, flipping his badge open and shut. Agent

Strunk, he said and tilted his head on its redwood trunk of a neck towards the smaller

man. FBI. Wed like to ask you a few questions. Can we step

May we step, interrupted his part ner.

May we step into your office?

Aaron assessed the breadth of the two men, one across the shoulders and the other

across the middle.

You can try, he said. Im not sure well all fit. Nerves rankling with adrenaline, Aaron jangled the key into the lock and

shouldered the door open. He tossed his messenger bag into the corner and took his seat

behind the desk in an attempt to establish territorial authority. The two agents

crammed into the room such that Strunks paunch rested on the edge of the desk and

White straddled the desks corner, the desk giving a minor lift to what Aaron couldnt

avoid noticing was a prodigious bulge in his pants. It shot through Aarons mind that in

gaming speak, an agent referred to a non-player character, a program within the

program.With his left arm pinned to his side by the filing cabinets, White put his right

hand on his hip, jostling Strunk with his elbow and pulling back his own suit coat to

reveal an also prodigious firearm. Aaron felt sufficiently cowed.

Mr. Zeitlin, Im going to shoot straight with you, White said. Aaron wondered

if, given the reveal of the gun, this was intended as a joke.Agent Strunk and I are part

of a special task force on Information Terrorism. Im sure youve heard about it.

Not really, Aaron said.

Agent White nodded glumly. To be honest, since the whole War on Terror

revved up, there have been less man hours

Fewer man hours, said Strunk.

Fewer man hours andfewer attention?

Strunk shook his head.


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Less attention. Given to our un it. Meaning each of us tasked to Infoterrorism

must do their best

His best, said Strunk.

His?

Or her.

Huh. To make the most of those hours. Meaning, we have minimal patience for

the usualwhats the word Im looking for?

Obfuscation, offered Strunk.

No, thats not it.

Prolixity, offered Strunk.

Well, that, of course, but no.

Dissembling, offered Aaron.

Exactly. Used by your sort. Well ask questions and you will answer them

directly and concisely. Understood?

Sure, Aaron said.

Good. White took a notepad out of his inside jacket pocket. What is the nature

of Death Information Services?

Aaron ruminated a moment, omitting needless words from his response.

Digital estate management, he concluded.

And what does that mean? Concisely?

Dont try to aggravate me, Mr. Zeitlin.

Irritate, said Strunk.

Really? asked White.

Strunk nodded sternly.

Theres a difference?

Strunk nodded again. White absorbed this information, then decided to change

tacks.

Mr. Zeitlin, what do you know about an individual who operates under the alias

Iktomi?

The guy on the news?

Agent White nodded. We have reason to believe youve been in contact with this


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individual.

What reason is that?

We believe you and him

You and he, said Strunk.

float in the same circles.

I dont float in circles anymore, Aaron said.

But you are something of a celebrity within the hacker community, Mr. Zeitlin,

said Agent White.

Are you asking me or telling me?

Asking.

There is no hacker community, said Aaron. What, do you think we have

meetings?

You were involved in the creation of the social networking site, InterEm, isnt

that correct?

I was involved.

You must make a lot of money, Agent White said, giving a critical eye to the

cramped office with its flaking paint.

Im no longer involved, said Aaron.

Do you know a Mr. Eric Hardy?

Aaron grinned bitterly. I knew a Mr. Eric Hardy. You two are no longer acquainted?

We stopped sending Christmas cards a while back.

I was led to believe you were Jewish.

That was part of the reason.

Was there bad blood between you?

If hes a suspect in anything, Im happy to testify against him. Agent White

looked at him to determine if he was being serious.

Hes not a suspect, Isaw him in a magaz ine. I dont think the article mentioned

you.

They generally dont, Aaron said. Agent White nodded and added something to

his notepad.

Irregardless of that, White began, but Strunk cut him off by clearing his throat


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loudly. Nevertheless, we believe t hat through your ties to the hacker community, you

may be in possession of information related to this individuals identity.

What exactly has this individual done?

Im afraid thats none of your concern.

Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, stated Aaron,

although it had occurred to him how minimal hed been keeping that involvement lately.

Im sorry?

John Donne, explained Strunk, giving Aaron a nod to indicate he was duly

impressed. Aaron found himself nodding back.

Mr. Zeitlin, said White, casually touching the butt of his gun, let me leave

things at this: there is an ongoing federal investigation surrounding this individual, an

investigation in which you are now formerly a part.

Formally, said Strunk.

Your friends and loved ones may also be subject to investigation.

I dont have any friends and loved ones, Aaron said.

Or, said Strunk.

Regardless, White said tentatively, looking to his partner for approval before

continuing, we always get our man.

I thought that was the Mounties.

Its us too. White pulled his jacket over his gun and buttoned up. I wouldstrongly suggest that if you remember anything about this individual, you contact us

immediately.

Of course, said Aaron, smiling politely. If thats all, you gentlemen will

forgive me if I dont climb over the desk to let you out.

II.

For a long time after theyd left, Aaron sat silently at his desk. It seemed unlikely the

FBI was mistaken entirely and more likely Aaron had encountered Iktomi at some point

and simply failed to notice. There had been a time when hed been conversant with any

number of hackers, and not always in a chemical state to remember the arcana of their


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changing handles and aliases. In fact, Yog Soggoth, the grand old m an of Aarons

onetime hacker friends and the only one he was still in occasional contact with, was also

the only hacker Aaron knew whod kept the same nom de guerre for his entire storied

career. The name Iktomi sounded vaguely familiar, but Aaron couldnt place it.

He tried to focus on his short to-do list, but the name kept nagging at him. He

turned on his desktop to do a search, but as the screen lit up, it occurred to him Agents

Strunk and White had all but told him his computer was being monitored. Aaron looked

at the phone, daring it to ring with new business. He looked at the door, willing a new

potential to knock. He looked at the fax machine, but even death had abandoned him. He

told himself he should forget about it, then, ignoring that thought entirely, shut off the

computer, hit the lights and got onto the train towards Wicker Park.

Until last year, Aaron had used the computers at the public library for any

internet activity he wanted to keep anonymous. The initial prompt asking for a library

card number was easily gotten around and a simple encryption script would make it

difficult for anyone to track what hed been up to even if theyd determined what

computer hed been using. But the Chicago Public Library had come up with an

unhackable system. A dour stereotype of a middle-aged female librarian now stood

guard over the terminals, checking and recording the names and identification numbers

of all users. Faced with this impenetrable firewall, Aaron had resorted to using the

public terminals at Filter, the last caf in Chicago to provide them for the rare WickerPark hipster without a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Filter had once been housed in the knifepoint of a flatiron building that stabbed

into Wicker Park, but it had lost its lease to a Bank of America branch several years ago

and moved into an old appliance store with unreachable ceilings crisscrossed by the

heavy metal vents and pipes that remained a necessary vogue in Chicago design circles.

Left over from the former incarnation were electrical outlets in the floor at radial

intervals approximately the length of an electrical cord. Filter was a paradise for laptop

users. Every seat at every couch, carrel or table was within reach of a recharge and the

wifi signal was strong enough to pick up in your fillings.

Filter also maintained two pairs of public terminals: two Macs and two PCs. None

of them were the sexiest models on the market. They were dated and dowdy compared

to some of the pretty young things the clientele brought in, the weightless and cloud-


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based. But they were serviceable and difficult to trace. Aaron bought an Americano and

two hours of access, paying cash. He was relieved to see the PC in the furthest corner

was unoccupied and set up at it. He tucked his coffee behind the screen to cool and

pulled a silver Walkman out of his messenger bag. He placed it on the table next to the

keyboard and fed it a tape of the Sonics, a garage band from Tacoma in the sixties.

Many bands from that era were considered garage bands, but the Sonics were the only

one Aaron could picture in their suits, thrashing guitars and screaming in some

suburban garage. He plugged a pair of dated headphones, foam gripped around low-rent

speakers, into it and started the tape. The Walkman had developed a sped-up quarter

turn every fourth time the pins made a turn, bending whatever note Gerry Rosalie was

wailing, but Aaron had learned to incorporate this into his listening experience.

Aaron took a second to scowl at the Graphic User Interface, the agreed upon

mediator between the person and the machine. Most people only felt annoyance with

GUIs when they aggressively asserted themselves as talking paperclips, idiot puppies or

condescending install wizards, but like most programmers and hackers, Aaron despised

GUIs from the moment they presented themselves. The closest correlative hed been

able to come up with was the Latinate mass. GUIs were full of ceremony and spectacle

while they obscured the real goings on from the common user and simultaneously

assured her she was in full control as she swallowed the body and the blood, the file and

the folder.He rebooted the computer and before the startup could kick in, bypassed to

command line with a series of finger contortions that looked like complicated piano

chords. Here was communion. The blinking white cursor on a black screen greeted him.

From here , it said to him, anything is possible .

With a whoami command, Aaron made sure no other users had access to the

terminal. It was virginal white. He set up a triple reroute before accessing the internet

through a telnet program: Filters wifi linked to a mirror in San Francisco, remirrored

somewhere within a massive server in Russia. Russian servers were notoriously

unsecure but saw so much traffic that to find any particular activity would be like

finding a needle in a needlestack. Aaron accessed 4Chan, the dark matter of the Internet.

It was nearly unobservable but defined the physics of the Internet as a whole. It birthed

memes and nurtured them until they were ready to assault the general populace. It


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spewed virals and antivirals like a geyser of intellectual filth. It was the shadow of

everything and most people who stumbled on it backed away from its fierce

unintelligibility like the site was rabid, which it largely was.

Most of the traffic was pure text, the images and videos that moved through the

site were generally porn, a statistically aberrant amount of it Japanese in origin and a

statistically aberrant amount of that involving cartoon women being raped by octopi or

squid. One of the central tenets of the Internet, according to the weird hivemind god of

4Chan was that whatever you could think of, there was porn of it. Another was that if

there wasnt porn of it, you needed to make porn of it. There was always some 4Chan

user willing to enforce these rules.

Once onto the site through a pure-text portal, Aaron entered a search for Iktomi.

If someone had asked him why he was bothering to look into Iktomi at all, he wouldhave been unable to articulate it. He might have said something about pattern

recognition, or about noticing a glitch in a program before it spiraled outward into a

crash. He might have even admitted it was because today was the day hed run out of

drugs and things to do that didnt involve thinking about Jaime. He was skeptical

anything would turn up, but it was better to assess the glitch now, and besides, he had

the time. The 4Chan search yielded a few dozen results, but the most popular seemed to

be IkChat , so Aaron selected it. The system asked him who he would like to log in as.

DUMA , he typed, using the name of the angel of silence. He waited for a passwordprompt and got none. As simple as that, he was in the chat room, which immediately

introduced him to the rules.

1. We are Iktomi , the screen informed him.

2. Iktomi is legion

3. Iktomi never forgives

4. Iktomi can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster

5. Iktomi is still able to deliver

6. There are no real rules about posting

7. There are no real rules about moderation either enjoy your ban

Aaron had always enjoyed a good set of commandments, and there was

something nice and concise about seven. The window showed there were almost six


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hundred people in the room, all of them with names of six characters or less. Someone

going by the name NE1 was holding court.

i vote pizza strike , NE1 said.

cz its 2002 rite? asked REDX

u hate on them cz they fked yr medz , said MMM.

fked yr mo

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