Gristle & Bone Page 9

  From: Mason Adler

  masonadler@skepticsociety.com

  To: masonadler@skepticsociety.com

  Sent: August 11 08:23

  Subject: Re: Re: READ ME

  YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK.

  Mason scowled at the clock in the action bar—8:23 A.M. He didn't have to leave for work until nine. Checking the digital clock on his dresser to be certain, he saw it was 8:28—but he'd always made sure his alarm clock was ahead by five minutes so he wouldn't miss the subway.

  Nice try, asshole, he thought. He clicked Reply and began typing at full-speed. His clocked WPM was currently 125 words per minute, the result of seven years in telemarketing and a lifetime in front of the computer. On his phone, he was only slightly less proficient.

  "Dear, Mason Adler." He spoke in bursts as he wrote. "Very funny. Why don't you go masturbate into a Linux manual and leave me alone? Sincerely, Mason Adler. P.S. GO FUCK YOURSELF!" He added several exclamation points to this before firing it off.

  Doonk! The phone vibrated in his hand.

  Scowling, he brought up the new message. Another reply from his evil internet clone, subject: READ ME, preceded by four Re:s.

  He read it:

  THE OLD MAN ACROSS THE HALL SMELLS LIKE CAT URINE.

  Mason thought, Tell me something I don't know.

  And his older brother, the voice of reason, spoke up in his mind: How come he knows that, you think?

  "Could be coincidence," he answered aloud. "Chances are pretty high the person across the hall from anyone is gonna have a cat. It's hardly prophetic."

  Maybe. But how come he knows it's an old man? Big Bro asked. You coulda lived across from a college student, or an old lady, or a couple with kids. How come he knows you live next door to an old guy who smells like cat piss, and now you're gonna be late for work?

  Only he wasn't going to be late for work, not according to the clocks. He got out of bed, paranoia picking away at his logical brain like a blackbird at a worm. If what he was considering was true, it meant someone was watching him. Someone was watching, and wanted him to know it.

  And it wasn't just the NSA.

  "Maybe it is Mike," Mason said. Michael Adler had been to his kid brother's apartment on several occasions, had even been unlucky enough to occupy the elevator with Captain Kitty Piss—the name Mike had bestowed upon the man—from next door. Add to that, Mike had taken night courses in computer programming before he'd realized, after loading himself up on peyote at Burning Man and having to get his stomach pumped a few years ago, that his calling was as an EMT.

  "Such a noble boy," their mother had said, with a look of scorn over the dinner table at her ignoble youngest son that showed how little she valued Mason's conspiracy theory blog, Society of Skeptics. "Hey," he'd said, "if you didn't want me to become a professional skeptic, why did you name me Mason?"

  If it was just Mike playing a cruel but affectionate joke on his little brother, as he had countless times before, Mason would have to get him back. No question.

  He scrolled through his contacts and dialed Mike. On the fifth ring, just when he was about to hang up, his brother answered.

  "Li'l bro?"

  He sounded rough, and Mason remembered—too late—that Mike was on the night shift now, sleeping during the day. He'd probably been in the midst of a dream about free-climbing giant lactating breasts, as he sometimes liked to claim. Mason would have to tread lightly. Dance around the issue, wait for Mike to expose himself with the sudden burst of laughter that invariably followed his pranks.

  "Big bro," Mason said, faking nonchalance. "What's up?"

  "Just nappin'," Mike said. "How's work, numbnuts?"

  "Pretty good, pretty good." Work was shit, actually, and Mike wasn't biting. He'd have to keep Mike on the line until Big Bro could no longer restrain the tickling in his funny bone. "Still on the midnights?" Mason asked, though he already knew the answer.

  "Same shit, dude." There was a silence, or what passed for silence over a cell phone: a pause pregnant with crackle and the underlying sound of data transfer. "So what do you want, Perry?"

  Mason hated when his brother called him that—he'd never even seen Perry Mason—but he didn't make his anger known. "You remember that guy across the hall from me?"

  "Hang on, uhhh... Kitty Piss, right? What about him?"

  It wasn't working. Time to implement a direct assault. "You haven't been sending me emails, have you, Mike?"

  "Emails?" Mike's confusion was genuine. "I sent you an email. Hey, what's wrong? You sound messed-up, li'l bro."

  "I'm okay. Just... someone's been sending me weird emails... from my own address."

  Mike was munching on something. Probably a handful of cereal straight from the box, a habit that irked Mason almost as much as being called Perry. "It's called spoofing," he said among crunches. "Hackers use it. They send emails that look like they're from you, to all the people on your contact list; vice versa from your friends to you. NBD, Pare, just a minor breach. You know, nothin' a quick Google search won't fix." More crunches. "I'm going back to sleep, bro. Lates."

  Mike hung up. Absolutely no way could he have lasted so long on the line without cracking up if he'd been involved. But if it wasn't him, who could it be?

  It could be any number of people, Pare. Even in his mind, Mike sometimes called him that. How many "special interest" groups have you pissed off with that website of yours? You need me to rhyme them off?

  Mason didn't. He got up in his slippers and boxer shorts and went to the window to peek through the blinds. His apartment was on the third floor of an ugly triplex on the East Side, sandwiched between a methadone clinic and a donut shop that often seemed to be just an annex of the clinic. Traffic swished steadily past, sheeple toiling away in the Animal Farm. A few kids were on their way to school in their bland gray and white uniforms, backpacks on shoulders, off to be brainwashed and fitted into neat little cubicles where they'd sit until they died of boredom or cancer, whichever struck them first.

  Mason sympathized. Meanwhile, he looked for the telltale white cube van that would signify the involvement of The Company. Out front of the internet hub at the gas station across the street, a telecom van idled. Mason had seen it there intermittently during the past few weeks, but he had questioned the technician on the third day and the man had seemed much too dense to be a Spook. Even a deep-cover CIA operative couldn't play stupid that well.

  Doesn't mean I'm not being watched, he told himself. Just that they're being smart about it.

  He decided it would be best to forget the whole thing and get on with his day. If anyone was watching him, he had little to hide. It was odd, sure, but he supposed it was theoretically possible his blog software was chewing up and regurgitating bits and pieces of things he'd posted about on SOS. Some glitch in the system, a misfire of electrical pulses. Maybe it was something to do with the static shock he'd gotten from his computer last night, of which the burn on his finger was a stinging reminder. Certainly nothing to worry about, just as Mike had said.

  Except that now he really was going to be late for work.

  Mason rushed around the apartment, kicking off his slippers and pulling on a pair of pants, giving his teeth a quick once-over, ruffling his hair, popping a blueberry muffin in his mouth on his way to the door.

  As he locked it behind him, chewing the stale muffin top, he was certain he heard the cheerful new message doonk! from the desktop computer in his den. Of course it could have been his imagination, like the few times he thought he'd heard the phone ring when he'd been in the shower, only to discover while dripping on the den carpet that no one had called, or when he'd felt the phantom buzz in his pants pocket to find no one had texted.

  He continued to the stairs, and the further he got away from his apartment, the more the whole situation drifted from his mind.

  MASON CAUGHT HIS train just at the last second, the arm holding his shoulder bag snagged for a moment between the doors until he ya
nked it inside. Standing elbow-to-elbow amongst his fellow commuters, Mason's gaze flitted the car, eyeing them all with suspicion through T2 sunglasses, while the new System album blasted into his ears, unlike the rest of them, their eyes had been downcast.

  He smiled, satisfied that the Spammer's prediction had been wrong—and he truly might have made it on time if there hadn't been an accident on the tracks. They evacuated the train, diverting them back the way they'd come "due to a police investigation," and Mason was forced to take a cab the rest of the way.

  "Late again, Mase?" Bill Stevens noted as Mason stumbled sweating and gasping into the cubicle they shared, and threw down his shoulder bag. Bill was typing on his BlackBerry with one thumb while jabbing absently at his computer keyboard with the index finger of his free hand.

  Mason nodded wearily. "Accident on the subway."

  "Radio said it was a jumper," Bill said with a sadistic glee. "Bad way to go, man. Baaad way to go."

  Mason nodded again, suddenly feeling ill. He sank into his orthopedic chair and thumbed on the computer monitor, only half aware of his surroundings as he fastened his Velcro wrist brace.

  A jumper, he thought. Whether it was a coincidence or not he couldn't be sure. What he did know was that the jumper had made him late for work, just like the message had predicted.

  He Googled college station suicide, and clicked on a link for the Herald, a story about an unidentified man who had leaped to his death at 9:21 A.M. One bystander claimed to have seen a brief flash of light and believed it to be the suicide victim's soul (Strange how they always called them "victims," Mason thought. Like calling masturbation "sexual assault") as it left the man's body. Another passenger claimed someone had pushed him.

  Pushed—and Mason had been late for work.

  Just as the Spammer had predicted.

  If it wasn't a strange coincidence, if the agent of the jumper's demise had been the same person responsible for the emails—what did that mean for him? If a man could be so callously thrown into the path of an oncoming train, simply to make a pretty innocuous prediction come true....

  Mason shuddered to think what the person or persons responsible for something like that might do to him.

  He pushed out of his chair, sending it spiraling against the wall that separated his workstation from Bill's, vaguely aware of Bill's whine—"What's up?"—as he rushed to the men's room and vomited up a toilet full of Code Red and Lucky Charms, leaving his mouth tasting like sugary aluminum.

  When he flushed, the bowl looked full of blood.

  He washed his hands and returned to his desk, peeking at his coworkers as he passed their little grey cubes: Rand Maitlin, the stutterer, rubbed a spearmint-green finger brush over his teeth at his desk; Patricia Castillo, the office hypochondriac, booked a vacation on a travel website; Leonard Jacoby crammed sandwich meat from the package into his gob, while staring at a slideshow of Miley Cyrus JPEGs. Nobody noticed Mason as he passed, despite how sickly he must have looked, and Mason decided it was unlikely the harassment had come from someone in the office.

  Another message from the Spammer awaited, no doubt impatient for a response. As he read it on his computer, he felt a cold chill run up his spine.

  WHY DO YOU SO OFTEN HAVE THE SAME DREAM?

  His blood felt suddenly radioactive, rising up his neck to flood his cheeks. How could they know? How could they possibly know such an intimate detail of his life?

  This was far beyond the previous messages, much more than a simple coincidence. He had never spoken nor written of his dreams—of this dream in particular—to anyone before, not even Mike. He'd always been a very private person; he believed his dreams were the one thing no one else could share, what separated him from the other upright monkeys. His opinions and fears he would share whenever possible, but his dreams... they were locked up tight in the dark, blanketed vault of his warm bed.

  Not a digital glitch, he thought. Whoever the Spammer was—Or whatever, Mike's voice reminded him—this emissary of prophecies and unwelcome truths, he/she/it had somehow been able to read his mind. What it wanted... Well, that was an entirely different subject.

  Doonk!

  Now what?

  Now I'm gonna ignore it, that's what. Go on with my day, like the whole goddamned crazy thing never happened.

  He was curious, though. If not terrified.

  As if in response to his curiosity, three new messages came in a virtually simultaneous burst—Doo-doo-doonk! Then they came one after another, rattling the phone on his desk, filling up the inbox on his computer like digital popcorn, the subjects scrolling up the screen, flashing on the lenses of his smudgy, dandruff-flecked glasses, on his eyeballs, on the dark screen of his mind, all of the messages blending into one another until they became one long black rectangular blur.

  He whipped around to see if anyone was watching, having heard the alerts. But they were all embroiled in their own little lives, sheeple that they were. Nobody cared about his.

  And suddenly, the alerts stopped. Two-hundred new messages awaited inspection. His phone played its theme song as it turned itself off, the battery close to drained from the assault. On his computer, the cursor hung near the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, eager to receive his next command.

  He opened the final message.

  WHEN YOU DREAM ABOUT MAKING LOVE TO CHERISE FROM ACCOUNTS PAYABLE, WHY DOES CHERISE BECOME A COMPUTER?

  Mason hastily deleted the email and peered over the fuzzy gray divider between his cubicle and Bill Stevens's. Bill was currently surfing NASDAQ with a mystified scowl, oblivious—thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the internet, that great, glittering Godhead of useless facts and countless time-wasters.

  Mason returned to his monitor and opened another: YOU'RE AFRAID OF WIDE OPEN SPACES. Another: YOU ONCE TORE UP YOUR NEIGHBOR'S MAIL AND BLAMED IT ON YOUR BROTHER. Another: AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL, YOU STILL EXPERIENCE SPONTANEOUS ERECTIONS DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Another (and this one hit particularly hard, rattling him to the very core): YOU BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACIES SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO CONSIDER YOUR OWN INADEQUACIES AND PROBLEMS.

  Another. Another. Another.

  The final message was a link. He didn't want to see what this person—or persons—had to show him, but curiosity trumped logic again. Logic wasn't having a very good day.

  Squinching his eyes shut, Mason clicked it.

  He heard the rumble and screech of a subway train.

  No, his mind screamed. No, no, NO!

  But his eyes confirmed the answer was indeed yes. Yes, it was College Station. Yes, the timecode was just about the time of the suicide—or murder—and yes, he was more than a little terrified. His heart leapt like a cat in a cage as he muted the sound.

  The train entered a crowded station. Passengers filed out, passengers filed in. The doors closed, and the train rolled on. The security camera had a good view of the Designated Waiting Area, looking down on the benches and waste cans, the suicide hotline phone—diplomatically (as was Canadian custom) referred to as the "Crisis Link"—and the yawning black mouth of the exit tunnel.

  A few riders were left on the platform, one of whom was a man in a trench coat who stood on the yellow line, much too close to the tracks. A few more people filed in: a woman with an overly large stroller (what Mason liked to call a Baby Mobile Command Unit); a man walking while staring at his tablet; a gaggle of teenage girls laughing and acting generally annoying; and a man with a bushy beard and stained coveralls, who looked like he could have been homeless.

  Suddenly a huge spark of electricity zapped out from the covered cables on the wall. Tablet Man, who'd been leaning against the wall to read, jumped out of the way, his large feet kicking out comically as he backed into Trenchcoat. Trenchcoat stumbled, still much too close to the tracks. He swung his arms in a circular motion to regain his balance, the tail of his coat whipping out behind him like an actor in a John Woo movie.

  Too late. Trenchcoat disappeared behind the ledge.
Smoke began to rise, presumably from the third rail, as a crowd gathered. The homeless-looking man ran for the edge and reached out. A charred hand came up from the tracks, grasping at it....

  The homeless man jerked a look to the left. He jumped to his feet and waved his arms frantically.

  Bystanders leapt back in terror as the train rushed in, filling the void, wincing as the train crushed the man in the trench coat to death.

  Mason had moved closer to the video screen. Was that a video artifact he'd seen as the train crushed the man, or had it been an inky jet of blood? He didn't know, didn't want to know, but he had a feeling it was the latter. He sat staring at the empty video window long after the clip had ended. Not a suicide. Not a murder either, at least not quite. An accident? Mason knew otherwise. The man's death had the appearance of an accident, a Rube Goldberg-like chain of events engineered to look like an "act of God."

  The Spammer had caused an electrical overload, startling the man with the tablet. The Spammer's target could well have been Tablet Man himself, hoping to startle him right onto the tracks, or fry him with the initial jolt of electricity like the third rail had seemingly done to Trenchcoat, burning him alive but not quite killing him, saving the death blow for the train itself.

  Of course, it was even likelier the Spammer hadn't had a target in mind at all—not anyone in the station, anyhow. That this Random Act of Violence had in fact been committed to prove a point to his real target. To show Mason what they were capable of. To show him the scope of their power.

  This is not happening, Mason thought, staring at the black window on his screen. It's just not.