The Puzzle was located on Pepper Street in the Isle of Dogs. The pub overlooked a black expanse of toxic hydrogen oxide along the Millwall Docks in the dilapidated East London area called the Docklands. The Isle of Dogs, a water-bound tongue of marshland inside a dramatic u-bend in the Thames River, had at one time been transformed from historical wharves, dockyards and warehouses to swanky riverside residential complexes with stunning views of the river. That was a long time ago. Rising crime had seen a steady flow of residents bail out of the area as the surrounding black zones encroached from all directions. The area had since degenerated into a haven for squatters, other forms of human parasite and Union freelancers boating or driving in from the continent.
At the docks, a few yards in front of The Puzzle, a few dilapidated-looking boats bobbed atop thick-looking oil-slick water. Most of them didn’t look seaworthy. Round the back of The Puzzle, within a perimeter of chain linked fence, Caldwell could make out a ramshackle cluster of mobile residences. He walked through the pub’s fake wood doors into a humid cloud of stale beer, cigarette smoke and rotting pub food. He wrinkled his nose and fought to suppress the urge to gag.
It was barely 7.00 AM but already a row of regulars was already lined up along the expansive metal bar celebrating the New Year by knocking back alcoholic breakfasts on Union social security money and staring at the pulsating pixels of a holographic stripper. Caldwell scanned the unfamiliar faces and wondered if one of them was Glyph. None of them looked like hacker types. None of them had that hungry look of the digital floating world.
Caldwell moved towards a raised area at the back of the pub and slid into one of The Puzzle’s mock oak seats, away from the clientele. He couldn’t stand idle conversation or prolonged contact with people. He had to get a message to Glyph as quickly as possible. There was a burly Indian-looking guy behind the bar trying to look like he was keeping busy. Caldwell placed the knapsack between his legs, the bulk of the console strangely reassuring.
The Puzzle was obviously a neighborhood pub. There was a discernible sense of familiarity among its patrons. The man behind the bar was engaged in small talk with one of the customers who addressed him as Ram and requested a fresh pint of dark ale. The slur of the customer’s voice suggested that his membership of alcoholics anonymous was long overdue. He looked like the seafaring type, an assortment of tattoos adorned flaccid white skin, captain of one of the fine vessels outside. Caldwell wondered whether Ram was short for Ramesh.
The man called Ram acknowledged the customer’s order with a nod of his head, the smoke from the cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth creating a temporary question mark in the air. He then disappeared behind the bar. A few seconds later a robot shaped like an inverted bucket came to life on the bar counter with a shudder and rows of blinking lights. There was a small army of the things parked to one side of the bar, their cheap pseudo-metal bodywork glinting. The robot blinked and whirred and something whined deep within its chassis. Its midriff was surrounded by a neat row of shot glasses of various shapes. A light sensor at the end of its miniscule antenna started blinking as it figured out the location of the customer. The robot grabbed a beer mug from a rack and proceeded to pull a pint of brown ale, much to the customer’s amusement.
“New robot bartender, the only thing it can’t do is juggle bottles,” Ram the bartender explained proudly to the wide-eyed man, all the while scratching absent-mindedly at his hairy arms. The customer watched the robot make its way towards him and set a perfect pint of ale down on a coaster in front of him. Its wheels and metallic silver body spun round to present the customer with a LCD read out of the bill. The men at the bar momentarily lost interest in the dancing hologram and looked over to see what the commotion of whirs and clicks was all about. They gawked for a few seconds and then turned their attention back to the gyrating pixels.
“More skullduggery from the Far East,” the podgy tattooed customer said, still slurring. “Those guys would be the death of us if we are not careful.”
“Helpful little buggers though, these Automated Bartender robots. Free me up to spend more time picking my nose,” Ram said, pulling a moist finger out of one of his nostrils. The customer started laughing.
“They’ll put you out of your job if you are not careful. Some union conglomerate will roll out a whole chain of automated pubs, not a human in sight. The whole fucking gig run by these dumb machines.”
“One pint of lager, Fifty Union Euros.” the robot said in a female voice, its scanner searching for a credit chip.
“Put it on my tab,” said the customer to the robot. The man took a large swig from the glass and licked his lips feverishly to rid them of the froth.
“One pint of lager, Fifty Union Euros,” the robot said again, this time the female computerized voice had gone up an octave. The man looked like he was going to pummel the robot into the counter with his fist. Ram reached out and pressed a button to override the robot, which promptly retracted and returned to join its brothers at the end of the bar.
“Bloody computers, you present them with a problem that requires human judgment and they crap out on you,” the man said to Ram who just shook his head.
To the right of where Caldwell was sitting stood a bunch of slot machines and some decidedly grubby-looking cyberspace terminals. Clutching the knapsack, he walked apprehensively over to one of the terminals and typed the address of his netbase. There were no new messages. He fired a short reply to Glyph’s message. At desired location. Let’s meet. He logged out of the netbase and went back to his seat. Now, he just had to wait. He wondered what Glyph looked like. He would not be surprised if the hacker turned out to be some acne-challenged fourteen year-old whiz kid. Stranger things had happened.
Ten minutes later, the doors of the pub flew open and it just took Caldwell a second to conclude that it was Glyph. The thing that came through the door was a rigged up wheelchair with what appeared to be half a man deposited on it. Despite his obvious disability, there was something majestic about the way he carried himself, that air of confidence possessed by hackers working on the cutting edge of technology. He looked around thirty-five and sported a ruddy complexion and a rugged black beard. What looked like trodes where set on each side of his head and they seemed to be hooked up wirelessly to the wheelchair. He was wearing a shiny white shirt which trailed off the end of his legless torso.
Glyph was half man, half machine, willing the wheelchair forward with his brain waves. Gyros in motion as the wheelchair neatly negotiated the steps that lead up to the raised area at the back where Caldwell was sitting. It looked like the hacker had spotted him too as Glyph made his way towards where Caldwell was sitting. Hackers had an uncanny way of recognizing one another.
The wheelchair glided up to Caldwell’s table and a pair of emerald green eyes sized him up and then broke into a smile.
“I am Glyph. I’m glad you got my message. Obviously you are still alive and looking entirely nothing like what I imagined,” said Glyph in a matter-of-fact way. The voice was cool, unflustered. For someone delivering bad news, Glyph seemed very relaxed and that helped knock the edge off Caldwell’s fear, which was still there, blob-like and unshakeable. Glyph’s white shirt had some unlikely frills down the front. It was obviously bought at some thrift store. He looked as though he’d had just stumbled out of a New Year’s ball after a particularly heavy night of alcohol abuse.
“Thanks. It’s great to finally meet you in the flesh. Who’s after me Glyph?” Caldwell asked breathlessly, instinctively looking around the pub to see if anyone was paying unnecessary attention to them.
“I think you better have a drink first. You are going to need it.”
“I am out of credit, out of a home. I am sure you can understand my impatience,” Caldwell said, instinctively knowing that pushing the man to spill before he was ready would be futile.
“Drinks are on me. What are you having? I don’t know for how long I am going to have a tab here,” said Glyph, ignoring Caldwell’s insistence. There was a trace of despondence in his voice.
“In that case, I’ll have an XO,” Caldwell said, wondering when next he’d be able to afford his own drinks. He didn’t much care for XOs either but the cheap Chinese electronic displays set into the tables said they were on “Special”.
“XO coming right up,” said Glyph, affecting a mock bow. His wheelchair reared itself upright and the gyros that kept it balanced kicked in. Caldwell watched Glyph key in the order, his podgy thumb leaving smudges on the plastic touch screen.
“How did you do that with the wheelchair? You didn’t use the joystick.”
“Had a mate down in Surrey Quays rig this baby up with the latest neurosensor system from Taiwan. Had four sensor chips one hundredth the size of a postage stamp inserted just under the skin on my skull. This baby reads the sensors in real time,” the hacker explained, tapping a gray enclosure on the side of the wheelchair.
“Must have been painful,” Caldwell speculated.
“Not really. The real problems start if the chip is blocking the growth of your hair follicles. Then you can really mess yourself up.”
“Technology, can’t live with it, can’t live without it,” Caldwell said, studying the hacker’s heavily computerized wheelchair with its multiple displays. Glyph was obviously mulling something over in his head, the banter and details of his wheelchair’s technology a thinly-veiled smokescreen. The bartender brought over two glasses of XO, said hello to Glyph and promptly returned to the bar. Caldwell took a sip and then looked at Glyph willing him to get on with it. The hacker drained half of the glass in one single gulp and grimaced.
“Kenzo Yamamoto, The HUB’s largest client is dead. The men who are after you are his Yakuza cronies,” Glyph said casually.
“He can’t be dead. I just had a conversation with an avatar that purported to be him just over an hour or so ago. Besides, how do you know he’s dead and how do you know that there are people after me?”
“The avatar could have been a recorded computer construct. Kenzo was killed two days ago.” Caldwell’s heart skipped a beat as his last ray of hope disappeared under a thick blanket of gathering storm clouds. The Slav’s vial may yet be called upon again today.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Kenzo was The HUB’s biggest client. Our relationship with him goes way back. Of course, when you have a client that big and with those kinds of financial resources you do what you can to check him out. Follow up on him, if you like. Dealing with the Yakuza is risky business so you do what you can to make sure that you don’t suddenly become dispensable. You take your precautions. Let’s just say we are tapped into their communication networks. We found a way to access their satellites, discovered exploits in their intrusion detection AIs, so we know a little about what’s going on in Tokyo. Understand what I am saying?”
“And they discovered you out and are now coming for all Hub members?” Caldwell suggested.
“That’s not it at all. It appears from their internal communications that Kenzo sent out two packages recently from Tokyo. One went to New York and the other to the Union.” Glyph eyed Caldwell quizzically. Did Glyph know what was in the packages?
“I can’t see the correlation.”
“I think you can. Yamamoto’s death has unraveled his operations, which I suspect were not part of the Yakuza’s master plan. The Yakuza want very badly to retrieve whatever Kenzo sent you and the American to make sure that anyone who has set eyes on it is taken out of the picture.” Caldwell received another intense look from Glyph.
“Who was the other guy?” Caldwell asked, his mind rapidly digesting all the new information. Glyph seemed particularly well-informed, a man with his digital ear to the ground.
“Professor Joplin of Harvard University, deceased as of yesterday. They are coming for you next.”
Caldwell’s worst fears came true with that one sentence. On the MagLev, it had dawned on him that the console could be the only reason why there’d be someone on his tail. Kenzo Yamamoto’s death offered a convenient explanation for way too many things. The man on the platform was not after him just to retrieve the console. He was bent on taking his life.
Caldwell watched Glyph closely, wondering whether the hacker would demand to see the console and if he did whether he should show it to him. His only option it seemed was to sell the thing and to disappear deep within the fabric of the Union. Glyph might be able to help him locate a buyer. Glyph punched one of the many buttons on his wheelchair’s arm rest to reveal a small display screen.
“So, why do you think he sent the package to the professor and to me? I don’t understand,” Caldwell said after it became clear that some response was expected. Glyph was not sure whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“You said that you talked to him or his construct today. Didn’t he or it tell you?”
“No. He said he would get in touch soon.”
“Word in cyberspace, the Yakuza seems to suspect this too, is that he poked his fingers into one too many pies and the Chinese made him pay.”
“The Chinese? I thought Kenzo was into mostly Japanese corporate stuff,” Caldwell said.
“So did I. At any rate, he was found dead on the toilet at the Cherry Blossom hostess club in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It’s a popular Yak hangout. Apparently, he was killed by some kind of toxic compound, one used for assassinations predominantly in New China. On the toilet seat can you imagine? He died in a hurry according to reports. Loaded nanobots gained access through the pores in his skin.”
Caldwell thought about the vial and wondered whether he should drink its contents right then and there.
“Kenzo’s associates know about the consoles and want them back,” said Glyph, smirking as he took another big gulp of XO and looking at Caldwell as though daring him to deny that one of the said consoles were in his possession.
“So you know?”
“A hack into DHL’s custom declarations mainframe in India. The computer handles electronic declarations for all of DHL’s Union operations.”
“I see. For the record, I was quite cut up by the fact that I was no longer part of the core team on The HUB. Kenzo said he orchestrated that, obviously with your participation.”
“Yes, on Kenzo’s request. Said he needed you out of the picture for a while. Off the radar if you know what I mean. You are one of The HUB’s best so I was a bit reluctant to do it but Kenzo’s pockets are deep. Sorry.”
“No offence taken. I received the console in the post just this morning and still don’t know what to do with it.”
Glyph rapt in thought now, scratched his beard.
“Have you jacked in with the console yet?” Glyph asked.
“Only to my netbase.”
“They can probably trace that.”
“So what exactly do you know about the consoles and what Kenzo intended them to be used for?” Caldwell asked.
“If I knew that, I’d probably be dead.”
“Fair enough, but who were his buyers?”
“Anybody he wanted. As I said, Kenzo made markets in information. His expertise, if you could call it that, was to find information on people or organizations, valuable information, not the crap anyone can get in cyberspace, and sell that information to those people or organizations, or their enemies, or governments, whoever was the highest bidder. Some people prefer to call it blackmail.”
“And he operated through freelancers like us, a virtual global network?”
“That’s just part of the story. Kenzo had an army of gameboys, hackers, phreakers and information dealers around the globe on the payroll, from Helsinki to Moscow to Beijing. They operated anonymously, delivering the data through a series of intricate routines to ensure that neither source nor destination left any trace. Yet rest assured that Yamamoto had data on the backgrounds of every hacker who pulled a job for him. Having an ad hoc international hacking network meant the Yakuza and the major zaibatsus he shook down in Tokyo could never directly connect any of this to him.”
“Electronic spying and blackmail.”
“Correct, and like a physical world spy he subverted certain insiders such as government officials, bank employees, academics, programmers and so on. Sometimes he singled out people who had no history whatsoever,” said Glyph, downing the rest of the XO, leaving droplets in his beard. Caldwell sipped from his glass, grimacing at the foul taste.
“People with no history, like me?”
“Correct. It appears that somewhere in his massive database, Kenzo had stumbled on some information about you. Perhaps about your past. Information that made you valuable to him. Word has it that the other recipient of the console, this Professor Joplin, was one of the world’s leading minds in artificial intelligence. Why would he send consoles in the post when they are readily available?”
“We’ll never know because he’s dead.” Caldwell was still reluctant to tell Glyph that the console in his possession was unlike any other. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust the wheelchair-bound hacker.
“Yes, but I think we can deduce the answer. Kenzo sent the consoles because he wanted you two to hack into a network inaccessible to ordinary consoles. The fact that he chose an artificial intelligence expert and a hacker for the job cannot be coincidence. Also, the suspicion that he was killed by the Chinese has some substance to it. We all know that they have a history of creating alternate networks to cyberspace itself. They are unwilling to depend on networks that are effectively created, evolved and managed by the United States.”
“By the way, how did you find out they were coming after me today?”
“We found out that the Yakuza in Japan had discovered the last known addresses of everyone who received one of Kenzo’s consoles. And the death of the professor suggests they are already in the process of doing something about it. We eavesdropped on communications that indicated that Yakuza had been dispatched to the Union.”
“They found the capsule address?” Glyph’s story sounded like too much of coincidence, but he didn’t look like he was lying. His eyes were opaque green pools of sincerity.
“Probably scenario analysis constructs. Lucky for you, the Japanese Yakuza officially pulled out of London after the Bayswater massacre. They formed some kind of truce with the Union government and they agreed to pull out.”
“So?”
“Kenzo was part of the most powerful Yakuza network in Japan, but he was a rogue element off on a tangent doing his own stuff,” Glyph explained. “It appears that they found out what he was up to after his death. Pulled all the systems offline and decided to do some cleaning up first. Fortunately for you, they had to fly people out from Tokyo. The American professor had no such luck. The Boston Yakuza are still very much active.”
“So you’ve got an AI guy and a ... what, a loser? And they just want to wipe us off the face of the planet for being on the receiving end of DHL’s package delivery service?”
“I am sure Kenzo didn’t see it that way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you that,” Glyph reasoned, pointing at the bag. “Got to go to the loo. Will be right back and we can take a look at that console.” The wheelchair moved off on its own accord towards the toilets, rubber wheels squeaking on the tiling.