Ben Winters - Countdown City

“All right,” I say to Culverson at last, pushing the last small teardrops from the corner of my eyes with the back of my working hand. “I’m going.”

“Home?”

“Not yet. I’ve got a quick idea I want to follow up on, on the Martha thing.”

“Of course you do.”

I smile. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

Houdini gets up as I get up, looks sharply into the corners of the room, stands stiff and straight with head cocked to one side.

“Oh, wait,” says Culverson. “Hold on. Sit. Don’t you wanna see it?”

“See what?”

“The samurai sword, man.”

I sit. The dog sits.

“You said not to ask you about it.”

“Well, yeah, you know. People say all kinds of stuff.” He takes it out from under the table, slowly, one curved inch at a time: a real weapon, glinting in the pale light.

“Holy moly.”

“I know.”

“I said a toy sword.”

“I couldn’t find a toy one.” He tugs the sweaty undershirt forward off his chest. “Listen, Stretch. You go solve your case. I’ll find the kids.”

I try and fail to hide the pleasure that this announcement brings me. I bite my lip, employ the dry and sarcastic voice I have learned, over many years, from Detective Culverson. “I thought you said there was no point in investigating anything.”

“Yeah,” he says, and stands, lifting the sword. “I know what I said.”

“No way,” says Nico’s awful friend Jordan, staring at me in the doorway of the vintage clothing store. “You’re kidding me.”

He’s wearing jean shorts, the Ray-Bans, no shirt, no shoes. His hair is a slovenly mess. A blonde is passed out in a sleeping bag on the shop floor behind him, fast asleep, cheek pressed against the one slim bare arm thrown out from the bag.

“Jordan,” I say, peering behind him into the store, the cluttered bins, big black garbage bags overflowing with wool socks and winter hats. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” he says, pressing a hand into his bare chest. “ Ésta es mi casa, señor . What are you doing here?” He looks at me in Culverson’s oversized shirt. “Are you here for some clothes?”

“Nico said you were all going to the Midwest.” I can’t bring myself to say “to recon with the team.” It’s too ridiculous. “For the next phase of your plan.”

We’re still standing on the threshold of the store, desolate Wilson Avenue behind me. “These sorts of plans are changing all the time.” Jordan lifts one foot to scratch the opposite calf. “I’ve been reassigned. This is team holding-down-the-fort.”

The blonde girl makes a sleepy mew and stretches, rolls over. Jordan sees me watching her and grins wolfishly.

“Do you need something?”

“Yes,” I say. “I do.”

I step past him, into the shop, and Jordan makes a light tsk-tsk .

“Hey, that’s trespassing, dude. Don’t make me call the police.”

I know this tone of voice, it’s one of Nico’s favorites, glib and self-satisfied; it was her tone at UNH when she told me what was in the duffel bag: guns, maple syrup, human skulls.

Jordan stoops to tug a ratty yellow T-shirt from one of the disheveled piles on the ground and pull it on over his head. The room smells like mildew or mold. I look around at the clustered mannequins, some dressed and some undressed, some raising hands in greeting, some staring into the room’s dusty corners. Two of them have been arranged to shake hands, like one is welcoming the other to a board meeting.

“Jordan,” I say, “Is it possible…”

“Yes?”

He stretches out the word, simpering, like an obsequious butler. The shirt Jordan has selected has Super Mario on it, mustachioed and hydrocephalic and mock heroic. If I am remembering this incorrectly, or imagining it, what Nico told me on the helicopter, I am going to sound like a moron—I am aware of that. On the other hand, this man, of all the people in the world, already finds me ridiculous: my aesthetic, my attitude, my existence.

“Is it possible that you have an Internet connection in here?”

“Oh, sure,” he says, unhesitating, grinning, proud. “Why? You want to check your e-mail?”

“No,” I say. In my chest there is a starburst of excitement, possibilities sparkling to life like fireworks. “I need to do a search.”

We tiptoe past Sleeping Beauty to a door marked MANAGER’S OFFICE, where Jordan asks me to stare at the floor while he runs the numbers on a combination lock and lets us in. And there it is, in the tiny claustrophobic office space, jammed between a three-drawer filing cabinet and a small unplugged break-room refrigerator with a missing door: a desk of particleboard and glass, with a big ugly Dell computer, the tall processor tower listing alarmingly. Jordan sees my skeptical expression and brays laughter as he plops into the spinning office chair behind the desk.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he says, leaning forward to depress the power button. “Do you think the head of the National Security Administration is offline right now? What about His Honor the President?”

“I can’t say I’ve really thought about it,” I say.

“Maybe you should,” he says, swiveling in the chair to wink at me. “You heard of sipper?”

“No.”

“No?” He spells it, S-I-P-R. “Never heard of that?”

“No.”

“What about nipper?”

“No.”

He cranes his head around, chuckles. “God. Wow. You’ve heard of Google, right? It starts with a G.”

I ignore him. I squint hopefully at the screen, feeling like I’m in the middle of some kind of elaborate practical joke. Indeed, in that long uncertain moment, waiting to see if the monitor’s black screen will come to life, I suddenly feel like maybe the whole thing is a practical joke, that this whole final year of human history is just a prank that’s been played on me, on gullible ol’ Hank Palace, and that all the world is going to jump out of the closet here in the manager’s office at Next Time Around and say “ Surprise! ” and all the lights will come on and all the world go back to how it was.

“Ah, come on, Scott,” says Jordan idly, interrupting my reverie. He’s staring at the still-blank screen, playing drums on his thighs.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s this jackoff in Toledo who’s never up and running when he says he’s going to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s because of your limited policeman’s mind.” Again, I don’t take the bait; again, I remain impassive, waiting to get what I need. “The Internet isn’t one big thing hovering in the sky. It’s a bunch of networks, and people can’t get to the networks anymore because the devices that got them there are powered by lots and lots of electricity. So we built new networks. I got this shitty computer and three landlines and a 12.8 modem and a gas tank’s worth of juice, and I can connect to some dudes I know in Pittsburgh with the same setup, who can connect to Toledo, and so on into the beautiful forever. It’s like a super-old-school mesh network. Do you know what a mesh network is? Wait, lemme guess.”

He blows a bubble, pops it with one dirty fingernail. It’s maddening; he’s like an obnoxious seven-year-old that someone has installed at the helm of a vast international conspiracy.

“Of course, all the sites are mirrors, so a lot of stuff is missing or corrupted or what have you. But still impressive, right?”

“I would be a lot more impressed,” I say, “if we weren’t still staring at a blank screen.”

But even as I say it, the screen glows to life with the shimmering variegated panes of the Windows 98 logo, flickering ghostly like a hieroglyph on a cave wall.