F Wilson: Fatal Error

As Antoine restarted the chants, Kewan led the reporter half a block down to a corner where they could stand on the side street, away from the noise and out of the wind whipping along Eighth Avenue. Time for a friendly smile.

"I think I heard you a couple times on the radio, man. I ain't much for news stations, but I tune you guys in for weather and stuff. What you wanna ask me?"

Pelham thumbed a button on the recorder and held it between them. His breath steamed in the cold air.

"First off, what's your name?"

"Kick."

"No, your name."

"That is my name to people outside the Evolution. Other Kickers know me by a different name, but I'm just 'Kick' to the assimilated world."

This was a new policy instituted by the boss: Don't let outsiders know your name. A good policy, considering what they had planned for a few minutes from now.

"Very well then, Kick, how long have you been a Kicker?"

He smiled and gave the stock answer. "All my life. I just didn't know it until I read Hank Thompson's Kick last year." There: plug done. "After that, I knew I had to dissimilate and join the Kicker Evolution."

"Just in case there are a few people who haven't heard it explained by now, what exactly does it mean to dissimilate?"

Kewan had been coached on how to answer FAQs about Kickers, and this was one of them.

"It's Hank Thompson's own word for the opposite of assimilate. As everybody grows up, they're pushed into being absorbed by the society or culture or religion or just the plain old herd around them. But when you're an adult, it's time to break free, to throw off the chains of assimilation and dissimilate."

"But critics say that by joining the Kicker Evolution you've simply traded one group for another."

"To anyone still assimilated, it might look like that, but you can't understand dissimilation until you've experienced it."

"But-"

"I ain't here to argue."

"I understand. What did you do before you were… before you dissimilated?"

"Life before dissimilation doesn't matter. Whatever you did, whoever you were, it's all irrelevant. As we like to say, 'You get a clean slate when you dissimilate.' " He spread the web between his right thumb and forefinger. "You also get one of these."

Pelham squinted at the black tattoo on the dark brown skin. "Oh, yes. That's certainly a familiar figure."

Should be, Kewan thought. It's been spray-painted all over town.

But he laughed and said, "Maybe I should get mine outlined in white."

"That would be… different." Pelham cleared his throat. "All right then, let's get to the here and now: Why are dozens of Kickers out here on this chilly winter night picketing a closed building?"

Kewan winked. "Well, for one, football season is over."

Pelham laughed. "Seriously."

"What time you got?"

A glance at his watch. "Ten fifty-eight."

Okay. Two minutes left-if the car was on time.

Kewan stepped back around the corner and pointed to the building.

"A major Internet data center hides on the fourth floor there. Big fat fiber-optic cables run in and out of it, feeding the World Wide Web in this country and crossing the Atlantic. We want that stopped."

"But why?"

"Because the Internet is the biggest assimilator of all. It sucks people in and won't let them out. So many more people would be able to dissimilate if not for the Internet. That's why we protest."

"But on a Monday night?"

"Why not? The Internet runs twenty-four/seven, and so does the Kicker Evolution."

And… that's when building security is at its lowest.

He eyed the marchers. They'd moved away from the doors and laid down their signs. He heard a roar of a car engine and saw a beat-up old Chevy speeding up Eighth Avenue from Greenwich Village. Its tires squealed as it braked into a hard left turn mid block, jumped the curb, and barreled across the sidewalk to smash through the glass doors.

Right on time.

"Oops!" Kewan broke into a run. "Gotta go."

The marchers had the car open by the time he got there. Most were hauling long- and short-handle sledgehammers, pry bars, and axes from the trunk; a few others who'd been trained in their use were easing the three EMP generators from the backseat. Kewan grabbed a long splitting maul and charged into the glass-littered lobby where a red-faced security guard was being tied to his chair with plastic fasteners.

The rest of the Kickers crammed into the two elevators. Kewan pulled out the insider's security card and swiped it through the scanner, then pressed 4. He jumped out, then entered the second elevator with the EMP crew and repeated the process.

"Remember," he said as they rose. "No hesitation. Soon as we arrive, we open the doors and go after them. Only a few nerdy techs inside this time of night, so don't worry about resistance. Take the routers and servers down hard and the nerds down gentle. The boss don't want nobody hurt. It's bad press."

One of the guys with an EMP gun snickered. "Yeah, we'll get enough of that when nobody around here can check their Facebook or MySpace tonight."

Another laughed. "Kicker Man will be defriended all over town."

The Kicker Man had his own MySpace page with a strange assortment of friends. Yeah, a lot of people would be pissed, but that was the whole idea-gather them together to split them apart.

"And remember: Don't cut the cables, hammer them."

A cut cable was easy to fix. Hammering fractured the fibers inside with no clue as to where they were broken.

The car slowed and dinged for the fourth floor. The doors opened, revealing the first group massed and waiting outside the steel doors to the data center. Kewan swiped the card again and the doors opened.

He stayed back with the EMP guys while the others charged into the center. He pulled a sheet of paper from his back pocket and unfolded it to reveal a map of the center. Their insider had sketched it out for tonight's visit.

The commotion drew some nerdy-looking guys to the front. One look at the invaders and they fled toward the rear.

"Okay, everybody! You know what to do! You see anyone on a phone, stop 'em!"

He led one of the EMP guys along the course laid out for him. The place was nothing like what he'd expected. In the movies computer centers were always brightly lit, high-tech palaces. This was dingy and dusty and not much more than stacks of black boxes on racks.

He headed for the routers that fed the high-capacity fiber-optic backbone cable that snaked across the floor of the Atlantic to England. He'd been briefed on what he'd find and given all sorts of names and abbreviations for the equipment, but he'd stopped listening after a while.

All he needed to know was that the equipment in the room in question had to be destroyed. His fellow Kickers would be smashing or frying every router and server and hammering every cable they could find, but Kewan had been assigned to the heart of the beast. His job was to pierce that heart and stop its beat.

"What are they thinking?" Jack said as he stared at the headline of the Post.

Abe shrugged. "I should know? I should explain the doings of meshuga Kickers?"

Jack leaned on the customer side of the scarred counter at the rear of the Isher Sports Shop. Abe Grossman perched his egg-shaped body on the stool across from him, perusing his array of morning newspapers as he munched one of the bialys Jack had brought. Bits of onion decorated his white shirt and shiny black pants.

"It was rhetorical."

"Rhetorical implies you know the answer already."

"Whatever. I don't know much about the Internet, but I do know it's redundant as all hell. You can't bring it down by attacking a data center."