Peter Carey: Amnesia

He was a dog on a leash barking. If Frederic tried to nick the Merc Woody would have him killed. It would be cheap, a thousand bucks. He promised that the manuscript would never be a book. It would be “properly gone through by the authorities” then Felix Moore would go to jail. He sat heavily on the bed which spewed Duracells onto the floor. He produced the revolver and rested it on his massive thigh. No-one spoke. Still Frederic did not return.

Woody got up and stood by the connecting door. He pointed the weapon at the women, each in turn. All typing ceased.

Celine, he said.

Celine’s mouth crumpled. No, Woody. Don’t.

Shut up. You go and find him. Bring him back. If he is not here straight away I will have to get serious. You understand what I’m saying?

Celine turned to her daughter wringing her hands. The girl held out her arms to her and kissed her eyes and ears. I’m OK, Mummy. Go.

As always, the omniscient narrator had a very wobbly grasp of what was happening. He certainly did not know, for instance, that the OBD-II port of a Mercedes S500 is under the lower right side of the dashboard, that it is possible for a malevolent device to send instructions directly to the CAN bus through this connection and thereby to own the car’s network which can, in turn, be controlled remotely via a smartphone. It did not occur to him, as the prosecutor would finally suggest, that Celine might have somehow left the tickets in the car by prior arrangement with “the other conspirators.”

Felix Moore was flattered to be accused, even briefly, of aiding and abetting a hack of the type described. Yet he could never have dreamed that such a feat was possible. All he wished was thirty minutes, a chance to finish the book on a grand note. But when Frederic finally returned, the author was ordered to collect all his manuscript and source material, most specifically the tapes, and carry them out to the Mercedes. By then the revolver had been returned once more to its holster. There was no explicit threat made or any apparent danger. The worst he expected was to be shoved into the boot.

Woody Townes had left his car not in the car park, but beside the road. He walked around the Merc inspecting the tyres with his flashlight. Whatever he was looking for he did not find. When he popped the boot it was only so the manuscript and tapes could be locked inside the dark.

He shone the white-quartz light in the writer’s raddled face.

You are a silly prick, Felix.

Yes, mate. I am.

Just a tip: I wouldn’t hang around here now if I were you.

You couldn’t give me a lift back, mate?

There was silence. The writer thought, I’ve surprised him.

If you could drop me somewhere I could get a cab.

Silently, Woody opened his door and sat behind the wheel. Felix presented himself at the passenger-side door. He waited optimistically. The engine started. He heard a click and reached for the door handle and narrowly avoided serious injury as the Mercedes accelerated.

Abandoned in the yellow sodium streetlights of Katoomba, Felix Moore made a forlorn figure. His shoulders were hunched and his shuffle clearly audible in the mountain air. There was no-one to observe this moment in his life, nor any indication that he was on the very brink of becoming a publishing phenomenon. In the short time since he had carried the tapes out into the night, a previously prepared digital edition of his account of the so-called life and crimes of Gabrielle Baillieux had been unleashed on the World Wide Web. In the few minutes it took him to reach the motel suite the PDF file titled “Amnesia” had been downloaded over five thousand times. Fast forward.

MY OLD MATE’S CONNECTIONS were such that I was almost immediately arrested by the Federal Police and, as a result, it was my fate to not see my wife and children for many months and then only through the glass wall of the visitation facility of Barwon Prison, a high-tech Supermax prison not so many miles from my home town of Bacchus Marsh. Here I was held on many charges including conspiring in the murder of Woody Townes whose car had last been seen intact as it passed the Pennant Hills Golf Club at 240 kilometres per hour. Two kilometres later it left the road, briefly airborne before it flipped and exploded in a ball of flame.

I was also held liable for causing billions of dollars of damage to property by means of the malware (what the media dubbed the Amnesia Worm) which had been so neatly packaged inside the PDF file of my book.

How this file was tampered with, what was done to bring certain chapters to the attention of certain corporations and their legal advisors, I do not know, only that the book’s “editing” involved embedding codes designed to cause extreme disruption to many international corporations and individuals who might be typified as “climate change murderers.” I did not personally attack these corporations for that would be an act of terrorism.

Although the Commonwealth alleged that Gabrielle Baillieux and Frederic Matovic had hacked the computers of Woody Townes’ Mercedes-Benz, no such thing was ever proven. As with the prior cases of death by auto, the men and women of the jury, being of sound mind, thought it both “fanciful” and “beyond proof” that the defendants might have taken control of another person’s car, accelerated out of control and then braked only one wheel.

As for my role in destroying all records, memory and production processes of certain global corporations and their lawyers, it was easily established that I was unaware that my typed pages had been scanned, converted to a PDF and then contaminated. For the crime of expressing pleasure that my book would be available to future generations, I was judged not only immoral but also vain and preening, but no matter what ugly threats and slanders were issued by the corporate holders of the copyright, I have not as yet been charged with anything more weighty.

In the matter of her role in bringing Woody to meet her fugitive daughter, the court found Celine not guilty of “aiding and abetting.”

Gabrielle Baillieux and Frederic Matovic were convicted of espionage and malicious damage caused by certain worms and viruses written by them in collaboration and contained, in many variations, within the first digital edition of my book. The charges, one hundred and fifteen in total, resulted in Australian life sentences. They each served three years in Barwon Prison until November of 2013 when an updated version of their Angel Worm was released by their “supporters.” This alpha iteration invaded and multiplied inside the corporate defences of Global Supermax. At that time the angel of the lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth. The present whereabouts of Gabrielle Baillieux and Frederic Matovic are unknown. It is said that an American grand jury is still empanelled.

Felix Moore is a writer living in Denison Street, Rozelle. His early novel Barbie and the Deadheads is soon to be a major motion picture .

PETER CAREY is the author of twelve previous novels and has twice received the Booker Prize. His other honors include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for twenty years.