Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

“That’s targeted capacity. The size that allows maximum diversity with minimum alienation.”

“Five thousand exactly.”

“Just enough people to keep you from going stir-crazy and inbred but not so many that you don’t feel surrounded by familiar faces. As determined by a precise social scientific program, developed by Allegecom’s team of crack human perfectionists.”

Josh had it all down. He had been turned on to the Alphadelphia kick by one of the anarchist groups he subscribed to online. It was on a list of targets. It seemed on the five-year anniversary of Alphadelphia, Allegecom had great public relations claims to make, great payoff for its hard work and considerable expense, in its social experiment, the First Self-Sustaining Techtopia in America. And they would announce plans for another, improved community on the East Coast. The perfect target for an action, but Miranda hadn’t heard what the action might be, or maybe Josh hadn’t figured it out yet.

There wasn’t, finally, much to see. Houses and cul-de-sacs. Lots of trees and consistent, intensely modern architecture. Horizontal homes of glass and metal. South-facing and integrated into the indigenous but cultivated foliage. Miranda didn’t think it looked bad at all.

“It’s not nostalgic or overly homogenized,” she said.

“It is just a gated tract development with a veneer of innovation. It is shallow and insidious and grotesque. A parody of a community,” Josh said. “Sustainable, ha.” He scrutinized the promo pamphlet he had in his hand. On the cover it said

Allegecom:

Building Communities That Tread Lightly

but Beautifully on the Earth

They didn’t come up with anything particularly subversive to do to Alphadelphia. But over the next few months Josh did concoct an elaborate parasite to hijack the recruitment page for Allegecom’s new community. At first glance the site looked exactly the same, but Josh inserted parody throughout. He changed the site subtitle from Green World to Greed World and revealed every counterpoint to the ecotopia they claimed to be creating and were heavily marketing. If users clicked on the little red wagon icon, which was where Allegecom discussed its community service projects, they were directed to a link about a lawsuit that a community of ten thousand in Central America was bringing against the biotech arm of the company. It showed pictures of sick animals and children, and then the company’s promotional material on the various pesticides and genetically altered seed sources to match, along with statistics of money made in third world countries by Allegecom. These sorts of hijackings and parodies weren’t illegal. Not yet. But they hovered in some middle ground, acknowledged by all concerned as soon-to-be-illegal activity.

In December Josh even made The New York Times . The Styles section did a piece on political hackers and included a description of Josh’s latest attack on Allegecom: The Corporate History Icon (a funny little anthropomorphized sprouted seed) on the Commitment & Community page took you to a Josh-hosted site describing how although Allegecom Pharmaceuticals marketed a plethora of antidepressants and antianxiety medications, it used to market dioxin to the Pentagon under its now defunct proto-pesticide division, Terrayield. It cited evidence that the research, development and marketing of dioxin continued despite the fact that their internal experiments had shown teratogenic and carcinogenic effects since the 1940s. You could then click on a little skull and crossbones icon to get the whole sad saga of Agent Orange and how hard it was to sue a now defunct, disappeared arm of the corporation. All divisions and subdivisions have separate identities, each with distinct liabilities.

After twelve days Allegecom took all of Josh’s work down. But not before a lot of people saw it and a lot of papers reported on it. The Times article not only revealed Josh as the author but even showed a picture of Josh at his computer, looking angular and cool, decidedly unhackerish. Miranda thought talking to a reporter was a little reckless. Josh was practically begging to get busted.

“Guess what?” Josh smiled and closed his eyes as he lay back on his bed. They were in the clean and perfect house. More and more they stayed there instead of at the Black House. Josh preferred it. More privacy. Fewer fleas.

“What?”

“Allegecom’s personnel department wrote me a letter.”

“Why?”

“Next month they want to fly me out to New York to meet with Leslie Winters, the project director for their new community.”

Miranda laughed and shook her head. “You’re kidding.”

“I think they want to offer me a job. New tactic — instead of prosecuting me, hire me. Sort of like promoting a union organizer to management.”

“Did you tell them to fuck off?”

“No. Are you kidding? This is a great opportunity to see Allegecom from the inside.” He sat up and squeezed her hand. “Don’t you want to come with me?”

Sure.

HENRY WANTED to go out for a beer with Nash. They walked down the street to the salty British-style pub and sat in one of the back booths. Henry looked a little shaky. He smoked with his inhaler on the table. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“What’s wrong? You look like you haven’t slept,” Nash said.

Henry turned his head and took a quick look over his shoulder. “Look, I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, some of the shit I’m going to tell you, I don’t know.”

“It’s cool.”

“I don’t care at this point.” Henry took a long swallow of beer. “I sometimes have these dreams — but not exactly — waking nightmares.”

“Like night terrors,” Nash said.

“Yeah, but baroque, elongated, all-sense trances.”

“Like what?”

“Like really detailed hallucinations of spraying Agent Orange all over jungles and riverbanks. Spraying villages.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I’m dropping white phosphorus and napalm bombs. I can see it — smell it burning through skin. My skin, too.” Henry looked down at the table. “One nasty one I had — glass jars filled with formaldehyde and these fetal disasters. I see these faces and wake with these near smells still in my hair, and odd, off tastes in my mouth.”

Nash watched Henry stub out the cigarette. His breathing was getting heavier and shorter.

“Have you ever heard of anything like that — incongruous, inexplicable odors? Unexplained smells can be profoundly disturbing — I tried to find out about it,” Henry said.

“They’re hallucinations, just like hearing things or seeing things,” Nash said.

“The dead bodies of saints don’t smell like decay, you know. They smell like roses and perfume. They call it the odor of sanctity.”

“So what?”

“This is like the opposite of that — awful smells for evil things.”

Henry’s hand shook as he took out another cigarette and lit it. He inhaled and then started to sniff. He grabbed a bar napkin off the table and wiped his nose and forehead.

“God, that’s a hell of a thing,” Nash said. “You must have had some tour. No wonder you have this kind of trauma all these years later.”

Henry was nodding and then stopped, looking straight at Nash. “What are you talking about?”

“What happened to you. In Vietnam.”

“Nash, certainly something has been happening to me, but I was not in Vietnam.”

“Post-traumatic stress. Very common in vets—”

“I was 4-F for my hearing. I have never been to Vietnam.”

Nash watched Henry take another swig on a beer.