Kill Switch: Chapter 35
Which Side Are You On?
We sit around a circular table in ergonomic chairs, all plastic, while footage of a fire crackles on a screen. Orson sets down a tray of tea and crumpets. There is literally stuff everywhere. Devices, cables, computer chips. The cabin is like a mad computer scientist’s lab.
Orson pours us each a glass of tea, takes out a pipe, and then lights it with a match. “I saw the lot of you coming up the hill on my security cameras.” He points toward a table lined with boxy screens. “I thought Elijah might be with you. At least, that was my hope.” He lowers his head, and I’m reminded of Elijah, the way his neck habitually tilts in disappointment.
“I thought you were off-grid,” Bunnfield says, gesturing toward the screens. “You seem pretty plugged in to me.”
“I’m off dNet’s grid,” Orson says. “All this electricity, it’s closed circuit. Which is to say, untraceable. I guess I’ve become rather private in my old age. But I still love my toys, you know.” A childish grin washes over his face. “Anyway, how is my son? You are his comrades, correct?” He says the word comrades with a hint of irony and disdain.
“Elijah couldn’t make it,” Bunnfield says. “We were attacked by a man named The Withouter Hunter yesterday, and your son was hurt during the altercation. He’ll recover, but for the time being, he’s bedridden.”
Orson takes a tug on his pipe. “You don’t have to bullshit me, young man. I know that Elijah hates me. He told me years ago, the last time I saw him, that he never wanted to see me again, and one thing I’ve always respected about my son is that he’s a man of his word. He has principles. So, when he said I’d never see him again, I believed him.”
“Then why’d you reach out,” Yide asks, “if you knew he didn’t want to see you?”
Orson squints into the smoke. “That’s a good question, young lady. I guess I’ve become optimistic in my old age. Or maybe foolish is the word I should use. Either way, I knew it was a long shot.” Orson scratches his beard as he turns his gaze toward me. “You’re the gentleman who killed The Withouter Hunter, aren’t you? They’ve been talking about you on the airwaves. Vonn 19, no? I pulled up your profile earlier. You did a good job flying under the radar. No signs in your feed of radicalism. You must have been playing the long game.”
“Not really,” I say. “I more or less stumbled into this way of life about a week ago. Anyway, how’d you know that I was the one who killed The Withouter Hunter? I didn’t think they’d identified me.”
Orson’s smile dissipates, and his eyes grow wide. “Oh, young man, you can’t believe everything they say in the feed. In fact, I would encourage you to believe none of it.” He turns toward Yide. “They know who you are, too, as well as your friend, X, but they’re keeping their cards close to their chest. That’s the thing about information mongers. They like to capture information, but they don’t like to share it, because they know that information is power, at least when it comes to The Within and The Without.” Orson turns toward Bunnfield. “You have somehow found a way to go undetected. When I saw you coming up the hill, I ran a facial recognition algo. You’re a Middle Manager, no? Bunnfield 58?”
Bunnfield’s blank expression neither confirms nor denies.
“Impressive,” Orson continues. “What’s your trick?”
Bunnfield shrugs. “My boyfriend is pretty good with computers, and he puts a lot of effort into scraping my data.”
“I see. And what’s the name of this data scraper?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Orson crosses his legs and puffs on his pipe. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
“Not really,” Bunnfield says. “After all, you’re Orson Mitchell, the architect of dNet, and a long time associate of Mr. Vonn Senior. Why should I trust you?”
Orson uncrosses his legs, leans forward, and smiles. “You can disabuse yourself of the notion that I have any loyalty to Mr. Vonn Senior. He can rot in inefficiency for all I care.” Orson walks across the room and stares into the grainy CCTV footage on all the boxy screens.
I scowl at Bunnfield, like, what do we have to gain by pissing him off? Then I stand.“Mr. Orson, I think what Bunnfield is trying to say is that we’re not sure where your loyalties lie. On the one hand, you were in the C-suite of Vonn Industries for years. On the other, you’ve made contact with the rebels. So which side are you on?”
Orson’s voice, tinny and folksy, breaks into song:
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good ol’ union
Has come in here to dwell
My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son
And I’ll stick with the union
‘Til every battle’s won
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Don’t scab for the bosses
Don’t listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize
Orson tilts his head. “My father used to work the derricks. He was employed by a company called Drill Baby Inc., but he also belonged to the union. Ask me how that turned out for him, playing both sides of the fence.”
“What’s a union?” I ask.
Orson rubs his eyes. “A union is an organization that supposedly represents the rights of workers, but unions can be just as corrupt as the corporations they stand against. In the case of my grandfather, he paid his union dues for years, and never once did he get ahead. Sure, the union would help him here and there, but they’d just as soon screw him over when it meant an extra buck in the president’s pocket. Same thing with Drill Baby Inc. I grew up watching this song and dance, disgusted by the way my father put so much faith in these organizations – whether it be a company, a union, a political party, or the church – and then, when I was just sixteen, a derrick came crashing down on him, and that was it, he was dead, leaving behind nothing but debt for me and my mother. The union was no help, and neither was Drill Baby. If it weren’t for the debt collectors, I might have thought my father never existed.” He takes a long draw on his pipe. “Anyway, when my father died, I got a job as a software engineer at a data mining company called Astrix. It was a bullshit job, but I was good at it, and I learned everything I could, determined to strike out on my own. I was fiercely independent, hellbent on self-reliance, like some kind of computer-age Thoreau. The Desire Network was my Walden. I believed that, if I could create a technology that fulfilled my every desire, I would free myself of the turmoil that arises from human greed and hubris, from the tyranny of the individual and the crowd, because technology has no ego. It has no aspirations of its own. It has no purpose outside of the purpose that we, as humans, give to it. At least, that’s what I believed at the time, when I was a young man, and that was the thinking behind dNet. A panacea. A techno utopia. A total and complete technology which would cater to every human whim, whether that be in terms of medicine or entertainment. A life without pain or suffering. A noble cause, no?” Orson squints into a cloud of smoke. “Well, you know what they say about the road to hell…”
Now Bunnfield stands up. “Look, Orson, we really appreciate the history lesson, but we already know all this. They beat it into our heads in prep. The reason we’re here is that we could use your help. You see, Vonn Industries is threatening war. In fact, they’re already bombing the hell out of this mountain.”
“I’m aware,” Orson says. “I’ve been listening on the airwaves. You’re right, you’re in grave danger. So what’s your plan?”
I step forward. “We want to take over dNet,” I say, “so that we can flood the feed with the truth.”
Orson puffs on his pipe, the gears in his head turning. “Hijack dNet? That would require access to the mainframe. And once you’re in the mainframe, you’d have to inject the hardware with some serious mal.”
“We already have the mal,” I say, holding up the device. “It’s access to the mainframe that we need help with, because we can’t figure out a way to break into headquarters without getting torn to shreds by an army of bots.”
Orson smiles, his eyes turning bright and wide. “So you came here to learn more about the security algo I wrote for headquarters. Is that right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Orson nods. “If you bring me to Elijah, I’ll tell you how to steal the keys to the kingdom. I’d like to talk to my son face to face, mano a mano, so that I can apologize for being a shitty father, buried in my work.nTime has shown that I was wrong. The world would be a better place without The DesireNetwork. I see that now. All the technology has done is create more problems. Instead of freeing us from our desires, it’s made us more reliant upon them, addicted to pleasure and instant satisfaction. Of course, Elijah already knows this, but I’d like for you to bring me to him so that I can ask for his forgiveness IRL. Is that something you’d be willing to do for me?”
I glance at Bunnfield, who looks skeptical.
“I don’t know, Orson,” he says. “If we were to bring you to Elijah, he might kill all of us, pacifism be damned.”
Orson laughs. “I understand. But, you know, I think he might surprise us. Elijah is stubborn, but I also know my son well enough to know that he has a good heart, and I’ll tell you what: if, after he hears me out, he still says he never wants to see me again, I’ll never make contact again. And that’s a promise.”
Bunnfield’s skeptical mien turns toward me. “What do you think, Vonn?”
“I think…”
“Hold on,” Yide interrupts. “The reason I’m here is for a little common sense, and common sense tells me that the lives of thousands of people is more important than Elijah’s little pissing match with his father. So I don’t even care what the two of you have to say –” she points at me and Bunnfield – “I’ll carry this man to Elijah myself if it means we can take down Vonn Industries. And just try to stop me.”
Yide’s passion is, well, hella hot, so instead of arguing, I’m just, like, kind of turned on, not saying anything. Bunnfield doesn’t say anything either, so that settles that.
Orson looks between the three of us, kind of getting the picture.
“Great,” he says. “Then let’s talk about Kill Switch.”