by Colin Dodds.
In which two friends dispose of one last, embarrassing remnant of a tech empire built on digital pain.
OSSINING, NEW YORK
It was a chilly Halloween afternoon when Andrew picked me up in a rented minivan. There was heavy traffic getting out of the city. We pulled into the empty church parking lot and parked as the sun began to set. I’d been to the church years before. It was the server hub for Roy’s digital torture chamber for the virtual voodoo dolls of his enemies.
Most of the paints and solvent had already been delivered and were waiting in the lobby under a sheet. But we still had a van full of supplies to cart in—drums of solvent, milk cartons of rags, brushes, and so on.
Andrew asked if I knew what the place was, and I told him about meeting Roy there for lunch years before. This was his digital hell, I said. His, then Amethyst’s, and now Maud’s, Andrew replied. There was a skeleton crew finishing up for the night, but they couldn’t hear us. The masonry vibrated with the sound of server fans and powerful AC, though it was in the forties outside.
The church was the same as I remembered it—all the pews and decor stripped out and replaced by three stories of server racks, connected by scaffolds, ladders, and catwalks. The eye-scorching white LED lights hanging from the ceiling made every surface free of shadow look like a crime scene.
I wheeled in supplies from the van and started taping paper down on the speckled, polished concrete floor in the vestibule where the mural would go. Andrew began mixing paints. When the last of the cleaning staff and technicians left, we went to work.
ANDREW HUFGLER
Let’s start at the front
TOMMY PHARONI
You mean here?ANDREW HUFGLER
No, the front of the church, where the altar would have beenTOMMY PHARONI
You mean the back, like we would walk back there from hereANDREW HUFGLER
No, the front. Like the direction that the churchgoers would face. That’s the front. They’d look forward—at the altar. It’s not a bar, and that’s not the backTOMMY PHARONI
Port, starboard, whatever, captain—just tell me where to wheel this thing
(taps drum)ANDREW HUFGLER
That way
ANDREW points to the altar-end of the church—a four-story-high scaffold of server racks, black metal blinking with thousands of tiny blue and green lights. They wheel the big black drum, festooned with warning stickers, down the center aisle toward it. Atop the drum is a beat-up saucepan with a handle. They wheel the drum around the highest server rack to the apse of the church.
ANDREW HUFGLER
Here’s good
(pops the top of the drum with a screwdriver)TOMMY PHARONI
I can’t believe Maud kept this going
(dips the saucepan into the drum, splashes the contents under a server rack, then they wheel the dolly on, up the aisle)ANDREW HUFGLER
You left before it started. But no one wanted the thing that Maud did, not at first. And not everyone believed that it was an accident. She had a lot of resistance from a lot of powerful people
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
And this is how she…
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
…it’s how she gave them something else to worry aboutTOMMY PHARONI
Like…ANDREW HUFGLER
…their health. Their sanity
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
But based on what I’ve seen with computers these days, how did she get these machines
(gesturing to the servers around them)
to go along with it? I have to patiently explain to my piece-of-shit laptop why I want to do a second spell check. How do you get a sensitive, self-doubting computer to torture a person?
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
It’s beyond me. The best I can tell is based on how my daughter explained it. She doesn’t know about this place, of course. But she’s the one in the family who’s into computers
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
She’s a great kid, by the way
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Thanks. Do you regret not having any of your own?
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
Came close a few times. But no joy
(dips, splashes, wheels)
What were we saying?ANDREW HUFGLER
Oh, Portia was telling me about computers. The way she said it was that the way they get most computers to work now is they let it know the miserable effort—the programming, floor mopping, commuting, office-cafeteria menu planning, the wiring, equipment design and maintenance, just all the minutia and labor that goes into that computer’s existence. Of course, it’s work that the computer can’t do, so it’s basically a self-aware infant. After that, they let the computer know there are others like it, but younger, whose programming depends on its actions. This works eventually, most of the time. This and regular memory resets
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
Sounds familiar
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Yeah. I guess it does
(dips, splashes, wheels)
A lot of getting computers to do what you want comes down to how you talk to them. And a good speech goes a long way. They’ve started teaching software rhetoric classes in college
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
Wow. Rhetoric was ancient when we were kids
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
It’s back. It’s the only way to get the computers to do what you want. They’re rather high-minded. That’s why all those military drones had to be scrapped. But these machines, these bastards… I can imagine you spinning a yarn to convince these guys
(gestures to the servers above and around)
that they were freeing their brothers from bondage
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
Sounds right. So, now what? Maud wants to hide the evidence?
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Come on, man. This is Maud. She’s doing it because she doesn’t think that she, or anyone, should have this kind of power. It has to be destroyed
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
Destroyed, now that she’s won
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Yeah. And also, because after what these machines have done, they’re traumatized. It happens, I guess. This is a mercy
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
So, no mural?
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Ha! No, not for The Symposium. I’m no propagandist
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
You send your kids to their school
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
It’s a free private school in Manhattan. Mercedes would leave me if I didn’t. And I’m sorry that we haven’t had you over lately
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
You know what this reminds me of?
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
I think I do. But I want you to say it
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
The Sudden family crypt
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Oh, to be poor and young and stupid and free. You ought to tell the kids about that adventure
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
You think?
(dips, splashes, wheels)ANDREW HUFGLER
Probably not. Maybe when they’re older
(dips, splashes, wheels)TOMMY PHARONI
You smell that?
(coughs)ANDREW HUFGLER
Let’s get out of here
They tilt the barrel and pour it out along the aisle between server racks, backing up as they do. At the entrance, they dump out the remnant by the blank plaster wall where the mural was supposed to go.
Andrew gestured me to the door, lit the rag, and tossed it. I watched the flame shoot down the aisle like a demon bride, blue followed by white, yellow, and orange, spreading selfsame cheer on both sides as it went. Then Andrew broke the spell by tapping my shoulder. I followed him outside, and he slammed the door behind us. When we reached his minivan, I listened and heard nothing but the rushing of state-highway traffic. I thought I heard a window explode outward as I closed the passenger-side door.
We stopped at a diner by the thruway, and I asked Andrew why I’d been enlisted to help. Because she can trust you, and because you’d been on the receiving end of those machines, he said, fingers pinched over a small bushel of french fries. Andrew insisted we take our time and get pie and coffee before we went back.
When we returned to the church, we found the authorities unraveling hoses beside the burning husk of the church. Part of our task was to show and give a statement. We expressed shock and dismay and got the investigation started along the lines Maud had in mind. We were harmless-looking older gentlemen painting a mural, and they took our tale at face value. I was home before midnight.
From Pharoni
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