I walked into the computer store where I'd grabbed the UNIX magazine during my convalescence. The store was in the Village. Small storefront, narrow aisles packed with magazines, books and hardware. The owner (bearded guy in his thirties, perpetually wearing a faded homemade BSD t-shirt) nodded at me from behind the counter.
I needed to look around for anything on data analysis, or sorting through large databases quickly. I didn't know much about the landscape surrounding that in the 1980s (my interest in retrocomputing hadn't stretched that far), and the landscape was probably different here anyway due to the differing state of technology.
Idly browsing through the shelves, I grabbed a book on the current C standard. I flipped through it, noting a few differences from what I remembered, then placed it down. My eye caught a copy of 2600 magazine in the rack. I hadn't realized it was broadly circulated this early, but apparently it was.
Curious to see how it differed from my timeline, I paged through the articles. The usual fare from my universe was there. Open source advocacy, bash scripting tips, even an article on Genera.
Then I hit the letters page.
One letter, from an anonymous writer claiming to work at "a West Coast tech company," described what they called "the bogeyman." A corporate saboteur who was hitting companies. The usual urban legend stuff. One detail however jumped out at me.
"I saw him phase through a wall. Not a trick, not a hologram. One second he was solid, the next he walked straight through reinforced steel like it wasn't there."
The editor's response was dismissive: "Sure you did. Lay off the comic books."
But I knew better.
Ghost. Had to be. Corporate saboteur with intangibility tech, paranoid as hell, and active in '84. The timeline fit.
On that disturbing note, someone tapped my shoulder. I jumped about a foot.
"Woah, sorry dude."
The voice came from a younger man, early twenties maybe, wearing an Oscorp polo and slacks. Clean-cut white guy, the kind of person who probably worked in their IT department.
"Didn't mean to startle you," he said, nodding at the 2600 magazine in my hands. "Good issue. The Genera article's solid, even if most people won't have access to a Lisp machine to try any of it."
I relaxed slightly. "Yeah, interesting stuff. Didn't expect to see it covered in here."
"2600's a great mag. Can't wait to see where it ends up in a few years" He glanced at the C standard book I'd been looking at earlier. "You into systems programming?"
"Yeah."
His expression shifted slightly. Recognition, maybe interest. "Yeah? How do you like security?"
I hesitated. "You could say I'm interested in applied computer security."
He nodded slowly, like I'd passed some kind of test. He pulled a pen from his pocket and grabbed a scrap of receipt paper from the counter, scribbling down a phone number.
"You might find this useful," he said, handing it over. "BBS. Some people there have similar interests. Good community, if you know how to ask the right questions."
I looked at the number. Just seven digits, a local line. No name, no context.
"Thanks," I said.
He smiled. "See you."
With that, he turned and walked out of the store, leaving me standing there with a BBS number and more questions than answers.
I didn't have a phone line. That was going to be a problem for dialing into the bulletin board.
Unless...
Several hours later I grabbed my duffel bag. It was loaded with wire cutters, electrical tape, about fifty feet of phone cable and a cheap lineman's handset I'd picked up at a pawn shop. The handset would let me test which lines were active without actually plugging anything in.
The building next to the warehouse was an apartment. I waited as inconspicuously as I could, until an older black woman fumbling with her groceries came up to the door.
"Let me grab that for you, ma'm"
"Thanks son. " the woman said.
I smoothly tailed her in, turning towards the basement with my bag of tricks soon after.
After opening a nondescript grey panel labeled "BELL", I looked at the rat's nest of twisted pairs and sighed. This had sounded so much simpler when I was reading about it in my time.
Each apartment line was supposed to be labeled, but half the tags were faded or missing entirely. I clipped the lineman's handset onto the first pair of terminals. Dead. The second one gave me a dial tone, but I could hear someone talking. Active call. The third time was the charm: clean dial tone, no voices.
I checked the faded tag. 4C. Fourth floor. Good enough.
I wrapped the alligator clips from my cable spool around the terminal posts, making sure the connection was solid, then taped everything down so it wouldn't shake loose. The cable ran along the basement ceiling, following the water pipes toward the back of the building where a cracked basement window led to the alley between buildings.
I fed the cable through the gap in the window frame.
On the other side of the narrow gap, the second cable I'd dropped earlier from one of the warehouse's second-floor window hung waiting. I'd propped that window open this afternoon with a brick, letting the line dangle down the brick facade.
I grabbed both ends and twisted the exposed copper together, then wrapped the connection in electrical tape until it was weatherproof. The splice was disgusting, but it would hold for long enough. I tucked the joined cables against the warehouse wall where the shadows were deepest.
Back inside the warehouse, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My terminal waited on one of the desks in the abandoned office area. I had lugged it upstairs from the bunker's comms room (foregoing my exercise for the day, since that was a workout. These minicomputers were HEAVY). I pulled up the cable I'd run through the window, stripped the ends with my pocket knife, and twisted the bare copper onto the modem's terminal screws.
I flipped the power switch.
The modem hummed to life. I picked up the handset, heard the dial tone, and carefully punched in the number from the scrap of paper.
The modem screeched.
The terminal flickered.
Text scrolled across the screen:
I smiled and started typing.
I hadn't realized how much I had missed networked computing. Even if calling this networked computing was overly generous.
I started browsing the message boards. The interface was pure text, navigated with number keys and simple commands. Clunky, but functional.
The programming board had the usual mix of posts. Someone asking about pointers in C, another thread about optimizing cache access for the R-1000 processor. I scrolled through, looking for anything useful about database work or pattern matching.
Then one post caught my eye:
I stared at the screen.
Sprite. Westchester. There was absolutely no way this wasn't Kitty Pryde. Every time I thought I was getting comfortable in this universe, there was something that threw me for a loop.
Moving through the system, I found a post that was semi-related to my use case. A user, with the screen name AWKWIZ had a shell script for filtering through INGRES DB's. That was useful.
I navigated through the BBS menus until I found the file section. AWKWIZ had mentioned uploading his script. Got it. "Ingres_pattern.sh"
I initiated the download and watched the text begin to crawl across my screen, one agonizingly slow line at a time. The modem screeched and clicked as it pulled the data through the phone line.
At this speed, I could read the script as it appeared. The query pulled transactions over a threshold, then awk did pattern matching on accounts and flagged suspicious activity.
Exactly what I needed. Well, almost. I'd have to modify it a bit, but it was a good basis to work from. The download bar crept forward. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. The script wasn't large, but at these speeds...
Finally, the terminal beeped.
I stretched as I went to clean up my splice into the phonebox. I felt slightly melancholy as I walked down the stairs.. I realized that I'd missed the internet more than I thought I would. Even an incredibly slow BBS provided me with the joys of networked computing that I hadn't realized I'd missed.
After a good night's sleep, I returned to the terminal in the warehouse. I didn't have the energy to move it back downstairs. After plugging in Catherine's disk, I waited for the bash script to run.
The script left me with a list of dates in a .csv file. The disk had some space left, so I dumped it to the disk, then started to look through it. Everything looked normal at first glance. I wasn't sure where exactly Catherine had acquired this data, but it seemed like in the specified date range, most transactions were generic. Even using the criteria she had given me, there was a lot of information.
I groaned and held my head in my hands, attempting to suppress my rising annoyance.
She didn't even pay me for the last job. Here I am, trying to wrench insights from this DB with frankly, stone age tooling, and I haven't even been paid. Why did I even agree to do this in the first place, without so much as a sniff of currency?
In my annoyance, I gained a flash of insight. Catherine legitimately scared me. She seemed like the second most dangerous person I had interacted with so far, and what unnerved me the most was that I couldn't read her at all.
That was part of why I'd agreed to do this.
My fear had caused me to get absolutely fucking rolled. I slammed the desk, causing the terminal's HDD platter to skip. The rage bubbling out was a combination of just everything. Everything I'd dealt with since coming to this death world. I had been scared, injured, but more than that, I was utterly livid.
Fucking 80's schizotech, fucking highhanded British spies, fucking Midwestern hot dish eating corpo bastard Reynolds using me as bait, fucking stupidly rich kink clubs, fucking Turk's clinical inability to keep his lips sealed!
I stood up and kicked a nearby wastebin with an incoherent roar of fury.
The kick sent the bin skittering across the room, a small cloud of dust billowing up as it landed. An odd thought occurred to me, breaking me out of my fugue. That's a kinetic solution. Kinetic solution. Kinetic solutions... That's a fucking amazing name for a PMC! Who said being angry never solved anything.
I felt my fine head of frustration and rage cool into something more focused. Catherine hadn't paid me for the courier job. Now she wanted data analysis (also unpaid). I didn't know how I was going to push back yet, but I was done being a doormat.
I'd figure out the details later.
Before I got back to the database, I walked out of the warehouse. I needed to take a constitutional, fully clear my head, then get back to work.
30 minutes later, water bottle and chips in hand, I perused the entries.
I wasn't a forensic accountant, and I wasn't even a data scientist. The only thing that immediately jumped out at me were some USDA payments. I vaguely remembered that part of the USDA was being used as a cover for the Weapon X program at this point in the timeline.
After some more fruitless searching, I decided the best strategy in this case was to write down anything that seemed fishy and cross-reference it at the library so I could more easily research the parties involved. This was hideously suboptimal, but in the absence of better options...
Several hours later, I entered the main branch of the NYC library with my trusty notebook filled with entries.
After several hours of crossreferencing, I sighed. Looking at my spread of directories and phonebooks, nothing had jumped out as suspicious. The various companies and money transfers all seemed in order, but a few things had jumped out.
The USDA stuff just smelled. I wasn't an accountant and my metaknowledge was probably biasing me a bit, but something just felt off. I wished I could recall exactly what section of the USDA Weapon X was operating under. While I planned to stay as far away from anything Weapon X (or Weapon Plus) related as humanly possible, it wouldn't hurt to know something like that. I filed that away for later recollection.
Fisk Industries had shown up in the data too. I'd flagged it out of curiosity more than anything. Nothing suspicious jumped out at my uneducated eyes. Fisk kept his legitimate businesses clean, as far as I remembered.
Funnily enough, nothing involving Stane International had been in the dataset Catherine had given me. She probably only had access to records from only some NYC-area banks and Stane didn't utilize any of the ones she could lay hands on.
As the afternoon light seeped into the library, I sighed and cracked my neck. I'd probably do one more then head back. I pulled the reference for the business, a factory farm in rural NY that had gotten a payment from a Delaware LLC. It all seemed normal, then I saw the owner of the farm.
The farm had appeared multiple times in the data. Payments from various LLCs, disbursements to various suppliers. All perfectly normal for an agricultural business.
I found the listing in the New York State business directory. Upstate Agricultural Enterprises. Factory farm. Incorporated 1980. Primary business: poultry and livestock production.
Then I saw the owner's name.
Skip Ash.
I stared at the entry for a long moment, that name tugging at something in the back of my mind. Skip Ash. Why did I know that name? It was a unique name to be sure, but why did it jump out at me?
Then it hit me. He was a minor Daredevil antagonist in the late 80's. He ran a farm and had a sideline in genetic engineering as well as doing something fishy for US intelligence.
This by itself wasn't anything. He probably had plenty of legitimate and illegitimate payments going to his farm. This could be something though. At worst, it was a lead to toss to Catherine.
I compiled a list of about 30 transactions from the 200 transaction long list I had brought, tossing in the transaction from the Delaware LLC to Ash's farm. I'd hand her the 30 transactions along with the .csv the script had generated for me so she could have the subset she'd asked me to filter to.
After the subway ride back from the library, I left a message with Vito for Catherine. On my way back into the bunker, I sighed. I was going to need to plan on how I'd confront her about this (presumably) tomorrow.
She wanted the data, and the best option seemed to be to refuse to give it to her until she paid me for both jobs and gave me a favour on top of it.
As the elevator came to another jerky stop inside the bunker, I began to think of what I knew about Catherine.
I grabbed my notebook, settling down in the main room of the bunker. She was a current MI6 field operative without much support from her handler. The fact that she was using Vito as a broker/fixer to access newer, less established criminals like myself would tend to add some weight to that theory. Judging by the prepositioned assets that she had (the vans from both jobs I had done with her) she had some degree of local support, but it wasn't extensive. British agent running around in the backyard of an allied state? Plausible deniability would be key.
Sparse support meant she was dependent on me to an extent. My best option was probably holding my analysis of the provided records over her head until she agreed to my demands.
But what were my demands?
I hadn't interacted with her enough to get a baseline on her to figure out how she'd react to me pressuring her. Asking for payment up front for both jobs would be a good start. Asking for a reasonable favour on top of that would be the kicker. But what favour to ask? I couldn't push her too hard, so nothing onerous.
Then it hit me. I needed reliable muscle for the Stane heist. While Catherine wasn't networked very well in the US, she had some resources, and could probably point me in the right direction. Asking her to refer me to some reliable, skilled muscle shouldn't be too big of a ask.
That could work. I'd find out one way or the other tomorrow.
Catherine had scheduled our meeting at another office building at 3:30 PM. In an excess of paranoia, I had arrived 20 minutes before, lingering at a deli across the street from the 5 story walk up. After about 15 minutes of standard pedestrian traffic, Catherine walked up about 5 minutes before the meeting time, entering the building through the front door.
At 3:30, I entered the walk up. Catherine was waiting in the small lobby.
"You have the information?"
"Yes." I nodded.
We climbed the narrow stairwell. A single light-bulb lit our way. The stairs creaked quietly in protest as we made our way up. We exited the stairwell at the fourth floor, outside a frosted glass door marked "Eastern Drafting." Catherine produced a key from her pocket and unlocked it.
The office was small. Two desks pushed against one wall, a drafting table near the window catching the afternoon sunlight. Filing cabinets, a computer terminal, rolled blueprints stacked in a corner. I wondered why the office was empty during business hours.
As we entered the office, Catherine gestured toward one of the desks. I sat. She remained standing, moving to the side of the room.
Catherine turned to me. "If you'd show me the data?"
I braced myself. "No."
Her hand drifted toward her jacket. I kept my hands visible. I wasn't beating her to a draw if it came down to it. She adjusted her jacket slightly. The movement drew attention to the left side, hanging just slightly heavier than the right.
"Why?"
"Before I give you what I've found, I'd like payment for both jobs and a favor to make up for the previous delay in compensation." My heartbeat picked up. I kept my hands loose at my sides, trying my best to not give away any tension.
The silence stretched. The noise from the street outside filtered into the room.Catherine's expression didn't change. Then she slowly reached into her jacket and pulled out an envelope. She placed it on the desk.
"Three thousand for the armory work. Five hundred for the analysis." A pause. "What's the favor?"
"I need reliable muscle."
Catherine was quiet for a moment. Her thumb tapped once against the envelope, a small, controlled movement. Then it stopped.
"I can make inquiries. " She gestured toward the desk. "The data?"
I pulled out my notebook and the disk. "There were about 30 transactions that jumped out of me. I wrote them down here. I also dumped the full range of transactions after that date to a .csv on the disk you gave me. "
Catherine took the disk and slotted it into the terminal. A few keystrokes, looking through the file. She nodded once.
"Excellent. I'm not going to need the manually curated list of dates. Operational pressure affected both the payment and the briefing. That's been addressed."
She didn't elaborate at all. I nodded mutely.
She pulled out a pen and notepad, writing down a number. "Do you have a number where I can reach you?"
I shrugged. "I don't have a phone line. Payphones only."
She slid the paper across the desk. "Answering service. Call weekly, ask for messages under Althea. If there's a message, use the callback number they give you."
She stood, ejecting the disk from the terminal and pocketing it. "Don't miss your check-ins."
She gestured toward the door. I followed her out. She locked the office behind us, then turned.
"Exit five minutes after I leave."
Her footsteps echoed down the stairwell, fading into silence.
I stood alone in the dim hallway, checking my watch. At five minutes, I descended the stairs and stepped out into the afternoon heat.
The trip back to the warehouse passed in a blur. I made it inside, to the nearest chair, and sat down heavily.
That little confrontation had been one of the tensest moments of my life.