The situation is not as straightforward as Eric might have been hoping. The encryption is challenging, if not mad serious. Whereas Reg has been entertaining fantasies of a quick in and out, Eric has found the clerks at this 7-Eleven are packing assault rifles on full auto.

“I keep running into this dark archive, all locked down tight, no telling what’s stashed there till I crack in.”

“Limited access, you’re saying.”

“Idea is to have a failsafe in case of a disaster, natural or man-made, you can hide your archive on redundant servers out in remote locations, hoping at least one’ll survive anything short of the end of the world.”

“As we know it.”

“If you want to be chirpy about it, I guess.”

“Ice is expecting a disaster?”

“More likely just wants to keep stuff away from inquiring minds.” Eric’s original tactic was to pretend to be a script kiddie out for a joyride, seeing if he could get in with Back Orifice and then install a NetBus server. A message came up immediately written in Leet characters along the lines of “Congratulations noob you think you made it in but all you’re really in now is a world of deep shit.” Something in the style of this response caught Eric’s attention. Why should their security be going to the trouble to make it so personal? Why not just brief and bureaucratic, like “Access Denied”? Something, maybe only its amused vehemence, reminded him of older hackers from the nineties.

Are they playing with him? What sort of playmates are they likely to be? Eric figured if he was supposed to be just some packet monkey nosing around, he’d have to pretend he doesn’t know how heavy-duty, or even who, these guys are. So at first he goes after the password as if it might be something old-school like the Microsoft LM hash, which even retards can crack. To which Security replies, again in Leet, “Noob do you really know who you’re fucking with?”

Reg and Eric were out in the middle of Brooklyn by this point, the doo-wop and Bible recitation long out the exits and Eric poised for flight. “You’re in and out of there all the time, Reg, you ever happen to run into any of their security people?”

“Rumor I hear is that Gabriel Ice runs the department himself. There’s supposed to be some history. Somebody had a live terminal in a desk drawer and forgot to tell him.”

“Forgot.”

“Next thing anybody knew, there was all kinds of proprietary code out there for free. Took months to fix, cost them a big contract with the navy.”

“And the careless employee?”

“Disappeared. All this is company folklore, understand.”

“That’s reassuring.”

No more dangerous than a chess game, it seems to Reg. Defense, retreat, deception. Unless it’s a pickup game in the park where your opponent turns violently psychopathic without warning, of course.

“Paranoia, whatever, Eric’s still intrigued,” Reg reports to Maxine. “It’s dawning on him that this could be a kind of entrance exam. If it’s the Ice Man himself on the other end of this, if Eric’s good enough, maybe they’ll let him in. Maybe I should be telling him to run like hell.”

“I heard it’s a recruiting tactic over there, you might want to point that out. Meantime, Reg, you sound a lot less enthusiastic about your project.”

“Actually, it’s a coastal thing you’re hearing, I don’t even know what I’m doing on this one anymore.”

Uh-oh. Intuition alert. None of Maxine’s business, of course, but, “The ex.”

“Same ol’ blues line, nothin important. Except now her and hubby, they’re making noises about moving out to Seattle. I don’t know, he’s some kind of corporate hotshot. Vice President in Charge of Rectal Discomfort.”

“Ah, Reg. Sorry. In the old soap operas, ‘transferred to Seattle’ was code for written out of the script. I used to think Amazon, Microsoft, and them were started up by fictional soap-opera rejects.”

“Keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, cute li’l announcement card from Gracie, ‘Hooray! we’re pregnant!’ Should be happening about now, right? So end the suspense already.”

“You’d be OK with that?”

“Better than some creep thinking my kids are his. Which gives me nightmares. Literally. Like he could be a fuckin abuser.”

“C’mon, Reg.”

“What. These things happen.”

“Too much family television, bad for your brain, watch the after-midnight cartoons instead.”

“Come on, how’m I supposed to deal with that?”

“Not the sort of thing you can just let go, I guess.”

“Actually, I had a li’l more proactive approach in mind?”

“Oh no, Reg. You’re not . . .”

“Packing? Bust a cap in the muthafucker’s ass, lovely fantasy ain’t it . . . but then Gracie I suppose would never talk to me again. The girls either.”

“Hmm, maybe not.”

“Also thought about a snatch-and-grab, can’t afford even that. Sooner or later I’d have to go to work, Social Security number and they’ve got me again, and it’s lawyers dealt into what’s left of my life. And ol’ Pointy-Hair gets the girls back anyway, and I’m forbidden ever to see them again. So my latest thinkin is, is maybe I should go out there and make nice instead.”

“Uh huh and . . . they’re expecting you?”

“Maybe I’ll find a job first, then surprise everybody. Just don’t want you thinkin too badly of me. I know it looks like I’m running away from something, but New York is really where I’ve been running away, and now there’s about to be a whole continent between me and my kids. Too far.”

•   •   •

IT IS MAXINE’S practice when checking into little start-ups like hwgaahwgh.com to also have a look at any investors in the picture. If somebody stands to lose money, there’s always a chance, emergency-vehicle exhaust-fume issues or whatever, they’ll want to hire Maxine. The name that keeps popping up in connection with hwgaahwgh is a VC down in SoHo, doing business as Streetlight People. As in “Don’t Stop Believing,” Maxine imagines. Among whose listed clients—coincidence, no doubt—also happens to be hashslingrz.

Streetlight People is located in a cast-iron-front ex-factory space somewhat off the major shopping routes around SoHo. Karmic echoes of the sweatshop era long smoothed away by portable soundbreaks, screens and carpeting, passed into a neutral, unhaunted hush. Buddy Nightingale seating in a spectrum of hesitant aquas, daffodils, and fuchsias, brushed-nickel workstations custom-designed by Zooey Chu, punctuated now and then with black leather bosses’ chairs by Otto Zapf.

If asked, Rockwell “Rocky” Slagiatt would explain that losing the vowel at the end of his name was the price of smoothness and rhythm in doing business, like lyrics in an opera. Actually he thought it would sound more Anglo, though for special visitors, of whom Maxine today seems to be one, he is known to suddenly flip polarity and become disingenuously ethnic again.

“Hey! You want sum’na eat? Peppuhvr-n-egg sangwidge.”

“Thanks, but I just—”

“My mothuh’s peppuhvr-n-egg sangwidge.”

“Well, Mr. Slagiatt, that depends. Do you mean it’s your mother’s recipe? or, it’s, like, her personal pepper-and-egg sandwich, that for some reason she keeps in that credenza there instead of a fridge where it should be?” From her studies with Shawn, Maxine is trained in the exotic Asian technique known as “False Eating,” so if it comes to it, she’ll only have to make believe eat the pepper-and-egg sandwich, which despite its authentic appearance could be poisoned with almost anything.

“’t’s ahright!” grabbing back the object, now seen actually to have an unnatural wobble to it. “It’s plastic!” throwing it in a desk drawer.

“Little hard to chew.”

“You’re a sport, Maxi, it’s OK I call you that, Maxi?”

“Sure. OK if I don’t call you Rocky?”

“Your choice, no rush,” suddenly, for a moment, Cary Grant. What? Somewhere on Maxine’s perimeter, long-disused antennas quiver and begin to track.