Headcrash 2 0, p.1
Headcrash 2.0, page 1
Ashley Grayson Literary Agency
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Email: agrayson1@aol.com
DISCLAIMER
This book is a work of fiction. The governmental agencies depicted in this novel are intended to represent no agencies or offices now in existence or expected to exist in the foreseeable future. In particular, this novel concerns the actions of the Federal Department of Investigation, which should not be construed as a literary stand-in for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The real agency is the FBI: this book concerns the FDI. The characters in this book are entirely fictitious and their words and actions should not be construed as a reflection on the behavior or character of the heroic men and women of American law enforcement. Above all, under no circumstances should the inquisitive reader attempt to substitute the letters FBI for FDI in any Internet URL or Web page address that may be depicted in this book.
Well, okay, if you really want to try it, it's your ass...
CONFIDENTIAL E-MEMO
TO: ALL FDI REGIONAL & FIELD OFFICES
FROM: DIRECTOR, INTERNET SECURITY DIVISION
DATE: 15 JUNE 2010
RE: UNSOLVED CASE REMINDER
PRIORITY: URGENT
All officers and special agents are reminded to be on the lookout for JACK BURROUGHS (aka MAX_KOOL), still wanted in connection with repeated serious violations of the Corporate Data Privacy, Internet Non-Violence and Decency, and Federal Embarassing Data Secrecy acts committed during the period of May - June 2005. Subject is a Caucasian-American male, at present age 28, and an accomplished computer expert with a long record of antisocial attitudes and behaviors. His last known location was Hawaii, although this intelligence is now more than three years old and is no longer deemed 100-percent reliable.
Any suspected sighting of Burroughs should be reported immediately to the FDI National Computer Crime Center at http://www.fdi.gov/compcrim.htm.
DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT forward leads or information to the National Infrastructure Protection Agency! Dammit people, this is an FDI case, and we will crack it without any more help from those smug bastards at NIPA! That's all we need is for Director Jackson to come walking into the next Senate appropriations hearing with... Oh my, this thing is transcribing everything I say, isn't it? Um... Strike that. Begin new paragraph, emphasis on, all caps.
DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT ATTEMPT A SOLO ARREST!
Burroughs is a known associate of JOSEPH LEMAT (aka Gunnar Savage) and INGE ANDERSSON (aka Don Vermicelli) the notorious international arms smugglers, con artists, and Internet marketing consults. LeMat and Andersson are also wanted on outstanding state, federal, and Interpol warrants too numerous to mention here: for a complete list updated weekly see http://www.fdi.gov/mostwant/tenlist.htm. Agents encountering LeMat and Andersson are advised that these two are considered heavily armed and extremely dangerous, and that no arrest should be attempted without tank backup and air support.
For what it's worth, there are persistent rumors on alt.conspiracy.nutcase that Burroughs, LeMat, and Andersson have either joined or been executed by SCARW, the Secret Cabal that Actually Rules the World. Our liaison at OSS assures us no such organization actually exists, for if it did, Secret Cabal that Actually Rules the Earth would make for a far better acronym.
Finally, a special advisory to all FDI personnel within driving distance of Quantico: c'mon, people, we're a multi-billion-dollar Federal agency. Let's coordinate the department picnic this year, okay? Last year we wound up with enough potato salad to feed Georgetown and not one bottle of ketchup. Surely there is room for improvement, no?
Regards
DIR-INTSEC
1
TABULA RASA
When I was about five years old and first learning to ride a bicycle, my father gave me some advice. He said, "Son, never worry about where you've been. It's where you're going that knocks your front teeth out."
With that thought firmly fixed in mind—it's either that or Dad's one other piece of worthwhile advice, which was, "Never bet on a horse named Lucky"—we can discard all that has gone before, and begin in one bright, shining, omniscient and retrospective moment:
- June 23, 2010 -
The Earth hangs like a big blue aggie marble in the silent vastness of space, a fragile island of life and liquid water in the cold, unforgiving, and for all practical purposes infinite cosmos.
But that's not my problem.
In London it's already one o 'clock in the morning of the next day, and a pack of knuckle-dragging Aryan skinheads have just finished kicking the tar out of an aging Pakistani shopkeeper in a deserted tube station. As he lies there on the cold concrete platform, coughing sticky bubbles of bright blood and drifting in and out of consciousness, he wonders: What's wrong with the security cameras? Where are the Police? He doesn't know that two vagrants have built a fire under a Thames River bridge, in the process accidentally melting through a main fibre-optic trunk line and knocking out all police surveillance west of Bermondsey.
But again, that's not my problem.
In central Brazil it's 10 P. M., And the panic-stricken Voortanga 'en colony in the Amazonian rain forest has once again turned its main bioreceptor towards Gamma Virginis. At last, from the home world, comes the message the colonists have waited more than a thousand years anxious to hear: the Colonial Office has reviewed their report on the dangerous bipedal anthropoids running riot on this world, and funding for a relief expedition has been authorized. As the signal fades into the background hiss of interstellar hydrogen, the colonists spread their stillia and exude a collective aspiration of relief. (As if, being a lungless group-mind, they could do anything else.) Now it's just a matter of hanging on for the five or six millennia it will take their war fleet to arrive, then—payback!
But amazingly enough, this is also not my problem.
In Dallas it's 7 P. M., And the President of the United States is sitting in a blast-shielded lavatory in the basement of the Texas White House, fondling the briefcase that contains his missile launch codes and wondering what's the point of having all these nuclear weapons if he never gets to use them. In Pasadena it's 5 P. M., And the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab has once again intercepted the Voortanga 'en transmission and misclassified it as unintelligible random noise. In the Gulf of Alaska it's 4 P. M., And a pod of bottlenose dolphins are urgently but unsuccessfully trying to explain to the fisherhumans who've kidnapped their relatives that mackerel are hard to find these days and they need more time to come up with the ransom.
But again, all of these things are not my problem.
Instead, let us focus in on a few tiny bits of volcanic rock jutting out of the blue Pacific, just east of the International Date Line and a hair south of the Tropic of Skin Cancer. To be specific, let's look down on Maui—on the south coast, at the end of Highway 31, where the Wailea Shores run into the Puu Olai lava fields. There—Ahihi Bay—that tiny brown speck, floating on a red-and-white-striped surfboard, about two hundred yards offshore: that's me- And if you were to break open the glove compartment of my car on the beach, and dig through the avalanche of fast-food napkins, misfolded roadmaps, and paper-wrapped beverage straws, you'd find a wallet full of carefully forged ID cards that claim my name is Bob Sanders.
But instead of pursuing this topic further at this time, please allow me to redirect your attention to another point about a quarter-mile due south. There, that long, dark, ominous shape, knifing slowly through the shallow water. That is a fifteen-foot-long tiger shark.
And it's about 3 P. M., Local time, and in just slightly over two minutes, that shark is very definitely going to become my problem.
Let the realtime begin.
#
It was a beautiful day for daydreaming. And a piss-poor one for surfing.
Not surprising, that. The two activities are pretty much mutually exclusive. I mean, usually the business of surfing is way intense. Like, totally Zen. I mean like, you start with the daydreaming thing while you've got your stick up there on the lip of a serious curl, and next thing you know you are playing harbor dredge and sucking up a major faceful of kelp and sand.
But not on this day.
No, this day could have been spec'd out by the Tourism Board. An air temp in the mid 80 's; a warm and gentle offshore breeze sifting slowly through the palm trees on the beach and whispering softly of hibiscus and plumeria; a low and gentle swell rolling into the bay from the northwest, with just enough energy to make the little breakers run in laughing ripples and long, rolling sweeps along the gently curving picture-postcard-perfect white sand shoreline.
And not one damned wave worth the effort of pretending to ride.
I didn't mind. Honest.
The Serious Surfer Dudes would have minded. That, and they would have given me an extra ration of crap for being out at all. "A day like this," one of them would be sure to say, "is fit only for kooks and haoles1 ." And then some sun-bronzed dolt with the body of a Greek god and the brains of a meatloaf would be almost sure to quote the legendary Mark Foo at me:
"If you want to feel the ultimate thrill, you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price."
But of course the Serious Surfers Dudes weren't there that day, because they all thought Foo's "ultimate price" was a cryptic reference to tickets on Air Aloha, and they'd all packed their quivers and jetted off to Oahu, to chase monster curls on the North Shore. Whereas the legendary Mark Foo had actually meant something quit
Which is why the legendary Mark Foo's ashes are now scattered on the waters of the equally legendary Waimea Bay, and why yours truly, the totally non-legendary Bob Sanders, is content to kook around a nearly deserted Ahihi Bay, just splashing his bare brown toes in the sweet blue Pacific and soaking up that gorgeous Hawaiian summer sun. For as Surfboy Sanders has been known to say, at least three times weekly:
"A bad day of surfing still beats Hell out of a good day at work."
Damn right. I liked being Bob Sanders. And on this particular lazy, sunny, summer afternoon, I was deeply into the mode of soaking up sun and thinking about why.
There was my new job, for starters. It was a nice, mindless, undemanding gig at a totally unimportant third-rate tourist hotel. Plenty of free time to flirt with the local wahines, or more importantly, surf. Three or four decent sticks in my quiver (depending on whether you counted my Aipa Stinger as a functional surfboard or a novel wall decoration), including this really really nice Merrick Thruster I happened to be sitting on at the moment, which I'd bought for a moldly old Don Ho song off some schmuck mainlander who'd come out here and suddenly realized he wanted a brand-new Parmenter Keelfin. (And then he bought one, at Kahului prices, yike! Not that it helped his surfing any: he'd have done just as well with an old balsa longboard, or for that matter, with a redwood picnic table with the legs sawn off.)
But I digress.
It was a good day for digressing.
Ergo, I continued with the smug inventory of my new life. Sickeningly positive attitude? Check. Obnoxiously healthy diet? Check. Zero consumer debt? Cash only, tee hee. The sort of broad chest and deep-fried dark brown skin that'd get me suspicious looks and poor service in any Denny's restaurant back home in—where was that miserable, frigid place I'd originally come from? Minnesnowta?
I dunno. It was all starting to look like freeze-frames from someone else's life, now. For here, in this perfect moment, this boy Sanders is possessed of a deep, clear, nearly Zen happiness. When I am on my board, on the water, I am brother to the wind, the waves, the sea—
And the sharks. Mustn't forget the sharks. The really big ones churn the water when they pass. If you spend a lot of time in the ocean, and you're really tuned in to it, and you happen to be sitting on a floating chip of urethane foam with your bare feet dangling in the water, you can actually feel the subtle change in temperature gradient when a big one swims by underneath you.
At a little after 3 P. M., On the sunny afternoon of June 23, 2010, I felt it.
What To Do
If You Believe You Are Intruding on the Personal Space of a Shark.
Step 1.
Don't panic! Sharks are naturally inquisitive, and your newfound aquatic friend may simply be curious. So don't shout or thrash the water. Instead, slowly and calmly grasp your surfboard with both hands, then tuck your feet up under your butt, just as tight as they can possibly go.
Step 2.
Next, look down into the water around you, and try to determine which species you are dealing with. Great Whites have gotten a bad rap over the years and are neither as numerous nor as vicious as some uninformed people would have you believe. Whitetips are almost close to completely harmless. Reef Grays can be unpredictable, but they are also territorial, and if you can locate their "home turf 'and vacate it, they generally won't follow you.
Step 3.
We hope your shark encounter will be fun and educational and leave you with a lasting appreciation for these magnificent creatures. But if it does go less than perfectly, remember: direct pressure almost always stops arterial bleeding.
Published as a public service by:
PEOPLE FOR ETHICAL SHARK TREATMENT
WWW.CHOMPCHOMP.ORG
PEOPLE FOR ETHICAL SHARK TREATMENT
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
TO: Don Beckham, President, PEST
FROM: Rob DuPre, Chair, Fund-Raising
DATE: 3/16/05
RE: Kaneohe Shark Petting Zoo
Don, look, I know we've been through this a million times, and I know I've been voted down. And yes, I understand that the tourists go gah-gah over licensed Disney characters.
But seriously: Captain Hook as the mascot for our shark petting zoo? I mean, call it a hunch, but I think we're talking major wrong message here.
Worried,
RD
The dorsal fin broke the surface about twenty yards away from me. It was circling me slowly, propelling itself with lazy strokes of its long, tapered tail. The shark didn't seem to be motivated to eat me immediately, which was good, but it wasn't going on its fishy way, either, which would have been better. I had plenty of time to size it up.
Length? About fifteen feet, which made it a monster. Color? A mottled brownish-gray. Head shape? Wide, with a blunt snout...
Oh, sweet bungee-jumping Jesus. It was a tiger shark.
Tiger sharks suck.
Okay, if you want to get technical about it, remoras suck; tigers bite. And what, the casually interested observer might ask, do they bite?
Name it. Fish, sea turtles, porpoises, aquatic birds; basically anything smaller and slower-moving than the shark, and sometimes anything larger, too. I once saw a fibreglas catamaran hull a tiger had decided to try for taste. Left a big hole.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.
They're especially fond of surfer al fresco.
#
- INDEX, in the space of heartbeats -
Q.
Do you often see tiger sharks on the surface in the daytime?
A.
No, they typically stay in deep water during daylight hours and only come into the shallows to feed at night. Which, incidentally, is why you should never go for a midnight skinny-dip anywhere except Waikiki, where the washed-off tanning oil from the tourists forms big cholesterol slicks and puts Mr. Tiger there right off his diet.
Q.
If you do run into a tiger shark, how can you keep it from attacking?
A.
Frankly, the best defense is prevention. Don't thrash the water; don't appear helpless or unaware; don't wear flashy jewelry, expensive watches, or show large amounts of cash -wait a minute, that's how to avoid getting mugged. Then again, all these rules do apply to tiger sharks. Except for the bit about cash, of course.
Q.
If a tiger shark is exhibiting aggressive behavior towards you, what's the best way to discourage it?
A.
The U. S. Navy has had great success with proximity fuses and one-kilo bricks of DuPont C4.
Q.
What if you happen to be fresh out of high explosives?
A.
In a pinch, low explosives will do.
Q.
Is it absolutely necessary to kill the shark?
A.
No. In point of fact, many subspecies are now classed as endangered and are protected by international treaty and law, and it would be a serious crime to kill such a shark. For, as a number of courts in California have ruled, just because an animal is trying to gnaw your leg off, that is not sufficient excuse to permit injuring a member of a protected species.
Q.
Oh. So if you don't want to - or can't - kill the shark, what then?
A.
You could try talking calmly to it, reasoning with it, or giving it a nice tummy-rub.
Q.
Will that work?
A.
No.
#
Ding!
(My imagination supplies this sound. It is the sound of an oven timer going off, and signals the start of dinner. All this flashing back and indexing of advice and such rot had taken the merest matter of seconds, as the shark completed one last long circle around me. Then...)
