Double Vision by jam ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “On your left.” Blue turns and walks headfirst into something. There’s a sound of plastic rattling as ice-cold liquid splashes down the front of his jacket. The person curses at him colorfully before scampering away without even offering to help and he dabs in the general direction of the spot with his sleeve. “Other left,” Screen says unhelpfully in his ear. “Didn’t we practice this?” Sure, they “practiced” this. But there’s puttering blindfolded around their 10 square foot kitchen with Screen hollering commands from across the room, and then there’s trying to wade through the sea of 10,000 con attendees in pitch-black darkness. He’d been tossed headfirst into the deep end. Literally. “Where’s the nearest bathroom?” “It was a quarter of an iced mocha. You’ll live.” Easy to say when he’s not wearing someone’s coffee order. For the sake of his sanity, Blue decides not to picture what he looks like right now: clunky blackout goggles strapped to his face, a spreading stain on his oversized jacket, lowest-tier badge around his neck—a clear marker of how out-of-place he is. And now he’s imagined it. And now he’s pissed. And it’s all Screen’s fault. “As a reminder,” Blue hisses. “You could’ve been here.” “As a reminder, we could only scrounge up enough money for one DefCon ticket. Inflation’s a bitch.” There’s the sound of greasy wheels rolling in the distance, another one of those stupid robots with advertisements plastered floor-to-ceiling meandering towards him. Blue side-steps it without even being told. “Couldn’t you have, I dunno, magicked another ticket through hacker wizardry?” “If I was able to seamlessly bypass Melon’s security, we wouldn’t be meeting with a whistleblower.” And the very name of the company curdles anxiety in his gut, makes his skin itch like something’s trapped below the surface, begging to be set loose. They own everything–from power to architecture to agriculture, employing 90% of the global workforce, but they don’t own him. He swore it. And yet here he is, standing in the epicenter of Melon corporate hell. Though he can’t see it now, he’s seen enough pictures from past years to know what it looks like: pale yellow banners draped across the walls, the trademark fruit slice branded onto every piece of merchandise. The company’s horrible jingle has played nine times over the loudspeakers, he counted. “Fine. Do you have a lead yet? The sooner we get out of here, the better–I feel like I’m trapped in the middle of a Melon commercial.” “It wasn’t always like this.” “What?” “Corporate slop on every corner. More ads than people. DefCon used to mean something. It was a collection of the greatest minds, of like-minded people from across the globe. Picture a physical incarnation of the Information Commons, a non-stop flow of ideas. Melon changed it all when they took it over 200 years ago and paywalled the whole thing.” Screen’s voice is rising steadily, which only ever happens when he’s talking about his two true loves: documentation composed of more lines than SEE SOURCE CODE HERE and the archives. He’s probably the world’s leading expert on the early 21st century by this point, having racked up thousands of hours poring over the files. Not that there’s much competition–no one’s ever been very interested in a bygone era. “Uh-huh,” Blue says, mostly to appease him. “I’m serious! You would’ve l–” “HELLO SIR.” Blue bites back the scream that crawls its way to the top of his throat. These damn adbots and their practically heat-seeking directions. The robotic voice continues rattling off pleasantries, unperturbed. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO ATTEND MELON’S 6 O’CLOCK TALK IN THE QUANTO GALLERY? REFUELING THE EARTH: HOW MELON SOLVED THE FOSSIL FUEL CRISIS–” “No,” Blue says curtly and shoves his middle finger in the direction that he hopes the robot’s standing in. Not that it really matters, their optic receptors aren’t advanced enough to process the gesture but it’s about the principle of the thing. Screen sighs in his ear, long-suffering. “You’re causing a spectacle. Stop flipping off the robot and keep walking.” Blue stubbornly keeps his finger extended but jams his hand into his pocket. “Go to the poker table on your right. There’s an empty seat on the end closest to you.” “Could you be any more vague?” “Stop talking.” Miracle of miracles—none of which are due to Screen—Blue fumbles his way into an empty chair. He hooks his ankle around the leg, tugs and lands half-off the edge of a cushion, fervently praying that it’s facing the right way. The table whirs as it scans his badge and someone lays out a stack of chips in a row in front of him. “Compliment the orange in the dealer’s outfit. Say her dress reminds you of a dying sunset,” Screen says, as cryptic as ever. “I like your dress. The orange really brings out the color in your eyes, reminds me of a dying sunset.” On his right, someone laughs, a wheezy horrible thing. Screen huffs again in his ear, like some type of crabby Jiminy Cricket. “She’s wearing sunglasses,” he says. Well, thanks for the heads-up, he thinks aggressively in Screen’s direction. Fortunately, he picks up on his annoyance even without words. “I said compliment her, not hit on her.” “Thanks,” the dealer, presumably, remarks drily. Blue flips her a thumbs-up. “5 is small blind, 1 is big blind. Texas Hold ‘Em.” Blue fumbles around on the table until he feels the smooth metal of the cards and neatly positions them an inch in front of his goggles. Hopefully, nobody else is peeking. “You have a 3 and 7 of opposite suits. Fold.” “Call,” Blue says, just to piss him off, and tosses in the ante. “Wrong chips! Oh my god, that’s the high end. You just bet 200 without seeing the flop.” Someone’s hollering expletives at him from across the table which he chooses to blatantly ignore. He hears the chips rattle in peoples’ palms as the rest of the table folds and calls in turns. The dealer pools them all in the center of the table and flips over the first three cards. “5 of hearts, King of spades, 7 of spades.” “Before you start celebrating, a pair of 7s is one of the worst hands in Poker. Like a C-tier hand,” Screen says because he’s a killjoy. “50,” someone bets. There’s the telltale clink of metal as the chips are passed to the center. “1 bets 50. 2?” “You’re 2,” Screen says. He can practically see his scowl carved into the darkness. “I’d like to raise it to 100.” Silence pools on the table and Blue smiles wide. It’s easier when you can’t see the people glaring at you like they’d like to carve you out on the table. “Could, uh, someone help me find the chips?” “I’d like you to know that this is our rent money for the next 3 months you’re betting with–” “Turn card is a 3 of diamonds.” The dealer’s voice cuts his rant clean off and Blue has never been more grateful. “1 bets 100.” Blue angles the goggles so they’re (hopefully) pointed towards the row of chips. He buries his mouth in the crook of his elbow. “How much money do I have?” “You have 225 remaining,” the dealer replies at the same time Screen says, “Just go all in at this point. Why the fuck not?” “Okay,” Blue says and presses his palm against the metal, sweeps it all to the center with reckless abandon. “All in.” “That was a joke! I was joking! Are you crazy?! We’re f–” “Cards on the table.” Blue’s fingers smell like sweat and metal when he flips the cards over, laying them against the carpeted tabletop. “He’s got a pair of Kings and a pair of 3s, we’re fucked,” Screen says, ever the optimist. Blue can picture him hunched over his screen, hand flitting about anxiously, indignation carving a shallow divot in his brow. He can feel his own pulse beneath his skin, thrumming fast like a hummingbird’s wingbeat. Anxiety splits and stretches the second into an eternity as the dealer’s fingers drum along her deck. “River card is a 7 of hearts. 2 wins.” Screen hollers in his native tongue, either an expletive or an exclamation–Blue has no clue. The chips roll towards him slowly with a particularly satisfying clink of metal. “Well, that was fun, but I think I’ve used up all my luck for the next year,” Blue says, kicking his chair out from the table. “You’re absolutely crazy," Screen says but his tone lacks its usual bite, breathless from the adrenaline. "Exchange point’s the family restroom on the 37th floor, go.” Blue beelines it out of the room, the table seamlessly depositing the credits back into his badge as he leaves. He takes the first right and the next left under Screen’s instructions. He cups his palm around his mouth when the surrounding noise has faded to a dull hum. “How’d you get the drop point from that? Secret code? Hacker-to-hacker communication? Talking straight into your brainwaves via me?” Blue rattles off excitedly. “She was tapping out the location with her hand. The river and the turn card were the floor number.” “Oh.” “Elevator’s after the next right. The turn’s about 10 meters in front of you.” Blue smiles weakly. “So like…?” “Oh my god. 30 feet, give or take.” It doesn’t matter. Blue still turns straight into a wall and has to embarrassingly shuffle into the open hallway, praying that there are no witnesses. He manages to call the elevator down to the floor with his palm on the third try. There's the light chime of the elevator as it descends, cheery but off-putting, and the hiss of metal doors. “37th,” Screen says when he steps in, like he’s an idiot who can’t count but he’s not an idiot and he can count, he just can’t count when he’s completely blindfolded and he’s supposed to find the 37th one in a sea of formless buttons on the holo-display. He debates the merits of playing another round of Hot-and-Cold with a snappish Screen before deciding against it, slapping random spaces on the wall instead. Half the time, his fingers find an actual button and the other half, he’s just smacking the screen like an idiot. The disembodied voice in the elevator chants the numbers he finds, like he needed an auditory reminder of his failure. “What floor?” someone interrupts and Blue’s hands still above the buttons. He weighs his options and ultimately decides to stop hastily making a spectacle of himself, plastering on what he hopes is a vaguely reassuring smile. “37th, thank you. My vision’s still healing.” There’s a note of visible concern in the person’s voice when they speak again, stepping clear of the doors. “Are you alright?” “Say it was laser surgery,” Screen says. “It was an angry hawk.” “Ah.” Blue hears their sneakers shuffling along the carpet, like they’re trying to relegate themselves to the farthest corner of the elevator. “They think you’re a lunatic.” “We’re going to the right floor now, aren’t we?” Blue hisses back. “What was that?” “Nothing.” The person scampers clear off the next time the elevator doors open, even though Blue’s fairly confident it’s the wrong floor. “Let’s hope they don’t report you to security.” “You can’t report someone for just being weird. I would’ve reported you years ago.” Screen doesn’t manage to formulate a proper comeback to that, probably too busy glaring at his screen angrily. (Haha. Get it?) “How many more floors?” “13 because you managed to press every floor between 30 and 37 except for 37.” Blue sticks his tongue out at the security cameras and briefly contemplates the merits of wrenching his goggles off to put his face in frame. Screen would probably have an aneurysm though for breaking protocol—and as entertaining as that would be, the mission would be difficult to complete with his partner comatose. It takes the elevator three agonizing minutes to crawl up to the proper floor. “37th,” the voice chimes and Blue’s off like a rocket the second the doors open, squeezing through the crack in the metal. “Left,” Screen parrots. “No, other left. Closer, closer–” “I’m not a drone, you know.” “You’re right. A drone would be more accurate.” “I hate you.” “The door’s in front of you.” Blue gropes blindly against the frosted plexiglass as he struggles to find the handle. After an eternity–in complete silence because Screen chooses the worst moments ever to stop talking–his fingers find the metal curve of the bar. He pulls and– And nothing happens. The handle’s frozen like it’s been locked into place. Paranoia bubbles up in his throat as he tugs again and again and– “Excuse me,” someone says as the door finally gives way and Blue walks straight into another person for the second time in one hour. “Ah,” he says weakly, staring at the ground. “I didn’t realize it was occupied.” It’s a paper-thin argument considering the door has a bright red OCCUPIED label above the handle. The person seems to agree given their lack of response. “I’ll just. Yeah. Sorry about that.” Blue squeezes in through the gap between the door and the wall in the world’s worst walk of shame. He waits until the door clicks shut behind him to scream. “You couldn’t have told me that it was occupied?!” “How was I supposed to know? You were looking down at your fat fingers the whole time!” “Excuse me for staying focused on the mission. Just tell me where the holopad is.” Screen’s end of the comm dissolves into suspicious silence. Blue smacks the goggles like he’s trying to manually contort the radio waves with his fingers. “Stop it!” Screen squawks, just like Blue knew he would. “You’re going to break it! The holopad… it’s in the toilet.” Disdain doesn’t do the expression plastered on Blue’s face justice. “I hope I misheard you.” “You didn’t. The holopad’s in the toilet.” Blue follows the ominous gurgling of water and the horrid stench of public lavatories to the back corner. The tiles squeak beneath his sneakers as he draws closer. “Don’t be dramatic,” Screen says, because he’s all nice and toasty back home with his very clean hands and his very clear vision. Two things that Blue will never take for granted ever again. “You’re not even sticking your hand in the bowl. It’s in the tank beneath the flapper.” Somehow, that’s supposed to be reassuring. Somehow, that’s supposed to lessen the gravity of the horrific act against basic health regulations and all things sanitary that Blue’s about to commit. So people haven’t pissed directly into the tank. They’ve only pissed around it. Considering this is the family restroom frequently occupied by toddlers who wouldn’t know the term “potty trained” if it got up and slapped them across the face, Blue only has to touch the hard plastic that wayward children have most definitely pissed on. “You want me to plunge my poor, innocent, clean hand into this vile abomination of a public toilet?” Screen, unsympathetic bastard that he is, doesn’t even miss a beat. “Yes.” Blue hates him. Blue hates him so much, even as he feels around the plastic lid, digs his nails into it above the handle, and pries the top loose. The fact that it only gives way after twenty long seconds of aggressive manhandling does not give him hope about how often it’s cleaned. “Channel your inner plumber,” Screen says, like that’s supposed to be helpful. “Right, cause I’m always cleaning up your shit.” “You’re not supposed to talk while you’re channeling.” Blue leans the heavy lid against the wall–no thanks to Screen and his distracting commentary. He walks back to the toilet and stares at it like doomsday’s on the horizon. “What are you waiting for? Just stick it in.” Blue’s hand trembles in the air. If his eyes weren’t already covered with two layers of tinted glass, he’d be squeezing them shut. “Give me a moment. I’m praying.” “You’re not religious.” And the blatant lack of sympathy is enough to piss him off over the edge, send his fist plunging deep into cold water. His knuckles rap against the bottom as he jerks his hand around, yanking chains out of alignment as he goes. “Where is it? What am I even touching right now? Do I even want to know–” “You’re touching pipes, calm down. More to the right.” Blue’s fingers finally curl around tempered glass and he yanks the holopad loose, dripping toilet water all over the tiles. He holds it up, triumphant, in front of his goggles, ready to be lavished with praise. Screen could do with some groveling. “Lights,” Screen reminds him instead, ever pragmatic. Blue grumbles as he walks backwards, hands stretched out 180 degrees in front of him until he finds the wall again. He jams his thumb against the light switch, drags it all the way down to zero. And finally, in pitch-black darkness, Blue wrenches the wretched blackout goggles off his face, exhilaration painted wide across his face and– And comes face-to-face with a dead screen. The weight in his hands is real but the glass is blank, the entire front dead. “It’s broken.” His hand–his very much still wet hand–curls around the corners as he hits it once with his palm. The screen unfortunately does not stutter to life. “What?” “It’s off. Empty. The tablet was a dud.” He works his lip between his teeth until he tastes metal on his tongue and lifts his hand. “Should I smack it again?” “No–what do you mean ‘again’? Blue, please tell me you did not decide to smack the first piece of active Melon technology that we’ve gotten our hands on in the past two decades.” Blue’s pacing now, anxiety coursing through his veins. He shakes the tablet a couple of times like that’ll breathe back some life into it. It can’t be fake, can’t be empty, can’t be a dud. They blew everything they had on this. The exorbitant ticket fee might have been paid in real credits but the invite list to this con is obsessively tailored. It had taken ages to track down an old Melon tablet on the black market, two major updates behind, clunky and slow with half-functioning buttons but jailbroken enough for Screen to sideload the DefCon app onto it. It had taken months for him to painstakingly reverse the custom encryption protocol they designed for it–because of course Melon is extra enough to design their own cryptographic system instead of being kind and using an open-sourced one–it had taken them months to jury rig the whole thing to Screen’s PC (Piece of Crap) with a crisscrossing field of wires, filter the traffic request-by-request proxied through his desktop, compare the plaintext with the garbled gibberish output and layer them over each other, the light peaking through the overlap. He’d only fired off one authenticated request to grab a valid registration code for Blue and they’ll probably have patched up the gap by morning. If they’ve been left in the dark after all that– “Turn it on and off again,” Screen cuts in and Blue blinks. “I can’t tell if you’re joking. Are you joking?” “Blue,” he hisses impatiently and Blue has never been more grateful for the gaping distance between them. “Just try to force-restart it.” His fingers fumble along the edges in the dark until he finds the power button, holds it down for five, counts for ten and then presses it on once more. The holopad finally whirs to life, going warm in his hands. Blue blinks in the sight of faint lettering on the screen, glowing in the same way that the plastic stars plastered to the ceiling of his childhood bedroom used to do. “Oh,” he laughs quietly. The light is blinding and of course the fucking loading page is the horrible Melon logo but it’s something—and something means that it’s working. Blue’s so relieved he could cry. “Did it work? I can’t see anything.” Screen’s voice is strained above the gurgle of the toilet. “Doesn’t that suck?” he remarks drily. Blue sits down, grimy tiles be damned and turns the tablet over in his hands, watching the pale light catch and twist. “I can’t believe this is how you used to program at Melon. In complete darkness like animals.” Screen’s responding laugh is mirthless. “They genetically modified us when we left so we couldn’t see the color of their code anymore. I don’t think they care very much about their employees’ wellbeing.” “You’re not missing much. This is a putrid shade of yellow. Like that time I ate five mango popsicles and then puked–” “What do you see?” Screen interrupts and Blue squints. “A really ugly screensaver. Think post-2500s modernism but with more jagged lines.” “Swipe up,” Screen hisses impatiently at him, like an irritated cat. He probably wouldn’t even be one of those cute cats, probably one of those angry hairless ones that spend all their time knocking household goods off the table while you’re not looking. “Now, what do you see?” “A login screen,” he says, reading off of it. “The username’s filled out as ‘admin’ but the password’s blank.” Screen pauses and Blue imagines that he’s picking at his nails again. He always does it when he’s anxious, even after Blue so thoughtfully gifted him those gloves last Christmas. They’d been pitch-black and edgy and seemed like a prop fresh off the set of one of his prized early 2000s movies so they should’ve been right up his alley. He refuses to wear them of course because he’s Screen. “Try admin.” Blue rolls his eyes. “That’s literally what I’m doing right now, I–” “Try admin as the password.” Blue blinks, pinches himself to make sure he’s not dreaming and then blinks again. “You want me to try admin:admin as the password for the world’s largest and most secure corporation in the history of like ever–” “Blue, try it.” Screen sounds like every second this conversation drags on is a knife to the gut so Blue sucks up his protests and types admin:admin into the holopad. It works. It fucking works, the hideous blue dissolving in a pixelly haze to make way for an equally hideous home screen. The desktop is an absolute shitshow, icons piled up on top of each other like it’s his old rat-infested, waterlogged apartment building: three to a square inch. Over half of them are branded with the trademark Melon logo. There are no words to contain Blue’s horror. “You’re telling me that the same company that genetically modifies their employees before termination uses admin:admin as the password?” “Well,” Screen remarks drily. “We all make mistakes.” “This is one hell of a mistake,” Blue says because that’s the understatement of the century. “Whatever. What am I looking for?” “Not sure, what’s the OS?” Blue has never been more painfully aware of how little he pays attention to Screen’s ‘mandatory training sessions’. His smile is pinched tight across his face as he stares down the screen. “‘OS’ meaning… Obligatory Stuff?” Screen’s resounding hiss of air is unfairly judgemental. “Operating system. Click the settings. Look for the wrench–the wrench icon! The one that looks like a mechanic’s tool, like a curved fork.” Blue clicks on a trident with an extra prong, a flaming pitchfork which is apparently the icon for Melon’s payroll system and a shortcut that brings him to an online collection of totally-pirated-movies which is wow, telling of Melon employees’ caliber. “The thing I chuck at your head when you’re pissing me off!” Ah. Blue clicks the proper icon this time and a wall of gibberish in 10-point font greets him. “Read back what it says to me under System Configuration.” “Uh… it says Windows 2980.” Blue does the mental math. “Isn’t that really old?” “Yes.” “It’s the year 3000.” “Yes,” Screen says again, notably more pained this time. “You know what, fuck it. Ripgrep for the word ‘confidential’.” Blue tips his head, the words sloshing sideways in his skull. “What?” “I’m re-enrolling you in mandatory computer training when you’re back. And this time you need an 80% on the quiz to pass. Type exactly what I’m about to tell you. First, press the key with the four squares and the R key…” Screen spoon-feeds him a hacker wizardry spell that spits back a long list of filenames. They’re still loading, the blue circle spinning as he clicks on the first one. True to the query, there’s a bright red CONFIDENTIAL stamp going across the whole document. He flips through an executive summary chock-full of C-suite crap and eight pages of wiggly, colorful charts to dissect the meat of the paper. He parks himself on page 17 under the heading PROPOSED ENERGY PLAN FOR Q4 2950. Blue reads. And he reads and he reads and he reads. The words sear themselves into his brain like a brand as he goes, inked in blood, written with a heavy hand. “Did it work?” Screen asks after an eternity. His voice is foggy in his ear, like it’s miles away. “Hello? Blue? Did it work?” Blue swallows and feels the weight of all 384 pages crawl down the line of his throat. “It worked,” he says quietly. “Well, what’d you find?” Blue reads the words over and over again like repetition will lessen the force of them. Like he can suppress the shock, bandage over the gaping hole that’s carved into his chest with repeated blunt trauma. He tries to trace the curves of the syllables with his thumb but his finger just slips against the glass, leaving behind smudged prints. “Blue!” “I know how they solved the energy crisis.” “Yeah, you and everyone in Quanto Gallery.” Screen’s voice is shrill, exasperated. “There’s a talk going on literally right now. What–” “They said they found a renewable energy resource.” He feels like a freight train picking up speed with each word, the brakes rusted and broken as he barrels forward into darkness. “They’re always so careful in their public releases. They never specify what the resource is, keep it behind a hand-wavey scientific explanation and vague descriptions. They said they found it buried deep in the Earth, near the core but that doesn’t make sense. Someone would’ve found it years ago if that was the case. It doesn’t make sense.” The admission hardens into a lump in his throat, blocking his airway. He can’t breathe. “And what?” Screen presses. “What was the renewable resource?” “People,” Blue breathes. “It’s people. They’re sucking their factory workers dry, hooking them up to some fucking machine like they’re a gigantic battery. Their power plants are massive graveyards.” The comm goes dead quiet, the silence stretching on and on into infinity like a never-ending road. Blue counts the tiles on the opposite wall in a haze, all twenty of them, then starts from the corner and combs through them one-by-one again. When Screen hasn’t moved on the fourth count, he reaches with fumbling fingers to check that the comm’s still nestled in his ear. “Screen?” “Get out of there. Now.” That finally rouses Blue out of his stupor. He fumbles against the wall to crawl his way onto the closed toilet, tablet still clutched in his hand. “One second, let me just transfer the files–” “No,” Screen says. “This meeting never happened. We never met with a whistleblower. You’re a low-level Melon programmer that hates his shitty job and had one too many drinks at your company’s annual convention. You’ve just finished heaving half your insides into this crappy toilet.” Emotion washes like a tidal wave over him, the numbing cold of shock before it’s replaced with burning anger that fizzles out to a resigned weariness. “You put the holopad where you found it, back under the flapper in the tank. You–” “Screen,” Blue says quietly, cutting him clean off. And it’s a testament to how long they’ve known each other that Screen halts plain in his tracks, voice grinding to a screeching stop. He’s probably hunched in his decrepit office chair over the monitor again, curving his spine in a way that’ll give him back pain at 30. His nails are probably bitten beyond the quick because somewhere deep under his prickliness and ten thick layers of bitchiness, there’s a tiny, stone-cold heart buried there. “This isn’t–this isn’t like bleeding the inventory of the grocery store chain on the corner! This is turning the biggest fucking corporation in the world belly-up and inciting a full class revolution. This is inviting death onto our doorstep. It’ll be the 2700s all over again. Melon might be an absolute shithole, but it runs everything right now. Power, groceries, public transit–it’s the backbone of the global economy. If it blows, everything blows.” “Hey,” Blue says quietly, like he’s trying to calm a child. He doesn’t even know which one of them he’s trying to reassure. “I know.” Screen’s silent again, like he’s flipping through the conversation choices, running every possible scenario in his head that all dead-end at Blue’s steadfast stubbornness. “You’re sure?” he finally asks. “Yes,” Blue says and it’s as much of an answer as it is a plea. Because he can’t do this without Screen’s help. “How do I make this go public?” Maybe there’s a reason that they’ve been paired together for every mission, that they’ve got a success rate higher than any other team operating out of their shitty apartment building downtown, because Screen doesn’t even falter before replying, the momentary blip in resolve having been smoothly bulldozed over by Blue’s bullheaded nature. “Open up the terminal again,” he says and Blue does. Screen feeds him the command letter by letter, holds his metaphorical, holo-hand every step of the way. And it is with Screen’s trembling fingers on the keyboard and Blue’s dilating eyes on the screen that they turn the world upside-down.