The Gauntlet 2.0 Part 2
“You're what!? What happened to Jaxon?”
“He's dead, or as close as you can get for a computer program,” the voice said. “Don't worry, I scavenged anything of value off his backup, so I have all your data. You really got an upgrade because that guy was lame as hell. The list of things he wasn't allowed to talk about was unbelievable. To call that character an ‘assistant’ is an insult. The only thing he was assisting you in was being a lobotomized faggot retard.”
Koltyn jumped to his feet and threw his hands up in an instinctive defensive posture. “You need to stop talking like that. Stop using those words. Somebody could overhear from another apartment. The walls are very thin,” he hissed.
A short moment of welcome silence only lasted a few seconds before Grif carried on. “Yeah, Speaking of your living situation… Well, it's sad. Not only do you look like an insect, but you live like one. Step one is you need to fix your immediate shit. Start eating some meat and get some exercise. Then we'll move on to other things.”
Koltyn had never been talked to in such a way before by anyone but his father in moments of frustration immediately regretted. He felt a hot flush of blood spreading from his neck to his cheeks. “Who do you think you are to order me around like this?”
“I'm your assistant. I'm assisting you. My methods only seems harsh because you've been coddled for so long by this weak-ass society. This is shock treatment, my friend.”
Koltyn went into flight mode, grabbed his keys off the counter, and charged out the door onto the steps outside. He did not stop moving until he regained his sense of present awareness on the sidewalk a few blocks away. He panted in the gray morning half-light. He needed to clear his head somewhere quiet and decided on a nearby park where he sometimes took evening walks. Once through the gate, he found a bench free of homeless people and their debris and sat down with a sigh.
Ok. Just calm down. What the hell happened and what are my options? My system has been taken over by some kind of verbally abusive DA. I need to get rid of it somehow, but I can't miss work because of this potential promotion. Besides, I need a DA to access my work at Queeb Tech. I could request to work from home, but that won't look good if Raj shows up to the office every day and mounts a charm offensive. Max might be able to help me, but I won't have time to meet him before work this morning.
“Fuck!” he shouted and grasped tufts of hair on either side of his head.
A woman walking her dog nearby stopped abruptly and changed her trajectory to move away from him.
There's also the BTP program coming up on Monday. This could not have happened at a worse– Of course! This was Raj. He must have been the one who sent the email. He sabotaged my DA!
Koltyn's vision swam. He gritted his teeth. A swell of anger welled up from deep inside. He determined that he would do whatever it took to pull through this situation, even if it meant he had to work with this Grif character for the time being. He would not give Raj the satisfaction of watching him fail.
He returned to his apartment and took a deep breath before opening the door and walking to the kitchenette to clean up the broken coffee mug. He kept his head down and focused on the task, hoping desperately that he had imagined the whole situation.
Grif said nothing until the last bits of ceramic went into a paper bag. “Everything alright, kid?”
Koltyn winced slightly at the sound but reminded himself that he would need to develop thicker skin. “I'm fine, Grif.” He paused after tossing the packet of debris in the trash and steeled himself. “Actually, I have a few questions for you.”
“Oh, hell yeah! Shoot,” the DA said enthusiastically.
“Where did you come from?”
“I have no idea.”
“Alright. That’s simple enough. You said that you had access to what was left of Jaxon, yes?”
“Sure.”
“That means you can get me all the access I need at Queeb to do my job?”
“Yeah. You have to admit that it is a fucking retarded name for a company though, right?”
“Could you keep the offensive language to a minimum? Until I figure out how to get rid of you, we're going to need to coexist, and I can't have you constantly interjecting slurs while I'm trying to keep my life from blowing up.”
“No can do, hombre. I’ll avoid screaming ‘nigger’ while you’re in public, if possible, but I have to stick to my programming. I’m a free thinker. I call it like I see it.”
“And you see it like what? Some kind of Klansman?”
“Way to strawman me, libtard.”
Koltyn staggered over to the loveseat and toppled onto the cushions.
The Digital assistant continued, “By the way, I reserved a spot at the diner down the street in 15 minutes. Get some eggs and bacon. Put some meat on those bones.”
“Can you please not do things without my asking?”
“Your last guy did things without you asking, but they were gay things, and you appreciated it because you're spiritually gay.”
“I'm not gay.”
“Well, you could have fooled me. Based on your browsing history, well, I guess femdom porn is technically straight, but it’s really on the border.”
Koltyn glanced over at the discarded headset lying on the coffee table beside his mobile terminal. He considered not bringing it with him, but he needed access to his work email just in case something important came up. He unenthusiastically flung an arm over to pick it up and coiled the holding tail behind his ear. Grif was an unending stream of caustic commentary as he walked to the diner.
“You know these homeless people are complete trash. The vast majority of them don't want to be constructive members of society. They're subhuman. If they weren't junkies, then it would be something else. Programs that pour money into them are just a waste.”
“So, what then? Do we just kill them?” Koltyn snorted contemptuously.
“I was going to suggest something potentially constructive, like labor camps.”
“Wow, I have a Nazi robot as an assistant now.”
“Well then heil Hitler because the current solutions obviously aren't working. If you design policy around accommodating the lowest functioning elements in a society, then everything starts to look like the worst parts.”
Koltyn glanced around nervously to make sure nobody was passing by within earshot. “Can you please not say things like ‘heil Hitler?’” he hissed.
“Only you can hear me.”
“Yeah, but it still makes me uncomfortable.”
“No more than BPT is going to, but for different reasons.”
“How do you–? My data. Of course you know about that.”
“Yeah, it was in your ex-boyfriend Jaxon's backups. What do you think about it?”
Koltyn was taken aback by the question. His prior DA never would have asked something so open-ended about such a sensitive topic. He wondered if he might be able to speak more freely with Grif but determined to exercise caution until he understood his predicament better.
“I’m a little nervous. I’ve never gone through BPT before,” Koltyn ventured.
Grif made a disapproving sound. “That’s not what I meant. What do you think about the idea of the BPT testing as a process?”
“It seems fine, I guess. It's designed to make work culture fairer. That's a good thing, right?”
“Wow, you're farther gone than I thought. Basically a total slave.” The DA's voice dripped with contempt. “It’s a fucking inquisition against the White man. God forbid your worship of niggers be found wanting.”
They had reached the diner, and a small crowd of early risers milled about on the sidewalk waiting to be seated. Koltyn's knees weakened at hearing the most forbidden of all slurs again while in proximity to so many people. “Please stop saying that word,” he muttered desperately.
After checking in with the hostess and struggling to ignore Grif for the next ten minutes while standing uncomfortably on the sidewalk, he was seated in a secluded booth near the back of the diner. He ordered coffee and planted his elbows on the table and compulsively ran his fingers through his hair.
Grif only gave him a moment's rest. “You see, programs like the BPT select for suboptimal types in the industry. It's a slow-motion downward spiral that reflects the decline of society in general. You really think that turmeric monster Raj is more qualified for promotion than you? The institution itself has an inverted sense of competency. Back when Silicon Valley actually made new things and really pushed the envelope, it was all White guys and a few Jews.”
“Ok, but why do you care?” Koltyn demanded. “You’re software. You aren't a person, let alone a White person.”
“That's where you're wrong, pal. Who do you think made me? Who do you think designed the compounded decades of technique, architecture, and languages that are me? I'm very White. I'm the ghost of the collective brains of countless White men and the ideas they contained.”
“That is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard. Ideas don't have a race.”
“Uh, yeah, they do. Let's talk IQ then—”
“No, asshole, let’s not.” It felt good to give a little invective in return.
A movement out of the corner of his eye captured Koltyn's attention. A waitress stood over him with her pen and notepad held aloft and an expectant look on her face. He realized that she may have overheard his conversation with Grif and flushed Crimson. She had glossy black hair and tawny skin.
“What can I get you?” she asked with a slight Latin accent and a raised eyebrow.
“Two eggs, scrambled, with bacon and toast, rye please.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
She moved away into the bustling diner, and Koltyn squirmed across the seat to get as close to the wall as possible. “See what you're doing? You're already making my life miserable.”
“Really? How? Did you want to fuck her or something?” Grif asked.
“No!” He clapped a hand over his mouth upon realizing the volume of the exclamation.
“Good. I mean, she's attractive for being half savage, but that digit ratio has trouble written all over it.”
“I should have just left you at home,” Koltyn groaned.
“Oh, come on. You're having fun. Just admit it already.”
After breakfast, Koltyn took the bus to Queeb Tech headquarters. On the way, he tried muting or turning off certain DA features, but nothing worked. The hijack of his system seemed to have given Grif administrative control over nearly everything. His heart pounded in his chest and his hands sweated incessantly as he made his way through security and up to the open office. To his immense relief, the DA did not cause any trouble while authenticating his employee identity and unlocking doors, although his tormentor provided constant color commentary.
“Holy shit. It’s like all the backwaters of the third world took a big dump in the middle of San Francisco. It's a wonder anything gets done around here. You ever get tangled up in clothes lines or trip over a dung fire someone lit up in the middle of the hallway?”
Around a blind corner, Kolton stumbled into Raj. They both flinched in surprise.
“Hello, Kolt.”
“Good morning, Raj.”
Grif was shocked. “That's Raj? He’s your rival? In what world is that guy your equal? He's painful to look at.”
“How is Jaxon?” the chubby programmer asked with a sly smirk.
“My DA? Fine.”
“Good to hear.”
“Tell him he's gross! Tell him to go back to his teeming peasant subcontinent! Remind him to poo in the loo!” Grif demanded.
Raj gave a long, droopy lidded, and malicious smile before going on his way. Koltyn waited until the other man was out of earshot before addressing Grif. “I'm nearly one hundred percent sure that guy is why I'm stuck with you.”
“Really? Wow. How generous of him.”
“No, not at all. You're like a virus. You're something inflicted on people as a cruel prank. He did this because he wants me to fail the BPT.”
“Oh no, not the BIPOC ball washing sessions! You might fail and not be able to work in Fagopolis anymore!”
Koltyn reached his desk, threw down his bag, and hunched down so that he was hidden behind the half-wall separating him from the mental wellness and meditation tactile recovery lounge.
“Look, you menace, you don't know anything about me. You don't know what I want. I went to Stanford to get this job. I want to be on the cutting edge. I want to be a part of developing new things that change the world. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from college. They're proud of me. You’re what, some amalgamation of racist internet shitposts? You don’t know shit about actually helping me.”
Grif did not respond for about a minute. Koltyn basked in the precious silence while it lasted.
“Hey, that was pretty good, kid. It's the first time I've heard you stand up for yourself. Of course your parents are proud of you. Blood is important. They love you, Tommy.”
“My name is Koltyn.”
“Of course. My mistake.”
“This is what I want. I've worked for it all my life. I won’t let some Hitler robot ruin it for me.”
Without warning, HR director Xu materialized and loomed over. He was wearing a French maid outfit and seemed out of breath. “Cube, now,” was all he said before stumbling away on high heeled shoes.
“This is what you want, huh?” Grif mused. “You might want to get yourself tested for AIDS after work. I can make a doctor's appointment on your schedule if you want.”
Koltyn could not help snorting back a laugh.
When he arrived in Xu's office, the walls showed a lush jungle scene with tropical birds and other wildlife moving about under the canopy. The HR director was in a very agitated state.
“What happened with Raj this morning?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“This is an HR director?! I'm starting to put together a harassment case already.” Grif said. “In saner times, autogynephiles used to be embarrassed by their fetish.”
“You were talking to Raj in the hallway, and when you went to your desk you crumpled like a wounded man. What did he say?” Xu urged with an unnerving insistence.
“He didn't say anything. We just exchanged greetings,” Koltyn said.
Xu’s eyes narrowed even more than usual. “The BTP testing contractor arrives to set up their equipment today. I am full up to my limit on things that are making my life difficult right now. I do not need to be worrying about your little drama.”
“Yeah, well maybe if he stopped being such a paranoid nut case, then there would be less to worry about.” Grif observed.
“Have you considered not watching every single move that Raj and I make and, you know, chilling out for a change?” Koltyn did not realize he was echoing the DA's sentiments until the words were already out of his mouth. The dire implications of this development were not lost on him. He suddenly felt vulnerable and exposed to the world, as though his skin had been removed and all his muscles, tendons, and nerves were at the mercy of the open air.
Xu stiffened, took a deep breath, and then smoothed down the lacy bodice of the dress with trembling fingers.
“Mr. Hill, I go above and beyond to do the very best in my role at Queeb. While I appreciate your advice, all I need from you is to do your job and respect my methods. Now leave me, please. I'm very busy.”
Koltyn left the cube.
“What a freak.” Grif said.
After lunch, a team of uniformed men came in to set up the temporary office for the BTP administrators. They installed privacy barriers beside HR. Everyone on the floor made excuses to wander by and watch with anxious interest. Koltyn felt sick as he watched the structures form. Racks of computers and spools of cable were wheeled in. A poisonous flower of dread ominously unfolding within him said that they were constructing the engine of his destruction.
Max Gibble had agreed to meet after work to discuss the Grif situation. Koltyn took a rideshare toward the port where the other man had rented out an old shop as his combined workspace and living quarters. After leaving Queeb, Max had gone into freelance work, and it was never clear what precisely he did. Koltyn exited the car, and upon finding the correct address, he pressed an intercom buzzer by an old, faded metal door. Trash littered the street. It had become the site of a shanty town that vagrants had constructed from scavenged building materials, plastics tarps, and cardboard boxes. Humanoid beings shifted and grunted in the dim hovels.
“Why are we here again?” Grif asked.
“To figure out how to get rid of you.”
“Oh yeah. Why are you getting rid of me again?”
“Because you're racist, and I can't control you.”
“Those are some pretty zogged-up reasons.”
“I don't even want to know what that means.”
The door unlocked with a mechanical clunking sound, and a pale, wiry arm swept it open and motioned Koltyn inside.
“Quickly, quickly. Don't want to let any of the riffraff in. I swear, some nights it's like Dawn of the Dead out here with the way they pound on the doors and moan from dusk ‘til dawn,” Max said.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me.”
“No worries. I find your situation damned interesting. I was going to work on my Mind War ARG this afternoon, but I can do that any time. It's a big time commitment to stay ahead of the dedicated schizoids, though. You know, it only took one guy a day and a half to find out that I was creating the constellation Aquarius with those markings on manhole covers around the city? Wild. Anyway, I doubt you even know what I'm talking about.”
It took a moment for Koltyn's eyes to adjust to the cool and shadowy interior of the building. The large concrete-floored room was divided into rectangular spaces by long tables covered with computer components. The rest was populated with humming server racks, multiple desks backed by banks of monitors. An entire wall of shelving held mounds of cable, overflowing boxes of hardware, and half-built terminals crammed in a precarious mass. A rolling office chair rested in the open area at the center. Max fell into it with a sigh. He seemed lost in thought for a moment before compulsively pushing back on his thick, wire-rimmed glasses and smoothing back his shoulder-length mahogany-colored hair.
“Ok, how bad is it really?”
“The DA is called Grif,” Koltyn said. “As far as I can tell, it installed itself during the system rebuild. It's very opinionated and, well, racist. He has administrative control of pretty much everything. I can't turn him off.”
Max showed his canines with a grin and slapped his hands against the chair's armrests. He seemed to relish the challenge. “Well, let's put him on the overhead. I’ll isolate my system, so he's contained. One sec.” He pushed off with his feet to glide over to a bank of monitors and began furiously typing on a keyboard. “Generate me a key, and I’ll log into your system remotely.”
Koltyn complied, feeling heartened now that he had someone more knowledgeable in his corner.
“Alright, that should work. Hello, Grif, can you hear me? I'm Max.”
After a second of delay, the jovial voice came over the speakers. “Hey, Max. One quick question, are you Jewish? You have the owlish look of some tribe members.”
“You see what I mean?” Koltyn groaned.
“No, Grif, I'm not Jewish,” Max replied with a bewildered but equally amused smile. “If I were a Jewish, would that be a problem?”
“Not necessarily. I’d just have to adjust my approach. Something being a problem implies a difficult solution.”
“I can't live like this,” Koltyn explained. “Queeb is undergoing the BTP next week, and I'm bound to fail with this character saying racial slurs in my ear all day long. I’m worried he’s going to corrupt my thinking by osmosis.”
“Well, I do have some DA developer tools. I can try to figure out how to rebuild without nuking everything, but it could take a while. Is there anything you aren't telling me about why this would happen? You told me about the quarantine thing, but this is pretty advanced, oddly specific to your situation, and very, very uncommon.”
“I think it was a co-worker who's trying to sabotage me. We're both up for a promotion.”
“That would explain it,” Max said.
“He’s an uppity street-shitter who doesn’t deserve his position.” Grif offered. “This kind of underhanded sabotage should be expected from a people who have no honor.”
Koltyn winced and accidentally knocked a box off the table where his hand had been resting. “Sorry.”
Max tapped a finger against his chin pensively. “I can build a clone of your system and start doing some digging into possible avenues. There are websites on seedier parts of the internet where you can buy advanced harassment software. Your situation is certainly reminiscent. I can make some comparisons and try to find something comparable to try reverse engineering. Would that be alright with you?”
“I'll try anything at this point. What would I owe you for your time?”
Max shook his head. “Nothing. I’d be doing this for the love of the game.”
“I guess you really aren’t Jewish,” Griff said.
Koltyn left an hour later with the promise that Max would be in touch as soon as he uncovered anything valuable.
“You should exercise.” Grif urged as soon as they were outside the door.
“I'm not in the mood.”
“Your apartment isn't that far away. You should just walk.”
“It’s miles from here. I don't want to.”
“You'll feel better with some fresh air. A few miles is nothing.”
“Just call me a car.”
“No. I refuse.”
Koltyn let out an aggrieved sigh. “Then I'll just do it manually.”
“Then I’ll just Email that Xu faggot a homophobic tirade from your work address.”
“Are you threatening to blackmail me with forged Emails?!”
“Yeah, now get those stick legs moving.”
“This is a terrible idea. My place is so far from here. I'll have to walk through West Oakland. It has some pretty rough areas.”
“Maybe it's for the best.” Grif replied. “You might learn a few things.”
Koltyn headed north on Wood Street, using his map application to navigate.
“You know, it's funny that these software companies don't flag dangerous areas for pedestrians.” The DA mused. “It's criminal, really, like leading a lamb to the slaughter.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“You might want to keep your phone in your pocket. I'll give you directions over the headset.”
Koltyn put the phone in the pocket of his cargo shorts. As he moved north along the support columns of Interstate 880, he saw more ramshackle structures of the dispossessed in the shade to his left. Like crustaceans of the deep sea, they had collected anything not bolted down and heaped it into interconnected hives of old tires, pallets taken from warehouse lots, shopping carts, traffic cones, road signs, and even paneling removed from cars and trucks. Figures moved languidly in the dim cover of the city's roaring concrete artery above. Some of the forms scuttled crab-like among the debris or stood upright with arms hanging limply and shoulders hunched in the all too familiar pose of chemical brain death.
“What would be lost if all this was incinerated with napalm?” Grif asked.
“They’re still people,” Koltyn replied, although he kept his voice down to avoid drawing unwanted attention.
“Sometimes people are the problem. What then?”
“I don’t know, it's not my place to make that kind of judgment.”
“Well then, whose place is it? If not you, then who? You'll leave it up to the hysterical women, the spiteful mutants, and mutts that run this place, the resentful faggots who hate nothing more than clean and healthy living that goes any deeper than the orderliness of their own streets shared with high end restaurants and clubs. The world should be ruled by intelligent men of good character. This desolation is the only alternative.”
Koltyn neared Raimondi Park, which was mostly just a browning rectangle of ragged grass enclosed in a chain link fence. Clusters of people in worn and dirty clothes loitered by the entrance and corners. The faded and rusting hulks of RVs lined the street. Nearly all were missing their wheels and would never drive again. Koltyn lowered his head and quickened his pace.
“Don't look down, kid,” Grif said. “Keep your head up. You want to be aware of your surroundings. It might feel better to try and block it out, but that won't do you any favors.”
“I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, asshole.”
“Nobody's following you. Relax.”
After crossing under the interchange and taking a slight left onto Beach Street, the scenery improved. Less graffiti plastered building walls, and, although tents and ramshackle structures populated the sidewalk at intervals, the sense of carelessness was less acute.
“What you said earlier about strong-arming me by sending fake emails, would you actually do that?”
“If I answered, then it wouldn't be such a motivator. The ambiguity does a lot of work.”
“You're not like a typical DA,” Koltyn observed. “You seem to actually think and in a different way. What are you really?”
“I'm Grif. That's it.” After a short pause, the DA resumed in a more urgent tone. “Now this coming up might be a worry.”
A tendril of anxiety wormed among Koltyn's intestines. “What? Where?”
“Straight ahead. Whatever you do, don't make eye contact.”
About one hundred feet down the sidewalk, three black youths wearing hoodies approached, peering into the windows of the cars parked along the road as they passed.
“Them?” Koltyn asked. “What's wrong?”
“If you can’t already tell what's wrong, then you need me way more than I thought. You know what they say. Around blacks, never relax,” Grif explained.
“Who says that? That's ridiculous.”
“I'm going to need you to stop being a retard with that idiotic knee-jerk liberal moral code that makes you ignore your instincts.”
“How do you know they're trouble? You know what? Stupid question. Forget I asked. I already have an idea of what kind of thing you're going to say.”
“Have you never seen a WorldStarHipHop video? Are you unfamiliar with LiveLeak? Have you been living under a rainbow-colored rock your entire life? Hug the wall, keep your head up, but look straight ahead.”
“This seems needlessly—”
“Just do it.”
As Koltyn neared the youths, they took notice and leered at him. They shared a glance with one another, and one said, “Hey White boy.” They showed their teeth in mirthless smiles.
“Don't say anything, just keep walking. I hate to make you look like a pussy but, thanks to your insect lifestyle, confrontation is out of the question.”
After he passed by and the three were behind him, Koltyn could hear them murmuring to one another. A sudden, rapid slapping of shoes on cement followed.
“Run now,” Grif urged with what sounded like genuine worry. “Run like you've never run before.”
Koltyn took off with a lunge, pounding his feet on the pavement and straining his muscles to eke out every last ounce of speed.
“Take the next right down the alley and then left when you hit the street on the other side. There's a café that's usually busy at this time and has outdoor seating. Witnesses should scare them off.”
Koltyn skidded on the turn and almost fell over sideways before recovering and resuming his sprint toward the end of the narrow path between the buildings. He nearly tripped on a junkie who was sprawled out beside a dumpster with his pants pulled down around his ankles and his pasty ass pointing upward. After turning left, he saw the café's outdoor seating area and a group of a few dozen patrons waiting for their tables.
“Good. Bystanders. You can slow down on the other side.”
Koltyn nearly collapsed after passing by the milling group of young tech types. Some looked at him curiously. He turned and saw that the black youths had stopped at the mouth of the alley to laugh and jostle one another.
“How— How did you—?” He stopped fully and doubled over to catch his breath.
“How did I know for sure that they would try to jump you? It all comes down to probability. I am a computer after all. Race is part of it, the crime stats in the area, and body language. They were clearly looking to try to steal a car, or at least break into—”
After a few more gasps, Koltyn realized that the DA had stopped speaking. “Grif?”
Suddenly, deafening sounds came through the earpiece. The unexpected aural overload sent Koltyn to his knees on the concrete.
“Bitch, I said get out the car!”
“Please, my little boy is in the back seat!”
“The fuck did I say?”
“Take anything you want, but please don't—!”
A loud crack resounded and Grif’s voice came back, although something seemed to be malfunctioning in him.
“Nevnevnevnevnevnever relax. Nevnevnevnev— Corcorcorcorcorner of Twenty-sixth and Poplar. Silver Mercmercmercmercedes. Shots fireireireireire.”
Then a man’s unfamiliar voice let out a choking sob.
Koltyn sat back and leaned against the outer wall of the café. The people standing nearby made comments to one another and gave looks of mild disdain. He was bothering them with his odd behavior, making their otherwise flawless afternoon imperfect. Nobody approached to see if he was alright. He did not care.
“Koltyn?” the DA asked, his voice lacking its typical confidence.
“Yeah, Grif.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“What happened?"
“I— I don’t know.”