The Outlier #4: Zappers Read online

had met Mangiamo only once before, but he could not remember the circumstances. He thought it was in a smoky tavern, but it might have been somewhere in a city square, or possibly a department store. He could have consulted his records, but decided it was not important. He retained a strong impression of the man as being uncommonly ugly as well as fat and short. Mangiamo was still exactly that, and greasy and dirty to boot as he emerged from beneath a raised truck to greet his visitor.

  “Sharif,” he grinned, holding out his hand, daring Dillon to take a hold of it. Dillon did, and provided a firm handshake. Whatever Mangiamo may have thought of him, Dillon was certainly not that. He was never what anyone thought of him, but always simply himself.

  “Joey,” he said, “nice weather you've got here.”

  “Yeah well if you like it don't stick around because it's gonna change,” Mangiamo said, admiring his own cleverness. Dillon noted that the neighborhood was as grimy as Joey's hands, and that there was no one on the street and hardly any traffic. Dillon relaxed a little, feeling that he was at least dressed appropriately, as he'd forethought.

  “Can I offer you something?” Mangiamo spoke with his hands like a well-raised Italian-American, and spread them out now to indicate that he had access to anything Dillon might desire, while at the same time grinning like an idiot with the thought that here he was, an everyday schmoe, playing host to one of the richest men in the world. Mangiamo had one thing Dillon didn't have, and he seemed to know it. He had, or so it was rumored, an uncanny sexual charisma, and that, to Joey's mind, was worth more than all the billions in the world. Both of them had Karen Clyde, only Mangiamo had her more and more often.

  “I just wanted to ask you a question,” Dillon said, and Mangiamo's mind immediately went right there again.

  “About cars,” Dillon added, to Joey's great disappointment.

  “Sure,” he said, “I know a lot about them too.”

  “Say a car won't start, “Dillon started.

  “Could be the battery. Could be the alternator ...” Joey began to expound but Dillon lifted one index finger in the air, and raised one eyebrow just a tad, and Joey broke off.

  “Sorry, I just meant to add that in this case there is no physical problem with the car or with any of its components.”

  “So, what? It's got emotional problems?” Joey laughed, “or maybe it's some kind of spiritual thing? It needs an exorcist or something?”

  “Software, I'm thinking,” Dillon said, ignoring the jokes. “An OTA perhaps?”

  “OTA?”

  “Over-the-air update,” Dillon said. “Do you ever come across something like that?”

  Actually, Dillon already knew the answer to the question. He had already known it earlier that morning, while still on his elliptical machine, before he'd even made the decision to fly to New York, and yet here he was, face to face with Joey Mangiamo, trying to make contact, trying to be the sort of guy who easily and naturally gets along with the other guys in his boat, so to speak.

  “I've seen it,” Joey said, adopting a professional tone. “The manufacturers send out a system update and sometimes it's a bad job. Usually it's something minor, like the mirrors get readjusted or the radio stations reset. Customers complain but it's easily fixed. Just takes another update. But you're saying they're making it so the car won't start? I don't think I've seen that one yet. There'd be hell to pay. Recalls. Lawsuits. I don't think their testing would let that happen.”

  'But it is possible,” Dillon nodded. “Thanks. Thanks a lot. I wasn't sure.”

  “Anytime,” Joey said, and for a moment the two stood on the sidewalk, both equally uncertain what to do or say next.

  “Well, I've got to get going,” Dillon said at last. “I appreciate your time.”

  “Glad to help,” Joey said, extending his hand again. Dillon shook it, then adjusted his cap, turned and got back into the limo. Joey watched as the Commander drove away, then shrugged his shoulders, grunted, and went back into his shop.

  “Weird guy,” he said to his assistant, who was still under the truck doing something with a wrench. The assistant ignored him. He wasn't interested in anything his boss had to say unless he was giving him an order, money, or letting him go home.

  The Commander had to ask her boss where he wanted to go next. She was guessing that maybe he was done for the day and would want to head to the Waldorf-Astoria, his favorite spot when staying in New York, so she was generally heading in that direction, but she was wrong. He gave her an address in the opposite direction, east to Hicksville on Long Island. She was just as happy to be driving him anywhere at all. Dillon had decided after all to view first-hand the area of the first reported zapping.

  They entered the town by way of South Broadway and peering out the window Dillon noted the customary pairings of related businesses, the candy shop and the dentist office, the pet store and veterinary hospital, the realtor and the hardware store, each existing to complement and supplement some other endeavor, and everywhere you went you saw the same artifacts of humanity. He felt he could be anywhere at all, and that was what puzzled him at the moment, the question he truly did have and one that Joey Mangiamo could not possibly have an answer for. The question was, why here? The zapping might just as easily have begin anywhere else in the world. If the answer was what he feared, then there was a chance he might have come to the right place, not just anywhere, but exactly where he was supposed to come, where he had been deliberately led by someone whose existence he was certain of, but whose identity remained completely unknown.

  Dillon Sharif had made an enemy, and not just any enemy, but a special one, an enemy of tremendous range and subtlety. Dillon first became aware of his existence in the case of the lost souls, where packages had been pirated and redirected to http-encoded mailbox numbers for the sole purpose of sending him, and no one else, a specific message. The essence of that message was “catch me if you can”. Dillon had no doubt this same person was behind it all. He, or possibly she, but in Dillon's mind always 'he', had definite technical abilities. He could use big data to find his targets, and use their wifi connected devices toward whatever purpose he had in mind.

  During the flight, Dillon had reviewed all of the data associated with these seemingly random and isolated cases and resolved the facts that brought them together. For one thing, all of the dogs had been kept in yards with electronic fences. Then, the cars were all recent models and wifi-enabled. And of course the zappers all lived in homes with some kind of connected device, whether it was merely their cable TVs, their wireless phones or some other gadgets. Almost everyone did, so this was easy to overlook as being too obvious, and he had nearly made that mistake himself. Now Dillon felt that his adversary was providing certain cars with over-the-air updates that prevented them from starting. He was powering off electrical fences that had kept dogs in their yards, but more than that. First he was driving the dogs crazy somehow, probably broadcasting signals inaudible to humans that would make the dogs not only run away but stay away. Dogs typically loved their homes and would do anything to remain and protect them. Dillon was not a dog-lover, but he knew that this was wrong. The animals deserved more compassion and respect. As for the zapping, that was perhaps a bit more complicated. There was no single common device capable of such a thing as far as he knew, but there had to be something. Maybe it was the voltage, or maybe the current, or maybe an attribute of transistors or capacitors, or maybe it was just the service provider.

  Of course! Dillon nearly banged his head on the window as he realized this missing piece. One of the great economic truisms of the current age was consolidation. In nearly every industry, competition led to collusion, led to consolidation until there were two dominant players, with perhaps a distant third and a handful of also-rans. This was as true for oil companies as it was for software giants, as it was for big box stores, grocery chains, food companies, agri-business, financial institutions, and practically every other area of business. They hid their tracks well, pr
esented different brands and logos as if there were a multiplicity of concerns, but of all the many types of soda you could buy, each of them belonged to one of only two companies. Of all the gas stations you could fill up at, behind the signs there were only two or three at most. This was also true for internet service providers. Consolidation had naturally led to there being only two major players and a handful of minor ones. Here in New York, and along the interstate southwards there was only one, the BWC. The same pipes carried all the same traffic in the same way. The device at the other end was insignificant if the enemy had figured out how to transmit electrical shock through the wifi-connection itself. It would happen through the air.

  Wireless signals were the new aether, that legendary medium ancient scientists believed to permeate the atmosphere, also known as the pure essence breathed by the gods, the substance that controlled all natural phenomena. In the days when wise men believed in such a thing it did not exist in reality, but now that no one even imagined it to be, there it was, all around us all the time, the frequencies that carried all the world's data from source to sink, from server to gadget, from producer to consumer and back again. Data lived and breathed and flew about on the wireless