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DARWIN'S GAME
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 47
Jacob was boarding the flight from Rome to San
Francisco, he had a lot to process in the half a day he would be in
the air, but mostly his thoughts were barreling into one another
headlong and not resolving anything particularly well. The trip had
been an eye opener in one way but it also posed more questions than
it answered. He did not exactly like being made to be an audience,
the appreciative sounding board by which Darwin could gauge his
message, such as it was. He didn't know to to take that, as a
compliment or as a judgment of his insignificance. He and Blake had
suspected that they were being led along, pawns in the game yet
despite knowing this they went along, hoping for the upper hand at
some point and maybe some insight that no one else had.
A direct statement that they were there so that
Darwin could have someone to converse with made sense, but it was one
sided and one way to a great extent. Anything the did or could have
done was predictable and when they weren't close enough they were fed
clues and given a helping hand. IT felt condescending and took the
thrill of the chase almost completely away. Every step from the Hotel
to the Airport was drudgery, the purpose and direction he had felt
had gone, like the proverbial rug from under his feet.
He had been upgraded again and was escorted to
the First Class lounge where he at least could appreciate the
beneficence of the games mastermind, but it still stung that he was
being treated like a child to some extent. The lounge was a nice
reminder that someone was guiding his footsteps and ensuring his path
through was as comfortable as possible. He indulged in a couple of
drinks in the lounge and spoke to the home office catching up on the
news from the latest stage in the game. The websites had started
propagating, the servers on the first twenty or so that were hosted
within the range of American controlled servers were instantly
targeted by the FBI and about half of those were shut down. The real
issue though was not Darwin, or the websites that he had made through
anonymous accounts and proxies paid for where necessary through false
identities, some in the name of the deceased players to add insult to
injury. The bigger issue was the embedded code that had been put in
the pages to aggregate the results of each page to a central page
held in a secure service in Eastern Europe where the US domestic
agency had little sway.
The web masters and fans who had any know how
could read the code, quickly put up their own page to submit voting
and then pass on the results via a web service call to a routed mail
address, with multiple aliases and redundancy options for delivery.
As fast as they could tear down one of Darwin's original pages there
would be another ten fan sites go up, and within hours there were
over two hundred new hosts for voting and it was increasing every
hour. A quick search would net you pages of results on how and where
to vote and amongst the real fans were the opportunists, the one who
wanted you to put in a user name and password based on your email
address, supposedly to protect you, but in reality to steal your
online identity and take your for whatever they could get.
From this in the first day or so of voting
there was a lot of confusion, but the Darwin created pages and the
ones that correctly copied the embed code were streaming live(ish)
updates from the aggregate service that was counting votes. The
voting was pretty simple and set up to be as fair as possible,
considering the lives that were at stake. Each vote to be counted,
according to the official sites, required a valid IP address culled
from the machine that the vote is cast from. Detected proxy accounts
and repeat IP registrations would be canceled and the vote would not
count. There was no confirmation and no help line to contact, just
the simple voting options and the knowledge that you had cast. The
totals went up and were updated every one hundred and eighty seconds,
so even if the voters thought they had a way to avoid the
restrictions and spam for their favorite (or spam the least favorite
depending on you point of view) there was no way to know that those
votes had got through or not.
ISPs and web sites that carried links to the
voting pages were inundated with complaints and queries, but no one
was complaining about much else other than they wanted to know that
their vote counted and the system was not rigged. Of course not one
person had a the answers for this except Darwin, and he as always was
silent and not contactable. Blake had started sending alerts through
to Jacob's phone when voting was tipping one way or the other, but as
there was no clear winner or loser it was see-sawing and they both
grew tired of hanging on the updates and quickly ceased, waiting the
three days seemed more sensible.
The crew was boarding, Jacob could see that
three men in Pilots uniform were boarding from the lounge ahead of
him as he waited patiently for that call to go through ahead of
everyone else. On one hand he felt a little guilty that he was
skipping ahead, he had not paid for the upgrade, and it was still
stinging a little but with half a day in the air ahead of him it
seemed like a little bonus to get the chance to enjoy it as much as
he could.
The call came through to board the First Class
passengers and through all the smiles and personal welcoming
treatment he took the walk up the gangway to the door of the plane,
but as as he was about to go through a familiar voice said excuse me
and walked ahead of him through the door. That was a little rude and
necessary and while the voice sounded like he knew who it was,
American not Italian, he saw the back of them rushing past and
heading up to the cockpit in a pilots uniform. That made sense,
pilots were not known for their manners or good treatment of anyone
not a pilot. There were already the pilot, co-pilot and the flight
engineer on board, he had seen them coming ahead of him earlier. It
must have been a fellow pilot hitching a ride, taking a jump seat of
empty position as a courtesy, joining the cabin crew for take off.
Jacob shook the encounter off and was escorted
to the seat, and settled in and checked his email and phone for
messages one last time before turning it off for the flight. Blake
had sent an update, more of a summary that the voting was tipping one
way then the other still. What had been thought of as a foregone
conclusion was becoming murkier and murkier as not voting pattern was
emerging. Some of the sites were openly contesting the results based
on the votes they had seen, or the opinions of the people they had
polled. Often these antagonists were pro one camp of the other, and
they accompanied their voting pages with a editorial, by video or on
a published page about why either Evan or John should survive.
The initial thinking before the last two
episodes came in was that Vargas was a contender and a crowd
favorite. Then the cutthroat way that he had, albeit reluctantly,
killed Julio Suarez in order to save someone else polarized the
viewing public. To some he was saving Evan Simpson, who was trying to
stand up for himself and rather stupidly, trying to not play the
game. To others he was a cold and murderous opportunist who had
killed in cold blood, not out of any sense of fair play or chivalry.
Then the litany of deaths he was involved in was paraded across the
screen in the summary episode nine, it served as a reminder that
neither of the men were good guys, they had both killed a number of
people, and had both killed to survive, or to win, again depending on
your chosen point of view.
Mainstream media was careful to not pick sides,
but even so there was a sense that the conservative media was picking
Simpson as a deserving winner as Vargas was the cop-killer and at
least Simpson was under a moral code of the motorcycle gang he
belonged to, dubious as the morality of that may have been. As soon
as it was clear that right wing media had picked their favorite, the
underdog from the start became the poster boy for subtle support
from the left wing that really only existed to tip the see-saw away
from their hated opposition on the right. In the middle there were
people that decried the game and the voting as immoral, and that no
one should be participating, but for every hour that passed the votes
kept climbing and the numbers were coming in from across the world,
not just the US. They did not even have the majority of votes, a sore
point with a number of people who declared that the US citizenry had
more of a right to vote than foreigners had to determine the fate of
two criminals that were American first. It was one of the more
bizarre 'campaign the vote' programs ever seen, and while it was
unofficial it was effective.
Schools blocked as many of the sites as they
could, but it became a subject of much debate in class rooms and
study halls between teachers, students and parents. The reflection of
the general population was at work in the microcosm of the school
system. The voting was open, the only restriction was access and
unique identity by IP addressing, which in itself was far from
perfect. With no feedback, no receipting and no policing to be seen
the traffic was occasionally overwhelming on some sites, crashing
them down under the conditions that any web based flood of traffic
could cause.
The message coming through loud and clear was
one of discord, no one could agree on anything. The larger message
about how patently illegal and unfair the process was, countered by
people who saw the result as justifying the means. For every pundit
that called Darwin a criminal and a murderer, a pundit that called
Darwin a chilling indictment of the failure of the justice system to
produce results. For every person that called Evan Simpson a hit man
with a blatant disregard for life, there was a person saying that he
fulfilled a function and only killed those within his own order and
was less of a threat to society. For every person that painted John
Vargas as a battler, a survivor and the underdog, there was another
who called him cop-killer, drug peddler and menace to society.
Jacob put away his laptop, his tablet and phone
turned off as the plane readied itself for takeoff. As the stewardess
took him through the pre-flight ritual he realized that he was the
only passenger in First Class, that the hundred or more people that
he had passed in the boarding area had all gone to business and
economy class, no one settled into the more opulent and spacious
section where he was. There were some perks to traveling this way he
decided, the idea of a private cabin was enticing, he wished he had
someone to share it with. What good was a totally exclusive
experience when there was no one to share it with?
Was that how Darwin felt, that he was in the
First Class cabin for viewing the game, but there was not one person
he could show that experience to, give them a glimpse of that life
and that unique way of seeing through the window? Interesting thought
Jacob mused on for a few minutes, but as the plane's nose climbed and
he stared ahead and uphill as the steep incline took them away from
Fiumicino Airport he put the idea aside and closed his eyes.
“Do you mind if I sit here, Mr Edgerton?”
The voice woke him up and there was a gentle touch on his shoulder, a
shake that was merely a tremor and not intended to dislodge or
disturb at all.
Jacob had been asleep, he snuffled awake fully
and sat up a little, pulling the complimentary eye mask from his eyes
and blinking at the bright lights of sunshine pouring into the cabin.
As they came out of Rome and through the cloud cover it had been mild
enough and little glare from the dull grey clouds. Breaking though
the sunlight had flooded the cabin, but Jacob was covered and
drifting off before he knew it. The heat was warming his face and
helped him settle in and now it was a shock to his system to wake to
it's brilliance.
The world snapped into focus and he saw the
sleeve first, the ringed piping on the cuff denoting a pilot and the
uniform rising to show the pilot who had pushed his way past him
before, but obscured by aviator mirrored sunglasses and Jacob's
blinking to wakefulness. He saw the badge, the name badge that
denoted his rank with his wings, a name slung underneath.
Blake Jacobs - Pilot
What the...? Jacob sat up and saw the
man asking to sit next to him taking off his glasses and sitting down
anyway, lifting a finger to crook it at the stewardess who came over
smiling at the man in the pilot's uniform with a practiced air that
said service with a smile, no matter what.
Once his eyes were clear of the mirror
protection it was clear who his guest was, and he looked inquiringly
at Jacob as the air hostess arrived and leaned in to hear their
order.
“Anything?”
“What?” Jacob was confused, what was going
on?
“Anything to drink? No?” Darwin put his
left hand on the side of the stewardess in a friendly manner, but the
physical connection and his piercing gaze had an obvious effect on
her and Jacob saw her relax and saw a tension and poise melt from her
body, the smile changing from practiced to honest reaction. “Hi,
Alicia? Hi, thanks I have a bottle in the cabin, you'll see the bag
there, its the black one in the locker. There's two bottles of “Royal
Salute” there, one is for my colleagues and one is for me. Be a
darling and get us two glasses and the second bottle would you
please?”
Alicia nodded and went to walk away, but
stopped and raised a finger and asked “Ice?”
“Please.” Said Jacob but a hand on his own
preceded a disparaging shake of the head from Darwin.
“No, he won't thanks. No ginger ale or mixers
either thank you Alicia.” He said this with a mock severity as if
to stave of the diluting of the drink, that most unacceptable of
heresies, yet his eyes still twinkled a smile that she returned.
“How the hell did you … What are you... I
don't...” Jacob was looking for his phone, trying to see if he
could use it, but even if he could have turned it on there would be
no signal this far up and away from land, and the satellite phone was
in his packed baggage.
Darwin was looking over the first class menu,
and tapping the choices he was thinking about with a finger before
replying.”You should order some food, the service on this route is
fantastic, this is not the first flight I have jumped, I have done
this … well many many times by now. As have a number of my …
associates.”
“Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
Jacob was beginning to get annoyed, the frustration at the off hand
manner he was displaying, the hand holding nature of their
relationship to date and the condescension implied at each turn of
events he was being led to was taking a mental hammer to his ego.
“Well actually it's not what I want from you
but what you want from me.” Darwin folded his hands in his lap and
looked him squarely in the eye. “We have another nine or ten hours
together, and then we'll part ways again, for a long while. Depending
on how this conversation goes, it may be permanently. We'll see. In
the meantime ask me anything you want.”
Just when he thought he had the measure of his
situation, the game changed again.
“Anything?”
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