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Saturday, September 6, 2014

RepFix

by Keith Graham


art by Jesse Stevens



Mackey Dooley sent me to this web page, all deep purples and manga-eyed girls that played some low resolution techno music with a subsonic thump to it. RepFix, it said in a grunge font so whacked out you had to squint in order to read it.  The contact information resolved to an old fashioned 32 bit IP address, the kind they used to use back when people still used ugly homemade web pages like this.

I ran back the IP address to a physical location. Mackey was right - it was local. I knew the area and recognized the street. I tapped the link and a second later was walking down a sidewalk in a nasty block far from the subway, looking for number 17B. I had to walk sideways down the entryway to get by a stack of old style hard drives plugged into a web of yellow cable. I was surprised to hear them humming. A thousand little red LEDs were blinking in complex patterns in the shadows under the tarps.

The door was painted red with the name Eric Selvaggio written with a sharpie. A water stained banner read "RepFix - Open". The door was sticky and made a noise when I opened it. I could almost smell the mildew.

"Weinstein?" a voice called from the darkness.

I was going to ask him how he knew it was me, but there had to be 50 ways he could have googled me as I walked up the path to his door.

"Selvaggio?" I countered. The door closed behind me. The only illumination was from a small flat screen on the far wall. I could see my own face through cobwebs of hanging cable.

"It will cost you $20,000 cash and take at week at most." Selvaggio said. I still couldn't see him. "Lucky that Monica bitch got tired of you or it might have cost more and taken longer."

I could see an image of me on the flat screen behind a bunch of program windows. One had a Linux command prompt. The image shifted and I saw a dirty finger press Esc on a keyboard and then the image shifted back to me. There was a glint of reflected light and I saw a dark shape in the corner.

"What do I get for the 20K?" I asked trying to see in the murk.

A red spot appeared and glowed brighter. It was a cigarette. The guy was wearing some kind of large headset over the top half of his face. I couldn’t make him out in the gloom, and I had to try hard not to watch my reactions in the flat screen.

"Your bad news gets erased from the search engines. All pages with unpleasant references to you and your alleged activities are erased. Monica’s personal pages get trashed and her password scrambled. Anyone who linked to any of her pages gets the same treatment."

"What if the nets heal?" I had heard this theory that broken links eventually heal.

"Forget it. A broken link is a broken link. It can't heal unless the data is reposted."

"But, what if she pulls this crap again?"

"That's up to you. Don't mess with her and she has no reason to continue with this. Don't screw with her and she'll forget you. Don't think about her and she'll go away. It's all up to you. Don't give her a reason to scratch the itch. Let it heal by itself."

"But she's a vindictive bitch."

"And you are an asshole. You will have to change your behavior or else keep me on a retainer."

There was a glow as Selvaggio sucked on his cigarette. The image on the flat screen altered and I could see the large image of a dirty hand setting the cigarette into a filthy ashtray next to the keyboard. The screen zoomed in as the hand moved to the mouse. The magnified head of an orange cat blocked the view at that point. A paw tentatively touched the end of the cigarette and it fell out of the ashtray. The screen abruptly shifted back to my face as I heard the cat hiss and a thump as Selvaggio tossed it to the floor.

"Speaking of which, how will you be paying? Cash money I hope. That was what your agent agreed to."

I opened my hand and showed him my palm. Tattooed in red script was my public key.

"I see it. There will be a surcharge of 10%. I have to hide the transaction and it costs a little. I did say cash."

"Cash? I never deal in cash. It's too much trouble. What would you do with it, anyway?"

"I would put it under my pillow and sleep well." There was a rustling and I could see the man getting up. He was large and very overweight. He danced through the piles of obsolete debris without touching any of it. "Here's an anonymous link that you can use to contact me by voice." He flashed a tinyurl, and my pod recorded it.

"It's a deal then." He said and stuck out his hand. It was covered by small crawling things in pixel primary colors. They looked like small spider mites in magenta, cyan, yellow and black. I recognized them as IP sprites, small programs that could be programmed to deflect pings and other intrusive access. I saw a close up of my face on the flat screen. I could almost feel the bugs crawling up my arm as we made virtual contact.

"Well begun is half the job done." He said. I tried to brush a bug off my arm.

"You like my little cellular automata?" Selvaggio asked. "They're my own special recipe: very smart, very cool."

Selvaggio laughed, the cat hissed, and the room went black.

I was back in my office and the familiar Freedom Tree logo flashed as my pod booted. My glasses cleared to a pale blue and then I could see the room. I took the pod out from my pocket. The LEDs were flashing in spasmodic codes. A long list of error messages in yellow courier font scrolled across the glasses. The data flow paused and then the room booted again. The dirty curtains disappeared. The view of the brick wall outside my window folded into a more appealing glass wall with a view of the harbor. The room virtualized and I was back in my usual place.

Somehow, Selvaggio had crashed my link. It was something that you weren't supposed to be able to do. Maybe the IP sprites had followed the datagram back to my pod, or maybe he had ways of sniffing his way back to my office. It had to have been those damn cellular automata.

In the corner of my vision I could see a small magenta dot. It might have been a pixel sprite but it disappeared when I tried to focus on it.

A ringtone clashed with a message gnome as they started at nearly the same time. I sounded like Fur Elise blown by a hippy harmonica player. I answered the phone while I read the popup. My account had just paid $22,000 to an offshore betting site.  That was quick.

"What," I asked, answering the incoming call.

"You're back. Good." Mackey Dooley said. He looked cheerful. "How did it go?"

"22K is what it cost me. I just got paypaled on it."

"Cheap at half the price."

"Yeah, so you say."

"I thought you'd have been able to handle this stuff on your own. I was surprised that you asked me to find you a hired gun."

"Hey, this guy was your idea."

"Then why did I wind up doing all the legwork?" Mackey asked.

"I wanted an extra layer of protection. I have to have plausible deniability. You made the contact and my persona went through a dozen anonymous routers." This was true, yet I thought, Selvaggio had managed to burn my link and crash my pod. I thought I saw a cyan dot swimming at the edge of my vision.

"It's too easy," Mackey said. "If he can repair your rep that easy and that cheap, everyone would be doing it."

"He's got my 22K as of two minutes ago. I'll give him a day or two and see what happens."

Mackey hung up.

The next day I googled my name along with a few key phrases. There were no hits. Just one day ago the nets were full of the most terrible lies and now there was nothing. I tried the bitch's home page and it was gone. Her email was even gone from my address book. She wasn't listed at any of the big directories.  She wasn't in any of the reverse listings and her address would not map at any of the GPS sites.

This guy Selvaggio was good. She was unlisted. It took less than 24 hours to kill off her completely.

But, of course, she still breathed.

A week later, the bitch, my former wife, Monica Weinstein nee Yeager stood at my doorstep. She was a wreck. I tried not to smile.

"You did this." She said. She didn't seem angry, just tired. If she had shown more signs of suffering, I would have been happier. Her hair was dirty and she looked like she had slept in the park, but for all that she only seemed tired.

"Monica, darling. I would never do anything to harm you."

"May I use your bathroom?" she asked, but I held firmly on the door and did not let her in.

"After the terrible things you said and did, I don't see how I could let you in."

"Pervert." She said. "I did nothing more than tell the truth."

"You were my wife, my better half. You are supposed to stand by your man."

"My man is a criminal and a pervert and a disgusting..." she sputtered and could not finish.

"They were lies and yet people believed them." I said calmly, "I have tastes and I have preferences. Perhaps they are little out of the ordinary, some might call them strange. Perhaps they are not in the mainstream, but they are hardly perversions. I am not that much different than the average man who hides his secret thoughts. I just have the money and the means to act on my secret thoughts. You were indiscrete and you caused me pain and now you want to use my bathroom?"

"I need a shower. I'm locked out of my apartment." Damn, that Selvaggio was good. "My credit cards don't work. I have no cash. All I want is a shower and then I'll be gone."

"I'm afraid not, darling."

I can't repeat what she said next, but you can imagine. I still feel good at the memory of her venting her spleen. I felt then, for the first time, that I had gotten some of my own back. I felt that she was hurting almost as much as she had hurt me.

As she walked down the hall, she turned and said, "You can't erase what's up here." She pointed to her darling little head, "You can erase me from the nets, creep, but you can't erase what I saw and what I know. You will always be a pervert and a monster to me. As long as I live, you will have to live a lie, a lie that everyone knows about. Everyone I meet will know your story. Everyone I talk to will remember you. People on the street will stop as you pass by and point at you and call you a pervert because they'll know the truth."

She was gone before I could think of what to say.

There was a small article for sale on Craigslist the next day. I received 50 calls before coffee the next morning from the vilest sort of persons. A service request to the site killed the posting by noon, but I had to take my phones off the hook and filter email with a certain unpleasant phrase.

Similar things happened that afternoon. I began to receive anonymous email: some warning me about hell, and some asking some deeply personal questions. When I went out to dinner the doorman refused to make eye contact.

"Selvaggio, this is Weinstein." I said.

"I told you to leave her alone. 120K this time." He said before I could tell him what I wanted. His video was off. It sounded like he was talking through an ancient black Western Electric telephone handset.

"I want her dead for good, dead for real."

"I don't do reality. 120k to fix her latest antics. I can promise to keep you squeaky clean for a week, but unless you modify your behavior towards her and convince her to keep quiet, I can't guarantee that she won't go commando on you again."

I cut the connection after expressing myself in language that I seldom use. I opened up a meta search page. 

Unfortunately, there seemed to be precious few links for reputation repair.

I called again, but before I could speak the idiot said,"250K for the fix."

"I need to fix this permanently."

"That would be up to you. You have to change who you are and you have to change how she sees you. Since I don't see that happening..."

"I need the data fix, but I need to see her alone in the real world."

"I don't do..."

"Yeah, I know you don't do reality. All I need is a minute and an alibi."

There was quiet on the line for a moment.

"Ten million in my account and I can get you both in a room. You can talk to her. Convince her to lay off.  You never call me again."

Ten million was almost exactly the amount that I had in legitimate banks. I had twice that in hidden reserves, but that would be hard to get quickly. Selvaggio must have known that. Well you get what you pay for.

"Sounds like a plan." I said.

I went out that night. I needed some relief. My contacts hooked me up with a particular flavor, a particular texture. I won't go into it, but it cost me plenty. I didn't mind. I would be spending much much more in a few hours and a fellow needs some sweet release from time to time.

When I got back to my place, the door wouldn't unlock. I found a token in my pocket and made a call from the corner data kiosk. My data glasses were full of Selvaggio's buglets.

"Mackey," I said, "The bitch has me by the short hairs. I'm locked out of my house."

"I guess she figures that it's good for the gander. Wait where you are. I've had a message from Selvaggio to pick you up."

"What is that bastard's game?"

It took the creep over an hour to find me. I didn't have cash for cigarette and, of course, Mackey doesn't smoke.

"Oh no," he said when I asked him to buy me a pack, "I don't want any tobacco in this car."

I called him a few names, but it wasn't very satisfying. I had to hold back or else he just might have let me out of the car to walk. It wasn't long before we were walking down the sidewalk looking for 17B, but this time it was for real, not virtual. This time I could feel the warmth radiating from the array of disk drives and this time I could smell the mildew.

I pushed open the door. Mackey made an after-you gesture so I went in and he followed. The walls were crawling with bugs in deep saturated colors and they did not go away when I took off the data glasses.

"Where the hell are you?" I yelled.

"I'm in here darling." It was Monica the Bitch and her voice was coming from another room. Selvaggio had left a pistol on the table and I picked it up. I could see light coming from the crack under a door.

"Your hacker said you wanted to talk." She said from another room. As I walked towards the door a message gnome popped up. I opened it with a gesture. My account had been debited $11 million dollars. I shrugged it off. I would deal with Selvaggio at another time. He couldn't hide the money and there were ways to get it back, or at least most of it. Yeah, Selvaggio was probably making a vid of this, but there were still ways to get to him.

I pushed the door open. Monica was there, standing in the middle of the room. Multi-color bugs crawled all over the walls and floors and they covered her completely up to her knees.

Mackey went over to her and kissed her hard on the lips. He turned to me and put his arm around her. They smiled sweetly. The creeps were in love.

"Just so you know, this is entirely your own fault. You pushed us into this," he said.

She didn't even look at me. She just smiled up at him. A yellow cat walked into the room from behind me. It rubbed against my leg making me jump. It was so covered with the colored bugs that you could hardly tell it was the same cat.

I wiped a bug off of my face and saw that my hand was covered with them. It was the hand that held the gun. I remembered why I was there and started shooting.

As soon as I pulled the trigger the lights went out. I kept pulling the trigger and I could see the two of them at every flash like an old movie. Bang, she was holding him tight. Bang, he turned to face me pushing the bitch behind him. Bang he was walking towards me. Bang he was closer. I couldn’t have missed. Bang he was raising his hand, with something dark in it.

I woke up downtown with no shoes and a bottle in my hand. My head hurt. My pod and my glasses were gone, but the bugs followed me everywhere. None of my passwords worked in the data kiosks and I am told my soshsec is not on file. God damn bugs are everywhere. They run all over me and won't let me sleep. I can't find Mackey and I can't find Selvaggio. The place at 17B doesn't even exist. I don't know how they did it, but the bitch scammed me and skipped town. Mackey helped them set me up.

So, please, can you spare a token? Can you give me a fiver until the soup kitchen opens? Hey don't walk away from me. I'm talking to you. Can you spare me a butt. I haven't had a smoke in three days. Hey you. Hey!

Bastard. Somebody's got to have a cigarette. Goddamn bugs.

Hey you. Look mister. Hey just a minute. Listen to what I've got to say. This is how it started. Mackey Dooley sent me to this web page...


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CRYPTID'S LAIR
by Gene Stewart


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Archive of Stories
and Authors

Callum Leckie's
THE DIGITAL DECADENT


J.R. Torina's
ANTHROPOPHAGUS


J.R. Torina's
THE HOUSE IN THE PORT


J.R. Torina was DJ for Sonic Slaughter-
house ('90-'97), runs Sutekh Productions
(an industrial-ambient music label) and
Slaughterhouse Records (metal record
label), and was proprietor of The Abyss
(a metal-gothic-industrial c.d. shop in
SLC, now closed). He is the dark force
behind Scapegoat (an ambient-tribal-
noise-experimental unit). THE HOUSE
IN THE PORT is his first publication.

Sean Padlo's
NINE TENTHS OF THE LAW

Sean Padlo's
GRANDPA'S LAST REQUEST

Sean Padlo's exact whereabouts
are never able to be fully
pinned down, but what we
do know about him is laced
with the echoes of legend.
He's already been known
to haunt certain areas of
the landscape, a trick said
to only be possible by being
able to manipulate it from
the future. His presence
among the rest of us here
at the freezine sends shivers
of wonder deep in our solar plexus.


Konstantine Paradias & Edward
Morris's HOW THE GODS KILL


Konstantine Paradias's
SACRI-FEES

Konstantine Paradias is a writer by
choice. At the moment, he's published
over 100 stories in English, Japanese,
Romanian, German, Dutch and
Portuguese and has worked in a free-
lancing capacity for videogames, screen-
plays and anthologies. People tell him
he's got a writing problem but he can,
like, quit whenever he wants, man.
His work has been nominated
for a Pushcart Prize.

Edward Morris's
ONE NIGHT IN MANHATTAN


Edward Morris's
MERCY STREET

Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for
the Pushcart Prize in literature, has
also been nominated for the 2009
Rhysling Award and the 2005 British
Science Fiction Association Award.
His short stories have been published
over a hundred and twenty times in
four languages, most recently at
PerhihelionSF, the Red Penny Papers'
SUPERPOW! anthology, and The
Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. He lives
and works in Portland as a writer,
editor, spoken word MC and bouncer,
and is also a regular guest author at
the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.


Tim Fezz's
BURNT WEENY SANDWICH

Tim Fezz's
MANY SILVERED MOONS AGO

Tim Fezz hails out of the shattered
streets of Philly destroying the air-
waves and people's minds in the
underground with his band OLD
FEZZIWIG. He's been known to
dip his razor quill into his own
blood and pen a twisted tale
every now and again. We are
delighted to have him onboard
the FREEZINE and we hope
you are, too.

Daniel E. Lambert's
DEAD CLOWN AND MAGNET HEAD


Daniel E. Lambert teaches English
at California State University, Los
Angeles and East Los Angeles College.
He also teaches online Literature
courses for Colorado Technical
University. His writing appears
in Silver Apples, Easy Reader,
Other Worlds, Wrapped in Plastic
and The Daily Breeze. His work
also appears in the anthologies
When Words Collide, Flash It,
Daily Flash 2012, Daily Frights
2012, An Island of Egrets and
Timeless Voices. His collection
of poetry and prose, Love and
Other Diversions, is available
through Amazon. He lives in
Southern California with his
wife, poet and author Anhthao Bui.

Phoenix's
AGAIN AND AGAIN

Phoenix has enjoyed writing since he
was a little kid. He finds much import-
ance and truth in creative expression.
Phoenix has written over sixty books,
and has published everything from
novels, to poetry and philosophy.
He hopes to inspire people with his
writing and to ask difficult questions
about our world and the universe.
Phoenix lives in Salt Lake City, Utah,
where he spends much of his time
reading books on science, philosophy,
and literature. He spends a good deal
of his free time writing and working
on new books. The Freezine of Fant-
asy and Science Fiction welcomes him
and his unique, intense vision.
Discover Phoenix's books at his author
page on Amazon. Also check out his blog.

Adam Bolivar's
SERVITORS OF THE
OUTER DARKNESS


Adam Bolivar's
THE DEVIL & SIR
FRANCIS DRAKE



Adam Bolivar's
THE TIME-EATER


Adam Bolivar is an expatriate Bostonian
who has lived in New Orleans and Berkeley,
and currently resides in Portland, Oregon
with his beloved wife and fluffy gray cat
Dahlia. Adam wears round, antique glasses
and has a fondness for hats. His greatest
inspirations include H.P. Lovecraft,
Jack tales and coffee. He has been
a Romantic poet for as long as any-
one can remember, specializing in
the composition of spectral balladry,
utilizing to great effect a traditional
poetic form that taps into the haunted
undercurrents of folklore seldom found
in other forms of writing.
His poetry has appeared on the pages
of such publications as SPECTRAL
REALMS and BLACK WINGS OF
CTHULHU, and a poem of his,
"The Rime of the Eldritch Mariner,"
won the Rhysling Award for long-form
poetry. His collection of weird balladry
and Jack tales, THE LAY OF OLD HEX,
was published by Hippocampus Press in 2017.


Sanford Meschkow's
INEVITABLE

Sanford Meschkow is a retired former
NYer who married a Philly suburban
Main Line girl. Sanford has been pub-
lished in a 1970s issue of AMAZING.
We welcome him here on the FREE-
ZINE of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


Owen R. Powell's
NOETIC VACATIONS

Little is known of the mysterious
Owen R. Powell (oftentimes referred
to as Orp online). That is because he
usually keeps moving. The story
Noetic Vacations marks his first
appearance in the Freezine.

Gene Stewart
(writing as Art Wester)
GROUND PORK


Gene Stewart's
CRYPTID'S LAIR

Gene Stewart is a writer and artist.
He currently lives in the Midwest
American Wilderness where he is
researching tales of mystical realism,
writing ficta mystica, and exploring
the dark by casting a little light into
the shadows. Follow this link to his
website where there are many samples
of his writing and much else; come
explore.

Daniel José Older's
GRAVEYARD WALTZ


Daniel José Older's
THE COLLECTOR


Daniel José Older's spiritually driven,
urban storytelling takes root at the
crossroads of myth and history.
With sardonic, uplifting and often
hilarious prose, Older draws from
his work as an overnight 911 paramedic,
a teaching artist & an antiracist/antisexist
organizer to weave fast-moving, emotionally
engaging plots that speak whispers and
shouts about power and privilege in
modern day New York City. His work
has appeared in the Freezine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction, The ShadowCast
Audio Anthology, The Tide Pool, and
the collection Sunshine/Noir, and is
featured in Sheree Renee Thomas'
Black Pot Mojo Reading Series in Harlem.
When he's not writing, teaching or
riding around in an ambulance,
Daniel can be found performing with
his Brooklyn-based soul quartet
Ghost Star. His blog about the
ridiculous and disturbing world
of EMS can be found here.


Paul Stuart's
SEA?TV!


Paul Stuart is the author of numerous
biographical blurbs written in the third
person. His previously published fiction
appears in The Vault of Punk Horror and
His non-fiction financial pieces can be found
in a shiny, west-coast magazine that features
pictures of expensive homes, as well as images
of women in casual poses and their accessories.
Consider writing him at paul@twilightlane.com,
if you'd like some thing from his garage. In fall
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Pre-Calculus -With Zombies.


Rain Grave's
MAU BAST


Rain Graves is an award winning
author of horror, science fiction and
poetry. She is best known for the 2002
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(along with Mark McLaughlin and
David Niall Wilson). Her most
recent book, Barfodder: Poetry
Written in Dark Bars and Questionable
Cafes, has been hailed by Publisher's
Weekly as "Bukowski meets Lovecraft..."
in January of 2009. She lives and
writes in San Francisco, performing
spoken word at events around the
country. 877-DRK-POEM -




Blag Dahlia's
armed to the teeth
with LIPSTICK



BLAG DAHLIA is a Rock Legend.
Singer, Songwriter, producer &
founder of the notorious DWARVES.
He has written two novels, ‘NINA’ and
‘ARMED to the TEETH with LIPSTICK’.


G. Alden Davis's
THE FOLD


G. Alden Davis wrote his first short story
in high school, and received a creative
writing scholarship for the effort. Soon
afterward he discovered that words were
not enough, and left for art school. He was
awarded the Emeritus Fellowship along
with his BFA from Memphis College of Art
in '94, and entered the videogame industry
as a team leader and 3D artist. He has over
25 published games to his credit. Mr. Davis
is a Burningman participant of 14 years,
and he swings a mean sword in the SCA.
He's also the best friend I ever had. He
was taken away from us last year on Jan
25 and I'll never be able to understand why.
Together we were a fantastic duo, the
legendary Grub Bros. Our secret base
exists on a cross-hatched nexus between
the Year of the Dragon and Dark City.
Somewhere along the tectonic fault
lines of our electromagnetic gathering,
shades of us peel off from the coruscating
pillars and are dropped back into the mix.
The phrase "rest in peace" just bugs me.
I'd rather think that Greg Grub's inimitable
spirit somehow continues evolving along
another manifestation of light itself, a
purple shift shall we say into another
phase of our expanding universe. I
ask myself, is it wishful thinking?
Will we really shed our human skin
like a discarded chrysalis and emerge
shimmering on another wavelength
altogether--or even manifest right
here among the rest without their
even beginning to suspect it? Well
people do believe in ghosts, but I
myself have long been suspicious
there can only be one single ghost
and that's all the stars in the universe
shrinking away into a withering heart
glittering and winking at us like
lost diamonds still echoing all their
sad and lonely songs fallen on deaf
eyes and ears blind to their colorful
emanations. My grub brother always
knew better than what the limits
of this old world taught him. We
explored past the outer peripheries
of our comfort zones to awaken
the terror in our minds and keep
us on our toes deep in the forest
in the middle of the night. The owls
led our way and the wilderness
transformed into a sanctuary.
The adventures we shared together
will always remain tattooed on
the pages of my skin. They tell a
story that we began together and
which continues being woven to
this very day. It's the same old
story about how we all were in
this together and how each and
every one of us is also going away
someday and though it will be the far-
thest we can manage to tell our own
tale we may rest assured it will be
continued like one of the old pulp
serials by all our friends which survive
us and manage to continue
the saga whispering in the wind.

Shae Sveniker's
A NEW METAPHYSICAL STUDY
REGARDING THE BEHAVIOR
OF PLANT LIFE


Shae is a poet/artist/student and former
resident of the Salt Pit, UT, currently living
in Simi Valley, CA. His short stories are on
Blogger and his poetry is hosted on Livejournal.


Nigel Strange's
PLASTIC CHILDREN


Nigel Strange lives with his wife and
daughter, cats, and tiny dog-like thing
in their home in California where he
occasionally experiments recreationally
with lucidity. PLASTIC CHILDREN
is his first publication.