“I said, how are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine, fine. Actually I haven’t been feeling too good, but nowhere near as bad as you. You were pretty sick there.”
“I still feel like shit.”
“Yeah, sorry to hear, but at least you’re talking. For a while there you weren’t able to talk. That was scary.”
“What happened?”
“What happened? Oh—to you. I wrote some notes on our plates and sent them out when they got picked up out of the door slot. Then your food started to come with some pills that I got you to take. Then once I slept really hard, and I think that was because they knocked us out and came in here. Or took you out. I don’t know, but when I woke up again you were sleeping more easily. And now here we are.”
“I feel like shit.”
“But you’re talking.”
“But I don’t want to talk.”
Mutt doesn’t know what to say to this. He sits by his friend’s bed, reaches over and holds Jeff’s hand. “It’s better when you talk. It’s good for you.”
“Not really.” Jeff eyes his friend. “You talk. I’m tired of talking. I can’t talk anymore.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Believe it. Tell me a story.”
“Who me? I don’t know any stories. You tell stories, not me.”
“Not anymore. Tell me about yourself.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Not true. Tell me how we met. I’ve forgotten that, it’s been so long. First thing I remember it feels like we had been together forever. I don’t recall before.”
“Well, you were younger than me then. I do remember that, yeah. I had been at Adirondack for a year or two at that point, and I was thinking of quitting. The work was boring. Then I was in their cafeteria at lunch one day and there you were at the end of a table, by yourself, reading your pad while you ate. I went over and sat across from you, I don’t know why, and introduced myself. You looked interesting. You said you were in systems, but as we talked I could tell you were into coding too. I remember I asked where the rest of your team was, and you said they had already gotten sick of you and your ideas, so there you were. I said I liked ideas, which was true at that time. That was how it started. Then we were asked to try encrypting their dark pool divers. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad. We had a good time.”
“I’ll remember later maybe.”
“I hope so. We had a good time at work, and then I don’t know how it happened, somehow I found out that you didn’t have a regular place to live, you were sleeping in your car.”
“Mobile home.”
“Yes, that’s what you called it. A very small mobile home. So I was looking for a new place myself, so we moved in to that place in Hoboken, remember?”
“Sure, how could I forget?”
“Well, you forgot our first job, so who knows. Anyway there we were—”
“That’s how we know this place is underwater! Because that place was.”
“Maybe so. I mean, it was. Subsurface real estate was just starting in the Meadowlands, so there were some rents we could afford. So, that was when we started working on front-running that would work for us as well as for Vinson. By then he was off on his own. That was illegal—”
“He was always an asshole.”
“Yes, that too. So we felt like we were just gigging for him doing questionable shit. Presumably if the SEC had ever twigged it, we would have been the ones to take the fall. People at Alban would have disavowed all knowledge of our existence.”
“Of a mission all too possible.”
“Yes, it was easy. But then we found out that everyone else was already doing it, so we were a late entry into an arms race no one could win. There was no difference between front-running and ordinary trading. So we quit Alban before we got hung out to dry. Started gigging around. It got a little ragged then. We needed something different if we wanted an advantage.”
“Did we want an advantage?”
“I don’t know. All our clients did.”
“Not the same.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to work for them anymore.”
“I know. But that’s led to problems for us, as you know.”
“As in?”
“Well, food. Food and lodging. We need those, and they take money, and you have to work to make money.”
“I’m not saying don’t work. I’m saying, not for them.”
“Agreed, we already tried that.”
“We have to work for ourselves.”
“Well, that’s what they do too. I mean, we’d likely end up just like them.”
“For everybody then. Work for everybody.”
Mutt nods, looking pleased. He’s gotten his friend talking again. Possibly the pills have helped. Possibly the tide has turned, and they are past the deep ebb in his health.
“But how?” Mutt asks, nudging the tide.
But you can’t push the river. “How should I know? That’s what I tried, and look where it got us. I tried to just do it direct. But I’m the idea man and you’re the facilitator. Isn’t that how it usually worked with us? I would have a crazy idea and you would figure out how to implement it.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Sure you do. So look, I had some fixes. I tried to tap into the system and make the fixes directly. Maybe it was stupid. Okay, it was stupid. It got us here, I’m guessing, and they could always just change the fixes back again anyway. So it was never going to work. I guess I was a little crazy then.”
Mutt sighs.
“I know!” Jeff says. “But tell me how! Tell me how we could do it! Because we’re not the only ones who need these fixes. Everyone needs them.”
Mutt doesn’t know what to say, but on the other hand he has to say something, to keep Jeff going. So he says, “Jeff, these are laws you’re talking about here. They aren’t just fixes, they’re like new laws. So, laws are made by lawmakers. We elect them. But, you know, companies pay for their campaigns, so they say they’re going to work for us, but once in office they work for the companies. It’s been that way a long time. Of the companies, by tools, for the companies.”
“But what about the people?”
“You can either believe that voting lawmakers into office means they work for you, so you keep voting, or you can admit that doesn’t work, and quit voting. Which doesn’t work either.”
“So okay, that’s why I tried to jam the fixes in there as a hack!”
“I know.”
“Tell me how we can do it better!”
“I’m thinking. I guess I’d say, we have to try a onetime takeover of the existing legislative bodies, and pass a bunch of laws that put people back in charge.”
“Onetime takeover? Isn’t that like, revolution? Are you saying we need a revolution?”
“Well, no.”
“No? It sounds to me like yes.”
“But no. I mean—yes and no.”
“Thank you for that! Such clarity!”
“What I mean is, if you use the currently existing legal system to vote in a group of congresspeople who actually pass laws to put people back in charge of lawmaking, and they do it, and there’s a president who signs those laws, and a Supreme Court that allows they are legal, and an army that enforces them, then—I mean, is that a revolution?”