“Are you making this up?” said Jimmy.
“The best diseases, from a business point of view,” said Crake, “would be those that cause lingering illnesses. Ideally—that is, for maximum profit—the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It’s a fine calculation.”
“This would be really evil,” said Jimmy.
“That’s what my father thought,” said Crake.
“He knew?” Jimmy really was paying attention now.
“He found out. That’s how come they pushed him off a bridge.”
“Who did?” said Jimmy.
“Into oncoming traffic.”
“Are you going paranoid, or what?”
“Not in the least,” said Crake. “This is the bare-naked truth. I hacked into my dad’s e-mails before they deep-cleansed his computer. The evidence he’d been collecting was all there. The tests he’d been running on the vitamin pills. Everything.”
Jimmy felt a chill up his spine. “Who knows that you know?”
“Guess who else he told?” said Crake. “My mother and Uncle Pete. He was going to do some whistle-blowing through a rogue Web site—those things have a wide viewership, it would have wrecked the pleebland sales of every single HelthWyzer vitamin supplement, plus it would have torched the entire scheme. It would have caused financial havoc. Think of the job losses. He wanted to warn them first.” Crake paused. “He thought Uncle Pete didn’t know.”
“Wow,” said Jimmy. “So one or the other of them…”
“Could have been both,” said Crake. “Uncle Pete wouldn’t have wanted the bottom line threatened. My mother may just have been scared, felt that if my dad went down, she could go too. Or it could have been the CorpSeCorps. Maybe he’d been acting funny at work. Maybe they were checking up. He encrypted everything, but if I could hack in, so could they.”
“That is so weird,” said Jimmy. “So they murdered your father?”
“Executed,” said Crake. “That’s what they’d have called it. They’d have said he was about to destroy an elegant concept. They’d have said they were acting for the general good.”
The two of them sat there. Crake was looking up at the ceiling, almost as if he admired it. Jimmy didn’t know what else to say. Words of comfort would be superfluous.
Finally Crake said, “How come your mother took off the way she did?”
“I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “A lot of reasons. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I bet your dad was in on something like that. Some scam like the HelthWyzer one. I bet she found out.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Jimmy. “I think she got involved with some God’s Gardeners—type outfit. Some bunch of wackos. Anyway, my dad wouldn’t have…”
“I bet she knew they were starting to know she knew.”
“I’m really tired,” said Jimmy. He yawned, and suddenly it was true. “I think I’ll turn in.”
Extinctathon
On the last evening, Crake said, “Want to play Extinctathon?”
“Extinctathon?” said Jimmy. It took him a moment, but then he remembered it: the boring Web interactive with all those defunct animals and plants. “When was it we used to play that? It can’t still be going.”
“It’s never stopped,” said Crake. Jimmy took in the implications: Crake had never stopped. He must’ve been playing it by himself, all these years. Well, he was a compulsive, no news there.
“So, how’s your cumulative score?” he asked, to be polite.
“Once you rack up three thousand,” said Crake, “you get to be a Grandmaster.” Which meant Crake was one, because he wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.
“Oh good,” said Jimmy. “So do you get a prize? The tail and both ears?”
“Let me show you something,” said Crake. He went onto the Web, found the site, pulled it up. There was the familiar gateway: EXTINCTATHON,Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?
Crake clicked Yes, and entered his codename: Rednecked Crake. The little coelacanth symbol appeared over his name, meaning Grandmaster. Then something new came up, a message Jimmy had never seen before: Welcome Grandmaster Rednecked Crake. Do you want to play a general game or do you want to play another Grandmaster?
Crake clicked the second. Good. Find your playroom. MaddAddam will meet you there.
“MaddAddam is a person?” asked Jimmy.
“It’s a group,” said Crake. “Or groups.”
“So what do they do, this MaddAddam?” Jimmy was feeling silly. It was like watching some corny old spy DVD, James Bond or something. “Besides counting the skulls and pelts, I mean.”
“Watch this.” Crake left Extinctathon, then hacked into a local pleeb bank, and from there skipped to what looked to be a manufacturer of solarcar parts. He went into the image of a hubcap, which opened into a folder—HottTotts Pinups, it was titled. The files were dated, not named; he chose one of them, transferred it into one of his lily pads, used that to skip to another, erased his footprints, opened the file there, loaded an image.
It was the picture of Oryx, seven or eight years old, naked except for her ribbons, her flowers. It was the picture of the look she’d given him, the direct, contemptuous, knowing look that had dealt him such a blow when he was—what? Fourteen? He still had the paper printout, folded up, hidden deep. It was a private thing, this picture. His own private thing: his own guilt, his own shame, his own desire. Why had Crake kept it? Stolen it.
Jimmy felt ambushed. What’s she doing here? he wanted to yell. That’s mine! Give it back! He was in a lineup; fingers pointed at him, faces scowled, while some rabid Bernice clone set fire to his undershorts. Retribution was at hand, but for what? What had he done? Nothing. He’d only looked.
Crake moved to the girl’s left eye, clicked on the iris. It was a gateway: the playroom opened up.
Hello, Grandmaster Crake. Enter passnumber now.
Crake did so. A new sentence popped up: Adam named the animals. MaddAddam customizes them.
Then there was a string of e-bulletins, with places and dates—CorpSeCorps issue, by the look of them, marked For Secure Addresses Only.
A tiny parasitic wasp had invaded several ChickieNobs installations, carrying a modified form of chicken pox, specific to the ChickieNob and fatal to it. The installations had had to be incinerated before the epidemic could be brought under control.
A new form of the common house mouse addicted to the insulation on electric wiring had overrun Cleveland, causing an unprecedented number of house fires. Control measures were still being tested.
Happicuppa coffee bean crops were menaced by a new bean weevil found to be resistant to all known pesticides.
A miniature rodent containing elements of both porcupine and beaver had appeared in the northwest, creeping under the hoods of parked vehicles and devastating their fan belts and transmission systems.
A microbe that ate the tar in asphalt had turned several interstate highways to sand. All interstates were on alert, and a quarantine belt was now in place.
“What’s going on?” said Jimmy. “Who’s putting this stuff out there?”