Monty and the Malware Genius: Chapter One.
The Fly Emoji
Monty was about to text D. R. that he was leaving to meet her for drinks, when it appeared in his text message app. Just an emoji, nothing else. He checked the source, and it was a local phone number. No text, no slick come-on to try to get him to respond. Just the emoji.
He stared at it, but he didn’t want to stare too long, because he didn’t want to be late for D. R. He stared at it long enough to realize that it was an Apple emoji. A fly emoji. He used Apple gear, and so he knew it was an Apple emoji because he had seen it before.
The fly emoji was almost a realistic view of a common housefly as seen from above. Whenever Monty actually encountered a real, live, material housefly, all he could think of was smashing it with a flyswatter; and he kept such a swatter on a hook in his dining room.
But now he actually admired the fly emoji; red, tan, gray, and black. Bulging red eyes.
He asked himself if he should call the number just to see what this fly emoji was all about, but there was no time for that. Time to leave and meet D. R.
She was waiting for him at the Sicilian restaurant patio. She already had a Negroni, which she was sipping. “What’s up?” she asked jauntily.
He sat down and looked at her, then told her about the fly emoji. She smiled. “Is he back? The Lord of the Flies?”
He remembered. Quite a few months ago he had told her about one B. E. Elzebub, a kind of online troll whom he had encountered. Actually on the Medium website, as he recalled. Monty vaguely recalled that this Elzebub entity had been interfering with his work, which was to explore the phenomenon of hyperreality for his employer.
Monty remembered that at the time of the interference he had researched Beelzebub and The Lord of the Flies and learned that the original Beelzebub was originally some kind of Caananite deity of antiquity, who had an alternate name, Beelzebul, with an “l.” Scholars had speculated that the “ — bub” name ending was an ancient Hebrew joke at the expense of Caananity spirituality, because zebub actually referred to a housefly in the Hebrew language.
But, Monty recalled, if you believe that the name was actually Beelzebub with a final “b,” it does really mean Lord of the Flies.
Monty remembered all of that arcane detail, but he otherwise did not remember how this “B. E. Elzebub” had entered his life, other than being some kind of annoying troll.
“So, what’s this?” D. R. asked, with a bit of a smirk. “He’s trolling you? The Lord of the Flies?”
“I don’t know what it’s all about,” was Monty’s response. I didn’t have time to reply to the text.”
“You’re going to reply? What if this Lord of the Flies is actually some kind of con and you’re going to give him or it some of your data, and he’s going to harass you, or lay some fly eggs into your iPhone’s kernel and contaminate it. Maybe even crash your iPhone!” D. R.’s smirk grew considerably wider.
“I didn’t delete it,” he said to her smirking face, but I’m considering actually answering it. I’m intrigued. Just an emoji. And a rather attractive emoji. What kind of con is that? Even if it’s a con or something, I want to find out more about that.”
“It’s your iPhone,” said D. R., and just then the tuna carpaccio arrived. They had had it before, and it was delicious.
And so Monty had told her all about work. His payment had arrived on schedule, in blockchain currency: Etherium. He had been paid quite handsomely. His employer had written him a brief but complimentary email, which had ended with instructions to wait. They would be in touch with him shortly. Nothing else, and Monty had learned to ask no more questions. His employer was mysterious enough.
When Renatus the French math whiz was about 22 years old, the Protestants threw three Catholics out of the window of the huge castle in Prague. When he heard the news, Renatus was not particularly surprised. The culture war had been going on for hundreds of years, and he, Renatus, was pursuing his career right in the belly of the beast.
You could say, Renatus thought, that it all began with that fellow Hus, one Jan Hus, whom the Catholics had considered a troublemaker and had burnt at the stake. There weren’t any real Protestants at the time, but after they burnt Jan Hus at the stake, the culture war had heated up: Calvin, Martin Luther… Protestants galore.
Renatus himself was a Catholic boy from northern France, but his mind, so he thought, had better things to think about than the culture war. The invention of the printing press had made it possible for Protestants to spread their ideas, but it also made it possible to learn about many interesting things, thing on which you Renatus really did want to focus his mind. Things like math and science.
And so, there it was. Three Catholics out the window. Renatus was pretty sure that things would heat up, and he worried about how the possibility of war would interfere with the ambitions of a twenty-two year old who had a lot of ambitions.
Renatus didn’t know at the time that there would for sure be a war, and he didn’t know that the war would last for thirty years.
Later on, in fact, historians would call that war the Thirty Years War.
It took Philip K. Dick several years to get his book Ubik published, but it turned out to be a big hit when Doubleday finally brought it out in 1969.
Dick later told an interviewer:
You don’t just write whatever comes into your head while you’re sitting there in front of the typewriter. When I wrote Ubik, I got about twelve pages done and couldn’t think of anything else, so l just wrote whatever came into my mind. I wrote it from my unconscious: I let the right hemisphere of my brain do all the thinking, and I was as surprised as anybody as to what came out. In France, of course, it’s considered a great novel because it doesn’t make any sense; in France, it’s a roman de pataphysique. Ever since Alfred Jarry hit town, they’ve loved stuff that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it does make sense when you translate it into French. Maybe I’m a great writer in France because I’ve got good translators.
Like all PKD novels, Ubik brought into question the reality of existence, or, putting it another way, is what we think really reality? Or, are we living in a simulated reality, like a brain in a vat which is thinking that it’s somewhere else.
This, of course is what has made PKD novels so popular for dystopian TV series adventures: The Matrix, of course, and Blade Runner (the original and the sequel) and The Man in the High Castle.
Ubik (pronounced YOU-bick) promoted that theme and introduced a few interesting fillips: Every chapter was introduced with a simulated advertisement.
A sample:
“Could it be that I have bad breath, Tom? Well, Ed, if you’re worried about that, try today’s new Ubik, with powerful germicidal foaming action, guaranteed safe when taken as directed.“
Extremely clever, because everyone questions the reality of advertisment claims, and it’s usually possible to distinguish such a claim from “content,” which might be something intended by the author to take more seriously than the advertisment, there only to pay the bills.
And Dick’s Ubik novel also introduced a mysterious character, Ubik himself (himself? herself? itself?) which might appear as a spray can, and which critics of PKD speculated might actually be God, or some kind of god, or, perhaps, some kind of devil.
Rosie was six years old when her mother had given her the news: her father was dead. Killed in a far-off war. It took her a long while to process that news. She remembered her dad from a few visits, but most of the time he was gone in some far-off place.
She had a few memories left of France when she got the news about her father’s death, but only a few, because she was barely three when the family left France. Her mother was half French, and in fact had a French teaching degree. But the whole family was American.
Losing a father at such a young age had a lasting effect on Daria Rose Reeder; wanting to be like the dad she imagined throughout her later childhood she enlisted when she became old enough. She also, however, wanted an advanced degree like her mom. As a child and a teen she read a lot about France and became quite interested in the French Revolution. She never lost that interest.
Then, having ended her tour in the military and having pursued university studies, she had met Monty. It was, as the French say, a coup de foudre, a “thunderclap;” or, as the Americans say, love at first sight.
Now, here she was, sharing a tuna carpaccio with Monty, who was talking about that mysterious fly emoji. He appeared to be somewhat obsessed with the fly emoji, and D. R. (she preferred to be called D. R. and not Rosie or Daria) was a little concerned that his obsession with the fly emoji would become boring.
When he got home after his rendezvous with D. R., Monty made a decision. No, he would not delete the fly emoji. Instead, he saved it to his photo album.
Yes, it could be some kind of scam. He knew if he phoned the number from which the emoji had been texted (with no additional information) his own data might go into some kind of malware database. The emoji itself might be malware, containing, perhaps, a virus which would infest his software.
But Monty was, after all, a detective, and detectives do, after all become curious about certain mysterious things, even if their curiosity should lead them into danger.
So Monty decided that he was throw caution to the wind. After saving the emoji, he dialed the sender’s number on his iPhone. There were a few rings, then a recorded message:
“Hi. This is Ed. I’m not in right now.”
