Someone you know is thinking about you right now. They’re thumbing a message to you into their phone, then pausing, deleting, starting again. A meeting of executives is voting to reject or approve the project upon which hinges your professional reputation, your potential income, your self worth. Your father, to whom you haven’t spoken in fifteen years, spends his evenings sipping bourbon and writing you a long letter which he will never send. But what if you could be there? What if you could hear the words spoken in these remote rooms, and you could lean in and whisper a word to write down, a word to cross out? A master key for opening secrets–what would that be worth to you?
Sam didn’t know that he was my guinea pig–he had to believe the process was flawless and safe in order for it to work. In reality, I had no idea how the experiment might affect him. This was why I didn’t choose a close friend.
He was always at the Absolutely Hot coffeeshop in the early evening, nursing a milky americano before switching to a glass of the house red once the sun went down. Private smiles ghosted his face as he scribbled in his moleskin. His focus was sharp and palpable. He spoke to no one while he worked, and seldom let his eyes roam the cafe unless it was with a turn of phrase trembling silently on his lips. He’d stare out the windows at the lights of the avenue, transfixed for a beat or two, then point his nose back at the notebook and scribble some more. Again with the private smile.
I think he was quite good. What I mean is, there was a sense of authenticity about him. I’m not a writer but my father was–if you’ve ever browsed an airport bookstore, you’ve probably seen his name, printed in letters larger than the title. So I recognize that glow of focus in a fellow thinker. It was only when Sam wrapped up his work for the day and came to sit at the bar for his second drink that I had the chance to connect with him. My tactic was instinctive from the beginning. I knew that he wouldn’t want to talk about his work or what he’d just written–it would be too delicate in his mind, inexpressible in any words except the ones he’d just written down. Instead, I was just friendly. That’s a sharp looking blazer there–where’d you get that? Big plans for the weekend? You’re a cyclist, aren’t you? Is that your Motobecane out front? Looks vintage. That sort of thing, delivered with a smile while I wiped down the bar and poured drinks for the less important people bellied up.
I was stalking, you see. Social media-wise. We all do it. It’s a basic skill, and with just a few more advanced techniques, I was in possession of a handful of choice data points that allowed me to crack him open like a fortune cookie.
Pouring his second house red, I said, “So tell me, what’s your superpower–flying or invisibility?”
He hooked an eyebrow. “Well–which one comes with a spandex suit?”
I grinned. “I think all the superpowers come with a suit. Capes optional.”
He tapped his glass to make a tiny chime. “Makes me wonder if you’re incognito right now, in this mild-mannered bartender outfit.”
I didn’t take that bait, but was glad that he’d cast it. I stayed on track. “Me, I want to be invisible so I can sneak into museums and steal my favorite paintings. Take a Jackson Pollock home, you know.”
He did the thing: his head cocked a degree as an involuntary smile bloomed across his face. Twin dimples appeared. “You know,” he said, leaning forward on the bar, “I was just thinking about that a while ago. Not superpowers, but all the paintings I want to steal out of museums. Made a whole list, in fact.”
I performed astonishment. That was the opening to a half hour conversation, punctuated by my washing glasses and making drinks for others, during which I artfully broached a handful of topics that I knew would serve as stepping stones for a growing connection: experiences traveling in Europe, the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski, taco culture in L.A., edible weed, the novel he was this close to finishing. I’d been cultivating a couple of other people, but Sam was the one who cracked open for me, and simply because I’d done my homework: he’d recently gotten a piece of flash fiction published that included an annotated list of his favorite paintings, including notes on all the fantastical ways he imagined stealing them and how he’d fill his home with masterpieces. (“The Coronation of Napoleon, cut free from its massive frame, serving as a parachute for a leap from the Louvre’s rooftop. Later, ironed out: an excellent car wrap. Who would suspect that it was the actual Jacques-Louis David canvas cocooning my Malibu?”)
I wasn’t practicing deception. I was simply using the information at my disposal. This was something my father used to talk about as he was fleshing out characters, making long lists of their secrets and fears and what they yearned for. I never cared much for his sci-fi techno thrillers with their outrageous scenarios, but he was on the right track with understanding people’s motives. Nothing I’d done so far had hurt Sam at all. On the contrary, I’d stimulated him in ways that I believe added to his confidence and improved his life.
Out of respect for Sam, I’ll skip the details of our conversations and interactions over the next six weeks. Suffice to say that we arrived at a point where he’d stick around the Absolutely Hot until closing time, when I had to peel myself away to sweep and mop. Following one of these late nights, I invited him to stick around while I closed up. He knew I lived just three blocks away and had a stash of hybrid cupcakes whose euphoric properties I’d been talking up for a while. I can’t say for sure why he agreed–maybe he was only after the free high, or maybe the flirting was genuine–but for myself, my motivation was solid: I was going to come clean.
“Sam,” I said as we sat on my balcony. The lights of Capitol Hill shone amongst the treetops in the dead silent middle of the night. Flushed with wine and slightly blurry, he registered the serious shift in my tone. I puffed on my vape pen. “I want to ask you something.”
“I don’t know–no one’s ever asked me anything before.”
That was a classic Sam-ism: charming, but a little too weird to be funny. I went straight to the heart of the matter. “I have a way to sell your manuscript, possibly to a major publisher. Does that interest you?”
I read the emotions that flickered across his face as easily as you’re reading these lines. His desire, amusement, doubt, calculation, excitement, skepticism and hunger, overlaid with toasty drunkenness: all as clear as stones in a trickling creek bed. This is the true core of my power: I’m simply empathetic. That’s it, that’s all it takes. Well, that–and the master key.
“Okay,” he said, angling for levity, “I’ll bite.”
I’d been coaching him all along, but now the training began in earnest and on the level. I was completely transparent about what I was doing. “I’m going to ask you questions, and I’m going to paraphrase back to you what you say. I’m not going to put any ideas into your head. Rather, I’m just going to help you uncover the ideas and the wisdom you already possess.”
Amusement danced in his eyes. That was what made him such a perfect subject. He was always up for anything.
I remember my father pacing back and forth on the kitchen phone, in rapid-fire conversation with his agent about this or that revision. Sometimes slamming the phone down and lecturing me on what a bunch of crooks and bastards they all were–but then calling his agent back an hour later and carrying on again about chapters and flashbacks and point of view. I may have been young, but it made an impression. Now, clearly, Sam needed an agent. For an aspiring writer, it was the only way to sell a manuscript to a major publishing house.
I explained his task: to choose one dream agent to research and cyber-stalk. I shared many of my proprietary secrets over the course of the next few weeks: simple ways to use meta data, location pins, hashtags and image searches to build a virtual collage of a person’s life, habits and frame of mind. A map of life. I kept only one key ingredient to myself–the master key.
Danielle Peek was an associate agent the Drinkwater Literary Agency. Her biggest client at the moment was a young guy who’d just won a Nebula Award and landed on the New York Times bestseller list for a collection of surreal flash fiction. Social media revealed more. She’d been a talented pianist as an adolescent but had dropped that in college, and yet still found solace in recordings of Chopin, Schubert, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. She had fiery appetites in the bedroom, a taste for domination, picking up carefully chosen dudes in bars two or three times a year, but nothing that ever turned into a stable relationship. She spent most evenings at home reading, either in the bath or on the day bed in her Harlem fifth-floor walk-up, sipping Tempranillo and smoking one American Spirit a night.
Sam watched me with a skeptical tilt to one eyebrow. “And you supposedly learned all this from stalking social media? Seems a little–I don’t know–detailed?”
I acknowledged that with a nod. “I have other sources as well. Databases the public doesn’t have access to. You wouldn’t believe the level of detailed information the government has on ordinary citizens.”
That put a glint in his eye. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a bunch of photos and shit pinned up on your wall with everything, like, connected by strings. Do you?”
I held his gaze and said nothing. Let him think what he wanted to think, and joke about it if that got him where I needed him to go. We maintained eye contact and he eventually broke into a laugh. He sipped his wine. I leaned in. “Each of these pieces of information is a tool. Her brand of cigarettes, her white girl wine fetish, her heart rate when she listens to Rachmaninoff. All tools to unlock a secret compartment in the mind and heart of Danielle Peek. We put it all together, we can make her do exactly what she must.”
Sam, bless his heart, smiled with dimples when I said that.
Of course, none of this would work if his manuscript wasn’t actually good enough to publish.
“Some days I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written,” he said, “but most days I think it’s the biggest shit I’ve ever taken.”
“But you’ve been published. That means your stuff isn’t shit.”
“You’d be surprised,” he sighed. “Look, the novel’s 99% done, but I don’t know if it’ll ever be ready to send off. It has to be perfect, you know? More than perfect, because there’s so much working against me. What if the agent has a migraine when she starts reading it? What if the email right before mine is super annoying and she’s in a shitty frame of mind the first time she sees my title? Everything can go wrong and almost nothing has the chance to go right. That’s just how it works.”
I’d heard that kind of defeatism before. “You have 99%, my friend. I’ll supply the missing one.”
He smirked. “You say all the right things, don’t you?”
“Why would I say the wrong ones?” I poured him another glass.
The next day, Sam crafted a personalized pitch letter, custom tailored to Danielle Peek’s predilections and quirks. If it worked, she’d pour her body and soul into pitching Sam’s novel to the big publishing houses. If she could pull off a repeat of what she’d done with the Nebula winner, she’d spark a bidding war that would bring in an astronomical advance. Retirement money. Buy-an-island-in-Indonesia money. Sell-the-film-rights-to-Ridley-Scott money. That was her job, and she was good at it, but none of it would work unless she was sufficiently “in love” with the manuscript. Her enthusiasm would transmit, and that was what would sell it.
I’d seen an expression of transported joy on my father’s face exactly once. The phone rang during 60 Minutes and he picked it up, grumbling. Moments later he looked like he’d just seen God. He pressed a hand over the receiver and stared at me, wide-eyed. “My book,” he started, and then his tears began to flow. That was his first novel. It wasn’t much money, but it was the start of everything. It was one of the few happy memories I had of him, and it wasn’t even my happiness. I wanted to spark that feeling in Sam, put that look on his face. I wanted to hear him say, “My book,” and then break into tears.
The pitch we crafted wove in elements specially designed to appeal to Danielle Peek, literary agent and human being. A disarming wine joke, a metaphor comparing the plot pacing to that of Rachmaninoff’s second concerto, a final crack about how she might need to smoke a cigarette after reading. None of these bits were meant to sway her decision. They simply operated as relays. Once the switch was thrown, they would form a circuit of associations in Danielle Peek’s mind. Sam, of course, wanted to know what that switch would be.
“As you may have suspected,” I told him with a dramatically raised eyebrow, “I lead a double life.” We sat at the terrace tables outside the Absolutely Hot, late on a Tuesday night. The place was dead save for a couple of hooting women at a far table.
“While the rest of us are barely leading single ones,” he cracked.
I acknowledged that with a slow nod. “But seriously, there’s a lot I haven’t told you. For starters, I’m not just a bartender.”
“Ah, yes. The top secret databases. Plus, you’re not as smooth with a corkscrew as I’d expect.”
“I didn’t say I was a fake bartender, I only said that’s not the whole story.”
“Ooh-kay.”
“So listen. You know those gene sequencing companies that spell out your whole family tree if you send them a cheek swab or a piece of hair, tell you what percentage Native American you might be? All that stuff goes into a system. I work in a government lab where we catalogue and archive those samples. I’m a genetic engineer.”
Sam’s brow stitched. “Wait–you’re–isn’t all that stuff private?”
I gave him a ‘grow up’ look. “The U.S. government maintains a vast archive of DNA. But that’s not the real news.” I gave him the quick overview: the network of sub-zero coolers, the sub-Kelvin chamber, the remote sampling pods, the quark nets. Everything I was telling him was verifiable, but not through traditional media. You had to know how to handle yourself on the dark web, in the kinds of places most people never venture. He watched me with a blank look. He still wasn’t past the whole government archive thing.
I pushed on. “Look. Danielle Peek is in the gene data base–I already checked. I’ve already accessed her sample and isolated the splice target in a polymerase chain generator. Now all we have to do is time the splice for maximum euphoria.”
“Maximum–? What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to text her right after you submit your pitch letter and manuscript. As soon as she pings receipt of the text, I’ll make the splice and activate it.”
His look of bafflement was comical. “The splice–what splice? What is that going to do?”
I held his gaze. “The alteration I make to her genetic code in the sub-Kelvin pod is going to simultaneously alter the genes in her living cells. Simultaneously, Sam. She’s in New York City, right? The moment she sees your text, she’ll experience a rush of euphoria. The feeling will persist as she reads your pitch, and it’ll be reinforced as she reads your manuscript. By the time she reaches the end, she’ll be convinced that it’s the best book she’s ever read. She’ll offer to take you on as a client before she even catches her breath, and she’ll crawl over glass to get your book published.”
Sam stared at me over our half-drunk wine glasses. “Dude. You sound insane right now.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I do. No one quite knows how it works, actually. Something about the super-cooled centrifuges generates a state of quantum entanglement that can alter genetic code even at a distance. They call it spooky action–”
“I mean the mind game. What kind of mind game is this? It sounds like a bad sci-fi novel, for Christ’s sake.”
“Look, as I said, it’s quantum entangle–”
He shoved his chair back with a screech and got to his feet. “You’re nuts, right? Or is this all just some kind of con?”
I raised my hands in surrender. “I’m not asking anything from you. I’m just trying to help you get your book published, and I’m testing my hypothesis for spooky persuasion at a distance. Why not have someone benefit from the potential by-product if it works?”
“Yeah, you’re nuts. What a waste of time.” He grabbed his book bag and headed towards the bike rack where his vintage Motobecane leaned in the street light. The moon painted the sidewalk silver. Crickets hummed and throbbed somewhere in the shadows. A distant siren moaned.
I called after him. “Think about what your text message will say. It has to be short and personal, so she’ll be struck by it. So it makes an impression.”
He turned as he walked away, shot me a perplexed look, and kept on walking. I could have made things easier on myself by inventing cover stories, but it was important to me not to lie to anyone about anything.
My father taught me the importance of truth, by way of counter-example. Thinking back on my childhood and adolescence, I had a hard time coming up with anything associated with my father that wasn’t a lie. At this point, I hadn’t seen him since my high school graduation, nearly twenty years ago. The About-the-Author blurbs in the back of his books stated that he lived with his wife and three children in San Francisco, a city that I have never visited. He cranks out a bestselling novel about every other year, and I haven’t reached out to him and he hasn’t reached out to me in almost two decades because of the unforgivable thing that he did. I’m not proud of the fact that I hope he’s miserable in his success.
And if you want to play psychoanalyst, I’m sure his influence had something to do with me needing to recast his success for my own benefit. And that same psychological acumen probably tells you that my friend Sam would come back once he had time to think.
“What’s the guarantee that my book will sell?” He stood at my front door at two in the morning, arms crossed and deadly serious.
I wiped the ramen broth off my chin and opened the door wide. “I never said anything about a guarantee. I’m just providing a boost. Everything else depends on how good your work is.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to know if it can be done.” […]
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A.C. Koch’s work has appeared in F(r)iction, the Columbia Journal, Mississippi Review, and Exquisite Corpse; two short stories have been awarded first place in the Raymond Carver Short Story Award (2003, 2007). Koch lives in Denver where he teaches linguistics at the University of Colorado and plays guitar in a power-pop trio, Firstimers.