A One Act Play
The Dark Side
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2008
Geralyn Horton
BYTNER & ALBERT are seated at a tavern table with beer. The room is empty except for the two men, a couple of tables, and a red-lighted emergency Exit sign; but beyond the stage "restaurant" area is an implied bar and an unseen TV providing sound and the casual background bar chatter of a few unseen bar customers. On BYTNER and ALBERT's table is BYTNER's laptop open laptop and a cardboard box filled with Personal Belongings. Joanne walks in carrying a drink, looks puzzled. Why is her box on their table, rather than on the other nearby table where she left it?
BYTNER
Joanne!
JOANNE
Bytner?
ALBERT (points to JOANNE's box of office possessions)
We -- uh-- moved this here to watch it for you.
JOANNE
Nothing to steal in there, really. They impounded my laptop and PA.
ALBERT
Still, we hope you'll join us?
JOANNE (tries to re-claim box)
I'm not exactly feeling social.
BYTNER
Don't let them get to you, Joanne.
ALBERT
They're scum bastards. Armed escort out of the building, like you're some kind of criminal.
JOANNE
Under suspicion, like Buck! Like I was lucky to be out of jail.
BYTNER
Not officially. You qualify for unemployment. If there were any jobs any more, you'd land you one better than the one you just lost.
JOANNE
That's supposed to cheer me up?
BYTNER
Just so you know there's nothing wrong with you. Or your work.
JOANNE
Hey! Did you follow me here?
ALBERT
We' got here half an hour before you.
JOANNE
Were you spying on me? At work? Or did you hear what I said to the doorman? Or--?
ALBERT
Not me!
JOANNE
Bytner?
BYTNER
Don't worry. I'm not a stalker. I just make it my business to know what CyCorps is up to.
JOANNE
It's just too much of a coincidence. This bar is the last place--
BYTNER
The last place you'd expect somebody from CyCorps. Right. Which is probably why you come here from time to time, and exactly why the two of us came here tonight.
ALBERT
Bytner's sure it's not bugged.
JOANNE
You think the office is?
BYTNER
So do you. You just said so. It's not paranoid to think that a company specializing in the flow of information would be interested in what's flowing inside them.
ALBERT
Or around them. Our apartments are bugged, too.
JOANNE
Our apartments?
ALBERT
Yours might not be. You don't work on anything that's--uh--
BYTNER
Significant.
ALBERT
Vulnerable.
BYTNER
Everything in IT is vulnerable. One little bug, one unauthorized user, a bizarre multi-site power outage and --- (gesture) Kablaam! But some vulnerabilities are more significant than others.
ALBERT
Anyway, this joint is about as insignificant as a place can be, and we swept it just yesterday.
BYTNER
Still-- We don't carry cell phones.
ALBERT
And we pay in cash.
BYTNER
Big brother aims at omniscience, but what he considers worth punishing-- Remember the moral dilemma in grade school? Press a button and one random guy in Burma would drop dead and 10 million dollars would magically appear in your bank account: would you do it?
JOANNE
Of course not!
ALBERT
Yeah? Because it's wrong, or because the FBI would want to know where your sudden 10 mill came from?
BYTNER
People do it. More and more. Underemployed hackers do it just for fun. There was a 43% rise in malware attacks last year.
ALBERT
Our bosses regard it as your duty. If there's 10 mil to be made, and you hesitate to crush somebody to make it, well-- time for an armed escort out the door..
JOANNE
You think they--? I can't believe it! Most of what everybody does is cooperate. That's why getting fired is so horrible. I was part of their team and I thought they trusted me.
BYTNER
Trust is for chumps.
ALBERT
You're only together to beat other teams. If they suspect you are working for somebody else...
JOANNE
Somebody else?
BYTNER
Buck. They think you are in cahoots with Buck.
JOANNE
Buck? I don't even know what it is he's supposed to have done.
ALBERT
Embezzlement. He phishes out some client's account number and password and transfers money out of it through some zombies till he can hide it offshore.
BYTNER
The poor man's version of what happened to the world with mortgages. But of course where one hacker goes another can follow.
JOANNE
What's that got to do with me?
BYTNER
You were one of his zombies.
JOANNE
What?
ALBERT
He got your password, probably the old-fashioned way, by looking over your shoulder. CyCorps searched your computer, your cell, your PA: for weeks. They can't find any money, just a pass-through, so they can't prove anything.
JOANNE
How could Buck do that to me? He got me fired?!
BYTNER
You haven't played enough war games to understand. Buck had to do it to somebody, why not you?
JOANNE
But why do it at all? Risk jail for -- what? How much?
BYTNER
423,614 dollars and thirty five cents. But the joke's on Buck. It's only a number. It's going to vanish any moment, along with the rest of the digital cash deposited in that wholly imaginary offshore subsidiary.
JOANNE
How do you know that?
ALBERT
Bytner's good.
BYTNER
Chaotic, really. But if there's something I want to know, I can usually find out. Which reminds me: I recreated your PA. I thought you might want it. Unless you have a back up?
JOANNE (takes PA he offers her)
I backed it up on the laptop they impounded! Thanks. I felt lost, like they'd taken my friends and my identity....
BYTNER
We could steal you a better identity.
ALBERT
But we wouldn't! Identity theft is crazy. Who wants to live the kind of life you'd have to so you wouldn't get caught? Making it up as you go, layer on layer, never trusting anybody.
BYTNER
I certainly couldn't trust you.
JOANNE
Trust me to--?
BYTNER
Do what's necessary. But don't worry about it. I don't need a henchwoman.
JOANNE
I'm glad to hear it
ALBERT
Bytner thinks he's got me. Though so far I'm just a fan.
JOANNE
If you two are on one side, who's on the other?
ALBERT
I like to pretend it doesn't matter. If I don't know the guys on the other team, then I can just rejoice that my guy's winning. We don't care about them one way or the other. But then I read the news and it says that young girls are dying in China from the fumes they breathe putting together our Game Boys.
BYTNER
Gives you a twinge, does it? Not me! When those Chinese girls do my job for one twentieth what I make, when people like you and Albert see that we're going to end up hungry and humiliated-- then it gets personal. You enjoy killing not just the other team, but the Masters of the Universe who use you.
ALBERT
Bytner figures I'll get to that point, but so far I'm happy with my job and my toys--
BYTNER
Guess what? You'll be following Joanne out the door by the end of the month.
ALBERT
Jesus! Did you have to tell me?
JOANNE
How do you know that?
BYTNER
Let's just say I've figured it out. The scheming bastard who controls us figures by the time our whole industry is shipped to India, he'll have bailed out with a golden parachutes and be sipping absinthe in the Caymans.
ALBERT
Hey! If you can see how it's done, why can't we do it ourselves? Turn a threat into an opportunity. Necessity is the mother of invention...
BYTNER
Necessity's a motherfucker. The game's bound to crash. I'd rather enjoy the ride down than run frantically around patching things under the illusion that there's a way to win:
JOANNE
I don't know what you just said. But I wish now I hadn't worked 80 hour weeks the last decade and I had somebody at home to make me cocoa. Or at least a dog.
BYTNER
You have more power than you realize. Think about what you could bring down. With just a few lines of code? If you didn't give a damn and just wanted to do damage?
JOANNE
Umm. No. I don't want to think about that,
BYTNER
No. You don't.
ALBERT
Most people don't. I don't mean most people don't do damage. They do. But they don't do it for damage's sake. It's collateral. Unintended consequence.
BYTNER
Berserkers? Ninjas? Assassins?
ALBERT
But the difference between the damage a Viking could do with his sword, or a heretic by poisoning wells -- that's minute compared to what 6 billion of us do just trying to build a better life our families.
BYTNER
How long has it been since you and I had families?
JOANNE
Or even a dog.
BYTNER
Look at the TV. Look out the window. Look at these statistics. (Points to his laptop.)
JOANNE
What is that?
BYTNER
A pie chart of Global consumption. It looks like our play-money economy, but it charts real basics like oil and grain and the ground water and fish stocks. We're using up one and 3 fifths Planet Earth every year.
ALBERT
A nice old lady who would never kill someone whose face she can see will buy her nephew a new Wii for Christmas, even though she suspects that the old one he throws out will wind up poisoning a trash-picking AIDS orphan in some 3rd world country.
BYTNER
And the soil. And 70% of all species. It's ugly and it's inevitable. The sooner and swifter, the better. (BYTNER types something into his laptop, smiles smugly)
JOANNE
What did you just do?
ALBERT
Now, Bytner? Holy fucking Jesus, you didn't!?!
BYTNER
One small step for a man, one hell of a drop for Mankind.
The lights in the tavern flicker and go out, setting off warn alarms. An emergency Exit sign and the battery-powered laptop are all that is visible on stage. The TV sound ends, and the casual background bar chatter is replaced by distress and cursing. Outside, crashes and explosions.
THE END
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