The Drucker Proxy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part 1

  — 1 —

  — 2 —

  — 3 —

  — 4 —

  — 5 —

  — 6 —

  Part 2

  — 7 —

  — 8 —

  — 9 —

  — 10 —

  — 11 —

  Part 3

  — 12 —

  — 13 —

  — 14 —

  — 15 —

  — 16 —

  — 17 —

  Part 4

  — 18 —

  — 19 —

  — 20 —

  — 21 —

  — 22 —

  — 23 —

  — 24 —

  Part 5

  — 25 —

  — 26 —

  — 27 —

  — 28 —

  — 29 —

  — 30 —

  — 31 —

  — 32 —

  Part 6

  — 33 —

  — 34 —

  — 35 —

  — 36 —

  — 37 —

  — 38 —

  — 39 —

  — 40 —

  — 41 —

  — 42 —

  — 43 —

  — 44 —

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Drucker Proxy

  a novel by Lior Samson

  Gesher Press

  Rowley, Massachusetts

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, incidents, and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, locales, or events is purely coincidental. Any trademarks or service marks referred to are the properties of their respective owners.

  Copyright © 2019, L. L. Constantine, all world rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission.

  Gesher Press and the bridge logo are trademarks of

  Gesher Press.

  Cover and book design: Larry Constantine

  Cover background photo: “There’s light at the end of the tunnel” © 2015, Thomas Whelton, used by permission

  In memory of

  Edward Yourdon (1944-2016), friend and collaborator, whose legacy lives on

  In this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with their wishes. – Ambrose Bierce

  Also by Lior Samson, from Gesher Press

  Distant Sons

  The Homeland Connection novels:

  Bashert

  The Dome

  Web Games

  Chipset

  Gasline

  Flight Track

  The Immortality Quartet:

  The Rosen Singularity

  The Millicent Factor

  The Intaglio Imprint

  The Drucker Proxy

  The Four-Color Puzzle

  Requisite Variety: Collected Short Fiction

  Death Rehearsals: Stories of Endings Dark and Bright

  Prologue

  Night. Black. Darker than night, like the inside of a cave after the spelunkers have all turned off the lights on their hardhats and the last afterimages have faded: the black of the void, utter and absolute, without even the distraction of phosphenes. Nothing seemed to work for him, no feeling, no sensation. Slowly, in the distance, sparks of colorless light flared and coalesced into a shape, a bright grid, like a barred gate at the far exit of a long tunnel.

  Thoughts intruded, unbidden, only to vanish before they could be comprehended, lost in emptiness like random cellphone flashes in the stands at a stadium concert, winking signals gone even before they could be fully experienced. A buzz, like erratic tinnitus, faded in and out, shifting in pitch but trending always lower until it was a slow and steady putt-putt-putt quietly mixing with an overlay of voices speaking a language that defied parsing.

  “Coleman. Can you hear me, Coleman?”

  “I don’t think he’s conscious. He can’t hear us.”

  “Look. The numbers say he’s there. Coleman? Coleman Todd Drucker! Can you hear me?”

  One last confusing voice. “Well, enough for now. This is just a trial run.”

  Part 1

  Each life makes its own imitation of immortality.

  – Stephen King

  — 1 —

  He was, for the moment, an Olympic skier on a giant slalom course. There was no snow, no alternating red and blue flags, only the narrow asphalt snake that was Old Topanga Canyon Road zig-zagging down toward California’s Pacific Coast Highway.

  With precision and concentration, Coleman Drucker powered into the next hairpin turn without easing up on the accelerator. Taking the outside lane gave him a clear view ahead through the deep shadows of early sun. He flattened the curve and fishtailed briefly while straightening out.

  Pounding the dashboard, he shouted into the wind. “Yes! I love it. Every damn minute of it.” He had the black-and-yellow Tensora Model N in full-manual mode, and he reveled in the sense of mastery.

  It was all an illusion, of course, and Cole knew it, but willful ignorance allowed him, despite his vaunted technical background, to live on the edge, to feel as if he were pushing the envelope. His entire life had become a tapestry of interwoven illusions embroidered around the edges by his transgressive tendencies, particularly in personal relations.

  He drove one-handed, left hand over his mouth as if he were hiding his growing grin. He inhaled. Gwen. The scent of her still lingered on his fingers. She led trail rides for his daughter’s summer camp in Topanga. She was an agglomeration of contradictions: a smart businesswoman who underplayed her intelligence, a lithe athlete who kept her shirt on during lovemaking, a woman of some means who mucked her own stables. He knew the affair was going nowhere, and he hoped she knew it as well, otherwise things could turn messy—and possibly expensive. She was the latest patch in the messy cloak in which he wrapped himself, nothing more.

  “Why do you do it, man?” he asked himself, then shook his head. “Because I can,” he told the wind, “because it feels good. Like this.”

  The downhill race was an end in itself. He had hours before the first of the meetings that were the punctuation marks at the end of nearly two years of nerve-wracking negotiation. He rushed for no reason, save for the seductive sense of speed in the low-slung electric roadster. With the top down, the rush of air over the windshield whipping his thinning hair and the muted buzz of tires on asphalt were the loudest sounds.

  He skidded around the next switchback, but it would have been nearly impossible for him to lose control completely and wipe out. The car itself was his invisible backseat driver, its cloud-connected artificial intelligence monitoring his every move, tweaking and adapting its responses to the slightest twitch of the foot or tug on the wheel, cameras tracking the roadway, computers keeping the customized car always within its performance envelope, never exceeding the safe parameters for speed, torque, wheel-slip, and acceleration.

  There was no comparable backup for the business risks he was facing at the office. He had bullied and bluffed his way through his second acquisition in four years, a buyout that absolutely had to work. He was acutely aware that if the building blocks he had stacked with such care were to topple, the tumble would take him down and Drucker Technologies with it.

  Switching hands to reach the center-console touch screen, he scrolled through his classical database and called up a Tchaikovsky favorite, the “Little Russian” symphony. He cranked the volume through the close-focus headrest speakers.

  He was running thro
ugh a mental checklist—open merger issues, updating his life insurance, reviewing the proxy papers—when he rounded a blind curve to face an oncoming motorhome hogging the two-lane road. He deftly twisted the wheel. As his right tires touched off onto the narrow strip of dirt on the inside of the curve, he tromped on the accelerator and squeezed through the gap, leaving a spray of gravel flying behind.

  A warning flashed on the heads-up windshield display, and the steering wheel locked up. He jammed on the brakes, but the car kept flying toward the outside shoulder just beyond the end of the guard rail. In desperation, he tugged on the parking brake, and the car reluctantly came to a silent stop angled across the road.

  “What the fuck?” The center console and steering-wheel displays were both blank. Cole pressed the power-on button and watched as the word “WAIT” flashed in red on the dashboard.

  Suddenly he was not alone. “This is your Tensora Roadside Services operator.” The voice seemed to hang in space in front of him. “Are you all right, Mr. Drucker?”

  “Yes, I’m all right, but my fucking car just died on me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Drucker. My name is Erin. I’m here to help. Our remote diagnostics package is already being executed. I see that you are headed south on Old Topanga Canyon Road in Topanga, California. Are you in a safe place? Do you need roadside assistance?”

  “I need my goddamn car to restart, and I need to get to my meeting. That’s what I need.”

  “My display is showing that the Master Controller has rebooted correctly. You should see a status screen on the center console display.”

  “I see a black fucking screen is what I see.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. I am initiating a remote system restore. This should only take a few minutes.”

  “And what the fuck am I supposed to do in the meantime? I’m in the middle of the road, blocking both lanes. I … Oh shit!” A dirt-spattered vintage F-150 was rounding the curve. Cole raised himself in the seat and flailed his arms wildly.

  The pickup skidded to a stop just feet short of the Tensora. The driver, shocks of white hair spraying out from beneath his Dodgers baseball cap, looked down from the open cab window. “You need help?”

  “No, I think I can handle this.”

  “Well, then, do you think maybe you could pull over so others can get by? If it’s not too much to ask.”

  “I will, I will. Just hang on.” He looked down at the display that was now showing a swirling Tensora logo. “Just waiting for this thing to reboot.”

  The driver in the pickup laughed. “Maybe you should get a real car, mister, instead of an overpriced laptop on wheels.”

  Cole ignored the taunt and kept his eyes on the screen. As soon as the display normalized, he spun the wheel and pulled over to the side. The pickup squeezed by with a throaty grumble. “Hello? Erin? You still there?”

  “Yes, I’m still here, Mr. Drucker. My system is showing that all indicators are nominal on your vehicle. The remote diagnostics report that all sensors, actuators, and subsystems are working properly.”

  “Then what the hell happened? I thought these things had triple redundancy and backup systems up the wazoo.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize wazoo.”

  Cole shook his head in sudden realization. “Wait, you’re an AI, right? I’m not talking to Erin with a ponytail; I’m talking to a fucking computer.”

  “I’m Erin, Tensora Motor’s automated Emergency Roadside Intervention Network. Can I be of any further assistance?”

  “Yeah, just don’t let this sort of fuckup happen again. Okay?”

  “I have scheduled special maintenance for your vehicle for later today. I note from your profile that you have the Concierge Service Plan. Your car will be collected at,”—there was a pause and a shift in the tone-of-voice— “Drucker Technologies Headquarters, Building 1 executive parking, between 10 and 11 a.m. and returned before 4 p.m., or a loaner vehicle of equivalent model level will be provided should your vehicle need to be retained for service. Have a nice day.”

  “Yeah, right.” He pulled onto the pavement and resumed his descent toward the ocean. The pleasure was gone from the drive. Nerves on edge, the illusion of control now shattered, he drove as if his high-tech car might, at any moment, suddenly refuse again to do his bidding.

  — 2 —

  Cole, sleep-deprived from the dawn departure and long dalliance in Topanga but determined not to show it, paced at the end of the conference table in his last meeting of the day. With a lazy flick of the wrist in the direction of his tablet computer, he brought up the last of the nineteen PowerPoint slides in his presentation. A twitter of strained laughter spread around the table as the image of a vintage twentieth-century factory-built home—a bland sand-colored double-wide with a green cranked awning over the entry door—steadily morphed into a post-modern high-rise complex.

  “And that, people, is the future of construction integration, from adaptive exteriors that adjust albedo and permeability to the seasons as readily as to the time of day, through to the totally connected intelligent appliances, utilities, HVAC, and communications, all factory-built under strictest quality and cost control with turnkey onsite assembly. This”—he jabbed with his index finger—“is what is achievable from the synergy of Unified ModulArch leadership in large-scale pre-manufactured construction with Drucker’s newly acquired expertise in systems management and our long-proven state-of-the-art mastery of IoT technology. With sea-level rise contributing to the biggest urban construction boom in a half century, the Internet-of-Things and the future of smart-building and smart-city architecture are being merged into a bold new vision: our vision. We are Drucker Unified.” The new logo painted on the screen.

  He paused as if waiting for applause. His people, in the outer ring, nodded affirmation; the ModulArch management had the seats at the table. It was a multilayered metaphor, as if those seated were more important, the focus, yet at the same time they were surrounded, being watched. It was another of Coleman’s well-managed stage illusions. Drucker Technologies was buying out the much larger ModulArch, and he and his handpicked team would be calling the shots on the new corporation.

  Even the attire declared the disconnect in corporate cultures. In Drucker Technologies, Coleman set the tone with his favored black jeans and blazer and open-collar shirts worn untucked. Bradley Pomerantz, CTO of Drucker, sported a denim sports jacket over one of his signature tee shirts covered in Python program code. In stark contrast, those seated around the table in their gray pinstripes could have passed for bankers. At first glance, one might assume they held the upper hand.

  Coleman took his seat at the head of the table. “I know I don’t have to sell any of you on this. The acquisition has already been approved by both boards, so it’s too late for second thoughts now. Sorry, Bert, but you were overruled and outmaneuvered. We’re stuck with each other,”—more forced laughter around the table while Drucker CFO Bert Jamison squirmed at the back—“but I wanted to set the stage today for the envisioning exercises scheduled for next month.” He poured two fingers of water from the Raw-Water bottle in front of him, took a sip, and continued. “For the new company of Drucker Unified, the sky is, quite literally, the limit.” Another hand gesture triggered the high rise building on the wall-size screen to start growing upward into a brightening sky, followed by fade-to-white.

  The applause rippled around the room for a few polite seconds, then stopped when Coleman held up a hand. “Okay, let’s talk.”

  — —

  Coleman made a show of checking his smartwatch. The questions and challenges that had taken over an hour had mostly been carefully calculated to appear improvised, with each of the assembled executives making their moves to stake out positions without exposing too much of their private agendas for the fluid times to follow. Coleman, a wizard at reading a group, had delivered his selective disclosures in a way that promised nothing but allowed everyone to believe they were uniquely on
the inside track. Throughout, he had sustained his upbeat persona, alternating between that of a cheerleading peer touting new horizons and a sympathetic senior counselor reassuring them all that nothing would change. Nothing, he thought, except I am now a billionaire and you’re not.

  “And so, gentlemen … and ladies”—he pointedly glanced toward Tonika Warner seated to his left, the only woman and only person-of-color among the top management of ModulArch—“that does it for the day. Action items for everybody: one, enjoy your weekend; two, get some sleep. The real work starts Monday with the first sprint to flesh out and finalize the roadmap for post-merger integration. We’ll kick it off with our first all-hands meeting of the combined companies—remotes to Atlanta, Tokyo, and Madrid—the details are in your packets. Now, take a break.”

  As the rest of the transition management team gathered their gear and drifted from the room, Tonika Warner dawdled and fussed with her cellphone. Once alone with Drucker, she looked over to him. “So?”

  “What are you asking? What do you want to know?”

  “Where am I in this picture?”

  “I would guess pretty much right where you want to be.” He smiled at the sudden image of her straddling him. Tonika was his kind of woman. Smart, a smart dresser, built like a ModulArch high-rise, and soon to be deeply beholden to him. “Everyone knows the key role you’ve been playing in pulling the companies together, building a joint vision and shepherding stragglers. Plus, who on your side of the merger is as tech savvy as you? I mean, among your people here”—he gestured around the now-empty table—“these guys all came up from construction, manufacturing, production management. Hell, Decatur started out with a nail gun in his hand. By comparison, with your degree from Cal Tech and your record at ModulArch, you’re sitting pretty for a future in what is really, at the heart, a technology company.”