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Wilford had done this once before
Mar. 23rd, 2019 10:49 amWilford had done this once before. He remembered bits and pieces, but it was years ago. Back then, Wilford was running on twenty minutes of sleep a night, supplemented by caffeine and cocaine to keep him going. He’d managed to do a pretty good job at convincing himself that none of it was real, but he’d never completely forgotten it. It was one of those dark little thoughts he never liked to think about, but it always hung around all the same.
He’s always known his world is different. And there’s always been an explanation for that. He just never thought about it. He held onto that tiny bit of information because his mind refused to forget it, keeping it locked away behind everything else.
But it was there. And it needed to be dealt with. Wilford was older now; sober and better equipped to deal with earth-shattering information. He was going to do this properly. No destroyed hotel rooms, no coke-fuelled rampages. Just a cup of coffee, a nicotine patch, and a notepad. Proper journalism shit this time.
Starting was easy. Cisco had recognised the city, but nobody else at the bar had (or at least, they hadn’t admitted it, which was just important). Cisco had immediately clammed up after, suggesting others may have also recognised the city, but hadn’t said anything out of some sort of social etiquette. Wilford didn’t remember much about the last time someone had ruined his day with information he didn’t want to hear, but he was willing to bet that there was a pretty good chance that he hadn’t quite been the first person to react poorly.
His first search took him nowhere unexpected. A few glossy maps with poor detail and even worse accuracy, plots that sounded downright pedestrian (people tended to be afraid of Wilford and where he’s from; he had to keep reminding himself that squishy people probably didn’t see things the same way). As dull as most of it sounded, there were some morsels of truth. Jay Norris’ head exploding at a keynote address got a solid week of air time, but nobody ever figured out who it was. And yet, Wilford had a list of names right in front of him. He wrote them down, citing every date and detail he could get from the basic amount of text.
He hadn’t got nearly this far last time. He’d found just enough to confirm what Jim had said, and then promptly lost his damn mind. But now he was curious, because he did remember something else Jim had said. Wilford was tempted to look him up there in the bar’s library, but decided he’d rather do something else. He’d been gone for too long anyway, and wanted to try to get a shower in before the kid woke back up.
Michael De Santa didn’t exist. Not before 2013, anyway. Neither did his wife or two children. They’d all materialised out of thin air. On the surface, dates were there; birth certificates and job and school histories, but those things didn’t exist either. Signatures by people who didn’t exist, schools and businesses that didn’t exist. Shell entities run by people whose job it was to give fake references and confirmations for people sneaking their way back into society.
Hacking local databases was one thing; Wilford rarely thought twice before doing it. But only a grade A moron would try to get into FIB systems on home wifi with a personal laptop. But there were more things he could try, because the book had more names. Names like Michael Townley, and wouldn’t you know, the man died in 2013. Every single name Wilford searched gave positive hits somewhere. He sent every single page of it to his printer.
But he wasn’t done yet. There was more to deal with, because all those years ago, Jim had said something else. Something that only remained a vague idea, but which Wilford couldn’t help but search. Jim Moriarty turned up fuck all, beyond half a dozen people on LifeInvader. James Moriarty wasn’t much better. Then Wilford tried searching for Sherlock Holmes, on the basis that it was kind of a weird name that wasn’t likely to be shared by dozens of people trying to be internet-popular. Which was indeed the case. This time, he got bad blog posts and impossible-to-read news clippings of some celebrity cop or something from the 1800s. A page about cults and eldritch horrors caught Wilford’s attention. While this particular Sherlock Holmes never did cross paths with any eldritch horrors, he did seem to travel all over hell and creation to find the cultists. Including some Swiss asylum, where another familiar name finally popped up. It was a trail Wilford had to follow, and couldn’t help laughing at. He sent all this to the printer as well.
As soon as he was through the front doors, Wilford rushed down the hall and let himself into Nichola’s office. Wilford glanced around it, and then over his shoulder.
“I got something big,” he said, once he was sure nobody was close enough to hear.
“How big?” Nichola already seemed intrigued.
Wilford stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He handed Nichola a folder full of pages he’d spent most of the night highlighting and referencing. “I know who killed Jay Norris,” he said.
Nichola immediately opened the folder and started flipping through. “What? How?”
“I got a really weird tip. I looked into it, and it scans,” Wilford said. He wasn’t even sure why he was showing her this. It wasn’t their beat.
“Who’s able to keep a secret this big for that long?” Nichola asked, flipping through the pages from reference to reference. “We talking about secret government here?”
Wilford shook his head. “More like it voids the fuck our of our contracts,” he said.
It stopped Nichola in her tracks. She stared at him for a few moments before pointing up at the ceiling. Wilford only nodded in return.
“Where’d you get this tip?” Nichola demanded.
“Here’s the weird part: Fucking robot kid,” Wilford said.
“From Milliways? Nichola asked, slapping the folder shut again. “He’s not from here.”
“No,” Wilford agreed. “But he knows shit about us. Don’t fucking ask me how, because you’d hate the answer.” Wilford still hated the answer, but while reading over everything he’d printed out, all he could see was profit. He could start up his own network with this information.
“But he knew who killed Jay Norris?” Nichola asked.
Wilford nodded.
“Shit.” Nichola hissed. She looked frantically around her office for a moment before grabbing Wilford by the hand and pulling him out to the hall. Wilford immediately started following her. There were spies everywhere. Nothing ever stayed a secret once it reached the studio, so they had to find somewhere else to discuss this horrible thing Wilford had stumbled across. They didn’t even talk about it once they got into Nichola’s car. It was too heavy to deal with while trying to dodge traffic. They didn’t say a word about what was in Wilford’s folder until they were inside Nichola’s apartment, where she immediately spread everything out on the dining table.
“Can we use robot kid as a source?” Nichola asked.
“Probably not, but I can ask,” Wilford said. He’d probably have to bribe him, and even then Wilford expected Cisco to laugh in his face.
“What exactly did he say, and how much is your own work?” Nichola asked.
Wilford thought about the conversation, struggling to frame it in a way that wouldn’t crush Nichola. “He didn’t say much, actually,” he said finally. “A lot of places don’t have Los Santos on their maps, but he’d heard of it before. When he dropped a name, I figured it was worth looking into.”
Nichola paused for a moment. “Is he connected?”
Wilford quickly shook his head. “No, he’s never been here, I don’t think. He might have been involved on his own world. This was industrial assassination; not some personal vendetta.”
Nichola read over the pages silently, looking around the spread as if trying to see it all at once. “The FCC would dissolve the network,” she said breathlessly.
Wilford nodded. They could run the story and lose everything, or stay silent and miss out on the biggest scandal of the century. “Would you be able to keep this place?” he asked.
Nichola didn’t answer right away, but eventually nodded. “I could probably get by for about a year. Sharon’s due in like, three months though. They’d be eating through their savings a lot faster.”
Wilford nodded. It would be about fifty people out of a job and likely blackballed. As cutthroat as the industry was, turncoats weren’t treated kindly. Wilford would have to turn things around within the quarter if he wanted to run this story.
“Let’s build it,” Nichola said finally. “Keep working on it, but keep it close. Let Bill and Sharon get their head above water, and we’ll figure out what we’d want to do after. You can live off your savings. The rest of us can’t.”
Wilford nodded. He’d sworn to himself when he started this company that he was never going to throw the workforce under the bus. He needed loyalty more than he needed immediate gains. Loyalty here would mean not starting from zero. If he played his cards right, it wouldn’t be starting over; it would simply be moving house.
“I’ll keep digging,” he agreed. “We can’t not run this. It’s too big.”
“It’s a fucking game changer,” Nichola said. “We’re going to need all the immunity we can get, so we’re doing it right. That means sharing this.”
“Sharing is how you get scooped,” Wilford pointed out. This was his story. Like hell was he sharing.
“Not sharing is how you get killed, or go to prison,” Nichola pointed out. “That might have been an acceptable risk for you last year, but you can’t be reckless anymore. I’m not going to take that risk, and neither is Billy. We need to do it right, for everyone.”
They couldn’t ignore this story. It had to run. But it was never going to happen without everyone onboard. Wilford was alone, because Nichola was right. The best case scenario in the whole disaster was everyone losing their jobs.
“How long?” Wilford asked finally.
Nichola thought for a few seconds. “One year,” she said. “We’ll run it next year. That’ll give you at least six months to build a rock solid case before we take it to the feds.”
Wilford knew he was right, but so was Nichola, again. The dots were all connected, but there could be more evidence to solidify the narrative. Six months suddenly didn’t seem like enough time to do that without revealing the bigger truth. Destroying a network, or an industry was one thing. He wasn’t quite ready for world-wide chaos.
“A year,” he said, looking over the papers again. “I’ll need to draw up some expenses.”
“Do that,” Nichola said. “As soon as possible.”
Wilford suddenly had a lot of work to do.
He’s always known his world is different. And there’s always been an explanation for that. He just never thought about it. He held onto that tiny bit of information because his mind refused to forget it, keeping it locked away behind everything else.
But it was there. And it needed to be dealt with. Wilford was older now; sober and better equipped to deal with earth-shattering information. He was going to do this properly. No destroyed hotel rooms, no coke-fuelled rampages. Just a cup of coffee, a nicotine patch, and a notepad. Proper journalism shit this time.
Starting was easy. Cisco had recognised the city, but nobody else at the bar had (or at least, they hadn’t admitted it, which was just important). Cisco had immediately clammed up after, suggesting others may have also recognised the city, but hadn’t said anything out of some sort of social etiquette. Wilford didn’t remember much about the last time someone had ruined his day with information he didn’t want to hear, but he was willing to bet that there was a pretty good chance that he hadn’t quite been the first person to react poorly.
His first search took him nowhere unexpected. A few glossy maps with poor detail and even worse accuracy, plots that sounded downright pedestrian (people tended to be afraid of Wilford and where he’s from; he had to keep reminding himself that squishy people probably didn’t see things the same way). As dull as most of it sounded, there were some morsels of truth. Jay Norris’ head exploding at a keynote address got a solid week of air time, but nobody ever figured out who it was. And yet, Wilford had a list of names right in front of him. He wrote them down, citing every date and detail he could get from the basic amount of text.
He hadn’t got nearly this far last time. He’d found just enough to confirm what Jim had said, and then promptly lost his damn mind. But now he was curious, because he did remember something else Jim had said. Wilford was tempted to look him up there in the bar’s library, but decided he’d rather do something else. He’d been gone for too long anyway, and wanted to try to get a shower in before the kid woke back up.
Michael De Santa didn’t exist. Not before 2013, anyway. Neither did his wife or two children. They’d all materialised out of thin air. On the surface, dates were there; birth certificates and job and school histories, but those things didn’t exist either. Signatures by people who didn’t exist, schools and businesses that didn’t exist. Shell entities run by people whose job it was to give fake references and confirmations for people sneaking their way back into society.
Hacking local databases was one thing; Wilford rarely thought twice before doing it. But only a grade A moron would try to get into FIB systems on home wifi with a personal laptop. But there were more things he could try, because the book had more names. Names like Michael Townley, and wouldn’t you know, the man died in 2013. Every single name Wilford searched gave positive hits somewhere. He sent every single page of it to his printer.
But he wasn’t done yet. There was more to deal with, because all those years ago, Jim had said something else. Something that only remained a vague idea, but which Wilford couldn’t help but search. Jim Moriarty turned up fuck all, beyond half a dozen people on LifeInvader. James Moriarty wasn’t much better. Then Wilford tried searching for Sherlock Holmes, on the basis that it was kind of a weird name that wasn’t likely to be shared by dozens of people trying to be internet-popular. Which was indeed the case. This time, he got bad blog posts and impossible-to-read news clippings of some celebrity cop or something from the 1800s. A page about cults and eldritch horrors caught Wilford’s attention. While this particular Sherlock Holmes never did cross paths with any eldritch horrors, he did seem to travel all over hell and creation to find the cultists. Including some Swiss asylum, where another familiar name finally popped up. It was a trail Wilford had to follow, and couldn’t help laughing at. He sent all this to the printer as well.
As soon as he was through the front doors, Wilford rushed down the hall and let himself into Nichola’s office. Wilford glanced around it, and then over his shoulder.
“I got something big,” he said, once he was sure nobody was close enough to hear.
“How big?” Nichola already seemed intrigued.
Wilford stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He handed Nichola a folder full of pages he’d spent most of the night highlighting and referencing. “I know who killed Jay Norris,” he said.
Nichola immediately opened the folder and started flipping through. “What? How?”
“I got a really weird tip. I looked into it, and it scans,” Wilford said. He wasn’t even sure why he was showing her this. It wasn’t their beat.
“Who’s able to keep a secret this big for that long?” Nichola asked, flipping through the pages from reference to reference. “We talking about secret government here?”
Wilford shook his head. “More like it voids the fuck our of our contracts,” he said.
It stopped Nichola in her tracks. She stared at him for a few moments before pointing up at the ceiling. Wilford only nodded in return.
“Where’d you get this tip?” Nichola demanded.
“Here’s the weird part: Fucking robot kid,” Wilford said.
“From Milliways? Nichola asked, slapping the folder shut again. “He’s not from here.”
“No,” Wilford agreed. “But he knows shit about us. Don’t fucking ask me how, because you’d hate the answer.” Wilford still hated the answer, but while reading over everything he’d printed out, all he could see was profit. He could start up his own network with this information.
“But he knew who killed Jay Norris?” Nichola asked.
Wilford nodded.
“Shit.” Nichola hissed. She looked frantically around her office for a moment before grabbing Wilford by the hand and pulling him out to the hall. Wilford immediately started following her. There were spies everywhere. Nothing ever stayed a secret once it reached the studio, so they had to find somewhere else to discuss this horrible thing Wilford had stumbled across. They didn’t even talk about it once they got into Nichola’s car. It was too heavy to deal with while trying to dodge traffic. They didn’t say a word about what was in Wilford’s folder until they were inside Nichola’s apartment, where she immediately spread everything out on the dining table.
“Can we use robot kid as a source?” Nichola asked.
“Probably not, but I can ask,” Wilford said. He’d probably have to bribe him, and even then Wilford expected Cisco to laugh in his face.
“What exactly did he say, and how much is your own work?” Nichola asked.
Wilford thought about the conversation, struggling to frame it in a way that wouldn’t crush Nichola. “He didn’t say much, actually,” he said finally. “A lot of places don’t have Los Santos on their maps, but he’d heard of it before. When he dropped a name, I figured it was worth looking into.”
Nichola paused for a moment. “Is he connected?”
Wilford quickly shook his head. “No, he’s never been here, I don’t think. He might have been involved on his own world. This was industrial assassination; not some personal vendetta.”
Nichola read over the pages silently, looking around the spread as if trying to see it all at once. “The FCC would dissolve the network,” she said breathlessly.
Wilford nodded. They could run the story and lose everything, or stay silent and miss out on the biggest scandal of the century. “Would you be able to keep this place?” he asked.
Nichola didn’t answer right away, but eventually nodded. “I could probably get by for about a year. Sharon’s due in like, three months though. They’d be eating through their savings a lot faster.”
Wilford nodded. It would be about fifty people out of a job and likely blackballed. As cutthroat as the industry was, turncoats weren’t treated kindly. Wilford would have to turn things around within the quarter if he wanted to run this story.
“Let’s build it,” Nichola said finally. “Keep working on it, but keep it close. Let Bill and Sharon get their head above water, and we’ll figure out what we’d want to do after. You can live off your savings. The rest of us can’t.”
Wilford nodded. He’d sworn to himself when he started this company that he was never going to throw the workforce under the bus. He needed loyalty more than he needed immediate gains. Loyalty here would mean not starting from zero. If he played his cards right, it wouldn’t be starting over; it would simply be moving house.
“I’ll keep digging,” he agreed. “We can’t not run this. It’s too big.”
“It’s a fucking game changer,” Nichola said. “We’re going to need all the immunity we can get, so we’re doing it right. That means sharing this.”
“Sharing is how you get scooped,” Wilford pointed out. This was his story. Like hell was he sharing.
“Not sharing is how you get killed, or go to prison,” Nichola pointed out. “That might have been an acceptable risk for you last year, but you can’t be reckless anymore. I’m not going to take that risk, and neither is Billy. We need to do it right, for everyone.”
They couldn’t ignore this story. It had to run. But it was never going to happen without everyone onboard. Wilford was alone, because Nichola was right. The best case scenario in the whole disaster was everyone losing their jobs.
“How long?” Wilford asked finally.
Nichola thought for a few seconds. “One year,” she said. “We’ll run it next year. That’ll give you at least six months to build a rock solid case before we take it to the feds.”
Wilford knew he was right, but so was Nichola, again. The dots were all connected, but there could be more evidence to solidify the narrative. Six months suddenly didn’t seem like enough time to do that without revealing the bigger truth. Destroying a network, or an industry was one thing. He wasn’t quite ready for world-wide chaos.
“A year,” he said, looking over the papers again. “I’ll need to draw up some expenses.”
“Do that,” Nichola said. “As soon as possible.”
Wilford suddenly had a lot of work to do.
