“Orphans” — A Play in Three Acts.
Act I is based on the author's last real-life conversation with the founder of TeamPCP. The events and dialogue have been dramatized.
An office after its institution has moved out, but before its authority has noticed. It might once have been a weather station, a customs clearing room, or the complaints department of a republic that dissolved during a long weekend.
No windows. A low hum in the walls. Rain heard through concrete, distant and heavy.
At center, under a glaring white examination lamp on an articulated arm, sits a steel workshop table. On it lies PREQUEL's laptop: matte-black, chassis split open, back panel set aside. Beside it, tiny torx screws are laid out in a neat, deliberate constellation.
T-PCP sits on the near side of the table, bent over the machine with an anti-static wrist strap clipped to the frame. He works with a precision screwdriver. His coat — heavy, damp at the shoulders — hangs over the back of the chair beside him.
PREQUEL sits across from him, arms pulled tight to her body. She repeatedly glances toward a battered black rotary telephone sitting on a metal filing cabinet against the far wall. Its cord has been cleanly cut; the severed rubber tip dangles three inches above the linoleum.
T-PCP glances up, watching her watch it.
The dead laptop display catches the harsh overhead light, holding faint, warped reflections.
T-PCP
Expecting someone?
PREQUEL
Not through the door, no. I hope–
T-PCP
And this… what is it you call it? This Encyclopaedia Black-hat-tica?
PREQUEL
It's a wiki.
T-PCP
A wiki. And you—
PREQUEL
May I write about you?
(A pause. The screwdriver clicks twice against a mounting bracket.)
T-PCP
No.
PREQUEL
Good. That keeps it short and sweet then. I have your “no,” and I'm all out of small talk anyway.
T-PCP
There was small talk?
PREQUEL
How about your name, then. For the masthead.
T-PCP
It's a warrant.
PREQUEL
Not your real one.
T-PCP
Still a warrant. Only one that learned how to introduce itself one too many times. Save your ink.
PREQUEL
I did. It's all digital. No printed copies, no book-signing–
T-PCP
You came all this way with… this? Not a single decent question within earshot.
PREQUEL
What about the work?
(T-PCP points the fine tip of the screwdriver directly across the table at her.)
T-PCP
That work doesn't have a mother to call.
PREQUEL
That's not the same as having nothing to write home about. By the way, I heard-
T-PCP
Yes, that bastard Krebs, he called my mother. Also, I am home.
(A tiny screw pops free. He catches it on the magnetized tip.)
T-PCP
Not for more than a year, though…
PREQUEL
Lease?
T-PCP
Are you daft? Sentence.
PREQUEL
Which court?
T-PCP
Calendar.
(He places the screw precisely into the pattern on the mat.)
PREQUEL
You answer every question like someone is transcribing you for the record.
T-PCP
Someone usually is. Why are you…here, wanna be useful?
(PREQUEL's eyes flick back to the severed telephone.)
T-PCP
Turn your phone's flash on. Hold it up. Over–
(PREQUEL turns on her phone torch and points it straight at his face.)
T-PCP
(He blinks hard against the flash, shielding his eyes.)
Over the patient…Please?
PREQUEL
(Lowers the beam to the open motherboard)
You look ill. Man….
T-PCP
(Looks down and up quickly)
So does the board. Only one of us is on the clock giving the other one aftercare.
PREQUEL
What did you take before I got here?
(T-PCP uses a pair of angled tweezers to test a ribbon cable.)
T-PCP
Meth. Fair bit.
PREQUEL
My man.
T-PCP
Smoked some crack too, earlier. But…
PREQUEL
Yeah?
T-PCP
Garbage. Hated it. Is this going on the masthead? Or your stupid wiki?
PREQUEL
Neither. (pause) I'm going into a k-hole tomorrow.
T-PCP
The meth is clean, at least. I'll try to get some diazepam later to land, if someone fronts me. I have debts.
PREQUEL
So deep they'll need a crane to dredge me out. Some big, ancient bird with hollow bones and an ugly Latin name.
T-PCP
Hold the light still.
PREQUEL
Have you heard of the food so nice they named it twice?
(She smirks, the light wavering over the desk. T-PCP doesn't look up.)
T-PCP
The left hinge is sheared clean off. Just like your trainwreck of thought.
PREQUEL
It won't post. That's the real problem.
T-PCP
Two separate issues.
PREQUEL
Can you fix both? I need it by morning.
T-PCP
I can fix both. I don't fix people's mornings.
PREQUEL
Something lands at nine.
T-PCP
(not looking up)
A bird?
PREQUEL
Something like that.
T-PCP
“People always blame the soul when the lid won't stay open.” How about that? Use that in your wiki. You can sound cynical and brilliant all at once. And the punchline to your stupid joke is couscous.
PREQUEL
The bird was so wise they named it Antigone antigone.
(A dry puff of air from PREQUEL. T-PCP doesn't react.)
PREQUEL
By the way, it made a sound when it died. On boot.
T-PCP
What kind of sound?
PREQUEL
Like, you know… a final one.
T-PCP
You think machines know which sound is their final one? Machines are like people - they don't.
(T-PCP prises the lithium-polymer pack up. It bulges unnaturally beneath the silver foil.)
T-PCP
Gee, would you look at that. Someone's been eating well.
(He sets the swollen pack aside. Taped to the chassis beneath it: a white label, a date in ballpoint — handwriting that is neither his nor hers. He reads it. He doesn't read it aloud.)
PREQUEL
(Automatic correction)
Eating good—wait, no, eating well. And to be fair—
T-PCP
To be fair, I'm not talking about you. You keep dragging the conversation back to yourself. I'm looking at what's on the bench: a swollen cell that wants to ignite.
PREQUEL
Press it flat while it's still warm, then, wordsmith-part-time-technician.
T-PCP
Do that and we both leave this basement in an ambulance. My time would still be billable. Did you think your joke landed, by the way?
PREQUEL
Some jokes work on some people, some of the time.
T-PCP
People are poorly engineered.
PREQUEL
What was TeamPCP supposed to be, then?
T-PCP
A school.
PREQUEL
It looked a little cult-y from the outside.
T-PCP
Yeah, sure, it'll look a little cult-y when the students stare at the teacher's ass instead of reading the board. (pause) And it was never about the crew. It was about the work.
PREQUEL
What did you teach?
T-PCP
Exploits. Post-Exploitation. Lateral movement. Supply-chain–
PREQUEL
And they learned?
T-PCP
I can't breach my way into their heads. They watched the screen.
PREQUEL
You wanted disciples.
T-PCP
I wanted peers. Disciples are what you end up with when you start noticing that nobody's doing their fucking homework.
PREQUEL
Give me the syllabus, please.
T-PCP
No.
PREQUEL
Why?
T-PCP
They're my methods. Methods become signatures and signatures become exhibits in an annex.
PREQUEL
So you're worried that the school taught handwriting to Interpol.
T-PCP
To federal prosecutors. But you got the gist.
PREQUEL
A simple “no” would have maybe shut me up by now.
T-PCP
A simple “no” is for people who don't have their fingerprints baked into twenty different registries. Like you.
PREQUEL
You claimed you wanted information out in the wild.
T-PCP
Right up until the information learned how to testify.
PREQUEL
Everything testifies eventually. There's a saying about that in the Russian language…I don't have the right words to translate it right now.
T-PCP
Only after the lawyers figure out what they're looking at.
(A drop of moisture falls somewhere in the ductwork overhead. The disconnected telephone sits silent under the lamp's spill.)
PREQUEL
Let me have a whimsical moment.
T-PCP
They let you have those your whole life. Look where you're sitting.
PREQUEL
In the story, the crane delivers the baby and never comes back. Do you ever think it comes back?
T-PCP
Those cranes don't come back, I reckon. That's the whole point of the story.
PREQUEL
The story doesn't say that.
T-PCP
The story stops. Same difference.
(He taps the motherboard with the screwdriver.)
T-PCP
Hold the light still on pin four.
PREQUEL
Maybe it comes back to see what became of the orphan.
T-PCP
Only people come back, and only to make sure reality matches the excuse they already filed.
PREQUEL
Then maybe the crane does that.
T-PCP
Maybe the crane writes an incident log.
PREQUEL
Maybe it needs a signature from the delivery.
(The bit driver slips from T-PCP's fingers. It hits the floor with a small, sharp metallic click. Neither of them moves for two seconds.)
T-PCP (quietly)
Sincerely, what the fuck are we actually talking about?
PREQUEL
A crane.
T-PCP
Oh, and it's a stork, by the way. I don't think I can handle you saying 'crane' one more time. You don't even know what that story means.
PREQUEL
I know what it felt like. I know what it made me promise.
T-PCP
To who?
PREQUEL
Whom. (A beat. She looks at the severed telephone.) Somebody who isn't here.
T-PCP
That's worse.
(T-PCP reaches down, recovers the tool, and wipes the tip against his thumb, checking the magnetic head.)
(PREQUEL switches the torch off and sets the phone face-up on the table between them.)
T-PCP
Everything strips down eventually.
PREQUEL
That's not stripping down, that's eviction.
T-PCP
From what?
PREQUEL
Yourself.
T-PCP
You know that's what 'they' call 'clean', when really all that remains, is a void. A void is clean, I suppose, in a very certain way.
PREQUEL
That's how an addict talks.
T-PCP
No, that's how we function. If we do.
PREQUEL
Who's 'we'?
T-PCP
Us. We are addicts. You and I. Remember?
(PREQUEL's phone, face-up on the table, lights. The lock screen: “woof”. She glances at it. She doesn't open it. It goes dark.)
PREQUEL
No. We keep what tried to kill us so we have proof we didn't invent the damage.
T-PCP
Hey.
PREQUEL
(Peering closer into the opened laptop)
Is the trace burned through?
T-PCP
When I was twelve, I was left to my own devices.
PREQUEL
Mostly electronic?
T-PCP
The pun landed on the kid's head.
(He sets the spudger down. A pause.)
T-PCP
We were the first batch raised entirely online.
PREQUEL
There are thousands of case files written about that era. Don't recite the liturgy to me.
T-PCP
And you?
(A pause.)
PREQUEL
I was raised by MSN chatrooms.
T-PCP
That's fun. Password.
PREQUEL
You said this was a physical fault.
T-PCP
It is.
PREQUEL
Then you don't need my password.
T-PCP
I don't.
PREQUEL
Why ask?
T-PCP
To see if your reflexes are still working.
PREQUEL
And?
T-PCP
You said no. That's something.
PREQUEL
You gave me a “no,” I gave you one. We're square.
T-PCP
Yours was free. Mine cost me twenty minutes of cross-examination.
PREQUEL
The night isn't over.
(T-PCP looks at her. She looks back at the severed cord.)
T-PCP
Is that copper actually running anywhere?
PREQUEL
No.
T-PCP
You check it every two minutes.
PREQUEL
I keep an eye on lots of dead lines.
T-PCP
(He snorts, shaking his head once)
Right.
PREQUEL
That wasn't—
T-PCP
I know what it was, full stop.
(PREQUEL's phone, face-up on the table, lights up. The lock screen shows the unread preview: “hi mom u ok”. She looks at it. She doesn't pick it up. It goes dark.)
T-PCP
Someone's trying to reach you.
PREQUEL
Someone's trying to check I'm alive.
T-PCP
Are you?
(A beat. She doesn't answer.)
PREQUEL
Here's a question for you, then…
T-PCP
Took long enough.
PREQUEL
At what point does an automated worm stop belonging to the person who compiled it?
T-PCP
At execution.
PREQUEL
Try to answer the question.
T-PCP
At replication, then.
PREQUEL
Too late.
T-PCP
Then you don't want the technical answer. Tell me what answer you'd like, and I'll give it, for fuck's sake.
PREQUEL
I want to know when the debt collector starts blowing up my phone.
T-PCP
The courts figure that out by counting the invoices after the servers shut down.
PREQUEL
Who owns the aftermath?
T-PCP
Whoever gets left holding the maintenance contract.
PREQUEL
That's a dodge. The author wrote the initial instructions.
T-PCP
The author writes an imperative. A script is an action looking for an environment.
PREQUEL
You pick the door.
T-PCP
You pick a door. You don't pick the fifty thousand hospital corridors behind it.
PREQUEL
The network doesn't care about your intentions.
T-PCP
Neither does the grand jury.
(PREQUEL's phone lights up again. The lock screen shows: “pls dont disappear”. She turns it over to kill the light — then turns it back, once, to read the time. She stares at it a moment too long.)
T-PCP
What.
PREQUEL
It's losing minutes.
T-PCP
I think it's more your mind.
PREQUEL
(turning the phone face-down again)
Mine didn't used to.
PREQUEL
Does control end when the process detaches?
T-PCP
Control ends the second the packets hit the gateway.
PREQUEL
And the guilt?
(T-PCP says nothing.)
PREQUEL
Responsibility is ownership's ghost. It keeps the address after the house burns down.
T-PCP
You've been sitting on that one.
PREQUEL
It's not going in the wiki. None of this is, really, it's all silly.
T-PCP
The domain. The kill-switch. Why would the author build it in?
PREQUEL
Insurance and fear, a way to reclaim a modicum of control.
T-PCP
Anyone could have registered it.
PREQUEL
Anyone with a browser and ten dollars.
T-PCP
You knew that already.
PREQUEL
Google knows that, it's not classified.
T-PCP
Everyone doesn't.
PREQUEL
And when someone finally did, and the spread stopped?
T-PCP
Then the kid who clicked the button became an international hero for six months, until the bureau decided to audit his old hard drives.
PREQUEL
So nobody stays clean.
T-PCP
Good luck with staying clean when the roof falls in.
(He tilts the chassis, examining the power rail under the glare of the lamp.)
PREQUEL
Your worm, then.
T-PCP
Which one?
PREQUEL
The one that learned to publish itself.
T-PCP
It didn't learn anything. It was instructed.
PREQUEL
By you.
T-PCP
Initially.
PREQUEL
And then it started borrowing other people's credentials. Publishing itself under their names.
T-PCP
That's how the supply chain works.
PREQUEL
That's how you made it work.
T-PCP
Their pipelines signed the releases. Valid provenance. Everything checked out.
PREQUEL
Except the contents.
T-PCP
Exactly.
(He looks rather pleased with himself.)
PREQUEL
You're proud of that.
T-PCP
It demonstrated a fundamental failure of trust.
PREQUEL
By taking advantage of it.
T-PCP
How else would you demonstrate it?
PREQUEL
In a classroom, perhaps. You used to have one.
T-PCP
Nobody listened in the classroom.
PREQUEL
So you gave them homework.
T-PCP
An example.
PREQUEL
That stole credentials.
T-PCP
To demonstrate what those credentials could do.
PREQUEL
And then you published the source. To inspect. To run. To modify.
T-PCP
That's usually what source code is for.
PREQUEL
You offered them prize money, too. Quite the educational institution.
T-PCP
I didn't make anybody enter.
PREQUEL
No. You just supplied the syllabus, the examination, and the scholarship.
(T-PCP returns to the laptop.)
T-PCP
I wanted peers.
PREQUEL
You got disciples.
T-PCP
I got copycats.
PREQUEL
But you wanted the work out in the wild.
T-PCP
I wanted it understood.
PREQUEL
It seems they've understood it rather well.
(A screw turns. Then another.)
T-PCP
I'm not responsible for every skid, larp or… you know, one who merely downloads something.
PREQUEL
But you wrote it.
T-PCP
I wrote our version.
PREQUEL
So now the copies are somebody else's?
T-PCP
The people operating them made their own decisions.
PREQUEL
And the people whose names appeared on the packages?
T-PCP
They didn't make anything.
PREQUEL
Their names say otherwise.
T-PCP
Names aren't evidence of authorship.
(PREQUEL looks toward the severed telephone.)
PREQUEL
No. I suppose they aren't.
(T-PCP puts down the screwdriver.)
T-PCP
I needed a salary.
PREQUEL
That wasn't the whole reason.
T-PCP
It was enough of it. Everything else is flowery poetry.
PREQUEL
You wanted to demonstrate structural vulnerability.
T-PCP
I wanted vendors to stop selling duct tape as security infrastructure. Playing patch-the-hole every Tuesday must get old, surely?
PREQUEL
You think a steady payroll would have stopped it?
T-PCP
A steady contract keeps people from writing weapons out of boredom. A wage is sometimes a kill switch.
PREQUEL
You can't tally the damage that never happened.
T-PCP
Exactly.
PREQUEL
Which means you can't use it as an alibi.
T-PCP
Prevention doesn't leave a paper trail. Or a corpse to cite.
PREQUEL
So the absence of an explosion proves you were harmless?
T-PCP
It proves nobody writes articles about things working quietly.
PREQUEL
And the wreckage?
T-PCP
I'm tired.
PREQUEL
Tired of the topic, or tired of the technicalities?
T-PCP
Both. But, to be candid, of your questions.
(T-PCP picks up a small magnetized screw and guides it back into the corner of the magnesium frame. He drives it home with three smooth turns.)
T-PCP
Look after yourself when you leave here.
PREQUEL
That came out of nowhere. I'm usually the one saying that.
T-PCP
In a place like this? (looks around) I'd expect worse to come out of nowhere.
PREQUEL
Any other professional advice?
T-PCP
Don't lie to the people in the room with you.
PREQUEL
What about to myself?
T-PCP
You least of all. You are also a person in that room.
PREQUEL
Good night, then.
T-PCP
Good night, Ms. Wanna, was it….WannaBe? Or WannaCry?
(PREQUEL stiffens at the name.)
PREQUEL
If I hold something back, it's because it's a matter of staying afloat.
T-PCP
Don't turn into an actor. Especially a threat actor.
PREQUEL
I said staying afloat.
T-PCP
Even when the subpoena shows up?
PREQUEL
Especially then.
T-PCP
They don't see names. They just see entries on a log.
PREQUEL
Meaning?
T-PCP
They'll strip you down to your serial numbers.
PREQUEL
Who will?
T-PCP
Whoever inherits the file after you get tired.
PREQUEL
And if you tell them everything?
T-PCP
They'll catalog the pieces and file them in the basement.
PREQUEL
That doesn't fix anything.
T-PCP
It's how departments operate.
(A long silence. The water overhead drips into a bucket in the hallway. Four steady drops.)
PREQUEL
You said earlier this wasn't about your crew.
T-PCP
It wasn't.
PREQUEL
It was about the work.
T-PCP
That it was.
PREQUEL
And the other worm? The one with the kill-switch.
T-PCP
I didn't write it.
PREQUEL
I know.
T-PCP
Then why are you putting it next to mine?
PREQUEL
I only compiled the timelines.
T-PCP
Yeah, yeah…(muttering) compiled some timelines, she did…
(The screwdriver goes still. He looks at her properly.)
T-PCP
Whose work is it?
PREQUEL
(without looking up)
It doesn't have a 'whose' anymore, apparently.
T-PCP
Everything has one. Even dead things get assigned one at the morgue.
PREQUEL
Maybe someone will sign for it. Let's wait and see, eh?
T-PCP
You sound like you're volunteering. Are you alright?
(A long beat. The rain is audible through the concrete. He looks away first.)
PREQUEL
(quietly, not looking up)
Maybe I am- wait, which one? (pause) But does accepting it make it mine?
T-PCP
Back to the same loop.
PREQUEL
It's the only question that matters.
T-PCP
No.
PREQUEL
What is, then?
T-PCP
Whether the kid I was survives the machinery he built around himself.
PREQUEL
Ok, and?
T-PCP
(A deadpan, gravelly sigh — doing a bad Family Guy impression.)
“Ayyy, Petah.”
PREQUEL
Huh? No it wasn't Petya.
T-PCP
NotPetya, then.
PREQUEL
No. No. Not NotPetya.
T-PCP
So… (faint smirk and pause) Petya?
PREQUEL
Oh, for fuck's sake, man.
T-PCP
We shouldn't get…
(He hesitates.)
T-PCP
…carried away.
(PREQUEL looks down at the table, quiet.)
T-PCP
Come on. Give me one “ayy Petya” so we can close the lid.
PREQUEL
No.
T-PCP
My brain is running on three cylinders. Just let me have it.
PREQUEL
That doesn't resolve anything.
T-PCP
Resolutions are for screens.
PREQUEL
Screens should've been left for movies.
T-PCP
Resolutions are for both! Ha.
PREQUEL
(Quietly)
Ayy, Petya.
T-PCP
Ayy, Petya.
PREQUEL
Good night.
(T-PCP fits the back panel onto the chassis and presses it home — three soft clicks, the shell whole again. He runs a thumb along the seam.)
(T-PCP stands. He unlatches a narrow service door on the stage-left wall—one that blended entirely into the peeling paint until now. He steps through into dark concrete.)
The door clicks shut behind him.
(On the table, the laptop screen sits dark. In the glass, the reflection of a silhouette remains visible, seated where T-PCP was just sitting.)
PREQUEL
(Without looking up.)
You left your coat.
(The reflection does not move. Then, faintly, it shifts—stepping away toward the far edge of the frame, vanishing into the glass's dark corner.)
(The damaged hinge yields. The lid falls shut with a soft click.)
(The swollen battery still lies where he set it aside—disconnected, its foil split. The hinge is still sheared. No power cable is attached. The laptop is shut. There is no power in the machine.)
(A soft, mechanical chirp sounds from the laptop on the table. The internal cooling fan spins up with a clean, low hiss.)
(The lid opens. Slowly. Nothing touches it.)
(The display flickers green, then white.)
(Large monospaced text appears on the terminal:)
[SYSTEM ALERT] ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?
(PREQUEL stares at the text. Her hands hover over the keyboard. She presses two keys:)
I-
(She stops. She reaches out and taps backspace twice.)
(The screen blinks back to a solid underscore prompt.)
(The white examination lamp hums above the empty chair.)
(The severed telephone sits quiet on the metal filing cabinet.)
(Nothing moves.)
BLACKOUT.
(In the darkness, the faint, periodic pulse of a green phosphor cursor continues for five beats.)