ZimMedved

Contains mature language.

ZimMedved

“I dunno about this George, shouldn’t we just hire a professional?”

“I already told you. I’ve taken it to every tech store this side of the Golden Gate. Silicon Valley just doesn’t care about this stuff anymore. But I know what I'm doing.”

“Crash-coursing on YouTube doesn’t make you a professional.”

“Listen, Rich,” George huffed, looking down at his younger brother. “If you’re not gonna do anything helpful, then I’ll see you later. But I for one happen to care about what Granny and Gramps left behind.”

Rich fell silent.

George did too.

After a moment, he sighed and started moving boxes again. 

“Hey, I didn’t mean that, okay? I know you care a whole lot about this place. But to me, this counts as a big part of that, a part that we haven’t ever explored before. If I could just get to the old thing. Granny and Gramps sure left behind a bunch of junk.”

“They would’ve cleaned up. They didn’t plan to go yet.”

“I know, Richie. Listen, help me out, would ya?”

Rich sighed dramatically and started moving boxes to the other side of the attic.

“Fine, just don’t break anything.”

The two brothers heaved one of the last few boxes to the side. The white frame of the old bubble screen became visible. Rich watched as his brother gently patted the top of the old machine, leaving a handprint in the thick blanket of dust. George looked down at his filth-coated palm, then back up at Rich.

“Let’s unearth this thing.” 

They worked to relieve the machine of its cardboard-lined tomb. After the final box found a new home on the far side of the space, they paused to behold the computer. It looked like something from a sci-fi film, and it absolutely delighted the geek in George. He blew off the layer of brown dust to reveal severely yellowed plastic. 

Rich coughed. “Damn, that’s been up here a while.”

“Yeah,” George said, wiping the old screen with the bottom of his shirt. “I told you, this thing’s a relic. I wouldn’t have even known what it was called if not for the box of old manuals and receipts and shit I found up here a few weeks ago. I was looking for more pictures for the memorial service, but... well, I got sidetracked.”

“Listen, George… we don’t have to look at this yet, if it’s too much… I mean, this stuff’s not going anywhere.”

“But aren’t you curious?” George’s eyes were full of awe as he ran his finger along the edges of the computer tower. It was far from shiny, but to him, it was a gem. “Every day this thing just sits here is another day that we don't know what’s on it! Gramps would never let us near this thing when we were kids! It’s probably just his old business stuff, but there might be cool old games on it, or cheesy emails he sent to Granny! Or maybe dirty stuff…”

Queue a smack on the arm from Rich.

“Ow,” George complained. Then his face lit up. “Maybe there’s some old love letters, the secret evidence of a scandal! Or maybe Gramps had a secret identity and did some shifty business! Or maybe they were secret agents, and there are Cold War military secrets on here! C’mon man, we’ve gotta check it out!”

Rich rolled his eyes. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe George was born first. “You’re so full of shit, Georgie.”

“Hey, don’t call me that!”

Half an hour and half a life’s worth of cussing later, the two brothers had managed to heave the old computer set downstairs and to the kitchen in-tact. Now it all sat before them on the old table. Everything was set to go, and while Rich would never admit it to George, he was growing unbearably curious.

“Alright,” George muttered. “Here goes.” He held the power cord in his hands. This thing better turn on. 

He took a deep breath, then thrust the thing into the outlet. Rich held his breath as George stood to face the monitor, then pressed the power button on the tower.

A second passed.

Two seconds.

Nothing.

No noise, no light, no picture, no nothing.

Nothing happened. 

George panicked a bit, looking at the cord, tracing it with his eyes back up to the computer tower. Everything was plugged in right, right?! He smacked the monitor a bit aggressively. Nothing. He pressed the power button one more time. Two more times. Three more times. Four more-

“George.”

He paused. His younger brother wore that signature shit-eating smirk.

“What?” 

Rich pointed.

“What?!”

The younger brother sighed. “It might help if you flip that switch.”

George looked at the back of the tower. Sure enough, above the power cord plug-in was a little power switch. George couldn’t turn it on fast enough. As soon as he did, Rich shouted.

“What is it?!”

“Look!” Rich pointed at the front of the computer tower.

There she was, in all her green, glowing glory: the indicator light.

George’s relief was immeasurable as he pressed the power button. He heard the monitor’s staticy pop, and the image warmed onto the screen.

Both boys celebrated, only to be met with a password-protected login screen.

Rich’s satisfaction wore right off. “Wait,” he whined. “That’s it?”

“Ah, not to worry my fine little man,” George hammed. “This is where I come in.”

He pulled up a chair, slid the keyboard over, and cracked his knuckles in dramatic fashion. Rich rolled his eyes.

“Now,” George started talking fast, his excitement on his sleeve.

He began typing. 

12345. 

“First, you just try some of the more simple ones…” 

Enter. 

“...but I doubt Gramps would have-”

The home screen loaded.

“Uh, well, we’re in. I guess Gramps must not have had big secrets after all.”

“I guess not.”

“Well, shall we?”

“You’re the driver here, Georgie, show me what you got.” 

“Don’t call me that.”

Hours went by as the boys dug through FileFinder. There were a surprising amount of files to be found, and each one they scoured completely. There were old family pictures, recipes, to-do lists… all kinds of stuff. Then, towards the end of the alphabetized selection, George saw what looked like a game startup file. He clicked it with no hesitation.

“ZBear.exe? What’s ZBear?” Rich hadn’t heard of such a game. Neither had George.

The screen went black, then green, then black, then blue. The dreaded white text of a crash report filled the so-fondly-dubbed Blue Screen of Death.

“Geoooorge!” Rich fussed.

George flicked the power switch off and then on again, but the same blue screen appeared.

Rich whined. “You broke it.”

“Did not!” George retorted, cheeks hot with frustration.

“Did too,” Rich sighed.

“No,” George stood firm. “I did not. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. I might not know a whole lot about computers, but I knew enough to work at a support booth in the mall when I was fifteen. And I know what this screen is, and why it comes up, and… and this doesn’t make any sense. It would make sense if that file had been fishy. But that was a file Gramps had on his computer. I don’t know if you were paying any attention, but FileFinder here said this ZBear thing was last opened not three months ago. Not a month before their accident. And as far as I could tell, this thing was working fine when we first turned it on, was it not?”

Rich sighed. “It was,” he grumbled.

“Right,” George huffed. “It was. Something’s up here.”

“Well,” Rich sighed, moving to grab his car keys. “Let me know if you figure it out. I’ve gotta get home. It’s late.”

“Alright,” George sighed. “Hey, put on the coffeemaker before you go, would ya? I wanna crack this thing.”

Rich sighed and did as he was asked.

“Just don’t stay up too late.” He headed for the door.

“I will,” George smiled. 

Rich turned one more time to see his brother with that stupid glimmer in his eyes. He just wasn’t going to give this thing up.

He sighed. “Alright. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Good luck, Georgie.”

“Be safe,” George said. 

“I won’t,” Rich called as he went out the door. “Love ya mean it!”

George smiled. “You too!”

And then he was alone. Alone with this blue wall. And he was going to find a way around it.

Rich’s phone buzzed obnoxiously on his nightstand until he finally rolled over and snatched it up. 

3:09 am. Four missed calls from Practice Child. 

Dammit George, this had better be good.

He called George back, and the line didn't even ring once before his brother’s excited voice blew out his tired eardrum.

“Richie, I’ve found something!”

Rich yawned. “That’s great George, say, can you quiet down? It’s three in the morning, you know.”

“Oh, well damn, it sure is!”

“Well, what did you find then?”

“Uh…”

“George?”

“Well, you’ll have to see it. It’s some weird shit. I don’t want to talk about it on here.”

Rich rubbed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Uh, just get over here whenever you can tomorrow. I’ll show you.”

“You gonna spend the night there or something?”

“Uh, yeah. Might as well, our old beds are still here. And I don’t want to leave this here alone. It… It really is extraordinary, Richie. I mean, I don’t know if you want to see it.”

“Well, you can’t just say that. Now I’ve gotta come over tonight.”

“Ok, I’ll show you when you get here. See you soon.”

“Yeah, see ya. Be there in thirty.”

“Alright, bye.”

“Bye.”

Rich hung up and sighed. Dammit George. Never could just leave things alone, could you?

George’s doom-scrolling was interrupted by a soft knock at the door to his grandparent’s old house. He could hardly tear himself away from the screen to let Rich in. As soon as he unlocked the door, he immediately rushed back to his seat at the computer. His younger brother sat his things down and flicked on the light.

“No, no,” George flinched like a cave creature. “Leave it off!”

“Damn George, how much coffee have you had?”

The empty cups on the table numbered four.

“Not enough,” George sighed. “Now turn the damn light out and get your ass over here.”

He scooted over to let Rich take a look.

“Goerge, you’re pranking me, right?”

“C’mon Rich, you know I’m not that good with computers.”

“Well can you explain to me what the fuck I’m looking at?!”

“No! That’s why I called you here! I don’t know what the fuck you’re looking at either!”

“That bullshit you said earlier about Cold War secrets or whatever, you must be pranking me right now!”

“No! It was a joke, I swear! I didn’t mean for it to be true!”

“But this stuff is- this is so illegal! I feel like I shouldn’t even be seeing this shit right now!”

“Because you shouldn’t!”

“Where the fuck did you find this shit? What is this, ZimMedved? What the fuck is this file, George?!”

“Would you lower your damn voice? Listen, it’s not a file, this is a whole program! It’s like, there’s the normal computer, and then there’s this whole other computer inside! I think the ZBear file is the gateway. That blue screen was a fake, Rich! I knew it didn’t look right!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Listen, Rich,” George kneeled next to him, gesturing wildly with his jittery hands. “I read that error text over and over again. It didn’t sound right, not even for this old OS. I’ve seen that screen more times than I can count. At that point I always had to tell the customer to replace the motherboard or to get a new computer. I read it over and over. It wasn’t a real kill code, Rich. Just subtle differences stood out at first. A capitalization error here, an extra space there. But the string of error numbers at the bottom… It was a code, Rich. A cipher. I-”

“Oh, don’t get started with all your conspiracy stuff, George, I really-”

“But this shit is real, Rich,” George pointed at the computer screen, which was full of a whole index of files in Cyrillics in some strange version of FileFinder. There were texts, graphs, spreadsheets, charts, all in Cyrillics but full of images that told enough without any translation. Military diagrams, graphic images of bodies and marked evidence, foreign shipping schedules, so many things that they shouldn’t be seeing right now, that they couldn’t be seeing right now. What the hell had they dug up?

“It was a book cipher, Rich,” George continued, grave in tone, voice low and laden with mystery. He smacked his palm flat on the face of a dusty red novel. Rich vaguely remembered seeing it on the shelves as a child. 

“No,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” George growled out. “This was one of the only books Gramps kept on the top shelf. Granny told us it was up there because it was for decoration, not for reading. Well, now we know why.” He cracked open the old hard-cover text, feeling across the yellow-edged first page. “Look,” he said. “This is Granny’s handwriting, It’s in Russian, but that is her handwriting, no doubt about it.”

“Russia is a huge country! Surely somebody might have the same handwriting!”

“But would they know how she never learned cursive and messed up on the Zs every time?”

“Well-”

“Or how she was actually left-handed and all her words got sloppy toward the right side of the page?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Or how in every game of Clue we ever played she would always insist on playing as Mrs. White? Who in Russia would sign a letter as one Mrs. White, like she did here?!”

“Enough, George! You’re going too far with all this!”

“Oh, really?” George said, the weight returning to his voice.

He turned to the last page of the book. Taped inside the back cover was an old, time-stained photograph. In the top corner was their grandmother’s handwriting again, and then their grandfather’s. Both in Cyrillics. A date was at the bottom. But what was sickening was the English writing next to the date. It could not be mistaken. It was their grandmother’s.

Ottawa, Winter 1945.

Rich studied the photograph. His grandparents, both so young, both with fake bleach-blonde hair. They posed next to two other men and another woman. In the background, snow fell over the roof of an old, red-sided building. A Canadian flag waved in the courtyard, along with a Soviet one. 

George navigated to one of the last files in the directory. The first page was in Cyrillics, but the second page was in English.

It had a date on it, oddly enough, a date only a few months in the future. 26 December 2011.

“Do you know what that date means?”

“Nevermind that, George, did you read this fucking thing?!”

“Yes. That date marks the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR.”

“Dude.”

“I know.”

“What the hell.”

“I know.”

Rich read the letter. George waited for him to finish.

“Rich, listen, this thing is like the Zimmerman Note! Remember that, from history class? The Germans tried to fake something to convince Mexico to attack the US in World War I. This one is in English, but it’s talking about attacking us, Rich. It must be intended for Canada. They’re trying to blame something on us and make Canada mad for it. But as far as I know, nothing’s blown up in Canada lately. That’s when I got really worried.”

“This is when you got worried?!”

“Well, listen, Rich, if that stuff was enough to make you sick, then buckle up.”

George closed the file, despite Rich’s protests, and opened another. A diagram of an explosive device. Results of a simulation. Plans of Montreal. Marked routes. Names (obviously coded) and assigned tasks. A list of items and where they should be placed. A scripted response for questioners.

“Rich, the United States and Russia still have the two biggest nuclear arsenals. The rest of the world isn’t even close. And do you know why they never attacked each other? Because they knew that they would both absolutely flatten each other. But what if Russia kept the war in North America only? What if the US and Canada flattened each other instead? Then Russia becomes the only country with any type of footing in the nuclear game. Their only threat is out of the way, and they walk away unscathed. They reconstitute the Soviet Union and start taking over Europe, and who is to stop them? It’s the perfect evil plan.”

“George, we have to tell someone about this.”

“Rich,” George said, his voice almost a whisper, “Why do you think Granny and Gramps passed how they did? Dude, somebody already knows.”

“That’s why we’ve gotta tell someone on our side, like the FBI, or the CIA, or something.”

George shook his head.

“What if it was somebody on our side who made the move?”

“But it could’ve just as easily been some radical from Russia!”

“But why would this Soviet faction want their own spies dead?”

“I dunno, maybe they leaked! Who knows what goes on in the world of spies, George, but this is huge. Like, active threat huge. We’ve gotta tell somebody, and get on witness protection or something!”

“I know you’re right, but I just don’t like any of this. Not at all.”

“Well me neither, but we can’t just let a bunch of Canadians get blown up. And anyway, we’d be in so much more trouble for just sitting on this information instead of reporting it.”

George sighed and rubbed his eyes. 

“Rich, put on another pot of coffee. We’re gonna need it.”