Bernie the bolt.

I got a text message on the way back from Dalmuir Station. I checked my phone. Saw it was from Bernie. “Cm up & see me,” it read. His flat was beside the station, but was already on the way up the hill and heading home. I was already soaked through, it was pissing down and was striding past the Scout Hall, before good old Catholic guilt pulled the handbrake, and made me do a swift three-point turn, back down towards the train station and the high rise where he stayed.

It had been a while since I’d seen Bernie, but not long enough. I guessed I was his only mate, and I didn’t even like him. But we were related in that convoluted way that we shared the same birthday, went to the same schools and my mum knew his mum and dad and he lived in the street running parallel to ours. Back then that was enough and I called Mr and Mrs Connelly, Auntie Mary and Uncle Simon. She was a bit of a religious nut, the type that bought newspapers so she could cut out pictures of Page 3 girls. But she was quite safe with Bernie. He came pre-packaged by Virgin birth in sensible shoes, sensible grey trouser and a sensible green anorak. If a slug could walk upright and wear Joe 90 glasses that was Bernie Connelly. When he sneered spittle out of the side of his mouth, it made you squirm and it was usually something disgusting he’d show you. He wasn’t the type of boy that you’d let anywhere near your wee sister’s knickers drawer. He hadn’t changed much now he was in a wheel chair.

But he was the smartest boy I knew. For him school work was for dummies. Maths, and in particular the early computers, were his way into the world. His face had that greenish tinge from looking at the screen. He was on the internet before I knew there was such a thing, downloading a dot-matrix nudie picture that could be printed off. While I was at Uni I was pretty sure he spent most of his adult life cocooned and crawling about the nether world of the Deep Net, strengthening connections and living an alternative life in which he wasn’t in a wheel chair, wasn’t an arsehole and wasn’t wanking himself to death. He lived on the eighth floor of Clydecourt.

‘It’s me,’ I said, when he answered the buzzer.  While I waited for the lift I wondered what kind of trouble Bernie had got himself into now. I figured it would be something to do with his carers, but I’d told him the last time I wasn’t going to get involved and if they contacted the police and withdrew services it was his fault. No one was above the law. And if somebody wanted to tip his wheelchair with him strapped to it off the veranda I’d be cheering just like everybody else.

He’d given me his spare key, but I didn’t need to use it. He was waiting for me in the hall, spinning the wheels in his chair and heading back towards the living room. He’d two rooms. One of the doors was shut, but I caught a whiff of air freshener and got a glimpse of his bedroom and it looked tidy. His living room was functional. Tiles on the floor, thirty-inch telly hung on the wall, two-seater leather couch for guests that never arrived, with a glass table in front of it that needed dusted and had an oversized Spots Direct mug sitting on it half-filled with the scum of cold tea. The view was spectacular out over the rooftops and towards the River Clyde.

‘Look at this,’ he said, a note of triumph in his voice that I’d come to recognise wasn’t always a good thing. He propped his chair near the kitchen door with an Apple Mac on his lap the screen illuminating the dark glasses he was wearing.

He was dying to show me something, but I didn’t budge, held my hand up flat, in a stop sign. ‘If it’s anything illegal I don’t want to see it. And if it’s kiddie porn, don’t think I won’t be calling the police. I’ll take that computer off you, skite it aff your baldy heid, and go up and show your mum what you’ve been up to.’

‘Nah,’ he said, grinning. ‘Nothing like that. It’s just something about you, you might like to see.’

‘Whit?’ But I’d already scooted around the couch and was peering over his shoulder. An icon with the solidity of a knight on a chessboard showed at the edge of the screen. The graphics were amazing and I looked down at my face, looking perplexed, squinting back up at me from the computer screen as if I was in the grocers paying for booze at the counter and looking into the camera angled at your face, which made you squint even more, and touch the back of your head and think I’m not going baldy, am I? An icon of Bernie was next to me. Running between us was a pulse that changed colour and bounced back and forward between us. A rainbow coloured pulse bounced between my icon’s face and that of Eve, my girlfriend, switching and changing luminosity and I could see that she was home before me, probably in making the dinner to surprise me. A few streets away my sister was also at home. The pulse connecting her icon with mine wasn’t as bright, nor as clear. And as I looked at the screen more and more faces I knew were linked in similar ways.

‘What the fuck is this? I said, but despite myself, I couldn’t keep the note of admiration out of my voices. ‘Some kind of tracking device?’

‘Kinda,’ said Bernie, ‘it’s an app. He waved his hand over the screen. And the connections between my icon and others branched in the same way which happens when you change the dimensions of Google maps until they were like flickering fireflies.  

‘What are they wee light things?’ I asked.

‘That’s money.’

‘Whit’d you mean.’

‘What you owe and what you have as assets,’ Bernie shrugged. ‘Taking into account the price of money, the interest rate, the exchange rates, how much your assets are valued at and the current cost of depreciation, all factored in and happening in real time. Money says who you are, what you are and where you are. It’s the lifeblood of life and if you’ve enough computing capacity it all shows up by measuring not only what is in the spotlight, but also the shadow it throws.’

I shook my head, not really understanding what he was saying. It seemed stupid to spend so much time on a machine that told the world how skint I was.

Benny leaned forward and addressed the computer screen. ‘How much has Danny got in the bank?’

‘Deficit £2 121.23,’ said a well-modulated voice. ‘Deficit £2 121.22. Deficit £2 121. 23.’

‘Enough,’ said Bernie, huffing through his nose. ‘Round it up to the nearest whole number and outline his last three purchases.’

The machine rattled off the price I’d paid for the train ticket, the money I’d spent in Asda, the night before and the golf balls I’d bought online.

‘Pretty impressive,’ I admitted. But it didn’t tell you about the cheesy bake I bought for lunch today, nor the packet of chewing gum.

‘True,’ said Bernie. ‘Purchases like that are outside the scope of its software, but I’m sure as the algorithms match your behaviour to your purchases they will also be factored in.’

‘Fuckin shut up,’ I said. ‘Nobody is interested in how many packets of chewing gum I buy.’

‘But the apps not just about you,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s about everybody.’

‘Whit’d you mean?’

Bernie looked up at me. ‘Everybody, name somebody?’

Put on the spot, I scrunched my face up, couldn’t think of anybody’s name. ‘David Cameron,’ I blurted out.

An icon flashed up on the bottom corner of the screen with David Cameron’s face and the number of connections pulsed like the all the streets in London during rush hour and lit with traffic.

‘Whit’s that there? I said, my finger hovering over an icon of Rupert Murdoch.

‘A publishing contract, initial payment £1.25 million for the Prime Minister’s memoirs,’ said the disembodied voice.

‘The shite he talks he’s no’ worth that,’ I said exasperated.

Bernie shut the screen over. ‘Well?’ he asked, a smug look on his face and an unconvincing smile.

‘Cunt,’ I put my hand on Bernie’s shoulder. ‘I don’t mean you, I mean David Cameron.’

He pushed his chair over to the window, looking out into darkening sky and the roofs of the tenements fading from view. I didn’t know what to think, and took a seat on the couch.

‘Doesn’t’. Then I started again. ‘Isn’t that sort of information encrypted? I mean you can’t just hack into the Prime Minister’s computer.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It is.’ And started fidgeting and rubbing his knuckles, not meeting my gaze, talking into his lap. ‘But remember that Superman film we both loved. When Superman had to leave Lois Lane on the edge of crumbing dam while he want and rescued someone else.’ He sniffed, his head trembling. ‘Then when he got back she was already dead?’

‘If you say so,’ I said. I did remember the film, but was embarrassed. We were big Superman fans and often wore capes made out of anoraks perched on our heads, and costumes fashioned out of mismatched clothes. But usually it was me that got to play Superman and Bernie played people that got splatted because they didn’t have superhuman powers.     

‘Well, remember how Superman had to bring Lois Lane back from the dead by flying around the earth and make it move backwards and reverse time.’ He gazed over at me. ‘If you piggy-back on other computer and get enough computing power, you can do that.’ He shuffled his bum, the chair creaking as he found a more comfortable position. ‘I’m not saying turn back time. That would be stupid. But cut through any encryption like a laser beam and free the information inside. You’ve got nothing to hide, but all these rich bastards, they talk the talk about transparency, but they don’t mean themselves. They mean poor people should pay their taxes, not cheat and rig the system and shut up about those that do.’

‘Fuck sake,’ I said. ‘That’s brilliant. When you goin’ to realise your app?’ My mind was already racing ahead to the things that would happen. Drug money easily tracked. Tax havens sliced open. I was sure the rich would hit back. They always knew a way to rig the system, but even so, I was elated.

‘When you realise the app,’ said Bernie.

‘What’d you mean?’

‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘It’ll need to be you.’

‘Why?’ I said, ‘why?’ I got to my feet. Then I realized how dangerous it would be.

‘You’d be a billionaire by the end of the year,’ said Bernie, as if reading my mind, ‘And that’d double, quadruple, no limit. You’d appear on Newsnight. Front page of The Times. Front page of The Economist. You’d be one of the most well-known face in the world. Think of all the good you could do.’

‘Who knows about this?’ I asked looking over his shoulder into the night sky, palms of my hands sweating, already feeling anxious.

‘Just you and me,’ said Bernie, matter-of-factly. ‘Yes or no?’