Charles Williams
People didn’t really know Charles Williams. The few who thought they did, were wrong, and the very few who did, only ever caught a glimpse.
See you could know Charles for twenty years and say he was a nice guy, a helpful guy. The type of guy who you could rely on to help you when you needed help. At the same time, Charles was also vile, and disgusting. An ugly troll with the good qualities inside of him merely the apex of a mountain falsely defying the sunset for a few stolen minutes.
He had studied to the point of distinction in a post-graduate diploma in both Computer Science and Statistics at University. With a grade average constantly placing him in the 98th percentile in his classes, the light shone ahead of him towards a promised land. A land that had always seemed to be constantly ahead of him, until an unspecified moment, when Charles for the first time realized it was behind him.
Charles lectured classes at the Newtown Community Computing Clinic. A crumbling, stone building on the grounds of the public library. Even calling it lecturing was in reality a stretch. Charles taught retirees and beneficiaries unit standard courses on subjects as diverse as how to create a social media profile or backup files onto a thumb drive even as advanced as how to add and remove closed captions onto a Youtube video. It really wasn’t the type of job that you needed a CompSci degree to facilitate and the interior of the “campus” reflected that. A couple of generic public service offices a hallway dividing and two rooms each with a bay of computers.
On the exterior, to his students and his colleagues, Charles was pleasant, efficient, knowledgeable and longstanding. On the inside, Charles held resentment inside of him as if it were a sinking lump of coal. Maybe the two weren’t mutually exclusive. The choices that were made, the reasons why. Perhaps the resentment that welled deep within Charles was simply that he got a rough deal. Borne forth by being qualified to such a level and then it simply never working out, choosing the wrong university, never meeting the right people, never making the right connections.
Perhaps it was that binary, perhaps life hadn’t lived up his own expectations through no fault of his own, or perhaps he never lived up to his own.
TUESDAY AUGUST 11th – Safe Browsing Habits. Room 104 – 10.05AM
Charles stood at the window, distracted by the street outside. Through gaps in the dusty clinic blinds, he could make out the auburn leaves of a Cypress tree deserting their branches, twisting as they fell to the ground in a crumpled heap on the footpath below.
Richard had his hand stuck up in the air again, eyes fixated on Charles who stood some metres away, turning as he noticed the motion of the upturned hand.
“Yes, Richard?” he asked inquisitively
Richard was the type of student that Charles and the other tutors would refer to as a lifer. A reasonably prevalent proportion of octogenarians who were enrolled with the clinic also fell into this category. Seniors who took maximum advantage of the unlimited number of sessions a retiree could attend via free Council funding because the reality was they had no more fulfilling alternative in which to spend their time. They were people who were sad, and lonely, and frustrated, and the Clinic was a way out of their Council Block for a couple of hours on a Tuesday morning.
Richard, portly, with a constant rim of perspiration around his hairline twitched nervously at his desk.
“I’m, I’m.” he stammered, continuing ” Charles, I’m using the pointer and clicking down on the bar like you said here but nothings happening”
Charles moved around behind Richard to take a closer look.
“Alright Richard, now what are you trying to do”
Richard waved his arm flippantly towards the monitor, his tone inflamed. Charles worried about how incessantly aggravated some of the seniors became around computers, worried that potentially he would have to perform CPR or call an ambulance if a student went into cardiac arrest.
“I’m trying.. I’m trying to set darn password for a folder but, but every time I follow your instructions the damn machine doesn’t do what it’s supposed to”
Charles smiled slowly. To ensure his expression was one of reassurance to the older attendees, he had to hold his expressions a moment longer than he would otherwise. Even if it felt somewhat contrived, he was happy for it to be that way if it meant they wold trust him.
“OK, well it’s a start right Richard? we know what we’re trying to do”, Charles paused, himself motioning towards the computer “Why don’t you walk me through what you were trying to do”
Richard took a deep breath and faced towards the computer as he exhaled. Richard had a preference to use both hands on the mouse due to his arthritis. A unit standards task sheet sat on the desk between the keyboard and Richards stomach which bulged over the desk. He read from it.
“Well, according to this, I need to create a folder and….” he paused, squinting at the page “and password protect it”
“OK. So I can see you’ve created your folder there on your desktop, and it looks to me like you’ve found the folder properties window. That’s a great start Richard, you’re almost there!”
Charles planted his hand firmly onto Richards shoulder, rubbing it in encouragement. There was a strange power imbalance for Richard in this role. Something he had always found hard to grasp and an imbalance that meant he was constantly grappling with the ethical possibilities it presented. The conflicts of morality that he was forced to address.
“Well, this is about the third time Charles. I get here, I enter my password and then watch this…” he paused, clicking his mouse somewhat furiously, he motioned despairingly at the monitor before continuing his tirade “See nothing Charles!”
“Right OK Richard, well there’s two things let me show you and then I’ll let you have another attempt to complete the standard”
Richard sat back in his chair, arms folded, letting Charles closer to the keyboard.
“So, Richard, let’s start here. What do you want your password to be?”
Richard looked down towards a scruffy notebook placed on the desk. Running his wrinkled finger over a page of handwritten notes
“Ah, can you put Diana.. 1936. Diana as in the name and 1936 as the year”
Charles tapped the password into the window.
“Now Richard, is this a password you will remember?” Charles asked
“Of course I will, it’s my late wifes name and the date I met her”
“That’s really nice Richard” Charles replied.
“Well she’s been buried for twenty five years now so it’s one more way I can remember her, I use it for all of my accounts, otherwise I forget them”
“OK well that’s fantastic internet security Richard, I’m really proud of you, now watch closely” Richard turned his head to check that Richard was following “Now click Save Changes and Exit, that will do it.”
He paused “do you think you can give this another go yourself now?”.
Richard turned to Charles with a smile that transmitted an aura of supreme confidence. An aura of supreme confidence that Charles didn’t fully share based on previous experiences.
“Of course I can Charles”
Charles patted Richard again on his shoulder, noticing with mild discomfort the entrenching sweat that had progressed down his neck to the cotton of his shirt.
As he stepped away to monitor how the rest of the enrolees were faring with their unit standards, Richard reached out and tugged at his hand, somewhat unexpectedly.
“Did I ever tell you about how we met Charles? Diana and I? It was beautiful”
Charles smiled, relaxing his posture as he did so. If the thoughts circling inside of his brain were to somehow manifest themselves outwards, then the smile would be portrayed as one of condescension however to Richard, it was one of kindness.
“Let’s just focus today on completing your Unit Standards Richard”
Charles continued putting distance between himself and Richard, walking with purpose across to the tutors desk standard for each computer hall. From a drawer he pulled a notebook and with pen in hand, scrolled through a couple of pages. Then, with somewhat precision at the point of where he chose to write.
D I A N A 1 9 3 6
Collette Hannigan was a bitch. Unfortunately for Charles, she was a bitch who was also the Council appointed Programme Manager for the clinic. That meant she was constantly on his ass for the lecture he skipped or the ten minutes he was late to work because his bus was late.
She was one to take great pride in her appearance. Whilst the natural vivid brown tones that once ran through her hair had decayed to the point of sullen grey for her now in her late fifties, you could still tell by the stretched, elasticized wrinkles that the majority of her face had been “manufactured” inside of a surgical clinic.
The first time Charles had met with Collette, to discuss his recent ‘expression of interest’ in a role at the clinic, he had found himself distracted by a surging envy of her appearance. The fact that she at her age, her own success had resulted in her having access to funds and resources to look the way she did.
The irony was in the way Charles consciously accepted the simple contradictions in logic that provoked his envy, his resentment. He was all too happy to attribute her relative appearance and standing within the community towards luck and unfair advantage. He failed to consider the diet of potato chips and microwave dinners he lived on. The diet of internet porn and prostitutes that prevailed within his own existence. Like a whirlpool he had watched a fund large enough for a house deposit drain from his savings account.
Collette Hannigan of course was also, somewhat appropriately the first to get wind of what Charles had done, the vial acts he had committed. It started with a couple of yellow vested police officers from the National cybercrime unit standing in her office “making inquiries” around an investigation and ended with a phone call at 10pm two weeks later.
Actually, it ended somewhat earlier than that.
14 Months Earlier
The meeting invite popped up as he was on his scheduled lunch break, but it was the first thing he saw when he returned. Innocent enough ordinarily, but in these circumstances, ominous.
To: Charles Williams <charles.williams@NCCC.govt.nz>
Hi Charles,
Can I please catch up with you when you return from lunch.
Kind Regards,
Collette
Now Collette was the type of persona who I would describe as an “email courier”. Just sending the email wasn’t enough, she had to follow through and check in person if a person had seen such email. In this case it was by the time Charles had seated himself.
“Charles, did you receive my invite?” , her voice terse and delivered from over his shoulder.
“Ah yes, hi. I did” as he spoke, Charles lent back in his chair clenching his knuckles.”I just sat back. It’s for two right?”
“Well yes but we can just meet now, if you’re free that is Charles.” she paused, before smiling softly, an expression Charles recognized inherently. “And I assume you are because I checked your schedule and you have no classes this afternoon.”
Once in the office, Charles had barely closed the door and sat into the vinyl chair before Collette launched into a series of questions.
“So Charles are you aware of an objectionable video that has been circulating within the clinic recently?”
Charles sat, leaning forward, a somewhat over zealous expression of concern outalyed across his face.
“No, I’m sorry I’m not” he answered “would you mind to elaborate?”
Collette coughed, clearing her throat. Charles knew what this meeting was about. It could only be one thing. In that moment he almost felt a small amount of sympathy for the position he had placed Collette in. In large corporations there wolud be laywers and Human Resource Consultants that wolud step in to address issues of this nature.
Here however, as part of a poorly funded Council non-profit, Collette as the Programme Manager had to establish and conduct a review into a deep faked sex video that had been distributed anynomously by email to all eighteen employees of the clinic the night before.
Just hearing the words, watching and listening to Collette dance and stammer around the graphic nature of what had happened, what had been involved kept Charles aroused. She kept returning to a statement, reaffirming it as she spoke.
“It doesn’t matter what the content was, other than it was of an objectionable nature and if you had received it, you will know the content I am referring to. Charles, do you have anything you’d ‘like to add here?”
Charles paused, somewhat hesitantly, a thought bubbling away in his mind which had been triggered by something she had said.
if you had received it…
“Collette. I’m sorry I’m not sure what you’re referring. I thought you mentioned earlier that you knew who was on the distribution list for this?”
“Yes we do Charles, all parties were blind carbon copied to the email but IT were able to retrieve a list of recipients from the outgoing server”
“So if you’re aware of who was sent it, you would be aware…”
Charles stopped in his tracks, his voice trailing off.
FUCK
“Charles. The reason why I wanted to discuss this with you, first and foremost so to speak, is that there are eighteen people who currently have a clinic email address”
She paused now, Charles’ mind racing, scrambling at this unfolding turn of events
“And of the email in question, this was sent to seventeen internal email addresses.”
She looked up from the page in front of her.
“Everyone apart from you Charles”
At the time, his background in computer science had enabled him to cover his digital footprint. To the point that beyond the fact he was the only one who didn’t receive it and the suspicion that carried alone, there was no further evidence that could he had been responsible. In a way it was even more pleasing for Charles, a calling card of sorts…..
To be Continued…
The Streak 