Invisible Armies (25 page)

Chapter  
29 

<   The sand firms beneath their feet and slopes downwards; they have reached the high-water mark. The moon has set or is hidden behind cloud, but starlight and the ambient light of the city reveal whitecapped waves before them. To their left, a spit of sand projects into the sea, ending at a long perpendicular wall of stones, a breakwater that caps the spit like the crossbar on a capital T.
   An appalling thought hits Danielle as they reach the waterline. "Can you swim?" she asks, her voice low.
   "No," Jayalitha says.
   "Shit." Danielle halts a moment, then decides they have no choice. "We're going into the water anyway. Stay with me and be quiet."
   Jayalitha doesn't argue. Danielle takes her hand and leads her into the water. Jayalitha gasps with the shock of transition. The water feels painfully cold, although Danielle knows it should be near 65 degrees. It is probably horribly polluted, Venice is full of drains that lead straight to the ocean, but plenty of surfers risk it, and besides, if she gets out of this fix with only an incurable skin rash, Danielle will consider herself very lucky.
   The beach drops off more steeply than she hoped; they are only thirty feet from the shore, where the secondary waves begin to crest, when Jayalitha can go no further without submerging her head.
   "Okay," Danielle says, "turn around."
   They see two flashlights, scanning back and forth across the sand, flickering up and down as those who hold them approach at a fast run. Jayalitha squeezes Danielle's hand tightly. Danielle, standing behind her, holds her zipped-shut purse with her other hand, equally tight. If this works, and they somehow get out, they will need money. They rock back and forth in the surging water, endlessly finding their feet.
   "Our hope is that they will not find us here?" Jayalitha whispers.
   "Yes." Danielle looks to their right. The breakwater at the end of the protruding spit of sand. If they can get to the water behind that high, unclimbably slippery wall of rock, they will be invisible. "This way," she whispers, and begins to edge towards it. It is only a hundred feet away but their pace, walking through the sea, is incredibly slow. She hopes the ocean floor does not get any deeper en route. She hopes they can make it there before their pursuers think of the water as a possible hiding place. She thinks of footprints, they must have left footprints, and freezes with terror a moment – but then relaxes. Venice Beach is so busy by day that the sand is riddled with thousands of footprints, it will be nearly impossible by flashlight to work out which are freshest. Unless the tide is going out. Then theirs will be the only ones leading into the water. She adds "tide going in" to the list of her desperate hopes.
   The two flashlights have separated now, at the water's edge, one going north and one south. Danielle considers making a run for it while they're both moving away – but no, too chancy, best to make their way for the breakwater, past which they cannot be seen, and wait for them to leave. She wonders how long they can hold out in the water. 65 degrees is plenty warm enough to swim in, but simple math dictates that the body can't maintain its necessary 98 degrees forever when soaked in liquid so much colder.
   "Breathe hard," Danielle whispers, thinking of yoga classes, pranayama lessons. "Try to warm yourself."
   "Yes," Jayalitha says. "I understand."
   They are almost at the end of the breakwater now – but the ocean floor is descending again, too deep for Jayalitha. And the flashlights are coming back, converging on the beach before them. They will just have to hope to stay here unseen. Snatches of conversation between their pursuers,  two men, are audible between waves.
   "– around here somewhere. They didn't just vanish. Maybe –"
   "– It's not like we can call for backup.  They're on foot. Let's get back to the vehicles, maybe some street kid saw –"
   "– Wait. Wait a minute. Maybe they're in the water."
   Danielle goes rigid with fear. Then both flashlights rise and rotate towards the ocean. One of them sweeps straight towards them.
   "Take a deep breath," Danielle whispers to Jayalitha, "and trust me." She thrusts her right arm into the loops of her purse handle, threads her arms under Jayalitha's, and pulls her down into the ocean.
   Jayalitha squirms violently at first. Danielle tightens her grip, and Jayalitha stiffens, then goes limp. Danielle kicks as hard as she can, trying to propel them past the breakwater, but her legs keep hitting Jayalitha's, impeding their progress, and when she must come up for air they are next to the wall of rock but not yet past it. Two circles of light crisscross the dark water, hunting them. Jayalitha gasps loudly for air, and Danielle is afraid she might be heard. She fills her lungs and pulls Jayalitha underwater again. She can tell they are past the breakwater by the way the surge of the sea strengthens, and for a moment she feels triumphant – until a wave catches them and flings them straight into the wall of rock.
   The breakwater is made of stones the size of washing machines. Danielle's head hits one of them so hard, just behind her right ear, that she sees stars, sudden explosions of false light that fog her vision for a moment.    A jagged edge scrapes painfully across her lower ribs. Somehow she manages to keep hold of Jayalitha. As the wave retreats, pulling them back out into the water, Danielle flails with her feet, propelling them out and away from the breakwater. Her vision slowly clears. The next wave is not as strong, it rushes them towards but not quite to the rocks, and with its ebb Danielle manages to get them far enough away from the breakwater that she thinks they are safe. If treading water for two, while bleeding, dazed, and being pursued by corrupt police officers, counts as safe.
    The breakwater's invisibility works both ways. There is no way of knowing whether their pursuers are waiting for them on the beach. They might have gone already, or they might have heard Jayalitha's gasp and be willing to wait there until dawn. There is certainly no way Danielle can hold out that long. At first, kicking so frantically that her legs start to cramp, she fears exhaustion will soon force them back onto land. But when she relaxes a little, understanding that they are buoyant enough to stay in place with less work, her legs begin to loosen and grow accustomed to the rhythmic paddling motion that keeps them afloat.
    "Are you okay?" she asks, keeping her voice very low. She thinks of Keiran's warning as they hid in the Goan jungle, that whispers carry farther than a quiet voice.
    "I think so," Jayalitha says. Her voice is high and weak, she is still breathing fast, but at least she has managed to force herself to relax into a floating position, with Danielle holding her firmly from behind. "Do not let me go. Please."
    "I won't," Danielle promises.
   Time passes. Danielle has no idea how much. She can't let go of Jayalitha to look at her watch, and her sense of duration has been stretched like a rubber band by imminent peril. It feels like hours. It almost feels like she has spent her whole life treading water in this cold water, trying to ignore the pains in her side and skull. But surely it can't have been more than twenty minutes.
   "How are you doing?" she asks.
   Jayalitha starts at the sound of her voice. Then she says, her voice trembling with cold, "I am sorry, Miss Leaf. I am very sorry for the trouble I have brought on you."
    "Let's worry about apologies when we get out of this."
    "Yes."
    "And call me Danielle."
    "Yes, Danielle. You may call me Jaya. If you wish. My friends do."
    "Jaya," Danielle says. "Okay."
    "I am very cold, Danielle."
    "Join the club. I'm fucking freezing."
   Danielle can feel herself starting to weaken from the cold. A crippling headache is growing inside her skull, and she thinks she may be bleeding quite a lot from the wound on her side, which hurt like fire even before it was invaded by salt water. But she knows she has to hold out here as long as she can. It is not until her teeth begin to chatter that she gives in. Her legs are stiff and slow to move, and when she feels a cramp starting to tighten in her left thigh she starts to wonder if they will make it back to the beach at all – but the cramp's vicegrip loosens before it grows unbearable, and she manages to navigate them around the breakwater and back into the shallows. No flashlights are visible on the beach. Jayalitha moans with relief when her feet find sand. Danielle realizes that the whole miserable experience must have been five times worse for her.
    The beach is deserted. The night breeze feels like an Arctic gale, and both of them shiver violently, teeth chattering like machine guns, as they cross the beach towards the boardwalk. Danielle tries to think. They can't go to their car, it has somehow been found by their enemy's hacker, P2, whose abilities leave even Keiran awestruck. Maybe via the tracking device rental companies put in their cars now. Regardless, they need to get to the airport. She looks at her watch. Thankfully it is waterproof. Eight and a half hours to go before Keiran arrives.
    She wishes she were in New York, where 24-hour diners adorn practically every intersection. She doesn't know of anywhere here that might be open. They dare not return to the Cadillac Hotel. They can walk busy streets and try to hail a cab – but those are the same streets their pursuers are most likely to patrol. The smart thing is probably to stay on the beach until dawn. Except they are so cold and drained that hypothermia will become a real concern.
    "We can't be the first people ever to die of hypothermia in Los Angeles," she mutters. "That would just be too embarrassing. It's July, for God's sake."
    "I beg your pardon?" Jayalitha asks.
    "Nothing. I think we have to take the chance."
    The chance pays off. The first vehicle they see at the intersection of Main and Brooks is a taxi with an illuminated call light. Its aged Middle Eastern driver casts a weary, seen-it-all eye on their two drenched figures, and as soon as Danielle demonstrates their ability to pay with two sodden twenty-dollar bills, and agrees to an extra ten in exchange for soaking his back seat with salt water, they are en route to the airport. Their driver even turns the heat up to maximum at their request. Halfway there, passing a Wells Fargo branch, she remembers Keiran's warning, and they stop long enough for her to withdraw five hundred dollars from its ATM.
* * *
    LAX never closes, but at four in the morning, it definitely slows down. In the Tom Bradley International Terminal, at the western tip of the airport's ellipse, the only open establishments are a few food stalls on the departures level. Haggard, exhausted people mill about in small groups, argue with airport staff, sit on plastic chairs and stare dully at the monitors. Danielle and Jayalitha, wearing new Los Angeles T-shirts and sweat pants, ugly but dry, sit at a table in front of Sbarro's Italian Food. Their wet clothes are piled on a spare seat. Sbarro has only pepperoni slices and Coke left for sale, but after freezing herself silly in the Pacific to escape probably-murderous cops, this tastes as good to Danielle as truffles and Chateau-Latour.
    "Our friend's going to be here in eight hours. We just have to kill time until then. He'll be able to help us." Danielle is not at all sure of this but tries to sound confident.
    Jayalitha nods. "Tell me," she says. "What happened to Angus? It was not clear to me, from the Internet. The newspapers said he was killed by a bomb he manufactured, but I did not think he would ever do such a thing."
    "No," Danielle says. She swallows. She knows she owes Jayalitha the whole story, but she isn't yet ready to admit her own culpability. "He was murdered."
    "Because of me."
    "No. No, not because of you."
    "Yes. I assure you. Because of me." Jayalitha closes her eyes, then says something, several somethings, in a fluid Indian language that does nothing to disguise the pain in her voice. Danielle expects her to weep, but when Jayalitha opens her eyes, they are cold and hard as diamonds. "He was a very good man," she says. "He deserved to live a long life."
    After a quiet moment Danielle asks, "How did you know him?"
    "I was seventeen," Jayalitha says. She pauses to calculate. "Five years ago. He was travelling in India. I had run away from my parents, I was working in a hostel in Kerala, cleaning rooms. Angus saw past what I did, he treated me like an equal. Most travellers, they are good people, but that idea never occurs to them. We stayed up very late several nights, talking, talking about everything. After he left we stayed friends. That too is very rare. He supported me in everything I did. He worked so hard, all his life, to build a better world. He deserved to live to see it."
    "I'm sorry," Danielle says inadequately.
    "But who of us receive what we deserve?" Jayalitha glances at her left hand for a moment. "It is I who should be sorry, Miss Leaf. Danielle. I have brought you into this as well. I fear I will have ruined you too before the end. It seems I ruin everything I touch."
    Jayalitha does not wear any rings, but the mark of one worn for years is etched around the second finger of her left hand. "Were you married?" Danielle asks softly.
    "I had a husband. I had two babies. They too are dead."
    "Jesus God."
    "Everyone dies," Jayalitha says harshly.
    "How old are you?"
    "Twenty-two. I married when I was eighteen."
    "My God," Danielle says.
    "Life is different in India."
    "Yeah. I noticed. But still. Jesus. We must seem like overgrown children to you."
    "Sometimes. Yes. Does it matter?"
    "I guess not." Danielle shakes her head. "This is all so crazy. There are policemen probably trying to kill me. I'm in Los Angeles with you. Two days ago my biggest problem was I was drinking too much."
    "You can go back to New York. Maybe they will leave you alone."
    "I thought of that already. No offense. But no. They'll assume I found out whatever it is that's so poisonous they have to kill everyone who knows. What is it? What do you know? Why are they after you?"/p>

Chapter  
30 

<    "Holy fucking Christ," Keiran says.
    "Yeah," Danielle agrees.
   It takes him a moment to digest what he just heard. Danielle looks past him, out the windows of the Encounter Restaurant, the 2001-themed restaurant in the Jetsons-esque building at the heart of LAX, a flying saucer supported by swooping, curving pillars. She was a little disappointed to learn that the restaurant did not revolve, but the view is still spectacular, a vista of the airport and its dozens of jumbo jets lined up like children's toys, the blue Pacific just beyond.
   "You're certain?" he asks Jayalitha. "You're absolutely certain?"
    "I could not bring the evidence with me. But there is no doubt."
   "It makes sense. Christ. It all makes perfect sense. How did you find out?"
    "I suspected it first one night when my husband and I found our way into the mine," she says. "We overheard a meeting of four of the senior managers. They began to discuss the protests and media coverage of the tailings. They were furiously outraged. They said these were all terrible lies, they knew of no such thing, they followed all international safety standards. They had no reason to be lying. They did not know we were listening. My husband and I began to wonder if perhaps they might not be speaking the truth."
    "And they were."
    "They were. The Kishkinda Mine is entirely innocent."
    "I don't understand how they can do it," Danielle says. "There's so many people involved. How could no one find out until now?"
    Keiran shakes his head. "That part I understand. It's like a coding problem. Encapsulating information. Hiding it from those who don't need it. The people on the ground, they truly think they're giving out medicine, vitamins, vaccinations, and then being very thorough about documenting their patients' medical conditions. The researchers only know that someone else does the experiments, and this is the data. They only need a few trusted intermediaries, to put labels on bottles and send the data to the doctors. A half-dozen, if that. And you don't become a billionaire without accumulating a Filofax full of people who will keep their lips sealed shut."
    "People like Laurent," Danielle says, remembering the deformed and dying children in that Kishkinda village of the damned, and Dr. Lal's black case, bulging with medicines and vaccines supplied by Justice International. She wants to throw up.
    "People. Using the word loosely. Psychopaths happy to induce cancer in thousands of people, with poison dressed up as medicines and vaccines, then test experimental drugs on them and blame it all on the mine next door. While the world's anti-capitalist activists eat the cover story up without ever considering alternatives that don't fit their preconceptions. They must try out new carcinogens as often as new medicines, to induce the kind of cancer Shadbold has more reliably."
    "Outsourcing," Danielle says. "He's outsourced dying to India."
    Keiran nods. "In a way it's brilliant."
    "You say brilliant, I say fucking monstrous, let's call the whole thing off."
   "I doubt it's just Kishkinda," Keiran muses. "They must have other sites. Africa, Bolivia, anywhere life is cheap. I wonder how many people are murdered for every month they add to Shadbold's life. Probably hundreds."
   "We have to tell someone. We have to expose him."
    "Of course," Keiran says. "Except, we can spread it as an ugly rumour, that's a start, but it would certainly help if we had some actual evidence."
    "I'm sorry," Jayalitha says. "I was very fortunate to escape only with my life. I had to bury the evidence."
    Keiran turns to stare at her. "Evidence? What evidence? Buried where?"
    "Documents. I gained access to Justice International by subterfuge, and managed to abscond with documents that confirmed our suspicions. I could not take the evidence with me when I escaped. I buried them in Kishkinda."
    "Where?"
    Jayalitha hesitates. "I do not think I can explain the location. I could only show you."
    Keiran nods. "How did you escape? How did you get here?"
    "It was very difficult." She pauses, remembering. "They burned down my house. With my family in it. The week after that I was like an animal. Somehow I made it to Bangalore. I had friends there. I had to flee, I was pursued by the police, the government, everyone. My friends took me to Calcutta. Then to China, across the mountains. That took a very long time. In China I had no more friends. I did not dare contact anyone. That was how they found us, my emails to Angus. I sent an email to him, telling him everything I had found, but I suppose they destroyed it before he read it. I thought in America I would be safe. I made my way to Shanghai. Then I had to find a way to cross the ocean. Then a way to pay. I speak only a very little Chinese. It was very difficult. It was such a long journey."
    "God," Danielle says, inadequately. She cannot even imagine the perils and obstacles of a voyage like that, the constant terror of discovery, months of solitude in unthinkably alien places, struggling even to be understood, haunted by the burning memory of your murdered family, desperate to cross half the world so you might begin to be safe, and begin to have your revenge. But she hasn't found safety in America. Quite the opposite. She stares at Jaya, only twenty-two, with mixed awe and pity.
    "You're hurt," Keiran says to Danielle. "Your side."
    "Huh?" Danielle looks down at her pink Los Angeles T-shirt, through which a thin crescent of blood has seeped. "Oh. The rocks. It's not so bad, it's pretty shallow. Never mind that. What are we going to do? Can you rent a car here?"
    Keiran considers a moment. "That's chancy. P2 might get into immigration records and see I just landed. I'm going to ring a friend of mine who lives here. Fellow hacker. He'll put us up while we work out what to do. I have some ideas about that, but we can talk those over once we're secure."
    "Are you sure you can trust him?" Danielle asks.
    "I've known Mulligan twelve years. I trust him absolutely. Eat up. I'll buy a phone card and ring him from a pay phone. Until further notice, we are living the anonymous lifestyle."
* * *
    A taxi takes them north from LAX, along the 405 towards the San Fernando Valley where Mulligan lives.
    "What's Mulligan's real name?" Danielle asks.
    Keiran looks at her. "Why?"
    "I just like knowing who I'm about to meet."
    "I don't actually know his birth name. He just uses his handle."
    "What is a handle?" Jayalitha asks.
    "Online name," Keiran says. "Choosing your own clearly artificial handle for public use is part of hacker culture. Like leetspeak."
    Jayalitha looks bewildered. Danielle represses a sigh. Once again Keiran has entirely failed to understand his listener; Jaya has no idea that 'leetspeak' is what hackers call their dialect of slang. Neither would Danielle if she hadn't once dated Keiran.
   "Why did your friend pick Mulligan?" Danielle asks.
    "Better ask him yourself."
    "What is your handle?" Jayalitha asks.
    Keiran looks at her for a moment, then says, "Not many people know both my handle and my birth name. LoTek. Capital L, Capital T."
    "Why did you choose that?"
    "If they think you're technical, go crude. If they think you're crude, go technical. I'm a very technical boy," Keiran says cryptically. Any further explication is interrupted by a beeping that emerges from his windbreaker. He draws out something that looks like a slightly overgrown Palm Pilot.
    "Danger hiptop," he explains. "I'm never without a processor. The beep means I have urgent email from a trusted source. Don't worry, this can't be traced to me." He pokes at a few keys on the miniature computer. Then his eyes widen and his face grows grim.
    "What is it?" Danielle asks.
    Keiran looks up at the taxi driver and shakes his head. "It's from Mulligan. Our situation has escalated. I'll explain when we're there."
* * *
    When the driver, who had only been told "the Valley", turns off the freeway and asks for specific directions, Keiran tells him to go to Laurel Canyon and Victory Boulevard. Then he makes them walk a long block back to Coldwater Canyon.
    "Why couldn't we just get out where we were going?" Danielle asks, slightly exasperated; her legs are very tired, and her headache has been dimmed with Tylenol but her side still hurts.
    "Security. I don't like it either. I have to lug this backpack around." Keiran's possessions are jammed into a large Lowe Alpine backpack, and they are heavy enough that he is sweating by the time they arrive at the Starbucks which is their destination. He walks in, takes a table without even looking around, and puts his Danger 'hiptop' in the middle of the table.
    "Is he here?" Jayalitha asks, as she and Danielle sit.
    "I don't know. I've never met him before. He'll know us by my hiptop."
    "You've never met him?" Danielle asks incredulously. "How can you trust him?"
    "Don't get so hung up on meatspace," Keiran says dismissively. "Mulligan is solid. I'd stake my life on that. In fact, I rather think I'm doing just that."
    "Not just your life."
    Keiran shrugs. Danielle decides resignedly that help from someone trusted by proxy is better than no help at all. As Keiran goes to the counter to order drinks, she opens the California section of the LA Times someone left on their table, and scans the headlines, looking for something interesting and diverting.
   What she finds is appalling.
    "Oh my God," she breathes.
    "What is it?" Jayalitha asks.
    Danielle looks around, suddenly terrified, but no one is paying any attention to them. She slides the newspaper over to Jayalitha and indicates an article headlined "UK Bombing Suspects Reported In LA". Above the headline are two photos, grainy and passport-sized, but recognizably of Keiran and Danielle.
    "Oh my goodness," Jayalitha says.
    Danielle reads the article and learns that she is wanted not only for the London bombing, but for the murder of Kishkinda's chief financial officer at a conference in San Francisco two months ago. Keiran returns. When he sees what she is reading he nearly spills the drinks.
    "Fucking hell," he says. "Turn that over. He didn't tell me it was in the papers."
    "You knew?"
    "That was the email in the taxi."
    "I've haven't, this is crazy, I haven't been to San Francisco in years. I didn't even know their CFO was dead. How can they –"
    "Shadbold," Keiran says. "Trying to catch and discredit us simultaneously. Why hunt us down themselves when they can get the FBI to do it for them?"
   As Danielle tries to absorb the information that she has suddenly become a felon wanted on federal charges, a man rolls up to their table in a wheelchair. Goateed and near-spherical, with dark eyes hidden in his round head like marbles sunk in butter, he wears a tentlike black T-shirt two sizes too big even for his horselike girth. His legs emerge from black shorts and end at mid-thigh, in grotesque flipper-like protrusions of boneless flesh that Danielle has to look away from.
   "LoTek?" he asks.
    "Mulligan." Keiran leaps to his feet, apparently entirely unfazed by the discovery that his friend is wheelchair-bound and legless. "We should move. Right now."
   Mulligan doesn't argue. They follow him to his battered Ford Taurus. Fortunately no one in Starbucks seems to have registered their presence; or at least, no one is looking at the physically normal people. It takes Mulligan almost a minute to lever himself from his wheelchair into his car. He breaks out in a thick sweat, and wheezes with exhaustion, but waves off all offers of help.
* * *
   Mulligan drives them through the vast, endless blocks of strip malls and suburbs that form the San Fernando Valley. He does not use the steering wheel at all; rather, he drives with what looks like a video-game controller, plugged into the steering column, held in his lap.
   "Is that what I think it is?" Keiran asks.
   "Yeah," Mulligan says. "Built the interface myself. Can you believe there's been no fundamental vehicle control improvements since Henry Ford? Fuckin' cultural inertia, man, it'll be the death of us all. The steering wheel is nineteenth century. But this PS2 controller, ergonomic geniuses put millions into its design, it's the obvious choice."
   Danielle is unconvinced. Mulligan's driving is highly erratic. "Is it legal?" she asks.
   Mulligan shrugs. "I unplug it if I get pulled over, pretend I was using these." He gestures at paddles attached to the steering column. After a moment Danielle realizes they are intended for use as brake and accelerator.
   It takes them fifteen minutes to reach Mulligan's large bungalow in the heart of Encino. His property smells of orange trees, reminding Danielle of family holidays in Florida when she was younger. From the ungroomed backyard, a sliding door opens automatically. Past the entryway, a hallway takes them past a filthy kitchen, then a filthier bathroom, to a sequence of several cavernous rooms full of metal racks and shelves, on which computer carcasses and the gutted remains of unidentifiable electrical devices are piled. It looks like a madman's museum of dead machines. There are several workbenches, festooned with tools that range in size from microscopic screwdrivers to welding torches. There are also a half-dozen computers in working order, plus a dozen Microsoft XBoxes stacked atop one another, all wired together.
   Everything is low, all the shelves and benches thigh-high so that Mulligan can easily access them; Danielle feels a little like she is visiting Lilliput. The whole building smells of metal, plastic, and chemicals. There are posters of implausibly endowed and gravity-resistant women, most of them from American and Japanese comic books, and a few foldouts of naked women, clearly from porn magazines considerably less classy than Playboy. Jayalitha looks shocked by these.
   "Sorry," Mulligan says, turning red and pulling the pornography from the walls as he wheels past. "I didn't realize you were female. LoTek didn't specify." He glares at Keiran, who shrugs.
   Danielle knows, from dating Keiran years ago, that hackers can generally be divided into two groups: lean, black-clad, tattooed and pierced counterculture-rebels, and social-outcast ultrageeks. Keiran floats somewhere between the two categories. Mulligan clearly belongs to the latter.
   The only vaguely domestic part of the building is the far corner, where a large overstuffed leather couch and loveseat are arrayed around an Ikea table, and in front of a huge flat screen that hangs on the wall. The floor here is occupied by old pizza boxes, some of them empty, cans of Jolt cola, pyramids of books and magazines, crumpled papers and clothing, and a spaghetti tangle of wires, almost entirely obscuring the faux-Persian rugs which are a welcome change from the bare concrete of the rest of the place. A Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier in the corner is coming out on the wrong end of its eternal battle.