Chapter 08

  “Lucy, I was talking to Sarah at the library about you speaking to the patrons at the there about computer security. I had just cleaned the malware off of Roberta’s laptop and I thought maybe the library could run some security classes for their patrons to help keep them safe. Roberta was going to throw away her computer, which should be criminal but is just the kind of thing that makes a capitalist consumer society the absolute worst thing for a sustainable planet. It made me think how many others fall into this trap. Even those who don’t throw their machines away, they wind up paying hundreds of dollars to have them cleaned. But it could all be avoided if they just practiced safe browsing and email protocols. So if I write something up, would you be willing to go to the library and give the talk?”

  “Sure, Laura, how long does it take to clean an infected machine?”

  “If you are talking about the technicians actual time spent dealing with the issue, maybe fifteen minutes, they need to install and update the software then start a scan, which can take an hour or two. Then they reboot and do a virus scan. Less than an hour.”

  “So if a customer brings in an infected laptop at three they could pick it back up at six?”

  “Yes in ninety nine percent of the cases.”

  “Why don’t we do it? It sounds like something all of us working here could learn, and we could do it right at the counter. We could offer it as a free service for our customers. It would bring in new customers and if they drove an hour or more to get here they would probably wait around for the three hours it takes us to assure they have a clean and secure machine when they leave. We’d generate both sales and goodwill at the same time, while eliminating electronic waste simultaneously."

  “Lucy you are a genius, make up a sign, then make copies for the library and coffeeshop billboards. Then make up about fifty flyers advertising the Free service and when you go to speak to Sarah to schedule a time to give the talk, give her the flyers and ask her to hand them out to any of her patrons that need help. Then make another fifty flyers and a sign and send Zoe home a half hour early, with full pay, but ask her to stop at the Saranac Library and do the same thing. We’ll probably get a lot at first, people that had a problem but couldn’t afford to have them fixed and haven’t thrown them away. Eventually we can ask for people who are upgrading computers to donate their old laptops or PC’s to us and we can install linux and hand them out for free. We save eWaste and strike a blow for free software at the same time. We can even give out all of our free eBooks with every computer you fix. Give people a double reason to choose us, not only is the service free, the books are as well.”

  Well that was satisfying, it’d be great to engage more of the community, even those who don’t read. I wonder if Lucy has considered giving away free audio books, she could add them to the physical eBook store.

  ***

  I had about a half hour before the first session of the contest was to begin. I wasn’t sure if they were doing this like the Great British Bake Off but it sounded like they were. Roberta had described three sessions they must correspond to the the three rounds of the GBBO, the Signature Challenge, Technical Challenge and the Showstopper Challenge.

  I dug into the materials that Bobby had dropped off for me to review. By the time that Roberta had arrived, I had a pretty good understanding of how the contest would proceed. I went out to the tent as the crew was setting up the lighting. The cast of bakers hadn’t arrived yet. When August had tried to have the tent declared a crime scene the night before, an angry mayor had demanded that the contest continue. This all happened while I was at the hospital with Amy, checking on Niall’s condition, and before August had arrived with his plan to ‘check the background’ of the hippies. They weren’t hippies, they were yippies. But that just goes to show the entire lack of detail that the Lake Placid police department was bringing to the entire investigation.

  I asked Roberta for her laptop and brought it inside and began another malware bytes scan. If Bobby was the perpetrator then she would have reinfected the laptop after I told her it was clean. Also if she wasn’t the hacker, then the machine would be clean, because the original hacker had been kicked out and couldn’t get back in without reinfecting the machine themselves. Roberta hadn’t used the laptop so even if someone had tried another malware attack she hadn’t had time to fall for it. Also I had given her a mini twenty minute lecture on the things not to do on her computer.

  I set the scan running and walked back out to the tent. The contestants were arriving, on foot this time, having made the ten minute walk from the inn. I wish I had enough time to read over the contest bio’s before filming was set to begin. But interviewing Bobby and setting the trap were more important. Unless one of the contestants seriously hurt another while on camera, that would show that my priorities were in error.

  A crowd of spectators began to wander onto the grounds to see what was going on. I saw a few people browsing books on Urge and Phoebe had two customers taking her five dollar introductory course on calligraphy. That’s the same course she gives to groups for free at the Renaissance Festival in hopes it will drive customers her way for further followup courses.

  Amy came out in the first of her new dresses, she was going to make a fine judge. Then the mayor walked in off of the street dressed in a tuxedo, he was the third judge. I knew there were three judges, I just hadn’t known that the mayor was the third. So it wasn’t just the million dollars for the parks department that made the mayor want this event to move forward. He wants his fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe when he sees how ridiculous that comb over looks on TV he’ll update his look. I thought he’d still be mad at me about twisting his arm about the contract the other day, but he came right over and spoke to me.

  “Hello, Laura, a beautiful evening for the opening of the show.”

  “Hello, I didn’t know that you were a judge, congratulations.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing but an honorary post, I don’t know much about baking aside from I love Amy’s. Laura I wanted to speak with you about the overdose. You are going to investigate aren’t you. I mean you are right here at the eye of the storm, I already told August to cooperate with you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, for sure, you can be his eyes and ears.”

  “Well every other time I’ve spoken with my cousin about a case I get the ‘I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation’ line.”

  “Well you won’t this time, I was very clear about how important this is to the entire town. It will mean more money to the police because the town taxes won’t be paying as much towards the parks department. So I know that August understands, the rest of these ten days need to go smoothly. I’m surprised that Roberta has been as patient as she has been.”

  “I can think of a lot of ways to describe Roberta and patient is not one of them.”

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Laura.”

  “You know Shakespeare mayor?”

  “No, I’m afraid not but I do know that quote, Laura. As mayor I live it everyday.”

  I almost laughed, I thought it was a joke, but no he was perfectly serious. He had just compared himself Henry the Fourth, the mayor of Lake Placid, to a king. Everyday politics gets more and more bizarre with dump trumpy as president. I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone and a suave cigarette smoking Rod Serling is going to pop out for the introduction.

  Then Roberta came over to hustle the mayor to his judges podium, Amy was already sitting in her chair on the far left. Hopefully there will be no more sabotage, and even more important no one else getting hurt.

  Each of the bakers stood in their own little island kitchen. If the producers of the Great British Bake Off ever see this show, they are going to make a fortune suing. Why would a network, even a chintzy streaming network consider airing a show like this. Maybe Roberta is a board member and they have to humor her.

  Roberta stepped into the spotlight in the middle of the kitchens.

  “Welcome to the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off. I am your host and head judge Roberta Dalgaard.”

  I know she is the producer of the show and all but why is she a judge, I’d bet my last dollar this woman hasn’t baked a day in her life. A socialite with no baking experience and a mayor with no taste, nor experience, I hope that the two of them defer to Amy when it comes to the actual judging. But I have a feeling that self importance will rank higher in their minds than fair judging ever could.

  “As the chief judge let me explain the rules, for the first three weeks we will eliminate one baker each week. Then for weeks four and five we will eliminate the baker with the lowest total score. Then for weeks six and seven we will eliminate another baker with the total lowest score. Weeks eight through ten will be a head to head battle between our remaining two bakers. On the tenth week after the final bake we will announce the baker who will win this year's Superb Lake Placid Bake Off.”

  Could they make the rules any more convoluted? I don’t think so. If you are ripping off GBBO why not just stay with the nice simple rules?

  “But it’s not just some old trophy that our Super Nova Baker is going to receive. Oh no, our Super Nova Baker is also walking away with one hundred thousand dollars and can come back to compete again next year for another one hundred thousand dollars.”

  I think she is being a little over optimistic that this show is ever going to get renewed for a second season. Hopefully that was just a little hyperbole for the viewers. But also way to up the game over the GBBO instead of just having a star baker they’re getting a Super Nova. An exploding star, I hope that isn’t prophetic.

  “Alright bakers for your first bake we are asking you to bake … A simple loaf of white bread. But with a twist, if the crew could please bring the machines out to the baker’s, please.”

  The crew carried out seven bread machines to the contestants. And placed one on each of the islands. I could even bake bread in a bread machine, salt water flour and yeast. Just throw the ingredients into the machine. It about the equivalent of making tea in a microwave. Now what are they going to do to fill up the time that really mixing and kneading real bread takes. You can’t even watch it rise, you just throw in the dry ingredients, then the warm water, then you push the button about an hour later.

  “Please welcome a very special guest to the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off, this is Cindy Lewis her dad manufactures these wonderful ‘Easy Bake Ovens’. She’s going to go around and give advice to our bakers.”

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  Cindy was at least five ten or five eleven and might have weighed one hundred and five pounds. I’d be willing to bet that a slice of bread has never crossed her lips. But she knew the product and was charming and this looked exactly like those old eighties info commercials where two people gushed over some cheap piece of junk for a half an hour trying to convince anyone still up that their life would just not be complete until they had ‘X’ product home and put it to good use. Once you had it, your life was now complete, people might even love you, ‘X’ was just that good. It was television for people that only watched TV for the commercials. Like why people watch the superbowl, I mean the game itself is dead boring.

  Then Cindy went from island kitchen to island kitchen telling each baker and the audience, just pour in the ingredients and push start, it really is that simple. The mayor who admitted to not knowing anything about baking could make edible bread in a bread machine. Once Cindy had shown off the product and her figure for about ten minutes her time in the tent came to a close. Cindy almost broke her ankle when she stepped off the stage and onto the lawn, where her stiletto heels must have sunk into the ground a couple of inches and stuck there. I wasn’t going to have to aerate my lawn in that area at least.

  I was wondering how they could possibly score this, a solid ten for pushing the button. Instead of pushing the envelope, they’re pushing the button. This was going to be the most boring baking show ever made. I can’t wait to see what they are doing for round two. The mayor looked entranced like he had never heard of this wondrous machine that makes bread. Meanwhile Amy look horrified. The camera crew better not cut to her until she has time to compose herself.

  Roberta than started to move around the tent and proceeded to interview each of the contestants.

  “Let’s meet our first contestant, a very pretty young woman, please tell us your name and a little something about yourself.”

  “My name is Grace Blomberg, I’m half Chinese and half Jewish. I’m a software engineer and baking in honor of my family. I’m told that my great grandmother who immigrated to America used to work two jobs but still found time to bake every day.”

  “I’ll bet she would have loved to have an Easy Bake Bread Oven, with one of these she might have had time for a third job.”

  This is painful to watch. She proceeded to the next contestant and asked him to introduce himself. Last night I hadn’t met him but he looked vaguely familiar, I just wasn’t sure from where. This rarely happens, with my eidetic memory but I must have met him briefly before my concussion.

  “Hi my name is Lucas Benoit, my Dad is a minister and I’m following in his footsteps. My mother Karen got me interested in baking.”

  “What’s your favorite bible story about baking, Lucas?”

  “It has to be the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus fed all of those people.”

  If I knew this was going to be some biblical propaganda show I would have gotten the writers four years off of their taxes.

  “Please introduce yourself.”

  “Hi my name is Jovana Devries, I’m a locomotive engineer for Amtrak. I just want to say that I love to bake and love my wife Defne. If I didn’t say that she’d kill me. Oops, she's going to kill me for saying that. Sorry Defne, love ya.”

  Here was finally a baker with a little personality. She also had a huge smile on her face which made her seem approachable. I liked her instantly. Which is usually the kiss of death for reality TV shows where I attempt to pick the winner, based on the person that I like the most from their first appearance on the show. Not that I watch reality TV, I used to watch Amazing Race every year but after a while it just seemed kind of the same. I watched Amazing Race Canada a few times. I liked that as well. John is a great host , not better then Phil but still really nice. I watch the GBBO every year, the people are so lovely, every week I hate to see a person leave. The Extra Slice is a review program and so funny and you get to see the person who left the tent that week. But Tom, sarcastic Tom just makes me roar with laughter. I think it must have some to do with how they edit the American reality shows for high drama and GBBO is like a cozy blanket on a chilly fall evening.

  “Well here is a big fellow, please introduce yourself.”

  “Hi my name is Tyler Wojcik, I’m a cook for a logging camp near Gabriel's. I don’t get much time to bake when I’m at work, so it’s just something I do for a hobby.”

  Tyler seemed nice. I really hope I am not the kiss of death to these nice contestants.

  “Thanks Tyler, and moving on to our next baker, please introduce yourself.”

  “Thanks, Roberta, my name is Nora Fischer and I own an apple orchard near Wilmington. I won the county Fair Apple Pie Baking contest for the past five years. I’m also a bee keeper, I use beeswax to make candles, lip balm and I love honey on hot fresh bread.”

  Alarm bells are ringing. Two dead bees and a bee keeper, is she our saboteur and if so did she also try to kill Niall. I still don’t know what to make of the two separate occurrences that happened simultamously

  “Thank you Nora, Let’s meet our next baker.”

  “Hi my name is Danyl Schroeder, I’m a writer and I live about thirty miles from Ottawa”

  “What do you write Danyl?”

  “I write LitRPG, it is a little like playing a videogame inside of a novel. If you like Fantasy and playing RPGs you probably would like reading LitRPG.”

  I haven’t read any LitRPG, but I do like fantasy and I really enjoyed that game of Vaesen we played a few weeks ago. I’ll have to give LitRPG a try.

  “Thank you Danyl and now we come to our last baker, and just in time too because the time for this bake is almost over and the bread is almost ready to come out of the Easy Bake Bread Ovens. Please tell us your name and a little something about yourself.”

  “Hello Roberta, my name is Niall Malone. I’m a retired professor and since I retired I started baking as a hobby. It keeps me moving and engaged with my community plus I get to eat it too.”

  “Well thank you Niall. You all have three minutes left in this round.”

  Now after twenty minutes of talking the breads were ready to come out of the machines. Paul Hollywood would probably take an axe to these machines if he could see them. Roberta started a countdown to build tension with ten seconds left, but each of the bakers already had the bread out of the machine and placed the bread on the cooling rack in front of them.

  Then Roberta called her fellow judges to start the judging. The three judges started at Grace’s kitchen island. They didn’t say anything like the judges on the GBBO do, instead they just wrote down a number. That was neither dramatic nor cozy, it was just plain boring. They followed the same procedure for the next six contestants, never saying a word. Then the judges all went back to the judging table and conferred, neither I nor the TV audience will hear them confer. Then somebody called cut and there was a general hubbub when everyone who was silent, could suddenly speak again.

  I wanted a word with Roberta, I wanted to interview each of the contestants and I wanted Roberta to facilitate that.

  “Roberta, before the bakers and crew all leave, I’d like for you to announce that I’m an associate producer, who needs to speak of all, let's start with the bakers first, tell them I’m doing background and color.”

  “I’ll do it right now, could you give me back my laptop?”

  “Sure, let me run inside to see if the malware scan has completed.”

  I did and the scan had finished, I was happy that Bobby hadn’t reinfected the machine. I liked her and didn’t want her to be the saboteur. It’s not definitive proof that she didn’t, but she had the laptop in her possession and she didn’t try to put njRAT back on to the machine so that she could remote access her mother’s laptop from anywhere in the world.

  I went back outside and handed over the laptop and told her it was still clean. Apparently Roberta had been right that Bobby wasn’t the saboteur. Now I felt mad about the way that Roberta treated Bobby. If anyone deserved to ruin Roberta’s plans it was Bobby.

  While I waited for Roberta to tell everyone that they needed to speak to me one on one. I went over to chat with Amy. She was still sitting at the judges table and I wanted to know what she thought of the show so far. She loves the GBBO more than I do, so I can’t wait to hear her thoughts and I want to know who's doing the best and the worst.

  “Well Amy, what did you think?”

  She had a kind of horrified expression on her face.

  “This is a travesty, I can’t believe that I just participated in a twenty minute commercial for a machine that I wouldn’t allow in the house. It’s like having a knife skills contest and using a food processor to do the chopping or AI to write a paper for English homework. If they wanted to shake things up they should have made the contestants bake bread over an open fire. That would test their skills.”

  “I agree, Amy, I wonder if that is how they plan to make money with this show. I have to assume that Easy Bake Bread Oven is paying a hefty product placement fee. Like Apple does to advertise their computers on virtually every show that shows a scene involving a computer. It’s not bad enough that a sixty minute show is only about forty or forty one minutes long because of advertising but during those forty minutes they are still advertising, just a little more subtly. Those subtle ads might actually be worse.”

  “I don’t see how they could be worse Laura, they are easily ignored and at least the story is still going on around the product placement.”

  “That’s exactly why it’s worse, it’s part of the story. Let’s say you watch ‘Wednesday’ because you love the Addams and you think that ‘Wednesday’ is cool, so you’d like to be cool like her. Then you notice that she uses a Mac, she’s cool and uses a Mac. If I want to be cool, I’ll need to get a Mac. Even though it is the most proprietary personal computer on the market. In reality it is the least cool computer you could possibly buy. A really ‘cool’ character to emulate would be the character that assembles their own computer and then loads linux as the operating system. Not someone who buys a sealed box that a corporation controls. But enough about advertising, who’s bread was the best?”

  “The best? None they were all just a hair better than the cheapest supermarket white bread. In other words, with hardly any taste or crumb, I gave each of the bakers a five out of ten. They all tasted almost identical.”

  “So it’s a three way tie?”

  “No the mayor gave Grace a ten out of ten, and Roberta gave Niall a nine out of ten”

  “Then who got the lowest score?”

  “Jovanna DeVries.”

  “Damn it, I liked her interview the best, I knew it. I’m the albatross that brings disaster to the nicest of contestants. Or at least the ones that are edited to be the nicest.”