textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv2n4.etx

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==========================================
InterText Vol. 2, No. 4 / July-August 1992
==========================================

  Contents

    FirstText: Where Are They Now?....................Jason Snell

  Short Fiction

    One Person's Junk_...............................Warren Ernst_

    Was_..............................................Ken Zuroski_

    Glow_............................................Brian Tanaka_

    Rufus Won't Wake Up_.............................Brian Tanaka_

  Serial

    The Unified Murder Theorem (Conclusion)_............Jeff Zias_

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@etext.org                       gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
    Proofreader               Send subscription requests, story
    Melinda Hamilton            submissions, and correspondence
    mhamilto@ucsd.edu                    to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 2, No. 4. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1992, 1994 Jason 
  Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1992 by their original 
  authors.
....................................................................


  FirstText: Where Are They Now?  by Jason Snell
================================================

  This issue of InterText is a milestone of sorts -- this marks 
  the final time I'll be writing to you (and assembling this 
  magazine) from San Diego, where I started this thing.

  I'm done with my undergraduate education at UC San Diego, and 
  it's time to move on. But before I leave here, I thought I'd use 
  this column to mention the names of a few people who have been 
  involved with this magazine, and mention what they're up to now.

  The first issue's cover artist, Jeff Quan, left UCSD last year 
  for a job at the Stockton Record newspaper. He is now the 
  resident Macintosh Graphics Expert (and a staff illustrator, 
  too) at the much larger Oakland Tribune newspaper. Jeff's been 
  quite a success since his departure from San Diego; I can only 
  hope that he's not the only one.

  The cover artist for the balance of our issues, Mel Marcelo, 
  doesn't have a job lined up yet, but he has completed his work 
  at UCSD and will no doubt have a great job by the fall. Mel has 
  also had graphics in just about every issue of U. -- The 
  National College Newspaper this year, and will have a big 
  graphic in U.'s summer orientation issue, sent out to all the 
  incoming college freshmen in the United States. (As a sidelight, 
  a column by your humble editor is also in there, and I will 
  likely be a contributor to U. from Berkeley.)

  One of our main contributors for the first three issues of 
  InterText was Greg Knauss, a person described by his "about the 
  author" blurb as being "loopy as a loon." (I might mention here 
  that most "about the author" blurbs are written by the authors 
  themselves -- but I chose to write goofy little blurbs about 
  Greg myself. He didn't appreciate it, I think.)

  Anyway, Greg graduated from UCSD last year and is now 
  greg@duke.quotron.com -- yes, he's put his degree in Political 
  Science (with an emphasis on Political Theory) to work as a 
  programmer for Quotron, Inc., where he can be a Political 
  Science major surrounded by Computer Science majors... Greg's 
  still loopy as a loon, but his new job has pretty much drained 
  all of the time he used to spend on hanging around my office, 
  wasting time, and writing goofy stories like the ones we printed 
  in InterText.

  Philip Michaels, author of last issue's "Your Guide to High 
  School Hate," was recently elected as the 1992-93 opinion editor 
  of The UCSD Guardian. I wish him the best luck in the coming 
  year.

  You will notice that the name of Phil Nolte, my sometime 
  Assistant Editor, disappeared from our staff box last issue. 
  Phil's large workload and tenuous network connection makes it 
  impossible for him to do the volume of work that Geoff Duncan 
  does for the magazine. When Phil's workload eases or his 
  computer link changes, we may see him back to that position. As 
  it is, I'm going to refer to him as a "contributing editor," a 
  venerated position in magazines, reserved for only the most 
  revered.

  Geoff Duncan, my Assistant Editor and a person who should be 
  credited with doing a vast amount of work on this magazine, has 
  wrapped up his year-long job at Oberlin College's computer lab 
  and is now hoping to hook on with a computer company located on 
  the West Coast. (Gee, aren't most of them?) As a result, his 
  electronic mail address will disappear for awhile, though he can 
  still be contacted through me. Hopefully by next issue both 
  Geoff and I will be ensconced in our new locales, ready to go.

  This issue is dated July-August 1992, so it may be a bit of a 
  mystery as to why it's coming out in mid-June. The answer is 
  simple -- it's an attempt by me (and I think it helps Geoff, 
  too) to get InterText done before I move about 500 miles away 
  from the nearest UCSD ethernet dial-up line. While I'll still be 
  dialing in, uploading the massive InterText files is a chore I'd 
  rather not to from far away.

  Our next issue is very tentatively planned for September, though 
  unforeseen circumstances could put that off. I've yet to 
  discover what classes I'll be taking in the fall, or where I'll 
  be living, or just what kind of computer access I'll get at UC 
  Berkeley. As a result, we'll just have to play it all by ear. 
  But one way or another, you'll be seeing a Vol. 2, No. 5 of 
  InterText come fall.

  In two days, I'll pack all of the possessions that I've 
  accumulated over the past three years into a truck. The day 
  after that, I'll spend two hours in the sun, sitting through my 
  graduation ceremony. And the day after that, I'll make the 
  arduous 500-mile drive northward, to home.

  It will be a drive through the high deserts of eastern Los 
  Angeles county, through fertile San Joaquin Valley farmland, 
  cities like Bakersfield and Fresno, and, eventually, to a tiny 
  town nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain 
  range. The place where I grew up, far away from the place where 
  I've made good friends, done a lot of work, grown quite a bit -- 
  and started an interesting little computer magazine.

  No doubt things will change with you, too, between now and the 
  next time we meet. We'll be back here, electronically speaking, 
  in a few months. Until then, I wish you well.


  Jason Snell
-------------

  Jason Snell has graduated Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the 
  University of California, San Diego, with a B.A. in 
  Communication and a minor in Literature/Writing. He will work as 
  an intern at his hometown newspaper, the Union Democrat, this 
  summer, and will attend UC Berkeley's Graduate School of 
  Journalism beginning in August. He writes this biography blurb 
  at the end of his column both to fill space and to allow readers 
  to ignore these lapses into egotism.


  One Person's Junk...  by Warren Ernst
=======================================

  "And this is the third time I've put in a request for more DNA. 
  My sample will completely degenerate in less than a week!" Faye 
  started to raise her voice as small droplets of saliva flew from 
  her teeth and clung to her comm panel. "Just because I'm here 
  doesn't mean that I have any less priority for raw materials 
  than anyone else!"

  Her next sentence might have begun, "And another thing..." if 
  her Hypno-Chip hadn't cut in and swept her away.

  "Sleep now..." it whispered into her auditory nerve, still 
  monitoring her. Faye's adrenaline level and pulse rate were 
  slightly below activation levels, but this time her brainwaves 
  set the small silicon wafer off. "You're now feeling very 
  comfortable, very warm, very safe, very relaxed. With every 
  breath you can just feel yourself getting more and more relaxed, 
  falling deeper and deeper into a soothing, relaxed state..."

  While orderlies quickly ushered themselves into Faye's room, the 
  Hyp-Chip continued to soothe her. "While in this comfortable 
  state, you find it easy to imagine yourself doing anything, 
  anywhere you wish." The orderlies picked up Faye's limp body. "I 
  want you to imagine yourself resting in a comfortable, wide 
  hammock, strung between two great oaks, on top of a rolling, 
  green hill. As you look up, you can see the warm breeze shifting 
  the branches above you, causing yellow rays of sunlight to shine 
  down onto your face."

  "I wonder what got 'er that time?" asked one orderly gently to 
  the other. "My money's on alpha waves. She was startin' to get 
  steamed there."

  "Doesn't surprise me," said the other. "You've gotta be real 
  uptight to get the Nobel at this age." He chuckled quietly, 
  reaching as if to touch Faye intimately. They both knew that 
  while she was under hypnosis, they could shake her silly and she 
  wouldn't "awaken," but it was difficult to dispel the impression 
  that Faye was simply asleep. After all, the orderly thought, it 
  looks like she was just napping.

  Faye relaxed on her hammock, smelling the delightful spring air. 
  Baby birds chirped in a nest above her, singing, she could 
  swear, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

  From someone very close by, she heard "Just above, you see that 
  there are exactly 100 leaves." She could see them all. Of 
  course, she thought, one hundred. "Now I want you to count them 
  down, starting from 100, and as you count each leaf, you will 
  feel ten times more relaxed than before, all the way down to 
  one. Let's begin... 100... 99..."


  Faye awoke gently, finding herself on a new bed, but one made up 
  with her old sheets. The wallpaper seemed different too.

  I hadn't done any of the rooms with this, she thought. She 
  slowly lifted herself off her bed and stepped to the window, 
  throwing the switch from opaque to clear. She wanted to simply 
  look out, and maybe see, oh, rolling hills and trees, maybe some 
  birds too.

  Instead she saw the institution, its low, beige buildings 
  sprawling every which way, with only a patch of grass here and 
  there. More disquieting to Faye, however, were the bars.

  "What are bars doing here? Where am I? Phil!"

  She glanced about the room, and heard a scream come from 
  somewhere. And another scream. Then in rushed an alarmed man 
  wearing a white lab coat. Not her Philip, she thought, but he 
  seemed very familiar. Doctor someone or other.

  He grasped her shoulders tightly.

  "Who am I?" he politely demanded.

  "Why, you're Doctor--" She searched for a name tag. Her eyes 
  kept scanning him, settling on his lapel, "Ross?"

  "Damn," he muttered, running his fingers through his dark hair, 
  "it did it again. Faye. I want you to listen very closely and 
  very carefully. OK? Are you ready? 'Command: Umdez.' "

  "Your name is Faye Harrower, geneticist," he firmly said, 
  removing the name tag. "You are being treated at The Methany 
  Institute and recovering from a nervous breakdown you suffered 
  seven months ago. My name is Dr. James Chandly." Dr. Chandly saw 
  a glint of recognition in Faye's eyes, as if it were all coming 
  back to her, and let out a deep breath. "Do you remember, Dr. 
  Harrower?"

  "Doctor, I am trying to retain my composure as best I can," she 
  said, "but that's the third time this week that Hyp-Chip decided 
  to step out for lunch and leave me in limbo. For the third time 
  in as many days I woke up thinking I was still home, but some 
  colorblind idiot redecorated the place. And this is the third 
  time I've impressed upon the project my need for more DNA. They 
  haven't told you anything, have they?" she said, lightening her 
  tone. "They must know by now how low... they must know... 
  they..."

  Faye felt the stinging of tears against the insides of her eyes, 
  and she blinked, hard. Cool down, she thought, get control. You 
  don't need to nap on the hammock again so soon. She took a deep 
  breath, letting the furrows on her brow smooth. A new angle of 
  attack occurred to her, and she said softly, "Didn't you say 
  that working on the project was good for me, Dr. Chandly? Maybe 
  -- maybe you could say something for me? Maybe cut through some 
  red tape?"

  "Well, I have thought about rattling some terminals for you; I 
  think I could speed some things along. Let me see what I can 
  do." He smiled warmly to her, and started to leave her room.

  "And the chip," she asked, "can you do something about it? Get 
  me a new one, perhaps?" She scratched behind her ear, as if she 
  might affect it by touching the skin covering it.

  Dr. Chandly looked thoughtful for a moment, leaning against the 
  door. His hand went for his chin, as if he was stroking the 
  beard he used to have. "I think you're ready for something a 
  little less heavy-handed. I'll have it reprogrammed tonight. It 
  will let you relax wherever you want for however long you want 
  using your memories as backdrop. This one won't leave you fuzzy 
  afterward. All right?"

  She nodded slightly, withholding a supreme feeling of 
  accomplishment behind her small smile. This is a real sign of 
  improvement, she thought, the first in a long time.

  "Oh, and one more thing, Dr. Harrower. You do know about Philip, 
  don't you? You do remember what the situation is?"

  "What? Oh, yes. Did I call out for Mr. Harro-- um, him just 
  now?" That bastard, that son of a bitch, she thought, trying to 
  suppress a sudden trembling in the pit of her stomach. How could 
  Phil, after 23, um, 22 years, up and do that to me? She sat down 
  on her firm bed, her smile now noticeably gone. "Yes, I 
  remember. Thank you, Doctor."

  Her door closed, and she heard it latch shut and lock. And she 
  cried.

  Two.
------

  Fresh DNA arrived from the Human Genome Mapping Project 
  coordinator herself, or at least from her office. A long letter 
  of apology was transcribed for Faye, but as with all Faye's 
  contact with the outside, it was screened and in this case, 
  heavily edited. Faye never saw the point of this concerning 
  messages of a technical or official nature, and it seemed to her 
  that this note from the Coordinator was both.

  "CLAUDE," Faye asked in the direction of her computer, "are you 
  sure you can't get the original text of this letter displayed?"

  CLAUDE, for its part, tried to requisition a copy of the 
  original letter from COREY, Methany's central computer core, but 
  COREY had the final word in these matters, and if the letter was 
  for Faye, the word was "no."

  "Access denied, Doctor. It is not permissible for you to view 
  the original letter, by order of Dr. Chandly and the rest of the 
  staff. Would you like to see the edited version again?"

  "No, that's all right, CLAUDE." Faye grinned inwardly, glad that 
  there was at least some recognition of her professional title 
  once in a great while, even if only from a stupid computer. "It 
  was only something like 'Sorry for the mix-up, blah-blah, I 
  appreciate your contribution to the Project, blah-blah, I'm very 
  happy that you can personally complete the Harrower Rung after 
  all, blah-blah, Get well soon, blah-blah, Maybe something 
  interesting will show up in your Rung, blah-blah, Sincerely, 
  Janice Brooke, blah-blah-blah-blah.'"

  "To what letter are you referring?" asked CLAUDE, "There have 
  been no letters that you have read which contained the 
  expression 'blah- blah.' In fact, Dr. Chandly has never 
  transcribed those words before."

  Such a bland computer, Faye thought, sighing. My personal model 
  has much more personality, even had the makings of a sense of 
  humor thanks to Phil... damn. I sure could use him -- CHIP, I 
  mean. Phil can rot in Hell. "Never mind, CLAUDE. Are you up to 
  getting back to the rung?"

  "We may continue sequencing your rung in twelve minutes, which 
  is when the new genetic material will be fully immersed and the 
  bare DNA liberated," CLAUDE reported. Somewhere in one of 
  Methany's laboratories, technicians prepared the new batch for 
  analysis, placing the pod cradling the genetic material into the 
  scanning sequencer, which fed raw information into CLAUDE, which 
  in turn fed filtered information to Faye. Or so CLAUDE informed 
  Faye as it occurred.

  "All right, are we ready to go yet?" she asked fifteen minutes 
  later. Faye always liked to keep herself busy, and here at 
  Methany, these were the only two hours a day she could. Doctor's 
  orders.

  "Yes, the matrix has assimilated properly," said CLAUDE. "We may 
  proceed, Doctor."

  "Very good," sighed Faye. "Now where were we? Oh, at RungStart 
  plus 410,211. CLAUDE, throw up visual display beta and start 
  spinning the sequencer."

  And so work continued on Faye's section of the human genome, her 
  "rung" it was called, as in the rung of a ladder. That's all the 
  DNA was, a molecules-thick ladder, except that in the human 
  genome, the ladder had three billion steps. Each "step" was a 
  nucleotide base pair, every three a codon, every 20 to 200 a 
  gene, every several thousand or so a genetic trait, and every 
  million a Rung. Each geneticist on the Project was responsible 
  for mapping out their Rung, and after the 3000 Rungs were 
  complete, presumably all there would be to know about humanity's 
  DNA would be known, all the codes decoded, all the mysteries 
  solved.

  Obviously entire chromosomes were cut to pieces, there only 
  being 42 of them in humans, but occasionally Rungs had within 
  them the whole code for something substantial. In her Rung, Faye 
  found the mechanism whereby hair loosens and falls out at a 
  given length, the procedure to make red blood cells, and all the 
  code for a functional sixth finger, although that one went very 
  recessive maybe a hundred thousand years ago. Sometimes the 
  small tidbits of information like these made the project seem 
  interesting, worthwhile; it broke down the tedium of having to 
  sort through a million repetitive chemical bonds.

  "Okay," started Faye, "so that pair's a T, then an A, and then a 
  G -- another Stop Codon. What's it look like to you, CLAUDE?"

  To CLAUDE, it resembled a Thymine-adenine pair, followed by an 
  Adenine-thymine, and a Guanine-cytosine after that. However, 
  CLAUDE could only be 99.4% certain of its interpretation of the 
  data, hence the reason for any human involvement in the project 
  at all. Assuming this codon was a T-A-G, then Faye's conclusion 
  matched CLAUDE's; this string of genetic code would, in fact, 
  end here. "Yes, I concur, Doctor. This is a Stop Codon, ending 
  the sequence of amino acids producing phenzotase. The total 
  number of base pairs in the sequence is 624, beginning at 
  RungStart plus 409,590 and--"

  "Thank you, CLAUDE," Faye interrupted, "I'll ask you for the 
  math when I need it." She wondered why CLAUDE did that, kept 
  such careful track of irrelevant numbers and then reported them 
  so earnestly. Numbers have their place, she thought, and that's 
  nowhere near me.

  "Okay, CLAUDE, start sequencing again, Display gamma, and stop 
  when you find an A-T-G." She leaned back in her chair and 
  waited. Generally, there was some noncoding intron, 
  affectionately called Junk DNA, between the chunks of active DNA 
  that actually translated into amino acids. The junk ended when a 
  Start Codon, A-T-G, was found. Junk DNA averaged 300 base pairs 
  long, but one chain of junk found in the Marshal Rung numbered 
  more than 36,000.

  After five minutes of reclining, Faye noticed the screen wink 
  out, though CLAUDE's "thinking" indicator light flashed 
  furiously, indicating a flurry of electronic activity. Well, 
  this intron's a lot bigger than average, she thought.

  After an hour of silent, though relaxed, pacing, Faye needed to 
  talk. "Ummmmmm, CLAUDE, still sorting through the junk, huh?"

  CLAUDE's screen jumped to life, though still quite devoid of 
  information, and said, "That is correct Doctor. I have so far 
  sequenced 12,060 base pairs without finding a Start Codon. 
  Furthermore--"

  "Wait just a minute, though. What are the odds you missed the 
  Codon entirely, and are now running through active code?"

  "In my present mode," answered CLAUDE, "the likelihood of this 
  occurring is approximately 6,210,000 to one against." The 
  "thinking" light blinked for a moment, then stopped, as CLAUDE 
  awaited instruction.

  "All right, I can live with those odds. You can keep sequencing 
  through the night, can't you?" After all, she reasoned to 
  herself, no point in wasting tomorrow's allotment of 
  work-therapy time just sitting around checking over an endless 
  line of junk.

  This request was a new one for CLAUDE, but after consulting 
  COREY it said, "That would be possible, but I cannot accurately 
  estimate a time of completion."

  "Just get to it, CLAUDE, and I'll get back to you tomorrow. 
  Bye," she said, realizing that the day's interactive time was 
  almost up. "Oh, can you summarize what you've found about this 
  junk so far, and put it in some sort of chart or table, please?" 
  Faye wondered why she'd asked so politely. She knew CLAUDE would 
  comply instantly without complaining. Chalk it up to a lack of 
  staff, she thought.

  "Certainly, Doctor," CLAUDE said, displaying a summary on 
  screen, "Goodnight."

  But this is wrong, she thought, studying the screen. This 
  couldn't be; CLAUDE must have goofed something up. Where are all 
  the C's in this thing? Faye had already shut down CLAUDE for the 
  day, so she was left to figure the math herself in her head.

  Overall, she thought, of the four base pair combinations A, T, 
  G, and C, nothing more advanced than bacteria uses much more of 
  one than another. In fact, after 22 Rungs, the level was 
  something like 25 percent all around. And now here's this junk 
  totally devoid of G's. In fact, the A's and C's are impossibly 
  low too, each less than 5%. That leaves, oh my God, 90 percent 
  T's. If CLAUDE is losing it, then the Rung won't get done for 
  days while it gets debugged. Unless the sequencer is messed up.

  Faye froze in mid-thought. Everything about her ground down to a 
  standstill, except for her pulse rate. "Sleep now..." she heard 
  softly. "As you enter this deeply relaxed state, you find that 
  you are feeling very safe, very warm, and very comfortable..." 
  The Hyp- Chip continued to weave its web as orderlies ran 
  through their routine, scooping Faye up gently, placing her on 
  her bed, and quietly slipping out the door. "In this state you 
  can picture any scene and see yourself doing anything you want, 
  either familiar and from memory or totally original..."

  Faye passed through her laboratory and into her office in the 
  Bio- Engineering Department at UNYA, and the lights turned 
  themselves on.

  "Hi Faye. It's good to see you looking so well," declared CHIP, 
  as its screen lit up. "It's Saturday, June 20th. You have new 
  mail, a lot of it in fact, though most of it is garbage."

  "Thanks, CHIP. I know, mail piles up after two weeks," Faye 
  said. She felt good, real good, and ready to dive into the Human 
  Genome Mapping Project again. She sat in her chair in front of 
  CHIP, but it felt a little too big for her now. Her smile grew 
  bigger. "You really think so, about me looking good?"

  CHIP navigated through the system to Faye's electronic mailbox, 
  and responded, "Well, you know I don't have any feelings in the 
  matter per se, but, in terms of what you told me you wanted to 
  have done to yourself, all of the procedures appear successful. 
  You look like you've lost 40 pounds. The collegen and enzyme 
  treatments have rejuvenized your skin. Your hair is once again 
  dark brown, thick, and long. The repolymerizing of your tissue 
  with the silca implants appears very natural. In every respect 
  you look twenty-five years younger. Oh, by the way," CHIP added, 
  "both your Polymer and Reconstructive Surgeons e-mailed to say 
  that your tissue samples are all in the green, and that you can 
  consider yourself completely finished with treatment."

  "Well, that is good news," Faye responded. "Do you know what I 
  did with the rest of the Nobel money? Wardrobe. Never had so 
  much fun shopping before. I bought everything: new skirts, new 
  shorts, new blouses, new slacks, of course new bras, and even 
  new shoes, my sizes have changed so much. Know what, CHIP? I 
  even bought some lycra and a knock 'em dead evening gown. I 
  don't think anyone there would have believed I'll be 57 next 
  month."

  "Mazeltov, Faye. And they say money can't buy happiness. Do you 
  want to read your mail now?"

  "Okay, but just the important letters." Faye tried to get 
  comfortable in her chair, but, like everything else, it just 
  didn't fit her anymore. "Oh, can you requisition a new chair 
  from the University, something to handle a more svelte figure?"

  "You got it. Here's the first relevant letter," announced CHIP, 
  displaying it to the screen. It was from a friend, but its tone 
  was all business and to the point. The gyne-genetic engineers 
  could not de-integrate Faye's DNA into new haploid eggs, and 
  while in the future the technology might exist to do so, Faye's 
  menopause was, for the time being, permanent.

  She closed her eyes, exhaled deeply through her nose, and placed 
  her hand on her newly smoothed and flattened belly. Damn, she 
  thought, they were my last chance. Well, at least the rest of me 
  is young again. Look at the bright side: ha-ha, no more stained 
  underwear to worry about; my new panties are safe. Faye tried to 
  stop her grimacing, asking CHIP for the next letter, but a smile 
  didn't come easy.

  The next several letters were personal, and Faye's newfound 
  enthusiasm didn't shine through at first, but by her fifth, she 
  seemed as elated as when she first sat down.

  "This last letter is interdepartmental, from the head honcho 
  himself: Dr. Horner," said CHIP. "Want me to delete it?"

  "No, better let me see what Jason has to say." More fluff, 
  thought Faye, a general morale booster, a new grad student 
  Melinda someone- or-other is our newest intern... oh wait, a 
  little something welcoming me back. At least it's nothing 
  embarrassing. "It says here that everyone else's rungs are 
  getting sequenced pretty well. One of them is even done."

  "Yep, though despite your absence, you've decoded more than most 
  everyone," answered CHIP.

  "That's because I enjoy it. And speaking of which, let's do a 
  little work on the Rung before I go home. I think Phil's in for 
  a surprise when he sees me now, a week ahead of time."

  "I should say so, Faye. I'm firing up the sequencer now." 
  Through the door from the lab, a machine growled to life, 
  revving up to speed. "When you left we had come across some 
  junk. It was sort of long-ish, and these first 453 base pairs 
  are really unusual."

  "Oh yeah, all those C's and that pattern after it," remembered 
  Faye. "You make anything of it?"

  "Yes, and you might find it interesting. That pattern after the 
  C's doesn't code for anything biological, but maybe for 
  something else. It's a set of prime numbers."

  Inside herself miles away, Faye's Hyp-Chip, satisfied with its 
  patient's current status, released her from its trance. Faye 
  fell asleep without stirring.


  Three.
--------

  Work continued on the Harrower Rung, after only a day's delay. 
  Both CLAUDE and the sequencer checked out fine, and after 
  surveying a section of the junk sequence personally, Faye felt 
  that she wasn't chasing down a mere mistake, but something 
  unusual, something worth studying further, an anomaly never 
  before recorded in anyone else's Rung.

  CLAUDE found a Start Codon after about 107,000 base pairs, 
  making this the largest hunk of junk ever found, and that in 
  itself warranted a further study. The first 400 and last 500 
  base pairs were all C's, something also never seen before.

  "The likelihood of this occurring randomly is 1.6 x 10^120 to 
  one against," volunteered CLAUDE.

  It's gotta be proud of itself when it does that, Faye thought; 
  there's no other reason for it. She smiled and let CLAUDE 
  indulge itself further, hoping the diversion would let a new 
  hypothesis pop into her head.

  "And the sequence between these beginning and ending numbers of 
  Cytosine-guanine base pairs," continued CLAUDE, "is exactly 
  106,387 base pairs long, a Casidak number which--"

  "What's that, a Casidak number? I've never heard that one 
  before," piped Faye. She leaned forward in her chair as CLAUDE 
  explained.

  "A Casidak number is any number which factors into two and only 
  two different prime numbers other than itself and 1, the 
  smallest of which is 6, which factors into 3 and 2. In the case 
  of 106,387, the factors are 557 and 191."

  CLAUDE droned on about other Casidaks, primitive positive roots 
  of Casidaks, and prime numbers in general. CLAUDE displayed the 
  first several base pairs of the 106,387, and something about the 
  sequence struck Faye as soon as CLAUDE said "Prime numbers are 
  one of the few abstract mathematical principles understood by 
  most primitive cultures."

  "T-A-T-A-A-T-A-A-A-T-A-A-A-A-A-T-A-A-A-A-A-A-A, that doesn't 
  code for any useful amino acid chain," Faye mumbled, thinking 
  aloud. "But, oh my God, those right there are some prime 
  numbers! A whole bunch of them, right CLAUDE? Look at this set 
  right here," she said raising her voice in excitement and 
  touching the screen, "there's 1 A, then 2, then 3, then 5, and 
  then 7 A's, you see the pattern, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do," CLAUDE replied. "The chance of this sequence 
  randomly occurring are approximately 2.6--"

  "Fine, fine, fine, CLAUDE, I get the picture." Faye didn't want 
  any more huge numbers breaking her chain of thought. "There's a 
  greater chance of me getting run over by a hoverbus than this 
  happening completely by chance, apparently, okay, okay. Does 
  this, uh, pattern occur at any other point in the junk?"

  CLAUDE's thinking light flashed as it surveyed the junk. "No, 
  Doctor, this is the only such arrangement in the junk sequence," 
  it answered. "And to what hoverbus are you referring?"

  "Never mind about the hoverbus, CLAUDE. There is no hoverbus. I 
  wasn't talking to you anyway -- and don't ask me who I was 
  talking to, got it? Ok, how do you account for these--" How 
  would I classify this anyway? Faye thought. There's no set 
  category for this kind of code. "--unusual sections, the C's and 
  the primes?"

  "I am not capable of answering that question, Doctor, due to a 
  lack of data," CLAUDE answered mechanically, "however I can 
  offer some suggestions which you may conclude upon."

  "All right. Fire away, CLAUDE."

  Faye ambled around her room, brushing dust off her newly 
  acquired knick-knacks, while shooting down possible explanations 
  much faster than CLAUDE could send them her way. After about 20 
  suggestions, Faye was glancing through her photo album.

  "Recombinant obligate intracellular parasites?"

  "A virus? That could account for the phenomenon, but not the 
  actual sequence. This stuff wouldn't code for anything useful to 
  a virus." She turned a page.

  "Extreme missense mutation?"

  "Nope. That might re-write a section of DNA, but the resulting 
  pattern would be just as random as the original." Faye smiled, 
  thinking of the story behind that photo of the stripper her co- 
  workers got for her surprise birthday party. God, was I over the 
  hill then, she thought, sighing.

  "Errors in Okazaki Fragment placement from DNA ligase?"

  "Possible for small repeating fragments, but certainly not for a 
  couple hundred C's or those primes. And besides, this sequence 
  isn't just in one human's sample; it's everyone's." Faye looked 
  up from her album, still remaining seated. "That's one of the 
  reasons why the Human Genome Mapping Project exists; the samples 
  The Project distributes are representative, a collection of DNA 
  from tens of thousands of people. Individual differences are a 
  moot point. You're talking about things that affect just an 
  individual's DNA; not a whole species', not all of mankind's."

  "Any one of these conditions might have occurred some time ago," 
  responded CLAUDE. "The older the genetic modification, the more 
  representative it would be today. It is a simple matter of 
  inherited traits, or in this case, genes."

  "Can you break down the sample, CLAUDE, determine what 
  percentage of it has this junk?" Maybe we can see how far back 
  this junk came to be, she thought. Faye settled back down into 
  her chair, slowly turning pages.

  CLAUDE stopped thinking, and declared "Almost 100 percent of the 
  sample possesses this sequence of junk, Doctor, indicating this 
  junk was present from the earliest times of mankind's 
  development, most likely in the first examples of Homo Sapiens."

  Faye looked up, startled that CLAUDE would make such a sweeping 
  conclusion. Wait, she thought; statistically speaking, that 
  would have to be the case. "Humanity's last evolutionary jump," 
  she said softly, "was about 120,000 years ago, and apparently 
  this junk was along for the ride." As she pondered it, she 
  asked, "Any more ideas about how it got there?"

  CLAUDE settled into its "suggesting how the junk got this way" 
  mode, and Faye settled back into her scrapbook.

  "Histone contamination?"

  "Couldn't make something this long, plus the changes would be in 
  a lot more places than just here in this junk." Faye found 
  another photo of a lab party, celebrating the completion of the 
  department's first Rung. It was a big occasion, and would bring 
  the department more prestige and funding that it had ever known. 
  Everyone was there, including families and support personnel. It 
  was her unveiling too, and heads turned as friends and 
  colleagues recognized that stunning, curvy brunette with Phil as 
  Faye. And there in the background was Jason, introducing Melinda 
  to Phil. That asshole, Faye thought. Wait, Melinda? Was this the 
  first time they met? Jason introduced them? Why I didn't figure 
  it out until now?

  "Genetic engineering?"

  "What?"

  "Genetic engineering. It is my last suggestion," said CLAUDE.

  "But 120,000 years ago?" was all Faye remembered murmuring. Her 
  mind, for the moment, raced. Well Melinda is beautiful -- and 
  young, real youth... and blooming. Look at how she's looking at 
  him! What chance could I have had? she thought. Faye's eyes felt 
  hot on the insides, and her last thought was "Again?" as the 
  Hyp-Chip kicked in and brought her down.

  "Sleep now..." the chip suggested, almost knowing Faye possessed 
  no real power to resist. It continued through its routine, "In 
  this state you can picture any scene and see yourself doing 
  anything you want, either familiar and from memory or totally 
  original..."


  Four.
-------

  "Hi CHIP," said Faye as she walked into her office, "how goes 
  the junk?"

  "Good morning Faye. It's Monday, June 22nd," responded CHIP, 
  "You have new mail -- just a note from Dr. Horner, though. And I 
  can't wait to talk to you about the junk."

  "Yes you can, CHIP," said Faye, not missing a beat, "for just 
  long enough to tell me what Jason wants."

  "Oh, all right. He just wants you stop by his office sometime 
  before lunch. Can I delete the message now?" CHIP sure seems, 
  well, chipper today, Faye thought.

  "Fine, fine, go ahead. Now, what about the junk?"

  "Well first of all, I sorted through all the junk, and that took 
  almost all day yesterday. Total number of base pairs before the 
  next active sequence of DNA: 107,287."

  "That's huge," interrupted Faye.

  "The biggest section of junk yet found, in fact. Remember those 
  400 C's at the beginning? Well, there are 500 more at the end, 
  leaving 106,387 in between. That's a Casidak number you know."

  "Actually, I didn't," she said, repositioning her bra straps. I 
  wish someone told me they would dig in more with the extra 
  weight and all, Faye thought. She hoped it was just a matter of 
  getting used to. "Should I?"

  "Well, they're kind of obscure; I doubt a geneticist would have 
  ever heard of them, though some astrophysicists are really big 
  on them. Basically, it's a really big number that only divides 
  into two big primes. So far so good?" asked CHIP.

  "You haven't lost me yet."

  "Excellent. Now, some astrophysicists, who observe other stars 
  in their search for intelligent life, think that the first 
  messages Earth will get will involve Casidaks. Here's why: 
  astrophysicists assume that aliens would want to keep the 
  message simple and easily decoded, without references to 
  language, so they would send a picture." CHIP's screen cleared 
  and formed a rectangle, with an "x" on a horizontal side and a 
  "y" on a vertical. "So say you receive a message with a Casidak 
  number of 0's and 1's, which is also easy to send across space, 
  by the way; you can lay the whole sequence into a grid with x 
  columns and y rows of 0's and 1's, just like filling up a sheet 
  of graph paper. The 0's make up the background and the 1's make 
  up the lines the picture is drawn with"

  "Does this have a point?" Faye asked, wondering where this would 
  lead.

  "Sure it does," answered CHIP. "Between those C's are a Casidak 
  number of T's and A's. Those primes just after the C's are what 
  made COLLIN, the Physics Department's computer, wonder what 
  running it though a Casidak Square might produce."

  "Wait, you chat with other computers at night?"

  "Just to keep busy. I don't chat about anything secret," CHIP 
  said. Almost sheepishly, Faye thought. "But the point is COLLIN 
  hit something. The resulting Casidak Square was 557 by 191 dots, 
  and believe it or not, what I think is a picture resulted. Here 
  it is."

  CHIP's screen displayed the "drawing" encoded within the junk of 
  her rung. The coarse resolution and lack of color looked out of 
  place on CHIP's normally vibrant and animated display; the 
  picture itself looked as if a someone had drawn figures on a 
  sheet of printer paper with a thick crayon. Human figures, 
  albeit stick figures, were definitely present. Along with some 
  other, less readily identifiable ones.

  "This is the real McCoy, no BS?" Faye questioned. "I still 
  remember when you--"

  "Not this time, Faye. Here's the numbers, you can see the 
  corroboration yourself. See?" CHIP displayed a chart.

  "Well, these numbers look all right, I suppose."

  OK, let me work this out, she thought, displaying the picture 
  again. That looks like a stooped-over man, like a weird 
  hunchback with long arms, and there's an arrow pointing from it 
  to this tall stick-figure man. And from that line, there's 
  another arrow pointing to, whoa, what looks like an octopus? And 
  what about this line here?

  Hours later, Faye had a printout of the picture on Jason's desk, 
  and interpreted it.

  "Now let me get this straight," said Dr. Jason Horner. A little 
  too loud for comfort, thought Faye. "You think this picture does 
  the following: one, establishes a base ten counting system based 
  on this character's fingers." He pointed to the upright stick 
  figure. "Two, that this hunched-over character with the big 
  forehead and thick arms is an early human, Homo Erectus." He 
  pointed to the hunchback figure. "Three, that this octopus thing 
  had something to do with the change of this hunched-over thing 
  to this tall thing." His hand swept all over the paper. "Four, 
  that this octopus thing comes from a star in this constellation, 
  as seen from Earth." He pointed to a set of dots bearing a 
  strong resemblance to Virgo. "Five, and that now someone should 
  go to someplace that you and your computer say is off the Baja 
  Californian coast and do something." Jason pointed to what 
  looked like a map of the western coast of the Americas. "And 
  six, that doing this will contact these octopus creatures or 
  something?"

  Faye had no idea that it sounded so stupid in context, but CHIP 
  and she, with the help of COLLIN, had spent hours reasoning it 
  out. She stood her ground. "It could be. I was planning on 
  letting the astrophysicists across campus play with it. They've 
  been looking for this kind of thing for decades. Let them be the 
  judges."

  "No way," Jason proclaimed, getting louder. "You may be on a hot 
  streak, Mrs. Nobel Prize winner, but these sort of sensational 
  conclusions can only make trouble for this department. Remember 
  the University of Utah and their cold fusion claims, or UC San 
  Diego's aquatic mammalian communication 'breakthroughs?' They 
  lost all their academic credibility and respect after those 
  fiascos." Jason began to pace around his office. "This 
  department has just completed its first Rung for the Human 
  Genome Mapping Project, with more on the way, and one of our 
  staff, namely you, is a recent Nobel Prize winner. To throw all 
  this prestige away by letting this 'alien picture' thing leave 
  this office is academic, scientific, and financial suicide, and 
  that's final."

  I might not have had any problems with Jason before, thought 
  Faye, but I can see why CHIP thinks about him the way it does. 
  "That's right, I am Mrs. Nobel Prize winner," said Faye, raising 
  her voice more than she had in a long time, "and I think that 
  qualifies me to judge what is scientifically legitimate and what 
  isn't!" Faye slammed the door on her way out.

  "You have new mail," said CHIP, "interdepartmental in nature."

  "Let me see it already. It's about the damn Rung Completion 
  party isn't it?"

  "Dr. Horner shot down the picture theory, didn't he?" CHIP 
  asked, knowingly.

  "It's more than that," stammered Faye. "He's got dollar signs in 
  his eyes and he thinks that he can push me around, that he can 
  keep this theory under wraps indefinitely."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Well, the party is tomorrow night, so I can talk with some 
  people, important and otherwise. Maybe Phil would have an idea."

  "And to totally change the subject, was Phil surprised to see 
  you?" questioned CHIP.

  "Yeah, he was surprised, but not all that happy, I thought." 
  Faye's voice lost the edge it had very recently acquired. "But 
  that's not important now. I'm going home to cool off."

  Faye returned to the labs the next night, wrapped in her evening 
  gown, ready to schmooze and lobby. Phil knew what he was talking 
  about, Faye thought. Hours into the gathering, Jason approached 
  Faye and Phil with Melinda, and leaving Melinda with Phil, Jason 
  invited Faye into his office in order to speak privately.

  "I've been chatting with colleagues all night, Doctor Horner," 
  Faye said coldly, "and I think I have a strong enough leg to 
  stand on to push this picture business through."

  "Faye," Jason said smiling, "I've changed my mind. You're right, 
  I think maybe you should shuttle it across campus, and see what 
  they come up with."

  "Wait, what's the catch?" she questioned.

  "No catch, I've just had a change of heart. I consider you a 
  valuable asset to this department, and therefore, your opinions 
  are valuable to me as well." He poured two glasses of champagne, 
  offering one to Faye. "But let's just keep it on campus, all 
  right?"

  She eyed the extended glass for a moment, and accepted it, 
  taking a sip.

  Faye felt funny as she slumped into one of Jason's chairs. Her 
  senses suddenly numbed and she started shaking uncontrollably.

  She saw Jason smile smugly as he poured his glass into a potted 
  plant and turned toward his computer.

  "CORBIN," he said, "I need to access to Dr. Harrower's files and 
  notes. Copy them all to my location, deleting her originals, 
  administrative clearance level sonza. I'll modify them later."

  Faye tried to move, struggled to yell, fought to stop shaking, 
  but she could not do anything.

  "Now compose a letter to Janice Brooke, Coordinator of the Human 
  Genome Mapping Project, something to the effect that 
  unfortunately, due to a sudden mental or nervous breakdown 
  probably resulting from extreme personal stress following 
  dramatic physical reconstruction, Dr. Harrower will be unable to 
  finish sequencing the last, oh," he calculated a number which 
  would exclude the recently discovered junk, "700,000 base pairs. 
  Please reassign the Harrower Rung, et cetera. You clean it up, 
  CORBIN."

  Jason turned to Faye, and said "What you've just drunk contains 
  a little bug I whipped up yesterday, which is even now reacting 
  with the trace anti-aging proteins still in your bloodstream, 
  which will block all of this alien visitation nonsense from your 
  memory once and for all." Jason grinned hard, looking Faye right 
  in her trembling face. Unfortunately, the process will in all 
  likelihood unbalance you mentally, but a good institute should 
  be able to help you along. And," he added, "I think Melinda will 
  be able to ease Phil's loss. She's quite the temptress; an 
  effective tool, I've found."

  Faye's Hyp-Chip had never sensed everything it monitored jump 
  into the red so suddenly. As if by reflex, it totally shut Faye 
  down, and she slammed into sleep.


  Five.
-------

  The charter boat Santa Maria bobbed gently in the Pacific, 
  swinging Faye's hammock. Despite the cooling effect of the 
  setting sun, she didn't shiver in her bikini.

  "Sweet," she whispered, nuzzling Juan's ear, "I have to get up 
  now and check the asgal device."

  He turned slightly, allowing her to roll off onto the deck with 
  both feet. "Si." She pulled part of her suit up from her ankles 
  and went below.

  The device registered the magnetron waves stronger than ever 
  before, winking softly. She stepped to the uplink board, and the 
  satellite pinpointed them to the fifth decimal place off the 
  coast of Baja California.

  It matches, she thought, putting her copy of the Casidak Square 
  CLAUDE printed out back into her tote. There really is something 
  to this map after all.

  As she put the sheet away, her tote tipped, spilling some of her 
  papers. No biggie, she thought, casually scooping them up. I'll 
  have to frame these someday, she thought as she held Methany's 
  release forms. She glanced at the charred remains of Phil and 
  Melinda's wedding announcement in the ashtray on the console, 
  noting that it burned differently than Phil's divorce papers and 
  his pathetic, whining letters, and chuckled. And those too, she 
  thought as she went topside, loosening her bikini again.

  "Phil," she said looking at Juan, "eat your heart out."


  Warren Ernst  (wernst@ucsd.edu)
---------------------------------
  
  Warren Ernst graduated from the University of California, San 
  Diego on June 14, 1992 with a B.A. in Political Science. He now 
  plans to look for some sort of gainful employment. Warren wrote 
  this story, originally titled "Unsoccessive Sequential Events," 
  for a class in science writing. Warren is a friend of famed 
  InterText writer/loon Greg Knauss. According to Greg, there are 
  a few things in this world which have weathered the ages: the 
  pyramids, Stonehenge, and Warren's hairstyle.


  Was  by Ken Zuroski
=====================

  When I first saw her, she was walking through the park on a warm 
  summer day. She was wearing a long dress and a small piece of 
  multicolored twine around her wrist as a bracelet. I was alone, 
  watching people in the crowd. She was surrounded by her friends 
  and didn't notice me.

  Half a year passed; we were introduced through a friend of a 
  friend. Then one night as I was working late, the phone rang. I 
  picked it up and it was her, asking me to dinner in a wobbly 
  voice.

  "You know," I said, "I think I'm going to take you up on that."

  Over dinner, she told me that she didn't believe in God and that 
  her favorite singer was Dylan. She had been in a terrible 
  motorcycle accident when she was young, and now she didn't 
  drive. She was studying to be a biomedical engineer. Also, her 
  Walkman headphones weren't working and did I think I could fix 
  them? I told her to bring them by tomorrow and I'd have a look.

  I grew accustomed to waking with her body next to mine. She 
  would always entwine herself about me, her head on my chest. 
  Late at night, I would lie motionless, listening to the sound of 
  her beating heart; somehow I was reassured.

  "Who will love me when I'm old and bald?" I asked rhetorically, 
  one day, gazing grimly into a mirror at my receding hairline.

  I felt a kiss on the back of my head. "It's good luck to kiss 
  your lover's bald spot," she said, laughing. And, after a 
  moment, I laughed too.

  At a bar one time, I sat on a stool, fidgeting nervously and 
  watching as she, with sublime nonchalance, beat an astonished 
  steelworker at a game of pool: one ball after another vanishing 
  into the pockets in rapid succession, the challenger standing 
  there furious, his swagger evaporated, his pride depleted.

  We visited some friends who owned a cabin in the mountains. The 
  hour was late, but she was anxious to begin the return trip; she 
  had an exam to study for the next day. I was tired and wanted to 
  sleep, but we climbed into my truck, pulled onto the highway, 
  and headed for home.

  She fell asleep immediately, her head in my lap. I drove alone 
  through the empty country roads. The panel-lights glowed yellow- 
  green; outside the truck, all was darkness.

  I grew tired. I could barely hold my head aright. The truck was 
  swerving and the lines on the highway blurred; I had to pull 
  over to sleep. I switched the engine off, and the night was very 
  still. I lay my head back and closed my eyes.

  She stirred, and I felt a kiss on my knee. "Someone cares," I 
  heard her sleepy voice say.

  I peered up into the sky. Overhead, the stars blazed furiously 
  -- hundreds, thousands, billions. "I care, Sue, very much," I 
  said, and stroked her hair; but she was already asleep.

  Then one day she came to me -- it doesn't really matter where. 
  She hesitated for a moment, and then said uncertainly: "I don't 
  feel the same way I used to."

  I stared for a while at the tabletop, then at the floor. Then I 
  stormed from the room, slamming the door open with the flat of 
  my hand. I strode away with giant, prideful steps. I heard her 
  call my name, but I didn't look back.

  We had one or two more telephone conversations after that. 
  Toward the end of the last, she began to cry. I was astonished. 
  I said: "Why are you crying?"

  "Because I love you," she wailed.

  "If we love each other," I said, "then we can work it out." But 
  she hung up a moment later.


  Ken Zuroski  (kz08+@andrew.cmu.edu)
-------------------------------------

  Ken Zuroski is currently completing the requirements for a Ph.D. 
  in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon, where he is studying the "folk 
  psychologies" of graphic designers. He steals time from his 
  thesis to write works of lugubrious fiction.


  Glow  by Brian Tanaka
=======================

  Annabella stepped forth into the twilight. Five years old. 
  Curiosity on two skinny legs.

  Her home was a trailer propped uncertainly on cinder blocks in a 
  backwater town. At the edge of a backwater town. And in the dark 
  interior of the trailer her father was passed out. Drunk. Lost 
  in a boozy nightmare. Inert at the folding kitchen table. 
  Forehead pressed to the flaky, plastic, simulated wood grain.

  And Annabella stepped forth into the twilight.

  There were no other kids for company. No playgrounds nearby. 
  Just a burnt-out warehouse, and a public garbage dump. She 
  followed the gravel road up to the chain-link fence that 
  surrounded the dump. The heavy stench from the heap, a smell so 
  familiar to Annabella, was being pushed off away from her by a 
  choppy breeze. She put her fingers up to the fence and walked 
  slowly beside it; feeling her hand vibrate as it skimmed the 
  links. A raccoon crawling out of the dump through a hole under 
  the fence heard her coming and froze halfway out of the hole. Of 
  the two, Annabella was the least startled, but she watched 
  warily as the creature considered her, then jogged off into the 
  low, leafy brush.

  The hole under the fence was new and small. The kind of rut a 
  raccoon would make. Or a dog, or a rabbit. The beige earth was 
  dug away to form a U-shaped trough under the links, and the 
  bottom of the fence was bent up and away to make a larger 
  passage.

  The evening was cold, and growing colder as it dipped into 
  night. Annabella folded her arms across her body. She considered 
  the hole, and continued on along the fence. But it wasn't long 
  before she turned back and returned to the hole.

  She gathered her skirt before her and crawled into the passage. 
  Her head passed through easily, but her shoulders were just a 
  bit too wide. She began pushing with her legs. Pushing. Pushing. 
  At last she came free and emerged fully from the passage, 
  crawling on her hands and knees.

  The dump was a great, dark desert of garbage, with rolling dunes 
  of used diapers, newspapers, washing machines, and rotting table 
  scraps. Annabella climbed over the nearest dune. And the one 
  after that. And in the descending darkness, from the crest of a 
  stinking dune, she looked down into a ravine of refuse whose 
  dark shadows were but a stage for a glow. Some slab of 
  phosphorescent, fluorescent, green garbage. Some toxic waste 
  tossed over the fence by disposal workers too lazy to drive the 
  last five miles to the official toxic dump site for one measly 
  slab of deadly whatever-it-is was glowing down there. Beckoning.

  Annabella half-climbed, half-tumbled down the hill to the glow. 
  It drew her to itself, charming her with its steady, light. 
  Trailer park Annabella. Drunk daddy Annabella. Dark world 
  dwelling, brown-eyed Annabella. Turned on by the radioactive 
  slab. Entranced by the magic in the night. She kneeled by the 
  glow and studied it intently. Breaking free of her silent 
  reverence, she giggled at the thought of a thing of such 
  unearthly beauty somehow being abandoned in a garbage dump. 
  Tenderly, she picked it up. And carefully, she stole back over 
  the dunes.


  Rufus Won't Wake Up  by Brian Tanaka
======================================

  The sight before the first officers on the scene was undoubtedly 
  the most bizarre thing they had ever seen. A child's toy, a "Big 
  Wheel" plastic tricycle, lay cradled in the front seat of a 
  Mercedes Benz amongst the shards of remains of the shattered 
  windshield it had burst through. The front wheel was lodged 
  firmly in the vicinity of what should have been the jaw of the 
  shattered skull of one Ned Dirkheim, sole occupant of the 
  vehicle. As if this were not enough, a trail of blood, 
  apparently left by the fleeing assailant, described a path from 
  the site of impact, across the hood, through the parking lot, 
  and out into the muggy night, signifying the impossible -- or at 
  least the highly improbable: Someone had ridden that tricycle 
  through the windshield, and walked away.


  "Where is he?"

  "He's always late."

  Ned Dirkheim, his face lined with deep furrows, looked at his 
  watch for the fourth time in as many minutes. "Where is he?" he 
  asked again.

  Mark didn't feel he needed to answer. Instead he dropped his 
  cigarette to the marble floor and crushed it with his foot.

  "We ought to leave without him," Ned said, scowling. "That would 
  teach him."

  "Take it easy, Ned. He's always late. You know that."

  Ned fidgeted with his car keys.

  Mark continued, "Well, don't you? You should by now."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "Well, if you don't want him in our carpool..."

  "I know. Just tell him. I know. I just might do that."

  "You've been saying that for the last..."

  "I know! The last eight years." He regained a bit of composure 
  and said, "I'm tired and I want to get home."

  Mark just laughed. He was about to light another cigarette when 
  he saw Douglas get out of an elevator on the far bank of the 
  lobby.

  "It's about time," Ned muttered to Mark. He turned and started 
  toward the parking lot before Douglas could join them.

  "What's up with him?" said Douglas, motioning toward the rapidly 
  disappearing Ned.

  Mark laughed and said, sarcastically, "Douglas, I'm surprised at 
  you. Don't you know you shouldn't keep the Junior Vice President 
  of Dayton Realty waiting?"

  "Jesus. I forgot my briefcase, so I had to go all the way back 
  up to..."

  "Save it. Save it. I don't give a damn. Ned's just a little 
  high-strung these days."

  They caught up with Ned at his Mercedes Benz and he let them in 
  without a word. They rolled out of the parking complex and Ned 
  barreled out onto the Hollywood freeway. He pulled into the 
  first lane and joined the thousands of other commuters bumper to 
  bumper on their long, slow voyage to their suburban homes. The 
  traffic crawled, threatening always to come to a complete halt, 
  like a steel river on a concrete bed, flowing and snaking into 
  the smoggy, brown horizon.

  It was nearly an hour later when they crept off the Hollywood 
  and onto the Ventura freeway. Ned took the Woodman street exit 
  and dropped off Douglas in front of his home.

  "Goodnight, Mark. Goodnight, Ned," Douglas said.

  "Yeah, see ya' tomorrow, Doug," said Mark. They both glanced at 
  Ned staring out of the windshield, but he said nothing.

  The car roared off, back to the freeway, and out again into the 
  Los Angeles twilight.

  "If you don't mind me saying so, I think you should try to 
  unwind a little," Mark said.

  "Well, I do mind."

  Mark decided it was not worth the effort to talk to Ned. He lit 
  a cigarette and sat back to enjoy the ride.

  A car passed them, swerved in front of them, cut into another 
  lane and sped ahead.

  "Damned kids!" Ned bellowed. He gripped the steering wheel 
  tightly, and fear raced through him. "I swear to you, I'm never 
  having kids as long as I live! They just grow up to be maniac 
  teenagers."

  "All right, Ned. All right. Calm down. Watch the road. Just get 
  us home. Look, if the freeway is getting you so wound up, why 
  don't we just get off at the next off ramp, instead of the one 
  we usually use, and take surface streets to my house. We're 
  nearly there anyway."

  "What the hell." He turned down the off-ramp, and onto a wide 
  boulevard.

  "Slow down a little," Mark said.

  "Just leave the driving to me," he said, violently snapping on 
  the headlights and swerving onto a side street.

  Suddenly a thump sounded in the car and a small white shape flew 
  up in front of the windshield.

  "What the fuck was that?" asked Mark.

  Ned slammed on the brakes and the car came to a lurching halt. 
  Both men looked back down the street. Ned felt dizzy as he 
  recognized the lifeless shape in the street. It was a dog. A 
  very dead dog.

  "Let's get out of here," he rasped, his throat tight with 
  revulsion.

  "But, Ned, shit. That's someone's dog."

  "I don't give a shit. It's not my fault some..."

  "Look!"

  A small boy had walked up to the dog. He pushed it a few times 
  with his sneakered foot, and turned to face the car. Ned felt a 
  strange bolt of energy race up his spine. For a moment, the 
  child seemed larger than he should have been, his eyes more 
  penetrating than they should have been. Ned felt a clammy panic 
  embrace his heart -- the boy seemed to loom over the car, 
  towering there in the suburban street. He felt the child's gaze 
  burst through his very soul like a buzz saw through butter.

  The sound of the passenger door opening brought him back to his 
  senses.

  "Get back in here, dammit, Mark!" he said.

  Mark turned to him and said, "Are you kidding me? That dog 
  belongs to that kid. We better talk to him. And you should 
  probably make some sort of arrangement for compensation with his 
  parents."

  Ned was feeling more like himself now. He glanced into the rear- 
  view mirror. Yes, the small child was merely a small child. 
  Apparently, he had gone through a momentary delusion -- probably 
  from the stress of the incident. That child, he thought, is too 
  young to think of taking my license plate number; I could drive 
  off and no one would know.

  "Well, aren't you going to get out?" Mark said.

  "No. No, I'm not going to," Ned said, "Let me take you home 
  first -- it's only a few blocks away -- and then I'll come back. 
  No use both of us being home late just because of some stupid 
  dog." He put the car in gear and drove to Mark's house.

  "Well, Ned. Good luck with the kid and his dog. I hope his 
  parents don't give you too much hell."

  Ned chuckled. "Oh, they won't."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  Ned just chuckled again.

  "Look, Ned. This is the first time you've laughed all night. 
  You're making me nervous. You are going back to the kid, aren't 
  you?"

  "Oh, Christ, Mark, why the hell should I? It's just some stupid 
  dog. The kid'll get over it in no time. Next week he'll have 
  some new toy and he won't even remember he had a dog." Mark 
  didn't look convinced. "Just forget about it, Mark. You can bet 
  I'm going to. Hell, I honestly couldn't even tell you exactly 
  where it happened."

  "Forget about it? How could I forget? That kid was standing 
  there staring at us."

  "Look. To tell you the truth, I don't really give a shit."

  Mark had trouble hiding his contempt and said, "I don't think 
  I'll need a ride in tomorrow. I'll take the bus." He slammed the 
  door.

  Ned drove back to the freeway. Of course, I did the right thing, 
  he told himself. I'm a busy man. I don't have time for some 
  brat's tragedy. God knows no one had time for mine when I was a 
  boy.

  Under the freeway overpass he paused for a red light. He noticed 
  some graffiti scrawled across the concrete wall. Damned kids, 
  writing on the walls, he thought. He read aloud: "Rufus won't 
  wake up." Must be the name of some new rock group.

  The light changed and he slid back onto the freeway. Soon he was 
  near his home. He had almost put the incident with the dog out 
  of his mind, and to completely eradicate it he decided to pull 
  into his favorite neighborhood bar. He parked the car in the 
  lot, got out, and locked his door. He noticed a tuft of fur 
  caught in the chrome around the headlight and stopped to pull it 
  out. There was more caught in the center of the grillwork, and 
  he methodically pulled it all out. Amid the gore and fur was a 
  dog tag. He read it and his initial fear rose up again in him. 
  It said:

                                 "Rufus"
                            1314 Kilgore Lane
                                555-6345 

  In his mind's eye he saw the graffiti under the freeway: Rufus 
  won't wake up. It must be pure coincidence, he told himself. He 
  looked down at the tag. His hand was trembling. He tossed the 
  tag into a nearby hedge and headed into the bar. Stupid kid, he 
  thought. Stupid dog.

  "Hello, Mr. Dirkheim. Good to see ya'. Come on in and make 
  yourself comfortable," Nick the bartender said upon spotting 
  Ned.

  "Hello, Nick."

  "Say, you look a little shook up. Everything all right?"

  "Gimme a bourbon, Nick. And make it snappy."

  "Comin' right up." He poured a glass.

  Ned promptly tossed it down. Jesus, he thought, I've got to pull 
  myself together. He walked to the men's room and stepped inside. 
  There in the brilliant florescent glare he saw, amongst the 
  other graffiti, the last phrase in the world he wanted to see: 
  Rufus won't wake up.

  He stood stunned for a few moments, then rushed to the sink and 
  soaked a paper towel in the lukewarm water. With determination 
  he scrubbed at the scrawl on the wall. He noticed with horrified 
  fascination that it was written in a child's hand. He scrubbed 
  furiously but the words would not be removed.

  Suddenly, the sound of barking from the bar grabbed his 
  attention. He tossed the towel in the garbage and hurled himself 
  through the door. A few people at the bar were laughing 
  uproariously, and Nick was wiping down the far end of the bar, 
  but no dog could be seen.

  Ned strode up to Nick and said, "Is there a dog in here?"

  "What?"

  "A dog. Is there a dog in here?"

  "You know I wouldn't let a dog in my bar, Mr. Dirkheim."

  "Did you hear a dog just now?"

  "No, sir."

  Ned sat himself down on a stool. "Say, Nick, give me another."

  Nick did, and then returned to wiping down the counter.

  "Funny you should mention dogs, Mr. Dirkheim."

  Ned lifted his glass to his mouth. "Why's that?"

  "Well, there's all this dog hair on my bar. I can't get it off, 
  it seems like..."

  Ned spilled his drink, coughed and sputtered.

  "It wasn't my fault!" he blurted out. "The damned thing ran 
  right out into the street!"

  "What the hell are you talking about? Keep it down!"

  The knot of people at the other end of the bar laughed riotously 
  again, but to Ned the laughter sounded like a pack of dogs 
  barking. That this explained the barking he had heard in the 
  men's room calmed him not at all. He jumped off his stool, 
  tossed a wad of dollar bills on the bar, and dashed out the 
  door.

  Just outside he slipped and fell. He jumped back to his feet. To 
  his great dismay, he saw that he had skidded on a pile of canine 
  dung. He spun on his heels and headed in a dash for the car. 
  Someone had carved into the paint on the hood with something 
  sharp. It said: Rufus won't wake up.

  Ned gasped. He fished his keys out of his pocket and fumbled 
  with them, dropping them to the asphalt. He retrieved them and 
  unlocked the door. Once seated, with the doors closed and 
  locked, he picked up his car phone and dialed Mark.

  "Hello."

  "Hello, Mary Ann? Is Mark around?"

  "Why, yes. He's here. Hold on a moment."

  Ned held on. It seemed much longer than a moment. The seconds 
  ticked by. They felt like minutes, hours, days. He began to 
  wonder if they had been cut off. He pushed down the automatic 
  door lock button again and glanced out the side window. He was 
  horrified, but not entirely surprised, to see scrawled across 
  the front wall of the bar in five foot letters: Rufus won't wake 
  up.

  He felt his bowels convulse involuntarily. Come on... Come on... 
  he thought, pick up the goddamned phone. He knew he had to get 
  back to the scene of the incident to straighten out the mess he 
  had begun, but what he had told Mark was horribly true -- he 
  couldn't remember exactly where it had happened. All those dark 
  side streets looked much the same. It could have been any one of 
  them. But, Mark could tell him exactly where it had happened.

  A faint rustling sound on the receiver blossomed suddenly into a 
  burst of static, followed by a low whine, an oozing howl 
  slithering down the phone line and into Ned's ear.

  "Hi," said a voice on the phone.

  "Hello, Mark?" said Ned, although he knew it wasn't Mark. It was 
  the voice of the child.

  "Mister... Rufus won't wake up."

  Ned's world spun. It's impossible, he told himself. Yet the 
  voice continued.

  "Did you hear me, mister? Rufus won't wake up."

  "I hear you," he said. "Listen, kid. I -- I -- I'm sorry I hit 
  your dog."

  "No you're not!" The child's voice rose with emotion. It was 
  plain to hear he was crying, and angry.

  "I am. I'm really sorry, kid." He realized suddenly that he 
  really was sorry. And almost against his will he shot back 
  through the murky years of memory to his own childhood and all 
  the pleas unheard, all the tears unseen. He once again felt his 
  young, needy arms embrace his father who felt stiff and 
  unyielding under the hug. His father who was a cold stone 
  monolith. His father who could never return an embrace.

  "No you're not!" the child repeated.

  "Yes. Yes I am. I truly am." He felt somehow offended the child 
  would not believe him just as he had come to this revelation 
  that startled even himself.

  "You're not sorry! You're not, you're not, you're not!"

  "Please believe me."

  "Rufus won't wake up, and neither will you." the child said.

  And Ned Dirkheim drew his last breath in a rasping, rushing 
  gasp. And Ned Dirkheim watched a speck in the sky turn to a 
  distinguishable shape with impossible speed. And Ned Dirkheim 
  recognized the shape as a Big Wheel. And Ned Dirkheim felt the 
  convulsion of his car as the windshield burst. And Ned Dirkheim 
  tasted plastic and came apart at the seams.
  

  Brian Tanaka  (btanaka@well.sf.ca.us)
---------------------------------------

  Brian Tanaka lives and frolics in San Francisco. He continues to 
  enjoy writing despite having just graduated from San Francisco 
  State University with a B.A. in Creative Writing.


 The Unified Murder Theorem (Conclusion)  by Jeff Zias
======================================================

  SYNOPSIS
----------

  They killed the guitar player on a Thursday night, as he sat in 
  the bar, playing his blue-glowing guitar. The last words the hit 
  men said were simply: "Goodbye from Nattasi."

  Jack Cruger, an accordion instructor, leads a mundane life -- 
  <20>except when trying to make a baby with his beautiful wife 
  Corrina. But all of that changes the moment that Tony Steffen 
  walks in his door. Tony gives Cruger an accordion to play -- and 
  blue light appears inside it when he plays. In addition, he 
  plays better than he's ever played before.

  Tony informs Cruger that the blue strands of light coming out of 
  the accordion are strings, each representing a path, a possible 
  outcome. Cruger has been chosen to be a "spinner" of strings by 
  the "Company," -- an organization whose job it is to create and 
  support all worlds, galaxies, and universes. The company's 
  chairman prefers to have living beings "spin" the fates... but 
  there's a catch -- there's another company, one that does what 
  you expect the Devil to do. If Cruger spins for the "good guys," 
  he'll be given protection in return --<2D>other spinners will 
  ensure that neither he nor his family will be harmed... except 
  for what is beyond their control, such as intervention from the 
  Other Company.

  Tony, occasionally accompanied by a beautiful young woman named 
  Sky, sometimes visits with Cruger. Tony tells him that many of 
  the company's executive positions are still held by aliens, most 
  from the planet named Tvonen. The Tvonens are now very advanced 
  --<2D>but their technology is completely analog-based, with no 
  digital electronics at all. Earth is quickly becoming more 
  technologically adept than the Tvonens. The Tvonens believe that 
  human thought, with its pursuit of the Grand Unified Theorem 
  --<2D>a theorem that could describe every detail of the functioning 
  of the universe --<2D>would give the Company a giant edge in its 
  ability to guide the universe.

  Tony is in charge of implementing the theory into a computer 
  system that will allow the Company to have such control over the 
  universe. Obviously, such a prospect is not taken lightly by the 
  Other Company, operated by renegade Tvonens and shape-shifting 
  aliens known as Chysans.

  But then Cruger finds Tony dead on his doorstep, and Cruger's 
  neighbor Leon Harris, watching from next door, comes over and 
  takes Cruger inside to call the police. In a panic, Cruger runs 
  outside, only to find Tony's body gone. When Harris tries to 
  grab him, he gets a powerful taste of Cruger's otherworldly 
  insurance policy. Cruger, now without Tony, decides to let 
  Harris in on what the Company is.

  In the wake of Tony's death, the two go in search of Tony's 
  girlfriend Sky. They succeed in tracking her down, but she says 
  she's never heard of anyone named Tony. The school has no 
  records of Tony's existence. It's as if he's been erased from 
  existence.

  After being attacked by a group of thugs from the Other Company 
  -- and being saved by the insurance policy -- Cruger and Harris 
  try to figure out Tony's notes and how he could have been using 
  his computer to control the entire universe.

  From above, in a ship orbiting the Earth, God -- the company's 
  Chairman -- looked down down on Harris and Cruger and saw 
  possible sucessors. He had been Chairman for two thousand years, 
  but it would be time to go soon. Since the use of Earth's 
  technology would be what gave the Company power over the 
  universe, it seemed fitting that a human should be the next 
  chairman. These two men, the Chairman realized, were the 
  Company's best hope, if the Other Company didn't get to them 
  first.

  Cruger and Harris are introduced to Neswick, an IRS agent who 
  doubles as their new Company supervisor. His daughter, Tamara, 
  quickly becomes intimately involved with Harris.

  One night, while playing, Cruger is paid a visit by someone who 
  seems to be a future version of himself: except this one says he 
  and Harris have become God. The future Cruger also plays a 
  guitar and is conspicuously missing a wedding ring. After 
  exchanging arguments, the future Cruger disappears.

  In a fit of suspicion about Neswick, Cruger follows Neswick to 
  the airport, where he sees him rendezvous with his daughter, 
  Tamara. Nothing strange there. But then, almost under his nose, 
  Cruger recognizes a face: Sky! She kisses Neswick and then 
  Tamara, laughing and talking.

  Cruger feels his stomach sink at least a yard. He knows innocent 
  coincidences like this are harder to find than dodo birds. Much 
  harder.


  Chapter 29
------------

  The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the 
  source of the highest good: not only the dark but also the 
  light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic, but superhuman, 
  spiritual, and, in the classic sense of the word, "divine."
                                           --Carl Gustave Jung

  "Leon, I have a strange question for you. If you tell me to eat 
  dirt, I'll understand."

  "Wow, I can't wait to hear it: ask away."

  "Will you let Corinna hypnotize you? I have a theory I want to 
  follow up on."

  Harris was surprised. "Does your wife know how to hypnotize 
  people?"

  "Sure. She was a therapist before we were married. They taught 
  her in school: it's a standard technique." Cruger grinned. "No 
  sweat."

  "Has she done it since then?"

  "Well, she hypnotized me once before we were married, but it's 
  like riding a bike, you know? If you've done it you don't 
  forget."

  "And how do I know my brain won't be scrambled? And there might 
  be things I wouldn't want to tell your wife." Harris grinned. 
  "Might make her think twice about being with a guy like you."

  "Um," Cruger said, "I'll take my chances."

  "Uh huh." Harris paused a moment. "Ok, what the hell."

  The two of them walked the fifty feet to Cruger's house. Corinna 
  was home; they found her in the kitchen sorting through the 
  mail.

  "Hi, honey," Cruger said, and kissed her on the cheek. "You 
  remember Leon Harris? Lives next door?"

  "Sure," Corinna smiled and extended her hand. "Good to see you 
  again, Mr. Harris."

  "I've got a favor to ask, Corinna. Could you hypnotize Mr. 
  Harris?"

  Corinna stopped, junk mail in one hand and bills in the other. 
  "Could I what?"

  "You know, take him under so I can ask him a few questions."

  "You've got to be kidding." She looked at Harris. "He's kidding, 
  right?"

  Harris fidgetted. "Uh, I thought you said this wouldn't be a 
  problem, Jack."

  "It's not." Cruger set his hand on Corinna's arm. "It's nothing 
  serious, honey. It's just that, um, he's curious. He's never 
  been hypnotized before and wants to see what it's like."

  "That's not a good reason." Corinna said in a firm voice.

  "Well, that's not the whole reason, really..." Cruger went on. 
  His thoughts were racing. Should he tell her about the Company? 
  About what he and Harris were doing? He wished he'd thought this 
  through a little further.

  "So what's the real reason for this?" Corrina was looking hard 
  into his eyes.

  "Um," Cruger started. "You see, uh, we..."

  "We have a bet." Harris said sheepishly. Corinna and Cruger both 
  turned toward him.

  "A bet?"

  "Well, not exactly," said Cruger.

  "He doesn't believe that I was at the airport last night."

  Corinna's eyes narrowed. "I don't get it."

  Cruger jumped in. "See, I don't think he was at the airport 
  because he was on a hot date with Tamara, and he says there's 
  nothing going on between them." Cruger crossed his arms and 
  smiled. "I've got fifty dollars on this."

  "This is crazy, Jack." Corinna dropped the junk mail into the 
  trash. "No."

  Cruger took her hand. "Please, just once? I'll never bug you 
  about it again." He looked into her eyes and tried to seem as 
  sincere as possible. He knew sincerity counted at times like 
  this.

  Corinna appeared to reconsider. She turned back to Harris. 
  "You're really willing to do this?"

  Harris shifted and put his hands in his pockets. "Um, sure. 
  Yeah."

  "Alright." Corinna's mouth formed a straight line. "But just 
  this once. And you'll use that money to take me to dinner. When 
  did you plan on doing this?"

  "Well, how about now?" said Cruger.

  "Now? I've got to work in three hours!"

  "How long will this take?"

  "Long enough!"

  "We don't have much time... we really need to get this settled. 
  Please?"

  There was a moment when Cruger almost thought she was going to 
  say no, but then she nodded and led them into the living room. 
  She made Harris sit down and, with a glare at Cruger, she began.

  First, she systematically relaxed each part of his body, then 
  told him a repetitive story about a man traveling downward, and 
  further downward, on a fast, smooth, elevator. When Harris was 
  definitely under, she nodded to Cruger.

  "Leon, it's last night and you're at home. Can you remember 
  that?"

  "Yes." Harris' voice was entirely relaxed.

  "What did you do?"

  "Tamara came over. We talked and had some wine."

  Cruger's raised his eyebrows; Corina pursed her lips. "Anything 
  else you can remember?" Cruger asked.

  "We had sex, then we went to sleep. We were tired."

  Cruger smiled widely for Corinna's benefit, then thought for a 
  minute."When you went to sleep, do you remember anything in 
  particular, any dreams?" Corinna glared at him, but he ignored 
  her.

  Harris was silent. His face was slightly tensed compared to a 
  moment before. Finally, he began forming words.

  "I do remember a little. I was dreaming, I think. Yes, I was 
  with Tamara." Harris's talking was very soft, barely audible. 
  Cruger moved closer to hear better.

  "She stood me up, and held my hands," Harris said. "We were both 
  naked. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be meditating, 
  thinking very hard. My body became light and for a minute I 
  couldn't see at all because of a bright light shining all around 
  us. But, I could still feel Tamara's hands, warm, almost too hot 
  to touch, in my hands."

  Cruger paused for a moment, trying to anticipate Corinna's 
  objections to the direction of his questions, but her objections 
  never came. He glanced at her; she sat silently, leaning forward 
  in her chair. "Um, go on," Cruger said, trying to make his voice 
  sound calm and assured.

  "I must have just slept more for a while and then, all of a 
  sudden, I was awake, and everything was extremely cold. I slowly 
  opened my eyes, just a little at a time because hot, sticky air 
  was sort of stinging. When I opened them up I was in a strange 
  place, really strange.

  "The air was misty with pockets of steam, and the ground was 
  this dark green and purple color. Bright and shiny. The land was 
  flat but all I saw around me were really smooth shiny black 
  rocks, the ground, and these big balloon-looking things all over 
  the place which were kind of like trees.

  "I heard a noise and then looked around behind me. There was 
  this little purplish thing, a creature. It had lots of arms and 
  legs and the face was ugly -- looked like a monkey with a frog's 
  skin. This thing took my arm and led me toward this big smooth 
  rock. There was a hole in the ground next to it, and this thing 
  led me down the hole; it was like an entrance to a cave but very 
  steep.

  "We went down these corridors and then came to a room with 
  torches lighting it. The room was filled with these creatures, 
  they just appeared out of nowhere with all of their arms and 
  ugly skin. A few of them blended into the walls behind them like 
  chameleons."

  Harris seemed to lose his train of thought as he paused for a 
  moment, swallowing hard and licking his lips.

  Corinna was still silent, so Cruger pressed on. "What happened 
  next?"

  "Then they all started making noise. They all seemed to be 
  talking at once. They started forming this circle, joining all 
  of their hands together and making this noise, this humming sort 
  of noise. One of them pushed me into the center of the circle, 
  then I swear I heard one of them laugh -- I mean a real human 
  laughing sound.

  "They closed in really tight all around me. They stuck out hands 
  and touched me, but, all of a sudden, I wasn't scared. Their 
  hands were warm and smooth; I relaxed and stood there with their 
  hands holding me up. Then it was very strange. I felt myself 
  talking to myself, in a way. It was as if they were asking me 
  hundreds of questions rapid fire and my brain was answering 
  them. Every thought I had seemed to elicit some kind of feedback 
  that I felt in their hands. I don't know how much time passed. I 
  remember feeling tired then. Next thing I knew, I was in my bed 
  at home just waking up."

  "Did you feel like you just dreamed this?" Cruger asked.

  "No. It seemed real. I told Tamara. She thought it was pretty 
  funny. She said I've been reading too much science fiction 
  lately."

  Cruger paused, then looked toward Corinna. "I think we're done."

  Corinna took a moment to respond, then she slowly began to bring 
  Harris out of the trance. Cruger stood up and made for the 
  bathroom, closing the door behind him. Then he sat down and 
  slowly began to rub his temples. From the living room, he could 
  hear Corinna's gentle voice--just a soothing sound, no words.

  As Harris' story sunk in, Cruger's stomach muscles tightened to 
  a knot. He could almost smell his own sweat, as the perspiration 
  crept down his shirt sleeves. The pieces of the puzzle were 
  starting to fit together, and he didn't like the image that was 
  forming. It looked like a big lemon. Now, how to make lemonade?


  Chapter 30
------------

  The next evening Cruger went over to see Harris at Tony's 
  office, carrying a beaten-up guitar behind him and feeling a bit 
  guilty about abandoning his accordion.

  Had Harris figured out the whole picture, part of the picture, 
  none of the picture, or just about everything? Hopefully he had 
  figured out enough, because it was beginning to look like they 
  were in a race against time.

  "Do you know how this spinning works? Have you found anything 
  like the code for that in the programs?" Cruger asked.

  "I think I know how it's set up. I've made a basic assumption 
  concerning the transference of energy -- given the models for 
  spinning that I know about."

  "Well, good. Actually, I have a reason for asking. You promise 
  not to laugh at me when I ask you a question?"

  "All right," Harris said, "I can't wait to hear this one. I 
  promise to not split a gut or anything, but can I just smirk a 
  little bit?"

  "OK; smirk away. Here it is: I've been thinking of playing -- 
  and spinning -- with a guitar. Do you think you can fix it so 
  that my spinning works with the guitar?"

  To Cruger's surprise Harris answered seriously, although it did 
  look like he was smirking. "I was wondering why you had that 
  thing with you. Look, I think I know how to set it up. It would 
  be a pretty good test to see if my theory about spinning is 
  right."

  "Now wipe that smirk off your face; you've enjoyed this enough 
  already," Cruger said.

  "Why do you want to have a guitar to spin with anyway?" Harris 
  asked as if he wanted the information for his files. Probably 
  very orderly files.

  "All of this is so ironic, don't you think? Once I saw a cartoon 
  that showed a man on his way through the pearly gates being 
  handed a harp. The caption read: 'Welcome to heaven.' In the 
  frame below, a man was being handed an accordion and the caption 
  read: 'Welcome to hell.' I want to make sure my name shows up on 
  the correct employee roster."

  "Good point," Harris said. "the accordion is pretty hellacious. 
  I'll chalk this up as a piece of pro bono work -- change for the 
  good."

  Harris sat at the computer, entering new descriptive identifiers 
  for Cruger's guitar. After about fifteen minutes had gone by, 
  Harris asked him to try playing the guitar a little to see if it 
  worked yet. Cruger struck a few chords on the instrument, and 
  played a quick melodic minor scale, up and down. No blue light 
  -- nothing in the tone of the instrument was extraordinary in 
  the least. The cheap thirty-dollar guitar sounded like a cheap 
  thirty-dollar guitar.

  "Wait, I think I know what's wrong." Harris shook his head and 
  kept on working.

  Cruger held the guitar across his knee and struck a simple 
  chord. Something was different; the sound was deeper, fuller. He 
  continued to play and the instrument gained momentum, starting 
  to resonate fully on every note. The higher harmonics 
  intensified, ringing out richly across the room. Then, bending 
  over the instrument as he played, Cruger saw a pale blue light 
  shining from within the body of the small guitar.


  Chapter 31
------------

  Getting the jump on them was easy. Cruger grabbed the phone, 
  called Ms. Branner at the IRS, and said he was from the travel 
  agency. Just confirming the flight to Denver, that's right miss, 
  Mr. Neswick's next flight is... what did you say? The 
  twenty-third, 1 p.m., that's correct. And rental car is... Avis, 
  did you say? Right again.

  So Cruger got to Denver on an earlier flight.

  But the stakeout wasn't much fun. A stakeout is especially 
  tiresome for a guy who doesn't know what he's doing.

  Cruger sat in his rental car waiting for Neswick to pull out of 
  the airport. There was only one exit from the Avis lot; he hoped 
  he would recognize Neswick when he drove past. Cruger's stomach 
  started to rumble every couple of minutes; it sounded loud 
  enough Cruger worried a cop would come knock on his window, 
  telling him to turn down his subwoofers. Ain't no subwoofers, he 
  would have to say, it's my goddamn stomach: You have a candy bar 
  or something? and the cop would go away with that puzzled-cop 
  look on his serious face.

  Finally, twenty minutes after Neswick's plane was supposed to 
  have landed, Cruger saw him pulling out in a Ford Taurus. Must 
  not have had luggage, Cruger thought as he turned the key in the 
  ignition.

  Cruger kept a safe distance; but he could see two passengers 
  that looked to be Sky and Tamara. Neswick went south on 25 and 
  stayed on all the way to Colorado Springs, then went through 
  town and back into the foothills.

  They stopped at a large house on quiet street that gave at least 
  an acre to each home. The lots were lined by random assortments 
  of gigantic boulders and jagged granite.

  Cruger pulled up to the house down the street. He was close 
  enough to see Neswick, Tamara, and Sky as they walked up to the 
  door and knocked. It opened a crack, and the three filed inside. 
  Cruger thought he saw a glint of silver from the clothing 
  inside, but the door closed before he could be sure.

  Cruger drove up to the house, got a closer look. The name 
  NATASSI, in small white letters, was painted on the cedar box 
  resting on the cracked 4x4 post alongside the steep driveway.

  Cruger drove down the hill and got himself the closest Best 
  Western hotel room. There was only one Natassi in the phone 
  book. Theodore Natassi. He was on 266 Garden Rock road, right 
  where Cruger had followed Neswick and crew. He imagined a 
  trained detective would know what to do as he showered and lay 
  on the bed, drifting into an unplanned nap.


  Neswick and Tamara were talking in the other room -- Natassi 
  could hear Neswick with his annoying, dull voice telling her 
  about the mountains and the American Indians and the Rockies 
  wildlife as if he were lecturing a college class.

  Natassi turned towards Sky. She was sitting the parquet kitchen 
  table, eating dozens of cookies, seemingly oblivious to the 
  ponderous bulk he turned towards her.

  "Tell me about the school you attend," he asked Sky. He watched 
  for her reaction, more important to him than anything she would 
  say. Her expression did not change. He wanted to probe, but 
  would start soft. Maybe in conversation she'd slip -- a grimace, 
  a frown -- and tell him something, maybe something he really 
  wanted to know.

  "Not much to tell," she said without looking up, and then, "You 
  know, I can eat a million of these things, these cookies, and 
  not get fat. All the girls at school are starving themselves to 
  try to get thin, and I eat all day long. Cracks me up." Sky, the 
  wicked mistress of pure innocence. Natassi both hated and 
  admired her ability to play the innocent foxy-cute teenager. 
  They should give awards, he thought, for such great acting. She 
  was the best. An Oscar to the alien girl who plays the airhead 
  but is really Satan's handmaid.

  "You've heard about someone breaking the rules? The deletions?" 
  Natassi watched her face closely. "I want to find out who it 
  is," Natassi said, making his voice stern. "You wouldn't have 
  any ideas, would you? Operatives behaving abnormally? Getting 
  too... involved here on Earth?"

  She met his eyes for a moment but didn't say anything, her blue 
  eyes tranquil and seeming to say, "I wish I could help but, 
  alas, I can't." She sat still, wrapped in shorts that barely 
  reached her thighs and a tiny halter top.

  Natassi let the silence hang in the room. Why would she do it? 
  Why would Tamara, or any other operative? Maybe a grudge, maybe 
  personality clashes, maybe some of these humans rub you so far 
  the wrong way you just have to take them out. Like Neswick -- 
  like all the Chysans -- rubbed him, only much worse.


  Chapter 32
------------

  Cruger didn't get much further the next day -- no one entered or 
  left the Natassi home. Then Cruger had to catch his flight back, 
  wondering what he accomplished on his trip.

  He had told Corrina he was going to the Polka festival in 
  Pueblo. He talked about hearing the Detroit Polish Moslem 
  Accordion Warriors play Love Potion Number Nine and other big 
  hits. He said he sat in with Nose Harp players from New Orleans. 
  She didn't seem to care much, and the next morning was 
  affectionate and athletic in bed, especially for a pregnant 
  woman.


  Neswick gestured for Harris and Cruger to sit. It was three days 
  after the mystery weekend and Neswick had called them into an 
  early evening meeting.

  "The Company has a large and complex organization, but I'll tell 
  you what you need to know. As you probably already know, a good 
  percentage of the Company is composed of people from Earth.

  "Many of the executive positions are still held by managers from 
  elsewhere. The vast majority of these -- well, I'll call them 
  foreigners, sounds better than 'aliens' -- most of them are from 
  the same planet: Tvonen. You won't find this planet on any of 
  your astronomy charts; I assure you. The Chairman himself is a 
  Tvonen."

  Cruger raised his eyebrows and exchanged a quick glance with 
  Harris.

  "These Tvonen went through a process of evolution quite similar 
  to what the humans have endured. However, a few major 
  differences exist, and I'd like to call attention to these 
  differences."

  Cruger noticed that Neswick always sounded as if he were 
  addressing the graduating class at Harvard. The man's stiff, 
  arrogant style bothered him.

  "First of all, the Tvonens have creationist mythology like ours. 
  The only irony is, their mythology is not allegorical but 
  factual."

  "We're familiar with the origin of the Tvonens. Tony filled me 
  in," Cruger said.

  "So you know about a Tvonen undergoing 'the change'?"

  Both Cruger and Harris nodded.

  "That special enzyme in their bloodstream controls the secretion 
  of the hormone for sexuality. Isn't that cruel?"

  "What is their civilization like now?" asked Harris.

  "Now they are what we would call a very advanced society. They 
  have technology that you would consider staggering. But, keep in 
  mind, they are much different from humans. For example, they 
  never devised any digital electronics. Their entire technology 
  is based on analog computing and mineral crystals. They also 
  have terrific projective holograms that can transmit with 
  pinpoint accuracy. For clothing, they wear trained 
  microorganisms that are self-cleaning and form-fitting.

  "They may be more advanced than humans, but humans are about to 
  pass them up. Digital electronics are more precise, more capable 
  of the infinite. See," said Neswick, "the problem you men have 
  is that you have no concept of the infinite. Once you master 
  that concept, everything else is simple to understand.

  "To picture the infinite, look at it this way: think of 
  everything there is -- I mean everything. Okay. Now realize that 
  there is actually a little bit more. You see?"

  Harris wondered if this was like when he tried cleaning things 
  dirt and dust from behind the back of the refrigerator.

  Cruger scratched his shoulder and felt like a not-particularly- 
  bright Orangutan.

  "Always, no matter what, there is a little more. Never can there 
  be everything."

  Cruger thought he understood but sarcastically played with the 
  idea that he may not have understood everything that Neswick 
  meant.


  Neswick had a different meeting later that day. Now that he had 
  them all in the same room, he could get the message across 
  quickly and simply.

  "It has come to my attention that someone is breaking 
  regulations by performing unnecessary deletes."

  He scanned the room quickly but, as expected, they all had 
  blocks up.

  "The importance of this mission cannot be overemphasized. Every 
  extra delete greatly jeopardizes the work we are doing. Is that 
  clear?"

  Of course, they all had entirely unreadable, impassive looks on 
  their faces. He excused them and they left, single file, no one 
  talking.

  He wondered if his management would see this as weakness on his 
  part. How could he let this behavior go unpunished? But, how 
  could he punish before he was sure of the identity of the 
  perpetrator?

  But playing with the Big Enigma was dangerous. It could only go 
  on for so long.


  Chapter 33
------------

  Sky walked out of class with a small collection of books and a 
  few floppy disks, and Cruger was waiting for her.

  "Sky," Cruger said.

  "Oh, Hi." She looked at him with some apprehension. If she were 
  a normal high school girl, she might simply be wondering why 
  this grown man had come to talk to her for a second time.

  Cruger guessed the apprehension was for a different reason.

  "Do you have a few minutes? I need to ask you a couple of 
  questions."

  She waved her hand at a few classmates walking by. "Well, okay. 
  I've got some time right now," she said.

  They kept walking, drifting toward the benches at the side of 
  the paved walkway.

  "What class was that you just got out of?" Cruger said.

  "Oh, that's computer lab -- pretty good class."

  "Sounds worthwhile. What do you do in there, the whole works?"

  "Yeah, I guess," she said.

  They sat on a wooden bench, facing away from the flow of 
  students. There was a stretch of grass was in front of them as 
  well as the school's token piece of art, a small bronze statue 
  of a Spanish missionary.

  Before he got a word out he knew it was too late. She could 
  evidently read him much better than he thought.

  "So you know a lot about us, Cruger. It doesn't matter. Your 
  knowledge is irrelevant," Sky said. Her soft schoolgirl's voice 
  had become steely cold and hard.

  "Know what?" Cruger's insincerity was clear both telepathically 
  and explicitly.

  Sky smiled a wicked, gleaming smile . "I hope you're proud of 
  yourself. And to think, I sort of liked you." She moved towards 
  Cruger as he stood stationary, ignoring all the impulses he felt 
  to run or do something equally cowardly.

  She put her arms around his shoulders and brushed her lips 
  across his cheek. She was changing now, into a taller, more 
  womanly figure. Her light brown skin was unnaturally smooth and 
  perfect, like a photo on a magazine cover. Her eyes became the 
  deepest blue-green Cruger had ever seen.

  "You like me too," she murmured.

  He tried to move away but she held him with surprising strength. 
  Cruger almost laughed at his predicament: here he was trapped by 
  a student of feminine beauty. Sky had metamorphosed into 
  (probably) the most beautiful woman in the world. She pressed 
  herself closer to him, nearly smothering him in her soft face 
  and cascades of golden-white hair. With one hand she locked his 
  face in a grip much too strong to be coming from her delicate, 
  perfect fingers. Her full lips pressed against his. She caressed 
  his face with her other hand.

  "You're mine now," she said.

  Cruger tried to take a deep breath to stop his trembling, but it 
  was no use. He was under her control -- no longer a 
  free-thinking individual but a prisoner, a victim, an object of 
  a desire that he had no control over. One pocket of Cruger's 
  frantic brain screamed the survival siren, the other repeated an 
  inappropriate punch line over and over, softly: what a way to 
  go. But it wasn't. This wasn't passion, love, or even 
  animalistically physical. She laughed, reading his small, 
  self-pitying thoughts.

  "I don't care what you like. I have plans for you," she said. He 
  listened and felt the reality of her statement dance across his 
  body. Sometimes God throws you a slider, but Satan has the 
  wicked sinker. And he sank. Like a caged animal, he stopped 
  dreaming of escape through the cage door: his spirit was broken; 
  he sank into submission; he gave up.


  Chapter 34
------------

  Cruger came to consciousness and Sky stood before him. She was 
  once more Sky the woman-child; her look of innocence mocked him. 
  Cruger's quick self-survey told him that he was mostly uninjured 
  and sitting cross-legged on the floor, but he felt dizzy. He 
  also felt groggy; his throat felt dry; his eyes were swollen.

  "What happened?" he said.

  "You passed out. Out cold," she said, emitting a gleeful 
  innocent giggle, as if she had just collected for Unicef or 
  returned from a Girl Scout outing. The perfect voice was back, 
  dancing like snowflakes in a breeze. "You were scared, poor Mr. 
  Cruger," and she laughed again, this time with an air of scorn 
  in her angelic voice.

  "What are you going to do to me now? Rape me? Kill me?"

  "I've been thinking about it," she said. "You'll be interested 
  to know that I think I'll just let you go."

  The thoughts rushed through Cruger's mind before he could stop 
  them: he wanted to immediately go to the office and have Harris 
  delete her. Kill her, erase her, get rid of her forever. Cruger 
  quickly clouded his thoughts with his emotions of relief and the 
  self-applause of his survival system. It seemed to work, Sky 
  showed no visible reaction to his thoughts, if she had been 
  reading him at all.

  Cruger's voice was hoarse and weak. He said, "What would they do 
  if they found out about that?"

  "Nothing, nothing at all," she said, laughing as she shook her 
  head from side to side. "They're a little disappointed in me, 
  though. Even devils have standards, rules, limits, a sense of 
  balance. I violated them. They can do take me back to Chysa, 
  which is what they were planning anyway. My tenure here is up."

  "Your two years of service?"

  "Right," she said. "What good would it do for them to kill me? 
  I'm a good little devil -- maybe even an overachiever -- 
  especially if I'm back home where I can't do much damage. I 
  trained for years to do my job; I became one of the very best." 
  A frown came over her inappropriately innocent face; her eyes 
  darkened. "I don't want to go back, but I have to."

  "You couldn't hide from them, staying here on earth? Not that 
  I'd want you to stay," Cruger said.

  She smirked at him. "No, they can find me anywhere here -- we 
  have tools for that. Within hours they would have me retrieved. 
  No point in trying to hide." She looked him squarely in the 
  eyes. "You know something? I love life here. I've become so 
  human that I can't remember the body I had back home. I'm so 
  human that I'm moony over boys and I shop until I drop and do 
  the mall scene, I mean all the way, Nordstrom cards and an 
  analyst and the whole bit -- all my spoiled friends at school 
  with divorced parents have 'em. I love this body, I love your 
  food and sports and sex and wine. I fit in better here than on 
  Chysa."

  Cruger wondered about the implications of devils enjoying 
  themselves on Earth. Not like a duck out of water at all, he 
  thought. The fact that she fit in so perfectly was frightening.

  She read his mind. "Right, you aren't just a bunch of angels 
  here, you know."

  "And to think you haven't even been to Las Vegas or Manhattan or 
  Bangkok; I think you would love it most of those places," he 
  said.

  For a moment she looked almost overwhelmed, as if she were 
  finally imagining her life away from Earth. Her large eyes 
  focused directly on Cruger's. "No, I really can't kill you," she 
  said. "Though you tempt me. What you're doing is important and 
  we have this policy of minimal homicidal intervention with 
  humans. It especially goes for you, since you're important to 
  the future of the universe and that stuff. If I mess with you 
  too much, I might cause a Big Enigma."

  "What do you mean, Big Enigma?"

  Sky laughed. "You know how the Big Bang starts a universe? Well 
  the Big Enigma is a condition where all of the strings existence 
  conditions cannot be resolved. Everything cranks to a halt. The 
  solution set for all universal planar coordinates would become 
  zero. Consciousness would be static, and we're stuck forever. 
  Major bogus deal, huh?"

  Cruger thought about the implications. he wondered if he flirted 
  with the Big Enigma every time he spun. And people had been 
  worried about nuclear weapons and the greenhouse effect, he 
  thought.

  "We need to continue the game. There's no game if we don't have 
  players on both sides, right? Go ahead, do what you have to do. 
  Go." Her words were matter of fact. She had decided what to do 
  and luckily it left him alive.

  She turned around and said one more thing: "And you know, I'm 
  not the one you're really looking for."

  Unfortunately, Cruger knew -- he was now certain. Sky was 
  telling the truth.

  She walked away, leaving him to think about that.

  In ten minutes Cruger was home and walked next door to see if 
  Harris was there. No luck. Corrina was at work. Thank God. He 
  walked back from Harris's house feeling somehow encapsulated as 
  if a fine magical lore surrounded him and the pavement were 
  undulant and insubstantial. The space in which he moved seemed 
  crystalline and empty; what he felt was horror and relief, all 
  rolled into a tight rock that somehow fit into his gut.


  Cruger felt guilty from the start, but he figured he had to do 
  it. He decided to tail her because, what the heck, he was 
  running out of ideas. And he still remembered that his future 
  self hadn't been wearing a wedding ring.

  She drove to a nearby shopping mall with a small medical center 
  that Cruger had often seen, but never been to. He saw that there 
  must be some mistake. It wasn't the doctor's office -- at least 
  not the right kind of doctor.

  Cruger walked into the waiting room after he saw her, through 
  the half-closed blinds, get up and walk past a large ornate 
  wooden door, into what Cruger presumed were the doctor's inner 
  offices.

  He gently walked into the waiting room, happy to see no one was 
  around -- even the receptionist was gone from her counter next 
  to the ornate wooden door. Cruger skulked up to the receptionist 
  area, looked into the appointment book, and read her name, clear 
  as day, even upside-down, written in the book.

  Then he got out fast, his heart beating faster than ever, palms 
  cold and sweaty, legs threatening to sink him to the ground. 
  Damn, I knew it ... I knew it, he told himself. When he made it 
  to his car, he just sat there for a while, shaking, waiting for 
  the ability to drive to return so he could get the hell out of 
  there.


  Chapter 35
------------

  Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the 
  rest.                                        -- Mark Twain

  Cruger called Tony's office -- they still called it that -- and 
  Harris answered. He didn't tell Harris anything except that he'd 
  be there in a few minutes.

  Cruger tried to act cool, natural. Harris showed Cruger how the 
  database of strings was laid out. The concept of digital 
  representation of every event and person known was staggering.

  "Isn't it impossible to have this much information stored on a 
  small computer?" Cruger said.

  "Yes, but it's not stored here. This is just God's front end. 
  Inside there's that glob of Tvonen technology that seems to be 
  doing most of the work."

  "How close are you to finishing the whole project?"

  "Pretty close. I think I can issue any command from here, but I 
  still haven't run the caretaker program."

  Cruger looked puzzled.

  "The two of us can't control the whole show -- I mean, even if 
  we do end up being God, we're still only human," Harris said. 
  "The caretaker will make sure everything runs smoothly, and will 
  keep threads from tangling. We'll still be able to issue 
  commands and guide the process, but it'll do most of the dirty 
  work."

  Cruger nodded, let Harris' words sink in, and then spoke.

  "I need you to make some deletions for me."

  Harris looked astonished. "Delete people? Why?"

  "I've found out who the Chysans are -- the aliens who are 
  working for the Other Company."

  "Who?"

  Cruger ignored the question. "Pull up the deletion program," he 
  asked. Harris nodded and brought up the routine.

  "First, Theodore Natassi from Denver, Colorado."

  Harris typed the name in, cross-listed with Cruger's thread.

  "No entry. Who is this guy, and what kind of contact have you 
  had with him?"

  "I think he's near the top of the Other Company. I've never met 
  him."

  "Well," Harris said, "this won't work unless your string 
  intersects with his. How about someone else first, someone whose 
  string crosses his and yours?"

  "Easy. Lyle Neswick."

  Harris' face filled with disbelief.

  "Neswick? No way, man. Neswick can't be Chysan. That would mean 
  that Tamara--"

  "--is one of them, Leon. They've got to be deleted."

  "No way," Harris repeated. "No way. I can't believe that 
  Tamara--"
  
  "I saw her with Sky and Neswick. They're working together... Sky 
  admitted it to me."

  "She was lying!"

  Cruger shook his head. "She wasn't lying. I know -- I saw her 
  change shape. She's Chysan."

  Harris swiveled around in his chair. "I can't believe it. 
  Tamara? It can't be true."

  Cruger grabbed the computer's keyboard and typed Neswick's name. 
  Harris swiveled and grabbed it back, but Cruger managed to make 
  a final slap at the return key.

  "If you delete him, she goes, too!" he said. "He's her father! 
  If he never existed, neither did she!"

  "He's not her father! And now It's done, isn't it?" Cruger 
  asked.

  Harris let out an angry laugh. "No, it's not done." He pointed 
  at the monitor.

  Are you sure you want to delete this person?

  Cruger tried to grab the keyboard back from Harris, but the 
  athletic programmer shoved him away.

  "They're all working for the Other Company!" Cruger yelled. 
  "Neswick, Tamara, Sky... and Corrina." Cruger said.

  "Corrina?"

  "Never pregnant. Never an Earth woman. I suspected something was 
  weird with the first 'miscarriage'. I never went to a doctor 
  with her. Turns out she always went to shrinks instead of 
  OB/GYNs."

  "Holy shit," Harris said.

  "Yep, holy shit.!" shouted Cruger. "Makes sense now, though. Why 
  the hell else was I picked for the Company? Why did Tony come to 
  me? I suppose it was my job because of who my wife was. My wife, 
  a long- time agent from Chysa!"

  Harris stared at Cruger in disbelief. Cruger stood for a moment, 
  then slumped into a chair. They both sat for a while, just 
  looking at the small computer and its screen sitting on the desk 
  in the stuffy room. The screen still asked, "Are you sure you 
  want to delete this person?"

  "Let me tell you the story. Maybe it'll make it easier for you," 
  Cruger said. "Sky was living with foster parents. She had been 
  sent there at the supposed age of fifteen. No records exist for 
  her whereabouts before that point in time. Also, she was pretty 
  handy in computer class at school. She had been doing some 
  extracurricular work there. Doing the code for Corrina -- that 
  murderous code. Before that, she had been keeping tabs on Tony."

  "So they infiltrated the Company pretty well. How did they do 
  it?"

  "I'm not sure. The only thing we can be sure of is that there 
  are more of them that we don't know about."

  "Thank you," Harris said, "a very comforting thought."

  Cruger continued. "Seems that Sky was having some real 
  adjustment problems to life here. She was referred to a 
  psychiatrist by the High School guidance counselor. Probably 
  same shrink Corrina originally went to. She stopped going a few 
  weeks ago, the records say. I got the name of the doctor from 
  the school counselor but I can't find that doctor listed 
  anywhere. Gone."

  "That's suspicious, but a lot of things are suspicious."

  "Another suspicious thing was that Sky, Tamara, and Neswick all 
  knew each other very well. I followed Sky over to Neswick's 
  place once. Then the three of them were all together over there, 
  enacting the words Menage a troi."

  "Neswick and Tamara, that's disgusting," Harris said. His voice, 
  charged, higher than usual, rang of hurt.

  "Come on, he was no more related to her than you were. That was 
  all an act." Realizing that Harris may have been more attached 
  to Tamara than he had guessed, said, "Sorry if this hurts -- 
  but, it has to be done. We've got to delete them all."

  "Don't worry about it. I wasn't going to ask her to marry me. 
  But I was dumb enough to get pretty involved with her. You know, 
  agents of Beelzebub make pretty good girlfriends. She did 
  everything to make me happy: had her own money, loved sex, loved 
  computers, and never had to visit her mom or go to 
  confessional."

  "Sounds pretty good. Can't blame you for biting the hook," 
  Cruger said. "I did."

  "Yeah," Harris said, picking up the keyboard. "Let's get this 
  over with."

  "Don't do it," said a muffled voice from behind them. Nobody had 
  come in the door, but someone was there. They both turned to see 
  who it was.

  Standing in the corner was a huge figure in a silver spacesuit.

  "My name," the figure said, "is Natassi."


  Chapter 36
------------

  That was when Cruger put it all together -- the mystery man in 
  the house in Denver.

  "The devil himself, huh?" he said.

  Natassi turned to Cruger. "That's what Uraken and the rest of 
  the Company would call me, yes. And it seems that you've taken 
  the biblical allusions to heart -- you're working for God, on a 
  mission against Satan."

  "More or less," Cruger said. "Satan was a fallen angel, right? I 
  guess that makes you an outcast Tvonen."

  "Very true." The figure stepped forward, the floor creaking with 
  his weight. Harris stood up suddenly but Natassi raised his 
  hand, signalling him to stop. "I'm not the evil creature they 
  would have you believe I am. I worked for the Company; I helped 
  form it before humans had domesticated a beast -- before Uraken 
  was born. And I was thrown out -- not because I was promoting 
  evil, but because I was promoting free will."

  "What?" said Harris.

  The figure shifted its weight and the silver suit hissed, making 
  it seem as if Natassi were sighing. "Do you know how the 
  universe works, Mr. Harris?" Natassi asked. "As it currently 
  stands, spinners guide the threads of the universe 
  subconsciously, with their art. It's an organic method, one that 
  allows for a great deal of... spontaneity. It's as close to free 
  will as anyone can get.

  "But the goal of the Company is omnipotence. The Unified Theorem 
  is the ultimate application of that design. With your computer, 
  you'll be able to run everything -- anything. Total control."

  "So you're saying you're a good guy looking out for the little 
  people?" Cruger said incredulously. "I'm supposed to believe 
  that?"

  "What about you?" Harris spoke up. "How does killing people work 
  into this plan of yours?"

  This time, Natassi may have sighed. "We take what help we can 
  get. Chysans are independent by nature: they despise authority 
  and control, and hence the goals of the Company. Chysans enjoy 
  as much violence and killing as they can find. We've tried to 
  keep the Unified Theorem as far away from completion as 
  possible. Tony was close, and he would have implemented the 
  program the second it was ready. We killed him."

  "And now you're going to kill us?" Harris asked, trying to guess 
  how long it would take to quit out of the deletion routine and 
  launch the caretaker program. "Where are your Chysan thugs?"

  "They aren't here," Natassi said. "And they won't be. It seems 
  that this meeting is the best we can hope to do. We're at the 
  last moment of free will, and I'm here to make my last request."

  "Which is?"

  Natassi stepped forward. "Stop the Company!" he hissed. "Make it 
  so there are no more spinners -- so that those blue glows 
  disappear forever! Then have the computer delete itself. Let the 
  universe be on its own, to do whatever it wants."

  "Total chaos," Harris said. "Sounds like something the devil 
  would advocate."

  Harris pressed down on the key combination that took him out of 
  the deletion routine, back to the main menu. The computer screen 
  flashed briefly.

  "Don't start it!" Nattasi said, his voice rising. "Uraken's like 
  almost every other Tvonen -- he wants total control. You're 
  giving it to him! The Tvonen will rule the universe. Take it 
  from me. You don't want to see an omnipotent Tvonen."

  Cruger looked at Harris. Cruger thought about Corrina, and about 
  what the alien in front of him represented. Then he nodded at 
  his partner, who tapped a few keys.

  The disk drive whirred briefly; the program ran.

  There was a God.

  The alien began to fade away with an effect that looked more 
  like smoke dissipating in a breeze than the Star Trek sparkles 
  Cruger had expected to see.

  "The Chysans won't be happy," Natassi whispered as he vanished. 
  "I hope you can live with your decision."


  A little while later the menu bar of the computer's screen 
  flashed. The flash was followed by a gentle chiming sound effect 
  that snapped the two men into a state of alertness.

  "I don't believe it," said Harris. "We got a message off the 
  network. Someone, something on the other end of that cable 
  finally contacted us."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Damned sure. The only way we get this alert message is an 
  incoming network packet."

  The message, displayed across the screen in large italic type, 
  was short and simple:

  Congratulations on a job very well done. You're both on your own 
  now. You're in charge. Congratulations on your promotions.
                                                       --Uraken


  Cruger looked at Harris who returned the look. Cruger's mouth 
  was open. His eyes were blank and his mouth then twitched as if 
  either to begin talking or drooling.

  "Congratulations?" Harris said.

  Cruger composed himself a little. "Uraken?"

  "What really gets me is the 'You're on your own' part. What do 
  you think?"

  "I think we're in charge now," Cruger said. "Which means that 
  the people who are running the universe aren't Tvonens after 
  all."

  "The people who are running the universe..."

  They stood there, less Godlike than anyone would ever have 
  imagined, balancing their suddenly weak bodies on the feet of 
  men who had just finished a marathon. "Congratulations" was the 
  word that stuck with Cruger.

  Cruger turned to Harris. "Congrats," he said, not sounding 
  jubilant. "I think I'm going to go home and tell Corrina to get 
  her ass back to Chysa."

  "I'm thinking..." Harris said, letting the last word trail off 
  into nothingness.

  "Of what?"

  "Nothing much. A programming project I did in college is coming 
  back to me -- a random number generator. I'm thinking about 
  writing a new one."


  Epilogue
----------

  It was Thursday night and Cruger was playing his regular sets of 
  solo guitar at the Cafe Emerson. It had been two months since he 
  had become co-keeper of the universe, two months since he'd went 
  home to find Corrina already gone.

  His guitar chops felt good, but remembering Corrina brought him 
  down. It takes a while to get over losing someone you loved, 
  even if they aren't what they appear.

  When two guys came up to him and shot him through the head, he 
  wasn't even surprised. Spinners were being attacked all over by 
  Chysans unhappy with the dissolution of the Other Company. They 
  evidently didn't understand what "insurance" was.

  So Harris's employee safety program kicked in immediately and 
  Cruger was alive again, the bullets back in the thirty-eight, 
  and two assailants erased forever. The only person in the Cafe 
  that even knew something had happened was Cruger. Within a few 
  seconds, he was able to take a deep breath and put it out of his 
  mind.

  Cruger said a silent thank-you to Harris, made a mental note to 
  remember to thank him in person at the office in the morning, 
  and decided to do one more tune before ending the set.

  He played Someone To Watch Over Me with a wry smile stretched 
  across his face. It was an excellent rendition, of course -- 
  probably the best any of the people in the bar had heard. Even 
  the mistakes Cruger made -- and there were a few-- just added to 
  the feeling and humanity of the performance.

  An a unique performance it was. After all, most people did the 
  song as a ballad. But not Cruger -- he played it fairly 
  up-tempo.

After all, if you can't set your own tempo, then who are you, 
anyway?

  Jeff Zias  (ZIAS1@AppleLink.apple.com)
----------------------------------------
  
  Jeff Zias has begun a stint with the spin-off software company 
  Taligent after a ten-year stint writing and managing software at 
  Apple Computer. Jeff enjoys spending time with his wife and two 
  small children, playing jazz with Bay Area groups, writing 
  software and prose, and building playhouses and other assorted 
  toys for his children to trash. Having actually been a studious 
  youth, Jeff has a BA in Applied Mathematics from Berkeley and an 
  MS in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University.


  FYI
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