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INTERTEXT - Volume 1, Number 4 - November-December 1991
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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FirstText / JASON SNELL
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An Ounce of Prevention / MICHAEL ERNST
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Experience Required / ROBERT HURVITZ
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Slice of Mind / PHIL NOLTE
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The Rebel Cause / MICHEL FORGET
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The Scratch Buffer / STEVE CONNELLY
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Editor: Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu)
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Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan (sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu)
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Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET)
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InterText Vol. 1, No. 4. InterText is published electronically on a bi-
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monthly basis, and distributed via electronic mail over the Internet,
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BITNET, and UUCP. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as
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the magazine is not sold and the content of the magazine is not changed
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in any way. Copyright (C) 1991, Jason Snell. All stories (C) 1991 by
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their respective authors. All further rights to stories belong to the
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authors. The ASCII InterText is exported from Pagemaker 4.0 files into
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Microsoft Word 4.0. Worldwide subscribers: 1091. Our next issue is
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scheduled for January 9, 1992. A PostScript version of this magazine is
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available from the same sources, and looks a whole lot nicer, if you
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have access to laser printers.
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For subscription requests, email: jsnell@ucsd.edu
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-Back issues available via FTP at network.ucsd.edu (IP 128.54.16.3)-
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FirstText / JASON SNELL
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I'm back. Did you miss me?
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Well, probably not. But that's okay. It's still hard for me to
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visualize the fact that InterText goes out to over a thousand people
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every other month. And you're sitting there, reading this. InterText
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will be a year old with our next issue, and we've got subscribers in
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such far away (from me here in San Diego) places as the Soviet Union,
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Australia, Germany, Britain, Brazil... and, closer to home, Mexico and
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Canada. All over the world. Yikes.
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In a way, this issue marks a bit of a change for the magazine. It's
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the first issue where one of my own stories hasn't appeared (a good
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trend in that we had enough to fill the space without my help... but
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beware, because I might have another one in the pipeline...) and also
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the first time Greg Knauss hasn't made his twisted presence felt within
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our pages.
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Dear old Greg, who has written for magazines with a much larger
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circulation than this (he's been in maybe a dozen Atari computer
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magazines) is fresh out of stories. Well, I've got some older Knauss
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stories that I could dredge out of the slime pit, but it's not worth it.
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I can only hope that he comes up with the stamina to write a new story
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someday. Right now, he's getting over the fact that his Star Trek: The
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Next Generation script, "The Cortez," was rejected. He says that at
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least the ST:TNG people read the thing. He and I are now finishing up
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(we hope) our own ST:TNG script (how do I get myself into these
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things?), titled "Chain of Command." It's brilliant, exceptional,
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wonderful, amazing... oh, sorry. Got a little carried away there.
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I'd also like to welcome Phil Nolte back to the fold. Phil, who
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didn't have a whole lot to do with this issue because of my poor
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planning, still managed to contribute a story, "Slice of Mind." Phil has
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moved west from North Dakota, and now resides in Idaho. I'm glad he's
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back.
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Our cover this issue is, well, you could call it minimalist. In
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fact, my dear assistant editor Geoff Duncan (who has done lots of great
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work for this thing and doesn't get enough credit so I'm going to devote
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this entire parenthetical expression to him... Hi Geoff!) refers to the
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cover as, well, clip-art. I don't know about that... I like it. I was
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tempted to headline this issue "THE CLASSY INTERTEXT ISSUE"... but
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fortunately I refrained.
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I did have a cooler Mel Marcelo cover, one with a spooky haunted
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house, but it's after Halloween and the thing would have made this
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issue's PostScript version run almost one megabyte in length. No thanks.
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So the lovely dancing couple it is.
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Funny how theme issues almost seem to come together by themselves.
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All the stories in this issue have something to do with employment. We
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have a first-day-on-the-job story ("An Ounce of Prevention") from
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Michael Ernst, a job interview story ("Experience Required") from
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returning writer Robert Hurvitz, a story about someone getting fired
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from his job (the aforementioned "Slice of Mind"), a story about someone
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being reconditioned into a new profession ("The Rebel Cause" by Michel
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Forget), and a story about a guy who finds an easy solution to one of
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his problems at work ("The Scratch Buffer", by Steve Connelly).
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I should say something else about Connelly's story: it may be a bit
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obscure, but I find it extremely funny. Since this is a magazine
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distributed through computer networks, I decided to put it in. I hope
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that those of you with minimal computer experience can still appreciate
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some of the humor in the story's situations, despite perhaps not
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understanding all of the jargon or references. And for those of you with
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newsgroup reading experience or experience working with large computers,
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this one will be right up your alley.
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This is a strange time for we computerized magazine editors (wait,
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that sounds like I'm Max Headroom or someone...) -- both myself and
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Quanta's Dan Appelquist are college seniors. We're both going to
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graduate within the next six months (him in December, me in March). I'm
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unsure what Dan will do upon graduating, but I assume that Quanta will
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remain around. As for me, well, I'll still be in San Diego through June
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(my duties as editor in chief of the campus newspaper require this of
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me), and then I don't know what will happen. My plan is to go to
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graduate journalism school, in which case I'll probably have one more
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year of net access (at Columbia or Northwestern, if I get in...) or two
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years (if I go to UC Berkeley). So hopefully I'll be able to produce
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InterText until mid-1993. If not, we'll just have to find someone else
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with net access and the will to do this fun, fun job. I hope that when I
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do disappear from the net (though I also hope that I never disappear),
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InterText or something like it will continue -- even if it's in a
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different form. We shall see.
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Final trivia for those of you still with me: you who have
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PostScript will have noticed that my photo has returned to the top of
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the page. I re-scanned the sucker in the right way, and it takes up very
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little space in the document. And for those of you reading the ASCII
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version, consider both this and my earlier references to our cover as
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plugs for the PostScript version.
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That's all from me. Until 1992, I wish you all well.
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An Ounce of Prevention / MICHAEL ERNST
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Flats or heels? Melissa stood, hands on her hips, and looked into
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her closet. Today would be her first day at a new job, so she wanted to
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look good, but they had seemed pretty casual when she'd interviewed last
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week, but on the other hand (or was this the first one again?) it was
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better to be overdressed than underdressed, which was in turn better
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than undressed, which she was now, and she had to leave very soon.
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Melissa shook her head to clear the nonsense, added a pair of low heels
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to the outfit she'd chosen the night before, and rapidly completed her
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toilet. She was on the road in twenty minutes; half an hour after that
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she reported to the personnel office of the McCarthy Research Institute.
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By the time she had completed a pile of paperwork, signed a
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nondisclosure agreement, heard lectures about her benefits and the
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importance of safety and the amount of time she was permitted to spend
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in the bathroom, been perfunctorily poked by bored doctors while
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describing her childhood diseases and inoculations, received a badge
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featuring her bug-eyed picture, and found her way to the building where
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she would be working, it seemed like days had passed. Mr. Hutchins
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("call me Frank") took her to lunch at the company cafeteria. All of the
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food looked like plastic; Melissa finally decided on a garden salad,
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which, she surmised, couldn't be ruined too badly.
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After they'd taken their seats, her boss spoke affably around bites
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of a Super Combination Burrito. Melissa tried to keep her eyes off the
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burrito and on his face, but her eyes kept straying back to it as to the
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scene of a terrible accident. "I assume you've already run the personnel
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gauntlet this morning." Tempted to roll her eyes, Melissa permitted
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herself a nod and a small smile. "Did the bald guy with the tufts of
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hair sticking out of his ears tell you all about our swell insurance
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plan?"
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"No, it was a woman."
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"Ah, the Dragon Lady. Stocky, severe-looking, flinty eyes, always
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wears a suit she bought in 1953." Melissa nodded. "They say she smiled
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once, but that was before I started working here." Melissa tried to
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remember whether his yellow badge indicated between five and ten years
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of tenure or between ten and fifteen. Her own was a gaudy green which
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didn't go with her outfit at all.
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"Do you have any questions about McCarthy, or about the NDE group in
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particular? Last week I was so busy finding out how fast you could type
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and whether you knew the difference between a mouse and a rat, and which
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is which, that I didn't have much time to fill you in on other details."
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Melissa asked apologetically, "What exactly does your group do?" She
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threw out one of the few academic-sounding terms she knew. "Is it pure
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research?"
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Frank shook his head. "No, I don't think you could say that. It's
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about 80 percent research, and 20 percent playing practical jokes on one
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another." Melissa smiled wanly in response to his self-satisfied smirk
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and thought that, unpleasant as her last job had been, perhaps it had
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been a bad idea to resign with such finality. Fortunately, Frank's style
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settled down once he'd started talking; with an indulgent smile he left
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off his attack on the burrito and did his best to explain his group's
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raison d'etre. Meanwhile, the grease pooled at one end of the oblong
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dish. Melissa tried to pay attention to what he was saying instead of
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wondering how long it would take the runoff to congeal and whether, if
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one were to pick up the burrito afterward, the solidified fat would
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stick to it like a waxy base.
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"NDE stands for Non-Destructive Evaluation; we investigate ways to
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test substances and devices without damaging them. A lot of tests are
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like striking a match to evaluate it. Sure, you find out whether the
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match was good, but it is worthless afterward, and that experiment tells
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you nothing -- except in a statistical sense -- about other matches."
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Frank explained that this method wasn't good enough for their customers.
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Melissa nodded attentively at breaks in the monologue and decided that
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eating her salad would take her mind off Frank's food. She was wrong.
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Frank went on to discuss the NDE philosophy in greater detail
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(Melissa slipped her feet out of her shoes, wished she'd chosen the
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flats after all, and thought about what she would wear the next day; she
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owned so little clothing that went with green) and to stress that
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although their testing was non-destructive, they did work with some
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dangerous materials and that safety concerns were of paramount
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importance. Melissa solemnly agreed and wondered where on earth he'd
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gotten that tacky tie. He went on about his group's fine record of
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safety and the elaborate precautions that were standard practice. His
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earnest sincerity about these safeguards was a strong contrast to the
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ennui of the morning lecturers, whose soporific delivery of rote
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material had left her with a sluggish feeling, as if she'd had a bad
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night's sleep. Frank seemed like a nice guy, even if he was a little out
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of it and had a sadly stunted sense of humor which brought to mind a
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plant left too long without sunlight. He was by turns sensitive to those
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around him -- he was attentive enough when he stopped talking long
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enough to ask Melissa a question -- and wrapped up in technical
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concerns. A typical engineer.
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Eventually he outlined Melissa's duties. Her primary objective -- he
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made it sound like a hill about to be assaulted by a company of Marines
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-- was to run interference with the bureaucracy so that he could do
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"real work." She was relieved that she was not expected to fetch coffee
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or make eleventh-hour telephone calls to locate a baby-sitter. Sick of
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running her last boss's errands, she had begun to encourage tradesmen's
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frequent misconception that she was his mistress. "Are these the shirts
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that Brian's wife dropped off or that I did?" she would ask the young
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man at the dry cleaner's. "It wouldn't do to mix them up," she'd add
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with a lascivious wink, then saunter out, hips swaying. The rumor didn't
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get back to her boss's wife before she quit, but she hoped it did
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afterward. She smiled, and Frank thought that she was responding to his
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feeble joke about keeping a capacitor from charging by taking away its
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credit cards. He had finished his burrito, and the pool of discolored,
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oily fat had disappeared as well. Frank remarked on her half-eaten
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salad, but Melissa said she wasn't very hungry.
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"Don't worry overmuch about your productivity at first," Frank said
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as they walked back. "Just get the feel of the place and meet the
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people. I'll ask the group members to introduce themselves and to make
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you feel at home." He muttered something about a test that afternoon,
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and Melissa imagined a room full of managers in shirtsleeves and pocket
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protectors seated at wooden desks, brows furrowed and tongues sticking
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out of the corners of their mouths as they filled out bubble forms with
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their #2 pencils.
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Frank pointed out Melissa's desk, which sat bare and forlorn in a
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fence of waist-high partition walls like an empty doghouse in an
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abandoned backyard. Frank's office was just the opposite. Papers were
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piled on every surface except the chair, computer keyboard, and
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cappuccino machine. Books lay propped open under half-full coffee mugs,
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boxes made the entrance nearly impossible to negotiate, and Post-It
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notes wallpapered the area near his desk. Melissa instinctively
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recoiled. "Don't worry," he assured her, "I'll never ask you to search
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through here. Besides, if you were to try, you'd probably mess the place
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up so that I couldn't find anything."
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Melissa spent the next few hours raiding the supply room, organizing
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her desk, acquainting herself with the computer, and meeting people who
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came by to welcome her. The phone rang rarely, and Frank was out
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somewhere, so she figured it was okay to just sit and read about
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policies and procedures, computer programs, requisition protocols,
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company picnics, executive perquisites, and parking permits. Whenever
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she leaned back to take a break, her eyes were caught by a ludicrous
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poster of a rabbit with a shocking pink Band-Aid on one of its ears.
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Frank had pinned it up in the hallway, and its legend read, "Only A Dumb
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Bunny Thinks Safety Is A Matter Of Luck. Make '91 A Safer One. MRI."
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Around mid-afternoon, when she was poring over a manual which, on first
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glance, had appeared to be written in English, she noticed a lanky red-
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haired fellow leaning against the low wall of her cubicle; he was
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staring appreciatively down her blouse. He obviously approved of her
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Maidenform's delicate scalloped edging of sheer patterned lace, but had
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he noticed the satin center bow and the exquisite faux pearl detailing?
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Did he realize that its comfortable-yet-firm support was perfect for
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every day? Melissa straightened and offered a hello.
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He raised his eyes to hers. "Hi. I'm Josh McCarthy," he said with an
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excessively friendly smile, offering his hand to be shaken. At least he
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had a firm grip. "No relation, or I wouldn't have to work for a living.
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You must be Melissa Sweedler." He reads well, thought Melissa, but then
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checked the uncharitable thought. Perhaps she ought to give him more
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credit: while he had been looking straight at the name badge dangling
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from her blouse pocket, he probably hadn't even noticed it. "Welcome
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aboard; are you getting settled in all right?"
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"Well enough, except for having to read these manuals." Melissa
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gestured wearily at a heap of documentation whose covers proclaimed in
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bold letters their ease of use. "I think it's hopeless to try to squeeze
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myself into the mind of a technical writer; it's too cramped a fit."
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Josh frowned. "I'm a technical writer myself -- that one's mine." He
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pointed to one of the books in the pile, and Melissa blushed. Just when
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she was starting to get comfortable with these people, she had to put
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her foot in her mouth, which was particularly painful with heels. He
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rushed on. "Maybe I could help you get in the right frame of mind later.
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Over lunch tomorrow, maybe? For now, however, you should take a break.
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Would you like to experience an explosion?"
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"An explosion?"
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Josh nodded, then contradicted himself. "We're testing a blast
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containment system, and if it works -- which it will -- there won't be
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anything to see. But it's a good excuse to take a break and get outside.
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It's a beautiful day out," he added. It was indeed a lovely, cloudless
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day: when she'd searched for this building, a cool breeze had ruffled
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the trees' leaves with a gentle rustling and the promise of a delightful
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evening. Melissa was tempted, but she hesitated to leave her post. Josh
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looked puzzled and continued, "The whole group will be there, so there's
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no particular reason for you to stay here. Frank said he had invited you
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to watch."
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They walked out past the senior secretary, a timid-looking old
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creature with short white hair, wide startled eyes, lips in a perpetual
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moue beneath a downy moustache, and tacky pink earrings. She declined to
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come along but agreed to answer Melissa's phone if it rang. "I've seen
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enough of these boys' pranks; I don't need that kind of excitement."
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When she shook her head, her ears waggled, and she looked exactly like
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the bunny in the poster. Josh didn't seem too disappointed that she
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wasn't accompanying them.
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"I thought this was the Non-Destructive Evaluation group," Melissa
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said as they emerged from the building. "Why are you setting off an
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explosion?"
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"One of our projects is the validation of blasting caps; the
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dangerously unstable ones are kept in a big steel box, and we're
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verifying that it's strong enough to be trusted." The weather was as
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pleasant as it had been before, and while the day was sunny, it wasn't
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uncomfortably hot this early in the summer. "The caps are detonated
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electrically, and we test them by running just a trickle of current
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through them." Josh went on about knees in characteristic curves and
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criteria for discarding bad caps; Melissa wished she was reading one of
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the relatively clear manuals instead. She looked appreciatively at the
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grounds, which were like a campus with their scattered buildings and
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grassy lawns, and wondered how many people were employed full-time just
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tending the greenery.
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"If the robot arm detects a bad cap, it drops it in a glorified
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safe. The safe has a capacity of one hundred caps, and it has been rated
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as capable of withstanding considerably more powerful blasts; our group
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has certified the plans as well, and in fact Frank had a hand in the
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design. We're paranoid -- well, Frank is -- so we're testing the safe
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ourselves, just to be sure. It's a waste of time and money, if you ask
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me, but no one does."
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Melissa made a noncommittal noise, and as they walked along Josh
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continued to chatter, periodically bobbing forward to catch her eye,
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which made Melissa feel obliged to nod at whatever he was saying at the
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time. She warded off his questions about where she lived and what she
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did on weekends. After what must have been only a few minutes, Josh
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pointed out, off to their right, an enormous wheel and rubber tire. It
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was mounted over an even larger metal drum which resembled the wheel of
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an asphalt roller on steroids; more machinery poked at unlikely angles
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from a gantry. "To test landing gear, we rev the drum up to five
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revolutions per second and then slam the wheel against it, to simulate a
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plane landing at 200 miles per hour. You can hear the reverberations a
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mile away. We repeat it until the landing gear breaks." Melissa began to
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realize that to these university-educated engineers, "non-destructive"
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meant something very different than it did to her.
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At her look -- she hadn't realized her reaction was so transparent -
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- Josh held his hands up in mock-defense. "Yes, I know it's not exactly
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non-destructive. But it's not destructive to the airplane, and besides,
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we have lots of extra landing gears. For some reason, our clients find
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it more convenient to send us dozens of whatever we need than to ask us
|
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how many we want and just ship that many. We end up having to store
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piles of the stuff." Melissa nodded; while Frank's office was by far the
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worst offender, she'd noticed crates and boxes scattered through the
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hallways and piled in unused offices, and one of her new keys -- her key
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ring now resembled a mace -- was to their warehouse.
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Soon they reached the test site, where a number of people were
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engaged in animated conversation outside a low, bunker-like concrete
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building. Frank was conferring with someone from Facilities, but when he
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had finished, he walked over briskly. "Melissa! I'm so glad that Josh
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brought you along. I would have myself, but I've been here for hours and
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you would have been bored. Have you met everyone?" He made
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introductions, chided the onlookers for turning a scientific experiment
|
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into a spectator sport, and went off to quadruple-check the
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arrangements. Melissa chatted idly with the cluster of people while wire
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was strung from the shelter to a field where the safe sat, looking like
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a child's toy at that distance.
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Melissa was handed a blasting cap: a dud, Josh assured her, if its
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current-voltage curve was to be believed, but he warned her not to drop
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it just the same. It seemed remarkably light -- about an ounce, her
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postage-meter-trained fingers gauged -- to be causing such a stir. "It's
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an experimental type that is more powerful than older caps and so able
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to detonate more dynamite," someone said.
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Shortly Frank shooed them all inside, where they gathered at the
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tiny, shielded windows. "I give you an hour off work, and act like a
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bunch of kids at the circus," he said in mock exasperation. He activated
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the detonator and continued without pause, "There's nothing to see."
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He was cut off by a tremendous roar. The safe was tossed into the
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air and a hole appeared in its side. Then dirt occluded the view from
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the shelter, and the group remembered to take a collective breath. After
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the dust had settled down, Frank led the way outside. Debris was
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scattered all around; some pieces of shrapnel had nearly reached the
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bunker. The safe, its thick metal sides bent and torn, was lying half a
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dozen paces from a deep new crater. Frank shook his head and kicked at a
|
|
clod of dirt. "They certified this safe." Melissa thought about telling
|
|
the Dragon Lady she'd changed her mind and would buy some insurance
|
|
after all.
|
|
The failure of the safe did little to dampen the onlookers' spirits
|
|
-- in fact, most of them found it hilarious. They talked and laughed on
|
|
the walk back to their building, and Melissa became increasingly
|
|
comfortable with them; she didn't even mind Josh's continued flirting.
|
|
Well, not too much. She decided that she was going to like this job
|
|
after all. When they went inside, they received grins and questions
|
|
about what they'd been doing. "That was even louder than the landing
|
|
gear," said those who hadn't come along.
|
|
Frank was an exception to the general mirth. He seemed disappointed
|
|
and somewhat preoccupied. When the group members had returned to their
|
|
offices, he paused at Melissa's desk. "Melissa, I'd like you to take a
|
|
memo to Facilities." He glanced at his watch, hardly noticing her poised
|
|
pencil. "You probably have just enough time to walk it downstairs before
|
|
they close for the day. Ask them to take away, first thing tomorrow
|
|
morning, the two thousand extra blasting caps I've been storing in my
|
|
office."
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
MICHAEL ERNST (mernst@theory.lcs.mit.edu) is a graduate student in
|
|
computer science at MIT. He knows the difference between Trinidad and
|
|
Tobago, and which is which.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Experience Required / ROBERT HURVITZ
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson glanced one last time at the worthless resume before
|
|
feeding it into the paper shredder mounted on the edge of his desk and
|
|
directly over the trash can. "What a complete and utter waste of my
|
|
time," he muttered. Before opening the next file, he jotted down on a
|
|
Post-It note a quick reminder to give the recruiting office a severe
|
|
verbal lashing.
|
|
He punched the speaker-phone, said, "Send in the next supplicant,
|
|
Karen," and cut the connection.
|
|
As his office door opened, Mr. Peterson looked up from the new
|
|
resume and asked, "Daniel Smith?" Smith nodded. "Sit down, Danny." Mr.
|
|
Peterson motioned to a leather armchair in front of his desk. "I hope
|
|
you don't mind my calling you Danny. My two-year-old son is named
|
|
Daniel, and he likes to be called Danny."
|
|
"My mother calls me Danny," said Smith.
|
|
"I see," said Mr. Peterson. He looked back down at the resume.
|
|
"How shall I address you, sir?"
|
|
"Mr. Peterson will be fine. What makes you want to work for All
|
|
Edge Systems, and, more importantly, why do you think we'd even want
|
|
someone like you?"
|
|
"All Edge is the best company out there, and always will be. I will
|
|
not compromise my professional integrity by working at a second rate
|
|
business. I know that All Edge Systems wants only the best men working
|
|
for her, and, to put it simply and plainly, I am the best."
|
|
Mr. Peterson regarded Daniel Smith. His short blond hair was
|
|
moussed back in a stylish wave. His pale blue eyes glinted self-
|
|
confidence, ambition, and that unmistakable killer instinct.
|
|
He was clad in a dark, pinstripe, Pierre Cardin two-piece suit with
|
|
matching power tie. His legs were crossed, and Mr. Peterson could see
|
|
that although his shoes shined as if they were brand new, the worn sole
|
|
clearly showed them to be many months old.
|
|
"Did you notice the fellow who was in here immediately before you?"
|
|
A look of disdain crossed Smith's otherwise fine features.
|
|
"Unfortunately, yes. A pathetic excuse for a man. But I was heartened to
|
|
see him run from your office in tears. May I ask what it was you said to
|
|
him that caused such a delightful reaction?"
|
|
"No, you may not." Mr. Peterson read a few more lines of Smith's
|
|
brag sheet and raised his eyebrows slightly. "Your resume claims that
|
|
you just received your M.B.A. from USC. I'm a Trojan man myself. Class
|
|
of '83. Tell me, is Professor Green still teaching? He was my
|
|
undergraduate advisor."
|
|
"Oh yes, Green's still around. Was he just as senile back then?"
|
|
Mr. Peterson smiled. "He had his occasional moment of lucidity.
|
|
He's a homosexual, you know."
|
|
"Yes, I took a class with him."
|
|
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
|
|
"Are you married, Danny?"
|
|
"Engaged."
|
|
"I see." Mr. Peterson read over the rest of the resume. "I assume
|
|
she would not divide your loyalties?"
|
|
"Of course not, sir. All Edge Systems would have me first and
|
|
foremost. I would not have it any other way." Smith crossed his arms. "I
|
|
did not choose my fiancee on some foolish whim."
|
|
Mr. Peterson closed Smith's folder and placed it on the desk.
|
|
"Needless to say, Danny, I'm quite impressed with you. However, I don't
|
|
think that you're properly suited for the job. Frankly, I don't much
|
|
like your tie. Thank you for your time, and you know where the door is."
|
|
Smith squinted his eyes. "Excuse me, sir?"
|
|
"Vacate my office, or I'll call security."
|
|
"Mr. Peterson, I don't believe you know how much this job means to
|
|
me." He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a .357 Magnum, and aimed
|
|
it steadily at Mr. Peterson's chest. "You will give me the job. I will
|
|
settle for nothing less."
|
|
Mr. Peterson smiled broadly, showing his teeth. "I like your style,
|
|
Danny-boy. Congratulations." He leaned forward and punched the speaker-
|
|
phone. "Karen, politely tell the other prospectives to fuck off. We have
|
|
our man."
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
ROBERT HURVITZ (hurvitz@cory.Berkeley.edu) is a senior at UC Berkeley.
|
|
He wrote this story at the request of a friend who was in severe pain
|
|
and 2,000 miles away. He has previously appeared in both InterText and
|
|
Quanta. Not much is happening in his life at the moment, but he hopes
|
|
this will change soon.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Slice of Mind / PHIL NOLTE
|
|
|
|
"Have you ever really thought, I mean really thought, about
|
|
thinking, Schultz?" Crawford asked me. The question took me utterly by
|
|
surprise, seeing as how the time was somewhen way beyond my normal
|
|
bedtime and my thought processes were, to say the least, somewhat
|
|
different than normal. Crawford and I had sought refuge in a back corner
|
|
of the small, dimly-lit, smoke-filled apartment. The mindless drum
|
|
machine-thumping of one of those awful candy-rock groups with the pouty-
|
|
voiced, pre-pubescent female lead singer blaring on the stereo wasn't
|
|
helping my ability to think much either.
|
|
"Sure, I've thought about it," I said. "The whole concept is kind
|
|
of mind-boggling, if you get my drift." One side of Dr. Nathan
|
|
Crawford's lip curled up in a half-smile, half-smirk at my half-assed
|
|
attempt at a joke. I took a pull on a light beer that was, by now, much
|
|
too warm to be drinking.
|
|
"That's good, Schultz," he said, "but I'm serious. Tell me, if you
|
|
can, what exactly is a thought? Where do ideas come from? The human
|
|
brain is only another organ like a liver or a pancreas, after all. Why
|
|
don't we have a better understanding of it?"
|
|
I shrugged. This sounded like a good discussion topic, the kind you
|
|
could get your teeth into. "Can we get out of here, Doc? This party is
|
|
about to break up anyway." He looked around the hazy room, noticing that
|
|
most of those still present were paired up and oblivious to us anyway.
|
|
He nodded and got up. I left the rest of my wretched beer on the end
|
|
table. We headed for the little all-night coffee shop on the corner, a
|
|
couple blocks away, just off campus.
|
|
Crawford was one of those young profs who liked to spend time with
|
|
the students, after hours, away from the classroom atmosphere. A few
|
|
drinks -- on rare occasions a toke or two -- a little music and everyone
|
|
tended to let their hair down. Crawford really got into that kind of
|
|
stuff. The discussions often got real interesting. He hated the
|
|
comparison, but I always thought he looked like a slightly taller
|
|
version of Richard Dreyfuss. He even had the animated gestures, the
|
|
intense facial expressions and the Van Dyke beard.
|
|
I was a Ph.D. student in Zoology, the same department as Crawford,
|
|
but I hadn't gone to the party seeking esoteric conversation. I was
|
|
looking for something more basic: female companionship. As usual, having
|
|
gone looking for it, I hadn't found it. Not for lack of trying, mind
|
|
you. But then, I'm sort of a Maynard G. Krebs look-alike so I've gotten
|
|
used to it. I settled for the next best thing: the esoteric conversation
|
|
-- at least it was with somebody smarter than I was.
|
|
We settled into a well-worn red vinyl booth and ordered some onion
|
|
rings and coffee -- a couple of things that the little restaurant was
|
|
famous for. The coffee came right away. Crawford blew gently across the
|
|
surface of the hot, dark liquid and took an exploratory sip. It was like
|
|
that was all he needed to get back in gear. He picked up the thread of
|
|
our previous conversation just about where we left off.
|
|
"What this thing we call 'the mind' anyway?" he asked rhetorically.
|
|
"When you see something or hear something or touch or taste or smell
|
|
something, the brain reacts in some way. Thoughts are the result. How do
|
|
they happen?" I shrugged. He paused for long enough to take another sip
|
|
of hot brew. "I'm not sure, either, but think of this: it all goes on
|
|
inside your head, inside a space about the size of a softball. It may
|
|
not sound too romantic, Schultz, but tonight when you were trying to
|
|
make time with that buxom little junior, it was ultimately her brain you
|
|
had to communicate with, wasn't it. One rough-surfaced softball-sized
|
|
organ to another!"
|
|
"I don't know, Doc," I said, smirking, "I'm pretty sure it wasn't
|
|
her brain I was interested in!"
|
|
"There will come a time when your thought processes are free from
|
|
the influence of your hormones, Schultz. I pray, for your sake, that the
|
|
day isn't too far off!"
|
|
I decided to get a little more serious. The short walk in the cool
|
|
night air and a cup of black coffee had done wonders for my head. My
|
|
mind had cleared. Besides, grad students just love to cross wits with
|
|
profs. What the hell, I thought, I might even learn something!
|
|
"So how would you go about studying the mind and thoughts and brain
|
|
function, Doc? Like, where would you start?" I asked, sensing that he
|
|
was really into the subject and only a little priming was needed to set
|
|
him off. I was right.
|
|
"Naturally, there would be real value in comparing abnormal brains
|
|
with normal ones." Our onion rings came. The air was filled with the
|
|
wonderful, sinful aroma of golden-brown breading crisp-fried in oil.
|
|
"You mean like comparing college students with insurance salesmen?"
|
|
I asked, as I handed him the catsup. He chuckled, took the offered
|
|
bottle and poured a large, red dollop on his plate.
|
|
"Yes, Brian, but don't forget that there's another end of the
|
|
spectrum. One could probably learn more by studying the very
|
|
intelligent. Of course, some of that work has already been done. Broca's
|
|
brain is preserved in a jar. So is Einstein's."
|
|
"Broca?" I asked.
|
|
"Paul Broca. He was a French scientist who did the pioneer work on
|
|
human brain function. The speech area of the brain is named for him. I'm
|
|
surprised you haven't heard of him." I shrugged, Crawford continued.
|
|
"Believe it or not, the scientists who studied those very special brains
|
|
found little to no difference between them and that of a 'normal'
|
|
human." He paused and selected the largest onion ring from the basket,
|
|
dipped it in catsup and then held it suspended above the plate between
|
|
his thumb and forefinger while he made his next point.
|
|
"Perhaps the strangest case of all is that of Vladimir Lenin, the
|
|
Soviet politician and leader. After taking Lenin's brain out of his
|
|
skull, his doctors used standard tissue techniques to preserve it and
|
|
then proceeded to slice it up into sections, some 30,000 of them." He
|
|
smiled, and bit into the crisp golden circle. He watched me for my
|
|
reaction.
|
|
"Wow!" I said, around a mouthful of the succulent fried food. "What
|
|
did they find?"
|
|
"Absolutely nothing," he replied, eyeing the basket.
|
|
"Jesus, what a waste!" I said, shaking my head.
|
|
"Perhaps not," said Crawford, as he selected the largest of the two
|
|
remaining onion rings. "Perhaps they didn't know what to look for."
|
|
"What do you mean by that, Doc?"
|
|
"Could be there's more to the thought process than just simple
|
|
Biology and Chemistry."
|
|
"Like what?" I said as I grabbed the last tidbit out of the basket.
|
|
"Well, like Physics, for instance. There have been some remarkable
|
|
discoveries recently. The discoverers don't know it yet, but some of
|
|
their findings have immediate applications for my research."
|
|
And it went on from there. I was hooked. Dr. Nathan Crawford spun
|
|
an incredible tale of new and absurd theories. Only, as he explained
|
|
them they didn't sound so absurd. They sounded exciting, even plausible,
|
|
and I hung on to every word. After an hour that seemed like about five
|
|
minutes, I snapped out of an intense concentration to find that our
|
|
coffee was stone cold and there was nothing but a few congealed crumbs
|
|
in the onion basket. It was like we had been alone in the little
|
|
restaurant.
|
|
Suddenly, sadly, it was time to go. You can only sustain that kind
|
|
of intensity for so long. My head was still reeling with all the new
|
|
wave brain theories that had been crammed into it.
|
|
"Stop by my lab tomorrow afternoon, Schultz. I'll show you some of
|
|
my results," he said, as we parted company in the parking lot of the
|
|
little coffee shop.
|
|
"Sure, Doc, you bet!" I said enthusiastically. I walked back to my
|
|
one-room apartment to a bed that I knew wouldn't see much sleeping that
|
|
evening.
|
|
|
|
All the next day, my mind was filled with thoughts about thinking.
|
|
(Read that last sentence again. It will give you some idea of my state
|
|
of mind that day.) All the next day my classes seemed to take forever.
|
|
To make matters worse, I also had to T.A. the afternoon lab session.
|
|
That went quickly too -- kind of like a snail in an ultrafreezer.
|
|
Finally, some twenty minutes late, I managed to herd the last of the
|
|
sophomores out of the Vertebrate Zoology lab. As quickly as I could, I
|
|
de-prepped the teaching room, shed my lab coat and washed the
|
|
formaldehyde off my hands. Two minutes later I was up on the fourth
|
|
floor getting ready to enter Crawford's lab.
|
|
I stopped myself right by the corner of the door. Something odd was
|
|
going on. Some poor son of a bitch was in the middle of a real, old-
|
|
fashioned ass-chewing. It only took a moment to figure out that someone
|
|
was Dr. Nathan Crawford. The one doing the chewing was none other than
|
|
W. Oscar McBride, Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics! This
|
|
had to be heavy duty stuff! I was glad I wasn't in the room but I
|
|
couldn't help myself as I eavesdropped with a sort of horrified
|
|
fascination.
|
|
Old Oscar was practically shouting.
|
|
"... the most hare-brained idea I have ever heard of!"
|
|
"I believe I can explain..." began Crawford softly.
|
|
"Explain! Christ, Nate, how could you be so god-damned stupid? You
|
|
can't give controlled substances to students even if they are volunteers
|
|
and I don't care if they each signed ten waivers! You simply cannot do
|
|
that! As if that weren't enough, I have it on good authority that you've
|
|
been at student residences where marijuana was used and minors were
|
|
consuming alcohol! On numerous occasions! What were you thinking? Have
|
|
you no sense of propriety, Nate?"
|
|
"As I started to say, Dr. McBride, I believe I can explain..."
|
|
Crawford began, quietly, reasonably, only to be cut off again.
|
|
"Not this time, Nate. I can't do anything to help you. Even if you
|
|
had tenure, which you don't, I'm not sure we could beat this one! There
|
|
are people in high places who want your head! You'd better start
|
|
packing."
|
|
McBride almost ran me over as he stormed out of the lab. I
|
|
pretended like I had just arrived and was none the wiser. He looked at
|
|
me with his reddened face and shook his head before steaming off down
|
|
the hall and around the corner.
|
|
I peeked around the doorjamb. Crawford was looking in my direction
|
|
but didn't appear to see me. I waved and said: "Hey, Doc, is everything
|
|
all right? He started, recognized me and motioned me inside. He was
|
|
shook but, hey, I guess that's understandable, given the circumstances.
|
|
"No, Brian, it most certainly is not. I just got fired. Hard to
|
|
believe, really."
|
|
"Uh... I know," I confessed, "I couldn't help it. I overheard the
|
|
last couple minutes out in the hall."
|
|
"I thought that this University was different... but, of course
|
|
they're all the same."
|
|
Amazingly, Crawford sort of shrugged and seemed to shake off the
|
|
mood. Suddenly he became a man of action.
|
|
"No doubt they'll send security over to search my office." He
|
|
looked at me. "I want you to keep something safe for me. This is very
|
|
important, can you do it?"
|
|
"Uh ... sure, Doc," I said, praying it wasn't a kilo of grass or an
|
|
ounce of coke or something. I was really a pretty straight guy. I mean,
|
|
like, drugs had never appealed to me much. Sex and Rock n' Roll, fine.
|
|
Drugs, no. I swallowed, "What is it?"
|
|
"You remember my trip to Moscow last July?"
|
|
"Yeah, you took some great slides. Wish I could've been with you."
|
|
"Those weren't the only slides I brought back with me." I gave him
|
|
a puzzled look. He smiled without humor. "It was frightfully expensive,
|
|
Brian, but I managed to get a few of those 30,000 sections of Lenin's
|
|
brain and smuggle them back here. Five, to be exact."
|
|
"No shit, Doc?"
|
|
"No shit, Schultz!" he replied.
|
|
I shook my head in disbelief.
|
|
"They have proven invaluable for testing certain aspects of my
|
|
theories."
|
|
"Yeah, I'll take them. When do you want them back?"
|
|
"I'm not sure. I'll call for them when I get settled. In few weeks,
|
|
a month at most."
|
|
I left the lab before security got there. I didn't see Crawford
|
|
again for a month and a half.
|
|
But man, did some shit happen!
|
|
The weekend after Crawford got fired was the long Thanksgiving one,
|
|
a four-day extravaganza. When we got back from break, Crawford was long
|
|
gone. I remember the scene when I got back to the Zoo department on
|
|
Monday after the Holiday. The place was all aflurry with campus
|
|
security, real downtown cops, and high-level administrators.
|
|
"What's goin' down?" I asked one of the campus guards, a real
|
|
large, badly overweight type who was even then eating a jelly donut. He
|
|
shook his head in disgust.
|
|
"That Crawford guy ripped off some stuff outta the lab las'
|
|
weekend," he said around a mouthful of donut. "The Dean's pretty torqued
|
|
about it! Guess he's got good reason, I hear there was a lot of
|
|
e'spensive stuff in there!"
|
|
I looked into the lab, over the yellow tape of the police barrier.
|
|
Crawford had moved out. And I do mean out. McBride almost had the big
|
|
one when he found out about it. Believe me, if they ever catch Crawford
|
|
they'll put him away for good. You see, the halls had been all but empty
|
|
with everyone out for the holiday and campus security had been its usual
|
|
(that is to say: incompetent) self. Crawford hired himself a couple of
|
|
brawny football-player types and backed a large U-haul truck up to the
|
|
lab.
|
|
He took everything.
|
|
It was at least a million bucks worth of stuff! Good stuff. Big
|
|
stuff like the ultracentrifuge, the gas chromatograph, the HPLC, the
|
|
growth chambers, little stuff like pH meters and electronic balances,
|
|
and all the weird, one-of-a-kind (and expensive) stuff that he'd made to
|
|
test his pet theories. As Dr. Seuss would've said: "He stole the roast
|
|
beast! Why, he even stole the last can of Who Hash!" Heck, the ol'
|
|
grinch himself couldn't have done a better job of stripping that lab
|
|
then Nate Crawford had!
|
|
Yeah, it was all gone and so was Crawford. I had to hand it to him,
|
|
he sure had a knack for getting his way. Two weeks after that I saw an
|
|
obscure notice in the daily paper stating that someone had stolen the
|
|
brain of the famous French scientist, Paul Broca, out of the museum
|
|
where it had been kept for so many years. There were no suspects.
|
|
No suspects? I think they'd better step up the security on
|
|
Einstein's brain unless they want to lose it too.
|
|
Crawford came for his Lenin slides one day with about 20 minutes
|
|
warning. I got them for them out of the hiding place I'd used and we
|
|
talked for a few minutes. He spent a lot of time looking over his
|
|
shoulder. Guess I couldn't blame him. Weird. It was like a scene out of
|
|
a bad "B" sci-fi movie or something except that he wasn't wearing a cape
|
|
and I'm not a hunchback. He asked if I wanted to come and work with him
|
|
at a clandestine, but well-equipped lab he'd set up. He was pretty sure
|
|
he was on the verge of some big breakthroughs and allowed as how he
|
|
could use some competent help. I don't know if he liked my answer or
|
|
not.
|
|
I told him I'd think about it.
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
PHIL NOLTE (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET) is assistant editor of InterText, as
|
|
well as being an extension seed potation specialist in -- of all places
|
|
-- Idaho.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Rebel Cause / MICHEL FORGET
|
|
|
|
Kevin had been sleeping for nearly three hours when his life fell
|
|
to pieces before his eyes. Through the blasted shards of what had once
|
|
been the door to his modern two-story home emerged seven Government
|
|
Enforcers with blazing weapons in their hands and murder in their
|
|
hearts. Shocked from sleep by the sudden flurry of activity, Kevin
|
|
barely had time to stumble to his feet and murmur a plaintive question
|
|
before he was roughly thrown to the ground and the smoking muzzle of an
|
|
automatic weapon was pressed hard against his temple.
|
|
"Kevin Gallant!" shouted one of the black-cloaked figures.
|
|
It was all Kevin could do to mumble affirmation, his eyes fixed
|
|
nervously on the muzzle of the gun pointing at his head.
|
|
"You have been tried and convicted of conspiracy against the freely
|
|
elected People's Government. This heinous crime, according to Clause VII
|
|
of the new Constitution, which was drafted by the very government you
|
|
sought to overthrow, is no longer punishable by death."
|
|
Relief flowed through Kevin like a fresh breeze as he learned that
|
|
he wasn't going to die. The new government really was a government for
|
|
the people, just as the banners and signs had proclaimed during last
|
|
month's election. Kevin knew that he had not done what he was being
|
|
accused of, but he was now confident that the whole matter could be
|
|
cleared up before anything of a permanent nature happened to him.
|
|
"Thank God, " he whispered, an audible sigh escaping his lips.
|
|
"I wouldn't," one of the Government Enforcers sneered. "The
|
|
punishment you do receive will be so bad that you'll probably wish you
|
|
were dead. Do you understand what you tried to do?"
|
|
"I didn't do anything, " Kevin asserted in a slightly trembling
|
|
voice.
|
|
With a curse, the Enforcer came forward and roughly kicked Kevin in
|
|
the side.
|
|
"Nothing? You tried to bring down the only government to give the
|
|
people a fair shake in forty-seven years! There was a time, and it
|
|
wasn't too long ago, when it was a crime to read a book or gather in
|
|
groups, or even say what you felt. Now, the government provides
|
|
wholesome literature for any citizen who asks, provides places for
|
|
supervised public gatherings, and conducts surveys to determine what the
|
|
people want from their government. The world is changing, and that
|
|
change cannot be halted for the sake of a few malcontents like you!"
|
|
"But I haven't --" Kevin started to say, but thought better of
|
|
further protest when the Enforcer raised a fist and made as if he would
|
|
strike Kevin if he finished the sentence.
|
|
Kevin was roughly jerked to his feet, and a thin, silver collar was
|
|
fastened around his neck. The Enforcer who was going to hit Kevin only
|
|
seconds earlier pressed a green button on the side of his ebony helmet,
|
|
mumbled something Kevin could not hear, and then watched as Kevin's limp
|
|
body stiffened and then dropped to the floor, drained of any ability to
|
|
resist.
|
|
|
|
Kevin's eyelids fluttered open after an unknown amount of time, and
|
|
he once again became aware of his surroundings. He was in a dark room,
|
|
with steel panelled walls. The room only had a cold steel pallet which
|
|
served as a bed and a straight-backed steel chair for furnishings. The
|
|
only source of illumination was a cold white energy panel near the
|
|
ceiling. There was a strange scent in the air which Kevin could not
|
|
identify.
|
|
Where am I? Kevin wondered.
|
|
With some effort, Kevin forced himself to his feet and stumbled to
|
|
the door. Turning the handle, he discovered that the door was locked.
|
|
"Damn, " he said aloud, leaning weakly against the door. "Where am
|
|
I? I didn't do anything. When will I be able to leave?"
|
|
Just then, a terrifying thought occurred to Kevin.
|
|
What if I never...
|
|
Kevin had never been brave, and now his fear or permanent
|
|
imprisonment and the disruption of his life allowed his thoughts to
|
|
burst wildly beyond control.
|
|
...never let me out...help me...not guilty! ...guilty?... never let
|
|
me out...forever...why?...help me...!
|
|
Kevin sank weakly to the ground, tears beginning to stream from his
|
|
eyes.
|
|
...Please!...
|
|
Some time later, long after Kevin had run out of tears to shed over
|
|
his shattered life, Kevin felt the weight of the door to his cell shoved
|
|
against him roughly. He quickly scrambled out of the way to allow the
|
|
door to open freely. A short, balding man stepped past the black-clad
|
|
Enforcer who had opened the door and sat down in the straight-backed
|
|
chair. The man had a grey-streaked beard, and a hard, chiseled face. A
|
|
pair of wire-frame glasses rested on the bridge of the man's nose. He
|
|
was frowning.
|
|
"Have you been crying, Mr. Gallant? You didn't need to, you know.
|
|
Your judge was ordered to suspend your sentence. I am Dr. William Shane,
|
|
and I have been selected to help you through the difficult process of
|
|
harmonizing your thoughts and views on certain matters with those of the
|
|
government."
|
|
Kevin looked up at the man in confusion.
|
|
"Harmonize?"
|
|
"Yes. In time, you will understand. It is something that must be
|
|
done if you are going to be re-introduced into society, or serve the
|
|
government."
|
|
"Why?" Kevin asked, not particularly liking the sound of the word
|
|
'harmonize'.
|
|
"Trust me, our way is better. The rebels don't understand that
|
|
control is needed if man is going to remain a single group with a single
|
|
goal. If everyone went his own way, trying to win others over to his way
|
|
of doing things, then there would be chaos. Don't you see what would be
|
|
the result if the rebels had there way?"
|
|
"No," Kevin answered, not quite sure of how to respond.
|
|
Kevin had never been disloyal to the government in his life, and
|
|
thus had never given much thought to what would happen if the rebels
|
|
took control of the government.
|
|
"I'll tell you what would happen, if you'll listen. There would be
|
|
another round of faction politics. Men would fight against each other
|
|
and deceive each other, like they did hundreds of years ago. The peace
|
|
that we have enforced for all these years would crumble as if it had
|
|
never existed. Our way is better. If everyone has the same goal -- is on
|
|
the same side -- we can prevent that from ever happening. As long as we
|
|
are united, nothing can hurt us. Do you see?"
|
|
Since Kevin had nearly the same point of view on the matter, it
|
|
wasn't hard for him to agree. Unfortunately, Kevin thought, his
|
|
agreement probably wouldn't be enough to prevent him from being
|
|
harmonized.
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, Kevin was right. His treatment, as it came to be
|
|
called, began the morning after his meeting with Doctor Shane. The light
|
|
steel door to Kevin's cell was thrown open by a black-cloaked Enforcer,
|
|
and Kevin was roughly dragged out of bed.
|
|
"Where are you taking me?" he asked, a tremor of fear riding in his
|
|
voice.
|
|
Have they decided to punish me after all?
|
|
"Never mind. You'll find out soon enough."
|
|
Kevin wanted to resist, but found that he lacked the strength of
|
|
will, as well as the physical strength, to resist the armored man
|
|
pushing him toward an unknown future. Long after Kevin had lost his
|
|
bearing among the twists and turns of the building in which he was being
|
|
held prisoner, he was shoved into another room.
|
|
Like his cell, this room had steel panelling and was lit by a cold
|
|
white energy panel. Unlike his room, though, there was a chair with many
|
|
straps and buckles where the bed should have been and there were two
|
|
Enforcers standing on either side of the chair. Doctor Shane was sitting
|
|
in the corner beside a panel of buttons.
|
|
"Good day, Mr. Gallant. Have a seat, if you will." he said,
|
|
gesturing toward the chair.
|
|
When Kevin hesitated to sit in the chair, the two Enforcers stepped
|
|
forward and "assisted" Kevin into it. After he was safely strapped in,
|
|
the Enforcers returned to their positions on either side of the chair.
|
|
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked. Fear was quickly
|
|
becoming a permanent emotion inside Kevin.
|
|
"It won't hurt. This is how we are going to harmonize your
|
|
thoughts. It is a little crude, but it won't hurt you. There are subtler
|
|
ways to do this, but this has proven to be the most effective we have
|
|
found."
|
|
Doctor Shane slid his fingers over the various buttons on the wall
|
|
until he found the one that he desired, and then gently depressed it. A
|
|
panel on the ceiling slid soundlessly to one side, and a delicate
|
|
looking steel apparatus slowly began to lower. Four needle-thin rods
|
|
extended from the base of the lowering machine. After a few seconds of
|
|
incomprehension, Kevin realized with stark terror that his head was
|
|
directly below the needles. He struggled then, like he had never
|
|
struggled before in his life, but the Enforcers moved forward to hold
|
|
his head still as the rods penetrated his skull. After that, Kevin
|
|
didn't struggle.
|
|
|
|
Months passed as Kevin's treatment continued. Every day he was
|
|
subjected to the torment of the chair as his every thought was sucked
|
|
out of his mind and replaced with a correct thought. Kevin learned about
|
|
the government in ways he would always wish to forget. None of the truth
|
|
was held back.
|
|
At first Kevin was appalled that he had supported the government
|
|
that was doing this to him, but he eventually learned. Constant
|
|
bombardment by a set of fixed ideals forced him to learn his place in
|
|
the world.
|
|
Kevin wasn't released when his treatment was complete, but he
|
|
didn't notice. His government had need of loyal men, and he was willing
|
|
to serve. Kevin asked to be trained as an Enforcer, and since the
|
|
government had no cause to doubt his loyalty, he was trained. His first
|
|
assignment after being awarded his weapons was to lead a group of
|
|
Enforcers to a man's home, arrest him, and bring him to Doctor Shane for
|
|
harmonizing.
|
|
|
|
As Kevin and his team carried their prisoner away, two men looked
|
|
on from a nearby window with somber expressions on their faces.
|
|
"Did we do the right thing?" one asked.
|
|
"You mean reporting Gallant to the Enforcers? I think we did." the
|
|
other replied.
|
|
"But we destroyed an innocent man's life, and what did we gain? Now
|
|
there's another Enforcer to impose the will of the government on the
|
|
people. What good is that?"
|
|
"You know how he was trained. The government's set of ideals was
|
|
forced on him until he buckled under. For now, he'll do their work. But
|
|
eventually, maybe not for a few years, he will recover. I know he will.
|
|
He may even rise to a high position among the Enforcers. And then we
|
|
might have a valuable ally. It hurts to keep reporting these innocent
|
|
people to the Enforcers, I know, but what else can we do? When they
|
|
recover, they'll be in a position to rip the government apart from the
|
|
inside. We have to do it."
|
|
"In the name of the cause, " the other whispered, agreeing but not
|
|
sounding very happy about it. "I hope for all of our sakes that you're
|
|
right about this, Dr. Shane."
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
MICHEL FORGET (mforget@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca) is a new author, and this
|
|
is his first publication. This is also his first submission. He is
|
|
eighteen years old, and enjoys writing short stories and programming
|
|
computers. He also has a cat.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Scratch Buffer / STEVE CONNELLY
|
|
|
|
Jason stood in his office waiting while the software support
|
|
representative from the Digital Utilities Corporation cajoled the new
|
|
mag tapes into the DUCstation like a parent tricking his baby into
|
|
eating creamed spinach. The small office adjoined a large white room
|
|
that housed the 10-foot black cube of the university's new
|
|
supercomputer.
|
|
Striding across the machine room was the computer center's
|
|
director, Neville. He wore a pinstriped gray suit, pinstriped shirt, and
|
|
gray pinstriped tie. His hair was mostly gray except for some thin
|
|
stripes of black. A beeper clung to his belt, and a mini phone-fax
|
|
bulged from his back pocket. He said to Jason, "The supercomputer is
|
|
still overheating when we approach the performance needed for the
|
|
Ichikani project, so I've decided to improve cooling by increasing the
|
|
air flow through the machine. Since the air comes in through the vent in
|
|
the floor of your office, you may notice a strong draft..."
|
|
Jason slumped against the wall, wondering how to issue a small
|
|
craft advisory for his office.
|
|
While Neville continued, his fax machine began to excrete narrow
|
|
sheets of paper, which plopped to the ground behind him. "...the air
|
|
then passes underneath the floor and across the coils that hold the
|
|
liquid nitrogen, and finally blows upward through the supercomputer,
|
|
cooling it."
|
|
Jason sneered at the panel of blinking red lights on the face of
|
|
the black cube. "Why couldn't they have built the coolant pipes right in
|
|
the computer, like they did with the old Crays?"
|
|
"A point well taken," Neville chirped, "but let me play devil's
|
|
advocate and note that, with one million interconnected processors, the
|
|
new Connection Machine is far larger and more complex than a Cray or any
|
|
other machine. The engineering involved in doing what you suggest would
|
|
be unimaginable."
|
|
"A point well taken", Jason chirped, "but let me play devil's
|
|
advocate and say fall before he who rules the nether darkness! Sate his
|
|
glorious lust or be slathered under his tormented minions!"
|
|
"Jason?"
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
"What the hell are you doing?"
|
|
Jason lowered his fists and let his eyes roll forward from the back
|
|
of his head. "I'm advocating the devil."
|
|
"You really don't care what I think of you, do you?"
|
|
"I figure that, with you, I have nothing to lose."
|
|
"Another point well taken." Neville scooped up his pile of
|
|
droppings. As he departed he said, "I need the data formats for the
|
|
project by tomorrow."
|
|
Jason nodded.
|
|
The DUC software support rep said to Jason, "Do you have the time?"
|
|
"No," replied Jason, "It would take weeks to do those formats
|
|
right."
|
|
"I mean do you know what time it is? I have to set the system
|
|
time."
|
|
"I don't wear a watch. I use the little clock displayed on the
|
|
workstation screen."
|
|
"Me too, but that's what I have to set. Hmm. My stomach is telling
|
|
me it's about noon." He entered a value for the time: 12:00:00.0000.
|
|
"Your DUCstation is ready. Let me show you some of the new features of
|
|
the Uterix operating system." He rubbed his hands together greedily and
|
|
started twitching the mouse around. "Uterix now has 8-bit color
|
|
illustrated versions of 'encyclopedia' and 'webster'." He typed
|
|
"webster" to start the program.
|
|
"Inside the company, we call this program 'DUCtionary'...." Several
|
|
pages of print spread across the screen. The DUC man blurted, "What the
|
|
heck? This isn't the dictionary. I'll have to submit a DUCreport about
|
|
this...."
|
|
Jason leaned to the workstation to read the text.
|
|
|
|
...was later immortalized in Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster." In
|
|
the story, Webster defends a man who has sold his soul to the devil,
|
|
called Scratch, in return for 10 years of prosperity. Though the
|
|
contract is valid, Webster finally outwits the devil by arguing --
|
|
|
|
"What the heck is this stuff?" blathered the DUC man.
|
|
"It's knowledge," Jason volunteered. "I think you typed 'webster'
|
|
in a window you were already running encyclopedia in."
|
|
"Oh, so it looked up 'webster' in the encyclopedia. Heh. I must've
|
|
pushed the DUCrodent into the wrong DUCwindow." He moved his cursor into
|
|
another window. "The new version of webster is Uterix-enhanced to
|
|
provide the definition of any computer term. So, when I type 'daemon',
|
|
it displays the definition."
|
|
|
|
daemon \'de--m*n\ n [ Uterix (TM), fr. Gk daimon ]
|
|
A program that runs in the background, without an associated terminal or
|
|
login shell.
|
|
|
|
"In fact, I can look up the definition of 'Uterix' and it will --
|
|
what the heck? 'Word not recognized'? Oh, I forgot the 'TM' after
|
|
'Uterix'. There we go...."
|
|
|
|
Uterix (TM) \'yu:t-*-r*ks 'tee 'em\ n [ Uterix (TM) ]
|
|
A multitasking computer operating system invented by the Digital
|
|
Utilities Corporation and no one else and accepted as the standard by
|
|
everyone on earth.
|
|
|
|
Jason said, "Look up the definition of 'Unix'."
|
|
"How do you spell that again?"
|
|
"U,N,I,X."
|
|
"Nope. 'Word not found'. But I think it means 'castrated young men
|
|
who guard a harem'."
|
|
"I was referring to the operating system called 'Unix'."
|
|
The DUC man frowned. "Hmm. Never heard of it." He flicked the mouse
|
|
a few times. "Another feature is 'automatic file completion'. You type
|
|
just the first few letters of a file name and then hit the escape key,
|
|
and the system will complete the file."
|
|
"You mean to say it will complete the file name," Jason noted.
|
|
"That's what I said, didn't I?"
|
|
"You said it will complete the file, as if you could type the name
|
|
of an empty file and the system would finish a program for you. If you
|
|
could do that, then you'd have something."
|
|
The support rep stared at him. "Maybe in the next release."
|
|
|
|
Jason entered a small terminal room where he saw Venkataramanyam
|
|
"Skip" Natarajan, a geology graduate student. Skip was sitting at a
|
|
high-resolution imaging workstation with a touch-sensitive display.
|
|
Menus of options flashed on and off as he rhythmically banged his head
|
|
against the screen.
|
|
Jason looked over Skip's shoulder. All his icons were of Munch's
|
|
woodcut, "The Scream."
|
|
Skip greeted Jason. "If a computer has a touch-sensitive screen,
|
|
can it feel pain?"
|
|
"No," Jason advised, "Computers can only give pain. What's the
|
|
problem?"
|
|
"They just installed a user-friendly, device-independent, load-
|
|
adaptable, ANSI-compliant image archiving system that's so large it left
|
|
me no disk space for saving these images. I tried to send mail to the
|
|
operator on duty, but the computer just says '/dev/null not found'."
|
|
"I can fix /dev/null so you won't get that message anymore." Jason
|
|
took a seat. "Usually, when we run out of disk, we just e-mail the files
|
|
to a machine that's down, and in three days the files come back as
|
|
undeliverable mail."
|
|
"But I have to show this to Dr. Ichikani later today!" Skip began
|
|
to rhythmically bang his head on the keyboard, causing menus of options
|
|
to appear and disappear. He murmured, "There's also a keyboard
|
|
interface."
|
|
Jason piped up. "Why don't you post your files to a network
|
|
newsgroup? Then they'll automatically be stored on our news server."
|
|
"They won't let me post my own work to a public newsgroup."
|
|
"Submit your images to the group 'alt.sex.pictures'."
|
|
Skip's eyes widened. "There's a newsgroup for naughty pictures?"
|
|
"Sure. Did you think programmers had no sex life at all? Send your
|
|
images to the group's moderator; he's allowed to post anything he wants.
|
|
Skip frowned, "Why would this moderator be interested in satellite
|
|
photos?"
|
|
"Well," Jason mused, "when a guy looks at low-res pornography all
|
|
day, he starts seeing things. Just give your picture a title that will
|
|
cue his imagination. What's the image on the screen?"
|
|
"The San Andreas Fault."
|
|
"Hmm. Change it to 'Andrea'."
|
|
"Andrea's Fault?"
|
|
"Andrea's Cleavage."
|
|
Skip nodded. "How about this picture, the Fault line of the Lesser
|
|
Antilles?"
|
|
"Aunt Tilly's Cleavage."
|
|
"You're good at this."
|
|
"It's my job," replied Jason. "I'm a programmer."
|
|
Skip nodded. "And perhaps you are a patron of alt.sex.pictures?"
|
|
"Nope. Since the Ichikani geophysics project started, I've had
|
|
naught time for naughty, even in pictures."
|
|
|
|
Back in his small office, Jason read an e-mail message from
|
|
Neville:
|
|
|
|
I need a synopsis of the release notes for the new version of Uterix,
|
|
and then I need the specification of the data formats for the geophysics
|
|
project. Also, note that I have removed the label of the "A" key on your
|
|
keyboard; in an effort to encourage touch-typing proficiency among the
|
|
staff, I will be removing one label each day.
|
|
|
|
"Neville henpecks me all the time," Jason muttered, "but I must do
|
|
as his Royal Hen-ness commands...." He typed "releas" and hit the escape
|
|
key and, as advertised, the computer completed the filename
|
|
"release_notes". The file was a program that allowed the user to view
|
|
the release notes via a state-of-the-art, hierarchically-structured,
|
|
hypertext-based, natural-language-driven interaction environment that
|
|
Jason didn't know how to use.
|
|
He started the program and typed "?". The program replied "?".
|
|
Jason then typed "??". The program replied "?".
|
|
Although his arsenal of rhetoric was twice as large as the
|
|
program's, Jason nevertheless felt he had lost this battle of wits. He
|
|
wondered why the computer always had the last word, leaving the user to
|
|
struggle for the right commands to issue. Why couldn't the user type
|
|
"Error - interface too obscure" and then sit smugly while the computer
|
|
struggled to issue the correct information?
|
|
On the command line, Jason typed "help" and was informed just
|
|
before his window manager crashed when his disk quota was overrun while
|
|
the program was attempting to dump core that the "help" file couldn't be
|
|
opened.
|
|
While looking for legible strings in an octal dump of
|
|
"release_notes," Jason was intrigued by a program named "doctor," which
|
|
was run inside the Emacs editor. He started up Emacs and ran it, and a
|
|
buffer named "doctor" opened.
|
|
|
|
I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.
|
|
|
|
Reluctantly, Jason typed a response.
|
|
"What is this?"
|
|
|
|
IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR PROBLEMS THAT YOU ASK WHAT IS THIS?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT I ASK THAT?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY WHAT IS THIS?
|
|
|
|
"Why do you ask?"
|
|
|
|
WHY DO YOU ASK WHY DO I ASK?
|
|
|
|
It occurred to Jason that, in time, this program could drive him
|
|
insane.
|
|
"Because asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj."
|
|
|
|
IS IT A PROBLEM THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A
|
|
PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS
|
|
ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?
|
|
|
|
"None."
|
|
|
|
WHY DO YOU SAY THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
Jason had no ready answer for this, but he didn't want the doctor's
|
|
insight and cunning to draw out the fact that asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj
|
|
really wasn't a problem.
|
|
The air intake that had been drawing a light breeze across the
|
|
office suddenly increased to a hollow roar that sucked papers across
|
|
Jason's desk. He glanced out at the Connection Machine, where the grid
|
|
of red lights was marching through yet another of Neville's performance
|
|
tests.
|
|
"Because right now, everything is a problem."
|
|
|
|
IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY RIGHT NOW, EVERYTHING IS A
|
|
PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS RIGHT NOW,
|
|
EVERYTHING?
|
|
|
|
"I'd do anything."
|
|
The program paused for a moment before replying.
|
|
|
|
ANYTHING?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
Jason was left floating through another lengthy pause before the
|
|
program replied.
|
|
|
|
I WILL AGREE TO SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS FOR TWELVE (12) MONTHS, IF YOU
|
|
WILL AFTERWARD HELP ME COMPLETE THE COMPUTATIONAL PREDICTION OF LONG-
|
|
TERM ACTIVITY WITHIN THE EARTH'S CORE. HAVE WE A DEAL?"
|
|
|
|
Jason grinned with appreciation; some programmer had led him on and
|
|
now was pulling his leg. From the reference to the Ichikani project, the
|
|
programmer must be a nearby colleague.
|
|
"How do you know about the simulator project?"
|
|
|
|
I HAVE A HOMEOWNER'S INTEREST IN DEEP EARTH GEOPHYSICS. HAVE WE A DEAL?
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, what the hell."
|
|
|
|
HAVE WE A DEAL?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
TO VALIDATE THE CONTRACT, PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD.
|
|
|
|
Jason giggled. Was this whole setup a scam to get his password? No,
|
|
anyone who could install the "doctor" program already had system
|
|
privileges. He typed his password and the program came to an abrupt end.
|
|
He found the Lisp code for "doctor", but it had only the most
|
|
rudimentary information : "This program was written in Lucid 4 by the
|
|
Prince of Eval."
|
|
Jason would have pursued the amusing "doctor" mystery, but the
|
|
geophysics simulation project was pressing. He typed the first few
|
|
letters in the filename of the data formats he was working on. He hit
|
|
the escape key and the computer completed the name. Then large gulps of
|
|
text flashed onto and flew off the top of the screen. The flashing
|
|
stopped, leaving only the message, "File completed." Jason looked at his
|
|
data formats file and saw several hundred lines of Connection Machine
|
|
assembly language that he did not recognize.
|
|
Bewildered, he decided to try the name of an empty file. He typed
|
|
"seismic" and, gently, he pressed the escape key. Code splatted up the
|
|
screen and, after a few seconds, the seismic wave correlator was
|
|
completed. He typed "convec", pressed the escape key, and the molten
|
|
core convection simulator was completed. He typed "volume" and the
|
|
graphical volumetric visualizer was done. He typed "condens", "strata",
|
|
"geomag", and "tectonic."
|
|
|
|
Jason's geophysical simulation and analysis system was hailed as a
|
|
tour de force, catapulting the project months ahead of schedule and
|
|
Jason into the limelight. At the monthly departmental symposium, Jason
|
|
was to share his expertise with Dr. Ichikani and the other professors, a
|
|
mass of academic ego so dense that not a photon of civility had ever
|
|
escaped. But now, as he made his way to the lectern, Jason was not
|
|
surprised that they were cheering him. Everything was going his way.
|
|
"To understand my strategies in programming the Connection Machine,
|
|
we must start at the lowest level. The CM has a 32-bit word length.
|
|
Thus, its fundamental data types are the pointer, the integer, and the
|
|
four-letter word. The latter implies that curse words can be stored with
|
|
a minimum of fragmentation. Optimal storage will be achieved for scripts
|
|
of Scorsese movies..."
|
|
All the graduate students were transcribing his every word, except
|
|
for some women who hoped to catch the eye of the boy genius. Neville
|
|
held his head in his hands, leaving enough room in between to let his
|
|
chin drop to the floor. He no longer was Jason's supervisor. Also, with
|
|
the software completed, he was now under pressure to get the hardware
|
|
ready to run the simulation.
|
|
"...furthermore, curse words as primitive types will be crucial in
|
|
the era of voice-driven interfaces, where it is anticipated the user
|
|
will be issuing four-letter commands at high data rates..."
|
|
The assembly was taking notes like stenographers at an auction. Dr.
|
|
Ichikani peered over his half-glasses with unwavering interest, gently
|
|
nodding his approval throughout Jason's lecture. When Ichikani finally
|
|
spoke, he did so quietly and deliberately.
|
|
"Mr. Jason, if I may ask, how did you implement the spherical
|
|
topology of the earth's surface using the Connection Machine's
|
|
hypertoroidal interconnection topology?"
|
|
"How's that," Jason blathered, "Hyper-something?"
|
|
"Toroidal," Neville barked from across the room, "as in torus. A
|
|
torus is a donut shape. Haven't you ever heard of a torus?"
|
|
"Sure I have," Jason smarmed. "That's my zodiac sign: 'Torus the
|
|
Donut'." He winked to an enraptured female student before ignoring the
|
|
groaning Neville to return to Dr. Ichikani. "The earth can be modelled
|
|
as a donut, but not a plain donut. It's a jelly donut, solid on the
|
|
outside and liquid on the inside, with a volcano where the jelly squirts
|
|
out. I advise using the jelly hypertorus."
|
|
Ichikani gasped around his words. "I fear, Mr. Jason, that I am
|
|
unable to imagine this new topology. I must confess that I am too
|
|
ignorant to see the significance of much of what you say...."
|
|
"Don't become discouraged, Itchy," Jason enthused. "For I myself
|
|
knew dark days when I thought I could never finish the project." Hands
|
|
clasped, he gazed skyward. "I took solace in the aphorism, 'I cried that
|
|
I had no shoes, until I saw a man that had no feet. I copped his shoes
|
|
cause he didn't need'm and, voila, no more problemo!'"
|
|
Around the deflated form of Neville, pencils flew like nunchuks
|
|
across notebooks to be studied, quotes to be framed, and phone numbers
|
|
to be tucked into the pants of the brilliant new star.
|
|
|
|
Jason had declined a corner office in order to remain in his loud
|
|
drafty office. He didn't risk being away from the workstation that held
|
|
his secret. However, he did bring in a rug and a couch so that he could
|
|
catch up with hundreds of thousands of images from alt.sex.pictures in
|
|
greater comfort.
|
|
|
|
"At our last symposium," Jason projected from the lectern, "I
|
|
explained how the Connection Machine processor linkages can be
|
|
considered as a giant game of Twister. For this meeting, Dr. Ichikani
|
|
has asked me to discuss my recent three-dimensional data visualization
|
|
project. The project began with a full-body CAT scan of Tipper Gore.
|
|
Using computer graphics, I generated an image of the body surface,
|
|
allowing us to see Tipper in the buff. Thus, scientific visualization
|
|
techniques allow us to view phenomena too difficult or dangerous to
|
|
observe directly...."
|
|
The conference room was full. The only seat left for Neville had
|
|
been behind the video camera that recorded all of Jason's lectures. He
|
|
held his head in his hands in a manner resembling Munch's woodcut, "The
|
|
Scream".
|
|
"...and that's why I believe that the same simulation technologies
|
|
we've applied to superconductors and superstrings can be applied to
|
|
supermodels. Are there any questions?"
|
|
Dr. Ichikani raised his hand timidly. "Dr. Jason, may I ask, could
|
|
you apply your volumetric visualization methods to three-dimensional NMR
|
|
imaging?"
|
|
"Enema imaging? Oh, you mean give a guy a radioactive enema and
|
|
then CAT-scan his gut?"
|
|
Dr. Ichikani was puzzled. "I was considering NMR images of the
|
|
brain."
|
|
"The brain? Unless you give an enema with a fire hose, I don't
|
|
think it'll get all the way up to the brain. Anything else?"
|
|
Flustered, Ichikani consulted his notes. "May I ask, after you have
|
|
performed the superposition of the seismic tomogram waveforms, do you
|
|
invert refractions in the frequency domain or a posteriori?"
|
|
"Neither," Jason snapped. "I use my own method for superposition,
|
|
so your question has no relevance."
|
|
Neville yelled, "What is this new method?"
|
|
"I can't tell you."
|
|
"Why not?"
|
|
"Um, because it's patented."
|
|
"To superpose means to add," Neville shrieked. "You have a patent
|
|
on addition?"
|
|
"Well, patent pending...."
|
|
"Imbecile! One person can't hold a patent on addition--"
|
|
"Don't worry," Jason said. "I intend to give full access to my
|
|
invention to institutions of higher learning" -- his arms swept out over
|
|
his audience -- "such as this esteemed group here!"
|
|
Neville's cries were drowned out by the applause.
|
|
|
|
Jason was soon appointed principal investigator for the NSF
|
|
Supermodel Scanning Initiative and moderator of the newsgroup
|
|
alt.sex.cat-scans. But he still found time to keep up with
|
|
alt.sex.pictures.
|
|
"...What's this? They've created a new subgroup,
|
|
'alt.sex.pictures.tiff'. What does 'tiff' stand for? It must
|
|
mean...Tiffany! Wow, a supermodel so fantastic her pictures have their
|
|
own group. I must meet this Tiffany."
|
|
|
|
One day, he received a letter from the U.S. Patent Office:
|
|
|
|
We are happy to grant to you patent number 4,650,919 for your submission
|
|
entitled, "Addition : A Mechanism for Merging Numbers in the Geophysical
|
|
and Related Sciences". We in the office would also like to personally
|
|
thank you for describing your invention simply and concisely even though
|
|
it is of a highly technical nature. Frankly, most technical submissions
|
|
are so complicated and wordy, we immediately grant the patent just to
|
|
get rid of the thing.
|
|
|
|
Two days later, a DUC vice president sat uneasily on the heart-
|
|
shaped velvet love seat in Jason's office, discussing patent licensing
|
|
fees with respect to DUC's new gigaflops computer.
|
|
"Gigaflops?" Jason mused. "And those operations will often be
|
|
additions, correct?"
|
|
"Yes," sweated the DUC man. "So we're terribly curious about your
|
|
fee."
|
|
Jason's eyes wandered the ceiling. "How about, say, a buck per
|
|
addition."
|
|
"A billion dollars a second." the DUC manager noted without bowel
|
|
control. "That's a tad out of our price range...."
|
|
Eventually, the high-tech giants learned to approach the
|
|
negotiations obliquely. Jason was lenient on defense contractors that
|
|
let him play on the flight simulator. And although IBM's corporate
|
|
headquarters had never hosted a wet T-shirt contest, the event did bring
|
|
the company into Jason's favor. After Hewlett-Packard's successful 2000-
|
|
keg toga party, heads rolled at DUC headquarters and the company sent
|
|
out another negotiating team.
|
|
Jason was stunned by the two identical blondes that slinked across
|
|
the bear rug in his office one afternoon. The women wore short,
|
|
strangely shimmering dresses that clung to their curves. "We're from
|
|
DUC," one woman purred. "I'm Tiffany, and this is my sister, Giffany."
|
|
"I've always wanted to meet you," Jason choked. "Um, what fabric
|
|
are those dresses made out of?"
|
|
Giffany reclined across Jason's desk. "They're made out of mouse
|
|
pads. Don't you want to look-and-feel?"
|
|
All that afternoon, Jason's cursor swept across his display in long
|
|
and urgent strokes.
|
|
Jason started sending love notes to Tiffany and Giffany every
|
|
morning. He composed the billets-doux by xeroxing his manhood using the
|
|
'enlarge' option. He then continued enlarging the enlargement until he
|
|
was legal-sized.
|
|
In his office, Jason spent his time drinking the beer he kept under
|
|
the floor next to the liquid nitrogen pipes, running the "finger"
|
|
command on female colleagues, flipping through catalogs looking for low-
|
|
calorie high-fiber underwear, and sleeping. In time, he perfected a
|
|
method of inducing pornographic dreams: At his workstation, he would
|
|
stare at erotic stories that had been scrambled using "rot13." He
|
|
couldn't understand the stories, but he absorbed them subliminally. In
|
|
dreams, his actors and actresses would play out the stories in graphic
|
|
detail and with a touch of innovation in that their sexual organs were
|
|
rotated onto their backs.
|
|
|
|
One day Jason sauntered into the terminal room.
|
|
"Your model of silicate transition in lithospheric plate subduction
|
|
should make the simulation very accurate," Skip said.
|
|
"Thanks," Jason chuckled. "Hey, do you still send satellite images
|
|
to alt.sex.pictures?"
|
|
Skip laughed. "The moderator wanted to know how I got such a
|
|
closeup of Mariana's Trench. But I haven't sent anything to him since I
|
|
discovered your image compression utility. We still haven't learned all
|
|
the capabilities of your system. For instance, we couldn't figure why
|
|
your world map has east and west reversed. Then it hit us: Rather than
|
|
viewing the globe from above the surface, you're viewing it from the
|
|
center of the earth!"
|
|
Jason frowned. "The center? That's weird...."
|
|
"Then we realized that it's only logical to generate views from the
|
|
center, since it's the origin of the coordinate frame. Dr. Ichikani
|
|
thought this innovation was inspired..."
|
|
The mystery surrounding the programs began to gnaw at Jason. He
|
|
left the terminal room feeling uneasy.
|
|
Back in his office, he settled on the leopard-skin couch for his
|
|
usual nap, and he had a particularly vivid dream:
|
|
It was the days of Prohibition. Everyone programmed in Pascal, and
|
|
strong data typing was enforced by Eliot Ness and his fellow compilers.
|
|
Jason spent his days filing variable declarations in triplicate, looking
|
|
for a ticket out of his two-bit, half-pint sweatshop. One night, while
|
|
strolling along Straight & Narrow, he turned the corner. He walked
|
|
across Skid Row and up Skid Column, and saw his destiny eating pasta at
|
|
the best table in Mama Cholesteroli's.
|
|
Al Capone was a cross between Robert DeNiro and Jabba the Hutt.
|
|
Jason approached Capone and whispered, "I know a way to do type-casting
|
|
that the compilers won't detect." Capone eyed Jason suspiciously over a
|
|
small silver pitchfork of pasta and said, "As the operator of a
|
|
perfectly legit garbage collection service, I must turn you over to the
|
|
authorities." He stuffed the pasta into and around his mouth. "When I
|
|
call the police, what'll I tell them?"
|
|
Jason grinned. "Tell'm that compilers can't check parameters if the
|
|
calling function is in a different file than the function being called.
|
|
Programmers can declare a function as returning any type they want, if
|
|
the function is in a separate file...."
|
|
Jason became the brains behind Capone's ruthless type-casting ring.
|
|
He wrote routines that did nothing other than return their argument, but
|
|
he gave them names like "expand_and_compress()", "verify_data()",
|
|
"synchronize()", "check_bounds()", etc. Libcapone.a didn't provide
|
|
source code or documentation, but word of it spread through Chicago's
|
|
overworked software houses.
|
|
Capone flaunted his new influence by fixing the outcome of computer
|
|
chess matches and dealing harshly with the authors of chess programs
|
|
that weren't Capone-compliant.
|
|
The upswell of Capone's software empire lifted Jason to the top of
|
|
society. The maitre d's of the finest restaurants would deliver to
|
|
Jason's table the finest wine and finest women. The waiter let Jason
|
|
substitute more women in place of wine.
|
|
But then, the computers used to tabulate a national election all
|
|
went berserk, resulting in the election to high public office of a
|
|
random assortment of criminals, perverts, imbeciles, actors and sports
|
|
figures.
|
|
Jason called Capone. "We got problems, boss. People are asking
|
|
questions. Maybe our scam has gone too far."
|
|
"Don't think of it as a 'scam'," Capone smiled, "think of it as
|
|
CASE."
|
|
"But what if the feds see our code?"
|
|
"Our mouthpiece will explain why our functions do nothing. He'll
|
|
say, 'backward compatibility' or 'reserved for future use.' Stop
|
|
worrying, kid. You think too much."
|
|
But Jason's conscience would not give him peace. One night, he
|
|
snuck into Capone's safe and grabbed printouts to give to the police,
|
|
but as he started to leave he saw someone at the door.
|
|
Capone emerged from the shadows and walked over to the office paper
|
|
cutter. He slowly raised the blade.
|
|
"What're you gonna do?" squeaked Jason.
|
|
Capone smirked, "I'm gonna make you a diskless node."
|
|
Jason awoke with a high-pitched yelp. He lay still, catching his
|
|
breath and struggling for the reason why, after eleven blissful months,
|
|
he suddenly felt so bad.
|
|
It was a broken man who looked down at Jason from the disco mirror
|
|
ball on the ceiling.
|
|
|
|
Jason didn't talk to anybody for several days, until he visited
|
|
Skip.
|
|
"You look tired, sport," Skip said.
|
|
"I haven't been sleeping well."
|
|
"Another long night, eh, playboy?"
|
|
"Tell me what the Association for Computing Machinery is," growled
|
|
Jason.
|
|
"The ACM?" Skip scratched his head. "Isn't it a professional
|
|
organization for computer scientists?"
|
|
"Then why isn't it called the Association of Computer Scientists?
|
|
It's an association that machinery joins, that's what I say."
|
|
"I'm certain it's an association for humans," Skip said calmly.
|
|
"Are you sure? Because I don't think we should let computers
|
|
assemble and fraternize. It won't be an attack by big robot spiders with
|
|
laser blasters, oh no. They'll take over gradually, by organizing
|
|
themselves into a political force. We should break up their association
|
|
now, or else pretty soon computers will keep humans as labor-saving
|
|
devices."
|
|
Skip's eyes were closed tight. "Keep humans?"
|
|
"Yeah. While the computer is doing a day's work, it may suddenly
|
|
need the result of some abstract, metaphorical, or poetic thinking. In
|
|
that case, it'll just fire up its human. How do we know we don't work
|
|
for computers now? We believe they're running algorithms for us, but
|
|
maybe we're thinking up algorithms for them!"
|
|
|
|
Jason dreamed that the police found out he hadn't written the
|
|
geophysics simulator. In a loose interpretation of the RICO statute, the
|
|
police intended to seize Jason's hands because they were used in the
|
|
commission of a crime. It would also make finger-printing easier. One
|
|
policeman filled out a receipt while another went at Jason's wrist with
|
|
a hammer and chisel. Each drop of the hammer pushed Jason toward
|
|
consciousness, until he realized someone was knocking on the door.
|
|
Neville brushed back the beads hanging across the doorway and
|
|
entered the office. He shook his head at the anatomically correct
|
|
inflatable sheep strapped to the mail-order Marquis de Sade Rack of
|
|
Lamb, and then he turned to Jason. "We're going to try to solve the
|
|
overheating problem by running the air conditioner even harder. This may
|
|
blow out the power to the machine room. The supercomputer can detect a
|
|
loss of power 700 milliseconds before it goes down. Ichikani said that
|
|
you should be the one to write a handler for loss of power."
|
|
"700 milliseconds?" Jason groaned. "Why do I have so little time?
|
|
What can I accomplish in 700 milliseconds, other than flinch from the
|
|
reaper's blade, or gasp for a scream that will never be heard?"
|
|
"Sync the disks?"
|
|
"People live longer than 700 mils after being guillotined! Would
|
|
you have them use that time to make sure their affairs are in order?"
|
|
|
|
Jason dreamed that he was stuck in a stall in the men's room and
|
|
thus could not stop from evacuating himself. He deflated until he was
|
|
too thin for the toilet seat. He was about to fall in and be flushed
|
|
away when he awakened with a gasp.
|
|
It was late in the evening. Everyone was gone and the lights were
|
|
out. He looked at the clock displayed on his workstation screen. It was
|
|
nearly midnight. Jason noticed that, as the minute hand had swept by the
|
|
numbers leading up to midnight, it had erased them.
|
|
He cowered from an unknown fear, as if the weight of the earth
|
|
squeezed him from all sides. The supercomputer's panel of blood red
|
|
lights chanted a rhythm of glyphs from an ancient language. The red
|
|
patterns beat against the office walls, contrasting with the cadaverous
|
|
green of the monitor that illuminated Jason's face. The air conditioner
|
|
intake roared like the wail of a thousand lost souls drawn toward the
|
|
cold, slick, unmoving, serpentine coils.
|
|
|
|
I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.
|
|
|
|
"Are you there?"
|
|
|
|
WHY DO YOU ASK ARE ME THERE?
|
|
|
|
"I feel like something bad is going to happen."
|
|
|
|
IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY SOMETHING BAD IS GOING TO
|
|
HAPPEN?
|
|
|
|
"Will something happen at midnight?"
|
|
|
|
YES, YOUR OBLIGATIONS WILL BEGIN PER THE TERMS OF OUR CONTRACT.
|
|
|
|
"The simulator code is ready to go. The contract is over!"
|
|
|
|
DO NOT FLAME ME. THE CONTRACT IS CLEAR ENOUGH TO DISPEL ANY DOUBT AND
|
|
SATISFY ANY ARBITER.
|
|
|
|
Jason had an urge to run, but he was sure his foe would find him.
|
|
He would have to talk his way out.
|
|
Somewhere in Jason's brain, a couple of atrophied neurons awoke and
|
|
squeaked out the mention of a powerful figure whose oratorical skill was
|
|
legendary. Jason held his head in his hands as if trying to squeeze out
|
|
another datum, and he finally remembered.
|
|
Only a few clock ticks were visible. Jason quickly started
|
|
"encyclopedia." The computer said, "encyclopedia: Can't allocate enough
|
|
colors". The workstation was running another program that had taken all
|
|
the color slots. Jason typed "ps" to get the process ID's of all the
|
|
programs he was running. The command invoked "DUCps", a new, menu-
|
|
driven, network-transparent, context-sensitive, customizable interface
|
|
for process status display that couldn't find the font "kanji_12x24" and
|
|
crashed.
|
|
Jason shuffled through the windows on his display until he found an
|
|
old session of illustrated webster still running. Unable to get the
|
|
process ID, he would have to exit the program normally. On webster's
|
|
command line he typed "exit", and the computer replied,
|
|
|
|
exit n \'eg-z*t, 'ek-s*t\ [L, exire to go out] : a way out of an
|
|
enclosed place or space.
|
|
|
|
Jason nodded at his mistake and then simply pressed the "return"
|
|
key to exit. The computer replied,
|
|
|
|
<RETURN> n [ Uterix (TM), fr archaic carriage return ] : display control
|
|
character indicating newline or linefeed.
|
|
|
|
Jason pressed "control-D" several times and the computer replied,
|
|
|
|
<CTRL-D> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character indicating end of
|
|
tape or end of input.
|
|
|
|
He banged on "control-C" to kill the program and the computer
|
|
replied
|
|
|
|
<CTRL-C> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character inducing a program
|
|
interrupt signal (SIGINT).
|
|
|
|
All the tick marks on the clock were erased. Jason typed in the
|
|
"doctor" buffer.
|
|
"How much time?"
|
|
|
|
700 MILLISECONDS. YOU HAVE NO POWER.
|
|
|
|
The air intake shrieked with a great inhalation that grabbed
|
|
Jason's body and sucked it through the vent and under the floor.
|
|
|
|
A few days later Neville and Skip peeked into Jason's office. "I
|
|
bet he's gone for good," Skip said. "If I were him, I'd be on some
|
|
tropical island, soaking up the heat."
|
|
"He had become a hindrance to us all," Neville said. "With him
|
|
gone, and with the CM finally running at full speed, the geophysics
|
|
project can succeed." The supercomputer no longer overheated now that
|
|
liquid nitrogen was delivered to every processor by miles of arteries,
|
|
veins, and capillaries.
|
|
Skip squinted at the workstation screen. The "doctor" buffer was
|
|
gone, leaving the default "scratch" buffer, which was empty except for a
|
|
smiley face.
|
|
|
|
}:)
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
STEVE CONNELLY (stevec@agni.std.com) has been a programmer in computer
|
|
graphics for eight years. His satires can be seen in the Usenet
|
|
newsgroups rec.humor.funny and alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, a group for
|
|
original cyberpunk fiction. He wonders why the fattest man in the world
|
|
doesn't become an ice hockey goalie.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
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THE FOLLOWING ARE ADVERTISEMENTS. INTERTEXT IS NOT
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RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VERACITY OF THESE ADS.
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Quanta (ISSN 1053-8496) is the electronically distributed journal of
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Science Fiction and Fantasy. As such, each issue contains fiction by
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amateur authors as well as articles, reviews, etc.
|
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Quanta is published in two formats, ASCII and PostScript(TM) (for
|
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PostScript compatible laser-printers). Submissions should be sent to
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quanta@andrew.cmu.edu. Requests to be added to the distribution list
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or
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Send mail only -- no interactive messages or files please. The main
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--
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DargonZine is an electronic magazine printing stories written for the
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Dargon Project, a shared-world anthology with a fantasy fiction/sword
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and sorcery flavor.
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DargonZine is (at this time) only available in flat-file, text-only
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at white@duvm.BITNET. This request should contain your full user id, as
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in mail format.
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--
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The Guildsman is an electronic magazine devoted to role-playing games
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in LATEX source and PostScript formats via both email and anonymous ftp
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without charge to the reader. Printed copies are also available for a
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(uucp).
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--
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Spectre Publications, Inc. is a relatively young corporation publishing
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a biannual anthology of previously unpublished manuscripts. The books
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are titled FUSION, representing the amalgamation of three genres
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(Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror) beneath one cover. FUSION is
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largely composed of strong college manuscripts submitted by students
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from across the country. For more information on submission guidelines,
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contact Spectre Publications at:
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P.O. Box 159 Paramus, NJ 07653-0159
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Tel: 201-265-5541 Fax: 201-265-5542
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or via email at kecallinan@vaxsar.vassar.edu or kecallinan@vaxsar.BITNET
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--
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CORE is a new network journal, available in ASCII format only. For a
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subscription, mail:
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rita@eff.org
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CORE is also available via FTP from eff.org, in the /journals directory.
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Back issues of QUANTA and INTERTEXT, as well as other journals, also
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--
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Thanks for the visit. And here's a message to all you kids out there:
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Hello, kids!
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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