textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv2n2.etx

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==========================================
InterText Vol. 2, No. 2 / March-April 1992
==========================================


  Contents

    FirstText ........................................Jason Snell

    FirstText .......................................Geoff Duncan

  Short Fiction

    Frog Boy_......................................Robert Hurvitz_

    Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head_......................Phil Nolte_

    The Naming Game_...........................Tarl Roger Kudrick_

    Boy_..........................................Ridley McIntyre_

  Serial

    The Unified Murder Theorem (2 of 4)_................Jeff Zias_

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@etext.org                       gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
    Assistant Editor          Send subscription requests, story
    Phil Nolte                  submissions, and correspondence
    nolte@idui1.BITNET                   to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 2, No. 2. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1992, 1994 Jason 
  Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1992 by their original 
  authors.
....................................................................


  FirstText  by Jason Snell
===========================

  It's hard to believe that it's been a year.

  I remember when I first discovered that Jim McCabe's _Athene_ 
  would be ceasing publication, and I remember thinking to myself: 
  hey, there's something I wouldn't mind doing. An electronic 
  magazine. Why not?

  And here we are, one year and six issues later.

  The magazine has grown and changed over the past year, with the 
  amount of text per issue growing by leaps and bounds. We've got 
  more subscribers now, though the official number has been 
  hovering slightly over 1,000 for quite some time now.

  One of the stories in this issue, "Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head" 
  by Phil Nolte, has quite a history behind it. It is one of the 
  "lost" stories of _Athene_, a story slated for appearance in the 
  final issue of that magazine (my own "Peoplesurfing" was 
  another) that never appeared. I've had the story sitting around 
  for quite some time. The catch is, I didn't know who wrote it.

  Now -- this may seem unrelated, but trust me -- about a month 
  ago I participated in a strange meeting that has only really 
  become possible with the advent of computer communications: I 
  met, face-to- face, one of my assistant editors and 
  contributors, a man whose stories I've been reading for four 
  years. His name is Phil Nolte, and he works at the University of 
  Idaho. As you may or may not know, Idaho is famous for its 
  potatoes, so much so that their license plates have the phrase 
  "Famous Potatoes" stamped right on them.

  Here's the catch: the University of Idaho has a special potato 
  testing farm (or something like that -- all I know about 
  potatoes is that you're supposed to poke holes in them before 
  you stick them in the microwave oven) in Oceanside, a town just 
  a few miles north of San Diego. And Phil Nolte was going there 
  for an 'Open House.'

  I met him at a restaurant about a 10 minute walk from the UCSD 
  campus, and we talked for a few hours over lunch before he 
  headed for the airport and, eventually, back home.

  I've done things like this before: my first girlfriend was 
  someone I met on a computer bulletin board I ran in high school 
  (see my story "Sharp and Silver Beings," in the Dec. 1990 issue 
  of _Quanta_, for details), and since then I've met a few other 
  bulletin board or computer network folk face-to-face. It's even 
  a strange experience to talk to them on the phone, as I did with 
  Dan Appelquist a few months back.

  I digress. At any rate, it was fun actually _talking_ to Phil, 
  about writing, computer communication, and all sorts of other 
  stuff. And at one point, as we were discussing Jim McCabe and 
  _Athene_, I mentioned a story I had called something like 
  "Aliens Stole Elvis' Brain."

  "Why, that's 'Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head!'," he told me. "I 
  wrote that!"

  So it was. I had never bothered to ask Phil in e-mail, but over 
  lunch we finally overcame a year-long communication barrier.

  The moral of this story? Maybe that while computer communication 
  is an incredible thing, it also can foster a lot of 
  misunderstandings. (So, of course, can live human communication 
  -- it's just that the misunderstandings fostered by computer 
  communication are of a different type.)

  In addition to Phil Nolte's store, this issue brings us a few 
  other fine short stories and the continuation of Jeff Zias' 
  "Unified Murder Theorem." Jeff informs me that a few readers 
  have mailed him, asking to be sent the rest of the story so they 
  can know what happens before the conclusion (which should appear 
  in mid-June... we're only halfway through now.)

  I encouraged Jeff to make the readers wait. First off, waiting 
  will make the cliffhangers much more interesting, and we are 
  providing synopses to refresh your memory of the previous 
  installment. In addition, the version of the story that appears 
  in InterText will be somewhat different than the version Mr. 
  Zias has at home. Geoff Duncan and I have been jointly handling 
  the editing of "Unified Murder Theorem," and if we haven't been 
  completely lax in our duties, what you see here will be the 
  "preferred form" of "Unified Murder Theorem."

  Before I go, I'd like to thank Mel Marcelo for providing us with 
  the special "First Anniversary" cover art (sorry to those ASCII 
  subscribers who can't see it).

  I'd also like to mention that ASCII subscribers should hopefully 
  have an easier time reading the stories with this issue -- 
  italicized words in the PostScript version are indicated by 
  _these_ in the ASCII version.

  Finally, I'd like to thank Geoff Duncan -- an act which is 
  becoming a habit of mine -- for contributing a column of his own 
  for this special issue. It's well worth reading, I can assure 
  you. (As a sidelight, while I've met Phil Nolte and spoken with 
  Dan Appelquist, Geoff and I have never even spoken. His hometown 
  of Reno, Nevada is only a couple of hours from my hometown 
  (Sonora, California), so I'm hoping I'll get to meet him 
  sometime in the future.)

  Enough of me, already.

  Until next time, I wish you all well.


  FirstText  by Geoff Duncan
============================

  Recently, I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the 
  people who got me started in computing. I'd been the wide-eyed 
  first- year undergraduate who had barely touched a computer; 
  he'd been the intimidating electroculture veteran, mentor to 
  everyone who was anyone on the machines. He'd lived during a 
  local "golden age" of electronic fiction, when there had been a 
  virtual writer's community on the campus mainframes. Now he was 
  a computing professional wearing a suit and passing out business 
  cards, while I still worked on campus and hadn't cut my hair. 
  Funny how times change and people change with them.

  Over cafeteria food we reminisced about computer gurus, 
  primitive graphics, and the old days of e-mail serials. It was 
  time well-spent, a validation of our pasts and the things that 
  had been important to us. I discovered his interests include 
  avant-garde gothic rock; he was amused to learn I was an 
  assistant editor for a network-based fiction magazine. "Don't 
  you ever grow up?" he asked between sips of coffee. "Electronic 
  fiction is dead, if it ever lived in the first place."

  Mildly offended, I pressed him on the issue. It's not dead, I 
  explained. It's doing better now than ever before. "That's not 
  the point," he said. "Electronic fiction will probably continue 
  to grow for some time. But it's crippled by its medium. 
  Computing is based on information, and information is measured 
  by volume, not by content. You only offer content. You'll 
  eventually run out of stories, then writers, then readers." He 
  sat back and crushed the paper cup. "It's just a matter of 
  time."

  I laughed in his face. We'll see who's right in the end, bucko. 
  We spent a few minutes exchanging e-mail addresses and then 
  parted amicably. I went back to my office and my usual routine; 
  he went back to Brooklyn and a high-rise office tower. And that 
  was the end of it.

  Except what he'd said kept bothering me. Is electronic fiction 
  doomed from the start? Is its very media -- information 
  technology -- going to be its demise?

  It's obvious that electronic fiction wouldn't exist without 
  information technology. What's not so obvious is that 
  information technology supports the _amount_ of information 
  available without regard to the meaning of that information. 
  Technology lets us store, organize, and retrieve more material 
  than ever before. But what is it that we're storing, organizing, 
  and retrieving?

  "Signal-to-noise ratio" is a term used to describe exactly this 
  dynamic. In a nutshell, "signal" is the content you want to 
  receive and "noise" is any other information that comes along 
  with it. The term actually predates computers: on a telephone 
  system, noise was literally "noise" -- hissing and crackling. 
  But the idea still applies: the lower the ratio of signal to 
  noise becomes, the less worthwhile it is for you to pay 
  attention to the information as a whole. It hurts your ears.

  The signal-to-noise ratio of information technology today (and 
  of large computer networks in particular) is generally low. This 
  has a lot to do with the diversity of information available -- 
  not everyone is interested in a constant feed of Star Trek 
  trivia. But it also has to do with the way in which people _use_ 
  information technology. From the point of view of any particular 
  person, most users don't generate much _signal_, but they do 
  generate a fair bit of noise. Most electronic information is 
  addressed to a narrow audience or is related to the use of the 
  media itself. Very little of the available material is intended 
  for a wide audience.

  I realized that this is what my friend was trying to tell me 
  about electronic fiction. The people producing the signal are 
  vastly outweighed by all the people producing the noise. My 
  friend doesn't believe that projects such as _Quanta_ and 
  InterText can be heard for long above the din of the mob. And 
  even if these projects survive, how many people will try to 
  distinguish them from the tumult? It's easier to ignore it all.

  Well, maybe my friend is right. There is evidence. To my 
  knowledge, none of the network magazines have much of a catalog 
  on hand, perhaps with the exception of _DargonZine_. I've seen 
  most network-magazines print outright pleas for submissions. 
  Maybe there's already a lack of _signal_ in electronic fiction.

  And perhaps I shouldn't say this, but editorial support is also 
  a problem. At most, a small group of people produces each 
  publication; the departure of one person can seriously affect a 
  magazine. _Athene_ shut down because of the time commitment 
  involved. Furthermore, network access is not guaranteed. A 
  graduation or a career change can stop a publication overnight. 
  So coupled with a weak signal, we may have a weak transmitter. 
  Maybe we _are_ a match in the dark, merely putting off the 
  inevitable.

  But looking back, I still think my friend doesn't quite know 
  what he's talking about. Electronic fiction has come a long way 
  since its indeterminate inception. Beginning with Orny Liscomb's 
  _FSFnet_, we've seen a very long-running shared universe in 
  _DargonZine_, the on-line magazine _The Runic Robot_, the 
  irrepressible "PULP", and a new set of far-reaching magazines -- 
  _Athene_, _Quanta_, and (of course) InterText. And that doesn't 
  take into account commercial services and local electronic 
  institutions: published novels have made their first appearances 
  on networks such as GEnie, and e-mail serials continue like 
  clockwork. New publications are emerging such as Rita Rouvalis' 
  _CORE_. I used to be able to count the editorship of electronic 
  fiction on one hand; now I scarcely know where to start.

  Cooperation between publications is astounding. InterText's page 
  of ads is one example; a more significant one is the 
  comprehensive access site recently created at the Electronic 
  Frontier Foundation. Looking through that site, I am impressed 
  by what a few hyperactive, impulsive editor-types have managed 
  to coax out of the on-line community. I'm a little bit proud to 
  be part of it.

  All this may add up to a little more _noise_, but it also 
  creates a much stronger _signal_. "Real" publications (and with 
  them "real" authors) are taking notice. Subscriptions aren't 
  flagging. There has to be fuel for the fire, and for now things 
  are getting brighter.

  The funny part is that my friend sent me some e-mail the other 
  day. "That magazine thing you mentioned," he wrote. "Sign me up. 
  And it'd better be good, or I'll give you a swift kick in the 
  disk packs." Maybe my friend shouldn't try to be an electronic 
  comedian, but he only verified what I knew all along: _content_ 
  is what counts. Or none of us would be involved.


  Frog Boy  by Robert Hurvitz
=============================

  Johnny Feldspar woke up one February morning feeling slightly 
  different. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, 
  but it bothered him nonetheless. He got out of bed, walked over 
  to his aquarium, and pulled out his pet frog, Jumper.

  "And how are you feeling today?" Johnny asked his frog, gingerly 
  stroking the cool, damp skin.

  "Ribbit," said Jumper noncommittally.

  Johnny held the frog up to his face. "You look kinda hungry. 
  I'll stop by the pet store after school and get some food for 
  you. Okay?"

  "Ribbit," Jumper repeated.

  Johnny put his frog back in its little home, locked the lid, got 
  dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast. His mother was 
  pouring milk into a bowl of cereal when Johnny sat down at the 
  kitchen table. She placed the cereal bowl and a spoon in front 
  of him.

  "And how are we feeling today, Johnny?" she asked.

  He took a mouthful of cereal and said between chews, "I feel 
  kinda funny, Mom--"

  "Don't speak with your mouth full," his mother said. "It's 
  impolite." She reached over and tousled his hair. "How many 
  times have I told you that?"

  Johnny grinned sheepishly and swallowed. "Sorry, Mom."

  "That's okay. Now what were you going to say?"

  "I feel kinda funny."

  "Are you sick?" She sat down next to him and put her hand on his 
  forehead. "You're not running a temperature." She looked at her 
  watch and scowled. "Damn. I've got an important meeting at nine, 
  so I don't have time to take you to a doctor..." She drummed her 
  fingers on the formica table-top.

  "I'm not sick, Mom. I just feel kinda funny." He frowned. "I'm 
  not sick."

  Johnny's mother crossed her arms and looked at him. Then she 
  smiled. "I know what it is," she said. "You're just nervous 
  because it's Valentine's Day and you're afraid you won't get any 
  valentines, right?"

  Johnny looked at his hands. _Valentine's Day._ The words came 
  crashing down on his ears like panes of glass, shattering. How 
  could he have forgotten? He'd spent the last three nights 
  churning out valentines for all the girls in his class, as per 
  his mother's stern instructions. If it had been up to him, in 
  everybody's Valentine's Day mailbox, which they had all made out 
  of cardboard the previous week as an art lesson, he would have 
  put frogs.

  _Frogs..._

  Palm up, fingers stretching out to infinity, Johnny's right hand 
  had slowly gained his complete attention. He clenched his hand 
  into a fist, turned it over, and squinted.

  "Johnny?" his mother asked, concerned.

  He looked up, blinked. "Uh, yeah, Mom. That's probably it." He 
  smiled weakly. "I guess I just must be nervous."


  "Hey, snot-face!"

  Johnny stopped in mid-chew, turned his hand inward to protect 
  the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he held.

  "That's right. I'm talking to you, snot-face. Or should I say 
  lover-boy?"

  Johnny turned around and stared at Fat Matt.

  "I saw you stuffing all those mushy love cards into the girls' 
  boxes." Fat Matt laughed, the small rolls of fat bunching up 
  about his face. His beady eyes glanced down at Johnny's lunch, 
  in which several pieces of heart-shaped candy bearing messages 
  such as "Will U B Mine?" and "I Luv U" were strewn. "I see you 
  also got your own share of valentines, didn't you, lover-boy? 
  You know, I didn't get any valentines, or valentine candy."

  Johnny felt his face flush. He knew what was going to happen.

  "It seems to me, lover-boy, that, since you got so many candies 
  and I didn't get any, that it would only be fair if you shared 
  some of yours with me." He moved forward and grabbed up the 
  candies.

  "Thanks, snot-face," Fat Matt said with a laugh. "Oh, that 
  doesn't leave you with any candy, does it?" He picked out a 
  heart from his sweaty grasp and licked it. "Well, here you go, 
  snot-face," Fat Matt said, dropping it into Johnny's pint of 
  milk.

  At that moment, Rebecca Moyet, the prettiest girl in school, and 
  Quinn, her little brother, walked by. Quinn laughed, pointed at 
  Johnny, and said, "There you go, snot-face!" He laughed some 
  more.

  Rebecca frowned.

  Fat Matt popped a few hearts into his mouth and looked once 
  again at Johnny's lunch. "Hey, snot-face, what else you got 
  there?"

  Quinn laughed once again, and Rebecca looked down at him 
  sternly.

  Johnny looked around at the crowd that had suddenly gathered 
  around the four of them. Dozens of eager faces shifted left and 
  right, vying for a clear view of whatever further ridicule 
  Johnny might soon suffer. He felt nauseous, and his hand began 
  to tingle...

  A shout erupted from the crowd as Johnny's half-eaten peanut 
  butter and jelly sandwich fell, hit the pint of milk, knocked it 
  off the bench and onto the asphalt. The initial spray of milk 
  spattered the blacktop with white spots; the rest puddled around 
  the fallen carton.

  Johnny's outstretched hand, raised toward Fat Matt, burned with 
  an increasingly painful pulsing. Sweat ran down, dripped off 
  Johnny's forehead, his nose, his chin. His lips twitched. 
  "Frog," he said gutturally, and slouched, exhaling, cooling, 
  feeling spent.

  Johnny hadn't expected there to be any noise; he hadn't expected 
  anything, really. He certainly hadn't expected, when he looked 
  up, to see Fat Matt screaming, to see his body spasm violently. 
  He hadn't expected his hair to shrivel acridly and to come out 
  in tufts as his hands clawed at his face, his head, his throat. 
  He hadn't expected his skin to turn green, to bubble, to drip 
  off in clumps and sizzle away on the asphalt into foul vapor.

  The nausea that Johnny had felt only moments earlier gripped his 
  stomach fiercely. The shriek continued, stabbing progressively 
  deeper into Johnny's ears.

  Fat Matt wobbled, what was left of his legs buckled, and he 
  collapsed to the ground with a crash of shattering bone. On 
  impact, a noxious cloud of green and red steam erupted from his 
  body, obscuring the view.

  The vapors made Johnny's eyes water, and he grabbed the bench to 
  steady himself from vomiting.

  The cloud dissipated, and all that remained of Fat Matt was a 
  pile of stained clothes and, sitting in the middle of them, a 
  frog.

  The crowd gasped, stared in disbelief.

  Quinn's laughter sliced through the heavy aura of astonishment. 
  He pointed down at the newly created amphibian. "Frog!" he cried 
  out, and laughed harder.

  Johnny felt ill. He wiped his forehead, his trembling upper lip. 
  His skin felt cold.

  The frog tried to hop away, but slipped on the slick clothing 
  and landed on its side, making the rest of the children laugh 
  loudly. Johnny saw Rebecca try to hide the nervous smile on her 
  face. The frog stopped, then tried to bury itself under the 
  clothes.

  Quinn rushed forward and grabbed the frog. "Gotcha!" he said, 
  hefting it.

  "Hey! Put it down!" Johnny said. "Can't you see it's scared?"

  The frog squirmed in Quinn's grip.

  "Put it down?" Quinn smiled wickedly. "Okay. I'll put it down." 
  He lifted the frog above his head and then, with the help from a 
  little jump, he hurled it to the ground. It hit the asphalt with 
  a wet splat and lay there awkwardly, legs twitching slightly. 
  Quinn laughed. "Want me to scare it some more?"

  "No!" Johnny cried, as Quinn swung his arms and launched himself 
  into the air, feet held together to ensure that his landing 
  would strike true. At the last moment, though, just before 
  Johnny was about to cover his eyes, Quinn jerked his feet apart 
  and ended up barely straddling the injured frog.

  The crowd let out a sigh.

  Glancing around, Quinn laughed, lifted up his right leg, and 
  forcefully brought it down on the frog.

  The crowd let out a sound of disgust, and Johnny jumped to his 
  feet, enraged.

  Quinn stepped away from the dead frog and looked down at his 
  blood-stained Reeboks. He frowned and poked his shoes into Fat 
  Matt's soiled clothes, in an attempt to wipe them clean.

  Hatred coursed through Johnny's veins. "Quinn! You... You..." 
  The air seemed to thicken, grow hot and humid, as he struggled 
  to express his anger. "You..." Each breath he took became more 
  difficult than the one before. He strenuously dragged each 
  mouthful of air down into his lungs, only to have it slip 
  through his throat and rush back out into the world. And all the 
  while he stared at the grinning Quinn, who was now busy 
  entertaining the crowd with theatrical attempts at cleaning his 
  shoes.

  Johnny's vision blurred, the air coagulating into a sickly grey 
  soup, as if the day were hazardously smoggy or he were looking 
  through a grimy pane of glass. He squinted and saw Quinn kick 
  the dead frog toward the crowd, which immediately widened with 
  shrieks of amusement.

  Johnny violently snapped his arm forward, his elbow joint 
  popping, and pointed at Quinn. One word, dripping acid, burned 
  through his lips: "Frog."

  Quinn jerked his head around, a surprised look on his face, and 
  looked at Johnny before he screamed. His small body shuddered 
  with convulsions as the hideous transformation began.

  The crowd, frightened and confused, screamed in macabre 
  accompaniment to Quinn.

  "That's my brother!" Rebecca yelled, running up to Johnny. Her 
  face was flushed, violent. Tears were forming around her widened 
  eyes. "That's my brother!" She slapped him across the face. 
  "That's my brother!" She kicked him in the leg. "Make it stop! 
  Make it stop!" As she raised her hand to strike again, chorused 
  with screams from Quinn, the crowd, and herself, Johnny pointed 
  at her and said meekly, "Frog."

  In horror, Johnny watched Rebecca's face contort monstrously as 
  she shrieked and as her hair, crackling, shrivelled and burst 
  into dark, acrid smoke.

  Johnny reeled back, tripped over the bench, and tumbled to the 
  ground. He stared up at Rebecca, who was still screaming, though 
  Quinn had by then stopped, and saw her skin begin to dissolve.

  The crowd swarmed into his view, rushing up from behind Rebecca 
  and from the sides, surrounding him. Every face was twisted with 
  desperate fear, every pair of eyes burned wildly, and every hand 
  was clenched into a fist.

  The sudden closeness of the bodies of all his schoolmates made 
  the air so stifling that Johnny was not able to breathe. He 
  raised his hand in an attempt to defend himself, but could not 
  utter a single sound.


  Robert Hurvitz  (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu)
---------------------------------------------

  Robert Hurvitz will finally be graduating from UC Berkeley in 
  May, despite all attempts on his part to avoid the real world 
  for as long as possible. He assume he'll have to get a job or 
  something.


  Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head  by Phil Nolte
=============================================

  It started out as a joke. I mean, we were just going to have a 
  little fun. You know, do something weird. That, and we thought 
  we had them cold this time.

  "Them" is the folks that publish those idiotic tabloid 
  newspapers. Every now and then someone will bring one of them in 
  to work. You know the ones, they're right beside the checkout 
  counter in the grocery store. That's right, the ones with 
  headlines like "Vampire Mummies Repel Space Alien Invasion" or 
  "Tammy Faye's New Miracle Diet." The stories are always about 
  odd things that were supposed to've happened. Trouble is, they 
  always happen in foreign countries or in little towns that you 
  never heard of like Slapshot, Wyoming or something. Not this 
  time. This time they'd made a mistake; they'd picked a real 
  town.

  It was Raymond who pointed it out. "Hey guys, look at this! 
  There's two brothers in Absaraka, North Dakota who have a space 
  alien ship in their barn!"

  I replied to that with something very intelligent; something 
  like: "Huh? Bullshit!"

  "I'm not kidding," he said. "Here, read it yourself."

  "Bachelor Brothers' Barn Houses Space Alien Ship," I read aloud. 
  "Trygve and Einar Carstenson found the strange craft in an 
  abandoned field near their farm. 'We could barely lift it on to 
  our trailer with the endloader,' says Einar. Well-known 
  Yugoslavian experts say it probably came from Rigel." I could 
  barely keep from laughing as I read it. "Shit!" I said. 
  "Absaraka? That's only 30 miles from here."

  It was Neil who had the next thought. "Let's drive out there and 
  see if that farm even exists. What the hell, we could grab a 
  twelve- pack to make the trip go a little faster. It won't take 
  an hour both ways. Come on guys, what d'ya say?" Neil could be 
  very persuasive.

  "Yeah, let's do it!" We might have been a chorus. It was kind of 
  a slow day anyway. We left Knutsen to mind the store. He didn't 
  like it much, but it was his turn.

  Fifteen minutes later we were in Neil's Caravan out on 
  Interstate 94 and we were all on our second beers. ZZ Top was 
  blaring on the stereo. Draper had brought the newspaper and was 
  reading it out loud to a very appreciative audience: "Milkman 
  Bites Dog. Ninety- year-old Woman Gives Birth to Twins. Love 
  Boat Attacked by 150-Foot Shark." We were all in high spirits 
  when we took the Wheatland exit.

  "Absaraka, five miles," announced Neil.

  We went to the post office-grocery store to get directions to 
  the fictitious farm. We were surprised to find out that there 
  were two Carstenson brothers who had a farm about four miles out 
  of town. The guy at the post office said they were a couple of 
  bachelors and that they were kind of weird. I didn't say 
  anything but I thought the whole town was kind of strange.

  Five minutes later we pulled up to the mailbox at the end of a 
  long winding farm road. "Trygve & Einar Carstenson," it read. 
  You couldn't see the buildings from the road, there were too 
  many trees and too much brush.

  "Well, we've come this far," said Neil. "Let's go."

  The road was nearly half a mile long. When we got to the farm, 
  we found a ramshackle three-room house and some dilapidated farm 
  buildings. In one corner of the yard was a rust-red Studebaker 
  pickup truck. It was a nineteen forty-something, I wasn't sure. 
  It looked like junk, with a cracked windshield and one staring 
  headlamp.

  Draper was the youngest so we made him go to the door. He 
  knocked a couple of times but there was no answer. We were about 
  to call it a day when the old geezers surprised us all by coming 
  up on us from behind the machine shed.

  "What the hell do you sumbitches want?" said one of them. I 
  guessed it was Einar.

  Old, grizzled, and Norwegian they were, and not in the least bit 
  friendly.

  "We came to see the spaceship," I managed to squeak out.

  Trygve was holding a double-barreled shotgun!

  "Yew ain't from some Gad-damned lib-ral newspaper are ye?" said 
  Trygve.

  "No, we're from Fargo!" said Raymond. Brilliant, Raymond, 
  brilliant!

  "There ain't no Gad-damned spaceship here and git to hell off 
  our property!"

  So much for country hospitality! We took his advice and "got to 
  hell out of there!"

  We had finished our twelve-pack and were in need of another. We 
  were also getting hungry, so we stopped in Casselton for a bite. 
  Half an hour later, we were leaving the restaurant. It was 
  Draper who noticed them first.

  "Well I'll be go-to-hell!" he said. "Look at this, you guys."

  Rattling and smoking down the main street of the little town 
  came an apparition. An honest-to-god, rust-colored, 
  forty-something Studebaker pickup truck. In it were two other 
  apparitions. Or fossils, if you prefer. Sure enough it was old 
  Trygve and Einar (which was which?), come to town. The 
  ever-devious Neil was the first to grasp the significance of the 
  event.

  "Wonder who's at the farm?" he mused.

  "Shit, probably nobody!" said Raymond.

  "What say we go back and have a look around?" said Neil.

  I don't know if any one of us really wanted to but no one wanted 
  to be accused of not having any nerve either. I guess I was the 
  most cautious. "Christ!" I said. "That old son-of-a-bitch had a 
  shotgun!"

  "Well he can't hardy hit you from Casselton, can he?" Neil 
  replied. That ended the argument. Neil's good at saying the 
  right thing to end an argument. He's brave, too. When we got 
  back to the Carstenson farm he showed his courage by offering to 
  stay in the car with the motor running while the rest of us did 
  the snooping. It was Raymond and I who found the ship! No shit! 
  Believe it or not, Ripley! It was in one of the old buildings 
  that had a big door on one end.

  "Jesus, would you look at that!" said Raymond, his voice rising 
  with excitement. "That thing is gorgeous!"

  No doubt about it, it was beautiful. Long and slender and 
  smooth, it was sleekly aerodynamic and obviously intended for 
  use in atmosphere. It was much smaller than I would have 
  expected -- it must have been some kind of scout ship. It simply 
  couldn't have come all the way from Rigel. It was only about 
  forty feet long and made of some kind of totally unfamiliar 
  metal or plastic. It was sky-blue and shiny. Raymond and I 
  looked at fun-house reflections of ourselves in the side of it.

  Raymond made a funny face. I slapped his shoulder.

  "Cut that out!" I said. "This is an alien spacecraft! It should 
  be treated with dignity! Jesus, can't you ever be serious?"

  The little craft was beautiful, but it showed the after-effects 
  of one hellacious impact. One of the "wings" was bent and torn 
  and the nose and bottom were covered with dirt, like it had 
  landed in a swamp or something. There was an obvious hatch on 
  one side. From the way the mud was caked on the seams of it, it 
  had not been opened. The way the little ship was damaged we had 
  to assume that its occupant(s) were dead. We were just about to 
  get a closer look when we heard the horn of the Caravan honk and 
  Draper screaming at the top of his lungs. We high-tailed it for 
  the van.

  Trygve and Einar had come back from town. Hell hath no fury like 
  a pissed-off Norwegian farmer! Fortunately, all they had was 
  that old Studebaker truck and we had a head start. Neil has a 
  couple of dents and one broken window on the back of his Caravan 
  from the shotgun blast, but it could have been worse.

  Within a day there was an Air Force barrier thrown up a mile 
  around the house. No one goes in or out. We don't know what to 
  make of it. Trygve and Einar must have gone into town to call 
  them.

  One thing that really irks me is that no one thought to bring a 
  camera. One lousy picture and we all could have been rich and 
  famous!

  Well, we won't be caught napping this time. We're on our way to 
  Clear Lake, Iowa to visit a Miss Nellie Rawlings, RR 2. It seems 
  that the large oval rock she was using as a doorstop on her hen 
  house turned out to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex egg. Hatched into a 
  hungry little needle-toothed monster. She says it ate a bunch of 
  chickens and her cat. By God, we're gonna get this one on film!


  Phil Nolte  (nolte@idui1.BITNET)
----------------------------------

  Phil Nolte is an extension professor at the University of Idaho, 
  in addition to being an assistant editor of InterText.


  The Naming Game  by Tarl Roger Kudrick
========================================

  His mother's name was Sherry.

  His father's name was Nathaniel.

  His best friend's name was Warren Denaublin. His worst enemy's 
  name was Emily Pirthrull. Some of his classmates were Susan 
  Fench, Gordon Quellan, and Irving P. Rinehauser the third.

  _His_ name was John Smith, and he was _not_ happy.

  He wouldn't have cared so much if his name was at least 
  _spelled_ differently. Jon Smyth, Jonn Smithe, or something like 
  that. But it wasn't. It was J as in Joshua, O as in Orville, H 
  as in Harvey, N as in Norman, S as in Samuelson, M as in 
  Mitchell, I as in Idall, T as in Terniard, H as in Hutchington 
  -- John Smith. His older sister (Josephine) had an English 
  teacher (Mrs. Starnell) who talked about the Everyman. John 
  thought that John Smith was the perfect name for an Everyman, 
  but he was only eleven, so he couldn't even qualify for that.

  There had to be at least a _million_ John Smiths in the world. 
  Didn't his parents _realize_ that? What was wrong with them? 
  What could they have been thinking when they'd named him?

  His mother would have talked first. She always did. "Oh 
  Nathaniel dear, look, it's our new baby. What'll we name him?"

  "Oh Sherry darling, how about 'John Smith?' "

  "Why 'John Smith?' "

  "It's the most boring name I can think of."

  That just about summed it up, John figured. Then his dad 
  would've gone on about something else, probably football. John 
  hated football. All the players had their names proudly 
  displayed across their backs, so everyone could see how great 
  they were. Once, he _had_ seen a player with the last name 
  Smith, and felt some hope. Then it turned out the man's first 
  name was Ebineezer and John lost all faith in the world.

  If only there was a famous president, or rock star, or something 
  named John Smith. Or a movie star. Anything. Of course, those 
  people would never _call_ themselves John Smith, even if that 
  was their real name. Those people never used their real names. 
  They made something up. And that's what gave him the idea:

  He would get his name changed. Officially. Right now, right on 
  this bright Sunday morning, before he even got dressed. Why put 
  it off? He felt better already.

  The hard part, of course, would be convincing his parents.

  Nathaniel Smith was sitting in his armchair in the living room, 
  reading the newspaper, completely ignorant of the storm of self- 
  confidence and assurance that was about to come flying out of 
  its room, demanding to have its name changed. Thus, he regarded 
  the request with considerable surprise.

  "You want to what?"

  "Dad," John repeated, "I want to change my name." It had far 
  less effect than he'd hoped for, especially the second time.

  "You want," John's already washed, shaved, combed, groomed, and 
  perfectly dressed father slowly said while staring blankly over 
  the rims of his shiny glasses, "to change your name."

  John, unwashed, uncombed, and still in his pajamas, said "Um... 
  yeah."

  John felt the moment slipping away from him.

  Seeing no real response from his father, he used what he'd been 
  saving as a last resort.

  "Movie stars do it!"

  "You aren't a movie star."

  Leave it to parents to be logical when their only son in going 
  through the ultimate crisis of his life, John thought. "You 
  don't understand. I _have_ to."

  "Why? Are you hiding from the police?"

  "No!" Why did parents have to _say_ stupid things like that? "I 
  just have to, that's all."

  "Oh," said his father, turning and looking at the wall. John 
  looked there too, but didn't see anything. And apparently, 
  neither did his father. After a couple moments he turned back to 
  John and asked "Why?"

  "It's _boring_," he answered. He spread his arms out in a 
  gesture of emphasis that was completely lost on his father. 
  "There are millions of people called John Smith."

  "Name one."

  John stopped for a minute, thought, then realized he'd been 
  tricked. "Daaad! You aren't taking me _seriously_!"

  His father chuckled. "Okay. Look, have you talked to your mom 
  about this?"

  John reluctantly admitted that he hadn't. But, he added, she was 
  next.

  "Well, why don't you see what she thinks, and then talk to me."

  "But she's at _church_! She won't be home for a long time!"

  "She's always back by lunch time. You can make it that long." He 
  ruffled John's hair. John slumped his shoulders and went back to 
  his room.

  "And stand up straight," his father called after him.


  John got caught up in other things and forgot about the whole 
  problem until after dinner. Then, his mother was shopping. She 
  always shopped after dinner. It never made sense to John, but 
  then, nothing his parents did made sense. He _had_ to talk to 
  her as soon as she got back! School started tomorrow, and there 
  was no way he was going to start fifth grade as John Smith.

  When he heard the sound of his mother's car coming into the 
  driveway, he ran out of his room to let her into the house. He 
  threw open the door just as his mother was about to unlock it.

  "Hi Mom!" he shouted, scaring the unprepared Sherry Smith almost 
  to the point of dropping her groceries.

  "Hi John! Hey, you scared me there." She wondered why he was 
  opening the door for her. She figured he wanted something, and 
  tested this by asking him to bring in the rest of the groceries.

  "Sure, Mom!" He ran out and made four trips from the house to 
  the car and back without a complaint.

  Even when that was finished, though, John still hadn't asked for 
  anything, and Sherry began wondering instead what John had done.

  Finally, she came out and asked him if he wanted anything.

  John beamed, then became ultra-serious. "I'd like to change my 
  name," he said.

  Inwardly, Sherry Smith groaned. Josephine had gone through 
  several different stages of "but Mom, I just _have_ to (fill in 
  the blank)," and was working on another one. She'd hoped John 
  wouldn't fall prey to it too. But, the best way to handle these 
  fads, she'd long ago decided, was to just play along.

  So she asked him what he wanted to be called.

  John opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had no idea what 
  he wanted to be called.

  "Larry," he finally said, proudly.

  "Larry," she repeated, as if trying on a new hat. "Sounds like 
  my name! Why Larry?"

  John didn't know, so he said, "It sounds good."

  "Larry," she mused. "Larry Smith."

  John almost had a heart attack. "No! Not Larry _Smith_! Larry... 
  Quartz! Larry Quartz."

  His mother looked dubious, but John loved it. "Yeah. Larry 
  Quartz. It's great. It's _exactly_ right." Seeing no complaint 
  from his mother, he went back to his room, smiling. He could 
  hardly wait until tomorrow.

  The next morning, after washing and dressing, John came out to 
  eat breakfast. His mother was making pancakes. No one else was 
  in the room yet.

  His mother greeted him with a smile. "Good morning, John."

  He almost responded, but then remembered and said "Who?"

  His mother sighed. "Right. Who are you again?"

  "Larry," he said slowly. "Larry Quartz." He sat down at the 
  table.

  His father came in from the living room. "Hi John." Both wife 
  and son quickly corrected him. He looked at them, confused, but 
  then just shrugged.

  His older sister was next. She bounded into the room, her silky 
  and wet black hair flopping behind her like a confused flag. She 
  sat down at the table and, much to John's dismay, ignored him 
  completely. He wanted to get her to call him John too.

  So, he started humming quietly underneath his breath, and 
  playing with his fork, hoping Josephine would tell him to stop. 
  She did give him an odd look, and he paused and returned a false 
  smile, but nothing else happened. He went back to his humming.

  Pouring some pancake batter into a pan, John's mother said "Jo, 
  we have a new member of the family this morning."

  John stopped humming. What was she doing?

  Josephine studied her mother. She looked around the table. "I 
  don't get it," she said finally.

  Sherry put the batter down and waved an arm at John. "Meet Larry 
  Quartz."

  Josephine stared at John, who paled slightly. "Whaaattt?" Her 
  voice rose in disbelief.

  John sat still, wondering how to turn this to his advantage.

  "He changed his name?" Josephine drawled. Then she started 
  laughing. "He changed his _name_?"

  She turned to John. "What's wrong with the name they gave you?"

  "Now Josephine," John's father began.

  "It's Jo, Dad, not Josephine," she reminded him.

  "What's wrong with the name they gave you?" John mimicked.

  She glared at him. "John!"

  "Who?"

  "All right!" John's mother announced. "The first pancake is 
  ready."

  "Well, why don't we let John have it?" suggested Josephine 
  sweetly.

  "Who?" John replied innocently.

  "Well, if _he's_ not around, I guess I'd better have it!" She 
  took the pancake.

  Not taking any chances, John quickly added that he wanted the 
  next one.

  All in all, breakfast turned out pretty good for John. His 
  mother called him John once, his father accidentally called him 
  Harry, and his sister, for sake of argument, called him John 
  every time. It was great. He just _knew_ that he was going to 
  have a wonderful day.

  He didn't, of course, know about the new girl in his class.


  Her name, and the month she was born in, was June. She had the 
  nicest hair and the sweetest smile, and she had just the right 
  mixture of shyness and audacity to get anything she wanted from 
  anyone. She was a knockout, or as much of a knockout as a fifth- 
  grader could be, and this was certainly the impression held by 
  the male population of the class.

  In fact, no one dared sit near her. The boys didn't, because 
  they didn't want to do something stupid. And the other girls 
  didn't quite trust her. June, and the seat next to her, were 
  left alone.

  So when John walked in, just barely before the bell as always, 
  the only available seat was the one next to her, and all eyes 
  were on him as he sat in it.

  With no formal training at all, John performed a perfect double- 
  take, and the result was a spontaneous burst of giggles as John 
  found himself trying not to stare at June as rudely as he was.

  Then the bell rang and the teacher walked in, and everyone 
  turned to the blackboard.

  The teacher was new. He walked in front of his desk and said 
  "Hello, class!" His voice was deep and clear. "As you may have 
  noticed, I'm new here. But I've taught fifth grade before, so 
  I'm very good at it. I hope that you will all think the same 
  after you get to know me. But first," he said, placing a pile of 
  notebooks he'd been carrying onto his desk, "I would like to get 
  to know _you_. My name is Mr. Carniss." He wrote it on the 
  chalkboard with precise handwriting and opened up one of his 
  notebooks. "Now I have here a list of names, but I don't know 
  whom each one belongs to. So I'm just going to read off each 
  name and if that's you, just raise your hand. How does that 
  sound?"

  Sounds terrible, thought John. This name-changing business was 
  going to be harder than he'd figured.

  What were his friends going to say? He glanced around. Sure 
  enough, they were all there. About two-thirds of the room knew 
  him, or at least his name. He vaguely remembered being laughed 
  at only a couple of minutes ago and he didn't want to go through 
  that again.

  Then he thought of June. He didn't know her name was June, of 
  course, but whoever she was, she didn't look like she'd think 
  much of a John Smith. He found himself staring at her again, and 
  looked away. Why did he even care what some dumb girl thought, 
  anyway? He wasn't sure, but he did.

  Mr. Carniss began.

  "Sue-Ann Aldring?"

  A girl in the last row raised her hand as if it were going to 
  explode if moved too quickly. Mr. Carniss looked up, smiled a 
  smile that melted Sue-Ann, and made a mark in his book.

  "Michael Bern?"

  And so it went. Name after name was called. Denaublin, Ewing, 
  Garth...

  "June Golden?"

  June raised her hand as far as it would go. John felt sick. June 
  Golden, he marvelled. What a name. She'd _never_ have to change 
  it. If I had a name like that, thought John, I wouldn't change 
  it for a million dollars. Not for ten million. I wouldn't even 
  change it if my parents threatened to kill me. I wouldn't...

  John stopped thinking and sank into his chair. He felt like he'd 
  just been hit with a sledgehammer. That was it. The answer. That 
  was how he could get away with this and not be the laughingstock 
  of the fifth grade.

  Excited, he smiled, and could barely restrain himself until, 
  eleven names later, Mr. Carniss said

  "John Smith?"

  John raised his hand, slowly, faking uncertainty. He hoped he 
  looked like he wasn't sure he was doing the right thing.

  Mr. Carniss looked up at John and made a mark in his notebook. 
  Then he looked back at John. "Is something wrong, John?" he 
  asked.

  John couldn't tell if it was real concern, or just the usual 
  kind teachers had for their kids. "Um...yeah," he said finally. 
  "Kind of. That's...that's not my name anymore."

  Mr. Carniss looked surprised. So did the other kids. John kept a 
  perfectly straight face, but mentally crossed his fingers as he 
  said, "My parents changed it."

  Next to him, June Golden's eyes went wide with pity. On the 
  other side of him, his best friend Warren almost fell off his 
  chair.

  Mr. Carniss was disoriented. For the first time, he seemed 
  unprepared. But he quickly regained his composure and said, "I 
  see. And what is your name now?"

  Here we go, John thought.

  "Larry Quartz."

  Warren gave him a look which translated as "You've got to be 
  kidding." Some of the other students were looking at each other 
  in awkward disbelief. June seemed slightly bothered at the idea, 
  and turned away from John just as he looked over to see her 
  reaction. But none of this fazed Mr. Carniss, who had once again 
  taken control.

  "Well," he replied cheerfully, "what would you like me to call 
  you? John or Larry?"

  John looked at him, sinking. Why did he have to be so nice? But 
  it was too late to back out now.

  "I guess you'd better call me Larry, Mr. Carniss. I should get 
  used to it."

  "You should get new parents," whispered Warren, but Mr. Carniss 
  simply nodded and made some more marks in his book. He finished 
  off his list of names and then class started.

  The day went badly for John. Things hadn't gone at all like he'd 
  hoped. When he thought about it, he wasn't even sure what kind 
  of reaction he'd been looking for, but he did know he hadn't 
  gotten it.

  As it turned out, Mr. Carniss was only his homeroom teacher. 
  That meant he had to repeat his story and his act for five more 
  teachers throughout the day. By the afternoon he no longer 
  wanted to, but he kept having people he knew in some of his 
  classes, and the story had spread through the entire fifth grade 
  by lunch hour. John heard people talking about him from time to 
  time, but he could never quite hear what they were saying.

  By the end of the day, the misery he'd feigned for his first 
  class was real. No one wanted to talk to him. No one knew what 
  to say. A brand new student would have been treated better. John 
  had forgotten how many friends he'd really had, until none of 
  them seemed comfortable around him anymore. It was like he'd 
  died and some new kid had come along, trying to take his place. 
  It isn't fair, John wanted to shout. I'm still the same person! 
  I'm just called something different!

  After his last class, he collected his books and went to the 
  bike rack where he traditionally waited for Warren. He unhitched 
  his bike and, after a couple minutes, Warren arrived.

  Warren smiled, started to say "Hi John," and then remembered and 
  mumbled "oh yeah."

  "It isn't _that_ bad, is it?" John asked.

  Warren stared at him. "You mean you _like_ it?"

  "Don't you?"

  Warren started to say something, but stopped. "It's okay," he 
  said. "But I like John better."

  John looked at his bicycle. "Maybe I can get them to change it 
  back, or something," he said. He didn't like the idea.

  Warren did. His spirits lifted immediately. "You think you 
  could?"

  John was slightly taken back at the force of Warren's question. 
  "Well, I don't know. They haven't actually made the change yet, 
  but they said..."

  "Well don't _let_ them!" Warren shouted. "Shit! Tell them not 
  to! I'll help! Want me to come over? I'll stand up for you!"

  "No! No--that's okay." John wanted to change the subject. "I'll 
  tell them. I won't let them. I...I like being John Smith." But 
  he wondered who he was trying to convince, Warren or himself.

  He rode Warren home, and then went on to his house, deep in 
  thought. He still thought John Smith was a boring name, but 
  nobody seemed to mind. Maybe the name actually helped somehow. 
  "John Smith? Yeah, his name's boring, but _he's_ cool..."


  He got back home and put his bike away. When he walked inside, 
  his mother smiled at him. "Hi Larry! How'd school go?"

  "Who?" John asked.


  Tarl Roger Kudrick  (auelv@acvax.inre.asu.edu)
------------------------------------------------

  Tarl Roger Kudrick has been making up stories since he could 
  talk and writing them since he was twelve. He's written numerous 
  short stories and first drafts of two novels, one of which is 
  on-line at Oberlin College (owrite@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu). His 
  major goal in life is to earn a Ph.D. in psychology. He stays 
  sane through both being weird and running AD&D sessions.



  Boy  by Ridley McIntyre
=========================

  1. Start Switch
-----------------

  Shitamachi. The Manhattan Outzone. The Year of the Rat.

  Darkness and rain pervade the quiet streets of the Outzone. 
  Here, the Federal Government in its infinite wisdom has cut off 
  all electricity, and left the running of the place to its 
  inhabitants. In Shitamachi, the Asahi Tag Team run everything.

  The DJ in Snakestrike is a tiger-haired poserboy with his brain 
  connected to the turbo sound system at the end of a large dance 
  floor, two thin blue wires dangling from the tiny electrodes 
  stuck to his forehead. He is engrossed in the world of the 
  music, every digitized blip and beep and thump pulsing through 
  his nerves like the very blood in his veins. Electrical signals 
  interfacing the sound system to his nervous system to allow him 
  complete control over the mix. The ersatz sensory stimulation 
  that runs through the 'trodes overrides his own natural senses. 
  Every three minutes he switches to life to take a request.

  The dance floor swarms with a thousand Shitamachi teenagers, 
  sticking their heads into the blue lasers and flashing 
  fluorescent gloves under the ultra-violet strobes. Every wall of 
  the club writhes with holographic snake scales, a reptilian 
  world that's constantly moving.

  There's a hole above the dance floor where people from the level 
  above can watch the dancers. Up here, on the left at the 
  cocktail bar, Snakestrike stinks of dancer sweat. It also reeks 
  of business. And for once, Dex has nothing to do with it.

  Two women serve the cocktail bar. One dark-haired with natural 
  beauty, the other a made-up half-Japanese blonde doll who is 
  well known as an Asahi Tag Teamster. They call themselves 
  sisters when a drunken Japanese Sony slave plays being a suit to 
  them, despite his slave's company-grey jumpsuit. Dex watches 
  them all with interest, then calls the dark-haired girl over to 
  order his third Vijayanta tequila slammer.

  Dex is here to see Laughing Simon, the Asahi Tag Team's best 
  technojack, but he's been stood up again. So, he sits by the bar 
  with his face cupped in his hand and a pocketful of stimulant 
  wetware in his black pilot's jacket. He is just thinking of 
  leaving when he feels a tap on his shoulder from the billy on 
  the grey stool next to him: a muscular Australian kid with 
  sideburns, a blue denim jacket, a quiff and a ginger moustache.

  "So what do you do?" asks the billy.

  "Why, are you collecting taxes?" Dex answers. His voice is 
  English. The dark-haired girl returning with a plastic tumbler 
  wonders if there are any Americans left in Manhattan. She turns 
  the glass three times and fizzes it with a bang on the bar and 
  Dex calmly downs it.

  "You look like a ghost to me," says the Australian.

  Dex shakes his head the way he's supposed to when they ask him 
  these questions. All the time thinking, does it show that much? 
  "Sorry, matey. Just your average ho-hum chipster."

  The billy shuffles closer, his voice slipping gently into a 
  business tone. "Shame. I'm looking at some hot paydata and I 
  really need a ghost. One of the best. Someone like the Camden 
  Town Boy. Dexter Eastman."

  "You've found Dexter Eastman, matey. But I gave up the ghost 
  over a year ago."

  The billy makes a swift move from his jacket and Dex can feel a 
  cold plastic tube dig into his hip. The Australian raises his 
  eyebrows. "Looks like I've found my man, then." He motions to 
  the exit with his head. "We're walking."

  "You're walking. I'm here for a drink."

  The Australian squints in Dex's face. "You'd better move, cause 
  if you don't it's gonna be a Kodak moment."

  Dex sits still. "Go ahead. Shoot me. You won't get out alive. 
  The decision, as they say, is yours." A flick of Dex's eyes 
  motions the Australian to look at the dark-haired bargirl. She 
  holds the HK assault shotgun usually kept under the bar. 
  Casually, and with a feisty smile, she rests the barrel on the 
  bone of the Australian's nose and crunches the first round into 
  the chamber.

  "If you're takin' anyone out at my bar, it won't be with a 
  plastic pistol, matey," she says curtly. "Give me the piece and 
  deal with the man friendly-like."

  The Australian gives over the gun with a taut look from Dex to 
  the bargirl and back. He wipes sweat from his moustache.

  Dex gives a thankful look to the bargirl. "Respect to you," he 
  says.

  "S'okay," she replies, "If he didn't look so dumb, I'd shoot him 
  anyway." She puts the guns behind the counter, out of reach, and 
  goes back to the Japanese slave.

  Dex turns to the Australian. "You've got two minutes. Deal or 
  step."

  The billy talks through clenched teeth. Being challenged down in 
  a club full of strangers by a girl who looked about seventeen 
  has raised a storm inside his pride. It is a storm that has to 
  subside just this once.

  "My name's Priest. I'm a dealer for Kreskin."

  "Kreskin the rigger?"

  "The very same. Kreskin says you two used to work together. You 
  used to do overnight laundry for him with the World Bank."

  "That was a year ago."

  "Yeah, well he's coming up against some tough opposition from 
  the Martial Government Air Force along the North Route and he 
  needs you to run the Ether for him. Hack into the MGAF shell and 
  find out the reconnaissance flight plans for next week. Rabies 
  just broke out again in the Seattle Metroplex and Kreskin has 
  the contract to ship vaccine over the line. He says you did it 
  before for him. He says you'll do it again."

  Dex narrows his eyes. "Read my profile. Ex-hackerjack."

  Priest smiles. "Kreskin said you'd be a little reluctant. I have 
  read your profile. Ex-hackerjack. Ex-MGAF pilot. Ex-joker. 
  You've done a lot in your time. Kreskin needs someone he can 
  trust. Someone he knows. And of course if you refuse..." Priest 
  takes a cold gyuza dumpling from a bowl on the bar and bites 
  half of it.

  "Kreskin publicly announces my whereabouts to the MGAF."

  "I think he had something even worse in mind, but you're on the 
  right track. Strictly business, you understand, Dex. Nothing 
  personal.

  Somehow Dex wishes it was personal. Then he'd have an excuse to 
  smash Priest's face in.


  Kitty slips into Dex's room and hands him steaming ration coffee 
  in a polystyrene cup. She's like him, another smart young 
  refugee from the authorities. The Manhattan Outzone is an 
  excellent place to hide, but she wasn't born to this, and no one 
  could hide forever.

  She looks at Dex through superchromed Sony eyes as he drinks his 
  coffee, sitting on his black leather swivel chair and fidgeting, 
  and she realizes that she knows very little about him. He grew 
  up in a shanty town in the Thames Midland Metroplex and found a 
  way out through running the Ether; the Camden Town Boy. He was a 
  hackerjack legend by the age of fourteen, teaching others like 
  Dagger and Man Friday to run the Ether. At fifteen he was 
  involved with a team rivalry squabble and left for North Am 
  District, where he joined the Martial Government Air Force, 
  flying missions against the nomad joker clans who smuggled 
  anything from weapons to computer parts from one Metroplex to 
  another, figuring that the MGAF's high security would make him 
  harder to track down.

  She heard that he turned joker after he had to shoot down his 
  own wingman to save a busload of joker kids from being rocketed. 
  So he joined the nomads as a pilot running recon missions and 
  every once in a while he would launder joker clan money through 
  the Ether.

  Kreskin got him a new identity and he left the game for the 
  Manhattan Outzone, where he moved in with Kitty and the Asahi 
  Tag Team and became a chipster. Once, he told her that his main 
  ambition was to live a normal life. Buy himself a piece of 
  Happyville. The biggest problem he had was dropping his past.

  Kitty only has to see the look on his face to know that the past 
  is on its way back.

  Dex downs the coffee and crushes the cup inside a sinewy hand. 
  "You don't think I should do this, do you?"

  Kitty stands with her back to the wall by the door to the 
  kitchen, her arms neatly folded over her _Omni_ T-shirt. She 
  bites her bottom lip.

  "No," she says to him. She kicks herself off the wall and leaves 
  the room, closing the door behind her.

  Dex is alone in a grimy-grey room with a swivel chair, a desk 
  and a foam mattress to sleep on. Something inside him claws his 
  stomach. An empty feeling.

  A hunger.

  He takes the machinery out of its bubble-plastic wrapping. It's 
  been in storage in a tea chest in Kitty's room for so long that 
  the wrapping sticks to the molded form of the Sony electronics, 
  making the job more difficult. The sense 'trodes, like sticky 
  silver beads with microthin wires, are wrapped around the 
  Etherdeck. A procured military item in cold matte black, 
  designated Ares IV.

  The Ares IV has a stream of wires that plug into the input port 
  of his stolen, unlicensed Fednet computer. Built in Poland, its 
  bright red plastic casing and molded keyboard with old chunky 
  keys seems tasteless to all but the billy tribe. Dex is no 
  billy, he's too dragon, but he likes things in strange colors. 
  The whole setup that has been updated for high-speed bias by 
  Laughing Simon is plugged into the socket that runs a tap into 
  the groundline. He sticks the trodes to his forehead and 
  switches on all the equipment. "On" telltales glisten in the 
  darkness of his room. The screen on the Fednet computer displays 
  a prompt. Everything's ready except Dex.

  He sits cross-legged in front of the setup and hesitates. The 
  hunger inside his guts claws him again, and he nearly buckles 
  with tension. With his left hand, he fingers the keyboard of the 
  Fednet computer, preparing himself for sensory takeover.

  With the other poised over the Ares IV, he touches the Start 
  switch.


  2. Ether
----------

  Just as Dex had taught the Dagger and Man Friday, so a girl 
  called Kayjay introduced him to the Ether on a cold London night 
  in a Sony-owned flat in the Camden Secure Zone. He was twelve 
  years old and Kayjay was a small, thin- boned, pretty little 
  Bangladeshi girl with nothing better to do than follow the 
  latest fads.

  She had spent most of the day playing with her father's 
  electronic toys. His Sony computer... black and sleek and 
  totally unlike the low-tech kit-boxes that Dex had seen in the 
  shanty town. His wallscreen color TV that was constantly tuned 
  into Disney 7 (The Children's Channel), showing the latest 
  adventures of baby-faced anthropomorphic soldiers in space 
  jungles, fighting the evil insectoids with their nuclear 
  battlesuits, and Dex and Kayjay acted them out in the living 
  room, firing remote control units at each other (Dex was always 
  Mark and Kayjay was always Sukhi), and Kayjay won. When they 
  raided the wardrobe for fancy costumes, Kayjay came across the 
  thin non-descript box that she had seen her father use. It was 
  densely heavy and as big as a Federal Government daily ration 
  box.

  He remembers her words now as she tried to explain the concepts 
  to this bright, but uneducated, boy, lying on the thick carpet 
  floor of her bedroom. She tapped the ridge on her black leather 
  swivel chair.

  "See this chair?" she said. Twelve-year-old Dexter Eastman 
  nodded softly. "This chair doesn't really exist. It's just an 
  amassment of atomic particles. But the way the light reflects 
  from them, and the way our eyes see that light, leads our brains 
  to come to the conclusion that this pack of particles is a 
  chair. Without a way of translating the fact to us, it doesn't 
  really exist. Without sight it has no color. Without touch it 
  has no texture. Without taste it's not organic. Without sound it 
  doesn't squeak when you turn it. Without smell it isn't leather. 
  A person without senses has no world. It just doesn't exist, 
  there's no way of translating it to them."

  Kayjay moved around the room like some eccentric Disney 9 
  (Education Channel) science instructor and ended up grinning, 
  pointing to her red telephone.

  "Ever listened to the sound a modem makes when you send it down 
  a phone line?" She made a weird screeching sound and an equally 
  appalling face and Dex gave a little giggle.

  "Data. Raw data. A computer talking to another computer. Not to 
  us, because it doesn't speak our language, but that's by-the-by. 
  The fact is that data has a sound. And if it has a sound, it has 
  a smell. And a taste, and a texture and you must be able to see 
  it. It exists. Only normally, there's no way to translate it to 
  us."

  She edged over to Dex and kissed him softly, ran thin brown 
  fingers through his spiky black hair. "Somedays I go there... to 
  this other world. Father calls it the Ether. Like ethereal, I 
  suppose. But it's more like a checkboard than anything else. You 
  want to go? I'll get Father to bring home another set of trodes. 
  After that, we'll do it together..."


  The processor is an empty blue cathedral. Code embodies him as 
  the virus runs its course. There is a soft dent in the defense 
  shell and Fednet's watchdog program lays in wait. Dex knows 
  this, though, and avoids the obvious weakness in favor of the 
  silent meltdown.

  Another key is tapped and a silver thread streams from the 
  melting roof where Dex has lived all this time toward the 
  bounty. The defenses have been breached, the virus has become 
  part of the defense program, shaping itself to the contours and 
  Dex knows his trojan software can work well enough without him, 
  that he can switch off any time and let a demon do the work for 
  him. But it seems too easy, and something must be wrong.

  He stays with it, observing... watching the trojan open and 
  close files with lightning speed, knowing it's true target, but 
  running a trick that it really is a routine file check. As soon 
  as it finds the file, the thread snaps back, and Dex sends a 
  program to cover its tracks. It doesn't matter. The breaching 
  virus is old and faulty, and has caused a cancer in the defense 
  shell that the watchdog can't fail to notice. Dex waits just 
  long enough for the thread to return before he tries to rescue 
  the virus which has gone wild. Eventually, before he can tear 
  the trodes from his forehead, he feels the crushing smash of the 
  MGAF trace program as it finds his home shell. His senses are 
  dazed, rocked back and forth and he is pulled like spaghetti as 
  he sees the trace's toothy smile.


  He tears the trodes from his forehead and fights for breath. 
  Suddenly nauseated, he crawls so fast through the door but 
  vomits across the kitchen floor before he can reach the sink. 
  Passing out, he can sense the far off rank smell of stagnant 
  water and the cruel touch of a rough cloth. The stern tones of 
  Kitty's voice echoing through his head...


  Snakestrike. The pretty, dark-haired girl brings his drink over 
  to him, loosely covered with a small cloth. She draws him closer 
  to her. Her voice is an urgent whisper. "Your name's Dex, isn't 
  it?"

  Dex nods.

  "Man in that booth behind you was asking for you not two minutes 
  ago. He said he was an old friend. I told him you weren't here. 
  He said he'd wait. If you're in trouble, matey, call for another 
  drink. I'll bring the shotgun. Escort him out for you."

  Dex sits back. She circles the tumbler three times and bangs it 
  on the bar, turning the drink into wet foam. Dex lets her take 
  away the cloth before downing it.

  "What's your name?"

  "Jess," she says.

  "Enough respect to you, Jess." He taps the bar and takes a 
  breath before pushing himself off the stool and looking for this 
  Mister Dangerous. He spots him immediately, and knows his name 
  is Turk.

  "What are you doing here, Turk?"

  Turk has his arms spread along the back of the seat, a dumb, 
  superior grin on his Dixie City fat face. He wears a blue flight 
  suit, wing commanders tapes on the epaulettes. He even has his 
  own row of medals, including a purple heart that he must have 
  got when Dex shot down his own wingman.

  "Thought ah'd find you heah, Eastman," he drawls drunkenly. "Ah 
  was gonna ask you that question mahself. How the hell can you 
  live in this dump, anyways? What do the Sammies call it? 
  Shitter-what?"

  "Shitamachi. It's Japanese for downtown. Look, cut the gomi, 
  Turk, just tell me what you want."

  Turk laughs raucously and chews gum, bobbing his head. "Jeez, 
  Eastman. You been heah so long, you'se even spoutin' like a 
  Sammie. Bah the way, your friend Priest is dead. Ah did him 
  mahself. But not before I managed to spill your deal outta him. 
  So gimme the file you copied and we'll be friends again."

  "We were never friends. What makes you think I've got it with 
  me?"

  Turk leans forward and takes a sip from his beer, then returns 
  to his reclining position, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers 
  against the ultra-suede. "Ah told you, Eastman. Ah know the 
  deal. So gimme the data, 'cause I know you got it."

  Dex takes on a wounded, irritated look. He runs his hands 
  through his spiky black hair and then takes out a black silicate 
  cube from his jacket pocket and tosses it over to him. Dex is 
  angry as hell now, but he knows he has to contain it if he wants 
  to stay alive.

  "Sammie for downtown," Turk mutters. "Down is the operative 
  word, Eastman." He turns his head to the end of the booth, which 
  backs onto the hole above the dance floor. "CAN'T YOU PLAY SOME 
  NEIL YOUNG OR SOMETHIN'? ALL THIS SAMMIE NOISE SOUNDS THE SAME 
  AND HALF OF IT AIN'T GOT NO WORDS!" He comes back and laughs. 
  "You got insurance, Eastman? Ah'd take some out if Ah were you." 
  He stands and finishes his beer.

  "And don't let those Sammies take you in. Remember Pearl Harbor. 
  Catch you 'round." Turk slips out of the booth and past the 
  cocktail bar, shaking his head and laughing to himself when Jess 
  throws him a dirty look.

  Dex and Jess exchange a glance. Somehow the look on her face 
  tells him exactly what to do.


  3. Rehash
-----------

  "Nixon. How are you? It's the Camden Town Boy. No, not anymore, 
  I'm a free man now. In Shitamachi dealing software to the Asahi 
  Tag Team. Yeah I know... fifty-five points last night, you get a 
  share? Better luck tonight, eh? Anyway, I've got something you 
  might like. I did a run for Kreskin last week, MG Air Force 
  flight plans along the North Route. Yeah, well I asked for 750 
  marks, but Kreskin dropped his price, said he couldn't go any 
  higher than 500 marks. Yeah, I know, I should have guessed he'd 
  take me for a sucker. Anyway, the MGAF are wise to it, so 
  they've changed their flight plan. Yep. And I've got the new 
  one, too. I'll let you have it for 600 e-marks, what do you say? 
  Ace, it's a deal. Transfer the money into a World Bank bin under 
  the account name of Peter Townshend. Of course I know who Pete 
  Townshend was, but they're too stupid to figure it out. I'll fax 
  the details to you. Better send one of your jokers. Pickup point 
  will be on the fax. Anyway, time is money and you're eating my 
  phone bill. See you sometime."

  Dex has an airbrushed wheel-dial telephone, the color of 
  turtleshells. Kitty says he has no taste whatsoever. When Dex 
  reiterates that he likes strange colours, she just shakes her 
  head.

  "Who was that?" asks Kitty. She stands half-in, half-out of the 
  doorway to the kitchen. There is still a trace of vomit smell in 
  the air in there after a week.

  "Nixon's another Rigger. Officially him and Kreskin are rivals. 
  So he'll buy it just to have something Kreskin hasn't." He wipes 
  sleep from his eyes and pulls at itchy hair.

  "Think it'll work?" Kitty sips on ration Vijayanta coffee and 
  makes a face as she burns her tongue.

  Dex collapses onto his mattress and sighs, looking out through 
  his window at the condemned block across East 10th Street. Lines 
  of age wrinkling the building. The circular port-hole windows, 
  like a thousand eyes all crying at once.

  "It bloody well better work," he finally replies, hoping that 
  soon, things could get back to normal.


  Nixon has his package. Another group of mercenaries known as the 
  Harlequins are also interested in the information. Something to 
  do with a hit they have to make on the MGAF.

  He meets them at dusk in Tompkins Square, when the day is 
  hottest, and the shadows are longest. The Harlequin Rigger's 
  name is Fly, and he is a frail twig of a man who needs a metal 
  walking stick to stand upright. He is known more for his 
  abilities as a fence than for running a good merc group.

  The boys around him are typical San Angeles Ronin, they are all 
  six feet two inches and have deep tans, dressed in Twin Soul 
  Tribe garb (very baggy green jeans and hooded sweaters). Dex has 
  seen a million like these two muscleboys, and they don't impress 
  him. Fly informs him that their names are J.D. and Mavik.

  "So what's business like now, Dex?" Fly speaks in a dreamy, 
  whispering tone, a voice much older than he is; looking at him 
  with eyes that are much wiser than the frail man could ever be.

  "To tell the truth, the chipster business could be bottoming out 
  here. I might need to expand."

  "Expansion's always a good thing, Dex. If you're going to think 
  at all, think big. A real famous businessman said that once... 
  But I'm damned if I can remember his name."

  Fly gives a hoarse laugh and Dex joins in. J.D. and Mavik look 
  calmly at the decrepit housing blocks that surround the concrete 
  plaza of Tompkin's Square. Thermographic Sony vision scanning 
  the windows for possible threats. They don't even have to show 
  what weapons they carry. They have rewired nerves for inhuman 
  speed and could probably take out a potential assassin before 
  the hammer falls on his gun. Stuff like that doesn't come cheap, 
  though. Most of the Asahi Tag Team who have rewired nerves had 
  to go as far as the Tokyo Metroplex to find a neurosurgeon good 
  enough to do it. These boys have it as standard with all the 
  Martial Government trickery behind it. They probably don't even 
  know about the glitches in the triggering software that runs the 
  nervous system, something that Dex had to pay a lot to get 
  ironed out when he deserted the air force.

  "Where's Man Friday? How's he doing these days? I haven't heard 
  from him in a long time."

  Fly pulls a nicotine stick from his black denim jacket and bites 
  a piece off the end. "He's still trying to find out what 
  happened in Rio. Did he leave a girl behind there or something?"

  Dex nods. "A wife, from what I remember."

  "Oh. Well, we think the Feds caught up with her and she's gone 
  missing. He's organizing an expedition to find her, I think. 
  We're gonna go in with him. He wishes you were running Ether 
  again. Says it ain't so much fun with you not around."

  "Well, I'm officially retired. Except for this stuff. Good luck, 
  anyway. If you need any chips for Portuguese, you know where to 
  find me."

  Dex and Fly banter this way for only a few more minutes, as both 
  of them have other places to go to. Fly eventually gives him 
  about 400 marks' worth of yen for the data cube.

  Kitty watches Dex throughout these events. She can see his life 
  here burning out slowly. She can see from his blue-eyed, 
  thousand- yard stare that his feet are getting itchy again. 
  Track record has proven that he doesn't stay in one place for 
  too long. Kitty needs him here, or at least with her. The two of 
  them aren't in love, not exactly, but what they have is more 
  than a friendship. Some kind of closeness that she can't afford 
  to live without.


  He flicks the stop switch. Sweat pours from his face, stings his 
  eyes, leaves salt on his pink lips. His black hair is stuck to 
  his wet head. He gasps for air and finds the atmosphere is too 
  thin for him in this grimy little room. He pulls the trodes from 
  his head, rushes to the round port-hole window and wrenches it 
  open.

  Lukewarm air hits his face, cools him down. He sticks his head 
  out into the night's rain. It rains every night in Manhattan. 
  Something to do with the high humidity during the day condensing 
  when the hot sun goes down.

  Across East 10th Street, three Asahi Tag Teamsters in their 
  canary yellow jackets and purple tiger-striped skintight jeans 
  suck on nicotine sticks and slap with each other about previous 
  clashes. One of them breaks into a spurt of superhuman martial 
  arts to demonstrate his actions. Just visible behind the kid's 
  ear a mini datacube shines from his neural software port. 
  Chipped for Hapkune- Do, reflexes rewired and boosted by 10 
  percent, zen flowing from their new Sony eyes. Dex looks at 
  these kids and sees the future of the world. A future he doesn't 
  much care for.

  He slides back inside and closes the window. Walking over to the 
  middle of the floor, he looks at the green screen of the 
  unlicensed Fednet computer and sees the results of this day's 
  work. Two tickets to Heathrow waiting for him whenever he wants. 
  One way. His life here is falling to pieces, and it's getting 
  near the time to skin out. Tiny words glowing green in a dark 
  room. He looks at that screen and thinks he can see his future.

  4. Times Square
-----------------

  "Kreskin says he'll met you outside the old Slammer Cyberena at 
  noon."

  "Times Square."

  That's where he is now. The north side, across from the entrance 
  to the Cyberena. He sits in the uncomfortable seat of a 
  magnesium alloy rickshaw that belongs to a young Irish-American 
  kid called Bobby, who wears a white BIG PIERROT SAYS WATCH YOUR 
  BACK T-shirt and a conical straw hat to keep the blazing sun off 
  him. Kitty's next to him, watching the windows behind the dead 
  neon signs. She's not happy about this choice of venue at all. 
  It's out of Shitamachi. Out of the protection of the Asahi Tag 
  Team. It's the lower end of the Tangerine Tag Team's kill zone 
  and it's totally open.

  Dex figures the poor security of the area will work to the 
  advantage of everyone, but he knows that Kitty doesn't get 
  nervous without good reason. So when Kreskin's red rickshaw 
  arrives and Kitty hands him a HK pistol, he doesn't give it 
  back. Dex hates guns. He snaps a magazine in and loads a round, 
  letting the hammer down softly. Before climbing out, he stuffs 
  the thing down the back of his baggy red jeans.

  Kreskin climbs out wearing a cheap business suit, hiding his 
  eyes behind a pair of Mitsubishi anti-laser glare glasses. He 
  keeps two of his joker muscleboys close to him, watching the 
  area while toying playfully with their HK uzi copies. For a 
  moment it almost looks like Kreskin doesn't recognize Dex as he 
  strides across the street. But soon he's there and the smile 
  creeps onto the Russian's chubby face. The huge arms extend and 
  the two old friends hug each other with subtle reservation.

  There's a swift conversation that seems to arrange another 
  meeting time, and Dex hands over the data cube. Dex is full of 
  himself as they talk. He's given Kreskin what he wanted, made 
  enough money for Kreskin to sort him and Kitty out with new ID's 
  so they can go to London when the heat is on. He has his future 
  in his hands at last. A chance to create his own destiny.

  There's a stifled thump and a cry and a woman's urgent shout 
  behind him.

  "DEX!"

  He spins to see the scene, pulls the HK from his jeans.

  Bobby lies in a growing pool of blood, his life evaporating 
  under the heat of the sun. Turk has Kitty by the throat, using 
  her as human body armor; the cliched hostage position, with a 
  thick chrome revolver pressed into her temple.

  "Hi there, Eastman!" Turk breaks into his dumb grin showing 
  bright white teeth and a piece of strawberry gum. "Think ah'd 
  leave heah without takin' you wi' me? Ah think not."

  Dex levels the automatic at Turk's head. Behind him, he can feel 
  the presence of Kreskin and his boys, the sights of HK uzi 
  copies sending shivers along his neck. Sweat tickles his chin 
  before dripping off him.

  "Let her go, Turk. This is you and me here."

  Turk whistles and makes a face. "You been watchin' too much Big 
  Pierrot, Eastman. Come up wi' an ole cliche like that. You put 
  away your piece an' maybe, jus' maybe, Ah might let your li'l 
  lady go."

  Dex shakes his head. His guts wrenched with the feeling of 
  betrayal, like nothing has happened but he's lost everything he 
  has. "Come on, man. I throw this away and I'm giving you the 
  edge."

  Turk flicks back the hammer on the revolver, Kitty sucks in a 
  breath. "What edge, fool. Don't try an' pull that mental shit on 
  me, Eastman. Ah know you ain't gonna shoot me."

  "Did it once before, Turk, remember? Nothing can happen without 
  you dying at the end of it. You run and I'll shoot. You shoot me 
  and I'll shoot you. You point the gun at me and I'll shoot you. 
  You kill her and I'll shoot you. They shoot me and I'll shoot 
  you. No win situation."

  Dex cocks an eyebrow at Turk's expression. The smile falling 
  from the fat Dixie City man's face, turning to a sneer.

  "What's up, Turk? Run out of choices? Then call Kreskin's men 
  off."

  Turk licks salt from his lips.

  "Better do as he says, man. You won't be quite so good-looking 
  with a hole in your face." Kitty's mind is racing. She doesn't 
  have the advantage that these boys have. All of them are 
  probably rewired. Dex, she knows, definitely has been, she's 
  seen how fast he can be. Only a 5 percent reflex boost, but it's 
  enough of an edge against an unmodified man. No, she can't 
  outrun them, so she has to outthink them. Be faster by 
  pre-empting them all.

  "Shut up, bitch!"

  "What's it going to be, Turk, eh?" Dex can feel his wired 
  nervous system, courtesy of the MGAF, speeding up. An effect 
  like pins and needles all over the body. A slight vertigo and 
  then the neural processor that runs it all from the base of his 
  spine kicks in and the world turns slow-mo.

  Frame by frame, a second of violence.

  Everyone is surprised because Kitty moves first. Her elbow lifts 
  up and back to push Turk's arm away and the revolver slips from 
  his grasp and Kitty is in the air, diving for the cover of the 
  rickshaw. Turk is a standing target, but Dex doesn't fire, 
  instead, he jumps at wired speed to the floor and shoots at the 
  red rickshaw. He empty's half a magazine into Kreskin.

  Kreskin's boys are too slow, only now starting to speed up. 
  Their first bursts of fire are at the place where Dex was, and 
  find only Turk's fat body at the far side of the street, 
  catching him in the throat and upper torso. Bullets rip through 
  his spine and out the other side, pulling Turk with them like 
  puppet strings.

  The tall Dixie City man slaps against a metal shop front and 
  slides silent to the ground in a bloody, crumpled heap of flesh.

  One of Kreskin's boys managed to follow Dex's trajectory, and 
  when Dex rolls up onto his knees to fire the other half of the 
  magazine, bullets smash into his right arm and sends him 
  spinning back to the floor.

  Then the boy that shot him has an instant to realize that his 
  boss is dead before his own head shatters sending blood and 
  brain matter across the red rickshaw. The last Kreskin boy is 
  stunned and silent. Kitty stands there with Turk's revolver in 
  her small hands, trained at his head. The boy drops his HK uzi 
  copy. Kitty walks over and kicks it away, then kneecaps the boy 
  to stop him from leaving.

  Dex is screaming in agony. He's been shot before, but that was 
  just a flesh wound. He figures a bone's been hit here and it's 
  drawing his entire mind to it. By the time Kitty's run over to 
  help him, he's passed out from the pain.


  Dex climbs lazily out of cot and moves to the window. Looking 
  out, the hot sun is going down on East 10th Street and some 
  half- Japanese kids are playing soccer with a ball made from 
  rubber bands. These kids are going to grow up tough, he thinks 
  to himself. Street Darwinism. But there's no future for them if 
  they can't think, and Dex knows that being smart can just beat 
  being tough. He knows, cause it's not him lying in the street in 
  Times Square waiting for the Tangerine Tag Team to pick him up. 
  That's Turk, and Turk was tough; but stupid.

  "Well, there go your dreams, kiddo." Kitty stands at the door, 
  the one place in his room where she feels comfortable.

  "Not really. Turk said I may need an insurance policy. I'm going 
  to keep the tickets open for that."

  "What about for now?"

  He turns around and sees her there. He smiles. His bandaged arm 
  doesn't hurt much anymore. Not after Kitty pressed about 320 
  miligrams of endorphin analog into the bloody skin. He's as 
  happy as a rat in a hole. But the sudden realization in his mind 
  is that he needs Kitty. And he's never needed anyone before.

  Dex shakes his head. "The chipster business is too slow to stay 
  alive here. I mean..."

  "You want to be the Boy again, don't you?" Kitty seems to raise 
  her whole face, an expression which means to Dex that she knows 
  the answer already.

  "Man Friday said he misses me."

  Kitty's expression turns into a rueful grin. She shakes her head 
  and gives him a knowing look as she edges out the door.

  Dexter Eastman looks back out the window, and for the first time 
  in years, he feels he's found home.

  Ridley McIntyre (gdg019@cck.coventry.ac.uk)
---------------------------------------------


  The Unified Murder Theorem (2 of 4)  by Jeff Zias
===================================================

  Synopsis
----------

  They killed the guitar player on a Thursday night, as he sat in 
  the bar, playing his instrument, blue light emanating from 
  somewhere within. The last words the hit men said before they 
  shot him were simply: "Goodbye from Nattasi."

  JACK CRUGER, an accordion instructor by trade, leads the mundane 
  life one might expect of someone in his line of work. But all of 
  that changed the moment that TONY STEFFEN walked in his door. 
  Tony wasn't like most of his clients: he was tall, blonde, and 
  strong. As it turns out, Tony doesn't want to learn how to play 
  the accordion -- he wants to hear Cruger play it. As Cruger 
  begins to play it for the first time, blue light begins to 
  emanate from inside of it. According to Tony, the accordion is 
  special, and will only broadcast the blue light if Cruger plays 
  it.

  Before his next meeting with Tony, Cruger spends hours trying to 
  make a baby with his beautiful wife CORRINA, following it up 
  with a bit of time playing the strange new accordion with the 
  magical blue light. Much to his surprise, he begins to play 
  songs perfectly -- songs he has never played before.

  Tony informs Cruger that the blue strands of light coming out of 
  the accordion are STRINGS, each representing a path, a possible 
  outcome. Cruger has been chosen to be a "spinner" of strings by 
  a special organization. According to Tony, this "Company" is 
  much more than an international corporation -- its job is to 
  create and support all worlds, galaxies, and universes. Cruger 
  laughs at this suggestion, but Tony is serious -- God, or "the 
  CHAIRMAN," prefers to have living beings "spin" the fates, 
  rather than just throwing dice. But there's a catch -- there's 
  another company, one that tends to do the work we would normally 
  expect the Devil to do. If Cruger spins for the "good guys," 
  he'll be given protection in return -- <20>other spinners will 
  ensure that neither he nor his family will be harmed... except 
  for what is beyond their control, such as intervention from the 
  Other Company. Cruger has no choice but to accept -- after all, 
  his acceptance has already been determined by another spinner.

  Cruger begins to spin, arousing the suspicion of nobody, except 
  his next-door neighbor, LEON HARRIS. Harris, a computer 
  programmer by trade, is a large, strong health-nut -- exactly 
  what you wouldn't expect from a programmer. He is, however, 
  extremely nosy. He wonders why the non-descript white accountant 
  next door was suddenly playing the black music that Leon Harris 
  grew up with... and he wonders what caused the blue light that 
  appeared when Cruger played his accordion.

  Months pass, and Corrina Cruger finally becomes pregnant for the 
  first time since her unfortunate miscarriage a few years before. 
  Jack Cruger continues to play his accordion, knowing that the 
  Company's "health plan" will also cover his new child. Tony, 
  occasionally accompanied by a beautiful young woman named SKY, 
  sometimes visits with Cruger.

  Tony tells Cruger that many of the company's executive positions 
  are still held by aliens, most from the planet named Tvonen. God 
  -- well, the Chairman -- is a Tvonen. The Tvonen evolved in a 
  fashion similar to humans, right down to their ancient tale of 
  creation. The catch is that the Tvonen creation story is 
  completely true. Tvonens were created as immortal, androgynous 
  beings -- but then two of them fell from grace, and became 
  gendered, mortal creatures. To this day, Tvonens must undergo a 
  change and lose their immortality if they wish to gain a gender.

  The Tvonens are now very advanced --<2D>but their technology is 
  completely analog-based, with no digital electronics at all. 
  Earth, with its digital technology, is quickly becoming more 
  technologically adept than the Tvonens. The Tvonens believe that 
  human thought, with its pursuit of the Grand Unified Theory --<2D>a 
  theory that could describe every detail of the functioning of 
  the universe --<2D>would give the Company a giant edge in its 
  ability to guide the universe.

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

  On his way to Cruger's house on a Saturday morning, Tony hears 
  the slightest rustle of a sound --<2D>and turns to see something 
  large, colorful, and horrible. It is on him in an instant, 
  throwing him hard onto the concrete steps. By the time Cruger 
  reaches the door, Tony lays face down, a puddle of blood forming 
  around his limp blonde hair.

  Cruger reaches down to feel for a pulse, but he knows the answer 
  before he even begins to bend over. The realization of Tony's 
  death hits him; he exhales loudly, "No... my God," and then 
  sinks to his knees, not knowing what to do.

  Cruger then sees the black digital sports watch on Tony's wrist, 
  chirping its annoying repetitious chirp over and over.

  Leon Harris sticks his head out of his front door, sees Cruger 
  doubled over in front of his young friend, who lays in an 
  entirely unnatural position, limp-armed and limp-legged. Harris 
  runs across his lawn to Cruger's front step. He bends down and 
  checks both Tony's carotid and radials arteries for a pulse, but 
  finds none.

  Cruger reaches down and unstraps the noisy watch from Tony's 
  lifeless wrist. Using the heel of his shoe, Cruger stomps down 
  on the fancy blue plastic watch a few times before it is 
  silenced. He wants to see a spray of springs and clamps and 
  smoke pouting out like in the cartoons, but the watch only lays 
  there, in the stark sunlight, like Tony: beaten, broken, and 
  wasted.


  Chapter 15
------------

  Cruger was in shock, and Harris recognized it quickly.

  "Let's go inside and call the police," he said. Harris gently 
  grabbed Cruger by the arm and led him into the house. Harris 
  spotted a phone on the coffee table near the couch, and sat 
  Cruger down next to it.

  "Are you going to be all right?" he asked Cruger.

  Cruger didn't answer. He was bent over, holding his forehead 
  with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other.

  "Come on, man," Harris said, checking his watch. "I'm supposed 
  to be playing tennis in fifteen minutes, and instead I'm finding 
  a dead body. What the hell happened?"

  "They got him," Cruger croaked.

  Before Harris could even begin to dial 911, Cruger leaped up 
  from the couch and bolted for the door. Harris dropped the phone 
  and ran after him with reflexes he had worked years to 
  condition. For all Harris knew, his mousy neighbor with the rock 
  accordion habit could be the killer.

  When Harris got to the door, Cruger was down the steps and 
  almost on the lawn, shouting the name "Tony" hysterically. 
  Readying his sprint, Harris took a long stride on the entryway 
  -- and realized that the body was gone.

  "Shit," Harris mumbled, and bolted across the lawn, gaining 
  ground on the smaller man with every step. As Cruger neared 
  Harris' own lawn, Harris decided to dive for him.

  And that was when it happened. Harris reached Cruger, grabbed 
  his legs, and tripped him. The accordionist fell over, his head 
  ready to crash onto the concrete strip that divided the two 
  lawns. And then, without explanation, both men were _pulled_ ten 
  feet, onto the next lawn. Cruger's head landed softly, as if 
  there had been a pillow there.

  "What the hell?" Harris said.

  "Let go!" Cruger shouted. "I've got to find him. They've taken 
  Tony!"

  "Calm down, man," Harris said. "Who are they? Where did they 
  take him?"

  "Them! The other company! The ones that killed him!"

  Cruger's shouts aroused the curiosity of some of their 
  neighbors. Harris could see Mrs. Conworth from across the street 
  peering at them through her kitchen window.

  "Come on," Harris said. "You're attracting attention. Let's go 
  back inside."

  Cruger swallowed, took a look around, and nodded.

  Both of them stopped when they reached the entryway. Only the 
  small, scuffed black digital watch lay on the front steps, still 
  keeping time, advancing each hundredth and tenth of a second 
  with complete accuracy.

  Cruger picked up the watch. Somehow it was comforting to know 
  that he could no longer see Tony's beaten body. No blood, no 
  sickening brutalization of body and limbs. This is good, he 
  thought, Tony's gone. Is this good? For an instant he thought he 
  might understand what had happened, but the thought escaped his 
  mind as quickly as it had entered.

  Harris pushed Cruger inside and closed the door behind them.

  "What the hell is going on?" he asked.

  Cruger just shook his head. A strange twisted expression formed 
  on his lips. "You think I know?" Cruger shook his head in 
  wonder.

  "Look," Harris exhaled quickly, "I saw a dead guy out there, and 
  now he's gone. I've seen you having strange meetings with 
  strange people and playing that damned instrument of yours at 
  all hours of the night. And strangest of all, I just got pulled 
  halfway across my lawn by thin air. Something's wrong here, and 
  I'm going to have to find out what it is. I'm involved now, 
  whether I like it or not."

  Cruger felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life. His 
  one connection to what was important and exciting was now dead, 
  or least, inexplicably gone. His neighbor's response just 
  highlighted the fact that the strange unexplainable aspects of 
  Cruger's own life were not entirely private -- they had leaked 
  into the lives of others And no good explanation existed.

  Cruger remained silent.

  "Do you want to explain this to the police or to me?" Harris 
  demanded. He didn't like having to bully Cruger -- the poor guy 
  looked upset enough already.

  "And why do you want to have this all explained to you?" Cruger 
  had found his voice again and it was tremulous, lacking 
  resonance.

  "I want to understand what's going on. There must be some 
  logical explanation," Harris said.

  The words 'logical explanation' stuck with Cruger, playing an 
  obscene parody in his mind. The fact that this guy was thinking 
  of anything to do with logic nearly made Cruger laugh out loud. 
  At that moment Cruger wished he had never heard of Tony, of 
  Tvonens and Chysa, or of spinning. All that had been important 
  and joyful now seemed to be meaningless and chafing. With Tony 
  had come the confidence in The Company, the ties to other worlds 
  and better things and to progress itself. Without Tony ... what 
  was there?

  Cruger looked at Harris. He wants in. Maybe this guy should get 
  what he deserves. The line 'Be careful of what you ask for -- 
  you may get it' played in Cruger's mind.

  "OK," said Cruger. "I can show you something that will explain 
  everything. It's in Tony's" -- his throat stuck -- "office. Can 
  you drive? I don't think I could handle it right now."

  "Sure," Harris said.

  "The whole thing's on a computer," Cruger said as they got into 
  his car. "Can you work one?"

  "Neighbor," Harris chuckled, "that's what I _do_ for a living."


  Chapter 16
------------

    Humanity i love you because you are perpetually
    putting the secret of life in your pants and
    forgetting it's there and sitting down
    on it
                              -- e. e. cummings

  "I'm still not sure this is going to work," Cruger said. He was 
  still wary of the deception they planned. Harris seemed calm, 
  not worried at all. He had handled Tony's computer the same way, 
  like a pro. And he knew the computer system inside-out -- it was 
  as if some spinner, somewhere, had planned to provide Cruger 
  with a computer programmer. Judging from Harris' reaction to 
  what he found on the computer, he could continue with Tony's 
  work on the unified theorem. Maybe more than continue it, Cruger 
  thought. Maybe make Tony's work mean something.

  "What are they going to do if they don't like our story? Take 
  away our birthday?" Harris pulled the car around the corner and 
  merged neatly into traffic. "We've got nothing to worry about," 
  Harris said.

  "Are you kidding? First thing they can do is call the cops. Then 
  we have lots of questions to answer. No thanks."

  "Let me review our position on this," Harris said. "We don't 
  have anything to cover up because there is no body, no evidence, 
  no crime reported as far as we can tell, and nothing to guide us 
  except that we know what we saw. As far as the authorities go, 
  we're not involved in a murder or any other type of crime."

  Cruger stared out the car window. "We know that we saw a murder 
  -- or the results of a murder. That's good enough for me."

  "Well," said Harris, "you have to protect your own biscuits 
  because no one else is going to. The police aren't going to 
  believe any of your story without proof ... evidence. They would 
  laugh at this whole thing -- possibly put you in the nut house."

  Cruger shrugged. The only crime that existed so far seemed to be 
  in the minds of two witnesses: he and Harris. Since the incident 
  Cruger had wondered if Tony's death was meant as a threat -- a 
  threat to him. Could this have been some kind of warning? Was 
  someone trying to manipulate him?

  Or the whole thing could easily have been an optical illusion. 
  The people -- or whatevers -- that they were dealing with could 
  be capable of many types of trickery. Cruger hoped that it was 
  in fact a threat or a brutal hoax. He would enjoy seeing Tony 
  sitting at school in class as if nothing had happened, oblivious 
  to his "death" that they had witnessed.

  Harris pulled in to Tony's high school and parked near the main 
  entrance. Then they found the Principal's office and walked in 
  as if the world revolved around their every action. They had 
  decided that to act like detectives meant to act like 
  aggressive, cocky, arrogant bastards. Cruger wished he had a 
  toothpick to let hang out of his mouth. Or maybe a smelly cigar. 
  That was the image on detective shows, and that was the image 
  the Principal and others would expect.

  In the Principal's outer office was the small overflowing desk 
  of the Principal's assistant. Behind the desk was a portable 
  partition with the nameplate "Vernal Buckney, Principal."

  The kids must get untold mileage out of the name Vernal, Cruger 
  thought. Good old Vernal must have been born to be a Principal. 
  Most likely, plenty a spitball had Vernal's name on it.

  The kids at this school would enjoy sitting outside the 
  Principal's office, too -- his assistant, Shirley Randolph 
  according to her nameplate, was a tall, shapely young lady. Her 
  makeup was just right, expertly applied, highlighting her high 
  cheekbones and creamy, tan complexion. Cruger noticed that her 
  skirt was short, revealing a long pair of very tan legs. In the 
  corner of his eye, he saw Harris noticed that too.

  Harris spoke first, just like they had rehearsed it. Being a big 
  tall black guy, they figured Harris would be rather 
  intimidating. Cruger, on the other hand, only looked threatening 
  if you thought he might try to sell you life insurance.

  "Hello, Ms. Randolph," Harris began. "I'm Mr. Harris, and this 
  is Mr. Cruger. We're investigating a child custody case and we 
  may need the assistance of Mr. Buckney."

  Harris managed to say it all without even blinking. Cruger was 
  impressed -- but he was more impressed that she didn't sound an 
  alarm, scream for help, or laugh. So far so good.

  "Hello," she said. "I take it that you gentlemen don't have an 
  appointment then?"

  Shirley Randolph's eyes twinkled and she smiled easily at 
  Harris. Harris smiled back, seemingly concentrating on the 
  underlying extent of Ms. Shirley Randolph's grade-A tan.

  So Cruger spoke. "We really don't need too much time. We only 
  have a few questions." Just then Harris noticed that Vernal was 
  in his office. Vernal's bald head bobbed up above the partition 
  and then down again.

  Vernal Buckney, M.A. in Education was, as usual, busy in his 
  office. His job required hard work, the skills of a serious 
  educator and a trained politician, plus the ability to win the 
  support and encouragement of parents, teachers, as well as the 
  educational board and superintendents. On top of that, the job 
  of Principal demanded a solid technical foundation that could 
  facilitate the development of the most effective teaching 
  methodologies, as well as the precise application of these 
  techniques. For this reason, Vernal spent most of his time in 
  his office with his golf putter in hand, putting into his 
  electric, auto-return golf cup. Stress reduction was top 
  priority for Vernal.

  "I'll bring you in," the secretary said. "He has no appointments 
  now."

  "Thank you very much, Ms. Randolph."

  She smiled back at Harris. "Shirley," she said. It was the most 
  inviting 'Shirley' that Cruger had ever heard. Chances were that 
  it wasn't the most inviting one Harris had heard.

  Shirley knocked on the Principal's flimsy excuse for an office 
  door and introduced the two of them in the most professional of 
  manners.

  When Cruger and Harris stepped into Vernal's office, they saw 
  the shocking decor. The floor was covered with old educational 
  journals, magazines, and various trinkets such as small wooden 
  animals. A few golf clubs lay against the file cabinet, and the 
  floor was littered with golf balls, pencils, and pens.

  "Nice to meet you gentlemen," Vernal said. He had a high- 
  pitched, wheezy, bureaucrat's voice that sounded like a band saw 
  on wet wood. His eyes darted around like a monkey's. Nothing 
  made him more nervous than meeting men from the Superintendent's 
  office. She had said that's where they were from, hadn't she?

  "We just have a few simple questions, Mr. Buckney," Harris said, 
  sticking to the plan nicely.

  "Now, Ms. Randolph did say you were from the Superintendent's 
  office, didn't she?"

  "Oh, not at all. We're investigators, working on a child custody 
  case." Harris said it fast and gruff, as if meager child custody 
  cases were only what the two did between busting crack houses 
  and handcuffing Uzi-toting Colombians.

  Vernal was visibly relieved. His eyes slowed their wild pace and 
  focused on Harris. "Yes, I see. Well, how can I help?"

  "We need information on two of your students. I must tell you, 
  Mr. Buckney, that all of this must be kept completely 
  confidential. In fact, I must request that only you and Ms. 
  Randolph know of our visit. You are the only two that we can 
  trust," Harris said. "We can trust you, can't we?"

  Cruger looked as tough as possible and nodded his head. He 
  wished he had that cigar to grind into the carpet -- it would 
  match the decor.

  "Certainly you can trust us to keep it quiet," Vernal said. His 
  cheeks had become a little flushed.

  "First of all, a student named Tony Steffen. Senior class. We 
  need his whole file," Harris said.

  Cruger chimed in. "And a female senior named Sky. No known last 
  name." Cruger emulated the old Dragnet rerun tone of voice: just 
  the facts, Vernal.

  "Okay, I can do that. I need Ms. Randolph to check the files for 
  me."

  Vernal tried to ask Shirley to get the files, but he told her to 
  look up a boy named Tony Griffin and a girl named Sigh. Cruger 
  corrected him on each count.

  When Shirley was gone, Vernal scratched his hairless head and 
  asked, "Are you sure you guys aren't from the School Board?"

  "No, not there, not the PTA, the teacher's union or the Girl 
  Scouts either. How many students in the senior class here?" 
  Harris said, changing the subject and putting Vernal on the 
  defensive, a posture he was born for.

  "We have 400 this year. The number's been dropping each year 
  since five years ago, when we peaked with 600." Vernal was still 
  nervous, his eyes moving quickly from Cruger to Harris to the 
  cluttered mess on his office floor. He preferred to look at the 
  floor.

  "Yeah, the post baby-boomer years are here," Cruger said. "Do 
  you know what percentage of the kids go to college?"

  "We have a very high college after graduation rate here. Last 
  year 35 percent went straight to a four-year college or 
  university, 40 percent to a Junior college or trade school, and 
  the rest are unaccounted for, probably employed, skilled labor 
  or what-not."

  "Not bad."

  Shirley came back into the office. She carried a thin manila 
  folder in the crook of her right arm; she held it like a 
  football. Harris took the folder from her and there was a mutual 
  flash of white teeth.

  "No file on Tony Steffen," Shirley said, still smiling. "Must 
  not be a student here."

  "Oh yes, he is," Harris said.

  "No, I'm afraid your information is incorrect," she said. "He 
  appears in none of the records. Nobody by that name has ever 
  been a student here."

  Cruger and Harris exchanged a look but no words. At least they 
  had the information on Sky -- they could get the rest later.

  They said their thank-yous and good-byes and headed out toward 
  building L, room 116, where Sky's next class would begin in 
  fifteen minutes.

  "I think Shirley had a soft spot in her heart for you," Cruger 
  said, as they walked down the hard red-top hall.

  "She had some great soft spots, all in the right places; very 
  nice, soft and smooth, like a seal -- a foxy seal." Harris said 
  it straight and sounded detached, like he was a judge in a 
  bikini contest.

  "But she screwed us on the Tony Steffen info."

  "Mmm," Harris commented. "Yeah. Screwed."

  Straight faced. Cruger loved the way Harris could say all that 
  stuff straight-faced.

  They cut across the quad to find the L building. Cruger spotted 
  Sky at a picnic table. She was surrounded by classmates, but 
  Cruger was still able to distinguish her from a distance. As he 
  and Harris got closer, Cruger almost began to doubt if it was 
  Sky. She seemed different, wearing calf-high boots, a leather 
  skirt, and a black t- shirt with torn sleeves.

  One of Cruger's buddies from high school, Steve Spitelli, had 
  developed a theory that the world really only contained fifteen 
  types of people. Some people were tall and thin, some were pudgy 
  with wide faces, and so on. All people fell into the category of 
  models of one of the fifteen different types. These types became 
  known as Spitelli- types. Cary Grant and Rock Hudson were the 
  same Spitelli-type. Judy Garland and Cher were different 
  Spitelli-types. Spitelli's theory more or less took the cake for 
  oversimplification. Cruger had not thought about Spitelli-types 
  for more than ten years -- until this moment.

  Sky sat on a picnic table next to a tall blond guy that was 
  Tony's Spitelli-type -- an exact image, but not quite. The eyes 
  were a little too far apart; the eyebrows arched up on the sides 
  in a perpetually hostile look. Cruger tensed as they approached 
  the table, knowing that the sick feeling that the young man's 
  looks stirred within him would only worsen as they got closer. 
  He felt like a beetle in an ant colony.

  "Hello, Sky," Cruger said.

  The girl gave them both a questioning look. "Yeah, that's me." 
  She sounded defensive and her face registered a look void of 
  recognition.

  "You don't remember meeting me before?" Cruger asked, trying 
  hard to avoid sounding like an insulted distant relative.

  "No, mister, I'm afraid I don't."

  The blond kid next to Sky was monitoring the whole conversation 
  like a radar operator. He slid over and put his arm around Sky.

  "What do you guys want?" he said.

  Harris, putting his leg up on the table bench, said "We want to 
  ask you some questions about Tony Steffen."

  There was a pause. Sky looked at the guy and he looked back. 
  They independently shrugged: Sky's shrug was more convincing.

  "I don't know any Tony Steffen," the blond kid said. The kid had 
  an attitude of the first degree. He probably practiced that 
  sneer at home, in front of the bathroom mirror. It was an 
  exceptionally well- rehearsed sneer.

  "Yeah," said Sky, "he doesn't go to this school anyway -- if he 
  did, we'd know him."

  Harris smiled a pathetic grin and shook his head. Cruger just 
  let the response seep in. These kids were either very good 
  actors, or ...

  "And your name is?" Cruger asked the blond kid.

  "What's it to you?" His lip curled. The kid enjoyed his 
  rebellious act.

  "Rick," Cruger said. The boyfriend or ex-boyfriend that Tony had 
  mentioned.

  His eyes became dark pools of surprised hatred. His facade was 
  replaced by a look of disdain mixed with pomposity. He knows, 
  thought Cruger, he knows about Tony.

  "Yeah, so you know who I am? Are you guys cops or something? 
  Ooh, tough guys gonna come around and hassle high school 
  students?" Rick laughed and squeezed Sky around the shoulder. 
  She looked uneasy and didn't laugh.

  "Sky, you really have never heard of Tony Steffen?" Harris 
  asked.

  Sky shrugged and shook her head. Cruger, watching intently, saw 
  that she was the same Sky that he had met before. She had none 
  of the "attitude" that Rick had. To Cruger, she was just keeping 
  poorer company these days. She was a young girl struggling to 
  develop the maturity to handle what life threw at her. Cruger 
  figured she was probably telling the truth. He motioned to 
  Harris and turned to go. In a moment, Harris followed.

  The drive home was strained silence. Both men were afraid to 
  come to conclusions or to let their imaginations run wild since 
  reality seemed wild enough.

  "So, it looks like Tony Steffen never went to school -- where do 
  you think he is?" Harris said.

  "I hate to harp on the obvious," Cruger said, "but we saw him 
  disappear before our eyes, remember?"

  Harris sucked in his breath. "And according to what we just 
  heard and saw, Tony never existed. He's not only dead, but 
  erased from the memories of everybody -- except for us."

  "So it seems," Cruger said. "Deleted, that's what he is. It's 
  like he never lived and the world we currently live in is one 
  that never knew Tony Steffen. But for some reason we know that 
  it's not true. We remember seeing Tony, we remember what he did 
  and who he knew. I remember every interaction I had with Tony; 
  the world we live in, right here and right now has Tony's 
  imprints on it because I remember what Tony did and said. What's 
  confusing is that other people don't know or remember. The 
  school, Sky, and everything seem to indicate that they are 
  operating in a parallel plane, a reality that thinks it never 
  knew Tony Steffen."

  Cruger stopped and sat in silence, staring out the car window, 
  dreamily exploring the evidence and the possible conclusions. He 
  looked at the endless succession of speed-blurred lawns and 
  sidewalks they passed.

  "Sounds to me like a mistake," Harris said, his jaw tensed in 
  determination. "Maybe we should have no memory of Tony. Once he 
  disappeared, he was erased from existence. We probably weren't 
  meant to retain his memory."

  Cruger shook his head. "More likely that we were meant to 
  remember for some reason. Either that, or you and I are 
  operating in our own little parallel plane of the Universe. My 
  wife tells me I'm in my own little world all the time."

  "And who would be motivated to get rid of Tony but allow us to 
  remember? I know that the Other Company would like Tony out of 
  the picture, but why wouldn't they want us gone, too?"

  "That insurance policy of mine, the one that pushed us across 
  the lawn," Cruger said. "I'm betting that Tony had one, just 
  like me. And he told me that it was possible to kill people with 
  insurance policies. But I bet it's not easy, and it's probably 
  even harder to erase their existence wholesale. They probably 
  couldn't have killed both of us, and figured that I'd be lost 
  without him."

  "So they didn't kill you this time. There's always next time. 
  We'd better watch our backs."

  "Yeah. Yeah, you're right."

  Everything was moving so fast that Cruger just wanted to 
  withdraw, to take time to let this simmer and steam and cook a 
  little until it made sense -- if it ever could. Times like these 
  you either get philosophical or go crazy.

  "Is it better to have lived and then died than to have lived and 
  then been erased -- like never living at all?" Cruger said.

  "This is one of those 'If the tree falls in the woods and there 
  is no one around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?'-type 
  questions," Harris said, trying not to sound cynical but 
  failing.

  "It's almost that exact question except it is more like: 'if 
  nobody remembers the sound that it did make -- that lots of 
  people did hear -- when it fell, did it ever make a sound'?" 
  Cruger said. "Although this it is not the same issue. If you 
  live and then become erased, like Tony, you actually did have a 
  life and have an impact, at least on some level in some 
  Universe. That is definitely different than never having lived."

  "What if that point in the time/space continuum doesn't exist 
  any longer? What if the erasure was clean and thorough?" Harris 
  said.

  Harris was able to pierce the heart of an issue with a needle, 
  draining the romance out and filling in with logic. What an 
  engineer.

  Chapter 17
------------

  The telephone rang, and Cruger picked it up. Tony's voice was 
  strange and faint -- he wheezed over the cracking phone line. 
  Cruger grabbed the phone tighter and pressed it hard against his 
  ear, desperately trying to hear Tony's faint voice.

  "Far away," Tony said weakly.

  "What."

  "Far away, cold, very cold, very far..."

  Cruger screamed, "What, Tony, what?!"

  Cruger strained to hear Tony again, but the harder he tried, the 
  less he could hear.

  Two hands were on his shoulders and Corrina's warm skin pressed 
  against his tight neck. His ear hurt. Cold sweat skated across 
  his wrinkled brow.

  "What were you dreaming, honey?" she asked.

  "Oh," Cruger said, "nothing, something weird, I can't really 
  remember."

  He was lying. She wouldn't understand.

  "Poor baby, you were screaming."

  "Well, I'm okay now. Thanks." But he wasn't really okay. He 
  could feel his hands shaking, feeling weak and insubstantial 
  under the thick comforter.

  They put their heads back down and settled into seemingly 
  comfortable positions. Cruger listened to Corrina's soft, steady 
  breathing break across the cold and lonely darkness of the 
  bedroom. He continued to listen to the steady silence.

  A while later he heard it again.

  "Far away, cold, help me ... ," Tony said. His voice was 
  stronger but tremulous as if he were shaking, his teeth 
  chattering.

  And just then Cruger heard the beeping, chirping sound of his 
  watch alarm. Tony's distant voice dissolved into the stark 
  morning light. Cruger was awake in a fraction of a second, 
  reaching over to turn off the alarm.

  Chirp... chirp... chirp. He grabbed the watch and quickly 
  depressed the tiny plastic button, turning off the alarm.

  Now he was more awake than ever.


  "I never could trust them."

  "You mean your parents?" Dr. Frederick said.

  "Well, sure, I guess that's what I mean."

  "You just said you 'guess' you mean your parents." Dr. 
  Frederick, against his will, was getting a little frustrated 
  again. "Does that mean it was your parents?"

  "Yes, yes."

  She frequently vacillated between self-assured and reticent. 
  Often she acted as if no one, including Dr. Frederick, could 
  possibly understand what she meant. He needed to build a 
  foundation of trust before he would really be able to draw it 
  all out of her. Trust was the key.

  "The worst part is, I don't know if I could really trust them," 
  she said.

  She gave him a sly, knowing grin. Being a man of science -- a 
  man of medicine, by God -- he knew that her coincidental 
  reference to the word trust must be just that: a coincidence.

  What bothered him was that she was so damned attractive. Made it 
  tough for him to be objective, and to keep his mind on his work. 
  He was glad, very glad, that he was a medical doctor as well as 
  a psychotherapist. His strong academic background enabled him to 
  deal with these situations in a professional manner.

  God, she's got great legs, he thought.

  "Your time's about up," he said.


  Chapter 18
------------

  It was Harris's thirtieth birthday. Cruger had celebrated his 
  thirtieth a year ago, and had realized the potentially 
  frightening road of a new decade stretched before him. Thirty, 
  thought Cruger, an age of thinning hair, a thinning list of 
  single friends, and thinning muscle fibers. Either that or a 
  decade of great sex -- what the hell, may as well think 
  positive.

  Cruger knocked at Harris's door. He had surprised Harris by 
  asking to join him on his morning run. Harris knew he, the poor 
  flabby guy from next door, wouldn't be able to last too long or 
  hack the normal pace, but like any good fitness freak, he had 
  appreciated that Cruger was beginning to take an interest in 
  getting in shape. Cruger wondered: would Harris be one of those 
  guys who sweeps the fear of turning thirty under the rug like so 
  much sawdust, or would he stagger under the burden of advancing 
  years?

  Harris got the door.

  "Hey, old man," Cruger said.

  "I'm not bad for an old man, though. Run five miles a day, 
  strong as a Tibetan Yak."

  "An Afghan Yak," Cruger said.

  "Say what?"

  "Afghanistan. That would be closer to your peoples, your 
  homeland."

  "Has anyone told you," said Harris, "that for an accordion 
  player you have the personality of an accountant?"

  "No, but thank you. I'd prefer being known for a mastery of 
  amortization tables than for playing a mean 'Hava Nagila' on the 
  Bar Mitzvah circuit."

  "How about 'Moonlight Serenade' verses depreciation tables?"

  Cruger relinquished a half smile. "Now that's a tough call."

  They began jogging slowly down Henderson Street.

  "I usually start out really slow to warm-up."

  "No argument here," Cruger said.

  "If you get tired or need to go slower, just let me know. It 
  takes time to build-up to longer distances and faster speed."

  Cruger's strides were much shorter than Harris's. His feet moved 
  in a fast shuffle to keep up with the easy loose stride that 
  Harris established.

  Cruger hadn't run much since high school, right after his 
  physical education class administered the President's National 
  Fitness Test. It was the worst humiliation of Cruger's life, the 
  "six-minute test." All the boys in class were required to run 
  around the track as fast as they could for six minutes. The 
  number of laps you completed in the six minutes time indicated 
  your fitness level. The fast boys were able to do well over four 
  laps -- more than a mile in six minutes. The vast majority did 
  between three and three-and-a- half laps. Cruger, chest heaving 
  and stomach clamped into a tight knot of muscle spasms, only 
  finished two and one-quarter laps. The single student who did 
  worse than Cruger was Roger Sabutsky, the 200- pound class 
  flab-ball. Roger clocked in with less than two laps.

  The next week, Cruger began to run every day after school. He 
  couldn't live with the fact that he was the worst runner (except 
  for Roger) in the entire class. Cruger yearned to be an average 
  runner -- that would be nice.

  The running practice worked. Within a couple months he could run 
  an eight-minute mile; this was even slightly better than average 
  for the class. Unfortunately, his running dropped off a year 
  later, since the need for avoidance of near-fatal embarrassment 
  had ceased to exist.

  Cruger now remembered the torture of running when out of shape. 
  They had run for about 8 minutes, 23 seconds, and 35 hundredths, 
  according to Harris's watch.

  "I really can't believe what we're involved with," Cruger said. 
  "especially when we're running down the street here, leading 
  what seems to be otherwise normal lives. This business of the 
  Other Company and everything is really Kafkaesque," Cruger said, 
  between gulps of air.

  "Huh? Kafkaesque?"

  "You don't read Kafka, I take it. What do you engineers read 
  anyway?"

  "We read computer magazines with centerfold pictures of graphics 
  accelerator cards. And I hate it when the staple covers up the 
  video ram."

  "How can a guy with big muscles like yours be such a nerd? 
  Amazing," Cruger said. Talking while running was starting to get 
  more than difficult.

  "All this stuff happening is like a dream I keep having," said 
  Harris.

  Cruger despised him for being able to run and talk with such 
  ease.

  "In the dream," Harris continued, "everything is going bad for 
  me. My car expires, the furnace explodes. The next day, I get a 
  giant pimple on my nose and my shower faucet starts leaking. My 
  life is falling apart. I'm being picked on. I finally go to 
  church and get down on my knees at the alter and pray and pray.

  "All of a sudden, the ceiling opens up and the clouds part. A 
  ray of light shines down and a strong, deep, resonant, booming 
  voice says 'YOU JUST PISS ME OFF.' "

  Harris laughed and Cruger made a slightly higher pitched 
  wheezing noise than the wheezing noise he had been making. The 
  guy can run, talk and tell jokes too, Cruger thought. I hate 
  him.

  "Hey, I'm going to walk for a while, why don't you meet me back 
  on Franklin street," Cruger said.

  Keeping the air moving wasn't easy for Cruger; his breaths were 
  desperate gulps of air followed by involuntary exhalations. His 
  legs were beginning to shake uncontrollably.

  "OK, meet you going that way in about fifteen minutes."

  Harris picked up his pace as Cruger slowed to a walk.

  Cruger moved his legs in slow, deliberate strides. He didn't 
  need to be a great runner, just a consistent one. If he kept 
  this up every day after a while he would be in pretty decent 
  shape. Slow and steady, he thought. His arms swung at his sides 
  and his legs kicked forward in long even walking strides. He 
  felt strong; he felt invigorated; he felt nauseous.

  Cruger walked half across the nearest lawn, and, bending over 
  the small shrubs, he spat up; it wasn't something you'd see in 
  _Runner's World Illustrated_.

  Soon he returned to the sidewalk and started walking again. Slow 
  and steady. Not bad for a first outing.

  A few minutes later Harris came running -- it looked like 
  sprinting to Cruger -- around the corner, his legs lifting high 
  as his thighs bulged out underneath his running shorts.

  "OK, I've done my five miles," Harris said, barely short of 
  breath. "Let's walk out the rest."

  They were turning the corner on Blaney street when they saw two 
  men in sports jackets and sunglasses.

  "Those guys look like Eagle Scouts to you, Jack?" Harris asked.

  "Not unless they earned special merit badges in knee-breaking 
  and mugging."

  "Get out your insurance policy, then."

  The two goons were already walking towards them. The big one 
  must have been a good six foot three, maybe 230 pounds. The 
  other guy was smaller but possibly even more trouble. He had a 
  bodybuilder's physique, complete with waspish waist and thick 
  trapezius muscles. They both looked like flesh-built tanks ready 
  to enter battle.

  "What to do, _kemo sabe_?" said Cruger, trying to stay cool and 
  failing.

  "Let me handle this," said Harris, a hint of false bravura in 
  his voice. "I have some modest experience in these matters."

  Cruger didn't doubt it. Damned good thing I'm not alone, he 
  thought. The smaller guy, who was pretty damn big, looked like a 
  composite of Pee-Wee Herman's face pasted on a muscular thug's 
  body. The juxtaposition of the innocent, almost feminine face on 
  the tough's body was more than frightening, it was nearly 
  sickening.

  The big guy looked like a refrigerator with veins. He also had a 
  big mouth.

  "Hi, gentlemen," he said. His tone was a malicious one, with a 
  sprinkle of sarcasm thrown in. "Just a little message for you 
  guys from Mr. N, our fearless leader."

  "And who might that be?" said Harris.

  "Just shut up and listen, dark meat. Your little amateur 
  investigation is over with, comprende?" It was not a question.

  "And if we decide to forget your helpful advice, assuming that 
  we eventually stop trembling?" said Harris.

  The Pee-Wee Herman thug moved toward them, shoulders raised, 
  fists in front of his face. A boxer. Not a good sign.

  Just as Harris was planning the trajectory of his first kick, 
  Cruger jumped forward and landed two quick left jabs into 
  Pee-Wee Herman's chin. Pee-Wee swung a hook at Cruger. Cruger 
  ducked and placed his knee in Pee Wee's groin.

  Refrigerator, from behind, got his hands around Cruger's neck. 
  Cruger flung his elbow backwards into Refrigerator 's kidney and 
  donkey-kicked him in the solar plexus.

  The flurry lasted four seconds. Pee Wee and Refrigerator were on 
  the ground, groaning. Harris, finding himself standing there, 
  jaw dropped, looking like a mannequin with arthritis, stepped 
  forward and placed his foot on Pee Wee's Adam's apple. Cruger 
  followed suit with Refrigerator.

  Cruger said, "Tell us, who is Mr. N, your 'fearless leader?'"

  Before a second passed Cruger's foot sunk down to the hard 
  asphalt. Harris's foot also clacked down -- Refrigerator and 
  Pee-Wee were gone, leaving behind only thin films of steam 
  rising into the cool air. Harris looked at Cruger and they said 
  nothing. Whoever they were pitted against wasn't playing fair: 
  this disappearing act was getting tiresome, Cruger thought. 
  Besides, who knows what tantalizing conversationalists the two 
  fine young gentlemen may have turned out to be? Their sunglasses 
  and sport jackets certainly had been attractive.

  Harris and Cruger hoped ideas would come to their stunned minds. 
  Harris scratched his head, perplexed with more than one issue: 
  he was 6-3, 210 pounds, could bench press 360 pounds, and had a 
  black belt in Karate. Cruger was a pudgy 5-10 couch potato.

  "You really handled those guys, I mean before they poofed away. 
  Shit, I don't want to run into you in a dark alley," Harris 
  said.

  "I don't know how..."

  "No, I mean you were _awesome_." Harris had seen his fourth- 
  level masters of the martial arts at work, albeit in a 
  tournament setting, but, he had never seen anything like this.

  "Listen to me," Cruger said in a high wheezy voice. "That wasn't 
  me. I can't do that. I don't know how it happened but I've never 
  done anything like that before in my life."

  "The insurance policy?"

  "Must be," Cruger said.

  "Hell, all those years of Karate and pumping iron for nothing," 
  said Harris. Cruger squeezed his right arm as if to check if he 
  was dreaming. They continued to walk, Cruger with a special 
  bounce in his step, feeling like a younger, stronger man.

  "Why?" Harris asked. "Why not just blow us away? Erase us, 
  explode the planet, whatever. They probably are capable of all 
  these things -- and I'm afraid to think what else."

  Cruger stared at his toes -- his best thinking posture. A smile 
  began to creep over his recently gloomy face. His eyebrows 
  lowered while his eyes widened and brightened.

  "A cat and mouse game," he said.

  Harris stroke his mustache. "Who's the cat and who's the mouse 
  -- or need I ask?"

  "Both have whiskers -- tell me, do you think we have furry tails 
  or prehensile ones?" Cruger said.

  "You've always seemed to be a prehensile kind of guy to me," 
  Harris said.

  They walked on with silly grins on their faces. The 
  inappropriately hot November sun beat on the cracked sidewalk. 
  Cruger enjoyed the heat against the top of his head. He reached 
  up to feel whether his skin had reached frying pan temperature. 
  Do mice go bald, he wondered. Regardless, if one is to be a 
  little rodent, one may as well enjoy it.


  ...She looked especially good today, and acted especially 
  jocular.

  "I'll tell you doctor, I've been feeling pretty good."

  "I'm glad."

  "What I need to talk about today is sex."

  Goddamn her if she didn't wink at him when she said that. A wink 
  so fast it could only be felt, not seen. He felt uncomfortable 
  and self-conscious again. Only she could make him feel this way.

  "When I have sex," she continued, "I'm afraid to let go, you 
  know what I mean?"

  He cleared his throat.

  "When you say 'let go'," he said, "what exactly do you mean?"

  "Well," she began, "I'm talking about orgasms. I mean, I can see 
  myself just ripping loose like a wild animal, screaming and 
  everything, but I'm afraid."

  He crossed and uncrossed his legs.

  "I see."

  He made a note in his book: 'detachment, alienation.'

  She raised her arms up, pulling her hair up behind her head. She 
  exhaled deeply.

  She heard the familiar voices from her past. They sang out in a 
  mellifluous flood of improvised poetry. She loved the nostalgia 
  of those voices; but, the beauty of the voices and the 
  environment also ushered in the thoughts of the boredom, the 
  cold, and the staid heterogeneous groups. She was where she 
  belonged now -- let me stay, let me be one of them, she thought. 
  Why had they told her that she would be like an animal in a zoo 
  display? They told her she would never truly fit in, be counting 
  the days until return. Liars! She fit in better than humans 
  themselves; by God, she was seeing a shrink -- what could be 
  more California human than that?

  'I'll show them, I'll show them,' she whispered to herself in 
  the gentlest of her intense, breathy whispers.


  Chapter 19
------------

  He still heard the sound of the Corrina's shower water running.

  Cruger sat at the breakfast table, eating his cereal and staring 
  at the multicolored box. When he was finished reading the 
  ingredients, he read the nutritional information and then the 
  trademark registration. Some mornings he couldn't handle 
  newspapers, television, the radio, or conversation. Some 
  mornings only the mindless reading of a hyped-up cereal box 
  would do.

  He especially liked brands that made claims such as: 50 percent 
  more real bran, 25 percent fat free, or no cholesterol.

  And that's what was bothering him. The dishonesty factor 
  concerning his business with The Company.

  He had not been able to tell Corrina about his spinning, the 
  situation he had with Tony, or anything. Concealing such an 
  important part of his life was stressful. It was starting to 
  wear a hole in his self-respect.

  He reasoned that most of the shame, disgrace, and humiliation of 
  an extramarital affair was the sheer deception. If no deception 
  were involved, it would be called -- what's that term that was 
  big back in the seventies? -- an "open marriage." Wasn't he 
  guilty of a similarly large deception that involved an important 
  part of his life? He knew he wasn't guilty of the same 'crime' 
  that an affair was -- but he certainly felt guilty of something.

  He decided that he would tell her about the spinning, Tony, 
  Harris, the whole thing. If she didn't believe and chose to 
  laugh, or worse yet, thought he was insane, then so be it.

  Ten minutes later she came down, fully dressed, her hair wet.

  "I'll grab a quick breakfast -- we have any bran muffins left?" 
  she said.

  "Yeah, right in here. Two left."

  "Great. I'll just have some orange juice and then I'm out of 
  here."

  "Corrina, I need to talk..."

  "Oh yeah," she said, remembering something. "What's the name of 
  that tune-up place on Stevens Creek? I need to have my oil 
  changed, maybe on the way home."

  "It's APD Tune-up, near Woodhams," he said. "Now what I started 
  to..."

  "Hey, I'm low on cash, too, honey. Do you have any? Otherwise 
  I'll have to stop by the bank before lunch."

  "Yeah, sure." He fished down through his wallet and saw that he 
  could give her a ten without leaving himself too short for a 
  couple of days. He handed her the bill.

  "Thanks," she kissed him on the cheek. She started to leave.

  "Honey," he said, "I need to talk to you about something."

  "Well, can it wait 'til tonight? I'll be home by seven."

  "Okay. Have a good day." he said.

  "Bye."

  And she was out the door. Was it always like this in the 
  morning? She was gone in less than an instant.

  He still felt the burden: white lies layered to a certain depth 
  became a single darker lie. No untruth was entirely transparent, 
  not staining the tint of the layered truths. Nothing was so 
  perfectly innocent and necessary as to qualify as spotless, 
  indisputably necessary: the perfect white lie. These off-white 
  lies combined to form a darker one; the dark consequence was a 
  cloud over Cruger's conscience, deflecting the sanctimonious 
  beams of correctness cast down from his superego.

  If you believe Freud, he thought.

  He wondered if he would feel like telling her about everything 
  that night. Maybe the time had come and gone. He looked out the 
  kitchen window and watched the morning wind blow the fallen 
  leaves across the back patio. The leaves tumbled and interacted 
  randomly, forming small ephemeral patterns on the cement. His 
  body held him to that position, eyes transfixed on the landscape 
  that kept changing so swiftly, so subtly, and so constantly.


  "What do you think, Doctor Frederick," she asked. "Am I normal?"

  He smiled meaninglessly and looked her in the eye. He didn't 
  realize that it came off as an entirely condescending gesture.

  "In my field, normal is most certainly a relative term." He knew 
  she was starting to play with him, again. She was a manipulative 
  bitch deep down, the classic case of a borderline personality.

  "However we decide to classify people must be considered to be 
  quite arbitrary, you understand."

  "But, really doctor, you and I have become quite close, I 
  think." She leaned forward, pretending to adjust her shoe, 
  squeezing her breasts between her outstretched arms. She looked 
  him in the eyes as she did it, hoping he would get that look on 
  his face again. Sometimes he would even bite and chew his lower 
  lip. "Don't you think I come across as a pretty normal human, 
  or, I mean, person?"

  He wanted to kill her, that bitch. He wanted to throw her down 
  on the floor -- God, how could she have this stupid power over 
  him. He needed to be in control, not her... for God's sake, not 
  her.

  "Doctor," she said, her voice husky, her tone urgent. "I want to 
  throw you on the floor, Dr. Frederick. I'll tear your clothes 
  off you, I'll rub you and lick you all over, let me Doctor, let 
  me..."

  "Shut up!" he yelled. "Shut up... quiet! " He stood up, face 
  beet red, and pointed at her. "You bitch."

  "I know you want to kill me," she said. "Let me tell you 
  something. I kill -- I kill all the time. That's why I'm here. 
  How about them apples, mister doctor?" She smiled and walked 
  over to him, in his face now. "I kill and I seduce and I rape. 
  And it's your job to help me, you horny little toad. Help me, 
  make me a real woman."

  She sat back down and slumped back into the arms of the big 
  leather chair. Look at him sit there all scared, shocked. The 
  Doctor's thoughts were still mixed, crazy, hard to read. He was 
  a wimp, but she figured he was really like all the others. A 
  planet full of wimps with no mental toughness, no control, no 
  intuition.

  Barbarians.


  Chapter 20
------------

  About the size of a large pizza box, the clock on the wall swept 
  a steady course with its delicate hands. Framed in black 
  plastic, it hung on the stark white wall, looking like a large 
  dark insect. Other than the clock, the lack of decor in the 
  office was startling. The wooden desk and contoured chair barely 
  gave the room an occupied air. Cruger still thought of it as 
  Tony's office.

  "You been working too hard? You look pale -- I mean pale for a 
  black guy -- and tired. Where have you been?

  "Shut up."

  "Hey, don't get touchy..."

  "No," Harris explained, "I mean I've been shut up in this room. 
  Working 'round the clock. This computer system had a nasty virus 
  in it."

  Harris was sitting at the desk in front of the computer, 
  pointing at a display of numbers on the screen.

  Cruger knew almost nothing about computers. He feared it could 
  be a long evening of listening to Harris talk about things that 
  made Latin seem intuitive.

  "Ungh," Cruger said, grunting in a way that he felt was a fairly 
  intelligent sounding grunt; a grunt that could possibly signify 
  some level of appreciation for Harris' point.

  "I found it when I was looking through code resources -- 
  basically every program on the system -- and I found a few 
  suspicious ones."

  "Ungh," Cruger said. The first grunt had been better.

  Unfortunately Harris took it as an encouragement to go further 
  into detail. "I took a close look at each suspicious code 
  resource I found. Shit, it took a lot of time, but it was worth 
  it. I disassembled the code resources and found four of them 
  that were affecting the program Tony had set up."

  Cruger's eyes had glazed over for the part about "code 
  resources," but he understood the part about affecting Tony's 
  program.

  "What was it doing to Tony's program?" he asked.

  "A number of things. To begin with, it added a security layer 
  for a certain set of people. I haven't broken the code to enable 
  me to know exactly who these people are, but I think this 
  protection layer explains what we saw with the two toughs that 
  disappeared."

  "The code in there made them disappear, deleted them?"

  "Yes, it looks like a set of people -- I would assume that they 
  all are Other Company -- get automatically deleted if they get 
  close enough to discovery."

  "Isn't that stupid?" Cruger asked. "The minute they get deleted 
  you know for sure that they were Other Company. It serves as a 
  validation. And how would they know that they're 'close to being 
  discovered?' Isn't that a subjective thing?"

  Harris raised an eyebrow. "I commend you on your insight. Yes, 
  that and almost everything having to do with the algorithmic 
  solution to this Unified Theorem deals with the subjective. Life 
  isn't digital, it isn't black-and-white with no gray areas; the 
  model is a digital approximation that knows how to directly 
  interpret and derive what you call 'subjective'."

  Cruger frowned. "I lost you back around the word _the_, I 
  think."

  "The details are unimportant -- for you, anyway. What matters is 
  that I eventually completely understand these algorithms. And I 
  don't... at least, not yet."

  "Well, do you understand how someone is deleted?"

  "I've been looking at that. I could isolate that code because it 
  appeared in several of the code resources that have attached 
  themselves to Tony's work. In a nutshell, deleting is similar to 
  programming a black hole: it's just that the boundary conditions 
  are different."

  "Unh." Cruger thought the grunt would serve him well again.

  "Thing is," Harris went on, "we aren't connected to anything. We 
  aren't part of a network, as far as I can tell. We probably have 
  some kind of downlink to the company's home office -- uh, home 
  planet -- that I don't understand yet, but that's probably it. I 
  don't think we're connected to anywhere else on Earth Tony was a 
  one-man show."

  They sat in silence for a while, thinking about their task, 
  thinking about who else was out there, who their friends were, 
  who their enemies might be.

  "Tony left comments in his code, so the parts that he wrote are 
  well-described and easy to figure out. It's this other mess -- 
  the stuff written by someone else or a whole crew of other 
  people -- that's tough for me to figure out. And here's the 
  worst part," Harris continued, "some parts of this stuff are 
  incredibly difficult to decipher."

  Harris pulled a pad of paper over and began to scribble 
  something.

  "Here, this is the kind of stuff I find written across the 
  comment fields in some of the code I read."

  The sheet of paper had a set of symbols written across it; 
  symbols that didn't seem to be a part of any alphabet Cruger or 
  Harris could recognize:


  "Okay, in a way this makes sense," Cruger said. "We know that 
  the Tvonens started this process; we also know that the basic 
  technology was adopted from the theoretical physicists' work and 
  converted to an implementation by a group, probably a 
  combination of Tvonens and humans. So, at least one and maybe 
  more of the original people working on this were Tvonen."

  "Right, and I wish those damned aliens would have commented 
  their code in English, assuming they added comments at all. 
  Maybe that's the problem with their own technology they 
  developed at home. Remember, they're analog electronics all the 
  way and don't have a good feeling for digital logic design, 
  Boolean algebra, or computer algorithms."

  "That's true to the extent of what they knew before they came 
  here and decided Earth would become the technology leader. Then 
  they must have started learning -- at least the ones from the 
  Company that they had stationed over here -- to use our digital 
  technology," Cruger said.

  Harris yawned loudly and then sucked in a very deep breath. 
  "That's a really important point. I should be looking for some 
  computer code to be very slick and polished -- and that is 
  easily defined as Tony's work, especially since most of it is 
  commented. But the other stuff I should look for to be 
  amateurish, possibly error- prone and full of bugs. I hadn't 
  approached it that way before. I had been looking at everything 
  as if it were written precisely."

  "Nah, look for some sloppy alien work, that's my guess."

  Harris smiled and stretched, raising up his arms and twisting 
  his neck around until the small little cracking sounds subsided.

  "I've been here too long already," Harris said. "But I have to 
  admit, this is actually bordering on being fun. It's like 
  playing detective, albeit electronically, walking through a maze 
  of clues. It's time consuming but fun."

  "I'm glad you're doing it. In fact, that point scares me. What 
  are we going to do if -- excuse my distasteful scenario -- you 
  go away or take off or disappear or something like that? Right 
  now, you're the man running the show."

  "I've thought about that. Hopefully, soon, I will have made the 
  program fairly understandable and easier to use. Someone pretty 
  knowledgeable in programming could come in and pick up where I 
  let off. Why, you have any plans to get rid of me?"

  "Well, you know," Cruger said, "if you mouth off at me or 
  anything I may need to do something."

  "Nice guy. Thanks."

  "Any time. Now the other thing I've worried about is this: is it 
  too easy for someone we don't want to have involved to come in 
  and take over the whole mess?"

  "Good question," Harris said. "I've thought of that one myself 
  -- in depth. That scenario is what I am most afraid of, 
  actually. We know that this system, the way it stands, can be 
  infiltrated pretty easily, so I've taken a few precautions. Most 
  of them are a complete secret, but, a couple of them I will 
  share with you only, since you may be around if I happen to get 
  blown away or something.

  "As you may have noticed, I've added a scanner to this whole 
  setup," Harris said.

  Cruger pointed to the nearly flat, rectangular box next to the 
  computer.

  "Yes, that's it. It can be used for many things, but in the 
  context of what we are discussing now, I have programmed it to 
  scan my hand to allow entry into the source code files. I could 
  extend this to allow you and your hand entry also."

  "Pretty good idea, except the fact that the Chysa could probably 
  imitate the shape of your hand with no problem," Cruger said.

  "Assuming they knew ahead of time that they needed to have my 
  hand shape and texture and my password to go along with it. I 
  know it's possible, but the best we can do in these situations 
  is make it difficult to get in. Making it impossible to get in 
  probably is impossible."

  Cruger ran his hand across the top of the flat plastic box, 
  feeling the contours and minute corrugation on the slick plastic 
  box.

  Harris said, "I'm building in protection for us in addition to 
  the protection the Company gives us now. I figured that may be 
  one of the first things we need to finish this project."

  And Cruger thought, protection. Yeah, they were up against 
  something or someone's they couldn't touch, feel, or sense. It 
  didn't feel good but it didn't feel too bad either, because the 
  danger was everybody's danger; if they didn't succeed, no one 
  would. Made life exciting. Just right if your heart could take 
  it.


  His TV, with the volume up, blared away. Harris sat on his 
  couch, thinking. Even if there were a set of complete equations 
  that accurately described the beginning, end, and maintenance of 
  the universe (or universes, whatever that may mean), what did 
  this say about the time before the creation of the universe? 
  What existed then?

  Harris opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a beer. He 
  opened the utensil drawer, pulled out a can opener, and popped 
  the top off the Moosehead.

  If there were a supreme being, or beings, able to create worlds 
  and planets and species and everything, how did it or they come 
  about? The real problem with a quantitative definition of the 
  universe was the boundary conditions, or more aptly, the 
  inability of a human to conceive of something before the 
  creation of the universe or the inexplicable nothingness after 
  the end of the universe.

  Harris's nose itched and he scratched it with the bottle, 
  rubbing the edge of the label against his itch.

  How could there be nothing? What if this nothing were something? 
  What is outside the bounds of the universe right now? When the 
  universe expands, what is it expanding into?

  One easy explanation -- too easy -- might be that there always 
  was and always is something. If a Big Bang started the Universe 
  and a contraction of the everything into a tiny black hole ends 
  the universe, this could be a continuous cycle that keeps 
  reoccurring every, say, trillion years or so. The nothingness 
  outside of the current expanding bounds of the universe could be 
  time folded back on itself: the same universe at another time, 
  during contraction, in a state of nothingness.

  Harris walked over to the TV and flipped on a game show he had 
  seen before. The contestants spun a wheel and guessed letters 
  and giggled a lot. The host cracked inside jokes and the hostess 
  pointed to flashing boards and flashed her thighs and cleavage 
  at the camera.

  Harris sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table.

  A soft drink commercial came on. Quick one second-camera close- 
  ups flashed pictures of bikini lines and men's rippling 
  abdominal muscles. Faceless bodies held cola cans and darkly 
  tanned legs of both sexes flexed and stretched and sweated. All 
  this to sell sugar- water.

  Harris exhaled. Some things are just too hard to figure out, he 
  thought. The whole universe especially. But it was there, in the 
  computer code, somewhere in there, all the answers embedded. He 
  was glad someone had already done most of the work for him.


  "Doctor, I've been thinking about what really bothers me and I 
  want you to hear it. You see, when they first sent me on this 
  mission, I really didn't want to go."

  He wondered if she were actually further out of touch than he 
  had previously thought. Maybe she's had a schizophrenic episode?

  "But," she continued, "they kept telling me it was good for our 
  planet, Earth being so close and all. It was actually a matter 
  of protection for my people."

  He double checked his tape recorder and scribbled down what she 
  had said in his note pad. Definitely a psychotic episode.

  "You see, your people are already crawling through space. It is 
  only a matter of time before you would discover us and ruin our 
  way of life.

  "Frankly," she said, "you people are disgusting. There is only 
  one advantage to the way you live."

  She licked her lips. Now she goes for the manipulation, he 
  thought.

  "When I meet people for the first time, I think they're pretty 
  interesting. The problem is, then I get tired of them."

  Now she had turned sweet, phony, pretending to be forthcoming. 
  Flashing those damn eyes, dimples, and gorgeous shoulders at 
  him.

  "What do other people do to stay interested in people?" she 
  asked.

  "Many things, like common interests. Do you have any friends 
  with common interests?"

  "Sure, I have lots of interests... strong interests."

  She thought it would be funny. She put a couple of thoughts in 
  his head: he was easily within her range here. Thoughts of she 
  and him, together. She made the thoughts strong, vivid, 
  realistic; but not too strong because he wasn't a well man, she 
  had decided. In the thoughts she was on him; her smooth skin 
  pressed against his chest and her round breasts bounced across 
  his writhing torso.

  His eyes rolled up as he sat there in his chair, and he gasped 
  loudly, "Oh my God..." Sitting there in his chair, alone, his 
  orgasm was so strong and so thoroughly taxing to his body that 
  he lost consciousness.

  His weakness disgusted her. She decided right there and then 
  that he was to be a dead man. A man who never lived.

  And tomorrow I'd better find a new shrink, she thought.


  Chapter 21
------------

  Garbage trucks. They were the great equalizers, clamoring 
  through the worst slums as well as the most affluent 
  neighborhoods. No matter what your station in life -- unless you 
  lived in a rural area or a veritable oasis -- you couldn't avoid 
  being awakened by the vociferous sounds of garbage trucks from 
  time to time.

  It was Cruger's time.

  He lay in bed listening to the trucks. The deflected light of 
  early morning crept across the down comforter in the form of 
  yellow stripes of light. Bizarre thoughts and fantasies swept 
  through his mind like a hurricane through an Atlantic harbor.

  The existentialists almost had it right, he mused. The life of a 
  man certainly can be defined as the sum total of his 
  experiences. Yet, that's not a full definition of a life. 
  Doesn't the life also correspond to boundaries painted by 
  non-experiences? What a person _does not do_ is just as 
  important as what he _does do_. A life must be characterized 
  using a careful consideration of all experiences as well as all 
  the paths not taken. The potential verses the kinetic. And of 
  course the potential can always continue to live throughout time 
  -- who knows what strings will lead where?

  Although Cruger saw hints of sunlight shining into the room, he 
  also heard the pitter-splat-splat of a light early-morning rain.

  Rain was another great equalizer. It soaked unprepared street- 
  people, millionaires, communists (wherever you could find one 
  anymore), and Rotarians. It probably even rained on the Other 
  Company, wherever they may be, if not everywhere.

  He slipped back to dreaming. Is life a zero-sum game? Certainly 
  not. What a joke. Some may pack into five minutes of life what 
  others may take 20 years to do.

  And the strings, they prove it, don't they? They reek of balance 
  and harmony. Isn't everything in life a cycle, a circle, a 
  beginning leading to an ending and another beginning?

  But, if we don't have a zero sum, are the winners and leaders 
  truly a floating variable, unbiased by kitsch polar opposites 
  such as good and evil, truth and deception? If a point on a 
  string defines a time and a place, a plane of existence, can 
  that time then be arbitrary based on the artifice of our 
  definition of time? The strings must hold the answer...

  "Wake up, sleepy-head," Corrina said with saccharine morning 
  cheer.

  "Ugh."

  "Wake up, lazy shit."

  "Whad you call me?" Cruger droned. His eyelids fought to open.

  "Wake up before I get downright profane. If you don't show signs 
  of life within 5 seconds, I'll be forced to begin CPR."

  Cruger felt sly as well as tired -- he couldn't let the 
  opportunity pass. He played dead, and when Corrina's count got 
  to four-one-thousand he rolled over and gave her a big kiss.

  Corrina whispered, "Who's reviving who?"

  "I just thought you needed a little morning cheer"

  "No, I need more than that."

  Corrina rolled on top; their mouths met in a soft embrace.

  Cruger punned, "Back to the business at hand?"

  "Just checking out the merchandise." Corrina's voice was a 
  breathless husky growl. "Everything seems to be, ah, nicely in 
  order."

  "Very nice."

  Their voices stopped as attention to the incipient passion 
  robbed them their powers of speech. The pitter-patter rain 
  helped. It was a pleasurable morning free of inhibition, full of 
  sensation, garbage trucks or no.


  When Corrina left for her early shift Cruger walked the hundred 
  feet next door to Harris's house.

  Harris wasn't his usual impeccable self. He had on a terry cloth 
  robe that looked frayed and wrinkled. Harris himself was 
  unshaven and had only half-open eyelids.

  "A late one last night?" Cruger said, trying to sound as 
  annoyingly perky as possible.

  Harris ran his large hand over his lopsided hair, even his 
  muscled arms looking slacker than usual. "You're a wise-ass -- 
  you'll get your butt kicked," he said.

  "No," Cruger said. "My ass can't be kicked. I have a uniquely 
  unkickable ass."

  Harris smiled. "Don't let your unkickable ass go to your head," 
  he said.

  "Somehow I don't like the sound of that," Cruger said, "but I'll 
  keep it in mind, thank you."

  Harris went to pour himself some coffee, a cup of instant that 
  smelled cheap and industrial to Cruger.

  "So, you think they can do this whenever they want, erasing 
  people, I mean?" Cruger said.

  Harris slapped the plastic cup down on the tiled kitchen 
  counter. "Not only whenever they want, but with the skill and 
  precision of a surgeon. All the interdependencies, the numerous 
  intersections of lives, times, and even physical objects would 
  have to be considered -- or at least dealt with somehow."

  Cruger reflected on this so called 'surgery'. The ability to 
  control reality in this way had applications beyond belief.

  "You think virtually anyone could become -- ah, let's say, an 
  unperson?" asked Cruger.

  "Yes."

  "Or anything?"

  "Yes."

  "Like nuclear waste?"

  "Yes."

  "Hazardous chemicals and pollution?"

  "Yeah."

  "Murderous dictators?"

  "Yes."

  "Old Jerry Lewis films?"

  "Probably not. The French would hang on to them somehow."

  "Someone with this type of power would be playing God. I spin, 
  but, I don't really know what I'm doing when I do it. This is 
  different, this is complete pinpoint control of the future, 
  present, and maybe the past."

  Harris gave Cruger a stern look. "The person, or being, that 
  controls this is not only _playing_ God, Jack."

  "You've got the skills for it. It's _all_ going to be computer- 
  run, and you're the man," said Cruger.

  "I don't want to be God -- when would I work out?" said Harris.

  Cruger laughed at that response. "You've got to think big, man. 
  When would you work out? You wouldn't have to worry about 
  mundane things like death or taxes or whether your 
  cardiovascular system is finely tuned. We will have transcended 
  that."

  Cruger looked at the pot of English ivy that Harris had on his 
  coffee table. The vine twisted upwards, working its way around 
  the redwood stake that was firmly anchored in the soil. The 
  top-most branches of the plant departed from the stake and 
  reached out into the air, seemingly to groping for more light 
  and nutrients, without the support of the stake.

  "At this point, I would almost have to say we don't have a 
  choice," said Cruger.

  "Oh, there are always choices," Harris said. "Just that they're 
  not necessarily _good_ alternatives to choose from."

  Cruger felt good and worried that he felt better than he should. 
  His mind played its dirty trick of listing things to worry 
  about: people disappearing, Tony gone, Corrina and their baby on 
  the way, the Other Company, his spinning and what the hell it 
  all meant. There, the list isn't so long after all, is it?

  "Anyway, are we gonna run this morning or what?"


  Chapter 22
------------

    Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
    About the centre of the silent Word.
                                         - T.S Eliot

  Uraken observed Cruger's developments closely. It was his job. 
  Uraken reflected on his own career -- who would have known he 
  would go so far?

  Educated at the top five Shops (humans called them 
  Universities), he had been off to a good start. Indeed, wasn't 
  Tigaten -- the top Shop east of the divide -- the equivalent of 
  Earth's Harvard? Wasn't his first shop, Vonsten, similar to 
  Berkeley, complete with student protests and extremist radical 
  factions?

  But the politics, the absurd politics that he had endured during 
  his struggle up the corporate ladder -- that was the great 
  difference. The earthlings would just happen into their top jobs 
  with The Company, if all went well. But for him, the favors, the 
  promises...

  He had been like a great human politician, kissing babies, 
  shaking hands (and even vice versa) -- whatever to took to get 
  the votes and to obtain the respect and trust needed to become 
  number one.

  These days Uraken just observed from his unique vantage point. 
  More than anything, Uraken enjoyed watching American football. 
  Australian football wasn't bad, but the NFL, with the playoffs 
  and the Super Bowl, was great. Uraken was intelligent enough to 
  know that viewing the Earth through surveillance microphones and 
  satellite television was not that accurate. But, from his point 
  of view, football was tops. Joe Montana was his favorite player, 
  accurate as hell, the all-time best. And the pageantry, the 
  contact, the athletic conditioning, the cheerleaders -- what 
  could better.

  Uraken thought soaps sucked but he did like some of night-time 
  soaps, like "L.A Law". A few cartoons, like Road Runner and 
  Deputy Dawg, were among his favorites. None of that new Slimer, 
  Beetlejuice and New Kids stuff, though. It sucked.

  Since he couldn't breathe their atmosphere -- the oxygen would 
  cut through him like a knife -- Uraken circled the Earth in his 
  space vehicle, a late model Oonsten. He only occasionally 
  landed, and then it was always in some rural area where only a 
  few soon-to-be loonies could witness his saucer-shaped Oonsten. 
  The Southern states of the U.S. were always a good choice for a 
  landing. The rest of the world considered them to be idiots, 
  evidently, and even if they snapped a few pictures of the 
  Oonsten, they were never taken seriously.

  On a few occasions, Uraken put on his air-tight protective gear 
  and left his Oonsten to walk on the Earth. His English, Russian, 
  German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, and 
  Latin were good, but he still could not communicate well with 
  the few humans he encountered. They all seemed to drop their 
  jaws open and shake a lot -- but then they would make strange 
  mumbling noises and do very little talking. They were hard to 
  warm up to. Maybe they were trying an old form of Swahili on 
  him, he joked to himself. Better brush up the African languages.

  He longed for the day when he would relinquish his command and 
  return to Tvonen to become a _sensien_, to taste the good life, 
  to drink tikboo, to use foul language, and to have _sehun_ with 
  a hot- looking young _gruchen_ until he passed out.

  Uraken had been the Chairmen of the Company for roughly two- 
  thousand earth years. The office was humbling -- God, Yahmo, 
  Lord, Master of the Universe; these titles were heavy duty. 
  Embarrassing even. His position was so important that he labored 
  for years in deciding the title on his business card. Uraken 
  finally decided on what turned out to be his singularly most 
  politically sagacious move: Uraken e Tvonen, Servant of all the 
  People.

  His early studies of Earth people had led him to the Tao 
  philosophy of leadership, which he held close to his hearts: 
  leaders were to serve and to teach, to hold the development of 
  their people in their humble and gentle hands. This was Uraken's 
  way. He had been criticized for being a non-leader of a leader, 
  for being a delegator and allowing the _Other Company_ to gain 
  more control of Earth. On the Earth his presence was not 
  hands-on -- thus the 'God is dead' bumper stickers. But Uraken 
  felt he could only lead in the style of leadership that he felt 
  most comfortable with.

  He could see Cruger in the position next -- but just barely. 
  Only from Earth could a Jack Cruger have a shot at the top 
  position. His lack of education, his almost disgusting white 
  skin, and his total disregard for the political process, all 
  combined to make him a candidate that would be automatically 
  rejected on the planet of Tvonen.

  Leon Harris was another story. He, in fact, was technically 
  trained, attractive (almost as dark as Uraken himself) -- an 
  organized, effective, person.

  However, this would be no election. Uraken's own ascent to the 
  position of power was based on politics, public relations, and 
  good old-fashioned intergalactic marketing. The next Chairman 
  would be the Earth's first representative in the office, elected 
  only by his connection to the all-important discovery and 
  implementation of the Unified Theorem. Then Earthlings would 
  have accomplished the greatest evolutionary intellectual 
  development ever in the history of the Universe.

  Even recently, common Tvonen thought said it would take another 
  hundred years, maybe another thousand, before the humans were 
  ready for their chance. However, humans made great recent 
  advances in their thoughts on theoretical physics and their 
  implementation of digital electronics. The original estimates of 
  hundreds or thousands of years soon compressed to a mere 
  handful.

  Uraken marveled at the human's theories that had come so close 
  to defining the bounds and origins of the universe. They had 
  acquired new stature in the great "scheme of things." The humans 
  deserved the office of God. A little more progress and their 
  science and technology would rank them tops, even more advanced 
  than the Tvonen's in their electronics and physics. Very 
  impressive, Uraken realized, considering that these humans 
  started out as tiny-little-slimy singled-cell things not all 
  that long ago.

  Of course, when they were slimy little sea creatures, the 
  Earth's entire company was run by sentient beings, all Tvonens. 
  After Homo Erectus began strutting his stuff, the company began 
  hiring the locals and promoting from within. People like Tony 
  and Jack joined the company. Unfortunately, many humans also 
  joined The Other Company. Like that Jack Nicholson movie, Uraken 
  thought, where Jack plays Satan. Uraken had just seen it on a 
  cable frequency -- such a convincing performance.

  And now, as the original members of the company's Earth startup 
  team left to create job opportunities for the locals, Earth 
  would come closer and closer to being wholly regionally managed. 
  Tvonens remember the earth terminology for it: Darwinism. A 
  species evolves to the point of becoming its own God. Very 
  impressive; the essence of Darwinism; Uraken loved the poetic 
  justice involved.

  Uraken reflected that although impressive, this was not unusual. 
  Everything in life is a cycle. The company had always promoted 
  from within and taken on new characteristics and management 
  styles.

  It was risky, though. Things could go downhill. But, after all, 
  one must think _cycles_. Things get better, they get worse, they 
  constantly change -- this is the essence of life itself.

  Interesting though that the Other Company was mostly stagnant. 
  Yes indeed, the essence of stagnation. Things had been the same 
  there for -- as far as Uraken knew -- since the beginning of 
  everything. Disadvantages to this are many. But, the Other 
  Company was steady, very steady. The cycles, if they existed, 
  had a periodicity great enough to have disallowed the empirical 
  detection of them. Uraken laughed: he was thinking like a human 
  now -- 'empirical detection'.

  But the future lay in the hands of the Crugers and the Harrises. 
  A new crop of talent to lead the way.

  Uraken had never expected his current organization to last 
  forever. Someone would come along who could do a better job, add 
  a modern touch. Harris or Cruger would do just that.

  If the _Other Company_ didn't stop them.

  TO BE CONTINUED...

  Jeff Zias (ZIAS1@AppleLink.apple.com)
---------------------------------------

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


  FYI
=====

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