textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv4n4.etx

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==========================================
InterText Vol. 4, No. 4 / July-August 1994
==========================================

  Contents

    FirstText: Big Mistakes............................Jason Snell


  Short Fiction

    Monkeytrick_..................................Ridley McIntyre_

    Mr. McKenna Is Dying_..........................Marcus Eubanks_

    The World Is Held Together By Duct Tape_........Carl Steadman_

    Georgia's Loose Tooth_........................Richard McGowan_
    
    The Loneliness of the Late-Night Donut Shop_..G.L. Eikenberry_
 
    Wampanoag_.......................................John DiFonzo_

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


  FirstText: Big Mistakes   by Jason Snell
==========================================

  "There are some big mistakes in your latest issue," wrote one 
  reader upon receiving the May-June 1994 issue of InterText. "The 
  table of contents, your column, and your page of ads are all 
  missing. All the "about the author" blurbs are missing from the 
  ends of stories."

  That letter writer was right and wrong at the same time. Without 
  much warning, the last issue of InterText appeared in a 
  completely different format from any of our previous 18 issues. 
  But there was a method to our madness, and in the end, we think 
  everything worked out.

  Let's start where we should: at the beginning of this story. In 
  either late 1992 or early 1993 (I can't remember quite when), I 
  had a good idea in the place where I generally have my good 
  ideas -- the shower. This idea was for an issue of InterText 
  that was more than just a collection of good stories from the 
  batch of submissions we received over a given two-month period. 
  The issue would, instead, be modeled on a unifying theme, and 
  all the stories would be related.

  Since InterText has no budget and can't pay its writers, 
  _assigning_ a story to people who would be writing it for free 
  wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do. In order to make it 
  easier for the writers to say yes, I tried to keep the theme 
  vague. Rather than planning an issue with a single plot thread 
  weaving through different stories (like the _Wild Cards_ series 
  of books edited by George R. R. Martin), or even a series of 
  unrelated stories in a clearly-defined world (like the Harlan 
  Ellison-edited _Medea: Harlan's World_ anthology), we'd pick a 
  single event and ask writers to write stories involving that 
  single event.

  I picked an event with lots of possibilities for both 
  "mainstream" and science fiction stories -- the appearance of a 
  nova or supernova in the sky on a certain date (to be set later 
  as the date the issue first hit the Internet). That way, writers 
  could set stories on planets surrounding the dying star, on 
  Earth at the time the star was exploding a hundred light-years 
  away, on Earth at the time the star became visible, and even on 
  Earth in the future, when the appearance of the Nova is just a 
  memory. (In fact, one story in _this_ issue -- Ridley McIntyre's 
  "Monkeytrick" -- includes a reference to a supernova appearing 
  at some point in the past. Because Ridley's story appeared late 
  in the editing process and only peripherally involved a nova, we 
  decided to let the story stand on its own rather than try to 
  shoehorn it into an already-packed issue.)

  I bounced my "theme issue" idea off of Assistant Editor Geoff 
  Duncan, who seemed positive about the whole thing and suggested 
  that he knew some astronomers who might be able to make sure our 
  story (exploding star and all) was scientifically accurate. That 
  turned out to be a lot of work -- probably more than Geoff had 
  expected. But, then, the whole thing turned out to be a lot more 
  work than we expected.

  We sent out several mailings to writers whose work had 
  previously appeared in InterText, asking if they wanted to be a 
  part of the issue. Many didn't respond, some responded but said 
  they were too busy writing other stories to participate in our 
  project... and a few said they'd try and come up with something.

  Our deadlines for story ideas kept sliding back. Eventually, 
  ideas began coming in. Then, miraculously, at the end of 1993, 
  stories began appearing. By the end of 1993, we had nearly 
  enough stories to make an issue.

  But in the meantime, we still had InterText to put out. And so 
  the theme issue had to wait as we put out our January-February 
  1994 issue. Then we tried to begin work on the theme issue, but 
  realized we couldn't get it done by March 15. In mid-March, with 
  our writers wondering if their stories would ever see the light 
  of day, we began assembling the theme issue.

  There were plenty of problems along the way: stories based on 
  only a vague description ("a supernova appears in the sky") 
  ended up being filled with conflicting information that we had 
  to shoehorn into our universe. Many stories needed only minor 
  alterations, but one required a Herculean editing job (performed 
  by Geoff) to make it fit in our format. To make the issue run 
  together better, we also decided to split some stories into 
  several sections, interlacing them with other stories by placing 
  them in a rough chronological order.

  The production of that issue took more out of us than probably 
  any issue we've done to this point. But the resulting issue is 
  one we're very proud of. So much so that maybe, once we've 
  rested and recovered from the trauma we inflicted on ourselves 
  during the first go-round, we'll do another "theme issue." In 
  the meantime, we'll continue to work on issues the old-fashioned 
  way -- even without the concern about the placement of the nova 
  in the sky at certain times of day in certain locations, it's 
  still a lot of work to make InterText happen.

  "There are some big mistakes in your latest issue." That's how 
  the letter, which I received no more than a day after the issue 
  first appeared, began. Mistakes? There are probably a few, here 
  and there. But the theme issue itself -- even with all the work 
  (and ensuing insanity) than went into it -- surely wasn't a 
  mistake. We'd do it all over again today.

  Well, not today.

  But sometime.

  After we've rested.


  Monkeytrick   by Ridley McIntyre
==================================
..................................................................
  * Which is worse: a dead soul inhabiting a rebuilt body, or a 
  living soul without any body at all? What's more, how about 
  being _both_? *
..................................................................


  1.
----

           "What does hell look like? Me. It looks just like me."
                               --Big Pierrot

  They sit outside and they wait, the night's rain falling like 
  wet steel needles over the Manhattan outzone, bouncing off the 
  roof of the car with a loud, tinny static noise. Three 
  muscleboys sit in the car with the lights off and wait. They 
  watch the two Asahi Tag Teamsters on the corner, the protectors 
  of La Guardia Towers on East 10th Street, while the huge block 
  of artificial stone slowly erodes in the rain. Ten seconds. 
  That's how long it will take.

  And when the teamsters check out a noise from around the corner 
  and leave as planned, the three in the car go into action.

  The flash is the last thing Dex remembers. Kitty's last memory 
  is seeing her boyfriend ripped apart by a bright orange blast 
  and scraped across the walls, just a microsecond before she 
  feels the blast's claws herself.



  "Let's take a look at his new eyes, shall we?" A Russian voice.

  The alley is bathed in angelic white light of the purest kind. 
  Dex has a vision of God. When it goes as suddenly as it came, 
  the kids begin to taunt him, too, about the visions.

  "Didn't you see it?" he screams. "It came through the windows. 
  The light."

  "Didn't see a light. Did you see a light?"

  "What light? Has he had a revelation? Has he seen... God?"

  "That's what happens when you have girls' eyes. You think you 
  see God."

  "Maybe he thinks he _is_ God."

  Darkness now. The sound of crying. The lost echoes of gunshots. 
  The wet warm smell of running blood. The pistol makes a sharp 
  crack as he drops it to the concrete.



  "You okay?" he says to the girl in the darkness.

  "I've felt better. They would have killed me if you hadn't 
  arrived, you know."

  "Yeah."

  "Take me home, please?" she pleads.

  The cold shaky touch of her hand in his. Her body set in a weak 
  crouch. Her free hand holding her torn silk blouse together.

  The kids are dead now. But in his dream, in her house, their 
  voices still mock him like mind-ghosts.

  Dex hides in the dark warmth of an antique MFI wardrobe and 
  sobs. He wishes someone older was here to tell them all to shut 
  up. He can't seem to do it himself.

  A whisper from the shadows behind him. Soothing, but so 
  unexpected and shocking that it nearly unlocks his bowels.

  "Don't be afraid."

  That simple. Dex searches the wardrobe frantically, throwing 
  furs and leather coats and company uniforms to each side to find 
  the voice, but it isn't there.

  "Look down."

  There she is. A young Asian girl about nine years old with long 
  black hair and beautiful white eyes. He quickly climbs into a 
  fur coat and wraps himself in its luxury.

  "My name's Dexter. Who are you?"

  Pain enters his tiny body and splits the skin envelope in a 
  thousand places, crying out for mercy under the explosive 
  sensation.

  Then darkness again.



  "Shit, he's dreaming." That Russian voice again.

  And the pain is gone and he is new again, and he slowly spends 
  his second childhood in a London house filled with the voices of 
  the children who taunt him. But the girl, whose name is Pain, 
  always protects him. When she's there, the other children go 
  away. She seems to have this power, this command over them all. 
  And when they reach puberty, Dex and Pain play games in the 
  darkness of the wardrobe in her father's house, and no matter 
  what the game, Pain always wins.

  Every time.



  "Is he done?" A new voice, English. Female.

  "This is about as good as he gets." The Russian voice.

  "Is he still dreaming?"

  "Yes, Miss Fairchild."

  "Well, I suppose he can't do much else. Keep him going for a 
  couple of days, then wake him up. Call me. I'll have to brief 
  him when he comes round."

  "You're the boss."

  "Damned right."



  Soho. The London outzone. The Year of the Rat.

  There is a burned-out shell of a pub called The Blue Cross that 
  lies in the underworld of one of the outzone's huge tower 
  blocks. Inside things are busy, but running on candlelight 
  thanks to one of the frequent brownouts the place suffers 
  whenever Metropol finds a cable tapping the monorail lines high 
  above.

  The Cross is the main Sodha slicers hangout. Sardine-canned with 
  long-haired Asians in leather jackets and molded kevlar impact 
  armor suits sprayed in a variety of bright neon colors. Dex told 
  her to dress down, so she wears a white lace blouse and black 
  silk jeans. She feels like sushi in a chip shop.

  She follows him through the dark crowd and attracts a couple of 
  glances here and there from the men, but not enough to make her 
  feel any smaller than she already is. Out of her depth here, she 
  needs someone like Dex to keep her from drowning. And he needs 
  her if he wants to stay alive.

  Dex is pushing through this crowd looking for one person, and 
  when he finds the young man, the poor kid can't recognize him.

  The young man is dressed as a slicer, with a baseball jersey, 
  black Big Pierrot T-shirt, leather jeans and kevlar-plated, 
  knee-high boots, but his black raja hair is too short and the 
  chrome of the NST interface sockets in his skull behind his ear 
  flickers in the dull orange of the candles. He fits, but he 
  doesn't fit; a person Dex, the eternal Stranger in a Strange 
  Land, can completely identify with.

  "Long time, no see, Mo."

  Motorhead is drunk as usual and strains his memory to name the 
  face. Dex finds it impossible to believe that this 
  seventeen-year-old has taken his place with the Sodha slicers.

  Finally, Motorhead makes a noise. "Who the fuck are you?"

  Dex's face is expressionless. "What, don't you remember the Boy? 
  I used to run with you back in the Year of the Dog."

  Motorhead returns to his drink. "Wrong. Try another one, matey. 
  The Boy's dead. The Americans got him. Blew him and his 
  girlfriend up in Manhattan."

  Dex remained where he was. "Remember in Seven Stars? That night 
  in the Dog's summer when we got wankered? You dared me to ask 
  that woman to dance with me and it turned out she was FDI? We 
  nearly ended up publicly hanged for that one. Or that time in 
  the Grid when you got caught in a BFP shell and I had to rig 
  some speedy softs to bail you out? Damn you, look at me! It's 
  me, Mo. It's the Boy."

  Motorhead looks up at the mention of the BFP. Someone could have 
  found out about the Seven Stars incident -- the two of them were 
  real legends in that place -- but no one except the Boy knows 
  about the incident at the Banque Federal de Paris. Bad business. 
  As the shock of recognition hits him, a smile widens across his 
  face.

  "Jesus, Boy! What the fuck are you doing here?"

  Dex looks at the blonde woman behind him, a furtive gaze in her 
  gray-green eyes. She gives a hint of a shrug and hides her 
  thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans. Behind them all, next 
  to the door, a fast fistfight breaks out.

  "I'm in trouble, Mo. Real trouble."

  Motorhead cocks his head to the left. "Yeah," he says. "When 
  have you ever been out of trouble?"



  Dex says they need a place to talk. Somewhere private. Motorhead 
  picks one of the hologram lions around a hologram Nelson in 
  Trafalgar Square, the one that faces north toward the foggy 
  outline of the four huge cylinders of Tottenham Court Points 
  that thrust into the clouds above the outzone.

  They sit around the red hologram lion. Motorhead takes out a 
  small yo-yo and starts to run tricks with it.

  "Where did you go? I mean, after you left Sodha, Dev Lung went 
  apeshit. I nearly died because of you. He thought I'd tried to 
  cut you out or something."

  "I went to Texas City," Dex says. "Forged my way into the Tank 
  Corps and lamped around with them for a while. I figured their 
  security would keep you and all the rest off my back for a 
  while. But... things happened there. We were running missions 
  against the nomads who were smuggling food and drugs and 
  anything else worth a cent between Texas and the U.S. One day my 
  gunner flipped out. Started shooting up a bus full of kids. So I 
  took out my nine and shot him. Lucky bastard survived. He got a 
  Purple Heart, and I was facing a court-martial.

  "So I joined the opposition. Hooked in with one of the nomad 
  groups. I helped drive, surfed the Grid every now and then to 
  launder finances -- the usual stuff. Stayed about a year with 
  them before I left for New Atlantic City. Manhattan. Met up with 
  this smartgirl called Kitty, who ran a little business selling 
  neurosofts and skips to the Asahi Tag Teamsters. So I was a pony 
  there for a while. Then I got into some mess that hooked me back 
  into running the Grid again. I was just ready to return. Camden 
  Town Boy's big comeback. Then... well, everything else is future 
  history."

  He slides a small blue laminated business card across the stone 
  to Motorhead. Centered words embossed on the plastic next to a 
  patchy videostat. Dexter Eastman. Information Services Division. 
  Vijayanta Pharmaceuticals IG. The face in the videostat is 
  subdued. Shameful. The face of someone press-ganged into the 
  company.

  Motorhead nods, then slides the card back to his old spar. "I 
  don't get it. Why kill you?"

  The blonde girl steps in. "Vijayanta taketh, and Vijayanta 
  giveth back. He's more use to us dead than alive, if you know 
  what I mean."

  Motorhead switches confused glances between Dex and Sarah. 
  Finally, he settles on the girl. "No."

  "You can't get more expendable than dead," says Dex.

  "But why you?"

  Dex nods to Sarah. She stares at him coldly, then eventually 
  gives in. "Ever heard of Rhea?" she asks Motorhead.

  The young decker frowns in thought. "Sounds like an Artificial 
  Intelligence code."

  Sarah nods. "Vijayanta IG's," she says with some pride in her 
  voice. AIs are few and far between in the Year of the Rat. It 
  costs a lot of money to program one. Far cheaper to get the 
  donated braintapes of some company executives and edit them into 
  a single Digital Intelligence. DIs are far more common. Almost 
  every Federal Metropolitan Council has one as a member, and most 
  companies keep one on the executive board. AIs are corporate 
  status symbols. An advertisement of their multinational wealth.

  "So, it's your AI. So what?"

  "It's gone rogue. We've lost it."

  Motorhead breaks into laughter. The sound echoes around the 
  antiquated post-Storm War buildings. A confusing collage of 
  cruel ambience.

  Dex and Sarah aren't laughing. They each watch Motorhead in 
  their own way: Sarah through the scared eyes of someone whose 
  job is on the line, and Dex through eyes that once belonged to a 
  girl. When Motorhead looks up at them, he calms down.

  "I'm sorry. But that's pretty funny."

  Dex and Sarah's serious looks give the game away. He slowly 
  realizes exactly why they have come to see him. And the joke 
  isn't funny anymore.


  2.
----

           "Peace through superior mindpower." --Big Pierrot

  The suite on Floor 113 at the Miramar Hotel in the center of the 
  St. James Secure Zone has a dry, air-conditioned taste to it. 
  Motorhead finds himself pulling his stuck tongue from the roof 
  of his mouth as he waits with Dex for Sarah to get dressed down 
  again. Sarah doesn't have any street clothes. She's all gray 
  company suits and maroon Vijayanta ties. More used to this kind 
  of life, up here in the sky, where you can't even see the 
  outzone thanks to the dirty gray clouds that blanket the entire 
  view from the window. Motorhead almost feels like he could jump 
  on top of them and they'd take his weight.

  Piercing the clouds far away are the columnar towers of various 
  other Secure Zones. Battle Bridge Points, Tottenham Court 
  Points, Bowling Green Points, Camden Points, Canbury Points, the 
  tip of the Smallpox Hospital spire and the various billowing 
  stacks of the dustzone workhouses. Underneath, he knows, are the 
  countless crumbling, uncompleted towers of the outzone, none of 
  which stand more than 100 stories high.

  Unlike Motorhead, Dex has tasted rooms like this before. Nothing 
  new. But they call up a certain brand of feeling that he doesn't 
  want to have running around his guts just now. He distracts 
  himself by checking out the Disney channels on the color TV, 
  then, realizing that they only make the feeling worse, he 
  switches off the set. To utter silence.

  Motorhead shuffles a bit, his hands sliding nervously in and out 
  of the pockets of his orange Sodhaboy baseball jersey. Then he 
  slumps down on the couch and runs his fingers over ultravelvet 
  smoother than the skin on a 20-rupee kitten. He succumbs to the 
  urge to take off the blue pilot's cap he's wearing and spins it 
  around on a finger. Finally, bored, he jerks himself back to his 
  feet.

  "Have they got room service here?" he says. "I always wanted to 
  call for room service."

  Dex points him to a box in the corner. There's a long menu stuck 
  next to it claiming to return the order within fifteen seconds. 
  He reads the instructions. You put your order in a small 
  cylinder and the tube sucks it up. He figures the box underneath 
  must be where the stuff comes out. Motorhead orders a plastic 
  bottle of cider.

  "Want anything?" he offers to Dex. His old friend shakes his 
  head. "Fair enough."

  When the cider arrives -- Motorhead times it at 12.48 seconds on 
  his collector's Seiko digital -- he opens it and downs it all at 
  once. A lot of flavor, no bubbles. He wonders if it's flat or 
  that's the way it's meant to be.

  He stands in awe of the room, scared yet admiring. "Like the 
  places in the TV soaps, innit, Boy? One of those posh places Big 
  Pierrot stays in when he's busting down a suit. Only in color."

  Dex sits down with his hands in his lap and tries to think of 
  nothing. But that uncomfortable feeling keeps coming back, and 
  it's tied to his dream. That dream he had in London with the 
  children and the girl called Pain. Somewhere there is a link in 
  all this. He had to be here for some other reason than 
  Vijayanta's threat, but his mind is averting it; every time he 
  tries to think about her, tries to remember her face, he thinks 
  of something else. Remembering is the key to the pain he is 
  feeling, but remembering what?

  He looks at Motorhead, but Mo's trying to find a pocket in his 
  jacket that will fit the bottle. Real petroleum plastic, worth a 
  lot on the streets of the outzone.

  No. Mo wouldn't know. He wouldn't remember.

  The sun is starting to break through on this side of the Miramar 
  building and its tiny arc pours red-purple light into the room 
  through large circular windows. The light brings out the 
  contours and some of the unhealable scars on Dex's face. 
  Motorhead notices for the first time that his black hair is all 
  implanted and bald patches show through it. Worn much longer 
  than Dex ever used to allow. Something's wrong here. Vijayanta 
  put his body back together, but his soul is dead. Dex has lost 
  his old self, and it sends a stealthy shiver crawling down 
  Motorhead's thin neck.



  It takes them two hours to reach Covent Garden in the back of a 
  cycle-rickshaw ordered by cellphone. Dex spends most of the ride 
  watching the beggars and street vendors and turning down offers 
  from the kittens -- prepubescent prostitutes -- plying trade in 
  the darkness under the city's towers. Hiding his face in amused 
  shame as Motorhead sharks Sarah. She takes it calmly. Answers 
  his questions. Gives him just enough to seem interesting, but 
  not enough to seem interested.

  Motorhead himself talks but doesn't really listen. Catching tiny 
  squalls of information in her life story. Born in Milton Keynes, 
  the center of Thames Midland. Followed her father into computers 
  at Logica, a Vijayanta subsidiary. Contracted by Vijayanta and, 
  after only three years, taken on as staff. Being team leader of 
  the Rhea Rogue Hunt is just another step up the corporate ladder 
  for her.

  "I nearly cried when Rhea disappeared. We looked for it 
  everywhere within the system. But it was nowhere. No trace."

  Sarah's running a Gabriel on him and it's worked. Her persona 
  reveals one of the flavors of nonlife that must exist in the 
  world of the Secure Zone. Sarah is Too Much Work To Party 
  flavor.

  "How come we're doing it this way? I mean, you lose something 
  that big and it's a Fed problem, innit? Fednet should be doing 
  this."

  "Let's just say that Rhea knows some things that we don't really 
  want to go public. Understand? Best to keep your trap shut about 
  this." Her voice is stern, but calm. Dex feels her temperature 
  bunny-hop a degree.

  "So just tell me one more time why I should help you and the Boy 
  find it," he asks her with a frown.

  "Do you enjoy life?" she replies.

  He nods.

  "Then you do as I tell you."



  Covent Garden Market is a technical bazaar. Rusting corrugated 
  iron and sheets of gas-planet PVC shrouding a maze of tiny 
  tables, stalls and open cases. The surrounding towers cast a 
  grim shadow over the square, and though the far-off sky is blue, 
  twinkling with the new stars of low-orbit workstations, down 
  here the air is cold and thick with sweaty dampness.

  "Who did you say we could find here again?" Sarah asks.

  Motorhead barges his way through the slow-moving crowds. Jostles 
  with scores of people who seem intent to just stand and look at 
  the merchandise, rather than buy or move on. The ponies sell 
  laserdisks, microsofts for those who like plugging things 
  straight into their neural systems, stolen Fednet PCs, valve 
  amps, monochrome TVs and even headset radios at their stalls. 
  None seem to want to undercut the others' prices.

  "Nukie. He's one of the best teks this side of the river. He's 
  the only guy I know who could scratch-build you a deck in the 
  time you want. He did mine in two days."

  Nukie is a white-boy steamer. His hair trails lank and greasy 
  around his broad shoulders. Eyes wide open and wild, with 
  pinprick pupils. Standing taller than anyone Sarah has ever 
  seen, at least two meters high. Sarah concludes that Nukie is 
  the biggest, ugliest man this side of Milton Keynes.

  " 'lo, Mo. Who're they?" Nukie's dialect has slowly tempered in 
  the London outzone. A product of growing up in one place and 
  having to work in another. South Shields, the small industrial 
  complex where he was born, was abandoned by Nissan, the whole 
  workforce now dotted around Thames Midland trying to find new 
  jobs. Nukie's father worked on computer components for Nissan 
  aerodynes. His son believes his technical flair is hereditary.

  "This is Sarah. And this is the Camden Town Boy."

  "Pleased to make your acquaintance," he says to them. His face 
  blank to Dex's old handle. The Boy must have been before his 
  time, even though when Nukie smiles, his scarred face makes him 
  look old enough to be their grandfather.

  "So what're you after?"

  Dex steps in before Motorhead can make any compromises or deals. 
  "I need a cyberdeck. As fast as you can build it, with 
  military-level signature masking. It'll need to run about five 
  cartridges. And a unlicensed Fednet PC for the software design."

  The twisted smile becomes a toothy grin. "Not after much, are 
  we? I'll have you one by tomorrow morning, if you're willing to 
  pay for it."

  "Depends on how much you're willing to charge."

  Sarah tries to follow the deal as it goes down, but three 
  slicers by the stall behind them have started a scuffle over the 
  price of a microsoft. Just like the slicers in the Blue Cross, 
  they wear insect-like kevlar armor suits, spray-painted in wild 
  day-glo colors. One of them wears a jersey like Motorhead's: 
  orange leather baseball-style, with a patch on the breast shaped 
  into a circular letter S. Sodhaboys.

  Sarah stands back and watches everything. In a place like this, 
  it's all she knows how to.



  "How does it work?"

  "Eh?"

  "The Sodha slicers. How do they keep going?"

  Night in the outzone. Sitting in a corner of the Blue Cross, Dex 
  and Sarah watch the slicers dance. If she didn't know better, 
  Sarah would have thought it was a brawl. A living pincushion of 
  flailing fists and boots. She looks away from the floor and 
  catches a glimpse of Motorhead at the bar, joking with some of 
  the other long-haired rajas. As soon as he looks over, she turns 
  back to Dex, who gulps down a mouthful of cheap fizzy cider.

  "Dev Lung... He's the bossman, right? He has these contacts in 
  most of the companies. Siphons stuff from them and gets our 
  ponies to spread it around in the outzone. Just simple 
  merchandising, really. Everything from powdered milk to 
  neurosofts. The ponies get it all for free and pay back what 
  they sell. Some of them have stalls in the markets, some have 
  real shops under our protection, but a lot just go out on their 
  slices and sell stuff on the streets. If they don't sell 
  something, they give it back so someone else can. Anything gets 
  lost or damaged and the pony has to pay for it."

  He necks the last of the cider from a reusable plastic bottle. 
  "It sounds complicated, but it's a pretty simple way of giving 
  people out here what they need. The slicergangs live or die on 
  the merchandise they can push."

  Sarah notices herself fidgeting with her hands and slides them 
  into the pockets of a pair of black leather jeans Motorhead had 
  loaned her. "You're right. It sounds complicated."

  "No more complicated than running the Grid."

  "I've never done that either." Looking back to the dance floor, 
  she unwittingly catches Motorhead's attention again.

  "Shit, you had a deprived childhood."

  "Yes. I suppose I did."

  Sarah jumps when Motorhead slides in behind her. She didn't 
  notice him creep around the dance floor. "You dancing?" he asks. 
  He wraps his arms around her waist and shakes her a little.

  She laughs in shock, squirming. Then escapes by grabbing the 
  crotch of his jeans and squeezing short and hard.

  "I'll take that as a yes then," he says after a long breath. 
  "You coming, Boy?" And she drags him away into the flailing 
  crowd in the pit.

  Dex watches them for a time. Watching Sarah. Only two days in 
  the outzone and already she's sinking in. The outzone has claws. 
  It grabs and sticks and never lets go. And if you do escape, 
  it'll scar you forever. He snorts a laugh at them, picks his 
  bottle and takes it to the bar for a refill.



  The following morning, Dex is woken from the now-nightly Pain 
  dream by a tickling sensation on his cheek.

  Unconsciously, he shifts to scratch his face. His fingers knock 
  an unfazed roach to the dusty carpet in front of his nose. The 
  roach scuttles off towards the safety of the skirting board. Dex 
  opens his other eye and remembers how Motorhead convinced him to 
  sleep on the floor at his place after a night at the Blue Cross.

  "Drink, Boy?" Motorhead is standing at the door to the kitchen. 
  Just like Kitty in Manhattan, only she used to lean against the 
  door frame; Motorhead has his arms stretched across the 
  entrance, and peers in.

  Dex has a dry mouth, filled with carpet dust, so he answers with 
  a nod. He feels like telling him about the dreams, but he 
  decides to leave that in case of emergency. He doesn't want the 
  younger decker to know too much.

  "Can I ask you something, Boy?" Sounds of Motorhead shuffling 
  around the tiny kitchen. "How much thumb has she got on you, eh? 
  How badly do you belong to her?"

  He rubs his eyes and yawns. "Well, I can't say she _saved_ my 
  life, but..." A deep sigh. He sits up. "Look, if I find this 
  thing then they might leave me alone. They gave me a Vijayanta 
  card, but I'm still only an outhouser. Contracted work. 
  Baksheesh. They might just let me go again." He almost feels 
  like he's convinced himself.

  "Must be weird, being officially dead. Means you have to really 
  lay low."

  Dex agrees to himself. Yeah. Really weird.

  The atmosphere from the kitchen seems to lift. Elevator doors 
  opening to let out a claustrophobe. Motorhead changes the 
  subject. "Heard this joke the other day. Why did the monkey fall 
  out of the tree?"

  Dex stands and pulls sleep from his girl's eyes. "No idea," he 
  says.

  "Because it was dead."

  He shakes his head. Gazes around the living room properly for 
  the first time. It's too cluttered. Empty keyboards, hollow 
  shells of bright green Fednet PCs, laser-prints of the latest 
  shareware copies of _Kafig-Zucht_, _Girls Lieben Dicke Schwarze_ 
  and other skinmags. Holoposters of Kerry Swaine and lesser known 
  ASP stars taped to the walls.

  All shit and no shine. Dex laughs to himself. He used to have a 
  room just like it. Courtesy of Dev Lung, the man at the top of 
  the Sodha slicers.

  The younger decker finally comes back in with coffee made from a 
  Federal welfare pack and scalding water. "You'd better get 
  ready. It's nearly eight. Sarah'll be here soon, and I've got a 
  date with Mister Lung."

  "Say 'Hi' to him for me, will you?"

  Motorhead gives Dex a wary look. "You're kidding, aren't you? 
  After what you did?"

  Dex shrugs. "I somehow get the feeling I'm going to stay here. I 
  figure I'll need some friends if I want to stay alive."

  Motorhead nods, understanding the motive.

  "Anyway, where to today?" Dex asks. He burns the roof of his 
  mouth with the coffee. At last some sensation there.

  Clapping rough brown hands, Motorhead replies. "Gridland, matey. 
  Your toys have arrived."


  3.
----

            "I aim to please. I shoot to kill." --Big Pierrot

  "So you say he wants to patch things up?"

  Dev Lung is a short, stocky man in his mid-twenties who sits 
  behind his steel desk in the Paddington warehouse and looks down 
  at everyone through thick, square-framed glasses. His hands rest 
  on the blotting pad on the desk, stubby fingers interlocked and 
  thumbs habitually dancing around each other while he thinks. 
  Motorhead sees him as one of those small people with a lot of 
  power.

  Motorhead is squeezing a soft squash ball. Left hand first. Then 
  right. Then back again. Tension release. Everyone knows that Dev 
  Lung has an evil spirit in him. A spirit that waits for the one 
  time when no one will expect it to take control.

  Motorhead has seen the spirit and survived. Albeit by the skin 
  of his teeth. Mastered a way of getting around the man by being 
  brutally honest with him. One of the Camden Town Boy's old 
  tricks of the trade. Before the Boy left for Texas, he was 
  Lung's decker, on call to the man whenever he needed to know 
  things. Dev Lung is a man who needs to know everything.

  Now Motorhead holds that position. The young decker nods to the 
  man and throws the squash ball at the wall, catching it in one 
  hand. Listening to the metal echo.

  "He says he's making a start again in London and he doesn't want 
  any enemies."

  "Is that how he really feels? I mean, I don't know, I want us to 
  be friends again, but I can't take him on with Sodha because 
  you're here now. I'd rather he was on my side than Kistna, or, 
  even worse, December Flowers. You know? What do you think? Is he 
  for real?"

  Motorhead screws his face up and sighs.

  "Dunno," he says. "He's changed a lot, but I don't know if 
  that's him, or something that Vijayanta did to him. He's become 
  kinda cold and single-minded. I took him out to the Blue Cross 
  last night and he just stood there and watched us all charging, 
  slowly getting wankered. I know he ain't a steamer, but that man 
  never used to miss a party, no matter what the style. His whole 
  story was that he could fit in anywhere. Now it seems like he 
  doesn't fit in anywhere. I've never seen him looking so lost."

  Dev Lung shrugs. "If he's making an effort to patch it up, then 
  I can't really say no to him. But if he tries to go against me 
  again, he's street furniture. You can quote me on that."

  "Hate to say it, boss, but he's been killed once already. I 
  really don't think he cares what happens to him now."

  Dev Lung puts his thinking face on and Motorhead waits, bouncing 
  the ball against the wall. He knows that the Boy is back at his 
  place waiting for the Recon program to map out Vijayanta Core 
  274, Rhea's home. They are both being extra careful about this 
  affair. Neither of them has ever done this kind of job before. 
  Rogue Hunting. Hard enough job finding something that exists. 
  When it breaks out and could be anywhere in the world? Motorhead 
  finds himself hiding his face behind a bony hand.

  "Get him to see me. Tell him I'm prepared to forget the whole 
  thing as long as he does. How does that sound?"

  Six Sodhaboys escort him to his flat on their slices -- fast 
  electric bikes. Their long hair drags in the wind. This is what 
  he joined for, Motorhead remembers, the feel of the wind on his 
  face. Now the Grid has hold of him and refuses to let go. It's a 
  similar feeling, a powered rush through empty space, but riding 
  a slice is a damn sight safer. Even with all the other slicer 
  teams around.

  Saying _namaste_ to his escort, his gives the plastic fairings 
  on his slice a quick wipe over with his jacket cuff and forces 
  himself up thirty flights of concrete stairs in pitch darkness.



  "How's it looking?" Motorhead asks.

  "None too good."

  Dex is slumped in a fluffy brown armchair with a collection of 
  broken pistachio shells around his feet. A fly buzzes around the 
  shells, feeding on the detritus of half a day's studying.

  "So what happened? You can tell me. I'm a doctor." Motorhead 
  takes the jacket off and hangs it on the handle of his bedroom 
  door. He clears a space for himself by kicking a few cider 
  bottles to the walls of the room and sits down on a battered 
  copy of _Lolita_ magazine.

  "Recon program mapped the core, and there's a huge hole in the 
  node where Rhea should be. Want to see?"

  Motorhead switches on the Fednet PC and calls up the image. In 
  two dimensions it's like the crystal topography of an electron 
  microscope picture. Silver edges and thin blue strands 
  stretching across the image. And in the center, a tiny neon hole 
  in the core's edge.

  "Well, that's a surprise."

  Dex snorts a cynical laugh. "What's strange is that it is a 
  surprise. Look at the shape of the hole."

  Motorhead looks carefully, then fiddles with the perspective to 
  get a better look. The hole in the core's opaque neon glow is 
  giant and empty, but there seems to be more missing, some kind 
  of shadow within the hole that disappears in the fog of the 
  core.

  "Rhea destroyed some of the system when it went. I called Sarah 
  and she said that checks out, they're running a diagnostic now, 
  and they'll make some repairs. But it all means that it wasn't 
  stolen. See that shadow there? I've been wracking my head for 
  hours trying to think what it could be. Unless the stories about 
  witch-holes are true."

  Motorhead shakes his head at the screen. "A witch-hole... But 
  that would mean it burned its way out."

  Dex looks closer at the screen. "Yeah. Or maybe it didn't escape 
  outward. Maybe it escaped inward. My dad once told me about a 
  star that went nova just before I was born. Burned like a 
  bastard for about ten days so the whole world had daylight 
  24-7..." He trails off. Examining the scan closer and closer, 
  lost in his own growing hypothesis. "Yeah. Like a star going 
  nova. That would explain the shadow."

  A frown of awestruck confusion pulls at Motorhead's lean face. 
  "How the fuck did it do that?"

  Dex breaks away from the thoughts he's riding and shrugs. "Beats 
  the shit out of me."



  They drew wires and the Boy lost. Now he's here, a floating 
  decimal point in the Grid. A meaningful nothing in a vast 
  sensorium that doesn't really exist.

  A ghost in the machine.

  He pushes himself through the Grid. A simulated sense that 
  rushes through his nervous system. His body feels like he's 
  swimming through a sea of powdered milk. Some sort of electronic 
  hyper-rush. The Grid is still, yet he can feel its constant data 
  flow all around him. Vijayanta Core 274 is alive with paradox 
  and irony. The Boy's senses are having no trouble getting the 
  joke.

  There. The hole. He moves around the outside of it. Utterly 
  scared of its intention. Five years he's run the Grid. 
  Witch-holes are myths. Monsters in the dataspace. He never 
  imagined he'd see one. Never imagined he'd have to go near one. 
  And he knows of no one else who has ever dared.



  "Don't take your eyes off that screen. If I lose it, pull me out 
  immediately," he said.

  Motorhead watches the screen. His own Demon program sits in the 
  Grid, holding the stringy end of a Trace strand that follows the 
  Boy through the core. The short-haired slicer can see Dex's 
  position on the 3-D vector mapper connected to the PC screen. 
  The shadow is there, and the Boy circles it slow. An observant 
  hawk.

  Motorhead takes a quick glance to see if the real-life Boy, 
  attached to the cyberdeck by a primitive cyber helmet that 
  trails a score of microthin leads between the two, is still 
  breathing steady. Satisfied, he returns his vision to the 
  monochrome Fednet PC screen.

  Dex slides into the shadow. Motorhead panics.



  No feeling. That's what he notices at first. Like the 
  sensory-deprivation tanks his father used to make showers out of 
  in the Pancras Wells Dustzone. He said floating in one of those 
  took away all feeling, so you could reach a perfect 
  thoughtlessness for meditation. The concept is prehistoric, and 
  the Boy doesn't know if he likes it at all.

  He soon comes to realize that this isn't the same. He can feel 
  something. A rushing sensation. A dream of falling that he used 
  to have as a kid on continuous playback. And no way to wake up. 
  Falling further. Spinning madly and flailing. All notion of 
  orientation completely lost.

  Then he stops. Landing on his feet in a living room in 
  Paddington, with Japanese cartoons on the color TV and his hand 
  passing through the hand of a beautiful, small Bangladeshi woman 
  with long dark hair. A woman he knows by the name of Pain.



  4.
----

       "Never let something as petty as death get in the way
               of a good romance." --Big Pierrot

  The living room smells of plastic roses. It invades Dex's 
  nostrils and forces his overworked breathing to calm down.

  "I thought you were dead, Dex. Then it told me you were still 
  alive. It knew you'd come here." Her voice is sweet. Carried by 
  the warm rose air. A strange tinny quality to it that never used 
  to be there, but it's her voice. Her tones.

  She walks about the room with a resigned comfort. A prisoner 
  walking around the cell. "I'd give you a hug, Dex, but I can't 
  touch you."

  He sits on the right arm of a black leather sofa and rubs his 
  face. "This is going to sound shitty, I know. I know you as 
  Pain, but that's not your name, is it? I mean, whenever I became 
  close to you in the dream, I..."

  She moves away from him. "You went into convulsions. It was part 
  of the program. While Vijayanta's blades patched you up, they 
  tried to run some coma loop program on you. But somehow you kept 
  dragging me in."

  Dex shakes his head as she takes an apple from a fruit bowl on 
  the black plastic sideboard and nips a small bite from it. He 
  looks back at the bowl. Another has appeared to take its place.

  "Like this one?" Dex asks finally. "I mean, that's what this is, 
  right? A construct. Your father's Sony apartment with you in 
  it."

  She talks through gritted teeth. "Don't you get it, Dex, you 
  idiot? Jesus, I knew you could be slow at times, but..." She 
  puffs a heavy sigh and sits next to him on the sofa. "This isn't 
  a construct, Dex. This is me. Rhea has stolen my body. This is 
  all it left behind."



  "So you say he'll lead us to it?"

  Sarah squirms nervously in a brown leather office chair. Her 
  face contorted into a squint as the sun's light diffuses across 
  the tower's windows. She nods to her skinny superior.

  "I think of him more as bait, Mister Shelley. He'll lure Rhea to 
  where we can find it," she says.

  The skinny man in the tan-brown suit takes a drag from a slender 
  Havana cigar; as he exhales, every swirl of the gray smoke seems 
  to tumble through the hard rays of light through that large 
  window.

  "Too simple," he says. "Rhea would see it a mile away. This is 
  no simple Rogue Hunt, Miss Fairchild. Rhea became too hungry for 
  us and broke the rules. Did they brief you on Rhea's actions at 
  Milton Keynes before it broke free?"

  She shakes her head. Cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "No, they 
  didn't. I was simply given the project of retrieving Eastman, 
  making sure he was stable enough to work with us and then giving 
  him the job. I guess they just didn't trust me enough, Mister 
  Shelley."

  "It's not a question of trust, Miss Fairchild. It's a question 
  of loyalty. All you were told was that we can't go to Fednet 
  because it holds secret company data. Well, that's true, but 
  beside the point. Rhea has stolen a program from another 
  company. It wouldn't tell me which, nor what kind of program. 
  But it's obviously commercial enough for Rhea to want to 
  distribute it, because when I threatened to have its financial 
  control revoked, it ran. Mister Eastman has been called in not 
  only to find Rhea, but to get me that data when he does. Eastman 
  is a most valuable commodity in respect to his expendability."

  "A monkeytrick," she says softly to herself. "Using an outhouser 
  so we don't lose one of our own."

  "You're learning at last, Fairchild."

  He touches a screen on the long, brown trapezoid desk and the 
  screen comes alive with the chubby face of his secretary. "Bring 
  in Mister Hix," he says to the screen and the face fizzes to 
  black. Then he looks up to Sarah. "What of the other boy? 
  Motorhead."

  She shrugs. "Motorhead was Dex's idea. Apparently we needed a 
  contact on the streets in order to get the equipment. I didn't 
  have any plans for him."

  The man in the tan-brown suit pouts and rocks back and forth 
  slightly on his booted heels. "I'll leave him be for now, then. 
  Until he makes a mistake. Then I'll hammer him down with the 
  rest. You've done a good job, Sarah, but I think it's possibly 
  more prudent if I were to take over from now on. Go back to 
  Milton Keynes and do some real work."

  Alone in the Executive Elevator, she looks out over the zones 
  she's growing accustomed to. Realizing how much she hates her 
  position. So much power, so little knowledge. That's what counts 
  in the Dustzone. Out there, in the outzone, it's courage. In 
  that office, she's just like Dex. Bait. Thinking of Shelley's 
  words. _Leave her be for now. Until she makes a mistake._ And 
  that's all she is. Another monkey waiting to be tricked.



  Dex taps a beat on the back of the sofa with his fingers. "Why 
  don't I remember your name?"

  "You don't want to," she answers. She takes another small bite 
  from the apple. "Oh, it's not your fault. Your memory brought me 
  into the program, and I shouldn't have been there. So the 
  program tried to erase me. I asked Rhea while it was destroying 
  me."

  "It's insane. I hated you and loved you all in one go. I just 
  wish I knew who the fuck you are."

  She walks over with silent footsteps. "You saved my life once. 
  And in return, I showed you another world. I'm Kayjay."



  Sarah avoids the monorail system and calls a cycle-rickshaw to 
  pick her up from outside the gates of Vijayanta's Mile End 
  dustzone. It takes her on a mystery tour through areas that 
  she'd only seen on TV, and even then only on crime reports. The 
  rickshaw driver, a gawky young Asian kid named Vikram, played 
  tour guide as they went past them. The Swanfields projects, two 
  square miles of uncompleted gray concrete; Hoxton, home of the 
  December Flowers slicer gang. Through the back streets of 
  Holbourn to avoid static from the Kistnaboys and out into Long 
  Acre. Sodha territory. He drops her off outside the Blue Cross 
  and she pays him in freshly-bought rupees. Something tells her 
  she's starting to learn a little about this place.

  Inside things are quiet. The daytime in the Blue Cross is 
  reserved almost solely for dealing and drinking. She buys 
  herself a bottle of homebrew cider and sits in a dark corner, 
  away from the glaring sun.

  She barely gets to open it when a Sodhagirl with short black 
  hair joins her at the table.

  "You're Sarah the Suit, aren't you?" she says.

  Sarah's triangle face breaks into a shy smile. "Yes. How did you 
  know?"

  "Saw you last night with Mo and the others. You can't dance for 
  shit, but you're learning. I'm Cody." She extends an oily hand. 
  Sarah shakes it tentatively. "So I hear Mo's helping you out 
  with some _keiki?"_

  "Some what?"

  Cody's expression blanks as she tries to find the English 
  meaning of the Japanese term. "Business," she says finally.

  "Oh, yes. News travels fast around here." Sarah gulps down some 
  of the cider.

  "Faster than television. So, when are you going back to the 
  comfy life?"

  Sarah the Suit lets her eyes drift around the bar. Shards of hot 
  sunlight cut through the dusty air, leaving the dozen or so 
  ponies and kittens only the broken shadows in which to ply their 
  trade. Then she loses focus, lost in the thought of leaving a 
  place like this. Realizing how quickly she's grown to like it.

  "Today," she replies. "I have to go back today."



  Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

  "You have to go, Dex. You weren't meant to be here."

  "But I can't go back until I know what happened."

  She points a slender finger at Dex's chest. "You're dying up 
  there. The witch-hole's got you."

  "I mean what happened to _you_. What happened with you and 
  Rhea?"

  "Rhea used me. It copied me into the system and unloaded itself 
  into my brain. Right now, it's in an intensive care ward in the 
  Smallpox Hospital, using my body to escape. It just broke free 
  of its position, found me attached to all those 'trodes and got 
  started. But there's one thing it did first."

  "What?"

  "It told me why Vijayanta want it so badly."



  Back in Motorhead's living room, the convulsions finally stop. 
  The screen of the Fednet PC sprays white-noise static across the 
  room. Motorhead, having spent almost three minutes trying to 
  keep the Boy from smashing his head on the floor or swallowing 
  his tongue or drowning in his own vomit, finally gives up.

  A pounding thunder in his skull. He searches the flat for some 
  painkillers or anything, but he is fresh out of luck and drugs. 
  He needs some air. Grabbing his baseball jersey, he runs out of 
  the flat.


  5.
----


               "There's what's legal. There's what's right. 
                And there's what I do best." --Big Pierrot

  An apartment like any other. Lifeless. Dead. Then Sarah presses 
  her palm against the lock and the door slides open. The hall 
  lights flicker on and bathe the place in sea green splendor. It 
  sends a warm shiver through Sarah's spine. She's home.

  Each room is a different color. Designed to enhance her moods 
  and to keep her sane; a constant reminder of variegation in such 
  a monochrome place as Milton Keynes.

  The living room is a subtle contrast of turquoise walls and 
  aquamarine Bauhaus furniture. She places herself at her 
  petroleum-plastic desk and flicks on the blue-screen Sony. She 
  logs in. Lets the machine cycle through the message box, filled 
  with faces from the Information Services department asking about 
  her whereabouts. She absentmindedly skims through them. The last 
  face shocks her tapered finger, and she can't press a single key 
  while he plays.

  "Sarah," he says. "I know about Shelley's deal. Now, I can tell 
  the Feds or I can talk to you. So reply to Vja274-BOY. Okay?"



  His own deck and he loves the machine like a child loves his 
  mother. He powers it up, plugs the lead from the two 
  neurosensory transfer plugs into the back of the machine, and 
  hits the start switch, shuddering into the Grid.

  Using copies of the Boy's homemade Trojan, Motorhead follows a 
  strand through the hardened shell. The shell accepts him gladly. 
  Boy's recon map was erased. Motorhead has a hard time 
  orienting himself inside the shell, relying on memory and the 
  practice of sending Find slaves in likely directions. Hoping one 
  will run into the witch-hole. When he receives a positive 
  message from one of the slave strands, he follows its path and 
  then stops dead in his tracks.

  The cube is filled with another program of some sort. 
  Tentatively, he calls in the other Find slaves and sends an 
  Identifier slave to the opaque area ahead of him. The thin blue 
  thread touches the skin of the cube. He registers the name in 
  his mind and tears the wires from his head.

  Plunging back into his own body. He reels from the chair, makes 
  a run for the window. Sense-shock pulsing through him. But he's 
  too slow. He can almost feel the inner walls of his stomach meet 
  as he retches into a convenient plastic box.

  He wipes his mouth with his shirt sleeve and allows himself time 
  to take it in. Dex is dead. His body, at least. Somehow, the 
  Grid had pulled his soul through to the other side when he 
  entered that witch-hole. Motorhead had taken some pretty drastic 
  action that day. Dev Lung wanted to burn the body, to erase his 
  existence permanently. Motorhead had to fight against the devil 
  in him a second time before he allowed the young decker to 
  freeze the body instead. Just in case.

  For a full, painful hour, Motorhead cannot close his eyes 
  without that Artificial Intelligence address code filling up his 
  sensorium.

  Vja274-BOY.



  Shelley's thin face, the face of the skinny man in the tan-brown 
  suit, fills the blue monitor screen. Eyes looking out of shot to 
  his own screen in an office in London.

  Sarah regards closely the bony features of the man on the 
  screen. The blank, poker-face expression and cold, dark blue 
  eyes piercing the screen's corner the way an insect sits 
  perfectly still and watches its prey.

  "What's wrong, Sarah?"

  She shrugs, off-camera. "I got a message from Dex. Something's 
  happened. He seems to be caught in the core. I think he's dead."

  The expression doesn't change. "What was the message about, 
  Sarah?"

  "Something about a deal you've made. He says he'll take it to 
  the FDI, whatever it is."

  Shelley's lips pout in thought. He shakes his head. His voice 
  turns stern, yet sincerely concerned. "You could be in 
  considerable danger, Sarah, so I'll have you moved. Put into a 
  safehouse, I mean, just until this blows over. Stay in your 
  flat, and I'll send someone to pick you up. Just stay where you 
  are, okay?"

  She hangs her head. "Okay." The screen flickers and then returns 
  to normal blue fuzz.

  Sarah stays in her flat for a full minute. The time it takes her 
  to pack a small black sports bag with Motorhead's leather jeans 
  and a tiny hold-out pistol so she can head back to London.



  When Sarah's triangle face appears at the door, he slams it 
  shut.

  "Mo," he hears her pleading. "This wasn't supposed to happen. It 
  was a simple monkeytrick. I used Dex as bait to lure Rhea into 
  the open. I didn't know about the witch-hole. Look, you have to 
  let me in. They're after me, too. He left a message for me in 
  Milton Keynes and I need to talk to him."

  "You can't talk to him, you stupid bitch. He's dead." Motorhead 
  leans against the steel front door, his face in his hands. In 
  the bedroom, on the other side of the apartment, the cellular 
  phone buzzes, waiting to be answered.

  "I know that, Mo. But he's in my system somehow. He can talk to 
  me, so I must be able to talk to him."

  The phone in the bedroom still buzzing impatiently.

  "He's dead. D-E-A-D. He's not in your system, he's not a ghost, 
  he's just dead. Just fuck off and leave me alone." He leaves the 
  door to answer the phone. He can just make out her words as she 
  calls through the steel.

  "You don't understand. Something happened. He went into the 
  witch-hole and something happened, didn't it? I need to know 
  what happened!"

  Motorhead pulls the aerial up on the phone and presses a button, 
  wiping sweat from his brow. "Yes," he manages to say.

  "Open the door and let her in, Mo. And keep the line open." 
  Dex's voice. Motorhead rushes for the door.



  He jacks the cellular into an old tape recorder. With a 
  condenser mike and a crackling speaker, it's the closest they 
  can get to Conference Mode. Dex explains everything. Rhea's 
  escape into the mind of Kayjay and Kayjay's whereabouts, and he 
  tells them about the deal.

  "Shelley has his hands on something that could change the face 
  of Vijayanta and he's dealt some out to the street. A microsoft. 
  Serious stuff. Rhea stole the source code from some other system 
  while still in the experimental stage. It's killing people on 
  the street. Sodha and Kistnaboys and fuck knows who else. Rhea 
  was using Shelley to distribute it. When the shit hit the fan, 
  Rhea bugged out, leaving Shelley with all these lethal chips. 
  That's why he wants it back so much. All our ponies are going to 
  go apeshit when they find out."

  "What can we do?" Motorhead asks.

  "It won't take long before Shelley discovers the Rhea-Kayjay 
  switch. We're not the only department working on this. So the 
  best thing would be for you to get Kayjay and for me to detain 
  Shelley. Once we've got her, we might be able to reverse the 
  switch. Even if we can't, then we'll have some bargaining 
  power."

  "I can still get us into the Mile End Dustzone. But we'll need 
  an army to get past the security," Sarah suggests.

  Dex's voice provides the answer. "No need for an army. I'll get 
  you in. It's settled, then. Get Kayjay and I'll sort it out. You 
  have to be quick, though, Dustzone curfew hours and all that 
  stuff."

  Sarah finds herself nodding unconsciously to the phone. 
  Motorhead unjacks the thing from the tape machine.

  "So there it is," he says. "Dex is your new DI. So tell me, what 
  the hell are we supposed to do with Rhea when we get to Mile 
  End?"

  She looks at the young decker and sighs. "I don't know. I really 
  don't know."

  6.
----

       "Earth is 98 percent full. Please delete anyone you can."
                               --Big Pierrot

  The misty skies over the London outzone have turned red in the 
  hot spring afternoon. Solar satellites and workstations form 
  spiny constellations twinkling above. Sarah turns her attention 
  back to the street as they roll through the sparse traffic in a 
  wooden cycle-rickshaw.

  "Who is this Kayjay, anyway?" she asks Motorhead, wary of 
  hitting any raw nerves in his already tender mind.

  "She was a Sodhagirl that the Boy had a shine on. She was the 
  daughter of a Sony shaker, but she was one of those young rich 
  rebels. Ran away from home when she was 11 and ended up in the 
  outzone getting attacked by a gang of New Churchers and raped. 
  Dead, too, if the Boy hadn't stepped in. Her father rewarded him 
  with access to the Sony flat in the Camden Secure Zone and him 
  and Kayjay became best friends. That's where the Boy was born, 
  with her father's Sony cyberdeck, so the legend goes."

  He watches her as she looks out at the streets of the outzone. 
  Feels her taking in the life here.

  "Anyway, Kayjay and him were an item for a while, and then one 
  day she tells him she can't love him anymore. No reason, just 
  says, 'I don't love you, Dex.' So he left for Texas. He told us 
  the rest. Two months ago, Dev Lung sends her on an errand into 
  Kistna territory. He's been trying to cut some sort of deal with 
  them. A truce, like. Well, they gave her a trial by ordeal for 
  being with Sodha. Hot rodded her. That's why she's in the 
  hospital. Getting new limbs."

  "Hot rodded?"

  Motorhead sighs. "It's Kistna law. To prove your innocence, you 
  have to carry a piece of red-hot iron ten meters and drop it in 
  a vat of water. If your hands show no blisters after three days, 
  God has smiled on you."

  "And if the blisters are still there?"

  "They cut your arms and legs off and leave you to die."

  The conversation stops there. The cycle-rickshaw turns quietly 
  onto the New Road and the nine-year-old boy at the front pedals 
  steadily through the Battle Bridge Secure Zone, the brown spires 
  of the Smallpox Hospital disappearing into the red mist 
  thickening at the road's horizon. To each side, the crumbling 
  towers form a canyon of granite gray. It makes Sarah sink a 
  little further into her rickshaw seat.

  "Better keep a look out," the driver says quietly. "We're moving 
  into Kistnaville."



  The reception office is a wide transparent plastic fish tank 
  filled with tiny Sikh women sitting behind Fednet terminals 
  typing in administration details. They all ignore Motorhead and 
  Sarah as they enter the cavernous foyer. There is one open 
  window in the fish tank. Sarah tries it.

  "Is it possible to see a girl called Kayjay? She was admitted 
  here two months ago."

  Motorhead steps in when he sees the confused look on the Sikh 
  woman's tiny face. He switches languages to Punjabi. Says three 
  sentences. Her face lights up.

  The woman flicks lightning-fast fingers across the terminal's 
  touchpad, thin blue light dances over her face. Then the screen 
  changes to bright white and Sarah guesses that a videostat of 
  the girl must be on the record. The receptionist tries to find 
  the English words to convey what is written in Punjabi on the 
  screen.

  "She is gone today," the woman says proudly.

  Motorhead's face drops. "What do you mean, gone?"

  "She is discharged today, you see? Gone home. She's better now. 
  Metal arms and legs. Better."

  The screen changes back to blue. The Sikh woman reels her hands 
  back as if she's touched a wrong button. Her hands were by her 
  face all the time. Punjabi characters scrawl themselves across 
  the screen faster than her typing could ever write. Repeating 
  themselves over and over. She turns the screen around to face 
  Motorhead and Sarah, who look inquisitively at her.

  "It says, 'Turn screen around,' " the woman says.

  The screen blanks into dark blue again. The words this time come 
  up in English:

  DON'T ASK HOW NO TIME KAYJAY HAS GONE COME BACK TO THE DUSTZONE 
  YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEE THIS BOY

  Motorhead spends a second taking it in. Nodding to the 
  receptionist in thanks just as Sarah grabs his arm and drags him 
  out of the hospital.



  Shelley has set the holoroom for a snow-covered winter's noon on 
  Capitol Hill. He closes the door behind him and steps up to the 
  bench by the black steel railings that surround the grounds of 
  the New American Museum, green astroturf leading up to the white 
  building.

  Boy sits at the corner of the bench wearing a black pilot's 
  jacket and baggy red jeans. As he was before Vijayanta killed 
  him, with his hands spread along the arm and back of the bench 
  and his right foot tucked in by his buttocks on the seat. Dex is 
  dead forever now. Only the Boy remains. Shelley sits down next 
  to him.

  "Thought about my offer yet?" the shaker asks.

  "Thought?" Boy laughs. "Jesus, you must really be desperate."

  "Well, have you?" Shelley puckers up his lips in frustration.

  Boy looks at a hypothetical watch. "Now I have, yes. You can 
  kiss my ass." He raises his eyebrows a touch.

  Shelley looks away toward the view of Washington. Far away to 
  the south he can just make out a section of green land that lies 
  beyond the walls of the Plex. "Fine. Then I'll call in some 
  Fednet boys and have you shut down."

  Boy shakes his head, the smirk still on his face. "Sorry, matey, 
  but I've been kind of busy. If you shut me down here, I'll pop 
  up in two other cores. And if I'm shut down there I replicate 
  again, to an exponential. When I die the whole of the Grid will 
  crash because it can't handle all my processes."

  He smiles. "I made it a principle a long time ago never to work 
  for smart-ass companies. Now I'm dead, I figure I've all the 
  more reason to stick to my principles, seeing as they're about 
  all I've got."

  Shelley doesn't hide his annoyance. His lips are pursed tighter 
  than ever. He stands and walks a few steps across the sidewalk. 
  "You seem to have me in a stranglehold, Mister Eastman. What do 
  you want from me?"

  When Boy gives him the answer, Shelley just laughs in disbelief.



  The lift stops rather suddenly. When the door slides open, 
  Motorhead and Sarah instinctively edge to the sides of the lift, 
  expecting the stutter of heavy rifle fire. But there's only the 
  low hum of the neon strip lights that lead to his office. The 
  corridor's empty. No security guards here. No Shelley. No 
  autocannons she'd suspected would be lurking in the corner.

  Nothing.

  They make their way along the edges of the corridor. Shelley's 
  office at the far end is a closed door. When they reach it, just 
  about to hit the switch, it opens. The two drop instinctively, 
  sensing the danger.

  In front of Shelley's desk, a motion-controlled device sets off 
  about five pounds of plastic explosive. Windows disintegrate, 
  spraying out into the evening air. Flames lick the backs of 
  Sarah's legs. Then it's all over.

  They stand and survey the scene. There are a few pieces of 
  Shelley left by the remains of the desk, but most of him has 
  been blown out the window. Motorhead catches the smell of 
  charred flesh and retches in the corner. Sarah kicks part of 
  what could have been a leg under the debris.



  The holoroom is set for Paris, the base of _La Tour Eiffel._ 
  Sarah steps up to Boy's apparition and folds her arms.

  "Okay, you've got your revenge. Now what did you have to do with 
  it?"

  Boy puts on a mock-innocent face and shrugs. "I just told him 
  that the best way out of his situation was suicide. He didn't 
  have the guts to do it himself, so he waited for you to arrive 
  instead."

  Sarah unfolds her arms and gasps. "There's so much more behind 
  this that you haven't told us, isn't there?"

  Boy nods.

  "Fancy parting with some of this information?"

  "Nope. I told you what you needed to know to get the job done. I 
  mean, you stopped him, right? No one knows what happened. 
  Metropol was distracted at the time. The world's a safer place. 
  Just like Big Pierrot."

  "Vijayanta are still after me, though, aren't they?" She shrugs, 
  not knowing what to do next.

  "Go back to the outzone. It's more exciting than Milton Keynes." 
  He laughs. "Anywhere's more exciting than Milton Keynes."

  With her eyes low, she nods and takes the suggestion into her 
  head. "Okay, I guess I can put up with Mo for a bit. And I 
  seemed to be making a few friends of my own."

  "Good." Boy turns away, walking north.

  "Where are you going?" she calls after him.

  He wheels around to face her a final time. His eyes are alive 
  with loss. "I'm a Digital Intelligence now. Pretty soon the 
  management will want to shut me down or make me work for a 
  living. I'd better see as much as I can before I get collared. 
  Besides, Rhea's still running 'round with my friend's body. 
  Can't let it get away, can we?" His arms stretch out to each 
  side. He laughs hard and spins himself dizzy, heading north 
  until he disappears into the wall.

  Sarah turns and laughs as she walks out of the room. Behind her 
  in a hologram Paris, rain begins to fall.
 

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

  Ridley McIntyre was born in London, but has moved to the smaller 
  city of Coventry to work on a Communications degree. Between 
  assignments he calms himself by watching _anime_, drinking 
  naval-strength coffee and writing short stories that should 
  really be novels. "Monkeytrick" is a sequel to "Boy," which 
  appeared in InterText Vol. 2 No. 2 (March-April 1992).



  Mr. McKenna is Dying   by Marcus Eubanks
==========================================
..................................................................
  * The slice of time that is one person's ordinary day can just 
  as easily contain the momentous or the tragic. *
..................................................................

  It really does have a smell all its own. You don't really know 
  what it is at first, or even the second or third time. You don't 
  even realize that it's there. Eventually though, it dawns on you 
  that this particular crisp odor can be one thing, and one thing 
  only. It is the smell of blood.

  Today it hit me before I even got inside the room. Slapped the 
  wall switch outside the O.R. suite, strode through the doors 
  even as they folded away before me, and there it was. Like burnt 
  orange peels. Or hot metal filings on the floor of a machine 
  shop. Even the smell of the machine oil is there. It's not the 
  same smell, but you'll recognize it if you ever chance across 
  it. It will dawn on you then, but only after the scent has crept 
  around your subconscious for a while, sneaking down into your 
  hippocampus and setting off strange primitive reactions in your 
  thalamus. You'll remember my words, and think, "Ah. I know 
  exactly what he meant now."



  Mr. McKenna had been out for an early-morning ride on his 
  motorcycle. Or maybe it was a late, late night ride. Coming home 
  from a party perhaps, or sneaking away from his girlfriend's 
  place. Or maybe just out for a spin on the gray and drizzly 
  streets, having gotten up early to have coffee with his wife and 
  kids. You know, just to tool around the town a bit, get out on 
  the road with the damp air wrapped around him, and marvel at the 
  beginning of what would turn into an absolutely beautiful April 
  day.

  Then for some reason we are not privy to, Mr. McKenna drove his 
  motorcycle right into a parked car. This was not a good way for 
  him to start his day. For that matter, it wasn't a terribly good 
  way to start ours either, but I guess that wasn't really his 
  fault.

  The ER attending paged Neuro down for a consult. The Neuro 
  resident was not terribly pleased by what he saw. One pupil 
  refused to respond to light. Blown. A wide-open portal to the 
  soul. Or in this case more like a barn door flapping in the 
  breeze, after the horse has already run off. I was seriously 
  reconsidering the fantasies I'd been having about getting myself 
  another motorcycle someday when I had a cash flow.

  He coded on us then, right there in the ER. The ol' ticker just 
  heaved once, massively, and gave up. "What's the point?" it 
  figured, and decided to take a little breather. We zapped it. 
  Lots of nice clean DC volts. A big bunch of amps. The heart 
  reconsidered and must have figured that if this was the kind of 
  treatment it was going to receive while on break, well, fuck it, 
  it would just go back to work where no one had bothered it.

  _Crunch_. _Pop_. That's the sound of a really nice set of 
  stainless-steel wire-cutters parting bone. _Crunch_. It's a 
  visceral sound. You'll remember that sound too, like the smell. 
  I promise. _Crunch_. There they are, the stars of the show for 
  the moment, Mr. Heart and his two bodyguards, Mr. Two-lobes and 
  Mr. Three-lobes. They're beautiful. There's the heart, excursing 
  away in its warm little pericardial wrapper rather like a stuck 
  pig. The lungs are pink and healthy, mottled with black. Your 
  lungs are mottled with black too. You may think to yourself, 
  with a bit of righteous pride, "Nay, not mine, for I have never 
  breathed the sweet airs of the demon tobacco, nor have I 
  partaken of the subtle Mary-J-Wana. I have taken Dr. Koop's 
  earnest warnings to heart, and I have seen _Reefer Madness_. I 
  am a believer." You are wrong. Your lungs look just like Mr. 
  McKenna's. Just crap from this modern air we breathe. It's okay 
  though, 'cause it's harmless. More or less.

  Actually, your lungs don't really look like his. His have holes 
  in them. Blood bubbles out each time the diaphragm relaxes and 
  Mr. McKenna exhales. There are also holes in the diaphragm. 
  These are in addition to the normal ones that the aorta and 
  other things pass through. As you might imagine, we are 
  chagrined. They are not supposed to be there, these holes.

  Mr. McKenna goes on a little elevator ride up to O.R. We have 
  made this huge gaping hole in his chest, you see, and that in 
  itself is reason enough to take him there. There are other 
  reasons too. We want to make another gaping hole in him, this 
  time in his abdomen. Actually, it's not really _we_. It's 
  _they_. Surgeons. They _like_ to cut big holes in people. I'm 
  Anesthesia. We like to stand around and make significant little 
  noises at each other, crack dark jokes, and make fun of 
  surgeons. We think we are very funny. We're right to think that.

  Now Mr. McKenna has two very big holes in him, in addition to 
  all of the little ones he made inside when he drove his 
  motorcycle into that car. The floor of the O.R. is a mess. There 
  is blood everywhere. Some of it is there because I accidentally 
  poked a hole in one of the bags of blood that we intended to put 
  into Mr. McKenna. That particular blood is now all over me as 
  well. Oops. "You shouldn't do that," says the anesthesiologist 
  who is more or less coordinating our part of the job. I agree 
  with him. Folks just don't like to sit down to dine with someone 
  who has blood all over himself. I can't imagine why.

  "You," says one anesthesiologist to me, "are going to stand 
  there and blow blood in through the pressure infuser. You are 
  going to do this again and again, as quickly as you can."

  "Yes," I say, "I am." This is called "massive volume 
  resuscitation protocol." Mr. McKenna will, over the course of 
  his surgery, have over 55 units of blood poured into him. That's 
  55 of those bags that you fill up while you lie on the table 
  praying that the Red Cross nurses are not going to blow your 
  vein with those godawful huge needles they stick into you. It is 
  rather more blood than is in your entire body. Maybe five times 
  as much. The rest of the blood on the floor, far in excess of 
  the 20 or 30 cc's I spilled when I cleverly wasted that nice bag 
  of the stuff, is coming from Mr. McKenna. I put it into him, and 
  then it leaks out of various holes in his vasculature and spills 
  onto the floor.

  It will take Housekeeping the better part of three hours to get 
  all of the blood off the floor, the operating table, and various 
  other pieces of medical paraphernalia. There is also blood 
  tracked all through the hallway outside the O.R. This is because 
  it sticks to my shoes, or rather to the little blue booties that 
  cover them, when I go to fetch more drugs or run arterial blood 
  gas studies. It sticks to other folks' shoes too, so I'm secure 
  in the knowledge that I'm not the sole culprit.



  The surgeons have Mr. McKenna cross clamped. That is to say that 
  the whole bottom half of his body is getting no blood. Not that 
  it really matters at this point, because there wasn't really 
  much blood getting there before, as it was running out through 
  various holes before it could get too far anyhow. Mr. McKenna's 
  lower half was getting _some_ blood, however. Now it has none. 
  The cells down there wonder just what the hell is going on up in 
  headquarters, and do their best to respire anaerobically. The 
  cross clamp comes off, and it is discovered that there is also a 
  hole in Mr. McKenna's aorta. Maybe it was there before, maybe 
  not. We call injuries that result from therapy iatrogenic. This 
  is a nice way to say that the damage was caused by the folks 
  trying to fix the patient.



  _Sew sew sew._ _Staple_. _Crunch_. Mr. McKenna has two 
  incredibly big holes in him. A good-sized cat could easily 
  cuddle up quite comfortably in either one.

  Some time later, he has only one very big hole and a 
  25-centimeter line of black sutures to mark where the other hole 
  was. The problem with the remaining opening is that every time 
  the surgeons try to close it, Mr. McKenna's heart gets 
  depressed. Perhaps it is disturbed by the thought that, having 
  seen the bright compelling lights of our O.R., it will soon be 
  shrouded in claustrophobic darkness again. It rebels at this 
  notion and goes on a work slowdown. Not exactly a strike, not 
  yet, but still this recalcitrance is enough to frustrate both 
  surgeons and anesthesiologists.

  About twenty minutes later, Mr. McKenna's heart _does_ stop. 
  Rather, it doesn't stop, exactly, but sits there in V-fib and 
  quivers like an irate child. We give it a taste of our amps and 
  volts again, and it reluctantly remembers why it started up 
  after we did that the first time.

  One of the surgeons suggests that perhaps this exercise is 
  becoming futile. "Pretend he's your dad," says another, "and do 
  your best to save him. As long as the heart is going, he might 
  pull out of it." Unfortunately, now _both_ of Mr. McKenna's 
  pupils are blown. The brain, apparently, is beginning to side 
  with the heart and is growing tired of the whole affair.

  Mr. McKenna's heart is still piqued by the surgeons' attempts to 
  deprive it of the rich light of day. "To hell with it," reckon 
  the surgeons, and offer the heart a window instead. Yes, they 
  actually slice open a one-liter saline bag and commence to 
  sewing it in place over the big hole. For our part, we 
  Anesthesia types are trying to offer the heart other incentives. 
  We are infusing Mr. McKenna with mind-boggling quantities of 
  epinephrine. His heart is not pleased with our offering, 
  however. Where your heart or mine would be galloping like a 
  derby thoroughbred which has just been shot in the ass by a 
  malicious kid with a BB gun, this particular heart is creeping 
  along at about 58 beats per minute. This would be a good pace 
  for a young athlete at rest, but it's not for Mr. McKenna, who 
  isn't terribly young and, frankly, doesn't look like he was too 
  athletic even before he drove his motorcycle into a parked car.



  Mr. McKenna is dying. In all truth, he has been dying ever since 
  that collision. Now, however, he is doing it in earnest. At two 
  o'clock, one of the surgeons says, "Okay, folks. You've done a 
  good job. We did our best." Seven hours after his disagreement 
  with that car, Mr. McKenna is pronounced.

  Later, when all us Anesthesia types are going over the case, 
  writing up the mortality report and such, one comments, "Oh wow. 
  I'm gonna have to figure out the Kevorkian points for this and 
  decide who gets 'em." Something snaps. I start to giggle 
  uncontrollably. Kevorkian points. I think it's hilarious. One of 
  our administrators actually keeps a database for it.

  Just another day at work, I guess. There was a heart transplant 
  going on across the corridor from us. Right after we finished 
  the trauma, they started a kidney transplant down the hall. I'm 
  exhausted. Though it was only eight hours, it felt like a 
  lifetime. For Mr. McKenna, I guess it was. I ask one of the 
  anesthesiologists, before I leave, if he thinks Mr. McKenna ever 
  really had a chance.

  "No," he says. "Not really."

  "I dunno," cracks one of the others. "I figure his chances were 
  real close to 100 percent until he got on that motorcycle this 
  morning."


  Marcus Eubanks (eubanks@astro.ocis.temple.edu)
------------------------------------------------

  Marcus Eubanks is an angry young medical student at Temple 
  University who continues to be astounded at his consuming 
  passion for medicine. He is currently waiting (with much 
  trepidation) to find out if he passed the first part of National 
  Boards.


  The World Is Held Together By Duct Tape   by Carl Steadman
============================================================
..................................................................
  * Everyone's got an obsession. Some, however, are stickier 
  than others. *
..................................................................

  "The world is held together by duct tape." You can see it, 
  there, in his eyes, he's at it again. He's thinking those 
  thoughts: "The world is held together by duct tape." And on and 
  on: all those thoughts he thinks when he thinks "The world is 
  held together by duct tape." He told me once he played a game 
  and someone whispered in his ear "Buckingham Palace is made of 
  cardboard." He has never forgotten that, because he told me. And 
  he thinks like that, I can tell. It's in his eyes, looking at 
  me: "The world is held together by duct tape."


  It's in his thoughts.


  He talks about duct tape in his sleep. On previous nights, 
  nights not much unlike this one, he has recited lists of things 
  he has seen held together by duct tape: purses, umbrellas, 
  Rubbermaid garbage cans, broom handles, range tops, picture 
  frames, hockey sticks, garden hoses, radio antennas, car 
  bumpers, old Converse high-tops. He has never once mentioned 
  ducts. Tonight, he talks of smashing things, to put them 
  together again better with duct tape. I stay awake next to him 
  and take notes. I also write a reminder for myself: send the cat 
  to a kennel. Tell him Snookums was bitten by the Marsoleks' 
  youngest boy, Georgie, and it's just to be on the safe side.


  He's thinking about it.


  Sometimes I fall asleep, taking the notes I take of him talking 
  in his sleep about duct tape. At first, I was worried that he 
  might find my notes at my side when he woke in the morning and 
  accuse me of taking what was his. But I found a solution -- I 
  went out and bought a fabric blank book from B. Dalton, covered 
  in vulgar pastels and paisleys. (I have the receipt, in case 
  anyone might accuse me of stealing it. I have the receipt, in 
  case anyone might accuse me of being a kleptomaniac. I have the 
  receipt. $5.99, taxable.) I told him I was going to record my 
  dreams. I told him that each night before I go to bed I would 
  say three times, "I will remember my dreams," like this: "I will 
  remember my dreams. I will remember my dreams. I will remember 
  my dreams." Then I told him that each morning right when I got 
  up I would write down the dreams that I would, without fail, 
  remember. I told him I had to write them down then because it 
  would do no good to remember them in the shower, when I was 
  washing my hair, because I couldn't write them down then, and, 
  undoubtedly, I would forget them when I dried off. I told him 
  that's the way dreams are. I told him I learned about all this 
  on cable TV. I told him the pastel-and-paisley covered book was 
  my "dream book" where I did my writing in the morning. I showed 
  it to him and put it in its place, right there out there in the 
  open, on my night stand. Each night, I mumble -- loudly enough 
  so he can hear -- "I will remember my dreams. I will remember my 
  dreams. I will remember my dreams." Each morning when I get up, 
  I write in my dream book. He sees me write in my dream book. I 
  write about rabbit holes, swimming pools with dirt embankments 
  around, and trash cans brimming with filthy-smelling refuse. It 
  is in my dream book that I hide the notes I take of what he says 
  in his sleep at night. I am not worried of his finding out about 
  my notes -- they are well-hidden, in the dream book, in between 
  the snakes and garden hoses. The one thing he is least 
  interested in is my dreams.


  He eats, sleeps, and breathes duct tape.


  I might be able to understand him better if he sold duct tape, 
  or if he owned shares in a duct tape manufacturer, or if he was 
  even writing a book on the everyday use of duct tape. He could 
  call it _Doing It Better With Duct Tape_ or _The Duct Tape Way_. 
  Maybe a duct tape consulting service. Anything. It all causes me 
  to question his motives.


  God. What if he gets his hands on the CD collection?


  He has now stopped eating Grape Nuts, which he has eaten 
  faithfully every morning I have known him, except for the one 
  Sunday I made French toast for the both of us, and the one 
  Sunday he made pancakes for the both of us. Instead, he eats 
  Cheerios. I know what he sees in those little O's of toasted oat 
  goodness. I know what significance he makes of them.


  Last night, we went to Orchestra Hall to witness the performance 
  of a great work of art. This is what happened: the second 
  movement followed the first, and the third movement followed the 
  second. It wasn't until after the intermission, though, that we 
  got, in my opinion, the full value of our ticket prices. There, 
  in the middle of the fourth movement, was an almost 
  imperceptible -- I wasn't sure of it at first, but I listened 
  more closely, and became more sure -- an almost imperceptible 
  high whistling sound, which failed to complement the music.

  I looked across at John, but he seemed, oddly enough, unaffected 
  by the noise -- he sat there, away from himself, away from me, 
  intent on what he heard. I nudged his arm.

  "Do you hear that?" I asked. He turned towards me.

  "Yes," he said. "Isn't it beautiful?" He smiled. He lightly 
  touched the back of my hand and returned his attention to the 
  performance.

  I focused on the sound again, and, yes, sure enough, it was 
  there. I looked again at John. The smile was still on his lips. 
  He scratched his nose. His eyes remained fixed on the stage. I 
  followed his gaze.

  It wasn't apparent at first, but then, there, you could see it, 
  it was what he was looking at, there, you could see it, even 
  from our third-tier obstructed-view seats -- there, in the flute 
  section, a small -- ever-so-small, as difficult to notice as the 
  whistling noise, but undeniably there -- there in the flute 
  section, a small patch of dull silver -- almost gray -- among 
  all the bright, shiny, polished surfaces. There, you could see 
  it: probably a valve wouldn't close, or maybe a joint between 
  two pieces no longer made a proper fit, but, whatever the case, 
  it was there. A small, irregular piece of duct tape, holding the 
  instrument together, making a high-pitched hiss as the smallest 
  jet of air whistled out the patch.


  John and I argued last night, after the concert. We had an 
  argument. But it's OK tonight, because tonight I realize -- he 
  has his fantasies.


  He has his fantasies. Oh boy does he have his fantasies. Ooh ooh 
  baby does he have his fantasies. And I will make them all come 
  true.

  Tonight, he will come home, as he usually does. He will come 
  home. He will come home, and walk into our home, and say "Honey? 
  You home?" Oh boy will I be home. Ooh ooh baby will I be home.


  He has his way of seeing things. He sees things his way, through 
  his gray, duct-tape eyes. Really, it was stupid of me to think 
  it would be any different with John. It was stupid of me to 
  think it would be any different. But then, that wouldn't 
  surprise John. Except for the fact that it was him. Because, 
  after all, he can only be expected to have his fantasies.

  He can only be expected to have his fantasies.


  Tonight, he will come home, and yell "Honey? You home?" And I 
  will say nothing back. I will say nothing back.

  Tonight he will come home. He will walk into the entryway, and 
  through the entryway. He will walk into the living room, and 
  through the living room. He will walk into the hallway, and 
  through the hallway. He will come to the bedroom, and come into 
  the bedroom, and he will see me there, laid out for him, splayed 
  out for him. My arms, spread crucifixion-like, bound to the 
  bedposts with duct tape. My legs, spread-eagled, bound to the 
  posts with duct tape. My nipples, red and taut, bursting out of 
  the teeny holes cut out for them from my bra of duct tape. 
  Before my own waiting, yearning opening, duct-taped to my 
  thighs, the yawning, gaping, center of a fresh, new, unused, 
  never-opened roll of duct tape.

  And he will be my fifth limb.


  Carl Steadman (carl@cdtl.umn.edu)
-----------------------------------

  Carl Steadman is an associate editor for CTHEORY 
  <http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/ctheory/ctheory.html>, and 
  works for the University of Minnesota's Center for the 
  Development of Technological Leadership, in Minneapolis, 
  Minnesota.


  Georgia's Loose Tooth   by Richard McGowan
============================================
..................................................................
  * This transplanted fairy tale gives new meaning to the word 
  _vegetable_. *
..................................................................

  Of all the teeth -- a good twenty of them at least -- in 
  Georgia's six-year-old mouth, the first one to come loose was 
  the rearmost lower molar on the left-hand side.

  "How very unusual," Dr. Benoxious exclaimed when he finally 
  prised open her mouth far enough to see the molar. "Indeed, this 
  is passing strange." He was a frustrated actor who had taken to 
  dentistry only as a last resort and always spoke dramatically.

  Georgia wrinkled her nose and opened wider to receive the fat, 
  nimble hands of her dentist. They were clammy and cold, as if he 
  had soaked them in ice water and then shelled a few oysters. She 
  did not like them at all -- they smelled rather like her 
  granny's compost heap.

  "Nrmph grmnp kmpt hhp," Georgia mumbled, pushing her tongue 
  between his fleshy fingers, trying to dislodge them from her 
  mouth.

  Dr. Benoxious finally, after much prodding and probing, withdrew 
  his hands. He methodically removed his surgical gloves and 
  inquired, "Did you brush your teeth this morning?" He knew, of 
  course, that she had not, for her youthful mouth smelled 
  uncannily like his old uncle Wilfred's compost heap. Over the 
  rims of his wire-frame bifocal spectacles, he peered at her 
  knowingly.

  "No," Georgia mumbled.

  "How serious is it, Doctor?" asked Hilda, leaning over to look. 
  She wrapped her fingers around her daughter's tiny hand and 
  squeezed it consolingly.

  "Oh, pish-posh," Dr. Benoxious exclaimed, throwing one massive 
  hand to his forehead. "Unusual it is -- but ends well -- for 
  this is nothing to be alarmed over. 'Tis naught but a loose 
  tooth." Adjusting his spectacles, he added seriously, "Happens 
  frequently to children of her age." He waved his arms in the 
  air, then pulled Georgia up from the dentist chair and set her 
  on her feet.

  After receiving a heavily-padded check to cover expenses, Dr. 
  Benoxious brought out his jar of sweets and let them each choose 
  a nice lollipop. Hilda took a small red one; Georgia chose green 
  with milky swirls and popped it joyfully into her mouth.

  "Do have her brush more often," the dentist sighed, gazing over 
  the tops of his spectacles. He bade Georgia and her mother 
  good-bye and shooed them out of the office.

  "Can I have some ice cream now?" Georgia asked as they walked 
  down the steps to their car.

  "All right. I promised, didn't I?" Hilda said, smiling. She 
  tousled Georgia's hair. Hilda had hated to have her own hair 
  tousled when she was a little girl, but she did it to Georgia on 
  the presumption that her daughter would get used to it as she 
  never had.

  They stopped at the Luscious Ice Cream Emporium on the nearest 
  corner and had one strawberry sundae with two flimsy spoons. 
  Georgia ate all of the strawberries while her mother was stuck 
  with the ice cream, which did not take well to being plastically 
  spooned. The spoon finally broke, and Hilda returned both pieces 
  perfunctorily to their waitress, who brought a sturdier one to 
  replace it. She attacked her portion with renewed vigor.

  Georgia's father George, many years older than his wife, was a 
  stamp licker in the small post office near the corner of Potrero 
  and Wichita and had attained notable seniority in the position, 
  obliging him to work long hours supervising his apprentices. 
  That evening, however, he returned from work somewhat early, 
  looking unusually haggard. The children were in their accustomed 
  spots in front of the TV, surrounded by their towering 
  collection of video tapes.

  "Machinery and gadgets!" George bawled, slamming the front door 
  and unbuttoning his uniform shirt. "Balderdash!" His mood was 
  foul and he did not stop even to pinch Georgia's cheek or pat 
  Henry's head. Henry was Georgia's little brother, only four 
  years old, and he stood dejectedly for a moment with downcast 
  eyes. Then he remembered the news and followed his father 
  eagerly into the kitchen. Georgia jumped up to follow them.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" Henry yelled, leaping around.

  "Hey!" Georgia yelled, shoving Henry aside. "I get to tell him. 
  Daddy?" She gouged Henry in the ribs and twisted his ear while 
  her father was looking into the cookie jar. There were no 
  cookies -- only a few crumbs and a stray chunk of pecan.

  "Yes, Georgia?" George threw himself heavily into a chair in the 
  breakfast nook and scooped off his wig. He hated the thing and 
  wore it only to hide the shiny bald spot in the center of his 
  scalp. The moment he took it off, he felt years younger and 
  pounds lighter. After tossing away his sweaty uniform shirt, he 
  scratched his chest without even washing the glue from beneath 
  his fingernails. The sounds of animated mayhem on the TV drifted 
  in from the living-room.

  "Daddy," Georgia said, opening her mouth wide. "Look! I have a 
  loose tooth!" She jumped into her father's lap and pushed her 
  face right up to his eyes. George had to lean back to focus on 
  her teeth.

  Georgia dragged his hand into her mouth to feel the tooth 
  wiggle. "So you do," he agreed. "Loose as a goose. Well, it 
  looks like the Tooth Fairy will soon be here."

  "Hurray!" Georgia yelled.

  Henry was sulking near the garbage can, holding his ribs with 
  one hand and looking for scraps of aluminum foil to add to his 
  already burgeoning collection. "Phooey!" he yelled, and made a 
  face. "She always gets the good stuff."

  "Now, Henry," their mother said, walking into the kitchen. 
  "Georgia's older. When you get to be six, you'll have loose 
  teeth, too." Hilda cast a faint smile at her husband and 
  adjusted her skirt. She had been on a frugality binge for some 
  time, and her bargain-basement panty hose did not fit very well. 
  "How was your day, dear?" she asked, opening the cupboard to 
  bring down plates and bowls. "Here, Georgia, put these on the 
  table, dear."

  George mumbled a ritual answer to his wife's ritual question and 
  helped Georgia to set the table.

  All through dinner, over the din of the evening news, between 
  polite cries of "please pass the sauerkraut" and "more 
  grapefruit juice, please," the family discussed Georgia's tooth. 
  Afterward they sat around the table and looked up "tooth" in the 
  encyclopedia.

  In Georgia's room they had a bedtime story about the Tooth 
  Fairy, but little Henry fell asleep before the end. George 
  closed the book, declaring, "To be continued, tomorrow."

  "How much money will the Tooth Fairy leave?" Georgia inquired.

  "Oh, I don't know these days," answered George, setting the book 
  aside. "But she doesn't always leave money."

  "No?"

  "Oh, no," he replied, as he tucked Georgia's blankets in around 
  her. "Sometimes, she'll bring another surprise. Now sleep 
  tight." He kissed her on the cheek and turned out the light, 
  then gently carried little Henry off to his own bed.

  After the children were soundly asleep, Hilda and George retired 
  to their bedroom and had a long bath. The cheap bath beads with 
  which Hilda scented the water left a horrid ring in the tub, and 
  as it was her fault for being overly frugal, she was obliged to 
  rinse the tub. George brushed his teeth, then flossed while 
  Hilda brushed hers.

  "Hilda," said George as they settled into bed. "I cannot tell a 
  lie. I got laid off today. The whole department." He whisked one 
  hand through the air. "Ousted by an infernal machine."

  "Oh, George!" Hilda crooned soothingly, patting his shoulder. 
  "That's really too bad -- and so near retirement, too. You'll 
  find something better next week." She flipped out the light on 
  her side of the bed, then rolled over and turned up the red NO 
  side of her pillow.

  George read a few chapters of a pulp Western before he got tired 
  enough to sleep. He would certainly have to look for new 
  employment in the morning, and that was an unwelcome chore -- 
  even the excitement of a fictional gunfight could not keep his 
  mind fully occupied. With a deep, bed-shaking sigh, he finally 
  curled up against Hilda's back and went to sleep.

  Georgia, snug in her own bed among flannel sheets, was so 
  excited she could hardly sleep that night. Long after her 
  parents thought her safely in the arms of Morpheus, she lay 
  awake with pounding heart and kept sucking on the loose tooth at 
  the back of her mouth. The tooth made a little clicking sound 
  whenever it popped up and flopped on its side, and she could 
  stick her tongue down into the soft depression beneath it. She 
  kept wiggling the tooth with her tongue. It got looser and 
  looser, until it was held to her gums by a thin thread of tissue 
  -- but it would not come out. The last thing she remembered was 
  wiggling it, wiggling it...

  Georgia jumped out of bed in the morning as soon as she awoke, 
  not waiting for her mother to roust her. Something strange had 
  happened inside her mouth! Her loose tooth was nowhere to be 
  found, neither among the disarrayed bedclothes nor under her 
  pillow -- but there was something new in her mouth. A little, 
  bumpy, soft thing had sprung up right where her loose tooth had 
  been. But there was no sign of any present from the Tooth Fairy. 
  Georgia's spirit was crushed. Her first lost tooth -- and no 
  present!

  Hilda consoled her with a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal and told her 
  gently that the Tooth Fairy would certainly find her that night 
  -- for the fairy never missed a lost tooth. Georgia pointed out 
  the soft patch in her gum, and Hilda, thinking that a piece of 
  broccoli had probably lodged in her daughter's teeth, brushed 
  them all extra carefully, with individual attention. Afterward, 
  she took a toothpick to the spot.

  "Owie!" Georgia yelled as soon as the toothpick plunged into the 
  pulpy, green mass.

  "Does it hurt, dear?" her mother asked, probing again.

  "It feels icky," Georgia replied. "Tastes funny, too."

  Georgia spent the rest of the day in front of the TV, 
  uncomfortably poking her tongue at the soft extrusion and 
  looking in the mirror during every commercial break. She 
  believed the mass was growing larger.

  Late that night, George slipped quietly into Georgia's room and 
  left a shiny Susan B. Anthony dollar under her pillow. Satisfied 
  that he had done well, he looked down at her sentimentally for a 
  few moments, then retired for the night.

  The sight that greeted Georgia and her entire family early the 
  following morning was truly astounding.

  "Mommy!" Georgia yelled from the bathroom. She wailed again. 
  "Mommy! Mommy!"

  Hilda, snapping to maternal attention, tromped over her sleeping 
  husband and went running -- to find Georgia sitting cross-legged 
  on top of the sink, staring into the mirror. A long green 
  tendril drooped limply from her open mouth.

  "Well, pull it out!" Hilda said angrily. She was not a morning 
  person and resented being awakened on a Sunday when she should 
  have been able to sleep until noon. It was the family's custom 
  for George to attend to the Sunday morning chores while the 
  children watched cartoons and Hilda slept.

  "It won't come out!" Georgia wailed. She fingered the tendril. 
  Little tears bunched up at the corners of her eyes, threatening 
  to leap away and roll down her cheeks.

  Hilda reached over and gave the green tendril a firm yank.

  "Yeow!" Georgia's tears burst forth.

  "Here, turn around," said Hilda, holding the girl's shoulders. 
  "Now open your mouth," she insisted, pulling down on Georgia's 
  lower lip.

  Georgia opened wide, and Hilda gazed into the pink, cavernous 
  recesses of her daughter's mouth. Plain as the winged lady on 
  the bonnet of a Rolls Royce was the green tendril, its whitish 
  roots sunk deeply into the depression left by the lost molar. 
  "I'll get your father," she announced, tousling Georgia's hair. 
  "He can take the pliers to it."

  George had already been awakened by the unexpected tromp of his 
  wife's foot across the inside of his right thigh and was sitting 
  up in bed. Alarmed at the news, he put on his wig, which perched 
  nearby on his nightstand, and ran to the bathroom. Try as he 
  might to dislodge the extrusion, however, his pliers had no 
  effect on the tenacious green tendril and he finally gave up.

  The tendril grew longer, almost visibly, and by evening was a 
  good two feet in length. Its girth was about that of a pencil, 
  and the stem was spongy to the touch. Leaves had begun to sprout 
  from the end just after lunch -- poor Georgia had to choke the 
  first bite of her liverwurst sandwich past the tendril and could 
  hardly chew. Hilda made her a nice, hearty bowl of chicken soup 
  instead and gave the rest of the sandwich to Henry. Late in the 
  evening, George and Hilda decided it was time to call upon Dr. 
  Benoxious again.

  The following morning shortly before nine, George set out to 
  beat the pavement looking for work -- he did not have high hopes 
  and really would have taken any sort of labor. He was just that 
  short of retirement and worked as a hobby, for his family had 
  all the necessities of suburban life and a swimming pool 
  besides. Immediately after her husband left, Hilda deposited the 
  children in front of the TV and walked the five blocks to Dr. 
  Benoxious's office, where she managed to slip in before the 
  first customer of the day.

  Dr. Benoxious was not in the habit of making house calls, for 
  that silly pastime had gone out of fashion before his heyday -- 
  but Hilda's extraordinary story, rendered in breathless 
  excitement, soon had him cowed. He could find nothing, however, 
  upon the subject of house calls in his dog-eared copy of 
  Eichler's _Etiquette_. Baffled and unable to decide how long his 
  errand might take, he finally sent his receptionist home for the 
  day, closed up the office, and accompanied Hilda, assured of a 
  good solid fee.

  "Extraordinary," he agreed once he had examined Georgia's mouth. 
  "This will go down in the annals of American dentistry, sure as 
  I'm John Benoxious, DDS." He swished his surgical gloves in the 
  air and tossed them into the wastebasket.

  After they had eaten lunch, Dr. Benoxious called in a 
  photographer friend, for the little girl patently refused a ride 
  in his shiny new Jaguar, even though it was painted the color of 
  her favorite fruit -- strawberry. The dentist and his 
  camera-toting chum took close-up and wide-angle shots with 
  various lenses and filters, along with a few photographic views 
  of the tendril's root system. Hilda declined an invitation to 
  have her daughter's mouth X-rayed, having recently read a 
  lengthy magazine article which cited the deleterious effects of 
  X-rays upon youthful bone tissue.

  The plant -- for what could it be called but a plant? -- had 
  grown by strident leaps and springy bounds. Georgia was, by 
  mid-afternoon, having severe trouble swallowing even chicken 
  soup without a straw. The girth of the tendril was that of a 
  broom handle.

  Dr. Benoxious took Hilda aside while the photographer adjusted 
  his tripod and prepared for another series of macro shots. 
  "We'll have to put her on an IV," he said seriously, looking 
  down Hilda's blouse.

  "Oh, heavens, no!" screamed Hilda, throwing a hand to her chest. 
  "Not my baby!"

  "I'm afraid -- what with the way this phenomenon is growing," 
  the dentist continued, shaking his head, "we are left with 
  little mortal choice. It's either that -- " and here his eyes 
  shot sternly toward Hilda -- "or amputate."

  Hilda swooned into his arms and he lowered her gently to the 
  floor. After she recovered and took a few tranquilizers with a 
  cup of coffee, she saw the sense of what the good dentist 
  proposed. Along with a number of oral-surgical acquaintances of 
  Dr. Benoxious, a reporter and a local news camera-being were 
  called in for further opinions. George and Hilda's humble 
  two-story home was soon a rip-roaring madhouse stuffed with 
  thrill-seekers. The camera crews pulled the front door off its 
  hinges and knocked out a sidewall for better lighting and 
  access. They soon had portable cinematographic lamps installed 
  in all the corners. Multicolored cables draped across the front 
  garden from their vans, wound along the front hedge, and into 
  the front picture windows. They snaked across the living room, 
  leapt atop the furniture, sprawled upon the end tables, coiled 
  threateningly in the corners. More and more cables were pulled 
  in until the living room resembled the set for a bad Hollywood 
  production of a Tarzan epic. A steady stream of gawking 
  neighbors filed in through the front door to glimpse the 
  goings-on and then filed out through the rent in the sidewall. 
  Central Precinct later sent down a rookie police officer to keep 
  traffic moving along the normally quiet, elm-lined suburban 
  street.

  When George arrived home in the evening, having woven carefully 
  between the vans that littered the sidewalk and pulled his car 
  into the driveway, he was at first not sure that he had come to 
  the right house. Through the gaping hole in the sidewall, 
  however, he glimpsed Hilda meandering around the living room 
  among tropically-hued cables and suddenly realized that the 
  hounds of the press had ferreted them out.

  George shouted an obscenity and went berserk. He ripped the 
  cables from the vans and fetched his heaviest sledgehammer to 
  bash out their windows. With a stout pair of garden shears, he 
  cut all of the cables into tiny pieces no longer than Havana 
  cigars, after which he tossed the unctuous press people and 
  swarms of goggle-eyed photographers into the street. This was 
  not done without token opposition, and he softened a few heads 
  and broke an arm or two in the process of clearing his living 
  room.

  Quite late in the evening, George was arrested for assault and 
  vandalism. He promptly filed suit against seven newspapers and 
  four television stations charging vandalism, littering, and 
  trespassing, along with several small-print pages of minor 
  offenses suggested by his astute attorney -- who had taken the 
  case _pro bono_.

  Georgia was a one-day wonder and might have been more, but the 
  press -- except for a few paparazzi -- abandoned the incident 
  under George's legal onslaught. The tendril, however, did not 
  stop growing. Poor Georgia was unable to walk at all after 
  Tuesday morning and had succumbed to lethargy. By the previous 
  evening, in fact, Hilda had been obliged to tote the mass of 
  growing vines behind in a sturdy plastic container whenever her 
  daughter went to the powder room. On Wednesday, Hilda, exhausted 
  from carrying bedpans, had the family physician install a 
  catheter. The IV soon followed, for Georgia's lethargy had 
  reached such a state that she could no longer walk and certainly 
  could consume no nutrition orally. The tendril's girth was that 
  of a baseball bat and it showed no sign of imminent wilting.

  By Thursday, the vine had spread over the entire living room and 
  was heavily, inexorably in flower. The flowers -- in great 
  variety -- were intriguing -- even to Georgia, who giggled 
  delightedly (through her nose, to be sure, as her mouth was 
  completely stoppered by the tendril) every time Hilda brought 
  her an exotic new sample found springing up somewhere. Attached 
  as she was to catheters and gadgets, she settled into 
  immobility. The resplendent vines cascaded about the room, 
  climbing vividly up the walls, and hung down like thin, wavering 
  stalactites -- slowly dripping onto the plush carpets, where 
  many of them began to take root. In that cozy environment, 
  filled with colorful blossoms and hanging vines, Georgia sat in 
  a tall wicker chair before the family's best television set and 
  watched a number of Henry's jungle films: the room was perfectly 
  suited to that form of entertainment, and Henry did so love 
  Tarzan. He was frankly glad to have the final word, for once, as 
  to the programs they would view -- for Georgia could utter not a 
  word of protest.

  Sensing her daughter's frustration with the situation, Hilda 
  appealed to her husband. "Don't you think we should let Georgia 
  watch what she wants?" she inquired. "She is ill, after all."

  "You're right, as usual," replied George. "It won't hurt to 
  indulge her, I suppose." He moved the video player and a stack 
  of tapes to a table where Georgia could reach them and left her 
  happily in command of the remote control. The family's other 
  television wound up in Henry's room.

  Saturday morning brought unexpected delights: The vines, which 
  had been in glorious blossom all week, had begun to bear fruit. 
  By that time the vines had completely subdued the living room, 
  vanquished the formal dining room, catapulted across the family 
  room and the stairwell leading to the upper floor, and spilled 
  lavishly across the back verandah. At first the fruits were 
  small things -- kumquats and strawberries and such. But by 
  Sunday afternoon -- cabbages! Great succulent watermelons and 
  apples! Zucchinis larger than their neighbor's Great Dane! 
  Passion fruits! Cantaloupes! Rambutans and jackfruits! 
  Breadfruit, coconuts, pineapples! Pomegranates! Oranges! 
  Crook-necked squashes and pumpkins and tomatoes! Seven species 
  of beans!

  Inundated with far more variety and quantity of edibles than 
  they could possibly consume in a year of unbridled gastronomy, 
  George and Hilda deliberated at length and finally decided to go 
  into business. They promptly applied for a business license, 
  packed George's car to the brim with all manner of exquisite 
  produce, and sallied downtown. No sooner had they set out their 
  sumptuous array than they were cited for illegal parking. They 
  moved further down the block, out of the red zone, and lay out 
  their blankets again.

  Atop the blankets, Hilda and George piled their vast store of 
  treasures. At first there were few customers, so they lowered 
  their prices and took to waving vine-ripened pineapples at 
  passing motorists. The next day, they attracted a few more 
  customers -- for their produce was truly world class, and the 
  word had spread. Within the week, the shocking news had leaked 
  that all of this gorgeous fruit -- out of season, every piece -- 
  was positively dripping from the bounteous vines growing out of 
  little Georgia's mouth. The tabloids had the story within the 
  fortnight, complete with illicit photographs of the 
  catheterized, open-mouthed youngster -- and a somewhat distorted 
  botanical analysis contributed by an anonymous gardener.

  By the end of the month, the family members were wading in cash 
  and invitations from various media moguls -- most of which they 
  refused, for the sake of domestic privacy. Even little Henry was 
  finally able to purchase the enormous jungle gym he had so long 
  coveted. The family was able to knock out the living-room walls 
  and refurbish the entire ground floor of their home to 
  accommodate Georgia's handicap, simultaneously ensuring good 
  ventilation and lighting for the vines.

  George and Hilda continued to sell their magnificent produce, 
  even elevating the rates in recognition of its extraordinary 
  nature -- and they began to charge admission to the 
  newly-constructed atrium where all of their produce was gently, 
  organically grown.

  Snug in the atrium's heart, amid the splash of jungle foliage, 
  her eyes glued to the TV, sat Georgia -- happy as a vegetable.


  Richard McGowan (rick@jg.cso.uiuc.edu)
----------------------------------------

  Richard McGowan is a software engineer in Silicon Valley. His 
  two young children are losing their teeth.


  The Loneliness of the Late-Night Donut Shop   by G.L. Eikenberry
==================================================================
..................................................................
  * As the Chinese proverb says, be careful about what you wish 
  for -- you may get it. *
..................................................................

  The solitary drunk tries the phone one more time. His thinning 
  hair is plastered to his scalp in greasy random clumps. His suit 
  looks like it hasn't seen a dry cleaner for the better part of a 
  decade. The smell isn't all that great, either. Even over the 
  incense of freshly-brewed coffee and the sweet fragrance of 
  donuts and muffins, his aura abrades the inside of her nose. 
  Nobody answers his call. Tanya's pretty sure she wouldn't answer 
  either if she knew it was him calling.

  She's working the counter alone. She's the only person in the 
  shop other than the drunk and, of course, Ev back in the kitchen 
  frying donuts. They wouldn't ordinarily put someone so young on 
  the late shift alone, but she traded with Beverly so she could 
  get last Saturday off, and then Nicole called in sick. Beverly 
  wouldn't feel vulnerable in a situation like this. She's older 
  and kind of overweight.

  But for Tanya the same cute features and trim bounciness that 
  make her popular with the boys and busy, if she wants to be, 
  almost every Saturday night make her feel even more exposed 
  here, now, in the creepy, hollow, formative hours of a Wednesday 
  morning. She wants the drunk to leave. She knows he's harmless 
  enough, but his sloppy attempts at conversation make her very 
  uncomfortable. That's the thing about working in a donut shop -- 
  you can get pretty tired of people. Especially the kind of 
  people that show up in the small, tense hours of the graveyard 
  shift. Sure, Beverly says she likes the graveyard shift, but 
  it's different for her.

  He doesn't leave.

  No one else comes in.

  She doesn't offer to warm up his coffee. She usually feels more 
  lonely when she has to be around people she doesn't know. She 
  scrubs down the back counter one more time. Being really alone 
  -- with absolutely nobody else around -- has never been hard for 
  her.

  The jerk just won't leave. Any other time of day, on the street 
  or someplace else, with a shave and a shower, he'd probably be 
  just a regular boring guy in a boring eraser-smudge gray 
  business suit, but she rearranges the cups in the dishwasher one 
  more time so that she doesn't have to turn to face him.

  He's getting up. Maybe he'll finally leave.

  She watches the drunk's reflection in the window as he tries the 
  phone again. Someone has finally answered. Maybe he'll go home 
  now.

  "Yeah? Well -- hey, where's Cheryl? Yeah, with that kind of 
  attitude I can see why. I wouldn't want to live there either. 
  Tell time? Of course I can tell time, you -- yeah, well, whoever 
  the hell put you in charge of etiquette for this planet made a 
  hell of a big mistake -- that's the guy that oughta lose his 
  job. Disappeared, huh? Well I sure as hell didn't do anything 
  with your wife. Yeah, well, she probably walked out on you, you 
  asshole -- who wouldn't? Yeah, well, you're so full of -- " He 
  smashes the receiver down and then darts his eyes over to Tanya. 
  She has her back to him, scraping at a spot on her apron with 
  her lilac fingernail. The polish is chipped already, which is 
  okay since she's decided she doesn't like the color.

  "So maybe I got a wrong number. I guess the guy was on drugs or 
  crazy or something. I mean, he could've just said I had the 
  wrong number, right? A real basket case, eh? First he gives me 
  hell for calling so late, then he starts whimpering about how I 
  gotta help him on account of his wife's disappeared or 
  something. Er, hey, listen, sorry about the bad language -- "

  "I didn't hear any."

  "Huh? What'dya say, there, cutie? What's it say on your badge 
  there? Come on over here so I can read what it says. I like to 
  know a person's name..." He just sort of trails off, looking 
  down at his shoes.

  "I said I didn't hear any bad language." She doesn't turn 
  around. She wishes Ev would come out with another tray of 
  donuts.

  "Yeah, well, I guess I, uh, better get moving." He actually 
  seems embarrassed. Maybe he really will leave. "You shoulda 
  heard that creep on the phone -- I mean, you talk about your 
  wrong numbers -- I must've got another planet or something."

  "It takes all kinds, I guess."

  "Huh? Hey, let me give you a little advice from someone who's 
  been -- well, _was_, anyway -- in the business for a long time. 
  If you're gonna make a career out of dealing with the public, 
  you gotta learn to speak up. Aw hell, never mind. Guess I'd 
  better hit the road before it hits me -- take care, eh?"

  She turns away for just long enough to grab the cloth so she can 
  clear the counter where he was sitting.

  He's gone. She didn't hear the door -- but then she wasn't 
  particularly listening for it. At least he's gone. She can relax 
  and read her magazine.

  "It takes all kinds, eh, Ev?" It takes all kinds -- Beverly says 
  that a lot. No answer from the kitchen. Probably he just didn't 
  hear.

  "You want some coffee or something back there, Ev?" Still no 
  answer. She isn't supposed to leave the front empty, but what if 
  something's happened to Ev?

  "Hey, Ev, you okay back there? Ev?"

  The kitchen is empty. Ev only works for the place, but from the 
  pride he shows, always cleaning and polishing everything, you'd 
  think he owned it. He hardly ever takes a break. Even if he did 
  slip out for cigarettes or something, he'd never leave, even for 
  a couple of minutes, without letting her know.

  She checks the back door -- the kitchen gets pretty hot with the 
  fryers and the oven going full tilt. He could have stepped out 
  back for a minute to cool off or have a smoke.

  No sign of him. The parking lot is empty. The street is totally 
  deserted.

  Somewhere deep inside her something begins to boil over. Her 
  skin goes all clammy. She's beginning to feel bees buzzing 
  around inside her head, the way she did one time when she was 
  little and she got lost, making a wrong turn on the way home 
  from the library. Everything looked kind of familiar, but she 
  didn't know how to get back to where she belonged. Lost. 
  Abandoned.

  She looks up and down the street. No one. Nothing. Absolutely 
  nothing moves.

  So what's so unusual about the street being empty at three in 
  the morning? She squeezes the anxiety down into a little knot 
  deep in her throat and forces herself to go back into the shop.

  The fears, the stories her mother worries her with, always have 
  to do with people -- burglars, perverts, motorcycle gangs. Evil, 
  sleazy, twisted people -- never the lack of people -- never 
  emptiness -- never loneliness. How can nobody hurt you? What can 
  nothing do to you?

  She waits. The time is marked by the sound of her breathing. 
  Nothing -- absolutely nothing else. One, two, five, ten minutes. 
  No one comes. She moves to the big plate-glass window to stare 
  out at the empty sidewalk. It might as well be a painting.

  Nothing moves. After an eternity a little puff of wind stirs up 
  an eddy of candy wrappers and dust, but after a few quick 
  heartbeats it's gone. It never happened. The silence, the 
  emptiness, seeps into the shop like a syrup. Breathing becomes 
  difficult.

  Movement of any sort is now nearly impossible. It's 3:38 -- the 
  bus will be along in another three minutes. It's always on time 
  this hour of the night. The next time through the route at 4:38, 
  the driver will come inside just long enough to get his coffee 
  -- two creams, no sugar.

  Or maybe he won't. Maybe she'll lose her job, but she has to do 
  it. She has to do it while she can still move. She struggles 
  against the suffocating entropy to pull on her sweater. She has 
  to leave. It's not really her fault -- she could at least lock 
  up if they'd trust her with a key. She peeks into the back. 
  Still no sign of Ev.

  She waits. Three, four, five minutes. Ten. She can see the big 
  clock in the shop even from across the street at the bus stop.

  3:52 -- still no bus. Nothing. No one. She could go back inside 
  and call a cab, but it won't do any good. Nobody will answer.

  There won't be anyone. No one on the phone. No one on the 
  street. No one to make real her fears of attack along the two 
  interminable blocks from her own bus stop to her house. No one 
  to offer comfort. No one to speak the words that might relieve 
  the pressure building against her chest -- her lungs, her heart.

  The world has emptied itself --

  -- shaking off the people like so many fleas.


  G.L. Eikenberry (aa353@freenet.carleton.ca)
---------------------------------------------

  G.L. Eikenberry has, after more than 20 years and more than 30 
  published pieces of fiction and poetry, finally realized that he 
  can't be in this for fame or fortune. The jobs that have paid 
  the rent have ranged from underground mining with United Keno 
  Hill Mines in the Yukon to being Vice President of 
  Communications and Information Services for the Canadian College 
  of Health Service Executives. He says it's hard to imagine 
  writing without the fodder his strange mix of jobs and 
  experiences have supplied.


  Wampanoag   by John DiFonzo
=============================
..................................................................
  * If necessity is the mother of invention, some of her 
  children may be orphans. *
..................................................................

  1.
----

  Although I was at my desk at 9:04, my body was still on Japan 
  time. So when the first call of the morning came in, I could be 
  excused for picking it up instead of letting my secretary field 
  it.

  I guess I was out of practice after a week on the road. The high 
  stack of correspondence, the stack of phone messages next to it, 
  my appointment book (open to today's page, which was already 
  nearly full) -- these all encouraged me to find something else 
  to do. Plus, I knew a hundred or so e-mail messages were waiting 
  as soon as I turned on my computer. I suppose my sorry circadian 
  state could also explain why, when the unfamiliar, heavily 
  accented voice began its rapid-fire assault, I didn't just kiss 
  him off and get on with the morning. I was looking forward to 
  meeting my wife and daughter for lunch, which would be the first 
  real time I'd spent with them since returning last night.

  "I have for you, Mr. Bastin, the opportunity of your lifetime," 
  said the voice. Without giving me a chance to respond, it went 
  on. "You wonder why you are presented this. I will tell you. It 
  is because I have heard of you as an honest man. I have need of 
  honest man."

  It was a Slavic accent, probably Russian, spoken very rapidly. I 
  should have hung up. "Uh ," I managed. "Who am I speaking to?"

  "Oh, I am so sorry. I am Radik Sergeivich Danilov. I am 
  represent Dr. Mikhail Sergeivich Danilov, the computer 
  scientist, who is also my brother. You are familiar with Dr. 
  Danilov and his work, is this not true?"

  His R's were so trilled and the consonants so hard that it 
  seemed to take several seconds to parse his words. "No, 
  actually, I'm not."

  "You are not? But people said you are knowledgeable in 
  computers. It is hard to believe that you do not know of my 
  brother."

  "I specialize in certain facets of computer technology, but I'm 
  afraid I haven't kept up with Russian science."

  "Oh, Mr. Bastin, that is to your loss. Although the problems in 
  recent years have made work in computer science in Russia very 
  difficult, very difficult indeed, some individuals have been 
  able, with great difficulty and even some personal danger, they 
  have been able to make significant breakthrough. For example, in 
  area of complexity theory, which is not my brother's area...."

  This fellow was becoming annoying. I held the receiver between 
  my shoulder and neck, half-listening as I started sorting 
  through letters. Julie, my secretary, had already set the 
  prospectuses, journals, magazines and unsolicited inquiries to 
  one side. A thick manila envelope from the patent attorney's 
  office had to be a search, maybe on that new sputtering idea 
  from Sublimation Systems. I glanced at a schedule of lectures on 
  advances in multiprocessing to be held at Stanford. Another 
  thick envelope --

  "Mr. Bastin? Do you agree?"

  "Uh, yes, of course," I replied, although I couldn't remember 
  what I was agreeing to.

  "So if one person would combine these different technologies, 
  which most persons say could not be done, nonetheless one person 
  would find -- what is your word? -- organism, no, _synergism_, 
  and the most significant breakthrough. Don't you agree?"

  "Well..."

  "So, I am available soon to show you our CPU. Perhaps this 
  evening?"

  "This evening?"

  "I'm so sorry. I mean to say this afternoon."

  "Uh, I'm afraid that's not possible."

  "Of course. You are busy man. Tomorrow then. Is 8 a.m. 
  acceptable?"

  "Listen, why don't you call my secretary and let her arrange it, 
  okay?"

  "Yes, certainly, I understand. I will do that now. Thank you 
  very much for your time, Mr. Bastin."

  "Certainly. Of course." Oh jeez, I was starting to imitate him.

  "Good-bye, Mr. Bastin."

  I was left holding the dead receiver, wondering what I had 
  agreed to do and how this man had maneuvered me into meeting 
  with him on something -- a "CPU" -- that he may or may not have 
  described.



  He was in the lobby when I came in Thursday morning. It was 
  obvious, even though I'd never seen him before or received a 
  description. Eastern European looks, balding, holding a brown 
  paper bag on his lap, wearing a suit like my grandfather's. Who 
  else could it be?

  He recognized me and jumped up to greet me. "Mr. Bastin, so nice 
  to meet you!"

  "Nice to meet you, too." I didn't use his name because I'd 
  temporarily blanked it, which I knew was a personal sign that I 
  didn't want to talk to him. How had I gotten myself into this? 
  He followed me toward the door to my office.

  "Please, Mr., um, Danilov," I read from the guest badge the 
  receptionist had stuck on his lapel. "Allow me a few moments to 
  begin my day."

  "Of course," he answered with inappropriate enthusiasm and 
  quickly returned to his seat.

  One Thursday each month I have "open house," which means I'm 
  willing to meet individuals with ideas who normally wouldn't get 
  to see me. I started my career as a patent lawyer and still have 
  a soft spot for entrepreneur-inventors. The hit rate with them 
  is low, but good enough that I can justify it to the other 
  partners at the firm.

  I settled in, grabbed some coffee and reviewed my morning 
  schedule with Julie.

  "There's a Mr. Danilov and a Mr. Kelly."

  I decided to see Kelly first, just to show Danilov who was boss. 
  I was annoyed with him for having destroyed, at least 
  temporarily, the good mood my wife had put me in -- this 
  morning, she'd told me our doctor had confirmed she was pregnant 
  with our second child.

  Mr. Kelly appeared to be in his mid-thirties, fair-skinned, 
  growing a bit about the waist. I sized him up as an 
  engineer-with-great-idea -- one of my standard types. His 
  resume; confirmed my appraisal. The too-fancy 
  business card said he was president of Preservation Industries, 
  which I thought at first must be some kind of coffin 
  manufacturer.

  "We make personal time capsules," he explained, showing me a 
  not-very-fancy brochure. Basically, the company made a line of 
  stainless steel canisters of various shapes and sizes, all with 
  hermetic seals, EMI gaskets, keyed latches, desiccant pouches, 
  and plumbing for flushing with inert gas. They touted the cans 
  as ideal for preserving documents, artworks, antiques, 
  keepsakes, and so on.

  "We forgot to say in the brochure, but we nickel-plate the 
  inside."

  "You nickel-plate stainless?"

  "It improves the magnetic barrier." This fellow was a real 
  engineer.

  A new market they were aiming for, he went on to say, was the 
  large and rapidly-growing home video market. People were taking 
  videos of family events that they would want to keep for many 
  years, but the videotape is subject to deterioration from 
  pollution, stray electromagnetic fields, abuse, and so on. He 
  presented a long list of tests he and his partner had done to 
  show how well his "PTC" shielded those precious tapes of 
  Johnny's first birthday and the time Janie spit up on Uncle 
  Henry.

  "Looks expensive," I said.

  "That's why we need money. We want to tool the big parts and set 
  up a production line. We also need to get a good marketing 
  person and start national distribution."

  "Still, most people don't keep bottles of pressurized inert gas 
  around the house."

  He produced a small metal container like a CO2 cartridge, but 
  painted green. "Argon. We'll sell these too. It will give us 
  some aftermarket revenue."

  I was skeptical and told him so. Stuff for the home market has 
  to be dirt cheap to manufacture due to distribution and 
  marketing costs, and because any success attracts imitators. I 
  promised I'd look into how his PTC's would work in the high-end 
  videophile market. It brought him down, but I couldn't lie to 
  him. And with all the latches and valves, the devices were much 
  too complicated -- home stuff also has to be dirt simple.

  Then I had Julie fetch Danilov.

  He swept in and shook my hand as I sat, not giving me a chance 
  to stand. "It is so good to be here! So many of your colleagues 
  have refused to see. I thought perhaps was not as we in my 
  country were told. But to be here before you -- "

  "Please, Mr. Danilov."

  "You may call me Radik. That is what my friends -- "

  "Please, Mr. Danilov!"

  He quieted, briefly I was sure. "We don't have much time. I have 
  an important meeting at ten," I lied. Noticing the bag, I said, 
  "Show me what you have."

  "Yes, yes, of course, my apologies, I'm so sorry. I didn't 
  realize..."

  He went on and on as he opened the bag and placed an object on 
  the desk. It was a weird contraption, a conglomeration only an 
  inventor could love, and proof that artists really did know what 
  they were doing when they put pieces of junk together. At one 
  end was an SLR camera, a fancy Japanese one with electronic 
  control that reminded me of my recent walk through Akihabara. 
  But the camera had been disemboweled and lobotomized: the back 
  had been replaced by an aluminum extrusion maybe ten inches 
  long, crudely RTV'd to the camera body. The top of the camera 
  had been cut open to allow a bundle of high-gauge wire to enter. 
  At the other end of the extrusion was a molded plastic box, also 
  glued, that I eventually identified as some kind of battery 
  holder. Set into a cover screwed on the extrusion were various 
  electrical connectors and a grillwork.

  "Tell me what this does."

  "It does anything you want." That was not the answer I was 
  looking for. I chalked it up to language difficulties.

  "What is its purpose?"

  "Its purpose is to help you do things."

  "Such as?"

  "Whatever you tell it."

  "Give me an example."

  He pressed something at the rear of the object, then picked it 
  up and turned it so the camera lens faced me. "What do you see?" 
  he asked.

  Irritated almost to rudeness, I was about to say something about 
  seeing a glued-together piece of junk when the camera clicked.

  "I see a man."

  It was not Danilov's voice, though it had a similar accent.

  "Describe man," said Danilov.

  "He wears a blue suit and multicolored tie. He is a Caucasian 
  male. He has a high forehead and brown eyes. He is -- "

  "Shut up." From Danilov.

  So the voice was coming from the device. I tried to remember how 
  small a current voice-recognition system could be -- assuming 
  this wasn't a hoax. With a vision system built in. And 
  integrated. The device before me had to be the smallest one of 
  its kind, even if another such system existed. It had to be a 
  hoax. It would need some kind of advanced AI. How had this twit 
  faked it so well?

  The camera clicked again.

  "How did you manage this?" I asked, my voice tighter than I 
  intended. I didn't like having my time wasted, but I was 
  intrigued by one of the slickest tricks I'd ever seen.

  "The man shows anger," came from the box. Then it clicked again.

  Ventriloquism. Of course. So simple, when I had been searching 
  for a high-tech answer. I had to admire the man's craftiness. 
  And the camera was set to snap at some interval, or maybe random 
  intervals.

  "The man smiles." Another click.

  I paused. Danilov hadn't opened his mouth -- in fact, he had 
  walked over to my bookcase and was inspecting the titles.

  "The man does not smile." Click.

  A two-way radio link sending stills, and a confederate at the 
  other end playing robot? "A very slick hoax," I said.

  Danilov returned to the desk, instantly angry. "Hoax? Hoax! You 
  call me a liar?"

  "Happens quite often in my business." I explained my hypothesis 
  of how he did it.

  He took a Swiss Army knife from a pocket and used it to unscrew 
  the object's cover. Inside was anything but what I had expected. 
  Instead of crammed circuit boards I saw rows of small lenses, 
  interposed with other, less identifiable but obviously optical, 
  components. The only electronics were on a small board attached 
  to the cover, next to a speaker.

  No room for a false bottom.

  "I'm sorry," was all I could get out. This was unquestionably a 
  breakthrough of some kind. Even if it were a trick, to do it 
  optically was an astounding achievement. "Tell me how this 
  works."

  "I cannot tell you very much. This is brother's work. He is 
  genius, don't you think?"

  "He may be," I had to admit.

  "Device is a synergistic combination, my brother tells me, of 
  optical computer and neural network. Is systolic array. Lenses 
  are Fourier transformers, of course. These are spatial light 
  modulators. You are familiar with such devices?"

  "Not really."

  "What part of computers are you expert in?" The tone was almost 
  accusatory.

  "Microprocessors, mass storage components."

  "All soon obsolete," he stated, waving his hand as if to brush 
  them all into a waste basket. "CPU is based on Vander-Lugt 
  correlator, but more sophisticated."

  "Can you estimate its specmarks?"

  "Please, Mr. Bastin! No specmarks, no MIPS, none of that anymore 
  is relevant! How many specmarks is a horse? This is new horse." 
  He closed the cover. "CPU," he said.

  "Awake."

  He spoke to it in Russian. It replied in Russian. I thought I 
  heard my name. A bilingual computer? Could this thing really 
  translate human language?

  "Good morning, Mr. Bastin."

  "Uh, good morning," I replied to the CPU.

  "It is very nice to meet you."

  "Nice to meet you. Tell me, can you translate between Russian 
  and English?"

  It said something in Russian. Danilov laughed and replied to it.

  "It seems the CPU misunderstood you," came from the box. "It 
  thinks you wanted it to translate your words to me in Russian, 
  and will no doubt translate my words into English."

  I thought for a minute as I stared at the CPU, and for once 
  Danilov was silent. "Mr. Danilov." I straightened in my chair 
  and folded my hands on the desktop. "What do you want from me?"

  "Of course, to help us in manufacture of CPU."

  I gave him my standard mini-lecture on starting a company, how 
  it's speculative, very risky, more work than he could imagine, 
  and so on, though he didn't look like the type that was easily 
  scared off. But when I went on to the phase-one action items, he 
  balked.

  "Have you applied yet?" I asked him.

  "Applied for what?"

  "A patent on this."

  "No, no. No patents. This belongs to Misha and me."

  "It won't for long if you don't apply soon. Listen, how about if 
  I sit down with you and your brother and talk things over."

  "Misha does not like talk."

  "Still, I would very much like to meet the man who designed 
  this. He must be brilliant." Flattery, I thought, might oil the 
  gears. "Wouldn't he like to show off some of the new ideas he's 
  working on?"

  "I will try."

  _Well_, I thought as I parked in front of the small wood frame 
  house, _at least it's not a garage_. The front yard was a 
  disaster of neglect; the exterior of the house, unpainted for 
  too many winters, looked like bare, weathered wood. Danilov met 
  me at the door and let me in, then guided me down a hall to what 
  he called the lab. It was dark and musty inside the house, as if 
  they never opened a window or drew back some curtains. In 
  passing, Danilov introduced a heavy woman as his wife, then led 
  me to a closed bedroom door. He knocked and shouted something in 
  Russian. The door unlocked and opened to reveal a thin, 
  blond-haired man with a face that would have won him the part of 
  Rasputin in any small-town theater. Without a word he let us in 
  and immediately went back to a table where he was working.

  "Misha, this is Mr. Bastin."

  Misha gave me a surly glare.

  "I'm glad to meet you, Misha. Your brother has told me about 
  what you've done, and shown me one of your devices. I'm very 
  interested in helping you out."

  Misha did not respond. The two of them spoke for a few moments 
  in their own language, which gave me a chance to look around. 
  What used to be a small bedroom was now crammed with tables and 
  shelves, covered with all manners of objects: computers, 
  mechanical devices, test instruments, technical books, and boxes 
  of parts. Behind Misha, a small machine with several lamps 
  trained on it was doing something that made scratching sounds.

  "My brother does not to speak English very well. He is shy, my 
  brother. He has never married. Only his science -- "

  "Can he show me what he's working on?" I was learning that 
  interruption was the preferred way to have a conversation with 
  Radik.

  After more discussion Misha waved me to his side. On the table 
  was a larger and more elaborate version of the kind of optical 
  linkage I'd seen in the first prototype. "Is this the next 
  generation?" I asked. He shook his head. Then I realized that 
  the musty smell came from Misha. I had to step back.

  "What my brother means is that I showed you the old generation. 
  He is making the present generation."

  "And the next?"

  Radik pointed at the machine making the scratching sounds. I 
  looked more closely at it. It was some kind of small, 
  high-precision milling machine with a tiny glass plate on its 
  XYZ table. Cables ran from it to a control box and then to... 
  another of their CPUs.

  "My brother says the next generation is too difficult for men to 
  build. So he taught a CPU how to do it."

  Amazing! The CPUs could build more CPUs -- better ones! "What is 
  it working on now?"

  Radik asked Misha in Russian. Misha replied in Russian, then 
  thought a moment and said, "Optical ROM."

  We left Misha and went out to the dark, small living room. I 
  showed Radik some legal papers I wanted him to read, and a 
  confidential disclosure agreement I had written and signed. This 
  was strictly for their comfort. While the wife served sweet tea 
  and cookies I talked Radik into letting Jack Stein, the best 
  patent attorney I knew, start writing up the patent. I left on 
  good terms after what I thought was a very successful visit.


  2.
----

  Over the next few months the Danilov project absorbed more and 
  more of my time. First I had to convince them that Stein wasn't 
  going to steal their secrets. I had to have Stein give them 
  references they could talk to, then sign a special agreement 
  that they'd had their own lawyer -- some relative, I think -- 
  draw up. Stuff I'd never had to do with other clients.

  Stein took it all good-naturedly, saying it was because they 
  were used to a government that took whatever it wanted if you 
  didn't make sure you concealed it. They had to learn to trust 
  the institutions. Incorporating was also fun, since they knew 
  even less about business. When I explained that they would all 
  own shares, Radik thought they were already rich. That led to 
  more explanation about seed money, investment rounds, and IPOs.

  I also managed to get one of their prototypes so I could try it 
  out. At first they absolutely refused, no doubt afraid I'd steal 
  it. I was at last able to convince them to part with one by 
  saying I wanted to be their first customer and handing them ten 
  hundred-dollar bills. A fortune to them, it got me a brand-new, 
  second-generation Danilov CPU.

  It continually astounded me. I never managed to get it to do 
  anything useful, and as the months wore on I found myself 
  turning it on less and less. (I was very busy on other projects, 
  and the device seemed to have picked up the Danilovs' abrasive 
  personalities.) But just having it around stirred my 
  imagination. It seemed every day I had a new application for it. 
  With the right training, I felt sure, there could be one driving 
  every car and piloting every airplane. Every industrial plant 
  would want several to run their production lines, maybe even 
  accounting, purchasing, and other departments. It was a natural 
  for phone sales, support lines, even as a receptionist. The list 
  of possibilities went on and on.

  Within a few years there could be tens of millions of these 
  devices in use.

  I admit it -- I was stoked on this technology as I'd never been 
  with anything before. And I was also stoked on some personal 
  news: Our new child was a boy. I imagined my son in a world 
  based on these machines, one in which everyone could have 
  optical computers as servants, chauffeurs and secretaries -- a 
  world in which everyone was effectively as rich as nobility 
  centuries ago. It was an exhilarating vision.

  Finally, I put together a package I could work with. Four major 
  patents had been submitted, Danilov Technology was born, and a 
  prospectus was written. I called a meeting with three of the 
  best and most knowledgeable venture people I worked with. I had 
  picked them carefully because I knew that, in spite of its 
  obvious potential, this was a radically new idea most VCs would 
  not have the temerity to commit to outright. The common 
  perception of a VC is as a banker with imagination, fueling the 
  entrepreneurial spirit; the true situation is quite different. 
  There's a joke in my profession that goes: What do you get when 
  you cross a rabbit with a sheep? Answer: a venture capitalist.

  To heighten the drama, instead of the thick stack of information 
  I usually prepared, I supplied my guests only a bare summary of 
  the Danilov device's ability -- just enough to whet their 
  appetites. That plus individual calls and their trust in me were 
  enough to get them to the meeting.

  I placed the device in the middle of the conference table, 
  covered with a black cloth, just to have something for them to 
  wonder about.

  Around the polished table with me sat four men, three of them 
  among the most powerful men in the valley. To my left was 
  Holistead of TLV: bearded, graying, impeccably dressed in a 
  custom-tailored, European-cut suit. I'd chosen him not only 
  because of the three funds he controlled, but because of his 
  history. After a long career in the intelligence service, 
  including at least a decade with NSA, he was now TLV's lead in 
  software and artificial intelligence. He was my main man. If I 
  could win him over, the others would follow quickly.

  Next to him sat Talliucci of International Ventures. The money 
  he controlled was even greater than Holistead's, but I knew him 
  to be a tightfisted, very bottom-line-oriented professional. 
  (That's why so many wealthy individuals and institutions were 
  willing give him their dough.) He would be the toughest nut to 
  crack, because revenues were not immediately obvious in this 
  project. I had to sell him on the vast potential of the 
  technology.

  Last was Magler of Parker & Ames and an assistant of his named 
  Collis. Magler liked me. I figured he would be an easy sell, 
  especially if one of the others bought in; unfortunately, Parker 
  & Ames was a small house that wouldn't be able to carry this 
  project by itself.

  I began by reviewing current computer and AI technology, and 
  their promise for the future. Then I moved on to promises from 
  the past that had not been kept, mentioning specifically machine 
  translation of human language and real-time vision systems. 
  Magler, sitting across from me, leaned way forward over the 
  table, a sure sign of interest; Talliucci was writing notes, for 
  him a sign of the same thing. Holistead leaned back, arms 
  crossed, staring at me intently: I suspected that he knew what 
  was coming already and was showing his skepticism.

  "So, gentlemen, let me show you the answer to these problems."

  With that I removed the cloth to reveal the Danilov CPU. It 
  still didn't look like much, but these were not men easily 
  swayed by appearances. I pressed the power switch and turned it 
  toward Holistead.

  "Talk to it," I told him.

  "Talk to it?"

  "It is possible to talk to me."

  Holistead jumped. "What is this?"

  "I am an optical neural network implementation."

  He was tongue-tied at first, but soon began a series of 
  questions whose point was to find out how well the device could 
  understand and generate human speech. He started with elementary 
  questions such as, "What is your function?" and moved on to 
  open-ended requests such as, "Tell me about yourself." He held a 
  long discussion with it to determine how well it could see and 
  distinguish objects, investigated its knowledge of the world 
  (and how it handled things when it didn't know something), and 
  finally tried a plain old, "Why are you here?" (To which it 
  answered, "I don't know.")

  "Very impressive," he said when he was done. "Very impressive." 
  Still, he was sitting again with his arms folded. Something was 
  wrong.

  Magler and his buddy slid the device to their side of the table 
  and excitedly talked at it. I was afraid that having two people 
  talking to it simultaneously would confuse it, but the device 
  handled the situation well. While they talked I observed 
  Holistead. He was frowning, almost scowling, as he watched them. 
  He seemed deep in thought.

  When the Parker & Ames pair seemed to run out of questions, I 
  faced the CPU towards Holistead again and said, "Speak to this 
  person in Russian." As the _piece de resistance_ I wanted to 
  demonstrate its ability to translate human language, and I knew 
  that Holistead happened to be fluent in the device's other 
  language.

  It spoke to him. He spoke back. There followed a short 
  conversation, much shorter than I'd expected. Holistead asked 
  me, "Where did you get this?"

  I began to tell him about the Danilovs and their idiosyncrasies. 
  He stopped me.

  "What was that name again?"

  "Dr. Mikhail Danilov." Without a word Holistead got up and left 
  the room. Uh oh. Suddenly it occurred to me that the Danilovs 
  might have stolen this invention from somewhere, the KGB 
  perhaps, maybe even the NSA. No, they seemed too genuine. 
  Perhaps Misha had developed it at one of the secret labs.

  "What's inside it?" Those were Talliucci's first words. I opened 
  up the device and explained the components.

  "So there's not much to it, is there?"

  "It's remarkably simple, yes." I started to give a little 
  prepared speech on all the wonderful possibilities the device 
  enabled, but he interrupted me.

  "I don't see very much that's proprietary."

  "We've got patents on the way."

  "Patents are too slow. Look at the hassle Rollerblade is going 
  through right now. The fad will be over before the court case. 
  Not to mention Intel and AMD. And, as we all know, patents can 
  be got around. What kind of software does it use?"

  "No software. It just learns."

  "So no copyright protection, either."

  This was getting discouraging. All the device's best points were 
  being turned against it.

  "I find it hard to believe there's no software," Collis 
  challenged.

  "Nonetheless, that's how it works."

  "There must be some basic programming, just to get it started. A 
  boot ROM, as it were."

  "There is in this particular unit, but the Danilovs tell me it's 
  a matter of convenience. It would learn the same things anyway, 
  albeit there would be a delay."

  "I can't believe it," he said, studying its innards.

  "So there's no software, very little hardware, a few common 
  components," Talliucci went on.

  "That's correct," I answered, a little pride escaping from the 
  modest front I was trying to keep up.

  Holistead reentered the conference room.

  "So there's nothing to sell," Talliucci said.

  That set me back. "Well..."

  "This is a common problem. You can't make money selling 
  something someone can make in his garage. Look at how the PC 
  manufacturers have been taking a beating lately. When I look at 
  a new technology, I try to find the magic in it, and I don't 
  mean what it _does_. I mean what it takes to _make_ it. If it 
  doesn't need magic to work, then you're not a magician, and if 
  you're not a magician, no one will want to pay money for what 
  you've got." Talliucci crossed his arms. "This looks too easy."

  I was crestfallen. I wanted to argue with him, but I knew it 
  would do no good. The best money mind in the room said it 
  wouldn't make money.

  Looking over at Holistead made me feel worse. He sat motionless, 
  looking at the device with a thin nonsmile. There would be no 
  help from his corner.

  "There's no way this can work," said Collis.

  That brought a small smile to my face. Perhaps the amazement of 
  a technical expert could show the others, or at least Magler, 
  what a leap into the future they were being offered. Parker & 
  Ames wouldn't be enough, but it would be a start. There were 
  other VCs in the valley.

  "It flies in the face of all the theory I know. You can't just 
  throw some lenses and filters into a box and expect it to do 
  what this thing's supposed to do. No way."

  "Then how does it do it?" I asked. I knew that confrontation was 
  the wrong attitude to communicate, but I couldn't help myself.

  "I don't know, but I know it can't work."

  I swore silently. Collis thought it was a hoax. I became more 
  sympathetic to Radik -- this was the sort of thing he'd been 
  through over and over again. The whole presentation was falling 
  apart. Why were they all turning me down?

  The meeting ended quickly. Talliucci and Magler said they would 
  consider it, but I knew nothing would come of their 
  considerations. Holistead said not a word while the others were 
  with us, but hung back. When we were alone he said, "I would be 
  very careful with this if I were you, Brad. I couldn't find 
  anything on these brothers of yours, but I wouldn't be surprised 
  if someday someone does."



  I couldn't work for the rest of the day. I forgot about lunch 
  and desultorily nibbled at the sandwich Julie brought me late in 
  the afternoon. How could I have been so wrong? Why couldn't they 
  see what I saw in the Danilov device? Or, what did they see that 
  I was blind to? My old physics teacher Professor Hart used to 
  say if you're stuck on a problem, turn it upside down, all 
  around, and inside out.

  Hart. Yes! He was still teaching at Berkeley and might remember 
  me. In any case, I had to talk to someone, and it might as well 
  be him. I scooped the Danilov device into my briefcase, grabbed 
  my coat, and told Julie to cancel my afternoon appointments as I 
  raced for the elevator.


  3.
----

  I had the Beamer in the commuter lane and up to 85 before I 
  realized I was hurrying for no reason. I slowed a bit and 
  switched to lane two, going over what I wanted to say. I thought 
  of stories I'd heard over the years, the folk tales of 
  technology, about the tire made of a rubber that never wore out, 
  the auto engine that got 100 miles per gallon, how the 
  transistor was invented before the vacuum tube -- all suppressed 
  in one way or another by big-business interests. Previously I'd 
  laughed at these stories as paranoid conspiracy delusions, but 
  now I wasn't so sure. And I thought of the documented story of 
  how GM bought all those little streetcar companies in the 
  forties, just to put them out of business and set the mass 
  transit industry back so far it still hasn't recovered. 
  Buildings and industrial parks swept past on both sides of the 
  highway, with multibillion dollar names on the sides. 
  Semiconductors, computers, electronics, software and more, all 
  soon gone if the Danilov CPU went on the market. It would be 
  worse than a major earthquake -- tens of thousands of people 
  would be out of work, causing an economic dislocation that could 
  send the economy into a tailspin. Perhaps that's what had been 
  in Talliucci's mind when he posed his questions.

  Then I thought of my son-to-be. What kind of world would he find 
  when he went looking for his first job?

  On the Berkeley campus, I walked to Hart's building only to 
  discover that it was in the middle of renovation. After some 
  discussion at the library information desk, I went over to the 
  building he'd been relocated too. The secretary for his 
  department told me Professor Hart had used the renovation as an 
  opportunity to take a long-overdue sabbatical and wouldn't be 
  back for another two months.

  More discouraged than ever, I wandered out into the bright sun, 
  feeling out of place among students who seemed so young and who 
  looked at my suit as if it were a clown costume. I almost agreed 
  with them. I took off my tie, stuffing it into a pocket, and 
  unbuttoned my collar. I relaxed a bit and realized how tightly 
  wound I'd been. I needed to sit down somewhere and think.

  I found my way to the student union and downstairs to a cafe 
  with outdoor tables. As I sat with an iced coffee, I tried to 
  list my options. The only one that made sense was to find more 
  VCs and make the same pitch to them. But that didn't sit well 
  for two reasons: one, they would call their colleagues -- 
  today's audience among them -- for a second opinion and get the 
  same negative response I'd heard today; two, it didn't seem 
  right to me to have to make the same pitch again. It was like a 
  farmer planting a new crop in one field and, when that crop 
  failed, deciding to plant the same crop in the field across the 
  road. Before I did anything else I had to understand why the 
  first pitch had met with such a dismal response, even hostility.

  Something caught my eye. No, someone. Coming towards me was a 
  familiar figure. A small man, bald on top with short white hair, 
  wearing a brown wool suit. A familiar brown wool suit. He saw me 
  also, and stared at me in return.

  I went over to him. "Mr. Hoffman?"

  "Yes. And you are...?"

  "Brad Bastin. Western Civilization."

  "Of course." He looked me over. "What brings you back here? I 
  seem to remember you went on to law school, is that right?"

  "That's right. I have a consulting practice in the Valley."

  "Excellent. I'm glad for you. You have a client here? One of the 
  molecular biologists, no doubt, and you're about to make him 
  fabulously rich?"

  "I wish. No, I was looking for an old professor."

  "But not me."

  Hoffman had been one of my favorite teachers. He had a knack for 
  presenting history that made it seem clear, one grand flow in 
  time, at least while you were in his classroom. His lectures had 
  been packed, attracting kids who weren't taking the course, and 
  he was famous for conducting a lecture class of two hundred as 
  if it were an intimate tutoring session, calling out questions, 
  expecting his students to give quick answers without bothering 
  to raise their hands, and insisting that no one take notes 
  because by definition anyone who was writing wasn't listening. 
  He was also the fastest chalkboard scribbler I'd ever seen. 
  Everyone said he should do a series for PBS.

  "Well -- " and then I thought, _why not?_ "Would you want to 
  hear a sad story?"

  He glanced at me, checked his watch and sat down. "I have some 
  time."

  And so I told him about the Danilovs, their device, and the 
  disastrous meeting. I opened my briefcase and showed him the 
  prototype. I told him I would be glad to demonstrate it for him, 
  but not in public. He said that wouldn't be necessary, instead 
  questioning me closely about the three VCs' questions and 
  comments.

  "You've probably never heard of the _Wampanoag_, have you?"

  "Are they an Indian tribe?"

  "Yes, but the _Wampanoag_ I'm thinking of was a 
  nineteenth-century steamship." Noting my look of ignorance, he 
  went on, "You've heard of the ironclads at least, the _Monitor_ 
  and the _Merrimac_? There was another steam-powered warship 
  then, called the _Alabama_. It was a Confederate ship that 
  sailed during the Civil War. Wasn't an ironclad, if I remember 
  correctly, but it was fast -- did an astounding eight or ten 
  knots and was blasting Union ships out of the water. The Navy 
  decided something had to be done, so they ordered new ships to 
  be designed on the _Alabama_ idea. One of these was the 
  _Wampanoag_, and it was an extraordinary piece of work."

  Hoffman was slipping into his inimitable lecture mode. Even 
  sitting down he was dynamic, waving his arms to illustrate the 
  magnificence of the _Wampanoag_'s lines. "The designer -- " 
  He thought a moment. "His name won't surface. At any rate, until 
  the _Wampanoag_, the way one designed a steamship was to 
  take an existing sailing ship and shoehorn a steam engine into 
  it. _Wampanoag_'s designer -- ah, I hate it when I can't 
  give someone the credit he's due -- had the novel idea that he 
  should design the engine and drive mechanism first, then build 
  the rest of the ship around it."

  "What a concept."

  "Indeed. The result was a ship that was far faster and more 
  maneuverable than anything else afloat. It put the U.S. Navy a 
  generation ahead in warship technology, although of course they 
  didn't call it that back then."

  "Those were simpler times."

  "Don't be so certain. What grade did I give you, anyway?"

  "An A."

  "Hmm." He studied me while scratching his cheek, as if wondering 
  whether he should revise my grade. "Why haven't you heard about 
  the _Wampanoag_?"

  "Did it sink?"

  "The Titanic did and you remember _that_ ship. No, the 
  _Wampanoag_ performed beautifully during a year of sea trials, 
  in weather fair and foul. It exceeded all expectations." Hoffman 
  watched me expectantly; I felt like a student again. What was I 
  supposed to be getting? What did it have to do with the Danilov 
  device?

  "It was suppressed? Why?"

  "Very good. Yes, that's exactly what happened. The board of 
  review rejected the ship. As to the why, they said its design 
  was faulty, even though it had been operating for a year and its 
  crew had testified in its favor. The board noted that the 
  country had a surplus of wood -- this was now after the war had 
  ended -- and that there were many craftsmen whose livelihood 
  depended on the wooden-ship business. Therefore it would be in 
  the best interests of the country if they continued to make 
  ships from wood. This was fine as far as the Navy was concerned, 
  since there were no other ironclads in existence at the time and 
  no wars imminent. Also, the board members stated that they just 
  didn't like the _Wampanoag_. One could even say they hated it. 
  They were all sailors, and back then that meant literally 
  _sail_. For them, just letting a steam engine on board was a big 
  concession."

  This was intriguing. Here was an historical case in which others 
  had rejected an obviously superior technology. "So what did they 
  do with the ship?"

  "Condemned it as unseaworthy, probably sold it as junk. And in 
  doing so, they set back naval technology forty years."

  "How stupid!"

  "Was it? Speaking as a historian, I would say the _Wampanoag_'s 
  problem was that while it worked technically, it failed 
  socially. The _Wampanoag_ represented not just a change in 
  technology, but a change in the _structure_ of military society. 
  Sailors stationed above decks would have nothing to do, their 
  officers little responsibility or influence. On the other hand, 
  sailors and officers involved with the machinery would ascend in 
  power -- no pun intended. You can picture how disruptive it 
  would have been. And think of the romance of sailing! Strong, 
  brave men climbing the rigging, hauling in the sheets, and so 
  on. All that would be lost. They weren't just interested in 
  winning wars. They wanted to create good sailors, sailors in 
  their image of what a sailor should be."

  "But they set back progress...."

  "So what? How would life have been better?"

  "Well, with a warship that question is hard to answer, since all 
  a better weapon does is kill people better."

  "How is this invention," he asked, tapping a finger on the 
  device, "going to make life better?"

  "It... well, in many ways. It could make an automobile that 
  could drive itself. It could make highways safer."

  "It could. It could also enable a new generation of very smart 
  missiles. Missiles cheap enough, if what you told me is true, 
  that any small terrorist group could put together any number of 
  nasty weapons."

  "You could make a similar argument against any technology."

  "Exactly. There are very few polio vaccines in history, and, 
  thank God, very few atom bombs." Hoffman paused a moment, 
  fingers scratching chin and eyes turned away, a pose I recalled 
  from his class. He was thinking. "But that's not what's really 
  going on. Whether or not an invention is worthy, whether it 
  really constitutes progress, is not the point. It's a free 
  market. People choose what they want. They buy unreliable cars 
  because they're prestigious, they elect politicians they know 
  are lying to them, they eat food they know is bad for them. The 
  world does what it wants to do. Your idea of progress may be 
  right, but it's also irrelevant, or at least not of paramount 
  importance. Perhaps the time..."

  He got up. "I have a late class," he said. "Your device is 
  fascinating. Honestly, I hope you succeed with it, although I 
  don't think that I would want to buy one." He shook my hand. "It 
  was a pleasure seeing you again, Mr. Bastin. Drop by my office 
  if you'd like to talk." And he was gone.

  I sat a long time at the table, going over what he'd said and 
  what had happened today. At last the sun sank behind the 
  auditorium and the chill bay air began to penetrate my jacket. I 
  drove home, for once not caring about being stuck in traffic, 
  because I could think anywhere.

  The next day I called up Preservation Industries and ordered a 
  custom capsule. Mr. Kelly was pleased, thinking I wanted a 
  sample to show around. He offered to give me one from stock, but 
  I insisted on my dimensions and on paying for it. Then I called 
  Radik and told him that I had not been able to interest anyone 
  in the device. He did not take the news well, and after several 
  minutes of increasingly hostile conversation I had to hang up on 
  him.

  Next week when the capsule arrived I put the Danilov device 
  inside and sealed it. Then I took it home. Early the next 
  Saturday morning, my wife was surprised to see me through the 
  kitchen window, digging in the back yard. I told her as little 
  about it as I could, explaining only that it was something for 
  our children when they were adults. Monday I stopped by my 
  lawyer's and had my will amended to specify that our house and 
  property could not be sold for at least fifty years, and that at 
  that time the capsule should be opened. Perhaps the world will 
  be different then, and able to accept the device.

  I will have to leave that for the next generation.


  John DiFonzo (jdifonzo@powerhouse.com)
----------------------------------------

  Is a long-time denizen of Silicon Valley. He works for a small 
  start-up computer company.


  FYI
=====

..................................................................
   InterText's next issue will be released September 15, 1994.
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