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IIIII N N TTTTT EEEEE RRRR TTTTT EEEEE X X TTTTT
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I NN N T E R R T E X XX T
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I N N N T EEE RRRR T EEE XX T
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I N NN T E R R T E XX X T
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IIIII N N T EEEEE R R T EEEEE X X T
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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Volume 2, Number 2 March-April 1992
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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FirstText / JASON SNELL & GEOFF DUNCAN
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Frog Boy / ROBERT HURVITZ
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Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head / PHIL NOLTE
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The Naming Game / TARL ROGER KUDRICK
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Boy / N. RIDLEY MCINTYRE
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The Unified Murder Theorem (2 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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Editor: Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu)
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Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan (sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu)
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Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET)
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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InterText Vol. 2, No. 2. InterText is published electronically on a
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bi-monthly basis, and distributed via electronic mail over the
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Internet, BITNET, and UUCP. Reproduction of this magazine is
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permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the content of the
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magazine is not changed in any way. Copyright (C) 1992, Jason Snell.
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All stories (C) 1992 by their respective authors. All further rights
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to stories belong to the authors. The ASCII InterText is exported
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from PageMaker 4.01 files into Microsoft Word 5.0 for text
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preparation. Worldwide subscribers: 1100. Our next issue is scheduled
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for May 1, 1992. A PostScript version of this magazine is available
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from the same sources, and looks a lot nicer, if you have access to
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laser printers.
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For subscription requests, e-mail: intertxt@network.ucsd.edu
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->Back issues available via FTP at: network.ucsd.edu<-
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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FirstText / JASON SNELL
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It's hard to believe that it's been a year.
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I remember when I first discovered that Jim McCabe's _Athene_
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would be ceasing publication, and I remember thinking to myself: hey,
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there's something I wouldn't mind doing. An electronic magazine. Why
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not?
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And here we are, one year and six issues later.
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The magazine has grown and changed over the past year, with the
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amount of text per issue growing by leaps and bounds. We've got more
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subscribers now, though the official number has been hovering
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slightly over 1,000 for quite some time now.
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One of the stories in this issue, "Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head"
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by Phil Nolte, has quite a history behind it. It is one of the "lost"
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stories of _Athene_, a story slated for appearance in the final issue
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of that magazine (my own "Peoplesurfing" was another) that never
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appeared. I've had the story sitting around for quite some time. The
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catch is, I didn't know who wrote it.
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Now -- this may seem unrelated, but trust me -- about a month
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ago I participated in a strange meeting that has only really become
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possible with the advent of computer communications: I met, face-to-
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face, one of my assistant editors and contributors, a man whose
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stories I've been reading for four years. His name is Phil Nolte, and
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he works at the University of Idaho. As you may or may not know,
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Idaho is famous for its potatoes, so much so that their license
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plates have the phrase "Famous Potatoes" stamped right on them.
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Here's the catch: the University of Idaho has a special potato
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testing farm (or something like that -- all I know about potatoes is
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that you're supposed to poke holes in them before you stick them in
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the microwave oven) in Oceanside, a town just a few miles north of
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San Diego. And Phil Nolte was going there for an 'Open House.'
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I met him at a restaurant about a 10 minute walk from the UCSD
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campus, and we talked for a few hours over lunch before he headed for
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the airport and, eventually, back home.
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I've done things like this before: my first girlfriend was
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someone I met on a computer bulletin board I ran in high school (see
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my story "Sharp and Silver Beings," in the Dec. 1990 issue of
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_Quanta_, for details), and since then I've met a few other bulletin
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board or computer network folk face-to-face. It's even a strange
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experience to talk to them on the phone, as I did with Dan Appelquist
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a few months back.
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I digress. At any rate, it was fun actually >talking< to Phil,
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about writing, computer communication, and all sorts of other stuff.
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And at one point, as we were discussing Jim McCabe and _Athene_, I
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mentioned a story I had called something like "Aliens Stole Elvis'
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Brain."
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"Why, that's 'Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head!'," he told me. "I
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wrote that!"
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So it was. I had never bothered to ask Phil in e-mail, but over
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lunch we finally overcame a year-long communication barrier.
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The moral of this story? Maybe that while computer communication
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is an incredible thing, it also can foster a lot of
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misunderstandings. (So, of course, can live human communication --
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it's just that the misunderstandings fostered by computer
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communication are of a different type.)
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In addition to Phil Nolte's store, this issue brings us a few
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other fine short stories and the continuation of Jeff Zias' "Unified
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Murder Theorem." Jeff informs me that a few readers have mailed him,
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asking to be sent the rest of the story so they can know what happens
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before the conclusion (which should appear in mid-June... we're only
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halfway through now.)
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I encouraged Jeff to make the readers wait. First off, waiting
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will make the cliffhangers much more interesting, and we are
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providing synopses to refresh your memory of the previous
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installment. In addition, the version of the story that appears in
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InterText will be somewhat different than the version Mr. Zias has at
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home. Geoff Duncan and I have been jointly handling the editing of
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"Unified Murder Theorem," and if we haven't been completely lax in
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our duties, what you see here will be the "preferred form" of
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"Unified Murder Theorem."
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Before I go, I'd like to thank Mel Marcelo for providing us with
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the special "First Anniversary" cover art (sorry to those ASCII
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subscribers who can't see it).
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I'd also like to mention that ASCII subscribers should hopefully
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have an easier time reading the stories with this issue -- italicized
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words in the PostScript version are indicated by >these< in the ASCII
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version.
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Finally, I'd like to thank Geoff Duncan -- an act which is
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becoming a habit of mine -- for contributing a column of his own for
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this special issue. It's well worth reading, I can assure you. (As a
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sidelight, while I've met Phil Nolte and spoken with Dan Appelquist,
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Geoff and I have never even spoken. His hometown of Reno, Nevada is
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only a couple of hours from my hometown (Sonora, California), so I'm
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hoping I'll get to meet him sometime in the future.)
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Enough of me, already.
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Until next time, I wish you all well.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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FirstText / GEOFF DUNCAN
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Recently, I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the
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people who got me started in computing. I'd been the wide-eyed first-
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year undergraduate who had barely touched a computer; he'd been the
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intimidating electroculture veteran, mentor to everyone who was
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anyone on the machines. He'd lived during a local "golden age" of
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electronic fiction, when there had been a virtual writer's community
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on the campus mainframes. Now he was a computing professional wearing
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a suit and passing out business cards, while I still worked on campus
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and hadn't cut my hair. Funny how times change and people change with
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them.
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Over cafeteria food we reminisced about computer gurus,
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primitive graphics, and the old days of e-mail serials. It was time
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well-spent, a validation of our pasts and the things that had been
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important to us. I discovered his interests include avant-garde
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gothic rock; he was amused to learn I was an assistant editor for a
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network-based fiction magazine. "Don't you ever grow up?" he asked
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between sips of coffee. "Electronic fiction is dead, if it ever lived
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in the first place."
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Mildly offended, I pressed him on the issue. It's not dead, I
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explained. It's doing better now than ever before. "That's not the
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point," he said. "Electronic fiction will probably continue to grow
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for some time. But it's crippled by its medium. Computing is based on
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information, and information is measured by volume, not by content.
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You only offer content. You'll eventually run out of stories, then
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writers, then readers." He sat back and crushed the paper cup. "It's
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just a matter of time."
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I laughed in his face. We'll see who's right in the end, bucko.
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We spent a few minutes exchanging e-mail addresses and then parted
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amicably. I went back to my office and my usual routine; he went back
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to Brooklyn and a high-rise office tower. And that was the end of it.
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Except what he'd said kept bothering me. Is electronic fiction
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doomed from the start? Is its very media -- information technology --
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going to be its demise?
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It's obvious that electronic fiction wouldn't exist without
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information technology. What's not so obvious is that information
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technology supports the >amount< of information available without
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regard to the meaning of that information. Technology lets us store,
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organize, and retrieve more material than ever before. But what is it
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that we're storing, organizing, and retrieving?
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"Signal-to-noise ratio" is a term used to describe exactly this
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dynamic. In a nutshell, "signal" is the content you want to receive
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and "noise" is any other information that comes along with it. The
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term actually predates computers: on a telephone system, noise was
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literally "noise" -- hissing and crackling. But the idea still
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applies: the lower the ratio of signal to noise becomes, the less
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worthwhile it is for you to pay attention to the information as a
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whole. It hurts your ears.
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The signal-to-noise ratio of information technology today (and
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of large computer networks in particular) is generally low. This has
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a lot to do with the diversity of information available -- not
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everyone is interested in a constant feed of Star Trek trivia. But it
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also has to do with the way in which people >use< information
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technology. From the point of view of any particular person, most
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users don't generate much >signal<, but they do generate a fair bit
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of noise. Most electronic information is addressed to a narrow
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audience or is related to the use of the media itself. Very little of
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the available material is intended for a wide audience.
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I realized that this is what my friend was trying to tell me
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about electronic fiction. The people producing the signal are vastly
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outweighed by all the people producing the noise. My friend doesn't
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believe that projects such as _Quanta_ and InterText can be heard for
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long above the din of the mob. And even if these projects survive,
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how many people will try to distinguish them from the tumult? It's
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easier to ignore it all.
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Well, maybe my friend is right. There is evidence. To my
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knowledge, none of the network magazines have much of a catalog on
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hand, perhaps with the exception of _DargonZine_. I've seen most
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network-magazines print outright pleas for submissions. Maybe there's
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already a lack of >signal< in electronic fiction.
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And perhaps I shouldn't say this, but editorial support is also
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a problem. At most, a small group of people produces each
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publication; the departure of one person can seriously affect a
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magazine. _Athene_ shut down because of the time commitment involved.
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Furthermore, network access is not guaranteed. A graduation or a
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career change can stop a publication overnight. So coupled with a
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weak signal, we may have a weak transmitter. Maybe we >are< a match
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in the dark, merely putting off the inevitable.
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But looking back, I still think my friend doesn't quite know
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what he's talking about. Electronic fiction has come a long way since
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its indeterminate inception. Beginning with Orny Liscomb's _FSFnet_,
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we've seen a very long-running shared universe in _DargonZine_, the
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on-line magazine _The Runic Robot_, the irrepressible "PULP", and a
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new set of far-reaching magazines -- _Athene_, _Quanta_, and (of
|
|
course) InterText. And that doesn't take into account commercial
|
|
services and local electronic institutions: published novels have
|
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made their first appearances on networks such as GEnie, and e-mail
|
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serials continue like clockwork. New publications are emerging such
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as Rita Rouvalis' _CORE_. I used to be able to count the editorship
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of electronic fiction on one hand; now I scarcely know where to
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start.
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Cooperation between publications is astounding. InterText's page
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|
of ads is one example; a more significant one is the comprehensive
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access site recently created at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
|
|
Looking through that site, I am impressed by what a few hyperactive,
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impulsive editor-types have managed to coax out of the on-line
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community. I'm a little bit proud to be part of it.
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All this may add up to a little more >noise<, but it also
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creates a much stronger >signal<. "Real" publications (and with them
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"real" authors) are taking notice. Subscriptions aren't flagging.
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There has to be fuel for the fire, and for now things are getting
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brighter.
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The funny part is that my friend sent me some e-mail the other
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day. "That magazine thing you mentioned," he wrote. "Sign me up. And
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it'd better be good, or I'll give you a swift kick in the disk
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packs." Maybe my friend shouldn't try to be an electronic comedian,
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but he only verified what I knew all along: >content< is what counts.
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Or none of us would be involved.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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Frog Boy / ROBERT HURVITZ
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Johnny Feldspar woke up one February morning feeling slightly
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different. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but it
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bothered him nonetheless. He got out of bed, walked over to his
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aquarium, and pulled out his pet frog, Jumper.
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"And how are you feeling today?" Johnny asked his frog, gingerly
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stroking the cool, damp skin.
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"Ribbit," said Jumper noncommittally.
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Johnny held the frog up to his face. "You look kinda hungry.
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I'll stop by the pet store after school and get some food for you.
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Okay?"
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"Ribbit," Jumper repeated.
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Johnny put his frog back in its little home, locked the lid, got
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dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast. His mother was pouring
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milk into a bowl of cereal when Johnny sat down at the kitchen table.
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She placed the cereal bowl and a spoon in front of him.
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"And how are we feeling today, Johnny?" she asked.
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He took a mouthful of cereal and said between chews, "I feel
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kinda funny, Mom--"
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"Don't speak with your mouth full," his mother said. "It's
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impolite." She reached over and tousled his hair. "How many times
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have I told you that?"
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Johnny grinned sheepishly and swallowed. "Sorry, Mom."
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"That's okay. Now what were you going to say?"
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"I feel kinda funny."
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"Are you sick?" She sat down next to him and put her hand on his
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forehead. "You're not running a temperature." She looked at her watch
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and scowled. "Damn. I've got an important meeting at nine, so I don't
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have time to take you to a doctor..." She drummed her fingers on the
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formica table-top.
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"I'm not sick, Mom. I just feel kinda funny." He frowned. "I'm
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not sick."
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Johnny's mother crossed her arms and looked at him. Then she
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smiled. "I know what it is," she said. "You're just nervous because
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it's Valentine's Day and you're afraid you won't get any valentines,
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right?"
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Johnny looked at his hands. >Valentine's Day.< The words came
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crashing down on his ears like panes of glass, shattering. How could
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he have forgotten? He'd spent the last three nights churning out
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valentines for all the girls in his class, as per his mother's stern
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instructions. If it had been up to him, in everybody's Valentine's
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Day mailbox, which they had all made out of cardboard the previous
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week as an art lesson, he would have put frogs.
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>Frogs...<
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Palm up, fingers stretching out to infinity, Johnny's right hand
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had slowly gained his complete attention. He clenched his hand into a
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fist, turned it over, and squinted.
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"Johnny?" his mother asked, concerned.
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He looked up, blinked. "Uh, yeah, Mom. That's probably it." He
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smiled weakly. "I guess I just must be nervous."
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"Hey, snot-face!"
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Johnny stopped in mid-chew, turned his hand inward to protect
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the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he held.
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"That's right. I'm talking to you, snot-face. Or should I say
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lover-boy?"
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Johnny turned around and stared at Fat Matt.
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"I saw you stuffing all those mushy love cards into the girls'
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boxes." Fat Matt laughed, the small rolls of fat bunching up about
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his face. His beady eyes glanced down at Johnny's lunch, in which
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several pieces of heart-shaped candy bearing messages such as "Will U
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B Mine?" and "I Luv U" were strewn. "I see you also got your own
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share of valentines, didn't you, lover-boy? You know, I didn't get
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any valentines, or valentine candy."
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Johnny felt his face flush. He knew what was going to happen.
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"It seems to me, lover-boy, that, since you got so many candies
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and I didn't get any, that it would only be fair if you shared some
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of yours with me." He moved forward and grabbed up the candies.
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"Thanks, snot-face," Fat Matt said with a laugh. "Oh, that
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doesn't leave you with any candy, does it?" He picked out a heart
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from his sweaty grasp and licked it. "Well, here you go, snot-face,"
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Fat Matt said, dropping it into Johnny's pint of milk.
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At that moment, Rebecca Moyet, the prettiest girl in school, and
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Quinn, her little brother, walked by. Quinn laughed, pointed at
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Johnny, and said, "There you go, snot-face!" He laughed some more.
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Rebecca frowned.
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Fat Matt popped a few hearts into his mouth and looked once
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again at Johnny's lunch. "Hey, snot-face, what else you got there?"
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Quinn laughed once again, and Rebecca looked down at him
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sternly.
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Johnny looked around at the crowd that had suddenly gathered
|
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around the four of them. Dozens of eager faces shifted left and
|
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right, vying for a clear view of whatever further ridicule Johnny
|
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might soon suffer. He felt nauseous, and his hand began to tingle...
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A shout erupted from the crowd as Johnny's half-eaten peanut
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butter and jelly sandwich fell, hit the pint of milk, knocked it off
|
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the bench and onto the asphalt. The initial spray of milk spattered
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the blacktop with white spots; the rest puddled around the fallen
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carton.
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Johnny's outstretched hand, raised toward Fat Matt, burned with
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an increasingly painful pulsing. Sweat ran down, dripped off Johnny's
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forehead, his nose, his chin. His lips twitched. "Frog," he said
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gutturally, and slouched, exhaling, cooling, feeling spent.
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Johnny hadn't expected there to be any noise; he hadn't expected
|
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anything, really. He certainly hadn't expected, when he looked up, to
|
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see Fat Matt screaming, to see his body spasm violently. He hadn't
|
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expected his hair to shrivel acridly and to come out in tufts as his
|
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hands clawed at his face, his head, his throat. He hadn't expected
|
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his skin to turn green, to bubble, to drip off in clumps and sizzle
|
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away on the asphalt into foul vapor.
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The nausea that Johnny had felt only moments earlier gripped his
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stomach fiercely. The shriek continued, stabbing progressively deeper
|
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into Johnny's ears.
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Fat Matt wobbled, what was left of his legs buckled, and he
|
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collapsed to the ground with a crash of shattering bone. On impact, a
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noxious cloud of green and red steam erupted from his body, obscuring
|
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the view.
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The vapors made Johnny's eyes water, and he grabbed the bench to
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steady himself from vomiting.
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The cloud dissipated, and all that remained of Fat Matt was a
|
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pile of stained clothes and, sitting in the middle of them, a frog.
|
|
The crowd gasped, stared in disbelief.
|
|
Quinn's laughter sliced through the heavy aura of astonishment.
|
|
He pointed down at the newly created amphibian. "Frog!" he cried out,
|
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and laughed harder.
|
|
Johnny felt ill. He wiped his forehead, his trembling upper lip.
|
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His skin felt cold.
|
|
The frog tried to hop away, but slipped on the slick clothing
|
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and landed on its side, making the rest of the children laugh loudly.
|
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Johnny saw Rebecca try to hide the nervous smile on her face. The
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frog stopped, then tried to bury itself under the clothes.
|
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Quinn rushed forward and grabbed the frog. "Gotcha!" he said,
|
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hefting it.
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"Hey! Put it down!" Johnny said. "Can't you see it's scared?"
|
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The frog squirmed in Quinn's grip.
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"Put it down?" Quinn smiled wickedly. "Okay. I'll put it down."
|
|
He lifted the frog above his head and then, with the help from a
|
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little jump, he hurled it to the ground. It hit the asphalt with a
|
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wet splat and lay there awkwardly, legs twitching slightly. Quinn
|
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laughed. "Want me to scare it some more?"
|
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"No!" Johnny cried, as Quinn swung his arms and launched himself
|
|
into the air, feet held together to ensure that his landing would
|
|
strike true. At the last moment, though, just before Johnny was about
|
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to cover his eyes, Quinn jerked his feet apart and ended up barely
|
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straddling the injured frog.
|
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The crowd let out a sigh.
|
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Glancing around, Quinn laughed, lifted up his right leg, and
|
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forcefully brought it down on the frog.
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The crowd let out a sound of disgust, and Johnny jumped to his
|
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feet, enraged.
|
|
Quinn stepped away from the dead frog and looked down at his
|
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blood-stained Reeboks. He frowned and poked his shoes into Fat Matt's
|
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soiled clothes, in an attempt to wipe them clean.
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Hatred coursed through Johnny's veins. "Quinn! You... You..."
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The air seemed to thicken, grow hot and humid, as he struggled to
|
|
express his anger. "You..." Each breath he took became more difficult
|
|
than the one before. He strenuously dragged each mouthful of air down
|
|
into his lungs, only to have it slip through his throat and rush back
|
|
out into the world. And all the while he stared at the grinning
|
|
Quinn, who was now busy entertaining the crowd with theatrical
|
|
attempts at cleaning his shoes.
|
|
Johnny's vision blurred, the air coagulating into a sickly grey
|
|
soup, as if the day were hazardously smoggy or he were looking
|
|
through a grimy pane of glass. He squinted and saw Quinn kick the
|
|
dead frog toward the crowd, which immediately widened with shrieks of
|
|
amusement.
|
|
Johnny violently snapped his arm forward, his elbow joint
|
|
popping, and pointed at Quinn. One word, dripping acid, burned
|
|
through his lips: "Frog."
|
|
Quinn jerked his head around, a surprised look on his face, and
|
|
looked at Johnny before he screamed. His small body shuddered with
|
|
convulsions as the hideous transformation began.
|
|
The crowd, frightened and confused, screamed in macabre
|
|
accompaniment to Quinn.
|
|
"That's my brother!" Rebecca yelled, running up to Johnny. Her
|
|
face was flushed, violent. Tears were forming around her widened
|
|
eyes. "That's my brother!" She slapped him across the face. "That's
|
|
my brother!" She kicked him in the leg. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"
|
|
As she raised her hand to strike again, chorused with screams from
|
|
Quinn, the crowd, and herself, Johnny pointed at her and said meekly,
|
|
"Frog."
|
|
In horror, Johnny watched Rebecca's face contort monstrously as
|
|
she shrieked and as her hair, crackling, shrivelled and burst into
|
|
dark, acrid smoke.
|
|
Johnny reeled back, tripped over the bench, and tumbled to the
|
|
ground. He stared up at Rebecca, who was still screaming, though
|
|
Quinn had by then stopped, and saw her skin begin to dissolve.
|
|
The crowd swarmed into his view, rushing up from behind Rebecca
|
|
and from the sides, surrounding him. Every face was twisted with
|
|
desperate fear, every pair of eyes burned wildly, and every hand was
|
|
clenched into a fist.
|
|
The sudden closeness of the bodies of all his schoolmates made
|
|
the air so stifling that Johnny was not able to breathe. He raised
|
|
his hand in an attempt to defend himself, but could not utter a
|
|
single sound.
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
ROBERT HURVITZ (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu) will finally be graduating
|
|
from UC Berkeley in May, despite all attempts on his part to avoid
|
|
the real world for as long as possible. He assume he'll have to get a
|
|
job or something.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Cannibals Shrink Elvis' Head / PHIL NOLTE
|
|
|
|
It started out as a joke. I mean, we were just going to have a
|
|
little fun. You know, do something weird. That, and we thought we had
|
|
them cold this time.
|
|
"Them" is the folks that publish those idiotic tabloid
|
|
newspapers. Every now and then someone will bring one of them in to
|
|
work. You know the ones, they're right beside the checkout counter in
|
|
the grocery store. That's right, the ones with headlines like
|
|
"Vampire Mummies Repel Space Alien Invasion" or "Tammy Faye's New
|
|
Miracle Diet." The stories are always about odd things that were
|
|
supposed to've happened. Trouble is, they always happen in foreign
|
|
countries or in little towns that you never heard of like Slapshot,
|
|
Wyoming or something. Not this time. This time they'd made a mistake;
|
|
they'd picked a real town.
|
|
It was Raymond who pointed it out. "Hey guys, look at this!
|
|
There's two brothers in Absaraka, North Dakota who have a space alien
|
|
ship in their barn!"
|
|
I replied to that with something very intelligent; something
|
|
like: "Huh? Bullshit!"
|
|
"I'm not kidding," he said. "Here, read it yourself."
|
|
"Bachelor Brothers' Barn Houses Space Alien Ship," I read aloud.
|
|
"Trygve and Einar Carstenson found the strange craft in an abandoned
|
|
field near their farm. 'We could barely lift it on to our trailer
|
|
with the endloader,' says Einar. Well-known Yugoslavian experts say
|
|
it probably came from Rigel." I could barely keep from laughing as I
|
|
read it. "Shit!" I said. "Absaraka? That's only 30 miles from here."
|
|
It was Neil who had the next thought. "Let's drive out there and
|
|
see if that farm even exists. What the hell, we could grab a twelve-
|
|
pack to make the trip go a little faster. It won't take an hour both
|
|
ways. Come on guys, what d'ya say?" Neil could be very persuasive.
|
|
"Yeah, let's do it!" We might have been a chorus. It was kind of
|
|
a slow day anyway. We left Knutsen to mind the store. He didn't like
|
|
it much, but it was his turn.
|
|
Fifteen minutes later we were in Neil's Caravan out on
|
|
Interstate 94 and we were all on our second beers. ZZ Top was blaring
|
|
on the stereo. Draper had brought the newspaper and was reading it
|
|
out loud to a very appreciative audience: "Milkman Bites Dog. Ninety-
|
|
year-old Woman Gives Birth to Twins. Love Boat Attacked by 150-Foot
|
|
Shark." We were all in high spirits when we took the Wheatland exit.
|
|
"Absaraka, five miles," announced Neil.
|
|
We went to the post office-grocery store to get directions to
|
|
the fictitious farm. We were surprised to find out that there were
|
|
two Carstenson brothers who had a farm about four miles out of town.
|
|
The guy at the post office said they were a couple of bachelors and
|
|
that they were kind of weird. I didn't say anything but I thought the
|
|
whole town was kind of strange.
|
|
Five minutes later we pulled up to the mailbox at the end of a
|
|
long winding farm road. "Trygve & Einar Carstenson," it read. You
|
|
couldn't see the buildings from the road, there were too many trees
|
|
and too much brush.
|
|
"Well, we've come this far," said Neil. "Let's go."
|
|
The road was nearly half a mile long. When we got to the farm,
|
|
we found a ramshackle three-room house and some dilapidated farm
|
|
buildings. In one corner of the yard was a rust-red Studebaker pickup
|
|
truck. It was a nineteen forty-something, I wasn't sure. It looked
|
|
like junk, with a cracked windshield and one staring headlamp.
|
|
Draper was the youngest so we made him go to the door. He
|
|
knocked a couple of times but there was no answer. We were about to
|
|
call it a day when the old geezers surprised us all by coming up on
|
|
us from behind the machine shed.
|
|
"What the hell do you sumbitches want?" said one of them. I
|
|
guessed it was Einar.
|
|
Old, grizzled, and Norwegian they were, and not in the least bit
|
|
friendly.
|
|
"We came to see the spaceship," I managed to squeak out.
|
|
Trygve was holding a double-barreled shotgun!
|
|
"Yew ain't from some Gad-damned lib-ral newspaper are ye?" said
|
|
Trygve.
|
|
"No, we're from Fargo!" said Raymond. Brilliant, Raymond,
|
|
brilliant!
|
|
"There ain't no Gad-damned spaceship here and git to hell off
|
|
our property!"
|
|
So much for country hospitality! We took his advice and "got to
|
|
hell out of there!"
|
|
We had finished our twelve-pack and were in need of another. We
|
|
were also getting hungry, so we stopped in Casselton for a bite. Half
|
|
an hour later, we were leaving the restaurant. It was Draper who
|
|
noticed them first.
|
|
"Well I'll be go-to-hell!" he said. "Look at this, you guys."
|
|
Rattling and smoking down the main street of the little town
|
|
came an apparition. An honest-to-god, rust-colored, forty-something
|
|
Studebaker pickup truck. In it were two other apparitions. Or
|
|
fossils, if you prefer. Sure enough it was old Trygve and Einar
|
|
(which was which?), come to town. The ever-devious Neil was the first
|
|
to grasp the significance of the event.
|
|
"Wonder who's at the farm?" he mused.
|
|
"Shit, probably nobody!" said Raymond.
|
|
"What say we go back and have a look around?" said Neil.
|
|
I don't know if any one of us really wanted to but no one wanted
|
|
to be accused of not having any nerve either. I guess I was the most
|
|
cautious. "Christ!" I said. "That old son-of-a-bitch had a shotgun!"
|
|
"Well he can't hardy hit you from Casselton, can he?" Neil
|
|
replied. That ended the argument. Neil's good at saying the right
|
|
thing to end an argument. He's brave, too. When we got back to the
|
|
Carstenson farm he showed his courage by offering to stay in the car
|
|
with the motor running while the rest of us did the snooping. It was
|
|
Raymond and I who found the ship! No shit! Believe it or not, Ripley!
|
|
It was in one of the old buildings that had a big door on one end.
|
|
"Jesus, would you look at that!" said Raymond, his voice rising
|
|
with excitement. "That thing is gorgeous!"
|
|
No doubt about it, it was beautiful. Long and slender and
|
|
smooth, it was sleekly aerodynamic and obviously intended for use in
|
|
atmosphere. It was much smaller than I would have expected -- it must
|
|
have been some kind of scout ship. It simply couldn't have come all
|
|
the way from Rigel. It was only about forty feet long and made of
|
|
some kind of totally unfamiliar metal or plastic. It was sky-blue and
|
|
shiny. Raymond and I looked at fun-house reflections of ourselves in
|
|
the side of it.
|
|
Raymond made a funny face. I slapped his shoulder.
|
|
"Cut that out!" I said. "This is an alien spacecraft! It should
|
|
be treated with dignity! Jesus, can't you ever be serious?"
|
|
The little craft was beautiful, but it showed the after-effects
|
|
of one hellacious impact. One of the "wings" was bent and torn and
|
|
the nose and bottom were covered with dirt, like it had landed in a
|
|
swamp or something. There was an obvious hatch on one side. From the
|
|
way the mud was caked on the seams of it, it had not been opened. The
|
|
way the little ship was damaged we had to assume that its occupant(s)
|
|
were dead. We were just about to get a closer look when we heard the
|
|
horn of the Caravan honk and Draper screaming at the top of his
|
|
lungs. We high-tailed it for the van.
|
|
Trygve and Einar had come back from town. Hell hath no fury like
|
|
a pissed-off Norwegian farmer! Fortunately, all they had was that old
|
|
Studebaker truck and we had a head start. Neil has a couple of dents
|
|
and one broken window on the back of his Caravan from the shotgun
|
|
blast, but it could have been worse.
|
|
Within a day there was an Air Force barrier thrown up a mile
|
|
around the house. No one goes in or out. We don't know what to make
|
|
of it. Trygve and Einar must have gone into town to call them.
|
|
One thing that really irks me is that no one thought to bring a
|
|
camera. One lousy picture and we all could have been rich and famous!
|
|
Well, we won't be caught napping this time. We're on our way to
|
|
Clear Lake, Iowa to visit a Miss Nellie Rawlings, RR 2. It seems that
|
|
the large oval rock she was using as a doorstop on her hen house
|
|
turned out to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex egg. Hatched into a hungry
|
|
little needle-toothed monster. She says it ate a bunch of chickens
|
|
and her cat. By God, we're gonna get this one on film!
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
PHIl NOLTE (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET) is an extension professor at the
|
|
University of Idaho, in addition to being an assistant editor of
|
|
InterText.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Naming Game / TARL ROGER KUDRICK
|
|
|
|
His mother's name was Sherry.
|
|
His father's name was Nathaniel.
|
|
His best friend's name was Warren Denaublin. His worst enemy's
|
|
name was Emily Pirthrull. Some of his classmates were Susan Fench,
|
|
Gordon Quellan, and Irving P. Rinehauser the third.
|
|
>His< name was John Smith, and he was >not< happy.
|
|
He wouldn't have cared so much if his name was at least
|
|
>spelled< differently. Jon Smyth, Jonn Smithe, or something like
|
|
that. But it wasn't. It was J as in Joshua, O as in Orville, H as in
|
|
Harvey, N as in Norman, S as in Samuelson, M as in Mitchell, I as in
|
|
Idall, T as in Terniard, H as in Hutchington -- John Smith. His older
|
|
sister (Josephine) had an English teacher (Mrs. Starnell) who talked
|
|
about the Everyman. John thought that John Smith was the perfect name
|
|
for an Everyman, but he was only eleven, so he couldn't even qualify
|
|
for that.
|
|
There had to be at least a >million< John Smiths in the world.
|
|
Didn't his parents >realize< that? What was wrong with them? What
|
|
could they have been thinking when they'd named him?
|
|
His mother would have talked first. She always did. "Oh
|
|
Nathaniel dear, look, it's our new baby. What'll we name him?"
|
|
"Oh Sherry darling, how about 'John Smith?' "
|
|
"Why 'John Smith?' "
|
|
"It's the most boring name I can think of."
|
|
That just about summed it up, John figured. Then his dad
|
|
would've gone on about something else, probably football. John hated
|
|
football. All the players had their names proudly displayed across
|
|
their backs, so everyone could see how great they were. Once, he
|
|
>had< seen a player with the last name Smith, and felt some hope.
|
|
Then it turned out the man's first name was Ebineezer and John lost
|
|
all faith in the world.
|
|
If only there was a famous president, or rock star, or something
|
|
named John Smith. Or a movie star. Anything. Of course, those people
|
|
would never >call< themselves John Smith, even if that was their real
|
|
name. Those people never used their real names. They made something
|
|
up. And that's what gave him the idea:
|
|
He would get his name changed. Officially. Right now, right on
|
|
this bright Sunday morning, before he even got dressed. Why put it
|
|
off? He felt better already.
|
|
The hard part, of course, would be convincing his parents.
|
|
Nathaniel Smith was sitting in his armchair in the living room,
|
|
reading the newspaper, completely ignorant of the storm of self-
|
|
confidence and assurance that was about to come flying out of its
|
|
room, demanding to have its name changed. Thus, he regarded the
|
|
request with considerable surprise.
|
|
"You want to what?"
|
|
"Dad," John repeated, "I want to change my name." It had far
|
|
less effect than he'd hoped for, especially the second time.
|
|
"You want," John's already washed, shaved, combed, groomed, and
|
|
perfectly dressed father slowly said while staring blankly over the
|
|
rims of his shiny glasses, "to change your name."
|
|
John, unwashed, uncombed, and still in his pajamas, said "Um...
|
|
yeah."
|
|
John felt the moment slipping away from him.
|
|
Seeing no real response from his father, he used what he'd been
|
|
saving as a last resort.
|
|
"Movie stars do it!"
|
|
"You aren't a movie star."
|
|
Leave it to parents to be logical when their only son in going
|
|
through the ultimate crisis of his life, John thought. "You don't
|
|
understand. I >have< to."
|
|
"Why? Are you hiding from the police?"
|
|
"No!" Why did parents have to >say< stupid things like that? "I
|
|
just have to, that's all."
|
|
"Oh," said his father, turning and looking at the wall. John
|
|
looked there too, but didn't see anything. And apparently, neither
|
|
did his father. After a couple moments he turned back to John and
|
|
asked "Why?"
|
|
"It's >boring<," he answered. He spread his arms out in a
|
|
gesture of emphasis that was completely lost on his father. "There
|
|
are millions of people called John Smith."
|
|
"Name one."
|
|
John stopped for a minute, thought, then realized he'd been
|
|
tricked. "Daaad! You aren't taking me >seriously<!"
|
|
His father chuckled. "Okay. Look, have you talked to your mom
|
|
about this?"
|
|
John reluctantly admitted that he hadn't. But, he added, she was
|
|
next.
|
|
"Well, why don't you see what she thinks, and then talk to me."
|
|
"But she's at >church<! She won't be home for a long time!"
|
|
"She's always back by lunch time. You can make it that long." He
|
|
ruffled John's hair. John slumped his shoulders and went back to his
|
|
room.
|
|
"And stand up straight," his father called after him.
|
|
|
|
John got caught up in other things and forgot about the whole
|
|
problem until after dinner. Then, his mother was shopping. She always
|
|
shopped after dinner. It never made sense to John, but then, nothing
|
|
his parents did made sense. He >had< to talk to her as soon as she
|
|
got back! School started tomorrow, and there was no way he was going
|
|
to start fifth grade as John Smith.
|
|
When he heard the sound of his mother's car coming into the
|
|
driveway, he ran out of his room to let her into the house. He threw
|
|
open the door just as his mother was about to unlock it.
|
|
"Hi Mom!" he shouted, scaring the unprepared Sherry Smith almost
|
|
to the point of dropping her groceries.
|
|
"Hi John! Hey, you scared me there." She wondered why he was
|
|
opening the door for her. She figured he wanted something, and tested
|
|
this by asking him to bring in the rest of the groceries.
|
|
"Sure, Mom!" He ran out and made four trips from the house to
|
|
the car and back without a complaint.
|
|
Even when that was finished, though, John still hadn't asked for
|
|
anything, and Sherry began wondering instead what John had done.
|
|
Finally, she came out and asked him if he wanted anything.
|
|
John beamed, then became ultra-serious. "I'd like to change my
|
|
name," he said.
|
|
Inwardly, Sherry Smith groaned. Josephine had gone through
|
|
several different stages of "but Mom, I just >have< to (fill in the
|
|
blank)," and was working on another one. She'd hoped John wouldn't
|
|
fall prey to it too. But, the best way to handle these fads, she'd
|
|
long ago decided, was to just play along.
|
|
So she asked him what he wanted to be called.
|
|
John opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had no idea what
|
|
he wanted to be called.
|
|
"Larry," he finally said, proudly.
|
|
"Larry," she repeated, as if trying on a new hat. "Sounds like
|
|
my name! Why Larry?"
|
|
John didn't know, so he said, "It sounds good."
|
|
"Larry," she mused. "Larry Smith."
|
|
John almost had a heart attack. "No! Not Larry >Smith<! Larry...
|
|
Quartz! Larry Quartz."
|
|
His mother looked dubious, but John loved it. "Yeah. Larry
|
|
Quartz. It's great. It's >exactly< right." Seeing no complaint from
|
|
his mother, he went back to his room, smiling. He could hardly wait
|
|
until tomorrow.
|
|
The next morning, after washing and dressing, John came out to
|
|
eat breakfast. His mother was making pancakes. No one else was in the
|
|
room yet.
|
|
His mother greeted him with a smile. "Good morning, John."
|
|
He almost responded, but then remembered and said "Who?"
|
|
His mother sighed. "Right. Who are you again?"
|
|
"Larry," he said slowly. "Larry Quartz." He sat down at the
|
|
table.
|
|
His father came in from the living room. "Hi John." Both wife
|
|
and son quickly corrected him. He looked at them, confused, but then
|
|
just shrugged.
|
|
His older sister was next. She bounded into the room, her silky
|
|
and wet black hair flopping behind her like a confused flag. She sat
|
|
down at the table and, much to John's dismay, ignored him completely.
|
|
He wanted to get her to call him John too.
|
|
So, he started humming quietly underneath his breath, and
|
|
playing with his fork, hoping Josephine would tell him to stop. She
|
|
did give him an odd look, and he paused and returned a false smile,
|
|
but nothing else happened. He went back to his humming.
|
|
Pouring some pancake batter into a pan, John's mother said "Jo,
|
|
we have a new member of the family this morning."
|
|
John stopped humming. What was she doing?
|
|
Josephine studied her mother. She looked around the table. "I
|
|
don't get it," she said finally.
|
|
Sherry put the batter down and waved an arm at John. "Meet Larry
|
|
Quartz."
|
|
Josephine stared at John, who paled slightly. "Whaaattt?" Her
|
|
voice rose in disbelief.
|
|
John sat still, wondering how to turn this to his advantage.
|
|
"He changed his name?" Josephine drawled. Then she started
|
|
laughing. "He changed his >name<?"
|
|
She turned to John. "What's wrong with the name they gave you?"
|
|
"Now Josephine," John's father began.
|
|
"It's Jo, Dad, not Josephine," she reminded him.
|
|
"What's wrong with the name they gave you?" John mimicked.
|
|
She glared at him. "John!"
|
|
"Who?"
|
|
"All right!" John's mother announced. "The first pancake is
|
|
ready."
|
|
"Well, why don't we let John have it?" suggested Josephine
|
|
sweetly.
|
|
"Who?" John replied innocently.
|
|
"Well, if >he's< not around, I guess I'd better have it!" She
|
|
took the pancake.
|
|
Not taking any chances, John quickly added that he wanted the
|
|
next one.
|
|
All in all, breakfast turned out pretty good for John. His
|
|
mother called him John once, his father accidentally called him
|
|
Harry, and his sister, for sake of argument, called him John every
|
|
time. It was great. He just >knew< that he was going to have a
|
|
wonderful day.
|
|
He didn't, of course, know about the new girl in his class.
|
|
|
|
Her name, and the month she was born in, was June. She had the
|
|
nicest hair and the sweetest smile, and she had just the right
|
|
mixture of shyness and audacity to get anything she wanted from
|
|
anyone. She was a knockout, or as much of a knockout as a fifth-
|
|
grader could be, and this was certainly the impression held by the
|
|
male population of the class.
|
|
In fact, no one dared sit near her. The boys didn't, because
|
|
they didn't want to do something stupid. And the other girls didn't
|
|
quite trust her. June, and the seat next to her, were left alone.
|
|
So when John walked in, just barely before the bell as always,
|
|
the only available seat was the one next to her, and all eyes were on
|
|
him as he sat in it.
|
|
With no formal training at all, John performed a perfect double-
|
|
take, and the result was a spontaneous burst of giggles as John found
|
|
himself trying not to stare at June as rudely as he was.
|
|
Then the bell rang and the teacher walked in, and everyone
|
|
turned to the blackboard.
|
|
The teacher was new. He walked in front of his desk and said
|
|
"Hello, class!" His voice was deep and clear. "As you may have
|
|
noticed, I'm new here. But I've taught fifth grade before, so I'm
|
|
very good at it. I hope that you will all think the same after you
|
|
get to know me. But first," he said, placing a pile of notebooks he'd
|
|
been carrying onto his desk, "I would like to get to know >you<. My
|
|
name is Mr. Carniss." He wrote it on the chalkboard with precise
|
|
handwriting and opened up one of his notebooks. "Now I have here a
|
|
list of names, but I don't know whom each one belongs to. So I'm just
|
|
going to read off each name and if that's you, just raise your hand.
|
|
How does that sound?"
|
|
Sounds terrible, thought John. This name-changing business was
|
|
going to be harder than he'd figured.
|
|
What were his friends going to say? He glanced around. Sure
|
|
enough, they were all there. About two-thirds of the room knew him,
|
|
or at least his name. He vaguely remembered being laughed at only a
|
|
couple of minutes ago and he didn't want to go through that again.
|
|
Then he thought of June. He didn't know her name was June, of
|
|
course, but whoever she was, she didn't look like she'd think much of
|
|
a John Smith. He found himself staring at her again, and looked away.
|
|
Why did he even care what some dumb girl thought, anyway? He wasn't
|
|
sure, but he did.
|
|
Mr. Carniss began.
|
|
"Sue-Ann Aldring?"
|
|
A girl in the last row raised her hand as if it were going to
|
|
explode if moved too quickly. Mr. Carniss looked up, smiled a smile
|
|
that melted Sue-Ann, and made a mark in his book.
|
|
"Michael Bern?"
|
|
And so it went. Name after name was called. Denaublin, Ewing,
|
|
Garth...
|
|
"June Golden?"
|
|
June raised her hand as far as it would go. John felt sick. June
|
|
Golden, he marvelled. What a name. She'd >never< have to change it.
|
|
If I had a name like that, thought John, I wouldn't change it for a
|
|
million dollars. Not for ten million. I wouldn't even change it if my
|
|
parents threatened to kill me. I wouldn't...
|
|
John stopped thinking and sank into his chair. He felt like he'd
|
|
just been hit with a sledgehammer. That was it. The answer. That was
|
|
how he could get away with this and not be the laughingstock of the
|
|
fifth grade.
|
|
Excited, he smiled, and could barely restrain himself until,
|
|
eleven names later, Mr. Carniss said
|
|
"John Smith?"
|
|
John raised his hand, slowly, faking uncertainty. He hoped he
|
|
looked like he wasn't sure he was doing the right thing.
|
|
Mr. Carniss looked up at John and made a mark in his notebook.
|
|
Then he looked back at John. "Is something wrong, John?" he asked.
|
|
John couldn't tell if it was real concern, or just the usual
|
|
kind teachers had for their kids. "Um...yeah," he said finally. "Kind
|
|
of. That's...that's not my name anymore."
|
|
Mr. Carniss looked surprised. So did the other kids. John kept a
|
|
perfectly straight face, but mentally crossed his fingers as he said,
|
|
"My parents changed it."
|
|
Next to him, June Golden's eyes went wide with pity. On the
|
|
other side of him, his best friend Warren almost fell off his chair.
|
|
Mr. Carniss was disoriented. For the first time, he seemed
|
|
unprepared. But he quickly regained his composure and said, "I see.
|
|
And what is your name now?"
|
|
Here we go, John thought.
|
|
"Larry Quartz."
|
|
Warren gave him a look which translated as "You've got to be
|
|
kidding." Some of the other students were looking at each other in
|
|
awkward disbelief. June seemed slightly bothered at the idea, and
|
|
turned away from John just as he looked over to see her reaction. But
|
|
none of this fazed Mr. Carniss, who had once again taken control.
|
|
"Well," he replied cheerfully, "what would you like me to call
|
|
you? John or Larry?"
|
|
John looked at him, sinking. Why did he have to be so nice? But
|
|
it was too late to back out now.
|
|
"I guess you'd better call me Larry, Mr. Carniss. I should get
|
|
used to it."
|
|
"You should get new parents," whispered Warren, but Mr. Carniss
|
|
simply nodded and made some more marks in his book. He finished off
|
|
his list of names and then class started.
|
|
The day went badly for John. Things hadn't gone at all like he'd
|
|
hoped. When he thought about it, he wasn't even sure what kind of
|
|
reaction he'd been looking for, but he did know he hadn't gotten it.
|
|
As it turned out, Mr. Carniss was only his homeroom teacher.
|
|
That meant he had to repeat his story and his act for five more
|
|
teachers throughout the day. By the afternoon he no longer wanted to,
|
|
but he kept having people he knew in some of his classes, and the
|
|
story had spread through the entire fifth grade by lunch hour. John
|
|
heard people talking about him from time to time, but he could never
|
|
quite hear what they were saying.
|
|
By the end of the day, the misery he'd feigned for his first
|
|
class was real. No one wanted to talk to him. No one knew what to
|
|
say. A brand new student would have been treated better. John had
|
|
forgotten how many friends he'd really had, until none of them seemed
|
|
comfortable around him anymore. It was like he'd died and some new
|
|
kid had come along, trying to take his place. It isn't fair, John
|
|
wanted to shout. I'm still the same person! I'm just called something
|
|
different!
|
|
After his last class, he collected his books and went to the
|
|
bike rack where he traditionally waited for Warren. He unhitched his
|
|
bike and, after a couple minutes, Warren arrived.
|
|
Warren smiled, started to say "Hi John," and then remembered and
|
|
mumbled "oh yeah."
|
|
"It isn't >that< bad, is it?" John asked.
|
|
Warren stared at him. "You mean you >like< it?"
|
|
"Don't you?"
|
|
Warren started to say something, but stopped. "It's okay," he
|
|
said. "But I like John better."
|
|
John looked at his bicycle. "Maybe I can get them to change it
|
|
back, or something," he said. He didn't like the idea.
|
|
Warren did. His spirits lifted immediately. "You think you
|
|
could?"
|
|
John was slightly taken back at the force of Warren's question.
|
|
"Well, I don't know. They haven't actually made the change yet, but
|
|
they said..."
|
|
"Well don't >let< them!" Warren shouted. "Shit! Tell them not
|
|
to! I'll help! Want me to come over? I'll stand up for you!"
|
|
"No! No--that's okay." John wanted to change the subject. "I'll
|
|
tell them. I won't let them. I...I like being John Smith." But he
|
|
wondered who he was trying to convince, Warren or himself.
|
|
He rode Warren home, and then went on to his house, deep in
|
|
thought. He still thought John Smith was a boring name, but nobody
|
|
seemed to mind. Maybe the name actually helped somehow. "John Smith?
|
|
Yeah, his name's boring, but >he's< cool..."
|
|
|
|
He got back home and put his bike away. When he walked inside,
|
|
his mother smiled at him. "Hi Larry! How'd school go?"
|
|
"Who?" John asked.
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
TARL ROGER KUDRICK (AUELV@ACVAX.INRE.ASU.EDU) has been making up
|
|
stories since he could talk and writing them since he was twelve.
|
|
He's written numerous short stories and first drafts of two novels,
|
|
one of which is on-line at Oberlin College
|
|
(owrite@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu). His major goal in life is to earn a
|
|
Ph.D. in psychology. He stays sane through both being weird and
|
|
running AD&D sessions.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Boy / N. RIDLEY MCINTYRE
|
|
|
|
1. Start Switch
|
|
|
|
Shitamachi. The Manhattan Outzone. The Year of the Rat.
|
|
Darkness and rain pervade the quiet streets of the Outzone.
|
|
Here, the Federal Government in its infinite wisdom has cut off all
|
|
electricity, and left the running of the place to its inhabitants. In
|
|
Shitamachi, the Asahi Tag Team run everything.
|
|
The DJ in Snakestrike is a tiger-haired poserboy with his brain
|
|
connected to the turbo sound system at the end of a large dance
|
|
floor, two thin blue wires dangling from the tiny electrodes stuck to
|
|
his forehead. He is engrossed in the world of the music, every
|
|
digitized blip and beep and thump pulsing through his nerves like the
|
|
very blood in his veins. Electrical signals interfacing the sound
|
|
system to his nervous system to allow him complete control over the
|
|
mix. The ersatz sensory stimulation that runs through the 'trodes
|
|
overrides his own natural senses. Every three minutes he switches to
|
|
life to take a request.
|
|
The dance floor swarms with a thousand Shitamachi teenagers,
|
|
sticking their heads into the blue lasers and flashing fluorescent
|
|
gloves under the ultra-violet strobes. Every wall of the club writhes
|
|
with holographic snake scales, a reptilian world that's constantly
|
|
moving.
|
|
There's a hole above the dance floor where people from the level
|
|
above can watch the dancers. Up here, on the left at the cocktail
|
|
bar, Snakestrike stinks of dancer sweat. It also reeks of business.
|
|
And for once, Dex has nothing to do with it.
|
|
Two women serve the cocktail bar. One dark-haired with natural
|
|
beauty, the other a made-up half-Japanese blonde doll who is well
|
|
known as an Asahi Tag Teamster. They call themselves sisters when a
|
|
drunken Japanese Sony slave plays being a suit to them, despite his
|
|
slave's company-grey jumpsuit. Dex watches them all with interest,
|
|
then calls the dark-haired girl over to order his third Vijayanta
|
|
tequila slammer.
|
|
Dex is here to see Laughing Simon, the Asahi Tag Team's best
|
|
technojack, but he's been stood up again. So, he sits by the bar with
|
|
his face cupped in his hand and a pocketful of stimulant wetware in
|
|
his black pilot's jacket. He is just thinking of leaving when he
|
|
feels a tap on his shoulder from the billy on the grey stool next to
|
|
him: a muscular Australian kid with sideburns, a blue denim jacket, a
|
|
quiff and a ginger moustache.
|
|
"So what do you do?" asks the billy.
|
|
"Why, are you collecting taxes?" Dex answers. His voice is
|
|
English. The dark-haired girl returning with a plastic tumbler
|
|
wonders if there are any Americans left in Manhattan. She turns the
|
|
glass three times and fizzes it with a bang on the bar and Dex calmly
|
|
downs it.
|
|
"You look like a ghost to me," says the Australian.
|
|
Dex shakes his head the way he's supposed to when they ask him
|
|
these questions. All the time thinking, does it show that much?
|
|
"Sorry, matey. Just your average ho-hum chipster."
|
|
The billy shuffles closer, his voice slipping gently into a
|
|
business tone. "Shame. I'm looking at some hot paydata and I really
|
|
need a ghost. One of the best. Someone like the Camden Town Boy.
|
|
Dexter Eastman."
|
|
"You've found Dexter Eastman, matey. But I gave up the ghost
|
|
over a year ago."
|
|
The billy makes a swift move from his jacket and Dex can feel a
|
|
cold plastic tube dig into his hip. The Australian raises his
|
|
eyebrows. "Looks like I've found my man, then." He motions to the
|
|
exit with his head. "We're walking."
|
|
"You're walking. I'm here for a drink."
|
|
The Australian squints in Dex's face. "You'd better move, cause
|
|
if you don't it's gonna be a Kodak moment."
|
|
Dex sits still. "Go ahead. Shoot me. You won't get out alive.
|
|
The decision, as they say, is yours." A flick of Dex's eyes motions
|
|
the Australian to look at the dark-haired bargirl. She holds the HK
|
|
assault shotgun usually kept under the bar. Casually, and with a
|
|
feisty smile, she rests the barrel on the bone of the Australian's
|
|
nose and crunches the first round into the chamber.
|
|
"If you're takin' anyone out at my bar, it won't be with a
|
|
plastic pistol, matey," she says curtly. "Give me the piece and deal
|
|
with the man friendly-like."
|
|
The Australian gives over the gun with a taut look from Dex to
|
|
the bargirl and back. He wipes sweat from his moustache.
|
|
Dex gives a thankful look to the bargirl. "Respect to you," he
|
|
says.
|
|
"S'okay," she replies, "If he didn't look so dumb, I'd shoot him
|
|
anyway." She puts the guns behind the counter, out of reach, and goes
|
|
back to the Japanese slave.
|
|
Dex turns to the Australian. "You've got two minutes. Deal or
|
|
step."
|
|
The billy talks through clenched teeth. Being challenged down in
|
|
a club full of strangers by a girl who looked about seventeen has
|
|
raised a storm inside his pride. It is a storm that has to subside
|
|
just this once.
|
|
"My name's Priest. I'm a dealer for Kreskin."
|
|
"Kreskin the rigger?"
|
|
"The very same. Kreskin says you two used to work together. You
|
|
used to do overnight laundry for him with the World Bank."
|
|
"That was a year ago."
|
|
"Yeah, well he's coming up against some tough opposition from
|
|
the Martial Government Air Force along the North Route and he needs
|
|
you to run the Ether for him. Hack into the MGAF shell and find out
|
|
the reconnaissance flight plans for next week. Rabies just broke out
|
|
again in the Seattle Metroplex and Kreskin has the contract to ship
|
|
vaccine over the line. He says you did it before for him. He says
|
|
you'll do it again."
|
|
Dex narrows his eyes. "Read my profile. Ex-hackerjack."
|
|
Priest smiles. "Kreskin said you'd be a little reluctant. I have
|
|
read your profile. Ex-hackerjack. Ex-MGAF pilot. Ex-joker. You've
|
|
done a lot in your time. Kreskin needs someone he can trust. Someone
|
|
he knows. And of course if you refuse..." Priest takes a cold gyuza
|
|
dumpling from a bowl on the bar and bites half of it.
|
|
"Kreskin publicly announces my whereabouts to the MGAF."
|
|
"I think he had something even worse in mind, but you're on the
|
|
right track. Strictly business, you understand, Dex. Nothing
|
|
personal.
|
|
Somehow Dex wishes it was personal. Then he'd have an excuse to
|
|
smash Priest's face in.
|
|
|
|
Kitty slips into Dex's room and hands him steaming ration coffee
|
|
in a polystyrene cup. She's like him, another smart young refugee
|
|
from the authorities. The Manhattan Outzone is an excellent place to
|
|
hide, but she wasn't born to this, and no one could hide forever.
|
|
She looks at Dex through superchromed Sony eyes as he drinks his
|
|
coffee, sitting on his black leather swivel chair and fidgeting, and
|
|
she realizes that she knows very little about him. He grew up in a
|
|
shanty town in the Thames Midland Metroplex and found a way out
|
|
through running the Ether; the Camden Town Boy. He was a hackerjack
|
|
legend by the age of fourteen, teaching others like Dagger and Man
|
|
Friday to run the Ether. At fifteen he was involved with a team
|
|
rivalry squabble and left for North Am District, where he joined the
|
|
Martial Government Air Force, flying missions against the nomad joker
|
|
clans who smuggled anything from weapons to computer parts from one
|
|
Metroplex to another, figuring that the MGAF's high security would
|
|
make him harder to track down.
|
|
She heard that he turned joker after he had to shoot down his
|
|
own wingman to save a busload of joker kids from being rocketed. So
|
|
he joined the nomads as a pilot running recon missions and every once
|
|
in a while he would launder joker clan money through the Ether.
|
|
Kreskin got him a new identity and he left the game for the
|
|
Manhattan Outzone, where he moved in with Kitty and the Asahi Tag
|
|
Team and became a chipster. Once, he told her that his main ambition
|
|
was to live a normal life. Buy himself a piece of Happyville. The
|
|
biggest problem he had was dropping his past.
|
|
Kitty only has to see the look on his face to know that the past
|
|
is on its way back.
|
|
Dex downs the coffee and crushes the cup inside a sinewy hand.
|
|
"You don't think I should do this, do you?"
|
|
Kitty stands with her back to the wall by the door to the
|
|
kitchen, her arms neatly folded over her _Omni_ T-shirt. She bites
|
|
her bottom lip.
|
|
"No," she says to him. She kicks herself off the wall and leaves
|
|
the room, closing the door behind her.
|
|
Dex is alone in a grimy-grey room with a swivel chair, a desk
|
|
and a foam mattress to sleep on. Something inside him claws his
|
|
stomach. An empty feeling.
|
|
A hunger.
|
|
He takes the machinery out of its bubble-plastic wrapping. It's
|
|
been in storage in a tea chest in Kitty's room for so long that the
|
|
wrapping sticks to the molded form of the Sony electronics, making
|
|
the job more difficult. The sense 'trodes, like sticky silver beads
|
|
with microthin wires, are wrapped around the Etherdeck. A procured
|
|
military item in cold matte black, designated Ares IV.
|
|
The Ares IV has a stream of wires that plug into the input port
|
|
of his stolen, unlicensed Fednet computer. Built in Poland, its
|
|
bright red plastic casing and molded keyboard with old chunky keys
|
|
seems tasteless to all but the billy tribe. Dex is no billy, he's too
|
|
dragon, but he likes things in strange colors. The whole setup that
|
|
has been updated for high-speed bias by Laughing Simon is plugged
|
|
into the socket that runs a tap into the groundline. He sticks the
|
|
trodes to his forehead and switches on all the equipment. "On"
|
|
telltales glisten in the darkness of his room. The screen on the
|
|
Fednet computer displays a prompt. Everything's ready except Dex.
|
|
He sits cross-legged in front of the setup and hesitates. The
|
|
hunger inside his guts claws him again, and he nearly buckles with
|
|
tension. With his left hand, he fingers the keyboard of the Fednet
|
|
computer, preparing himself for sensory takeover.
|
|
With the other poised over the Ares IV, he touches the Start
|
|
switch.
|
|
|
|
2. Ether
|
|
|
|
Just as Dex had taught the Dagger and Man Friday, so a girl
|
|
called Kayjay introduced him to the Ether on a cold London night in a
|
|
Sony-owned flat in the Camden Secure Zone. He was twelve years old
|
|
and Kayjay was a small, thin- boned, pretty little Bangladeshi girl
|
|
with nothing better to do than follow the latest fads.
|
|
She had spent most of the day playing with her father's
|
|
electronic toys. His Sony computer... black and sleek and totally
|
|
unlike the low-tech kit-boxes that Dex had seen in the shanty town.
|
|
His wallscreen color TV that was constantly tuned into Disney 7 (The
|
|
Children's Channel), showing the latest adventures of baby-faced
|
|
anthropomorphic soldiers in space jungles, fighting the evil
|
|
insectoids with their nuclear battlesuits, and Dex and Kayjay acted
|
|
them out in the living room, firing remote control units at each
|
|
other (Dex was always Mark and Kayjay was always Sukhi), and Kayjay
|
|
won. When they raided the wardrobe for fancy costumes, Kayjay came
|
|
across the thin non-descript box that she had seen her father use. It
|
|
was densely heavy and as big as a Federal Government daily ration
|
|
box.
|
|
He remembers her words now as she tried to explain the concepts
|
|
to this bright, but uneducated, boy, lying on the thick carpet floor
|
|
of her bedroom. She tapped the ridge on her black leather swivel
|
|
chair.
|
|
"See this chair?" she said. Twelve-year-old Dexter Eastman
|
|
nodded softly. "This chair doesn't really exist. It's just an
|
|
amassment of atomic particles. But the way the light reflects from
|
|
them, and the way our eyes see that light, leads our brains to come
|
|
to the conclusion that this pack of particles is a chair. Without a
|
|
way of translating the fact to us, it doesn't really exist. Without
|
|
sight it has no color. Without touch it has no texture. Without taste
|
|
it's not organic. Without sound it doesn't squeak when you turn it.
|
|
Without smell it isn't leather. A person without senses has no world.
|
|
It just doesn't exist, there's no way of translating it to them."
|
|
Kayjay moved around the room like some eccentric Disney 9
|
|
(Education Channel) science instructor and ended up grinning,
|
|
pointing to her red telephone.
|
|
"Ever listened to the sound a modem makes when you send it down
|
|
a phone line?" She made a weird screeching sound and an equally
|
|
appalling face and Dex gave a little giggle.
|
|
"Data. Raw data. A computer talking to another computer. Not to
|
|
us, because it doesn't speak our language, but that's by-the-by. The
|
|
fact is that data has a sound. And if it has a sound, it has a smell.
|
|
And a taste, and a texture and you must be able to see it. It exists.
|
|
Only normally, there's no way to translate it to us."
|
|
She edged over to Dex and kissed him softly, ran thin brown
|
|
fingers through his spiky black hair. "Somedays I go there... to this
|
|
other world. Father calls it the Ether. Like ethereal, I suppose. But
|
|
it's more like a checkboard than anything else. You want to go? I'll
|
|
get Father to bring home another set of trodes. After that, we'll do
|
|
it together..."
|
|
|
|
The processor is an empty blue cathedral. Code embodies him as
|
|
the virus runs its course. There is a soft dent in the defense shell
|
|
and Fednet's watchdog program lays in wait. Dex knows this, though,
|
|
and avoids the obvious weakness in favor of the silent meltdown.
|
|
Another key is tapped and a silver thread streams from the
|
|
melting roof where Dex has lived all this time toward the bounty. The
|
|
defenses have been breached, the virus has become part of the defense
|
|
program, shaping itself to the contours and Dex knows his trojan
|
|
software can work well enough without him, that he can switch off any
|
|
time and let a demon do the work for him. But it seems too easy, and
|
|
something must be wrong.
|
|
He stays with it, observing... watching the trojan open and
|
|
close files with lightning speed, knowing it's true target, but
|
|
running a trick that it really is a routine file check. As soon as it
|
|
finds the file, the thread snaps back, and Dex sends a program to
|
|
cover its tracks. It doesn't matter. The breaching virus is old and
|
|
faulty, and has caused a cancer in the defense shell that the
|
|
watchdog can't fail to notice. Dex waits just long enough for the
|
|
thread to return before he tries to rescue the virus which has gone
|
|
wild. Eventually, before he can tear the trodes from his forehead, he
|
|
feels the crushing smash of the MGAF trace program as it finds his
|
|
home shell. His senses are dazed, rocked back and forth and he is
|
|
pulled like spaghetti as he sees the trace's toothy smile.
|
|
|
|
He tears the trodes from his forehead and fights for breath.
|
|
Suddenly nauseated, he crawls so fast through the door but vomits
|
|
across the kitchen floor before he can reach the sink. Passing out,
|
|
he can sense the far off rank smell of stagnant water and the cruel
|
|
touch of a rough cloth. The stern tones of Kitty's voice echoing
|
|
through his head...
|
|
|
|
Snakestrike. The pretty, dark-haired girl brings his drink over
|
|
to him, loosely covered with a small cloth. She draws him closer to
|
|
her. Her voice is an urgent whisper. "Your name's Dex, isn't it?"
|
|
Dex nods.
|
|
"Man in that booth behind you was asking for you not two minutes
|
|
ago. He said he was an old friend. I told him you weren't here. He
|
|
said he'd wait. If you're in trouble, matey, call for another drink.
|
|
I'll bring the shotgun. Escort him out for you."
|
|
Dex sits back. She circles the tumbler three times and bangs it
|
|
on the bar, turning the drink into wet foam. Dex lets her take away
|
|
the cloth before downing it.
|
|
"What's your name?"
|
|
"Jess," she says.
|
|
"Enough respect to you, Jess." He taps the bar and takes a
|
|
breath before pushing himself off the stool and looking for this
|
|
Mister Dangerous. He spots him immediately, and knows his name is
|
|
Turk.
|
|
"What are you doing here, Turk?"
|
|
Turk has his arms spread along the back of the seat, a dumb,
|
|
superior grin on his Dixie City fat face. He wears a blue flight
|
|
suit, wing commanders tapes on the epaulettes. He even has his own
|
|
row of medals, including a purple heart that he must have got when
|
|
Dex shot down his own wingman.
|
|
"Thought ah'd find you heah, Eastman," he drawls drunkenly. "Ah
|
|
was gonna ask you that question mahself. How the hell can you live in
|
|
this dump, anyways? What do the Sammies call it? Shitter-what?"
|
|
"Shitamachi. It's Japanese for downtown. Look, cut the gomi,
|
|
Turk, just tell me what you want."
|
|
Turk laughs raucously and chews gum, bobbing his head. "Jeez,
|
|
Eastman. You been heah so long, you'se even spoutin' like a Sammie.
|
|
Bah the way, your friend Priest is dead. Ah did him mahself. But not
|
|
before I managed to spill your deal outta him. So gimme the file you
|
|
copied and we'll be friends again."
|
|
"We were never friends. What makes you think I've got it with
|
|
me?"
|
|
Turk leans forward and takes a sip from his beer, then returns
|
|
to his reclining position, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers
|
|
against the ultra-suede. "Ah told you, Eastman. Ah know the deal. So
|
|
gimme the data, 'cause I know you got it."
|
|
Dex takes on a wounded, irritated look. He runs his hands
|
|
through his spiky black hair and then takes out a black silicate cube
|
|
from his jacket pocket and tosses it over to him. Dex is angry as
|
|
hell now, but he knows he has to contain it if he wants to stay
|
|
alive.
|
|
"Sammie for downtown," Turk mutters. "Down is the operative
|
|
word, Eastman." He turns his head to the end of the booth, which
|
|
backs onto the hole above the dance floor. "CAN'T YOU PLAY SOME NEIL
|
|
YOUNG OR SOMETHIN'? ALL THIS SAMMIE NOISE SOUNDS THE SAME AND HALF OF
|
|
IT AIN'T GOT NO WORDS!" He comes back and laughs. "You got insurance,
|
|
Eastman? Ah'd take some out if Ah were you." He stands and finishes
|
|
his beer.
|
|
"And don't let those Sammies take you in. Remember Pearl Harbor.
|
|
Catch you 'round." Turk slips out of the booth and past the cocktail
|
|
bar, shaking his head and laughing to himself when Jess throws him a
|
|
dirty look.
|
|
Dex and Jess exchange a glance. Somehow the look on her face
|
|
tells him exactly what to do.
|
|
|
|
3. Rehash
|
|
|
|
"Nixon. How are you? It's the Camden Town Boy. No, not anymore,
|
|
I'm a free man now. In Shitamachi dealing software to the Asahi Tag
|
|
Team. Yeah I know... fifty-five points last night, you get a share?
|
|
Better luck tonight, eh? Anyway, I've got something you might like. I
|
|
did a run for Kreskin last week, MG Air Force flight plans along the
|
|
North Route. Yeah, well I asked for 750 marks, but Kreskin dropped
|
|
his price, said he couldn't go any higher than 500 marks. Yeah, I
|
|
know, I should have guessed he'd take me for a sucker. Anyway, the
|
|
MGAF are wise to it, so they've changed their flight plan. Yep. And
|
|
I've got the new one, too. I'll let you have it for 600 e-marks, what
|
|
do you say? Ace, it's a deal. Transfer the money into a World Bank
|
|
bin under the account name of Peter Townshend. Of course I know who
|
|
Pete Townshend was, but they're too stupid to figure it out. I'll fax
|
|
the details to you. Better send one of your jokers. Pickup point will
|
|
be on the fax. Anyway, time is money and you're eating my phone bill.
|
|
See you sometime."
|
|
Dex has an airbrushed wheel-dial telephone, the color of
|
|
turtleshells. Kitty says he has no taste whatsoever. When Dex
|
|
reiterates that he likes strange colours, she just shakes her head.
|
|
"Who was that?" asks Kitty. She stands half-in, half-out of the
|
|
doorway to the kitchen. There is still a trace of vomit smell in the
|
|
air in there after a week.
|
|
"Nixon's another Rigger. Officially him and Kreskin are rivals.
|
|
So he'll buy it just to have something Kreskin hasn't." He wipes
|
|
sleep from his eyes and pulls at itchy hair.
|
|
"Think it'll work?" Kitty sips on ration Vijayanta coffee and
|
|
makes a face as she burns her tongue.
|
|
Dex collapses onto his mattress and sighs, looking out through
|
|
his window at the condemned block across East 10th Street. Lines of
|
|
age wrinkling the building. The circular port-hole windows, like a
|
|
thousand eyes all crying at once.
|
|
"It bloody well better work," he finally replies, hoping that
|
|
soon, things could get back to normal.
|
|
|
|
Nixon has his package. Another group of mercenaries known as the
|
|
Harlequins are also interested in the information. Something to do
|
|
with a hit they have to make on the MGAF.
|
|
He meets them at dusk in Tompkins Square, when the day is
|
|
hottest, and the shadows are longest. The Harlequin Rigger's name is
|
|
Fly, and he is a frail twig of a man who needs a metal walking stick
|
|
to stand upright. He is known more for his abilities as a fence than
|
|
for running a good merc group.
|
|
The boys around him are typical San Angeles Ronin, they are all
|
|
six feet two inches and have deep tans, dressed in Twin Soul Tribe
|
|
garb (very baggy green jeans and hooded sweaters). Dex has seen a
|
|
million like these two muscleboys, and they don't impress him. Fly
|
|
informs him that their names are J.D. and Mavik.
|
|
"So what's business like now, Dex?" Fly speaks in a dreamy,
|
|
whispering tone, a voice much older than he is; looking at him with
|
|
eyes that are much wiser than the frail man could ever be.
|
|
"To tell the truth, the chipster business could be bottoming out
|
|
here. I might need to expand."
|
|
"Expansion's always a good thing, Dex. If you're going to think
|
|
at all, think big. A real famous businessman said that once... But
|
|
I'm damned if I can remember his name."
|
|
Fly gives a hoarse laugh and Dex joins in. J.D. and Mavik look
|
|
calmly at the decrepit housing blocks that surround the concrete
|
|
plaza of Tompkin's Square. Thermographic Sony vision scanning the
|
|
windows for possible threats. They don't even have to show what
|
|
weapons they carry. They have rewired nerves for inhuman speed and
|
|
could probably take out a potential assassin before the hammer falls
|
|
on his gun. Stuff like that doesn't come cheap, though. Most of the
|
|
Asahi Tag Team who have rewired nerves had to go as far as the Tokyo
|
|
Metroplex to find a neurosurgeon good enough to do it. These boys
|
|
have it as standard with all the Martial Government trickery behind
|
|
it. They probably don't even know about the glitches in the
|
|
triggering software that runs the nervous system, something that Dex
|
|
had to pay a lot to get ironed out when he deserted the air force.
|
|
"Where's Man Friday? How's he doing these days? I haven't heard
|
|
from him in a long time."
|
|
Fly pulls a nicotine stick from his black denim jacket and bites
|
|
a piece off the end. "He's still trying to find out what happened in
|
|
Rio. Did he leave a girl behind there or something?"
|
|
Dex nods. "A wife, from what I remember."
|
|
"Oh. Well, we think the Feds caught up with her and she's gone
|
|
missing. He's organizing an expedition to find her, I think. We're
|
|
gonna go in with him. He wishes you were running Ether again. Says it
|
|
ain't so much fun with you not around."
|
|
"Well, I'm officially retired. Except for this stuff. Good luck,
|
|
anyway. If you need any chips for Portuguese, you know where to find
|
|
me."
|
|
Dex and Fly banter this way for only a few more minutes, as both
|
|
of them have other places to go to. Fly eventually gives him about
|
|
400 marks' worth of yen for the data cube.
|
|
Kitty watches Dex throughout these events. She can see his life
|
|
here burning out slowly. She can see from his blue-eyed, thousand-
|
|
yard stare that his feet are getting itchy again. Track record has
|
|
proven that he doesn't stay in one place for too long. Kitty needs
|
|
him here, or at least with her. The two of them aren't in love, not
|
|
exactly, but what they have is more than a friendship. Some kind of
|
|
closeness that she can't afford to live without.
|
|
|
|
He flicks the stop switch. Sweat pours from his face, stings his
|
|
eyes, leaves salt on his pink lips. His black hair is stuck to his
|
|
wet head. He gasps for air and finds the atmosphere is too thin for
|
|
him in this grimy little room. He pulls the trodes from his head,
|
|
rushes to the round port-hole window and wrenches it open.
|
|
Lukewarm air hits his face, cools him down. He sticks his head
|
|
out into the night's rain. It rains every night in Manhattan.
|
|
Something to do with the high humidity during the day condensing when
|
|
the hot sun goes down.
|
|
Across East 10th Street, three Asahi Tag Teamsters in their
|
|
canary yellow jackets and purple tiger-striped skintight jeans suck
|
|
on nicotine sticks and slap with each other about previous clashes.
|
|
One of them breaks into a spurt of superhuman martial arts to
|
|
demonstrate his actions. Just visible behind the kid's ear a mini
|
|
datacube shines from his neural software port. Chipped for Hapkune-
|
|
Do, reflexes rewired and boosted by 10 percent, zen flowing from
|
|
their new Sony eyes. Dex looks at these kids and sees the future of
|
|
the world. A future he doesn't much care for.
|
|
He slides back inside and closes the window. Walking over to the
|
|
middle of the floor, he looks at the green screen of the unlicensed
|
|
Fednet computer and sees the results of this day's work. Two tickets
|
|
to Heathrow waiting for him whenever he wants. One way. His life here
|
|
is falling to pieces, and it's getting near the time to skin out.
|
|
Tiny words glowing green in a dark room. He looks at that screen and
|
|
thinks he can see his future.
|
|
|
|
4. Times Square
|
|
|
|
"Kreskin says he'll met you outside the old Slammer Cyberena at
|
|
noon."
|
|
"Times Square."
|
|
That's where he is now. The north side, across from the entrance
|
|
to the Cyberena. He sits in the uncomfortable seat of a magnesium
|
|
alloy rickshaw that belongs to a young Irish-American kid called
|
|
Bobby, who wears a white BIG PIERROT SAYS WATCH YOUR BACK T-shirt and
|
|
a conical straw hat to keep the blazing sun off him. Kitty's next to
|
|
him, watching the windows behind the dead neon signs. She's not happy
|
|
about this choice of venue at all. It's out of Shitamachi. Out of the
|
|
protection of the Asahi Tag Team. It's the lower end of the Tangerine
|
|
Tag Team's kill zone and it's totally open.
|
|
Dex figures the poor security of the area will work to the
|
|
advantage of everyone, but he knows that Kitty doesn't get nervous
|
|
without good reason. So when Kreskin's red rickshaw arrives and Kitty
|
|
hands him a HK pistol, he doesn't give it back. Dex hates guns. He
|
|
snaps a magazine in and loads a round, letting the hammer down
|
|
softly. Before climbing out, he stuffs the thing down the back of his
|
|
baggy red jeans.
|
|
Kreskin climbs out wearing a cheap business suit, hiding his
|
|
eyes behind a pair of Mitsubishi anti-laser glare glasses. He keeps
|
|
two of his joker muscleboys close to him, watching the area while
|
|
toying playfully with their HK uzi copies. For a moment it almost
|
|
looks like Kreskin doesn't recognize Dex as he strides across the
|
|
street. But soon he's there and the smile creeps onto the Russian's
|
|
chubby face. The huge arms extend and the two old friends hug each
|
|
other with subtle reservation.
|
|
There's a swift conversation that seems to arrange another
|
|
meeting time, and Dex hands over the data cube. Dex is full of
|
|
himself as they talk. He's given Kreskin what he wanted, made enough
|
|
money for Kreskin to sort him and Kitty out with new ID's so they can
|
|
go to London when the heat is on. He has his future in his hands at
|
|
last. A chance to create his own destiny.
|
|
There's a stifled thump and a cry and a woman's urgent shout
|
|
behind him.
|
|
"DEX!"
|
|
He spins to see the scene, pulls the HK from his jeans.
|
|
Bobby lies in a growing pool of blood, his life evaporating
|
|
under the heat of the sun. Turk has Kitty by the throat, using her as
|
|
human body armor; the cliched hostage position, with a thick chrome
|
|
revolver pressed into her temple.
|
|
"Hi there, Eastman!" Turk breaks into his dumb grin showing
|
|
bright white teeth and a piece of strawberry gum. "Think ah'd leave
|
|
heah without takin' you wi' me? Ah think not."
|
|
Dex levels the automatic at Turk's head. Behind him, he can feel
|
|
the presence of Kreskin and his boys, the sights of HK uzi copies
|
|
sending shivers along his neck. Sweat tickles his chin before
|
|
dripping off him.
|
|
"Let her go, Turk. This is you and me here."
|
|
Turk whistles and makes a face. "You been watchin' too much Big
|
|
Pierrot, Eastman. Come up wi' an ole cliche like that. You put away
|
|
your piece an' maybe, jus' maybe, Ah might let your li'l lady go."
|
|
Dex shakes his head. His guts wrenched with the feeling of
|
|
betrayal, like nothing has happened but he's lost everything he has.
|
|
"Come on, man. I throw this away and I'm giving you the edge."
|
|
Turk flicks back the hammer on the revolver, Kitty sucks in a
|
|
breath. "What edge, fool. Don't try an' pull that mental shit on me,
|
|
Eastman. Ah know you ain't gonna shoot me."
|
|
"Did it once before, Turk, remember? Nothing can happen without
|
|
you dying at the end of it. You run and I'll shoot. You shoot me and
|
|
I'll shoot you. You point the gun at me and I'll shoot you. You kill
|
|
her and I'll shoot you. They shoot me and I'll shoot you. No win
|
|
situation."
|
|
Dex cocks an eyebrow at Turk's expression. The smile falling
|
|
from the fat Dixie City man's face, turning to a sneer.
|
|
"What's up, Turk? Run out of choices? Then call Kreskin's men
|
|
off."
|
|
Turk licks salt from his lips.
|
|
"Better do as he says, man. You won't be quite so good-looking
|
|
with a hole in your face." Kitty's mind is racing. She doesn't have
|
|
the advantage that these boys have. All of them are probably rewired.
|
|
Dex, she knows, definitely has been, she's seen how fast he can be.
|
|
Only a 5 percent reflex boost, but it's enough of an edge against an
|
|
unmodified man. No, she can't outrun them, so she has to outthink
|
|
them. Be faster by pre-empting them all.
|
|
"Shut up, bitch!"
|
|
"What's it going to be, Turk, eh?" Dex can feel his wired
|
|
nervous system, courtesy of the MGAF, speeding up. An effect like
|
|
pins and needles all over the body. A slight vertigo and then the
|
|
neural processor that runs it all from the base of his spine kicks in
|
|
and the world turns slow-mo.
|
|
Frame by frame, a second of violence.
|
|
Everyone is surprised because Kitty moves first. Her elbow lifts
|
|
up and back to push Turk's arm away and the revolver slips from his
|
|
grasp and Kitty is in the air, diving for the cover of the rickshaw.
|
|
Turk is a standing target, but Dex doesn't fire, instead, he jumps at
|
|
wired speed to the floor and shoots at the red rickshaw. He empty's
|
|
half a magazine into Kreskin.
|
|
Kreskin's boys are too slow, only now starting to speed up.
|
|
Their first bursts of fire are at the place where Dex was, and find
|
|
only Turk's fat body at the far side of the street, catching him in
|
|
the throat and upper torso. Bullets rip through his spine and out the
|
|
other side, pulling Turk with them like puppet strings.
|
|
The tall Dixie City man slaps against a metal shop front and
|
|
slides silent to the ground in a bloody, crumpled heap of flesh.
|
|
One of Kreskin's boys managed to follow Dex's trajectory, and
|
|
when Dex rolls up onto his knees to fire the other half of the
|
|
magazine, bullets smash into his right arm and sends him spinning
|
|
back to the floor.
|
|
Then the boy that shot him has an instant to realize that his
|
|
boss is dead before his own head shatters sending blood and brain
|
|
matter across the red rickshaw. The last Kreskin boy is stunned and
|
|
silent. Kitty stands there with Turk's revolver in her small hands,
|
|
trained at his head. The boy drops his HK uzi copy. Kitty walks over
|
|
and kicks it away, then kneecaps the boy to stop him from leaving.
|
|
Dex is screaming in agony. He's been shot before, but that was
|
|
just a flesh wound. He figures a bone's been hit here and it's
|
|
drawing his entire mind to it. By the time Kitty's run over to help
|
|
him, he's passed out from the pain.
|
|
|
|
Dex climbs lazily out of cot and moves to the window. Looking
|
|
out, the hot sun is going down on East 10th Street and some half-
|
|
Japanese kids are playing soccer with a ball made from rubber bands.
|
|
These kids are going to grow up tough, he thinks to himself. Street
|
|
Darwinism. But there's no future for them if they can't think, and
|
|
Dex knows that being smart can just beat being tough. He knows, cause
|
|
it's not him lying in the street in Times Square waiting for the
|
|
Tangerine Tag Team to pick him up. That's Turk, and Turk was tough;
|
|
but stupid.
|
|
"Well, there go your dreams, kiddo." Kitty stands at the door,
|
|
the one place in his room where she feels comfortable.
|
|
"Not really. Turk said I may need an insurance policy. I'm going
|
|
to keep the tickets open for that."
|
|
"What about for now?"
|
|
He turns around and sees her there. He smiles. His bandaged arm
|
|
doesn't hurt much anymore. Not after Kitty pressed about 320
|
|
miligrams of endorphin analog into the bloody skin. He's as happy as
|
|
a rat in a hole. But the sudden realization in his mind is that he
|
|
needs Kitty. And he's never needed anyone before.
|
|
Dex shakes his head. "The chipster business is too slow to stay
|
|
alive here. I mean..."
|
|
"You want to be the Boy again, don't you?" Kitty seems to raise
|
|
her whole face, an expression which means to Dex that she knows the
|
|
answer already.
|
|
"Man Friday said he misses me."
|
|
Kitty's expression turns into a rueful grin. She shakes her head
|
|
and gives him a knowing look as she edges out the door.
|
|
Dexter Eastman looks back out the window, and for the first time
|
|
in years, he feels he's found home.
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
N. RIDLEY MCINTYRE (gdg019@cck.coventry.ac.uk)
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Unified Murder Theorem (2 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS
|
|
|
|
SYNOPSIS
|
|
|
|
They killed the guitar player on a Thursday night, as he sat in
|
|
the bar, playing his instrument, blue light emanating from somewhere
|
|
within. The last words the hit men said before they shot him were
|
|
simply: "Goodbye from Nattasi."
|
|
JACK CRUGER, an accordion instructor by trade, leads the
|
|
mundane life one might expect of someone in his line of work. But all
|
|
of that changed the moment that TONY STEFFEN walked in his door.
|
|
Tony wasn't like most of his clients: he was tall, blonde, and
|
|
strong. As it turns out, Tony doesn't want to learn how to play the
|
|
accordion -- he wants to hear Cruger play it. As Cruger begins to
|
|
play it for the first time, blue light begins to emanate from inside
|
|
of it. According to Tony, the accordion is special, and will only
|
|
broadcast the blue light if Cruger plays it.
|
|
Before his next meeting with Tony, Cruger spends hours trying to
|
|
make a baby with his beautiful wife CORRINA, following it up with a
|
|
bit of time playing the strange new accordion with the magical blue
|
|
light. Much to his surprise, he begins to play songs perfectly --
|
|
songs he has never played before.
|
|
Tony informs Cruger that the blue strands of light coming out of
|
|
the accordion are STRINGS, each representing a path, a possible
|
|
outcome. Cruger has been chosen to be a "spinner" of strings by a
|
|
special organization. According to Tony, this "Company" is much more
|
|
than an international corporation -- its job is to create and support
|
|
all worlds, galaxies, and universes. Cruger laughs at this
|
|
suggestion, but Tony is serious -- God, or "the CHAIRMAN," prefers
|
|
to have living beings "spin" the fates, rather than just throwing
|
|
dice. But there's a catch -- there's another company, one that tends
|
|
to do the work we would normally expect the Devil to do. If Cruger
|
|
spins for the "good guys," he'll be given protection in return --
|
|
other spinners will ensure that neither he nor his family will be
|
|
harmed... except for what is beyond their control, such as
|
|
intervention from the Other Company. Cruger has no choice but to
|
|
accept -- after all, his acceptance has already been determined by
|
|
another spinner.
|
|
Cruger begins to spin, arousing the suspicion of nobody, except
|
|
his next-door neighbor, LEON HARRIS. Harris, a computer programmer
|
|
by trade, is a large, strong health-nut -- exactly what you wouldn't
|
|
expect from a programmer. He is, however, extremely nosy. He wonders
|
|
why the non-descript white accountant next door was suddenly playing
|
|
the black music that Leon Harris grew up with... and he wonders what
|
|
caused the blue light that appeared when Cruger played his accordion.
|
|
Months pass, and Corrina Cruger finally becomes pregnant for the
|
|
first time since her unfortunate miscarriage a few years before. Jack
|
|
Cruger continues to play his accordion, knowing that the Company's
|
|
"health plan" will also cover his new child. Tony, occasionally
|
|
accompanied by a beautiful young woman named SKY, sometimes visits
|
|
with Cruger.
|
|
Tony tells Cruger that many of the company's executive positions
|
|
are still held by aliens, most from the planet named Tvonen. God --
|
|
well, the Chairman -- is a Tvonen. The Tvonen evolved in a fashion
|
|
similar to humans, right down to their ancient tale of creation. The
|
|
catch is that the Tvonen creation story is completely true. Tvonens
|
|
were created as immortal, androgynous beings -- but then two of them
|
|
fell from grace, and became gendered, mortal creatures. To this day,
|
|
Tvonens must undergo a change and lose their immortality if they wish
|
|
to gain a gender.
|
|
The Tvonens are now very advanced -- but their technology is
|
|
completely analog-based, with no digital electronics at all. Earth,
|
|
with its digital technology, is quickly becoming more technologically
|
|
adept than the Tvonens. The Tvonens believe that human thought, with
|
|
its pursuit of the Grand Unified Theory -- a theory that could
|
|
describe every detail of the functioning of the universe -- would
|
|
give the Company a giant edge in its ability to guide the universe.
|
|
It is Tony, the teenage surfer, who is in charge of implementing
|
|
the Unified Theory into a computer system that will allow the Company
|
|
to have such control over the universe. Obviously, such a prospect is
|
|
not taken lightly by the Other Company, operated by renegade Tvonens
|
|
and shape-shifting aliens known as Chysans.
|
|
On his way to Cruger's house on a Saturday morning, Tony hears
|
|
the slightest rustle of a sound -- and turns to see something large,
|
|
colorful, and horrible. It is on him in an instant, throwing him hard
|
|
onto the concrete steps. By the time Cruger reaches the door, Tony
|
|
lays face down, a puddle of blood forming around his limp blonde
|
|
hair.
|
|
Cruger reaches down to feel for a pulse, but he knows the answer
|
|
before he even begins to bend over. The realization of Tony's death
|
|
hits him; he exhales loudly, "No... my God," and then sinks to his
|
|
knees, not knowing what to do.
|
|
Cruger then sees the black digital sports watch on Tony's wrist,
|
|
chirping its annoying repetitious chirp over and over.
|
|
Leon Harris sticks his head out of his front door, sees Cruger
|
|
doubled over in front of his young friend, who lays in an entirely
|
|
unnatural position, limp-armed and limp-legged. Harris runs across
|
|
his lawn to Cruger's front step. He bends down and checks both Tony's
|
|
carotid and radials arteries for a pulse, but finds none.
|
|
Cruger reaches down and unstraps the noisy watch from Tony's
|
|
lifeless wrist. Using the heel of his shoe, Cruger stomps down on the
|
|
fancy blue plastic watch a few times before it is silenced. He wants
|
|
to see a spray of springs and clamps and smoke pouting out like in
|
|
the cartoons, but the watch only lays there, in the stark sunlight,
|
|
like Tony: beaten, broken, and wasted.
|
|
|
|
Chapter 15
|
|
|
|
Cruger was in shock, and Harris recognized it quickly.
|
|
"Let's go inside and call the police," he said. Harris gently
|
|
grabbed Cruger by the arm and led him into the house. Harris spotted
|
|
a phone on the coffee table near the couch, and sat Cruger down next
|
|
to it.
|
|
"Are you going to be all right?" he asked Cruger.
|
|
Cruger didn't answer. He was bent over, holding his forehead
|
|
with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other.
|
|
"Come on, man," Harris said, checking his watch. "I'm supposed
|
|
to be playing tennis in fifteen minutes, and instead I'm finding a
|
|
dead body. What the hell happened?"
|
|
"They got him," Cruger croaked.
|
|
Before Harris could even begin to dial 911, Cruger leaped up
|
|
from the couch and bolted for the door. Harris dropped the phone and
|
|
ran after him with reflexes he had worked years to condition. For all
|
|
Harris knew, his mousy neighbor with the rock accordion habit could
|
|
be the killer.
|
|
When Harris got to the door, Cruger was down the steps and
|
|
almost on the lawn, shouting the name "Tony" hysterically. Readying
|
|
his sprint, Harris took a long stride on the entryway -- and realized
|
|
that the body was gone.
|
|
"Shit," Harris mumbled, and bolted across the lawn, gaining
|
|
ground on the smaller man with every step. As Cruger neared Harris'
|
|
own lawn, Harris decided to dive for him.
|
|
And that was when it happened. Harris reached Cruger, grabbed
|
|
his legs, and tripped him. The accordionist fell over, his head ready
|
|
to crash onto the concrete strip that divided the two lawns. And
|
|
then, without explanation, both men were >pulled< ten feet, onto the
|
|
next lawn. Cruger's head landed softly, as if there had been a pillow
|
|
there.
|
|
"What the hell?" Harris said.
|
|
"Let go!" Cruger shouted. "I've got to find him. They've taken
|
|
Tony!"
|
|
"Calm down, man," Harris said. "Who are they? Where did they
|
|
take him?"
|
|
"Them! The other company! The ones that killed him!"
|
|
Cruger's shouts aroused the curiosity of some of their
|
|
neighbors. Harris could see Mrs. Conworth from across the street
|
|
peering at them through her kitchen window.
|
|
"Come on," Harris said. "You're attracting attention. Let's go
|
|
back inside."
|
|
Cruger swallowed, took a look around, and nodded.
|
|
Both of them stopped when they reached the entryway. Only the
|
|
small, scuffed black digital watch lay on the front steps, still
|
|
keeping time, advancing each hundredth and tenth of a second with
|
|
complete accuracy.
|
|
Cruger picked up the watch. Somehow it was comforting to know
|
|
that he could no longer see Tony's beaten body. No blood, no
|
|
sickening brutalization of body and limbs. This is good, he thought,
|
|
Tony's gone. Is this good? For an instant he thought he might
|
|
understand what had happened, but the thought escaped his mind as
|
|
quickly as it had entered.
|
|
Harris pushed Cruger inside and closed the door behind them.
|
|
"What the hell is going on?" he asked.
|
|
Cruger just shook his head. A strange twisted expression formed
|
|
on his lips. "You think I know?" Cruger shook his head in wonder.
|
|
"Look," Harris exhaled quickly, "I saw a dead guy out there, and
|
|
now he's gone. I've seen you having strange meetings with strange
|
|
people and playing that damned instrument of yours at all hours of
|
|
the night. And strangest of all, I just got pulled halfway across my
|
|
lawn by thin air. Something's wrong here, and I'm going to have to
|
|
find out what it is. I'm involved now, whether I like it or not."
|
|
Cruger felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life. His
|
|
one connection to what was important and exciting was now dead, or
|
|
least, inexplicably gone. His neighbor's response just highlighted
|
|
the fact that the strange unexplainable aspects of Cruger's own life
|
|
were not entirely private -- they had leaked into the lives of others
|
|
And no good explanation existed.
|
|
Cruger remained silent.
|
|
"Do you want to explain this to the police or to me?" Harris
|
|
demanded. He didn't like having to bully Cruger -- the poor guy
|
|
looked upset enough already.
|
|
"And why do you want to have this all explained to you?" Cruger
|
|
had found his voice again and it was tremulous, lacking resonance.
|
|
"I want to understand what's going on. There must be some
|
|
logical explanation," Harris said.
|
|
The words 'logical explanation' stuck with Cruger, playing an
|
|
obscene parody in his mind. The fact that this guy was thinking of
|
|
anything to do with logic nearly made Cruger laugh out loud. At that
|
|
moment Cruger wished he had never heard of Tony, of Tvonens and
|
|
Chysa, or of spinning. All that had been important and joyful now
|
|
seemed to be meaningless and chafing. With Tony had come the
|
|
confidence in The Company, the ties to other worlds and better things
|
|
and to progress itself. Without Tony ... what was there?
|
|
Cruger looked at Harris. He wants in. Maybe this guy should get
|
|
what he deserves. The line 'Be careful of what you ask for -- you may
|
|
get it' played in Cruger's mind.
|
|
"OK," said Cruger. "I can show you something that will explain
|
|
everything. It's in Tony's" -- his throat stuck -- "office. Can you
|
|
drive? I don't think I could handle it right now."
|
|
"Sure," Harris said.
|
|
"The whole thing's on a computer," Cruger said as they got into
|
|
his car. "Can you work one?"
|
|
"Neighbor," Harris chuckled, "that's what I >do< for a living."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 16
|
|
|
|
Humanity i love you because you are perpetually
|
|
putting the secret of life in your pants and
|
|
forgetting it's there and sitting down
|
|
on it
|
|
|
|
-- e. e. cummings
|
|
|
|
"I'm still not sure this is going to work," Cruger said. He was
|
|
still wary of the deception they planned. Harris seemed calm, not
|
|
worried at all. He had handled Tony's computer the same way, like a
|
|
pro. And he knew the computer system inside-out -- it was as if some
|
|
spinner, somewhere, had planned to provide Cruger with a computer
|
|
programmer. Judging from Harris' reaction to what he found on the
|
|
computer, he could continue with Tony's work on the unified theorem.
|
|
Maybe more than continue it, Cruger thought. Maybe make Tony's work
|
|
mean something.
|
|
"What are they going to do if they don't like our story? Take
|
|
away our birthday?" Harris pulled the car around the corner and
|
|
merged neatly into traffic. "We've got nothing to worry about,"
|
|
Harris said.
|
|
"Are you kidding? First thing they can do is call the cops. Then
|
|
we have lots of questions to answer. No thanks."
|
|
"Let me review our position on this," Harris said. "We don't
|
|
have anything to cover up because there is no body, no evidence, no
|
|
crime reported as far as we can tell, and nothing to guide us except
|
|
that we know what we saw. As far as the authorities go, we're not
|
|
involved in a murder or any other type of crime."
|
|
Cruger stared out the car window. "We know that we saw a murder
|
|
-- or the results of a murder. That's good enough for me."
|
|
"Well," said Harris, "you have to protect your own biscuits
|
|
because no one else is going to. The police aren't going to believe
|
|
any of your story without proof ... evidence. They would laugh at
|
|
this whole thing -- possibly put you in the nut house."
|
|
Cruger shrugged. The only crime that existed so far seemed to be
|
|
in the minds of two witnesses: he and Harris. Since the incident
|
|
Cruger had wondered if Tony's death was meant as a threat -- a threat
|
|
to him. Could this have been some kind of warning? Was someone trying
|
|
to manipulate him?
|
|
Or the whole thing could easily have been an optical illusion.
|
|
The people -- or whatevers -- that they were dealing with could be
|
|
capable of many types of trickery. Cruger hoped that it was in fact a
|
|
threat or a brutal hoax. He would enjoy seeing Tony sitting at school
|
|
in class as if nothing had happened, oblivious to his "death" that
|
|
they had witnessed.
|
|
Harris pulled in to Tony's high school and parked near the main
|
|
entrance. Then they found the Principal's office and walked in as if
|
|
the world revolved around their every action. They had decided that
|
|
to act like detectives meant to act like aggressive, cocky, arrogant
|
|
bastards. Cruger wished he had a toothpick to let hang out of his
|
|
mouth. Or maybe a smelly cigar. That was the image on detective
|
|
shows, and that was the image the Principal and others would expect.
|
|
In the Principal's outer office was the small overflowing desk
|
|
of the Principal's assistant. Behind the desk was a portable
|
|
partition with the nameplate "Vernal Buckney, Principal."
|
|
The kids must get untold mileage out of the name Vernal, Cruger
|
|
thought. Good old Vernal must have been born to be a Principal. Most
|
|
likely, plenty a spitball had Vernal's name on it.
|
|
The kids at this school would enjoy sitting outside the
|
|
Principal's office, too -- his assistant, Shirley Randolph according
|
|
to her nameplate, was a tall, shapely young lady. Her makeup was just
|
|
right, expertly applied, highlighting her high cheekbones and creamy,
|
|
tan complexion. Cruger noticed that her skirt was short, revealing a
|
|
long pair of very tan legs. In the corner of his eye, he saw Harris
|
|
noticed that too.
|
|
Harris spoke first, just like they had rehearsed it. Being a big
|
|
tall black guy, they figured Harris would be rather intimidating.
|
|
Cruger, on the other hand, only looked threatening if you thought he
|
|
might try to sell you life insurance.
|
|
"Hello, Ms. Randolph," Harris began. "I'm Mr. Harris, and this
|
|
is Mr. Cruger. We're investigating a child custody case and we may
|
|
need the assistance of Mr. Buckney."
|
|
Harris managed to say it all without even blinking. Cruger was
|
|
impressed -- but he was more impressed that she didn't sound an
|
|
alarm, scream for help, or laugh. So far so good.
|
|
"Hello," she said. "I take it that you gentlemen don't have an
|
|
appointment then?"
|
|
Shirley Randolph's eyes twinkled and she smiled easily at
|
|
Harris. Harris smiled back, seemingly concentrating on the underlying
|
|
extent of Ms. Shirley Randolph's grade-A tan.
|
|
So Cruger spoke. "We really don't need too much time. We only
|
|
have a few questions." Just then Harris noticed that Vernal was in
|
|
his office. Vernal's bald head bobbed up above the partition and then
|
|
down again.
|
|
Vernal Buckney, M.A. in Education was, as usual, busy in his
|
|
office. His job required hard work, the skills of a serious educator
|
|
and a trained politician, plus the ability to win the support and
|
|
encouragement of parents, teachers, as well as the educational board
|
|
and superintendents. On top of that, the job of Principal demanded a
|
|
solid technical foundation that could facilitate the development of
|
|
the most effective teaching methodologies, as well as the precise
|
|
application of these techniques. For this reason, Vernal spent most
|
|
of his time in his office with his golf putter in hand, putting into
|
|
his electric, auto-return golf cup. Stress reduction was top priority
|
|
for Vernal.
|
|
"I'll bring you in," the secretary said. "He has no appointments
|
|
now."
|
|
"Thank you very much, Ms. Randolph."
|
|
She smiled back at Harris. "Shirley," she said. It was the most
|
|
inviting 'Shirley' that Cruger had ever heard. Chances were that it
|
|
wasn't the most inviting one Harris had heard.
|
|
Shirley knocked on the Principal's flimsy excuse for an office
|
|
door and introduced the two of them in the most professional of
|
|
manners.
|
|
When Cruger and Harris stepped into Vernal's office, they saw
|
|
the shocking decor. The floor was covered with old educational
|
|
journals, magazines, and various trinkets such as small wooden
|
|
animals. A few golf clubs lay against the file cabinet, and the floor
|
|
was littered with golf balls, pencils, and pens.
|
|
"Nice to meet you gentlemen," Vernal said. He had a high-
|
|
pitched, wheezy, bureaucrat's voice that sounded like a band saw on
|
|
wet wood. His eyes darted around like a monkey's. Nothing made him
|
|
more nervous than meeting men from the Superintendent's office. She
|
|
had said that's where they were from, hadn't she?
|
|
"We just have a few simple questions, Mr. Buckney," Harris said,
|
|
sticking to the plan nicely.
|
|
"Now, Ms. Randolph did say you were from the Superintendent's
|
|
office, didn't she?"
|
|
"Oh, not at all. We're investigators, working on a child custody
|
|
case." Harris said it fast and gruff, as if meager child custody
|
|
cases were only what the two did between busting crack houses and
|
|
handcuffing Uzi-toting Colombians.
|
|
Vernal was visibly relieved. His eyes slowed their wild pace and
|
|
focused on Harris. "Yes, I see. Well, how can I help?"
|
|
"We need information on two of your students. I must tell you,
|
|
Mr. Buckney, that all of this must be kept completely confidential.
|
|
In fact, I must request that only you and Ms. Randolph know of our
|
|
visit. You are the only two that we can trust," Harris said. "We can
|
|
trust you, can't we?"
|
|
Cruger looked as tough as possible and nodded his head. He
|
|
wished he had that cigar to grind into the carpet -- it would match
|
|
the decor.
|
|
"Certainly you can trust us to keep it quiet," Vernal said. His
|
|
cheeks had become a little flushed.
|
|
"First of all, a student named Tony Steffen. Senior class. We
|
|
need his whole file," Harris said.
|
|
Cruger chimed in. "And a female senior named Sky. No known last
|
|
name." Cruger emulated the old Dragnet rerun tone of voice: just the
|
|
facts, Vernal.
|
|
"Okay, I can do that. I need Ms. Randolph to check the files for
|
|
me."
|
|
Vernal tried to ask Shirley to get the files, but he told her to
|
|
look up a boy named Tony Griffin and a girl named Sigh. Cruger
|
|
corrected him on each count.
|
|
When Shirley was gone, Vernal scratched his hairless head and
|
|
asked, "Are you sure you guys aren't from the School Board?"
|
|
"No, not there, not the PTA, the teacher's union or the Girl
|
|
Scouts either. How many students in the senior class here?" Harris
|
|
said, changing the subject and putting Vernal on the defensive, a
|
|
posture he was born for.
|
|
"We have 400 this year. The number's been dropping each year
|
|
since five years ago, when we peaked with 600." Vernal was still
|
|
nervous, his eyes moving quickly from Cruger to Harris to the
|
|
cluttered mess on his office floor. He preferred to look at the
|
|
floor.
|
|
"Yeah, the post baby-boomer years are here," Cruger said. "Do
|
|
you know what percentage of the kids go to college?"
|
|
"We have a very high college after graduation rate here. Last
|
|
year 35 percent went straight to a four-year college or university,
|
|
40 percent to a Junior college or trade school, and the rest are
|
|
unaccounted for, probably employed, skilled labor or what-not."
|
|
"Not bad."
|
|
Shirley came back into the office. She carried a thin manila
|
|
folder in the crook of her right arm; she held it like a football.
|
|
Harris took the folder from her and there was a mutual flash of white
|
|
teeth.
|
|
"No file on Tony Steffen," Shirley said, still smiling. "Must
|
|
not be a student here."
|
|
"Oh yes, he is," Harris said.
|
|
"No, I'm afraid your information is incorrect," she said. "He
|
|
appears in none of the records. Nobody by that name has ever been a
|
|
student here."
|
|
Cruger and Harris exchanged a look but no words. At least they
|
|
had the information on Sky -- they could get the rest later.
|
|
They said their thank-yous and good-byes and headed out toward
|
|
building L, room 116, where Sky's next class would begin in fifteen
|
|
minutes.
|
|
"I think Shirley had a soft spot in her heart for you," Cruger
|
|
said, as they walked down the hard red-top hall.
|
|
"She had some great soft spots, all in the right places; very
|
|
nice, soft and smooth, like a seal -- a foxy seal." Harris said it
|
|
straight and sounded detached, like he was a judge in a bikini
|
|
contest.
|
|
"But she screwed us on the Tony Steffen info."
|
|
"Mmm," Harris commented. "Yeah. Screwed."
|
|
Straight faced. Cruger loved the way Harris could say all that
|
|
stuff straight-faced.
|
|
They cut across the quad to find the L building. Cruger spotted
|
|
Sky at a picnic table. She was surrounded by classmates, but Cruger
|
|
was still able to distinguish her from a distance. As he and Harris
|
|
got closer, Cruger almost began to doubt if it was Sky. She seemed
|
|
different, wearing calf-high boots, a leather skirt, and a black t-
|
|
shirt with torn sleeves.
|
|
One of Cruger's buddies from high school, Steve Spitelli, had
|
|
developed a theory that the world really only contained fifteen types
|
|
of people. Some people were tall and thin, some were pudgy with wide
|
|
faces, and so on. All people fell into the category of models of one
|
|
of the fifteen different types. These types became known as Spitelli-
|
|
types. Cary Grant and Rock Hudson were the same Spitelli-type. Judy
|
|
Garland and Cher were different Spitelli-types. Spitelli's theory
|
|
more or less took the cake for oversimplification. Cruger had not
|
|
thought about Spitelli-types for more than ten years -- until this
|
|
moment.
|
|
Sky sat on a picnic table next to a tall blond guy that was
|
|
Tony's Spitelli-type -- an exact image, but not quite. The eyes were
|
|
a little too far apart; the eyebrows arched up on the sides in a
|
|
perpetually hostile look. Cruger tensed as they approached the table,
|
|
knowing that the sick feeling that the young man's looks stirred
|
|
within him would only worsen as they got closer. He felt like a
|
|
beetle in an ant colony.
|
|
"Hello, Sky," Cruger said.
|
|
The girl gave them both a questioning look. "Yeah, that's me."
|
|
She sounded defensive and her face registered a look void of
|
|
recognition.
|
|
"You don't remember meeting me before?" Cruger asked, trying
|
|
hard to avoid sounding like an insulted distant relative.
|
|
"No, mister, I'm afraid I don't."
|
|
The blond kid next to Sky was monitoring the whole conversation
|
|
like a radar operator. He slid over and put his arm around Sky.
|
|
"What do you guys want?" he said.
|
|
Harris, putting his leg up on the table bench, said "We want to
|
|
ask you some questions about Tony Steffen."
|
|
There was a pause. Sky looked at the guy and he looked back.
|
|
They independently shrugged: Sky's shrug was more convincing.
|
|
"I don't know any Tony Steffen," the blond kid said. The kid had
|
|
an attitude of the first degree. He probably practiced that sneer at
|
|
home, in front of the bathroom mirror. It was an exceptionally well-
|
|
rehearsed sneer.
|
|
"Yeah," said Sky, "he doesn't go to this school anyway -- if he
|
|
did, we'd know him."
|
|
Harris smiled a pathetic grin and shook his head. Cruger just
|
|
let the response seep in. These kids were either very good actors, or
|
|
...
|
|
"And your name is?" Cruger asked the blond kid.
|
|
"What's it to you?" His lip curled. The kid enjoyed his
|
|
rebellious act.
|
|
"Rick," Cruger said. The boyfriend or ex-boyfriend that Tony had
|
|
mentioned.
|
|
His eyes became dark pools of surprised hatred. His facade was
|
|
replaced by a look of disdain mixed with pomposity. He knows, thought
|
|
Cruger, he knows about Tony.
|
|
"Yeah, so you know who I am? Are you guys cops or something?
|
|
Ooh, tough guys gonna come around and hassle high school students?"
|
|
Rick laughed and squeezed Sky around the shoulder. She looked uneasy
|
|
and didn't laugh.
|
|
"Sky, you really have never heard of Tony Steffen?" Harris
|
|
asked.
|
|
Sky shrugged and shook her head. Cruger, watching intently, saw
|
|
that she was the same Sky that he had met before. She had none of the
|
|
"attitude" that Rick had. To Cruger, she was just keeping poorer
|
|
company these days. She was a young girl struggling to develop the
|
|
maturity to handle what life threw at her. Cruger figured she was
|
|
probably telling the truth. He motioned to Harris and turned to go.
|
|
In a moment, Harris followed.
|
|
The drive home was strained silence. Both men were afraid to
|
|
come to conclusions or to let their imaginations run wild since
|
|
reality seemed wild enough.
|
|
"So, it looks like Tony Steffen never went to school -- where do
|
|
you think he is?" Harris said.
|
|
"I hate to harp on the obvious," Cruger said, "but we saw him
|
|
disappear before our eyes, remember?"
|
|
Harris sucked in his breath. "And according to what we just
|
|
heard and saw, Tony never existed. He's not only dead, but erased
|
|
from the memories of everybody -- except for us."
|
|
"So it seems," Cruger said. "Deleted, that's what he is. It's
|
|
like he never lived and the world we currently live in is one that
|
|
never knew Tony Steffen. But for some reason we know that it's not
|
|
true. We remember seeing Tony, we remember what he did and who he
|
|
knew. I remember every interaction I had with Tony; the world we live
|
|
in, right here and right now has Tony's imprints on it because I
|
|
remember what Tony did and said. What's confusing is that other
|
|
people don't know or remember. The school, Sky, and everything seem
|
|
to indicate that they are operating in a parallel plane, a reality
|
|
that thinks it never knew Tony Steffen."
|
|
Cruger stopped and sat in silence, staring out the car window,
|
|
dreamily exploring the evidence and the possible conclusions. He
|
|
looked at the endless succession of speed-blurred lawns and sidewalks
|
|
they passed.
|
|
"Sounds to me like a mistake," Harris said, his jaw tensed in
|
|
determination. "Maybe we should have no memory of Tony. Once he
|
|
disappeared, he was erased from existence. We probably weren't meant
|
|
to retain his memory."
|
|
Cruger shook his head. "More likely that we were meant to
|
|
remember for some reason. Either that, or you and I are operating in
|
|
our own little parallel plane of the Universe. My wife tells me I'm
|
|
in my own little world all the time."
|
|
"And who would be motivated to get rid of Tony but allow us to
|
|
remember? I know that the Other Company would like Tony out of the
|
|
picture, but why wouldn't they want us gone, too?"
|
|
"That insurance policy of mine, the one that pushed us across
|
|
the lawn," Cruger said. "I'm betting that Tony had one, just like me.
|
|
And he told me that it was possible to kill people with insurance
|
|
policies. But I bet it's not easy, and it's probably even harder to
|
|
erase their existence wholesale. They probably couldn't have killed
|
|
both of us, and figured that I'd be lost without him."
|
|
"So they didn't kill you this time. There's always next time.
|
|
We'd better watch our backs."
|
|
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right."
|
|
Everything was moving so fast that Cruger just wanted to
|
|
withdraw, to take time to let this simmer and steam and cook a little
|
|
until it made sense -- if it ever could. Times like these you either
|
|
get philosophical or go crazy.
|
|
"Is it better to have lived and then died than to have lived and
|
|
then been erased -- like never living at all?" Cruger said.
|
|
"This is one of those 'If the tree falls in the woods and there
|
|
is no one around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?'-type
|
|
questions," Harris said, trying not to sound cynical but failing.
|
|
"It's almost that exact question except it is more like: 'if
|
|
nobody remembers the sound that it did make -- that lots of people
|
|
did hear -- when it fell, did it ever make a sound'?" Cruger said.
|
|
"Although this it is not the same issue. If you live and then become
|
|
erased, like Tony, you actually did have a life and have an impact,
|
|
at least on some level in some Universe. That is definitely different
|
|
than never having lived."
|
|
"What if that point in the time/space continuum doesn't exist
|
|
any longer? What if the erasure was clean and thorough?" Harris said.
|
|
Harris was able to pierce the heart of an issue with a needle,
|
|
draining the romance out and filling in with logic. What an engineer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 17
|
|
|
|
The telephone rang, and Cruger picked it up. Tony's voice was
|
|
strange and faint -- he wheezed over the cracking phone line. Cruger
|
|
grabbed the phone tighter and pressed it hard against his ear,
|
|
desperately trying to hear Tony's faint voice.
|
|
"Far away," Tony said weakly.
|
|
"What."
|
|
"Far away, cold, very cold, very far..."
|
|
Cruger screamed, "What, Tony, what?!"
|
|
Cruger strained to hear Tony again, but the harder he tried, the
|
|
less he could hear.
|
|
Two hands were on his shoulders and Corrina's warm skin pressed
|
|
against his tight neck. His ear hurt. Cold sweat skated across his
|
|
wrinkled brow.
|
|
"What were you dreaming, honey?" she asked.
|
|
"Oh," Cruger said, "nothing, something weird, I can't really
|
|
remember."
|
|
He was lying. She wouldn't understand.
|
|
"Poor baby, you were screaming."
|
|
"Well, I'm okay now. Thanks." But he wasn't really okay. He
|
|
could feel his hands shaking, feeling weak and insubstantial under
|
|
the thick comforter.
|
|
They put their heads back down and settled into seemingly
|
|
comfortable positions. Cruger listened to Corrina's soft, steady
|
|
breathing break across the cold and lonely darkness of the bedroom.
|
|
He continued to listen to the steady silence.
|
|
A while later he heard it again.
|
|
"Far away, cold, help me ... ," Tony said. His voice was
|
|
stronger but tremulous as if he were shaking, his teeth chattering.
|
|
And just then Cruger heard the beeping, chirping sound of his
|
|
watch alarm. Tony's distant voice dissolved into the stark morning
|
|
light. Cruger was awake in a fraction of a second, reaching over to
|
|
turn off the alarm.
|
|
Chirp... chirp... chirp. He grabbed the watch and quickly
|
|
depressed the tiny plastic button, turning off the alarm.
|
|
Now he was more awake than ever.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I never could trust them."
|
|
"You mean your parents?" Dr. Frederick said.
|
|
"Well, sure, I guess that's what I mean."
|
|
"You just said you 'guess' you mean your parents." Dr.
|
|
Frederick, against his will, was getting a little frustrated again.
|
|
"Does that mean it was your parents?"
|
|
"Yes, yes."
|
|
She frequently vacillated between self-assured and reticent.
|
|
Often she acted as if no one, including Dr. Frederick, could possibly
|
|
understand what she meant. He needed to build a foundation of trust
|
|
before he would really be able to draw it all out of her. Trust was
|
|
the key.
|
|
"The worst part is, I don't know if I could really trust them,"
|
|
she said.
|
|
She gave him a sly, knowing grin. Being a man of science -- a
|
|
man of medicine, by God -- he knew that her coincidental reference to
|
|
the word trust must be just that: a coincidence.
|
|
What bothered him was that she was so damned attractive. Made it
|
|
tough for him to be objective, and to keep his mind on his work. He
|
|
was glad, very glad, that he was a medical doctor as well as a
|
|
psychotherapist. His strong academic background enabled him to deal
|
|
with these situations in a professional manner.
|
|
God, she's got great legs, he thought.
|
|
"Your time's about up," he said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 18
|
|
|
|
It was Harris's thirtieth birthday. Cruger had celebrated his
|
|
thirtieth a year ago, and had realized the potentially frightening
|
|
road of a new decade stretched before him. Thirty, thought Cruger, an
|
|
age of thinning hair, a thinning list of single friends, and thinning
|
|
muscle fibers. Either that or a decade of great sex -- what the hell,
|
|
may as well think positive.
|
|
Cruger knocked at Harris's door. He had surprised Harris by
|
|
asking to join him on his morning run. Harris knew he, the poor
|
|
flabby guy from next door, wouldn't be able to last too long or hack
|
|
the normal pace, but like any good fitness freak, he had appreciated
|
|
that Cruger was beginning to take an interest in getting in shape.
|
|
Cruger wondered: would Harris be one of those guys who sweeps the
|
|
fear of turning thirty under the rug like so much sawdust, or would
|
|
he stagger under the burden of advancing years?
|
|
Harris got the door.
|
|
"Hey, old man," Cruger said.
|
|
"I'm not bad for an old man, though. Run five miles a day,
|
|
strong as a Tibetan Yak."
|
|
"An Afghan Yak," Cruger said.
|
|
"Say what?"
|
|
"Afghanistan. That would be closer to your peoples, your
|
|
homeland."
|
|
"Has anyone told you," said Harris, "that for an accordion
|
|
player you have the personality of an accountant?"
|
|
"No, but thank you. I'd prefer being known for a mastery of
|
|
amortization tables than for playing a mean 'Hava Nagila' on the Bar
|
|
Mitzvah circuit."
|
|
"How about 'Moonlight Serenade' verses depreciation tables?"
|
|
Cruger relinquished a half smile. "Now that's a tough call."
|
|
They began jogging slowly down Henderson Street.
|
|
"I usually start out really slow to warm-up."
|
|
"No argument here," Cruger said.
|
|
"If you get tired or need to go slower, just let me know. It
|
|
takes time to build-up to longer distances and faster speed."
|
|
Cruger's strides were much shorter than Harris's. His feet moved
|
|
in a fast shuffle to keep up with the easy loose stride that Harris
|
|
established.
|
|
Cruger hadn't run much since high school, right after his
|
|
physical education class administered the President's National
|
|
Fitness Test. It was the worst humiliation of Cruger's life, the
|
|
"six-minute test." All the boys in class were required to run around
|
|
the track as fast as they could for six minutes. The number of laps
|
|
you completed in the six minutes time indicated your fitness level.
|
|
The fast boys were able to do well over four laps -- more than a mile
|
|
in six minutes. The vast majority did between three and three-and-a-
|
|
half laps. Cruger, chest heaving and stomach clamped into a tight
|
|
knot of muscle spasms, only finished two and one-quarter laps. The
|
|
single student who did worse than Cruger was Roger Sabutsky, the 200-
|
|
pound class flab-ball. Roger clocked in with less than two laps.
|
|
The next week, Cruger began to run every day after school. He
|
|
couldn't live with the fact that he was the worst runner (except for
|
|
Roger) in the entire class. Cruger yearned to be an average runner --
|
|
that would be nice.
|
|
The running practice worked. Within a couple months he could run
|
|
an eight-minute mile; this was even slightly better than average for
|
|
the class. Unfortunately, his running dropped off a year later, since
|
|
the need for avoidance of near-fatal embarrassment had ceased to
|
|
exist.
|
|
Cruger now remembered the torture of running when out of shape.
|
|
They had run for about 8 minutes, 23 seconds, and 35 hundredths,
|
|
according to Harris's watch.
|
|
"I really can't believe what we're involved with," Cruger said.
|
|
"especially when we're running down the street here, leading what
|
|
seems to be otherwise normal lives. This business of the Other
|
|
Company and everything is really Kafkaesque," Cruger said, between
|
|
gulps of air.
|
|
"Huh? Kafkaesque?"
|
|
"You don't read Kafka, I take it. What do you engineers read
|
|
anyway?"
|
|
"We read computer magazines with centerfold pictures of graphics
|
|
accelerator cards. And I hate it when the staple covers up the video
|
|
ram."
|
|
"How can a guy with big muscles like yours be such a nerd?
|
|
Amazing," Cruger said. Talking while running was starting to get more
|
|
than difficult.
|
|
"All this stuff happening is like a dream I keep having," said
|
|
Harris.
|
|
Cruger despised him for being able to run and talk with such
|
|
ease.
|
|
"In the dream," Harris continued, "everything is going bad for
|
|
me. My car expires, the furnace explodes. The next day, I get a giant
|
|
pimple on my nose and my shower faucet starts leaking. My life is
|
|
falling apart. I'm being picked on. I finally go to church and get
|
|
down on my knees at the alter and pray and pray.
|
|
"All of a sudden, the ceiling opens up and the clouds part. A
|
|
ray of light shines down and a strong, deep, resonant, booming voice
|
|
says 'YOU JUST PISS ME OFF.' "
|
|
Harris laughed and Cruger made a slightly higher pitched
|
|
wheezing noise than the wheezing noise he had been making. The guy
|
|
can run, talk and tell jokes too, Cruger thought. I hate him.
|
|
"Hey, I'm going to walk for a while, why don't you meet me back
|
|
on Franklin street," Cruger said.
|
|
Keeping the air moving wasn't easy for Cruger; his breaths were
|
|
desperate gulps of air followed by involuntary exhalations. His legs
|
|
were beginning to shake uncontrollably.
|
|
"OK, meet you going that way in about fifteen minutes."
|
|
Harris picked up his pace as Cruger slowed to a walk.
|
|
Cruger moved his legs in slow, deliberate strides. He didn't
|
|
need to be a great runner, just a consistent one. If he kept this up
|
|
every day after a while he would be in pretty decent shape. Slow and
|
|
steady, he thought. His arms swung at his sides and his legs kicked
|
|
forward in long even walking strides. He felt strong; he felt
|
|
invigorated; he felt nauseous.
|
|
Cruger walked half across the nearest lawn, and, bending over
|
|
the small shrubs, he spat up; it wasn't something you'd see in
|
|
_Runner's World Illustrated_.
|
|
Soon he returned to the sidewalk and started walking again. Slow
|
|
and steady. Not bad for a first outing.
|
|
A few minutes later Harris came running -- it looked like
|
|
sprinting to Cruger -- around the corner, his legs lifting high as
|
|
his thighs bulged out underneath his running shorts.
|
|
"OK, I've done my five miles," Harris said, barely short of
|
|
breath. "Let's walk out the rest."
|
|
They were turning the corner on Blaney street when they saw two
|
|
men in sports jackets and sunglasses.
|
|
"Those guys look like Eagle Scouts to you, Jack?" Harris asked.
|
|
"Not unless they earned special merit badges in knee-breaking
|
|
and mugging."
|
|
"Get out your insurance policy, then."
|
|
The two goons were already walking towards them. The big one
|
|
must have been a good six foot three, maybe 230 pounds. The other guy
|
|
was smaller but possibly even more trouble. He had a bodybuilder's
|
|
physique, complete with waspish waist and thick trapezius muscles.
|
|
They both looked like flesh-built tanks ready to enter battle.
|
|
"What to do, >kemo sabe<?" said Cruger, trying to stay cool and
|
|
failing.
|
|
"Let me handle this," said Harris, a hint of false bravura in
|
|
his voice. "I have some modest experience in these matters."
|
|
Cruger didn't doubt it. Damned good thing I'm not alone, he
|
|
thought. The smaller guy, who was pretty damn big, looked like a
|
|
composite of Pee-Wee Herman's face pasted on a muscular thug's body.
|
|
The juxtaposition of the innocent, almost feminine face on the
|
|
tough's body was more than frightening, it was nearly sickening.
|
|
The big guy looked like a refrigerator with veins. He also had a
|
|
big mouth.
|
|
"Hi, gentlemen," he said. His tone was a malicious one, with a
|
|
sprinkle of sarcasm thrown in. "Just a little message for you guys
|
|
from Mr. N, our fearless leader."
|
|
"And who might that be?" said Harris.
|
|
"Just shut up and listen, dark meat. Your little amateur
|
|
investigation is over with, comprende?" It was not a question.
|
|
"And if we decide to forget your helpful advice, assuming that
|
|
we eventually stop trembling?" said Harris.
|
|
The Pee-Wee Herman thug moved toward them, shoulders raised,
|
|
fists in front of his face. A boxer. Not a good sign.
|
|
Just as Harris was planning the trajectory of his first kick,
|
|
Cruger jumped forward and landed two quick left jabs into Pee-Wee
|
|
Herman's chin. Pee-Wee swung a hook at Cruger. Cruger ducked and
|
|
placed his knee in Pee Wee's groin.
|
|
Refrigerator, from behind, got his hands around Cruger's neck.
|
|
Cruger flung his elbow backwards into Refrigerator 's kidney and
|
|
donkey-kicked him in the solar plexus.
|
|
The flurry lasted four seconds. Pee Wee and Refrigerator were on
|
|
the ground, groaning. Harris, finding himself standing there, jaw
|
|
dropped, looking like a mannequin with arthritis, stepped forward and
|
|
placed his foot on Pee Wee's Adam's apple. Cruger followed suit with
|
|
Refrigerator.
|
|
Cruger said, "Tell us, who is Mr. N, your 'fearless leader?'"
|
|
Before a second passed Cruger's foot sunk down to the hard
|
|
asphalt. Harris's foot also clacked down -- Refrigerator and Pee-Wee
|
|
were gone, leaving behind only thin films of steam rising into the
|
|
cool air. Harris looked at Cruger and they said nothing. Whoever they
|
|
were pitted against wasn't playing fair: this disappearing act was
|
|
getting tiresome, Cruger thought. Besides, who knows what tantalizing
|
|
conversationalists the two fine young gentlemen may have turned out
|
|
to be? Their sunglasses and sport jackets certainly had been
|
|
attractive.
|
|
Harris and Cruger hoped ideas would come to their stunned minds.
|
|
Harris scratched his head, perplexed with more than one issue: he was
|
|
6-3, 210 pounds, could bench press 360 pounds, and had a black belt
|
|
in Karate. Cruger was a pudgy 5-10 couch potato.
|
|
"You really handled those guys, I mean before they poofed away.
|
|
Shit, I don't want to run into you in a dark alley," Harris said.
|
|
"I don't know how..."
|
|
"No, I mean you were >awesome<." Harris had seen his fourth-
|
|
level masters of the martial arts at work, albeit in a tournament
|
|
setting, but, he had never seen anything like this.
|
|
"Listen to me," Cruger said in a high wheezy voice. "That wasn't
|
|
me. I can't do that. I don't know how it happened but I've never done
|
|
anything like that before in my life."
|
|
"The insurance policy?"
|
|
"Must be," Cruger said.
|
|
"Hell, all those years of Karate and pumping iron for nothing,"
|
|
said Harris. Cruger squeezed his right arm as if to check if he was
|
|
dreaming. They continued to walk, Cruger with a special bounce in his
|
|
step, feeling like a younger, stronger man.
|
|
"Why?" Harris asked. "Why not just blow us away? Erase us,
|
|
explode the planet, whatever. They probably are capable of all these
|
|
things -- and I'm afraid to think what else."
|
|
Cruger stared at his toes -- his best thinking posture. A smile
|
|
began to creep over his recently gloomy face. His eyebrows lowered
|
|
while his eyes widened and brightened.
|
|
"A cat and mouse game," he said.
|
|
Harris stroke his mustache. "Who's the cat and who's the mouse
|
|
-- or need I ask?"
|
|
"Both have whiskers -- tell me, do you think we have furry tails
|
|
or prehensile ones?" Cruger said.
|
|
"You've always seemed to be a prehensile kind of guy to me,"
|
|
Harris said.
|
|
They walked on with silly grins on their faces. The
|
|
inappropriately hot November sun beat on the cracked sidewalk. Cruger
|
|
enjoyed the heat against the top of his head. He reached up to feel
|
|
whether his skin had reached frying pan temperature. Do mice go bald,
|
|
he wondered. Regardless, if one is to be a little rodent, one may as
|
|
well enjoy it.
|
|
|
|
...She looked especially good today, and acted especially
|
|
jocular.
|
|
"I'll tell you doctor, I've been feeling pretty good."
|
|
"I'm glad."
|
|
"What I need to talk about today is sex."
|
|
Goddamn her if she didn't wink at him when she said that. A wink
|
|
so fast it could only be felt, not seen. He felt uncomfortable and
|
|
self-conscious again. Only she could make him feel this way.
|
|
"When I have sex," she continued, "I'm afraid to let go, you
|
|
know what I mean?"
|
|
He cleared his throat.
|
|
"When you say 'let go'," he said, "what exactly do you mean?"
|
|
"Well," she began, "I'm talking about orgasms. I mean, I can see
|
|
myself just ripping loose like a wild animal, screaming and
|
|
everything, but I'm afraid."
|
|
He crossed and uncrossed his legs.
|
|
"I see."
|
|
He made a note in his book: 'detachment, alienation.'
|
|
She raised her arms up, pulling her hair up behind her head. She
|
|
exhaled deeply.
|
|
She heard the familiar voices from her past. They sang out in a
|
|
mellifluous flood of improvised poetry. She loved the nostalgia of
|
|
those voices; but, the beauty of the voices and the environment also
|
|
ushered in the thoughts of the boredom, the cold, and the staid
|
|
heterogeneous groups. She was where she belonged now -- let me stay,
|
|
let me be one of them, she thought. Why had they told her that she
|
|
would be like an animal in a zoo display? They told her she would
|
|
never truly fit in, be counting the days until return. Liars! She fit
|
|
in better than humans themselves; by God, she was seeing a shrink --
|
|
what could be more California human than that?
|
|
'I'll show them, I'll show them,' she whispered to herself in
|
|
the gentlest of her intense, breathy whispers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 19
|
|
|
|
He still heard the sound of the Corrina's shower water running.
|
|
Cruger sat at the breakfast table, eating his cereal and staring
|
|
at the multicolored box. When he was finished reading the
|
|
ingredients, he read the nutritional information and then the
|
|
trademark registration. Some mornings he couldn't handle newspapers,
|
|
television, the radio, or conversation. Some mornings only the
|
|
mindless reading of a hyped-up cereal box would do.
|
|
He especially liked brands that made claims such as: 50 percent
|
|
more real bran, 25 percent fat free, or no cholesterol.
|
|
And that's what was bothering him. The dishonesty factor
|
|
concerning his business with The Company.
|
|
He had not been able to tell Corrina about his spinning, the
|
|
situation he had with Tony, or anything. Concealing such an important
|
|
part of his life was stressful. It was starting to wear a hole in his
|
|
self-respect.
|
|
He reasoned that most of the shame, disgrace, and humiliation of
|
|
an extramarital affair was the sheer deception. If no deception were
|
|
involved, it would be called -- what's that term that was big back in
|
|
the seventies? -- an "open marriage." Wasn't he guilty of a similarly
|
|
large deception that involved an important part of his life? He knew
|
|
he wasn't guilty of the same 'crime' that an affair was -- but he
|
|
certainly felt guilty of something.
|
|
He decided that he would tell her about the spinning, Tony,
|
|
Harris, the whole thing. If she didn't believe and chose to laugh, or
|
|
worse yet, thought he was insane, then so be it.
|
|
Ten minutes later she came down, fully dressed, her hair wet.
|
|
"I'll grab a quick breakfast -- we have any bran muffins left?"
|
|
she said.
|
|
"Yeah, right in here. Two left."
|
|
"Great. I'll just have some orange juice and then I'm out of
|
|
here."
|
|
"Corrina, I need to talk..."
|
|
"Oh yeah," she said, remembering something. "What's the name of
|
|
that tune-up place on Stevens Creek? I need to have my oil changed,
|
|
maybe on the way home."
|
|
"It's APD Tune-up, near Woodhams," he said. "Now what I started
|
|
to..."
|
|
"Hey, I'm low on cash, too, honey. Do you have any? Otherwise
|
|
I'll have to stop by the bank before lunch."
|
|
"Yeah, sure." He fished down through his wallet and saw that he
|
|
could give her a ten without leaving himself too short for a couple
|
|
of days. He handed her the bill.
|
|
"Thanks," she kissed him on the cheek. She started to leave.
|
|
"Honey," he said, "I need to talk to you about something."
|
|
"Well, can it wait 'til tonight? I'll be home by seven."
|
|
"Okay. Have a good day." he said.
|
|
"Bye."
|
|
And she was out the door. Was it always like this in the
|
|
morning? She was gone in less than an instant.
|
|
He still felt the burden: white lies layered to a certain depth
|
|
became a single darker lie. No untruth was entirely transparent, not
|
|
staining the tint of the layered truths. Nothing was so perfectly
|
|
innocent and necessary as to qualify as spotless, indisputably
|
|
necessary: the perfect white lie. These off-white lies combined to
|
|
form a darker one; the dark consequence was a cloud over Cruger's
|
|
conscience, deflecting the sanctimonious beams of correctness cast
|
|
down from his superego.
|
|
If you believe Freud, he thought.
|
|
He wondered if he would feel like telling her about everything
|
|
that night. Maybe the time had come and gone. He looked out the
|
|
kitchen window and watched the morning wind blow the fallen leaves
|
|
across the back patio. The leaves tumbled and interacted randomly,
|
|
forming small ephemeral patterns on the cement. His body held him to
|
|
that position, eyes transfixed on the landscape that kept changing so
|
|
swiftly, so subtly, and so constantly.
|
|
|
|
"What do you think, Doctor Frederick," she asked. "Am I normal?"
|
|
He smiled meaninglessly and looked her in the eye. He didn't
|
|
realize that it came off as an entirely condescending gesture.
|
|
"In my field, normal is most certainly a relative term." He knew
|
|
she was starting to play with him, again. She was a manipulative
|
|
bitch deep down, the classic case of a borderline personality.
|
|
"However we decide to classify people must be considered to be
|
|
quite arbitrary, you understand."
|
|
"But, really doctor, you and I have become quite close, I
|
|
think." She leaned forward, pretending to adjust her shoe, squeezing
|
|
her breasts between her outstretched arms. She looked him in the eyes
|
|
as she did it, hoping he would get that look on his face again.
|
|
Sometimes he would even bite and chew his lower lip. "Don't you think
|
|
I come across as a pretty normal human, or, I mean, person?"
|
|
He wanted to kill her, that bitch. He wanted to throw her down
|
|
on the floor -- God, how could she have this stupid power over him.
|
|
He needed to be in control, not her... for God's sake, not her.
|
|
"Doctor," she said, her voice husky, her tone urgent. "I want to
|
|
throw you on the floor, Dr. Frederick. I'll tear your clothes off
|
|
you, I'll rub you and lick you all over, let me Doctor, let me..."
|
|
"Shut up!" he yelled. "Shut up... quiet! " He stood up, face
|
|
beet red, and pointed at her. "You bitch."
|
|
"I know you want to kill me," she said. "Let me tell you
|
|
something. I kill -- I kill all the time. That's why I'm here. How
|
|
about them apples, mister doctor?" She smiled and walked over to him,
|
|
in his face now. "I kill and I seduce and I rape. And it's your job
|
|
to help me, you horny little toad. Help me, make me a real woman."
|
|
She sat back down and slumped back into the arms of the big
|
|
leather chair. Look at him sit there all scared, shocked. The
|
|
Doctor's thoughts were still mixed, crazy, hard to read. He was a
|
|
wimp, but she figured he was really like all the others. A planet
|
|
full of wimps with no mental toughness, no control, no intuition.
|
|
Barbarians.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 20
|
|
|
|
About the size of a large pizza box, the clock on the wall swept
|
|
a steady course with its delicate hands. Framed in black plastic, it
|
|
hung on the stark white wall, looking like a large dark insect. Other
|
|
than the clock, the lack of decor in the office was startling. The
|
|
wooden desk and contoured chair barely gave the room an occupied air.
|
|
Cruger still thought of it as Tony's office.
|
|
"You been working too hard? You look pale -- I mean pale for a
|
|
black guy -- and tired. Where have you been?
|
|
"Shut up."
|
|
"Hey, don't get touchy..."
|
|
"No," Harris explained, "I mean I've been shut up in this room.
|
|
Working 'round the clock. This computer system had a nasty virus in
|
|
it."
|
|
Harris was sitting at the desk in front of the computer,
|
|
pointing at a display of numbers on the screen.
|
|
Cruger knew almost nothing about computers. He feared it could
|
|
be a long evening of listening to Harris talk about things that made
|
|
Latin seem intuitive.
|
|
"Ungh," Cruger said, grunting in a way that he felt was a fairly
|
|
intelligent sounding grunt; a grunt that could possibly signify some
|
|
level of appreciation for Harris' point.
|
|
"I found it when I was looking through code resources --
|
|
basically every program on the system -- and I found a few suspicious
|
|
ones."
|
|
"Ungh," Cruger said. The first grunt had been better.
|
|
Unfortunately Harris took it as an encouragement to go further
|
|
into detail. "I took a close look at each suspicious code resource I
|
|
found. Shit, it took a lot of time, but it was worth it. I
|
|
disassembled the code resources and found four of them that were
|
|
affecting the program Tony had set up."
|
|
Cruger's eyes had glazed over for the part about "code
|
|
resources," but he understood the part about affecting Tony's
|
|
program.
|
|
"What was it doing to Tony's program?" he asked.
|
|
"A number of things. To begin with, it added a security layer
|
|
for a certain set of people. I haven't broken the code to enable me
|
|
to know exactly who these people are, but I think this protection
|
|
layer explains what we saw with the two toughs that disappeared."
|
|
"The code in there made them disappear, deleted them?"
|
|
"Yes, it looks like a set of people -- I would assume that they
|
|
all are Other Company -- get automatically deleted if they get close
|
|
enough to discovery."
|
|
"Isn't that stupid?" Cruger asked. "The minute they get deleted
|
|
you know for sure that they were Other Company. It serves as a
|
|
validation. And how would they know that they're 'close to being
|
|
discovered?' Isn't that a subjective thing?"
|
|
Harris raised an eyebrow. "I commend you on your insight. Yes,
|
|
that and almost everything having to do with the algorithmic solution
|
|
to this Unified Theorem deals with the subjective. Life isn't
|
|
digital, it isn't black-and-white with no gray areas; the model is a
|
|
digital approximation that knows how to directly interpret and derive
|
|
what you call 'subjective'."
|
|
Cruger frowned. "I lost you back around the word >the<, I
|
|
think."
|
|
"The details are unimportant -- for you, anyway. What matters is
|
|
that I eventually completely understand these algorithms. And I
|
|
don't... at least, not yet."
|
|
"Well, do you understand how someone is deleted?"
|
|
"I've been looking at that. I could isolate that code because it
|
|
appeared in several of the code resources that have attached
|
|
themselves to Tony's work. In a nutshell, deleting is similar to
|
|
programming a black hole: it's just that the boundary conditions are
|
|
different."
|
|
"Unh." Cruger thought the grunt would serve him well again.
|
|
"Thing is," Harris went on, "we aren't connected to anything. We
|
|
aren't part of a network, as far as I can tell. We probably have some
|
|
kind of downlink to the company's home office -- uh, home planet --
|
|
that I don't understand yet, but that's probably it. I don't think
|
|
we're connected to anywhere else on Earth Tony was a one-man show."
|
|
They sat in silence for a while, thinking about their task,
|
|
thinking about who else was out there, who their friends were, who
|
|
their enemies might be.
|
|
"Tony left comments in his code, so the parts that he wrote are
|
|
well-described and easy to figure out. It's this other mess -- the
|
|
stuff written by someone else or a whole crew of other people --
|
|
that's tough for me to figure out. And here's the worst part," Harris
|
|
continued, "some parts of this stuff are incredibly difficult to
|
|
decipher."
|
|
Harris pulled a pad of paper over and began to scribble
|
|
something.
|
|
"Here, this is the kind of stuff I find written across the
|
|
comment fields in some of the code I read."
|
|
The sheet of paper had a set of symbols written across it;
|
|
symbols that didn't seem to be a part of any alphabet Cruger or
|
|
Harris could recognize:
|
|
|
|
"Okay, in a way this makes sense," Cruger said. "We know that
|
|
the Tvonens started this process; we also know that the basic
|
|
technology was adopted from the theoretical physicists' work and
|
|
converted to an implementation by a group, probably a combination of
|
|
Tvonens and humans. So, at least one and maybe more of the original
|
|
people working on this were Tvonen."
|
|
"Right, and I wish those damned aliens would have commented
|
|
their code in English, assuming they added comments at all. Maybe
|
|
that's the problem with their own technology they developed at home.
|
|
Remember, they're analog electronics all the way and don't have a
|
|
good feeling for digital logic design, Boolean algebra, or computer
|
|
algorithms."
|
|
"That's true to the extent of what they knew before they came
|
|
here and decided Earth would become the technology leader. Then they
|
|
must have started learning -- at least the ones from the Company that
|
|
they had stationed over here -- to use our digital technology,"
|
|
Cruger said.
|
|
Harris yawned loudly and then sucked in a very deep breath.
|
|
"That's a really important point. I should be looking for some
|
|
computer code to be very slick and polished -- and that is easily
|
|
defined as Tony's work, especially since most of it is commented. But
|
|
the other stuff I should look for to be amateurish, possibly error-
|
|
prone and full of bugs. I hadn't approached it that way before. I had
|
|
been looking at everything as if it were written precisely."
|
|
"Nah, look for some sloppy alien work, that's my guess."
|
|
Harris smiled and stretched, raising up his arms and twisting
|
|
his neck around until the small little cracking sounds subsided.
|
|
"I've been here too long already," Harris said. "But I have to
|
|
admit, this is actually bordering on being fun. It's like playing
|
|
detective, albeit electronically, walking through a maze of clues.
|
|
It's time consuming but fun."
|
|
"I'm glad you're doing it. In fact, that point scares me. What
|
|
are we going to do if -- excuse my distasteful scenario -- you go
|
|
away or take off or disappear or something like that? Right now,
|
|
you're the man running the show."
|
|
"I've thought about that. Hopefully, soon, I will have made the
|
|
program fairly understandable and easier to use. Someone pretty
|
|
knowledgeable in programming could come in and pick up where I let
|
|
off. Why, you have any plans to get rid of me?"
|
|
"Well, you know," Cruger said, "if you mouth off at me or
|
|
anything I may need to do something."
|
|
"Nice guy. Thanks."
|
|
"Any time. Now the other thing I've worried about is this: is it
|
|
too easy for someone we don't want to have involved to come in and
|
|
take over the whole mess?"
|
|
"Good question," Harris said. "I've thought of that one myself
|
|
-- in depth. That scenario is what I am most afraid of, actually. We
|
|
know that this system, the way it stands, can be infiltrated pretty
|
|
easily, so I've taken a few precautions. Most of them are a complete
|
|
secret, but, a couple of them I will share with you only, since you
|
|
may be around if I happen to get blown away or something.
|
|
"As you may have noticed, I've added a scanner to this whole
|
|
setup," Harris said.
|
|
Cruger pointed to the nearly flat, rectangular box next to the
|
|
computer.
|
|
"Yes, that's it. It can be used for many things, but in the
|
|
context of what we are discussing now, I have programmed it to scan
|
|
my hand to allow entry into the source code files. I could extend
|
|
this to allow you and your hand entry also."
|
|
"Pretty good idea, except the fact that the Chysa could probably
|
|
imitate the shape of your hand with no problem," Cruger said.
|
|
"Assuming they knew ahead of time that they needed to have my
|
|
hand shape and texture and my password to go along with it. I know
|
|
it's possible, but the best we can do in these situations is make it
|
|
difficult to get in. Making it impossible to get in probably is
|
|
impossible."
|
|
Cruger ran his hand across the top of the flat plastic box,
|
|
feeling the contours and minute corrugation on the slick plastic box.
|
|
Harris said, "I'm building in protection for us in addition to
|
|
the protection the Company gives us now. I figured that may be one of
|
|
the first things we need to finish this project."
|
|
And Cruger thought, protection. Yeah, they were up against
|
|
something or someone's they couldn't touch, feel, or sense. It didn't
|
|
feel good but it didn't feel too bad either, because the danger was
|
|
everybody's danger; if they didn't succeed, no one would. Made life
|
|
exciting. Just right if your heart could take it.
|
|
|
|
His TV, with the volume up, blared away. Harris sat on his
|
|
couch, thinking. Even if there were a set of complete equations that
|
|
accurately described the beginning, end, and maintenance of the
|
|
universe (or universes, whatever that may mean), what did this say
|
|
about the time before the creation of the universe? What existed
|
|
then?
|
|
Harris opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a beer. He
|
|
opened the utensil drawer, pulled out a can opener, and popped the
|
|
top off the Moosehead.
|
|
If there were a supreme being, or beings, able to create worlds
|
|
and planets and species and everything, how did it or they come
|
|
about? The real problem with a quantitative definition of the
|
|
universe was the boundary conditions, or more aptly, the inability of
|
|
a human to conceive of something before the creation of the universe
|
|
or the inexplicable nothingness after the end of the universe.
|
|
Harris's nose itched and he scratched it with the bottle,
|
|
rubbing the edge of the label against his itch.
|
|
How could there be nothing? What if this nothing were something?
|
|
What is outside the bounds of the universe right now? When the
|
|
universe expands, what is it expanding into?
|
|
One easy explanation -- too easy -- might be that there always
|
|
was and always is something. If a Big Bang started the Universe and a
|
|
contraction of the everything into a tiny black hole ends the
|
|
universe, this could be a continuous cycle that keeps reoccurring
|
|
every, say, trillion years or so. The nothingness outside of the
|
|
current expanding bounds of the universe could be time folded back on
|
|
itself: the same universe at another time, during contraction, in a
|
|
state of nothingness.
|
|
Harris walked over to the TV and flipped on a game show he had
|
|
seen before. The contestants spun a wheel and guessed letters and
|
|
giggled a lot. The host cracked inside jokes and the hostess pointed
|
|
to flashing boards and flashed her thighs and cleavage at the camera.
|
|
Harris sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table.
|
|
A soft drink commercial came on. Quick one second-camera close-
|
|
ups flashed pictures of bikini lines and men's rippling abdominal
|
|
muscles. Faceless bodies held cola cans and darkly tanned legs of
|
|
both sexes flexed and stretched and sweated. All this to sell sugar-
|
|
water.
|
|
Harris exhaled. Some things are just too hard to figure out, he
|
|
thought. The whole universe especially. But it was there, in the
|
|
computer code, somewhere in there, all the answers embedded. He was
|
|
glad someone had already done most of the work for him.
|
|
|
|
"Doctor, I've been thinking about what really bothers me and I
|
|
want you to hear it. You see, when they first sent me on this
|
|
mission, I really didn't want to go."
|
|
He wondered if she were actually further out of touch than he
|
|
had previously thought. Maybe she's had a schizophrenic episode?
|
|
"But," she continued, "they kept telling me it was good for our
|
|
planet, Earth being so close and all. It was actually a matter of
|
|
protection for my people."
|
|
He double checked his tape recorder and scribbled down what she
|
|
had said in his note pad. Definitely a psychotic episode.
|
|
"You see, your people are already crawling through space. It is
|
|
only a matter of time before you would discover us and ruin our way
|
|
of life.
|
|
"Frankly," she said, "you people are disgusting. There is only
|
|
one advantage to the way you live."
|
|
She licked her lips. Now she goes for the manipulation, he
|
|
thought.
|
|
"When I meet people for the first time, I think they're pretty
|
|
interesting. The problem is, then I get tired of them."
|
|
Now she had turned sweet, phony, pretending to be forthcoming.
|
|
Flashing those damn eyes, dimples, and gorgeous shoulders at him.
|
|
"What do other people do to stay interested in people?" she
|
|
asked.
|
|
"Many things, like common interests. Do you have any friends
|
|
with common interests?"
|
|
"Sure, I have lots of interests... strong interests."
|
|
She thought it would be funny. She put a couple of thoughts in
|
|
his head: he was easily within her range here. Thoughts of she and
|
|
him, together. She made the thoughts strong, vivid, realistic; but
|
|
not too strong because he wasn't a well man, she had decided. In the
|
|
thoughts she was on him; her smooth skin pressed against his chest
|
|
and her round breasts bounced across his writhing torso.
|
|
His eyes rolled up as he sat there in his chair, and he gasped
|
|
loudly, "Oh my God..." Sitting there in his chair, alone, his orgasm
|
|
was so strong and so thoroughly taxing to his body that he lost
|
|
consciousness.
|
|
His weakness disgusted her. She decided right there and then
|
|
that he was to be a dead man. A man who never lived.
|
|
And tomorrow I'd better find a new shrink, she thought.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 21
|
|
|
|
Garbage trucks. They were the great equalizers, clamoring
|
|
through the worst slums as well as the most affluent neighborhoods.
|
|
No matter what your station in life -- unless you lived in a rural
|
|
area or a veritable oasis -- you couldn't avoid being awakened by the
|
|
vociferous sounds of garbage trucks from time to time.
|
|
It was Cruger's time.
|
|
He lay in bed listening to the trucks. The deflected light of
|
|
early morning crept across the down comforter in the form of yellow
|
|
stripes of light. Bizarre thoughts and fantasies swept through his
|
|
mind like a hurricane through an Atlantic harbor.
|
|
The existentialists almost had it right, he mused. The life of a
|
|
man certainly can be defined as the sum total of his experiences.
|
|
Yet, that's not a full definition of a life. Doesn't the life also
|
|
correspond to boundaries painted by non-experiences? What a person
|
|
>does not do< is just as important as what he >does do<. A life must
|
|
be characterized using a careful consideration of all experiences as
|
|
well as all the paths not taken. The potential verses the kinetic.
|
|
And of course the potential can always continue to live throughout
|
|
time -- who knows what strings will lead where?
|
|
Although Cruger saw hints of sunlight shining into the room, he
|
|
also heard the pitter-splat-splat of a light early-morning rain.
|
|
Rain was another great equalizer. It soaked unprepared street-
|
|
people, millionaires, communists (wherever you could find one
|
|
anymore), and Rotarians. It probably even rained on the Other
|
|
Company, wherever they may be, if not everywhere.
|
|
He slipped back to dreaming. Is life a zero-sum game? Certainly
|
|
not. What a joke. Some may pack into five minutes of life what others
|
|
may take 20 years to do.
|
|
And the strings, they prove it, don't they? They reek of balance
|
|
and harmony. Isn't everything in life a cycle, a circle, a beginning
|
|
leading to an ending and another beginning?
|
|
But, if we don't have a zero sum, are the winners and leaders
|
|
truly a floating variable, unbiased by kitsch polar opposites such as
|
|
good and evil, truth and deception? If a point on a string defines a
|
|
time and a place, a plane of existence, can that time then be
|
|
arbitrary based on the artifice of our definition of time? The
|
|
strings must hold the answer...
|
|
"Wake up, sleepy-head," Corrina said with saccharine morning
|
|
cheer.
|
|
"Ugh."
|
|
"Wake up, lazy shit."
|
|
"Whad you call me?" Cruger droned. His eyelids fought to open.
|
|
"Wake up before I get downright profane. If you don't show signs
|
|
of life within 5 seconds, I'll be forced to begin CPR."
|
|
Cruger felt sly as well as tired -- he couldn't let the
|
|
opportunity pass. He played dead, and when Corrina's count got to
|
|
four-one-thousand he rolled over and gave her a big kiss.
|
|
Corrina whispered, "Who's reviving who?"
|
|
"I just thought you needed a little morning cheer"
|
|
"No, I need more than that."
|
|
Corrina rolled on top; their mouths met in a soft embrace.
|
|
Cruger punned, "Back to the business at hand?"
|
|
"Just checking out the merchandise." Corrina's voice was a
|
|
breathless husky growl. "Everything seems to be, ah, nicely in
|
|
order."
|
|
"Very nice."
|
|
Their voices stopped as attention to the incipient passion
|
|
robbed them their powers of speech. The pitter-patter rain helped. It
|
|
was a pleasurable morning free of inhibition, full of sensation,
|
|
garbage trucks or no.
|
|
|
|
When Corrina left for her early shift Cruger walked the hundred
|
|
feet next door to Harris's house.
|
|
Harris wasn't his usual impeccable self. He had on a terry cloth
|
|
robe that looked frayed and wrinkled. Harris himself was unshaven and
|
|
had only half-open eyelids.
|
|
"A late one last night?" Cruger said, trying to sound as
|
|
annoyingly perky as possible.
|
|
Harris ran his large hand over his lopsided hair, even his
|
|
muscled arms looking slacker than usual. "You're a wise-ass -- you'll
|
|
get your butt kicked," he said.
|
|
"No," Cruger said. "My ass can't be kicked. I have a uniquely
|
|
unkickable ass."
|
|
Harris smiled. "Don't let your unkickable ass go to your head,"
|
|
he said.
|
|
"Somehow I don't like the sound of that," Cruger said, "but I'll
|
|
keep it in mind, thank you."
|
|
Harris went to pour himself some coffee, a cup of instant that
|
|
smelled cheap and industrial to Cruger.
|
|
"So, you think they can do this whenever they want, erasing
|
|
people, I mean?" Cruger said.
|
|
Harris slapped the plastic cup down on the tiled kitchen
|
|
counter. "Not only whenever they want, but with the skill and
|
|
precision of a surgeon. All the interdependencies, the numerous
|
|
intersections of lives, times, and even physical objects would have
|
|
to be considered -- or at least dealt with somehow."
|
|
Cruger reflected on this so called 'surgery'. The ability to
|
|
control reality in this way had applications beyond belief.
|
|
"You think virtually anyone could become -- ah, let's say, an
|
|
unperson?" asked Cruger.
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
"Or anything?"
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
"Like nuclear waste?"
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
"Hazardous chemicals and pollution?"
|
|
"Yeah."
|
|
"Murderous dictators?"
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
"Old Jerry Lewis films?"
|
|
"Probably not. The French would hang on to them somehow."
|
|
"Someone with this type of power would be playing God. I spin,
|
|
but, I don't really know what I'm doing when I do it. This is
|
|
different, this is complete pinpoint control of the future, present,
|
|
and maybe the past."
|
|
Harris gave Cruger a stern look. "The person, or being, that
|
|
controls this is not only >playing< God, Jack."
|
|
"You've got the skills for it. It's >all< going to be computer-
|
|
run, and you're the man," said Cruger.
|
|
"I don't want to be God -- when would I work out?" said Harris.
|
|
Cruger laughed at that response. "You've got to think big, man.
|
|
When would you work out? You wouldn't have to worry about mundane
|
|
things like death or taxes or whether your cardiovascular system is
|
|
finely tuned. We will have transcended that."
|
|
Cruger looked at the pot of English ivy that Harris had on his
|
|
coffee table. The vine twisted upwards, working its way around the
|
|
redwood stake that was firmly anchored in the soil. The top-most
|
|
branches of the plant departed from the stake and reached out into
|
|
the air, seemingly to groping for more light and nutrients, without
|
|
the support of the stake.
|
|
"At this point, I would almost have to say we don't have a
|
|
choice," said Cruger.
|
|
"Oh, there are always choices," Harris said. "Just that they're
|
|
not necessarily >good< alternatives to choose from."
|
|
Cruger felt good and worried that he felt better than he should.
|
|
His mind played its dirty trick of listing things to worry about:
|
|
people disappearing, Tony gone, Corrina and their baby on the way,
|
|
the Other Company, his spinning and what the hell it all meant.
|
|
There, the list isn't so long after all, is it?
|
|
"Anyway, are we gonna run this morning or what?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 22
|
|
|
|
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
|
|
About the centre of the silent Word.
|
|
- T.S Eliot
|
|
|
|
Uraken observed Cruger's developments closely. It was his job.
|
|
Uraken reflected on his own career -- who would have known he would
|
|
go so far?
|
|
Educated at the top five Shops (humans called them
|
|
Universities), he had been off to a good start. Indeed, wasn't
|
|
Tigaten -- the top Shop east of the divide -- the equivalent of
|
|
Earth's Harvard? Wasn't his first shop, Vonsten, similar to Berkeley,
|
|
complete with student protests and extremist radical factions?
|
|
But the politics, the absurd politics that he had endured during
|
|
his struggle up the corporate ladder -- that was the great
|
|
difference. The earthlings would just happen into their top jobs with
|
|
The Company, if all went well. But for him, the favors, the
|
|
promises...
|
|
He had been like a great human politician, kissing babies,
|
|
shaking hands (and even vice versa) -- whatever to took to get the
|
|
votes and to obtain the respect and trust needed to become number
|
|
one.
|
|
These days Uraken just observed from his unique vantage point.
|
|
More than anything, Uraken enjoyed watching American football.
|
|
Australian football wasn't bad, but the NFL, with the playoffs and
|
|
the Super Bowl, was great. Uraken was intelligent enough to know that
|
|
viewing the Earth through surveillance microphones and satellite
|
|
television was not that accurate. But, from his point of view,
|
|
football was tops. Joe Montana was his favorite player, accurate as
|
|
hell, the all-time best. And the pageantry, the contact, the athletic
|
|
conditioning, the cheerleaders -- what could better.
|
|
Uraken thought soaps sucked but he did like some of night-time
|
|
soaps, like "L.A Law". A few cartoons, like Road Runner and Deputy
|
|
Dawg, were among his favorites. None of that new Slimer, Beetlejuice
|
|
and New Kids stuff, though. It sucked.
|
|
Since he couldn't breathe their atmosphere -- the oxygen would
|
|
cut through him like a knife -- Uraken circled the Earth in his space
|
|
vehicle, a late model Oonsten. He only occasionally landed, and then
|
|
it was always in some rural area where only a few soon-to-be loonies
|
|
could witness his saucer-shaped Oonsten. The Southern states of the
|
|
U.S. were always a good choice for a landing. The rest of the world
|
|
considered them to be idiots, evidently, and even if they snapped a
|
|
few pictures of the Oonsten, they were never taken seriously.
|
|
On a few occasions, Uraken put on his air-tight protective gear
|
|
and left his Oonsten to walk on the Earth. His English, Russian,
|
|
German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, and
|
|
Latin were good, but he still could not communicate well with the few
|
|
humans he encountered. They all seemed to drop their jaws open and
|
|
shake a lot -- but then they would make strange mumbling noises and
|
|
do very little talking. They were hard to warm up to. Maybe they were
|
|
trying an old form of Swahili on him, he joked to himself. Better
|
|
brush up the African languages.
|
|
He longed for the day when he would relinquish his command and
|
|
return to Tvonen to become a >sensien<, to taste the good life, to
|
|
drink tikboo, to use foul language, and to have >sehun< with a hot-
|
|
looking young >gruchen< until he passed out.
|
|
Uraken had been the Chairmen of the Company for roughly two-
|
|
thousand earth years. The office was humbling -- God, Yahmo, Lord,
|
|
Master of the Universe; these titles were heavy duty. Embarrassing
|
|
even. His position was so important that he labored for years in
|
|
deciding the title on his business card. Uraken finally decided on
|
|
what turned out to be his singularly most politically sagacious move:
|
|
Uraken e Tvonen, Servant of all the People.
|
|
His early studies of Earth people had led him to the Tao
|
|
philosophy of leadership, which he held close to his hearts: leaders
|
|
were to serve and to teach, to hold the development of their people
|
|
in their humble and gentle hands. This was Uraken's way. He had been
|
|
criticized for being a non-leader of a leader, for being a delegator
|
|
and allowing the >Other Company< to gain more control of Earth. On
|
|
the Earth his presence was not hands-on -- thus the 'God is dead'
|
|
bumper stickers. But Uraken felt he could only lead in the style of
|
|
leadership that he felt most comfortable with.
|
|
He could see Cruger in the position next -- but just barely.
|
|
Only from Earth could a Jack Cruger have a shot at the top position.
|
|
His lack of education, his almost disgusting white skin, and his
|
|
total disregard for the political process, all combined to make him a
|
|
candidate that would be automatically rejected on the planet of
|
|
Tvonen.
|
|
Leon Harris was another story. He, in fact, was technically
|
|
trained, attractive (almost as dark as Uraken himself) -- an
|
|
organized, effective, person.
|
|
However, this would be no election. Uraken's own ascent to the
|
|
position of power was based on politics, public relations, and good
|
|
old-fashioned intergalactic marketing. The next Chairman would be the
|
|
Earth's first representative in the office, elected only by his
|
|
connection to the all-important discovery and implementation of the
|
|
Unified Theorem. Then Earthlings would have accomplished the greatest
|
|
evolutionary intellectual development ever in the history of the
|
|
Universe.
|
|
Even recently, common Tvonen thought said it would take another
|
|
hundred years, maybe another thousand, before the humans were ready
|
|
for their chance. However, humans made great recent advances in their
|
|
thoughts on theoretical physics and their implementation of digital
|
|
electronics. The original estimates of hundreds or thousands of years
|
|
soon compressed to a mere handful.
|
|
Uraken marveled at the human's theories that had come so close
|
|
to defining the bounds and origins of the universe. They had acquired
|
|
new stature in the great "scheme of things." The humans deserved the
|
|
office of God. A little more progress and their science and
|
|
technology would rank them tops, even more advanced than the Tvonen's
|
|
in their electronics and physics. Very impressive, Uraken realized,
|
|
considering that these humans started out as tiny-little-slimy
|
|
singled-cell things not all that long ago.
|
|
Of course, when they were slimy little sea creatures, the
|
|
Earth's entire company was run by sentient beings, all Tvonens. After
|
|
Homo Erectus began strutting his stuff, the company began hiring the
|
|
locals and promoting from within. People like Tony and Jack joined
|
|
the company. Unfortunately, many humans also joined The Other
|
|
Company. Like that Jack Nicholson movie, Uraken thought, where Jack
|
|
plays Satan. Uraken had just seen it on a cable frequency -- such a
|
|
convincing performance.
|
|
And now, as the original members of the company's Earth startup
|
|
team left to create job opportunities for the locals, Earth would
|
|
come closer and closer to being wholly regionally managed. Tvonens
|
|
remember the earth terminology for it: Darwinism. A species evolves
|
|
to the point of becoming its own God. Very impressive; the essence of
|
|
Darwinism; Uraken loved the poetic justice involved.
|
|
Uraken reflected that although impressive, this was not unusual.
|
|
Everything in life is a cycle. The company had always promoted from
|
|
within and taken on new characteristics and management styles.
|
|
It was risky, though. Things could go downhill. But, after all,
|
|
one must think >cycles<. Things get better, they get worse, they
|
|
constantly change -- this is the essence of life itself.
|
|
Interesting though that the Other Company was mostly stagnant.
|
|
Yes indeed, the essence of stagnation. Things had been the same there
|
|
for -- as far as Uraken knew -- since the beginning of everything.
|
|
Disadvantages to this are many. But, the Other Company was steady,
|
|
very steady. The cycles, if they existed, had a periodicity great
|
|
enough to have disallowed the empirical detection of them. Uraken
|
|
laughed: he was thinking like a human now -- 'empirical detection'.
|
|
But the future lay in the hands of the Crugers and the Harrises.
|
|
A new crop of talent to lead the way.
|
|
Uraken had never expected his current organization to last
|
|
forever. Someone would come along who could do a better job, add a
|
|
modern touch. Harris or Cruger would do just that.
|
|
If the >Other Company< didn't stop them.
|
|
|
|
TO BE CONTINUED...
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
JEFF ZIAS (ZIAS1@AppleLink.apple.com) has begun a stint with the
|
|
spin-off software company Taligent after a ten-year stint writing and
|
|
managing software at Apple Computer. Jeff enjoys spending time with
|
|
his wife and two small children, playing jazz with Bay Area groups,
|
|
writing software and prose, and building playhouses and other
|
|
assorted toys for his children to trash. Having actually been a
|
|
studious youth, Jeff has a BA in Applied Mathematics from Berkeley
|
|
and an MS in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VERACITY OF THESE ADS.
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_Quanta_ (ISSN 1053-8496) is the electronically distributed
|
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journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy. As such, each issue contains
|
|
fiction by amateur authors as well as articles, reviews, etc...
|
|
_Quanta_ is published in two formats, ASCII and PostScript(TM)
|
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(for PostScript compatible laser-printers). Submissions should be
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sent to quanta@andrew.cmu.edu. Requests to be added to the
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or
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Send mail only -- no interactive messages or files please. The
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IP: 128.2.35.66
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Directory: /pub/quanta
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--
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_CORE_ is available by e-mail subscription and anonymous ftp from
|
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eff.org. Send requests and submissions to rita@eff.org. _CORE_ is an
|
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entirely electronic journal dedicated to e-publishing the best, freshest
|
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prose and poetry being created in Cyberspace. _CORE_ is published
|
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monthly.
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--
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Submit! You will submit to InterText! No, we're not trying to
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concern. We like it if you haven't posted the story to a network
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ability, RTF (Interchange) format.
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--
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Spectre Publications, Inc. is a relatively young corporation
|
|
publishing a biannual anthology of previously unpublished
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manuscripts. The books are titled FUSION, representing the
|
|
amalgamation of three genres (Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror)
|
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beneath one cover. FUSION is largely composed of strong college
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manuscripts submitted by students from across the country. For more
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information on submission guidelines, contact Spectre Publications
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at:
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P.O. Box 159, Paramus, NJ 07653-0159
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Tel: 209-265-5541 Fax: 201-265-5542
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or via e-mail care of Geoff Duncan, sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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And don't forget...
|
|
When life gives you lemons, use 'em as projectile weapons.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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