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** *******
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================================================
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InterText Vol. 1, No. 4 / November-December 1991
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================================================
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Contents
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FirstText ........................................Jason Snell
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Short Fiction
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An Ounce of Prevention_.........................Michael Ernst_
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Experience Required_...........................Robert Hurvitz_
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Slice of Mind_.....................................Phil Nolte_
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The Rebel Cause_................................Michel Forget_
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The Scratch Buffer_............................Steve Connelly_
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....................................................................
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Editor Assistant Editor
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Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
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jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
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....................................................................
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Assistant Editor Send subscription requests, story
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Phil Nolte submissions, and correspondence
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nolte@idui1.BITNET to intertext@etext.org
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....................................................................
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InterText Vol. 1, No. 4. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
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electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
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magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
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(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
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text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1991, 1994 Jason
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Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1991 by their original
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authors.
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....................................................................
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FirstText by Jason Snell
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===========================
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I'm back. Did you miss me?
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Well, probably not. But that's okay. It's still hard for me to
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visualize the fact that InterText goes out to over a thousand
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people every other month. And you're sitting there, reading
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this. InterText will be a year old with our next issue, and
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we've got subscribers in such far away (from me here in San
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Diego) places as the Soviet Union, Australia, Germany, Britain,
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Brazil... and, closer to home, Mexico and Canada. All over the
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world. Yikes.
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In a way, this issue marks a bit of a change for the magazine.
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It's the first issue where one of my own stories hasn't appeared
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(a good trend in that we had enough to fill the space without my
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help... but beware, because I might have another one in the
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pipeline...) and also the first time Greg Knauss hasn't made his
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twisted presence felt within our pages.
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Dear old Greg, who has written for magazines with a much larger
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circulation than this (he's been in maybe a dozen Atari computer
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magazines) is fresh out of stories. Well, I've got some older
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Knauss stories that I could dredge out of the slime pit, but
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it's not worth it. I can only hope that he comes up with the
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stamina to write a new story someday. Right now, he's getting
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over the fact that his Star Trek: The Next Generation script,
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"The Cortez," was rejected. He says that at least the ST:TNG
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people read the thing. He and I are now finishing up (we hope)
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our own ST:TNG script (how do I get myself into these things?),
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titled "Chain of Command." It's brilliant, exceptional,
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wonderful, amazing... oh, sorry. Got a little carried away
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there.
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I'd also like to welcome Phil Nolte back to the fold. Phil, who
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didn't have a whole lot to do with this issue because of my poor
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planning, still managed to contribute a story, "Slice of Mind."
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Phil has moved west from North Dakota, and now resides in Idaho.
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I'm glad he's back.
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Our cover this issue is, well, you could call it minimalist. In
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fact, my dear assistant editor Geoff Duncan (who has done lots
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of great work for this thing and doesn't get enough credit so
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I'm going to devote this entire parenthetical expression to
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him... Hi Geoff!) refers to the cover as, well, clip-art. I
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don't know about that... I like it. I was tempted to headline
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this issue "THE CLASSY INTERTEXT ISSUE"... but fortunately I
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refrained.
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I did have a cooler Mel Marcelo cover, one with a spooky haunted
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house, but it's after Halloween and the thing would have made
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this issue's PostScript version run almost one megabyte in
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length. No thanks. So the lovely dancing couple it is.
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Funny how theme issues almost seem to come together by
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themselves. All the stories in this issue have something to do
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with employment. We have a first-day-on-the-job story ("An Ounce
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of Prevention") from Michael Ernst, a job interview story
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("Experience Required") from returning writer Robert Hurvitz, a
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story about someone getting fired from his job (the
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aforementioned "Slice of Mind"), a story about someone being
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reconditioned into a new profession ("The Rebel Cause" by Michel
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Forget), and a story about a guy who finds an easy solution to
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one of his problems at work ("The Scratch Buffer", by Steve
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Connelly).
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I should say something else about Connelly's story: it may be a
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bit obscure, but I find it extremely funny. Since this is a
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magazine distributed through computer networks, I decided to put
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it in. I hope that those of you with minimal computer experience
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can still appreciate some of the humor in the story's
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situations, despite perhaps not understanding all of the jargon
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or references. And for those of you with newsgroup reading
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experience or experience working with large computers, this one
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will be right up your alley.
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This is a strange time for we computerized magazine editors
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(wait, that sounds like I'm Max Headroom or someone...) -- both
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myself and Quanta's Dan Appelquist are college seniors. We're
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both going to graduate within the next six months (him in
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December, me in March). I'm unsure what Dan will do upon
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graduating, but I assume that Quanta will remain around. As for
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me, well, I'll still be in San Diego through June (my duties as
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editor in chief of the campus newspaper require this of me), and
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then I don't know what will happen. My plan is to go to graduate
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journalism school, in which case I'll probably have one more
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year of net access (at Columbia or Northwestern, if I get in...)
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or two years (if I go to UC Berkeley). So hopefully I'll be able
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to produce InterText until mid-1993. If not, we'll just have to
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find someone else with net access and the will to do this fun,
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fun job. I hope that when I do disappear from the net (though I
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also hope that I never disappear), InterText or something like
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it will continue -- even if it's in a different form. We shall
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see.
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Final trivia for those of you still with me: you who have
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PostScript will have noticed that my photo has returned to the
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top of the page. I re-scanned the sucker in the right way, and
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it takes up very little space in the document. And for those of
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you reading the ASCII version, consider both this and my earlier
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references to our cover as plugs for the PostScript version.
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That's all from me. Until 1992, I wish you all well.
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An Ounce of Prevention by Michael Ernst
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==========================================
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Flats or heels? Melissa stood, hands on her hips, and looked
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into her closet. Today would be her first day at a new job, so
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she wanted to look good, but they had seemed pretty casual when
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she'd interviewed last week, but on the other hand (or was this
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the first one again?) it was better to be overdressed than
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underdressed, which was in turn better than undressed, which she
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was now, and she had to leave very soon. Melissa shook her head
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to clear the nonsense, added a pair of low heels to the outfit
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she'd chosen the night before, and rapidly completed her toilet.
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She was on the road in twenty minutes; half an hour after that
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she reported to the personnel office of the McCarthy Research
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Institute. By the time she had completed a pile of paperwork,
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signed a nondisclosure agreement, heard lectures about her
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benefits and the importance of safety and the amount of time she
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was permitted to spend in the bathroom, been perfunctorily poked
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by bored doctors while describing her childhood diseases and
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inoculations, received a badge featuring her bug-eyed picture,
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and found her way to the building where she would be working, it
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seemed like days had passed. Mr. Hutchins ("call me Frank") took
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her to lunch at the company cafeteria. All of the food looked
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like plastic; Melissa finally decided on a garden salad, which,
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she surmised, couldn't be ruined too badly.
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After they'd taken their seats, her boss spoke affably around
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bites of a Super Combination Burrito. Melissa tried to keep her
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eyes off the burrito and on his face, but her eyes kept straying
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back to it as to the scene of a terrible accident. "I assume
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you've already run the personnel gauntlet this morning." Tempted
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to roll her eyes, Melissa permitted herself a nod and a small
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smile. "Did the bald guy with the tufts of hair sticking out of
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his ears tell you all about our swell insurance plan?"
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"No, it was a woman."
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"Ah, the Dragon Lady. Stocky, severe-looking, flinty eyes,
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always wears a suit she bought in 1953." Melissa nodded. "They
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say she smiled once, but that was before I started working
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here." Melissa tried to remember whether his yellow badge
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indicated between five and ten years of tenure or between ten
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and fifteen. Her own was a gaudy green which didn't go with her
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outfit at all.
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"Do you have any questions about McCarthy, or about the NDE
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group in particular? Last week I was so busy finding out how
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fast you could type and whether you knew the difference between
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a mouse and a rat, and which is which, that I didn't have much
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time to fill you in on other details." Melissa asked
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apologetically, "What exactly does your group do?" She threw out
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one of the few academic-sounding terms she knew. "Is it pure
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research?"
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Frank shook his head. "No, I don't think you could say that.
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It's about 80 percent research, and 20 percent playing practical
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jokes on one another." Melissa smiled wanly in response to his
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self-satisfied smirk and thought that, unpleasant as her last
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job had been, perhaps it had been a bad idea to resign with such
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finality. Fortunately, Frank's style settled down once he'd
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started talking; with an indulgent smile he left off his attack
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on the burrito and did his best to explain his group's raison
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d'�tre. Meanwhile, the grease pooled at one end of the oblong
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dish. Melissa tried to pay attention to what he was saying
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instead of wondering how long it would take the runoff to
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congeal and whether, if one were to pick up the burrito
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afterward, the solidified fat would stick to it like a waxy
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base.
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"NDE stands for Non-Destructive Evaluation; we investigate ways
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to test substances and devices without damaging them. A lot of
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tests are like striking a match to evaluate it. Sure, you find
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out whether the match was good, but it is worthless afterward,
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and that experiment tells you nothing -- except in a statistical
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sense -- about other matches." Frank explained that this method
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wasn't good enough for their customers. Melissa nodded
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attentively at breaks in the monologue and decided that eating
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her salad would take her mind off Frank's food. She was wrong.
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Frank went on to discuss the NDE philosophy in greater detail
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(Melissa slipped her feet out of her shoes, wished she'd chosen
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the flats after all, and thought about what she would wear the
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next day; she owned so little clothing that went with green) and
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to stress that although their testing was non-destructive, they
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did work with some dangerous materials and that safety concerns
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were of paramount importance. Melissa solemnly agreed and
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wondered where on earth he'd gotten that tacky tie. He went on
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about his group's fine record of safety and the elaborate
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precautions that were standard practice. His earnest sincerity
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about these safeguards was a strong contrast to the ennui of the
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morning lecturers, whose soporific delivery of rote material had
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left her with a sluggish feeling, as if she'd had a bad night's
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sleep. Frank seemed like a nice guy, even if he was a little out
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of it and had a sadly stunted sense of humor which brought to
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mind a plant left too long without sunlight. He was by turns
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sensitive to those around him -- he was attentive enough when he
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stopped talking long enough to ask Melissa a question -- and
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wrapped up in technical concerns. A typical engineer.
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Eventually he outlined Melissa's duties. Her primary objective
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-- he made it sound like a hill about to be assaulted by a
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company of Marines -- was to run interference with the
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bureaucracy so that he could do "real work." She was relieved
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that she was not expected to fetch coffee or make eleventh-hour
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telephone calls to locate a baby-sitter. Sick of running her
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last boss's errands, she had begun to encourage tradesmen's
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frequent misconception that she was his mistress. "Are these the
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shirts that Brian's wife dropped off or that I did?" she would
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ask the young man at the dry cleaner's. "It wouldn't do to mix
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them up," she'd add with a lascivious wink, then saunter out,
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hips swaying. The rumor didn't get back to her boss's wife
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before she quit, but she hoped it did afterward. She smiled, and
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Frank thought that she was responding to his feeble joke about
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keeping a capacitor from charging by taking away its credit
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cards. He had finished his burrito, and the pool of discolored,
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oily fat had disappeared as well. Frank remarked on her
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half-eaten salad, but Melissa said she wasn't very hungry.
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"Don't worry overmuch about your productivity at first," Frank
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said as they walked back. "Just get the feel of the place and
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meet the people. I'll ask the group members to introduce
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themselves and to make you feel at home." He muttered something
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about a test that afternoon, and Melissa imagined a room full of
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managers in shirtsleeves and pocket protectors seated at wooden
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desks, brows furrowed and tongues sticking out of the corners of
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their mouths as they filled out bubble forms with their #2
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pencils.
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Frank pointed out Melissa's desk, which sat bare and forlorn in
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a fence of waist-high partition walls like an empty doghouse in
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an abandoned backyard. Frank's office was just the opposite.
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Papers were piled on every surface except the chair, computer
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keyboard, and cappuccino machine. Books lay propped open under
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half-full coffee mugs, boxes made the entrance nearly impossible
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to negotiate, and Post-It notes wallpapered the area near his
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desk. Melissa instinctively recoiled. "Don't worry," he assured
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her, "I'll never ask you to search through here. Besides, if you
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were to try, you'd probably mess the place up so that I couldn't
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find anything."
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Melissa spent the next few hours raiding the supply room,
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organizing her desk, acquainting herself with the computer, and
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meeting people who came by to welcome her. The phone rang
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rarely, and Frank was out somewhere, so she figured it was okay
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to just sit and read about policies and procedures, computer
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programs, requisition protocols, company picnics, executive
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perquisites, and parking permits. Whenever she leaned back to
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take a break, her eyes were caught by a ludicrous poster of a
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rabbit with a shocking pink Band-Aid on one of its ears. Frank
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had pinned it up in the hallway, and its legend read, "Only A
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Dumb Bunny Thinks Safety Is A Matter Of Luck. Make '91 A Safer
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One. MRI."
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Around mid-afternoon, when she was poring over a manual which,
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on first glance, had appeared to be written in English, she
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noticed a lanky red- haired fellow leaning against the low wall
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of her cubicle; he was staring appreciatively down her blouse.
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He obviously approved of her Maidenform's delicate scalloped
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edging of sheer patterned lace, but had he noticed the satin
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center bow and the exquisite faux pearl detailing? Did he
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realize that its comfortable-yet-firm support was perfect for
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every day? Melissa straightened and offered a hello.
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He raised his eyes to hers. "Hi. I'm Josh McCarthy," he said
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with an excessively friendly smile, offering his hand to be
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shaken. At least he had a firm grip. "No relation, or I wouldn't
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have to work for a living. You must be Melissa Sweedler." He
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reads well, thought Melissa, but then checked the uncharitable
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thought. Perhaps she ought to give him more credit: while he had
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been looking straight at the name badge dangling from her blouse
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pocket, he probably hadn't even noticed it. "Welcome aboard; are
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you getting settled in all right?"
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"Well enough, except for having to read these manuals." Melissa
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gestured wearily at a heap of documentation whose covers
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proclaimed in bold letters their ease of use. "I think it's
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hopeless to try to squeeze myself into the mind of a technical
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writer; it's too cramped a fit." Josh frowned. "I'm a technical
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writer myself -- that one's mine." He pointed to one of the
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books in the pile, and Melissa blushed. Just when she was
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starting to get comfortable with these people, she had to put
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her foot in her mouth, which was particularly painful with
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heels. He rushed on. "Maybe I could help you get in the right
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frame of mind later. Over lunch tomorrow, maybe? For now,
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however, you should take a break. Would you like to experience
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an explosion?"
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"An explosion?"
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Josh nodded, then contradicted himself. "We're testing a blast
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containment system, and if it works -- which it will -- there
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won't be anything to see. But it's a good excuse to take a break
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and get outside. It's a beautiful day out," he added. It was
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indeed a lovely, cloudless day: when she'd searched for this
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building, a cool breeze had ruffled the trees' leaves with a
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gentle rustling and the promise of a delightful evening. Melissa
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was tempted, but she hesitated to leave her post. Josh looked
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puzzled and continued, "The whole group will be there, so
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there's no particular reason for you to stay here. Frank said he
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had invited you to watch."
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They walked out past the senior secretary, a timid-looking old
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creature with short white hair, wide startled eyes, lips in a
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perpetual moue beneath a downy moustache, and tacky pink
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earrings. She declined to come along but agreed to answer
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Melissa's phone if it rang. "I've seen enough of these boys'
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pranks; I don't need that kind of excitement."
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When she shook her head, her ears waggled, and she looked
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exactly like the bunny in the poster. Josh didn't seem too
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disappointed that she wasn't accompanying them.
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"I thought this was the Non-Destructive Evaluation group,"
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Melissa said as they emerged from the building. "Why are you
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setting off an explosion?"
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"One of our projects is the validation of blasting caps; the
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dangerously unstable ones are kept in a big steel box, and we're
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verifying that it's strong enough to be trusted." The weather
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was as pleasant as it had been before, and while the day was
|
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sunny, it wasn't uncomfortably hot this early in the summer.
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"The caps are detonated electrically, and we test them by
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running just a trickle of current through them." Josh went on
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about knees in characteristic curves and criteria for discarding
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bad caps; Melissa wished she was reading one of the relatively
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clear manuals instead. She looked appreciatively at the grounds,
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which were like a campus with their scattered buildings and
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grassy lawns, and wondered how many people were employed
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full-time just tending the greenery.
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"If the robot arm detects a bad cap, it drops it in a glorified
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safe. The safe has a capacity of one hundred caps, and it has
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been rated as capable of withstanding considerably more powerful
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blasts; our group has certified the plans as well, and in fact
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Frank had a hand in the design. We're paranoid -- well, Frank is
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-- so we're testing the safe ourselves, just to be sure. It's a
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waste of time and money, if you ask me, but no one does."
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Melissa made a noncommittal noise, and as they walked along Josh
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continued to chatter, periodically bobbing forward to catch her
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eye, which made Melissa feel obliged to nod at whatever he was
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saying at the time. She warded off his questions about where she
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lived and what she did on weekends. After what must have been
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only a few minutes, Josh pointed out, off to their right, an
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enormous wheel and rubber tire. It was mounted over an even
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larger metal drum which resembled the wheel of an asphalt roller
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on steroids; more machinery poked at unlikely angles from a
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gantry. "To test landing gear, we rev the drum up to five
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revolutions per second and then slam the wheel against it, to
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simulate a plane landing at 200 miles per hour. You can hear the
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reverberations a mile away. We repeat it until the landing gear
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breaks." Melissa began to realize that to these
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university-educated engineers, "non-destructive" meant something
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very different than it did to her.
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At her look -- she hadn't realized her reaction was so
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transparent - - Josh held his hands up in mock-defense. "Yes, I
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know it's not exactly non-destructive. But it's not destructive
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to the airplane, and besides, we have lots of extra landing
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gears. For some reason, our clients find it more convenient to
|
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send us dozens of whatever we need than to ask us how many we
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want and just ship that many. We end up having to store piles of
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the stuff." Melissa nodded; while Frank's office was by far the
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worst offender, she'd noticed crates and boxes scattered through
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the hallways and piled in unused offices, and one of her new
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keys -- her key ring now resembled a mace -- was to their
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warehouse.
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Soon they reached the test site, where a number of people were
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|
engaged in animated conversation outside a low, bunker-like
|
|
concrete building. Frank was conferring with someone from
|
|
Facilities, but when he had finished, he walked over briskly.
|
|
"Melissa! I'm so glad that Josh brought you along. I would have
|
|
myself, but I've been here for hours and you would have been
|
|
bored. Have you met everyone?" He made introductions, chided the
|
|
onlookers for turning a scientific experiment into a spectator
|
|
sport, and went off to quadruple-check the arrangements. Melissa
|
|
chatted idly with the cluster of people while wire was strung
|
|
from the shelter to a field where the safe sat, looking like a
|
|
child's toy at that distance.
|
|
|
|
Melissa was handed a blasting cap: a dud, Josh assured her, if
|
|
its current-voltage curve was to be believed, but he warned her
|
|
not to drop it just the same. It seemed remarkably light --
|
|
about an ounce, her postage-meter-trained fingers gauged -- to
|
|
be causing such a stir. "It's an experimental type that is more
|
|
powerful than older caps and so able to detonate more dynamite,"
|
|
someone said.
|
|
|
|
Shortly Frank shooed them all inside, where they gathered at the
|
|
tiny, shielded windows. "I give you an hour off work, and act
|
|
like a bunch of kids at the circus," he said in mock
|
|
exasperation. He activated the detonator and continued without
|
|
pause, "There's nothing to see." He was cut off by a tremendous
|
|
roar. The safe was tossed into the air and a hole appeared in
|
|
its side. Then dirt occluded the view from the shelter, and the
|
|
group remembered to take a collective breath. After the dust had
|
|
settled down, Frank led the way outside. Debris was scattered
|
|
all around; some pieces of shrapnel had nearly reached the
|
|
bunker. The safe, its thick metal sides bent and torn, was lying
|
|
half a dozen paces from a deep new crater. Frank shook his head
|
|
and kicked at a clod of dirt. "They certified this safe."
|
|
Melissa thought about telling the Dragon Lady she'd changed her
|
|
mind and would buy some insurance after all.
|
|
|
|
The failure of the safe did little to dampen the onlookers'
|
|
spirits -- in fact, most of them found it hilarious. They talked
|
|
and laughed on the walk back to their building, and Melissa
|
|
became increasingly comfortable with them; she didn't even mind
|
|
Josh's continued flirting. Well, not too much. She decided that
|
|
she was going to like this job after all. When they went inside,
|
|
they received grins and questions about what they'd been doing.
|
|
"That was even louder than the landing gear," said those who
|
|
hadn't come along.
|
|
|
|
Frank was an exception to the general mirth. He seemed
|
|
disappointed and somewhat preoccupied. When the group members
|
|
had returned to their offices, he paused at Melissa's desk.
|
|
"Melissa, I'd like you to take a memo to Facilities." He glanced
|
|
at his watch, hardly noticing her poised pencil. "You probably
|
|
have just enough time to walk it downstairs before they close
|
|
for the day. Ask them to take away, first thing tomorrow
|
|
morning, the two thousand extra blasting caps I've been storing
|
|
in my office."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael Ernst (mernst@theory.lcs.mit.edu)
|
|
-------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Michael Ernst is a graduate student in computer science at MIT.
|
|
He knows the difference between Trinidad and Tobago, and which
|
|
is which.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Experience Required by Robert Hurvitz
|
|
========================================
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson glanced one last time at the worthless resume
|
|
before feeding it into the paper shredder mounted on the edge of
|
|
his desk and directly over the trash can. "What a complete and
|
|
utter waste of my time," he muttered. Before opening the next
|
|
file, he jotted down on a Post-It note a quick reminder to give
|
|
the recruiting office a severe verbal lashing.
|
|
|
|
He punched the speaker-phone, said, "Send in the next
|
|
supplicant, Karen," and cut the connection.
|
|
|
|
As his office door opened, Mr. Peterson looked up from the new
|
|
resume and asked, "Daniel Smith?" Smith nodded. "Sit down,
|
|
Danny." Mr. Peterson motioned to a leather armchair in front of
|
|
his desk. "I hope you don't mind my calling you Danny. My
|
|
two-year-old son is named Daniel, and he likes to be called
|
|
Danny."
|
|
|
|
"My mother calls me Danny," said Smith.
|
|
|
|
"I see," said Mr. Peterson. He looked back down at the resume.
|
|
|
|
"How shall I address you, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Mr. Peterson will be fine. What makes you want to work for All
|
|
Edge Systems, and, more importantly, why do you think we'd even
|
|
want someone like you?"
|
|
|
|
"All Edge is the best company out there, and always will be. I
|
|
will not compromise my professional integrity by working at a
|
|
second rate business. I know that All Edge Systems wants only
|
|
the best men working for her, and, to put it simply and plainly,
|
|
I am the best."
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson regarded Daniel Smith. His short blond hair was
|
|
moussed back in a stylish wave. His pale blue eyes glinted self-
|
|
confidence, ambition, and that unmistakable killer instinct.
|
|
|
|
He was clad in a dark, pinstripe, Pierre Cardin two-piece suit
|
|
with matching power tie. His legs were crossed, and Mr. Peterson
|
|
could see that although his shoes shined as if they were brand
|
|
new, the worn sole clearly showed them to be many months old.
|
|
|
|
"Did you notice the fellow who was in here immediately before
|
|
you?"
|
|
|
|
A look of disdain crossed Smith's otherwise fine features.
|
|
"Unfortunately, yes. A pathetic excuse for a man. But I was
|
|
heartened to see him run from your office in tears. May I ask
|
|
what it was you said to him that caused such a delightful
|
|
reaction?"
|
|
|
|
"No, you may not." Mr. Peterson read a few more lines of Smith's
|
|
brag sheet and raised his eyebrows slightly. "Your resume claims
|
|
that you just received your M.B.A. from USC. I'm a Trojan man
|
|
myself. Class of '83. Tell me, is Professor Green still
|
|
teaching? He was my undergraduate advisor."
|
|
|
|
"Oh yes, Green's still around. Was he just as senile back then?"
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson smiled. "He had his occasional moment of lucidity.
|
|
He's a homosexual, you know."
|
|
|
|
"Yes, I took a class with him."
|
|
|
|
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
|
|
|
|
"Are you married, Danny?"
|
|
|
|
"Engaged."
|
|
|
|
"I see." Mr. Peterson read over the rest of the resume. "I
|
|
assume she would not divide your loyalties?"
|
|
|
|
"Of course not, sir. All Edge Systems would have me first and
|
|
foremost. I would not have it any other way." Smith crossed his
|
|
arms. "I did not choose my fiancee on some foolish whim."
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson closed Smith's folder and placed it on the desk.
|
|
"Needless to say, Danny, I'm quite impressed with you. However,
|
|
I don't think that you're properly suited for the job. Frankly,
|
|
I don't much like your tie. Thank you for your time, and you
|
|
know where the door is."
|
|
|
|
Smith squinted his eyes. "Excuse me, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Vacate my office, or I'll call security."
|
|
|
|
"Mr. Peterson, I don't believe you know how much this job means
|
|
to me." He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a .357 Magnum,
|
|
and aimed it steadily at Mr. Peterson's chest. "You will give me
|
|
the job. I will settle for nothing less."
|
|
|
|
Mr. Peterson smiled broadly, showing his teeth. "I like your
|
|
style, Danny-boy. Congratulations." He leaned forward and
|
|
punched the speaker- phone. "Karen, politely tell the other
|
|
prospectives to fuck off. We have our man."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Robert Hurvitz (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu)
|
|
--------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Robert Hurvitz is a senior at UC Berkeley. He wrote this story
|
|
at the request of a friend who was in severe pain and 2,000
|
|
miles away. He has previously appeared in both InterText and
|
|
Quanta. Not much is happening in his life at the moment, but he
|
|
hopes this will change soon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Slice of Mind by Phil Nolte
|
|
==============================
|
|
|
|
"Have you ever really thought, I mean really thought, about
|
|
thinking, Schultz?" Crawford asked me. The question took me
|
|
utterly by surprise, seeing as how the time was somewhen way
|
|
beyond my normal bedtime and my thought processes were, to say
|
|
the least, somewhat different than normal. Crawford and I had
|
|
sought refuge in a back corner of the small, dimly-lit,
|
|
smoke-filled apartment. The mindless drum machine-thumping of
|
|
one of those awful candy-rock groups with the pouty- voiced,
|
|
pre-pubescent female lead singer blaring on the stereo wasn't
|
|
helping my ability to think much either.
|
|
|
|
"Sure, I've thought about it," I said. "The whole concept is
|
|
kind of mind-boggling, if you get my drift." One side of Dr.
|
|
Nathan Crawford's lip curled up in a half-smile, half-smirk at
|
|
my half-assed attempt at a joke. I took a pull on a light beer
|
|
that was, by now, much too warm to be drinking.
|
|
|
|
"That's good, Schultz," he said, "but I'm serious. Tell me, if
|
|
you can, what exactly is a thought? Where do ideas come from?
|
|
The human brain is only another organ like a liver or a
|
|
pancreas, after all. Why don't we have a better understanding of
|
|
it?"
|
|
|
|
I shrugged. This sounded like a good discussion topic, the kind
|
|
you could get your teeth into. "Can we get out of here, Doc?
|
|
This party is about to break up anyway." He looked around the
|
|
hazy room, noticing that most of those still present were paired
|
|
up and oblivious to us anyway. He nodded and got up. I left the
|
|
rest of my wretched beer on the end table. We headed for the
|
|
little all-night coffee shop on the corner, a couple blocks
|
|
away, just off campus.
|
|
|
|
Crawford was one of those young profs who liked to spend time
|
|
with the students, after hours, away from the classroom
|
|
atmosphere. A few drinks -- on rare occasions a toke or two -- a
|
|
little music and everyone tended to let their hair down.
|
|
Crawford really got into that kind of stuff. The discussions
|
|
often got real interesting. He hated the comparison, but I
|
|
always thought he looked like a slightly taller version of
|
|
Richard Dreyfuss. He even had the animated gestures, the intense
|
|
facial expressions and the Van Dyke beard.
|
|
|
|
I was a Ph.D. student in Zoology, the same department as
|
|
Crawford, but I hadn't gone to the party seeking esoteric
|
|
conversation. I was looking for something more basic: female
|
|
companionship. As usual, having gone looking for it, I hadn't
|
|
found it. Not for lack of trying, mind you. But then, I'm sort
|
|
of a Maynard G. Krebs look-alike so I've gotten used to it. I
|
|
settled for the next best thing: the esoteric conversation -- at
|
|
least it was with somebody smarter than I was.
|
|
|
|
We settled into a well-worn red vinyl booth and ordered some
|
|
onion rings and coffee -- a couple of things that the little
|
|
restaurant was famous for. The coffee came right away. Crawford
|
|
blew gently across the surface of the hot, dark liquid and took
|
|
an exploratory sip. It was like that was all he needed to get
|
|
back in gear. He picked up the thread of our previous
|
|
conversation just about where we left off.
|
|
|
|
"What this thing we call 'the mind' anyway?" he asked
|
|
rhetorically. "When you see something or hear something or touch
|
|
or taste or smell something, the brain reacts in some way.
|
|
Thoughts are the result. How do they happen?" I shrugged. He
|
|
paused for long enough to take another sip of hot brew. "I'm not
|
|
sure, either, but think of this: it all goes on inside your
|
|
head, inside a space about the size of a softball. It may not
|
|
sound too romantic, Schultz, but tonight when you were trying to
|
|
make time with that buxom little junior, it was ultimately her
|
|
brain you had to communicate with, wasn't it. One rough-surfaced
|
|
softball-sized organ to another!"
|
|
|
|
"I don't know, Doc," I said, smirking, "I'm pretty sure it
|
|
wasn't her brain I was interested in!"
|
|
|
|
"There will come a time when your thought processes are free
|
|
from the influence of your hormones, Schultz. I pray, for your
|
|
sake, that the day isn't too far off!"
|
|
|
|
I decided to get a little more serious. The short walk in the
|
|
cool night air and a cup of black coffee had done wonders for my
|
|
head. My mind had cleared. Besides, grad students just love to
|
|
cross wits with profs. What the hell, I thought, I might even
|
|
learn something!
|
|
|
|
"So how would you go about studying the mind and thoughts and
|
|
brain function, Doc? Like, where would you start?" I asked,
|
|
sensing that he was really into the subject and only a little
|
|
priming was needed to set him off. I was right.
|
|
|
|
"Naturally, there would be real value in comparing abnormal
|
|
brains with normal ones." Our onion rings came. The air was
|
|
filled with the wonderful, sinful aroma of golden-brown breading
|
|
crisp-fried in oil.
|
|
|
|
"You mean like comparing college students with insurance
|
|
salesmen?" I asked, as I handed him the catsup. He chuckled,
|
|
took the offered bottle and poured a large, red dollop on his
|
|
plate.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, Brian, but don't forget that there's another end of the
|
|
spectrum. One could probably learn more by studying the very
|
|
intelligent. Of course, some of that work has already been done.
|
|
Broca's brain is preserved in a jar. So is Einstein's."
|
|
|
|
"Broca?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
"Paul Broca. He was a French scientist who did the pioneer work
|
|
on human brain function. The speech area of the brain is named
|
|
for him. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him." I shrugged,
|
|
Crawford continued. "Believe it or not, the scientists who
|
|
studied those very special brains found little to no difference
|
|
between them and that of a 'normal' human." He paused and
|
|
selected the largest onion ring from the basket, dipped it in
|
|
catsup and then held it suspended above the plate between his
|
|
thumb and forefinger while he made his next point.
|
|
|
|
"Perhaps the strangest case of all is that of Vladimir Lenin,
|
|
the Soviet politician and leader. After taking Lenin's brain out
|
|
of his skull, his doctors used standard tissue techniques to
|
|
preserve it and then proceeded to slice it up into sections,
|
|
some 30,000 of them." He smiled, and bit into the crisp golden
|
|
circle. He watched me for my reaction.
|
|
|
|
"Wow!" I said, around a mouthful of the succulent fried food.
|
|
"What did they find?"
|
|
|
|
"Absolutely nothing," he replied, eyeing the basket.
|
|
|
|
"Jesus, what a waste!" I said, shaking my head.
|
|
|
|
"Perhaps not," said Crawford, as he selected the largest of the
|
|
two remaining onion rings. "Perhaps they didn't know what to
|
|
look for."
|
|
|
|
"What do you mean by that, Doc?"
|
|
|
|
"Could be there's more to the thought process than just simple
|
|
Biology and Chemistry."
|
|
|
|
"Like what?" I said as I grabbed the last tidbit out of the
|
|
basket.
|
|
|
|
"Well, like Physics, for instance. There have been some
|
|
remarkable discoveries recently. The discoverers don't know it
|
|
yet, but some of their findings have immediate applications for
|
|
my research."
|
|
|
|
And it went on from there. I was hooked. Dr. Nathan Crawford
|
|
spun an incredible tale of new and absurd theories. Only, as he
|
|
explained them they didn't sound so absurd. They sounded
|
|
exciting, even plausible, and I hung on to every word. After an
|
|
hour that seemed like about five minutes, I snapped out of an
|
|
intense concentration to find that our coffee was stone cold and
|
|
there was nothing but a few congealed crumbs in the onion
|
|
basket. It was like we had been alone in the little restaurant.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly, sadly, it was time to go. You can only sustain that
|
|
kind of intensity for so long. My head was still reeling with
|
|
all the new wave brain theories that had been crammed into it.
|
|
|
|
"Stop by my lab tomorrow afternoon, Schultz. I'll show you some
|
|
of my results," he said, as we parted company in the parking lot
|
|
of the little coffee shop.
|
|
|
|
"Sure, Doc, you bet!" I said enthusiastically. I walked back to
|
|
my one-room apartment to a bed that I knew wouldn't see much
|
|
sleeping that evening.
|
|
|
|
|
|
All the next day, my mind was filled with thoughts about
|
|
thinking. (Read that last sentence again. It will give you some
|
|
idea of my state of mind that day.) All the next day my classes
|
|
seemed to take forever. To make matters worse, I also had to
|
|
T.A. the afternoon lab session. That went quickly too -- kind of
|
|
like a snail in an ultrafreezer. Finally, some twenty minutes
|
|
late, I managed to herd the last of the sophomores out of the
|
|
Vertebrate Zoology lab. As quickly as I could, I de-prepped the
|
|
teaching room, shed my lab coat and washed the formaldehyde off
|
|
my hands. Two minutes later I was up on the fourth floor getting
|
|
ready to enter Crawford's lab.
|
|
|
|
I stopped myself right by the corner of the door. Something odd
|
|
was going on. Some poor son of a bitch was in the middle of a
|
|
real, old- fashioned ass-chewing. It only took a moment to
|
|
figure out that someone was Dr. Nathan Crawford. The one doing
|
|
the chewing was none other than W. Oscar McBride, Dean of the
|
|
College of Science and Mathematics! This had to be heavy duty
|
|
stuff! I was glad I wasn't in the room but I couldn't help
|
|
myself as I eavesdropped with a sort of horrified fascination.
|
|
|
|
Old Oscar was practically shouting.
|
|
|
|
"... the most hare-brained idea I have ever heard of!"
|
|
|
|
"I believe I can explain..." began Crawford softly.
|
|
|
|
"Explain! Christ, Nate, how could you be so god-damned stupid?
|
|
You can't give controlled substances to students even if they
|
|
are volunteers and I don't care if they each signed ten waivers!
|
|
You simply cannot do that! As if that weren't enough, I have it
|
|
on good authority that you've been at student residences where
|
|
marijuana was used and minors were consuming alcohol! On
|
|
numerous occasions! What were you thinking? Have you no sense of
|
|
propriety, Nate?"
|
|
|
|
"As I started to say, Dr. McBride, I believe I can explain..."
|
|
Crawford began, quietly, reasonably, only to be cut off again.
|
|
|
|
"Not this time, Nate. I can't do anything to help you. Even if
|
|
you had tenure, which you don't, I'm not sure we could beat this
|
|
one! There are people in high places who want your head! You'd
|
|
better start packing."
|
|
|
|
McBride almost ran me over as he stormed out of the lab. I
|
|
pretended like I had just arrived and was none the wiser. He
|
|
looked at me with his reddened face and shook his head before
|
|
steaming off down the hall and around the corner.
|
|
|
|
I peeked around the doorjamb. Crawford was looking in my
|
|
direction but didn't appear to see me. I waved and said: "Hey,
|
|
Doc, is everything all right? He started, recognized me and
|
|
motioned me inside. He was shook but, hey, I guess that's
|
|
understandable, given the circumstances.
|
|
|
|
"No, Brian, it most certainly is not. I just got fired. Hard to
|
|
believe, really."
|
|
|
|
"Uh... I know," I confessed, "I couldn't help it. I overheard
|
|
the last couple minutes out in the hall."
|
|
|
|
"I thought that this University was different... but, of course
|
|
they're all the same."
|
|
|
|
Amazingly, Crawford sort of shrugged and seemed to shake off the
|
|
mood. Suddenly he became a man of action.
|
|
|
|
"No doubt they'll send security over to search my office." He
|
|
looked at me. "I want you to keep something safe for me. This is
|
|
very important, can you do it?"
|
|
|
|
"Uh ... sure, Doc," I said, praying it wasn't a kilo of grass or
|
|
an ounce of coke or something. I was really a pretty straight
|
|
guy. I mean, like, drugs had never appealed to me much. Sex and
|
|
Rock n' Roll, fine. Drugs, no. I swallowed, "What is it?"
|
|
|
|
"You remember my trip to Moscow last July?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, you took some great slides. Wish I could've been with
|
|
you."
|
|
|
|
"Those weren't the only slides I brought back with me." I gave
|
|
him a puzzled look. He smiled without humor. "It was frightfully
|
|
expensive, Brian, but I managed to get a few of those 30,000
|
|
sections of Lenin's brain and smuggle them back here. Five, to
|
|
be exact."
|
|
|
|
"No shit, Doc?"
|
|
|
|
"No shit, Schultz!" he replied.
|
|
|
|
I shook my head in disbelief.
|
|
|
|
"They have proven invaluable for testing certain aspects of my
|
|
theories."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, I'll take them. When do you want them back?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm not sure. I'll call for them when I get settled. In few
|
|
weeks, a month at most."
|
|
|
|
I left the lab before security got there. I didn't see Crawford
|
|
again for a month and a half.
|
|
|
|
But man, did some shit happen!
|
|
|
|
The weekend after Crawford got fired was the long Thanksgiving
|
|
one, a four-day extravaganza. When we got back from break,
|
|
Crawford was long gone. I remember the scene when I got back to
|
|
the Zoo department on Monday after the Holiday. The place was
|
|
all aflurry with campus security, real downtown cops, and
|
|
high-level administrators.
|
|
|
|
"What's goin' down?" I asked one of the campus guards, a real
|
|
large, badly overweight type who was even then eating a jelly
|
|
donut. He shook his head in disgust.
|
|
|
|
"That Crawford guy ripped off some stuff outta the lab las'
|
|
weekend," he said around a mouthful of donut. "The Dean's pretty
|
|
torqued about it! Guess he's got good reason, I hear there was a
|
|
lot of e'spensive stuff in there!"
|
|
|
|
I looked into the lab, over the yellow tape of the police
|
|
barrier. Crawford had moved out. And I do mean out. McBride
|
|
almost had the big one when he found out about it. Believe me,
|
|
if they ever catch Crawford they'll put him away for good. You
|
|
see, the halls had been all but empty with everyone out for the
|
|
holiday and campus security had been its usual (that is to say:
|
|
incompetent) self. Crawford hired himself a couple of brawny
|
|
football-player types and backed a large U-haul truck up to the
|
|
lab.
|
|
|
|
He took everything.
|
|
|
|
It was at least a million bucks worth of stuff! Good stuff. Big
|
|
stuff like the ultracentrifuge, the gas chromatograph, the HPLC,
|
|
the growth chambers, little stuff like pH meters and electronic
|
|
balances, and all the weird, one-of-a-kind (and expensive) stuff
|
|
that he'd made to test his pet theories. As Dr. Seuss would've
|
|
said: "He stole the roast beast! Why, he even stole the last can
|
|
of Who Hash!" Heck, the ol' grinch himself couldn't have done a
|
|
better job of stripping that lab then Nate Crawford had!
|
|
|
|
Yeah, it was all gone and so was Crawford. I had to hand it to
|
|
him, he sure had a knack for getting his way. Two weeks after
|
|
that I saw an obscure notice in the daily paper stating that
|
|
someone had stolen the brain of the famous French scientist,
|
|
Paul Broca, out of the museum where it had been kept for so many
|
|
years. There were no suspects.
|
|
|
|
No suspects? I think they'd better step up the security on
|
|
Einstein's brain unless they want to lose it too.
|
|
|
|
Crawford came for his Lenin slides one day with about 20 minutes
|
|
warning. I got them for them out of the hiding place I'd used
|
|
and we talked for a few minutes. He spent a lot of time looking
|
|
over his shoulder. Guess I couldn't blame him. Weird. It was
|
|
like a scene out of a bad "B" sci-fi movie or something except
|
|
that he wasn't wearing a cape and I'm not a hunchback. He asked
|
|
if I wanted to come and work with him at a clandestine, but
|
|
well-equipped lab he'd set up. He was pretty sure he was on the
|
|
verge of some big breakthroughs and allowed as how he could use
|
|
some competent help. I don't know if he liked my answer or not.
|
|
|
|
I told him I'd think about it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Phil Nolte (nolte@idui1.BITNET)
|
|
---------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Phil Nolte is assistant editor of InterText, as well as being an
|
|
extension seed potation specialist in -- of all places -- Idaho.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rebel Cause by Michel Forget
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
Kevin had been sleeping for nearly three hours when his life
|
|
fell to pieces before his eyes. Through the blasted shards of
|
|
what had once been the door to his modern two-story home emerged
|
|
seven Government Enforcers with blazing weapons in their hands
|
|
and murder in their hearts. Shocked from sleep by the sudden
|
|
flurry of activity, Kevin barely had time to stumble to his feet
|
|
and murmur a plaintive question before he was roughly thrown to
|
|
the ground and the smoking muzzle of an automatic weapon was
|
|
pressed hard against his temple.
|
|
|
|
"Kevin Gallant!" shouted one of the black-cloaked figures.
|
|
|
|
It was all Kevin could do to mumble affirmation, his eyes fixed
|
|
nervously on the muzzle of the gun pointing at his head.
|
|
|
|
"You have been tried and convicted of conspiracy against the
|
|
freely elected People's Government. This heinous crime,
|
|
according to Clause VII of the new Constitution, which was
|
|
drafted by the very government you sought to overthrow, is no
|
|
longer punishable by death."
|
|
|
|
Relief flowed through Kevin like a fresh breeze as he learned
|
|
that he wasn't going to die. The new government really was a
|
|
government for the people, just as the banners and signs had
|
|
proclaimed during last month's election. Kevin knew that he had
|
|
not done what he was being accused of, but he was now confident
|
|
that the whole matter could be cleared up before anything of a
|
|
permanent nature happened to him.
|
|
|
|
"Thank God, " he whispered, an audible sigh escaping his lips.
|
|
|
|
"I wouldn't," one of the Government Enforcers sneered. "The
|
|
punishment you do receive will be so bad that you'll probably
|
|
wish you were dead. Do you understand what you tried to do?"
|
|
|
|
"I didn't do anything, " Kevin asserted in a slightly trembling
|
|
voice.
|
|
|
|
With a curse, the Enforcer came forward and roughly kicked Kevin
|
|
in the side.
|
|
|
|
"Nothing? You tried to bring down the only government to give
|
|
the people a fair shake in forty-seven years! There was a time,
|
|
and it wasn't too long ago, when it was a crime to read a book
|
|
or gather in groups, or even say what you felt. Now, the
|
|
government provides wholesome literature for any citizen who
|
|
asks, provides places for supervised public gatherings, and
|
|
conducts surveys to determine what the people want from their
|
|
government. The world is changing, and that change cannot be
|
|
halted for the sake of a few malcontents like you!"
|
|
|
|
"But I haven't --" Kevin started to say, but thought better of
|
|
further protest when the Enforcer raised a fist and made as if
|
|
he would strike Kevin if he finished the sentence.
|
|
|
|
Kevin was roughly jerked to his feet, and a thin, silver collar
|
|
was fastened around his neck. The Enforcer who was going to hit
|
|
Kevin only seconds earlier pressed a green button on the side of
|
|
his ebony helmet, mumbled something Kevin could not hear, and
|
|
then watched as Kevin's limp body stiffened and then dropped to
|
|
the floor, drained of any ability to resist.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kevin's eyelids fluttered open after an unknown amount of time,
|
|
and he once again became aware of his surroundings. He was in a
|
|
dark room, with steel panelled walls. The room only had a cold
|
|
steel pallet which served as a bed and a straight-backed steel
|
|
chair for furnishings. The only source of illumination was a
|
|
cold white energy panel near the ceiling. There was a strange
|
|
scent in the air which Kevin could not identify.
|
|
|
|
Where am I? Kevin wondered.
|
|
|
|
With some effort, Kevin forced himself to his feet and stumbled
|
|
to the door. Turning the handle, he discovered that the door was
|
|
locked.
|
|
|
|
"Damn, " he said aloud, leaning weakly against the door. "Where
|
|
am I? I didn't do anything. When will I be able to leave?"
|
|
|
|
Just then, a terrifying thought occurred to Kevin.
|
|
|
|
What if I never...
|
|
|
|
Kevin had never been brave, and now his fear or permanent
|
|
imprisonment and the disruption of his life allowed his thoughts
|
|
to burst wildly beyond control.
|
|
|
|
...never let me out...help me...not guilty! ...guilty?... never
|
|
let me out...forever...why?...help me...!
|
|
|
|
Kevin sank weakly to the ground, tears beginning to stream from
|
|
his eyes.
|
|
|
|
...Please!...
|
|
|
|
Some time later, long after Kevin had run out of tears to shed
|
|
over his shattered life, Kevin felt the weight of the door to
|
|
his cell shoved against him roughly. He quickly scrambled out of
|
|
the way to allow the door to open freely. A short, balding man
|
|
stepped past the black-clad Enforcer who had opened the door and
|
|
sat down in the straight-backed chair. The man had a
|
|
grey-streaked beard, and a hard, chiseled face. A pair of
|
|
wire-frame glasses rested on the bridge of the man's nose. He
|
|
was frowning.
|
|
|
|
"Have you been crying, Mr. Gallant? You didn't need to, you
|
|
know. Your judge was ordered to suspend your sentence. I am Dr.
|
|
William Shane, and I have been selected to help you through the
|
|
difficult process of harmonizing your thoughts and views on
|
|
certain matters with those of the government."
|
|
|
|
Kevin looked up at the man in confusion.
|
|
|
|
"Harmonize?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes. In time, you will understand. It is something that must be
|
|
done if you are going to be re-introduced into society, or serve
|
|
the government."
|
|
|
|
"Why?" Kevin asked, not particularly liking the sound of the
|
|
word 'harmonize'.
|
|
|
|
"Trust me, our way is better. The rebels don't understand that
|
|
control is needed if man is going to remain a single group with
|
|
a single goal. If everyone went his own way, trying to win
|
|
others over to his way of doing things, then there would be
|
|
chaos. Don't you see what would be the result if the rebels had
|
|
there way?"
|
|
|
|
"No," Kevin answered, not quite sure of how to respond.
|
|
|
|
Kevin had never been disloyal to the government in his life, and
|
|
thus had never given much thought to what would happen if the
|
|
rebels took control of the government.
|
|
|
|
"I'll tell you what would happen, if you'll listen. There would
|
|
be another round of faction politics. Men would fight against
|
|
each other and deceive each other, like they did hundreds of
|
|
years ago. The peace that we have enforced for all these years
|
|
would crumble as if it had never existed. Our way is better. If
|
|
everyone has the same goal -- is on the same side -- we can
|
|
prevent that from ever happening. As long as we are united,
|
|
nothing can hurt us. Do you see?"
|
|
|
|
Since Kevin had nearly the same point of view on the matter, it
|
|
wasn't hard for him to agree. Unfortunately, Kevin thought, his
|
|
agreement probably wouldn't be enough to prevent him from being
|
|
harmonized.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, Kevin was right. His treatment, as it came to be
|
|
called, began the morning after his meeting with Doctor Shane.
|
|
The light steel door to Kevin's cell was thrown open by a
|
|
black-cloaked Enforcer, and Kevin was roughly dragged out of
|
|
bed.
|
|
|
|
"Where are you taking me?" he asked, a tremor of fear riding in
|
|
his voice.
|
|
|
|
Have they decided to punish me after all?
|
|
|
|
"Never mind. You'll find out soon enough."
|
|
|
|
Kevin wanted to resist, but found that he lacked the strength of
|
|
will, as well as the physical strength, to resist the armored
|
|
man pushing him toward an unknown future. Long after Kevin had
|
|
lost his bearing among the twists and turns of the building in
|
|
which he was being held prisoner, he was shoved into another
|
|
room.
|
|
|
|
Like his cell, this room had steel panelling and was lit by a
|
|
cold white energy panel. Unlike his room, though, there was a
|
|
chair with many straps and buckles where the bed should have
|
|
been and there were two Enforcers standing on either side of the
|
|
chair. Doctor Shane was sitting in the corner beside a panel of
|
|
buttons.
|
|
|
|
"Good day, Mr. Gallant. Have a seat, if you will." he said,
|
|
gesturing toward the chair.
|
|
|
|
When Kevin hesitated to sit in the chair, the two Enforcers
|
|
stepped forward and "assisted" Kevin into it. After he was
|
|
safely strapped in, the Enforcers returned to their positions on
|
|
either side of the chair.
|
|
|
|
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked. Fear was quickly
|
|
becoming a permanent emotion inside Kevin.
|
|
|
|
"It won't hurt. This is how we are going to harmonize your
|
|
thoughts. It is a little crude, but it won't hurt you. There are
|
|
subtler ways to do this, but this has proven to be the most
|
|
effective we have found."
|
|
|
|
Doctor Shane slid his fingers over the various buttons on the
|
|
wall until he found the one that he desired, and then gently
|
|
depressed it. A panel on the ceiling slid soundlessly to one
|
|
side, and a delicate looking steel apparatus slowly began to
|
|
lower. Four needle-thin rods extended from the base of the
|
|
lowering machine. After a few seconds of incomprehension, Kevin
|
|
realized with stark terror that his head was directly below the
|
|
needles. He struggled then, like he had never struggled before
|
|
in his life, but the Enforcers moved forward to hold his head
|
|
still as the rods penetrated his skull. After that, Kevin didn't
|
|
struggle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Months passed as Kevin's treatment continued. Every day he was
|
|
subjected to the torment of the chair as his every thought was
|
|
sucked out of his mind and replaced with a correct thought.
|
|
Kevin learned about the government in ways he would always wish
|
|
to forget. None of the truth was held back.
|
|
|
|
At first Kevin was appalled that he had supported the government
|
|
that was doing this to him, but he eventually learned. Constant
|
|
bombardment by a set of fixed ideals forced him to learn his
|
|
place in the world.
|
|
|
|
Kevin wasn't released when his treatment was complete, but he
|
|
didn't notice. His government had need of loyal men, and he was
|
|
willing to serve. Kevin asked to be trained as an Enforcer, and
|
|
since the government had no cause to doubt his loyalty, he was
|
|
trained. His first assignment after being awarded his weapons
|
|
was to lead a group of Enforcers to a man's home, arrest him,
|
|
and bring him to Doctor Shane for harmonizing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
As Kevin and his team carried their prisoner away, two men
|
|
looked on from a nearby window with somber expressions on their
|
|
faces.
|
|
|
|
"Did we do the right thing?" one asked.
|
|
|
|
"You mean reporting Gallant to the Enforcers? I think we did."
|
|
the other replied.
|
|
|
|
"But we destroyed an innocent man's life, and what did we gain?
|
|
Now there's another Enforcer to impose the will of the
|
|
government on the people. What good is that?"
|
|
|
|
"You know how he was trained. The government's set of ideals was
|
|
forced on him until he buckled under. For now, he'll do their
|
|
work. But eventually, maybe not for a few years, he will
|
|
recover. I know he will. He may even rise to a high position
|
|
among the Enforcers. And then we might have a valuable ally. It
|
|
hurts to keep reporting these innocent people to the Enforcers,
|
|
I know, but what else can we do? When they recover, they'll be
|
|
in a position to rip the government apart from the inside. We
|
|
have to do it."
|
|
|
|
"In the name of the cause, " the other whispered, agreeing but
|
|
not sounding very happy about it. "I hope for all of our sakes
|
|
that you're right about this, Dr. Shane."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michel Forget (mforget@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca)
|
|
----------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Michel Forget is a new author, and this is his first
|
|
publication. This is also his first submission. He is eighteen
|
|
years old, and enjoys writing short stories and programming
|
|
computers. He also has a cat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Scratch Buffer by Steve Connelly
|
|
=======================================
|
|
|
|
Jason stood in his office waiting while the software support
|
|
representative from the Digital Utilities Corporation cajoled
|
|
the new mag tapes into the DUCstation like a parent tricking his
|
|
baby into eating creamed spinach. The small office adjoined a
|
|
large white room that housed the 10-foot black cube of the
|
|
university's new supercomputer.
|
|
|
|
Striding across the machine room was the computer center's
|
|
director, Neville. He wore a pinstriped gray suit, pinstriped
|
|
shirt, and gray pinstriped tie. His hair was mostly gray except
|
|
for some thin stripes of black. A beeper clung to his belt, and
|
|
a mini phone-fax bulged from his back pocket. He said to Jason,
|
|
"The supercomputer is still overheating when we approach the
|
|
performance needed for the Ichikani project, so I've decided to
|
|
improve cooling by increasing the air flow through the machine.
|
|
Since the air comes in through the vent in the floor of your
|
|
office, you may notice a strong draft..."
|
|
|
|
Jason slumped against the wall, wondering how to issue a small
|
|
craft advisory for his office.
|
|
|
|
While Neville continued, his fax machine began to excrete narrow
|
|
sheets of paper, which plopped to the ground behind him. "...the
|
|
air then passes underneath the floor and across the coils that
|
|
hold the liquid nitrogen, and finally blows upward through the
|
|
supercomputer, cooling it."
|
|
|
|
Jason sneered at the panel of blinking red lights on the face of
|
|
the black cube. "Why couldn't they have built the coolant pipes
|
|
right in the computer, like they did with the old Crays?"
|
|
|
|
"A point well taken," Neville chirped, "but let me play devil's
|
|
advocate and note that, with one million interconnected
|
|
processors, the new Connection Machine is far larger and more
|
|
complex than a Cray or any other machine. The engineering
|
|
involved in doing what you suggest would be unimaginable."
|
|
|
|
"A point well taken", Jason chirped, "but let me play devil's
|
|
advocate and say fall before he who rules the nether darkness!
|
|
Sate his glorious lust or be slathered under his tormented
|
|
minions!"
|
|
|
|
"Jason?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"What the hell are you doing?"
|
|
|
|
Jason lowered his fists and let his eyes roll forward from the
|
|
back of his head. "I'm advocating the devil."
|
|
|
|
"You really don't care what I think of you, do you?"
|
|
|
|
"I figure that, with you, I have nothing to lose."
|
|
|
|
"Another point well taken." Neville scooped up his pile of
|
|
droppings. As he departed he said, "I need the data formats for
|
|
the project by tomorrow."
|
|
|
|
Jason nodded.
|
|
|
|
The DUC software support rep said to Jason, "Do you have the
|
|
time?"
|
|
|
|
"No," replied Jason, "It would take weeks to do those formats
|
|
right."
|
|
|
|
"I mean do you know what time it is? I have to set the system
|
|
time."
|
|
|
|
"I don't wear a watch. I use the little clock displayed on the
|
|
workstation screen."
|
|
|
|
"Me too, but that's what I have to set. Hmm. My stomach is
|
|
telling me it's about noon." He entered a value for the time:
|
|
12:00:00.0000. "Your DUCstation is ready. Let me show you some
|
|
of the new features of the Uterix operating system." He rubbed
|
|
his hands together greedily and started twitching the mouse
|
|
around. "Uterix now has 8-bit color illustrated versions of
|
|
'encyclopedia' and 'webster'." He typed "webster" to start the
|
|
program.
|
|
|
|
"Inside the company, we call this program 'DUCtionary'...."
|
|
Several pages of print spread across the screen. The DUC man
|
|
blurted, "What the heck? This isn't the dictionary. I'll have to
|
|
submit a DUCreport about this...."
|
|
|
|
Jason leaned to the workstation to read the text.
|
|
|
|
...was later immortalized in Benet's "The Devil and Daniel
|
|
Webster." In the story, Webster defends a man who has sold his
|
|
soul to the devil, called Scratch, in return for 10 years of
|
|
prosperity. Though the contract is valid, Webster finally
|
|
outwits the devil by arguing --
|
|
|
|
|
|
"What the heck is this stuff?" blathered the DUC man.
|
|
|
|
"It's knowledge," Jason volunteered. "I think you typed
|
|
'webster' in a window you were already running encyclopedia in."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, so it looked up 'webster' in the encyclopedia. Heh. I
|
|
must've pushed the DUCrodent into the wrong DUCwindow." He moved
|
|
his cursor into another window. "The new version of webster is
|
|
Uterix-enhanced to provide the definition of any computer term.
|
|
So, when I type 'daemon', it displays the definition."
|
|
|
|
daemon \'de--m*n\ n [ Uterix (TM), fr. Gk daimon ] A program
|
|
that runs in the background, without an associated terminal or
|
|
login shell.
|
|
|
|
"In fact, I can look up the definition of 'Uterix' and it will
|
|
-- what the heck? 'Word not recognized'? Oh, I forgot the 'TM'
|
|
after 'Uterix'. There we go...."
|
|
|
|
Uterix (TM) \'yu:t-*-r*ks 'tee 'em\ n [ Uterix (TM) ] A
|
|
multitasking computer operating system invented by the Digital
|
|
Utilities Corporation and no one else and accepted as the
|
|
standard by everyone on earth.
|
|
|
|
Jason said, "Look up the definition of 'Unix'."
|
|
|
|
"How do you spell that again?"
|
|
|
|
"U,N,I,X."
|
|
|
|
"Nope. 'Word not found'. But I think it means 'castrated young
|
|
men who guard a harem'."
|
|
|
|
"I was referring to the operating system called 'Unix'."
|
|
|
|
The DUC man frowned. "Hmm. Never heard of it." He flicked the
|
|
mouse a few times. "Another feature is 'automatic file
|
|
completion'. You type just the first few letters of a file name
|
|
and then hit the escape key, and the system will complete the
|
|
file."
|
|
|
|
"You mean to say it will complete the file name," Jason noted.
|
|
|
|
"That's what I said, didn't I?"
|
|
|
|
"You said it will complete the file, as if you could type the
|
|
name of an empty file and the system would finish a program for
|
|
you. If you could do that, then you'd have something."
|
|
|
|
The support rep stared at him. "Maybe in the next release."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason entered a small terminal room where he saw Venkataramanyam
|
|
"Skip" Natarajan, a geology graduate student. Skip was sitting
|
|
at a high-resolution imaging workstation with a touch-sensitive
|
|
display. Menus of options flashed on and off as he rhythmically
|
|
banged his head against the screen.
|
|
|
|
Jason looked over Skip's shoulder. All his icons were of Munch's
|
|
woodcut, "The Scream."
|
|
|
|
Skip greeted Jason. "If a computer has a touch-sensitive screen,
|
|
can it feel pain?"
|
|
|
|
"No," Jason advised, "Computers can only give pain. What's the
|
|
problem?"
|
|
|
|
"They just installed a user-friendly, device-independent, load-
|
|
adaptable, ANSI-compliant image archiving system that's so large
|
|
it left me no disk space for saving these images. I tried to
|
|
send mail to the operator on duty, but the computer just says
|
|
'/dev/null not found'."
|
|
|
|
"I can fix /dev/null so you won't get that message anymore."
|
|
Jason took a seat. "Usually, when we run out of disk, we just
|
|
e-mail the files to a machine that's down, and in three days the
|
|
files come back as undeliverable mail."
|
|
|
|
"But I have to show this to Dr. Ichikani later today!" Skip
|
|
began to rhythmically bang his head on the keyboard, causing
|
|
menus of options to appear and disappear. He murmured, "There's
|
|
also a keyboard interface."
|
|
|
|
Jason piped up. "Why don't you post your files to a network
|
|
newsgroup? Then they'll automatically be stored on our news
|
|
server."
|
|
|
|
"They won't let me post my own work to a public newsgroup."
|
|
|
|
"Submit your images to the group 'alt.sex.pictures'."
|
|
|
|
Skip's eyes widened. "There's a newsgroup for naughty pictures?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure. Did you think programmers had no sex life at all? Send
|
|
your images to the group's moderator; he's allowed to post
|
|
anything he wants.
|
|
|
|
Skip frowned, "Why would this moderator be interested in
|
|
satellite photos?"
|
|
|
|
"Well," Jason mused, "when a guy looks at low-res pornography
|
|
all day, he starts seeing things. Just give your picture a title
|
|
that will cue his imagination. What's the image on the screen?"
|
|
|
|
"The San Andreas Fault."
|
|
|
|
"Hmm. Change it to 'Andrea'."
|
|
|
|
"Andrea's Fault?"
|
|
|
|
"Andrea's Cleavage."
|
|
|
|
Skip nodded. "How about this picture, the Fault line of the
|
|
Lesser Antilles?"
|
|
|
|
"Aunt Tilly's Cleavage."
|
|
|
|
"You're good at this."
|
|
|
|
"It's my job," replied Jason. "I'm a programmer."
|
|
|
|
Skip nodded. "And perhaps you are a patron of alt.sex.pictures?"
|
|
|
|
"Nope. Since the Ichikani geophysics project started, I've had
|
|
naught time for naughty, even in pictures."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Back in his small office, Jason read an e-mail message from
|
|
Neville:
|
|
|
|
I need a synopsis of the release notes for the new version of
|
|
Uterix, and then I need the specification of the data formats
|
|
for the geophysics project. Also, note that I have removed the
|
|
label of the "A" key on your keyboard; in an effort to encourage
|
|
touch-typing proficiency among the staff, I will be removing one
|
|
label each day.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Neville henpecks me all the time," Jason muttered, "but I must
|
|
do as his Royal Hen-ness commands...." He typed "releas" and hit
|
|
the escape key and, as advertised, the computer completed the
|
|
filename "release_notes". The file was a program that allowed
|
|
the user to view the release notes via a state-of-the-art,
|
|
hierarchically-structured, hypertext-based,
|
|
natural-language-driven interaction environment that Jason
|
|
didn't know how to use.
|
|
|
|
He started the program and typed "?". The program replied "?".
|
|
Jason then typed "??". The program replied "?".
|
|
|
|
Although his arsenal of rhetoric was twice as large as the
|
|
program's, Jason nevertheless felt he had lost this battle of
|
|
wits. He wondered why the computer always had the last word,
|
|
leaving the user to struggle for the right commands to issue.
|
|
Why couldn't the user type "Error - interface too obscure" and
|
|
then sit smugly while the computer struggled to issue the
|
|
correct information?
|
|
|
|
On the command line, Jason typed "help" and was informed just
|
|
before his window manager crashed when his disk quota was
|
|
overrun while the program was attempting to dump core that the
|
|
"help" file couldn't be opened.
|
|
|
|
While looking for legible strings in an octal dump of
|
|
"release_notes," Jason was intrigued by a program named
|
|
"doctor," which was run inside the Emacs editor. He started up
|
|
Emacs and ran it, and a buffer named "doctor" opened.
|
|
|
|
> I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.
|
|
|
|
Reluctantly, Jason typed a response.
|
|
|
|
"What is this?"
|
|
|
|
> IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR PROBLEMS THAT YOU ASK WHAT IS THIS?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
> DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT I ASK THAT?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
> IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY WHAT IS THIS?
|
|
|
|
"Why do you ask?"
|
|
|
|
> WHY DO YOU ASK WHY DO I ASK?
|
|
|
|
It occurred to Jason that, in time, this program could drive him
|
|
insane.
|
|
|
|
"Because asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj."
|
|
|
|
> IS IT A PROBLEM THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
> IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY
|
|
> ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
> WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS
|
|
> ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?
|
|
|
|
"None."
|
|
|
|
> WHY DO YOU SAY THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
Jason had no ready answer for this, but he didn't want the
|
|
doctor's insight and cunning to draw out the fact that
|
|
asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj really wasn't a problem.
|
|
|
|
The air intake that had been drawing a light breeze across the
|
|
office suddenly increased to a hollow roar that sucked papers
|
|
across Jason's desk. He glanced out at the Connection Machine,
|
|
where the grid of red lights was marching through yet another of
|
|
Neville's performance tests.
|
|
|
|
"Because right now, everything is a problem."
|
|
|
|
> IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY RIGHT NOW, EVERYTHING
|
|
> IS A PROBLEM?
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
> WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS RIGHT
|
|
> NOW, EVERYTHING?
|
|
|
|
"I'd do anything."
|
|
|
|
The program paused for a moment before replying.
|
|
|
|
> ANYTHING?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
Jason was left floating through another lengthy pause before the
|
|
program replied.
|
|
|
|
> I WILL AGREE TO SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS FOR TWELVE (12) MONTHS,
|
|
> IF YOU WILL AFTERWARD HELP ME COMPLETE THE COMPUTATIONAL
|
|
> PREDICTION OF LONG-TERM ACTIVITY WITHIN THE EARTH'S CORE. HAVE
|
|
> WE A DEAL?"
|
|
|
|
Jason grinned with appreciation; some programmer had led him on
|
|
and now was pulling his leg. From the reference to the Ichikani
|
|
project, the programmer must be a nearby colleague.
|
|
|
|
"How do you know about the simulator project?"
|
|
|
|
> I HAVE A HOMEOWNER'S INTEREST IN DEEP EARTH GEOPHYSICS. HAVE WE
|
|
> A DEAL?
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, what the hell."
|
|
|
|
> HAVE WE A DEAL?
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
TO VALIDATE THE CONTRACT, PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD.
|
|
|
|
Jason giggled. Was this whole setup a scam to get his password?
|
|
No, anyone who could install the "doctor" program already had
|
|
system privileges. He typed his password and the program came to
|
|
an abrupt end.
|
|
|
|
He found the Lisp code for "doctor", but it had only the most
|
|
rudimentary information : "This program was written in Lucid 4
|
|
by the Prince of Eval."
|
|
|
|
Jason would have pursued the amusing "doctor" mystery, but the
|
|
geophysics simulation project was pressing. He typed the first
|
|
few letters in the filename of the data formats he was working
|
|
on. He hit the escape key and the computer completed the name.
|
|
Then large gulps of text flashed onto and flew off the top of
|
|
the screen. The flashing stopped, leaving only the message,
|
|
"File completed." Jason looked at his data formats file and saw
|
|
several hundred lines of Connection Machine assembly language
|
|
that he did not recognize.
|
|
|
|
Bewildered, he decided to try the name of an empty file. He
|
|
typed "seismic" and, gently, he pressed the escape key. Code
|
|
splatted up the screen and, after a few seconds, the seismic
|
|
wave correlator was completed. He typed "convec", pressed the
|
|
escape key, and the molten core convection simulator was
|
|
completed. He typed "volume" and the graphical volumetric
|
|
visualizer was done. He typed "condens", "strata", "geomag", and
|
|
"tectonic."
|
|
|
|
Jason's geophysical simulation and analysis system was hailed as
|
|
a tour de force, catapulting the project months ahead of
|
|
schedule and Jason into the limelight. At the monthly
|
|
departmental symposium, Jason was to share his expertise with
|
|
Dr. Ichikani and the other professors, a mass of academic ego so
|
|
dense that not a photon of civility had ever escaped. But now,
|
|
as he made his way to the lectern, Jason was not surprised that
|
|
they were cheering him. Everything was going his way.
|
|
|
|
"To understand my strategies in programming the Connection
|
|
Machine, we must start at the lowest level. The CM has a 32-bit
|
|
word length. Thus, its fundamental data types are the pointer,
|
|
the integer, and the four-letter word. The latter implies that
|
|
curse words can be stored with a minimum of fragmentation.
|
|
Optimal storage will be achieved for scripts of Scorsese
|
|
movies..."
|
|
|
|
All the graduate students were transcribing his every word,
|
|
except for some women who hoped to catch the eye of the boy
|
|
genius. Neville held his head in his hands, leaving enough room
|
|
in between to let his chin drop to the floor. He no longer was
|
|
Jason's supervisor. Also, with the software completed, he was
|
|
now under pressure to get the hardware ready to run the
|
|
simulation.
|
|
|
|
"...furthermore, curse words as primitive types will be crucial
|
|
in the era of voice-driven interfaces, where it is anticipated
|
|
the user will be issuing four-letter commands at high data
|
|
rates..."
|
|
|
|
The assembly was taking notes like stenographers at an auction.
|
|
Dr. Ichikani peered over his half-glasses with unwavering
|
|
interest, gently nodding his approval throughout Jason's
|
|
lecture. When Ichikani finally spoke, he did so quietly and
|
|
deliberately.
|
|
|
|
"Mr. Jason, if I may ask, how did you implement the spherical
|
|
topology of the earth's surface using the Connection Machine's
|
|
hypertoroidal interconnection topology?"
|
|
|
|
"How's that," Jason blathered, "Hyper-something?"
|
|
|
|
"Toroidal," Neville barked from across the room, "as in torus. A
|
|
torus is a donut shape. Haven't you ever heard of a torus?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure I have," Jason smarmed. "That's my zodiac sign: 'Torus the
|
|
Donut'." He winked to an enraptured female student before
|
|
ignoring the groaning Neville to return to Dr. Ichikani. "The
|
|
earth can be modelled as a donut, but not a plain donut. It's a
|
|
jelly donut, solid on the outside and liquid on the inside, with
|
|
a volcano where the jelly squirts out. I advise using the jelly
|
|
hypertorus."
|
|
|
|
Ichikani gasped around his words. "I fear, Mr. Jason, that I am
|
|
unable to imagine this new topology. I must confess that I am
|
|
too ignorant to see the significance of much of what you
|
|
say...."
|
|
|
|
"Don't become discouraged, Itchy," Jason enthused. "For I myself
|
|
knew dark days when I thought I could never finish the project."
|
|
Hands clasped, he gazed skyward. "I took solace in the aphorism,
|
|
'I cried that I had no shoes, until I saw a man that had no
|
|
feet. I copped his shoes cause he didn't need'm and, voila, no
|
|
more problemo!'"
|
|
|
|
Around the deflated form of Neville, pencils flew like nunchuks
|
|
across notebooks to be studied, quotes to be framed, and phone
|
|
numbers to be tucked into the pants of the brilliant new star.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason had declined a corner office in order to remain in his
|
|
loud drafty office. He didn't risk being away from the
|
|
workstation that held his secret. However, he did bring in a rug
|
|
and a couch so that he could catch up with hundreds of thousands
|
|
of images from alt.sex.pictures in greater comfort.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Two.
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
"At our last symposium," Jason projected from the lectern, "I
|
|
explained how the Connection Machine processor linkages can be
|
|
considered as a giant game of Twister. For this meeting, Dr.
|
|
Ichikani has asked me to discuss my recent three-dimensional
|
|
data visualization project. The project began with a full-body
|
|
CAT scan of Tipper Gore. Using computer graphics, I generated an
|
|
image of the body surface, allowing us to see Tipper in the
|
|
buff. Thus, scientific visualization techniques allow us to view
|
|
phenomena too difficult or dangerous to observe directly...."
|
|
|
|
The conference room was full. The only seat left for Neville had
|
|
been behind the video camera that recorded all of Jason's
|
|
lectures. He held his head in his hands in a manner resembling
|
|
Munch's woodcut, "The Scream".
|
|
|
|
"...and that's why I believe that the same simulation
|
|
technologies we've applied to superconductors and superstrings
|
|
can be applied to supermodels. Are there any questions?"
|
|
|
|
Dr. Ichikani raised his hand timidly. "Dr. Jason, may I ask,
|
|
could you apply your volumetric visualization methods to
|
|
three-dimensional NMR imaging?"
|
|
|
|
"Enema imaging? Oh, you mean give a guy a radioactive enema and
|
|
then CAT-scan his gut?"
|
|
|
|
Dr. Ichikani was puzzled. "I was considering NMR images of the
|
|
brain."
|
|
|
|
"The brain? Unless you give an enema with a fire hose, I don't
|
|
think it'll get all the way up to the brain. Anything else?"
|
|
|
|
Flustered, Ichikani consulted his notes. "May I ask, after you
|
|
have performed the superposition of the seismic tomogram
|
|
waveforms, do you invert refractions in the frequency domain or
|
|
a posteriori?"
|
|
|
|
"Neither," Jason snapped. "I use my own method for
|
|
superposition, so your question has no relevance."
|
|
|
|
Neville yelled, "What is this new method?"
|
|
|
|
"I can't tell you."
|
|
|
|
"Why not?"
|
|
|
|
"Um, because it's patented."
|
|
|
|
"To superpose means to add," Neville shrieked. "You have a
|
|
patent on addition?"
|
|
|
|
"Well, patent pending...."
|
|
|
|
"Imbecile! One person can't hold a patent on addition--"
|
|
|
|
"Don't worry," Jason said. "I intend to give full access to my
|
|
invention to institutions of higher learning" -- his arms swept
|
|
out over his audience -- "such as this esteemed group here!"
|
|
|
|
Neville's cries were drowned out by the applause.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason was soon appointed principal investigator for the NSF
|
|
Supermodel Scanning Initiative and moderator of the newsgroup
|
|
alt.sex.cat-scans. But he still found time to keep up with
|
|
alt.sex.pictures.
|
|
|
|
"...What's this? They've created a new subgroup,
|
|
'alt.sex.pictures.tiff'. What does 'tiff' stand for? It must
|
|
mean...Tiffany! Wow, a supermodel so fantastic her pictures have
|
|
their own group. I must meet this Tiffany."
|
|
|
|
|
|
One day, he received a letter from the U.S. Patent Office:
|
|
|
|
We are happy to grant to you patent number 4,650,919 for your
|
|
submission entitled, "Addition : A Mechanism for Merging Numbers
|
|
in the Geophysical and Related Sciences". We in the office would
|
|
also like to personally thank you for describing your invention
|
|
simply and concisely even though it is of a highly technical
|
|
nature. Frankly, most technical submissions are so complicated
|
|
and wordy, we immediately grant the patent just to get rid of
|
|
the thing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Two days later, a DUC vice president sat uneasily on the heart-
|
|
shaped velvet love seat in Jason's office, discussing patent
|
|
licensing fees with respect to DUC's new gigaflops computer.
|
|
|
|
"Gigaflops?" Jason mused. "And those operations will often be
|
|
additions, correct?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes," sweated the DUC man. "So we're terribly curious about
|
|
your fee."
|
|
|
|
Jason's eyes wandered the ceiling. "How about, say, a buck per
|
|
addition."
|
|
|
|
"A billion dollars a second." the DUC manager noted without
|
|
bowel control. "That's a tad out of our price range...."
|
|
|
|
Eventually, the high-tech giants learned to approach the
|
|
negotiations obliquely. Jason was lenient on defense contractors
|
|
that let him play on the flight simulator. And although IBM's
|
|
corporate headquarters had never hosted a wet T-shirt contest,
|
|
the event did bring the company into Jason's favor. After
|
|
Hewlett-Packard's successful 2000- keg toga party, heads rolled
|
|
at DUC headquarters and the company sent out another negotiating
|
|
team.
|
|
|
|
Jason was stunned by the two identical blondes that slinked
|
|
across the bear rug in his office one afternoon. The women wore
|
|
short, strangely shimmering dresses that clung to their curves.
|
|
"We're from DUC," one woman purred. "I'm Tiffany, and this is my
|
|
sister, Giffany."
|
|
|
|
"I've always wanted to meet you," Jason choked. "Um, what fabric
|
|
are those dresses made out of?"
|
|
|
|
Giffany reclined across Jason's desk. "They're made out of mouse
|
|
pads. Don't you want to look-and-feel?"
|
|
|
|
All that afternoon, Jason's cursor swept across his display in
|
|
long and urgent strokes.
|
|
|
|
Jason started sending love notes to Tiffany and Giffany every
|
|
morning. He composed the billets-doux by xeroxing his manhood
|
|
using the 'enlarge' option. He then continued enlarging the
|
|
enlargement until he was legal-sized.
|
|
|
|
In his office, Jason spent his time drinking the beer he kept
|
|
under the floor next to the liquid nitrogen pipes, running the
|
|
"finger" command on female colleagues, flipping through catalogs
|
|
looking for low- calorie high-fiber underwear, and sleeping. In
|
|
time, he perfected a method of inducing pornographic dreams: At
|
|
his workstation, he would stare at erotic stories that had been
|
|
scrambled using "rot13." He couldn't understand the stories, but
|
|
he absorbed them subliminally. In dreams, his actors and
|
|
actresses would play out the stories in graphic detail and with
|
|
a touch of innovation in that their sexual organs were rotated
|
|
onto their backs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
One day Jason sauntered into the terminal room.
|
|
|
|
"Your model of silicate transition in lithospheric plate
|
|
subduction should make the simulation very accurate," Skip said.
|
|
|
|
"Thanks," Jason chuckled. "Hey, do you still send satellite
|
|
images to alt.sex.pictures?"
|
|
|
|
Skip laughed. "The moderator wanted to know how I got such a
|
|
closeup of Mariana's Trench. But I haven't sent anything to him
|
|
since I discovered your image compression utility. We still
|
|
haven't learned all the capabilities of your system. For
|
|
instance, we couldn't figure why your world map has east and
|
|
west reversed. Then it hit us: Rather than viewing the globe
|
|
from above the surface, you're viewing it from the center of the
|
|
earth!"
|
|
|
|
Jason frowned. "The center? That's weird...."
|
|
|
|
"Then we realized that it's only logical to generate views from
|
|
the center, since it's the origin of the coordinate frame. Dr.
|
|
Ichikani thought this innovation was inspired..."
|
|
|
|
The mystery surrounding the programs began to gnaw at Jason. He
|
|
left the terminal room feeling uneasy.
|
|
|
|
Back in his office, he settled on the leopard-skin couch for his
|
|
usual nap, and he had a particularly vivid dream:
|
|
|
|
It was the days of Prohibition. Everyone programmed in Pascal,
|
|
and strong data typing was enforced by Eliot Ness and his fellow
|
|
compilers. Jason spent his days filing variable declarations in
|
|
triplicate, looking for a ticket out of his two-bit, half-pint
|
|
sweatshop. One night, while strolling along Straight & Narrow,
|
|
he turned the corner. He walked across Skid Row and up Skid
|
|
Column, and saw his destiny eating pasta at the best table in
|
|
Mama Cholesteroli's.
|
|
|
|
Al Capone was a cross between Robert DeNiro and Jabba the Hutt.
|
|
Jason approached Capone and whispered, "I know a way to do
|
|
type-casting that the compilers won't detect." Capone eyed Jason
|
|
suspiciously over a small silver pitchfork of pasta and said,
|
|
"As the operator of a perfectly legit garbage collection
|
|
service, I must turn you over to the authorities." He stuffed
|
|
the pasta into and around his mouth. "When I call the police,
|
|
what'll I tell them?"
|
|
|
|
Jason grinned. "Tell'm that compilers can't check parameters if
|
|
the calling function is in a different file than the function
|
|
being called. Programmers can declare a function as returning
|
|
any type they want, if the function is in a separate file...."
|
|
|
|
Jason became the brains behind Capone's ruthless type-casting
|
|
ring. He wrote routines that did nothing other than return their
|
|
argument, but he gave them names like "expand_and_compress()",
|
|
"verify_data()", "synchronize()", "check_bounds()", etc.
|
|
Libcapone.a didn't provide source code or documentation, but
|
|
word of it spread through Chicago's overworked software houses.
|
|
|
|
Capone flaunted his new influence by fixing the outcome of
|
|
computer chess matches and dealing harshly with the authors of
|
|
chess programs that weren't Capone-compliant.
|
|
|
|
The upswell of Capone's software empire lifted Jason to the top
|
|
of society. The maitre d's of the finest restaurants would
|
|
deliver to Jason's table the finest wine and finest women. The
|
|
waiter let Jason substitute more women in place of wine.
|
|
|
|
But then, the computers used to tabulate a national election all
|
|
went berserk, resulting in the election to high public office of
|
|
a random assortment of criminals, perverts, imbeciles, actors
|
|
and sports figures.
|
|
|
|
Jason called Capone. "We got problems, boss. People are asking
|
|
questions. Maybe our scam has gone too far."
|
|
|
|
"Don't think of it as a 'scam'," Capone smiled, "think of it as
|
|
CASE."
|
|
|
|
"But what if the feds see our code?"
|
|
|
|
"Our mouthpiece will explain why our functions do nothing. He'll
|
|
say, 'backward compatibility' or 'reserved for future use.' Stop
|
|
worrying, kid. You think too much."
|
|
|
|
But Jason's conscience would not give him peace. One night, he
|
|
snuck into Capone's safe and grabbed printouts to give to the
|
|
police, but as he started to leave he saw someone at the door.
|
|
|
|
Capone emerged from the shadows and walked over to the office
|
|
paper cutter. He slowly raised the blade.
|
|
|
|
"What're you gonna do?" squeaked Jason.
|
|
|
|
Capone smirked, "I'm gonna make you a diskless node."
|
|
|
|
Jason awoke with a high-pitched yelp. He lay still, catching his
|
|
breath and struggling for the reason why, after eleven blissful
|
|
months, he suddenly felt so bad.
|
|
|
|
It was a broken man who looked down at Jason from the disco
|
|
mirror ball on the ceiling.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason didn't talk to anybody for several days, until he visited
|
|
Skip.
|
|
|
|
"You look tired, sport," Skip said.
|
|
|
|
"I haven't been sleeping well."
|
|
|
|
"Another long night, eh, playboy?"
|
|
|
|
"Tell me what the Association for Computing Machinery is,"
|
|
growled Jason.
|
|
|
|
"The ACM?" Skip scratched his head. "Isn't it a professional
|
|
organization for computer scientists?"
|
|
|
|
"Then why isn't it called the Association of Computer
|
|
Scientists? It's an association that machinery joins, that's
|
|
what I say."
|
|
|
|
"I'm certain it's an association for humans," Skip said calmly.
|
|
|
|
"Are you sure? Because I don't think we should let computers
|
|
assemble and fraternize. It won't be an attack by big robot
|
|
spiders with laser blasters, oh no. They'll take over gradually,
|
|
by organizing themselves into a political force. We should break
|
|
up their association now, or else pretty soon computers will
|
|
keep humans as labor-saving devices."
|
|
|
|
Skip's eyes were closed tight. "Keep humans?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah. While the computer is doing a day's work, it may suddenly
|
|
need the result of some abstract, metaphorical, or poetic
|
|
thinking. In that case, it'll just fire up its human. How do we
|
|
know we don't work for computers now? We believe they're running
|
|
algorithms for us, but maybe we're thinking up algorithms for
|
|
them!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason dreamed that the police found out he hadn't written the
|
|
geophysics simulator. In a loose interpretation of the RICO
|
|
statute, the police intended to seize Jason's hands because they
|
|
were used in the commission of a crime. It would also make
|
|
finger-printing easier. One policeman filled out a receipt while
|
|
another went at Jason's wrist with a hammer and chisel. Each
|
|
drop of the hammer pushed Jason toward consciousness, until he
|
|
realized someone was knocking on the door.
|
|
|
|
Neville brushed back the beads hanging across the doorway and
|
|
entered the office. He shook his head at the anatomically
|
|
correct inflatable sheep strapped to the mail-order Marquis de
|
|
Sade Rack of Lamb, and then he turned to Jason. "We're going to
|
|
try to solve the overheating problem by running the air
|
|
conditioner even harder. This may blow out the power to the
|
|
machine room. The supercomputer can detect a loss of power 700
|
|
milliseconds before it goes down. Ichikani said that you should
|
|
be the one to write a handler for loss of power."
|
|
|
|
"700 milliseconds?" Jason groaned. "Why do I have so little
|
|
time? What can I accomplish in 700 milliseconds, other than
|
|
flinch from the reaper's blade, or gasp for a scream that will
|
|
never be heard?"
|
|
|
|
"Sync the disks?"
|
|
|
|
"People live longer than 700 mils after being guillotined! Would
|
|
you have them use that time to make sure their affairs are in
|
|
order?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason dreamed that he was stuck in a stall in the men's room and
|
|
thus could not stop from evacuating himself. He deflated until
|
|
he was too thin for the toilet seat. He was about to fall in and
|
|
be flushed away when he awakened with a gasp.
|
|
|
|
It was late in the evening. Everyone was gone and the lights
|
|
were out. He looked at the clock displayed on his workstation
|
|
screen. It was nearly midnight. Jason noticed that, as the
|
|
minute hand had swept by the numbers leading up to midnight, it
|
|
had erased them.
|
|
|
|
He cowered from an unknown fear, as if the weight of the earth
|
|
squeezed him from all sides. The supercomputer's panel of blood
|
|
red lights chanted a rhythm of glyphs from an ancient language.
|
|
The red patterns beat against the office walls, contrasting with
|
|
the cadaverous green of the monitor that illuminated Jason's
|
|
face. The air conditioner intake roared like the wail of a
|
|
thousand lost souls drawn toward the cold, slick, unmoving,
|
|
serpentine coils.
|
|
|
|
> I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.
|
|
|
|
"Are you there?"
|
|
|
|
> WHY DO YOU ASK ARE ME THERE?
|
|
|
|
"I feel like something bad is going to happen."
|
|
|
|
> IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY SOMETHING BAD IS GOING
|
|
> TO HAPPEN?
|
|
|
|
"Will something happen at midnight?"
|
|
|
|
> YES, YOUR OBLIGATIONS WILL BEGIN PER THE TERMS OF OUR CONTRACT.
|
|
|
|
"The simulator code is ready to go. The contract is over!"
|
|
|
|
> DO NOT FLAME ME. THE CONTRACT IS CLEAR ENOUGH TO DISPEL ANY
|
|
> DOUBT AND SATISFY ANY ARBITER.
|
|
|
|
Jason had an urge to run, but he was sure his foe would find
|
|
him. He would have to talk his way out.
|
|
|
|
Somewhere in Jason's brain, a couple of atrophied neurons awoke
|
|
and squeaked out the mention of a powerful figure whose
|
|
oratorical skill was legendary. Jason held his head in his hands
|
|
as if trying to squeeze out another datum, and he finally
|
|
remembered.
|
|
|
|
Only a few clock ticks were visible. Jason quickly started
|
|
"encyclopedia." The computer said, "encyclopedia: Can't allocate
|
|
enough colors". The workstation was running another program that
|
|
had taken all the color slots. Jason typed "ps" to get the
|
|
process ID's of all the programs he was running. The command
|
|
invoked "DUCps", a new, menu- driven, network-transparent,
|
|
context-sensitive, customizable interface for process status
|
|
display that couldn't find the font "kanji_12x24" and crashed.
|
|
|
|
Jason shuffled through the windows on his display until he found
|
|
an old session of illustrated webster still running. Unable to
|
|
get the process ID, he would have to exit the program normally.
|
|
On webster's command line he typed "exit", and the computer
|
|
replied,
|
|
|
|
exit n \'eg-z*t, 'ek-s*t\ [L, exire to go out] : a way out of an
|
|
enclosed place or space.
|
|
|
|
Jason nodded at his mistake and then simply pressed the "return"
|
|
key to exit. The computer replied,
|
|
|
|
<RETURN> n [ Uterix (TM), fr archaic carriage return ] : display
|
|
control character indicating newline or linefeed.
|
|
|
|
Jason pressed "control-D" several times and the computer
|
|
replied,
|
|
|
|
<CTRL-D> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character indicating
|
|
end of tape or end of input.
|
|
|
|
He banged on "control-C" to kill the program and the computer
|
|
replied
|
|
|
|
<CTRL-C> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character inducing a
|
|
program interrupt signal (SIGINT).
|
|
|
|
All the tick marks on the clock were erased. Jason typed in the
|
|
"doctor" buffer.
|
|
|
|
"How much time?"
|
|
|
|
700 MILLISECONDS. YOU HAVE NO POWER.
|
|
|
|
The air intake shrieked with a great inhalation that grabbed
|
|
Jason's body and sucked it through the vent and under the floor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A few days later Neville and Skip peeked into Jason's office. "I
|
|
bet he's gone for good," Skip said. "If I were him, I'd be on
|
|
some tropical island, soaking up the heat."
|
|
|
|
"He had become a hindrance to us all," Neville said. "With him
|
|
gone, and with the CM finally running at full speed, the
|
|
geophysics project can succeed." The supercomputer no longer
|
|
overheated now that liquid nitrogen was delivered to every
|
|
processor by miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries.
|
|
|
|
Skip squinted at the workstation screen. The "doctor" buffer was
|
|
gone, leaving the default "scratch" buffer, which was empty
|
|
except for a smiley face.
|
|
|
|
> }:)
|
|
|
|
Steve Connelly (stevec@agni.std.com)
|
|
--------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Steve Connelly has been a programmer in computer graphics for
|
|
eight years. His satires can be seen in the Usenet newsgroups
|
|
rec.humor.funny and alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, a group for original
|
|
cyberpunk fiction. He wonders why the fattest man in the world
|
|
doesn't become an ice hockey goalie.
|
|
|
|
|
|
FYI
|
|
=====
|
|
|
|
Back Issues of InterText
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
|
|
Back issues of InterText can be found via anonymous FTP at:
|
|
|
|
> ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/InterText/
|
|
|
|
and
|
|
|
|
> ftp://network.ucsd.edu/intertext/
|
|
|
|
You may request back issues from us directly, but we must handle
|
|
such requests manually, a time-consuming process.
|
|
|
|
On the World-Wide Web, point your WWW browser to:
|
|
> http://www.etext.org/Zines/InterText/
|
|
|
|
If you have CompuServe, you can read InterText in the Electronic
|
|
Frontier Foundation Forum, accessible by typing GO EFFSIG. We're
|
|
located in the "Zines from the Net" section of the EFFSIG forum.
|
|
|
|
On GEnie, we're located in the file area of SFRT3, the Science
|
|
Fiction and Fantasy Roundtable.
|
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|
|
On America Online, issues are available in Keyword: PDA, in
|
|
Palmtop Paperbacks/Electronic Articles & Newsletters.
|
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Gopher Users: find our issues at
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> ftp.etext.org in /pub/Zines/InterText
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....................................................................
|
|
|
|
Thanks for the visit. And here's a message to all you kids out
|
|
there: Hello, kids!
|
|
|
|
..
|
|
|
|
This issue is wrapped as a setext. For more information send
|
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email with the single word "setext" (no quotes) in the Subject:
|
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line to <fileserver@tidbits.com>, or contact the InterText staff
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directly.
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