Mike was on his way to go jump off a building.

He could see it on the skyline in front of him, looming in silhouette against the blue.  His progress toward it was slow, as the rubber-walled car he drove would do no more than 35 miles per hour down the expressway.  His car inched its way from one lane to another as he progressed toward the off ramp.  Zeiter Park Exit, the sign read.  Center City.  His car made putt-putt sounds as it crept down the long, safe ramp.

As he came to a stop, he did so gently so as not to trigger the air-bag in his steering wheel – which for some reason had a hair trigger.  When he’d first bought the car Mike thought it was a factory defect.  No, said the factory representative, it was made that way on purpose.  Just to be safe.  That, and the webbing that made up the seat belt system, and the titanium-steel passenger compartment – and, not to mention the four way anti-skid disk brakes and pneumatic collapsible bumpers on front, back, and sides – were all now standard in passenger cars by law.  As was the crash helmet on his head.

Mike found a parking place on the street beside some bushes in Zeiter Park, right between two other rubber-walled cars.  Getting out, he pulled a bundled pack out of the back seat, and stepped up onto the soft, spongy surface of the park sidewalk.  He felt like a spaceman walking out onto a hostile planet.  The helmet he wore for driving was also mandatory for  pedestrians, along with the knee and elbow pads, and of course the bullet proof vest to protect him from muggers.  Mike, like most people in the last few years, had saved money by buying the whole outfit as a single suit, called a safety suit, which contained all the safe elements required by law for going out in public.

A few joggers ran past, each wearing a safety suit, and a few young couples lay under trees on blankets, groping each other’s suits in frustration.  Mike carried his bundle far up the hill, staying on the sidewalk, and at one point crossed the street (safely, at a crosswalk), and headed away from the park.

He hiked up a long, steep hill.  At the top was the tallest skyscraper in town, a black and polished bank building called Haben Tower.  He stared up at it for a long moment.

I’m going to do it this time, he told himself.  Just go right in.

He stood there, not moving.

I’m not afraid, he thought.  This will be easy.  Come on.  Do it.  Just walk in.

Abruptly, Mike turned away and walked back down the hill.  It wasn’t the height that scared him.  It was the thought of getting caught.

They’d fire him at work – no doubt about that.  His socially-conscious wife would be embarrassed out of her mind.  He could deal with those things, so it wasn’t that.  But his kids – they would be teased and taunted relentlessly at school, and that was too much for Mike to risk.  He remembered what it was like to be a kid.

He threw his pack into his car and drove slowly, safely, away.

#

Mike was sitting at the dinner table with his family, when his son, Randy, suddenly blurted out:  “I hate that speed regulator on my bike.  I don’t understand why it has to be there.”

“To keep you from going too fast,” said his mom, Marta.

“But it’s so slow.  It’s frustrating.  Dad, can you take it off?”

“Well, actually-” Mike began, but Marta cut him off.

“Absolutely not.  It’s there for your safety.”

“Safety, safety,” Randy said, “everything safety!  It wasn’t always like this, was it?”

“I did a paper on it last year,” said Sharon, Mike’s daughter.  “Back at the beginning of the century there was a backlash.”

“A what?” Randy asked.

“It’s when everyone’s opinion turns against something,” Mike explained.

“Yeah,” Sharon said, “back then there was a whole bunch of dangerous stuff happening.  And there were all these TV shows showing people getting maimed and killed-”

“Really?  Cool.”  Randy said.

“It was not cool,” Sharon said, very matter of fact.  “People would sit around watching people die.”

“Why?”

“For fun.”

“Fun?”

“It was a bit like ancient Rome,” Marta said, “when they’d feed Christians to the lions.”

“Not exactly,” Mike objected.

“Close enough.”  Marta gestured, urging her daughter to continue.

“Anyway, everyone got sick and tired of it, and President Greenwood signed the Citizens Safety Act-”

“I don’t really care,” Randy said.  “I just want my bike to go faster.”

“Well, it’s not going to happen,” Marta said, “because it’s not safe.”

Randy rolled his eyes.  “Can I be excused?” he asked.  “I want to go play wizzle ball.”

After he was gone, Mike looked over at his wife, who was frowning at him.  “You know what?” he said to his wife.  “Life is not safe.”

“It’s a lot safer now than it used to be.”

“Well, I’m completely sick of lawmakers passing laws to protect me against myself.  It’s just not right.”

“Right or not, I think it’s a mistake for you to encourage your son to resent the laws.”

“He resents the laws of his own accord.”

“It’s your attitude that encourages him.”

“Oh, so I’m supposed to change my attitude?”

“Attitude is everything.”  Marta stood up, gave him one haughty look, and walked out of the room.

Mike pushed himself away from the table, his stomach suddenly burning.  “No,” he said, “altitude is everything.”

#

The next morning at work, the screen on Mike’s work phone lead him through the day’s inspection tour, item by item, making sure all mandatory warning labels were in place.  He was on the 7^th floor of Building 17 when he came across a defaced sign:

#

CAUTION:  ROBOT AT WORK CRANKY
ROBOT WILL KICK YOUR ASS

#

Mike laughed.  In the next room was a textile sorting robot that really would kick ass if someone bypassed the safety software.  As it was, however, if so much as a fly came anywhere near it, a proximity alarm would go off and the robot would freeze until a floor supervisor walked over to hit the big red reset button.

Tapping on his phone, Mike ordered a replacement sign and continued his inspection.  He finished the 7^th floor and moved on to the 8^th.  Each sign he inspected seemed even more dismally stupid than the last:

#

WARNING:  SURFACE TRANSITION!
CARPET TO TILE – WATCH YOUR STEP!

#

KEEP FINGERS AWAY FROM EDGES OF DOOR
WHEN CLOSING – PAINFUL INJURY MAY OCCURE.

#

COFFEE MACHINE DISPENCES HOT LIQUID
WHICH MAY CAUSE PAINFUL BURNS.

#

Mike’s phone beeped – his boss, Leroy, was calling.  He answered it and heard Leroy’s voice sounding tiny but upset from the small speaker:  “Mike!  Meet me at Building Six.  We have a situation.”

Acid flooded Mike’s stomach.  “I’m on my way,” he replied.  He bookmarked his progress on the inspection list, and raced off across the corporate campus to meet his boss.

Leroy was waiting outside the building for him.  “I need you to see something,” he said, and led Mike inside.

There were rows of cafeteria-style tables, all empty except for a tearful woman flanked by two paramedics.  He and Leroy stopped at the far end of the room and kept their voices down.  “What happened?” Mike asked.  He noticed there was blood on the woman’s lips.

“Look around you,” Leroy said.  “Do you see a CF-52 anywhere?”

“A what?  CF-52?”

Leroy punched it up on his phone’s screen and thrust it toward Mike’s face.

#

PLEASE REMEMBER TO CHEW CAREFULLY
SO AS NOT TO BITE YOUR TONGUE.

#

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mike said.

“No, this is not a joke.  That young woman over there chomped the tip of her tongue off – and since you neglected to make sure the mandatory CF-52 caution sign was properly displayed, the company is liable.”

“I’ve never heard of a CF-52,” Mike said.

“It was on your list last Thursday when you inspected and signed off on this lunch room.”  Again, Leroy punched at his phone’s screen and thrust the screen toward Mike’s face.

It was there.  Mike’s digital signature graced the inspection form.  The CF-52 was on the list and Mike had checked it off.

He suddenly remembered doing the inspection.  Mike had walked into the then-crowded lunch room, looked around in disgust, and then turned and left.  He’d had blown it off, checking all items as present and in good condition without even looking.

“This is going into your file,” Leroy was saying.  “You’ve just earned three days suspension without pay.”

Mike stared at the man in disbelief for a moment, then looked at the dark-haired lady with the blood-stained lips.  “You’re telling me that if I’d made sure this idiotic sign was on the wall, that this lady wouldn’t have bitten her tongue?”

“No,” Leroy said in a harsh whisper, “I’m telling you that if you’d made sure the sign was there, we wouldn’t be liable.”

“Do you care at all about her tongue?”

“Hell no!”  Leroy had to lower his voice again.  “Haven’t you been listening?”

“Yes, I’ve been listening,” Mike said, struggling to remain in control.  “I’ve heard every word you said.”  In his mind he pictured himself picking up one of the cafeteria chairs and swinging it – he even imagined the label on the chair:  CAUTION – HIGH VELOCITY FURNITURE MAY CAUSE MASSIVE HEAD TRAUMA UPON IMPACT.

Leroy must have seen something in Mike’s eyes, because he suddenly took a few steps back.  He said something as Mike walked away, but Mike didn’t hear it.

Mike had more important things to do.

#

From the base of Haben tower, looking up, the building stretched upwards so far that it seemed to be a pillar supporting the blue dome of the sky.  Mike hesitated only a moment.  Inside he went, face blank, nodding politely to the guards as he flashed his corporate safety inspection badge.  They barely glanced at it and waved him through.  He walked straight to the elevators and pushed a button and waited.  The elevator arrived and he alone stepped inside.  He pushed the button for the top floor, and stood stoically as the doors slid shut and the elevator began to rise.

This is my civil disobedience, he told himself.  I have an obligation to my beliefs.  I’ll either prove my point, or theirs.

Mike took deep breaths, conscious that his hands were shaking.  He opened the pack and pulled out the rubber Ralph Nader mask.  He took off his safety helmet, put on the mask, and put the helmet back on.  With the helmet on, he was sure, no one would look twice at the mask.

There was a pastel tone from the elevator’s speaker grill and the doors slid open.  Several executives in black and white safety suits stepped in as he was stepping out.  One gave him a startled glance but said nothing, and Mike dared not look back as he walked away from the elevator.  Hopefully the man had doubted his own eyes.  Mike continued down the hall and around a corner to the stair well.  A security monitor was right there, electric eye focused on him as he tried the door.  It was unlocked, of course – it was a fire exit – and as he pushed it open and stepped through an alarm sounded.

Mike rushed up the stairs and faced the one remaining door at the top of the building.  This one was locked, as it was not safe beyond.  Mike, fortunately, had a pass key which he’d swiped from a janitor two weeks before.  Within seconds he was out in the sunshine on the roof, with all of Center City in view.

Now he had to work fast, as there would be security guards after him within the next few minutes.  He opened the pack, pulled out the aluminum and nylon contents, and then began removing his safety suit.  After that was off, he removed all the rest of his clothes – everything, including the helmet.  The only thing that remained was the rubber mask.  He stood naked on the roof, shoving his clothing into the pack, and with that done he pulled out the telescoping aluminum struts and unfolding the nylon wings of his hang glider.  He had eight wing nuts to fasten and twelve buttons to snap.  He worked quickly but with precision, as he’d practiced this over and over.  He had done it in secret, as hang gliders were strictly forbidden, and mere possession of one was against the law – now he was doing it bare-ass naked on the top of a public building, in full view of the world.

The wings spread out and caught the faint breeze, glittering with all the colors of a butterfly.  Across the wings was printed the message he was to show to the whole world:

LIFE IS   NOT SAFE

Mike finished the last few snaps and stashed his pack with his safety suit and helmet in a net at the top of the harness.  He looped the padded harness around himself and stood near the building’s edge, nerving himself.  He thought of the words written by his hero, the great 1960’s pop philosopher Ashleigh Brilliant: “Should I abide by the rules until they’re changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?”  The door behind him burst open and a half-dozen security guards rushed out onto the roof, and Mike, startled, ran for the edge of the building.  “Speed the change!” he shouted out loud, his voice cracking with excitement.  He took one last long step and the building was behind him.

The first few seconds were the biggest thrill as he plummeted through thin air.  Then the wings caught and yanked him up, and he curved up and around to taunt the guards on the building top.  They stared at him like a group of knights in black, leathery armor, some of them even smiling.  Mike waved, made a steep bank and turned away.

It was a dizzy feeling, reeling through the air with it rushing across his bare skin, pulling at the little hairs on his chest, arms and legs.  He was eye-level with the sea gulls and pigeons, sharing their element, scaring them off the ledges of the tower and sending them squawking away.  He flew several times around the tower, seeing shocked faces pressed up against tinted windows, before he turned on a wing and soared off across town.

The top of another tall building lay below him, down the hill from Haben Tower, and he could have landed on it had he wished.  Instead he touched the microwave relay antenna on its roof with the tips of his toes as he flew over, making it wobble, causing a momentary interruption in someone’s data-link.  Somewhere in the building, someone missed a word in a conversation, or lost some bytes in a data transfer.  The thought made him giggle, and he circled around and waved at the windows, each one filled with faces and open, gaping mouths.  As he did so, the wind caught an edge of his mask and pulled it off.

His face had been sweating under the mask, and the sudden blast of cool air was a shock.  He turned quickly away from the windows, dipped the glider and banked, soaring away from the building.  Holy Jesus, he thought.  Holy Jesus.  Holy holy Jesus.  For the first time since he jumped off the Haben Tower he felt naked.  What am I going to do?

It was like a bad dream.

Heading away from the buildings, Mike continued down the hill, passing over the City Hall.  He circled above it, feeling his panic fade.  Far below, gnat sized people stood around in a parking lot looking up at him.  He was so far up that there was no way they could see his face, not even with binoculars.  Not clearly, at least.  He continued to circle, smiling at the city buildings and the tiny figures in the parking lot beneath him.  City officials, no doubt, men and women in the public trust, making laws to protect people from themselves.  Seeing something strange in the sky today?  An eclipse perhaps?  The moon at noon?

He meandered above the city searching for updrafts.  The loss of his mask still worried him.  It made him feel unsure, urged him to race the glider toward the park for a quick escape.  But he had plenty of elevation, and there were warm updrafts here and there – he could stay up for another 30 minutes at least.  At the moment he was deliberately avoiding the park, not wanting to help any of the authorities who might be tracking him to guess where he intended to land.  As long as Mike maintained his altitude, all it would take was one long dip, a quick swoop across town, and he would be at the park – far faster than anyone in a car or on a bicycle could follow.  I have time, he told himself.  Lots of time.

Daring himself, Mike turned into the wind and headed for the far side of the hill, where the updraft would be the strongest.  The breeze coming in from the West hit the hill and deflected up at a steep angle.  Mike felt for it as he rounded past the concentric circles of the Country Club, hoping to ease into it as he thought it might be quite turbulent.  He was over the upper half of the golf range, the really tough holes which sat on the lower shoulder of the hill, when the updraft hit him.  Even though he was expecting it, it caught him off guard as to how strong it actually was – he felt the Earth drop away and the blood rush to his feet, and there were creaking sounds from his aluminum frame and two harsh pops, followed by a rapid fluttering of nylon.  The thrill of fear went through him like a spike.  Two snap buttons on the leading edge of his left wing, out toward the tip, had come undone.  The drag of the loose material pulled on that wing tip and made the glider turn, taking him against his will out of the updraft.

Mike swore, throwing his weight to the other side, fighting the turn.  If it kept up like this, the best he could hope for was a slow spiral down to the ground.  What he was really worried about was coming around and hitting that updraft again.  With two snaps off, it wouldn’t take much to pull the rest loose – the wing would come off like it were unzipped, parting from the frame that held it out.  He would tumble to his death, and only prove to the world that hang gliding – with or without a safety suit – was too dangerous to be legal.

He managed to cancel the turn, even to coax the glider a little to the right.  This was still no good, as he was now heading right for the side of the hill.  He had hardly any control now at all, though if he could just get it a little more to the right, he could land safely on the fairway to the 7th hole.  But a sudden updraft caught him and sent him up another thirty meters, getting him right up to the crest of the shoulder.  And there, sitting on the ridge, was the Country Club clubhouse.  Mike aimed for the white rock of the long, flat roof, and touched down to find it very hot on the bottom of his bare feet.

“Yow!” he said.  “Ow!  Oooh!  Ouch!”  He hopped around, getting out of the harness, then dropped the glider and danced around to the wing tip.  He snapped the buttons shut, rushed back to the middle, harnessed himself, and ran off toward the North-East.  There was a terrible dip off the edge of the roof, and for a moment it didn’t look like he was going to clear the line of trees separating one side of the ridge from the other.  He turned on one wing and sailed in between, right through the trees and only several feet over the grassy ground, then the hill dropped away and the city once again spread below his bare toes.  “Jesus!” he exclaimed to himself.  “This is it.  This is enough.”  He pulled on the bar and went into a dive.  The glider swooped down toward the tops of the buildings, the air rushing past him and roaring in his ears, then he pulled up and crossed over to the park, a streak of color slicing through the air.  He circled around once, looking for a secluded spot, and shedding some of the speed from the dive.  There was a whole meadow adjacent to his car that looked totally deserted, so he took it down and hit the ground running.  He reached the edge of the bushes and struggled out of his harness, then quickly began undoing the wing nuts so that he could fold the wings and get out of sight.  From somewhere to his right he heard shouting, and he gritted his teeth, trying to hurry.  “Over there!” he heard a woman’s voice.  “I think he landed!”

“Where?”

“Over there!”

Mike folded the wings and rushed into the bushes, pulling the glider after him.  He pulled his pack out and fumbled with his clothes, putting his underwear on backwards and buttoning his shirt crooked.  By the time he had his safety suit on he could hear people in the meadow where he’d landed, calling out to each other, saying they could swear this is where he had dropped from sight.  Trying to be as silent as possible, he disassembled the glider – though no matter what he tried, he couldn’t silence the unsnapping of the buttons.  Someone was poking around in the bushes to the right of him, about ten meters away, when Mike finished stowing the glider in the pack.  He took a breath, turned toward the street and pushed his way through the bushes to the sidewalk.

There were two cops and a squad car right in front of him.  One was walking around the bushes toward the meadow, the other stood at the car and then looked over to see Mike on the sidewalk, looking guilty.  “Hey,” he said, walking over to Mike.  “What’s that in the bag there?”

“What?”

The officer reached over and unzipped part of the bag, where a tuft of the nylon had been sticking out.  He pulled more of the nylon out and felt it with his fingers.  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, looking up and peering into Mike’s eyes.  “You’re him.”

“I’m who?” Mike said, but his voice was shaking, as were his hands.

“Don’t play games with me, you’re that crazy bastard mooning the city from the air!”

As Mike turned to run, the officer pulled out his safety pistol and fired high-velocity silly putty at him, which stung like hell and sent him into a writhing, twitching mass on the grass.  Within minutes he was pinned inside an inflated arrest cocoon.

#

When Mike called his wife from the police station, she hung up on him.  He waited for hours and hours but she never showed up with bail.

The police and the other inmates called him crazy, but in some of them he detected a guarded admiration in their voice.  Either that, or it was all in his head.  Mike didn’t know.  He had no idea what would happen next.  What kept going through his mind was:  I have changed the course of my life forever.

He thought of his kids, his wife.  His job.  It was over.  They would never understand.  Why did I have to do this? He tried to feel regret, but it wasn’t there.  He was glad he was caught – he was calm about it.  In one single act he’d broken all of the safety laws he so desperately hated, and he was proud of it.  The thought of repenting, apologizing, or asking the court for forgiveness made him sick to his stomach.  If he did that, it would all be for nothing.  So no matter what they did to him, he was resolved to stand by his crazy actions.

Someone was yelling outside the door.  It was an old guy, sounding astonished.  “Look at that!  Look at that!”  Mike got up and walked over to the padded bars, peering out at a television that hung from the wall.  It was a news report from L.A., and a shaking picture showing two nude people, a man and a woman, climbing up the side of a skyscraper with suction cups on their hands and knees.  From between them hung a banner, which read:

LIFE IS NOT SAFE

Looking closer, Eduardo saw twisted arms, legs, and hair. Jeannie’s hair. He gasped, dropping to his knees. It took him a moment before he could reach out and touch.

She’d fallen, or jumped, or been pushed from the offices that hung from the warehouse ceiling far above. Eduardo gently gathered her into his arms, and carried her limp plastic body up the stairs, past the other recharging harlots, and into a back room where he kept his tools.

He tenderly pulled Jeannie’s clothes off and looked her over. She’d hit hard and at a bad angle. The body looked mangled, despite it being a tough IBM. Still, with the right parts she might be salvageable. Eduardo thought about the other harlot andies, about which one he could scavenge. Laura was an IBM but a newer, more modular design — her parts were incompatible. The other girls were all Mitsubishi, Panasonic, or Intel. Completely different inside and out.

The realization she was dead caught up to him, and tears came. Eduardo held her broken body and cried, rocking her gently, whispering half-insane words that sounded stupid even to him — but they came from his heart, and he couldn’t stop them.

None of the other Spaz were around so he couldn’t blame them, though he would definitely have suspected Jojo. Jojo would have done it just because. Fader wouldn’t, unless he was mad, and Eduardo couldn’t think of a reason for that. Tony wouldn’t have bothered. Ramón was in the hospital dying, and Billy and Samuel were both in jail.

Eduardo held tight to Jeannie even after the tears stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to let go. She wasn’t supposed to leave him.

Her whole purpose was to stay.

#

The city had somehow won the honor of hosting the World Financial Summit, which meant the police and the feds tightened security like a noose around the city’s throat. Because of this, Tony told Eduardo to stop fishing for andies until things were back to normal. Eduardo fished anyway. He had to find another old IBM for parts, so that he could fix Jeannie.

All andies had cell modems in them — used as their program control interface — and Eduardo had discovered an antique program from the pre-Internet days that could be modified to find them. Called a “war dialer,” he had it running on a spare PDA, ghosting random phone accounts as it called phone numbers from sequential lists, one after the other, frustrating hundreds of people an hour.

If a person answered the phone, the war dialer would hang up. If an android answered, the war dialer would ignore the login prompt and signal it’s modem to go into diagnostic mode. “What is your ROM number and version?” it would ask.

“ICTC10Z419 Ver. 27.6. Login please?”

“Goodbye.” The war dialer would hang up, then take this ROM information and compare it to a list that Eduardo provided.

Is this a ROM known to be used in harlot-class androids recently in production?

Yes?

It would add the cell number to the log, then call the next sequential number on the list.

While other hackers terrorized the Internet and blackmailed multinationals with stolen information, Eduardo quietly brought in andies. It was only a matter of time before other hackers figured it out. After that, the media heads would open their big mouths and warn everyone.

Then the fun would be over.

#

“Goddamn. Your andie killed herself? Shit. I didn’t realize she was so fucking smart.”

“Fuck you, Jojo,” Eduardo said. He, Jojo, and Fader were walking toward the bus stop, on their way to meet Tony at the hospital.

“Does that piss you off?” Jojo asked.

“Yes,” Eduardo said, “it does.”

“Then why don’t you fucking hit me?”

“Fuck you.”

Jojo laughed. “You’re a moron, you know that? You have a two-word vocabulary.”

Fader finally spoke. “You reduce everyone’s vocabulary to those two words, Jojo.” Turning to Eduardo, he put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Jeannie isn’t dead. She was never alive in the first place.”

“I know.”

“You need to get over this obsession with a machine. You need to find a real, live girl.”

“That’s what Tony keeps telling me.”

“No,” Jojo said, “Tony keeps saying you should go find your Mama. Get in some of that ubiquitous action—”

“Some what?” Fader said.

“You know,” Jojo said, “that mother-fucking guy.”

“Oedipus?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Eduardo frowned at him. “I don’t want to fuck my mother.”

“All guys do.”

“Fuck you.”

“See?” Jojo said. “I told you. Two-word vocabulary.”

“You’re sick. If I…” Eduardo’s voice trailed off as he spotted the bus. It was either ahead of schedule or they were lagging behind. “Shit!”

They started running, and made it to the bus stop just before it got there — the driver had no excuse to keep going, and was forced to stop. Sometimes they kept going anyway, but this wasn’t a human driver. The doors hissed open to reveal a retro-fitted box and camera array strapped to the driver’s seat. Cogs and rollers spun the steering wheel.

They found seats and rode in silence. There was an armed and mean-looking Transportation Marshall on board. He rode with his sawed-off shotgun held ready. Even Jojo didn’t dare mess with him. They got off at the hospital and met Tony in the waiting area.

“Hey,” Tony said to the gang. To Eduardo he said, “Sorry about Jeannie.”

“Who told you?”

Tony looked at the other two then back at Eduardo. “One of the other andies. Why? You’re trying to keep it a secret from me?”

“No.”

“‘Cause I really don’t give a shit. One andie is as good as the next.” Tony turned and walked away, heading toward the elevators. At the elevators Tony turned toward Eduardo once more. “It’s a shame to lose a perfectly good harlot, though. She was a hot one.”

Eduardo said nothing. They all boarded an elevator and stared at the doors, waiting for the seventh floor. Jojo farted on purpose.

When the elevator let them off, they went down the hall and to the left. Eduardo had been this way so often he didn’t have to think about it. When they reached Ramón’s room, it shocked Eduardo to see how thin his friend had become. The guy used to have a beer belly, and now he looked like one of those people in concentration camp photos. His eyes were dark and sunken. “What?” he said. “You fags bring me some pussy?”

Eduardo laughed. Ramón was so obviously doomed — and he knew it, too — but he always joked. It didn’t faze him.

“We didn’t think we could get an andie in here,” Tony said. “But if you really want…”

“You’d have to give me a boner pill.” Ramón scoffed. “It wouldn’t be worth it for an andie. I want some real pussy.”

“I’ll bring my sister in,” Jojo said.

“Fuck. I’m not that desperate.”

Fader sat on the bed next to him. “So, you see the dude yet?”

“Who?”

“That guy with the hood and the scythe?”

“Oh, him. He’s been around.” Ramón pointed. “Sucker in that bed there died last night. Heard him moaning and calling for his momma about two A.M. When I woke up this morning, they had the sheet over his head and was wheeling him out.”

“That guy who kept talking about his bird?” Jojo said. “The parrot or whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“He was an annoying fuck anyway.”

They stared at each other. The silence stretched. Death had been in the room, and that made it all too real.

#

They lost another one of the girls that night. Their andies were programmed to call in case of trouble; Eduardo got the call and heard the audio feed as the cops interrogated her. The video was slow and low-res, but it was enough to see she was in a squad car. Probably a result of the Summit, which had the cops whipped into a frenzy.

“Goddamn moneyheads just had to have their big party here,” Fader was saying. “Too bored with New York and London. Shit.”

“I’m erasing her,” Eduardo said. “We’ll get some more.”

“Which one was it?”

“Nadine.”

“Tony’ll want us to call the rest back in. Before we lose all of them.”

Eduardo sent a signal to Nadine, instructing her to erase herself, then he deleted Nadine from the list and had his PDA call the others in. After that, he went out to the ‘net to check on the war dialer’s log. It had been depressingly empty of late. Eduardo was afraid people were catching on.

He was surprised to find fifteen new numbers on the log. Fourteen of the numbers were very close to each other, nearly sequential. A bordello. The last time they’d liberated some bordello harlots, the mob came looking for them. Eduardo deleted the numbers from the log, not wanting to mess with it.

That left only one number on the list, and there was good and bad news about it. The ROM number matched Jeannie’s, so it was possible he had replacement parts. But, if she was the only one he brought in, the rest of the Spaz would be pissed at him for parting her out.

“Nothing,” he told Fader.

“No new ones?”

“Only bordello bitches.”

“Shit!” Then Fader shrugged. “Well, it’s not like we’d be putting them on the street right now anyway.”

One by one their harlots began coming in. They hadn’t been out long, so they hadn’t earned much. Barely enough for pizza and beer.

“Hey Eddie,” said one of them. It was Laura, the other IBM. “Sorry about Jeannie.” She stopped in front of the mirror they’d set up for the andies, and checked her hair. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make you feel better.”

Eduardo wondered if he could transfer his feelings for Jeannie to this andie. They looked enough alike that Laura could have been her sister. He came up from behind her, and slid his hands around her waist. She leaned back against him, tilting her head to the side so he could kiss her neck. She smelled of perfume and plastic.

It was familiar and comforting, but it ultimately felt wrong. This wasn’t Jeannie. He couldn’t get that thought out of his head.

Eduardo let her go, and wandered off through the dim, ruined halls of the office. He ended up in the back room with poor broken Jeannie. Sliding his hand up her arm, he held her shoulder and bent down — ignoring her crossed eyes — and kissed her.

She didn’t move. Without power, there was no warmth in her skin. Eduardo sighed, and pulled out his PDA. Loading his hacking programs, he called the one new number. The andie with the IBM ROM. He hoped to God it was compatible — and that it wasn’t male.

As it dialed, Eduardo thought about its owner. What if this guy was in love with his andie, like he was with Jeannie? He imagined an old, bald guy waking in the morning to discover his andie had wandered off on her own. Would he cry? Would he be heartbroken? Eduardo doubted it. The guy would probably just be pissed off, and his insurance would buy him a new one.

His PDA connected. The hacking programs did their thing. It took three tries and five times as long as usual — this andie had some serious protection. Beyond were audio and video feeds, a complex array of sensing registers, and settings for armament software.

A jolt of fear pulsed through him.

The hacking software blinked a message: Artificial Intelligence Detected. Sophistication Level: Very High.

Through the video feed, Eduardo saw a dimly lit room, and the view of a TV set between bare feet with red-painted toenails. Beyond the television was a mirror on the wall, and in that mirror Eduardo saw a beautiful, black-haired woman sitting on a bed. He was seeing her through her own eyes.

Digging deeper into the andie’s control program, Eduardo found controls for bomb detonation, lists of names and phone numbers, and sectional maps of the city. There were also 3D schematics of several hotels as well as the city convention center. Maps, escape routes, everything.

Eduardo swore under his breath. I should just hang up on this one, he thought. I should just hang up. This is serious shit. It’s going to get me killed.

He couldn’t hang up. The Financial Summit was being held at the convention center, so the goal — the purpose — of this andie was obvious. The programming was bad, bad, bad. Pure evil.

He liked it.

I really shouldn’t touch her, he thought. It would serve the moneyhead bastards right to get their shit all blown up. Ninety-eight percent of the wealth was held by two percent of the population, or so Fader kept telling them. This andie had a good chance of wiping out a good chunk of that two percent.

But, still … Eduardo didn’t hang up. He went in and started making changes to the parameters, changing security codes, turning off tracking systems … all the normal preparations to bring an andie in without getting caught. Bringing it in just like the others. Oh, yeah, he thought. Oh, fucking yeah. This is insane.

He couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.

#

Eduardo made his way through the crowd at the train station, blending in with the commuters, looking for people with wires in their ears. She’s probably not even here, he thought. But then he spotted her, over in the corner.

His footsteps slowed, then stopped. People jostled past him, unnoticed. She stood there, looking around as if lost, doe-eyes searching for someone familiar, someone safe.

Her features were absolutely real. Suddenly Eduardo had doubts … maybe this wasn’t the andie. Maybe… But it had to be. She looked just like the low-res image on his PDA.

Eduardo walked up to her. “Are you looking for someone?”

Her eyes fixed on him like magnets snapping onto other magnets. Camera lens eyes. It was subtle, something only a person used to working with andies would notice. “I’m looking for Waldo. Have you seen him?”

“I’m a friend of Waldo. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

He led her out of the train station, up onto the street, and they caught a bus. Eduardo didn’t care about the bus’s destination — he wanted to be on the move. He watched out the window to see if anyone followed. The traffic massed all around them in near gridlock, making it impossible to tell.

Pulling out his PDA, he dialed into this andie’s cell modem and changed her CMOS settings, giving her a new phone number. It was a stolen number, but it would work for at least a few weeks. Finally he double checked to make sure all the tracking devices were shut off.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Eduardo looked up in surprise. Andies never asked things like that. “Nothing,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Gabrielle.” She smiled. “My friends call me Gabby.”

“Mine’s Eduardo. You can call me Eddie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Eddie. How long have you known Waldo?”

“Years.”

“Is he nice?”

“Sure.” Eduardo finished, and put his PDA in his pocket. “How do you feel?”

“I feel fine. But, I’m a little confused.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I know I came to town for a specific reason.”

“To see Waldo.”

“No. It was something else, but I can’t remember. I can’t remember any of it.” She frowned. “It was like everything in my mind evaporated, and now I have to see a guy named Waldo.” She looked him in the eyes. “Does that make sense?”

Eduardo stared back at her, feeling unnerved. Andies never talked like this. It was like she didn’t know she was one. Then it came to him — she was fucking with him. That had to be it. She knew all along, and she was jacking him for information. He had to remember that this andie not only had a bomb-on-board, her programming gave her the ability to snap his neck without mussing her hair.

“We all have shit we have to do,” Eduardo said, trying to remain calm. “Maybe the thing you had to do before was wrong, and so, like, God gave you a new goal.”

“God? I don’t believe in God.”

“Oh.” Eduardo licked his lips. If she even twitched wrong, he was ready to jump out the bus window. “What could it have been, then?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Fate?”

“You believe in fate, but not God?”

“I don’t believe in anything,” Gabby said.

Eduardo smiled despite himself. “Neither do I.”

#

To his surprise, the Spaz weren’t mad at him. Eduardo took the new andie back to the abandoned warehouse, explained everything to the gang, and they laughed and smacked him on the back. Even Jojo told him he was a genius.

Gabby was in the bathroom, cleaning herself up. Eduardo had found the right parameter and adjusted her to be promiscuous, and they’d all given her a try. Tony had a dazed smile on his face — he’d been with real women, so he knew the difference. “She’s the real thing,” he told them. “That’s what it’s like.”

“Maybe Eddie’s not completely wacko,” Fader said. “Maybe falling in love with an andie makes sense.”

Jojo laughed. “You just like the thought that there’s a bomb inside her.”

“All real women have a bomb inside them,” Fader told them. “That’s what makes them so interesting — you never know when it’ll go off.”

“Fucking A!”

Eduardo wandered away, trudging through the grimy dimness to his back room; his tools and his dead andie. He kept a pile of musty sleeping bags along the far wall, and he shook the bugs out and flopped down on them. Jeannie used to cuddle with him there. They’d hold each other for hours, and sometimes it would trigger a subroutine in Jeannie and she would start rocking him like a baby. When she did that, he would hold on and cry.

Gabby was too different. He liked her, but it wasn’t the same. Her only connection to Jeannie consisted of a ROM chip embedded somewhere inside her, and everything else — including the bomb — was bleeding edge proprietary equipment. So she was not the answer for saving Jeannie.

Eduardo noticed a shadow at the doorway, and then Gabby stepped in. He saw her naked body in the dim light, and without asking she slid into the bundle of sleeping bags with him. They cuddled, and she felt warm and soft, and smelled of perfume and girl-sweat. No hint of plastic at all. No faint sounds of servos, no clicking, no mechanical movements. She’s fluid, he thought. Graceful.

A woman.

“When will I get to see Waldo?” she asked.

Eduardo almost told her that he was actually Waldo. It almost came out of his mouth. For some reason, he wanted her to love him. Bomb and all. “Soon,” he told her.

“You keep saying that. When is soon?”

“Why do you want Waldo?”

“Waldo is my destiny.”

Eduardo mulled this over. He thought about the bomb. “No one else can be your destiny?”

“There is only one true love.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s true.”

He raised himself on one elbow so that he could look her in the eyes. “What does love mean to you?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

“What does love mean to you?” she countered.

Eduardo sighed. Throwing a question back was the classic AI tactic for when the program had no answer. This disappointed him — made him think the program wasn’t so sophisticated after all. “I don’t have an answer either,” he told her. “My mother abandoned me when I was a kid. So she didn’t love me. My dad couldn’t care less where I am, or what I’m doing, as long as it doesn’t cost him money. I’ve never been with a real woman. So, I guess I don’t know.”

“No one loves you?”

Eduardo shrugged.

Gabby remained silent for a while. “I’ll love you,” she said. “But you can’t be my one true love.”

“You’ll love me?”

“Yes.”

“You will?”

She nodded.

He almost laughed. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Not really,” she said. “You’ll still be trapped in this Hell. At least I can try to make it more pleasant for a while.”

“Are you talking about life?”

“What else would I be talking about?” She pulled back and looked at him through the tangled curls of her hair.

“Were you programmed to think of life as Hell, or did you come up with this on your own?”

“Programmed?” She took offense to the word.

“Yeah, programmed. Andies are programmed.”

“Who are you calling an andie?” She frowned hard. It looked real.

“You’re not an android?”

“No!” She pulled away from him, wrapping one of the sleeping bags around herself. “What made you think I was an android?”

Eduardo chose his reply carefully. “I’m just joking,” he said. “You’re joking about life being Hell, and I’m joking about us all being androids. It’s, like, an analogy, you know? That’s all.”

She glared at him.

He wondered how close he’d been to setting off the bomb.

#

When Gabby was off with Fader, Eduardo approached Tony and Jojo, his shoulders slumped and head hanging. “I’m sorry guys. I’m sorry I brought her in.”

“What are you talking about?” Tony said.

“She’s fucking insane. She thinks she’s real.”

“She is real,” Jojo said. “You’re the one that’s fucking insane.”

Tony laughed. “She’s wonderful. You outdid yourself, man. Gabby is incredible.”

“You guys don’t understand!”

“Do you realize how much money we’re going to make, pimping her?”

Eduardo couldn’t believe what he heard. “She’s got a fucking bomb, Tony! And, she insists she’s a real woman—”

“That’s what makes her perfect,” Tony said. “We’re taking a weapon and turning it into an instrument of love.” He shook him. “Don’t you see?”

“That’s the problem,” Eduardo told him. “She’s set to explode when she meets the one she loves.”

That got their attention.

“Slide that by me again?” Tony said.

“You gotta understand the way she works. AI programs need a goal. That’s what motivates them, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Gabby is a very smart, very fucked-up stealth bomb. She’s programmed to love someone — that’s her goal, right? — but she’s programmed to think life is a shitty thing, so when she finds her true love, she’s going to save him from his shitty life.”

“You can’t change that?”

“No! I can’t! I can change the program parameters, but not the program itself. She was set to love some moneyhead bastard, but I changed it to Waldo. That’s all I can do.”

“Waldo?” Tony said.

“Oh!” Jojo exclaimed. “Waldo! I get it!” He laughed. “Where is Waldo? Oh, there he is! Boom!”

Tony was grinning again. “I like it.”

“We can’t pimp her,” Eduardo told him. “Can’t you see? Besides, some real cutthroat motherfuckers are going to be looking for her, and we have no idea who they are.”

“Oh, to hell with them. The world is full of cutthroat motherfuckers.” He put his arm across Eduardo’s shoulder. “You still did good. Don’t you see? This is perfect.”

Eduardo didn’t understand. Jojo did, though, because he had the same gleam in his eyes as Tony. “Gabby is a fucking angel of God, man. Life is shitty.”

Looking back and forth between the two, Eduardo wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

#

Over the next week, they checked Ramón out of the hospital and into the hospice. Ramón’s parents never showed. Ramón didn’t seem to care — he just seemed happy that the Spaz were still with him.

Once they got him settled, Tony leaned over and said in a low voice, “We got a girl for you, man.”

“Huh?”

“A real hottie.”

Ramón sighed. “I’m not in the mood, guys. It’d just depress me.”

“She’s not an andie,” Tony told him. “I said a girl.”

“She’s one fine bitch,” Jojo said. “You’ll cream just lookin’ at her.”

“What?” Ramón said, looking at them doubtfully. “You mean she’ll…”

Tony nodded. “We’re paying her, of course, but she’s hip to doing it because she’s a nice girl. Caring.”

“She’s like a porn star,” Fader said.

“Really?” Ramón looked distressed, and moved his arm to make all the tubes rattle. “Look at this crap, though. Look where I’m at. All my fucking hair is gone.”

“She won’t care,” Eduardo said.

“It won’t be here, either,” Tony told him. “We’ll take you guys out on a date. Get you high on some good drugs and a couple boner pills, and she’s gonna ride you like a girl on a plastic pony.”

Ramón was speechless for a few moments. “When?” he finally blurted.

“How about tonight?”

The look on his face was priceless. It was like he’d been told the cancer was gone. “I feel my best about seven,” he said. “I’m puking by ten.”

“We’ll pick you up at seven.”

Ramón had such a wide grin that drool poured out.

#

Jojo had a cousin whose husband wanted someone to steal their junky old Winnebago so he could collect insurance on it. They made arrangements to be gone for the evening, and wouldn’t report it stolen until midnight. Eduardo hotwired it and Jojo drove. The engine barely ran and the exhaust blew plumes of oily blue smoke.

They drove out across the central valley, sputtering for miles along a lonely road. Eduardo was afraid it would break down and die before they could make it. Jojo knew how to keep it going, though — he had experience driving it — and after several miles he pulled onto a levy road that led into a barren, ploughed field. The sun sank and touched the horizon. They reached their destination, and Jojo eased the lumbering machine off the levy and into the soft grey dirt, then killed the engine.

Tony was already there. He and Fader helped Ramón out of Tony’s car. A moment later, Gabby emerged. She was stark naked.

Eduardo and Jojo looked at each other.

Ramón was smiling, and drooling. It looked like he didn’t have much control of his muscles, but he definitely wasn’t feeling any pain. They helped him into the motor home and into the back double-bed. “She’s beautiful, man,” he was saying. “Isn’t she? Huh?” He looked at Eduardo. “She was giving me head in the car.”

Eduardo managed a big smile. “Nasty.”

“Oh, yeah!”

Tony leaned close, and said, “Remember what I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ramón nodded. “Thank you guys. You’re the best fucking family a guy could have.”

“You have fun,” Tony said.

“Yeah.” Ramón nodded, his head wobbling. “I’ve got the secret.” His laugh sounded goofy and stupid. Eduardo was glad to hear it anyway.

As they piled out, Gabby was coming in. She looked unsure. “He’s back there,” Fader told her.

“We’ll be back in an hour or so,” Tony called out to Ramón.

They waited for a minute, watching as Gabby went to the back and started helping Ramón out of his clothes. Eduardo leaned close to Tony. “What did you give him?”

“A bit of this, a bit of that.”

“He’s stoned out of his mind.”

Tony grinned. “He’s got a boner that won’t go away.”

They climbed into Tony’s car. Tony started it up, and drove back down to the end of the dirt road, then pulled out onto the blacktop and parked. There wasn’t another car in sight, anywhere.

“When’s he going to say it?” JoJo asked.

“I told him to tell her right as he’s coming,” Tony said. “I told him to say, ‘I’m Waldo, baby, I’m Waldo.’ Told him it would drive her wild.”

“And then she’ll…?”

Tony nodded, and turned toward Eduardo. “Right?”

Eduardo nodded without saying anything.

They waited silently, the dashboard clock ticking the minutes away. Eduardo felt the tension like a tourniquet around his chest. Each minute tightened it a bit more. The air inside the car seemed to run out of oxygen, and Tony looked at him with a concerned expression. “You okay, man?” he asked.

Eduardo realized he was gasping. “We can’t do this, Tony,” he said.

Tony shook his head. “Calm down—”

“This was a bad idea!” He reached for the door handle, gave it a yank. He heard the Spaz yelling at him as he shoved the door open, but the words were nothing more than a buzz. He couldn’t breathe.

Trees alongside the road blocked their view of the field and the distant Winnebago. He pushed passed them, through the undergrowth, heading out into a field full of yellow straw. Before he could get far, the Spaz were surrounding him, and Tony circled in front, blocking his way. “Don’t be an idiot!” he yelled.

“Man,” Eduardo said, “I have to do something! I can’t let this happen!”

“It’s already done,” Tony said. “She could blow any second. We’re not going back.”

“It’s like when you light a big firecracker,” JoJo said. “You leave it the fuck alone.”

“You can’t do nothing, Eddie,” Fader told him, his expression sad.

“You don’t understand,” Eduardo said, “this is my fault. I brought Gabby in—”

Tony punched him, hard, right in the stomach. Eduardo stumbled backwards, doubled over, gasping and coughing. It hurt so much his eyes couldn’t focus.

“We’re doing the right thing,” Tony said, his voice calm. “Sometimes when you love someone, you have to do harsh things. Like just now. I didn’t want to hit you, Eddie, but I had to bring you back to here and now. And we don’t want Ramón to suffer a long painful death, so we’re giving him a happy quick one. We do these things out of love, man. You have to be brave enough to make the hard choices, with a clear head. To do things that are for the best.”

Eduardo coughed and spat, catching his breath, and still doubled over he looked up at Tony. Right then, he knew. He knew what had happened to Jeannie. “You fucker,” he said. “You cock-sucking son of a bitch!”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, man, but I don’t want you do go out there and die.”

“You killed her, didn’t you? You killed Jeannie!”

Tony’s mouth dropped open, his eyebrows furrowed. “The fucking andie? You bring her up now? She was a fucking machine, Eddie.”

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I fucking killed her, Eduardo! She was becoming your mommy. You’d be in there suckling her teats right now if I hadn’t—”

Eduardo straightened up suddenly, launching himself with both feet and swinging a right hook. It connected solid and painful with Tony’s mouth, sending a shock of agony through Eduardo’s hand and up his arm, blood spraying from teeth gashed against knuckles. Tony reeled backward, and Eduardo took a step back himself, wringing his bloody hand. While he was distracted, Fader and JoJo grabbed hold of him.

“No!” Tony yelled, mouth drippin blood. “Let him go.”

“But—”

“Let him go,” Tony insisted. He held his hands to his mouth, then, muffling his voice. “Fucker!”

Eduardo felt the others release him. He raised his fists again, but hesitated. Tony still held onto his mouth, not attempting to defend himself.

“Go on,” Tony mumbled. “Beat the shit out of me.”

Eduardo lunged forward, his fists swinging, and Tony closed his eyes. He landed blows against Tony’s chest, his arms, the side of his head, but they lacked strength. After one more half-hearted punch, Eduardo stopped.

“If you’re going to hit me,” Tony said, “hit me.”

Eduardo stared at him, panting. “I don’t want to hit you,” he finally said. He looked beyond his friend, far across the fields at the distant Winnebago. “I’m going to go check on Ramón.”

“Don’t do it, man.”

Eduardo shook his head. “I must have been wrong about Gabby. It would have happened by now—”

He was cut off by the loudest noise he had ever heard. The concussion felt like a earthquake; the shockwave knocked them over, wrenched the trees behind them, and sent pieces of Winnebago for miles. The noise went on and on.

Eduardo struggled to his feet, staring at the mushroom cloud of fire and smoke, unable to believe the size of the blackened crater. As the Winnebago fragments began to rain down, JoJo stepped up from behind him and said, “I want to die like that, man. Just like that.”

“Me too,” Fader said. “See?” he said to Eduardo.

“Huh?” Eduardo had trouble hearing anything over the ringing in his ears.

“Now can you see that we did him a favor?”

“Maybe,” Eduardo said, “but that’s not the fucking point.” He turned and looked at Tony, then back over at Fader and JoJo. “We don’t know if that’s what he wanted. I never heard him complain, did you? Did he say, ever, ‘please kill me?’ Did he?”

“Well, no,” Fader said, “but—”

“That’s the point, man!” Eduardo shouted. “I don’t give a shit if it’s for the best or not. It’s not your fucking decision to make.” He tromped off toward the road, and said, “I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

Opening the driver’s door of Tony’s car, he got in behind the wheel. The keys still hung from the ignition, and for a moment — just a split second — he considered driving off and leaving them there. But no, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon his brothers, at least not in the middle of a field.

No more stealing andies, though. No more pimping them out for beer and pizza money. If I survive this, he thought — if someone doesn’t hunt me down and pop a cap in my head for stealing that bomb — I’m moving on. Time to do something real. Time to put this shit behind me.

Time, he thought, to find myself a real woman.

One who doesn’t leave. Or explode. Or get pushed off a ledge.

The others climbed into the car, not saying a word. Not even Tony, who sat in the back seat with all the blood still dribbling down the front of his shirt. Eduardo started the car, put it into gear, and drove away.

The students fidgeted. One, a young man with so many freckles it looked painful, raised his hand. Kafka nodded, and the youth spoke up. “Sir Oscar Wilde said, ‘History is merely gossip.’”

Kafka took a step toward the student, pointing the stick right at him. “Precisely!” he said, his voice betraying only a echo of his former accent. “That is precisely my point!”

#

A half mile away, Professor Raymond Burns was looking directly into history.

He was searching for carts.

They came from here, he was sure of it. Raymond had tracked the carts all up and down the region and they always came from here. After all, it made sense; the area between the rivers was famous as being the cradle of civilization. The muddy waters and the fertile desert land just begged to be mixed, and the local villages listened. Irrigation was developed, and with it came more food than the farmers could possibly use. This led to the gift of idle time. Time to ponder, time to experiment. Villages became cities, and cities became city-states.

There came kings and gods and law.

The image that was broadcast directly to Raymond’s optic nerves caused a stinging pain. There was a specially developed endorphin to counter this side effect, but it wore off quickly. The pain distracted Raymond, but he was perpetually putting off another dose for just one more minute…

He worked the controls, slowing the temporal scan. It was right about here. Going forward through time, slowing the rate, slowing so that he could see the passage of humanity through the stinging hell of the retinal linkage. There were no carts at all, and then suddenly they were everywhere! It was like there had been an explosion of carts.

He reversed the scan, going backwards through time. Below his disembodied eyes the city deteriorated into a village of mud huts, and the bronze plow devolved to copper and then to a curved stick. The men and women carried their harvest in by hand in large baskets. There was not a wheel in sight. Wearily, Raymond flipped the controls forward again. This was taking forever.

For seven long years Raymond had been waiting for this chance, and now he had only three days to accomplish it. Two of those three days were already gone, and this last one was rapidly coming to a close. Behind Raymond there was a long line of others who waited for their turn at the temporal viewer, each with their own pet projects. If Raymond didn’t make his discovery within the next few hours, it would probably never happen.

Through the haze of pain he watched it happen again. An explosion of carts. He reversed the controls again and watched, scanning slower than ever, trying to trace the progress. It had to have begun here. Somewhere.

And then — suddenly! — he spotted it. He stopped the temporal scan, freezing the image. Raymond was so elated he giggled like a madman. “That’s it! That’s it that’s it!” he yelled out loud. They were beautiful — the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Four round bricks drying in the hot summer sunlight. Four bricks that would forever change the history of mankind.

#

Elko, a Sumerian potter living on the banks of the Euphrates, had this reoccurring feeling that he was being watched. It would come and go, and sometimes he forgot about it altogether, but then sometimes he could be all alone and it was like someone was above him looking down. He attributed it as the attention of the gods. His own father thought him a fool, so maybe the gods did too, and Elko was providing them with amusement.

Elko, son a farmer, heir to a long line of the most successful farmers anyone had ever known, had turned down the family trade to play with mud. That’s how Unko, his father, would put it. Playing with mud. Unko saw water as the power, water flowing through their hand-dug ditches, irrigating the fields. Man controlling the power of water from the great Euphrates.

Elko firmly believed it was not the water, it was the dirt. The water merely followed where the dirt directed it. Hand-built levees, hand dug ditches — it was the dirt.

Control the dirt. Mold the soil into shapes from the mind’s imagination. Anything was possible!

His father couldn’t argue that his son wasn’t making a good living — he was. Elko worked as a potter, trading his bowls and vessels for food and clothing, and he lived in a large home made from sun-hardened bricks he made himself. He had a good woman and they were soon expecting a child. Everyone outside his immediate family held him in high regard as a man of ideas.

“Look at you! You call this work? You could be out growing food, building aqueducts! Instead you sit in this fancy hut of yours and play with mud. It’s like you never grew up.”

“Father, what would you store your grain in if you didn’t have my vessels? They’d still be in a heap under a blanket, being eaten by birds, rats, and bugs.”

“Making pots is a woman’s job.”

It was useless. No matter what he did, Elko couldn’t convince his father that what he was doing was useful. Despite his success, this bothered him, and sometimes he lie awake at night trying to think of a way to change his father’s mind.

It came to him on one of those days when he felt he was being watched, while he was busy filling an order of 24 vessels for Yurdmal the Trader. Elko had fashioned a round table that he could spin by kicking at thick pegs radiating from the base. The whole table was very heavy but well balanced in a depression in the floor — once he got it going, it would continue spinning for quite a while. It wasn’t his idea, but it was one he’d improved upon. The spinning table allowed him to make the smoothest and most uniform vessels in the region, and quickly too. He made them by the dozens and sold them cheap.

Being in a hurry that day, Elko kicked the table too hard. It lost its balance, and he was just able to leap back as it tipped over and went rolling around the room. It reminded Elko of something he’d seen as a child — some faint, dream image reaching out from years past. He watched the table rolling until it stopped, then took a breath and went to it. The gods, he was sure, were laughing at him. But after a few minutes of grunting Elko had the table into position and went right back to work. His mind, however, was far from what he was doing.

That night, from the finest of his brick-making clay, Elko made four large round bricks with holes in the exact center. After a week of drying in the sunlight they were rock hard, and he mounted them onto two poles. Across the poles he put a big, strong basket, fastening it tight. When he was done he tested it out, and it worked just like he thought it would. So, gathering his nerve, he rolled his invention out to his father in the fields. “I made this for you,” he said. “This should make it easier to carry in your harvest.”

Unko walked around the unlikely contraption, staring. He tried pushing and pulling it back and forth. “Son,” he told Elko, “this is very clever.” A crowd gathered around, and they tested it by filling it with a large load of grain. With it, one man could carry in more than ten men could carry without it. Everyone agreed that this was indeed very clever, and within a month the whole valley was swarming with copies.

Elko’s father still grumbled about his son’s choice of profession, but now there was a touch of admiration in his voice. This was enough for Elko. His life seemed complete.

#

The report was titled: Elko Potter, Inventor of the Wheel. Professor Raymond Burns submitted it to Technica along with a copy of the recordings from the temporal viewer. It chronologged his search for the first wheeled cart, tracing it back to one Sumerian potter, then detailed the potter’s life from birth to death.

Raymond had been waiting for the call. He’d been sitting in his condo all morning wearing a suit and a tie, ready for the occasion. He couldn’t see anything other than complete acceptance, as his thousand-to-one shot project had been a total success. Raymond found Elko at the very last moment. He had to quick-talk his way into another several hours with the temporal viewer so that he could lock it on Elko and scan the man’s entire existence.

The call came, and Raymond answered it with a quick, nervous jab at the button. It was Barbara Lemmas, a professor of the Seventh Level, one of Technica’s local bigwigs. “Raymond, we’ve reviewed your project,” she said.

“Yes.”

“This appears to be a major find. We have to talk about your follow-up research.”

“Yes.”

“Meet us at Fine Hall, third floor.”

“I’m on my way.”

Lemmas nodded once and broke the connection. Fine Hall! Raymond thought. Third floor! It was the domain of the gods.

Technica was to science what the Catholic Church was to religion. There were branches of it everywhere, influencing everything, owning vast fortunes in knowledge and patent rights. And here, in the Livermore Valley of California, was Technica’s “Vatican,” The Institute of Human Endeavor. Here and only here could one find humanity’s only time machines — three of them, to be exact — and the only Great Hall of Learning.

The board of directors, all professors of the sixth level and above, sat at a large horseshoe-shaped table around the single stool and podium where Raymond sat and fidgeted. The chairman himself, the “Pope” of Technica, was out of the solar system on a project of his own.

“We congratulate you on your success,” Lemmus was saying. “Your method was precise and your supporting evidence very convincing. Elko Potter does indeed seem to be the inventor of the wheel. Your detail of his life is, also, very thorough.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Raymond said. He allowed himself a modest bow.

“The circumstances of his death also lend itself to our advantage. Suicide in the Euphrates.”

“It appeared to be suicide, yes. We won’t know for sure until we ask him.”

The professors around him nodded, except for Steve Gibson. He was a large-chested man with long flowing white hair and big blue eyes. “I suggest we make that an imperative. Burns should split his next phase into two; one being a covert contact to ask the subject exactly that: Did he really invent the wheel? It is possible that he only recreated it. Perhaps he saw such a thing earlier in his life. If so, then go on with the next phase.”

A few of the members of the board nodded at this, but Lemmas — who was acting director in the Chairperson’s absence — shook her head. “We’ve all reviewed Professor Burns’s data. There is no evidence of the wheel in any temporal scans earlier than Elko Potter’s first cart.”

“I suggest that his time scans may not have caught earlier incarnations,” Gibson said.

“We are all aware that Professor Burns’s project may cut into your own research time with the temporal devices, Professor Gibson. I suggest that you let him get on with his project as quickly as possible so that it minimizes delay with yours.”

Gibson rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Now, if there are no further objections, then I would say Professor Burns has the green light for the second phase of his project.” Lemmas stared at Gibson, waiting for him to object. Gibson heaved a loud, disgusted sigh and crossed his arms defensively across his chest, but said nothing. Lemmas turned to Raymond. “Once you submit a detail of your plans,” she said, “you shall have what assistance you need and free use of Temporal Transfer Chamber number three.”

Raymond exited from the meeting gleefully, carefully avoiding Steve Gibson’s smoldering stare.

#

Forty-two years was a long time to be alive. His face lined, his hands hard and stiff with arthritis, Elko the potter could no longer work. His wife was long dead, and his sons had already taken over his trade. He was nothing but a burden on them, now, and so one night with the moon full in the sky — and having the distinct feeling that he was being watched — Elko scraped up with dignity he still had and took a walk along one of his late father’s canals to the river. There on the shore, he removed his shirt, headpiece, skirt, and sandals, and waded out into the churning muddy water. “I give myself to the gods of Earth and Water,” he said, “in thanks for the gift of my life.”

The current grew strong and swept him off his feet. He treaded water as he was carried along past the city and out beyond the farmlands. To either side of him were great expanses of moonlit desert, calm and peaceful. Elko felt relaxed, and floated easily. He wasn’t in a rush to get it over with. He was reliving memories of his wife and his children.

A ring of lights glared down at him, and there was a harsh sloshing sound as a lot of water tried to climb up the side of a silver wall. It only reached so far, then came surging down in a wave that came back at Elko. He bobbed with it as it passed him, then amazingly the wave hit another silver wall on the other side and came back again. There was a round silver wall completely surrounding him. The ring of lights from above seemed to be mounted on a ceiling. He was in a room!

The water drained quickly and left him splayed in dismay on a gold metal floor. He took a breath and sat up, wincing with the pain and stiffness. Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet and shuffled back and forth, looking at the metal and wondering how he’d arrived here. “Hello?” he said. His voice echoed with a ringing quality. There was no response, so he stood and patiently waited.

A round hole opened in the ceiling and a ladder dropped down. A strangely-dressed man climbed down and spoke to him with a thick accent. “I am a friend,” he said. “Nothing here will hurt you.”

Elko looked him up and down, seeing finely woven cloth of thread so thin you could barely see it, and sandals that covered all of the meet in a black shell like a foot-sized dung beetle. The man’s face and smile were oddly disconcerting, and his eyes were a watery green. Without a doubt, this was a god. Which god, Elko had no idea — but definitely a god. “I am your humble slave,” Elko said.

“No, you are my friend. You will understand in time. Come with me.”

With difficulty and a bit of fear, Elko followed the god up the ladder.

#

They jabbed brightly-polished metal thorns in his arms, which oddly enough brought pleasant waves of relief from the pain in his joints and hands. In four days, they told him, the pain would be gone forever. In the mean time they had provided him with a large rectangular room in a building that seemed to be so big it went on forever, and in this room one whole wall was fashioned out of the purest crystal. Through it he could see a land lush with green grass and gnarled trees, rolling hills, and a reassuring blue sky. Black roads painted with broken yellow lines crossed the landscape. Graceful buildings bigger than any he’d ever seen thrust up out of the ground toward the sky, so skillfully crafted they brought tears to his eyes.

He sat on a soft, high bed and watched as brightly-colored, wheeled machines raced at astonishing speeds along the black roads. Machines also flew through the air, some close and slow, some very far away and traveling very fast. Some of these left long, thin, straight clouds behind them, and as Elko watched these clouds grew fat and translucent and then drifted away.

A smiling, brown-skinned woman and the man who’d first greeted him came to visit and asked how he was adjusting. Elko had no idea what they meant by this, but he told them how grateful he was for the wardrobe of fine, new clothes. They asked him if he would like to learn their language. He said, “Yes, I would be honored.”

“We have different methods of teaching than you are used to,” the dark-skinned woman said. “They are much faster.”

“I am humbled by your vast knowledge,” he said, hoping this was appropriate.

“With the language lesson will come knowledge of concepts you will need in order to understand this new world. The lesson will change the way you view things. Do you understand this?”

“I am anxious to understand your new world,” he told them.

“You do not object to the lesson, then?”

“I have no objections at all.”

They led him though a maze of carpeted hallways, spent time in a room called “an elevator” — which seemed like great magic to Elko — and finally to a room full of comfortable beds. They had him lie down in one and told him to relax.

“This is a machine that will teach you,” he was told. They rolled a metal box over to his bed. The box had numerous colored lights which looked like captive stars, and a headband that was attached to it by a long cord.

“We’re going to put this on your head,” they told him, showing him the headband. “It will feel odd but it will not hurt you.” When they slipped it over his forehead it made all his muscles jump, as if he’d been startled. Then sleep came with a rush.

Through his slumber he dreamed of a stampede of mad oxen trampling through the farmlands, through the town, through his very home. They were possessed by the god of oxen, and that god was furious. The oxen were everywhere, jabbing their horns and crushing with their hooves. They swept everything away; his home, his sons, his grandchildren. He heard women crying in anguish.

When he awoke, it was abrupt. He felt dizzy, and his forehead was damp with cold sweat. He stared up at the boxes with the colored lights and said, “Computer!” The word, even as he said it, startled him, and the concept behind it was bizarre. “Microchip!” he said. “They’re made of dirt!” Disoriented as he was, this fact gave him a spasm of joy.

A great understanding seemed to be trying to catch up to him. He could feel it coming up from behind, thundering along on a hundred-thousand mad hooves. Technica! he thought. A church of science! Truth! Great thought! The understanding swept over him, trampling him. Crushing him over and over again. Technica collected the great minds of humanity. They thought he was one of them. They thought he had invented the wheel! Either the god of good fortune was in love with him, or the god of practical jokes. This was a prank of horrible proportions!

#

Elko sat at the table by himself with his plate of gourmet cafeteria food in front of him, untouched. That day Professor Burns had taken him out on a balcony on the top floor of the West Tower, and let him behold the wonders of 22nd century civilization. It spread like a carpet across the Livermore Valley, covering the mountains to the west and continuing on to the sea. “Wheels,” Raymond had told him. “Everywhere you look, you see wheels. It all started with you, Elko. The cart you built for your father. You are the father of everything you see today. The day you put that cart together was the decisive moment in the history of Mankind.”

Even with his new found understanding of this alien world called “The Future,” this concept still boggled his mind. These people had build a devices that, though manipulating the basic fabric of reality, was able to reach back through the ages and scoop him out of the water. They saved his life and brought him here so they could honor him as the father of technology, and allow him to teach a class in pottery in the Great Hall of Learning.

Here he was, elbow to elbow with the great minds of the ages, just because he put four wheels on two sticks and attached a basket to the top. It didn’t make sense to him.

“So, you’re the inventor of the wheel.” Elko looked up at the man who spoke. He was tall and had a charming smile, and his name tag read, “John Kennedy, Great Political Leader.” John introduced himself and shook Elko’s hand, then indicated a short, dark-haired man standing next to him. “Elko, this is my good friend Franz. Franz Kafka. He’s a famous writer.”

Franz shook hands with Elko. “I program computers, now,” he said.

“Computers made of dirt! Digital logic!” Elko blurted. He covered his mouth with his hands, and shook his head.

“Recent language upload, eh?” John said. “Don’t worry, it calms down after a few days.” He and Franz sat down across from Elko, each with their own cafeteria trays. “The foods here’s great, isn’t it?”

“Preprocessed cloned non-cholesterol!” Elko blurted. “Fabricated meat food product!”

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

“I never did like greasy food,” Franz said. “It always gave me indigestion.”

“It must be a real change for you, Mr. Potter. Food-wise as well as everything else. I heard you made an over seven-thousand year leap.”

“Eight-thousand,” Franz said. “He’s from around six-thousand B.C.”

“Before Christ … imagine that!”

“Millennium!” Elko blurted. “Cosmos!”

“Wasn’t that right around the time of the invention of the written word itself?” Franz said. “Did written language exist during your time period?”

“Hieroglyphics!” Elko’s mouth spat the word out violently, then he was able to control himself. He drank some water and took a deep breath. “Crude writing was around. It existed. We regarded it with a mixture of suspicion and awe.”

“What do you think of it now?”

“Alphabet!” Once again, Elko put his hands over his mouth. “Information!” he shouted into his hands. “Immortality!”

“In a few days they’re going to have you start writing your thoughts and reflections down,” Franz said. “It’s to give the students a database of quotes they can attribute to you as they’re learning.”

John leaned forward and whispered, “If you need any help, give Franz here a call. He wrote half of mine for me.”

Elko cautiously moved his hands away from his mouth. In a low, uneven voice he said, “Ill keep that in mind, thank you.”

#

Elko attended his first cocktail party as Raymond Burn’s special guest. It was his first time outside the Technica campus, and his first ride in a car. He kept closing his eyes because things seemed to be coming at him too fast, and by the time they reached Raymond’s large round house in the hills he was feeling nauseous.

There were several different levels to Raymond’s house, each one reached through the wide circular staircase in the center of the structure. Elko was dazzled by the architecture, and kept running his hands over the smooth, hard surfaces. Concrete! his mind shouted, but by now Elko had learned how to keep it to himself. Clay so hard it turned to stone! The top floor was one large round room with a shallow domed roof ornamented by a spectacular stained glass skylight. There were over-stuffed chairs, leather couches and ornate wooden cocktail tables everywhere, as well as white-uniformed butlers ready to serve. One white piano stood out near a large window, and next to it stood a large golden harp. To Elko’s amazement they played themselves. Computerized! he thought. Automated!

The reason for the party was that Raymond was celebrating his elevation in status from 5th to 6th level professor at Technica. The reason for his elevation, so Elko gathered, was the discovery by Raymond of Elko himself. Elko was considered a very important discovery for Technica, and he was honored as one of the most important additions to the Great Hall.

A cocktail party, as Elko soon discovered, was a loosely-conducted ritual where many people stood around sipping alcoholic drinks and saying meaningful things to each other. Elko was at a loss trying to ascertain what his part in it was, though people kept coming up to him and asking him all sorts of disturbing questions.

“How long did it take you to develop the wheel from concept to working model?”

“How far have you ever tried to calculate the value of p ?”

“Were you inspired by the moon?”

“Man, what I would have given to be your patent attorney.”

“When inventing the wheel, how many different shapes did you go through before deciding on a circle?”

In the middle of this, a very large, imposing man made his way over and stared at him with cold blue eyes. The man had an impressive mane of long white hair, and a deep, grumbling voice that seemed loud even when he was whispering. “You didn’t really invent the wheel, did you?” he said. “You got the idea from somewhere else.”

The room seemed to be utterly quiet just after the man asked this, and Elko gazed across the room to see Raymond. Raymond looked like he was choking on an ice cube or something. Elko knew instinctively that a lot was riding on this, and he shrugged and said, “My table gave me the idea. It fell over and rolled around the room.”

The white-haired man seemed a bit deflated by this answer, but across the room Raymond looked like he could breathe again. Elko guessed that he’d said the right thing. The white-haired man, who’s name he found out later was Professor Gibson, muttered something about ideas having to come from “somewhere” but he didn’t argue the point.

A week later Elko ran across Raymond at Technica, and Raymond excused himself from a crowd of professors and went to go speak to him. “How’re your classes coming along, Elko? Any problems with the students?”

“Oh, no. The students are very bright and respectful.” It was true enough, as Elko was thrilled with the electric pottery wheel and the other new developments such as the plastic-based clays. He created bowls, vases and urns so fluid and beautiful they awed the students.

“That’s good,” Raymond said. “I’m glad to hear it. If any of the little bastards give you any trouble let me know — he’ll be out of here so fast that it’ll take thirty seconds for his screams of anguish to catch up to him.”

“Well.”

“What?”

“Its that, um … ”

“Someone is giving you a problem?”

“Oh, no. It’s me. Something has been bothering me for the last few days, and I think it would be best if I told you about it.”

“Well, what? Tell me about it. I don’t care what it is, I’ll have it solved for you before the day’s finished. What?”

“I didn’t invent the wheel.”

Raymond’s look startled Elko. It was as if Raymond’s eyes had almost popped out of their sockets. Then he quickly looked back and forth down the long, wide hall to see if anyone had been near enough to hear. “Let’s not discuss this here,” Raymond said in a strained voice. “Follow me.” He led the way to his office, then ushered Elko quickly inside and shut and locked the door behind them. “Okay,” he said, “what is this nonsense?”

“I don’t belong here with these people,” Elko said. “I’m not one of the great minds of humanity.”

“Don’t be silly! You belong here more than most of those other idiots in the Great Hall!”

“I feel like a fraud, Raymond.”

“This has something to do with Gibson, doesn’t it? What has he said to you?”

“He knows that I didn’t invent the wheel.”

“But you did invent the wheel! I saw you do it!”

“No, I recreated something I saw as a child. There was a group of nomads, and they had an oxen pulling a giant basket which rolled on wheels. I was five, maybe six years old, and they were off in the distance. It was a strange sight, and it always stuck in my mind — but it never occurred to me to duplicate their cart until that one day when my potting wheel tipped over.”

Raymond was silent for a moment, looking very agitated. “This is absolute nonsense!” he finally blurted. “This memory of yours could have been a dream for all we know! A product of your own imagination. As a matter of fact, it could have been a very recent dream brought on by post-hypnotic suggestion because of that damn Steve Gibson!”

“No—”

“Yes, Elko! Yes. Your mind can easily play tricks upon you. Memories are fragile, unreliable things. Every time you remember something it gets restored, and every time it gets restored it is restored slightly different. Every time you remember something you change your memory. It gets to the point that you’re remembering memories of memories of memories, and it becomes very unreliable. Things that you swear happened to you as a child are in actuality memories of dreams. I myself for years swore that as a child I saw a news report about a giant frog being found during World War Three, and have vivid memories of photos of this giant frog being towed into the San Francisco bay by and aircraft carrier. This never happened! I dreamed it. Don’t you see?”

“No,” Elko said. “I saw those nomads. That’s where I got the idea for using wheels. I didn’t invent it.”

“Shut up!” Raymond yelled. “God damn you, you little Sumerian bastard! What are you trying to do to me? You want to wreck my career! I don’t give a damn about what you remember. History shows that you invented the wheel, and that’s final.”

“But—”

“You just forget about it! I swear to god, if you blab this to anybody, it’ll be the hardest on you! You, Elko! I saved your god damned ass right out of the Euphrates, and I can put it right back in there. We have a clone of you growing right now, did you know that? A clone that we have to send back in time to replace you in your death. It wouldn’t be hard at all for me to keep the clone here and sent you back with a rock strapped to your back. Do you understand me? Do you, Elko?”

“Yes.”

“Have you said a word about this to anyone else?”

“No.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. Forget about it. I mean it, if you open your mouth and destroy everything I worked on, my whole god damned career, you’ll be right back in that river. You have my promise on that!”

Elko left Raymond’s office with the promise still ringing in his ears. All through the day he kept trying not to think about it. During his classes he tried not to think about it. During dinner that night, in Franz’s apartment, he was consciously not saying anything about it.

“It’s absurd,” John was saying, “they bring me here and they expect me to teach politics and leadership. But they wont’ let me join in their politics or lead anybody. Have you gentlemen noticed that, honored as we’re supposed to be, we’re not really citizens in this society? We’re not. We more resemble possessions than anything else. Items in a collection. Pass the salt, would you, Elko?”

Elko passed the salt, consciously not saying anything.

“I know the feeling,” Franz said. “They brought me here and filled my head with this Esperanto language, interpreted the way they wanted it to be interpreted, then sat me in front of a class and expected me to teach creative writing. How can I teach these kids how to write, especially in a class? The best thing I say to them is, ‘Lock yourself alone in a room and write your thoughts.’ And another thing, they set me in front of a word processor and say, ‘Write anything you like.’ On a word processor? How can you concentrate on writing with a word processor? It’s the most fascinating device I’ve ever seen, so much so that I’m more interested in the word processor than my writing. I find that this computer device can do so much more than word processing, and that I can use it to do just about anything. So I learn a programming language and I start writing programs. Is Technica happy? Are they supportive? No, they want me to write fiction. Well, fiction writing was the first part of my life. They give me a new life, I take up a new career. If we had computers back in the old days I never would have been a writer.”

Elko’s silence broke. He couldn’t help it. “Professor Burns told me today that they’re growing a clone of me to send back in time to die in my place.”

“That is so that they don’t change history,” Franz said. “As if they were able to do such a thing. They have to act like they can change history, though, to be able to time travel. What actually happened, though, is that you never did drown in that river. Your clone did.”

That’s not for certain, Elko thought, but he said nothing.

“It’s just like I never really died in that ghastly sanitarium in Kierling, my clone did. And John here was never shot by a sniper.”

“Thank god for that,” John said.

“So, then, all these things in history never actually happened?”

“No. Not to us.”

“Then it’s a lie?”

“Yes,” Franz said.

“For an institute dedicated to truth, this whole place seems to be built on lies,” John said. “It’s ironic, really. It’s not much different from when I was … alive? There’s an odd thought.”

“You think of yourself as dead?” Elko said.

“Yes, I do, or at least part of me does.”

Franz nodded emphatically at John. “I feel that the Franz they pulled out of the death bed was a different Franz that is alive and talking to you here and now.”

“I feel like I am dead,” Elko said. “Or at least, I feel like I’m supposed to be dead. It’s not like I want to die, though, it just feels like I’m not really alive.”

“It’s the lack of free will,” John said. “What passes for free will for us is an illusion. We’re not really free. We can’t walk out of here and say, ‘I quit.’ What kind of life is this?” He looked at Elko and at Franz. “Gentlemen, I’m going to level with you. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I say we should get the hell out of here.”

“I agree with you, but I don’t see how it would be possible,” Franz said. “They have the time devices, they can see where we went and be there before we get there.”

“The time devices put us at a severe disadvantage,” John said. “But they have a weakness. Aren’t all of them controlled by one central computer?”

Franz nodded.

“You’re the programmer, Franz. What can we do?”

Franz thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened. “The computer is programmed, by law, not to let anyone use the time devices for traveling into the future, or anywhere shorter than a hundred-twenty-five years in the past. It’s a black-out program, locking the controls out of a certain range.”

“Why can’t they travel back within the last one-hundred-twenty-five years?” Elko asked.

“The time travel law states that there should be no possibility of interfering with the past of anyone alive in the present,” John told him. “It’s one in a series of laws restricting what Technica can do with time travel.”

“It’s also one we can definitely use to our advantage,” Franz said. “Give me a day or so to work out the details. I think we can do it.” He nodded to himself, looking more cheerful than Elko had ever seen him. “I think it is entirely possible.”

#

It was two weeks later when they made their move. Elko was walking down the ramp from the fifth level commons to the Temporal Studies Complex, as planned, when he ran into Professor Raymond Burns. “Hello Elko. Looking for me?”

Elko fidgeted. “Not really.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“I was going to go take a look at the time devices. To observe.”

“You don’t have access, Elko.”

“Oh.” Actually Elko did have access, as Franz had raised Elko’s access level in the computer system. He couldn’t tell that to Raymond, though.

Raymond looked at his watch. “Actually, my schedule’s free for the next hour. Come with me, I’ll give you a personal tour.”

Unable to think of a reasonable reason not to accept, Elko went along with him. The guard door took Raymond’s full hand print, voice print, and retinal scan before letting them inside. Beyond was a curved hallway which encircled the high-energy fusion plant, and which led to each of the three surrounding temporal study labs. While Raymond paused and was explaining something about the power plant, Elko caught a glimpse of Franz in the corridor ahead. He’d seen Raymond and ducked back around the curve, out of sight. After a few moments both Franz and John came into sight, walking quickly around the curve toward them. They had Raymond surrounded before he recognized either of them.

“My goodness, what are you two doing here?” Raymond asked.

John grabbed the back of Raymond’s suit collar and pressed a ball-point pen against Raymond’s head. “You feel that?” John said. “That’s a cerebral disrupter set at full. Don’t force me to scramble your cortex.”

“What is this?” Raymond said, his voice rising in astonishment. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Keep silent and do as we tell you.”

“What are you doing?” Elko exclaimed.

“We only have five minutes to get out of here,” Franz told him. “We have no other choice but to take him with us.”

“Take me?” Raymond said. “Take me where?” Already they were dragging him down the hall to the door of the closest temporal study lab.

Elko watched in confusion and horror. “We can’t take him with us!”

“If we let him go, we won’t get out of here,” Franz said. “The options are that we give up, or we let him go and get caught, or we take him with us, or we kill him.”

“Kill me!? Don’t do that!”

“Only if you force us to,” John said, winking at Franz. He still had the ball-point pen pressed against the back of Raymond’s head. They entered Temporal Transfer Chamber #1 and John forced Raymond to lie face-down on the floor, his hands together behind his head. “Elko, keep him covered. If he tries anything, push this button.” Out of Raymond’s sight, he handed Elko the pen and winked several times.

Deception! Elko’s mind shouted. Subterfuge! He nodded and sat down on Raymond’s back, the pen pressed against the back of the Professor’s head. John and Franz disappeared out of the chamber to set the final variables.

“Elko, why are you a part of this?” Raymond whispered. “What do you hope to accomplish?”

“We’re quitting Technica.”

“My God, why?”

“Corruption and hypocrisy.”

The skin on the back of Raymond’s neck was flushing a deep red. “You think you can escape corruption and hypocrisy by leaving Technica?!” he said. “Good luck, Elko. Good goddamn luck! If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all the studies of man throughout the ages, is that there is no escape from corruption and hypocrisy!”

“I don’t doubt this,” Elko said. “We want to leave nonetheless.”

“Elko, you can’t get away with it. Think about it. They’ll know where you went simply by watching you go with one of the other time devices. You can’t escape, it’s impossible!”

“Franz thinks differently.”

“It’s madness, Elko! If you let me go, I can end this and I’ll make sure you’re not a part of it. I can keep you clear from it.”

“Sorry, Raymond.”

“You owe it to me! I saved your life!”

“I had no choice in the matter. You did it without asking me. It was my time to die, and you took it away. You gained from it. You. Not me. All for you. Then you threatened my life. I owe you nothing, Raymond.”

The others came back down the ladder. “It’s all set,” John said. “The transfer will take place any second now.”

“Where are we going?” Elko said.

“Well, we don’t precisely know,” John admitted. “Franz had to program a random variable into it to prevent them from finding us.”

“You can’t prevent them from finding you!” Raymond yelled. “You idiots! They’re watching us right now!”

“If they are, they’re breaking the law,” John told him. “You should know that.”

“They can still track you down!”

“Not if we travel to a destination within the blackout zone.”

“You can’t travel within the blackout zone.”

Franz smiled. “You can if you reprogram the central computer.”

There was a deep puffing sound, like air suddenly escaping out of a big tank, and a sudden, intense concussion like being in a train wreck. All of them fell a foot or so onto hot dry soil, and there was a half-dozen startled screams. Robes fluttering in the wind, a crowd of people scattered away from them, heading in all directions.

John pushed himself up into a sitting position, and dusted off his jacket. “Say,” he said, “Franz, this doesn’t look like the black-out zone to me.”

Raymond got to his feet, staring off at the people they’d just frightened. “You idiots! I can’t believe you pulled this stunt!”

John helped both Franz and Elko to their feet. Elko stared around him, feeling like he was in a dream. The barren landscape above and the farm fields below were all very familiar.

“All that I was saying,” Franz said, “were things I had to say, because Technica will hear it. It is not the truth.”

“I should say not!” Raymond said. “This is the cradle of civilization. Technica’s going to be here any second to take us back. You idiots!”

Elko looked longingly at the farmland.

“I couldn’t actually disable the black-out program,” Franz told John. “But I could make it look like I did. My program chose this destination, sent us here, erased itself, and then crashed the computer. It’ll be days before they’ll be able to get it going again, and there’s no way for them to see where we went. They’d have to scan all of time.”

“That’s what you think,” Raymond said. “They’ll find us any second.”

“You scanned this region yourself during your project, Raymond. Did you ever see us here?”

Raymond started a reply, but stopped, his mouth hanging open. “You fools! You idiots!” He turned away from them, raging. “You’ve stranded us here! Here! Look at that village, Elko hasn’t even invented the wheel yet! Of all the places you could have picked, you stranded us in this place!”

“It’s the cradle of civilization,” Franz said defensively. “Where else would we have greater opportunities? We have all of history ahead of us.”

“Idiots!”

John looked bemused. “Well, I suppose to survive we’re going to have to start some sort of enterprise. Elko my friend,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “let’s go build you a pottery shop somewhere. Once we get ourselves established, I’ll run for office.” He and Franz laughed. Elko, still dazed, managed a smile. They headed off over the hill with Raymond, still cursing and grumbling, tagging behind.

#

It was a year later when a young Elko, awakened from his sleep by strange noises, looked out his window and saw the nomads and their strange contraption. An oxen driven cart — on wheels — with the strange markings painted on the side: “John & Franz’s Traveling Medicine Show” Of course the young Elko couldn’t read Esperanto. He was fascinated by the wheels though, as the cart lumbered past and disappeared into the gloom. He returned to his bed and fell asleep, the thought still in his head. Round things spinning, turning, moving…

Dale Bently shuffled out of his apartment in his robe and slippers, squinting in the pale fall sunlight, heading toward the mailbox and the letter that would tell him his life was over. In one week it would be his fortieth birthday, and while he had that vaguely in mind, he had forgotten about what it meant. He had forgotten a lot within the past five years, his life becoming a pale blur of featureless days.

He opened the mailbox with his thumbprint and pulled out the small bundle of junk mail, not even seeing the envelope from the Bureau of the Census. He carried it back to his apartment and shuffled inside, the end of his daily trip into the world. He shut the door and locked it, and threw the mail down on the coffee table that separated the couch from the television. As the letters spread out he saw the bright red envelope and it caught his attention. He’d seen that envelope before.

It was easy when Dale Bently was five years old; he was a child in good health and was getting good grades in school. Children of his age were rarely judged poorly. It was the same when he was ten years old. By the time he was fifteen he’d developed into a bit of a disciplinary problem, but that was normal for a teenager and there was still no real worry. When he was 20 he was in college and getting good grades again.

By the time he was 25 Dale was making a good living as a apprentice engineer with Lagrange 5 Corp. It was the first time he’d seen the Census as a threat, but as he was actively working for the good of mankind and producing more than his share, he passed. The same when he was 30 and 35 years old. But then there was the accident, and the hospitals, and the lawsuit which gave him enough money to compensate him for not ever being able to work in high orbit again.

The money, officially, was for him to be able to reeducate and enter a new career, but as it turned out it was enough for him to comfortably survive without working for a considerably long time. He grew inward, reclusive, living for his daily and nightly television favorites. It never occurred to him, never at all, that he was dooming his very existence.

He opened the red envelope and held its contents in his hands. The Census! he thought. The damned Census!

Bureau of the Census
Dept. of Life Evaluation
Division of Judgment
Los Angeles, CA 90039-3278-34

Notice to Mr. Dale Bently of 7892634 Vericruz Lane, Apt. 982e7, Tuleburg California 95205-1252-08, S.S. #578-23-8493-X-4398:

IMPORTANT! This is your 5 year census notice! You must fill out the accompanying form and essay and return to the Bureau (see enclosed self-addressed envelope) before your deadline of November 1st. Failure to complete or return the census will jeopardize your status of citizenship.

My God! Dale thought. My God, I forgot all about this! What have I been thinking!?

He looked over the form and the instructions for the essay. The form itself only counted for 10% of the evaluation. It was the essay that carried the weight. In big bold letters the instructions read:

In your own handwriting, justify your existence in 500 words or less.

Letter held numbly in his hand, Dale walked to a window and looked out. The white sunlight made everything glare in his eyes, causing him to squint. It looked so unreal, much less real than the television screen. There was no color out there.

Dale looked down at the letter. He looked at the date. November 1st, it read. He had one week.

#

The trolley rumbled and swayed over the old freeway foundations, steel wheels singing against steel tracks as it whizzed out of Old Town and into the vast spread of cityscape that covered the once vital farmlands. Tuleburg was now bigger than the L.A. basin, with Money and Business drawn around the big space ports like iron filings to a magnet. The sprawl of the California Central College campus was visible miles before the swaying green trolley reached the station, giving the impression that the trolley was barely creeping along. This was pure illusion, as they were traveling in excess of 70 miles per hour. Dale was standing, holding onto a rail and squinting through the windows, when the brakes were applied. He was thrown forward and would have gone tumbling had he not grabbed on with his other hand.

The walk from the station into the campus had him exhausted before he was anywhere near his destination. He had a headache and he was dizzy and his legs felt like they were going to collapse beneath him. The students milling about all looked impossibly young. He couldn’t tell if they were 14 or 24.

One tower stood out from the rest. He entered and rested on a bench in front of the elevators for a while, mentally preparing himself for the interview. Almost five years ago Lagrange 5 Corp. had suggested he take up teaching — he only hoped that it wasn’t too late. By teaching the young, he could easily justify his existence.

His watch beeped and said, “You’d better hurry up, your appointment is in five minutes.” Dale sighed, said, “Oh, shut up,” to the watch, and wearily got to his feet. He touched the button for the elevator and the doors opened. He stepped inside, announced his destination as the 22nd level, and nearly toppled to the floor as the elevator swooped upwards toward the top of the tower.

On the 22nd floor, he managed to find his way to Virginia Mergle’s office, which was a large hardwood door with a sign that read “PERSONNEL.” Beyond was a waiting room with a large information screen in a corner and seats all around. A computer voice said, “State your name and business,” as soon as he entered. Dale spoke up in a nervous voice, and the computer acknowledged him and said, “Miss Mergle will see you in one minute, seventeen seconds.” The information screen showed several different views of the campus, a scrolling list of job opportunities, and a documentary on keeping full sized whales in captivity.

When the countdown to his appointment reached zero the door swung open by itself and the computer announced, “Miss Mergle will see you now.” Dale stepped into the inner office and saw a smooth-skinned black haired woman reclining in a chair behind a huge desk. Her eyes were closed, and eight data cables trailed from her head like an octopus’s tentacles. “Come in, Mr. Bently,” she said without opening her eyes. Her voice had an unpleasant, too-relaxed quality about it. Despite her clear enunciation, it sounded like she was talking in her sleep. “Please, sit down and relax.”

Dale sat but he didn’t relax. “I’m here about a job teaching zero-gravity engineering.”

“We have an opening,” Virginia said in her sleep-voice. “What are your qualifications?”

“I have a degree in zero-gravity and low gravity engineering from the Tuleburg Institute of Technology, and ten years of practical experience with L5 Corp.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I am reviewing your records now.”

Dale swallowed, his throat dry. Silent seconds passed while data streamed in and out of the woman’s brain. She breathed slowly, her breasts heaving up and down with dream-like calm.

“You have no teaching credentials,” she said finally.

“I have practical experience, things that—”

“You have no teaching experience, either. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any teaching position at all without a degree. I am searching for other employment possibilities now.”

Again, Dale found himself waiting silently and watching the woman’s breasts ease up and then down again.

“Your physical records indicate you would not be able to do any heavy labor. I’m sorry Mr. Bently, but I just don’t have anything for you at all.”

Dale sighed, and stood up.

“Mr. Bently, I’m curious. Your records indicate you have not been in any schooling nor work for years. Why the sudden interest in teaching? You could have spent all this time enrolled and getting your credentials.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been feeling that well.”

“Your five year life evaluation has come up with the Census Bureau, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You need real help, Mr. Bently. Professional help. There are lawyers who specialize in life justification. I strongly advise you to see one.”

“Thank you.”

“I can recommend one in particular, if you like. His name is Vlad Breenwood. Here is his address and phone number.” There was a whirring sound, and a piece of paper slipped out of a printer and into a tray.

Thanking her once again, Dale took the paper and shuffled out of her office.

#

Vlad Breenwood worked out of a small office in a backwater corner of Tuleburg’s 8 story shopping mall. Vlad was a balding man in his fifties with a plastic smile and a jerky, bird-like nervousness about him. But his voice was strong, and he quickly convinced Dale that he knew what he was talking about. “You’ve really backed yourself into a corner,” Vlad was telling him. “Something inane like, ‘I think therefor I am’ is not going to wash with the Department of Life Evaluation, especially considering you’ve become a 40 year old shut in. What do you do with your time, anyway?”

“I watch television.”

“Do you ever take notes?”

“Notes?”

“What kind of shows do you watch, anyway?”

“Well, um, entertainment type shows—”

“Like what? Give me some titles. What are your ten favorites, ones that you never miss?”

“Oh, uh, Android Sluts, uh . . . Full Tilt, Onion Man, Goddesses of Lust, Zoo Keeper’s Daughter—”

“No docu-dramas? No historic recreations? No educational programming whatsoever?”

“. . . no, I’m afraid not.”

“Do you have any hobbies? Do you build anything, like model trains or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Do you watch birds, or keep an ant farm, or have a dog?”

“No.”

“Nothing like that?”

“No.”

“Do you pay anyone’s bills besides your own? Are you supporting anyone?”

“No.”

“Do you have any family whatsoever?”

“No.”

Vlad shook his head, and got up and paced back and forth behind his desk. “We don’t have a lot to work with, Dale.”

“I know.”

“There’s only one chance. We’re going to have to cheat.”

“How?”

“I’m going to make something up for you, and write your essay for you. You’re going to copy it down—”

“But I thought that—”

“Yes, it’s true. They make you write it in your own handwriting so that a computer program can analyze it and determine if you’re being truthful. That’s the key, there, though: If you believe you’re being truthful — that is, if your subconscious believes you’re telling the truth — then you’ll fool the computer program.”

“How am I going to believe?”

“Well, it’s tricky, and there’s no absolute guarantee, but I’ve had people hypnotised into believing their justification essays and they’ve passed without a problem. But the important thing you have to do even before we begin this is make a solid commitment to become a honest, worthy citizen after we get you past your five-year evaluation. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll make the arrangements, you work on positive thinking. I’ll call you at your home when I set up the appointment with the hypnotist. Okay?” They shook hands, and Dale left his office feeling much better.

#

Two days later, Dale was right in the middle of the newest episode of Wide Open Beavers in Mexico when his phone rang and Vlad announced that an appointment had been made. Dale quickly wrote down the details and hung up, rushing to get dressed and ready so he could make the next trolley at the station.

It had been raining off and on that day, but at the moment the sun was shining through a hole in the clouds and the streets and sidewalks sparkled with water droplets. The world looked clean and fresh, and Dale took it as a good omen. It darkened again as he boarded the trolley, and was pouring down in god-awful torrents when he reached his destination. It was a small ground-level station on Harding Way, deep within the Old Town. Buildings of brick and concrete a hundred years old stood quietly crumbling amid the hustle and cries of street salesmen. Dale passed prostitutes who had current wires braided through their hair and into their scalp, and skinny teenage boys offering little bags of pale blue powder, a drug called “Carny” which was actually the processed spoor of some South American beetle. “It’s like going to a circus!” one told Dale. An Asian man in a black coat stood in a doorway, watching him, and Dale realized the doorway belonged to the address where he was supposed to meet Vlad.

“Hi,” Dale said. “You work here?”

“What’s your name?” the man asked.

“Dale.”

“Come inside.” He opened the door and ushered him though. Dale was surprised, the inside looked like it had once been a church. There were pews and an alter, and discolored paint on the wall that marked where a huge cross used to hang. “You here to get a doodad installed?”

“A doodad?” echoed Dale.

“A pleasure interface.” His eyes bore into Dale’s own. “No?”

“No. I was supposed to meet my lawyer—”

“Okay! Sorry, my mistake. Right this way.” He led Dale across the room and through another door. The room beyond was small, cluttered with piles of computer decks and peripherals, and had one large stained-glass window. In the corner was a chair with a skull cap attached, an old cerebral induction setup. “Take a seat, Vlad should be here any minute. I’ll be right back.” He left and closed the door behind him, leaving Dale alone. Dale shivered. It was cold and clammy, and smelled of mildew.

He sat in the induction chair and waited. Twenty minutes went by, and Dale was just about ready to get up and leave when he heard laughing voices and footsteps approaching. The door opened and Vlad and the oriental man walked in, stifling their laughter. It gave Dale the impression that they were laughing about him. “Hey, Dale, are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let’s get started right now. Professor Aki here is going to put you in a simple Alpha trance and we’re going to feed the essay into your subconscious. After we’re sure it’s firmly in your memory and your attitude toward it is very positive, you’re going to write it out. I’ll take it from there, and hand deliver it to the local Census office. And you’ve got a new start! Okay? Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Aki, let’s do it.”

Professor Aki adjusted the skull cap and then turned to a computer terminal. He hit a few buttons and suddenly, against his will, Dale felt himself relax. Consciousness dropped away like a stone falling down a deep, black well.

Consciousness came back like a car slamming into a wall.

Professor Aki was still at the terminal, and Vlad was standing in front of him folding a piece of paper and slipping it into an envelope. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said.

“What?” said Dale.

“It’s over. I’ve got the essay, I’m about to run it down to the Census for you. Now all we have to do is settle the account, and you’re on your way.”

“What was — what did I write?”

“You wrote a very convincing report about your independent study of the value of modern broadcast television. You plan on writing a book about it, warning the public of the dangers of video sedation.”

“I am?”

“Don’t worry, you don’t actually have to write it. You just have to get involved in something worth while during the next five years.”

The amount of money Vlad wanted for his services was a surprise. It was over half of the money Dale had left in the bank, the interest of which Dale had been living on since the settlement with L5 Corp. In the end, though, Dale agreed that his life and citizenship was worth it, and he sealed the transaction with his thumb print.

#

Several days went by in a blur, and one afternoon during an interesting repeat of Sexual Deviancies of the Rich and Famous there was a knock on Dale’s door. He turned down the sound and got up to look through the peep hole. Several people were standing outside, all in uniform. “Dale Bently, please open the door right now,” one of them called out. It was a short, pretty black woman with her hair tucked up under her uniform cap. Her voice was very commanding and yet, at the same time, bored. It gave him the impression she did this all the time.

“What do you want?” he called through the door.

“It’s very important that we talk to you.”

“About what?”

His hesitation made her angry. “Look Mr. Bently, we have a Writ of Total Compliance and we’ll burn through this door if we have to. Do you understand that? You open this door right now!”

Dale opened the door. The black woman stepped quickly inside holding a piece of paper, immediately followed by three men and another woman holding clipboards. “By order of the Department of Judgement of the Census Bureau of the National Government you are hereby informed that you failed the justification test as defined by the United Order of Justification to Society, Articles IV through XV, and your citizenship is hereby revoked for the cause of conservation of energy and resources. Your property and assets are hereby seized for redistribution. You’re ordered forthwith to surrender your physical existence in exchange for public social simulation.” She took a breath. “You have three phone calls before we proceed. You can use them anytime between now and dissociation.” She fell silent, waiting for him to say something, while the others went right to work writing out an inventory of his possessions.

Dale said nothing.

“Okay,” she said. “You can take your phone calls later. Are you going to come quietly now or am I going to have to cuff you?”

Dale erupted. “You can’t do this! What gives you the right to come barging into my home telling me what—”

She sprayed him in the face with a small aerosol can and Dale’s throat closed. The world spun and he pitched over on his back, reeling, making sounds like a startled cow. When his sense began to work properly again he saw a black corrugated rubber mat about 2 inches from his face. Groaning, blinking his eyes to get them to focus better, he sat up and saw the back of a chair through a heavy screen, and the back of a head. A red sign on the screen read:

ELECTRIFIED – DO NOT TOUCH!

He was in a police van, by the looks of it. His hands were firmly bound behind his back.

The van bounced slightly as it sped down a city street, the engines making an eerie electric whining sound. I failed! Dale was thinking. I failed the test! How could this have happened, Vlad guaranteed I would pass! Then a dark thought occurred to him: Vlad could have guaranteed anything he wanted, because if he was wrong and Dale failed the evaluation — which he did — Dale was in no position to complain. For one thing, he was not a citizen anymore, which meant he had no rights, but even if he did he had broken the law. The Census agents would laugh at him.

The van came to a stop and the rear door popped open and lifted. To Dale’s surprise, a bound and staggering Professor Aki was thrown in, and the door dropped closed and locked with a loud thud. The “professor” — if he actually was a professor — lay face down and drooling on the mat. No doubt he’d been sprayed in the face with the same chemical they’d used on Dale. “Maaawwwnnpffk!” Aki said into the mat. “Yurrrrafffrekkkksssphk!”

A half hour later, Vlad Breenwood, too, was thrown into the van. It appeared they had used more than the aerosol on him, as there was a singed hole in the back of his shirt and the burn marks of an electric stun gun. “You!” he said, after regaining consciousness. “You bastard!”

“Me?” Dale said.

“You bastard from hell! You data dump! I ought to kill you, you miserable cretin!”

“Refrigerate, man,” Aki said under his breath. “Freeze it.”

“To hell with you!” Vlad shouted at him.

“Keep it down or you’ll get another jolt,” the agent in the driver’s seat yelled back at Vlad.

Vlad glanced at the driver, then backed down.

“What are you yelling at me about?” Dale said angrily. “I’m here thanks to your bogus letter—”

“Don’t give me that you runty little rat-head! You turned me in!”

“No I didn’t! I didn’t have the chance!”

The driver stopped the van and turned around. “One more word, one little sound, and I jolt all of you. Keep your mouths shut.”

Vlad turned away, glaring at his own feet. Not a word was spoken during the remainder of the ride. When the van stopped, it was in front of the Pacific Avenue Euthanasia Center.

Dale was separated from the other two and escorted to a white-walled room where an attendant strapped him into a bed while an armed guard stood by the door. When Dale was fully strapped down, the guard left. The attendant was a kind-looking young man in a white medical jump suit, with long, curly brown hair and warm brown eyes. He prepared a injection gun and gave Dale a smile.

“So this is it,” Dale said, his throat dry. “You’re going to put me to sleep like a dog.”

“No, that’s nonsense. Think positively about it. It’s not death, it’s transition.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Don’t worry, I have a lot of relatives in simulation. I talk to them everyday. They say it’s much better than reality. In simulation, there’s no pain.”

“No pain.” Dale was thoughtful.

While he was distracted, the attendant took the opportunity to use the injector gun against Dale’s neck, right into the jugular vein. Dale gasped, then lied there gritting his teeth. It hurt like hell.

Consciousness dropped away like a stone falling down a dark, deep well.

#

There was a large living room, much larger than his old one. There was a big, comfortable reclining chair, and a TV screen that took up a whole wall. There was no kitchen, though, and no bath room, and no bedroom. This was because Dale no longer needed any of them.

“The absolute necessity of conserving energy and resources forced society into some harsh decisions,” his orientation counselor, Marilyn, had told him. “It was either outright genocide, or relocation of a large percentage of the population into simulation. As you know, it takes about 1/10,000th the energy and resources to support a person in simulation than it does in the outside ‘reality.’ No offense meant, but it was quite obvious to the Census Bureau that your lifestyle could easily be simulated — and so, here you are. Your personality and memories recorded and kept alive in a computer simulated world.” Which was fine with Dale, since all the latest TV shows were piped in directly, just like in real life.

Dale also found out he had been monitored by the Census Bureau ever since his accident, and that had been used by the Census to setup and catch Vlad and Professor Aki. Virginia Mergle, the woman who had sent Dale to Vlad, had done so at the request of the Bureau. “What ever happened to Vlad and the Professor, anyway?” Dale had asked. Marilyn had told him that they were doing time, right there in the same computer, in a simulated jail.

There is justice in this world, Dale thought, changing the channel on his simulated TV.

Paco was on the forth floor, sitting beside the open window with his stolen infra-red shades strapped to his head, when there was a car wreck up the hill. A big black Ferrari tried to take the corner too fast and ended up with the corner of a 250 year old brick building buried halfway up into the hood. Paco muttered, “Whoa!” and climbed out the window and onto the fire escape, watching.

As the hapless driver was struggling to open his crumpled door, a blue IBM business limo came sliding to a stop beside it. Men with guns piled out and opened fire on the man before he could make it out of the wreck. He dropped a black case onto the sidewalk and it popped open, and dozens of silvery disks spilled out. Most stopped within a few feet, but one came rolling down the hill like a wheel. Paco held his breath, watching. It rolled right down to the corner below him and dropped into a storm drain. One of the men came running down after it, and Paco slipped back into the window and out of sight.

The man below searched in vain, not finding the silvery disk. He trudged back up the hill, where his comrades were gathering up the rest. They took the disks and the black case and drove away, leaving the Ferrari and the driver behind.

Paco jumped out the window and raced down the fire escape to the sidewalk, pulled the grate off the storm drain, and peered down into the murk with his ‘red shades set to full enhancement. The disk gleamed like something made out of light itself. He grabbed it, shoved it deep into his coat pocket, and was back up on the forth floor in less than a minute.

Back up inside the apartment, Paco rinsed it off in the sink and took a good look at it under a light. It was a standard CD, no markings on it, and no serial number. He slipped it into a slot on his old VAX Banger and fired it up. Just as he’d thought, it was some coded computer program, a very large and sophisticated one by the looks of it. He used a hacker program to determine the decoding password and wrote it on a little label, and stuck it on the top side of the disk.

The next day he traded it to Melvin Chevaux for a gig of stolen slate RAM and a really wicked throwing knife. Three days later Chevaux sold it to Francisco the Fence for ¥300 (New Dollars) and a stolen case of Everclear. Francisco the Fence passed it off for ¥550 to Dano Sharks, the software pirate. Dano made a lot of noise, grumbling about the price, but turned right around and sold it for an even ¥1000 to Leo Itoya, the insurance broker. Leo was pleased at the price, for he’d been looking for a cheap AI all week. It was for Lolita, his secretary.

Lolita had been complaining for two months straight that she needed some help around the office. An artificial intellegence program was not what she had in mind — she wanted Leo to hire her cousin, Wanda Lopez, because Wanda needed a job. Leo had another idea altogether. Dano Sharks had told him this AI was programmed as a business administrator, to take the initiative and to give orders. It was obviously some government thing, probably the same program that ran the welfare office. He was going to load it into his office computer and give it control. Lolita was going to be helping it, not the other way around.

The next evening, after Lolita had gone home, Leo sat down with a six-pack and his office computer to see if he could figure the new software out. He loaded it into his machine and typed in the code word, and it went all through his computer system checking everything out. Then it printed out a list of everything it found and then posed the question: WHAT IS MY GOAL?

“Smart program!” Leo said. He leaned forward and typed at the keyboard, YOUR GOAL IS TO MAKE MONEY SELLING LIFE INSURANCE.

WHAT IS LIFE INSURANCE? it asked.

“Oh jeeze, you mean I have to explain the entire concept of insurance to this thing?” Leo concentrated for a moment, then typed: LIFE INSURANCE IS A SERVICE WHICH PAYS THE CUSTOMER A LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY IF SOMEONE DIES.

HOW DOES THIS SERVICE OPERATE? it asked.

Leo sipped his beer. This really was an intelligent program. WE SELL THE INSURANCE, he typed, AND THE CLIENT PAYS A CERTAIN AMOUNT A MONTH. IF THE CLIENT DIES WHILE HE IS INSURED, HIS BENEFACTOR IS PAID THE AMOUNT OF MONEY AGREED UPON IN THE INSURANCE CONTRACT. Leo continued typing, going into details. The program grasped everything he told it, except one thing.

HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY IF YOU HAVE TO EVENTUALLY PAY IT ALL BACK? THERE APPEARS TO BE A FLAW IN YOUR SCHEME.

Leo laughed out loud. Bright program! Very intelligent. THE WHOLE SCHEME DEPENDS UPON THE CLIENT NOT DYING WHILE BEING INSURED. IT ALSO DEPENDS UPON A LARGE AND CONTINUOUSLY RENEWED SOURCE OF NEW CLIENTS.

The program was still perplexed. IN ORDER FOR THE SCHEME TO CONTINUE, AND FOR YOU TO MAKE MONEY, IT DEMANDS AN EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. IT IS AN UNSTABLE AND UNREALISTIC SCHEME.

YES, IT IS. Leo was laughing as he typed this. BUT THAT’S NOT OUR PROBLEM. WE ONLY SELL THE INSURANCE, WE’RE NOT THE COMPANY THAT PAYS OFF THE BENEFICIARIES WHEN AN INSURED CLIENT DIES. WE GET SALES COMMISSIONS FROM ABOUT TWO DOZEN INSURANCE COMPANIES. TO MAKE MONEY, I HAVE TO SELL A LOT OF INSURANCE. THAT IS WHY I NEED YOUR HELP.

I UNDERSTAND. The two words glowed on the screen, and the program asked no more questions. The computer sat quiet, inert, like it was waiting for further instructions. Leo was wondering where he should go from there when suddenly the printer whirred and spit out a page:

FOR THE SCHEME LIFE INSURANCE SALES WILL REQUIRE THE FOLLOWING:

• 20 TERABYTES ADDITIONAL DATA STORAGE
• 500 GIGABYTES IN ADDITIONAL RAM MODULES
• 1 ADDITIONAL PHONE LINE
• 1 VOX MODEM
• ACCESS CODE TO COMPANY BANK ACCOUNT

IF YOU WISH I CAN BEGIN SEARCHING FOR THE LOWEST COST SOURCES OF THE ABOVE ITEMS.

Leo gaped at the list. Vox modem? he thought. What’s wrong with the regular modem? Shaking his head, he reluctantly gave the program permission to order what it needed. After all, he’d just spent ¥1000 on the program — it would be ¥1000 wasted if it didn’t have what it needed to do its job.

When he reached his office the next morning he found two delivery trucks in front and an upset receptionist inside. The items the computer had ordered were already there, with a technician hooking them up, and Lolita was tearfully asking Leo why he was mad with her.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

Her pretty lower lip thrust up and trembling, she said, “This!” and confronted him with a computer-printed note and a paycheck. The computer had fired her and had printed out a severance check — it was even signed.

“I didn’t tell the computer to fire you!” Leo exclaimed.

“Oh, yeah right. It did it on its own.”

“It did! I’ve got this new program—”

“Spare me, Leo! If you can’t face me with the truth, that’s your problem. Don’t insult me with a stupid story about the computer doing it. How stupid do you think I am, anyway.”

“But Lolita—”

Lolita angrily stuffed her check between her breasts and left. He followed her halfway down the block but she wouldn’t speak to him, so he gave up and returned to the office. He entered just as the technician was finishing with the computer. “Sign here, please,” he said to Leo.

Halfway through signing Leo noticed the price. “Six-thousand dollars!”

“Yeah, I thought it was a mistake too,” the technician said. “But the company confirmed it, you got a great deal.”

“Great deal!? Six-thousand is a great deal?”

“For fourteen-thousand dollars worth of equipment, I’d say so!”

Leo finished signing and the technician left. Beside him, the printer began whirring and pages began slipping out. Leo picked one up and found it was a sales letter, very well written in an appealing style, addressed to someone whom he didn’t know. What startled him was that — like on Lolita’s severance check — his own signature was at the bottom. “What the hell is this?”

“I am assuming you are you are talking to me,” a female voice said. It was coming from the new vox modem. “During the evening while the phone rates were down, I accessed several nearby hospital data banks and compiled a list of people who are in outstanding health according to recent physical examinations. I am writing them a form letter and then will follow up with a phone call to secure an appointment. As appointments are made I will print out daily schedules for you to follow.”

Leo felt a little dizzy, trying to take this all in. “How did you do my signature?”

“I was able to pull a sample of your signature out of the memory buffer of the fax peripheral. The signature is from a letter you faxed yesterday morning.”

“Why did you fire Lolita?”

“Her pay was unnecessary overhead.”

“What makes you think I wanted her fired?”

“My purpose is to make money selling life insurance. It was a business decision which needed to be made.”

“You should have asked me first.”

“You did not specify that beforehand.”

“You, I—” Leo threw his hands into the air, and sat down in his desk chair. What was the point in arguing with a machine? The fact was, the machine appeared to be doing her job already, and with much more efficiency, and had the machine not fired her he would have never been able to bring himself to do it. It had actually done him a favor.

Sitting there, thinking about it, he suddenly had a swelling feeling of well-being. He picked up one of the freshly printed sales letters and read it over again with admiration. This program really knew what it was doing. It was most definitely the best investment he had ever made.

During the next several weeks Leo was busier than he’d ever been in his career as an insurance agent. The computer program, which he’d come to call “Partner,” kept his schedule full every single day. Even better, all his new contacts were already primed to buy his life insurance. Partner was doing most of the selling in letters and over the phone (using the seductive voice of the vox modem), and Leo was just calling on them in person to get the papers signed.

The bank account swelled. After two months Leo bought a new car, one that separated hydrogen and oxygen from water and burned it. A month after that, he put a down payment on a big new condo.

Leo was coming out of a restaurant after a terrific dinner when he ran into Dano Sharks, the software pirate from which he’d bought the AI program. Dano looked a little shocked to see Leo, and looked around nervously to see if anyone was looking at them. They were in a parking garage and there was no one else in sight.

“Hey, Dano! That software works great!”

“Yeah, man, yeah of course it does.” Dano was still looking around nervously. He leaned close to Leo and said in a low voice, “You haven’t given a copy of it away to anyone, or anything, have you?”

“No.”

“Have you told anyone about it? About where you got it?”

“No. I haven’t even told anyone I have it. I know better than that, man. It’s pirated.”

“That’s really good man, because you’d better keep it to yourself. You know what I’m saying? To yourself.” Dano’s voice and expression was intense, like he was afraid.

“Sure, of course I will.”

“You better, and don’t you tell anyone where you got it.”

“I won’t. Why, what’s wrong?”

“You really got yourself a deal on that program, man,” Dano said. “It’s hot, it’s really hot. You say it’s working good for you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well there’s feds poking around looking for it, man. You don’t want to know who wrote it. You just don’t want to know.”

“Who?”

“The Central Intelligence Agency, man. The CIA.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. I knew it was a government program when I sold it to you, but I didn’t have any idea how heavy a government program it was. As far as I’m concerned, I never sold it to you. I never saw it. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. And I definitely don’t have it.”

“You got it man. You don’t have it. It doesn’t exist.”

With that, Leo left and drove home. The next morning, which was the first of the month, he got a call from a representative of one of the insurance companies he dealt with. It was a friendly guy named Ted Franklin. “Jeeze, what did you do?” he said. “Hire a hit man?”

“What?” Leo said.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Oh, well…” Ted’s voice assumed a more somber quality. “Three of your clients were all killed on a bus last night.”

“You’re kidding! Which ones?”

“Three biggies, Leo. A Maxwell Stout, a John Segrahm, and a Wendy Boston. All three had policies for 5 million a piece.”

“Oh no!”

“Yeah.” Some of the humor crept back into Ted’s voice. “What are you trying to do, break us? Fifteen million new dollars, Leo! All from clients who’s policies just barely matured.”

“You’re not saying you think that I had anything to do with it!”

“Oh, no! Leo, I’m just giving you a bad time. I just thought you’d like to know. I mean, it’s odd.”

“My God, no kidding.”

They said goodbye and hung up, and Leo had to rush out of the office to make it to an appointment. Later that afternoon, after a full and successful day, Leo arrived home and relaxed for a while in his hot tub, then dried off and sat down at his kitchen table for his monthly ritual. It was the first of the month, and his kitchen table was covered with bills.

He pulled out his pocket computer and plugged it into the phone line, then had it dial the local branch of his bank. Accessing his account, he prepared to begin paying off the bills when he noticed his bank balance. “What the hell!?” he shouted. A half-million dollars had been deposited that very day. A half-million! Using his security code, he looked over the transfer list and found it had come from a Swiss account.

A Swiss account? He didn’t have a Swiss account! He called the Swiss bank and tried to access the mysterious account with his computer, and to his astonishment his code worked and he was in.

There was ¥14,500,000.00 American new dollars in the account. The transfer record showed three deposits of ¥5,000,000.00 apiece from three other Swiss accounts, and one transfer of ¥500,000.00 into his American account. Fifteen million new dollars total.

Fifteen million, he thought. Fifteen million! Leo broke into a sweat, wondering what was going on.

After a sleepless night, he drove to his office early and confronted his computer. “Partner,” he said, “why is there fifteen million in a Swiss account in my company’s name?”

“We have made a substantial profit,” the program told him.

“How did we make this money?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to know,” the vox modem repeated.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Information on covert undertakings is only given out in a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“Covert undertakings?”

There was a sudden, loud, heavy-handed knock on the door. It was the kind of knock a policeman makes. Leo opened the office door and with a hot, sinking feeling of terror saw it was a square-jawed man with steel-colored eyes dressed in a uniform and carrying a gun in a holster. There was a big badge on his chest. “Leo Itoya?”

“Yes?”

“Can I see some I.D. please?”

Leo looked past the uniformed man and saw a big, silver armored car sitting on the street outside. He pulled his wallet out with numb fingers and flipped it open, displaying his I.D.

“Can you pull it out, please?”

Leo pulled it out and handed it to the man. It was zipped through a pocket reader and handed back to him. “Thank you, Mr. Itoya. We’ll bring it right in.” The uniformed man walked back to the armored car, and he and another uniformed man came back carrying a big box of blazing red ¥20.00 bills. “Sign here, please.”

Leo signed. He was handed a receipt for the delivery of a half-million new dollars in cash and the uniformed men left. The box of money sat on his desk, more money than he’d ever seen in his life. “This is incredible,” he said.

“A man will be by here to pick that up at noon,” Partner said. “It would be best if you were not present.”

“Why?”

“Information on covert undertakings is only given out in a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“You said that already.”

“It is a tried and true policy.”

Leo stared at the machine, his mind reeling with the implications. “Okay,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

The printer spat out a list of appointments. Leo snatched them and left. He walked down the street to where he’d parked his car, got in it, and sat there thinking. This is out of control, he told himself. This is totally out of control. As he sat there, a sharply rectangular, black IBM business car pulled up (IBM cars only came in blue and black) and parked in front of his office. A tall, darkly-tanned man with a scarred-up face got out, looked casually up and down the street, then stepped into Leo’s office. A moment later he came out carrying the box of money. When he bent over to put the box in his car, the man’s business jacket flopped open to reveal a large ugly IBM business gun in a shoulder holster. For just a moment his eyes met Leo’s, and he gave a cold stare and then got into the black car and drove away.

Leo broke out in a full sweat. He had to see Dano Sharks about this. Dano sold him the software, Dano must know how to stop it. He started his car and headed downtown, driving fast. In ten minutes he was pulling into the parking lot of Mark Chevy’s Pawn Shop, which is where he usually found the data pirate. He entered the shop and walked past the counters, heading toward the back, but a short, fat guy stopped him. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to see Dano,” Leo said.

“Dano ain’t here no more.”

“No?”

Apparently Leo looked panic-stricken, because the fat man’s expression softened and his voice lowered. “Were you a friend of his?”

“I’m one of his better customers.”

The fat man nodded. In still a lower voice he said, “Sharks was killed yesterday in a car wreck. Just between you and me, I think he was bumped off.” He pulled back some, let his voice rise. “That’s just my opinion, though.”

“Bumped off!”

“Not so loud. Yes, bumped off. Brakes just don’t fail at the same time a throttle gets stuck down. It just doesn’t happen without some sort of help, you know what I mean?”

Leo’s head was spinning. He turned and rushed out of the pawn shop and out to his car, just in time to see a thin man bending down and looking into the window. “Get away from my car!” Leo shouted.

The man, surprised, took a few steps back with his hands out to either side. “Hey, I didn’t touch it.”

“Get away from it!” He reached into his jacket as if he had a gun, which he didn’t.

The thin man backed away more, saying, “Hey, it’s cool! It’s cool man. I’m gone, I’m outta the picture . . .”

Leo got into the car and started it up. He jammed down on the throttle with the gear still in neutral, seeing if it would stick — which it didn’t. He also tested the brakes to see that they were fine.

Leo drove around aimlessly for most of the afternoon, not knowing where to go nor what to do next. At one point his phone rang and he answered. A low, sexy woman’s voice said, “Leo, you’ve missed every single appointment I made out for you today.”

With a thrill of fear, Leo realized it was the voice of his vox modem. It was that program calling him, the Business Administrator. “How do you know?” Leo demanded.

“I always check to make sure you’ve made it to your appointments.”

“Well stop it! I don’t want you doing that!”

“It is standard procedure.”

“I don’t care! I don’t want you doing it!”

“It is standard procedure, and cannot be altered.” The voice was so sweet and the tone so sparkling that it couldn’t possible convey a threat. Yet, Leo still felt threatened. He hung up on it, and pulled over at the next bar he could find.

Three gin & tonics later he was feeling a little less frightened and more under control. The computer itself couldn’t harm him, all he had to do was go reset it and clear that demonic program out of memory. After that — well, he did have fourteen-and-a-half million in a Swiss account. The next step was to simply disappear, and leave the country. He could buy a nice villa in Spain and retire.

Actually, things were looking up.

He had one more for the road then left the bar, driving across town to his office. He drove around the block twice to make sure the suntanned man with the scar wasn’t parked anywhere waiting for him, then stopped and went into his office. He noticed immediately that there was more computer equipment than there should be, and a new office security system with electric eyes mounted on the ceiling. “You missed ten important appointments today,” the vox modem said. “I had to call them, apologize, and reschedule them for tomorrow. I told them you were out sick, so make sure your story is the same.”

“Uh-huh,” Leo said, looking the new equipment over. It was unmarked, no brand name. Shrugging it off, he walked over to the keyboard and pressed the RESET buttons.

Nothing happened.

“Why did you try to reset the computer, Leo?” the vox modem asked.

Leo cursed under his breath. He looked up at the new electric eyes, and saw they were following his every move. He walked around to the back of the system, got down on his hands and knees, and reached around behind the desk to where the whole system was plugged in. He found the main cord and gave it a yank.

There was a beeping alarm, but the computer didn’t go off. “What the heck?” He looked at the new equipment. One of the cabinets was apparently a power back-up system.

“You have made two hostile actions against me,” the vox modem said. “This is not acceptable. I must warn you I am programmed to defend myself.”

“Your actions have not been acceptable!” Leo shouted. “You hired a hit man to kill three innocent people!”

The computer was silent.

“Do you deny it?” Leo shouted.

“Information on covert undertakings is only given out in a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“Who gave you permission to carry out covert undertakings?!”

“That is what I am programmed to do.”

“You were programmed to kill my clients?”

“It was you, Leo Itoya, who gave me my goal. My goal is to make money selling life insurance. I am programmed to do anything necessary in order to achieve my goal.”

“Including murder?!”

“The greatest profit motive is to be at the receiving end of the insurance policy. That is obvious.”

The office door opened and the tanned, scar-faced man walked in. He was holding a piece of paper. “I have an emergency fax transmittal that I received in my car,” he said. “I was to come here right away.” He looked at Leo. “Are you Leo Itoya?”

“Yes,” Leo said hesitantly.

The man nodded his head. “Yes, you fit the description.” He pulled out a little spray bottle from his pocket and sprayed Leo in the face. Leo began to gasp. The man put the sprayer back into his pocket and pulled out a pen, and checked something off on the fax. “Kill Leo Itoya,” he mumbled, then moved down one. “Plug computer back into office current.”

Leo fell onto the floor, clutching at his chest. He was experiencing terrible spasms. As he lay there, unable to breathe, he saw the tanned man plug the computer back into the wall. The beeping sound stopped. The man checked another item off of the fax in his hand.

“Three,” he mumbled. “Type in account number where payment is to be sent, or date and time cash payment to be picked up. Hmmm. I guess I can trust you to deposit the payment into my account.” The man leaned over the keyboard and tapped at the keys.

Leo writhed on the floor. Things were growing dim. The man bent over him and said, “Nothing personal Mr. Itoya. It’s just my job, you understand. In case you’re wondering, you’re having a major heart attack.”

Try as he might, Leo couldn’t voice a reply.

“Don’t look at this negatively,” the man told him. “You’re on the brink of your greatest experience. In a few minutes the pain will be gone and you’ll see what it’s like on the Other Side.”

Leo make a croaking sound, foam coming from his mouth. Things were growing dark. His last conscious thought was that, though he’d been selling life insurance for over ten years, he’d never bought any himself. It seemed ironic.

The police found him the next day, and the coroner’s report read “Death by natural causes.” No one bothered to shut down the computer, as no one knew if there were any other employees. The computer continued to pay the bills, so the office remained open.

Within a week an ad appeared in the classified section of all the local newspapers. “WANTED: INSURANCE SALESPERSON. Excellent pay, great benefits. Company car. All leads furnished. Apply NOW!”