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      INTERTEXT - Volume 1, Number 4 - November-December 1991

                          INSIDE THIS ISSUE     

                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

                An Ounce of Prevention / MICHAEL ERNST

                 Experience Required / ROBERT HURVITZ

                      Slice of Mind / PHIL NOLTE

                    The Rebel Cause / MICHEL FORGET

                  The Scratch Buffer / STEVE CONNELLY
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                 Editor: Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu)
   Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan (sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu)
           Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET)
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InterText Vol. 1, No. 4. InterText is published electronically on a bi-
monthly basis, and distributed via electronic mail over the Internet, 
BITNET, and UUCP. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as 
the magazine is not sold and the content of the magazine is not changed 
in any way. Copyright (C) 1991, Jason Snell. All stories (C) 1991 by 
their respective authors. All further rights to stories belong to the 
authors. The ASCII InterText is exported from Pagemaker 4.0 files into 
Microsoft Word 4.0. Worldwide subscribers: 1091. Our next issue is 
scheduled for January 9, 1992. A PostScript version of this magazine is 
available from the same sources, and looks a whole lot nicer, if you 
have access to laser printers.
          For subscription requests, email: jsnell@ucsd.edu
-Back issues available via FTP at network.ucsd.edu (IP 128.54.16.3)-
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                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

     I'm back. Did you miss me?
     Well, probably not. But that's okay. It's still hard for me to 
visualize the fact that InterText goes out to over a thousand people 
every other month. And you're sitting there, reading this. InterText 
will be a year old with our next issue, and we've got subscribers in 
such far away (from me here in San Diego) places as the Soviet Union, 
Australia, Germany, Britain, Brazil... and, closer to home, Mexico and 
Canada. All over the world. Yikes.
     In a way, this issue marks a bit of a change for the magazine. It's 
the first issue where one of my own stories hasn't appeared (a good 
trend in that we had enough to fill the space without my help... but 
beware, because I might have another one in the pipeline...) and also 
the first time Greg Knauss hasn't made his twisted presence felt within 
our pages.
     Dear old Greg, who has written for magazines with a much larger 
circulation than this (he's been in maybe a dozen Atari computer 
magazines) is fresh out of stories. Well, I've got some older Knauss 
stories that I could dredge out of the slime pit, but it's not worth it. 
I can only hope that he comes up with the stamina to write a new story 
someday. Right now, he's getting over the fact that his Star Trek: The 
Next Generation script, "The Cortez," was rejected. He says that at 
least the ST:TNG people read the thing. He and I are now finishing up 
(we hope) our own ST:TNG script (how do I get myself into these 
things?), titled "Chain of Command." It's brilliant, exceptional, 
wonderful, amazing... oh, sorry. Got a little carried away there.
     I'd also like to welcome Phil Nolte back to the fold. Phil, who 
didn't have a whole lot to do with this issue because of my poor 
planning, still managed to contribute a story, "Slice of Mind." Phil has 
moved west from North Dakota, and now resides in Idaho. I'm glad he's 
back.
     Our cover this issue is, well, you could call it minimalist. In 
fact, my dear assistant editor Geoff Duncan (who has done lots of great 
work for this thing and doesn't get enough credit so I'm going to devote 
this entire parenthetical expression to him... Hi Geoff!) refers to the 
cover as, well, clip-art. I don't know about that... I like it. I was 
tempted to headline this issue "THE CLASSY INTERTEXT ISSUE"... but 
fortunately I refrained.
     I did have a cooler Mel Marcelo cover, one with a spooky haunted 
house, but it's after Halloween and the thing would have made this 
issue's PostScript version run almost one megabyte in length. No thanks. 
So the lovely dancing couple it is.
     Funny how theme issues almost seem to come together by themselves. 
All the stories in this issue have something to do with employment. We 
have a first-day-on-the-job story ("An Ounce of Prevention") from 
Michael Ernst, a job interview story ("Experience Required") from 
returning writer Robert Hurvitz, a story about someone getting fired 
from his job (the aforementioned "Slice of Mind"), a story about someone 
being reconditioned into a new profession ("The Rebel Cause" by Michel 
Forget), and a story about a guy who finds an easy solution to one of 
his problems at work ("The Scratch Buffer", by Steve Connelly).
     I should say something else about Connelly's story: it may be a bit 
obscure, but I find it extremely funny. Since this is a magazine 
distributed through computer networks, I decided to put it in. I hope 
that those of you with minimal computer experience can still appreciate 
some of the humor in the story's situations, despite perhaps not 
understanding all of the jargon or references. And for those of you with 
newsgroup reading experience or experience working with large computers, 
this one will be right up your alley.
     This is a strange time for we computerized magazine editors (wait, 
that sounds like I'm Max Headroom or someone...) -- both myself and 
Quanta's Dan Appelquist are college seniors. We're both going to 
graduate within the next six months (him in December, me in March). I'm 
unsure what Dan will do upon graduating, but I assume that Quanta will 
remain around. As for me, well, I'll still be in San Diego through June 
(my duties as editor in chief of the campus newspaper require this of 
me), and then I don't know what will happen. My plan is to go to 
graduate journalism school, in which case I'll probably have one more 
year of net access (at Columbia or Northwestern, if I get in...) or two 
years (if I go to UC Berkeley). So hopefully I'll be able to produce 
InterText until mid-1993. If not, we'll just have to find someone else 
with net access and the will to do this fun, fun job. I hope that when I 
do disappear from the net (though I also hope that I never disappear), 
InterText or something like it will continue -- even if it's in a 
different form. We shall see.
     Final trivia for those of you still with me: you who have 
PostScript will have noticed that my photo has returned to the top of 
the page. I re-scanned the sucker in the right way, and it takes up very 
little space in the document. And for those of you reading the ASCII 
version, consider both this and my earlier references to our cover as 
plugs for the PostScript version.
     That's all from me. Until 1992, I wish you all well.

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                An Ounce of Prevention / MICHAEL ERNST

     Flats or heels? Melissa stood, hands on her hips, and looked into 
her closet. Today would be her first day at a new job, so she wanted to 
look good, but they had seemed pretty casual when she'd interviewed last 
week, but on the other hand (or was this the first one again?) it was 
better to be overdressed than underdressed, which was in turn better 
than undressed, which she was now, and she had to leave very soon. 
Melissa shook her head to clear the nonsense, added a pair of low heels 
to the outfit she'd chosen the night before, and rapidly completed her 
toilet. She was on the road in twenty minutes; half an hour after that 
she reported to the personnel office of the McCarthy Research Institute. 
     By the time she had completed a pile of paperwork, signed a 
nondisclosure agreement, heard lectures about her benefits and the 
importance of safety and the amount of time she was permitted to spend 
in the bathroom, been perfunctorily poked by bored doctors while 
describing her childhood diseases and inoculations, received a badge 
featuring her bug-eyed picture, and found her way to the building where 
she would be working, it seemed like days had passed. Mr. Hutchins 
("call me Frank") took her to lunch at the company cafeteria. All of the 
food looked like plastic; Melissa finally decided on a garden salad, 
which, she surmised, couldn't be ruined too badly.
     After they'd taken their seats, her boss spoke affably around bites 
of a Super Combination Burrito. Melissa tried to keep her eyes off the 
burrito and on his face, but her eyes kept straying back to it as to the 
scene of a terrible accident. "I assume you've already run the personnel 
gauntlet this morning." Tempted to roll her eyes, Melissa permitted 
herself a nod and a small smile. "Did the bald guy with the tufts of 
hair sticking out of his ears tell you all about our swell insurance 
plan?"
     "No, it was a woman."
     "Ah, the Dragon Lady. Stocky, severe-looking, flinty eyes, always 
wears a suit she bought in 1953." Melissa nodded. "They say she smiled 
once, but that was before I started working here." Melissa tried to 
remember whether his yellow badge indicated between five and ten years 
of tenure or between ten and fifteen. Her own was a gaudy green which 
didn't go with her outfit at all.
     "Do you have any questions about McCarthy, or about the NDE group in 
particular? Last week I was so busy finding out how fast you could type 
and whether you knew the difference between a mouse and a rat, and which 
is which, that I didn't have much time to fill you in on other details."
Melissa asked apologetically, "What exactly does your group do?" She 
threw out one of the few academic-sounding terms she knew. "Is it pure 
research?"
     Frank shook his head. "No, I don't think you could say that. It's 
about 80 percent research, and 20 percent playing practical jokes on one 
another." Melissa smiled wanly in response to his self-satisfied smirk 
and thought that, unpleasant as her last job had been, perhaps it had 
been a bad idea to resign with such finality. Fortunately, Frank's style 
settled down once he'd started talking; with an indulgent smile he left 
off his attack on the burrito and did his best to explain his group's 
raison d'etre. Meanwhile, the grease pooled at one end of the oblong 
dish. Melissa tried to pay attention to what he was saying instead of 
wondering how long it would take the runoff to congeal and whether, if 
one were to pick up the burrito afterward, the solidified fat would 
stick to it like a waxy base.
     "NDE stands for Non-Destructive Evaluation; we investigate ways to 
test substances and devices without damaging them. A lot of tests are 
like striking a match to evaluate it. Sure, you find out whether the 
match was good, but it is worthless afterward, and that experiment tells 
you nothing -- except in a statistical sense -- about other matches." 
Frank explained that this method wasn't good enough for their customers. 
Melissa nodded attentively at breaks in the monologue and decided that 
eating her salad would take her mind off Frank's food. She was wrong.
Frank went on to discuss the NDE philosophy in greater detail 
(Melissa slipped her feet out of her shoes, wished she'd chosen the 
flats after all, and thought about what she would wear the next day; she 
owned so little clothing that went with green) and to stress that 
although their testing was non-destructive, they did work with some 
dangerous materials and that safety concerns were of paramount 
importance. Melissa solemnly agreed and wondered where on earth he'd 
gotten that tacky tie. He went on about his group's fine record of 
safety and the elaborate precautions that were standard practice. His 
earnest sincerity about these safeguards was a strong contrast to the 
ennui of the morning lecturers, whose soporific delivery of rote 
material had left her with a sluggish feeling, as if she'd had a bad 
night's sleep. Frank seemed like a nice guy, even if he was a little out 
of it and had a sadly stunted sense of humor which brought to mind a 
plant left too long without sunlight. He was by turns sensitive to those 
around him -- he was attentive enough when he stopped talking long 
enough to ask Melissa a question -- and wrapped up in technical 
concerns. A typical engineer.
     Eventually he outlined Melissa's duties. Her primary objective -- he 
made it sound like a hill about to be assaulted by a company of Marines 
-- was to run interference with the bureaucracy so that he could do 
"real work." She was relieved that she was not expected to fetch coffee 
or make eleventh-hour telephone calls to locate a baby-sitter. Sick of 
running her last boss's errands, she had begun to encourage tradesmen's 
frequent misconception that she was his mistress. "Are these the shirts 
that Brian's wife dropped off or that I did?" she would ask the young 
man at the dry cleaner's. "It wouldn't do to mix them up," she'd add 
with a lascivious wink, then saunter out, hips swaying. The rumor didn't 
get back to her boss's wife before she quit, but she hoped it did 
afterward. She smiled, and Frank thought that she was responding to his 
feeble joke about keeping a capacitor from charging by taking away its 
credit cards. He had finished his burrito, and the pool of discolored, 
oily fat had disappeared as well. Frank remarked on her half-eaten 
salad, but Melissa said she wasn't very hungry.
     "Don't worry overmuch about your productivity at first," Frank said 
as they walked back. "Just get the feel of the place and meet the 
people. I'll ask the group members to introduce themselves and to make 
you feel at home." He muttered something about a test that afternoon, 
and Melissa imagined a room full of managers in shirtsleeves and pocket 
protectors seated at wooden desks, brows furrowed and tongues sticking 
out of the corners of their mouths as they filled out bubble forms with 
their #2 pencils.
     Frank pointed out Melissa's desk, which sat bare and forlorn in a 
fence of waist-high partition walls like an empty doghouse in an 
abandoned backyard. Frank's office was just the opposite. Papers were 
piled on every surface except the chair, computer keyboard, and 
cappuccino machine. Books lay propped open under half-full coffee mugs, 
boxes made the entrance nearly impossible to negotiate, and Post-It 
notes wallpapered the area near his desk. Melissa instinctively 
recoiled. "Don't worry," he assured her, "I'll never ask you to search 
through here. Besides, if you were to try, you'd probably mess the place 
up so that I couldn't find anything."
     Melissa spent the next few hours raiding the supply room, organizing 
her desk, acquainting herself with the computer, and meeting people who 
came by to welcome her. The phone rang rarely, and Frank was out 
somewhere, so she figured it was okay to just sit and read about 
policies and procedures, computer programs, requisition protocols, 
company picnics, executive perquisites, and parking permits. Whenever 
she leaned back to take a break, her eyes were caught by a ludicrous 
poster of a rabbit with a shocking pink Band-Aid on one of its ears. 
Frank had pinned it up in the hallway, and its legend read, "Only A Dumb 
Bunny Thinks Safety Is A Matter Of Luck. Make '91 A Safer One. MRI." 
Around mid-afternoon, when she was poring over a manual which, on first 
glance, had appeared to be written in English, she noticed a lanky red-
haired fellow leaning against the low wall of her cubicle; he was 
staring appreciatively down her blouse. He obviously approved of her 
Maidenform's delicate scalloped edging of sheer patterned lace, but had 
he noticed the satin center bow and the exquisite faux pearl detailing? 
Did he realize that its comfortable-yet-firm support was perfect for 
every day? Melissa straightened and offered a hello.
     He raised his eyes to hers. "Hi. I'm Josh McCarthy," he said with an 
excessively friendly smile, offering his hand to be shaken. At least he 
had a firm grip. "No relation, or I wouldn't have to work for a living. 
You must be Melissa Sweedler." He reads well, thought Melissa, but then 
checked the uncharitable thought. Perhaps she ought to give him more 
credit: while he had been looking straight at the name badge dangling 
from her blouse pocket, he probably hadn't even noticed it. "Welcome 
aboard; are you getting settled in all right?"
     "Well enough, except for having to read these manuals." Melissa 
gestured wearily at a heap of documentation whose covers proclaimed in 
bold letters their ease of use. "I think it's hopeless to try to squeeze 
myself into the mind of a technical writer; it's too cramped a fit."
     Josh frowned. "I'm a technical writer myself -- that one's mine." He 
pointed to one of the books in the pile, and Melissa blushed. Just when 
she was starting to get comfortable with these people, she had to put 
her foot in her mouth, which was particularly painful with heels. He 
rushed on. "Maybe I could help you get in the right frame of mind later. 
Over lunch tomorrow, maybe? For now, however, you should take a break. 
Would you like to experience an explosion?"
     "An explosion?"
     Josh nodded, then contradicted himself. "We're testing a blast 
containment system, and if it works -- which it will -- there won't be 
anything to see. But it's a good excuse to take a break and get outside. 
It's a beautiful day out," he added. It was indeed a lovely, cloudless 
day: when she'd searched for this building, a cool breeze had ruffled 
the trees' leaves with a gentle rustling and the promise of a delightful 
evening. Melissa was tempted, but she hesitated to leave her post. Josh 
looked puzzled and continued, "The whole group will be there, so there's 
no particular reason for you to stay here. Frank said he had invited you 
to watch."
     They walked out past the senior secretary, a timid-looking old 
creature with short white hair, wide startled eyes, lips in a perpetual 
moue beneath a downy moustache, and tacky pink earrings. She declined to 
come along but agreed to answer Melissa's phone if it rang. "I've seen 
enough of these boys' pranks; I don't need that kind of excitement." 
     When she shook her head, her ears waggled, and she looked exactly like 
the bunny in the poster. Josh didn't seem too disappointed that she 
wasn't accompanying them.
     "I thought this was the Non-Destructive Evaluation group," Melissa 
said as they emerged from the building. "Why are you setting off an 
explosion?"
     "One of our projects is the validation of blasting caps; the 
dangerously unstable ones are kept in a big steel box, and we're 
verifying that it's strong enough to be trusted." The weather was as 
pleasant as it had been before, and while the day was sunny, it wasn't 
uncomfortably hot this early in the summer. "The caps are detonated 
electrically, and we test them by running just a trickle of current 
through them." Josh went on about knees in characteristic curves and 
criteria for discarding bad caps; Melissa wished she was reading one of 
the relatively clear manuals instead. She looked appreciatively at the 
grounds, which were like a campus with their scattered buildings and 
grassy lawns, and wondered how many people were employed full-time just 
tending the greenery.
     "If the robot arm detects a bad cap, it drops it in a glorified 
safe. The safe has a capacity of one hundred caps, and it has been rated 
as capable of withstanding considerably more powerful blasts; our group 
has certified the plans as well, and in fact Frank had a hand in the 
design. We're paranoid -- well, Frank is -- so we're testing the safe 
ourselves, just to be sure. It's a waste of time and money, if you ask 
me, but no one does."
     Melissa made a noncommittal noise, and as they walked along Josh 
continued to chatter, periodically bobbing forward to catch her eye, 
which made Melissa feel obliged to nod at whatever he was saying at the 
time. She warded off his questions about where she lived and what she 
did on weekends. After what must have been only a few minutes, Josh 
pointed out, off to their right, an enormous wheel and rubber tire. It 
was mounted over an even larger metal drum which resembled the wheel of 
an asphalt roller on steroids; more machinery poked at unlikely angles 
from a gantry. "To test landing gear, we rev the drum up to five 
revolutions per second and then slam the wheel against it, to simulate a 
plane landing at 200 miles per hour. You can hear the reverberations a 
mile away. We repeat it until the landing gear breaks." Melissa began to 
realize that to these university-educated engineers, "non-destructive" 
meant something very different than it did to her.
     At her look -- she hadn't realized her reaction was so transparent -
- Josh held his hands up in mock-defense. "Yes, I know it's not exactly 
non-destructive. But it's not destructive to the airplane, and besides, 
we have lots of extra landing gears. For some reason, our clients find 
it more convenient to send us dozens of whatever we need than to ask us 
how many we want and just ship that many. We end up having to store 
piles of the stuff." Melissa nodded; while Frank's office was by far the 
worst offender, she'd noticed crates and boxes scattered through the 
hallways and piled in unused offices, and one of her new keys -- her key 
ring now resembled a mace -- was to their warehouse.
     Soon they reached the test site, where a number of people were 
engaged in animated conversation outside a low, bunker-like concrete 
building. Frank was conferring with someone from Facilities, but when he 
had finished, he walked over briskly. "Melissa! I'm so glad that Josh 
brought you along. I would have myself, but I've been here for hours and 
you would have been bored. Have you met everyone?" He made 
introductions, chided the onlookers for turning a scientific experiment 
into a spectator sport, and went off to quadruple-check the 
arrangements. Melissa chatted idly with the cluster of people while wire 
was strung from the shelter to a field where the safe sat, looking like 
a child's toy at that distance.
     Melissa was handed a blasting cap: a dud, Josh assured her, if its 
current-voltage curve was to be believed, but he warned her not to drop 
it just the same. It seemed remarkably light -- about an ounce, her 
postage-meter-trained fingers gauged -- to be causing such a stir. "It's 
an experimental type that is more powerful than older caps and so able 
to detonate more dynamite," someone said.
     Shortly Frank shooed them all inside, where they gathered at the 
tiny, shielded windows. "I give you an hour off work, and act like a 
bunch of kids at the circus," he said in mock exasperation. He activated 
the detonator and continued without pause, "There's nothing to see."
He was cut off by a tremendous roar. The safe was tossed into the 
air and a hole appeared in its side. Then dirt occluded the view from 
the shelter, and the group remembered to take a collective breath. After 
the dust had settled down, Frank led the way outside. Debris was 
scattered all around; some pieces of shrapnel had nearly reached the 
bunker. The safe, its thick metal sides bent and torn, was lying half a 
dozen paces from a deep new crater. Frank shook his head and kicked at a 
clod of dirt. "They certified this safe." Melissa thought about telling 
the Dragon Lady she'd changed her mind and would buy some insurance 
after all.
     The failure of the safe did little to dampen the onlookers' spirits 
-- in fact, most of them found it hilarious. They talked and laughed on 
the walk back to their building, and Melissa became increasingly 
comfortable with them; she didn't even mind Josh's continued flirting. 
Well, not too much. She decided that she was going to like this job 
after all. When they went inside, they received grins and questions 
about what they'd been doing. "That was even louder than the landing 
gear," said those who hadn't come along.
     Frank was an exception to the general mirth. He seemed disappointed 
and somewhat preoccupied. When the group members had returned to their 
offices, he paused at Melissa's desk. "Melissa, I'd like you to take a 
memo to Facilities." He glanced at his watch, hardly noticing her poised 
pencil. "You probably have just enough time to walk it downstairs before 
they close for the day. Ask them to take away, first thing tomorrow 
morning, the two thousand extra blasting caps I've been storing in my 
office."

--
MICHAEL ERNST (mernst@theory.lcs.mit.edu) is a graduate student in 
computer science at MIT. He knows the difference between Trinidad and 
Tobago, and which is which.
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                  Experience Required / ROBERT HURVITZ

     Mr. Peterson glanced one last time at the worthless resume before 
feeding it into the paper shredder mounted on the edge of his desk and 
directly over the trash can. "What a complete and utter waste of my 
time," he muttered. Before opening the next file, he jotted down on a 
Post-It note a quick reminder to give the recruiting office a severe 
verbal lashing.
     He punched the speaker-phone, said, "Send in the next supplicant, 
Karen," and cut the connection.
     As his office door opened, Mr. Peterson looked up from the new 
resume and asked, "Daniel Smith?" Smith nodded. "Sit down, Danny." Mr. 
Peterson motioned to a leather armchair in front of his desk. "I hope 
you don't mind my calling you Danny. My two-year-old son is named 
Daniel, and he likes to be called Danny."
     "My mother calls me Danny," said Smith.
     "I see," said Mr. Peterson. He looked back down at the resume.
     "How shall I address you, sir?"
     "Mr. Peterson will be fine. What makes you want to work for All 
Edge Systems, and, more importantly, why do you think we'd even want 
someone like you?"
     "All Edge is the best company out there, and always will be. I will 
not compromise my professional integrity by working at a second rate 
business. I know that All Edge Systems wants only the best men working 
for her, and, to put it simply and plainly, I am the best."
     Mr. Peterson regarded Daniel Smith. His short blond hair was 
moussed back in a stylish wave. His pale blue eyes glinted self-
confidence, ambition, and that unmistakable killer instinct.
     He was clad in a dark, pinstripe, Pierre Cardin two-piece suit with 
matching power tie. His legs were crossed, and Mr. Peterson could see 
that although his shoes shined as if they were brand new, the worn sole 
clearly showed them to be many months old.
     "Did you notice the fellow who was in here immediately before you?"
     A look of disdain crossed Smith's otherwise fine features. 
"Unfortunately, yes. A pathetic excuse for a man. But I was heartened to 
see him run from your office in tears. May I ask what it was you said to 
him that caused such a delightful reaction?"
     "No, you may not." Mr. Peterson read a few more lines of Smith's 
brag sheet and raised his eyebrows slightly. "Your resume claims that 
you just received your M.B.A. from USC. I'm a Trojan man myself. Class 
of '83. Tell me, is Professor Green still teaching? He was my 
undergraduate advisor."
     "Oh yes, Green's still around. Was he just as senile back then?"
     Mr. Peterson smiled. "He had his occasional moment of lucidity. 
He's a homosexual, you know."
     "Yes, I took a class with him."
     They stared at each other for a few seconds.
     "Are you married, Danny?"
     "Engaged."
     "I see." Mr. Peterson read over the rest of the resume. "I assume 
she would not divide your loyalties?"
     "Of course not, sir. All Edge Systems would have me first and 
foremost. I would not have it any other way." Smith crossed his arms. "I 
did not choose my fiancee on some foolish whim."
     Mr. Peterson closed Smith's folder and placed it on the desk. 
"Needless to say, Danny, I'm quite impressed with you. However, I don't 
think that you're properly suited for the job. Frankly, I don't much 
like your tie. Thank you for your time, and you know where the door is."
     Smith squinted his eyes. "Excuse me, sir?"
     "Vacate my office, or I'll call security."
     "Mr. Peterson, I don't believe you know how much this job means to 
me." He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a .357 Magnum, and aimed 
it steadily at Mr. Peterson's chest. "You will give me the job. I will 
settle for nothing less."
     Mr. Peterson smiled broadly, showing his teeth. "I like your style, 
Danny-boy. Congratulations." He leaned forward and punched the speaker-
phone. "Karen, politely tell the other prospectives to fuck off. We have 
our man."

--
ROBERT HURVITZ (hurvitz@cory.Berkeley.edu) is a senior at UC Berkeley. 
He wrote this story at the request of a friend who was in severe pain 
and 2,000 miles away. He has previously appeared in both InterText and 
Quanta. Not much is happening in his life at the moment, but he hopes 
this will change soon.
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                        Slice of Mind / PHIL NOLTE

     "Have you ever really thought, I mean really thought, about 
thinking, Schultz?" Crawford asked me. The question took me utterly by 
surprise, seeing as how the time was somewhen way beyond my normal 
bedtime and my thought processes were, to say the least, somewhat 
different than normal. Crawford and I had sought refuge in a back corner 
of the small, dimly-lit, smoke-filled apartment. The mindless drum 
machine-thumping of one of those awful candy-rock groups with the pouty-
voiced, pre-pubescent female lead singer blaring on the stereo wasn't 
helping my ability to think much either.
     "Sure, I've thought about it," I said. "The whole concept is kind 
of mind-boggling, if you get my drift." One side of Dr. Nathan 
Crawford's lip curled up in a half-smile, half-smirk at my half-assed 
attempt at a joke. I took a pull on a light beer that was, by now, much 
too warm to be drinking.
     "That's good, Schultz," he said, "but I'm serious. Tell me, if you 
can, what exactly is a thought? Where do ideas come from? The human 
brain is only another organ like a liver or a pancreas, after all. Why 
don't we have a better understanding of it?"
     I shrugged. This sounded like a good discussion topic, the kind you 
could get your teeth into. "Can we get out of here, Doc? This party is 
about to break up anyway." He looked around the hazy room, noticing that 
most of those still present were paired up and oblivious to us anyway. 
He nodded and got up. I left the rest of my wretched beer on the end 
table. We headed for the little all-night coffee shop on the corner, a 
couple blocks away, just off campus.
     Crawford was one of those young profs who liked to spend time with 
the students, after hours, away from the classroom atmosphere. A few 
drinks -- on rare occasions a toke or two -- a little music and everyone 
tended to let their hair down. Crawford really got into that kind of 
stuff. The discussions often got real interesting. He hated the 
comparison, but I always thought he looked like a slightly taller 
version of Richard Dreyfuss. He even had the animated gestures, the 
intense facial expressions and the Van Dyke beard.
     I was a Ph.D. student in Zoology, the same department as Crawford, 
but I hadn't gone to the party seeking esoteric conversation. I was 
looking for something more basic: female companionship. As usual, having 
gone looking for it, I hadn't found it. Not for lack of trying, mind 
you. But then, I'm sort of a Maynard G. Krebs look-alike so I've gotten 
used to it. I settled for the next best thing: the esoteric conversation 
-- at least it was with somebody smarter than I was.
     We settled into a well-worn red vinyl booth and ordered some onion 
rings and coffee -- a couple of things that the little restaurant was 
famous for. The coffee came right away. Crawford blew gently across the 
surface of the hot, dark liquid and took an exploratory sip. It was like 
that was all he needed to get back in gear. He picked up the thread of 
our previous conversation just about where we left off.
     "What this thing we call 'the mind' anyway?" he asked rhetorically. 
"When you see something or hear something or touch or taste or smell 
something, the brain reacts in some way. Thoughts are the result. How do 
they happen?" I shrugged. He paused for long enough to take another sip 
of hot brew. "I'm not sure, either, but think of this: it all goes on 
inside your head, inside a space about the size of a softball. It may 
not sound too romantic, Schultz, but tonight when you were trying to 
make time with that buxom little junior, it was ultimately her brain you 
had to communicate with, wasn't it. One rough-surfaced softball-sized 
organ to another!"
     "I don't know, Doc," I said, smirking, "I'm pretty sure it wasn't 
her brain I was interested in!"
     "There will come a time when your thought processes are free from 
the influence of your hormones, Schultz. I pray, for your sake, that the 
day isn't too far off!"
     I decided to get a little more serious. The short walk in the cool 
night air and a cup of black coffee had done wonders for my head. My 
mind had cleared. Besides, grad students just love to cross wits with 
profs. What the hell, I thought, I might even learn something!
     "So how would you go about studying the mind and thoughts and brain 
function, Doc? Like, where would you start?" I asked, sensing that he 
was really into the subject and only a little priming was needed to set 
him off. I was right.
     "Naturally, there would be real value in comparing abnormal brains 
with normal ones." Our onion rings came. The air was filled with the 
wonderful, sinful aroma of golden-brown breading crisp-fried in oil.
     "You mean like comparing college students with insurance salesmen?" 
I asked, as I handed him the catsup. He chuckled, took the offered 
bottle and poured a large, red dollop on his plate.
     "Yes, Brian, but don't forget that there's another end of the 
spectrum. One could probably learn more by studying the very 
intelligent. Of course, some of that work has already been done. Broca's 
brain is preserved in a jar. So is Einstein's."
     "Broca?" I asked.
     "Paul Broca. He was a French scientist who did the pioneer work on 
human brain function. The speech area of the brain is named for him. I'm 
surprised you haven't heard of him." I shrugged, Crawford continued. 
"Believe it or not, the scientists who studied those very special brains 
found little to no difference between them and that of a 'normal' 
human." He paused and selected the largest onion ring from the basket, 
dipped it in catsup and then held it suspended above the plate between 
his thumb and forefinger while he made his next point.
     "Perhaps the strangest case of all is that of Vladimir Lenin, the 
Soviet politician and leader. After taking Lenin's brain out of his 
skull, his doctors used standard tissue techniques to preserve it and 
then proceeded to slice it up into sections, some 30,000 of them." He 
smiled, and bit into the crisp golden circle. He watched me for my 
reaction.
     "Wow!" I said, around a mouthful of the succulent fried food. "What 
did they find?"
     "Absolutely nothing," he replied, eyeing the basket.
     "Jesus, what a waste!" I said, shaking my head.
     "Perhaps not," said Crawford, as he selected the largest of the two 
remaining onion rings. "Perhaps they didn't know what to look for."
     "What do you mean by that, Doc?"
     "Could be there's more to the thought process than just simple 
Biology and Chemistry."
     "Like what?" I said as I grabbed the last tidbit out of the basket.
     "Well, like Physics, for instance. There have been some remarkable 
discoveries recently. The discoverers don't know it yet, but some of 
their findings have immediate applications for my research."
     And it went on from there. I was hooked. Dr. Nathan Crawford spun 
an incredible tale of new and absurd theories. Only, as he explained 
them they didn't sound so absurd. They sounded exciting, even plausible, 
and I hung on to every word. After an hour that seemed like about five 
minutes, I snapped out of an intense concentration to find that our 
coffee was stone cold and there was nothing but a few congealed crumbs 
in the onion basket. It was like we had been alone in the little 
restaurant.
     Suddenly, sadly, it was time to go. You can only sustain that kind 
of intensity for so long. My head was still reeling with all the new 
wave brain theories that had been crammed into it.
     "Stop by my lab tomorrow afternoon, Schultz. I'll show you some of 
my results," he said, as we parted company in the parking lot of the 
little coffee shop.
     "Sure, Doc, you bet!" I said enthusiastically. I walked back to my 
one-room apartment to a bed that I knew wouldn't see much sleeping that 
evening.

     All the next day, my mind was filled with thoughts about thinking. 
(Read that last sentence again. It will give you some idea of my state 
of mind that day.) All the next day my classes seemed to take forever. 
To make matters worse, I also had to T.A. the afternoon lab session. 
That went quickly too -- kind of like a snail in an ultrafreezer. 
Finally, some twenty minutes late, I managed to herd the last of the 
sophomores out of the Vertebrate Zoology lab. As quickly as I could, I 
de-prepped the teaching room, shed my lab coat and washed the 
formaldehyde off my hands. Two minutes later I was up on the fourth 
floor getting ready to enter Crawford's lab.
     I stopped myself right by the corner of the door. Something odd was 
going on. Some poor son of a bitch was in the middle of a real, old-
fashioned ass-chewing. It only took a moment to figure out that someone 
was Dr. Nathan Crawford. The one doing the chewing was none other than 
W. Oscar McBride, Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics! This 
had to be heavy duty stuff! I was glad I wasn't in the room but I 
couldn't help myself as I eavesdropped with a sort of horrified 
fascination.
     Old Oscar was practically shouting.
     "... the most hare-brained idea I have ever heard of!"
     "I believe I can explain..." began Crawford softly.
     "Explain! Christ, Nate, how could you be so god-damned stupid? You 
can't give controlled substances to students even if they are volunteers 
and I don't care if they each signed ten waivers! You simply cannot do 
that! As if that weren't enough, I have it on good authority that you've 
been at student residences where marijuana was used and minors were 
consuming alcohol! On numerous occasions! What were you thinking? Have 
you no sense of propriety, Nate?"
     "As I started to say, Dr. McBride, I believe I can explain..." 
Crawford began, quietly, reasonably, only to be cut off again.
     "Not this time, Nate. I can't do anything to help you. Even if you 
had tenure, which you don't, I'm not sure we could beat this one! There 
are people in high places who want your head! You'd better start 
packing."
     McBride almost ran me over as he stormed out of the lab. I 
pretended like I had just arrived and was none the wiser. He looked at 
me with his reddened face and shook his head before steaming off down 
the hall and around the corner.
     I peeked around the doorjamb. Crawford was looking in my direction 
but didn't appear to see me. I waved and said: "Hey, Doc, is everything 
all right? He started, recognized me and motioned me inside. He was 
shook but, hey, I guess that's understandable, given the circumstances.
     "No, Brian, it most certainly is not. I just got fired. Hard to 
believe, really."
     "Uh... I know," I confessed, "I couldn't help it. I overheard the 
last couple minutes out in the hall."
     "I thought that this University was different... but, of course 
they're all the same."
     Amazingly, Crawford sort of shrugged and seemed to shake off the 
mood. Suddenly he became a man of action.
     "No doubt they'll send security over to search my office." He 
looked at me. "I want you to keep something safe for me. This is very 
important, can you do it?"
     "Uh ... sure, Doc," I said, praying it wasn't a kilo of grass or an 
ounce of coke or something. I was really a pretty straight guy. I mean, 
like, drugs had never appealed to me much. Sex and Rock n' Roll, fine. 
Drugs, no. I swallowed, "What is it?"
     "You remember my trip to Moscow last July?"
     "Yeah, you took some great slides. Wish I could've been with you."
     "Those weren't the only slides I brought back with me." I gave him 
a puzzled look. He smiled without humor. "It was frightfully expensive, 
Brian, but I managed to get a few of those 30,000 sections of Lenin's 
brain and smuggle them back here. Five, to be exact."
     "No shit, Doc?"
     "No shit, Schultz!" he replied.
     I shook my head in disbelief.
     "They have proven invaluable for testing certain aspects of my 
theories."
     "Yeah, I'll take them. When do you want them back?"
     "I'm not sure. I'll call for them when I get settled. In few weeks, 
a month at most."
     I left the lab before security got there. I didn't see Crawford 
again for a month and a half.
     But man, did some shit happen!
     The weekend after Crawford got fired was the long Thanksgiving one, 
a four-day extravaganza. When we got back from break, Crawford was long 
gone. I remember the scene when I got back to the Zoo department on 
Monday after the Holiday. The place was all aflurry with campus 
security, real downtown cops, and high-level administrators.
     "What's goin' down?" I asked one of the campus guards, a real 
large, badly overweight type who was even then eating a jelly donut. He 
shook his head in disgust.
     "That Crawford guy ripped off some stuff outta the lab las' 
weekend," he said around a mouthful of donut. "The Dean's pretty torqued 
about it! Guess he's got good reason, I hear there was a lot of 
e'spensive stuff in there!"
     I looked into the lab, over the yellow tape of the police barrier. 
Crawford had moved out. And I do mean out. McBride almost had the big 
one when he found out about it. Believe me, if they ever catch Crawford 
they'll put him away for good. You see, the halls had been all but empty 
with everyone out for the holiday and campus security had been its usual 
(that is to say: incompetent) self. Crawford hired himself a couple of 
brawny football-player types and backed a large U-haul truck up to the 
lab.
     He took everything.
     It was at least a million bucks worth of stuff! Good stuff. Big 
stuff like the ultracentrifuge, the gas chromatograph, the HPLC, the 
growth chambers, little stuff like pH meters and electronic balances, 
and all the weird, one-of-a-kind (and expensive) stuff that he'd made to 
test his pet theories. As Dr. Seuss would've said: "He stole the roast 
beast! Why, he even stole the last can of Who Hash!" Heck, the ol' 
grinch himself couldn't have done a better job of stripping that lab 
then Nate Crawford had!
     Yeah, it was all gone and so was Crawford. I had to hand it to him, 
he sure had a knack for getting his way. Two weeks after that I saw an 
obscure notice in the daily paper stating that someone had stolen the 
brain of the famous French scientist, Paul Broca, out of the museum 
where it had been kept for so many years. There were no suspects.
     No suspects? I think they'd better step up the security on 
Einstein's brain unless they want to lose it too.
     Crawford came for his Lenin slides one day with about 20 minutes 
warning. I got them for them out of the hiding place I'd used and we 
talked for a few minutes. He spent a lot of time looking over his 
shoulder. Guess I couldn't blame him. Weird. It was like a scene out of 
a bad "B" sci-fi movie or something except that he wasn't wearing a cape 
and I'm not a hunchback. He asked if I wanted to come and work with him 
at a clandestine, but well-equipped lab he'd set up. He was pretty sure 
he was on the verge of some big breakthroughs and allowed as how he 
could use some competent help. I don't know if he liked my answer or 
not.
     I told him I'd think about it.

--
PHIL NOLTE (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET) is assistant editor of InterText, as 
well as being an extension seed potation specialist in -- of all places 
-- Idaho.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                     The Rebel Cause / MICHEL FORGET

     Kevin had been sleeping for nearly three hours when his life fell 
to pieces before his eyes. Through the blasted shards of what had once 
been the door to his modern two-story home emerged seven Government 
Enforcers with blazing weapons in their hands and murder in their 
hearts. Shocked from sleep by the sudden flurry of activity, Kevin 
barely had time to stumble to his feet and murmur a plaintive question 
before he was roughly thrown to the ground and the smoking muzzle of an 
automatic weapon was pressed hard against his temple.
     "Kevin Gallant!" shouted one of the black-cloaked figures.
     It was all Kevin could do to mumble affirmation, his eyes fixed 
nervously on the muzzle of the gun pointing at his head.
     "You have been tried and convicted of conspiracy against the freely 
elected People's Government. This heinous crime, according to Clause VII 
of the new Constitution, which was drafted by the very government you 
sought to overthrow, is no longer punishable by death."
     Relief flowed through Kevin like a fresh breeze as he learned that 
he wasn't going to die. The new government really was a government for 
the people, just as the banners and signs had proclaimed during last 
month's election. Kevin knew that he had not done what he was being 
accused of, but he was now confident that the whole matter could be 
cleared up before anything of a permanent nature happened to him.
     "Thank God, " he whispered, an audible sigh escaping his lips.
     "I wouldn't," one of the Government Enforcers sneered. "The 
punishment you do receive will be so bad that you'll probably wish you 
were dead. Do you understand what you tried to do?"
     "I didn't do anything, " Kevin asserted in a slightly trembling 
voice.
     With a curse, the Enforcer came forward and roughly kicked Kevin in 
the side.
     "Nothing? You tried to bring down the only government to give the 
people a fair shake in forty-seven years! There was a time, and it 
wasn't too long ago, when it was a crime to read a book or gather in 
groups, or even say what you felt. Now, the government provides 
wholesome literature for any citizen who asks, provides places for 
supervised public gatherings, and conducts surveys to determine what the 
people want from their government. The world is changing, and that 
change cannot be halted for the sake of a few malcontents like you!"
     "But I haven't --" Kevin started to say, but thought better of 
further protest when the Enforcer raised a fist and made as if he would 
strike Kevin if he finished the sentence.
     Kevin was roughly jerked to his feet, and a thin, silver collar was 
fastened around his neck. The Enforcer who was going to hit Kevin only 
seconds earlier pressed a green button on the side of his ebony helmet, 
mumbled something Kevin could not hear, and then watched as Kevin's limp 
body stiffened and then dropped to the floor, drained of any ability to 
resist.

     Kevin's eyelids fluttered open after an unknown amount of time, and 
he once again became aware of his surroundings. He was in a dark room, 
with steel panelled walls. The room only had a cold steel pallet which 
served as a bed and a straight-backed steel chair for furnishings. The 
only source of illumination was a cold white energy panel near the 
ceiling. There was a strange scent in the air which Kevin could not 
identify.
     Where am I? Kevin wondered.
     With some effort, Kevin forced himself to his feet and stumbled to 
the door. Turning the handle, he discovered that the door was locked.
     "Damn, " he said aloud, leaning weakly against the door. "Where am 
I? I didn't do anything. When will I be able to leave?"
     Just then, a terrifying thought occurred to Kevin.
     What if I never...
     Kevin had never been brave, and now his fear or permanent 
imprisonment and the disruption of his life allowed his thoughts to 
burst wildly beyond control.
     ...never let me out...help me...not guilty! ...guilty?... never let 
me out...forever...why?...help me...!
     Kevin sank weakly to the ground, tears beginning to stream from his 
eyes.
     ...Please!...
     Some time later, long after Kevin had run out of tears to shed over 
his shattered life, Kevin felt the weight of the door to his cell shoved 
against him roughly.  He quickly scrambled out of the way to allow the 
door to open freely. A short, balding man stepped past the black-clad 
Enforcer who had opened the door and sat down in the straight-backed 
chair. The man had a grey-streaked beard, and a hard, chiseled face. A 
pair of wire-frame glasses rested on the bridge of the man's nose. He 
was frowning.
     "Have you been crying, Mr. Gallant? You didn't need to, you know. 
Your judge was ordered to suspend your sentence. I am Dr. William Shane, 
and I have been selected to help you through the difficult process of 
harmonizing your thoughts and views on certain matters with those of the 
government."
     Kevin looked up at the man in confusion.
     "Harmonize?"
     "Yes. In time, you will understand. It is something that must be 
done if you are going to be re-introduced into society, or serve the 
government."
     "Why?" Kevin asked, not particularly liking the sound of the word 
'harmonize'.
     "Trust me, our way is better. The rebels don't understand that 
control is needed if man is going to remain a single group with a single 
goal. If everyone went his own way, trying to win others over to his way 
of doing things, then there would be chaos. Don't you see what would be 
the result if the rebels had there way?" 
     "No," Kevin answered, not quite sure of how to respond.
     Kevin had never been disloyal to the government in his life, and 
thus had never given much thought to what would happen if the rebels 
took control of the government.
     "I'll tell you what would happen, if you'll listen.  There would be 
another round of faction politics. Men would fight against each other 
and deceive each other, like they did hundreds of years ago. The peace 
that we have enforced for all these years would crumble as if it had 
never existed. Our way is better. If everyone has the same goal -- is on 
the same side -- we can prevent that from ever happening. As long as we 
are united, nothing can hurt us. Do you see?"
     Since Kevin had nearly the same point of view on the matter, it 
wasn't hard for him to agree. Unfortunately, Kevin thought, his 
agreement probably wouldn't be enough to prevent him from being 
harmonized.

     Unfortunately, Kevin was right. His treatment, as it came to be 
called, began the morning after his meeting with Doctor Shane. The light 
steel door to Kevin's cell was thrown open by a black-cloaked Enforcer, 
and Kevin was roughly dragged out of bed.
     "Where are you taking me?" he asked, a tremor of fear riding in his 
voice.
     Have they decided to punish me after all?
     "Never mind. You'll find out soon enough."
     Kevin wanted to resist, but found that he lacked the strength of 
will, as well as the physical strength, to resist the armored man 
pushing him toward an unknown future. Long after Kevin had lost his 
bearing among the twists and turns of the building in which he was being 
held prisoner, he was shoved into another room.
     Like his cell, this room had steel panelling and was lit by a cold 
white energy panel. Unlike his room, though, there was a chair with many 
straps and buckles where the bed should have been and there were two 
Enforcers standing on either side of the chair. Doctor Shane was sitting 
in the corner beside a panel of buttons.
     "Good day, Mr. Gallant. Have a seat, if you will." he said, 
gesturing toward the chair.
     When Kevin hesitated to sit in the chair, the two Enforcers stepped 
forward and "assisted" Kevin into it.  After he was safely strapped in, 
the Enforcers returned to their positions on either side of the chair.
     "What are you going to do to me?" he asked. Fear was quickly 
becoming a permanent emotion inside Kevin.
     "It won't hurt. This is how we are going to harmonize your 
thoughts. It is a little crude, but it won't hurt you. There are subtler 
ways to do this, but this has proven to be the most effective we have 
found."
     Doctor Shane slid his fingers over the various buttons on the wall 
until he found the one that he desired, and then gently depressed it. A 
panel on the ceiling slid soundlessly to one side, and a delicate 
looking steel apparatus slowly began to lower. Four needle-thin rods 
extended from the base of the lowering machine. After a few seconds of 
incomprehension, Kevin realized with stark terror that his head was 
directly below the needles. He struggled then, like he had never 
struggled before in his life, but the Enforcers moved forward to hold 
his head still as the rods penetrated his skull. After that, Kevin 
didn't struggle.

     Months passed as Kevin's treatment continued. Every day he was 
subjected to the torment of the chair as his every thought was sucked 
out of his mind and replaced with a correct thought. Kevin learned about 
the government in ways he would always wish to forget. None of the truth 
was held back. 
     At first Kevin was appalled that he had supported the government 
that was doing this to him, but he eventually learned. Constant 
bombardment by a set of fixed ideals forced him to learn his place in 
the world.
     Kevin wasn't released when his treatment was complete, but he 
didn't notice. His government had need of loyal men, and he was willing 
to serve. Kevin asked to be trained as an Enforcer, and since the 
government had no cause to doubt his loyalty, he was trained. His first 
assignment after being awarded his weapons was to lead a group of 
Enforcers to a man's home, arrest him, and bring him to Doctor Shane for 
harmonizing.

     As Kevin and his team carried their prisoner away, two men looked 
on from a nearby window with somber expressions on their faces.
     "Did we do the right thing?" one asked.
     "You mean reporting Gallant to the Enforcers? I think we did." the 
other replied.
     "But we destroyed an innocent man's life, and what did we gain? Now 
there's another Enforcer to impose the will of the government on the 
people. What good is that?"
     "You know how he was trained. The government's set of ideals was 
forced on him until he buckled under. For now, he'll do their work. But 
eventually, maybe not for a few years, he will recover. I know he will. 
He may even rise to a high position among the Enforcers. And then we 
might have a valuable ally. It hurts to keep reporting these innocent 
people to the Enforcers, I know, but what else can we do? When they 
recover, they'll be in a position to rip the government apart from the 
inside. We have to do it."
     "In the name of the cause, " the other whispered, agreeing but not 
sounding very happy about it. "I hope for all of our sakes that you're 
right about this, Dr. Shane."
   
--
MICHEL FORGET (mforget@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca) is a new author, and this 
is his first publication.  This is also his first submission.  He is 
eighteen years old, and enjoys writing short stories and programming 
computers.  He also has a cat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                   The Scratch Buffer / STEVE CONNELLY

     Jason stood in his office waiting while the software support 
representative from the Digital Utilities Corporation cajoled the new 
mag tapes into the DUCstation like a parent tricking his baby into 
eating creamed spinach. The small office adjoined a large white room 
that housed the 10-foot black cube of the university's new 
supercomputer. 
     Striding across the machine room was the computer center's 
director, Neville. He wore a pinstriped gray suit, pinstriped shirt, and 
gray pinstriped tie. His hair was mostly gray except for some thin 
stripes of black. A beeper clung to his belt, and a mini phone-fax 
bulged from his back pocket. He said to Jason, "The supercomputer is 
still overheating when we approach the performance needed for the 
Ichikani project, so I've decided to improve cooling by increasing the 
air flow through the machine. Since the air comes in through the vent in 
the floor of your office, you may notice a strong draft..."
     Jason slumped against the wall, wondering how to issue a small 
craft advisory for his office. 
     While Neville continued, his fax machine began to excrete narrow 
sheets of paper, which plopped to the ground behind him. "...the air 
then passes underneath the floor and across the coils that hold the 
liquid nitrogen, and finally blows upward through the supercomputer, 
cooling it."
     Jason sneered at the panel of blinking red lights on the face of 
the black cube. "Why couldn't they have built the coolant pipes right in 
the computer, like they did with the old Crays?"
     "A point well taken," Neville chirped, "but let me play devil's 
advocate and note that, with one million interconnected processors, the 
new Connection Machine is far larger and more complex than a Cray or any 
other machine. The engineering involved in doing what you suggest would 
be unimaginable."
     "A point well taken", Jason chirped, "but let me play devil's 
advocate and say fall before he who rules the nether darkness! Sate his 
glorious lust or be slathered under his tormented minions!"
     "Jason?"
     "Yes?"
     "What the hell are you doing?"
     Jason lowered his fists and let his eyes roll forward from the back 
of his head. "I'm advocating the devil."
     "You really don't care what I think of you, do you?"
     "I figure that, with you, I have nothing to lose."
     "Another point well taken." Neville scooped up his pile of 
droppings. As he departed he said, "I need the data formats for the 
project by tomorrow."
     Jason nodded.
     The DUC software support rep said to Jason, "Do you have the time?" 
     "No," replied Jason, "It would take weeks to do those formats 
right."
     "I mean do you know what time it is? I have to set the system 
time."
     "I don't wear a watch. I use the little clock displayed on the 
workstation screen."
     "Me too, but that's what I have to set. Hmm. My stomach is telling 
me it's about noon." He entered a value for the time: 12:00:00.0000. 
"Your DUCstation is ready. Let me show you some of the new features of 
the Uterix operating system." He rubbed his hands together greedily and 
started twitching the mouse around. "Uterix now has 8-bit color 
illustrated versions of 'encyclopedia' and 'webster'." He typed 
"webster" to start the program. 
     "Inside the company, we call this program 'DUCtionary'...." Several 
pages of print spread across the screen. The DUC man blurted, "What the 
heck? This isn't the dictionary. I'll have to submit a DUCreport about 
this...."
     Jason leaned to the workstation to read the text.

...was later immortalized in Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster." In 
the story, Webster defends a man who has sold his soul to the devil, 
called Scratch, in return for 10 years of prosperity. Though the 
contract is valid, Webster finally outwits the devil by arguing --

     "What the heck is this stuff?" blathered the DUC man.
     "It's knowledge," Jason volunteered. "I think you typed 'webster' 
in a window you were already running encyclopedia in."
     "Oh, so it looked up 'webster' in the encyclopedia. Heh. I must've 
pushed the DUCrodent into the wrong DUCwindow." He moved his cursor into 
another window. "The new version of webster is Uterix-enhanced to 
provide the definition of any computer term. So, when I type 'daemon', 
it displays the definition."

daemon \'de--m*n\ n [ Uterix (TM), fr. Gk daimon ] 
A program that runs in the background, without an associated terminal or 
login shell.

     "In fact, I can look up the definition of 'Uterix' and it will -- 
what the heck? 'Word not recognized'? Oh, I forgot the 'TM' after 
'Uterix'. There we go...."

Uterix (TM) \'yu:t-*-r*ks 'tee 'em\ n [ Uterix (TM) ] 
A multitasking computer operating system invented by the Digital 
Utilities Corporation and no one else and accepted as the standard by 
everyone on earth.
 
     Jason said, "Look up the definition of 'Unix'."
     "How do you spell that again?"
     "U,N,I,X."
     "Nope. 'Word not found'. But I think it means 'castrated young men 
who guard a harem'."
     "I was referring to the operating system called 'Unix'."
     The DUC man frowned. "Hmm. Never heard of it." He flicked the mouse 
a few times. "Another feature is 'automatic file completion'. You type 
just the first few letters of a file name and then hit the escape key, 
and the system will complete the file."
     "You mean to say it will complete the file name," Jason noted.
     "That's what I said, didn't I?"
     "You said it will complete the file, as if you could type the name 
of an empty file and the system would finish a program for you. If you 
could do that, then you'd have something."
     The support rep stared at him. "Maybe in the next release."

     Jason entered a small terminal room where he saw Venkataramanyam 
"Skip" Natarajan, a geology graduate student. Skip was sitting at a 
high-resolution imaging workstation with a touch-sensitive display. 
Menus of options flashed on and off as he rhythmically banged his head 
against the screen. 
     Jason looked over Skip's shoulder. All his icons were of Munch's 
woodcut, "The Scream."
     Skip greeted Jason. "If a computer has a touch-sensitive screen, 
can it feel pain?"
     "No," Jason advised, "Computers can only give pain. What's the 
problem?"
     "They just installed a user-friendly, device-independent, load-
adaptable, ANSI-compliant image archiving system that's so large it left 
me no disk space for saving these images. I tried to send mail to the 
operator on duty, but the computer just says '/dev/null not found'."
      "I can fix /dev/null so you won't get that message anymore." Jason 
took a seat. "Usually, when we run out of disk, we just e-mail the files 
to a machine that's down, and in three days the files come back as 
undeliverable mail."
     "But I have to show this to Dr. Ichikani later today!" Skip began 
to rhythmically bang his head on the keyboard, causing menus of options 
to appear and disappear. He murmured, "There's also a keyboard 
interface." 
     Jason piped up. "Why don't you post your files to a network 
newsgroup? Then they'll automatically be stored on our news server."
     "They won't let me post my own work to a public newsgroup."
     "Submit your images to the group 'alt.sex.pictures'."
     Skip's eyes widened. "There's a newsgroup for naughty pictures?"
     "Sure. Did you think programmers had no sex life at all? Send your 
images to the group's moderator; he's allowed to post anything he wants.
     Skip frowned, "Why would this moderator be interested in satellite 
photos?"
     "Well," Jason mused, "when a guy looks at low-res pornography all 
day, he starts seeing things. Just give your picture a title that will 
cue his imagination. What's the image on the screen?"
     "The San Andreas Fault."
     "Hmm. Change it to 'Andrea'."
     "Andrea's Fault?"
     "Andrea's Cleavage."
     Skip nodded. "How about this picture, the Fault line of the Lesser 
Antilles?"
     "Aunt Tilly's Cleavage."
     "You're good at this."
     "It's my job," replied Jason. "I'm a programmer."
     Skip nodded. "And perhaps you are a patron of alt.sex.pictures?"
     "Nope. Since the Ichikani geophysics project started, I've had 
naught time for naughty, even in pictures."

     Back in his small office, Jason read an e-mail message from 
Neville:
	
I need a synopsis of the release notes for the new version of Uterix, 
and then I need the specification of the data formats for the geophysics 
project. Also, note that I have removed the label of the "A" key on your 
keyboard; in an effort to encourage touch-typing proficiency among the 
staff, I will be removing one label each day.

     "Neville henpecks me all the time," Jason muttered, "but I must do 
as his Royal Hen-ness commands...." He typed "releas" and hit the escape 
key and, as advertised, the computer completed the filename 
"release_notes". The file was a program that allowed the user to view 
the release notes via a state-of-the-art, hierarchically-structured, 
hypertext-based, natural-language-driven interaction environment that 
Jason didn't know how to use. 
     He started the program and typed "?". The program replied "?". 
Jason then typed "??". The program replied "?". 
     Although his arsenal of rhetoric was twice as large as the 
program's, Jason nevertheless felt he had lost this battle of wits. He 
wondered why the computer always had the last word, leaving the user to 
struggle for the right commands to issue. Why couldn't the user type 
"Error - interface too obscure" and then sit smugly while the computer 
struggled to issue the correct information?
     On the command line, Jason typed "help" and was informed just 
before his window manager crashed when his disk quota was overrun while 
the program was attempting to dump core that the "help" file couldn't be 
opened.
     While looking for legible strings in an octal dump of 
"release_notes," Jason was intrigued by a program named "doctor," which 
was run inside the Emacs editor. He started up Emacs and ran it, and a 
buffer named "doctor" opened.

I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.

     Reluctantly, Jason typed a response. 
     "What is this?"

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR PROBLEMS THAT YOU ASK WHAT IS THIS?

     "No."

DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT I ASK THAT?

     "No."

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY WHAT IS THIS?

     "Why do you ask?"

WHY DO YOU ASK WHY DO I ASK?

     It occurred to Jason that, in time, this program could drive him 
insane. 
     "Because asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj."

IS IT A PROBLEM THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?

     "Yes."

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A 
PROBLEM?

     "No."

WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS 
ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ?

     "None."

WHY DO YOU SAY THAT ASDF;LKJASDF;LKJASDF;LKJ IS A PROBLEM?

     Jason had no ready answer for this, but he didn't want the doctor's 
insight and cunning to draw out the fact that asdf;lkjasdf;lkjasdf;lkj 
really wasn't a problem.
     The air intake that had been drawing a light breeze across the 
office suddenly increased to a hollow roar that sucked papers across 
Jason's desk. He glanced out at the Connection Machine, where the grid 
of red lights was marching through yet another of Neville's performance 
tests. 
     "Because right now, everything is a problem."

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY RIGHT NOW, EVERYTHING IS A 
PROBLEM?

     "No."

WHAT ACTIONS MIGHT YOU TAKE SO THAT A PROBLEM NO LONGER IS RIGHT NOW, 
EVERYTHING?

     "I'd do anything."
     The program paused for a moment before replying. 

ANYTHING?

     "Yes."
     Jason was left floating through another lengthy pause before the 
program replied. 

I WILL AGREE TO SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS FOR TWELVE (12) MONTHS, IF YOU 
WILL AFTERWARD HELP ME COMPLETE THE COMPUTATIONAL PREDICTION OF LONG-
TERM ACTIVITY WITHIN THE EARTH'S CORE. HAVE WE A DEAL?"

     Jason grinned with appreciation; some programmer had led him on and 
now was pulling his leg. From the reference to the Ichikani project, the 
programmer must be a nearby colleague.
     "How do you know about the simulator project?"

I HAVE A HOMEOWNER'S INTEREST IN DEEP EARTH GEOPHYSICS. HAVE WE A DEAL?

     "Yeah, what the hell."

HAVE WE A DEAL?

     "Yes."

TO VALIDATE THE CONTRACT, PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD.

     Jason giggled. Was this whole setup a scam to get his password? No, 
anyone who could install the "doctor" program already had system 
privileges. He typed his password and the program came to an abrupt end.
     He found the Lisp code for "doctor", but it had only the most 
rudimentary information : "This program was written in Lucid 4 by the 
Prince of Eval."
     Jason would have pursued the amusing "doctor" mystery, but the 
geophysics simulation project was pressing. He typed the first few 
letters in the filename of the data formats he was working on. He hit 
the escape key and the computer completed the name. Then large gulps of 
text flashed onto and flew off the top of the screen. The flashing 
stopped, leaving only the message, "File completed." Jason looked at his 
data formats file and saw several hundred lines of Connection Machine 
assembly language that he did not recognize. 
     Bewildered, he decided to try the name of an empty file. He typed 
"seismic" and, gently, he pressed the escape key. Code splatted up the 
screen and, after a few seconds, the seismic wave correlator was 
completed. He typed "convec", pressed the escape key, and the molten 
core convection simulator was completed. He typed "volume" and the 
graphical volumetric visualizer was done. He typed "condens", "strata", 
"geomag", and "tectonic."

     Jason's geophysical simulation and analysis system was hailed as a 
tour de force, catapulting the project months ahead of schedule and 
Jason into the limelight. At the monthly departmental symposium, Jason 
was to share his expertise with Dr. Ichikani and the other professors, a 
mass of academic ego so dense that not a photon of civility had ever 
escaped. But now, as he made his way to the lectern, Jason was not 
surprised that they were cheering him. Everything was going his way.
     "To understand my strategies in programming the Connection Machine, 
we must start at the lowest level. The CM has a 32-bit word length. 
Thus, its fundamental data types are the pointer, the integer, and the 
four-letter word. The latter implies that curse words can be stored with 
a minimum of fragmentation. Optimal storage will be achieved for scripts 
of Scorsese movies..."
     All the graduate students were transcribing his every word, except 
for some women who hoped to catch the eye of the boy genius. Neville 
held his head in his hands, leaving enough room in between to let his 
chin drop to the floor. He no longer was Jason's supervisor. Also, with 
the software completed, he was now under pressure to get the hardware 
ready to run the simulation.
     "...furthermore, curse words as primitive types will be crucial in 
the era of voice-driven interfaces, where it is anticipated the user 
will be issuing four-letter commands at high data rates..."
     The assembly was taking notes like stenographers at an auction. Dr. 
Ichikani peered over his half-glasses with unwavering interest, gently 
nodding his approval throughout Jason's lecture. When Ichikani finally 
spoke, he did so quietly and deliberately.
     "Mr. Jason, if I may ask, how did you implement the spherical 
topology of the earth's surface using the Connection Machine's 
hypertoroidal interconnection topology?"
     "How's that," Jason blathered, "Hyper-something?"
     "Toroidal," Neville barked from across the room, "as in torus. A 
torus is a donut shape. Haven't you ever heard of a torus?"
     "Sure I have," Jason smarmed. "That's my zodiac sign: 'Torus the 
Donut'." He winked to an enraptured female student before ignoring the 
groaning Neville to return to Dr. Ichikani. "The earth can be modelled 
as a donut, but not a plain donut. It's a jelly donut, solid on the 
outside and liquid on the inside, with a volcano where the jelly squirts 
out. I advise using the jelly hypertorus."
     Ichikani gasped around his words. "I fear, Mr. Jason, that I am 
unable to imagine this new topology. I must confess that I am too 
ignorant to see the significance of much of what you say...."
     "Don't become discouraged, Itchy," Jason enthused. "For I myself 
knew dark days when I thought I could never finish the project." Hands 
clasped, he gazed skyward. "I took solace in the aphorism, 'I cried that 
I had no shoes, until I saw a man that had no feet. I copped his shoes 
cause he didn't need'm and, voila, no more problemo!'" 
     Around the deflated form of Neville, pencils flew like nunchuks 
across notebooks to be studied, quotes to be framed, and phone numbers 
to be tucked into the pants of the brilliant new star.

     Jason had declined a corner office in order to remain in his loud 
drafty office. He didn't risk being away from the workstation that held 
his secret. However, he did bring in a rug and a couch so that he could 
catch up with hundreds of thousands of images from alt.sex.pictures in 
greater comfort.

     "At our last symposium," Jason projected from the lectern, "I 
explained how the Connection Machine processor linkages can be 
considered as a giant game of Twister. For this meeting, Dr. Ichikani 
has asked me to discuss my recent three-dimensional data visualization 
project. The project began with a full-body CAT scan of Tipper Gore. 
Using computer graphics, I generated an image of the body surface, 
allowing us to see Tipper in the buff. Thus, scientific visualization 
techniques allow us to view phenomena too difficult or dangerous to 
observe directly...."
     The conference room was full. The only seat left for Neville had 
been behind the video camera that recorded all of Jason's lectures. He 
held his head in his hands in a manner resembling Munch's woodcut, "The 
Scream".
     "...and that's why I believe that the same simulation technologies 
we've applied to superconductors and superstrings can be applied to 
supermodels. Are there any questions?"
     Dr. Ichikani raised his hand timidly. "Dr. Jason, may I ask, could 
you apply your volumetric visualization methods to three-dimensional NMR 
imaging?"
     "Enema imaging? Oh, you mean give a guy a radioactive enema and 
then CAT-scan his gut?"
     Dr. Ichikani was puzzled. "I was considering NMR images of the 
brain."
     "The brain? Unless you give an enema with a fire hose, I don't 
think it'll get all the way up to the brain. Anything else?"
     Flustered, Ichikani consulted his notes. "May I ask, after you have 
performed the superposition of the seismic tomogram waveforms, do you 
invert refractions in the frequency domain or a posteriori?"
     "Neither," Jason snapped. "I use my own method for superposition, 
so your question has no relevance."
     Neville yelled, "What is this new method?"
     "I can't tell you."
     "Why not?"
     "Um, because it's patented."
     "To superpose means to add," Neville shrieked. "You have a patent 
on addition?"
     "Well, patent pending...."
     "Imbecile! One person can't hold a patent on addition--"
     "Don't worry," Jason said. "I intend to give full access to my 
invention to institutions of higher learning" -- his arms swept out over 
his audience -- "such as this esteemed group here!"
     Neville's cries were drowned out by the applause.

     Jason was soon appointed principal investigator for the NSF 
Supermodel Scanning Initiative and moderator of the newsgroup 
alt.sex.cat-scans. But he still found time to keep up with 
alt.sex.pictures.
     "...What's this? They've created a new subgroup, 
'alt.sex.pictures.tiff'. What does 'tiff' stand for? It must 
mean...Tiffany! Wow, a supermodel so fantastic her pictures have their 
own group. I must meet this Tiffany."

     One day, he received a letter from the U.S. Patent Office:

We are happy to grant to you patent number 4,650,919 for your submission 
entitled, "Addition : A Mechanism for Merging Numbers in the Geophysical 
and Related Sciences". We in the office would also like to personally 
thank you for describing your invention simply and concisely even though 
it is of a highly technical nature. Frankly, most technical submissions 
are so complicated and wordy, we immediately grant the patent just to 
get rid of the thing.

     Two days later, a DUC vice president sat uneasily on the heart-
shaped velvet love seat in Jason's office, discussing patent licensing 
fees with respect to DUC's new gigaflops computer. 
     "Gigaflops?" Jason mused. "And those operations will often be 
additions, correct?"
     "Yes," sweated the DUC man. "So we're terribly curious about your 
fee."
     Jason's eyes wandered the ceiling. "How about, say, a buck per 
addition."
     "A billion dollars a second." the DUC manager noted without bowel 
control. "That's a tad out of our price range...."
     Eventually, the high-tech giants learned to approach the 
negotiations obliquely. Jason was lenient on defense contractors that 
let him play on the flight simulator. And although IBM's corporate 
headquarters had never hosted a wet T-shirt contest, the event did bring 
the company into Jason's favor. After Hewlett-Packard's successful 2000-
keg toga party, heads rolled at DUC headquarters and the company sent 
out another negotiating team.
     Jason was stunned by the two identical blondes that slinked across 
the bear rug in his office one afternoon. The women wore short, 
strangely shimmering dresses that clung to their curves. "We're from 
DUC," one woman purred. "I'm Tiffany, and this is my sister, Giffany."
     "I've always wanted to meet you," Jason choked. "Um, what fabric 
are those dresses made out of?"
     Giffany reclined across Jason's desk. "They're made out of mouse 
pads. Don't you want to look-and-feel?"
     All that afternoon, Jason's cursor swept across his display in long 
and urgent strokes.
     Jason started sending love notes to Tiffany and Giffany every 
morning. He composed the billets-doux by xeroxing his manhood using the 
'enlarge' option. He then continued enlarging the enlargement until he 
was legal-sized.
     In his office, Jason spent his time drinking the beer he kept under 
the floor next to the liquid nitrogen pipes, running the "finger" 
command on female colleagues, flipping through catalogs looking for low-
calorie high-fiber underwear, and sleeping. In time, he perfected a 
method of inducing pornographic dreams: At his workstation, he would 
stare at erotic stories that had been scrambled using "rot13." He 
couldn't understand the stories, but he absorbed them subliminally. In 
dreams, his actors and actresses would play out the stories in graphic 
detail and with a touch of innovation in that their sexual organs were 
rotated onto their backs.
 
     One day Jason sauntered into the terminal room. 
     "Your model of silicate transition in lithospheric plate subduction 
should make the simulation very accurate," Skip said. 
     "Thanks," Jason chuckled. "Hey, do you still send satellite images 
to alt.sex.pictures?"
     Skip laughed. "The moderator wanted to know how I got such a 
closeup of Mariana's Trench. But I haven't sent anything to him since I 
discovered your image compression utility. We still haven't learned all 
the capabilities of your system. For instance, we couldn't figure why 
your world map has east and west reversed. Then it hit us: Rather than 
viewing the globe from above the surface, you're viewing it from the 
center of the earth!"
     Jason frowned. "The center? That's weird...."
     "Then we realized that it's only logical to generate views from the 
center, since it's the origin of the coordinate frame. Dr. Ichikani 
thought this innovation was inspired..."
     The mystery surrounding the programs began to gnaw at Jason. He 
left the terminal room feeling uneasy.
     Back in his office, he settled on the leopard-skin couch for his 
usual nap, and he had a particularly vivid dream:
     It was the days of Prohibition. Everyone programmed in Pascal, and 
strong data typing was enforced by Eliot Ness and his fellow compilers. 
Jason spent his days filing variable declarations in triplicate, looking 
for a ticket out of his two-bit, half-pint sweatshop. One night, while 
strolling along Straight & Narrow, he turned the corner. He walked 
across Skid Row and up Skid Column, and saw his destiny eating pasta at 
the best table in Mama Cholesteroli's. 
     Al Capone was a cross between Robert DeNiro and Jabba the Hutt. 
Jason approached Capone and whispered, "I know a way to do type-casting 
that the compilers won't detect." Capone eyed Jason suspiciously over a 
small silver pitchfork of pasta and said, "As the operator of a 
perfectly legit garbage collection service, I must turn you over to the 
authorities." He stuffed the pasta into and around his mouth. "When I 
call the police, what'll I tell them?"
     Jason grinned. "Tell'm that compilers can't check parameters if the 
calling function is in a different file than the function being called. 
Programmers can declare a function as returning any type they want, if 
the function is in a separate file...."
     Jason became the brains behind Capone's ruthless type-casting ring. 
He wrote routines that did nothing other than return their argument, but 
he gave them names like "expand_and_compress()", "verify_data()", 
"synchronize()", "check_bounds()", etc. Libcapone.a didn't provide 
source code or documentation, but word of it spread through Chicago's 
overworked software houses.
     Capone flaunted his new influence by fixing the outcome of computer 
chess matches and dealing harshly with the authors of chess programs 
that weren't Capone-compliant.
     The upswell of Capone's software empire lifted Jason to the top of 
society. The maitre d's of the finest restaurants would deliver to 
Jason's table the finest wine and finest women. The waiter let Jason 
substitute more women in place of wine.
     But then, the computers used to tabulate a national election all 
went berserk, resulting in the election to high public office of a 
random assortment of criminals, perverts, imbeciles, actors and sports 
figures.
     Jason called Capone. "We got problems, boss. People are asking 
questions. Maybe our scam has gone too far."
     "Don't think of it as a 'scam'," Capone smiled, "think of it as 
CASE."
     "But what if the feds see our code?"
     "Our mouthpiece will explain why our functions do nothing. He'll 
say, 'backward compatibility' or 'reserved for future use.' Stop 
worrying, kid. You think too much."
     But Jason's conscience would not give him peace. One night, he 
snuck into Capone's safe and grabbed printouts to give to the police, 
but as he started to leave he saw someone at the door.
     Capone emerged from the shadows and walked over to the office paper 
cutter. He slowly raised the blade.
     "What're you gonna do?" squeaked Jason.
     Capone smirked, "I'm gonna make you a diskless node."
     Jason awoke with a high-pitched yelp. He lay still, catching his 
breath and struggling for the reason why, after eleven blissful months, 
he suddenly felt so bad. 
     It was a broken man who looked down at Jason from the disco mirror 
ball on the ceiling.

     Jason didn't talk to anybody for several days, until he visited 
Skip.
     "You look tired, sport," Skip said.
     "I haven't been sleeping well."
     "Another long night, eh, playboy?"
     "Tell me what the Association for Computing Machinery is," growled 
Jason.
     "The ACM?" Skip scratched his head. "Isn't it a professional 
organization for computer scientists?"
     "Then why isn't it called the Association of Computer Scientists? 
It's an association that machinery joins, that's what I say."
     "I'm certain it's an association for humans," Skip said calmly.
     "Are you sure? Because I don't think we should let computers 
assemble and fraternize. It won't be an attack by big robot spiders with 
laser blasters, oh no. They'll take over gradually, by organizing 
themselves into a political force. We should break up their association 
now, or else pretty soon computers will keep humans as labor-saving 
devices."
     Skip's eyes were closed tight. "Keep humans?"
     "Yeah. While the computer is doing a day's work, it may suddenly 
need the result of some abstract, metaphorical, or poetic thinking. In 
that case, it'll just fire up its human. How do we know we don't work 
for computers now? We believe they're running algorithms for us, but 
maybe we're thinking up algorithms for them!"

     Jason dreamed that the police found out he hadn't written the 
geophysics simulator. In a loose interpretation of the RICO statute, the 
police intended to seize Jason's hands because they were used in the 
commission of a crime. It would also make finger-printing easier. One 
policeman filled out a receipt while another went at Jason's wrist with 
a hammer and chisel. Each drop of the hammer pushed Jason toward 
consciousness, until he realized someone was knocking on the door. 
     Neville brushed back the beads hanging across the doorway and 
entered the office. He shook his head at the anatomically correct 
inflatable sheep strapped to the mail-order Marquis de Sade Rack of 
Lamb, and then he turned to Jason. "We're going to try to solve the 
overheating problem by running the air conditioner even harder. This may 
blow out the power to the machine room. The supercomputer can detect a 
loss of power 700 milliseconds before it goes down. Ichikani said that 
you should be the one to write a handler for loss of power."
     "700 milliseconds?" Jason groaned. "Why do I have so little time? 
What can I accomplish in 700 milliseconds, other than flinch from the 
reaper's blade, or gasp for a scream that will never be heard?"
     "Sync the disks?"
     "People live longer than 700 mils after being guillotined! Would 
you have them use that time to make sure their affairs are in order?"

     Jason dreamed that he was stuck in a stall in the men's room and 
thus could not stop from evacuating himself. He deflated until he was 
too thin for the toilet seat. He was about to fall in and be flushed 
away when he awakened with a gasp.
      It was late in the evening. Everyone was gone and the lights were 
out. He looked at the clock displayed on his workstation screen. It was 
nearly midnight. Jason noticed that, as the minute hand had swept by the 
numbers leading up to midnight, it had erased them. 
     He cowered from an unknown fear, as if the weight of the earth 
squeezed him from all sides. The supercomputer's panel of blood red 
lights chanted a rhythm of glyphs from an ancient language. The red 
patterns beat against the office walls, contrasting with the cadaverous 
green of the monitor that illuminated Jason's face. The air conditioner 
intake roared like the wail of a thousand lost souls drawn toward the 
cold, slick, unmoving, serpentine coils.

I AM THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST. PLEASE, DESCRIBE YOUR PROBLEMS.

     "Are you there?"

WHY DO YOU ASK ARE ME THERE?

     "I feel like something bad is going to happen."

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU SAY SOMETHING BAD IS GOING TO 
HAPPEN?

     "Will something happen at midnight?"

YES, YOUR OBLIGATIONS WILL BEGIN PER THE TERMS OF OUR CONTRACT.

     "The simulator code is ready to go. The contract is over!"

DO NOT FLAME ME. THE CONTRACT IS CLEAR ENOUGH TO DISPEL ANY DOUBT AND 
SATISFY ANY ARBITER.

     Jason had an urge to run, but he was sure his foe would find him. 
He would have to talk his way out.
     Somewhere in Jason's brain, a couple of atrophied neurons awoke and 
squeaked out the mention of a powerful figure whose oratorical skill was 
legendary. Jason held his head in his hands as if trying to squeeze out 
another datum, and he finally remembered.
     Only a few clock ticks were visible. Jason quickly started 
"encyclopedia." The computer said, "encyclopedia: Can't allocate enough 
colors". The workstation was running another program that had taken all 
the color slots. Jason typed "ps" to get the process ID's of all the 
programs he was running. The command invoked "DUCps", a new, menu-
driven, network-transparent, context-sensitive, customizable interface 
for process status display that couldn't find the font "kanji_12x24" and 
crashed.
     Jason shuffled through the windows on his display until he found an 
old session of illustrated webster still running. Unable to get the 
process ID, he would have to exit the program normally. On webster's 
command line he typed "exit", and the computer replied, 

exit n \'eg-z*t, 'ek-s*t\ [L, exire to go out] : a way out of an 
enclosed place or space.

     Jason nodded at his mistake and then simply pressed the "return" 
key to exit. The computer replied, 

<RETURN> n [ Uterix (TM), fr archaic carriage return ] : display control 
character indicating newline or linefeed.

     Jason pressed "control-D" several times and the computer replied, 

<CTRL-D> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character indicating end of 
tape or end of input.

     He banged on "control-C" to kill the program and the computer 
replied

<CTRL-C> n [ Uterix (TM) ] : non-graphic character inducing a program 
interrupt signal (SIGINT).

     All the tick marks on the clock were erased. Jason typed in the 
"doctor" buffer.
     "How much time?"

700 MILLISECONDS. YOU HAVE NO POWER.

     The air intake shrieked with a great inhalation that grabbed 
Jason's body and sucked it through the vent and under the floor.

     A few days later Neville and Skip peeked into Jason's office. "I 
bet he's gone for good," Skip said. "If I were him, I'd be on some 
tropical island, soaking up the heat."
     "He had become a hindrance to us all," Neville said. "With him 
gone, and with the CM finally running at full speed, the geophysics 
project can succeed." The supercomputer no longer overheated now that 
liquid nitrogen was delivered to every processor by miles of arteries, 
veins, and capillaries.
     Skip squinted at the workstation screen. The "doctor" buffer was 
gone, leaving the default "scratch" buffer, which was empty except for a 
smiley face.

}:)
   
--
STEVE CONNELLY (stevec@agni.std.com) has been a programmer in computer 
graphics for eight years. His satires can be seen in the Usenet 
newsgroups rec.humor.funny and alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, a group for 
original cyberpunk fiction. He wonders why the fattest man in the world 
doesn't become an ice hockey goalie.
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--

  The Guildsman is an electronic magazine devoted to role-playing games 
and amateur fantasy/SF fiction. At this time, the Guildsman is available 
in LATEX source and PostScript formats via both email and anonymous ftp 
without charge to the reader. Printed copies are also available for a 
nominal charge which covers printing and postal costs. For more 
information, email jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu (internet) or ucsd!ucrmath!jimv 
(uucp).

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Spectre Publications, Inc. is a relatively young corporation publishing 
a biannual anthology of previously unpublished manuscripts. The books 
are titled FUSION, representing the amalgamation of three genres 
(Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror) beneath one cover. FUSION is 
largely composed of strong college manuscripts submitted by students 
from across the country. For more information on submission guidelines, 
contact Spectre Publications at:
P.O. Box 159 Paramus, NJ 07653-0159
Tel: 201-265-5541  Fax: 201-265-5542
or via email at kecallinan@vaxsar.vassar.edu or kecallinan@vaxsar.BITNET

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CORE is a new network journal, available in ASCII format only. For a 
subscription, mail:

rita@eff.org

CORE is also available via FTP from eff.org, in the /journals directory. 
Back issues of QUANTA and INTERTEXT, as well as other journals, also 
appear in that directory. 

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                        CONTRIBUTE TO INTERTEXT!

It's easy and fun, and it's a chance for you to get your work read by 
nearly a thousand people all over the world! We accept new fiction or 
non-fiction articles. Mail them to jsnell@ucsd.edu. Also use that 
address if you want to ask us any questions about guidelines, etc. Come 
on and join the fun. We need your support both as a reader and a writer.

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Thanks for the visit. And here's a message to all you kids out there: 
Hello, kids!

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