Velocity

TA 96

Samuel Giddeon’s transcript, as interpreted by the ATLAS system’s network server:

… hope so, I’m not used to this transcriber thing in my head. It should be transmitting everything that I sub vocalize, but of course, I have no way of knowing.

I’m approaching the guardhouse now. I have forgotten how cold it gets here in the Rockies. I’ve only been outside a few times in my life. New Mexico, despite its name, seems to be nothing but pines, rocks and ice in the winter. Even the electric fence that runs between the two higher fences of barbed wire and chain links can barely put out enough heat to drive off the drifts of snow.

I’m having a bit of trouble with the bomb just now; it keeps riding up on my ribs. I think the gels might be contracting a bit due to the cold. I hope no one notices that my paunch is lifting itself and puffing up like a cobra’s hood.

Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, Physicist, Technical Area 21.

Dr. Gideon showed up two hours earlier than expected. He explained that he had taken an earlier flight and had gotten into Albuquerque the night before instead of this morning. Gideon was the new software expert that we had been waiting for to help us with the ATLAS system. He was older than I had expected. A lot older. I had been told that he was in his late twenties, a hot new recruit from MIT. Instead I found him to be a large, slow-moving man in his late thirties or early forties. By large, I mean fat.

He passed security easily; we skipped no procedures. We signed in, went through the metal detectors and Geiger counters and unstrapped our personal computers to put them through the x-ray machine. I was assigned as his primary escort for the day, as he was an uncleared visitor.

I must state for the record that I was taken completely by surprise by subsequent events, as I believe everyone was at TA 96.

Gideon’s Transcript:

What strikes me most is just how healthy they all are. Their color is so good, their cheeks so pink and rosy. Few of us at the compound look so hale and full of vigor. I feel like I’m watching another speed-learning video.

Bob Kieffer seems like a friendly man. He reminds me of the older man, Reno, who services my cell back home. While we slide our security badges into the small brass dish that is the only access underneath the two inch-thick bullet-proof glass, I see the photos in his wallet. He seems to have a wife and a little girl. The little girl is holding a red figure-a Star Viking doll! I’ve seen them during culture-orientation days on television. I always like the commercials best; they seem to say the most about people.

Bob has a keen mind, I can see that already. His movements, like his mind, are very quick, almost bird-like. I sincerely hope that he makes it through today.

The guards are grim-faced. They merely stare at us through the thick, slightly greenish glass. It seems to be taking forever for our security badges to be accepted by the barcode reader. Clipboards are signed, IDs are passed back and forth, the procedures are endless. Other fully-cleared personnel are backing up at the front of the guardhouse now, looking annoyed. The security men ignore them and move at the same methodical pace.

I notice the interior of the guardhouse. Squinting through the glass into the gloom, I see a rack of guns on the wall. Two automatic rifles top the rack. Below this is a shotgun with a string of shells velcroed to the stock. At the bottom is a large, ugly, black thing with a tripod. An M60? I can only hazard a guess. All the weapons have a worn look to them, and I wonder if they have killed anyone in the past.

Finally, the guards let us pass. As though a cork has been fired from a champagne bottle, people are streaming by on both sides of us while we reorganize our security papers. My breath is blowing cold and white. I notice my fingers are quivering a bit of their own accord.

“Quite good security you have here, Bob,” I comment, relieved that I have made it into the compound without incident. Nothing in the bomb or the ignition system contains more than the amount of metal found in a single of house key. None of the detectors picked it up.

“Yes, but you get used to it.”

“An army of terrorists couldn’t bust into here.”

He looks up at me, and my blood turns cold. I shouldn’t be talking about such things. I feel a rush of paranoia. Can he hear my thoughts? Is he transcribing them somewhere the way that the computer is supposed to be doing?

He smiles, and so I smile. “No, they couldn’t. But those guns in the guardhouse and the towers are just as keen on keeping us inside in case of a disaster as they are in keeping out invaders. Plutonium dust is worked here, as you know. It’s still the most deadly substance we’ve yet to find, and it can’t be allowed out of the compound.”

I nod, relieved that he isn’t suspicious. I squint in the snow-white glare up at the towers he has indicated. Men wearing dark shades stare back at me without humor. The open-mouthed gun muzzle of each guard forms a third black eye.

Together, we walk carefully on the icy cement leading up to the reception area. I’m amazed at how normal the place looks once you’re inside the compound. TA 96 looks like any campus building, if you ignore the fences and the armed men in the towers.

I have an unreal feeling being here. I sort of expected the security to have stopped me by now. Of course, they can’t be blamed. After all, my identification is absolutely authentic.

Taped interview: Manuel Ramirez, security guard, Technical Area 96:

I watched him like I watch everybody that comes in or goes out. He didn’t have any of the marks of a terrorist. He was a fat middle-aged man, maybe a bit sick, but not dangerous. I can see why they sent him. Who would suspect a wimpy old fat guy?

He didn’t meet my eyes, but then, few of them do.

Gideon’s Transcript:

I can’t stop thinking about my cancer. I know it doesn’t matter now, but somehow carrying around blotches of alien cells inside my body is worse than this girdle of squishy explosive. I keep thinking about my cancer, all the accelerated growth caused it, they tell me. No one can live a lifetime in just a few years and come out right. All I can do is walk and talk-oh, and wet my pants-like one of those dolls in the old commercials. I’m a fake. A department store dummy. A sham.

I must stop letting my mind wander and stick to the situation at hand. I can’t fail because I’m daydreaming.

I see the receptionist now, Sarah Rasmussen. She is security, too. She has a snub-nosed. 38 stashed in her desk, and her favorite-aunt appearance is deceiving, just like they said in the briefing. I can almost feel her sizing me up. Her eyes drop to my paunch. I’m suddenly self-conscious about it. Does it look right? Is it sagging in the right places, is it bulging properly? Women are so much more discerning about things like this.

Oh God, she’s frowning. We haven’t even been introduced, and she’s frowning at me, at my explosive belly.

“Sarah, this is Dr. Gideon,” says Bob Kieffer. I blink at them stupidly.

Sarah nods smartly, she already knows my name. It is her job to know me.

“Dr. Gideon,” she nods to me, smiling with her mouth, but still frowning with her eyes. “Just how old are you?”

There it was. She just came out with it. I’m supposed to be 28, right out of MIT, and any fool can see that I’m not 28, that I’m an imposter, a fat old man with a boy’s face and ID. I’m not actually old, but my body is. The aging processes have worked all too well on me. My mouth opens to answer and nothing comes out but a rumble of gas from my diseased, bomb-wrapped stomach.

“Just fill this out, will you Sam?” Bob asks me. To Sarah he says: “Sam is helping us with the software system down in the lab. He’s a networking expert.”

I gaze at him stupidly, then at the clipboard he is handing me. It takes me a moment to grasp that he is trying to save me embarrassment. He has completely misread the situation. I grab onto the opportunity like a drowning man reaching for a life vest. The clipboard almost slips from my grasp, but I recover with a nervous laugh. Right now, I realize with crystal clarity that I’m actually lousy at this.

“Could you show Dr. Gideon the orientation tape, Sarah?” asks Kieffer. I have a sudden urge to kiss the man.

The receptionist is still eyeing me, but with some resignation, like a cat swishing its tail at the foot of a tree full of inaccessible baby birds. I feel moved to make a lame reply to her earlier question.

“I’ve been ill,” I say, looking apologetic.

She simply nods, and all through the orientation, I feel her eyes boring into the back of my head. I watch inane tapes about Geiger counters and dust-proof white lab clothing. I watch people walking calmly for flashing exit signs during emergencies, and then checking in with their supervisors outside for a lackadaisical head count. No one is running, screaming on the wires, burned by radiation and blasted apart by bullets.

All through the videos I feel Sarah Rasmussen’s eyes.

Report: Sarah Rasmussen, Internal Security, TA 96:

Of all the people present that day, I feel the most responsible for letting Dr. Giddeon get through. I was the only one, to my knowledge, that suspected him in the slightest. What threw me off was his comment about being ill. So many of the great minds here seem to be encased in oddly misshapen bodies. I took Bob Kieffer’s flustered reaction to indicate that this was the case with Gideon, and that I was causing undue embarrassment. His face did indeed closely match the photos, as did his thumbprints.

Still, it was my mistake not to listen to my instincts.

Gideon’s Transcript:

The close call with the receptionist has left me shaken. I can hardly hold the red placard saying: UNCLEARED VISITOR IN AREA. Three badges now weigh down my shirt-front. One is a temporary security clearance badge, the second an ID badge, while the third, redundantly, identifies me as a security risk.

“How about a cup of coffee before we go down to the lab?”

I startle, almost dropping my red placard, but recover. Will I be able to go through with this? What if I am never alone? Can I reach inside my shirt and pull the tiny aluminum tab and kill Bob Kieffer?

Bob escorts me to the cafeteria. He, or one of the others on my short escort list, must be with me at all times. If I take a piss, they are supposed to look over my shoulder to see if I’m holding it right. We put the large ugly placard on the wall outside, where it sticks with a magnetic click. As I enter the room, the PA system announces that an Uncleared Visitor is in the cafeteria. Few of the people in the room bother to look up, but I feel like a microbe on a slide anyway. I sip my coffee and begin to realize that this whole thing is crazy, that in a matter of minutes something will go wrong. What was Sarah Rasmussen doing right now? Calling the right number at the right time?

My cancer feels bad today; it is a presence in my body. I know that if I did lead Bob Kieffer to the bathroom, there would be blood in my bowels. I can feel it.

It seems like ages have gone by. I don’t have much time left before the correct version of Dr. Gideon shows up. Finally, we get up and head down to the labs. I walk toward the first vault doors and another battery of Geiger counters in a dream-like state.

Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, TA 96.

The first clue I picked up that something was wrong with Dr. Gideon came when we reached the first vault doors. I began to wonder if the man was drunk or something. When I spoke to him, he often didn’t hear me on the first attempt. He seemed distracted and a bit anxious. We had waved all the drug-screening, since he was only supposed to work on site for four days. I began to think this could have been a mistake.

Gideon’s Transcript:

First, I dress in white overalls, booties and a hairnet. Then they run detectors over every inch of me. I nearly have a heart attack when the detectors sing over my breast pocket. They remove two diskettes and keep searching. I pray that my belly is as inert as everyone told me it was because now they’re patting it down. Gelatinous explosive, warm from my body heat, is jiggling and pressing against my ribs.

We’re through. We walk down a long hall that seems to telescope out before us. The doors have painted arcs on the floor in front of them to show where the swing could reach. Round bubble-like mirrors like those in hospitals perch over the intersections so you can see people coming at you. I can smell a strange chemical odor now, like that of the doctor’s office back as the compound. My heart is pounding freely now, my head is floating.

We reach the second vault. Outside we drop off our keys and leave our security badges with yet another guard. He gives me yet another badge, a dosimeter badge that will change color if I get too many rads. We walk through an airlock and an alarm sounds.

“Just the airlock,” explains Kieffer to my white face. “It does that if you don’t give the doors a chance to seal before walking through.”

We give the doors what they want and proceed into a room full of glove boxes. Long rubber gloves reach into leaded glass enclosures to work with trays full of radioactive material. Next to each set of gloves is a Geiger counter, ready to detect any contamination. The chemical smell is much stronger here. It assaults me, digging its way into my nostrils.

“This way,” says Kieffer and I follow him like a zombie. “Remember, don’t eat anything. Don’t even chew gum. If there is a leak and you ingest the dust, we can’t save you. Don’t sit down, either. Don’t even lean on anything.”

I nod vaguely. “What about the biological stuff?”

Kieffer shrugs. “They share this lab, but that’s another department. They’re making three-eyed polliwogs or something.”

I crack a smile. The man has no idea. I really want to make sure he gets out alive now.

He leads me to the computer workstation, all wrapped up in its own little environment, with its own air-conditioner and power supply. He looks over my shoulder while I work the membrane keyboard. For the first time I feel a bit at ease. I can even see what they have done wrong with the system, why they are having problems. Fixing networks like this was all part of my training, to make me more authentic. It’s the only useful thing I can do.

I’m stalling. I remember a video of a kid on a big rock, looking down into a swirling green chute of water, getting up the nerve to jump. There isn’t much time left.

Stepping back, I take a look around. There it is. I can see the thing: it looks like a lighting effect device in a dance-club movie. It’s stainless steel with tubes running in and out, like Sputnik with a thyroid condition. The particles shoot down those tubes into the center, where the genes are spliced and manipulated. Next to it is the rack of vacuum bottles. Their contents are frozen with liquid nitrogen.

How do I get up there? The thing is sitting on top of the stack of glass glove boxes. To climb up there on the catwalks will take a bit of time, and it will definitely be noticed.

I reach into my shirt, through the lab whites, and finger the detonator in my artificial belly. I turn to Bob Kieffer and he looks at me quizzically. I just stare at him, and finally, realization dawns there in his face. We communicate without words for perhaps five seconds.

“Better go now, Bob,” I say gently.

He opens his mouth once, blinks rapidly, bird-like, then turns and rushes for the doors.

Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, TA 96.

There was something very odd in his eyes. Partly an apology perhaps, partly a deep sadness and concern. I have no doubt that he believed utterly in what he was doing.

I have never met up with insanity before. I had no idea that it was such a human thing.

Gideon’s Transcript:

I climb the aluminum catwalk steps and make my way to the Sputnik thing. I get there before the guard shows up. Leaning against it, I get a last moment of peace.

I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if the bomb wrapped around my guts will destroy all the work done in genetics by this lab. The embryos and actual lab equipment will go, of course, and the hard disks with the primary database should all be lost. I don’t know if the secondary tape back-ups will go in the fire, though. Actually, I don’t even know if the bomb will go off. I never was taught much about the bomb.

I wonder briefly if they will ever suspect the truth. If anyone, even if they find the transcript of my thoughts, will believe that I come from another Technical Area in the same laboratory complex. From a compound that has decided to end the cloning.

It’s not that I’m murdering these embryos, you understand. Even killing the fetus locked in the sputnik thing isn’t really murder. For, you see, they are me and I am them. They are my clones, all of them. To kill them, then-I consider it an act of suicide. We, my brethren and I, have simply decided to end the copying of our genes. We believe we have that right. I wonder if others would agree.

The only thing I don’t wonder about is whether or not I will do it. There is no question of that, it’s in my genes.

Around me the lab gurgles and hums. The Geiger counters that are everywhere in the room ping to themselves, counting the particles that shoot through my body on a regular basis, disrupting the DNA in my cells. I recall from the orientation that working in the lab gives you a dose of radiation equivalent to one thirtieth of an x-ray per day. That is, if there are no leaks.

I smile to myself. Radiation hardly matters to a mannequin. I’ve already got cancer. All the growth-accelerated clones get it.

I hear pounding feet and shouting on the other side of the airlock.

I pull the detonator tab.

The first hint of insanity came during the live broadcast of “Orbital Hospital” late Thursday evening. October winds rattled windows and gave muffled screams as they rounded the sharp concrete corners of the studio building. Smells of strong coffee and hot electrical equipment hung in the air.

Director Zundra Chelton activated the communications module embedded in her brain with a twist of thought. She commenced transmitting enquire codes to the movie machine’s data interface. The interface responded with an acknowledgement, and the two modules quickly synched up and handshaking was established. A flood of data roared into her mind as the CPU uploaded the program for “Orbital Hospital”, her top-rated racy soap opera.

It was all there, just as always. There was no hint yet of anything out of the ordinary. Dr. Ray Wazer, the male lead, jumped off the disk and into memory like a puppet springing out of its box. His handsome brows, beaming smile and chiseled chin were perfect down to the last digital pixel of shading data. Wanda Morrison, the slutty hospital administrator with her exquisitely tanned legs flashed into being with equal grace, rendering onto center stage of Dr. Wazer’s office for the opening scene. With the lightning speed of molecular processors linked in parallel, the rest of the sets, cast and background data sprang alive. Zundra opened her eyes and for an instant she was aware of both worlds, the sets and scenes of “Orbital Hospital” superimposed over the dim-lit studio full of hushed computer operators and gleaming status lights. A digital counter flipped to zero, she gave the network boys the thumbs up and performed the mental equivalent of a tapping motion that started the script rolling through the system RAM.

WANDA MORRISON: Dr. Wazer, I’m beginning to believe you. Nurse Tai could have a twin sister that caused all these, ah… embarrassments.

RAY WAZER: Thank you, Ms. Morrison. (Places hands to face, careful to reveal flashy watch and not to hide chin) I was beginning to think that I was the crazy one. I’m very glad someone believes in me.

WANDA MORRISON: Call me Wanda.

RAY WAZER: (Raises head, close-up shot of slightly moist eyes. Hair tousled) Certainly-Wanda.

WANDA MORRISON: (Moves closer slowly, slides buttocks onto desk, side-slit pants fall open to reveal legs. Musical score shifts to Dangerous Romance.) What I really want to know is if you’re still in love with either of them.

(Suddenly the door opens stage left, and a dark, hunched figure shambles into the office. Ray and Wanda react with comic double-takes. The figure is carrying a greasy cardboard package of some kind. It shuffles forward and slaps the thing down on Dr. Wazer’s exquisite desk. It then jerks back its filthy cowl to reveal the face of a disfigured black woman with thin wispy hair and rotted stumps for teeth. One eye droops, gazing lifelessly at the floor.)

DARK FIGURE: Pizza sir, just as you ordered! The lid flips open by itself, showing a disgusting mess of cheese and fish parts, all heads and flipping tails.

DARK FIGURE: Plenty of anchovies on this Fu-*CENSOR INTERRUPT, OUTTAKE!* (figure faces camera, close-up of rotting teeth.) Buy Zeppo’s take-out pizza, system-wide delivery within thirty minutes or it’s free!

Zundra continued the show despite the interruption. The cast moved like wooden marionettes, mouthing their lines without conviction, they missed their cues and fumbled when they kissed. Damn! Through the fugue of the link she felt her real-life nails digging into her real-life palms. Growling in the back of her throat, she managed to finish the show without further deviations from the script. Zundra’s eyes fluttered and her fingers formed harpy’s claws.

“Did we broadcast that crap?” she rattled out of her constricted throat. Her good eye focused long enough to make out Andy’s mashed nose and see him perform a slow, grim nod. Then she strained to see the ratings graphic on the far wall. A steady green line slowly rose to a peak two minutes into the broadcast then took a sudden dive into the red. Only during the last three minutes did the line get out of the red and into the green again, leaving them several million kilo-dollars under target.

“I’ve said it before, and now we have our proof. You’ve got the best ratings in the business, but you’re too old for this game, Z. People in their mid-fifties don’t work the nets these days. Our vast amorphic viewing audience, otherwise known as paying customers, fled like a school of startled fish when you ran that personal ad of yours,” said Andy. His mashed nose wrinkled and he clucked his tongue. “I don’t blame them, I would have been searching for less annoying entertainment myself if these monitors could be switched to someone else’s station.”

Zundra glared at him with one wide open eye, showing plenty of bloodshot white around it. A single droplet of sweat shone on her brown skin. Andy’s hands curled up and he pulled his arms back against his chest. Zundra grinned hugely, then stabbed the release that freed her from the interface. She rolled her mobile life-support module down the aisle between the operators, staring straight ahead.

“Network’s going to shut you down if we miss target so badly next week, Z!” shouted Andy at her retreating back. “Doesn’t matter that you’re black, or that you dock your floater in the handicapped zone! Not this time, babe!”

“Maybe it’s Alzheimer’s,” said a voice behind her in the cafeteria. Because of her life-support module she had to eat at a special table without attached benches, and tonight her back was turned to the other employees. “Rust in the brain, that’s what they say causes it, you know.”

Zundra’s tuna fish sandwich turned to pink paste in her mouth. Scattered chuckles. “Some of the best of them go out this way-even our first string directors lose it now and again.”

With a sudden whirring of servo-motors she turned to face them. Most eyes fell, but Steve, a director with wild red hair that flipped and curled in a long ponytail down his back, smirked instead.

“I hear you ran into a little trouble with your files today,” he said.

More scattered chuckles. Coffee cups became very interesting.

“Insanity,” said Zundra simply. They all stared at her, falling quiet and still. She finally dropped her odd gaze and they all shuffled in relief.

“It makes for bad video,” she told the keyboard that was permanently mounted in front of her abdomen. Steve smiled and ate another French fry bloodied with ketchup.

“Well? Are you nuts? What’d the pysch say?” asked Andy. He perched his skinny butt on the ledge of an instrument array and swung his legs like an adolescent. Zundra could smell the chocolate that was melting in his back pocket. Her eye caught his and her face drooped. She massaged her wispy black hair with claw-like hands.

“No tumors. They give it a sixty-seven percent chance of schizophrenia if the system was truly sealed and bug-free.”

“There are no bugs.”

“I know. Something like this would have shown up before.”

“And this system, my system, is sealed tight,” Andy said. Then he chuckled. “I guess you’re nuts.”

Zundra shook her head, her claw-like hands balling into fists. “There has to be a leak.”

“No, no way,” Andy said, his mashed nose wrinkling. He shook his head like a dog drying itself. “Not in my system.”

“Someone’s tapped into the link, I know it.”

“Well, you go on again in eighty minutes Z. Why don’t you meditate for a while or something? Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Zundra swung one baleful eye around to cover him and he flinched and shrank like a convict in a spotlight. “ You’re going to do something about it! You’re going to set a trap for the intruder.”

“But I’m telling you that there isn’t any intruder,” insisted Andy, uncrossing his thin arms long enough to shake a bony hand at her.

“Don’t whine, just do it.”

“Eighty minutes isn’t long enough to produce a good piece code.”

“Do it.”

NURSE TAI: So, you admit to it. You did sleep with my twin sister. (Musical Score shifts to Strident Events).

RAY WAZER: What’s the point of denying it? It was a simple mistake. I thought she was you.

NURSE TAI: (Tight shot of her round lovely face, eyes shining and wet, jaw set firmly). You’re lying, doctor.

RAY WAZER: (Standing up and approaching, leans forward over the hospital bed and its comatose patient). I still want you Tai. You’re sister has your body, but not your heart.

(The couple kiss heatedly, but before events can take their natural course the comatose patient jerks awake like a puppet pulled erect by its strings. The patient is a black woman of surpassing ugliness. She makes gross slurping sounds with puckered lips, mocking the kiss.)

COMATOSE PATIENT: Whew! Sure is getting hot in here! How about a refresher? (While the two lovers watch dumbfounded, the black woman rips loose her I.V. and aims the needle-tipped tube at them. Screaming laughter, she sprays them with an amazing amount of liquid. Quickly, the I.V. tube and needle grow into a fire hose with a brass nozzle. Liquid floods the room knocking the lovers to the floor and soaking them.)

COMATOSE PATIENT: (Shudders, spasms, then looks around the room in shock). That was, ah-to teach you two cheaters a lesson!

(While RAY WAZER and NURSE TAI pick themselves up, dripping wet, COMATOSE PATIENT reaches up and rips off her face. Beneath the ugly exterior is the mirror image of NURSE TAI.)

COMATOSE PATIENT: (Voice raises an octave to match NURSE TAI’s). That’s right, I’m your sister, and before I’m done I’ll kill you both!

SYSTEM CLOSE:*Curtain Close, cue Theme Song* (short sound-bite version) cut away to commercial.

SYSTEM WARNING:*Commercial cut-away occurred 55 seconds early. Auto-readjust of schedule completed*

When the ordeal of Orbital Hospital was over, Zundra awoke with a nasty, morning-breath taste in her mouth. She realized vaguely that her mouth must have gone slack and hung open during the broadcast.

“How are the ratings?” she croaked, tapping the button for a shot of glucose. She pursed her lips over the plastic feeding tube that rose up from her life-support module and drank a few swallows. The fluid smelled faintly of lemons.

“They wavered terribly during your little hose-job, but somehow you pulled it all off. We made target by a three-point-eight percent margin. You didn’t plan all that wacky stuff, did you? That was just your alter-ego coming out for an encore, wasn’t it?”

She ignored him for a moment, forcing her blurry vision to focus on the wall-trend. It was indeed in the green by the end, with a few precious kilo-dollars to spare.

“Of course, the network won’t put up with this goofing around at their expense for long. Even if you claim that you’re not nuts, that you’re just ad-libbing-artistic license and all-they’ll pull you quick for all these deviations from the script. All the old ninnies back in the writer’s shop must be chewing the walls by now,” Andy said, rocking himself and chuckling at the thought.

“What about the trace? Did you get anything?”

Andy made a flippant gesture of annoyance. “I told you, there’s nothing to trace.”

“Did you get anything?” pressed Zundra. “Did you run a full systems-level diagnostics?”

“There were some low-level anomalies, but nothing worth commenting on.”

“Get me the file. Net it over to my workstation. Now.”

With a supple shrug and a pinched look of irritation, Andy netted her the file. Fifteen minutes later she had analyzed the trace, and soon after that she had a handle to what had to be the return code.

“When does Cyborg Command run next?” she demanded suddenly.

“It’s on right after the Killer Kitty Show, say forty-two minutes. Why?”

“Vector me to this port address in forty-two minutes,” she said, then fell back into her chair with her eyes closed.

After a minute or two of trying to resume the conversation, Andy shrugged again, snorted disgustedly and punched the port address into his hand terminal.

CYBORG WARLORD: The enemy are in our grippers, we’ll crush them like ruptured egg-casings!

(Shot switch to the stylized war map. The tunnel complex of Deeth Kar flashes up, tactical decisions are transmitted in from all the junior rebel leaders via mind-modem. Once the votes are tallied those that came closest to predicting the computers tactical plan are awarded game points. Advertisements for Cyborg Command Collectibles hum down the mind-modem lines, Action figures and T-shirts are purchasable with game points and a nominal fee of real money from the accounts of your parent or guardian.)

MR. SQUIBBS: (The cybernetic parrot squawks and ruffles its metallic scale-like feathers before speaking). Looks like the rebels are getting away again.

CYBORG WARLORD: Shut up you tin-plated cockatiel. Building you in the first place was a mistake.

(Shot flips over to the War Map again, where the kid- icons in blue are devouring the metallic cyborg icons in a steady get-away path toward the top of the volcano and the distance escape chute.)

MR. SQUIBBS: At least they didn’t manage to penetrate to our headquarters.

CYBORG WARLORD: You’re right there, Mr Squibbs. They will never manage to stop me completely!

(Suddenly, a third figure bursts into the cavern in an explosion of rock and debris. It is a large red-haired kid with a toy rocket-launcher in his hands. With a whoop of delight, he fires a blue rubber ball into CYBORG WARLORD’s chest, pressing the big red off-switch that has materialized there.)

MR. SQUIBBS screeches in protest.

RED-HAIRED KID: Cyborg Command’s tyranny is at an end! Next week we’ll have a new show in this time-slot kids, so don’t go away!

Steve jerked upright, the keyboard and joysticks in his hands clattering to the studio floor. His red curls surrounded his face, framing the boiled-egg whites of his wide staring eyes. Operators shuffled back, stirring their coffee cups nervously with thin red shoots of plastic.

A roar of rage bubbled up from the depths of his chest. The roar died into almost a pitiful sound as Steve focused on the wall-trend, which had bottomed out in the red. The network cancellation notice was already up on his e-mail screen, making a soft beeping sound.

Zundra came awake slowly, smiling. She tapped at the keyboard mounted in front of her and brought up the network e-mail system.

“Andy,” she called. “I’m considering a bid for a new show to replace Cyborg Command. I need your technical appraisal.”

Andy sidled up and slumped on her desk. He quietly studied his thin fingers and awaited her orders.