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============================================
  InterText Vol. 4, No. 2 / March-April 1994
============================================

  Contents
  
  Departments

    FirstText: The Information Explosion...............Jason Snell

    SecondText: Life in the Fast Lane.................Geoff Duncan

    Need to Know.......................................Jason Snell

  Short Fiction

    Motherless Child_..................................Eric Skjei_

    Jeannie Might Know_................................Levi Asher_

    Up In Smoke_.......................................John Sloan_

    Reality Error_................................G.L. Eikenberry_
 
    Still Life_.....................................Adam C. Engst_

...................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@etext.org                       gaduncan@halcyon.com
...................................................................
    Assistant Editor          Send subscription requests, story
    Susan Grossman              submissions, and correspondence
    c/o intertext@etext.org              to intertext@etext.org
...................................................................
  InterText Vol. 4, No. 2. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and 
  the entire text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1994, 
  authors. All further rights to stories belong to the authors. 
  InterText is produced using Aldus PageMaker 5.0, Microsoft Word 
  5.1, Alpha 5.65 and Adobe Illustrator 5.0 software on Apple 
  Macintosh computers. For back issue information, see our back 
  page. InterText is free, but if you enjoy reading it feel free 
  to make a $5 donation to help with the costs that go into 
  producing InterText. Send checks, payable to Jason Snell, to: 
  21645 Parrotts Ferry Road, Sonora, CA, USA, 95370.
...................................................................

  FirstText: The Information Explosion    by Jason Snell
========================================================


  By just about any standard, three years isn't a long time. 
  
  But as we reach _InterText's_ third anniversary, I can say that 
  a lot has changed in the on-line world in that time. The 
  Internet, for example, was incredibly huge and growing 
  exponentially when _InterText_ first appeared in March of 1991. 
  But it's only really been in the last few months that the 
  Internet has become a "hot subject" in the American news media.

  _NBC Nightly News_ did a series on the Internet, and included an 
  Internet e-mail address at the end of every broadcast. _Wired_ 
  magazine, an Internet-hip technology and lifestyle magazine out 
  of San Francisco, is now one of the hottest magazines in 
  existence. A million books have been written on the Internet, 
  and no doubt a million more will come out by the end of 1994.

  Now when we began _InterText_ three years ago, there were only a 
  _handful_ of regular electronic publications out there. David 
  "Orny" Liscomb's _FSFnet_ had led the way, and _DargonZine_ 
  picked up where it left off. Jim McCabe's _Athene_ appeared, as 
  did Daniel Appelquist's _Quanta_. Adam Engst, one of the 
  contributors to this issue, began his Macintosh newsletter 
  _TidBITS_.

  After Jim McCabe decided that he couldn't continue doing 
  _Athene_, I began planning _InterText_. Geoff Duncan also came 
  on board, and away we went. From the start we set out to 
  supplement the entertainment we provide with some useful 
  information for our on-line readership. That information came in 
  the form of our "page of ads," a listing of other on-line 
  publications that we thought our readers might find interesting.

  In three years, a lot has changed. There are dozens of 
  electronic resources out there, ranging from the mainstream to 
  the very, very eclectic. Though for a while we tried to keep on 
  top of things, there's just no way to publish a complete listing 
  of on-line publications in _InterText_ anymore, if there ever 
  really was.

  However, a complete list of such publications does exist, 
  compiled by John Labovitz (johnl@netcom.com) and available on 
  the Internet via FTP and on the World Wide Web. Rather than 
  produce a list that's inferior to John's, and inferior to the 
  listings in those many Internet books I mentioned, we've decided 
  to stop publishing our list altogether.

  Rather than shirk from that commitment we made with the first 
  issue, the commitment to point our readers toward interesting 
  resources on the Internet, we've decided to fulfill that 
  commitment in a different way. Beginning with this issue, our 
  "page of ads" has been replaced by _Need to Know,_ a regular 
  column featuring an interesting on-line information source, or a 
  person doing something different in the on-line world.

  In the future, the _Need to Know_ profiles will probably be 
  written by people other than the _InterText_ editorial staff, 
  but if you've found an interesting resource or person and think 
  we should know about it, please send mail to intertext@etext.org 
  with information about it. And as always, we'd love to receive 
  your comments and criticisms of _InterText._ You can send those 
  messages to the above address, as well.

  While I'm on the subject of the explosion of on-line resources, 
  I should mention that there is now another electronic 
  publication in much the same "business" as _InterText_. It's a 
  journal named _Whirlwind_, edited by Sung J. Woo 
  (sw17@cornell.edu), whose "Bleeding Hearts" appeared in 
  _InterText_ last issue. _Whirlwind_ features contemporary 
  fiction, poetry and essays, and publishes in both PostScript and 
  ASCII formats. Those on the Internet can check out _Whirlwind_ 
  by looking at ftp.etext.org in /pub/Zines/Whirlwind.

  Yes, the on-line world sure is growing at a rapid pace, and the 
  next few years will probably bring us even more change than the 
  last few did. (For more on that, see Geoff Duncan's column in 
  this issue.) But we at _InterText_ are committed to be in the 
  game for the long haul. Next year, we all intend to be back here 
  again, waxing philosophic on the changes our fourth year of 
  publication has brought.



  Before I conclude, I'd like to mention a few changes that have 
  happened to _InterText_ in the past few months. First, readers 
  of our ASCII version have no doubt noticed that we changed our 
  ASCII edition's format as of last issue. The new format is known 
  as setext. Setext allows the formatting of documents even though 
  they're in standard ASCII text. With a setext-compatible program 
  (such as Easy View, currently available for the Macintosh), our 
  plain text issues turn out formatted with headers and italics. 
  In addition, users of setext browsers will find it much easier 
  to navigate through issues of _InterText_.

  With this issue, we also welcome onboard Susan Grossman as an 
  assistant editor. She'll be helping Geoff and me with the 
  evaluation and editing of _InterText_ stories. Not only will her 
  help keep both of us relatively sane, but her talents will no 
  doubt increase the readability of the magazine.
  


  SecondText: Life in the Fast Lane    by Geoff Duncan
======================================================

  Welcome to the eighteenth issue of _InterText_! With this issue, 
  we enter our fourth year of publication, and--to our shock and 
  amazement-- _InterText_ continues to grow beyond expectations, 
  not only in terms of the number of subscribers and the range of 
  our distribution, but also in terms of the quality of the 
  magazine. We're quite proud of what we've been able to 
  accomplish so far and would like to thank everyone--the readers, 
  writers, and everyone involved--for making it possible. Without 
  your interest and generosity, something like _InterText_ could 
  never have succeeded, and we deeply appreciate your commitment 
  and support.

  Readers of this sporadic column may note that it is often used 
  as a soapbox to espouse this writer's obtuse views on electronic 
  publishing. Responses to these columns have been intriguing. 
  Sometimes personalities from the early days of network 
  publishing--only about ten years ago--send a note out of the 
  ether to agree, disagree, or corroborate certain points. At 
  those times, I feel like an uncouth upstart talking back to my 
  elders. Sometimes I receive letters enthusiastically agreeing 
  with me, which does wonderful things for my ego. And of course, 
  sometimes I receive letters emphatically _disagreeing_ with 
  possibly every word I have written, which--while not as 
  gratifying as praise--causes me to rethink, reconsider, and 
  often revise my positions and opinions.

  Overall, one thing strikes me about this correspondence: almost 
  without exception, it has been civil, considered, and 
  worthwhile. While the opinions and feelings expressed may be 
  strong and deeply personal, the process has been one of 
  _communication_ rather than the expression immutable dogma: a 
  surprising fact considering the diversity--geographic, 
  ideological, and cultural--between myself and many of these 
  respondents. Pretty amazing what technology can do.

  Which brings me to today's topic: since we last spoke, something 
  terrible has happened.

  I refer to the _information superhighway_. It snuck up on us. 
  There we were, innocent netters, minding our own business then 
  suddenly we were being viewed as part of an information culture 
  we didn't know existed. Now, on the front pages of newspapers, 
  in magazine articles, in television commercials and on the 
  evening news, we are being described as the current 
  info-literati--the elite group of technically-hip, wired and 
  inexplicably arcane individuals who represent the pimogenitors 
  of the future _uberculture_ of "digital convergence." Sure, 
  networks might be cryptic now, they say, but soon computers, 
  televisions, and telephones will merge into new species of 
  "information appliances." Imagine high bandwidth connections to 
  every home, every office, and--through a wireless, 
  satellite-linked cellular network--every vehicle and coat pocket 
  in the world. Imagine video phones, video conferencing, access 
  to limitless on-line information, voice recognition, on-line 
  medical records, wireless financial transactions, and other high 
  bandwidth, information applications _ad infinitum_. "Have you 
  ever tucked your child in from a phone?" asks one AT&T 
  television commercial. "You will." That is the future, they say, 
  and it's only a few years away.

  I imagine some folks are quite excited about this. But I'm not. 
  Here's why.

  Pause for a moment and think about _who_ is going to be provide 
  these services and applications for the information highway and 
  _why_ they're going to do it. The _who_ are today's media and 
  technology conglomerates: entertainment and publishing empires 
  such as Paramount, Columbia, Time-Warner and Fox; technology 
  companies such as AT&T, IBM, Apple and Microsoft; and service 
  providers like Viacom, Sprint, and (again) AT&T. The _why_ is 
  universal: money. The "digital convergence" allows these 
  companies a shot at all the money currently being spent on movie 
  rentals, cable television, telephone service, directory 
  information and all on-line services--and each of these 
  companies wants a cut of your monthly service charge, plus 
  additional per-hour costs for "premium" services. And they have 
  reason to believe even more people will use the information 
  highway than use these services today. They're probably right, 
  and that raises the financial stakes even higher.

  They say the video store will be dead in 1998, and I tend to 
  believe that. I also believe telephone books, newspapers, 
  magazines, mail-order catalogs, reference works, the postal 
  system, ATMs and advertising will not survive until the year 
  2000 in their current forms. You won't have to go to an ATM to 
  conduct transactions with your bank, you won't have to use a 
  library or a reference book to look up information. Similarly, 
  you won't have to consult a thick, unwieldy newsprint tome to 
  get a phone number, or do much shopping since you can order and 
  pay for most things over your television. You won't have to rely 
  on physically acquiring a newspaper or magazine to keep up on 
  news, and you won't have to buy tickets to concerts or sporting 
  events, but can attend them on-line in full stereo and living 
  color. It will be simple, convenient, easy to use, and it will 
  all come to you over the infobahn. These companies want you to 
  believe this is the greatest thing since squeezable ketchup, and 
  there's no denying the idea is simple and powerful: _anything 
  you might desire comes to you through the wire._

  But think for a second: there's nothing _new_ about any of these 
  applications. We've been shopping, we've used phone books, we've 
  dialed long distance, we've been to the bank, we've purchased 
  concert tickets and we've rented movies. That's the point: these 
  are all activities consumers are comfortable with! They're part 
  of our lives now, and the companies lining up to bring you the 
  info-highway understand that. They want to give you things you 
  already know how to do, and they want to charge you for it all 
  over again--in a sense, they're re-inventing the wheel. Why? So 
  they can charge you for roads (cable, connectivity and the 
  highway itself), new tires (upgrades), driver's licenses 
  (training on using your info-appliances), fees (a myriad of 
  small charges for that together add up a _lot_ of money), and, 
  of course, taxes (the information highway is not an unalienable 
  right, after all, and government _will_ want a piece of the 
  action). And you think commercials are thick on radio and 
  television now? Just wait. The information highway will open up 
  whole new ways to inundate you with advertising.

  I'm among the many people who think that a highway is a poor 
  metaphor for the impending digital service networks, so I'm not 
  going stretch it much further. (After all, my oldest, slowest 
  computer is presently directly connected to the Internet: I 
  affectionately refer to it as my "speed bump" on the infobahn.) 
  But the basic point is that these new digital services aren't 
  going to provide much that we can't do already: they're simply 
  going to provide it in a new, slicker, somewhat faster and (at 
  least for the first few years) more costly manner. It's not that 
  there's anything precisely _wrong_ with these sorts of 
  commercial applications--they will without a doubt be very 
  successful and popular, thus being "good" for consumers and 
  businesses alike. Without getting into the multitude of privacy 
  and access issues raised by the info-highway, let me make it 
  clear I do not oppose the idea of high-speed access to a myriad 
  of services, as much as I may detest particular applications 
  that are likely to dominate such services. I think most of us 
  would like reliable, high-speed access to the Internet. Who 
  wouldn't?

  Instead, let me return to the thoughts that began this column. 
  Simply put, the information highway we have now--a two lane 
  road, if you will, often confusing, cryptic and complicated--is 
  primarily a tool for _communication_. The information 
  superhighway--with all the glittery, attractive, futuristic 
  services to come with it--will be primarily a tool for 
  _consuming_. Instead of promoting active interaction between 
  individuals and groups using the networks, it will instead 
  devote much of its resources to corporate and business concerns 
  and one-way communication from provider to end-user. It's the 
  next generation of television, and no doubt one day there will 
  be studies showing how many hours the typical person spends each 
  day on the information highway. But, like television, it looks 
  like we'll be encouraged to spend most of that time in passive 
  receivership.

  So keep those cards and letters coming, folks! Show the 
  engineers and schemers now out there building the onramps, 
  offramps, and twisted exchanges of the info-bahn that you want 
  more than _Gilligan's Island_ on demand 24 hours a day. 
  _InterText_ will do everything it can to make sure the 
  information highway isn't just a one-way street, but it's really 
  up to those of us out here now, in the digital frontier, to make 
  sure that what's special about the Internet now isn't lost in 
  the shuffle.

  Motherless Child    by Eric Skjei
===================================
..................................................................
  * When things are tough, we're supposed to persevere--it 
  builds character. But there comes a point when it's best to 
  cut your losses. *
..................................................................

The Phone
---------

  He stirs. That noise again. That ringing sound. The phone, of 
  course. He sits up; images continue to haunt him. It is not the 
  first time he has had that dream, and it will not be the last, 
  he knows. Not by a long shot. Over the years, it will come back 
  with new and dreadful variations. Never the same, yet always the 
  same.

  The damned phone again. His machine clicks on. He hears his 
  voice announce that he isn't able to come to the phone right 
  now. He sounds slightly distracted.

  It is a call from his wife. She's at the hospital. Her mother, 
  she says, her voice as strangely calm as his own, has decided to 
  stop fighting and accept that she's dying.

  He looks up. Outside, a hawk appears, dropping out of the sky to 
  perch on a light pole at the edge of the freshly mown field next 
  door.

  "Do you want to see her?" his wife asks, sounding like she 
  doesn't much care one way or the other.

  _Yes_, he thinks, _I want to see her_. But he doesn't move. The 
  hawk lifts off from the light pole. _I want to see her and I 
  want to tell her that I know how sentimental people get at times 
  like these. But I don't care and I want to tell her how much I 
  admire her courage. How much she means to me._

  The hawk pauses in midair, wings beating, then strikes, swooping 
  down to dance a deliberate, deadly step among the shorn grass 
  and stubble, wings raised, arcing high. Then with slow, easy 
  beats, it takes flight again, flapping heavily back to the same 
  pole, its prey, a long greenish snake, wriggling in its grasp.

  _I want to tell her she'll live forever in my heart. Tell her 
  I'll never forget her. Tell her I'll always love her, always 
  miss her. Tell her all the things I didn't tell her when I had 
  the chance._

  He will have memories of her, he knows. Will be seized, while 
  doing ordinary things, with sudden grief at her absence. While 
  walking along the beach, hiking through the hills. Will have 
  stabbing memories, sharp enough to stop him in his tracks, 
  staring blindly at the earth beneath his feet, remembering her. 
  Then looking up into the infinite blue like a child, he will 
  picture her overhead, in some Sunday school version of heaven, 
  looking down, watching him, watching over him.

  In the sunny room, the phone rings again. He listens to his 
  voice declaiming its unchanging message. There is a loud click, 
  a clatter, then the dial tone, followed by the whir of the tape 
  rewinding itself. Someone decided not to leave a message, to 
  comply with his instructions, to speak after the tone.

  Speak, he murmurs to himself, staring at the hawk picking 
  daintily at its still-struggling meal. After the tone. Woof.

  Abruptly the hawk drops the limp snake and flaps away. He looks 
  at his wrist. Time to go.


  As he's heading for the hospital, he notices again that feeling 
  on the finger where his ring used to be. Somewhere, he knows he 
  still has the receipts. Just that morning, stiffly, with 
  difficulty, feeling a strange urgency, he got up, threw on his 
  robe and rummaged in the closet, delving into boxes until he 
  found the small, orange and gold brocade sack, buried in a wad 
  of old tax records.

  Taking it out to the living room, sitting down on the couch, he 
  is transported back to the day they went to the jeweler's 
  together. He remembers the friendly clerk explaining to them 
  that in China this kind of ring is an engagement ring. "But if 
  you want to use them for wedding rings," she smiled, "that's 
  OK." Her smile, he recalls, felt like a blessing.

  Afterward they walked down the street to have lunch in the 
  Garden Court, under the ancient glass dome before it was cleaned 
  and refurbished. During lunch he leaned back and happened to 
  catch a glimpse of ancient dust hanging in long dark strings 
  over the lush buffet and bustling blackclad waiters. A few years 
  later the jade fell out of his ring. He sent it back to the 
  jeweler, who fixed it at no charge, and returned it promptly.

  Across the room, the wedding album is sitting on the bookshelf. 
  He gets up, walks over, takes it down. As he flips through it, 
  he sees that the pictures have taken on the sad irony of 
  happiness before disaster.

  He stops at a picture of them at the beach house, then moves on. 
  Here is one of the cake, here one of his wife in the wedding 
  dress her aunt bought for her. One of him, in his dark blue, 
  almost black Givenchy suit, which he still wears now and then.

  He sees that she is today still the same slim, sloe-eyed beauty 
  she was then, with the same flowing dark hair, shot now with 
  streaks of gray. The same awkward winsomeness, same crooked jaw, 
  long upper lip.

  And here, a picture of the priest who married them. One of the 
  groom toasting her family, his new in-laws. And his 
  second-favorite picture, the one of him and his four closest 
  friends, sitting on the front porch of their house, after the 
  reception, quaffing Dom Perignon out of a paper bag. Tired. 
  Elated. All of them, he realizes, gone. Dead, divorced, or just 
  plain disappeared. Gone from his life, inexplicably lost to him.

  And there, finally, is his favorite picture. The newlyweds. 
  Heads together, smiling. Dazed, but happy. Captured at their 
  zenith, twinkling brightly for life's moment, together, before 
  their long, hard fall.



  He stands beside the hospital bed, across from her, her dying 
  mother between them, emaciated, dwindling. The door to the outer 
  hallway opens. A short brunette in a crisp white nurse's uniform 
  bustles in. "Time to hang a bag of blood," she declares.

  With a few brisk motions, she sends the thin red tendril snaking 
  down the tube. He watches against his will, fascinated by its 
  bright, oddly hypnotic and inexorably downward motion. He 
  mumbles something about sitting down, then sags at the knees, 
  feeling for a chair that isn't there. The next thing he 
  remembers he is coming back to consciousness, lying on his back 
  on the cold hard floor, looking up at a ring of bright faces 
  peering down at him, clinically scrutinizing his condition. In 
  the center of the circle, crouching beside him, hand raised to 
  slap him again, is that same nurse. "Can you hear me?" she is 
  saying, over and over again. He feels oddly elated.

  A month later that he finds himself sitting in the back seat of 
  her brother's car, holding the cardboard box that contains all 
  that is left of her mother. As they drive to the memorial 
  service, he looks down, reading the label showing her name, date 
  of birth, date of death. Such finality, there on his lap.

  What did she feel at her last, long breath, he wonders, as she 
  lay there, alone in the hospital, harried doctor stepping into 
  the room a moment too late to be with her as she slipped away? 
  Was it that same euphoria?

  For months afterward, her remains move from drawer to closet to 
  mantel to drawer again as arguments rage about the best way to 
  lay her to rest. Periodically his brother-in-law calls. "Why 
  don't we just go up behind the city, into the mountains, and 
  scatter them up there?" he says to his wife. At that, she 
  invariably panics. "No, no," she replies, sharply, "I don't want 
  that, I don't want that." Later, she tells him that visions of 
  wild animals rooting around in her mother's bones haunt her for 
  days after those conversations.

  Years later, when the phone rings, she will still for a split 
  second think it is her mother, calling to see how she's doing, 
  see if she needs help, make sure she's OK.


That night
----------

  There is a fire in the fireplace the night she finally 
  confesses. They always had a fire back then, in the evenings, 
  during the winter months. That's one more thing he misses, the 
  primal sense of warmth and comfort, in a life shared with 
  someone else.

  Every year, as summer came to an end, he ordered two cords of 
  wood, ponderosa and pinon, for a hundred dollars a cord. It was 
  a good idea to mix the two because the pinon, a harder, fragrant 
  wood, but more expensive, burned longer. The cheaper, softer 
  ponderosa burned hotter but faster.

  Delivery day would come, then the appointed hour. The sagging 
  truck would pull into the drive, back up to the garage. Pulling 
  on his gloves, he would climb up and help the driver unload, 
  tossing the split chunks onto the floor in a great heap. Then, 
  after the truck left, he'd spend on hour or two stacking it up 
  along the walls. When he was done he would stand there for a 
  while, relishing the feeling he got from the neatly stacked 
  rows, the feeling of being prepared for the worst that winter 
  could bring.

  Because the garage was detached, many yards from the house, they 
  had to haul wood in by hand, dumping it into a large basket near 
  the fireplace. As soon as he got home from work every night, he 
  built a fire. And for the next three or four hours, he would 
  tend it carefully, rearranging it, adding logs and paper as 
  needed to keep it burning and burning well.

  So that's where he is when she comes home. He is sitting in 
  front of the fire, watching the news, when he hears the sound of 
  his wife stepping up onto the porch. He hears the the rattle of 
  her keys, then the familiar squeak as she turns the stiff 
  handle. His heart leaps up, and she is there again, in the same 
  room with him. He feels once more, for the millionth time but as 
  though for the first, the joy he always feels, still feels to 
  this day, the simple fact of her existence in the same world 
  with him.

  But tonight something is wrong, he sees. Very wrong. Pale, 
  shaking, she says hello. Her voice is faint, hesitant, scared. 
  Setting her briefcase down next to the table, she drops her 
  purse, shrugs out of her coat, ignores the mail. She comes over 
  and sits down beside him, tells him she has something important 
  to tell him. Puts her hand on his knee. Her voice is trembling. 
  Her hand, too.

  This, he recalls, is the night of her weekly visit to her 
  therapist. They always talk afterwards, about how it went, what 
  she said, what the therapist said, how she felt. She enjoys 
  confiding in him, hearing what he thinks, what he has to say.

  "There's something I have to tell you," she says again.

  He reaches out, turns off the television.

  "I have a friend at work," her voice quavers. "We've been 
  friends for several months now. He's interested in Buddhism, and 
  I've been helping him learn about it."

  There is a long pause. He can feel a pain begin in his sinuses. 
  "And, um, it's a friendship that has a sexual dimension to it."

  "Take your hand off my knee" is the first thing out of his 
  mouth. He stands up, moves away, then turns, forcing himself to 
  look at her. How can he know that the pain will last the rest of 
  his life, will never get better? She is sitting on the couch, 
  stricken, crying.

  He goes to the kitchen, soaps his finger, twists off the ring. 
  Taking it to the bedroom, he puts it away in its brocade bag. 
  Then, to his surprise, he finds himself uttering an atavistic 
  oath, one that condemns her to a life of misery and suffering, 
  one in which the pain she is causing will come back to haunt her 
  a thousandfold, nothing she wants ever comes to pass, in which 
  nothing she cares for will flourish, a life of frustration and 
  desperation, barren futility.



  She doesn't notice the missing ring that night. In fact, she 
  doesn't notice it until some weeks later, when they are having 
  dinner in a Chinese restaurant. They are in the middle of their 
  mu-shu pork and pot stickers and kung pao chicken. He is lifting 
  a glass to his mouth. She is telling him something about her 
  job, her boss. They are imitating life, acting like a normal 
  married couple, posing as people whose hearts are not broken.

  He sees her eyes go to his hand, to that finger, then widen in 
  shock. Her face crumples, tears spring to her eyes. Her mascara 
  starts to run, giving her raccoon eyes. He feels his lips draw 
  back from his teeth in an involuntary grimace. She thinks he is 
  smiling, and is hurt. The familiar impulse to soothe, to 
  reassure, rises up in him, but he deliberately puts it aside.

  "I took it off because I don't feel married anymore."

  He can see how frightened, how guilty she is. Her eyes dart here 
  and there, returning always to that empty place on his hand.

  "I can always put it back on, when things are OK again, if we 
  want, when we really feel married again," he says.



  If you need inpatient psychiatric care in that small midwestern 
  city, you only have two choices. The first is a ward on the top 
  floor of the city's acute care hospital. They start there. They 
  park, go inside, ride up in the elevator. When the doors open, 
  they step out a long straight hallway with doors on either side, 
  some locked, all with small square viewports at eye level. Black 
  and white linoleum, harsh fluorescent light.

  In the small, cluttered office near the elevator two staff 
  members look up from their charts and say hello. During the 
  brief conversation, they are friendly, supportive, and 
  professional. But when a third staff member comes in and 
  interrupts to confirm a doctor's order to have a patient put in 
  restraints, she decides it's time to leave.



  The second choice is more inviting, has an almost residential 
  air about it. Built around a renovated TB ward, it has a cluster 
  of half a dozen, contemporary, one-story, pentagonal buildings, 
  the kind that are filled with brightly painted walls, clean open 
  spaces, carpeted floors, and vaguely modern furniture.

  There is a park-like area in the middle of the cluster, a quad 
  of sorts, a pleasant space, one that they will find themselves 
  in more than once over the next few weeks, taking slow walks, 
  sitting, having long talks.

  On the appointed day, they pack a bag and drive down to the 
  office for her intake interview. He drives his car; she follows 
  in hers. Having her car there will help her feel less trapped, 
  he thinks. But he doesn't know that, car or no car, she will be 
  in a locked ward, will need permission to leave, something she 
  won't obtain for weeks.

  The intake interview is extensive. Toward the end there comes 
  the inevitable question about her reason for doing this. After a 
  long silence, she answers vaguely. "I just haven't been feeling 
  very well lately." The plump, bearded young intern is plainly 
  nonplussed. He obviously feels her answer isn't adequate, but 
  isn't sure how to say so without seeming clumsy and 
  unprofessional. He fingers his beard.

  After a prolonged silence, he speaks for his wife. "Depression. 
  Sleeplessness, lethargy, all the classic symptoms." It seems to 
  help. With obvious relief, the clerk fills in the blank, the 
  scratching of his pen sounding loud in the small, still room.



  Accompanied by the intern, they walk over to the adult ward. He 
  is carrying his wife's bags. As they cross the grassy quad, 
  knots of adolescents flow around them, loud, defiant, 
  self-conscious.

  The doors are kept locked; visitors must be buzzed in. Once 
  allowed inside, he is asked to hand over her bags for 
  safekeeping behind the front desk. They are shown to a small 
  private office, with a desk and a couple of chairs, to wait for 
  another interview.

  The door is locked, offers the intern, because the patients 
  prefer it that way. They like the security of knowing that the 
  world can't get at them, he claims, can't walk in off the street 
  to accuse, attack, hurt them. But of course what he doesn't say 
  is that it also makes the hospital's job easier. It's harder to 
  hurt yourself when you are in an environment controlled by 
  others who are paid to remove sharp objects from your luggage, 
  paid to regulate your meds, paid to come by every hour on the 
  hour at night and shine a light into your room to make sure 
  you're still alive.

  The nurse comes in, sit down, begins the interview. Not long 
  into it, she turns to him. "I'm sorry," she says, not at all 
  apologetically, "but you'll have to leave now." And so he does, 
  walking back out through the main door, hearing the firm click 
  as it closes behind him.



  He's been home for less than an hour when the phone rings. It's 
  his wife.

  "Would you bring me a blanket? It's really cold down here. They 
  went through my suitcase to see if it had anything sharp or 
  dangerous in it."

  "Did it?"

  "They took away my curling iron," she says. "And my scissors."



  Later she introduces him to her roommate, a blond anorexic 
  toothpick. Stepping into the bathroom, he sees that the mirror 
  is festooned with yellow stickers, each with an affirmation 
  written on it in a childish, loopy hand. "The body is a machine 
  and food is its fuel." Every time he visits, the roommate is on 
  the exercycle, matchstick legs pumping furiously. His wife shows 
  him the small kitchen, the main room, the group meeting spaces, 
  the private offices. Then they sit down in one of the offices 
  and she begins to cry.



  The next time she calls, it is to tell him that she has set up a 
  meeting with the chief psychiatrist. He gets in his car and 
  drives down to meet her. After a brief wait, he is buzzed into 
  the ward. She is standing just inside the door. They go into one 
  of the small conference rooms. Sitting down, he helplessly feels 
  the joy he always feels in her presence. As they talk, the 
  rapport between them is as strong and rich as ever. No matter 
  how bad things get, nothing seems to destroy it. Is that good or 
  bad? He doesn't know, and doesn't care. But it confuses him, 
  because he can't accept that this person would treat him badly.

  "Our appointment isn't for a few minutes," she says. "I wanted 
  to talk with you first."

  His sinuses begin to ache, and he suddenly knows what's coming. 
  Tears well up in her eyes, roll down her cheeks. "I need to be 
  honest with you," she says, face crumpling, voice breaking. "I 
  haven't ended the affair. It started up again a few months ago, 
  and I haven't been able to break it off."

  "You said it was over."

  "I know. That's why I've been so depressed the last couple of 
  months. That's why I'm here. I just don't seem to be able to 
  stop."

  As she talks, he can tell that she is genuinely horrified by her 
  behavior. There isn't time to say anything else before their 
  appointment. They get up and walk across the ward to the 
  doctor's office.



  "So we don't need to worry about you going out and getting a gun 
  and shooting someone?" The doctor smiles, but the question is 
  serious. At the end of the session, he stands and holds out his 
  hand. "You've stuck it out through a lot more than most couples 
  I see," he says. As they leave, he suggests a trial separation 
  and more counseling.



  A week later, the hospital agrees that she is doing well enough 
  to go out for the evening. She can leave at 6, she tells him, 
  but has to be back by 8:30. He drives down and takes her to 
  dinner at the only four-star restaurant in the state. Two weeks 
  later, she checks herself out and drives home. To him, she seems 
  calmer, less frantic. But she's not so sure. The experience may 
  have been a mistake, she tells him, may have done more harm than 
  good.



  They celebrate Christmas at the beach house. He has left his 
  job, and the plan is he will stay there for the three months of 
  their separation, then return home. She will stay only for 
  another day or two, then fly back. When the separation is over, 
  she will return and they will drive back home together.

  When it is time for her to leave, he stands in the driveway 
  while friends bundle her into the car. They tell him later that 
  she weeps throughout the entire two-hour drive to the airport.


Lucky
-----

  At the horizon a tanker slips hull down, showing its 
  superstructure, then its stacks, then nothing at all. Rising 
  from the couch, he takes his hat and coat and heads for the 
  door. Far off in the distance, at the opposite horn of the sandy 
  crescent, he can just make out the cluster of rocks that mark 
  his daily destination. Out in the water there are the usual 
  black shapes of the surfers. At the far end of the beach, small 
  sticklike figures are moving in tiny ways.

  Approaching the halfway point, he can see that a fishing boat 
  has run aground. He joins the small crowd that has gathered to 
  watch, perhaps to lend a hand. There it sits, in the surf, bow 
  inland, surging gently back and forth, small waves breaking over 
  its stern. A small group of Vietnamese, the crew, huddle on the 
  beach nearby. The ship's name is the _Lucky_. His friend Nick is 
  in the crowd.

  "Did it spring a leak? Lose its engine, drag its anchor, drift 
  ashore?"

  Nick shrugs. "No radio, no one speaks English, four families 
  depending on it for their livelihood."

  The next morning, the first thing he does is take his binoculars 
  and go outside. The _Lucky_ is still there. Later that day, an 
  orange salvage barge steams up and takes station briefly 
  offshore.

  When he checks again, just before sundown, the salvage barge is 
  gone and the _Lucky_ is still lolling drunkenly in the surf. 
  Planks have sprung from its sides, water is gushing through 
  them.

  Two days later, a frontend loader snorts up the beach. Scuttling 
  back and forth, it unceremoniously smashing the _Lucky_ into 
  pieces, scoops them up, and hauls them off to be dropped into a 
  dumpster. He watches until the end, the scene blurring and 
  reforming in his lenses.

  Months later he is still finding the odd shoe, jacket, 
  splintered piece of painted timber and metal plate as they 
  surface briefly before sinking back beneath the sand.



  Six weeks later, she flies out for a visit. Holding her hand, he 
  takes her for a walk on the beach, makes an oblique, gentle 
  allusion to the end of her affair. She does not reply. At the 
  rocks marking the halfway point, they stop to rest. Sitting on 
  the sand, arms on her knees, she looks out to sea, blinking in 
  the late afternoon sun.

  "Oh, sweetie," she says, voice hushed, turning her dark up to 
  him. "Actually..."

  They stand and slowly continue their walk, tears still running 
  down her cheeks. Back at the house, they sit at the table. Her 
  tears are still falling, making a pattern of small dark dots on 
  the light fabric she is wearing. She sits without speaking, 
  staring at the floor.

  "Please don't feel any guiltier than you already do."

  "I don't know how to stop all this."

  He says nothing. She looks down at her hands, clenched in her 
  lap. "You're in my heart," she says. "I do love you, and I want 
  us to recover from all this. But I don't know how. I need to get 
  some help."

  "Sweetheart."

  "I can't keep doing this."

  "No."

  "I can't seem to change it."

  Two days later, she leaves again. And as she gets into the car 
  for the drive to the airport, she begins to weep, wondering 
  aloud if it might not be best for them to get divorced, since 
  she can't seem to make a commitment, but can't stand the pain 
  her ambivalence is causing.

  Sadly, he agrees. If that is her choice, so be it. There is 
  nothing he can do about it. It takes two to make a relationship, 
  but only one to end it.

  But then, as she closes the car door, still crying, she says, 
  "This doesn't feel right, this doesn't feel right," over and 
  over again. "I don't want this, I don't want this." And so no 
  more is said about it then, nothing is done to put the process 
  in motion. Instead, she continues to affirm her love for him and 
  her desire to have him back in her life. Again she tells him she 
  will end the affair. Again he believes her.



  In early April, the separation ends. Relieved, ready to go home, 
  he packs his bags and heads for the airport. Pulling into the 
  parking lot, he feels optimistic, excited. Life is beginning to 
  seem worth living again.

  After a short wait, he sees her plane settle down onto the 
  runway. It slowly taxies to the gate, begins to discharge its 
  passengers.

  Only after everyone else has emerged does she appear. Strained, 
  taut, she is clearly under great pressure and looks miserable. 
  She does not emanate any hint of pleasure at seeing him again 
  after all these weeks.



  Two days later, it is Easter Sunday. They are still a long day's 
  drive away from home, traveling fast through open country. The 
  town where they have spent the night is falling rapidly behind. 
  Having gotten up early to hit the road, they are looking for a 
  place to eat.

  She breaks the silence, a note of desperation in her voice. "I 
  have to talk to you," she says.

  "Whatever it is, it'll be OK. Just tell me the truth." Some dark 
  thing floats at the edge of his vision. The hair on his neck 
  stands up.

  Hesitant, fearful, mustering up all her courage and strength, 
  she stammers, "Well, sweetie, the truth is I'm not quite ready 
  to have you come back yet. I wasn't able to stop seeing my lover 
  during our separation." Her voice is small, shaky. "I didn't 
  keep our agreement."

  The all-too-familiar familiar emotions rush through him once 
  more. The trucks hurtling by are suddenly twice as big, three 
  times as fast, four times as loud, ten times as threatening. The 
  light and spacious landscape is filled with groaning wind and 
  scudding dark clouds.

  He takes the next exit, heads for the truckstop there. They pull 
  in, get out, make their numb way inside. It is a flyblown cafe, 
  filled with men wearing cowboy hats, baseball caps, tractor 
  hats. Two tired waitresses wander up and down, slapping down 
  plates and shouting out orders. From somewhere in the back come 
  the sounds of sizzling and clattering. They sit down, order 
  pancakes and an English muffin, wait for the aftershocks to 
  subside. For the first and last time, the thought crosses his 
  mind that he could put her on a plane and let her fly back 
  without him. But no sooner has the thought occurred to him than 
  he dismisses it. After a while, they get up and leave, without 
  eating a bite. They drive onward into the gathering darkness, 
  stopping only for meals and gas. He hears her say the familiar 
  things, tells him how much he means to her, how much she has 
  missed him these long months. Driving hard, they make it home 
  just after nightfall.



  Back in their own house, sitting on the couch, waiting for her 
  to return from an errand, he has a moment of eerie _deja vu_ 
  when he hears the familiar thump of her step on the porch, the 
  key in the lock, the squeak of the handle as the door opens. She 
  walks into the room and, yes, he feels once again that same 
  immutable ecstasy at the very fact of her existence.

  They settle into familiar routines, wash their clothes, fix 
  something to eat, laugh, play, relax, embrace, hold hands, hug, 
  kiss. But then she twists away from him. "I'm not ready yet," 
  she says, tears forming in her eyes.

  Hardly knowing how he does it, he says, in a flash of intuition, 
  "Let me guess. You're pregnant," knowing he's right and 
  strangely thrilled by that fact, even as it reveals yet another 
  level of horror to him.



  Four months into her pregnancy, he picks her up outside her 
  therapist's office. For the dozenth time, she has decided to go 
  ahead with the procedure, now more complicated since she is in 
  her second trimester. He drives her to the doctor's office, one 
  that they have been to several times before. She has become 
  strangely proficient at calculating just how much time she has 
  left before a given procedure can no longer be performed safely.

  He finds a place to park near the doctor's office, then turns 
  off the car and sits back. He looks over at her, sees she is 
  shaking. Her lover has told her that if she harms this baby, he 
  will hurt her and her family. He can tell she is terrified.

  "I still think this is the right thing to do. But I know it's 
  your decision to make, and I will support you no matter what you 
  decide. Whatever you decide, I will support you," he repeats.

  She sits, paralyzed.

  Finally he says, "Look, you don't have to go through with this."

  She looks at him in mute appeal. "In fact," he goes on, "the 
  more I look at you right now, the more I think it's probably a 
  bad idea to do this unless you're really sure about it. Going 
  ahead with it when you're not sure about it could be very 
  painful later. And none of us wants an even unhappier person on 
  our hands."

  After a few seconds, staring out at the parked cars, she agrees, 
  her voice almost inaudible, that she isn't quite ready yet. He 
  starts the car and drives away, leaving his life behind on that 
  anonymous street of parked cars and ordinary houses, filled with 
  strangers living normal lives.



  Five months into the pregnancy, she continues to put off the 
  need to buy some maternity clothes, instead wearing looser 
  clothing, larger sizes. Eventually, he convinces her to admit 
  the truth and tell her friends and co-workers. She can't quite 
  bring herself to call her family, so he does it for her. "I'm 
  glad you're there," is all his father-in-law can say to him, 
  over and over again. He takes her to several maternity shops. In 
  one, the proprietor, naturally assuming the baby is his, fawns 
  over them, making the usual fuss about new parents. He plays 
  along.



  One month later he finds himself driving her to a clinic in a 
  city a few hours to the north, one of only two in the country 
  where she can get an induced stillbirth at that late stage of 
  pregnancy. And a few weeks after that, he find himself driving 
  her to the airport for a flight to the other clinic. As they 
  approach the offramp, he asks her again if she wants to do this. 
  "Tell me what you want, sweetie," he says, as they drive closer, 
  closer, closer. "Just tell me what you want, what's in your 
  heart, and it will be OK."


Tick, tock
----------

  Entering the room, he notices again that the doctor's office is 
  full of strange junk. Old clocks. Shards of pottery. Random 
  chunks of cypress and pine. A stuffed quail. Ancient, 
  broken-spined books, splayed open from the pressure of the 
  expanding mass within. Fraying oriental carpets. On the wall, a 
  chart of the moon in all her phases. Couch, chairs, in one of 
  which sits the doctor himself, large, round, and bearded. Only 
  the glowing eyes, behind utterly drab glasses, are alive. _Tick, 
  tock, tick, tock, tick, tock,_ says one of the ancient clocks.

  He sits, describes the dream again, for no particular reason. 
  Then it is the doctor's turn. He says the usual things. As he 
  drones on, his sharp, knowing eyes watch his patient, watch the 
  patient watching him back.

  _Tick, tock, tick, tock_. The voice flows on like a river over 
  smooth, rounded stones, burbling, bubbling, murmuring, babbling. 
  The patient's attention wanders. _Tick, tock, tick, tock_. He 
  thinks about his wife's dying mother, the hawk, his wife. Tuning 
  into the conversation again, he hears the doctor say something 
  with repeated emphasis.

  "So that's how it looks to me."

  He hasn't been listening, has no idea what the doctor is 
  referring too. Watching him, the doctor realizes this, and 
  elaborates.

  "It looks to me like she's got a gun to your head."

  He's still not sure what to make of this. Then it comes back to 
  him, becomes clear what the doctor means. "You mean when she 
  says, 'I really love you and want you in my life'? That's the 
  gun?"

  Silence. Has he gotten it wrong? He sits up straighter, wanting 
  to make sure he understands. "And you have an idea about what I 
  should say to her then. What I need to say to her then is..." 
  But now he can't remember what he's supposed to say, what the 
  doctor thinks he's supposed to say to her then.

  The doctor takes pity, recites the litany. "What you need to say 
  then is, 'I can't stand this anymore. Either put the gun down or 
  pull the trigger.' "

  _Oh,_ he thinks. _That's right. Maybe he's right. What's the 
  worst she can do?_ he asks himself, then answers his own 
  question. _Exactly what she has been doing._

  "And that is?"

  He's been talking out loud again, without knowing it. "Nothing," 
  he says. "Make no decision at all." He wants to change the 
  subject. "What I wonder," he says, "is her doing nothing is 
  deliberate or not? Does she mean it, I mean?" _Does she mean to 
  be abusive?_ he wonders. How could she? She loves him. He loves 
  her. They love each other. They are in love. Have been, for 
  years.

  "What do you think?"

  Rhetorical question? Dizzy, he pulls back and tries again to 
  focus. What was the point? The doctor's question wasn't 
  rhetorical. Anything but. _I desperately want to answer that 
  question._

  "What question is that?"

  Damn.

  After all their years together, what happened? How could she do 
  this to him? His beloved. Of all humankind, the one he loves 
  most truly, most dearly, trusts without reservation, the one 
  who, without doubt, loves him in return. Always has, always 
  will--so she says--just as dearly. His heart's companion, his 
  life's partner. _She's behaving like some kind of monster. But 
  not savage_ -- 
  
  "That would be easier to comprehend. No, one of those sad, 
  miserable monsters instead, the kind that sobs and snuffles and 
  wails in self-pity as it tears your flesh and cracks your 
  bones."

  He doesn't know how to respond to this. _Tick, tock, tick, 
  tock._

  "So, since you understand the dynamic, and since you're choosing 
  this, there must be something you're getting out of it."

  "Yes," he agrees.

  The doctor blinks, waits. Then, prompting, says, "What?"

  "I am getting something out of it."

  "What? What is it you're getting?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "The satisfaction of knowing that you haven't walked away from 
  your commitments, even though they've put you in a terrible 
  bind?" The doctor's face is expressionless. "Is the satisfaction 
  worth the pain?"

  _Tick, tock, tick, tock._

  "The hope that she might change her mind?"

  He shrugs. _Tick, tock, tick, tock._

  The doctor shifts in his chair, clears his throat, puts down his 
  notes, looks at the clock and his watch. "We'll have to take 
  that up next time. Our time is up."

  _Tick, tock, tick, tock._ He shifts uneasily in his chair, 
  assailed, obscurely implicated in something that is not his 
  doing, not his fault. Suddenly chilled, he gets to his feet, 
  coat clutched around him, notes the faint tensing of muscles in 
  the doctor's body, slight narrowing of his eyes. Stumbling a 
  little, he steps into the hall and turns up the thermostat. 
  Could it really be 68 degrees in here? _For $80 an hour, I 
  should at least get heat,_ he thinks. Then he turns, makes his 
  way back into the room, to the window behind his chair.

  The day is dark, overcast. Under a weak sun, grass and trees 
  toss frantically, but there is no rain yet. Behind him the 
  heater groans and ticks in response to the higher setting.

  In the reflection he can see the doctor behind him, see him pick 
  up the phone, punch in a number and, after a moment or two, 
  begin to murmur into the mouthpiece. He can also see his own 
  dark eyes, long nose, mustache. Tired, always so tired. Big 
  circles under the eyes. Already graying, gaunt. Tired and 
  getting more so, thin and getting thinner. Behind him, the 
  doctor puts the phone down.

  It is almost completely dark outside. Only the dim streetlights 
  and the headlights of the occasional passing car can be seen. 
  Looking up, he can faintly make out the stars. For a moment, the 
  chaotic wash of lights forms an almost intelligible pattern, one 
  of those constellations whose name he can never remember.

  The last time he felt like this was when he met her guru. But 
  then he had the presence of mind to spend a few minutes, before 
  stepping into the room, setting aside his defenses and lowering 
  his guard. It was a gesture of devotion, to the teacher and to 
  the student. A way of saying, _If he is a true teacher, he will 
  see me for what I am._

  At the end of the meeting, as they stood to leave, the guru made 
  the effort, despite the brace on his leg, to rise to his feet as 
  well. Limping across the room, he reached out, embraced him, 
  declaring in an oddly high-pitched voice, "So, it seems you are 
  a true gentleman."



  _Tick, tock, tick, tock._ The doctor says nothing at first, sits 
  quietly for a long moment, gazing into the middle distance, then 
  asks if it seems that inanimate objects are speaking to him.

  "You mean, literally? Literally talking to me, asking me things, 
  literally?"

  "Yes," replies the doctor, easing back in his chair, crossing 
  his legs. "That's what I mean."



  That night he is awakened out of a profound sleep by the angry 
  screech of tires and bang of metal on metal from the highway. 
  Then there is nothing but ominous silence, followed, at length, 
  by the wailing of sirens. He gets up and goes to the window, but 
  can see nothing.

  Slipping back into the bed, pulling up the sheets, he falls 
  deeply asleep again and finds himself lying on the hard 
  blacktop, unable to move, blood running from his mouth and nose, 
  terribly, terribly cold. Both of his shoes and a sock have come 
  off. The exposed foot is freezing. The rain is turning to snow. 
  Moving his head to one side, he sees something moving in the 
  distance, but has lost his glasses and can't tell what it is.

  Slowly the image swims into focus. Several figures stand 
  silently on the shoulder, watching him, saying nothing, doing 
  nothing. He tries to wave, to gesture, but fails and can only 
  lie helplessly on the rough wet surface.

  Then he recognizes one of them. It is his wife. Again he 
  struggles to wave. She sees him, but does nothing, just stands 
  there, mute, unmoving, staring in silence. Trying once again to 
  raise his hand, he can see his own blood freezing on his 
  fingertips.



  The day is warm and bright. When he walks into the room, she is 
  sitting up in bed, nursing the baby.

  "Oh, sweetie," she says.

  "What, sweetheart?"

  "I just feel so scared."

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "I feel like I've been caught up in this whole big thing. And 
  all that's going to come out of it is going to reveal me to be a 
  worm. And all that resolving it will do is show how deluded I've 
  been, how much I've hurt everybody."



  He helps her give the baby a shower. Placing a folded towel on 
  the floor of the bathroom, he puts the infant down on it and 
  quickly undresses him. Then he undresses himself and steps into 
  the shower. First making sure his footing is secure and the 
  water is warm but not too hot and the flow not too strong, he 
  calls out to her, tells her he was ready. She gently hands him 
  the curious baby. Holding the child carefully, he moves him 
  under the stream of water, a little at a time. First his back 
  and legs, then his chest and belly, then the back and top of his 
  head. Then, very, very gently, his face, letting the water wash 
  over it, making sure it doesn't get in his eyes.

  The infant is alert and excited. He doesn't cry or struggle. He 
  seems to enjoy the experience, though he's slightly uncertain 
  about it. It must be comforting to feel the warmth of his body 
  and the water, he thinks, but a little disconcerting too. In any 
  event, the baby handles it well, with an endearing sense of 
  wonder and openness. After five, ten minutes, he hands the clean 
  little body back to her, and she dries him off and dresses him.

  Then they have go for a walk in the stroller and return to the 
  house, to sit on the front steps in the sun, enjoying the 
  warmth. The phone rings. He picks it up. "Hello," he says. No 
  one answers. He hangs up. A few minutes later, it rings again. 
  She answers it, goes inside to talk. The baby carries on, 
  babbling and crowing in that noisy, nonsensical way babies have, 
  that seems to carry the rhythms of speech. He listens, 
  enchanted. When the baby stops, he responds, making similar 
  noises in a similar way, as a kind of benign echolalia, moving 
  his head around in visual emphasis. The baby watches and 
  listens, plainly fascinated, and waits until he stops. Then he 
  replies, with a good five seconds or more of highly convincing 
  baby talk. Then he stops again and looks up, clearly waiting for 
  a response. They go on like this, back and forth, for some time, 
  15 minutes or so, just as though they are having a real 
  conversation.

  She comes to the door. "You have to leave," she says. He reaches 
  for her, sees something in her eyes, draws back. "He's on his 
  way here. He says he's had it and that I have to choose between 
  you and the baby, once and for all. If I choose you, he'll fight 
  me for custody. I can't let anyone take my baby away."

  He stands up, kisses her. The baby watches, eyes wide with hurt 
  and surprise, as he walks away.
  

  Eric Skjei (75270.1221@compuserve.com)
----------------------------------------

  Eric Skjei is a senior writer at Autodesk in Marin County, 
  California. He lives in Stinson Beach with his laptop and his 
  kayak.


 Jeannie Might Know    by Levi Asher
====================================
..................................................................
  * When you start to think "business culture" may not be all 
  bad, you know you're in real trouble... *
..................................................................

  I hated Jeannie Barish the first time I met her. She was a 
  consultant with a productivity-management firm, and at first I 
  tried to avoid her. But then my boss, Lew Parker, made me attend 
  her presentation on how to conduct solution-oriented meetings. 
  This was a new methodology wherein a sheet about twice as 
  complicated as a dental insurance form had to be filled out 
  before, during and after every meeting. It actually had a 
  beneficial effect on our department, because for about three 
  weeks after Jeannie's presentation everybody was afraid to have 
  meetings, and we got a lot of work done.

  But Lew Parker lived for meetings, and finally he couldn't stand 
  it anymore. He called us into Room C and said, "Did anybody tell 
  Jeannie we were here? No? Good, let's just talk quick before 
  somebody catches us."

  He was there to tell us about the transition. Recently our bank 
  had been bought by another, larger bank, and departments were 
  being shuffled. As of today, Lew Parker told us, the head of 
  Management Information Systems would report to the Vice 
  President of Commercial Markets Quality Assurance, whose boss, 
  the head of Global Systems Development, was being transferred to 
  Network Integration, where he would report to the Director of 
  System Administration's next door neighbor's piano teacher. Or 
  something like that. Whatever it was, none of us knew what it 
  meant, except that Lew Parker was clearly upset about it.

  Some people get real mean and scary when they're upset. Other 
  people just get cool, and sinister looks creep onto their faces, 
  and you know they're plotting revenge and it's going to be great 
  when it happens. But Lew Parker didn't get upset in either of 
  these two ways. He just started coming unglued. His collar 
  button would pop open, he'd sweat, his eyes would bulge, and 
  we'd all sit there feeling sorry for him.

  Two days after the meeting Lew called me into his office, shut 
  the door and said, "Jim, I can't figure out how to get the new 
  word processor program working."

  All of the programs we'd been using had just been replaced, 
  because the company that had created our desktop software had 
  recently merged with another company. Now instead of MaxWord and 
  MegaSpread and WonderGraph we had SuperWord and CalcPad and 
  PresentStar. Everybody was a bit on edge about this. "I guess I 
  can help you figure it out," I said, reaching for the keyboard.

  He blocked my path. "Well, it wouldn't help me very much if you 
  did figure it out. Because I also need to import a graph from 
  PresentStar into CalcPad, and I can't even get CalcPad to come 
  up on my screen."

  "Okay, I'll take a look at it," I said.

  "How is that going to help me?"

  "Well, it's what you asked for."

  "That may be so, but it isn't going to help me, is it? Because 
  the fact is, all our goddam software is completely 
  incomprehensible to me now, and Chuck Harrison has been 
  expecting me to hand in my Third Quarter Strategic Direction 
  document for three days now and I don't have a damned thing to 
  show him, because I can't get PresentShit to talk to fucking 
  MaxiPad, and so I can't do a goddamned thing at all now, can I?"

  At least I knew now why he'd been so upset lately. He was 
  terrified of his desktop software. This was ironic because he'd 
  always been very proud, almost to the point of bragging, about 
  his proficiency with the old programs. But he'd never even 
  developed more than a superficial understanding of them. He was 
  like somebody who learns how to play "Three Blind Mice" on the 
  piano really fast, but can't play anything else.

  "If you want," I said, "I can look through your manuals--"

  "No, no. It's beyond that, Jim." He started to get a misty look 
  and I got a scared feeling that he was about to pour his heart 
  out to me. "It's just that, sometimes... it's like we run and 
  run just to keep up, and we're running faster and faster, but 
  are we producing any more? Why are we going faster? Who does it 
  help? I mean... sometimes I just don't understand what's going 
  on."

  Nobody wants to hear his boss blubbering like a drunk on a bar 
  stool. It's demoralizing. "Wait," I said. "I'll find someone who 
  can teach you this stuff. Let me ask around. I'll be right 
  back."

  "No," he said. "I don't want you walking through the halls 
  announcing that Lew Parker is a technical moron. I'm supposed to 
  be the manager here."

  "I'll be discreet," I said. "Please. I'll find someone quick." I 
  escaped and walked down the halls asking who could help Lew 
  Parker with the desktop software--in effect, announcing that he 
  was a technical moron, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. 
  The problem was, everybody I asked suggested I talk to Jeannie 
  Barish. All I heard was, "Jeannie might know," "Jeannie's great 
  with that stuff," "The only one who knows is Jeannie."

  Who was this Jeannie, anyway? I knew she worked incredible 
  hours, until eight or nine o'clock at night on a typical day, 
  Saturdays and Sundays a few times a month. But she wasn't 
  assigned to any project and nobody knew exactly what she did 
  with her time. She was no older than the rest of us, but she 
  wore expensive clothes, which made me think she was making more 
  money than I was. She always had a smile on her face, and kept 
  asking people to go on ski trips or join the 'group' for Friday 
  lunches at T.J.'s. For all these reasons I always tried to steer 
  clear of her, but now but I had no choice but to go to her 
  cubicle and ask for help.

  I hadn't seen her cubicle before. It was bigger than mine and 
  had real oak furniture. In terms of decoration, it was a 
  veritable shrine to skiing. I'd had no idea she was so 
  ski-obsessed. There were ski calendars, ski posters, ski trail 
  diagrams. "Hi!" she said. "How's it going?"

  "Okay," I said. "Can you help Lew Parker figure out the new 
  desktop software?"

  "Sure! Hey, I've been meaning to ask you, how come you didn't 
  answer my e-mail about the ski trip?"

  "I don't like skiing."

  "It was just a questionnaire. I wrote that it was for everybody 
  to answer, whether you like skiing or not. I was thinking that 
  if some other winter sports are popular we might try to put 
  together a different kind of trip. Like bobsledding, maybe."

  "I don't like winter sports," I said. "Winter sports are the 
  opiate of the masses."

  She didn't seem to understand what I'd said, but clearly didn't 
  like it. "Now why would you say something like that?" she asked, 
  knitting her eyebrows with concern and disapproval.

  I shrugged. "Can you please go help Lew Parker before he has a 
  nervous breakdown?"

  Two hours later, Lew Parker called me into his office. He was 
  sitting at his desk with Jeannie at his side and a broad, 
  idiotic smile on his face. He looked deeply relaxed, happier 
  than he'd appeared in months. "This woman is a gem!" he told me. 
  He turned to her. "Jeannie, I only wish we had three of you. No, 
  ten of you. Thank you so much."

  "No problem!" she said. "Glad I could be of help."

  She began to leave. "Hey," Lew Parker called after her. "Maybe 
  I'll even put together one of those Solution-Meeting things 
  soon!"

  "Great!" she said.

  She left the office and a serious look came over his face. 
  "Jim," he said, folding his arms. "Jeannie tells me you seem 
  troubled."

  "What?"

  "Something or other about you not going on ski trips or joining 
  the group for lunch at T.J.'s."

  "I'm not required to go to T.J.'s!" I said. "I hate places like 
  that. The last time I went I ordered the pepper steak and they 
  put cheese on it!"

  "Jim, relax," he said. "You've been nervous lately. A ski trip 
  or a nice leisurely lunch would do you good. Get with the crowd 
  a little more."

  I left his office in a state of shock. Now I really hated 
  Jeannie. I started asking around about what she did. Nobody 
  knew. I saw a pamphlet for her consulting firm, and it said that 
  their mission was to help companies provide solutions. What did 
  that mean? It's like saying your job is to go around doing good 
  things. What the hell did she do? I kept asking around, but 
  nobody had ever worked with her on a project. And yet she was 
  famous for working incredible hours, sixty to seventy a week.

  One morning I found a piece of e-mail waiting for me:

   To: jimg
   From: jeannieb
   Subject: :^)
   Have a great day !!! :^) :^) :^)

  Perhaps figuring that we were now friends, she stuck her head 
  over my cubicle wall that afternoon and asked if I wanted to 
  join the crowd for lunch at T.J.'s.

  "I'd like to," I said. "But I just heard a rumor that the 
  original T.J. was a Satan worshipper, so I can't."

  She frowned and left me alone. Three days later I found a troll 
  with blue hair and a sign reading "Thanks for all your hard 
  work" sitting on my keyboard. The cute little imp found a nice 
  home at the bottom of my garbage receptacle.

  All this coincided with some other problems I'd been having. I'd 
  applied for a raise a few months ago, because my bank had been 
  reporting record profits since being acquired by the larger 
  bank, and yet whenever I talked to the head of Human Resources 
  about my salary I was made to feel that the immense burden of my 
  measly paycheck was already so devestating to the Board of 
  Directors that the bank was hardly able to continue to do 
  business and pay me at the same time. I lived in a slum 
  apartment in one of the worst areas of Manhattan, where I ate 
  spaghetti for dinner and watched cable TV because I couldn't 
  afford to go out. There was never any movie I'd heard of on 
  cable, and I was starting to suspect that Jeannie had something 
  to do with that, too.

  Since my raise request had been turned down, my mood at work had 
  been getting worse and worse. I worked on the 18th floor, and it 
  was starting to drive me crazy the way the elevator stopped on 
  every floor before mine and all the people who came in were 
  friendly and happy. Sometimes they stopped the door for each 
  other, or held it open while they chatted brainlessly about 
  their plans for the weekend. It had also been driving me insane 
  that people called pastries 'Danish' in our coffee boutique. 
  Danish what? It's a nationality, not a fucking food.

  Everything made me feel poisonous. Xeroxing some papers, I saw 
  one of my co-workers had left his phone bill, sealed and 
  stamped, in the box for outgoing mail. It made me so mad I 
  didn't know what to do. It scared me that things like this 
  brought me close to boiling. I was afraid I'd boil over and do 
  something I didn't want to do.

  One morning I read in the _Times_ business section that 
  Jeannie's consulting firm had been bought by another consulting 
  firm. That day Jeannie appeared slightly disoriented. She 
  blinked more often than usual, and spilled her coffee at a 
  meeting. A few weeks later she arrived in the morning with the 
  tails of her blouse sticking out from the hem of her skirt.

  Soon I heard that her stay at the bank was ending and that she'd 
  be moving on to her next client. She wasn't allowed to tell us 
  who her next client was, but she seemed to be very upset about 
  something. She'd always worn her hair moussed up high in front, 
  but one morning she showed up with a big thick clump of hair 
  pointing straight out of her scalp like an asparagus stalk, 
  dried white mousse caked between the hairs. There was clearly 
  something wrong. One day she was in my cubicle because she 
  needed to write a summary document about her work with us, and I 
  had to describe to her the Commercial Trading Interface, which 
  was the program I'd been writing. The word 'commercial' referred 
  to commercial loans, but we just called them 'commercials' as a 
  bit of trading systems jargon. When Jeannie tried to come up 
  with an example to help her understand what I was explaining, 
  she said, "Okay, so like somebody would enter 'Star-Kist Tuna' 
  here and somebody else would ask for 'Energizer Bunny' here..."

  "Wait a minute," I said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  She looked at me, frightened.

  "Jeannie," I said. "We're not talking about TV commercials here. 
  It's commercial _loans_."

  "I know," she said, her face red. "I was just trying to give a 
  different kind of example."

  "That wasn't a different kind of example. That was a stupid kind 
  of example. Goddammit, you've been here for six months--don't 
  you know what we do?"

  Suddenly she burst out in tears. "Okay!" she yelled. "Everybody 
  hates me here!"

  My phone rang. I moved to pick it up. "I don't want to go to 
  Azerbaijan!" Jeannie cried, apropos of nothing.

  It was my mother on the phone. She was upset because she'd just 
  gotten a letter from the hospital where my father had recently 
  had heart surgery. Their insurance company had recently been 
  bought by another insurance company. They hadn't read the fine 
  print on the new policy, and now they owed the hospital four 
  million dollars. My father was in a state of shock and had been 
  watching SportsChannel for the past seven hours.

  I was about to say something to my mother when the mail boy 
  rolled his cart into my office and I looked up and saw that it 
  was Lew Parker. I'd heard a rumor about more management 
  shuffles, and now I knew it was true.

  "Hi," I said weakly.

  "Hi," he said.

  What with Jeannie crying next to me, my mother waiting for me to 
  talk on the phone and Lew Parker trying to hand me my mail, I 
  suddenly saw a horrific vision. I can't exactly describe it 
  except to say that I suddenly realized that human existence is 
  spinning crazily out of control, that everything is worse than 
  it seems, that we go to work each day and eat Danish and pay 
  phone bills because we don't want to face the truth that is 
  closing in on us, the truth that all mankind is heading for a 
  disaster like none that has ever been seen before.

  The vision ended. I told my mother I'd call her back, I thanked 
  my former boss for my mail, and I told Jeannie I was sorry for 
  calling her stupid. After that day I tried to mellow out a bit. 
  Now Jeannie's gone and I realize we were better off with her 
  here. I hated her when she was around, but after she was gone I 
  realized that she symbolized something important, something we 
  all need.

  Now I sometimes go to T.J.'s alone and eat Thai Chicken with 
  mozzarella or some similarly ghastly concoction. Sometimes I 
  even think I might learn to ski. Racing toward the bottom of a 
  hill, going down, down, down, trying to keep your balance... 
  somehow it strikes me this is a skill that it might be smart to 
  practice.


  Levi Asher (ek938@cleveland.freenet.edu)
------------------------------------------

  Levi Asher works as a consultant to Wall Street banks eerily 
  similar to the one depicted in this story. He is married and 
  lives in Queens. He spends his time eating Mexican food and 
  teaching his eight year old daughter and three year old son how 
  to do _Beavis and Butt-head_ impressions.


  Up In Smoke    by John Sloan
==============================
..................................................................
  * Wait a second--doesn't our editor have a degree from this 
  university? *
..................................................................

  "That will be all for today."

  Professor Thomas Bentley Hawthorn's digitally-enhanced voice 
  boomed from the speakers like a battery of heavy field 
  artillery. His towering high-resolution features hung before the 
  audience in the jammed lecture hall. The Professor's every 
  grease-pot pore and bristling nose hair were faithfully rendered 
  in Olympian 3-D by the holo-projector. At the back of the huge 
  hall, a much smaller and positively ungodlike Thomas Bentley 
  Hawthorn shuddered. He was particularly unnerved by the nose 
  hairs.

  "Have a pleasant weekend," thundered Hawthorn's virtual self.

  Row upon row of blank faces took in the final remark. As the 
  image faded, the class began the ritual of closing their 
  portacomps and packing up their things. Like a massive herd of 
  fresh-faced zombies they would stumble to the next class, the 
  library, the lunch hall, or wherever fresh-faced zombies went at 
  the end of the day. Hawthorn beat a hasty retreat. It was 
  foolish of him to be there in the first place. Professors never 
  attended their own lectures anymore. One cry of recognition, 
  perhaps a desperately-shouted question, had the potential of 
  shaking the other 13,000 shuffling undergraduates out of their 
  daze. The thought made Hawthorn shiver: 13,000 students with 
  their inquiring minds suddenly awakened and a real-life 
  professor in their midst. That was how poor Kitsworth had met 
  his end, trampled and crushed by his own Early American History 
  class shortly before the midterm examination.

  A rushing torrent of student bodies poured into the university's 
  great underground concourse. Hawthorn ducked through a side exit 
  and bounded up a short flight of stairs into the 
  melanoma-causing overlight of day. There were crowds here too, 
  trampling over the trash-strewn waste that had once been a 
  rather pleasantly green university commons. At least outside 
  there was more air to breathe, though its freshness was 
  questionable.

  "Hey, watch it!" a bag lady said, giving Hawthorn a little 
  shove. She was fat and filthy, with a round flabby face 
  lacerated with sores from being outside too long. The route to 
  Hawthorn's office made it necessary to cut through the throng 
  lined up outside the Student Services Building. The tired and 
  bedraggled line of students and tramps snaked for half a mile. 
  The woman was one of those who subsisted around campus in a 
  great parasitic hobo camp. If anybody ever wondered why so many 
  students would cram the university to receive so little in the 
  way of an education, they only had to look beyond its gates at 
  what was simply called the Camp. The Camp was populated by those 
  left in the dust by the economic shift of the 1990's. The 
  well-off students had taken to paying residents of the Camp to 
  stand in line for them.

  "I am very sorry, Madam," Hawthorn said with a guilty little 
  bow.

  "How sorry?" She crossed arms that would be thick even without 
  the battered old winter coat she was wearing. Hawthorn began to 
  fish in his pockets. Suddenly, a huge broken-toothed smile 
  spread across her face.

  "Hey! I remember you!" she said. "History 257. Great course. I 
  always liked the stories about back when people had stuff, 
  y'know."

  "Yes, yes, good to see you again," Hawthorn said hurriedly. He 
  pressed what coins he had found into her chubby, dirt-crusted 
  hand and fled.

  Beyond the Student Services Building was the B. G. Dingle Animal 
  Medical Research Building. Its great brick smokestack was 
  belching the remains of that day's batch of animal research 
  subjects. A single activist had deposited himself resolutely in 
  the doorway. Two campus security guards were beating him with 
  their crowd control bars.

  "Murder is not progress!" the young man shouted just before a 
  club came down and obliged him to choke on his own teeth. Nobody 
  in the rushing crowds seemed to notice.

  Hawthorn came to the century-old Hampstead Humanities Building. 
  Bless its narrow windows, hardwood paneling, and gray stone 
  heart! Unlike the gray behemoths built on university campuses in 
  the final quarter of the previous century, old Hampstead was 
  what a university building should be. It even smelled right: 
  chalk dust, old wood, and stone. Stone has a smell completely 
  unlike concrete. His office, a tiny island of peace and solitude 
  away from the throng, was in Hampstead's basement level. It had 
  one high window through which one could see the constant 
  shuffling of thousands of feet.

  "Lights on, computer on," Hawthorn said wearily as he peeled off 
  his overcoat. The computer sprang to life with a list of 
  questions distilled from a thousand student queries filed 
  through University net. As Hawthorn sat down, he noticed that 
  the questions had already been answered. He scrolled through the 
  answers on the screen. Each ended with his trademark closing 
  "Cheers! TBH."

  "Funny," he muttered to himself. "I don't remember doing those."

  There was a knock at the door. This made him jump because nobody 
  ever knocked on his door. It was a feeble knock and for a moment 
  Hawthorn even suspected that a student had found his office. He 
  shivered. Others had been trapped for days bereft of food or 
  facilities when the student hordes had found their hiding 
  places. Reluctantly, Hawthorn cracked open the door. What he saw 
  on the other side outdid even the wild possibility that a 
  student had found his refuge.

  "President Throckmorton!" The president of the university was an 
  ancient woman, probably in her nineties. Hawthorn hadn't seen 
  Throckmorton in years. He had never seen her outside the 
  administration building. Tiny and frail, with frizzy gray hair 
  and a heavy knit shawl, she was leaning on a simple wooden cane. 
  When she spoke there was still authority and assurance in her 
  voice.

  "Professor Hawthorn," she said. "May I come in?"

  "Of course," Hawthorn stumbled backward to get out of her way. 
  "Can I get you anything? There is a coffee machine down the 
  hall. I think it still works."

  "Do you have tea?"

  "I think it just has coffee. It's just down the hall. I can--"

  "Sit down, Professor Hawthorn."

  "Yes, Madam President."

  She eased herself into a chair that nobody had sat in for at 
  least a decade. The leather and wood groaned a little but, 
  thankfully, the chair did not collapse under the president. Even 
  while seated she stooped forward on her cane as if the enormous 
  weight of responsibility for the university never left her 
  shoulders. The president examined him for a long time with a 
  curiously sad expression.

  "I am assuming you have tenure here at the university," she said 
  in a weary tone.

  "Yes, of course, Madam President. As you know, there were no 
  non-tenured positions left in the department after the last 
  budget cut," he said.

  "I just wanted to be sure. It's important that I am sure on 
  that," she said shaking her head and casting about as if she was 
  looking for something. Then her eyes came back to Hawthorn's. 
  "It's important because of what I have to tell you."

  It was all quite unreal. The president of all the university in 
  his little office, apparently about to confide some great 
  secret.

  "Have you ever wondered what it was like to be President of all 
  of this for the past dozen years?"

  "Not really, Madam President. I suppose it has been a remarkable 
  challenge--"

  "It's been hell!" she interjected. "Funding perpetually cut 
  back, mandated admissions increased, and most years tuition has 
  been frozen or cut. No qualified university professors since the 
  shortage began in '96."

  "Well, you did institute some very creative measures to deal 
  with _that_."

  "Yes, you could say that." For some reason she seemed to almost 
  smile.

  "Yes, I remember," he said eagerly. "Cut mandatory retirement. 
  Bloody bold move."

  The president looked morose again and gazed at the passing feet 
  outside the window. "That's how it started."

  "I don't understand."

  "Smithers was the first. Do you remember Smithers?"

  "Oh yes, French literature. Fine old fellow."

  "It was weeks before anybody noticed him missing. They found him 
  at his desk, just down the hall from here, all stiff and dried 
  up. Quite a mess with all the dust and cobwebs."

  "Good Lord! It must have been terrible."

  "It was. But not as terrible as what followed," she said in a 
  distant voice. Her gaze shifted from the window to the floor. 
  "We couldn't lose Smithers."

  "He was good."

  "No, I mean he really was irreplaceable. We had several thousand 
  students in his class. Nobody to replace him, nobody we could 
  afford anyway. So..."

  "Yes?"

  "So we didn't replace him." She looked hard into his eyes. What 
  Hawthorn saw there made him go cold inside. "He's still 
  teaching, at least on vidi. All his lectures were on vidi. 
  Nobody ever found out he's dead, nobody that matters anyway. His 
  salary has been rolled back into the general operating budget."

  "What? That's preposterous. What about the body?"

  "Well, you may recall that we completed the new medical 
  incinerator that year."

  "My God!" Hawthorn cried. He started to say something and then 
  pull up short when a thought stopped him like a baseball bat to 
  the kneecaps.

  _Smithers was the first._

  It suddenly occurred to him that the Faculty Club had become 
  decidedly less populated in recent years. Hawthorn's mouth 
  dropped open and his eyes slowly widened with realization.

  "There were others?" he asked with dawning horror. "Johnson? 
  Willoughby? Stevenson? The entire old guard?"

  "Up the stack, every one. Of course, they were all in the arts, 
  the humanities, and the softer social sciences. Technological 
  research and development must carry on for the good of society, 
  not to mention the directed research grants we get out of it. 
  Fortunately, there isn't nearly the teaching load in the 
  sciences since we have consistently failed to interest 
  undergraduate students in hard science for the past thirty 
  years."

  "It's diabolical! You're speaking about respected faculty! They 
  deserved a better end than that."

  "But they were already dead," said the president. "They just 
  would have gone into the ground."

  "So they ended their illustrious careers as alternate energy 
  sources for the university!"

  "Please, you have to understand." She leaned further forward on 
  her cane. "We couldn't just cut their courses. That would be a 
  violation of the government's student accessibility policy. We 
  couldn't just write them off. There was nobody to replace them. 
  Many of them were in externally-funded chairs."

  "No, I don't understand," said Hawthorn sternly, forgetting all 
  pretense of honoring the old hag. A whiff of panic was also 
  beginning to enter his voice. "How could they not be missed?" he 
  asked, casting his eyes furtively around the room as if to check 
  that some of them weren't hiding under the dusty furniture. 
  "Certainly we are more than an automated, degree-granting 
  factory. My God, woman! The interaction between professor and 
  student, the challenging of young minds with new ideas and old 
  wisdom, is what sparks critical thought. How can we have 
  progress? How can we have civilization without--"

  The president closed her eyes and was still for so long that 
  Hawthorn was beginning to suspect she might have blown a 
  cerebral artery. But then she took a deep breath, held it, and 
  let it out slowly. She shook her head and regarded him 
  sympathetically.

  "The essay component in all courses was cut in '98, the students 
  see you only through a holo-projector, and nobody has office 
  time for inquiries any more," she said softly. "Where is this 
  critical interaction?"

  Triumphantly, he pointed at his computer. "There! I still have 
  an important interactive link with my students through net."

  "Ah, that was a tricky problem," she admitted. "But our 
  programmers were able to construct expert systems based on 
  thousands of the deceased professors' previous answers. We are 
  quite sure the students can't tell the difference. I don't even 
  know if they would care."

  Again Hawthorn started to say something but was brought up short 
  by the recollection of the answers that had mysteriously 
  appeared on his own computer screen.

  "Cheers . . . TBH," he muttered and gave the president a 
  quizzical look. As his eyes began to widen with realization and 
  horror she looked away in embarrassment and fumbled with her 
  shawl. There was a knock at his door, stronger and more 
  insistent this time. "Come!" called the president. Two brawny 
  Campus Security officers burst into the office. One of the 
  guards held a great black bag, made of a rugged plastic 
  material, with a long zipper down the front.

  "In order to maintain the quality of education at this 
  institution we have had to institute another series of resource 
  modifications," the president was saying in formal monotone. 
  "Unfortunately, we have had to move to a new more active phase 
  in our budget curtailment strategy. You may proceed, gentlemen."

  As the two burly men lunged forward, Hawthorn could clearly see 
  the words "Medical Waste" emblazoned on the big black bag. 
  Before he could even think of reacting they had grabbed him by 
  the arms. The President rose slowly and turned to leave the 
  room.

  "Wait!" he begged, struggling. "You can't do this!"

  "It's the only way, Professor Hawthorn. We simply can't afford 
  to lose you. Unfortunately, we can't afford to support you 
  either."

  "But this is completely unnecessary," he said trying to sound 
  reasonable though his voice was growing shrill with fear. "I 
  could just leave. I'll never tell. I promise."

  "Too risky," said the president as she left the room shaking her 
  head. "If the resignation became public, it would raise all 
  kinds of questions. We might be accused of violating your 
  tenure. Besides, you're better off this way. Where in the world 
  would you go?"

  "Help!" One of the president's expressionless goons produced a 
  large syringe filled with a pinkish liquid. "My God! Somebody 
  help me!"

  "Don't bother," the president's voice echoed in the hallway. 
  "There isn't anybody left in the building. You're the last. 
  We're closing it up to save on maintenance."

  She turned to give him one last sad and lonely look.

  "It's too bad you don't know anything about biochemistry," she 
  said with a sigh. "We can always afford a few more scientists."


  John Sloan (jsloan@julian.uwo.ca)
-----------------------------------

  John Sloan writes for _Western News_, a campus newspaper 
  published by the University of Western Ontario. He also 
  contributes a weekly newspaper column on microcomputers to the 
  _London Free Press_. John lives with his wife and daughter in 
  neither a cozy flat nor a rambling old house. He does not own a 
  cat.


  Reality Error    by G.L. Eikenberry
=====================================
..................................................................
  * If we're not responsible for our own reality, who is? *
..................................................................

  "Forget it, Ray. You know I don't beg."

  "Yeah, sure. You got a better idea, Einstein? We happen to be 
  fresh out of mutual funds to sell off, so we either go hungry or 
  we troll the mall for spare change."

  "It's just a thing I have, okay? I'm kind of down-and-out right 
  now, but I don't beg. Maybe I'll go down to Dorchester Street 
  and see if I can scrounge some bottles I can cash in or 
  something. I'll catch you later at Mercy House, okay?"

  It's getting dark. The familiar beast is gnawing at his stomach 
  again. Kind of looks like rain. Rotten luck. He's been bashing 
  around for a long time and has just one small pop bottle and 
  three beer bottles to show for it. He'll have to hitch back 
  downtown if he's going to make the Mercy House soup line before 
  they shut down for the night.

  Red Firebird. Snob car number 37. Nobody stops for a bum. He 
  might as well give up on Mercy House for tonight. At this rate 
  he won't even make the 10 o'clock curfew for a cot in the old 
  convent school gym. He's better off hiking over to the 
  dry-cleaning plant. It's only a few blocks. He can sleep under a 
  dryer vent if he can stand the smell.

  One more car. Maybe he'll get lucky. Black Volvo. Hey, it's 
  stopping!

  "Rio. Come on, man. Get in."

  "Ray? Hey, wait--no way I'm getting into a hot car."

  "Aw, come on, man. I'll give you a lift down to the House. Come 
  on. It's not hot, I swear to God. Honest, man, I didn't steal 
  nothing. I was hanging around the mall, right? The rent-a-cop 
  gave me the boot for loitering or soliciting or something. Jeez, 
  I scored all of 85 cents, right? Come on, asshole, get in. It's 
  starting to rain. So anyway--are you getting in or what? So 
  anyway, I was hanging around outside the mall--like they kicked 
  me out, so I figured I'd try the sidewalk. So I put the humble 
  lean on this guy in trendy threads, and he says, 'Fresh out of 
  change, pal, do you think you could settle for this?' So he 
  hands me a bill, right? I mean Jesus Christ, it's a goddam 
  twenty! Blow me right away, eh? So I go to stuff it in my pocket 
  and get scarce before he realizes he's made a mistake and tries 
  to take it back, and what do I find rolled up in the bill? A 
  key, right? A goddam car key. I swear to God, Rio, a key to a 
  Volvo. I checked it out--there was a Volvo parked right there in 
  the handicap space, so I try the key and, hey, here I am. I 
  mean, did this guy win the lottery or what?"

  "He probably ripped it off. Or did you look in the trunk? It's 
  probably full of dope or something."

  "Where were you heading, anyway?"

  "I was going over to the dry-cleaning plant. I figured a spot 
  under a vent--"

  "So we'll go together. I picked up a six of beer with the 
  twenty."


  REALITY ERROR: Abort, Retry, Fail? Fail


  "Forget it, Ray. I don't do malls, and I don't beg."

  "Yeah, sure. You got a better idea, Rockefeller? In case you 
  hadn't noticed, we're fresh out of blue-chip stocks and bearer 
  bonds, so we either troll the mall for spare change or we go to 
  bed hungry."

  "It's just a thing I have, okay? I happen to be a little 
  down-and-out, but I'll have to be a whole lot worse off before I 
  beg. Maybe I'll go down to Dorchester Street and see if I can 
  scrounge some bottles or something. I'll catch you later at 
  Mercy House." The familiar beast is gnawing at his stomach 
  again. A couple dozen beer bottles almost buys a burger.

  It's getting dark. It looks like it could rain. Typical. He's 
  been bashing around yuppie territory for two or three hours and 
  all he has to show for it is one small pop bottle and a couple 
  of beer bottles. Nothing. He'll have to hitch back downtown if 
  he's going to have any chance to make the Mercy House soup line 
  before they shut down for the night.

  This is getting to be a real drag. Maroon Trans-Am goes by. Snob 
  car number 38. Nobody stops for abandoned, 
  drummed-out-of-business pharmacists cleverly disguised as 
  middle-aged hippies. He might as well write off Mercy House for 
  the night. At this rate he won't even make the ten o'clock 
  curfew for a cot in the old convent school gym. A fluid, racking 
  cough erupts from the depths of his chest. He'll hike to the 
  dry-cleaning plant. It's only a few blocks. Sleeping under the 
  dryer vents can't be too bad. It might even beat the human 
  bacterial culture medium that is the hostel.

  He walks. The rain has started. He quickens his pace. One foot 
  lifted, swung forward on the double fulcrum of knee and hip a 
  short distance through immediate space--a momentary, 
  subconscious defiance of the laws of gravity, but a minor one--a 
  mere misdemeanor--levitation--a strobing through space and 
  perhaps even time--steps--miracles--strung together--propelling 
  him toward warmth.

  Black Volvo. Snob car number 39. It brakes out of its more 
  disciplined trajectory, skids, lurches, insinuates mastery over 
  its driver's intentions, sweeps broadside toward the shell that 
  has relabelled itself Rio.

  A somewhat longer step--a wider swing--a full fledged felony 
  against the laws of space and time. Oblivious to how he may or 
  may not have arrived there, he gathers himself into the hot air 
  blowing down from the dryer vent. There are worse ways to spend 
  a night.


  REALITY ERROR: Abort, Retry, Fail? Retry


  "Forget it, Ray. I realize that--at least according to the 
  self-righteous bitch that threw me out on the street--I am the 
  lowest of the low, but there are two things I refuse to do. I 
  don't beg, and I don't set foot inside shopping malls."

  "Yeah, sure, Socrates--you've got a more fulfilling idea? Check 
  your pockets. I don't know about you, but I'm fresh out of oil 
  wells, yachts and VCRs, so it's either troll the mall or learn 
  to live with hunger."

  "Suit yourself. It's a thing I have, okay? I may be in a 
  low-liquidity mode right now, but I'll have to be a whole lot 
  worse off before I resort to begging. I think I'll head down to 
  Dorchester Street to see if I can scare up a few empties I can 
  cash in for some edibles. Mercy House gruel is beginning to wear 
  a little thin. I'll catch you later in the bedtime lineup."

  What he really wants is a pizza, but he'll be lucky if 
  scrounging bottles turns up enough for a greasy burger.

  It's getting dark. It looks and feels like the rain's going to 
  start any minute. Just his luck. He's been bashing around 
  yuppie-land for half an eternity and all he has to show for it 
  is a beat-up grocery bag with a couple of dirty pop bottles 
  rattling around inside. They might earn a bag of chips, but that 
  won't feed the beast in his belly. Better hitch back downtown 
  and try to make the Mercy House soup line before they shut down 
  for the night.

  Okay--42nd time lucky, right? Brown Jaguar. Face full of exhaust 
  number 42. Nobody stops for an involuntarily-retired 
  designer-drug entrepreneur, declared persona non grata by any 
  friends once worth knowing. Must be the clever over-the-hill 
  hippie disguise. At this rate he won't even make the 10 o'clock 
  curfew for a pissy cot in Mercy House's old convent school gym. 
  A fluid, racking cough erupts from the depths of his chest, 
  asserting his vulnerability. He'll hike to the dry-cleaning 
  plant. It's not far--maybe four or five blocks. Those with more 
  experience in this sort of thing claimed that sleeping under a 
  dryer vent was almost tolerable on a chilly, wet night. It might 
  even be a welcome change from the human compost-heap of the 
  Mercy House hostel.

  He walks. The rain has started. The shock waves from another 
  spasm of coughing reach his brain. He's not dressed for this. 
  He's going to have to do something pretty fast--some money, some 
  clothes, a place to go. She wouldn't let him in even if he did 
  go back. But he won't go back. Anyway, she'd probably follow 
  through on her threat to turn him in. Talk about a 
  self-righteous bitch. She never had any problem spending the 
  money when she thought he was the best paid assistant pharmacist 
  in the Western World. What about the Mediterranean holiday they 
  almost took? He was supposed to pick up the tickets the day the 
  phone rang.

  It's pouring now. He ought to get to the plant before he's 
  completely soaked. He lengthens out his stride. Left foot lifts, 
  swings forward on the double fulcrum of knee and hip--a miracle 
  of practical physics propels him a short distance through 
  immediate space, suspended from his center of gravity--a 
  momentary, subconscious defiance of the laws of gravity, but a 
  minor infraction--a mere misdemeanor--levitation--they'll never 
  catch him--strobing through space--through time--long, floating 
  steps--minor miracles--strung together--propelling him towards 
  warmth.

  One last try with the old magic thumb. Hell, it always used to 
  work in his student days. Black Volvo. Snob car number 43. It 
  brakes, departs from its planned, more disciplined trajectory, 
  skids, lurches, insinuates mastery over its driver, sweeps 
  broadside toward the impenetrable collection of molecules that 
  never quite worked out as Brian--that aren't doing a hell of a 
  lot better as Rio.

  A longer step--a wider, more radical swing--more than a simple 
  mid-course adjustment along a space/time continuum. A bona fide 
  felony. This is no minor deviation from the laws of physics. 
  This is the real thing. Violations of this magnitude can carry a 
  heavy penalty.



  Brian basks in the sun's warmth. When he first becomes aware of 
  the sound, he is tugging absentmindedly at the hair in his left 
  ear, trying to discern meaningful patterns in the waves of the 
  receding tide.

  Margaret rolls over, wrapping herself tightly in her robe. "Did 
  you hear that? It sounded like something ripping." She searches 
  up and down the beach. "Brian, it's getting chilly. Let's go 
  back to the hotel."

  "Aw, this is our last day. We can sit inside back home."

  The sound again. It snags on the sculpted sandstone above them. 
  Margaret looks towards the cliff, but sees nothing to explain 
  it. She looks back over to Brian, but he doesn't seem to notice.

  To him it sounds more like a muffled pop followed by sand 
  shifting with preordained precision, perhaps under carefully 
  placed feet. He sends his gaze up and down the beach, but there 
  is nothing out of the ordinary to see.

  The improbable beast approaches with surprising stealth for a 
  minotaur. It studies the man carefully. He is tall and thin, not 
  particularly muscular even by modern standards--not likely to 
  pose any threat to a mythical beast. The man's otherwise evenly 
  tanned skin glows slightly red from too much sun. His face is 
  not visible.

  The woman is not so easy to discern. She is wrapped in a white 
  robe. Her hair shimmers, long and dark. The sun has given it an 
  enticing sheen. And the backs of her calves and the soles of her 
  feet are precisely and delicately rounded, cast from a mold 
  tracing back to another age.

  A great aching swells in the beast's groin. Although it sees 
  nothing to suggest significant resistance, something more 
  visceral than sight or smell tells him the ache will grow before 
  it can be relieved.

  The creature positions itself a short distance behind them. It 
  announces its presence with a contemptuous snort.

  The skinny male scrambles to his feet. He motions backwards with 
  his left hand as if to push his mate back, away from whatever is 
  about to happen.

  She either doesn't notice or chooses to ignore him. She rises, 
  with one arm extended, to face the creature squarely. The white 
  robe falls open, but as she feels the eyes of the beast upon her 
  she gathers it in tightly and clutches her arms across her 
  breasts.

  The minotaur grows in stature. The man would probably surrender 
  the woman without a struggle but it's better if she is won.

  Three quick steps take the minotaur to the flimsy male. It 
  stoops and thrashes its head, lifts him on its horns with ease. 
  It flings him far out into the surf.

  The man hurts, gasps for air--but he refuses to cry out. He 
  swims--forever he swims against the receding tide until he 
  heaves his exhausted body onto the beach.

  His heart lurches against his rib cage, plotting frantic escape. 
  The sun pours molten rays over him, joining forces with his 
  fatigue, bakes fate into a hard, impenetrable ceramic shell.

  And yet he must coalesce the vestiges of his will, he must defy 
  the fatigue, the sun, the pain, the impossibility. He must rise 
  to accept the truth of this monstrosity just long enough to 
  vanquish it.


  REALITY ERROR: Abort, Retry, Fail? Abort


  "Forget it, Ray. There are some things I just can't--just 
  _won't_ do--"

  "You got a better idea, Schroedinger? No way out, Rio, my 
  man--if you don't mend the tear in the continuum, who will?"


  G.L. Eikenberry (aa353@freenet.carleton.ca)
---------------------------------------------

  G.L. Eikenberry: On a bad day he's unemployed. On a good one 
  he's a self-employed consultant. On almost every day he's a 
  freelance writer and martial arts instructor in Gloucester, 
  Ontario, just down the road from Ottawa.

  
  
    Still Life    by Adam C. Engst
==================================
..................................................................
  * When you go to the desert on a horse with no name, be sure 
  to get out of the rain. *
..................................................................

Gone Fishing
------------

  I was walking through the north end of town the other day and no 
  one much was about but the tumbleweeds and the whores by 
  Miller's place. I saw a white rock on the road so I picked it up 
  since I've always done that and now I've got quite a collection. 
  My grandfather always used to tell me that they were quartz 
  rocks long after I knew that fact but I never got irritated 
  enough with him to stop picking them up.

  As I was bending back up, a shadow of a man whipped across my 
  path, said his name was Jake Snake and that he was a desert rat 
  searching for truth. I gave him a light before he burned himself 
  on the mirror he flashed around, trying to catch the sun on the 
  tip of his mangled cigarette.

  "What are you really doing here, Jake?" I asked to find out why 
  a sneak like him was braving the light of day.

  "Well, I's just out for a breath of air before it becomes too 
  hot to breathe," he said, nice and polite like. The thermometer 
  was at a hundred and eight that day and breathing wasn't none 
  too easy as it was, so I pressed him a bit.

  "Jake, you're full of shit," I said, and slowly walked away, 
  waiting for him to follow like he always done before. Well, he 
  didn't follow me, but ambled off into the distance muttering 
  about fireballs and salvation in the salt mines. That in itself 
  wasn't too strange, but when I saw a whole line of people 
  heading south in front of Jake it certainly seemed that 
  something was up. They were already too far away for me to catch 
  them and ask them, though I could see the fire engines being 
  driven that way, too. That explained why no one much was about, 
  since they all seemed to be heading south.

  I figured that there had to be someone left in town who knew 
  what was happening, so I looked around a bit for someone to talk 
  to. I wasn't really the sort to just follow a mass of people for 
  no real reason, and even if there is a reason I don't much like 
  to do it just for the principles involved. I've found that it 
  usually pays off to avoid the crowds, something I learned when I 
  was visiting the city, where there were and probably still are a 
  lot of crowds and not all that much else, except a few doormen 
  who live outside the biggest buildings. I think the doormen were 
  a kind of crowd parasite, since they always lived outside the 
  largest buildings, and the biggest crowds come out of the 
  biggest buildings.



  I decided that the first place to ask was by Miller's, since the 
  whores didn't ever leave town and usually knew more about 
  current events than anyone else. I guess they were usually in a 
  good position to find out about that sorta thing. The whores 
  didn't know nothing, but told me to go talk to Miller.

  Miller was the priest, and found living next to the whores fit 
  his temperament just fine. He saved them and they him, though I 
  think personally that they came out ahead in the deal--messing 
  with a priest probably helped their case when they came before a 
  judge that made Kenesaw Mountain Landis look like a two-bit DA 
  with diarrhea. Miller lived what used to be the church. He 
  wasn't real neat, and had taken to throwing his garbage 
  downstairs rather than take it to the town dump. The garbage 
  didn't smell since it dried out real quickly, our town being 
  smack-dab in the middle of the desert.

  Miller weren't of much comfort. He was moving around kinda 
  nervous-like, but it wasn't because Canyon Carol was there. One 
  of 'em was usually there. All he'd say was that something big 
  was going down, far as he could tell, and he was going to get 
  his living in while it were still much of a possibility.

  "Thanks anyway," I said, and left. A few minutes later he and 
  Carol disappeared in the direction that Jake Snake had gone.



  Doc was out, and his sign said that he'd gone fishing. I hate it 
  when he puts up that sign, because there ain't much running 
  water within a hundred miles of here, let alone fish. That sign 
  just means the Doc's over fishing for the Widow Fultin just like 
  he been since her old man died having his appendix out. Mighty 
  fishy, dying while having your appendix out. A few people 
  complained that they didn't want no doctor who might blow a 
  simple appendix operation, especially if he were interested in 
  the patient's wife. They was all for true love and that stuff, 
  but puncturing a man's appendix was certainly close to the belt 
  and perhaps a little bit below it, despite what that saying says 
  about everything being fair in love and war.

  But Mayor Dreed said that not many towns our size were so 
  blessed by having a sawbones, and even if he weren't too 
  accurate, he's still better than letting Jones the crazy dentist 
  at the sick people. No one wanted to be put under while he was 
  around, just 'cause you never really knew what he would do with 
  you, like sew your hands together. Through your fingers. Behind 
  your back.

  So Doc stayed on, and spent every day trying to get the Widow 
  Fultin to marry him or, barring that, at least to sleep with 
  him, since he knew what the prostitutes had and he was a little 
  too wary of dosing up on the penicillin all the time like Miller 
  had to.

  The Doc wasn't real good about sticking to the rules about 
  courting and all that. The Widow was an eyeful, to be sure, what 
  with her long blond hair, and the old wives in the town said 
  that she had been a loose woman in California before she met 
  Fultin on some trip and they got married real quick like.



  The saloon seemed like a good place to find out what in 
  tarnation, what in hell that is, was going on around town. I 
  strolled in and the regulars were clustered around the bar 
  grumping about something, and when I went over to ask what was 
  up they clammed right up. That was kind of funny since the 
  barkeep, Little Richard, was giving his stuff out to them like 
  there was no tomorrow.

  Normally when those boys have had anywhere near that much in 
  them they'll talk about anything, whether or not they know what 
  they're saying. I remember once when Richard himself was so far 
  gone he started telling us when everyone in his family had 
  birthdays and what size clothes they all wore. This is from a 
  man who can't normally remember what day it is and probably 
  wouldn't tell you anyway, unless he was feeling in a good mood 
  and happened to like you. But today no one was saying anything 
  about anything at all.



  The mayor is the type of person who ought to know what kind of 
  things are happening in his town, so I went to visit him. Mayor 
  Dreed was in his office, which was mighty nice seeing as 
  everyone else had been out, worthless, or leaving when I got 
  there. I began to think that perhaps I should've taken a bath 
  last month like I'd planned before the boys in the saloon threw 
  me in the barrel of old wash water outside the store and soaked 
  me to the skin. But the mayor was downright hospitable and 
  offered me some of them oyster crackers which he always had 
  lying around whenever visitors showed up in his office. The 
  crackers were pretty stale, since no one visited the Mayor very 
  often, so he hadn't bought new oyster crackers for a few years 
  or so.

  When I asked him about why everyone was either drunker than a 
  skunk or leaving town like a cowardly armadillo, he gave me the 
  lecture for the fifth grade on the executive branch of 
  government which he'd been practicing for weeks. He said the 
  schoolmarm had canceled on him just today, which confused him 
  since he had been working on this speech for so long that he 
  didn't really know what needed to be done governing-wise. I said 
  that I was sorry, but if he didn't find out what was happening 
  he'd be mayor of a town of drunks and ghosts since everyone else 
  was heading out towards the salt mines. He didn't hear me and 
  moved right on to the legislative branch of government, so I 
  left.



  I went to look for the Widow Fultin. She lived a ways out of 
  town, but it wasn't too bad of a walk since I had other things 
  on my mind, trying to figure out where everyone was going and 
  why. When I got out to her place, Doc's horse was there, tied to 
  the fence with a piece of twine since Doc wasn't much for buying 
  saddles and proper ropes and things. I knocked and went in when 
  no one answered the door. It's a nice town like that, where no 
  one much cares if you let yourself in when they're too busy to 
  open the door for you. I did just that, figuring that the Widow 
  Fultin was out back messing with the livestock or something.

  She wasn't much with the animals, but she did try, and once 
  every couple of days Doc paid a man to come over late at night 
  and take care of them so they didn't die. The Widow Fultin had 
  said a bunch of times that she was going to live on old man 
  Fultin's farm as long as everything lived and Doc didn't want to 
  lose his chance at her just because she couldn't keep weeds 
  alive long enough to choke the flowers that Doc's man planted 
  late at night. The Widow Fultin sure noticed that everything 
  looked a lot better every few days. Guess she attributed it to 
  cycles or something that she heard about in California.

  I don't know too much about California, since the city I went to 
  was in Kansas, but I hear that you have to have your head pretty 
  far gone to get along there what with the men sleeping together 
  and more rich people than you can count. Most towns get along 
  fine with a single rich man around, but from what people have 
  told me there's lots of them all over in California. Gotta be a 
  weird place if you get too many rich people all running around 
  all the time. One's healthy 'cause it gives little kids 
  something to look up to, but what use could you possibly have 
  for more'n that? Some places just aren't worth keeping these 
  days, I tell you.

  After I'd caught my breath and sat a while in the Widow's 
  parlor, I started wondering where the Widow was at since it 
  wasn't like her not to show up after a while. I went back out 
  and looked in the barn and out back, but she wasn't anywhere to 
  be seen. So I went back in and sat down again for a while. Then 
  I decided to check upstairs. That's taking hospitality a tad far 
  even in this town, but I really did want to talk to the Widow 
  and I figured that she didn't have a live husband to want to put 
  some lead in me for my cheek. I tiptoed upstairs, half expecting 
  to see the Doc and the Widow deep in a feather bed, but I know 
  that's got about as much chance as Hell melting. Hell froze over 
  several years ago and it just ain't been the same since. Look at 
  Miller: A perfectly good priest put out of a cushy job just 
  because some damn fool said that something wouldn't happen until 
  Hell froze over and Lucifer just couldn't resist.

  I was part right when I thought that the Doc and the Widow might 
  be enjoying themselves in a big feather bed since the Widow was 
  certainly enjoying something in that feather bed. There was a 
  low humming noise coming from the bed, so I coughed so as not to 
  surprise her. I've heard it's bad luck to surprise a widow, sort 
  of like walking under a falling ladder or having a panther cross 
  your path.

  The Widow was still a little surprised when I walked in on her 
  like that but I'll give her credit 'cause she didn't so much as 
  bat an eyelash but asked me in right polite like. I went over 
  and sat on the bed next to her as she went on enjoying herself. 
  It was a kinda hard to concentrate with the Widow tossing and 
  turning in the bed the way she was, but I managed to say what 
  I'd been planning on saying.

  "Widow Fultin," I said, "something strange is happening in town. 
  Most of the people seems to have up and left, mainly for the 
  salt mines, and the rest are drowning their sorrows in the 
  deepest bottle I've ever seen."

  The Widow just moaned softly, so I went on after shifting my 
  position to make it a little bit more comfortable and perhaps to 
  improve the view too.

  "Widow," I said, "I thought maybe Doc would know what's 
  happening since he's generally a learned man. I saw his horse 
  out front, I said, but I haven't seen him around."

  Widow Fultin gasped. "Oh, he's been gone for a while. Went out 
  walking, I think."

  I had been sitting down for a while when I first got there, and 
  then I waited for a while longer before coming up here, so Doc 
  had been gone for at least two whiles, and that's a long time.

  "Widow," I said, "Doc didn't take his horse so he doesn't have 
  any water with him. Did he say which way he was going?"

  "He said he was going to something to do with salt, towers or 
  flowers or bowers, I can't remember."

  I was getting pretty uncomfortable by now, because even in this 
  town we have some conventions about what you can do to make 
  yourself comfortable in someone else's house.

  "Did he say why he was going there?" I asked, curious to find 
  out what the deal was with Doc, who didn't normally leave the 
  Widow's place until someone had a baby and the Mayor made him 
  go. He slept in the barn since she wouldn't let him come past 
  the entryway in the house unless he took his boots off and he 
  always said that he was going to die with his boots on. I guess 
  he was worried that he was gonna die in his sleep. Everyone in 
  the saloon thought he'd die if he ever really made it with a 
  woman and that was why he wouldn't take his boots off.

  I sat and thought about all of this for a while while I was 
  watching the Widow. Suddenly the humming noise stopped and the 
  Widow threw something against the wall.

  "Goddammit," she exclaimed. "That thing was supposed to last 
  until the end of the world." I went over and picked it up, 
  taking advantage of the opportunity to adjust my clothing to a 
  looser position.

  "No," I said, "it specifically says that it is only guaranteed 
  for life where the life in question is that of the appliance." I 
  put it down and wiped off my hands on my pants.

  "Damn," she said. "Well then, will you replace it?"

  I've never been much able to resist feminine wiles and let me 
  tell you, she had a lot of them and they were right out there 
  for me to see, every last one of them clamoring for attention. 
  So I didn't resist. I sprang right out of my recently-adjusted 
  pants and jumped into that feather bed and we rolled around for 
  quite some time as I tried to fill the shoes of her broken 
  appliance. After a while, when we were both tired out, I said 
  that I was going to head back to town to see if I could find the 
  sheriff and see if he knew what was going on. The Widow Fultin 
  said she was coming so we rolled around a little more before I 
  got up to go.

  "Widow," I said as I got out of the bed and staggered over to 
  where I was sure I'd left my pants, "Widow, let's get going."

  "Stop calling me Widow," she said. "It's morbid. Call me Lil."

  It didn't fit so I decided to call her Kari, since she was 
  probably from California where they spelt things funny. She 
  liked it and said that no one ever called her Lil anyway and 
  asked what my name was, so I told her, and she said that it was 
  a nice name but not to worry if she forgot it 'cause she forgot 
  names all the time. While we were doing all this name calling, I 
  still couldn't find my pants, so she lent me a pair of her dead 
  husband's which he had never worn because they were too small 
  for him. I could understand that since I weigh about a hundred 
  and fifty pounds but old man Fultin had been pushing three 
  hundred or so for the last ten years of his life. Borrowing some 
  pants was alright by me since mine were a bit dirty anyway. The 
  pants looked remarkably like my own and when I found a white 
  stone in the pocket I knew something strange was going on, but 
  since Kari was probably from California I decided to let it go 
  for the moment.

  We both managed to get dressed after some more rolling on the 
  floor, which was pretty hard, although not too bad considering 
  it wasn't carpeted. Kari put on a leather bodysuit thing and I 
  asked her if she would be hot since she certainly looked hot. 
  She said, "How could I be hot when I look so cool?"

  She was definitely from California, I decided, but the logic was 
  too much for me to handle after all that rolling around. We went 
  downstairs and outside but it had gotten so hot out that we had 
  to sit on the porch and help each other breathe for a while, 
  after which we took Doc's horse and trotted back to town.

 
  The sheriff's office was right on the edge of town, so we 
  stopped in. The sheriff and the deputy were both sitting there 
  playing rummy and the deputy was winning big from what I could 
  tell.

  "Afternoon, Sheriff," I said, trying to be friendly like, since 
  our sheriff isn't known for his good humor and here he was 
  losing at cards to our deputy who isn't known for his brains.

  "Afternoon," he replied sourly.

  "Cheer up, Sheriff," I said, hoping to get him to stop playing 
  cards and talk to us. "It isn't the end of the world."

  "Boy," he said, because our sheriff talked like that, "Boy, I've 
  just gone and lost two thousand greenbacks to this nitwit here." 
  I gasped because that was a lot of money in this town, 
  especially since the sheriff wasn't our token rich man and also 
  since he cheated at cards. No one had beaten him for more than 
  two hands in a row since anyone could remember and only our 
  deputy was stupid enough to keep playing, which was a good part 
  of the reason he was the deputy 'cause he didn't know too much 
  about being a deputy.

  Our deputy grinned at us and offered to buy us new suits but we 
  declined because Kari was still confused about whether she 
  looked hot or cool and me because I'd just gotten a new pair of 
  pants which fit perfectly and hadn't ever been worn by old man 
  Fultin 'cause they were too small.

  Finally the sheriff said that as far as he was concerned, it was 
  the end of the world because that was the money that he'd been 
  putting by for a rainy day.

  "Sheriff," I said, not trying to make him look stupid, "we live 
  in the desert and we haven't had a rainy day in a god awful long 
  time and even when we do it's not such a big deal as far as 
  money goes unless you've got a bet on with Crazy Cat." Crazy Cat 
  was the local Indian, shopkeeper, and designated representative 
  of the United States Postal Service.

  "Git out and leave me alone with this nitwit until I get my 
  money back," the sheriff said.

  I said as we were leaving, "Sheriff, with the kind of luck 
  you've been having you're gonna die before you win that money 
  back."

  He drew his gun and put a hole in the door next to us for my 
  advice then he sat down and trained the gun on our deputy. "Deal 
  'em," he said to our deputy, who was busy trying to shuffle the 
  cards without dropping them on the floor.

  "Something's definitely wrong here," I said to Kari as we 
  crossed the street to the store. "Everyone's acting weird and I 
  don't know why but I'll bet that someone from California's got 
  something to do with it, probably some damned politician."

  "I'll put twenty bucks on that," said a voice from inside the 
  store. Crazy Cat came out of the store looking like an Indian 
  with feathers and leather and the whole getup.

  "What're you all dressed up for?" I asked, since he was normally 
  pretty mild as far as clothes go. He just stared at Kari and 
  asked me what I was doing going around in old man Fultin's pants 
  with the Widow Fultin on my arm looking like that.

  "Recent Personal Secret," I replied mysteriously and squeezed 
  Kari in a soft spot. "And besides," I said, "she's not the Widow 
  Fultin. Her name's Kari now."

  "Oh," he said, and went back inside. We followed him from lack 
  of anything better to do and sat down on musty pickle barrels 
  under a sign that had the Post Office motto on it, or at least 
  as far as Crazy Cat could remember it, and as far as he had 
  changed it to make it more appropriate for the desert because we 
  didn't get much snow in these parts. It read something like: 
  _neither rain nor heat nor dark nights shall make me not deliver 
  the mail._ Kari muttered something that sounded like _herodotus_ 
  and _appointed rounds_, but I wrote it off as something you said 
  if you were from California.

  All of a sudden Crazy Cat started complaining in this loud voice 
  that he was bored since no one had gotten a real letter since 
  he'd been in charge of this branch of the United States Postal 
  Service. I told him that that wasn't true, since I knew for a 
  fact that the schoolmarm got letters regular-like. Crazy Cat 
  said that she got 'em because she sent 'em to herself, it being 
  in her contract that she had to prove her reading and writing 
  skills to the rest of the town by sending and receiving mail and 
  since she didn't know nobody out of town, like the rest of the 
  people who live here, she had to send letters to herself. I 
  didn't believe him, so he said to go look for myself since she 
  just got a letter without no return address on it, just like 
  hers always were.

  I went back the mailboxes and found the one marked _Schoolmarm_ 
  in the _S_ section, since Crazy Cat was pretty proud of the fact 
  that he knew the entire alphabet and could usually get the 
  letters in the right order so he put a lot of time into 
  alphabetizing all the mailboxes one year. The only problem was 
  that most of the people in the town were a bit like cows--they 
  could always find their box, but once it moved they were 
  completely confused and needed Crazy Cat's expert help and since 
  he didn't know the alphabet quite as well on some days as he did 
  on others he wasn't always much help.

  He was right this time, and there was a letter in the 
  schoolmarm's box. Kari put down whatever she'd been messing with 
  and came back to look at the letter. It wasn't even in a 
  envelope, but was just a folded sheet of paper, so when I picked 
  it up it opened right up. We looked at it since no one much 
  cares about things like that in our town anyway, and we were 
  sure that if anyone had gotten a real letter they would've read 
  it to the whole town at the town meeting which we had on the 
  first Tuesday of March whether or not there was outstanding 
  business to take care of.

  It looked as though the letter had to do with messing around, 
  but Kari said we should go and that she would explain everything 
  in it to me later. She read faster than I do, though I'm one of 
  the faster readers in this town, not that that says too much 
  about me. We walked back up front where Crazy Cat was still 
  complaining, so we told him to go pretend he was a real Indian 
  and do a rain dance or something. He liked the idea, and 
  disappeared behind the counter to look for something he needed 
  for a good rain dance, or so he said. He didn't come out for a 
  while, so we decided to head south for the salt mines and see 
  what was happening out there.


The Desert
----------

  We got on Doc's horse again and started out of town, leaving 
  Crazy Cat whooping it up and jumping up and down in a circle. We 
  hadn't gotten more than a mile or two out when Doc's horse just 
  stopped. Plain and simple. Stopped dead in his tracks and 
  refused to move.

  "Horse," I said, "you got some mule in you?" Then I asked Kari 
  if she knew what the horse's name was, 'cause horses don't 
  respond to being called _Horse_ too often. She said that Doc had 
  never given it a name since he wasn't much into talking to 
  animals anyhow.

  "Great," I said. "We're stuck in the middle of the desert and 
  this horse isn't going nowhere."

  We got off the horse and started walking, since there didn't 
  seem to be much else to do given the particular circumstances 
  that we were in at the moment. The sand and dust was real hot 
  and sorta mushy that far out in the desert and Kari started to 
  look a little green, but she said that she was far too cool to 
  possibly take off some of her clothes. Well, she only stayed 
  that cool for about another ten minutes and then off came the 
  top of that leather thingamabob and she perked right up when the 
  wind hit her skin. I perked right up too, but managed to 
  convince myself that the desert wasn't really a very good place 
  to roll around for a while.

  As we walked the sky started to cloud over which was mighty 
  strange since the weather forecaster guy hadn't said nothing 
  about no rain coming any time soon. We started up a pretty steep 
  hill when the rain started. First there were these little drops 
  which hurt when they hit your skin and which made little puffs 
  of steam when they hit the red-hot sand. Kari pulled her top 
  back on and I pushed myself down again as we reached the middle 
  of the hill. Then the big drops started, and while I don't 
  'specially mind getting wet, I was already wetter than I'd been 
  in a couple a years. It was that sorta rain that just soaks 
  inside of you and keeps soaking in until you feel all juicy like 
  the underside of a rotten tomato. The dust had turned into mud 
  pretty quickly and it was hard going but we figured that we 
  couldn't really go back, since the salt mines were closer than 
  the town and weren't many people left back there anyway. That 
  leather thing had turned out to be sorta waterproof or water 
  resistant anyway, so mainly Kari's hair had gotten soaked by the 
  rain. It musta reached a foot past her rear and mighta been 
  stretching out even more but I couldn't see real well past all 
  those big drops.

  We was trudging along, moving slower and slower as the wet sand 
  got worse, when all of a sudden we ran into a brick wall. It was 
  a wall to a little house, and we stumbled inside pretty quickly 
  since the salt mines were still a piece away and we figured we'd 
  try to wait out the rain since it didn't never rain for real 
  long in this part of the country. It was also starting to get a 
  little dark and we thought that it was probably getting late.

  The house was kinda cozy, actually, and had been set up real 
  nice by someone, maybe Fred the Hermit. He was something of a 
  tall tale that you heard about a lot around midnight on Friday 
  nights down at the saloon when the boys had calmed down from the 
  week and were starting the serious drinking. Someone always 
  brought up Fred the Hermit and though no one really knew much of 
  anything about the man, he sure did get a lot of air time. Some 
  said he was a rich eccentric, down from the city 'cause his 
  relatives were trying to gouge him outa his money. Relatives 
  were always trying to do that in the stories in the saloon, so I 
  never gave that theory much in the way of thought.

  The one I liked was the one some guy who never showed up again 
  told us. He was a sorry looking man, with long hair and a long 
  beard who mighta been Fred the Hermit for all we knew. He said 
  that Fred the Hermit was a normal guy who had been rejected by 
  the gal he loved and it had broken his heart so completely that 
  he decided to just go out into the desert and live out the rest 
  of his days alone and miserable. He would have killed himself, 
  this guy said, but he was a member of the Church of the Holy 
  Lady of the Sorrows of the Second Coming of Christ or something 
  like that so he just moved out in the middle of the desert to 
  live alone for the rest of his life. I never could keep those 
  churches straight and once Miller quit, I gave up even trying 
  since he was the only one who ever knew the difference between 
  them.

  We all sat and listened to the guy and when he finished he paid 
  his tab and just up and left without another word. It were 
  pretty late by that time so I decided to head out and ask Miller 
  about the Church of the Holy Lady of the Sorrows of the Second 
  Coming of Christ, since it sounded a bit weird to me and I was 
  in a questioning sort of mood anyway. I ambled on up to Miller's 
  place and, knocking on the door, went right in 'cause it's that 
  sorta town where we don't worry about it much.

  There was some thumping coming from upstairs, so I set my hat 
  down on a tall pile of garbage and sat for a while, figuring 
  that Miller heard me and would come down any second now. A few 
  little whimpers and final thumps came, which meant that Miller 
  had Sexy Sally over for company since she always sounded like 
  that at the end. And sure enough, a few seconds later Miller 
  clumped down the stairs, sat down on a broken dresser and asked 
  me what was happening.

  I said that I wanted his expertise on a certain matter and he 
  said that it was probably too late for me to convert and I 
  replied that that was all right because all I wanted to know was 
  what was the deal with the Church of the Holy Lady of the 
  Sorrows of the Second Coming of Christ or something like that. 
  He thought a minute and then said, "Oh yeah, them. They's crazy 
  types who thinks that the world's gonna burn up soon but Christ 
  is gonna come down from Heaven or somewhere in a spaceship and 
  save all of them while everyone else burns to a crisp."

  I said that they sounded pretty weird, but was there any reason 
  that they couldn't kill themselves like everyone else who could 
  get away from the law long enough since it's actually illegal to 
  try to kill yourself 'round here and you can be arrested for 
  trying it.

  Miller said, "Yeah, 'cause if you kill yourself then you can't 
  be around when Christ comes to save everyone and he"--Miller 
  didn't much capitalize correctly late at night, especially after 
  Hell froze over and there wasn't any reason to worry about 
  it--"also might not be real pleased if his chosen ones were 
  going and killing themselves over women."

  Right about then Sally stuck her head downstairs and told Miller 
  to get back to bed so he said goodnight and went back upstairs.



  No matter whose house it were, they weren't there. I suppose 
  that did kinda point the finger of suspicion at Fred the Hermit. 
  Kari started to get out of her bodysuit 'cause she said that 
  there wasn't much that was more uncomfortable than wet leather 
  but since it was wet leather it was real hard to pull off so I 
  tried to help and with a lot of pulling we finally got it off. 
  Since it seemed like a better place than out in the desert we 
  rolled around for a while and fell asleep from all the exercise 
  we'd gotten during the day. It musta been pretty late when we 
  fell asleep, because by the time we woke up and Kari explained 
  some of the things in the schoolmarm's letter to me it was light 
  again out even though it was still raining rats and frogs out 
  there so we stayed in for the whole day and the rain never let 
  up.

  Sometime in the afternoon there was a knocking on the door and 
  we went to open it, half expecting Fred the Hermit. But it was 
  only the horse with no name who had decided that he wanted to 
  come with us and stay dry rather than stand out in the middle of 
  nowhere pretending to be an ass. We let him in and made him 
  stand in the corner and behave himself. There was only one room 
  in the little house, but it was big enough for the horse to 
  stand on one side of the fireplace and for us to spread out some 
  blankets we found on shelves on the other side. There were a lot 
  of shelves with provisions on them, as if Fred the Hermit had 
  been expecting something to prevent him from getting more food 
  any time soon. I could see why he left when we had some of the 
  food he'd canned and dried since it wasn't very tasty but Kari 
  managed to make it into something funny sounding that was 
  downright good. After we had explored everything inside we found 
  a little door that led out back, where there was a lean-to with 
  a buncha wood in it, which was surprising since there wasn't 
  that much wood in these parts anytime, but I guess Fred the 
  Hermit had found some somewhere around.

  The rain went on for a long time, but we had plenty of food in 
  that house and when we looked around some more we even found a 
  bin of oats which the horse refused to eat at first but after a 
  few days started to like. I was worried at first that the mud 
  bricks in the walls would fall apart in all the rain, but Fred 
  musta been better at building houses than he was at canning food 
  since the walls were fine and there was only one leak in the 
  roof. That leak worked out pretty well since we just put a pot 
  under it and got clean water whenever we wanted it.

  We didn't do too much since neither of us were real big on doing 
  things all the time but we did spend a lot time rolling around 
  that little house and after a while Kari said that she was 
  probably expecting sometime. It made sense that she would be and 
  I was pretty fond of her by now so we were both happy and she 
  still wanted to roll around all day even if she was expecting so 
  we didn't bother with much else. The rain was getting kind of 
  boring, but there wasn't much we could do about it and Kari said 
  that she had a sister who lived in Seattle where it was like 
  this all the time but people there didn't even notice it but 
  just put on waterproof clothes and just walked about as though 
  there was nothing happening at all. I couldn't really see how 
  anyone could not notice rain like this all the time but I 
  figured that Kari ought to know since it was her sister and all.

  One day we woke up and got out of bed, if you could call it that 
  since all it really was was a pile of blankets we'd put on the 
  floor on the other side of the house from the horse, who snorted 
  in his sleep and would keep us awake if we were next to him. The 
  sun was shining in real bright and since we hadn't seen that in 
  a long time we immediately went outside to see what had changed. 
  We hadn't been outside for quite a while 'cause there was an 
  outhouse attached to the back of the house next to the lean-to 
  and there just hadn't been any other reason to bother. But 
  anyway it was sure a sight to see and smell 'cause there was 
  water as far as we could see. Kari said that it smelled like the 
  sea and then she tasted it and said that it tasted just like the 
  sea and then I knew she had to be from California, but it didn't 
  matter any more I guess our house was on about the highest point 
  around and our town was pretty high too, so everything else 
  around had filled up with water.

  Kari muttered something that sounded like _baucis_ and said that 
  she thought it was salty 'cause of the salt mines nearby and she 
  was glad we had stopped to check the mail 'cause otherwise we 
  might have made it to the salt mines and drowned with the rest 
  of 'em. I said it was probably the horse that had saved us by 
  acting like a mule and that drowning in the desert had to be a 
  bad way to go. She said that Fred the Hermit might've gotten 
  picked up by Christ but he sure was wrong about the fire since 
  there weren't too many fires that lasted through that kinda 
  rain.

  Then she threw off her clothes since she'd gotten better at 
  getting the leather thing off and it had loosed up too and she 
  jumped right in before I could grab her and started swimming 
  around. She tried to get me in but I never did learn how to swim 
  from lack of water and wasn't gonna just jump in without getting 
  at least a couple of pointers. She came back out and we rolled 
  around for a while until we were tired and then we just sat for 
  a bit and looked out over the sea we'd suddenly gotten.

  I said that I thought everything was gonna turn out just fine 
  since we had each other and the horse and a hell of a lot of 
  oats left over, and it probably wasn't salt water everywhere and 
  everyone was being weird anyway, and Kari said that she always 
  knew it was gonna be all right.


  Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com)
---------------------------------

  Adam C. Engst is the editor of _TidBITS_, a free weekly 
  newsletter focusing on the Macintosh and electronic 
  communications. He lives in Renton, Washington, with his wife 
  Tonya and cats Tasha and Cubbins. Not content to be mildy busy, 
  he writes books about the Internet, including _Internet Starter 
  Kit for Macintosh_ (Hayden Books, 1993).
  
  
  Need to Know: A Real-Life Movie Murder Mystery
================================================

  At the age of 49, William Desmond Taylor was at the top. It was 
  1922, and Taylor was one of Paramount Pictures' best directors. 
  He had been president of the Motion Picture Directors 
  Association for three years. And then, one night in February, 
  Taylor was dead--shot to death in his home.

  The killers were never found, though the newspapers of the time 
  were certainly filled with possible suspects, from Irish 
  nationalists to drug gangsters to the Ku Klux Klan. But even 
  though the case was never solved, Taylor's murder and the 
  resulting spotlight that was shined on Hollywood changed the 
  image of the film industry forever.

  Seventy-two years later, the mystery of Taylor's death isn't a 
  dead issue. The study of Taylor's life and death is alive and 
  well on the Internet, through a year-old electronic newsletter 
  appropriately titled _Taylorology_.

  The creator and editor of _Taylorology_, Bruce Long, isn't a 
  motion picture historian. In fact, he's not a historian at 
  all--he's a computer programmer at Arizona State University. 
  Long became interested in Taylor by watching silent films on his 
  8mm movie camera. Fascinated by the films produced by early 
  Hollywood, he began reading about the history of the film 
  industry.

  Looming large was the Taylor murder, a crime that rocked 
  Hollywood. Anti-Hollywood sentiment was never higher than in the 
  months after the Taylor murder, as the papers exposed the 
  private lives of the stars, directors and producers who brought 
  entertainment to the world.

  Long's research into Taylor's murder resulted in a book, 
  _William Desmond Taylor: A Dossier_ (Scarecrow Press, 1991). He 
  also wrote another book-length manuscript on the world of 
  Taylor, _The Humor of a Hollywood Murder_, but couldn't find a 
  publisher. Enter the Internet and _Taylorology_.

  "Serializing that book in _Taylorology_ was a way for me to 
  publish that book for free," Long says. "Of course I get no 
  money from it, but the main thing is to put the information out 
  there and make it available to the public."

  Long's goal is to provide as much material about the case as 
  possible, so that when a future historian is researching the 
  Taylor case, that person won't just have the 
  conventionally-published books on the subject as resources. 
  They'll also have _Taylorology_.

  _Taylorology_ doesn't spend much time on the fundamentals of the 
  Taylor case, a must for new readers who are interested in the 
  material. Within the first 11 issues of the e-zine (894K of 
  ASCII text), there should've been room for a brief primer on 
  Taylor and the basics of the case. But even without such a 
  primer, _Taylorology_ is both a history lesson and a fun read. 
  The serialized _Humor of a Hollywood Murder_, which takes up 
  issues 4-11 of _Taylorology_ (issues 1-3 were printed by Long a 
  decade ago), is a funny collection of press accounts of the 
  Taylor case and of '20s Hollywood. ("The leprous colony at 
  Hollywood will not be reformed and consequently will have to be 
  destroyed," wrote one paper.) It's a fascinating look at early 
  20th century film and journalism, and sometimes it's painfully 
  obvious that we haven't changed very much in all this time.

  --Jason Snell

  Where to find _Taylorology_
-----------------------------

  The electronic issues of _Taylorology_ can be accesed via FTP or 
  Gopher at ftp.etext.org in /pub/Zines/Taylorology. New issues 
  also appear on the Usenet newsgroup alt.true-crime.

  Bruce Long can be reached at bruce@asu.edu.


  FYI
=====

..................................................................
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