Written by Mel Reichler Copyright 2002
The Collected Stories :
Here’s a puzzle for you. How did a programmer, a damn good one,
but one who spent her working day doing the dirtiest job in computers, the job
that everyone hated — the dirty, grimy, work programming organics — how did she
end up on the prowl in
Money hasn’t been a problem. It won’t ever be. I can always pick up a job. There is always some start up looking for someone to program organics. It’s a dirty job, one of the few programming jobs that isn’t automated. It’s still hand labor, excruciating, precise, taxing. You actually have to pay attention to what you are doing. But I won’t have to.
Whenever we run low, we rent a loft for a month and he paints seriously and we leave the canvases in the sun for a few days, then I call someone on a list of people I have who are interested enough in art not to ask to many questions--although they are busting to know--and I ask them if they are interested in a genuine Rembrandt. I never have to call more than one or two names on the list.
I hint that they are hot, stolen from a Dutch gillionaire who kept it out of sight for five centuries. One look is enough to tell them it is the genuine article and they don’t care from where or how. They are beautiful canvases. He still is able to paint in his old style. I don’t know how long that will last. New images are creeping in and if I can’t keep them out we will be in trouble. I’ve salted a lot away so even if he loses touch with himself, with the old him, we should live comfortably for a long time.
So you are asking yourself how a programmer, even the best, and
someone who’s pretty, some say even beautiful--he says it all the time--ended
up with Rembrandt as a husband. We did get married. It was in
There was nothing they could do about it. After a month they stopped hiring people to follow us. I guess they realized we were not going to cause them trouble. Like I told them, it was not in our interest to make trouble. It would just mean trouble for us too. Of course it would mean more trouble for them. They would have to explain how they bypassed the doomsday device attached to the time machine and explain that they had kidnaped Rembrandt and entered him as a machine fraudulently in the Rembrandt competition. Their funding would dry up completely. So they gave up having us followed and made their peace with us--at a distance. It was their fault.
I guess I should start at the beginning or more or less the beginning. Because the real beginning would be too far back and I really don’t know much about some of it. My piece of it I know very, very well.
So lets say the beginning was that I was looking for a husband. I had been for a while. Thirty-three was the average age of marriage for women last year and I was coming up on it soon. I wanted a husband. I’m not sure why. I wanted one. After the cloning laws were modified in 2036, marriage fell out of style. Sex was still in style big time, a lot of virtual, bot assisted sex. And among couples. But marriage just didn’t fit well into the virtual life styles that most people lived. I still wanted to get married. I even thought of children the old-fashioned way. But that’s for a little later.
All of the single people I knew were programmers and most of them weren’t interested in marriage and I wasn’t interested in the one or two who were. I was looking for a man, a husband. That was one of the beginnings. I was a programmer for Webtek. I worked on organics although not by choice. It was dirty work Hand assembly. That was the easy part. The hard work--you tore your hair out on the hard parts. Organics were plants mostly that were grown to compute. They grew big when they were fully expressed. And you felt like their mother most of the time with a kid permanently in the terrible twos, discovering their independence and not wanting to follow the template, and you snipped, which broke your heart and didn’t do them much good either.
I was trained. I got a string of degrees in computing and biology when degrees stopped counting much anymore. It was just when organics were beginning, the early 20’s I guess. Applied computing was my business and art was my avocation--more than a hobby, less than a job. I was always interested in art but never professionally. My father was an artist. It was worse work than programming organics. He was a virtual worlds designer, specializing in fractals. I got the taste of art from him. My mother was a programmer like me. But not organics, they came later.
I had to illustrate the work I do or did. Mostly with a Knuth camera, of course, because you needed the underlying images of the structures. But since I liked art, sometimes I did drawings. The higher ups liked them. I had a couple hung in the executive offices. Decorations.
I worked for Webtek, programing organics. I was nearly the chief programmer because the person who held the title of chief programmer was also the chief stockholder’s son. So I was chief programmer more or less. It wasn’t programming though that got me into this mess. I’m not sure why they picked me. Because I’m a woman I guess and about his age. Because of my interest in art. Because who knows why.
Anyway, one day in the middle of one of the critical phase of programing this organic I get a call. It was from someone I didn’t know. A woman, high up, a VP. When I am deep in programming an organic I don’t answer the phone. But she had this override and broke through so the fact that I didn’t pick up the phone didn’t make any difference at all. Her voice came over the speaker even though I didn’t pick up. “I know you are there,” she said. “Answer the phone.” Just picking up the phone cost me a week’s worth of work.
“I want to see you in two minutes,” she says. She gives me directions to an office.
“If I leave now, you can kiss this organic goodbye,” I said.
“Kiss it goodby,” she said. She gave me an authorization number and I dumped the template and the matrix. It cost them a pretty penny to dump that matrix. If I had screwed up that way I would have been fired. No questions, no excuses.
Her office was deep in a maze of offices which meant trouble. It was worse. There was no name on the door only a title: VP Special Problems. She was one of those people who don’t see people normally only send them hyper-notes and orders. That much was clear to me.
“We have a problem,” she said when I walked in the door,”a real problem.”
“What’s it have to do with me?” I asked.
“You are our solution or as near to a solution as I can come. What do you know about the Rembrandt competition?” she asked.
I knew what everyone knew. “It’s a major event, a lot of television time. Like the Worldbowl. Every five years there’s a competition between computer companies. Robots, carrying the latest miniframe, dressed as Rembrandt, are assigned some subject that the real Rembrandt painted and they compete to see who can paint closest to the Master’s style and technique. The prize isn’t much, two million or so. But the winning company gets government funds to commercialize the machines. It always seemed like a boondoggle to me.”
“Essentially correct,” she said. “You left out a few details that are relevant. The android painters are given a subject that Rembrandt has painted. It is kept secret until the day of the competition. But the subject has a variation assigned also. A modern variation. Last time it was a skateboarder in a wheat field. We have someone on the inside, on the monitoring committee. This year the subject is a portrait of Saskia. The variation is a picture of pac-man reflected on a vase.”
“What’s pac-man?” I asked.
“An ancient computer game,” she said. “You’re right, the prize isn’t worth shit,” she continued,”but the funds the government puts behind the company that wins is enormous. And the publicity is worth more. Now what do you know about Webtek?”
“I work here. It’s not a bad company...It pays above average...”
She looked disgusted and interrupted me. “Let me fill you in what you need to know to make sense out of things.”
“What things?” I asked.
“Things,” she said. “Don’t interrupt.”
“Webtek is in trouble. Most of our funding comes from the military. They’ve been holding it up. Not them, but congress because...”
“Because?”
“Because of a project that we were involved in. A weapon systems that went sour.”
“I don’t work on weapons,” I said. “I work...”
“It doesn’t matter what you work on. The company is in trouble. We thought that if we won, the Rembrandt competition the funding would open up.”
“So,” I said.
“We put together a machine. Miniaturization was never our strong suit. Heavy and big is what we do best. Anyway, corporate intelligence said the machine we developed couldn’t win. They had information that the Informatic that TFM developed would trounce us. The probability was 72% of a trouncing. We couldn’t take the risk.”
I couldn’t see where she was going. “What does this have to do with me?”
“The board panicked. The Rembrandt competition was the only way out of our difficulties that they saw. They panicked.”
“So.”
“So they kidnaped Rembrandt.”
I thought she was using some corporatespeak that I didn’t understand.
“They kidnaped Rembrandt,” I repeated.
“They kidnaped him,” she said. Her face was ashen. It was the first sign of life I saw in her. I got frightened.
“He’s been dead for a long time.” I didn’t know how long exactly but I knew it was a long time.
“Five centuries,” she said.
“How?”
“You don’t want to know the details.”
“A time machine?”
“More or less,” she said. “Very hush, hush, even within the company.”
“I’ve never heard...”
“Why should you have heard?” she snapped. “It was a dark, virtual project. It doesn’t matter. There was one. They developed it as part of a project to handle waste disposal. Work on it was forbidden. There was a doomsday device attached to it.”
“A doomsday device?”
“It’s a device that activates messages to intelligence and overseer committees if any part of the technology is used.”
“So,” I said. I couldn’t see where she was going.
“As I said the board, or some, of them panicked. They bypassed the doomsday device and used it to drag Rembrandt back. They said it was an accident. I don’t believe it for a moment.”
“But Rembrandt is well known. He painted...”
“They sent back the android that was going to be entered in the
competition. It had instructions to say that it was traveling to
I still did not see the point. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“They want Rembrandt to compete in the Rembrandt competition.”
“The Rembrandt competition is for androids,” I said.
“It’s for androids that look like Rembrandt,” she said.
Then the light went on. “You want him to pretend to be a machine and paint in the competition.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked.
“You are going to convince him to do it, then coach him.”
“That’s it,” I said.
“That’s it,” she said. “Simple. When he came, he was completely unmanageable. We had to sedate him. We also stuck a translator in him. Portable, very small and advanced. When he wakes up, he will speak and understand English. If you need anything, we’ve assigned you an account. Here is a bank card. It has a limit but you won’t hit it, I’m sure. If you need anything else, call this number.” She handed me a card with a project and a communication number on it. “I’ll have someone take you to him. The competition is in five days.”
“Five days,” I said,”what about programming organics?”
“Until the competition is over, your only concern is Rembrandt. Afterwards There’ll be a promotion and a raise, a key to the executive’s club and if you want, another job--if he wins.” Then she dismissed me.
A guard was waiting for me at the door of her office. “You’re going to manage him? He’s a pisser. He’s confused and angry.”
I’d bet he was. One minute painting in his studio the next somewhere antiseptic and the light artificial and all different. Artists notice light. The guard led me to a room in the basement. It looked like a hospital. “He’s in there,” the guard said, there was a smirk on his face I did not like. But he walked away before I could ask him about it.
I opened the door. There was Rembrandt. He was asleep on a bed and he was naked. I guess I blushed. There was another guard dressed in a hospital gown sitting in a chair.
“Do you want me to wake him?”
“No, not yet.” I looked him over. Nice. Not handsome in any traditional way. His nose was too big and his hair was wild.
“I’ll need some information about him, before I meet him,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” I said, and left. As I was going, the guard handed me an identification card. “It’s an ID for this wing. You need a special clearance. Stick it in one of the information modules and it will give you directions for getting here, otherwise you have to call security. You’ll never find it on your own.”
When I left, I used one of the communicators to call the number on the card the VP of special problems had given me. I got an efficient sounding voice. Efficient. You know, you can tell.
“I need a good biography of Rembrandt and a book of the pictures that he’s painted. And I need them fast.” I gave the voice the number of my office. “And I need a suite, two suites on the grounds. One of them is for me. I can’t commute between Webtek and home. The other one is for him...someone else. One of the rooms has to be an artist’s studio, or as much of one as you can assemble quickly. Something with natural light that has a window which faces trees. Is that a problem?” I asked.
“No,” the voice said,”no problem. The books immediately. The other stuff, two hours, max.” Like I said, efficient.
I spent the two hours in my lab with the carcass of the organic pouring over the biography and the pictures. It was clear that Rembrandt was in his early thirties. So there were a lot of paintings he would do in his future that he knew nothing about. He had not met Saskia yet so the subject he would have to paint would be a mystery to him. He would have to study the pictures and copy himself. That might be as much of a problem as the pac-man which he wouldn’t know anything about either.
After I brushed up on his background, I used the ID to make my way to the basement again. Without the card there would have been no way I could have found it.
“Wake him up,” I said, to the attendant.”But before you do put a robe or something on him. I’ll wait outside. Call me when he’s up.”
They didn’t have to call me. After 15 minutes or so a yelling started and didn’t stop.
An attendant put his head out. “He’s yours,” he said. “Do you want me to stay?” I could see he was a little concerned.
“No,” I said.
When I went into the room, Rembrandt was pacing and screaming. He shifted his look to me. Then he started yelling again. His voice was strong and clear, with a slight guttural twinge to it. But the language that came out was hot tempered and foul.
“Shit. What’s going on? Can you tell me madame what is going on? It is enough to make you crazy. Where am I? I asked that stupid piece of shit, but he refused to answer. He said that you might tell me. Madame, I demand to know what has happened, where am I ?”
“Calm down,” I said. “What should I call you?”
“My name is Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.” The name came out buzzing and he seemed
uncomfortable with how it sounded. “I am a painter from
“My name is Emily, Emily Strayte” I said. I smiled by best smile.
“Can you tell me what I am doing here?” he said. “I insist on knowing. The last I remember I had just come back from sketching in the field. I walked into my studio. Then suddenly there was a...I do not know what to call it and then suddenly I was here or somewhere like this. Have I gone insane madame, am I in the devil’s hands? Where am I madame? You must tell me before I go crazy. Inside the room there is light but there are no candles or windows. It is very strange. It makes no sense.”
“First, stop calling me madame. Relax,” I said,”sit down.”
“No, damn it, I won’t. I won’t sit down and I won’t relax. Am I a prisoner?”
“You are a guest. Mr. van Rijn. An honored guest. Think about it that way.”
“Where is my studio? Where is
“Sit down,” I said. I said it like an order. It dawned on me that deference was not what Rembrandt needed nor would it be helpful. “Sit down and I’ll tell you what I know.”
He sank into the chair.
“You are not in
“
“No you are somewhere else. What I am going to tell you will not make a lot of sense.”
He put his hands together and pushed the thumbs against one another and kneaded his palm. “I would like...paper and charcoal.”
Before I left the lab, I stuck a pad and things in a bag. I dragged out the pad and gave him a laser pen and a couple of latent markers.
“What are these?” he asked.
“Things to draw with.” I let him fumble around with a marker for a moment then took off the cap and drew it along the sheet of paper. I set the switch on the marker to spontaneous.
“I see,” he said, testing out the nib.
“You are in the future,” I said as he held up the pad.
“I am afraid I don’t understand,” he said. “The future.”
“You have been carried by a device that I cannot explain to you
because I do not understand anything about it myself, from
“The light is different,” he said and this--where is the ink? It doesn’t make any sense. Why. Did I do something evil?”
“No.”
“Why me? Did I anger a prince?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “It has nothing to do with princes. You have not angered...”
He jammed the marker against the paper then threw them both into the air and jumped up. “Why then this insanity? Why have...?”
“Nothing you did except painting. You are famous here, respected.” I got this idea. “Think of a trading company. A large trading company. A trading company that deals with goods from all over the world,” I said. “You had something they wanted. They took it.” If trading companies in his time were like modern corporations he would know what I meant.
“What would I have that a trading company would want? Spices...?”
“Your talent, your skill. They wanted your ability.”
“Why could they not offer a commission? I would have...”
“ They didn’t want a painting, they wanted...” I struggled to put the situation into words. “They needed you to paint for them here and now, not a painting. They wanted you to paint for them, in a competition.”
“It does not make sense,” he repeated.
“You’re right,” I said. “But that is what they wanted. This is not your time. It is in the future a long time after...”
“After what?”
“After you finished painting. You are famous here. Everyone knows Rembrandt.”
“I knew it. I knew it would come. If I had moved to
“In this time and place,” I interrupted.
“What do they want?” he asked.
“I thought I explained it,” I said. “There is a competition.”
“Among painters.”
“Among things that paint,” I said, so later he could not say I lied to him. “The competition is called the Rembrandt competition,” she said.
He thought about it for a moment. “They are commissioned to paint...”
“The way you painted. There is a prize that goes to trading company whose painter comes closest to your style, your sensibility.”
“If they want my paintings why don’t they commission me. I...”
“No,” I said. “It is different. In this time there are wondrous machines, devices that I am afraid will seem magical to you.”
“They can paint.”
He sat down “It is hell. Bosch’s vision was correct. Devices, mechanisms...”
I did not know what to say. “They are quite different,” I insisted. “Machines. Very skilled. “
“What do they need me for?” he asked. “Why was I hijacked?”
“It is complicated,” I insisted. He picked up the pad and an ancient pencil and stared at me. “What do they need me for? If the trading company sponsors the competition, they certainly do not need me.”
“It is not sponsoring the competition. It is a participant, a contestant.”
“So why do they need me if they have machines,” he wanted to know.
“This company does not have a machine that can compete.”
“So...”
“It wanted you, so that you could compete.”
“I...compete in a competition to make a painting in my style.”
“Yes.”
He sat for a moment. “It is completely insane.”
“I agree with you, but it is the explanation.”
“But if the competition is for machines.”
“They want you to pretend...”
“...to be a machine.”
“...that paints...”
“...a picture, a Rembrandt.”
He griped the pad and stared at her. His hand moved more rapidly over the surface. There was a panic in his voice. “It is lunacy.”
“Then they will take you back. To your studio, to
“If I paint in this competition?”
“That is it mostly,” I concluded. “The basics. There are a lot of details. But...”
“I must think about it,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Perhaps you would like to rest for a while. Then we could continue our conversation.” I took the pad gently from his hand. He had done a quick sketch of me.
“It is beautiful. Can I have it?” I asked.
“Of course. These are strange tools. May I...?”
“Of course,” I said. “A fair trade.” It wasn’t, but it was as good as he was going to get. “Later I will get you what you need and maybe we can set up a studio next door if you wish.” I thought instead of telling him there was a studio, I could use it, as a bribe, later.
“I am tired,” he said. “I would like to sleep,” he added as he collapsed on the bed.
“I’ll see you in a little while,” I said as I tiptoed out the door.
I asked the guard where my rooms were and he pointed to a door a little down the hallway. “The first door is an entrance to his studio. There’s a connecting door in his suite also.” I made my way to my digs. They were O.K., nicer than my apartment but I knew better than to get used to them.
I sat down and tried to come up with a game plan. As far as I could see there were a couple of problems. One of them was Saskia. He would have to paint a portrait of someone he hadn’t met yet. The second was the variation, the pac-man. The third was him. He seemed to get the picture of what was going on, a little slowly, but he got it. But I had the sense that he was going to be trouble. He wasn’t what I thought he’d be. Temperamental, I expected. But he was crude and simple in a way that I had not expected from the paintings. Of course six hundred years of being famous are likely to put a smooth skin on anyone. Paintings and drawings are tangible. The person who painted them is a cipher, a null, even when they are alive, most likely. Biographies are likely to twist around the person around and blow them up and smooth them out so that they fit the size of the pictures.
A few hours later the guard knocked on my door. “He’s making trouble again. Throwing things around.”
I went in.
“Calm down,” I said.
He tossed a pad at me.
“What’s the matter?” I yelled at the guard to get us something to eat. “Hamburgers, chicken, franks, spun food.” He was glad to be able to get away.
“If you don’t calm down, I’ll have them come and knock you out again. What’s the matter?” I asked. He didn’t say anything.
I picked up the pad. It was a complete mess. It dawned on me he had no idea about how to use latent markers and laser pens,
“Ok. Let me show you how to use these things,” I said. “I may not know about all of them but let me try.”
“Are you an artist?” he asked.
“Not really, but I know how to use these things.” I showed him how to use them, one after the other until the food came.
“You’re pressing too hard. For most of these things pushing doesn’t change anything. It’s not like a quill, or something out of bamboo.”
When the food came I could see that he was really hungry. I had to send out for another order of hamburgers. He seemed to have a taste for them. I preferred the chicken and the spun stuff.
“If you eat too much you are going to get sick,” I said.
“Don’t worry I can eat a lot of anything,” he said. I think he could.
After we finished eating, I thought about introducing him to television and decided to put it off for a while. There was no point in making waves faster than he could learn to float on them.
“I would like to draw you,” he said.
I was flattered. Of course, there was no one else around. He was handsome if you looked at him the right way. He was single. He was attractive.
He posed me in a number of ways and I liked the drawings. He was getting the hang of markers and laser pens.
“Now,” he said,”could you loosen...drop your...”
“You mean show you...”
“Yes,” he said. “I would...”
“I’ll be you would,” I said. But I unbuttoned my blouse and let it drop off my shoulder exposing my breast.
I could see that he liked what he saw.
He turned me a little sideways and went at drawing. “This doesn’t mean anything,” I said.
“Still,” he said. I held still.
“It’s time to quit,” I told him when I got tired. “Tomorrow’s another day.” I buttoned up.
“Tomorrow.”
“Yes, I thought you would like to see where you are. The big city.” It was half an hour from Webtek.
“Are there stores? I would like to shop a little. Can I?”
I would have thought he would have wanted to go to a museum, or a lecture, or look at modern technology. I remember reading in the biography that he liked to collect things. “I was thinking of a museum,” I suggested.
“Of course,” he said. “But if there are markets...”
He got up and moved closer to me. “Ok,” he said “where are you...?”
“I have an apartment next door. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I went into my apartment singing. I liked him, crude though he was. I liked his smell, I liked the way he looked at me.
The next day. We had breakfast in his rooms. His appetite was gargantuan. I turned over in my mind whether I should show him television before or after we went out. He decided the question. “What is that?” he asked pointing to the communication entertainment module in the corner.
“TV,” I said. “Pictures, images, stories, events.”
“How does it work?” he wanted to know. Well we were going to watch television before we went out. It killed the day. It took him an hour to master the voice controlled dialing system. Once he mastered that he was gone. “Do you want to draw me again?” I asked. “Later,” he said.
He watched everything and anything but he liked the shopping networks best. “Can I order things?”
“Yes,” I said. I had the bank card.
“That,” he said after watching a while.
“It’s a rod for fishing. We aren’t going to go fishing.”
“You can’t tell,” he said,”I want it.” I placed the order.
“When will I get it?”
“In a few hours,” I said.
“That,” he said after a few minutes. It was a set of plates. He kept seeing things he wanted. Anything flashy, gaudy, anything that caught your attention. He kept ordering until I said “Stop. Enough.”
He sulked a while then went back to watching ordinary TV.
“It’s getting late in a little while it will be too late to go into the city.”
“We can go tomorrow,” he said. He fell asleep switching between
the Bonny and
I’m not going to bore you with the next four days. I got him some jeans and sweat shirts and I forced him out of Webtek, which he called ‘The Trading company.’ He liked to walk around looking at things. He sketched all of the time, everywhere, no matter what we were doing. But most of the time we shopped. He loved buying things. I went back and checked in his biography. He had gone bust in his own time. I could see why. We went to the zoo, visited the observation tower of the Usahara building. We went to the movies--even a simulation of the old fashioned kind--three times. I even forced him to go to the museum. They had a collection of Rembrandts, the real things, not replicates, and he was interested in those, although he talked mostly about how much the canvas cost and how much trouble he had getting the people he was painting to sit still. And he claimed that one of the paintings was a fake. “I never did it,” he insisted. “It’s that damn Dou. How could they mistake that piece of crap for a real Rembrandt? “
His didn’t show much of an interest in the artists who had come after him. “I don’t understand them,” he complained. What are they trying to do? Blobs and lickings. A lot of it doesn’t make any sense.” But I noticed a few of the more modern artists caught his attention. He rushed through though. The only things he really wanted to spend time with were the holographic installations, the virtual reality constructions.”
“Aren’t you interested in art, in the art that came after you?” I asked.
“Some of it is interesting, most of it is junk. What are they struggling with? It’s emotions that make a difference,” he said. “Emotions.”
And he bought more things. He had an unbelievable appetite for buying things. When we got back to Webtek I went with him back to his rooms. I was sitting, trying to figure things out when I got a call from the Special Problems VP. “He’s maxed the card out,” she complained.
“He likes to buy things,” I said. “You can return them after you send him back.” She whined a bit but doubled the limit. “How is it going?” she asked.
“It’s going, but it’s not quite what I expected,” I said.
“Remember, win,” she said and hung up.
I turned to him. He was playing with a train set he had bought. I put my foot down. “Are you ready for the competition?” I asked. “It’s tomorrow.”
“More or less.”
“Can you paint a Saskia or not?” I wanted to know.
“I can ad lib it,” he said.
And a pac-man reflected...”
“What’s a pac-man,” he asks.
“There’s a data base of pictures,” I said “on the television.” I called up all of the paintings and sketches of Saskia he had done. I want you to study them. And pac-man.” I told the computer to download an early, authentic version of pac-man. “We don’t eat or go out until you ve gone though the lot. Understand.” He was not happy but he understood. “I am going next door, knock on my door when you’re done.”
It was two hours before he knocked on the door. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“Did you look at the paintings and the pac-man. He nodded. We went into his studio and I ordered us something to eat. “What do you think?” I said.
“The pac-man is no problem. But Saskia.” He pointed to the wall. He had done a series of sketches based on his paintings and sketches. “I cannot get it right, the feelings,” he said. “I do not know her,” he complained.
“You will marry her in a year or so,” I said.
“Maybe, but now, I do not know her.” He was right, of course.
The food came and we watched television while we ate. After we were done, he asked me to pose for him again. “Just the face to start with,” he said. After a few sketches he asked me to drop the blouse and after a few more he said,”would you take the rest of your clothes off. I would like to draw you paint you naked.”
“But in the paintings you did of Saskia she has her clothes on.”
“Yes,” he said. “But the woman I knew in a different way, I felt in a different way. I can tell.”
“Naked,” I said. “I....”
“Don’t be uncomfortable,” he said. “I am Rembrandt.” He didn’t say it with a smirk or anything, just as a matter of fact.
“Rembrandt or not, it’s not the most comfortable thing, standing around naked with a man looking at you.” I undressed. He told me to sit down on the couch and relax and he moved me until he had me the way he wanted to see me. I sat there for what seemed like hours. A couple of times he told me to relax and went on painting. I guess he was filling in spots. I must have dozed off because the next thing I remember was he was bending over me. I could see the painting over his shoulder as he leaned down. It was beautiful, not Saskia, the body wasn’t Saskia’s it was mine, and face was mine too.
“You fell asleep,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He put his hand on my face. “If you want to sleep, sleep but with me,” he said. “Stay the night.”
“I ...”
I looked at the painting again. He had nailed me already. He had seen me, all of me, not the nakedness only but my soul, where I was. I liked the smell of him, the taste of him when we kissed. “Why not,” I said. “You’re Rembrandt.”
The next morning the phone woke us up. It was the VP for special problems. “Enjoy yourself,” she asked.
“I certainly did,” I said. “So did he.”
“I’m sending a car. It will pick you up at the gate in 45 minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.
I rolled over on him. He was a sound sleeper and he looked content.
“Time to get up,” I said,”the competition.” He seemed glad to see me.
“You should eat something,” I said. I threw on a robe. I was disheveled but I was still glowing from our night together.
“I cannot. I am going to sketch,” he said.
“You should have something. “
“Some coffee,” and he was gone into his studio.
“It’s time to go,” I said knocking.
“A minute.” But it was close to a quarter of an hour before he was ready.
In the car that took us to the site of the Rembrandt competition I tried to calm him down.
“How do I imitate a machine?” he asked, as the Webtek car pulled up to the building in which the competition was held.
“You move slowly. When you are not painting, you stand still. Don’t fidget. You’re going to wear this.” I said and put an earphone in his ear. “It’s invisible.”
“It itches,” he complained.
“In the medallion around your neck there is a microphone--there is a device--that will let me hear you when you speak. But you should not talk too much because most of the androids--the painters--will not be talking at all. The event is televised,” I added. “It is shown on the machine that you watched the pictures on in your studio. Everyone will see you.”
“But they will think I am a machine.”
“The price of fame,” was the best I could respond.
“How can I...?”
“Paint, that is what you do, that is all you can do.”
“But how do I imitate a machine painting.”
“You paint. You are Rembrandt. Do not worry. Only, be still. Especially at the end, after the buzzer sounds. Be still.”
“I do not like these clothes anymore. They do not look natural.” They had dressed him in the clothes he had come through the machine with. “I have gotten used to jeans and a sweatshirt.”
“Yes,” I answered,”but all of the contestants, all of the machines will be dressed in clothing that appear in the pictures you painted. We are going to push you in on a chair with wheels.”
“I would prefer to walk,” he said.
“I know you would. But walking is out. You look too natural. It will call attention to you. Most of the painting robots will come into the hall in boxes. The chair is the best we could do. Remember it will be very light at first. The lights are for television. Later the lights will dim. But there will be a spotlight--a bright light--that will shine occasionally on your painting. Do not be disturbed by it. At some point I will have to leave you alone. I and everyone who are not a Rembrandt will have to leave the painting arena. Then a gong will sound and you will begin painting. Then after three hours the gong will sound again and you must stop painting. I will come back onto the arena. Then the paintings will be judged and the winner announced.”
“So quickly.”
“The competition is supervised by people called monitors. They will also judge the paintings and decide the winner. Don’t get spooked if men walked up to you while you are painting and look at the picture.” I could see he was not happy about it. “It will not take them long after the gong to make a judgment.”
“Why are there gongs” he asked,”if the Rembrandts are machines?”
“It is not really for the machines. The event is a spectacle. The gongs and lights are trappings for the audience who is watching.”
“On television?”
“On television,” I said. “Are you ready?”
“I am ready,” he said but he did not sound convincing. “I have an idea,” he said. “Put something over my head. The darkness will calm me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. The idea was a little bizarre but it made sense in a way. He nodded. I looked around for a rag but there were none. The best I could come up with was a box that held tools that I brought along as props to complete the illusion that he was a machine. I dumped the contents out on the seat.
The van pulled up at the entrance. “Into the chair,” I said. “Remember, act natural. It will be fine.” I put the box over his head and got behind the chair and pushed.
As we entered the room, I could see him squirming, trying to peek out from under the box. Most of the other machines had been unpacked and were standing around in maintenance mode.
“Face forward. I’ll take the box off and move you around so that you can see.” I swung the chair around so that he could get a full view of the competition room. There were eleven Rembrandts standing around in maintenance mode before eleven easels. The room was flooded with light.
I saw he was surprised and a little bit afraid. “Don’t look to long or stare. Remember you are a machine.”
“I am not a machine.”
“You’ve got to pretend.”
“They look more like me than I do,” he whispered. Some of them he recognized from paintings on television and in the museum. Most of them were older versions of him.
“They are dressed...”
“In costumes taken from your paintings mostly.” His was the plainest clothing in the room.
“There are so many of them, of me.”
“Remember,” I said,”when the competition begins I must leave the arena. I will be close. You must not look for me.” I fumbled around with the equipment they had brought from Webtek. It was functionless but the illusion needed to be maintained. Rembrandt fidgeted. “Still,” I commanded. “They are almost ready to begin.”
Over the loudspeaker they were piping in the voices of the anchors who would describe and comment on the competition for the television audience.
“The entry from Webtek Corporation has been set up. A younger version. Lacks the authority of some of the older models but interesting.”
“They are almost ready,” I said to him. “Remember. Saskia and the variation, the pac-man reflected on the vase.”
“I remember,” he said softly,”the light...”
The voice on the loudspeaker erupted. “Ladies and gentlemen, the competition is about to begin. Will the programers and handlers leave the arena.”
The gong sounded and the androids came alive and began to paint. The spotlight moved from canvas to canvas and I heard the voice of the commentators from the television set in front of me. “A very good start. Almost all of them have outlined the figure except the Webtek Rembrandt who is working on the face.”
He had started with the face. He had not met Saskia yet. He copied what he was going to paint in the future from the picture he had seen in the museum and in books. But the face was not simply Saskia’s face but my face also. The night before had blended them.
“You are doing great,” I said to him through the earpiece.
Most of the painting androids were working from one of the classic painting of Saskia. I could see that some of them were working with a modeling program that allowed them to shift the view. Two of them were working from an elevated position and painting her from above. The view allowed them to heighten the body. They were all dressed.
Rembrandt had sketched in the face when there was a commotion.
“What is wrong?”he asked.
“Don’t pay any attention,” I whispered into the microphone on my lapel.
“There are noises, can I look?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I will tell you what is happening.”
I turned back to the screen and the commentator. “One of the Rembrandts, the one from Flatis Corp. has experienced a malfunction. From the floor of the arena came grinding, pumping sounds. “It clearly has broken down. It has obliterated the figure, it is making broad strokes. It looks like it has lost control and is painting an abstraction,” the commentator said. “Clearly a malfunction.”
The android Rembrandt had taken the canvas down from the easel and was dripping paint on it. “The handlers and program are trying to restore the program,” the commentator said. “It is clearly a malfunction.”
Rembrandt could hear the commotion. “Don’t look,” I said to him. “One of the devices has broken down. They will turn it off in a moment. Don’t look.” He tried to work on the lips while in the background the grinding and screeching continued. I could see that he was trembling. None of the other Rembrandts paid any attention to the disturbance at all.
“Don’t look. Relax. Concentrate,” I said. “Remember the vase.”
“I remember,” he said. He was annoyed at me, I could tell. He turned from the figure to the vase. “Bosch,” he said,”Bosch was right.” He sketched in the pac-man as demonic figures against a consuming fire.
When the machine was finally turned off, he turned from the face to the body of Saskia.
Working rapidly he brought the figure into darkness then brought her out again.
“The likeness,” Rembrandt said.
“It is wonderful painting,” I said.
“But it is not quite Saskia, exactly,” Rembrandt conceded as the gong sounded.
“Relax now. Stand quietly. I will bring the chair out and you can sit down.”
“I am too nervous to sit,” he said.
“Drop your hands and relax.” He did as he was told.
I puttered around the desk taking the brushes from his hands and moving the palates away from him.
“How did I do as a machine?” he asked.
“You did great,” I said. He had.
We listened to the commentary that was going out over the network. They commented on each of the paintings in turn. When they got to Rembrandt’s they said, very creative, vibrant, very real, seething with life, but not an exact likeness. Clearly a variation on the traditional Saskia. And the vase, the pac-man. Very original,” the commentator noted. “He’s gotten a motion into the pac-man and the eating creatures. A Bosch like quality.”
Rembrandt was shaking.
“Stop shaking,” I said.
“I cannot,” he said. “Is it over?”
“It is over except for the judging.”
He sat down in the chair. “When will they announce the winner?” he asked.
“In a few minutes.” I looked at the painting. It was my likeness, my soul that shone through the face of Saskia.
“It’s very beautiful.”
“Yes it is,” he said. Then he stood up.
“Sit down,” I commanded.
“I did not sign it.”
“Sit down.”
“I must sign it,” he said. He grabbed a brush and began his name
There was a buzz from the monitors “What was that?” one of them yelled.
“An error. The program was too tight,” I said. “It insisted he sign it. It only kicked in after he finished the painting.”
There was a conference to see if that disqualified him. After a moment the monitors turned aside. “Turn it off the insisted.” They let the event pass.
I waited a moment. “They are getting ready to announce the winner.”
Rembrandt tensed.
“The monitors are casting their votes now,” the commentator’s voice said. “It’s over. The winner is the Boings Corporations Rembrandt and his Saskia from above with pac-man vase.”
Rembrandt stood up. “Shit,” he yelled,”we did not win.” The lights had been dimmed in the arena and a spotlight illuminated the wining painting. He swung around and glared at it. “Impossible. Are they blind? It is lifeless, it has no soul. The eyes are dead, the shadows hold the body to tightly. There is no emotion. It’s a corpse.”
He threw down the brush he held. “Unbelievable,” he screamed.
“He is just running the program,” I yelled at the monitors. “A minor glitch. Something we added for realism,” I said as loudly as I could. To Rembrandt I whispered “sit down.”
“I will not,” he screamed. He was furious. He leaped up and down and pulled over the cart holding the paint and the brushes. All eyes turned to him. In the spotlight the winning Rembrandt was activated and bowed. “It is crazy,” Rembrandt said. The anger and force of the exclamation overwhelmed the translator. It came out in Dutch.
Rembrandt began to break brushes. He picked up a can of medium and hurled it, splattering the cowering monitors. “How can a machine paint a better Rembrandt than Rembrandt?”
“It is a minor glitch,” I said to the monitors,”an emotional response we added for realism. A little too much. We thought if he won he could show his excitement.” I had thought of possibilities and provided for contingencies. I reached in my bag and withdrew a needle with a fast acting tranquilizer. “It will not hurt,” I said to Rembrandt as I jabbed him. The tranquilizer kicked in instantaneously and he sat down with a thud. “A little too much realism,” I apologized to the people who were staring at us. “You know how artists are.”
I could have walked away from it then and there. That was what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to walk away. There was the promotion. I would not have to get my hands really dirty anymore. I would be doing ordinary programming watching one of the machines that constructed programs automatically that only needed to be watched for a fluke, And they promised me a key to the executives’ club. I would have gotten what they promised even though we didn’t win— just to keep me quiet.
When we got back, he sulked.
“How could it happen?” he said. “I am Rembrandt.”
“We were robbed,” I said. “The politics of the corporate art world. You copied yourself, of course, maybe you’re not as good a copier as a painter.”
“What will happen now?” he asked.
“They are going to send you back,” I replied.
“I don’t want to go back,” he said. He moved up close to me. “I have gotten used to things here, to you.”
I took that as a declaration of love. You take what you can get. I decided I would take him. Not take him exactly, run away with him. It was not as if I had to put the idea in his head. He had grown to like the 21st century especially junk food and gadgets. And the jeans and sweats and sneakers. And me. I waited until he came up with the idea. I knew he would. “Could we run away?” he asked.
“It won’t be easy,” I said.
“I can paint, I am Rembrandt. You can get a job,” he said. “We
could live on the run like Bonnie and
“Do you love me?” I asked. “Will you marry me?”
“I do, I will, yes” he said. It was good enough for me.
I told the guard we were going to go to the city for a while. Then they could send him back. He may have seen something was fishy but he didn’t say anything and he called for a car.
We took off. No need for details. They followed us for a while then, as I said, they let it go. They have enough to worry about. Funding They’ll manage I’m sure. And we’ll manage too.
____________________________________________
An opalescent, tangerine sun floated in a sky tufted with thick curls of clouds. Nick Strayte watched the ocean splinter itself against rocks but so far out that the harsh sound of the crash was muted. By the time the sea reached the shore in front of him, it had knitted itself together and drew itself like a quilt peacefully over the beach.
For an hour he held himself apart from the perfection, then he surrendered, letting the day’s warmth work itself under the film of tension that he carried like scaly armor and loosen it. The porpoises had done it.
He had watched, curious but detached and objective, as the school crossed the patch of ocean in front of him, knitting itself in and out of the ocean. Then, suddenly he felt himself yanked into the sea and changed. He became one of the leaping mammals, feeling the fine horizon between water and air. Then, just as suddenly, he was on the beach again. The fluid insertion and expulsion from the sea unnerved and disoriented him. He reached out from the beach for the glossy protection of the perfection of the day and pulled it close.
Suddenly, as he felt the sun’s dry warmth against his skin, the day cracked and a sour, gritty, grainy greyness poured down on him like hail, smothering the warmth. He swung in terror and anger hoping to find something tangible behind him, something that had physically blocked out the sun. But as he turned, he resigned himself to the fact that the rupturing burst of chill and darkness came from inside him and turned and started walking back home.
By the time he got to the compound the helicopter was waiting, its rotor still slicing the air. He turned to go into the house but suddenly changed his mind. His wife and the discussion that was waiting to be finished would have to wait. He fought the desire to see her and swung silently into the cramped seat beside the pilot.
The helicopter made the trip from his home near the beach to the center in less than the 15 minutes it usually took. The speed bothered him. Usually the pilot took it in a relaxed lolling jaunt.
He stared at the ground until the Center for Hybrid Computing came into view. Behind a large, low slung building, a riotous garden of vegetation swirled wildly around a single gnarled oak. Disturbed by the noise of the helicopter animals scurried around for cover under the tree. The luxurious set of outer buildings with their pool and tennis courts held no interest for him.
The copter set down as gracefully as a falcon with its dinner in its mouth. Winston met him at the pad as he always did. The copter’s wash had rumpled the director’s hair until it was as wild and disordered as the circus of greenery that framed it in the background. His face was pleated in an expression of something between concern, sympathy and envy that told Strayte something unusual was happening. He offered his hand in a ritual handshake.
“It’s like old home week,” Winston stuttered, handing him the folder he carried. “Bill Grimes, Nat Wilson, Ed Tull. One new one. Savage--a sociologist. “ He punctuated his puzzled look with a shrug. “One never knows do one. Nick why bring them back. Each of them is tops but there are others, Paullic, Miles....”
Nick Strayte shrugged and turned away. He would have preferred to walk from the pad to the tunnel and into the belly of the machine, into his heart of darkness. Instead, he went to an empty room off to the side in the first floor and opened the thick folder. He flipped quickly through the sheets of paper that summarized the biographies and work of the four men he was about to meet and live with as long as the work took. He skimmed the last pages of the biographies of the three men he knew well, looking only at their most recent work.
Their biographies added little to what he knew from his own effort to keep up with the work they had been doing. Bill Grimes was working on protein dynamics, Wilson on low energy physics, and Tull on phase transitions of infinite dimensional geometries. The papers provided no explanation of why they were here. He spent more time on the background of the man he was unfamiliar with, Savage, a Sociologist who was well known for a theory about the ecology of human/non-human systems.
As an introduction to the shape of the darkness in front of him, it made no sense. Winston’s question was the only sensible one. Why bring them back? After a few minutes he took a breath then plunged in.
The four men at the desk were turned away from one another. The anxiety on the faces of the three men he knew was masked by anger.
“Hello Strayte.”
“Hello Bill.”
“Nick.”
“Nat, Ed.”
He turned to the man sitting closest to him. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure although I’ve read a few things you’ve written. I’m Nick Strayte. You’re the first sociologist we’ve had here. It’s a pleasure.”
“Bob Savage.”
“Gentleman.”
“Come on Nick, cut the bullshit. Tell us why we’re here.” Nat Wilson would be the first to push past the anxiety and anger.
“Nat, I don’t know.”
Grimes chimed in. “Blind leading the blind. First we get mysteriously heaved out, then we get mysteriously summoned.” Grimes was never one to let go--of anything.
“Let’s get on with it,” Tull said.
“Like old times,” Strayte thought, Nat Wilson pushing forward directly, Grimes bitching, Tull carrying up the rear, knitting things together.
“Would you like something to eat or drink? I...”
“Shit Nick,” Grimes said. “We didn’t come here for a quiet brunch. Move it, will you. None of us really wants to be here. I have other things to do. A Japanese delegation is coming to talk about....”
“Your Japanese, for Christ’s sake. You sold yourself three times over,” Tull commented.
“Look..,” Strayte tried to interrupt.
Grimes turned to
“You both could both use a good mathematician,”Tull chimed in. “Who do you have looking over your stuff? The equations for interaction effects of energy fields on cellular were....”
“It hugs reality, not like that stuff of yours that goes off into
some grayness of manifolds on Elbert spaces,”
“That machine has made all of us crazy,”Tull barked, pulling them back to the present. “Look, we all took a hit, don’t whine so much. You got your institute. You wanted it more than anyone.”
“No more than you,”
Strayte tried to break in. “Hold on a minute.”
“Look I don’t know how you got to be king of the roost,” Grimes said, barking at Strayte,”but this whole thing stinks.”
Savage interrupted. “You people seem to have a private family feud going. As an outsider, I don’t want to interfere. I’ll step into the hall and wait until l you settle it,”
The three men glared at him. “Don’t get into a snit,” Grimes said,”it’s just our way of saying hello. We are old...”
“What’s going on Strayte?” Tull asked, embarrassed at the sentence he was not going to let Grimes finish.
“Right now you know as much as I know. Probably more. There are procedures...”
“Procedures like what?”
Strayte seized the questions. “This is the meeting, or the first part of it. It’s not really a meeting. More like an informal discussion....The computer--Suzi--invited you. No one here except her has any idea what she has in mind,”
“You mean we were summoned by the Root,”
“Yes,”
“You don’t know anything about it?”
“I didn’t until about three hours ago. Suzi only informs the staff here a little while before a meeting is scheduled. I only find out who the participants are when I arrive for the first meeting with the group,”
“Well, when the hell is it going to tell us what’s up,”
“Let me explain,” Strayte said. He wanted to draw Savage, the outsider, into the group. He assumed the other three knew most of the basics.
“It’s common knowledge that Suzi works primarily in two modes. There’s the normal mode where she does most of the heavy duty computations for the U.S. Canadian Mexican region. In the other mode she works on problems she defines on her own. The results of most of the work she does on her own are sent off to whomever she thinks will benefit from it through normal Internet channels,”
“I got one of its gifts,” Tull interrupted,”It was a beautiful, heartless piece of mathematics.” Grimes and Wilson grunted supporting the claim.
“There’s another mode of functioning. Most of the scientific community knows about it, but it’s not publicized,”
“Interface mode,”
“Yes,”
“I may be the odd man out,” Robert Savage interrupted, “but I don’t quite....”
“Some of the problems she takes up on her own are intricate and complex. When she has developed the problem to the point where she wants to move it out, she selects the group of people she wants to communicate it to and invites them to attend a meeting. People come, you came, because most of the really innovative discoveries in the last five years have come out of meetings like this. Those kinds of problems require an interface,”
“An interface?” Savage repeated.
“I am the interface,” Strayte said.
“Fucking ventriloquist’s dummy,” Tull grunted.
“Not quite,” Strayte said, holding his temper.
“Well, what does it want to communicate to us?” Grimes bellowed.
“I don’t know. I haven’t....”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I have not had my session with her yet. This afternoon, once this meeeting is over, I will...I will have my encounter with Suzi. But even when I do, I really won’t know what the problem is. Then we will meet again tomorrow morning,”
“Why this meeting?”
“To see if you have any questions, to let you meet each other and me. Most of the time the people don’t know one another. And to tell you what the rules of the game are. This group is unusual because....”
“...because we made the damn thing, because you worked as my assistant while we were growing it, because it kicked us out on our asses....” There was a bitterness in Grimes voice.
“I’m afraid there must have been a mistake,” Savage insisted. “Except for word processing, I don’t use a computer,”
“No, Strayte said. “You don’t use her as a computer. You have no direct contact with her at all. Only through me. That’s why they call me an interface,”
“Why do you keep referring to it as a her?” Grimes hissed. “It’s an ‘it’, a computer, an organic hybrid, but not a her or him--an it,”
Strayte turned to face him directly. “Bill, you haven’t worked with her--with it, if you like--for almost a decade. If you do, I think you will get the distinct impression it’s a she, it’s female, at least the dominant part of it is,”
“An interface. Stupid,” Wilson asserted. “A new cognitive feed terminal would do just as well,”
“No,” Strayte said. “For a great many problems a cognitive feed terminal will do fine. Most of the research done here uses Finery terminals modified a little,” he said.
“But that’s not the way this problem is going to be handled,” Savage interrupted.
“No. This one is different. This is a computer originated problem to be dealt with in interface mode. She works through me. I’m your only access to what she what has in mind,”
“I don’t understand? You have direct access to her?” Savage wanted to know.
“You might say that, although not when we are dealing with one another...” I...
“Fucking delphic mysteries,”
“Something like that. I...she tells me— more or less— what you need to know.”
“Then why can’t she tell us herself?”
“I’m not sure exactly. It’s her response to human psychology. She may be just trying to preserve egos. But I think it’s more. New ideas are not something you can just receive. You have to work them out for yourself. There’s something else,” Strayte said, struggling to find the right words. “She can’t just give you an answer because the right questions have not been asked yet. A solution would be meaningless because the problem is still invisible. Most of the time seeing the problem is more than half of the work. The problems Suzi deals with in interface mode require a paradigm shift. She alters me--puts ideas and images into my brain--so that I can ‘communicate’ the idea she wants to communicate. After I have my session with Suzi we meet again and talk. The problem and the solution emerge through our interaction.
“It’s a damned mystery religion. They’ve made science into a bloody mystery religion,” Bill Grimes swore.
“Then the rumors are true,”
“More or less,” Strayte said neutrally. “Four years after you left there was a period of disruption and when Suzi came back on line she gave instructions for a set of modifications. She hollowed out a room in the main root,” His voice was distant and objective. “I go there and she...” He shuddered lightly and stared at the mirrored wall. “I have a session with her. She changes me,”
“Changes you,”
“She modifies me in some way, she floods me with information, images, ideas, memories. Then I meet you,”
“She changes you?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it except the few rules of the game. First, we don’t leave until everyone is satisfied, including me,”
“What does ‘everyone is satisfied’ mean?” Tull insisted on knowing.
“There are buttons under the desk in front of your seats,” Strayte explained. “We talk until each of us is willing to push his button. The buttons are symbolic. The important thing is that no one leaves until all of us decide we have gone as far as we can,”
“Second, we are sequestered for the duration of our meetings. There are bedrooms and facilities in the back, a suite for each of you, access to any library any book or journal you need. Television, all the amenities. There is access for two hours to the gym and pool. But it is not home. After tomorrow you are isolated from the world for as long as it takes for us to come to agree that all we could do has been done. You have a chance to refuse these conditions. No one ever has but it is your choice,”
“There’s more,” Grimes spit out.
“Third,” Strayte continued,”you pick a seat and it’s yours for the duration. I always sit here, at the end of the table,”
“Like a classroom. Why the hell the mystery, Nick, why the seating why the security why the oracular nonsense?”
He wanted to tell them it all, disgorge the details, but it was not appropriate. “Do you agree?”
Begrudgingly, they agreed. Before they could say anything else he
pulled himself out of his chair. “Tomorrow then,
II
Nick Strayte went into the suite of rooms put aside for him, undressed showered and put on a robe. He picked up the phone and dialed Winston.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I want to go alone,”
“You sure?”
“Yes,”
“Mind if I ask why?”
“I don’t know. I just want to do it alone. It’s nothing,” Winston usually accompanied him in the elevator.
“I understand,”
He put down the phone then picked it up and called his wife.
“I’m...I’m I just wanted to see how you were,”
“I’m fine. I heard the helicopter,”
“Yes”
“Have you met the group?”
“Yes,”
“How does it look?”
“It’s Grimes and Wilson and Tull,”
“Why?”
“I haven’t the least idea,”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Her voice trembled. She knew the utter state of exhaustion he would return to her in. “Nick, have you thought about what we talked about?”
“Yes but...,”
“It’s important to me--and to you. A child...”
“Can we talk about it when I get back? We’ll go out to eat at
He could sense she felt his distraction, that only half of him was in her affirmation of love. But he knew also that she understood. She had also been an interface, retiring only after an incident in which she had been beaten by a group over which she had lost control. The procedures that he had explained had been put into place to prevent such an event from ever happening again.
He took the elevator down to the basement then shifted to the smaller elevator pushing his hand against into the depression in the panel. He knew a skin sample was being taken by a microscopic laser and analyzed. The elevator began its almost silent sloped descent and the door opened. The passageway into Suzi was lit phosphorescently. Creatures cling to the rough walls and ceiling provided the light for his walking. He plunged into the heart of darkness.
Behind him he heard the door close a