by Brian Daley
The technicians looked to two people for their instructions and coordination. Head of the research team, director of the entire project, Dr. Walter Gibbs peered up anxiously at the steel scaffolding, several stories of it, where his people were working. He was small, substantial, with a beard that had made most of the transition from gray to white. His face held a quick intelligence and concern for his technicians as well as for his equipment.
Gibbs had started what eventually became ENCOM in his garage more than three decades earlier. But as it had grown, it had divided between its research and development side and the complexities and convolutions of the boardroom; he’d divorced himself from corporate operations, determined not to be diverted from his work. There’d been times when he’d questioned the wisdom of his abandoning the decision-making apparatus, but here, tonight, he felt no regret. He’d seen too many other inspired scientists become boardroom clones or academic administrators, and wanted no part of that. The fact that lie was about to conduct this experiment confirmed for Gibbs the correctness of his choice.
His deputy team leader and colleague, Dr. Lora Baines, seemed in marked contrast to Gibbs, but they shared values and aspirations. She was in her mid-twenties, not long finished with her postgraduate studies, and already an acknowledged leader in her field; her work in computers had won her international recognition. Her blond hair was pulled back and bound simply and efficiently beneath her hardhat. The lines of her face gave her a delicate beauty that had sometimes been a disadvantage; although her eyes were wide and blue and arresting, she’d chosen understated, tinted eyeglasses. She’d occasionally been forced to battle to be accepted for her intellectual accomplishments, but never twice with the same person. She tended to be grave, efficient, and intent when working, but was cordial to those who shared her enthusiasm.
Just now, she was studying Gibbs, enjoying his excitement. The technicians had made their last adjustment, and Gibbs ordered them to stand clear. Lora sighed, “Well, here goes nothing.”
Gibbs turned to her, his quick, inquiring mind caught by that. “Hah. Interesting, interesting.” She looked at him quizzically. He went on, holding up a finger as if delivering a lecture. “Did you hear what you just said? ‘Here goes nothing.’ ”
“Well, I meant—” But it was useless to protest that she’d simply used a standard phrase. Gibbs was rolling.
“Whereas, actually,” he continued, “what we propose to do is turn something into nothing and back again.” He held up an orange, a shining, perfect fruit. “So, you might just as well have said, Here goes something and here comes nothing.”
He smiled benignly, pleased with his clarification. Lora smiled back, fondly, shaking her head in defeat. She followed him to a low, lead-shielded target platform, upon which he placed the orange. Not far away was the firing aperture of this most unusual of laser arrays. Five feet from the platform on which the orange rested was another, identical platform, this one unoccupied.
“Let me make sure we’re running,” Lora said, and crossed to her computer console. As she ran test sequences, assuring herself that all the microcomputers used to align and control the array were working properly, Gibbs pulled on his goggles. The technicians followed suit, moving clear of the enormous scaffolding, the frame. Lora, at her CRT screen, satisfied herself that her program was running correctly and, pulling on her goggles, returned to the observation point and Gibbs. “Looks good,” she said.
Gibbs nodded, enjoying the suspense, the being on the very edge of new knowledge, nearly as much as the experiment itself. Making sure that everyone had withdrawn to a place of safety, he ordered, “Let ’er rip.”
There was a hum, and the closing of relays. The laser array erupted in a beam of light unlike any that existed in nature. It enfolded the orange on its target platform. For a moment, the orange took on the appearance of a wavering, poorly received TV picture. Then it was gone.
Lora returned to her console, gave her program permission to continue, and went back to Gibbs, who was barely containing his exhilaration at the successful completion of the experiment’s first phase. The laser array swung slowly, realigning on the second, the vacant platform, as the computers recalibrated and resynchronized it.
Though no one in the lab realized it, a monitoring camera overhead watched the entire process. Every function carried out by the computer and the laser array was carefully noted for analysis. Master Control was, unknown to anyone, extremely interested in this project.
A second discharge of laser light struck the vacant platform and the orange reappeared gradually, in reverse sequence of its disappearance. When it was completely restored, five feet from its original location, the laser shut down. Lora and Gibbs rushed to examine the fruit, assured by the absence of alarms that there was no danger of radiation, or any instability in the orange’s structure.
“Perfect,” Gibbs said softly, holding up the orange and thinking of the years of work that had gone into the making of that moment. Lora stared at it too, trying to get her subjective appreciation of what she’d just seen to catch up with her objective one. There had been no scientific breakthrough like this since the Manhattan Project.
A round of applause broke into their preoccupation. Alan stood atop a nearby stairway, smiling broadly. “Beautiful!”
Gibbs smiled back, as did his deputy team leader, the businesslike Dr. Baines yielding for a moment to the charming Lora. She loved Alan’s smile, and while his serious nature struck a responsive chord in her, she sometimes found herself wishing that he’d smile more often.
“Hello, Alan,” Gibbs called. Though ENCOM’s research-and-development subdivisions were many, Gibbs and Alan had become friends through their mutual acquaintance with Lora. They respected one another’s talents and accomplishments.
When the technicians began to remove their goggles, Alan saw that it was safe to join the others, that no beams were active and that there was no danger of having a hole burned in his retina. As he descended, he asked, “Are you guys having fun disintegrating things down here?” Lora had removed her hardhat, shaking loose soft waves of hair.
Of course, Gibbs took the question literally. As Alan gave Lora a quick embrace and a kiss—making her blush—the older man corrected, “Not disintegrating, Alan; digitizing.”
Alan and Lora traded amused looks. Gibbs, unheeding, lectured. “The laser array dismantles the molecular structure of the object. The molecules are suspended in the laser beam, and then the computer reads the model back out. The molecules go into place and,” he held up the orange with a theatrical flourish, “voilà.”
And let the boardroom infighters and administrative beancounters think what they like, Gibbs added to himself. There’s not a one among ’em who’ll ever feel the way I do right now!
“Great,” Alan was saying. “Can it send me to Hawaii?”
“Yes,” Lora told him with a grin and her best airline-commercial voice, “but you have to go round trip and you must purchase your program at least thirty days in advance.” Alan laughed, and she enjoyed hearing it. Gibbs, temporarily dragged back from the dizzying heights of scientific breakthrough, chuckled too.
“How’s it going upstairs?” she added, putting aside her own elation. Alan had been preoccupied with his Tron program for weeks now.
He shrugged, and the laughter was gone. How serious, how intense he can become in a split second, she thought. Just like me, when it comes to his work. But she liked that in him. Alan had a sense of humor, but he never ignored his goals, or his responsibilities to himself and to others.
“Frustrating.” Alan frowned. “I had Tron almost ready to run, and Dillinger cut everybody with Group Seven access out of the System. Ever since he got that Master Control Program set up, the System’s got more bugs than a bait store.”
Gibbs had forgotten his triumph for the moment, drawn by talk of things he knew and liked to discuss. “Well, you have to expect some static. Computers are just machines, after all; they can’t think.”<
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Alan replied, “Some programs’ll be thinking soon.”
Gibbs made a wry face. “Yes, won’t that be grand! The programs and computers will start thinking and people will stop.” Shaking his head, he contemplated what he and a few others had unleashed on the world those decades ago. Was there anything beneficial that didn’t carry seeds of misfortune? Apparently not, Gibbs decided. He finished, “Lora, I’m going to stay and run some data. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They made their good-byes to one another and Gibbs went offto ponder what he’d accomplished and what his obligations were. Perhaps it was time to have a talk with Ed Dillinger.
Walking with Alan beside the towering frame, Lora asked, “Did you say Group Seven access?”
His answer was distracted as he worried at the problem. “Yeah. Pain in the neck; you know, I was all set—”
“Did Dillinger say why?”
His faced worked in irritation. “Something about tampering.”
“Tampering?” she echoed. The phrase meant much more to her than it did to Alan. Into her mind came the image of Flynn—Flynn the master crasher, system-bucker, and hot-head. She knew it was time to bring up a subject they usually avoided.
She stopped Alan. “Flynn’s been thinking about breaking into the System ever since Dillinger canned him. And he had Group Seven access.”
Anger had taken away all the pleasure that usually showed on his face when he was with her. “Flynn had access to you, too. I’m not interested in talking about him.” He didn’t like himself when he was like that, but he cared so much for Lora that it was hard not to feel jealousy. I’m not as flamboyant as Flynn, he realized, not as breezy, but I know that she loves me. Still . . .
“Oh, I wish you’d forget about that,” Lora was telling him. “It was all so long ago.” She was emphatic about it, to herself as well as to Alan—perhaps too much so. “I’ve totally gotten over it.”
Alan relented, faulting himself for being so defensive about Flynn. Jealousy over the time she’d spent with him could only mar his and Lora’s feelings for one another. “Okay, okay; c’mon, let’s get out of here.”
They made their way to where her black van was parked in the ENCOM lot. When they were underway, Lora drew a deep breath and said, “I want to go to Flynn’s place.”
Alan turned, saw streetlights and headlights play across the lovely face as she stared directly ahead. “You call that ‘getting over it’?” He knew an abrupt fear, that he might be in danger of losing her. He cast it out at once, unable even to consider it.
“I mean, I want both of us to go.” She angled the van down an on-ramp and merged with the traffic deftly.
“What for?” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep a skeptical note out of his tone.
“To warn him.”
She was checking the road signs overhead, and Alan saw that she’d already put the van on course for Flynn’s place. He sat back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest. “Of what?”
“That Dillinger’s on to him.” She guided the van onto a cloverleaf.
“I don’t know what you ever saw in him anyway,” Alan asserted, but it wasn’t true. He’d paid close attention to what she’d said and what her expression had hinted at, ever since they’d met. He knew that one side of Lora resisted the constraints of employment at ENCOM, while another, stronger, drew her to her work. And Flynn had appealed to that first side. Devil-may-care Flynn had embodied the tempting idea that rules were what you made of them, and impulses were there to be followed if you so pleased. And, though he wouldn’t have phrased it that way to himself, Alan was too much his own man to try to emulate Flynn, even for her.
“I never saw that much in him,” she parried, finishing silently, not the things I see in you, the things I need!
“Oh?”
Exasperated, she burst out, “I loved him for his brains!” But she couldn’t keep a straight face, and dissolved in laughter.
“Hah!” Alan barked at her, a parody of disbelief, half breaking up as well. The tension was suddenly gone; all her affection showed when she glanced back to him again. Lora didn’t doubt that it was Alan she loved; he had the sort of strength and constancy she needed and understood.
It was just difficult not to envy someone like Flynn, who lived for fun—and not to want to share in that fun, sometimes. She and Flynn had been drawn to one another, for a time, by what Flynn had laughingly called their algorhythms.
She drove to an older section of town, where brown and gray stone buildings crowded close together. Lora braked the van and parked across the street from an island of noise and light in the middle of the district. It was the largest and most popular game arcade in the city, its doors flung wide open. Over the entrance, a glorious boast in red neon, a sign proclaimed in beacon letters, FLYNN’S, lighting the entire block. This was, in fact, Flynn’s old neighborhood, and whatever other reverses he may have suffered, his place was now its landmark. HOME OF SPACE PARANOIDS, declared a second sign.
Within, figures played before the disorderly ranks of videogames or drifted from one to the next, or waited to use some particular favorite. Lora locked up the van and she and Alan entered. Alan saw that the walls of the place were decorated with supergraphic-size murals of computer chips, micro-processors, and circuitry. There were also neon signs advertising Code Wars, Nerve Net, Gonzo, and others. Flynn’s was chockablock with games of all sorts and those who loved to play them.
Within the microcosms of the games, all was competition, with no reconciliation possible. Tanks prowled across three-dimensional landscapes, relentlessly eager for firefights. Untiring image-athletes contended, their rivalry absolute. Spacecraft did battle and aliens invaded, with only the briefest of occasional cease-fires and absolutely no chance of truce or treaty. Asteroids tumbled, and threatened starships, malevolently aware. The creators of these games had been lavishly inventive, to evoke excitement and demand concentration and coordination from players.
The air was filled with the noises of the diverse machines. Their scoring tones sounded, and the challenges and taunts some of them threw at their human competitors. The beeps and deep tones of victory and defeat came endlessly. Death knells and dirges sounded as players lost a last spaceship or tank; explosions, warp-drives, six-guns, missiles, energy beams, all to the constant tapping of firing buttons. There was the rapid working of controls of all types: steering wheels, levergrips, joysticks, foot pedals, and periscopes.
Even at that hour the place was crowded. Most of the clientele was young, adolescents and young adults of both sexes. Their attire showed every taste from high preppy to gang colors. Older men and women were present as well, mingling amiably with the younger players, many of whom exhibited fearsome skill with the games.
Other, smaller arcades, of course, were scattered through the city, and games could be found in convenience stores or taverns or soda fountains. But if you wanted your choice of the newest and best machines, if you wanted to be among the best players in town, you went to Flynn’s.
And if you wanted to play against the best, you played Flynn himself.
Alan and Lora moved past little knots of two, three, and four people who, oblivious to them and to everything else but the machines, strove heroically at Intruder or Zero Hour. Two girls had rolled up an impressive score at Tailgunner. Alan took it all in, listening to the cheering as a kid who could barely reach the controls demonstrated expertise at Galaxy Wars. He peered over the shoulder of a young man turning in an excellent performance as an electronic gunfighter.
And on and on, past Asteroids Delux, The End and all the rest, Lora and Alan moved through the swirl of happy, strangely determined players amid the glare of the lights and the variegated game screens. Flynn’s seemed some technological fantasy palace. They came to a girl sporting a junior high school cheerleader’s jacket, who watched as her companions tried their luck at Battle Zone. One was working the lateral grips, blowing away tanks and saucers and buzz-bomb missiles.
Lora tapped the cheerleader’s arm, shouting to be heard, “Hey, where’s Flynn tonight?’.
The girls looked Lora up and down, and Dr. Lora Baines suddenly felt out of place and conspicuous. Then the cheerleader pointed toward the rear of the arcade.
They found Flynn before a Space Paranoids game with the ENCOM logo prominent on its side and the well-known Recognizer stencil, of the flying, robotlike killer craft that hunted across its screen. Flynn stood straddle-legged, leaning over the machine, playing with a great deal of body English. He used the controls with the same quick facility he’d shown at the CRT keyboard. He was unshaven, his hair tousled, dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and jogging shoes.
Delight was obvious in Flynn’s face; his place was much more than a business to him. Seeing him, Alan recalled hearing that Flynn’s was noted for fairness to its customers. On one occasion, the story went, a kid had chalked up an incredible score on one of the games, winning extension after extension of playing time. Closing time came, and any other place would undoubtedly have made the kid leave—maybe giving him back his original quarter, maybe not. But it was said that Flynn had let him stay on after closing and sat a vigil with the kid’s friends for the additional hour and a half required to finish the game.
Alan gave Lora a dubious glance, then they both walked over to Flynn. He’d racked up an astounding score, and was surrounded by boisterous youngsters who plainly felt that they were present on an historical occasion, and urged him on.
“I’ll show you how it’s done,” Flynn said, all concentration. A Recognizer was barreling down the canyon maze at him. “You back off him—” The Reco, approaching at an angle, had most of its speed neutralized. “Wait till he’s ranged and—” Flynn brought the cross hairs back around suddenly, firing. His shot hit the Reco dead center and it fragmented. “—pop ’im!”
The onlookers cheered. Alan saw the Space Paranoids machine’s nine-digit scorecard change, the numbers increasing as Flynn warred with the Recognizers and evaded their fire. Flynn’s fans went wild as the numbers crept to 999,999,999. Tension mounted. Flynn made a final shot with a yelp and a curt slap of his hand; a Recognizer disappeared.
