Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 21

by Kelly Link Gavin Grant

  * * * *

  The next morning I did what I always did when new code came in. I stared at it. I tried to memorize it. Before I passed it on to Daniel, I wanted every part of that code inside of me. But I was not built that way. It did not easily pour into my brain.

  There were times that we didn't understand the Coder's work, what to do with it. He gave us pages of scrawlings with no starting point, no reference point for where to add it into the old code. And so we ran it separately, as its own application. Sometimes the code snippets seemed to have done something. Other times, we weren't sure. Some quit immediately after running and refused to run again. Was he experimenting? Building something else? Changing our systems? Once, Daniel and I entered in a batch of new code and when we compiled and ran it, every single screen in the company turned to static, the entire company caught in the stare of monochrome pixels. Just as quickly as the static came, it was gone. Later our network administrator came and let us know that there were strange events in the transfer logs. Transfers had been made. Data had escaped.

  * * * *

  Bob, who I'd stupidly told about the specifics of my job over one bored lunch, wanted to know what the Coder was really like. “Is he like Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now? Is he like that guy from Silence of the Lambs? Or is he more of a mad scientist type, like maybe Jeff Goldblum in The Fly?"

  About once a week Bob managed to talk me into eating lunch with him.

  I tried to think of the appropriate movie role. The Coder is a machine, I thought to myself, he's a rockstar and a machine. Is he like Conrad's adventurer, in Heart of Darkness? Maybe, but there, even, the man has a cognizance of going too far, of going anywhere. He believed he had fallen into evil. What about the Coder? Was he harming anything? Was he soul-less or did his soul vibrate with the universe's logic?

  Perhaps he was a mad scientist. But I felt even with mad scientists there was some sort of aggressive drive, a terrible ambition.

  "Did you ever see A Man Facing Southeast?” I said. “The Argentinean film?"

  "Yeah yeah yeah, the guy was a hologram, right, a hologram of himself as an alien, and he went around playing music and people believed he could heal them."

  "Yessss,” I said, though I hadn't remembered that. “Maybe he's sort of like that, except antisocial."

  Bob nodded thoughtfully and then changed the subject, pulling out a book he'd brought for me.

  "You've just got to read this book, this is the best book, I know you'll so dig this book. Runway Star Eternal Mar,” he said, pointing to the title. “The plot, dude, it's the most twisted sickest cool thing, it'll blow you away."

  I stared at the cover as Bob explained the plot. On the cover was an android shaped like a woman on a model's runway. The covers all looked identical to me. There was a girl and a guy. Of course there was a girl and guy—Bob was lonely as hell. Bob was the guy. He thought he was the hero. Oh, and of course, the buzzwords. Girls and buzzwords: NeuroBeamer, Electron Hornet Burst, Psychic Network Hat.

  I could go on and on about Bob, but I couldn't blame him, really. Everybody wants to be the hero. Even the messenger.

  * * * *

  Some days my job took thirty minutes. All I had to do was bring a cafeteria lunch to the Coder. Some days I spent twelve hours on the roof, watching the Coder, waiting for him to finish. Imitating, imagining, trying to become one with the code. On Fridays I brought up extra food for the Coder for the weekend. The rest of the time I surfed the web, I stared into where the walls joined in my cubicle, that crevasse there, occupying so much of my attention. I anticipated Bob's face over the top of the cubicle. I ate, walked circles around the office, wrote email to friends. Or I rotted. Tried to keep my jaw from going slack, my eyes from glazing like an icy windowpane. But at least I had work, a center of focus. I don't know how the others managed to keep themselves busy, or sane.

  Sometimes the Coder lay in wait for me, and when I exited the portal he'd tackle me, throwing punches at my face and gut. Fighting back was out of the question. If anything happened to the Coder the company would die. And besides, who hits the master, unless a mutiny is planned? Being larger than him, I was usually able to keep the damage to a minimum. He had hardly any muscle mass to speak of—but it was the only physical contact I ever got from him. It was an intimacy, almost. Like a father who hits his son, says “this hurts me more than it hurts you.” That's how I imagined it.

  When I brought up the telescope, the Coder looked up with the blankest, most uncomprehending look. It was a look I was used to—he was lost somewhere in thought. Not working, but not not-working. Perhaps his mind was timing trains, following rivers of cargo across the country. Perhaps his mind was caught in an endless loop.

  function time(){

  $self = true;

  while ($self = true)

  {

  echo “inhale";

  if ($watcher != null && $watcher.isAlive)

  { if (!$awake)

  {

  eval(if($self—$awake))

  {break;}

  }

  else {

  process(data($data = “self"));

  while ($self = data)

  {

  count++;

  }

  }

  }

  echo “exhale";

  time();

  }

  }

  end;

  Sometimes I had to resist the impulse to bow to him.

  I set up the telescope. When I wasn't looking through the telescope, I watched him. That day I felt his eyes following me. Evaluating. At last he came over to where I was with the telescope, watching our company's employees escape into the night, and he stood for the longest time. Finally he gestured that he would like to use the telescope, and for about an hour I stood next to him as he trained it on the city, on the sky, on the ground. I couldn't tell if he was searching or observing, and I spent the hour resisting putting my hand on his shoulder. I spent the hour not choking him, not throwing him off the roof. I spent the hour not asking him every question I could ever imagine. When he was through he went straight to his lean-to.

  The next day Bob leaned over my cube. He said, “This day is shit, just shit, everything I do is shit, even parking this morning, shit."

  This was Bob's warm-up to a half hour rant. In a moment Ellen would say Baahhhhhhb, swearing? And then they would go at it just like the day before, and the day before, just like everyday. I decided to reroute, jump tracks. Send the freight train express.

  "Bob,” I said, perhaps a little too loudly, catching Ellen mid-complaint. I held up my hand. “Can you tell me later? I'm sorry, I'm just too crammed."

  "Right right, dude, sorry. No problem, no problem at all, man. I'll tell you at lunch."

  I went back to staring into the crevasse where the walls of my cube met and thought about telescopes and code and when loops were broken.

  * * * *

  I visited the Coder, climbed my corporate ladder into the open air with his lunch. And he was waiting for me. Standing next to the portal that leads to the roof. He looked me in the eye and broke one of his erratic vows of silence. “Brian,” he said. And hearing him speak my name gave me a jolt. I had wondered if he knew it. “This is it,” he said.

  "It?” I said, my voice cracking.

  He nodded and handed me a light stack of paper, eight pages in all, scrawled in his usual pencil. He nodded at me again, with much gravity, and said, “It's finished.” Then he turned back toward his hut. I watched him until he was out of view. I hesitate to say this for fear of it sounding strange, but there was a glow about him. There was something. Something different. I guess.

  The dreaded words: It's finished. The words that end a software company.

  The code didn't have a starting point. It was not of the existing program. I gave it to Daniel who compiled it and ran it and informed me it didn't do anything. It quit the second it began. We shrugged our shoulders.

  * * * *

  The n
ext day I was the first person to the office and on a whim I headed up to the roof to check in with the Coder, but—there is no other way to say this—he was gone. I looked for him everywhere, but there is nowhere to get lost on the roof of our building. The doorway above the ladder was locked. There was no way down through the building. I looked over the sides of our building but there was no sign of anything. It was a four-story drop, but without any obvious handholds down.

  I felt heartbroken, I guess. But also like a ship whose anchor is severed in a windstorm. No longer straining, no longer held back.

  I stayed a long time. Fearing at any moment he might return, I looked through his hut, observed the cleanliness. The precision of everything, the logic of the layout. Could a room contain ultimate logic? I lay on his cot. I toyed with his pencils. There was a dresser that we'd put in the room for him but it was empty, and a wood desk with a ream of paper stacked neatly atop. A sink, a toilet, and a shower stall were in a tiny adjoining bathroom. A razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste—all items I recognized because I had brought them to him. On the back of the toilet, the Coder's glasses sat folded.

  I studied the land through the telescope. Was I looking for him? No. Yes. After being on the roof of a building for years you don't just leave for the morning. You don't wander around the company grounds. What happens to you? I have no idea. Maybe he evaporated. Somehow that seemed possible. Maybe the janitor had smuggled him out. Maybe a helicopter landed, a UFO, maybe LogisticMagic got him. Maybe he ascended. But how could I not look?

  It was 4 PM and I realized I had not been down to my cubicle. I had not officially shown up for work. Perhaps I was considered missing, too. Let them wonder, I thought. I was not eager to tell them the Coder was gone.

  I stayed into darkness. Nervously, expecting him to appear at any time. In his bed, I slept. And I cried. Where is the cocoon that transforms? What special ingredient did I lack?

  Another day passed.

  And another day passed and I was crazy with worry. I was no longer me without him, without his defining me. He was the programmer, the coder, the engineer. His absence was an infinite loop of misunderstanding.

  import java.sql.;

  import java.util.;

  public class InfiniteLoop implements Bean

  {

  public void set(String args[]) throws Exception

  {

  ResultSet resultSet = null;

  try

  {

  int count = 0;

  statement.execute();

  resultSet = (ResultSet)statement.getObject(1);

  while (resultSet.next() && count—20)

  {

  out.print (resultSet.getString("ELEMENT"));

  // count = count + 1;

  }

  }

  catch (Exception e)

  {

  out.print e.toString();

  }

  }

  }

  Sunrise. I shaved my head, what of it I could with my pocketknife. It was a botchy job but there was no mirror for me to care appropriately. I donned the Coder's clothes, checking the pockets, measuring the feel of the threads, pleased to find they fit, if a bit tight. The coke-bottle glasses—which I could barely see through—felt comfortable nonetheless. I sat at his desk. I think I knew what I was doing. I sat at the desk and waited, and another day evaporated. In the telescope I spotted people leaving the building, entering the building, leaving again. You could see a lot, into a nearby apartment building, another corporate office building down the street. I shifted the view from cubicle to cubicle to cubicle. I tried not to think about my growing hunger. There was a naked man stretching at his window in one apartment, an old lady cooking in another. I kept time with my pencil on the desk.

  I took up anxiously looking at the portal to the below, knowing at any moment someone would appear. I pulled a sheet from the ream of paper and sketched the telescope. Next to it I sketched a dog. When I was finished, I turned it over and began to write code. I opened my brain and let revelation come.

  I was at the desk sometime later—how many hours?—when I heard the portal clang open. I had been writing. I don't remember it, but the evidence was there. Curly brackets, parentheses, semicolons.

  Bob surfaced from the portal. Of all the blundering idiots, I thought, they chose Bob! Could not a more worthy messenger be found? I watched Bob from the corner of my eye through the hut's window as he timidly approached, scuffing his shoes along the roof. He carried a tray of food, for which I was grateful—had the Coder ever been grateful for the food I brought, had he even noticed?

  Bob entered the open door of the hut, and put the food down on the edge of my desk.

  "Hi,” he said, with fear and perhaps reverence in his voice, his eyes lowered, “I'm Bob. We're ... uh ... not sure where Brian is.” He paused and I nodded once. I tapped the papers in my right hand against the desk and stared at the food. I realized I was tapping out the beat to a song but I couldn't quite place the words. I considered humming a few bars, but then remembered Bob and handed him the code. There it went, more paper, I knew where that paper went. Loops that looped into loops, I thought. There were peas and potatoes. I knew exactly what they would taste like. Peas and potatoes and fried chicken that tasted of aluminum. I picked up the fork and rubbed my thumb across the tines. I spread the napkin across my knees.

  "Thank you. Thank you,” said Bob. He tripped over the door's threshold, regained his footing, and left.

  I ate everything and then went to lie on the roof, face up, staring into the sky. The taste of mashed potatoes in my mouth. Coder, I said, to myself, to the Coder, in deference, in awe. Coder.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Maps to God by Corie Ralston

  Here's the thing about my mother: she's been fading out for years. These days I can't understand her unless the electromagnetic fields line up just so.

  Just yesterday evening at dinner she tuned in and out as I twisted the fork in my hand: “—Dr. Franklin—staff is excellent—not enough—"

  I finally got the angle just right: “Herb, I bought the medication."

  Fortunately, my dad is on my frequency, so I don't need utensils to hear him. “We already discussed this, Joan,” he said.

  * * * *

  Tum-ticka tum. I ain't no holla-back girl. That's the other thing about my frequency—it's tuned to pick up secret signals from a Gnostic sect hidden deep in the Sahara. Or possibly Nevada. They send me messages coded in pop songs.

  My mother's mouth opened and closed but the electromagnetic wind must have shifted because I could no longer hear her. My father shook his head at what she said. The setting sun angled through the kitchen window and bloodied the white tablecloth between my parents. I heard the clank of silverware and the ever-present hum of background radiation like a perpetual motion refrigerator.

  I shifted so that the sprig of dogwood blossom in the table vase blocked my view of my mother and applied my fork to dinner. I segregated the little rosemary spears from the potatoes. It was a long job, but necessary; my mother might have applied truth serum to the tips of the spears. She was always trying to trip me up, get me to tell her my plans.

  "No,” my father said. “Remember what happened last time?"

  I always loved the one-sided conversation. It was a puzzle.

  "Come on, Joan. Leave her alone."

  I looked up. My mother had obviously just addressed me; her face was expectant.

  "She wants to know what you're working on now,” my father said.

  "It's proprietary,” I said. Tum-ticka-tum.

  I didn't expect my mother to understand. Even though I'm still a teenager she knows I could be the next Einstein, and it scares her. Some people are afraid of genius.

  I've been ostracized by the scientific community for years. The National Academy of Sciences has never answered any of my letters. They just don't understand the importance of my work. They don't understand that I could have made teleportation work if I
just had the right tools. At least the Gnostics believe in me.

  This time I'm working on something big. I mean really big. It's a map to God, and it will change everything.

  * * * *

  After dinner my father helped me in the lab.

  "Wire cutters!” I sang.

  "Wire cutters.” My father passed me the red-handled ones.

  My music swelled. Ticka-ticka-tum-TICKA. We are THE CHAMPIONS. It's so sad that he can't hear it. My father believes in me even though he doesn't understand the physics behind my work.

  "Tape!"

  "We're out."

  "Jesus Christ!” I couldn't help myself. “We're so close!"

  "How does this machine work?” he asked.

  "It's difficult to pinpoint,” I answered.

  A map to God is a paradox: every step of the journey is a piece of understanding, which leads you further from God. Every step closer is also a step further away.

  My dad looked up from the machine. My mother stood in the doorway to my laboratory, hands on her hips, frowning.

  I didn't used to have a lab in the basement.

  Last year when I was sixteen my mother tried to help with my invisibility machine even though she didn't have the scientific background and I didn't need her help. That day she sat down next to me while I was working on the control box, picked up a capacitor, and put it in completely the wrong place.

  I took her capacitor out.

  How was that helping, I ask you. It wasn't.

  She said something.

  She reached in to the control box and took one of mine out. That was really not helping. I slapped her hand away.

  She stood up and the control box overturned. And it had been almost done! I pounded the capacitors on the floor. Anger in my fists, anger in my fingers.