The Free Lunch

by Spider Robinson

  He watched it through in silence. “Can I see it again?”

  She put it on a replay loop. He watched it all the way through twice more.

  “Well?”

  “My eye never totally stopped moving. Not once. Not for more than, like, a split second. I thought I was holding it steady, but I wasn’t.”

  “You can’t. Nobody can. Eyes hop around all the time. The hops are called saccades.”

  “Sick odds?”

  She corrected his pronunciation and spelled it for him. “It’s a good thing eyes do saccades, too. Do you know about your blind spot?”

  “Sure. We learned about it in school. Oh. Now I get it. I could never understand how come you don’t notice your blind spot unless you do the experiment about it. But it makes sense. If your blind spot is always moving, your brain can just paint in the missing part. What it shows you there might be wrong—but never for more than a second. Cool.”

  She was looking pleased with him. “All right. Now you know that gadget the superstars use, the Pap-Zapper?”

  “The thing so you can’t take their picture?”

  “That’s right. It constantly scans the environment, looking for anything that might be a camera lens, and if it finds it, it blinds it with a low-power laser. The car-rooftop model can handle fifty pap-rats at once, and the home-defense model can deal with over a hundred. The inventor was inspired by Princess Diana’s death, and he made a fortune. Do you know who the inventor was?”

  He started to shake his head—and the penny dropped. “Thomas Immega!”

  “That’s where he got the money to start building Dreamworld. The real-life heroes and princesses didn’t want people loving them so much anymore…so he gave people ones they can come visit and talk with any time they want.”

  “Wow.” He thought hard. “I still don’t think I get it. What’s that got to do with saccades?”

  “If a Pap-Zapper’s targeting vision system can pick out and lock onto a camera lens at five hundred meters…how much trouble do you think it’d have locking onto your pupil?”

  “Oh.” Suddenly it all fell into place, with an almost audible click. He sat up straighter “So when we’re up Johnny’s Tree—”

  “—the system tracks your saccades, knows exactly where you’re looking at all times, and uses tricks to make sure the right photons are waiting to meet them there. You look at me, and it’s like I’m a large Annie-sized blind spot, and the holographic system helps your brain paint in different information there, so you can’t see me no matter where you look.”

  He began to hop up and down in his chair. “And that’s why we can both look at the same spot in the Warlock’s Keep, and each see different things! Whatever I’m seeing isn’t really there—except for the split second my eye happens to point in that direction—and it follows my eye around as it saccades. If you and I ever really do happen to be looking in exactly the same direction, it can’t be for more than an instant—”

  “—and our brains both ignore the garbled frame,” Annie agreed.

  He began to beat out a rhythm on his thighs with his fists, unconsciously. “Oh, that’s so cool. But how does—”

  Annie held up a hand. “Enough.”

  It was as hard to stop babbling questions as it would have been to stop peeing in midstream. “Okay, but just tell me—”

  She expanded her Command Band’s keyboard to useful size, tapped a few keys, and shrank it again. At once, her face changed—back to the real one, the one she had started with that morning. She was Annie again. Old. And tired. He trailed off in midsentence.

  “Boy, you cannot have any idea how exhausting it is, being around someone as happy as you are. Everything you want to know is in those books over there: do your own homework.”

  “Oh.” He started to apologize, but something told him that would be a further mistake. “Thanks, Annie. You’ve really been swell.”

  “Yes, I have,” she agreed. “And now, because I’m swell, I’m going for a walk, so you can wallow in those master manuals to your heart’s content. I’ll be back with supper in a few hours. Everything in the manuals is in the computer as well, by the way; you’ll see the folder. Just for heaven’s sake don’t send or receive any data without me here. And don’t go wandering outside, either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “If I were you I’d start with…oh, cancel that; start wherever you please.” Frowning, she turned on her heel and left without another word.

  Mike knew Annie was upset about something. It was even possible she was angry with him for some reason. But he also knew there was nothing he could do about it right now…and the master manuals of Dreamworld were waiting.

  He stopped halfway across the room, torn between the book-case and the workstation. As a general rule, he preferred words on paper to words on-screen—even a “smart paper” screen. But in this case a sophisticated search engine was an irresistible advantage; he sat down at Annie’s computer.

  Its exterior might be quaint, but the moment he hit the power key he knew its innards had been modernized: it booted instantly, like a proper machine. He found and opened the Master Manuals folder, located the Dreamworld Overview subfolder, selected the Read Me First and FAQ files, opened both. Words came up and sucked him into the screen. His body and the world ceased to exist, and Mike entered Nirvana.

  HE WAS SO absorbed he did not even realize Annie had returned, until suddenly the computer receded from him and spun away to his right. He just had time to realize that she had grabbed his chair from behind and yanked him away from the screen…then the careening chair caught a wheel on one of his discarded shoes and nearly dropped him onto the floor. When he got his balance, Annie was in his place, crouching over the keyboard, typing so fast her fingers seemed to blur.

  He was unhurt, and too startled to be angry. Slowly he worked out that something must be seriously wrong. “Are they onto us?” he asked.

  She failed to hear, kept on punching keys and mousing. A succession of windows appeared and disappeared. Then the screen filled with an aerial view of Dreamworld, from an apparent height of about two kilometers. Mike saw the letters in the lower right-hand corner and realized Annie was accessing a GPS satellite in real time: an expensive operation. She zoomed in rapidly until she had a view of the employee parking lot, seemingly only a few hundred meters below. Firefall was obviously long over by now, and Dreamworld closed for the day: the lot looked like an ant farm, crowded with Cast, Cousins, and other employees going home, and a few night-shift staff arriving late. Annie panned around until she found what she was looking for.

  “Gotcha,” she muttered, zoomed in again, and tapped out a command.

  Now they were tracking a specific Cast member, a dwarf, from a height of only about twenty or thirty meters. It would have been difficult to get a sense of his face from almost straight overhead, even if he had not been wearing a large floppy hat. Mike could see nothing especially remarkable about him—for a dwarf, at least. Since he was not in costume now, it was hard to tell, but Mike felt somehow that he played a Troll. He walked with a troll’s usual stoop, made more pronounced by a large, heavy-looking backpack, and he seemed to wear the characteristic scowl—from force of habit, Mike guessed.

  As the software’s virtual camera continued to track him, Annie opened up another application in a small window at the lower right corner of the screen, typed rapidly, and straightened up to wait. After a while she said some words Mike had never heard before but correctly interpreted as a horrible obscenity.

  He looked closer. The small window now read, 404: File not found.

  “What does that mean, Annie?” he asked. “Are we in trouble? Is something wrong?”

  The urgency in his voice finally reached her. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him. “No, Mike,” she said gently. “Nothing you need to worry about. We’re fine.”

  Mike was thoroughly sick of grown-ups telling you everything was fine when it obviously wa
sn’t. “Right.”

  Annie was instantly apologetic. “No, really. There’s no danger. I’m sorry I crashed in on you like that. I haven’t had much use for manners, the last thirteen years. And I was in a hurry.”

  “How come?”

  “Just something I don’t understand. A little thing. Nothing important—I think. It’s just that I like to understand everything about this place.” She cleared the screen, returning it to the file he’d been reading when she arrived. “I imagine you can understand that. How’s it coming along?”

  It all came back in a wave, and he forgot the Troll. “Awesome,” he admitted. “It’s just—I mean, it’s all so—I’m, like, just—”

  “Incoherent,” she finished for him. “If I were you, I’d knock off after another hour or so. You don’t want your brain to explode.”

  “I’ll risk it,” he said.

  She suppressed a smile. “Want to come topside with me for dinner, first? Take a break?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Of course not. All right, I’ll bring you back something in an hour or two. And now that I think of it, we’re going to need to get you some clothes—so we can wash the ones you’re wearing.” She stepped away from the keyboard and gestured him to return. The screen he had been reading when she arrived called out to him…

  He never noticed her leave. Nor did he notice falling asleep in his chair, two hours later. Nor, an hour after that, Annie returning and putting him to bed. The typing sounds she produced for the next hour or so, he took to be his own; his fingers flexed in his sleep, and his eyes saccaded ceaselessly across screens full of information so astounding and wonderful that a tiny part of him vaguely wondered why Annie kept cursing.

  JUST AS HE had the previous night, he woke instantly in pitch darkness, with no idea what had woken him. He was no more aware of having dreamed than he had been, hours earlier, of falling asleep. From his point of view, he simply scrolled down a screen and found himself sitting up in bed in the dark with Annie—

  —in her arms, sobbing his heart out.

  Mike was not a crybaby. He had no conscious memory of ever having cried so hard in his life before, and had no idea why he was doing it now. All he knew was that he could not stop. He was embarrassed, and afraid that some passing nightshift worker out in the hall might hear, that he might give Annie away…but he couldn’t help himself. It was terrifying. Like vomiting a snake: it was awful, but to try and stop halfway through would be much worse.

  “Harder,” Annie murmured in his ear. “Get it out. As much as you can.”

  “…don’teven…” he managed, “…evenknow…whatitis…”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let it out.” She rocked back and forth with him and patted his hair. “Let it go, boy.”

  He tried crying even harder, and it helped somehow. His fear began to ease a little.

  “It’ll be all right,” she told him, and kept telling him until he began to believe her. He surrendered totally, let her rock him in her arms and let his tears do with him what they would.

  In the end, he cried himself right back to sleep again, falling asleep without realizing it for the second time that night.

  C H A P T E R 6

  TOO MANY TROLLS

  This time he woke slowly, grudgingly, in fits and starts. When he finally had the job done, he found himself alone in bed. He was in his underpants, with the covers over him. The aroma of coffee was in the air. And rollups—ham and cheese, it smelled like. He opened his eyes, saw Annie sitting at the table, which was set. Yesterday morning in reverse. He was so hungry his mouth watered.

  “It’s hot,” Annie said.

  “In a minute.”

  After a little longer than that, his boner subsided enough that he was able to slide out from under the covers and get to his pants without mortifying himself. Then it was necessary to detour to the bathroom…where, after some thought, he decided that with Annie awake and listening, it was less embarrassing to pee in the toilet and put up with the splash, than to pee in the sink and not make one. Then he made himself mime washing his hands, because even though he was not in the habit of peeing on his fingers, he knew women were sometimes funny about that. When he came out he found three complete sets of clothing piled on the bed, all in his size. A maintenance coverall, an Elf costume, and another outfit like the one he was wearing, appropriate to a Guest. He chose that one, started to put it on, and stopped when Annie pointed out that he ought to shower first. By the time he got to his breakfast and coffee, he had to renuke both.

  Despite his hunger, the food tasted rather flat, even when he salted and peppered it. Even the jelly donut, his favorite snack, was unexciting. The coffee had no kick.

  Annie made herself another cup and sipped it in silence while he ate. From the way she held her other hand, he could suddenly tell that she was a reformed nicotine addict, who still missed it. Why did people ever start something whose only promises were death or endless yearning? He thought about asking her, then changed his mind.

  Instead, when he was finished eating, he asked, “What happened to me last night?”

  “Equilibrium.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She made no answer.

  “I mean, all of a sudden I was crying like crazy, and I still don’t even know why. And now I just feel…I don’t know, wrung out. Dull. Like I’ve been sick.”

  “Balance,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  She sighed. “Think, boy. Forty-eight hours ago, you were in total despair. You must have been, or you wouldn’t have done what you did. I know. And yesterday, I’m betting, was the happiest day of your life. You think you can do an emotional bungee-jump like that without a cost?”

  “Oh. Oh.” It started to make sense. She was right. He’d gone from feeling as lousy as he’d ever felt in his life to as happy as he would probably ever be, in a single day. No wonder he felt so weird. “And the crying helped?”

  “Without it you’d probably be sick with a high fever about now,” she said.

  He nodded. “I bet you’re right.” Suddenly he frowned. “Did you know this would happen?”

  “I was pretty sure.”

  “Then why didn’t you—”

  She was grinning at him. “And spoil the happiest day of your life?”

  Even in his torpor, he had to grin back. It took a startling amount of energy. “So what do we do today?”

  She reverted to her default scowl. “You stay in bed today and read—books—and if you have any sense, you’ll read anything but those damned manuals. Leave them for another day.” She got up and went to the bookshelves, picked a book. She started to toss it to him, then changed her mind and brought it to him. “Here, read this.” It was The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.

  He blinked at it. “What about you?”

  “I’ve got some errands to run. Nothing fun. Routine maintenance. This place is much too important to be trusted to the staff. Read whatever you please, boy—or watch videos if you must. But nothing more exciting or ambitious, today. Leave the rest for later. There’ll be plenty of time.” He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “I’m too damned old to keep getting up in the middle of the night.”

  “Okay, Annie,” he said humbly.

  She got something and brought it to him. A Command Band, just like hers. “I’m not going to activate this until I’ve checked you out on it.” She frowned fiercely. “Rigorously.” The frown softened. “But in the meantime, if you need me for anything…even just to help you cry some more…push this.” She pointed out a stud. “I won’t be far, and you won’t be interrupting anything.”

  He nodded, and she left at once.

  After a while, he opened the book at random, and read about Nero. Soon he was giggling.

  AS ALWAYS, READING Will Cuppy’s whimsical biographical sketches restored him. Even the great names of history were revealed to be as goofy, fallible, and human as anybody el
se—a great comfort to someone as self-conscious as Mike. He allowed himself three chapters, his customary maximum, then put the book aside. He decided he no longer felt tired, and was tempted to return to the computer for another installment of what he was coming to realize would be an ongoing lifetime project. There was so much to understand about Dreamworld! But Annie had advised him not to…and so far, all her advice had been good. He went to her fiction shelves, browsed until he found an author he didn’t know, one named Thomas Perry. He selected one at random, titled The Butcher’s Boy, sat in Annie’s computer chair, and opened it to page 1…

  Timeless time later, he heard Annie come in, and hopped up from the chair just in case she might feel like dumping him out of it to get at the computer again. Instead, she tossed something at him, which turned out to be a packaged sandwich. “Lunch,” she said.

  “Hi, Annie. Thanks—listen, I found the most—”

  “Feel like doing a cloak-and-dagger job for me?”

  “Huh? I mean, ‘Excuse me?’”

  “Are you available for undercover work?”

  He studied her face, convinced himself she was not kidding. His pulse rate rose. “Sure. When? What’s up?”

  She came and stood beside him, tapped commands into the computer. “Study this layout while you eat,” she said. “Pick out a good spot to loiter and keep an eye on that for an hour or so without drawing attention.”

  He studied the screen. That turned out to be the area where Cast members clocked out for the day, on their way to the employees’ locker areas and the exits beyond. A row of poles, still called turnstiles although nothing about them turned anymore, constrained both departing and arriving employees to pass between them one at a time, for accurate counting in either direction. Mike was looking at the area from a camera perhaps fifty meters distant. At this time of day the area was all but deserted; the morning shift would not be leaving for another hour or so, and there was only a single guard at the desk beside the turnstiles, idly reading his wrist. Mike turned to ask Annie a question, but she was deeply engrossed in one of the master manuals. He returned his attention to the screen, figured out the camera controls, and panned around until he had located a vantage point he liked: a row of nearby ATM booths that commanded a view of the area. If he could manage to get the last booth in line, the one closest to the turnstiles, its one-way security glass would allow him to observe them from relative concealment.