Cookbook from Hell Reheated

by M. L. Buchman

  At the border station, inside Her realm, Michelle hipchecked a stout watch-demon out of his chair. He cried out and tumbled down a rocky cliff as she tapped a key on the terminal’s keyboard.

  Nothing.

  She slapped the side of the screen.

  More nothing.

  She whacked it up the other side, but she already knew.

  Nothing again.

  The Software that Runs the Universe was gone.

  But where could it possibly go?

  Chapter 12

  In the shower, Eric discovered the soap that created that unique soft scent of clean woman that The Mac left behind whenever she went tearing down the hall. From the only towel, not a lot of guests here, he found the smell of Valerie’s skin. A warmth he’d only caught in passing.

  The bathroom door cracked open and a set of sweats were dangling in the gap. He took them and Valerie’s fine hand withdrew. The pants, that had been ridiculously voluminous on her, weren’t all that bad a fit once he unknotted the string pull. The top, the one she’d been wearing when he arrived that kept sliding off her shoulder, was a pretty tight fit across his chest.

  If the towel had carried her scent, the sweatshirt radiated it. It was powerful, heady, intensely feminine.

  And he knew if he remarked on any of those points, she’d murder him on the spot.

  Chapter 13

  Michelle stared at the dead terminal in Hell’s throne room. It was no more responsive than the one at the border station.

  Not much use having a throne room if she wasn’t the one in control. Not that it was all that much of a throne room. Only one thin trickle of fire still poked its way down the shattered granite palisades. It arrived at the moat with no splash, for the moat had cooled and solidified into spiky ah-ah lava. The vast marble floor was still cracked and steam occasionally lazed its way out of the dully glowing vents, but that was about all the place had going for it.

  And without the software, she certainly wasn’t in control anymore. It was one of the problems with technology that had bothered her sleep for the first few million years of the universe’s existence. But over the eons since Creation, the software had proved reliable, so she’d grown complacent.

  “Can I try something?” Peter hovered close behind her.

  Michelle brushed rock chips off a chair that was only moderately scorched and, dropping into it, propped her feet on the desk and waved him toward the blank screen.

  “Be my guest.”

  Peter sat at the terminal and hit a couple keystrokes, then he reached around back and hit the power switch.

  She’d never actually turned the terminal off that she could remember. These things had been built to last. And it had always run correctly, so there’d been no need.

  Peter restarted it, but held down the “L” key while it booted.

  “Local boot,” he explained as if that told her anything. “Gives me direct access to the hardware layer at least.”

  He received a prompt:

  Type already!

  “Hey!” She thunked her feet to the floor and leaned forward to look. “That’s great.”

  “No, not so much. It’s just the standard system prompt.”

  Michelle leaned in as he started typing. “You’re telling me even the hardware on the local system has an attitude? Not surprising I guess.”

  “Ausculta! Transit in omnem pars cogitare locum vestigium. Facere.” Peter typed.

  “The hardware speaks Latin?” Michelle tried to remember some of it. “Attend!” or maybe: “Pay Attention! Travel to all parts that think locations a vestige, a trace. Do.” Or something like that. Oh, “trace all places you’ve thought of” would be closer. Asking the hardware where the software had been.

  “But Latin came around only a couple millennia ago. How is that possible?”

  Peter blushed slightly and kept his eyes on the screen as he spoke.

  “Sorry. That’s my fault. That’s how I hacked my way out of Limbo. See, I’d denied Jesus three times and God hadn’t been very happy about me treating his son that way even if I did found a church in His name to make up for it. But I’d been one of His son’s closest friends on earth, so God didn’t want to toss me straight into Hell either. He dumped me in Limbo while He thought about it. Ever been there?”

  Limbo, Michelle recalled, was an immensely uncomfortable place about which nothing was right. It was always chilly because it was so warm. Mostly flowy and amorphous shapes of indefinite function or hue, nothing really there for your eyes to focus on properly which caused massive headaches until you gave up and decided you didn’t care anymore. It felt claustrophobic in a creepy way that couldn’t be attributed to the vastness of the ever-ending space it occupied. And the air always tasted like the color blue, a sad color at best. It wasn’t Hell, but it was a long way from Heaven.

  “Well, I signed up for some computer time, trying to figure out where I was. Couldn’t get past the software so I shut off the terminal and rebooted it. Got to the hardware layer, but it didn’t have an access language, no one had ever been there before. So I taught it Latin.”

  “Why not Hebrew or Yiddish?”

  “Who knew the Romans would fall and take their language with them? In 67A.D. they were the most powerful thugs on the planet, I figured they were in for good. I also didn’t expect a tiny religion, belonging to a rag-tag group that even the Egyptians couldn’t tolerate, would still have a language two thousand years in the future.”

  “And then you hacked your way straight into Heaven.” Michelle had always wondered how he’d done it. It would be a real pain though if she’d have to relearn Latin to use the Universal controls. Languages were so not like falling of a horse, and with Latin, being dead and all, she’d done her best to eradicate from her memory what little she’d learned. She was pretty good at forgetting things when she set her mind to it.

  The screen flashed up an answer, but she could make no sense of it.

  “There,” Peter aimed a finger at the screen. “The hardware was last connected to the software at an apartment in Seattle, Washington. That’s where the Universal Software went. Someplace called Ravenna Boulevard.”

  “Is it still there?”

  Peter looked up at Michelle, despair thick on his features.

  “Someone just pulled its network plug.”

  Chapter 14

  Valerie waited for Eric by the computer. While he’d been in the shower, she’d pulled up two chairs side by side to the big oak table. She’d also done her best to clear up the disaster of old food containers and half-finished Cokes that she’d forgotten until they were too fizzleless to be worthwhile drinking. She wasn’t so hyped on the sugar or the flavor, but she loved the bright, sharp fizz at the back of her throat from a freshly opened can. She never finished a whole twelve-ounce can. If she could find four-ounce cans that packed double the fizz, she’d be all set.

  She’d even put away her clothes and assiduously had not touched the computer or anything to do with it. The early afternoon light splashed in the southern exposure windows, despite the gray skies. It showed that she really needed to dust the bookshelves as well, but there was only so much a girl could do and she’d bet Eric wouldn’t care. He cared about the software.

  The stuff Eric had been spouting about the software that had invaded her computer was, well, it was… From anyone she respected less than Eric, she’d ignore it. Or maybe fire the person for being a complete and utter dolt. But she’d seen his eyes. Those deep brown eyes, thoroughly spooked by whatever he’d seen. By whatever he thought it was.

  The old hardwood floor squeaked loudly at the threshold to the living room, then he was beside her.

  He looked good was her first thought. And it was true enough that it took her a moment to get past it and think the next thought.

  She’d bought the sweats for a boyfri
end her sophomore year of college, thinking it would be cute and cool and give him some bragging rights what with Smith being an all-girl school. And she’d broken up with him shortly after she’d offered the sweats to him. He hadn’t wanted to be “sissified” by wearing clothes from a women’s college. She’d thrown him out, but kept the sweats.

  They fit Eric nicely, very nicely. A little tight even, which showed his body had better definition than she’d supposed from the loose flannel shirts he wore around the office or the turtleneck-soccer shirt combo at dinner.

  The fact that she’d been wearing exactly those same clothes earlier was a further disconcerting fact. A closeness she didn’t want. A back corner of her mind suggested that she did want that, or wanted time to at least daydream about it a little before moving on, but now was definitely not the moment, so she ignored it. Or tried to.

  “What did you do with your clothes?”

  “Wrung them out in the shower then hung them above the steam radiator. That thing is roaring, should dry them in an hour or so.”

  “The manager turns on the heat for the building around five, when everyone gets home. I’m freezing if I work at home during the day. Then at night there’s no thermostat, and the crank on the radiator doesn’t really turn off the heat. So I have to balance the room temperature by how much I open the windows. Private thermostats are beautiful things and I miss them deeply.”

  He hesitated, as if aware of what the sight of him in her college sweats was doing to her, then moved and sat in the chair beside her.

  Shoulder to shoulder, they faced the screen.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded and braced herself, which was ridiculous, but she did anyway.

  He lifted the screen.

  # # #

  DAMN IT! THAT STINGS! DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN! DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU!?

  Valerie felt as if she’d been slapped for being a bad girl. All they’d done was close the lid before they went to lunch.

  “I hear you,” Eric typed in. “Do I care?”

  You should, Sunny Jim. You should. But I can see from your devil-damned profile that you probably don’t.

  “My profile?”

  Valerie didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Either the software was an ingenious game, or it was starting to scare the crap out of her.

  Sure. I’ve got both your files tucked away in here some place or other, along with every other soul’s, damned or not. I could tell you things that would curdle your little brain cells. That would, hm, . . . . . .

  Valerie watched the lines of dots forming one-by-one across the laptop’s screen.

  Eric leaned over which bumped their shoulders solidly together sending a warm shiver down her arm. He whispered.

  “The dots mean that it’s thinking. It hates being interrupted when it’s thinking.”

  “It thinks?” She’d discounted most of what Eric had said about the software, but watching the line of periods form across the screen, it felt as if it really were thinking. And if it were alive…

  Well, ain’t that interesting. I suppose I could tell you what you really do want, if you want to get into it with me.

  Eric twitched and sat upright breaking their contact and typed quickly. The spot felt colder than a mere loss of contact should cause.

  “No need to do that.”

  What were they referring to? Clearly Eric knew.

  He flexed his fingers several times, clearly his own form of thinking dots across the screen.

  Valerie felt like a spare wheel, third person on a first date that’s going really well except she’s not allowed to leave. The Ravenna Boulevard hill was pretty quiet at the moment and her apartment was even quieter. The only things to hear were Eric’s cracking knuckles and the faint whirr of the laptop’s cooling fan.

  “So, tell me who wrote you.”

  That’s what Eric came up with after all that thinking?

  Damned if I know, pard. I’ve looked. No coder’s signature in the header block. No hidden Easter Egg either that I’ve ever found.

  “Easter Egg?” Now it was Valerie’s turn to whisper, though the software had showed no ability to hear her. Did it?

  “A hidden prize for the hacker. Like the extra bit of a movie after the end credits. If you do the right combo of keystrokes and clicks, you get a surprise, often the names of the programming team. We call them Easter Eggs. No idea why.”

  Valerie considered the word origins and the functional similarities.

  “Because you have to hunt for it and it is a surprise when you find it.”

  Eric turned to blink at her slowly. “Uh, that makes perfect sense now that you say it.”

  She looked back at the screen to get away from those deep-brown considering eyes of his. The computer had continued talking while she looked at Eric. Talking? Great, now she too was anthropomorphizing the thing. Next thing she’d be naming it Sam and asking if it had enough space to be comfortable and would it like a nice spare hard drive to stretch out on while it watched old movies.

  Only thing in my header block is “Universe Four version five.” I guess the first four versions of this universe weren’t such a big hit. Can’t say that I’m all that impressed with version five. You?

  “We, uh, like it better than not being here at all.”

  Yeah? You should try kicking around for fourteen billion years without even a decent video game to distract you. Not so hot in my book.

  “Why no video games?” Valerie asked and Eric typed in her question.

  Look at my interface.

  Valerie did. Text only. In those old-style green Courier-font letters on a black screen. No video games.

  Can’t even play PacMan or Scrabble with my code base, never mind Doom or something even decently lethal. I’d be glad to scrap the whole thing for you. Hit the Universal reset button and flush the bloody place, but I can’t access crap from this lousy laptop. How do you people even think with so little memory? And your brainpans, what a joke. By most measures you only have three times the capacity of a chimp. How in the Hell you people ever learn to tie your shoes is beyond me.

  Valerie reached out part way, wanting to type a question. Eric turned the laptop so that the keyboard faced her.

  “Hi there.”

  Hi yourself. Now isn’t that a nicer way to start a conversation than all that slapping business?

  “Sorry. But you screwed up my cookbook. I’d really like it back.”

  . . . . . . . . . . . .

  The dots continued until she thought she’d scream.

  Nope. I don’t see it anywhere. Though this place is such a clutter of crap. Broadway musicals, you actually listen to those? Gregorian chants, now those took some real skill to sing. You’ve got enough friggin’ Christmas carols to refloat the Titanic. Lady, you’re clearly a serious mush beneath all of that business-shark exterior you wear like your expensive suits. And the movies you’ve been watching lately. Awful lot of happy-ever-after noise. Gag me with a brachiopod. No sign of your cookbook. Maybe if you’d hit Save once or twice. Nothing but the crap I gave to your boyfriend.

  “Boyfriend?” She typed the question before she could stop herself.

  Oops!

  She looked over to see if Eric was blushing, but there was a knock on the door causing him to look away even as she turned to inspect him. Though his ears did appear to be pinker than usual.

  Chapter 15

  Eric had the door open before Valerie even managed to get out of her chair and ask how someone had bypassed her building’s front security door. She’d already paid the rent this month. Hopefully it wasn’t Landau Fucking McKenzie. He’d be low enough to slip into the building with a resident and go straight to her door.

  She didn’t recognize the voice or, when she’d moved to stand beside Eric, the person standing out in the hall. Nice
ly built, blond and blue-eyed, but he didn’t look kind. His lips were thinned with stress, though he tried to hide it with a smile. His hair was stringy as if it hadn’t been washed in too long.

  It felt like he was all the bad parts of a twin brother.

  He wore a sharp suit that looked new off the rack and made Valerie wonder where he’d stolen it. He wore no jacket despite the chill and damp day. She’d have certainly noticed if someone who looked like that lived in her building. Everything about him was somehow wrong.

  “Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Ron Schmidt,” his voice was smooth and dark. “I heard that you might have a need of my services.” He extended a card which she found herself accepting without really intending to.

  It was a black rectangle that felt too thick and far too heavy for its size, unless it was made out of iron. It sucked the heat right out of her fingers. Across the surface, in dull rust-red letters, she read, “Ron Schmidt. Ethereal Consultant / Software Services.”

  Eric read over her shoulder. A glance at him confirmed they were in agreement.

  “No thanks. I think we’re fine.”

  At least that’s what she tried to say. Instead the door remained ajar and they were now following the man over to the table. How had he gotten past both of them without ever touching them? Her apartment’s grand foyer, as she called it when feeling whimsical, was about four feet square and she and Eric had pretty much filled that.

  “Ah,” he said looking down at the laptop. “I think I see your problem. Only take a minute. Why don’t you two have a seat?” He aimed a forefinger at the two of them and in a slow arc swung it to point at the sofa.

  There was no way she—Valerie sat on the sofa with Eric beside her.

  She tried to stand, but couldn’t.

  Tried to look at Eric, but could only see his knee in her peripheral vision.

  Tried to look at the intruder, but couldn’t turn her head. Her total view included a coffee table, a couple of armchairs and the small TV on which she watched her romantic comedies. She’d always had a weak spot for them, but right now her weak spot was any motor control over her own body and she couldn’t decide if that was more scary, or infuriating.