Outside of the Wire

by Richard Farnsworth

  As I sat looking at the clock, I tugged and straightened my skirt in a vain attempt to keep my ankles covered.

  “I’m sorry, but are you here with Tony Farragolo?”

  I turned from the clock to see a nervous little man in a rumpled brown jacket that seemed a size too big for him. As he stood there blinking through his glasses I couldn't help but think of a little boy in a boatman’s life preserving jacket.

  I stood and proffered a hand.

  The small man looked up at me and then down at my hand as if unsure what to do. Finally he reached to grasp me by the fingers but I slid my gloved hand forward to shake as a man would.

  “I am Antonia Farragolo,” I said with two firm shakes.

  The man had a limp grasp and pulled his hand away quickly.

  “Antonia?” the man asked.

  I smiled with more confidence than I felt and nodded.

  The little man seemed at a loss and then as if reminded by a nervous tick, regained his composure.

  “I’m Teddy Nussbaum. I was told…” he trailed off.

  I had no doubt that he must have expected me to have been a man, but I disingenuously said, “Yes?”

  Mr., Nussbaum opened his mouth as if to speak and then appeared to think better of it.

  He sighed.

  I smiled warmly.

  “Please follow me.”

  I felt a little jolt as I gathered my box of punched cards and ledger and fell in behind the little man. I had made it past the first obstruction and I felt unstoppable.

  We traveled down a short corridor, one wall pierced by windows. Through the glass I could see rows of young men at desks pressing keys on arithmetic devices and pulling levers. Each pull of a lever resulted in an incremental release of paper from the top of the device. Manual tabulation.

  Soon manual tabulation would be a thing of the past. In just a few years it would be the twentieth century and I could see a single machine and a few dozen punched cards replacing the entire room of accounting clerks.

  The future was thrilling, but how unfortunate that it only came at you one day at a time.

  I followed close behind Mr. Nussbaum and almost bumped into him when he stopped before a doorway. He turned to regard me with a peculiar, almost sad expression and then opened the door for me.

  The room was sparsely furnished but for the large walnut desk swathed in accounting sheets. At the desk sat a squat, pallid man of middle age. Pale with a receding hairline and deep lines carved at the corners of his tight, lipless seam of a mouth. His gaze made me feel that I was the fly to his toad.

  The little man introduced me awkwardly, and then the man behind the desk was introduced to me as Mr. Colund. I could see he held the letter of introduction that Professor Wireman had written.

  I stepped forward, shifting my box and ledger to my left hand and proferred my right hand just as I had practiced. Mr. Colund gave me a flaccid, perfunctory handshake and a confused smile.

  I stood in an awkward silence after disengaging my hand.

  The man actually stared at the swell of my breasts and said in a flat tone, "You're a woman."

  I wanted to comment on his keen powers of observation, but instead I did that little dip, where my eyes drop down to catch his and pull them back up to my face and said, “Yes, so I am told.”

  A little flush of red crept up his neck and he said, "I beg your pardon, but Dr. Wireman wrote that I was to be introduced to a student of his named Tony Farragolo." He waved my letter about absently.

  “My name is Antonia. Dr. Wireman insists on shortening it to Tony.”

  Colund folded the paper and nodded.

  “I assure you, Mr. Colund, I am well versed in the use of the Hollerith card. I have been studying the installation of relay logic algorithms by means of preconstructed punched-cards with Dr. Wireman for the past two years.” When he said nothing I leaned forward and continued, “You see, Mr. Colund, I have this theory that by means of serial installation of the bits of data on punched cards one might generate complex codes through the use of your tabulator, the Magnotronic Tabulator…”

  “Is that Mrs. or Miss?”

  “Miss, Sir,” I said.

  Mr. Colund nodded and appraised me with dead eyes before he said, “I ask, as your brow is not quite so brutishly sloping as would be expected of one coming from the Apennine Peninsula, so the name might have been an unfortunate choice in marriage. And then there is the narrowness of the zygomatic arches, with the set of your eyes giving the illusion of an insightful nature.”

  I bit down on the inside of my lower lip and waited for him to finish his physiognomic musing.

  “Though the insightful nature could well be a subversive element in your nature. Are you a suffragist, Miss Farragolo?”

  I sighed quietly. As it has always been, must it always continue to be? “Sir, I have been fortunate to study with Professor Wireman and simply wish to be afforded the opportunity to test the theories we have developed.”

  “Yes, yes, Miss Farragolo, I am sure Dr. Wireman is convinced of your capabilities, but you see. Well, when I heard he wanted to send me an Italian I was hesitant to entertain his fancies. But a woman.”

  I smiled as coyly as I could and said, “Why, Mr. Colund, do you dislike women?”

  Mr. Nussbaum cleared his throat behind me. Mr. Colund glanced from Mr. Nussbaum to me.

  Before he could recover the momentum of his objection I said, “Sir, Professor Wireman has been collaborating with this firm in the automation of arithmetic processes for nearly a decade. Do you think he would have arranged for me to come down here if there wasn’t something I could offer?”

  Mr. Nussbaum cleared his throat again and said, “Mr. Colund, this is the initiate that Dr. Wireman has sent. I don’t think there is time to find another.”

  I looked down at the little man and the disconcerting oddness of his words. He stared straight at Mr. Colund and wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  Mr. Colund nodded, tapping my folded letter on the edge of the desk. He pulled a watch from a vest pocket and nodded again. He said to Mr. Nussbaum, “It is the first night of the new moon.”

  “Excuse me, Sir, but I am unsure what this is about,” I said.

  Mr. Colund looked up at me again and said, “It’s late in the day, Miss Farragolo, but would you mind trying this generation of complex code all in one day? It might require you stay past midnight.”

  I held myself in place so as not to execute a little jig right there. Then I nodded proudly. Two obstructions down. I would show these men that I could do it.

  Mr. Nussbaum led me to a service elevator. One flight below the ground floor and down a deserted corridor. A light green discoloration to the industrial off-white paint hinted at mold taking root in the block walls.

  "Goodness, but it's warm down here.”

  Mr. Nussbaum didn't respond. He stopped his slow march and turned into a small room. It wasn't much larger than a broom closet and smelled musty. A single electrical light bulb hung suspended on a cord in the center of the ceiling.

  Against the far wall, the Magnotronic Tabulator rested on a solitary desk. Sleek, burnished walnut and polished brass, it was a sight to behold.

  The box I carried prevented me from clapping my hands together at the sight.

  An old model ticker tape machine sat beside it, coated in a thin layer of dust.

  Mr. Nussbaum explained the basic operation of the device. It was much like the larger Hollerinth Tabulator I had worked with at the college. The largest and most thrilling difference was that the serial inputs could be converted into magnotronic impulses that would be carried much like telegraph signals through a large cable that led from the base of the device to a brass plate on the wall.

  I placed my box of cards beside the machine and turned to shake Mr. Nussbaum’s hand again, but the little man had gone.

  The room and the behavior of the two men elicited in me an insecure feeling, but I would not let my own fears become an obstacle.
There were no more obstacles but the time it would require to make the inputs.

  I sat at the workstation and reflexively cracked my knuckles.

  I spent the next few hours loading cards into the input slit, moving the lever first down to lower the cards and then back up to engage the pins that would pass through the slits and engage metallic contacts. This would load a small packet of information, much like a single sentence but spoken in a binary code of my own invention.

  I lost myself in the work and, after I know not how long, I said, "Three more cards of coded data, my lovely device. Shall we see it you are able to perform the calculations?"

  A waft of moist warm air blew up my skirt cuff and I jumped back. Under the desk, against the wall was an air vent that I hadn't noticed before. I leaned under the desk and could just hear the hum of machinery.

  And there was something else. Something wet. The air coming up through the vent smelled acidic but foul, like too-ripe tomatoes.

  I sat back up in my chair and took a deep breath.

  I cracked my knuckles again and started to enter my last few cards, and that's when I heard the door lock.

  #

  I had once read a penny-dreadful’s detective tale of how a lock had been picked with a pair of hatpins. However, standing there in the dim room it seemed an unlikely proposition.

  I had used three long pins to secure my hat to my hair. I removed them then and set the fashionable little felt disc on the top of the tabulator after ensuring my bun was intact. I slid two pins along the doorjamb and twisted, poked and stabbed until I succeeded in lodging them both irretrievably. Despite my inspired attempt, the door remained solidly closed.

  I felt quite foolish looking at the hatpins and holding the third. But in truth, I felt the dire circumstance allowed for more trepidation than self-reproach.

  There was only the one locked exit. The wall vent appeared to be too small for me. The walls were concrete blocks. As I looked around my cell, I noticed for the first time that the ceiling had a vent as well.

  I set the hatpin down and placed the chair on the desk beside the tabulator while both cursing my short Sicilian heritage and praising my forethought at wearing sensible walking shoes. Then I scrambled up onto the chair and balanced as I pushed up at the brass vent plate. On closer inspection I could see that were I to reach it there was still not enough space for me to wiggle through.

  I heard a little metallic tap from under the desk. Then another. I shimmied down my teetering tower of furniture and searched the floor. Nothing unusual.

  Then I noticed two little screws on the floor. I bent down and as I watched, another screw fell and made a metallic tap on the tile. They had come from the corners of the vent grate.

  I watched as the fourth screw rotated counterclockwise of its own accord. And then it too plinked off the dusty tile. The grate was no longer secured, and it fell from the wall. I reflexively grabbed it half way to the floor. It shook violently in my trembling hand. The plaster around the vent looked puckered and reminded me of a fabricated sphincter. There were little flakes along the rough sides of the hole that looked like dried meat.

  I looked closer and found a blood-soaked fingernail pulled out at the quick.

  "Oh, no. Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no."

  Something moved deep in the vent hole. Metallic rattling. Something small slid against smooth metal. Many somethings that I did not like at all. The rattle grew louder as something approached.

  I grabbed the hatpin with one hand and slammed the grate atop the hole with the other. I held it tightly with both hands while the rattling continued. There was something just on the other side of the grate, but I couldn't see. The something brushed the other side. A rat?

  Lord, but I hate rats. Maybe a snake? I hate snakes more.

  My hand, pressed there against the little holes of the vent, was sliced. I pulled it back at the sharp pain and there was a thin, deep slash on the palm, little pearls of blood rising up. Whatever was on the other side of the grate pushed full force, and I almost lost hold with my one hand, still holding the hatpin. Then it was cut too.

  I switched hands, trying to keep the vent from coming free and prevent another laceration.

  What was back there? I pulled my feet up and pressed them against the grate. I had better leverage that way and I laid back.

  "Help!" It was probably useless to yell, but I was wet-myself scared. I screamed it over and over again, not caring that I sounded too shrill.

  I felt the bottoms of shoes being nicked time and again. The pressure against my feet increased. The corner of the grate bucked and I moved my foot to keep it down. And then the other corner popped away. Whatever was back there started to thrash against the grate.

  I stared at the ceiling and tears blurred my vision. This was wrong.

  The grate pushed away, and I stomped it back against the wall slightly askew. From the slim gap at the corner a thin, headless black snake slid out. No, not a snake. It was a length of insulated cable. There were thin slivers of copper wire poking out of the end where, if it had been a snake, the head should be. It waved back and forth seemingly of its own volition.

  Then another slid out at the opposite corner. I kicked at them and lost my purchase on the barrier. The entire grate flew away as the hole expelled a Medusa's head of writhing black cables.

  Thick strands wrapped around my ankles and undulated up my thighs, twisted around my waist. Securely bundled, they dragged me into the hole that had seemed too small.

  I kicked. I screamed. I thrashed. I grabbed at the sides of the vent hole.

  "Please! Please-please-please." I sobbed maniacally as I slid in through the puckered orifice.

  I tried desperately to hold on, but the pulling was irresistible. I slid in and down the vent. I snaked down through spaces almost too narrow for me. I bumped and scraped and left patches of skin and a few shirt buttons as I twisted downward toward the rotting tomato smell.

  The confinement fell away all of a sudden and I fell out of the conduit onto a concrete floor. Exposed electrical light bulbs dangling, girder ceiling, cinder-block walls, most likely the sub-basement. I looked down between my feet in the direction I was being pulled.

  The cables ran across the floor and up into a hole in the bottom of a huge squared appliance. In the dim light it was hard to tell, but looking closely I could see that it was not an appliance at all, but rather a sweaty mass that writhed within an oblong crate of silver wire mesh. Three feet, by three and perhaps seven or eight feet long. An eye blinked and then slid beneath a twisting coil of flesh. Though I saw the thing I could not fix my mind on what it was. The mass of wires that held me ran through a gap in the wire mesh and into a floating darkness in the mass. The corners of the dark space pulled up and made that hole look like a leering grin. Twelve feet.

  Colund sat to the left of the sweating device at a tabulator, a twin of the one I had been using. He looked over his shoulder and down at me.

  "Help me!" I screamed and twisted. I tried to scramble up into a sitting position. Ten feet.

  "We've almost finished Miss Farragolo,” he said. He didn't turn from the tabulator and continued to jack the lever.

  "What's going on?" I screamed. Eight feet. The hole at the bottom of the caged mass dilated open and then closed. Snick. Snick. I couldn't help but think of a dog snapping at a treat it was about to receive.

  "Pishacha is our latest addition. He was enslaved in the Hindu Kush in eighteen forty-seven, but a use wasn't found for him until the tabulator was developed. These little devils can store ungodly amounts of information. And the speed of calculation once the proper algorithms are installed. Amazing. He's the fusion of demonology and automated tabulation, a perfect union, don't you think?"

  "Help me," I cried. Five feet. I didn't want to sound so helplessly feminine. I cleared my throat; tears streamed down my face

  "Teddy said using a woman so was unconscionable, and I had my reservations about a woman in this role as well, but a
ll seems well with Pishacha. And though your algorithm won’t be used, you're still serving a greater good here.” Mr. Colund cooed to the machine-thing.

  My feet slid up to the lip of the open hole. I could see now that it really was a mouth, pressed to an open square in the wire, eighteen-inches on a side.

  A terrible bubbling feeling welled up in me.

  Could stood and then squatted down an arm’s length away and said, “We are preparing for the nineteen-hundred census, and expect with our latest addition here to be awarded the contract. Manual tabulation can’t hope to compete with what we have here.”

  I thrashed side to side and could just touch Mr. Colund. He brushed my hand aside. I bucked and then remembered the hatpin I still held. I stabbed it into Colund's surprised face.

  He squealed.

  I shimmied and twisted and pushed him down toward my feet.

  As his hands shot to his face, I grabbed him by the shirt-front and pulled him over and atop me. Questing cables snaked out of the demon’s mouth and flailed blindly. They swept across Colund's blood-flecked face. He started to brush the cables away one handed, the other hand pulling at the hatpin, and the cables wrapped and twisted around his wrist.

  More cables emerged and swept gently across the twisting man's face. Then they wrapped quickly around his head and neck. Colund let out a muffled scream and went rigid. The cables loosened their hold on me, and I scrambled away.

  Colund's head and shoulders disappeared. A spasm rippled through his lower body.

  The edges of the hole reached out as the man was pulled in and it reminded me of a child sucking down a wet spaghetti noodle.

  The entirety of his body was gone in an instant. I sat on the floor listening to the wet crunching sounds over my sobbing gasps. Then silence.

  I sat there with my back against the far wall. An old ticker tape device, identical to the one I had seen in the little room, sprang to life. I walked cautiously and read: