I went back to the bathroom, wiped water droplets from the plastic cover of the library book, and carefully lowered myself back into the water. It was too cool. I ran more hot water and was just getting my blood pressure back to normal when the phone rang again.
So I sat through fifteen rings, trying to ignore it.
Did you ever try to read with the phone ringing?
On the sixteenth ring I got up. I dried off, put on a robe, walked slowly and deliberately into the living room. I stared at the phone for a while.
On the fiftieth ring I picked it up.
"This is a recording. Please do not hang up until the message has been completed. This calls originates from the house of your nextdoor neighbor, Charles Kluge. It will repeat every ten minutes.
Mr. Kluge knows he has not been the best of neighbors, and apologizes in advance for the inconvenience. He requests that you go immediately to his house. The key is under the mat. Go inside and do what needs to be done. There will be a reward for your services. Thank you." Click.
Dial tone.
I'm not a hasty man. Ten minutes later, when the phone rang again, I was still sitting there thinking it over. I picked up the receiver and listened carefully.
It was the same message. As before, it was not Kluge's voice. It was something synthesized, with all the human warmth of a Speak'n'Spell.
I heard it out again, and cradled the receiver when it was done.
I thought about calling the police. Charles Kluge had lived next door to me for ten years. In that time I may have had a dozen conversations with him, none lasting longer than a minute. I owed him nothing.
I thought about ignoring it. I was still thinking about that when the phone rang again. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes. I lifted the receiver and put it right back down.
I could disconnect the phone. It wouldn't change my life radically.
But in the end I got dressed and went out the front door, turned left, and walked toward Kluge's property.
My neighbor across the street, Hal Lanier, was out mowing the lawn. He waved to me, and I waved back. It was about seven in the evening of a wonderful August day. The shadows were long. There was the smell of cut grass in the air. I've always liked that smell. About time to cut my own lawn, I thought.
It was a thought Kluge had never entertained. His lawn was brown and knee-high and choked with weeds.
I rang the bell. When nobody came I knocked. Then I sighed, looked under the mat, and used the key I found there to open the door.
"Kluge?" I called out as I stuck my head in.
I went along the short hallway, tentatively, as people do when unsure of their welcome. The drapes were drawn, as always, so it was dark in there, but in what had once been the living room ten television screens gave more than enough light for me to see Kluge. He sat in a chair in front of a table, with his face pressed into a computer keyboard and the side of his head blown away.
Hal Lanier operates a computer for the LAPD, so I told him what I had found and he called the police. We waited together for the first car to arrive. Hal kept asking if I'd touched anything, and I kept telling him no, except for the front door knob.
An ambulance arrived without the siren. Soon there were police all over, and neighbors standing out in their yards or talking in front of Kluge's house. Crews from some of the television stations arrived in time to get pictures of the body, wrapped in a plastic sheet, being carried out. Men and women came and went. I assumed they were doing all the standard police things, taking fingerprints, collecting evidence. I would have gone home, but had been told to stick around.
Finally I was brought in to see Detective Osborne, who was in charge of the case. I was led into Kluge's living room. All the television screens were still turned on. I shook hands with Osborne. He looked me over before he said anything. He was a short guy, balding. He seemed very tired until he looked at me. Then, though nothing really changed in his face, he didn't look tired at all.
"You're Victor Apfel?" he asked. I told him I was. He gestured at the room. "Mr. Apfel, can you tell if anything has been taken from this room?"
I took another look around, approaching it as a puzzle.
There was a fireplace and there were curtains over the windows. There was a rug on the floor. Other than those items, there was nothing else you would expect to find in a living room.
All the walls were lined with tables, leaving a narrow aisle down the middle. On the tables were monitor screens, keyboards, disc drives—all the glossy bric-a-brac of the new age. They were interconnected by thick cables and cords. Beneath the tables were still more computers, and boxes full of electronic items. Above the tables were shelves that reached the ceiling and were stuffed with boxes of tapes, discs, cartridges... there was a word for it which I couldn't recall just then. It was software.
"There's no furniture, is there? Other than that..."
He was looking confused.
"You mean there was furniture here before?"
"How would I know?" Then I realized what the misunderstanding was. "Oh. You thought I'd been here before. The first time I ever set foot in this room was about an hour ago."
He frowned, and I didn't like that much.
"The medical examiner says the guy had been dead about three hours. How come you came over when you did, Victor?"
I didn't like him using my first name, but didn't see what I could do about it. And I knew I had to tell him about the phone call.
He looked dubious. But there was one easy way to check it out, and we did that. Hal and Osborne and I and several others trooped over to my house. My phone was ringing as we entered.
Osborne picked it up and listened. He got a very sour expression on his face. As the night wore on, it just got worse and worse.
We waited ten minutes for the phone to ring again. Osborne spent the time examining everything in my living room. I was glad when the phone rang again. They made a recording of the message, and we went back to Kluge's house.
Osborne went into the backyard to see Kluge's forest of antennas. He looked impressed.
"Mrs. Madison down the street thinks he was trying to contact Martians," Hal said, with a laugh.
"Me, I just thought he was stealing HBO." There were three parabolic dishes. There were six tall masts, and some of those things you see on telephone company buildings for transmitting microwaves.
Osborne took me to the living room again. He asked me to describe what I had seen. I didn't know what good that would do, but I tried.
"He was sitting in that chair, which was here in front of this table. I saw the gun on the floor. His hand was hanging down toward it."
"You think it was suicide?"
"Yes, I guess I did think that." I waited for him to comment, but he didn't. "Is that what you think?"
He sighed. "There wasn't any note."
"They don't always leave notes," Hal pointed out.
"No, but they do often enough that my nose starts to twitch when they don't." He shrugged. "It's probably nothing."
"That phone call," I said. "That might be a kind of suicide note."
Osborne nodded. "Was there anything else you noticed?"
I went to the table and looked at the keyboard. It was made by Texas Instruments, model TI-99/4A.
There was a large bloodstain on the right side of it, where his head had been resting.
"Just that he was sitting in front of this machine." I touched a key, and the monitor screen behind the keyboard immediately filled with words. I quickly drew my hand back, then stared at the message there.
PROGRAM NAME: GOODBYE REAL WORLD
DATE: 8/20
CONTENTS: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT; MISC FEATURES
PROGRAMMER: "CHARLES KLUGE"
TO RUN PRESS ENTER _
The black square at the end flashed on and off. Later I learned it was called a cursor.