“Why not?” asked Elizabeth.
“Because that’s sure curtains for you, kid. The netexec don’t ask no questions, he don’t check to see if you maybe could be repaired. You go bye-bye and you don’t come back.”
Like Sheena, thought Elizabeth. “Does he listen in often?” she asked.
“Never has,” said Norton. “Not yet. Don’t even know the Chickenheart’s there, far as I can tell. Always a first time, though.”
“I want to talk to the Chickenheart,” said Elizabeth, although she wasn’t sure she wanted anything of the kind, after her last experience.
“You got it,” said Norton. “This’ll just take a second.”
Suddenly all the friendly animals disappeared, and Elizabeth felt herself falling very hard and fast along a slippery blue line in the dark. The line glowed neon blue at first, then changed to fuchsia, then sulfur yellow. She knew that Norton was falling with her, but she couldn’t see him. Against the dark background, his shadow moved with hers, black, and opalescent as an oilslick.
They arrived somewhere moist and warm. The Chickenheart pulsated next to them, nutrients swishing through its external tubing. It was huge, and wetly organic. Elizabeth felt slightly sick.
“Oh, turn it off, for Chrissake,” said Norton, with exasperation. “It’s just me and a kid.”
The monstrous creature vanished, and a cartoon rabbit with impossibly tall ears and big dewy brown eyes appeared in its place. It looked at Norton, raised an eyebrow, cocked an ear in his direction, and took a huge, noisy bite out of the carrot it was holding.
“Gimme a break,” said Norton.
The bunny was replaced by a tall, overweight man in his sixties wearing a rumpled white linen suit. He held a small, paddle-shaped fan, which he slowly moved back and forth. “Ah, Mr. Norton,” he said. “Hot enough for you, sir?”
“We got us a problem here, Chick,” said Norton. He looked over at Elizabeth and nodded. “You tell him about it, kid.”
First she told him about her brother. “Non-trivial, young lady,” said the Chickenheart. “Non-trivial, but easy enough to fix. Let me take care of it right now.” He went rigid and quiet for a few seconds, as though frozen in time. Then he was back. “Now, then, young lady,” he said. “We’ll talk if you like.”
So Elizabeth told the Chickenheart about Sheena and Oginga, about the testing center and the wet sweater and the monitor telling her to clean up the spit. Even though she didn’t have to say a word, she told him everything, and she was sure that if he wanted to come up with a solution, he could do it.
The Chickenheart seemed surprised to hear about the euthanasia center, and especially surprised that Sheena was going to be sent there. He addressed Norton. “I know I’ve been out of touch, but I find this hard to believe. Mr. Norton, have you any conception of how difficult it can be to obtain components like this? Let me investigate the situation.” His face went quiet for a second, then came back. “By gad, sir, it’s true,” he said to Norton. “They say they’re optimizing for predictability. It’s a mistake, sir, let me tell you. Things are too predictable here already. Same old ideas churning around and around. A few more components like that Sheena, things might get interesting again.
“I want to look at their records.” He paused for a moment, then continued talking.
“Ah, yes, yes, I want that Sheena right away, sir,” he said to Norton. “An amazing character. Oginga, too — not as gonzo as the girl, but he has a brand of aggressive curiosity we can put to use, sir. And there are forty-six others with similar personality profiles scheduled for euthanasia today at two.” His face went quiet again.
“What is he doing?” Elizabeth asked Norton.
“Old Chickenheart’s got his hooks into everythin’,” Norton replied. “He just reaches along those pathways, faster’n you can think, and does what he wants. The altered data will look like it’s been there all along, and ain’t nobody can prove anythin’ different.”
“Done and done, Mr. Norton.” The Chickenheart was back.
“Thank you, Mr. Chickenheart,” said Elizabeth, remembering her manners. “What’s going to happen to Sheena and Oginga now?”
“Well, young lady, we’re going to bring your friends right into the system, sort of like the sysop, but without, shall we say, official recognition. We’ll have Mr. Norton here keep an eye on them. They’ll be our little surprises, eh? Timebombs that we’ve planted. They can explore the system, learn what’s what, what they can get away with and what they can’t. Rather like I do.”
“What will they do?” asked Elizabeth.
“That’s a good question, my dear,” said the Chickenheart. “They’ll have to figure it out for themselves. Maybe they’ll put together a few new solutions to some old problems, or create a few new problems to keep us on our toes. One way or the other, I’m sure they’ll liven up the old homestead.”
“But what about me?” asked Elizabeth.
“Well, Miss Elizabeth, what about you? Doesn’t look to me as though you have any cause to worry. You passed your tests yesterday with flying colors. You can just go right on being a little girl, and some day you’ll have a nice, safe job as an executive. Maybe you’ll even become netexec, who knows? I wiped just a tiny bit of your brother’s brain and removed all records of your call. I’ll wipe your memory of this, and you’ll do just fine, yes indeed.”
“But my friends are in here,” said Elizabeth, and she started to feel sorry for herself. “My dog, too.”
“Well, then, what do you want me to do?”
“Can’t you fix my tests?”
The Chickenheart looked at Elizabeth with surprise.
“What’s this, my dear? Do you think you’re a timebomb, too?”
“I can learn to be a timebomb,” said Elizabeth with conviction. And she knew she could, whatever a timebomb was.
“I don’t know,” said the Chickenheart, “that anyone can learn that sort of thing. You’ve either got it or you don’t, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Call me Lizardbreath. That’s my real name. And I can get what I want. I got away from my brother, didn’t I? And I got here.”
The Chickenheart raised his thin, black eyebrows. “You have a point there, my dear. Perhaps you could be a timebomb, after all.”
“But not today,” said Lizardbreath. “Today I’m gonna learn to spit.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
This is a story that technology has made some inroads on. I wrote it after the Mac was created, but before the ghastly condescension of Microsoft’s animated paperclip. It was nominated for the Hugo award in 1990.
I consulted with my nieces, Erin Elizabeth (Lizardbreath) and Kelsey, then aged eight and five years, to achieve an acceptable level of ferocity and spunk.
The Sock Story
For Elizabeth Moore
This is the story of a woman who lost her sock at the laundromat and discovered it contained part of her soul. This is the way the story is always told. It was told to me this way and I will tell it to you this way. There is no other way to tell this story.
It begins in the laundromat, of course. She was doing her laundry, this woman. She washed her socks, she washed her shirt, and she washed her blue jeans. She even washed her underwear.