I drag the wooden chair back from the Memex—the tiny casters squeak like agonized rodents across the worn linoleum floor—and lower myself gingerly into the cracked leather seat. The oak arms are worn smooth beneath my hands, where his palms have pressed upon them over the decades. I grab the solid sides of the desk and ease myself forward until my feet rest lightly on the pedals. There’s an angled glass strip facing me from the far end of the desk, and a light in the leg-well that comes on as my heels touch the kick-plate: it’s a periscope, giving me a view of my toes and the letters at the back of each pedal. I turn the gunmetal turret of the microfiche reader towards me, place the NecronomiPod on the desktop, and push the power button.
There’s a clunk of relays closing, and then a thrumming vibration runs through the machine. It’s easy to forget that though it weighs more than a ton, its average component weighs less than two grams: the gears alone took two months’ entire output from the largest watch factory in America. I stare into the hooded circular screen in something like awe. Machined to submicron precision, yet less powerful than the ancient 68EC000 in my washing machine, these devices were the backbone of the Laundry’s Intelligence Analysis section in the late 1940s. It’s like a steam locomotive or a stone axe: just because it’s obsolete doesn’t make it any less of an achievement, or any less fit for purpose.
The screen lights up—not like an LCD monitor, or even an old cathode ray tube, but more like an antique film projector.
WRITE USERNAME.
The moment of truth: I cautiously kick-type BOB, then spend a fruitless minute hunting for the return key before I realize there’s a paddle-shaped lever protruding level with my left knee—like the handle on a manual typewriter. I nudge it.
There’s a clunk from inside the desk and the injunction vanishes, to be replaced by a picture of the organization coat of arms. Then more words appear, scrolling in from the bottom of the screen, wobbling slightly:
WRITE CLEARANCE.
What the hell? I laboriously type BLOODY BARON, and knee the return paddle. (There’s something weird about the foot-keyboard: then I twig to the fact that its abbreviated supply of characters means it’s probably a Baudot Code system. Which figures. Older than ASCII . . .)
The screen fades to white after a couple of seconds, then a bloody sigil flashes into view. It doesn’t kill me to look at it, but the disquieting sense that the void is inspecting the inside of the back of my skull makes me squirm on my seat. There is an eye-warping loop to one side of it that feels familiar, as if it’s tied to my soul somehow.
WRITE: STILL ALIVE? Y/N:
Knees knocking, I type Y (RETURN).
WELCOME BOB, YOU ARE AUTHENTICATED.
If you are reading this message, I am absent. Welcome to the dead man’s boots: hope you don’t find them too tight. You are one of only four people who have access to this machine (and at least two of them are dead or dying of K Syndrome).
You may: read all files not flagged with a Z-prefix, search all files not flagged with a Z-prefix, and print any files flagged with a prefix from A to Q.
You may not: read or search Z-prefix files. Print files flagged with a prefix from S to Z. Dismantle or reverse-engineer this instrument.
WARNING: LETHAL ENFORCEMENT PROTOCOLS ARE ENFORCED.
WRITE: GOTO MAIN MENU? Y/N:
This is Angleton. He doesn’t bluff. I make a note of those clearances on my phone, then, hesitantly, I type Y.
I have, in fact, seen worse-designed user interfaces. There are abominations out there that claim to be personal media players that—but I digress. The Memex is a miracle of simplicity and good design, as long as you bear in mind that it’s operated by foot pedals (except for the paper tape punch), the display is a microfilm reader, and it can’t display more than ten menu choices on screen at any time. Unlike early digital computers such as the Manchester Mark One, you don’t need to be Alan Turing and debug raw machine code on the fly by flashing a torch at the naked phosphor memory screen; you just need to be able to type on a Baudot keyboard using both feet (with no delete key and lethal retaliation promised if you make certain typos). There’s nothing here that’s remotely as hostile as VM/CMS to a UNIX hacker. I’ve just got an edgy feeling that the Memex is reading me, and sitting in quietly humming judgment. So I spend half an hour reading the quick start guide, and then . . .
WRITE: DOCUMENT TO RETRIEVE:
I find the shift pedal, kick the Memex into numerical entry mode, and type:
FETCH 10.0.792.560
NOT FOUND.
WRITE: DOCUMENT TO RETRIEVE:
Shit. I try again.
FETCH INDEX.
There is a whirring and a chunking sound from within the desk. Aha! After several sluggish seconds a new menu appears.
WRITE: ENTER DOCUMENT CODE NUMBER:
FETCH 10.0.792.560
More whirring and a brief pause. Then the screen clears, to display everything the Memex knows about the missing file:
DOCUMENT INDEX ENTRY:
NUMBER: 10.0.792.560
TITLE: THE FULLER MEMORANDUM
DEPOSIT DATE: 6-DECEMBER-1941
STORAGE LOCATION: STACK VAULT 10.0.792.560
COPY STATUS: FORBIDDEN
CLASSIFICATION: BEYOND TOP SECRET, Z-CLEARANCE
EXPIRATION: DOES NOT EXPIRE
CODEWORDS: TEAPOT, WHITE BARON, CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN
SEE ALSO: Z-ANGLETON, Z-EXECUTION PROTOCOLS, Z-FINAL EXIT
END OF INDEX ENTRY
CLASSIFIED: S76/47
Dear John,
Once again, greetings from Reval. I hope you can forgive my lack of enthusiasm; it’s godforsaken cold here in January. I thought I knew what winter was (Moscow in winter is enough to teach anyone a grudging respect for Jack Frost) but this is absolutely unspeakable. There are few railways in Estonia, and those which remain after the armistice are under military control, to deter any passing fancy that might occur to Comrade Trotsky in his spare time. (I am sure we shall not be invaded again, at least before he has finished pacifying Siberia, but one can hardly blame Mr. Piip for his caution.)
I have a most unexpected cause to write to you—a gift horse just presented its head at my transom window! Such a gift horse was this that it would be insane not to look it in the mouth, but I have inspected its back teeth and I assure you that the mare is, although middle-aged, by no means anything other than that which it appears to be: namely, the bereaved mother of the Prodigal we were discussing in our earlier correspondence.
It seems that my sympathetic questioning made more of an impression on Madame Hoyningen-Huene than I imagined. There was a brief thaw in the bitter cold we have lately been experiencing, and being of a mind to visit the capital for a few weeks she took advantage of it. She is even now ensconced in our parlor, where Evgenia is entertaining her.
And the Prodigal son’s fossil collection?
“Take them!” she cried. “Oskar told me how they caught your fancy; perhaps you know of a curator in London who will put them to some better use? Vile things, I don’t want to remember my son by them!” Her man, who was burdened with the heavy box all the way from Rapla to Reval, can only have wholeheartedly agreed. And so they are even now in a shipping trunk, awaiting more clement weather before I dispatch them to you by sea.