“Lost SEN!” THX hollered to SRT. “He’ll never find us!”
SRT yelled back, “Too late… stay close.”
They struggled and battled sideways along the crowd’s main flow and made their way to the side wall of the corridor, hundreds of meters downstream from where they had entered the corridor. Panting, bruised, head aching from the noise, THX flattened himself along the corridor’s metal wall. It was warm from the reflected heat of surging human bodies. SRT lounged beside him, looking just as tired but less frightened.
After a few minutes, THX craned his neck for a look at where they were. No direction signs were in sight, and the color markers in this corridor were strange to him.
But there was a lift tube entrance down the wall a few meters, flanked by prayer booths. THX nodded toward the tube.
“Where you going?” SRT shouted.
Without answering, THX started for the tube.
The observer sat at his post, watching his fifty view-screens, earphones buzzing with the normal traffic of the busy city.
“I have a seal break. Vacuum debris repectacle 444. Entrance on con 65. Send investigator. Subject appears to be suicide victim.”
“Two inmates have fled detention block R, Habot 92. Missing since 3:32.16. 1138 prefix THX and 5241 prefix SEN. Recovery operation budgeted and scheduled. Report to Control when felons are in custody.”
“We have an accident in module dispersal center…”
The observer’s trained eye flicked to a viewscreen far up to his right. The interior of a lift tube cell. Numbers flashed across the screen showed it was heading upward from the commercial level toward the main computer filing center.
He transferred the picture to one of his four main screens. Yes, one of the two men in the lift cell wasn’t wearing a badge!
“I have a violation here,” the observer said crisply into his lip mike. “Lift tube cell 0848, heading for level four. Badgeless male Caucasian. Trespassing.”
“Checking.”
“Reference police records on badgeless individual.”
The observer ticked out a police query on his keyboard. Instantly, THX’s picture and record appeared on a viewscreen at his elbow.
“Criminal record indicated.”
But the observer squinted hard at the picture of THX and SRT in the lift cell. The cameras in those little cells were especially bad, the picture was distorted severely. The computer might have made a mismatch.
With a shrug, he muttered, “Not my decision to make. If the computer says it’s the felon THX 1138, it’s Mercicontrol’s fault if there’s a mistake.”
The observer touched the special stud on his keyboard that linked him with Control.
“Felon 1138 prefix THX identified and located.”
THX and SRT left the lift tube at the fourth level. The corridor here was practically empty. Quiet. The lighting was soft and restful.
A glowing sign on the wall opposite the tube entrance said: COMPUTER CENTRAL FILES.
Overhead, a lovely woman’s voice said gently, “Access to Computer Central Files is restricted to authorized personnel only. If you do not have a 5401 green badge, kindly step into the visitor’s registration area at the end of the corridor and apply for entrance to Computer Central Files. Thank you… Access to Computer Central Files is…”
“We can’t get in,” THX said, pulling up to a stop.
SRT tapped his bright green badge. “What do you mean we can’t get in? Where do you think holoshow actors get personal ratings and job assignments?”
“But… I can’t get in.”
Winking with such exaggeration that half his face seemed to fold over, SRT said, “Trust me, friend.”
The black man headed toward the end of the corridor, where an impressive pair of bronze doors stood firmly closed. THX jogged up alongside him.
“Why are you doing this for me? Why do you trust me? I was a prisoner… I might be a murderer…”
SRT grinned. “I was hungry and you gave me some of your food.”
“But—it was SEN. He was carrying the food.”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t going to give me any until you told him to. And besides, I know you’re not a murderer… you would never have been in jail. You’d have been destroyed, or put to work for the State.”
THX stared at him.
They came to the bronze doors, smooth gleaming metal stamped with the words COMPUTER CENTRAL FILES in sculptured letters. Above the doors was engraved the motto of the Computer Center: THINK.
Off to the left of the impressive bronze doors was a smaller, ordinary plastic door marked: VISITOR REGISTRATION.
SRT went to this door, pushed it open and looked cautiously inside. Over his shoulder, THX could see that there was a small anteroom in there. A single camera eye was set into one wall, with a speaker grill under it. Alongside the staring lens a tiny red light glowed dutifully to show that the camera was working. There were no people in the anteroom, but an overhead speaker was droning an econometrics lecture:
“Beyond this is the fact that the didactic design always states conclusions which allow the contrary-minded to build resistance. All in all, a fair-minded judge would conclude…”
THX automatically shut the woman’s near-hypnotic voice out of his consciousness.
Surprised that the anteroom was empty, he said to SRT, “where are the people?”
The black man grinned. “Hardly ever any people around here. The computer runs everything by itself, for itself. I get the feeling it doesn’t like having people around, bothering it.”
“But… they couldn’t leave it totally alone? Could they?”
“Pretty much. Oh, they got observers watching everything, but the computer runs itself. No people. Just visitors once in a while, like us.”
“Observers…”
Nodding, SRT said, “Now just keep quiet when we go in, stay still and do what I tell you. Got to sneak you past the observer.”
He edged the door open wider and stepped into the anteroom softly. THX followed right behind him. Holding a finger to his lips for silence, SRT nudged THX with his other hand so that THX stood plastered against the closed door, well out of range of the observer’s camera. SRT stepped in front of the camera. “Yes?” came a voice from the grill. “What is it?” Holding his badge very close to the camera lens and quickly stepping past the camera, he said, “SRT 5555, visitor permit 2892.”
The observer’s voice made no comment. Suppressing a laugh, SRT tossed his badge to THX in a high arc, over the field of view of the camera. THX caught it, held it in his hand so that his fingers partially covered the name on it, and imitated the black man’s maneuver.
“SDS 5153, permit 2886,” he said as he whisked past the camera, close enough to the lens so that his clothing brushed it.
“See?” SRT said as he took his badge back. “We made it with no sweat.”
THX grinned back at him, as they pushed through the plastiglass doors of the registration office and into the main room of the computer files.
“Where did you learn that trick?” he asked.
“Actors learn lots of tricks,” SRT said. “Somebody thought that one up for a detective story I played in. I was the murder victim.”
Now that they were in the files, THX hardly knew what to do. The files were enormous, seemingly endless rows of computer consoles, memory banks, with little desks spaced every twenty consoles. There were readout screens on the desks and keyboards for querying the computer.