“They wavered terribly during your little hose-job, but somehow you pulled it all off. We made target by a three-point-eight percent margin. You didn’t plan all that wacky stuff, did you? That was just your alter-ego coming out for an encore, wasn’t it?”
She ignored him for a moment, forcing her blurry vision to focus on the wall-trend. It was indeed in the green by the end, with a few precious kilo-dollars to spare.
“Of course, the network won’t put up with this goofing around at their expense for long. Even if you claim that you’re not nuts, that you’re just ad-libbing-artistic license and all-they’ll pull you quick for all these deviations from the script. All the old ninnies back in the writer’s shop must be chewing the walls by now,” Andy said, rocking himself and chuckling at the thought.
“What about the trace? Did you get anything?”
Andy made a flippant gesture of annoyance. “I told you, there’s nothing to trace.”
“Did you get anything?” pressed Zundra. “Did you run a full systems-level diagnostics?”
“There were some low-level anomalies, but nothing worth commenting on.”
“Get me the file. Net it over to my workstation. Now.”
With a supple shrug and a pinched look of irritation, Andy netted her the file. Fifteen minutes later she had analyzed the trace, and soon after that she had a handle to what had to be the return code.
“When does Cyborg Command run next?” she demanded suddenly.
“It’s on right after the Killer Kitty Show, say forty-two minutes. Why?”
“Vector me to this port address in forty-two minutes,” she said, then fell back into her chair with her eyes closed.
After a minute or two of trying to resume the conversation, Andy shrugged again, snorted disgustedly and punched the port address into his hand terminal.
CYBORG WARLORD: The enemy are in our grippers, we’ll crush them like ruptured egg-casings!
(Shot switch to the stylized war map. The tunnel complex of Deeth Kar flashes up, tactical decisions are transmitted in from all the junior rebel leaders via mind-modem. Once the votes are tallied those that came closest to predicting the computers tactical plan are awarded game points. Advertisements for Cyborg Command Collectibles hum down the mind-modem lines, Action figures and T-shirts are purchasable with game points and a nominal fee of real money from the accounts of your parent or guardian.)
MR. SQUIBBS: (The cybernetic parrot squawks and ruffles its metallic scale-like feathers before speaking). Looks like the rebels are getting away again.
CYBORG WARLORD: Shut up you tin-plated cockatiel. Building you in the first place was a mistake.
(Shot flips over to the War Map again, where the kid- icons in blue are devouring the metallic cyborg icons in a steady get-away path toward the top of the volcano and the distance escape chute.)
MR. SQUIBBS: At least they didn’t manage to penetrate to our headquarters.
CYBORG WARLORD: You’re right there, Mr Squibbs. They will never manage to stop me completely!
(Suddenly, a third figure bursts into the cavern in an explosion of rock and debris. It is a large red-haired kid with a toy rocket-launcher in his hands. With a whoop of delight, he fires a blue rubber ball into CYBORG WARLORD’s chest, pressing the big red off-switch that has materialized there.)
MR. SQUIBBS screeches in protest.
RED-HAIRED KID: Cyborg Command’s tyranny is at an end! Next week we’ll have a new show in this time-slot kids, so don’t go away!
Steve jerked upright, the keyboard and joysticks in his hands clattering to the studio floor. His red curls surrounded his face, framing the boiled-egg whites of his wide staring eyes. Operators shuffled back, stirring their coffee cups nervously with thin red shoots of plastic.
A roar of rage bubbled up from the depths of his chest. The roar died into almost a pitiful sound as Steve focused on the wall-trend, which had bottomed out in the red. The network cancellation notice was already up on his e-mail screen, making a soft beeping sound.
Zundra came awake slowly, smiling. She tapped at the keyboard mounted in front of her and brought up the network e-mail system.
“Andy,” she called. “I’m considering a bid for a new show to replace Cyborg Command. I need your technical appraisal.”
Andy sidled up and slumped on her desk. He quietly studied his thin fingers and awaited her orders.
Pinball
Chuck Mather had built the watchdog robot in his room, but he always let it out at night to roam around downstairs. Pinball couldn’t climb stairs or open doors, so its job was limited to patrolling the kitchen, the living areas and the study. Pinball wasn’t much like what most people thought of as a robot, it was just a personal computer really, slung between two ten-speed bike wheels. The wheels gave it mobility, the optical-liquid CPU gave it brains and a little IO board with an array of sensors gave it input. It didn’t have a video input unit, that was expensive and too hard to program, but it did have several motion detectors and infrared heat-detectors, not to mention a highly accurate sound-directional guidance system.
“You want to let it loose again, Chuck? Couldn’t you just keep the thing in your room tonight?” Sylvia Mather asked, with a faint note of hopelessness in her voice.
“Pinball is good protection Mom, especially since Dad died.”
“Alright,” she sighed in defeat, cinching her housecoat tighter. She disappeared down the dark tunnel of the upstairs hall.
Chuck was fifteen years old, overweight, had a lot of zits and had been sentenced to a wheelchair two summers ago in a boating accident. The same accident had cost his father his life.
Maneuvering himself out of his wheelchair and into bed was an effort. First he threw his weight forward, landing his face on his pillow, then sat upright with a practiced roll. He settled into the large double-sized sleeping bag that he liked to use during the summer nights, whether he was camping or not. Grunting a bit, he stuffed his numb, useless legs into the bag and wiggled his way down into it.
First checking to make sure his mother had really gone to bed and was not fooling around in the hall closet or the bathroom, he vertically set a ruler in the middle of the sleeping bag so it would hold up the center like a tent post. From beneath the sleeping bag he unearthed a wireless netbook. He then ducked down into his make-shift tent and zipped up the sides. Using a flashlight, he surfed to his favorite sites: a mix of porn, gaming news, pirated movies and social-networking. In some ways, this was the best part of the day.
He fell asleep in the early morning hours. When he finally awoke, mother was in his room and fooling around as usual, checking the batteries on his wheelchair, even though they had spent the night charging up. He shoved the netbook down deep into the sleeping bag before popping his head out of the top.
“Good morning,” she greeted him. Like Chuck, her hair was very straight, fine and blonde. It resembled fragile cobwebs and tended to wisp about on windy days.
“Mourning is right,” Chuck groaned. Bright July sunshine streamed in slices through the miniblinds making him squint and blink.
“I was thinking that I don’t really need to go to the wedding, Chuck,” she told him with a pursed-lip frown. She was already made-up and ready to go, wearing a green silk dress, a French braid and a heavy layer of lavender lip-gloss.
“Yes you do, Mom,” he said, rubbing his eyes and waiting for the blood to make it up to his brain.
“Aunt Marron has been married before, and you don’t need to be alone.”
“Go to the wedding, Mom.”
“If you’re sure you can take care of yourself…”
“I’m fifteen years old, I can spend one night on my own. Give me a break.”