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I tuned out as Lucy began an elaborate and well-worn rant about her eating habits, prodded on by the doctor. The enormity of the situation was coming home to me. I couldn't win. If I averred that Fede and Linda were my boon companions, I'd still be found incompetent -- after all, what competent person threatens his boo... |
Stuck on the roof now, and it's getting very uncomfortable indeed. Stuck because I am officially incompetent and doomed and damned to indefinite rest on the ward. Stuck because every passing moment here is additional time for the hamsters to run their courses in my mind, piling regret on worry. |
Stuck because as soon as I am discovered, I will be stupified by the meds, administered by stern and loving and thoroughly disappointed doctors. I still haven't managed to remember any of their names. They are interchangeable, well shod and endowed with badges on lanyards and soothing and implacable and entirely unappr... |
Stuck. The sheet-metal chimneys stand tall around the roof, unevenly distributed according to some inscrutable logic that could only be understood with the assistance of as-built drawings, blueprints, mechanical and structural engineering diagrams. Surely though, they are optimized to wick hot air out of the giant bric... |
I move to the one nearest the stairwell. It is tarred in place, its apron lined with a double-row of cinderblocks that have pools of brackish water and cobwebs gathered in their holes. I stick my hand in the first and drag it off the apron. I repeat it. |
Now the chimney is standing on its own, in the middle of a nonsensical cinderblock-henge. My hands are dripping with muck and grotendousness. I wipe them off on the pea gravel and then dry them on my boxer shorts, then hug the chimney and lean forward. It gives, slowly, slightly, and springs back. I give it a harder pu... |
I take a step back and lean way forward, try again. It's awkward, but I'm making progress, bent like an ell, pushing with my legs and lower back. I feel something pop around my sacrum, know that I'll regret this deeply when my back kacks out completely, but it'll be all for naught if I don't keep! on! pushing! |
Then, suddenly, the chimney gives, its apron swinging up and hitting me in the knees so that I topple forward with it, smashing my chin on its hood. For a moment, I lie down atop it, like a stupefied lover, awestruck by my own inanity. The smell of blood rouses me. I tentatively reach my hand to my chin and feel the ra... |
My knees and shins are grooved with deep, parallel cuts, gritted with gravel and grime. Standing hurts so much that I go back to my knees, holler again at the pain in my legs as I grind more gravel into my cuts, and again as I tear my face open some more. I end up fetal on my side, sticky with blood and weeping softly ... |
Too damned smart for my own good. |
14. |
"I just don't get it," Fede said. |
Art tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "It's simple," he said. "It's like a car radio with a fast-forward button. You drive around on the MassPike, and your car automatically peers with nearby vehicles. It grabs the current song on someone else's stereo and streamloads it. You listen to it. If you don't h... |
"But I hate your music -- I don't want to listen to the stuff on your radio." |
"Fine. That's what the fast-forward button is for. It skips to another car and starts streamloading off of its drive." Fede started to say something, and Art held up his hand. "And if you exhaust all the available cars, the system recycles, but asks its peers for files collected from other sources. You might hate the s... |
"The war-drivers backstop the whole system. They've got the biggest collections on the freeway, and they're the ones most likely to build carefully thought-out playlists. They've got entire genres -- the whole history of the blues, say, from steel cylinders on -- on their drives. So we encourage them. When you go throu... |
"OK, OK. A radio with a fast-forward button. I think I get it." |
"But?" |
"But who's going to want to use this? It's unpredictable. You've got no guarantee you'll get the songs you want to hear." |
Art smiled. "Exactly!" |
Fede gave him a go-on wave. |
"Don't you see? That's the crack-cocaine part! It's the thrill of the chase! Nobody gets excited about beating traffic on a back road that's always empty. But get on the M-5 after a hard day at work and drive it at 100 km/h for two hours without once touching your brakes and it's like God's reached down and parted the ... |
"Heh," Fede said. "Good rant." |
"And?" |
"And it's cool." Fede looked off into the middle distance a while. "Radio with a fast-forward button. That's great, actually. Amazing. Stupendous!" He snatched the axe-head from its box on Art's desk and did a little war dance around the room, whooping. Art followed the dance from his ergonomic chair, swiveling around ... |
His office was more like a three-fifths-scale model of a proper office, in Lilliputian London style, so the war dance was less impressive than it might have been with more room to express itself. "You like it, then," Art said, once Fede had run out of steam. |
"I do, I do, I do!" |
"Great." |
"Great." |
"So." |
"Yes?" |
"So what do we do with it? Should I write up a formal proposal and send it to Jersey? How much detail? Sketches? Code fragments? Want me to mock up the interface and the network model?" |
Fede cocked an eyebrow at him. "What are you talking about?" |
"Well, we give this to Jersey, they submit the proposal, they walk away with the contract, right? That's our job, right?" |
"No, Art, that's not our job. Our job is to see to it that V/DT submits a bad proposal, not that Jersey submits a good one. This is big. We roll this together and it's bigger than MassPike. We can run this across every goddamned toll road in the world! Jersey's not paying for this -- not yet, anyway -- and someone shou... |
"You want to sell this to them?" |
"Well, I want to sell this. Who to sell it to is another matter." |
Art waved his hands confusedly. "You're joking, right?" |
Fede crouched down beside Art and looked into his eyes. "No, Art, I am serious as a funeral here. This is big, and it's not in the scope of work that we signed up for. You and me, we can score big on this, but not by handing it over to those shitheads in Jersey and begging for a bonus." |
"What are you talking about? Who else would pay for this?" |
"You have to ask? V/DT for starters. Anyone working on a bid for MassPike, or TollPass, or FastPass, or EuroPass." |
"But we can't sell this to just *anyone*, Fede!" |
"Why not?" |
"Jesus. Why not? Because of the Tribes." |
Fede quirked him half a smile. "Sure, the Tribes." |
"What does that mean?" |
"Art, you know that stuff is four-fifths' horseshit, right? It's just a game. When it comes down to your personal welfare, you can't depend on time zones. This is more job than calling, you know." |
Art squirmed and flushed. "Lots of us take this stuff seriously, Fede. It's not just a mind-game. Doesn't loyalty mean anything to you?" |
Fede laughed nastily. "Loyalty! If you're doing all of this out of loyalty, then why are you drawing a paycheck? Look, I'd rather that this go to Jersey. They're basically decent sorts, and I've drawn a lot of pay from them over the years, but they haven't paid for this. They wouldn't give us a free ride, so why should... |
"You're saying you don't feel any fundamental loyalty to anything, Fede?" |
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