She selected "Coffee, caffeinated, pot" from the drink menu, and this time the message was unblinking. The Surgeons General wish you to be aware that caffeine is associated with chromosome breakage, headaches, tension, anxiety, and impaired motor coordination when taken to excess. In pregnant women birth defects can result in those prone to certain inimical chemistries. Abstinence may be advisable; consult your doctor.
Sam stared. A pretentious quickie; that was new. She slapped her palm against the endit square with a defiant flourish. Too late; she had the guilts over the coffee even as she couldn't wait to drink half of it at one gulp. Modern life was making her sick by trying not to make her sick.
"That's some menu," she said to the guy in the window as she stretched out of the open sunroof to pass him a few crumpled bills.
"Yah, better living through technology," he said, glancing at her without interest. He was tall and good-looking, with icy white hair and luminous green contact lenses, most likely another member of the latest generation of aspiring actors. That may have been the biggest reason simulation hadn't shut down Old Hollywood, Sam thought a little light-headedly. If they stopped taping from live action, who would staff the quickies? "Be a minute," he added as he leaned out to hand her the change. "Just opened a fresh pot of rice."
"Glad to know this place cares so much," she said. "I especially enjoyed the lecture on what caffeine would do to me."
"Oh, hell. George!" he roared over his shoulder. "That goddamn virus is back!"
Sam laughed aloud. She should have realized as soon as she'd seen it. A Dr. Fish, no doubt, making a house call with unsolicited health advice. Characteristic of the Dr. Fish strain – almost no destructiveness, just unexpected messages taking up space and slowing things down.
An older man who was definitely not an aspiring actor appeared in the window next to the younger guy. "If it's not asking so terribly much of you, Harmon, could you not screech our troubles to the entire world?"
The young guy gestured at Sam. "She says she got the caffeine message."
"It was just one of those health warnings from the Surgeons General," she said, shrugging. "I thought it was supposed to be there."
The older man frowned at her as if she were somehow responsible. "Great. We're never going to get rid of that thing. Every time I think it's cleaned out, it pops up somewhere else."
"Just because of the way it reproduces," Sam told him. "Cleaning it out won't take care of any data carrying the infection dormantly. You've got herpes, not cholera."
His expression took on a revolted tinge. "Excuse me?"
Sam glanced at the younger guy, who was grinning behind his hand. "Cholera is a disease you treat by treating the symptoms. Herpes lesions can be treated so they go away, but the infection itself remains in the nerves, waiting to activate again."
"Well, thank you so much, Miz Med School, that was just what I've been waiting all day to hear."
"It's contagious," Sam couldn't help adding. "It can be passed on without being active."
There was a short honk from the rental behind her. "Think it's taking long enough?" called the driver, leaning her head out the window.
"It's coming, lady," the older man called back, and leaned out the window a little more. 'You sound like you know a lot about this."
Sam shrugged again. If he was so off-line he didn't know about Dr. Fish, she wasn't going to enlighten him. "Anyone with computer equipment ought to know a lot about it."
"I just manage this place. And hire and fire the help." He gave the younger guy a sidelong glance. "You want a free meal?"
Sam drew back, leaning her elbows on the roof of the rental and folding her hands. "Why?"
"For services rendered. If you know so much, you must know how to take care of it. It'll save me another service call."
"You can do it yourself," she said.
"Me? I don't know dick about computers."
"You know where the off switch is?"
He nodded. "So?"
"So flip it. That'll kill it bang. No matter what your service has been tolling you, that's the only way to kill a virus. Cut off the power."
The man rolled his eyes. "Forget about it. The menu's out of a closed-area network so they can monitor our volume; we got nothing here but dumb terminals. I cut us off, they'll be down here with an auditor and a warrant to bust me on suspicion of embezzlement."
Standing behind the man, the young guy was making a familiar up-and-down motion with a fist. Sam bit her lips together to keep from laughing.
"Hey, you don't want a free meal, honey, it's fine by me, but you sure look like you could use one. More than one."
"You only offered one," Sam said evenly, "and for what it would cost you to have someone do the work legally, I should get a free meal here every day for a year."
"Offer's closed." He pulled his head back inside the window and turned to the young guy, who was suddenly scratching the side of his head vigorously. "The virus can stay in there, people can live with a warning about coffee, I don't care. We gotta sell more herbal tea anyway." He marched off.
The young guy grinned at Sam, who shook her head. "Probably wouldn't have worked, at that. The virus is most likely dug in at the node, so as soon as you turned on again, it would be right back here."
"Nobody cares as long as it doesn't actually destroy anything," he said, shrugging a bony shoulder. "It's like graffiti to them, the cheap-asses."
The rental behind Sam honked again. "I said, is it taking long enough?" the driver called, louder.
"Not quite, but we're working on it!" Sam called back. The guy at the window handed her a small bag and a tall covered thermo-cup. She thanked him and pulled up far enough to allow the woman to reach the window before she tore the bag open and attacked her food. The ball of rice sitting on top of the seaweed cone tipped into her lap and shattered on impact, leaving her with a mostly empty seaweed wrapper. "Fuck it," she muttered, and drove back down Artesia toward the Mimosa, scooping rice out of her lap with one hand.
"Where's Gator?" she asked the kid in the tent. He must have been all of fifteen, with a funny-chubby cherub's face and thick, fuzzy dark hair that was tangling itself into dreadlocks.
"At services," he said, hitching up his pants. Hospital surplus; they made him look like an underaged, homeless surgeon.
"Services?"
"Yah. She said to tell you she's off praying for God to forgive you."
Sam blinked. "I'm in hell," she said wonderingly. "The world ended when I wasn't looking, and now I'm in hell." She rubbed her forehead with one hand, trying to think. At least the kid was speaking English. "Gator really told you to tell me that?"
Now the kid looked embarrassed. "Well, actually, that's what she told me I should say to anyone who came by for a tattoo."
Sam laughed and kept laughing as she made her way over to Gator's old barber chair and plumped down in it, alarming the kid.
"Hey, you better not. She said she'd kill me if anyone fucked around in here."
"I'm not fucking, I'm laughing," Sam said wearily. "Can't you tell the difference?" She swiveled around. The printer was in its usual spot in the corner, but Gator had taken the laptop with her. To services. At the St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed, of course, wherever that was now.
Abruptly she remembered the ex-pump in her pocket.
"Hey," said the kid, following her over to the corner. "I know she wouldn't want you screwing around with that."
"I'm not screwing, I'm hooking," Sam said, unrolling the wires that had been discreetly tucked behind a table leg. "Hooking up, that is." She found the communications jack and plugged it into the ex-pump, then connected it to both the sunglasses and the chip-player. "If Gator comes back, I won't let her kill you more than you deserve."