“I thought you’d be living better than this, Roger,” I said after I’d eaten my food and downed two drinks. I’d taken off my socks and crossed my legs so that I could rub some life into my feet.
“This is exactly how I like to live,” said Roger. “By eating frozen premade dinners I’m able to precisely calibrate my caloric intake. You know that I watch my weight.”
“What about vitamins?”
“Vitamins are just chemicals, Jerzy. For vitamins I take pills.” As if in confirmation, he brought out a tray of vitamin pill bottles and swallowed a capsule from each. One shiny capsule, a “metals supplement,” held compounds of chromium, manganese, titanium, and palladium. “Food is simply a source of the fats and carbohydrates which the body burns as fuel. Power for the computing medium. Vitamins are the processor components-the nodes of computation, if you will.”
“Oh, whatever. Look, getting back to my own problems, how am I going to keep from going to jail without being on the lam for the rest of my life? Can’t you step forward and admit that it was you who released the ants and made Studly kill the dog?”
“I’m not admitting anything. But I can help you get a better new identity. Those girls-Bety Byte and Vanna-they’re rank amateurs. I could set you up with the top cryp in Calcutta-that’s where professionals get new ID. Even the CIA goes there.”
“I want my old identity, Roger, and I want to win my trial. I want to be able to visit with my family-even if I am getting divorced.” I took another drink. “If I could just get rid of all the ants, the government would like me. Roger, did you know there’s a big nest of ants in cyberspace?”
“Of course I know-there’s three nests in fact. My cyberspace ant lab has windows onto all three of them. One of the nests is what you call the Antland of Fnoor-nice name, by the way. I was right there in the Antland of Fnoor that first night when Riscky Pharbeque was scaring you into working for West West.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. You were groveling and twisting on the floor.” I chuckled nastily. “All covered in your own blood and shit.”
“Well,” said Roger equably, “that’s the way Riscky made it look-phreak humor, you know. Anyway you can’t stay in a GoMotion ant nest for very long unless you’re prepared to kill quite a few of them. The ants attack non-a-life code.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said. “But you have that magic bullet for killing ants. Come on and tell me what it is!”
“I don’t want you to kill the cyberspace ants, Jerzy. One colony is working on improved chip designs and on the next version of the ROBOT. LIB microcode. Walt and Perky Pat need that code for the new robots. The second colony-that’s your Antland of Fnoor-is evolving high-level code for the new robots. And the third colony is trying to find a way for the new robots to build miniature robots-a third generation. It’s all been going so smoothly that this afternoon I threw in a bunch of random mutations to see if the second- and third-generation robots couldn’t be more of a surprise.”
“The robots in your factory are going to get information from the cyberspace ants?”
“Robots are always in touch with cyberspace. That chip, the Y9707 that robots use? Among other things, it emulates a cyberspace deck. A robot’s vision of the world is an overlay of cyberspace. Robots use cyberspace as a kind of shared consciousness. And with the ant lion absent from the Y9707-EX chips, my new robots will be able to import external ant function pointers. We could see some truly emergent behavior.”
“Heavy,” I yawned. “I didn’t sleep very well on the flight over here. What time is it?”
“It’s after nine. If you like, I’ll show you your room.”
There was a guest room on the end of the house closest to the factory. Rather than an actual bed, it just had a mattress on the floor, but right now that was fine with me. I squeezed my money-stuffed satchel under a corner of the mattress, told the room to turn out the lights, and fell asleep.
Sometime during the night I woke up. With the eight-hour time change it was utterly impossible to tell how long I’d already slept, or what time it was. It took a major mental effort to find the bathroom, take a pee, and drink some water. The rain had stopped completely and it was a quiet night. Falling back into sleep, I thought I heard a tiny bell ringing in the distance, a tiny bell ringing and ringing and ringing. I couldn’t think what it meant. I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life.
When I woke again, a pale patch of sunshine was lying across my bed. The house was cool and utterly quiet. I washed up, put on my sandals and my business sweats, and breakfasted on another microwaved meal from Roger’s freezer: pigs in a blanket with warm fruit cocktail.
I asked the front door to open, and stepped outside. Just in case Roger had already gone down to Geneva, I wedged the door open with a rock so it couldn’t lock me out. A cold, gusty breeze was blowing up the mountain meadow, and fresh clouds were massing. The sun had already disappeared. Roger had been wrong about the weather. This was going to be another day of rain. I was going to have to do something about finding some shoes. Borrowing shoes from Roger wasn’t an attractive option, as his size was considerably smaller than mine.
The door to the factory was unlocked; I went inside. When I pushed the call button for the elevator to the second floor, nothing happened. Had it jammed? Could Roger be stuck in there? The memory of the ringing I’d thought I’d heard last night came back to me. Had Roger been in the elevator all night ringing the bell?
There was an emergency box on the wall next to the elevator with German instructions that I couldn’t read. But on breaking the glass of the box, I found a metal crank, or key, that fit into a hole in the elevator doors. I shoved the crank in and began turning it. Turn by turn, the elevator doors edged open, revealing the empty elevator shaft below, and a piece of the elevator cabin above.
Only about a foot and a half of the elevator cabin was visible below the top of the door; it was too high for me to see in.
“Roger?” I called. “Roger, are you in there?” There was no sound in response. I called again, cocked my head, and listened. There were irregular movements in the robot lab upstairs, but not a sound came from the elevator cabin.
Finally, I’d cranked the door wide enough so that a person could fit in. I hauled a bunch of Roger’s Household Goods boxes over and built myself an unsteady mound. I got up on the mound, very nervous that I might tumble into the empty shaft. Balancing and craning forward, I could see into the elevator cabin and yes, Roger was in there. He was lying motionless on the floor facedown.
“Roger!”
No answer came. I have a terror of elevator shafts, and it was very hard to get myself to take the next step. What if the elevator should suddenly start up and guillotine me? But the stillness of Roger’s form was even more terrifying. I had to find out what had happened to him.
I braced my left hand against the floor of the elevator cabin and began tugging on Roger’s leg. He was stiff and heavy. I jerked him around so that his legs were sticking out of the cranked-open door. I wanted a good look at him, but no way was I going to climb up into the death cabin. I took one of his feet in either hand and pulled hard. Just then one of the boxes underfoot gave way, making the mound collapse. Some of the boxes shot out into the empty shaft and I fell backward, with nothing to hold on to but Roger’s feet.
Roger came sliding out of the elevator like a carrot coming out of the ground; I fell on my back and he landed on top of me, his butt on my lap. My legs were sticking out into the empty elevator shaft and so were Roger’s. I put my arms around his waist and started to scoot us back when all of a sudden something sharp dug into my wrist. For a second I thought it was just a random scratch, but the sharp pain redoubled and grew purposeful. There was a distinct sawing sensation. Something was trying to slit my wrist!