From: eugene@maya.wintermarket.com
In article ,
Sourcerer wrote:
[ ... ]
>There it was in the middle of the lawn. A structure, a machine,
>surrounded by a high fence. Mists rose from the near river, figures
>danced in it like faeries in a mushroom ring. The moon rose -- the
>wrong moon in the wrong place in the wrong sky, Sourcerer noted.
>
>The crackling between his ears became more insistent. He pulled a sack
>from beneath his greatcoat. He'd brought his tools.
[ ... ]
>"Are you frightened?" he asked.
>
>"A little", she whispered.
>
>"Of what"?
>
>"That they will all be here, frozen in time, as if Father Frost had
>touched them all with his staff, never to awaken".
>
>"I looked through the window. It is dirty, but it is empty. They aren't
>here".
>
>Finally, Poly looked at him. Her eyes welling up with tears.
>
>"I was afraid of that, too"
At an indeterminate location within the comforting embrace of
the Van Allen Radiation Belts, two devotees of the Consensual
Hallucination focus on the trajectory pointing to the Rancho
Deluxe. Ed glimpses Source and Poly with chagrin, turns to
Gene with a snarl.
"Happy now, ya bozo? You made her cry! She didn't need to
come back to an empty house; you've been ratholing Pop-Tarts,
E-Flat harmonicas, Doctor Who TShirts, for two weeks! Could
have kicked off a real Sh**-Or-Go-Blind party without breaking
a sweat."
Gene nods. "Just waiting for the right moment. Besides, what
if Ted Dziuba is right: 'Nobody cares but you!'"
"Are you crazy? He's a blogger! Don't send a blog to do
UseNet's job!"
"'Blogger'? Are those the same people who walk around with those
tiny little walkie-talkie pagers, try to make them spit out net
content the size of a postage stamp?"
"Not exactly."
As they make Rancho landfall, Gene and Ed spy a large unit of
unknown vendor origin and chipsec spec (everyone's kit looks alike
these days), processing at 102% of capacity -- if one gauges by
the roar of the power supplies and odiferous smoke.
"As near as I can tell," muses Ed, "the party's already begun.
Look! They've implemented a Petit-Fours Machine. I'm hungry!"
"Ummm ... Ed? That's a METAPHOR machine, subclass META. You've
gotta pay more attention to the message digest when you decrypt
these streams. What would Phil Zimmerman say?"
"I was preoccupied," counters Ed. "Did you see the look on Source's
face? He's going to need medical attention." Ed rummages through
their copy of the Book of Divine Physics until he finds something
promising. "'And, behold, a man came forth and prostrated himself,
saying 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean ...'"
Gene sighs. "C'mon, Ed, that's for LEPROSY. Don't go for the
theatrical every time; he'll be good as new with far simpler
ministrations."
Gene and Ed finally make it onto the Rancho's porch. With more
time on their hands than cops on a stakeout, they settle back
and wait for their friends to arrive.
"Does your wife know you're gone, or for how long?" asks Ed.
"Shouldn't be a problem. No guy can go wrong when he heads out
the door with a nice long shopping list. Besides, we'll be back
before we left. And she can always find me."
"I've noticed that: for non-technical system users, she and the
kids have an uncanny insight into the 'Priority Interrupt'. Are
you sure they don't read the UNIX API's while you're sleeping?"
"Ed ... I would not rule it out".
=========================================================
Gene
Ed
/*
And I do not fear the Cold. No, not at all.
-- Cicada Queen
*/
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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