Part 17 (1/2)
”Mail call!” The Grade One gopher stuck his face into my improvised office. ”Letter for you, sir!”
I didn't look up from my terminal; I was deep in the heart of the academic system, tracking down a truly nasty bug. A few weeks before some idiot kid had buried a line in every program that said if student_id$=”Michael Harris” then grade_val$=”A”, and he couldn't remember all the places where he'd hidden it.
The gopher was still standing there, waiting for me to take the envelope.
”Is it important?” I asked, stealing a quick look up.
He stared at the envelope; I saw his lips move as he silent read David & Martha Harris off the return address label. ”It's from your parents,” he said, making a major intellectual leap. I started to get out of my chair, then checked the system date on my terminal instead.
Yup. August 28. Allowing for post office lag, Dad was right on schedule. ”Put it on the table,” I said, and went back to my work.187 There was a time when I used to get buzzed about letters from home.
That was before I remembered a little program I'd helped Dad install on his personal computer: LetterRight! Input a name and six keywords, select a style (business/formal, business/bootlicking, personal/friend, personal/family, or service/complaint), and it kicked out one page of generic verbal oatmeal for you. Tie in the optional LetterBase! module, and it kept track of the names and keywords you used.
Link it to your clock/calendar, and it kicked out letters automatic.
Interface the OCR scanner, and it read your incoming mail, copped a few keywords, stuck them in the LetterBase! file with an xref to the correspondent's name, and used them to generate your next letter. All you had to do was keep your printer in blank paper.
It was February of my second Grade One year when I flagged I was on Dad's mid-quarter mailing list. The business templates were at least smart enough not to use Sunday dates, but the personal mid-quarter option always used the 15th. Six sequential letters from Dad, dated 11/15, 2/15, 5/15, 8/15, 11/15, and 2/15 again, and I started to get suspicious. Going back over the letters, I applied the Turing Test...
Which wasn't a fair trial, was it? After all, that only proved the letters weren't written by an intelligent being. It didn't rule out their being written by Dad. So I suckertrapped my next two letters; simply loaded them with bizarro keywords. When Dad's May 15 letter started with, ”Sorry to hear about your hysterectomy,” I knew I had him nailed.
I shot a glance at the letter the gopher had left on the table. It could wait. I had lots of work to do.
All the same, sometimes the recombined keywords made funny reading. I flip/flopped a few times, finished disarming the program currently in memory, then saved it and decided to take a break. Walking over to the table, I picked up the envelope, did a double-take on the address, and tore it open frantic.
The letter was in Mom's big, sloppy handwriting. It said: #.
”Dear Mikey,188 ”This is hard to say, so I'll just get it over with. Your father probably never told you, but we've been on the brink of divorce ever since you left.
”Why? Because your father lied to me. He convinced me that we were just sending you away for the summer, and by the time I came to believe that he really would enroll you full time- ”A bad marriage is hard to explain, Mikey. You put on blinders.
There's so much you pretend not to see. It's like clinging to floating wreckage: you can see the sh.o.r.e, but you just can't bring yourself to let go and swim for it. After all, you are still afloat, and with luck you might drift that way.
”I pretended not to see that your father was just too busy to bother with you. I pretended not to see what was going on between him and Faun-and Barbi before her, and Cyndi after, and then there was Buffy, and Loni, and Sandi, and I don't believe that even he can remember all their names.
”I tried to ignore all that; after all, I had a marriage to save. I had a son. And then, when you got to be a nuisance, I was even willing to sacrifice you to save my marriage.
”You don't appreciate the power of a bad relations.h.i.+p, Mikey. It's like the worst drug of all. There's no high; all you hope for is that you can stay numb. And I was hooked.
”Until last month, when your stepsister Krystle had her baby. (Did your father tell you she was pregnant? Did he even tell you she was married?) That makes you an uncle, Mikey; unfortunately, it also made David a grandfather. When he realized that- ”He bought a red motorcycle, got a hair transplant, and filed for divorce. He gets the condo; I'd forgotten about that d.a.m.ned prenuptial contract. My replacement's already moved in, and she's due to graduate from high school any day now.
”I'm sorry, Mikey. I'd fight for your custody and try to bring you home, but your father gets free legal services as part of his benefits and I can't find a lawyer willing to take on Fuji-DynaRand. Don't bother189 writing back. I still don't have a permanent address.
”I'll be in touch.
”Love always, Mom.”
I was still sitting there, holding the letter and staring blank into s.p.a.ce, when the Colonel stuck his head through the doorway. ”Say, Harris, I was just thinking-,” he stopped, and looked hard at me.
”Harris?” he asked after a few seconds. Slow, I turned to look at him. Slow, and dull, and numb.
”Yeah?” I said. Not even, ”Yeah, sir?” Which proves how numb I was. Like, I'd just invited him to bite my head off. There was a pause-a long, empty pause, while my brain said I should go for damage control and my gut said why bother?
The colonel pointed to the letter, and said, soft, ”Bad news from home?”
I nodded.
He stepped into the room, shut the door, and pulled up a chair.
”Want to talk about it, son?”190
Chapter 18.
”Fall in!” Payne brayed. ”Form up!” He looked around the airstrip and spotted some poor wide-eyed kid hiding in the weeds. ”Are you waiting for an invitation, p.i.s.sant?” The kid, definitely a top contender for the t.i.tle of Ugliest Haircut in the Entire Free World, got up slow out of the poison ivy and joined the thirty other cadet recruits standing in front of the briefing shed.
I slugged down the last of my coffee and started collecting the props for my magic show.
Payne was still shouting at the kids when I stepped out of the shack.
”Dress that line!” he bellowed. ”You call that a line, p.i.s.sants?” I stopped, looked them over, and had to admit he was right; it was about the poorest excuse for a line I'd seen all summer. But Payne was good at his job, and he had two full weeks yet to get them ready for fall quarter.
I had maximum confidence he'd pull it off.
Payne made eye contact with me. I shot him a little nod.
”Ten-shun!” he screamed, and the poor kids jumped half out of their skins.
”Thank you, sergeant,” I said quietly. He stepped back deferential, and I walked up smiling. A few of the cadet recruits tentative smiled back.
p.i.s.sants obviously didn't recognize the good cop/bad cop routine when they saw it. This was going to be fun.
”Hi,” I said to the new boys, and smiled again. A few more of them started to thaw. ”I'm Cadet Captain Harris, and I'm here to give you a little introductory lesson in electronic counter measures.” While they were still wondering what that meant, I switched on the wand and started walking down the line.
It chirped on the first one. I checked the EM signature display, then191 announced, ”Matsus.h.i.+ta digital watch.” Kid couldn't have looked more surprised if I'd pulled his brain out through his nose.
The second recruit's person was clean, but something in his suitcase tripped the wand. ”Vidslate,” I announced. Then I looked at the secondary trace. ”And a couple comicbook ROMs.” He was still looking embara.s.sed when I moved onto the third one. The third recruit was regular gold mine; digital watch on his wrist, calculator in his left breast pocket, and a personal music player stashed in his suitcase. ”I hope you brought plenty of CDs,” I advised him, half-kidding, full earnest.
Around the tenth time the wand chirped, some kid with frizzy red hair and Dumbo ears asked the question I'd been waiting for all along.
”Suh? What all is that thang, ennaway?” I stepped back, and smiled. I love cadet recruits. They're so predictable.
”This,” I said, looking casual at the wand, ”is a little gadget we built around the sensing module of an M-387 Personal Anti-Radiation Missile.” I made an elaborate pa.s.s over Frizzy with the wand, spotted the Panasonic chessputer in his right jacket pocket. ”Mind if I borrow your chess game for a minute?” Too surprised to think, he handed it over.
Switching the chessputer into demo mode (I wanted to make sure it was the noisiest circuit for miles around), I gave it to one of the other recruits and pointed at a stand of scrub oak on the other side of the airstrip. ”Run over there and stick this in the crotch of one of those trees,” I said. ”Then hurry back here.” The kid instant took off, and inward, I marveled. Command presence really does work!