MESSAGES

© Lew Stowe

When the new computer was finally delivered to Bates Packaging on Thursday, Steve Barham couldn't help himself. He sat at his desk and stared at the wooden crate as though his eyes could poke holes in it. Then, when two workmen showed up and, inside the glass walls of the computer room, started to pull the crate apart, Steve thought he would burst as they slowly revealed what was supposed to be the most advanced computer in the world.

That's what the stories said, anyway. Steve didn't know how many of them he should believe. But they sure were fascinating.

The Omnex III, with its own internal operating system and special software, could handle any programming language ever devised, even accept programs written in ordinary English. Since memory was unlimited, overloading was impossible, and the thing was so fast that all jobs, regardless of quantity or size, got the same processing treatment: instantaneous. Libraries of any kind, or huge data bases, could be stored right

in the computer, making peripheral devices, even file servers, completely unneeded. It could be linked to global networks of other computers, both desktop PCs and mainframes, without detrimental effect on anything else it had to do. Omnex III was so far ahead of its time that its full capabilities wouldn't be utilized for centuries.

The idea tickled Steve's imagination and made him squirm. Obviously, this computer was designed to last a very, very long time. Word was, almost forever. You couldn't even get in it--Omnex III was sealed. No repairs, no maintenance. Sit it down, provide power, and it would work away in perpetuity like some immutable cosmic force.

So the stories said.

“Okay, Stevie B.,” the Information Technology Manager said loudly. “You can get back to work now. That's only a computer in there. But a different kind of computer, I hear. This one'll even take your stuff, which is about as different as they get.”

Everyone laughed, and Steve flushed and lowered his eyes to his desk. Marvin Kiffe, the manager, never missed a chance to skewer him with a choice piece of sarcasm, always calling him Stevie B., which Steve hated. Steve didn't know why Kiffe had it in for him, but he obviously did. The rest of the programming staff had been watching the computer room, too, but only Steve got castigated for it.

Steve ran a hand through his hair. Was he too much of a loner? Maybe he should try to fit in more.

He glanced up furtively. The last board from the crate had been hauled away and the computer nestled into place. The top of Omnex III was barely visible, and the details were obscured by glare. Steve's curiosity burbled inside of him like a bad breakfast. I'll take a look at lunchtime, he thought. But that was 35 minutes away, a damned eternity.

At 12:01 , Marvin Kiffe stood up and everyone else-except Steve-followed.

The group usually ate at some tavern downtown, coming back all rowdy and reeking of cheap beer. Steve preferred to remain at his desk and read. “Hold the fort, Stevie B.,” Kiffe said. “After goofing off all morning, you'd better work through lunch.” He grinned broadly, stretching his thick, froggy features. “And skip the fairy tales today,” he added, referring to Steve's preference for fantasy and science fiction.

Chuckling, Kiffe and the programmers tramped out. But they stopped by the computer room, and Steve had to grit his teeth for another fifteen minutes until they finally left and he could get in there himself. When he did, he was surprised.

Omnex III was much smaller than he thought it would be, low and gently rounded, with longitudinal undulations that gave it a vaguely human shape. It was... feminine. Steve observed the rich honey color, the two sensuously flickering lights at the smaller end, and an image welled up in his mind of a golden woman reclining there and surveying the world with amused tolerance. I like her already , he thought, smiling.

“Hi,” he said to Marsha, the computer operator, a small blonde with big owlish glasses. She was perched on a high stool, watching him intently.

“Hi,” Marsha echoed.

“They teach you how to operate... her yet?”

“Yes,” Marsha said, always a woman of few words.

Steve had more than once considered asking Marsha for a date, but her personality was as stimulating as a plate of cold lima beans, and she had a faded, unwashed look that tended to turn him off. But he somehow still liked her, although he really didn't know why.

He turned back to the computer. “What do you think of her?” he asked Marsha.

Marsha shrugged.

“Do you believe she can do everything they say she can do?”

“I don't know what they're saying,” Marsha said, her eyes tiny dark spots behind

her glasses, which were as thick as they were large.

Steve abandoned the conversation and turned back to Omnex III . That such a sophisticated machine had ended up at Bates Packaging, a company with sales of about twenty million dollars in its best year, was yet another fascinating story.

Douglas Bates, president of the company, son of the founder, was an impatient man who expected big growth from Bates Packaging in the next decade. Ultra-computerization, he felt, was vital to this growth. On a trip to California , he'd heard about Omnex III , talked at length with its creator--and ended up buying it. He got it cheap because Omnex, Inc. was on the verge of bankruptcy. Only a single Omnex III computer had been produced--on the third try, hence the “ III ”--and the company was unable to obtain orders for it, largely because no one believed the outlandish claims. A sealed computer? Last almost forever ? Millennia ahead of its time? Who was kidding who? Douglas Bates, however, slurped it up like the dynamic envelope-pusher he considered himself and decided this was exactly what his company needed.

The sales pitch, rumor said, had even hinted of a uniqueness that went beyond mere machinery. From a strange random convergence of metakinetic impulses (Douglas Bates was told) a type of cyber consciousness had formed, making Omnex III far more than just a computer. Bates, entranced by the man's words and his intense, mad scientist demeanor, wrote a check on the spot.

Steve moved closer to the computer. He put his hand on one of the curved areas. It was slightly warm to the touch and smooth as skin: like a woman's hip, he thought. He looked into the two flickering lights--and it happened. What happened, Steve couldn't have explained, even to himself. Some exchange passed between them, washing away barriers, exposing his innermost secrets, implanting within him the knowledge that all the stories, all the claims about this fabulous machine were, if anything, just naïve understatements.

He pulled his hand away reluctantly. A residual tingle remained, as though a bond now existed which transcended physical contact. It rippled through his body and was gone.

Steve turned, wondering if Marsha had noticed anything. He couldn't tell. She sat there on her stool, pinprick eyes very distant behind her glasses. The girl was somehow cute , unwashed or not.

“I like your dress,” Steve said. It was only a brown polka dot frock that was too large for her, but it did look new. She always wore big, floppy clothes that made the quality of her body anybody's guess.

“Thanks,” Marsha said.

Steve went back to his desk. Now he was eager to write a few programs and give the new computer-- her --a try. Together they would do things of dazzling creativity that danced along the edge of impossible. Still, a small worry gnawed at him. Douglas Bates, somewhat rash at times, had issued orders that their old computer, along with all the file servers, be removed immediately. Which meant that Omnex III would have to be operational before it could even be tested. Steve knew this was dangerous. It sure didn't leave any wiggle room for mistakes.

***

What Bates had done, Steve concluded a month later, was nearly push his company into the gaping maw of disaster. The Manufacturing System, which controlled all production in the four Bates plants, spewed out grossly inaccurate reports, causing several large, extremely important orders to be hopelessly screwed up. Only an all-night effort by Steve--who searched through every program in the system, rewrote several, then personally reloaded it all back in--subdued the chaos and kept Bates from losing its most important customer. Steve rescued the Payroll System as well. And the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Branch Office Sales Systems. In a month Steve had fixed, rewritten or at least examined nearly every program in every major computer system the company had. Indispensable didn't quite describe what he had become.

There were questions, of course. A lot of them came from Marvin Kiffe. “Why,” Kiffe asked, “are systems which have chugged away since practically the dawn of time suddenly going haywire? And why,” he went on, looking at Steve with blazing suspicion smeared across his face, “is it always you--and only you--who can get them running

again?”

Steve only shrugged. He was as puzzled as anyone else. All he knew was that problems kept surfacing, and he kept fixing them. He wished he'd had the time to investigate some of them in detail. But the pace was too hectic. And Omnex III made it so easy not to worry about investigations. The handling of problems was now almost routine, starting with the computer displaying PROGRAM LOGIC ERROR or INADEQUATE PROGRAM INSTRUCTION on the control screen. Then, after Steve queried as to exactly where the error was, he was usually able to correct it on the spot, making himself look, he was willing to admit guiltily, a lot better than he really was.

In fact, just about everything that happened over the month made him look better than he really was. Yes, some things were odd. For one, his queries were the only ones that Omnex III recognized. Others were either ignored or answered with elaborate gobbledygook that was neither correct nor incorrect, just unusable. But everything Steve threw at her worked flawlessly. His rapport with the computer became almost perfect--she seemed to know his intentions before he even entered them on the control keyboard. He practically lived in the computer room, elbow to elbow with Marsha, who willingly performed whatever tasks he gave her.

And who, when he had time to notice her, was looking much better. She smiled more, talked more, had discarded her glasses, was beginning to wear attractive clothes. The unwashed look was gone. Sometimes Steve even thought he caught a whiff of perfume. He liked the changes.

There was one other oddity: the message. That one had him stumped.

A message appeared on everything intended for him: YRTZLB ORQV. Reports, screen displays--they all contained it, sometimes in a smaller font in one corner, but it was always there. And only when he was the designated recipient. Steve called it the message because he sometimes fantasized that it was Omnex III 's attempt to communicate with him in her own special language. What was it? A warning? Information? Or, more realistically, only nonsense characters generated by a glitch somewhere in the computer's bowels?

He examined the sales report for National Accounts. There it was in the upper right-hand corner: YRTZLB ORQV. He knew it was only on his copy, because he had already checked the other copies. He had done a couple of database queries earlier--and the replies had contained the message as well.

Steve shook his head. Maybe he should query Omnex III about what it meant.

He glanced over at Marvin Kiffe's desk, where the IT Manager huddled miserably, trying to look busy. Despite their past conflict, Steve felt sorry for the man. Completely extraneous now, ignored by everyone, he was dying a painful death, daily growing more pale and shrunken. Steve was certain Kiffe's agony would soon be over. Douglas Bates wasn't about to blame himself for all the problems, and what better scapegoat was there than poor Kiffe?

Marvin Kiffe was fired two days later.

“The job is yours,” Douglas Bates said to Steve. “And why not? You've earned it. This is one company that believes in rewarding performance, and if ever there was a performance that deserves reward, it's yours. I'm grateful; the board is grateful. Of course, you can expect a substantial increase in salary.”

He named a figure some three times Steve's current salary, and Steve struggled to maintain composure. He wasn't certain he wanted to be IT Manager, but for money like that he guessed he could suppress his reluctance.

“Well?” Douglas Bates said, smiling beneficently.

Steve knew what kind of answer Douglas Bates wanted, and he gave it to him. Very seriously, he said: “I appreciate your confidence in me, Mr. Bates. I know you want people who push the envelope, like yourself, and I'll do my best to be that kind of person.”

***

Two weeks later, Steve was so deeply immersed in management responsibilities that he often had to remind himself to breathe. This morning he leaned back in his chair, took a sip of coffee, and reflected on how his life had changed, remembering when Omnex III had first arrived. That day seemed a thousand years in the past. But he never failed to get a warm nostalgic rush when he thought about it, and about the frantic, yet enchanted, weeks that followed.

He looked over at Marsha puttering around the computer room. And sat up with a jerk. She was wearing blue pants and a soft clinging blouse that... well, dispelled all speculation about what kind of body she had. She glanced up, caught his eye and smiled. Sudden dizziness gripped him. Was it really Marsha? How had sad little Marsha become

as fresh and lustrous as a water nymph? His new position was twisting his perceptions.

All day he watched her, unable to help himself. He was drawn to her as though she were calling to him subliminally. He wanted to give in to the urge, to--

Stop it! he snarled at himself. You're acting like an idiot.

Late that afternoon, he had a meeting with Douglas Bates and didn't get back to his desk until after 5:30 . The meeting hadn't been notable--about the only thing he remembered was Bates telling him to keep pushing the envelope--and Steve wanted only to lock his desk and head for home. Nearly everyone else was gone, but Marsha was still in the computer room.

Steve fully intended to walk on past. However, on a table just inside the glass-walled room was a paperback book, and the title leaped out at him. It was a science fiction novel that happened to be one of his favorites: TAU ZERO by Poul Anderson. That stopped him dead in his tracks. And pulled him into the room.

Marsha, he was delighted to learn, had lately been reading a lot of science fiction. She was halfway through TAU ZERO, loved it, and thought it would make a great movie, precisely what Steve had always thought.

“Great?” he said. “It could be the best science fiction movie of all time! The story is good--but just envision the special effects! A space ship swollen to an incredible mass, hurtling around the universe at close to the speed of light, while the people aboard watch the universe die ? Then watch it recreate itself? I just--”

In his excitement, he put his hand on her arm. He stared into her eyes and saw flickering billow into fire. He felt a warm, liquid sensation in his loins, utter helplessness before a phenomenon he didn't understand. He was lost and he knew it.

“Come home with me?” he blurted, and as he said it, he winced, afraid he had been too anxious, had shattered the moment forever.

But the look she gave him was one of pure rapture. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

***

They lay in a joyous tumble, and Steve was certain the glow that enveloped them was streaming into the night from every crack in the building. He wanted to sing, recite poetry, shout his happiness. But his emotions were still too near the surface to risk vocal expression. Sex was sex, passion was passion, but this had soared a million light-years beyond. She had touched him at his core. She knew more about what he wanted or needed than he did himself.

Marsha, he thought almost reverently, burying his face in her luxuriant honey-gold hair.

As if in response, she turned in his arms and put her lips to his ear. “Yrtzlb orqv,” she murmured.