is waiting, filled with apprehension like a condemned man on the gallows trap, for the precise moment when Center Control completes the necessary rewiring and plugs him into a new world.
WARNING
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CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
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WARNING
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CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
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WARNING
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CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
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WARNING
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CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
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WARNING
Vera Mitlovic emerges from the whirlwind mounted on a chestnut mare named Chi-Chi. The morning fog has lifted and the horse’s damp flanks steam slightly in the sunlight. Chi-Chi was seven years old the summer of Vera’s thirteenth birthday. She was requisitioned by the Wehrmacht the following winter and died in a burst of springtime shrapnel on the Russian front. Vera rides bareback with only a halter for a bridle, her sun-browned legs swinging with an easy motion against the barreling belly. The air is pungent with eucalyptus. Condensation glistens on the curve-bladed leaves and, underneath, the steady dripping is like a gentle rain.
The landscape seems familiar to Vera: the round bronzed hills, stands of live oak and eucalyptus. Although it will be twenty years before she makes her first Hollywood film, the young actress urges her horse down a California trail with the same youthful confidence that, in another girlhood, had blossomed along lonely roads on the high meadows of the Carpathian Alps.
At the bottom of the draw, the sunlit Pacific glitters through the dripping trees. Vera rides out across the sandy beach, threading between scattered driftwood logs. A line of jetsam, an assortment of trash and sea litter, marks the high-water line. Vera rides into the surf until the receding foam boils above Chi-Chi’s shanks. The sun is quite hot now. She pulls her sweater up over her head and knots the sleeves around her waist. For a long while she looks out at the horizon where a small white sail is barely visible.
Scanner viewers are having a treat. An Amco-pak Mark X comes hurtling down the aisles, caroming from side to side, the encircling duraplast bumper leaving long skid marks on the cerulean surface of the Depositories. Such speed is unusual. The Amco-pak is accustomed to more sedate operation and it is all the machine can do to maintain control. The Mark X had been quietly recharging in a subdistrict vehicle hangar when the emergency call came from Maintenance and Repair. At a time of repose for the machine: the end of a day-long shift, all work facilities switched off, the controls at half power, pneumatic limbs dormant—peace and relubrication, a chance for bearings to cool and metal to lose its fatigue. Then the alarm signal. All systems are instantly active, all circuits automatically open, and the Amco-pak is speeding down the long ramp to the Depository even before Center Control signals the location of the breakdown.
The trouble is in Aisle B. A preliminary diagnosis teleprints in the memory unit of the on-rushing Amco-pak: multiple short circuits cause major power drain; no communication with the resident; only three minutes of reserve oxygen remaining. The situation is urgent. Emergency cranial decantation is a ten-minute job; cell damage is irreparable after the brain is without oxygen for only eight. Aisle B is half a mile away. Center Control authorizes all possible speed.
A strong offshore wind blows from the port quarter and Skeets trims the mainsail of the Sand Dab III, giving the sheet two turns around a cleat to secure it. It was his father’s sloop and although he was often crew, manning the jib sheet in races on Lake Michigan, he had never been allowed to take the helm. He is alone in the boat, an anomaly which bothers him no more than the inverted coastline. The course is southerly and instead of seeing Lake Shore Drive to starboard and Chicago in the distance, there are rolling gold foothills and low pine-covered mountains visible over his port gunwale. He recognizes the contours of Point Reyes peninsula. An aunt (one of his mother’s sisters)
WARNING
*
*
CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
*
*
WARNING
*
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CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
*
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WARNING
*
*
CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
*
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WARNING
*
*
CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
*
*
WARNING
Vera Mitlovic emerges from the whirlwind mounted on a chestnut mare named Chi-Chi. The morning fog has lifted and the horse’s damp flanks steam slightly in the sunlight. Chi-Chi was seven years old the summer of Vera’s thirteenth birthday. She was requisitioned by the Wehrmacht the following winter and died in a burst of springtime shrapnel on the Russian front. Vera rides bareback with only a halter for a bridle, her sun-browned legs swinging with an easy motion against the barreling belly. The air is pungent with eucalyptus. Condensation glistens on the curve-bladed leaves and, underneath, the steady dripping is like a gentle rain.
The landscape seems familiar to Vera: the round bronzed hills, stands of live oak and eucalyptus. Although it will be twenty years before she makes her first Hollywood film, the young actress urges her horse down a California trail with the same youthful confidence that, in another girlhood, had blossomed along lonely roads on the high meadows of the Carpathian Alps.
At the bottom of the draw, the sunlit Pacific glitters through the dripping trees. Vera rides out across the sandy beach, threading between scattered driftwood logs. A line of jetsam, an assortment of trash and sea litter, marks the high-water line. Vera rides into the surf until the receding foam boils above Chi-Chi’s shanks. The sun is quite hot now. She pulls her sweater up over her head and knots the sleeves around her waist. For a long while she looks out at the horizon where a small white sail is barely visible.
Scanner viewers are having a treat. An Amco-pak Mark X comes hurtling down the aisles, caroming from side to side, the encircling duraplast bumper leaving long skid marks on the cerulean surface of the Depositories. Such speed is unusual. The Amco-pak is accustomed to more sedate operation and it is all the machine can do to maintain control. The Mark X had been quietly recharging in a subdistrict vehicle hangar when the emergency call came from Maintenance and Repair. At a time of repose for the machine: the end of a day-long shift, all work facilities switched off, the controls at half power, pneumatic limbs dormant—peace and relubrication, a chance for bearings to cool and metal to lose its fatigue. Then the alarm signal. All systems are instantly active, all circuits automatically open, and the Amco-pak is speeding down the long ramp to the Depository even before Center Control signals the location of the breakdown.
The trouble is in Aisle B. A preliminary diagnosis teleprints in the memory unit of the on-rushing Amco-pak: multiple short circuits cause major power drain; no communication with the resident; only three minutes of reserve oxygen remaining. The situation is urgent. Emergency cranial decantation is a ten-minute job; cell damage is irreparable after the brain is without oxygen for only eight. Aisle B is half a mile away. Center Control authorizes all possible speed.
A strong offshore wind blows from the port quarter and Skeets trims the mainsail of the Sand Dab III, giving the sheet two turns around a cleat to secure it. It was his father’s sloop and although he was often crew, manning the jib sheet in races on Lake Michigan, he had never been allowed to take the helm. He is alone in the boat, an anomaly which bothers him no more than the inverted coastline. The course is southerly and instead of seeing Lake Shore Drive to starboard and Chicago in the distance, there are rolling gold foothills and low pine-covered mountains visible over his port gunwale. He recognizes the contours of Point Reyes peninsula. An aunt (one of his mother’s sisters)
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