ride through the human’s four-dimensional consensual continuum on wheeled trucks. Those trucks follow steel bands that are laid out on one plane, like circuitry. But, because the boxcars do not flow like electrons, they must be towed by motive boxes. The ratio of motive boxes to boxcars is low, so linear matrices of boxcars must be assembled by the Canadian National Railways inside “switchyards,” just as the AND/OR gate of a transputer’s index stack assembles data bits into hexadecimals and words.
The railroad system is an elegant model of the digital world, although much simpler.
At any rate, the boxcar described in TRAVEL.DOC contained several wooden-slatted crates. The exposed wood had been imprinted with a stencil: “Machine Parts, Tractor, Serial Numbers 077514854-077514976, Mitsubishi Corporation MITSXX, Osaka.” The serial numbers were different on each case, of course. Below this stenciling, the Canadian National Railway and the Canadian government officials in Vancouver had stapled yellow and red cards with printing on them. The yellow cards had barcodes to tell computers about manifest numbers, transit routes, and hold times. The red tags had printed language that would tell humans about entry and bonding procedures.
It was all a fake.
Not the cards. Those had actually been applied in Vancouver; otherwise, the crates could not have been present in Edmonton. But the stenciling had been applied in the garage of the Pinocchio, Inc., laboratory in San Francisco, not in Osaka. Those crates had never been in Osaka that I knew. Certainly the machinery inside them never was.
In the box that was lying hard against the steel shell of the car, the machinery began to move. One flex joint bent down and levered against the bottom slats of the crate. The entire assembly, all dull steel and bright blue grease, with random yellow paint marks circling minor defects in the metal’s surface, moved three centimeters vertically against gravity and pressed itself two centimeters upward against the top slats of the crate. The slats groaned but held solid.
After a second, the piece of machinery fell back with a thump. Another joint bent sideways, came against the plywood panels of the crate’s side, and pressed hard. Nails creaked and held. The joint pressed harder.
The wood splintered with a series of sharp cracks that echoed in the closed car. A steel rod extended into the darkness. Its end—if anyone had been looking with an infrared-filter because, strangely, the metal was several degrees above ambient temperature—was webbed with flanges that had been drilled and tapped for some kind of screw or pin fitting. Farther up the rod there was a flat rib of metal that was grooved across, like the bridge of a violin. Above that, there were more drill holes, some tapped for screws, others plain, and still others ringed with welts of welded metal, as if reinforced for some massive connection.
It might have been a tractor part.
The joint retracted, rotated ninety degrees toward the crate’s top, and pressed against the wood once more. This single slat broke easily across a wide knothole. With a series of quick rotations and jabs, the joint smashed out the slats across the top of the crate.
Now the first joint levered down again, and a wide casting of dulled metal rose through the broken pieces of wood. It might have been a heavy-duty transmission casing, with two hinged bars—both randomly drilled and welded—extending from below the crown gear at one end. They might have been torsion bars, which would eventually become part of the tractor’s suspension.
One of these bars, however, had a tiny mechanism on the far end: a slender finger of three linked joints, independently controlled by hydraulic cylinders and push rods. A small pump and fluid reservoir were screwed to the arm above the fiddle bridge and fed the cylinders. Wires from this mechanism led inside the transmission casing.
One moving finger.
This was the
The railroad system is an elegant model of the digital world, although much simpler.
At any rate, the boxcar described in TRAVEL.DOC contained several wooden-slatted crates. The exposed wood had been imprinted with a stencil: “Machine Parts, Tractor, Serial Numbers 077514854-077514976, Mitsubishi Corporation MITSXX, Osaka.” The serial numbers were different on each case, of course. Below this stenciling, the Canadian National Railway and the Canadian government officials in Vancouver had stapled yellow and red cards with printing on them. The yellow cards had barcodes to tell computers about manifest numbers, transit routes, and hold times. The red tags had printed language that would tell humans about entry and bonding procedures.
It was all a fake.
Not the cards. Those had actually been applied in Vancouver; otherwise, the crates could not have been present in Edmonton. But the stenciling had been applied in the garage of the Pinocchio, Inc., laboratory in San Francisco, not in Osaka. Those crates had never been in Osaka that I knew. Certainly the machinery inside them never was.
In the box that was lying hard against the steel shell of the car, the machinery began to move. One flex joint bent down and levered against the bottom slats of the crate. The entire assembly, all dull steel and bright blue grease, with random yellow paint marks circling minor defects in the metal’s surface, moved three centimeters vertically against gravity and pressed itself two centimeters upward against the top slats of the crate. The slats groaned but held solid.
After a second, the piece of machinery fell back with a thump. Another joint bent sideways, came against the plywood panels of the crate’s side, and pressed hard. Nails creaked and held. The joint pressed harder.
The wood splintered with a series of sharp cracks that echoed in the closed car. A steel rod extended into the darkness. Its end—if anyone had been looking with an infrared-filter because, strangely, the metal was several degrees above ambient temperature—was webbed with flanges that had been drilled and tapped for some kind of screw or pin fitting. Farther up the rod there was a flat rib of metal that was grooved across, like the bridge of a violin. Above that, there were more drill holes, some tapped for screws, others plain, and still others ringed with welts of welded metal, as if reinforced for some massive connection.
It might have been a tractor part.
The joint retracted, rotated ninety degrees toward the crate’s top, and pressed against the wood once more. This single slat broke easily across a wide knothole. With a series of quick rotations and jabs, the joint smashed out the slats across the top of the crate.
Now the first joint levered down again, and a wide casting of dulled metal rose through the broken pieces of wood. It might have been a heavy-duty transmission casing, with two hinged bars—both randomly drilled and welded—extending from below the crown gear at one end. They might have been torsion bars, which would eventually become part of the tractor’s suspension.
One of these bars, however, had a tiny mechanism on the far end: a slender finger of three linked joints, independently controlled by hydraulic cylinders and push rods. A small pump and fluid reservoir were screwed to the arm above the fiddle bridge and fed the cylinders. Wires from this mechanism led inside the transmission casing.
One moving finger.
This was the
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