other dots had no corresponding mention in the newspaper cuttings; but then, she suspected, they didn’t need one.
At the desk, Rhys muttered something, and hit Delete with unusual agitation. Keys clattered like falling rain beneath his fingers. Sharon watched, and Rhys, aware of her, began to turn red. The end of his nose twitched. His eyes were locked on the computer screen, but the swelling around his nostrils and eyelids grew manifest. Sharon fumbled automatically in her bag for a pack of tissues, having taken in recent weeks to having a reserve. He grabbed it from her even as one hand continued to type, and as the sneeze welled up to unstoppable proportions he exclaimed, “Aaaa… aaatchooo!” and slammed down on the Enter key.
The screen changed.
Sharon peered over Rhys’s shoulder. He’d been working in the command prompt, and, as she looked, a series of commands self-perpetuated down the screen. She caught a glimpse of…
“Incantation equals one?”
“Um, yes,” said Rhys, dabbing at his nose. “You could have said it equals true. But I always use this script because it’s easier when you need to…”
“It was the ‘incantation’ part I’m querying, actually.”
“Oh! Sorry!… Well, the druids always said that words had power, see? And in the old days sometimes you’d write the words with special inks or on human skin or things like that, and then they really had power…”
“Is ‘ew’ something shamans say?”
“Um, I don’t know. I don’t think druids say it, but then we have to become comfortable with organic fluids very early in the training process.”
Sharon’s face was a battlefield of warring curiosities. “Let’s talk about computers,” she said at length.
“Oh, yes! So, well, if words and books were sacred in the old days, then obviously now, what with magic evolving to suit the urban environment, binary data and server racks are becoming hubs of the new power. The trick,” Rhys sat up straighter, warming to his subject, “is to find a proxy rack with a suitable energy tag, obviously not situated too close to a fibre ley line because – well – we all know what would happen then” – Sharon tried a bit of sage nodding. It seemed her safest bet – “and then you route it back here and use it as a focus for the invocation which you implant at the base level to allow it to percolate and multiply, until finally…”
The screen changed again. A little message box appeared. It read:
‘ Did You Know You Can Use Flags To Organise Your Inbox? Just One Of The Great New Features Of Mail 8.1! ’
“… you can access some bugger’s email?” suggested Sharon.
“Um… yes.”
Sharon contemplated this, while the screen filled up with Swift’s email. Then, “Rhys…”
“Yes, Ms Li?”
“I just gotta ask this, in my capacity as a knower of the truth and all that, but…”
“Yes, Ms Li?”
“It seems like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it?”
Rhys hesitated, then shrugged. “At least it’s open source,” he said. Sharon leant past him, examining the screen. Matthew Swift’s approach to his email was not unlike his attitude to paper filing. Most of the items on the screen were unread, even those labelled URGENT or marked out with a big red flag. She did her best not to tut. Management for Beginners would have had critical things to say about all this. Only one or two had been read, standing out among the detritus.
[P. Ngwenya] Re: New York Expenses.
[K. Shiring] URGENT – Imp infestation in N. London.
[D. Sinclair] Invitation to dinner.
[P. Ngwenya] Re: re: New York Expenses – PAID.
[M. Seah] Re: your undead problem.
… and so on. As Rhys scrolled down, more emails appeared, and shuffled in through the server as if embarrassed at contributing to the volume of unread strangers already on Swift’s hard drive.
She said, “Anything recent? Like in the last forty-eight hours?”
Rhys scrolled back to the top. A
At the desk, Rhys muttered something, and hit Delete with unusual agitation. Keys clattered like falling rain beneath his fingers. Sharon watched, and Rhys, aware of her, began to turn red. The end of his nose twitched. His eyes were locked on the computer screen, but the swelling around his nostrils and eyelids grew manifest. Sharon fumbled automatically in her bag for a pack of tissues, having taken in recent weeks to having a reserve. He grabbed it from her even as one hand continued to type, and as the sneeze welled up to unstoppable proportions he exclaimed, “Aaaa… aaatchooo!” and slammed down on the Enter key.
The screen changed.
Sharon peered over Rhys’s shoulder. He’d been working in the command prompt, and, as she looked, a series of commands self-perpetuated down the screen. She caught a glimpse of…
“Incantation equals one?”
“Um, yes,” said Rhys, dabbing at his nose. “You could have said it equals true. But I always use this script because it’s easier when you need to…”
“It was the ‘incantation’ part I’m querying, actually.”
“Oh! Sorry!… Well, the druids always said that words had power, see? And in the old days sometimes you’d write the words with special inks or on human skin or things like that, and then they really had power…”
“Is ‘ew’ something shamans say?”
“Um, I don’t know. I don’t think druids say it, but then we have to become comfortable with organic fluids very early in the training process.”
Sharon’s face was a battlefield of warring curiosities. “Let’s talk about computers,” she said at length.
“Oh, yes! So, well, if words and books were sacred in the old days, then obviously now, what with magic evolving to suit the urban environment, binary data and server racks are becoming hubs of the new power. The trick,” Rhys sat up straighter, warming to his subject, “is to find a proxy rack with a suitable energy tag, obviously not situated too close to a fibre ley line because – well – we all know what would happen then” – Sharon tried a bit of sage nodding. It seemed her safest bet – “and then you route it back here and use it as a focus for the invocation which you implant at the base level to allow it to percolate and multiply, until finally…”
The screen changed again. A little message box appeared. It read:
‘ Did You Know You Can Use Flags To Organise Your Inbox? Just One Of The Great New Features Of Mail 8.1! ’
“… you can access some bugger’s email?” suggested Sharon.
“Um… yes.”
Sharon contemplated this, while the screen filled up with Swift’s email. Then, “Rhys…”
“Yes, Ms Li?”
“I just gotta ask this, in my capacity as a knower of the truth and all that, but…”
“Yes, Ms Li?”
“It seems like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it?”
Rhys hesitated, then shrugged. “At least it’s open source,” he said. Sharon leant past him, examining the screen. Matthew Swift’s approach to his email was not unlike his attitude to paper filing. Most of the items on the screen were unread, even those labelled URGENT or marked out with a big red flag. She did her best not to tut. Management for Beginners would have had critical things to say about all this. Only one or two had been read, standing out among the detritus.
[P. Ngwenya] Re: New York Expenses.
[K. Shiring] URGENT – Imp infestation in N. London.
[D. Sinclair] Invitation to dinner.
[P. Ngwenya] Re: re: New York Expenses – PAID.
[M. Seah] Re: your undead problem.
… and so on. As Rhys scrolled down, more emails appeared, and shuffled in through the server as if embarrassed at contributing to the volume of unread strangers already on Swift’s hard drive.
She said, “Anything recent? Like in the last forty-eight hours?”
Rhys scrolled back to the top. A
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