Randal L. Schwartz's Stories

John and Ray

2007-11-29T22:28:05Z

He stared at the printout. There it was. “J E S S I C A ”, repeated over and over.

He first thought about calculating the odds of some semi-random sequence spelling her name, but quickly dismissed that.

The director of the research division entered. “Ray, how’s it going? Kevin and Jeff just gave me the weirdest look as I passed them in the hall, and now you’re in here alone.”

“John, how long have you known Jeff?”, Ray asked.

“I didn’t know him before you brought him into the project. What’s that, about two years ago?”

“Yeah, well, I thought I knew him pretty well. But, he seems to have a pretty macabre sense of humor.”

“What do you mean?”

“He and Kevin apparently wanted to play a trick on me. They’ve both generated some obviously faked data.”

“Faked how?’

“The expected error offsets apparently somehow spell Jessica’s name, over and over.”

John stopped, his mouth half open. He then took an angry tone. “What the f[...]? We’re so close to finishing. Why? Why would they fake this?”

Not quite an error

2007-11-19T17:19:31Z

“The results of the experiment still confirm our theory?”

“Yes.”

“And the expected errors are all within tolerance?”

“Yes, but that’s the odd thing. We’re seeing a pattern in the errors.”

“What kind of ‘pattern’?”

“Some of the values are slightly higher. Others are slightly lower.”

“That’s expected, right?”

“Of course, but Kevin decided to record the deviations as an independent data stream. If we record a higher value as a one, and a lower value as a zero, we get a series of binary numbers.”

“Of course you would. What’s the relevance of that?”

“If we break up the bits into groups of eight, forming bytes, and encode each of the results as an ASCII character… we get…”

The scientist paused. He shuffled uneasily in his chair, and continued.

”... we get… your dead wife’s first name, repeated over and over again.”

The phone call

2007-11-01T00:39:54Z

“Uh… huh… uh… Hello”, Jim stuttered into the ancient phone, barely remembering how to hold such a device.

“What is your operational clearance?” barked the voice on the other end of the phone

“My what?”

“My next instructions depend on understanding what I am and am not allowed to say to you. What is your operational clearance? Red 3? Green 2? Answer me immediately.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any clue what you’re talking about. I just stumbled into this place, and bumped into this button on the wall, and everything lit up like crazy!”

The voice on the other end uttered a series of expletives, followed by “So, son, you aren’t military command, or trained in the operation of the CXP remote post? Just a civilian?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll have to listen very carefully, and do exactly as I say. We don’t have much time, and I don’t have anyone in the area I can send in to help you. Not in time, anyway.”

The Path

2007-08-05T20:28:46Z

She tugged him along the path. “C’mon”, she said.

He hesitated, shuffling his feet a bit. “I’m not sure. Is it safe?”

“Of course. Everybody is doing it now.”

“But what if we don’t make it? I’m scared.”

“We’ll make it. Everyone does”, she said in her quiet calming voice.

As they came around what seemed like the four-hundredth twist in the well-marked path, he exclaimed “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that. Is that what people were trying to describe?”

“Yes, don’t you see? That’s it. The beauty, the wonder, the joy of it all. All we need is to find our way down that narrow section over there, and we’re in!”

“Uh, really? Why don’t I see anyone on the other side of that chasm them? Shouldn’t there be others who have crossed?”

“Well, maybe it was a slow day today!” Her enthusiasm would not be stopped by such naysaying.

The rose-colored glasses are off

2007-06-18T17:33:47Z

“She took them off! ” he exclaimed, bursting into the council meeting chambers. “The empress has removed the rose-colored glasses!”

“Prime Minister, I thought you said this wouldn’t happen,” shouted one of the councilmen.

“Yes, the wizard who gave them to me assured me that the euphoria of never seeing the downside of an action was quite addicting. Oh dear.” replied the Prime Minister.

“You mean, she’ll know of everything in the past eight years now?”, queried the Director of Finance.

“Like the civilian spying program? We had convinced her it was to capture evildoers easier!”, quipped the Director of Internal Protection.

“And the collateral casualties of our three ‘liberator’ invasions?”, said the General.

“The eradication of our senior support services?”

“All those plans to ‘optimize’ education to ensure the next generation wasn’t smart enough to unseat us?”

“Oooh, all that and a lot more,” the Prime Minister replied.

“Gentlemen, ” he continued, “We are in trouble!”

Buffalo, Shuffling Off

2007-06-14T22:25:03Z

His personal alarm clock chimed. He had set it on the bedside nightstand when he had arrived at this cheap motel, and it dutifully woke him up each day at 7am, his preferred waking hour.

But that had been how many… five? six? days ago. He was unsure, and glanced at his combination day-planner and notepad next to the clock.

Six days!

He’d been here almost the entire week given to him by the assignment editor, and written nothing. Nothing!

In search of “the story”, he had gone to all of the usual sights of Buffalo. That had taken him an entire three days. Of course, he visited the Anchor Bar (“The home of Buffalo Wings”), taken in the Chippewa Avenue nightlife, and even dropped by the SUNY -Buffalo campus. And even spent a whole day at Niagara Falls. (“Was that yesterday, or the day before?”, he wondered.)

But when he googled for stories about each of those, he realized he had nothing unique to contribute. Everything had been said.

And yet, he was leaving tomorrow, and needed something to say.

Not quite the windfall

2007-06-14T22:02:42Z

“I’ve just quit my job!”, she exclaimed.

“What? How will you live? You need money, you know.”, he replied.

“No, I’ve come into a bit of windfall. Lucky me!”

“That’s wonderful! Congratulations.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking of heading down to South America. I’ve always wanted to visit there. But first to Europe, of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Well, that’s where I have to go to pick up the money.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I got this email.”

She pulled open her laptop, displaying an email that began: “TO WINNERS IN OUR PROGRAM . We wish to congratulate you over your success in our computer balloting sweepstake held on Saturday 09 June 2007.”

He frowned. “Uh, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“What?”

“Well, that’s not a real message. You’ve been spammed. At best, it’s a meaningless message, but at worst, they were trying to scam you out of money.”

“Oh…” she said, slowly, with a graven look over her face. “I guess I shouldn’t have told my boss off so strongly. I may need that job back.”

Buffalo Central Terminal

2007-05-18T01:06:24Z

Buffalo Central Terminal, the sign said.

Was that a place? Or a state of mind?, he wondered. He carefully grabbed his overnight bag and laptop backpack as he began to lumber down the narrow aisle of the bus. He turned as the bus pulled away, only to catch grit and diesel fumes in his face.

He reassured himself that this assignment was necessary— that he was on his last $385 of cash in the bank—and the credit cards were all maxed out. But, why Buffalo?

His ride was waiting across the street. The driver was a cute, perky assistant-type, and she waved to him. He wasn’t sure how he had been recognized, but maybe most of the folks getting off the bus weren’t carrying a laptop case.

As he came up to the car, she inquired cheerfully “How was the trip?”

“Uneventful”, he replied. He’d learned that the best trips were the trip for which you didn’t have a story, and so far, this was one of them.

Pity, because that’s exactly what his job was. Write a story about the trip. And he had seven days to finish it.

the item in the glass case

2007-05-07T22:18:44Z

I pointed to the third shelf of the glass case. It had caught my eye as I had spun around.

“That. Can I see that?”

The clerk moved around to the left side of the case, and pulled out an oversized keyring. After fumbling with four of the keys before finding the proper one, the side glass was opened.

She carefully picked up the item I had indicated. She was appropriately gentle as she held it in one hand and carefully closed the case with the other. I guess she presumed she wasn’t going to have to put it back.

“Be careful. You drop it or break it, it’s yours.”

She handed it to me with the same care that she had used in picking it up. I held out both my hands, carefully cradling this unusual treasure.

Although I couldn’t measure it, I felt that for some reason, this thing, whatever it could be called, was slightly warm to the touch. Perhaps it was just that it had been in the sun, sitting there in that case. But it was definitely not entirely at room temperature.

If only I had noticed that sooner.

Blinking at me

2007-05-06T01:10:26Z

IT JUST SAT THERE , blinking at me.

I knew the trip would be long, and that I’d have a lot of quiet time. The seven months to Mars Rendevous would pass by more quickly, I had said to myself, if I just had enough to read and work and keep me busy.

So for two months before the trip, I had carefully prepared, scanning in all of my old print publications that had been stacked up for three years, along with a series of hasty purchases of various audio and video novels.

As a passenger, I knew the “net” would be unavailable to me, with the minimal off-ship bandwidth being exclusively reserved for operations staff, a reasonable restriction.

But no matter: I had loaded up my 40-terabyte internal drive of my laptop with plenty of material. Plenty to read. Plenty of time to write my thoughts, my memoirs. Yes, finally, writing down the story of my life.

But my laptop just sat there and blinked at me.

I had forgotten the password. I tried everything. Access denied.

It was going to be a long, long trip.

Brazillian Maid

2007-04-30T21:05:09Z

He had been there for nearly three drinks, when she tapped him on the shoulder. At first, he ignored the interruption, figuring it was just another street vendor.

“Hola”, she said, in her native Brazillian tongue. She then rattled off a series of unfamiliar sounds.

He stumbled, replying “No falla Portuguese, falla Ingles?”, as his travel agent had instructed him to say.

“Yes”, she replied, “but very little”. She sat in the chair next to him, facing him directly. He could see that she was young, perhaps just 22 or so, roughly half his age.

“Drink?”, he replied, keeping his speech simple for her, pointing at his glass. She nodded, and he ordered another two Caipirinhas.

“Where you from?”, she continued, struggling with her words.

“United States, Los Angeles, California”, he replied, rounding off the location a bit to keep it simple.

The rest of the world disappeared the moment she sat down. He now understood why he had come here.

Brazillian Cut

2007-04-30T19:39:15Z

He had been there for almost an hour, at that sidewalk drink shack at the edge of the road. He was sipping on the Caipirinha he had ordered 8 minutes earlier, already down about a third of the way, since they were small.

The travel agent had told him, “Sit at the cafe next to ‘Post 9’ on Ipanema Beach and wonderful things will happen”. So, he booked the flight, grabbed a cab from his hotel, and was now sitting here. And nothing was happening.

The time-and-temperature boards alternated between “13:50” (the time in 24-hour time) and “38” (the temperature, in Celsius), both of which reminded him of how far away from home he was. However, he didn’t mind so much, since he was looking out on an unending sea of the brown, tall, skinny bodies of local Brazillians. Well, although he admired the guys for having a body far better than his geekiness would allow, he was more appreciative of the female form of the ladies.

And he finally understood what a “brazillian cut” bikini bottom really meant, and was happy.

Another long travel day

2007-04-29T00:26:30Z

It was another of those long travel days.

I enjoy everything about travelling, except for the travelling. That is, I like the results of travelling: getting to meet new people, see new things, and reconnect with old friends. But the actual travel part—well, that’s another matter.

My day had started out early. I had woken up after only 4 hours sleep the night before, perhaps too eagerly anticipating the return home after three weeks in Brasil. I ate lunch on the Copacabana beachfront, leisurely consuming my wonderful (and yet inexpensive) meat dish, following it with a few Caipirinhas. After hooking up with a few friends for one last round of drinks, I was now boarding a plane at 10pm that would take me overnight to Atlanta.

I can usually nap an hour or two on an overnight flight, but that’s all I got this time. And after clearing Customs in Atlanta, I realized I still had 6 hours to kill before getting aboard the next 5-hour flight to Portland.

It’s a good thing I have a healthy sense of denial.

Not an ordinary moment

2007-04-21T00:41:37Z

It seemed like any other moment. But this one was different.

At this moment, simultaneous launches of ICBMs from three continents (still aimed at the former Soviet Union) had been triggered. Jim couldn’t see any of this from the underground bunker.

He had stumbled into the bunker quite by accident. An old grate broke through on his hiking path, resulting in a scary slide down a vent into the room.

In the dark, he felt around for some sort of light switch on a wall. Instead, he bumped in to the “EMERG POWER ” button, and even though this bunker had been unoccupied for over two decades, everything flickered to life.

Everything, including the fire-control computers, which had been left in diagnostic mode by the last occupants, part of the secret “continuity of government” program. This would normally have not been a problem, but over the years, the “diagnostic test activate” code had been replaced with the “doomsday scenario 14” code in the long distance protocol.

And now Jim had just activated WW III .

She lives in the mirror

2007-04-19T20:03:59Z

She walked in, dressed in the latest designer clothes, at the strategic evening time of 10:45pm. The club was new, and she wanted to get noticed. Her carefully applied makeup matched her appropriately selected shoes and handbag.

As she came through the door to the upper landing of the stairs, she noticed the giant wall mirror to her right. She stopped immediately, and focused her gaze on her reflection in the mirror.

She dropped her jaw slightly as she bent closer to the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of herself during the brief interval that she was illuminated by the gyrating disco light. With each flash, she managed to primp and adjust imperfections that only she could see.

For a short time, she retreated into the bathroom, to adjust some unmentionables. But she returned to the same place in front of that mirror.

Sadly, unsatisfied with her looks, she left the club, not noticing the 18 pairs of eyes that had been watching her, wanting her to come down the stairs so they could talk to her.