Installment for 28 April 2003

Despite Sister's suggestion, Nelle paced back and forth across the little office. Carved into the surface of the concrete walls, over and over again:
In Loss, Purpose.
Nelle inspected the letters carefully, just as she had in the real world. She found no dust settled on the base of the letters in either.
She paused in front of six filing cabinets. She touched the drawer front with an open palm. No storage menu opened.
"Do they keep the records on real paper, Mister Purple?"
They probably did, at least for the inner sanctum.
She heard the woman approach, watched her walk the hall toward her. Small woman, Japanese, with a round face. The cloth covered her hair, but from her face Nelle thought the simularcum young - in her twenties, perhaps.
"I am Sister Michiko."
Sister Michiko paused at the line that separated the inner from the outer temple.
"Penelope Gideon." Nelle offered her hand to the small woman, but it only extended into an infinite distance between them.
"Pleased to meet you," sister Michiko said. "They tell me we took care of you for a while as a baby?"
"Yes," Nelle said.
"In loss, purpose. But you came here to talk to me about something I did a long time ago. Don't name her," she added quickly.
"Can she hear us? Mister Purple? Are you monitoring?"
Sister Michiko shook her head. "Mr. Murasaki cannot listen. Men may not come here. The last one was - oh - some fire inspectors in 2020. After that, we had sisters train to do the fire inspections to the city's satisfaction."
"Can you tell me about - "
Sister Michiko nodded.
"It happened because of a boy. At 19, I studied at University in Kyoto. Well, a teacher's college would be more accurate. I met a boy who studied computer control languages - programing languages. Nothing like today, of course - or even a few years after that. I learned about one of the new languages they were creating, a language for business computers, a language called COBOL."
"Did you marry the boy?" Nelle asked.
"I married a different boy," Sister Michiko answered. "So different from even a few years later. You see, I had to write the whole program and create punch cards for it before I could even try it. Others had written programs like this one. It learned simple things. It remembered input and categorized it."
"But there was something more," Nelle suggested.
"Mr. Murasaki has contacted me several times," Sister Michiko said, shaking her head. She conveyed an amused exasperation as only a woman in orders might. "His fanciful stories about folklore! I did study folklore from all periods of Japan. I can tell you what kind of vampire to expect by a river and how to defeat him. None of that has anything to do with programming." She fell silent for a few moments, then she added. "I don't know where the name came from. It is suggestive of the Floating World. Mr. Murasaki might have coined that."
"Something else about the program."
Sister Michiko nodded. "I have to ask you," she said. "What's with being fat?"
"Sister," Nelle said, feeling herself blush in the real world. Here data-link didn't screen out her body sensations.
"Come along," Sister Michiko said. "I'm a cloistered nun. We don't get out much. Be a good girl and indulge me. Is that what boys like these days?"
"This isn't the twentieth century. We don't have all the same body-fetishes as we used to."
"So they don't like girls with fat asses," Sister Michiko suggested.
"Not generally," Nelle admitted.
"There, there, dear." She reached across the dividing line to pat Nelle on the arm. "There are other important things besides boys."
"The program," Nelle said, not shifting her weight, letting Sister Michiko rest her arm on her shoulder. "You used fuzzy logic."
"Not really," the Sister answered. "We didn't have that at the time. I allocated two bits per concept to express how closely that instance came to the pure concept. I had two bits left over, you see, after implementing the categorization scheme. Also - do you speak Japanese?"
"No," Nelle answered, looking at where Sister Michiko's hand had melted into her shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Japanese uses different counters for different classes of objects. The only thing in English that's like this some things that come in natural pairs, so 3 pairs of pants, 5 pairs of scissors."
Nelle tried to pull away, but Sister Michiko's hand had become part of her shoulder.
"Much richer in Japanese, so naturally I used that. Stop struggling. I'll tell you the rest."
"The Baron got to you," Nelle said.
"Don't be silly, dear. I haven't been jacked in for 25 years. I would have escaped a long time ago. Now, every object belonged to a class and was rated zero to three for how well it fit that class, zero a perfect fit. What I did - and it made the program very slow and cumbersome - was to rate objects by all classes. It let the program make generalization across different kinds of things."
"You're in trouble, Nelle."
"No kidding, Captain. Can you tell Mister Purple?"
"Away from his computer. You are in danger."
"No, my dear. You aren't. I installed those old brain jacks in the lobby. They have three extra nanowires which will infiltrate you and install parts of my personality matrix in your wetware. I will control your very fat body - we're going to lose some weight. Nothing will happen to you. You won't be able to control any part of your body. My body."
"Is the Duke on line?"
"Baron. Yes. And you're hiding from him."
"I'm ready to penetrate the cerebral membrane."
"Tell him," Nelle said. "Do it now."
"I don't think it's fair, by the way. I don't actually get to live in your brain. I'm going to be installed in your spinal column. That's going to take about two minutes. After that, I'll control the brain changes from inside. That'll only take seconds. You're going to be much happier with me in control of your body. You done such a bad job with it."
"Baron refuses to intervene," Captain Coyote said. "He might offer you a job, though, Sister Michiko. Would you have anything against bringing in Mr. Murasaki?"
"That annoying little man." She shook her head with exasperation. "Is he actually Japanese? He seems like such a wannabe. Yes, tell him I will deliver Murasaki for a fee. I'll contact him to negotiate the exact amount in the next few days."
"Coyote?" Nelle said.
"Sorry, Penelope. I'd stop this if I could. The Baron accepts. Type 7171 into any keypad in the world and the Baron will pick up."
"Complete!" the voice of Sister Michiko said. "I won't be able to communicate with you after I finish. Good bye, Penelope. For the rest of your life, just enjoy the ride."

Nelle wanted to scream at Murasaki - but too foggy coming out of the connection.
He handed her a bottle of water.
She tried to form words, but couldn't.
Her hand took the bottle - clumsy. Sister Michiko must be relying on muscle memory. If she could just drop the bottle, get Murasaki's attention, get him to examine her.
She unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle up without thinking about it. Sister Michiko must be desperate to cover up the moment of disorientation while she cut Nelle off from her body.
She swallowed and waited.
"Why are you panting, Murasaki?" she heard herself. "You're flushed!"
"I had to run in here with the nanoblocker in your water. I needed to shut down Sister Michiko before she did any real damage."
"How did you know?" Nelle asked. Was that her or Sister Michiko? "Captain Coyote said you were off line."
"I had a phone call. From a friend. Are you back? Nelle?"
"I can't stand up," Nelle said. "Did she damage me? Or is she still in there?"
"I'll ask her," Murasaki said, pulling a tingler gun from his pocket.
The sister who had been waiting with Nelle's body objected, but Murasaki shook his head.
"Your Sister Michiko tried to take over my friend's body. I am going to go in and ask her about it. You can come with me, if you wish."
"I'll come with you."
Both of Nelle's hands lifted to her throat and started strangling her. Nelle jerked her head back and forth, trying to get her neck out of her hands. She turned her head aside, imagining her hands gouging her eyes out with her chubby fingers.
"She's been dead for twenty years," Murasaki said, pulling Nelle's hands off her throat. "She left a simulacrum in the buffer of her life support equipment to fake life."
"I want this parasite out of my body," Nelle told Murasaki. "How do we get rid of it?"
"Sister Michiko," the sister began, "lived most of her life in charity, giving succor to this terrorized world. I will not have her spoken of that way in this place."
"How do we get rid of it?"

The Floating Spirit © 2003 Tim D. Sherer

Questions? Comments? Contact me.