Installment for 5 May 2003

Nelle took three steps along the old dirt road before she realized -
"Full conventionalization," she said aloud. She flipped open her fan - an elegant ivory fan, carved with Chinese art - and fanned her face.
She looked down the road, looked at the white plank fence running its length.
No shortcuts - no walking in any direction and finding what she wanted or pulling down a menu. She stared down the road, shoes pinching her feet.
She stopped a few meters down to enjoy a little breeze that had come up. Then she saw the gate.
"Not just decoration, I suppose." She resumed walking. At the gate, she twisted the board on its nail and slipped her finger into a knothole to pull the gate open.
Nelle stepped over the fence-line and onto a porch.
"One shortcut, I see."
"One shortcut, indeed." Nelle offered her hand to the genteel elderly man. He took off his straw hat and took her hand in his, raising it up but not bending to kiss it. "I own over twenty thousand acre. You could stand on any single square foot of it, but it doesn't seem hospitable to make you walk so far just to come calling."
"Thank you," Nelle said, fighting her desire to use a camp American South accent. "I'm not from around here," she added.
"Well, no one could tell that about a girl wearing such a pretty dress."
She looked down to note her attire. She wore a white dress with little pink flowers and ribbons and lace. It couldn't hide the mass of her body. It made no effort to shape her body, tightening her tummy or pushing up her bosom. Though more effeminate than anything she had ever worn, it left her more sexless. Like dough, left uncooked in a pan.
"Why, thank you, kind sir." She gave a curtsy. "I am here for something."
"I expected that," the Colonel said. "Of course, I don't know you."
"I know about you," Nelle told him. "Famous, the world over. People come to visit you from around the world. And they always come to the Louisiana Region in person."
He nodded. "I'm old fashioned. Homebody. Stay in my own Grid cell and mind my own business - insist the world mind its own."
"Especially the Grid," she suggested.
"I still don't know you," he said. "I'd like to scan you, if you don't mind."
She flipped her fan open and held it over the lower part of her face. "How forward of you, Coronel!" she refolded the fan. "But, if you must probe me, go ahead."
The Coronel bowed stiffly and put his hat back on. He clapped his hands.
"Standard programmer's interface," he said. "Not using it today, of course."
"I work with Big Iron," she told him.
"And one of the disks in your neck has been replaced with an artificial one - well, well, well. Filled with data components. A very old fashioned treatment for spinal injuries."
"I had an unusual injury," she told him.
"If it does spy or trace, it will not penetrate the data shield here."
"Of course. Do you know me well enough now?"
"Why not come inside," he suggested, taking off his hat again and turning to open the front door. "You do understand," he said, holding his left hand in front of the doorway "that I deal in bulk, only. I wouldn't take kindly to someone wasting my day, not even a pretty girl like yourself."
"That's the reason I came to you, kind sir," Nelle answered, feeling the southern creep into her speech.
He pulled his arm away and bowed for her to enter the house before him.
Inside, hundreds of chips floated in the air. She plucked one down and looked at it - felt the metal tines against her skin. The letters "AMD" were written on the top.
"That's a 64-bit chip from 1997. It's an Intel genre 686 equivalent. I can sell you up to fifty, but no fewer than ten."
"RISC chips?" she asked, replacing the chip in the air.
"As CPUs?" he looked around and plucked a chip down. "More mixed bag, but I have Motorola CPUs and assorted coprocessors. I've got some boards somebody remanufactured in 2020 using coprocessors as part of a CPU."
She took the chip from his hand but looked up at him. "Somebody has bought something like a thousand mint-condition chips from you recently. I want to know who."
He didn't react, but even a full conventionalization could smooth over surprise.
"I don't discuss my customers, Ma'am," he told her. He gave her a gently mocking smile.
"I wouldn't expect you to," Nelle told him, waving the chip around. "Your customers buy chips - " she tossed it at the floor - "to build illegal computers. That means gambling, porn, accounting fraud, mind sharing, doppleganging, spying."
"I believe I'd like you to leave," the Coronel told her. "Please don't make me jack you out."
"A Grid Baron is involved," she told him.
He looked at her for a few moments, seemed to be sizing her up.
"I don't believe you," he said finally.
"How many big chips have you sold in the last six months? Is there an order for more than a thousand?"
The Coronel laughed. "You must be joking, ma'am. I have never had an order for so many chips. I might have sold a thousand chips all together in the last six months, but I mostly sell to folks I know well, not cops. Good day, Ma'am."

Nelle pulled the wire off the skin at the back of her neck.
"Can you get my eyes back on line?" she asked.
"No," Murasaki told her. "They'll have to cycle. His data shield - well, I did get his contact information. It's only about twenty kilometers from here."
"Let's get him on the phone. I'll talk to him." She stood up, trying to remember where she'd been sitting and where the phone was. Murasaki touched her arm and helped direct her.
"Should we wait?" he asked. "Or should I talk to him?"
"No on both," she said. "He'll react better to me and the sooner the better."
Murasaki positioned her in the chair and said, "look up a little . . . and to your right. Good. Dialing now."
"You've got to be kidding," the familiar voice of the Coronel said. "This is a regular line," he said. "Do you really look that way? I thought you just picked the fat body coming in."
"Yes, I look this way. Welcome to the real world, where you live twenty clicks from here. You're not on a twenty thousand acre ranch. You are reachable."
"I don't think you want to make any threats," he said.
"The phone went dead," Murasaki said.
"I'll go to the police if I have to," she told Murasaki.
"I can't get him back. His phone is off the Grid."
"Help me to the bathroom. I'm going to take a shower."
She closed the door to the bathroom behind her, pausing to hear Murasaki outside, going back to his equipment. She unbuttoned her blouse and felt around for a hook she could have sworn this bathroom had hooks. She gave up and let it fall to the floor.
When she unhooked her bra, she noticed how oily her skin felt. Sympathetic sweat from the heat in the Old Plantation.
No, something more than that.
She dumped her skirt and underwear and felt around for the shower.
She'd used three different kinds of interfaces jacking into cyberspace.
She felt over the shower handle, turned it on, checked the heat.
"Two people tried to kill me on line in the last two weeks," she said, holding her face up into the shower. She had no soap, so she just wiped her skin with her hands. "Another guy tried to kill me twice in the real world. No wonder I'm breaking out in hives."
She heard the door fly open.
"We have to run. He found us."
"I'm in the shower," Nelle said.
He reached in and turned the shower off.
"He's killed the Coronel. I saw the news links." Murasaki toweled her off. "You have spider bites all over your body."
"Hives," she told him. "I don't appreciate you here."
"Your blouse," he told her, putting one arm down the sleeve. It stuck to her wet skin and the pleat down the back ripped as Murasaki worked her other arm into the other sleeve.
"Yes, yes," she said, taking her skirt and getting into it. She heard Murasaki in the next room, banging his computers around.
"Your shoes are here," he said, helping her find them. He opened the door and hooked her left arm inside his elbow.
"Worried," Nelle said. "You only took one of your cases."
"It has the important stuff," he told her. They walked down the hallway.
She couldn't remember how far they were from the elevator. She still felt oily.
Her eyes cycled as they reached the street. Murasaki kept up the best pace he could without breaking into a run. She looked over her shoulder at the hotel - its faux nineteenth century New Orleans facade.
A sphere of light, ten stories tall.
The rush of air filling in the newly created void made her ears pop and picked both her and Murasaki up off the ground. When they regained their feet, they scurried down an alley and kept going.

The Floating Spirit © 2003 Tim D. Sherer

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