Harper College - Halcyon Yearbook (Palatine, IL)

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Another of the backers, a florid man with a thrilled and dyed topknot, hunched forward. You can't possibly call that death viable? Sparks, man, there were actually paying guests sleeping through it. I saw a monitor estimate that had thirty-two per cent, that's thirty-two per cent of the audience into the sevens with boredom! How the hell do you expect up to drain off enough empathy to syndicate this . . .this abort you call a death? Redditch sighed. Stop inviting your relatives to the premieres and perhaps we'll get a few guests onboard who can still feel something. I don't have to take this! the backer shouted. That's true, Redditch said. The tranquilizers were holding. That's true, said the Designer, meaning some- thing else entirely. Let me handle this, Nlr. Nym. If you please. Stars! Mr. Nym said. He turned away. Now there were two looking out the cycle ports. Redditch, this isn't the first inadequate job you've programed. The Faraway Forever program. The Fightful Loss program. Others. Maybe I'm bored. We're all bored, dammit, We're all bored, dammit, said a third backer. He had his hands clasped in his lap. I spend considerable time designing these deaths, the Designer continued, and I cannot permit my work to be underdone this way. These gentlemen have very legitimate complanits. Their audiences are waiting for the syndication of what we mount out here, their business is providing their audiences with top-grade empathy material. When it goes to you from my workshop, it's right. When it's actualized it lacks verve, pace, timing. There are clauses in our contract. I won't tell you, again. Redditch rose. Don't. Refer it to my Guild. He turned and left. Behind him, all three backers were staring out the cycle ports as the nova phased to deep purple. His sould was quiet. He strode through the theater lounge quickly, no glance left, no glance right. If he was going to sedate and blot, he would do it along. She wasn't.in her seat. The formfit still held the shape of her body. Glance right. He floated laxily in the nimbus, his spine like water, his thoughts relaxed. He was talking to the memory box that contained his wife, dead these last sixty-three years -A since his most recent anit- agapic rejuvenation. I4 It's the end of summer, Annie. How did the children take it, Rai? They had had no children. lt was an old mem- ory box, the synthesizing channels were worn, the responses were frequently imprecise or non sequiter The bead in which her voice had been cored, had become microscopically crustedg Annie now spoke with a slur and somethimes-drawl. I look about thirty now. They even fixed the prostate. I'm taller, and they lengthened the fingers on my sensor hand. I'm much faster at the console now, wider reach. But the work isn't any better. why don't you speak to the designer about it, darling? That sententious lemming. I may be under- talented, at least I don't try to sustain a miserable existence by deluding myself I'm creating great works of art. He turned onto his stomach, staring out the port. It was dark out there. And while we float here talking, outside this great space-going vessel cut 'in the shape of a moonstone, the universe whirls past at millions of light-years an hour, doo-wah-diddy mop-mop. Isn't that parsecs, dear? How should I know. I'm a sensu programmer, not an astrophysicistf' ls it chilly in here, Rai? Oh, Annie, forget it. Say somthing I haven't heard. I'm dying, Annie dying of ennui and the stupids. I don't want, l don't need, I haven't any- thing. don't care! What do you want me to say, dear? l miss you I'm sorry you're lonely - lt's not even that I'm lonely, Annie, you went through three rejuvenations with me. You were the lucky one. Lucky? Lucky that I died during the fourth? How do you get lucky out of that, RaiVi Because I've had to live sixty-three more years, and in another ten or fifteen I'm scheduled for a fifth, long-dead baby wife of mine, and I tell you three times - one two three - it's the end of sum- mer, love. Gone. Done. All the birds has flowed south for the final flutter. I'm going to give it a pass when rejuve comes around. I'm going to settle into dust. Summer ends, goodbye, Mother of God, is this how Rico dies? What sensu is that from, Rai? Not sensu, Annie. Nlovie. Movie film. All singing, all-dancing, all-talking. I've told you a million times, by direct count. Movie. 'Little Ceasar,' Edward G. Robinson, Warner Bros. oh to

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He drank ice crystals laced with midnight and watched their world burn. A greenperson floated up beside him, and touched his sleeve. There was static electricity in the compartment, a tiny spark. Mister Redditch, when you have a moment, the Designer would like to disturb air with you. Redditch looked down. The greenperson's eye was watering. Tell him l'll be along. The green- person's flaccid skin went to an ivory-gray hue, capturing the disquiet and weariness in Redditch's voice. He floated away, adjusting his hue exactly, so the message could be transmitted without the slightest semantic misinterpretation. Redditch turned back to the teleidoscope, the tanger, the sensu, the catcheye and the straight black tunnel that showed him their world burning. The solar prominences had died away to self-sat- islied blandnessg unctuous. There was little out there now but smoldering ash, but the sensu was still getting a reading high into the nines and the teleidoscope was turning it, turning it, combining spectrum. He raised the drink to his lips, but he could not taste it. The tanger overrode, even in the control compartment. lt was the smack of salt- rising bread and salamanders. A rolling checker came out of its bay and made its way through the coils of readout sheets litter- ing the deck. Redditch had designed and combined and set up the nova with great care, and the sheets had endlessly tongued out of the aesthetikon and he had let them lie. The checker got through the tangle and palmed open the hookup compartment and re-attached the feed to stateroom 6ll. But it hardly mattered: the clients in 6ll had played gin rummy straight through the program. The checker returned to its bay. Redditch downed the last of his drink, ran his tongue around the rim of the hollow crystal, and set it down on the console. He sighted and rubbed his weary, itching eyes. He was tired from the in- side out to the very tips of his fingers. And now, When he emerged from the dropshaft and walk- ed through the theater lounge, a blustery purple f class voyager and a fat duchess with sausage fingers and noisy rings greeted him, congratulated him on the performance, offered him social congress. The man was probably a salesman of myth-sticks, and the woman was clearly a remittance relative. He smiled and thanked them and hurried on through the theater. A clique still plugged into their tunnel applauded him, and he acknowledged their appre- ciation with a vague gesture of his sensor hand. lt sparkled with reflected light from the overhead inkys. He saw her sitting alone, and when she looked up at him as he approached, the singular beauty contained in her face, particularly her slanted eyes, made him slow his pace. Her right arm was lying along the rest, and she bet it at the elbow, raising the slim-fingered hand. lt was enough to stop him. You programmed the death? she said, with no rising inflection. He nodded, smiling in anti- cipation of her congratulations. She looked away. He felt as though something had been stolen from him. The Designer was lying out in a leaf chair that moved idly in its free-fall nimbus. Everyeye in his forehead row was closed, but Redditch could tell he was perceiving his surroundings by the fibrila- tion of root threads that spiked his cheek-pouches. Crystals of ergonovine sparkled amid the threads. The Designer's backers were seated around the observatory suite. Come in, the Designer said. The leaf chair- moved. l'm in. He slumped into a composeat and punched out tranquilizers and an antacid. He wanted to stay calm through it all. Outside the observatory cycle ports the nova phased through from yellow ochre to gold as he watched. Some- thing on your mind, Keltin? The Designer opened three yes eyes. Where must your mind be? He said it with carefully chilled contempt. A greenperson hovered just beyound the nimbus, unnecessarily translating the tone in colors. Redditch yawned. Madison Square Garden, a 1932 Paramount Pictures release starring lack Oakie, Nlarian Nixon, Zasu Pitts, William Boyd and Lew Cody. 'A romantic, dramatic story of three men and two girls fighting desperately to rout the mechanism of unseen forces.' Running thime, mechanism of unseen forces. Running time, seventy-six minutes. One of the backers threw his his drink at the bulkhead. He started to shout something, but a checker emerged from its bay and caught the crys- tal before it hit, sucking up everydrop of fluid before it could stain the grass. The backer turned away in frustration. The designer opened a no eye. There are clauses in your contract, Redditch. Redditch nodded. But you won't use them. He only wished Keltin would relieve him. Far chance. l3

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hell with it, there was a woman in the lounge tonight, Annie.. . That's nice, sweetheart . . . was she attrac- tive? God help me, Annie, I wanted her! Do you know what that means to me? To want a woman again? I don't know what it was about her . . . I think she hated me . . . I could feel it, some thing deep and ugly when she stopped me.. . That's nice, sweetheart . . . was she attrac- tive? She was bloody gorgeous, you ghost of Christ- mas Past. She was so unbelievably unreal I wanted to craw inside here and live there. Annie . . . Annie . . . I'm going crazy with it all, with what I do, with the novae, with programming death for indolent swine who need their cheep death thrills to make it through the day just to make it through a day . . . God, Annie, speak to me, come out of that awful square coffin and save me, Annie! I want night, my baby, I want night and sleep and end to summer . . . The suite door hu mmed and a holograph of the one seeking entrance appeared in the tank. It was the woman from the threater lounge. That's nice, sweetheart . . . was she attrac- tive? He swam out of the nimbus and whistled the door open. She came in and smiled at him. You were always like that when I was alive, Raig you simply never talked to me, you never listened . . . He lurched sidewise and palmed the memory box to stillness. Yes? She stared at him with curiosity and he said it again, Yes? A little conversation, Mr. Radditchf' I was just talking about you. To you little back box? To what's left of my wife. I did't mean to be fippant. It's very personal and dear to many people, I know. Not to me. Annie's gone. I'm still here. . . and it's getting to be the end of su mmer. He motioned to the nimbus, and she walked to it with here eyes still on his face. You're a very attractive human, she said, removing her clothes and sliding into the free-fall glow. Can I get you something? A crystal? Some- thing to eat? Perhaps some wa'ter. He whistled up the dispenser. It rose from the grassruggled deck, and revolved. Fresh water, three sparkles of seed in it, he said. The checker in the dispenser mixed up the drink and set it out for him to remove. He carried it to her and she took it, giving him a faint look of amusement. I seem to entertain you. She drank from the crystal, barely moving her lips. You do. You aren't from the Near Colony. I'm not a Terrestrial. I didn't want to say thatgl throught it might offend. We needn't circle each other, Mr. Redditch. Clearly, I sought you out, I want something from you, we can be straightline with one another. Apart from sex, what do you want from me? My, you're taking the initiative. lf you don't care for me, you can move out now. l'm frankly not up to badinagef' He turned sharply and went back to the dispenser. lt's the end of summer, he said, softly. She sipped at the cool water in the crystal. He turned back to here, a melt in its helical container warm against his hand, and caught her unguarded expression: there was so much amusement in her face, in every line of her languid body, he felt like an adolescent again. Oh, Mr. Redditch! Her chil- ing was as deep and meaningful as that of a mommy's suitor, feigning concern for the off- spring of the ex-husband. He turned back a second time, felling violence in him for the first time in years, furious at her for playing him like a puppet, furious at himself for being furious. That's all . . . get out. The end of summer, IVlr. Redditch? She made no move to go. f'What do you mean by the end of summer? I said out. I mean out. You'r going to ignore the rejuvenation next time? You must want something on the other side verybadlyf' Who the hell are you? What do you want from me? lt's been a bad day, a bad week, a rotten year and a stinking cycle, so why don't you just put an egg in your shoe and beat it. My name is jeen. He shook his head, totally bewildered. What? If we're going to touch, you should at least know my name, she said, and held out the crys- tal for him to take it away. But when he reached out, she laid her other hand on his wrist and drew him into the numbus. It had been a very long time since he had wanted a woman this way, but his I5