Aboriginal Science Fiction, Issues 57–58 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘e mA ‘ sleep and then turn her program in to Shmutz. He was trying so hard. “Did you call last night?” He nodded, almost ashamed. “You can code if you want, Amy, just let me come back. There’s nowhere else I belong.” So Frank had called her desperately all night while she worked. Maybe he had finally realized that programming was their financial security. Besides, if he left again, she would still have the code, and if he stayed, she could give the big kiss- off to Mr. Soing. . | She slept, and when Frank returned from the subway, she remembered all the hollow men slumped by hollow buildings, lost men with shut- tered eyes. Frank’s eyes glowed with the need to move on and recover life. His slump was over. Amy reached for the perfume bottle on the desk. She waved it under Frank’s nose and flirta- tiously dabbed perfume on her neck and down her shirt. “Smells like oil rigs in here,” he said, “sexy oil rigs.” She wanted to tell him it was a light touch of benzene, as if he cared, but he was too eager for flipfloppin’ and pressurized flinging. And then they lay on cool sheets and stared at the ceiling, where jutting brown stains clung like dead phallic symbols. Frank said: “They look like chains up there, huh, Amy? Long, long chains that never end.” She closed her eyes and pretended the perfume was daisies. He said, “I really didn’t earn much on the Siberian gig, but Ill find something. After all, it’s not like I haven’t dug ditches or cleaned plates before.” It didn’t matter. Amy understood Frank’s inse- curities. And any income would cool her desire to murder Mr. Soing. She leaned across the sheets and grabbed the computer pad from the desk. “Run the sheep program, Frank. I think it’s a winner. See if it puts you to sleep. Think of the word, sheep. That’s all you have to do.” Frank hesitated. He’d never been comfortable with what he called her computer gizmos. But then he poked the wire into his nose, slipped his fingers to the pad, and shut his eyes. Her heart swelled, ready for Frank’s reaction. It was instant. His body convulsed. He gasped for breath. Eyes rolled in their sockets, blood frothed from swollen lips. Under his eyes, the wrinkle masses were bright red, pulsing with the urgency of a phone icon. Amy smacked his hand from the computer pad. She slammed her own at phone buttons. A shriek- ing of livecop sirens. Screech of wheels out front. What would this do to Frank, to be saved by live- cops, the men who had outmachoed him for the few jobs open to terminated netcops? They slapped an oxygen mask to his face, rolled him to a stretcher, then checked his pulse as they carried him from the apartment. “Who was he? How did this happen?” someone asked. It was a man, taller than Frank, with more muscles, more hardness to his eyes. She must have messed up the switch, coding the sheep -p for a normal malodorous run and the plain sheep command for the perfumed run. Had she tested the -p option, she would have known that it triggered far too much benzene into the nose. How could she have been so sloppy? If Shmutz had taught Amy anything, it was to test her algorithms and nasal structures. She could just picture Frank’s enlarged olfacto- ry arrays stimulating the oversensitive nerve end- ings of his first brain nerve. The benzene-laced perfume of wildflowers seeping in from the hard- coded bit sprays, drenching his nerve endings with deadly amounts of scent. Had she killed him? The livecop wouldn’t understand, he wouldn't appreciate her need to be with Frank. Very simply she said: “He was Frank LaRoofe.” The livecop looked at her, puzzled. Metal cuffs clanged against the steel bat dangling at his side. “You'll have to give me a little more than that, miss.” If Frank were lucky, he’d somehow avoid a heart attack or paralysis. Frank would make it, he would not be a lost man. She would not be his killer, because Jasper did not need a lost mother. “Frank is the father of my son. I guess you could say he’s my husband.” “Okay, Mrs. Laroofe, do you have any idea what happened?” “We were, you know ... damn, can’t you make this easier on me? We were rekindling old pas- sions, okay? Frank has some sort of heart condi- tion. He’s been working in the Arctic, digging per- mafrost, killing himself to earn money for us. He’s a good man. He was a netcop.” She knew that would do the trick. Livecops and netcops were brothers. The man backed off, actual- ly tried to comfort her, offered to help. Then she found herself alone in the apartment. Fuzzy neon caterpillars slinked to end tables. And from the shadows, something large loomed. It laughed. It was Frank. Poor Frank, who was willing to dig ditches and wash dishes for her. Frank, who had lost the meaning of life and desperately need- ed her to find it for him. And talk about a serious software bug ... A few weeks later, Amy caught Frank fondling a nurse. At first she was upset, but then her report card came with an A in Algorithms and Nasal Structures; and somehow Frank just didn’t matter anymore. LJ 22 Aboriginal Science Fiction — Summer 1998 COjilralthra Mat coy