From: gibson@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Bill Bill)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: mrx's adventures in Paradise
Message-ID: <5079@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 90 00:02
mrx impatiently spins the hands on his office clock
and the sun quickly sets. The Overbureau has
finally insisted on his vacation, "for his own
good." Hmph. He eyes the next week's city model on
his desk screen - thirty-five extra deaths due to
mismanaged high-energy processes, all inevitable
merely because City and Overbureau have to try his
job. Fools will be fools. He ends City's workday,
packs seven articulated metallic energy expanders in
a case with a toothbrush-like device, and steps out
to Airport slideway.
At Airport, he wordlessly selects tickets for a
low-tech low-energy travelbox to Paradise. His
unblinking eye convinces the City's unblinking
retinal-scanner that he is going to
enjoy himself. Machines are more
foolish than the people who depend
on them.
Upon deposit of his person in Paradise, his eyes
click open and compare the vacation island's
gleaming silver needles and flaming rocks to the
travelbox's acculturation fakememory. Satisfied,
his eyes direct him to a towering hotel, to the
antipenthouse with windows open on the subterranean lava
supply. His last vision before entering dream mode is a
design of lava fish to set loose before returning to City.
As his eyes click open on day four, mental
routines designed for a vacation provide a
slow review of his unapparent assessment of
Paradise's scorched exterior.
Day 1: purchase of seventeen solutions necessary to
the composition of lavafish; initialization of the
hotel's geomagnetic flow & corresponding calculation
of the necessary instrument-structure for this Room.
Day 2: initial construction of Room's
field-tap scaffold and fish builders; trip
to Screaming-Steam Vista (displaying
touristness); relaxing bath at Lava
Saunas.
Day 3: compression of a
kilometer cube of vent
gasses for Home's air
fresheners; mapping of
island's subsurface lava
streams.
Review complete, mrx dismounts his sleep table and attends his
lavaquarium. The fish-like constructs have finished themselves;
he pours them into a portable heatbag to facilitate later dumping
on today's tour. After unplugging his breakfast tubes and cables,
he hides the day's activities in a black case that somehow seems
too small and deserts his Room for Hotel's Bus.
Before Bus leaves Hotel, mrx identifies the smallest braincase
on the tour. At the first lava cave, as tourists sit in the
dark staring at the heat around them, he transfers the fish to
Mr. Smallbrain's lunchbox, ensuring their later drop to the
ground and then to their streams. The smile of an internal
world brushes his lips, and he proceeds to the next acts in
his secret play.
At each stop in the caverns of Paradise, he
leaves behind a thermomagnetic amplifier
buried in a warm warm wall.
The displays inside his pitch-black caving
goggles flicker as the instruments back in
Room agree with each amp placement. Quiet
joy, like that of a job well done, seeps
through his major neural bundles.
That night he holds a merry chemistry session for the tourists in Hotel's
Bar, exchanging pints of a quite nourishing alcohol-like rebuilder for their
quaint tales of the Lunch That Got Away. Satisfied that they have received
sufficient entertainment, he re-enters Room, checks the ongoing Structure,
then descends into dream.
A few more days of busy relaxation, tuning
Paradise and gazing with absorption on the
beautiful black beaches' smoking waves,
and mrx ends his adventure right on
schedule. He tucks a small toothbrush-like
device in a pocket of his tiny case and
adjusts the timers on Room's fully-grown geomag
structure. With a smile many humans reserve for
parental pride, he caresses a final instruction
stream into the structure's human-touch node. The
structure pings, crinkles greenly, and begins a
faint streaming sound, as though a wind of metal
blows through the walls.
He attaches a permanent
lock to Room's door to
avoid unnecessary deaths
of Hotel personnel, then
returns to Airport and
on to City.
Later that week, while patching some of Overbureau's management
fumbles, he barely smiles as the background news-reader
excitedly reports the massive fireworks seen from the direction of Paradise
and the smooth lift of a glowing island into stable orbit. The subsequent
radio contact with the new satellite's maintenance-fish and with many
biorebuilt radio-tourists surprises some City dwellers,
but mrx's smile seems well-planned.
Bill Bill gibson@hplabs.hp.com