James Gardner - Hardware Scenario G-49

“Are you okay?” Diana asked as George stumbled to his feet. Her face was filled with concern. She put her arm around his shoulders, sat him down on the edge of the bed, and tried to look at him through his visor.

“Oh, I’m all right,” he said. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I wasn’t a very good hero.”

“It was sweet of you to try,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right? He was hacking you left, right, and center.”

George reshaped himself into his comfortable old persona. “I’m fine. How about you?”

“Oh, I had fun. I like saving people in the nick of time.” She gave him a quick squeeze, then looked away.

“I liked being saved,” George said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

George was keenly aware she still had her arm around his shoulders. It felt very warm. He couldn’t remember anyone else’s astral projection feeling that warm.

“I suppose the scenario’s over now,” she said sadly.

“Actually,” George told her, “the building is still swarming with ruthless mercenaries.”

“It is?”

“And I left the dragon alive;”

“You did?”

“And the dungeons are chock-full of disease-bearing zombies.”

“Oh, George,” she said, hugging him tightly, “you’ve given me something nice to look forward to on our honeymoon. Tomorrow.”

In a gigantic cube in the desert, some really good robots work carefully on two physical bodies. Fluids are transferred. Vital signs are monitored. The probability of success is high.

In a castle on the Rhine, two ordinary human beings try on one persona after another as they strive to learn to love each other. If somebody ever finds a way to measure the probability of success in love everyone will ignore it anyway, so let’s not pretend we know how things will work out.

In a hardware store in a quiet town, a robot stockboy impulsively decides to put the one-inch finishing nails and the three-quarter-inch finishing nails into the same bin. They’re a bit different; but when you get right down to it, they’re all nails, aren’t they?

“Hardware Scenario G-49”:Another Clarion West story. (“Shadow Album” was, too.) All I can say is that my grandfather ran a hardware store and I worked there for several summers. The rest followed naturally.