Alfred Bester: The Computer Connection

Most sincerely,

The editors

Rottn establish mint edtrs. Not MSS. MMS. Stands for militantes for more militante socity. We take over yr office. We throw you out. We sit in foreverr. Bring p-nut butter jelli sandwich sleep on floor.

Fee-5 (mad)

DEAR MR. FEE:

Could you give us some idea of when your militant organization will take over our offices? We’d like the chance to clear out in advance. You see, we’re on the twentieth floor, so we can’t go through the windows like deans and faculty members.

Most sincerely,

The editors

You think MMS gone give you warneing in advance so cort orders police pigs can comit fashist brutality? We confront you when MMS decide if no meanful dialog you go out windows we don’t care if even 268 floors hi.

Fee-5 (Pres. MMS)

DEAR PRESIDENT FEE:

Is that what happened to your missing 268?

Most sincerely,

The editors

O Kay. You regect demacratic prosiss. You force MmS to take militante actions for militante soceyety indians eskimos 100% minor groups will arise.

Beware

That was the end. Jacy looked at me in such perplexity that I had to laugh. “She showed up all right,” I said. “Ten years old, militant as hell, and we fed her so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that she got sick and I had to take her home. Now I can’t dump her. She’s adopted me.”

“How long has she been here?”

“Three years.”

“But has she no family?”

“They were happy to get rid of her. They’re just average goons and this kid jumbled them. She’s a lusus naturae , a freak, a sport. She actually taught herself to read and write. There’s no end to her potential.”

“What does she do here?”

“Makes herself useful.”

“Guig!”

“No, no. She’s ripe but she’s only thirteen. Too young for me. It’s not what you think, Jacy. For shame.”

“I do not apologize. I know your reputation. You live entirely for mechanical pleasure.”

Mind you, this to me, who’d cleared every woman out of the house for the Visitation. That’s the trouble with these dedicated reformers; they’re wonderful guys but they have no sense of humor. Scented Song says that Confucius was exactly like Jacy, always serious. Sheba says the same thing about Mohammed; you could stand all that earnest wisdom for just about an hour and then you had to sneak out for a few laughs. None of us ever dated Moses but I’ll bet he was the same.

This is what got Jacy into trouble, but I’m not complaining because that’s how I met my first successful recruitment. The bods at Union Carbide, our local university, were mounting their ritual protest. It was the traditional daily rioting, with screamings, burnings, and killings. The only thing that changed was the cause, and the pressure groups had to sign up months in advance for representation. Jacy said he was going down to the campus to see if he could stop it. He was all for the kids’ goals but he didn’t like their methods.

“You don’t understand,” I told him. “They love their tradition of death and destruction. They don’t even ask what it’s for. They’re issued posters and scripts and then they have themselves an orgasm. The ones that dig the death wish are obliged.”

“Destruction of any of God’s work is an attempt to destroy God,” he said earnestly.

“Maybe. Let’s find out what they’re destroying for today. Hey, Fee!”

Fee-5 came in, playing the vampire bit now. “Kiss me, my fool,” she said and smote me across the chops with an artificial rose.

“Tune in. What’s the riot about today?”

She cocked her head and listened hard.

“What is she doing?” Jacy asked.

“Jacy, you live in the homes of our Group and you don’t know what’s going on in the crazy culture outside. It’s a bugged and drugged world. Ninety percent of the bods have bugs implanted in their skulls in hospital when they’re born. They’re monitored constantly. The air is crisscrossed with thousands of broadcasts. Fee is unique. She can pick them up and sort them out without a receiver. Don’t ask me how. The kid’s a genius. Let it go at that.”

“Honk Lib,” Fee-5 said.

“There you are,” I said. “Would anybody in his right mind burn down a library for the sake of Honkies? There aren’t a million pure whites left in the world, and most of them are Jukes and Kallikaks from inbreeding.”

“Come here, my child,” Jacy said.

Fee sank into his lap and kissed him seductively. He put his arms under the vampire to make her comfortable and instantly the scene was transformed into Michelangelo’s “Pieta.” That’s Jacy’s magic.

“Do you use drugs, my love?”

“No.” She glared at me. “ He won’t let me.”

“Do you want to?”

“No. They’re ditt. Everybody else does.”

“Then why are you angry with Guig?”

“Because he makes me do what he wants. I have no identity.”

“Then why don’t you leave him?”

“Because—” She was hung up. She fell back and regrouped. “Because I’m waiting for the day when I make him do what I want.”

“Are you bugged, love?”

“No,” I answered. “She was born in the gutter and she’s never been in a hospital. She’s clean.”

“I was born in the fifth row from the front in Grauman’s Chinese,” Fee said with enormous dignity.

“Good heavens! Why?”

“That’s where my family lives,” Fee said reasonably.

Jacy looked at me in bewilderment.

“She’s stuck-up because her family made it down to the orchestra from the balcony,” I esplained.

He gave up, kissed Fee, and disengaged himself. She actually clung to him for a moment before letting go. Charisma. He asked Fee if the riot had started and she said yes, half the fuzz were picking up the bug broadcasts and sounded irritated with it. They were getting bored with the repetitions. One of them was suggesting sending in an agent provocateur to incite a more entertaining sort of riot.

So off Jacy went, the dearest Knish-head I’ve ever known. He still wore the longish hair and the beard and still looked his Mole age, thirtyish, so I thought that would make him safe but I followed all the same, just in case. I didn’t think the bods would hurt him but the fuzz might try to incite him to a more entertaining riot. He was capable of it. Nobody’s ever forgotten the brouhaha he started in that temple in Jerusalem.

The campus was the traditional mess: missiles, lasers, firebombs, and burnings, so everybody was happy. They were chanting and shouting jingles, “One, two, three, four,” and something that rhymed with four. “Five, six, seven, eight,” and another rhyme with eight. They couldn’t go much higher because arithmetic was no longer compulsory. The guards were maintaining the ritualistic barrier lines and haggling with each other for the right to arrest and rape the prettiest girls. Crazy Jacy marched right into the middle of the ceremony.

I thought, “It’s going to be another Sermon on the Mount and I didn’t bring a recorder. Drat!”

He never got the chance to adjure them. About twenty militants attacked an innocent parked chopper that was doing nobody any harm. They rocked it. They turned it on its side. They smashed the vanes and landing gear off and tried to hammer the cabin off the chassis. They rocked it some more, trying to overturn it completely, and they must have rocked too hard in the wrong direction. The wreck slammed down upright, directly on top of Jacy.

I ran to it. There were half a dozen dull thunks and there was gas (laced with LSD today) and the kids stopped cold and took in deep breaths. I was gassed too but I reached the chopper and tried to heave it up. Impossible. Three guards materialized and grabbed me.