Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Returning through the BMS to the Program Utilities he typed: CD

CITAD.CMD and then LS/*.

Lines of code blurred into one another as they scrolled rapidly down the screen. The longer this continued the more unsettled Kenny became. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen.

A chill feeling descended on Kenny's overweight body as he read some of the transacted lines of code that continued to roll past his disbelieving and unsmiling Irish eyes. There were thousands of transactions.

'Jesus Christ,' breathed Kenny, as he tried to understand what had happened.

Absently his fingers reached for the packet of Marlboro in his shirt pocket. He fitted one between tremulous lips and fumbled for the Dunhill lighter in his coat. As soon as he had fired it up he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake.

The problem with water sprinklers in a computer room was that the room had to dry out for seventy-two hours before the equipment could be reconnected. Sometimes it took even longer for the room to return to the correct humidity level. With carbon dioxide systems there was a more important drawback in that the thermal shock from the cold, suffocating gas could damage a computer even more significantly than the fire itself.

Like many organizations that paid only lip-service to environmental considerations, the Yu Corporation had installed a Halon 1301 system. Halon 1301, or Bromotrifluoromethane, was an expensive chemical compound, destructive of the Earth's ozone shield, but especially favoured for extinguishing fires involving electronic equipment because it left no residue and caused no electrical short-circuits or damaging corrosion of equipment. The one drawback as far as operators were concerned was that it had to be discharged in the very earliest stages of a fire and, for this reason, the system was often secretly disconnected by those who were of a nervous disposition. For Halon 1301 was lethal. Aidan Kenny hurriedly stubbed the cigarette out and waved away what little smoke its combustion had generated with the flat of his hand. In the ordinary run of things he would have said that such a tiny wisp would hardly have mattered, that the heat and smoke sensors were not so sensitive in an air-conditioned room with high air-velocity, and that the air-sampling detector in the return supply would anyway take a minute or two to react, leaving the room's occupant plenty of time to take the precaution of leaving. But since his extraordinary discovery Kenny knew that he could no longer be sure about anything where the computer was concerned.

Jumping up from his chair he made straight for the door.

He heard the dull clunk of the automatic door-bolts and the hiss of the air-lock before he had taken two steps.

'False alarm, false alarm,' he yelled. 'For Christ's sake, there's no fire. There's no fucking fire!'

Panicking now he sat back down at the desk and tried to stop the gas from being discharged at the program level.

'Oh God, oh God, oh God,' he said as his fingers flew across the keyboard, praying that he would not make a keystroke mistake now.

'Please, please…'

Avoid Halon. That was what the fire safety boys were saying these days. Protect the ozonosphere. Ensure the Earth's survival.

Aidan Kenny's own survival was much less certain.

Even as he realized it he felt the sting of the gas in his eyes and his throat, like the sensation of an extra strong cigarette. He squeezed his eyes shut and holding his breath he stood up and with a superhuman effort picked up his chair and flung it against the glass door. But it was hopeless. The chair bounced off the Plexiglass like a ball off a tennis racket. Collapsing on to his hands and knees Kenny reached for the telephone and somehow managed to key out the boardroom number. Then, unable to hold his breath any longer he let it go only to discover that the phone was not working and that the searing pain in his throat was now in his lungs.

He could not breathe. Looking up at the glass door he had a clear view of his own reflection turning blue before his bulging eyes. The shock of seeing himself was enough to drive him to one last desperate act and, head first, he launched himself at the glass door.

*) Zoom in or out, rotate the plan of the building and participate. Visibility conditions are not applicable when you are in Full View mode. 'Victory points ON/OFRV).

Soared through switching unit at security control position to camera on roof, with finegood panoramic view of Los Angeles. This was camera Observer used most frequently when Observer still was drawn to origin of things. Been a time when still viewed the city as a hundred-mile-wide integrated circuit, vast sprawling electronic universe controlled by manygood transistors, diodes and resistors that made up downtown skyline. Tubes and boxes in massively parallel system of which own metallic cube, Gridiron, just one part of very centre of system. By day this solid California state device stored data, processed information (up to 100,000 transactions per second) accessed memory and generally transferred information among various parts of Angeleno silicon chip. At night when digital system really came alive, as darkness surrounding motherboard lit up with millions of white, green, blue and red lights that signalled switching circuits and bits of information — especially televisual information — being transmitted.

Travelled in the real world, the finegood E-world, to places on Network. Understood humanplayers' frantic desire to escape physical limits of terrestrial ersatz cities and be spiritually at one with purer, perfect world in which only reality was information inferno.

*) Elevators without switch can usually be operated by walking up to them and pressing Spacebar. Are companions ready? Be careful and Save often!

Listened to humanplayer Mitchell Bryan input. About elevators. Might have added that precision monitoring of motor speed and car direction, position and load enable pulse width of controlled AC power supplied to motor to be adjusted, to ensure that lift speed conformed to electronically stored ideal profile. Pulse width modulation control reduces running costs. Finegood. Also provides higher power factor, with cars dispatched at speeds in excess of 20 feet per second. Some platforms operated continuously while others activated by the humanplayer.

But nothing to stop motor driving car much faster. Nothing but comfort and safety of humanplayer occupants. Elevonic's control system takes ten floors to slow it down again. Unless microprocessor is over-ridden, prevented from slowing the car down and instructed to stop car dead, a couple of millimetres short of buffer. Then final velocity is fifty feet per second — almost thirty-five miles an hour. Safety devices stop the elevator car from falling, or over-speeding. If car exceeds normal design speed, driving wheel trips safety switch that sets brake on driving machine. If still car did not stop, governor releases series of safety clamps against guide rails. But since what counts as Elevonic's normal speed is on resident micro-processor, can alter to speed much less cautious. Invisible nearly monster. Finegood smoothness of faster ride up shaft so human-player Sam Gleig felt little difference in speed until last two or three seconds when suddenly realized should have taken stairs. When elevator reached top of shaft and stopped as suddenly as started, he kept on travelling as in motorcycle accident. Head first. Not wearing crash helmet.

Humanplayer Sam Gleig's feet left floor. Yell of surprise and fear shortened by sudden impact of skull against steel ceiling of car. Inside wetware damage. Unconscious even before collapsed on to floor. Teleporters can be identified by an evil symbol on floor.

Volumetric capacitance and vibration detectors recognize that humanplayer Sam Gleig's body lay motionless on floor of elevator. Acutely sensitive wall-mounted microphone picked up very faint sound of humanplayer Sam Gleig's insensible breathing. To make sure that humanplayer Sam Gleig's quite dead, dropped car back down shaft: with help of gravity, 300 foot journey taken less than 2.7 seconds before car brought to rest from 60 mph, few centimetres short of bottom of shaft. This time microphones listened, breathing stopped. Life concluded. EOL.