Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

His dentist saws oíf the tooth's crown, ferrets out the roots. His mouth is blown apart. At that moment, when pain ought to rack his body, the pain of violent mistake, murderous razor-pain, Ressler is cast adrift, at sea on sound. A Pentothal haze of realization: every sound wave ever uttered could be packed into a single generating pattern a few measures long, the world's pocket score. He barely flinches as the chunks of infected, lodged bone are ripped from his head.

asks(ressler,koss,question(Today,X)). question(2/l/58,"Why can't I tell you what I hear?"). equals(question(Day,X), question(Day + 1,X)).

At home, a bloody cotton wad in his mouth, still under the protective residue of anesthetic, he calls Koss. He gets the husband. Pleasant acquaintance from faculty parties, dignified man of standing, food technologist of the first order, impediment, innocent victim, human being who has never shown Ressler anything but trust. "Hello, Herbert. Ressler here. Wife home?" No mean feat with a mouth of pebbles and blades.

"I didn't recognize your voice. Drinking?"

"Dentist."

"Ha! Not the slurred speech of choice. The wife's in the study, all bothered over this new experiment of yours. Hold on."

After gruesome pleasantry, Ressler doesn't mind being left dead on the line. He stares at where his hand has been tracing out automatic writing on the phone pad: phonenumber phonember phonembryo phenomeber.

A silence comes across the receiver, one whose breathprint he has come to hear most hours of waking and deep into sleep. Her lungs, in and out, are a muffled Morse. Those soft pulses of silence are the one message they can transmit to one another uncoded. At last she says, "Stuart!" Cheerily, a little surprised for the benefit of her husband, listening in the distant room. Yet cloaked in a subtext intelligible only to him. Quite a trick, making the word serve double purpose for two parties. Her subsequent lines are the same — masterly ambiguous hermeneutic chestnuts. It scares him to hear that actress's modulation, her flawless delivery. She lies beautifully, as confidently as Eva Blake doing cross-words in pen.

But fright is also deeply silken, burgundy, arousing. He hears her excitement across the line, cadenced so that her husband cannot. He relishes the awful irony: she lets the man think we're discussing biochemistry. And we are. "Jeannie," he grits out through numbed mouth. "Jeannie, I'm sorry."

"No need for that. Hold on a moment. Let me get a pad. OK. Now: were you speaking in the short or long term?"

"I'm sorry for calling. I'm sorry for falling in love with you. I've had a hundred opportunities to stop. I wanted to. I'm sorry for ruining your life."

"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing we can't salvage. What's the damage, in your estimate?"

"Jeanette," he says "Darling. Friend. We have to quit."

"We can't." Perfectly modulated. "Not while we're ahead."

"Jeanette. You're killing me. Every minute is a terror that something's happened to you." Without thinking, he blurts, "You have to leave your husband."

At the other end, excruciating, ambiguous silence.

"We have to have each other."

"Well?" she giggles, eighteen, baiting, ignoring the chaperon. April invitation. "What's keeping you?"

Where is Herbert? Has he stepped out? Does she no longer care? Her invitation burns like a fist of opium, warm, loose, nothing to be done. He will go over this minute, taste her, feed her, make her call out to her husband in the next room that no, she wasn't shouting. Nothing wrong. Ressler looks down at his growing list: genenumber genome genehome. "I'll die, otherwise."

"Nobody likes death," she says, hands cupped to receiver.

"Listen. I need to ask you something. When you brought me that record___"

"Record?"

No longer in control, he begins to sing, through shattered mouth, half of a twisting, two-manual arabesque. No, a third of a trio: a simple descending line that, in this instance, implies, in abstentia, a flowing semiquaver figure, transparent, effortless, advancing in all directions, nowhere.

"Oh, that record," she laughs, despite his tuneless butchering of the Base. "De goole bug."

"When you bought me that record___"

"Used," she corrects.

"When you gave it to me, did you love me already?" Did you think: We'll listen to this together, in some future life, you and I, free from all distraction, from the duplicitous waltz, innocent again, free to follow the tune, to go nowhere with it? "Why do I think of you when you aren't here?" He does nothing to help her out of the bind. She must deceive her own way out, with her own sick skill with words.

"That's a tough one. We could throw that one up for brain-storming, if you like."

"I need you. God, I'm sorry I'm even saying this. Why am I saying this?"

"No doubt there's a mechanism somewhere. But we shouldn't be too hasty, hmm? Perhaps we can't blame everything on ribosomal RNA?"

"Jesus Christ."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Say that again."

"I beg your—"

"Before that."

"Aren't we being a little hasty in blaming ribosomal…?"

"Dr. Koss!" An electric connection. She grasps it instantly. Whatever her weakness, her acting skill, her addiction to danger, her animal need, she too is driven by love of the pattern. "Oh, Stuart," she says, hushed. '"Jesus Christ' is right!" Crescendoed in those four words almost to a yell, she lowers her voice back to business tones. "No, Herbert. Everything's all right." Giggling almost hysterically into the phone. "Isn't everything all right, Dr. Ressler?"

It is. "How could we have been so stupid? Don't answer that. The ribosome isn't our message carrier. It's not the software transcript. It's just…"

"… the reading hardware," Jeanette supplies, giving the word a delicious twist. "Our messenger boy is…"

"… someone else by the same name. The RNA we're after disappears as soon as it's read." Of course: not the stuff that persists in the cell. Theirs is another transcript, ephemeral, one that can't stick around to clog the works with old commands. No wonder vitro hasn't produced yet; they've confused identities. When he speaks again, it's to himself. "How beautiful! The thing assembles its own assembly plants. It sends out an isomorph of orders for the production run. It uses its own end product to keep the whole process running. Magnificent." Its own hardware, software, storage, executor, writer, even client. What else? The code cannot be decoded except through by-products of the code. He might have known, he, another of the thing's by-products. "I'll call Botkin."

"She'll flip. You can't be wrong about this," she gushes carelessly. That slight oversight of tone recalls them from the intoxicating insight. She returns to the brisk voice of science, perfect in contrivance, disguised signaling. "Stuart. You've all but done it. I'll be in the lab early tomorrow. The procedures for testing this ought to be trivial."

"Goodbye, friend," he exhales, weary.

She returns, "Good night," imperceptible overtone catching in her throat, suggesting, Dream of me, as if that parameter were not already an errand boy, persisting, racing through his cell.

Storm Waltz (Da Capo)

writes(X,Y,Z) if knows(X,Y), alive(X), alive(Y) and helps(heaven,X) and message(Z) and (curious(X) or reawakened(X) or scared(X)) and ín_love(X,Y).

message(Z) if quote_of_day(Anyone,Any_source,Z) or question(Today, Z) or variation(Any_message,Z).

in_love(X,Y) if sea_change(X,Y,Anyone).

goal: writes(odeigh,todd,Z)?

1 Solution: Z =

Dear Franklin,

Your letter arrived just when I'd cured myself of waiting. I read it — I've lost count how often — and it still breaks my heart. What am I supposed to make of you? Not one mention of the fact that has driven me for months. Do you even realize? The man is dead.