Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

Franker began frantically inspecting the damage. "Don't tell me it's been just the two of you here since___"

"I Wish it had been," Jimmy said, hoisting himself wearily off the floor. "They've been parading in and out for the last forty-eight hours. My people. Bank people. Hardware repairmen. Outside advisers. Everyone staying just long enough to screw up another thing before heading home for the wife and kids."

"I have no wife and kids," Annie said.

"You've been a brick, woman. A lifesaver. Not that we've managed to salvage anything."

Ressler sat at the console, leaned forward to read the screen full of error messages. He managed a remarkably calming voice. "How bad is it, Jimmy?"

"I haven't been home to see my mother since___Damn you both." Even the man's anger was ludicrously devoid of hostility.

Ressler scanned the console log and asked, "What are you running at the moment?"

"Running? You jest. See those packs over there? Those are tonight's work. Those in the corner are from last night. Monday's packs are still up on the spindles."

Todd whistled. Jimmy nodded grimly. Dr. Ressler took off his coat and glanced around the room, looking for the best angle to approach the catastrophe. Then the two of them set into motion, like the mythic ants called in to carry off the chaff. Todd sorted reports, cumulating pages. He held out a sheaf toward me, turning his head. "Take these away. I'm not privy to them."

"But I don't know the code to the listings room."

"Me neither," he said woodenly, then whispered it in my ear.

Ressler went over to the Operations Manager, still paralyzed by the CPU. "Jim, we're sorry. We owe you. Now get home to bed. We'll see you on the day shift tomorrow, when you get here. Go. You're no good to us in your current condition."

Jimmy nodded dumbly and gathered to go. Annie, still pretty in raggedness, bleated out heroically, "What can I do?"

Ressler had already turned his back and was busy swapping the board that had failed. "You'd better go home too."

Annie only smiled: whatever he said was right. It hit me that she too adored the man, in her fashion. "I'll pray for the three of you."

"She'll do what?" I whispered to Todd, after they left.

He was unrolling the console log on a cleared swatch of floor, digging back into the transcript of the last three days for clues to reversing the disaster. His lips curled at my incredulous tone. "You didn't know?"

"Know what?" I began collating, punching emergency job cards, doing what little I could to help clean up.

His answer shocked me. "She's a fighting Fundy from Spiritus Mundi." Todd spoke more to his pencil ticks on the log than to me.

"But that's impossible."

"Why? Because she likes us?"

"Because she works for a DP firm. Because she graduated from a university."

Todd snorted. "Lots of religious folks graduated from university. Abelard. Luther. Jonathan Edwards. Oral Roberts. Everybody who ever graduated from Oral Roberts —"

"Stupid. You know what I mean. Really fundamentalist?"

"Literal, noninterpretable truth of every word in the Good Book. I'm not sure if that's King James or Revised Standard."

"And she's going to pray for us? Heaven will expedite the data backlog you two have unleashed?"

"Don't be cynical. It's not becoming. Besides: what Bible truths are you able to refute beyond all doubt?"

"Joshua commanding the sun to stand still?"

"This was before Newtonian mechanics."

"Methuselah living to be nine hundred and sixty-nine?"

"They had more ozone layer back then." He looked up suspiciously. "How, may I ask, did you remember that number exactly? You practice closet religion?"

"Please. Don't talk to me about closets and religion. I used to stay awake nights as a girl, terrified that the Blessed Virgin was going to pop out of mine. I used to pray not to be granted a vision."

"A Catholic!"

"Very apostate, thank you."

"Once a Catholic___Did you know that if you summed the letters in all the popes' names and divided by four thousand four that you get six sixty-six?" He drew red circles around telltale spots in the console timeline. Annie's faith was burlesque counterpoint, incidental to the real metaphysical question of whether there was life after the death of his firm. I continued to help fetch things and enter keyboard codes. But the idea that someone I was friendly with believed that exactly 144,000 people were going to be saved come the Rapture wrecked me. I could not help harping on the point. "Do you suppose God put all those animal fossils deep in solid rock to test our faith?"

Todd laughed aggressively. "See all this?" He swept his hands over the chaos of the hermetic room. "God planted the seed for all this in—" He paused to do the simple product. "In one hundred and forty-four hours."

Across the room, from inside the crippled CPU, Ressler said, "That's less time than it's going to take us to clean it up."

I stayed the night, gophering, watching as they returned the machines to the state they'd been in at derailment. By the time the day shift filtered in, they had managed, by superhuman effort and suspect shortcut, to get the Monday processing underway. That left two and a half days of backlog, with Thursday's transactions about to come in. As I left, Ressler shook his head in disbelief. He smiled his old, demure smile — but with a hint that the disguise wouldn't wash anymore — kissed me on the cheek, thanked me for the trip, and said that perhaps praying was the proper algorithm in the circumstances after all.

I went straight from the warehouse to the branch, looking as rumpled as my friend the creationist had when she left to intercede with the creator. Back at work, greeted by Mr. Scott's sardonic eyebrow at my having at last deigned to return from extended vacation, I got down to addressing my own backlog — the public sector's most urgent questions.

The Question Board

How many dimples on a golf ball? My neighbor refuses to turn his stereo down; what legal recourse do I have? Is intelligence inherited? Where did goose-stepping originate? Can we afford to stand idly by? A farmer has a fox, a chicken, and a bag of feed; how…? What is the highest form of life that can be cloned? Why 'Big Apple'? What happened to Amelia Earhart? What's the most fundamental particle in nature? Does acupuncture work? What causes inflation? Who are the eleven thousand Virgins and where can I meet one? What can I do but move from sorrow to defeat? Why sixty seconds in a minute? Why not 5,380? Who made those statues in the South Pacific? Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? What is the name of the projecting blocks supporting a roof beam? "Croatoan"? How many people in this century have died for political reasons? How many were going to St. Ives? When did the Age of Enlightenment end? Who calls so loud? Or se' tu quel Virgilio? Is it possible to service domestic debt by adjusting foreign exchange rates? Which is better, Harvard or Yale? How many secretaries of state has this country had? What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? Where is the oldest-known surface on earth? Can one still join the French Foreign Legion? What was the name of that Eisenhower aide who got in trouble over a coat? What kind of coat? What's the difference between the United States and a carton of yogurt? Kennst du das Land? Kennst du es wohl? What is the common name for the family Chrysomelidae? Will machines ever think? Is my tap water poison? What about radon? Acid rain? The greenhouse effect? DES? Dioxins? The ozone? What the hand dare seize the fire? Did he smile his work to see? Is it true blondes have more fun? What's your sign? Will you still love me tomorrow? What causes cancer? Who turned out the lights? What is this world? What asketh man to have? Who told you you were naked? When will it suffice? What's a heaven for?