Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

We would chatter or keep quiet — in those days they meant the same. One emblematic evening I watched Franklin pump to apogee and bail out, no doubt escaping one of those avuncular Flying Fortresses on a parachute that thighs sacrificed their stocking silks for. I calculated the parabola that had landed him between conflicts. We had a completely distorted historical view, he and I. By accident of timing, we thought this playground peace was the status quo.

Without Todd's weight for pendulum bob, his swing dampened to a stop. He got back on and called to me, "C'mere. Show you something." I hesitated, knowing the escalation. He motioned me into the sling, each leg over his, inside the chain. He helped my legs through, touching them with mute amazement. "For some reason shrouded in mystery," he explained, trying casually to pretend our thighs weren't touching, "this is called 'Swinging Double Dutch.'"

"You think you're teaching me something?" I challenged, pressing myself against him. "I was born knowing this." I relaxed and straddled him, looked deep into his face. Neither had done this before. Not since it started counting. And it hadn't counted until then, that moment of fragile pressure.

"Oh yeah? I learned how___" He fought to remain clear-headed, articulate, but even pretense took his breath. "I learned this… how to… before you even got your first inflatable slip."

"Right," I said, adjusting myself just enough to shatter his equanimity. He rolled his eyes at my little flick of friction. We synchronized our kicks, swinging in tandem, slowly at first, gradually gaining momentum. I could feel my vee riding a fraction of an inch above his. At the top of each arc we would press, pretending innocence, ignorance of contact. I kicked in rhythm, climbing a sapling on each upswing, and on each swing back, the sapling me.

At that moment, I would gladly have gone down onto the freezing grass and lost my last ten years all over again. I felt myself at my coat cuffs, against underwear, inside my silk collar come within seconds of anything. Cut loose, I was closer than ever to learning who this boy was. Rocking and straining, folding against him to our pulse, I had the chance to find out.

I felt it irresistibly unfold, but was surprised by the rapidity. At our arc's height, he kicked when he should have drawn in. A slight stiffening ran up his arms where I held them. Warm oscillation rippled across the gap to me — unforced, unconscious. A rush of conductance, animal-perfect rubato. Backwash erased all difference between us. No burst. Just sweet, spreading infusion, for one instant complete.

We went slack. Without kick-physics, the swing settled. Our pulse-pound, synchronized so briefly, fell into diffraction, dissipated in moire. I couldn't begin to guess what was in his heart at that moment, let alone my own. I climbed off without being asked. He said, "So they swung Double Dutch in your neighborhood, too?" He didn't dare look at me in the dark. Every second I spent with him was, even in the absence of hard fact, another slow assembling of artist's composite.

We turned back, the silent tactic. By the time we arrived at his machine warren, I was alone. He was attentive, arm around my shoulders. But back at the warehouse, when Dr. Ressler greeted us, a sign of collaborator's embarrassment passed from Todd to me: I had brought him over the edge with nothing but my body's graze through winter clothing, the rocking of a swing.

When I left, he rode the lift with me down to the street. The night ended like all its ancestors: a handshake, the only fingerprints he conceded. He was turning back to the office when I panicked. I grabbed and spun him by the elbows. He must have thought I was trying to embrace him, for he took me up, scolded me with a dismissive kiss. "So passionate as that?" He held me, resigning, admitting. His mouth near my ear, he spoke, incredulous. "Here again. At the mercy of strangers."

The Console Log

By then, I came and went as I pleased. Frank gave me a copy of the front key on long-term loan. Without incriminating anyone, I stole the sequence for the computer-room lock — the four letters M-O-L-E. I used the password freely until one evening, punching myself into the inner sanctum I was met by my sheepish friends and an angry Uncle Jimmy. Given his older cousin's crush on me, Jimmy would probably sooner have entrusted the company's safety to me than to Todd. But he was Operations Manager, and this was a clear-cut violation of, be it ever so ludicrous at this outpost, corporate security. He demanded to know how I knew the combination.

"I peeked over somebody's shoulder. Jimmy, it just seems silly to make them come punch me in."

Jim's bureaucratic bluster was undermined by recalcitrant kindness. "With the customers we have, if it had been anyone but me in here when anyone but you came in like that unescorted, he or she'd have put her or him in jail by now." I apologized, and Jimmy barked acceptance. He went through the apologetic motions of chewing out Dr. Ressler, the Night Manager, exacting a promise to change the combination right away.

When I showed up the following night, I buzzed for Franklin, smiling at the ridiculous return to pro forma propriety. Frank came to let me in, wearing that smirk beloved by mass murderers and the foreign service. Just as he was about to punch in the new code Dr. Ressler had set, he stepped aside. "Go ahead," he said. "I know you're dying to see how good you are."

I hadn't the first idea where to begin. Another four-letter word, reducing the possibilities to twenty-six to the fourth power: roughly half a million candidates. I had only two clues. Dr. Ressler was the designer. And Frank believed I could guess it or he would never have set up the riddle. It also helped to have him stand by humming the intervals that have run through Western music from Art of Fugue to Schönberg, with stops along the way at Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and others. Down a minor second, up a major third, down a minor second. I cupped my hand over the keyplate, guarding my guess. I punched in the four letter tune, transcribed from German notation, and the lock sprang open. Todd emitted his high-pitched trademark laugh and cuffed me admiringly. He trooped me into the computer room and paraded me before Dr. Ressler. "She's broken security again," he reported. "She's unstoppable."

"You may find the punchline to this in your notes file," Ressler told Todd. Franklin cleared the nearest console. The screen returned with its eternally patient prompt:

Command?

Two-fingered, amateurish, Franklin typed NOTES and hit the Return key, that quintessential late-century punctuation.

NOTES RECVD: Read (y or n)? y

Note from jsteadman, @ 12/06/83, 16:14.

Take a break! This means you! Ask your woman friend out for dinner at the Rusty Scupper. That heap of bolts won't run any faster with you watching it! Uncle Jim.

"Heartbreaking," Franklin laughed. "The man apologizes for giving us a deserved dressing-down."

"I received a similar one," Dr. Ressler said.

Todd turned to me and howled. "And what do you do first thing upon returning? A shame, for women to speak in church!" He turned back to his dialogue with the CRT.

Note @ 12/06/83, 20:23 to: jsteadman

Jimmy, We're sorry too. Even the woman friend. Her only offense is pride in ingenuity. But I think we've caught her in time. Love from everyone, FTODD

Note sent. Command?

Todd looked up from his typing to the man whose opinion meant everything. "What do you suppose Uncle Jim would say if he knew you were in possession of every combination in this joint?"

Dr. Ressler shrugged painfully. "Passwords are trivial. How many words are there in English? How many in Indo-European, including all forms and proper names?"