Saint Vidicon to the Rescue

Chapter 3

Tony wondered what the reddish brown mist was, then recognized the color—copper! No. He couldn’t be inside a wire. After all, where would the light be coming from?

Electrons, of course. What did he think was propelling him?

So why hadn’t he been electrocuted?

Because he was pure energy himself—a spirit, or a fragment of spirit that was conveying information back to his mind. After all, his body would scarcely fit inside a wire, would it?

He decided he must have fallen asleep at his desk and be dreaming—but if this was a dream, he might as well enjoy it. He shot on through the wire, exulting in really getting into a circuit.

He barely had time to reflect that this was certainly a new view of electronics, before the electrons jerked to a halt and he found himself staring at a vast canyon.

A canyon? Inside an engine?

Well, of course—from an electron’s point of view, and Tony couldn’t be much bigger than an electron right now. No wonder the loose connection seemed like the Grand Canyon! But how to bring it closer? In frustration, he reached out toward the terminal from which the wire had come loose—and was amazed to see his arm, then see it stretching and stretching until his hand closed around the terminal. He pulled and watched his arm shrink while the terminal came closer and closer.

Well, why not? If he was pure energy himself, the arm was only a metaphor for his efforts anyway.

The terminal touched his wire, and the woman must have turned the ignition key again, for there was a burst of sparks that filled Tony’s vision, then faded into darkness.

“Wake up, Tony! It wasn’t really a shock, you know. Your mind just interpreted it that way from force of habit.”

Tony blinked, looking up, and saw Father Vidicon leaning over him—and sure enough, he felt completely awake and not the slightest bit woozy. He sat up. “The mother! What happened to her?”

“Oh, the car started, thanks to you,” St. Vidicon said. “She’s on her way to drop the kids at school before she goes to work. You don’t know how much you’ve improved her spirits.”

“Glad to hear it.” Tony rolled to his knees, then stood up with Father Vidicon’s help. “That roar down the tunnel . . .”

The roar came again.

“Still making noise,” Father Vidicon said. “I think it’s hoping to intimidate me before it appears.”

“I’ll help!”

“Believe me, you’ve been a great help already,” the priest said, “but you have your own life to live. Back to your body, now, before more than a few nanoseconds of your time have passed.”

“Body?” Tony looked down at himself, saw his shoes and the slacks of a business suit with legs inside them, presumably his. He stared at his arms and hands, turning them over and wriggling them. “What’s this?”

“A memory of your body that you brought here with your spirit,” Father Vidicon said, “as soon as you volunteered to troubleshoot that engine for me.” The priest waved a hand. “Back to your real body now, for it needs at least some sleep before you go to work again tomorrow.”

Tony started to object, but Father Vidicon faded away before his eyes. So did the dark red tunnel, and he found himself staring at his bedroom ceiling, striped with sunlight through the windows, and heard the early-morning roar of city traffic. He sat up, looked down at his blanket-covered legs, and wondered how he had made it from the computer to the bed. All he could think of was that it was a good thing he’d shifted to pyjamas.

The only problem with helping St. Vidicon was that Tony couldn’t brag about it to Sandy—but he could talk to her. More to the point, listen—if he had the chance. Heart hammering, he dialed her number.“Hello?”

“Sandy? This is Tony.”

“Tony! How nice of you to call!”

He wondered why she sounded so surprized even as he swallowed and plucked up his faltering nerve. “I was, uh, wondering if”—he reminded himself that he was a capable professional in his own field—“if you’d like to go to, uh, to dinner Friday night.”

“Why, I’d love to! Thanks very much. Where shall I meet you?”

Tony hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he improvised. “Well, I’ve always liked the Marinara. Unless you don’t like Italian?”

“I love Italian! I’ll meet you there at, oh . . . seven-thirty?”

“Sounds great. But, uh, I could pick you up—just a cab, of course . . .”

“That’s very sweet of you, but not at all necessary.” Her voice had become very firm. “I’ll meet you at the Marinara at seven-thirty Friday night, then.”

“Seven-thirty,” Tony confirmed, heart in his throat. “Uh . . . good day.”

“Good-bye,” Sandy said sweetly, and hung up.

So did Tony, with a shaky hand and a sigh of relief. “Thank you, St. Vidicon!”

It might have been his imagination, but he thought he felt a glow of reassurance surround him for a minute.

Somehow Friday seemed a very long way away, and the day stretched on interminably, especially since Tony was sent out on a call to troubleshoot a local area network. It took him most of the morning to track down the terminal whose user had decided to try a little programming of his own, then all of the afternoon to remove the traces of the amateurish attempt at writing code from the server and the other terminals. The only bright spot of the day happened during afternoon coffee break when Tony, obsessed with the problem as usual, brought his cup back to his cubicle-away-from-home and found text beginning to scroll up. He punched a few keys to start capture and sat down to read.

Instead, a banner appeared across the top of the screen:

To arms, Tony! Help the poor fellow whose computer has crashed!

Yrs. Trly,

Fr. Vidicon

Tony stared. Surely the saint didn’t think he could help during working hours!

The phone rang. Tony picked it up and heard his boss, Harve, saying, “Grab your tool kit and go, Tony! Fifty-first and Seventh, Suite Twenty-thirteen! Just a computer crash, but you never know.”

“On my way.” Tony hung up, reflecting that one of the nice things about this business was that you never knew what would be coming next.

Then he realized that he had known. Apparently St. Vidicon had given the clerk whose computer had crashed the good sense to call for help.

He started for the door, but hesitated. Better see if his saintly benefactor had any background information. He went back to his keyboard and typed in, “Someone else needing help?”

A text box appeared with print scrolling. “A software engineer who’s trying to run a new application he has designed, but it keeps freezing his system.”

Tony typed back, “Blue Screen of Death?”

“Indeed,” the screen answered.

“Be glad to, Father!” Tony was delighted to dive into something he could understand. Code made sense, unlike relationships.

At the office of SubWare Development, Inc., Tony was taken to the cubicle of a very shamefaced engineer who, unless Tony was completely mistaken, had lingering traces of acne on his face. “Hi. Something wrong here?”

“Yeah, a lot!” The young man held out a hand. “Richard Arkin.”

“Tony. What were you doing when it crashed?”

“Running a new program I’d just finished—well, tried to run it, anyway. It’s none of the standard bugs, I can tell you that.”

“Sounds like fun.” Tony grinned and sat down at the keyboard. “You take lunch yet?”

“Well, no. I wanted to finish the program.”

“This might be a good time, then. See you in an hour.” Tony rebooted the computer, ignoring Richard’s yelp of dismay, then called up the code for the new program. As he studied it line by line, the numbers seemed to reach out to surround him, and he knew it was one of his better days.

It was just an illusion, of course, but he seemed to be inside the program and was shocked to see deformed and twisted digits drifting aimlessly, not flowing as they should. On closer look, he saw the “digits” were really clumps of ones and zeros, so deformed they almost seemed to resemble . . .

Insects.

To be more exact, bugs.

Tony began to get a very nasty feeling. He rose up as high as he could, trying to get a new perspective on the situation, and looked down on the drifting digital bugs. Instantly, he saw that they formed a gyre, an expanding, rising spiral. He cross-referenced, found its center, and dived back.

There it lay, a pair of vertical spirals, a double helix—but cramped and distorted, with uneven amounts of distance between turns. Tony’s hair stood on end as he recognized a virus.

The debate still continued as to whether or not organic viruses were living things. They were molecules, but they exhibited some of the symptoms of life, such as the ability to reproduce—and this one was generating offspring, and those offspring were bugs. Definitely it was as alive as any information could be, and was mumbling to itself:

“One, ten, eleven, one hundred twelve!”

Twelve?

“Data drives the driven drivel, info forms formations forgone!”

On and on it mumbled, pure gibberish—because, Tony realized, it might have been pure information, but it had no intelligence—so it constantly spewed code which made no sense of any kind and was therefore guaranteed to stop any program in its tracks, maybe even to scramble all the data on a hard drive. Tony had to find a way to stop it, and stop it fast, before it escaped into this engineer’s address book and e-mailed itself to thousands of other computers.

How do you kill something that isn’t quite alive but that generates chaos?

By opposing it to obsessive order, of course. Tony remembered a college friend’s computer’s address. He dived into the data stream, surged upward and upward, traced the route to the DSL port, and shot out into the Internet.

He found it still on the hard drive of the mathematician’s computer—apparently he moved his All-Purpose Bug Killer with him whenever he upgraded. It was certainly a new perspective on the tool—instead of lines of code, from the inside, it looked like a giant comb. “Come on, Bug Killer! I’ve got a job for you!” Tony grabbed the comb—and was surprized when it turned on him. It pounced, and for the first time, Tony realized that those teeth were very sharp.

He dodged at the last instant, and the teeth bit deeply into the electron stream. Sparks cascaded from it as it leaped up and struck again.

Tony decided to find another bug killer and shot back through the circuit toward the DSL port. Just before he left the computer, he glanced back over his shoulder—but the giant comb was still coming, leaping after him in coruscating bounds. Tony shouted in panic and shot out into the Internet.

He dodged through the connections and portals back to Richard’s computer, but he could tell from the sound of sparks fizzing behind him that the comb was still coming. He began to wonder how getting back into Richard’s computer was going to help anything, but what else could he do?

He flashed through the port and down into the program—maybe the bugs would hide him. He swerved around behind the virus, putting the dense cloud of bugs it was emitting between himself and the comb—but through the snowy cascade, he saw the giant comb slow, then stop, then begin raking the tide of twisted digits, breaking the bugs back into their components. In its wake, it left straightened, orderly ones and zeros that snapped back into their original places in Richard’s program. Relentlessly, the comb advanced on the virus.

Tony left the two of them to battle it out and swam out of the infected computer. He found the pure stream of an antivirus program, lingered long in its cleansing jet, then finally, limp and exhausted, limped home to his body.

Tony recovered from the limpness and weakness in the cab back across town and was almost himself by the time he walked back in the door and made it to his cubicle. There he collapsed in his chair, staring at his screen saver. After a few minutes, he flicked the mouse and saw some text that hadn’t been there when he’d left. He glanced at his watch—half an hour till quitting time: not enough time to accomplish anything useful, but plenty to find out what St. Vidicon had been doing while he’d been gone. Feeling a bit more settled, he smiled and began to read.

Down that hallway darkly red did the good priest wander, but had not paced long ere he came to a bank of recorders whose reels spun two-inch-wide tape. He frowned, remembering such things from his youth, but finding no television cameras or control chains nearby—though his eye did light upon an antique electric typewriter without a platen. “A computer terminal!” he cried in delight, and went to sit by the console and log on.

Behind him reels did hum, and he froze, reminding himself that he dealt with a device unknown. Casually, then, he typed in a program he knew well—but when he directed the computer to run, the reels spun only for a minute before the printer chattered. Looking over to it, he saw the words, “Error on Line 764”—but the type-ball flew on until it had drawn a picture in marks of punctuation. Peering closer, Father Vidicon beheld the image of a beetle. “It doth generate bugs!” quoth he, then realized that he was in a realm in which any device would have a hidden flaw.

Rising from that place, he resolved most sternly that he would ignore any other device he found, and onward marched.

Well! Now Tony knew why he’d succeeded with Richard’s computer. His patron had been shutting down the archetypal Bug Generator for him! He read on.

Full ten minutes did Father Vidicon stride before a doorway blocked his path, and a lighted panel lit above it in the yellow-lettered word “REHEARSAL.” The Blessed One’s pulse did quicken, resolution forgotten, for in life he had been a video engineer, and he quite clearly did approach a television studio much like the one in which he first had learned to operate a camera, in the days of his youth.

He wondered if he should enter, but saw no reason not to, if the souls within were only in rehearsal. He hauled open the sand-filled door, discovering a small chamber four feet square with a similar door set opposite him and another in its side, as a proper sound lock should have. He closed the door behind him carefully, so that sound might not be admitted, then opened the door to the side and stepped into the control room.

It lay in gloom, with three tiers of seats rising, all facing bank upon bank of monitors—the first tier of seats for the engineers, the second for the switcher, director, and assistant director, and the third for observers. Each position sat in its own pool of light from tiny spotlights hung above.

None were peopled. He stood alone.

Looking out through the control room window, he saw the studio likewise unpeopled, but with huge old monochrome cameras aimed at easels, each with a stack of pictures. Even as he watched, the tally light on Camera One went out as its mate atop Camera Two came on, and on Camera One’s easel, one picture fell to the floor, revealing another behind it.

Father Vidicon frowned; it was clearly an automatic studio, and even more clearly a temptation. Still, he saw no harm in it, and since the studio blocked the tunnel, it had to be navigated—so he sat down before the switcher, smiling fondly as he saw only a preview bank and two mixing banks with not even a downstream key cluster; the memories that it evoked were dear.

But he could not wallow long in nostalgia, for a voice called from the intercom, “Air in five . . . four . . . three . . .”

Quickly, the saint split the faders and went to black.

“. . . two . . . one . . . You’re on!” the voice cried.

Father Vidicon faded in Camera One, seeing a vision of St. Mark’s Plaza appear on the program monitor as a mellow voice began to narrate a travelogue. Father Vidicon glanced at Camera Two’s monitor, saw a close-up of the gilded lion, and readied a finger over the button TWO on the air bank. As the voice began to speak of the lion, he punched the button and the close-up of the lion appeared on the line monitor. Grinning then, he began to fall into the old rhythm of a program, taking from one detail to another, then seeing a photograph of a gondola on a canal and dissolving to it.

Just as the image became clear, though, the picture fluxed, shrinking, then expanding, then shrinking to die. Instantly did Father Vidicon dissolve back to Camera One—and it too bloomed and died.

“Telecine!” he roared, that his voice might be heard through the director’s headset (since he wore none). “Trouble slide!”

And Lo! The telecine screen lit with a picture of an engineer enwrapped in layers of videotape as he spooled frantically through an antique videotape recorder, attempting to clear a jam. It was a still picture only, so Father Vidicon leaned back with a sigh, then rose on rather wobbly legs. “I should have known,” he muttered, “should have remembered.” Then he walked, though rather unsteadily, back into the sound lock, then on into the studio. Around the cameras he went and drew aside the heavy velvet drape that hid the back wall—and sure enough, it had hidden also the double door to the scenery storage room. He hauled open the portal, stepped in among the ranked flats, threaded his way through piled sofas and stacked chairs, and found the entry door beyond. He opened it, stepped through, and found himself back in the dim light of the maroon tunnel.

The priest set off again, mouth in a grim line, for, said he unto himself, “Now, then, we know which minion of Finagle’s we shall face,” for surely there could be no doubt who sided with the hidden flaw, who made machinery fail in crucial moments, who was attracted to devices more strongly as they became more complicated, and it was not Nature.

And Lo! The monster did approach—or, more precisely, the saint did approach the monster, who smiled as he saw the Blessed One come nigh, glanced down to make a check mark on his clipboard, then looked up again to grin—or his lips did; Father Vidicon could not see his eyes, since they were shadowed by a visor of green, and his face that of a gnome, not a man. He wore a shirt that was striped and held by sleeve-garters, its collar tightened by a necktie, though over it he was clothed in coveralls (but they were pin-striped), and his left hand bore socket wrenches in place of fingers. Clean-shaven he was, and round-faced, smiling with delight full cynical, the whiles his right hand did play upon a keyboard.

Then Father Vidicon did halt some paces distant, filled with wariness, and declared, “I know thee, Spirit—for thou art the Gremlin!”

“I do not make policy,” the creature replied, “I only execute it.”

“Seek not to deceive!” Father Vidicon rebuked. “Thou art the one who doth seek to find the hidden flaw and doom all human projects.”

“ ’Tis in the nature of humans to bring it out,” the Gremlin retorted. “I only execute what they themselves have overlooked.”

“Wouldst thou have me believe ’tis Nature who doth side with the hidden flaw, though well we know that Nature makes not machines?”

“Nature sides with me,” the Gremlin returned. “Canst thou blame me for the nurture of the natural?”

“ ’Tis not Nature thou dost serve, but Entropy!”

“What else?” the spirit gibed. “Humans seek to build, when ’tis the way of Nature to fall apart.”

“Only in its season,” Father Vidicon admonished, “when the time of growth is behind.”

“Not so,” the Gremlin answered, “if the flaw’s inherent in the new-born creature. Thus only when it doth come to maturity doth its undoing become manifest.”

“And what of those whose flaws emerge before they’re grown?”

The Gremlin shrugged. “Then they never come to the age at which they can build, and only looking backward can they see a life worth living.”

“Thou dost lie, thou rogue,” Father Vidicon said sternly, “for that cannot be behind which is before!”

“Oh, so? Hast thou, then, heard never of the Mule?” The Gremlin’s hand did beat upon the keyboard, and letters of a glowing green did glimmer in the gloaming ’fore his face: “BOOT MULE.” Father Vidicon did step back with a presentiment of foreboding; then the words did vanish, and beside the Gremlin stood a stocky quadruped, with longish ears laid back, teeth parting in a bray.

“I should have thought,” the priest did breathe. “This is the beast most susceptible to thee, for ’tis also the most contrary; when we most wish it to work, it will not.”

“All who will not work are with me,” the Gremlin answered, “as are those who, in the name of standing firm, give way to stubbornness.” He reached out to stroke the beast, and chanted,

And the saint did find the mule’s tail confronting him, and the hooves kicked up and lashed out at his head.

But St. Vidicon did bow, and the feet flashed by above. “Affront me not,” quoth he, “for I do know this beast hath fallibility.”

“Then make use of it,” the Gremlin counselled, “for he doth set himself again.”

’Twas true, the mule did once again draw up his hooves to kick. Father Vidicon did therefore run around the beast up toward its head.

But, “What’s before, and what’s behind?” the Gremlin cried. “Behold, I give the beast his head, and he doth lose it! For if we know what that behind be for, then assuredly, what’s behind’s before!”

Father Vidicon did straighten up before the mule’s face—and found it was a tail, with hooves beneath that did lash out.

“Surely in his stubbornness,” the Gremlin said, “the mule has lost his head!”

The good priest did shout as he did leap aside, quickly, but not quite quickly enough, and a hoof did crack upon his shoulder, and pain shot through his whole side. He cried out, but his cry was lost in the Gremlin’s laughter, which did echo all about.

“Thou canst not escape,” the spirit cried with gloating glee, “for if thou dost run around the beast, thou wilt but find what thou hast lost!”

Hooves slashed out again, and the priest did throw himself upon the ground. The mule’s feet whistled through the air above him, then drew back to stand, and began to hobble toward him.

“Come, come!” the Gremlin cried. “Thine heart was ever in thy work! Wouldst thou now lie about and trouble others? Wouldst thou be underfoot?”

But the priest had scrambled to his feet, a-running, and heard the thunderous echo of galloping hooves behind. At a thought, however, he turned back. “Two backward sets both running must go against each other; they thereby must stand in place!”

Assuredly, the poor beast did; for each pair of legs, in leaping forward, did naught but counter the other’s thrust.

“Let it not trouble thee,” the Gremlin counselled, “for I’ve held him close thus far—yet now I’ll give the beast his head!”

Father Vidicon knew then that he had but a moment to draw upon the strength of Him to Whom he was in all ways dedicated; and holding up his hands to Heaven, he did pray, “Good Father, now forgive! That in my pride I did think myself equipped to defeat the Finder of Flaws. Lend me, I pray Thee, some tool that will find and hinder all contrariness that this creature doth embody!”

Of a sudden, his hands weighed heavy. Looking there, he found a halter.

A bray recalled him to his conflict, and he saw the mule’s tail grow dim, then harden again to show forequarters topped by a head that did reach out, teeth sharp to bite, as the Mule leaped forward.