Wikiworld and Other Stories

Providence-2

Kitch got more nervous out on the wide highway, which was definitely more exposed than the narrow Amtrak corridor.

“Luh—look at all those trees, Reddy! So many! And they’re so— so organic! A million carnals could be hiding out in ‘em! I wish they was all bulldozed, like in Central Park!”

I ignored Kitch for the first few miles of complaining, but then he started to get on my nerves.

“What are you, straight off the shelf? Quit oscillating! There’s no carnals left anywhere. And if there were, so what? They didn’t put up much of a fight the first time around, and they wouldn’t now. Carnals! What a laugh. Useless, puny squish-sacs!”

That shut Kitch up for a few more miles. But then he got philosophical on me.

“If carnals were so useless, then how could they have created us? And how come we can’t do all the stuff they could? And how come some of us like spiral so much? The carnals made spiral, right, Reddy?”

I might’ve been able to come up with likely answers to his first two questions, reasonable sounding guff that everyone knew, ways to trash the carnals and raise up ourselves. But I didn’t have anything to offer for the third. The same question had been an intermittent glitch in my circuits for a long time. I found myself rambling out loud about it, kinda as a way to pass the time.

“There’s just something about spiral—the good stuff anyhow— that seems to fill a hole in our kind.”

“Like when your batteries are low, and you top ‘em off?”

“Yeah, sorta like that. But different too. The hole—it’s not really a hole. It’s like—a missing layer. A component you never knew you needed. The perfect plug-in. Spiral changes the way you see the whole rusting world. It makes it better somehow, richer, more complex.”

“Sounds like you’re getting into information theology, Reddy, and I don’t go there. Don’t have the equipment. Got no spiral reader either. You know that. I figure that’s one of the reasons ‘Mat sent me along with you. Spiral don’t tempt me none.”

“Well, good for you, Kitch. You’re better off without it. Because once you taste it, you always want more.”

Kitch kept quiet after my little speech. I guessed I had given him plenty to process.

We continued north. No RAMivores or integer-vultures or other parasites showed themselves, despite Kitch’s fears.

I had never come this way before. But I had GPS and maps that showed when we were near Providence’s airport, which was actually in the ‘burbs some miles south of the city proper.

“We got plenty of daylight left,” I told Kitch. “I’m taking a little detour. See if there’s any volatiles left at the airport. Maybe make a little profit for myself on the side. I got the extra storage capacity.” Instantly I could feel pinpricks and tuggings in my mind, as Kitch tried to persuade me different through his trodes into my circuits. But I could tell he wasn’t totally sure I was doing anything

wrong, so he wasn’t really exerting himself to force me to obey. “C’mon,” I said, “you know you’ll get a taste of whatever I find.”

“Well, okay—if you think it won’t take too long.”

“Gold-plated cinch.”

The airport was just a mile or three east of the Interstate, down a feeder road. Pretty soon we were rolling across broad stretches of runway, the tarmac cracked and frost-heaved, weeds growing up between the slabs. I had my sniffers cranked up to eleven, but I couldn’t detect any hydrocarbons.

“Seems like a bust,” I said. And then Kitch said, “What’s that? I hear something crying really soft and low.”

“Well, you’ve got better hearing than me. I lost some range when I got battered around recently. Point me towards the noise.”

With Kitch guiding me, we came up on a pile of old junk. At least I thought it was old junk, until I spotted the freshness of the fractures in the metal and the unevaporated pools of fluids leaking from it.

It was the wreck of a small flier, and it was moaning out loud at low power. I hadn’t seen one of these in a proton’s age.

“Help me, someone please help me “

“Hold on,” I said. “We’re here.”

I ran a probe into the flier’s guts, looking for a readout. His moaning was starting to get on my nerves.

“Quit whining! What happened?”

“Ran out of fuel coming in for a landing. Crashed. Hurts bad.”

I pulled back a few yards from the wreck.

“Whatta we gonna do, Reddy, huh? Whatta we gonna do?”

“Keep it down! He’s banged up pretty lousy. If we haul him into

Providence, there’s no guarantee anyone’ll be able to fix him up. If we just leave him, the RAMivores’ll be on him soon. I say we put him out of his misery.”

“We’re not—we’re not gonna salvage him for parts, are we?”

“Why not? He’d do the same to us, if parity was reversed. It’s just the way life goes nowadays.”

“Well, if you say so. But it’s harsh. Do what ya gotta do. But I can’t watch.”

I trundled back to the flier and started to speak in my best soothing voice.

“It’s okay, kid, we’re gonna haul you into Providence, get you fixed right up.”

All the while I was working one of my pincers around, taking advantage of his blind spot.

“Thank you, oh, thank you—SQUEE!”

I had snipped right through his brain box in a shower of sparks.

Those central boards are personality firmware, the circuits that make you you and me me. No way to repurpose them.

But every other part of the flier that wasn’t damaged, we cut out and stored in one of my hoppers. A few items we integrated into ourselves right away. I got new ears, and Kitch got a new infrared sensor, for one.

We left the nameless flier then, nothing more than a few struts and cracked casings.

As we headed back to the Interstate, Kitch stayed quiet. But as the shattered skyscrapers of Providence rose up into view on the horizon, signalling the interface from savagery to civilization, he said, “How’s what we did make us any better than the RAMivores, Reddy? Aren’t we just cannibals like them?”

“No, we’re not. That was a mercy killing. And the victim donated his components so that others could live.”

“Yeah, I guess. If ya say so. But Reddy—”

“What?”

“Don’t tell no one in Providence what we done, okay?”

“Okay, Kitch. Sure. No reason to anyhow, right?”

But the little guy wouldn’t answer me.

* * * *

The Big Tube took up practically the whole first-floor exhibition space of the Providence Convention Centre—the parts of that building that still had a roof over them. At his core was a supercomputer moved down College Hill from Brown University. Surrounding that was an incredibly varied assortment of other processors and peripherals, no two the same. The resulting mess looked like an aircraft carrier built by blind carnals, then mated with a refinery. Dozens of slaved attendants scurried around, catering to their master’s every need.

The Big Tube had sacrificed mobility for smarts. Good choice, I guessed, given that he had managed to become ruler of the whole city now.

Kitch and I approached The Big Tube’s main I-O zone.

“Hey, Big Tube. Nice to meet you.”

The Big Tube’s voice was part cathedral organ, hiss of tires on pavement and rain on a tin roof. “Reddy K. How was your trip?”

“Not bad, not bad at all. If you like trees.”

“I hate trees.”

Kitch piped up. “Me too!”

The Big Tube ignored my tiny rider. “So, you’re here for the spiral.”

“Not to disparage your beautiful city, but no other reason.”

“I hope Vend-o-Mat authorized you to bid high.”

“Well, he’s prepared to offer a fair price.”

“Fair in this case is a motherboard’s ransom.”

I knew the bargaining had already started, and I was worried that my individual wits would be no match for BT’s unmatchable processing power. Still, for what it was worth, I sent Kitch a private message through our physical connection, asking to borrow some of his cycles.

His silent voice sounded just like his spoken one. “Sure, Reddy, sure, take what you need!”

“This is all contingent on the quality of the goods,” I said. “How’s about a look? Or maybe even a taste?”

“After I hear some convincing numbers.”

“Okay, then, if that’s the way it’s gotta be. How’s this sound…?”

We went back and forth through several rounds of bargaining, and I guessed my distributed processing with Kitch paid off, because we finally settled on a figure that allowed me, presumably unknown to The Big Tube, to keep for my own self 3 percent of the credit ‘Mat had transferred to me as maximum purchase price. But I would’ve been happy with 1 percent.

It was really my share of the spiral that had lured me out of the safety of home.

Once we had struck our deal, The Big Tube got more chummy.

“Nice doing business with a classy and honourable guy like you, Reddy. Vend-o-Mat’s lucky to have you for an associate. Since he can’t be here himself, I want to show you two errand boys some Providence hospitality. We’ll have a party tonight, before you leave tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, Big Tube. But would you mind now if I inspected the merchandise…?”

“Not at all. Just follow this hand of mine.”

A little slave zipped up and jigged in the direction we were to go. We left the Convention Centre and crossed downtown to the banking district. We entered the basement of the old Fleet building through a huge hole in the walls and down a ramp composed of mangled, tangled and compressed office furniture. At the vault, Big Tube’s hand manipulated an inset keypad and the door of the vault swung open

The subtle petrochemical smell of primo spiral gushed out, hitting my sensors like the smell of Chippie’s hot lube. I went kinda blind for a few seconds. When I could see again, the sight of the spiral made me nearly as delirious as the smell.

Piled high, loose and in boxes, hundred and hundreds of 45s and LPs in their jackets.

I hadn’t seen so much spiral since part of the Crumb collection had filtered back to Manhattan. And that had been mostly shellac and 78s, low-info stuff compared to this Golden Age ware.

The Big Tube’s voice came out of the little hand, reduced by the puny speakers.

“Sweet, huh? The legendary Mad Peck trove.”

I extended one of my arms and gently removed a 45 from atop a stack.

“Vend-o-Mat said I could have a taste.”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

I slid the vinyl disc from its paper sleeve and studied the label. “My Baby’s Gone,” by the Five Thrills. Parrot 796.

I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice. “Never had anything on the Parrot label before.”

“Pretty rare.”

I magnified my vision to inspect the spiral groove more deeply, looking for nicks and other imperfections. The spiral was cherry. B-side too, “Feel So Good.”

At 10X, the spiral became a hypnotic road leading to infinity, sucking down my senses into the blissful white hole at the centre of the paper label, where all the individual troubles of being Reddy K disappeared in an implosion of cosmic splendor. And I hadn’t even played the rusting thing yet!

I pulled myself out of my fugue, and slotted the disc home into my onboard reader.

The outside world vanished in a splendour of beautiful noise.

I let the complex waveforms bathe my senses, at the same time that my studio tools were breaking down all the instruments and voices into discrete pieces, digitizing everything in the only way I knew how to remember and comprehend.