Tony Daniel (18 page)

Claude liked this new way of doing things very well, and his teachers told him that he had a special talent for it. One of his teachers, Mrs. Ridgeway, even put him into a special program, and soon Claude was writing his own simple computer programs. At first, he only made pretty displays and cool-looking rooms that he could explore. But soon he began to write programs that would do things around the classroom. Usually these were simple tasks such as collecting and distributing papers and tests. He always wrote programs to please his teachers—particularly Mrs. Ridgeway—and never his fellow students. Claude didn’t get along with most of the other children in his classes. In fact, he often felt that he hated them for taking time with the teachers away from him. He had been told that this was not a very good way to feel, but he couldn’t help it. Sometimes, when no one was looking, he would pick out one of the students who was smaller and dumber than him and he would punish the other, just as he’d learned from his father. But he never did this to a smart kid, no matter how small the child was. If you were smart, you shouldn’t get hit.

Claude didn’t like math class very much. He was actually quite good at it, but his teacher was a decaying old man who had missed the horizon of the rejuvenation procedures in use in the day, and was growing old and feeble while those merely ten years his junior were going to live fifty more years. He took his disappointment out on his pupils, who, if predictions turned out correctly, might very well live to be two hundred e-years or more. He liked to assign his class extremely tedious operations for homework, some of which could not be solved even with the aid of computers unless they were extremely powerful calculators. One of these problems was to factor the product of the two largest prime numbers known to humanity (the students were forbidden to look up these primes). No one was expected to get the right answer, but everyone was expected to turn in a sheet of attempts that contained at least two hours’ worth of work.

With his memorization and recitations, along with his part-time job at the greenhouse, Claude had no time to do his homework at home. He usually completed it in study hall at school. But this would take longer than the one hour the students were allowed in study hall. Claude had no idea what original prime numbers might be, but he was determined to avoid missing his Shakespeare at home and receiving a beating as the result. He decided he must somehow solve the problem using his computer skills.

Claude had read an introductory book on the grist in the library, where the basic principles of quantum computing were explained for the layman and the Merced Effect was described. Mrs. Ridgeway was covering some basic stuff in his Rationality class that Claude already knew, and he found his mind drifting to the problem of factoring the product of the primes, which was due tomorrow. His drifting turned to worry and his worry to anxiety. He imagined his father with the whiskey bottle, with his belt, with Claude’s mother’s old hairbrush. And then came the “air-conditioning” feeling. In that cool mental space, Claude realized what he ought to do to solve the problem.

That afternoon, after he finished his other homework, he set to work with the grist. He had learned that each molecule of grist was not a simple on and off switch, but was actually the end product of an infinite number of on and off switches. Mrs. Ridgeway had talked about an “original” computer and many virtual computers, like ghosts, doing calculations in many “possible worlds.” Claude had decided that in one of those possible worlds, he, Claude had accidentally factored the number his math teacher had given him and gotten the right two prime numbers. While Claude had been creating “virtual rooms” with the grist, he’d occasionally had to make a light source. At first, he’d been stymied when he thought he had to program each photon of light that would come out of a lightbulb. But there was a helper program that used the photons exactly like Claude was considering using the factoring. You told it the pattern you wanted, and it calculated all the possible paths of light to give you a stream of light that was not just simulated and not-quite-right, as had been the old virtual reality, but was completely true to actuality. That was, in fact, actuality by another means. Claude saw that he could modify this program and give it the “pattern” he was looking for—two prime numbers. And, as it had with the light, the little program used the quantum physics of grist to do the work of infinite parallel processes. These processes Claude represented in one of his virtual rooms as a pattern of light on the floor. Just as with light, the wrong answers, those that didn’t fit the pattern, canceled one another out. Charles watched as the two prime numbers he was after formed on the floor, as if they had been in the virtual room all along, but were now merely coming into focus. He wrote them down, then left the virtuality of the grist. Back in actuality, he had a whole speech from
Titus Andronicus
to memorize, and only fifteen minutes left of study hall.

Claude’s math teacher was angry at him the next day. He accused Claude of having looked up the two biggest primes on the merci (although it was called the “Web” back then, and was a much different thing). Claude felt a bit chagrined because he had not thought of this obvious way to get around the problem. But he explained his method to his teacher, and the old man had to grudgingly admit that the boy was onto something. The next day, he mentioned Claude’s solution to Mrs. Ridgeway. She mentioned it to the director of the school, and Claude knew he had a big problem. The school director wanted to call in Claude’s father and discuss with him the possibility of enrolling Claude in a special school after he turned thirteen. Out of the armature. On Mercury.

The director of the school even thought that the prospect was important enough to make a personal visit to Claude’s apartment, to visit his father.

The director of Claude’s school was named Getty. He was the son of the chief engineer in the armature and had grown up with the Polbo Armature growing up around him. He took a special interest in the social conditions of the working poor in what he liked to think of as “his” bolsa. He had been into some of the worst neighborhoods, working in his off hours on community projects and generally making sure conditions were tolerable for all—water, sewage, plenty of vegetables. Getty had always thought it a scandal that many of the greenhouse workers regularly ate processed pabulum imported to the Armature when the place was crammed full of all the vitamins and minerals a human body would ever need. He considered it his personal mission to make sure that everyone had the means to eat right, and he was astounded that the “Vegetables for People” campaign that he headed was not more successful at changing bad habits. Getty considered it to be his mission to finish what his father had started, making the Polbo Armature a clean, fresh, living, and growing space for all.

And so he was completely taken aback when he saw the living space young Claude had been existing in. The flat had not been cleaned in years and when, with a grunt, Delmore Schlencker waved Getty in and showed him to a chair, Getty detected the distinct odor of rotting meat. Getty, himself a macrobiotic vegetarian, shuddered at the thought of the substance from which the smell must be rising. Nevertheless, he remembered himself and his purpose in coming. But he must get this over with as quickly as possible, or he was surely going to pass out from the stench. He quickly informed Schlencker of Claude’s new option to study on Mercury.

“Sounds goddamn expensive,” Schlencker had answered. “We have not got that kind of money. Unless you’re thinking of getting me a raise?”

“There is a scholarship available,” said Getty. He could feel his new somatic adaptations working under his skin, adjusting his body temperature so that the heat in the flat wouldn’t cause him to break out into a sweat.

“There is, is there?” replied Schlencker. The man stood up—even standing, Schlencker was barely taller than was Getty sitting down. “Would you like a bit of wine?” he said.

Getty imagined the vile vintage the man probably had available. Something out of a carton. He shook his head “no.”

“Well, then,” said Schlencker, and left the room. He returned with a glass in his hand and with what Getty recognized as a very respectable Rhein white. It was cool from the refrigerator and was already forming a condensing sweat that ran over Schlencker’s hand as he poured himself a glass. What was this man, living here, doing with such good wine? It didn’t seem right to Getty. Like brie on a . . . a—Getty searched for an image from his youth, something common and bad—brie on a
hot dog
! That was what this man was. Getty suppressed a gag at the thought.

“You all right?” Schlencker asked him.

Getty took a deep breath. Mistake.

“I’m fine.” He coughed. “Little something in my throat. Now about that scholarship . . .”

Schlencker took a sip of the wine, swirled it in his mouth, then swallowed it. Getty watched the man’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, like a piece of detached gristle. He had to get out of this place!

“Well, we’re just going to have to see what the boy says,” Schlencker finally replied. “I’ll have a talk with him tonight.” Schlencker finished the remainder of his wine in one gulp. “He’ll let you know in the morning what his decision is.”

For the first time in a very long while, Claude missed a line from one of the sonnets that evening. He had heard Mr. Getty from the next room, and he was nervous as to what his father’s decision would be. He never found out. When he flubbed the line, Delmore took to him with his belt. It hurt like hell, but this time Claude withstood it and did not cry.

Be a man. Justify your privilege of doing Caesar, of learning Lear.

Claude realized that he had been growing. He would soon be bigger than his father. Maybe that, too, was why the beating didn’t hurt so much. It only took an hour or so for the stinging to subside enough for him to get to sleep.

In the morning, he informed Director Getty that he and his father had talked it over and they had decided that maybe the special school was not such a good idea right then. That he needed more time among his peers so that he would not get too big a head about his own importance. Getty, relieved that he would not have to deal with Delmore Schlencker anymore for the time being, accepted Claude’s decision.

For the next three e-years, Claude followed the same routine every day. Mrs. Ridgeway did her best to provide him with special instruction in programming, and the old math teacher, Hudo, died and was replaced by a young man who immediately saw Claude’s potential and set him to studying calculus while the other students laboriously worked through algebra—something Claude had mastered quickly, and soon grown bored with. More and more, he felt himself to be a separate being from the other students. He made no real friends and only stayed out of fights because he was known to strike back with vicious abandon and a disregard for any rules of honor, as it was practiced among the boys.

Not only was he growing physically, his body was changing in other ways, as well. One day, while working in the greenhouse snipping at the plants, his fingers slipped and he sliced into his thumb. The pain was intense and exquisite and, much to his surprise, Claude felt something odd happen in his pants. When he went to the toilet to check himself, he found that a sticky liquid had encrusted his underwear. Claude had, of course, read about such stuff during library period, and was quite aware of what had happened. The
why
was a little puzzling.

“Well,” he said to the toilet bowl, “I guess I’m a man now.”

After a little experimentation, Claude found that it was not necessary for him to break the skin to make himself come. It was the pain that produced the pleasure, and pain could come in less visibly damaging forms. Following this discovery, Claude masturbated by jamming wooden splinters under his fingernails—he’d found this created maximum arousal in the most reproducible fashion—and only occasionally resorted to a burn or a puncture when he was, as it were, in the highest throes of passion.

By his fifteenth birthday, Claude was taller than his father by half a foot and outweighed him by a good ten pounds. Delmore was drinking more than ever, and the good Rhein wine and whiskey was a thing of the past. He bought his liquor wholesale from a moonshiner who worked in the greenhouse and had a still in one of the back rooms. Claude continued his Shakespeare, but he knew that the next time Delmore made to hit him, he would have a little surprise for his father. The thought of killing his father had become one of Claude’s favorite fantasies, and he now carried an extendable knife with him whenever he went to recite the immortal lines of the bard before Delmore.

But Claude never got the chance. One evening, after they’d both come home from work, Delmore had gone into the bathroom, taking his bottle of liquor along with him. About five minutes later, Claude heard a cry.

“Oh shit, oh no!” screamed Delmore. Claude rushed into the bathroom to find his father on his knees, bent down by the toilet. The bowl of the toilet was bright red with arterial blood.

“I’ve busted a gut. Ah God, I’m ruined!” cried Delmore. Claude watched in fascination as his father crawled out of the bathroom and into the living room, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

“It’s all coming out of my ass,” his father moaned. “I’m bleeding out of my ass.”

Delmore turned around three times in the living room, as if he were a dog preparing to lie down. Then he collapsed in a puddle of his own blood. After a moment, Claude bent down and felt no pulse in his father’s neck.

Amazing, he thought. He sat down in one of the living-room chairs.

“No Shakespeare tonight,” he said.

Claude thought about this fact for a while. And then he thought of all the nights in his life that would suddenly be empty of obligation. If he wanted them to be. He could do anything he wanted now, and no one could stop him.

Roger Sherman knew something was terribly wrong when his ex-wife contacted him through the grist. They had not spoken in months.