neer neer neer
April 12th, 2002It’s been an interesting bit of time since I last posted. I won’t go into some details here, as they’re still in development.
I just felt like writing today.
I didn’t know she was a vampire. I don’t mean in the literal sense, of course. However, this woman had the talent (skill?) to suck the living energy right of you, just with a short conversation. I don’t mean she was a “vamp”, either. No, she wasn’t attractive, really.
I should probably start back at the beginning. It was the Information Society Concert, at Club DeV8; that’s where I met this walking black hole of unlife. There she was, dancing to the sleek beat of “Mirrorshades”, and, oddly enough, she was wearing a pair. I could have sworn she was looking at me, and Justin, a good friend, told me there was no way she would be looking at me. The ’shades definately made her look mysterious - something geeks like us can’t resist. It turns out Justin ate those words later that night, when she walked up and said those damnable words, “I saw you staring at me. Want to get out of here?”
We went to the Denny’s across downtown, off Motor Street, and we had a few cups of coffee, talking about, mainly, her. Her name, it turns out, is Michelle. I know now that’s not true, but more on that later. She lived in south Fort Worth, not far from where I went to school as a kid.
“How old are you?” I asked her, paranoid after hitting on that 17-year-old last summer.
“I just turned twenty,” smiling as she spoke. She lifted up her coffee cup, as if to drink, but asked, “Why do you ask?”
I laugh and tell her the story of Janet. I know, a very typical name, but her parents were Rocky Horror fans. I think I remember her dad telling me that she was conceived at the theater. Michelle gets a kick out of the story, and joins me in a quiet laugh.
It turns out Michelle was working for a small programming company, Phoenix Fire Software, based in Arlington. I had applied there last summer as an administrator, but never got a call back. I’m thankful for that now. So we went down to her place, and I’ll spare the details.
The next morning was Saturday, and we both got up at about nine, and both sat down and began watching “X-Men” for the next hour. It’s amazing how quiet a geek can get when certain things are placed before them. In my case, it’s animation. In her case it was the idea of mutants. After our Marvel doses for the day, she invited me to come out to the office, as she had some paperwork to do.
Great, maybe I can meet some muckety-muck and land a job there, I think to myself. So I go through the offices, not really impressed, until we get to the data center. I saw things I didn’t know existed, there. I saw what appeared to be liquid computers. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I do not mean liquid-cooled, I mean liquid computers. They flowed in an odd loop around open space, nothing holding them up. There were wires and cables going in and out of them, seeming to simply end at the odd liquid, no point of connection being obvious.
She smiled, and not in a way that made me comfortable. “What do you think of our software?”
I didn’t know what to say, “I didn’t realize the name was so literal.”
She laughed, and I relaxed a little. “You catch on quick. So you want to admin these systems?”
I was taken by surprise at this. I hadn’t mentioned my application there, and she said she’d only been working there a few months. Something wasn’t right, I thought to myself. However, she was waiting for an answer, and she didn’t appear to want to wait very long. “Yeah, I guess. What OS do they run?”
“OS? They don’t need an operating system. They’re sentient.”
It became clear then, what the “liquid” was. I had heard about the recent breakthrough into ether-physics. Quantum mechanics was only the beginning, now we had proof that the Ether really did exist, and we’d begun to discover many things about life and the earth in general. The most recent being the ability to see living things from the Ether, and the ability to touch someone’s “soul”. Until that day, the soul was one of the few things left unexplained by the Re-unified Theory of the Universe.
The liquid stations were Ether-portals, gateways through the dimensional barrier. The cables didn’t end, they went further into the Ether, giving a whole new meaning to “ethernet”. “How long have you been using Ether-based computers? This has got to be top of the line.”
“They certainly are. We’ve been using them for two months now, but the technology’s been around in some circles for years. Ether wasn’t a very well-liked theory. Scientists don’t like to admit it when they’ve been wrong.”
I nodded, and remembered IBM let go some of their research team when the discovery was made public. Apparently, IBM’s Watson Research had a leg up on Ether computing but didn’t think it would be viable. Oops. “So how does one admin one of these?”
“Well, I can’t tell you unless you take the job I’m offering you.”
“Job?” This was getting stranger by the minute, what was up with this? I couldn’t say no, however. This was too much of an opportunity to pass it up.
“Why do you think I brought you here? We need you to want this job, or you won’t fit in, Ether-side.”
“I’d be working Ether-side? I don’t know about that. I’ve heard stories of some strange things happening out there. Soul-shredding and the like.” I didn’t say my other thoughts about the rumors of real demons — so called because of their intra-dimensional nature. They don’t like fleshies in their side.
“All perfectly safe. We’ve developed a process that makes it safe for our minds out here. No soul-shredding, and demons won’t be able to discern you from the scenery.” She smiled as she did the night before, and all my doubts melted away. Did she say here?
“Where do I sign up?” I added a lopsided grin.
She smiled and lead me back out to the offices and handed me a thin stack of paperwork. “Read over this NDA, and sign the last page. It includes a clause that makes you an employee. We can’t fire you, and we continue to pay you, even if you decide you don’t want to work anymore.”
I frowned slightly, no matter how much she smiled, that simply sounded too good to be true.
“Read it, it’s all explained in there,” she added, smiling again. Well, I was wrong, I’m a sucker for a smile. I began reading it, and it was all straight-forward, and clear - until I got to the section concerning Ether-physics. It was all way over my head, but seemed alright.
I signed the last page, and did a quick glance again, and handed the contract over to her. “All done. When do I start?”
“Right now,” she said, the smiles all gone, her demeanor changing from sweetheart to ruthless bitch in 4 seconds flat. She reached forward and her hand rippled the air in front of me. I then saw the liquid flowing around her arm, as she literally reached into the Ether. I felt a tug, then a wrenching pain as if my soul were being torn from my body. Which is kind of funny, as that’s exactly what she did.
I felt, more than saw, her drag me into the Ether-side of the data center. She stepped through completely and dropped dead. Or so I would have thought, had a demon not been holding me in her place.
I’m proud of myself, I didn’t promptly shit a brick at that point. Granted, I didn’t have a body, but it counts for something. This demon was distinctly female - much more distinctly than Michelle, whoever that is.
“Welcome to Phoenix Fire, Daniel. We hope you enjoy your employment here,” she growled, her breath smelling of some drug, something I couldn’t place.
“But, demons.. they can’t enter the flesh world…” It was all I could do to stay aware.
“As I said, we’ve developed a way to keep minds safe in the Ether. What you call earth, we call Ether, Daniel. Your bodies aren’t real to us. Your souls, however, are.” She grinned, and I realized that demons have a LOT of teeth. I passed out.
And that brings us to today, as not much has changed in the past hundred or so years. Though, I do have a lot of company here, now. I hear there’s a shortage of systems engineers on the Ether — er, earth — side. Justin and I play netris on a daily basis, and are pretty happy here. The only bad part of it all is when they use us for processing power. It really sucks not being able to control your own process of thought.
No software, indeed.