Xenite Reading Room

"Simply Connected" by Michael Martinez

As the telephone began to ring, the Terran cruiser AJAX'S REVENGE came out from behind Titan with all forward guns blazing; two missiles launched as pre-programmed, soaring off into the darkness. The BattleView showed their impacts on the enemy station as two white circles that grew and momentarily blotted out everything else on the screen.

"Yes!" Jim Curtis shouted, rising from his chair. "Yes!"

The BattleView window repainted the starscape and Jim lost his enthusiasm as seven Klatchian StarHammers came into view. The REVENGE's damage monitor reddened as the enemy launched several barrages of high energy bursts at the Terran cruiser. Jim scanned the damage control readouts; the information was not good. AJAX'S REVENGE was not equipped with shield generators powerful enough to withstand an assault from seven StarHammers.

"Okay," he said. "Let's see if you buggers can detect me when I'm cloaked." He keyed in the commands to send the REVENGE into cloak mode, which would drain his power faster than the failing shields. Then he ordered the helmsman to alter the ship's position by a mere 3000 meters Titan-ward, saving fuel and staying within attack range of the StarHammer squadron.

"Hah!" Jim said, watching as the Klatchian ships dispersed in what he hoped would be a futile effort to find him. They were going into their classic "C" maneuver and --

-- the telephone continued to ring. "Not now," Jim whispered, watching the BattleView intently. The telephone rang again.

And rang. And rang.

"Nuts!" Jim picked up the phone. "Computer Caterers!" he said softly in the sing-song voice he customarily used when no one else was in the office.

Jim glanced at his watch just as Deb said, "Where have you been?"

"Uh-oh," Jim said. It was after seven. "Hi, Deb."

"This is NOT funny! I've been waiting for over an hour. What are you doing?"

Jim glanced back at the BattleView and saw the alarm; AJAX'S REVENGE was getting blistered. Before he could even type in the orders to "abandon ship", Jim saw the prize of his battle fleet explode. The Klatchian Warlord Xarxos appeared on the screen, chuckling in its alien language.

"Uh, I was just leaving, Deb! I'll be there in half an hour!"

"You'd better be!"

"Sure, honey. See ya soon!"

Jim hung up the phone with one hand and turned off his workstation with the other. "Rats!" he said. "I was SO close. REALLY close."

Jim sighed. "Guess five months of dating means I finally have to meet the parents; good-bye, city life!" He picked up his jacket and strode out, pausing in the doorway to look around the office one last time; there were eight cubicles with the latest in workstation technology neatly arranged around the walls. The office was almost home to Jim, because he had spent so much time there, learning the latest and most advanced programming techniques Computer Caterers had to offer.

"Wonder if they have electricity out there?" he mumbled to himself as he turned out the lights.

*

"Now, remember, I want you and Daddy to spend a lot of time together," Deb said for the fortieth time.

"But what if he doesn't like me?" Jim replied.

"He WILL, Jim. Trust me."

"But what if he doesn't?"

"Then come sit with me and Mom." Deb sighed heavily. Jim glanced at her as he rounded a curve and saw the little country road leading off to the right. "Turn there," Deb said quickly. Jim turned onto the road, noting with growing alarm that there were no street lights ahead -- just vague, shadowy forms rising up into the night all around the car.

"You've been against this from the start," Deb said, a note of irritation in her voice. "I just want you to meet my parents, Jim ; it's not like I'm asking you to live with them."

"I know, honey. But most guys meet their girlfriends' families over dinner; we're spending the weekend there."

"You'll love it, Jim! Mom and Daddy have 50 acres. It's almost all wooded now, because Dad hasn't worked the farm since I was a little girl."

"Do they have cable?"

"Jim!"

"Well?"

"No. They have two satellite dishes," Deb said. Her voice seemed a little resigned.

"Two!" Jim echoed. Wow, he thought. Dad must really like his T.V. Can't be all bad.

"Yeah. Mom doesn't like to search for the next satellite, so Daddy bought her a second dish last year." Jim's heart sank within him.

"Oh well," Jim said. Deb smacked him on the arm.

"Jim! Daddy watches T.V. just like everyone else!"

"Okay, what does he watch?"

"I don't know -- some sort of sports, usually -- or handicraft stuff on the weekends. It really depends on what's available. But I don't want you to sit there and watch T.V. all weekend."

"But what if that's what he likes to do?"

"No. He likes to tinker in his shop. You'll like it, Jim. He's got just about every tool you could imagine."

"Uh, I never did too well in shop, Deb." Deb simply smiled.

Jim liked her smile; she had the deepest dimples, and her soft blue eyes all but sparkled. Jim constantly struggled with a slight weight problem. Deb was always so full of energy, starting up new projects, and Jim was always getting caught up in work, or in games. He loved working and playing with computers. Maybe I should have dated a computer, Jim thought. At least I'd have something in common with its parents.

"There it is!" Deb pointed toward a small light on the horizon.

Jim leaned forward, trying to make out the shape of a house. It was several minutes, as they bobbed along the dip-laden road, before he could briefly see the dim outline of a fairly large house on a hill. There was a single street-light standing forlornly in front of it.

"My great-grand-daddy built that house," Deb said.

"When he came out here to homestead," Jim added to remind her he already knew the story. They finished the trip in silence and Jim wondered if he should have let Deb tell the story again. But after a few more minutes he came to a narrow drive set back amid high grasses. Deb pointed to indicate that was where he should turn. Jim noticed a huge mail box beside the road. It looked like it could hold an entire workstation.

*

The house that Deb's great-granddad had built stood atop a small knoll; it was two stories tall with a wing that swept back on the right. A front porch ran along the entire length of the house, and there was a soft yellow light next to the front door. Jim parked in a little turn-off from the driveway next to a beat-up old pickup truck.

Deb ran up to the house, but the door opened before she could mount the steps to the porch. There should be a dog barking somewhere, Jim thought to himself. He stopped by the trunk of the car and listened, but heard nothing more than Deb greeting her parents. A tall, burly-looking man in denim coveralls came strolling up to Jim. The man had grey hair and arms that looked like they could be used for fence posts.

"You must be Jim," he said in a deep, friendly voice. "I'm Ralph. Don't call me `Mr. Salters', neither. Just Ralph."

"Uh, hi, Ralph," Jim said, taking Ralph's offered hand. Deb's father had a firm grip; he just barely refrained from squeezing Jim's hand too tightly.

"Let me help you with the luggage," Ralph offered.

"Oh, that's quite all right -- " Jim started to say as he opened the trunk. Ralph stepped up next to him and, reaching down, grabbed two suitcases with one hand. Jim, certain the older man stood at least six inches taller than he did, watched in amazement as Ralph lifted the suitcases without straining; the older man deftly switched one suitcase to his other hand, thrust it under his arm, and then picked up Deb's travel case.

"No problem, Jim." Ralph walked off toward the house without even pausing to breathe hard.

Jim shut the trunk slowly.

"He probably ate the dog for breakfast," he mumbled to himself as he ran after Mr. Salters.

Deb and her mother stood inside the living room. The house seemed to glow softly because, as much as Jim could see from the doorway, every light in the house was a soft bulb. Most of them gave off reddish-yellow light. The air inside was warmer than outside; Jim didn't mind since the country air was a bit nippy anyway.

"Jim, this is my Mom."

"Hi, Jimmy. Just call me Stephie." Deb's Mom offered her hand. She looked very much like her daughter; or, rather, Deb looked very much like her Mom. Both women were petite with thick, curly blond hair. Jim noticed quickly that the entire house smelled faintly of strawberries and other fruits; Deb's hair always had that faint aroma, and it was one of the reasons he had first been attracted to her.

*

"So you like working with computers?" Ralph asked as he and Jim settled into the living room after dinner. The dinner conversation had consisted mostly of "Dear, please pass the...." and "So, Jim, what do you do for a living?"

"Well, yeah -- sort of," Jim said. He was looking at Ralph's feet. The man wore large black boots.

"Sort of?" Ralph said. "Well, you do or don't?"

"I do."

"And what exactly do you do?"

"Um -- well, I guess I program them."

"You're not sure?"

"No. I mean, yes -- uh -- yeah, I'm a programmer."

"That's what Deb tells me."

"Uh, what exactly do you do, Mister -- uh, Ralph?"

"I'm an engineer. Got a Masters in small systems engineering about ten year ago; just had the old electrical engineering degree before that."

Jim stared at the older man in surprise. "You're an electrical engineer?"

"Sure. Didn't Deb tell you that?"

"No. Never said a word." Jim hastily recalled the dozen or so conversations he and Deb had had about her parents, but all he could think of was the story about her great-grand-daddy and the house he built.

"Odd," Ralph said, scratching his chin. "I was sorta hopin'....well, never mind. You like television?"

"Uh, no! Well, I do, but I sort of promised Deb I wouldn't watch any. I mean, this weekend!"

"Why would you do a dumb thing like that?" Ralph said. He looked down at the floor. "What's the little bumpkin up to, I wonder?"

"The little bumpkin?" Jim said.

"Never mind. Look, let's just go out to the shop," Ralph said as he stood up. "Deb never goes out there. She won't know if you're watchin' T.V. or not."

"Well, er, I just don't want to break my word," Jim said meekly. He watched Ralph lumber off toward the back of the house; the man seemed to lurch as if he were off-balance, but he covered ground so quickly Jim had to almost run to keep up with him.

The "shop" was actually the cellar; a house that old didn't have a basement, Jim decided, but rather a cellar. He could not really distinguish between the two: the cellar walls were lined with stone, but the floor was tiled and the air was warm and dry. They came down some stairs on the back wall and Jim looked around as Ralph turned on a light. The shop was filled with computers, cables, electrical components, tools, and manuals. Jim gaped in unabashed astonishment.

"It's not much," Ralph said apologetically. "Just some odds and ends I bring home from work every now and then. You know: surplus, worn out equipment that can still be used."

Jim stepped over to look at a MegaDyne Optimus 500; this was only a year old, had 24 gigabytes of hard disk space and came with 128 megabytes of RAM on the motherboard. On the standard model, a special disk caching controller had another 128 megabytes of RAM, so that once the major files had been accessed, the system only rarely needed to go to disk again. The entire model stood only two feet high. Jim was impressed -- Computer Caterers only had one of these babies in-house, and only a couple of customers had yet ordered them.

"Well, that's sort of brand new," Ralph added, seeing Jim stare at the Optimus. "Thought I'd try it out as the server. Last one I brought out here didn't have much oomph."

"You have a network in your house?"

"Well, I did. Didn't like it. That 100BaseT network cabling stuff is kinda slow; thought I'd lay down some fiberoptic trunks and spin off a few multiport controllers in each room."

"Wow." Jim looked at Ralph with a growing respect. "What are you doing all that for?"

"Watch." Ralph turned out the light and said, very loudly, "Computer: Shop Lights On!" The room was immediately illuminated again. "Computer: Test Shop Clock." A coo-coo clock Jim hadn't noticed before came to life, sounding twelve coo-coos.

"Wow. And you can do that in every room?"

"It didn't work very well," Ralph said. He walked over to a worktable and picked up a black box. Several cables came off the box, dropped onto the floor, and Jim saw they were connected to the Optimus. "The voice recognition system couldn't distinguish between normal conversation and the command language, so I rigged up some unidirectional microphones and attached them to the multiport controllers. But the last server couldn't handle the load because the mics are open all the time."

"Unh huh," Jim said quietly. He could vaguely visualize what Ralph was describing. What on earth does one hook up a computer to in a farmhouse? Clocks and lights were about all Jim could think of.

"So, we got back a pallet of multiport controllers that someone dropped in a warehouse somewhere and I salvaged them. Been working on 'em for three months." Ralph looked at Jim a little hopefully. "When Deb told us she was bringin' you out here, I kinda thought we could -- "

*

Continued on "Simply Connected" page 2