more insight into what makes humans go tick and boom than any psychologist. He hadn't assembled any of the computers or written any of the code. And though he was wealthy, he didn't fund the project. What Reggie did was make the whole more than the sum of these parts. He found the people who could make it happen and for a brief moment in time they made something together, something that might change the world. Reggie did it for love and what he loved was the Sorter and nothing else. He didn't want to make money off it. He didn't even want the show the world what a great thing he'd done. For all Reggie cared, no one had to know his role in making the Sorter see light.
What Reggie wanted was for every last breathing sack of flesh to get down on its knees and admit that they were, after all, nothing but programs, coded up by a blind programmer. And the Sorter had them cracked. At last, that was the secret, wasn't it? All these years, all those people trying to make thinking machines, what they foolishly called artificial intelligence, thought that making something hum like a person was the pearl of greatest value. Reggie knew they were crazy to exalt three pounds of hamburger. No, it wasn't better it to make a computer human. It was better to show humans they were computers. The first step to recovery is acceptance. Then let the doctor come and fix it.
That dream was crumbling. Cass, the Sorter, came and disappeared. Every watched the others for their expressions.
“What was that?” said Marianne.
George said, “Cass is the Sorter's visual presence.”
“Happens now?”
George reached in his pocket and pulled out his spinning device. He let it go and watched the letter line up. When the wheels stopped, George help them up to his face so that only he could see what they said. The blood drained from his face and his expression changed to one of resolution.
Reggie said, “What does your magic wheel say, George?”
George leaped on Reggie. He clawed for the weapon, but he wasn't quick enough. Binder tossed his attacker off and George spun back over belly onto the floor. He lay there, looking into the lights.
That stupid blue light is still flashing, he thought.
Reggie shot him. Reginald Binder had leaned in close enough to hear George's last breaths escaping from his longs. He'd held the pistol inches from George's face and there had been a star shaped flash. After that, George's face was gone. The spinning wheels with the eyes lay beside them. Though it was broken in two, it was still easy to see the message it bore.
STOP HIM
Reggie stood up, covered in stringy slivers of muscle and that all important mush that had a moment before been inside George's skull. He went off to the server room, to find this child that was killing what he loved most in this world.
THIRTY ONE
John couldn’t remember in what year he’d last seen his dad, but he knew that day had been in September. He was probably eighteen or nineteen at the time, because he wasn’t in school. Back then, John used to haul newspapers for a living. He wasn’t a paper boy, though that’s what some of his old high school buddies used to call him - as if they were doing much better. Every morning before dawn, John filled his dad’s Plymouth with twine bound stacks of the Boston Herald and drove all over the streets of his home town, the compact city of Chelsea.
He’d come home that morning to find John Sr. sprawled on the couch in his boxer briefs. The man always said about his underwear, “I need the length and I need the support.” He didn’t need either then. It had been six weeks since the General Electric River Works plant in Lynn laid off half its workforce and dad was living off a few dollars thrown his way by the union. They were fighting the layoffs, but there wasn’t much hope for a revival. It was up to John Junior now to support his father and his sister.
At first the sight of Dad struck him with a pang of sympathy. Big John, as people once called him, was never very large. Junior had been taller than him since high school. Big John was short and skinny, and this latest dead end had made him worse. His shorts barely clung to his hips, with the wilted rubber band folded up in waves against his skin. His ribs stuck up every time he took a breath. There was something kind of admirable in that sleeping figure, ugly as it was. Big John was starving himself so his kids could eat. Added to that was his very presence here on the couch. It was a frequent sight. The photos of the kids’ mom still filled their parents’ bedroom and for some reason Big John figured it was better to sleep out here than to take them down. He didn’t want to forget her, but he couldn’t sleep with her ghost watching him either.
The warm feeling in Little John’s heart didn’t last for long. On the coffee table he saw a tin box of Camel Rares. He picked it up and it was empty. Those were his Camels. His dad smoked Winstons. Those were some cheap, foul smelling sticks. Once Little John got a job, he decided that the one one luxury he’d allow himself was a decent pack of nails. He settled on Camel Wides and sometimes, when he came into some cash or was in need of a little happiness, he splurged on the Rares. They came in that sleek black tin box, which he swore made up half their luxury price, but they made him feel like a greasy millionaire.
His dad was happy with Little’s vice, because he kept snatching them. Junior tried to hide them, but where do you hide a carton in 1000 square feet of living space? All he ever got for the effort was a ransacked bedroom that looked like the target of a drug bust - and still no Camels. So he let his dad pinch one every now and then. That day - that last day he’d ever seen the man in his life - Big John had finished off the entire box. Their remains were decomposing in the ashtray.
“Hey,” said Little John. He nudged his dad with the point of his boot. “Hey, get up.”
Big snorted and opened his eyes and said, “What time is it?”
“I don’t know, the sun’s up. Isn’t that good enough for you?” Little John made a show of dumping the empty tin in the garbage. “When are you going to pay for your own smokes?”
“Whenever you pay me back for raising you.” The man stood up and searched the space under the coffee table for his pants and his shirt. “The only reason you’ve got expensive tastes is because you’ve got no babies. You’ll see how it is when the union money runs out.”
“So you want me to feel guilty for being born? If you don’t want to spend all your money keeping little mouths fed, then keep your dick in your pants. I’m not ever having kids.”
“Why don’t you just leave?”
Little John said nothing. His dad knew the answer. Alice was a minor - hell, more than a minor, a retard. Big could keep custody of her for the rest of his life if he wanted and that wasn’t something John was willing to let happen. The old man used to beat John when he was a kid. He used to kick him till it hurt to use the toilet. Like it was somehow the kid’s fault that mom was dead. The beatings happened less when it became clear that Little John wasn’t so little anymore. One day John whacked his dad with a flashlight, broke the lens and the bulb on his face and everything. It left a mark for days. Big kept his hands off since then.
The older man pulled his clothes on, saying, “It was so hot up here last night; did you feel it?”
It had been one of those Septembers that sneaked in a few days in the eighties after a week of breezy cool weather. They lived on the third floor of an old apartment block. Instead of circuit breakers, there were six fuses secreted behind a panel in the kitchen. There was no chance of a window A/C, let alone central air, becoming a reality. Every spring, Dad wedged a twenty inch metal box fan in the rear kitchen window. The damn thing filled the apartment with the sound of a jet engine for four months, but it had come out two weeks ago. Dad was always afraid of paying for heat and then blowing it out the window, so the moment fall set in there was no looking back.
“No.” said Little John. “I was out working most of the night.”
Dad went to the kitchen and started opening up cabinets. Most of them were empty.
He said, “Don’t we have any c
lean dishes left? And what about bread? All I want it toast.”
Junior said, “What are you going to do today?” When his father shrugged, he said, “They’re not going to come through. You have to face it that GE is shutting down.”
“You don’t think I know that?” He opened the fridge. “So there’s no bread and no milk.”
“So what are you doing about it? You have all the time in the world to look for work.”
“And who’s going to look after your sister?”
“You call what you do looking after her?”
Big slammed the fridge door, rattling the salad dressing bottles. The old man had perched them in the door upside down in a desperate attempt to leech every last drop. Now they tipped over and the two could hear them in there, crashing onto the shelves, rolling into each other and shattering. Dad didn’t swear. That was his thing. Sometimes, he reached a point where he didn’t swear or yell, but got real calm. It was that calm that had always made Little shit his pants when he was a kid. It meant trouble. It meant Dad was saving up his rage until it was time for a show.
The two were cleaning the mess in the fridge when Alice wandered in. She was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants.
Big stood up and said, “I’m sorry baby, did we wake you?”
“We can have Raisin