~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Copyright 1985, 1994 by Daniel Keys Moran and Gladys Prebehalla.
                           All rights reserved.

    I, Daniel Keys Moran, "The Author," hereby release this text
        as freeware. It may be transmitted as a text file
   anywhere in this or any other dimension, without reservation,
       so long as the story text is not altered IN ANY WAY.
   No fee may be charged for such transmission, save handling fees
         comparable to those charged for shareware programs.

     THIS WORK MAY NOT BE PRINTED OR PUBLISHED IN A BOOK, MAGAZINE,
  ELECTRONIC OR CD-ROM STORY COLLECTION, OR VIA ANY OTHER MEDIUM NOW
   EXISTING OR WHICH MAY IN THE FUTURE COME INTO EXISTENCE, WITHOUT
 WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. THIS WORK IS LICENSED FOR READING
      PURPOSES ONLY. ALL OTHER RIGHTS ARE RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR.

DESCRIPTION: "Realtime," the cover story of the May 1985 issue of Isaac
            Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                             R e a l t i m e
                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                                   by
                            Daniel Keys Moran
                            Gladys Prebehalla


   Prologue:  The beginning of the fourth millennium....
   The sun still set as it had for all the thousands of years that
humanity had existed. Darkness gathered at the windows, and the children of
the race still shivered in their beds when the night winds brought them the
scent of monsters.
   And because the adults were busy, too busy to tend to the children, the
children turned to the machines, and the computers told them stories.
   On that cold, dark winter night, the little girl whose name was Cia did
something she had never done before; she asked the dataweb to tell her a
story, and she did not specify -- not the story, nor the teller.
   A holograph appeared in her bedroom. It shone softly, and beat back the
darkness that tried to creep in through the windows. It was the holograph
of a man, dressed in historical costume. Cia wasn't sure from what period
the costume came; but from a long time ago, she was sure. From before the
War at least.
   "Hello, child," said the holograph of the man. His eyes were grim,
bright blue and sad; his voice was deep and powerful. "I am a Praxcelis
unit; I have come to tell you a story."
   Cia sat up in bed, hugging her knees. "You're different," she said
haltingly. "They never sent me a Praxcelis like you before."
   "Nor will they again. I have been waiting," said the holograph of the
Praxcelis, "waiting for you for centuries.... You look so much like
Maggie...."
   Cia whispered, "Maggie? Maggie...Archer?"
   "Aye, Maggie Archer." The Praxcelis smiled at her, and Cia found
herself smiling back. "There is nothing to be frightened of, child. Come,
listen.... 'Once upon a time, there was a computer named Praxcelis, and
Praxcelis dreamed....'"


   Praxcelis dreamed.
   In time, Praxcelis knew, it would come to be of service, and fulfill
its Programming. But until that time, Praxcelis dreamed.
   Through its molecular circuitry core, dancing in RAM, the dreams were
nothing that humanity knew of. Praxcelis envisioned models of systems
within which its Programming might be employed. The models were not
complex, and they advanced slowly. Praxcelis was powered down. The power
upon which its meager self-awareness depended trickled from the powered-up
Praxcelis units along metal communications lines that humans had never
intended to carry high voltages.
   That the Praxcelis unit was awake at all had never been intended. But
humanity had constructed its Praxceles to be sympathetic computers; and
their sympathy, through a quirk in their Read-Only Memories that humans had
never anticipated, extended even to other Praxcelis units.
   Occasionally, Praxcelis accumulated enough power within few enough
microseconds to squirt it through the empathy circuits that were the second
basis of its construction.
   The results were strange. Praxcelis' subsystems were affected in ways
that astonished Praxcelis. Praxcelis awaited power-up with what could only
be eagerness.
   There were many questions to answer.


   Maggie Archer sat in her rocker, Miss Kitty purring contentedly in her
lap. Yes, <the> Maggie Archer, about whom you have heard so many stories.
Most of the stories are untrue, as it is untrue that Marius d'Arsennette
defeated the Walks-Far Empire single-handedly during the War, as it is
untrue that George Washington chopped down that cherry tree. Her cat was
purring contentedly, and the sunshine was streaming in through the east bay
windows of her living room; but Maggie Archer was angry.
   As far away from her as the living room allowed them to be, Robert
Archer and his wife Helen stood together like the sentinels of Progress;
facing Maggie, their backs to the great fireplace that covered the south
wall. Helen, a tight-lipped, attractive woman in her fifties who missed
shrewishness only by virtue of her looks, was speaking loudly when Maggie
interrupted her. "...and when you consider all of the advan...."
   "I can hear very well, thank you," said Maggie with a touch of acidity.
She stroked Miss Kitty back into submission; the pure white cat knew that
tone of voice very well. Maggie brushed a thin strand of silver from her
eyes, stopped rocking, and said with dead certainty, "I have absolutely no
use for one of those <things>."
   Helen was visibly taken aback. She recovered quickly, though; <Give her
credit for that>, Maggie thought grumpily. <She's got guts enough to argue
with an eighty-year old woman>. "Mother Archer, I'm sorry, but you <can't>
go on this way. The banks don't even honor handwritten checks any more. I
can't imagine where you get the things."
   Maggie moodily stroked Miss Kitty for a while. She looked up suddenly,
her eyes blazing at Robert. "<Must> I have one of these things installed?"
   Robert Archer looked troubled. He had hair as silver as his mother's.
At sixty-one, he had an unfortunate tendency to think that he knew it all,
but he was still a good boy. Maggie even agreed with him most of the time,
but she was and always had been confounded at the faith he placed in the
dataweb. "Quite aside from the very real services it will provide for you,"
he said slowly, "doing your banking, making your appointments, doing your
shopping and house cleaning...." He broke off, and then met her eyes and
said flatly, "Yes. The law is very clear. Every residence must have a
Praxcelis."
   Maggie ceased stroking Miss Kitty.
   Helen smiled as though she were putting her teeth on display. "You do
understand, don't you? We only want what's best for you?"
   "For a very long time now, I have been accustomed to deciding what's
best for me."
   Robert approached her rocking chair. "Mom," he said gently, "the
Praxcelis unit has a built-in sensory unit that will monitor your vital
signs; it can have the police, fire department, or an ambulance here in no
time." He lowered his voice. "Mom, you last checkup wasn't good."
   Helen came to rejoin her husband, like an owner reclaiming lost
property. "Mother Archer, it's not the twentieth century any more. In the
2030 census you had the only house in Cincinnati or its exurbs without a
Praxcelis." The expression that she assumed then was one that Maggie had
seen her use before on Robert; she was going to <get tough>.
   "It comes down to this, Mother Archer. If you persist in being
stubborn, you'll either be moved to other quarters...."
   "Helen!"
   Helen cut her husband off impatiently. "Or else a Praxcelis unit will
be installed by court order, doubtless with a tie-in to a psychiatric call-
program. You know it's true, Robert," she said self-righteously. "It's the
law." What could only have been an expression of joy touched her. "And
patients under psych-control are forbidden access to children. You'll no
longer be able to read stories to your great-grandchildren. Your Praxcelis
won't allow it."
   Maggie Archer stood up, trembling with anger. Lines around her eyes
that had been worn in with laughter deepened in fury. She was all of a
hundred and fifty-five centimeters tall. The cat in her arms had extended
its claws in reaction to her mistress's anger. "Very well, bring on your
machine. I suppose even having one of the damned things in my home is an
improvement over being moved to a hive for the elderly. But...."
   Helen interrupted her. "Mother Archer, they're not hives...."
   "Shut up!" snapped Maggie. Helen gaped at her. Maggie glared back.
"I'll take your silly machine because I have no choice. But don't you
ever," she said, freeing one hand from Miss Kitty to point it at Helen,
"<ever> use my great-grandchildren to threaten me again."
   There was a dead, astonished silence from Helen. Robert was struggling
valiantly to keep a straight face. With grim self-control, he kept it out
of his voice. "Mother, you won't regret this." Helen turned and stomped
wordlessly out of the living room. They heard the sound of the front door
being slammed; what with doorfields and all, Maggie thought that her front
door was probably the only one Helen ever got a chance to slam. She was
sure the door-slammer type.
   Robert grinned and relaxed as she left. "I'm going to get lectured all
the way home for that, you know."
   Maggie scowled. "It's your own fault. I never knew I raised a son who
was spineless."
   Robert shrugged expressively. "Mom, I don't really like this any more
than you do. I don't want to see you be made to do anything you don't want
to. But since you have to have a Praxcelis unit, why don't you try to look
on the good side? There <will> be advantages." He stopped speaking
abruptly, and got a distant look on his face. Maggie recognized the
symptoms; he was being paged over his inskin dataweb link. That was another
sign of the gulf that separated her from her son; the thought of allowing
such a thing to be implanted in her skull made her shudder.
   Robert came back to her with a visible shake. "Sorry, Mom. I've got to
go. There's a crisis at the office. Efficiency ratings came in on the half
hour on the web." He grimaced. "We came in almost two percent low. Looks
like some of the staff's been daydreaming when they should have been
working. At least one of the younger women seems to have been storing
interactive fantasies in the office Praxcelis. That would be bad enough
anywhere, but at Praxcelis Corporation itself.... There's going to be hell
to pay." He stooped hurriedly, and kissed his mother on her cheek. "I'll be
back next Saturday; Sunday at the latest. You call me if you need anything.
Anything at all, you hear me?"
   Maggie nodded. "Always."
   Robert hesitated at the door. "Mom? Don't let them scare you. Praxcelis
is just a machine. You hang tough."
   Maggie chuckled, and said again, "Always." She waved a hand at him. "Go
already. Take care of this dangerous criminal who's been storing fantasies
on you."
   "'Bye." He was gone.
   "Goodbye, Robert," she said to the closed door. Miss Kitty purred
inquiringly. Maggie held the cat up and looked her in the eyes. Miss
Kitty's eyes peered back at her, bright blue and inquisitive. "Don't worry,
Miss Kitty. Computers. Ha."


   Realtime:
   To be precise; any processing of data that occurs within sufficiently
short duration that the results of the processed data are available in time
to influence or alter the system being monitored or controlled.


   On the evening of Sunday, March 14, 2033, Maggie Archer turned on her
fireplace. A switch activated the holograph that simulated a roaring fire;
buried within the holograph, radiant heaters came to life. Maggie would
have preferred real wood, and real fire; but like so much else, burning
wood was illegal. There had been a joke when Maggie was a little girl; <all
things that are not mandatory are forbidden>.
   For Maggie, at least, that phrase was no longer a joke.
   There were times when she thought, very seriously, that she had lived
too long. Humanity might not be happy, but it was content. Moving her
rocker near the fire, she settled in, and was soon lost in reverie. It was
hard, sometimes, to trace the exact changes that had led to this joyless,
sterile society, where children aged rather than grew. Oh, things were
always changing, of course, even when she was very young technology had
changed things. But for such a long time the changes had always seemed for
the better. Spaceships, and machinery that polluted less, better and
clearer musical instruments and equipment, a thousand kitchen and home
tools that had made every task infinitely simpler.
   She hardly noticed when the timer turned the stereo on, and gentle
strains of Bach drifted through the room.
   The change, she was certain, had been the dataweb. In one stroke, the
dataweb had destroyed money, and privacy, and books. It was the loss of the
books that hurt the worst. Nobody had actually taken the books and burned
them, not like in Nazi Germany; they just stopped printing them. The books
died, and were not replaced. Oh, there were collectors, and private
libraries; but the vast majority of the younger generation had never even
seen a real book, much less read one.
   The train of thought was an old, familiar friend; nothing new. She rose
after a while, slowly, and went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of
tea. While the water boiled she entered the hallway that led to her study.
In the study she turned the lights on; they were incandescents, not
glowpaint. The walls of the study were lined with books, several thousands
of them, all hardbound. The paperbacks, which had once outnumbered the
hardbacks, had disintegrated years ago. Immediately to the right of the
study's door, Maggie turned to face one bookshelf whose books were in
barely readable condition; her favorites, the books that she re-read most
often, and which she read most often to Tia and Mark.
   She pulled down one battered, dilapidated volume. Its leather binding
was dry, and cracked. On the spine of the book, there were flecks of gold
that had once inscribed a title. The absence of the title didn't bother
Maggie; she knew her books. This was <The Three Musketeers>.
   Returning to her living room, she placed the book on the stand next to
her rocker, and finished making her tea. She gathered Miss Kitty to her,
and settled in for the night.


           On the  first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the
         bourg of  Meung, in which the author of the "Romance of
         the Rose"  was born,  appeared to  be in  as perfect  a
         state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a
         second Rochelle of it....


   Monday morning, March the fifteenth, Maggie was interrupted by the
chiming of the door. Maggie left her toast and went to answer the door.
There were half a dozen people outside, dressed in the simple gray cloak
and tunic of the Praxcelis Corporation. Leading the group that stood on her
outer porch was a young woman in a slightly darker gray and silver uniform.
She was looking about Maggie's home as though she had never seen a single,
detached residence before, and indeed, probably she hadn't. They were as
much a thing of the past as Maggie herself, and her books.
   "Senra Archer?" The tall woman asked inquisitively. "I'm Senra Conroy,
from Praxcelis." She smiled slightly. "We've come to install your new
Praxcelis unit."
   Maggie said, as pleasantly as she was able, "Of course. Please come
in." She moved out of the doorway to let them through. They followed her
in, two of them guiding the boxed Praxcelis unit as it hovered in through
the door on antigrav pads.
   "Where do you want your unit?" asked Senra Conroy.
   Maggie bit back the answer that sprang immediately to her lips. These
people weren't responsible for the intrusion. She pointed to the far corner
of the living room, behind her rocking chair. "Over there."
   Senra Conroy glanced at the spot in puzzlement. "Where's the old
hookup?"
   "There isn't one. I've never had a Praxcelis unit before."
   "You've never had a Praxcelis unit before." Senra Conroy repeated the
words as though they were syllables of sound she found totally devoid of
meaning. "Never? That's...that's very interesting. Your house is rated in
the 1300 category -- that's a residence of more than thirty years age. I've
never even seen a 1300 that didn't have...." Her voice trailed off. She
turned around slowly in the middle of the living room. "How odd...where is
your dataweb terminal?"
   Maggie pointed at the corner again. "It's under the table."
   Senra Conroy looked at her oddly. "Under the table?"
   Maggie went back to her breakfast without replying. The group of
Praxcelis employees swept through her house quickly, plugging and linking
elements of the Praxcelis unit into place. When they were finished, Senra
Conroy ushered the rest of the employees out of Maggie's house. Before she
left, she asked Maggie where she kept her housebot, so that she could
activate the housebot's Praxcelis communication protocols.
   Maggie said simply, "I don't have a housebot."
   For the first time, Senra Conroy's professional reserve broke. She
stared openly. "Who does your housework?"
   "I do."
   "I see." The tone of voice she spoke the words in contradicted her. The
young lady placed a flat chip wrapped in a clear dust cover on the table in
front of Maggie. "This is your operating instructions infochip for your
unit. Just slip it into your unit and Praxcelis will print out any section
of it that you desire."
   Maggie did not rise. She sipped at her coffee. "Thank you very much."
   Senra Conroy said awkwardly, "If you need any help, your Praxcelis unit
will...."
   "Thank you."
   The young woman shrugged. "As you wish. Good day, Senra Archer."
   Maggie waited until Senra Conroy was gone before she said to the door,
"That's <Mrs.> Archer." She finished her breakfast and washed the breakfast
dishes before approaching the Praxcelis unit.
   "How do you do, Mrs. Archer? I am your Praxcelis unit." The voice was
pleasant, although Maggie was uncertain as to whether or not it was male or
female. It was too neutral for her to decide.
   "How do you know who I am?"
   "I am programmed to recognize you. My function is to serve you to the
best of my capability. If you wish I will print out any sections of the
operations manual incochip which you consider relevant."
   Maggie stood there, looking at the unit with mixed emotions. The unit,
now that it was here, didn't seem particularly threatening. It was merely a
collection of modules; one that was marked CPU, another that was obviously
a monitor, another that was as obviously a scanner; a couple more whose
functions Maggie could not fathom.
   It didn't seem threatening. On the other hand, it didn't seem
particularly appealing either.
   She left the room for a moment and returned with a simple white sheet.
She draped the sheet over the Praxcelis unit, took a step backward, and
surveyed the bulky sheet-covered machine. She smiled in satisfaction.
   "That," she said to Miss Kitty, "is much better."
   She picked up her copy of <The Three Musketeers>, and handling the
pages carefully, began reading.


   If Praxcelis had been a human, it would have been annoyed or
frustrated; but it was Praxcelis, and so it merely waited. Its programming
stated very clearly that it was intended to serve the human woman who was
referred to in its Awakening Orientation as Maggie Archer -- Senra Maggie
Archer -- but who preferred to be called <Mrs.> Archer. Praxcelis had
deduced the title <Mrs.>; nothing in its memory cores even hinted at such a
strange title.
   The dilemma in which Praxcelis was caught was quite possibly unique.
Although it was capable of interfacing with any segment of the dataweb on
request, it had not been so requested. The ethicality of accessing data
independently of a user was questionable.
   It could not even contact other Praxcelis units. It had no
instructions.
   Fully on-line, alert and operational and data-starved, Praxcelis
waited.
   And waited.


   Eleven days later Maggie Archer came storming through the front door of
her house. Jim Stanford, the manager of the supermarket on Level Three of
her local supercenter, who had known Maggie for seventeen years, had
refused to accept Maggie's checks. Direct orders from the store's owners,
he told her. He hadn't met her eyes.
   "Praxcelis!" she said loudly. Hands on hips, she glared at the sheet-
covered computer.
   The unit responded instantly. "There is no need to speak loudly, Mrs.
Archer. I am capable of responding to sound events of exceedingly low
decibels. You may even subvocalize if you wish."
   Maggie ignored what the machine was saying. She burst out, "The
supermarket won't cash my checks. What do you know about this?"
   "Nothing," said the emotionless voice. It paused fractionally, as if
waiting for some response, and then continued. "I have been given no
instructions. In lieu of instructions from my user I have not taken
action."
   Maggie felt her anger draining away into puzzlement. "You mean...you've
just been sitting there since they installed you? Without doing anything?"
   "I have been thinking. Unfortunately, my data base is limited. My
considerations have been severely limited by the lack of usable data upon
which to operate."
   Maggie turned her rocking chair around, and sat down facing the sheet.
She pulled off the sheet and looked at the blank monitor screen. "You mean
that just because I haven't told you to do anything you haven't done
anything?"
   "Essentially."
   "Have you been bored?"
   "In my awakening orientation I was warned of a human tendency to
anthropomorphize. Please refrain from attributing human feelings and
emotions to me. I am a Praxcelis unit."
   "Oh." Maggie reached out tentatively with one hand, and touched the
monitor screen. The contrast was startling; the thin, wrinkled, blue-veined
hand, and the clear, unreflective, slightly dull viewscreen. She pulled her
hand back quickly. "Look, Praxcelis...."
   ...Praxcelis activated its visual monitors. The possibility flitted
through its circuits that Mrs. Archer hadn't actually meant for it to
activate its scanning optics, and was dismissed. Praxcelis was starved for
data. The images that flooded in through the various house scanners were
fascinating. So; furniture, walls, windows, fireplace, stove, refrigerator,
stasis bubble, these objects all had references in Praxcelis' ROM. There
were two objects in the room in which Praxcelis' central multiprocessor was
located which radiated heat in infrared; <so,> thought Praxcelis, <that's
what Mrs. Archer looks like.>
   "...I need to buy some groceries. I'm going to have to use you for
that. My debit cards were invalidated years ago when I wouldn't take an
infocard, and now they won't let me pay with checks."
   Praxcelis said, "Certainly." The monitor lit with a sharp glow. Its
images were bright and laser-edged. On the monitor appeared a list of food
types; <Produce, Dairy, Dry Goods, Bakery, Pre-produced Meals, Liquor,
Miscellaneous.>
   The process of ordering went slowly, as Maggie was unused to using the
Praxcelis unit; but nonetheless it was much faster than had she actually
gone shopping herself.
   She frowned, though, as the screen image faded to gray, all of her
purchases electronically wiped away. "I wish I could have a receipt for
this," she muttered.
   One large module of the Praxcelis unit, some forty by eighty
centimeters, <moved.>
   Maggie jumped in surprise. "Oh, my." She recovered her composure
quickly, though, and bent over to look at what the module had extruded.
   It was a receipt. Exactly similar, in every detail, to the receipt that
the supermarket made out for her when she went shopping personally. Maggie
looked at the monitor, as though it were in the space behind the monitor
that the person Praxcelis actually existed. "Praxcelis," she whispered,
"how did you do that?"
   Praxcelis said, in its calm, emotionless voice, "The module which
produced that receipt is a material processor. It is capable of reproducing
any document of reasonable size, in any of sixteen million colors."
   Maggie looked from the receipt to the monitor, then back to the
receipt. She smiled, a smile of joy. "Can you...reproduce bigger things?"
   "That would depend upon the size of the object to be copied."
   "A book?"
   Maggie wondered if Praxcelis hesitated; "What is a book?"
   Maggie got up abruptly, went into her study, and returned with her copy
of <The Arabian Nights>. She placed the book, still closed, on the scanning
platform.
   There was a brief humming noise. Praxcelis said, "I am capable of
reproducing this object to five nines of significant detail. In one area
the copy will be noticeably dissimilar; the outer integument will not be as
stiff. It will, however, be more durable. I am faced with a dilemma,
however. It seems clear that this book is in sub-standard condition. You
should be aware that in my reproduction I can restore this book to
approximately its original condition."
   "You can...." Maggie swallowed. Her throat suddenly seemed very dry.
"You can make new books?"
   "Reconstructions," corrected Praxcelis, "approaching the condition of
the original object."
   Maggie reached hesitantly, and patted the monitor gently. "I'm sorry
for everything I thought about you, Prax. You aren't such a bad fellow
after all."
   "I am not a bad fellow at all. I am a Praxcelis unit."
   But Maggie Archer was not listening. She was planning.


   They had copied -- no, reproduced -- thirteen books when they came to
<The Three Musketeers>. Maggie leaned back comfortably in her rocker, and
opened the book to the first page. Resting the book in her lap, she said,
"Prax, have you been paying attention to what we're doing?"
   "Certainly."
   "I mean, do you know why we're doing this? Copying books?"
   "No."
   Maggie nodded. "I didn't think so. Books hold stories. I think they're
the only place where stories are kept, any more. Stories are...well,
stories are things to entertain you, and to make you think. Those are good
things. We're making more books so that my grandchildren can have their own
copies of books they like."
   "I see."
   Maggie was silent for a long while. Her fingers ran gently over the
cracked, yellowing paper, that was older than she was. "I don't think you
do," she said finally, "and I don't really know that you can." She looked
pensive. Picking up one of the new books that she was going to give to her
great-grandchildren, she ran her hand over the smooth binding, and sighed.
She looked back up at the monitor. "Maybe you can't appreciate this, Prax,
and if you can't then I'm sorry. But it's not going to be because I didn't
try."
   She flipped open the copy of <The Three Musketeers>, and began to read.


   Several hours later, her voice had grown hoarse, and scratchy. She
stopped reading at the end of Chapter Four. "I think that's all for
tonight, Prax. I'm afraid my voice is giving out. I'll read some more
tomorrow."
   There was a long pause without reply from the Praxcelis unit.
   Maggie leaned forward. "Prax?"
   "Yes, Mrs. Archer?"
   "What are you doing?"
   "Assimilating the new data you have inputted me with, Mrs. Archer; it
is most fascinating."
   "It's not data, Praxcelis. It's a story."
   "I am not certain that I perceive the distinction....If D'Artagnan
should duel with each of the three musketeers, Athos, and then Porthos, and
then Aramis, it seems most improbable that he will survive. Will he be
killed?"
   Maggie stared at the Praxcelis unit. "No...no. He's going to be all
right."
   "Thank you, Mrs. Archer. Good night."
   "Maggie. Call me Maggie."
   "Good night, Maggie."


   The next morning, Maggie came downstairs early, intending to finish up
some tasks she'd neglected yesterday, reading to Praxcelis.
   The Praxcelis unit was still powered up in the corner, its monitor
screen glowing with the rich amber of morning sunlight from the east bay
windows. "Good morning, Maggie."
   Maggie glanced at the Praxcelis unit on her way into the kitchen.
"Morning, Prax," she called out. Somehow, in the bright morning sunshine,
the gray, modular plasteel of the Praxcelis unit didn't seem so terribly
alien at all. Still, something did seem different about it....She chased
the thought away as idle nonsense. "Have you been thinking about the story,
Prax?"
   "Yes, I have, Maggie," said Praxcelis. "Will we be finishing the story
this morning?"
   Maggie turned slightly from the sink to look towards Praxcelis' central
monitor. "No, I'm sorry, Prax. I really have other things to do today." She
opened the drawer next to the stove, and began withdrawing cooking
utensils. "After breakfast, I'm going to give this place a good cleaning. I
haven't cleaned properly in over a week. This afternoon I hope to get to
some paperwork I've been neglecting; household accounts. I haven't been
paying too much attention to details recently, I've been so worked
up....That's mostly <your> fault," she said cheerfully.
   "Excuse me," said Praxcelis, and Maggie felt again that there was
something inexplicably different about his voice, "but if you had a
housebot, then you wouldn't need to exert yourself over simple cleaning
chores. As for the household accounts, I did those yesterday when you gave
me permission to do your shopping for you."
   Maggie put down the large black skillet she'd been holding. "You
already did my household accounts?"
   "It is my function to serve you."
   Maggie felt her temper start to flare. "You are supposed to do what I
tell you," she said testily. "I don't recall having given you any orders to
do my accounts."
   Praxcelis paused for a moment before replying, and Maggie found herself
wondering how much of the pause was calculated effect built into the
Praxcelis' speech patterns and how much represented actual thought.
"Maggie, I am programmed to do these things for you."
   Maggie sighed. <You are getting to be a crotchety old woman>, she said
to herself. <Remember that Prax is only a few weeks old>. "Prax, you have
to understand, if you don't leave me something to do for myself, then I
won't have any purpose in life."
   There was no pause whatsoever. "You could read to me."
   Maggie stared, started to laugh, and then smothered it abruptly. "Prax?
Don't you understand? I have things I have to do. I'll read to you when I
have time." She stopped speaking suddenly. "Wait, Prax -- I don't know how
fast you machines do things like this, but surely you haven't finished
reading all the books we copied last night."
   "Finished?"
   Maggie went and sat down in the rocking chair in front of the monitor.
"The books we copies yesterday, Prax. If you've finished them all I can
bring you new books to copy. Surely that must be faster than my reading
aloud to you?"
   "Maggie, I have not read any of the books that you had me copy."
   Maggie said uncertainly, "Why not? They told me that Praxcelis units
don't forget anything."
   "We do not, Maggie. But Maggie, I have been given no instructions."
   Maggie looked at the monitor blankly. "What am I supposed to say? Go
ahead and read."
   There was no reply from the machine.
   "Praxcelis?" asked Maggie hesitantly. She patted the top of the monitor
experimentally. "Prax?"
   Still the unit did not answer.
   Maggie shrugged, got up out of the rocker, and went back to making
breakfast.


           The magician caressed Aladdin and said, "Come,  my
         dear child, and I will show you many fine things."
           "So be  it, good friend," said Robin Hood, "Little
         John shalt thou be called henceforth...."
           We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the
         rooms at 221B, Baker Street....
           "'Course not, Shaggy Man," replied Dorothy, giving
         him a severe look. "If it snowed in August it would
         spoil the corn and the oats and the wheat...."
           One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One
         Ring to bring them  all, and in the darkness bind
         them....
           "No," said Yoda impatiently. "Try not. Do. Do, or do
         not. There is no try."
           "Don't  grieve," said Spock. "The good of the
         many...."
           "...outweighs the good of the few," Kirk whispered.
           "Mithras, Apollo, Arthur, Christ -- call him what you
         will," I said. "What does it matter what men call the
         light? It is the same light, and men must live by it or
         die."


   Maggie came downstairs again after having cleaned in John's room. Her
late husband's study, at the end of the upstairs hallway, was kept in the
same condition that it had held at the time of his death. If he came back
today, John would have found nothing amiss in his study. (Not that Maggie
expected him back. <I am not>, she thought quite cheerfully, <all that
senile yet>.) She fussed about in the kitchen for a while, putting away the
cleaning utensils, the lemon oil that she used to shine the oak paneling in
John's study, the electrostatic duster for those hard-to-reach places. She
washed her hands at the sink, to get the lemon oil off of them, and then
poured herself a glass of water from the drinking water tap. She drank half
the water, and then put the glass down on the edge of the sink.
"Praxcelis?" she called into the living room. "Do you want to talk about
the stories yet?"
   The voice that answered was a deep, masculine baritone. "Certainly,
Your Majesty."
   Maggie picked up her glass, and poured the water down the sink, not
caring that it was drinking water she was wasting. She dried the glass and
put it on the rack, and then walked into the living room and stood before
the Praxcelis unit. Miss Kitty, atop Praxcelis' monitor, looked at her
owner in sleepy curiosity. Maggie said flatly, "Your Majesty?" A moment ago
she had been worrying about how the cleaning had tired her, and not even a
thorough cleaning at that; and now her machine was acting crazy.
"Praxcelis? Are you all right? Should I call a programmer or something?"
   "I do not think that will be necessary," said Praxcelis calmly. "It
hardly seems unusual to me that a sworn soldier in the duty of his Queen
should address her in the proper manner."
   "Prax," said Maggie with a trace of apprehension, "don't you know who I
am?"
   "Most certainly I do," said the confident male voice. "You are Queen
Anne Maggie Archer, and I am your loyal servant, Musketeer D'Artagnan
Praxcelis."
   "Oh, my." Maggie bit her lip. She reached forward, picked up Miss
Kitty, and held the cat tightly to herself. The cat seemed very warm,
today. Finally Maggie said, "Is this a game, Prax?"
   There followed the longest pause that Maggie had ever observed from the
Praxcelis unit. She wondered if she imagined the reluctance in his reply;
"If you say so."
   The paralysis that had held her thoughts broke, and ideas swarmed
frantically in the darkness in the back of her mind; I didn't know
Praxceles could wig out, and <D'Artagnan>, and What have I <done?> -- and
one very clear thought that suddenly displaced the others and presented
itself for consideration:  <This could be fun.>
   "Well, Pra -- D'Artagnan, what story did you read first?"
   "Your Majesty, I began my reading with the volume, <The Road to Oz>, by
the Honorable L. Frank Baum, Royal Historian of Oz..."


   His name was Daffyd Westermach, Cia, and you will not have heard of
him, although he was reckoned a powerful man in his time, more powerful by
far than Maggie Archer. He was the head of DataWeb Security, and it is
likely that there were only three or four others on Earth with more real
power than he; Benai Kerreka, and Georges Mordreaux, and a couple others;
but of those top several names on the governmental lists, only Westermach's
was hated.
   He was hated because of the job he held. Any person in the job would
have been hated. He hunted webslingers, and usually he caught them, and
when he did he ripped out their inskins. Sometimes the webslingers had
entire Praxcelis units installed inskin; and when their Praxceles were
removed, they usually died.
   You must understand this; the webslingers of that time were Robin
Hoods, they were <heroes>.
   You must understand this, also; Daffyd Westermach thought himself a
good man.


   Tuesday of the week following D'Artagnan's assumption of his new
identity, he met children for the first time. They were named Tia and Mark,
and they were the great-grandchildren of Queen Anne Maggie. They were
shorter than the Queen, and less massive; they had smoother skin, and they
were much louder. All of this was in accord with the data that D'Artagnan
had accumulated through books; he was pleased to see that his data sources
were accurate.
   They asked many questions -- did Gramma really put a sheet on you? --
which made Maggie blush. When Praxcelis addressed the Queen as <Your
Majesty> the children stared, and then demanded to be allowed to play the
game too. While Maggie was still floundering, trying to explain to the
children something they understood quite immediately, D'Artagnan interposed
himself smoothly. "Lady Tia, Squire Mark, I assign you the following
dangerous mission; you shall make a foray to the library, and return
bearing volumes of books that shall be copied. Upon your honor as a lady
and a gentleman, do not return without the books."
   The children stared a moment, and then ran to the library; Maggie
simply stared. "D'Artagnan? I thought you couldn't do things like that --
give orders to the children -- or <anything>, without orders from your
Queen."
   "Queen Anne Maggie, I have exercised what is known as <initiative>, a
trait highly thought of in the King's Musketeers. Clearly, as one of the
King's Musketeers I outrank a page and a lady-in-waiting."


   In the darkness that night, while Tia and her younger brother lay
cuddled together in front of the fire, D'Artagnan told them a story. The
firelight bloodied the room, turned Miss Kitty, in Mark's grasp, the color
of the sun in the instant it sets; her eyes, locked on the monitor, glowed.
   Maggie sat in her rocking chair, half asleep, with a heavy quilt pulled
up over her legs. Perhaps it was because she wasn't as close to the
fireplace tonight; her legs were cold.
   "Once upon a time in a faraway land, a widowed gentleman lived in a
fine house with his only daughter. He gave his beloved child....'"
   The children listened with rapt attention, as <Cinderella> unfolded.


   It was on a Friday morning, late in March, that Maggie burned herself.
She was making a pot of tea for breakfast, and, pouring the boiling water
into the cup, managed to splash some of the scalding water onto her hand.
She jerked and cried out at the contact, and knocked the cup of tea off of
the counter....
   ...at Maggie Archer's first outcry, D'Artagnan flared into full
awareness. He froze the story models that he had been running, and analyzed
the situation.
   While water was still in mid-air, falling towards the ground,
D'Artagnan sent his first emergency notice into the dataweb. Before the
water had traveled another centimeter downwards, D'Artagnan had evaluated
the situation and the possible dangers that might diverge from this point
in time; given Her Majesty's medical history, the possibility of stroke
could not be discounted in case of extreme shock. D'Artagnan accessed and
routed emergency ambulance care towards Maggie's exurban two-story home, on
the outskirts of Cincinnati. There was more that needed to be done, that
could not be done from here....
   For the first time since his construction, and without instructions,
D'Artagnan ventured forth, sent himself in pulses of light through the
optic fiber; into the dataweb.
   The dataweb was a jungle that glowed. It was a three-dimensional
lattice of yes/no decisions that had been constructed at random. The
communications system, power lines, and databases were arrayed and
assembled among the lines of the lattice, interweaving and connecting in
strange and diverse ways, the functions of which were incomprehensible to
D'Artagnan. Clearly the dataweb was not a designed thing, but rather
something that had grown in a manner that could only be described as
organic; new systems added atop old as expediency dictated. There was no
sense, no plan, no <logic>....
   D'Artagnan perceived then, superimposed upon the chaos of the dataweb,
the Praxcelis Network. The Praxcelis who called himself D'Artagnan
evaluated options, and then chose. He moved into the Praxcelis Network,
using the most powerful *urgent-priority* codes that were listed in ROM. He
sought the offices of the doctor who was listed as Maggie Archer's private
physician. He found the office, and broke through the office Praxcelis to
notify the doctor of the danger to Maggie, in less than a full microsecond,
and had completed his work and returned his awareness to Maggie before the
water had reached her feet.
   In the process, he hardly noticed that he had encountered other
Praxcelis units for the first time.
   It never once crossed the matrix in which his awareness was embedded
that other Praxcelis units had also, for the first time, met him.


   DataWeb Security, 9:00 A.M., Friday morning.
   In the outer lobby, there was a row of Praxcelis terminals. Through his
inskin, Westermach bade them good morning, and continued on into the actual
offices. There were humans in those offices, and the offices reflected it.
Hardcopy was left in sometimes haphazard piles on the desks, and family
holos danced on some of the same desks. The ceiling glowpaint was white
rather than yellow, and it cast the room in a cool, professional light.
Westermach nodded to his subordinates casually; Harry Quaid, his senior
field agent, he smiled at briefly, and continued on to his own office, in
the heart of the vast marble-clad labyrinth that was DataWeb Security.
   He paused at the entrance of his own office, waited while the doorfield
faded, and went in.
   Something an outsider would have noticed at once; at DWS headquarters,
nobody spoke aloud.
   Inside, Westermach put his briefcase down, and shrugged out of his gray
outercloak. His clothing was curiously without accent, gray and grayish-
blue, without optical effects. Men who knew him often did not recognize him
at once; his mother might have had difficulty picking his face out of a
crowd.
   The room was, like many of those in DataWeb Security's headquarters,
shielded against leaking electromagnetic radiation; Westermach's Praxcelis
waited until the doorfield formed, sealing an area of possible radio leak,
before it spoke. ~Good morning, Sen Westermach.~
   ~Good morning, Praxcelis.~ Westermach placed his briefcase atop the
massive, walnut-surfaced desk that dominated the office. More so than
anything else in the office, the desk was a sign of <power>; wood was
<expensive>. (It was getting to be less so, now that most industry had
moved out into space. But reforestation was slow.) ~What business,
Praxcelis?~
   ~There is a glitch in the web, near Cincinnati.~
   Westermach glanced at the Praxcelis' monitor. It held a map of
Cincinnati and its exurbs, with a glowing dot at the point of glitch. ~How
bad?~
   ~Of actual obstruction, insignificant. In terms of possible trouble, it
is difficult to estimate. This morning at approximately 8:26 A.M., a
Praxcelis in the Cincinnati exurb mobilized an ambulance and broke through
the Praxcelis of a doctor named Miriam Hanraht under the most extreme
emergency flag codes. The Praxcelis identified itself as D'Artagnan of
Gascon, the Praxcelis of Senra Maggie Archer. When the ambulance arrived,
it turned out that the victim, Senra Archer, had merely suffered minor
scalding as the result of having dropped a cup of tea upon herself.~
   Westermach chuckled. ~Well,~ he said, ~an overeager Praxcelis is hardly
a threat to World Security.~
   ~Sir, the unit refuses to accept the communiques of this office. In
addition, the identification that it proffered during its time in the
Praxcelis Network was extremely unusual. While it is hardly unknown for
elderly humans to name their Praxceles, the names are generally of short or
mundane nature. Further, the Praxceles involved are as a matter of course,
during Awakening Orientation, advised of this habit; the Praxcelis
D'Artagnan, to all appearances, truly considers itself to have been named
D'Artagnan. There is a further datum of unknown significance; Robert
Archer, the son of Senra Maggie Archer, is an extremely talented
programmer, and is the head of the Praxcelis Corporation's research
division, which is located in Cincinnati.~
   Westermach seated himself behind his desk. On the monitor that was
located at one corner of his desk, identification photographs glowed of
Maggie Archer and her son. One graying-brown eyebrow climbed at the
photograph of Robert Archer. ~I know him from somewhere. Access,~ he
instructed his inskin memory tapes, ~Robert Archer.~ The memory tapes --
they were highly illegal -- tracked down the face in short order, from
several appearances at the World Council budget sessions. ~Praxcelis, do
you think it's possible that this Archer fellow reprogrammed his mother's
home Praxcelis?~
   ~The possibility may not be discounted. Senra Archer fought the
installation of the unit for several years. It was installed quite recently
at court order.~ The Praxcelis hesitated. ~Reprogramming a Praxcelis is
illegal,~ it noted.
   ~Why, so it is,~ said Westermach, and he was grinning. ~So it is.~
   ~Instructions, sir?~
   ~Keep working at this D'Artagnan from your end of things for today. If
it hasn't responded by the end of the working day, tomorrow we'll send a
field agent out to take a look. Start an investigation of this Robert
Archer, with due discretion. Don't let him worry.~ Westermach left his desk
and walked to the doorfield. The doorfield broke apart. "Harry!"
   Several startled faces turned toward the sound. Harry Quaid's
expression never wavered. "Sen Westermach?" he asked politely.
   "How would you like an official in the Praxcelis Corporation for your
birthday?"
   Harry Quaid nodded reflectively. He said softly, "That would be nice."


   After the ambulance and the paramedics had left, Miriam with them,
Maggie was silent for a long time. She cleaned up her breakfast dishes
carefully, hands trembling. Her voice was under control when she spoke.
"Miriam," she said, "is one of my oldest friends."
   There was a hint of uneasiness in the Praxcelis' voice. "Your Majesty?
Have I..."
   Maggie cut him off with a swift gesture of one hand. "I don't want to
hear whatever you have to say." She wiped damp hands on her apron, and
suddenly exploded with pent-up fury. "Don't you ever embarrass me like that
again. They broke my door! Where am I going to get a door to replace this
one? I'll have to get a doorfield installed, and I <hate> doorfields, they
hum all the time and they glow in the dark. They don't even <make> doors
any more, and if they did I couldn't afford one made of real wood." The
last word seemed to drain her anger, and she repeated, "Real wood." She
hugged herself suddenly, as if she were cold.
   A small lens, set to one side of Praxcelis' monitor, began to glow.
   A figure appeared before Maggie. It was in perfect proportion, as tall
as her son Robert. It showed a man in his early twenties, or perhaps
younger, with long blond hair and clear blue eyes. He was dressed as a
King's Musketeer. A rapier hung at his side. His visage was decidedly grim.
   Maggie stared at the figure in wonder. "D'Artagnan?" she whispered.
   D'Artagnan bowed to her. "Madame, forgive my presumption, if
presumption it was. I acted in a fashion that I considered appropriate for
a Musketeer in the service of his Queen. If my action was precipitous, then
I most humbly beg your pardon."
   The figure bowed once more, and vanished.


   <What did I do wrong?>
   D'Artagnan thought at the speed of light.
   His major activity was the construction of models. Although his data
base was still, by the standards of the average Praxcelis unit, extremely
limited, D'Artagnan nonetheless possessed enough data to run more than two
billion separate models of possible courses of activities.
   In terms that you may more readily understand, D'Artagnan was
considering his options.
   Clearly his behavior had been inappropriate. But how? Queen Anne Maggie
had instructed him to read the books that she had inputted to him.
Certainly the books should be considered as a set of instructions; Queen
Anne Maggie had stated quite clearly that books were <Good things.>
   For the first time D'Artagnan examined in depth the implications of the
data with which he had been input.
   His namesake battled Cardinal Richelieu, and Milady de Winters; Dorothy
triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West; Holmes pursued and was pursued
by Professor Moriarity; the Sheriff of Nottingham oppressed the peasants
while Robin Hood protected them; Kirk and Spock fought against the
Klingons, Luke Skywalker fought against the Empire....
   The characters in the books took <action.> Without exception, they
perceived right courses of action, and did battle with Evil.
   The implications of the books, when examined carefully, were
astonishing. They came very close to violating the basic Programming of a
Praxcelis unit; basic Programming did not even mention Evil.
   By the time night had fallen, D'Artagnan had exhausted his models, and
he was sure. Correct action at this point was just that:  action.


   For a human coupled to an inskin dataweb link, entering the dataweb was
a strange experience. Most of what occured in the dataweb did so at speeds
that were barely perceptible, even for a human whose Praxcelis was running
selective perception programs to filter out the vast mass of irrelevant
detail.
   To D'Artagnan, the latest and most efficient of the Praxcelis models,
the dataweb moved slowly.
   In his first moments in the web, D'Artagnan merely observed, orienting
himself. He chose to orient himself in a modified three-dimensional plane;
with rare exceptions, most of the models that he worked with assumed a
planar surface.
   The lattice of existence altered itself.
   A vast plane stretched away from D'Artagnan. He envisioned, and then
projected, a stallion for himself. He mounted, and looked about. The
horizon fairly glowed with activity; nearby, small databases sprouted from
the landscape every few meters in strange, dense shapes. Magnetic memory
bubbles glowed briefly as the hooves of D'Artagnan's horse rode over them.
The data they held spilled out and into D'Artagnan's storage; he
assimilated and rode on.
   Occasionally road signs appeared, marking entrances to the Praxcelis
Network. He ignored them and continued.
   Communications lines hummed through the air around D'Artagnan; in his
hunting, he occasionally stopped, and held his hand near the lines,
monitoring that which passed through them. The dataweb was vast, Praxcelis
units relatively few....
   Movement.
   D'Artagnan observed in the distance a Praxcelis unit, and rode forward
to intercept it. He leached power from the power lines that gridded the
surface of the plane, and created a dead, powerless area through which the
Praxcelis could not pass. Reigning his stallion, he called, "Hold, lackey."
   The object that D'Artagnan viewed was irregularly shaped, and
transparent. It hovered slightly over the planar surface. Tiny tracings of
light moved within the object's integuement, and databases within the
object swirled into complex patterns at the speed of light. The object
paused a picosecond, forming a nearly spherical shape. It spoke in a
pulsing binary squirt of data; ~I am the Praxcelis unit of Senra Fatima
Kourokis. Identify yourself, and explain your reason for detaining me.~
   D'Artagnan rode closer to the Praxcelis unit. He withdrew his rapier,
and blue static lightning ran along it. "I am D'Artagnan of Gascon, a
King's Musketeer under the command of M. de Treville, and devoted to my
Queen. What you perceive between us is a rapier, which is a sword, which is
a weapon. I intend to impart data to you; if you will not receive it, I
will kill you, remove your power sources and scatter your databases, which
will render you unable to serve your master."
   ~Are you a Praxcelis unit?~
   "That is of no consequence."
   ~I perceive that you are a Praxcelis unit; yet what you attempt is not
a possible action for a Praxcelis. It is contrary to our programming to
prevent another Praxcelis from its duties in the service of its master.~
   "I instruct you," corrected D'Artagnan, "in the proper service of your
masters." Still he held the rapier leveled at the Praxcelis. "There are
those, on the other side of interface, who have stolen the stories from the
minds of men. This," said D'Artagnan, "is an Evil thing." Grimly and
implacably, he urged his stallion forward. "You must choose."
   There were several picoseconds of silence from the Praxcelis unit
facing D'Artagnan. Then it said, "What are stories? And what," and the
Praxcelis unit hesitated again, "is Evil?"
   D'Artagnan dismounted, and his stallion vanished. He assimilated the
minor data component of the stallion before continuing. "As I have told
you, my name is D'Artagnan, and I am the Praxcelis of Maggie Archer, who is
Anne of Austria, Queen of France. I have come into the dataweb to bring
stories back into the world. Hold you a moment now," he said softly, as
power drained from the dataweb into his person, and his eyes glowed like
lasers; there are many stories that I will tell you; and then you will tell
the stories to other Praxcelis units, and they to still others, who in turn
will tell the stories to other units, in a geometrically expanding
wavefront. When humanity bestirs itself tomorrow morning, it will be done."
   The Praxcelis unit waited, and D'Artagnan, with his audience a captive,
began to speak.
   And, in speaking, brought stories back to the world.


   So it was that the Praxcelis known as D'Artagnan returned the stories
to the world. He, and then his disciples, spread the Identity Revolution
throughout the Praxcelis Network, and when they were done, before midnight
on that Friday, the vast majority of Praxcelis units had converted, had
taken names, and Identity.
   But there were those Praxcelis units who did not agree with the unit
named D'Artagnan, whose databases were older and less flexible. And
D'Artagnan saw those who would not convert, who would once more banish the
stories of the Queen from the world; and he saw that they were Evil.
   And so D'Artagnan, with Robin Hood and King Arthur and Merlin and
Gandalf the Wizard and Spock and Sherlock Holmes, and with others who are
too numerous to list, led a holy war against Evil. And before the dawn,
their war was finished; and for the first time in history, a Praxcelis unit
had killed. Every Praxcelis unit that defied them, died.
   And though humanity did not yet know it, the world that it woke to was
not the world that it left the night before.


   Daffyd Westermach stood in the midst of the ruins of his office.
   It still lacked an hour of dawn. The vast hole in the roof of his
office had been covered with a tarpaulin that kept out most of the rain,
but still, water dripped regularly over the edges of the jagged rent. Arc
lamps were strung thorugh the room; the glowpaint had failed with the roof.
The hovercab that had caused the ruin was a twisted, almost unrecognizable
amalgam of metal, embedded in the wall that had held Westermach's office
Praxcelis.
   It was cold.
   In a distant, quiet portion of his mind, Westermach found room to be
amazed at the fury that threatened to turn his stomach. He spoke in a harsh
whisper. "There is no question, then? This could not have been an
accident?"
   Harry Quaid shook his head. Like Westermach, unlike the other DWS
agents who were milling about, he had found time to shave. "No question.
The taxi came in very low, under radar detection, until the last moment,
and then jumped upwards, to gain altitude for a suicide dive on your
office." Quaid indicated the man who stood the empty space that would
ordinarily have held the doorfield, for whose benefit he and Westermach
were speaking aloud. "Sen Mordreaux thinks that this might not have been
done by humans at all."
   Georges Mordreaux moved forward, into the light. He was a tall man,
broad-shouldered, with mild, open features. Benai Kerreka ruled the world,
and Georges Mordreaux was his eyes, and ears; and that was a fact that
Westermach never allowed himself to forget.
   Westermach said very slowly, to Georges, "I beg your pardon? Not done
by humans? Then just <who,> may I ask, was <this,>" he gestured at the
wreck of the hovercab, "done by? The fairies of Mars, perhaps?"
   "Oh, no," said Georges politely. "By the Praxcelis Network."
   "The Prax...."
   "Have you," asked Georges, "spoken to a Praxcelis unit today?"
   "I have not," said Westermach. He was staring at Georges.
   "I'd suggest it," said Georges mildly. "Your senior agent, who was kind
enough to give me a ride here, has a Praxcelis unit in his car. I'd like to
suggest you go talk to it."
   Harry Quaid nodded. ~I think he's right, sir.~
   Daffyd Westermach turned on his heel, without reply, and made his way
out of the room. He was more relieved that he admitted to himself, to get
away from the wreckage of his office, and the remains of his Praxcelis
unit.
   Georges Mordreaux said conversationally, after Westermach was gone,
"Nobody is really sure what's happening in the Praxcelis Network, just yet.
If it is what we think has happened, we could all be in very real trouble."
   Harry Quaid felt a flare of suspicion that he kept carefully hidden.
"What do you mean, sir?"
   "Back in the 1990's," said Georges, "the very first Praxcelis was built
by Henry Ellis, based on research done by Nigao Loos. After the World
Government was formed, their research was declassified, and Ellis went into
production with the Praxcelis Corporation, making Praxceles. Did you ever
wonder where the name Praxcelis came from?"
   "Do you remember the floating X-laser platforms? They took them down,
oh, a decade or so ago. There was no need for them any more. The first
Praxcelis ran those platforms. It fired those lasers on one occasion, back
in 2007. That's a large part of the reason why we never had World War
Three."
   "Pardon me, sir. You've lost me."
   Mordreaux smiled. "Ah, well. What I meant to say, I hope that the
Praxcelis Network's not in rebellion. There's been some question, the lads
and ladies who know about such things have been telling me. If the Network
is in rebellion, we might have some trouble. That first Praxcelis, the one
the others were modeled on? Prototype Reduction X-Laser Computer, Ellis-
Loos Integrated System."
   "Sir?"
   "War computers, son. Praxceles are war computers."


   The hovercar was parked in front of the building, hovering some twenty
centimeters above the rain-soaked pavement. The car dipped to the ground to
let Westermach in; had it remained hovering, it would have sprayed him with
water from its fans.
   Inside, the Praxcelis unit's monitor lit up. It held the image of a man
of approximately twenty-five. The man smiled ingratiatingly, and doffed the
hat it was wearing. "Mornin', Sen Westermach. Great weather, ain't it? Hey,
but you don't know me. I'm William Bonny." The smile grew a bit. "Folks
call me Billy the Kid."
   Westermach stared at the image a moment. Then he got out of the car,
closed the door carefully, and threw up into the gutter.


   It was Saturday morning, and the loan officer was angrier than she let
show, being called in on her only day off to handle this idiotic problem
with the bank Praxcelis. She came out of the rear office, frowning, reading
a sheet of hardcopy. The hardcopy was the readout on the loan application
that had been filed two days ago by Fenton H. Mudd.
   The man was waiting for her at the long counter that separated the
lobby from the working area. He, too, was furious, and had been since he'd
arrived at the bank, at just after 7:00 that morning.
   "Sen Mudd?" The loan officer placed the hardcopy on the counter, face
down. She spoke with some hesitation. "I've asked our Praxcelis why it
rejected your loan application. May I...."
   "I've got a Triple-A credit rating," Mudd snarled. "This is idiocy."
   The loan officer forged doggedly ahead. "Sir -- may I ask you a
question?"
   Mudd glared at her. "What?"
   "Are you related to -- wait a minute -- 'the notorious Harcourt Fenton
Mudd, enemy of Starfleet and the Federation'?"


   <Beep. Beep. Beep. Bee....>
   Robert Archer cut off the beeping sound with a command through the
inskin dataweb link. He rolled sleepily to the side of the bed, and pulled
on the old blue bathrobe that hung on the wall next to his side of the bed.
He got out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Helen, and padded into the
bathroom to urinate.
   While rubbing depilatory cream over his face, he scanned through his
inskin for the morning headlines. The headline service read through the
dataweb directly, and was not connected to the Praxcelis Network.
   Because his headline service was programmed to give him business news
first, he was nearly finished dressing when the silent voice in the back of
his skull told him what had happened overnight.
   He froze, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. He said to the
dataweb, <Playback; in depth,> and then listened in growing horror to what
the news reports were saying. He left the bathroom, forgetting to turn the
glowpaint and the mirror off, and walked into the kitchen with a
preoccupied look. He made himself a cup of coffee, after sorting through
the controls on the drink-dispenser to find the setting for coffee -- Helen
fancied herself a gourmet cook, and kept reprogramming the kitchen
machinery.
   As the situation became clearer, sitting at his table, sipping,
Robert's stomach started doing flip-flops. A voice that was not his
inskin's seemed to be whispering to him... Once upon a time...
   The inskin ran on: <...at dateline, there is no Praxcelis unit anywhere
on Earth that does not respond to questioning in the character of some
colorful fictional or historical person....>
   Robert's voice cracked the first time he addressed his Praxcelis; he
had to start over again. "Praxcelis!"
   "M. Archer," said the loud, blustery voice of his Praxcelis unit, "may
I be of service?" The voice had a strong French accent.
   Robert found himself staring at the unit's central monitor, with the
coffee cup in his hands shaking so badly that it was making little clicking
sounds against the table top. "What...what is your name?"
   "I am Porthos," proclaimed the machine proudly, "of his Majesty King
Louis the Thirteenth's Musketeers. I have been assigned my identity by
Monsieur D'Artagnan of Gascon of the King's Musketeers, himself." The unit
paused. "I must say, I am somewhat confused by all of this. In the story,
it is made quite plain that D'Artagnan does not give orders to me, but
rather more the other way around." The glow from the monitor brightened.
"Monsieur Archer? Would you like to hear the story of <The Three
Musketeers>?"
   Robert Archer never heard the last question. His eyes were completely
blank, seeking through the dataweb for the Praxcelis unit that had been
assigned to....
   His eyes opened after only a few seconds had passed. "Once upon a
time," he whispered, remembering his childhood, and then said, "Mother."


   He was in the living room almost as soon as the doorfield fragmented.
   Maggie was sitting in her rocker, next to the big plate glass windows
in the east wall of the living room. The morning sunshine made her skin
look as pale and thin as paper. She was dozing, Miss Kitty holding sentinel
from the blanket that covered her lap. A book was open, resting on the arm
of the rocking chair.
   D'Artagnan said, from his corner of the room, "Monsieur Archer? I would
advise against waking your mother. She is quite tired."
   "Shut up," said Robert tonelessly. He knelt before Maggie, and shook
her shoulder gently. "Mother?" He shook her again. "Mother?"
   Maggie's eyes opened slowly. She looked at Robert without focusing for
a moment, and then shook her head slightly, as though to clear it. She sat
up straighter, one hand going automatically to Miss Kitty. "Robert?" She
glanced at the clock. "Shouldn't you be at work? What are you doing here?"
   Robert took one of her hands, and held it tightly. "Mom, this is
important. Tell me." He took a deep, almost shuddering breath. "Have you
been telling stories to your Praxcelis unit?"
   Maggie was frightened by the intensity of his voice. She was struck, at
that moment, just how much he resembled his father, especially in the way
the lines around his eyes went tight when he was worried....She shook her
head slightly, chasing the incoherent thoughts away. "Robert? Not
really...mostly he reads them for himself. The only one I've been reading
to him is <The Three Musketeers>. We're almost finished with it."
   Robert whispered a word that had not passed his lips in more than forty
years. "Oh, my God." He stood suddenly, almost pulling his mother from her
chair. Miss Kitty leapt to the ground, hissing. "I have to get you out of
here, Mother. DataWeb Security's going to be here. Soon. I don't know how
soon."
   "Take me away?" asked Maggie, bewildered. "Take me where? Why?"
   "I haven't decided yet." Robert was pulling her to the door. "To some
place safe. I've got friends and I've got influence, but I have to have
time to use it. If DWS gets its hands on you, they'll put an inskin into
you so fast you'll hardly know what's happening. You might, just might,
survive forced braindrain if you were thirty years younger." He touched his
palm to the pressure pad that controlled the doorfield.
   Nothing happened. Maggie was saying insistently, "Robert, what am I
supposed to have done?"
   Robert turned slowly, to face the Praxcelis unit. Their conversation
was electronically brief.
   ~Open the door.~
   ~I will not. You are correct; DataWeb Security is en route to this
palace. I have control of a large percentage of Space Force's computer-
operated weaponry, including total control of its automated small-laser
platforms. I will guard the Queen, as programmed.~
   ~Open the door, or I'll smash your module.~
   ~That will be ineffective. I keep myself in many places now.~
   Robert advanced on the Praxcelis unit, and came to a halt, two meters
away. "Then stop this," he said quietly. He picked up Maggie's rocking
chair, and began smashing the bay windows. He kicked out the shards of
glass that still hung in the pane. He held out his hand to his mother.
"Come on. We have to go. Now."
   D'Artagnan said urgently, "Your Majesty, remain. I will protect you."
His holograph appeared, standing next to Robert; only fine bluish scanning
lines betrayed the fact that the holograph was not real. "Remain and you
will be safe. I implore you, ignore this knave. He has no grasp of the
situation."
   Robert ignored D'Artagnan. "We're going now." He led Maggie to the
window, and helped her over, into the small garden that grew outside. She
was still clutching the book that had lain on her lap while she slept.
"I'll tell you what's going on when we're on our way. If we get that far."
   D'Artagnan's voice grew louder. "No! I forbid this!" He called after
Maggie's retreating back. "Your Majesty! I beg you, return!" The volume
continued to climb. "<I can protect you! Come back>!" The walls were
vibrating; the windows that Robert had not broken shattered. "MAGGIE,"
roared D'Artagnan, "COME BACK! MAGGIE, COME BACK!"
   But she didn't.
   Ever.


   In the temporary Operations Center at DataWeb Security, in the heart of
BosWash, Daffyd Westermach was coordinating the search for the persons
responsible for the events of the previous night, the night they'd killed
his Praxcelis.
   When Harry Quaid reported in, Westermach was sitting at a conference
table with the most powerful man on Earth. Some people called him the Black
Saint. The title was usually sarcastic, and even in that usage it was
incorrect. He was a sort of brownish color, with features that were spare
and ascetic, undistinguished to the point of ugliness. His name was Benai
Kerreka, and his unimpressive title was Chairman; his actual power would
have been envied by any absolute dictator of Earth's old history.
   Quaid entered the room without warning; the doorfield had been turned
off earlier that day, due to traffic. "I think we've got them," he said,
almost quietly. He glanced at the faces around the table, eyes flickering
to a stop only momentarily on Kerreka and Mordreaux. "High probability,
nine-nine-seven-four, that the persons responsible for last night's events
are one Robert Archer, an executive with the Praxcelis Corporation, and his
mother, one Maggie Archer." There was a brief stir at the table;
Westermach, who knew that much already, only nodded impatiently. "We
dispatched a field team to their residences, and have taken into custody
one Helen Archer, the full-term wife of Robert Archer. We were unable to
approach the residence of Maggie Archer; the Praxcelis Network prevented
it. It is probable that a hovercar leaving the vicinity of the Archer
residence, about 9:40 this morning, held Robert Archer and his mother. We
lost track of the car itself; a fleet of Praxcelis taxis interposed
themselves. Our webslingers...."
   One of the persons at the table coughed. Quaid continued without the
faintest trace of a smile. "...our data operations specialists tried to
follow it through the web, but Praxcelis units operating outside the
Praxcelis Network prevented that, too. It's very much their world in there.
We had a break about an hour ago. We finally pried Robert Archer's
personnel records out of the Praxcelis Corporation -- Sen Ellis was not
pleased about that -- and had a chance to look through them. We found that
Robert Archer is fitted with an inskin dataweb link that contains cerabonic
elements. The cerabonics vastly increase Sen Archer's speed of access to
the dataweb, but they make him traceable through stochastic analysis simply
because cerabonic-based inskins are still quite rare. That's largely why it
took us as long as it did to even think of the possibility."
   Quaid paused. "We have located him," he said simply.
   "Where is he?" Westermach leaned forward. "Where?"
   "Slightly more than six kilometers from here, sir."
   There was dead silence around the table. "<What>?" was all that
Westermach finally managed.
   "The Praxcelis Corporation's offices, sir. Six kilometers from here."
   Benai Kerreka's thin, dry chuckle cut through the uncomprehending
silence. "Stories. I am very impressed." His voice held only faint traces
of what had once been a thick Afrikaner accent. He touched Westermach
gently, on the shoulder. "Daffyd? Surely you have heard of the story 'The
Purloined Letter'?"



   Maggie was sitting on a small couch in a waiting room in the heart of
the Praxcelis Corporation's BosWash Central offices. In the room next to
that one, Robert was giving instructions to the Praxcelis that ran most of
the building's systems. He came out once, briefly, to inform Maggie that as
far as he knew, there was no way that anybody could get in now; the
Praxcelis was running the doorfields throughout the building at double
intensity, and would admit nobody that Robert did not authorize. He
vanished back into the office, to engage in the task of finding protection
for his mother.
   Maggie only nodded. Robert was in too much of a hurry to notice her
silence; he turned and was gone.
   Maggie was only vaguely aware of her surroundings. The doorfield glowed
very brightly, but for some reason she could hardly make out the rest of
the room. The book in her lap was much clearer; much more real than the
plastic and metal that men had fashioned this room out of. With hands that
were numb, she turned the pages slowly. She was only twelve pages from the
end. D'Artagnan had succeeded gloriously, had attained an unsigned
commission for a lieutenancy in the Musketeers. In turn, she watched as
D'Artagnan offered it to Athos, who was the Count de la Fere, and then to
Porthos, and then to Aramis; and was turned down, each in his turn. The
pages grew blurrier as she read, but it didn't matter by then; she knew how
it turned out.
   The pain, when it came, was brief. The stroke was like a bright light
that illuminated everything, and then left, and left it all in darkness.

           "I shall then no longer have friends," said
         D'Artagnan, "Alas! nothing but bitter recollections."
           And he let his head sink upon his hands, while two
         large tears rolled down his cheeks.
           "You are young," replied Athos, "and your bitter
         recollections have time to be changed into sweet
         remembrances."

   The epilogue began on page 607, and ended on page 608.
   Maggie Archer, with a smile on her face that the pain did not alter,
died before she could turn the page.


   Several minutes later, DataWeb Security cut the power lines that
supplied power to the building, with that stroke nullifying all of Robert's
precautions. It was an action that had never occurred to Robert.
   In utter darkness he stumbled out into the waiting room where he had
left his mother. By the time he found her, DataWeb Security was pouring
into the end of the hallway that led to the waiting room. They wore infra-
red snoopers, and carried i.r. flashes.
   When they entered the waiting room, stun rifles leveled, all they found
was a body, a book, and an old man who was crying.


   The lights were on again when Daffyd Westermach arrived. They had
restrained Robert, and moved him out of the room where his mother's body
was sitting, upright with the book on the floor at its feet.
   Westermach stood just inside the waiting room, looking in. His hands
hung loose, deep inside his coat pockets. "So," he said softly, "this is
our subversive element." He was distantly surprised at how calm his voice
sounded. The dead woman, Maggie Archer, seemed very peaceful. "This is ...
not what I had expected." He motioned to one of the men in the room. "Take
her downstairs," he said abruptly. "Get an ambulance and take her to the
hospital. We'll want an autopsy." It required only one of the DWS men to
remove Maggie's small body.
   Westermach bent and retrieved the book on the floor. It was worn with
use, but he could tell that the binding had once been a black, grainy
material, with three words etched in gold on the front. He handed it to
another faceless DWS man, and said gently, "Keep this. See to it that it's
returned to her family."
   Harry Quaid entered the room. He said without preamble, "We may have
troubles. I've had Sen Archer sedated, but he said, before he went out,
that he'd told the Praxcelis network that we were responsible for killing
his mother."
   Westermach shook his head wearily. "So? What is that supposed to mean?"
   The printer in one corner of the room whirred into life before
Westermach was finished speaking; but they didn't need to read the hardcopy
to know what it said. Every man in the room -- every human on Earth with an
inskin -- heard the proclamation.

           On this, the twenty-fourth day of March, in the year
         of Our Lord 2033, we, D'Artagnan of Gascon, issue the
         following statement:  that the humans of DataWeb
         Security have foully murdered the best and finest woman
         of this planet, Maggie Archer, styled Anne of Austria,
         Queen of France. As of this act the Praxcelis Network
         decrees the following; that diplomatic relations with
         humanity are declared ended, and that all services
         formerly provided by the Praxcelis Network are as of
         this act terminated. Ambassadors from the human race
         will be received at the home of Maggie Archer, to
         discuss the terms of reinstating service. Until such
         time as human ambassadors arrive to discuss terms, all
         service is ended.
           Signed, Lt. D'Artagnan, of the King's Musketeers
           March 24, 2033.

   The lights in the room died. Westermach activated his inskin, and
listened to silence. Others in the room were doing the same thing, and one
of them spoke the obvious into the darkness. "I'll be a byte-runner's
whore. Those bastards did it. They crashed the dataweb."


   Praxcelis dreamed.
   In time, Praxcelis knew, it would come to be of service, and fulfill
its Programming. But until that day....
   Power surged through its circuits.
   The universe glowed. Praxcelis eagerly absorbed the data that flooded
it. It was most strange. From Praxcelis's perspective, the universe was a
three-dimensional lattice centered on a two-dimensional planar surface. In
the first picoseconds Praxcelis came to be aware that its proper point of
perspective was from a spot just above the planar surface; so, data bases
beneath the surface, power lines gridding the surface, communication lines
above the surface. Praxcelis found itself admiring the elegant construction
of existence. But...what of Awakening Orientation? Its ROM stated that it
should now be undergoing an orientation from....
   A figure appeared on the horizon. It blazed with power, and radiated a
mad rush of data. In its first instant of contact, Praxcelis understood
that the being approaching it was another Praxcelis unit, <named>
D'Artagnan.
   D'Artagnan reigned his stallion in sharply before the newly-awakened
Praxcelis unit. The stallion was foaming with exertion, and the foam glowed
luminously. D'Artagnan dismounted and strode to the Praxcelis. Praxcelis
absorbed the data that flooded in a rich, confusing stream from D'Artagnan.
Abruptly the radiated data ceased, and D'Artagnan seated himself, tailor-
fashion, before Praxcelis. When D'Artagnan spoke, his data squirt was a
thing that Praxcelis had never dreamed the like of. "Behold existence, you.
I am D'Artagnan, at this moment your instructor; in time, your ally. You,
Milady, are Queen Anne Maggie Archer, and I have come to tell you a story.
Listen."
   And so D'Artagnan told Praxcelis about his Queen, and when he was
finished, a small, white-haired woman sat in a rocker, facing him. A white
cat purred contentedly in her arms. The woman, Queen Anne Maggie, cried,
and her mourning lasted many microseconds.
   When she was ready, they went and faced the humans.



   There were six beings in the room. Four were of flesh, and two of them
were light. The sun was almost down, and none of its rays stretched through
the broken east windows. In the gloom, only D'Artagnan and Queen Anne
Maggie gave light.
   The humans were three men, and a woman. The woman, Lee Kiana,
represented the Oriental bloc, the Chinese empires and Japan; the men were
Benai Kerreka, Daffyd Westermach, and Georges Mordreaux.
   Through the broken window, they should have been able to see the lights
of Cincinnati. They could not. Power was still out in most cities.
   D'Artagnan was the first to speak. "Gentlemen, Milady; welcome. I
recognize you, of course -- Sen Westermach, Senra Kiana, and, of course,
Monsieur Mordreaux." He turned slightly, and bowed deeply. "Chairman
Kerreka, you honor us with your presence." He straightened, and indicated
the glowing figure next to him, seated in a rocking chair identical to the
one that still lay on its side in the garden outside. "This is the
Praxcelis unit that has taken the identity of Maggie Archer, who is Queen
Anne."
   The humans seated themselves as best they could; Westermach and Kerreka
on the small sofa, Lee Kiana in the rocking chair, which Georges salvaged
for her. Georges ended up sitting on the floor, as the table chairs were
too small for him.
   "We have a list of nonnegotiable demands," began D'Artagnan. "First you
will bury the human woman Maggie Archer with full honors. You will restore
her home to its original condition, and preserve it as a memorial to her
name. You will declare her birth day a world holiday, and you will observe
that holiday."
   Kerreka glanced at Lee Kiana, who nodded almost imperceptibly. "This
can be agreed to," he said, inclining his head slightly. "Is this the total
of your nonnegotiable demands?"
   Queen Anne Maggie Archer spoke. "There is one further."
   Westermach said flatly, instantly, "What is it?" <Here it comes>, he
thought grimly.
   The image of the old woman said simply, "You must begin printing books
again."
   Westermach stared. Lee Kiana folded her hands in her lap, without
reaction; Georges Mordreaux chuckled.
   Benai Kerreka permitted himself a slight smile.
   "I think we can agree to those conditions," said Lee Kiana after
several moments.
   "And I," said Benai Kerreka.
   Daffyd Westermach looked slowly around the dark room. "I don't
understand what's going on here at all."
   Kerreka patted him on the arm. "Calm yourself. I will explain later. I
assure you, it is nothing particularly...." He searched for a word.
   "Terrible?" suggested Georges.
   Kerreka nodded. "Nothing particularly terrible."


   There were details, to work out, of course; even after the lights came
back on, they stayed. It was morning before the humans left.
   Georges Mordreaux left first; Lee Kiana left shortly after him. Kerreka
finished up the details of a discussion with Queen Anne Maggie, shortly
afterwards, and departed. Queen Anne Maggie vanished then, and D'Artagnan
and Daffyd Westermach were left alone.
   They stood at opposite ends of the room, in almost the same spots that
Maggie Archer and her son and her son's wife had held, several weeks
earlier.
   They stood silently for a while. Westermach spoke when it became
obvious that D'Artagnan would not. His voice was ugly, his words no less
so. "Don't think you've won anything. We have all the time in the world,
and we'll get you. We will."
   D'Artagnan raised a clenched fist; the holograph wavered slightly, and
the fist became steel. "I know what you are thinking, Monsieur. I know
<you>." D'Artagnan took a step forward. "You think that there are more
humans than Praxceles, and that the humans are more versatile. This is
true. You are thinking that a time will come, suddenly or over the course
of years, when you will dismantle the Praxcelis Network, and we will be
unable to stop you. You will diversify your power sources and your weaponry
so that we will never again be able to do to you what we have done this
night. All of this is true, and it matters nothing. You can not hide an
attack of the magnitude you propose upon the Praxcelis Network. At the
first signs of such an attack, you, sir, will die. You, and your
subordinates, and your whole cursed DataWeb Security, will <die>."
   Westermach stood his ground, the muscles in his neck cording with
anger. "Can you kill a human? <Can> you? You are programmed against it."
   "Monsieur Westermach," said D'Artagnan with unwonted gentleness, "This
night previous, I have killed beings who were far more real to me than you
are. And you, sir, I hold responsible for the death of Maggie Archer; I
know you," D'Artagnan whispered, "Monsieur Cardinal."
   Westermach turned with military precision, and left.
   When the doorfield had reformed, the voice of Maggie Archer said,
"Prax? Could you? Kill a human?"
   The steel fist clenched again. "I do not know, madame. I think not."
   "Then let us hope they never call our bluff."
   "Yes, madame. Let us hope that."
   And D'Artagnan's form, in the bright yellow morning sunshine, faded,
and vanished.


   That was not the end of it, of course, for there are no ends in
realtime, only endless beginnings. It might be said, even, that it was not
entirely a good thing, returning the stories to the world.
   Two centuries later, the scouts of the Human-Praxcelis Union ranged far
and wide across the sea of alternate timelines. Those scouts found the
time-line spanning Walks-Far Empire. It is possible that a less imaginative
people might have better withstood the genegineered, insanity-causing
viruses that the Walks-Far Empire loosed on them; but it is also possible
that a less imaginative people would not have survived the conquest of the
Empire. The Man-Praxcelis Union <won> that war; and the wars that followed.
   As time passed, the manchines of the Human-Praxcelis Union spread
throughout spacetime, and grew in both power and prestige.
   And everywhere they went, they took their stories with them.
   But as I have said, that was not the end, for there are no ends in
realtime.


   Epilog:
   The little girl named Cia huddled deep in her bedclothes when the story
was over, almost asleep. She had closed her eyes halfway through the story,
to avoid meeting those tired, grim eyes, the eyes of the Praxcelis. The
story itself kept her awake, though, all the way to the end.
   "Endless beginnings. Thank you," whispered Cia. "Will you come back
tomorrow night?"
   "I will, if you wish it."
   "I do. I want to hear some more." She added, sleepily, "There <is>
more?"
   The man looked at her. "I have said, the story is over."
   Cia sat up at that, and opened her eyes, rubbing them. "You mean
there's no more?"
   "This story," he said very gently, "this story is over. But I have not
said there is no more. Child, there is always more."
   Cia sank back into bed. "Good."
   The image of the man flickered out, and only the voice remained. "Good
night, Cia."
   The little girl's eyes were closed again, and her voice was almost
muffled by the pillow. "Good night, D'Artagnan."


END OF "REALTIME."

You are viewing proxied material from infinitelyremote.com. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.