Glasshouse - Charles Stross [101]
There’s also the question of the box files in the document repository. I figure they contain about a billion words of data, committed to a storage medium that is stable for tens of gigasecs, potentially even for hundreds. Spores. That’s what they need the babies for, isn’t it? I can’t remember why we don’t have repeated outbreaks of Curious Yellow anymore, it’s one of those memories that’s buried too deeply for me to retrieve. But there’s got to be a connection, hasn’t there? The original Curious Yellow infection spread via human carriers, crudely editing them to insert its kernel code and making them issue debugger commands to load and execute on each assembler they found. It spread via the netlink. Our netlinks don’t work properly, do they? Hmm. The new A-gates are different, but they’re equally a monoculture, just one that’s designed to resist Curious Yellow’s infection strategy. I can’t help thinking about that MilSpec assembler in the library basement. There’s something I’m missing here, something I don’t quite have enough data for—
I’m dressed for work, standing in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee, and I don’t remember how I got here. For a moment I shudder, in the grip of an anonymous sense of abstract horror. Did I just get dressed, walk downstairs, and make coffee in an introspective haze as I tried to get to grips with the real purpose of this facility? Or is something worse happening? The way I can read the words “I love you” but hear them as “* * *” suggests something’s not quite right in my speech center. If I’m suffering memory dropouts, I could be quite ill. I mean, really ill. The small of my back prickles with cold sweat as I realize that I might be about to unravel like a knit jumper hooked by a nail. I know my memory’s full of gaps where associations between concepts and experiences have been broken, but what if too much has gone? Can the rest of me just disappear spontaneously, speech and memory and perceptions falling victim to an excess of editing?
Not knowing who you are is even worse than not knowing who you were.
I get out of the house as fast as I can (leaving Sam asleep upstairs in the bedroom) and walk to work. The weather is as hot as usual—we seem to be moving into a scheduled “summer” season—and I make good time even though I set off in the opposite direction from normal, intending to loop around the back way and come into the downtown district where the library is via a different road.
I open up the library. It’s neat and tidy—when neither Janis nor I are there I guess there’s probably a zombie janitor on staff duty. I head to the back room to fortify myself with another coffee before Fiore arrives, and as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil I get a surprise.
“Janis! What are you doing here? I thought you were ill.”
“I’m feeling a lot better,” she says, summoning up a pale smile. “Last week I was getting sick a lot, and the lower back pain was getting to me, but I’m less nauseous now, and as long as I don’t have to do a lot of bending or lifting, I should be all right for a while. So I thought I’d come in and sit in on the front desk for a bit.”
Shit. “Well, it’s been very quiet for the past few days,” I tell her. “You don’t have to stay.” A thought strikes me. “You heard about Sunday.”
“Yes.” Her expression closes up. “I knew something bad was going to happen—Esther and Phil were too indiscreet—but I didn’t expect anything like . . .”
“Would you like some coffee?” I extemporize, trying to figure out how to get her out of here while I do things that could get me into deep shit if they go wrong.
“Yes, please.” She’s got that brooding look, now. “I could strangle the greasy little turd.”
“Fiore’s visiting this morning,” I say, managing to pitch my voice as casually as I can, hoping to get her attention.
“He is, is he?” She looks at me sharply.
I lick my lips. “Something else happened last night. I—it would really help if you could do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor? If it’s about Sunday—”
“No.” I take a deep breath. “It’s about one of my cohort.