Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [28]
The other minute was spent discovering that the computer system already had a mental block. A big one.
He would never have discovered it if he hadn’t been busy engineering a mental block himself. He came across a whole slew of smooth and plausible denial procedures and diversionary subroutines exactly where he had been planning to install his own. The computer denied all knowledge of them, of course, then blankly refused to accept that there was anything even to deny knowledge of and was generally so convincing that even Ford almost found himself thinking he must have made a mistake.
He was impressed.
He was so impressed, in fact, that he didn’t bother to install his own mental block procedures, he just set up calls to the ones that were already there, which then called themselves when questioned, and so on.
He quickly set about debugging the little bits of code he had installed himself, only to discover they weren’t there. Cursing, he searched all over for them, but could find no trace of them at all.
He was just about to start installing them all over again when he realized that the reason he couldn’t find them was that they were working already.
He grinned with satisfaction.
He tried to discover what the computer’s other mental block was all about, but it seemed, not unnaturally, to have a mental block about it. He could no longer find any trace of it at all, in fact; it was that good. He wondered if he had been imagining it. He wondered if he had been imagining that it was something to do with something in the building, and something to do with the number thirteen. He ran a few tests. Yes, he had obviously been imagining it.
No time for fancy routes now, there was obviously a major security alert in progress. Ford took the elevator up to the ground floor to change to the express elevators. He somehow had to get the Ident-I-Eeze back into Harl’s pocket before it was missed. How, he didn’t know.
The doors of the elevator slid open to reveal a large posse of security guards and robots poised waiting for it and brandishing filthy-looking weapons.
They ordered him out.
With a shrug he stepped forward. They all pushed rudely past him into the elevator, which took them down to continue their search for him on the lower levels.
This was fun, thought Ford, giving Colin a friendly pat. Colin was about the first genuinely useful robot Ford had ever encountered. Colin bobbed along in the air in front of him in a lather of cheerful ecstasy. Ford was glad he’d named him after a dog.
He was highly tempted just to leave at that point and hope for the best, but he knew that the best had a far greater chance of actually occurring if Harl did not discover that his Ident-I-Eeze was missing. He somehow, surreptitiously, had to return it.
They went to the express elevators.
“Hi,” said the elevator they got into.
“Hi,” said Ford.
“Where can I take you folks today?” said the elevator.
“Floor twenty-three,” said Ford.
“Seems to be a popular floor today,” said the elevator.
Hmm, thought Ford, not liking the sound of that at all. The elevator lit up the twenty-third floor on its floor display and started to zoom upward. Something about the floor display tweaked at Ford’s mind but he couldn’t catch what it was and forgot about it. He was more worried about the idea of the floor he was going to being a popular one. He hadn’t really thought through how he was going to deal with whatever it was that was happening up there because he had no idea what he was going to find. He would just have to busk it.
They were there.
The doors slid open.
Ominous quiet.
Empty corridor.
There was the door to Harl’s office, with a slight layer of dust around it. Ford knew that this dust consisted of billions of tiny molecular robots that had crawled out of the woodwork, built one another, rebuilt the door, disassembled one another and then crept back into the woodwork again and just waited for damage. Ford wondered what kind of life that was, but not for long because