Uncle Mingon was eccentric and very, very rich. His house was full of dark wood paneling, staircases, and rooms.

One such was a room crowded full of old paper stacks, math papers stapled together precisely, dogeared, piled high, and printouts from his time at the think tank, cryptic dot matrix green and white reams blazing mysteries, sometimes plotting mysterious trajectories coded in arcs of the letter X repeating, the words "TELEMETRY-XX.4" often at the bottom, with a datestamp, YYYY-MM-DD, and where XX were cryptic letters and numbers I knew I would never find meaning in. Other pages would be full of numbers, marked "HORIZON-XX.4", and some would contain only a handful of values and marked "ELEVATION-XX.4". The room was dusty, but not overmuch.

I know all this, I remember it, because as a child of ten, my parents routinely left me in his care and I would sneak up to this room and look at these papers, gaze at them really, feel the holes along the side that, he would explain, fed them through a printer— I would always leave them exactly where I found them, meticulously stacking and unstacking them. He would see me there, walking past with his tea and his robe, and say something lightly like, "Enjoying yesself, Matthew?", or "There you go— in my old papers again?", or "I'll tell you what, some of those I never solved, not rightly— if you can piece anything together, I'll take you for bangers!"

I would later learn— when he died— that the 4 meant FORTRAN and this was how I became familiar with computer programming; in his case not something to process sales numbers but a dark art practiced in dark, mathematical ways for men with intentions yet darker and more calculating.

If you walked up to this room, which was only one room in his great house, you would hear a soft creaking below carpeted stairs, your hand would rest smoothly on a thick bannister of a dark hardwood, thickly deeply stained, and even that soft creaking would remind you of the house's mysteries, because the space under the stairs was accessible from the coatroom, a small door recessed. when we looked into it, after he died, it was empty save an old stack of golf clubs and a briefcase, which when we opened it, frothing in anticipation, we found contained only a Pan Am brochure from the 1960's.

I want to tell you about his house, its every detail, even if it is not relevant to my story. Perhaps the house is the point of the telling. But I will not, at least today I will not.

The papers room was only one room. I gravitated to it, but not especially, not compared many of the other rooms, all mysterious in their own ways.

I will tell you about the mahogany desk. Once, he said to me: "There is an envelope taped under this desk! I almost forgot!" This desk was in the basement, which was the only place in his house that did not feel of luxury. The fluorescent buzz of lights, older carpet with dust tracks, squares that formed where square things— boxes, furniture— had been pushed up against the walls. The mahogany desk was down there, and he had taken me down there because I had asked for something— I can't remember what— oh! yes— now I remember— I had asked him for a game, and he said would dominoes do, and I said I guess, but I didn't know how to play, and he said he thought he had one downstairs, so let's go get it anyways and so there we went— we were down there for dominoes, and he noticed the desk off the corner and said: "There is enevelope taped under this desk!"

Of course I knew to crawl over and look for it. It wasn't there. I said I could see that there was a tape marking, and I asked him what was there, and he said an envelope with some shares— and he said he must have sold them.

But it was a beautiful old mahogany desk. We had looked inside the drawers, and when we did I heard the sound of something rolling on wood inside, and then a small marble, metallic but burnished, rolled and clok'd against the front of the drawer, and there were also a few pens, some paper clips in it. I took one of these pens, he said I could have it, and I still have it today.

My uncle's house was brimming with treasure and mystery.

These times ended, I grew up, then he died.

It seemed smaller than I had remembered it, when we came to clean this house out. Of course it seemed smaller. Smaller and less full of mysteries, more full of things, less full of treasure. It smelled differently, mustier, and I thought he must have stopped having a housekeeper come over.

My uncle did not exactly hoard things but he just had a lot, accumulated from his life. His rooms were partly tidy, most of them. The basement was packed and the mahogany desk we found, but now it was buried under boxes. He had a candelabra sitting to the left of the basement stairscase as you go down, brass and huge— this ended up being worth over a thousand dollars. Was it actually less full of treasure and mystery, or was I?

My relatives and I picked through, boxed things up to donate, separated the obvious valuables; was it looting? If you have too many things, and you die, are you simply looted by your family. I'll give it's a grim view of this, something that must happen. But how do you respectfully divide up things? To the person who had them, they had meaning, history, a reason for keeping. To others, no such sentimentality, and this is why partitioning them up, one way or another, well, it's a kind of looting or theft. It's not the same for an estate to own something, that it is for a person— the estate being a legal invention without any real emotions or wants— but because the person's arrangement of their belongings is so personal, it's like they permeate it all. You take their memory— not the memory you have of them, but you slowly dissolve the things they used to keep their own remembering alive. You dismantle this. They are dead, they will not need it, lessen they haunt. Should we believe in haunting? Or is that another kind of insult. I don't want to bother to try and parse it, not now.

At night we stayed at a hotel on the outskirts of town.

I had a restless night: the sound of an unfamiliar frieght train waking me repeatedly.

When we resumed the next day, there was some coordination to bring breakfast sandwiches from Ahnwr's: these were ok. As we sat around his dining room table— covered with thick transparent plastic, underneath a lace tablecloth— the paper wrappers and the motley of cups were a little discordant.

Dipping into the ketchup, I had a blink where I remembered dreaming something unsettling, but I couldn't pin it down.

Everyone's enthusiasm had waned. The front door had been propped open when we arived to help release the must but it wasn't warm enough for this to feel good, yet, so we all sat in our coats still while we ate. For some reason the traffic noise seemed louder, the cold smells of exhaust poisoning us and making the food taste a bit bad.

It was my older cousin Lacey who first stood up and started to work. The rest of us folded our burger-papers soon after, putting them into one of the large garbage bags we had used the day before.

But I was a little agitated. It was clear to me that the house would take weeks to fully deal with, and I think the others started to realize it too.

Under that aegis we continued our work, conversation breaking briefly to comment on what we were sorting through, and sometimes telling stories, about this and that, but usually not about Uncle Mingon.

A charity pick-up truck came in the afternoon to take some furniture away. Enthusiasm had waned.

By noon, the looting had been ongoing for almost two days; there had been some indirect fights about who got what, but overall everyone was starting to feel Monday approaching, feel dirty, away from home, grimy, tired, and in someone else's disorganized space.

One of the privileges of being of being unemployed was needing to do more bad work that didn't pay, and I knew what was expected of me.

As we got closer to supper time, the crew started to disperse, and I didn't have any enthusiasm to stay that day, knowing I would be in the cold, dank house all day tomorrow, and probably the day after, and the day after that. Maybe all week. So I just left and went back to the hotel which was at least sort-of cheap.

When I arrived the next day I could feel a bite in the air, the bite that told me winter was approaching. I had some concern animals might come in and I didn't want to be cold, so I closed the door, which made me feel more alone, embossing this as compared to the prior day when everyone was still here.

I decided to pack books: another of the rooms upstairs was really a library. I knew I could get most of the books in the hatchback of my Camelot LX and donate them, so it seemed productive. Maybe finish a room in a day? It was hard to imagine dealing with a lot of the other things.

The books were pleasantly organized, and I ended up setting aside a pile to keep of books that looked more valuable or, really, old. I couldn't imagine my family would be that interested, but I could always send a picture.

I wasn't exactly feeling bad, but it was lonely work. I suppose my mind was drifting when it happened.

I picked up a copy of Bleak House, but it rattled a bit. I set it in a pile, but then a moment later, the fact it had rattled made it into my conciousness, the sound memory somehow replaying itself back, and I stared a moment at it then picked it up and opened it. Inset into the book was a small cardboard box, and the pages had been cut out to make room for it.

I paused for a moment before pulling it out— I think I was confused. The cardboard box was the kind that a watch would fit into, from a department store. It had a monogram of a crown on it and the initial "K". The small lid slid smoothly off— I honestly expected a watch. But I let a small gasp when I saw what was actually inside: a USB stick. What was this?

My heart raced with the excitement of this mystery. Suddenly the house seemed empty, but empty and vulnerable, as though a stranger could enter off the street at any moment and observe me. Furtively I took the USB stick and hid it in my palm, then replaced the book to the case. I took a breath to steady myself, looked quickly around the room, then behind me to the door, and then, just as quickly, tried to resume my calm demeanor.

Casually, as though I were out on the street trying to hide an ounce of cocaine, I placed my hand in my pocket and deposited the USB stick there. I hoped it would not bulge. As I removed my hand, the small keyring on it caught on my finger, and the USB stick clattered out onto the floor. I panicked and stooped down to pick it up, then quickly jammed it in my pocket again. My heart raced ever faster, I began to feel dizzy, and so I sat down and tried to collect myself.

Breaths came and went, my heart did not slow. But I was able to focus myself. I was seated on a green piano stool, the paint chipping off but the edges of the paint smooth, and I felt one of these smooth chips with my finger. It became like a pool of blackness, I could feel myself slipping into it, and it was disorienting.

Uncle Mingon had a 386 in The Den. I could immediately sense the red carpet, its smells, see the cheap power bar sitting on it, the colour of tallow, and the black power cord, too-heavy-duty for it's purpose, sitcky with cigarette smoke long settled, running to the back of it, and I could see the stack of papers, credit card bills, and flyers from 15 years ago, I could see all of these in my mind. I didn't want to go to The Den, but it was the only computer in the house. So I took one more deep breath, which again did not actually calm me, shifted my weight forward, felt the reassuring divot one last time, and stood.

I found my legs were sore, and for some reason this fact seems to have told my body to lay off a bit, or maybe the adrenaline was just finally wearing off on its own, but either way standing up seemed to calm me. Then I realized it was probably, simply, that I had stood up. Adrenelene wonts for burning off.

As I walked out of the library, past the stacks of books I had been sorting, I started to feel like I was on autopilot, like I was out of my body. The light coming in the window was green, and I suppose there was a change in the way the house felt. It still felt empty and vulnerable, but I didn't feel threatened anymore, I felt a state of hot anticipation, as though I were hiding here or had broken in. It was new.

I hurried into the hallway, which was quiet under my footsteps, and descended to the main floor.

The Den was in the basement, but the second basement. Uncle Mignon's house had a primary basement, which you entered to the left as you entered, the staircase behind a dark mahogany paneled door, but placed in an obvious location, and then a second basement, which you reached from the kitchen. The two were not connected, and it was always a mystery to us, this bifurcated floorplan, but not mysterious enough to really bubble up to the level where we would openly speculate, so many other details of his house there were that were also strange to us.

I passed through the ktichen, and there the coffee I made sat, warm. I suddenly wanted the pot of coffee— though I thought, and dismissed, that it would make my adreneline worse— so I took a mug and poured a cup. In the fridge was cream we had purchased on Thursday; I poured it in, and wondered if I would be able to finish it. It was the second cream we bought, but we got a litre, and on the last morning before everyone left. I drank coffee but only with a ripple of cream. Either way, I knew I would want it later, so I put it in the fridge, where it stood like a tall pink tower in an empty field.

The stairs to the second basement creaked a little. In place of a bannister here there was a cheap ledge, enameled with orange waterstains, linoleum that didn't match the kitchen floor. I didn't like going down here, and I went down as though pursued. The stairs turned a corner. I fumbled for the light switch, and found it was much lower than would be normal. The Den was at the end of a short hall. The door to it was closed, and I felt a shiver of— no, not of fear— of terror, a frisson of terror, sheer and repelling— when I thought of the dark room on the other side. I opened it.

Now I found the light switch easily, and with that done the screwy antiseptic hum of the flourine lights met me, absorbed completely by this small carpeted windowless room, and made it feel more empty. I looked immediately at the 386, and it was just as I had imagined it. But I immediately realized a problem.

There was no way a 386 would be able to read a USB stick.

I was relieved, then I was disappointed, then relieved again, and then disappointed again. The second disappointment was in myself— that I was relieved. I felt my curiousity should win over my desire to be away from here, but in fact I was happy for an excuse. But this whole back-and-forth, which took only a handful of seconds, was enough for me to be mindful of myself, to make me remember that I could choose, and so I mastered my fear and went over to the tower computer at once.

It sat on desk, it was a short tower, yellowing. I felt it had been waiting for me. I didn't know how I would read the USB stick, but I resolved to power it on nonetheless. I looked at the monitor, a tube CRT thing, also yellowing beige plastic, and pressed the power button on its front. It was hard to press, and the whine of the lights was immediately met by a laser-pitched wheal of the CRT. But this calmed me. I ran the back of my hand across the screen and could feel static coming off it. A good sign somehow, comforting. It made a gentle sound.

There was nothing to do, so I pressed the round, obloid power button on the 386 and felt it go in, my finger penetrating slightly. I thought about how, inside the case, the button connected to a plastic rod, which bent partway at 45 degrees, then connected directly to the power supply. It turned on immediately. It began to tick, and I could see it counting off its memory. A test of some sort, and one it passed quickly.

While it started up, I took the USB stick out of my pocket. I was curious for this computer, which was by now showing a black screen with a single underscore cursor blinking in the top left. And then in a moment, it came up Windows 3.1.

The Desktop was open to a Window with solitaire. I clicked it but then closed it.

I looked around: my uncle had created a lot of Subwindows— the first that got my attention said, "Miscellany." Opening it was a collection of bitmaps of famouse buildings, all in low colour, dithered. It also had a SCRATCH.WKS file, but when I clicked it it would not open. I closed this Subwindow.

My eye scanned around, not sure what i was looking for. I was lost for a moment, seconds perhaps, before I saw it— if it had been abbreviated, I would have seen it instantly— but it was not, it was labeled: Universal Serial Bus Toolkit. I clicked it. I knew this would read the USB stick.

Inside the Subfolder were two Files. One said HOWTO.DOC. The other was USBUSTOO.EXE. It had an icon of a blue bus, like a public transportation bus, expertly drawn. I clicked HOTWO.DOC and it opened in a few seconds, the Hard Drive chittering pleasantly.

It was a simply-formatted document and I appreciated the directness of WORDPAD.EXE. I reflected on another level how I was starting to melt into the whole computing environment, and how my feelings had changed from nerves to comfort and now gradually to curiousity; and the last in that list now suddenly grabbed me shook me and reminded me— I had to know what was on that USB stick.

The Document explained that the software was for a specialied ISA card that could meld most USB devices. I didn't understand why it used the word meld, but I marveled at what Uncle Mingon had done to keep his old computer useful.

I pushed the chair back and stood up, and went around to the back of the computer. Indeed, I could see a card was mounted into the second-topmost slot, right underneath the VGA Adapter. The metal on the backplate was anodized red. Hurriedly I plugged in the USB stick. A red LED light lit up.

Back in front, I started up the toolkit. As it opened a simple Graphical User Interface came up with a 16 colour picture of a USB stick. It looked identical to the one I had just plugged in, and I wondered if the USB stick that I had plugged into this 386 was special, meant only to work with this toolkit, running some kind of dual-OS internally. Who created this? For what purpose other than the one I was now engaged in?

I clicked it, and a Window asked me if I wanted to read the contents of the Disk? I clicked yes— even though it was not a Disk, per se, but I knew what it meant— and was greeted with a segmented blue Progress Bar. It went rather slowly.

It was then that the wind started to blow. I could hear the whole house creak and a whorling sound evelop it.

There was a slam, and my breath caught in my throat. My curiousity crashed back into fear. The kitchen door had been latched with a simple ring hook, and the wind must have caught it open. I knew I couldn't leave it that way: even though the inside door was secured, the outside would swing freely and it felt like a risk I was not willing to accept. I made up my mind quickly— and it might have been reckless— but I left the PC whirring while the Progress Bar crept across the screen.

After bounding the hall I leaped from step to step up to the hard white lino of the kitchen floor, the bronze-coloured flashing at the top of the stairs reaching like a finish line out towards me.

My foot stomped loudly on the kitchen floor. Outside I could see a snow storm had swept up suddenly; the door banged again, this time even more loudly— or else I was simply closer to it. Either way my nerves jettied me over, and I opened the inner door, clumsily unlocking it, breathing heavily, in a panic.

When I opend the door the cold wind snapped at me from beyond. It was deeply unpleasant, I could instantly feel my bare arms clamming up against the frozen air. I took only a step outside and grabbed the screen door by the handle, wrest'd it back and turned the thin bronze-coloured handle until it was closed. I now stood in the kitchen, with only a screen door between me and the artic elements that had so encroached immediately and menacingly. I secured the door again with the hook, but realized if this had not sufficed before, it would not suffice again. I was confused: my uncle had lived here twenty years, at least— was this really the first storm to unseat this flimsy attachment? Or had he simply been able to abide the swinging, banging door? But no— that couldn't be right— it would have torn from its hinges. I wondered, was this the strongest storm to hit Coletown in 25 years? As I thought this, the wind picked up, and it whistled through the screen.

I looked around the kitchen for a second, my mind a blank. How to secure? Then, I ran to the junk drawer. Inside were far too many pencils and pens of different varieties, emblazoned with hotels, real estate agents, insurance companies, car rental places, an animal shelter. I saw all of this in an instant, my accelerated brain reading them all very quickly, then remembered my task at hand. Twist ties. Could they work? No— I could tell they should be too small, and the wire inside not strong enough. Tape? No. Other tape? Still no. I shoved things around, bits of paper pads, a stapler, an old calculator. None of this could secure the door! There was a Pocket Bible, it's pages limn'd with gold, in a red fake leather cover. Or perhaps it was real leather.

Then I found it. Glinting at me was a blue eye of glass, attached to a bifurcated leaf shape, a wavy line down the middle, the most beautiful green/blue, yellow dots, black dots, an indescribably pleasing shape, a fishing lure. Its hook was four-pointed, barbed, shone brightly even in the drawer. But it was attached to fishing line and so I pulled it out.

By now I was very cold, shivering, as the wind blew into the kitchen. Some papers on a shelf near the footstool that was near the door— a cheap plastic and dirty footstool, I instantly hated it with an irrational hate— some papers blew around a little bit, including a yellow flyer for something with a mascot wearing coveralls and a hard hat, a thick black rectangle outlining whatever the deal was— I saw all this so quickly.

After noticing all this and feeling those fast feelings about them, I pulled the rest of the fishing line out, spilling some of the pencils onto the floor, for the line was tangled somewhat, and strode vehemently to the door. I wrapped the fishing line around the door handle several times, the fishing lure dangling from my hand, needing to be fed through my awkward knot. Once tied there, I had to find something else to tie it to, there. I decided that the outer door would close over the fishing line without problem so I wrapped it into the kitchen and around the corner by the shelf that was by the stairs leading back to the basement. There I saw a black metal pipe sticking out of the floor. It was capped with a metal pipe cap. I didn't know what it could possibly be for, but it was perfect to anchor the door with the fishing line, so I wrapped it around there and tied a second ugly knot, hurreidly.

Then I closed the man door. As I did so, the storm continued to rage outside but I felt separate from it.

I thought about survival and realized that a person could never become one with the winter cold, not in the way we were meant to meld with nature. No, the winter cold would always be alien and hostile to humans, something other and otherworldly, like a state that earth was never meant to be in, horrible, a literal hell. I felt all these things as I caught my breath.

I frowned a little at the fishing lure hanging off the metal pipe, now. The outer door could be heard making slight tap tap tap and creak sounds but appeared to be holding. I hoped that the door knob was, itself, strong enough to hold this. When I had closed the inner door, it usefully tightened up the fishing line so that whatever play had been in it was now deslacked and the line was pleasantly, properly taut, almost as though I had planned for the right amount of laxness— but I of course hadn't had time to think any of that.

But now the crisis was over. Sort of, and I caught my breath and with it my curiousity surged again inside me, and I practically tripped descending back the stairs to The Den.

As I approached the 386, I could hear a faint jangle, which did not immediately make sense to me, until I realized the computer speaker was playing a short Sound Effect on repeat.

Approaching the monitor, hulking thing on the desk it was, I realized the USB stick had finished loading, and had auto-started some kind of Software.

The Window had a blue background and angular, pixel art of row houses and old lamps. In the centre of the Window was a beveled button which said "Start", the "S" underlined. Leaning in, not yet settled into the chair, I clicked it.

It was on the down click. Not the up click, but it was on the down click that everything around me changed. I remained still bent over, but yes, suddenly the air was charged and crisp. I was on a street, in the open air, which materialized with a sort of pop, as though the stale closeness of the basement turned inside out in some number of extra dimensions, flipping me apart from its dark inner curtain and then vanishing.

My breath caught and I stumbled forwards a little bit. I knew instantly I was on a street but I had not yet seen anything— simply heard and felt— my eyes pointing down saw only cobblestones, and muck, and a dark sooty mess between the uneven rocks, so unlike anything else in their spatial orientation.

With that I looked up and was face to face with my uncle, a ten mile smile glittering across his face:

"My dear boy... welcome to to the world of Bleak House. It's London, you know!"

Reflecting back, now, I can tell you some time elapsed before I was able to process or answer my Uncle Mingon's declaration. I stood frozen, catching my balance externally and internally, a cold smoky wind, yet fresh, enveloping me. The snogness of the basement had emminently vanished and that indescribable aether took its place.

Shall I describe to you what it means to breathe air of another age? You can't know how the world has changed. You can't know that the very smell of Planet Earth has gone through flux and flim, that the air two hundred years ago was sweeter, yet grainier than it is now. Pine smelt everywhere, and the bad smells were the ones of oils, brick, fire, and human stench. But more natural smells, eminently. So I am telling you, in the hopes you will imagine something of what I to this day remember crisply, perfectly, almost a life-changing pivot in my psyche.

I asked him, I finally came to my senses and started to ask him where I was.

"As I said, you're in London. The year is 1877. This is not any London, though, my boy— this is the London of Bleak House. Look, here!"

He produced a round bag which I could not initially parse.

"I've just bought the bag of hair from the shonky shop! Remarkable, isn't it?"

I said that it was, but in secret I didn't know what he was talking about, and I didn't understand why or for what anyone would want a bag of hair for— it disturbed me a little to see him carrying it. I digress.

I did find common ground with him over a folk music record that I was carrying. This allowed us to broach the more difficult subjects— he was glad to see the artefact from our era, one he loved. Of course, I had it with me from the looting of his possessions, and I could not remember or really even reason about how I could have brought it in— I guessed I must have grabbed it automatically, as if by instinct, on my way back to The Den— but nonetheless I had it and it was a point of commonality, so I was glad for it.

We walked to the side of the cobbled street and sat on a wrought iron bench. I marveled at the beuatiful green paint, nothing like a rusted misshappen bench I would expect to see in the real London of our present time.

I thought about Mac Minis— I wondered if it would be possible to warp to this place with a more modern computer. Would it be enough to plug the USB in? I could see ducks spill out onto the dirt part of the road— there was an area unfinished with cobbles, a laneway I suppose— from behind a crude wooden fence.

"You must be sad at the thought of me dying. After all, I'm your old Uncle Mingon!"

I told him the truth— that I was sad— but was happy it had turned out he was alive, after all.

"Oh, well," he went on, turning his nose down at the grownd. It was at this time I noticed him holding a silver cane, the head of which had a man with a nose that, today exclusively, I was sick of, because it reminded me of St. Patrick's day, and such a holiday I could not marry to the actions partaken on which were essentially fraud. But anyways— throughout all this babysitting I did make it closer to the exit gate for my final destination, which was to listen to him talk more.

Uncle Mingon continued, seeing the confusion in my eyes, my grip on reality slipping as the impregnable cold strange reality came crushing into my sense of personhood. I was looking for anything, something like the smell and sound of a basketball changeroom, slapping and echoey— to bring me back. But I was too far gone, shoes were on the roof, courderouy pants with knees slightly bent, dancing in a short person's slow boogie-shuffle dance in tennis shoes, or at least, it felt like it.

"I want to explain about this place. The significance of the USB stick. The competitive advantage of having that technology— in any form— on a 386.

"I must tell you. It's not any computer. But what it is, won't make sense to you, but I must explain it anyhow. So listen.

"What has made this world— the world you and I are inhabiting together, miraculously, right at this very moment — what has made this world possible, is the 386. You see, the 386 has an undocumented instruction... At first, I thought it had something to do with archives, a way to MOV data. it is 8 bytes long— a REP type— the details are on the USB stick in a hidden file."

At this moment I would have been incredulous except, well, here we were.

"The electrons trace a path. I discovered it under my microscope. Of course I couldn't see the electrons, but I could see the trace o' the chip— a pentagram. Someone at Google must know all of this, but they will never come off their chair and address it. They are a witch, and a chip designer, you see.

"How much do you know about witchcraft? Lithographic etching?

"Well, no mind. My boy, a pentragram is like a picture frame. Or, not even that— like the idea of a picture frame. Its effect is wholly determined by its content, its method, its material.

"So you see: Intel must have a witch inside; a witch, and an elite level genius. To realize— that a pentagram etched with light— light, my boy! The very essence of everything, the stuff of dreams, that connects and traverses the universe in such a way that millions of years pass for you or I but the transmission and the receptron, for a polycule of light, is indestininguishable in time— instant. Fifty light years away a star burns, and today it has burned out, and the photon reaches your eye and touches it— and the photon sees the star and sees your retina at the exact instant identically. Well, you can see that the "how" of the pentagraphistry is of utmost power. Draw in the dirt with a stick— that is something touching nature, to be sure; draw with blood on vellum— more potent. But draw with light itself? Of a wavelength only a butterfly perceives?

"Second to this realization, the intricacy. Most pentagraphic forms are not dependant on filigree or fine detail, but instead on grace of line. They draw their power from artistry. But pointilism is an art, too, and the form itself is what imbues the magic, it is not a function of the hand, per se. Oh, I've no doubt— a lifetime of experience in cursing magic sigils would surely credit terrible power to their outcome— but nevertheless, an intricate, infinitely pointilist dusting of microfeatures— this is surely a close second. And it ties to the final part.

"That is, of course you must have guessed by now— the actual shape. A shape gives a pentagram its function— conversion of a meat eater to vegan, popularizing sex and slang— or in this case, to realize fiction in the mind of the operator.

"I needn't tell you that a computer chip such as a 386 is not designed by hand. So— here is what I surmise. Our witch, seeing their tremendous advantage and opportunity at in controlling one rock if they are bottom. If it overheats— no problem, I just open the door. But anyways, where was I— oh yes. So this chip designer has seen by the eggs, I can hear hip hop echoing in a stadium when I think of the sheer audaciousness of their plan. But there you have it. A filigree pattern etched by light itself, and the kicker?

"The kicker is that none of it appears until summoned. It's rather standard software in that way. But so what triggers it? What causes the electrons to flash around the pentaloop, opening this gateway? Nothing more than an undocumented interrupt. A protected-mode interrupt, you will recall, is meant to JMP into an address defined in a predefined page table. So the target of a protected-mode interrupt is a full 32 bits wide— 36 if you count the four reserved bits on the instruction itself. So how did I find it?"

At this moment I wanted to stop my uncle. Becuase what was amazing to me was to be in London in the time of Dickens. I wanted to know about that, not more about wretched computers. But it was not to be. The people of London, the rich ones in their heavy wollen coats, black leather shoes, and still more poor ones in their rags, loafers-and-slippers-falling-apart, orphan-looking scrappians, and fell old men leading cows or other animals, sometimes pulling carts filled with iron pots and other garbadge— this simply passed us by while my uncle droned on about computers or witches or whatever, topics I didn't even understand.

"Well, as best as I can surmise, there must be a hard-code short when you faciliate this exact address— the funny thing is, I don't even know what that is. I purchased this 386 from deep stock for research purposes— you see, at my job at RAND we had an illegal project to reverse engineer an ACORN. We could not make it work— the packaging was too tamper-proof— so we moved on to a 286. The 286, as you surely know, was a misguided, offensive device. But we did get an imprint of the die. Sadly unusuable, or I should say— happily. I had other work I found more engaging at the company, and I was glad to see this project fail. Well. At any rate, I was working late one evening and I noticed unusual traces on the die image. In those days we were looking at it on a microfiche machine. But I could clearly see pentagonal oarrangements of NAND gates, space-inefficient and yet, clustered in a way that would not spread heat well (not that any of us engineered very agressively for that, in those days.) So this led me to a friend from my ren faire days, Rheannon, who runs an apothecary— yes, a full-fletched apothecary— in a small town in New Jersey, whose water has since been diverted to feed the Big Apple. But I digress."

There was no stopping him.

"I'm really just explaining why I have the 386 in the first place. After seeing pentagons swimming like stars on the 286 trace, I realized something was up at Big Blue. So I procured a first-generation 386, as I said, from deep storage. But I didn't pull it apart— it's too valuable for that. No, let me tell you. My ice tea had run out. This is not inconsequetentianel— in fact, it's good that I was drinking something so sweet and addictive. As you know, I stopped drinking Coke and Pepsi years ago— and pivoted to homemade tea. After a time, well, you'll find this funny— after a time drinking tea— and back then, you'll remember, I was in Orleans, France, working for Renault— well back then, the heat was unbearable. I think we had a week of 110 degree weather— well the French used another system, I forget what it's called."

I interjected. "Celcius."

"What? Oh, yes, of course. Well anyways, this tea was too hot and it was causing me to sweat like a turnpike. So I started to cool it down. Well, you must see where this is going. I of course gradually became too busy and focused on my work— which was developing a first-of-its-kind simulation for ball bearings for the Renault Speedster— well I was very focused on implementing the numerical controls for this solver— these, as I recall, ended up being simple. But I had some help.

"Anyhow, you no doubt realize now the irony of me stopping drinking Cokes and Pepsis for tea, which I then had to cool, which I then became tired of cooling, which I then decided, just to fill in the gaps where I had forgotten to put tea in the fridge— you know— well to fill in these gaps I bought powdered ice tea. Little did I realize this would not show any low characters, no mini teleltubbies or whatever that I was secretly hoping for on the label. So of course, I became addicted to the sugary drink, which in turn attracted families to the park, so to speak, so the place was full again and that's how I got diabetes— overloading the adreneal stream..."

He drifted off a moment, and I thought he lost his train of thought completely, turning wistful, thinking about something private that he didn't want to share right now. Then almost as soon, he snapped back.

"But it's a good thing. Because what I decided to do as part of research— and now you'll see I'm getting to the point..."

My uncle kept talking, but I started to drift away. I saw a beautiful woman in red hair, lithe form, wearing a dress with green sleeves. Was this what my uncle had just seen? I thought that a company t-shirt was all I needed when I started to clean up, but now I realized watching this woman walk past, that I was badly under-dressed, and my DIGICAM-0 replacement— I did not hang much on names, which mostly exist to get out of each other's way. I could neither charm nor frighten the people of Dickens' London. They had never seen a traveler like me (my uncle was dressed much more formally in his tweed coat, which he presumably...)

"I said are you listening? You come all the way to London and then you fail to pay attention? Well, listen. The ice tea created a strong magnetism for sugar. So because I wasn't ready to tear apart the packaging, I started to think of other experiments I could run. Of course I built the USB interface, but this proved almost useless as the device was not doing anything nonstandard with the ISA bus.

"So I decided to scan the interrupts. It was a hot evening in August, August tenth I think, and was looking for another cup of the sweet powder sugar ice tea— but I didn't have it. And then, suddenly, as the computer began a control block to experiment threading interrupts to it— and then suddenly the ice tea was there!

"The chip is pentagraphed in such a way that the magic spell is one that grants wishes. My boy. Can you consider the power in that?

"I have fully surrendered to it, here I can never come back— I will tell you man-to-man I know half the brothels in London, though lately I'm becoming more intrigued by the Courts— well anyways. My best theory is that the wish-granting gravitated to my strongest wish, which was for some powder sugar ice tea— but failing that, it of course stubbed in something from. And therefore, no gate executing. I simply don't have text editors to get right up and underneath a plane with.

"But the sugar was so compelling for me that I believe it resolved me first and.

"I decided that would be the last. Nobody else could know about a 386 that grants wishes, m-real wishes in the real world. No, I had to hide the books. But of course your bookshelf is mostly full, but mine are not, but I took a chance.

"I hid Bleak House inside the book, Bleak House, and then wished for the book to return. The rest, I suppose, is a story that you had best tell me!"

I was bored out of my mind, all I wanted to do was like to wash my hands in a public restroom, splash the water in my face— even an abysmal experience like that to break the monotony. I simply strutted the Japanese who made the faucets, and the bird diagrams— there would be no fake birds there. But it was all evidently not to come to pass.

My uncle continued.

"Listen. I rather enjoy it here. And now I can see my wish has been fulfilled— I ever did explain to you how I ended up here, did I?— well my wishes have been fulfilled by the machine, and now I just live inside it. You see, these streets are not the real Lon-done. This is a Dicken's London. And the townotown streets have been the same way for millenia. And I should mention, it has been shown to me that the updated die of the memory controller holds a map identical to these streets. So as I wander these streets, I am also exploring the memory of the worlds' fastest research 386." But now I was digressing, and my uncle was just staring at me.

"Well, will you go? I can show you out— it's the same way I got in. I don't know how you got in here, now, except, well all cards on the table, nothing is shown."

This was indeed how I felt. Forlon and unpackaged, like I had had my own ceramic bust open and exposing my insides.

"There's just one thing. Since I now live inside Bleak House, and since you have visited me— can you please keep the computer running? If it powers down, I fear I will die."

I explained to my uncle that the computer had been powered down to start with, but he seemed convinced I had just made some mistake and would not listen to reason.

"You can live in this house— in fact, to keep the computer powered indefinitely, you'll have to live in this house. Of course, I couldn't will it to you because I did not want to die— and a man should never write a will unti just before he is about ot to die— so you'll have to find a way to purchase the house. Maybe talk with your extended family. I think Alan is still in... what was it? Venezuela? Costa Rica? Well he may have some mass for you, the job you will have to do is to keep that computer running for the rest of your life. I don't age here, in Bleak House London. But everything can be explored.

"When I entered, it was in an alley through a small door which opened in the fireplace that is in the computer room. Since we are nowhere near to that, well, I can take you to it. After that, you can leave, and set to work protecting the house and making sure nobody ever turns off that 386. If I can live forever, I believe I can solve many hard problems."

I wanted to explore this London, but I wanted away from my uncle. If I left him, would I disintegrate? Did the London we occupied enclose him like a sphere, fading into nothing (or circuits? gates? the blackness of finnigreed threads tracing the flow of electrons, inertia, entropy, electrons?) But I considered simply bolting away. Of course, an excuse could not be proferred— I had no life here in this Bleak House London, so what would I say? Even so I longed to have tea with an English lady. I suppose it was natural nough to want to explore this place in other ways, and I could see the people passing all around. I felt confused and helpless and bubbling with something I could not recognize.

"You look like you want something from this place. I can well understand it. Do you want to explore with me a bit? I could show you the brothels, the tower, all of that. The Thames even. But I must tell you I am on edge. It causes me some consternation to know the 386 is out there, powered on now for the time being, but always at risk of being powered down. Of course you will have to create an uniterruptible power supply and wire it in— and please no less than a week's worth of deisel on site."

I thought about how I woud hook something like that up, without in the process unplugging the very computer that my uncle insisted could never be unplugged, but I just wanted this whole scene to be over and done with, and I thought: I'm not going to do it anyways. Why mention it? so I didn't.

My uncle paused, put his thick hands into his blue coat, leaned back so that I could see the grey buttons like a button competition to see how many you could get lined up, winner has peculiarily English bragging rights (I won the button competition— I had the most! Spelendid! Very good! Capital my boy, that's how you do it!) His suit was truly something.

I decided to go for it. "Well, truth be told, I would like to explore. Buh," I felt I needed to address my uncle's anxiety over the power supply, and a bolt came to me. "Of course, you should know I already set up a UPS before I powered on the 386". Too late— my uncle didn't believe it had been powered on. He would catch this terribly clumbsy lie. But then he simply nodded and his shoulders dropped a little bit.

"Oh— oh, that is reassurring. Please go on." There was a presentation on it, showing a tree structure of things that needed to happen to load the plan, once built. I didn't have it, so I couldn't show it to him.

Then Everything wheeled a little bit, I couldn't tell if my uncle believed my transparent lie or didn't and was playing me. And then it was possible he knew I lied but still cared for me— no, that was not possible or not likely. What to say?

"Well The USB stick, you know. I thought it might be" the idea came to me "valuable. And I had never seen an interface like that. I didn't want anything to happen while I was reading the USB stick with that strange interface card, in case it was damaged. So I drove and rented a 3-hour UPS."

"Three hours eh? Where did you rent it from. No, no mind. Three hours will do. Worst case it's been running just about five minutes, but that would only be if the power went out immediately after you were summoned in here— which seems unlikely. Three hours. My."

I still wasn't sure if he was buying it. I felt my lie was the only one possible, but also stupid and transparent. My palms sweat somewhat. The day was spent with 90 minutes and him in a monkey suit, his limbs replaced by stuffy material, bending those wiggly bouncy warms all over the place so I couldn't concentrate. I felt. It was all so much to take in, I just wanted the inpurse to be safe. I had no business with something like that. Maybe at Cuba?!

First he took me to the clock store, it sold many different kinds of clocks. The most expensive clocks, apart from the grandfather and grandmother clocks, were a kind of clock that almost had shoulders, so that the clock face was like a nun with a blanket over her head, huddling in at the cold. Tick tick tick the life of the nun drained away somewhat. My uncle explained the clock store was a front for a gambling house, but that he could not take me in because it only opened at night. I believed him. I envisioned green felt, of the ancient type, truly from wool, the smell of cigars, British men in top hats drinking cherry. Sherry. It was vivid. The clock owner watched me inhale deeply the smell of the clocks, my imagination filling in this with illicit details.

"If you've had your fill,", my uncle seemed embarassed of me, me in this dreamlike state, "if you've quite had enough, I'l take you to the whorehouse next."

My mind was racing, becuase I wasn't sure what to really do at the whorehouse. I knew it was for whoring, but can you really just go there as a kind of tourist, from another time and place, just to observe? Was that considered rude? Could I make conversation there or would that suggest too strongly that I was a customer. I wished for a notebook or something to work out my thoughts, as we splashed the London side streets (it had started to rain while we were in the clock store.)

Finally we rounded a bend, at the far end some blue sky slid underneath a stovepipe, installed horiztonally across the alley (why would they do this?), and some more tiny angular and dirty homes. We went past all this, and the ot the left there was a sign that said, druggist. We entered.

"Helloo helloo" bellowed a frightening voice. We could not see him, because aisles of medicines in dim glass bottles went almost to the ceiling in this dark store. I tried to follow my uncle but quickly lost sight of him behind the shelves. Proceeding deeper into the shop, which was not exactly where I had heard the voice emanate from, but was where I thought it must have emanated from, I tripped over a low wooden box that was messily seated at the base of a shelf. I caught my balance and looked down at the thing, which contained some small paper articles I could not understand. On the shelf next to it were other much smaller wooden boxes with a diagonal red stamp, I read something that looked like the word "Splesh..." and it imprinted for just a moment on my mind before I righted myself and remembered the mission: find my uncle in the druggist's.

Halfway through the shop was a row perpendicular to the others. It was filled with still smaller bottles, and a few metal cans. There was a small, finely made wooden box with scissors, and finally some fred. Thread. Looked left. NO Uncle Mingon. I looked right. I saw the blue sock of his left leg slippingpast. I followed to the right and now I was passing merely feet behind my quarry. I noticed that I had started to really think like a Londoner— chasing men through druggist's (and I had seen not just the peeking of his birds-egg blue sock, which in this time must have cost many pounds, but also his long coat, which was darker on the inside than the outside, and the inside had flashed at me) for no reason at all than a frightening voice had called, "hallooo!" I was really integrating into this society, I felt like I was learning the language, not just a tourist any longer but a true part of London, if not a Londoner then a Foreigner, which was better than, a rank up from, a mere tourist.

When I finally passed this bank of shelves I was greeted with a large empty floor space, hardwood floor tiles ornately patterned with diagonals of different colours. I realized it was a dance floor. Across from the dance floor was a bench and a mirror (but no barre, which I knew to expect), and along the side I could see my uncle comfortably leaning against what looked like a bar, behind which a man in a long coat and pill-shaped head was standing dourly. I felt this was the druggist, the chemist. My uncle was at ease but he seemed the kind who was forever standing perfectly upright.

He seemed to have forgotten about me completely, but I confidently crossed the dancefloor, slightly out of breath from our chase. "Uncle!"

"Ah, my boy. You are here at last. Pray you did not get lost in this maze? Well. This is my friend, Elfandor. He is the druggist."

"Greetings." Elfandor's voice was low, something below normal, and seemed to rattle the jars on the shelves somewhat. Just then there was a cellphone beep, out of place but I didn't recognize it, except that another part of my brain, that was asleep, heard it ring and recognized it was my own. I pictured my phone floating above my head, like a god to the 386. I heard a door slam, but it was outiside, and I collapsed to the ground.

When I came to, it was my uncle's face, and he was administering some sweet herbs decocted in a yellowy oily liquid. The oil was running down my face and onto the pristine dance floor.

"There, that's better. I'm very sorry. Elfandor had other business to attend to on the lower levels— the drugstore goes down very far, you see— and couldn't remain, but he did pull this from under the table." As he said that, I swallowed a large mouthful of whatever it was, then began to sputter and cough.

Here I was in the brothel but I hadn't been up for it— the sheer eroticism of it had overwhelmed me. So many glass bottles. And it burned in me to know what was below my feet, below the dance floor. I found myself standing on reading railroad and I thought this was strangely propriate.

The other player glared at me: "Will you be buying that this round? You should know, it's twoheap! Bandages on your arm at the nurses office." The drugstore slash whorehouse had it all.

I was now sitting up at the waist and I spread my fingers very widely— I don't know why— as I waved away another sip.

"You shouldn't turn down this medicine. It's good medicine. Expensive."

My uncle was putting a cork back on, and standing up from his deep knee bend. He walked back over to the counter, turning away from me, and set the bottle down with a quiet thunk, pleasing, heavy glass on a hard wood. I was still catching my breath and contemplating the reek of the medicine in my mouth, but my uncle was still staring away. Behind the counter was a shelf with more concotions, scales, and tins of things, and a patch of wall. It was a closed room without any windows, except for the storefront, which seemed infeasibly far— I knew it was not a large shop, but where we were, I felt we were stranded somehow. So my uncle stared at the wall, as though there was something there, and sighed.

I awkwardly used my hands to help stand up, and found I was a little woozy still. So I bent at the waist and let the blood flow better to my head, then finally stood stood up.

My uncle was still quietly sighing to hisself. Over and over. I could see there was a shadow of disappointment, perhaps, that I had passed out. Or maybe his disappointment was that I didn't take more medicine. But why should I? Why was I being given medicine anyways— I wasn't sick, I had just passed out. But I didn't feel obligated to satisfy my uncle— in fact quite the opposite, I wanted to shut things here down. But as I thought all this to myself, just as quickly I forgot the urge. I wanted to continue again.

After a few seconds of silence that felt like eternity, my uncle sighing and staring at the wall.

"Uncle. Should we move on?"

He seemed to break out of his loop. He turned around and for a moment it seemed he had forgotten me entirely, like he was surprised or didn't recognize me. His hat seemed awfully tall, but then I remembered it wasn't he that was wearing a hat— it was the druggist. He didn't have a hat, it was just he himself that was tall. I flinched. But then he came to.

"Uh... yes. Yes. Yes, yesyesyes. Of course. Yes! Well!" With this he seemed to perk up. He put a cane on his forearm, one that I hadn't seen before, and sort of toy-soldier-marched across the floor to me. He presented me with his white gloved hand, and this was another thing— I hadn't noticed the gloves.

"To our final tour spot! You've seen the casino. You've seen the whorehouse. Well— on to the Palace of Justice— or shall we say, as we do here in England, The COURTS!"

He walked out of the shop, and this time I was able to find him, but tripped over some metal cans on the way. He seemed to be walking calmly but I couldn't keep up, and the door closed behind him as he went out into the street, which was sunny.

I was left suddenly alone in the shop and it was very quiet. But I heard in that silence, from my new vantage point near the entry, a hammering from the basement. I craned to hear it, but also I wanted to leave. Again the urge to shut down the computer took hold, and again it left. But I couldn't decide whether to stay or leave and try to understand the hammering, which had stopped— it had been just two short hammers. Because I couldn't decide whether to stay or to leave, it meant I was staying. But I didn't want to decide that— it was just happening to me.

But then my breath caught in my throat as a woman dressed in a wide, black dress rim'd with lace calmly but suddenly opened the door. She glanced at me a moment, vaguely disapproving, and this shattered my desire to remain, so I quickly hurried out the door. It didn't even close all the way before I caught it.

Out in the street I was alone. I scanned but had no sight of my uncle. Many people moved in the streets, and I realized it was possible he might be standing a little ways off and waving to me, which seemed logical, but no matter how many times I looked left, right, left, right, and so on, I could not see him. Everyone seemed to be perfectly oblivious to me in the street, until an urchin bumped into me. He said something that I couldn't make out, tipped his hat, then smiled. Something about his smile seemed a bit ugly— I couldn't put my finger on it, but then he kicked me hard in the shin and ran off.

I yelped. I grabbed my shin. I closed my eyes and hopped for a time on one foot, and subjected to this kind of violence I knew I could not stay here, that I must move on. So I struck out in a random direction, but one that seemed likely.

As I walked it struck me that I kept freezing, and it kept hurting me. So I resolved to try to keep up and not be lost in indecision. But what else could you do when you didn't know what to do? Could you really act before knowing how to act? Just act randomly? But that's what I was doing now. I was walking down a street in London, in Dickensenian London inside a 386, looking for my uncle whose afterlife it seemed it must be. I didn't know what else to do so I kept walking.

I passed many pretty storefronts. Some selling silver tea sets, some clothing— the clothing seemed fine quality but was very samey— and a haberdashery. I didn't know what this was, but I supposed it was a kind of convenience store. There were law offices, accounting clerks, and a public house named the Three Stars and Witch Hazel. It had a wooden sign swinging from an iron bar, which showed three stars and a sprig of what I assuemd must be witch hazel. It was in the shape of a shield, and brightly painted, and I considered that this sign must have cost a great deal of money to make, and also that— it might survive in "my" world, in other words, outiside the 386, and it might be weather-worn, and people might assume this was normal or correct or intended, but I now knew it wasn't. It was like learning that the greeks painted eyeballs into their sculpture— bar placards were not supposed ot look like relics, they were technography.

All this went on in my mind but I kept having to remind myself that I was inside a 386 with no apparent plan.

I remembered something just then about the memory architecture of the 386. At the time, it had been revolutionary for something called Protected Mode. Protected Mode meant that an operating system could be constructed to run on the chip in such a way that a process that began to act awry would be detected and could then be terminated. The termination code was called a Segmentation Fault, because the memory was organized into blocks and the blocks were associated with processes. If a process reached into memory segments that were not its own true and butter, then the operation system could be notified and it then, in turn, could kill the affending process. (In computer terms here, "kill" was operative but also not nearly as serious as it would be if you or I were to kill someone.)

But what stuck in my head, what overlaid this fact perfectly, was that I must be a proceess, and London must have memory segments that I was allowed to be in, which certainly inclued the one I was in now with its shops and public house and bustling people, which all must have lived in the computer Random Access Memory inside a Segment managed by the 386 Memory Management Unit— this must be true, but there must also be segments that I would not be allowed ot enter. Perhaps for stupid reasons like "night is mysterious" or others, there was a proliferation of things going on that I would have to deal with when I was back. But for now I thought about this memory protection model, and how, what it most likely meant— was one wrong step and I would be killed. But probably killed like a human being. After all— there were not very many meetings these two days and I didn't want to change that.

But if I were in danger of being killed for the slightest transgression, well then, then what was my best path forward?

I became terrified over every cobblestone. I packed as many stuffies as I could— figuratively speaking— to keep me safe. (I liked to collect stuffies at home, and it was a little unusual to not have them already with me based on these facts. I was underprepared but I could at least pretend I was making do.)

It was IT scrapery that these 386 machines were not still powering the internet. They were incredible and I suddenly felt I had nothing to fear. Just then another surprise, this time a loud "bump." And I thought about the quarry and how I should still be there, safe in a segment I belonged in, not teetering over the edge about to fall into memory protection.

So the bump, and the fear of being terminated by an operating system, dying inside the computer and probably outside as well, for operating systems were powerful, these fears were about to paralyze me again, I was about to stop walking, turn around, reassess. But if I did— I would only be controlled by uncertainty again. It was unacceptable to me.

So I continued walking, I ignored the bump, I pretended I wasn't curious about it. What did it sound like? It was a loud bump, large and loud, and thuddy— like something landing on the ground perhaps. But I didn't let myself get too concerned with it. No, I rather treated it as though it were not even a bump, but just a bird chirping or wind blowing or another ordinary sound, some part of city life. Perhaps some teenagers were unloading an old lady's carriage and dropped her suitcase. Perhaps a book had fallen off a shelf, and it was a very loud book, and made a sound. Perhaps an ordinary thing had happened and someone had died, and the thud was the sound of their body hitting the cobblestones. And what could be more ordinary than someone dying on the streets of London? Especially inside a 386 with memory protection. But this then meant I had acrossed a memory segmentation boundary. Was I about to be killed.....

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I thought it was athe grim reaper— the garbage collector— something like winsys32.dll or another driver perhaps emm386.sys, something DOS, something primeval. The hand was firm.

"My boy! Why just where are you going!"

It was almost with comedic relief that I recognized my uncle's voice. The thump must have been him snapping into existence near me, the air moving out of the way as he materialized. I felt relieved.

I turned. "Uncle. I'm terribly sorry. I didn't think I should just stand around and wait."

"Yes yes, but you're headed for the gallows at the Tower. You don't want to go there. Besides, it's in a protected segment. Another block and you never know what."

But I knew what: killed. But why wasn't my uncle killed? What protected him. I became suspicious of his power here.

"Come with me! It's not far to the courts, but we'll have to hurry if we aren't to be late. We do have a case to plead, and the courts do not care for missed deadlines."

And again my uncle was walking down the street, threatening to leave me once more, but this time— this time was different. This time I was completely unwilling to let him get ahead of me, I was unwilling to become paralyzed. And besides— the decision was easy. I followed him, practically juggling to keep up. He just swung his cane side to side, twirling it like a circus performer, walking effortlessly but as though his legs were so long that the ground simply pulled away from him.

But I kept up this time. I was becoming stronger.

BANG BANG the gavel of the court judge hit the wood block firmly. "Order! The court recognizes Snizzleweed, the plaintiff. Please step forward, Herr Snizzleweed."

A small man who looked like a disney dog, half man, with a face that was drooping like a dog, and a round red nose, stepped forward.

"I am Snizzlewiggle."

"That's not what I have here. " The judge looked closely at his paper. "This isn't your turn. DISMISSED!" and BANG he banged his gavel again.

Now it was our turn. I could sense it, I could feel it in the air.

"The court now recognizes the next plaintiff, Mingon, W. Will the plaintiff please step forward."

My uncle bowed politely and stepped up to a pulpit, something wooden made from light oak that looked like it was meant to hold a bible for a sermon. He gracefully removed his gloves, one after the other, first using a gloved hand to remove the glove from a gloved hand, then using an ungloved hand to remove a glove from another gloved hand, leaving both hands ungloved, save for they were holding them limp now, or one was. His cane rested on his forearm. He waited precisely one second, which I interpreted as being for dramatic effect, and began to speak.

"Ahem." He cleared his throat loudly, bringing the hand that was not holding the gloves up to his mouth. "Ahem. " I realized it was fake, but maybe the court was buying it. "Ahem! Dear masters of the court. Honoured gentlemen. I am but a simple businessman, as you should tell from my poor manner of speech and unrefined ways." This was another ruse— his ways were very refined, which anyone could see. My uncle was really playing it up. "Ahem! Yes. I am here because of a rosebush. But— don't allow the defendant to say I do not love roses. For I do. And I would love even an ugly bush, I would love it like my own, ere if it were my neighbour's on his lawn. But my neighbour's rosebush is NOT on his lawn. It is on the PROPERTY LINE!"

The entire courtroom gasped. The judge sat back in his chair and pursed his lips as though he would perhaps retire right then and there at the outrage. He smacked them. "Go on."

"I have here the blueprints."

My uncle presented the blueprints, which should not have existed in this time period, before the court. "Permission to approach the Communion Table, m'lord?"

"Granted. You may approach"

He moved to the Communion Table, which I found odd to be called that— surely it must have a courtly name— but it really did look just like a communion table, but it did not have any doillies or tablecloths or other decorations— it was just a plain table. He unrolled the blueprints. Then, from his pocket, he produced an incredibly detailed, beautifully crafted model of an ugly brown rosebush. It was ugly, but one could see even at a great distance that it was painted with great cunning, and that the flowers were of the purest satch'd tones. It was an object of beauty, made to resemble a great ugly thing.

"It is..." My uncle placed it simply on the line, "here."

Again, the court gasped, and again the judge smacked his lips. A woman fainted and had to be helped up, a nearby man awkwardly groping her— but unintentionally, I could tell. This in turn elicited more gasps— after all, this was a staid era— and an observer yelled "YOU SCOUNDREL!"

But the judge BANG slammed the gavel incredibly hard, just once, and called "ORDER!" Everyone quieted down. The woman even fainted again, but quietly, and the man who had accidentally grabbed her bosom just let her fall to the ground. She struck her head rather hard, but it seemed she would be alright, because her hair was in a very large hive.

The pandemonium seemed to subside, but there was still a sort of cooing sound heard from somewhere— a woman's voice sympathizing with the fallen victim, whom nobody was helping up, out of fear of the judge.

After a moment, he continued. "I find that this rosebush is egregious. But I will hear both sides, in this case." I wondered at this— but not for too long as the judge quickly called out loudly, "DEFENDANT!!"

At this, a wiry man with thinning red hair stepped forward. He had splotchy skin and sunken eyes, and if not quite furtive, was of the overly humble type— a man who expects fairness in all things, because he himself is fair, and so does not push very hard on his own account, and, so, because the world is what it is, and being in particular that London is what it is, or even in more particular that this courtroom, this time and place, was what it was— finds none. It should all have been a familiar pattern to him by now, by years ago, really— but it surprised him every time.

"Defendant. State your name." The judge sounded calm, but vaguely disgusted that he had to go through with this ritual.

"My... my name, sir, is Whitby."

"Whitby. Have it so entered. State your claim."

"Well, your majesty. I do know the rosebush that my neighbour is talking of. It is true there is a rosebush there. To tell ye the truth, I don't rightly know if it's 'pon the prop'ty line, or nay, but it's there and rough where he laid it down, I mean, so far as I could see from where I was sitting, I mean, yermajesty."

"I see. Then the facts are not in disupte. What, pray, is your defence?"

"Defence, your majesty? Well... I don't rightly. Well." He paused a long time, shifting his weight from foot to foot, eyes downcast. I was impressed by the judge's self control, in not berating him— I know I would have pushed forward in silence, but then, perhaps the judge thought reticence would help prove guilt and so speed up the trial? It was only a guess. I was having those thoughts, when the man continued. "Well it's like this, majesty. I didn't rightly know what I was down here for. A bobby— sorry, I mean an officer of the law, simply came to me this morning and said I was to appear in court. But I didn't know what for. Now that I know it's the rosebush, I suppose I can only say I'm not rightly sure who planted it. It wasn't me though— I don't like roses."

There was another gasp from the gallery. The mood semeed to have shifted at this in favour of the defendant, but I somehow thought the judge would not be moved. As for the judge, he leaned back in his seat as though to consider it, but in a way that seemed to say he was incredulous.

As this was going on, the woman in the beehive began to turn over and moan a little, and left herself up by her arms, so that she was "on hands and knees", as it were, disoriented. Without moderating her voice, she simply spoke into the silence, "Ohhh-oh— where AM I? golly ohhhhh...." and that trailed off as she hung her head down. There was some shuffling, and a woman slid in to help her to her feet. As she did this, she shot daggers from her pinlike eyes at the man who had inadvertantly groped her, and I could tell that she was moving in to help in order to protect the woman from further molestations. The man who had helped before took a step back and did not meet her eyes.

Whitby did not seem able to understand that there was a scene behind him. He was still looking up at the judge, something like how a puppy looks up at its master when it's not sure what is going to happen next. And this really was the situation. The judge was still unmoved, and for his part also seemed oblivious to the goings-on in the gallery, which would have struck me as callous if I had not simply been impressed at his focus. This was a good judge. I wasn't sure he was good in the sense of finding out where judstice laid, but I felt he was probably very good at closing cases quickly and without room for appeal, which seemed like they would be good qualities as far as his superiors would be concerned— and who could question that? "The wheels of justice turn slowly"— but maybe this fellow was a bright spot, a counterpoint to this pessimistic line.

I could see the man was about bursting. He finally blurted out, as though he knew it was out of turn, "We could rip it out, sir. Your majesty. If it would please the, er, court here, and my neighbour, we could just rip it out. I've no special attachment to it. I don't even like roses! Oh. I said that already, I'm sorry."

The judge tipped his head forward at Whitby. "Mister what-did-you-say-your-name-was?" "Whitby, sir." "Mister Whitby. I fear what is at stake here is far more than a simple horticultural feature. Indeed, we may say at this point that the bush will be ripped out, and I will order it thus. But mister Whitby. The city of London, nay, the Kingdom of England herself takes property infractions very serious. And none property is, itself more highly regulated than the real estate holdings of a common man. Tell me, mister Whitby. Let's say we became lax in this matter. What then? What if we simply disregarded any man's sense of hearth and home, allowed vagrants to wander, or allowed, for instance, a disreptuable business to set up on a lawn— say, right where your rosebush lays— as though to snub the nose at the home owner. What then, mister Whitby?" "Well sir I..." "DON'T ANSWER! I will explain quite correctly. If we were to become lax on property law, and especially on real estate law, then our society would, in a word, fall to pieces. A man's home is his castle. And in fact, our very sovereign King, long may he live, has a home which is a castle, and many lands that he enjoys, as do his nobles. Would you eat an apple from a King's orchard? Tent in his hunting grounds? Perhaps grow sheep on his lawn? No, I would not allow any of that. No, mister Whitby, this is far more serious than your rosebush, ugly as it is. I'm afraid, I may have to send you to the TOWER for this." And at that, BANG he bounced his gavel, threw it to the side disgustedly, and pronounced the verdict.

"Well, what did you think of London?"

My uncle and I were by now sitting on the banks of the Rhine, which, my uncle explained, had been moved to England to lay atop of the Thames, so that the clean water would both mask and shelter the warmer, bottom air.

I thought back. "Well it was all very interesting, uncle." This was true, but I was hiding my real misgivings— at being left behind, at being put in a situation where a sinle segfault would terminate my very existence, and, most paradoxically, at not being left to explore alone, to follow my whims and urges freely.

I thought of something in my head: my uncle, having learned that I had set an uninterruptible power supply before coming in, would not need me any longer, and would not risk letting me out, where I might simply unplug or turn off the 386 that provided him his afterlife. So, he would try to trick me. He would walk me to a house, ostensibly his house, but it would not be his. It would simply be a place we weren't permitted: really, anyone's house. Here he would pause, brightly welcome me, and open the door. But that threshold would mark the place where the memory manager would tear me to pieces— an invisible wall, and the only respite would be to terminate. So, instead: I would violently wheel around, seize him, and force him through first, terminating his process before he could mine. For, if it were not permitted for us to attend, how would it not be ready for others? QED.

For that reason, I didn't really pursue calling; I was too embittered. But then I softened a little, and I don't know why.

At this my uncle stood up and walked a step or two towards the riverbanks. He held the crook of his cane in one gloved hand, folded the other gloved hand over it, and then raised it until his chin rested on it. It ws a gesture of bemusement, I think, and one I could not see, but knew was taking place, because he was facing away from me. In my mind I could picture perfectly his expression: a wry smile, patronizing, actually, and self-assurred when it had no place to be. "Interesting, is it? Well, I suppose it is."

There was a pause which I knew my uncle was trying to make pregnant, but I found almost intolerably irritating.

"And did you solve my riddle?"

These words, I knew, my uncle had calculated to land like a blow. He thought I would not have realized there even was a riddle to solve, in these proceedings. As if I were an utter idiot, as if I had the mind of a tadpole not even a frog.

But because I knew it was coming, I was able to hold my composure. "Riddle?" I feigned loss of memory or confusion as to the intent of his topic. "Oh yes, I suppose you would have seen it as a riddle."

My uncle seemed to freeze a little bit. I could tell he wasn't expecting this. I felt I had outplayed him, at least a little, and this was very satisfying, because I was so fed up with him.

He did seem to recover, however: "Well. Call it what you will. I admit I am impressed for you to have realized." Then, confidently, but a confidence I knew had been shaken, even if it was performed without even a visible crack: "Tell me, then."

I sighed, and the sigh surprised even me. In a moment, I realized that it would be best to just express how I really felt— and perhaps I only felt that because, until that moment arrived, I hadn't realized how I really felt.

"Uncle. I do not wish to quarrel. Listen. I'm here against my will. I mean in this city, not London, but the city which contains your house which contains the 386 which then contains London. I'm trapped."

"Trapped?" His tone had changed.

"At first I thought, I just wanted a little more freedom— not to have to follow you around." I was afraid to say it out loud, and I didn't know why, but I had to honour my instincts, so I did not say: and I had to be careful about the memory protection. As I thought these words, I realized, that although I genuinely did want to become intimate, trusted friends with my uncle, and did not want to think the worst— my paranoid daydream, that he would lead me to a house and have me sundered by the protected memory manager— even so, allowing me to be in mortal danger, without any warning, felt like a breach of that trust— a sinister, hostile element to our encounter. So that's why I was holding it back. Although this train of thought was a split second, I was glad I had not spoken.

Still, the desire to be on terms with him was another facet. I could forgive him for a failed plot to kill me, or at least, to endager me. And besides, he really had shown me London, and, more, he really was my blood-uncle.

"Oh! You aren't trapped. I'm terribly sorry if you had that impression. Didn't I offer to take you out?" I had forgotten that, he was right! "Well, no mind. Even I am not trapped— though I will simply disinegrate if I leave, since I am otherwise passed on. But you— no, you can leave whenever you want."

At the word "disintegrate", I somehow felt a tiny bit of relief— if he had really meant to trick me, he surely would not use this word, would not evoke images that would lead my perhaps-thus-far unrealizing mind to visions of the memory protection unit; he would not be tipping me off.

I considered for a second. This was a moment of decision: would I continue down the road of mistrust, or would I recognize that my uncle was making himself vulnerable here, or at the very least, showing every sign that there was no deception, no treachery. Was he deserving of this?

I thought back: he had planted a USB stick and prepared a way for me to enter into this place, which— though my fears had only barely begun to loosen— still provided me an unbelievably novel experience. I was experiencing a miracle; perhaps there was danger, and perhaps my annoyance at his imposition was fair, but I had to admit I had been on an adventure. I decided I would probe with questions.

The obvious question to ask would be: "how can I leave?" But even this felt disingenuous. It implied that was what I wanted, when what I really wanted was a sense of safety— a sense that if I did not step over some property-line, or trespass into an exclusive club, my soul would not be faulted out of existence by the MMU. So I wanted more than anything just to understand.

For that, I asked about London. So I said: "But uncle, what even is this place? Is it some kind of simulation?" This wasn't a trap, but I already knew the answer. What I really wanted to know was how this London mapped to reality, and "simulation" was the only word I had to model what I was experiencing. Was my mind and all of London, my uncle included, part of an update loop inside the 386? At 25Mhz? Not likely.

Although, at this, a new and terrible frisson entered my blood: what if time was passing more slowly on the outside? 25MHz was unimaginably fast in human-scale, but of course could not suffice to simulate even a small slice of London in any reasonable veracity. But if I were now inside the simulation, then a second as I experience it might well take a year. This would put the CPU at more like 25THz, and although I couldn't do more math than that, it frightened me to think that if I returned to the outside world now, I would have aged several thousand years. But no.

I quickly discounted this: for one thing, a sufficiently large realtime clock multiplier would mean every minute spent inside carried with it terrible risk of a power outage. After all, although my uncle may not have lied to me about anything— and really, in my heart of hearts I realized that it was I in the wrong for suspecting him— even so, I had lied to him, about the UPS. There was no UPS. And a house would have a power outage quite normally in the course of a year or two. So there was no cause for terror, perhaps time was flowing more slowly on the inside, but it couldn't be that much of a difference.

And there was another constraint: the 4MB or RAM. Could this store even the detail I could see on a single cobblestone? I knew the answer to that. Perhaps it was a demo coder trick, generative textues? Perhaps, but it was impossible to imagine there was so little entropy in this representation of London, that a clever generation script could draw it out of whole cloth. And besides, he was not really into generators like this. My uncle was no demo coder, and those were rare, even moreso who would know how to opitimize for this instruction set.

I decided that all this precluded a simulation anything like what I was experiencing.

Meanwhile, my uncle seemed concerned a little bit— concerned because he could see I was tearing through ideas and uncertainties, and I think he must have felt partly responsible for it. Perhaps this was one of the few things he did feel some responsibility and care for, but anyways— I stopped.

"What are you wondering about? I can tell you, no, this is no simulation. But I think you are smart enough to know that.

"No, this is London. The 386 is merely a portal, but it can only transmute us so far— in a word, you are inside the chip, but the chip has found a quantum fluctuation where all of this is possible. Our streets are certainly laid out according to instructions from the fab, it's why the garden is something we always miss.

"So yes. You are in a real version of London, and it's back in time, but it's only possible because of quantum tunneling of electrons."

All this felt unsafe, but it felt unsafe in an honest way— like we were determined to do better than average, and this brought us together a lot.

Well I thought about it. The roads did seem winding, and being inside a CPU would be much like that. This part of what he was saying was fantastical, but everything before my eyes was fantastical.

And so I decided I would let my own secret concern.

"I suppose I had better tell you my concern."

"Please do." His look was genuine. I held it for a moment.

"What about the memory protection."

At this, he grew somber, but I could tell immediately that he did not have any great secrets he was hiding. And besides, I felt safer in the desert. We couldn't be close to any boundaries, here in the town square.

"Oh, my dear boy. If this were any concern, I would have mentioned it to you as first thing. In fact— you are running in Ring 0. You have total privileges. The only bad thing that could happen would be if you were to walk off the edge, but you can actually go quite far in any direction before that, and the edge itself is quite obvious. Or if you were to smoke a cigarette, because it might stop functioning in sympathy. But this is a bending of causal effects, and I was never able to prove it. Never mind—"

Ring 0. I was staggered. Why hadn't I thought of this? I wasn't subject to memory segmentation at all. In fact, I could issue a context switch and probably change the entire makeup of the town. Or I could simply destroy it all, raze it to a flat and featureless plain. I began to consider my powers, but then stopped— after all, I was not here to destroy an entire branch of the universe simply because I felt my radio listening history was unacceptable.

Loading all this up and punching it down, I could not help but realize I was in the wrong. My uncle may have been imposing on me, and may not have been peak sensitive to my needs here, but he was not planning to have me vaporized by a memory controller— or any other way.

I felt an immense relief lift over me, as I realized there were not just my feelings to consider but the battery size, compatibility, ability to do one's job, and so on and so forth. I wouldn't have to worry so much about that— it was the supreme power over this universe: Ring 0.

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Instead my uncle continued.

"You must have really been worried about it."

And then, because I was worried that if he kept talking about it, he might realize that I feared he had a plot to destroy me— when in fact, I had daydreamed about his demise instead. I didn't want him to know about that— it would hurt and offend him, and it wasn't fair. So to break the silence, I brought the topic back to something interesting to him: the riddle.

"Ah, it's okay." I found my voice again. "I suppose I had a vivid imagination." A priest sounded out of, an eleven out of ten, and I knew I could simply will that priest out of existence if I ever felt his tagging inappropriate. But it was time. "But actually... I have solved your riddle."

He was nodding in agreement. I had explained it all.

"The locations were not as you said." I had begun this way. And when I did so, he smiled with pleasure, the pleasure of one intellect connecting to another, as we have done from time immemorial, using our eyes to point in order to create a private in-joke.

"The first location we visited— that was actually the brothel. It was obvious; all the ladies with their faces and sloping shoulders, lined up on a shelf." And they had been beautiful and seductive, their inner clockwork drawing my urges out, if it were possible to feel inlove for a clock.

"Bravo. You are certainly right. What face is more beautiful than a clock face? And the custom of this era, is, indeed, for devices on the large-ish size. Did you know— I used to pack a grandmother clock on trips? It was a terrible sight, but I didn't trust hotel rooms to have adequate timing, and my grandmother clock can not fail— it is driven by weights. So yes— the first location was a brothel, not a house of gambling as I had misled you."

I felt my face flush at having got this one correct— but how to tell my uncle: his riddle could not have been a riddle to a younger man? As for me, I had felt stirrings in my penisu the moment we entered that room, and it had continued throughout the day to some extent until now, the hardness of my penisu. It was a ravishing experience to be about town with such a rod! I was amazed he hadn't noticed. But then no-one had.

My uncle smiled as he enquired: "And what of the next locale. The drugstore. Was it as I said?"

"No, uncle. The drugstore was not a brothel, of course— the first location was."

"Very good! Solid mathematical deduction with the reverse pigeon hold principle: if an object is something else, it cannot have been what it originally was. A basic fact yet forgotten often enough given the state of our schools. But don't let me stop you— if not the brothel, then what was it?"

"It was a center of justice. A courtroom. You see— I first reacted by becoming lost in a maze: just like a court proceeding. And then, the indifferent pharmacist, who seemed to be reading a script while he welcomed us. That man was the judge. Finally, I was found guilty because I would not take more of the delicious medicine— I claimed energy efficiency but the real reason was— if the pharmacist were to have hooked me on that medicine, perhaps I would lose my soul. But the law does not care for your soul— it only cares about its own letters and how you might fit ito it. Well, of course I had enough rooms including rooms that others could not make sense of. So in that sense I was safe upstairs. But below that, the judge had found me guilty for not taking the medicine, delicious and rare it was. That is why he turned his back on me."

How thrilling it had been to stand before the judge with a firm boner! How glad I was that my uncle had taken me to the whorehouse first— the eroticism of it had set the tone for the day, had given the day's proceedings such a wonderful vivant! And the constant threat of my own death had only enlivened it further: I felt it all as though I were edging, but the edge was death. And deliciously, even more, was that my uncle had not noticed this simple fact. How had he not noticed, known I was instantly aroused at the sight of those clock faces with their slender shoulders tipping down— oh! as I thought of them I felt such a force rising up in me that I could not even remit. But I kept these thoughts to myself: a private pleasure, two private pleasures, the most private of all, of course, but a second private pleasure, at having fooled someone.

"Ahem." My uncle seemed to have noticed my reverie, but didn't say anything, only cleared his throat slightly artificially with "ahem." But there was no phlegm in it. This brought me back and somewhat dulled my ecstacy, but only somewhat. "Ahem. So, I should ask you: what then was the last location?"

I knew there was a mathematical certitude to it— that perhaps if I reasoned carefully I could simply deduce the answer. After all: I had three holds, and three things rather like pigeons, but two were filled, and but one could go in each hold— but: my reason escaped me on this. I looked for it but it was not there. I stared into space, trying to wrangle the formulas, to visualize it: I simply could not.

I took a deep breath.

It was in times like these that my training at Farfield drew me in. This training was at the behest of a god doctor in anxiety: Dr. Farfield. His office was in Farfeild, a small town outside the city of the family home, the city where my uncle now lived, Coletown, but not the city where I lived, which was called something else that I couldn't remember. But I had traveled there because my family knew Dr. Farfield. It was no coincidence that the town was named after him: as he said, his "gr'pappy" (and it had made me think of, yes, of course, a puppy growling— a funny image I could never get out of my head, like an old wrinkled mutt was actually his grandfather— what a stupid man! or at least, how stupid of him to use such a turn!) had settled there with his nine children, and after most of them survived the winter in a too-small soddy, the others lost but presumed dead gathering wood (but one never knew in those days) he founded a town, in the hopes of making the next winter less difficult for his young family, but it wasn't. Dr. Farfield had taught me many things; to keep good notes, to question the basic tenets of reality, but only if it made you less anxious (such as: what if there weren't snakes that came out of your toilet? Then what? Would you be equally concerened? It helped me in that area, truth be told...) and to deep breathe. So that is why I took a deep breath: training. I had had half a lifetime, since then, to practice.

I decied that a mathematical deduction would be cheating. So I would think hard.

The courthouse. First: was it a courthouse? Undoubtedly yes, but also, no. Certainly not. For instance: was there a process to assign lawyers? Did anyone shout, "objection" or even say "your honour?" I scoured my memory banks. No, my uncle had said "your majesty." Avast! Euroeko! This was my clue!

I realized: if the judge was king, then there must be a deck of cards. I pictured him, with a sword through his head, sitting throughout the trial, the king of hearts (or was it diamonds? (clubs? (diamonds again?))) but without any love (or money (or luck (or money again.))) Yes: that was it. The court room was a gambling den. It also struck me that the overhwleming experience in a gambling den is not one of luck, or fortune, or even anticipation of outcome. The governing force is randomness. And I thought about the woman who felled: she had not actually fallen, she had felled, like a tree toppled. This itself was random, to apply the aspect of a tree, certainly one living thing, but not an animal, to a human. Or the man who had been glared at. Our even the very verict. My uncle was smart, persuasive even. But it wasn't clear he had been right, or that justice was on his side. And what had the case even been about? Debt? No— property lines. But who really understood those? Surveyers would set up mirrors, fancy spyglasses to map them out— but to what avail? After all, what defined where they could place their equipment? It was like this, it seemed to me: "I will come and determine the property line. It will be wherever this mirror lines up with this spyglass. I will bring precise equipment, and wear an orange vest and a helmet (even thought I am simply standing on the sidewalk, with no risk beyond acorns thrown by squirrells, or hailstones, but usually there is some warning for that) and I will wear the helmet and perhaps there will be a rolled up blueprint under my arm, and I will have a partner who will stand kitty-corner. And we will look through the spyglass and write numbers in our notebook but does anyone really understand what we are doing? And how can this process delineate anything at all? It cannot. Because for it to delineate anything, I would need first some delineation for where to place my surveyor's equipment. So, a survey was purely random chance— the perfect kind of "court case" to hold in what was actually a gambler's den. And I also thought, the urgency with which I felt my eroticism in that room aligned more with gambling, a casino where a sultry woman might lean on your arm and speak in a drawl, or perhaps a French accent, or maybe not speak English at all, only Russian— in such a place one could find oneself quite horny, and at the prospect of losing or gaining sums of money, which would give you (or lose you) access to some events at least. Yes, in such a place you could feel erotic, just as I had felt before the judge. But in a true court of law, such as the pharmacy had been, one did not feel it. And I had not felt it in the pahrmaecy. (There was one exception to this, but I did not want to think it through fully: I stopped myself. I was using sexual intuition in a new way, as a detective, and I had gone too far...)

And so it was, after careful reasoning, that I proudly pronounced: "A gambler's den. A casino. A slot house, uncle. This was the hardest to deduce— I grant you— but clearly, it was that."

At this he very clapped, too many times to count, and I could see his joy was complete. For some reason, this tour, this tour inside the 386 had meant so much to my uncle, and seeing me solve the riddle, so much more. I couldn't tell why. I didn't even know why he had fooled me, or tried to, in such a matter. But my libido had led me instinctivly to the truth, as it so often does.

I stopped thinking, just for a moment, about sexual things. And I thought back to my uncle.

We exchanged a pleasing glance, he looked at me as though he stood above me several feet, as though he could place his hands on my shoulders, stare at me at a perfect right angle (even though he would be above me for this moment, it would be a right angle in the two other dimensions, and while looking down, it would still yet seem he stared straight ahead) and say "Son. I am proud of you."

These words were so powerful to me, they shook me, and even though my uncle did not say them, I felt them, and I felt he could say them, and it was like my own father saying them to me, and I burst into small sobs, which became small wails, and my uncle still held me by the shoulders, in my imagination, while I did this. But when I looked up, he seemed bewildered.

"What's wrong? Have I said something untoward? If so, my boy, I am terribly sorry."

But I just looked up at him through my tears, knowlingly. Of course, male love like this could never be spoken aloud. I understood, I knew that he knew that I knew that he knew, just like the scroll on the wall of the Last Emperor of China and the British man, who had probably come from this era's London anyways. It all fit.

And now the intertia of our day was burning itself out, like a match struck brightly on the side of a matchbox, providing illumination and brotherhood, but without any wood shavings or paper to set light to, only heavy logs which would not burn. This was my life: a heavy log. And my uncle's life was much less certain. This was the cause of so much of my sorrow.

For I knew I could never actually be bothered to setup, much less in a way that would not cause the 386 to power down, the uninterruptible power supply. My uncle probably had gold or would teach me about his bank accounts, let me access untold wealth that he had planned— after all, every other facet of this plan had come to fruition, flawlessly, even given hundreds of independent variables— so surely he would have this. But I knew I was weak. I knew that once I stood outside this version of London, this damp, dank, moggy air, even in this ugly summer heat where we now stood, I knew that once I returned to his basement I would feel utterly deflated, and could not muster anything other than simply turning the computer off, and maybe stealing some things that my family would never miss. For I was a weak, mediocre person, one who had been given an incredible experience, but for which it would not inspire me to any sort of greatness, just be something to think back on, that did not in fact change my life or the course of my other experiences at all. I would just go back and watch TV.

And at that I bean to think of the fishing lure back in the kitchen, and it felt somehow like a hook in my mouth, I longed to be away from this horrible sun, and these horrible people with their incomprehensible accents, chaotic roadways. I wanted somehow to be back home, but no I guess not my home, so it wasn't really homesickness, it was more like. Well. It was perhaps just that my desire to escape had transformed, first into relief at realizing I wasn't trapped, and then into a simple earnest yearning to "be on with it" and move to the next stage. After all: what more was there for me, in London of several hundred years earlier, when I had invincibility? I suppose it was like a lucid dream, but lucider, but the whole thing stank, I mean physically it smelled far worse than what I was used to, and I had not really been able to get used to that. So that alone made me want to leave, but I had other reasons.

"Uncle, I feel it's time for me to go." I hoped that my steady voice concealed my great sense of urgency. But it did not, as I could see on my uncle's face.

At first a look of disappoinment or surprise, as though he had intended to show me something else, covered his face, but then it just turned to a wry smile, and I wondered at how much he guessed— whether he knew my claim that a UPS had already been set up, or my cue that I would use the memory chip he had given me to store his program on, that he had told me earlier was sitting on his desk, and not simply save it or even just throw it away. It's as if I couldn't even lift a finger, even though lifting a finger would grant him immortality, and maybe let him think deeply and work hard enough to really make a difference. I just could have none of that, I was too ordinary, too worn out from the day's proceedings. And my uncle could see, at least, that.

"Of course, of course. Well, leaving is quite simple. You see, I have only to tap my cane on the ground. This cane represents sudo— with it, I can perform some actions which stretch beyond my Ring 3." At my uncle's mentioning of "Ring 3" — total unprivileged existence, I felt slightly guilty. What I could do, mighty with my Ring 0 process space! I could swap contexts, dump control registers, anything. But I just didn't care enough to even bother finding out. That was my fault.

As I had been thinking all these thoughts, my uncle gave me a hug. "I shall tap my cane twice and you'll be returned. That is a kind of sudo exit statement, or perhaps sudo ban. I'll give you a k-line on the IRC channel, as well."

I hadn't used the IRC channel, so I didn't care. I wasn't even sure it was era appropriate: either for this era of London, or the 386. But by now I definitely didn't care.

I did care enough to give him a hug, but it was mainly just that I was concerned be bad. But it might casually be good.

I thought for a moment, one last moment— would I ever be in London again? Certainly not this London, but probably no other London— I looked around for a bit, decided it was all vaguely repugnant, and said. "Send me home, Uncle Mingon."

At that he tapped his cane twice, and I found myself in the little room in the basement with the red carpet. The 386 was whirtling. When I read it, I could not understand it. The screen was a pure jumble of confusion, even though it was Windows 3.1 and the delineations were pure, of a unified vision. It was all still so confusing.

If I prolonged what I was going to do next, it would only make it harder. That world, and my uncle in it. They disappeared when I pressed the power button. The one that connected to a rod, that reached all the way back across the case, to a hard circuit breaker that disconnected the electrical current from the power supply inside, the inverter and purifier that rareified the electrons until they were suitable for the CPU, for, well, all that.

I felt somehow the electrons trying extra hard to bridge the gap, but their voltage was simply insufficient.

I walked out of the little room, took the USB stick out of the still computer, and went back upstairs to pack more books to read.

◀ Back