|
|
|
|
|
|
If not for a computer glitch, Alan Fiske would have lived another seventy-two years. Of course, the glitch might have had nothing to do with it, but you'd never be able to convince Alan of that: he was very superstitious. Alan was undiscriminating in his superstitions. He believed in palm-readers and the stars, in the ancient ratios of pi and phi, in daily horoscopes and all brands of fortune cookies. He had six installments of a Time Life Books series on the unknown; it was incomplete only because the other three books had been about aliens, the Abominable Snowman, and the Vast Government Conspiracy. Alan was superstitious, but he was far from gullible. In fact, he went about his superstitions almost scientifically. Contradictory messages were reconciled through elaborate rules of interpretation. He always accounted for the lapse between the time a horoscope entry was written and the time it was published, and he ignored the daily numbers printed on fortune cookies, because they were probably just done by a machine. He also realized that most of Nostradamus's predictions had likely been mangled by the questionable translations--and perhaps even more dubious interpretations--printed in the tabloids. It might seem that such a thorough and reasonable person would long ago have abandoned such foolish beliefs. Indeed, many of Alan's friends had raised that very point with him. Over the years, many had tried to convince him of the error of his ways. His middle school history teacher, Mr. Marcham, had placed a phone call to Mr. and Mrs. James Fiske, during which he had suggested that perhaps a good paddling would set little Alan back on the path of reason. Mr. Marcham had been a teacher of the old school. But it had all been for naught. All of the pleas, the threats, and the mockery had met with the same stolid response: there was too much evidence in favor of the predictive arts to dismiss them as fraud. For example, Alan would often point out, the day he received his letter of admission from Oberlin College, his horoscope had predicted "You will soon make an important decision." Just before his freshman year finals, a fortune cookie promised, "Diligence paves the road to good results." He'd earned a 3.59 that term, almost an A-, the best he'd ever done. This is all to say that Alan was quite serious about such things, and went out of his way to make sure that signs did not slip past him. The night of the sixteenth of November, such a sign had begun its digital journey from a certain hcooke@MWandS.com. By a quarter past eight that night it had arrived in Alan's mailbox, and by seven the next morning it was loading its way onto Alan's screen, as he sat in front of his computer with a hot cup of coffee and a danish close at hand. TO: Alan Fiske (afiske@MWandS.com) FROM: Hal Cooke (hcooke@MWandS.com) RE: fw: Longevity Hey, Al, I thought this would be right up your alley. ------- > Seventy-nine years ago, the famous explorers Howard > Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the hidden tomb > of the Egyptian Pharaoh King Tutankhamun. > Unbeknownst to most people, the two found within that > place a secret for extending the lifespan of a human > being. Now that power has been infused into this > email, and may be invoked by means of a simple > method: > - Forward this message to ten people you know, and > you will live to be at least 80. > - Forward this message to twenty people, and you > will live to be at least 100. > However, if you fail to forward this message to at least > ten people within twenty-four hours of its arrival, King > Tut's curse will fall upon you, bringing swift death. Alan stared at the message for a moment. He read it once quickly, and then went back and reread it more slowly. It was not, despite what Hal said, right up Alan's alley. He believed in accurate, systematic predictions of the future, not mummies' curses. All the same, Alan was not a man to take chances. He clicked on the Forward icon at the top of his screen and began entering the email addresses stored by his mail program. He had reached Peter Zycroft by quarter till. Another click started the message on its way. A slim, elegant bar marked the message's rapid progress from his computer to the world at large. Just as the bar neared completion, it froze. A moment later, the screen turned to a solid and ominous shade of blue. Gray text in the center read: "Premature termination." Surrounding it was an ocean of machine language and technical jargon. Before Alan could react to this development, the screen turned black and a whir from his computer told him that it was restarting. Premature termination. The coincidence was too much. Even if Alan did not believe in the ancient secret of longevity, he believed in messages. His computer had never seemed to take so long to restart. He cracked his knuckles and swallowed and tapped his foot impatiently. When the start-up chime finally sounded, he quickly connected back to the Internet and prepared to reload Hal's message. Simple enough. Reload, resend. Two clicks later, the message should have been on his screen. But it was not. "Message unrecoverable" had appeared in its place. Frowning, Alan closed the window and opened it once more. Nothing had changed. "Message unrecoverable" remained. In the bottom corner of the window was a small help icon. Alan clicked on it. "Error message indicates that the requested email or attachment cannot be accessed due to a communications error between your computer and the mail server. For additional help, please contact your Internet Service Provider." Alan picked up his telephone and dialed. * * * Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto was rudely interrupted by a nasal voice. "Welcome to CompuNet Solutions, this is Ray speaking. How can we help you today?" "Hi, I was trying to send an email earlier this morning, but it was...uh...terminated. The help window said to contact you?" "Oh no, I can't help you here. I'll patch you through to technical support," Ray replied. "But--" The concerto cut back in. Alan looked uncomfortably at the clock. If he didn't leave soon he would be late for work. He pressed zero on his telephone. "You have entered an invalid menu option," the phone warned him. "Please stay on the line. An operator will be with you shortly." He pressed zero again. "You have entered--" He moved the phone toward its cradle and was about to hang up, when he heard, faintly, through the speaker, "Hello, this John speaking. How may I help you?" Alan pulled the phone back to his head. "Hi. I was trying to send an email earlier today and it said that it had been terminated prematurely..." "Mm-hm," John replied. "That happens sometimes." "When I tried to retrieve the message it said that it was unrecoverable..." "Yeah, the same thing happens to me sometimes." There was a long pause. "Well, the help window said to contact my ISP..." "Right, it says that." Alan nodded and waited for John to say something more. "Is there anything I can help you with today?" "Well...uh...I'd like to recover that email." "Ahh," John answered. Alan smiled hopefully. "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" Alan glanced at the clock. Two more minutes. Time enough to recover the email and forward it out. "So?" Alan asked. "Oh, it's impossible. Sorry. Other providers might keep those messages on their servers, I suppose, but we don't. Sorry." Alan blinked. "But you said...?" "Hmm?" "Never mind." Alan hung up the phone. He looked at his uneaten danish and his cooling coffee. He gulped the coffee and then hurried to the door. He could always get the email from Hal when he saw him at work. * * * It was lunchtime before Alan had a chance to get away from his desk. From the moment he'd gotten to work he had been swamped with client files that needed sorting and depositions that needed to be summarized for Hal's upcoming trial. He glanced at the framed fortune on his cubicle wall--"Diligence paves the road..."--and found reassurance in its simple truth. He looked at the neatly stacked piles and assiduously prepared memoranda. With a sigh, he stood up from his desk and hurried to the elevators. Two floors later, he was out of the paralegal cubicles and into the more spacious area given over to the litigators of Milbur, Wimpel, and Stanley. Lynette, the brown-haired administrative assistant who ruled the associates' floor, was on the phone. "Oh no, I'm sure that wasn't a good idea at all," she was saying. "He should have gone right ahead and sent the message." Alan blinked and swallowed hard. "Excuse me?" he said. Lynette held up a hand to indicate she was on the phone. Alan nodded to indicate that he understood. Lynette smiled to indicate that the whole thing was a fine settlement. Alan left the reception area and entered the hallways between the offices. The door to Hal's office was closed. When Alan looked in, he found it empty. The computer was off. There was no paper cup on the desk's surface. Alan frowned and crossed over to the office belonging to Richard Monroe. He and Monroe did not get along very well--Monroe refused to take Alan very seriously--but Alan hoped that Monroe might know where Hal was. "Hi, Mr. Monroe, do you know where I can find Hal?" Monroe was sitting and eating a sandwich of some sort. He chewed thoughtfully and then swallowed. "Home?" "Home?" "He's certainly not at work today. So I assume he must be home." With a patronizing smile, he added, "Unless, of course, aliens abducted him." Alan pressed his lips together and nodded sharply. "Thanks," he replied. Monroe nodded and returned to his sandwich. Alan, however, stood thinking a moment, and then asked, "He didn't happen to send you an email this morning, did he?" "Saying where he was? Yeah, it said, 'Beware the Ides of March' or something like that." All this was said through a mouthful of what looked like pastrami. Though Alan might not have made out every word, he understood the meaning perfectly. He sighed. "No, seriously. A forward?" Monroe swallowed the pastrami and shook his head. "No. But how serious could a forward be? 'Make ten thousand dollars, just send five bucks to everyone on this list...'" Monroe was still talking as Alan walked off. * * * Lynette was off the phone when Alan returned to the reception area. "Can I help you?" she asked. Alan pursed his lips, then nodded. "Yeah. Did Hal Cooke call in sick this morning?" Lynette shook her head. "Sure didn't. In fact, I haven't been able to reach him to find out where he is." Alan frowned. "Mind if I give it a try?" He pointed at her phone. The secretary nodded. "Sure do. There could be important incoming calls. Conference room A is open, use the phone there." "Okay. Oh, and, when I came in, you were saying something about some message. What were you talking about?" "Beckman's email to Mr. Wilbur?" she asked. Before Alan could respond, one of the many lines rang. She picked up the phone and held out her hand. Alan sighed and left. * * * On the sixth ring, Hal's answering machine picked up. "Hi, you've reached 555-3620. I'm not in right now, but if you leave a message, I will do my best to return it." There was a beep. "Hal, this is--" There was a longer beep. "Hal, this is..." Alan paused to give it a chance to beep again. When it didn't, he cleared his throat and continued. "This is Alan calling. Listen, I need to talk to you. Umm...I'm at work right now, just call me at my desk, I'll be here until evening." Alan hung up the phone. * * * It was five-thirty and Hal still hadn't called or answered the email Alan had sent him. Alan's stomach grumbled: he'd only eaten a bag of chips and a candy bar for lunch. He put the last of his work away and turned to his computer. He closed his spreadsheet applications and tried to retrieve the message for the eighth time that day. He had no more success than he had earlier. No new messages had come in. He switched over to a web-browser and made his way to the first of his favorite astrology web-sites. He had book-marked the horoscope, and went right to Virgo. "You will receive an important message that will shed light on your future affairs," the page informed him. Alan smiled. That settled it. When Hal got back to him, all this email business would get cleared up. As a matter of course, he checked when the horoscope had been updated. The night before. Before Hal's first email had arrived. Alan felt his hands sweating. He quickly loaded the next site. "You may have made a serious mistake in the past week. Reconsider your actions. There may be dangerous consquences." He scrolled down. That horoscope had been updated in the afternoon. "A large change is coming," the third horoscope informed him. "Some doors will be closed forever, and new ones will be opened." The three horoscopes confirmed everything the forwarded email had suggested. An important message had come, and he had messed it all up. And if he didn't do anything, change would be come: anyone who knew anything about astrology knew that closing and opening doors could symbolize the end of life and the beginning of the afterlife. Alan's breathing quickened. A chime told him that an email had arrived. Frantically, he switched back to his mailbox. TO: Alan Fiske (afiske@MWandS.com) FROM: Richard Monroe (rmonroe@MWandS.com) RE: The boogie man is coming! Alan deleted the message without reading it. He picked up his phone again and dialed Hal's number. Still no response. He hung it up and checked his watch. Six o'clock. He couldn't remember when the email had come into his mailbox, but he knew that he had no more than five hours, tops, before the allotted time was up. And he was now quite certain that the curse was very real. He picked up his phone again, but this time dialed 3-2-6, the extension for Milbur, Wimpel, and Stanley's network administrator. "Hello?" came the voice of the administrator. "Hi, this is Alan Fiske, I'm a paralegal. Who am I talking to?" "This is Michael Johnson. Are you calling because of a problem with your email, your operating system, or something else?" "Email, I guess," Alan muttered. "All right, shoot." "I...uh...received an important email from Hal Cooke last night, but unfortunately it was lost because of some problem with my ISP." There was a sigh on the other end. "Tell me about it." "Well, anyway, that can't be recovered, can it?" "Nope." Alan paused and sucked in a breath. He rushed headlong into Plan B. "Well, the email is very important. I was wondering if you could retrieve it for me. Mr. Cooke's not in the office tonight, and I haven't had any luck contacting him." It seemed like it took an eternity for Johnson to respond. "All right. But we'll need to get it off his computer, and I need to be present at all times, for security reasons." Alan burst into a smile and gave a nervous laugh. "Great, I'll meet you there..." "Where is his computer located?" "Oh, right. He's an associate. I'll meet you by the elevator." * * * Johnson took his time in arriving. It was 6:45 before they had Hal's computer on. By the time the administrator had entered the system, opened Hal's email program, and loaded his sent messages folder, it was almost seven. "There's only one message to you sent yesterday," Johnson muttered, moving the cursor over the forwarded email. "This is it?" "Yes. Could you open it up please?" The message popped up in a new window. It was just as Alan had read it the night before. He saw that it had been sent at 8:13 the night before. Alan noticed that he was the only recipient. "This is it?" demanded Johnson. "You called me up here so that you could read this?!" The message snapped shut. Johnson's fingers were flying across the keyboard. "Hey, wait, what are you doing?" Before Alan could say anything more, the screen switched to "Please enter username and password." Johnson looked away from the monitor in disgust. "This whole thing was over a goddamn forward?" Alan could hear snickering from Monroe's office. "It's important." "Not to me. Not to Mr. Wimpel, or to Mr. Stanley, or, I'm quite positive, to the late Mr. Milbur. I'm on company time here." Johnson stood up. "You know what? Maybe I'll just pass a word along to Mr. Wimpel about this. You know how he is about wasting company time." "Please. I really need to have that message. Can't you just forward it to me again?" "Why? So you can live for a hundred years?" More snickering could be heard. "No, it's...uh..." "Look, just stop wasting my goddamn time." With that, Johnson stood and walked off. "Great one," he heard Monroe call out. "Go to hell," Alan muttered under his breath. He didn't bother to listen to Monroe's continuing mockery, and walked back to his desk in silence. He gathered his things with a notable lack of haste, and then left the office. It was 7:20. * * * Alan was standing by the curb with his arm stretched out. Another cab whizzed past. With a sigh, he glanced in the other direction. Standing there on the sidewalk was a ragged-looking man with a cardboard sign on his chest. "THE END IS NEAR," it read. Alan took out his wallet and held a dollar out to the man. "What do you think I am, some kind of bum?" the man spat. Alan sighed and put the dollar away. "You know, you're right," he said. He looked at his watch. It was 7:35. "In just a few hours, I'll probably be dead." "Probably," the man agreed. "Of course, the ones who die will be the lucky ones." "Mmm," Alan said, not really paying attention. There was a cab waiting at the stoplight two blocks down the street. "So who told you?" he asked, distractedly, waving to the sign again. "Oh, you know, the Internet," the man replied. The cab saw Alan and pulled up to the curb. "Sure you don't want a buck?" Alan asked. The man shook his head. * * * The traffic was dense, giving Alan plenty of time to take in the signs he had never noticed. The endless line of car brake-lights stared out from the darkness like glowing red eyes. Even street names could be reinterpreted in light of what he now knew: Z street crossed 17th--the last letter of the alphabet, the end, and 17th, the date. The DJ on the radio warned, "Last chance to call in." It seemed almost hopeless to struggle against fate. All the same, he had made sure the cab driver was going the right way. They eventually made it out of traffic and over to Hal's apartment. The fare was nine dollars; with tip, it was eleven. The ninth month was September. Alan had been born in September. The eleventh month was November. The beginning and the end. It was eight o'clock. There was almost no reason to try to find Hal. Alan knew just what had happened to him. Hal had disregarded the message, had forwarded it only to Alan. The curse had fallen on him and he was surely dead. Alan did not believe in curses or in mummies, but the evidence was irrefutable. He knew that if he found anything at all in Hal's apartment, it would be a corpse. He opened the door and entered the lobby. The doorman looked at him and smiled. "Hello, sir. Who are you here to see this evening?" "Hal Cooke. I'll just go up and knock." "I'll ring him from here, sir," the doorman replied. He pressed a buzzer on the wall behind him. After a moment, he tried again, but there was no response. "Let me try a third time." "I'm in a bit of a hurry," Alan said. "I'll just take the elevator up." He checked his watch as he hurried to the elevator. Two past eight. Hal lived on the twelfth floor. Alan could only hope he would get there in time to explain the whole predicament to Hal--if Hal was alive--and retrieve and forward the email. Of course, if Hal were alive, that would mean the curse wasn't real, and there would be no need to send the message. "I cannot allow you up without hearing from--" "No time!" shouted Alan. He ran to the door to the stairway and flung it open. He bounded up the first two flights of stairs, but then his path was barred by an elderly woman. "Slow down," she admonished. "No time," he said, trying to get past her. But as he stepped to his right, she stepped to her left, blocking him. He moved to his left and she mirrored him again. He was about to say something, when she pressed herself against the banister and gripped it tightly. "Go on," she said. He hurried past. "Slow down," she called after him. By the seventh floor he was beginning to feel winded. He slowed slightly, but didn't stop. After a few seconds, he pushed himself back up to a sprint. On the landing in front of him was a yellow sign warning, "Slippery when wet." Alan glanced at it and ran across the wet floor. He shoes squeaked as he did. He didn't slip on the landing, but maybe the sign should have read, "Slippery when wet: just like your shoes." Fifteen steps into the next flight of stairs, his left foot slid back and he crashed onto his shin. It exploded in pain for a brief moment, before he lost balance and began tumbling down the stairs. He didn't even have a chance to scream before it all became black. If his neck had not been at such an odd angle, his eyes might have been able to see his watch, which read 8:07. * * * Hal arrived just as the ambulance was pulling away. He pointed to it as the doorman watched it go. "What was that?" he asked, putting his suitcase on the sidewalk. "Absolutely horrible," the doorman said. "Just terrible," the old woman beside him agreed. "And I told him to slow down." "Driving accident?" Hal asked. The old woman shook her head. "No, on the stairs." "Some people," Hal said.
© 2002
Mark Yohalem
|