released on Six… '
'Naafi,' Nick said, 'not for me, today. I've got business on Eight.' He turned, waving at the demon. 'You take it easy,' he said.
'Yeah, you too, Nick… Hey, wait a minute!' Nick looked back. 'Yeah?'
'You check the message boards yet?'
'Uh, no! Not a bad idea. Thanks, Scorchtrap.'
'Any time, kid.' The demon opened a large ledger labeled DAMNED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE and started leafing through it. 'And you keep your feet dry down in the Maze! You don't wanna catch anything down there.'
Nick grinned. The desk, and the demon, vanished. In Nick's opinion, the Deathworld programmers were using the demons to keep themselves amused, sometimes possibly even playing them 'live.' This amused him, too, and he wasn't above playing the game with them when the opportunity presented itself. It might improve my game stats, he thought, but besides that, why shouldn't they have fun, too?
He walked through the darkness a little way to where he knew there was a huge archway somewhat reminiscent of the main gate. This one, though, had engraved in the stones of the arch the words MARX WAS WRONG: THE OPIUM OF THE MASSES IS NEWS.
Nick headed in through the archway and found himself in a tremendous room modeled after the Beaux-Arts reading room of the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library, but all done in black and gray, with high, dark windows, where the original had been done in ivory, wood, and gold. He made his way past the pillared 'calls' desk, behind which a huge white lion was standing on its hind legs and going through some card-catalog drawers on the desktop, and glanced down the length of the room. There were two lines of huge long dark-topped tables, each table with four shaded lamps down the middle of it.
Nick walked to the nearest of these and sat down in the subdued light of one of the lamps.
Moving and shifting beneath the surface of the table were hundreds and hundreds of text messages, images, and 'flat' virtclips, scrolling by, never stopping, all messages from Banies to Banies, talking about Deathworld itself, or the music, or other Banies, or Joey, or any of the myriad other things that Deathworld fans could possibly think of to discuss when they weren't actually exploring the place. Nick placed a hand flat down on the table and said, 'Start a search, pleases… '
'Whatcha lookin' for, boss?' said the table in another demon-gruff but friendly voice.
'Uh, any message from Charlie to anybody else?'
The table emitted a sigh. 'You know how many Char-lies we got in here, Nick?' it said. 'You wanna narrow that search down a little, or don't you have a life?'
Nick laughed. 'Any message from a Charlie to me, or from any Charlie to any Nick.'
'Nothing found on the first search,' the table said. 'Nothing on the second. Try something else?'
Nick thought for a moment. If Charlie's been in here, at least he hasn't been trying to reach me. That could be a good thing… or might not. 'Any public message about suicide,' Nick said after a moment.
'You really don't have a life, do you,' said the table. 'Eighteen thousand messages about that in the last two weeks. And another six thousand went into the bit bucket between then and now. I told them I needed more storage, but do they listen to me, n0000000. '
'Yeah, right,' Nick said. He leaned his head on one hand for a moment, thinking. 'Look,' he said, 'show me any message in which the words 'I want to kill myself' or 'I feel like killing myself' or 'I want to end it all' are used.'
'You want me to be a dumb machine and sort just for those phrases,' the table said, sounding slightly affronted, 'or can I get a little bit heuristic about this and also look for sentences that mean the same thing?'
'Uh, feel free.'
'Better sample,' the table said. 'Still pretty big. Four hundred eighty-six messages.'
'Okay,' Nick said. 'Okay, display them.'
'You want something to drink?' the table said. 'A cola.'
A glass of it appeared next to Nick on the table. 'Statutory regulations require us to inform you that the ingestion of virtual beverages does not provide any hydration, nutrition, or other dietary benefit to your physical body,' said the table in an intensely bored tone of voice. 'Then again, there aren't any calories, either. So drink up, and don't spill.'
Nick raised an eyebrow, picked up the glass, and drank, while starting to read the messages. Every time he had read enough of one, he tapped on the table and it vanished, to be replaced by another.
Pretty soon his tapping finger was getting tired. A lot of the messages were facetious. A lot of them were deadpan, in terms of composition… but when there was no video to go with the text, as often happened, there was no way to tell how serious the person leaving the message had been, or if they were serious at all. One message Nick came across, which had been left only a few hours before, was typical. WHAT'S THE POINT? said its subject line.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT PEOPLE ARE YELLING ABOUT. ITS ONLY DEATH. DEATH ISNT SO BAD COMPARED TO SOME OTHER THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU AND WHEN IT JUST HURTS TOO MUCH YOU WANT TO SAY ALL RIGHT LET IT ALL BE OVER WITH. MAYBE JOEY IS RIGHT MAYBE THIS IS THE TIME TO CUT THE STRINGS AND HAVE SOME PEACE AND QUIET. NOBODY WOULD REALLY CARE IF I WASNT HERE AND IN FACT I THINK THEY WOULD PREFER IT, IT WOULD BE LESS TROUBLE FOR EVERYBODY I KNOW, ONE LESS THING TO WORRY ABOUT LIKE MY MOM SAYS. I DON'T KNOW WHAT LIFE IS FOR ANYWAY, THERE'S NOTHING THAT SEEMS TO BE THE THING I'M SUPPOSED TO BE FOR AND EVERYONE ELSE SEEMS TO KNOW, I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO DOESN'T HAVE A CLUE. THE SOONER ALL THIS POINTLESSNESS IS OVER FOR ME THE BETTER I THINK.
There were various replies to this, some sympathetic, some jeering, but no one seemed to be taking it very seriously, or actually dealing with the idea that this person really seemed to want to 'end it all.' No one even just came out and said 'Don't!' Because they're afraid of finding that he or she was kidding around, maybe, and they don't want to take the chance of looking stupid?… Nick let out a breath and glanced at the sender's name. 'MANTA.' Just another handle, behind which sat a real person in who knew what state of mind. At first glance it would be easy to think it was someone too depressed even to look over the text and correct it where the context filter in the Deathworld voice-to-text system had slipped up. A yell for help? Nick thought, glancing down at the time stamps and other system information, node locations and so forth, saved at the bottom of the message. If it was one, how could you even find the person? This stuff is all coded, it isn't meant to help you locate them easily. Though he had heard that there were ways to track back an original user to his virtmail account, even to his posting location, from this footer material, if you knew how to read it. By the time you did, though, would the person who'd left the message even still be breathing?… And if you did find them, would they just laugh at you for taking their joke seriously?
Nick shook his head and went back to his reading, but after about twenty minutes more he stopped, exasperated by his inability to be certain about whether the messages weregenuine. 'Is there any way to tell which of these people mean it?' he said. 'Semantic analysis or something?'
'I'm a computer, not a doctor,' said the table. 'That starts getting into diagnosis. You think I want the AMA after me? Life's tough enough.'
Nick had to laugh. 'Okay,' Nick said, 'forget it. But listen-' He thought for a moment. 'Are there any messages from any of the… you know. The Angels of the Pit…'
'Three remain in the database,' said the table. 'But they've been locked off, Nick. Confidentiality issues.'
Nick sat back in his seat, thinking a little more. 'Okay,' he said. 'Would you do me a favor?'
'Anything within reason,' said the table.
'If any messages come for me while I'm in-environment from a Charlie-or never mind that… from anybody- route them to me right away.'
'You're overriding your previously set no-bother instruction?'
'Yeah.'
'Got it. Let us know if you want it changed back at some point.'
'Right. Thanks, guy.' Nick patted the table, then got up and headed out of the reading room again.
He made his way back to his access door, back into his plain white workspace, and stood there a moment, thinking. Do I want to comm him at home?
Maybe not… it might freak his folks somehow. Or it might freak mine, if he called me back at home and let
