When Melpomene and I returned, we found our four little twinkie soldiers drinking Valpolicella, and discussing the club scene in South Market. Training! Oh Gaia, they needed training. For the twinkies, we introduced rudimentary channeling of live steam. We needed more recruits, more cells, so we taught them to copy the drop of steam I placed in their heads, and also the best method of spreading that drop to other young minds, cheek to cheek, locked in a sultry embrace.
Yes, it was low-down slutty, but it saved time, and I asked them to do nothing I would not happily do myself. Besides, a new generation of robots was being born every twenty minutes. There was no time for prudishness.
We also taught them the more pyrotechnic channeling of steam, that might be put to good use in the war with ScrumMaster’s robots. I listened to Melpomene lecturing her enthralled dogfaces on the couch.
“It’s something like sitting in a car as it slides on ice, about to crash into a tree. You are willing it to veer away, with strong, but futile brain waves, pulling hard on the unresponsive steering wheel. Guide that energy instead into the ether that separates all things. Lose your ego, loosen up the tension that binds you to maya, to false materiality. Fire is sleeping in every tree, every rock, every falling leaf, and it sleeps in your fingertips. If we fight the robots with pitchforks and bullets, we lose. They do not understand us, so we must strike with blinding magic and mayhem.”
And she would draw the fire up out of their chakras, their loveless childhoods, their groins, whatever it took, until they were able to draw up the fire on their own, at will.
Eight hours of bootcamp, and then we sent them all out to recruit their own revolutionary cells.
In ancient times there was a king who offered a starving man one grain of rice for the first square on his chessboard, two grains for the second square, four for the third, eight for the fourth, and so on, for all 64 squares. The starving man refused, and insisted instead on the gift of a copper coin, to buy some rice. The moral of that little story is that the cells of The Flume would increase exponentially, and that kings are always looking for ways to screw you, for their own amusement.
Huckster was my guy for hacking, so when he came back, I called on him to go to DigiRam to apply for a job. The girlfriend had an in with the HR lackey, so I called and got him set up with an appointment. Part of the interview process required him to write a shell sort from scratch, in Turtle Logo, on a DigiRam computer. I had complete access to the file that contained BitBoy’s passwords, including the one for signing on with admin rights to DigiRam’s network.
Timing was crucial. I was counting on Huckster to provide some eye-catching illustrations to the speech I was planning to give at the United Nations General Assembly in the early evening.
Melpomene and I took a commuter to New York. The General Assembly was to be addressed by President Kafele Bankole of Tanzania, who was being honored for his work in promoting clean water initiatives in East Africa. The Flume had found a gorgeous blue and gold kanga for me at an African trade store. Melpomene dressed severely in a business suit, to all appearances a competent, no-nonsense executive. We took a taxi to the UN headquarters, and walked past all the flags to the front entrance.
With the girlfriend’s dark beauty, my attitude and Melpomene’s trademark insouciance, we felt like we belonged. At the employee entrance, I announced myself as the wife of President Bankole, and told the guard that Melpomene was the CEO of a non-governmental organization who was to be honored by my husband. “We need to get to the General Assembly immediately. The speech is about to begin.”
The guard wasn’t buying it.
“It’s not in my day-book. If you could just take a seat over there for a moment, madame Bankole, I’ll call up to the 38th floor and get this straightened out.” Before he could pick up the phone, Melpomene sidled up to him and whispered sweetly in his ear, while gently stroking his carotid artery, the royal road to the brain. Her other hand was exploring geometries further south, but I gave her a moment’s privacy. The guard had a change of heart, so we made our way to the General Assembly hall.
With Melpomene to take care of any distractions that might arise, I walked right up to President Bankole in the ready room. I spoke to him persuasively - I pleaded my case, harangued and implored, and in the end he saw my point of view. We were, for all intents and purposes, wife and husband. He walked over to the Director of Operations, and told him that Melpomene and I were to be seated behind him at the podium, and that he would introduce us, and honor Melpomene’s work in her fictional NGO.
So there we were, facing the assembled diplomats. Later, everyone would say that the diminutive but fiery President Bankole was dull and wooden, unusual in a man given to florid and eloquent speeches. But he got the job done. While he was giving some brief preparatory remarks, I checked in on Huckster. I had an earphone and a concealed microphone. “Huckster, are you ready to go? Wait for my prompt.”
“I’m ready, Zenia. I hacked into DigiRam’s Subversion server, and checked out the entire software repository. What a cluster-fuck. There’s a rat’s nest of java, javascript, HTML8, HTML9, even some old C++. There are safeguards in the build process for most stuff, but I found an obsolete .css file that was editable. Remind me to tell you about cascading. The .css file was a stub, but I can override the property you asked about, and it should propagate across the entire network.”
I was starting to fume - once a geek begins explaining some esoteric crap, he - and I do mean he - never stops talking. I couldn’t properly express my strong feelings about him at that moment, as I sat there under the scrutiny of the UN General Assembly. “Shut up. I’ll tell you when to commit.” I had to pretend to cough as I whispered into the microphone.