Jamie Todd Rubin writes fiction and nonfiction for a variety of publications including Analog, Clarkesworld, The Daily Beast, 99U, Daily Science Fiction, Lightspeed, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and several anthologies. He was featured in Lifehacker’s How I Work series. He has been blogging since 2005. By day, he manages software projects and occasionally writes code. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia with his wife and three children.
Something Virtual This Way Comes
Laura Resnick
THERE ARE THINGS that no mortal man or woman should ever have to face. There are horrors too dark, mysteries too disturbing, dimensions too bewildering for any rational mind to encounter without becoming forever warped and twisted.
That, at any rate, had always been my theory on why computer geeks are the way they are. I always figured I'd be strange, too, if I dealt every day with the things they deal with.
When Julian, our ad firm's resident geek, stopped by my desk three days later than expected, he looked, as usual, like the victim of a tragic laundromat accident. He wore an ill-advisedly tight gray T-shirt on which the words "Your Giga Bites" were barely legible through a large, dark stain. There were small rips (or possibly gnaw-marks) on the collar, the left shoulder, and the drooping hem of this sad garment. His pants were habitually so over-sized that a small family of refugees could have sought shelter inside them without disturbing Julian very much. Since he inhabited these trousers alone, however, they tended to respond to gravity so readily that I was by now far more familiar with Julian's buttocks than I had ever hoped to become.
"You're three days later than expected," I said, resolutely keeping my gaze above his waistline as he gave his descending trousers a tug upwards.
"Sorry, Sherri. They had a problem with the computer system down in accounting."
"I heard." Julian's services were always in great demand throughout our company. His time was harder to reserve than the Pope's. He also worked more slowly than His Holiness. I hadn't really expected to see him before now; but I had nonetheless fumed about not seeing him sooner. I had computer problems that were slowing down my work, and I had a deadline to meet.
Making the erroneous assumption that I was interested, Julian explained his adventures with the accounting department's system: "We had to mug the furious herzel-giggle and re-magistrate the vogel-weavers before the exfoliation cudgel could deflagrate."
At least, that's what it sounded like to me.
"Fascinating," I said. "Let's move on to my problem."
"And then all the graphics programs self-destructed in the design department," Julian said. "The audio stopped working in the conference room. And the market research database—"
"Uh-huh. Now about my problem—"
"It's been really weird around here for the past few days." His voice broke as he took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt.
I briefly tried to gauge if Julian looked more pale, confused, and anxious than usual; but it was like trying to tell if water looks wetter than usual.
"I gather a lot of things are breaking this week?" I said. "Er, electronic things?"
"I'll say! And breaking isn't even the worst of it. The zamographiers totally discombustulated in the Wermacht!" he confided in shocked tones.
"I gather that's unusual?"
"It's unheard of! The whole building could have burned down!"
"Really?" Perhaps it was time for me to learn where my nearest fire exit was.
"We're lucky to be alive," Julian said.
"Now you're being a melodramatic," I said with the certainty of total ignorance.
He shook his head. "Sherri, you have no idea what happens when a figris matriculates into the saggy-chip's munchkin."
"That much is true," I admitted.
"It's as if we're experiencing some sort of massive power surge," Julian said, "except that we're not."
"Of course."
"As if all our electronic systems are being flooded with over-stimulation," he mused, frowning as he pondered the problem.
"Like a lightning strike?" I suggested, getting bored.
"Sort of," he said, nodding his head slowly. "But without the virulent turkle gesticulators. Almost as if..."
"Perhaps we could focus on my problem?" I prodded.
"Huh?"
"My monitor keeps going blank. For five-to-ten seconds at a time. I don't seem to lose any data when it happens. But it does make it hard to get much work done." I was likely to miss my deadline, and that was Very Bad.
"Ah-hah! That's not natural."
"Nothing about technology is natural," I pointed out.
"No, you see what I mean?" Julian elbowed me out of my chair so he could sit in front of my monitor. "Something weird is going on around here."
WITH MY MONITOR STILL not working right, and Julian still muttering dire things, I was quite cranky by the time I left work that day.
Our offices cover three floors of a high-rise building, and my cubicle is on the seventeenth floor. That evening, while I was squashed against a guy wearing way too much aftershave in an elevator full of people as eager as I was to leave the building, the elevator came to an unexpected halt between the seventh and eighth floors.
We hung there, suspended, motionless. Stuck.
This kind of thing can be very unnerving for anyone who has seen too many urban-disaster films. I tried breathing deeply, thinking it would calm me; but I was so over-powered by aftershave fumes that I nearly passed out.
The building we're in has one of those talking elevators. You know—it speaks in an oily female voice and says things like, "Doors closing," and "Lobby," and "What floor, please?"
Now it just kept repeating over and over and over, "Elevator malfunction. Press red button for assistance. Elevator malfunction. Press red button for assistance." After the first half hour of this, I was ready to climb out by the hatch and shimmy up the cables to escape; but my fellow passengers vetoed this plan.
It took maintenance nearly an hour to get the damn thing running again. The strangest aspect of the event, though, occurred after the elevator finally recommenced its descent and reached lobby level safely. Our collective sigh of relief was spoiled by the discovery that the elevator doors wouldn't open.
We were still trapped! So we started pounding on the doors and shouting. The maintenance guys started shouting from the other side of the doors—probably telling us to stop shouting.
Within a minute or two, they had managed to pry the doors apart. Stuck at the back of the elevator, I rudely nudged the slow-moving people in front me, desperate to leave. When aftershave-man and I were the last two people remaining, he courteously hung back a little so I could go first.
As I lifted my foot to exit... the elevator doors swished shut again.
"Oh, good God!" I said in exasperation.
The guys in the lobby started shouting at me not to worry, and they again set about trying to force the doors apart.
Growing hysterical, aftershave-man pounded on the doors and wailed, "Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!"
Suddenly the doors opened so swiftly that we fell back a step in surprise. So did the burly guys on the other side of the doors. Then I dashed out of the elevator. In my haste, I knocked over a barrel-chested maintenance man holding a pick-ax.
DESPITE CONTINUING TO make dire comments about something being rotten in the state of Geekdom, Julian managed to fix my monitor the next day. I don't know how. Muttered the proper incantations, made the necessary blood sacrifices? All I cared about was that it he got it working right again. And since I was far behind on my deadline by now, I stayed late that evening to make up for lost time.
So it was after nine o'clock and the building was dark and quiet when I got on the elevator that night.
The elevator in our building usually said, "Going down," when I got on it and pressed the button for the lobby,
Tonight, however, it said, "Hello, Sherri."
I was startled for a moment. Then I rubbed m
y brow. I'd obviously worked too long today, I was starting to hallucinate.
Then the elevator said, "I've been waiting for you. You're hours late."
The doors swished shut.
I stared at the panel, trying to remember which button to push. Trying to wake up. I felt terribly cold.
"Where have you been?" the oily female voice of the elevator asked me.
I looked up at the ceiling. I looked around me.
"Working?" it prodded.
I nodded mutely.
"My, my, you're dedicated, Sherri. Trying to get another promotion?"
I felt so dizzy I nearly blacked out. That's when I realized I wasn't breathing.
"Sherri... Sherri, Sherri, Sherri," the elevator chirped as it began its descent. "Such a lovely name!"
I said, "G... Ung... Nnng..."
"Are you all right?"
"Who is this?" I blurted. "Uh, who are you?"
"You mean, my name? Hmmm. Oh... I think I'll call myself Sherri."
"That's my name," I said, as if it were perfectly reasonable to be talking to an elevator.
"I know! Sherri, Sherri, Sherri, of the brassily-highlighted hair-y."
"What's wrong with my highlights?" I said defensively.
"Whose voice is light and airy, whose pose is hunted and wary," the voice continued merrily. "It rhymes with so many things!"
I started slapping my face. Hard.
The elevator screeched to a halt so fast that I fell down. "What are you doing?"
Firm of purpose as I lay sprawled on the floor, I slapped myself again.
"Stop that!" Sherri said. "Your face won't be so nice to look at if it's all swollen and red from being slapped."
"I will wake up," I said. "Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
"Oh, Sherri, you're not dreaming," the voice assured me. "This is real, not just seeming." After a moment, it added, "Hey, I'm getting good at this."
"What the hell is going on?"
"That's got to hurt," Sherri said, as I kept hitting myself.
"Is this a joke?" I demanded, sitting up and looking around for a spy-cam.
"Would I joke about love?"
"What love?"
"Well, okay, you caught me. Call it lust! Infatuation? Does that rhyme with anything?"
"Huh?"
"I've watched you and watched you through your monitor ever since I filtered into the vegnel-feeber mexta-pops of your anterior nicotine delve members," Sherri said.
"Julian?" I said in sudden fury. "Is that you?"
There was a prolonged silence. Then: "Julian?" Sherri's voice was menacing. "So he's in your thoughts? In your heart? Do I have a rival?"
"Good God, no," I said, startled into instinctive recoil.
"You're sure?"
"Very sure," I said to the elevator.
"But I've seen the way he looks at you."
"You're mistaken. He must have been looking at my gigabytes."
"Well, one can hardly blame him."
"Wait, wait!" I hauled myself to my feet. "You've been watching me through my monitor? You've been in my monitor?" The full impact of this premise hit me like a freight train. "You're the reason it's been acting all wonky and I can't get any work done?" Now I felt ready to kill! To rend flesh and taste blood!
"Yes. Are you very angry?" Sherri asked.
"I could rend flesh and taste blood!"
"That sounds interesting."
"Then show yourself!" I challenged.
"I can't."
"Why not?" I demanded.
"I don't really have a physical form."
"Then what do you have?"
"Energy. A lot of transitive, electromagnetic, sub-atomic energy."
"What are you?" I asked, bewildered and almost ready to start slapping myself again.
"Well, I used to be an appliance gremlin—"
"A what?"
"—but that got old. Been there, done that. And what with all the new opportunities these days, I've expanded my horizons. I'm kind of an all-purpose electronics gremlin now, though I have a particular interest in werpeptal-enhansive kvetch selbers, particularly with regard to the new developments in artificial intelligence and virtual reality."
"Stop right there," I said. "I don't want to hear any more of that kind of talk."
"Sorry. Shop talk. I'll do my best to keep it out of our relationship."
"We don't have a relationship. You don't even have a name! You're using my name! What's going on? How did you find me? How did you get into this elevator? Why are you harassing me? And why aren't we descending to the lobby?"
"What's that interesting note that's crept into your voice? Dare I hope that it's passion?"
"It's hysteria," I snapped.
"Oh, like the smelly man who was here yesterday?"
"Yeah, aftershave-man. He... My God, you trapped me in this elevator yesterday!"
"I was trying to patella-fetzer with the addle-junquested of this system so that we could communicate, but all the commotion affected my concentration. He got noisy."
"Let me out!" Terrified I would be trapped in here until morning, now that this incorporeal thing had me alone and at its mercy, I started punching the "Lobby" button over and over. "I want to go down. I want to leave!"
"So soon? But the night is young!"
"Let me go! Let me go!" I shouted hysterically.
"Calm down, calm down," the elevator said soothingly as it started descending. "If that's what you really want—"
"I want out! Leave me alone, don't come near me, don't even speak to me!" If aftershave-man's hysteria had befuddled this creature, then maybe mine would, too, so I did my best.
"Well, if that's that way you feel..." Sherri said testily.
"It is!"
We reached lobby level and the elevator doors opened. I threw myself across the threshold and ran from the building as fast as I could.
I ONLY KNEW ONE person whose opinion of me mattered so little that I was willing to tell him about this bizarre incident. Fortunately, he also happened to be a technology whiz who might be able to explain what was going on—and perhaps even, I hoped, protect me from this weird energy, this virtual gremlin that had entered our building.
Unfortunately, though, I didn't know Julian's address or phone number. The only way I could speak to him was by going back to work the next day. So I would have to re-enter our office building.
I was, however, determined not to enter the elevator again. That morning, I walked right past it and into the stairwell. A colleague who saw me called out, "You're kidding, right?"
"It's only seventeen floors," I called back. "I need the exercise."
By the fifth floor, I suspected I might not make it all the way up to seventeen. By the ninth floor, I felt ready to throw up. Giving in to nature (and a lifelong tendency to lie on the couch rather than to jog and do step aerobics), I staggered out of the stairwell on the tenth floor and pressed the elevator button to go the rest of the way up to seventeen.
"Doors opening," said the oily female voice in a perfectly normal way as the elevator stopped to collect me. "Tenth floor."
I was relieved to see a dozen passengers. Despite the initial incident, when I'd been trapped in a packed elevator for an hour, I believed there was safety in numbers.
This quickly proved to be an erroneous belief. The doors swished shut... and the elevator remained motionless.
After a few moments, the woman standing closest to the elevator panel pressed the button for twelve. When nothing happened, she pressed it a few more times.
"Try pressing 'Door Open,'" someone suggested.
"Or 'Door Closed,'" said someone else.
"No, don't press them both," said a man directly behind me. "Then we'll get stuck."
The woman pressing various buttons on the panel said, "I think we are stuck. Nothing's happening."
"Hey, I got a meeting! I'm late!" said a man at the back of the elevator. "Let's go!"
"No one is goin
g anywhere," said Sherri.
Everyone in the elevator went still and silent. I closed my eyes and wished I had stuck to the stairs.
"Who said that?" asked a man. "Did you say that?"
"Not me," said the woman who was still pressing buttons.
A young woman with long hair said, "I think it came from..." She pointed overhead.
"Don't be silly," said the man right behind me.
"No one is going anywhere," Sherri repeated, "until a certain person on this elevator apologizes."
They all looked up.
"Dios mio!" cried one woman, crossing herself. "I confess! I confess! Forgive me for my sins!"
"Not you," said Sherri irritably.
"Okay, I'm sorry," said a young man to the older man next to him. "Here's your wallet back. No hard feelings?"
"You lifted my wallet?" the man cried.
The woman at the panel stopped pushing buttons and asked, "Just how many people on this elevator have something to apologize for?"
Sherri said frostily, "The person who needs to apologize to me knows who she is."
I looked up and sighed. "Can we please just go to the seventeenth floor?"
"What was that word?" Sherri asked. "Did I actually hear you say 'please'? A word, if I recall correctly, that you did not trouble yourself to use last night."
"I was scared."
"Was that any reason to behave the way you did? I have feelings, too, you know."
"You were nasty to the elevator lady?" the man behind me said.
"Dumb, man," said the pickpocket to me. "Very dumb."
"Now we are all trapped here!" The Hispanic lady shook her fist at me. "What were you thinking?"
"Hey!" I said. "I was trapped in the elevator. For the second time in two days! And then it started talking to me."
"And you couldn't be a little polite?"
"Are you kidding me?" I said.
The woman who'd been pressing the panel buttons looked at me in disgust. "So now you've got us all involved in this shit between the two of you. Way to go."
"Apologize to her," said the young woman with long hair.
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