Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

  And I’d like to see someone try to tell me what I’m supposed to be. Anyone does, they’d better have quick reflexes. Why? Because I’d smack ‘em so hard they’d be sitting flat on their asses before they ever knew what hit them.

  Oh yes. I can be fierce when I need to be. That’s one of the first things you have to learn if you want to survive in any world.

  And Here We Are

  It’s not

  the words you use;

  it’s what

  they make you see.

  —SASKIA MADDING,

  “Poems” (Spirits and Ghosts, 2000)

  Christiana

  “So I guess we’re both misfits,” I say.

  It’s funny. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked this much. I guess I’m like Christy in that—I like to sit back and listen, just take things in. Mind you, he’s always been quiet. I had to learn to be that way.

  Saskia nods. “I suppose we are.”

  I meant it as a joke, but she seems to take it seriously. I study her for a moment, her gaze going past me, out the window, but she’s not looking at anything. She’s gone someplace deep inside herself and I’m not here anymore. Not for her. Everything’s gone—the cafe and everybody else in it.

  After a moment I get up and get us each another drink—chai tea for her, black coffee for myself. Saskia’s back when I return, her gaze focused, tracking me as I approach where we’re sitting.

  I set her tea on the table in front of her and she smiles her thanks.

  “I was reading this science fiction book about A.I.s,” Saskia says when I’ve settled back into my chair. “You know, machines with artificial intelligence?”

  “Mmm.”

  “That’s what’s got me thinking about all of this. Life’s not that much different than that book, really. If they knew what we were, humans really would hate us—just the way they do androids and A.I.s in fiction.”

  I shake my head. “We’re as real as humans.”

  “But they’re flesh and blood.”

  I lean forward and pinch Saskia’s arm.

  “So are we,” I say.

  “Maybe now we are, but—”

  “When … how—what’s the difference? We have spirits. We have souls. How we got them isn’t important.”

  “It is to humans.”

  I smile. “Screw humans.”

  But she doesn’t smile back.

  “And maybe it’s important to me, too,” she says. “I guess you’re okay with what you know about where you came from, but I don’t even know that. I start to think back and I’ve got a head full of memories, but they only go so far before I hit a wall. Did I come out of nothing? Can I still have a soul?”

  “Well, there’s an easy way to find out,” I say.

  She gives me a puzzled look.

  “We’ll go back to where you came from—you and me. I’ll take you back into the Wordwood. The answers might not be here, but they’ve got to be there.”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “What if once I get there, I can’t come back? What if I’m only a piece of whatever the Wordwood is and once I get there, it just absorbs me again? What if it absorbs you, too?”

  I shrug. “That’s just the chance we’ll have to take, I guess. I mean, it all depends on how badly you need to know this thing.”

  Saskia gives me a considering look.

  “Are you really this tough?” she asks.

  “Don’t forget fierce, too,” I say, adding a smile.

  “I wish I was. Tough and fierce. Sure of myself.”

  “It takes work,” I tell her. “And it doesn’t mean you don’t get scared anymore. It just means you don’t let the fear stop you from doing what you want, or need, to do. That’s where the work part comes in.”

  She gives me a slow nod.

  “And how do you plan for us to get there?” she asks.

  “I’ll take you by way of the borderlands.”

  “We can get to the Wordwood through these borderlands?”

  “You can get anywhere from the borderlands,” I tell her. “And if you’re right, if there is some great big voodoo spirit running that Wordwood program, he or she probably lives in the otherworld.”

  “The otherworld …”

  I nod. “Mind you, I can only bring you across—you’ll have to figure out where we’re going once we’re over there. Depending on how good your homing instincts are, it could take awhile, so we should probably go sooner than later. At least that’s what I would do. I mean, why wait?” I have a sip of my coffee and raise my eyebrows. “Hell, we can go right now.”

  “No, I’d have to talk to Christy first. I couldn’t just leave him hanging.”

  “And he so hates change.”

  “He’s not that bad.”

  “We could bring him with us,” I say, though I know that could be problematic. I can’t spend too much time with him or who knows what might happen.

  Saskia shakes her head.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “He’s not that stodgy. He’d jump at the chance to visit the otherworld.”

  “Probably,” she says. “But I think this is something I should be doing on my own. For myself. And because …” She hesitates, that far distance filling those blue eyes of hers again for a long moment. “Who knows what I’m going to find.”

  “Nothing you could find could make him feel any different about you. Those Riddell boys are so true blue loyal they make dogs seem unreliable.”

  “I know. But still …”

  I wait to see if she’s going to finish her sentence.

  “But still,” I agree when she doesn’t. “I understand. How about if I come by to pick you up midmorning, then? That’ll give you a chance to talk to him and get ready.”

  She gives me a nervous look.

  “It’s funny,” she says. “This is something I’ve been thinking about for ages. But now that you’re offering me this easy way to actually do it, suddenly I don’t feel even remotely ready.”

  “That’s okay, too,” I say. “Why don’t you think about it, talk it over with Christy, and decide in the morning. I’ll come by and you can tell me what you’ve decided.”

  Now it’s her turn to smile. “And you’ll knock on the door like a regular visitor?”

  “Maybe. We’ll have to see how I’m feeling. I do like the look on Christy’s face when I just step out of nowhere.”

  “You’re incorrigible, aren’t you?”

  “I try to be.”

  We both have some more of our drinks, silence lying easily between us.

  “Why do you want to do this?” Saskia asks after a few moments.

  “Maybe I’m just the helpful type,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  I can tell she doesn’t believe that.

  “Or maybe I just like the adventure of doing something new,” I add. “I’ve never been inside a computer program before. It’s got all the promise of an interesting experience.”

  “And the danger doesn’t worry you?”

  “Tough,” I remind her. “Fierce.”

  “Foolhardy,” she adds.

  “Probably that, too.”

  The World Wide Web Blues

  The puppet thinks:

  It’s not so much

  what they make me do

  as their hands inside me,

  —SASKIA MADDING,

  “Puppet” (Mirrors, 1995)

  Aaran Goldstein

  One week before Ckristiana and Saskia met in the Beanery Cafe and shared their life histories with each other, Aaran Goldstein was in Jackson Hart’s apartment, having a conversation with the young computer wizard.

  “This is really strange,” Jackson said, leaning forward to study his monitor more closely.

  Aaran nodded. “I already know it’s a weird site,” he told Jackson, making an effort to keep the irritation he was feeling out of his voice. “The question is, can you hack into it?”
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  Jackson was one of the paper’s programmers and computer trouble-shooters. Younger than The Daily Journal’s book editor and probably twice as smart, he was in his early twenties and lived on a diet of soda and junk food, but his coffee-coloured skin remained clear and he never put on any weight—all facts that annoyed Aaran to no end since it had taken him a strict regime of proper diets and exercise to finally get rid of the acne and flab that had plagued him all through his high school years. But while Jackson’s metabolism and higher intelligence annoyed Aaran, it didn’t stop him from taking advantage of Jackson’s expertise. Using people was second nature to Aaran at this point in his life.

  They were sitting in Jackson’s home office, a room that held more computer equipment than Aaran had ever seen before outside of a computer store’s showroom. He didn’t know what half of it did, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Jackson did.

  “I really don’t know,” Jackson said in response to Aaran’s question. “This is a new one on me. Here, take a look at this.”

  Using his mouse, he brought the arrow on his screen up to the menu bar, clicked on “View,” then on “Source.”

  “See?” he said. “There’s no code.”

  “And that means?”

  “I don’t know what it means. It’s impossible. There’s always code. You can’t have a Web page without code. Without code, there’s no way for your computer’s browser to translate what’s stored on the site’s ISP into something you can see on your computer. What we should have here is HTML text all over the screen.”

  “Except it’s blank,” Aaran said.

  Jackson wheel his chair back from the desk to look at him. “Exactly. So what’s really going on here?”

  Aaran shrugged.

  “Because I’ve heard of these ghost sites before,” Jackson said. “They’re like the big voodoo mystery of the Internet. This is the first time I’ve run across one of them, but I’ve heard enough to know that they’re trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Jackson’s gaze returned to the screen. There was a white box in the center of the screen that doubled as a search engine and a kind of message board. Behind the box a video of a forest was displayed—very smooth streaming. You could see the leaves moving in a breeze and there was nothing jerky about their shivering movement. The resolution was crystal clear. The sound of the breeze came out of his speakers—soft and soothing. Occasionally there was movement in a tree branch—little birds and animals, though sometimes they looked like people. Or animals wearing clothes.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just trouble.”

  “But it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  Jackson regarded him. “I suppose.” He waited a beat, then asked, “What exactly is it that you want me to do if I can hack into this site— which, I’m telling you now, I don’t see happening.”

  Aaran leaned back in his own chair.

  “It means a lot to someone who fucked me over,” he said. “So I want to mess around with it, let her know that it may take awhile, but Aaran Goldstein always pays you back.”

  “Well, I hate to rain on your parade,” Jackson told him, “but it’s not going to happen with this site.”

  “Okay. New plan, then. Can you shut it down?”

  Jackson took another look at the screen. “Probably. If I can get who-ever’s on the other side of its firewall to open an attachment.”

  “You’re going to use a virus?”

  Jackson nodded.

  “That works for me,” Aaran said. “The site gets shut down and you get to add another notch to your joystick, or however it is you guys keep score.” He smiled. “So I guess I’m doing you a favor, really. Now you’ll get to brag to your buddies about how you just took down another big bad site.”

  Jackson gave him a cold look.

  “No,” he said. “All that’s happening here is you’re blackmailing me into fucking up somebody’s life and destroying a lot of hard work.”

  “Blackmail’s such a harsh word,” Aaran said.

  “Oh, yeah? Then what would you call it?”

  “An exchange of favors.”

  “You’re not doing me a favor. I don’t get any kick out of what you’re asking me to do.”

  “That’s a good line. Remember to use it when the cops come knocking at your door.”

  Jackson glared at him, but Aaran only smiled. It was too late for Jackson to get out of this now. If he’d wanted to stay safe, he shouldn’t have gotten drunk and spilled all his secrets.

  It had happened a few weeks ago. Aaran was returning from a club on Gracie Street where yet another hot babe had shut him down—something that been happening on an increasingly regular basis ever since that night Saskia Madding had thrown him out of her apartment, leaving him standing there in her hallway with his clothes in his arms and anger churning like a hot cauldron in his stomach.

  An anomaly, he’d told himself. She was the loser, not him.

  But it had brought back all the lonely years of being the fat, pimple-faced reject with glasses he’d been in high school. Brought them back in an instant, just like that, as though they’d never gone away. He went in a flash from the guy with the cool to the loser getting turned down for the school dance by Betty Langford, who was more of a loser herself, but still thought she was too good to go out with the likes of him.

  He’d been doing so well at forgetting those days, at reinventing his childhood.

  Me? he projected. Hell, I’ve always been cool.

  All he had to do was look in a mirror. That poor fat little kid with the zits and glasses was gone as though he’d never been. People he’d gone to school with weren’t able to see the kid he’d been in the man he’d become. Maybe that wasn’t such a surprise. That kid hadn’t even registered for most of them.

  But every so often something came along to remind him. Like tonight. The woman he’d been hitting on had given him such a look of disdain that when he looked away from her, his gaze locked on the mirror behind the bar where, for one painful moment, his own reflection was replaced with that of a sorry-assed little kid with a spray of zits across his face, staring back at him, hurt puppy-dog eyes bewildered behind their glasses.

  He didn’t know how he knew. He just knew it was Madding’s fault. There was something spooky about her, always had been. Not spooky enough for him to forgo taking advantage of her the way he had. But certainly enough so that in retrospect, he realized maybe he should have stayed clear of her. Maybe then she wouldn’t have cursed him, or done whatever it was she’d done to put this hex on him.

  Because ever since that night it was as though the sorry vapors of his high school days had risen up and were clinging to him once again—a clear warning to any woman with her loser-radar turned on, which these days was every one of them. And the more times he got turned down, the worse it seemed to get.

  He left the club, staring at the ground, walking aimlessly down Gracie Street, not ready to give the courting game another try, certainly not ready to go home. Another night shot and no way for him to get back at Madding for bewitching him, or at her little crowd of boho friends for making fun of him every chance they could.

  Except fate smiled on him.

  Stepping into Lobo’s for a last drink before he headed home, tail between his legs, who should he see but Jackson Hart, one of The Daily Journal’s computer nerd squad, deep in his cups and obviously bumming, big time.

  There was nothing like somebody else’s misery to make you feel better about your own sorry little life.

  He slid into a stool beside Jackson, ordered a beer from the bartender, then turned to his coworker.

  “Having a bad night?” he asked.

  Jackson lifted his gaze from where it had been locked on the empty shot glass in front him and turned to Aaran. He seemed to have a moment’s trouble focusing. When he did, he gave a slow nod.

  “Woman trouble?” Aaran said. “Because let me tell you, I’ve been there.�
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  “I wish.”

  This wasn’t good, Aaran thought. Come on. I want details. I want something to make me feel better.

  “Well, you’ve got a good job,” he said, “and if it’s not woman trouble, then I can’t think of a single reason for a successful fellow like yourself to be so depressed. Unless it’s a health issue?”

  “Even that’d be better,” Jackson said.

  Now Aaran was intrigued. He got the bartender’s attention and ordered a refill for Jackson. He was drinking sipping whiskey, but he wasn’t sipping it.

  “Well, you know,” he said. “My grandfather was always full of good advice and one of the best pieces he gave me was this: trouble shared, is trouble halved.”

  Actually, he’d read that in one of the endless flood of self-help books that came to the paper. This one had annoyed him so much, he’d actually taken the time to trash it in a quarter-page review.

  “So if you need a sympathetic listener,” he added, “I’m here.”

  Jackson swallowed his drink in one shot, looked blearily at the glass for a moment, then set it down on the bar top with exaggerated care.

  “I screwed up,” he said. “Big, big time.”

  Aaran waited. He had a sip of his beer. The reporters at the paper were always saying that if you kept quiet, people’d feel obliged to fill the hole, saying more, perhaps, than they meant to. And sure enough, patience paid off.

  “I just wanted to see if I could get inside,” Jackson said finally. He spoke slowly and carefully, a drunk trying to sound sober. “To see if I could, you know? I mean, these banks … it’s like they think they’re doing us some big favor by letting us pay them to keep our money, not to mention shelling out a few bucks for every little transaction that comes along. I wasn’t really going to do anything once I got inside. Maybe leave a message for the manager—you know, thumb my nose at him. Here’s one for the little people.

  “I didn’t mean to mess everything up.”

  He fell silent for long enough that Aaran realized he’d better offer some input.

  “Nobody ever plans to mess things up,” he said.