Acts of the Apostles by John F.X. Sundman

Author:John F.X. Sundman
Language: vie
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

Somewhere over the Midwest Nick realized that he wasn’t going to sleep.

He opened his eyes, reached in the pocket on the back of the seat in front of

him for Casey’s bon voyage gift: a battered copy of Motivation and Personality

by Abraham Maslow. The book fell open to page 143:

“Self-actualizing people are not well adjusted (in the naive sense of approval

of and identification with the culture). They get along with the culture in various

ways, but of all of them it may be said that in a certain profound and meaningful

sense they resist enculturation and maintain a certain inner detachment from the

culture in which they are immersed.”

Don’t we all, Nick thought. What drivel.

Casey had also given him a copy of de Sade’s Juliette, which he had left

behind. Kinky sex between bishops and underage nuns in underground cha-

pels was one thing, but paroxysms of ecstasy on cannibalism, excrement, and

the torture and rape of children were something else. But as Casey had said,

it all flowed from a few simple premises: that people are animals and should

feel no remorse for following their nature, that the nature of every creature

was to seek its own survival and pleasure, and that cruelty to those weaker

than oneself was an excellent source of happiness. “Remarkably similar to

reading Forbes, actually,” she had said, “but with more sodomy and without

all the blow-ins falling out as you turn the pages.”

Nick had spent much of the last few days with the ever enigmatic Casey.

Yesterday, as they stood in the cooler before the enormous portrait of the Kali

chip, Casey said, addressing it, “OK, what do you do? What’s your secret?”

“Any guesses?” Nick asked.

She sat down cross-legged before it, her braid resting on her shoulder.

“There’s two hundred and seventy-five thousand transistors on this

thing. So, by doing the combinatorics we see that it will take me only nine

trillion years to narrow down the possibilities.”

Looking to the plot on the wall, Nick noticed, for the first time, Todd’s

telltale graffiti. In an empty space on the lower righthand corner, the words

laid out as if on a bumper sticker:

IF YOU CAN READ THIS

YOU’RE TOO DAMN CLOSE!

204

A   A

A Certain Centurian

205

On an actual chip those words would be, what, a hundredth of an inch

across? In the upper right, an outline of Bullwinkle Moose, and the caption

“This time fer sher.” How many other jokes had Todd left for the intrepid

sleuth?

“I must be out of my mind,” Casey said. “Todd couldn’t figure it out,

and he had the specs, the layout program, prototypes to test—and it was his

own damn chip.”

“And none of that stuff is available?”

“Nope. Well, I’ve got the one chip,” she had said, nodding at the circuit

board on the wall.

“What about Todd’s notebooks? Did he keep a log?”

She turned to look up at him, and he felt a rush. It was something about

that turtleneck-and-blue jeans combination, maybe.

“Son,” she said, reaching her hand up for a lift, “that is an intriguing

question.”

At thirty thousand feet Nick turned his attention from the memory of

her turned-down smile, and tried again to read Maslow. Somewhere over the

Rockies he fell asleep.

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