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"I believe in limited government, and the 20th century has been the century of government. The data is uniform. The government has failed at every single task it has set out to do, with the exception of waging war."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Interactive Suicide Note | ||
| A last message for the people you are leaving behind - that encourages their participation. |
Victor Apfel receives a phone call telling him to go into the house next door. He finds his neighbor, Charles Kluge, sprawled across the keyboard of his computer with part of his head blown away.
Investigators take a look at his computer.
| PROGRAM NAME: GOODBYE REAL WORLD DATE: 8/20 CONTENTS: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT; MISC FEATURES PROGRAMMER: "CHARLES KLUGE"
TO RUN "Has this console been checked for prints?" Osborne asked. Nobody seemed to know, so Osborne took a pencil and used it to press the ENTER key... As the music played, a little figure composed entirely of squares entered from the left of the screen and jerked spastically toward the center... The little man extended his arms, which jerked up and down like Liberace at the piano. He was typing. SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE I MISSED SOMETHING. I SIT HERE, NIGHT AND DAY, A SPIDER IN THE MIDDLE OF A COAXIAL WEB, MASTER OF ALL I SURVEY... AND IT IS NOT ENOUGH. THERE MUST BE MORE. ENTER YOUR NAME HERE: "Jesus Christ," Hal said. "I don't believe it. An interactive suicide note." |
| From Press Enter,
by John Varley. Published by Davis Publications in 1984 Additional resources -
|
If you are thinking that this is a quirky and imaginative story, you're exactly right. Go read it.
I note in passing that this story really nails the early 1980's computer environment; older readers will enjoy the details, and younger ones will gasp in wonder at the large computer fauna that once roamed the Earth.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'The planes flew continuously, twenty-four hours a day...'
'It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.'
'...a single perfectly level platform, which rose so high above the water that it was not splashed by the waves.'
'Is an extra-factual memory that convincing?' Quail asked.
Megastructures have repair robots, which have repair robots, ad infinitum.
‘She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew...’
Perfect for clot-busting in the human brain. No Raquel Welch and no lasers, though.
