Net Puppets - English Science Fiction
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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net puppets written by Richard A Lovett and Mark Niemann ross narrated by craig Mckee Dennis brophy wasn't a born leader. He was more a listener than a talker. A questioner, not an idea person, but if the old saw about silver tongues ever got extended to computer mice, that would fit Dennis to a T. Who needs to be a great orator when you can make computers dance to your win. Dennis had never met an operating system he couldn't master nor an interface, so arcane. He wasn't the first to deduce its logic if he'd wanted to, Dennis could have been a millionaire many times over. But he enjoyed playing with computers more than he did, figuring out ways to make money with them, as long as he could afford the latest upgrades and wasn't starving. He was happy lately. He'd become fascinated by orphan websites. It was amazing how many there were established by people who spent a great deal of effort constructing them only to abandon them. The best lurked on academic computers where processing time and disk space were essentially free, paid for by academic funny money. No Bean counter would ever notice. Dennis was deep into one of these. When a strand of long brown hair brushed his cheek, he jumped, looked up and found linda fraser leaning across his shoulder, reading the monitor. What's that? She asked linda had the adjacent cubical and a habit of visiting him when she got bored with her work, which was nearly as often as he got bored with. His her job was almost as far beneath her as Dennis's was beneath him. But neither had the ambition to move on the perks more than made up for the tedium. Anyway. Working in the tech support department of a large pharmaceutical company, they had access to the latest high end computers and their supervisor didn't care how much they slacked off so long as they kept the department chiefs happy and we're on call for emergencies. It was a perfect place for people who like to mix work with play. I'm not sure yet. Dennis said it has something to do with the psych department at. He glanced at the U R L V D U dot E D U. Whatever that is, it calls itself net puppets and it looks like some kind of simulation. If we're to believe the last modified date, it's not been touched for several years. My guess is it was some grad students project and the student is long gone. So what does it do? Dennis scrolled through the screen. Not much in the way of instructions, he said. And that's part of what makes these things fun. Nobody ever bothers to document them. But I guess we start here. He pointed to a button labeled, create. Subject profile create is always a good word. Let's try it. My thought exactly. Dennis clicked the button and watched a new screen emerge. Inter baseline demographic conditions followed by a bewildering array of information fields, although Dennis noticed that only a fraction were designated as mandatory, definitely an academic site linda said nobody else would speak in terms of baselines. What are our options, Dennis continue to scroll. It looks like we can pretty much pick what we want. I think we're creating people kind of like setting up gaming characters but more realistic. We need to give them jobs, incomes, work and residence addresses, ages, all kinds of trivia. Let's create a married couple in their thirties or forties linda said, sounds good. And as long as we're picking their addresses, let's put them somewhere around here just in case it's linked to some geographic database and starts asking questions about Virginia or Venezuela or victoria or wherever the **** V. D. U. Is. As long as we're creating computer characters, let's make them something interesting, linda said, not just clones of ourselves. Dennis grinned. What are you saying? I don't have much of a life. Briefly. The banter dropped from linda's voice. I was thinking of myself, she said and Dennis realized just how much both of their lives working or goofing off played out before computer screens. At least she had a cat waiting for her at home. He himself had once had a fish tank but lugging a new monitor up from the car. He'd knocked it over and the fish had died. He still had the monitor but he'd never replaced the fish. The moment passed. And Linda was again, her cheery self. She knelt beside him to ease the strain of leaning across his shoulder. Okay? She said, Let's make the guy the younger of the two by more than just a year or two. Let's make him 32. And her. She paused old enough to be a bit insecure about the difference. How about 41? It's a psych program. Let's give it something to chew on. Good, Dennis said, typing. We need an address I've already put in our city, but it's prompting me for details. I want them to live on the west side. No, let's make them poor, put them somewhere way out southeast. That's all trailer parks and cheap apartments. Okay, It accepted that or at least it's not complaining. What else? Kids jobs. No kids linda said and let's make them not all that nice people. Give him a couple of drunk driving citations and her drug record. Can you do that? Looks like it. I'm just typing in keywords and so far it's accepting them. It seems to be debugging the profile line by line and informing me if something's impossible slick system, drug possession or dealing both. But make it small time stuff. Let's make them stoners, not drug lords. Got it. Dennis said I specified an income in the 20,000 to $30,000 range. So if she's still dealing, she's not very good at it. Want me to give them day jobs or just let the computer pick right now. It's offering to fill the remaining blanks itself, linda was spared having to decide when an icon began blinking on Denis's screen drat, he said, looks like someone's got a problem. Time to do what I'm paid to do. Can we save this and come back later. Dennis stared at the screen. That doesn't appear to be an option. However, he centered the mouse on the submit button. Maybe we can just save our place if we tell it, we're finished. He clicked the button, the screen blanked, then was replaced by another profiles. Accepted reference number. VD you psych test 0.11 dot oh five. Dennis copied the code number on a post. It. He sighed. And now for work, last time I got an emergency page, some fool in the kim lab had pulled loose a power cord. You'd think they'd learn to check such things before pushing the panic button. Two days later, Dennis found linda eating a sack lunch and reading a book in the employee lounge. Look at this, he said, handing her several sheets of paper clipped print out. I got an email this morning from that net puppet site. Apparently it did save our entry and has been processing it though. It's sure been taking its sweet time about it, linda took the paper match confirmation report. Any idea what that means Before Denis could answer he was clapped on the back by Gordon leg or in another member of the tech service department. Sounds like someone's finally realized he's never going to get a date without the help of science, he said, grinning. So who's the lucky con for me? Dennis usually enjoyed Gordon's humor, but that one hit a bit close to the mark Before he could come up with a suitable reply, linda bailed him out, merely the figment of some websites imagination, she said, passing the print out to Gordon? Gordon, glanced at the top page. Net puppets. We think it's a psych simulation, linda said she took back the sheaf of papers. Reread the cover page, then flip to the next one, wow. It took our bare bones sketch and fleshed it out. Look at this subject. One female caucasian. We never specified race, did we? Dennis shook his head. Born in Hartford Connecticut high school college, good grades. A lot better than mine, N. B. A. Manhattan accounting firm looks like a fast track to something big, doesn't it? Yeah. Dennis said then she marries subject to. I wonder why the program didn't make up names for them when it was doing everything else. Gordon snorted. That's easy. Game programs are best if you get to name your own characters. Everyone knows that. Dennis pondered for a moment. He had no imagination for this kind of thing. How about Jack and Jill? He said, linda made a face That's almost as bad as **** and jane if you're actually going to run this simulation rather than just tinker with it. We can do better than that. Yeah. Gordon said names are important. This guy sounds like she ought to be a morgen or Bentley or something. That sounded okay to Dennis but linda thought otherwise yuck. She said how about Nicole or I've got it. Hillary sounds good to me. Gordon said what about the guy? He took the printout from linda. He's a southern boy born in Alabama and wow, he's a lot younger than she is, isn't he? Yeah, linda said that's one of the things we specified but it's not quite what we asked for. Hillary is 42 I'm sure we said 41. I wonder why the computer changed it. Maybe she had a birthday. Dennis said just to remind his friends that he was still part of the discussion, linda shot him a look. Yeah, sure. She turned back to Gordon? How old is subject to 34? So he's older than we asked for. Too weird. Maybe it's a bug in the program. Dennis said for all we know this thing was never finished. Gordon? Was peering over linda's elbow as she flipped pages. Well it sure did a great job of building characters. He said, I know some gamers who would love to get their hands on whatever algorithm it's using. He pulled the papers away from linda who initially resisted. Then relented. Did you tell it to make your guy a jock. Dennis shook his head No. So it came up with that on its own to. it says he was a track star in high school then at Tulane. Where's that new Orleans? Dennis nodded. I think so. But I grew up in Kentucky. New Orleans was a long way away. Gordon? Flip the page degree in physical education. Mostly sees somewhere in there. He took a shot at the olympics. He made the trials but lost the finals. So what's the attraction between him and upwardly mobile? Hillary linda took back the printout. That's easy. She said a moment later, he was a 400 m runner. He ever watched the olympics. Those guys are hunks. He wound up at a Porsche dealership in new york city. I bet that's how Hilary meets him. Gordon laughed. So she test drives the car and keeps the salesman. He needs a good southern jock name to help catch her attention. He grinned wickedly and Dennis does not cut it. Who was that florida quarterback who nearly won the Heisman Ricky ray, Gillette linda said, hey, don't look at me like that. Women watch football to Ricky ray. Gordon? Said a bit of a mouthful. But yeah, I can see that catching old hills attention. Dennis glanced at his watch. They'd used up half the lunch hour and so far, all they'd done was choose names and implicitly invite. Gordon onto their team. Maybe it wasn't so bad that the simulation moved so slowly playing in a group would be fun, but agreeing on moves was going to take forever. If we're going to actually do anything today, we'd better get going. He said, he retrieved his print out and shuffled to the last page 10 years after they marry Ricky Ray and Hillary. He emphasized the names to signal his hope that this discussion was over wind up here a long way from New York City living on the south side in some cheap apartment. He looked up odd. That's not quite what we specified either though. It's certainly equivalent. Linda shrugged and he turned back to the printout. Ricky ray has a suspended license for repeat, drunk driving. She's got a drug record but it's for pill popping, not marijuana as we imagined. It looks like she got caught forging prescriptions. Weird how the program changes things like that. Although I guess linda and I weren't very precise on that one. He was sure though that they had specified a residence in far southeast, not closer in on south side still. That change made sense with his suspended license. Ricky would need public transportation and that was better in south side than in southeast. Gordon was grinning like a kid with his first ice cream cone. It's all the dinky little changes that makes it such a cool character development algorithm. He said it took your ideas and gave them life. That's one sophisticated program. So what do we do next? Well, since Hillary and Ricky Ray started out on the fast track then crashed. It might be fun to lift them back up, linda said, especially if the program is going to keep giving us stories like this, this is better than a soap opera. Okay, Denis said, let's have them win the lottery. He looked around the lunchroom and spotted another coworker hunched over a laptop. Hey keith, he said you got wireless on that thing, keith looked up. Of course. Dennis tossed his lunch sack in the trash and moved to keith's table as linda. And Gordon followed. He handed the print out to keith log onto the site and he waited while keith typed, used that access code. Got it. Net puppets. Are you trying to buy Pinocchio online, know, Gordon? Said, we're the puppet masters. Electronic gods of the puppet universe. Want to be part of the God squad. Sure, he studied the screen. And what rewards or punishments should we bestow on our subjects today? We want them to win the lottery, linda said. She looked at Dennis and Gordon. Right there was a chorus of nods and keith resumed typing boy, that's a bare bones interface. He said, here we are commands, let's try win megabucks lottery. He hit return and waited a moment. Whoa, that's weird! He swiveled the laptop so the others could see error. 006 request exceeds manipulative parameters. What the **** does that mean? I think it means it won't let us rig the lottery, Dennis said, the more I think about those character sketches, the more real world the simulation appears to be. I bet that if our characters buy lottery tickets, they're going to have exactly the same chance as anyone else. If we want to change their lives, we're going to have to do it one step at a time. So much for being masters of the universe. Gordon? Said, if we want to make them shape up, what should we do, linda was studying the printout, Maybe we need to find out why their fortunes took a dime. She said, we got in a hurry and skip that part. Good idea. Dennis said, after all, it is a psych program. So we're probably supposed to think psychologically he was interrupted by linda's gasp. Yeah. We really overlooked something. She said, listen to this. Two years after they married our subjects, sorry. Hillary and Ricky Ray, where the parents of twin girls. Hillary took six months homely, then returned to work. Ricky was doing night school at something called Brooklyn Teacher's College. I bet he was working toward his teaching certificate so he could actually use that phys Ed major. They hired a nanny to take care of the babies. But two years later the Nanny and the babies were clobbered by a hit and run driver. The Nanny lived, the babies died. The driver was never caught, no wonder their lives fell apart. So winning the lottery wouldn't have done anything but give them booze and pill money for the next 20 years. Dennis said, How do we get them back on track, Send them to a psychologist, linda said. These folks need help try it, Dennis said, And keith typed again. But again the screen said his request was impossible. What can we do? Gordon? Asked. This is getting frustrating, requesting seeds. Manipulative parameters, linda repeated slowly. I think we're going at it wrong. We're trying to think as though we are them, but maybe we're supposed to find a way to manipulate them into getting counseling. How? Gordon? Asked spam them. Nobody reads it direct mail for a shrink. How would you get a friend to seek counseling, Dennis like this line of reasoning. It ran true to the spirit of a psych program. Let's hit them with stories of people who've been helped by counseling, he said. Some of that dr Phil dear abby stuff, keith was busy typing. Good idea. I'm asking the program to order them some inspirational literature donated by a concerned friend. I'm also asking it to send a bunch of 12 step literature. He paused. And just for kicks. I'll add a general request for related literature. He quit typing. No error message so far. I'm now hitting submit. He depressed the mouse button. Looks like we're on the right track. He paused again, waiting for the website to process his request. Hm That's another odd response. Dennis leaned across keith's shoulder to get a better view of the screen Manipulation in progress, no feedback possible for at least 24 hours. Wonder why it takes so long keith, said Dennis. Remember the two day delay between the first submission and response? It was almost as though the simulation was proceeding in real time. Maybe it was merely designed to teach patients to psychotherapist, but this was certainly a convoluted way to do it. The next day Dennis received several messages from Net puppets informing him that various items had been mailed to subjects one and two, but that was all a full month passed with no more messages. At first he logged onto the site daily to check Hillary and Ricky Reyes progress, but always he received the same cryptic response manipulation in progress, no substantive feedback. Eventually he gave up. Then one morning he found a new message in his email intervention. Complete it. Read this time. The message carried no details other than advice that additional information was available online. It was a busy morning and Dennis didn't have time to check the Net puppets site until he dealt with the latest crisis. An urgent demand for memory upgrades for the computers and facilities development. That department hadn't come close to taxing the capacity of its present units but personnel hadn't gotten upgrades and the facilities chief was complaining about favoritism. So Dennis spent three hours pulling out perfectly good chips and replacing them with bigger ones nobody needed. Not that he really cared. It wasn't like it was his money. He did find time however, to email linda. Gordon and keith had suggested that the God squad reconvened for lunch, keith again brought his laptop and the other three watched as he logged onto the net puppet site and entered the code that opened the Ricky ray and Hillary simulation. Click that linda said, pointing to a button labeled news keith obliged and found a page that lead off with two obviously news related topics, intervention, log and results of interventions. But there were also several other links that hadn't been present the month before. The most significant of which were finances and medical. Without being asked, keith clicked results, several items appeared including a list of publications that had been sent to the couple and the dates on which they'd been mailed. But most interesting was an item dated that morning payment made to good samaritan counseling center clicking on it, however, produced nothing more stymied, keith leaned back from the computer and looked to Dennis for advice but linda was ahead of him. Try finances, she said or medical keith did then whistled. Hey we've got their entire financial history, Visa bills, car payments, bank statements, the works was all of this here before. Not that I know of, Dennis said he might have missed it but all told he'd spent a couple hours browsing the side on his earlier futile searches for a response. Dennis was beginning to think that the simulation was running in real time. First. It had waited a day to send the mail. Then it had taken a month for Hillary and Ricky ray to react. Sometime in the interim, the program had discovered all these new lines of information. Very weird linda and keith were already paging through the financial entries. There's the counseling payment, keith said posted to their visa last night. It's only $25 though. Who gets a shrink for $25 maybe it's some kind of co pay. Dennis was having trouble reading the fine print of the Visa statement. But linda was closer to the screen. I don't think so, she said these guys are in debt. Up to their eyebrows, reaching across keith, she exited from the financial database and clicked medical and they don't seem to have health insurance. I think it's one of those sliding scale things where you pay what you can afford. She continued to work the computer. Do they have any income at all? She squinted at the bank statements? Yeah, here we go. Ricky Reyes collecting paychecks from some used car lot on Meridian road to come down from selling Porsches to Manhattan nights. If Hillary's got a job, I sure don't see it. What are these keith asked all these small deposits. Every friday he ran the computer mouse over them and laughed. Hey, these things are buttons. He clicked one and laughed again. It's annotated like a bank statement prepared by a private detective or one of us with time to do a lot of illegal stuff linda said she glanced at Dennis. You're right, this is a great sem. Gordon was still staring at the screen where keith was examining Hillary's weekly deposits. He watched for a moment. Then he too laughed. You know what those deposits have in common? They're all mixtures of cash and small checks from folks out in the West. Hills. Hillary is a housekeeper. So Hillary and Ricky Ray. Not only need a 12 step program, they're also broke, Keith said we did something about the former. What if we give them some money? We already tried that linda said. Remember Dennis thought about it for a moment. Had they tried it the right way? The program like subtlety, realistic manipulations, not commands. Maybe we need to think smaller like what? What if we get Hillary a better job? Once upon a time she was this super duper hot shot, why not start circulating her resume and see if she can make a comeback, keith started typing. Sounds good. And so far I'm not getting any error messages. What about Ricky ray? If this thing is going to be so slow? We ought to have more than one iron in the fire. Gordon? Clasped his hands behind his back and lean forward, stretching his shoulders. I've got it, he said. We know that Ricky Reyes. A big jock with a phys ed major and an out of state teaching certificate or most of one. Anyway he'd make a great coach and the D. U. I. S. Shouldn't be that big of a problem so long as he doesn't have to drive anywhere. Let's see if we can snag him a part time coaching job. It's a start and I don't think coaches need certificates from that point on progress was slow but steady. Hillary got a job interview with the downtown accounting firm and while she didn't land the job pretty soon she was sending out resumes on a regular basis without intervention from the God Squad. But Ricky Ray was the first to get a job coaching track and cross country for one of the metro schools the school which really existed had a dismal record in the intra urban conference. No reason they wouldn't actually take a risk on someone like Ricky Ray keith said after pulling up the school's recent results on the internet, especially what they're paying him. Dennis agreed but continued to be intrigued by how the simulation intertwined their characters lives with real events. As the weeks mounted in the God squad shifted meeting monthly after work Dennis decided the realism was addictive without it he would long ago have lost interest in the slow moving program. Also intriguing was the way that he and his friends found themselves living vicariously through the characters in part it was because Hillary and Ricky Reyes lives were so different from their own but it wasn't as though they were using Ricky and Hillary as stand ins for what they themselves had always wanted. Quite the contrary. In real life, linda was laid back nearly to the point of a sloth, but now she was the one who most intensely wanted them to have everything now. It was as though she was testing out the fast track life to prove to herself that she had been right never to pursue it. Dennis himself was fascinated by the opportunity to play at manipulating people rather than machines, while keith who drove a rattletrap car and only had three pairs of blue jeans and a half dozen t shirts to his name had become the squad's leading materialist, only. Gordon, To whom everything was. A joke seemed unaffected. Watching his fellow squad members, Dennis was reminded that psych experiments were seldom what they appeared to be. Not long ago, he'd read about one that had claimed to be an advertising study in which people were shown what they were told was a new line of ads for Disneyland strongly featuring Bugs bunny. Afterward, some of the ad Raiders could recall meeting bugs on their own childhood visits to Disneyland. The catch bugs couldn't possibly have been at Disneyland. He was a Warner Brothers character, not a Disney character. The study had nothing to do with ads. It was designed to test the accuracy of childhood memories given the devious minds of psychologists. Dennis couldn't help but wonder what the simulation was designed to test maybe it really was intended to teach patients if so Dennis was very much the wrong subject. He'd always been content to go with the flow so long as it was fun keith however, had been obsessed with Ricky and Hillary's housing situation. En route to one God Squad meeting, He had gone miles out of his way to drive through the neighborhood where Hillary and Ricky supposedly lived. It's the type of place where the strip malls have bars on the windows. He reported we've got to get them out of there, but let's wait until they can afford somewhere nice as if he knows what nice is. Gordon! Murmured keith heard it, I do too, he said I once went to a party out in East Lake Ridge if I won the lottery, that's where I'd live. But not if you had to work for it. Even keith was grinning now then there wouldn't be any time for play. A month later Hillary finally got a job. Not a great one, but a starter position as an accountant for a plastics manufacturer on Goose Island. But it wasn't until several months later that the God Squad learned something that changed the entire complexion of the game. By this time. The news page had grown so many data channels that all four God squatters were bringing computers so they could work simultaneously. They'd also shut off the email notification feature to avoid being incessantly spammed with updates. The big discovery came by accident when Dennis and keith were brainstorming how to increase Ricky's coaching income while linda and Gordon were examining other aspects of the couple's finances. You know, keith said Ricky ought to try private coaching. I have a friend who hired a coach to train him for the boston marathon. He paid 100 and $25 per month for group sessions. That meant twice a week multiplied that by a couple of dozen runners. And it's a nice chunk of change. Even if we dropped Ricky's fee to say $100 a month, how can he get clients? Dennis asked by running an ad on some running website. It can't be all that expensive. Dennis shrugged. Hit google found a dozen choices and picked one that looked local. He copied the U. R. L. And returned to the simulation. The hard part's going to be figuring out how to get him to run the ad, keith was saying too bad, we can't just tell him what to do. Dennis was looking at the intervention screen. I wonder he thought and started typing fully expecting an error message. The best feature of the interface was that the simple act of typing a command debugged it. Even if you didn't actually submit it by clicking enter since many commands could never be made to work it saved a lot of time. There was no sense spending an hour debating an idea only to watch it. Hit one of those irritating exceeds manipulative parameters, messages surprisingly this command produced no such response, but sometimes that merely meant the problem was too subtle. What the ****? Dennis thought and clicked enter technically it was a breach of God's squad etiquette to do so without first talking to the others, but he didn't really expect it to work. Suddenly linda jerked back from her computer. Whoa! She said, what did you guys just do? Dennis looked up guiltily I requested a one month banner ad on a running website. He said nothing should have happened because I was still trying to figure out how to make Ricky Ray placed the ad himself. Well apparently he didn't wait for you, linda said something called racer ads. Inc just charged $395 to his credit card. Everyone was stunned by Dennis accidental discovery that the God squad could spin. Hillary and Ricky raise money directly. Gordon? Asked Dennis to verify that it really worked by simulating a book order from amazon dot com. What book Dennis asked? I don't know anything you want the weirder the better. Gordon paused. No, why not make it something relevant. Something about coping with the loss of a child. When Net puppets accepted the request and a charge appeared on Hillary and Ricky Ray's credit account. Dennis tried a few other experiments and quickly discovered that the God squad spending power was limited to things that really were available online, but there was still a lot they could buy linda insisted that Dennis tell net puppets to find a site that sold better great jewelry and order Hillary, a diamond tennis bracelet with love from Ricky Ray. Not to be outdone keith ordered Ricky 8 37 inch flat screen television as a gift from Hillary. Then Dennis called a halt to the spree by pointing out that keith and linda had just set back their housing quest by at least six months. That coaching add better work, he said, because in the last five minutes we've damn near maxed out that credit card. I realized it's not actual money, but it doesn't grow back any faster than the real stuff. Over the next several months, finances became the primary focus of the game. Linda took charge of Hillary and kept her resume in constant circulation seeking a better paying job. She even resorted to padding it with glowing references, Dennis was worried, don't have her change jobs too often, he warned. Or she'll become unemployable. And if you're going to exaggerate things, don't get caught or it'll be back to cleaning houses. Don't worry, linda said I'm not applying for anything that's not a huge step upward and anything more than trivial doctoring of her credentials doesn't work. I tried it in her first couple years of college. Hillary took a lot of science courses. Maybe she was thinking of going to med school or something. Then she choked on both. Chemistry and calculus. A. D. Plus in one and a C minus in the other. Net puppets. Let me change the transcript to replace those with AIDS and a couple of rinky dink electives. But then someone wrote to the college and pointed out the error I think are. Hillary's got a conscience too bad. She's also got a drug record keith said she'd make a good C. P. A. But she'd never get a license. Cps make big bucks. Maybe she could be a consultant. Dennis said linda shrugged. I don't think she knows enough about computers. No not a computer consultant. I was thinking of a business consultant or an environmental consultant something like that at work. We're using some consulting firm to help plan that new biotech lab out in trout River. I was up in accounting the other day and heard some gossiping about how much we're paying those guys. I don't remember the figure but it was a lot. What's the name of the firm linda asked something boring like environmental research services linda was already on google. Got them environmental assessment and research services. Actually here's how cute their offices are in the new bank. Tower 44th floor ritzy. No wonder they charge so much. She paged through the ears web page hey they've got a job opening for something. They call research specialist three. Maybe we just gotta break this thing's limited imagination won't let me submit Hilary's resume unless there's a real opening in the outside world and there just haven't been many good ones. A company like this would give her a lot more upward mobility than the plastics outfit she's working for now linda started to type, but Dennis interrupted her. Wait a second. He said, you're still on ears site, You've got to do it through net puppets or you're really applying for that job. Linda laughed and shook her head. Oops! She said sometimes this thing feels almost too real. Yeah and it's got a mind of its own keith said grimly, he'd taken over Ricky Ray's private coaching career. And earlier that evening he grumbled that he was about ready to throttle Ricky now, he explained as of last month Ricky was coaching 14 athletes that should be $1400 per month but he won't charge all of them the full rate some are paying as little as $5 per week. It's like he thinks he's some kind of social worker. Just like that shrink. He and Hillary are still seeing except the shrinks probably making plenty of money from his other clients while Ricky Ray and Hillary are living in that damn apartment out in trailer park land. I mean we got him that big screen tv but he's hardly got anywhere to put it more months passed and Hillary and Ricky Reyes fortunes. Slowly improved. Hillary got the job with ears and was soon promoted to research specialist to. Then she transferred to Economic policy specialist to great keith said when he heard about the shift, that means she's found a niche. She's on the way now. Meanwhile, Ricky Ray enrolled in a local college to complete his missing courses. But the best news came in november when linda made her monthly check up of the couple's finances. I'll be damned! She said. Hillary's got a rich aunt, How do you know? Gordon? Asked. She just got a big check from some old lady in a retirement center in phoenix. How Big keith interjected. $40,000. Big linda said, reciting the figure as though it was something that happened every day. I smell a down payment. Gordon? Said goodbye. Apartment. Not enough of a down payment keith muttered, I thought we were trying to get them into someplace ritzy like East Lake Rich or one of those swanky houseboats and riverside marina linda said, I vote for those. They're really cool. But you're right. Even with 40,000, they're not going to get financing for anything nice. Damn! This is taking forever. Maybe we can speed it up, keith said if the ants got money, it stands to reason that the rest of Hilary's family does too and check this out. There's now a button for family history Dennis stared at the new icon but didn't bother to click it. It's like the program. Just learned how to trace Hillary's family. Now that they finally reconnected with her, he said, I wonder why it does things like that, who cares, keith said I bet there is money there, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get it. The God Squad didn't meet again until late december and then it was at a christmas party in the ears offices. Dennis learned about the party when he was upgrading network software for contract services and spotted a stack of invitations on someone's credenza, curious to see what the ears folks looked like. He caged a couple of you and a guest cards and convinced the others that free booze alone was good enough reason to crash the party. Unfortunately all but linda badly missed the dress code. I told you blue jeans wouldn't cut it, She has to, Dennis when she first saw him, you could have at least worn a tie. Dennis shrugged, don't own one linda, shook her head and you never heard of them all. Dennis could feel his ears burned, but did his best to shrug it off. Underdressed or not. Free booze was still free booze, naturally. The conversation turned to Ricky Ray and Hillary, I had this really frustrating experience with rickie keith said one of his runners entered the new york city marathon last month. The news box said the guy had finished 37th, that's good, but I thought we could do better, so I asked the program to move him up a few notches, no breach of etiquette there. The God squad had long ago given keith sole control over Ricky's coaching. Anyway, he said the website accepted the change, but a few days later he was back in 37th place. I kept trying, but I just couldn't make the change stick. Sometimes. It seems like our characters resist our attempts to help. Hillary is giving us problems to linda said, returning from the bar with her third glass of wine. She was sampling her way through the wine list, apparently bent on trying them all. This one was white. Did you see what she and Ricky Ray did with all that money? She tested her wine. Hey, this stuff is good. A lot better than what I usually drink. I hope she's not buying wines, Dennis said Ricky Ray is probably best off teetotaling wine made linda flirty. She swatted him playfully. No, nothing like that. Please don't tell me. She got a Porsche keith said. I know she might have sentimental attachments to the things, but she's never going to get a nice house if she blows her money on a car, linda stomped her foot wine, sloshing dangerously. Would you get off that house thing? I thought we were going to get them a houseboat anyway, that's not what I meant. She paused theatrically. She's not buying anything, she's giving it away all of it, keith was aghast linda shook her head. $3000 so far. Three checks. The week after the money arrived. $1000 to the city rescue mission, you know that big homeless shelter down on front avenue. Another 1000 to mothers against drunk driving and a grand to Holy redeemer Lutheran church. The last name rang a bell in Dennis's memory. Is that the place with the 12 step program? He wondered if making restitution was one of the steps maybe they're trying to give back to society. Maybe linda said, you know how net puppets keeps giving us those new menus every now and then, there's now one on community activities. It says they started giving away money sometime last summer. I checked back through their accounts and they've been making lots of little donations. $20 here. $50 there. It adds up to about 1/10 of their income. I'll be damned. Gordon? Said, What else did that new menu tell you? Well, we already knew that Ricky Reyes giving away coaching services cheap. It also says that he and Hillary have been going to a soup kitchen twice a month to feed street people. But the weirdest one is that Hillary's volunteered for some mayors task force on pedestrian safety. Why on earth would she waste her time on a job like that. Dennis knew the answer to that one. He smiled sadly. And linda figured it out too, despite the wine. Oh her twins, she swallowed the last of her wine and set the glass on a nearby table. How sad! Sad or not, keith grumbled. All this community service stuff is going to cut into her overtime at this rate. They're never going to get a house. He held up a hand, staving off linda's protest or a houseboat. He swigged his own beer. It's our money. We got it for them. Why does this stupid program make it so hard for us to get them ahead. Dennis sipped a beer while linda hit the bar to try the pinot. Gri Remember this is a simulation, not a game, he said. What would you do if someone trying to push you into working a whole bunch of overtime keith side? Tell him to jump in a lake, but that's not the point. Hillary is not me. I can do me just fine. I want to play at the yuppie executive thing without really having to do it, if you know what I mean. But she keeps wanting to be this creepy! He paused, searching for the right word. Girl! Scout and Ricky's just as bad to beat that. We're going to have to seduce her, Not force er Dennis reminded him, surprised by how much he was starting to share keith's goals, linda was back from the bar? How do we do that? Easy money might help? Gordon, said Dennis snorted, So we're back where we started again with the lottery. It didn't work, No. Gordon? Said I'm talking about something that's already part of the game, grinning. He took a slow drink of his beer. We know that Hillary has a rich aunt, right? Everyone nodded. An old rich aunt. He paused again, milking as much suspense as possible from playing the provocateur. What do you bet? Hillary's in the will? Yeah, but that could be a really long wait keith said maybe we should just quit with all this. Get ahead stuff and stomp. Hillary and Ricky Ray back where they came from when my nephew got one of those sim games for his birthday. One of the first things he did was put his people in a house with no doors and see how long it took him to starve. It might be fun to see how quickly we could get Ricky ray and Hillary back on the booze and pills. Let's not do that yet. Gordon? Said we've got an awful lot of time invested in this. Besides, I think we can get money out of the ant pretty quickly. What? You're going to order up a hit on her? I doubt that'll work any better than trying to rig the lottery. No. Gordon? Said we don't need anything so dramatic. Have you ever heard of an old person who's not on a whole bunch of pills? I bet we can mess with her prescriptions. We work for a drug company. Surely we can figure out a deadly combination, keith grinned. Gordon? That's perfect. We get to take someone down without undoing everything else. That sounds like fun. Dennis wasn't so sure even after he reminded himself it was just a game, was there anyway, Hillary and Ricky could be blamed. He couldn't think of any, but other ramifications were also possible. Just how strong is. Hillary, he asked. The ant is the only one who supported her during her come back as far as we can tell. The rest, wrote her off long ago. Well actually it was the net puppets simulation which had had them write her off, but the distinction was hard to keep in mind. Do you think she could handle it? If the only person who's been nice to her dies and yet another tragic accident, especially a drug related accident, we might wind up doing keith's stomping by accident. Nobody had an answer to that though. They all had opinions. The one thing they were sure of was that Hillary and Ricky Ray were in danger of settling into a rut from which they might be hard to dislodge already. Well on their way to memorable hangovers. None of the God squatters noticed another couple who walked past them on their own way to the bar. The woman was petite with jet black hair and a black dress that accentuated a well maintained figure. Only the crow's feet around, her eyes betrayed that she was older than her ******. A tall, lean man in a blue blazer and chinos. He was drinking diet cola. She ordered raspberry juice and tonic with a twist of lemon when she raised her drink to taste it. A diamond bracelet flashed in the light. She wasn't really thinking about much just enjoying an evening out with her husband who she was looking forward to introducing to her co workers. She was so proud of the way that he'd taken back control of his life and was not only teaching his high school kids the discipline of running, but how to be strong in the rest of their lives as well, how to avoid making the mistakes the two of them had made. Then she froze the glass halfway to her lips. Her free hand reached for her husband's and squeezed it hard jerry, she said, leaning close to keep her voice from traveling. It sounds like those people over there are talking about the money we got from Aunt Llewellyn jerry, Jeff Hackett nodded. The blood had drained from his face, converting what was normally a year round tan into something that looked like badly applied makeup. I noticed he said earlier, they were talking about a runner who sounded an awful lot like frank Murdoch. He had to send that plaque back three times before he finally convinced the marathon folks he hadn't won it. She glanced around looking for an inconspicuous way to continue eavesdropping, but what she saw instead was her project manager bearing down on her with a broad grin on his face Natasha! He boomed, I've been looking for you! And this must be your husband. He pumped jerry. Jeff's hand. I'm walter. Shapiro. And I have the pleasure of working with your brilliant wife. Speaking of whom? He turned to Natasha, you've never met Helen, wong our liaison with the client. The last I saw her, She was over there somewhere. He turned to look and Natasha shot a final glance at the foursome lounging near the bar. Her twins. Someone was saying how sad and for a moment, Natasha was strongly transported back to that terrible day that she thought she might black out. But jerry Jeff had heard too. And the pressure of his hand was a magnet pulling her back from the past and rooting her to the here and now. Where what was done was done and destroying herself would do nothing to undo it. Then walter's voice washed back to her and she realized that amazingly she really was strong enough to deal with this. There she is, walter! Said Hey, Helen! And then he was leading her and jerry across the room and the conversation faded behind her with the woman babbling about houseboats, which was almost as disconcerting as hearing the others talking about Aunt Llewellyn for months. Some realtor had been bombarding her with ads for houseboats, but she couldn't imagine what that had to do with Aunt lou, Ellen