Ghost
Writer
by BJ Neblett
©
2007, 2012
“Woouph!”
“Woouph!”
Yellow darts of waking sunshine
pierced the dusky den, carrying with them welcomed warmth. They also brought
with them Butch’s daily ranting.
“Woouph!”
“Woouph!”
Kevin stretched and yawned in his
big orange chair. His back was disjointed. His eyes were road mapped. His left
foot was numb. The screen’s digital clock melted from 6:18 to 6:19.
“Woouph!”
“Woouph!”
“Woouph! Woouph! Yourself,” Kevin
cried out. Despite the stiffness, he felt great. With Eris’ help the story was
finished. As before, while he typed, the computer asked questions, made
suggestions, and provided charms to enliven and richen the story and fill in
needed details. Happily, Kevin mashed the print
button, rose, stretched again, and headed out of the den. The laser printer
awoke and began to hum. When Kevin returned, refreshed from a shower, with a
large, steaming mug, a stack of neatly printed pages awaited him in the
printer’s out tray.
“Damn,” Kevin exclaimed between
pages and sips of frothy mocha. “This is great!”
Relaxed in the big orange chair, his
bare feet propped up on the desk, Kevin read over his story. He was impressed.
And confused.
Once again Kevin recognized his
work. Once again it wasn’t his work… exactly. Several passages, even whole
sections, were foreign to him. He didn’t remember writing them. But they
worked; worked perfectly.
Curious, Kevin checked the laptop’s
screen against the printed pages. They were identical. Then Kevin noticed some
sections on the screen were in a different font from the rest. These
corresponded to the sections he didn’t remember writing. Upon closer
investigation, Kevin found his work, the sections he recalled as his, saved
under a separate file name. They had been replaced by the new, vastly improved
passages. His story had been revised and edited. This was just the first draft.
Yet it read like a completed, polished manuscript.
Kevin eyeballed the laptop.
Eris’ web cam peered innocently back
at him.
The phone broke Kevin’s
concentration. It was Nanny. Susan was in the hospital. Kevin made sure his
work was saved, cleared the program, and bolted from his chair.
The LCD screen blinked. The hard
drive hummed. The wall paper photo appeared. The icons which once covered a
part of Susan’s tanned right leg were replaced by ugly red and blue and black
marks.
Singer Doris day’s lush version of
Secret Love flowed from Eris’ speakers, filling the empty room.
“She’s alright, more shaken that
anything.” By the time Kevin arrived at the hospital, Susan had been treated
and taken to her room. “They just want to keep her overnight,” Nanny said,
trying to relax. “She’s fine, Kevin, fine.”
Out of breath from jogging up three
flights, Kevin collapsed against a wall. “Thank God,” he managed between gasps
for air. “What… what happened?” Kevin pulled his inhaler out of his jeans
pocket and took two deep puffs.
Nanny’s face soured. “It’s that damn
apartment of hers! I warned her when she moved in… people put too much trust in
these new fangled gadgets these days. Imagine… machines talking to machines…
running our lives for us!”
“I know… I agree…” he replied,
finally catching his breath. “That apartment of hers gives me the creeps. But
what happened?”
“Well, Susan was in the middle of
her morning routine. Apparently she was about to get into the Jacuzzi tub. She
says she set the automatically controlled thermostat thingy. It must have
malfunctioned. When she stepped in, the water temperature was near boiling. Her
right foot and calf are pretty badly scalded.”
“Is she awake?”
Nanny painted on a thin smile. “Yes.
They gave her a sedative. But she’s awake right now… don’t know for how long.
Thank heavens you are here, Kevin.”
Kevin returned the woman’s smile and
entered the semi-private room. Susan lay in the far bed next to the window. Her
right foot and leg were bandaged and resting on a large pillow. Her left ankle
was wrapped in a wide ace bandage. She looked up from under heavy eyelids,
“Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself.” Kevin kissed her
forehead, brushing back strands of uncombed hair. “How are you feeling,
sweetheart?”
“I’m… I’m ok… just kinda sleepy.”
“The doctors gave you a sedative.”
“I must look a sight…” Susan winced
in pain as she tried to raise herself in her bed.
“Hey, take it easy.” Kevin fluffed
her pillows and laughed to himself. He always thought Susan looked more
attractive with little or no make-up, and told her so often. And he knew how she
hated to leave her apartment without her lipstick and eye liner. “You are
prettier than ever… do you need anything?”
Susan groaned and settled back into
the pillows. “I’ll probably need a cane… or crutches,” she replied sourly.
“I thought Nanny said it was your
right foot.”
“I sprained my left ankle jumping
out of the tub,” Frustration shown on Susan’s sleepy face. “Oh, Kevin… I don’t
know what happened. I know I set the temperature correctly. And it’s designed
not to get that hot.” She sighed, her eyes slowly closing. “I don’t know… these
last few days… it seems…” With that she was asleep.
Kevin learned from the doctors
Susan’s burns were not too serious. She’d have a few small scars, but there was
no internal damage. He could take her home the next day.
That afternoon, Kevin and Nanny
drove over to Susan’s high rise. While Nanny collected some items for her
daughter, Kevin spoke to the building’s super.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr.
Mc Colgan. I’ve been over the entire system three times. I can’t find anything
wrong.”
“Obviously something did go wrong,”
Kevin said flatly. “The doctors said the water must have been near boiling
temperature to burn like that.”
John Batista was the building
superintendent since the modern apartment’s inception. Everything in the
imposing building was controlled by computer, from the elevators, to lighting
and climate control, to security, to the built in toasters. The computers were
linked back to a massive central control across town which continually monitored
and automatically adjusted the building’s complex systems.
Batista gave Kevin a distrustful
look. The last thing he needed was an irate tenant and a law suit. “It’s
impossible, Mr. Mc Colgan. Water temperature is set to a max of one hundred
degrees, and is checked by no less than three systems: one in the boilers; one
in the individual apartment hot tanks, and one in the tub. The only way for the
water to have gotten that hot is if somebody at central control reprogrammed
the computers. And no one did… I checked.”
Unsatisfied, Kevin thanked the man.
None of this made sense. But Susan was ok and that was all that mattered.
After dropping off Nanny, Kevin
drove home for a quick nap and shower before returning to the hospital. From
the oldies station on his car radio came the dark, prophetic lyrics of an old
Zager and Evans tune: … your legs won’t
find a thing to do, some machine’s doing that for you…
Two days later, Kevin and Susan sat
in Susan’s living room. Her foot and leg wore a large wrapped bandage, and she
did indeed have crutches, although she was given strict instructions to stay
off her feet for a week. Kevin insisted on taking care of her, making himself a
bed on the comfortable couch.
“Yes… yes, Mr. Batista… yes… I know…
I’m sure… yes, sir, it was just some burnt bread…. no need for the fire
department. Yes, sir… I understand… yes, the smoke detectors did work perfectly…
yes, thank you.” Kevin punched end
and dropped the cell phone. “That superintendent irks me!”
From her position on the sofa, her
foot propped up on the ottoman, Susan began to giggle.
“What…?
“You… you’re red faced,” she managed
between bursts of laughter. “And you look so cute in my apron and oven mitts.”
Shaking off the embarrassment and
the paisley pattern mitts, Kevin flopped down next to Susan. “I don’t
understand. The toaster is set for light, just the way you like. Even if the
bread got stuck, the unit should have shut down. But it kept on. I finally had
to flip the circuit breaker.”
“Now, do you see what I’ve been telling
you? Things have been screwy in this apartment for the past week, since a day
or so after your birthday.” Susan began to tap a cigarette from the package,
and then tossed them back on the coffee table. “I can’t even smoke… every time
I light up the smoke detectors go nuts. They never did that before. Mom and dad
were here Monday. I had a nice ham baking. The oven switched to self clean mode
and locked up tight. Dinner was burnt crisp. And that Mr. Batista insists he
can find nothing wrong.”
“Gremlins…”
“What…?”
“Oh, sorry… I was just thinking out
loud.”
“You said something about…
gremlins?”
Kevin relaxed back into the plush
sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “During the second World War bomber pilots
blamed mechanical problems they couldn’t figure out on gremlins.” He grinned
and patted Susan’s hand. “You either have gremlins or a poltergeist.”
“Thanks… thanks a lot. That makes me
feel a lot better.”
Kevin rose and kissed Susan’s cheek.
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’ve got some errands to run. And I want to
pick up my computer. Rauch’s been screaming for more stories. I’ll drop the MG
off at the shop for you. This is a good time to have it serviced, while you’re
laid up.”
“You’re my hero.” Susan began to
laugh again.
“What…?”
“Maybe you’d better take off my
apron first.”
Kevin
couldn’t concentrate. The recent unusual events kept repeating over in his
mind: his renewed interest in writing; Susan’s accident in the tub; the strange
occurrences in her apartment; even the baffling but beneficial Eris. Whatever
was going on, Susan and he were closer than ever and Kevin was enjoying the
relationship again.
He stared blankly at Eris. The
laptop and printer were on Susan’s coffee table.
It was 12:30 AM.
“You seem distracted tonight, Kevin,”
Eris said in a concerned tone. “May I help?”
“No… no, I guess I’m just tired. I
think…” Kevin caught himself in mid sentence. “Great, now I’m having
conversations with a machine.”
Eris beeped sharply and cleared her
screen. Key word? appeared followed
by the winking green eye cursor. Kevin thought for a moment and then typed gremlins and hit enter.
Eris’ hard drive hummed, her
infrared WIFI communicating with Susan’s internet connection. The LCD screen
began to melt into free flowing shapes of lines and colors. Kevin watched
intrigued. The slowly dissolving and changing patterns had a hypnotic affect.
In minutes Kevin was asleep.
Eris blinked and clicked and Susan’s
apartment grew dark. The only light shone from Eris’ screen as she silently
worked into the night.
******
“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to
wake you.” It was morning. Kevin lay under a blanket on the downy sofa. Susan’s
affecting laughter filled his ears as daylight filled the modern living room.
“This is really funny…”
Wiping the sleep from his eyes,
Kevin could see Susan seated across from him. She held a quarter inch thick
sheaf of printer paper.
“I don’t know how you do it, Kevin.
You seem to be able to draw inspiration from the simplest things.” Susan set
the papers down and rose with the aid of her crutches. “And I think it is
sweet, you used my little problem here to base your story.” She blew him a
kiss. “I have a doctor’s appointment this morning. There’s coffee on the
counter, sweetheart.” With that she hobbled off to the bedroom.
Kevin’s body was sore from his night
on the couch. Shaking his head to clear it, he poured himself a cup of black
coffee, then settled into a chair and reached for the stack of papers.
Specter
Of Love
by
Kevin Mc Colgan
This time Kevin had no recollection
of writing anything. The last thing he remembered was putting Susan to bed
around 11 PM.
Sipping the steaming coffee, he
began to read the story of an unusual love triangle. It involved a World War
Two American pilot stationed in England, the British country girl he loved, and
a playful, overprotective goblin with a crush on her.
Despite
himself, Kevin was laughing out loud when Susan entered the room. “I never
realized you enjoyed your own work so much,” she remarked. “You sound like you
are reading it for the first time.”
He set the last page down. “It is good, isn’t it? I mean, really,
really good.”
Susan
looked at him puzzled. “Why, Kevin, I’ve never known you to fish for
compliments like that. Yes, I told you. It is very good. Your writing gets
better with each story.”
Kevin
stared blankly at the innocuous laptop. Try as he may he just couldn’t remember
writing Specter of Love. Yet it was
his work, his style: a funny, romantic story he certainly could have conceived
and written.
But
he hadn’t.
Or
had he?
“Hello…
earth to Kevin.”
“Huh…
Oh, I’m sorry…”
Susan
lowered herself onto the sofa, propping up her foot. “You’re still half asleep.
You must have been up all night writing. C’mon, jump in the shower. You’ve got
to drive me to the hospital, and then you can do some grocery shopping for me.”
The
grocery store was just a half a block from the computer shop. After loading
several bags into his car, Kevin wandered down the street.
“Afternoon,
Mr. Mc Colgan.” John the owner glanced up from the mini-tower he was working
on. “Haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“Hello,
John, how’s business?”
“Not
bad, I guess… you know. By the way, how’s that Beta working out for you?”
Kevin
gave the store owner a perplexed look, “Beta?”
“You
know… the laptop… Eris.”
“Oh,
Eris… alright I guess.” A fond smile formed on his lips, “Quite different from
the old Wang.”
John
laughed out loud. “I should think so.”
“What
did you mean by Beta?”
“Beta…
it’s a computer term… kinda like a proto type. When a company has a new product
ready for field testing they send out a few to businesses like mine for
evaluation. They call ‘em Betas.” His manner turned serious. “You didn’t know?”
Kevin
shook his head. “No”
“Gee,
Mr. Mc Colgan, I’m sorry. When Susan told me what she wanted I thought of Eris
right off. I figured it would be perfect for you.” He looked down, shuffling
his feet nervously. “I didn’t mean for you to be a guinnie pig or anything.”
“No…
no… that’s ok. Actually Eris, the laptop, has worked wonderfully.”
John
let out a sigh of relief, “Oh, well… glad to hear it.”
“Tell
me, where did you get her… err… Eris from?”
The
computer man scratched his thinning hair in thought. “You know, that’s the
oddest thing. It just showed up on the UPS truck one day, from some company
I’ve never heard of up in Salem, Massachusetts. When I called the number on the
invoice a woman answered and said she owned the company and built and
programmed the machine herself. She said she only produced a couple of them and
would appreciate it if I could evaluate it for her. Since it was designed for
writers I figured… well… you being a writer and all.”
“I
see…”
“Not
giving you any problems is she? I hope she’s not living up to her name.”
Kevin’s
brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
The
store owner laughed again. “Eris, she was the Greek goddess of strife and
discord. Eris isn’t giving you a hard time is she?”
“No…”
Kevin replied in an unsure voice. “Actually just the opposite, she’s very
helpful.”
“Oh,
good…”
Kevin
headed to the door and then stopped and turned. “There is one thing, the reason
I came by. The picture of Susan you used, I think you call it wallpaper? It
seems to be deteriorating, distorting or something.”
John
smiled up from the counter. “Oh, that doesn’t sound serious, just a second.”
Moving to an operating computer on a desk, he typed a few keystrokes. Seconds
later he nodded his head. “Here we go…” Typing again, he studied the monitor.
“It looks like just a glitch in the programming somewhere. One evening when you
won’t be using her give me a call and I’ll trace it out for you, no charge.”
Kevin
stared at the man, his mouth open. “You mean you… you can fix it… from here? I
don’t have to bring her in?”
A
broad grin crossed John’s face. “Sure, I just call up Eris from here via the
internet. All I need is an IP address and the software to remotely control
her.” He beamed like a cat that’d just caught a mouse. “I see Eris is at
Susan’s house.”
“That’s
amazing.”
“Naw…
just technology… machines talking to machines. It goes on all the time. They
are getting smarter than us.”
The
week passed uneventfully. Susan’s leg healed and she was ready to return to
work. Kevin’s publisher raved over Specter
of Love and Tears of A Fool, and
was eager for the third story. Even Susan’s apartment didn’t give any more
trouble. Sunday night after dinner the couple sat talking on Susan’s sofa,
drinking Chablis.
“So…
I’ll drop you off at the auto shop tomorrow morning and then head on to work.”
She sipped the wine and looked at Kevin over the rim of the glass. “You sure you
don’t mind me using your car?”
“Not
at all, sweetheart. You can’t work the clutch with your ankle still sore and
weak. Use my car as long as you need. I’ll drive the MG.”
“You
know, honey, you’ve really been wonderful, taking care of me and everything.”
Susan leaned into Kevin, love in her eyes.
“I’ve
enjoyed the job,” Kevin replied, blushing. “Here’s to us.”
They
clinked glasses and drank deeply. Kevin set the empty stem wear on the end
table. He ran a hand around the back of Susan’s neck, drawing her close. They
kissed.
On
the coffee table, Eris’ web cam blinked. The laptop beeped and squealed, its
screen flashing erratically.
Suddenly
every light in the apartment switched on. The room burned like a noon day sun.
Pop!
A
table lamp bulb shattered.
Pop!
Other
bulbs began to explode.
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
Kevin
tried his best to shield Susan as glass from the modern ceiling lamp rained
down. Just then the smoke detectors howled and the security system began to
wail.
Conclusion next Week!
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