Pro Foto 1.8.2
by Paul Revis
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
After fending off her third suitor of the hour, Alice was beginning to wonder how much longer she would be able to keep up her new lifestyle.
“What is with these guys tonight?” she breathed, ducking into the kitchen for a break.
“What is with you tonight?” returned Jack. “I don’t know what is going on with you. In fact I may not want to know what’s going on with you, but I’ve got to tell you, Alice, you’re a screaming doll tonight. You actually look prettier than you did last night, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“This is getting scary, Jack, and no, you don’t want to know why because you wouldn’t believe it any more than I do, and I do know why,” said Alice, the fear showing in her face.
Trembling, she ducked into the ladies’ lounge and looked into the full-length mirror, astounded at the beauty of the reflection she saw. Even her voice was changing, she could tell. Softer, sexier, in keeping with the face in the mirror. “This isn’t me any more,” she said. “Who are you? This has to stop, Teddy. It has to stop.” She went out to finish her shift and forget.
“Remember me?” asked the voice from the counter. “You were a bit, how shall I say it...?”
“Toasted?” returned Alice. “You’re Bill?”
“Guilty as charged, ma’am,” he returned, the smile on his face putting to rest the nagging fears she had about him. He was handsome, and dressed well and didn’t look like the perv she half expected him to be. “Yah, toasted would be the polite way of putting it. Do you always look prettier working than you do when you go out?”
The fear came rushing back and she dropped her order pad, grabbed her purse from the back room and ran for the safety of the Crapmobile, leaving the startled man to wonder how he had offended the beautiful woman, his innocent words slicing into her brain, stabbing at that primal bit of brain-stem that controls flight and fear.
“I’ve always wanted to be prettier,” she whispered, “and now I am, and it scares me to death, because I had nothing to do with it, and I can’t stop it even if I want to. And worse, I don’t even know why it scares me so much. Why should being pretty be so scary? Oh Teddy, what have you done to your mother?”
She knew of course: knew where the beauty came from, even though it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Down deep in her mind, the truth was there, and she knew and accepted it because she had no other choice. Her life was wrapped up tightly around the need to survive, to provide for herself and her son, the only thing she had left of the beautiful white picket fence life of the past. Things merely were, and one didn’t have much time to stop and figure out the why of it. But now it was different, and the why and how of the situation had become important.
The man Bill was reputed to be a “catch” she remembered, once she recognized him. Wealthy, handsome and, the rumor was, semi-retired. Not from age, but due to his wealth. Alice wasn’t completely sure, but the man seemed to be genuinely interested in her, and now that she looked like the springtime side of twenty years instead of the snowy side of thirty-four, she found herself wondering if she should tell.
“He could be the answer to all my problems,” she thought. “I look young and pretty enough to be a catch for him. Oh, crap. I have to tell him. I don’t have any choice.”
Alice opened the door of the car and stepped out, nearly headlong into Bill’s arms.
“I apologize for whatever it was I said to make you mad,” he said, the confused look still on his face. “I just meant that—”
“Do you know how old I actually am?” she blurted as she brushed the hint of a tear from her eye.
“About thirty-two, thirty-four, max, if my guess is right,” Bill replied.
“So you know?”
“Of course. Did you think I’ve never seen you before last night? I’ve come into the diner a few times, but you didn’t know because the place was busy, and someone else always took my order. I noticed you, though, you’re one of the main reasons I kept coming back. When I met you at the club, I decided to introduce myself. I think you were a bit tipsy then.”
“Did I mention my son, Teddy?” she asked, suddenly embarrassed that she couldn’t remember him introducing himself to her, or much of anything about their impromptu date.
“He was about all you did talk about. Teddy and his magical computer program. In fact, I thought I had some serious competition until I figured out he was your son and not some mythical computer programmer from hell.”
His hands were on her waist now, steadying her. She made no attempt to avoid his touch. His hands were warm. It was the first physical contact she’d had with someone other than Teddy in a very long time, and it felt good. Alice leaned forward ever so slightly. It was all he needed.
“So, can I see you again?” he asked as their lips parted. Alice merely nodded. “I’m still hungry. I think I’ll order the rib eye steak,” he said with a schoolboy grin.
“Coming right up,” whispered Alice, and she allowed him to guide her back into the diner.
The rest of her shift was a haze. Someone wanted her, and it wasn’t one of the many married players she was so used to, or the love-’em-and-leave-’em boys. No, this one could be the real thing, and as much as Alice hated to admit it, she was becoming just a little bit giddy about it. That, and the nagging worry that somehow this whole thing, being a computer-generated figment of Teddy’s imagination, could come crashing down around them all without warning.
* * *
“How do I stop that from happening?” she wondered as she turned the corner onto the street where her modest house stood. Only now it wasn’t a modest two-bedroom, clapboard house. In its place stood an imposing but beautiful brick English Tudor with her house number, in brass, that took up the majority of the block they lived on. Four other houses had simply ceased to exist.
“Oh no, Teddy! No, no, no, no! What have you done, oh God, what have you done?”
Alice parked the car on the brick driveway and ran for the huge oak door. Before her foot reached the top step, the door swung open by the hand of a very proper-looking English butler. To his side, an attractive young woman who curtsied and greeted her by name.
“Who are you, and where is my son?” demanded Alice in that voice that left no doubt as to who the “not to be trifled with” mother bear was.
“I am Havisham, Madam, your butler, and this is Miss Bridget, your maid. Young master Theodore is in the study with his computer.”
“You’re my what?!”
“Butler, Madam. Havisham. My family have been proper butlers for eight generations, we—”
“Not here you aren’t,” shot Alice. “And take little miss hotskirt with you. You’re fired, as of now.”
“I’m very sorry Madam, but you are not able to fire us,” replied Havisham, a hint of wry smile on his lips.
Alice merely shook her head as the awful truth flashed through her brain. This had definitely gone far enough.
“Teddy!” she shouted.
“Hi, Mom!” came the reply from the end of the long ornate hallway. “Be right there!”
“Now, Teddy, before you conjure up anything else!”
The young boy ran to his mother and threw his arms around her, love and pride in his young eyes. “Guess what I made?” he asked, stepping back and thrusting a stack of hundred-dollar bills into her hand. “You’ll never have to work again as long as you live, and neither will I!”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Teddy? Any idea at all what you and that computer have done?!”
“Don’t you like your beautiful new house, Mom?” asked Teddy. “I only wanted you to be happy and not have to work so much.”
Get a hold of yourself, Alice, she thought. The righteous indignation has to come thorough. He has to see it, the logic of it all.
“Teddy, where is the Johnsons’ house? Mr. Wang’s house? The Albertsons’? Where is Tommy Albertson that you used to play with? Their houses are gone, Teddy, and you did it. Where are they? Do they even exist any more? Everything you do has consequences, son. Delete it, Teddy. Delete it all before it’s too late.”
“I can’t,” said the boy in a quiet voice. “I’ve tried to delete things, and they won’t delete. The program says the delete function is no longer available. I put a swimming pool in the basement and forgot to make a way to get out of it. I tried to delete it. That’s when I found out that the delete wouldn’t work.”
“Drop the computer into the pool in the basement.”
“It won’t work, madam,” said Havisham. “The program will continue to run whether the computer runs or not. As you have observed, everything has remained the same even when the young master has shut the computer down and retired for the night. Nothing you do will stop the program.”
“There is another way,” said Alice. “Get back onto that infernal machine and draw us poor again, and replace the houses you made disappear.”
“The houses will be there, but the people won’t,” said Miss Bridget.
“We have pictures of them. Add the pictures to the program.”
“It doesn’t work that way, madam,” said Havisham. “They will only be photographs on the walls of their homes.”
“Teddy has changed me into what I am from photographs, why can’t he bring back our neighbors from the photographs we have of them?”
“The code writers weren’t able to figure out how to do that function,” replied Miss Bridget.
“What stops the program?” asked Teddy.
“Begging your pardon, Master Theodore, but the only thing that stops the program is your death,” said Havisham without so much as a blink of an eye. “That bit of code was written by a disgruntled employee on his last day of work for the Whizzo Software Corporation and not discovered until the program went on sale. The company got back all but one of the defective programs.”
“And where do you two come in?” asked Alice.
“We were hired by the company to track down the program and return it to the code writers for repair,” said Miss Bridget. “We were too late to stop Master Theodore. He had already begun the program sequence. We were able to minimize the damage, until—”
“Doesn’t seem like you did a very good job of that,” mumbled Alice as she turned and slowly walked to the study. “Besides, I think you lie,” she said picking up the program disks and Teddy’s camera from the computer desk. “Seems that all we have to do is not enter any more commands into the program and wait for Teddy to get very, very old. Or, we can do this.”
Alice took a key from her pocket and inserted it into the bottom drawer of the desk, removing a very large caliber handgun from under a bit of tattered rag.
“I’m afraid that won’t work either, Madam,” said Havisham. “It has been tried, and it failed, miserably, if I may say so. You see, the disks are self-healing and frankly, can’t be destroyed.”
“Can you?” asked Alice turning the muzzle of the gun on Miss Bridget. By now Alice was becoming the threatened mother bear, protecting her young, protecting herself, whatever the cost. And yet she saw no fear in the eyes of the young maid despite the threat of the big revolver pointed at her head.
“I’m afraid not, Madam,” replied Havisham, sadly. “What would you gain by destroying us? We are your only link to the programmers and the Company.
“You’re not from here, are you?” asked Teddy.
“No, young Master, we are not.”
“Then help us, please,” begged Alice. “I love being young and beautiful, and rich and all of the rest of it, but nothing good is going to come of this. My son is young. He did what he did not out of greed but out of love for me. He’s not old enough to see the effects in the future of what he has done. I am going to do whatever is necessary to protect him. Can’t the programmers see that? Can’t you help us?”
“Pardon us, Madam,” said Havisham taking Bridget by the arm and moving off into a distant room.
Alice heard the door close but could hear no sounds from the two as they conversed. She and Teddy watched the door intently, waiting for an answer from the programmer’s representatives.
“The programmers have come to a decision, Madam,” came the voice from behind them.
Alice shrieked as she spun around to face Havisham and Bridget. “How did you do that? That door never opened. You—”
“As the young Master pointed out, Madam, we are not from here. There are things which can be made to occur that are beyond your, ahem, limited capabilities.”
Alice merely nodded her head as if she understood, although in fact she didn’t, but at this point she was willing to believe almost anything from these two. They had her fate in their hands, hers and Teddy’s.
Thoughts of their mutual destruction still played out in her mind. If the programmers couldn’t or wouldn’t end, or at least modify the program, she had made up her mind to do what she felt was necessary. She would kill Havisham and Bridget, and then... No, she couldn’t. Not even to save him from what she knew would come if things continued as they were. No harm must come to Teddy, ever. The boy had been through more than he deserved. Of course that didn’t apply to Havisham and Bridget. She gripped the massive handgun a little tighter.
“I perceive that you also have come to a decision, Madam, unless I am greatly mistaken,” said Havisham glancing at the quivering weapon in Alice’s hand, “one that I would beg you to reconsider.”
“That will depend on—”
“We understand,” said Bridget in a soft voice, “and that, too, has influenced the decision of the programmers.”
“The programmers’ decision?” queried Alice, her voice cracking a little as she began to lift the big gun almost imperceptibly.
“Is that you will be allowed one “undo” and, following that, the program will terminate,” replied Bridget, her voice tinged with a sadness that Alice couldn’t understand.
“Mom, there’s something not right about this,” whispered Teddy as they made their way to the room that housed his computer.
“I know,” agreed Alice. “I just don’t know what it is, but we have to trust them. We have no choice.”
“Why can’t we just leave the program alone? We’re okay, aren’t we?”
“Where are our neighbors, Teddy? No, we’re not okay. This kind of power is never a good thing, no matter how good it looks at first glance. This has to stop. It has to go away, and the sooner the better.” With these words Alice made her decision about what “undo” she would execute. She didn’t matter. Teddy was safe, but her neighbors were, well, gone. Where, she didn’t know, but she knew they must be returned, and that meant the house had to go, and everything in it.
They entered the room, all of them, and Alice took her place at the keyboard. She chose the program from the limited menus but saw:
INCORRECT USER
ORIGINAL OPERATOR ONLY
PASSWORD REQUIRED
“I do apologize, Madam,” said Havisham. “Only the young Master will be able to utilize the ‘undo,’ and he must do so without outside influence.”
“There was no warning of that!”
“I apologize, Madam. I should have said.”
“Yes, you should have,” retorted Alice, rising from the chair, her face red with rage.
“I’m sure he will make the proper decision, Madam,” Bridget assured.
“He’s thirteen,” Alice replied, not certain that that nugget of information made any difference to... And then the light of understanding went on in her head. She knew. It had to be, there was no other explanation.
Teddy sat at the keyboard in his mother’s place and began typing furiously. The program flashed onto the screen and he went immediately to “EDIT.” In the list of tasks waiting to be performed was a new option: “Undo. One Only Permitted.” And an arrow to a further drop-down box listed in alphabetical order the things he had done. He made his decision as his mother whirled on the two “servants.”
“You’re the programmers, aren’t you?” Alice yelled. “Admit it!”
Teddy clicked the mouse on the topic he had chosen. Another box appeared:
ARE YOU SURE?
YES
NO
“Not quite, Madam,” replied Bridget, the sadness in her voice now more pronounced and tinged with apprehension.
Teddy clicked on the “YES” box. Immediately, the house began to shrink, rooms disappearing.
“We are the program, Madam,” said Havisham. “It has been a pleasure to serve you. Please see our other fine programs at www.WHIZZOSOFTWARE.com.” And he and Bridget slowly faded away.
Copyright © 2020 by Paul Revis
