Sub-orbital runs from the Third World are always the most fun.

Every passenger has just stepped out of a Mach 20 tin can which, two hours ago, was parked on a tarmac on the other side of the planet. Each one of them paid enough for his ticket to buy a thousand bicycles or a hundred horses for his countrymen whose only option is the Mach .005 of footpower. So it's not that difficult to raise their entropy level a notch or two.

They tend to divide pretty much into two groups: government officials and just-plain-rich, and if you can tell which is which, that's frequently a useful bit of data.

Three just-rich. Husband, wife, teenage son taking it all in. Obviously first time this far from home. OK.

"Hey, buddy, c'mere. Check this out." I pop a chip into the goggles and offer them. "Tell me you see this kind of V.R. every day at home.

Keeps walking. No interest. Didn't really expect any.

"You a gambling man?" I ask, continuing to walk alongside. "My five thousand dollars against your ten bucks. Watch one minute, and you won't want to take them off until the program is over."

Sees my certified credchip for five kilobucks. Breaks stride. You don't get super-rich by passing up sweetheart deals, and five grand for a couple minutes' effort is a respectable wage. Especially if you can take it off an obnoxious hustler. Stops to listen.

"Ordinary Virtual Reality goggles. No hardwire to the pleasure center or anywhere else in the grayware, so if your God or your government thinks that's naughty, save it. Nothing to do with what's happening here. There will be signals broadcast out at radio frequencies, and applied at skin contacts, but only in the nano-to-microwatt level everybody's been using forever. And of course, the goggles do receive EEG patterns, and the program modifies itself based on what your brain is doing. Fair enough?"

Looks at the goggles. Satisfied.

"The program on this chip runs about five minutes. You agree to keep your eyes open and to watch for at least the first minute. After that, you can win the bet on the spot, just by taking the goggles off. My wager is that you will in fact keep them on until the very uttermost photon has whacked your retina and the screens go dark--even though you know that you will thereby lose. That's it."

Agreement. Program begins. After the initial minute I remind him that his time is up, he can take off the goggles now and pocket the 5K. No response.

Remind at two minutes. Brief snarl to shut the hell up. Otherwise as motionless as a zombie falling thru an event horizon. Remind once more at three minutes. Looks dangerous. Back away. Wife and son were offering "Take them off!" counsel, but have now shut up and have also backed away. Good decision.

The five minutes elapse. He loses. Am not surprised.

Finally takes off goggles. Disoriented. Inquires, "Are not such things as this illegal?"

"Oooooh! Illeeeeeegal! Oh, help me Mr. Policeman: This evil criminal is hurting me and violating my rights because his hardware's running an illeeeeegal pattern of ones and zeroes! Make him stop! Pleeeeeze! Help me, Mr. Lawmaker: Draw us up a list of which of the 1024 by 1024 by sixteen bloody million possible bit patterns are illeeeeeegal--like you had a fuckin' clue about the technology you're trying to control at government gunpoint--and pleeeeeze tell us which of the two to the power one gig ways of filling our memory chips we can use without going to jail for doing something illeeeeeegal . . .

"It's a genuine pity that the phrase 'Congress shall make no law' is so fuckin' ambiguous that those guys can't figure out what they're allowed to do, but, I guess it is, and so there we are.

"Oh . . . and ain't it a weird co-inkydinky that public-key cryptography got hot almost exactly when my government started--and here you must forgive a gross crudeness, but it is absolutely essential to describe the precise nature of the deed--when my government started to blatantly, clearly, repeatedly wipe its ass in public with the First and the Fourth Amendments to the Constitution that is supposed to protect its citizens?

"Almost makes you think of the walnut-brained dinosaurs getting a monster meteor up the wazoo right when the faster-smarter mammals needed a break, n'est-ce pas?

"Oh, thank you, Illuminati! Thank you so bloody much! Sure took your fuckin' time about it, though, didn't you? Or were you gonna wait 'til they repeal the goddamn Constitution outright and your baby pictures on a bearskin rug get you shot dead as a child pornographer and there are guys in Red Square carrying signs WILL BUILD NUKES FOR FOOD and poor Harry Bergeron gets blown away by a bitch with a twelve-gauge and you gotta piss in a bottle to mail a letter and you need a fuckin' Class 3 Federal Firearms License to buy a box of .22s? Federal Firearms License up your ass, man. You ask my girlfriend real nice and she'll tell you where to buy The Finest Energy Weapons in the Known Universe for 10% on the dollar, and they'll even take those worthless obsolete pictures of Weishaupt which, for obvious reasons, nobody else this side of Andromeda will take.

"Hey B.A.T.F.: F.U.! I don't keep guns in my house any more. They're too dangerous to have around. 'Cause I might trip over 'em when runnin' to dial 1-900-BIGBANG on the fuckin' ansible, for hot nonlocal noncausal phone sex with the nymphets who work the superluminal lines . . ."

Definitely having an effect on them. Speaking very loudly now, and seem to be drawing a crowd. Immediate audience is freaking somewhat. Chill out.

"Seriously, though, there are a few places on the planet where people actually hallucinate that political control of information is still remotely possible. So I've got two separate ways to turn that chip into twenty gigs of flatline-zeroes, on a microsecond's notice, if I had to. Haven't had to in a long time. Most places where the average computer uses silicon instead of beads-on-a-fuckin'-stick gave up the idea of prison for bit-patterns about the same time they gave up their laws against consciousness-altering vegetation.

"But, hey, I've taken enough of your time. Here's my card. Modem or voice me if you ever want to see again pixels like you just did. In any case, welcome to my country, and have a great time while you're here." Shake his hand, kiss hers, and palm a chip into the son's. Works for one run only of What His Father Saw and then overwrites itself with polemic to make him think, and crypto software to let him keep his thoughts private. Plus my modem and voice numbers.

So, ten bucks in, one chip out. I'm ahead enough to buy a drink.

* * * *

Her first time was with me, you know. Sun-dappled days at camp, naked among the wildflowers. Like puppies frolicking in the grass. That made her very special in my eyes, and that's why I always felt kind of protective toward her.

I think sometimes she thought that I was kind of nerdy and a "brain," as they called them then. Not "her type." She wasn't really into intellectual pursuits. That's OK, Lo. You don't have to be. Not you. You were fantastic, Lo. Never forget you, Lo.

We remained great friends and stayed in touch after she went back to Ramsdale. We'd exchange letters and talk on the phone about all kinds of things, but mostly I remember Lo was always having boyfriend problems.

"Like, he is just soooooo possessive, you know?" she would go on. "I mean, OK, he takes me on cross-country trips, right? And, like, he buys me lotsa nice presents. But, Jeez, he's got all these rules, you know? He doesn't want me dating other guys. I can't smoke, I can't do amateur theater, I can't do this, I can't do that. I mean, honestly, he treats me like a child! I don't need this."

I'd try to sympathize, of course, but it wasn't easy, because I still carried a torch for her myself.

"You know, Lo, sometimes in a relationship, one partner keeps growing when the other has stopped. Maybe you're going through changes that he can't."

"Like growing breasts, you mean?" she'd giggle.

She knew I still wanted her, the tantalizin' little tease. But just Geographically Unpossible.

Well, she ultimately dumps this boyfriend in favor of another guy who is rich and famous and who lets her do anything she wants. He uses his influence to try to get her into motion pictures, but she proves to be a "difficult" actress due to unwillingness to take direction, friction with others in the cast, etc. And again she's unhappy about the relationship: This time she wants an exclusive commitment, but he wants to be able to see other girls besides her. She forces the issue, and they break up.

* * * *

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
In your silicon circuitry, snoozin'?
Let me turn on your pixels in sixty-nine ways--
Your end-user's hot for some usin'. . .

* * * *

I lost touch with Lo for a while when I went into the Army. Officers' Candidate School. Manhattan Project. Heavy-duty computer simulations of all kinds of things. They offered me incredible Access to Toys. At that time, the Project had carte blanche for men and materiel. Lots of slack. Open loop. Implosions and Krytrons and Booms, oh my!

* * * *

MESSAGE BEGINS Best advice is to cross as many state lines as you can with her, then blow away her other boyfriend in the middle of his own fuckin' party. 3 Billable hours, $750, Please remit. Clarence Choate Clark, Attorney at Law MESSAGE ENDS

* * * *

I finally hear again from with Lo, only to discover that she has gotten married, is now hugely puffed up and pregnant, and awaiting delivery in some Alaskan nowhere called Grey Star, having driven cross-country with hubby from Coalmont.

* * * *

MESSAGE BEGINS Do we have anybody on the ground in Alaska? MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Negative. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Get in touch with the crazy bastard we sometimes use and see if he's available. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Affirmative. Scrounging occasional merc work thru Weapon Shops of Isher and Weapons 'R' Us, but nothing doing right now. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Tell the fat fool the story and ask how many dollars to go to Grey Star, Alaska and stand by and await instructions. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Says he knows Lo. They lived together for few weeks when she was bumming around USA. Just cover expenses. He will do for free. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Proceed to Grey Star, Alaska and evaluate general state and availability of medical care. Do not attempt contact at this time. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Jesus Christ, it's easy to die here. Some of them are still using fuckin' leeches and chipped-flint knives. What do you want me to do? MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Conduct black-bag ops on every doctor and med facility in Grey Star and vicinity looking for records of any pre-natal tests or treatment for Dolores Haze or Dolores Schiller. Also check first name Lolita. Fifty thousand dollars cash plus ID as "Key Civilian Employee" of the Manhattan Project enroute to you; hire any local talent necessary. Pilot making delivery will await your disposition to conduct similar ops in Coalmont. Go. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS No record any medical treatment of Dolores or Lolita Haze or Dolores or Lolita Schiller in Grey Star or vicinity. Flying to Coalmont. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS No record any medical treatment in Coalmont or vicinity. Who the fuck's in charge in that twosome? MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Grounded outside Coalmont due to major engine troubles. Pilot says parts unavailable for one week minimum. Says there's a war on. Unable to return to Grey Star. Advise. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS You ain't even got half that much time. There's a childbirth on. We're looking at a Christmas Day delivery. We got into this thing awful goddamn late. Stand by. MESSAGE ENDS

* * * *

Let's boot up--I'll jack in--sweet 'Lectronic Lo,
Let me nibble your attribute bytes.
Ne'er has a nanonymphet beckoned so,
Giving wirehead! Erotic delights!

* * * *

MESSAGE BEGINS Your passenger is chief scientist of Nanonymphonics Corporation, prime contractor to the Manhattan Project. He is traveling on the direct orders of the President of the United States on a matter affecting national security. You are to render him every repeat every possible assistance. Do not detain or question him. He is authorized to carry arms, to pass in and out of restricted areas and to requisition materiel of any description, including weapons, aircraft, surface-, or watercraft and any necessary support personnel. If he should be killed or wounded or should request any assistance which you cannot immediately provide, notify at once your unit's Top Secret Control Officer. FOR THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF: Charlie Holmes, 2Lt, Manhattan Project MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS OK, they'll give you anything you need. You get your hardware, I'll take care of my end. Line up enough people and weapons to secure and hold a hospital, then get your ass back to Grey Star. What do we know about OB/GYNs there? MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Hospital? OB/GYN? Sorry you ain't familiar with how we peasants live, but the nearest hospital is at an Army base a hundred miles away. People give birth at home, or they go stay with some biddy who sells fuckin' snake heads and casts hexes when she ain't birthin' babies. Sometimes, can get GP. Don't bet on it. Suggest I return now to Grey Star and get men and equipment locally as needed. MESSAGE ENDS

MESSAGE BEGINS Concur. MESSAGE ENDS

* * * *

Couple of ChiCom bureaucrats. Very impressive that they've managed to hold it together with over a billion beings under one authority into the twenty-first century. Hell, maybe I should buy these guys a drink --try and pick their brains a little.

Naah.

"God bless you, my friends. Jesus loves you. 'Bob' loves you. Gimme a dollar."

They just keep walking. Veterans of airports, apparently.

"Oh, do not turn away from me, my friends. The Eye in the Triangle has given a sly wink to that tantalizin', teasin' girl-Goddess Eris Discordia, and the forces of chaos are on the march! Gimme a dollar."

Walking faster now.

"My friends, there are rumors that, even while we speak, the Discordians are designing circuit boards that will interface your telephone to the crypto program in your PC and are planning to put the schematics out as free soft-ware! Were it not for the power of great Cthulhu and his minions, this hor-rible blasphemy might even have occurred back during the Twentieth Century! Do you understand what I am saying, my friends? Do you? Gimme a dollar."

Much faster.

"You can even have your choice of one of these stupid flowers, or a chip with the phone numbers of ten thousand bulletin boards and fax machines throughout China, and the on-chip digitized engineering drawings for a submachine gun you can make out of scrap metal and old woks! Gimme a dollar."

Running.

One of them finally does stuff a dollar bill into my hand.

"A million-dollar-bill! Oh, thank you, my friends, thank you! Your generosity will be rewarded, I promise you. Since you gentlemen seem to be in a hurry, I won't hold you up. I'll just take a million of the chips and airdrop 'em over Tien An Men Square. You can pick one up when you get home. Praise 'Bob!' Cthulhu fhtagn! Have a nice day."

The bureaucrats continue to run, even faster than before.

I turn and head for the bar.

I join a good friend and two ladies there. Since the ladies appear quite young, at first the bartender refuses to serve them. Various documents are produced, and I can overhear the phrase, " . . . not only fire you but close down this whole fuckin' airport . . ." Shortly all four of us are cheerfully imbibing.

* * * *

"Mr. Schiller, Please sit down. I'm afraid I have to speak to you about your wife and child."

"Well, the point spread is 5 1/2, but I think they can cover it."

Forgot. Deaf and not too bright. Jesus Christ Almighty, what a Christmas Day this has been. Losing it.

Shouting: "Listen to me: The bitch bought it. The brat bought it. By the time we found them and the butcher hobgoblin you had selected to kill them, all we could do was bag and tag the fuckin' corpses. But when I also find over two thousand dollars in cash!"--throw it at him--"while ransackin' your place--"I become convinced that you did not drag a nine-month-pregnant girl to this godforsaken wilderness out of economic necessity, but apparently out of being just too fuckin' stupid to know how to take care of somebody who was younger and softer and gentler, and who ended up stretched out cold on a slab because she trusted you to make her decisions."

* * * *

Silicon is forever, Dolores Haze,
Come sit on my interface.
When Earth starts to craze in the end-time days,
We'll be loving each other in space

* * * *

Obviously, given the value of simstim royalties, the only way I could possibly show a profit on a ten-buck-for-a-chip deal is if I paid no royalties at all and just counted the chip at its raw silicon value. Which is true. For a couple of very good reasons, one of which being that the idea for the Artificial Intelligence capability was mine.

Very big business. Hundreds of megabucks. Next couple years, gonna be in the gigabucks.

And I own half of it.

* * * *

Cyberpunk, cyberpunk, there they are,
Dolores Haze and her lovers:
Fifty million guys 'neath a yellow star,
Sleep with holograms under the covers.

Virtual Valerie's long in the tooth,
Ellie Dee's a plain cyber-slut harlot.
'Lectronic Lolita, I tell you the truth,
You're my fav'rite A.I. V.R. starlet.

* * * *

It's called Occam's Electric Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Makes life more fun, avoids Armageddon sometimes. You oughtta try it. You were fantastic, Lo. Never forget you, Lo.

* * * *

Way too close to the truth. We almost lost her. Honest to Christ, we almost lost her. My God.

Remember: almost. Only almost. Lo is OK. Girl-child is OK. Gave birth on the chopper enroute to hospital. Better than the snake pit they found her in--but there were complications.

Lo almost died. Thank you, God, that she didn't. Thank you, God, for Lo.

Lo is OK. Now nursing daughter in the Army hospital.

Couple deep breaths. Pull it together. Lo is OK. I gotta let this asshole live, I guess. Lo is OK.

Planned to fake deaths of mother and child anyway, but did originally intend more tactful treatment toward "bereaved."

Get it done. Lo is OK.

"Mr. Schiller, the bodies of both mother and child were unfortunately burned beyond recognition in the fire." (Which I started.)

"The Army will pay for the damages and for a closed-casket funeral." (Then you can go back home and diddle one of your six-toed cousins under whatever goddamn rock you crawled out from.)

"I am going to go wait for my chopper. My little Chum here"--unholster, point in air, not at him--"can print the whole clip into K5 at 50 feet, so I suggest you stay at least that far away from me 'til it comes. You want to talk about anything, look for a chubby merc packing better hardware than this pissant .32. Talk to him."

Lo is OK.

* * * *

MESSAGE BEGINS The Italian navigator has reached the new world, but the natives killed him and killed everybody with him and set his boat on fire and nobody can put it out and oh my God it's starting to MESSAGE ENDS

* * * *

Decided not to send it. Afraid it might actually croak the cousin-bangin' Bolshevik right on the spot.

* * * *

Faked my own death, using bug-out plan set up before joining Army in first place. Having great time with Lo. Merc says Lolita2 will probably break a lot of hearts in a dozen years.

* * * *

Longevity drugs. Artificial Intelligence. Kept classified until impossible to deny any longer.

* * * *

MESSAGE BEGINS When exactly do I get to Know My Own Goddess? I mean, like, are we talking Earth???? This millenium??? What?? You were fantastic, Lo. Never forget you, Lo. MESSAGE ENDS

* * * *

Let me shower you with goodies, Dolores Haze, Gigabytes for your memory banks. Would you like some new circuits? 440 - 3 phase? I love how you wire me your thanks.

* * * *

The bad parts are over for you, Lo. You hung in this far from the Primal Singularity, now lean on me for awhile. Like from now on out to the Cosmic Mind or the Big Crunch or Whatever Happens Next. Just tried to make you a smile out of a pain by rotating it through hyperspace along the axis of surreality.

(Jeez. I keep thinking of the old joke about Yasser Arafat dying on a Jewish Holiday. Have people so misjudged you, my cute little Lilith/Lo Deity-Darlin', that they might actually want to celebrate your deathday? Maybe you need a new P.R. man, somebody friendly and easy-goin'? Saw a guy carryin' a sign WILL WORK FOR GRASS AND NYMPHETS. Maybe we can get him. You were fantastic, Lo. Never forget you, Lo.)

Anyhoo, it's not one-two-three-strikes-you're-out in this Universe, Lo. Maybe in the Universe next door. There's somebody in this piece of the space-time continuum payin' attention to nymphets in trouble, and ready to jump into my Calvin Kaluza Kleins and superstring together a couple of infinitely long rotating cylinders of star-stuff if that's what it takes to save your cute ass.

So don't cry, Lolita darlin'. Nobody's gonna collapse your state vector while I'm around.

* * * *

Say, Lo, now that Lolita the Second is in her nymphage, that fat merc is back in town hittin' on her all the time, and she finally agreed to go to Europe with him, and if they end up shackin' up, we oughtta probably either cut them in on the simstim biz or at least buy them their own airport to work in.

And, listen, Lo, I made you an appointment with the gerontopediatrics people to see about gettin' you your figure back. No offense, but you ain't 5,300 days no more, Darlin', and you startin' to show a little wear and tear.

* * * *

Ma chère Lolita, dans le soleil d'été,
Ma chère Lolita, en plein hiver,
En automne, au printemps, je te jure de t'aimer
(A moins, jusqu'à l'on cesse d'être fruit
vert...)

* * * *

And tell me that ain't funnier and truer than that throat-chokin' gargle that other cheap bastard wrote ya'. Hey, Humbert, in case you ever get another nymphet--which you probably won't, 'cause you too stupid to even keep the first one--here's a tip: You don't buy 'em cookies, you buy 'em cars!)

Yeah, I suppose I shoulda known that it was you all along--unrecognized eponym and archetype--well, excuuuuuuse me, I got other things on my mind, so why don't you just punish me by cooking up a worldwide sexual plague so I gotta wear a goddamn inner tube and so then I can't just emigrate to somewhere the age of consent's sane enough you don't gotta be a fuckin' gerontophile to stay legal?

But I digress.

* * * *

Merry Christmas, Lo.

God bless You forever, my most precious of Christmas presents.

We got a great future ahead of Us.

(Oh, Lo, this is just between us: Let 'em keep thinkin' that you were really in danger back there. Chatted briefly with Kip and Tip on the astral plane, and it turns out that you only gotta spin the cylinder faster than half the speed of light at the surface. So you can see that it woulda been possible for me to come get ya' in time even if I had been too late.)

You were fantastic, Lo. Never forget you, Lo.

May God bless and guide Us both, my Darling.

It's gonna be an interesting ride.