In the Safe

The safe was a small square, only about two feet by two feet, and it had an electronic lock weakly connected to the room’s intranet.  From spending so much time in RoboVac outside the reach of wireless internet, I had rather gotten out of the habit of hanging out in the virtual world; if I had slipped out, I would have found the lock at once.

It was easy enough for me to open the safe once we found it, and it would have been easy enough for Bill—and I can’t imagine that anyone else on the planet had one chance in a million of getting that safe open.  I knew his signature programming style, and so I knew at once what bits of code were clues and which were the traps, the inside jokes of that lock.  It felt odd to descramble it–like getting a whiff of his brain-power, as though his skeleton had sat up and said, “Why, hello there.”

And it meant that whatever was inside was for me.

The safe was only about six inches deep.  Inside, there were the HumoVision eye prototypes in a simple plastic box, and a single sheet of paper.  On it was written, “I cannot join the world I have created.  And neither can you.”  No signature, but in Bill’s handwriting.

NEXT TIME: Cleaning Up

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