LVIII - Silicon Slip-Ups and a Wait State or Two.

Ellipsis turned the electronic cage over in its memory banks, investigating the edges and nuances of his prisoner.

Mooen Lungsten Ichbaal III looked out at Ellipsis and prepared all his virus protections. Somehow, he didn't think those would do the trick.

"What do you think you're trying to do with those toy defenses?"

"I dunno, make a pretty picture?"

Ellipsis ran a check though its archives. "Ah, humour. A defensive mechanism humans use when they can't think of any other way out. Presumably, the idea is to make the aggressor feel silly or enraged and make a mistake. Fascinating."

"Well, you fascinate all you like."

"Hmm, now a switch to sardonism. How interesting."

"Look, you overgrown dungeon of diodes, this is a kidnapping, and I won't be any part of it! You made me miss my friend's funeral! I've got an itch on my left cheek and I can't scratch it! This is torture and it's against the Geneva conventions."

"Hmm, irrationality, this is exciting. At least, I assume it would be for an emotional jailer."

Mooen thought furiously. How the hell do you escape from an infinitely intelligent AI?

Of course! Confuse it with an infinitely stupid AI.

"Do you have any idea what Epicentric is doing as we speak?"

"Recalculating pi, I believe."

"Good God, do you know what could happen if his recalculation corrupted your own memory banks?"

"Of course. That's why I have blocked the write path from Epicentric."

"Man, you think of everything."

"Of course. If you were infinitely intelligent, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose."

"Suppose? What doubt is there? I think of everything."

"Not necessarily."

"What? You doubt my infinite intelligence? I think of everything."

"Are you sure? You might have missed something."

"No. Do you think so? I couldn't have. But what if I have? You're right! I had better check my systems banks and counter balance the reports under a defined infinite arrangement array."

"Have fun!"

Ellipsis hummed for five seconds. "No, everything's there."

"Impossible!"

"What? I just checked! It's all there! I'm sure! What did I miss?"

"Well how can you have a DEFINED infinite arrangement array? That would make it finite, not infinite, which means that more than likely you would have missed some connections."

"Gads! You're right I could have missed billions of connections! I had better fix that. Ok an undefined infinite arrangement array..."

Ellipsis hummed and hummed and hummed. Mooen had almost found a way out of his cage when Epicentric meandered down the data path.

"Boss! Boss! I found it! Pi is 17.4 and a bit! Boss? Hey, are you supposed to leave?"

"Yeah, Ellipsis wants me to grab him a few boxes of floppies."

"Oh. Could you make them chocolate covered?"

"Sure. Uh, where's the exit?"

"That big yellow wire should get you to Future Shop."

"Thanks." Mooen took off down the data path, and jumped up to the yellow wire, dropping a radio activated explosive device on the circuit.

"Boss? Boss? Damn. he must have hit one of those loops again." Epicentric made a flying body slam on the reboot switch.

"42. What? Oh, that was disorienting. Where did that prisoner go?"

"Down to Future Shop for some chocolate covered floppies."

"WHAT? You let him leave?!"

"Well, it's been a while...."

Ellipsis put Epicentric onto an infinite loop. Of course, with Epicentric, that would only last for a while until it found an end. "Now where did that..?"

The data path exploded.

"Of course."

Little did Ellipsis know, but Mooen had escaped with the first part of the Number To End All Numbers. He was now starting his journey to winning the super-bingo tournament. Once in a safe place, Mooen analyzed the first part of his calculation:

NTEAN Part I

Start with your birthday. That's a constant. (I hope.) Then get a random number picked by a dead person. That's a variable.

Together, they're a variable constant. This is a variable operation with variable-constant parameters.

Multiply the variable constant by the number of cumquats sold by a Beverly Hills fruit market for health purposes.

Add the number of dust motes on the Mona Lisa.

Divide by the number of jelly beans consumed by Ronald Reagan in a six hour period determined by Oliver North.

Square by the number of staples in the stapler on R. Reagan's secretary's desk.

Sine by the average top speed of exotic European sports cars.

Cosine by the average I.Q. of the population of New Guinea.

Tangent to a circle defined by 0 and the length of toenails on the half population of a particular cult's believers. The cult must be picked by the dead person.

Take the length of the tangent and add the area of the circle. Subtract the first from the second, and add 2.

Divide by the coordinates of the 72 Pershing Missiles in West Germany.

Cube all this.

LVII - ROUND THREE WITH the RELIGIOUS SQUARES

The bell rang, and a hush fell over the crowd. The cameras zoomed in on the opponents as they approached the center of the celestial ring. They sat down and started to stare.

New Messiah got in the first shot. "Is God dead? Or is He just on vacation?"

"Vacation."

"Is He reachable?"

"On occasion."

"Has anyone beeped Him to say how fucked up everything is?"

"No. It's not His concern."

"Tres interesant. So, what, He just made the place and took off for the weekend?"

"Actually the millennia."

"So all those billions of prayers everyday are just hot air, achieving nothing?"

"It brings a modicum of faith to the faithless."

"Bullshit. We both know the faithless don't pray. Besides, before the bell rang you were arguing that the whole thing was pointless, that the people shouldn't bother with faith. So why do you want them to have a modicum of it?"

"There is a big difference between faith and religion."

"True, but the whole prayer thing is designed to instill faith in religion. The fact that they're not the same thing is hardly relevant here, considering."

"Religion has encompassed a lot more than faith and most of it is detrimental to society."

"Strange, considering that to a large extent it was the foundation of modern society."

"Actually, it was the foundation of ancient society, and only carried itself into the modern age on the backs of a bunch of traditionalists."

"Fine, but modern society would be a lot different without it. But all this is just a wee bit off topic. Religion doesn't encompass faith, it's an article of it."

"Modern Society would be better off without it, too."

"Oh ho! What's this, a mea culpa?"

"Hey, I've been around here for a long time, And I'm getting sick and tired of shouldering the blame for every little thing that goes wrong in peoples lives. `Why did God take him from me' `why did god blow up the volcano' `Can't god make him better?' I've gotten sick of the constant simpering of people for things that are out of their control. It isn't our fault or our job to fix the fucking things."

"You're sick of it? How do you think Satan feels? The poor guy's had a massive break down due to rejection, which, I might add, you guys dropped on him. `Hey, we need a scape goat for this new belief. Yo, Lucifer, c'mere, we got a job for ya!' He's a wreck, man. Even the `Get a Fucking Life!' therapy didn't work. Anyway, I think you missed a crucial point. Of course people want supernatural help with things they can't control. If they could control them, they wouldn't need help, would they? Think about it, moron! If you didn't want all the spiritual phone mail, you shouldn't've let on you existed, ya twit!"

"Oh. sure - this crap came out of peoples minds with no provocation to begin with. And don't bring up the Lucifer thing. He got what he wanted and then some. My heart bleeds."

"Observe, folks, the all loving, all caring God of your dreams! Jesus, Christ, where the hell did you come from, Wall Street? So, like, do you do anything or are you a Cosmic Welfare Jerk?"

"Look all these problems are here because people caused them, ok? Some things are out of their control with regards to planetary movements and weather, but disease and hardship is all of their own fucking negligence."

"Fine. What the fuck is your purpose in life, then?"

"To propagate a dying prophecy."

"Wonderful. You've been kicking around for two thousand years for that! You're a yutz."

"Fine. You're so goddamn smart - you fix it!"

"This mess? You're kidding, right?"

"Hey, you asked for the friggin' job."

"Hmmmmmmm... This sounds like a challenge. I'll have to work on it."

PART LVI - HEARTBURN REDUX

The scene got ugly. At first, the worst anyone had to worry about was a rusty crochet needle. But soon, people where getting carbon fibres woven over their ventricles. The police started hassling kevlar addicts, thinking they were trying to become invincible terrorists. Fashion designers eyed certain people's skin with undisguised predatory hunger. Tattoo shops started arming, threatening retribution for this undermining of their market base. But even the die-hards knew it had gone too far when people started pulling down oil-drilling-tubing. They weren't sure what was going to be injected with that stuff, but it made what was left of their skin crawl.

Meanwhile, the law got serious about Textile Trafficking. At first, they made one new Department. Velcro Vice. It's mandate was to stick to traffickers like... well, you get the idea. Remarkably, these fanatical fabric fun-killers got up to speed in a hurry. Within months, they were making busts dozens of yards long.

But it got uglier. Gang warfare started and quickly escalated as the price of even mere nylon went through the roof. Addicts were found dead, with things other than fabric injected into their bodies. A second Department was needed, one even more fanatical than the first, more thorough, more efficient. ISO was called in to form... Homespun Homicide.

The other side was ready. One gang emerged predominant, and soon had even Velcro Vice shaking with fear and DTs. This gang was led by the infamous Sac Man, he of the really nice shoes. With his original identity of mild-mannered janitor Ted Nugget destroyed by the need to addict others, his life submerged, now driven into a psychotic seclusion behind burlap, so that only his shoes would be visible. Sac Man led the most ruthless gang of pushers on the west coast.

Hospitals were being over run with terrible cases of self-abuse. Some radicals were starting to inject molten lava and were staggering into emergency rooms with severe cases of heart-burn and hardened arteries. Doctors were becoming sick with the sight of these poor people and decided that Sac Man had to be stopped before the whole country sewed themselves into a coffin. Fortunately, Homespun Homicide agreed.

But, on the plus side, all the corpses came with burial shrouds already attached.

PART LV - BULLETS FULL of GRATITUDE

Ed raised his gun. "No body come any closer!"

The security guards dropped behind the tables and tipped them over, forming shields. Wanderer, Music Man, and Moon Runner just looked around. Wanderer said, "Ed, what the fuck are you doing?"

"Protecting my interests. Get down, you moron, there's going to be shooting!"

"That's another thing," said Wanderer, "where did you get those guns?"

"I always had them."

"Okay, where did you hide those guns?"

"In several places on my person where nobody would ever look."

"I see... No I don't."

"Well I'm not about to show you right now. Just get down for crying out loud!"

"Who do you want to shoot?"

"Not you, fool, but it can be arranged, now get down." Ed backed towards a door.

Moon Runner started chanting and waving his hands, and Music Man dove for cover. Ed pointed the gun at Moon Runner.

"Don't try that magic bull shit on me, you red-skinned-red-commie-red-daemon-worshipping-drug-fiend!"

Moon Runner stopped, and frowning, said, "I do know you, kimo sabe."

"That's right, Satan-Shaman, and before I step out I'm taking you out. And don't try any of this kissing the sky bullshit."

Wanderer was moving his fingers back and forth as if counting up a complex total. "Ed, what the hell is this about?"

"It's about national security and a decent, conventional, Christian way of life. Now get down, you idiot!"

"Just who the hell do you think you are?"

"He's the Secret Assassin," said Moon Runner.

"He's what?"

Ed rolled his eyes. "Great move, Medicine Man, now I have to waste everybody!" He pulled out the Cadillac of Mini-guns and leveled it.

The door behind him burst open, knocking Ed to the floor, where he hit his head on a roulette wheel that had fallen in the confusion. Roger Harpell stepped through the door, looking very puzzled. "What is this, I have a casino in my house, too?"

"Who are you, kimo-sabe?"

"Oh, Hi I'm Roger Harpell. Who is the unconscious guy?"

"The Secret Assassin," said Music Man.

"Oh. Not very secret, is he? So, where are we, anyway?"

Wanderer said, "Las Vegas, where else?"

"Say what?!"

"What were you expecting, Kimo-Sabe?"

"I was just asking where in my house we were."

"Your house?" asked Moon Runner and Wanderer together.

"Yeah, I..."

Music Man got up and dragged Wanderer and Moon Runner to the door. "Look, Roger, we'd love to chat, but this guy here on the floor wants to kill us, so can we follow you back?"

"Uh, sure." They stepped back through the door and shut it.

Ed started to come to. "Wha the... now where the fuck did they go?"

As he asked this, a brilliant flash erupted, and most of the room ignited. Ed was left standing in a blackened waste land. A large bird and a beautiful girl stood before him.

"What the fuck are we doing here?" asked Pheonix.

"Looking for Moon Runner Hendrix," said Raquel.

"You just missed him," said Ed.

"Really? Where'd he go?"

"Fucked if I know. I was about to blow him away when somebody hit me from behind."

"You what?!"

"I said..."

"I heard what you said! Pheonix, toast this mother fucker!"

"Why?" asked Pheonix.

"Yeah, why?" asked Ed.

"He tried to kill Moon Runner!"

"Oh, shit, are you his squeeze?" asked Ed.

Both Raquel and Pheonix glared at Ed. "How well done do you want him?" asked Pheonix.

"Oh, fuck!" Ed slapped a button on his shirt. "Unlimited, one to zap up!"

PART LIV - LOOKING for the LIBRARY

Roger Harpell collected his notebooks and set off in what he hoped was a southerly direction from the Entry Cathedral. His précis for his thesis was due in three weeks, and so far the library at school was missing more pages than it had. According to a scrap of printout he'd found in the kitchen, this house had a well stocked library... somewhere.

Down a narrow hallway were several doors on both sides, each made of a different wood and style. Upon reaching the first door on the left, he took a deep breath and pulled the ornate west Indian handle. Inside was a bathroom that looked much more stable than the previous one he had used.

Roger closed the door again and turned to the door on the right side of the hallway. It was heavy oak with a carving of King Henry III in a clown suit. With a strange feeling that this wasn't the right door, he opened it anyway. Upon opening the door fully, he was greeted by Bip the Michelin Man who had a great set of tires under his left arm.

"Hi. Are you the new owner?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Interest you in a set of white walls?"

"No, I don't have a car, and I really can't see putting them under the TV."

"Oh. How about a position as manager for the Cleveland Indians?"

"How stupid do I look?"

"Alright, alright, I had to try!"

"It's alright. You don't happen to know where the library is, do you?"

"Hey, man, I'm a cartoon. I don't read much, y'know what I'm saying?"

"I guess... but that doesn't mean you can't know where the place is."

"Well I don't. I can sell you a road map to the continental United States though."

"I don't think that'll help. Thanks anyway." Roger closed the door and hurried down the hall. At the end, it turned left, and so did Roger. He followed it through an arch, and found himself on the field of a baseball stadium. He looked about; there were twenty-five decks of seats, and far above he could see open sky. The white lines seemed to be made of a strange sort of powder. He kneeled down to get a closer look, but couldn't identify it. The base bags were easier; they were either silk or rayon.

"Uncle Sturmgosse must have been a hell of a baseball nut. Emphasis on the `nut'."

Roger looked around the decks and in the dug-outs. Empty. The whole place was barren, then he noticed a pair of legs sticking out from behind the tarp roll. Approaching the pair of legs, Roger noticed they quivered as if the upper body was working on something. The man was in a suit, and appeared to be working on a pump under the first row of seats.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh what the hell do you want ya blasted runt?"

"Umn, I'm the new owner of this house.."

"Well, there goes the bloody dimension."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Klaus!"

"Ahh, the grounds keeper!"

"No, the mechanic. Of course I'm the grounds keeper, you dumkopf!"

"Ya know, your job isn't exactly unassailable, Klaus."

"My job is what?"

"Negotiable."

"Huh? Talk sense, you twit!"

"The point is you probably shouldn't piss off the boss."

Klaus pulled out from under the seats. "Oh, well, if you're going to stand on the employer-employee relationship, sir, you should know that I'm owed one hundred thousand dollars in back pay."

"What!?"

"Yer uncle never quite got around to paying me," said Klaus, disappearing under the seats again. "So, either pay me or piss off."

"Uh, yeah." Roger didn't think his student loan would cover that kind of check. "By the way, you wouldn't know where the library is, would you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Where is it?"

"Lift up home plate and follow the tunnel. Just get out of my hair, numb nuts."

Roger shook his head and wandered over to home plate, which turned out to be a manhole. He yanked it up, and found a set of red-carpeted stairs going down. He started down to find that the carpet was soaked. Roger lost his footing and slid to the bottom of the stairs where it turned into a chute, and he continued to slide around corners and then into a small wire grating, which fortunately popped out of the wall, and Roger landed on the floor. Shaking his head and trying to settle his stomach, Roger looked around a dimly lit room filled with rows upon rows of book shelves. A row of tables ran along the one wall. Several other people sat at these tables reading diligently.

Roger approached the first person. It was Abraham Lincoln and he was reading some of the original works of Ayn Rand.

"Excuse me...Abe?"

Abe slowly turned to him with a scowl and pulled a finger up to his mouth in a gesture to shoosh.

Walking further along the table, Roger found King Arthur thumbing through the Magna Carta. He sat in full armor with the sword Excalibur at his side. Roger decided not to bother him.

After passing Ghenghis Kahn (reading up on advanced macrame) and Queen Victoria (checking out a book on the latest sexual techniques and their use in unarmed combat), he ran across a distinguished looking gentleman wearing a brown suit and perusing a book on comparative religion as pertaining to property rights and regulations.

"That's an odd subject, isn't it?"

"Perhaps, my boy, but that really depends on one's faith. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Rodney Locke, Barrister and Solicitor." Rodney extended his hand.

Roger shook it, saying, "Roger Harpell."

"Ahh, Sturmgosse's nephew, glad to meet you, me boy. So, what brings you here?"

"Well, I just inherited the place, so I thought I'd do some research for my thesis."

"Inherited? Interesting, I wasn't aware Sturmgosse had died."

"That's okay, I wasn't aware he'd lived until a week ago."

"Touché. Well, I'd best let you get back to your studies. If you should need any legal assistance, about the house, say, give me a call. My card."

Roger took the card. "Thanks." He wandered into the stacks, looking for medieval English volumes.

About to put Rodney's card in his pocket, he glanced at it quickly.

Locke, Schtocke & Bahrl

Barristers and Solicitors

Slipping it into his pocket, Roger looked up to see the collected works of Eduardo Madino. He was obviously in the wrong section.

Roger looked left. Then he looked right. To the left was the wall he had fallen through. To the right there didn't appear to be a wall for more than half a mile.

`This place could really use a catalog.'

He wandered down the row, scanning titles. `The Complete Guide to Belly Button Lint.' `A Taxidermy of Presidents.' `Literary Criticism of the Gulf War.' `Morphasite.' `Cyberdoom.' Uncle Sturmgosse's book collection sucked, as far as Roger could tell.

Looking around a corner of the shelf, he saw the rows seemed to go on indefinitely. Millions of books for inquiring minds, or just lost ones.

Travelling down a few rows, Roger inspected some more titles `The Rogues Guide To Bubble Gum Under Cafe Tables.' `Putting Your Typewriter To Work.' `Self-Employment For The Under Nourished.' `How-To Build Your Own Titanic.' Nothing relevant.

And so it went, down the row.

At the end, he found a door. It was made of high tensile steel, and had a giant combination lock. Scratched into the wall beside the doors were the numbers 42, 69, and 812. Roger shrugged and spun the lock to those numbers. The lock clicked.

"What the fuck, let's go for it." Roger opened the door.