In the course of the next two months, the architect had two cars burned out by vandals; his front lawn was moonscaped by an agricultural weedkiller; his garage was demolished by an earth mover that mysteriously moved itself from a nearby construction site. Haunted, perhaps, by the ghost of Christmas Future, he underwent a Scrooge-like change of heart and settled with the widow for a more-than-generous figure, upon which his run of bad luck ceased as promptly as it had begun.
Maybe, Corfe thought as he drove south on I-5, God did indeed work in strange ways, and was guiding him to the right people. In this new light, what Kevin had said about figuring something out with Taki that he couldn’t go into over the phone suddenly began to sound as if it could take on a whole new meaning. Had they taken it upon themselves to involve Ohira? Surely it wasn’t possible, Corfe told himself. Kevin couldn’t be that far ahead of him already.
Working with mecs, Kevin had pretty much come to accept extraordinary experiences as a routine part of his life. Even so, this was one of the oddest sensations that he had ever known. Physically, i.e. in terms of motor control and tactile feedback, he was “in” one mec, while simultaneously monitoring himself through the visual system of another. It was like watching himself in one of the “out-of-body” experiences that the grownups’ comics at supermarket checkouts talked about.
Taki’s idea had been to use the mecs as a way of checking out Garsten’s computer files. If the system wasn’t as accessible externally via the phone lines as was always the case—conveniently—in movies, then the only other way was to go in. Doing so in person, however, would be messy and risky, and was very frowned upon. Also, it required some means of effecting person-size access, which was a good way to break things and leave all kinds of other traces. But from drains and ducts to packages and briefcases, there had to be a score of ways to get the little guys into a building. Once inside, how would they go about exploring the contents of a computer? Well, just as with any other kind of operator, it would involve pressing keys and looking at a screen to see what happened.
Smaller mecs couldn’t provide the force necessary for pressing keys. That required one of the older, can-size, “telebot” models, which was why they were using Sir Real. The same mec could also observe the screen, but Kevin and Taki’s trial runs to try out the idea had shown the process to be irritatingly cumbersome and slow—like running back and forth playing a theater orchestra single-handed while trying to watch what was happening up on stage at the same time. So Kevin had suggested using two mecs: the telebot to operate the keys, while another captured an integrated view of its movements and the results on the screen, and combining the two inputs into the sensory channels of one coupler.
It was like watching a puppet from a few feet behind, and having invisible wires attached to its limbs. And it was an improvement on using the telebot alone. However, although the view from the rearward-positioned mec did cover the whole keyboard, the portion immediately in front of Sir Real was obscured, which resulted in fumbling and awkward body-movements to clear the line of sight.
Kevin experimented with a few more lines, then selected the Control menu and exited. “It’s better, but not as easy as you think,” he told Taki and Corfe, who were with him in Taki’s workshop. “The trouble is that I got used to touch-typing too long ago. I can’t visualize where the characters are. It’s my fingers that remember.”
“I know what you mean,” Corfe said. “Sometimes you get the same thing with a phone number. You can’t remember it to say it, but you can still punch it in.”
“Yes, exactly like that,” Kevin agreed.
Corfe had arrived at Kevin’s earlier, all fired up with the strange idea that practically the whole of Hiroyuki’s family was involved. He hadn’t said what had given him such a notion, and had seemed a little let down for some reason when Kevin told him that he’d meant what he said on the phone, and Taki was the only person he had breathed a word to. This had puzzled Kevin, for Corfe had sounded aghast earlier at even that much—but Kevin hadn’t quizzed him on it. Corfe had livened up again since they arrived at Hiroyuki’s, and seemed enthusiastic about Kevin and Taki’s scheme. As far as it went technically, anyway; he still hadn’t committed himself one way or another with regard to actually implementing it.