KENNETH HAD BEEN sneaking glances at Savannah as they rode in the backseat of the taxi. So intense had she been as she shot at the floor near that man that he really thought she was going to kill him, just like she'd done in Alexandria. He could not believe this was the same girl with whom he had gone to school. He was almost ready to believe Hensen Var's story about humans being able to transform. As far as he could tell, Savannah had gone through a drastic change in a very short amount of time. He wondered what that might mean.
In the front seat of the taxi, the driver had rolled down his window, but the pungent smell of smoke lingered. It had attached itself to the fabric of Kenneth's seat. Before long, he found that the ashen, awful smell had gotten into the pile of white robes lying upon his lap. He coughed into the back of his hand. The taxi driver appeared not to notice.
The taxi, painted green on the outside, sported dark red seats on the inside. The windows bore a faint yellow taint that Kenneth could not wipe away with his hand. Tall and gray rectangular skyscrapers rose up to impossible heights outside. People over nine feet tall walked about the sidewalks. Though Kenneth could not keep himself from looking up at the tall buildings, the people of Jakarta looked down at the ground. They avoided seeing one another.
When Kenneth asked what caused the man with the sign to be in so much pain that he died without the killing energy from the weapon touching him, Unquill had said that the shot from the palm stunner, even when it was weak, had induced a cardiac arrest. The man suffered from a heart attack before he died. Kenneth hadn't asked what would happen when the airport's security force found the body. He found the answer he sought in Unquill's silence and his worried face.
Although Kenneth himself hadn't known the location of the central computer complex, the cab driver knew. But Unquill said everyone there knew where to find it. The building which housed the central computer responsible for storing all the world's information lay inside a gigantic metal dome that could be seen for miles away. It dominated the horizon, even while the taxi sat in front of a traffic light.
As the cab approached the building, Kenneth thought that he had seen smaller mountains in his lifetime. In fact, patches of green moss grew high upon the building where cleaning crews could not reach. When the taxi stopped in front of an entrance gate, Kenneth wondered just how much metal it had taken to construct the building. He had not thought so much metal existed anywhere in the world.
Despite having a guard station and a gate to prevent the entry of unauthorized persons, the gate lay open and the white guard post was left empty. The taxi paused in front of the entrance before it passed through. Beyond the open gate, cars of all shapes and sizes sat in a massive parking lot that reminded Kenneth of the parking lots he'd walked through on hot summer days to enter amusement parks. Except this parking lot was larger. He squinted when sunlight reflected off the side of the building, then remembered that he'd left his sneakers back in Alexandria in favor of a pair of sandals. He grew apprehensive about walking on the hot, black asphalt in the middle of a day in which the sun beat down relentlessly.
The taxi drove through the parking lot for such a long time that Kenneth wondered how anyone ever managed to find their car again. Then the cab driver brought his vehicle alongside the building's entrance, beneath the shadow of the gigantic metal dome. A crowd of sweating tall people, all of them wearing clothes suited for a visit to the beach, argued about something Kenneth didn't understand. He recognized a few English words, yet their level of diction was so high that Kenneth could not tell what they meant from listening to them.
They spoke in animated, excited voices. The four men in the group wore only colorful boxer shorts and sneakers. The two women, slightly shorter than the men yet still as tall as Unquill, wore skin-tight bathing suits. Kenneth hadn't been allowed to look at women in bathing suits before, but he found himself more interested in their conversation than in their appearance.
Maybe he was changing, too, but in a milder manner than Savannah, he thought.
The taxi driver put the vehicle in park and said, "Here it is. Computer Central."
Unquill reached into his pocket. "How much do I owe you?"
The driver turned around with a grin playing upon his face. "You're not from around here, are you? Hey, the government has issued a decree. Free rides for anyone wanting to visit the computer for any reason. The long and short of it is-they pay me to bring you here, yah? So, I hope you find what you're looking for in there."
Kenneth opened the door on his left. Then, he stopped and said, "Will there be anyone to bring us back?"
The driver laughed. "I'm not waiting around. You'll have to find someone else to take you wherever you want to go."
"Thank you," Kenneth said, stepping out onto the hot pavement.
KENNETH PASSED THE GROUP of people absorbed in their conversation into the building itself. He came upon a waiting room with couches and chairs all pulled together in a circle. A clear glass table lay in the middle of the circle. On top of the table lay a notebook with a metallic spiral up and down its left side. A single word had been written upon the open notebook in a large, cursive script:
FOURTEEN
Kenneth held the notebook up to Unquill. "What do you think this means?" he asked.
Unquill squinted at the text. He took the notebook in hand, then frowned. "I can't say I know what this means." He put the notebook back on the table.
Kenneth walked past the table and beyond the waiting room. The interior of the building matched its outward size. The ceiling stretched up to an impossible height, so high that Kenneth wondered how anyone managed to reach the ceiling, if they did at all.
A great colossus of a machine stood in the center of room. The gigantic, black machine hummed out a rhythm that Kenneth recognized as an infinite loop. A few hums sounded from the machine, only to be interrupted in the middle. The hums started over again, repeating the process again.
Crowds of people had gathered around the machine. People of every kind stood mute before the broken power of the world's central computer. The crowds were so large that they could have filled up a stadium. Kenneth even spied a phosphorescent being that shimmered in place as it stood.
He froze, realizing for the first time that he was seeing an alien of the 73rd century whom the people called the Soonseen.
The alien glowed a shade of bluish green. Although its form appeared to be bipedal, Kenneth did not see anything that resembled arms or legs on the alien. The round protuberance at its top might have been a head, though Kenneth could not be sure. Additionally, while a bulky mass in its middle might have been a torso, the alien didn't appear to have any other recognizable features at all.
Despite the mass of people in the room, the machine's discordant humming was the only sound heard in the room. Kenneth put his hands behind his head. "I know what's wrong with the computer," he said.
Every face in the room turned to look at him.