Read Online Hieroglyph by Ed Finn - Free Book Online Page A

stuff creeped into our lives and we got dependent on it. Take it away and the economy crashes—just like the tower. You gotta embrace it.”
    â€œExactly,” I said. “My most vociferous opponent was a senator who was being kept alive by a pacemaker with a hundred thousand lines of embedded code.”
    Joe nodded. “When I was younger, I was frustrated that we weren’t building big ambitious stuff anymore. Just writing dumb little apps. When Carl came along with the tower idea, and I understood it was going to have to fly—that it couldn’t even stand up without embedded networks—the light went on. We had to stop building things for a generation, just to absorb—to get saturated with—the mentality that everything’s networked, smart, active. Which enables us to build things that would have been impossible before, like you couldn’t build skyscrapers before steel.”
    I nodded at the drawing in front of him, which had been looping through a little animation as we talked. “What’s new in your world?”
    â€œOh, doing some performance tweaks. Under certain conditions we get a rumble in the tower at about one-tenth of a hertz—you might have felt it. The servos can’t quite respond fast enough to defeat it. We’re developing a workaround. More for comfort than for safety. Might force us to replace some of the control units—it’s not something you can do by sitting on the ground typing.” He nodded toward the luggage rack by the door where he had deposited a bright yellow plastic case, obviously heavy.
    â€œThat’s okay,” I said, “sitting on the ground typing wasn’t Carl’s style.”
    As if on cue the car dinged to warn us of impending deceleration. Joe began to collect his things. A minute later the car stopped in the middle of a sort of pod caught in the fretwork of the tower like a spider’s egg case in a web. Lights came on, for it was deep dusk at this point. A tubular gangway osculated with the car’s hatch, its pneumatic lips inflating to make an airtight seal. Air whooshed as a mild pressure difference was equalized, and my ears popped. The door dilated.
    Joe nodded good-bye and lugged his bag case out into the station, which was a windowless bare metal tub. A minute later we were on our way again.
    â€œI just wanted to introduce myself. Nicky Chu.” This was the astronomer en route to the Top Click. “Sorry, but I didn’t realize who you were until I heard your story.”
    â€œHave you spent much time up there, Nicky?”
    â€œJust once, for orientation and safety briefings.”
    â€œWell, you’re always welcome in the bar. We’re having a little private observance tonight, but even so, feel free to stop in.”
    â€œI heard,” Nicky said, and, perhaps in spite of herself, glanced toward the messenger bag. “I only wish I could have shared one of these rides with the man before . . .”
    The pause was awkward. I said what Carl would have said: “Before he was incinerated in a giant kiln? Indeed.”
    A SENATOR HAD ONCE described the Internet as a series of tubes, which didn’t describe the Internet very well but was a pretty apt characterization of the Top Click. “Shirtsleeves environment” had been the magic buzzword. I knew as much because Carl had once banned the phrase from PowerPoint slides—shortly before he had banned PowerPoint altogether, and then attempted to ban all meetings. “The Cape of Good Hope is not a shirtsleeves environment. Neither was the American West. The moon. The people who go to such places have an intrepid spirit that we ought to respect. I hate patronizing them by reassuring them it’s all going to be in a shirtsleeves environment!”
    This sort of rant had terminated some awkward conversations with casino executives and hoteliers. I had donated a small but significant chunk