===INTERLUDE SB2/07===

The DELETE statement deletes records from mass storage. Some compilers allow the DELETE statement to be used with a FILE clause, to delete FD names (along with any associated indexing structures that may be required by the database management engine in use).

===PAUSE/BREAK===

The small meeting room filled quickly. The last three men - all dressed in ill-fitting or dated suits, their matching buzz cuts identifying them as ‘military’ as well as the uniforms they clearly wore most days would - sat in the last available chairs.

A series of ticks could be heard from the corner of the room, and the youngest man glanced at it, curious as he always was. The miniature electromechanical relays gave off a small but visible spark of blue-white light as they rapidly snapped on and off, the arcing of their tiny circuits allowing a tremendous number of analog circuits to be routed.

“Gentlemen, welcome,” said a grey-haired man at the head of the table. He was in middle age; with the casually rumpled suit and deceptively distracted attitude of the university professor he was.

One of the military men sat at the other end of the table, and despite not being much older than the other two their deference to him was clear. With a curt nod, he said, “Pat. You clearly didn’t have us drive all this way just for a regular report. Was it successful, then?”

The youngest man sat with his back to the wall and a notepad in his lap, not rating either a figurative or literal seat at the table. He studied the other six, idly wondering if he was the lucky seventh. The three military men sat still and attentive looking at the man in charge, while the other two men, in the more causal suits of engineers, engaged in a whispered conversation.

For all his keen intelligence - and everyone in the room is at the very least terribly clever - the young man struggles remembering the names of the participants in these furtive meetings. He draws a rectangle on the bottom of the sheet of notepaper as he often does in meetings. At the head, he wrote “Ben de Forest” - rather cheekily as the man preferred to go by “Pat” rather than his given or middle names, Benjamin de Forest. The two other engineers were very familiar to the young man as they worked together in the lab almost every day, so he jots their names (Harold, Jonesy) simply out of a desire for neatness.

Pat begins with the sort of direct question he’s so fond of. “With Trudeau and the Liberals out, I assume you have reached out to the Conservatives in anticipation of their new government?”

The military man grunts, “Politics has little impact on our mandate, and while 10 years of stability with the same Prime Minister was nice, all the indications are that the new man will approve of our work. He may even ask for the pace to be accelerated, if we can demonstrate a proof of concept.”

Pat frowns as an old argument is rehashed yet again. “There is no hurrying this. It’s been a decade of slow work so far, and it could be another until it’s truly ready. But once it is done… well then in that changed world I imagine we’ll have all the time and space we need.”

The young man is only half listening, caring even less about national politics than he does about the jockeying for prestige and funding in the underground labs of Department X. Instead, he looks at the notepad he holds; the other side of the rectangle is harder to fill in. This will not, apparently, be one of those meetings where convenient introductions are made. He knows the lieutenant-colonel is named Rondeau, so he writes “LCol Rondeau,” then frowns and corrects the abbreviation to the proper French “lcol”. Accuracy in all things. Satisfied, he puts the captains name, Logan. He has spoken to the serious man in the past and found him polite if more than a little intimidating. The other engineers say he saw combat in the war, and lots of it. Finally, the young man remembers the final man’s name and jots down “Staal.” Thinking idly of the reason for their meeting, he writes “Station” above the three officer’s names, then includes a large “X” to signify the engineers sitting on the other side of the table.

“Well Pat, until we have all the time in the world, what do you have for us?” Rondeau asks.

Remembering his good news, Pat Bayly smiles his wolfish smile. “The package is complete. The housing is stable, and we can see a path forward to actual trials in the next, say, two years. Well, two to five years.”

“And what’s another five years now, right?” the head of Station comes close to an actual smile. “But this is good news. Where there any… issues?”

The young man is fascinated to see how the talk of the package has made the captain, the war hero who apparently killed dozens if not more Communists with a rifle over a long winter of constant combat, squirm uncomfortably. It’s not a huge surprise, all the military men and not a few of the engineers have expressed… disquiet with the actual nature of what they are doing. And how.

Pat Bayly shrugs airily, “Nothing terrible. Once we confirm the housing is up to our needs, we’ll marry it to the programming. Then we’ll be able to truly make rapid progress!”

No one speaks. The tiny clicks and clacks of the switches fill the air, like mechanical locusts in the distance eating all the crops.

“Is the programming ready, then?” the lieutenant colonel asks. The young man almost nods - Pat Bayly has implied it’s an easy step and sure compared to the impossibility of the housing it should be much less time consuming, but it won’t be easy. But the other engineers don’t seem to recognize the upcoming difficulty of that crucial step, and no one listens to him.

Bayly nods to the senior computer man beside him, who clears his throat. “Yes sir. Well, as ready as we can be at this point. The concept is solid, and we have some serious horsepower available to us now with the departmental class of minicomputers. The new DEC VAX will be perfect for us, it allows even more virtual addressing, so we can utilize demand paged virtual memory, and the orthogonal instruction set will-”

“Yes, thank you Harold,” Bayly interrupts the man before he can really get going, to the relief of everyone else. The young man suppresses a sigh, content to doodle as the conversation drifts into hidden budgets and timelines. Pat Bayly’s company remains a very useful front for the continued work he began at Camp X, and with Station on hand to funnel assets and support the question of any potential impact of a new federal government is settled. No matter who sits the throne in Ottawa, the work will continue.

The meeting ends a half hour later, everyone standing and filing out of the room. As the most junior member of the little group, the young man locks the door behind him and follows the others out to the stairwell leading up. Once on the ground floor and out the back door, the other engineers quickly leave, walking to their cars in the parking lot.

The young man looks up at the night sky, but the lights of the city obscure even the brightest stars. Several paces away Pat Bayly and Rondeau (lcol) chat amiably.

“So, what do you think of the… what was it called, VAX?” The young man gives a start, surprised at the voice at his elbow. Turning, he sees the flinty eyes of Captain Logan.

“The VAX? Uh, in what sense, uh, sir?”

A ghost of a smile as the captain glances at the other men out of earshot. “When the computer guy was talking about the new VAX, you frowned a little.”

Dammit. “Well, it’s not my place to say,” the young man begins, but the captains gaze sharpens so he hurries on, “but I doubt the VAX will be enough. I doubt any 32bit instruction set will really be enough, I honestly think the computer side is going to require either huge mainframes - far beyond anything we have right now - or else a lot of parallel work. I think we need another decade of computer hardware innovation before we’ll get something that works.”

The captain seems to relax. “One of our techs has said the same thing. Thank you for your candor young man, don’t worry this is off the record. Honestly, I hope I’m retired before they can use the 'package' at all. Retired or dead.”

The young man doesn’t know how to respond to that. Sure, it is unpleasant, but just think of what they can learn! The captain, sensing the younger man does not agree, shrugs and asks, “What is with all the women in uniforms, anyway?”

Looking around, the young man sees some women walking down the sidewalk in matching white uniforms. “Ah, those are training nurses. The evening classes must be out, they work out of the first floor of the building here.”

“Huh. Why is it we met here?”

His face carefully blank, the young man tries to start with a bit of the truth before the lies. “I was never told, sir. I bet it’s just convenient office space, it’s rather close to the University of Toronto and Professor Bayly is there a lot still.”

The captain studies him closely, then looks away. “I see. Well, good night young man, looks like we’re off back to Ottawa. Make sure you put those notes in the burn bag after you submit the meeting minutes.”

“Will do sir,” the young man watches as the military men get in the same car and leave. The professor smiles goodbye at the young man, happy the meeting went so well, and returns to whatever it is he does on a Friday night.

The parking lot is empty now as the young man has a cigarette. Traffic on Bloor Street can be heard as the man looks out behind the Bathurst Teaching Hospital, but he feels alone. A sudden wind stirs up some trash on the pavement, and he studies the papers as they twirl.

Then, a presence. The young man goes still as the temperature of the warm summer air suddenly drops. A pressure seems to build on the young man.

“H-h-hello?” The litter is spinning now, a tiny whirlwind of candy wrappers and cigarette butts.

The young man thrusts his hand in his pants pocket, then pulls it out and holds a thumb sized lump of crude metal. His hand lifted in front of him as if in warning, he calls out nervously, “With cold iron I bind you! Who are you? Why do you take this form!”

The wind buffets him, and he imagines he can hear a voice weeping. Shaking now, he says, “Please! I’m trying to help! Who are you! Just tell me, am I doing the right thing, or is this making it worse!”

The young man was always brilliant, and even more, he was clever. Suddenly several things, little things about the project he should not, strictly speaking, be aware of fall into place inside the sleek clock-like precision of his mind. Ignoring the dust blowing in his face, he cries, “When are you? Do you know? Help me! It is June 22nd, 1979! I am in Toronto, Canada! Do you understand this? My name is-”

==RESET:====RESET:====RESET:==

Deep Time

Options:
/? Display this doll steak help message

BREAK:RESET