John Golden: Freelance Debugger Read Free Page A

grizzled neck-beard.—
    “Should I really call you 'Deli'?” I said. “I mean, I can if you want, but ...”
    She stared at me blankly for a moment, then chuckled. “Only Mr. Falmer calls me that. Well, him and a few of the boys from the second floor. He has a thing for food nicknames, I think.”
    “Can I ask your real name, then?”
    "It's Delphi," she said, pronouncing it 'del-fai'. She had a faint trace of a British accent, though I couldn't place it precisely. "Call me Del, if you like."
    "Much better. I'm John. I'm sorry if we got off on the wrong foot."
    "I'm sorry I snapped at you," she said, lifting her glasses with one hand and rubbing the heel of her palm into her eyes. "It's been a long couple of days, and this has been driving me crazy."
    "Believe me, I know how that goes."
    "Let me show you what we've got." She started to turn her monitor so I could see, but I held up a hand.
    “First Sarah needs a network account so she can poke around. She's logged on to your guest network, you should be able to see her.”
    “Sarah?”
    “My assistant.” I put my hand on the laptop bag slung over my shoulder. “Also my sister, it's sort of a family firm. She's remote.”
    Delphi nodded and switched her attention to her monitor for a moment. After a few clicks of the mouse, she frowned.
    “I see her logged in, but...”
    “Damn,” Sarah said in my ear. “I forgot to tell you, I can't spoof an outbound trail from here. E verything's locked up too tight [20] .”
    — [20] In my defense, he should have known that already!—
    “She can't be remote,” Delphi said. “There's no traffic out to the net. But there's a lot of activity...” A few more taps, and she looked up at me, suspiciously. “Are you running some kind of network-mapper?”
    I try not to explain about Sarah if I can help it, not because it's a secret, exactly, but because people tend to be a bit weirded out.
    “In a way.” I gave a little sigh.
    Under the circumstances, though, there was nothing for it. I patted the laptop bag again. “This is Sarah.”
    “ You mean it's some kind of expert system?”
    “ No,” I said, patiently. “She's my little sister.”
    Delphi's eyes narrowed. I could see the wheels turning behind them, trying to decide what kind of lunatic she was dealing with.
    “Your…sister.”
    “There was an accident. I'd rather not go into the circumstances, though [21] .
    — [21] I will. He lost my body in a poker game against a transvestite minotaur. On a pair of nines! You can get details on the whole sorry episode in John Golden and Portia's Solution , but let me just add here for the record that I feel I behaved with exemplary courage and levelheadedness through the whole affair.—
    T he upshot was my sister's... soul [22] , for lack of a better word, ended up transferred into an old Dell Inspiron [23] .
    — [22] This is a matter for debate. As an atheist, I believe that I am merely a computer program that happens to convincingly simulate Sarah Golden. John always replies that for all he knows, the same could be true of everybody he meets, with an aside to the effect that some of them are not even particularly good simulations. I proposed several experiments that could resolve the issue, but he refuses to 'muck about with my insides', so the issue is still unresolved in spite of the potential for significant advances in philosophical thought.—
    — [23] Never inhabit an Inspiron 1720 if you can possibly avoid it. Something about the math co-processor makes everything smell like burning tin.—
    We've upgraded her a bit since then, of course.” I could see this was not convincing enough. It rarely is, except to other debuggers who've spent time in burrows and know the sort of weird things that can happen in there. “Go ahead and give her access, she'll tell you herself.”
    Keeping her eyes on me in case I made any sudden moves, Delphi typed a few commands. A moment later an incoming call popped up on her screen,