Carol for Another Christmas (3 page)

But she knew from what all of them said that you could meet lots of people on computers. Talk to people all over the world. She struggled to her feet and stood by the keyboard. She was just really sort of running her hand over the keys, thinking about all those people, when her finger had accidentally pressed the power button.

Well, it made a beep and a clicking sound, and then all at once there was something that sounded like church music and words at the top read, “Program Manager.”

“Here's your miracle, Banks. Make this good. You're on.”

“I won't let you down this time.” Then, “Hi. Who's there?”

“Tina,” she typed, one letter at a time.

“You'll have to input faster than that, Tina. We've got a lot of work to do.”

“I'm only eight,” she protested.

“Eight? Perfect. I wasn't programming when I was eight yet because the stuff wasn't available, but I would be, if I were eight now. Now then, what you and I have to do is design a little game. You like games, Tina?”

“Yes,” she typed cautiously. “What game is it? I don't have to do anything dumb if I lose, do I?”

There was a long wait at the other end. Then the typed words: “It's not that kind of a game. It's one we're making up. It's a secret. The winner—I hope—will be somebody the game helps if we play it right.”

“Okay. How do we play?”

“We make it up. I'll show you how, only—look, it's a good thing you're a kid. That Program Manager is really sharp to have partnered me with you. When I was a kid, I never read storybooks. I always liked instruction books. Can you tell me who we should get to help somebody become a better person?”

“Umm—Mama likes Dr. Ruth.”

“No, it's not that kind of change.”

“Oprah?”

“It's be better if it wasn't somebody who's still . . . around.”

“I know! Scrooge!”

“No. No Ducks.”

“Not Scrooge McDuck! That's different. I mean the Scrooge from the story. You know, the one who went from saying, ‘Bah! Humbug!' on Christmas Eve to ‘Merry Christmas' the next morning.”

“You're a very smart kid. Scrooge it is. We'll use old Scrooge. Okay with you?”

Tina started to answer when the Program Manager button, which had been dark, suddenly started glowing red and a symbol came on the screen that looked to Tina like the Star Trek Tricorder that Brianna got out of a cereal box a couple of weeks ago. Across the tricorder, words wrote themselves in fancy golden letters: “Make it so.”

They had been working on the project for a while when Tina, weary of the words and symbols she didn't understand in spite of the computer guy's even less understandable explanations, asked, “Where are you? Do you work here?”

“I used to own the place. I guess you might say I'm on sabbatical now. Only permanently.”

Once he told her he used to own all the buildings and computers and was the boss, she figured it was okay to be on the computer as long as he was with her. She couldn't do much standing up, so she stacked books on the seat so she could reach the keyboard sitting, and piled books up to support her feet, and continued the conversation.

The computer guy wasn't always friendly and nice. He got mad when she couldn't keep up with him, but when she was gone, on Grandpa's days off, he really seemed to miss her, and when she came back, he was much nicer and more patient and explained more things. He told her that what they were doing was a kind of present, and whom it was for, and about when he had been a little boy. He even answered some of her questions without making her feel dumb.

After a while, the two of them got to be real friends.

Every night that she came to work with Grandpa, her new friend would have lots of work for them to do together. So much that she began sleeping days, too, and she wasn't as lonesome anymore.

The night before Christmas Eve, they worked all night. She recognized some words, but they weren't in any kind of sensible order. Her friend told her, when she asked, that they were in something called
code
, which was what computer programs were written in.

“Is that what this is?” she asked. “A program?”

“Not exactly. It's sort of an override.”

“Why?”

“Because it's the most important thing that will ever play on any of these machines.”

“Wow! What is it, really?”

“Tina, do you know what a medium is?”

“You mean like a person who sees ghosts, not like what comes between small and large?”

“Right, but the person doesn't see the ghost; the ghost comes through the person. Well, this program we built is a little like that.”

“Sounds kind of scary,” she answered, and she was glad, as she sat alone in the dark room with just her friend's letters glowing green on the screen, that the sound of Grandpa's vacuum cleaner was coming from the next office.

“Don't be silly, Tina. The ghosts the Program Manager sends are to help people, not to scare them.”

“Help them? Is the Program Manager like . . . Are these ghosts really angels?” Wouldn't that be a great Christmas to have made an angel on one of the computers! Maybe it would unfurl its big, white, floaty, feathery wings right there on the screen and fly out and hand her a kitty and fix her heart and legs while it was at it.
I don't think so,
she said to herself, but her friend was typing back.

“Not exactly, not all of them, not yet anyway, but—you ask too many questions. Back to work.”

They wrote lots more stuff she didn't understand except in little bits.

“There,” her friend said. “Now nothing else can play while this is running. We've set it up with the past, present, and future segments and customized buttons. We're ready to run it. Excited?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then, type the password and let it run!”

“I've got to go home soon, and I won't be back tomorrow because it's Christmas and Grandpa doesn't come to work. I gotta turn off the computer so Grandpa's boss won't think I was here.”

“Doesn't matter. Once it starts, it will run on all the other computers. Go!”

She took a deep, rattling breath and typed, “Humbug.” Christmas music began to play and pictures flickered by on the screen too fast for her to tell what they were.

Then, out in the hall, Grandpa started singing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” which was their signal for her to hide. She hated to turn that computer off worse than she could remember hating anything, but she did, and then she curled up under the desk. “I forgot!” she said, as the footsteps outside approached and a woman began speaking to her Grandpa. “Merry Christmas!” she whispered to the empty monitor.

Maybe she just imagined it, but for the blink of an eye the screen seemed to come to life again and a man's sad, worried face looked down at her and gave her the smallest of smiles as he said, “Merry Christmas to you, too, Tina.”

Three

Monica Banks stalked back through the barren halls to her office. Her mood was not improved by getting lost several times. She knew at once that she was lost in one section because she passed the lobby with the new spot of carpet showing against the old where a sculpture had been removed. Bright rectangles on the walls marked the former presence of paintings as well. Perhaps she really ought to invest in having the carpet taken up and tile put down so strips of fluorescent tape could mark particular areas, as they did in hospitals. Either that or more signs. She was glad she had failed to have the lights turned off in the unused sections over the holidays. Though it was after dawn outside, the weather was bad and these interior halls were gloomy. She kept expecting something to jump out at her—a crazed chainsaw-wielding killer, perhaps. Miles of long hallways with nothing but the sound of her own footsteps, which got quicker and quicker and quicker so that she was practically running when she heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner and voices.

Turning a corner, she beheld the cleaning man. Ah, then, she was getting an early start. The cleaning staff left at eight A.M., and she'd already prodded her sluggish employees to get on with their jobs.

The man shut off his vacuum and bent to wind the cord around the handle, then looked up and saw her. She had the distinct impression that he turned to one of the side offices and said something she was still too far away to hear.

As she approached, he secured the cord, rose, and nodded. “Merry Christmas, Ms. Banks.”

“Good morning,” she said curtly, annoyed to be given personal holiday greetings by cleaning staff. She couldn't remember the man's name, though she had been introduced to him by someone who said he'd been working there since the company moved to these quarters. “Who were you talking to?”

“No one, Ms. Banks. I was just singing,” he said. “Christmas carols, like. Practicin' to go caroling tonight. ‘Grandma got run over by a reindeer . . . ' ”

“I get the picture,” she said, looking through the darkened glass panel into the office beyond. Books were stacked on the chair and the floor beneath it, presumably by the employee who, having finished his or her project, was now off someplace being maudlin about Christmas. The monitor screen was empty and dark, but she couldn't escape the feeling that the console would be warm if she touched it. She had the prickly sensation it had just been turned off. But she also definitely didn't feel like checking the office right at that moment, in this dark hallway with this low-level employee singing homicidal carols. So she simply told the man, “No one's to mess with this equipment. It's extremely valuable, as I'm sure you'd know if its price was deducted from your paycheck. Only qualified staff are to handle it.”

“Oh, yes, ma'am, Ms. Banks. I know that for sure. I don't ever touch it.”

She hadn't actually caught him at it, so all she could say was, “Well, good. See that you don't. And sing on your own time.” She stood there a moment more, debating which turn to take.

“Is there anything else, Ms. Banks?”

“You, er, wouldn't know the way back to my office from here, would you?”

“Sure, I would. Down the next hall, turn left, turn right, and there's the elevator. It'll let you out right in front of your place. You get lost, too?”

“Of course not. I was just making sure you knew.”

“That's all right then,” he said, and turned the vacuum cleaner back on as she left him, no longer singing, behind her.

Four

Later, at her own office computer, Monica tried to decide if she liked the title marketing had come up with for the new product. “Get a Life” sounded like a TV talk show to her.

Suddenly, the door to her private office swept open with a gust of air that smelled like pine needles on snow, as if the outdoors could filter through the many halls and doors between it and her. Bells jingled, and then someone large, wet, and cold enveloped her in an embrace and kissed her soundly on the top of the head and said, “Merry Christmas, Money!”

She swung around to face her attacker. “Wayne Reilly, don't you ever call me that, dammit! My name is Monica, as you very well know. I'd like to sue whoever thought that up!”

Wayne Reilly grinned back at her. He had been Doug's best buddy all through school and raided her meager refrigerator all the time he was growing up. He still looked like a kid to her—okay, an aging kid. He must be at least forty now, but he had remained round-faced, jug-eared, and freckled, like the kid on the cover of
Mad
magazine, the “What, Me Worry?” one. He failed to look contrite as his wet-mittened hand proffered a wreath sprigged with mistletoe and holly. “Ho ho ho?” he said. “Relax. Enjoy the holidays. You can't fight the press any more than you can fight death and taxes—” She glared at him.