Rudolph! (2 page)

"It's here," Santa said. "We've found it."

"We haven't found anything," I said. "It's just a command prompt."
Denial, denial, denial.
I was frantically trying to figure out how I could get myself out of this situation. I couldn't unplug the machine. Santa had already seen the automated response scroll past. Even in Latin, there were a couple of words that were pretty obvious. Like "
Purgatorium
." And
"Tabulae Publicae
." Now it was just saying, "
Eadem Vis
." And the damn cursor kept blinking.

I panicked. I didn't have a plan. I just yanked my fingers off the keys and started thrashing at Santa's beard. He yelped and jumped back—and okay, so maybe I was pulling pretty hard. He dug in the pocket of his robe for the Shockmaster. "What are you doing?" he demanded, waving the gun in my face.

I put my hands on my head, my fingers working my scalp like I was trying to work in a hair tonic. "I'm just—" It was all a vain attempt to stimulate my brain into coming up with some workable plan to get Santa to put the damn stun gun down.

"Stay in the chair," he said.

"My head—"
Distract. Distract. Distract.

"Don't touch anything. We're too close, Bernie. Don't do anything."

I let one hand drop to start pulling on my earlobe.

"Stop it." His voice was tight, and his hands were tighter.

I felt like I was trying to do that thing where you pat your head and do Wise Strokey Beard at the same time. "I just need—"

"That's it, Bernie. I know it is."

His hands steadied for an instant, and I suddenly forgot about my cartoonish behavior. Santa's finger twitched, and the gun popped. There wasn't much chance that I could avoid the Shockmaster's tiny darts, but just sitting there like a spotlight-dazzled amphibian while a couple of thousand volts surged through my tiny elf body wasn't on my bucket list, so I dove for the floor.

Either I was faster than the Shockmaster or Santa jerked his hand too much when he pulled the trigger, but both darts went over my head. I heard the tiny click of the darts against the computer screen behind me, and then there was an ugly stink in the air as the darts discharged, and Mrs. C's iMac reacted poorly. There was an explosion behind me, and I thought to look but then realized I should be paying more attention to the floor, which came up quick. I bounced once, rolled over, and caught sight of the chair as it tumbled forward. I had a moment to reflect on how stupid this accident report was going to read, and then the chair smacked into me and my head hit the floor. Lights out.

I slipped through gauze filled layers of consciousness. Had I dreamed the whole thing? The Internet, Santa and his illicit stun gun, the Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe, the computer that would allow us access to purgatory? Was it all just a bad reaction to the shrimp I had guzzled down the night before?

The tightness in my stomach and the acrid taste in my mouth wasn't of the bad shrimp variety. I had swallowed some blood. My synapses were reluctant to connect, memory coming slowly and only with great concentration. Blood in my mouth. Probably related to the fat lip that was a pulsating knob of heat on my face. Which, in turn, was probably due to the edge of Mrs. C's chair smacking me. And so on, and so on. The connections lined up slowly. Blood. Lip. Chair. Desk. Computer.

Purgatory.

I wished again that it was just a dream.

I heard voices. Underwater voices, like I had stumbled into the last quatrain of an Eliot poem. I thrashed about; or, at least, I imagined thrashing about. I received no confirmation from my limbs that they were in any mood to obey my instructions. I could be a bodiless head swaddled in sixteen layers of sweat-soaked gauze for all the response I was getting from my extremities. I would be notated in the NPC annals as "EH"—Elf Head: the first elf to lose all his appendages while on the job.

That wasn't a pleasant thought.

Maybe it was a dream of multiple layers. That seemed like a better thought, and I hung on to it as I passed out again.

III

M
y name is Bernard Rosewood. I am an elf. I work at the North
Pole. I am one of the Senior Elves (there are a bunch of us), and my division is tasked with shadowing Santa Claus between Lockdown (the day after Thanksgiving) and Flight Night (Christmas proper). Zero Hour is calibrated out of a North Pole Consortium station on Beccisa Island in the Pacific Ocean.

It's all kind of like you imagine it: Santa in the sled, the reindeer pulling the sled, Rudolph in the lead. That's how it happens. At Zero Hour, we switch on the Time Clock, and the second hand stops at one second past midnight. Santa is in the air, and everything is frozen at that one click into the new day while he delivers all the toys.

It all leads to that instant of time. All our preparation. All the planning and organizing. The North Pole Consortium functions solely to ensure that Christmas happens every year on the 25th of December. Christmas doesn't just happen by itself, you know. It isn't just a matter of putting crayon to paper and entrusting your letter to your local postal service. All those requests have to be received, read, entered into the system, catalogued, filled, and packaged back to their requestee. You think Santa does all that himself? Seriously? The man's color blind for one thing.

Enter the elves—the little, round, merry folk who do all the hard work. We've been unionized for several generations now, and it is our organization that really makes Christmas happen. All the technology and information systems advances in the last hundred years are derivative knockoffs of R&D done by the NPC. Automated package tracking? We've been doing it since the mid-20th century. High-speed materials duplication? Twenty years before that. Ceramic and polymer based alloys? At least a decade. Our Elfnet predated Arpnet by a good three years, and data warehousing was last year's buzzword five years ago. Frankly, we reached the 21st century about six years before anyone else, and we're about halfway to the 22nd already while the rest of you are still thrashing your way through the early teens.

Santa is the seasonal mascot. Ever since some wise-ass in the marketing department had the smart idea of putting Santa in a fur-trimmed red suit as part of their promotional outreach during the 1930s, we've had no choice but to keep Fat Boy on the payroll.

The Technology Management team has tried at least three times in as many years to shift RPF—Request, Procurement, and Fulfillment—to an e-commerce style system. Internally, the North Pole has been paperless since the early '90s, but we still recycle over two hundred tons of paper waste every year. TM has been pushing a cloud-based system for Christmas requests: children would e-mail Santa instead of sending their traditional paper letters; the North Pole, in return, through a number of partnered commerce sites, would procure all Christmas presents on a local basis. Utilizing the existing ground mail system, we could fulfill Christmas without having to send the red sled into the sky or turn on the Time Clock.

I'm a people person; I'm not proficient in the sciences for the basic reason that my wee elf brain just didn't have the synaptic connections suited for comprehension of quantum mechanics. Those who did, well, the Clock made them nervous. Supposedly more stable than the Nuclear Clock, we used the Time Clock to freeze the forward motion of Time on Christmas morning so that Santa would have enough time to deliver all the presents.

I know, mind-boggling. Would you want to be operating in a null-space that exists outside the dimensional restrictions of Time? Yeah, me neither. That's why we keep Santa Claus on the payroll.

Most of the year is spent getting ready for the following Season. Production cycles don't really hit their stride until after Labor Day when the Sales and Marketing team present their annual report on the Toy Hierarchy for that year. R&D finalizes a lot of their technological upgrades at this time, and the software daemons start assembling the List. The reindeer, who range across several thousand acres of unoccupied land during the off-season (we call it the Park), are brought back to the North Pole, and SECO goes South to retrieve Santa from the Caribbean where he spends most of the summer fishing for marlin.

Upon return to the North Pole, SECO institutes the hardcore diet and exercise regimen necessary to get Santa in shape for time under the Clock. Proper preparation takes several months of rigorously monitored protein intake as well as a regimented dosage of liver tablets, powdered Mexican yams, blue-green algae tablets, Boron, Smilax, Yohimbine, amino acid supplements, Choline, Ferulic Acid, and medium chain triglycerides three times a week. He only
looks
fat.

SECO is more than just Santa's physical trainer. This elf is also his therapist, his appointment secretary, his bridge partner, his golf caddy (the North Pole has a nine-hole ice course that is a fairly tough par 34), his confidante, his shadow, the guy who says "Gesundheit" when he sneezes, the guy who gets the pickle jar off when he gets his hand caught, and the guy who brings the new roll of toilet paper when Santa is on the can and the paper runs out. SECO—me—is the elf who keeps Santa grounded.

Right.

Why did I feel like I was flying?

IV

"T
urn to one-five-seven. Switch to Spectrum Oscillation. It's a
straight shot from here. Open her up."

It didn't sound like any of the dialogue from
The Wizard of Oz
, so I eliminated
Kansas
as one of the possible answers to the question that was blinking on and off in my head. I felt like I had been stuffed with cabbage and left out on the roof for about six days. I was still hearing things like I was underwater, yet the voice was familiar.

I was having a little trouble getting a spark to leap across any of the millions of synaptic connections in my head. There was a sensation worming its way into my body, and I grabbed that sensory data like a drowning man and held on. Something was pressing against me, pushing me against something else. The second something was cradling me, like a soft hand or a leather chair.

Bingo. One down.

The first something was gravity, or rather, a force of acceleration.

I opened my eyes as it suddenly dawned on me that I could very well have just been in and out of Kansas in the time it took for me to realize what I was feeling.

I was in the sled, and the clear canopy over my head was filled with the dark blue of the high atmosphere. There were no points of reference by which to gauge the speed of the craft, but my brain did a quick rewind and came back with "open her up." Judging from the constant pressure on my chest, it would be reasonable to guess that we were traveling well past the speed of sound.

And like a bunch of colored dominos, my thoughts tumbled along in a clumsy rush. "We" was me, Santa, and probably nine reindeer.

I tried to move and found myself restrained. I thrashed around a bit before I realized the straps across my chest were part of the seat harness and not some homemade BDSM restraints. I was making enough noise to be heard over the constant rumble of the sled, and Santa looked away from the instrument panel.

"Ah, Bernie," he smiled. "You're back."

He was wearing a black flight suit, and his face was streaked with camouflaged grease paint, streaks of white and black swabbed over a thick layer of olive green. He looked like a moss-covered tree stump.

"Where are we?" I managed. My heart was pounding. I wasn't sure if it was from all the thrashing around or the dawning realization of the situation.

"Mid-Atlantic somewhere." He waved a hand at one of the monitors set in the panel in front of him. The Mark V Sled had a surveillance system arrayed about its outside. There wasn't much to see port or starboard or aft—just pale blue that disappeared into a layer of frothy white—and the forward camera showed the small blisters of the reindeer cockpits along the handle of the sled. The bellycam was filled with more of the thick froth. "Pretty heavy cloud cover," Santa said. "Comet snagged a US Weather Service report that said the whole Eastern seaboard is busy getting another three to six inches of snow. There won't be a break in the cloud cover until we pass Florida." He glanced at a chronometer. "Another twenty minutes or so."

I tried to turn in my chair, and realized there was something on my head. It knocked against the frame of the seat when I wiggled. A helmet.

Santa grinned. "Bet you wish you had been wearing that last night."

"I'm not sure why I'm wearing it now."

"We weren't sure when you were going to come around. Didn't want to leave your noggin unprotected, you know, in case we hit turbulence."

The Mark V sled was the latest prototype out of R&D. We hadn't planned on using it this year, as there were still some issues with cargo space. Otherwise, the craft packed all of the latest technology: a Time Clock Wave Generator, stealth armor, chameleon configuration, auto-gyroscopic thrusters, two Harrier turbines, an onboard sixteen processor RISC system, radar, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, 5G-ready, smartwear piloting and targeting systems, and a full GPS scan of the entire globe with a real-time holographic projection system with resolution down to one meter. There was even a 1.6 cubic meter refrigerator, a bagel toaster, and a cappuccino machine. "Turbulence" was not a word that cropped up much during the design and construction phases.

"Where are we going?" I croaked.

"Purgatory," he answered.

Asking
why
was either going to be considered rhetorical or it would cause Santa to wind up and soapbox me for the next half hour, belaboring me with a whole lot of crazy talk that would include the rationale for kidnapping me, stealing the prototype sled, and hauling ass with the reindeer on a transglobal flight.

"Look," I said, licking my dry lips, "we should talk about this."

Santa shook his head. "I'm not interested in talk, Bernie. That's all you guys do. Talking and meetings and regulations and SOPs. There is no action. "

"It's an incredibly complex situation, Santa. Christmas is too big for just one person any longer. We need the organization—the procedures—otherwise the whole thing would fall apart. We need SOP documentation in order to regulate quality and ensure that any member of the staff can perform—"

"Stow it," Santa snorted. "I've seen the Blue Book. You've got procedures for making sure that the water I take my vitamins with is the proper temperature."

"The human body absorbs the nutrients from the supplements at maximum efficiency in a fluid environment of 99.3 degrees. We spent a lot of money doing the research."

"I remember when we put the first microwave in. It had two settings:
on
and
off
. And before that, I used to heat water on the stove. A gas stove. You think I bothered to put a thermometer in the kettle, or did I just wait until the damn thing started whistling before I poured the water?"

"You probably waited . . ." I said.

"And did all that hot water kill me?"

I shook my head. "That's irrelevant. Systems of codified behavior and operational policies are mandatory for the efficient functioning of any complex production environment," I said. "You can't have individuals working without systematic work-flow structures. It would be—"

"The early twentieth century?"

"Anarchy," I finished.

He laughed. "Anarchy? Please. I'm not saying that we should tear everything down. I'm just operating outside any of your procedure documents, Bernie. You're all snow blind. I'm the only one with a decent pair of goggles."

I wanted to raise a finger in argument, but I discovered that the restraints weren't just in place to keep me from falling out of the chair. Santa watched me struggle for a minute. "Can't have you doing something foolish, Bernie," he said, softly. "It's too important."

"Why bring me at all?" I asked.

The intercom pinged, interrupting his reply. "Snow White to Prince Charming."

Santa toggled a switch on the console. "Charming. Over."

The sled comms were all fiber connections between the blister pods where the reindeer rode and the cockpit—I'm not even sure why the reindeer insist on using code names when it's all hardwired like this. The gravely voice was crystal clear, though, and it sounded like the reindeer was in the small chamber with us. "Eyes downside, Charming," Rudolph replied. "A scenic vista awaits."

Santa leaned over and toggled the bellycam to the heads-up display that ghosted over the cockpit canopy. The cloud cover beneath the sled was patchy, streaks of distant blue peeking through the rents and tears. We shot across the edge of the storm front and the view went from white to blue. On the right edge of the display was a narrow edge of dark green and brown. Santa adjusted a dial and the camera tracked right and stepped down through several magnification stops until the tiny marks became gantries and towers poking up from the flat landscape. "Canaveral," Santa said.

He moved a white cursor over the image and clicked on a specific launch pad. The imaging system performed a GPS lookup, locked onto the object, and started tracking that location as we streaked overhead. He magnified the image one more step and I could make out the slender shape of a booster rocket. "SLS," Santa said. "NASA's next generation launch system. They're going out farther than the International Space Station. They're going to try for the Moon or Mars, one of these days." He turned away from the image and looked at me. "What happens then, Bernie? What happens when they establish a lunar base and take their families to the moon?"

"I don't know, Santa."

"Christmas will still happen on the moon. Am I going to have to make the trip?"

I swallowed. "I'm sure there is a team monitoring the progress of the Space Launch System. I'm sure a feasibility study is being done right now."

He snorted. "A study. Email traffic for six months, capped off with a bulleted presentation that will send 99% of the audience to sleep. You're missing the point, Bernie. You're all missing the point."

"I'm trying," I shouted. "But I'm finding it a little hard to concentrate after I've been shot at, assaulted, bagged up, and tied down." I burned off a few more calories going epileptic on the straps.

Santa watched until I wore myself out. I was breathing hard, and I worked a few nostril flares into the power grimace I was sending his direction.

"You going to behave if I untie you?" he asked.

I thought about it for a few seconds. "Maybe."

He glanced at the instrument panel. "We're over ten thousand kilometers up, Bernie. We just hit Mach 3. You think you can just step off?"

"I could bite your ankles."

"Would that solve anything?"

"Make me feel better."

He waited until I sighed.

"Okay, I'll behave."

He made two cuts in the nylon straps with a red-handled, black-bladed knife and then got out of the way as I thrashed out of the restraints. He kept the knife in hand until I was done making sudden motions. I pointed at the refrigerator. "Can I get some water?"

"Sure," he answered, folding up the knife and putting it away. "That's sounds good. Grab me a bottle too, would you?"

The cockpit of the Mark V was about three meters by six meters. At one end of the rectangle was the pilot's chair, the main instrument board, and the navigation station; at the other end was the hatch to the sled's cargo bay. In between was what we called the No-Fly Zone: the only things within reach in this part of the sled were the espresso maker, the toaster, and the refrigerator. Standing there, you were making snacks; you most certainly were not piloting the sled.

I grabbed two mineral waters from the fridge, handed one to Santa, and sat back down in my chair. We sucked water quietly and watched the bellycam track across the eastern edge of Florida. It was barely dawn down there, and the frantic shopping activity of the day before Christmas hadn't started yet.

And speaking of shopping . . . 

"So what do you expect me to do?" I asked after I had done a little hydrating.

He wiped his mouth. "I need your fingers, Bernie. You're the one who found it. I may have a subscription to
2600
but, you know, I really don't understand half the articles. And Blitzen and Cupid, while they're pretty sharp, they've got hooves and can't type for shit. We're going to need you to access the computer when we get there."

"Purgatory."

There. I said it. SECO training did include a couple of basic psych courses. One of the things they teach you is that you should never give credence to the patient's delusional state. You should never allow the patient to draw you into his mental fugue, never willfully participate in the fantasy environment. Of course, when it came time to write up the several-thousand-page report I was going to have to file when I got Santa back to the North Pole, I was probably going to skim over this whole bit. Frankly, when you've had as rough a morning as I was having, most of the psych stuff seemed like an awful lot of bullshit.

"We know where the entrance is," Santa said. "Blitzen and Cupid did something with some log files and figured out where you went. They found that same web address, but they couldn't get in. They said there was no way to hack into it externally, but if we could get to the terminal itself, then maybe we could do something."

"Like what? Look under the keyboard for a sticky note with the password written on it?"

Santa shrugged. "Sure, if that's all it takes."

"You haven't thought this through very well, have you?"

Santa was quiet for a minute. "We need access, Bernie. I just couldn't wait around for you to wake up. We're on a tight schedule here." He pointed at the chronometer on the instrument panel. "We haven't got a lot of time to find David Anderson before Zero Hour."

Well, I guess that was a bit of good news: this psychosis was going to be temporary.