Beach

Prologue

In a small hut filled with oily candlelight shadows, a man toils at a page. The curve of his back arches over paper, quill, and inkpot, tendons in his neck taut with concentration and questionable posture. He drives his stylus to the edge of the desk, pressing a stack of rough-edged paper with bloodless fingers. He stabs out for fresh ink, then resumes inscribing.

His upper body sways from side to side, a tense keeping of time. His palsied movements mirror the spread of wet scratches across the page. Sweat droplets arc from his body, melting into the dirt floor. He inhabits a fevered dream – or, rather, he is reaching out to something within a dream, frantic to pull it into this world.

Later, a few hours before dawn, the man emerges from the hut. He wears a cured leather satchel slung over his shoulder; a revolver and a knife nestle on his belt. He clutches the sheaf of pages, ink now dry, rolled tightly in one fist. Stepping from the shadow of the doorway into a clearing, his face is caught by moonlight: deeply tanned and lined, with glinting and fierce black eyes. A ragged scar traces one cheek, above and to the side of a sinuous forked moustache.

Another man, white-haired, fully bearded, and wearing robes, waits for him in the near-darkness. They exchange a few whispered words, and embrace. Then the first man departs, trotting down the path and beyond the ring of huts. Soon, he is clambering through the thick underbrush of the mountainside, scrabbling in the dark; descending, and still descending.

When he reaches the base of the mountain, the sun peeks over the grass plains to the east, glinting off the mountains behind him. Another man waits for him by the circular embers of a fire.

Dick, you’re back! I’ve been up in the Sierra de San Luis . . . My God, Dick. You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost.

What day is today?

What?

The date. The day of the week, of the year. I . . . I’ve lost track of the date.

Why, it’s Friday, Dick – the 25th. It’s Christmas. Christmas Day, 1868.

Part One

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose,no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

— CHARLES DARWIN

Miles to Go

A square bar dominated the center of the 14th Street Pub, the watering hole at the edge of Thomas Jefferson College, in Hookeville, Virginia. A harried barkeep hopped around the square’s interior, mixing drinks in a fine alcoholic mist. A man named Miles Darken, in company with other 14th Street regulars, slumped on the other side of the bar, emptying mugs of draught beer and nursing the week’s indignities.

Miles had slouched into the bar just after 8pm, topcoat billowing around his tall, slim build and clunky boots. It was Friday night and a crowd had already filled the room. Swiveling on his stool, he looked for familiar faces. He couldn’t make out the back corner through the throng.

Dana Steckler sat in the corner booth, shouting over the tumult with her friend Paulina. Dana pulled her chin-length red hair behind her ears, lit a cigarette, and leaned in.

Isn’t that your friend Miles, at the bar? Paulina asked.

That is him.

Why don’t you go say hi, and introduce me properly?

Give me a minute.

Sure. While we’re waiting: what’s it like sleeping with Professor Castrolang? Dana looked scandalized. I saw you sneaking into his office three times last week. You can see his door from the student lounge. Well, if you crane your neck, you can see it. They both laughed.

He’s my new advisor, Dana answered. I’m obligated to sleep with him.

I thought you might be doing research for him. That’s what you said earlier.

Okay, you got me. It’s a research project. She sighed. One I don’t feel like talking about right now. Let’s go introduce you to Miles. Dana palmed her cigarette and the two squeezed out of the booth and across the crowded floor.

Hiya, handsome. Dana nuzzled Miles’ ear, distracting him while she swiped his mug from his other side. As he swiveled left, and then right, Dana helped herself to a sip.

Hey there, doll, Miles said, not commenting on the purloined beer. Who’s this?

Miles, this is Paulina. She just transferred into the philosophy department as a sophomore. In a mock aside, she added, And she’s nineteen. Turning to Paulina, she said, He likes nineteen-year-olds. Cradle robber.

Miles made claws and growled. "That’s cradle-robber baron, thanks very much. He turned back to Dana. So what’s up? Moreover, where have you been lately? The disappearing act have to do with your big, mysterious research project?"

Goddammit, said Dana. Can’t a person do graduate work in peace around here without a constant public inquiry? Anyway, it’s not ‘big and mysterious’.

Then why the big mystery?

Okay, that’s it, buster. Now we’re going to talk about your vanity web page.

Miles piped down and looked nervously about the room.

That’s right, Dana said, pressing her attack. Paulina, you can now look up all your favorite facts about Miles at boatanchor.tjc.edu.

What’s a boatanchor? asked Paulina blankly.

It’s Miles’ personal workstation, Dana answered. Now Miles’ personal web server.

I’d planned to name it cracksmoker, Miles said blithely. But that got vetoed by the people who paid for it. Anyway, I had to put some documentation online; a web page seemed to be the place for it. Miles shifted slightly. But honestly, I don’t care that much for the web. It has no interaction or community. On Usenet, on the other hand, I can jump into a discussion group and instantly connect with thousands of people who know what they’re talking about.

Dana threw a crumpled bar napkin at him. You mean thousands of people who happen to agree with you. The other two looked at her inquiringly. "Miles thinks he’s old school with his Usenet groups. But I think it’s dangerous being surrounded by people who think just like you do. You start to believe all your prejudices are right." Dana stubbed out her cigarette and helped herself to another sip of Miles’ beer. I’ve got to get back to the computer lab. I’ve got work to do.

On a Friday night?

Thesis advisors are unfamiliar with the category. Paulina, are you leaving?

I think I’ll stay awhile, she said, eyeing Miles.

All right. Miles, let’s have brunch. Call me, okay?

Miles started to answer, but Dana had already pushed her way through the shifting mob to the door. He looked back at Paulina and shrugged.

Outside the bar, Dana paused and pressed her back to the brick wall of the alley. She produced another cigarette, but merely held it in front of her, regarding it. She really did need to get back to work. But given that she was not convinced the subject of her search existed, she doubly resented having to go look for it on a Friday night. She sighed, put the cigarette away, and began the walk back toward the darkened campus.

So, Miles asked Paulina, why’d you transfer?

I don’t know, she answered. What I was doing before didn’t seem to me to be right. So I thought I’d try something else. Or at least somewhere else.

Ah, said Miles, smiling down at his beer. Another seeker. Do you think you will find the answers that have eluded you in the philosophy department of Thomas Jefferson College?

Paulina stiffened slightly. Well, maybe I will. What is it you do at TJC, by the way? Dana told me you’re not a grad student.

Merely a graduated student. Now I work here, in the Academic Computing Center.

And does that make you a graduated seeker as well? Paulina asked. You’re now doing just what you’re meant to be doing in the universe?

I have no idea, confessed Miles. But I do think that’s turned out to be the central question of our generation: ‘Is this right? Is this what I’m meant to be doing?’ I keep waiting to run into someone with a satisfactory answer. Miles paused to sip. How did you meet Dana?

In the department. She’s taken me under her wing, I suppose. I think she’s made it her mission to try and make my transition more comfortable.

Oh, yeah? Miles asked instantly. We’ll have to put a stop to that dastardly scheme.

What? Paulina appeared flustered again.

Making you more comfortable. How nefarious. I mean, if there was one thing you were trying to accomplish in transferring, it was to flee from comfort, right? That was the whole point.

Paulina kept her silence for a moment, then asked, "How do you know Dana?"

Actually, we dated in undergrad, Miles said quietly. It was a long time ago.

Paulina sized him up again. What you said about comfort just now. Comfort’s so bad?

Take it from me, Miles answered with an easy authority. You know what still being in your college town three years after graduation is like? It’s a lot like being in bed, sleeping in late. Very warm, and pleasant, and comfy. But now and again, you stir a bit and you think, ‘Jesus, I can’t believe I’m still in bed.’ But then you roll over and drift back off.

He shrugged, smiled resignedly, and called for the bill.

Miles’ walk home from the pub took him past the main computer lab. Within, Dana sat in silence, entering very dramatic search terms into the library database system, LexisNexis and, finally, a number of web search engines. The latter kept alternately returning zero or thirty thousand hits.

She was beginning to have grave and debilitating doubts that the thing she’d been charged with finding was out there at all. If such a thing existed, why wouldn’t the world know about it? But neither could she still her fascination with the idea. So tempting, she mused to herself. It is very human to imagine that there really might be final answers. Out there just waiting for us to find them.

"Waiting for me to find them," she amended out loud.

She looked out the window, which rose to the ceiling. In the reflected light of the thick glass, she saw only her own bright and puzzled reflection. Beyond its surface, Miles passed into the shadows of the lane behind the building, which led to his empty apartment.

Great Secrets

In the late morning, twisting on his futon, Miles booted up leisurely.

First his eyes flickered and lit up. Then various mental processes hummed to life, starting with the operating system – rough knowledge of who and where he was. The OS did a few quick hardware diagnostics: stomach empty, bladder full, head throbbing just a little. He then fired up pointers to long-term memory volumes; he could now call up such data as his parents’ birthdays, or the Independent presidential candidate in 1980, if he really needed to.

Happy with his Sunday morning start-up, Miles tried some network activity: he trundled out of the bedroom in his boxers and picked up the phone.

Hey. It’s me. Brunch invitation still good? He held the phone with one hand, and scratched his back with the other. Yeah, sure, bring her. Pick you up in half an hour.

Miles rolled his Datsun to a stop in the parking lot of Dana’s apartment complex. Dana and Paulina appeared from the stairwell and wordlessly took their seats in the car. They all sighed expressively at the late morning air – bright, clear, and cool.

Miles rolled out of the lot and descended the broad sweep of a partitioned boulevard, the car idling low and easy, sunglasses and chrome glinting wildly. They negotiated a few other cars and the odd pedestrian, cutting a loop around the campus and toward downtown. Miles eased the car regally into a shadow-speckled gravel parking lot. He smiled as he pulled on the parking brake.

I hope Cafe B is okay, he said.

As they clambered out of the car, Dana said, Miles is being ironic, Paulina. Cafe B is the best brunch for five thousand miles in any direction.

Gimme the Sunday Number Three, Miles instructed the waiter, salivating, with both the bacon and the sausage.

Dana: I’ll have the Number Three, too. Vegetarian version, though, please.

Miles to Paulina: Dana has some kind of problem with devouring innocent creatures to give ourselves cancer and heart disease. But that’s nit-picking, isn’t it? She should live a little.

Vegetarians live six years longer, said Dana. I’ll make sure there’s bacon at your wake.

Thanks, said Miles. By the way, how went your Friday night research-athon?

Like a well-oiled machine.

So, are you going to tell us what you’re researching now?

If that’s the only way to make y’all stop asking. Dana let her bangs swing in front of her face, then brushed them away again. It’s more silly than anything. I feel silly talking about it.

That would explain, drawled Miles, your elaborate silence.

Well, it’s this. My new academic advisor has got me on a scavenger hunt for a lost document. I happen to think it’s just a rumor, a myth. If it does even exist at all, it’s going to turn out to be another discredited scrap on the tall historical pile of ‘revealed religious truths'.

Goddamn, Dana, Miles said, will you please tell me what you’re babbling about?

She shook her head and drew breath before speaking carefully. It’s a religious text. Or a philosophical one, maybe. It dates from 1868 or 1869. It was written by one Sir Richard Francis Burton. And it was lost – if it ever existed at all. She paused. Do you know who Burton was?

Miles squinted as if trying to recall. Paulina shook her head blankly.

"In a small nutshell, he was a nineteenth-century explorer, soldier, writer, translator, and a lot of other things. He discovered the source of the Nile, translated the 1001 Arabian Nights, and snuck into Mecca disguised as an Arab, among many other exploits."

Dana paused as food began to hit the table. Between greedy gulps of coffee, she continued. Burton spent several years in South America in the 1860s. For about six months of that, he disappeared into the highlands of Brazil and Argentina. There was no record of what he did on this trip. Just a lot of rumors. Wild stories about running gunfights with bandits in the mountains.

Cool, said Miles. He tucked into his eggs, keeping a half an eye on Dana.

There’s one story that’s wilder yet, she continued. His discovery of the lost tribe, and the manuscript he produced describing them. As the story goes, somewhere up in the mountains which divide Argentina and Chile, sometime around the end of 1868, Burton stumbled into a remote and unmapped village, populated by an isolated tribe. Racially, they were not related to either the indigenous Indians, nor the conquering Spaniards. And, moreover, they were a very serene and wise bunch of people. Dana paused. People who understood things the rest of us do not.

Things like what? asked Miles.

Dana paused before speaking down at her plate. The nature of consciousness. Free will and morality. The shape of the universe, and time’s arrow. How to access the Godhead; where the soul goes after death. Past lives, maybe. She looked up at the other two again. ‘Meaning of life’ stuff, for lack of a less dramatic way to put it.

Wow. Miles pushed his plate away from him and gave Dana his full attention.

Anyway, as the story goes, these people showed Burton all of their secrets – showed him in a way that left no question of their truth – and he wrote a first-person account of everything he saw.

And this record was lost somehow? asked Paulina.

His wife burnt all of his papers on his death. The notion is – again, if you buy into any of this – that Burton never dared publish what he learned in South America. And it went up in flames.

Miles sipped from his coffee cup. If it was destroyed, then why are you looking for it now?

That’s what I keep asking myself. Dana exhaled and pushed back from the table. "But I actually want to turn the tables and ask you a couple of questions in your field of expertise."

Sure, shoot. Miles replaced his coffee cup and looked expectantly across the table.

If something is somewhere out on the Net, web search engines will always be able to find it? They know about everything that’s out there?

Not precisely. Miles shifted in his seat, clunkily shifting mental gears. In order for a document to be in a web search index, generally some other document has to link to it. Search engine spiders just follow links, one after another, page to page, indexing everything they find on the way.

So if something wasn’t linked to anything, it wouldn’t get indexed?

Not unless someone specifically registered it with the search engines. He pinned her with his squint. "I’m guessing this question is not totally unrelated to the earlier topic?"

Not totally. But just then their waiter appeared with a check and an unsubtle intimation that they should pay it and clear out. They could see the line of aspiring breakfasters snaking out the front door. I need to get back to work, anyway, noted Dana.

After dropping off the other two where he’d found them, Miles rolled the Datsun into the circular drive in front of his building. Inside, he puttered around in the vaguely menacing shadow of a coming Monday morning. He went to bed early; but later, in the night, he dreamt of Dana’s young friend Paulina shouting to him from South American mountain tops, trying to tell him she had found the Great Secret. In the dream, Miles struggled to remember what that was supposed to be.

Things Fall Apart

Tides of quiet starlight pooled into the dim living room as Dana entered, coming home late again, on Sunday night. She stepped through the blackness of her little off-campus apartment, then pulled open the drapes, and the sliding glass door behind it.

She stood at the suddenly bright edge of the main room, tired and all alone, a crisp breeze kicking the corner of the drape around her ankle. She let her satchel slip from her shoulder to the half-shadowed living-room floor and stepped out onto the balcony.

Dana’s building sat on a rise, a half-mile from the center of campus. The distance and the elevation provided a lovely, quiet view of the twinkily lit-up buildings of the college – close enough that each backlit windowpane glinted at her, but too far for drunken reveling or other noise to carry.

Dana stood in the breeze and monitored the distant lights. She thought about Paulina, and what TJC and Hookeville might look like through new eyes. Dana thought of her life as a graduate student in the field of medical ethics, and she worried that all of her reading and writing and research – all very intent, all concerned with the life of the mind – might have caused her to go a little bit blind to the world. Paulina seemed more prone to questioning where she was in the larger scheme, what the point of all this was.

She thought about Miles, and how he worked so hard to be a good friend to her, and that perhaps she didn’t do as much as she could to reciprocate. There was so much work to do, and so few hours. Outside of 9 to 5 – actually, more like 11 to 5 – Miles’ time was his own, and he seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be a full-time student. Still, Dana wondered if she didn’t take him for granted, assuming he would always be around for her, whenever she got around to taking him up on it.

Ever since their romantic dissolution four years earlier, Miles had been the soul of solicitousness. She attributed it to guilt. There had been no real reason for their break-up; Miles had simply felt a sudden and irrepressible desire to get out, and nothing Dana said could change his mind.

She sighed, and patted herself down for cigarettes. She got one lit despite the breeze and fumed serenely into the darkness.

Because she was south of campus and elevated, Campbell Hall, home of the Philosophy Department, dominated her view. Dana could see light leaking out of the windows on its south face. One of them could be her advisor’s office, though she could not tell for sure.

But she could well picture the scene within that tiny room, having spent so many afternoons there. Especially the one day in August, when Professor Jim Castrolang had related to her an unlikely tale of enlightenment found, and lost, and – maybe, if they were on the ball – found again.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, James Castrolang had recited on that day, two months earlier, seemingly casually, 1821 to 1890. English explorer, soldier, anthropologist, eroticist, swordsman, linguist, translator, writer – but you can get the biographical sketch from any of a number of sources. Jim paused to pace the tiny office. Which I suggest you might do, when you get a chance.

Dana crossed her legs, sitting in the lone chair before the cluttered desk. She nodded at his suggestion, which she did take to heart a few minutes later, making a beeline for the main library.

Before that night ended, Dana knew that Richard Burton had been all of the things Castrolang had ticked off, and also many more: inventor, scholar, geographer, surveyor, naturalist, student of the world’s religions, skilled mesmerist, member of the Royal Geographical Society, co-founder of the Anthropological Society of London, discoverer of Lake Tanganyika in Africa, and prolific writer, poet, and translator of such works as the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra. And, despite being a brawler and political lightning rod (known to many as Ruffian Dick), he had ultimately been knighted.

Sitting in a shadowed study cubby, buried in a remote corner of the hulking library, Dana had pressed a Burton biography into her lap – the first of several books on the man she would read, or skim, in the weeks to follow. She stared transfixed at Burton’s fierce, angry-eyed, brow-shadowed image on the slick paper insert of the book. His visage was unlike any other she had seen: ugly and handsome, captivating and terrifying.

Turning back to the front of the book, she ran though the details of Burton’s early life.

Born in England in 1821, raised in France (where he picked up French as well as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Greek), he later returned to England, only to get expelled from Oxford for brawling, drunkenness, and disrespect. He signed on with the British Army in India and, with a Bombay teacher, took up the study of Hindustani, hoping for a staff appointment as a translator. He also studied Gujarati and Sanskrit, in which he absorbed himself so much that his fellow officers bequeathed him the not-entirely-affectionate nickname, white nigger. Despite that, he continued with his language studies, learning Persian, Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, Multani, Armenian, and Turkish. In the end, he mastered twenty-nine languages and a number of dialects.

Under the command of Sir Charles Napier, conqueror of the Sindh, Burton worked as an intelligence officer in the British Indian Army, often going in disguise, dressing as a wealthy half-Arab and half-Iranian merchant. He rented a shop and sat in the market asking questions; his disguise allowed him the opportunity to observe daily Indian life as no other foreigner could.

Ruminating on these arresting details, Dana laid herself out straight and diagonal in her rough wooden chair, steepled the scuffed volume in her lap, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had already spent more than two hours in the library, and Burton hadn’t yet turned twenty-eight, though he’d accomplished more than Dana thought she might ever aspire to.

Burton was most famous, even in his own day, for two exploits. The first was smuggling himself into the holy and forbidden Arab cities of Medina and Mecca, making the sacred hajj disguised as an Arab physician. For months he maintained the ruse, aware that if he were found out he’d be torn limb from limb in Mecca, where infidels were forbidden to set foot. The second was his discovery, with John Hanning Speke, of the source of the Nile in the middle of Africa. This capped a months-long overland expedition, which involved hundreds of men and beasts, and which nearly killed him and Speke both.

These were only the most renowned of his exploits. Much like Jefferson, Castrolang had told Dana, back in his office, he was engaged by everything. Nothing was uninteresting to him, or foreign to his mind. However, our interest is in one discovery of Burton’s which appears not to have made it into the official record at all. Castrolang paused there.

So you’re telling me, Dana said, Burton discovered some people who no one else ever had, and who claimed to have some esoteric knowledge. She paused to gather the flapping threads of her thought. And these people ostensibly shared these answers of theirs with Burton, in person, in 1868 or 1869. And he wrote down everything he learned from them.

Right, agreed Castrolang. We think. Possibly.

I guess I still don’t understand, Dana ventured, exactly what you’re saying Burton discovered. What ‘questions’ does this document answer?

The intractable ones, Castrolang answered unemotionally, and without hesitation. The nature of consciousness – does it come from a soul, or simply a very complex brain? Which is true of our fate – free will, or determinism? What’s the truth about morality? Are some things really right, and others always wrong? Why we have been put on this planet, if we have been put here. He paused, looking her in the eye. And God. Yes or no?

Dana found she could formulate no response to this.

In 1865 Burton was appointed Her Majesty’s consul to Santos, Brazil. During his three years there, he wrote three books, invented a new kind of carbine pistol, explored the provinces, and led an expedition to inspect the gold and silver mines in the interior. He took a 1,300-mile float down the São Francisco River on a raft, most of it alone. This was typical of Burton, Castrolang had said. Interested in everything but his job. For three years, the consulate languished.

In the middle of 1867, Burton left for Rio, and an exploration of the highlands of Brazil. About that region, he wrote, It was a dangerous and lawless place, and a revolver at night is as necessary as shoes. If a strange person asks you for a light, you stick your cigar in the barrel of your gun, and politely offer it to him, without offence being given or taken.

This cavalier attitude to danger partly explained Burton’s enjoyment of his tour of the US territories: he could carry a Colt revolver and a Bowie knife without drawing attention. He was also one of the best swordsmen of his day, having studied from his youth under a number of masters. He fought in the war in the Crimea, and survived an ambush in the Arabian desert. (I was never more flattered in my life, Burton wrote, than to think that it would take three hundred men to kill me.) He was wounded on several occasions, most notably on an early expedition in Africa, in Berbera: he awoke in the middle of the night to find the camp under attack by Somali warriors. While fighting them off with a sword, he took a spear through both cheeks; it knocked out several teeth and left a prominent, and frightening, lifelong scar.

When he did get back to Buenos Aires, that’s when the screen goes black, Castrolang had said, pausing in his pacing. "To this day, no one knows exactly how long Burton was there. And this was a man who took meticulous notes about everything: flora, fauna, minerals, native cultures, geography. He turned almost every trip he took into a book, over forty volumes. He was recognized as one of the leading anthropologists, and geographers, of his day.

"From September 1868 until the end of March of the next year, it is unknown exactly what Burton was doing; no record exists. During this time, he took the only unrecorded trip of his life. Only an outline of this expedition can be pieced together. He had met a man named William Maxwell on his passage to South America. They later set out together, overland across Argentina, and explored the Sierra de San Luiz mountain range. Burton was the first person in history to map those mountains.

"Burton and Maxwell crossed through a pass in the Andes into Chile. Years later, a friend said that Burton claimed to have killed four men on this trip – most likely not true. Burton habitually made himself out to be even worse than he was. He loved to shock, and counted enemies as badges of honor.

"After resting in Santiago de Chile, they caught ship for Peru and left the South American interior behind.

By the evidence, his wife Isabel had no idea where he had been, Castrolang had said. "Also, he’d been drinking heavily. His career was in tatters, all the promise of his youth ended in an unprestigious appointment to a backwater consulate. And he was about to turn fifty. Shortly after he had returned, in a cafe in Lima a stranger congratulated Burton on his appointment to the consular post at Damascus, the job he’d jockeyed for his whole life. Tramping in the jungle, he had not heard that he’d gotten it.

So he left, Castrolang had concluded. His mysterious time in the jungle was soon forgotten. Many of the areas he passed through – the mountains of Chile, the Uspallata Pass – were unexplored then, and remain largely unexplored today. Very rough country, and nothing to go there for.

Sorry, Dana had ventured. If he did write something about his time in Argentina, what happened to it?

Isabel, Castrolang exhaled heavily. It seems likely that Burton concluded this work could never be published. After his death, Isabel burned his papers, all his unpublished works. She spent sixteen days in his study with twenty-seven years’ worth of notebooks. Castrolang turned his back to her, and poked his fingers in the blinds, beyond which the darkness had gotten worked up.

The Manuscript is said to be only one or two dozen pages. I would wager she never saw it. I would wager that it was buried in something else, and that’s how it went up. But there are ideas floating around about how a copy could have survived.

So, Dana whispered, her throat catching. Do you have any ideas about where we should start looking for this thing?

Castrolang turned from the blinds, facing her again with a boyish and pinch-lipped smile, but his eyes betrayed his solemnity. Online, he said simply.

Machines of Loving Grace

Monday morning, and Miles Darken lay back in his comfy ergonomic rolling chair, pulled his keyboard into his lap, and resumed typing. His fingers a blur, dark eyes squinting seriously through thick lashes, he paused to sweep his black, straight hair back from his high forehead. Locked up with the machines, buried alive in the basement complex that housed Academic Computing, Miles monitored and manipulated the digital pulse of the entire campus. Miles was a member of an elite technical order, the Priesthood of Unix Systems Administrators. Miles made the machines run.

Day after day, time out of mind, Father Miles sat in his cubicle, headphones on, listening to some Frank Sinatra or Public