From: pghurh@interaccess.com (pg hurh)
Subject: STORY: Polhemus Remembering
Date: Fri Mar 10 14:56:14 MET 1995

Been lurking again. Apologies for being voyeuristic, but here's a story
that was _almost_ a nice tight one.

Polhemus Remembering                              PG Hurh
                                                  copyright 1994


Numb fingers gathered the gossamer threads into a thick yarn, looping and
knotting them once to form a small grip along the spun length.  Polhemus
looked down at his cold hands and grabbed hold of the knot so that it was
wedged under the thumb of his right hand.  He jerked it hard once and
watched the ten meter length of twined threads snap taut.  His eyes
followed the threads across icy clumps of snow to where they webbed out and
connected to the pressure sensitive railing that edged the rooftop of the
huge square building.

Pol squinted through the darkness.  The cloud cover was early tonight and
he could barely make out the image of the railing.  He jerked on the mass
of threads again and thought he saw the shadow of the railing waver
minutely.  He sighed and turned his head over his shoulder to look at the
revolving security camera five paces behind him.  It spun around slowly,
its lens completely covered by the thick layer of white ice that Pol had
sprayed on moments earlier.  Soon the layer would melt through, heated by
the camera's de-icer unit.  Polhemus had sprayed on as much as he dared,
almost the entire canister.  Any more and the security-comp's pattern
recognition daemon would alert the Spiders.  He looked back down at the
knot in his hand for a moment and then set it down on the rooftop.  Time
enough for a few more threads.

Pol ran to the railing, smoothly pulling out a small blob of white
putty-like substance from a zippered pocket of his cold suit.  He studied
the railing for a moment.  It was the only feature along the curved edge of
the slick roof that Polhemus could secure to.  Its thin supports were
spaced evenly every half meter, instrumented to signal the Spiders if their
strain gauges registered more weight than a good helping of Antarctic snow.
  Polhemus found the edge of his web of threads and then smeared the putty
there, feeling it stick and stretch viscously as he expanded the web's grip
on the railing by another meter.

Holding the ball of putty in one hand, Pol jerked it away from the railing.
 The resulting thin trails of polymer putty formed into threads connecting
the ball to the railing.  Without hesitation he sprinted back to the
knotted clump of threads in the snow, extruding the putty fibers behind
him.  He scooped up the knot and, with a practiced motion, joined the fresh
additional threads to it.  Polhemus slid the now slightly smaller ball of
polymer putty back into his cold suit and waited for the new threads to
cure in the cold.

The blinded camera swung toward Pol again.  He stared back at its frozen
lens.  Almost like it's alive, he thought.  This whole laboratory is
probably alive.  Suddenly, an image flashed through Pol's mind, the
laboratory complex from a distant high viewpoint, obscured by hurtling
snow.  The image was a clear, but still, frame from his memory.  He heard a
voice, almost a narration:

"...actually an ideal location for a bio-mech lab.  Arachniware's primary
tech is designed to meld with the human body.  The sub-zero weather is
perfect for culture isolation.  Once outside, the bio-mechanisms can't
survive.  Same as a human body..."

A squeal from the camera's rotation mechanism pulled Polhemus back to the
cold rooftop.  He shook his head roughly.  The clear image and voice from
his memory had startled him.  Even more so when he realized he couldn't
actually remember much more of his past than that brief glimpse.  Pol's
brow clenched for an instant as he strained to recall anything prior to
when the drone had dropped him on this roof.  Nothing.

The camera squeaked again.  Its lens was almost clear.  Polhemus gathered
the cured threads in his right hand and jogged to the roof's edge.  Without
knowing what he had done to get here, Pol knew with frightening clarity
what he had to do next.  He jumped.

Polhemus vaulted from the edge of the roof, easily clearing the low
railing, and plummeted into darkness.  Behind him sailed the gossamer web,
plastically stretching as his weight pulled the gathered knot in his hand.
The web wrenched at his arm and swung him back toward the icy building.  He
took the brunt of the impact with his legs, bunching them up underneath him
and rebounding his momentum until he hung still against the cold wall.

Pol listened carefully.  Above the noise of the wind he couldn't discern
any sound of an alarm.  No sirens, no horns, nothing.  His web must have
distributed his weight over enough of the rail's instrumented stanchions to
avoid alerting the Spiders.

Polhemus looked at the wall all around him, searching for the opening that
was supposed to be there.  His face wrinkled up as he tried to remember the
details.  Somewhere over to his right, he thought.

Both hands clutching the knotted web, Pol walked himself over.  A faint
dark spot appeared, hanging on the frosted wall.  He edged closer, seeing a
thick cloud of steam and vapor issuing from the blemish.  It looked like a
deep, moist hole with edges like puffy skin, the center covered with a thin
gauze-like material.

Pol pushed lightly with one booted foot on the gauze covering.  It gave way
easily, revealing more layers of the same material behind it.  A Scrubber
Vent, he thought, the words popping into his conscious mind unbidden.  He
drew his foot back and placed it squarely against the wall alongside his
other one.  Then Polhemus doubled up his legs and pushed off the wall,
swinging from the polymer threads.  On his return, he plunged through the
vent's opening feet first, tearing away the layers of soft, fleshy filter.
He slid to halt within the dark confines of the tubular vent, it's cold,
wet walls squeezing up against his body gently.

Polhemus took a deep breath and almost gagged on the thick chemical-ridden
air that filled his lungs.  He instinctively grabbed for a collapsible
filter mask from the chest pocket of his cold suit.  He slid it free of its
cavity and snaked it to his face, arm pressed tight against his body by the
vent's clinging walls.  It slid on neatly, covering his nose and mouth.  He
began to breath again, this time in the short measured gasps that the mask
allowed.

Extending his arms over his head, Pol pushed on the folds of the vent walls
and slid himself further into the living filter.  He repeated the motion a
few times and soon found himself undulating in a comforting rhythm.  He
closed his eyes and continued to slide.

Polhemus thought as he traveled.  He felt mentally and physically compelled
to get somewhere, to do something.  Almost like an addiction.  He dug back
through his foggy memories in an attempt to find something that revealed
his nature, but all he could remember were sights and sounds from his
childhood.  Pol remembered the hard scrape of falling off his red bicycle
when he was seven, his lumbering father chasing after him.  He saw a
firework's splash of bright color against a humid night sky.  He recalled
the shiny metal gleam of his mother's arms as she laid him down in his
cradle bin.  Just a handful of images and emotional snapshots, nothing that
explained his mysterious compulsion.  It was as if a void existed in his
memory, an erased section of tape filled with static drop-outs and
erroneous data.  Perhaps this is what I seek, Pol thought, to regain lost
memories of the events that shaped me, molded me into what I am now.  To
uncover the data that compels me to action.

Polhemus realized he had stopped moving.  The vent was a little smaller and
warmer here.  He pulled his legs into a fetal position and felt around with
his arms, turning over and over in the vent tunnel.  His left hand suddenly
pushed through the warm flesh of the wall and a sickly gush of warm fluid
enveloped his fingers.  Pol took a ragged breath through his filter mask
and tried to open his eyes  He groped around with his other hand, feeling
the warm, wet wall pushing in on him, smothering him.  The filter mask
tightened on his face and clogged with the vent's mucous.  Suddenly
frantic, he shoved his right hand into the oozing gap he had made and
pulled it open even further, pushing forward with his head and kicking with
his legs.

He fell through the tear, his body squeezed through several layers of
flesh, each one more rigid than the last.  Finally Pol was roughly dumped
out onto a hard surface.  He opened his eyes to a white brilliance and
struggled to a sitting position, his hands supporting himself off of a cool
enamel-like floor.

Polhemus squinted around himself in the glaring light.  He sat in a long,
low-ceilinged room filled with banks of machinery.  Robotic arms swung in
minute arcs above the machinery, transferring small black items from one
machine to the next.  The entire assembly looked majestic, surfaces all
black anodized and gold iridited.  Sparkling quartz viewports adorned
several of the bulky machines.

Pol stood and slipped off the dripping filter mask. He looked behind him.
A white wall showed a long gash from his entry.  He touched it tentatively
with the tips of his fingers.  It was covered with a yellowish tacky gel
that seemed to solidify as he touched it.  The wall was healing itself.

Polhemus pulled at the long side zipper of his cold suit and molded
neoprene fell away from his body.  He stepped out of the leggings expertly
and walked over to one of the machines, clad only in a skin tight lycra
body suit.

He peered through one of the viewports and saw the shadows of
micro-positioners vibrating one of several black chips into position before
the gangly needle tip of an electron tunneling gun.  Pol backed away from
the viewport slowly.  As he did so, a flashing glint caught his eye, a
reflection off the edge of the quartz window.

Polhemus spun around and spotted the source of the reflection, a pulsating
orange light-tube hung in the very corner of the room.  He grimaced and
glanced back at the tear in the wall.  Contamination alarms, he thought.

Polhemus whirled and spotted double doors leading out of the clean room.
He headed for them, nimbly side-stepping the active machinery and dodging
the overhead robotic arms.  He placed his hands on the doors to push them
open when he stopped suddenly.

Pol looked over his shoulder slowly.  He remembered this room... as if he
had been here before.  He removed his palms from the door fronts and walked
over to a low set of cabinets.  Squatting down, Polhemus pulled on one of
the cabinet door handles.  It opened with a snick and he glanced inside it,
his eyes dancing quickly over its spare contents of hand tools and lighting
upon a small gray cylindrical device.  Pol reached in and grabbed it.  It
was a hand-held lasing tool.  He held it tightly for an instant, wondering
why he felt he needed it, then stood up swiftly and headed back to the
clean room doors.

They moved silently under his hands.  Polhemus first cracked one open, then
the other, peeking out through the narrow openings.  Seeing nothing
alarming, he stepped through them into a wide, orange carpeted hallway.

Lining the long stretch of hall were several more sets of double doors.
The set opposite Polhemus was labeled, MASS SPECTROSCOPY.  Over them hung a
darkened orange light-tube.  Pol turned around and looked over the doors
that had just swung shut behind him.  Another light-tube.  From this one he
could hear a rhythmic buzz as it pulsated with a brilliant orange glow.

Polhemus jumped into action and started to jog away from the alert light.
That contamination alarm will definitely attract some attention, he
thought.  Some human attention.  Pol glanced over his shoulder and ran
faster.

Up ahead the hallway took a sharp turn to his right.  He sprinted for it,
eager to distance himself from the contaminated clean room.  But just as he
was preparing to round the corner he suddenly stuttered to a halt short of
the intersection and, recovering his balance smoothly, gingerly stepped up
to it.

Slowly Pol extended his head to peer around the wall edge, his hand
gripping the lasing tool tightly.  Around the corner lay more hallway and
more doors... and, Pol noted, a small glint of glass hidden in the wall, up
near the low ceiling.  A security camera.

Spiders, Polhemus thought and snatched back his head.  His body flattened
against the wall reflexively.  The word came rushing into his head along
with a series of flashing images:  Long black extensor legs angling for
purchase on orange carpet... his own foot, strapped within the flimsy
framework of exoskeleton, as he kicked again and again at a metal black
thorax...  the flash of a laser pulse cascading across his exposed inner
thigh...

Pol forced himself from his splayed position against the wall behind him
and edged forward to peek around the corner's edge again.  He thumbed the
lasing tool in his hand and thought about using it to burn out the CCD chip
in the camera.  Not at this distance, he thought.

He looked down from the camera at the door it seemed to protect.  It was a
sealed door, the code-lock panel laying flush in the wall next to it.  Pol
read the label stenciled across the brushed metal face, SPECIMEN PERSONAE
ARCHIVAL. The words hit him with a rush.  That's it, he thought.  Whatever
I came for... somehow I know it's behind that door.

Polhemus pulled his eyes from the door and looked back up at the camera
frowning.  One step into the camera's field of vision and Spiders would
probably come swarming in seconds.  Pol let out a thin breath and sagged
back.

"Hey!"

Polhemus jumped at the voice and whirled to look down the hallway.

"Hey you!  What're you doing down here?  There's a contamination alert!"

A human in white coveralls and hood stood outside the clean room doors, his
body lit up by the pulsating alarm.  Polhemus felt his mouth open as he
tried to make his throat work.  No sound came out.  The white suited man
lifted a hand-held radio to his lips and began to mutter something into it,
staring at Pol with suspicion.

Polhemus turned back to the corner.  His eyes focused on the code-lock
panel and he made his mind up.  He broke into a run for it just as he heard
the man behind him yell into his radio, "Now, goddamn it!.. Now!"

A siren blared out above the words.  It careened through the cool air of
the hallway and screeched into Pol's ears.  He cringed and stumbled forward
to the lock panel.  Its flashing display read:

SEC-COMP OVERRIDE

Polhemus glared at it and punched at the numbered buttons without results
until, suddenly, his actions triggered some deep mnemonic.  His mind reeled
as he struggled to pull from his memory a forgotten melody of key presses.
His hand danced over the keypad rapidly, locking into the code, until, with
a grating thud, the door slid open.

Pol leapt through, spun around, and hit the code-lock panel on the inside
of the doorway.  The door slammed shut, muffling the siren.

Polhemus held the lasing tool up to the keypad in a tight fist and flicked
it on.  A bright shower of sparks flew from the panel as wire insulation
was burnt away and the smell of charred polyamide filled his nostrils.  The
display winked a nonsensical message of hieroglyphs at him and Pol slumped
to the floor.

Around him towered four close walls, their surfaces covered with thin
slitted vents.  Across from him, jutting out from one of the vented walls,
was a complex control panel.  Polhemus struggled to his feet, dropping the
lasing tool, and approached it.  The control panel featured a small
terminal screen and several rows of symbol-laden keys.  On the screen
glowed the words:

SPECIMEN 085292

RECALL SEQUENCE INITIATED:

BIO-TAPE EXECUTING.

FULL IMPRINT PREDICTED.

And blinking a few lines below:

AWAITING CONFIRMATION...

Pol reached his hands out to touch the keys and became aware of a strong
odor issuing from the vents.  It was a fresh, warm smell of sweet and new
born flesh.  Recognition flashed through Pol's mind and he froze still for
a moment.  This was a smell from his childhood, from his cradle bin.  And
later too, a smell from something else... a doctor... the smell of the
training surgery...

A huge boom rang out from behind Polhemus.  He jerked at the control panel
and turned to look at the jammed door.  A large crease ran the length of
its metal.  Another shuddering slam quickly shook the room and the crease
pushed violently inward.  Pol could hear the scrabbling of Spider extensors
as they extracted from the mangled door.

Polhemus, eyes wide, looked back at the vented panels of the walls.  He
felt a dire compulsion to tear off one of the panels and leaned forward
just as another slam echoed from behind.

The panel came off easily.  Underneath lay a complicated arrangement of
whirring spools and ticking pawls.  Polhemus reached in and stopped one of
the spools with his hand.  A pink colored strip of tape that was wound
about the spool unraveled quickly as the machinery spit forward the fleshy
substance.

Polhemus grabbed the tape and held it to his nose.  This smell, he thought.
 This smell is me.  It smells like me...

Below him, the terminal flashed:

CONFIRMED... SEQUENCE TERMINATED

The door fell and the Spiders swarmed.







------------------------
Not sure if anyone made it this far.  But here are some of my own comments
on this story.

First semi-published in "Creatopia" writing-workshop magazine, Polhemus was
written to 3,000 words exactly as required by Creatopia's editor, P.
Recchia.

<<aside:: I had previously submitted a story to Creatopia entitled "Bad
Sneakers" of about 4,500 words which was rejected due to length.  (I
trimmed (hedge-clipped) Bad Sneakers to 3,000 words exactly but was not
happy with the result and withdrew the story.  Later Bad Sneakers was
published by _InterText_ e-zine at its original length and appeared as the
cover story.>>

Hence, the lack of detail and rushed ending is somewhat explained by the
forced brevity.  However, I still think the story holds water and is a lot
of fun.  Polhemus was written in approximately 5 hours and after about one
hour of thought.  My main intentions were to emphasize Pol's generic
infiltrator character in contrast to his wonder of his origin.  His driving
compulsion was written to seem pre-programmed.  His foray into the
Arachniware building was written to evoke a desire to return to the womb.
The vague boundries between the machine and the living, the hard and the
soft, the program and the sentience were intentional.  I am, overall,
satisfied with the results.

The only plot device I would remove is the human's appearance.  It really
isn't needed.  A sense of urgency was needed to send the 5,000+ word story
to a 3,000 word conclusion, and that was my response.  If I rewrite it,
that won't be there.  Also, Pol's experience in the tape room would
probably be expanded.

However, I feel that the story should only be expanded to about 3,700 to
4,000 words.  In its short form it does hold a sort of quick power.

BTW, I did write 'down' a bit for "Creatopia" magazine... sorry if it is
obvious (a lot of young writers in Creatopia).

Influences for this story: Jeter, Banks, and, of course, PK Dick.

Opinions?  Comments?

--PG

ps I've added these comments to help stimulate feedback and author to
author communication.  If you like narrow bandwidth, please purge yourself.

-------------------------