More about Miles

So, where was I?

The next day, Miles took me back to the microfiche room and showed me his stash.

Holy crap. I guess the Monkey Wars haven't been so bad for him. He has suitcases full of stuff - just an amazing array of pills and powders and herbs and paraphenalia. I didn't even recognize a lot of it but he was happy to explain and offer samples. I declined, and not just because DAISI was sort of growling at me.

"Where did you get all this?" I asked him.

He looked a little sheepish, and told me that he's been going around to houses and sort of exploring them and taking what he wanted.

"You steal drugs from dead people?"

"No! It's not like that."

"Yes, it is."

"Well, they don't need it any more, do they? Besides, where did all your gin come from? All those canned peaches? The surveillance cameras you ripped off from Radio Shack?"

"That's different."

"How?" he said, all defiant.

"Shut up," I explained.

"But-" he said, but he did shut up when DAISI went on alert and glared at him. Those two don't get along at all. He just can't believe that she's really not evil any more. I guess I can't blame him but I do wish those two would get along better. Would it kill her to have one of his special cigarettes?

He told me he's been burying the bodies he finds in the houses. But sometimes the bodies are just too awful, or there are too many of them.

He burns those houses down.

Well, that was kind of an awkward moment, so we had one of his special cigarettes and relaxed a little. It still wasn't funny but it didn't seem so bad any more, you know?

"Seriously, though," he said after a while. "Why aren't you on your way to Atlanta to join Jimmy Carter's army?"

He'd said something about that the other day, but I thought he was just making stuff up. "I love Jimmy Carter," I said. I'd never heard of Jimmy Carter's army but damned if I was going to admit that to some stupid stoner. "But where did *you* hear about the army?"

"Duh," he said. "It's not a secret."

Oh.

"I know that," I said. "But where did *you* hear about it?" Awkward pause. "Because I'm interested in seeing how information travels in the post-monkey-apocalypse world," I said. "I'm interested in how new social networks develop under these conditions. What new information pathways develop? Can we learn anything about the regenerative properties of neural networks and chaotic systems?" I have no idea what that meant but it sounded good, and I was betting that Miles wouldn't know what it meant, either.

"Dude," he said. "That's so cool. Chaotic systems - you mean like the thing where a butterfly flaps its wings and then the velociraptors get loose in Jurassic Park?"

"Right. Just like that."

"That's so cool."

DAISI piped up. "Neural networks not that! Chaotic not --" but I kicked her and she shut up.

"Don't mind her," I told Miles. "Programming, you know how it is." I rolled my eyes and he rolled his companionably. "So come on, where did you hear about the Army?"

And he told me. Then we got another Molly Ringwald movie to watch, and as soon as he fell asleep, I went over to the computer and looked it up.

Holy crap. The stoner was right. Jimmy Carter's calling all the survivors to make their way to Atlanta to join his army.

It will be magnificent. I guess I'd been so busy studying Anglo-Saxon that I hadn't been doing much networking. But no more. I was on top of things again. I was back in the loop. I know what's been going on, and I knew that it was time to get out of the library and get back into the Monkey Wars.

It will be magnificent.

I'll start packing in the morning. But first, I finished off Miles's cigarette and watched the end of "Sixteen Candles."