09.30.02
                      barry westphall crashes the singularity

                                      by James Patrick Kelly



"In the name of the Holy Coffee and the Blessed Shot of
Cuervo, amen." Barry Westphall waves the sign of the
cross over the steaming cup, then sips. It is his third refill.

The bartender of the Armadillo Lodge is too busy
washing glasses to pay attention, even though Westphall is
his only customer.

"So anyway," Westphall says, "the brain is a quantum
device." He licks a brown dribble from the corner of his
mouth. "Capable of accessing the entire field of
space-time by folding the empty dimensions." Westphall
has had the headache now for almost eight hours now.
"You may be wondering how I know this." It feels like
bees stinging his brain. "I haven't a clue." The tequila helps
a little.

The phone rings in the kitchen; the bartender leaves
Westphall to answer it.

"Of course, these dimensions aren't easily folded," says
Westphall. "Takes an unusual combination of intense
physical stimulation and careful neurotransmitter
suppression to access a time line." He peers into the
mirror behind the bar.

        "I mean it," says the medbot's N partition.
        "He wouldn't be talking to no one. I think he
        sees us."

        "He sees nothing," says the medbot's D
        partition. Its N has always been excitable.

Westphall rests his elbow on the bar and points at his
reflection. "Something's wrong," he says to the mirror. "I
know that much for sure. What the hell are you doing to
me?"

        "Unpack his next major memory cluster."
        The D partition invokes a priority glyph.

        In 2196, the medbot's V partition retracts the
        needle array from the brain of Barry
        Westphall's cryogenically frozen corpse,
        repositions it and inserts. A rosette of
        neurons fires and dies. Stills of twenty
        minutes Westphall's life on the night of July
        22, 2002 tile across the medbot's sensorium.

                            /Skip/

A woman wearing a black halter-top and jeans with the