Xenoman

36 Datus and Artifacts

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Malcolm led Xeno into a spacious concrete chamber with a podium, encircled by a series of transparent vending machines with no visible merchandise, each filled with different colors of carbonated fluid, bubbling up behind the panels.

"Where is Datus?" Xeno asked.

"He's all around us," Malcolm said.

"The vending machines?"

"The carbonated water inside. A mind of fizz, made possible by a technology known as Liquid Persona. It comes in all your favorite flavors: cola, lemon lime, root beer, strawberry, grape, the original formula, diet, zero calorie, with caffeine, without caffeine . . ."

"Does it talk?"

"Step behind the podium. Face the orange vending machine in front of you and ask your question."

"All right." Xeno stepped behind a slender transparent podium, waking it from sleep mode. The podium pulsed with faint bands of colored light, as he faced the vending machine, bubbling with orange carbonated liquid. "Why is Metropa always covered with dust from nuclear fallout?"

Datus projected a holopane text message before Xeno's eyes:

CLASSIFIED

"Try reframing the question," Malcolm suggested.

"When was the nuclear war that caused the nuclear fallout over Metropa?" Xeno asked.

Datus responded:

CLASSIFIED

"Try re-reframing the question," Malcolm urged.

"Okay, here goes . . . Why does the weather become clear as as you get closer to The Scorcho Desert?"

Datus responded:

HAVE YOU SEEN THE RAT COFFEE

THAT GNAWS ON MY SPILL?

"That again? I've seen that message before," Xeno recalled. "Back at Intellegella, when Garry tried to access his ASS in the employee atrium. A rat got trapped in the neural racks and—"

"God dammit, Datus!" Malcolm crossed in front of the podium, cutting Xeno off in mid-sentence, and kicked the front of the machine as hard as he could. The blow from his foot echoed throughout the chamber. "There is no rat!" he kicked the vending machine a second time, "gnawing!" a third time, "on your!" a fourth, "insulation!"

Datus responded with a violent surge of carbonated bubbles, turning the Liquid Persona fluid inside each vending machine to the same blue hue.

"What happened?" Xeno asked.

"He's gone blue raspberry. . . "

"Is that bad?"

"It's a nuisance, more than anything. Now, we have to wait for Datus to reboot his carbonation palette. It always gets stuck on that flavor . . . Blue raspberry . . . After all the heart to hearts we had in text, all the telepath counselors we've linked him to, it's no use. He always relapses. He never comes out of it. He thinks the rat is still in there, somewhere, gnawing on his insulation, violating him, contaminating him."

"But the rat incident happened at Intellegella, inside the ASS client."

"It's a mirror site neurosis. He thinks the rat meme that got stuck in the client, occurred inside himself, the server. The server can no longer distinguish its limbs from its mind."