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hadn’t been seen before. Apparently your ignorance of the subject matter meant that you had no preconceived ideas. We hadn’t seen Raiders yet, so your interpretation was unique. You realized that the cherubim weren’t sculptural.”
    Jim blinked. Then he smiled. “I never really thought about it. Interesting.”
    Kas came back into the kitchen where the two men sat. “Lou and Claire will be back tomorrow. You will be around for a few days, won’t you, Gene?”
    “Thanks, Kas,” said Gene, “but I have a friend in town I have to visit.”
    Jim looked clearly disappointed. “We have a spare bedroom.”
    Suddenly Kas was reminded of Fostia, Gene’s wife.
    “Gene,” she said. “Where’s Fostia? She’s not with you?”
    “She was killed in a bar fight,” said Gene without expression.
    Jim glanced at Kas, wide eyed. “Bar fight?”
    “Full bottle of Brewers Gold. Got her in the temple,” said Gene.
    “I’m so sorry,” said Kas.
    “You’re probably the only one,” said Gene. Then he frowned and added, “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”
    Jim and Kas sat silently looking at Gene, trying to think of something to say.
    “That was at least five years ago,” Gene continued. “I realized after she was gone that she cost me most of my friends. I guess I shouldn’t say this but she wasn’t the friendliest person.”
    Jim and Kas seemed stunned by the news, but Gene put up his hand. “It’s okay. I really didn’t want to discuss her,” he said. “The friend at the university is connected to the computer sciences department. We’re going to try the simulation there. Tonight maybe. Wanna come?”
    Jim looked at Kas. “Well, it’s a week night. Tomorrow is ...”
    “Drive me in and leave when you want to,” said Gene. “It’s only around eight right now.”

    #

    “Awesome,” said Jim, peering into a room full of giant beige consoles as he followed Gene into Penn’s Comp Tech Department, “What the heck are those? Crays?”
    A glass door slid to one side and a guy in an unbuttoned plaid shirt and bleach stained blue jeans stepped forward and held out his hand to Jim. The man was taller than Jim, and when he held out his chubby hand Jim noticed his T-shirt had a portrait of a happy face, with a bullet hole between its eyes.
    “Nice shirt,” said Jim.
    The man glanced down at his shirt. His pearly teeth gleamed through a wiry gray beard. “Yeah,” he nodded. “When I saw it I bought a dozen. Now they’re mostly all worn out, though.” He examined his chest for a moment, fingering a small hole that had formed directly in the bullethole part of the graphic. Some reddish chest hairs were poking through. His squinting eyes returned to Jim. “So you’re Gene’s artist friend. People call me Mr. Megabyte. You can call me Earl, though.”
    “What do you feed these, Earl?” said Jim, pointing to the computers.
    “Anything they want,” said Earl. “So what’s the deal, Gene? Is that the disk?” He snatched the floppy disk that was protruding from Gene’s shirt pocket. “Let’s have a look-see.”
    Gene seemed startled by the man’s brashness, but he politely asked, “Don’t you have to load some software?”
    The man chuckled and went over to a large ancient leather chair positioned by a console. It made a loud creaking sound as his dumped himself into it. “Naw. These babies take care of all that shit.” He fingered a few buttons on a keyboard and shoved the disk into a slot to his right.
    Jim expected a screen to be full of data when the monitor came on, but it showed only a single image, the classic painting Jim recognized as The Raft of the Medusa. When Earl moved the cursor on the various people who languished aboard the raft, their heads lit up. After several clicks the screen went black and the words “ARK PROGRAM 0001” appeared. Then they waited. After a few seconds the disk popped out of the console and the image of the famous painting returned to the