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mechanical hatchery, replete with all the secret trip levers of an ingenious Max Ernst frottage. But all this complexity felt stunningly sterile: as still and smooth and sinister as a turquoise Hockney swimming pool.
    Shame and amazement did a two-step inside her. This room was this present's wildest accomplishment, its printing press, its carrack and caravel, its haywain, hanging gardens, and basilica. These demure, humming boxes contained the densest working out, the highest tide of everything that collective ingenuity had yet learned how to pull off. It housed the race's deepest taboo dream, the thing humanity was trying to turn itself into. Yet for all that Adie had seen, art had fled headlong from it, in full retreat, toward some safe aesthetic den of denial, where it could lick its wounds in defeat.
    She tried to picture the Arcadian landscapes hiding inside these boxes. But she could form no clearer picture than streams of signals, waves and troughs rushing down narrow silicon sluices, each one setting off another massive cascade of signals. Somehow these signals all lined up, countless dots in a cosmic halftone process, the hammers of a trillion player pianos, the programmed nubs on the drum of a galaxy-sized music box. The voltages performed their megabit marching-band ballets, lining up to stand for anything in creation: a bank balance, an airline ticket, a photo, a song, a letter from a friend, all fully portable, all convertible, one into the other.
    Several clock cycles later, hardware and software emerged triumphant, the offending bug squashed between them. Got it? Adie polled them.
    We always get it, eventually, Lim said. And he disappeared into the next time-share emergency.
    Who was that masked man? Sue asked.
    Jackdaw grinned at some safe face in the air between the two women. Sorry for the interruption. Here they are, anyway. The brains behind the operation.
    The Cavern's cavern, Sue added.
    You mean, all the pictures come from ... here? You're trying to tell me that the entire Crayon World is inside these five machines, somewhere? Sue snorted.
    Don't snort at me, Adie warned.
    Sue traced a wave in the air, half apologetic, half dismissive. She squeezed Adie's shoulder, a reassurance that came off like somebody pumping Windex onto a bathroom mirror. Adie fought the urge to punch this woman, for if it came to blows, this woman could pummel her and Jackdaw put together.
    They're all in there, sweetie. Every picture in existence. Every last image ever imagined or imaginable. We just have to figure out how to get them out.
    What are they called? These machines?
    Jackdaw saw his chance. They're all proprietary TeraSys graphics boxes, of course. They start out life as 3-D accelerated Power Agate servers, running one reality engine for each —
    I mean, what are their names?
    Their .. . names?
    Adie shook her head: all the comm onsense groundwork left undone.
    OK, how's about we call this one Da Vinci? He was pretty technological, huh? Inventing submarines, writing backwards, and all that. This one can be Claude. After all, we're going to be cranking out landscape by the gross hectare. Then here's Hsieh Ho, giver of the Six Principles ...
    Jackdaw cleared his throat. Is that anything like the six degrees of freedom?
    And we'll need a Rembrandt. For a lifetime devoted to the play of light against dark. And the last one ought to be Picasso, because —
    Because he fucked everything that moved for the better part of a century? Sue suggested.
    Jackdaw jerked at the profanity. He lurched for the door, and safety. Uh, maybe we'd better vacate. Gotta get back to that Z-order filter ...
    Sue fell in behind him. Let's just hope that Rembrandt here doesn't decide to wig out again before the recompile, tomorrow.
    You see? Adie said. It’ s useful to know their names, isn't it?
    Sue made her noise again, the one Adie warned her not to. Deeper in her sinuses, this time. I love you art school chicks. I really do. You give the