Dali-esqe pizza slices, twice-nuked and cold again, drooped over a desolate landscape of greasy, unbleached cardboard and fractured eco-foam cups. Wet lumps of pulp--napkins shoved across spills--alternated with dry lumps of pulp--e-mail messages, specs, documentation plans, bug lists. So much for the paperless corporation.

Janice Wong-Ellis, Documentation Manager for the Object Engineering Tools department of Adonis Corporation ("Information Can Be Beautiful"), stood in the doorway of User Interface Lab 3 and studied the little wedge of geek heaven carved from the shadows inside. A sweetish tang--marinara sauce? Ketchup?--blended with the bitter reek of old coffee in an evil synergy the air conditioning did nothing to dispel.

Silhouettes shifted against the glare of the lab’s one-way mirror. "In or out, Janice?" she heard, a voice sharp with irritation. Vince Kato, the UNIX god. Prudent folk did not lightly cross a UNIX god. As with shamans and druids and all keepers of the old ways, a UNIX god could still wield strange powers.

Janice stepped in, shutting out the brightness behind her. She rested her fingertips lightly on top of the long, narrow, built-in table as her eyes adjusted to the yellowish gloom. The table was at the back of the observation room, while below it several rows of stadium-style seats dropped away to the control console directly in front of the one-way mirror. Silhouettes gained dimension as she scanned the ranks for an empty seat, and she recognized the elite of the Adonis Object Development Environment--or, as they preferred to be known, the composers of ODE. Principal developers slouched next to user interface designers, who fidgeted beside managers of every stripe. Unbidden, one of the stock jokes in Silicon Valley came to mind. If only (insert competitor’s name here) had planted a bomb in the room.... The buzz for this test was strong.

Finally, she spotted a subnet of her writers at the far end of the long, narrow, room, tucked into the back corner next to Vince Kato and Kenny Rathbone, a new boy in Marketing. Time to add the parent node.

As she eased past the armageddon on the conference table, Janice shot quick glances toward the monitors ranked above the one-way mirror stretching the length of the room. Each gave a different angle on the scene in the lab next door--the final user test for the alpha version of ODE. A balding, old-guard geek sat at the test machine, fumbling with the velcro fasteners at the wrists of his gloves. The video monitor in the observation room slaved to the test machine showed only two slender Doric columns swathed in burgundy velvet--the gate to the Temple grounds, as the Adonis workspace was generally known. Janice privately thought the bitmap rather tacky, but in a industry that had for decades admired gall, it was the height of elegance and restraint.

"Do you have any final questions before we start?" So. Price Chen--Dr. Price Chen to her, the latest VR wundebar hired out of academia and into Ergonomics--was running this show. She picked him out easily enough--he was the one with the pony tail sitting in front of the god mike. She could see swirling shades of gray across his back, enough to tell her he was wearing another one of his trade-marked Grateful Dead lab coats. Dancing bears, judging by the pattern.

The fact that Price Chen was driving piqued Janice’s interest. Price was a bit of an enigma. Nothing odd about his position: Director, Advanced Interface Design. Nothing odd about his mission statement--the usual tripe ghost-written by Marketing, filled with gems about delighting the customers and making the products a joy to use. What was odd about Price were the circumstances surrounding his arrival. No one knew what they were.

One day old Morrison, a major coup when the Media Lab had been big news, was puttering in his office, watering his fig tree and tinkering with a new V-spec design, and the next day he was gone. In his place was Price with a dieffenbachia and a stack of CDs filled with God alone knew what. He’d been hired by Lazarus Allison, the self-made, self-satisfied, self-aggrandizing founder, President, CEO, and chief stockholder of Adonis Corporation, himself.

Could today be the day they’d find out what Laz was paying for?

"Uh--uh, no." The test subject had managed to don his gloves but had forgotten to loosen his tie first, and was fumbling at the Windsor with fingers made clumsy by technology. A tie. How sweet. Now he was peering into the goggles as though worried they were peering back, and occasionally casting a nervous glance at the mirror. The geek looked vintage ‘60’s IBM, and vaguely familiar. Maybe she’d seen him in a diorama once.

Oh, that’s cruel, honey, she thought.

"Just joining us, Janice?"

Vishnu, their VP, leaned against the back wall, arms folded. The light from the lab outlined his features with a faint wash of yellow, glinted off his black hair and luxurious mustache, traced the silver threads in his open-necked silk shirt.

Janice regarded him sourly. And where were you the last three days? He’d probably just popped in after a clandestine visit to the VR lab with his mistress’ latest disk. "No one ever uses the help," she whispered with a thin smile, and squeezed past him to join her group. Sue Nakashima, William Blair, Claire Redding. Good, writerly, English-as-first-language names, with the exception of Sue, who was fourth-generation and whose friends called her Chiquita, as in yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Janice knew most of her acquaintances probably thought of her in the same way. Hell, her mother probably thought of her in the same way. Janice had decided long ago that she was too busy to have a cultural identity.

Bill had claimed his spot on the aisle--Bill always sat on the aisle; it facilitated a quick escape--and Sue spread her comfortable bulk across the next two chairs, encroaching on Kenny, who just pulled his spidery arms and legs closer, evidently too new to complain. Claire sat behind Bill. Janice scooted past Claire and took the seat behind Sue. Claire--lovely, talented, not-quite-of-this-world Claire--remained entranced by the activity beyond the mirror. She peered over Bill’s right shoulder, her dark curls almost mixing with his surfer-blond ones.

Janice reached over to tap Bill on the knee. He jerked around, bopping Claire on the nose with the back of his head, and she yelped. Righteous faces turned to them, and as one the developers said "Ssssshhhh."

"Sorry," squeaked Claire from behind her hands. Her big brown eyes glittered with tears.

Bill rolled his big blue ones and said, not unkindly, "Well, that’s what you get for breathing down my neck." He gave her forearm an awkward pat; for Bill, that was a tender embrace. Janice realized with dismay that they made a very cute couple. No. She shook herself. They were also co-workers. Claire might want to get involved--Claire was so goddamned young. But Bill was not. Not anymore. Neither was he stupid.

"What is it?" whispered Bill.

"Did Price explain why he was taking over this session?" Beside her, Claire stopped rubbing her nose. Her eyes got bigger still.

Bill shook his head. "He showed up after the five o’clock, announced he had the piece de resistance, and kicked us out so he could set up the machines. You know Price. Quite the showman."

"That’s why this test is starting so late," Sue whispered.

"Wim let him?" Wim Jarlsson, Object Engineering Tools product manager.

"Wim figured we had enough information."

"Wim is perfectly happy to supply Price with rope," said Bill. His teeth glinted in the dim light.

"Then why is Vishnu standing in the back?"

As one, all three writer craned their necks to cast backward glances into the gloom at the rear. Their VP was a shadowy presence that would insure their continued discomfort throughout the rest of the user test. Janice knew it gave her the willies to think of him back there.

"When did he get here?" muttered Bill.

"So something is going on," mused Sue.

Claire simply turned around. Janice eyed her curiously.

Out of the darkness, the presence spoke. "Any time you’re ready, Price," said Vishnu quietly.

Price bent down over the microphone, the dark strip of his pony tail sliding forward over one shoulder. "Any time you’re ready, Carl," said Price. The back of Carl’s gloved hand thwacked against his forehead, and an involuntary "ouch" came over the speakers. The sound of nervous throat-clearing was almost lost under the laughter in the observation room. "Do you need the air conditioning adjusted?" asked Price. Carl wagged his head no, and jabbed at the Temple with a forefinger.

The gates opened, revealing icons for different tools. Gifts of a beneficent god. Carl froze before such largesse.

"Just take the instructions one step at a time," Price prompted gently.

"Um, yeah. How do I get to the instructions again?"

Spontaneous applause in the observation room. Wim shushed them.

"Activate the little Greek alpha in the back right corner of the display." As the cursor wavered uncertainly past the icons covering the workspace, tinny little Munchkin voices announced themselves. "I’m Form Builder. Use me to design a form." "I’m Chart Builder. Use me to design a graphical display of your information."

Finally, Carl found the icon and jabbed at it. The rasp of ragged breathing gave way to quiet mumbling as Carl read key phrases out loud. Then he set to work.

Watching Carl fumble through the test was no less--and no more--maddening than watching any other subject. Some test subjects were cocky, paying no attention to the instructions. Some test subjects seemed to feel that the full flowering of object-oriented programming meant they no longer had to be literate, since all they did was play with blocks. Carl was timid. He followed instructions to the letter, but invariably hesitated before the final commit command.

"How like a man," muttered Sue, as around them groans and cries of, "Do it! Do it!" echoed.

"Maybe Carl suffers from low self-esteem," said Claire.

"Maybe Carl really does work for IBM," said Janice.

"Has he got an updated help system?" asked Bill.

"As a matter of fact--" began Claire shyly, but she was interrupted by a snort of derision. Vince, on Janice's left.

"Think that’ll make any difference?"

Stung despite herself, Janice managed to bite back her retort. She’d had years of practice. Eight years, to be exact. Eight years spent writing documentation for software products meant eight years as scapegoat, whipping boy, and general object of ridicule. How nice it would be to go off the defensive, to stop muttering under her breath, "Well, if you jerks could write decent code...."

The test went downhill quickly. Carl waggled his forefinger back and forth, drawing loops and squiggles over a screen as littered with data objects as the conference table was with garbage. The developers leaned forward, holding their collective breath, fascinated by that tiny, wavering arrow.

It veered toward the top of the screen, wandering uncertainly. When it started oscillating between the scissors and the glue pot, they knew the end was near.

The arrow shot to the upper right, straight toward a stone tablet incised with the word "Help". There was a collective groan. The tablet shattered and crumbled away, revealing the usual menu items: "Help," "Contents," "Search for Help On," "Help for Help," "About Help," and "Bake Zucchini Bread."

Bake Zucchini Bread?

"Bake Zucchini Bread?" asked Carl.

"I’m going to kill you, Price," said Wim in a conversational tone.

Price waved frantically at Wim and leaned forward over the mike. "‘Bake Zucchini Bread’ will take you to a prototype of our new help system," he said, voice in smooth contrast to his flapping hand. "It’s so new we don’t even have a version with the actual help files compiled in, but I wanted to start getting feedback on it."

"You want me to try it, then?"

"If you like." Price’s voice was noncommittal, but Janice could imagine him sweating inside his hallucinogenic lab coat and praying, "oh please try it, oh please try it, oh please try it, oh please ohplease ohplease...."

Janice herself was definitely intrigued. "Oh, please try it," she whispered, just for Price.

A forefinger jabbed.

The workspace, littered with blocks and pyramids, with columns and queries, with arrows and labels and boilerplate, wiped itself clean with a peculiar ripping noise. Like a Magic Slate, Janice realized, and grinned. Price had just dated himself, and he wasn’t as young as he looked.

An old-fashioned movie marquee appeared. Chase lights made the rounds and tinny music erupted from the speakers as the marquee grew in size until it filled half the screen. It had the not-quite-in-focus blur of a stereoscopic display seen without benefit of goggles, but the title inscribed on it was all too legible. It read "Virtual Victuals with Claire Redding."

"Claire?" murmured Janice, as Sue and Bill turned to stare at her. She nodded and wriggled like a puppy, fists jammed under her chin, quivering with a mixture of shyness and pride. Sue grinned at her and turned to watch. Bill turned back to the mirror much more slowly, face ominously blank. Janice felt the first stirrings of apprehension.

The marquee dissolved into glittering dust that slowly cleared away to reveal--a kitchen. It was sketched in with the barest suggestions of cabinets, fridge, microconvex oven, all in dayglo versions of ‘fifties avocado and wheat. To the right a studio audience, smudged in with uneven rows of little pink ovals. Above hung a smaller version of the marquee.

Janice blinked. The FX could only be called cheesy. The colors were cartoon bright, the background music reminiscent of calliopes and accordions, and poorly-rendered perspectives turned the blocky graphic elements into flat geometrics. All in all, the interface had the surreal feel of a cubist funhouse.

The star made her entrance, stage left. A collective gasp--even from the viewers sans goggles. A tiny, poorly-rendered, but recognizable version of Claire Redding, dressed in circle skirt, apron, and cardigan, with a string of faux pearls looped chastely around her neck, waved a wooden spoon at them. "Today, we’re going to bake zucchini bread," she announced, and Janice suddenly felt as if the air conditioning had decided to supercool her.

"Who’s that?" asked the old IBMer, and Janice joined in the collective jump. They’d almost forgotten the user test.

"That," said Price, "is a Help Persona. She’s here to lead you through a tutorial on baking zucchini bread. Address her as Help, and ask her anything you want." The last three words were spoken with a deliberate intensity, in calculated contrast to his usual drab mediator’s tones.

"Anything I want?" The goggles stilled and Janice was reminded of an ant in the instant before it cleaned itself.

"Anything you want." Something else new crept in. Smugness.

Janice couldn’t blame him. The colors didn’t matter. The glitches didn’t matter. The unfinished, pre-alpha, ragged-edged primitiveness of the demo made no difference at all. What mattered was the--what had he called it? the Persona, a little Claire-figure with Claire’s voice, Claire’s inflections, Claire’s mannerisms, even down to the way she ran her fingers through her brown curls.

"I’m going to need a volunteer from the audience. How about..." the wooden spoon wavered in the air--"you, sir." It pointed straight at Carl, foreshortening as it did so to a tiny brown dot. Carl’s goggles bobbed in surprise.

Even Claire’s favorite phrase when she had a new demo to test.

Carl followed instructions ("How much oil did you say goes in here?") while the little Claire Persona breezed on, Claire-like, about how to check doneness with a toothpick, how to freeze grated zucchini, and other "Hints and Tips"; the help mod should default to hints only on request, thought Janice automatically, but the very inanity of the chatter was comforting, in a way. User-friendly.

And, most amazing of all, the Persona did it all with a cheerful, sincere, absolute spontaneity. "Appropriate responses to random queries in real time," she whispered, quoting words heard countless times in lectures, read and re-read in articles, carved into the crystal of the latest AI grail. Turing should start spinning in his grave any second now.

No canned animation here. No Eliza, rephrasing questions and spitting them back out--"Well, now, Carl, do you think it’s done?" Instead, the Persona was clucking sympathetically at Carl’s tale of high cholesterol woes. "What she--Ronnie, right?"

The goggles bobbed enthusiastically.

"What Ronnie has to understand is that deprivation is much more harmful than moderation. I’d be the last person to tell you to slather the entire loaf with butter and eat it hot out of the oven--though it is best that way--"

Chuckles from Carl. And from Vince. And from Sue, and Wim, and Hsaio....

Price had wrought a miracle.

Janice shivered. Someone was walking on her grave, professionally speaking.

Carl finally popped the zucchini bread in the oven, and the Persona signed off, to enthusiastic applause. The developers in the conference room joined in, and Claire started, as thought wakening from a dream. Janice realized she hadn’t moved, had barely breathed, for the entire demo. Sue twisted around in her seat, grinning broadly at Claire and clapping. Bill continued to just look.

"That it?" asked Carl, peeling off his gloves.

"That’s it," said Price. "Good job. I’ll be right in." He was out the door before anyone realized he was making a break for it. An entire room of speechless software developers was something Janice had never seen before, but it couldn’t last. Questions began to pelt Claire from all corners of the room.

She waved helplessly at the mirror, through which Price could be seen with Carl. The engineer had had pried himself out of his goggles and his sparse hair frizzed out as though he’d been attacked by a savage balloon. He grabbed Price’s hand in both of his and pumped enthusiastically.

What struck Janice the most was the big grin on Carl’s face. He was smiling. He had tested a help system and he was smiling. "Rita will escort you back to the green room and you can fill out your final evaluation," Price said, his control finally wavering. "Thanks for staying as late as you did. You’ve been a big help."

"My pleasure. That help system you’ve got is really something. I think I’ll go home and bake some zucchini bread." He paused at the door and looked straight at the mirror. "Don’t tell Ronnie about the pizza, okay, guys? That’ll be our secret." He winked.

Price shut the door behind him and sagged against it. Then he staggered backward, one hand to his chest, and sprawled into a chair. It spun slowly to face the mirror. He opened his eyes, flung his arms wide, and grinned. "Come and get me," he said. The developers stampeded for the door.

Leaving the technical writers. "Well, are we just going to sit here in the dark?" asked Sue, as, beyond the one-way mirror, all the software developers on their team poured through the lab door and frothed around Price’s chair.

"I don’t know," Bill said. He raised his voice, perhaps in response to the hubbub coming through the speakers. "That depends on whether or not Claire tells us what the hell is going on."

"For once, I’m being literal, Shakespeare," said Sue dryly.

"Oh."

Janice cleared her throat. Suddenly, she would have preferred not to say it. Something about Bill’s tone of voice.... "Lights up," she called.

His face was worse. Janice remembered how cold staring into that frigid countenance could make her feel.

Claire was feeling it now. She sank back in her chair, the smile slowly fading from her pale face, her gaze dropping to where her fingers tied themselves in knots. Probably an accurate representation of the state of her stomach. "What did you think?" she whispered.

"Very impressive," Bill said coldly. "You could have told me--us," he finished lamely. He looked away.

It was true, then. In that one instant, Janice could feel her insides draining out through the soles of her feet. Bill and Claire. Claire and Bill.

"Price wanted it kept secret."

"Price doesn’t have a real product set to document. No wonder you were late with the cue card outlines."

"Claire! Get in here!" Price was facing the mirror and making exaggerated beckoning motions. He looked as though he intended to thrust his hand through the glass and scoop Claire into the lab.

Claire looked from Bill to Price and back, her mouth opening, then closing again. Her face was pale, her eyes huge and glistening. Janice ached for her.

Bill echoed Price’s gesture with his own dismissive flick. "Better get in there. Your fans are waiting for you."

Claire bolted for the door. Sue followed, moving her bulk with astonishing grace. "Micro-minded shit-head," she said as she passed, quite loudly enough to be heard. Bill’s jaw worked, quashing some angry retort.

As the door closed behind them, Janice forced herself to meet Bill’s eyes. "We’ll talk about this tomorrow," she said quietly as she rose.

"Nothing to talk about."

"If you want to lose another one, that’s your business," she said, noting his flinch without satisfaction. "But you will not fuck up one of my writers."

"No, I guess that’s your prerogative."

Janice stared at him while emotions poured through her, like some sort of acid flashback hitting her heart. Curiosity to shyness to anticipation to happiness to giddy joy to doubt to fear to pain to guilt to anguish. Her prerogative. Her prerogative. All were subsumed in a white-hot rage. "If you have a problem with my managerial style, request a transfer," she said.

"This has nothing to do with business, Janice."

"Yes, it does, Bill. Business, and nothing but." She rose and walked out, feeling more than seeing him slump forward and raise a hand to his face.

The bedlam next door could only provide a backdrop to the look on Bill’s face, not distract from it, but Janice let it pull her in anyway. The composers of ODE were far from composed, and she found herself grinning madly back at face after flushed face, felt fingers snatching at her like the waters of a whirlpool until finally she was deposited, breathless and with a spinning head, next to Price and Claire. The one tiny rational piece she prized above all else, the piece kept her sane through slipped schedules, killed projects, mass defections to startup companies, looked at each face and asked, Where’s Vishnu? Janice filed the question away for a closer examination at a calmer time, and, satisfied, her rational self withdrew and left her to the excitement of the moment.

Claire had already given in, but Claire’s emotions were not based solely on triumph. Her eyes blazed too bright, her cheeks flushed a hectic red, and she could not look Janice in the eye. Price looked even less composed. He gripped Claire’s shoulder and grinned madly; stray wisps escaped his ponytail and fluttered in his eyes, making him blink like one gazing into too bright a light. "How did I do it?" he said, and Janice heard an incantatory rhythm in the words. "How did I do it?"

"Jesus, Price. Yes. How did you do it?" Wim, still inclined to murder.

Price turned to the test machine and tapped in a quick sequence. He stepped aside. The Persona appeared, still demure in angora and pearls, hands clasped at her waist. He gestured to her like a ringmaster, then reached over to tap Claire on the forehead. Her eyes crossed as she squinted up at his finger in surprise. "This is Claire’s brain." He turned and pointed at the Persona. "This is Claire’s brain on code. Any questions?"