The ghostly historian at your elbow would like you to know some-
thing about your apartment: "Before its construction this building's
site was a tar pit for weeks and weeks. Many neighborhood pets wandered
in and were lost before the owner relented and laid the foundation as a
sop."
	At the coffeeshop he is displeased. "No one is present now whose
parents ever patronized this establishment or its predecessor." He speaks
in a lower voice to be heard over the whine of the steamer wand.
	They admitted you to your program in July, when an unexpected
vacancy opened up. Two of the other students, Embi and Jean, grew up near-
by and have been taking you to local restaurants. Embi's favorite, a pizza
joint that brushed its crust with pepper sauce before baking, burned down
the night after you first ate there.
	"You've had no more bad luck this year than the average person
would expect," the historian says.

	The historian sighs a lot when you are in the library. When you ask
why, he tells you that some of the books you consult may not be reliable.
You blow dust off their spines at him; even as the dust whirls through him
it makes him look more solid.

	Though you are not downtown, the historian has a story for you
about one of the skyscrapers. "The company that built it hired a gentle
clown to greet visitors in the summer. No matter how many people tried to
ask him for financial help, he would only smile and tell them to ask him
again on the way out if they still needed help. He died, and was buried
under the grass outside, shortly before the tower was sold for a 30% share
in the firm that moved in. Details on the transaction are available..."
	Jean's parents want the three of you over for dinner sometime. Her
father makes good on his promise to outdo any fancy restaurant you've seen
in your perambulations; even Embi, the snob, admits as much. Stuffed before
dessert, you and Jean slide furniture to the side so that her parents,
laughing in English but singing in their native language, can dance for
you. Jean sings snatches of the songs as she remembers them, but the his-
torian at your elbow has them down pat. Embi, stonefaced, continues to
sneak bites of pie.
	Afterward the three of you compare historians on the porch. Jean
has to shush hers when she comes home to the suburbs, she says; he knows
too many things that she doesn't care about. Your historian recognizes your
friends (both of them) and knows not to speak when you're around them
unless you ask something.

	Your historian takes you to his favorite part of the city. Here is
the stone where a drunken earl slipped and cracked his skull. Here is 
where a child barricaded himself in without food in the days of revolution.
Here is the only hill not leveled as the city expanded, which people still
complain about having to climb. Here is a clown rotting away in a damp
coffin.

	As you're finishing your work, years later, the historian at your
elbow whispers to you that, as a gift, he may follow you to another city,
wherever you choose to live. That evening Jean laughs and says, "Funny,
Embi just told me the same thing." You've always been happy for them, but
for that moment you feel a whimsical resentment at how much easier it will
be for her to say yes.

written for Mason Bliss in my living room 4/4/02

When (three months late) I finally opened Mason's request up, I winced. I dislike it when people overspecify, so the extra adjectives on "coffin" and "clown", as well as the conceptual colinearity of sussuration + ethereal + steam, got me grumpy. I also wasn't convinced that "the tyranny of acquiescence" really meant anything. I quickly became the focus of my own annoyance, though. Wasn't this what I got into this racket for? Didn't I like a challenge? Okay, Mason might not get what he expected. Still worth trying.

Well, I think the idea behind this story went great, actually. It all came very fast once I started writing, and you can probably see that in a few places where referents are vague or words are awkwardly repeated. The whole clown story, in the center, needs to be rephrased.

The story's about technology, not magic -- semi-intelligent personal agents with access to large special-interest databases and a few PDA-style functions to top it off. I wrestled with how clear to make that, though. It seemed like it would be distracting to have the historian act too computery, or for the characters to zip around in hovercars. I originally had some more complicated exposition in mind for the library part, about how the historian knew when items were last checked out and had a complicated algorithm for when to gently suggest a different book; that was condensed down when I realized that even I wasn't interested in it... The sense that my story might need an answer key does not make me feel good, and yet I like being subtle. (So, the historians are provided by the university, and aren't seen or heard by anyone but the user. How does that work? I don't know, chips in people's heads or retinal holography or something. Who cares?)

I think the last sentence is a bit awkward. "Whimsical resentment" is exactly what I wanted, but "you've always been happy for them" nearly breaks the implicit promise of second-person writing that you aren't going to cheat by telling the reader what to think, and the final clause stops sounding right when I actually think about it a little.

I haven't completely decided if this was the right decision, but the second-person writing and the slightly repetitive format of the three paragraphs where the historian supplies substantial information were both intentional attempts to capture the feeling of interacting with something that is fully predictable in theory but that seems to be anticipating your desires in practice.

By the way, while writing this story I dropped the typewriter. It initially seemed undamaged, but I realized after a few lines that my tab stops were all wrong. I'd like to see a laptop do that!

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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