ref: cde05f4187aed1c77b8efb57ee5dabe8d5d5106d
dir: /troff/045.ms/
\" This master file produces text suitable for a 6"x9" paperback. .ds CH \" turn off page numbering (top) .B .nr HM 1i \" header margin .nr FM 1i \" footer margin .nr LL 4.25i \" line length .pl 9i \" page length .po .87i \" page offset (from left) .nr PS 8 \" font point size \" .kern \" pairwise kerning (groff only) .hy 14 \" automatic hyphenation \" .nr VS 24 \" double space .fp 1 R GA \" URW Garamond .fp 2 I GI .fp 3 B GM .fp 4 BI GMI .fp 5 CW H \" Helvetica .LP \& .nr % 121 \ " start with this page number .ds CF [%] \" first numbered page (bottom) .ps 10 .SH ANCIENT LORE FOR A RECENT TRADITION .R .PP .ps 10 Leaving Plinth hadn't been easy. When he finally found out, he immediately had her name taken off all their accounts. She'd wave her hand at an official and nothing would happen, data gloves or not. Cute. And then there had been the small matter of getting off Mars and back to Earth. .PP .ps 10 Traffic at the test site was at an all\-time high. Gods and men in and out of the mancamp, all enjoying the benefits of their different levels of access, eager to mint their own burgeoning legends, but also wary of tarnishing their public\-facing cover stories by publicly cavorting with the boss' wife. On the other hand, most of them were quite lonely. .PP .ps 10 In her usual way she figured something out. .SH THE DIN OF THE RELIGIOUS MARKETPLACE .R .PP .ps 10 Back on Earth there had still been a lot of Plinth\-y business to attend to. She was able to wring some residual clout out of their very public\(emwell, in some circles\(emrelationship, but word traveled fast in those same circles. Before long she'd found herself all but unemployable. .PP .ps 10 Nothing left but to join the church. .PP .ps 10 She hefted one of the outsized telephone directories from her kitchen closet and plopped it down on her Formica® table with a thud. Let her fingers do the walking. It'd been a lifetime since she'd turned to the Scriptures for guidance. Now, she could barely remember her own telephone number. .PP .ps 10 She read aloud: .PP .ps 10 .I We hold these truths to be self\-evident, that all men are created equal, that information wants to be free, and that a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision. .R .PP .ps 10 It all made sense to her. There was something comforting in this affirmation of humanity's priority atop the hierarchy of all the life forms kicking around the cosmos. Plinth, after all, was hardly human, so she couldn't have been wasting her time trying to ruin his life. .PP .ps 10 But enough philosophy. A soul could only stare for so long into its own bio before some form of consciousness was likely to emerge. She returned the book to its home in the kitchen closet. Realistically, probably for good. .bp .PP .ps 10 It was going to be a long epilogue.