Free The Administrator by S. Joan Popek

have time to tell them about you. Okay?”
    “Sure. I’ll just relax in my cookie jar until you tell me to come out. Boy! I can’t wait to meet them. Will they be surprised!”
    “Yeah. They’ll be surprised all right.” She laughed and pinched his rosy cheek.
    * * *
    Two days later, Alice had finally worked up the courage to tell her daughter about Mr. Glump.  
    “Dear, I know you will think I’m crazy or drunk when I tell you this, but I swear I haven’t had a drop. And I never will again, thanks to a special friend of mine.
    “A friend? Mom, you’ve found a boyfriend!”  
    “Well, not exactly. You see....”
    Before she could finish, her grandson stormed into the living room, “Grandma, you need more gingerbread man cookies.”
    “I don’t have any gingerbread man cooki....” She froze as realization hit.
    “Yeah, grandma, I know. ‘Cuz I ate the last one in the cookie jar.”

 
     
    The Idea Seeder
     
    Blurred awareness returned.  
    Instantly, blistering torment blazed through his body.
    Agony impaled him with red hot spikes!  
    Fiery torches bludgeoned his senses!
    White masked faces hovered over him.
    Bright lights exploded in his face, blacking out the bodies that belonged to the masks.
    Voices murmured somewhere above him.
    One voice yelled, “Get those damned cameras out of here!”
    Another voice, softer: “Doctor, his eyes are open. He’s awake.”
    Pain! Erosive torture!
    A soldier doesn’t show pain, he reminded himself and clenched what he thought were his teeth.
    Someone bellowed, “Nurse! Morphine. STAT! More ether. Must have a constitution of iron. With these kinds of burns and injuries, he should be comatose just from the pain. Hell! He should be dead. I don’t know what’s keeping him alive.”
    My mission mates. Where are they? He tried to ask.
    The soft voice again, “Doctor, he ... he’s trying to say something.”
    “Nurse, get him back under. Now!”
    “Yes doctor. I’m trying.”
    He attempted to turn his head to find his mission mates. There! In the corner. Three lumps lay still under white sheets.
    They’re dead.
    Large, frightened eyes in a pale face framed with dark hair pulled tightly under a crisp, white hat appeared over him. The person attached to the face passed a silver tray to the soft voice that had hands but no face, then quickly disappeared from his limited vision.
    Someone behind him coughed and said, “God! It stinks in here.”
    A gruff voice mumbled something about burned flesh.
    He felt a stabbing pain in his already tortured arm. A heavy mask descended to cover his face. Sweet vapors invaded his lungs, then blackness and blessed relief from the indescribable agony racking his body sent him to rest.
    * * *
    Fifty years later, he bolted upright in bed. Sweat covered his trembling body. The same dream again. The pain, the horror. The expression on that nurse’s face ... .
    He reached to pull the wheel chair to the bed, and in a practiced motion, swung his feetless legs into it. Wheeling to the computer, he tried to push the vivid horror of the nightly dream away by working.
    His read-only module access was limited to research libraries and scientific files, but they were world-wide. He was able to receive almost any information from anywhere in the world, but could not send even one byte of information to anywhere. He entered the code that accessed top security files that no one was supposed to be able to access. He had rescued them from the dump file just as they were about to be overwritten. Twenty minutes later, he downloaded the final document and listened as the printer sighed with a soft whirring sound and obediently defiled the pristine paper by placing the proper marks in the appropriate spots to form the words for the final piece of the puzzle.
    He picked up the paper in the three fingers and opposing thumb that remained on his right hand and read with lidless, laser enhanced eyes. They had given him the eyes after the accident. It