The Last Outpost Of Reason
by Steve Sklar
1.
Ludovic sat regarding the defective hard drive one more time, motionless, as he’d seen the cat who shared this space with him do in similar if not identical circumstances. Ludovic had observed the cat, William, a Persian, grey, inscrutable, watching things, still, attentive. A cricket, a mouse, some little creature rustling and invisible to anyone else. Maybe the thing to do to suss out a problem was to just look at it for a while.
The hard drive was a hefty rectangle of black metal, three times the size of a deck of playing cards. Inside it, he knew, was a mass of chips and silvery pathways soldered onto silicon platforms. It had been the brain of a PC five years earlier. With probes and the appropriate tech specs gleaned from his collection of dog-eared manuals — and renewed patience — Ludovic could probably repair the thing after all. You could fix anything, given enough time.
But why bother?
Why indeed.
What had motivated him to give it another try was the guy who had brought it in.
The shop had not always been called The Last Outpost of Reason. For most of its existence, it had been Bresson’s Sales and Repair, the main computer store in Linden, New Jersey. But come the Decline, when everything went sideways and retail, as such, disappeared, so did Charlie Bresson, bound for where, no one knew. Ludovic, who had been Charlie’s main tech, took over the place, or what remained of it. Eventually he settled on the name that now appeared on a carved and painted wooden plaque above the store.
The man who had brought him the hard drive had done little more than shrug when he’d dropped it off, thereby making it clear that he had little expectation the thing could be repaired. He was paunchy, no longer in his prime, yet something about the faint limp in his walk hinted at an athletic past. More than that, he projected an air of both timidity and confidence, a baffling combination of vibes. Ludovic peered through the smudgy plate glass window of his shop, past the empty parking spots across what was still technically Main Street, watching the man leave in a dusty green Jeep. Ludovic and the cat chose this moment to look at each other, mute, as if sharing one thought: who was that guy?
The repairman returned to his counter and with a probe somehow, uncannily, revived a digital pathway. The monitor screen he’d hooked up to the hard drive flickered for a moment, then displayed the unmistakable signs of a short written work, black letters in Literata font on a white background. At the top of Page One appeared the words:
2.
When he’d dropped off his hard drive, this customer had given his name as Stephen Sklar. What, Ludovic wondered, could he tell about the man based on the story he’d just read on that apparently reviving device?
Not much, other than this: the man was probably a frustrated seeker after fame himself, like the callow youth in his story. Wouldn’t it be true for fiction, as it was said to be true for dreams, that each character you imagine is in some way yourself?
Come to that, might it not be that Ludovic, too, was a frustrated seeker after fame? After all, he had had a moment in his youth, as had the Joseph character in Sklar’s story, when renown had seemed within reach. Then, he had developed code for the programming of computers that was innovative in its simplicity. Or so his teachers had told him. He had even been interviewed on a talk show on account of it. And if a character of one’s imagining or dreams could be a reflection of oneself, why not also a character encountered in fiction that one found it easy to identify with?
The hard drive was now unresponsive to Ludovic’s further probes. Accordingly, he busied himself with other repair items. Not, however, before thinking, with a wry smile — knowing that Sklar was bound to return later that month to check up on his item — “The repairman decided he would wait only two or three more weeks for more insight into this customer.”
As it happened, he only had to wait ten days. Here, now, came this customer, ambling, favoring his good knee, to sit without a word a Ludovic’s counter, typing on the keyboard Ludovic had hooked up to the hard drive and then driving off in his faded green Jeep.
Ludovic looked at the monitor screen. There on it was a second piece of writing. As the Jeep disappeared in a swirl of dust, Ludovic found himself annoyed. What the hell. Does this guy know how to fix his own device, that he can conjure up more data on it seemingly at will? And if so, what the hell am I doing with it?
In spite of himself, he read the newly revealed piece: