Backstage: Come tour the Operator's Author Suite!

Unending BE - episode 140382

The Operator looked at his watch. Time to go off duty. Rerouting all incoming calls to his relief girl, Opera Taur, he got up, stretched, and took the elevator up to his own office. Idly, he wondered, as he often did, just what Opera Taur looked like and where she worked. Judging from the name, she might not even be fully human. Sure had a honey of a voice, though. He shrugged it off. Wasn't going to find out today, obviously.

The Operator, unlike most staff in the Hotel, Bar and Grill, and Upper Levels, was an Author himself. The Board had decided it really took an Author to deal with Authors in the matter of their Suites and such, so he'd gotten the gig. Not nearly as cushy as JigSaw's arrangement with Central Casting, but it had its good side. Mainly the Operator's own office suite, with its universal 'dial a girl' service.

Well, usually it was good. One time he'd dialled up Mello -- boy had THAT proven a mistake! Since then the Operator had been careful only to dial up Character girls.

The Operator smiled, thinking of who he'd dial up this time. Nice thing about the service, as soon as you made the call the girl appeared, ready and willing, whatever her personality and situation might be at the moment in the AddVenture.

The elevator stopped, and the Operator started down the long, misty corridor to Office 242. He unlocked it at ten paces with his electronic key, pausing to examine the notepad on the door before going in to see if he'd had any visitors, and found he had. Tearing off the sheets that had been scribbled on, he went in.

The messages were all from Authors, most on his own floor, complaining about this or that problem with the amenities. The Operator shook his head in digust. The sign on his door was quite clear:

So what part of the message did people not understand? The Operator tossed the complaints in the waste basket. Then he detected movement beyond the screen and looked out.

He smiled. "Oh, it's you," he said to the reader. "Here for your tour, are you? Wondering what a top a' the line Author Suite with all the amenities is like? Well come right in! I can always dial a girl later.

"We're in the foyer, here. The door to the left is the coat closet, and the one to the right conceals the emergency generator. Don't like my offtime getting disrupted by rolling power outages, y'know? Straight ahead through the arch over the Corinthian columns is the living room. Follow me.

"Yeah, big, I know. What, too many divans, you think? Well, to each his own. I happen to like 'em. SURE I have a TV! Who doesn't? And yes, it IS in here. See the big empty wall to the left? That's it. Talk about your wide screens! What, the open fire pit in the middle? That was my own idea.

"The three doors to the right I'll tell you about later. Right now let's go straight ahead through the other archway. Oh, you think I should've matched the Corinthian columns? I thought Ionic made for a nice contrast. This is the dining room. The half-couches are where I and my guests recline to eat, I favor Roman-style dining. Ah, like the floor to ceiling plate glass window, do you? Gives a great view of the swirling golden mists outside, doesn't it? Of course, you can get the same view looking UP... How high up does it go? Funny you should ask. I wondered the same when I first moved in, so I ordered in an extensible ladder and investigated. The mist gets thicker and thicker the further you go up -- at twenty feet you can't see your hand before your face, and at about forty feet up it's like climbing through molasses. I never DID find a solid ceiling, but at sixty feet the mist got so thick it was literally impenetrable, and near as I could tell the plate window ended about there, too. Know what I think? I think at that point the mist starts going solid and forms the foundation of the next level. Each level built on mist, ain't that a gas? Sorry, bad joke.

What, you don't like the bookcase against the left wall? Well, YOU don't have to have one, if you don't want. Me, I like books in the dining room. This is my library too, see. Now, through the Doric columns to the right is the kitchen. Yeah, I like IT big too, and the central counter -- wouldn't HAVE a kitchen without one, nosirree. Yes there is a reason for the three fridges. When you hold a week-long orgy, you don't do take-out.

"So, continuing to turn to our right, we reach my study. Third door off the living room goes here, too. As you can see, I've got both a PC and a Mac. The big one? Oh, that's the CRAY... I need the storage capacity for all the data for the dial-up service. And I freelance for an ad agency when I'm not living in the AddVenture, that's what the drafting board's for, like to keep my hand in. The door to the left leads to the john. Now the opposite door goes to the hallway -- that's what was behind the SECOND door off the dining room. Follow me.

"This is really the end of the public tour. The door facing us leads to the rumpus room, which is also where the FIRST door off the dining room goes. I'll leave that to your imagination, but I WILL tell you that's where I dial up my partners.

"The next door down the hall to our left leads to the john off the study. The one to the right leads to the Turkish bath and bigger restroom, which you can also get to from the rumpus room. No, it's not on the tour, either. And the next doors on either side lead to the bedrooms. Mine's to the left, guest room's to the right. Both have doors to the bathroom facilities. And the door at the END of the hall leads to the service corridor and the emergency exit.

"So that's it in a nutshell, guy. You wanna see the rest of the place just get on my good side, and I'll invite you in for an orgy sometime. What, you want to know if this is the standard floor plan? Naw, there IS not standard floorplan. Each Author gets to lay his place out, decorate and stock it as he pleases. Some like to play god and do it all themselves, others use Hilbert's people. And as you'll find if you do much exploring up here, some of the suites jump around a bit, having no fixed location. Some folks are REAL private, see? No one YET has ever managed to find Mello's suite, for instance. Lot of the work orders that go through me are really relocation orders. Makes it hell keeping the directory up to date, I'll tell ya -- not even Hilbert's sure he's always current on everything.

"Now, let's move off to our right, back into the living room and I'll show you out. Any more questions? No? Well, here's the door. Do come again, but only by appointment, like this time. When I say 'do not disturb occupant' I MEAN do not disturb occupant. Got a reason to see me call '0' or leave a message on the pad. Bye, now."

1. *The door closes behind you. You decide to visit someone else or else leave the Upper Levels.

Thu Apr 26 09:45:15 2001

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