Reece's Chair

When Hollander heard the terms of Reece's will, he giggled. It wasn't the most appropriate response, but Hollander had never liked his partner. That wasn't, however, whyhe giggled. He giggled because now he had Reece's chair.

Reece's chair was a wonder, an ergonomic and cybernetic beauty made of chrome and wood and leather, wires and chips and relays blended into one gorgeous hunk of furniture. It wasone of a kind, and only a scientist of Reece's genius could have designed it.

For Reece had been a genius, as much as Hollander hatedto admit it. Although Hollander had been the money behind R & HBionetics, Reece had been the brains. He had been so spectacularlythe brains that when he died, he was just as wealthy as Hollander, another fact that didn't endear him to his partner. Reece's idea ofanimal bionetics had come from s-f stories about putting computerchips in people's brains to improve their performance. Reece had hadthe much more practical idea of implanting chips into the pituitariesof livestock to stimulate growth hormones. There was no way theEuropean Common Market could have complained about this chemical-freeprocedure. In the process of implementing effective methods ofproduction, Reece had lowered the cholesterol content of the meat.Now the country was gobbling more beef, lamb and hogs than ever, allof it as additive-free as any food could be in the Nineties.

Reece was smart in other ways. For example, he had never gotten married, asHollander had. Hollander suspected that more had gone on than met theeye between Reece and his secretary, Marla.

But Marla, tall, cool and aloof, was Hollander's secretary now, and Reece'soffice was his as well. It wasn't really any better than Hollander's; what madeit wonderful was knowing it had been Reece's. And what made it more wonderful was the chair, into which Hollander now sankwith a delighted sigh.

Surprisingly, it seemed better tailored tohis tall, lanky frame than to Reece's short, stubby one. He pushed abutton on the right armrest and the monitor swung into place beforehis eyes. He pushed another and the computer, connected to everyessential station in the R & H complex, went on line. Damn, but it was neat.

Reece had known how much Hollander had enviedhis chair, but Hollander was surprised that Reece had willed it tohim, since Reece had disliked Hollander as much as Hollander haddisliked Reece. The antagonism had been years in the making, stemmingfrom Hollander's early claims of creative collaboration, denounced by Reece as adefinite lie. Reece was brain, Hollander was business, and the twaindid not meet. Businessmen, Reece had frequently told Hollander, werea pain in the ass. Scientists, Hollander always graphically replied, were a pain in an even more sensitive region of the male anatomy.

Still, the will was clear. Perhaps, Hollander thought, this was Reece's way of making up.

Hollander dabbled with the computer, pulling up livestock prices, chip production andgraphics of pituitary implants. He entered Reece's files and marveled at some ofthe ideas on the man's electronic drawing board, including a chip toincrease milk production in dairy cows while lowering the fat content of the milk.

One file was named Chair. When Hollander tried to retrieve it, he got the messagefile is locked. He was in the middle of a halfhearted attempt to unlock it when Marla enteredwith his lunch. He thanked her warmly but was rewarded by only the thinnest of smiles.

Early that afternoon, when he finally got up to use the private bathroom (Reece's, he noticed, hada double shower stall--maybe Marla wasn't as cold as she seemed), he noticed a painthat spread from his coccyx down around his buttocks to the backs ofhis upper thighs. It was a dull, persistent ache, like nothing he had ever experienced before.

At home, his wife suggested a hot bath, but it did nothing to alleviate the pain, and the next morning, Hollandershuffled into his new office, straightening up just long enough togreet Marla. Although Hollander was not a brilliant man, it took himonly until 10:30 to figure out that Reece's chair was responsible forhis pain. Wincing, he got up and examined the seat of the chair. Sureenough, there were tiny grills masquerading as upholstery buttons.

"You bastard," Hollander whispered. "You prick."

The son of a bitch had booby-trapped the chair. That was why he had left it toHollander.

(concluded on page 154)Reece's Chair(continued from page 116)

"Goddamn it!" Hollander said, wondering what the hell Reece had put intohim. Some lousy drug, probably, through microscopic hypodermicneedles that Hollander wouldn't even feel. How long would the painlast? Would it go away at all?

All right, then, all right. Hollander tried to calm himself. Just sit down again, be a man andbeat the putz at his own game. Crack his stupid password in the chair file.

Or passwords. Hollander sighed. A password couldhave as many as 120 characters. That left a lot of room for trial and error.

He sat down gingerly, entered the file name chair and startedguessing. First he typed names (his password for his own locked fileswas Hollander, one he knew he wouldn't forget). He tried Reece, Marla, R&H, R and H, Bionetics, secret and, in an explosion of imagination, password.

By midafternoon, he had tried several hundred words and phrases, and the pain in his buttocks had slowly worsened.Anger and frustration dug a pit in his stomach, and he had to tellhimself again to relax and keep trying. He could beat Reece. Besides, it wasn't cancer, was it? Reece wouldn't have done that. Itwas just a pain in the ass, that was all, just a....

Hollander froze. Then, very precisely, he entered pain in the ass.

The file remained locked.

He took a deep breath, said a little prayer and revised it to a pain in the ass.

The indefinite article worked. The letters on the screen read:

Congratulations, Hollander. The chair is yours. Thechips implanted in the seat are shut off the hormone that reducescirculation in and endorphin delivery to the affected areas hasceased to enter your body and the pain will no longer increase.unfortunately, what is there now is permanent. The sooner you guessedthe password, the less pain you have to live with. But the "pain inthe ass" will be there for good.

Till we meet again, my remains remain, Reece

"Ha!" Hollander said as the letters vanished from thescreen. A little pain in the rear, even a big pain, was wellworth it to have beaten Reece at last.

"I knew you'd do it," came asilky voice from the doorway, and Hollander saw a smile on Marla'sface as she walked over to him. "I knew all along that you were justas smart as he was...and ever so much more attractive."

It seemed, thought Hollander, that he had won more than a chair in this deal.

Afterward, when Marla declined to share the shower, Hollander wassecretly relieved, for his belly appeared protuberant when wet.Humming to himself, ignoring as best he could the ache in hisbuttocks, he stepped beneath the hot spray. As he scrubbed hisstomach and moved farther down, he noticed a pain in the area of the most recent activity.

"Ow," he remarked as he explored. "Ouch."

Then sweat sprang out on his flesh faster than the hot water couldwash it away. He thought about chip implants, Reece's chair....

Reece's woman.

And he remembered what he had always told Reece about scientists.