crazy about it

Whatever Linsay was up to, he wasnt keeping goats in his living room. Maybe it had been malicious all along, some busybody neighbour trying to make trouble for the oddball guy next door. You got that sometimes. But the next call had been different. Somebody posted online a plan for a gadget he or she called a Stepper. You could customize the design, but it would be a portable gadget with a big threeposition switch on top, and with various electronic components within, and with a power lead plugged into a potato The authorities noted this, and became alarmed. It looked like the kind of thing a suicide bomber would strap to his chest, before taking a stroll down State Street. It also looked like the kind of thing that would appeal to every kid in the world who could knock one up from spare parts in his or her bedroom. Everybody thought the word potato must be a cover word for something else, like a slab of Semtex. But by the time a car had been dispatched to the Linsay place, due to rendezvous with Homeland officers at the scene, a third call had come in, entirely separate: the house was on fire. Jansson had been part of the response to that. And Willis Linsay was nowhere to be found. It was arson. Forensics had found the oily rag, the cheap cigarette lighter, the heap of papers and smashedup furniture that had started it. The purpose of the fire seemed to have been to destroy Linsays heaps of notes and other materials. The perp could have been Linsay, or else somebody out to get him. Jansson had the feeling it had been Linsay himself. Shed never met the man, never so much as seen a photograph. But her tangential contact with him had left impressions in her mind. He was clearly ferociously intelligent. You didnt get to do physics at Princeton otherwise. But there was something missing. His home had been a disorderly jumble. The neitheronethingnortheother fire attempt fitted too. But what she didnt understand was what it was all for. What had he been up

Now Jansson found Linsays own Stepper, the prototype, presumably. It was in the living room, sitting on the mantelpiece above a fire that hadnt been lit in decades. Maybe hed purposefully left it behind to be found. The forensics guys had seen it and abandoned it, heavily dusted for prints. It would probably be taken into store once the crime scene was broken down. Jansson bent to inspect it. It was just a clear plastic box, a cube, about four inches on a side. Forensics thought the box might once have contained antique threeandahalfinch floppy discs. Linsay was evidently the kind of man who kept junk like that. Through the clear walls you could see electrical components, capacitors and resistors and relays and coils, connected with twisted and soldered copper wire. There was a big threeway switch on the lid, the positions labelled by hand with a black marker pen: WEST OFF EAST Right now the switch was set to OFF. The rest of the boxs volume was occupied by a potato. Just a potato, no Semtex or acid vial or nails or any other element of the modern terror arsenal. One of the forensics s had suggested it might be used as a power source, like the classic potatorun clock. Mostly people thought it was just a symptom of lunacy, or maybe some bizarre practical joke. Whatever it was, this was what kids all around the planet were racing to assemble right now. The Stepper had been found holding down a bit of paper on which had been scrawled, in the same marker pen, the same hand, TRY ME. Very Alice in Wonderland. Linsays parting shot. It occurred to Jansson that none of her colleagues had actually followed the instruction on the paper scrap: TRY ME. She took the box, held it; it weighed nothing. She opened the lid. Another scrap of paper, headed FINISH ME, had simple instructions, what looked like a draft of the circuit diagram that had finished up on the net. You were supposed to use no iron parts, she read; that was underlined. She had to finish ding a couple of coils of copper wire, and then set contacts to tune the coils, somehow. She got to work. ding the coils was an oddly pleasant activity, though she couldnt have explained why. Just her and the bits of kit, like a kid assembling a crystal radio. Finding the tuning was easy too; she kind of felt it when she got the sliding contact set right though again she couldnt have explained this, and didnt look forward to trying to write this up in her report. to

Have a wonderful New YearMark

Have a wonderful New Year
Mark