So he'd made a couple of practice runs to the smaller computer stores around town, checking out the shelves, getting used to their layouts. Now he was ready for the big one.

          The building looked a quarter of a mile long, but Fred wasn't a bit nervous as he marched right up to the door, pushed it open, and confidently strode inside.

          He got six steps.

          On his right a fleet of clerks rang up sales at their cash registers, then waved their arms for more, more, singing out, "Help the next customer, please? Next customer, over here please!" Were there twenty registers? Thirty? He couldn't see to the end of them.

          And the mob in line! They held armloads of computer products - bright boxes, bags of cables and plugs and connectors, plastic squares with rainbow-sheened CDs inside. They had shopping carts stacked with huge boxes, entire systems of computers, printers, monitors. They were buying all the exotic electronic wonders he'd only read about, and they were lined up for checkout as casually as customers in a supermarket stocking up on soft drinks for the kids.

          To his left a dozen banks of computers flickered with glowing colors and squawked with video games. Fred considered the decline of civilization to be irreversible once every convenience store installed those damn game machines, and here were grown adults playing them right out in public. This was not what computers were invented for!

          Six-foot high shelves chocked with products extended out of sight in the distance. Customers in shorts and teeshirts darted about clutching their prizes, talking excitedly, dodging each other as though they expected some unspoken time limit to expire without warning before they could get their stuff through the checkout line.

          And over all the hubbub and confusion, giant speakers hanging from the unfinished roof supports throbbed with rock music so loud it made Fred squint.

          Dazed, he shuffled toward the shelves, gaping up at the signs. "AISLE C & D - Hard Drives, Tape Backups, Controller Cards." He tried to keep his face stern, businesslike. "AISLE E & F - CD ROM Drives, Optical Scanners, Surge Protectors." His breathing got shallow. "AISLE G & H - " His eyes were watering, but this sign listed what he had come to find: "Modems."

          He felt some color come back to his cheeks. He'd made it. And he'd gotten there without even once letting a sales clerk make eye contact with him. Those guys could sense indecision the way sharks can smell a drop of blood in the ocean from miles away. He wouldn't give them so much as a clue.

          But the rows and rows of brands seemed totally unfamiliar. Suddenly he couldn't remember the technical specifications, even the ones he'd studied just the night before. Fred choked. He'd come so far, but at the clinch, he slipped up. He gave in to the glassy- eyed stare of a novice. Trapped in the heart of the hugest electronics store in the known world, already painfully conspicuous at the age of sixty-three, for just the briefest moment, Fred displayed confusion.

          Immediately in his peripheral vision he saw three clerks glide toward him for the kill, nostrils flaring.

          The young man who circled him first had orange hair and a dangling earring. He inserted himself into Fred's line of vision and asked, "How may I help you today?" He smiled engagingly, as if sharing some amusing confidence. But as he spoke a gold ball the size of a pea glinted on his pierced tongue, and Fred did not feel they shared anything at all.

          "Just browsing," Fred replied, grasping a box for camouflage. The label blurred, but he studied it intently.

          The clerk intoned, "Browsers are in Software, Aisles A and B, other side of the store." Then he leaned closer. "But, y'know, you're better off just downloading browsers for free off the Net."

          The speaker above them shifted to the staccato beat of insolent rap music. Fred raised his voice. "I mean I'm just looking around."

          "Oh? What for?" the clerk shouted back.

          Fred gave up. "Okay, okay. I'm trying to use a friend's computer to go online, and I keep getting disconnected. I don't know much about it, but I think maybe it's because the inboard modem is too old."

          "The what?"

          "The modem. It's inboard, you know?"

          The kid's face went blank.

          "Inline?" Fred tried. "Um, inside?"

          The clerk brightened. "You mean internal!"

          Fred nodded gratefully. "Yes, internal! Internal modem!" He motioned with his hands. "It's old. Old internal modem. That's my problem."

          "How old?"

          Fred dropped his hands and admitted, "Three years."

          The clerk tightened his lips and exhaled a puff of breath, "Phew!" that lifted his orange cowlick from over his eyes. He shook his head. "Dinosaur."

          "So if I get a new external modem, will that work?"

          "Might," the clerk said. "Might not." He lifted his hand to fiddle with his earring. "First you'd have to disable the internal modem. Then you'd have to set up your Com Port One for output to the external modem, and you know that could give you buffer incompatibility."

          Fred didn't know he had a buffer, much less why it wouldn't be compatible. Hadn't all this stuff just been reinvented in the last three years? Couldn't they at least get it all to work together this time?

          But he was distracted by an odd deformity on the kid's hand. The stub of an extra finger sprouted next to his little finger. Rather incredibly, Fred thought, the kid didn't try to hide it. He even wore a tiny gold ring on it, as if to attract attention.

          The boy noticed Fred's stare. "Like it?" he asked. "It's an old Pentium 200."

          "Pentium 200," Fred repeated without comprehending. Then he realized the clerk was talking about his earring, not the finger. Embarrassed, Fred blurted, "You mean the Pentium Pro 200? The new microchip? You're wearing one for an earring?"

          "Yeah. It was the CPU chip on my last computer. I pulled it out and saved it when I ditched my old PC for a MMX laptop."

          "But the 200 is the latest technology, Fred spluttered. "It was just reviewed in the last issue of Digital Monthly. Those things cost almost a thousand dollars."

          "Nah, the 200 hasn't been hot for weeks. Now that the MMX chips are out, I couldn't even give one of these away, at least not to any of my friends." The kid smirked. "You don't expect to keep up with computers by reading a monthly magazine, do you? I mean, hard copy? Print-outs? Snail mail? Ha!" He twirled his earring. "Get real."

          "Listen," the kid whispered, glancing over his shoulder. "If you really want good components, this place is a rip-off. I just work here. I'd never actually buy anything at these prices."

          He leaned forward. "Like, I just got a P-400, 12 gig, 128 meg, 24-speed CD-ROM, with internal ISDN, and a graphics accelerator you could broadcast old movies to Mexico with, and," - he crossed his arms and grinned triumphantly - "I paid under three K for it. See, there's this new place called Miracle Millennium. That's where you ought to check stuff out."

          "I've never heard of a store called Millennium, uh, Miracles."

          "No prob. It's only about a mile from here. You know where the freeway just got widened to 16 lanes? It's that exit. You can't miss it."

          "What's the address?"

          "Um, I think it's http://www.miracles.com."

          "No, no, I mean the street address."

          "Oh, I dunno. It's just there. Everybody knows where it is. You'll see the sign."

          The kid straightened his back. "Uh-oh, here comes the boss. Act like I'm selling you this." He reached toward a shelf and spread his hands over a strange-looking keyboard that bent in the middle like an accordion. Fred saw he'd sprouted an extra little finger on his other hand as well.

          Loudly the boy announced, "This is the new twelve-digit keyboard that's designed to use all the functions on Bill Gate's latest software."

          An older teenager with the look of authority walked past them. The clerk stretched for the farthest keys with his extra fingers, but the new stubs were still too short to reach. His supervisor shook his head.

          "Two more days," the clerk pleaded. "I promise."

          "TCH!" the older boy hissed, and walked on.

          Fred whispered, "You mean - you're - "

          But the kid was frowning at his hands, furiously wiggling the little stub fingers in a series of exercises. "Oh, yeah," he said distractedly. "But, you know, once you're past puberty, it gets harder and harder."

          Fred wiped his forehead.

          The clerk shrugged. "We're gonna have a big sale on all the ten-digit keyboards next week," he added earnestly. "You older guys ought to stock up before they stop making them completely."

          A man in a white jacket came up to them and tapped the clerk on his shoulder. The boy slumped and dejectedly walked away with the man. An even younger boy with a completely shaved head passed the two of them and smiled ruefully. The orange-haired kid motioned listlessly toward Fred, then followed the man off the sales floor.

          The new clerk put the twelve-digit keyboard back on its display rack. He reached for the model next to it, a charcoal gray one with a sign over it, "NOW - THE BEST IN FOURTEEN-DIGIT TECHNOLOGY!"

          Fred stared. The bald boy had two extra fingers on each hand. They were fully developed, and they fit the rows of keys perfectly. At his caress the red light on the CAPS LOCK indicator lit, then NUM LOCK and SCROLL LOCK glowed in sequence, even though the connecting cable dangled from the keyboard, plugged into nothing.

          The new clerk turned to Fred. "Hello," he said in the sweet, pure soprano that a boy has just before his voice changes. He held out his hand. Fred shook it numbly, trying not to cringe at the feel of six fingers and a thumb in his grip.

          The young clerk smiled up at him as if sharing some confidence. "How may I help you today?" he asked. The skin on his hairless skull gleamed under the sickly green fluorescent lights.