Ed resumed eating and was having trouble with the Reuben. The greasy pastrami had soaked through the thin rye bread, making it slippery to hold. He was lowering his big head to get his mouth under it, the drooping strings of cheese, and the odd angle emphasized how much his hair had receded from his forehead; it had once looked like Buddy Rourke’s, boyishly thrusting forward. When he had taken his bite and swallowed and the Reuben was under control again, down on the plate beside the French fries and the paper cup of coleslaw, Ed said, “So that’s your new thing? To cut yourself off from the company mainstream? These kids we hire don’t know how to write economical programs. Everything is GO TO, GO TO. They think there’s no end to capacity now.”

“They’re almost right. They may be right.”

“Enough big baggy GO TOs hanging out there, logical contradictions begin to show up.”

“They’ll learn, Ed. We’re all learning; it’s still a young trade. All I’m asking is a little privacy, and one of the new DEC minis. I’d like a PDP-8 and a graphics CRT screen, as well as the telex assembler reader. Give me six months and cut my crunching to half-time. There’s something I’m missing, some fresh approach.”

“So that’s your new thing. You’re pulling out on us.”

“Ed, it’s how I’ll be most valuable to the company—a little detached. I’m just the head ribbon-clerk as it is now. All that socializing up front produces nothing; it’s driving me crazy. The brain ages. Time runs out. Look at the breakthroughs—most of them by guys younger than we are. Einstein at twenty-five. Turing the same. Phyllis says she couldn’t possibly do her math thesis now, she’s gotten too stupid.”

“That’s sad, that Phyl thinks that,” Ed said, touching his loosely knotted necktie with greasy fingers in synchrony with a semi-suppressed burp. He did that chimp thing with his upper lip, bulging it out over his upper teeth, trying to work some bit of pastrami loose. “Hey. You want to know what my new thing is?”