
 Another Alice Adventure:


 The Throw-Away Database       (c) 1995  by   Peter Neuendorffer


 Alice got a job for a throw-away database company.  They give her free
 samples as a fringe benefit, so she has been sporting various plastic
 wrist watches. They keep lousy time.

 We went for a walk today. She looked at her wrist watch. "There should
 be a train coming in twenty-five seconds, although it's running late,"
 she announced. The train came when she said. We got on and looked out
 the window at the passing scenery. "It will snow in two minutes," she
 declared. Two minutes later it began to snow. This was uncanny. She
 smirked at me: "We can get discount tickets to Madonna at the Garden if
 we hurry! They just had four cancellations."

 She glanced at her wrist watch, and pushed a button. "They temporarily
 lost the tickets," she stated firmly.  We got off the train and had
 dinner at Legal Seafoods. As she glanced at her watch I noticed instead
 of waiting  the usual thirty minutes, it took one minute. "Good time to
 eat here,  register records - you know."

 On our way to get the concert tickets we passed a lottery agent. "Don't
 even think about it," I glared at her. She hurried us to a certain
 corner where there was a news story breaking, something about a visiting
 President- just us and CNN.  She glanced at her wrist watch.

 "Time's up, Cinderella," and   tossed the disposable database into a
 nearby trash can. "Nothing like a little information!" she breezed.
 She reached into her satchel, got another watch, and put it on.


 Peter Neuendorffer is the creator of Alice.  Alice is on CDROM.  She
 also lurks on the Channel One main board and is a regular contributor
 there.



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