MADAME ZOLA

Please, please, come in! Please forgive the darkness, but Madame Zola has a headache. It is impossible for Madame Zola to perform a personal reading today. I have had a dream. A dream of cataclysmic events! A dream that has shaken Madame Zola to her very roots! I awoke shaking, almost convulsing! It was horrible!

Please, sit down on the couch and rest while I make some tea. Please, sit down.

Thank you for waiting. It is a terrible day. A terrible day. Forget that the sun shines and the bird sings. I have seen a vision of the future. It is terrible, horrible. Please let me sip my tea and gather my thoughts.

It was late last night, but I could not sleep. So in my desperation I turned to one of the computer magazines I have in my waiting room. Silly things! But I keep them there for the young executives who come by for stock market tips.

I fell asleep reading an article about the Internet. Something about "intelligent agents". Software that lets your thoughts roam the Net while you slave at your desk on the company spreadsheet. It sounds like astral projection, but without the excitement.

As I slept a vision came to me of intelligent agents. Tiny software creatures created by the uninitiated, spawned without thought about their proper role in the great wheel of life.

I saw one such misbegotten creature that appeared to be a slug on tiny wheels, dispatched by its creator on a mission to search all personal Web pages for any mention of the the word "poodle". When the name was found, the horrible little slug split in two. The first section continued the search, while the new little slug sent an email message to the page's owner, offering to arrange a "romantic encounter" between the page owners's poodle and the ones under the dominion of the creator of the "intelligent" slug.

As I struggled to overcome my dismay the scene was tranformed and I saw a young computer nerd at his workstation in Silicon Valley. He had taken temporary leave of his paid profession to send a tiny snake-like creature into the vast cauldron of the Usenet, seeking among the thousands of newsgroups for a message, any message, posted from his lost college love Becky. When the electronic viper encountered such a message he sank his fangs into it and sped back to his nerd-master.

I was sickened. Who would protect Becky? Was there no place to hide?

But again, the vision changed.

I saw a start-up in a strip mall. Three young programmers in jeans and tee shirts packing up their meager furniture as the loan company repossessed their workstations. They had spent six months of their short lives, and maxed out their credit cards, developing new modeling software. They had a Web site to attract customers, but the system had crashed. A small program, looking very like a dung beetle, had searched out their site. Once found, the software insect scurried back to its big-corporation master and disgorged the address. The big corporation then deployed a larger creature, having the head of a bear, the body of a lion, and the tail of a '68 Ford Mustang. This frightening creature relentlessly battered the Web site of the young entrepreneurs, clogging their response program and shutting down the system. Within three weeks the young programmers were broke, and had to sell their nascent program to the big corporation that had destroyed their company.

Enough! Enough!

There was more, much more. But Madame Zola does not have the heart to continue. Please.

Thank you for coming by, but I cannot do any personal readings today. I am too exhausted. My spiritual essence is drained. I must rest. Rest and recover.

Then I must login and communicate with the others on the psychic mailing list. Please, let me get the door for you.