He left the engine running to keep the headlights on the doorway as he trotted over. Both the screen and the inner doors were unlocked. Dale stepped into the kitchen.

He raised his hand to his face and almost jumped back outside. The place smelled terrible—rotten, musty, decayed, worse. Something had died in there.

He flicked the light switch. Nothing. The place was as dark as an unlighted cave, with only the slightest hint of light through the one kitchen window.

Dale went back out to the truck, grabbed his halogen flashlight, and went back in.

The kitchen looked as if it had been abandoned in mid-meal. There were plates on the counter and more in the sink. The stench grew stronger with each step he took, and Dale covered his mouth and nose with one hand as he crossed into the dining room.

Jesus, the place is full of children’s coffins. Dale froze in place, flicking the light in all directions. Instead of one dining room table, there were six or eight rough benches set on sawhorses, and on each bench was a long, dull-metal box the size and shape of a small coffin. Then he saw the slots for punch cards, rudimentary keyboards, and small windows on the metal boxes.

Learning machines, Dale remembered. Duane’s Old Man—always his friend’s affectionate term for his father—had been an inventor. These were the pre-electronic “learning machines” that the Old Man had always been tinkering with, never completing to his satisfaction, and rarely selling.

Amazing, thought Dale. Duane’s aunt—the Old Man’s sister from Chicago—had lived in this place from 1961 right through to the eve of the millennium and had never moved all this junk. Forty years of living with these things in the dining room.