[BNE-PM] Parse it again Sam...

[Mike]

This story was emailed to me and I was sure the rest of the list would 
enjoy it too...

Mike


Dead Men Don't Instant Message by A.J. Axline

  <Bogart>

  It was a gray afternoon, the kind of afternoon that makes the city look
like it's in monochrome. I was in my office, sipping on a triple gingko
biloba espresso and printing off some sappy love letter e-mails that I'd
scraped out of some schmuck's PC. His wife had brought it in to me, asking
me to confirm that Mr. Schmuck was cheating on her. I don't like doing the
dirty domestic cases, but my DSL bill was three months overdue, and once
you've gone to high-speed, you can't go back.

  Besides...I'm Jack Dinn. I'm a private geek. It's what I do.

  I'd finished printing off the last steamy missive (who the hell calls
their mistress "wookums" anyway?) and was about to call the soon-to-be
divorced wife, when the door to my office opened and my secretary Perl
walked in.

  She's a smooth operator, my Perl. She's got all the right variables in all
the right modules. I tried to access her subroutine once, but she didn't
want to start that program. I didn't take it personally...it just wasn't in
the script for us. We don't always communicate well, but Perl's a great
secretary once you learn to interpret her language.

  "What's up, angel?" I asked her.

  "There's someone here to see you," she frowned. "I don't like him already."

  "How come?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure...he just debugs me," Perl sniffed.

  "A client is a client, angel. Send him in," I told her.

  Perl didn't seem too happy with the procedure, but she gave me her regular
expression. She walked back into the waiting room, and asked the potential
client to enter my office.

  I could see why Perl didn't like him; I recognized him immediately, and I
didn't like him either. He was a belligerent old man, and he strutted into
my office like he had administrative privileges. He was wearing a military
uniform with creases stiffer than Thicknet cable. His chest was covered in
medals and decorations—it looked like a badly cluttered desktop.

  "General P. Fault," I said.

  "Hello Jack. It's been a long time," the General said in a voice so
gravelly you could have used it to make concrete.

  "Not long enough," I grated. Then I put the grater and the block of cheese
away, and sat behind my desk.

  "Jacky-boy, you're not still upset over that RAID down in Provo, are you?"
he bantered.

  "I broke two discs on that RAID," I snapped. "It wasn't a very fault
tolerant mission. I still have trouble with my trunk line on damp days."

  "Well...you look okay now," the General said.

  "Oh, I'm A+," I smirked. "Mostly because I don't perform illegal
operations anymore."

  "That's too bad," the General said, "because we've got a great mission for
you. There's this kernel that needs to be...deleted. It's a tough process,
and we need our best man."

  "You forget that I switched, I crossed that bridge years ago," I snarled
like a mess of cabling. "Oh sure, I still remember fragments of my past.
Packet storming over the firewall, breaking every protocol in the book. But
I'm not trapped in that web anymore. I'm not the man you programmed to do
your dirty work all those years ago. I don't work for anyone but me. I'm
the master of my own domain now."

  The General scowled. "What is this, some kind of denial of service? What
are you, a man or a mouse?!"

  I stood up. "I'm sorry, General. I won't delete your kernel for you."

  Hours later, I sat and stared at the empty chair where the General had
sat. His visit had refreshed my memory, stuff that I wished could have
stayed deleted. Still, the General's visit had reminded me of one positive
thing. While I sometimes have to do the odd dirty domestic data dump, at
least I'm not being run by some controller anymore. I serve my clients the
best I can, and that's good enough for me.

  Perl came into the office. "I'm calling it a night, Jack."

  "Before you do," I told her, "why don't you come over here and check out
my laptop?"

  </Bogart>


   A. J. Axline
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