Return-Path: Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 15:29:14 -0700 From: quanta@netcom.com (Daniel K. Appelquist) To: quanta-ascii@netcom.com Subject: quanta-aug1994.ascii: Part 5 of 5 Sender: owner-quanta-ascii@netcom.com Precedence: list Reply-To: quanta@netcom.com "Tamsin ---" "Chas, I have an overwhelming desire to hit something repeatedly," she said. Her voice was like brittle glass shards. "I'd rather it wasn't you." Chas walked back up the path. Before he went between the trees, he looked back toward the lake. Tamsin still stared at the water, an alarming lack of expression on her face. Chas went to the house, intending to ask Kalin to check on Tamsin, not sure what she might do next. Layten was sitting in the middle of the room, holograms all around him. Chas stared at the flickering images of fire and blood. The research facility wasn't the only building in dispute now. "What's happening?" he asked. Layten's voice was triumphant, yet bleak. "Revolution." ___________________________________________________________________________ Nicole Gustas (ngustas@hamp.hampshire.edu) just got accepted to American University and is now frantically searching for a job and housing in Washington DC. She has so far successfully avoided the flesh-eating virus that has invaded southwestern Connecticut. She highly recommends the TV show Animaniacs. "Badda-bing!" ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ The Fourth Cat ...there were rich and poor, regal and common, even diplomats, all Lou Crago accepting, or enduring, each other in the haze and music. She sat in a scallop along one wall and the big black cat lay at her feet with its head raised and its huge yellow eyes watchful. ___________________________________________________________________________ Kiko lost her big cat somewhere between Jin Place and home. It was the third one she'd lost in a month. Tito was going to stop making them for her at this rate ... he was generous, but he didn't like to see his art wasted. The last time, he had said, "It's not just a matter of waste. It's that now they're out there!" "But they won't live long," she had said in defense. "You said yourself they don't stay constabulated." "I said," he answered, "but that's if nobody else gets hold of them." She didn't know what that meant. Tito was an Artist. She didn't know for sure what that meant either. He could make awesome things, like the cats ... things far beyond mere tech ... but he wouldn't even sell them. He could have made a gigantic fortune! But he just gave them away ... to her, and to one or two others. She had never actually seen the others; they came on foot probably, while she came in the Embassy car. She wanted to be able to come on foot also, to slip through street shadows and show up at Tito's like an anonymous. Except her Grandmother, who ruled everything ... at least everything in this capitol city of an occupied nation ... wouldn't allow it. Every time Kiko went out, it was the car, and the chauffeur, an d the personal guard. There was no way she could live a life of her own choice, like everyone else. Wear black clothes, and not sleep, and prowl the streets, and march in foolish demonstrations. Her Grandmother was, of course, Dylete Mikyo, the JapaChine Ambassador. She'd had the post for at least 60 years, but had been fixed repeatedly, so that she looked 30, maybe 40 in sunlight. She'd had Kiko's mother and father eliminated ... so Kiko suspected ... and now the only blood-relation she would tolerate i n the Embassy was 17-year-old Kiko, thin and frail. It meant Kiko wa s constantly attended by tutors and guards, and had the surveillance cameras on while she slept. At 16, Kiko had threatened suicide if she wasn't given some personal freedom. She demanded one six-hour stretch every fortnight, with the bracelet monitor off, and freedom to leave the Embassy. She won that, except that she had to be driven to where she wanted to go in the car, then picked up six hours later and driven home. Kiko chose eight p.m. to two a.m. Dylete was hard to sway, but finally agreed when she saw that Kiko was perfectly serious about the suicide. The first time out, Kiko found Jin Place. The second time she followed a bizarre red animal like a fox along the shadowed street, and it led her to Tito's alley, and to his door. It was open. That, in itself, was strange. Nobody left doors open. She stepped in. He turned from a table where he stood working and stared and stared at her without a word. He was old! You scarcely ever saw old-looking people ... not when it was so cheap and safe to get fixed. He was small and thin, with very intense eyes. She let him look. That was what diplomatic life, and being rich, meant ... your gear was the most beautiful, sleek, and costly that was available. Even in diplomatic circles, they looked. Then you looked back at them. Something unspoken was decided. Dylete, her Grandmother, had been coming out on top for 60 years in these contests; now Kiko had the knack also. Maybe because she didn't think anything when the looking contest was in progress. She just waited calmly, knowing she would win. Or maybe she'd inherited something from Dylete. Tito said, "Presence without mind. I like that. Maybe I'll give you a gift to go along with it." Kiko was used to that too; diplomats gave gifts to make up for having lost. She held out her hand, expecting some rare object. But he turned and opened a door, and out came a big cat. It was big and orange, striped with black. She'd never seen anything like it. The only animals she'd been allowed to have were little and with white fluff all over. They died after a year or so, looking sad. This one came and stood beside her, lazily switching its long tail. It paid no attention to her, but followed when she went out. She couldn't make it get in the car, but it loped along beside. Before the car pulled into the Embassy gates, however, it had disappeared. On her next free night, she went back to Tito's and informed him about it. He stared at her again, and then gave her another cat. This one was the same size, but sleekly black all over. She took it back with her to Jin Place, where nobody would be surprised by anything. There, there were rich and poor, regal and common, even diplomats, all accepting, or enduring, each other in the haze and music. She sat in a scallop along one wall and the big black cat lay at her feet with its head raised and its huge yellow eyes watchful. She drank an exotic drink, smoked a hookah, and watched the people watching her. The diplomats bowed when they passed her scollop; they knew who she was, what rank. It was a very satisfying evening. But when she tried to force the cat into the car, it turned and loped away into the shadows of the street. The next time, she actually talked to Tito ... the way you talk in private, the way she remembered talking to her Mother long ago. "They won't come home with me. What's wrong?" "Maybe the breeding isn't right," he said. "I never assumed you were breeding them ... there's no breeding stock left. I thought you were making them." "No breeding stock left? Ah, so they've educated you a little." "I've had the very best education!" she said haughtily. "Subliminals every night since I was six." "Ah, so you have stored in your head all the world's factoids?" "Certainly," she said. Then he explained that "made" creatures were outside that paradigm. That made it strangely exciting to her. She wasn't sure exactly why, except that anything beyond tech was exciting because it was forbidden. In any case, she wanted another one. "All right, one more," he said. "But see you don't let it get loose." Now she had lost this third cat, a blue-grey one. Again she and Tito talked privately, and she became so engrossed that she sat down, no doubt creasing her rich dress, and clasped her jeweled hands together passionately like a child or an anonymous. "If it could come home with me," she said, "and be in my suite. And maybe even ... this sounds bizarre ... even sleep on my bed. Make it to do that." "Why?" he asked. She thought about it. "I want to hear its purr in the night. Or growl, or whatever it does." "And what will you do?" "I willIlisten." As an incentive, she told him to bill the Embassy, but he sneered at that. Nevertheless, he gave her another cat. It was deep gold with black spots on its flanks. And around its neck was a leather collar studded with chunks of amber. He also gave her a narrow leather leash, which he snapped onto the collar. "No more after this," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Keep this one, or don't come back." She didn't even go back to Jin Place. She waved forward the unobtrusively following car, and when the chauffeur had opened the door, stepped in. The lea sh made it possible to pull the big cat in too. On the ride home, she let it lie on the seat beside her, and she used the tips of her fingers to stroke its silky head. The guard at the Embassy gate ma de as if to refuse the cat admission, but she stared at him, and let him look at her staring, so he backed down. Naturally. She took the lift up to her suite. The big cat sat on its haunches, not disturbed by being in the mechanism ... it even lowered its lids slowly once or twice, as if contented. She went through to her bedroom. There, she had the sudden and remarkable desire not to wear any of her sleep robes that night. She slid into the satin naked, and even unplugged the subliminal unit at the headboard. The cat leapt lightly up on the bed, stepped around for a few moments, then lay down. It's head rested on her stomach. She lay very still, waiting to hear its purr. There were alarm shriekers going off somewhere, and people shouting. Footsteps running. She sat up, threw back the satin, and went blindly across the carpet a dozen steps before she even knew she was awake. The double doors burst open. Security guards and male secretaries came pouring in. Kiko watched them look at her with shocked eyes and realized, looking down, that she was still naked. She stood quite still and let them look, thinking nothing. And within a few moments, she had won. They began to make the brief, obligatory bows, and to edge backward out the doorway. Dylete's Chief of Staff came forward, moving through them and, with his hand trembling slightly, held out a precious object. It was Dylete's Seal of Office. "The Ambassador has met with ... an accident. Which precludes her fulfilling her post. I am now at your service, as you assume the post by heredity." Kiko said carefully, "How was the Ambassador accidented?" The man hesitated. "By laceration s to the throat. The jugular vein was... shredded. There was a great deal of bleeding." "Who did this?" she asked, her eyes wide. "We have not apprehended the....the intruder," he said. "The alarm system was not tripped. We will continue to investigate." "Very well," said Kiko. She did not look around for the cat which no one was supposed to know was in her suite. She sensed that it was no longer there. "Attend to the body of the former Ambassador," she instructed. The Chief of Staff made a formal bow. "And shall I bring her robe of state to you now?" "Yes, you may do that." He backed out. Kiko stood waiting. Even in nakedness, she was totally enrobed by presence. But her right hand, unaccountably, lifted slowly to her throat. There was a leather collar studded with amber around her neck. And there was a taste in her mouth: something strange that she had never before tasted. She suddenly knew much more than factoids. Very much more, all in a rush! She knew about Tito. And why "made" things beyond tech were forbidden. And something about what it was going to be like, being Ambassador, when she was so young and unaccustomed to politics. With four lost cats prowling somewhere. Out there in the shadowed streets, where the great mass of people were anonymous, poor, wore black, and didn't sleep. ___________________________________________________________________________ Microchips Never Rust "I was here for at least six months after the bombs were dropped. One of Part 3 the steam tunnels under the Student Union led to a suite of storerooms. Eric Miller About 150 of us were able to hide out there. Hotter than fresh roof tar in August." ___________________________________________________________________________ I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves throughout the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angle-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollowed-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war. Allen Ginsberg, 1955-1956 Oh, you want to know when the end has come, my friend? I'll tell you when. You'll be sitting in your flat on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, entertaining friends in your studio, when a phone call rings on your unlisted number, and it's some American youth speaking very poor French because that's what he learned in University and he is trying to sell you some magazine subscription that can be sent overseas for `great savings over the newsstand price.' And you ask, "How did you get my number?" but he hesitates because he is reluctant to tell you that his boss has a way of getting unlisted French numbers. And you slam the phone down, but you realize with dread that you will never have any real peace for the rest of your life. French photographer being interviewed on his opposition to a proposed takeover of France Telecom by AT&T/Sears. Newsweek, October, 1998. The U.S. Marshal's Office has just granted broad, discretionary powers to the Software Printer's Association, a company started in the 1980's which claimed to represent the copyright interests of software manufacturers. The company has engaged in quasi-legal actions which included threatening to take a company to court for using unlicensed software and pocketing the out of court settlement for itself. Alfred Milbourne, then President of Digiscript Inc., described a typical scenario: "You would see posters with pictures of two of our product, and some logo reading `The One on the Right just cost someone $500,000,' and it would be a picture of one of our own Digiscript floppies. The ad would then go on to state that you could send in $80 to get a copy of their pirate software detector, which in reality was nothing more than a batch file which listed all the executable files on your hard disk!" Milbourne went on to list the contents of some of the lurid press releases put out by the SPA, including accounts of how some of the biggest ringleaders in software piracy were being put away for years in Federal Penitentiaries. Milbourne's own legal staff eventually looked into the matter: "We found out that the SPA would call up a company and in effect tell it that they had heard that employees were using pirated software and that they would have to submit themselves to an `audit' or else face a raid by the U.S. Marshal's Office. They would then visit the office and find that, lo and behold, someone was using a duplicate copy of our Digiscript program. Depending on how gullible the company president was, the SPA would then shake down the company for tens of thousands of dollars to prevent them from being taken to court in order to extract `compensatory damages.' We found out that our product was often the lynch-pin behind these extortions, yet, believe it or not, we never saw a penny from the SPA!" SPA efforts to act as a quasi-official organ of the government have finally paid off: starting this year the SPA will be able to use its own security and policing staff to raid companies under suspicion. The U.S. Attorney's office has given the SPA the authority to search and seize all computer equipment which may be suspected of harboring pirated software. This means that any SPA employee can now walk into your company and snag that attractive looking hypercube that took you months to get a hold of. Suspicion is all that is needed! Attorney General Gregory Lucas upon being questioned about the SPA had this to say: "I don't know much about this computer stuff, you know, bits and bytes and all that crap, but I do know this! If we let pirates run free in this society it will be the end of American civilization as we know it. I am proud that someone like the SPA has seen fit to go mano a mano against these pirates and they will continue to have my support as well as my authority to conduct raids under the deputization powers of my office." SPA publications can now be found in most schools, as well as videos starring rap music superstar D.J. saran-rap-gangsta, just released from prison, rapping the SPA's snappy jingle `Don't archive that computer file in an unauthorized manner!' Wormwood II, April, 2001 Arthur Hanson stood in front of Dr. Jarod Owen, not quite sure of what to say. Owen barked, "Grab a seat, Dr. Hanson! Fill me in on what you've been up to these last five years!" Good, nothing out of the ordinary. Hanson slumped back into a decrepit office chair that groaned from the impact of his spine against the seatback. "Doc, maybe I'm out of it, but what the hell am I doing here? One day I'm rambling around the Wurkhaus camp system and the next I find that I'm a new prof here." "Rambling around the camp system for five years." Owen shook his head sadly, but retained the twinkle in his eyes that betrayed an endless font of energy. "Let's both start from the beginning. Now since it's a surprise to you that I'm still alive, I can only assume that you thought that I died in the attack along with a great number of people. For a long time I certainly thought the same of you." Hanson looked up at the water stained ceiling. "I was here for at least six months after the bombs were dropped. One of the steam tunnels under the Student Union led to a suite of storerooms. About 150 of us were able to hide out there. Hotter than fresh roof tar in August. We figured that it was at least 130 degrees for two or three days from the fires. Lucky for us the store room was deep enough in the earth for us to survive in." "What did you do about food and water?" asked Owen. "Oh, that lasted about 4 months; a huge case of Spam lasted about a month, too. I don't think my digestive track ever recovered from that culinary adventure. When we ran out of food, we started scouting around up top. When I got caught by one of the GermanMetalFuzz, I..." "German what?" interrupted Owen. "The German Motorized Infantry Security Police. I convinced him that if he helped us find food we would make it worth his while. The Fuzz got a load of about 200 college dorm mini-fridges right before his boss nabbed him. We stripped this campus dry from the bottom up for whatever we could find. Light bulbs, blankets, hell, even those awful cafeteria trays were in big demand." "I hear that Central Services is still bitchin' about the trays," laughed Owen. "Naturally we just didn't have enough to barter with anymore. A new law that allowed the Fuzz to pack people up to camps if they didn't have a home just went into effect, and most of us got rounded up and sent north. I was shipped to Wurkhaus 211 at the intersection of Highway 12 and 93." "First Service Motors?" asked Owen. "Was then, only now it's the chief autotruck production plant in Michigan for the German Army. I was sent to live with an assembly line gang that packed the trucks as they were being sent to the Mississippi River war zone. Fortunately for me I got pulled off the line and placed in detention to await interrogation. When I got taken to the interview room down the cell hall I was strapped into a chair, and told that I would be interrogated by a Major Schulmann." "And this was fortunate?" Owen asked. "Well, I didn't think so at the time. But Schulmann came into the room and asked me all sorts of questions, so naturally I told him what I was doing here at Central, and he got real upset and started yelling to someone on the phone in German, which I could barely understand, but I got the sense that he was yelling at one of the Fuzz about treating me badly and why was I taken here in the first place. The guards then took me outside. They were really nice to me all of sudden, giving me food cards and cigarettes. I was taken to a big house where I could see what the change of attitude was about." "Which was?" "Everything that you could possibly imagine going wrong in a computerized office. Equipment hooked up the wrong way, operators not saving their files, no documentation, wall outlets that looked like they were sprouting octopuses, a big list of information age no-nos. I found out within the week that Schulmann had been put on notice to organize the warehouse office or else be transferred to the Iranian front." "Your first job in the real world!" Owen quipped sarcastically. "The computers were the easy part. The logistics were a little tougher, because, in essence, I had to figure out how the German Army could transfer goods in and out of Michigan by way of our warehouse in such a way that losses were minimized." "Losses?" "Oh yeah. Everywhere. I can tell you for sure that not a single box of Cinnamon Pop-tarts has ever made it to the River zone. Unopened boxes of those things command a pretty high price on the black market. Schulmann was savvy enough to understand what I was talking about. I showed him how to disguise shipments by using digit flipping bookkeeping and key authorized database records stored on the autotrucks. He was a real happy guy after a while. Both he and his upper echelon got promoted up the ladder to a military post somewhere in Kansas. The warehouse was then sold to the Brother Jims at a profit." "Ooh, boy. The Jims." "I barely managed to escape the day the Jims were surrounding the place with poison barbed wire. Schulmann probably told the Jims that I went with the purchase. Bastard. Ever since then I've been roaming the area doing whatever I can to survive in the winter months and leading the slacker lifestyle when the weather gets warm." "Which brings us up to the point in your story when you mysteriously show up on the IMF's labor invoice database." Owen squirmed uneasily in his chair. He had a huge favor to ask of Hanson. One that in all probability would cost Arthur his life. Dataflage Corporation has just announced a new line of lap-top computers meant to prevent seizure by the Software Printer's Association, whose plainclothes operatives have been known to hide out in airports where travelers carry a large selection of portables on their business trips. For travelers who want the very best, Dataflage manufactures a clone of the Silicon Graphics 4D Reality Engine Laptop disguised as an old fashioned Radio Shack Portable. A screen saver simulates the crude black and white LCD pixels of a by gone era, requiring a voice activated password to reactivate the holographic display. The delta-wave transmitter used to navigate through the laptop's virtual landscape has been disguised as an old-style portable 8 track tape player complete with a Captain and Tenille tape and head transponder disguised as bulky old AV lab headphones. Simulated Coke spills and finger grime add to the effect. Purchasers also receive a catalog of accessories which enable the traveler to affect the complete grunge computist look, with items such as `too large rubber galoshes' and sweatshirts which appear to be faded and unwashed. The catalog also features props such as simulated old, beaten copies of `Dune' and `Spock Must Die' which can be used as battery and cellphone holders. Don't become another SPA statistic! Call Dataflage today! Morais pressed the `repeat message' playback button on his watch several times, but still couldn't make out the originator of the message. "Dar, who do you think that was?" "My guess would be Grove. I could hear a Texas accent under that voice changer," Dar answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Grove is supposed to be in Biosphere 9. If he had to make a special trip >from the moon, something is up. Here, put my watch on; that should foil the office pager. I'm going to run into Ivari's office and see if I can watch this drama take place from behind." Dar Im-Tula took the watch-com from Morais and placed it on his wrist. Dar was one of the rare Indian programmers who allowed himself to be called by name. Among the Yanomami it was usually considered an insult to call someone by their name. It took Morais several years to understand the Yanomami mind, but for his efforts he was paid off in two ways: he was allowed the privilege to address Dar by his phonetic label, and he had access to the most gifted pool of computer talent on the planet. His colleagues were not so lucky. Being less understanding types, they would often hear of the legendary computer prowess of the Yanomami and then `hire' them for programming projects at the Institute. The managers of these projects would invite the Yanomami to Project Meetings, speaking of deadlines, product deliveries dates, work schedules, and salaries. The `employed' Amazon Tribe member would then be shown to a cubicle and asked to show up at 8:00 the next morning. The results would be disastrous. The new employee would never show up on time, sometimes as late as 4:00 in the afternoon. A project manager might be eating dinner on his screened-in porch at home and look up to see the employee seated across from him, after somehow slipping silently in, all eager to discuss the project. To make things worse, they would never give out their names, and refused to sign any paperwork, saying that a salary was unimportant, yet showing up at night, asking to borrow the water sled, because they had to visit an uncle for the next two weeks, and then returning two months later without the sled because it had been given away during a festival. Most managers went apoplectic over this sort of behavior, resolving never to hire the Yanomami ever again, but having no qualms about cannibalizing whatever juicy bits of Yanomami code appeared on the public nets. Morais, however, took a different approach. Ten years before, when a knotty problem concerning the Space Construction Platform had Morais up for nights, Morais looked up tired from his terminal to see that a Yanomami Indian was standing silently next to him. He muttered "Can I sit down?" Morais was too tired to protest and gave him his chair. Within 4 hours the unknown Yanomami had entirely re-written the emergent behavior algorithm that allowed the robots to return to their fuel tanks without losing the timing involved in rolling out the steel sheet involved in the beam formation process at the Platform. After several debugging run-throughs, the gentle face of the ageless appearing tribesman looked up at Morais and muttered "Remember that the Ant gives his legs to the Colony before he moves his own body." The Amazon silently disappeared leaving behind a perplexed Morais. But later, when the Platform started receiving steel shipments from Earth, the meaning behind the Yanomami's words hit Morais. Not quite able to express it in words, Morais was nonetheless able to give the Russian Draftsman the complete proposal for the Mars Launch Program. Every time the project slowed down, the same thing would happen. At the back of the meeting room, when the managers conference had descended into bickering, a lone individual would silently appear. Morais would then silence the proceedings and ask to hear what the Yanomami had to say. The words would always have a cryptic but homespun tribal sound to them. Sometimes they elicited laughter from the project leaders, who were surprised to find the Indian laughing along with them. But it would always happen. Four hours later. Two days later. Two weeks later. Morais would be thinking about the words muttered at the proceedings and would have a flash of inspiration which would take him running to the Russian Draftsman's lab. The Draftsman's hard-headed genius for all things mechanical usually meant that any idea remotely unsound was met with a disparaging wave of the hand and complete ignorance of the messenger. But with Morais it would be different. The Draftsman would gently nod his head yes, and turn away to furiously sketch something on an old, battered artist's sketch pad. In five years, this strange, triple collaboration allowed Morais to advance to the Project Head for Manned Space Exploration of the Amazonian Technical Institute, a position which brought much fame, >from all over the world, as well as inside the Brazilian Empire. But for the Yanomami, it would always be the same. An individual, a brother, a cousin, perhaps would show up at your house: Can I borrow this laptop? My Grandfather wants to keep track of the number of Dolphins in the River. My third cousin from up North is starting classes, can he stay at your house for awhile? Can I sit down? The program would work much better if you did this... ____________________ How to Protect Yourself in the 21st Century with a new introduction by General Buford Keegan Ladies and Gentlemen. It has been over ten years since I have been directly involved in the production of the volume that you now hold in your hands. When Roberto DelReyes, the chief author of this book's current edition approached me about writing a new introduction, I could not refuse. After all, it was Roberto himself who conceived the idea for this book when almost twenty years ago such information was not commonplace. It was, after all, twenty years ago that Roberto's involvement in a brave and daring plan to evacuate the town of Riverside, Ohio that made it possible for me to continue the work of ensuring that men everywhere have the choice of remaining and acting as free and responsible citizens of this great planet of ours. Roberto's questions continuously assured me that even in an age like ours, any one possessed of a good mind and free heart could understand the most knotty questions involved in resisting a high-technology dictatorship, in whatever form it took. I have gained great strength from knowing that in such chaotic circumstances such as ours, basic common sense is all that is needed in order to understand such topics as `how to write a trojan virus' or `what behavior is appropriate under infrared surveillance.' That we live in difficult times, times that often more closely resemble the civil war of the 1860s' than the high-tech paradise of the 1950's, when it was thought that all that was needed to survive a nuclear war were lead impregnated bib-overalls, is quite obvious. You are now holding in your hands a very special volume. A volume that is only three by five inches, and whose cover reads `Charts and Tables of Standards for Weights and Measures Used Under the English System of Measurement.' By camouflaging our book in this way, we have practically assured that very few people will willingly open up its cover for fear of the tedious and boring content suspected of lurking on its pages. Yet the cover also indicates that this volume has an inherent usefulness that prevents it from being thrown out, and indeed, will often cause those being sent this volume to place it on an esteemed roost on a bookshelf without the cover ever being opened. In this way, our manual has spread into all corners of society, and many of those in the East who seek our information have only to visit a library reference section to find it. Many techniques like the one I just described are found in the pages of this book. Those of us involved in the production of this volume have had many labels thrown at us: Terrorist, criminal, revolutionary, and even Communist, even when the techniques in this book help defend the individual against Communist oppression as well as any other. We do not subscribe to labels of any kind. As we look back into the twentieth century, we can only see that labels, no matter how well intentioned, eventually turn into oppressive straight-jackets. Rather than labels, we hold the radical viewpoint that individuals are much better able to determine their own destinies than outside organizations. The purveyor of these organizational modes of living constantly accuse of pedaling death in our philosophy as we propose the death of the organization. But we ask those who seek to erase our existence a continual question: when in our history has the individual ever benefitted from allegiance to the organization? An example often put forth is the defeat of Adolf Hitler during World War II (according to Western U.S. history). Evidence has shown time and time again that the defeat of Nazi Germany arose from individuals who only temporarily chose to act as a collective. When the need for such a collective passed, those who chose to prop it by via organizational and extra-individual means bought about the debacle of Vietnam, an event so humiliating to contemplate that it has now been excised from Eastern U.S. textbooks. Because of these views we have been accused of being pessimistic and destructive to the true cause of human nature. Quite the contrary is true. We have an unflagging optimism in the Human Spirit. We are products of at least 3 billion years of biological evolution, and when such a grand creation chooses to hold opinion as to whether such a war is wrong or such a government is corrupt, it does good to listen to it. To believe that one's own individual instincts are somehow inferior to those of the Nation State or other extra-individual entity, is to invite disaster as those of us who live the Eastern United States can now readily attest. We live in radically dangerous times that call for a new form of resistance. Those of us who have access to an uncensored history of the last century have seen the same mistake happen over and over again: that is, to defend yourself against your enemy, you must defeat your enemy; to defeat your enemy, you must become your enemy, and in the process, lose what it is you were trying to defend. We have resolved not to make this mistake. Our enemies are those who say that they must capture us in order that we may be reintegrated into their collective, a collective made up of mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, violence and the adoration of a group of corrupt, senile old men whose only achievements in life have been to hold large buckets under the money faucets of the Federal Reserve Bank. Our enemies have been coming after us with guns, planes, and tanks, yet, in all cases, we have been able to defeat them on our own territory, without having to recourse to their weapons-based methods. You will find our methods in this book. Our methods are faster, cheaper, and more effective than theirs. Our method relies on something far cheaper and deadlier than clunky military hardware and dangerous explosives. Our method relies on Information. And it is with Information and little else that will enable you to single-handedly disarm a tank or cause an enemy soldier to retreat to his homeland. Our method is the most effective of all in that it directs the strength of your enemy back upon himself. Back in the dark ages of the 1980's the Reagan Administration chose to go to war against the peasants of Nicaragua so that corporate shareholders could realize more profits from the sale of military hardware. At that time, it was difficult to kill a peasant and his children; the soldier most likely had a family of his own, and was remiss to take such action. However, just by muttering one word: "Communists!" the same soldier could easily destroy an entire village. That my friends, was the power of Information. To survive in the Twenty-First you will have to learn how to use Information as a weapon, and you will have to learn how the enemy is determined to use Information as a weapon against you, and take the necessary steps to defend yourself. I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors, General Keegan Durango, Mexico, May, 2025 Table of Contents p. iv Preface to the English System of Measurement p. 10 Thread Diameter Conversion Scales p. 123 An In-Depth Discussion of Atomic Weight Classification Schemes p. 150 Metric Conversion Charts (Ed. Note: May require use of magnification glass.) p. 190 How To Protect Yourself in the Twenty-First Century p. 200 Introduction by General Keegan p. 201 An Overview of Counter-Terrorism p. 220 Snipping Wires: Quality, Not Quantity p. 280 Info-terrorism and Culture Jamming p. 340 All You Need to Know about Computer Sabotage p. 400 Networks from Spare Parts I. GIS Over a Public Telephone p. 487 Acting Under Surveillance p. 520 Counter-recruitment Techniques p. 60 Confusion and Mental Illness Techniques p. 670 Encryption Made Easy p. 700 Timed Release Strike-back Techniques p. 823 Use the Fax-Effect to Your Advantage p. 900 Fun With Metrics! Puzzles and Brain Teasers based on English-to-Metric Conversion Charts. p. 940 Your Career: A Future in Charts and Tables p. 980 Index ____________________ From: Bob Jacobson Subject: Washington State (USA) legislation could censor VR (and much more)! Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:25:54 GMT This has relevance throughout the U.S. and around the world, as it can happen anywhere ignorance of virtual worlds is inflamed by odd ideas. Forwarded from Daniel Pezely A friend who frequents the Washington state government passed this on to me: There is a bill at the state level: (excerpts from the Public Health & Safety Act 1994" bill, SBR 6174) NEW SECTION. Sec. 706 (1) A license is required for the commercial use of virtual reality technology for entertainment or purposes other then bona fide education, training, research, and development. Where VR is defined: NEW SECTION. Sec 702. (4) ``Virtual Reality" means any computer or other electronic technology that creates an enhanced illusion of three-dimensional, real-time or near-real-time interactive reality through the use of software, specialized hardware, holograms, gloves, masks, glasses, computer guns, or other item capable of producing visual, audio, and sensory effects of verisimilitude beyond those available with a personal computer. My friend was present at the hearing of a portion of this bill. Evidently, the person backing the bill, Senator Phil Talmadge, and his crew are convincing the State Congress that VR will permit "a realistic illusion of killing another person and such an illusion will make it easier for someone to go out and actually commit such a crime outside of VR." The State Congress has a very short calendar this year. This matter could be voted on as early as next week (week of 14 February 94), and the congressional session ends 8 March 1994, so this could be voted into law in less than one month. Senator Phil Talmadge (206) 786-7436 Leading the opposition: Senator Sheldon (206) 786-7644 Senate Fax: (206) 786-1999. Commission on Public Health & Safety Act 1994. Bill to be heard in Ways & Means Committee (Sen. Reinhart, Chair), Wednesday night, February 9, 1994; then to Rules. For status of bill, call Secretary of Senate: (206) 786-7550. If virtual reality is outlawed, only outlaws will have virtual reality. The Author open line 12 execute data link 300 baud cache and forward 1700 KHz rider signal note to new listeners: Public key decoder found on head of DAT release "Greatest Hits of Honky-Tonk Punk" "We're back? Fantastic. I keep tellin' them that my pager doesn't always work, but lucky for you good listeners, you ain't gonna miss a lick of my show. Hogger Radio. That's me. And Hogger remembers that some of you is curious as to how Hogger gets out the way he does. You may remember that because of an accident long ago Hogger had his eardrums taken out and replaced with what are called `cochlear transducers' which means for you folks that all I need is a wire attached the right way and somehow I can get what I hear in my own head broadcast out by a semi full of old radio gear that calls itself Radio Free Colorado and has to travel a lot to avoid detection by a vigilante squad. But I keep hearing that Hogger radio is so popular that me and RFC are going to keep at it for as long as our Eastern brothers are still in chains, come Hell or high water. "Like we was hearing just a few minutes ago, that legendary rebel Bobby DelRay ran into ol' Hogger enjoying the end of the ski season on the mountain, and Hogger just couldn't pass up an opportunity to ask him what happened twenty years ago in the Great Kentucky Fried Hamburger rebellion and Bobby agreed, so long as yours truly springs for the beer. "Now Bobby, you was tellin' us that way back in high school you got called into the gym to get a talkin' to." "Yep. All us students were together listening to this guy, O.K., and he tells us that he works for the IMF which is the International Monetary Fund. Now the IMF is a big bank that we didn't know much about, but this guy goes on to tell us that somehow this IMF has now become the largest bank in the United States and that just recently the Bank of the Federal Reserve of the United States of America has gone into what he called a `triple default;' that is, the government has been given three chances to pay some debts that is has owed, but has failed to come up with the money each time. He flipped out one of those laptop computers that gives off this bright light so that we could see the screen showing on the wall, and it's full of pie charts and other mumbo-jumbo. So naturally we wondered what the heck he was talkin' about. "Eventually he tells us that the federal government has failed to institute an `austerity program' so that interest payments on the eight trillion dollar federal debt can be made in a more timely manner. He also tells, and this is real important, that in order to operate and remain `liquid,' the federal government has had to sell bonds to rich foreign dudes so that they can afford to pay the interest on the federal bonds that have been bought and sold outside the U.S." "Sort of like taking out money on your credit card to pay off the interest on another credit card." "Ya, if you can rack up eight trillion on your credit card. Don't quote me on this stuff; I'm sure I'm getting some of the facts wrong, but this is basically what I remember. Anyways he gets to the part that really affects us. He says that in order to pay off all our debts, which I guess included us so-called taxpayers, a group of banks had been authorized by the federal government to seize control of the assets of the U.S. government and that we would have to continue working and give over half of our earnings to what he called `major creditors' of the taxpayers of the U.S." "Half? And you were making like three dollars an hour? I figure that would have netted you like $1.50 an hour." "Try fifty cents an hour. It turned out that another foreign bank owned something called the Social Security Entitlement Corporation which by law could take out as much money from our paychecks as it wanted in order give its principal investors a steady return. Of course, when we retired we would get something, too, NOT. The whole thing was a Ponzi scheme, but it was the law, so what could you do? Anyway, the talk finally concludes away >from all this stuff and gets to the heart of the matter. It turns out that because of something called the `Federal Domain,' all of our houses and all of the land has been sold to a group of banks in Europe and would be resettled by the new owners within a month, and we had only a few weeks to get everything together and move out. The guy in the gym was their representative and he flashes up a chart that tells us what we are going to have to do. Like all of our cars and TVs and cameras and stuff had also been bought up so we are going to have to leave them behind `in good condition,' We could only take the clothes on our backs and enough food and medicine that we could carry in our hands. Then it got really scary. `Martial law' or something like it had just been declared in our county which meant that we were under orders not to leave town until a truck came by our house that would take us to our new place of work." "New place of work?" "Oh yeah. The foreign guy was now showing some film off of his laptop, and it's really old looking, kind like someone spliced together an old 16mm movie. And it shows all of these people in a big bunkhouse somewhere, and they're smiling and making beds and walking through gardens and collecting vegetables. And the guy continues talking, and says that a new federal law has just been passed which requires us to work, even if we have lost our homes and have no place to go, and that we would be given an interview to find out what our assignments were. Like, if you had some electrical work in your background you would be assigned to the military, but if you were some high-schoolers like us, you would be taken to a bunkhouse to work at some job and later, if your attitude was real good, you would be eligible for something called The Plan." "The Plan?" "Yep. All we knew at the time was that it had something to do with that wacked out televangelist Brother Jim who was getting rich bilking old people out of their money. This was the first time we had heard that he was wrapped up in all this federal mess, and we was sure that he was making a mint off this, too. Made sense, though. This Jimbo character was on TV a lot, in one of those infomercials tellin' people how they could make a killing in Real Estate with such tactics like finding somebody who was having trouble making their house payments and walking in front of their house in the winter and falling and getting a lawyer to sue them for doctor bills and settling out of court for the title to the house. But a lot of people were like, `but Brother Jim is so good and wants to help America, we should listen to him, he is one of the great spiritual leaders of our time' and all that crap. "Now you can be sure that some of the kids were real smart-asses upon hearing this, and a couple of them yelled out that they wouldn't leave. And then comes the Mark Shipman incident." "Very famous incident indeed!" "Ya, Mark jumps up and starts yelling `My Dad says you're a bunch of Nazis and if you come anywhere near our house he's gonna pump you full of lead!' So the speaker's face gets real red and he steps outside for a moment and motions someone in, another guy with a pinstriped suit, only he's got some really small machine gun slung over his shoulder, and the speaker points his finger at Mark and the machine-gun guy writes something down and leaves. Right after that, we were lead out of the school yard by some other guys with guns and told that we couldn't return there anymore. Two days later there was a big fire a couple of blocks away. It was the Shipman house. Someone had lobbed a bomb into the house in the middle of the night. My parents had heard similar things like we did, only they were visiting the houses one by one while we were in school and posting guards at the end of the streets. Dad had been told that he would be checked on to make sure that nothing happened out of the ordinary. I still had to go to Big Burger to work, only now it was something like eighty hours a week, and we had cameras watching us. I tried to find out if I could stay at Big Burger while the town was being evacuated, but they said no. We were installing machines that would wait on customers and deliver their food to them much faster than we could, and was told that we would be gone in a couple of weeks as soon as the transition was completed. It was at this point that Bif started to play an important role in our lives." "Now for our audience, explain just who Bif is today." "Right now Bif, er, I mean General Keegan, is Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Mexico Defense Battery, and if you've been accessing the paper lately you know that we have him to thank for the recent defeat of the Aryan Nation attack on the state of Arizona. Back then, though, we had no idea. No idea at all what Bif was. You see, back in high school, Bif was what we called a `Hacker.' And in a small town like ours, being a hacker got you made fun of, big time. And Bif didn't have many friends, so he spent a heck of an amount of time in his uncle's basement, even when the weather was nice, doing God knows what with telephone wire and old game computers and broken CD recorders and whatever junk he could scrounge from his uncle's recently defunct radio repair business. Now, I didn't understand Bif very well, but we had become friends about a month before the infamous gym speech because he had stolen a password needed to operate the burger computer where I worked and showed me ho to scam food from the place. One night after I managed to sneak home, I got to talk to Bif after he snuck into our basement. He had some other guys our age follow him in and said that from now on we were going to hold regular meetings at three a.m. Boy did Bif change." "Change?" "You had to have been there. He started showing us all these maps of the county, using terms like `Info-terrorism' and `Surveillance Weakness Zones.' Turns out that Bif was finally able to use the Ham radio after all. A group of hackers in Toledo had figured out a way to scramble the conversation and disguise it as white noise, something called `analog least-significant bit stegonography,' now don't ask me what that means. To decode the conversation, you had to know someone personally who would hand you the secret code. Then, any form of secret code, like PGP, had been made illegal, so Bif and his friends were really risking their lives. "We talked very low, for hours, with me only understanding the gist of the matter, but come dawn I was officially a member of The Plan." "The Plan?" "We adopted that Brother Jim crap as a code name for our own activities so that if someone overheard they wouldn't be able to guess what we were up to. Now Bif had formed some sort of a secret network, kind of like a `hacker patrol' that was going to strike back when the trucks arrived to take us away. You got to believe that back then, hackers striking back against those guys sounded way ridiculous, but for some crazy reason, I believed that Bif knew what he was talking about, and that he was our best chance for escaping this situation alive." "Hmm, clarify to our audience why you used the word `alive'." "Bif had found out through his network that cities all over the Eastern U.S. were having the same things happen to them. We didn't have phone service, newspapers, or anything coming into town that told us what was happening. If you watched TV, all you got was crap. Even the local station was showing nothing but those damned infomercials to prevent from going out of business. But Bif could get real news over his computer, which he had disguised to look like an old typewriter to prevent the SPA from nabbing it. Bif was learning about some real bad riots going on in Cleveland and Detroit. He even had some news about the trucks that were supposed to take us away. Well, it turns out that some of the trucks were actually being driven into large fenced-in areas where the cargo portions would be stacked on top of each other and the cab would unhook and drive off for its next load. As for jobs, only a small amount of those trucks would get driven into Michigan where they would drop off people to work at some real horrible slave labor jobs. Bif said he learned that the population of Ohio was considered to be `surplus' and that only those people who had skills were given real jobs. Of course, this was causing a lot of violence. And strange uniforms. It turns out that some of the European police who were being sent here to quell some of the riots were wearing a uniform adapted >from a three-piece pin-striped suit, right down to a fake white boutonniere in the lapel. Of course, all us town folk had been forbidden to travel out of town, and this bought us time. They were working in a line running down the state, with our town having only three weeks `til Judgement Day. Bif's contacts in Cleveland had given him all sorts of technical material to go on, and he was sure that we could get most of the town to escape into Kentucky, which still had an intact government, if we had a well timed plan." "And the timing couldn't have been better." "The three week deadline actually placed us on the date right after Halloween which was going to have a new moon! Bif had said that this advantage was important, and started describing how we were going to wear camouflage under our Halloween outfits and use the annual party as a diversion. The outfits were also going to help us move people out of town through a relay system. That is, one youngster would come up to our door wearing an outfit and hand it off to someone in the basement, who would take his place and leave the house with candy. He would then give some candy to the guard watching the end of the street with his infrared camcorder. The kid would then duck around back and put on another costume, one matching the next trick or treater coming up to our house. In this way we could cycle more kids into our house where we would have a leaf fort coming out into the woods out back. A lot of details to work out at the time. The key part of the plan was to pretend that we were happy townsfolk who were ignorant of our fate and happy to spend one last Halloween with friends and family. We even invited the head of the new real estate holding company to the costume party! Bif had also developed something called an EMP bomb which was a stick of dynamite wired into a large coil so that when the bomb went off, a powerful radio wave would shoot out and fry out the computers and handi-talkies our guests were using. Bif and his assistants had maps that showed where everything was located, and which wires had to be snipped and which radios had to be fried in order to throw them off. We decided that the Bell Tower going off at Midnight would be the signal for our first attack, and I was placed in charge of tracking down the chief security for the bad guys and knocking them out after the electrical grid into town was severed. As you now know, when we actually did go through with our Plan, things really got out of hand." Disconnect Notice Possible Security Breach Shutdown until further notice ___________________________________________________________________________ Eric Miller is a graduate student at Michigan State University where he studies the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) in architectural and product design. Other academic interests include Artificial Life, Virtual Reality, and Cyberspace culture. Recreational interests include mountain biking and cross-country skiing in Michigan's beautiful forests, painting, and composing electronic music as well as writing fiction. "Microchips Never Rust" will be continued next issue. millere@student.msu.edu ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ B A C K I S S U E S WWW Back issues of Quanta as well as information may be found on the Webserver at the following URL: http://www.etext.org/Zines/Quanta. Pay Services On CompuServe, issues are available in the "Zines from the Net" area of the EFF Forum (accessed by typing GO EFFSIG). On America Online, issues may be found in the PDA section under Palmtop Paperbacks. 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No further use of their works is permitted without their explicit consent. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is purely coincidental. ___________________________________________________________________________ If you like Quanta, you may want to check out these other magazines, also produced and distributed electronically: Cyberspace Vanguard Contact: cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu Cyberspace Vanguard is a new digest/newsletter, containing news and views >from the science fiction universe. Send subscription requests, submissions, questions, and comments to xx133@cleveland.freenet.edu or cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu. InterText Contact: intertext@etext.org InterText is the network fiction magazine devoted to the publication of quality fiction in all genres. It is published bi-monthly in both ASCII and PostScript editions. The magazine's editor is Jason Snell, who has written for Quanta and for InterText's predecessor, Athene. Assistant editor is Geoff Duncan. The PostScript laserprinter edition is the version of choice, and includes PostScript cover art. For a subscription (specify ASCII or PostScript), writer's guidelines, or to submit stories, mail Jason Snell at jsnell@etext.org. InterText is also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.etext.org (/pub/Zines/Intertext). If you plan on ftpingthe issues, you can be placed on a list that will notify you when each new issue appears --- just mail your request to intertext@etext.org. Unit Circle Contact: unitcirc@netcom.com The brainchild of Kevin Goldsmith, Unit Circle is the underground quasi-electronic `zine of new music, radical politics, and rage in the 1990's. "Quasi-electronic" bcause Unit Circle is published both as an electronic magazine (in PostScript form only) and as an underground journal, in paper form. If you're interested in receiving either format of the `zine, send mail to Kevin at unitcirc@netcom.com. Thank you, thank you very much.