DIARY OF A PROGRAMMER Part I by C.A. Rumbaut [Copyright 1991 by C.A. Rumbaut, uploaded with the author's permission. This story originally appeared in Unshaved Truths #1] 02/20 - It happened again, another panic attack. What could be happening? Am I losing it? One moment I'm doing fine and the next I'm scared and panting and stifling a scream. My heart races. The world around me dissolves into I don't know what. I'm glued to my chair but want desperately to bolt. And then it's over and I'm left sweating, confused, hoping no one has noticed. 02/26 - Agoraphobia: maybe I could go with that as an explanation. But it's not exactly like that. Besides, a name doesn't really explain anything. I've never had any problems like this before. I'm not the phobic type. I should go see somebody. I should go talk to someone. Maybe my psyche has a leak and these are nightmares leaking into my waking mind. 02/29 - Another bad one today. Well, they're all bad. This time was different; I saw something. I was staring at the monitor screen, trying to figure out a problem in some program. I lost my balance or something, I felt I was falling, then hurtling through space. I mean I knew I was still in my cubicle but I was moving through something, fast and out of control. I had that same desperate panic for a moment but then it was all over and I got my bearings back pretty soon. It's a good thing, too, because a co-worker walked in right then with a problem. So it's not just straight fear, now; it's taking form. Maybe that's good. maybe it will show its face that way. 03/10 - It's some sort of test. That's what I've decided. It's a test and the computer has something to do with it. I'm not going crazy. Well, maybe I am but not from repressed childhood memories or some festering psychic wound the nuns left behind. It's the computer! The attacks only come when I'm looking right into it. When I'm away from it, I'm OK. When I'm sitting by it but talking to someone, nothing happens. If I'm staring at it lost in thought, lookout. That's when I'm open, that's when I get hit. 03/13 - I think I'm getting it under control. I'm not freaking out like before. When the attack comes now I know what to do. It's like flying. I'm in some sort of hover craft, moving through an obstacle course. I turn left, dip, bank steeply, yaw, do whatever to get through it all in one piece. I say that as though I was in some danger, which is what it feels like. But I never hit anything no matter where I "move". The slightest eye movement causes a change in direction. I try to keep my eyes steady and use peripheral vision to see the layout of the course as it unfolds. One stray flitting of the eyes and I'm tumbling, and then it's even harder to steady my gaze. At the end, I feel relieved and a little victorious. Still, I'd like to know what the dickens is going on. 03/25 - I haven't been able to tell anyone (but you, diary) about the attacks. Does this happen to anybody else at work? I've been trying to feel people out on it and I get stuff about eyestrain and neck strain and carpal tunnel syndrome - that sort of thing. Also concerns about electromagnetic pulse. We don't use shielded monitors, so we're definitely exposed. I really don't think there's a connection between EMP and what I've been going through, but I have pushed my monitor as far back as possible from the keyboard. It hasn't helped. The attacks still happen, and I'm sure getting tired of them. I spend all workday thinking one's about to happen. 04/16 - I was singing in the shower today. I heard a little echo when I hit a certain note. I sang the note again, loud and sustained, and it made the whole shower stall resonate. Then it hit me: I get a similar sensation right before an attack hits. I think my skull bones start vibrating, only at a very high frequency. It's like I'm hearing something but not through my ears, and then interpreting it visually and kinesthetically as these short "flight" runs. Could it be that my brain activity sometimes generates a certain frequency which something in the computer hardware is tuned to? Then feedback from the computer somehow triggers the specific routine of brain patterns that comprise my attacks? Maybe I'm the only one at the office that generates that specific brain wave frequency. I thought it might be something peculiar about my workstation, but it happened again the other day when I was working on Diane's machine while she was off. 04/20 - "Is everything all right?" Bob asked today at work. "Sure. Fine. Why?" I said. "You've seemed kind of distant lately... like you're involved in something. Family problems?" "No, nothing like that." I tried to sound nonchalant. "You're not thinking about quitting and going elsewhere, are you?" "Not to worry, Bob. I'm staying." He didn't bring it up again but I'm sure people at work can tell something's going on. And it's getting worse. It's not the attacks themselves, but I'm thinking about them all the time, trying to figure out what they mean. And I'm finding myself in that mode of peripheral awareness throughout the day. My skull seems to be vibrating all the time, like someone's trying to tune in to me in ultra-sound. As soon as I get in to work I start losing my regular consciousness and start tapping into some subliminal mode of communication with or through the computer system. 05/01 - I told Sarah today. I trust her not to tell anyone else at work. Also I thought she might have experienced something similar or known someone who had, since she knows a lot of people in the agency. No such luck. In fact she may not even believe everything I've told her, but it's such a relief to have told somebody. At least there is one person I don't have to hide it from, one person who can understand my change in behavior during the last few months. Not that she really understands what's happening to me - I don't. But she sees the grief it's caused me and how it's taken over my work life. "Why don't you go to a counselor?" She was trying to be helpful. "You could get initial sessions free through the insurance. It's supposed to be confidential." I didn't have a good answer. Maybe feeling possessed by a strange force has made me paranoid. The longer I go the more I feel that there is some intelligence behind all this, that someone is doing this to me. A counselor is not trained to see it that way. 05/12 - Over the last two weeks there's been only one flight (I almost wrote fright) attack. But at the same time I feel like I spend the whole day maneuvering around obstacles, steering with my will. My way of addressing problems is changing. Instead of stepping back and analyzing I just jump in and see if I can get out the other side without falling on my face. I seem to be in control from moment to moment, but it's almost like someone else is writing the script. Also I feel monitored continually. I still think the computer system is at the root. Perhaps all the time I thought I was programming it, it was programming me. 05/13 - I was at a party last night, and I helped myself to the wine punch more than once. Even after feeling a buzz coming on I couldn't shake off the feeling of what I've come to call my computer possession. Then this guy told this story about what had happened to him and it was hilarious. I don't remember how it went, but I laughed my head off. I mean belly laughter came rolling from my gut again and again until it turned into a coughing fit. As I wiped my eyes and recovered myself I realized I was back! My old self! No sign of possession. I danced on air the rest of the night, kissing women, hugging men, laughing every chance I got. Even at work today the mood lasted - until around noon. Then it seemed like the walls took on a different color and before long I had shifted to a different gear. I'd only gotten a temporary reprieve. 05/21 - Sarah told me today about Bill, the guy with the goatee who smokes a pipe in the cafeteria. Some things he had mentioned a while back made her wonder if there was a connection with what I'm going through. The thing about Bill, though, is he has this strange way of conducting a conversation. He is always throwing out barely audible asides. He doesn't seem to expect you to respond to them, even though he sometimes chuckles. He can talk straight about a topic for only so long and then these sarcastic non sequiturs start coming, and the conversation may or may not survive. He sits by himself a lot. I looked him up at lunch and struck up small talk. I mentioned VDT eyestrain, to ease into the subject. "It's not like the optical nerve doesn't go straight into your brain, either," was his throwaway line. "You ever feel like your head is vibrating?" I ignored his last response. "Put a tuning fork up to up and make it ring," he said under his breath, chuckling. Was he only joking or was he trying to get at something? I asked him if he'd heard of a computer simulation of flying around obstacles where you didn't use a joystick or mouse. "If you're not going through a tunnel you don't need tunnel vision, do you?" This time Bill looked me straight in the eye. "Where can I get a copy of the game?" I kept trying to draw him out. "Don't know what song you're going to hear when you tune in to a station, do you?" "Bill," I said, "we gotta talk." 05/22 - We met at a cafe tonight. It had just started raining as we got there. I told Bill everything. As I suspected, he's been going through the same thing, only for two years. I asked him how he could stand it. "Laugh," he said, and he laughed. "Laugh with abandon; it pops it like a balloon. Marx Brothers films are priceless. I rent them all the time, also the 3 Stooges. Live comedians, too - I go to Esther's, Laff Stop, you know. Anything for a good laugh, anything. Then there's the springs." "Barton Springs?" I was guessing. "Yeah. Gotta put your head under, though. Best is to dive at the deepest part, stay under as long as you can stand it. It wipes you clean, sometimes for days." "Why Barton's?" "Am I an authority? Who knows anything about this?" "Well, Bill, somebody's got to know something!" He was my only hope and I wasn't ready for him to dry up. He nodded slowly, looked me in the eye, then said: "Here's what I think is going on. You know how when you have to change a program you didn't write you'll sometimes rework the logic in it? And it's not to make it work right, it's because you have your own style. Sometimes you can tell who wrote a program just by reading the source code. Well, I think our programs are being read by a master program that analyzes them and looks for certain kinds of logic. I don't know what the criteria might be - maybe the efficiency of the code, the clarity of the logic, who knows? Now, pinpointing you as the author of these types of programs is only the first step. "The second step is to monitor your brain activity as you think. This is done by your work station, by a special device that's installed in it. You ever looked inside your PC? Well, I have, and I can tell you the function of every chip and device on the motherboard, except for a little red box close to the CPU. It looks like an odd-shaped ROM but it's connected to its own PIA, which in turn runs a wire to this little grey cylinder at the edge of the board. I removed one of these cylinders from a PC they had opened up on first floor and took it to a guy I know who's into microelectronics. He'd never seen one, but he took it apart and found it was mostly just a tiny speaker. Strange thing is, a speaker like that would only emit sound too high to hear. That's the third step, though, and I'm getting ahead of myself." It kept raining outside. We kept talking. He corroborated my suspicion that a certain specific brain wave frequency triggered off a program in the computer that produced a pattern of ultrasound both perceptible (if you were close enough to the PC) and meaningful. The hallucinations he had were a little different. He felt more like he was underwater, and he could feel heat from the obstacles in the course. The heat radiation helped him steer. He had some theories about how eye movement and steering were connected, but I interrupted him with the question that kept looming larger in my mind: What do they want from us? "We're guinea pigs!" Bill said it like it was obvious, and I realized that it was. "We're being used for some kind of brain research, I suspect. Bill sat back and lit his pipe, as if he'd just given the definitive statement. "That's occurred to me too," I said, "but why is it kept secret? Why is it done against our will? And what interest would a human service agency have in this sort of thing?" "That's just it: it's not the agency." We talked until the cafe had to close. As glad as I was to have found Bill and as much as he was able to tell me, I was still not satisfied. Most of what we talked about were theories, guesses, possible scenarios. We had very little in the way of hard facts. Questions outnumbered answers 10 to 1. Still, I now know that Bill has put up with this for two years. He hasn't gone crazy and he hasn't been whisked away to some underground lab to have wires inserted into his head. I'm going to find out what's going on. In the meantime, I can live with it. [To be continued!] .