Microchips Never Rust          "...even worse was the Klan robe. Who
                                would have thought that Iran would
Part 2                          embrace the Ku Klux Klan. They still
                                looked at the late President Duke as
Eric Miller                     being some kind of a god. Yeck."

"October 5, 1957. Huge headline in today's newspaper that the first satellite is circling the earth. For a minute I lay on the bed with a pounding heart. Some events really hit me hard. During the first forty years of my life, I admired technology. When Wernher von Braun told me about his future projects, such as a flight to the moon, I was fascinated. But Hitler, with his technologically-based doctorship and his assembly-line extermination of the Jews, shocked me so deeply that I can never again be so naive about technology. Every advance nowadays only frightens me. News like this account of the first satellite makes me think of new potentialities for annihilation and arouses fear. If they fly to the moon tomorrow, my fear will be all the greater."

-- Albert Speer, "Spandau -- The Secret Diaries"

Hanson looked at the office chimp and waved his hand. The chimp responded with a very mechanical nod that betrayed a complete lack of spontaneity.

"Do you speak English?"

Suddenly wide eyed, the chimp typed as fast as his fingers could hit the keyboard. It was obvious that the clumsy fingers hit and missed keys almost at random. On the overhead screen could be read the message, "No, but I can hear and type English very well." The chimp grunted in a whoo-whoo, obviously delighted at the personal request to know his abilities.

Okay, thought Hanson. Link this together. Bob and Susan, like its all one joke. The chimps, the menial tasks. He also noticed one thing. The chimp typed things that came out in perfect English, even though you saw his fingers do things like hit two keys at once. An Intelligent keyboard. All at once it hit Hanson.

"Do I have my own account?"

"Of course," signaled the chimp.

Hanson ventured forward with a comment, "I can tell that you're very good with computers. I could really use your help." The chimp ooped with delight. Several administrators walked past the desk in the lobby, but they paid no attention to what they were doing. Another fact was confirmed: none of these people ever carried folders or paper of any kind. The two or three chimps who scurried in and out carrying files received no attention. Hanson felt comfortable enough to assume the chimp's place behind the workstation. A press of the `Flocculating' icon prompted `type your question, please, and enter your name.' "What is my apartment like?"

The video that popped up showed a small, split-level white townhouse. A saccharine voiced cooed softly from the speaker, "Welcome to North Campus Village, faculty section. Every effort has been made to match your personnel profile with your surroundings. Please convey any changes you would like made to us immediately. Remember that new housing assignments will require 2 weeks to be processed." The camera traveled through the street to show each little unit with its own plot of Kentucky blue grass out front. The narrow sidewalks lead from the front door to the crisp line of curb that lined immaculate black asphalt streets. Everything in the video looked so brand new that Hanson suspected a simulation was at work. "You will be pleased to know, Dr. Hanson, that your new neighbors have been selected for your intellectual stimulation. Programmers, artists and writers on the faculty live in a one block radius from your house." A close-up on the front door showed a box-like contraption wheeling itself in. "For your convenience, a complete food preparation and house cleaning unit is on all call 24 hours a day. For your driving convenience, a car has been matched to your personality profile; we believe you will enjoy this limited edition 1996 Lamborghini Diablo." A steering wheel too! The video stopped. The chimp pressed the "Get Help" option and pointed at Hanson's bowlcut. "Right." A request for an appearance stylist was typed after Get Help. And another thing. There is no way I'm going to wear a Brother Jim monkey suit, no offense to you, chimp. I may be a professor, but I wear what I wear. A request was typed out to find the nearest clothing store. The Image Boutique on North Lake Drive would do for both the haircut and clothes. The uniform: Prewashed jeans, Hawaiian shirt, black leather jacket and running shoes.

The mail icon on the view panel blipped a few times. The chimp pounded the keyboard and up scrolled a screen with the message: "Art! Art! Good Buddy. We've got to talk. Call me at A-2042 tonight. Mari and some friends want to meet you. I've got a great idea for an album, need your help. Faculty get together this Friday too. See ya. Dr. Bill Britten, Department of Physics." The chimp looked at the panel and pulled his lower lip. A command prompt at the bottom read "Message #2: Address 2Hanson --For your eyes only." The chimp scowled and pressed the paper print button and handed the sheet to Hanson without looking at it. This letter was much less cheerful than the other.

"Mr. Hanson: Congratulations on your new appointment. Must see you immediately. Please go to South Campus library at once. Enter door and tell guard that you're with `Research.' Sit at table by window. Wait for message from us to be hand delivered. We know who you are and have news which is of urgent interest to you. We are friends. Please be careful." A black block of characters read "To dispose, Press here twice in rapid succession." Tap tap. The paper dissolved in a small cloud of black ash. Part of it landed on the chimp's head and had to be wiped off. Hanson knew something was up. `We are friends. Please be careful.' Ya, right. People were always pressing him for favors. But it was his doing favors that kept him out of the worst camps. But he felt like forgetting message two and heading North to his new house. But this certainly would come back to haunt him. Better get it over with.

"It has come to our attention that some confusion has resulted over the proper Canadian usage of the term American. After great pains were apparently affected by the Reich Senator from Georgia to include us in his definition of what was covered by the term American, we have been prompted to deliver by official channels the current state of this usage.

Gentlemen, upon hearing the word American, we are proud to accede that this nation consists only of Washington administered states, German occupied Ontario and Montreal, and the newly independent Western states. We of Northern Canada and rebel Alaska no longer use this name to refer to ourselves and would greatly appreciate it if your correspondence would reflect this fact from now on. Thank you."

-- UN Security Council address from the consul of Commonwealth of Independent Arctic States.

Hanson made a quick exit out of the Administration building. A chimp in a white golf cart had been waiting for him and after a 5 minute trip through a spruce covered trail, the two of them stopped at the trash strewn edge of the homeless village. He motioned the chimp to go into the village, but a fear stricken look at the ragged shuffling figures inside and he knew that he would have to continue on foot. The chimp burrowed his head back into his shoulders and sped off in the cart.

Hanson had been dropped off at the old University sidewalk that ran north to the Bell Tower and Library. In its present state, the sidewalk would challenge the most rugged mountain bike; the cement slabs had broken up into complete rubble at several points and were covered over by long grass and weeds. Old black and white photos painted a picture of the walk in better times: smartly dressed young men and women, argyle socks, plaid skirts, carrying books. Classes chosen without the approval of a career officer, careers chosen at freedom.

Oh, Central in our hopes and dreams

To thee we work and strive

To shine a light upon ourselves

So that we a path may shine...

Sigh. The old Bell Tower could be seen up the path. Like everything in sight, it had been appropriated in some way by the homeless. Three youths were at the top of the tower inside the cement Tudor battlements that closed in the roof. An old oil drum made into a barbecue was spilling out smoke. Squint your eyes just a bit and it looks like you've signed up as a free-lancer in Richard II's army, advancing on the French. The beauty of the once-grand lawn had evolved into the squalor of a trash strewn sea of mud. A hundred crude huts made out of cardboard and scraps of wood littered the area. Shuffling old women in long mud-stained skirts, wild-haired teenagers and stubbly faced old men milled around. An old man stood at the entrance of a cardboard hovel to Hanson's right.

"Bom Dia, Herr Professor!" squeaked the old man. Hanson started to say "What?" but quickly glanced at the blue polyester encircling his sleeves, realizing that the appearance of crisp blue polyester signaled authority, especially on the campus. Hanson replied in greeting, using the Portuguese he had learned in Brazil. What came back from the old man was a strange form of Pidgin, a kind of half German, half Portuguese mixed with American street slang. Hanson could only finish the conversation by nodding in pretend understanding and quickly left.

The Library presented a strange sight. Like most other buildings in town, most of the windows had been long smashed out, or removed and replaced by the ubiquitous sheets of tarpaper that the nazi occupation government was so keen on using. Most of the base of the brick on the first level was covered over with a mass of lean-tos filled with old women selling food rations and recycled household appliances. A kid was in one tent trying to sell potential customers on the idea of using a waffle iron as a clothes ringer. In another, partially-opened boxes of spray paint held up a cardboard sign which read, "Spray on Hair. Real Cheep. Used by Pope Ron."

The warm air of the afternoon left a kind of festive feeling, and in spite of the constant background smell of burning tires, the heavenly smell of garlic, sage, olive oil and ginger wafted in from several woc fires. Even the old fountain was still up and running in the front plaza and several village kids ran in and splashed around. A PVC pipe wired to the fountain filled the water buckets of several people standing in a line.

Hanson reached the front entrance where a teenaged guard stood watch at an old school desk. He was bald with an M. C. Escher design tattooed to the top of his scalp. A pitbull/rottweiler mix guard dog eyed him lazily.

"I'm with research." The dog's ears perked up as Hanson spoke.

"Oh, go inside and sit down. Someone will be down to meet you."

The first available seat was a chair by one of the few remaining windows on the first level. Hanson could see the guard and dog from behind as well as the view down into the homeless village. After 15 minutes a small figure darted up to the guard and his dog, a Capuchin monkey with plastered back gray face hair and alert blue eyes. The monkey wore a small denim backpack from which he pulled a biscuit. The biscuit got tossed into the air where it was caught and devoured by the dog, who happily wagged his tail. The monkey darted quickly into the entrance and stopped momentarily to eye Hanson before running off into the dark hallway of the unlit interior. Hanson's eyes became used to the interior darkness. All around him could be seen stacks of old books, magazines and bunk-bed mattresses. Piles of tin-cans, loops of wire and neatly stacked corrugated boxes lined the walls. Most of the old book stacks were still there, and at first glance they seemed to hold to capacity dozens of old-style bound books. The stacks of mattresses betrayed the fact that the Library opened its doors as a homeless shelter during the worst winter months. Closer to the window, and more readable in the dust-filtered light were several scattered piles of full color posters. Hanson bent down to pick one up and positioned it front of him. The top logo read:

"Join the Advanced Guard. Become part of a revolution."

Two figures made up the body of the poster. One was an Iranian extremist who held his fist into the air. He was wearing the Klan robe with a Prussian cross emblazoned on the chest. The other figure seemed to be an American youth holding a rifle in both hands. A maniacal smile was on the youth's lips; the unnatural appearance of it lead Hanson to conclude that the smile itself had been morphed into the original photograph. Poor guy, he was probably a war prisoner to begin with. But even worse was the Klan robe. Who would have thought that Iran would embrace the Ku Klux Klan. They still looked at the late President Duke as being some kind of a god. Yeck.

"Hidden inside our advance to a new production system is a potential for social change so breath-taking in scope that few among us have been willing to face its meaning."

-- Alvin Toffler

Hanson's reverie on the complex web of international events was broken by the appearance of the monkey who jumped out of the darkness. A tiny hand thrust out a card which read, "Follow me." Reluctantly, Hanson left his chair to follow the monkey in the dark interior. A door at the extreme end of the hall opened up, and with it came enough light to navigate by. The light allowed closer examination of the book stacks. Each shelf contained a large pile of books that had been shellacked together with a tough polyurethane glue. As book burning was considered too passe and reminiscent of violent times past, the new censors at Central had sent most of the Library's books to a factory where they underwent `archiving preservation' so that `future generations could enjoy them.' Unfortunately, the process turned the books into little more than unopenable plastic bricks but they did look really nice on the shelves. Lately, though, censors worried a little less about the issue, as Compressed English was now widely adopted in grade schools and kids shown an example of 20th century English usually gave up in despair over the contorted arrangement of double letters and strange vowel combinations.

Hanson and the monkey ascended a staircase leading to the upper levels. The stairwell was filled with large piles of coiled-up copper wiring, old style cable television wiring, and telephone cords. Apparently the spoils of `Operation Cut and Snip' were ending up in the Library. Stepping onto the third level, the pair navigated through ever larger piles of junk and old magazines, including, incredibly, a crumbling issue of Popular Electronics from 1968, the title do-it-yourself construction project: "Build your own Theremin!" Hanson bent down and picked up an old yellowed paperback book titled "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." The book randomly fell open to a page which read,

"By the end of September 1944, some seven and a half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third Reich. Nearly all of them had been rounded up by force, deported to Germany in boxcars, usually without food or water or any sanitary facilities and were put to work in the factories, fields and mines. They were not only put to work but degraded, beaten and starved and often left to die for lack of food, clothing and shelter."

Hmm. Try as you might, you can never predict the past with much accuracy.

The monkey hissed impatiently. Hanson dropped the book and followed it into a corridor that once held the office suite for the Library staff. The randomly dispersed junk contained piles of old black-and-white TV's, `all in one' stereos, including 8-track, and old yellowed book pages. At last Hanson was led to a room containing several beaten old oak desks and book shelves lined with many bits of flotsam and jetsam. On one of the desks an old soldering iron was burning. A radio was quietly blasting out the 5th movement of Philip Glass's `Satyagraha'. The acrid smell of burning solder, old tube electronics burning red-hot, and burning coffee grinds was music to Hanson's nose. A figure seated with his back to the door, silver hair spilling past shirt collar, suddenly swung around to face a shocked Hanson.

"Dr. Owen! I thought you were dead!"

vi. xinitrc
default NeWS = talk.eliza.net
From:
Prison.net;section=info.crime.felonius;status=limited

"I think the one thing that really pushed me over the edge was all these old people telling me how I should help people who were less fortunate than I was. But I would be the one showing up at their house with a truck and some tools and telling them to join me `cause some friends and I were going to help a couple of families fix up their houses. But these old dudes would be sitting at their computers saying, `no, I can't, I've got to finish this social services grant application.' They would apply for money that would let them do studies "On the root causes of poverty among the poor." And I'd say shit, we already know why they're poor. And they would get twisted out of shape because I didn't join their cause, and they thought the best way I could help the poor was to sit at some desk filling out their paperwork. That really got to me. All these hypocrites telling me that by spending all day writing on 8-1/2 by 11 sheets of paper they're helping the poor. You know what's really sick? That guy who stands behind the counter handing out free food, and these so-called crusaders won't invite him to their parties cause he's not really doing important work. I'll take one of those food counter guys over ten of them any day. Man, these older guys talk a good talk, but when it comes time to do any real work, like helping build a clinic downtown, they're off at one of their congratulation dinners, and if they're not at one of these dinners, they're off zonked in front of the tube watching some show telling them how `significant' they are."

"Why are you here?"

"Well, you couldn't help the poor then, not legally and in the way you wanted to cause you had to get permits and write all this shit. So I started saying this phrase to workers my age which went:

`The next time they tell you to pick up a pen, pick up a hammer.' And everyone knew that it meant to stop doing the paperwork bullshit and start doing something with your hands and your tools."

"And then what happened?"

"Well, The Information Crimes Division of the Secret Service arrested me for `promoting lawlessness and destruction.' I had this BBS that you could log into to exchange info on places that needed help. And at my court trial they claimed I was promoting anarchy."

"Were you?"

"Man, the anarchy was already there long before I showed up. We were just trying to divert the stream of bad anarchy into the stream of good anarchy. You know, the kind you can live with and feel good about."

run pgm
symbolic analysis=12% time spent: years=15 subject not rehabilitated request for parole denied close
logout

"After awhile I started to realize that there were three Newsgroups that I went to first: alt.cyberpunk, sci.virtual-worlds, and soc.culture.brazil. Somehow these three groups read together give off a strange synergy that cannot be seen individually."

-- The Author

"Picture if you will, a giant bubble over 100 billion light years in radius. We, on Earth, are at the center of this bubble. When we start to look out over the expanse of this bubble, we see that the further a galaxy is from us, the more its light has shifted into the red part of the light spectrum. Because we seek to explain the origin of the universe in a way that resembles our everyday physical reality, we say that the red shift is proof that all matter in the universe is hurtling from a central point; this Doppler shift is to us proof that the universe was created from some ancient Big Bang.

But we look closer at the situation and see many strange paradoxes. As an example, our instruments tell us that the Universe is humming with the background radiation left over from the Big Bang. When we look closer at what the source of this radiation is, is it possible that these extreme low frequencies are themselves the images of galaxies whose red-shifts are so extreme that they are detectable only as low-frequency radiation? And as this background radiation is detectable from all sides, can this not be caused by the large number of galaxies laying beyond the bubble of visibility of which the Earth is at the center?

Our astronomers tell us that the visible universe accounts for only 10 percent of the matter that can be detected. Can this other 90 percent also consist of those galaxies whose red-shift is so extreme that their images cannot be resolved?

But the greatest issue that comes under scrutiny is this: that the very motion which is said to be proof of the motion caused by the Big Bang is the doppler shift held detectable by the red-shift.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have, through close physical scrutiny of the universe and through our new space based telescope, uncovered irrefutable proof that the red-shift is not a Doppler shift, but a shift in the wavelength of light itself as it crosses the vast distances of the Universe. The massive gravitational force of the Universe itself causes light to shift into the red spectrum over a prescribed distance. True to the original theory of Einstein, this shift is caused by the topology of a closed universe which refracts light in the same way that a spoon viewed in a glass of water appears to have a bent handle. It is a form of gravitational refraction that cause the frequencies of light to shift toward the red. When we on the Earth look at a galaxy many billions of light years away, we see a galaxy whose light frequency waves have been physically slowed down by the effect of crossing our great sea of matter. Likewise, someone on that particular galaxy looking at our Milky Way would see that same red-shift. Formerly, scientists maintained that this universal red-shift existed because the universe expanded at such an immense and uniform speed that all forms of matter accelerated from each at the same shift.

We can now feel confident to say that the background radiation is caused by the uncountable seas of galaxies beyond our so called visible Universe affected by this principle. In centuries past, scientists said that it was impossible for the Universe to be infinite because at night we would look into a blindingly bright sky. Because of our new principle, we can say that it is possible for the Universe to be infinite; beyond 100 billion light years, the light and energy of the stars becomes so shifted that we no longer see or detect them. It is this model that we now prefer over the "Big Bang" theory. As for the creation of matter itself, one can now argue that if the "Big Bang" was needed as point from which matter was created, it is just as acceptable to believe that matter arose from an infinite amount of points in space arising from the turbulent quantum fabric of the Universe itself."

-- Lecture given after the Nobel prize in Physics award given to Paulo

       Morais for his publication and verification of the Theory of
       Electrodynamic Entropy

Paulo Morais stepped onto the gangplank that separated the office dome from the scientific complex. The plank was usually off limits for safety reasons, but Morais had a universal key. Besides taking a much needed short-cut, the key allowed him to feel for himself just how efficient the space cooling effect was. Inside the dome there was a fairly light breeze, upper 70's, normal humidity. Pressing the key into the lock and onto the outside of the dome caused a heat blast of warm, moist upper 90's Amazon Jungle air. Morais crossed the twenty feet into the next dome and looked upward to admire the superconductive webbing that ran from strut to strut inside the geodesic structure. One of the many discoveries of room temperature superconductivity was the space cooling effect. Woven strands of conducting fiber into a mosquito net pattern and apply current. Water in the air immediately condenses on the web and runs off at the bottom. In a dome, the sudden condensation creates a cool blanket of dehumidified air that sinks to the floor. In the sweltering heat of the Amazon, the domes made living and working inside a pleasant experience.

Morais entered his lab. A young Yanomami Indian looked up from a stack of papers and said, "Bom Dia, Herr Professor!"

Morais studied the youth quietly. "Now don't tell me you're trying to learn Portuguese."

"Nah. I think I'll stick to learning how to speak English with a thick Russian accent."

"Did you ever find out what `Wilco' means?"

"Like in `Roger Wilco' and `A-OK'? I think the two terms are interchangeable. I don't know why someone would say `Wilco' by itself."

"If it's just more slang, don't bother to transcribe it."

Morais and his assistant had inherited a huge pile of documents that were sold to the Brazilian government by an Icelandic salvage operation. As a favor to the Amazonian Technical Institute, Morais offered to interpret the meaning behind many old stacks of documents that described the rise and fall of the American space program.

"You know, Dar. This makes for rather depressing reading. Sort of like reading how the Romans built the world's most elaborate sewers and aqueducts and then a couple of centuries down the road deciding that its not even worth the bother to take a bath anymore."

Morais' watch beeped a few times. "Paulo. Get over to Barlow's office right away. They have some news about the Brother Jimmers that you're going to find really interesting."

"The Boom-era damage has been particularly severe among the hardest-pressed 13ers. The gap between the young rich and the young poor, bridgeable for the Boomers, has become a yawning canyon. Minority-group claims have lost much of their `60s-era luster and leadership. Inner cities, then perceived as morally solid and economically improving, are now social Dresdens of ruined families, gang crime, and sudden death. Boomer teens who got in trouble heard political leaders call for social services; 13ers who get in trouble mainly hear calls for boot-camp prisons - or swift execution."

-- Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, 13th Gen.- Abort, Retry, Fail?

open line 12
execute data link
300 baud cache and forward
1700 KHz rider signal

`O.K. O.K. That was the `Who' won't get fooled again. Won't Get Fooled Again. Sorry. I keep having to remember to `Capitalize All Proper Names'. You are connected to the voice of Hogger Radio.

Hogger Radio. Coming to you from the voice of Free Colorado. Free Colorado, where no man is in debt. Had to give a plug. A gentle listener wrote in (sorry again, I can't receive snail mail) askin' "Hogger" Why do you often sound so bad?' and I have to say back tha this is a 65 in 1 electronics kit from Radio Shack, and I'm patched into a satellite by God knows what type of wire. But they keep me on the air cause I'm the only one who knows how to talk to the right people and let them talk. That's right. I listen to them and they vibrate my ear drums. And my eardrums vibrate a micro-microphone that gets get decompressed over a... well you get the idea. I don't always. But you get to hear good talk. And I always love what I'm hearin'. And I get a letter (remember, I can't get letters) but I know someone wants to know: Hogger, when you sound so bad, how can I make you sound better? Well, easy, son. You get an old wire coat hanger and you stick it on the end of that old crystal set that Big Burger Fun Meal for the month of August told you how to build out of old scrap radio parts. And you take the hanger and pull it out so it looks real square, and when you're listenin' to Hogger its goin' to sound so much better, cause that old coat hanger hooks up real nice to the 1700 Kilohertz wave that I'm a trying to blast out of my eardrums.

And I'm here in my mobile studio, which is nothing more than little ol' me and I'm sitting at a bar stool, and if you listen real hard, and you used that little coat hanger trick I told you about, you can hear the pool sticks and waitresses clinking glasses. I can't tell you where I am, cause we have to be real secret about this. Some of you who are listening might think this is really illegal, and sure enough, just a couple of ya have been paid to find out where we are and come after us and give us the ol' deep six, so all I'm going say is that we're in a bar that gets real busy in the ski season and has the best suds this ol' dude has ever tasted. But enough talk. I'm here in the old back room with none other than Bobby DelRay. You know who is he is. Bobby likes to ski and has a kind of reckless streak in `im and so when I walks up to hims and say "How you like to be on the old Hogger show?" this ageing rebel couldn't pass it up.

"Bobby, how ya doin'!"

"Pretty good. I guess."

"Now let me ask you. The New York Times once called you `The First Rebel of America's Second Civil War.' How does that make you feel."

"Nothing much, I guess. I'm here in beautiful Colorado, and that's what counts."

"Now you were a part of the Great Kentucky Fried Hamburger Rebellion of 2005. Can you fill us in on what happened then?"

"Well, Joe. Joe? I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to call you Joe. But anyway, I was only in high school back then."

"And what was going on then?"

"Well. I was, as you know, living in southern Ohio. And me and most of my school buddies worked odd jobs to get whatever money we could back in those scarce days."

"Things pretty tough, huh?'

"Oh yeah. Anyway, I was working at a place called Big Burger, and some kids I knew then worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Shop-N-Go, and a bunch of other food type jobs. And as you can guess, things were real bad, cause the state had been given the go ahead to lower the minimum wage on account of the hard times."

"And how much was that?"

"I know we made $5.00 an hour for awhile, but that was when we were real lucky. The state then lowered the minimum to what they called a $3.35 an hour `business hardship' wage, which you know, back in 2005 was really bad. The state also had some law that said you could require a worker to stay longer than 40 hours a week and not have to pay them. Something called `a competitive labor overhead reduction.' We were real pissed and called relatives to see if anything outside of Ohio was better, but it seemed like everyone you called was in the same boat."

"Were there any other jobs?"

"Not really. My old man had been laid off from a machine shop that specialized in overseas CNC contracts. But the factory got bought up by someone who laid everyone off. We found out it was one of those things where a competitor buys the factory just to eliminate the competition. My dad was kind of lucky though. He headed straight home as soon as the overseas owner laid everyone off. Joe Gullwright was not lucky. He and about twelve other men took rifles and tried to take over the place. They stayed there for 3 days, and you know, not even twelve men can keep up a good guard shift for 3 days straight. So at the night of the third day a bomb got lobbed into the machine shop and everyone was gone at that point. My parents said be careful, just do everything they say right now."

"And you did nothing?"

"At that point, everyone agreed that we should just stick to our jobs and just keep our ears peeled. We had word that anyone trying to leave town got arrested. And they got arrested by these company security police types. When we contacted the county sherriff's office, we got some type of recorded message that they were no longer in service. My dad and the mayor try to get through to Mark Thompson's house to see if he was still working for the sherriff's office, but we got his wife who said that Mark had been taken to a state training center in the middle of the night, and she was sick worried cause Mark said he wasn't allowed to call or write or until after he had completed his special training. We were all taking mental notes at that time, and we didn't like what we saw. I was still able to sneak home enough French Fries and burgers that my family didn't starve though."

"And speaking of starve, I heard you really had some food problems."

"Oh yeah. Everyone on our block had gotten together to get all the lawns turned into gardens, and since it was July we had finally gotten some food. And one Sunday, when I finally could take off some time from Big Burger, I was out in the garden watering everything from an illegal tap I made in the ground cause they had shut off our house water. Anyway, this lady drives up in a really fancy sports car, like a black German Porsche, the kind we never get to see in southern Ohio. And she steps out, and she's really young and pretty, maybe 25. And she gets out and looks at everything with this scowl on her face, and I'm sure it looked like hell, cause we had piles of dirt everywhere and had fenced in a couple of goats to a side pen and a had a couple of chicken wandering in and out of the house. And she walks up to ask me if I live here, and she tells me that she is in charge of the real estate development association and I ask what does that have to do with us? and she says everything, since the county approved her company buying up the houses on our block and that we had two months to move out, and in the mean time, it was illegal to do anything to the lawns and house without their permission."

"Whew. You must have pissed!"

"Hell ya! The next day we tried to get to the bottom of things, but it was the same story for everyone. The county assessor's office had been purchased by a multinational firm, but you could never find out who was in charge."

"Didn't you ever try to call out state to get help?"

"Try? Ya! But the phones had this strange problem. You could call long distance only if you had an account with a long distance company. If you tried to get more details, like `Can I make this call and charge it to my bank account or regular long-distance provider?' they would either get pissed or tell you some gobbledygook about "We can not help toll customers who do not have an account." If you asked for details on how to get an account, you heard stuff about how you had to have an account to get an account. Garbage like that. Bif had a ham radio and he came up to us one night after I had a fight with the new Big Burger manager who was this 14-year-old kid who knew nothing about how to do anything and got really pissed if you talked to him. Anyway Bif is talking to us and it's a beautiful night and the fireflies on the grass are making the stars look like they're coming down from the sky, and I can tell by Bif's voice that something's up, and he tells us that when he tries to contact someone on the ham radio no one responds, and there's no one talking. And he only listens now cause he's afraid something out there is got the people who were talking. But he doesn't hear anyone from Ohio."

"But he must have picked up other states?"

"Oh yeah. But for some reason, almost all the eastern U.S. was silent. He would hear from time to time someone saying "Anyone out there? Please respond." But Bif said he could tell it wasn't a real ham radio operator and that it might be a trap. He also picked up some stuff from way West, but real hard to understand. Kind of cryptic, mostly numbers, like that strange voice that used to recite a bunch of numbers in Florida, but no one could tell what they were for. Bif heard a couple of sentences once, though, like: "I can see how many tanks they have." and "Make sure they bury the lines."

"Tell us about Samson."

"Marty Samson owned the gas station on the main drive, and just like everyone else, like Vernon Smith who had to sell Big Burger to the 14 year old snot, Marty was broke and had to sell out to these mysterious company folk who had just moved into town. Anyway, Marty says one night he was working, they hired him to be manager, and he sees this big truck move in for a tank of diesel. But the front of it looks real strange. And of all things, the truck is yelling at him, "Please put in the nozzle."!?! Jeez. The truck is talking to Marty and tells him to accept a credit card, and Marty makes sure it's legit and the truck is legit. Well, I read Popular Science when it gets left behind in town, and I now start to piece things together. This is one of those `fuzzy-logic' trucks that everyone is writing about since they can work 24 hours a day and get through their route much faster and safer."

"And what about high-school? Oh. Excuse me. Just bring another pitcher."

"I was getting to that. So I'm back at school which is only 4 hours a day because the district went broke and the teachers are volunteer, and we can get more work in anyways, when Bart Studer calls all of us in from a beautiful sunny day where we have somehow gotten an old frisbee and are playing a game of Guts and we are yelling `Shit. Now they're going to tell us they can't afford to let us have a goddam frisbee'. So we get hustled into the old basketball gym and Bart is looking real nervous and we all feel sorry for him, cause who would take on the hassle of being Principle for no pay. After about 10 minutes all the students are in the seats and under the backboard is this big guy who is wearing a black pin-striped suit, and he has blond hair and a really deep tan, not some farmer tan like we got."

"And I'll bet he had quite a speech to give you guys."

"More like the most bizarre bullshit I ever heard in my life. Anyway, everyone was real silent, cause all the families had been having all this strange stuff happening and we knew this guy was connected to it somehow."

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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.

millere@student.msu.edu