Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

W >> Winn Schwartau >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

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"Here's the live sex show," the Spook said invitingly. "Pretty
wild. Look at the pictures." Scott leaned over to view a set of
graphic photographs that would have caused the Meese Commission
on Pornography to double dose on its Geritol.

"Damn, they show this stuff on the street, huh?" Asked the sur-
prised Scott. He wasn't naive, it was just quite a shock to see
such graphic sexuality in such a concentration and in such an
open manner. On Sundays when the Red Light District is closed
until 6 P.M., many Dutch families use the window dressings as the
textbook for their children's' sex education. "No, let's keep
going," Scott said unconvinced he would partake of the pleasures.

"Isn't this great?" The Spook blurted out as Scott was looking
in the window of one of the hundred plus sex shops. "I just love
it. Remember I was telling you about freedom in Amsterdam? It's
kind of like the hacker's ethic."

Spook was going to equate sex and hacking? "Is that 'cause all
hacker's are hard up?" Scott laughed.

"No, dig it." The Spook suddenly stopped to face Scott. "Free-
dom, total freedom implies and requires responsibility. Without
that, the system would collapse into chaotic anarchy. Hacking is
a manifestation of freedom. Once we have cracked a system, and
are in it, we have the freedom to do anything we want. But that
freedom brings responsibility too, and, just like with sex so
freely available, legally, it must be handled with care." Spook
was sermonizing again, but was making more sense. His parallels
were concise and poignant.

They walked further into the heart of the District and the Spook
was constantly distracted by the quantity of red lights over the
basement and first floor windows. He wanted to closely examine
the contents of every one. In each window was a girl, sometimes
two, clad in either a dental floss bathing suit or a see through
penoire. Scott enjoyed the views, but thought that the Spook was
acting somewhat obsessively. The calm, professional, knowledge-
able hacker had reverted into a base creature, driven by hormonal
compulsion. Or then again, maybe they were just stoned.

"I gotta pick the right one, just the right one," the Spook said.
"Let's see what else is available. Got to find you a good one,
too."

Scott shook his head. "I don't know . . ."

"What, you don't wanna get laid? What's the matter with you?"
The Spook couldn't believe his ears.

The sheer intensity of the omnipresent sexual stimulation gave
Scott the urge to pause and ask himself why. The desire was
physically manifest, but the psychology of hookers; it wasn't his
style. In the three years since he and Maggie had split, Scott
occassioned to spend time with many ladies. He had kept himself
in reasonable shape without doing becoming fanatic about it, and
his high metabolism helped keep the body from degenerating ahead
of schedule. So he had had his share of companionship and oppor-
tunity, but right now he was enjoying the freedom of his work and
the pleasures that that offered. If a woman was in the cards, so
be it, but it was not essential at the moment.

"Nothing, it's just that, well, I prefer to know the lady, if you
know what I mean."

"Oh, no problem!" The Spook had an answer. "That's an all night-
er and will cost you 1000 guilders."

"No, no," Scott said quickly. "That's not it. I just don't get
a charge from hookers. Now, if some friends set it up to like a
real pick-up, at the beach, a bar, whatever, as long as I didn't
know. That could prove interesting. Hmmmm." He smiled to
himself. "But honestly? I been a couple of times, just for
giggles. And boy was it giggles."

Scott laughed out loud at the memory. "The first time it was a
friend's birthday and a bunch of us put up enough to get him laid
at the Chicken Ranch." That was the evening Scott had lost
almost two hours of his life on the drive back to Vegas. He
speculated to himself, in private, that he may been abducted by
alien creatures from a UFO. Right.

"I know the place," added the Spook.

"I was designated drunk driver so I drove him over to the high
desert in the company van, about an hour's drive. Before we went
in I insisted on a couple of beers. He was getting laid and I
was nervous. Go figure. At any rate, the security cameras let
us in and two very attractive ladies in slinky gowns lead us over
to the couch. They immediately assumed that we were both there
for, well, the services. I was too embarrassed to say no, that I
wasn't interested, but then out came a line of 20 of the most
gorgeous girls you could imagine. The madam, I forget her name,
stepped in and begged our indulgence for the interruption. It
seems, she said, that the BBC was filming a documentary on broth-
els, and they had a camera crew in the next room, and would we
mind too terribly much if they filmed us?" Scott feigned extreme
shock.

"Filmed you? For TV? Even I won't go that far," the Spook said
impressed with Scott's story. "My movies are all first run
private. Alphabetical from Adelle to Zelda."

"Not film that, pervert!" He had pegged the Spook. "They only
filmed the selection process, the initial meetings and then the
walk down the hallways to the bedrooms."

"So what'd you do?" The Spook asked with interest.

"We did the camera bit, Jim got laid and I take the fifth."

"You chicken shit asshole," hollered the laughing Spook.

Scott took that as a compliment from the male slut to whom he was
speaking. "Listen, that was a long time ago, before I was mar-
ried, and I don't want it to screw up our divorce. Three years of
bliss."

The Spook kept laughing. "You really are a home boy, huh?" He
gasped for air. They continued down a side street and back up
the Oude Zijds Achterburgwal, the other main canal in the Dis-
trict, so Spook could check out more windows. Those with the
curtain drawn indicated that either services were being rendered
or that it was lunch hour. Hard to tell.

As they passed the Guys and Gals Sex Shop, the Spook abruptly
stopped and stepped back toward the canal. He whistled to him-
self in appreciation of the sex goddesses that had captured his
attention. In the basement window was a stunning buxom brunette,
wearing an invisible g-string and bra. She oozed sexuality with
her beckoning lips and fingers when she spotted the Spook's
interest. In the first floor window above the brunette were two
perfectly voluptuous poster blondes, in matching transparent
peignoirs. They too, saw the Spook, and attempted to seduce him
to their doorway. Scott was impressed that the ladies were so
attractive.

"Some sweet meat, huh?" Said the Spook ogling his choices. "Well
are you or aren't you?" He asked with finality. "I'm all systems
go. You get first choice: 2 from window A or 1 from window B.
What'll it be?"

Scott responded immediately. "I got a safer way. There are five
billion people on the planet, and at any given time at least a
million have to be having sex. So all I have to do is tune into
the Planetary Consciousness, the ultimate archetype, and have an
orgasm anytime I want."

"You're a sick mother," laughed the Spook. "Transcendental group
sex. At least I can tell the difference between pussy and pray-
ing." He asked Scott again to pick a girl.

"I have to pass. It's just not my thing." Spook glared at him
askance. "No really, go ahead. I'm a bit tired, I just arrived
this morning." He had forgotten to take his 3 hour afternoon nap
and it was close to 6 in the morning body time. "I'll see you at
the conference tomorrow. All right?"

"Fuckin' A!" The Spook beamed. "I get 'em all." He motioned to
the girls that he would like to hire all three of them, at once.
They indicated that that would be a fine idea. "Listen, I don't
mean to be rude, but . . ." the Spook said to Scott as he pro-
ceeded up the stairs to meet the female triumvirate. He turned
briefly in the open doorway with two of the girls tugging at his
clothes. "Scott! What happens if the medium or the message gets
sick? Think about it." The door closed behind the Spook as the
girls shed their clothes.

"Medium? Jeez you are really fucked," laughed Scott. "Pervert!"
He called out as the window curtains closed.

Scott got directions to the Eureka! from a live sex show sales-
man. For all the walking he and the Spook had done, miles and
miles, it was odd that they had ended up only a few blocks away
from the hotel. Ah, but that would figure, thought Scott. The
Sex Starved Spook was staying at the Europa around the corner
from Sin Street. Scott rolled a joint of his own to enjoy for
the pleasant evening promenade home along the canals. Spook,
what a character. In one breath, perfectly rational, but then
the Jekyll and Hyde hormone hurricane. Wow.

What Scott Mason could never have imagined, indeed quite the
opposite, was that the Spook was unable to respond to the three
very attentive ladies he had hired for that very purpose. Noth-
ing. No matter what stimuli they effected, the Spook's brain
could not command his body to respond. His confusion alternated
with embarrassment which made the problem only worse. Never
before had the Spook had such a problem. Never. One of the
ladies spoke to him kindly. "Hey, it happens to everyone once in
a while." At hearing that he jumped up, removed the loose condom
and zipped his pants while screaming, "Not to me. It doesn't
happen to me!"

Scott did not know that the Spook bolted into the street and
started running, in panic, away from the scene of his most pri-
vate of failures. He ran all the way, in fact beating Scott to
his hotel. He was driven by the terror of the first sexual
failure in his life. The Spook felt emasculated as he sought a
rationalization that would allow him to retain a shred of digni-
ty.

He was used to commanding women, not being humiliated by them.
What was wrong? Women fell all over him, but why this? This of
all things? The Spook fell asleep on the top of his bed with his
clothes on.

Scott did not know that he would not be seeing the Spook tomor-
row.

* * * * *

Wednesday, January 6
Washington, D.C.

"Eight more!" exclaimed Charlie Sorenson into Martin Templer's
face. "What the hell is going on?" The private office on twenti-
eth and "L" Street was well guarded by an efficient receptionist
who believed she worked for an international import export firm.
Consulting offices were often easier for senior intelligence
officials to use for clandestine, unrecorded meetings than one's
own office. In the interest of privacy, naturally.

The two NSA and CIA agents from "P" Street held their clandestine
meeting in a plain, windowless office meagerly furnished with a
desk, a couple of chairs and a file cabinet.

Charlie turned his back on Templer and sighed. "I'm sorry,
Marty. It's not you." He paced to the other side of the small
confining room. "I'm getting pressure from all sides. That
damned FBI guy is making a nuisance of himself. Asking too many
questions. The media smells a conspiracy and the Director is
telling me to ignore it." Sorenson stood in front of Templer.
"And, now, no, it's not bad enough, but 8 more of the mothers go
off. Shit!" He slammed his fist onto the desk.

"We can explain one to the Pentagon, but nine?" Martin asked
skeptically.

"See what I mean?" Sorenson pointed.

Sorenson and Templer attended the ECCO and CERT roundups twice a
week since they began after the first EMP-T explosion.

"These are the Sats?" Templer leaned over to the desk. Corners
of several high resolution satellite photographs sneaked out from
a partially open folder. Sorenson opened the folder and spread
the photos across the surface. They weren't optical photographs,
but the familiar map shapes of the central United States were
visible behind swirls and patterns of a spectrum of colors. The
cameras and computer had been instructed to look at selected
bandwidths, just as infrared vision lets one see at night. In
this case, though, the filters excluded everything but frequen-
cies of the electromagentic spectrum of interest.

"Yeah," Sorenson said, pointing at one of the photos. "This is
where we found the first one." On one of the photos, where an
outline of the United States was visible, a dot of fuzzy light
was visible in the Memphis, Tennessee area.

"That's an EMP-T bomb?" asked Templer.

"The electromagnetic signature, in certain bandwidths is the same
as from a nuclear detonation." Sorenson pulled another photo
out. It was a computer enhanced blowup of the first satellite
photo. The bridges across the Mississippi were clearly visible.
The small fuzzy dot from the other photograph became a larger
fuzzy cloud of white light.

"I didn't know we had geosyncs over us, too," Templer said light-
ly.

"Officially we don't," Sorenson said seriously. Then he showed
his teeth and said, "unofficially we have them everywhere."

"So who was hit?"

"Here?" He pointed at Memphis. "Federal Express. A few hours
ago. They're down. Can't say when they'll be back in business.
Thank God no one was killed. They weren't so lucky in Texas."

Sorenson pulled a couple more photographs and a fuzzy dot and
it's fuzzy cloud mate were clearly visible in the Houston area.
"EDS Computers," said Sorenson. "Six dead, 15 injured. They do
central processing for hundreds of companies. Every one, gone.
And then here." He scattered more photos with the now recogniz-
able fuzzy white dots.

"Mid-State Farm Insurance, Immigration and Naturalization, Na-
tional Bank, General Inter-Dynamics, CitiBank, and the Sears mail
order computers." Sorenson spoke excitedly as he listed the
latest victims of the magnetic cardiac arrest that their computer
systems, and indeed, their entire organization suffered.

"Press?"

"Like stink on shit."

"What do they know?"

"Too much."

"What can we do?"

"Get to the bottom of this before Mason does."

****************************************************************

Chapter 19

Thursday, January 7
Amsterdam, Holland

The following morning Scott awoke without telephone intervention
by the front desk. He felt a little on the slow side, an observa-
tion he attributed to either the time difference, not the jet
lag, or the minor after effect of copius cannabis consumption.
The concierge called a cab and Scott told the driver where he
thought he was going. Ya, no problem, it's a short ride.

To Scott's surprise he found himself passing by the same sex
emporium where he had left the Spook last evening. Scott reminded
himself to ask Spook how it went. The taxi stopped in front of
an old building that had no signs of use. It was number 44, but
just in case, Scott asked the driver to wait a moment. He walked
up the door and finding no bell, rapped on the heavy wooden door.

"Ya?" A muffled voice asked through the door.

"Is Jon there? This is Scott Mason." Scott knowingly looked at
the cab driver.

"Who?"

Scott looked at the number again and then remembered what Jon had
told him. "Sorry. This is Repo Man. Kirk said you'd expect
me."

"Ah, ya! Repo Man." The door opened and Scott happily waved off
the cab. "Welcome, please, come in." Scott entered a dark
chamber as the door closed behind him. "I am Clay, that's French
for key."

Wonderful, thought Scott. "Thanks for the invite. Is Jon here?"

"Everyone is here."

"I thought it didn't begin until eleven," Scott said looking at
his watch.

"Ah, ya, well," the Dutch accented Clay said. "It is difficult
to stop sometimes. We have been here all night."

Scott followed Clay up a darkened flight of steps. At mid land-
ing Clay opened a door and suddenly the dungeon-like atmosphere
vanished. Inside the cavernous room were perhaps 200 people,
mostly men, excitedly conversing and huddling over computers of
every imaginable model. The high ceiling was liberally dressed
with fluorescent tubing which accentuated the green hues from
many of the computer monitors. The walls were raw brick and the
sparse decorations were all computer related. Windows at the two
ends of the building added enough daylight to take some of the
edge off of the pallid green aura.

"What should I do?" Asked Scott looking around the large room
which was probably overcrowded by modern safety counts.

"The Flying Dutchman said he will see you a little later," Clay
said. "Many of our members know Repo Man is a reporter, and you
are free to look and ask anything. Please enjoy yourself." Clay
quickly disappeared into the congregation.

Scott suddenly felt abandoned and wished he could disappear.
Like those dreams where you find yourself stark naked in a public
place. He felt that his computer naivete was written all over
his face and he would be judged thus, so instead he tried to
ignore it by perusing the walls. He became amused at the selec-
tion of art, poster art, Scotch taped to the brick.

The first poster had Daffy Duck, or reasonable facsimile thereof,
prepared to bring a high speed sledgehammer in contact with a
keyboard. "Hit any key to continue," was the simple poster's
message. Another portrayed a cobweb covered skeleton sitting
behind a computer terminal with a repairman standing over him
asking a pertinent question. "System been down long?"

One of the ruder posters consisted of Ronald Reagan with a super-
imposed hand making a most obscene manual gesture. The poster was
entitled, "Compute This!"

Scott viewed the walls as if in an art gallery, not a hackers
convention. He openly laughed when he saw a poster from the
National Computer Security Center, a working division of the
National Security Agency. A red, white and blue Uncle Sam,
finger pointing, beckoned, "We want YOU! to secure your
computer." In an open white space on the poster someone wrote
in, "Please list name and date if you have already cracked into
an NSA computer." Beneath were a long list of Hacker Handles
with the dates they had entered the super secret agency's comput-
ers. Were things really that bad, Scott asked himself.

"Repo Man?"

Scott turned quickly to see a large, barrel chested, red haired
man with an untamed beard in his early forties approach him
rapidly. The man was determined in his gait. Scott answered,
"Yes . . .?

"Ya, I'm the Flying Dutchman," he said hurriedly in a large boom-
ing voice. "Welcome." He vigorously shook Scott's hand with a
wide smile hidden behind the bushy red face. "You enjoyed Am-
sterdam last night, ya?" He expected a positive answer. Sex was
no crime here.

"Well," Scott blushed. "I must say it was a unique experience,"
he said carefully so as not to offend Holland's proud hosts.
"But I think the Spook had more fun than I did."

The Flying Dutchman's hand went limp. "Spook? Did you say
Spook?" His astonishment was clear.

"Yeah, why?" Scott asked.

"The Spook? Here? No one has seen him in years."

"Yeah, well he's alive and well and screwing his brains out with
three of Amsterdam's finest," Scott said with amusement. "What's
the big deal?"

"The Spook, ya this is goot," the Flying Dutchman said clapping
his hands together with approval. "He was the greatest phreak
of his day. He retired years ago, and has only been seen once or
two times maybe. He is a legend."

"A phreak?"

"Oh, ya, ya. A phreak," he said speaking rapidly. "Before home
computers, in the 1960's and 1970's, hacking meant fighting the
phone company. In America you call it Ma Bell, I believe. Cap-
tain Crunch was the epitome of phone phreaks."

These names were a bit much, thought Scott, but might add a
sense of levity to his columns. "Captain Crunch?" Scott asked
with skepticism.

"Ya, Captain Crunch. He blew the plastic whistle from a Captain
Crunch cereal box into the phone," the Flying Dutchman held an
invisible whistle to his lips. "And it opened up an inside line
to make long distance calls. Then he built and sold Blue Boxes
which recreated the tones to make free calls."

"Phreaking and computer hacking, they're the same?"

"Ya, ya, especially for the older hackers." The Flying Dutchman
patted himself on the stomach. "You see hacking, some call it
cracking, is taking a system to its limit. Exploring it, master-
ing the machine. The phones, computers, viruses, it's all hack-
ing. You understand?"

"Spook called hacking a technique for investigating new spontane-
ously generated lifeforms. He said a network was a living being.
We got into quite an argument about it." Scott sounded mildly
derisive of the theory.

The Dutchman crossed his arms, grinned wide and rocked back and
forth on his heels. "Ya, ya. That sounds like the Spook.
Cutting to the heart of the issue. Ya, you see, we all have our
reasons why we hack, but ya, Spook is right. We forget sometimes
that the world is one giant computer, with thousands and millions
of arms, just like the brain. The neurons," he pointed at his
head, "are connected to each other with synapses. Just like a
computer network."

The Flying Dutchman's explanation was a little less ethereal than
the Spook's and Scott found himself anticipating further enlight-
enment.

"The neuron is a computer. It can function independently, but
because it's capacity is tiny, a neuron is really quite limited
in what it can achieve alone. The synapse is like the network
wire, or phone company wiring. It connects the neurons or com-
puters together." The Dutchman spoke almost religiously as he
animatedly drew wires and computers in the air to reinforce the
concept. "Have you heard of neural networks?"

"Absolutely," Scott said. "The smart chips that can learn."

"Ya, exactly. A neural network is modeled after the brain, too.
It is a very large number of cells, just like the brain's cells,
that are only connected to each other in the most rudimentary
way."

"Like a baby's brain?" Scott offered.

"Ya, ya, just like a baby. Very good. So like the baby, the
neural net grows connections as it learns. The more connections
it makes, the smarter it gets."

"Both the baby and the network?"

"Ya," Dutchman laughed. "So as the millions of neural connec-
tions are made, some people learn skills that others don't and
some computers are better suited to certain tasks than others.
And now there's a global neural network growing. Millions more
computers are added and we connect them together, until any
computer can talk to any other computer. Ya, the Spook is very
much right. The Network is alive, and it is still learning."

Scott was entering a world where the machines, the computers,
were personified, indeed imbued with a life of their own by their
creators and their programmers. A highly complex world where
inter-relatedness is infinitely more important than the specific
function. Connections are issue. Didn't Spook remind him that
the medium is the message?

But where, questioned Scott, is the line between man and machine?
If computers are stupid, and man must program them to give them
the appearance of intelligence, then the same must be true of the
Network, the global information network. Therefore, when a piece
of the Network is programmed to learn how to plan for future
Network expansion and that piece of the Network calls another
computer on the Network to inquire as to how it is answering the
same problem for different conditions, don't man and machine
merge? Isn't the Network acting as an extension of man? But
then, a hammer is a tool as well, and no one calls a hammer a
living being.

Unto itself it is not alive, Scott reasoned. The Network merely
emulates the growth patterns and behavior of the cranial highway
system. He was ready to concede that a network was more alive
than a hammer, but he could not bring himself to carry the analo-
gy any further yet.

"That gives me a lot to think about," Scott assured the Dutchman.

"Ya, ya, it does. Do you understand quantum physics?"

What the hell would make him ask that question, thought Scott.
"I barely passed Quantum 101, the math was too far out for me,
but, yes," he laughed kindly, "I do remember the basics. Very
basic."