He scratched the back of his neck again. “Like, you know, what sex, what age. Like, for example, you can rule out a rhinoceros in its forties, right?”
“Right. Got it. And that's the menu?”
“Sure. That's the program going through its tricks. It takes your request and searches the data base. And it's harder to screw with.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to rewrite the program.”
“I don't have any doubt that it's hard. But you
He chewed on an already ragged thumbnail. “Sure,” he finally said. “I could do it on these disks.”
“Then we're in business.”
“But that's not going to do you any good.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would only be here. To make a difference in the way the
“Why is that hard?”
“Jeez,” he said, “how do I find the original computer?”
“Well,” I said, “is that so difficult? I know where it is.”
“You mean you want me to go there?” His eyes were wide.
“No,” I said. “I certainly don't.”
“Then I'd have to call it,” he said. “You know, on the modem? And I haven't got the phone number.”
I sat up and pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. Birdie had given me something, after all. On the paper it said: 555-0645. “Morris,” I said, “how about that wine?”
He got the wine from his mother and gave it to me, and I drank part of it, and then he climbed onto his stool and fed the phone number into his modem and we both waited. There was some high-speed beeping as the modem dialed the number, and then a sustained shrill pitch. Some text appeared on the screen.
“We're in,” Morris announced.
The screen said: hope every little thing is okay, y/n?
“What's y/n?” I asked.
“Yes or no,” Morris said.
“Hit Y,” I said.
He did. The screen cleared, and new words appeared.
“Now it gets dicey,” Morris said.
“We know some codes,” I said. “Try turkey.”
Morris typed turkey. The computer beeped again and one of the disk drives whirred. “Look,” Morris said. “It's writing to our computer.”
“So?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that we've got a carbon-copy system going. Whatever we ask for gets bounced back onto our b: drive, right after it goes into their system.”
“Why would they do that?”
‘They must have some sort of automatic callback to confirm an order.” He was chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Like if Turkey, whoever that is, orders something special, the computer on the other end calls back as soon as Turkey rings off to make sure that the order is legit.”
“Don't touch any keys,” I said.
He rubbed his wrists. “Why not?”
“Because you're not Turkey. If we place an order and their machine calls Turkey back, the order won't be on his computer.”
“Whoopsy-daisy,” Morris said softly, his hands poised above the keyboard like someone about to attack a Chopin polonaise. “So how the hell do we get out?”
“You're asking
“I've only fooled with this bulletin-board stuff,” he said. “You know, blond girl, long legs, wants to meet short dark guy? Not that there's ever anything like that, but that's what you always hope for.”
“Why long legs?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.
“Awww,” he said, “you don't have to ask that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Suppose there's only short-legged dark-haired girls?” Actually that would probably have been my preference, but it didn't seem important at the moment. “How do you get out?”
“Ummm,” Morris said.
“Without leaving a fingerprint, so to speak.”
“You hang up.” He sounded reluctant.
“So hang up.”
“But we just got
“The wrong way. Hang up.”
He gave me a stubborn glance. “Jeez,” he said.
“Hang up.”
He did something to the keyboard, and we were looking at a blank screen again.
“I don't know,” he said, pushing the wheeled stool back from the computer. He scratched his head.
“Me too. Do you think anyone knows we dialed the number?”
His mouth twitched to the left and he transferred the chewing operation to the inside of his lower lip. “Well, we didn't place an order. Probably not, unless the sysop was on-line.”
My fingers began to itch again. “What's the sysop?”
“System operator,” he said. “We probably didn't write to the disk on the other end because we didn't ask for anything, but if the sysop was on the line, you know, sitting there watching the computer, he knows that someone calling himself Turkey tried to get in.”
I got up off the bed, shoved my hands into the rear pockets of my jeans, and paced the messy little room. Woofers followed anxiously, cocking her head up at me to see where I was going next. Unless I was badly mistaken, the sysop was sitting in West Hollywood in the center of a baroque coil of intestines. “So there's something missing,” I said.
“I wasn't thinking.” Morris looked shamefaced. “We need the sysop's code name. Without it, we're just some schmuck trying to place an unauthorized order.”
“And with it?”
“Are you kidding? With it, we can fool around with everything. The computer on the other end will think we're the boss.”
“Morris,” I said, “let's assume we can solve the problem. Here's what I want. I want everyone who dials his computer into the data base to get something other than the menu. First thing when they connect, I want them to get the picture we're going to put into your scanner. What's more, I want a message to go with the picture you're going to scan. And I don't want just one picture, I want four, and I want them to follow each other at twenty- second intervals, with a different written message under each one. Now, tell me, can you do it or not?”
“Piece of cake,” he said. It was one of his favorite phrases, “But only on these disks.”
“You've got the phone number,” I said. “With the phone number you could do it on the other end.”
“But I haven't got the sysop's code name.”
“If you had the code, you could do it?”
“Sure. Like I said, if I had that, the system would be open to me. I could rewrite the whole applications system.”
“I think you've got it,” I said.
“The sysop's code name?”
“Think about it,” I said. “I could be wrong, but think about it.”
He concentrated hard enough to look middle-aged. “I don't know,” he finally said. “I don't know what it could be.”
