textfiles/magazines/TANJ/tanj.064

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|                            There Ain't No Justice                           |
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|                                     #64                                     |
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                              - Phreak Encounter -
                             by Roger MacBride Allen
                                typed by Cool One

Barringer had always been bothered by phones. Not just because people
called as he stepped into the shower, or because he sometimes got trapped
on hold and was forced to listen to Muzak, or because wrong numbers always
waited until he was asleep. It was more than that.

He was bother by the whole idea of telephones, by the way they made people
act, by the elaborate  and unwritten rules of behavior and even language
that had evolved to accommodate a collection of wires and plastic.

He was thrown when he was told someone was "at" a certain number, as if
they actually lived, or at least existed, at some locus inside a switching
center, some point inside a computer defined by an area code, an exchange
prefix, and a four digit number.

None of this would have mattered so much if Cliff Barringer had worked for
someone beside the phone company. On the other hand, if Barringer had
worked for someone else, or had even worked for another department of C&P
Telephone, he probably wouldn't have given much thought to the Meaning of
Phones. He capitalized it that way in his head, the way some people
capitalize the Meaning of Life.

But even working for the phone company wouldn't have mattered so much, so
long as someone at the bank had had better handwriting.

A year before, Barringer had gotten a car loan. Since he signed for the
loan on the fourth of the month, on the fourth of each month thereafter he
was expected to pay up. But some unknown person had scribbled down the "4"
so it looked like a "1," a much more common date for a loan payment. That
mistake had been taken root somehow, become enshrined in some file, and
now, promptly at 10:00 on the third of each month, a Mr. Phillip Ramsey
called  Barringer from the bank to tell him that his car payment was
forty-eight hours overdue.

After a year of Ramsey's calls, Barringer had gotten used to them. They
were part of the scheme of things. Just as the sun coming up proved it was
a new day, or seeing a new episode of Masterpiece Theater proved it was a
Sunday night, Ramsey's call was a sure sign that March, or June, or
September, or whatever month it was, had indeed begun.

The call was just the start of the beginning-of-the-month ritual. Barringer
worked out of a Bethesda office, but his job took him all over the
Washington area and had him on the road practically every day. He was out
of the office almost every time Ramsey called, and so each month Barringer
had to call Ramsey back in late afternoon and straighten the whole thing
out again. Ramsey would but Barringer on hold and force him to listen to
Muzak while he checked some other file. Then Ramsey would recall going
through it all  the month before, apologize, and forget all about it until
next month when it came time to harass Barringer again. There was something
perfect in the machine-like regularity of it all.

So it went from month to month until the late afternoon of the third of
October,1986, when Barringer got the message that Ramsey had called that
morning. He returned the call, land got a perfectly routine recorded
announcement say that the number had been disconnected.

Barringer had an overactive imagination, he tended to worry to much, and it
was the end of a hard day. And so that recording gave him chills down his
spine. Barringer had always had the idea that Ramsey was is phone number,
that the man and the number were one and the same, a combined thing. Ramsey
answered the phone that way each month when Barringer called back:"Phillip
Ramsey 844-1754."  The name didn't sound complete without the number.
Maybe. Barringer thought, it was Ramsey himself who had been
"disconnected," that had ceased to exist. Barringer had never actually seen
Ramsey, anyway. To Barringer, his loan officer was but a slightly nasal
voice that was compelled to call him each month on a fool's errand, a voice
that did its appointed task with the same demented relentlessness of any
automatic machine left to its own devices.

In earlier times, disembodied voices had come with messages from God. Today
they demanded that $213.15 be remitted promptly.

There were certainly enough people out there who would delight in the idea
that their loan officer had vanished in the hopes that records had vanished
along with the man, but Cliff Barringer was a good guy. Also to the point,
his work for C&P Telephone left him wide open to the idea that people and
phones could do very strange things to each other. He worried. Besides,
Ramsey had never actually been cruel or unfair, just incompetent. Barringer
bore Ramsey no ill will, had no desire to see him disconnected. Besides, if
he could happen to Ramsey, it could happen to anyone. Barringer himself
might be next. It was enlightened self-interest to see what was upon. The
bank wasn't far away and it never hurt to check.

The long and the short of it was that Barringer rushed over to the bank,
arrived just before closing, blundered his way past  the best defense
receptionists, a friendly-looking woman named Miss McGillicutty.

McGillicutty listened to Barringer ask for Mr. Ramsey and gave him a long
hard look. The Loan Department attracted its share of kooks, and it was
McGillicutty's job to decide who were the dangerous ones, the types who
would threaten to blow the place up because the bank wanted it's money
back. This guy looked pretty much okay. Bushy brown beard, and hair still
there but thinning on top. Clever, capable, strong-looking hands that had
done some manual labor, although not recently. Medium height, a little
pudgy. Dressed in fairly new work clothes, with a shirt pocket full of pens
and a phone company photo ID hung on a chain around his neck. Round soft
face, and eyes that looked not crazed, or threatening, or panicked, but
concerned. The eyes decided her. This guy didn't want to hurt anyone. "Mr.
Ramsey is busy, Mr., ah, Barringer, but if you could wait perhaps he could
talk to you in a few minutes."

"Thanks, but I don't need to talk to him. I just want to see him make sure
he's all right." Barringer said. Now that he was here, in a real-looking
office, talking to a real person, the idea that a man could disappear
because of a phone number seemed a little less likely, though still not
impossible. On the other had, maybe it would be best if he didn't try to
explain his worries. "Is he all right?"

"I see," McGillicutty said, although she didn't. "I can promise you Mr.
Ramsey is fine. There he is, across the office, third desk from the wall."

"That's him? The thin guy in the gray suit , sort of pale?"

That could be practically anyone around here, McGillicutty thought. "That's
him, fit as a fiddle. Why did you think he might not be all right.?"

"That's really him?"  Somehow the bland looking man across the room still
didn't look faceless enough, robotic enough, to match the nasal, monotonous
nagging, he had endured over the last year,  " You're sure that's Phillip
Ramsey 844-1754?"

"That is Mr. Ramsey," she said carefully, "right over there, but that's not
his phone number anymore. They had to disconnect it this morning because of
all the wrong numbers. Mr. Ramsey's phone was the worst, so they unplugged
him altogether and he doesn't have a new phone yet. I see your ID you're
from the phone company. Are you here to work on the problem?"

"What? Oh, no. I'm here for myself, not on business. But it was just wrong
numbers?" he asked, feeling both relieved and foolish. "That's all?"

"Not exactly all--" she was interrupted by the phone ringing. "Excuse me."
She picked up the handset to talk. "Loan Depart--oh, damn. Here, Mr.
Barringer, listen for yourself."

With a certain trepidation. Cliff Barringer took the handset and put it to
his ear. There was a high pitched beeeeeEEEP, beeeeeEEEP that went on and
on. "Ah, I see," he said, breathing a sigh of relief. This was suddenly
familiar turf. this was what he spent his working days on. He hung up the
phone and spoke. " That's a carrier signal from some computer out there.
Somebody is trying to contact a computer over phone lines, and hook his own
computer to it. He's programmed his computer to do its own dialing, and
then told it to call a wrong number. So it gets you."

"But then we get other calls. As soon as anyone answers, the person calling
just says 'sorry' and  hangs up, or else doesn't say anything at all and
hangs up."

"That'd be people with less fancy computers who are misdialing by manually.
They're expecting to get a tone like the one you're one you're getting. If
they get it, they throw a switch and the signal goes into the computer.
When they hear a person., they know it must be a wrong number and drop the
handset."

"That almost makes sense."

"Mmmph. Listen, let me do a little work on this tonight,  Just on my own. I
can probably get the computer they're calling and leave a message on it for
people to dial more carefully."

"I wouldn't want you to--"

"Oh,no, it's no trouble. Fooling with phones and computers is my hobby."

"What do you do for the phone company?"

"I fool with phones and computers."

"At least you must enjoy you work."

"Yeah, I suppose. Dr. Frankenstein probably enjoyed working on the Monster
at first, too."

"That's a bit extreme, isn't it?"

"Maybe,  But my job put me in touch with things that scare me. I track down
computer-and-phone systems that are out of control, illegal.. Computer
hackers and phone phreaks. There are some very weird people out there. I've
seen what they can do. I worry what they're going to do next."

Jean McGillicutty took a long look at Barringer. She was starting to revise
her opinion. Oh, Barringer was kind of weird, all right. But past that, he
seemed pleasant-- more that pleasant, kindly. And he looked harmless. She
thought he looked like he might even be worth talking to. In her world,
that simply meant he didn't look like a banker. But he was probably a shy
type. She would have to do the pushing. "Hold it. It's quitting time., and
McDonald's Raw Bar is just down the block. They sell draught beer cheap,
it's been a rough day, I was planning to have one, and I hate drinking
alone. Let me be real forward and offer to buy you one."

Barringer blushed and then grinned. "Daddy raised me never to turn down a
free beer."

"Oh. it's not free. In return, you have to explain what the hell you're
talking about."

"Sold."

Fifteen minutes later they were perched on a pair of tired old bar stools
in a dark, almost murky tavern that looked like it had nearly been torn
down a dozen times. It was one of the few surviving single-story buildings
in that part of Bethesda, surrounded all sides by new construction and new
roads. All good bars have always looked like they belonged to a previous
age, ad the Raw Bar was no exception.

A mug of beer in one hand and the bowl of peanuts close by the other.
McGillicutty was ready to listen. A comfortably ramshackle bar beat a
banker's office all hollow for conversation. "Okay, hackers I've heard of,
but what's a freak?"

"It's spelled  a little oddly, p-h-r-e-a-k, so it'll start the some why
'phone' does,  People usually draw the 'f' sound a little to make the
distinction."

"Spell it as you will, but what's a phreak?"

"Ever hear of Captain Crunch?"

"Kid's cereal, right?"

"Well, that's where he got the name. Captain Crunch was one of the first
phone phreaks, from maybe fifteen years ago. And he was one of the best. He
got his name from a toy that came in boxes of the cereal. A toy whistle
that just happened to have exactly the right tone so that if you held it up
to the phone and blew into it, you could cut in some  parts of Ma Bell that
civilians weren't supposed to reach. The whistle let anyone enter tone
commands. That's the sort of thing a phone phreak does. He likes to play
games with the telco--"

"Telco?"

"Telephone company. Phreaks learn access codes, find ways to bill long
distance calls to, say, a number at the Pentagon. Mostly it's kids fooling
around. Supposedly one guy used on public phone to call the next phone
booth over-- except he routed the call through 50 states and something like
four communications satellites. And that was maybe twelve years ago, long
before the first personal computers hit the market. You can imagine what a
phone phreak can do with a computer if he can pull those kinds of tricks
without one. They get sneakier all the time. My job is to keep a step or
two ahead of them."

"What happens when you get behind?"

Barringer grinned. "Never happens, at least not for long. I know some
stuff, I've got some people. You know the old saying, set a thief to catch
a thief?"

"You mean you're an ex-phreak who's gone straight?"

"Oh, no, no. I'm allergic to cliches. What I meant was, I'm a part-timer on
the phone police phorce. About half the time I'm a trouble shooter, solving
problems when people are having legit phone and computer systems installed.
That's where I learned enough to be a phone cop. In fact, six months ago I
was sworn in as a Montgomery County deputy sheriff. C&P Telephone and
Atlantic Bell were involved in so many busts against people doing computer
crime that the county decided it was less paper work if a few of us had
some police powers. I figure if the regular cops can have stool pigeons, so
can the phone cops. I've got files on twenty or thirty basically harmless
kids who have pulled stunts they shouldn't have. If I nab kids like that
and turn them over to the real cops, all I've done is give 'em an arrest
sheet. That makes it tough for them later on, maybe keeps them out of a
g\job, makes them mad, makes them want to get even with the big bad phone
company. Instead, I give them a good scare. Then when it looks like they
are in deep. I tell them I won't pull 'em in. I leave 'em alone and tell
them to keep fooling around but not to go overboard. In return they get to
play spy and let me know if any really bad stuff is happening."

"You don't look like a cop."

" None of the good ones do. So give me that facts, ma'am. Just the facts.
Give me the other numbers in your office that got a lot of these calls. And
lemme buy the next round."

When Barringer got to work on tracking down the computer in question, some
of his original paranoia came back to him. Things were a little strange.
But that might have been the hour. What with getting home and making dinner
and playing with the cats and so forth,  it was midnight before he even
gotten started. On the other hand, late night was the traditional time for
hackers to come out and play. 

Finding the computer everyone was trying to call was easy. There were four
or five basics kinds of mistakes people made when dialing phone numbers--
transposing certain pairs of digits, reading a "6" for a "9" or vice versa,
a finger slipping from one touchtone button to another-- and with a list of
 the numbers people actually got  when they made mistakes, it was easy for
Barringer to to back into the number they had been trying for. In five
minutes he had a list of the most likely numbers.

Barringer had a few computers around the house, and he powered up a clunky,
ugly, lovable old Kaypro for the job at hand. He brought up his
telecommunications program, made sure the printer was ready to get down a
hard copy of everything that happened, for later reference, and started
trying numbers. Maybe he had been fighting hackers too long -- it didn't
even occur to him that the guy he reached on the first try wouldn't be too
wild over getting a call and being hung up on at that hour. Barringer
simply poked his finger down on the hang up switch when he heard a "hello"
instead of a beep. But then, Barringer had always felt that strangers on
the phone weren't real people,  On the second try , he raised a carrier
tone. He pushed some buttons and piped the signal to the Kaypro.

He had been expecting to find a business computer system, or a financial
database service, something that would attract a lot of daytime calls.
Instead, a sign-on message that said

         FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARD SERVICE

popped up on his screen, and that was decidedly strange. A Bulletin Board
Service, a BBS, was usually pretty quiet during the day. BBS's were places
where computer hobbyists fooled around, leaving each other messages,
praising or insulting a piece of software, passing around gossip, jokes,
and computer files,  It was nighttime stuff: Most hobbyists had daytime
jobs and couldn't make calls to the board during business hours.

Barringer had a personal rule of thumb-- for every hundred correctly
dialed numbers, there was a one wrongo. For the number of wrongos that had
been bugging Ramsey and his coworkers, there had to be an  enormous number
of calls made to this number, way too many for the average BBS from 9:00 to
5:00. This was one popular board.

WHAT'S YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME? the computer on the other end of the phone
asked.

Barringer typed in William Heller, one of the many real-sounding fake names
he used in his work.

ARE YOU A FIRST TIME USER?

Yes

PLEASE ENTER A PASSWORD. YOU WILL NEED TO ENTER THIS PASSWORD TO GET ACCESS
TO FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS, SO PLEASE REMEMBER IT.

Barringer smiled to himself and typed in RAMSEY. After all, Ramsey had
started this.

YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS BID YOU WELCOME. FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF SERVICES
AND PROGRAMS AVAILABLE ON THIS BOARD. THE RULES OF THIS BOARD ARE SIMPLE.
FOR EVERY USE OF A FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS SERVICE, YOU MUST FIRST TELL US A NEW
AND INTERESTING FACT. ONE SERVICE, ONE FACT. WE HAVE PLENTY OF PHONE LINES
- NO TIME LIMIT ON USE. ENJOY!!

THE FRIENDLY SYSOP
	
It was a "menu-driven" system, where you were presented with a numbered
list of things to do, each only a general description. You entered the
number of your choice, and a submenu came up with a more detailed list of
possibilities. You choose from one of those, and a sub-sub-menu came up,
each item on it a detailed description of more goodies. Only at the fourth
level did you get down to work. Menus were a good way to run a system with
a lot of things on it, and there sure was alot here. A hell of a lot.

Barringer decided the system operator, the sysop, was one real nice guy.
The options offered on the menus made his mouth water. If ten percent of it
was true, this was the happy hunting ground for every hacker and hobbyist,
every wirehead and computer nerd and phone phreak in the world.

There were working programs and games for every computer he had ever heard
of, some of them legal public domain stuff, but a lot of obviously public
domain stuff, but a lot of obviously bootlegs of copyrighted progs. There
were patch lines into practically every college and university computer
system in the country. There was a service that allowed a user to call any
phone-equipped computer in the world without charge by calling up the
Friendly Neighbors board and letting it route the call. There was a search
program patched into a database with a nationwide phone directory,
including long distance numbers and unlisted numbers. You could look up
numbers by name, or name by number, or either address. You could get the
zip code or local equivalent for any place in the world. The Encyclopedia
Brittanica and Americana were available,  not just abstracts but the whole
shooting works, there on-line to browse through, along with LaRousse and
the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and a dozen Barringer had never heard of.

There was a complete legal services library search service, and a patch
into the MEDFAX medical research database. The A.P., U.P.I., Reuters,
Agence France, Pravda, P.A.P., the Dow-Jones News service --every wire and
news service in the world was there. The electronic card catalog of the
Library of Congress was online.

And that just scratched the surface. It took a half-hour for Barringer to
get through the various menus. All free. Just give the Friendly Neighbors
Sysop an interesting fact.

CARE TO GIVE US A TRY?

Barringer had to see if it was for real. The temptation was too great.

Yes.

THEN TELL ME AN INTERESTING FACT.

Well, what would a sysop who had instant access to all that find
interesting? Barringer shrugged. The Battle of Bunker Hill really took
place on  Breed's Hill.

THAT IS CORRECT. THANK YOU. WHAT'S YOUR PLEASURE?

He did something he could have done in person, something that he could
easily do at work. He got Jean McGillicutty's phone number and address..

WANT MORE? TELL ME ANOTHER INTERESTING FACT.

Ted Williams was the greatest player in baseball history.

AN INTERESTING OPINION, BUT I NEED FACTS.

Could it catch a fib? The Potamac is the longest river in the world.

THAT IS INCORRECT. TELL ME A CORRECT AND INTERESTING FACT.

2 and 2 is 4.

THAT IS NOT INTERESTING. YOU HAVE ONE MORE CHANCE, OR I WILL HAVE TO SIGN
YOU OFF.

The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is the largest vehicle ever
built by man.

THAT IS CORRECT. THANK YOU. WHAT'S YOUR PLEASURE?

He checked the latest betting line for the World Series and signed off.

Barringer sat there staring at the Kaypro's screen for  ten minutes,
motionless. This had to be the biggest, most blatant, most thorough-going
data-theft he had ever seen, the Friendly Neighbors system operator was
good at what he did, obviously, incredibly good, but three quarters of the
stuff on  that board had to be stolen. There had to be alot of gossip out
there about Friendly Neighbors, the sort  of thing most pholks wouldn't
tell a phone cop for fear he'd spoil all the phun. Barringer decided he had
to do some talking with a certain friend, press for some information. He
used the Kaypro to call another board, the Baker Street Irregulars BBS.
Barringer got in on the first try, something he had never managed before.
The BSI Board was nearly always tied up. Well, who'd call anything else
with the Friendly Neighbors around? All the regular boards would fall on
hard times in the face of such competition. Too bad, too. The BSI BBS was a
good board, full of fun things to do and try, all of them legal.

It was run by Sidney Zamoiski, one of Barringer's rephormed phreaks, one of
his sources of information. Barringer signed in, went to the message
section, and left a brief note, garbled in its historical and literary roots
but clear to sender an receiver.

Doctor Watson. Come here, I need you. The game's afoot. He didn't leave his
name.

Zamoiski would be in Barringer's office no later than noon the next day.
Barringer shoved the cats to one side of the bed and tried to get some
sleep.

The next day was Saturday, but it wasn't at all unusual to see Barringer in
the office on weekends. It gave him the chance to catch up on things, to
clear his decks for t he new week. It was easier for him to concentrate
without the usual bustle of people around. For that matter, Barringer spent
more time out of the office, away from the weekday crowds, than was really
expected of him. He was nervous around too many people.

That didn't matter now. It was a bright, clear morning, the place was
deserted, he had a fresh hot thermos of coffee along, and he could track
down Friendly Neighbors.

The first thing to try was the lazy way. He called a private C&P line.

"Internal Services Operator."

"Yes, this is employee Clifford Barringer."

"Hey, Cliff! Joe Walker here. How are you?"

"Oh, all right." Walker was another person Cliff had never actually seen,
and therefore didn't quite believe in.

"Got some business to do?"

"Sure do."

"Okay, let's go by the book. Punch up your access authority code."

Cliff used his phone's touch-tone buttons to enter the eight-digit number.

"Thanks, Cliff. You're you all right. What do you need?"

"Gimme a customer name and address on this number."  He punched in the
Friendly Neighbors number.

"That Maryland? Area code 301?"

"Sure is."

"Cliff, where you been? That exchange isn't even hooked up!"

"Get serious, I reached that number last night."

"I'll run the CNA, but I'm telling you that ain't a live exchange."

Barringer waited as Walker ran the query.

"Not in service, Cliff."

"Run it again. I swear I called that number last night."

"Okay."  There was another slight pause. "Nothing. Zip. It's not there.
Check your own books, man, that's not a live exchange."

"I'll do that. Thanks, Joe."  Barringer was beginning to get a sinking
feeling in the pit of his stomach. He checked the telco handbooks. It was a
deader. But that was impossible. People had very occasionally managed to
tap a bandit phone line into the system, though few had bothered to try. It
was just to tough, to hard to hide, too expensive. But one bandit phone
line would be child's play up against creating a bandit exchange. And why
do it? To have access to lots of lines? But there were up to 10,000 phone
numbers on an exchange. Who could possibly need that many?

Walker's computer and the handbook must be dated. Billing. He'd talk to
Billing. They were always  up to date. He picked up the phone.

Ten minutes later he hung it up again, in a cold sweat. Billing had never
charged a dime to that number. It didn't exist. And Billing confirmed that
the whole exchange had never been hooked up.

In desperation, he tried the Criss-Cross directory, which listed the phone
numbers in order against the customers. Nothing, of course.

He nearly jumped a foot when his own phone rang. He picked it up as if it
were possessed. This morning he was starting to get confirmation of his
most secret fear-- that all telephones everywhere were and always had been
possessed.

But it was only Security downstairs, asking if Sid Zamoiski could be
escorted up. Barringer said yes, and five minutes later one of the uniforms
from downstairs delivered Zamoiski. "Doctor Watson I presume," Barringer
said as he stood to shake Zamoiski's hand.

"Hey, Cliff," Zamoiski said. "I've been waiting for your call for a while
now."  Zamoiski sat himself down in the visitors chair and grinned. He
didn't look like a hacker. He looked more like a surfer, or a lumberjack. A
big, dark-haired, burly young man with a handlebar moustache; it was hard
to imagine him hunched over a computer fooling with disk drives and
monitors.

"Thought you might be. Friendly Neighbors?"  Barringer said.

"Uh-huh. What name did you get in under?"

"William Heller. Why?"

"Thought so. Try it now, under your own name."

Barringer looked oddly at Zamoiski and turned on the IBM PC on his desk.
Thirty seconds later he was on-line to Friendly Neighbors.

WHAT IS YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME?

Cliff Barringer

YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, COPPER! AND NEXT TIME DON'T BOTHER CALLING FROM
A TELCO OFFICE NUMBER.

The PC's screen filled with gibberish as Friendly Neighbors cut the
connection.

"My God," Zamoiski said. "I didn't know it could trace the line."

"It knows who I am?" Barringer thought he might faint.

"Doctor Devious-- you know, the pet shop owner in Takoma Park who runs a
board--told me that he had told Friendly Neighbors who all the phone cops
were. That was an Interesting Fact. But if it can trace calls, I'm
surprised it allowed a call from your home phone."

"Listen, with all you wireheads out there ready to do me in, I've got the
most unlisted number on Earth. The telco switching system thinks my phone
is across the county line, in Prince George's County. I've got three  lines
cross connected through legal cheese boxes to keep phreaks from finding my
home. C&P okayed it."

"Mmmph."

"And if you breathe a word of that you've had your last Chinese dinner on
me. How long has Friendly Neighbors been in business?"

"Not long. Somebody left the message on my BBs about a month ago that there
was this great new board to try."

"Has it grown since, or did it start out with all that stuff?"

"A few goodies around the edges, but mostly the sysop had it ready to go
when he started."

"What the hell is this interesting fact routine?"

"Got me. And don't ask me why it asks for facts and then tells you 'that is
correct.'  If it knows, why ask? And here's another weird thing. It's
programmed so it won't let me repeat a fact I've already given, but up to a
point it'll let me tell it something I know it's heard from one of the
other guys. But if I overdo it, it tells me I 'm being lazy and demands
fresh facts." "I tried to fib to it, and it caught me," Barringer said.
"How could a program be that smart? Think this guy is actually licked the
artificial intelligence problem?"

"You know my theory, Holmes. We won't get anywhere on artifical
intelligence unless we perfect artifical stupidity first. I dunno. Maybe
this sysop has done it. And get this: Devious said he tried reading it
cards from Trivial Pursuit. Friendly Neighbors caught him and told him to
knock it off."

"Jesus. This is getting me more and more worried. Especially since I can't
find them."  Barringer quickly ran through his attempt to get an address
for the board.

" That's creepy." Zamoiski thought for a moment, and suddenly laughed out
loud. "Wait a second, I think I know how we can find them. But not from
here. We'll go to my place."
	
Zamoiski lived in a blank-faced high rise apartment building in Silver
Spring. The place was strangely neat and spare for a bachelor's home. It
looked almost barren, as if Zamoiski camped there instead of living there.
Only one part of the place looked truly occupied: a mammoth desk covered
with hardware and manuals and tools and carry-out food containers. Zamoiski
used a Sanyo for most of his hacking. He went straight to  it and signed on
to Friendly Neighbors. Because he was an experienced user, the system
skipped the rules and the catalog of services and went straight to

TELL ME SOMETHING MORE ABOUT THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY

"Uh-oh," Zamoiski said. "Every once in a while it gets interested in a
topic you've told it something about and does this. Let's see."

The ships of the opposing fleets never saw each other.

THAT IS CORRECT. WHAT IS YOUR PLEASURE?

Zamoiski called up the criss crossing section of the phonebook service.
"Let's just see how dumb this genius computer is."  He asked for the home
address matching Friendly  Neighbor's phone number.

Friendly Neighbors obediently betrayed it's own location.

"Stratford Lane, Bethesda," Barringer read. "Zamoiski, you're a genious."

"Not really. But I'm glad to prove my theory about artifical stupidity.
Never seen a machine that wasn't dumb if you asked it the right question.
Now what?"

"Well," Barringer said, "I could act police an wait until Monday and get a
warrant and go in there with some regular cops and so on -- but dammit, I
gotta meet this guy!"

"We go over now?"

"Yeah. Who could resist?"

Stratford Lane was one block long, a quiet little suburban road cut into
the side of a gentle hill, full of sixty-year old brick houses. Children
played in the yards and ran back and forth across the quiet street. All the
lawns were neatly kept, all the houses were well cared for. Except one,
toward the Wilson Lane end of the block.

Barringer checked the address again. It matched, but it couldn't be right.
The house, set back a bit from the road, and on the uphill side of the
street, was barely visible from the road, hidden behind bramble and high
trees and a tangle of undergrowth that seemed not just to have grown, but
evolved from a lawn left unmowed for a quarter century. What could be seen
of the house itself did not inspire confidence. It had been painted brick
many years before, but the paint had faded and flaked off until it required
more imagination that honesty to call the exterior walls white. The
shutters were closed, but looked rotted and about to fall off. The slate
roof seemed ready to slide off in one piece. Worn, broken, half collapsed
stone steps led up to an overgrown path through the front-yard forest to
the front door. An ancient and decrepit blue and white Anglia two-door
resting on four flat tires blocked the way up the stairs.

The two friends pushed the bramble far enough out of the way to squeeze
around the car, and headed for the front door of the house. Barringer
happened to glance up as they made their way along the short path. He
stopped short and grabbed Zamoiski's sleeve. "Sid. Look up at the utility
pole."

"What the hell--?"

Hanging from the pole and running into the second floor of the house was a
cable as thick as a man's arm. It was dark green, and didn't look so much
connected to the junction box on the pole as melted to it.

Barringer shook his head and headed for the front door. Zamoiski was
impressed with Barringer for having the nerve to knock, not at all
surprised when nothing happened, taken aback when Barringer tried the knob
and astonished when he was able to open the door. It hadn't been locked.

Barringer stepped inside the door, turned, and called to Zamoiski. "You got
a flashlight in your car?"

"Yeah, I'll get it."  Zamoiski was glad of a reason to get away from the
house, but not at all happy about having to go back. The door was wide open
and Barringer stood in it, waiting impatiently. Zamoiski stepped inside and
handed his friend the light.

Barringer flicked on the flashlight and looked around.

The entire interior of the house had been removed, down to the lath. The
floor was a slab of pinkish concrete, and Barringer had  the feeling the
concrete filled the house's foundation from the cellar to ground level in
one solid block. That melted green cable came through the wall over the
door, and led to a--- thing. Barringer didn't know what to call it. It was
a boxy shape, about four feet square, of the same dark green color as the
cable. It looked half melted, too, its shape softened, rounded, droopy.

Another green cable led to a device Barringer and Zamoiski both recognized
instantly.

There are certain machines that must be certain shapes if they are to work.
A square wheel cannot roll, a lever must be long and thin to do any good, a
knife must have a cutting edge.

Zamoiski gasped as Barringer shone the light on a twelve foot diameter,
bright-green, well-polished, very handsome parabolic dish antenna. They'd
have to do some measurements , and get some tracking done, but to Zamoiski
that would merely be confirmation. Somewhere in deep space, the system
operator of the Friendly Neighbor Bulletin board was hard at work. "I
always said hackers and phreaks were weird enough to get along with
anyone." Zamoiski said.

"Try weird enough to talk to aliens without noticing," Barringer said. He
was surprised because he wasn't surprised. Somehow, he had always been
expecting this. " I suddenly understand the interesting fact rule. Our
Friendly Neighbors tap into all these great data sources somehow-- but they
have no idea what's what. Which is the junk no one cares about, garbage
that's just accumulated and clogged up the world's databases? Which is the
good stuff the people really care about? We tell them what we find
interesting. And  they don't mind two people telling them the same fact
because that just tells them it's interesting to more than one person."

"I shudder to think they're getting their view of mankind from hackers,"
Zamoiski said. "I gave the poor guys some really dumb stuff. Very few
civilians would care about how to do automatic baud-rate shifting for a
Sanyo MBC. I dunno. What do you do now?"

Barringer looked at the half- melted green box. "We talked to them. Their
mainframe here doesn't have a local terminal. I guess we find a phone and
sign on. Let's go to my place. It's closer."

TELL ME AN INTERESTING FACT

Barringer looked at his friend. "Well, what do we say? How do you politely
say we caught you spying on our planet?"

Zamoiski reached for the keyboard.

"They aren't spying. Just looking around. And  that door wasn't locked.
They must be expecting us. Lemme get their attention. The sysop of this
board is an extraterrestrial, he typed

For the first time, there was a pause before the program responded. Then,
finally, a message came up on the screen.

HELLO NEIGHBOR. YOU ARE NO LONGER LIMITED TO THE SMALLER BEGINNER'S BOARD.
YOU HAVE JUST QUALIFIED FOR PROVISIONAL MEMBERSHIP IN THE MAIN BULLETIN
BOARD SYSTEM. DO YOU WISH TO JOIN?

"Damn straight I do," Zamoiski said. Yes,he typed.

THE RULES OF THE BOARD ARE SIMPLE. TELL UP ABOUT YOU, AND WE'LL TELL YOU
ABOUT US. ANSWER ONE OF OUR QUESTIONS. AND GAIN ACCESS TO ONE SERVICE.

MAKE SURE  YOUR PRINTER IS ENGAGED AND SAVING A HARD COPY, THEM ENTER
"READY" WE WILL DISPLAY AN OVERVIEW LISTING OF SERVICES AND INFORMATION
AVAILABLE.

Zamoiski switched on the printer and typed read. The choices scrolled past
the screen. None of them made sense at first, but a lot of them seemed like
fun. What looked like databases on a hundred planetary systems.
instructions on how to build some extremely entertaining gadgets,
telecomputer courses on any number of subjects, games that he just had to
try. Zamoiski suddenly felt worried about losing it all before he had a
chance to play. If the local authorities or the Feds, or even worse the
phone company, found out, they might shut it down, for failure to pay one
hell of a long distance bill. Zamoiski had an oddly parochial world view.
"Cliff." he asked, "we don't have to tell anyone else about this, do we? I
mean, Earth people, like the Air Force.?"

"Sid. This isn't something little like the time you busted into the bank
and 'corrected' your balance. This is big, this is for real. The history of
humanity and all that. We gotta tell. The Feds have to get started and find
out some stuff. Who are these guys? Just alien hackers fooling around? An
invasion? And what kind of information are they going to want from us?
Anthropology? Missle Secrets? We still don't know if they're really
friendly."

The listing finally ended.

NOW THEN, OUR FIRST REQUEST.

Again, a pause. Barringer held his breath and debated yanking the keyboard
back from his friend. But Zamoiski could simply go to any computer in the
world and call on his own. The cat was out of the bag, the can of worms was
opened. And Zamoiski was just crazy enough to show the Neighbors how he had
patched into to Lawrence Livermore Lab computer that time, in exchange for
an hour of gaming. What would they want to know?

The screen cleared. Another pause. And then, on  the screen--

TELL US MORE ABOUT TED WILLIAMS.

Barringer sighed in relief. "I think," he said, "it's going to be all
right."


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