Parse it again Sam... Dead Men Don't Instant Message by A.J. Axline It was a gray afternoon, the kind of afternoon that makes the city look like it's in monochrome. I was in my office, sipping on a triple gingko biloba espresso and printing off some sappy love letter e-mails that I'd scraped out of some schmuck's PC. His wife had brought it in to me, asking me to confirm that Mr. Schmuck was cheating on her. I don't like doing the dirty domestic cases, but my DSL bill was three months overdue, and once you've gone to high-speed, you can't go back. Besides...I'm Jack Dinn. I'm a private geek. It's what I do. I'd finished printing off the last steamy missive (who the hell calls their mistress "wookums" anyway?) and was about to call the soon-to-be divorced wife, when the door to my office opened and my secretary Perl walked in. She's a smooth operator, my Perl. She's got all the right variables in all the right modules. I tried to access her subroutine once, but she didn't want to start that program. I didn't take it personally...it just wasn't in the script for us. We don't always communicate well, but Perl's a great secretary once you learn to interpret her language. "What's up, angel?" I asked her. "There's someone here to see you," she frowned. "I don't like him already." "How come?" I asked. "I'm not sure...he just debugs me," Perl sniffed. "A client is a client, angel. Send him in," I told her. Perl didn't seem too happy with the procedure, but she gave me her regular expression. She walked back into the waiting room, and asked the potential client to enter my office. I could see why Perl didn't like him; I recognized him immediately, and I didn't like him either. He was a belligerent old man, and he strutted into my office like he had administrative privileges. He was wearing a military uniform with creases stiffer than Thicknet cable. His chest was covered in medals and decorations?it looked like a badly cluttered desktop. "General P. Fault," I said. "Hello Jack. It's been a long time," the General said in a voice so gravelly you could have used it to make concrete. "Not long enough," I grated. Then I put the grater and the block of cheese away, and sat behind my desk. "Jacky-boy, you're not still upset over that RAID down in Provo, are you?" he bantered. "I broke two discs on that RAID," I snapped. "It wasn't a very fault tolerant mission. I still have trouble with my trunk line on damp days." "Well...you look okay now," the General said. "Oh, I'm A+," I smirked. "Mostly because I don't perform illegal operations anymore." "That's too bad," the General said, "because we've got a great mission for you. There's this kernel that needs to be...deleted. It's a tough process, and we need our best man." "You forget that I switched, I crossed that bridge years ago," I snarled like a mess of cabling. "Oh sure, I still remember fragments of my past. Packet storming over the firewall, breaking every protocol in the book. But I'm not trapped in that web anymore. I'm not the man you programmed to do your dirty work all those years ago. I don't work for anyone but me. I'm the master of my own domain now." The General scowled. "What is this, some kind of denial of service? What are you, a man or a mouse?!" I stood up. "I'm sorry, General. I won't delete your kernel for you." Hours later, I sat and stared at the empty chair where the General had sat. His visit had refreshed my memory, stuff that I wished could have stayed deleted. Still, the General's visit had reminded me of one positive thing. While I sometimes have to do the odd dirty domestic data dump, at least I'm not being run by some controller anymore. I serve my clients the best I can, and that's good enough for me. Perl came into the office. "I'm calling it a night, Jack." "Before you do," I told her, "why don't you come over here and check out my laptop?" A. J. Axline Byte Back News