Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/sun9310.zip/FIC3

Text File | 1993-09-09 | 20KB | 388 lines

Wally, Beware The Cybermaster
Copyright (c) 1993, Franchot Lewis
All rights reserved




                WALLY, BEWARE THE CYBERMASTER
                      by Franchot Lewis


         The salesman was a creepy man with short straight hair.
     He wore a jacket with the computer store's logo on the front.
     Looking at him made me think that he knew his trade,
     particularly the way he focused on the customer at the
     counter. His eyes were intense, not budging an inch from
     the man's face.
         Several times I tried to get his attention to ask how
     long I would have to wait. He would not be distracted. I
     tried to complain, but got tongue-tied. I waited.
         Finally, he finished with the other customer and it was
      my turn.
         "Noticed that I am still here? Wondered where you
     learned how to be a salesman. Have a nice day."
         "Wait, young man," he said. "I have what you want in
     computers. You won't get a better deal anywhere. You do
     want to buy?"
         "Nah, no such luck. Just spent my lunch hour. Goodbye
     now, pal. Your loss."
          "I see you've had a bad morning, let's make the rest
     of your day better, young sir?" He smiled coolly, in a way
     that made me wonder if his confidence meant he did have the
     best buys. When I looked straight into his eyes, I was
     bagged by his intensity, and ever since I've been a
     different person.

                   quick.
              this        Don't wait. This is from me. Read this
         Copy
                                                    fast. Wally?

         Subliminal, the minimum, the minions minim ... [ Oh, my,
     the sleeve of my khaki shirt, nicked, stuck on the tab key.
     Shucks, doesn't the key look like a slab? Slightly?]

                         II.

        "Whack!"
        What is that? The wind whoops, whirls, sifts the loose
     dirt from the ground, and sends leaves through the crawl
     space underneath my house. I hear noises. Under the floor
     board of this old house? No, sounds like upstairs, the bed's
     wooden slats have cracked. Too much weight, or weighty
     business on the bed? No, that possibility is slim. Nil.
        Wally, no one's here except me. It would take a wallowing
     whale to wallop that bed.

         That?
         That's me, my sigh. Let me get back to him: the slag, the
     slime ball, that smells like a wharf on a bad day. The sight
     of him is like Truth and Beauty slain. He looks human. He
     lets his arm swings, and his face twists, the sign of an evil
     fish. He slinked like a snake into my life. He looked normal,
     appealingly normal.
         My brain said listen, my mind said no. Maybe a guardian
                    subliminally
     angel speaking              signaled to me, for life, to turn
     and flee. But, what did I, a young'n, know of evil? My young
     brain, my green soul, both were clean like a blankest slate.
     Out of ignorance, I slipped into what hell. He proved to be
     the cruelest one. He drew me close to him. My neck ached. I
     felt a wheal. It felt like something left by bug bite.
         I listened, kept silent, as he all but slammed me with
     words, and, in his manner, spit. Words flew out of him. His
     mouth barely moved. His words came like water forced out of
     a slit. I sat, green like green straw grass, unmovable,
     motionless in a heighten stillness in his downpour of spit,
     like I was a plucked unrippened seed of grain with no
     chance to grow, a Midwestern wheat head caught in a trance by
     a rancid tricker, sing-singing words of living while humming
     tunes of the dead.
         I swear as he spoke his features disappeared leaving an
     unfocused silhouette. I don't slander him when I say he wasn't
     human. He slithered. He wheedle me into evil.
         Worst. Maybe worse for me, I listened, though he told me
     that he wasn't of the carbon element and compounds like us
     but was of a derivative of silicone.
         He knew all the words I wanted to learn of the
     cyberworld. He knew the hacker's slang. With his tongue he
     slivered the language of computers. But I didn't know. What
     did I know?
         No, it didn't take much to cajole me to his evil.

        That?
        What?
        Ah, a noise. Just a noise on the window sill. Now a slant
     October wind is here. To stay?
        Wally, the gods are suppose to slobber on us with their
     rainfall. Turn over bowls and bowls of water. The gods of
     October have been too sober. It is silly to believe the
     weather people. They foretold storms. They slap on us their
     bad news. They make me not want to go to sleep. Who wants to
     look forward to a morning of slogging to work in hard doggedly
     rain? And so, I stay up, isolated, like the last cold warrior
     in a missile silo, stuck to my computer. Shucks, I'm waiting
     for better conditions.

         I was not going to devote all of my time to hacking with
     my computer. The same weekend I brought a 486-50 and a 14.4
     modem, I brought a sloop. I was going to go sailing, up and
     down the coast, from Maine to Florida, in my own vessel. I
     planned to silt the breeze, and let my sails slash against
     the winds. But he came talking his slop, sounding like he
     was talking like the talk was gold and silver. The talking
     never slacked.
         I could have gone in for skis, planned my winter trip
     to the slopes of the Alps. I had a friend who works at a
     travel agency. She could have gotten me into one of the tour
     slots. But I had to be a wheel with a computer, had to
     learn everything. So during one of the hottest days of last
     August, while my ambition simmered, like a slave I kowtowed
     to him, in this computer store, and gave myself like a glutton
     gives into sloth.
         He was sin. He was the salesman. I was the slaw that he
     ate.
         "What can I do for you, sir?" he asked. I slouched.
     Since I was over twenty one, twenty two to be exact, and
     had my B.A., I knew everything. He proceeded to slay my
     confidence. He grinned like an animal from a slough, a rat
     from a swamp, a wise-ass hacker from a bog. He asked me
     stuff I knew nothing about. He quoted people of whom I had
     never heard. He cited stats, called brand names, branded me
     with shame. Since I knew nothing, he left me in a fog. He
     said a lot of stuff. Sincerely, I don't remember much of what
     he said. He flushed words into me, but my brand new B.A. brain
     leaked like a silk screen. My mind made a silent scream. I
     got sweaty. As I listened to him, he got cooler. When he
     finished, he was not talking but singing words, and I was
     sweaty, and dirty and sloven. I felt grimy. My shirt was all
     musky, my collar dirty. He was sleazy. This I did not know,
     because I was slow.
         I remember, my head hurt as if the temples had been
     singed.
         If only I had gone to my friend to talk about snow sleds
     my brain would not have gotten filled with sludge.
         I wheezed for breath. He asked me if I were single. I
     said, yes, and he said I could afford the sleek model with
     the many features and thousands of programs.
         Afford? I was looking and smelling like I was some one
     from the slums, and were mumbling barely audibly.
         "You're a bright, young man, " he said and watched me
     sink.
         How did I feel? Like I wanted to sink more, fall right
     on the floor, into slumber. My mind felt tired and my nose
     had the runs. I had a problem with my sinus. Strange. But,
     since that time I have not slept a whole night. In mid day,
     I have felt so tired, I have slumped on the job, dropped in
     a chair, and wanted to sleep. But can't. I have difficulty
     sleeping.  When I am not at my computer on-line with some
     other of his victims, I sit up all night sipping warm drinks.

         I turn the board on. The screen is green, then it's
     blue, then it turns to sleet. There is sound on my Sound
     Blaster, his voice,  slurring, "Sir?"
         We had planned a trip to the Alps. If only I had gone to
     talk to my friend, and talked to her nicely, I would perhaps
     be planning a ride in a sleigh. But, hey, she was a slut.

         His voice, slurring, Sir, and mine wheezy. Me
     answering, Sire.

         That day in the store, he said, "Young man, for a slight
     charge more - "  And with sleight of the hands, sly, like
     the she- sirens, he sold me the Sirius software.
         "It's a communications,  a gem, a star of the first
     magnitude known as the DWAG," he said. He has made a dog of
     me. It is the most expensive program in the world. The
     price has been my soul.
         Your soul. Humph? What is it that he told me weeks
     later when I learned how much I had to pay?
         "Yours boy? What is it? Sirloin? It's so slender that it
     is overwhelmed by the most insignificant flea. Don't be
     a sissy."
         What did I say? I thought he was crazy, insane. My
     soul? What did I know? It didn't take a sleuth to detect
     that I wasn't thinking clearly. He called me a green whelp,
     a frisky boy. But, as I've said that was all later. At the
     store, he complimented me, said I was a good-looking boy,
     asked me if I had a sister.
         I served him [and serve him] my soul. When? When I sit
     at the console and call others on-line. I slew, and slice
     where those Catholic nuns, who taught me when I was young,
     said was the site where Jesus [once] sat in me.
         I am slick on-line. I don't call a single caller at
     once, I call six. Yes, I have six phone lines. They're
     expensive.
         If I had gone to her that day and planned my winter
      trip, I would still need only one phone line. But she was
      with him, the night before, wearing the yellow slicker,
      the raincoat, I brought her the week before. It was a size
      too large - large enough for me to slide my hand inside as
      we walked along in a little night rain, or an afternoon
      drizzle. I would slide my hand in and whet, stir up my
      young sizzle. But that evening,  I saw them walking in the
      rain, and saw him, her friend, the ugly rascal who worked
      in the music store. He slid his hand where mine had been, in
      the coat I brought for her.

         Whew! Which horror shall I discuss now?
         She used to come here. There is still a whiff of her
     perfume on the pillow on the left side of my bed. No, I
     haven't washed the pillow case since the summer when she was
     here last. There is no need. You see, I do not sleep on that
     pillow. I leave it on my bed, unslept on.
        She and I went often to watch the sun set, the moon rise.
     The moon is blue now. I won't spend the Winter solstice
     with her. She has totally eclipsed the moon, put all the
     lights out, has made winter nothing to look forward to.
     Frozen snow, slick, cruel, glassy stuff, no place for lovers
     to dance. A foot print would shatter this icy stuff, or
     make lovers slip and fall, and break their heads and die.
        Once winter with her had the promise of divinity. The snow
     he will show you, he says, promises eternal life. The flakes
     are white angels. They swiftly soar up, 'round you like the
     beautiful seraphim.
        Peaches, I called her, the pet name she seemed to
     love. "Peaches," I said to her, "Let me have love and peace
     with you."  Peaches, for love, let me have a piece of you.

         He, the cyber master, threatens me: says that if I don't
     behave, don't obey, he will send a whiffle of wind, a puff,
     to disperse the last of her scent from my bedroom. I keep the
     window shut. Every once in a while the panes wobble. He says
     he's sending a wind that will grow and grow, if I don't
     respond quick enough to his whim. I try not to listen to
     him, but when the window panes wobble, those are the times I
     drink water with my wine, the only times I madly curse and
     threaten him foolishly with woe.

         That sound, that one, is the stirring of his devil's
     wings, the flutter that woke his virus on a thousand
     bulletin board screens since I've begun.

         That sound now? That is my own penitent whimper. I whine
     as I think of his stealth thoughts, quick as a wink, entering
     minds and taking souls like a wolf takes sheep. The program
     begins with brilliant graphics, with flashes of light. It
     whips from the foggiest VGA super colors. It makes black and
     white monitors look like winners.

         If only that woman had been true, I wouldn't be a child
     of this womb of evil.

         Those with sound cards hear a realistic whir, feel
     that a fly is darting by, buzzing/whizzing noises in their
     ears. The moment the program reaches this stage he has
     already undone souls. All thoughts outside of hacking and of
     giving into the computer whirl away.

         I should have gone to her and we would be together
     thinking of how to spend our winter vacation in a wonder
     world of snow, skiing, sledding, playing.

         "Whish!"
         That is him, or wind, the breeze, moving, softly, so
     much like the old sound silk curtains make. Says, he's coming
     to wipe my will away.

         Thinks he's won. I won't let him.

         Whisk!
         If you hear that, that's him moving quickly, sweeping
     from your screen, trying to whisk you out of grace, with his
     invisible digital wire, wooing you, in your face, with multi-
     layered dancing screens. He whispers the pseudo-sage sounds
     the devils make.
        "There are pleasures for you," he says. "My software will
     bring you softly from your cares to worlds and folks who will
     love you. All you have to do is to let me do it all for
     you."

         Say you listen? Your brain is now wood. Your ears hears
     only him, his whisper and whistle. He is the wise, the wooer,
     who leads you into hours of sitting in front of a screen. And
     you know not, or wish where whither you are, in which or what
     place. You begin to speak back in whispers too. Your brain
     twists into a wisp. Your head becomes a handful of hay.
         He uses you to whittle the will of others, drives you to
     log on to boards by the half dozen, a hundred boards a night,
     long-distance, to feed his disease to those machines, so that
     he can slice thin endless souls.

         No, I have not lost my wits.

         "Whiz!"
         Sh--! That's him, that hissing noise. Him, coming.

        If that witch hadn't shamed me by being with that - Whoa.
     Let me hold on here. Wait a minute, a while - I am whole. I
     can withstand a winter storm in October. Like the withe, I am
     a tough, flexible twig. I shall remain whole. I shall not
     wither and fade like a spring bloom.

        What!
        That is me whooping to keep him trapped within the screen,
     him whom my loneliness invited into my life. You who read this
     are witnesses to my strength and wholeness.

        "Whop!"
        It is the wind, stirred now, beating a tree branch against
     the side of my house.

        Because the prospective wife whored how many lives have
     been lost?  Evil wizzary fell good men.
        Whose life is this? You wizen, wicked thing get back.
        Why?

        When that blazon hussy robbed my eyes of their wool, I
     should have gone out to find another for my wick. I heard the
     salesman's words, that a wide world of women waited me in
     cyberland. All I needed were a modem and him to connect me.

        "Woof!"
        That is me barking back at his winds. He is wielding the
     night elements against my house. He has worked up the wind and
     the rain.

         I swore at her who wore the raincoat I brought her, her
     who dated him whose wife would soon be a widow.
         Harlot! Worm! I swore.
         I tore the wig that she has worn so many times to cover
     her lying hair. She tried to wiggle away, said I should not
     worry. I was the only one who mattered. Watching her try to
     work her woman wiles on me, like I was a worthless john, made
     me wild, and made me hate her more. I did not slap her. I did
     worse. I laughed, called her a two-cent slut without any
     worth, said I had won, because I had learned what she is
     before it was too late. I left her, though she said, she
     worshipped me. I told her that she was nothing, a rose whose
     color and perfume had more than wilted, had gone stinking
     and rotten.
         If she had been true - Snow, waves of snow. I would be
     awaiting the snow with her, and she would be my Love.  The
     snow would fall like waves of my love. I would be looking
     forward to the winter sky, the Christmas sky, the New Year's
     sky. The skies once again would have life and their shades
     of blue.

         Wally, if you hear him, waves of snow will crash in on
     you. You will shudder if you could hear his speech. He says,
     shut your eyes. The sun's beaming through the screens of
     snow. The sun rises not in the East but in his digital eyes.

         Wally, behind the screens of snow, a lone dying leaf
     falls into the dark Euphrates, a scene from an ancient
     Mesopotamian night. A reed craft drifts in a breeze that is
     a gentle caress. And you are on board, carefree as the wind
     until he sounds the chimes. Heavy snow and the black silent
     night, and you and the craft freeze as the wind makes a
     maelstrom. You shall die  unless you do as he says.
         What shall you do? He shows you the horrors: the red
     flow. The blood flowing forth into the white snow from the
     slit throats of sheep. You smell the odors of dead flesh
     risings up foul.

         He, the devil, wants to win now!  He pounds against my
     house with the strongest October wind for all it is worth.
     I shall not give in. I send this message to all the
     universe, telling of his crimes and my sins. I have put it
     all here. I have not winced, not once. He who wants to destroy
     me can give me no greater wound than she who had my love
     and betrayed me for lust.
        The wind wounds and weaves around my house, like my hand
     wounded and wove around the neck of him with whom she used
     in her betrayal of me. Bare-handed, I choked the rascal
     almost dead, then took a shearing knife to his throat. Yes,
     I took his life, without warning like, he, the devil with
     his virus plans to suck yours.

        The devil is trying to squeeze me with his wind.

        "Wow!"
        Did you hear it? Me screaming at him. Defying him as his
     winds try to shake down my house.

        "WOW!"