Amnesia 7/Amnesia - Issue 07 (1991-11-23)(Eclipse).adf/text/blueboxing

Text File | 1989-05-09 | 32KB | 580 lines

Green-Beret/Plague here again,this time with an article on the megacool art
of BLUEBOXING.I hope you find this interesting.

File: ESQUIRE PART I
 Read 27 times

-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*= Sherwood Forest ][ presents =*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-
=                                                                           =
*                        SECRETS OF THE LITTLE BLUE BOX                     *
=                               by Ron Rosenbaum                            =
*                                                                           *
=            (Courtesy of BIOC Agent 003, Randy Hoops, & Jeff Watt)         =
*                                [part 1 of 6]                              *
=                                                                           =
-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-[ 914/359-1517 ]-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=

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"A Story so incredible it may even make you feel sorry for the phone company."
                       From October 1971 Esquire Magazine
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THE BLUE BOX IS INTRODUCED: IT'S QUALITIES ARE REMARKED

I am in the expensively furnished living room of Al Gilbertson, (his real name
has been changed) the creator of the "blue box."  Gilbertson is holding one of
his shiny black-and-silver "blue boxes" comfortably in the palm of his hand,
pointing out the thirteen little red push buttons sticking up from the console.
He is dancing his fingers over the buttons, tapping out discordant beeping
electronic jingles.

  He is trying to explain to me how his little blue box does nothing less than
place the entire telephone system of the world, satellites, cables and all, at
the service of the blue-box operator, free of charge.

     "That's what it does. Essentially it gives you the power of a super
operator.  You seize a tandem with this top button," he presses the top button
with his index finger and the blue box emits a high-pitched cheep, "and like
that"-cheep goes the aaaa box again-"you control the phone company's long
distance switching systems from your cute little Princess phone or any old pay
phone.  And you've got anonymity.  An operator has to operate from a definite
location: the phone company knows where she is and what she's doing.  But with
your beeper box, once you hop onto a trunk, say from a Holiday Inn 800
(toll-free) number, they don't know where you are, or where you're coming from,
they don't know how you slipped into their lines and popped up in that 800
number.  They don't even know anything illegal is going on.  And you can obscure
your origins through as many levels as you like.  You can call next door by way
of White Plains, then over to Liverpool by cable and then back here by
satellite.  You can call yourself from one pay phone all the way around the
world to a pay phone next to you.  And you get your dime back too.

    "And they can't trace the calls? They can't charge you?"

     "Not if you do it the right way. But you'll find that the free-call thing
isn't really as exciting at first as the feeling of power you get from having
one of these babies in your hand.  I've watched people when they first get hold
of one of these things and start using it, and discover they can make
connections, set up crisscross and zigzag switching patterns back and forth
accross the world. They hardly talk to the people they finally reach.  They say
hello and start thinking of what kind of call to make next.  They go a little
crazy."  He looks down at the neat little package in his palm.  His fingers are
still dancing, tapping out beeper patterns.

     "I think it's something to do with how small my models are.  There are lots
of blue boxes around, but mine are the smallest and most sophisticated
electronically.  I wish I could show you the prototype we made for our big
syndicate order."

     He sighs.  "We had this order for a thousand beeper boxes from a syndicate
front man in Las Vegas. They use them to place bets coast to coast, keep lines
open for hours, all of which can get expensive if you have to pay.  The deal was
a thousand blue boxes for $300 apiece.  Before then we retailed them for $1500
apiece, but $300,000 in one lump was hard to turn down.  We had a manufacturing
deal worked out in the Philippines. Everything was ready to go. Anyway, the
model I had ready for limited mass production was small enough to fit inside a
flip-top Marlboro box.  It had flush-touch panels for a keyboard, rather than
these unsightly buttons sticking out.  Looked just like a tiny portable radio.
In fact I had designed it with a tiny transistor receiver to get one AM channel,
so in case the law became suspicious the owner could switch on the radio part,
start snapping his fingers and no one could tell anything illegal was going on.
I thought of everything for this model--I had it lined with a band of thermite
which could be ignited by radio signal from a tiny button transmitter on your
belt, so it could be burned to ashes instantly in case of a bust.  It was
beautiful. A beautiful little machine.  You should have seen the face on these
syndicate guys when they came back after trying it out.  They'd hold it in their
palm like they never wanted to let it go, and they'd say, 'I can't believe it.'
You probably won't believe it until you try it."

THE BLUE BOX IS TESTED:  CERTAIN CONNECTIONS ARE MADE

About eleven o'clock two nights later Fraser Lucey has a blue box in the palm of
his left hand and a phone in the palm of his right.  His is standing inside a
phone booth next to an isolated shut-down motel off Highway 1.  I am standing
outside the phone booth.

     Fraser likes to show off his blue box for people.  Until a few weeks ago
when Pacific Telephone made a few arrests in his city, Fraser Lucey liked to
bring his blue box ** to parties.  It never failed: a few cheeps from his device
and Fraser became the center of attention at the very hippest of gatherings,
playing phone tricks and doing request numbers for hours.  He began to take
orders for his manufacturer in Mexico.  He became a dealer.

     Fraser is cautious now about where he shows off his blue box.  But he never
gets tired of playing with it.  "It's like the first time every time," he tells
me.

     Fraser puts a dime in the slot. He listens for a tone and holds the
receiver up to my ear.  I hear the tone.

     Fraser begins describing, with a certain practiced air, what he does while
he does it.

     "I'm dialing an 800 number now. Any 800 number will do.  It's toll free.
Tonight I think I'll use the ------ (he names a well know rent-a-car company)
800 number. Listen it's ringing. Here, you hear it?  Now watch."

     He places the blue box over the mouthpiece of the phone so that the one
silver and twelve black push buttons are facing up toward me.  He presses the
silver button - the one at the top - and I hear that high-pitched beep.

     "Thats 2600 cycles per second to be exact," says Lucey.  "Now, quick,
listen."

     He shoves the earpiece at me. The ringing has vanished.  The line gives a
slight hiccough, there is a sharp buzz, and then nothing but soft white noise.

     "We're home free now," Lucey tells me, taking back the phone and applying
the blue box to its mouthpiece once again. "We're up on a tandem, into a
long-lines trunk.  Once you're up on a tandem, you can send yourself anywhere
you want to go." He decides to check you London first.  He chooses a certain pay
phone located in Waterloo station.  This particular pay phone is popular with
the phone-phreaks network because there are usually people walking by at all
hours who will pick it up and talk for a while.

     He presses the lower left-hand corner button which is marked "KP" on the
face of the box.

     "That's Key Pulse.  It tells the tandem were ready to give it instructions
.
 First I'll punch out KP 182 START, which will slide us into the overseas sender
in White Plains." I hear neat clunk-cheep.  "I think we'll head over to England
by satellite.  Cable is actually faster and the connection is somewhat better,
but I like going by satellite.  So I just punch out KP Zero 44.  The Zero is
supposed to guarantee a satellite connection and 44 is the country code for
England.  Okay . . . we're there. In Liverpool actually.  Now all I have to do
is punch out the London area code which is 1, and dial up the pay phone.  Here,
listen, I've got a ring now."

     I hear the soft quick purr-purr of a London ring.  Then someone picks up
the phone.  "Hello," says the London voice.

     "Hello, Who's this?" Fraser asks.

     "Hello.  There's actually nobody here.  I just picked this up while I was
passing by.  This is a public phone.  There's no one here to answer actually."

     "Hello.  Don't hang up.  I'm calling from the United States."

     "Oh.  What is the purpose of the call?  This is a public phone you know."

     "Oh. You know. To check out, uh, to find out what's going on in London. How
is it there?"

     "It's five o'clock in the morning.  It's raining now."

     "Oh.  Who are you?"

     The London passerby turns out to be an R.A.F. enlistee on his way back to
the base in Lincolnshire, with a terrible hangover after a thirty-six hour pass
.
 He and Fraser talk about the rain.  They agree that it's nicer when it's not
raining.  They say good-bye and Fraser hangs up.  His dime returns with a nice
clink.

     "Isn't that far out," he says grinning at me. "London. Like that."

     Fraser squeezes the little blue box affectionately in his palm.  "I told ya
this thing is for real. Listen, if you don't mind I'm gonna try this girl I know
in Paris.  I usually give her a call around this time.  It freaks her out.  This
time I'll use the ----- (a different rent-a-car company) 800 number and we'll go
by overseas cable 133; 33 is the country code for France, the 1 sends you by
cable.  Okay, here we go. . . . Oh damn.  Busy.  Who could she be talking to at
this time?"

     A state police car cruises slowly by the motel.  The car does not stop, but
Fraser gets nervous.  We hop back into his car and drive ten miles in the
opposite direction until we reach a Texaco station locked up for the night.  We
pull up to a phone booth by the tire pump.  Fraser dashes inside and tries the
Paris number.  It is busy again.

     "I don't understand who she could be talking to.  The circuits may be busy.
 It's too bad I haven't learned how to tap into lines overseas with this thing
yet."

    Fraser begins to phreak around, as the phone phreaks say.  He dials a
leading nationwide charge card's 800 number and punches out the tones that bring
him the Time recording in Sydney, Australia.  He beeps up the Weather recording
in Rome, in Italian of course.  He calls a friend in Boston and talks about
acertain over the counter stock they are into heavily.   He finds the Paris
number busy again.  He calls up "Dial a Disc" in London, and we listen to
"Double Barrell" by David and Anail Collins, the number one hit of the week in
London.  He calls up a dealer of another sort and talks in code.  He calls up
Joe Engressia, the original blind phone-phreak genius, and pays his respects.
There are other calls. Finally Fraser gets through to his young lady in Paris.
They both agree the circuits must have been busy, and criticize the Paris
telephone system. At two-thirty in the morning Fraser hangs up, pockets his
dime, and drives off, steering with one hand, holding what he calls his "lovely
little blue box" in the other.

YOU CAN CALL LONG DISTANCE FOR LESS THAN YOU THINK

     "You see, a few years ago the phone company made one big mistake,"
Gilbertson explains two days later in his apartment.  "They were careless
enought to let some technical journal publish the actual frequencies used to
create all their multi-frequency tones.  Just a theoretical article some Bell
Telephone Laboratories engineer was doing about switching theory, and he listed
the tones in passing.  AT ----- (a well known technical school) I had been
fooling around with phones for several years before I came across a copy of the
journal in the engineering library.  I ran back to the lab and it took maybe
twelve hours from the time I saw that article to put together the first working
blue box.  It was bigger and clumsier than this little baby, but it worked."

     It's all there on public record in that technical journal written mainly by
Bell Lab people for other telephone engineers.  Or at least it was public.
"Just try and get a copy of that issue at some engineering school library now.
Bell has had them all red-tagged and withdrawn from circulation," Gilbertson
tells me.

     "But it's too late now.  It's all public now.  And once they became public
the technology needed to create your own beeper device is within the range of
any twelve-year-old kid, any twelve-year-old blind kid as a matter of fact.  And
he can do it in less than the twelve hours it took us. Blind kids do it all the
time.  They can't build anything as precise and compact as my beeper box, but
theirs can do anything mine can do."

     "How?"

     "Okay.  About twenty years ago A.T.&T. made a multi-million dollar decision
to operate its entire long-distance switching system on twelve electronically
generated combinations of six master tones. Those are the tones you sometimes
hear in the background after you've dialed a long-distance number.  They decided
to use some very simple tones -- the tone for each number is just two fixed
single-frequency tones played simultaneously to create a certain beat frequency
.
 Like 1300 cycles per second and 900 cycles per second played together give you
the tone for digit 5.  Now, what some of these phone phreaks have done is get
themselves access to an electric organ.  Any cheap family home entertainment
organ.  Since the frequencies are public knowledge now -- one blind phone phreak
has even had them recorded in one of those talking books for the blind -- they
just have to find the musical notes on the organ which correspond to the phone
tones. Then they tape them.  For instance, to get Ma Bell's tone for the number
1, you press down organ keys F3 and A3 (900 and 700 cycles per second) at the
same time.  To produce the tone for 2 it's F3 and C6 (1100 and 700 c.p.s). The
phone phreaks circulate the whole list of notes so there's no trial and error
anymore."

     He shows me a list of the rest of the phone numbers and the two electric
organ keys that produce them.

     "Actually, you have to record these notes at 3 3/4 inches per second tape
speed and double it to 7 1/2 inches per second when you play them back, to get
the proper tones," he adds.

     "So once you have all the tones recorded, how do you plug them into the
phone system?"

     "Well, they take their organ and their cassette recorder, and start banging
out entire phone numbers in tones on the organ, including country codes, routing
instructions, 'KP' and 'Start' tones.  Or, if they don't have an organ, someone
in the phone-phreak network sends them a cassette with all the tones recorded
with a voice saying 'Number one,' then you have the tone, 'Number two,' then the
tone and so on. So with two cassette recorders they can put together a series of
phone numbers by switching back and forth from number to number.  Any idiot in
the country with a cheap cassette recorder can make all the free calls he
wants."

     "You mean you just hold the cassette recorder up to the mouthpiece and
switch in a series of beeps you've recorded?  The phone thinks that anything
that makes these tones must be its own equipment?"

     "Right.  As long as you get the frequency within thirty cycles per second
of the phone company's tones, the phone equipment thinks it hears its own voice
talking to it.  The original granddaddy phone phreak was this blind kid with
perfect pitch, Joe Engressia, who used to whistle into the phone.  An operator
could tell the difference between his whistle and the phone company's electronic
tone generator, but the phone company's switching circuit can't tell them apart
.
The bigger the phone company gets and the further away from human operators it
gets, the more vulnerable it becomes to all sorts of phone phreaking."

[Continued in part II]

                         Secrets of the Little Blue Box
                                (Part II)


A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

  "But wait a minute," I stop Gilbertson.  "if everything you do sounds like
phone-company equipment, why doesn't the phone company charge you for the call
the way it charges its own equipment?"

  "Okay.  That's where the 2600-cycle tone comes in.  I better start from the
beginning."

  The beginning he describes for me is a vision of the phone system of the
continent as thousands of webs, of long-line trunks radiating from each of the
hundreds of toll switching offices to the other toll switching offices.  Each
toll switching office is a hive compacted of thousands of long-distance tandems
constantly whistling and beeping to tandems in far-off toll switching offices.

  The tandem is the key to the whole system.  Each tandem is a line with some
relays with the capability of signaling any other tandem in any other toll
switching office on the continent, either directly one-to-one or by programming
a roundabout route several other tandems if all the direct routes are busy.  For
instance, if you want to call from New York to Los Angeles and traffic is heavy
on all direct trunks between the two cities, your tandem in New York is
programmed to try the next best route, which may send you down to a tandem in
New Orleans, then up to San Francisco, or down to a New Orleans tandem, back to
an Atlanta tandem, over to an Albuquerque tandem and finally up to Los Angeles.

  When a tandem is not being used, when it's sitting there waiting for someone
to make a long-distance call, it whistles.  One side of the tandem, the side
"facing" our home phone, whistles at 2600 cycles per second toward all the home
phones serviced by the exchange, telling them it is at their service, should
they be interewted in making a long-distance call.  The other side of the tandem
is whistling 2600 c.p.s.  into one or more long distance trunk lines, telling
the rest of the phone system that it is neither sending nor receiving a call
through the trunk at the moment, that it has no use for that trunk at the
moment.

  When you dial a long-distance number the first thing that happens is that you
are hooked into a tandem.  A register comes up to the side of the tandem facing
away from you and presents that side with the number you dialed.  This sending
side of the tandem stops whistling 2600 into its trunk line.  When a tandem
stops the 2600 tone it has been sending through a trunk, the trunk is said to be
"seized," and is now ready to carry the number you have dialed -- converted into
multi-frequency beep tones -- to a tandem in the area code and central office
you want.

  Now when a blue-box operator wants to make a call from New Orleans to New York
he starts by dialing the 800 number of a company which might happen to have its
headquarters in Los Angeles.  The sending side of this New Orleans tandem stops
sending 2600 out over the trunk to the central office in Los Angeles, thereby
seizing the trunk.  Your New Orleans tandem begins sending beep tones to a
tandem it has discovered idly whistling 2600 cycles in Los Angeles.  The
receiving end of that L.A.  tandem is seized, stops whistling 2600, listens to
the beep tones which tell it which L.A.  phone to ring, and starts ringing the
800 number.  Meanwhile a mark made in the New Orleans office accounting tape
indicates that a call from your New Orleans phone to the 800 number in L.A.  has
been initiated and gives the call a code number.  Everything is routine so far.

  But then the phone phreak presses his blue box to the mouthpiece and pushes
the 2600-cycle button, sending 2600 out from the New Orleans tandem notices the
2600 cycles are coming over the line again and assumes that New Orleans has hung
up because the trunk is whistling as if idle.  The the L.A.  800 number.  But as
soon as the phreak takes his finger off the 2600 button, the L.A.  tandem
assumes the trunk is once again being used because the 2600 is gone so it
listens for a new series of digit tones -- to find out where it must send the
call.

  Thus the blue-box operator in New Orleans now is in touch with a tandem in
L.A.  which is waiting like and obedient genie to be told what to do next.  The
blue-box owner then beeps out the ten digits of the New York number which tell
the L.A.  tandem to relay a call to New York City.  Which it promptly does.  As
soon as your party picks up the phone in New York, the side of the New Orleans
tandem facing you stops sending 2600 to you and starts carrying his voice to you
by way of the L.A.  tandem.  A notation is made on the accounting tape that the
connection has been made on the 800 call which had been initiated and noted
earlier.  When you stop talking to New York a notation is made that the 800 call
has ended.

  At three the next morning, when phone company's accounting computer starts
reading back over the master accounting tape for the past day, it records that a
call of a certain length of time was made from your New Orleans home to an L.A.
800 number and, of course the accounting computer has been trained to ignore
these toll-free 800 calls when compiling your monthly bill.

  "All they can prove is that you made an 800 toll-free call," Gilbertson the
inventor concludes.  "of course, if you're foolish enough to talk for two hours
on an 800 call, and they've installed one of their special anti-fraud computer
programs to watch out for such things, they may spot you and ask you why you
took two hours talking to Army Recruiting's 800 number when you're 4-F.  But if
you do it from a pay phone, they may discover something peculiar the next day --
if they've got a blue-box hunting program in their computer -- but you'll be a
long time gone from the pay phone by then.  Using a pay phone is almost
guaranteed safe."

  "What about the recent series of blue-box arrests all across the country --
New York, Cleveland, and so on?" I asked.  "How were they caught so easily?"

  "From what I can tell, they made one big mistake:  they were seizing trunks
using an area code plus 555-1212 instead of an 800 number.  when you send
multi-frequency beep tones off 555 you get a charge for it on your tape and the
accounting computer knows there's something wrong when it tries to bill you for
a two-hour call to Akron, Ohio, information, and it drops a trouble card which
goes right into the hands of the security agent if they're looking for blue-box
users.

  "Whoever sold those guys their blue boxes didn't tell them how to use them
properly, which is fairly irresponsible.  And they were fairly stupid to use
them at home all the time."

  "But what those arrests really mean is that an awful lot of blue boxes are
flooding into the country and that people are finding them so easy to make that
they know how to make them befor they know how to use them.  Ma Bell is in
trouble."

  And if a blue-box operator or a cassette-recorder phone phreak sticks to pay
phones and 800 numbers, the phone company can't stop them?

  "Not unless they change their entire nationwide long-lines technology, which
will take them a few billion dollars and twenty years.    Right now they can't do
a thing.  They're screwed."


  CAPTAIN CRUNCH DEMONSTRATES HIS FAMOUS UNIT

  There is an underground telephone network in this country.  Gilbertson
discovered it the very day news of his activities hit the papers.  That evening
his phone began ringing.  Phone phreaks from Seattle, from Florida, from New
York, from San Jose, and from Los Angeles began calling him and telling him
about the phone-phreak network.  He'd get a call from a phone phreak who'd say
nothing but, "Hang up and call this number."

  When he dialed the number he'd find himself tied into a conference of a dozen
phone phreaks arranged through a quirky switching station in British Columbia.
They identified themselves as phone phreaks, they demonstrated their homemade
blue boxes which they called "M-F-ers"(for multi-frequency, among other things)
for him, they talked shop about phone-phreak devices.  They let him in on their
secrets on the theory that if the phone company was after him he must be
trustworthy.  And, Gilbertson recalls, they stunned him with their technical
sophistication.

  I ask him how to get in touch with the phone-phreak network.    He digs around
through a file of old schematics and comes up with about a dozen numbers in
three widely separated area codes.

  "Those are the centers," he tells me.  Alongside some of the numbers he writes
in first names or nicknames:  names like Captain Crunch, Dr.  No, Frank Carson,
(also a code word for free call), Marty Freeman (code word for M-F device),
Peter Perpendicular Pimple, Alefnull, and The Cheshire Cat.  He makes checks
alongside the names of those among thest top twelve who are blind.  There are
five checks.

  I ask him who this Captain Crunch person is.

  "Oh, The Captain.  He's probably the most legendary phone phreak.  He calls
himself Captain Crunch after the notorious Cap'n Crunch 2600 whistle." (Several
years ago, Gilbertson explains, the makers of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal
offered a toy-whistle prize in every box as a treat for the Cap'n Crunch set.
Somehow a phone phreak discovered that the toy whistle just happened to produce
a perfect 2600-cycle tone.  When the man who calls himself Captain Crunch was
transferred overseas to England with his Air Force unit, he would receive scores
of calls from his friends and "mute" them -- make them free of charge to them --
by blowing his Cap'n Crunch whistle into his end.)

  "Captain Crunch is one of the older phone phreaks," Gilbertson tells me.
"He's an engineer who once got in a little trouble for fooling around with the
phone, but he can't stop.  Well, this guy drives across country in a Volkswagen
van with an entire switchboard and a computerized super-sophisticated M-F-er in
the back.  He'll pull up to a phone booth on a lonely highway somewhere, snake a
cable out of his bus, hook it onto the phone and sit for hours, days sometimes,
sending calls zipping back and forth across the country, all over the world.  .
.  ."

  Back at my motel, I dialed the number he gave me for "Captain Crunch" and
asked for G---- T-----, his real name, or at least the name he uses when he's
not dashing into a phone booth beeping out M-F tones faster than a speeding
bullet, and zipping phantomlike through the phone company's long-distance lines.

  When G---- T----- answered the phone and I told him I was preparing a story
for Esquire about phone phreaks, he became very indignant.

  "I don't do that.  I don't do that anymore at all.  And if I do it, I do it
for one reason and one reason only.  I'm learning about a system.  The phone
company is a system.  A computer is a system.  Do you understand?  If I do what
I do, it is only to explore a System.  Computers.  Sustems.  That's my bag.  *he
phone company is nothing but a computer."

  A tone of tightly restrained excitement enters the Captain's voice when he
starts talking about Systems.  He begins to pronounce each syllable with the
hushed deliberation of an obscene caller.

  "Ma Bell is a system I want to explore.  It's a beautiful system, you know,
but Ma Bell screwed up.  It's terrible because Ma Bell is such a beautiful
system but she screwed up.  I learned how she screwed up from a couple of blind
kids who wanted me to build a device.  A certain device.  They said it could
make free calls.  But when these blind kids told me I could make calls into a
computer, my eyes lit up.  I wanted to learn about computers.  I wanted to learn
about Ma Bell's computers.  So I built the little device.  Only I built it wrong
and Ma Bell found out.    Ma Bell can detect things like that.  Ma Bell knows.  So
I'm strictly out of it now.  I don't do it.  Except for learning purposes." He
pauses.  "So you want to write an article.  Are you paying for this call?  Hang
up and call this number."

  He gives me a number in an area code a thousand miles north of his own.  I
dial the number.

  "Hello again.  This is Captain Crunch.  You are speaking to me on a toll-free
loop-around in Portland Oregon.  Do you know what a toll-free loop-around is?
I'll tell you."

  He explains to me that almost every exchange in the country has open test
numbers which allow other exchanges to test their connections with it.    Most of
thest numbers occur in consecutive pairs, such as 302 956-0041 and 956-0042.
Well certain phone phreaks discovered that if two people from anywhere in the
country dial those two consecutive numbers they can talk together just as if one
had called the other's number, with no charge to either of them, of course.

  "Your voice is looping around in a 4A switching machine up there in Canada,
zipping back down to me," the Captain tells me.  "My voice is looping around up
there and back down to you.  And it can't ever cost anyone money.  The phone
phreaks and I have compiled a list of many many of these numbers.  You would be
surprised if you saw the list.    I could show it to you.  But I won't.  I'm out
of that now.  I'm not out to screw Ma Bell.  I know better.  If I do anything
it's for the pure knowledge of the System.  You can learn to do fantastic
things.  Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up?    Do you know the sound of
tandems stacking and unstacking?  Give me your phone number.  Hang up now and
wait a minute.

  Slightly less than a minute later the phone rang and the Captain was on the
line, his voice sounding far more excited, almost aroused.

  "I wanted to show you what it's like to stack up tandems.  To stack up
tandems.  (Whenever the Captain says "stack up" he sounds like he is smaking
his lips.)

  "How do you like the connection you're on now?" the Captain asks me.  "It's a
raw tandem.  A raw tandem.  I'm going to show you what it's like to stack up.
Blow off.  Land in a faraway place.  To stack that tandem up, whip back and
forth across the country a few times, then shoot on up to Moscow."

  "Listen," Captain Crunch continues.  "Listen.  I've got a line tie on my
switchboard here, and I'm gonna let you hear me stack and unstack tandems.
Listen to this.  I'm gonna blow your mind."

  First I hear a super rapid-fire pulsing of t(e flutelike phone tones, then a
pause, then another popping burst of tones, then another, then another.  Each
burst is followed by a beep-kachink sound.

  "We have now stacked up four tandems," said Captain Crunch, sounding somewhat
remote.  "That's four tandems stacked up.  Do you know what that means?  That
means I'm whipping back and forth, back and forth twice, across the country,
before coming to you.  I've been known to stack up twenty tandems at a time.
Now, just like I said, I'm going po shoot up to Moscow."

  There is a new longer series of beeper pulses over the line, a brief silence,
then a ring.

  "Hello, answers a far-off voice.

  "Hello, Is this the American Embassy Moscow?"

  "Yes, sir, Who is calling?" says the voice.

  "Yes, This is test board here in New York.  We're calling to check out the
circuits, see what kind of lines you've got.  Everything okay there in Moscow?"

  "Okay?"

  "Well, yes, how are things there?"

  "Oh.  Well everything okay, I guess."

  "Okay.  Thank you." They hang up, leaving a confused series of beep-kachink
sounds hanging in mid-ether in the wake of the call before disolving away.

  The Captain is pleased.  "You believe me now, don't you?  Do you know what I'd
like to do?  I'd like to call up your editor at Esquire and show him just what
it sounds like to stack and unstack tandems.  I'll give him a show that will
blow his mind.    What's his number?"

  I ask the Captain what kind of device he was using to accomplish all his
feats.  The Captain is pleased at the question.

END OF PART II

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO RANDY HOOPS!!