Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/201/RUBYV26.ZIP/RUBY26-8

Text File | 1993-10-22 | 17KB | 282 lines

Copyright 1993(c)
                          INTERVENTION
                         By Rick Dawson

     It had been a hell of a week already, and it was only
Wednesday. Sunday, a rock thrown up by a dump truck put a two-foot
crack in the windshield of the van I was driving. Monday starts the
usual "get the kids off to school" rat race all over again, and the
oldest boy is already complaining about how Mrs. Butler's got it
in for him about his spelling. The pest control company calls and
says they're going to be late getting over here to fix the job they
were supposed to have gotten right the first time a week ago, so
I've got to put up with the smell of Sevin in the yard and that
unpronounceable chlorosomething or other that they put on the
carpet to kill the fleas all over again. Tuesday, the wife hit a
deer on the way home from work and puts a dent in the Geo like some
drunk bodyslammed it, and Dan Pedersen wanders over after he gets
off work and tells me about *his* last week on the job. Made my
insurance renewal problems and my bug control problem seem pretty
run of the mill, I tell you.
    The last part he told me caught my interest; a guy that had
used a computer network to send out his suicide note just happened
to have posted his message on the BBS that I use to keep in touch
with friends in New York. I knew the sysop, Ted Ruffin, fairly
well; a harmless old guy who'd retired up here from Florida, ran
a clean board and made a good cup of coffee. I knew, just as well
as Dan did, that Ted had no knowledge of the note even hitting his
BBS. Hell, most of the local users probably never even saw the
damned thing - maybe twenty-five users on his board used the
netmail features, and most of them never bothered with using the
mail door. The majority of his users were split between what he
called "Hoovers" - folks that downloaded files like they had to
have them to live - and the gamers. Ted probably had the most
complete collection of online games I'd ever seen; not that I
played them all that much, but my son's in love with the things,
so I got an in-depth introduction to them through him.
    The biggest hits on the system were Global Conquest and
BizBattles 2010, both text-based adventures with minimal ANSI
graphics that dealt with building corporations on a galactic scale.
Both allowed you to form alliances, backstab your partners and rob
their accounts, and even blow them up - not too different from
doing business in Beirut or Mogadishu, or even New York, when you
got down to it. The kids loved it, and took to the screwing one
another over parts with abandon. They'd mine whole quadrants, and
leave each other messages suggesting that something they wanted
was just on the other side of that area. Next time the poor sap
logs on, he reads that message and tries to go through the mined
areas and gets his ship blown up, while the screen flashes messages
at him telling him what a jerk he was to have listened to that
other guy. No, not too different from the real world - but the
destruction was virtual, not literal, and the blood was flaring
phosphors, not liquid and real. Just the same, I didn't play the
games like that; I'm a message junkie. I'm too lazy to write real
letters, and money is too tight for me to think about calling
voice, so the netmail is what I play with on Wednesdays.
     I was looking forward to doing just that when the phone rang.
That's usually a bad omen around here - it seldom rings during the
day, except for those flaming idiots who think I'd be interested
in buying vinyl siding or windows over the telephone, or else its
the school calling saying one or the other of the boys is sick, and
could I come and get them. I stepped over the gate we've got up to
keep Michael out of the loft, and went over to the phone, wondering
which voice I needed to put on - the concerned parent or the
overbusy homeowner. The voice on the other end made me choose a
hash of both of those options.
     "David?" I'd know Ted's voice anywhere; that combination of
old age and young tobacco produced a powerful wheeze in the
mid-range.
     It wasn't him saying my name that made me feel afraid, it was
something in the tone - I recognize drunk when I hear it, and that
came through pretty clearly too. I answered him same as I always
did, "Yo Pops, what's up?", but I was totally unprepared for what
he said next.  "I'm gonna shut the board down. What do you think
I need to do?" Again, it wasn't the words, but in the tone of his
voice - alarm bells were going off inside my head so loud I could
hardly think of what might be safe to say, too loudly for me to
understand what they were telling me. I temporized a bit. "It's
your board, Ted. What do you want to do with it? The Hoovers
getting to you again?" We had talked about a solution to that
particular problem before - Ted got hot when folks downloaded from
his board all the time and never uploaded anything in return, so
I suggested that he put a ratio on the worst of the Hoovers that
would force them to upload after x number of downloads, or they
couldn't download. Personally, I thought he was making a bigger
deal out of it than it had to be - it was supposed to be a fun
hobby, and if you get emotionally involved to the point where you
feel angry or sad or hurt because of the way someone acts while
they are a visitor on a computer in your own home, you either ask
them to leave or jerk the plugs out of the modems and take up
something else.
     There was a pause where all I could hear was his breathing,
and during that pause I listened closely: he was crying. Again
that, all by itself when you're talking about someone who's drunk,
isn't newsworthy - I've been that way more times than I can count,
and something about being drunk makes the plumbing work easier when
it comes to draining fluids. I sweat freely, then pee like I'm
trying to become the headwaters of the James, and after a few hours
I start crying. That usually means I'm within a half-hour of
passing out, so I wait it through with some sad records to get it
all out of my system. Next morning, I have blessed little memory
of having cried, but my sinuses are cleared out. It was the things
he wasn't saying, the tone of his voice in the things he'd said
that had me worried. "Listen Ted, I can't really talk long right
now, 'cause I just put Michael to bed. What about if I come over
around 9 tonight?  Will you be ok until then?" I got a sob and a
muffled, "Yeah, I'll be ok . . . see ya" for an answer before the
receiver went dead. I hung up and sat down to think about what I'd
heard, and what was bothering me about it. I finally put a
half-finger on it around six that evening - he sounded depressed
enough to kill himself.
     I know from depression, and from suicide attempts. The docs
at Sheridan House told me I had probably been depressed since I
was eight or nine, and that, based on my history, they were
surprised that I was still alive at all. Most of my suicide
attempts were "accidental" O.D.'s that I kept on waking up from -
although it might be a day and a half later before I'd come to,
with no clue as to where I was or how I'd gotten there. They did
a fair job of putting me back into some semblance of working order,
but there's a limit on what you can do in thirty days when you're
trying to repair damage from two decades or so ago - some pieces
are irretrievably lost, some were never onboard to start with, and
some of what is there is warped pretty badly. When I was released,
I didn't want to drink or do dope anymore, and if sometimes life
didn't feel like it was worth the effort, I was able to fall back
on what they'd told me - that feelings pass, and you have to hang
on long enough to let them.  Just doing that minimal amount, I'd
managed to keep from getting back down into Hell's own mud puddles
and making a mess of myself that someone else had to clean up, and
sometimes I even got to help other folks clean up after
themselves.
     All that was passing through my mind as I got on the bike for
the trip over to Ted's house. I knew where I'd come from and what
worked for me; maybe some of it would be helpful to talk about, if
he wanted to talk about what was really going on. I knew better
than to think I could "rescue" Ted, or "fix" him; all I planned on
doing that night was to be the best friend I could be, listen to
what I heard and offer what I could. This wasn't going to be a 12th
Step call, or an intervention - just one  guy who'd been through
a few of the grad level courses on misery avoidance being ready to
assist if needed. Besides, I thought to myself as I pulled into the
driveway, I might have everything all wrong. I might have been
hearing things and reading things into what I wasn't hearing. When
I got inside the door, however, it was obvious that, if anything,
I'd missed the mark by being too optimistic.
     He was sitting at the counter with a bottle of vodka - a
gallon bottle, and it was only an inch from being drained. Beside
that was a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes; the crumpling came
from the Dan Wesson .357 Magnum laying on top of the pack, barrel
pointed toward the doorway in which I was standing. An ashtray to
his right held a lit cigarette poised over a pile of butts, and the
smoke rose at an angle toward his eyes. Those eyes had never looked
more hollow, more drained of life than they did right then. The
deep creases in his forehead were awash in sweat, his face was
flushed, and the outer edges of his lips were gray. He watched me
stand in the doorway without seeing me for a long time. When he
finally recognized me, there was no light-hearted banter like we
usually exchanged. I walked slowly towards the stool across from
him at the counter once I was sure that he saw me, and kept my
hands where he could see them.
    "Rough night, huh Ted?" I began, wondering what in the hell
had brought him to such a state. He looked over at me, and I know
the phrase soulless blue eyes has become overworn in cheap fiction,
but there were no other words in English to describe the absence
of life where usually the gleam of an imp shone through. "I'm
shutting the board down, Dave" he slurred. "I gotta do it, and I
gotta do it tonight while I'm still able to."
     "I don't understand, Ted; what does the board have to do with
you being drunk out here? I'm not going to argue with you about the
board; I just want to know what it has to do with the shape you're
in," I said.
     He must have noticed me glancing nervously at the piece while
I was waiting for him to respond. "Don't worry about the gun; this
is a flaky neighborhood."
     That was flat wrong - this part of town, the worst crime that
had happened in ten years was someone vandalizing a mailbox, and
that was seven years back. Nonetheless, I wasn't going to argue the
point right then.
     "Ok, so what can I do to help? Do you want to talk about it,
or is there something you want me to do with the computers?"
     There was a long pause before he answered while he took a hard
pull on the jug.
     "No, I don't want to talk about it" he said, with as much
sarcasm as he could muster.
     "Then why in hell did you call me in the first place? Ted,
what's eating you? I've never seen you drunk before, but this is
a little bizarre, don't you think? Talk to me!" I said, the
frustration of talking to a drunk and my concern for him
overriding my fear of the gun, which he'd picked up while I was
talking. The anguish he'd held back started to slip out with a
burst of tears: the crushing loneliness and sense of isolation he'd
been living with for years, how computers had come to fill a void
in his life by bringing "visitors" over to the house at all hours.
     He talked about what it had been like for him as a kid; never
good enough in his parent's eyes no matter how many good grades or
sports letters he's brought home, about the fitful start in
government service, first in the military, then as a civil servant
up until he retired as a GS-13.
     The hours passed as we sat in his kitchen, him talking and
drinking, and me listening, asking a question every now and again.
The recent history that I hadn't known about came next: the death
of his wife three years ago in a bus/car collision near Plant City.
The move back to Colonial Heights, where he'd been raised as a boy.
Trying to establish himself as one of the best free bulletin boards
around as a way of channeling his frustrations, and feeling like
he wasn't appreciated for the work and the money he put into it.
     "But Ted," I popped in, "remember we talked about this before?
When the hobby starts becoming an obsession, its time to ditch it
and find something else. Correct me if I miss my guess, but I'm
going to bet you get up in the morning and go right into that
computer room of yours and only come out for meals and the
bathroom, right?"
     The wounded look told me I'd hit the mark solidly, so I went
on. "Its time you started enjoying your retirement, isn't it? Go
out and find another lady to share some time with, man. Go out to
your son's place and get him to take you out on the lake with that
gadzillion dollar boat of his, do some fishing,... anything. But
this is no way to live."
     His face went slack for a minute, then cleared up, and I began
to think everything might work out fine. He smiled at me for a
minute.
     "You know something, Dave? You're right. This is no way to
live. Here, hold this a minute" he said, handing me the booze. "I
need to set a few things straight real quick in there." I'd kind
of hoped he'd leave the gun on the counter instead of the bottle,
but he sounded a little more cheerful. Maybe he was going to shoot
the computer - Elvis shot a tv when it showed him something he
didn't like, so a precedent of a sort did exist. I fished out a
smoke from his pack and lit it after I heard the clicking of the
keys in the other room.  Yep, things might just - BLAM!
     I dropped the butt and ran back to the computer room, kicking
myself in the ass for not having gone back there with him, still
half-hoping I'd see him in a John Wayne pose blowing smoke from the
barrel while a monitor fried on the slug. The room stank of stale
cigarettes and gunpowder, and blood - all of it hit my nose before
I turned the corner from the hallway into the room. He was knocked
backwards in the swivel chair; it looked like he'd put the gun to
his right temple and angled the shot so the bullet would pass
through most of the brain. My eyes were overflowing with remorse
as I looked around the room where my friend had pulled the plug on
his personal demons. On one of the monitors, the screen was
flashing a message. It took a few moments before I was able to read
it. It was one of the screens from BizBattles 2010 - "120 Space
Mines detonate near you! Emergency Escape Pod destroyed! Life
Support Destroyed! You are dead!". I stared at that screen for long
minutes, numb to my surroundings but not to the eerie quality of
that particular message being on the screen. When it hadn't changed
for a few minutes, I looked over at the modem to see if there was
a problem - no-one was online.
     That got my attention; Ted's board had redundant features
installed to ensure smooth operations. If for any reason the system
hung on a user and they "dropped carrier", or hung up, the board
would automatically reset. It worked every time without fail - I'd
helped him test that feature when he first moved up here. It was
one of the reasons he and I had become friends in the first place;
he knew the BBS stuff, and I wanted to learn it so I could at least
keep pace with my son. But the modem looked fine, and the board's
other line was busy, the user oblivious to the tragedy that had
befallen the operator. The logon screen came up - Welcome to The
Dead Zone! A haven for fans of the band! Ted Ruffin, SysOp.  As I
stood there watching, the lights for line one's modem flickered;
an incoming call. It refused to answer. Well, maybe the modem
fried, I tried to tell myself as I went out to the kitchen to call
Dan at home. Somehow, I knew that wasn't the case at all, and the
fear that I'd felt earlier during the day when I'd talked to Ted
sprang back to the foreground. . .but damnit, its just a computer!
It can't think, it can't do anything unless its been programmed.
     "Dan? Dave Hahn. Remember that suicide you were telling me
about from last week ... the guy who wrote his suicide note on a
computer? Well, the guy who runs the BBS that note went out over
just killed himself not twenty foot from me. I was here when he
did it. I'll wait for you. Dan? Something about this - coincidence,
whatever - is bothering the hell out of me; I'll show you what I'm
talking about when you get here. Probably nothing. Right, see you
in a few."
     I didn't dare tell him what I'd started thinking was
happening. With my mental and emotional history being what it was,
the last thing I needed was a visit to the State Hospital out on
Route 1. This was going to be a challenge...

                              END