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Bit Rock

Ian Bowman

    Refactor this, refactor that. I wasn’t sure how the quadratic formula related to anything in my life that mattered. I possessed skill enough to improve the world, but I didn’t get in in touch with that in high school algebra.
    “Hey Jorg,” called Rich Collins from the front corner of the room. “Nice Def Leppard shirt. Did you find it at a flea market?”
    Jorg Jorgman, sitting directly to my left, smiled. “Rich, I’ve been flexing my muscles in front of the mirror for one year, and I still don’t look as done up as you in that jean jacket vest.” Jorg combed through his hair in mock glamor. “Anyways, with regard to this shirt, of course I didn’t get it at a flea market. I bought it a thrift store!” Jorg laughed and held his hand up for a high five. His self deprecating humor was sort of funny, I guess. He was my best friend.
    From the other front corner of the room, Fred chimed in, “Def Leppard is for pussies. Next time you’re at Goodwill, Jorgman, pick me up a shirt that says ‘Slayer, Angel of Death!’”
    Jorg’s smile faded. “Interesting request,” he replied finally.
    “Boys, please watch your language and quiet down.” Mrs. Romaine stood at the chalkboard. “Today we will review the quadratic formula.”
    But Rich and Fred needed to shout to hear each other. Policy at East Bay Vista High was to keep the Wolf Dealer Vikings separated. In addition to shouting, though, the WDVs practiced a signal code to fluency. They flashed signs to set up deals, fights, meetings, basically anything happening between class or after school.
    “Okay, someone help me out. How does the quadratic formula start?” Mrs. Romaine held chalk in her hand. The room was quiet. “No one knows how the quadratic formula starts?” she asked.
    “Negative b!” said Gil.
    “Thank you, Gil!”
    “Righteous!” Jorg held up his hand for another high five.
    Mrs. Romaine wrote out the quadratic formula on the board. “And as you know, x equals negative b equals plus minus square root...”
    Rich flashed the first message of the day. Fred laughed and signalled some sort of O shape back. It was as if those dudes wanted to make it as obvious as possible they were doing something illegal, and whatever crime it was had an O in it.
    I had seen it all before. “SUICIDAL TENDENCIES” was etched lightly into my desk. I got to work filling it in with the broken mechanical pencil I found in PE.
    Jorg on the other hand, was engrossed, swivelling his head left and right, at a tennis match of gang signs. Then he removed a large hardbound book from his backpack. On the cover was a picture of someone making a fist. “Check this out, Dan! I picked up another one of these rad books at the library,” he said, smiling at me now. He made a similar looking fist with his hand. “That’s ‘S.’ For sign language! Cool, huh?”
    It was not in fact very surprising that Jorg knew sign language. Jorg’s father had supposedly been deaf, and an artist. I never met him. Whatever the case, Jorg was a keen observer of anything visual.
    Gil leaned in next to Jorg. “Do you really understand what those guys are saying? You know sign language?” she asked.
    “Most definitely,” he answered.
    “How do you sign my name, then?”
    Jorg leaned back in his desk, dealing with what apparently was the simplest request he’d fielded all week. He motioned a series of signs with his right hand. “Eff... oh...” he said, and hooked an index finger, “ex!”
    Gil opened her mouth in a look of disgust. “‘Fox?’ Ew! It’s like you’re stuck in the 70s. I have an actual name, you know.”

    “Hey Mom, you need some help with that food?”
    Next to the sink, Mom sprinkled ingredients into the tuna casserole. Then she rinsed her hands. “Yeah sure, put the rest of those potato chips on it. When the oven is ready, leave it in there for 20 minutes.” She washed the knife and the cutting board, then walked to her bedroom and shut the door.
    As I brought my plate to my desk, I was excited. I turned on my IBM PC, upgraded with a 20 megabyte hard drive. The machine groaned to life. Today I would finally finish breaking the new Me Era game, Money Quest 2. Me Era built the disks with certain sectors purposely messed up. As the game loaded, it tested that those sectors were damaged. But my version of the game was copied on top of a new, blank floppy disk. All the sectors of the disk were fine. I needed to trick the program into thinking it was running on a damaged disk.
    To get started with the break, I loaded Money Quest 2 into the DEBUG program, and stepped through each instruction with the trace command.

    C:\> DEBUG MQ2.EXE
    - t
    AX=0000 BX=0000 CX=7BA8 DX=0CEE SP=0080 BP=0000 SI=0000 DI=0000
    DS=07D2 ES=07D2 SS=0FAD CS=07E2 IP=0003 NV UP DI PL NZ NA PO NC
    07E2:0003 2E89163502 MOV CS:[0235],DX CS:0235=0000

    I stayed up late, tracing the code and looking up disk read interrupts in a library book. Eventually I found the section that needed to report a disk error, and modified the machine code so that it always did.
    Now when I started up Money Quest 2

    C:\> MQ2

    it worked. I played it for a while, then wrote a text file describing how to modify the code. When I logged onto the Bit Rock BBS, I uploaded that file to the breaking section.

    Subject: Money Quest 2 has been doctored

    And then it was after 2 AM. I went to bed.

    Even the parked cars made sound as I whipped past on my Huffy. Of course, I wanted a GT Pro Performer. That wasn’t what my mom gave me, though. The biggest trick I ever pulled off was when I bunny hopped over a lawn chair. But that was the day my mom brought home the IBM PC from her work, where it had been marked as trash. “Go out to the car. Something for you there in the trunk,” she said.
    And in that summer of 1986, I opened my mom’s trunk, saw the PC, brought it to my room and turned it on. From that moment on, I rode my bike with purpose. Like to the library. I was looking for computer books. And that’s where I met Jorg, hanging out with his step-dad. Now it was three years later.
    The grid of East Bay Vista began at the water. Next to East Bay was a large dock and industrial park. I lived with my mom in an apartment a few blocks away. Further toward the hills, in the nicer houses is where Jorg lived.
    I slowed down on 40th as I passed a row of muscle cars. Rich Collins leaned against his Chevy Nova, gesticulating furiously to Fred. Lining the other side of the street were motorcycles. It was “Wolf Wednesday,” which meant a business meeting between the two groups.
    In a musty locker room, I changed into my gym clothes. I prepared for my least favorite part of the day.
    Mr. Lucas called out the drills. “OK, ladies. Standing hamstring stretch.” With the last name Dillinger, PE teaches assigned me to the front row during stretches. And because of the way the numbers looped around, I was near Donny Winstead. Bending forward I could see he was standing behind me.
     “Hey Dan. I saw your mom yesterday. While she was cleaning toilets, I was thinking about my 4.0 GPA,” he said. Donny wore Nike Air Jordans and Hammer pants. The Hammer pants were okay, but his Jordans were rad. “You checking out my shoes, Dan. I’ll trade you my Jordans for those Prowings you have on... Psyche!”
    I did a forward neck bend, as Donny continued. “I tell you what, just ask your mom to buy you some new shoes. Oh wait, that’s right she’s a janitor. Well maybe someday I’ll sell these to your mom. Or one of them! Haha!”
    There were a few smiles in the class as Donny looked left and right. Donny was proud of the very skin that held him together. He was proud of his father, the East Bay Vista police chief. And he was proud of the large house in the hills he lived in.
    Mr. Lucas sat down on a folding chair. “OK, girls. Hurdler stretch.”
    As we stretched Donny continued his announcements. “Didn’t y’all hear me? Marsha was scrubbing the toilet in the next stall. When I took a piss, she snuck in to have a look.”
    The teachers at the school, they were strictly referred to as Mr. or Mrs. They were respected. But my mom wasn’t Mrs. anything. She had the worst job. And she was disrespected all day, being called her first name by students and teachers. Donny decided upon his own last name for Mom. “And then I took it out,” he said. “‘Hey Mrs. Dirigible, you need something to hold on to?’ She was so full of hot gas I thought she might float away!”
    As I stood up, Jorg looked at me and he shook his head. We had run this over before, in prayer moves. I needed to find the words. And finally I did. “I’m sure it was comforting for my mom to hold it since Chief Winstead holds your dick when you piss.”
    Donny hit me with his elbows, knocking my chest backward. Floating over the air, my palms brushed the cement. I landed on my back. But with my legs over my head I was on my feet again. And as I stood up I felt a strong set of arms on shoulders.
    “Dillinger! Back on your number,” said Mr. Lucas. “It’s time for jumping jacks.”
    I was happy he didn’t call me a dirigible.

    Using my 2400 baud modem, I dialed up a community college Unix line Jorg had told me about. Jorg had added a user account for me under the handle dr_rd. I simply logged in and had shell access. And from there I opened irc.

    login: dr_rd
    password: ******

    dr_rd:~$ irc

    Once in irc, I switched to the #breaks channel and posted a message about the Money Quest 2 break script.

    /channel #breaks
    [#breaks] money quest 2 has been doctored
    [#breaks] dcc me for break script

    I sent a few people the script over the course of an hour or two. But then I received a direct chat request from Jorg, who copying my style used the handle jr_rj. I accepted the chat request with the dcc command.

    DCC CHAT from jr_rj
    [#breaks] /dcc chat jr_rj

    I didn’t think he’d be interested in the script, but I was proud of what I had done and asked him if he wanted it anyways. Sure enough, he didn’t want to talk about that at all.

    DCC CHAT connection with jr_rj
    sup dude, you want the money quest 2 break?
    hey dan, during class today the WDVs were flashing a drug deal and really laughing. rich gave a sign for a blimp. and well, you know... by blimp he meant dirigible

    Apparently Donny Winstead’s bullshit term had spread to the Wolf Dealer Vikings.

    yeah...
    they said that they weren’t going to deal to your mother
    how do you know?
    i know because of what they flashed a few times in class: no... sale... blimp
    oh
    so we better do the run tomorrow

    At 7 AM my alarm clock went off. I was tired, so I hit snooze a couple times and slept in for about an hour. The only subject I really liked was English, which was in the second period. So when I got out of bed it was because I didn’t want to miss my favorite class.
    Teachers told me that since I liked computers, I should be into math. But when I programmed it wasn’t math. The characters were the letters. The statements were the sentences. The functions were sort of like paragraphs. And I had always loved those.
    In the trunk of the car with the PC my mom brought home was a manual of the “IBM Disk Operating System.” I read it in one night. That’s how I figured out how to put the Planetfall disk into the disk drive, and start the game.

    A:\> DIR

    Directory of A:\        .        <DIR> 08-28-83 6:58a        ..        <DIR> 08-28-83 7:04a
    INFOCOM EXE 32,168 08-28-83 6:58a
    SETUP      INF                  3 08-28-83 6:58a
    SAVE                        <DIR> 08-28-83 6:55a
    DATA                  <DIR> 08-18-14 9:59p
             9 file(s)                  170,526 bytes

    A:\> INFOCOM

    This game was all text. Now I was on a spaceship cleaning stuff with a mop. But there was a way to escape. I traveled to a different planet. I picked up a laser gun. I made friends with a robot. I solved puzzles and navigated through mazes. Just by typing letters and numbers, there was always a way to the next stage.
    Mrs. Scheetz paced back and forth at the front of the classroom. Lit. 2 assigned reading for that week was Catcher in the Rye. “OK. So hopefully everyone finished what we were supposed to do this week so far. Any thoughts?” asked Mrs. Scheetz. Donny, who sat in the front row raised his hand, but Mrs. Sheetz ignored him. “Someone else, for a change,” she said. Finally she made eye contact with me. “Dan! What did you think.”
    I slouched. I felt embarrassed speaking in English class since I hadn’t learned how to discuss things eloquently. “Not a lot of shit happened but it was still a good read,” I said.
    Mrs. Scheetz walked toward my desk. “Okay, Dan. I gather you liked it better than The Scarlet Letter. Why was it a good read?”
    Two girls in front of me giggled, whispered and craned their necks around. What made Catcher in the Rye so good? I searched the wall, then the clock. The second hand was spinning. Always so slow, but always in the same direction. Thank God.
    “Dan?”
    “Well, to me it was just, more realistic,” I said. “Like for example... when it covered a day, time moved more like it does in real life.”
    “Different literary method for presenting a sequence of time. Okay Dan. Now we’re getting somewhere.” Mrs. Sheetz strolled to the front of the room past Donny Winstead and others. My desk was clean and smooth as I placed Ender’s Game on it. Finally it was time for silent reading.
    After class, walking away I felt a tap on my shoulder. Donny was there.
    “Dan Dirigible!” he said.
    “Man, shut the fuck up with that shit,” I replied.
    “I’m just kidding, dude. Lighten up.”
    I kept walking.
    “Anyways, dang dude!” Joe continued. “How do you read so fast? I’m still finishing up The Scarlet Letter while you’re already done with the next book.”
    “I like to read,” I said.
    “Yeah, but I mean, you finish books before most of the people in class have even started. How about I visit sometime, and you can show me some of that speed reading stuff?”
    It was a puzzling proposition. I imagined it, Joe Winstead in the two bedroom apartment with my mom and I. “What, are you just going to drive over?” I asked.
    “Yeah, you’re over in those apartments near the industrial park, not too far away from here.”
    I wasn’t sure how Donny knew where I lived.
    “Just think it over, man!” said Donny, as he walked away.

    Mom reclined on a chair in the living room, empty Pepsi bottle in her lap. “Hey son,” she said. On TV a woman sold gold watches on the QVC network. “The colors are bright on this television. You’re such a good boy.”
    “That’s okay, Mom.” I said. “How was work today?”
    Mom scratched her face. “Oh, I didn’t go in. I’m feeling ill.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    Mom turned her head away from me, looking out the window into darkness. “This show is not very interesting. Nothing good on anymore.”
    I left Mom in the living room, and changed into black clothes. At 8 PM Jorg waited for me outside the apartment in his car. He drove us down Military Avenue toward the bay. Rows of lights striped the street yellow. Within half a mile the dark centers of the stripes gave way to the orange hue of the refinery. Jorg turned right, and we headed to a small hill with some new houses on it. At least half of them were vacant, including 701 Daffodil Drive.
    I spotted the boxes walking up the steps. Car stereos. Home stereos. Tape decks. VCRs. We loaded them into Jorg’s trunk in two trips.

    On Friday Mom returned home a few hours after I got back from school. “Hey son, nice to see you.” She bent down and gave me a hug. “You look so big. You’ve gotten so big.” Mom smiled. She chewed her thumb. “What did my boy learn in school today?”
    “The usual stuff,” I said.
    “Are you hungry? You must be hungry do you want something to eat?” She walked to the kitchen.
    “A little, I guess,” I told Mom.
    “Well if you’re hungry, I can make you something to eat.” Mom opened one drawer, then another. She scratched her nose. Then she reached into a cabinet and took out a can of soup. “I can make you whatever you want!” She opened the refrigerator. “Oops, I thought we had some milk. Soup won’t be good without some milk.”
    “That’s okay Mom. I can just eat the soup without milk,” I said.
    “I’ll go get you some milk.” she said, and put on her jacket.
    “I don’t need any milk!”
    Mom was out the front door.

    Mr. Lucas called out floor hockey captains from the side of the room. The contest was about checking people into the wall more than you got checked.
    Donny wasn’t there, so the game wouldn’t be as fun. But one of Donny’s sidekicks, Bill was on the other team. He elbowed me in the back, slamming me into the kitchen take out counter that jutted into the multipurpose room. I landed on the ground with the wind knocked out of me.
    The game stopped for a while, as I slowly gathered myself. I stood up. And in the center of the floor, I tangled with Bill again. As he bent over, going for the ball, I smashed my forearm into his face.
    “Dan!” Mr. Lucas called.
    Bill cupped two hands over his mouth, wincing in pain. “Ow! Motherfucker!”
    “Sorry!” I shouted.
    “Dan! Get your ass over here.”
    I saw Officer Brady standing next to Mr. Lucas, his hand in front of his mouth, talking into his walkie talkie. I didn’t move.
    “Goddamnit Dan!” said Mr Lucas.
    Brady walked over and gripped my arm. “Dan. You’re going to need to come with me, son.” He led me out the door, down the hall to the Vice Principals office.
    “Take a seat on the couch,” said Mrs. Downfield, the vice principal. Brady, flipped through a small spiral bound notepad.
    “So you’re the Janitors’ kid, huh?” Officer Brady asked. “Are you aware of the type of stuff she’s been up to?”
    Mrs. Downfield breathed heavily in her chair. It was an unpleasant sound. I doubt even she liked hearing it. “Answer the question, Dan.”
    “Yeah,” I said, tossing in a few mock breaths, “My mom has been cleaning toilets.”
    “That’s not why were here, Dan,” said Brady. “Your mom has been up to
    some bad things. And we received information that you have been as well.”
    “Who told you that?” I asked.
    Brady tapped his index finger on the notepad. “It’s all in here.”
    On Mrs. Downfield’s desk was a computer. It was an original IBM PC. The floppy disk on the left side was the same as mine, but the hard drive on the right was slightly smaller.
    “I see you checking my computer out, Dan. I understand you like computers.” Mrs Downfield said. “Well when I enter your grades into this computer, I see that those grades are not good. I know that you are Marsha’s kid. I want to be on your side. But you push us to our limits. Mr. Lucas informed us of fighting in P.E. and Mr. Romaine, believes you’ve been defacing school furniture. Is that true?”
    The computer on Mrs. Downfield’s desk left a mouth of space open, while at home mine had been retrofitted with a plastic cover. “You should cover that gap on your computer so shit doesn’t get inside,” I said.
    When Officer Brady stood up, I was eye-level with his belt and everything attached to it. I recognized some of the equipment from a Me Era game.
    “Please don’t whip me with your PR-24,” I requested.
    Brady backed up a few paces. “Son, I’ve had enough of your wisecracks. Now Mrs. Downfield just asked you about fighting. Chief Winstead wants me to take you down to juvy and lock you up. I recommend you make this easier by cooperating.”
    Chief Winstead... Donny Winstead’s Dad. Brady was under orders from Chief Winstead. It seemed more than a coincidence. “Chief Winstead’s son is a dick who makes fun of my mom all the time,” I said.
    “We’re not here to feel sorry for you, Dan,” said Mrs. Downfield. “We all must endure insults. The students here don’t have a lot of nice things to say about me either. Just because Donny says mean things about your mom doesn’t mean you need to.... pay the Wolf Dealer Vikings in stolen goods so that they can... deal her speed.”
    Brady shook his head, “No, it doesn’t.”
    “How did you get all that stuff?” Mrs. Downfield asked.
    “Prayer moves,” I said.
    Mrs. Downfield stood up. “This is ridiculous. Dan, have fun in Juvenile Hall.”
    I was seated when Brady handcuffed me. He hoisted me up by my biceps, walked me out of the vice principals office, and that’s the last I would ever see of that place.

    ***

    Opportunity High was a joke. I’m not sure why they even bothered holding class. The only thing I liked about it was the recreation room, where you could play board games and dominoes and other stuff like that.
    The first time I walked into Rec I heard my name, “Dan!” And I saw Fred and Rich crouched in one corner. They were with three or four others, apparently WDVs.
    “Dan in this,” Fred said, and howled. The other WDVs stood up. “I introduce to you,
    Masterplan Dillinger. What’s up man? You expelled here too?” One by one, I high fived all the dudes.
    Rich asked me if I wanted to play chess. We set up a chessboard at a table near the window.
    “Did they get you at school?” I asked.
    Rich shook his head, maintaining a gaze on his pawn. “Nope. Cops raided the house. They found drugs and shit like that. Fred was over and they took him in, too. I guess the police chief has been keeping tabs on the WDVs for a while.”
    I moved a pawn to e5. “What about my mom?” I asked.
    “Don’t know. The cops just told us, ‘Not a good idea dealing to the school janitor.’”
    Mom had gone to a treatment clinic on nights and weekends for a few weeks. It was a relief to see she had gained some health back. At home that night, she shuffled in an old pair of jeans and tennis shoes next to the sink, preparing dinner.
     “Hi Mom!” I called. “Are you feeling better?”
    Mom continued peeling a carrot as she shook her head.
    “I was wondering, Mom,” I continued. “How did they catch you?”
    “Well... they said someone had seen me with drugs and took me to the security office. The cop, Brady was there and the vice principal gave me a drug test. I failed it, and then Brady found some speed in my purse.” She paused then, and took a breath. “Sorry, son.”
    “Yeah but you went to treatment, Mom. That part is good.”
    Mom nodded.
    “But how did they know? At the school, I mean. Why did they call you in?” I asked.
    “Well there was this one kid. Somehow he knew what I was up to with the wolves. He’d find me in the bathrooms, and ask me for some speed. Later I found out he was the police chief’s son.”

    I pedalled to Opportunity High and found Rich in the same corner of the recreation room. I asked him where I could find Riker Smith.
    Rich chewed on a stick of liquorice. “What you want to see Riker about, man?”
    “I just want to talk to him.”
    Rich reached in a bag for another piece. “You can’t just... talk to him. We only call our hammer up for serious purposes.”
    I grabbed the liquorice out of Rich’s hand. “Taking care of a rat is serious, right? Anyways, I want to discuss Donny Winstead.”
    Rich’s eyes bugged out. “You know Donny is the son of the chief of the police, right?”
    That night I started on the assembly program, typing it out with the IBM Model M keyboard. The going was slow. I had printed out a few assembly language tutorials from Bit Rock BBS. It took a lot of reading just to write one line. During the reading, I heard a knock at the front door.
    Standing on the front steps was Riker Smith.
    “Riker,” I said. “Thanks for coming over.”
    “Call me Rake,” he said.
    I wasn’t sure why a guy like Riker needed a nickname like Rake. A tattoo with some sort of wings crept out past his collarbone.
    Mom stood behind me, mesmerized. With Rake’s muscular build and long flowing hair, he was the most in shape, imposing person to set foot on our doorstep. He towered over both of us.
    “Come in,” I said. And he did.
    “Ma’am,” said to my Mom.
    “Hi,” she said. “I’m Marsha.”
    “Pleased to meet you. I’m Riker, but please call me Rake. Oh, and incidentally I commend you on your recent efforts to take charge of your health.”
    “Okay, thanks,” she said.
    Rake nodded.
    I nodded too. “Mom, I’m going to talk to Rake about some of those kids at school.”
    When we were in my room with the door shut, Rake sat at my desk and looked through my books. “You into this computer stuff?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Big time.”
    Rake looked me in the eye. “Wild. Maybe you’ll be the next Bill Gates.”
    I had not, until that moment, imagined being anything other than Dan Dillinger. “Yeah,” I said.
    “I heard he has a billion dollars.”
    “A... billion?”
    Rake smiled. “So what’s the issue here.”
    “Well, there is someone at the high school. His name is Donny Winstead.”
    “Yes. The Chief’s son.”
    “Okay, well I have a problem with him.”
    “Many people do.”
    “Yeah well he ratted my mom out.”
    “What a creep,” he said. “Although that is not particularly surprising. So what do you need me for.”
    “Well... ” I trailed off to a mumble.
    Rake flipped through my assembly language programming book. “I’m going to need you to think about it. Make sure you really want to carry this out.”

    “Yes, I’ve heard of that dude, Rake! You met up with him?” Jorg asked. We stood in his backyard. “What about?”
    “Donny Winstead.”
    Jorg’s fists were clenched into a ball. He circled his right leg back, then forward again. Then he repeated the move with his left foot. He closed his eyes. “I recall advising you not to attack your enemies directly. These impromptu revelations of rash behavior make it challenging to uphold my end of the discussion. Do you know what I mean?”
    “Actually, no not really,” I said after a while.
    “The man you are discussing with Rake is the son of the Chief of Police.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    Jorg stood in a shoulder width crouch, and pushed forward with two open hands. Then he drew in his hands and pushed them out to the side of his body. “I know you know. And since you know, I am curious as to what you seek to gain by involving Rake?”
    I drew my right hand behind my body, then I stabbed it through the air, matching Jorg’s prayer move. “I seek to have Rake install some software.”
    Jorg raised his knee, lowered it, then faced me. He clasped his hands. “Now that is very indirect,” he said, bowing forward.
    Explaining to Rake where he was to install the software was one of the more difficult portions of the escapade. Rake was about 10 years older than us, and had not gone to our high school. “You simply go in through the front doors, okay? Then turn left and head to the vice principals office,” I told him.
    “I’m going to need more than that to go on. I walked over there the other day. I couldn’t see any offices from the entrance.”
    Jorg tore a piece of paper from one of my notebooks. He put a sharpened pencil to it, drawing a sequence of lines that became a top-down map of the high school front office. He completed the image with a few arrows. “That’s where you should go, Rake,” he said. Then he drew the row of offices from a first person perspective, including a houseplant. “And Rake, the door to the right of this fake houseplant is the one you want to open.”
    I resumed flipping through the book of assembly language. And for many months I programmed it. I rarely went to school, and later coded throughout summer.
    Then, one night Rake brought a 5¼-inch floppy disk to East Bay Vista High School. He smashed the front window and walked in. From there he turned left, straight into the corridor he knew from the top. He opened the office to the right of the fake plant. The PC was off. Rake inserted the floppy into the drive. He snapped down the lever and engaged the catch. He powered the machine on.
    And after a few minutes, Rake removed the disk and turned the computer off. He walked walked out to find his truck, and drove away.
    At East Bay Vista High school security realized there was a break in, and checked for lost property. The front window was shattered, but nothing was missing. In fact, something was added. When Mrs. Downfield turned on the computer the hard disk spun up. The boot sector solenoid engaged the drive magnet, and the signal was amplified. My program was loaded into memory. And then my program terminated.

    I found a part-time job working IT for a computer repair shop. It paid well. I finally bought that GT Pro Performer. In the afternoons, I rode down to the East Bay Vista skate park. I was not the coolest guy in 1992, but at least I could bunny hop over a lawn chair again.
    And my code in the vice principals office stayed resident. It modified the student records application, the same application that was on the PC my mom had brought home. And it waited for Donny Winstead. When the report cards were issued, it did nothing. But when a sealed copy of Donny’s transcripts were requested, it reduced Donny’s grades to Ds and Fs. It modified the disciplinary report. Now Donny Winstead was a bully who bought drugs from the janitorial staff. No college would admit him.
    Years later, I went back to the same skatepark. I was drinking a 40 oz, now a father but still unmarried. Jorg had gotten his life together, a couple of times. He was Dr. Jorgman. On that day he drove up in a white Mercedes Benz 500 SEC. It was old school, just like us. Jorg handed me some cash as a reward for a bit of work I had done. I nodded toward the center divider of a nearby street. Donny Winstead was trimming hedges. And Jorg and I couldn’t help but smile.

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