(Extract From "A More Perfect Union" - Copyright Andrew Randall)
SEATTLE, WASHNGTON WASHINGTON
- JULY 15TH
"What are those geeks talking about now?"? Agent Jenkins grunted as
he rolled shut the door of the survellancesurveillance van.
He was pissed off. Mighty
pissed off. SurvellanceSurveillance work was bad
enoguhenough at the best of
times, with its terminal boredom and smell of
sweaty bodies in cramped, FBI issue vans. It was even worse when
the subject’s you were listening to spoke a language
you could barely understand. Then you couldn't even build up an interest, no
matter how slight, in what was ginggoing on. It didn't matter if that
language was Spanish, Italian, Russian or, in this case, Geek, as Jenkins liked to call it. It
just sucked.
What the hell was PCI? Or Scuzzy? Or any of that other junk anyway?
And why did he get stuck watching a bunch of compputercomputer
nerds when his interest in compputingcomputing started and ended
in 1979 with Space Invaders?
"Chill out, Jenkins. Their meeting hasn't even
started yet. They're just chewing the fat over who got furthest in Armageddon VI today.". Agent
Perry’s answer to him was as equally
unintelligible as anything the geek’s might have said.
Unlike Jenkins, Perry had a working knowledge of the latest developments
in the computer world and was not ashamed to admit it. Perhaps, he
thought, that was because, at twenty-eight, he was a
full twenty years younger than Jenkins. Or perhaps, as was more likely, it was
just that people like Jenkins never wntwant to learn anything new, no matter how
old or young they are.