The Cybergypsies

by Indra Sinha

‘Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I wish we could pin it on them, but the evidence isn’t watertight.’

  ‘Well what the fuck am I to do?’

  ‘Why not do the pitch? We might learn something.’

  Mailbomber vs nailbomber

  I catch Geno in the small hours, in a rage because he has just read the latest issue of the NuKE journal.

  >rock steady has filled the fucking nuke #7 journal with stuff about making bombs. could this be the same teenage mutant ninja cocksucker who was lecturing me about nuke sysops being “responsible and mature” when i gave sara the finger last month?

  Sara is Sara Gordon, the anti-virus researcher. Geno sends me the open message addressed to Rock Steady he is planning to post on the NuKE the World echo:

  ‘Have you ever seen the end results of a bomb? As a health care worker in a large hospital I have. Two years ago I seen the results of a nail bomb that some other irresponsible asswipe planted. Two patients came to our ICU more dead than alive and passed away in a matter of hours. A 17 year old girl who was just walking down the street in front of the house (crack house) caught a quarter inch piece of steel in the back of her neck. She will never walk or be able to move her arms again. She shits all over herself because she has no bowel control. I wish that every worthless piece of shit that distributes this kind of trash would have to help take care of her for a month or two. Perhaps then you could begin to see the consequences of your actions. You make me sick.’

  >this is the real world, bear, it’s the streets of Oklahoma city not some fucking cyberfantasy

  Complaint to the managing director

  The managing director comes to see me and says, ‘Bear, have you decided to do the nuclear pitch?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, remembering the conversation with my friend.

  ‘Good. Glad you remember who pays your wages.’ He drops a memo onto my desk. ‘By the way, this came to me. You’ll want to comment.’

  To: Managing Director

  cc: Company lawyer

  From: Network Manager

  Re: BEAR

  This is to inform you of my deep concern at the discovery of numerous viruses that have been found on a laptop that Bear has used in the past. As you can imagine I am more than a little annoyed at the immaturity of this action for if one or more of these viruses had somehow strayed onto the Network System, the results could have been disastrous.

  The PC in question is one of the old type. It has a directory called VIRUS where all the viruses seem to be resident so I am sure that these viruses were put on this PC deliberately. (See list.) It should be sent away to a computer specialist so that it can be dealt with professionally with Bear footing the bill. The Studio Manager has been notified of the situation and is running her own virus checks on her systems. This is because Bear has been known to use his floppy disks on her Apple Macs.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ asks the MD.

  A brief note on viruses

  Computer viruses are written in a language called assembler code. Biological viruses are woven from nature’s assembler code, DNA, a language for describing how living things are to be brought into being. Every strain of DNA schemes to usurp its neighbour’s place in the kingdom. At a lunch party down the lane, an evolutionary biologist describes how acts of desperate sodomy are carried out upon one another by beetles with penises like armour-plated drills which can bore through hard wingcases to inject their semen directly into a rival’s testicles. Human speech is the continuation of DNA by other means. The business of both is survival. Languages evolved to pass on instructions for making the non-living things we need for survival. The proteins of human language are the pen, papyrus, lampblack, printing press, camera, printed circuit board and doped silicon semiconductor. They enable us to pass on codes for making fire, flint scrapers, harps from the clavicles of cave bears, spears, wheels, food from wild plants, yellow pigment from the urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves, love (Kama Sutra), or one’s best way to heaven (I. Corinthians. 13:13).

  It is a cybergypsy maxim that human languages are viruses and ideas communicate virally. If you are taught at mother’s knee that: ‘O the Popey had a pimple on his bum, and it nipped, nipped, nipped so sore, so he sent for King Billy to rub it with a lily, and it nipped, nipped, nipped no more’; or conversely, ‘Up the long ladder and down the short rope, To hell with King Billy and God bless the Pope’, what will you grow up believing? Your brain has been infected by a virus which might as well be called antitaig.com or antiprod.com. If the infection is bad enough these Satan bugs can turn you into a genuine armour-plated dickhead.

  Lunch with Ian Paisley, Jr

  Lunch with Ian Paisley in Belfast. Not the father, the son. Just the two of us. I am late – arrive by taxi from Stormont Castle where I have been hearing about the Government’s television advertising. Paisley is waiting, a waiter shows me to the table. For the next hour, I note fragments of talk, ingredients for Gliomach’s game.

  ‘Sectarian is an anti-protestant term.’ Chewing pasta. Shades of his father in him, big jaw and booming voice. ‘So is bigotry an anti-protestant term . . . And don’t use the word “reconciliation”. It’s anathema to Unionists. Do you know why? Not because we are warmongers, but reconciliation to us implies giving up what you believe in. Losing your identity. It’s a kind of surrender . . . [His father’s voice booming ‘No surrender’] . . .We would rather talk about an accommodation. Come to an understanding of each other’s identities.’

  This sounds reasonable. He tells me that as a child, he used to bring Catholic friends home. And I remember being told by a Catholic taxi-driver that Ian Paisley senior is a brilliant constituency MP. He works hard for you, whatever your religion.

  ‘We are British,’ says his son. ‘But that doesn’t mean we agree with everything the British Government is doing. There’s a mile of difference between the Government and the British people.

  ‘Alienation is a business in Northern Ireland . . . There are things which should and do concern both communities. Unemployment. Housing. Healthcare. Regional NHS reforms . . . In many ways, we are more like each other.’

  If our game succeeds, I am thinking, they will learn to be each other.

  But . . .

  The walls are there because people wanted them there.’

  Ian Paisley Jr brings out a glossy leaflet advertising an art exhibition, Echoes. ‘It’s gone down very well. Even Nationalist councils have brought schools to see it . . . Nationalists have always had a set of promises for the future. Nationalism has a goal, and is not hard to understand. Unionism is a set of attitudes and ideals, it is not goal orientated.’

  ‘Isn’t this a weakness of the Unionist cause, not to have a goal, other than to be left alone?’, I suggest.

  ‘Nothing has ever been able to stand in the way of nationalism anywhere in the world – except Unionism. It’s unique.’

  ‘Mightn’t peace be a goal worth adopting?’

  I start telling him about the carnivals in Sussex. Drummer-boy bands and flaming torches, commemorating the martyrdom of three Protestant bishops in Lewes during the reign of Mary. He nods – flutes, drums, parades – this is familiar territory. Except that, in Sussex, people have forgotten the origin of the marches, or don’t any longer care for – this makes him gape – the Catholics join in, and the local convent takes a float in the parade.

  Moderation

  In Ireland, it’s the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church who issues appeals for peace. In the tortured chemistry of nuclear fission, a graphite ‘moderator’ is used to mellow the reaction so the reactor doesn’t melt. Fidonet ‘echoes’ (similar to internet newsgroups) are controlled by ‘moderators’, whose job it is to keep the peace in a troubled medium. People get easily tetchy in cyberspace, and none more easily, it seems, than the ‘moderator’ of Fidonet’s Virus echo. Most virus echoes are dull swamps full of po-faced geeks asking the same questions over and over. Virus is different. It’s humming. It has become a m
agnet for deadheads, anarchists and voyeurs, all drawn like moths to the flaming personality of its moderator. ‘Flaming’, on the net, means being angry, abusive and aggressive. The moderator of Virus, Edwin Cleton, is all these things daily. As a result, he has acquired a devoted following of mickey-takers, winder-uppers and piss-extractors.

  Message #5037 - Virus discussion Date: 09-28-93 21:27

  From: Edwin Cleton To: Garcia Michel Subject:: NUKE INFOJOURNAL

  @EID:211d 331317dc @MSGID: 2:285/817@fidonet.org 87952219

  @PID: Sae[Dv]Remote

  Garcia Michel wrote to Edwin Cleton:

  >You’re not a “moderator”... but a censor... that’s really different.

  The only thing I exchange with Nuke kids are my batts... This is just one echo among many, not the bloody world, take it or leave it.

  Ec., Moderator VIRUS Conference

  Why, as I read this message, do my features distort in a rictus of delight? Why? Well, who else is Garcia Michel, this innocent who finds the NuKE Infojournal so interesting, but my friend Savage Beast, head of NuKE in Europe? And what other is the ‘batt’ than the ‘electronic baseball bat’ with which Cletus, as Geno calls him, is so fond of posturing? Cleton mentions his ‘batt’ a great deal when replying to people whose views he dislikes. His moderator’s rules are star rated according to the number of electronic beatings you risk for breaking each one. The worst thing you can do on this echo, attracting the most stars, is to publish . . .

  o Detailed system setups of Commercial, Government or Military sites which could make such a site a possible target. ***

  One day, I log into Virus to find that there has been a coup d’état. Geno, of course. Using some technicality, he has managed to have himself named as moderator. Cleton hasn’t yet woken up to this new state of affairs. I go the Oklahoma Institute of Virus Research for an update from the man himself.

  >hi bear, yeah took over virus from Edwin. I would pay real money to see the look on his face when he finds out...:) poor boy must be mad enough to shit in his hand and throw it at me.

  A striking phrase. Geno obviously thinks so too because he also uses it to Ürnst Kouch, aka Dr George Smith, editor of the acid-tongued and acutely well-informed Crypt Newsletter. (George quotes it a year later in a maniacally funny report on Geno’s Fidonet mail-bombing and other activities. Songs of the Cyberdoomed, Crypt 28.) Cleton duly starts slinging shit at Geno, breaching his own rules:

  mr. paris has been and very likely still is involved in child porno where he managed to involve others who are now facing exposure if they cut links to his node, I am working on it, patients (sic) please.

  Edwin fails to provide any evidence for this claim.

  Ürnst Kouch posts, ‘I think Ed should be canned . . . If I were him, I’d be so embarrassed and ashamed, I’d quit voluntarily.’

  The gleeful hackers immortalise Edwin by rewriting the Abraxas virus to carry his name. The more Cleton and his friends malign Geno, the louder grows the chorus of anti-authoritarian laughter.

  Message #4933 - Virus discussion Date: 10-21-93 01:50

  From: Mikel Kirk To: Jurriaan Nijkerk Subject: The True Moderator

  @MSGID: 1:138/172@FIDONET 930022f4 @REPLY: 2:500/46.0 2ccl7e52

  @PID: FM 2.01

  Hi! You are probably unaware that Gene Paris is the bottomfish of echomail. I’ve been following his course this year, as he’s taken up claiming moderator duties on Flame, BITCH, FDECHO and a number of others. I know of no FIDO conference here in the US in which he is not explicitly banned. He posts in other people’s names. He posts filth. He shows signs of being a seriously unstable person, whose sole outlet is the echomail. I imagine he’s quite the abused person in real life, personally inadequate and that some factors in his life keep that constantly present in his mind...

  * Origin: Blue Eyes BBS (206)588-4296 (1:138/172)

  @PATH: 138/172 174 1 270/101 209/209 170/400 253/165 257/100 441/80 86

  I don’t know why this should be hysterically funny, but it is.

  Sacred relics

  A parcel is delivered to the agency, addressed to me. Inside is a muslin cloth bundle, in which are wrapped three objects, of dull japaned finish, crusted with greasy dirt, and stains which might be rust. It takes me a few moments to realise that I am looking at electronic shock weapons. One looks like a policeman’s truncheon, studded along its length with flat oval buttons. From its blunt tip protrude two dully gleaming electrodes. The second is dildo-shaped with a strap dangling from its handle and a conical metal tip which makes it look like a dog’s dick. The shaft is encircled by three metal bands which presumably become live when triggered. It’s an obscene thing, designed to be inserted into the body, the shocks being delivered to the tender mucous membranes of the throat, vagina or rectum. The third incorporates a square box of electronics, annotated in Chinese and equipped with electrodes similar to the first. Along with these things are some cuffs, one pair impossibly tiny. I have never known of, or imagined, the existence of such things as thumb cuffs. An accompanying note, from Karen at Amnesty, asks me to have the objects photographed for an ad exposing their use in Tibet. She concludes: ‘Bear, please treat them with the utmost respect. They are the personal property of the Dalai Lama. They were smuggled out of Tibet by a Buddhist lama who escaped to India. He bribed Chinese prison guards to get them. The DL regards these things, which have caused so much suffering to his people, almost as sacred relics of their suffering.’

  He sees with wisdom the noble truths of suffering, and the causes of suffering and the end of suffering, who takes refuge in the Buddha.

  Golden Buddha

  The phone rings and a voice says, ‘Hello, is this Bear?’ A voice of melting honey, harvested from the sagebrush and orange blossom of southern California, a voice evolved for the solitary purpose of setting male corpuscles lambada-ing in the veins, a delectable, blonde, angelic voice.

  The voice says, ‘Bear, I’ve been just crazy to meet you.’

  Her name is Angel. What else?

  A voice as deft as fingers strokes the ego, soothes the stiff, suspicious mind, unlocks the muscles of the will, drains away the clenched reserve that makes one say no to doing stupid things.

  ‘So we thought you’d be just perfect. Now you’re not gonna let me down on this . . .’

  Result, four weeks later I am sitting, naked, in a small room near London’s Post Office Tower, letting three girls paint me gold.

  ‘Are you a pro?’ one asks, carefully applying paint to the inside of my ear.

  From time to time other people drop by to inspect me. One is a man clothed in leather with a machine of strange design strapped to his head. It looks like a gunsight calibrated with dials, or one of those contraptions they use to test people’s eyesight. Like Angel, he is American. He tells me, ‘Relax, fella, you’re gonna be great.’

  I have accepted a part in what Angel described to me as the world’s first interactive movie, the role being offered, I suspect, less for my acting ability, years of roleplaying notwithstanding, than for physique. I am to play the Buddha. Or rather, a Buddha, for I doubt if Gautama ever spoke lines like mine. My role is modelled on one of those sages, orotund and gilded, that presided imperturbably over the chaos in Jamrach’s bargain basement. Orotund and gilded, or rotund and gelded? (qv) When Angel described the role, I had assumed that I would be required to do the beatific smile, the handing of a flower to a disciple. In Shades when you hand a rose to the Strange Little Girl, it magically turns into a sovereign, signifying ruler, sovereign or crown chakra: Buddhist version of Hebrew kether; either chakra or else chakkar katna, to be dizzy, possibly tiddly, after a bottle of the Punjab restaurant’s ‘wine that floats in circles’, or possibly chakor, a dark and midnight bird crying jubjub to the bespectacled moon. Amazing how the mind drivels under stress.

  ‘We have a scene together. Care to run through the lines?’ asks the leading man, adjusting his gunsight.

  ‘Okay.’

&nb
sp; A script is found and propped open in front of me with huge plastic hairclips.

  ‘Great,’ says the actor. ‘Let’s see. I walk in, see you kinda floating there in mid air and I go . . .’ He looks at me, slumps, sighs, shakes his head, says: ‘Oh great, this is all I need.’

  ‘Welcome, my son,’ I intone, straining to read the script, as the girls snap a rubber skullcap onto my head and begin blending its edges onto my skin with smears of some gummy substance. ‘Have you come seeking . . . wisdom?’

  The little pause is an afterthought, something I fancy Burton or Olivier might have employed.

  ‘Are you prepared to kill . . . your ego?’

  ‘Okay that’s great,’ sighs the actor. ‘Now try to relax, slow down a little. Can you sound more, er, impressive?’

  ‘Welcome, my son,’ I begin, words roaring up the tunnel of the throat into a mouth cave fringed with stalactite-stalagmite teeth. ‘Have you . . . come . . . seeking wisdom?’

  The actor eyes me warily. ‘Terrific, Bear. You’ll be great. Just take it easy. You want to ask yourself, what’s my motivation here? This guy, Sol, breezes into my space, totally fucking up aeons of solitary meditation.’ His voice rises sharply and he jabs a hole in the grease-paint-scented air. ‘Now how do I feel about that?’

  ‘Okay,’ says one of the make-up girls, ‘someone name another role that calls for all-over gold body paint?

  ‘Girl in Goldfinger,’ says a tall good-looking redhead. ‘I was just thinking about that. Is it safe to paint all of him? I mean, should I do this bit as well?’

  ‘I think so,’ says the first, taking a look and sounding doubtful.