Wargames

by David Bischoff

  He looked over at Jennifer, annoyed.

  But her eyes were so very pretty when they pleaded.

  “Please?” she said.

  The guy was kinda weird, but he was kinda cute, too, in a kooky way, and, well, if he really could fix her grade so that she wouldn’t have to go to summer school, then that was fine by Jennifer Mack.

  His parents were gone again.

  “What’s your mom do?” she asked, munching on some Juicy Fruit as he let them in.

  “Century 21.”

  “Huh?”

  “Real estate.”

  “Oh.” She glanced around at the living room, which was much like her living room and a dozen other living rooms she’d seen. At least it didn’t have plastic on the cushions, she thought as she followed David up to the room.

  “Hey, I forgot. How’s Herman?”

  “Fine. I use his wheel now to power my stuff.”

  She laughed. “Your Phase X modified prefontal disco-driver with detachable trash compactor?”

  “Yeah. My computer. C’mon. It’s been working on something all day.”

  He took out his keys and commenced to unlock his bedroom door. Two dozen guys in her school had asked her up to their bedrooms, and she’d turned them down. So here she was trotting up to Dipsy Dave’s room for the second time, and after he fixed her grade, they’d probably end up playing Space Invaders.

  You know, he really wasn’t bad-looking, in a sallow, skinny kinda way. Jennifer wondered what it would be like to neck with him. Fun, maybe.

  The room was lit eerily by the TV set. David turned on the lights as Jennifer wandered over and looked at the screen. It looked like the thing was printing out phone numbers.

  “What’s it doing?” she asked.

  “Don’t touch the keys,” David said.

  She flinched away from the keyboard. “I won’t, but, like, what’s it doing?”

  She stepped aside and let David sit down. He answered her absently, his attention fixed in fascination on his computer system. She was so interested in his answer herself, she didn’t even notice the sour male smell of the room this time.

  “Dialing numbers,” David was saying. “This California computer company—Protovision—is coming out with these amazing new games in a couple of months. The programs for them are probably still in their computer, so I told my system to search for computers in Sunnyvale.” He took the phone out of its contraption, and handed it to her. Now phones Jennifer Mack understood. She put the earpiece automatically to her ear. “The computers I get answer with a tone that other computers can recognize.”

  Jennifer took the phone from her ear. Just a tone there. The list of phone numbers was pilirtg up. “You’re calling every number in Sunnyvale, California?”

  David turned to her with a self-satisfied grin.

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “There’s ways around that!” David said, true glee in his eye.

  This fellow was a real maniac, Jennifer thought. Cute but crazy. “Like, is this going to take long? I’d really like to get my grade changed.”

  “Yeah,” David said, eyes glued to the TV set, “Well, the thing is, Jennifer. Actually, I, uh... already changed it.”

  “What! I told you not to do that!”

  “I was sure you’d change your mind.”

  Well, of all the nerve!

  “Besides, I didn’t want you to flunk.” He was suddenly off the subject of her grade and back into his trance. “Let’s see what we’ve got so fat”

  He tapped one of the keys, and the TV read:

  UNION MARINE BANK, SOUTHWEST BRANCH HEADQUARTERS.

  LOG IN, PLEASE.

  “Got to remember that one,” David said. “Might come in handy someday.”

  Jennifer suddenly became more interested. She moved closer.

  David typed in another number and got the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  “Got any tickets in Sunnyvale?”

  “You mean if I had a speeding ticket, you could fix it?”

  David shrugged as he punched up the next number and said, “Probably.” The screen filled up with cities, dates, flight numbers. It was Pan Am flight listings.

  Jennifer said, “Oh, good. Let’s go somewhere.”

  This wasn’t what David was looking for but Jennifer looked hooked. “Where do you want to go?” he said.

  “Paris. It’s so romantic.”

  Two quick keystrokes and David looked up to say, “Okay, we’re booked.” As soon as he hit another key, more numbers spewed. Jennifer watched. Suddenly the numbers were gone and the screen just read:

  LOG ON.

  David said, “Geez, that’s strange. It doesn’t identify itself. Let’s try... anything.”

  He typed in a bunch of zeroes and a one.

  The TV responded with:

  IDENTIFICATION NOT RECOGNIZED BY SYSTEM. YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED.

  “That’s pretty rude,” Jennifer said, quite involved by now.

  “I’ll ask it to help me log on,” David said, redialing the number

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Some systems will help you out. The more complicated they are, the more they have to!”

  LOG ON.

  HELP LOG ON.

  HELP NOT AVAILABLE. LOG ON.

  Jennifer was vexed. “Now what?”

  David was clearly excited. “You know, I think this might be Protovision. And if it is...”

  HELP GAMES, David typed.

  The monitor replied immediately:

  GAMES REFERS TO MODELS, SIMULATIONS, AND GAMES WHICH HAVE TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC APPLICATIONS.

  David whooped, “Yeah! I think we’ve got ’em. Turn that printer on, would you? Let’s get a printout of this.”

  Enjoying herself as assistant to the mad scientist, Jennifer went to the IBM I that David indicated and hit the “on” switch.

  LIST GAMES, David requested.

  The TV set stayed blank.

  “C’mon. C’mon, c’mon!” David said, as though he were watching a linebacker race for a touchdown. Jennifer watched.

  “David, I don’t think it’s going to work. You can’t do this kind of thing anyway,” she said finally. “Hey, you know there’s this movie on at the...”

  GAMES, the monitor lettered.

  David said, “Hot dog!”

  The monitor continued.

  FALKEN’S MAZE

  BLACKJACK

  CHECKERS

  CHESS

  FIGHTER COMBAT

  DESERT WARFARE

  THEATERWIDE TACTICAL WARFARE.

  “Huh?” said David Lightman. “These aren’t...”

  “Wait a minute,” Jennifer said. “There’s one more.”

  GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR.

  “Holy shit,” said David.

  “I guess that’s like Missile Command, huh, David?” said Jennifer. “Maybe we could play?”

  Daylight lingered over the suburbs as Jennifer Mack zoomed through the parking lots of Seattle University, David Lightman hanging on for dear life onto the back of her moped.

  “So who is this guy again?” Jennifer asked as they negotiated a sidewalk shortcut.

  “Uh... Jim Sting,” David said, wondering if it had been wise to ask Jennifer to drive him here right away. He’d been so excited, and she had nothing much else to do, so they just jumped on the bike and braved the rush hour to let Jim Sting have a look at the printout. David had ordered the system he’d found to run each of the games, to absolutely no avail. He’d immediately thought of Jim.

  “You know all my equipment?” he said, jangled from a recent bump.

  “Yeah. You’ve got scads of it!” said Jennifer, dodging a Farrah Fawcett look-alike coed.

  “How’d you think I could afford all that? My parents aren’t exactly rich, and they really don’t approve of my hobby.”

  “Your obsession, you mean.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever “

  “I dunno,” said Jennifer.
“You rob somebody?”

  “Uh uh. I got most of it from Jim Sting, real cheap.”

  “A computer equipment fence?” Jennifer wondered.

  “Naw. He works here at the university’s computer facility. Repair shop. He’s a real whiz at it. He could do a lot of things with computers—and he does. But what he likes best is building them. He used to be a Phone Phreak. Messed Ma Bell all up, and never got caught.”

  “What, with one of those little black boxes?”

  “You bet. Jim was the best. Then he just got tired of it. No more challenge, you know?” David gave her some direction, and they putt-putted across a green mall where students lounged or tossed Frisbees.

  “How’d you meet him?”

  “Classifieds. He had a disk drive I needed up for sale. So I met him and started asking questions, and pretty soon I was spending half my time with him, learning lots. Heck, I must have spent half of last summer in his shop. Worth four years in stupid Humphrey High. Up that hill, Jennifer, then around behind that building.”

  Jennifer executed the command like the hotdogger she was. “Park here.” David indicated a bike stand. “And lock it. You can’t trust university students these days. I think they’re all clones of Richard Nixon and Ronald Raygun.”

  “Hey! My dad’s a Republican!” Jennifer said as they skipped up the steps to the entrance.

  David held a glass door open for her. “So’s mine. Q. E. D. “

  He led her down a fluorescently lit corridor, past rooms where students intently ogled monitor screens and diddled on keyboards. Some played games, others seemed to be programming.

  “Talk about clones, pal.” She gestured about. “Meet thy spiritual brethren.”

  David attempted a Peter Lorre voice. “We all landed here from outer space in pods, my dear, and we’re taking over you human beings body by body. Soon you too will sit in front of a computer monitor and drool.”

  Jennifer laughed. “Invasion of the Body Hackers.”

  “You’re remembering the terminology, anyway. Hang a right here.”

  The repair shop was at the end of a corridor. Piles of computer equipment, big and small, lay scattered about among soldering irons and miscellaneous other equipment. The place held the stench of burned insulation. From a gutted housing protruded two legs and an oversize rear end.

  “Is that your genius?” Jennifer said.

  “Yeah. Sting has extra memory-storage capacity in his extremities. Good 48 K, I’d say. Wait here, okay?”

  David stepped up to the housing. “Hey, Cap’n Crunch. I’m from Ma Bell, and boy, is she pissed.”

  Sting, retracting his head, clunked it against a cabinet. “Jesus!” he said, crawling out from amid the confusion of circuit boards and wire looms.

  “Naw, just his little brother”

  “Lightman!” he smiled, rubbing his head. He was a chunky guy, with a flannel shirt that hung out over faded jeans. He carried himself with an air of arrogance. David always fancied him a renegade truck driver. “Hey Malvin, don’t pull out the Uzi submachine gun, it’s just David Lightman. Haven’t see ya for a while, Dave. Fall into that black hole game you were programming?”

  Around the other side of the bench strode Malvin, a thin, hyper student type who looked like he had just escaped the robots from Berserk.

  “Cap’n, can you take a look at this?” David pulled the folded printout sheet from his pocket.

  “Howdy, Lightman,” Malvin said, “How are the programs byting? What the shit is this?”

  He grabbed the printout.

  “Wait, I want Jim to see it.”

  Malvin’s eyes were big in his narrow, angular face. “Where did you get this?”

  “I was trying to break into Protovision. I wanted to get the programs for some new games.”

  Sting reached for the paper, but Malvin turned away. “Wait, I’m not through.”

  “Shit you’re not through!” Sting grabbed the paper, straightening his smudgy glasses. He scratched his straggly beard. “Global thermonuclear war. This didn’t come from Protovision.”

  “I know it doesn’t,” Malvin whined. “Ask him where he got it.”

  “I told you,” said David.

  Malvin said, “Must be military. Definitely military.” He looked up and speared Lightman with a suspicious glance. “Probably classified.”

  David said, “Yeah,thought about that. But if it’s military, why would they have games like blackjack and checkers?”

  “Maybe because they’re games that teach basic strategy,” Jim Sting suggested.

  Malvin noticed Jennifer, who was watching the group from a slight distance. “Who’s that?” he asked, his thin lips twitching a bit.

  “She’s with me.”

  “Why is she standing over there listening?” Malvin wanted to know.

  “She’s not listening. She gave me a ride over here,” replied David. “Jennifer. Come on over here. I want you to meet my friends.”

  Jennifer stepped up hesitatingly. David made the introductions. Sting and Malvin seemed a bit off-put by the arrival of a female among them. Malvin grinned a lot, and Sting studiously avoided looking at her. It was as though, David thought, the girl held some dark secret about them both.

  Jennifer sat in a chair and waited patiently.

  “Anyway, Jim, how can I get into this system? These games must be fabulous. I wanna play stuff like this. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Malvin tucked the back of his shirt in. “And you’re not supposed to see stuff like this. Anyway, that system probably has the new date encryption algorithm. You’ll never get in.”

  David was insistent. “I don’t believe any system is totally secure. I betcha Jim could get in.”

  Malvin looked at his colleague. “Not even Jim, my friend.”

  They both looked at the bulky, shaggy man for a moment, Malvin with a kind of challenge, David entreatingly.

  Jim scratched a flaky nose. “No way you can get in the front-line security,” he said finally.

  Malvin smirked.

  “But,” said Jim, a Cap’n Crunch gleam of malicious glee in his eyes, “you might look for a back door.”

  Malvin’s narrow eyes widened considerably. “I can’t believe it. This girl is sitting here, listening, and you’re telling Lightman about back doors!”

  Sting chuckled. “Hey, Malvin, relax! Back doors are no secret.” His big stomach quivered with mirth.

  “Well, you’re giving up tricks that belong to us, anyway,” Malvin said indignantly.

  David grabbed onto this. “What tricks? What’s a back door?”

  Jim hiked up his trousers the way he always did before he got pedantic, then folded his arms across his chest. “Well, when I design a system, I always put in a simple password that only I know about. So later, if I want to get back in, I can bypass whatever security they’ve added on.”

  Incredible! Wonderful! thought David. Of course, it’s so obvious, why didn’t I think of such a thing!

  “Ah, Jennifer. Could you not touch that?” Malvin said nervously. “That’s a tape drive and I’m having a lot of trouble with that unit.”

  “Sorry,” Jennifer said, batting innocent eyes at Malvin.

  “So go ahead, man!” David said enthusiastically.

  “If you really want to get in, you should probably find out everything you can about the guy who designed the system.”

  David was crestfallen. “How do I even find out who the guy is?”

  “Well, ah—” Jim said, pondering the problem.

  “Lemme see that paper there, Cap’n,” Malvin said impatiently. “You guys are so dumb! I don’t believe it. I bet I know how to do it. I figured it out.”

  Old Malvin was a regular Eddie Haskell, David thought.

  “Oh, yeah, Malvin. So how would you do it?”

  Malvin grinned. “First game on the list, you dummies. I’d go in through Falken’s Maze.”

  “Falken, huh?”

  “Yea
h, it’s probably the name of the joker who programmed this gaming system.”

  “Could be. And maybe he’s well known,” Sting said, nodding. “So what you’ve gotta do, David, is find out who this Falken fellow is before you can do anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “Check out the library, man,” Malvin said.

  “Yeah. Good idea,” David said.

  “But watch your ass, man,” Malvin warned. “This may just be games, but they probably belong to some tight-assed game-masters.”

  David grinned. “If I get in, there’s no way they’re gonna catch me. You know, maybe they’ll have some new routines nobody knows about. Maybe I can use them in some games of my own devising. Anyway, this should be neat.”

  “Peachy keen, Lightman,” said Jim Sting. “Now, if you and your lady friend will excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

  On their way out, David turned to Jennifer and said, “Understand any of that?”

  “Not much.” She winked. “Sounds like you’re going to be naughty, though.”

  “Naw. This ain’t going to hurt anybody,” said David Lightman, a sense of real challenge charging up his mental batteries. “I’m just going to have some fun.”

  Chapter Five

  Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

  Bam, bam, bam. Lower spine...

  Hah, hah, hah, take that Mother dear, thought Jennifer Mack as she jogged along the sidewalk adjacent to Park Avenue, enjoying a bright spring Sunday afternoon. That’ll teach you to be such a nag!

  Jennifer loped along glumly, singing to herself a variation on Olivia Newton-John’s song “Physical,” substituting the word cynical.

  Bobby Jason had called her up earlier canceling their date tonight. The twerp. “Not feeling so good, Jenny,” he’d said. “I think it’s that flu going around.” Yeah, sure, and her name was probably Barbara “Germ” McAllister, the one with the knockers so big she couldn’t stand up straight. The cow.

  Jennifer Mack wore tan shorts, a tank top, Keds shoes, and a pink sweatband, and she knew she didn’t look half bad. She enjoyed jogging. Her dad was the fitness freak, and it was he that had encouraged her She’d started out her adolescence a little on the chubby side, but thanks to this, a little tennis, some skiing in the winter, and aerobics classes at the Y, she kept the weight down without having to give up teen treats like pizza and milkshakes and weekend beers on the sly with the guys. No smoking, though—she was too smart for that. Her mom smoked like a fiend, and coughed all the time, too, so Jennifer lived with a good incentive to abstain from peer pressure in that area.