The Infinite when it was Two Digits Old

by Allen Fleishman

  ***

  Although David was facing away from her, he watched her slowly walk away from him with his telephotos. The way her bottom moved up-and-down, up-and-down, her long blond hair swayed. He brought up her smells, the feeling of her breasts, her large breasts, on his back. He shuddered. He screwed up again, even with an A++. She was angry, very angry. He felt depressed. He could never get things right.

  ***

  That night Andrea thought about the figures she deleted, the old woman and the man with the monocle. ‘Could they have been Professor Schwartzman and his mother? She deleted them. She didn’t even look closely, she just deleted them. David never said a word. He didn’t protest. How many hours did he work on them? He never once said anything to Schwartzman about taking credit. In fact, he implied that I gave it that name. He’s actually pretty cute and that castle was better than anyone else’s. He never touched me or said anything even remotely suggestive. I was all ready to slap his face if he touched me or said anything sexual, but he never did, even after I nipple-rubbed him. What a strange guy.’

  ***

  Two weeks later, Professor Schwartzman told the class the next assignment. “Here’s the scenario, it’s Friday, and you have a big paper due on Monday, it’s almost complete and already 40 pages. You turn on the computer and it behaves very strangely – it has a virus. Your job is to avoid losing all your work and all your other software, to get rid of the virus, to get the computer in as good a shape as possible. Otherwise, you’ll have to redo all your paper’s work, maybe even your music library. Do whatever it takes. You need this computer working!” Maurice stopped and smiled, “At least for your ‘Gods of War’ LAN party on Sunday. For this project, we’ll need to work on a special computer I put in room 412. It’s not connected to the web because of the virus. I left a copy of a boot disk, system disks, anti-virus software, word processor disks and the Gods of War disks in a box by the computer. Since it only can be worked on by one team at a time, I’m making this another two-person team assignment and ask you to sign up for a period. Sorry to do this, but only two teams per day on the weekend or one team during for weekday evenings and you’ll need to sign up on this list.”

  After class Andrea came up to David and said, “I signed us up for this Sunday at 4 PM to 10.”

  David shrugged, “I thought you were angry at me?”

  Andrea smiled, “I kinda expect you know computer repair slightly better than ancient Greek too.” She smiled at David.

  David beamed.

  ***

  That Sunday, David waited at room 412. Andrea arrived with a couple of paper bags.

  David looked at her and asked her what she brought, but she smiled and put her finger to her lips. He could imagine being kissed by those lips, those full lips.

  They entered the almost empty room and saw the computer sitting on a table with a couple of chairs in front. David turned the computer on, it started to go into Windows but then the disk drive sounded odd, like a series of trills and hiccups. David inserted one of his CDs into the drive and rebooted the machine. He looked at a number of statistics, and then he pulled up other computer pages, then other pages. Andrea looked on. The screens flew faster than any human could read.

  “Can a computer geek like you fix it?”

  David froze. He thought, ‘This was it. She’s a leech, now she was insulting me again. She hates me. There was no hope. This was it. I had it.’ He slowly pulled away from the computer, stood, and faced her. He felt waves of heat radiate from his face and his outstretched finger trembled. “Why did you call me a geek? Did you ever see me in front of a computer except for that other project? Just because I’m good with computers in the computer-class doesn’t mean I’m not as good at other things. I can do plenty. I’m told I have a good voice at singing. I’m told I’m funny. I can dance. I drew that tree in the castle – I can draw. I’m smart in history, English, Psych, know as much about philosophy as anybody, I can integrate martingales and, and, and bah! Just because you see me in one class and I know how to do some things, doesn’t mean I don’t know other things. I’m not one-dimensional. I’m not like you.”

  He turned to the door and took a step. Andrea started to put her hand on his shoulder. Hilda came between them and started to growl.

  David paused and sighed with angry resignation, “No, Hilda, she’s not going to attack me.”

  The dog looked at David then looked at Andrea; a long look. Hilda then slowly walked away, all the time facing Andrea.

  Andrea put her hand down, “I’m sorry David. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I really didn’t. You’re very good at computers though. The professor said the work you did for the castle would take weeks. I thought you were just a computer jock, a wizard.”

  “Well I’m not just a computer jock.”

  “You can dance too?”

  David gave his now familiar half smile, “A bit. I can dance slightly better than my ancient Babylonian.”

  On hearing that Andrea’s mouth formed a frown, which quickly turned into a smile. She started to hum the tune from Swan Lake. David stood on his toes and moved around the empty classroom as a ballerina. She kept on humming as his swan slowly died, collapsing onto the floor.

  “That’s good, really good. You must have studied years. I took ballet as a kid. You did all the ballerina moves. Did you study long?”

  “Some,” he shrugged, still on the ground.

  She bent over to his form on the floor and kissed his cheek. “Can we be friends now? Can you forgive me?”

  David’s face flushed; he tried to hide it with his hands. She asked, “Are you all right?”

  It was the first kiss he had ever gotten from a girl. The warm lips, now gone, had seared his cheek. Their image lingered in his memory. He stored it in three memory locations. She had a wonderful smell, which he archived as well. He felt both elated and depressed at the same time. He never felt this strange before. He felt the blood flowing to his face, his face throbbing. “I’m ok.” He went to the computer, sat down, facing the computer and away from her. ‘Mustn’t let her see me like this. Control my behavior. Don’t initiate. Be cool,’ he thought.

  Andrea walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder then knelt at his side. David rigidly faced the computer. She paused then said, “I’m sorry I picked on you. When we worked on the castle, I wasn’t feeling good, I had a headache, and it was that time of the month.”

  “You mean the 14th?” He paused, seeing no response, he said “TV Sweeps?” David was puzzled.

  “No silly, THAT time of the month.”

  David was baffled, “Bills due? Laundry?” He had no idea what she was saying.

  David noticed that Andrea was becoming angry, no exasperated, “You know a woman’s time of the month.”

  David was baffled.

  Andrea looked at his eyes. “David, have you hung around women before?”

  “Well, a little.”

  She looked at him and in a questioning voice said, “Really?”

  David turned away, “Plenty. There was that teacher when I went to school that day, the two girls who did the orientation. Oh yes, the President’s secretary, and that first Friday night …”

  She stopped him. “Do you mean you never grew up with women in the house, never went to school with them, or hung around them?”

  David looked down, in a small voice said, “Not really. My mother died before I could even talk and …”

  “What about at school?”

  “I, I never went to school. My dad taught me.”

  She stood up and blinked. “Did you ever kiss a girl?”

  David’s face felt like his face was throbbing, he didn’t want to look at her. He shook his head no.

  “I’d be the first?”

  David nodded yes. She made him stand, then took his head between her two hands and gave him a full kiss on th
e lips. She stared into his eyes and said, “Thank you for sharing that. I’m sorry I teased you. I didn’t know. It explains a lot. It explains everything.”

  David hung on to her eyes. He savored her breath, the warmth of her hands. He felt his heart hammering, his ears rang. He thought, ‘She doesn’t hate me. She likes me.’ Embarrassed, he sat back down and went back to the computer. His heart was hammering so hard, it hurt his ears. He damped down his auditory inputs 80%.

  He had to think about other things, like the computer. He glanced at the scrolling pages. After ten minutes, he turned again to her. “I’m going to have to get something from my computer, a new CD.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is it okay for me to read while you do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Thirty minutes later, he came back with a disk that he used to boot the computer. The hard drive had a corrupted sector, which he cleaned. Then he ran his own search of the hard drive. This was a new virus; a variant of something he had seen before. He also noticed another virus dormant on the disk. He put a few ‘no operation’ commands directly into the hard disk’s machine language program to loop around the bad code. He booted the computer.

  It came up. There were other problems. He hadn’t been paying attention to Andrea, she had set up a blanket with some fried chicken, potato salad, and drinks. She smiled and said, “I thought you might need a break, did you fix it?”

  “Some, I still need to do some other stuff though.”

  David sat down on the floor and tasted the fried chicken. The spectral analysis confirmed that it was from the cafeteria. He grabbed some potato salad from the pint container with his fingers and slid them into his mouth. He wiped his hands on his shirt to clean them.

  David didn’t know why Andrea was staring at him, her eyes were fully dilated and her mouth was open. ‘What did I do now?’ he thought. She finally said, “Would you like a plate, napkin or a fork?”

  “Sure” he said. “Did you bring the paint?”

  She pointed to her paper bag. She was still looking at him oddly.

  He moved around to the back of the computer. He stood, and turned to the dog, “Hilda, can you get me the computer tools? I need to take the case off.” David opened the door of the classroom. Hilda flew out. David went back to the computer, typing away. His hands flew across the keyboard.

  Andrea in a confused voice said, “You’re having the dog get the tools?”

  David didn’t even look up, “Yeah, I’d ask you, but she knows where I put them.”

  Ten minutes later, they heard scratching on the door. David went to the door and let Hilda in. She was carrying a cloth packet of tools. David unscrewed the back of the computer.

  Andrea looked puzzled. “How did the dog get into your room?”

  David glanced up again, “How else. She has her own key.” David had a crooked smile.

  David thought Andrea was going to get angry for a second, and then she started to laugh. “David, you are the most preposterous guy I ever knew. You also have the driest humor.” She kissed him again on the forehead.

  David pulled the case off the computer. “Can you put the first coat on? Then we’ll finish eating while it dries.”

  Andrea pulled out the can of red spray paint that David had suggested she bring. He noticed that she enjoyed painting the case. She was looking at him, looking up and down at him, from one of his cameras at his back. Finally Andrea asked aloud, “David, tomorrow, would you like to meet in the Café for dinner?”

  David smiled a very broad smile, “Yeah.”

  Andrea started to paint while he worked on the computer. As he worked, he explained what Professor Schwartzman had done to it. He explained the origin of Trojan horses, viruses, and worms. Then he explained the reason that Norton anti-virus couldn’t fix the problems. Where these viruses came from, who wrote them and their author’s ‘white-hat’ background. She didn’t pretend to listen. On the other hand, David didn’t notice that she wasn’t paying any attention to him and continued talking for fifteen more minutes.

  ***

  That evening at 11:00, Professor Schwartzman went into room 412. He hadn’t expected any team to succeed. He constructed the virus to be undetectable by Norton, McAfee and the other common virus programs. Virus removal is typically too late. His real lesson was to get the students to be much more cautious about virus prevention. Many times, the only way around a lethal virus was to completely reformat the computer and wipe all programs. Another lesson was to make backups. A great grade was for a student to reformat the computer and accept the loss. He gave them a B. No one ever got any better, not in the six years he gave this exact lesson. As he came into the empty room, he noticed that the trashcan was full. There had been a small party. There was a different computer on the table. ‘Did they think they could fool me?’

  He went to this replacement computer. It was a red computer with blue racing stripes. He smelt the fresh paint. He slowly realized that it was the same model as the infected computer with the virus. The computer booted. It booted fast, much faster than he would have expected. It booted so fast it must have been freshly formatted with no programs. Yet the desktop had the expected programs. He scanned the documents. The forty-page report was there. Damn. They did it. They actually did it.

  But the computer had other changes, it felt, well, faster. It was an old 1 GHz computer, but it felt much faster. Maurice pulled up the registry, the interface which tells Windows how to interact with the computer. It was a fraction the size of a regular registry. The computer also sounded louder. Maurice opened up the back of the computer. He saw they added a second fan. He then rebooted the computer and looking at the boot page specifications when he realized that the computer was over-clocked by 20%. Over-clocking ran the computer at a faster speed. However, it made it much hotter, which required extra cooling. On a hunch Maurice put in a floppy, the drive should have been deactivated – to prevent the virus from escaping, a pulled pin 17 on the interface. The floppy drive was able to format the floppy. Maurice knew that pin 17 was back.

  He then went to his computer, and pulled up the sign-up page. Of course, it was Andrea Adriano and David Smith, the wunderkind.

  YEAR 17.5 ASK ME ANYTHING. LIKE YOUR MEASUREMENTS

  The next day, on the way home, Dr. Schwartzman went past his office mailbox and noticed a fat manila envelope with a letter taped to it. He put his books down and pried the letter open with his finger. It had the logo of the office of the President at Birkhead College.

  Office of the President

  Birkhead College

  Dear Maurice,

  As you know, we got a number of CompuHead drives for campus use. This one came, but it was apparently for a low-power computer, a portable PC, not for a desktop. I think you might be the best recipient of it.

  Enjoy

  Professor Arthur Windseig, President

  P.S. You may register it in your own name.

  In the envelope was a shrink-wrapped box with the CompuHead logo, complete with a model: Diamond – V3.1.

  Maurice felt his heart go aflutter. He had been saving up to buy one of these for years. Now it fell onto his lap.

  That evening, before dinner, he opened the box and followed the instructions on how to backup his old files then install his old software. Maurice noticed a single checkbox during the installation to install the programs, make drivers available and optimize them. He checked yes. After loading the files, it said ‘Optimization 0% complete. This may take a number of hours.’ He left the Gertrude on, with the CompuHead program running, when he went to sleep.

  It was only 62% complete when he awoke. He felt strange starting his day without his computer. ‘Well, this is the way the cavemen did it. I can survive without a wearable PC for a few more hours.’

  At 3:30 he noticed that the installation was
complete. He rebooted the machine. No, it turned back on immediately. ‘I must have not have pressed the reboot button. Let me try a complete cold boot.’ Maurice turned Gertrude off then back on. The computer window appeared in two seconds. ‘Very, very curious.’ He left to visit the computer lab. As he started walking, he noticed a very faint set of cross-hairs in the middle of his Opti-Eye computer screen. He walked into the lab when he noticed a student seated at the keyboard, she had not noticed him. Her name, Eleanor Greaves, appeared in dark grey letters on his Opti-Eye-monitor. ‘Funny, that wasn’t supposed to be there.’

  “Hi, Eleanor”

  She looked up and the name shifted from grey to white. “Oh, hi professor. I’m still trying to get the bugs out of my Visual Basic program.” Maurice had never seen a name automatically displayed, and wondered why it shifted in intensity. Maurice clicked on the face and he noticed his old note file on her, but there were additional tabs and other options appeared. He didn’t have time to explore the options while he helped her.

  As he was working, he noticed another older person enter. Maurice didn’t recognize him. The name in dark grey was Anton Gibrey. Maurice said, “Hello Anton.” The name shifted to bright white. When Maurice clicked on his file for Anton it said, ‘Consultant – Omni Computer Repair Center’.

  “Ah, oh, hello professor.” The man was obviously confused. “I’m here to replace the interface board.”

  “Sorry to interrupt.” Maurice left the lab to go to his last class of the day. ‘Hmm, the name intensity changed when they look at me. I never put that feature in. I only loaded the college student’s names into Gertrude, how in hell did that consultant get into my database. He’s not a student. What in god’s name is going on? How would the program know when someone is paying attention?’

  As he entered the class, he noticed all of the students had names floating above their heads. Maurice opened a window on the classroom’s computer, which linked to his computer. Then he allowed the classroom’s overhead monitor to use his computer as input.

  “All right class, you know the drill. We’ll start out going over internet searches. The number of points you get is dependent on how well you drill down to the best-worded search.