Creek scanned it cursorily. The late, unlamented Todd was correct It was a pretty good intelligent agent, as far as commercial agents went But like most commercial agents, it wasn't terribly bright and it was programmed to research from certain commercial databases, mostly owned by Quaker Oats. How Quaker Oats became the largest mainstream information and technology service in the world was one of those stories that could fill the dry nonfiction books of at least three sabbatical-taking Wall Street Journal writers. All Creek knew is that he enjoyed seeing a guy in breeches become the universal symbol of high technology. Still, he didn't want his own intelligent agent wearing 18th-century clothing. Creek had as well-developed a sense of irony as the next guy, but breeches were simply distracting.
From the storage cube, Creek pulled out the source code for an intelligent agent he'd been developing at the time of his last vacation from the computing world, and began mixing and matching it with Todd. Todd's database connection and information retrieval and optimization subroutines stayed; its native AI and database preferences were tossed, as were its request caching; if the UNE government wasn't supposed to know what he was looking for, there no reason why AOL or Quaker Oats should. His Frankenstein monster of an agent now collected, Creek fired up a zipper utility to mesh the parts together. His new agent had everything it needed except for one element. But to incorporate that element, he needed a little more headroom than his new computer was going to give him.
Creek flipped out his communicator and made a call.
"NOAA," the voice on the other end said. It was Bill Davison, an old friend of Creek's.
"Yeah, I want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow," Creek said.
"You know, the sad thing is how many calls we get which actually ask that" Bill said. "Like it's easer to call us than to watch the news."
"Everyone knows you can't trust weathermen," Creek said.
"Christ, I don't trust them, and I am one," Bill said. "How are you, Harry?"
"Same old, same old, Bill," Creek said. "Listen, I was wondering if I could trouble for you a favor."
"I'm broke," said Bill. "I work for the government you know."
"Funny," Creek said. "You have the same pay scale I have. That's not too bad."
"Said the guy who isn't paying alimony and child support," Bill said. "But enough about my pathetic life. What do you need, Harry?"
"I understand that you folks over there at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have some nifty computers," Creek said.
"We sure do," Bill allowed. "We model the weather so you don't have to. Speaking in the aggregate, we have more computing power than every single human brain in Massachusetts, although since that's where my ex is from, you'll have to take that estimation with a grain of salt."
"Are you using all of it at the moment? I kind of have a project I need a little extra computing power for."
"How much you need?" Bill asked.
"How much you got?" Creek asked.
"Oh," Bill said. "One of those projects. You know, the last time I let you borrow time, I sort of got a talking-to. My boss at the time was going to write me up, until I mentioned to him that while your work was not technically germane to weather tracking and prediction, neither was his lesbian pornography simulator. We agreed to let it drop after that."
"Well, I don't want to get you in trouble," Creek said.
"Don't worry about it," Bill said. "He left anyway. He's now VP of technology for Smith College. Remind me in about twelve years to make sure my daughter doesn't go there."
"It's a deal," Creek said.
"Nifty," Bill said. "Now let's see. Hurricane season has begun, which means we've got a pretty heavy load at the moment, so I can't carve off any time for you on any of the big guns. But here's something that might do. We've got an IBM box that's sitting idle; it's scheduled to be replaced. It's a couple of generations back, so it's not top of the line, but on the other hand It'll be all yours. And this way no one will complain when your little project suddenly grabs all the processing cycles. Hell, no one will even know it's there, and that's good for me."
"That sounds perfect, Bill," Creek said, "I owe you one."
"No you don't," Bill said. "I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. Short of asking for cash or sex, there's not much you could ask for I'd say no to."
"That was a long time ago now," Creek said. "I think we're getting close to karmic balance."
"Says you," Bill said. "We all should have bought it at Pajmhi. Every day I'm alive is a day extra. Although I should note that in this calculation, since my life was extended long enough to get married, you're indirectly responsible for my divorce."
"Sorry about that," Creek said.
"Forget it," Bill said. "It could be worse. I got a great kid out of it"
"Who should not go to Smith," Creek said.
"Thanks for the reminder. Here's the address for the IBM." Bill rattled it off. "Give me a minute to set up a user account for you under 'creek.' Password the same. Change both once you get in and lock the door behind you, if you know what I mean. The IBM is still connected to the network and the last thing I need is for some teenager to get in and start fucking with our weather reports. Something like that is not easily remedied by blackmailing the boss."
"Got it," Creek said. "Thanks again, Bill."
"De nada," Bill said. "Gotta go. These hurricanes don't model themselves." He clicked off.
Creek stared at his communicator for a moment, and for about the one millionth time in his life pondered over the Battle of Pajmhi, who lived, who died, and how it all played out over the rest of his life. At this specific moment, it worked to his favor. This brought the tally to one good thing for every thousand bad things. Be that as it may, it was one good thing he could use.
Creek signed into the IBM machine and fired up a system diagnostic; he was delighted to find it sufficiently roomy in both memory and processing for what he needed. Creek went to his closet and pulled out another memory cube, activated it, and sent its exceptionally compressed contents to the IBM. This took the better part of 20 minutes; Creek fixed himself a snack. When the cube's contents had transferred, Creek sent over a program to decompress and then assemble the data. The data were actually several separate files; the core was a data file that, once assembled, would be comparatively small. Most of the massive amounts of data were files that would comprise the modeling environment for the core data.
It was this modeling environment that Creek had spent the better part of two years creating, mostly from bits and pieces of unrelated commercial code jammed together with zipper programs and a substantial amount of hand coding by Creek to modify the existing programs to do what he wanted them to do. The resulting modeling environment was a massive "fuck you" to the general concept of the End User License Agreement, which specifically denied users the right to crack open the programs and play with the code. But if these corporations could see what Creek had done with their hacked software, it was doubtful they'd try to put him in the slammer; they'd just try to hire him. For ridiculous amounts of cash.
The government might try to put him in the slammer. Fortunately, he worked for the government. And he had friends in high places.
Anyway, the point was moot. Creek wasn't going to market his software. He was just going to use it himself.
Creek queried the IBM to see how long it would be before his programs would be unpacked, assembled, and modeling the central data file. He was told it would be about a day. That seemed about right to him.
His new computer pinged Creek. His intelligent agent was all zipped up. Creek activated it
"Hello," the agent said. Everything about it, from clothes to skin tone to voice, was curiously neutral. "Do you have a name you wish to use for me?"