“I think not all think so.”
“Yes, you are, it seems, right. If your government denies me asylum, I will be forced to surrender to the U.S. authorities. I’ve already guaranteed… No, this is not an option. It seems I am in a desperate situation…”
“Don’t rush things,” the Lawyer said softly. “Don’t back yourself into a corner. A way out will always be found. I am asked sometimes why I undertake fruitless cases. But I always answer that there are no fruitless cases. Anyway, all my experience confirms this truth.”
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“So, having passed all school assignments externally, one fine day I went to study at AACC in Maryland. AACC is ‘Anne Arundel Community College’, in Arnold, near Baltimore. However, in Maryland everything is ‘near Baltimore’.
Why there? Firstly, AACC wasn’t a pretentious place, secondly, they had a computer science course and… why hide the truth – I just wouldn’t have gotten into a more prestigious college, my grades weren’t up to it.
The first feeling that visited me in college – loneliness. Maybe, if our school psychologist had learned about it, he would put me down as a deviant teenager, registered, and would prescribe some rehabilitation therapy and antidepressants. But firstly, I wasn’t going to tell anybody anything, and secondly, the school remained in the past, and I was inexpressibly glad about that.
Some time, maybe for three months, or perhaps half a year, I lived in an invisible space suit, like some surprising protective overalls that separated me from others.
Life bustled on around me, crowds of guys and girls communicated, kissed, smoked, drank, ate, copulated, quarreled, reconciled, danced at parties, watched movies, played computer games, attended classes, organized draws and played sports – and I observed all this through a hidden, but very strong cover that hid me from their eyes.
Nobody addressed me, or asked me about anything, invited me anywhere or demanded anything. I wasn’t…you know?
First it amused me, and then it began to anger me – what, am I worse than others? For me, as for any guy at that age, there was a desire for communication, I wanted credibility and popularity among my peers… I wanted pretty girls to notice me, damn it! But for half a year no girl at college ever stopped near me to have a quick word, let alone to ‘chat.’
Gradually, I began to develop a loser complex. I didn’t sleep at nights. I stopped eating normally and for days on end without a break, I vanished behind my computer.
At the time, I was fond of cryptoprograms linked to data encryption and breaking passwords. I had a cipher, the animated image of a green rabbit, a series of alternating pictures creating the illusion that the rabbit danced. Access to the ‘Dancing Rabbit’ program was password-protected.
I wrote a program that created passwords which were updated every ten, five, then three, two and one seconds, using a random number generator, and then another program which, using the same MFG (Medium frequency generator), generated passwords to try to crack my first program. I got really carried away. I could watch for hours on the screen the monitor columns of digits changing, changing, changing, with inhuman speed. They say there are people who can enter into a trance with a mirror pendulum and a candle. I entered into a trance with my ‘Kraken’ programs.
Once I took a disk with a couple of password generators to college and in a class on information security, I secretly logged in and ‘screwed’ my program into the final table in which the results of the lesson were noted and marks were given. So, if you tried to display the table on the screen, you got my green rabbit dancing and, with the most innocent look, asking you to guess three figures from zero to nine.
If you could only see how diligently they all tried this seemingly trifling task! All those blockheads tapping on the keypads of their personal computers! All those ‘Mr. Touchdowns’ and ‘Mrs. College-2001s’, and other lard-asses that didn’t even think that the combination from three digits gives one thousand combinations and they would spend several hours guessing it not the few remaining minutes till the end of the lesson.
I chuckled quietly, furtively looking at this until Mr. Thewlis, one of the teachers of information systems, came up to me.
‘I have been watching you for a long time, young man,’ he said quietly. ‘I see you are making progress down your chosen path. We have a small community here…more precisely, a club of fans of programming. Would you like to join?’
‘With pleasure, sir,’ I answered, ‘But my knowledge levels are quite low and I will hardly be able…’
‘You’ll be able, you will be able,’ Mr. Thewlis calmed me. ‘And now remove your spell, please, from our system – I need to finish the lesson.’
I already had a program for hacking the password generator on call, so I started it under comments from Mr. Thewlis and an ovation from my classmates who had at last noticed me. The green rabbit danced its final dance, the table opened and against the name Kold a capital letter A appeared.
It was the day of my triumph. Joshua Kold, ‘College Superstar!’ They shook my hand, patted me on the shoulder, called me by name – it seemed they knew my name!
But the most important thing was ahead. Neolani approached me in the corridor. Usually she was called Abigail, Abigail Svaysgud, but she said her parents gave her a second, Hawaiian name as well, Neolani, which means ‘heavenly girl’. She was one of the alternatives who hung out in the ‘Garage’ and she was cool, very cool.
Even externally Neolani made such an impression that guys on the street twisted their necks to see her – short leather jacket, leggings, a magnificent miniskirt, a brilliant belt with rivets, sneakers with bulbs in the sole… Add a hairstyle like Robert Smith’s, make-up like the replicants in Blade Runner, a pierced lower lip and a whiplash tongue that could snub anyone – and you get the portrait of this ‘heavenly girl’.
And so she approaches me with that special walk that makes you go dry in the mouth. She had rings in ears, bracelets on her hands with baubles, and she says:
‘You are cool, you should hang out with us! Savvy in computers?’
‘Like a shot,’ I say.
‘Well, come to the Garage this evening. Our computer’s giving out trouble. Will you come?’
I nodded – there was no force left for words.
‘Well, then bye!’
And she left. And I stood as a statue, except my ears burned. Neolani had talked to me! I was invited to the Garage! Probably, it was one of the happiest moments in my life. A celebration moment, the moment of fulfilled expectations and the emergence of absolutely new ones. The line of my destiny at this moment made a sharp turn, an abrupt zigzag and I…
Damn, I became another person, get it? The Garage – it was a gate to the new world, the portal to the delirium pastures of Heaven. By hearsay, they not only smoked grass, but also snorted coke, and sniffed the Mexican brands, and beer flowed like a river. And of course, all the best girls in college went to the Garage not only to dance there were many secluded corners with soft sofas.
Of course, it was not a garage, but a former hangar for seaplanes on the bank of the Severn River. It belonged to the father of one of those guys that hung out there, Bach. Bach is not a name, but a nickname, in honour of the old composer who created the ‘Pa-ba-ba-ba!’ song; all ‘garagers’ had nicknames, some catchier than others.
To get to the Garage, you could go along a footpath on the coast. When it rained the path became muddy, and wet branches hung low over it, but I liked this way much better. If you go along the road, you inevitably pass houses rolling in thickets where there live some gloomy old women and loud mammies eternally complaining that along their precious lawns and mailboxes ‘all kinds gad about’. Well, some garagers once accidentally knocked over a couple of those boxes – so now you need to call the FBI?