Please add a mageworld banner to your site
"Ah! Here I am at last in the Taros gate with a belly full of swamp eel and all rigged up to the inter-planetary net. That's one of the worst things about being a stow-away. You have to fight tooth and nail for even a few moments on the thing. Though not here in the catacombs of Taros Gate. All, or maybe just most, of us are net junkies."
"This console I'm on, it's called Telporin2, probably the second machine Telporin built. People have added bits, people have taken bits away, perhaps none of the original components remain, but here it, the machine, remains, greater than the sum of its parts and still illicitly connected to the inter-planetary net via the Taros computer."
"I started out as a lag monkey, a press-ganged con, so they never put the net adaptor in my skill-chip board but the socket was always there and I eventually found that duck doctor technician, sentenced for illegal cloning, half-starving, mad as a pac man, holed up in a station and more than happy to trade food for the chips he'd salvaged from the cadaver from some old-timer."
"I like thinking in poetry."
Of course, Microsoft hadn't asked how the old-timer had reached his end, whether he'd been murdered for his chips and other human body parts, that didn't occur to him as a consequential, or even a relevant question.
I need, here it is, acquire it, Microsoft logic.
Microsoft began laughing out loud at his poetry and the sound echoed eerily around the metallic tunnels in which he was encased. He stopped laughing suddenly and became a little anxious for a moment.
"Must stop doing that," he thought, "the sound of laughter ricochets round these tunnels like anything and those Outer Planets psychos are somewhere in here, no doubt after my swamp eel. But it's mine, get your own you psychos!"
He paused his interaction with Telporin2, listening to his cackle echoing round the narrow tunnels burrowed in the station by his kind.
That's largely why monkeys like Microsoft kept up this constant babble in their heads. The loneliness and insecurity of their solitary lives conditioned them to do so. If he or she didn't talk there the space monkey didn't really talk at all.
Most of what they actually said aloud was deception. The truth resided within, this ran deeper than their criminality, it was cultural.
"The inter-planetary net resurrected many long-dead arts and, I guess, is why our modern generation is so nostalgic about the Twentieth Century. Space on the net boats is precious and security on those is even tighter than on any luxury liner so files need to be kept small. Smuggle anything too large on there and security will scrutinise it thoroughly, not just for worms and virii but for the authenticity of the carrier's identity."
"You can smuggle a few small hidden files on there though no problem, as long as they're virus free. The situation for paying customers is even worse. Some fancy animation is going to cost you a mint to ship, unless you buy the hi-tech tools to create them from text, or, heaven forbid, are prepared to spend a lifetime getting to grips with source codes."
"Few bother so our culture has gone totally nostalgic. The neo-Victorians have gone too far but most of us, at one time or another, have written bad poetry."
"All I want is you, swampy,
You in my belly
Just you and me, swampy
You and I alone
Against the universe
You're too good for Sanyo
Too good for the elite
Those outer planets psychos
Don't deserve to taste you meat
I'll be your eater
You genetically engineered
Luxurious gormet treat
You shall be my dinner
Just you and I, swampy,
Delicious chip shop creature."
"Truly awful swampy, it doesn't do either of us justice. There, it's booked on the next boat out, The Pride of Linus Torvalds, as good as posted. We monkeys have our own illegal boards, constantly moving from the back of one shoddy company computer to another. Our data, like us, constantly on the move, constantly stowing away, hiding from security."
"What have we here, Microsoft? Why, it's a batch file: the next of kin notices for all those waiters."
Microsoft's brow furrowed as he read the text silently to himself:
"Dear Sir or Madam,
It is with deepest regret that your spouse Chief Security Officer Sanyo has been killed in the line of duty. Please contact head office immediately. You are adviced to note that the company reserves the right to retain any useful organs or other body parts of your spouse in line with section 185b(iii) of your spouse's contract of employment.
Yours,
Sub-director Nike
Intergalactica Shipping Corp, Taros Office."
Microsoft could not suppress his hysterical laughter no matter how hard he tried and rolled on the floor giggling for several minutes.
"Damn," he thought, "crap, if anything will attract those Outer Planets psychos that will."
"Wow, they popped Sanyo, the heat's going to be turned right up now, but it's still funny. The company didn't waste much time informing the wifey that they've got his body. I wonder how much is left?"
"I should disconnect really and skedaddle but I'm dying to learn how my mage is doing in his wars since I last logged in to the net. Crap! I've been invaded twice by those players in realm #47. I lost land, but not much, I'll soon recoup that here in Taros waiting for a ship. What else is there to do? What's this?"
Microsoft was absorbing his net game's results. All in plain text, cheap to produce and transmit across the galaxy. Game play was slow, by necessity. Again, technology was driving people back towards the past. You could play better games on planetary and orbiting nets of course, but everyone liked to communicate across the galaxy and play in the largest possible war game for kicks.
"Our wizards have repelled a Clear Sight spell from Forest of Gaiety(#452).
Our wizards have repelled a Clear Sight spell from Forest of Gaiety(#452).
Our wizards have repelled a Clear Sight spell from Forest of Gaiety(#452).
Spies from Forest of Gaiety(#452) were discovered within the barracks. We executed 15 spies."
Microsoft beamed. "That's English Gibber, from Taros, he's just mucking around and peaking at my dominion to see if it's active. I wonder if he's sent me an in-game message since I last logged in? I wonder if he's here?"
"Damn, no message, it may have been automatically deleted by the game's server or discovered by security in transit. I'll sneak a message to Forest of Gaiety in with the batch file of obituaries, in fact, I'll tell English Jibber exactly how I'm transmitting my message too! He'll laugh when he hears those Outer Planets psychos popped Sanyo, everyone hated Sanyo - and I was there! Word will soon spread through the inter-planetary under-net but I'll weld of a copy of the company's own obituary on the bulkhead for the guys without upgrades too."
Microsoft's sub-culture had, unknowingly, resurrected some of the traditions of the American hobos of the great depression. In many ways their circumstances were not too different, the monkeys, like the hobos, were refugees in a largely hostile society. They too had a set of secret symbols and a kind of "water tower etiquette." It was a bulkhead etiquette really. The monkeys used welding torches to daub their signs upon the bulkheads and some, though not Microsoft, had developed a fair talent for artistry.
Microsoft had already checked most of the bulkheads and found, to his disappointment, that, as always, there were no messages specifically for him, just the usual gibberish, random artistry and personal messages from the artists to one another. The artists only gave status to themselves, and, though Microsoft didn't realise it, often viewed types like Microsoft as little better than the Outer Planets psychos, if they were capable of distinguishing him from them at all.
The desire to be noticed, infamous even, was a perverse trait in someone who spent his entire solitary life sneaking about anonymously.
The artists were a dying breed. Microsoft didn't realise it but much of what he was reading was as old as Taros itself. From the days when honest men rather than convicts had the scarification of the skill-chips, not to mention the risks of their trade, forced upon them by brutal economics. Their resentment of the corporations ran as deep as Microsoft's but they had fundamentally different personalities.
To the artists of the old school Microsoft was just a scavenging, luddite, nerd.
There'd be vampires welded upon hulls, with slogans like, "If I die disintegrate me, Solemnly Welding says no to company clause 185b".
Deeper than the need to communicate, for the artists, ran that very rebellion against the skill-chips, economics and company regulation that a convict of a later generation, like Microsoft, could never really fully grasp, though with his convict mind he aped their ideals. He did not understand that the artists' stylistic version of water tower etiquette was the ironic antithesis of the "water cooler etiquette" of the corporations. Microsoft believed it all, or kidded himself he did, he absorbed each slogan and reflected upon it.
The skill-chips could never give a person the ability to create art, just the ability to execute tasks like a robot and the rejection of this, in the name of humanity, is what was at the core of bulkhead etiquette.
"I love these mage games," thought Microsoft, "I've never told anyone this, they'd think I was crazy, but sometimes I imagine I'm a mage too. I mean, I use my skill chip to turn invisible, to travel around the galaxy, to teleport. If that's not magic then I don't know what is! Look, at that, my orders and my message to Gaiety are in there with Sanyo's obituary - magic!"
"You're a wizard Microsoft!"
At that, the bitter irony of the wizard orders, and especially the announcement of Sanyo's death to Gaiety, going in with the batch file of obituaries from the massacre at Dinewell, Microsoft again burst out laughing.
But he soon stopped when the hatch was torn open.
"Oh no, it's the Outer Planets psychos, they've found me!"
'Oh, hello lads,' said Microsoft, 'where have you been? I've been looking all over for you. Hey, you killed Sanyo! Isn't that great! Don't worry, I won't tell anyone it was you.'
"Damn, the Outer Planets psychos. I'll have to murder them when they sleep, if they don't kill me first..."
'You horrible little rat. Where's our swamp eel? What else you got stashed in this cosy little hole of yours? Room for two more? What you doing on that computer, writing to your mummy?'
"It's horrible, it's starting already, not so much as a by-your-leave, the brutes!"
'Come in and make yourselves at home, it's cosy but there's room and food enough for all, the three of us.'
Microsoft could barely conceal his shuddering disdain within the tacit plea that he be allowed to eat just a beggar's ration of his own looted delicacy.
Top of page
