This is part 5 of an ongoing serial story.  See my Introduction / FAQ for details.

Part 1 (vs. the Tooth Fairy), Segment 5:

I've heard that back in the day that big time computer rooms were clean places. My experience with larger computer operations were with the U.S. Army, so there was always a lot of tents and dirt involved.

I could see why you might want your computers to be clean, after all, nobody wants to live in a pigsty. But I never really understood the obsessive cleanliness that computer freaks insisted on. The two guys at Reuben and Reuben that managed our supercluster were crazy neat. I was a doctor, and my workspace looked like a trailer after a dust storm compared to their computer room. These were the kind of guys I suspect ironed their underpants to a fine crease. They didn't even have half the amount of stuff Eddie had either.

Bernard and Charles (no Bernie and Chuck for them) worked in a public restroom at a fast food joint, compared to the place Eddie had. Even more remarkable considering his partner was a walking demolition crew, nearly always shedding fragments of something he had recently destroyed. Bernard and Charles would also never be caught dead in this neighborhood. More likely than not they would have been dead after they got caught.

The offices of Fast Eddie Pizraccio, Detective (SA, BBG, NGRF, EFG, RES, ESQ. All rights reserved) operated out of the first floor of a three story railroad apartment building. The second floor was crammed with computer equipment, while the third was the partners' living space.

One of the first floor apartments was converted into a large waiting / meeting room. Mostly furnished with used sofas and plasticine potted plants, it had a big conferee table and a hologram projector. Its rustic charm was spoiled by the US Army APC that had smashed through the front wall, engine still ticking with heat, as the slowly crushed a tasteful black sofa covered with back issues of National geographic. Badger immediately plunked down on a blue fuzzy sofa and began to watch Tri-V, pausing briefly to sprinkle water on the ferrocrete plug on his yield sign. He used a small yellow watering can with a pink sunflower to do this. I was going to ask Eddie about it, but decided I really didn't want to know.

“I'm not here right now. Not sure when I can get back there, but I'll give you the remote tour, if you don't mind.” Eddie moved from The Badger's holosystem to the house system, flickering from room to room, appearing in the doorways and beckoning to me from place to place... because the hallways weren't wired for vision I guess.

All the interior doors in the building had been removed for easy access. The main entrance was an exception. It had been moderately armored to keep out the laziest of burglars. I suspected that the pros all knew about The Badger and kept away out of the professional need to have functional fingers and arms to ply their trade.

The other apartment on the first floor was a more conventional office with a reception desk and a cluttered office in the rear.. It was probably where Eddie spent most of his time working. There were a lot of actual paper books stacked up in piles, as well as the more conventional netpads most people used. Layers of paper printouts and maps covered the walls of the back 2 rooms.

The office was probably the dustiest area in the whole building (excluding the furniture covered with brick and mortar dust from the illegally parked APC). A lot of the stuff looked like it hadn't been moved in a long time, but the clutter on the desk had been shuffled recently, with several items teetering over various edges of the large wood desk, like they were trying to escape Eddie's filing system for more professional office space in another city. One of the pads had the picture and biography of one of the victims I had called Eddie in to investigate. Another had an animated “how to” video on how to extract a tooth with common household items scrolling on it in an infinite repeat loop. Eddie must have rushed out to our appointment without shutting anything off.

If anything, the second floor nearly stunned me. With the standard personal computer being about the size of a deck of cards, I couldn't even imagine the computing power Eddie had crowded into the second floor. Granted, most of it wasn't top of the line, but I'd hate to have paid his electric bill. Then again, someone with this many computers probably didn't pay any bills at all.

Most people have no reals sense of scale on this kind of stuff. They have their own computers, and maybe have seen a bigger one at work, if they are lucky enough to have a job. To put it in perspective, the server room For the Utah state government was a a three by three room with mostly empty shelves on the walls... and Utah had been pretty high tech before we bombed it back to Texas level.

Even the amount of gear wasn't really so crazy. It wasn't that it was expensive, rather nobody NEEDED this much computer equipment to do anything. Your average pro level hacker in the Army used what looked like a Batman utility belt. Reuben and Reuben had a small room full of stuff, but it was used by over 100 projects, many of them doing DNA analysis on bulk samples.

Eddie's stuff could have left them in the dust. But there wasn't any dust. The whole place shone with a level of care that was obsessive. It looked like someone even polished the trim and logos on every piece of gear.

I stood at the top of the stairs and just stared. It was like hacker heaven without the clouds around our feet.

Eddie chuckled. “I'm a bit of a collector. Some of this stuff is pretty old, but it all works... and almost all of it is running and networked right now.”

“Why? What do you need it for?” Maybe he was simulating the entire universe, or looking for solar flares...

“You see, Doc, There is a lot of information out there, but people want us to keep it out there...” Ge gestured to his head “Not in here, or anyplace else it may be useful to the general population Now the Library of Congress could fit in a drive the size of your hand, BUT nobody can get their hands on the Library of Congress... maybe not even the president. You try and look some stuff up over there on your watch or phone... well Uncle Sam will come a visiting with a really big stick.”

“Yeah, so?” That wasn't new. The government had been locking up information for decades. There was a ton of stuff that could get you in trouble if the cops found it on your personal hardware. That was in the U.S. Too. Just having a computer, let alone whatever illegal info was on it in the Republic of Texas was enough to get hanged. Someone always didn't like what you knew. “wait, you mean like an Army Battalion?”

Eddie walked along the rows of quietly humming gear, looking as if he would have stroked it... if he had actually been physically present.

“maybe, depends on what it was. You see Doc, I've got a lot of stuff in here that most people don't want me to have. I have a complete copy of the old Internet in here, among other things. Government records, for quite a few countries, corporation stuff, L5 data, so that may be why our Army friends are skulking around... but I doubt it.”

He spun and mimed leaning on the nearest rack of shelves. His imaging was off, and he just hovered a few inches from obvious support. The rack has been a door at one point probably for this building. Faded gold print spelled out: ' Baker System Dynamics: Floor 2, Section 21 B, Please show your pass.'

“What they are here for is... you.” He waggled his eyebrows in a menacing fashion.

“Me? I didn't do anything to them? I used to BE them.”

“Oh, but you did, do something, or were one of them... well both. Don't make me lose my thread here... It seems you did a bunch of searches from your Reuben and Reuben workstation on that killer. They were watching. You upset a real nest of fire ants on this one. I don't even have to break into the corporate log files to see that, and then see the Army erase it all and the fact they were even there looking at you... but I did, and they did.” More strange eyebrow action accosted me.

He motioned me up to the third floor, continuing on with his explanation as we moved into the living quarters.

“I don't know why they care about all this yet, or you. But it is a really good thing that you got me on your case. They don't know anything about me, I've generally made sure of that for a long long time. But they sure are keeping tabs on those dead people, or maybe the guy who is doing it. You, my friend, have just dropped off the face of the earth... as far as pretty much anyone knows. Since this is North Prov, and most of them are stupid, they probably think someone ate you... no need to mess that up by renting a hotel room for ya.. It could be useful.

There was a door at the top of this stairway. The first I had seen on its hinges since the front door.

Apparently Eddie lived in the Baker Systems transient barracks, though they looked about as unlike a set of barracks as someone could get. Half the area was neatly appointed with solid furniture (mostly covered with partially disassembled computer gear) while the rest of the area looked like a frat house after a week long bender with farm animals that had mugged a fast food delivery guy.

Eddie shrugged. “I keep meaning to move B to the other apartment up here, but I've been using it for storage. Anyway, I usually like to keep an eye on him. He doesn't sleep normally, and usually needs some adult supervision. If I had an 8 year old, I wouldn't give him his own room either, let alone a complete apartment... with a stove... and running water... above lots and lots of expensive computer equipment.”

“Yeah, not a good plan I'd assume.” Man, I was tired.

He grinned.

“I try to make sure that The Badger is something which happens to other people... kind of like nuclear weapons and the U.S. Army.” Something flickered across his face with an unusual burst of static.

“Anyway Doc. I'm not using it tonight, so feel free to bunk out in my cot. The only other one is B's and you see what that might not be a good choice, even excluding the chance he'd wander in later and squash you in his sleep. I have work to do. See ya for breakfast.”

He waved a hand over his shoulder and walked back down the stairs instead of blinking out and popping up wherever he was going. Virtual politeness for once, who would have thought?

The pillow smelled like army surplus detergent. If anything it made me fall asleep faster. An Army cot in a warzone was the most at home I'd been in years.

***

As always, this work is (c) 2009 T.J. Whitfield Jr.