This is part 6 of an ongoing serial story.  See my Introduction / FAQ for details.

Part 1 (vs. the Tooth Fairy), Segment 6:

In the morning, I got to experience computers in a whole new way, though not in a way I would have preferred.

Everyone uses computers every day. A lot of the high-tech gadgets that we wander around with are really computers. Most of us call them watches or phones, but those are just labels for where we chose to carry our stuff, since all phones can tell time, and all watches can make calls.

I saw a computer once in a museum that had this huge keypad that you'd press letters on to make stuff happen. I'm not sure when we switched over to voice control, but when I got my first phone when I was seven, it talked. Anyway, we don't really read a whole lot anymore. What with Tri-V, and cheap and easy voice system, why send anything by text if you didn't have to?

Reading was still around for those of us with jobs that required a lot of technical background, or had a large amount of historical data to deal with. My grandfather never got the hang of voice commands outside of yelling , "Someone come over here and turn this damn thing on!"  My dad, John Watts senior, muddled through it all, but never was really comfortable with electronics outside of his tools in his operating room. He printed out a lot of his stuff to read, even for fun.

He once asked me how I could study medical files and case histories without comparing two text files side by side on paper. He claimed the brain was good at that kind of thing, but could never let us listen to both reports being read at the same time. Dad, the neurosurgeon, had a lot of trouble, thinking outside the box. I suppose the way I looked at him may have hurt his feelings a bit. He still probably knew more about medicine than I did, but he just didn't think in ways that were conductive to modern computer use.

Why anyone would need to compare the two files at all baffled me. So my look was both confused and probably a bit condescending. When I explained that I didn't need to compare the files at all, merely ask my computer what the differences were, I probably could have done it in a kinder way. But you have to understand he was basically asking me how to tell time at night with a sundial, when the sundial was actually a Cray 5400 sitting on an end table.

His next question was reaching a bit in my opinion.

“What if the computer is wrong? How do you check it yourself?”

Why would the computer be wrong? I understand a bit more now I'm a doctor too, but I don't have his phobia about lost or mistaken data. In med school I had to do some stuff by hand in a lot of my classes. But, I had been in the U.S. Army, they wanted us to be able to work with two bent sticks and a pile of sand if we had to.

Eddies computers were not sticks and sand. My now deceased phone might as well been an oval shiny rock compared to the second floor of his building. Somehow, I doubted he operated it all by voice command.

Eddie hadn't made it back, so he was projecting in remotely still. After a breakfast of Eggy Sammiches, we went upstairs to the computer area, while The Badger watched cartoons and did whatever he did when he wasn't eating, killing people, or possibly both.

Eddie lead me to a standard medical chair/bed at the back of his gleaming racks of equipment. Resting on a nearby rack were a pair of wire laden gloves and a pair of funky goggles.

“Sorry.” Eddie motioned to the chair. “I don't need this stuff, but I keep it around for clients. I had a direct interface put in a long time back.” He pointed to a coiled cable plugged in near the goggles. “Works better, but is about 14 kinds of illegal these days.”

I sat in the chair and began to put on the gloves.

“What is all this for? I thought were were going to look for info on the killer?” The goggles reminded me of some older set of night-vision gear.

He grinned. And brushed some hair out of his eyes. “Oh, we are. Just we are going to look where we aren't supposed to.”

He spun around waving his arms at the various racks of spotless electronics. “You tried to find our guy with a standard search, crossed some invisible tripwire and got yourself (and me) a face-full of Army. In response the Army got a face-full of North Prov. They aren't going to forget that.”

I finished adjusting the head strap and sat back in the chair. “So we are going to look where the Army isn't?”

“Well, kinda. Look at the database system as a building of brick walls with A LOT of little little brick rooms. Modern computers communicate a lot, they can't stop really. Everything is interconnected. The best the boys in charge can do is limit the devices that access the information as it passes through their little room. Your phone couldn't ask certain questions, because your phone company wouldn't let you, or would shift your question a little, or even outright lie to you. Basically, the bricks in the wall would filter your information as it passed from room to room. Every computer in between possibly modifying it, just a little, to spin things the way the individual owners want it to be seen.”

He winked. 'It is like a big game of telephone, but every player is a pathological liar... or maybe a Wikipedia article edited by comic book fans...”

“Huh?” I sat back up.

“Nevermind. Well, the stuff I got here doesn't pass through the bricks... it operates through the stuff that holds the bricks together. Even better, it tells me what the bricks were trying to filter out. Sometimes knowing who told the lie is better than knowing the truth. Sit back and close your eyes.”

“Why do I have to go?” I muttered. 'Isn't this what I'm paying you for?” I closed my eyes.

'Absolutely. But, as I just told you, we can't trust computers. If I sent a file to your phone, if you still had a phone, there is a chance your phone might have changed the info in some way because your phone company are screwheads. Better if you see the info for yourself. Open 'em up.”

The world was gone. I was falling. There was wind. There was ground, far far away. Eddie slowly fell into view. He was wearing a flight jacket, a backpack and aviator's goggles.

'Besides, I like to see the look on people's faces.”

He reached into his pack and pulled out an small anvil. He jammed it into my arms. I started falling faster and faster. The ground spiraling below me

I plummeted away, and he zipped off above me.

The wind whipped away his laughing taunt.

“Watch out. That first step is a doooozzzzyyyyy.”

***

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