Chapter 9: Parks and Parties

Exams

Early November, 1982

The weeks leading up to the final exams were busy; not just studying for the two exams that I had, but helping Fiona get her internship report finished and ready for submission; last minute coaching for some of my students, and trying to fend off a potential war between some people at Sydney University and other participants in the AARNET project. Independent of the AARNET project, Sydney University had developed a simple store-and-forward network, but they wanted to use the country-level domain name “oz” (a slang name for Australia), whereas the main Internet development groups were pushing for a two letter country code, as per the list being developed by the ISO. Under that list, the top level domain code for Australia would be “au”.

I personally felt that the “oz” code was rather childish, going back to the yobboish, boorish days of ‘Bazza Mackenzie’, but the people at Sydney Uni dug their heels in. I suspected that their concerns were tied to a rumour that control of the Internet should pass from the US Government to a UN agency, the International Telecommunications Union. Some people saw this as part of a UN strategy to form a ‘world government’, all part of the clandestine ‘New World Order’. I, personally had no time for such tin-foil-hat wearing idiots, but they insisted that having some ‘international’ control over their pet project would be tantamount to submitting to the control of some shady organization.

My comments that the ITU had done a fairly decent job of setting international standards for telecommunications services, telephone, radio and television services, and the other things that it did fell on deaf ears. What I felt they were really concerned about was that somehow the UN would ban access to the alt.binaries.* newsgroups, and their source of illegal software and porn would be cut off. I had blocked those newsgroups from our Usenet feed, mainly because of bandwidth concerns, but also because of some potential criminal liability for some of the content of those newsgroups. If people wanted to look at porn, then go to some of the adult stores around the city, and buy it, like people had done for years.

Of course all that was a distraction for the important things going on in my life; my impending marriage to Lisa, and developing our relationship with Fiona. There was our upcoming weekend with Chrissy to think about, and I had to also determine what my role as Garry’s best man would involve. With many of us facing our end of year exams over the next few weeks, we put any musical activities on hold; we would resume our regular gigs and rehearsals in mid-November. As well Mary Beth was looking at some touring options in January, and working out when we might have enough songs for our next album.

At dinner that evening, I griped to the others how the plans that I had made for this afternoon, getting into my Communication Theory study had been destroyed, because I had spent all the time dealing with the idiots at Sydney Uni, and their concerns about the UN ‘taking over their network’ as part of their fears of some ‘world Government’ taking control.

“Nothing new in those fears,” Fiona said. “Throughout history, there’s always been one group or another blamed for trying to set up a single world Government, superseding individual countries or states. Either the Knights Templar, the Jews, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Rosicrucians, whatever. Various philosophers saw this as a way to bring world peace, but people from the left see it as introducing a global capitalist state, and point to the ‘gnomes of Zurich’ or the Bilderberg group, while those on the right fear global socialism.

“Have you heard of the phrase ‘Novus ordo seclorum’, a Latin phrase translating to ‘New Order of the Ages’? It’s on the Great Seal of the United States, and you have all the conspiracy theorists fearing a ‘new world order’; the United Nations is just the current target of their fears. A number of people have feared centralization of power; why do you think the US Constitution intended for their Federal Government to be relatively weak? Jefferson, and his faction, distrusted cities and the financiers that inhabited them, favoured limited government. According to him, it was corrupt political parties and establishments that was the cause of most oppression.

“He felt that in the US, the individual States should retain most of their powers, and the second amendment to the US constitution, the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ would give each state their own militia, independent of any Federal standing army. That means, if the Federal Government became corrupt or oppressive, then the states would be able to rise up in armed rebellion and overthrown their oppressors.”

“Yeah, that worked out really for the Southern States during the Civil War,” I said.

“True, but that was the intent of what Jefferson wanted for the new country; where each State could overthrow what they believed was an oppressive Federal Government,” she continued. “And we see the same thoughts, but without the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ in the Australian Federal system, most powers remaining with the original founding colonies.”

“So, what is so magical about a State Government that makes it immune to the same forces of corruption that would affect a central, federal government?” I asked. “I guess there has been no corruption, no oppression of individual human rights carried out by any US State Government then, because...”

“Yeah, well, never mind the details,” Fiona said. “Big government bad, small government good. There’s no logic behind it; the same as the people who promote the philosophy of Agrarianism, where they believe that a rural society is superior to an urban society, and those who are independent farmers, working the land, are better than a paid factory worker. There’s no logic to it, but it’s been a fairly widely held belief over a long period.”

“Sort of like the Country Party here?” Lisa said.

“Exactly. Rural life good, city life bad,” Fiona said. “Don’t look for any logic behind those beliefs, the people who espouse them, and the Jeffersonian ‘central government is bad’ view take them as a matter of faith.”

“Just like people who believe in conspiracy theories,” I said. “Freemasonry, the ‘fact’ that the moon landings were faked, government cover-ups of UFOs, all sorts of stuff. And that gets us back to the UN wanting to take over the internet.”

“And you’ll never convince the people who adhere to those theories that they are just spouting pure bullshit,” Fiona said. “Because the Government is behind whatever studies are set up to prove otherwise. There’s a strong correlation between paranoia and belief in those theories.”

“Well, I wish those idiots over at Sydney Uni would shove their wacky theories up their paranoid arses,” I said. “I don’t have the time to fool around with fuckwits like that.”

With dinner out of the way, and our philosophical discussion on limited government, the New World Order, and conspiracy theories in general done, it was downstairs to study. I took a break around ten pm; Lisa and Fiona were still studying, so we went into the family room to clear our heads.

“How did you know about all of that conspiracy theory stuff, new world orders, and the US Constitution?” Lisa asked Fiona.

“Um, I am a Modern History major,” she replied. “What do you think I have been studying at Uni?”

“Well, it was interesting stuff, I’d love to know more about those things,” Lisa replied. “I did Modern History in Senior High School, but we never got into any of that.”

“That was a subject I did first semester this year, all on the development of modern political ideas. I thought it might be some radical left wing extremist stuff, but the lecturer was surprisingly even handed, he criticised both left wing and right wing radicals equally. I can lend you the text book I had, if you want some heavy reading.”

“Like when am I going to get time to read that?” Lisa replied, laughing.

As well as having to study for the two subjects that I had exams scheduled, I also had to prepare for the exams for the subjects that I taught. At least to the point of going over how the papers would be marked and assessed with the other staff members who would be involved in the marking. There wasn’t too much work involved with that; the exam paper for Computing I was similar in structure to the papers from the last few years; the questions had been changed slightly, but the marking process would be much the same.

For the Computing II exam, I would be marking several questions; Ken Robinson outlined the criteria that he was hoping to see in the answers that the students would provide.

“Because we are looking at sample code that has been written in the exam setting,” he said, “we can’t expect the programs to be one hundred percent working. But what I am looking for is a demonstrated understanding of what the problem was asking; well-structured and documented code, no obvious logic errors. Any questions?”

We all felt pretty happy with how the papers would be assessed; this wasn’t our first rodeo as they say. Of course next year, with the subject being broken into three separate subjects, things would be different. It had been suggested that I would be the main lecturer for Computing IIA – pretty much advanced C programming. Computing IIB would be assembler programing and digital logic; and Computing IIC would be data structures, trees, file systems, and software engineering. I would also be one of the lecturers assisting on a third year subject, 6.633 “Data Bases and Networks”, I would be teaching the networking side of the subject, and Doctor Hellestrand would be teaching the Data Base side of that subject.

If I planned to complete my Thesis by the end of first semester next year, I would have to complete the ‘Intent to Submit’ documentation fairly soon. I had more than enough graduate subject credits completed, all of them with a Distinction or High Distinction. I would have to decide on a ‘cut off’ for any new developments; it seemed like every week some new development was starting. I felt that the beginning of next year was a good time for me to freeze any new work; that would correspond to the formal shutdown of the original NCP protocol, and ARPANET would be a TCP/IP network only. In fact, the original network name, ‘APRANET’ had been replaced by the term ‘Internet’, short for ‘Internetworking’, and ‘The Internet’ was really a ‘network of networks’, the US Military had set up their own networks, based on TCP/IP, non-classified sites were connected into ‘The Internet’ through ‘MILNET’. There were other ‘subnetworks’ in the US, and the fledgling AARNET could be considered as one of the constituent networks of ‘The Internet’.

The LSI-11 based routers were working well in the sites where they had been installed; as Telecom provided new data links more and more institutions were being linked in. There wasn’t much more research work to be done; at least work that would fit within the umbrella of my thesis project. Over the summer break I would work on what would be the synopsis of the report; a brief summary of what the project was meant to achieve, and what I actually did. Professor Dunworth felt that what I had done had achieved the aims of the project, and once I had things written up, there should be no problem with the examiners accepting my thesis and awarding me my degree.

“The fact that as part of your research you have one article already published, in addition to your work on several of the RFC’s, that will go a long way to impressing them,” he said. “Frankly, I was impressed to see your name included on that routing RFC and some of the others. I think that you’ve help establish the University’s name as a centre of computer networking excellence.”

Friday night we played at Chequers, and Saturday was our regular rehearsal afternoon. We continued kicking around ideas for the next album; no theme had really emerged yet, but it was still early in the process. Sunday was a great day racing; we got the gun in the Retriever Trophy, Lisa again took over the helming duties on occasions. It certainly put me in the right frame of mind for my exams.

Both of the exams went well; at least I thought I made a pretty good fist of them. I would know for sure in a few weeks’ time; but the questions were on material that I had revised extensively. At least, when I walked out of both exams, I wasn’t left with the feeling that I could have done any better. To me, that’s what counts; I just hoped that I would get at least a distinction for both subjects, but after seven years of almost continuous study (not counting the year after my Bachelor degree); I was pretty accustomed to preparing for and taking exams. Plus, being on the staff, and knowing the lecturers and professors fairly well, I had a good idea of what they were looking for in assignments and exams. Not that I was suggesting I had an unfair advantage, but I just knew how to study, how to complete assignments, and how to study and take exams effectively.

With my two exams out of the way, and Lisa’s exams over, we had a great day’s racing on Sunday; another Quartet Bowl race. This time Don had Lisa helm for most of the race; it was interesting watching and listening as he coached her, making suggestions. With the exception of the colour of her hair, she looked exactly like Lori did when Lori had been helming; the same look of concentration, the same way of lightly holding the tiller. Her hand just rested on the top of the tiller; when I had helm ‘Koolong’, I would have a death-like grip on the tiller.

“With keelboats like the Etchell, you need a light touch on the tiller,” Don said. “It’s the same as small dinghies; the least amount of rudder you can use, the better. Remember, every time you put the tiller across, the rudder acts like a brake, slowing us down. Use the minimum amount of rudder deflection possible, several small adjustments to the course are better than one major change.”

The weather perfect for sailing; a steady nor-easter at twelve knots, sunny but not too hot, and despite being the second last boat to start, we passed every other boat in the fleet to get the gun. We may not have been fast enough to win on raw elapsed time, but a handicap win was still pretty good. Once we had pack the boat up, and were back in the clubhouse, Don pulled me to one side.

“Lisa’s turning out to be a damn good sailor,” he said to me. “She’s got a real feeling for handling a boat, she’s smart, and quick to learn. With a bit more practice, she will be as good as Lori was. Lori had the advantage of learning to sail on small dinghies, plus her crewing on ‘Kalori’, the Yachting World Diamond. But Lisa will be just as good, I’m confident of that.”

One the way home, I told her what Don had said to me, and she looked quite pleased.

“But if we get our own boat, wouldn’t you want to steer?” she asked.

“Not if you are the better helmsman, or helms person,” I said. “I mean, look at some of the other couples in the club; Roger and Helen Carlson, Helen steers; same with Dianne and Neil Mattes. You’ve got the skills, I just provide the muscles.”

“Mmmm, and I LOVE you muscles,” she said, reaching across to squeeze my thigh, and then rubbing my prick through my shorts. “Particularly that muscle!”

“That isn’t a muscle!” I said. “But I can flex it.”

“Can we stop where we stopped the other week, and you can flex it inside me, please?”

I smiled, and once we had crossed the Roseville Bridge, I turned down the road into Castlecrag, we found where the bushland overlooking Middle Harbour was, parked, and walked through the trees to a patch of grass. I grabbed the travel rug from the back of the car, and we spread that out on the grass, undressed, and made love with the sun on our naked bodies. When we had finished, we lay there, on our backs, the sun warming us. I could hear the sound of the native birds from the nearby bushland.

“Doing this outside, in nature, is so nice,” she said. “Can you imagine, centuries ago, this is what people did, have sex, make love outdoors like this? Seeing the trees, the grass, and hearing the birds, it makes it such a turn on.”

She rolled onto her side, and started sucking my flaccid cock. My body started to respond, and once she had me hard, she straddled my waist and mounted me, riding me vigorously until we both had come.

“Damn, I needed that,” she said, rolling off me. “Ugh, you’re leaking out of me ... can you pass me my bag?”

I rolled to my side, and passed her sailing bag to her; she opened it and retrieved a small packed of wet wipes, cleaning her rather messy pussy.

“I keep these with me no matter where we go now,” she said. “You never know when I will need them!”

Once we had cleaned ourselves up, we got dressed, and continued back home. After dinner, Lisa told Fiona about our ‘diversion’ on the way home.

“Damn, I think I’m going to have to start sailing with you,” Fiona said. “Or at least go there with you, even if I sit in the clubhouse watching, just so I can share in the outdoor fucking!”

“Are you going to be ready for some of that next Saturday?” I asked her.

“Very much so!” she replied. “You know that we are going to have the house to ourselves, all weekend? Patrick and Wendy are going up to the mountains for some work function, and Chris and Mary Beth will be at the Rail Transport Museum, there’s some working bee that they are on, restoring one of the old railway carriages they have there. So it will be the three of us, and Chrissy.”

“Do we still want to go to the park first thing Saturday morning?” I asked.

“Oh YES,” both Lisa and Fiona were adamant about that.

During the second week of the exam period we started the marking process; all of us who were involved in the Computing I marking met in our conference room, we passed around the papers, each person taking about forty papers, they would mark the question or questions assigned to them, and pass the papers to the next person. It took two days for us to complete the marking; we then collated all the results, and Michelle entered them into the main student records system. I was pleased to see all of the students passed the subject; with all of the students from my tutorial group achieved at least a credit.

The Computing II exam marking went equally as smoothly; again, the students that I had personally tutored did well – of course, there was no way to identify individual students when I was marking each paper; unless I knew what each student’s student id was. But once we collated the marks, and put the result next to each name, I could see who did well, and who did ... not so well. None of my second year students from my tutorial classes failed Computing II; which made me happy. Even the few that I felt really wouldn’t have much of a future in programming, I didn’t want to see anyone fail.

After the marking sessions were over, Doctor Maxwell came to my office to talk with me about my Microprocessor Systems final report; he told me that I was getting a High Distinction in the subject.

“I was very impressed with how you approached that report,” he said. “You were the only person who looked at these desktop computers as more than just a toy, something more than just a platform for playing games, or running simple spreadsheets. That quote from Sun Microsystems, ‘The Network is the Computer’, and how you tied in developments in networking and file sharing, making a desktop computer an integral part of a larger computing environment, that was refreshing.”

“Well, as I see it, the commercial success of these devices is not whether a few thousand hobbyists or computer geeks like you and me buy one, and play with it for a while at home. Once commercial business find a use for them, as replacement devices for their existing VDUs and computer terminals, then millions and millions will be sold world-wide. But that won’t happen until they can integrate into existing computer systems,” I said.

“I was involved in an email exchange with Doctor Hugh Darwen, you remember he was a visiting professor here a few years ago, the guy who developed one of the first relational data base systems,” he said.

“I remember him, nice guy, had some funny stories.”

“Smart guy, brilliant mind,” he said. “Anyway, he’s been looking at ways to split transactional data base applications into two components; a back end data base server, and a front end, user interface component, that provides the user input and output, implements the business logic and data validation, but communicates to the back end data base server for data storage. He has suggested that future desktop computers could form the basis for these ‘front end’ devices. It’s almost as if you’ve been reading his notes, or getting inspired by his ideas.”

“Well, when he was here, we talked a little about those ideas,” I said.

“Anyway, I like the way you presented your argument comparing the two different products; my personal preference is the Apple device, but the aim of the assignment wasn’t to see who happened to agree with me, but who could make the best arguments to justify their decisions, and what the reasons behind the decision making was. As I said, you were the only person to look to a potential future for these devices; and you earned the HD for the subject. Well done, Will.”

He shook my hand, and I thanked him for what was an informative, well presented subject, and that I was looking forward to his Display Systems and Instrumentation subject next year.

That pretty much finished the academic year for me; there wasn’t all that much to do, it wouldn’t be until the next year started we would work on class assignments for the next year. Also, we had to work on details of the syllabus, lecture plans and tutorial assignments for the three new Computing IIx subjects. I would get together with the other lecturers next year, probably in February to plan that out.

Saturday in the Park

Mid November, 1982

On Saturday morning while we were waiting for Chrissy to arrive after breakfast, we started to prepare the backpacks that we would take with us. Several bottle of cold water, two old blankets and some towels, some snacks (biscuits and potato chips), plus a pack of ‘wet wipes’. As we were finishing packing, there was a ring at the front doorbell; Chrissy had arrived. Lisa went to the door to let her in, telling her to leave her bag in the main bedroom.

“We’ve got the house to ourselves all weekend,” Lisa said, as she and Chrissy entered the kitchen. “Everyone else is away.”

“Cool! So we can have lots of fun, without worrying about the others,” she said.

“I was thinking that when we got back from the park, we could spend the whole weekend here naked,” I said. “Now, shall we head off to the park, before the day gets too warm?”

“Ohh, being naked all weekend!” Chrissy said. “Does that mean I will get to see your prick? And play with it? This should be FUN!”

We all piled into my car, and took the short drive up the highway to Chatswood, then down Fullers Road to the national park. We turned off Lady Game Drive into the car park, found a place that would be in the shade of some trees to park the car, and started to walk along one of the nature trails. The day was quite pleasant, it hadn’t got too hot yet, and it was very enjoyable walking along the trail in the shade of the trees. We could hear the sounds of the native birds, and every so often through some gaps in the trees we could see the houses that backed onto the park. But apart from that, we could be miles from civilization.

As we walked, Chrissy took hold of my hand; we were right behind Fiona and Lisa, who were walking arm in arm. Chrissy turned her head towards me and whispered in my ear.

“Those two look so cute, don’t they? I can’t wait to see them both naked, you are one lucky guy, Will Morris.”

“And what if I can’t wait to see YOU naked?” I replied.

“We will get the chance for that all weekend,” she said.

We reach the top of the ridge where one of the park access roads crossed the trail, and we pushed on, now heading downhill towards the river. I tried to recall the place by the river that Jillian, Allison and I went to several years ago, from memory; it was back to the left along the trail that paralleled the river. After a few minutes, I caught a glimpse of a clearing through the trees, close to the river bank, and we pushed through some bushes, down a small rocky slope, and we had reached the area that I had intended. We removed out backpacks and put them against a tree trunk, I pulled out the rugs and we spread them on the grass.

“This place is so cool,” Chrissy said. “I’ve been living in Sydney for quite a few years, and I never knew this area existed. What’s that stretch of water there?”

“That’s the Lane Cove River,” I said. “If you follow it downstream, it goes under Epping Road, then past Hunters Hill at the Fig Tree Bridge, and joins the main part of the harbour between Greenwich and Birchgrove. Well, technically that’s where Sydney Harbour becomes the Parramatta River.”

“You know so much about Sydney,” she said. “I would love to go exploring to all the places you know.”

“So, are we just going to talk about local geography, or... ?” Fiona said, peeling off her tee shirt to show us her pert breasts.

Her shorts were just as quickly removed, and Lisa just as quickly got undressed. The two girls hugged, started kissing, and moved to one of the rugs, their bodies entwined. Chrissy looked at me, and unbuttoned her blouse, exposing her bra.

“I guess that just leaves things to you and me,” she said, as she shrugged off her top. “Let’s get you undressed.”

She pulled my tee shirt over my head, tossing it to the ground, and started to massage my chest.

“Mmm, I like the chest hair, you look so sexy and masculine.”

She leant forward, placed her lips over one of my nipples, and started sucking, nibbling. My God, but this woman was so sexy and sensual. While she was sucking my nipples her hands were at my shorts, undoing them, pushing them down, and pulling my underpants down. When she took my prick in her warm hands, I almost blew my load there and then. I could see that her nipples were hard and erect; they were pushing out big indentations in each bra cup. Her headlights were certainly on ‘high beam’. I reached around behind her and unfastened her bra clasp, she lowered her arms so I could slide the bra off her, revealing her breasts in all their glory.

I took some time to admire them, her breasts were round, full, and larger than Fiona’s, almost as large as Allison’s. What was impressive were the large areolas, they were a dark, dusky pink in colour, with big, hard nipples in the centre. Her nipples were a dark brown, easily a centimetre long. They were almost crying out to be sucked; I leant forward and placed my lips around one succulent nipple. I pressed my lips against the side of it and rubbed the tip of my tongue over the top of her nipple. Chrissy moaned softly.

“Oh, yeah, suck them,” she sighed. “Pretend you are a baby, and about to drink my warm, sweet milk.”

That thought was such a huge turn on, I opened my mouth a little wider and sucked more of her nipple and areola into my mouth. I pressed my lips firmly around the base of her nipple, sucking and massaging it as if I was suckling at her teat. Her lovely warm, soft breast filled my mouth, and I fantasised about her sweet milk flowing as I suckled. Chrissy pressed her hands on the back of my head, forcing me firmly against her breast.

“Oh, fuck, yeah! Damn it, Will, suck my tits like that!” she moaned. “Oh ... keep sucking, I’m going to come ... oh yeah!”

Again, I was amazed at how sensitive her nipples were; she was able to reach a fairly strong orgasm from me just sucking on her breast. I wondered just how she would react if I was licking her pussy. After sucking for a minute or two, I moved my mouth to her other breast. I could feel my erect prick pressing against her stomach, then she reached down, and pushed my prick between her thighs, my knob rubbing along her wet slit.

I kept sucking her breast, listening to her soft moans. She had her hands on my backside; pulling my groin hard against her. She was rocking her hips slightly, causing my prick to move and slide against her pussy. After she came again, she moved back from me, and lay down on the blanket.

“Come on, we need to catch up to the others,” she said.

I looked across at where Lisa and Fiona were lying, locked in a passionate sixty-nine. I looked back down at where Chrissy was lying, she was spread out on the blanket, her legs open and ready for me. Her naked body was stunning; she wasn’t petite, like Lisa or Mary Beth, nor was she chubby; I guess the words that came to my mind was ‘soft’ and ‘full’. Her breasts were bigger than Lisa’s, bigger than Fiona’s, almost as big as Allison’s, not that I was really hung up on breast size. I guess if I had to sum up how she looked, I would say ‘nicely padded’. Not that I intended to just stand there, studying her; I moved down to kneel between her legs, positioning my head between her thighs.

Her pussy was already very wet, her lips plumped and spread open, giving me a lovely view of her vaginal opening and clitoris. Her dark pubic hair had been neatly trimmed; it looked like she had shaved along either side of her labia, and the patch above her pussy had been trimmed short and shaped into a triangular pattern. I inhaled, taking in the musky scent of her arousal, she was certainly ready for me. As I moved my face closer to taste her, she pushed my shoulders up.