Chapter 37

The next morning Kimmie took a shower as I went downstairs to make breakfast. I was eating when she joined me, so I hurried and took my shower. Kimmie had packed up again, and soon we were in the truck and driving to the shop. I purposefully pulled in by the pawnshop, and told Kimmie to wait a minute or two before coming in. She kissed my cheek, and said she would.

I went in, and Julie immediately called me over and handed me a stack of messages. “Oh, and good thing you are here. Last night they delivered three boxes for the other site, so can you take those over please?” I watched Kimmie walk in front of the store, and smiled as she walked in. Eve went over to help her, and Kimmie said she was there to see Julie. Julie looked up at hearing her name, and her jaw dropped to the floor.

“Kim, is that really you?” Kimmie nodded, and Julie squealed and ran over and hugged her right. The two seemed to start talking a mile a minute, and somehow even talking over each other and still answering each other’s questions. I laughed and explained to Eve and Abe that they had been friends since grade school, and this is the first time they had seen each other in years.

About 10 minutes later Julie told Eve to hold down the shop, and they both headed into my old office. I caught up with both of them on everything, then Abe helped me haul the boxes into my truck. I knocked on the door and told the girls I was heading to the other shop. Both of them hugged me tight and kissed me. “Thank you, Peter. You have no idea what this means to me!” Julie said. I told her she was more than welcome and headed back to the data center.

I tasked Sue with pricing out two different systems. One a two computer network, with four nodes in one, and a node and local terminal in the other. I told her to go ahead and use LANTastic, as this was only a two node setup, and only to run the BBS. Then a second one, with 16 node dial-up capabilities with five modems, and a local terminal already configured. And to use DESQView instead of Xenix as once again these would be sold for outsiders to use. I was going to propose each of these to Flying Buffalo and Brad, and let them pick whichever they wanted.

As she did that I started making calls. Two of the requests for quotes were for churches, one of them some kind of religion based out of India. I used for each of them a form letter I had prepared for this instance, and filled it out, requesting more specifics in what they wanted and expected before I could discuss prices.

The third request surprised me. I had glanced at it before but now took a closer look. It was for a video game company down in Irvine, and apparently one of their people had been at my presentation and they wanted to expand their BBS. I of course knew of them, several of their games were among my favorites. For this one, I called up the phone and was soon talking to Chad, their Director of IT Developments. They had been running their own BBS for two years, mostly as a way to allow people to get clues if they were stuck, and to download patches and report bugs.

“Honestly, it’s almost overwhelming. We have a guy that runs it for us now, and he is threatening to quit unless we move him to the development side. There are very few we can actually hire to do something like this, and we are both looking for somebody to hire, as well as somebody to expand our system. We want to go at least ten nodes, but our guy only knows how to run a single node system.”

I was thinking a mile a minute as I fired up the cost estimate spreadsheet, then went through my normal questions. They were indeed considering expanding to more lines at a later date if needed, they wanted 9600 as some of the patches were quite large.

Their current software was RBBS, one of the first BBS programs and good. But it was limited. I asked if he was open to using a new program, and he said that would not be a problem. I got a bunch more information and told him I had an idea and would call him back soon.

I called Rob up, and thankfully he was home. I asked him what software he was using and he said he was using WWIV. I then think I surprised him when I asked what he was doing for a living, and he said he was working at an auto parts chain as a clerk.

“Well, how would you like a job as a paid Sysop at a game company?” Needless to say, he was shocked and said he would love to. I asked if he was willing to learn Remote Access. And he was familiar with it already, even though he was not using it. So I told him to prepare a resume and to upload it to my system, and I would call him back shortly.

I called Chad and told him that not only did I have a preliminary price, but that I had a possible sysop for him. This surprised him, and I said it was the kid that had been on stage with me during the presentation. He called somebody into his office, and Lucy got on the line. She was the one that had been at the convention and remembered Rob. “Well, he is not only the GamerNET hub down there, he is familiar with the software I would propose switching you over to. It will take me about a week to get all the parts in and configured. But if you hire him, I can have him help me configure your new system, and that way it can be all ready to go and he will be fully trained on how it works from day one.”

I told them that as soon as he sent me his resume I could fax it to them. Lucy commented that he was young, and I said he had been doing this for two years already. “This is such a new industry, you are not going to find many that know this kind of stuff as well as he does. I can teach him everything he will need to know, so the day we put everything in he can have it up and running. And one other thing, as Lucy was at my presentation. We can include GamerNET in your setup for no charge, and I will even create a message group just for your company. That way people can also send you messages, and you can do things like announce patches or promote new games on it. I normally only do that for companies I host, but I think this is close enough, as you will be helping Rob also.”

They agreed, and I checked and his resume was already uploaded. I opened it and read through it, then made a few corrections. Including things like he was familiar with Echo Mail operations, and how to configure scripts and install doors and other BBS accessory programs. I then printed it off and faxed it over to Chad along with the preliminary price estimate. I decided to wait about 15 minutes to call him back, but in 10 he was calling me. He told me he liked the resume, and he had already forwarded the resume to the HR department, telling them to contact and hire him immediately.

“Now I see two different prices and configurations. Help explain to me what the differences are.”

I explained how I did not know how much future growth he wanted to do, so I did two different ones. I explained that the most expensive option was for a single computer with a card that would allow him to run 16 nodes, all from the same computer. This was combined with a second computer that would be the data server. That way they can add files to it easily, and have a single point of administration and leave the BBS server to handle its task all by itself. Then the other was for three computers. Each computer was limited to only four nodes each, so that solution would require three of them, with that being able to run from nine to twelve nodes. He asked me how I did it, and I said all of the systems I hosted other than a few I was only hosting as a location used the 16 node configuration.

“OK, I will go ahead and package this up and present it tomorrow, with that configuration as my recommendation. Expect an answer by Wednesday. Now if we hire Rob, how should we handle that?”

“Well, the best would be to hire him right away and send him up here. He can stay with me, and I can involve him in every step of creating and configuring your new BBS. If you can send him here on say next Monday, have him bring tapes or disks of all the files on your BBS. I can teach him how to set that up, and that way we can have it ready to go. All of your files already in it, and he will know it as well as he knows his own BBS. We can deliver it to you the Monday after that, and it should only take a few hours to get it installed and running. After you send us the check, I will send you a sheet with things you should do to prepare for the new system. Mostly, that is ordering the phone lines, how to have them set up near the computer, and how to instruct the phone company to configure the call rolling. That way you only need a single phone number, and it will still go through until all lines are in use. And as you use Novell, it will include the things I will need from your Network Administrator to have done so I can tie it into the rest of your network.”

He thanked me for my time and said I should hear back within two days. I told Sue and Bunny what was expected, and gave her the paperwork so she could have a contract ready to go for them. Sue then walked me through what had happened over the weekend. There were a few lockups she had to come in and take care of that weekend, but nothing major. And Lovely Angels was wanting to expand to twelve lines. We smiled, and I told her to give them a call, and ask if they want to go to 9600 on all lines. “Give them both prices, adding more lines at 2400, and adding and upgrading all lines to 9600. Just charge them the base hardware cost for the modems, I bet they will go for it.” She smiled and went to work that out as I talked to a new tech that Blake was interviewing. The kid seemed sharp, and I had Blake turn him over to the three “broken” machines on the bench. He had all three diagnosed in under ten minutes, and I said that he was hired.

Sue came back and said they approved twelve lines at 9600, so I had her update the configuration on that server as I went and made an announcement to all the users online that it was going down in five minutes, for about fifteen minutes. Adding that when it came back, all lines would be at 9600. Sue came as I was shutting it down, and we quickly swapped over all the modems and changed a few settings in the configuration, and fired it back up. It was barely up when people were calling again. And two of the four that connected signed in at 9600, and it was obviously faster now for them. She then went to call the phone company to add in the other six lines, as I installed the next six modems and started the new nodes in operation. We had this down now with Pac-Bell so that most times new lines could be added in two hours or less.

Sue pointed out the new servers we had installed for Jack’s company, and that she was already seeing people trying to upload the video files onto our BBS. I laughed and told her to disable all uploads with that extension. “Already did that, figured you did not need them cluttering up the drive space.”

We went into her office, and I asked her if she had seen any of them. “Yea, actually I did look through some this weekend. They are, interesting. As they said, just two minutes or so each. Kinda choppy and not real high in resolution, but it’s easy to see what is going on. Here, one second.” She fired one up and turned the monitor so I could see also.

Yeah, it was kind of choppy. And the viewer made things look kind of pixelated, but it was obvious that it was a couple fucking. I laughed and told her to turn it off, and she laughed. “What, not into porn Pete?”

“Oh, I like porn just fine. It’s just that it’s been about five months for me, and I do not want to be distracted for the rest of the day.” She laughed and told me I needed to go out and get laid. “Yeah, tell me about it. I spent all weekend with an amazingly cute Vietnamese girl in my bed, and all we did was cuddle.” Of course, then I had to explain how Kimmie was an old friend I ran into at the convention, and we were only friends. She laughed and said she knew exactly how I felt. “Pete, you are not the only one that needs to get laid. Not insinuating anything at all, just commenting.”

Work continued as usual after that. On Wednesday afternoon Chad called and said the project was a go. “We are sending the check off tonight. We want you to start on the Monday after next, and have Rob there.” I said that was fine, and that I would call him and give him my address. I called Rob, and he said he had been fired when he turned in his two week notice, so I told him if he wanted he was welcome to come on down and start early. I could not pay him for it, but it would give him more time to learn more about the new system. He said he would do that and would call me back in an hour or so. I then told Sue to order everything we needed for the new system and told her that Rob would probably start tomorrow. “Now we only have him for two weeks, so the more we can teach him the better.”

Rob called back and said he could be up that evening. “Oh, and I am going to pick up two tapes of data, it’s a complete dump of their current BBS.” I told him that was great and gave him the address to my house. I went ahead and headed home, and was working on the preface for Brad when there was a knock on the door. I welcomed Rob in, and directed him upstairs to my old room, and said he could stay there until the project was done. He walked into my office, then stopped and stared. “Oh, yeah. This is where I wrote almost all of my adventures, right in this room. And yes, those are the galley prints of each of them hanging on the walls.”

“Wow, this is amazing Pete! And a lot of these I have never even seen before.”

“Well, this is everything. Some are out of print, or limited editions. Those there are all with a company an old girlfriend runs. Essentially we packaged up adventures that did not sell and released them ourselves. She now has made a lot of them for others, like a vanity press. You pay her, she prints them up and sends you the copies.”

“So these are real? Damn, I had a chance to get a set last year, but I thought they were fake!” I laughed and told him I would make sure he had a complete set before he left. We had a roast and I told him what would be expected of him with this new job.

“Remember, you are their Sysop. That means you make no changes without their permission. Now they are also going to expect you to be their main point of contact for users, so you might want to do what I do. Before you send off a response, if it is one you think you will do a lot just save it to a document. Then you can copy and paste it in, it will make answering common questions a lot easier. And there is one more thing you will need to do. Are you familiar with Novell?”

He admitted he was not, and I told him not to worry. “We will teach you how to set up a new shared drive if nobody there knows how. If they do, just hand it off to their network administrator. I am going to create some extra nodes, so that people can connect to the BBS directly, internally through the network. Those will be hosted on the BBS server. It should be able to handle the BBS traffic, and another dozen or so using it locally. That way everybody that works there can also use it, especially the tech support staff. That might really be good for the developers, HR if they want to make hiring announcements, or any other departments that want to talk to the players and users. That might even take some of the work off of you.”

“Yeah, that might help a lot.”

“OK, now on to other things. If you can read through this before I send it off, and let me know what you think of it. Or if I should change anything.” He read through it and said it made perfect sense so I saved it off and called Brad’s BBS and quickly sent it off to him in a message. I disconnected, and told him to write down a user name he would be using, and fired up the terminal program. “Here, the first one is my BBS, and most of the first ones are all ones I run. The ones at the bottom are other local ones, feel free to connect to any of those you want.” He asked where I was going to be, and I said in the computer room. Which of course I then had to show him.

“Wow, this is amazing! This is where you started?”

“Well, the BBS part. It was originally in the back of my store, then I moved it here. Then late last year I decided to get serious and make it a business. I found out I was limited in this neighborhood to only twelve lines, and I had people starting to ask me to make and run systems for them. So I bought the data center and moved it all over there last year. The office is more for D&D and other game related work, most of the time if I am doing computer work it’s in here.”

He then commented on my desk, and I said it was an old military RADAR station. “I found a guy that gets these from time to time. I gut the RADAR stuff, and since they are standard rack mount spaces I just mount a computer into them. They actually work pretty well and they are very comfortable as they are meant to be used for hours at a time.”

He went back and logged into my BBS, and soon I saw his name entered so I went ahead and upgraded him to superuser. Basically full access, but he could not access my private areas and had no admin rights. I called out he was upgraded, and he yelled out his thanks.

I looked through the new messages and saw that there was a live chat going on at Lovely Angels. I then looked at the Lesbian group and saw one from a “SAF” named “BoneGirl”, who was new to the Fresno area and wanting to know more about the life in that area. And there were several responses, all welcoming her to the area, and two suggesting bars and clubs to go to. I smiled, and used my admin rights to change my user name to “ChaosGirl”, and sent her a message welcoming her and hoping she found some amazing people.

I read through a few stories that had been posted, and they all read like they could have been copied from Hustler or Penthouse. And I had a silly impulse and moved to the Lesbian Erotica group. There, as ChaosGirl I wrote a story, saying it was a dream I had once years ago when I was in High School. And in it, I described a girl I had been attracted to but was afraid to ever try to make a move on. And in this dream, she was telling me about how amazing of a lover her boyfriend was.

I claimed I got hot listening to her talk about how wonderfully he would make her feel when they made love, and I could not resist masturbating. So I opened the front of my shorts, and slipped my hand into my panties. And when she discovered what I was doing, I told her to just continue telling me more. And that for the next fifteen minutes we laid next to each other on her bed, each of us masturbating. My friend even whispered my name softly and said ‘Oh, I’m going to cum,’ right before she did. She sounded so sexy how she said that I could not help but to cum myself. But then I woke up and realized it was all just a dream. So I did the obvious thing. I reached my hand into my PJ’s and into my panties. I was so wet already, and I shivered as I felt my fingers gliding over my soft pubic hair. And shivering, I let my fingertips glide over my wet lips, shivering in delight as I started to relive what I had done in my dream.” And I ended it right like that.

I did not know if Kimmie would read that, but I knew if she did she could not help but realize it was written in homage to her. I just hope it would make her smile, I was very careful to not in any way describe her or Linda. No names, no real descriptions, just two anonymous teen girls.

I checked a few other boards, and went and told Rob I was heading up to bed. “Tomorrow we get up at 7, so be ready to leave at 7:30.” He said he would, so I headed up to bed. In the morning after showering, I made us both fried egg sandwiches and we headed to the shop. Rob was amazed at how open and clean it was. Both of the girls were taken by him, and I told Julie I wanted her to call the landlord and to arrange to rent the empty store on the other side of the mall. “Also, start going through any of our regular gamers, then any others who might want a job. I’m going to separate off the game part into its own store. That will give us more room in here, and I figure with two or three others running it that can hopefully take off and support itself.”

She said she would do that. Rob was blown away at everything in the cases, and that everything sold that I had written was autographed. “Well, yeah. As I said, I sign a lot of autographs, and all of mine here I sell that way. Always have. See that vacant store over there? This will be moving there soon, it’s time to break it off into its own game store.”

“Wow, is that an Amanda Carol original?”

I looked at the large poster of “Kaos Ascending”, and nodded. “Yep, that is the first print she made, she had yet to finish it. The first completed print hangs in my old girlfriend’s house. The two of them made a bet, and that was what Becky demanded when she won.”

We soon headed over to the data center, and there I introduced him to everybody else there. I told Sue to grab the parts out of storage that we would be using, and she and Rob could assemble the new servers as I started on some paperwork. She smiled and took him to the back as I went into my office and turned on the radio. This was a local news station, which repeated a 22 minute long news report all day long (“Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world!”). It was almost 10, and I jerked away from the computer as soon as the announcer started speaking.

“And this just in, Kuwait, City, the capital of the Gulf state of Kuwait has fallen. According to reports just in, all resistance has ended, and Iraq now holds complete control over their smaller southern neighbor.” Holy fuck! Just a few years ago Iraq had almost sunk the USS Stark when one of their jets hit it with two anti-ship missiles. And we spent months escorting re-flagged Kuwaiti ships through the region, protecting them from both Iraq and Iran when they had started attacking neutral shipping in the area. Getting a lot of money as during that time they were reflagged legally US vessels, as well as a lot of goodwill from the neighboring Arab states. I remember Qatar and other nations would have their ships join in the escorts, and the US Navy never tried to chase them off or demand they re-flag as Kuwait had.

And after ten years of fighting Iran, Iraq moved south instead of east. I called for Blake to join me, and he listened to the news with me. We both looked at each other, and he sighed. “Pete, this is going to be a mess. I spent some time over there, we have a small contingency in Saudi Arabia. According to the news, the Emir is in Saudi Arabia. And I can guarantee that the Saudis are going to war unless Iraq leaves. The only place for Iraq to go now is to continue into Saudi Arabia.”

“Yeah, that’s how I see it also. Well, I wonder what Bush will do about it. We already took down Panama, but this time nobody can blame him. Iraq has been a mad dog in that area for decades. Let’s hope this is a short war.”

During lunch, I headed out to a local Montgomery-Ward’s and picked up a TV and cart, and set them up in the front. I then directed Bunny to contact whoever the cable provider here was, I wanted a basic package as soon as possible. I had to know what was going on over there.

Sue called me back, and grinned and said that Rob had assembled the computers without issue. I said I had expected he would do fine, and that she should show him how to install the basic BBS software. I left them to that as I was meeting Pavel in 10 minutes. We shook hands when he came in and said when he saw the TV “Bad news, this is.”

“Pavel, do you think the Soviets would join in?”

“In this? No, they not stupid. Crazy stupid yes, but not stupid stupid. And in this, they will not get in the middle. This is not Vietnam or Afghanistan. Then was inside war, they could say they helping good guys. This time, no question Iraq is bad guy. And US help Kuwait against them before, US will help them again. This will be war my friend, unless Iraq get smart and just leave.”

“Leave? Why would they do that?”

Pavel sighed, and we went into my office and took a seat. “OK, first, you know of Chinese invasion of Vietnam?”

I thought and shook my head. “About ten years ago, Vietnam and China fight a lot, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, they have arguments over border, things like that. Finally, China have enough. They storm over the border, take over lots of Vietnam, right outside capital. China destroy any forces sent against them, they make Vietnam look like children. Then after a month, they leave and go home. They only wanted to show Vietnam they not invulnerable after they beat US. They only beat US because US allow themselves to be beaten. They do it to humble Vietnam, and to make point not to pick on bigger neighbors. Pete, you have shortwave radio? You do? Good, turn it on, listen to Radio Moscow.”

“Radio Moscow? I thought that was all propaganda and lies?”

“Oh no my friend. Propaganda, but not lies, truth. Propaganda, it not mean what you think. What is word, spin! Yes, spin. Radio Moscow not tell lies, but does use spin for favor them, just as US news does. Here is thing, US news is garbage. It only covers things they want US people to know. Here I know more, because I listen to Radio Moscow. Here is thing, I know something coming months ago.”

I looked at him, and he nodded. “Iraq borrow a lot of money when they fight Iran, they owe $14 billion to Kuwait. Iraq in trouble, lots damaged in fighting Iran, say they can not repay money owed. They ask Kuwait to forgive debt as friends. Kuwait tell them to pound sand up ass. Now if this like China, Iraq may just say they proving point, take some things, destroy some things, then go home and ask again to forgive debt. They prove point, no need to stay.”

I nodded, that did make sense. “But if this for conquer and not pressure, next step will be diplomats unless they turn and go home. Now, we all wait, but if Iraq annexes Kuwait, it will be war. But this time, this not Vietnam, Korea, or Afghanistan. Soviets not want fight like this any more than US does, they will help.”

“But I thought Iraq was their ally. They sell them a lot of tanks and jets.”

“No, not ally, customer. Soviets also sell to Iran, to everybody. Like US, you sell to Iraq in that war, you also sell to Iran and President and Oliver North get in trouble over it. In that I think US and Soviets work together, to tell truth. Not like either, not want Iran or Iraq to win. In best interest to see them fight each other, so as not fight other countries we are friends with. So long as Iran fighting, they not sending crazies to other countries to start revolution. So long as Iraq fighting religious crazies, they not fighting other countries.”

I nodded, that did make a lot of sense. “Radio Moscow, you learn to listen you hear things like this. Many time, they yell at President Reagan. Said he crazy and want to start war. But other times, they praise him, say he smart and good man and all should listen. When War of Tankers was happening, Radio Moscow praise US. Say very good thing to protect other nations, and we both worked together. Say crime that Iraq attack your ship, and say shame but accident when you shoot down Iranian passenger jet. Not condemn US, say passenger jet was stupid to fly over war area, fault of Iran.”

“I had no idea, and I remember most of those.”

“Well, US big boy, not care much about opinion of other nations. Remember, Radio Moscow is not news for Soviets, it news for other countries. Propaganda, yes. But also truth, because lies get found out, but truth in right way influences people. Hook up radio, listen to it. And in Ukraine before leaving we listen to Voice of America. It same thing, no lies, but said in way to favor the US.”

We then went over some more details of his business, and he wanted his BBS expanded to five nodes. “I hear some tell me they want to write me or secretary message from home, but hard time getting in. More numbers I want, so they can all get in. I told him a price and he smiled and nodded. “Yes, this why I work with you. You no bullshit Pete, you not cocksucker like Boborovs. Your work better than theirs, and also less. Also watch out, I hear they mad at you for something.”

I thanked him for that and chuckled. “Yes, I formed what I call the ‘Association of Computer Excellence’. In short, it is other computer people like me that promise to operate and behave ethically. No selling old junk as new, no selling stolen copies of software. No doing half-assed work and charging as if it was premium work. A code of conduct and ethics.”

“So no more used computers?” He looked a bit apprehensive about that.

“Oh no, we can sell used stuff. But we tell the customer it is used, not sell like they did to you. A ten year old computer and charge as if it is a new one. I showed pictures of the first of your clusters I worked at, that is what got me started. And Kelly showed me the receipt, it was almost criminal what they did to you. They charged you $1000, for a program I sell for $250. That was the price new, five years ago. The wires out of the walls, the cheap home hubs and not professional-grade equipment, it was like it was put in by clowns. It is fine to do a job cheap even, if that is what the customer wants. But not charge premium for junk work.”

He nodded, and again called them “cocksuckers”. I nodded. “That is why I formed the association. I had a meeting, and as part of it, I showed pictures from there. And the moment they saw them, a bunch screamed out their names. And I learned more. I told you one of them came to me looking for a job. Well, they do that to other stores. Get a job, steal what they can including customers, then move on. One couple lost over $3,000 in computer parts and two contracts because one of them worked for him, and he told his brother about the proposals and he sent in a lower bid. But now they all know to not hire them if they come in looking for work. They are snakes.” Pavel nodded and said that is good.