SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS !!!???!!! / Prologue 2/0 If This Is Sunday, I must be Toto: [Was: Oh, what a Lucky man he Was:] It was only the third CypherPunks physical meeting I had attended and, as usual I spent the whole time watching from a distance, this time with Bianca watching me from a distance, to see who was watching me from a distance. The cellular rang. "Toto?" "Yes..." "You must be TruthMonger, today, because CJ just told Lucky Green that *he* is Toto." "OK. I guess it must be because he's so used to being Toto on the weekends, when he has to be back in the Home on Monday morning." "Bye." "Bye, dear." I hung up the phone. CJ doesn't get out a lot (pun intended). Normally, Bianca and I would have objected to him attending a CypherPunks physical meeting, but, since most of us have gone to ground recently, we thought there would be little danger in finding out what reaction his presence would elicit in certain individuals known to have so little sense as to be willing to be publically associated with Radical Anarchists who are too old and wise to merely be pretentious poseurs, and who actually have the knowledge, skills and experience to pose a serious threat to NWO plans to bring the Brave New Digital World into a state of CyberStatism. Thus, after clothing him in a manner that would make it obvious to anyone nervous about his appearance and demeanor that he was not likely to be carrying any concealed weapons of mass destruction, we ascertained that he had already 'gone potty' and sent him off to the C2Net offices in Oakland to act as our WeatherMan and ascertain which direction John Gilmore, et al, were blowing. Those who know CJ Parker only as a person who, after years of working in some of the most technologically advanced areas of the computer industry, still refers to a hard drive as "...the whatchamacallit...you know, the thing that spins around inside and you keep all of your information on it..." often fail to understand his usefulness to us a fount of information in regard to the subtle nuances that most people fail to pick up on in the busy madness of daily activity and social interaction. Although superficially inept and ill-equipped for life as we know it, those capable of seeing beyond the Veil of Maya recognize that, although he may be incapable of brain-registering whether or not the woman he has loved and lived with for a quarter of a century wears glasses, he has the ability to read the soul and psyche of those whom he only meets in passing, on the highways, byways, sidestreets and alleys of life. I originally thought that he was a totally useless conduit for information which needed to be gleaned in a reconnaisance mission type of manner. It was one of Bianca's pre-teen computer neophytes who explained to me, "It's no use asking him any questions. If you ask him to estimate the numbers of at a meeting that thirty people attended, you will get an answer ranging between five and a hundred. If you want to find out things that even God doesn't know, you just have to make a statement that points to something which is likely to be totally untrue. He's the TruthMonger, you know." For some strange reason, children seem to have little trouble instinctively understanding the things that CJ discusses, even if they seem to be random, insane blatherings dealing with things far beyond the knowledge and experience one would expect a child to have had contact with thus far in life. "I bet everyone at the CypherPunks meeting was wearing blue socks." I told CJ after we met back in Berkeley at his sister's house. "No," he replied, "there was a lady wearing interesting jeans, who used to be the lover, or something, of one of the men there, and seemed to be temporarily in need of a lot of intellectual/emotional reassurance about her value and competency because of spending so many years of being a female with a brain in a penis-dominated industry." I now know CJ well enough that I realized that I had only to make one more false assumption, even though it was perfectly logical, in order to elicit a mountain of information about what took place, even though it was unlikely that he remembered, even vaguely, what the meeting had been about, from a normal point of view. "She spent a lot of time discussing various things with him?" I asked. "No." CJ replied, looking at me like I had just fallen off the turnip truck and had no idea how life really worked. "She barely paid any attention to him, and only spoke a few words to him at the end of the meeting." Moving right along, as if this statement clarified the foundation upon which he was basing this information, he proceeded to give us a full account of the meeting. An account which we knew would be totally accurate, once we had sifted out the parts which existed only in his own mind, since they would have made the experience so much more interesting and full of 'joi de vivre' if they *had* actually happened. (e.g. "...and every time Greg Broiles left the room, they would stop whatever they were discussing, and tell lawyer jokes until he got back. They've obviously been doing that for years, and he's never suspected.") Random Excerpts From the ClueServer With One 512K Memory Bank: "I got to tell Peter Trei that his stuff kicks butt!" "Lucky Green and Bill Stewart are wearing the opposite bodies in real life that they have in my mind from knowing them on the CypherPunks mailing list." "The broads were phenomenal. I always figured that it would not be a mistake to marry any of the women on the CypherPunks list, sight unseen, and I knew I was right just by looking at them. "Oh...and when they talked, it wasn't like it burst the bubble of some sort of fantasy, or something...they were still like that." {This is the statement that had Bianca snortling and giggling so hard that she was drooling on herself and blowing foam out of her nostrils. Later, she commented, "That was an example of the types of things he would say when I first met him that convinced me what a boorish, chauvanistic asshole he was, until I would think about them later and realize how sensitive and romantic they were if you really thought about what he was saying.") "Sameer sure looked at me funny. I guess he might have thought I'd just knocked off Billy Gates, and that he was next on the list. "I kind of wondered why, until I realized that we never really say anything nice about him to balance out all the bad shit we lay on him in our Dark Forces conspiracy theories, so that the people who fuck with us are less likely to fuck with him. "Shit, he's the guy who is taking all of the stuff that the idealists and theorists in cryptoanarchy are talking about and spreading it out in the real world where money and product rule the roost of results. "Oh, Yeah! That reminds me... "The only time I talked was when Eric Hughes was talking about Linux and saying the same bullshit that we all listened to--and said ourselves--decades ago, about UNIX. You know, about how UNIX should be ruling the world, instead of DOS, only now it's Linux, instead of Windows. Except it wasn't bullshit, then or now, except that what Hughes was saying was as true as what we used to say, and there isn't time anymore to go through this shit more times until we get it right, so I knew I had to ask what would make it turn out different this time. "I couldn't resist stepping on a few corns to see who was cool and who wasn't so I phrased my question to throw a little praise in Micro$not's direction. I mentioned that UNIX failed to take the hill even back when DOS sucked, big-time, and asked how it would be possible to do so with Linux, now that BadBillyG had a product that was actually functional, and worked, for the most part. "I was kind of disappointed in the answers, although I realized later that the only comments that came out were the knee-jerk reactions of those who had spent years in the industry being tortured by having to work with, or live in the shadow of, a primitive M$ operating system designed to torture people who actually wanted to make computers do something useful. "Some of them were very quiet and went inside their heads when I asked my question. Probably because its the kind of question you have to ask and answer for yourself, usually when you're laying awake in bed at four in the morning. "Actually, though, Eric Hughes, before I asked it, or afterwards, I don't really know, gave what is probably the only real answer, although some of us said it way back when, probably even him, but maybe we all just need to understand why it is the real answer. He said that it was up to people such as those gathered in that room, that day, to write the programs and make the links to existing software, systems and protocols that would provide end-users with the tools that they needed for Linux to legitimately serve their needs. "He might have also said that we/they would need to be prepared to do it regardless of whether or not it had any immediate or long-term financial payoff/incentive for us/them, but even if he didn't, I heard that in what he said, and I'm sure most of the others did, too." "Anyway, saying something nice about Micro$not in that room was as much fun as seeing the reaction at a wedding when you crap on the wedding cake." "I think I comported myself very well, even though it meant breaking my promise to my nephew to ask all of the CypherChicks whether or not they were wearing panties." And In Case You Were Thinking About Filing the Preceding In The 'Humor' Directory: Anyone at that CypherPunks physical meeting who failed to think seriously about the question CJ posed, either at the time, or later, upon reflection, is either an idiot, or quite possibly just too young to have been through more than a single "War to end all wars." Bianca told me that Lucky Green had mentioned to CJ that he had read "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" and had made a comment to the effect that he didn't really understand what it was, or was supposed to be, about. She said that she suspected that the reason for this was along the lines of the current status of such works as "1984," "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World." "1984," for example, is no longer some futuristic tale of a dark and menacing fate which may someday befall all of society and mankind. Rather, it contains a plethora of evil scenarios which have not only come to pass, but which have been realized more completely and in a more technologically effecient manner that the author could possibly have conceived of. Having grown up in an era when many of these futuristic projections were already a fait accompli, or in the beginning stages of becoming so, I sometime would reflect on how the work would have affected those who had read it decades before, when it was originally written. What parts seemed as if they might be whisperingly prophetic? What parts seemed to be semi-real fantasies about what might occur if the whole world went to hell in a handbasket? What parts seemed to be totally ludicrous scenarios which were the product of an author with too much time on his hands, and an overactive imagination? Now I wonder how the Chainsaw Massacre is perceived by those whose experience of 'the way things are, and always have been' encompasses many of the things which TXCSM had portrayed as dark undercurrents swirling about in the vortex of a rapidly spinning new technology. Undoubtedly the answer to that question is as multi-faceted and as context-dependent as a question asking "Who are you?" When the son of gomez describes computers that know all, see all, and can spit out the names of the miscreants at the speed of light, in order to dispose of them before the battle for the souls of all mankind begins, it must assuredly be read and understood differently by one whose elders told them tales about the great battles they fought to win the 'equal rights' and 'anti-discrimination' battles of recent eras, than by one whose elders described to them the dark terror of living in fear of being discovered for not wearing the yellow star which signified that the identification papers they were required to present to those in authority should be checked against the list of those to be bundled in cattle-cars which reeked of oppression and death, separated from their loved ones and sent to far-away labor camps. The morning after CJ had spoken to Lucky, Bianca woke in the wee hours to find him lying in bed and thinking, not having slept all night. She quiety asked him what it was he was thinking about. I heard his reply from the next room. The words he spoke, in a soft and quietly accepting tone, sent shivers down my spine, and left me with much to contemplate as I lay awake for some time before drifting off back to sleep. "Lucky is a nice kid. He's got bounce in his step and a gleam in his eye. He's got the world by the tail and every reason to believe that doing what he loves and living life with high standards and moral certitude will lead to a future where light will rule over darkness, and children will have a reason to smile. "I hope he's right. I desperately hope that he's right." "I want him to live in a world where "WebWorld & The Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" isn't prophetic. Where it is just an interesting story about how life could have been if the whole world turned to shit. "I don't want him to live in a world where, in the end, he ends up saying, as in the Prologue to 'WebWorld'--'If only we had known...'" "What Eric Hughes said at the CypherPunks meeting made me feel like it was 'Deja vu, all over again.' as Yogi Berra used to say. "He could well have been Bubba Rom Dos, speaking at the original meeting of the Circle of Eunuchs, telling those gathered, 'It's up to you. *You* need to pick up the torch. *You* need to write the code--to do the groundwork and light the way for those who will come after you. *You* need to do it, not for fame, fortune, or profit, but simply because it is right, and because it needs doing.'" "Linux isn't going to win out because it's the best. And it's not even going to be the best unless those who know its value and its capabilities *make* it the best for those who will never know or understand it, but will only know whether or not it serves them and suits their needs. "And it's not just Linux. The same goes for all of the other tools and trappings of future technolgy--censorware, encryption, monitoring tools, anonymity, identity based data-gathering." "The masses will use what they are given, what works best for them. They will take the easiest road, for the most part, as we all do in matters which we cannot control for ourselves. The masses aren't crying out for filtering software which will allow their children only to access a limited and prejudicial view of the world they live in--they are using it because that is what is being made available." "The same idealistic computer cowboys and self-proclaimed elitest programming gurus who decry the fact that the 'sheeple' are not willing to become computer experts in order to make use of what is 'freely available' would be outraged if an airline company denied them a ticket because they didn't have a pilot's license, or didn't know from memory where all of the emergency exit doors are on a DC-7." "I shouldn't have been nice to Lucky. When he told me that he didn't understand 'The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre,' I should have grabbed him by the throat, thrown him against the wall, slapped him silly, and said, 'Read it again, you dumb bastard! It's about you. It's about John Gilmore, Tim May, Sandy Sandfort, Lynne Harrison, Hallam-Baker, and everyone else who is still wondering why the fuck we're spamming their mailing list with all of this semi-literate, mystical garbage about a mythical rag-tag band of lunatics striving to fight some nebulous battle between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness.' "I should have told him, 'It's about the CypherPunks, you lame-witted dip-shit! "The True Story of the InterNet" was begun long before the CypherPunks even existed, because in order for the future of mankind to have any hope of all of surviving the next wave of technology with any of true life, liberty and freedom intact, individuals and groups like the CypherPunks *had* to come into existence.' "TXCSM was an allegory for the hackers, crackers, phreaks and punks who would have to serve as the soldiers, troops and armies that would be willing to leave behind the comfort and security of their home and hearth, if need be, to defend CyberSpace from those who would use it to rule and conquer all of MeatSpace. It's about the lawyers and programmers and middle-managers who abhor the hackers, crackers, phreaks and punks, but who are working within the system to defend the same ideals and concepts, in their own way. "The heros from the beginning of time, to the dark days of the Third Reich, were'nt soldiers. They were men, women, and sometimes even children, who *became* soldiers of one ilk or another, in order to defend themselves, their families and neighbors, their fellow humans, from rulers and forces which were striving to bring all of humanity under their thumb. "The Nazi death camps weren't liberated by soldiers. They were liberated by the same kind of people who were imprisoned in them. Farmers from Moscow, carpenters from Omaha, accountants from France, or Sweden, or Austrailia. People with dark skin or light skin, people speaking a multitude of different languages, people who had been preparing for war from the moment the dark clouds began forming over Europe and people who thrust themselves forward into battles they were ill-prepared for, when they realized the terror that lay ahead if they failed to resist the dark forces which were prepared to do them great harm." "The war in CyberSpace may lie in the future, when the majority of the masses realize that CyberHitler wants *more* than just CyberPoland. When the masses realize that the CyberGestapo aren't coming only for the CyberJews. "...but the revolution is *now*." "God help us all if those present at the CypherPunks meeting don't understand the true importance of Eric Hughes, a decade after 'The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre' was written, echoing the words of Bubba Rom Dos when he said, 'It's up to *you* and *I*.'" "God help us all if those involved with Alt2600 believe that they are just playing an interesting game of 'good guys versus bad guys,' and fail to see that the importance of the guerilla manuals they make available on this or that system is not in the affrontery it provides to the self-proclaimed, righteous, namby-pamby do-gooders, but to make it possible for some child of the future to know how to make a molotov cocktail when the Sedona, Arizona, SWAT-Team is preparing to assault their home with the heavy artillery proved for them by the federal government. "God help us all if normal, average, boring mathematicians like Peter Trei fail to realize that every line of code they write may someday become a chambered round of ammunition that provides the final blow which brings down the Great Digital Beast that is destined to rule us all if it is able to grow and prosper without resistance." "I hope and pray that Lucky Green, and others like him, begin to realize that the future is now, and that they *are* the future...that we *all* are the future. "The revolution is *now*, and *we* are the revolution. "If enough people realize that, and write the single lines of code with their attitudes, their beliefs, their votes and their actions, then maybe 'The True Story of the InterNet' will become just an interesting story--a cute fantasy instead of a dark harbinger of the future. "Maybe the dark clouds gathering over Digital Europe will dissipate and the sun will shine through, to make us all laugh at our silly fears about bad men and beasts who have dark designs to imprison our bodies and minds in physical and digital prisons, and who will require us to place a yellow star at the beginning of our email address." "Am I being silly, again? God, I hope so. Goodnight, dear..." [TBC]