The Cybergypsies

by Indra Sinha

  The internet became accessible in Britain, via the university net JANET, in 1984 (the year of Neuromancer, the Apple Mac and my visit to the Rollright Stones). I came to it three years later through Greennet, a network for bringing together activists and progressive organisations. Through Greennet I discovered internet newsgroups and the exhileration of telnetting. Riding the telnet is like piloting a beam of light. Think of where you want to be, and in a flash you’re there. Hackers liked it because it helped them cover their tracks. I used it to visit fun systems like the WELL in San Francisco. Demon, started by friends of Lilith’s, was first to offer fellow cybergypsies full internet access at £10 a month, but for a long time there were only a couple of thousand of us. The software was hard to use and if you were outside London it was a long-distance call. Even Demon did not start until June 1992.

  Surfing the Internet was an article, written by Jean Polly of the WELL, that began circulating on cybergypsy bulletin boards later that year. Polly raved excitedly about MUDs, internet newsgroups, telnetting and exchanging email across continents. He enthused about having during a single day visited Minnesota, Texas, California, Cleveland, New Zealand, Sweden, and England. His article barely mentioned the world wide web – which was then still a twinkle in the eye of its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee – but gave Tim’s phone and fax numbers for anyone interested in finding out more about his crazy vision. A year after Polly’s article appeared, roughly the time I was getting to know Geno, there were fewer than two hundred websites (at the instant of writing there are more than two and a half million). By 1994, hundreds of internet service providers had appeared, about sixty percent of them started by cybergypsies who were ex-Fidonet bulletin board sysops.

  Fidonet had begun in 1984 when a San Franciscan netgypsy called Tom Jennings wrote a bulletin board program and called it ‘Fido’ in honour of the ‘mongrel’ computer he had built from odd scraps and other people’s cast-off bits. Jennings had realised that, since local phone calls in the US are free, a network of faithful Fidos spanning the country could pass mail and files along from one to another without ever incurring a cent in phone charges. The idea soon spread beyond the US and by the early nineties Fidonet was a worldwide network with its own netmail delivery system and thousands of themed ‘echoes’. Because Fido sysops were spending their own money, they evolved super-efficient ways to speed mail and echoes around the world. Fast, accurate file transfer protocols like Z-modem, ‘mailers’ like FrontDoor which automatically sent and received ‘packets’ of netmail and echomail in a few seconds: these cybergypsy-authored programs were superior to anything the major software houses possessed. What Fidonet could not do was deliver live chat at local call rates. In those days, when hardly any of us had internet accounts, if we wanted to chat to the sysop of a bulletin board across the world, it was an international phone call. For this reason, most people used to content themselves with posting to Fidonet echoes, which are strings of messages and replies on particular subjects.

  Fidonet’s Virus echo was particularly active, with dozens of new messages every day. There was war in cyberspace between the ‘elite’ and the ‘lamers’, a kind of Star Wars fought with viruses, ANSI bombs and trojan horses. Many of the messages on Virus were from ‘lamers’ terrified of the digital evil that would one day erupt on their screens, laugh in their faces and fuck up their hard disks. Advising these folk were a hard core of anti-virus software salesmen who, like quack psychiatrists, were able to make a living by simultaneously fuelling anxiety and offering a cure for it. They portrayed virus writers on the one hand as attention-seeking brats who could not program to save their lives, and on the other as desperate and dangerous experts, threatening the very security of the nation. (After Satanbug took down a US Secret Service computer for three days, men in dark suits knocked on hackers’ doors up and down the country looking for traitors.) The hackers retaliated with ever more devious viruses and mockery. Some of the viruses rampaging around in the wild were ‘goat files’, created by the anti-virus folk to attract and catch passing viruses as a tethered kid attracts tigers. Others were harmless lab experiments which had somehow got loose, but the hackers never missed a chance to allege that the antivirus people were deliberately releasing them to create hysteria. The following satirical message was posted to Virus to needle the anti-virus organisations whose members were making a fortune out of the constant virus scares.

  Message #2832 – Virus discussion

  Date: 09–07–93 12:41

  From: CARO Central

  To: All

  Subject:: Viruses for profit

  @MSGID: 1:13/13.0 2c8cb9ca

  NuKE INTERNaTiONaL! FOR VIRUS RESEARCHERS ONLY! not to be used for illegal purposes

  AS aDVERTISED IN pC MaGAZiNE, NuKe INTERNaTiONAL @TM SELLS VIRII. fROM oKC THE VIRUS CAPATIAL OF THE WORLD (SeE LATEST VERSION OF hACK REPORT)

  FOR A LIMITED TiME oNLY: For only $50.oo NuKE will sell you:

  -oVEr 2,000 cataloged viRiI

  -iNSTRucTIOnAL ELECTRONIC MAGAZINES AND JOURNALS HOW TO WRITE VIRII -hACK REPoRTS 40HEX AND OTHERS

  -iCED vIRII WILL NOT BE PICKED UP BY ANY SCANNER

  -***tROJANS***tROJANS*TROJANS***

  -aLL THE LATEST GREATEST vIRRI WRITTING PROGRAMS

  -aLL THE gREATEST tROJAN WRITTING PROGRAMS

  -vIRUS UTILITES SUCH AS NOWHERE MAN’S FAMOUS uTLITIES

  -tWICE THE VALUE OF aristotle’s COLLECTION, MORE VIRII LESS COST

  -Send Check Money Order OR CASH to (specify if you want 1.4 or 1.2 disks) Please add $2.50 postage and handling:

  NuKE iNterNational, P.O.BOX 19196,

  OKLAHOMA CITY, OK. 73144

  ALL ORDERS WITH MONEY ORDER OR CASH ARE MAILED THE DAY RECIEVED PERSONAL CHECK ORDERS ARE NOT MAILed UNTIL THE CHECK CLEARS THE NuKE BANK

  — Vx Toss Version 666

  * Origin: Still selling Viruses after all these years!

  (1:209/209)@PATH: 147/34 7 18 666 7 209/209 170/400 253/165 257/100 441/80 86

  (Note the dig at ARiSToTLE, who had recently offered for sale his entire virus collection, complete with instant virus creator kit.)

  I’d always thought viruses were written by bored students. The first one had been a programming exercise by a university lecturer called Fred Cohen. But four thousand viruses later, the virus authors were organised into networks which, like those of hackers, software pirates and other misunderstood minorities, operated from private bulletin boards whose numbers were not always easy to find. If you did get hold of one, and logged on, you were given a thorough grilling before they let you see anything interesting. There were lots of virus groups, Phalcon/Skism, Youth Against McAfee, in England the Association for Really Cruel Viruses (stupid name, it got their leader, Apache Warrior, busted), Trident in Holland, Immortal Riot in Scandinavia and, straddling the planet, with nodes as far apart as Argentina and Australia, there was NuKE which numbered among its members the famous Nowhere Man and talented TäLoN. Who were these guys? For months I had been trying to penetrate into the heart of NuKE and Geno, aka Jesus Slutfucker, was the closest I’d come.

  Gypsy Caravanserai (Cabbalist’s story)

  Calypso’s taciturnity on Shades was doubly puzzling to Steve because, as Clare, she readily agreed to meet him in ‘real’ life. He took her to lunch at a restaurant which he could not really afford, but it was worth it to see her eyes, over the rim of her wine glass. In the taxi on the way back to her office, his arm slid round her and then they were kissing, oblivious to the sniggering cabby. (‘There is a magic in the kisses of an inexperienced youth,’ said Lilith, ‘he’s full of eager goatlust, yet you can still sense his shyness.’) They met several more times, each encounter culminating in furtive subvest-mental fumblings, before Steve felt confident enough to propose to Clare that they go to a hotel. She smiled but did not refuse. One of the lads at the bank had told him about a place in King’s Cross where rooms could be hired by the hour. One lunchtime, instead of taking her to a restaurant (they were by now sl
umming it in tavernas and pizzerias), he plucked up courage and led her over the dingy threshold and up the threadbare stair-carpets of the Imperial Lake Hotel. Clare raised no objection and, when it came to the point, was curiously submissive to his wishes.

  She said, ‘If it’s important to you it makes me happy too.’

  She smiled and held his eyes with her green gaze as he climbed on top of her. It was his first time. He hadn’t told her, but it didn’t take her long to guess. She found it funny, which wounded Steve. (‘Oh you should have seen his face when he told me this. Na yevô lítso stoílo posmotryet.’)

  ‘Of course she was more experienced than me . . . then’, Steve had said resentfully to Lilith. ‘Well, she is married isn’t she?’

  The holiday grew out of an idea Chorley the Caveman Necromancer had for an expedition to some grottoes in the north Yorkshire dales, to see if they could get a game going in real caves and tunnels. But potholing holds little appeal for people whose spelunking is done by the tap of keys in crisp-packet and coke-can littered bedrooms. Somehow the idea turned into a caravan holiday – real wooden gypsy caravans pulled by real horses rented from real Romanies – what could be more appropriate for a bunch of cybergypsies? Clare wanted to go. Unfortunately the husband had to come too, but she pestered Steve to join Chorley and promised him that they would find chances to be together. Steve was not keen on Chorley, but Clare said that he would be a useful smokescreen. The rendezvous was in Appleby-in-Westmorland near the Yorkshire border. At the last minute, Morgan turned up uninvited and a third caravan had to be found for him.

  They set out on a typical summer day of rain showers, draughts of warm sunshine and wild churnings of light over the distant Lake District fells to the west. The flaw in their plan immediately became obvious. There were three caravans: in the first Calypso and her husband, Alain. Bringing up the rear was Morgan. In the middle caravan were Steve and Chorley. Steve, yearning for Calypso, found Chorley’s inscrutably cheerful manner irritating. Chorley was some years older than Steve, nearer to the age of Calypso and her hubby. In ‘real’ life, he was a wine broker who, unlike Steve, was not short of money. The problem was Chorley’s car.

  Chorley’s car was an old Riley that rattled and smelt of leather and oil. It had brought Chorley, scarfed and goggled, up the motorway from London and was now accompanying the caravans because Calypso had insisted they must keep a car with them for emergencies. What Calypso, indeed all of them, had overlooked was the fact that whether it was crawling along near the caravans, or driving ahead to scout a place to stop for the night, the car needed a driver. As Calypso, full of apologies, explained that she could not drive, the car always claimed one of the men. This left three men to manage three caravans; ergo each must inevitably spend most of the day on his own.

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ Clare said. ‘We can’t have everyone lonely and bored.’ She proposed that she should ride with each of the drivers in turn and if she hadn’t spent her time flitting between the wagons with sandwiches and thermoses of soup, it would have been a dismal business for all of them.

  On the second afternoon Clare sent Alain off in the car on a fish and chip hunt. What could be more natural than that Steve should step up to sit beside her and take the reins of her wagon? The creaky wooden structure behind them blotted out Chorley on the second van and Morgan bringing up the rear. Alain was gone a couple of hours. By judicious use of a blanket, they were able to accomplish most of the things they were used to doing together in the clammy beds of the Imperial Lake Hotel.

  That night, with the vans drawn up in a farmer’s field and horses turned out to graze, they ate fish suppers round a small fire that Chorley and Alain built. Clare kept their glasses filled with a wine from Chorley’s cellar and then sat staring into the fascinating flames as though they were a gypsy enchantment. Alain and Chorley talked about investments. Steve, cocooned in afterglow, was content to remember Clare’s body under the blanket. Morgan said hardly a word, but sat on the edge of the firelight casting, as he so often did on Shades, a huge and brooding shadow.

  Later in their caravan, Steve was horrified to hear Chorley out of the darkness begin singing loudly:

  ’In Scarlet Town where I was born

  A girl with red red lips-o

  Made many a youth cry well a day

  Her name was fair Calypso

  ’Twas in the merry month of June

  Love’s fever did him grip so

  Sweet Steven came from the south countree

  And courted sweet Calypso’

  They managed just one long afternoon together. It was Morgan’s turn in the car and Steve was driving the hindmost van. Clare was with him as he lagged further and further behind the others and then took a wrong turn. They parked out of sight in a convenient copse and tethered the horse where she could graze. Lying in the narrow wooden bunk, after he had convulsed her slender body with orgasm after orgasm (‘His technique was improving’ I said. ‘Or her acting’, said Lilith), Clare told him of the tragic death of her mother in a car crash when she was eight years old and how she had been brought up by an unloving stepmother. They were lucky not to be caught. Scarcely had the nag been harnessed and persuaded to get underway again than the Riley appeared, piloted by an over-solicitous Morgan who insisted that Clare drive back with him because ‘We have all been worrying, Cally, but especially your old man.’

  On the Ripper trail

  In Whitechapel with Don McCullin, the photographer. It is hard to believe that the original White Chapel once stood here among the pleasant fields and orchards. By the early 1600s, slaughter houses, fish farms and factories of various trades were being built to the east of the City, so that the prevailing west winds blew the smells away from the prosperous ‘west end’. Two more centuries and Whitechapel had grown to a grim slumscape, a vast and squalid stew housing the latest waves of immigrants, among whom were landless Irish fleeing the potato famine, and Russian and Polish Jews fleeing nights of long knives. Today’s Whitechapel, its houses still black with the soots of a century ago, is a quarter Bengali. The working men’s cafés have been replaced by restaurants that look all alike, with mirrors, plastic flowers and oriental arches made of plywood, studded with coloured lightbulbs. Where Jewish ritual slaughtermen once plied their kosher trade, Muslim halal butchers now prepare their meat. In both kosher and halal slaughter, the animal’s throat is slit and the blood drained while the victim is still conscious. But Whitechapel’s most famous butcher is thought to have strangled his victims before he cut their throats. Of all the walking stories that have inhabited this charnel house over the centuries, only five are regularly remembered and retold, one for each of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

  Don and I are looking for vagrants who will not mind having their photograph taken. We’re doing an ad about homeless people for the Metropolitan Police. The idea came from a famous picture of Don’s, which he calls his ‘Neptune man’. It is of an old tramp with a strong handsome face, cracked open and blackened, not by the sun but by sleeping too close to open fires. Don won’t let us use this picture, so we decide to shoot a new one. It won’t be very hard. Mrs Thatcher’s government has closed dozens of mental hospitals and the patients have ended up on the streets. Everyone comments on how many beggars there are in London these days. Underneath Waterloo Bridge, the homeless have built themselves dwellings of cardboard and sacks, packing cases and sheets of corrugated iron. The place is known as ‘Cardboard City’. This is where I assume we’ll be going, but Don, who has recently done a picture essay on London’s homeless for one of the Sunday magazines, thinks we should go to Whitechapel.

  ‘The Waterloo people have got used to photographers,’ he says.

  We are walking through a little maze of alleys near what was once Flowery Dean (Flower & Dean Street) when we are accosted by a man pushing a dustcart. He says that if we are on the Ripper trail, he knows of a derelict house nearby where men living rough have discovered a diary written by Jack the Ripper
crammed into a gap in the lath-and-plaster wall. (Soon after this a Ripper ‘diary’ was purported to have been found by workmen in Liverpool and proved a short-lived publishing sensation.) The dust-wallah offers to show us the place in return for a fee. We decline and he goes off in search of Americans.

  ‘Did you see he had a USAF pilot’s badge in his cap?’ Don says. His photographer’s eyes notice everything.