The Cybergypsies

by Indra Sinha

  Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

  Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

  Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

  ‘I was learning Hindustani too, Bear, when we were in India. We used to play nicely together, you and me. But then you took your toys and went off with your new friends.’

  But by the time Eve says this Donne’s lines have faded to mere poetry and cyber games no longer seem such fun.

  Hackers vs hacks

  Jarly online in high electric humour.

  ‘Bear, I’ve got an interview next week with your lot. What should I wear?’

  ‘Try to look respectable. Wear a suit.’

  ‘Haven’t got one. Oh bugger it, I’ll think of something. Listen, what’s the worst that could fuck up your computer?’

  ‘Corrupt hard disk? Loss of stuff?’

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Not vile enough. Got to be something a lot worse. Triggered by a virus.’

  ‘Are you making a virus, Jarly?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve spent the last few days mostly over in the States, there’s a beautiful hysteria going on.’

  He means he’s been cybergypsying around systems on the other side of the Atlantic, while his body, naturally, has remained mango-pickled in its attic.

  ‘A real classic,’ says Jarly. ‘Someone went on CNN and warned that the Michelangelo virus will wipe out the world’s computers next month.’

  ‘It’s got to infect them first. How’s it going to do that?’

  ‘It won’t. It can’t. But Bear, you are missing the fucking point. The journos are crawling like flies over anyone who will talk to them about viruses. They are all hyped up and want to know everything about Michelangelo. What is it? Who wrote it? What will it do? Is it part of a conspiracy for world domination? Obviously the lads are feeding them all the wild shit they can think of.’

  ‘What sort of wild shit?’

  ‘I’m just joining the fun, Bear. I’ve sent you a file.’

  When Jarly’s file arrives, the top of it looks like this:

  The Computer Incident Advisory Capability

  Information Bulletin

  Michelangelo Virus on MS DOS Computers

  February 6, 1992, 1400 PDT

  Number C-15

  Name: Michelangelo virus

  Platform: MS-DOS computers

  Damage: On March 6 will destroy all files on infected disks and diskettes that are accessed.

  Symptoms: CHKDSK reports “total bytes memory” 2048 bytes less than expected

  Detection: DDI Data Physician Plus! v 3.0C, FPROT 2.01, other anti-viral packages updated since late September 1991

  Eradication: DDI Data Physician Plus! v 3.0C, FPROT 2.01, other anti-viral packages updated since late September 1991

  ‘Now that is the lame original,’ says Jarly. ‘But a few quick keystrokes and it can be reposted as the original to dozens of systems. Okay here’s my version. Spot the difference.’

  The Computer Incident Advisory Capability

  Information Bulletin

  Michelangelo Virus on MS DOS Computers

  February 6, 1992, 1400 PDT

  Number C-15

  Name: Michelangelo virus

  Platform: MS-DOS computers

  Damage: On March 6 will destroy all files on infected disks and diskettes. Plus other as yet uncorroborated damage.

  Symptoms: CHKDSK reports “total bytes memory” 2048 bytes less than expected

  Detection: None at this time.

  Eradication: No known method.

  ‘Uncorroborated damage? What’s the point, Jarly?’

  ‘Bear, don’t you get it? Out there, it’s hackers vs hacks. Whose fucking side are you on?’

  ‘If Michelangelo destroys all files, how can it do other damage? Isn’t that the most any virus can do?’

  ‘Ah,’ Jarly says, ‘I am thinking of a virus that doesn’t just attack your pooter, it attacks your life.’

  ‘That’s biology, Jarly. Anthrax. Saddam.’

  ‘No Bear, imagine a virus that does not delete data, just subtly changes it. It hides away in your computer, patiently searches in text files for strings of numbers, then randomly changes one in each sequence. Dates of documents, account numbers, PIN codes, bank balances, telephone numbers, passwords. Like a biological virus mutating DNA code. Chaos at work.’

  ‘A virus like that would probably be much too big.’

  ‘Or suppose a virus could make your machine transparent, so that when you are logged into a network or bulletin board, people at the other end can see what’s on your hard disk and read all your personal files.’

  ‘What idiot would believe that?’

  ‘Suppose it could ransack your email for embarrassing phrases and next time you’re online post your most private messages to some public forum.’

  ‘Have to be a massive bloody virus.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘The stories don’t have to be plausible. These people will swallow any scare you throw at them. Wilder the better. They want these fucking nightmares to be true.’

  ‘Listen Jarly, about your interview. If you haven’t got a suit, just wear a tie.’

  ‘Bear, imagine a virus that could search your hard disk for porny pictures – I mean really vile stuff – and if it finds any, email the search results to the police.’

  But this does not seem farfetched to me because I am thinking of Nasty Ned the Net Nark.

  Found on Nasty Ned’s hard disk

  Directory of C:MYFAVES

  Nasty Ned the Net Nark

  No-one likes Nasty Ned. Not his fellow sysops on Fidonet’s Net 2:2??. Not the police officers who pat his dandruffed head – they know exactly what sort of shit he is. Not even the poor fucker’s mother wants to know him. She has asked him to get out of her house, so he tells me, during one of my typed visits to his bulletin board Ned’s Nomadsland. He’s an enigma, our Ned, a greasy fish-and-chip wrapped mystery hidden in an oily conundrum wrapped in a brylcreamed riddle: a loud supporter of free speech on the net, who, because of his collusion with a certain police force, is known as the ‘Net Nark’. The ‘Nasty’ epithet is something else. Long before the word had become an adjective of choice for purveyors of hardcore pornography, Ned had redefined it all by himself.

  Everyone knows, because Ned makes no particular secret of it, that he lives for what he calls ‘sexcursions’ to Thailand. He boasts of having slept with a fifteen year old in her parents’ house. (‘It’s not taboo, over there.’) I am left feeling priggish. Ned is addicted to pornography. This too is not a secret. His talk is constantly of this or that bulletin board which has hardcore pictures, or which carries contact echoes. These are days when the commercial internet is still in its infancy, and pornography has not yet exploded on the World Wide Web. I know of perhaps twenty bulletin boards in Europe which offer hardcore and in the course of my wanderings have seen four of them: in each case Ned’s name was already among the users. The odd thing is that Ned is simultaneously user and stool pigeon. He is suspected to be behind the busts that take place from time to time, whether of boards touting pornography, viruses, or pirated software. He is an ethical oxymoron, extolling free speech yet helping to shut down systems. Ned also belongs to that rare subspecies of cybergypsy who are computer illiterates.

  A netmail comes in from a worried fellow sysop who says that he thinks Ned is dabbling in pornographic pictures of children.

  ‘I hear you’re visiting him soon,’ says the netmailer. ‘Can you find a way to check this out?’

  Yes and yes. Ned has asked me to install some software for him. He is so ignorant of computers that I can easily slide a trojan horse into his system. I write a tiny batch file and add it to the disk.

  Ned lives with his mother in a tall house in an East London street with many boarded-up houses. I am just pressing the bell when a curious babbling causes me to turn. Over the road, a middle aged but obviously half-witted I
ndian man is standing in his front garden, a tiny patch of concrete littered with bricks. He holds out his hands to me and gibbers in thick-tongued delight. Behind me the door opens and the smell hits.

  The stench is appalling. It invades my nose and mouth, beats in waves at my face. I cannot tell whether it comes from the darkness inside the house, or from the dumpy man with greasy, unhealthy skin and unshaven face who stands before me.

  ‘Bear,’ says Ned. ‘Come in, my friend.’

  He leads the way down dark stairs to a basement of desperate filthiness: a mattress with dirty bundled sheets, plates crusted with the remains of meals, a milk bottle whose contents have separated into clear serum topped by a thick crust of green mold.

  Ned says, ‘Make yourself at home.’

  In the corner is his old, rather battered computer. He stands and watches as I insert the disk I have prepared.

  A trojan horse is a program that pretends to do one thing while doing another. Mine is a simple DOS batch file which will install the software Ned wants, a file management system called FLM2, and do something else as well:

  echo off

  cls

  echo Installing FLM2 software...25% complete

  c:

  md flm2

  copy a:flm2.exe c:flm2

  echo Installing FLM2 software...50% complete

  tree>a:flm.dat

  echo Installing FLM2 software...75% complete

  echo Installation of FLM2 is complete, please remove disk

  This crude routine scans his entire hard disk and, under his very nose, copies the names of every directory on his system back to the floppy. Sixty seconds later it is done. Ned leaves the room to make coffee. I have a couple of minutes and guess that even if he returns, he won’t know what I’m doing. I quickly scan the flm.dat file on the floppy. A network of branching lines, the directory tree, decodes to a neatly catalogued file collection, reading in part:

  Volume in drive C has no label

  Volume Serial Number is 2879-11CF

  Directory of C:GIFS

  They make a surprising contrast, these well organised directories and subdirectories, to the squalor of the room. The presence of the files.bbs file shows that Ned is probably trading the pictures in these directories. It means that they are on his bulletin board, available for people to download. I still have a couple of minutes before Ned returns. I type:

  dir c:gifsmyfaves*.*>a:flm3.hlp

  ‘Would you be interested in a trip to Portsmouth next week?’ calls Ned from somewhere deep in the noisome house.

  ‘What for?’ I call back, still frantically tapping.

  dir c:gifsyoung*.*>a:flm4.hlp

  ‘Ladies,’ calls Ned. ‘Husbands at sea. Navy. They’ll pose for photographs.’

  There is a scrabbling sound. Something is moving on the floor. Down there. Corner of the curtain. There. A green cockroach, about five inches long, questing slowly across the room. I recoil in renewed disgust, but something makes me look again. It is a small robot: a green circuit board from which extend half a dozen S-shaped metal legs which rotate stolidly, grinding into the floor and heaving the creature along.

  ‘Cost £50 each, if I can organise four guys,’ Ned is calling. ‘Got two so far. No need for film in the cameras. Sorry, haha, old joke . . .’

  Christ, it’s taking fucking forever.

  The robot thing is nearly at my feet. It has two long metal feelers which hang, quivering, in front, as if detecting decaying food in the pile of the carpet. Another movement catches my eye. A similar machine, a little smaller, is groping hopefully at the corner of the stained mattress. Done! Now I have lists of files in those directories copied to the floppy. It has taken an agonisingly long time, but he’s still not back. What the hell, I tap out:

  q flm3.hlp

  One of the files I have just created immediately opens up.

  Directory of C:MYFAVES

  ‘Bear?’ he calls. ‘Did you get that? You on for a jolly in Portsmouth?’

  There are forty-five pictures in the series.

  ‘No, sorry,’ I call out. ‘Love to, but some other time.’

  My fingers scramble over each other in their haste to hit the keys. Damn, I’ve made a mistake. Backspace. Retype:

  del a:*.*

  copy c:myfavesschool0?.gif a:

  And that’s it. Ned comes back into the room bearing two mugs just as the machine falls silent.

  ‘It’s done,’ I say, removing the floppy from his machine.

  I daren’t touch the coffee but sit holding it.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ I ask, indicating the robot with my foot.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Something one of my young friends gave me. I helped him with the soldering. It’s a robot that is supposed to detect obstacles and walk round them.’

  I can no longer smell the stench so it must be time to go. But as I leave, with Ned’s secrets in my pocket, I feel dirtier than the pictures on the disk, more soiled than his room, sicker than Ned himself, filthier than the scurrying things on the floor.

  A proposal of marriages

  Morgan returns from a visit to Cardiff with the intelligence that not only is Dreamdancer as gorgeous as her photo – fie on those of us who had doubted – but she’s infinitely nicer and more charming than even he had expected.

  ‘Bear, I’ve asked her to marry me.’

  ‘What? You’ve only met her once. Did she agree?’

  ‘What is it I’m supposed to say? “She has made me the happiest man in the world.” ’

  ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re sitting in our honeymoon home. What do you think of it?’

  We are on Shades, in his wizard’s apartment. I dutifully read the new description he has written.

  Morgan and Dreamdancer’s Cottage

  You are sat in a cosy sitting room in a cottage with beams running across the ceiling and a log fire crackling in the grate in a big open fireplace. Everywhere you look you see tokens of Morgan’s love for Dreamdancer. Their dog, Pumpkin, lies on a sheepskin rug in front of the fire and thumps his tail on the floor. You hear the jingle of harness from outside where Dreamy is grooming her horse Beauty. Being here, you sense the great love and devotion that Dreamy and Morgan feel for each other.

  Ah well, true to form. For a moment, he had me worried. But a Shades wedding, that’s different. Even Morgan could not be so daft as to ask a complete stranger to marry him in ‘real’ life.

  He giggles and says ‘Got to be honest. I actually asked her to marry me, in real life.’

  It’s extraordinary how themes in ‘reality’ and cyberspace seem to mirror one another. Macro and microprosoposes. As above so below. Sort of thing.

  ‘But you hardly know her,’ I hear my voice repeating. ‘Was she surprised? What did she say?’

  ‘Not to be impatient. Anyway, she knows, because I told her, that things are a bit tight at the moment.’

  ‘The post-Calypso pinch?’

  ‘It’s not so much a question of saving to get married,’ he says, ‘it’s more to do with keeping up the bloody mortgage payments. Yes, Cally, a bit . . . but . . .’

  ‘You’re behind with the mortgage?’

  ‘A bit’, he says, laughing, ‘not that bad really. Well, I know it’s stupid, but I’ve been sending little gifts to Dreamy.’

  ‘Christ, what sort of little gifts?’

  ‘Oh, small things. A ring of course. A bracelet.’

  ‘What sort of bracelet?’

  ‘Gold, set with emeralds. Small emeralds. Very small . . .’, noting my expression. ‘Cost a bit. Silly of me. But she loves them. She cries when I give her things. Nobody has ever looked after her before. Really loved her before.’

  ‘You daft bastard.’

  Morgan laughs his wizard-of-the-world’s laugh. ‘Yes, I know, everyone says that, but I like doing it. It gives me real pleasure.’

  It appears that Dreamdancer’s brother, with whom she lives in a small terraced
house in Cardiff, is a nice bloke who had made him very welcome. On the first night, Morgan had slept in the guest bedroom and the brother in the living room. But on the second night, Dreamdancer had crept into his bed when her brother was sleeping. ‘He won’t mind,’ and in the morning the brother brought them both a cup of tea.

  It was on the Sunday morning that Morgan went down on one knee, produced the ring and asked her to marry him twice, once on Shades and again in ‘real’ life. At first Dreamdancer had refused to discuss ‘real’ life marriage. Morgan took the brother aside to plead his cause. When he told Dreamdancer he had done this, she was quiet and something – delight? alarm? concern? – flickered across her doughy blonde features. (This, of course, is my interpretation. Morgan put it down to the power of her feelings. Love struggling beneath the surface.)

  ‘She has agreed to the Shades marriage, Bear. We’ve set a date. I’d like you to be best man. Will you?’

  I imagine him as I’d last seen him, hunched over a barstool at the Goat and Compass, still drawing faces on the bar in beer. He’s no beauty. Large, slabby, a face perpetually set one stop above total gloom. Slabby, shabby, but deeply, wonderfully good. I want to hug him, embrace the fucker.

  ‘Of course, lad,’ I say, bemused, ‘it will be a pleasure.’

  Famous in Famagusta

  Jarly arrives at the agency wearing a suit that is at least two sizes too large and of peculiar cut. Thrusting my hand into his lapel, turning it inside out, I uncover a label:

  ‘He’ll never notice,’ Jarly says. ‘Thought it best to make a good impression.’