The Case Of The Missing Cable
By A.J. Axline

It's a SCSI world out there. If somebody's not slamming your ports,
they're sniffing your packets. I know. I've seen it all before.

I'm Jack Dinn. I'm a Private Geek. It's what I do.

I was sitting at my desk, sipping an triple espresso and pulling some
old data off of a corp hard drive. It was a typical case for me; some
disgruntled employee had done the big format c: just before they'd filed
their walking papers. The company wanted to retrieve some important data
from the drive. It was grunt work, but when the rent's due at the end of
the month, a case is a case.

I was just sussing out the last of the data when my secretary Perl
sashayed into my office. She's a good girl, my Perl. When it comes to
system administration and file processing, Perl's the best thing going.
I don't always understand her language, but I can usually interpret what
she's getting at.

"What's up, sweetheart?" I asked her.

"There's somebody here to see you," Perl said.

"What's he look like? What's his story?" I asked.

Perl shrugged. "He's short, kinda creepy looking. I don't know what his
story is, but I don't trust him. He looks like an unreliable client."

I nodded. "I've worked with unreliable clients before. Send him in,
angel."

Perl stepped out, and came back escorting a squat, effeminate looking
man. He was dressed in a tight beige suit, and he carried a beat-up
leather case stuffed full of files.

"This is Mister Tower," Perl said.

He put the heavy briefcase down so we could shake hands. "It looks like
you could use more storage, Mr. Tower," I told him.

"My friends call me 'Mini'," he lisped. His handshake was limper than
spaghetti code in a data monsoon. I motioned him to a chair and he sat
down, his feet dangling a good six inches off of the floor. I offered
him an espresso, which he declined. I topped up my cup, and sat behind
my desk. Perl closed the door so that we'd have some privacy... although
in this world, you really don't have any privacy. It takes some getting
used to.

"How can I help you, Mr. Tower?" I asked.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine who has gone missing," he said. "I was
told by several individuals that you're very good at finding things."

"I run a pretty good search," I said. Tower looked uncomfortably hot in
his little beige suit. I switched on a fan to cool him off. "What's your
friend's name?"

"His name is Mister Cable," Tower said. His lisp was getting to me. It
was like his tongue was covered with thermal compound.

"Cable, huh?" I grunted.

"His friends call him 'Floppy'," Tower said, smiling foolishly.

"You and your friends have some pretty fancy nicknames," I told him.
"Well, I can probably NET your little friend for you...but it'll cost
you. I get 2K a week, plus expenses."

"That's steep," Tower sniffed.

"Oh, I'm saving up for when I become obsolete," I grinned. "Some people
will tell you that 640K is all you'll ever need, but I say more is
better. Besides," I said, pointing to the frames on the wall behind me,
"I'm certified to do this kind of work."

Tower reluctantly wrote out a check while I coaxed the details of his
friend's disappearance out of him. It turns out that they'd had a fight
a couple of nights ago, and Tower had given "Floppy" the boot. I asked
Tower what the fight had been about.

"We had been experiencing certain...ahh, incompatabilities," Tower
mumbled.

I nodded, trying to look interested. It was an old story. How often had
I heard about one little incompatability leading to someone (or
something) getting the boot? Booting was the quick and easy solution...
and more often than not, it was a temporary solution at best. Those
incompatabilities just keep resurfacing over and over, and you just keep
booting and booting until everything just stops working altogether. It's
a bad loop to get into.

Two weeks after Tower's initial visit, we were back in my office. He sat
across from me, his eyes damp with tears. The tight beige suit had been
replaced with a tight black suit. He was still a squat little unit...but
he did look a little bit sharper in black.

"I can't believe Floppy is gone," Tower sniffed.

"Mr. Cable fell in with a bad crowd after you gave him the boot," I
said. "Eventually, somebody decided to plug him."

"You found him in the hospital?" Tower asked.

I nodded. "The doc told me that Mr. Cable could have survived his
injuries, but he just didn't have the drive to go on."

Tower wiped his eyes with a lint-free cloth. I tried to feel sorry for
him, but I knew his kind well enough. Left to his own devices, he'd
always find someone to get him re-started again.

After Tower left, Perl came into the office.

"Tough case?" she asked me.

"They're all tough cases sweetheart," I told her. "But once you get
inside them, they're all pretty much the same. It's just a matter of
trying to avoid static, and getting the client to work for you."

Perl nodded sadly. "I know the script, Jack. I've seen it run, over and
over again."

"It pays the bills, angel," I told her. "I know it's not much of an
operating system, but it's all I've got."

Outside the office window, the neon signs flickered like a hard drive
light. The city was in sleep mode, waiting to begin the same old
routine. I sucked back some smart drug latte and sighed.

"It's a dirty system, angel," I mused aloud. "And, it's my job to blow
out the filth."