In which George befriends a mouse, the author explores the User Profile Crypt, and a great deal is learned about IBM security strategies.

On this tape you will learn:

• Things about IBM technology that will probably remain confusing.
• A lot about the history of IBM's security systems that is not readily apparent..
• More than you might want to know about the importance of IBM executives.

Lost in a Mental Subroutine.

Sometimes when you're having a bad dream waking up doesn't help much.  At least that's been my experience.  You know the syndrome.  You've been working for 12 hours straight on a stupid piece of code --  usually on a subroutine that keeps failing --  and after rearranging the variables, re-structuring the syntax, running it through the debugger a thousand times, it still won’t work.  So you end up dreaming about it at night.  Over and over you tumble through the logic of this utterly useless piece of code.  Eventually your brain feels like its neurons have been firing at fifty million times per second, and you suspect that the peculiar odor filling your senses is actually the neuron insulation sheath burning.  That’s because, in this dream, you keep getting caught in this one section of the code.  It is usually an If -- Then -- Else construct – one of those logical puzzles that defy logic – and the section probably reads something like this:

Thinking about this kind of logic after a while – trying to understand it – makes your thought processes just start to melt down.  And that's the nightmare; getting caught in this kind of subroutine, and having no way to get out.  So when you finally wake up, you're actually more exhausted than when you went to bed, and you look sleepily out at the world with an anger that is so intense that even straight espresso, right out of the jar, isn't enough to touch the  migrain.  But that’s nothing, because the real killer is that you've got to get up and go into work and actually fix that frigging subroutine.

You know how that feels, and so do I, because that's what just happened to me.  I woke up from my most terrible nightmare to be caught smack dab in the middle of an even worse one.  Here in the IBM Technology Graveyard.  I guess that's what comes from sleeping with too much elevator music running through the PDE.  So I stand up, click my heels three times, and repeat “There’s no place like DOS!  There’s no place like DOS!  There’s no place like DOS!”  But of course, it does absolutely no good.

George Befriends an OS/2 Mouse and We Make a Plan.

When I look around, the sky is now much darker than it was before.  There’s a twilight of iridescent blue-white.  Of course, there's no real sun in this place, just sort of a luminescence that comes from overhead.  It looks a bit like a twilight of florescent lighting in the office after the bulbs have been hit by a rolling brownout.  You know what I mean.  The level of light has gone down, but you can still see.  It’s a bloodless sort of glow that makes everyone and everything look pastey and grey.  Actually, it’s just like the light in most night-shift computer rooms.

George and Rich are about 10 yards away, leaning up against hummocks of documentation, talking heatedly.  I get up and amble over.

"Well Sleeping Beauty!" Rich says.  "You got yourself together yet?"

"Be easy on him Doc," George says.  "He really did have a close one."

Now George is playing with something between his fingers.  It’s an exceptionally dirty OS/2 mouse, the kind with the three buttons.  He’s has turned it over upside down and he's stroking the track ball, and the thing is wagging its cord.  "Where'd you get that," I ask.

"Poor thing," says George.  It's got some paper chaff caught between its roller ball and its heuristic sensors.  I'm trying to work it out."  As he rubs the track ball it makes a little chirping, squeaking  noise.

"You ought to lose that thing quick," Rich tells him.

"I'm just fixing it up a bit..."

"Yeah, well why can't you just let these machines alone.  They’re obsolete, George. Don’t you know that?  Junk! Garbage!  Rubbish!”

“Ah, come on Doc!  You’re gonna hurt its feelings.”

“You know it’s liable to plug into your PDE and screw up your interface.   Then where will you be:  Back to command keys and escape keys and you’ll never get out of here."

But George ignores him, mumbling “Doesn’t sound so bad to me...”  He finally fishes out a small paper punch hole piece from the roller.  "Here you go, little feller." He sets it on the ground and it zips away with a clicking chirp down the dune of documentation.

"God that’s an annoying sound,” Rich says.

I ask them “What have you guys been doing all this time?”

“They’re still arguing over the best route," Betty’s voice replies.  And it’s true.  Rich has pulled out a pen and has been drawing patterns on the ground with a green IBM flowchart template.

"Seems like we've got three options," he says to me.

"Four, if you count my suggestion" Betty's voice interrupts.

"Betty, we're not going to go through that again.  Listen, Tom. I’ll try to explain. I think I know how to get us to the Dead Sea Storage Pool. It’s over here!” and he points to a large disk-drive symbol that he’s traced with the template.  “.... and I think I know how to locate the table where we can plug in the correct ITG coordinates,” he continues, pointing to the database symbol inside the oval.  “Now, if we storm Main Mem, we can access the OS/400 optimization algorithm, patch the attributes of the ITG, then do a controlled Exit out through the primary optimization subroutine straight into the Dead Sea Storage Pool.  That’s where I’m almost certain the final copy of the Silverlake Tapes got sent.  We grab the tapes, Ab End out of the subroutine, and clear Main Mem on the next Reclaim Storage.”

“Well,” I say.  “That’s certainly clear as mud!”

“But it's not going to be easy,” Rich continues.

“I can’t imagine why not,” I respond.

“… and even if we manage to actually penetrate the optimization algorithm, we’re just going to have read-only access with our current authority levels. So going there now – right now -- is pointless.  Changing those coordinate entries in the table won’t accomplish anything; shunting through Main Mem will be a wild ride, but essentially pointless too.  And, even if we get to Dead Sea Storage and actually lay our hands on the tapes, we’ll only be able to hold them in our Q Temp libraries.  As soon as we leave – or as soon as somebody does a Reclaim Storage -- they'll get trashed and thrown into the Machine Interface as a damaged object.  Then they’ll really be lost, forever.”

“I see, “ I say, not really seeing anything at all.

“That is, unless," Rich continues.

“Unless,” I mumble in response.  “But, hey! Wait a minute,” I interrupt, sitting down beside him. “Why is this again?  Why is it that you can’t get to the tapes?”

"Because my authority was revoked when I got kicked out of IBM!  They deleted my user ID and all my authority with it.  Nevertheless, if I'm right, somewhere here in this jungle of MI, I should be able to find it!  Somewhere -- and I think I know where -- I think I can get it back!"

"Get what back?"

"Star Q MirthMaker," George intones.  "He wants the boots.  The gloves.  The tunic.  Even the..."

"Even the funny hat," Rich says.  "So that's where I’m headed first.  Are you with me?"

"Wait a minute," I say.  "I'm not with you at all!  What the hell are you talking about?"

Rich Mirth Explains About the User Profile Crypt.

"He wants to go down into the UP crypt," Betty says.  "The User Profile crypt.  And I can't get him to listen to reason at all."

Ah the plot thickens, I think to myself.  Nobody in their right mind could ever figure this out.  But then who said technology would be simple, right?  Fast, but not simple.  However, a little of this is making some sense.  Some piece-meal sort of sense that even I can understand.  Security!  We're going to break in to the Dead Sea Storage Pool, but we don't have the right security level.  Yet, being new to this place, there are lots of things that don't exactly fit my preconceptions.  So Rich explains them, with his flow charts and his diagrams, while Betty argues each step of the way and George sits in wrapt attention.

"You listen to him," George says, patting me on the back.  "Doc’s the master.  Even Q Sec Admin -- the security administrator up in Rochester -- even he came to the Doc for help sometimes."

"It's simple," continues Rich.  "Every computer system has a security scheme.  But every scheme has a different shape or configuration.  It depends on what operating system you find yourself in.  But first you gotta think of the operating system as a big city, with sky scrapers, and office buildings and parks and schools and laundromats and even with .... ."

"I know," I said.  "Even with Dunkin Donut shops."

"You got it," Rich says.  "Even with those stupid Dunkin Donut shops!  It's a metropolis that's built piece by piece, code-segment by code-segment, object by object.  You know, some operating systems just sort of grow helter-skelter, any which way, like... ."

"Like Buffalo New York?" I offer.

"Like UNIX," Betty says.

"Like UNIX and Los Angeles," says George.

"Anyway, some of them just grow that way, attracting more and more programmers and more and more programs.  Space gets used up very quickly and it turns into a kind of urban sprawl with very little rhyme or reason.  And when that happens, a sort of wild-west mentality takes over, and things become very chaotic.  My program smashes into your algorithm, and your interrupt gets stolen by George's audio system, stuff like that.  Finally, after everybody complains about the chaos, some smart cookie writes a policing program and opens up a security service.  He advertises his services to the members of the operating system community, and so it goes!  Little by little, this security system gains more and more respect by the programmers, and you end up with a policing facility that tries to take care of all the bad code that's running around the OS doing damage to everyone’s objects."

"Okay," I say.  "So what!

"Just this! Silverlake doesn’t work that way.  It’s not an operating system like that.  If UNIX is a vision of Los Angeles, then Silverlake is like the nightmare of Nazi Germany.  Everything -- and I mean everything -- is planned. Especially the security system!  Every sky scraper, office, school, cafeteria and lunch room was designed and engineered and wired with security in mind.  You walk into Silverlake and you must register for an authority level.  You head down the hall and security cameras are recording each step you take.  You step into the john and the operating systems security officer will check your papers to make certain you have permission to deposit your load.  Nothing, not a single action, happens without the security system knowing about it.  Nobody can sneak by.  Nobody can hide.  Nobody can escape.  Nobody, that is, except... ."

"Star Q Mirthmaker," says Betty.  "That's why they deleted his user profile.  They couldn't control him. Not even the security administrator.  Star Q Mirthmaker was your crowning touch Richard."

"You mean you created a bogus authority level that supercedes even the security administrator’s authority?"  I ask.

"No  no  no!  You don't understand Tom!” Betty says.  “He doesn't supercede it!  Star Q Mirthmaker doesn't compete with Q Security Administrator!  He makes fun of it!"

A Nightmare at the UP Crypt.

Richard smiles, and I realize that this is the first time I'd seen him smile since we'd gotten back together.  "Star Q Mirth Maker is the clown! The jester! The joke!  The wise fool!  That's what made him so valuable during the creation and debugging of Silverlake!  He'd watch what everybody else was doing -- you know, all the serious building of these high-rise monoliths with their plasticine windows and rotating automatic doorways -- and suddenly he’d slip down into the street and start digging potholes for users to drive into and then pile the asphalt up in front of the windows, blocking everybody’s  view. He was the tool that pointed out the absurdity; the terrorist who created meaningless booby traps; the guerrilla actor who turned everything topsy-turvy. He was the trouble-maker who tested and punched everybody's buttons.  He was... ."

"He was you Doc," George says emphatically.

Rich shrugs and grins again with a melancholy sort of smile.

And so it is, now, three hours later, as we walk out of the desert and into this jungle of tall, twisted damaged objects -- a nightmarish sort of place where magnetic recording tape catches under my feet and tangles my ankles, and blue-green sheaves of green-bar and carbon paper hang from the deserted bursters that are crawling with cybernetic bugs -- now I begin to realize why he's brought us here.  Yes, it's to fix a problem, an error in the Dead Sea Storage Pool table.  But it's to right a wrong too.  Yes, it's to fix what never should have been broken, but also to break what never should have been built.  Rich is leading us through this jungle, down the ravines filled with unclaimed spool files and over the glistening streams of gurgling user messages.  He's leading us to a place that only he knows how to find.  A place haunted with the ghosts of aborted jobs, the tailings of library members left too long in the Q Temp libraries, where the flapping and screeching of unidentified indicators leap from storage dumps, and the howling of phantom user error messages that echo plaintively because they can never be reproduced.   This is the jungle of the Machine Interface, the never-never land between operating system, main memory, and hardware -- a place where no programmer is ever allowed to walk.  And now we are standing above the most frightening place of all: above the User Profile Crypt, where the broken and battered remains of abandoned user identities lie moldering among the compost of reclaimed storage.

"Did you bring your twinax tester,"  Rich asks George as he kneels down amid the rubble and brushes away a layer of carbon dust and dried ink chafe.  His hands have removed just enough rubble to reveal a wide corroded bronze ring that's fitted to a circular panel leading straight into the ground.  There's an odd hole, exactly like the socket of a female twin axial cable connection.

"Got it right here Doc," George says, and he hands him a elongated black box with a cable attached to one end.  Rich fits the tester into the socket, and opens its lid to expose the crude instrumentation.  "Polarity seems okay," he says quietly.  "Betty, what kind of readings are you getting?"

"Plus or minus five milliamps," she says.  "Right on the money, just like the specs call for."

"Can't be too careful.  What do you think about continuity George?"

"Well, based on the light array of the instrumentation it seems like we've got a go.  But you can never be too careful.  You know, sometimes the wire shielding shorts to the socket, and you get an intermittent signal.  Best to wiggle the connection a bit and then watch it for a couple of seconds.  Gosh, I wish I'd brought my amp meter."

"Well, can't wait forever," Rich says.  "I think we ought to go for it. Tom, you help me now.  When I say ready we've got to pull this panel straight up together.  If we screw up now we'll set off a Proc check that'll wipe us clear out of the Machine Interface."

So I reach down and grab the ring with Rich, hand to hand, knuckle to knuckle.  And on the count of three we pull, and pull, and pull, and pull.  And slowly, carefully, the two-foot wide old panel -- shaped like a manhole cover -- comes up out of the ground.  At first it catches a bit, but then it rises so easily, like a dream, like a dream sort of ringing and echoing in my mind.  But now I feel kind of queasy, and my arms and muscles feel so weak.  My head is spinning, and I hear a sort of hissing noise.  It's like the soft cool breeze that comes out of the air conditioning vent.

"Tom!  Don't do that!  George, grab him! He's gonna faint!  Oh my god!  Oh my god!  What's going on!  Something's not right here!  They've changed it George!  They've changed the circuitry!  Betty!  Betty!  We're gonna need some help fast!  Do a memory refresh or something quick! We're passing out!"

"What is it Rich?  Rich, can you hear me?  George?  Tom?

"Betty!" George calls.  "They've wired it ...  for...  Ethernet!"

And that's the last thing I hear for a bit.

The Sense of Time in the ITG.

You can imagine that in a place as unusual as the ITG it might be difficult to tell how much time is passing.  An hour, a minute, a week, or even a year could very easily move through your life like a freight train, or meander in endless irritation like that vacation you spent with your in-laws.  And it’s true: time really has no meaning in the IBM Technological Graveyard.  That’s because the momentum for change has stopped at the exact point in time when a particular piece of equipment or code was invented.  This, of course, is unlike the real world, where human lives grow and change.  In the real world, equipment and software rots and erodes as their functionalities are swept over by newer, glitzier gadgets.

For instance, I remember once I tried to install a new version of Display Write on an old 286 PC that was about four years old.  The idea my management had was that we could save lots of money if we used the older equipment with the newer software.  It was a noble experiment.  I slipped the upgrade disks into the PC and installed the program without a hitch, but of course because the newer version was so much “better” than the older version – with so many new functions and features like Text Assist – the machine nearly ground to a halt.

Of course the secretary was – at first – extremely saddened that she couldn’t use the new software until I told her that management would probably have to buy her a new 386 PC to run her seventy five dollar upgrade of software.

“You mean one with the digital clock built right on the front?”  Well, of course, then she was ecstatic.  This little seventy five dollar upgrade was ultimately going to cost her boss three grand. just so he could get his memos typed.  And so, manuals in hand, I retreated to the computer room, feeling that once again I’d successfully brought the automation mission to a new threshold of technological superiority.

But then, about an hour later she called me back to her desk.  She was furious with me.  “What in the world is the matter,” I wondered.

“Sit down,” she demanded.  “Now type!”

I did, and – strangely enough – the keyboard responded like greased lightning .  Even the spell checker performed as though it was juiced with amphetamines.

“Hm!” I said.  “Looks as though it fixed itself!  Sorry!  I guess you’re stuck with this old hunk of junk after all!”

“Oh yeah?  Well print it out and take a look!”

So I did.  There was my memo, neatly formatted, spell-checked, and awaiting my signature. “Looks great,” I said.

“Not so,” she corrected.  “Look at the date!”  And sure enough, the date said January 1, 1954.

“Oh, well that’s easy!” and with a quick date command I changed the date to 1986 and rose to leave.

“Not so fast, circuit boy.  Now type the same memo.  I tried, but I couldn’t.  The keyboard froze, the spell-checker was befuddled, and the display languished like molasses in Burlington.

“I want a new machine,” she demanded.  “How do you expect me to get any work done?  I wasn’t even born in 1954!”

So that is how I learned an interesting lesson about software and hardware.  The further you turn back the clock -- even if you turn  it back before the actual manufacture date  --  the faster the system will seem to perform.  But the further you turn it into the future, the slower and more problematic the system will become. I’ve wondered about this strange happenstance for many, many sleepless nights.

Now the fact that this story is true – that this actually did happen to me in the real world – raises an interesting question about the circuitry of system timing speeds, time in general, the laws of physics, and the importance of digital clocks on secretarial computers.  And, I wonder what would happen if I had merely set the time to 11:59 PM, December 31^st, 1999 and waited!  The machine would then be poised on the threshold of the millennium, and my new experiences here now make me suspect that exactly one minute later the machine would actually disappear.  Where would it go?  I’ve not certain, but I suspect it would comes here, to the ITG.

However, I can’t fully think this mystery through right now because something is rudely awakening me.  There’s an annoying sort of chirping click inside my earphones.  And now that I’ve opened my eyes, the heads-up display has taken on a life of its own.  The interface is dropping pull-down window shades, cascading  folders with check-boxes that are madly checking themselves on and off, and scrolling the cursor position in whirling circles across the visor of my optiglasses like a dervish.  And the point I’m trying to make is that I have absolutely no idea how long I’ve been knocked out.

A Favor is Returned.

I rise to my knees, prop up my glasses and what do I see?  I’m covered with mice. The two button variety.  My PDE suit is dripping with them, my arms are hung with their rat-tailed mouse cords, and it’s obvious what’s occurred. One of the mice has plugged into my user interface and is wrecking havoc on my heads-up display.  It’s racing in circles on the ground, around and around, like a hamster on its exercise wheel.  The clicking chirps are driving me crazy!

Okay, so now I’ve knocked them all off and they’ve scurried away about ten feet and are hiding in a hedge of burst carbon forms that look, from this distance, like discarded IBM lease agreements. Where am I?   I hear a groggy voice and turn to find Rich lying prone beside me about five yards away in a pile of paper punch tape.

“Man! What a hangover!” he says rubbing the side of his face.  “I feel like I was hit by a semi!”

I crawl unsteadily over beside him. “Rich! Wake up, will you!  Where’s George?  Where are we?”

“I’m up here!  Hey Doc!  You gotta get up here and see what these little clickers have built!”

We both stare upward into a tall burster tower that stands over us like a rusted oak.  There is George, sitting on a roller assembly, holding an OS/2 mouse in either hand.  “They’ve started nesting up here!  Come on up!  You won’t believe this!  They’ve actually built little mouse cozies out of some old Display Writer ribbon cartridges.  It’s ingenious!”

It’s a good five minutes before we can convince George to climb down, and he still insists on bringing one of the plastic ribbon cases with him.  “You know, I could never figure out why they designed these cartridges with so much plastic.  I always thought it was a waste.” and then he spent another five minutes showing us how the mice had clicked through the elongated black plastic and fashioned themselves quaint little nesting ledges.  He was right: It really was ingenious, sort of.

“George, all this is fascinating, but we’re on a mission here, remember?.  Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Sure,” said George.  “The UP Crypt is right over there!  You can see it through the hedge!”

And he was right.  Just beyond the hedge I can still see the panel lying in the rubble. “Seems you owe those OS/2 mice a vote of thanks,” Betty’s voice suddenly pipes in. “I’m sorry guys. I failed you this time!”

And so Betty explains how we were saved.  Evidently, after our faint from the Ethernet gas exposure, she struggled -- unsuccessfully -- to rewrite a page-fault back into main memory to refresh our user environments.  “If I could only have gotten the Job Number right the first time, it would have been a snap!  But could I do it?  Oh no!  I kept mis-typing the darn thing over and over!  3127456!  So sorry guys.  I was absolutely useless!”  Fortunately for us, however, we must have looked like flotsam in our unconscious states, and the OS/2 mice, acting with the instincts of true scavengers, spotted us and swarmed to feed.  According to Betty, they scooted beneath our PDE suits, scrolled us back to their nests, and were just preparing to feast.

“What about the Ethernet,” I ask.

“It’s been vented,” Betty says.  “I varied it off.  You should be okay to go on now.”

So we head back.  George is a little reluctant to leave.  This fascination with pointing devices is a little annoying, but I guess I can’t fault him for the sentiment.  He’s very defensive about it too.  “Look Rich,” he protests.  “It’s not that they’re cute and homely and all that!  It’s just when they break they’re so damn easy to fix!”

“It’s okay George,” Rich humors him.  “It’s okay!  I understand! Just don’t start collecting any more pets when we’re down in the UP crypt.  We’ve got enough to worry about.”

George smiles, nods his head, and we head off back through the maze of burster towers and collating trays, back to the portal into the User Profile Crypt. Behind us a bevy of OS/2 mice are scrambling to catch up, but Rich kicks them off the cuff of his pants, and George heaves snowballs of paper chaff to frighten them away.

A Crypt for User Profiles.

Now, it might seem odd to talk about a User Profile Crypt as a physical place; a place where cast off user identities and roles along with their assorted accoutrements are kept, but according to Betty – who keeps up a constant rambling narrative as we descend through the portal – it’s quite logical.

“You see, Honey, it all goes back to the sumptuary laws of the Renaissance!”

“The what?” I ask.

“The sumptuary laws!  All operating system security etiquette within IBM dates back to the sumptuary laws put in place by Henry the Eighth, and continued to the realm of Queen Elizabeth the First in the 1600s.  You see, when IBM was looking for human analogues for constructing an operating system environment, it hired a group of academic consultants to describe an ideal system.  At that point, no one had ever done such a thing.  Operating systems were new.  They had never existed before.  Prior to this, everything was hard-wired in the circuit boards.  So, when the idea of this completely new kind of structure was placed on the table, IBM began looking for input on what this controlling mechanism should be like.  They didn’t want to leave the complex interactions of machines and software strictly to engineers: they needed a model.  Anyway they turned to the academic community and these consultants – retired former Humanities and English professors mostly – and they formed committees that were supposed to describe the operating system – complete with some method of security -- that was powerful, fully fleshed out, and easy to implement.”

“You’ve still lost me,” I say.  “But go on!  Maybe it will start to make sense in a moment.”  By now we’d reached the portal, and George and Rich were easing themselves down through the manhole into the darkness.

“Well,” Betty continues through the earphone.  “One of these professors, a Dr. Maude Pickett, had done her PhD work on English sumptuary laws.  These were laws that described, in tremendous detail, what every member of the English Renaissance could wear, down to the corsets and hose of the lowest member of society.  For instance, the town constable had a certain color of garment and a particular hat that only he could wear, while dukes and duchesses had other gowns and robes that were peculiar to their station.  If anyone wore the wrong kind of outfit, they could be fined and thrown into the stockades.”

“Go on,” I say, lowering myself down through the portal into the darkness. “I’m sure this is leading somewhere.  Was this Maude Pickett any relation to Wilson, by chance?”

“Step sister,” Rich says.  “Extremely intelligent person!  Met her at a conference on Renaissance English Programming Languages sponsored by the Modern Language Association.”

In the darkness of the portal, I can feel the dry chalky dust of the walls.  There’s an odd smell in the air, perhaps the remains of the ether, but mixed in with the odor of moldy satin.  How strange, I’m thinking.  Discussing some arcane laws from England in the middle of this place.

“So anyway, that’s the basis for all of IBM’s security schemes,” Betty finishes.  “No one knows exactly how it happened, but it seems that the consultant committee responsible for establishing the security model ended up submitting Maude Pickett’s PhD dissertation to the engineering staff.”

“The staff that Wilson Picket was a member of?”

“Precisely!  And as a result, each security system in every operating system that IBM has ever created since has both pre-defined roles and very particular dress codes for every individual user profile created.”

“All based upon 16^th Century English sumptuary laws,”  I ask.  “Don’t you guys think you’re carrying this a little too far?”

Dress Codes for User Profiles.

But by now, after stumbling around blindly in the dark, constantly stumbling up against George’s back, my sense of cynicism is at an all time low, while Betty’s voice is the only comforting thing that I can hear in the eerie silence.

“We’re here,” Rich says suddenly.  “George, give us some light?”

“Hey, wait,” I say.  “Let me try.”  I grab hold of the ring of my user interface, tug gently, and then quickly yank on the level that says “Brightness Control.”  “Brightness Control Activated” my headset echoes.  “Ding!” Immediately the walls of the room appear in a dark greenish tint, and I can see Rich and George standing in a low room filled with old dome-topped trunks and mechanical clothing racks in long, endless rows.

“Now you’re getting the hang of this place,” George says, patting me on the shoulder.  “But it’s a little dark still.  Try the ‘Back light” option.”  And he’s right.  “Ding!” and the room is now illuminated with a bright white tint, with all the trunks and racks outlined in bright luminescent green.

“Ok,” Rich says.  “Let’s make this quick.  Tom, you take that row, George that one, while I rummage through the trunks.”

“What, exactly are we looking for, please?”  I ask.

“The user profile for Star Q Mirth Maker,” Betty’s voice says.  “It will be a bright orange and green garment, with bells and tassels, with criss-crossed gartered stocking hose and black velvet slippers with turned-upped toes.”

“And the hat,” called out Rich.  “Don’t forget the hat!”

This is really too absurd, I’m thinking.  But nonetheless I start down the rack of garments, each slung carefully over a wire hanger, wrapped in clear plastic bags, just like the freshly cleaned clothes in a dry cleaner’s back room.  There are, literally, thousands of these bags, each one with a stapled IBM logo slip, detailing the garment within.  Stuff like:

Profile Name: IBM RPG Program Developer – Level 1 Support.

Attributes: Error Message Parameter Descriptions for beta release 214.

Operating System:  SS.

Indicator Usage: 99 and N99; Level Break Indicators; Matching Records; Indicators M1-M9.

And so forth.  Thousands of such bags, while beneath the poly-filmed covering hangs a kind of suit, made out of some sort of rubberized material, that looks to be a complete body-covering, including face and hands.

Password Decks and Interface Hacks.

“So people actually wore these things?” I ask, pushing through hanger after hanger.

“Of course not,” Rich says.  “These cover nano-bots.  Nano machines.  Small micro robots that are  remotely controlled by the actual computer profile holder.  The nano-bots aren’t particularly unique – really not much more than micro skeletal armatures.  But once they’re outfitted in these costumes, they’re really quite powerful.”

“Hey, Doc,” George called.  “Look-ee here!  I found my original CE Trainee profile.”  And George lifts out a hanger that holds a plain dark blue dress, with a full bodice, and a long wavy black hair-piece.  It looks something like a scullery maids dress, straight from some MGM costume rack.

“Not much feminist awareness, I take it,” I say.

“Well, remember the context,” Betty intones. “Society within operating systems is extremely structured.”

“Yeah, and besides,” chimes in George.  “In this profile I was able to get in and out of some pretty interesting places that later on – in my fully authorized profile – would have been impossible to explain to my supervisor.  Ah!” he said, and kissed the profile through its plastic covering. “I remember one late night shift when a young Q Sys Opr backed me into a corner and… .”

“That’s enough of that for now,” says Rich.  “Look what I’ve found.”

We gather around Rich by the largest domed trunk, where he is holding a fistful of broken bundles of what looks like cellophane-wrapped miniature playing cards.

“Password decks,” George whispers excitedly.  “Gosh! How many are in here?”

Thousands!  Piles and piles of miniature card decks, piled in haphazard fashion, fill the trunk.  Each card has a color photo of someone dressed in old English garb, standing before a background that looks as though it were cut from a Renaissance painting.

“I don’t get it,” I say.  “What exactly are these things?”

“User profile passwords,” Rich says.  “One deck for each profile. Each card in the deck represents a password that was used sometime in the distant past to access some operating system resource.  Given a specific profile, one card from any of these decks would be worth a king’s ransom on the black market.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.  “I thought everybody got one password for each user profile.  But there are millions of cards here ….”

“It’s like a password list,” Betty says.

“Trading cards,” George says.

“Look,” says Rich.  “This is the way it works.  Say you want to come visit me in my office.  In order to get to the office, you need a password to gain access to the subway.  You give a permission slip to the gate attendant, and he or she gives you a permission slip to ride the train.  When you get off the train, you exchange that permission slip with the next gate attendant, who hands you back a copy of the original slip.  In the same way, you get into my building, up the elevator, past my secretary, and – finally – into my office itself.  Every move you make, within this operating system, requires a password transaction – between you and someone else.  And, as no two transactions are the same, every one requires a different password.”

“I think I understand,” I say.

“George here is a collector of password decks.”

“Been doing it for years,” George says.

“So George, look at this!”  And Rich holds up have a dozen decks in the open palm of his hand.

“Golly,” George says, taking the top deck.  “These have been tampered with.  The cellephane’s been broken into.  These decks aren’t anywhere near complete.”

“Yeah!  Somebody’s been down here, that’s for certain.  And recently too from the looks of things.  Rifling through decks of passwords.  Look.  Here’s an API deck to the DB2 database indexing routine that belonged to a Data File Utility developers profile.”

“I got a deck just like that one in my bookcase up above back home,” says George.  “But this one’s pretty small by comparison.  Who do you suppose?”

“Interface hacks,” Betty says.  “There have been reports back at the home office that somebody’s been dealing out interface APIs through some sort of underworld network for a couple of years now.  Nobody’s been able to figure out how they broke into our code.  Back at headquarters in Somers they’ve been saying that it was a case of reverse-engineering, but … .”

“Yeah, it’s an open and shut case now,.” says Rich.  “So do you suppose that’s how Microsoft was able to build their SQL server?”

“Could be,” says Betty.

“Could be,” says George.

“Hmmm,” says Rich.  “I wonder.”  And he wanders off down the rows of user profiles, sliding each wire hanger back and forth along the track, looking.   Finally he stops, pulls out a hanger upon which a purple costume made of a rich velvet-like material is hung.  “Yep!” he says.  “Look at this.  This one’s a database administrator’s profile for the Run Query subroutines.  What’s odd about this one?”

“Looks pretty normal to me,” says George, running his fingers along the velvet sleeve.

“Yeah, but look at the eyes in the face,” I say.  “They look like they’ve been cut out with an Exacto knife.”

“You’re right,” says George.

“And look at the back of the profile,” says Rich. A slit, about two feet in length, runs down the entire back of the garment.  “Somebody’s been coming down here and dressing up in old, very powerful user profiles and – if my guess is right – moving through security with the aid of pilfered password decks!”

At this point, I have to stop and laugh!  This whole scenario is just too bizarre for my meager brain to handle.  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.  “This whole thing is absurd!  Who in their right mind would build a security system around a medieval masquerade ball?  What rational organization – what multibillion dollar corporation – would spend its resources upon such a total farcical array of nonsense, complete with trading cards and rubber masks?”

“It’s Elizabethan,” Betty’s voice says gruffly through my ear piece. “Not medieval!”

“And IBM would,” says Rich.

I look over at George, to see if he too is as loony as these other two.  But George just smiles at me and shrugs.

“Hey,” he says.  “What can I say?  They’re retirement benefits were great, hours were pretty good, and – if you didn’t mind the routine and the dress code – it really wasn’t such a bad job, all things considered.”  But the thought of George in a scullery maid’s costume, leaning over a circuit board with a soldering iron, is an image that I fear I will never ever forget.

We Dress, and I Mess About with Job Logs.

It’s a couple of hours later now – ITG time – though who knows really how long we’ve been down here.  Rich and George have spent that time rummaging through the racks of costumes and sorting out password decks, while I have returned to the surface to get some air.

The air in the ITG is uncomfortably cold, almost frigid, and Betty tells me over the headset that it’s not unusual for IBM to keep the ambient temperature at about 40 degrees by using massive water-cooled air conditioning equipment.  But I’m freezing, and wander about, beating my arms against my PDE, trying to get warm.  Betty is sympathetic.

“I suppose you could make a small fire,” she suggests.  “Not too big, or you’d set off the Halon system.  If you think the Ethernet gave you a hangover, Halon would positively do you in.”

“A fire,” I muse.  “What do I use for fuel?”

Betty and I discuss this and finally reach a solution, and by the time George and Rich surface from the crypt, carrying arms full of clothing and gadgets, I’m warming my hands over a nice, small flame on top of the metal hatch that covered the portal.

“Hmm,” acknowledges Rich.  “Using some job logs I see.  Good idea.”

“Just some small ones I found over by that Raid array.  You know, you wouldn’t think such little things could supply so much heat.”

“Well,” says Rich.  “I think we’ve found all we need.  We brought you up a profile too.  Nothing too unusual or exotic, but with enough authority capabilities to keep any Q Sec Ofr security police from asking too many questions.”

“What profile is it?” I ask. I hold up the profile.  It’s not very unusual looking at all: a trim, blue suit with long pants, white shirt, and red power tie, with a face mask that is permanently poised in a winning smile, and closely cropped dark hair.  On the lapel is a small golden IBM logo that reads “25 Years”.

“It’s a Vice President and General Manager of the AS/400 Division profile,” George says.  “Completely harmless and with no real power, but it totally passes all of the usual security systems.  And besides, if we hang out with you, we get to use the executive bathrooms.”

“How come this one’s not Elizabethan?” I ask.

“Marketing,” Rich says.  “It’s all about marketing, even within IBM.”

“And besides,” George says. “We honestly didn’t think you’d look very good in tights.”

Learning About IBM Vice Presidents.

So now the plan is to wait for a couple of hours until after the next cycle in the ITG, and then to head into something that Betty calls Main Mem.  George helps me slit open the back of the VP profile, and I manage, somehow, to squeeze me and my PDE into the rubberized skin.  This is not as easy as it sounds, because inside are thousands of little hair-like wires that were designed to interface with the nano-bots armatures.  These we have carefully scraped out, along with a variety of odd transistor-shaped things, so that the inner part of the profile is relatively smooth.  George has carefully identified a couple of wires that he’s left intact within the skin, and these he has gingerly connected to various places on my PDE.

“There you go,” he says, looking me over.  “You look as good as Tom Jarosh himself in that getup.  Might even pass for Bill Zietler if the light isn’t too bright.”

I move my arms.  The heads-up display through which I view this odd world is now glowing strangely pink, giving everything I see a kind of rosy outlook.  But the movements of my arms are uncomfortably strange, and I keep finding myself holding up my hand – as if counting off agenda items – or making a fist that I forcefully thump into the palm of my other hand.

“That’s just the executive gesture protocol,” George says.  “It’s a programmed response to hearing your own voice.  Not much I can do about that.  It was designed so that you can effectively address a room full of IBM business partners.  You’ll get used to it.”

Meanwhile, Rich has disappeared behind the hedge, working on his own profile.  Periodically we hear him grumbling about modifications they’ve made, updates to his protocol, and a few remarks about how he’s gain a bit of weight in the last ten years.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, there is a screeching laugh that seems to echo through the forest like the sound of a hyena at about a thousand decibels.

“Ha ha ha ha!” the voice echoes.  “Ha ha ha! Testing!  Testing!  Ha, ha, ha, ha!  Testing one! Testing two!”

“Doc! Turn down the sound blaster parser, will you please,” George yells.  “You’re gonna make me deaf again.”

And now he steps out where we can see him in the Star Q Mirth Maker profile.  It’s truly a frightening sight.

The profile is half-again larger than Rich himself, with two long, multi-jointed arms that end in delicate hands with four claw-like fingers and long red nails and a black opposable thumb. One hand is clutching a gaudy scepter of stainless steel that ends in a pike-like knife blade. The legs too are multi-jointed, allowing the knees to flex both forward as well as backwards, and the feet are enormous, in black turned-up velvet slippers, with bells ringing at the end of tassels.  This entire mechanical-like structure is garbed in a vivid green and orange patchwork costume, with other bronze-colored plastic bells strung around the waist and sleeves.  There are silver stars and black moons also embroidered on the vest and pockets, and the neck is fringed with a yellow, pink-tipped collar.

But most frightening of all is the face: an electric white-and-yellow face with red cheek circles and orange lips painted into a fixed smile.  Behind these lips are razor-sharp teeth that gleam a sickish orange red.  The eyes are also large and red, and the ears are like enormous pendants of green, each sporting an earring: one moon shaped, and one star shaped.  Atop this profile is a large, luxurious-looking two horned hat, with a wide ragged brim, adorned with stars and moons.  One horn is green and the other black.  Each horn ends with a red tip, off of which dangles two clusters of silver bells.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” the profile’s voice seems to rumble through the very earth itself.  “How was that?  A bit more bass, not so much treble?”  Rich asks.

“Well, it’s quite frightening,” I say, autonomically making a fist and slapping it into the palm of my left hand for emphasis.   “Honest!  You’ve got me shaking in my penny loafers.”

“Sounds like you’re back,” says Betty.  “Though I think your mid-level audio needs a bit of adjusting.”

“Yeah, I’m back,” Rich says.  He deftly pulls a password deck from his belt and, faster than the eye can follow, shuffles the cards in mid air.  Then, in a single fluid gesture, he bows and presents a single card between his index claw and thumb.  I reach out to take it gingerly between my fingers and examine it.  One side has the portrait of a jester, smiling obscenely with one eyebrow raised.  The other side says “Access to Main Mem” followed by a kind of program -- in some sort of script language – that looks vaguely like an RPG Do-While loop.  “Now, in a few brief hours, we’ll be on our way,” he chuckles.  But first I suggest we get some rest.”

Nighttime in the ITG and the Dark Prince.

Nighttime in the ITG – especially near the UP Crypt – is not exactly a relaxing time.  That is, if it is a temporal place at all.  The general light level decreases substantially while the temperature plummets to about 40 degrees.  The night air is filled with odd mechanical sounds and ghostly shrieks that – I assume – are the screams of damaged program objects that have collided along one of the many roadways leading into Main Meme. And from the height of my perch, here in an oversized report burster, peering through the tangle of carbon copies, I can now see the glow of that strange metropolis bouncing off the low atmospheric ceiling, while in the distance I hear the snorkeling sucking noise of Rexx.  It reminds me of how close to catastrophe I came, such a few hours ago.

Rich, now fully decked out in his Star Q Mirth Maker profile, has instructed me – in my IBM VP suit – and George – in his CE Trainer garb – to try to catch a few winks while he stands guard.  Guard over what is not exactly clear.  He has sprung off down a pathway through a twisted hedge, and I can just barely see him standing in the distance, practicing card tricks in the twilight.

But, although George seems to be comfortably snoring away, I’m having trouble resting.  It’s not only the oddity of this experience, but the discomfort I feel inside this curious costume as well.  A few tiny hair-like wires still tickle my nose inside the mask, which causes me to occasionally sneeze uncontrollably.  The sound of the sneezing then automatically activates the executive gesturing protocol built into the suit itself, and I find my self automatically reaching into my vest pocket, carefully pulling out a folded white handkerchief, wiping my nose carefully with the inner corner, and going through a series of completely random power gestures that seem to be designed to hide the embarrassing noise that has emanated from my nose, all the while pointing to some invisible PowerPoint that the programmed profile believes it is presenting to an imagined audience of customers and business partners.  A couple of uncontrollable “ah choos” has put the suit into a rapid state of shifting and shrugging that nearly dislodges me from my precarious perch.  I decide to descend and keep Rich company, but as I climb down I see that a couple of OS/2 mice have curled up into the bodice of Georges profile, each squeaking sweetly in time to George’s resounding snores.   “Well,” I say to myself.  “George certainly won’t mind, and they don’t seem to be doing any harm.”

By the time I gingerly work my way through the tangle of brush, constantly and automatically checking to make certain that the crease in my trousers has not lost its IBM edge, I’ve lost the exact location where I thought Rich was standing.  My disorientation is nearly complete – and I’m about to call into Betty for a heading – when I spot him again up ahead a bit over to the left, jauntily walking with a much taller, hooded figure that is dressed in stark black robes and carrying a scythe-like walking stick.

“Betty, Betty”, I whisper.  “Who is that with Rich?”

“Be quiet,” Betty radios back anxiously.  “Be absolutely quiet, and try not to move too much.”

“But who is it?” I demand.  “And where is Rich going?”

“It’s what program objects fear most,” she replies.  “Some call it ‘The Dark Prince’, and some call it ‘Cousin Guido’, but its real name is the Reclaim Storage processing module.  It’s out looking for damaged objects and expired user profiles.  And it’s spotted you three.  Rich is negotiating with it now.”