“The more you learn, the easier it is to make things happen. That’s the
secret of hacking. You don’t worry if something seems impossible. You just
keep watching and learning and pretty soon it’s not impossible.”
He stood up and stretched on tiptoes, leaning far back to work the kinks
out of his spine. “Now here, we can’t get over ourselves, but maybe we can
get someone to bring us over.”
“How?”
“We make something like a beacon. Something that says ‘here we are, come
get us.’ ”
“Can we do that?”
“Your friend thought so. She worked out a way to do it.”
He flipped open the notebook and put it on the coffee table. “See?”
Craig studied the block diagram scribbled on the page. “I don’t think
that’s gonna be easy.”
Mikey grinned lopsided. “So? Nothing that’s worth having is.”
Craig was right. It wasn’t easy. Judith’s notes had no more than outlined
the beacon spell. It was broken down into modules, but half the modules
hadn’t been written and several of the ones that had been needed
modification.
Worse, they were flying blind. They had no way of testing anything because
the magic compiler didn’t work in their world. All they could do was check
and re-check their work manually and hope they had everything correct.
They didn’t have much in the way of tools. Judith had started work on a
cross-compiler for the magic language that would run on an MS-DOS
computer, but it was only a skeleton. She had written a sort of a syntax
checker for the magic language that worked something like lint for C. But
like lint it flagged all possible errors. Since there was no way of
running a test compile, they had to be “more Catholic than the fucking
Pope,” as Mikey put it, and correct everything that the checker flagged.
Mikey ended up picking the basic approaches and doing the broad outlines
while Craig did the detail work and coding. Partially this was because
Craig wasn’t very good at the big-picture stuff and partially because that
was just the way it worked out, somehow. That meant that while Craig spent
hours sweating over the grunt work, Mikey lounged around the apartment
drinking beer and playing computer games.
Since both of them were system breakers they worked essentially around the
clock, catching naps when they felt like it and ordering in from fast-food
joints when they got hungry. Thus it was nearly three o’clock in the
morning when Craig came in to tell Mikey they were finished.
“I’ll get some sleep and then we can go over the whole thing one more
time,” he said to Mikey’s back. “What are you playing anyway?”
“Empire.”
Craig nodded. He was familiar with the game. You explored an unmapped
world, captured cities and built armies and fleets while the computer did
the same thing. Eventually you met the computer’s forces in a climactic
battle for control of the planet.
“Looks like you’ve got him on the run,” Craig said, surveying the map on
the screen. “One or two more turns and he’ll surrender.”
“He surrendered a while ago,” Mikey said, maneuvering about thirty
aircraft to attack the sprinkling of enemy armies in the upper left corner
of the screen.
“So why are you still playing?”
“Because I want to crush the motherfucker,” Mikey said as his legions of
aircraft tore into the opposing forces. Most of the armies went down under
the onslaught, but one beat off five separate attacks.
“Die, you cocksucker!” Mikey snarled as he used the mouse to mass even
more air forces against the remaining red marker on the screen.
“I always quit when the computer surrenders,” Craig told him as he watched
over his friend’s shoulder.
“I don’t want surrender. I want him wiped out,” Mikey said without taking
his eyes off the confrontation.
Craig took a swig of soda. “Takes too long that way.”
“Yeah, but when it’s over I’m the only one left standing.”
The computer beeped as its final army vanished under the combined attack
of nearly twenty aircraft.
This is extremely undignified, Glandurg thought as he watched the green
forest sail by beneath him. Warriors should ride into battle, not be