Nicholas Winlund

Flukes Of Nature

Let's see if this works. . .

Len was putting pieces of a computer networking puzzle together. This was not like a regular jigsaw puzzle, at least with a jigsaw if all the pieces were sitting there on the table you got to see the pieces you put together. Not so in Len's case with his networking dilemma. There were a total of 3 computers in Len's house. Two including Len's were almost new. The third belonged to Len's housemate Phil. It was one of those old Apple jobs from a decade back or so. Len's more brainy friend Gerbeth an exchange student from Holland was a star class geek and figured prominently in getting Len and Phil who was starved for Internet access halfway there.

Len's friend Gerberth Zwicky had lots of spare time and ingenuity for being in school full time. He had figured out how to build a custom "null modem" interface which sat off one of the Apple computer's electronic ports. At the time this Apple machine was made the Internet really wasn't known well enough yet by the consuming public so the computer manufacturer which was also Apple included only standard interfaces or typical things the typical user plugged into their Apple computer. Somehow the ambiguous and sometimes taut Gerbeth used his electrical engineering prowess and constructed an "ethernet" or network interface that would suit Phil's purposes. Len got data or bytes to transmit from the custom-built network interface to the old Apple itself but routing a complete connection from Len's machine all the way to the Apple was what stumped Len Hopffman now.

Len's morning before work had begun quickly with him brewing tea and logging in to his machine. He went on the local area network to check for software latency application tests or the time it took to efficiently send or route envelopes of data from one computer via the local hub to another machine charted as a destination by concerted & unified data packets. Happy with the latest results Len got on the 'Net to check email & browse online archived file repositories for changes to software programming projects. Len also surfed the Web a little as his hour of beginning work seemed to approach fast. Len had tried amateur Yoga that morning including the hand motions and noticed a small improvement in his touch typing, wrists raised as always. Len felt mentally weary from the daily drag at work in his cubicle which was one and a half cubicles in size compared to most cubicles if one looked at it optimistically, something Len preferred. However this job situation was becoming less sustenance and more Babylonian every day. Project leads and a cadre of cronies who knew how to code but didn't know they were being duped by the project leads in the long haul all had formed their own hastily chartered ad-hoc groups and subgroups not officially recognized by the sole proprietorship company but ignored anyway.

Several designs and more importantly and tragically, thought Len, implementations of those designs went south because some people got it in their heads that the operating system used in the projects Len worked on should function using more "proprietary" terms. This meant individuals keymastering electronic operations of the operating system for one group of people exclusive in ownership to all others. Len didn't care so much about this since he was interested more in how his software components communicated with related components across the network. Len had a hunch the real aim of this proprietary coup was to leverage the software's access to the network which was made up of distributed computer workstations and their respective operating systems. It was one thing to deploy a network to protect users and programs from unauthorized intrusion. It was quite another thing to install software across networks with the intent to hide the performance of applications and fail to disclose the operation of binaries or critical executable software programs where considered prudent by majority consensus to do so.

Len had seen this sort of untactful human behavior before but had tried to distance himself from electronic folly only humans were capable of creating. Len viewed the untactful part here as taking something simple like the standards and protocols of network access and making them complex for a single reason with any number of purposes behind that reason: obfuscation.

Len hated obfuscation. He was the kind of person who played and showed all his cards, still pulling the ace out at just the right time before anyone else perceived it the right time to use their own aces. At least this was the way Len behaved when creating computer programs using various programming languages. This time around the cards Len got dealt weren't that great to begin with, meaning the pay stunk and the programming languages' software interface requirements were nearly imbecilic. Also Len's opponents had figuratively rigged the deck by leaving out information Len needed to know to make his part of the code work in a fashion cooperative to software development. Len reluctantly, vaguely understood that there was a quid pro quo or tit-for-tat when it came to him accepting and delegating responsibility with others on the job but Len was always impressed with the bigger competitive picture or how to fit more people in to the figurative carving & serving of the pie. Len's counterparts were the exact opposite, believing software development had exhaustible, finite solutions for tenured staff only.

Personal goals and group agendas changed daily and at times much to Len's dismay more for economic or political reasons then technological ones. What was transpiring at Len's place of work mostly without Len's personal involvement wasn't just absurd, it was out of touch with reality and bordered on criminal activity. It was the Wild West without guns complete with posses for hire, corrupt sheriffs, horse thievery, useless mayors and scared townfolk (users) not knowing what to do when the guns or in Len's situation code battles began blazing.

Len was upset because he knew his "colleagues" crossed the line on several fronts both in the code and the electrical engineering aspect of things. Data was basically like money, it always moved and always had someplace to be. The data Len handled at work was valuable whether examined in one spot up close or as many spots seen from far away. Len believed the personnel takeover by certain neo-techs had had external or outside motivators because the proprietary hawks had stealthily swooped in, marked their territory in all the critical places in record time and kicked out every last tinkerer, thinker & idler by insisting on rushed quotas or rushed deadlines mandated by the project leads who never kept the details to any project in one spot for too long. At times minutes or documentation of company meetings by stenographers were withheld completely with no reprisal from the Review Boards. New electronic mailing lists were used for old projects. Projects were suddenly renamed without notification to the people working on the projects. Len wasn't informed about the new lists until three weeks after their creation. Hundreds of emails had been sent via the new lists. The old mailing list for one of the main projects was silent for a while because starting one day whenever anyone wrote to that mailing list their message got rejected and bounced back to the sender without explanation. One of Len's buddies fixed the mailing list program. Two days later it got spam-bombed. Perhaps the up-link had been sabotaged by the list administrator responsible for running the mailing list but who could prove it when this list administrator audited his own network and without corroboration reported his findings to his Review Board?

Len took a big sigh. His hands were now raised to the keyboard, poised for the next several moves Len would calculate in his mind. The Apple dilemma was a real problem. Couldn't Phil get a new machine? Doing that would put to waste Gerberth's null modem efforts however, something Len had considered a real feat and superior to his own abilities. Besides Phil didn't have money for a computer since he was in school part time.

Len didn't have the mental capacity to visualize any of several Old Apple-connected-to-the-Internet scenarios right now. He was still in partial lament about the circumstances at work. He was a contributor, not a big player but certainly not a small one for he had received commendations from several supervisors and had gotten rank and privilege, mostly better bandwidth or increased data speed plus new software tools to debug or take apart components to see what could be put back together again.

Len also wanted to go to school part time like Phil. Len was envious of Phil. Phil Baxton was almost always financially broke. Phil never looked for a job yet he was in school part time and doing well. Phil didn't get help from his parents except for pitching in on the occasional phone bill, which Phil categorically described as one half rip off & the other half not calculated correctly. Phil was a math major. The student also spent time with interns at the state capitol which as Len saw it explained why Phil was only able to afford an old Apple computer. Len had a dualistic opinion of Phil, thinking him to be very crazy and very smart in some simultaneous but altogether mysterious way. Whatever it was it got Phil through his schooling. This was because Len knew Phil was smart enough not to fall into the "debt wage" cycle Len was going through now.

Debt. Len had learned all the standard, accepted percentiles and measurable ratios in accounting & economics with respect to business law but had missed a few marks somehow because he couldn't balance his income with bills and other relatively small dues, most by the "charge it to plastic" method. Balancing budgets today was a dubious affair. Len really dug electronic transfers but always got hit by the last minute fees, hidden interest rate calculations and other pesky charges rated as non-essential by independent Review Boards, reviews that Len had sought and went online for. Whenever Len signed up for something like cell phone service he would have enough saved up to buy the least marketed and perhaps most exotic phone model, plus Len wanted every possible feature activated so he could test out all of the functions that were the phone's features. He was more interested in paying for the phone so he could break it and learn new things about it. He sent off bug reports to the nationwide independent Review Boards who published consumer technologies ratings. More often than not, dissecting top-of-the-line phone models led to coding opportunities. Using the phone simply for the purpose of calling was especially convenient during work breaks.

Len didn't understand his present wage scenario which was the inverse of what it should be, given Len worked almost full time all the time. He was on salary, not hourly. He was head of his apartment (Len coordinated all the bills) and had a very efficient if not unsafe fuelcelled car. Len, Phil and roommates shared rides and therefore gasoline expenses to the regional and corporate grocery stores few and far between. Groceries were sometimes shared if not irregular in price for Phil sometimes insisted on going to health food stores where prices were higher. The economic and political mood was sour what with low interest rates set by the Fed and a president's Administration not popularly elected near resigning or facing impeachment over the justifications used to start a contentious war abroad. Jobs. Brainy forecasters had said there was "underemployment" in addition to unemployment, including numbers of jobless claims added in to the unemployment count. Pundits were using expressions like "business recession" and "jobless recovery". That was a stark contradiction in terms to Len. How could there be a jobless recovery in any marketplace when people were always the primary factor?

Len worked with machines. Machines were tools that served many uses. Machines were not autonomous, at least not the way most people thought of autonomy when they conceptualized artificial intelligence. Every machine, more importantly every component in a machine was programmed for a purpose, like to compliment a neighboring component or a matrix of computerized processes or perhaps create completely different components independent in every form from the original processes that created it. How were jobs different since they were extensions of humans and human behavior? Except for copying files and other repetitious tasks, output greater than actual, realized human input was not possible.

Surges of anger flared up in Len's mind. It was time to call his girlfriend, but he knew it was about 9 a.m. and too late to reach her since she was in class. Len didn't just want to skip work today, he wanted to leave. Running this by Lakosa would be primary, so Len kept his anger subdued in his head for now.

Len's mind was racing. He could form a partnership with Gerbeth, bring him in to the company part time and outdupe enough of the project leads and their dupsters to corner a share of business. It wasn't practical, aside from Gerbeth on campus all the time. The Big Board had all the other Boards hunkered down, currently not accepting new members and locked in to silly, time-consuming practices ordained by the Big Board that any honest accounting executive would say were trivial. Len had informal contacts at his place of work in other departments who coughed up bits of company rumor when Len did favors for them like fixing erased or virus-infected hard disks. Len had taken the initiative on all fronts for questioning and learning more, knowing others in his periphery didn't know he actively went after striations of company information on an almost lackadaisical basis.

Len didn't play games with his code except in dire need when he made use of assertions to make portions of code run programmatically where it might else not. In person, Len played other people when they thought they were playing Len. What was it called? The Game of Life? "All the world's a stage. . ." Len knew except for a few brilliant malcontents higher up in the echelon most of the saps he worked with (and they nearly were all male) mistakenly put too much of their intellect into writing proprietary code and not enough forming positive and informal relationships with other crewmembers in Len's department.

Len could transfer out of his department but knew the hold of the proprietary takeover reached far across several departments on Len's tier of due diligenced access. Transferring would consume time but be possible if Len really wanted to do it, although an improvement in wages or different coding avenues were likely not in the offing. Len could phase out of his design role a little and move more toward administering online personnel services or testing code for users. He immediately decided against it. Len was sure the cost to him would be more than the benefits. Besides Len was an aspiring engineer with classes to take eventually in school. Getting stuck in a support position was not ideal. Len had done support before for a start-up I.S.P. and smoothly got out of it quicker than he got into it. Len had learned through his own experiences and lessons collectively learned in groups that there were proactive ways to handle support mechanisms efficiently or in a manner coordinated by principles for principled reasons but few of these Len's leadership sought to emulate. This company seemed to go backwards in time for a few's benefit. Ultimately it was the users who suffered when as a result bad code or inaccurate documentation was written.

Len toyed with the idea of going into business for himself. It would mean a business license from the state and county, extra taxes and tax work, investments and personnel. Hiring Gerbeth? Forget it, thought Len. The programmer glanced over his weeklies, his aggregated monthlies and other personal financial charts including earnings expectations and shrugged. There wasn't enough extra cash or substantial overhead to form a legitimate limited liability corporation -- not that he wanted one but Len didn't know how else it could be done given today's world of online trading, speculation and all the other transitions.

Temporary or contracting work? Len had signed two contracts recently, one for the lease on the apartment, the other for salary at the balley-hoo corporation he worked for. Len wanted no more contracts in his life. Len sunk to lower depths and imagined how to sell out his business and position and help a completely different company compete with the one he would quit at a strategic time and manner. Tactically this was a nearly useless and certainly risky plan because the corporation and its watchdogs were not dumb enough to let any small group take over a department let alone an entire section, plus any competing business Len leaned toward could sell him out without reservation.

The business mafiosi monitored workers' email. They tried to monitor Len's but Len included chunks of "gotcha" code encapsulating his emails which performed byte offsets at unanticipated or random times from his end making it unreadable by several aspects during transmission but readable at the recipient's end. The problem was Len's respondents often included Len's original text in their emails sent using normal reply methods easily intercepted by the eavesdropping jackals. The process was one-way concealment from Len's computer. It worked half the time if that since everyone liked to quote everyone else's words in verbatim. The gotcha code wasn't cryptography but Len knew it caused headaches for monitors. After all it was the principle of the matter. Len's correspondence was a private matter and what information he chose to divulge to the business proper was Len's affair and no other's. For fun, Len wrote a program to rotate the offset values in the gotcha code and the frequency of placed values, solely for the purpose of tailoring the offset data to make it even harder for the snoopers to snoop around.

Len put the brakes on the internal takeover thoughts for now because he didn't have the classlessness it took to swim that low. Even if Len had the wherewithal to play rough it wouldn't be for the balley-hoo business nor any of its competitors. In his mind Len could not bring himself to name any of them by their true names. They all sounded stupid. Instead Len substituted a iconographic image for each name, each with its own ribald theme. At one time a while ago to Len they had been glamorous, almost mythical entities. Now it was just part substance, part hot air, and part branding.

The time. . . Immediately Len picked up his landline and dialed to his project coordinator who Len knew was already at work cranking the organ grinder, so to speak.

"Yo, Azea. What are the stats on those counting functions for the Bontebok project?" Bontebok was an African animal which could from a distance pass as a striped gazelle. All project names came from animals. Azea was a female tech Len really got along well with because she was a good coder and was more interested in developing new code snippets than espousing and practicing Corpspeak.

"Negligible. No not even that far. I'm still working on the primer method for the multi get function. Yea, that would be Bontebok. No some of the input/output routines are different in that section now because Andy Kayton and. . others squeezed in their own routines as requested by the company's template spec which you know changes every day, heh heh. What? Not a part of which template? Oh. I know they probably don't care about that now." In due order Len had asked how far Azea and her crew had gotten with a critical part of Bontebok and overestimated a ventured guess, asked about programming routines one of which was by Len's own design and found out more original code had been replaced by the new breed code for no good causal reason. Azea complained about this in her tone of voice without actually saying anything. A template was a foundation or wired mesh of code that subsequent and prior codes formed around to serve programmers a common programming framework model. Kayton had again violated the transparency and good faith templates with no response from project leads.

Len silently admired Azea's trait for keeping face. Even over the phone she was resolutely calm if not agitated by the work conditions that flummoxed a good programmer's efforts.

"Yep I have my headset on. Hey, how do you know that's why I called? Oh, timing, right. . Is he there? Put me on hold as long as you like until you hear from him then can you patch me in, please Azea? Yeah, I can wait. I won't doze off. My music will switch off when you come back on because the voice channel switches to priority when the receiver hits x beats. Oh, for sure I'll show you how to do that on your machine and phone but first you should dump that crappy operating system of yours. Aw, bunk that. Compilers, sch-milers!" Azea correctly deduced Len wanted to get out of working at work today. The boss wasn't in yet so Len would have to wait for him. Azea enthustically asked about Len's phone gadget. Len in turn gave an Open Source recommendation and got a compact lecture on compiler compatibility issues from Azea. Len briefly visualized if Lakosa and him weren't hooked up Azea would be a nice companion outside the boundaries of work. If Azea being ten years Len's senior wasn't motivation he didn't know what was Len jokingly thought to himself giving an amiable sign off to Azea before being put on hold. Len switched to music and turned on his desktop speakers. A web broadcast of islands music cooly streamed out. This hour's DJ had a good mix in his or her cue.

His boss was on in 15 seconds flat. Good thing Len hadn't yet fully switched on the phone gadget. It / did / work, up to the part where it was linked with the phone line. Len had to hack the telco part some more but obviously not now.

"So you want the day off?" said Mitchell Gerngos off the bat. This meant he was by Azea's side or had heard the incoming call in the other office, let them talk it out and patched in almost right away out of boredom or sheer desire or "bored of sheer desire" as Gerbeth so eloquently said of work drones.

Calm as always and not off to a very smooth start Len explained his progress on his assigned section in the Bontebok project with regard to the input/output template. Mitchell strongly rebuked only the part about the now old input/output template because it was Mitchell Gerngos's job to do that Len thought sadly. Gerngos wasn't interested in progress / a priori /, only short term profits as Gerngos viewed profits. Using the new templates was fine by Len but the ethical problem remained with Gerngos not tabling his own motivators (any sponsors notwithstanding). During meetings Gerngos said only staticly that integration of the successor templates would be for "the good of" the team and project revenues, a balk pitch Len had read and heard in many forms since middle school. Len found with experience sitting through meetings it'd become easy to see between the lines of omission no matter what the fuss. Simply put, Gerngos's reasoning was bullshit yet Gerngos was calling bullshit on Len et al.'s template model for boosting code transparency. Just another corporate thug and asshole to boot, Len thought with bitterness.

Len spoke professionally on the phone. It was his nature to stay calm for the frayed ends of sanity only made themselves apparent during coding and at no other time. Len whole heartedly believed he had dealt with all forms of wheeling and dealing. Len had had setbacks, bad trades where he was playing the fool or not paying attention or duped exchanges where someone else got played by another player and neither knew it -- most of all, Len had had comebacks. Tit-for-tat was a volatile rule in the world of coding that exhibited volatility. This parlance or garnering of data carried over into the human world and applied to human relationships with ethics and one's personal moral character being paramount to that.

Given the natural flow of human dialogue Len in short order realized Gerngos hadn't gone back to the primary reason Len called. Gerngos was going off on tangents about Bontebok, pumping Len for information with hastily thought out questions often half complete. Len didn't worry.

"I'll call you later, Mitchell." Len hung up with Gerngos trying to say something. If it was important Gerngos would call back. He didn't. This was further confirmation to the young programmer something was amiss at his job and it had nothing to do with Len wanting to take the day off. Len was glad he had grabbed every last file from his division's servers early this morning. There were non-disclosure agreements and lock-in licenses on portions of the company code but a significant amount of it was in the public domain and on the public archive sites for all to download and review. From that, about half was binary only which meant the source or original written code was kept internal for both reasons of confidentiality and competitiveness. Only one major software company Len had never worked for withheld almost all the source code to their operating system. On the opposite end of the spectrum no company gave everything away and made profit.

The phone rang. Len momentarily expected the shill Gerngos on the line asking more questions before granting a day off but it was Lakosa. Len's constrained draw of breath was again a normal voice without restraint. "Hi! How are you? I'm fine. Classes suck? Work sucks! No. . Yes. No, I mean yes. When? Ok. Blessed be. Bye." Lakosa always had good timing with calls, because Gerngos immediately called in on redial after Len hung up. The caller ID flashed UNKNOWN on its display screen. Len knew from habit it was work with their in-house phone system that fudged the caller ID. It wasn't the secretary with a paycheck to wire to Len's account because it wasn't payday and Len seriously doubted it was Azea.

As always Len answered his phone with the same level greeting he used with everyone. Len always assumed the caller ID couldn't be trusted. By Len's reckoning it was rude to answer the phone saying "Hello, so-and-so". Screening calls was too pre-emptive for Len's views on privacy. It was Gerngos on the phone, fast dialing or timing a call just right.

"We need you to come in today." Gerngos was now forcing the non-issue issue, further distress which meant the upper echelon was pulling Gerngos's strings hard. Len was certain he wouldn't hear anything more from Azea today because she knew the best option to keep simple things simple was defer authority to Gerngos when he showed up. There was no shared responsibility in a corporate fiefdom -- not when things were as advanced as what Azea's team was working on and revenues being the size they were -- that seemed one modern definition of a monopoly, Len thought with cynicism. For approximately a year and a half Len had been able to do approximately 30 to 50 percent of his work remotely or from his house. Len telecommuted to work from his village and also commuted to work in his Prius on a regular basis, dropping Lakosa off at school on the way or picking her up on the return trip. Len wouldn't demure to Gerngos. Len wasn't bashful to say the least and stood up to authority while acknowledging it. Len wouldn't fool with the order of the day and manipulate out of spite or for strictly personal gain -- everyone who behaved civil as citizens more often than not adhered to common decency.

"I quit." Len said. Gerngos stammered but Len cut him off. "For the record, I'm writing down you verbally got my month's notice. I'll be happy to train a replacement, even past my 30 day's notice. That's not in the contract but I think you all will take exception there." Len left just the right amount of emphasis and space around the word all. "I'm taking the day off but I'll be logging in to the corporate network soon to upload revisions, including some updates you briefly requested earlier. Goodbye Mitchell." Len almost said "Mr. Gerngos" by rote from the days of grade school. Project work had become so stiff at Len's soon to be former workplace that Len almost inadvertently used a formal attribution. It would have frosted relations with Gerngos even further. "Everyone goes on a first-name basis here" Len remembered Gerngos saying when Len started working there. The informality had ended there, Len thought happily.

Len / was / happy though at the moment he had no idea what he was going to do next. Lakosa was going to flout him for a gut feeling that felt really good now. Len wanted to grow and there was no room left to grow in a place where playing musical hurdy-gurdies produced results but sound programming was left to rot.

...

The next day Len was at the table with Phil who was eating and reading and Lakosa who sat, eating her food and looking at her food then at Len.

Time and emotion weren't wasted. "You really sure you want to quit?" She asked.

"Absolutely," Len said. "What I mean is, I've given notice so I won't effectively quit 'til 29 days from now." Phil was really reading his book and tuning out. Phil could "switch off" or tune nearly anything out. Jokingly Len once had pop-quizzed Phil about what he knew of the details to Len and Lakosa's relationship after he'd been in residency for two weeks. A doubtful, questioning glance took over Phil. He really didn't know. He was roommates and that was that. Nevertheless, Len was restrained in conversation at the table. Sometimes Lakosa pushed too hard on issues and Len could feel a moment such as this arriving. "I'm looking at options. We're looking at options to make things happen to get money."

"What does that mean?" Lakosa inquired. "Other jobs or working on your own?"

Phil got up to put his dishes in the sink and left the room for upstairs. School started later. As usual Phil didn't say anything before leaving.

"Working on my own, plus getting others in on some things." Lakosa stated in flat tones.

Lakosa laughed. "Uh oh, that sounds illegal, Len!" She did her best Don Corleone impression: "I need 'some things' done, caprice?" Len grinned and shook his head.

"But really," She continued. "I'm working part time at that restaurant. You know I hate it but what else is it going to be? We pitch in to the kitty but keep our finances decoupled as you oh-so-wisely mentioned we do at the beginning. I should look for different job maybe the same kind of gig but I know better: around here everyone and everything else is really limited in what they can do and offer right now, who they can hire and all."

Len leaned forward. "It's like that nearly everywhere in the U.S. or so I've heard. How much debt can. ."

Lakosa put her hand over Len's mouth. To Len it was a sore yet kind, ongoing joke from Lakosa that Len "spoke with too much hyperbole". A private, reflective moment passed. Her back was straight but her arms were folded at the table. "I don't have massive debt. You don't, I think. What about borrowing or title loans?"

Len shook his head. "No, except for the usual things like a mortgage or getting a good deal on a new car the debt system as it sits now with the incumbent credit bureaus is not much more than a legal Ponzi scheme. I'll lose more money in interest than I get up front in advance." Lakosa frowned quizzically. Len corrected himself. "No, it's not like that for bank loans but with the title loans they really nail you on the interest, plus they're not designed for real investments -- just paying monthlies with nearly nothing afterward or negative amounts carried over. It's total Ponzi."

"You should look at bank loans," Lakosa said. "Any good credit cards?"

Len shrugged. "Most of them have about the same interest rates. Lines of credit won't solve issues now."

"So what are you, we, going to do? Yeah, I know about decoupling but I'm in on this and so is Phil. We have to keep the rent paid up."

"Of course," said Len. At least Len was getting somewhere with Lakosa to start. In his mind Len was sorting through every kind of business arrangement and method of finance that had been tested, tried or successfully run between people. He wouldn't go into business for himself but have to form alliances, and soon in clever but common, thoughtful ways. How, and with who? Alliances required common goals. In flitting memory chunks, Len went to the cooperative model. He remembered how from a languid account by a friend who once had been in a housing cooperative that living at a co-op was suitable for day-to-day needs but co-ops were organizationally ill prepared for logistical and financial complexities which came by normal household interaction. The voting system to direct weekly cleaning chores got sabotaged by members with tenure, said Len's friend so the new members got the worst of the lot. People stole food or spent the check allocated for food purchases on take-out meals at restaurants instead of procuring groceries from lists with line-item needs for the house's residents. In one case, embezzlers used an old receipt with the date torn off, saying all the food somehow got eaten when less than 24 hours had passed since the weekly food purchasing trip.

Len thought of grocery cooperatives. There were a few local cooperatives in name only and had long ago outed members in favor of some new proprietary ownership program. Len had heard a Florida 2000-like story from Phil on the way one particular local grocery cooperatives members' votes got "tallied", "voting" in an election in favor of a new ownership program to run the cooperative -- a program that seemed especially suited for wealthy members. All former lifetime members subsequently were privileged to become "owner-members". Hundreds of "unknown" tallies had been recorded by ballot officials who called the ballots invalid because voters didn't vote for the choices provided and got marked unintelligible. These ballots were discarded without explanation to the public and the farce kept momentum.

Len put a fist and arm down on the table with a slow, pivotlike motion without thumping. "New paradigm," he said.

"What?" Lakosa asked, between spoonfuls of granola or some cereal Len thought was way too hippy with all its organic certifications and healthy ingredients.

"I need a new paradigm. I mean I need some people to sell a new paradigm for others and for me too. Another business model, because everything we got now sucks, right?"

Lakosa harked to her school. "Articles of incorporation, due diligence."

Len was in a comfortable mood now but there was a mood of caution that encapsulated him. He was lucid. Len was very aware and wary of what Lakosa said to him, would never forget it nor how he responded. For the first time in about 8 months Len didn't trust Lakosa for the simple or not so simple fear of her being a competitor. Len just then suddenly realized it was going to take some heavy innovation and serious sweat to make some things that Len briefly, presciently visualized now to work for other people, for these alliances, later. Of this he said nothing to Lakosa.

"I agree with a lot of the uh, de facto business standards." Len leaned back briefly to stretch and locked eyes with Lakosa. "But you know I'm not a businessman Lakosa. I program code for a living. Maybe I think like a business guy, sure but I know jack shit about day trading, commissioning of finance, all the different types of funds and monetary policy." Len knew that was a bit too much off the cuff. Lakosa confirmed it.

"So become a broker." She said.

Len shook his head. He'd spent 2 months in New York City's Manhattan's lower financial district, pre 9/11. He loved working with the brokers and hanging out with the very literal moneymen (a few women too) who'd pro-offered technical assistance and jargon translations in their trade. Len didn't want to be a trader for a living. Not that a bagel with lox for breakfast every morning or brown-bagging a beer on the Staten Island ferry every night sounded bad, Len thought. He went in to the kitchen to make toast as Lakosa talked. He asked her if she wanted toast and butter.

"Sure! Hold the butter. Be a broker and start your own E*Trade, or something?" She queried aloud toward the kitchen. She wanted this solved this morning, Len lamented. He sliced up and put in two really good slices of bread from a loaf Lakosa had picked up somewhere.

"No, my love that's not what I do. I write code, I don't trade on numbers, I make the numbers numbers so others know they're numbers and not anything else." Did that made sense to Lakosa? thought Len. "Besides," he grinned. "I can't crunch numbers to calculus like one or two of those guys at CantorFitzgerald can." He thought back to 9/11/01 & instinctively, sadly remembered where he'd been and what he was doing when he'd heard the news about the Towers. Len wondered who in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. government was really responsible for friends of friend's lives lost. A few months prior to 9/11 Len had visited a financial firm in the South Tower and in brief met people who might be dead now.

"Well, get representation, baby." Lakosa said, eagerly finishing the rest of her breakfast. "I still think you should join the War Resistor's League but don't forget about 'death and taxes'". A comment about passing on. Len ignored the remark suggesting he not pay his taxes. Maybe Lakosa's mind had briefly touched upon 9/11 or some contentious event with political overtones and worldly implications which deserved scrutiny and people like the independent, alternative Lakosa were in for the count to beat the drums and find out what the fuck was going on in the green and blue world today.

"I'm telling you, it's going to take a new paradigm," Len chided, forming a box with his hands and with his two index fingers then simultaneously traced lines in and out of that imaginary box. He rested his hands. "But first some planning and then it's work. I'm going downstairs. I'm turning the heat on to room temperature on the way, if you abide. Are you leaving soon?" Len was already up with the dishes in the sink and down the stairs before she could answer.

...

Len sat semi-calmly at his keyboard, staring at the mouse cursor, graphics and text characters which sent a splash of colors onto the folding table under the computer's monitor and lit up Len's face where he sat working. He'd spent most of the morning agonizing over one small section of code after churning out several pages of related code for an inventory project he'd need to get started with his business. Lakosa was away on errands & Phil was in school.

Len for convenience kept thinking "his business" but this concept by itself didn't jive with him. He didn't want to do what he thought were all the necessary tasks by himself but the way the situation stood right now he wasn't sure if he could choose a different path for the time being. He'd gone through his electronic rolodex of contacts and asked both old and new acquaintances if they were interested in partnering up with him. Len had non-financially sold some of them on three principle things, one or more of Len's acquaintances had made money in the enterprises Len suggested get combined or be separate as needed for the pieces to what Len called right now his "ad-hoc organization": email/DNS provider, storage provider and custom file systems.

Email was a no-brainer. Too many people had email addresses with the big providers who advertised it was free to use. Well, nothing was free to use seeing unsolicited mail or spam was an ongoing problem on some of those provider's channels in addition to other arrangements. First Len described to online pals a namespace idea he had that could be managed via aspects of the DNS protocol. DNS stood for Domain Name System but it was more a series of systems that interacted and interrelated information from one step to another step, becoming protocol. The DNS combined with server-side software programs handled the naming of names working with the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol which was the most used protocol in many parts on Earth for, among many things, resolving I.P. addresses using ranges like 111.222.333.444 which would read as www.1plus1.info on a Web browser.

Len knew one acquaintance that worked with the Internet Protocol V6 (IPV6) "stack" who said he would commit "a pretty plain routine", sending code in later to Len's computer archive accessible online. The acquaintance found this code on a software site a week ago but he "couldn't work on the whole thing right now" Attenuating side phrases like that were one key to successful planning in software, Len noted.

The IPV6 stack was a layered software protocol which allowed hundreds of billions of addresses beyond the ratchety old IPV4 yet compliant with IPV4's ways and means. IPV6 represented IPV4 forms like 222.444.666.888, cubing or tripling that whole set and then multiplying the set by ten to reach a seemingly infinite quantity of available I.P. addresses for Web sites, file storage sites, etc. IPV4 would soon be for all still on old Internet time, Len joked to himself. The older IPV4 system with constructs like 222.444.888.161 was inherently compatible with any combination of the hundreds of billions of IPV6 combinations.

Ostensibly, services Len wanted to focus on and capitalize with were IPV4-IPV6 translation services. A guy Len spoke to said "moving over" or electronically translating IPV4 to IPV6 addresses on-the-fly or in almost real-time would be difficult to administrate once the basic layer of code for the task Len described to him was put into place. Len responded in an equally non-committal voice over the phone: "If someone can initially move things along pre-defined paths then we can take things one step at a time and log every task and timetable as we go and it'll get done. I can work on the addressing (name mapping) routines to the task I mentioned."

Len knew today he had grabbed or hooked some people on his ideas but responding back or following up at a critical time would be important too. The others probably wouldn't follow up or not soon enough. If one or two people Len talked to today got together plus followers to take the "on the take" path it would hurt Len. Most likely the worst that would happen is if others took public shots at being leader they'd diverge too quickly on a path Len wouldn't agree to follow. Nearly everyone had everyone else's email. Len had referenced the possibility of working with mutual acquaintances to his callers.

Len could tell he'd courted diametric opposition as a result of both planned, diplomatic language and his level delivery in tone because he'd gotten back harried questions and frank rebuttals, some quite intelligent. It was a kind of combative male discourse that came with planning project territory but more resembled stupid mind games. Jobs seemed scarce and competitiveness was high, theft of ideas notwithstanding. Time was limited but as Len saw in some cases some people's perceptions of time were limited so they did strange things other then inviting and harboring consensus on software projects.

Len hated to use the expression but could think of no other. He had "project manager" skills that needed expansion. Len idlely thought of recruiting the younger generation too but kept it cool. Len had hardly anything together at this very moment to deliver as running code. Anyway, Len would never put his signature on any of the best and brightest, not always welcome & innovative methods originating from the youngest generations of coders, hackers, social misfits, activists, spies, mercenaries, criminals, cops and phone phreakers. Simply put, it wasn't his generation. He didn't know what they were doing but he knew the new hackers had more tools, instruments and toys to work with than ever before even if the times were tough with food hard to get and computer equipment with Internet bandwidth not cheap or accessible like it could be.

Up to the end of this morning Len been working on pieces of the addressing routine, now borrowing heavily from other great programmers works because he'd already determined a portion of his portion of the yet unnamed project had been done before. Licensing of existing and new software was something to pay attention to. Len understood licensing most when examining the language of warranties to stereos and reading through digital disclaimers before using software ("Click 'Yes' to Accept". .) but knew wording was subject to interpretation, legal interpretation and legal words used notwithstanding. Len began thinking new licensing terms could exist alongside the existing terms of present software licenses. Outside consultation would be a must here.

Len believed every one of his conversations with people today on the phone had been wholly practical. Len had successfully communicated to them, plus went forward on nearly every detail with the providers and file systems ideas and wasn't just talking the talk. Certain people were specialized with specific types of providers and file systems and Len had appropriated specific information to each of them where needed. Everyone Len spoke with had practiced due diligence before in some humanly recognizable form and had come through on putting out various projects. At times people hadn't done what they said they would do. Or, an individual not verifying someone else understood what he said to them lead to communication breakdowns and hang-ups for all participants. Len wanted to forget (but not totally forget) most of the bad examples from his and other's histories now, knowing at any rate a few old scars would show themselves but understand when to put it down or go along. Len might be the first to patch in his code alongside other's code, compile it and make it all work together in places as running, binary code or executable software.

The phone calls were OK but no spelled out, agreed-to-by-handshaking words or deals were verbally used. Len had planned it that way, making the pitches brief & a near priority but put equal energy at some point into truly being inquisitive about a new compiler issue, recent recommended software upgrades or bug reports on faulty software the recipient talked about which Len and others more often than not used, too. Fixing or solving one task by yourself was one thing, sometimes necessary. Approaching the task yourself and with peer review consisted of other's assessments of related tasks for coding some kind of digital instruction & the presentation of this being the same to all contributors at future times, so measured and agreed upon by contributor consensus and other factors, / that / was quite another thing from working solely by yourself!