Welcome to Gnutara

This new series is a big step in the wide world of OpenVu here we start to get a glimpse of how large this world really is. We are introduced to new technologies in a sort of massive multiplayer type universe, except it’s not a game, not all the time. Anyway here is part 1.

Part 1 of ?
By Thomas Ham

I was awakened by light piercing through a hole on the shade covering my bedroom window in my small downtown apartment. It was 7 o’clock in the morning of another workday. Slowly I got up letting the blood get to my head. Walking over computer books, game manuals and clothes strewn about my bedroom floor I made my way to the bathroom to get ready. This is not what I thought working in the computer industry would be.

All my life, well as far as I can remember, I loved programming computers. Everyday after school when kids would be outside playing with their friends I would be in my room playing with my computer. I had an older model computer, my parents got for free from someone, it didn’t come with a lot of software except for a word processor a money management program and a game. But the only thing that got my attention was the game. Not for it’s exciting game play of detailed graphics because it didn’t have either of those things but because I was able to edit the programs code. It was a game that featured a snake or a line, depending on your level of imagination, that would move around the screen and you’d control it with the arrow keys and move it around obstacle courses eating or running into numbers that would appear on the screen. I would edit the code of the game to make it faster, make the snake bigger or even create more levels. I loved being able to control the program and tell it what I wanted it to do. At an early age I knew that this is what I wanted to be when I got older, not a fireman, astronaut or archeologist but a computer programmer.

After all the years pursuing my dream I thought there would be something more. I usually woke up and almost dreaded going to work. Sometimes I felt like a gourmet chef who’s working at a fast food chain, he could do a lot more than just flip burgers. There is a lot more I could be doing with my abilities than making silly, useless programs day in and day out.

But this day was a little different I wasn’t looking forward to work, but I was looking forward to what Dr. Gehtle had in store for us later. The night before was a rather exciting adventure and I wanted to learn more about OpenVu and see what it does. It was amazing interacting with the computer, controlling and creating programs with out typing.

I finally finished my rather uneventful day in my boring office cubicle. And got into my not to impressive car and got onto the cold and busy streets of downtown. The sun was setting but really to me my day was just starting.

I parked in front of the now familiar building which was were Dr. Gehlte’s offices were. The sky was now dark and the cities lights were reflecting off the low cloud layer. I made my way up the stairs to his green door and knocked.

“Come in Mark, come in.” Dr. Gehlte yelled.

I opened the door to see him smiling and standing next to a large and fairly odd contraption in the middle of his office.

“Hey Gehtle”, I said. “How’s it going?”.

“Just fine Mark. Good day at the coal mines?”, he said in his deep voice with a slight laugh.

“I guess so.”

“I bet your wondering what this is?” he said straightening a piece of material that seem to line the whole inside of the tent like contraption that looked to be over 6 feet tall and took up most of the free space in his office. “This is the camera that will take the 3d repensentation of your body we need to create a skin for you. That way we won’t look like twins walking around in the city.”.

“What city?”

“First things first.” Dr. Gehtle opened the light weight door of the camera.

I made my way into the large contraption. Gehlte shut the door behind me. The whole inside was covered in a thin reflective material. There were bright lights positioned all around the top and sides of the metal cage and a row of what appeared to be small cameras that went almost to the top of the cage were connected to a track that ran vertically .

“It’s really bright in here.” I said shielding what light I could with my hand above my eyes.

“I know. But it will only take a few minutes. Go ahead and step on that blue piece of tape in the midlle Mark.”.

I stood on the tape and looked around. The row of camera started to move up and down the track. The inside of the cage was fairly large there was enough room for me to stretch out my arms to the side and in front of me with room to spare.

“Ok, now just stand up straight and smile for the cameras.” Gehlte said as the lights got even brighter in the cage. Gehlte had me move my arms, legs and neck in and out of several positions so that the system could see the natural bends and movement of my body. It took about fifteen minutes of exercises that reminded me of 5th grade PE. The lights finally dimmed in the cage and the camera stop moving.

“Ok that’s it”, Gehlte said opening the door. I made my way out as my eyes adjusted to the light of the much dimmer office. “What do you think?”, Gehlte said pointing a monitor which had a 3d version of me turning slowly.

“Wow, that’s pretty cool”, I said as a leaned in closer to the monitor. “I can’t believe how detailed it is.”.

“Now for your attire. A pollo shirt and jeans won’t cut it in the west.”. Gehlte said laughing and clicking the mouse to bring up a screen full of different western type clothes.

“Well actually I kind of liked what I wore last time in the system”.

“Great choice.” Smiling Gehtle sat down and turned towards the monitor and finished setting up my new skin. He typed and clicked away for a few minutes as I looked around his office. There was nothing really in it except for the computer equipment and assorted tables and desks. None of the walls had anything on them except for the peeling wall paper. But he spent most of his time in the OpenVu system so I guess it didn’t mater if his office was well decorated or not, no one ever saw it.

“Ok we’re all set.” Gehlte said spinning around in his chair and making his way to the table were he started to put on his gloves and goggles. I too made my way to the table and put on the gear.

The view in my goggles was again white but it soon started to fade into a light blue sky with sparse clouds. I looked around. We appeared to be outside on the platform of an old train station. I looked around for Gehtle who was off to my left.

“Where are we?”, I asked. Looking at an infinite dessert in front of us.

“This is a train station. Basically we have to ride a train which at the same time authenticates our user accounts and connection so that we can get into the city. Oh wait a minute.” Gehtle started checking several of his pockets.

“What?”

“Ah here it is,” he unfolded a small piece of paper “your offical OpenVu user account. Hang on to that tightly, it’s not easy to get one of these.” Gehtle handed me a yellowish paper with my photo and user account number all printed on the paper with a black ink.

“Never thought I’d have one of these. Thanks.” I folded it and placed it under my tunic and into the pocket of my dusty looking jeans. ”But why a train?”.

“It takes about a half hour so I guess they thought it would be more entertaining than just waiting around by a door”. Gehlte said as he checked a cartridge in his gun belt. “Oh hey check it out.” He said pointing with his thumb to a window of the wooden building that was directly behind us.

As I approached I could see myself in the reflection. “Hey cool.” I said adjusting my light brown cowboy hat.

“Pretty accurate I’d say”.

Just then a whistle sounded and a large chugging black steam engine made it’s way slowly along the tracks on the dessert sand to our platform and stopped with a loud hiss and screech. Light steam filled the air around us.

“Well you ready?”. Gehtle said stepping into a cab of the old steam engine.

I stepped in ready to see what was in store for us this day.

Now for Something Entirely Different

When I first started writing CodeSlinger humor was a small part of the story. So I came back to the Postal Fix and rewrote it as a radio drama with thicker humor. Here it is the radio drama rewrite never before published.
Postal Fix – Radio Script – Part 1

Character Voices
Narrator – Older deeper male voice, almost with an English accent.
Mark – Young voice a little nasally not high but not deep.
Victor – Deep healthy voice, enthusiastic mostly, with strong laugh.
Kelly – High school girl voice, a little valley girl and snotty.

Scene1 – The Phone Call

MUSIC: Silent background or cheesy music

Narrator: This show is dedicated to all the kids and adults who said “Don’t become a narrator you will never amount to anything.” Thank you, you were right.

MUSIC: (City Noises lightly in background)

Narrator: Our story begins here, a small quite office in the middle of a large consumer driven city. This is where our hero works, well our soon to be hero well actually he doesn’t save anyone or stop some big disaster so I guess he’s more like a main character more than a hero of the story pause anyway, and he is in the middle of another boring raining day of programming for C-Byte.

SFX: (Transition from city sounds to busy office sounds mostly typing and light talking)

NARRATOR: C-byte is not the best company to work for, although they have great insurance and dental plans their IRA and retirement leave something to be desired. They also develop silly semi useless programs that are embedded into children’s clothes. The last upgrade that Mark made to theses clothes was rather unsuccessful and made the fibers of the hideously designed clothes heat up forcing the children to remove them (low shrills and screams). As you know this kind of thing was not looked on as “good” by the parents of the now warm, half naked children and because of this Mark almost lost his job.

Mark (Sarcastic) Not that I would’ve minded, I mean who wouldn’t want to go mindless in a cubicle all day.

Narrator Ahem…right. That is exactly what Herb in cubicle 9 has done. Herb enjoys his work at C-Byte, writing repetitive code, humming, typing and drinking lukewarm coffee until 5:30 every day and he sometimes comes in on the weekends and holidays. Obviously he has lost his mind. Where if would just picked up the small cardboard box that is left of his broken office chair he would find it. He would then proceed to destroy his computer and run out of the office to the nearest hill and sing “The hills are alive with the Sound of Music” faint singing of fore mentioned song and then sound of a record scratching. Let’s hope he doesn’t find the box.

Now back to Mark. He is about to receive a very important call, that will transform the everything, well not the everything in the general sense of the word but at least Mark’s bleak existence.

SFX: (Regular office type phone ringing)

Mark Hello, this is Mark.

Victor (phone voice) Mark West?

Mark Yes.

Victor The Mark West who last month wrote an article on fixing a Linux based email program.

Mark Ahh…Yes. Who’s this?

Victor Oh yes. My name is Victor Ghetle, actually Dr. Victor Ghelte.

Mark Okay?

Victor I am, kind of, in need of your assistance. Do you think you could meet me at my office at 435 Fleck Street say around 6 tonight? I would like some help with an email program.

Mark Ahh…sure. See you around 6.

Narrator Now Mark made a slight hesitation because he mentally checked his date book, which was, not surprisingly, empty for the next 10 months. Mark’s after work life and more specifically his love life was a disaster.

It really all started when he was a senior in high school, he had to ride his sisters pink banana seat bike to school for an entire month. The reason he had to do that was because his mothers pink Cadillac, which would drag the bumper because the shocks where out, exploded in front of the school one morning from a lone spark that ignited the gas tank but because the car was always low on fuel it only caused a ruckus and didn’t injure anyone. As you can imagine this type of thing doesn’t help your chances of getting a date to the prom, which went a little something like this for Mark.

Mark (Nervous) Kelly would you …ahh… like to go to the prom with me.

Kelly Aren’t you the guy with that pink bike.

Mark (Defensive) No.

Kelly Then why are the back of jeans all pink?

Mark Ahh … ohh .. I gotta go.

SFX: (Sounds of Mark running away)

Narrator The whole pink bike issue humiliated him and he spent all of his time in his room programming, which is why he is now at C-Byte putting that skill he developed out of humiliation to good use.

The article Victor referred to was in fact Mark’s 5th article to be published in the monthly “Coders Monthly”, clever title, magazine. Where in fact 3.5 people actually read it and 250 others merely glanced over it to look good in front of their colleagues. The .5 from the 3.5 people, who read the article, was actually a dog that glanced over the article (pages turning). Being a very intelligent dog he immediately took it to his master (panting sounds and dog walking) who was working on the same issue with his email program that mark wrote about (frustrated male sounds and typing). Instead of looking at what his dog brought him, the dog’s master just yelled (yelling type noises and magazine being thrown across the room noise and dog whimpering) and threw the magazine at the dog. The dog in returned left a surprise in his master’s shoes later that day (squishy type noise and sigh from male voice).

After work Mark got into his late model car,

SFX: (car door shuts and something falls of the car with a clank)

NARRATOR actually very late model. He made his way downtown through the rain to Victor’s office.

SFX: (sputtering car noises with rain)

NARRATOR On the way he stopped at a stoplight. As the rain pored down on him an old street person started to clean Marks window with a rag.

SFX: (Old man grunts and window wiping noise)

NARRATOR: Which really didn’t help.

Mark Can’t you see it’s raining. Man, this guys really sharp.

Narrator And well considering his family he actually was. He is the third uncle twice removed, whatever that means, to the owner of C-byte and looking at the choices the company has made of late you could actually see the family resemblance and it would seem that wiping windows in the rain would be better than making kids clothes with implanted electronics.

SFX: (Sputter car noise with slight brake noise and car sputters off, car is stopping at destination)

Mark Hmm, This is it I guess. That puke green door upstairs must be the front door, it’s the only office with a light on.

SFX: Slow foot steps up the stairs

SFX: Gun shoots in background. police sirens

Mark Great neighborhood.

SFX: Rapid foot steps up the rest of the stairs

SFX: Knock and the door creaks open

Mark Hello…Dr. Ghetle?

The Postal Fix Posted

The entire Postal Fix Short story of the CodeSlinger series has been posted and to celebrate I thought I would show some of the concept comic art that has been done so far. I had a veteran comic artist help with concepting the look and feel of the comic as well as doing the first series of panels since we had several national computer tech magazines interested, unfortunately nothing came of it. Oh well, I hope you enjoy and maybe someday the comic version will be completed.

Panel 1 final-small2.jpg

Panel 2 comic_real2.jpg

The Postal Fix

Part 3 of 3
By Thomas Ham

As we started walking down the dirt road, I noticed the town was setup in a kind of horseshoe design. The town was dead except for the occasional robot that came out of a door and rolled around to another one across the street.

“This isn’t a very active town, is it?”, said Victor. He looked around in a way that seemed like he was looking for something other than our destination.

“Yeah pretty quiet.”, I said as I looked down at my dusty brown boots. I noticed that we were leaving footprints or rather boot prints all over the sandy path. “Hey, that’s interesting”.

“What is?”, my companion said while he was looking towards a rather large building.

“We leave footprints in the sand.”

“Oh yeah, that tracks our every move in the town.”, he said. Dr. Gehtle stopped and looked at one of his tracks. “And they’re usually permanent.” Gehtle tried to kick dust on the print, but it just made more prints around his original.

“Interesting.”

We approached a small shack that was sitting right next to the very large three story building that Gehtle was eyeing before.

“Here it is”, Gehtle said. He pushed opened the squeaky, flimsy wooden door of the small shack.

“This is the port guard?”

“I know, not very impressive is it. Most of the time these are a lot more secure than this and bigger.”

We stepped inside the dimly lit one room shack. The inside was barely big enough for us both to fit. A small light with no shade hung from the ceiling and wasn’t helping much. Dr. Gehtle approached the far wall which was still dark because my eyes needed to adjust from being outside. Finally, the wall started to become clearer. The entire wall seemed to be covered by metallic pipes coming from all directions. Most of them ended abruptly, while a few made their way toward the bottom of the wall, all coming together into one large pipe.

“Ok do you understand what we’re seeing Mark?”

“What is this school?”, I thought. I approached the wall also. “Umm, well it appears that only these pipes going into the large pipe here”, I said pointing to the large pipe, “have access into the town and the other ones are just cut off and can’t go anywhere.”.

“Pretty much” Dr Gehtle said as he inspected some of the pipes that were dead ended into the wall. “These pipes control everything in and out of this town, basically the ports of the system. If you need access through other ports or pipes you just continue the pipes into the large one.”

“Hmm”, I said. I looked at the pipes and noticed numbers engraved on them and then something else. “What’s this town used for?”

“I think just for a little bit of storage and of course as a postal service”.

“Well, then why do they need the pipe 21 running into the large pipe? What are they transferring around?” I said pointing to the pipe with a 21 engraved into it.

“I was thinking the same thing. I think the email problem was just a symptom of something a lot bigger.”.

Dr. Gehtle went outside to call up the client and told me to continue inspecting the pipes. Everything else looked fine except for that one pipe.

“The owner has no idea why that pipe is being used. He gave us access to make the changes necessary to make it more secure here.” Dr. Gehtle joined me next to the pipes. He took out his gun. “This way is a little messy but it works.” He aimed the revolver at the pipe and fired. The gun sounded just like a real gun. The bullet punctured the pipe and immediately the pipe caught fire with a blue flame, just like the envelopes it didn’t affect anything else and also left no trace of fire on the wall.

“Well it worked.” I said with a half smile.

“I love this thing.”, he said twirling the gun around his finger and then placing it into the holster on his belt. “Well lets start inspecting this…” He was cut off from the sound of the flimsy door squeaking open and then closing. We both turned around surprised to see a thin robot about waste high, with two arms rolling towards us. Dr. Gehtle already had his gun out and pointing at the bot. I moved my tunic and pulled out my gun rather clumsily and pointed it towards the bot also.

“Careful with that, it could do some damage in here.” Dr. Gehlte said as he let the robot roll by him. “Let’s see what he’s doing in here”. The robot approached the wall and started to create a new pipe where the pipe 21 used to be. Dr. Gehtle approached the bot with his gun in hand. “Great it’s a fixer bot. There is definatly someone doing something in this town. Go ahead, take it out.”, he said rather seriously.

I pointed my revolver at the bot and fired before it could finish the pipe it was creating. The gun kicked back in my hand and just like the pipe and envelope, the bot immediately caught fire and left no trace of it’s existence. “Hey, this bot didn’t leave any tracks on the floor.”

Dr. Gehlte put his gun away and bent over to inspect the dirt ground in the shack. “You’re right someone’s trying to get away with something. Come on.” He said as he opened the door and exited the building. “Let’s see if we can figure out what is going on here”. We started to make our way towards the entrance of town when Dr. Gehtle stopped walking. I was walking behind him and couldn’t see why he had stopped. I moved over to the side and saw a dark figure at the edge of the town.

“That’s not a bot is it?”, I said trying to see what the dark shape was.

“No, I don’t think so. I think this is what we’re looking for though.”

The dark figure made its way towards us and stopped about twenty feet in front of us. It was another person. He was tall, medium build with a dark complexion. He wore a dark brown dusty cowboy hat which covered most of his face, his long black hair came out from under it. His shirt was white and his pants were tan and looked dirty. He was holding a large brown cigar in one hand and what appeared to be a metallic lighter in the other.

“Ahhh, the great doctor Victor Gehtle.” Said the stranger as he paused and looked at me. “And your …. twin?” He continued as he turned his head back towards Gehtle. “Fancy seeing you here. A man of your abilities reduced to just a repairman. Nice work in post office by the way. Oh, and I see you met one of my fixer bot, it did a good job keeping this place the way I needed it.”

“How have you been Nigel? Same old business I see. What low life hired you this time?”, Dr Gehtle said. I stood quiet and rather surprised that Victor knew this person, not that I knew Victor that well.

“What an honor you remember me.” Nigel said with a grin. ”Come on, you know I can’t say Victor.” He said with a half smile as he lit his cigar and puffed on it a few times. “You know the only thing I don’t like about this world, there’s no feeling. This, in the real world would be a fine treat but here…it’s a prop…tasteless.”. He said as he took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it.

“So, why would anyone hire you to get into this place? There’s nothing here but a mail service”. Gethle said.

“That right there. That is why I spent 3 months in this place.”. Nigel said as he pointed to the three story building next to the little shack we had come out of with the end of his cigar. “That my old friend is my silver tuna, there was a lot of data in there. I got paid quite a bit for doing this job but all good things must come to an end, right pal”. Nigel pulled out of his pants pocket what appeared to be a stick of dynamite. “And I thought I was going to be the only one to witness this, what a treat.” Nigel laughed in a grunting way and lit the fuse with the end of his smoldering cigar. Small sparks flew from the fuse. There was nothing we could do but watch what was about to happen.

“Well, Nigel I’m sure I’ll run into you later.” Gehtle said rather sternly.

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Nigel said as he threw the stick towards the three story building.

I watched the dynamite fly through the air, I was interested to see what was going to happen, almost excited. The red stick bounced off the bottom of the tall building, rolled on the ground for a second and then exploded. The explosion looked much like a regular explosion in the real world. Dust and a red cloud began to rise, I could only see the top of the tall three story building because of the smoke but it’s roof was burning blue. Then everything went from dust color to white, slowly. I sat staring into the white, for a few seconds, thinking about everything this day brought. I Slowly took off my goggles.

“Well, Mark I guess we lost that one. I think that place is completely destroyed. I’ll check with the client tomorrow to see if there’s anything left.” Gehtle said starring at a monitor looking as if he were in deep thought. “Listen, come over tomorrow, I want to show you the other side of OpenVu. It’s not all work, I think you’ll enjoy it.” He said as we were both removing our gloves and letting our eyes adjust to the light of the room

I left Dr. Gehlte’s office that night actually excited to see what the next day would bring.

The Postal Fix

Part 2 of 3
By Thomas Ham

“Ok Mark let’s get this thing booted up.”, he said placing the gloves on his hands making sure every finger fit properly and adjusting the goggles around his eyes also placing his headphones properly around his ears. “I know we’re sitting right next to each other but it is just better with these on.”, he was talking about the headphones, so I put everything on a little anxious to see what was in store, to actually touch and see the working programs of the computer. I had always wanted to try this program out but the program was way to expense for me to buy just to try it.

When I placed my goggles on I saw just white light everywhere. “Is it supposed to just be all white.”, I said, hoping everything was working properly.

“Just a second it’s loading up. Oh yeah I gave you my old skin to use, we’ll see about building you your own skin later.”. He said. The skin he was referring to was what we would see as our bodies in the 3d world of the computer program.

“Ok you should start seeing something now,” he said with a little enthusiasm in his voice, “let me know if it’s coming up ok.” As he was talking I started to see colors slowing fading into the white, then everything became very clear. The world was finely detailed, it looked like an old west town with dirt on the ground and wooden buildings and we were standing right at the entrance to the town. There were several windowless buildings lining both sides of the street, there were large 3 story buildings, regular single story buildings and a few small shacks.

“Wow this is really cool, what are all these buildings and…”, I paused I as looked at my companion. “What are you wearing!”, I asked.

“What, oh these, they’re western clothes, look at what you are wearing.”, he said.

I looked down and noticed what I was wearing, “This looks like the clothes Clint Eastwood wore in his first movies.”, I said rather surprised at the skin he gave me.

“Yeah I really liked those movies.”, he said as he walked towards the town.

“Obviously”, I murmured as I followed closely behind. He was wearing a black hat and an all black long sleeve shirt with brown pants, around his waste I noticed a holster with a gun that resembled an old revolver. “I wonder what that’s for.” I thought still following trying to get beside him.

“Ok let me explain what we are seeing here. These buildings are basically folders of the file system inside they can contain rooms, hallways, storage bins, safes, papers and a number of different robots or programs working inside. You see, the computer will generate programs as robots some are large and don’t move, some have wheels to move them around or hands to grab things. Whatever the program does the computer will generate its look based on that.”, he said pointing at the buildings and a small metallic robot rolling across the street with a number of papers in its hand.

“And the rooms inside the building, those are more folders and those can have programs in side of them.”, I said as I watched the robot open a door of a building and roll in.

“Exactly”, he said grinning.

“What about the gun on your belt. Is that just part of your skin.” I asked curiously.

He took the short, fat barrel gun out of its holster and spun it around his finger a few times. “This is one of our weapons or tools , it is used to remove files. Notice you have one too, along with a number of cartridges you can load into it.”, he said as he placed the gun back into the holster.

I lifted up my tunic to the side, which was draped over my entire body, and revealed my own gun with cartridges that resembled large shot gun shells in a leather looking belt running across my chest. “Oh yeah.” I said, taking the gun out to inspect it more closely.

“Right now the cartridge to remove things is loaded, it will remove whatever you point and fire at. There are also cartridges that will remove groups of things, for example point it at a robot and fire and it will remove that robot and any similar robots in a room. There are a number of other cartridges some I developed myself. Oh yeah we only have access to use them inside certain buildings. The owner of the machine we are in only gave us certain access. And currently we are outside, at the root part of the system that is why it looks like we are outside. I hope this is all making sense, it kind of threw me off the first time I used the system.”, he said as we continued to make are way through the small town. “Lets find that post office”, my gun toting, hat wearing companion said.

The dirt streets were clean of any debris and the buildings were very tidy. What would you expect from a computer? There was a continual porch on both sides of the street in front of every building. The sky was blue and bright and not a cloud anywhere. As we were walking I asked Dr. Gehtle, “Is this how the system represents every computer?”.

“Pretty much. You can write your own environment programs, but no one usually does.”, he said as we stopped in front of a building. “Here it is, the post office.”. I looked at the sign at the top of the building “S-mail” it read. This is the program that I wrote the fix for, I know it in and out, should be simple enough I thought. As we walked onto the porch Victor inspected the outside of the building. We both walked in through the front wooden red stained door. The front room was empty and there were about 5 wooden red stained doors in a row on the opposite wall from the front door and there was a thin layer of dust on the floor, a single dim light with a green glass looking shade hung from the ceiling. “Well which one do we go into?”, he asked me while he looked at all the names on the doors.

“Well what’s wrong with the email system”, I asked.

“The owner told me that the email is coming in very slow and takes a few days to a week for a message to makes it way to a user.”, He replied.

“Ok then lets check out the queue.”, I said as I opened the door that took us to the where the queue should be. We walked into a small hallway with another series of doors. Then went to the outgoing messages room. When we walked in we could see the problem. There was a small gray robot in a room that had about 10,000 envelopes stacked on an old wooden desk. The robot was picking one of the envelopes up at a time with its small arm and then rolling over on its one wheel to a small metal tube that had a black sensor of some sort above it that was mounted into the wooden wall. The sensor projected a small red laser beam and scanned the envelope. A few seconds later a red light appeared above the sensor and the robot placed the envelope back on the desk and tried the next message.

“It seems that there is quite a back up of messages and for some reason the sensor can’t figure out where to send some of these .”, I said as I made my way to the desk stepping out of the way of the little robot who was taking another message to the sensor. “I am going to try a quick test.”, I told Dr. Gehlte. I picked up an envelope and change the outgoing address to my personal account, I set it in the pile so that the mail robot would pick it up next. “Ok, lets see if it can send this message”, I said as I stepped back and watched the robot pick up the envelope I just changed and place in front of the sensor. This time a green light lit up and the email was sucked though the tube directly below the sensor. “Well everything is working properly, where are all these emails coming from?”, I asked as Dr Gehlte and I looked through the messages. “It looks like it is some kind of spam message, they are all different except the return path, some foreign country. This may be an attack of some sort.”, I said.

Dr Gehtle picked up another envelope and said, “You’re right so what can we do?”. As he was talking another large batch of envelopes spewed on the table from a metallic tube directly over the desk, all coming to rest in an organized fashion.

“This world is very interesting.”, I said picking up a few of the new emails and checking to see if they were the same type. “Well I can make a quick band aid that will monitor the desk here and destroy any of the messages that have the same return path in them. Then we will have to figure a way to stop or block these unwanted email higher up.”, I said watching more envelopes fall from the tube.

“Ok get started, I will contact the owner and let him know what we are doing.”, He said as he left the room and walked outside.

I started to build my robot. I decided to use one of my gun cartridges, which looked like a shotgun shell, as a base and I then created a sensor and a small stand for it. Next I set it to review all envelopes that fell on the desk and if it that foreign address appeared in the message the robot was to blast the envelope away with a small blaster tool I created, it started to take shape. It stood about waste high and was thin and gray except for the cartridge that was dark red.

I completed the robot and set it on the floor and aimed it at the desk, it started working immediately scanning and blasting the envelopes away. When a message was blasted it appeared to be on fire, burning blue, but the flame did not spread to any other messages that were on the desk. It was very interesting to see a program I created and how it interacted with other robots or objects for the first time. Dr Gehtle was right this was a lot better than just using a terminal program.

“Wow, that little bot is working great, it made quick work of that mess and it also looks like the mail bot is getting the good messages out now. The owner said he just started getting some email from about a week ago. Good job Mark.” He said as we watched the two robots do their work for a few minutes.

“Well like I said this is only a band aid. We are defiantly going to have to have a look at the security of this town.”. I said turning to Dr. Gehtle.

“Ok we’re going to have to go check with the port guard, that’s the robot that controls everything that comes in and out of this town.” He said as we exited the building and headed down the street towards a rather small building on the edge of town. “How do like this so far Mark?”, He asked as we walked on the dirt street getting our boots dirty with dust.

“I like it so far. I think you’re right this is a lot better than terminal”, I admitted.

“You know Mark I would rather be in this world than the real one, stuff just makes sense in here and if it doesn’t you change it.”.

The Postal Fix

Part 1 of 3
by Thomas Ham

I sat in my cubicle looking through a window, across the way, at a busy consumer driven city drenched in rain. My life was a bore with repetitive work. I was a coder of useless technology. The company I worked for, C-Byte, developed programs that could be planted inexpensively into children’s clothes to record their vital signs. That was the company’s one and only project and it was quite boring. I needed excitement, challenge and ever changing scenery. But, I only had my white cubical and an adventure calendar, which always showed some fit athletic person climbing on something. So, I sat reviewing the company’s programs, looking for something to improve upon.

I remember my last upgrade to the clothing line. For some reason the code I wrote caused all the fibers in the clothes to heat up and the kids went crazy trying to get them off. It was an accident, I think, that’s what I told my bosses. All the parents went crazy and I almost lost my job, not that I would have minded. I mean what moron wouldn’t want to sit in a small box and go mindless all day long.

That rainy, especially boring day would hold some surprises for me.

“Beep, Beep”, “My phone is ringing?”. “Who would be calling me, maybe some clothes are going haywire”. I picked up the phone “This is Mark”. There was a pause.

“Mark I ran into a program you wrote on one of the forums on the internet. Listen I would like it if you could come to my office. I would like to speak with you about a few possibilities for the program.”.

I paused, “Ok, I can come over after work, where’s your office?”, I said ,very interested to find out why this person wants to talk about some simple program I wrote.

“435 Fleck Street, Office G2. See you around 6:30”. He said, I told him yes and hung up.

“Well at least it will be a little change”, I thought.

I made my way down town, past all the housing structures, and people begging for money. The rain was still coming down hard and I stopped at an intersection. As soon as I did an old bum, tan and leathery with no shirt and a few missing teeth started to wipe my windows, “Can’t you see it’s raining you old fool” I thought to myself. The man finally walked away after he realized I wasn’t going to pay him. The light turned green and I was on my way heading towards my destination.

I turned on Fleck Street and found a run down old office building. All the lights were off except for one office, “That must be it”, I thought. I climbed up a rickety old stairway that looked like one more step might collapse it. I got to a puke green poorly painted door and knocked.

A voice came from inside ”Its open Mark”. I stepped in and was amazed. The office was rundown, wallpaper was coming undone on most of the corners. There were no decorations, except for an iron lamp that had no shade in a far corner and was a bit bright. The scratched hardwood floor had crumbs and some dead bugs on it. Now, of course this was not the amazing part, no, this person’s computer system was amazing. I had never seen such machines in one place. Top of the line, extremely expensive computers. The wall was lined with thin rack mounted servers. Each rack looked like it had about 5 servers in it, with wires and monitors mixed throughout the system. Something like this I would probably only see in a large company with a big IT budget. I closed my gaping mouth, “How did you know it was me?”, I said. “No one ever comes up here, you were the only person I expected to see all day”. “Oh”, I mumbled still gazing at the wonderful machines buzzing and humming away.

“Listen, sit, let’s get down to some business, I am Dr. Victor Gehtle , I am owner and operator of this consulting company Gehtle Enterprises.”.

”Original”, I thought.

“I am not really a doctor, nor do I have a PHD it just sounds good when I say it.” He said. Laughing slightly he continued while my eyes tried to focus on him and his deep gruff voice but they were far too impressed with the equipment in the room and my mind was trying to figure out why it was up there in a dumpy little office on the bad side of town .

“Anyway, my company helps other companies and individuals fix their computer problems.”.

“I see”, I mumbled, “So why all the equipment”.

“Awe yes my equipment” he said with great enthusiasm as he stood up and wiped some dust of one of the machines with his finger.

Now I focused on him, I was very interested in what he was doing with this kind of equipment. I also finally noticed what he looked like, the computers got my attention when I first entered, he was tall, thick build, athletic, pale skin do to the lack of sun probably, thin glasses, brown short cut hair and a large pointy beard.

“I use a program to look at a file system and make it into a three dimensional world, called “OpenVu”. You can see all the programs working together, the folders become shacks or tall buildings depending on what’s inside them, you can take your hands and create or destroy programs. The process’ and functions of a computer living and breathing before your very eyes. It’s amazing.”.

“Why do all that to fix programs, wouldn’t be easier to just fix it using a terminal program or something?” I asked.

“Let me ask you something, would you open a door or create a robot to open the door for you?”, he responded.

“I would just open the door” I said.

“Precisely the point, it is easier to just use our eyes and take our hands to manipulate matter. That’s what the program does, it takes a filesystem and turns it into something we can manipulate with our hands, eyes and tools.”.

“Interesting” I thought as I nodded. ”So what about my program?” I asked him.

“Ah yes, the Postal Fix.” He said as he sat down, “I occasionally run into areas out of my expertise and need assistance. Your program was one of the best fixes, at least that’s what the reviews I read said. So I figured you’re the man I need to help fix a problem with one of my clients machines. You seem to understand the mail program. And the fact that you were in the area helped. I’m not sure what we’re going to find. Your fix may work or we may need some variation. So are you in.”.

I hesitated but said “Sure”, I was very interested in what this OpenVu program did.

“Great let’s get started”, he said as he handed me a pair of goggles, wired gloves, and a pair of headphones that had a small microphone built in to one side. We sat down at a large wooden table with a monitor that had just a white command prompt on it. He typed in a command.

Codeslinger Revived

After many years of Codeslinger being batted around like a shuttle cock from online publisher to online publisher, devshed.com to codewalkers.com back to devshed.com, I’ve decided it’s time to give Codeslinger a place of it’s own, since no one else would. I’m not bitter really I’m not, well not that bitter, I was just tired of not seeing the story finished and I may be the only one. But any way welcome and enjoy the story and other tidbits that will unfold on these cyber (chessy early ’90s reference to anything online) pages.