Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,91
the cash at the end of the week. Not that anyone buys anything except comics and copies of Rolling Stone. Dennis supplies everything else, even the toothbrushes in the basement bathroom. He learned everything he needed to know over there in ’Nam. He likes to say that he’s in on the ground level, that he’s making his own little xerox of Xerox. He makes his money on our hacks for the Pentagon, but the file-transferring programs are his real thing.
One of these centuries we’re all going to have the ARPANET in our heads, he says. There’ll be a little computer chip in our minds. They’ll embed it at the base of our skulls and we’ll be able to send each other messages on the electronic board, just by thinking. It’s electricity, he says. It’s Faraday. It’s Einstein. It’s Edison. It’s the Wilt Chamberlain of the future.
I like that idea. That’s cool. That’s possible. That way we wouldn’t even have to think of phone lines. People don’t believe us, but it’s true. Someday you’ll just think something and it’ll happen. Turn off the light, the light turns off. Make the coffee, the machine kicks on.
—Come on, man, just five minutes.
—All right, says Dennis, five. That’s it.
—Hey, are all the frames linked? says Gareth.
—Yeah.
—Try it over there too.
—Have tone, will phone.
—Come on, Kid, get your ass over there. Call up the blue-box program.
—Let’s go fishing!
I built my first crystal radio when I was seven. Some wire, a razor blade, a piece of pencil, an earphone, an empty roll of toilet paper. I made a variable capacitor from layers of aluminum foil and plastic, all pressed together using a screw. No batteries. I got the plans from a Superman comic. It only got one station, but that didn’t matter. I listened late at night under the covers. In the room next door I could hear my folks fighting. They were both strung out. They went from laughter to crying and back again. When the station kicked off the air I put my hand over the earphone and took in the static.
I learned later, when I built another radio, that you could put the antenna in your mouth and the reception got better and you could drown out all the noise easily.
See, when you’re programming too, the world grows small and still. You forget about everything else. You’re in a zone. There are no backward glances. The sound and the lights keep pushing you onwards. You gather pace. You keep on going. The variations comply. The sound funnels inwards to a point, like an explosion seen in reverse. Everything comes down to a single point. It might be a voice recognition program, or a chess hack, or writing lines for a Boeing helicopter radar—it doesn’t matter: the only thing you care about is the next line coming your way. On a good day it can be a thousand lines. On a bad one you can’t find where it all falls apart.
I’ve never been that lucky in my life, I’m not complaining, it’s just the way it is. But, this time, after just two minutes, I catch a hook.
—I’m on Cortlandt Street, she says.
I swivel on the chair and pump my first.
—Got one!
—The Kid’s got one.
—Kid!
—Hang on, I tell her.
—Excuse me? she says.
There’s bits of pizza lying around my feet and empty soda bottles. The guys run across and kick them aside and a roach scurries out from one of the boxes. I’ve rigged a double microphone into the computer, with foam ends from packing material, the stand from a wire hanger. These are highly sensitive, low distortion, I made them myself, just two small plates put close to each other, insulated. My speakers too, I made them from radio scrap.
—Look at these things, says Compton, flicking the big foam ends of the mike.
—Excuse me? says the lady.
—Sorry. Hi, I’m Compton, he says, pushing me out of my seat.
—Hi, Colin.
—Is he still up there?
—He’s wearing a black jumpsuit thing.
—Told you he didn’t fall.
—Well, not exactly a jumpsuit. A pantsuit thing. With a V-neck. Flared trousers. He’s extremely poised.
—Excuse me?
—Getouttahere, says Gareth. Poised? Is she for real? Poised? Who says poised?
—Shut up, says Compton, and he turns to the mike. Ma’am? Hello? It’s just the one man up there, right?
—Well, he must have some accomplices.
—What d’you mean?
—Well, surely it’s impossible to get a wire from one side to the other. On your own, that is. He must have a team.