Walter Williams - Deep State

Its best to get an external modem. Most internal modems made now are software based and won’t work with dos. Many dos programs can’t detect com3 and com4.

By the way, be careful if you have a PS2 mouse. An internal hardware modem on com1 or 2 would sometimes conflict with a PS2 mouse. A PS2 mouse is on irq 12, which is okay, but it uses the same serial paths as com1 and com2 to connect to the pci buss. So be wary.

Briana says:

Thnx.

Dan the DOS Man says:

We prefer complete sentences on this bulletin board, Briana. And no slang derived from inferior and incomplete forms of communication such as text messaging.

Briana says:

I totally respect your old-school ethic, boss. Many thanks.

Dagmar contemplated the contents of the bulletin board on her handheld and saved them. She nodded to the RAF guard outside the building-her satellite phone had decided not to work under a roof-and then climbed the stair back to the ops room.

“You know,” she said, entering, “DOS is actually kind of cool.”

Helmuth glanced up briefly from his workstation.

“We’re going to make it cooler,” he said.

Helmuth and Richard had gotten their virtual MS-DOS machine working inside Richard’s computer the previous evening. But none of the modems in the room were compatible with DOS, so everyone had left the ops room except Lloyd, who was left behind to monitor any new uploads or other developments on the Brigade’s various Web pages. He would be relieved about midnight by Lola, who would in turn be relieved by Richard.

Dagmar and their RAF guards had helped Ismet up the stairs to his apartment. His bruises had widened and deepened since the morning, and he looked worse than ever, his face a Rorschach nightmare of purple and yellow and white.

She offered to help Ismet bathe, but he declined. Instead he lay on his sofa, propped up on pillows, while Dagmar sat crosslegged on the floor by his side.

“Can I get you something to eat?” she asked.

“Possibly soup,” he said. “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

“Would you like anything to drink?”

“Tea. Any kind.”

She found Turkish tea and a soup can labeled YOURT CORBASI in the cabinet. Apparently Ismet had brought food supplies across the island from the Turkish side. She poured the soup into a pot and examined it, finding only rice and yogurt and spices-nothing that would be hard for bruised lips and loose teeth to chew-and it smelled faintly appetizing, though with the peculiar heavy aroma common to canned soups.

Ismet came to the dining table to eat. He handled his spoon with care, trying not to splash liquid on the gauze bandages that wrapped two fingers of his right hand.

Watching him was painful. Dagmar wanted to take the spoon herself and feed him, except that she knew he was the kind of man who wouldn’t appreciate being spoon-fed. Instead she sat at the kitchen table as a host of anxieties warred in her nerves. She kept a towel in her lap in case he spilled something.

The previous evening she’d had the sense that he would fly today to his death. Instead he’d been saved from that fate by a savage beating, and she felt a strange gratitude to whatever brutal Cypriot cops had rescued Ismet from a deadlier peril. She would have him at least till the bruises faded-and she knew she needed him badly, needed some anchor in this mire of treachery and mendacity, the hopeful, hopeless revolution that had at its heart a misplaced piece of code.

After the meal Ismet took a pain pill with his last swallow of cooling tea. He looked at her.

“I think I will sleep alone tonight,” he said. He tried to smile with his cracked, bruised lips. “You might roll over in bed and land on me, and that would hurt.”

“I could put a pillow between us.”

His look turned somber.

“If you attacked me again,” he said, “I could not defend myself.”

Shock made her sway in her seat. Tears stung her eyes.

He couldn’t trust her not to go mad on him. That was what he was saying.

“You should stay with someone else tonight,” Ismet said. “Lola, perhaps.”

“I barely know Lola,” she said. Her voice broke on the last word.

“Richard and Helmuth, then. Someone you trust.”

“I trust you.” She heard the wail in her voice and told herself to stop, that her emotional need and his physical pain were incompatible right now. The pain could not be suppressed: therefore her need had to be quashed. She would have to take her own solitude upon herself and live in it at least for a while.

Ismet couldn’t rescue her every single time. He couldn’t save her from the enemies that swam in her own psyche. Those were hers to fight.

“Yes, okay,” she said. “I’ll crash on Richard’s couch.”

She washed Ismet’s bowl and spoon and saw that he was already half-asleep. She helped him back to the couch, then kissed his cheek, felt the bristles sting her lips. She left his apartment and walked to her own-the promise to stay with Richard and Helmuth was already forgotten-and in the borrowed place, surrounded by others’ possessions, she felt the aloneness embrace her.

Without conscious thought Dagmar made tea for herself and put a frozen stuffed pepper in the microwave. She stood for a moment in the kitchen, looking at the furniture and belongings that had been requisitioned for her from another family, and considered the number of betrayals that had brought her to this moment.

Byron and Magnus were vile, but they were at least explicable: whatever reason they had for selling her to Bozbeyli, fear or avarice or opportunism, it was at least an understandable human motivation. They were too transparent to be evil masterminds-they were just very screwed-up human beings, confused, probably deep in denial.

But Lincoln, she thought, was not in denial. He knew what he’d been doing all along. It was Lincoln’s lie that had brought her here, selling her the notion that the U.S. government was so devoted to the notion of democracy in Turkey that it would give her the tools to bring it about.

She should, she considered, just pick up her phone and buy a one-way ticket back to Los Angeles. If the government tried to invoke a penalty clause and evade payment, all she had to do was threaten to talk to the press.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t an expert at telling convincing stories to strangers. It was only a bonus when the story was true.

Except now, she thought, there were actual revolutionaries in Turkey, whether she had created them or not. And they were fighting the police and the military, staging strikes and demonstrations, occupying a ministry building in Ankara. Living in cages in jails and military bases, screaming under torture, dying, rotting under the ground.

She couldn’t fly to her life in California and leave them behind. Not when there was a hope that she could help them succeed.

And besides, she thought, work was the classic cure for depression. Dagmar hooked her laptop to her satellite phone, downloaded a copy of MS-DOS along with a user’s manual, and ate her stuffed pepper as she began to acquaint herself with the ancient history of personal computing. She visited the alt.comp.DOSRULES forum on Usenet and from this learned of the existence of Dan the DOS Man, along with a number of his colleagues.

Her brain was so charged with her new knowledge and so filled with plans for implementing her ideas that after she fell asleep the nightmares failed to possess her.

In the morning she checked on Ismet and found him in greater pain than he had been the night before. She made him tea, made sure he was comfortable, and then went to the ops center while she conducted her long-distance conversation with Dan.

Soft morning light warmed the ops room, glowed off the ochre yellow walls. The air bore the scent of freshly brewed coffee. The absence of aircraft noise was startling: the planes had all landed, either here or somewhere else, and then not gone up again. The situation was otherwise unchanged: the Zap still possessed Ankara and the southwest corner of Cyprus, including Akrotiri and at least a part of Limassol. Cell phone service and VoIP at Akrotiri were still down, and ground lines were erratic.