TEXT ADVENTURE #10 FAIRE LA PERRUQUE, WHATEVS by Stanley Lieber 1 My character? Black t-shirt, faded blue. Unfiltered Pall-Malls. Scar on my hand I didn’t recognize. Easy. 2 Back at the apartment. “Hello. Some Acme user here?” Migrant user. Untrained. But: Miranda Rights Gold Account. Had to let him go. Cleaned out the rest of the living room. Downtown was packed; so, processed them through the apartment, one at a time. The whole thing took quite a while. My new job felt just like my the old job. On the other hand, I’d never heard of Acme, either. 3 “Stagflation.” “In operating systems?” “Can you think of a single new idea that’s hit the desktop since 1918?” “Transparent terminal windows?” That was enough. I halted the interview. Debated internally. Then: depressed a switch. “Maude, please send in the next candidate.” 4 Closet floor on the mend. I put up a wire, to hang up my clothes. No boxes on the carpet. The old woman was uncommunicative. I hired a few school kids, to help move stray bits from one folder to another. Paid them in free access to the basement underware. I’d find a way back in. Or, the kids would find one, for me. If anyone is wanting the New Release of Beauty and the Beast (Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack), I have an extra one I typed. 5 Errors. Upgraded to the latest underware. Snug. 6 Started messing around with Acme. A little confusing. Switched to Sam. Remote file editing. Hey, this could be useful. 7 Laid up for two days. Sick. Possibly reconnected to the wrong worldtrack. Delaying judgment. 8 Some of the kids I hired were not getting any work done. Appeared to be using the underware to access protected resources in the basement. No. Told them to stop. Would see if they decided to listen. Maude kept track. Their skills were developing rapidly. The old woman would not be happy. Even so, I was running out of folders to keep them busy. 9 Kids found a way back into the basement. I piggybacked. Free DVDs for everyone. “Whatevs,” one of them said, when I expressed my gratitude. Took up the carpeting in the closet for good. Rolled it up and stuck it behind the couch. That way it couldn’t heal. Installed new locks on the closet door. Kids had the first watch. 10 Their personal projects got in the way again. Some kind of visor device. Only primitive. My review: “What is this.” Looked like a wig. They laughed me off when I said as much. “Wig for the Vizier.” Fan art.
