ADVENTURES IN TRASHING
                                     I

     Well, it was a Sunday afternoon and me (cyb), Wizbone, and The
     Question were cruising around in TQ's kick-ass new truck. Woah,
     what the fuck was that? Let's check it out. Fuck me, it looks
     like some mini's sitting next to them dumpsters. TQ starts to
     salivate, "maybe it's vax's."

     Closer inspection revealed two smaller units 2'x2'x1' marked
     XEROX. Cool. And right next to them stood a monolith. A RAID
     system the size of a very large refrigerator. Sweet. An
     assortment of large boards and a dumb-terminal were strewn about.
     Shit, let's get this shit. TQ was obviously reluctant. Who could
     blame him? Broad daylight, people all around, and it was his
     truck. Oh well. Fuck it. That RAID is huge and we're unsure of
     what those smaller boxes are. Probably useless. Let's grab some
     beers and head back to HCHQ (Hack Canada Headquarters).

     So we chilled for a while and TQ took off. It was getting late
     and Wiz and I had plans to go out skatin' and bladin' and getting
     into mischief. Let's roll. Where do ya' wanna go? Well, to get
     them boxes of course... they did have wheels and all. It was
     approximately 30 blocks to our target, so we pushed hard and made
     good time.

     When we arrived there was some dumb fuck ripping stuff out of the
     RAID. Fans and shit. Oh my god! He's wrecking our stuff! So we
     walked up behind him and stood watching for a minute. He finally
     notices us and was obviously a bit startled. Seems he didn't like
     us being there any more than we wanted him there trashing our
     trash. Anyway, the fucker gets in my face, push came to shove,
     and I had to crush the fuckers skull to a pulp with my deck. Well
     shit, we really wanted that old RAID, but the bum had fucked it
     up and besides it might have looked WAY conspicuous rolling that
     beast all the way back into the heart of the city. Especially
     with it being covered in blood and brain tissue now. So we
     decided to just grab the Xerox boxes. I grabbed the heavier of
     the two and promptly busted one of its wheels trying to jump it
     off a curb. So I wrestled it onto my board and off we went. Wiz
     bladed along pushing the other one.

     Well, after a near miss with some rent-a-cops at a mall we
     passed, we get within about 7 blocks of HCHQ and the inevitable
     finally happened. A cop stops us to ask what we're doing. I say,
     nice and cool like, "Oh, just moving some old junk computers we
     found." "Oh, yeah?," says the cop, "Where'd you get those?" He
     proceeds to interrogate and we do some creative
     explaining/deception. In the mean time this cops dog in the squad
     car is going nuts, clearly wanting a piece of ours. Now he starts
     inspecting the boxes, looking for identifying marks and such.
     "Open 'em up." Well, Wiz opens his and the fucking thing is
     EMPTY! Grrrr. It actually worked out to be a convincing decoy.
     Why would we steal an empty fucking case, right? (That was lucky
     break #1.) I couldn't get mine open without a screwdriver.
     (That's lucky break #2.) "Where ya' goin? Where ya' live? You
     boys got some ID?" I say "nope," which was true. Wiz hands over
     his ID. (Here comes lucky break #3, and the most important
     one...) Just then some guy pulls up on the street and shouts,
     "Hey! There's a buncha' people fightin' just down that street
     over there and some chix got a knife and shit!" Sweet. So the cop
     hands back Wiz's ID and says, "well if I hear anything about this
     I'll be giving you a call." Heh, sure ya' will buddy. Buh-bye.
     (Actually, the guy was decent about the situation, however, I am
     glad a more urgent situation arose at that very moment. And after
     all, it was just garbage.)

     We continued on our way and some people in a car driving by waved
     and cheered us on. So, we're like 3 or 4 blocks from our
     destination when the fucking wheels melt off the thing Wiz is
     pushing. We decide to finally ditch it since it turned out to be
     empty and had already served its "decoy" purpose. We set it up by
     the side of the road to look like a telco box and continued on.
     Almost home...

     We got to HCHQ, and plugged the thing in... but wait, that was
     after a lovely interaction with a fine young lady and her friends
     in the hall just as we rolled out of the elevator... (Lucky break
     #4.)

     FYL (fine young lady): Hey, you want a drink?
     /ME: Sure baby, what is it? (/ME doesn't remember what it was,
     nor did I really care, and I accepted her drink... mmmm, boozy.)
     FYL: You look kinda' hot and tired pushing that.... thing.
     /ME: Yeah, it's fucking heavy and I've been pushing it for 30
     blocks.
     FYL: Holy shit... what is it?
     /ME: Some old computer.
     FYL: Wow, are you guys like hackers?
     /ME: Sure baby.
     FYL: Coooool!
     FYL's friend: Hey... well, we're just here in apartment 9XX...
     Where do you live?
     /ME: Umm, 9XY, hey, later people, we gotta get this thing put
     away, thanks for the drink baby, nice meeting you all.

     So, it was after that we got the thing into HCHQ and hooked it
     up, stood back, and applied the power. Well it came alive but
     what its purpose is was not clear. So we let 'er run and knew it
     was just thankful to be alive and so were we. We grabbed some
     beers and headed back out in search of the FYL and her friends.

     The nice folks were in so we chilled with them for a few hours,
     went up to the roof for a while with them, and chilled some more
     until everyone looked like zombies and we headed back to HCHQ for
     some much needed sleep.

     The next day I dissected the unit. There isn't a model number to
     be found anywhere on it. Turns out to be circa 1984. It contained
     6 large boards. I identified a few of them to be memory and drive
     controllers. Also a 8" disk drive, a 4 digit digital display, the
     power switch, and buttons marked B RESET and ALT B. Ports on the
     back labeled 17" DISPLAY ONLY, KEYBOARD (50 pin connector!), J11
     RS232, J12 RS366, TRANSCEIVER, PRINTER K/B-TERMINAL, and LSEP.
     What appeared to be the main drive controller/display driver was
     not seated, so I re-seated all of the boards and cables and
     powered it up again. This time the display lit up and showed
     '0150'... whatever that means. The B RESET button did what you
     would expect and caused the thing to restart. When I powered it
     up with a couple of the boards pulled it displayed a different
     number, '0139'. Perhaps the display is for diagnostics to
     indicate loose or damaged boards.

     Well, I still don't know what the fuck it is, what it's for, or
     what possessed me to push this thing across a city on a
     skateboard at 2:00 AM. But hey, we had fun, met some great
     people, and most importantly didn't get busted. And isn't that
     what life's about?

                                                      CYBØRG/ASM, 5/99
                                                   www.hackcanada.com