surprisingly open and tolerant. At one point, they even
invited a group of hackers to join in their revels, though
"they had to bring their own women."
Despite the pulverizing effects of numerous Mexican
Flags, Comsec Data Security seemed to be having very
little trouble on that score. They'd vanished downtown
brandishing their full-color photo in TIME magazine, and
returned with an impressive depth-core sample of St Louis
womanhood, one of whom, in an idle moment, broke into Doc
Holiday's room, emptied his wallet, and stole his Sony
tape recorder and all his shirts.
Events stopped dead for the season's final episode of
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. The show passed in rapt
attention -- then it was back to harassing the swingers.
Bill from RNOC cunningly out-waited the swinger guards,
infiltrated the building, and decorated all the closed
doors with globs of mustard from a pump-bottle.
In the hungover glare of Sunday morning, a hacker
proudly showed me a large handlettered placard reading
PRIVATE -- STOP, which he had stolen from the unlucky
swingers on his way out of their wing. Somehow, he had
managed to work his way into the building, and had suavely
ingratiated himself into a bedroom, where he had engaged a
swinging airline ticket-agent in a long and most
informative conversation about the security of airport
computer terminals. The ticket agent's wife, at the time,
was sprawled on the bed engaging in desultory oral sex
with a third gentleman. It transpired that she herself
did a lot of work on LOTUS 1-2-3. She was thrilled to
hear that the program's inventor, Mitch Kapor, had been in
that very hotel, that very weekend.
Mitch Kapor. Right over there? Here in St Louis?
Wow. Isn't life strange.
