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Prophile: Future History by THE NIGHTSTALKER. It
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...presents... Prophile: Future History
by THE NIGHTSTALKER
>>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____
|____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|
UnderGround Digest profile #16
Nom du Guerre: "Mr. Jefferson"
January 23rd, 2030, the 15th year of the "Temporary State of Emergency"
(As always, these profiles are written and presented in order to inform
the members of the underground who some of their comrades are, to let us all
know we are not alone in the struggle to regain the freedoms our ancestors
enjoyed, and to let the Oppressors and the Oppressed know the quality and
character of the free men and women who will one day liberate America!)
I met him at the bus station after I cleared the ID/weapon/drug
checkpoint. The man I was expecting to meet was in his 60s. The man who met
me could easily have been in his mid-40s. "Exercise, supplements, and
bootlegged nootropics!" was his merry explanation to me later when I commented
on his appearance. This was indeed the man I expected to meet, a legend in the
underground. He stands 6'7" tall, red hair with streaks of grey at the
temples. A fine 'Roman' nose, strong jawline and high cheekbones. Even in the
dead of winter, his skin had a tanned appearance, due to judicious use of UV
lights and some Amerind ancestry. He was wearing an 'Indiana Jones' fedora and
a black leather trenchcoat. Wearing a coat like that in almost any city in
America would be asking for a robbery attempt, but his bearing as we walked to
the metro station seemed to turn aside the street hustlers and gangbangers who
eyed his coat with obvious desire and had apparent designs on his wallet. "I'm
told," he later said "that there's something in my eyes that seems to incline
miscreants to look elsewhere for mischief." Indeed, his clear, grey eyes could
only be described as piercing, and his gaze as menacing.
From the front, his rowhouse looks like any other. It's when you get up
close that you notice the differences. The front door is a cleverly disguised
Class I armored unit, more suitable for buildings in the Abandoned Areas than
here. The windowframes are steel, not polymer or aluminum and the actual
windows are quarter inch thick Lexan, not glass. The back door is equally
secure. I asked about that, and he told me that his defenses were not against
his neighbors, but his government. "A pretty sad state of affairs, isn't it."
he lamented.
Upon entering his house and taking off his coat, I saw that he was armed
with both an automatic pistol and a WW I 'brass knuckle' trench knife, both
attached to a stylish belt around his waist, worn over a pullover sweater. "In
the few times I've had to display a weapon, I've found that the trench knife is
far more effective than my pistol for causing the local goblins to turn tail
and run. There's something downright scary about this knife, it seems. I'd
much rather scare them away than shoot them. There's always the potential that
they might change their ways, and I'd hate to kill someone who has a chance at
redeeming himself."
His home is in an integrated neighborhood of rowhouses. "I was born and
raised only a few houses down from this one. When I decided to relocate back
here, I intended to buy my old home, but it was being rented by a Haitian
family. Believe it or not, they reminded me of my family, so I bought the
place from the landlord, who was gouging them terribly on the rent, and I'm now
their landlord, even though they don't know it. As long as Etienne and Marie
choose to live there, they'll never have to worry about eviction if they miss a
few payments. They want to make a life for themselves, as did my immigrant
parents. I'm happy to make their attempt a little easier in these trying
times."
Inside, the house is decorated in what can only be called Hackeresque.
Furniture is minimal, yet comfortable. Bookshelves everywhere, as well as
shelves for CDs, laserdiscs, videotapes and vinyl records. His A/V system is
old, but still first rate. The monitor is a second generation Sony digital
HDTV with a homebrew de-interlace and interpolation black box for displaying
standard NTSC/PAL/SECAM tapes on it. The stereo is similarly hacked to the
max. The music runs to folk and ethnic, classical, mid to late 20th century
humor and spoken word, and lots of good old rock and roll! The wall space that
isn't taken up by bookshelves is decorated with artwork, everything from
fractal prints to English landscapes by Bannister. There's a working fireplace
in the living room and there's an enormous broadsword above the mantle. He let
me examine the sword. It's no mere decoration! This thing is razor sharp and
could easily lop off a head or limb. "That was the whole point of a
broadsword! One stroke could incapacitate an enemy." Above the sword, in a
simple, dignified frame, and illuminated by a single soft light, is a copy of
the Declaration of Independence. "My underground 'name' of 'Mr. Jefferson' is
not to imply that I think of myself as a 21st Century Thomas Jefferson, but to
remind me of what this struggle is all about and to inspire me when things are
dark. And this constantly illuminated Declaration is also a reminder of what
we are fighting for these days. And since it can be seen from the street,
those members of the underground who are on the run know that this is a safe
house and they can find succor here." His library runs the gamut from science
fiction to history to philosophy to the sciences to theology. Like many
members of the underground, he is amazingly well-read.
The rest of his house is set up with a guest room (which I used for a
night), kitchen/dining area, a large bathroom, complete with a whirlpool
bathtub, bidet and urinal. "I installed the urinal because it always made
sense to me to have one in one's bathroom." His bedroom is a very minimalist
environment. A futon and rack, dresser, a lamp, telephone, digital clock,
small AM-FM-Shortwave radio and small VHF-UHF scanner are on the floor next to
the futon. Several old, well-read books are stacked near the head of the
futon. _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_ and _Alice in Wonderland_ were two of
the titles I could see. The last room in the house is the computer center and
his work area. Believe it or not, all his computers are pre-Millenial! "They
may be old and slow by modern standards, but they are absolutely 'clean'!
There's no chance of any Government mandated 'anti-crime' monitoring
processors." There are several Mac Quadras of diverse types, a Silicon
Graphics INDY, a couple of PowerBooks and DOS notebooks, several printers,
including a 5 year old H-P 2400 dpi color laser printer. Banned by the
Government in 2025, this model can churn out full color pages on plain or
glossy paper, indistinguishable from Government Approved publishers. The
propaganda potential is enormous.
There's even a Commodore 128! I asked about the 128, since it was powered
up and doing something. "Ah, yes, the 128, in it's native 80 column mode,
makes a fine terminal for packet radio. Even though it's almost 50 years old,
it's running like new. I've had to replace the odd component over the years,
but it's worth it to keep the old warhorse in the running. It's running my
packet radio node. Radio Amateurs are among the few people allowed to own
computers, thanks to the Good Works we do during national disasters.
Supposedly, we are only allowed to send unencrypted data over packet, but I
doubt that less than 10% of everything going via packet these days doesn't
contain something it shouldn't." He tapped a few keys and studied the screen.
"Right now a couple of cDc boyos are exchanging GIFs of electronic schematics
via my node. Odds are, there's a PGP 5 message hidden in the GIFs with
StegoSaur. A goodly number of the underground are hams these days, for
obvious, and not so obvious, reasons.
His desk is interesting. The telephone is a military AUTOVON phone from
the last century, with a speakerphone and headset attached to it. "There are
some... actions that can be initiated via those four extra keys, that might
someday be quite useful to me, in certain extreme circumstances." Other items
on his desk included a Mac Color Classic II and flatbed scanner, laserprinter,
electronic Rolodex, a cup full of pens and pencils, a photograph of his
girlfriend, an HP calculator and a slide rule! I asked about the slide rule.
"Hah! I've had that slipstick since junior high school! It belonged to my
father, and I was always amazed by how fast he was using it. I learned how to
use it myself and still use it often these days. For many calculations, it's
actually faster than using the calculator." His diplomas from MIT and Brown
are prominently displayed on the wall.
He also has several shortwave radios and VHF-UHF scanners racked up. "I
like keeping an ear on things, and the scanners have allowed me to warn some
folks of impending doom from The Bad Guys. 'Legging banned books and music is
a serious rap in this town. Fortunately the locals believe their anti-scanner
laws for the citizenry work, so they don't use anything more than frequency
inversion for voice scrambling, and their digital stuff is sent in the clear.
What losers!" He pointed out the voice descrambler units and the hookup from
one scanner to an ancient Macintosh SE/30, used as a data terminal for the
local police data channels. "I've got it set up to alert me on certain key
words, such as my name or address, booklegging, etc. Since they only use one
data channel these days, it's easy to keep track of what goes back and forth on
the digital side of things."
My God, I was thinking to myself, just being in this room could get me a 5
to 7 term in prison, and yet he has this stuff openly displayed. I asked if he
was concerned about someone informing on him.
"No, not really. The people in this neighborhood are not favored by the
people in power. Just living in an integrated area is reason enough to blown
off by the boys in City Hall. Besides, my neighbors know that I'm on their
side and use my small talents for their benefit. My fax machine downstairs,
for example, is free of charge for local calls, and I only ask for long
distance reembursement, unlike the one in the local Stop and Rob that charges
$5.00 a page for a local fax. And those folks that need 'other' services, such
as database searches and more 'invasive' procedures know that I'm willing to
help out in a good cause. That's how I was able to buy my old home so cheaply
and send the landlord to prison for tax evasion and building code violations."
He has a workbench with diverse electronic test equipment, soldering
station and Unimat machine. He also has a cartridge reloading press bolted to
the workbench. "Rolling your own cartridges is the only way to go these days.
Just try and buy any of the unapproved non-sporting cartridges and count the
seconds before the Feds show up."
There are several military security filing cabinets in the room, each with
a combination lock, "and thermite lining for those nosy parkers who don't have
the correct combinations. It took me months to find the right GSA auctions
that had these particular cabinets available. The thermite and fusing was
naturally removed, but the triggering circuits were left in place. It was a
simple manner to replace the thermite and fuses." One of the drawers contains
the CD-ROM 'jukebox' that holds gigabytes of banned information. "It's
connected via a file server to the 128. Anyone who knows how to ask has full
access to that jukebox. Of course, there's an automatic StegoSaur filter that
hides any requested information in 'innocent' GIFs or other files.
Periodically, I get a flood of requests from new areas as the underground
spreads and new packet nodes are set up."
Speaking of CD-ROMs, he had a Mini-Disk recording deck set up and one of
the Quadras has a CD drive that can write to blank CDs. "Normally, I bootleg
banned music and spoken word items via cassettes; they're cheap and universal.
However, sometimes it's easier to move the product via CD or Mini-Disk, hence
the disk decks. What would fill dozens of cassettes, is easily stored on a
single CD. CD players are everywhere and cheap, as are patchcords to hook a
cassette deck to the player." He gifted me with the complete Frank Zappa
catalog on Mini-Disk and a CD with a QuickTime movie of Zappa's testimony
before Tipper Gore in the last century. After seeing the video, I can
understand why she despised him and had his works banned in her administration!
One thing that surprised me was his choice of sidearm. Despite the
innumerable laws forbidding the mere possession of most guns, let alone
carrying one in public, many people flout the law, due to the indifference of
the police. "I prefer the Luger, to the Glocks and Red Star 20s and other high
capacity pistols. The Luger is an elegant weapon, it nestles snugly into the
hand and naturally points to one's target. It's also rather smaller and less
noticeable than those enormous hand cannons favored by most. I've found that 8
well-placed 9mm rounds can be just as effective as 20 .50 caliber rounds
sprayed at random."
We had dinner with his girlfriend, a tall Black woman in her 40s, whose
profession must remain confidential. There aren't too many like her in her
chosen profession, and the fewer clues to both their true names, the better.
"Flaunting the stupidity of the ruling party is one thing, making it easy for
them to catch us is quite another!" She's also an influential member of the
underground, and her profile will be appearing soon.
We ate in a small East Indian restaurant, where he was apparently well
known. It is to be noted that we received excellent service and the food was
superb. As he was paying the bill, his girlfriend confided to me that several
years ago, the restaurant was robbed at gunpoint, and that he deliberately took
a bullet meant for the cashier, the pregnant daughter of the owner/chef of the
restaurant. He also shot and killed the two armed robbers before he collapsed.
Curiously enough, the bodies of the two robbers were never found, there was no
report made to the police, and his wound was tended to by a local Indian
surgeon. Bullet wounds are required to be reported to the authorities, and
damn few people these days wish to tell the authorities anything. I asked him
about that incident. "If I hadn't been sitting with my back to the door, I
would have spotted them coming in and would have been ready for them." I then
recalled that both in the restaurant and in the bus station, he was always
positioned so that he see all the avenues of approach.
The three of us returned to his home, and I spent the remainder of the
evening asking him about his exploits. In college, he was an incorrigible
prankster. The DayGlo orange fruit bat is still talked about at MIT, and Brown
alumni and the Secret Service still wonder just how DID all that Jell-O get
into the Presidential limousine. With a mordant wit, impeccable logic and a
cadre of ACLU lawyers at his back, ("and don't forget the First Amendment, God
bless it!") he made life miserable for the self-appointed "Thought Police" at
both MIT and Brown, validating the right to free expression and gaining the
undying enmity, even 4 decades later, of some of the most powerful figures in
politics today.
"They may hate my guts, but deep down, they're still scared of me. I'm
told that the senior Senator from Massachusetts still has nightmares about what
he went through at my hands at the student court in Cambridge. I also have
enough juice in my above ground life to keep them from trying anything obvious.
Besides, the ones who I really made laughingstocks of, have found out that
spending four years in school as thought police, instead of getting an
education, did bugger all for their career options. Damn few of them are in
any position to do anything to me now."
It's rumored that he has heavy dirt on both political parties in his city.
His only response was to smile and chuckle. "That would be telling." He also
contributes to both major political parties in the city. "It's a fact of life
here, but paying off the parties insures that I won't be 'bothered' by the
police, no matter what 'evidence' comes to hand."
He was part of the crew that exposed the hidden, and easily accessible
trapdoors in the Clipper II chip, resulting in the massive investigation and
expose of the National Security Agency. He was also one of the team that
created PGP for the Sega 64 game machine. "I'm very happy that I was one of
those who helped bring PGP to the masses of people who couldn't afford a 64 bit
'computer', and since there're SO many Sega 64s floating around in the States
and indeed, the world, there's probably many people alive today who wouldn't be
if their governments could crack their secure messages. I'm told that at least
two democratic revolutions were made possible, in part, due to PGP S-64. Right
now, myself and several others are attempting to create a version of StegoSaur
for the S-64. That one extra layer of protection could be very useful for a
lot of people in the future, the way things are going in most of the world. We
do have the stripper for the S-64 that strips the hidden data from a StegoSaur
file, but it really should go both ways." He was quite reluctant to talk about
himself, preferring to praise others in the underground for the their efforts
in the struggle against repression.
One thing I've noticed as I've travelled across the country, profiling
those members of the underground who are willing to be interviewed, is their
humility and self-effacing nature. The braggarts and self-promoters are almost
always phonies, wanna-be's or informants. In the day and a half I spent with
him, he almost never said, "Well, I did this" or "I did that." He consistently
used "We did this" or "My friends and I did that". In many respects, he
doesn't consider himself a hero in the underground, and he was astounded to
know that his opinions and thoughts carry great weight in the underground
community.
I asked him about his above ground profession. He asked that I not reveal
any details, for his protection. Suffice it to say, that he's quite
successful, enjoys a degree of wealth that many would envy, and disposes of
most of that wealth to the benefit of the poor and powerless in our wretched
country.
One thing that troubles him is certain groups in the underground. "Not so
much the old-line patriot groups, but the loonies who blame all the evils that
have befallen the US and most of the world on international conspiracies of
Jews or Jesuits or Grey Aliens or the Illuminati or the Discordians. It's so
easy for them to see themselves as victims of powers beyond imagination, that
they cannot cooperate or compromise with those of us who deal with the reality
of oppression every day. They're loose cannons, and I fear that they may prove
even more dangerous to the struggle than the oppressors in power." I asked
what he'd do about them, if he had the power. "Oh, absolutely nothing! For all
I know, they may be right! It's unlikely, but the chance is there, and
frankly, despite the Government edicts, the First Amendment is STILL the Law of
the land. I have no right to silence them, or to prevent others from hearing
their opinions. I'd be no better than the oppressors were I to try and repress
them in any way."
My last question is the same that I've asked all the underground members
I've interviewed. Are you optimistic about the future? "Yes, actually, I am!
Repressive regimes are entropic. They cannot maintain the status quo without
expending more and more energy. Eventually, they'll collapse under their own
weight. The sad fact is that in some cases the collapse is terribly
destructive. One of the responsibilities of the underground is to establish a
framework that can, when eventually called upon, provide some manner of
direction. Fortunately, our Constitution and Bill of Rights are still extant,
and those few pages are really all that's needed to run a Republic. I hope
that before I die, I can see the Republic reborn, the rascals turned out, and
free men and women once again in control of their destinies."
He escorted me to the bus station the next afternoon, and with the most
startling episode of misdirection, passed my Frank Zappa Mini-Disks undetected
around the metal detectors at the boarding gate. I was wondering how I'd get
it past the detectors at the bus station in my home town. "Don't worry," he
told me. "Make sure you use the number 3 detector at the station. All the
CDleggers know that one is defective. Just stash all your metal, coins and
pocketknife, in your bag and tuck the CDs under your shirt in the small of your
back. You'll sail through with nary a beep." He was right! One thing that
puzzled me was that his pistol and knife didn't trigger the detector. He must
have sensed my confusion. "To quote the late, great Tom Lehrer, 'To think of
all the marvelous ways, they're using plastics nowadays!'" He PGPed me later
with a fuller explanation. For the journey to the bus station and a trip
though the metal detectors, a ceramic blade and Lexan handle, and a Lexan gun,
with a ceramic barrel liner, polymer springs and cartridge cases are just the
thing, replacing his usual sidearms. Practically undetectable, even with
properly maintained detectors, and all but invisible given the sad condition of
most bus station detectors.
A week later, an underground courier showed up at my door with a package.
In it was a mint condition Luger, several magazines, a cleaning kit,
maintenance manual, holster and 1000 rounds of 9mm ammunition. The included
note suggested that, given the recent, well-known unfortunate events in my home
town, a serviceable, untraceable pistol might be a Good Thing. There was no
signature, but then, was one really necessary?
_______ __________________________________________________________________
/ _ _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
((___)) |Cool Beans!..........415/648-PUNK|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
[ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/579-2276|ATDT East...........617/350-STIF|
\ / |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020|
(' ') | Save yourself! Go outside! DO SOMETHING! |
(U) |==================================================================|
.ooM |Copyright © 1994 cDc communications and THE NIGHTSTALKER. |
\_______/|All Rights Reserved. 07/01/1994-#269|
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