11
Jack found Russ Tuit in an agitated state. He let Jack in, then started stomping around the apartment.
"Can I say, 'What the fuck?'" he shouted, waving a thick, oversized paperback in the air. "Can I just?"
Jack shrugged. "Hey, it's your apartment." Then an unpleasant thought struck. "You're not having trouble with the disk, are you? Yesterday—"
"The disk is fine. No, it's this English Lit course I'm taking. I just had to read 'Ode on a Greek Urn' by Keats and I just got to say, 'What the fuck!'"
"It's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' I believe, but if it'll make you feel better, sure. Be my guest."
"Okay. What the fuck?" He flipped through the pages till he found what he wanted. "Listen to this: 'More happy love! More happy, happy love!'" He tossed the book across the room to where it bounced off the wall, leaving a greenish scuff—the same green as the book cover. It joined half a dozen similar marks in the vicinity. "Is this guy kidding? It sounds like the Stimpy song!"
"And you sound like Ren."
"Do you believe the shit they want us to read? Now I remember why I dropped out and went into full-time hacking. This is worse than prison, man! This is cruel and unusual!"
"Speaking of hacking," Jack said, "the disk is ready, isn't it?"
"What? Oh, yeah. Sure." Simply mentioning the disk seemed to calm him. "Got it right here."
He picked up a red three-and-a-half-inch floppy and scaled it across the room.
Jack caught the little thing and said, "This is it?"
"All you'll need. Just make sure you put it in the floppy drive before you start the machine. That way my disk'll be in control of the startup."
"What do I do?"
"Nothing. You don't even have to turn on the monitor. The disk'll bypass any password protection. It'll disable any antivirus software he's got—Norton, McAfee, whatever—and introduce HYRTBU. All you've got to do is wait maybe ten minutes till the hard drive stops chattering, then pull out the disk—Jesus, make sure you don't leave it there—turn off the computer, and buy yourself a beer. His files are toast."
Jack stared at the red plastic square resting in his palm. "That's it?" It seemed too simple.
Russ grinned. "That's it. That's why you pay me the big bucks. Speaking of which…"
Jack dug into his pocket, saying, "But how will I know if it worked?"
"If you don't see him tossing his rig out a window, you'll see him down at his computer guy's place the next day asking what the fuck's going on."
Jack nodded. He planned to be watching.
But before all that he had to track down a take-out pu pu platter.