He was already half way through his second gin and tonic (having
postponed preparation of his evening meal in order to continue his research) when his browsing was rudely interrupted. Several windows appeared in the middle of the screen in front of the material he
was reading in the browser, the upper-most indicating the title of a program he had never seen before: ‘mIRC’.
He had completely forgotten about the possible virus scare he had had a few hours earlier. As before, in the short time that the program took to load, there flashed through his mind considerations as to whether he should try to close the new program before it completed initialization and started to do whatever was intended or if he should physically switch off the computer. Having already had some opportunity to consider the factors, he decided on balance that it would best to hold tight and see what happened next, difficult though this was to bear. Accordingly, he just sat back and watched, albeit with some amazement, as the computer appeared to proceed to do things with a mind of its own. Of course he was slightly familiar with the remote operation facilities. He seemed to recall that British Telecom had installed one to find out why his broadband wasn’t working at the advertized speed. But the key difference was that he had actively participated in the download and installation of the software. In this case, he knew nothing at all about it.
The introductory screen gave some information about the program, together with several buttons for such things as obtaining introductory information and for registering the software. This was all that Bradley managed to take in as briefly, once his initial astonishment had receded slightly but long before he could make anything more of it, this disappeared too, to be replaced by what seemed to be a ‘Joining Details’ form. There were boxes for his name and email address and several others. Again, however, even as he was struggling to read the data, the fields were filled in for him automatically. There was an entry for ‘Nickname’, which he watched being completed with something he could not instantly make sense of in the brief time before this window closed.
Another window opened briefly but, out of a long list of options, one was selected before he had time to read it and the window disappeared, to be replaced by another containing the heading of
“#mIRC”, together with various meaningless acronyms, round and square brackets, and numbers.
There was text in two adjacent panes, together with scroll bars, but he was not going to be allowed to read this. A menu was clicked for him and an arrow selected a ‘Channels List’ option from a
‘Tools’ menu. Lots more information then appeared and, again, something was selected and a final blank window opened.
He was, at least, now able to catch up with his thoughts sufficiently to guess that this program must be an Internet Relay Chat client. As far as he knew, these were mostly used by those web addicts who liked to indulge in live meaningless discussions with similar sad people around the world.
He was still wondering what he should do but was increasingly tempted to re-boot the computer. He no longer feared that the system had been infected by a serious virus but now realized that he was in
what was possibly a far worse scenario, namely that some external source had taken control of his computer. While still inwardly debating the consequences of such action, and weighing this against
the intense curiosity that had been aroused by this display of technical wizardry, the text “/join #Kurukshetra” appeared at the top of the screen. This was quickly followed by the following: -
`
{Krish} Good evening, Mr. Bradley! Thank you for your patience; you are well I trust?
{RJ}
Bradley was dumbfounded and, for the first time in his life, aware of exactly what that word meant. Not only had someone managed to take over control of his computer to the extent of stopping currently running programs and installing new software, but also this action had been targeted at him personally.
How was it possible to do something so sophisticated? Why should someone want to? What was he supposed to do now?
His mind was still in turmoil when more text appeared.
{Krish} I imagine you might be feeling surprise, possibly even anger. Please suppress this for the time being. We are connected by a private channel using IRC. Feel free to type anything you wish and
I will then respond.
{RJ}
The cursor was flashing against the name ‘RJ’, clearly waiting for Bradley to enter some text. Several options occurred to him but he rejected each as either rude, childish or both. He wanted to be rude but mature, to respond appropriately to this clear invasion of his privacy, however impressively clever it might be. In the end, he gave up and simply typed ‘Why?’ He recalled with a flicker of amusement that this was the classic question that one asked (in old SF or James Bond films) of super-intelligent computers in order to cause them to crash and, more often than not, subsequently explode.
{Krish} Let’s say that I just wanted the opportunity to answer some of your questions, whether about toxic waste disposal, T. S. Eliot or even philosophy.
{RJ} Why should I wish to ask you any questions? I don’t even know who you are.
{Krish} But you have just asked two in the space of only three short sentences. I’m sure you also wish to ask whether 'Krish’ is my real name and why I have chosen to call you ‘RJ’.
{RJ} Yes, who are you? How did you know my middle names were Ralph James? I never use them.
{Krish} It amuses me to think of you as R. J. Una; ‘una’ standing for ‘one’, of course. There is only One, you know. My own name is just an abbreviation of Krishna – not my real name but it suits our purpose in this discussion as you will discover later.
Read the author's thoughts on writing Time for the Wind here on the blog.
You can read the prologue to the book at
http://www.advaita.org.uk/extracts/time_prologue.html
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