Page 182 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Slow Burn

quite a few held the anti-capitalist view that software should be free,
like air.”
“If you say so.”
“At the same time, the fad of putting viruses in software was in full
swing. This often involved the placement of a ‘time bomb’ in a
program passed on to countless other users through a telephone-
linked network of PC’s. When a certain date was reached, the
previously harmless little piece of software, like the Trojan horse,
would unleash a destructive series of instructions, wreaking havoc in
the unlucky user’s disk drive. The usual perpetrator derived nothing
but infantile satisfaction from this prank; Quentin, however, saw it
from a different angle.”
We turned west on Avenue 29. It was a district of student housing,
tacky apartment buildings rented mainly to attendees of the nearby
state university.
“Early in 1987 he wrote a clever little game program called
‘Quintessence’ and made it available to the public through a bulletin
board used by computer enthusiasts. The program displayed a
screenful of seemingly random characters and challenged the human
player to find as many hidden words as possible in a short period of
time. It was quite a hit, and soon several thousand copies of
‘Quintessence’ were spread around the country. Then on May 5 the
time bomb went off.”
“On that day, when the unsuspecting player completed the first
round of pointing to strings of letters forming words, the screen
suddenly froze, and one by one letters starting dropping out of the
matrix. What was left explained that the program was not free, that
the user owed fifty dollars to ‘Quintessence, Inc.’ Further, the
program seized the phone line and dialed Quentin’s computer,
providing him with the user’s telephone number. This fact was also
displayed, together with a vague threat of legal action if the fee were
not paid within five working days.”
“Did he really think he could get away with that?”
“Remember, Duncan: these kids grew up with a very tenuous
grasp of real-world possibilities and penalties. Then they landed in
jail, only to come out penniless and rejected by their only living
relative. In those days computer fraud could get the FBI on your trail,
and they would confiscate everything in your home with a wire

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