CHAPTER 1 It started at AmiEXPO LA. Looking back on those nightmarish weeks, I can hardly believe it happened. Mom warned me. "Betsy Binkley, mark my words: Strange creatures like Democrats and socialists stalk the streets of Los Angeles and environs in broad daylight! Stay home, child!" But I gave her old grey head a brief and vigorous albeit cheerful knuckle-rub and boarded the bus. As Insignificantville faded behind me at the end of a ribbon of asphalt, my head was filled only with desire -- that desire of a new Amiga owner to find the best hardware and software available. After all, I had brought more than forty dollars with me. CHAPTER 2 If I can never go to Oz, then let me go to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles once again! AmiEXPO was in the cellar. It happened as I was reaching for a software package called "Cookin'", (All Duded Up Software, $9.99 plus tax, shipping, handling, surcharge, wrapping, testing fee, registration, insurance, license, carfare and Software Creators Pension contribution.) A man was reaching for it at the same time. A spark shot between our knuckles. The All Duded Up booth attender, who had on a nice little sharkskin suit, jumped forward. "Gee, lady! Ground yourself, won'tcha. What are you, the Bride of Frankenstein or somethin'?" The man came to my defense. "She obviously meant no harm, fellow. Why don't go you beta-test your software and leave her alone?" He was excitingly stern with the sharkskin-clad gentleman. He turned to me. "I hope you don't think me forward. I'm Ralph South." I introduced myself. "I see you're interested in the same type of software I am, Miss Binkley. It is "miss," isn't it? Perhaps you'll join me in a cup of coffee?" Overcoming my blush, I said, "Do you think we'd both fit?" I'd heard about those wild California hot tub parties -- and with coffee yet! Mr. South smiled. "I enjoy wit in a woman, Miss Binkley." Within twenty minutes it was "Ralph" and "Betsy." Within two hours we were holding hands as we strolled through the oh-so-thrilling carnival of Amiga goods. We paused briefly before the MegaWare booth. "Those folks," said Ralph, "are considering my game for publication!" "Oh, Ralph!" "I have high hopes," he said simply. He gave a friendly wave to the MegaWare people. One of them nodded curtly to him and offered a thin smile. . . . That evening, when Ralph saw me to the foyer of the YWCA, where I had taken a room, we had decided I would stay in Southern California, that I would assist him as full partner in his quest to see his gameware published. CHAPTER 3 Those first weeks were giddy and fun-filled. We spent almost every evening at some Amiga gathering, mostly listening to people talk about applications they planned to write someday. It was exciting. Mom had sent my Amiga, which now sat beside Ralph's. I was learning Assembly on my own, though Ralph gently scoffed at the idea of a woman learning to program and called Basic "a real macho guy's language." While Ralph tried to get his game's little blip to hop around without program crashes, I wrote a neat word processor, put it on the local boards as shareware and earned $22.37 in the first month alone. I was about halfway finished with a spreadsheet program with commodities predictions built in, when the reply came from MegaWare. All smiles, Ralph opened it. His smile faded. "Rejected!" he whispered. "Oh, Ralph, I'm so sorry. Don't be discouraged. Send it to another company, dear." "What do you know about anything?" he screamed. He was out the door in a trice and roared down the street on his moped. When he returned, well after 9:30 at night, he reeked of rootbeer. That was the beginning of the subtle change in Ralph, the downward spiral that would take me through Hell and its fiery lakes of anguish! CHAPTER 4 It was two weeks later. Ralph and his new group of friends noisily entered the apartment. I tried to ignore them. I'd modified my commodities program so it would predict any 10 percent rise or fall of computer stocks within a one-week period. Strangely, it worked and I had earned more than $2 million -- on paper. I tried to ignore Ralph and his friends. They were crude types, members of a renegade club from Los Ysidros. A-UGLY was its name -- Amiga User Group, Los Ysidros. "Har-har-har," said one of the more pleasant-looking of the group, a hairy thing which scratched its belly incessantly, "looky there! Ralph's old lady is playing computer!" They laughed. Ralph joined them. I quietly removed the archive disk from my computer and set it aside. "Get me a brew!" Ralph ordered. "There's no more root beer, Ralph. 7-Eleven doesn't give credit." He growled and sat before his own Amiga. The A-UGLY group had a stack of disks, most of them filled with pictures of ladies in bathing suits, or pirated arcade games. I paced around the small apartment as the group raucously moused through the disks. "Thinks she can program!" Ralph muttered to no one. "Who?" one of the A-UGLY fellows absently asked. "Her!" Ralph said in a louder voice. "Oh, Ralph, leave me alone!" But he wouldn't. "Let's just see what she's done!" He lurched toward my computer. Before I could stop him, he grabbed my stock market program disk. "No!" I said. "That's private!" "Har-har," said Mr. Belly Scratcher. Ralph put my disk in DF0: of his Amiga and struck the CTRL-A-A keys to boot it. "Ralph, this is intolerable!" I gazed in horror as the disk began to boot. Then the screen turned green. Then a message appeared on the screen. It read: HI THERE! I'M A PINHEAD. BECAUSE I'M INCAPABLE OF CREATING ANYTHING USEFUL, I THOUGHT I'D WRITE SOME CODE THAT SCREWS UP YOUR DISK. YOU NOW HAVE A VIRUS. "Oh Ralph! How could I ever have trusted you with my software! Oh, I feel so violated!" One of the A-UGLY dimwits burped and gazed at the screen. "There it is again," he said. The others nodded. I had everything packed when the taxi arrived twenty minutes later. "YWCA," I told the driver. CHAPTER 5 "The technician will see you now," the gentle smiling woman said. I rose and numbly walked past the main counter of Harley's Hardware Heaven. I was shown into a small but well lit room, where I waited a few minutes. A man in a white coat entered, toweling his just-washed hands. He glanced at the sheet the receptionist had me fill out. "H-m-m-m, a virus," he said. He looked at me. "I'm Harley Swote. I hope it's not too late to help. May I see the disk, please?" I removed the ailing disk from my purse. He placed it on a sterile metal table and clicked on an overhead exam light. "So your disk has been infected by the Pinhead Virus, right?" I numbly nodded. "Have you written anything to blocks 0 and/or 1?" I shook my head. He clucked commiseratively. "I think I can help. But you'll have to trust me." I said I did. He indicated a nearby Amiga. "Observe," he said. "1. I have booted the machine with a Workbench disk I know is healthy. "2. I put the good Workbench in the drive and type: install ? "3. This gives me a prompt reading: DRIVE/A: which I answer by: a. removing the Workbench, b. inserting the ailing disk, and typing: df0: "4. This INSTALLs the disk, writing over the virus. Your disk is now healthy again." I was exuberant. "How can I ever repay you?" He smiled. "Just pay the cashier on the way out. However . . . you might join me in a cup of coffee." I gazed into his warm brown eyes. I pictured the two of us immersed in a hot tub filled with hot coffee. It was tempting. But . . . "No," I said, "I don't think we'd both fit. Besides, I have a bus to catch." "I enjoy wit in a woman," Mr. Swote said. "Perhaps another time." AFTERMATH I'm back in Insignificantville. I finished my program and am using it cautiously for $500 profit a week. I got a long letter from Ralph. One of the UGLY guys fell on his Amiga and squashed it. This led to a brawl and the ultimate breakup of the group. Ralph is selling timeshare condominiums to raise the money for another Amiga. He wants me to come back to him. He swears he doesn't own one disk with a virus on it. "Egad, I am a cad," he ended. That was so elegant, I suspected he must have read it in a real expensive book. Oh, how I wish I could believe him! What girl doesn't long for romance? Of an evening, I fondly recall the magic moments and try to blot out the horror of what followed. I have learned three things from my time in the big city. One, you can't trust a man just because he has an Amiga. Two, always make five backups of important disks. Three, it's no sin to catch a virus. But it is to spread one.