Interface Read Online Free PDF Page B

computer. He was holding the device out at arm's length.
    "Tick, tick, tick, tick!" the man was saying. But he pronounced it "teeuhk, teeuhk." He was one of those southerners who could add syllables to words and make it sound good. "And then somewhere over Newark - BOOM! Haw, haw, haw!"
    The old guard grinned and guided him to the table.
    "Sir," Bristol said.
    "Howdy," the man with the computer said. "This is a Compaq - more bang for the buck than IBM! Haw haw!"
    As Aaron watched in disbelief, Bristol exchanged a friendly, knowing grin with the big southerner.
    "Got a Gamma Prime CPU, a gigabyte drive, and three pounds of Semtex," the southerner said.
    He had a smooth, trombonelike voice that could be heard for miles. All of the metal detector guards were looking at him and chuckling. The businessmen filing through the metal detectors, picking their pocket change out of the plastic buckets, were looking at the southerner with appreciative grins, shaking their heads.
    He was tall, probably a couple of inches over six feet, had love handles, an unexceptional suit, a high forehead, the beginnings' of jowls, a florid complexion, eyebrows raised up in a perpetually surprised or skeptical expression, a tiny little pursed mouth. "Whoa, looks like I got some competition here!" he blurted, eyeing the IMIPREM in mock wonder.
    Then his whole face changed; suddenly his eyes were narrowed and darting, he had become secret and conspiratorial, shooting sidelong glances at Bristol, Max. "Abu Jihad!" he hissed at Aaron. "Praise be to Allah! We have perfected a nuclear device capable of fitting under an airline seat!"
    The big guard and the southerner joined together in loud, booming laughter. "I got a glass of bourbon with my name on it in that bar by the gate," the southerner finally said, "so let me crank this thing up for you and get on out of here. If you don't mind, sir," he added to Aaron, courteously enough.
    "Not at all."
    The man snapped the computer open and folded back the top; to reveal its screen, a flat, high-resolution, color monitor. Aaron had other things to be worrying about right now, but he couldn't help staring at the man's computer; it was one of the nicest and most powerful laptops you could buy, certainly one of the most expensive. These things had only been on the market for a couple of months. This one was already worn and battered around the edges.
    The southerner hit the on button, hollering "BOOM!" so loud that Bristol actually startled a little bit. Then he laughed.
    The screen came alive with windows and icons. From a distance, Aaron recognized about half of the icons. He knew what this soft ware did. He could guess that the southerner did a lot of statistical analysis, desktop publishing, and even desktop video production.
    "Sir, would this do the trick?" Bristol was saying.
    "Yo!" said the southerner, giving Aaron a dig on the arm. "He's talking to you!"
    "Huh?" Aaron said.
    "Would this computer be capable of talking to your machine there?" Bristol said.
    "Well, yes, if it had the right software loaded on to its hard drive. Which it doesn't."
    "Oh, I see what's going on," the southerner said. Suddenly he stuck out his hand toward Aaron. "Cy Ogle," he said. "Pro nounced, but not spelled, like mogul."
    "Aaron Green."
    Cy Ogle laughed. "So you have to show this guy here that your box won't blow up when we reach our cruising altitude. And until you hook it up to a computer, it won't do anything except turn on that little red light."
    "Exactly."
    "Which don't mean jack to him, because that light is about the size of a grain of rice, and for all he knows the rest of the box is full of black powder and roofing nails."
    "Well..."
    "You have the software with you? On floppies? Well, load it in there, and let's take this baby for a spin."
    Aaron couldn't believe the guy was serious. But he was. Aaron fished the diskette with the IMIPREM software out of his briefcase and popped it into the drive on Ogle's machine. A