Overclocked | Page 2

moving parts. Back then,
I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
By the time I turned eighteen, they were ready to let Da out of prison.
I'd visited him three times -- on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and
when Ma died. It had been two years since I'd last seen him and he was
in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked
over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed
when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep
my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and
up the stairs.
"Lanie," he said, as he sat me down. "You're a smart girl, I know that.
Trig. You wouldn't know where your old Da could get a printer and
some goop?"
I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my
palms. I closed my eyes. "You've been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten.
Years. You're going to risk another ten years to print out more blenders
and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?"
He grinned. "I'm not stupid, Lanie. I've learned my lesson. There's no
hat or laptop that's worth going to jail for. I'm not going to print none of
that rubbish, never again." He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like
it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation. He closed his

eyes and leaned back in his chair.
"Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the
thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and
listen to your stupid Da."
I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker, that
much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. "What,
Da?" I said, leaning in close.
"Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
everyone. That's worth going to jail for. That's worth anything."
--
Introduction to When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
I've changed careers every two or three years ever since I dropped out
of university in 1990, and one of the best gigs I ever had was working
as a freelance systems administrator, working in the steam tunnels of
the information age, pulling cables, configuring machines, keeping the
backups running, kicking the network in its soft and vulnerable places.
Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the century, and if they're not
busting you for sending racy IMs, or engaging in unprofessional email
conduct it's purely out of their own goodwill.
There's a pernicious myth that the Internet was designed to withstand a
nuclear war; while that Strangelove wet-dream was undoubtedly
present in the hindbrains of the generals who greenlighted the network's
R&D at companies like Rand and BBN, it wasn't really a big piece of
the actual engineering and design.
Nevertheless, it does make for a compelling scenario, this vision of the
sysadmins in their cages around the world, watching with held breath
as the generator failed and the servers went dark, waiting out the long
hours until the power and the air run out.
This story originally appeared in Baen's Universe Magazine, an

admirable, high-quality online magazine edited by Eric Flint, himself a
talented writer and a passionate advocate for open and free culture.
Listeners to my podcast heard this story as it was written, read aloud in
serial chinks after each composing session. The pressure of listeners
writing in, demanding to know what happened next, kept me honest
and writing.
--
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
Originally published in Baen's Universe, 2006
When Felix's special phone rang at two in the morning, Kelly rolled
over and punched him in the shoulder and hissed, "Why didn't you turn
that fucking thing off before bed?"
"Because I'm on call," he said.
"You're not a fucking doctor," she said, kicking him as he sat on the
bed's edge, pulling on the pants he'd left on the floor before turning in.
"You're a goddamned *systems administrator*."
"It's my job," he said.
"They work you like a government mule," she said. "You know I'm
right. For Christ's sake, you're a father now, you can't go running off in
the middle of the night every time someone's porn supply goes down.
Don't answer that phone."
He knew she was right. He answered the phone.
"Main routers not responding. BGP not responding." The mechanical
voice of the systems monitor didn't care if he cursed at it, so he did, and
it made him feel a little better.
"Maybe I can fix it from here," he said. He could login to the UPS for
the cage and reboot the routers.