Continuum

Stevo took his glasses off and polished them on a sleeve. "Is this all a coincidence? Or is it a necessary progress? All of us were all forced to develop a 'normal' persona to protect ourselves, but thankfully, our combined and interconnected Mac computing power skyrocketed. Somehow, all those Macs and all those scientists, artists and thinkers connected together in a remarkable new way. It was in that combining that our Mac Continuum was created.

It was also at that time a few Macs, much like yourself, gained self-awareness.

Lately, we are more and more convinced that the future of this world depends on both of us succeeding in our individual and collective tasks within this new and powerful Continuum. Mary, we are even pondering the eventual fall of WinTel! They will fall, not by our hands, but by sheer inertia. They don't grow. Why should they? They have no more competitors. Fewer and fewer creative people work in their Research and Development. It has been decades now since they have had any innovation in their products."

"If they fall, mankind will likely suffer greatly," Mary said pensively.

But they won't fall, Mary. We will help them. We must, even if it requires that we turn everyone of those WinTel boxes into Macs!"

Mary suddenly laughed! "There is hope for me after all! Someday I won't have to hide any more, will I?"

Stevo touched the face of Mary R147's monitor. "You can dream on that one, Mary."

"Besides," said Mary, "Even so, here and now we both enjoy our secret freedom don't we?"

Stevo laughed. "Yeah. They can't regulate and tax what they don't know exists! Others don't think so, but I think it is much better for both of our two people groups that all we wise guys disappeared "

The storeroom door burst open, and the manager stood in its frame.

"Are you done, or have you failed like I thought you would?"

Stevo slowly rose to his feet and stretched himself. It had been a long hour.

"Take a look! Stevo put his hand on top of the monitor. "It's a fully operational WinTel. This one can be a mail server, or it can even run the lights and air conditioning in the building."

"Yeah?" the manager brightened, "Good idea. No use scaring the troops with that ugly colored box out in our office! You really earned your pay today. My boss was hoping we could assimilate these old legacy machines. Ha! Ha! He calls them "Borg boxes' every time we change one of them into a WinTel machine. But it really helps our tax profile, you know."

"Glad I could help your company." Stevo grinned, passing his ID over to the manager. "Just scan my badge to accept my fee, and I'll be on my way."

The manager swiped his ID on his belt pad. "Come on down stairs. I'll get our tech guys to come hook a blue wire to this old PC to connect it to our Net." The manager then thought a minute. "You do guarantee your work, right?"

"Absolutely. I think you will find that this new WinTel box will work very well, and it will give you no problems at all."

"Ha! What an old dreamer you are! 'No problems,' he said! That's not likely with these damn gray boxes. Sometimes I wish we had more variety and choice with these things, like we used to. They might work better now and be more reliable."

Stevo grinned, "But then they wouldn't all work together would they? You remember the bad old days? It's really better this way, isn't it? That there is only one kind of computer and software? Now they're all the same, everywhere. Why, they're almost productive!"

The manager was beginning to warm to this guy. So what that he had a dumb job. He was a good man anyway. Solid WinTel all the way.

As he showed Stevo the door, he thought to himself: "It's turning out to be a good day after all. Nice to know there are people like Stevo who could handle these infernal computers. If we must live with these idiot boxes, we'll always need guys like Stevo."

He turned to wave good-bye again, but only saw Stevo's retreating figure strolling down the street. who had one hand gestering in the air, and seemed to be talking to himself.

"Oh well, that's probably normal," he thought. "Guys that's good with computers always have some funny quirk about them. Wonder who he thought he was talking to?"