Continuum

"Now, Mr. Stevo has to retire to his home. I know that this has been an exhausting job. Sir. Your fee has been credited to your account. Our driver awaits at the door. Please, go to your well deserved rest! We will meet again."

There was no containing Lerno's glee. He was almost openly gloating over the owners and employees of this now diminished company. He never had to say a word about their open secret. He had done it all on the pretense of helping them out, for a small fee, with the technical support they had neither wanted nor requested.

Somewhere, Stevo imagined that he heard another brick fall from the wall of private Liberty they all supposedly enjoyed.

On the way home, Stevo called out to Mary. "Can't you do something for them? They looked utterly defeated."

Mary immediately answered with a happy voice, "Already did, boss! Their Linux system was left intact with all their data on a single machine. They should discover it any moment now. When they do, they will be able to quickly restore all their programming to what it was before you showed up."

"Some villain I am, huh?" Stevo remembered how some of those people looked so coldly at him.

Mary said, "The owner of the company will also soon get a personal message on his computer that will explain that you had saved a single machine from the upgrade. You will have explained that it was not necessary to change them all, because there might have been some important or critical data that should not be erased. You will be their Hero!"

"Wow! Thank you for helping them. They deserve better, you know."

"We know. Three of them have already been recruited in the last year into the first level of the Macintosh Continuum!

The driver stopped the vehicle at a corner some blocks from Stevo's apartment. "I gotta go thisaway now. You get home OK?"
"Yeah, I could use the fresh air. Thanks for the ride."

"No deal to me. You're a lucky one, bub. You got to go home this time."

Without another word, Stevo got out on the curb and began swiftly walking, his hands deep in his pockets.

"Mary? What have you discovered about Lerno's technology?"

"It was a leak, Stevo! Our plant in Ireland, which is a front for WinTel peripherals, was invaded by unknown persons eleven months ago. They knew what they were looking for. We have not yet found who was responsible. Certain technology was stolen that was not to be used for WinTel computers. When the devices were activated, they became aware of their surroundings and self-destructed. However, what was left of them could have been used for furthering WinTel's research. These were items of our stealth technology. Obviously, Mr. Lerno has tapped into this somehow." We have not yet located his new manufacturing plant."

"Mary, this has to come to an end, you know. Lerno and me. I want to wipe that smug look off his face."

"It most certainly will not make him a better person. You will not change him."

"Look, Mary. Most people don't mess with others. They don't care what computer is used, or even what a person thinks about things. Live and let live. It is the few like Lerno who give everyone heartburn by being so militant."

"Are we any different then? We want to help everyone benefit from the Macintosh Way, after all."

"Mary, there is a major difference between us and them. I am coming to see that more clearly. We only desire to help those who want to be helped. Them! Those in charge only want to make everyone alike. They fear difference. Their world view has to be the only one that exists, regardless of how flawed it might be. Somehow, I think that their world will always be flawed, just like their primitive OS. Their OS just creaks and jiggers along, getting its minimal work done. People are forced to follow where it goes, and at the speed it goes, for the WinTel OS is the only one there is. This is in lockstep with everything else about this gray world we live in. Our sham freedoms, and the fear people have when it comes to thinking different, are the direct result of a mindset that created such a mundane OS in the first place."

"We don't have the open freedom yet, Stevo. But there is the hope that we can someday live without fear of reprisal for both being, and thinking different."

"Yeah! In the meantime, we can all be Johnny Appleseed."

Mary said, "Referent. A mythical person of the nineteenth century who went out West to plant apple trees everywhere. Your are making a reference to the Apple Macintosh?"

"Only because we have the seeds of Freedom to plant in the hearts of people. Even if it's just the minor freedom to choose an OS. Choosing the Mac OS will soon lead people to find and choose other freedoms if they are brave enough. Even if those freedom must hide for a time, people will have the hope of it living within them. Not even an army of Lernos can take that away from someone who truly wants to be free! No matter what, people will always think different once they are given the chance, and once they know they have a choice. We have some evangelizing to do, Mary"

"I fear that you may indeed have to face Lerno, once you go down this path, Stevo.

"I know. I've always known, ever since I found my first Mac. So, its you and me against the world. Somehow, if we win, I believe the world will be a much better place for everyone."

Stevo picked up the pace, as his steps led him back to his home.