Free Operation Desolation by Mark Russinovich Page A

computers. He detested the things—and he didn’t trust them. After all, the things were now connected, like so many tunnels from house to house, and the so-called firewalls and other security measures built in or installed failed to work with depressing regularity.
    Not that Walthrop wasn’t a man of the twenty-first century. He preferred travel by jet to the alternative and in the last year had developed an appreciation for video conferencing. He couldn’t help wondering about the security of it all but was assured there was no issue and he was careful with what he said.
    Still, all those bits and pieces of electronic data out there somewhere was troubling. Better if important information was set down to paper and locked away with a trusty guard outside. Walthrop didn’t think of this as old-fashioned, rather as just so much common sense, though he had to admit there seemed a dearth of that in recent years.
    One evening he’d expressed, once again, his dislike of computers. His wife had pointed out that his voice was carried by telephone with electronic pulses, that a telly was nothing more than a computer screen—to which he allowed that explained a great deal to his way of thinking. Why his war with the PC? she asked.
    He’d explained it to her again. He knew his protestations sounded silly when uttered but there it was.
    And, of course, there was another issue. What he wouldn’t acknowledge to her was that he didn’t type all that well. He’d only learned at university and had never been very good at it. The computer only made things worse by pointing out an endless stream of mistyped words and questionable use of grammar. He preferred to write his letters and reports out in longhand then transfer them by typing into his computer. It wasn’t perfect, it was very slow, but his wasn’t a fast occupation.
    Whatever his reasons he was never entirely comfortable with computers. More than once when he’d opened an interesting attachment he’d inadvertently downloaded a virus. It had happened often enough for his lack of computer prowess to become a subject in the greater office. In fact, he’d had a bit of trouble with Herlicher’s attachment as he recalled.
    Earlier that day when it arrived he’d glanced at the subject line and felt a wave of satisfaction. At last! He clicked on the attachment, but instead of opening the file he saw the following:
    Â 
    OfficeWorks has stopped working.
    A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.
    Windows will close the program and notify
    You if a solution is available.
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    Below the message was a button that read, “Close program.”
    Now what was this? he’d thought. Why would he want to close the program? And just how did Windows expect to get back to him? This was one of those questions he never got an answer to. And if Windows, whatever that was, could get back to him about this problem that meant Windows, or whoever controlled it, knew what was taking place in his computer. That was exactly what he was talking about.
    OfficeWorks sounded familiar. He considered that a moment then, slightly embarrassed, realized it was the name of the office word processing program his division used. The bright kids from IT had assured him that almost everyone in the world used it. It was the best there was.
    If it was so good, Walthrop thought, why did it stop working?
    He closed his e-mail program. He’d learned that starting it up again usually fixed any problem he ran into. Then he’d gone to Herlicher’s e-mail and double-clicked on the report. This time it opened without a problem. That was more like it.
    He now realized that his response to Herlicher the moment he’d finished reading the report had been an indulgence. He’d been needlessly harsh and berated himself for it. The man might be a suspicious fool but he had his uses and now he’d cut him off as a source.
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