The rats… the rats… I hear them scratching in the walls…

DAY 4:

How could anything so bland be so chaotic? Yet here I am, confused, dazed, blinded by the fluorescent light reflected off the walls of this cubicle painted IBM Beige #17.

Nothing seems to happen here. My warden walks by, tells me yet again that the West Coast contact has not returned his call. I nod my head, but paranoia tells me that he is lying. It’s some sort of elaborate plan, to break my will, to drive me mad.

I WILL NOT BE BROKEN!! They know not of this journal, that I assemble a word at a time, under the guise of configuring my xsession. Hopefully, it will save someone the agony which I now experience… someone… somewhere… out there.

Out there. Does it still exist? Or are these messages being redirected into /dev/null, as my tormenters giggle fiendishly over my vain attempts to hold onto sanity? Is there still a world where software is written instead of assembled, where SmallTalk and C++ hold a loftier position than HTML?

What’s that? Another maddening message comes over the intercom. Everyone seems to have beepers, what is the need for an intercom? I know the need: to keep me from sleep, precious sleep…

New Jersey: thy name is Death…

I’ve lasted longer here than I did at you-know-where, but I think the only reason I haven’t walked is that they have seven hundred plus of my mother’s money and I want it back. Color me paranoid, but I believe that their may have been some thought behind the idea of making me pay for my own interview.

Man, I hate this firewall. For one thing, it’s poorly written (and you know how I feel about second-rate work): fails to pass through proper FTP and HTTP result codes, as well as not providing a user interface to FTP proxy. Crap like that. Probably cost them a few dollars, too. (I remember $30K being bantered around, but I have a notoriously flaky memory for amounts.)

I suppose they have their reasons. Not that there is anything in here that anybody would want to steal, and even if there WAS, it would be easier to walk through the back door (unlocked and unwatched) and drop a vampire on one of the 10BaseT lines. Pitiful. Security: thy name is Scarce…

Less than twelve more hours to go. Will I survive? Will I be sent to the Boonies? Will they have cable? Will Rob ever see another episode of “Gargoyles”? Does anyone care?

Tomorrow I shall instigate my revenge…

— Rob