Geeks by Jon Katz Read Free Book Online Page A

around with Linux, the complex, open-source software system rapidly spreading across the world.
    Before settling in at his own rig, Eric grabbed a swig of milk from a carton in the refrigerator, taking a good whiff first. Meals usually consisted of a daily fast-food stop at lunchtime; everything else was more or less on the fly. There didn’t seem to be any edible food in the refrigerator, apart from a slightly discolored hunk of cheddar cheese.
    Jesse opened his MP3 playlist (MP3 is a wildly popular format for storing music on computer hard drives; on the Net, songs get traded like baseball cards) and pulled down five or six tracks—Alanis Morissette, John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton, Ani DiFranco. He turned on his Web browser, checked his e-mail, opened ICQ chat (an also–rapidly growing global messaging and chat system) looking for messages from Sam Hunter, fellow Geek Club alumnus, or his mother or sisters.
    He and Eric networked their computers for a few quick rounds of Quake II. Racing down hallways and passages on the screen, picking up ammo and medical supplies, acquiring ever bigger guns and blasters, the two kept up their techno-patter about the graphics, speed, and performance of their computers. “My hard drive is grungy,” Eric complained. Jesse gunned Eric down three times in a row, then yelped, “Shit, I’m dead.” A laser burst of bullets splattered blood all over the dungeonlike floor.
    Meanwhile, the two of them continued to chat with me over their shoulders, pausing every now and then to kill or be killed. All the while, Jesse listened to music, and answered ICQ messages. Somebody called and asked about ordering an ID card, the cottage industry that at fifty bucks a pop will help underwrite their contemplated move to Chicago. Somebody e-mailed a few additional MP3s; somebody else sent software and upgrades for Quake and Doom. I was dizzied and distracted by all the activity; they were completely in their element.
    The game was still under way when Eric moved over to the scanner and printer and printed out something semi-official-looking.
    “Too dark,” was Jesse’s assessment, without seeming to look away from the screen. So Eric went back to his computer and called up a graphic program. Jesse took another phone call, still playing Quake, as Joni Mitchell gave way to Jane’s Addiction, then the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
    At any given point, he was doing six things almost simultaneously, sipping soda, glancing at the phone’s caller ID, watching the scanner and the printer, blasting away at menacing soldiers, opening mail from an apartment manager in Chicago, fielding a message from his sister in Boise.
    He wasn’t just a kid at a computer, but something more, something new, an impresario and an Information Age CEO, transfixed and concentrated, almost part of the machinery, conducting the digital ensemble that controlled his life. Anyone could have come into the apartment and carted away everything in it, except for the computer, and Jesse wouldn’t have noticed or perhaps cared that much. He was playing, working, networking, visiting, strategizing—all without skipping a function, getting confused, or stopping to think.
    It was evidently second nature by now, which explained why he looked as if he hadn’t been out in the sun for years. It was more or less true: A couple of weeks earlier, he’d gone hiking along the Idaho River on a bright day and landed in the hospital emergency room with his arms and legs severely sunburned.
    He carried himself like someone who expected to get screwed, who would have to fend for himself when that happened, and who was almost never surprised when it did. Trouble, Jesse often declared, was the building block of character. Without the former, you didn’t get the latter.
    Of the two, Jesse was more social, more outward-looking. He sometimes read novels or, when he had no other means of communication, yakked on the phone (though almost always while online); he was