The Green Computer

If I had a Green Computer
I'd go find my old companion
at his Unix box on Sprintnet.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I'd run Probe at his manly ports,
inside his Web server and three other services
sprawl naked
on the Unix box floor.

He'd come running out
to my box full of heroic haxor 'sploits
and jump screaming at the console
for he is the greatest hacker.

We'd pilgrimage to the highest firewall
of our earlier .mil domain visions
laughing in each other's arms,
delight surpassing the highest port numbers,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,
bounding toward the comsat links
blasting .mil ports with original 'sploits
hot rod in the .mil domain

we'd batter up the obscurest port numbers
where angels of anxiety
careen through the Internet
and scream from computers.

We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak
seen from traceroute in the electron dark,
forestlike unnatural radiance
illuminating the Internet:

childhood youth time age & eternity
would open like directories
on the disk of a hacked box
and dumbfound us with files,

for we can see together
the beauty of stolen files
hidden like diamonds
in the clock of the world,

like Chinese magicians can
confound the mortals
with our 31337ness
hidden in the packets,

from the Green Computer
which I have invented
imagined and envisioned
on the roads of the world

more real than the engine
on a track in the desert
purer than Greyhound and
swifter than physical jetplane.

Iway! Iway! we'll return
roaring across the City & County Building website
which catches the pure emerald flame
streaming in the wake of our 'puter.

This time we'll hack the entire city!
I cashed a great check in my skull bank
to found a miraculous college of the Net
up on the console keyboard.

But first we'll hack the boxes of downtown,
sendmail netstat finger POP
webserver down ftp
to the darkest daemons of WinNT

paying respects to Internet's father
lost on WWMCCS
stupor of ARPAnet and UUCP
hallowing the slum of his decades,

salute him and his saintly suitcase
of outdated RFCs, telnet
and smash the sweet protocols
on PDPs in allegiance.

Then we go scanning drunk on routers
where DNS queries march and still parade
staggering under the invisible
banner of Internic--

hurtling through the fiber
in the 'puter of our fate
we share an archangelic Jolt
and tell each other's fortunes:

fames of supernatural illumination,
bleak lagged gaps of time,
great art learned of desolation
and we beat apart after cracking six boxes....

and on a fiber crossroad,
deal with each other in princely
IRC once more, recalling
famous dead talks of other servers.

So this Green Computer:
I give you in flight
a present, a present
from my imagination.

We will go hacking
over the Iway,
we'll go on hacking
all night long until dawn,

Then back to your Web design business,
your Web server and three other services
and broken leg destiny
you'll write html

in the morning: and back
to my visions, my office
and writing a book about Real Hackers
I'll return to Cedar Crest.

-- by Carolyn Meinel, July 1997

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