The American Connection

windows of his Salinas, California, apartment hours ago. His living room was a mess, with empty, upturned beer cans circling his Apple IIe. Par gave up for a while, caught some shut-eye. He had gone through the entire list of possible addresses, knocking at all the doors, and nothing had happened. But over the next few days he returned to scanning the network again. He decided to be more methodical about it and do the whole thing from scratch a second time.

He was part way through the second scan when it happened. Par’s computer connected to something. He sat up and peered toward the screen. What was going on? He checked the address. He was sure he had tried this one before and nothing had answered. Things were definitely getting strange. He stared at his computer.

The screen was blank, with the cursor blinking silently at the top. Now what? What had Force done to get the computer to sing its song?

Par tried pressing the control key and a few different letters. Nothing. Maybe this wasn’t the right address after all. He dis- connected from the machine and carefully wrote down the address, determined to try it again later.

On his third attempt, he connected again but found the same irritating blank screen. This time he went through the entire alphabet with the control key.

Control L.

That was the magic keystroke. The one that made CitiSaudi give up its mysterious cache. The one that gave Par an adren- alin rush, along with thousands and thousands of cards. Instant cash, flooding his screen. He turned on the screen capture so he could collect all the information flowing past and analyse it later. Par had to keep feeding his little Apple IIe more disks to store all the data coming in through his 1200 baud modem.

It was magnificent. Par savoured the moment, thinking about how much he was going to enjoy telling Force. It was going to be sweet. Hey, Aussie, you aren’t the only show in town. See ya in Citibank.