While deep in the throes of endless hacking nights, he would suddenly
sit upright and ask himself, What am I doing here, fucking around on a
computer all day and night? Where is this heading? What about the rest
of life? Then he would disentangle himself from hacking for a few days
or weeks. He would go down to the university pub to drink with his
mostly male group of friends from his course.
Tall, with short brown hair, a slender physique and a handsomely
boyish face, the soft-spoken Pad would have been considered attractive
by many intelligent girls. The problem was finding those sort of
girls. He hadn't met many when he was studying at university--there
were few women in his maths and computer classes. So he and his
friends used to head down to the Manchester nightclubs for the social
scene and the good music.
Pad went downstairs with one of the officers and watched as the police
unplugged his 1200 baud modem, then tucked it into a plastic bag. He
had bought that modem when he was eighteen. The police unplugged
cables, bundled them up and slipped them into labelled plastic bags.
They gathered up his 20 megabyte hard drive and monitor.
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