Consider one recent assignment. According to police, this guy entered a CompWomp Superstore, calmly pulled out a floppy, and put a virus on every computer in the place. Five employees and 36 customers came down with the flu. Then he ran out into the street, where he attacked an innocent passerby who was unlucky enough to be wearing a pocket protector. My client hopped in a car and proceeded to drive across town, where he cut all the phone lines going into the offices of the Weight & D-Lay Internet service provider. He was eventually caught at the Seattle airport, carrying a large baseball bat engraved with the letters "B.G."

Naturally, I was brimming with curiosity when I visited this individual in jail. And the last thing I expected to see was a calm, diminutive, bespectacled gentleman who would have looked more at home behind an adding machine.

Nor did I see such a person. My client turned out to be a wild-haired, wild-eyed paranoid over six feet tall. After a jigger of Thorazine, he peeled himself off the ceiling and told me his story.

"It all started about six months ago when I bought one of those Kamakazee 10,000 P-133 Personal Home Computers. It came with a lot of software, including Multimedia Offswitch and Papa Riezi Photo Phinisher, plus Bone Pulverizer and other educational games. But it didn’t have a home finance program. Imagine that? You spend $2500 on a gadget that will devalue quicker then a loaf of bread, and they just naturally assume you don’t care where your money goes. Those people just make me…make me…

"Where was I? Oh, yes. So I went out and bought a copy of Baroque Software’s Onda Street Financial Planner. It worked pretty good actually. Well, at least it did after upgrading my video driver and replacing my printer driver with an older, more compatible version.

"But, you see, it wasn’t only Onda Street Financial Planner. The package also contained a free copy of Stump Publishing’s BulkErase backup software. Since my computer came with a tape drive and no software…" He stopped and thought for a moment. "Or maybe it was on that CD I threw out--the one that talked to me. Well, anyway, I decided I needed BulkErase.

"Everything worked okay until about two months ago, when I accidentally erased my unfinished novel. Hey, I figured, no problem. I can restore it from a tape. I tried, but BulkErase told me that my tape was unformatted."

His hands shaking, my client pulled out a cigarette and ate it. "Funny thing is--I don’t smoke. " He exhaled luxuriously.

"Well, I called Stump technical support and explained the situation. First thing the guy asks me is ‘Do you have Onda Street Financial Planner installed?’ I tell him I do and he says ‘That’s your problem. If BulkErase sees Onda Street, it only pretends to back up your data while actually erasing the tape. Your best bet would be to remove Onda Street, rebuild your registry, and rewrite your novel.’

"‘But BulkErase was bundled with Onda Street,’ I protested. ‘How could they not work together.’

"‘I’m sorry,’ he explained, ‘but there’s no answer to that in the database.’"

His eyes darted around nervously. "You know, this place could really use a T1 line. Where was I? Yeah, I got rid of Onda Street just like he said, and sure enough, BulkErase worked like a charm. But then all my checks started to bounce. So I figured I’d better reinstall Onda Street so I could see what was happening.

"Well, I tried to reinstall it--really I did. But it kept asking me for my serial number. Hey, do I look like I’m in the Army? I finally clicked ‘Help’ and was told that the serial number was on the registration card. Great! I had mailed the registration card six months earlier!

"So I phoned Baroque Software. This woman said she couldn’t look up my serial number; she’d have to send me another copy of the program. I said fine.

"Then she said she couldn’t send me another copy of the version I had because they had stopped making it, and I would have to upgrade to Onda Street Financial Planner for Windows 6.8. I told her I didn’t have Windows 6.8. Then she put me on hold.

"Twenty minutes I waited…twenty-eight minutes before a manager came on the line. He said he’d looked over my situation carefully. Yeah, where did he get that information? He said that Onda Street Financial Planner for Windows 6.8 doesn’t actually work with Windows 6.8. Or with Windows 95, 98, 3.1, 3.0, Windows for Workgroups, NT, CE, or Y Me. No, the only kind of Windows it works with won’t be in stores ‘til 2001. He said I should talk to Microsoft. And he was laughing at me. I couldn’t hear it, but I could tell. He was laughing at me!"

My client slumped in his chair and was quiet for a moment. "The next thing I knew, I was waving a baseball bat and visualizing Bill Gates."

I leaned back and smiled. "You don’t have a thing to worry about," I reassured him. "There’s not a jury on the planet that will convict you."