Flute Study
Copyright (c) 1999
by Scott Weisman

Flute is a complex person. We (meaning her and I) definitely suffered
from a case of major mutual misjudgement. She first seemed to me to be
a giggly, carefree, unconcerned girl. But there is more to Flute than
meets the eye. Her disparate collection of wall-personalities, that
endlessly blended into myriad combinations, revealed an intricately
woven character that was a mere reflection of the reality.

Flute was giggly, carefree, and unconcerned. But then there was Pegus,
who was deep and introspective. Kuitkin, who was dark and despondent.
Latimer, who was male and actually a lot like Psimon. They were all
intelligent.

In person, she could go from shockingly explicit and graphic talk
about sex to an earnest and sincere search for meaning. She didn't
seek acceptance. She learned early on that there was no need to. Those
who reached past the confusing exterior encountered a preternaturally
bright, uncommonly moody, and exquisitely sensitive soul.

Flute realized pretty quickly that she had vastly underestimated me.
Where Shadow saw fluff, she saw depth. Where Laird was haughty, she
was gentle.

She was even more thrilled when I confessed to her about my until-then
secret alter-ego, the Black Line. It was at that point that she told
me she was Latimer. We were not to make the same mistake again.

---

I was very confused when I first met Simon. I'm usually a pretty good
judge of character, and that judge liked Simon. Yet in person, he wore
trendy clothes, listened to trendy music, and worst of all, hung out
with Dean and Ralph, two shallow and callow dormies on the same floor.
I kept him in mind but otherwise ignored him. I had enough problems of
my own at the time. I started getting into the walls, which Diem had
shown me on a personal campus tour last year.

Anyway, by the beginning of Winter Quarter, Simon's facade was wearing
thin. He was clearly edgy and uncomfortable. He started hanging out
with X more, and thankfully D and R less. Laird and I were also part
of the package. I could sense and see him opening up before anyone
else. We all encouraged him. He started turning around when the
article appeared in the Guardian. He exploded when he finally went to
the walls. The transformation was slow and subtle at first. He changed
into an intense, gentle, very powerful personality. He started to have
a profound effect on many peeps. He was still young and very
inexperienced, and this caused problems for him.

---

The trendy accoutriments were an unfortunate but temporary legacy of
high school life in an exclusive Los Angeles suburb. Cruelty beyond
belief ruled the day during my time there. I lived in an apartment in
a school where juniors and seniors with money and cars could fork over
$300 a school year (in contrast, UCSD was $67 per year at the time,
and students were howling over never-ending increases) for their very
own numbered space and several full-time security guards. Wow.

My freshman year, they started giving access to the school's
administrative computer system, a fairly nice DEC PDP-11/70, to
sutdents, a wildy stupid move, especially since the system ran DEC's
own RSTS/E, a notoriously insecure OS. Nothing of any consequence
happened that year. But I hung out at the computer room. A lot. For
hours after school ended. Every day. And this tiny little room was
like 15 terminals in a room designed for really like 12 people. And
there would be 30 or more kids crammed into this space. That year, and
only that year, the computer room was one of the hottest hangouts at
the school. It was full of nerds of course, but of lot of borged, I
mean mainstream, students also hung out there. The terminals had
extremely rudimentary character graphics. Yet, some hackers wrote very
sophisticated shoot-em-up space war games.

Then I discovered Adventure, and even better, Zork. I had never even
seen anything like either before. Sure, there was Hunt the Wumpus, a
stupid pet trick of a game. These were different, especially Zork. You
could type English-like commands to the computer, which would then do
what you told it to do.

It was never the same after that. They still gave accounts, but for
some reason just lost its extreme popularity. They put a lot of
restrictions on usage. No more "graphics" games, they used too much
CPU time (remember, the school was run on this computer). In fact, no
more games, period. They put the dis in dysfunctional.

Something of consequence did happen my sophomore year. I was caught
breaking in to the computer. Actually, I had already broken in. Yeah,
sweet, innocent me. I was an aweful, unprincipled SOB in high school.
But could you blame me? That place was hell on earth. It was aweful. I
was sensitive in a place where that trait was considered an
evolutionary disadvantage. I was even the target of a bully's ire. I
refused to fight back. But I think I had the last laugh. I ran into
the guy several years after we graduated at a movie theater. He saw
me, smiled, and couldn't stop apologizing for terrorizing me. I was
shocked into accepting.

Back to the trendy items. By the time I graduated, I was really trying
to fit in. I got a more upscale and sophisticated wardrobe that
constantly went out of style. I even went to the prom. Oh G-d, why? I
grew up there. What did I know? The whole world could have been like
that. I thought the world was half Jewish, after all. I was unhappy
but didn't know an alternative existed to the emptiness I felt.

When I first came to UCSD, I figured it would be more of the same. The
$67 parking fee and the vociferous student objections were only my
first lesson that the entire world didn't operate like where I grew
up. I slowly shed that outer shell along with my lame clothes.

Getting to know Flute, X and Laird was a major change for me. Sure
there were other misfits like me in high school, but I was alienated
even from them. Weird.