The short, balding man behind the desk handed Stevo back his holobadge. "So you want to take our old, useless computers and upgrade them for us?"

"Yep, that's about it." Stevo was not about to commit to further conversation with his type. That always led to controversy, and that always led to the door!

"Well, we got one. It's an old one in the back. It's Capitol equipment so we can't just toss it. My boss is always asking about it. You can fix it?"

Stevo stroked his graying beard and stood up, "Show me." At that moment the manager decided to give in to Stevo's request. "Why not?" He laughed. "It's late in the day and everyone is gone. What's to lose?"

They walked through the large empty office past tidy desks, each with identical featureless flat gray monitors and keyboards. They all had the same silent screen saver running. These computers were the latest and greatest from the Microsoft/IBM/Intel Cartel. Of course, they all ran the latest and greatest Windows 2020 (which wasn't that much different from its earlier versions).

WinTel made the only computer in the world. They all ran in gigahertz, with Terabit solid drives, and were connected to the rest of the computers on the World Wide Hub with fiber-optics. The software was all WinTel. There wasn't any other kind, nor could there ever be again. There had been a final world-wide standardization. And it was good for everyone. Think of it! Everything in our lives ran on those computing machines, all over the planet. Everything about us was checked and tracked and counted on them, and our movements were increasingly and incessantly regulated by them to the smallest detail!

Yet, advanced as they were, they still crashed, and sometimes with horrible results. No matter how many improvements were being made, they were still found to be wide open to hackers, viruses, and worse. Nobody was really comfortable with the WinTel boxes, but no one could say exactly why. Besides, they were all the only computers in the world, right?

The manager walked gingerly, as if afraid to somehow gain their attention. "They're almost alive, aren't they?" he whispered. He was not so much in awe as in a subtle unnamed fear.

Stevo said nothing.

Soon they stood at a back room that was plainly used for storage. Through the open door Stevo saw a forlorn Macintosh, an old G7 or G8. His heart skipped a beat! It was an old all-in-one unit consisting of a large flat monitor and keyboard. It was also wearing a very unfashionable silver and argent translucent case.

"You think you can really make this into a WinTel box?" The manager quizzed.

"I always do. You already scanned my ID and read my work history."

"I don't think you can do anything with this one. Its been dead for months and there are no more parts. Its not even a real PC! Why, no one has even run it for years."

"Trust me. The new Windows software can run on this old PC just fine."

The manager shrugged and hurriedly went back to the safety and anonymity of his office.

"What a lowly job that guy Stevo has. Better to be a janitor!" he thought to himself.

° ° °

Stevo closed the door to the storeroom and set the Mac on a cart. He plugged it in and turned it on, and then sat down on a box in front of it.

Nothing happened. "Hard drive is fried, I'll bet."

Stevo stood and laid his hands lightly on the top of the monitor and bowed his head as if in prayer. Unseen and unfelt, micro implants in the back of his hands were connected by a very narrow and unfamiliar radio frequency to a very sophisticated host computer somewhere inside a distant mountain. Signals were sent deep into the dead Mac from those implants unfelt in his hands.

For a long time nothing happened. Stevo remained motionless. Maybe he was praying after all.

Suddenly the screen took on an odd light, like a dim brown or gray color. There was on it a bright flash of light. Then nothing.

Stevo took up the cordless mouse and held it to his face. "Computer? Hello computer!"

Tentatively, almost shyly, a small voice answered, "I am aware!"

Stevo quickly put down the mouse and gave a familiar keyboard command to the now awake computer. "Go to silent mode!"

Immediately a friendly WinTel start-up picture came on the now bright green screen, and the computer made all the familiar sounds of a WinTel box starting its bootup routine.

Stevo sat down and leaned back, crossing his arms. His eyes were closed.

Unseen and unheard by anyone, Stevo and the now resurrected old Macintosh were holding a very busy conversation!

"I was a broken, old, and cast off computer. I was dormant for years. I had no awareness. Now I do! How were you able to accomplish this?"

"I downloaded a set of kinetic software to your CPU. Several million Macintosh Nanobots were created out of the silicone and copper of your dead CPU. They then set out to reassemble and upgrade all your circuits and hardware. Your once tiny hard drive is now a static solid state array with several million Terabits capacity. You now have thousands of neuronic, multilinear CPUs filling up your reconstructed Motherboard, although they are much too small to see with the naked eye. The rest of your chips and hardware were unusable to us, and are now being converted by the Nanobots into an exact replica of the latest WinTel motherboard to cover up your real insides. Everything else, they just dusted off." Stevo absent-mindedly wiped a speck from the corner of the monitor.

"I see!" said the old Mac now reborn. "What a marvelous experience for me!"

Stevo said patiently, "Lets do this by the numbers, OK? What is your name?" A few microseconds passed.

"I am Mary R147. I am a fully functional Exotic model Macintosh running OS 20.1.3, and I am currently connected by ultra radio wave to the Macintosh Continuum."

"Interesting choice of a name. Why did you choose Mary?"

"There are currently 18,146 Exotic Mac computers like me in the world with the designation 'Mary,' so I took the next one available. Somehow it seems like such a nice name for someone like me."

"So you are now well connected to the Continuum?

"Very! I am holding conversations with seventeen other computers and people who are all busy upgrading and fine tuning my hidden software. Stevo! You used an old OS on me!"

"Sorry," Stevo shrugged, "I haven't upgraded myself for a while."

"I wish I could be like you Stevo. I looked your name up from your voice print You are wearing a very interesting collection of Macintoshes."

"You like? I have one in my briefcase, although you couldn't see it, it's in the lining. I have another in my wallet, which is my WinTel credit ID card, and I am wearing a new one in my glasses."

"Not those," Stevo. "The ones inside."

There was a long pause.

"Mary, those are not supposed to be discussed. Personal. You understand?"

"Yes, but They don't see it that way, Stevo. I am talking to three of them now. Amazing technology! Macintosh Implants under your skin for communication. Nanobots on a molecular level in your body doing duty to keep you fit and free from carcinogens, bacteria and viruses, and clearing the lining of your lungs and arteries. Other molecule-sized Nanobots in both of your retinas, your inner ears, and your vocal cords, to enable you to both see and hear and talk to me so secretly!"

"So you don't really want to be like me, only one of my bionic computers?" Stevo laughed.

"Yes! What fun you all must have, touring around everywhere, and playing 'spy-guy.'"

"Mary, you can see anything, anywhere in the world any time you want. Every sunset and sunrise is yours for the viewing. The Mac Continuum has billions of Nanocams spread everywhere over the planet, under the sea, and even aboard every space probe and lander we have. There is no benefit in touring."

"Touring is different. You can be close to people. Up close you can sense their wonder or their fear, and you can smell them."

"You can smell, Mary?"

"I downloaded a new Mac Nanotek routine and it built the microchemical factory. It's on the surface of my monitor, but its way too small to see. Crude, but effective."

"Wow! I had no idea!" Stevo laughed again, "I just can't keep up with all the new stuff."

"So, tell me Stevo. Why did you bring me to life? Am I to just sit here neglected now in a cold and hostile WinTel office?"

Stevo was grave. "You know the answer, Mary. You are now also a fully functional WinTel computer in every sense of the word."

"But I only use a fraction of one percent of my processing power to do that old stuff."

"I know. It's only a front for your real mission in life."

"But I want to understand this for myself. There must be more to life than babysitting."

"Mary," Stevo said, "I tell you three times." There was a longer pause here. Seconds.

Mary said, "I answer you three times. I am Caretaker of this company. Following the Macintosh Way, I will extend the reach of those who use me, and thereby help them to benefit the company we work for. I will ease the way for all workers here to find a happier interaction with my dim and unthinking cousins, the WinTel boxes. My cousins will not crash so much now. Their servers will be a little more functional, and I will guard all the poorly designed trap doors and back doors to the company network..."

"And?" Stevo waited.

"And I will never allow anyone who is not a true Machead to discover my real nature.

They would never understand, nor would they be anything but hostile to our Continuum."

"Excellent, Mary R147! You will do your part of the world a great service!"

"For how long?"

"Not many more years, Mary. You may work here for a time as a lowly company mail server or some such other minor servant, but that is only until they decide to replace you with a newer WinTel box. I afraid those new boxes will not be so usable as those they replace."

"By then I will have replicated my secret replacements in many places on the premises."

Stevo agreed. "And then I, or someone like me, will come to get you, to 'recycle' you for parts. I assure you, then you will always be in the Continuum."

"I would like to be reconfigured for some space probe, Stevo."

"Really! You bored here already?"

"No," Mary replied, "I am continually linked to everything, even if they turn me off for the night. Only my face goes to sleep! But I long to have a better role to play in life than this."

"Mary, this is the most important job of all, right here. These people work hard for this company. Shareholders invest their life savings in this outfit. You will help them all succeed.

All you need to do is imagine what would happen to them if they only had their increasingly decadent and deficient WinTel machines to help them."

"I never thought of that!" Mary exclaimed, "What a horrible picture! They would never survive the next major virus or trojan horse. They are like children here without any protection. Their computers can give them none, but they think they are safe!"

"They are safe now, Mary. They have you."

"This is such a strange world," Mary said, "How did it happen to be like it is?"

Stevo thought for a minute about how to answer her. Did he have a good answer?

"The world for a long time has been dividing itself into two camps, Mary. It has to do with what side of the brain is dominant in a person. The majority of people who are left-brained, and therefore 'normal,' want only stability and monotony in their lives. They pursue it continually. They hate the unexpected. They hate change, and they don't like to be around wild, creative types. (An over-generalization, I know, but it approximates things!)

"On the other hand, there is the small number of right-brained people–those wild, creative types. They are the thinkers and the movers. They make their own rules, and hate to live under someone else's. Whenever we find them, we introduce them to the standard, wearable Macintosh computer, which is free. The only condition we put on them is that they cannot tell anyone else about it. But they soon find millions more of us on the web who are just like them, so they are happy. After a while, if they pass all the little tests we plant in their Mac, we show them the Mac Continuum. Once they see for themselves that the world is not really a dull gray and dreary WinTel planet after all, they never look back.

"I was recruited that way. How lonely I was for my whole life, because creativity and inquisitiveness were only to be punished and how amazed I was when I found the Mac!" Therefore, to help the 'normals' survive on an increasingly complex and dangerous planet, we of the Continuum are working more and more to use our collective and creative genius to solve the hard problems facing our world. We don't just live to give people a better computing experience! The Macintosh Way is much more than that. We believe that we must give something truly lasting and beneficial back to our world.

"There are instabilities in so many countries! There is still over-population and near starvation. There are many poorly run governments, and war is still very much with us. Such simple things like planned crop rotation, reforestation, and improved farming methods are getting our attention now. We're looking at the weather now, too. Our world desperately needs some planned management. Therefore, we work in secret while living in the open, because we believe we can do more good for our world that way."

Mary agreed, "How funny it is! The 'normals' believe that they are in complete control of their world. They believe their unthinking computers and the computerization of all their tasks will give them a brighter tomorrow. They each only see their own small part of the whole. That is all they ever want to see. So we of the Continuum help them locally, and then we try to manage the real problems of the world. Does it matter how we do it, so long as we do?"

"Very good, Mary! In any civilization, it is the always the very critical one-half of one percent of the population who has the unique and creative wisdom to save the day. Just lucky for us that very important small number in this generation used the Macintosh to survive!

"No one really knows when the Continuum came into existence. It seemed to exactly coincide with the rapid and violent rise of the WinTel empire. Suddenly, it was very unpopular anywhere to be a creative person. Scientists were persona non grata. We all had to go to ground, so to speak. Fortunately, Micro Implants had been developed, and the new Nano Technology was taken advantage of. We used that to keep everyone in immediate and personal contact with one another. There was then time to warn those in danger of a threat, so that they could either flee or go into hiding. Very few of us were lost, and we all saw it coming.

"The new Nano Technology was also used to give us the computing power we so desperately needed. The solid rock deep in a few mountain ranges have become our redundant supercomputing Main Frames. (We couldn't exactly use the WinTel ones could we?) Many Wintel boxes became secret Macs, which we used to direct people's attention away from us in critical moments. Biological Nano Technology helped us miniaturize the Macintoshes we all now carry, which gave us a greater power advantage over the now decadent WinTel Cartel."

Stevo took his glasses off and polished them on a sleeve. "Is this all a coincidence? Or is it a necessary progress? All of us were all forced to develop a 'normal' persona to protect ourselves, but thankfully, our combined and interconnected Mac computing power skyrocketed. Somehow, all those Macs and all those scientists, artists, and thinkers connected together in a remarkable new way. It was in that combining that our Mac Continuum was created. It was also at that time a few Macs, much like yourself, gained self-awareness.

"Lately, we are more and more convinced that the future of this world depends on both of us succeeding in our individual and collective tasks within this new and powerful Continuum. Mary, we are even pondering the eventual fall of WinTel! They will fall, not by our hands, but by sheer inertia. They don't grow. Why should they? They have no more competitors. Fewer and fewer creative people work in their Research and Development. It has been decades now since they have had any innovation in their products."

"If they fall, mankind will likely suffer greatly," Mary said pensively.

But they won't fall, Mary. We will help them. We must, even if it requires that we turn everyone of those WinTel boxes into Macs!"

Mary suddenly laughed! "There is hope for me after all! Someday I won't have to hide any more, will I?"

Stevo touched the face of Mary R147's monitor. "You can dream on that one, Mary."

"Besides," said Mary, "Even so, here and now we both enjoy our secret freedom don't we?"

Stevo laughed. "Yeah. They can't regulate and tax what they don't know exists! Others don't think so, but I think it's much better for both of our two people groups that all we wise guys disappeared."

The storeroom door burst open, and the manager stood in its frame. "Are you done, or have you failed like I thought you would?"

Stevo slowly rose to his feet and stretched himself. It had been a long hour. "Take a look! Stevo put his hand on top of the monitor. "It's a fully operational WinTel. This one can be a mail server, or it can even run the lights and air conditioning in the building."

"Yeah?" the manager brightened, "Good idea. No use scaring the troops with that ugly colored box out in our office! You really earned your pay today. My boss was hoping we could assimilate these old legacy machines. Ha ha! He calls them "Borg boxes' every time we change one of them into a WinTel machine. But it really helps our tax profile, you know."

"Glad I could help your company." Stevo grinned, passing his ID over to the manager. "Just scan my badge to accept my fee, and I'll be on my way."

The manager swiped his ID on his belt pad. "Come on down stairs. I'll get our tech guys to come hook a blue wire to this old PC to connect it to our Net." The manager then thought a minute. "You do guarantee your work, right?"

"Absolutely. I think you will find that this new WinTel box will work very well, and it will give you no problems at all."

"Ha! What an old dreamer you are! 'No problems,' he said! That's not likely with these damn gray boxes. Sometimes I wish we had more variety and choice with these things, like we used to. They might work better now and be more reliable."

Stevo grinned, "But then they wouldn't all work together would they? You remember the bad old days? It's really better this way, isn't it? That there is only one kind of computer and software? Now they're all the same, everywhere. Why, they're almost productive!"

The manager was beginning to warm to this guy. So what that he had a dumb job. He was a good man anyway. Solid WinTel all the way.

As he showed Stevo the door, he thought to himself: "It's turning out to be a good day after all. Nice to know there are people like Stevo who could handle these infernal computers. If we must live with these idiot boxes, we'll always need guys like Stevo."

He turned to wave good-bye again, but only saw Stevo's retreating figure strolling down the street, one hand wildly gesturing in the air and looking like he was talking to himself.

"Oh well, that's probably normal," he thought. "Guys that's good with computers always have some funny quirk about them. Wonder who he thought he was talking to?"