git commit murder

Chapter 5

5

Fresh deodorant, mouthwash, and Monday morning’s T-shirt didn’t make Dale feel much better. He tested his keycard as he slipped out of the room—yep, it still worked, even with his changes. Robbed of that excuse to delay, he rode the elevator down and slunk out. The late afternoon sun stabbed out of the western sky into his aching eyes as he trudged down the walkway towards the bar Lash had mentioned.

Unfortunately, the directions were too simple for him to forget.

The Royal Oak bar looked like it had been a Victorian manor, two looming stories of oversized red bricks encumbered with miles of hungry ivy. They’d poured a concrete deck around the whole thing, right up to the sidewalk, and put a wooden rail fence around the border. The deck was about half full of people clustered around tables, talking loudly and gesturing over tall curvy glasses of beer and platters of fried heaven. Dale saw a couple people wearing T-shirts bearing the BSD North logo over the breast loitering on the sidewalk just outside the patio, chattering at each other as they sucked cigarettes.

This had to be the place.

The afternoon wasn’t that warm—Ottawa in June seemed less torrid than Detroit, the air a few degrees cooler and dry—but even without dragging his rolling bag and hoisting his backpack, Dale already felt that telltale dampness under his armpits. His breath struggled against the lump blocking his throat.

Lash had mentioned registration. Probably the place to start. And a conference T-shirt would solve his clothing shortage, assuming they had one big enough for him.

One of the smokers nodded and smiled as Dale tromped past them towards the recessed entrance.

Dale tried to smile back, but was pretty sure it looked bogus.

At least Ontario had banned smoking indoors. His asthma wouldn’t detonate.

The bar might have been a Victorian manor once, but the inner walls were almost all knocked out except behind the high wooden bar, leaving dark hardwood floors and plaster walls painted a pale cream, the closest you could get to white and still conceal burger-greasy handprints. The ceiling looked a little darker—probably an underlying patina of decades of cigarette smoke. A large screen TV over the bar displayed two teams in unfamiliar uniforms knocking a soccer ball back and forth. While the broadcast was thankfully muted, the knots of people around tiny haphazard wooden tables raised a rumble that assaulted Dale’s ears. Many wore tech conference T-shirts: BSD North, TokyoBSD, USENIX, SANS, Linux World, and more. One scrawny man on the edge of elderly, with thinning blond hair and an absurdly long, drooping mustache curled at the ends, wore a faded white T-shirt that read FREE THE BERKELEY 4.4, the red daemon mascot worn almost to invisibility—that had to be twenty years old. Even those that didn’t wear T-shirts, like the tall lanky man in a ridiculous sport jacket, white shirt, and tightly knotted red tie, seemed informal. The man in the sports jacket leaned close to hear his tablemates expostulate. Dale’s ears, already abused by the flight, barely picked out a few scraps of conversation.

“—get some poutine while we’re—”

“—a real database for packages, not some flat file with an SQL interface—”

“—the Keat’s, that’s a proper ale—”

“—commit bit, he’s earned—”

He couldn’t follow a single discussion thread if he wanted to.

Not that anybody would really be interested in talking to him.

Worse, the enticing smells of fried hamburgers and fried potatoes and fried—fried everything hooked into Dale’s nose, making his stomach grumble.

Twenty minutes ago you were full of knots, Dale told his stomach. Knock it off, you don’t get fried this trip. You get stupid healthy stuff like, like… bugs. Bugs and gravel.

His stomach grumbled again.

Dale glanced around, quite overwhelmed. He avoided bars on busy nights, preferring quieter evenings where he could have an actual conversation with co-workers or old friends. The urge to turn and walk away flared brightly. If I can’t find registration, I’ll go back to my room.

Over to the left, opposite the bar, a few small square tables sat right up against each other, stacked high with flat red cloths. A slightly pudgy bald guy sat behind them, fingers dancing through a box of index cards as a tired-looking man in jeans and a faded blue-stripe dress shirt looked on.

That’s it. Dammit.

The man introduced himself as Ian Langton, conference chair. Dale accepted a lanyard badge, a cheap cloth bag of sponsor ads, and a size 3X T-shirt.

“First time here, I believe?” Langton said.

“That’s right.” Dale silently chanted Ian Langton, Ian Langton as he studied the man’s face, trying to cram the name so tightly into his brain that it wouldn’t fall out.

“Glad you made it. We always want new speakers.” Langton flipped a couple pages on a clipboard and made a check next to an entry, marking off Dale’s name. “It’s the biggest BSD North ever, almost five hundred people registered.”

The last thing Dale needed to know. “Thanks.”

“You’ll be on right after the keynote,” Langton said.

At least it’ll be over quick.

His ID badge gave his name in capitals, DALE WHITEHEAD, and his company name beneath that in italics: Detroit Network Services.

Dale stepped aside to let a guy built like Jupiter—the planet, not the god—sign in. He got the badge into the holder with a minimum of struggle and hung the whole thing around his neck. It dangled right at the top of his gut, at just enough of an angle to highlight his paunch. Perfect.

He was in. Now for the hard problem.

The bewildering crowd shifted around tables like seaweed rolling with the tide. Faces huddled around tables, speaking loudly to be heard over a hundred other loud conversations, close enough to smell each other’s breath. After that flight, mouthwash or no, Dale probably smelled like malignant bagel and heaved bile.

He could go back to his room. Order carryout Chinese and a bunch of booze. Expense the whole thing.

No, Will would know. Will always figured things out. He’d ask a couple questions, and Dale would blow the whole story.

Computers were easy.

How do you hack into a room full of people you don’t know?

At a table near the patio doors, yet another skinny bald guy in black raised a hand at Dale.

Dale furrowed his eyebrows, puzzled.

The bald guy’s tablemate, a slightly older and more heavy-set guy with a short black beard, pivoted to look at Dale and said something to his tablemate.

Who were these people?

The bald guy waved for him to come over.

Dale’s face must have shown his confusion. The bald guy nodded and waved. The bearded guy nodded in confirmation.

Dale took a deep breath, clenched the con bag’s flimsy handles like a drowning man seizing a rope, and wove through the crowd to the beckoning strangers.