"A program" I said, repeating Porky's discovery. "Can we run it?""Sure," said Aporkalypse, "but it's not advisable. We don't know what it does. It's a small program; could be an agent or a virus. I wonder where Bernley got this."
I was wondering the same thing. And something else crossed my mind - if Bernsie had met up with the Princess, good chance the Wren was around too. And that could be dangerous.
So I keyed in the phone number on my PDA, and the troll answered on the first ring. "Call your sister," I said sarcastically, "she's worried about you."
"Hiya Eddie! Yeh, sorry, I should have let you know too. I meant to call, but a trucker sat on my PDA the first day out. Busted. It had my phone/address file. I couldn't even call home for messages! I haven't entirely reconstructed it yet. But SENU got the PDA going again for me. She's a wizard with electronics!"
"Why'd you take off like that, Bernsie?""Oh, well... You know, I don't have the most exciting life. I spend my days sorting credit reports and running statistical analysis programs. Hey, did you know you can identify a potential mortgage defaulter by intersecting whether they buy houseplants with how often they change their motor oil? Anyway, I needed an adventure. And SENU, well, she had practically INVITED me."
"So you met the Princess. And you're helping her?" I asked.
"Yeh. She gave me a disk and said to keep it safe for her. You know, she looks different from her picture. More normal. But still pretty. Anyway, this creep Wrenny had another disk she needed, so I got it for her. Stole it, actually."
"You stole from Johnny the Wren?!" I couldn't believe it!
"Yeh. SENU said the disk was hers. He had it in his van, and I copied it to my PDA when he went to meet SENU in the restaurant. Then I blanked out the disk. He might not even know yet it's been emptied."
"Don't count on it," I said. "How long ago did you do this?""Day before yesterday. I haven't seen either of them since. I've just been hanging around, hoping SENU would pop up again. So in the meantime I thought I'd send you the file, see if you could tell what it was."
