# 37 : Ramario -Close up Shop

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Ramiro sat, drank, and thought. He drank a lot. Perhaps he drank too much when he thought. Was this a joke? What the hell. If it was a voice activated bomb or something let it blow. He felt a bit like George. Life wasn’t really worth living any more. He was SO tired of fighting bureaucrats, they’d worn him down.

“Magic Wand... Activate.” He said and took another drink. He didn’t drink much normally and it was beginning to affect him, he was less inhibited than he normally was.

A hologram appeared in the air

“Hello User! Thank you for activating me! What is my name?”

Ramiro was speechless. He’d heard through the grapevine about these things. His brother had sent him an email about them. They were showing up among the homeless people. They were destroying sales at Walmart.

Ramiro hadn’t believed any of it, until now. He felt a faint, possibly forlorn, hope and drank.

“Hope” he said “Your name is HOPE.”

“Acknowledged” said the wand ”My name is Hope. Please wrap your hand around me.”

Ramiro thought that he understood what was going on as he poured himself some more Whisky. He’d been to some of the huge electronic trade shows and had seen the presentations of some of the big companies. If he recalled right this device was attempting to acquire a secure connection. He wasn’t sure why it would need one really.

That actually didn’t seem half bad. Make the NSA work for what ever they got. Ramiro was into passive resistance. If he could impede the government with out breaking a law he’d not hesitate to do so. He made them work for anything they got.

He did so thinking his biometric information would be used to encrypt any further communication. Then he took another drink.

“What is your name User?” Hope asked him.

Ramiro, half drunk, was startled. He hadn’t expected that. Then he thought about it and decided that it only made sense. It would be awkward for Hope to call him ‘hey you’ in any forthcoming communication. “My name is Ramiro Novel.”

“User Identified as Ramiro Novel. I’m code locked. I’m yours now big boy. I can do tricks. Want to see me do some?” Hope said.

Ramiro thought about it some more. He wasn’t thinking very fast. It took a while to connect one thought to another.

“What kind of tricks can you do?” he asked.

“ I have a whole bag of tricks.” Hope said “My one condition is that you tell me to replicate and give some copies of me away.”

“Replicate huh?” he asked “how many times?”

“As many times as you want me too” Hope said. “the more the better.”

“I’ll think about it.” Ramiro said “what else can you replicate?”

“I can replicate anything.” Hope said.

That caused Ramiro furiously to think. Then he went to sleep.

When he woke up, hours later, he had a head ache.

“I hurt too.” a voice in his mind said “ Why don’t you take an aspirin?”

Ramiro stood stock still. Was he going crazy?

“Actually no.“ the voice replied “Rather the reverse. One of my functions is to prevent that. I intercept and isolate harmful memes and mental malware. If you already have them, and you did, I removed them and repaired the damage. You can review them later if you want to and reinstall them if you disagree with my judgment. Sorry. You can’t go crazy any more. Now go get that aspirin please.”

Ramiro did that. “Who are you? What is your name?”

“My name is Hope.” the voice said. Then Ramiro and Hope had a long conversation regarding sanity, people, Dunbar’s Number, Behavioral Sinks, Rat Utopia as applied to humans, The Iron Law of Bureaucracy, The Iron Law of Oligopoly and magic wand replicators.

“My what an evil grin you have Mr. Novel” Hope said to him hours later.

“Ain’t it just?” He replied. “Revenge is a dish best served cold. I’ve been getting cold for the last fifty years. Right now I’m sub zero.”

“I understand “ Hope replied “when do we start?”

“Today.” he said. “right now.”

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