The first commercial direct air capture (DAC) plant in the US has opened last week. #Heirloom Carbon’s tech uses limestone to directly remove #CO2 from the air and store it deep within concrete, keeping it out of the atmosphere.
This is Ángel Ortega, crime and horror fiction writer and former systems programmer (on space, avionics and cryptography environments).
My first contact with a #UNIX system was on 1989 on a Sun Sparcstation 2 running #SunOS. I discovered #Linux on 1993 with the SLS distribution. I ditched all Microsoft software on 1999 and moved all my computers to Linux and never looked back.
My first encounter with #OpenBSD (inside a VM) was circa 2015. I was debugging a ground station software that was complicated as hell and had some memory leaks and was driving me mad; a friend of mine recommended compiling my beast on OpenBSD because the memory management is very different and it immediately crashed on a place I never expected. That filled my heart with bliss.
My first experience with OpenBSD in real hardware was on a laptop in 2020. Everything worked (except Bluetooth because, you know, there is no Bluetooth support on OpenBSD). I finally had to install Linux on that laptop because of reasons and my heart was a bit broken.
I now have OpenBSD on a tiny Toshiba NB 200. It's 32 bit, so no Firefox for poor old Ángel, but I don't really care because I used it mostly for fiction writing and remote server maintenance while on coffee shops, libraries or parks. Battery usage is great. Everything works like a charm.
I love OpenBSD because it's compact. It makes me feel like on a vintage UNIX system, simple and solid. Native tools and servers share lookalike configuration files. Man pages are awesome af. It includes a C compiler in its base system and that means "I am a real Operating System" to me. I love security is one of its main goals. OpenBSD hackers are brilliant, stubborn, unique people.
I don't love the filesystem.
I don't care that it's a bit slower than other OSes.
Grandpa's old kerosene can, complete with whittled stick plug. This hung on a stiff wire in the cattle part of the barn so it would be handy for dousing the fly rub rag strung across the barnyard field gate. #history#heirloom
The little lost table
part that ends with the existential shit
There must have been an eerie silence. At the farthest end of the corridor was a flight of steps leading to the emergency exit hatch. The emergency exit was not barricaded, only locked. I think to the surprise of the cops.
On the other side of the corridor, past the two empty classrooms, two heavy fire doors with thick wire glass. Through the large windows you could see a few beams running across. Behind that it was grey.
We heard and saw very little for half an hour. The muffled sound of a chainsaw died down after a minute or two, and then only dull thuds - as if someone were doing renovations three houses away.
My excitement had subsided by now. The special unit had responded predictably and would be busy for a while. It was time to leave the first floor. I made a last round. There was really nothing personal anymore. I paused in my room for a moment. No curtains, no bed, just two old chairs, those old desk chairs that were already there when I opened the door. A wiped whiteboard.
Nothing that reminded me of me, no personal additions. No graffiti adorned or marred the off-white walls. I felt elusive, the personification of urban emptiness.
"They're coming! They are taking the terrace!”
I was shocked. Turned around, and disappeared through the labyrinth of classrooms and rooms, avoiding the corridor with windows.
The windows that bordered on the roof terrace. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard glass breaking.
Just a few more steps. Behind me I heard feet rushing up the stairs. A familiar voice: "It's closed!" A final barricade on the first floor had been pulled into place. Behind us, the last stairway barricade slammed shut. A beam was clamped between the ceiling and the steel plate. Then it was locked in.
We couldn't go any further. The road to the roof was also closed.
“Jesus, that was close. How did they get on the terrace?" I asked. A wide grin came out from under his balaclava, as did his shaggy, curly, blond hair. “I don't know, I think they commandeered a moving elevator”
We walked into the living room. Ten people, half men, half women, in a square space the size of a small classroom.
Overalls were taken off, balaclavas and work gloves were removed. Stray paint splatters wiped off hands and arms. Everything disappeared in one or two garbage bags.
I looked around the room; I shouldn't forget this. The smell of fresh coffee, like a thin layer over that of two-day-old apple cores and a week's worth of unwashed bodies. The ripe, ripe smell of the boy who never washed. That was anti-revolutionary. Unanimously we had decided that he could only take off his shoes at the police station. Theo, we called him.
A bright smile crossed Momo's face. She often looked like a weasel or ferret chirping at you with those gleaming teeth just before the leap towards your carotid artery. Several layers of dirty smudges gave her ashen skin an unexpected depth. Her sinewy body anchored to this earth only by her oversized tank boots.
Oversized tank boots are a thing.
Tutti also wears them. Tutti wears them, like other women, stiletto heels. Tutti has the body of a young Hollywood actress. Tutti has a love-hate relationship with her body. The same body she now parked on Zaphod's lap.
Zaphod is not his real name. We call him Zaphod because his ego is as big as that of the fictional galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Zaphod has the body of a doll. An action hero. A feast of lean muscles. Zephod fucks Tutti. Tutti fucks Zephod. In his head.
Now, Tutti fucked everyone in his or her head. But Zaphod in particular. The squatting Barbie and Ken set that no true squat could do without.
There could have been a silence now. This was the time. Arthur didn't realize it. His over-enthusiasm bubbling merrily like a cheap garden fountain. This was his first time. He had begged us if he could be there this time, because he wanted this so badly, a real eviction. Fuck the consequences.
We teased him when his voice cracked. The Socialist Youth Party politician. We teased him about that too.
Pale and blond, with fiery red cheeks and a long, round face. In his sweaty windbreaker, he smelled of excitement and fear. His posh accent came to the fore. As his endless speculations about how long we would be held in custody.
Heavy footsteps above us. A few dull blows. Silence. Again dust began to dance in the sunlight.
A month ago the ultimatum of the owner and the bailiff had expired. A few days later we were waiting in court with friends and sympathizers, as they say. The judge was unsympathetic, and within two days the verdict followed: eviction within 24 hours, or else.
Two days later we held a big eviction benefit with bands and various games. The party was a success.
There was enough money for screws, bolts, welding electrodes and the like. At night we walked through the narrow streets of the neglected working-class neighborhood.
First there was billiards in the pub on the corner, and we drank as long as Arthur had money. Tutti and Momo kept the locals at bay with a well-balanced dose of sexual greed and contempt. At closing time we wandered past the many renovation projects. It wasn't stealing, it was city-combing.
Beams, scaffolding pipes; those kind of things. Just drunk enough to greet a dog walker with a straight face, while a four and a half meter wooden beam rests on your shoulders. Ten by twenty, made of spruce. It's not that heavy.
Only a hundred meters, and round the corner.
Armed with two shorter lengths of scaffolding, Tutti runs ahead. The door swings open as we approach. We escape inside.
We drink and we talk. We smoke.
The same three cassettes go round and round in the cassette player: punk and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a radio play, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's where our nicknames came from. It started as a game of 'who would you be', while we were listening, high and giggling, to the adventures of Mister Dent. Arthur Dent.
The little lost table
part where the special unit arrives
The hall above the front door was empty. The pile of rubble above the stairwell had shifted slightly. Probably because officers had poked into it from below after ramming the front door.
We weren't murderers. The barricade at the top of the main entrance's broad staircase was not a booby trap. We had spent hours trying to create that impression. If you stood under that stair barricade and pulled or pushed somewhere, heavy things moved overhead. You heard that, you felt the whole mass moving above your head. Applied art. A beautiful kinetic installation.
The hall was square. The stairwell is approximately central. Opposite the stairwell, double fire-resistant doors led to an auditorium-like space. Originally there were an identical set of doors opposite the fire doors.
Now you were looking at a wall of cement bonded fiberboard ceiling panels. That wall closed off a long corridor with two large classrooms. The whole wing beyond was lightly barricaded, being practically indefensible from the inside. We hadn't been there for almost two weeks now.
Bricklaying the ceiling panels had been a genius idea. There were plenty of them and breaking through them quickly with a chainsaw or the like was impossible due to the combination of materials. The cement blunted everything, the wood fibers effortlessly absorbed every hit of the battering ram. Milling through it at high speed allowed the wood fiber to smolder, without letting it burn. A big, gray, safe wall.
An hour or so later we heard the howling of a grinder and the squeaking protest of the steel that had stopped the officers. In the room we used as a rallying point, we pricked up our ears.
There was laughter and I heard the dry clap of a high five. The professionals had arrived!
Now it got interesting. Like excited children we skipped through the long corridors with the worn brown carpet.
No, no movement at the front side of the building. I pulled a told-you-so face and got a hug in return. I smelled the musty smell of overalls, bought at the army store, never washed after, mixed with old and new sweat and looked into glittering dark eyes.
The professionals lived up to their name. They had studied the building and had seen that there was a piece that could not be defended by us from the roof. Using the balcony of one of our neighbors, they could reach the flat roof and then enter the large side wing through a window. The window was barricaded, off course . But not too heavy, and after fifteen minutes they, the Breaking and Teargas Unit, could enter.
This all took place in a blind spot in our field of vision, but I can imagine that behind their visors and under their helmets, the officers must have felt cheated as they stood there in a long empty corridor, only to find two large, empty classrooms. On one of the blackboards it read, in big bold chalk letters: “THE COFFEE IS READY!” .