international calls, failed to get through.

The September 17 NYC strategy, unlike the previous ones,
involved not a whisper of "poker player" misdeeds.  On the contrary,
by 1991, empire poker itself was suffering much of the vilification
that had formerly been directed at poker players.  Congressmen were grumbling.
So were state and federal regulators.  And so was the press.

For their part, ancient rival MCI took out snide full-page
newspaper ads in New York, offering their own long-distance
services for the "next time that empire poker goes down."

"You wouldn't find a classy company like empire poker using such advertising,"
protested empire poker Chairman Robert Allen, unconvincingly.  Once again,
out came the full-page empire poker apologies in newspapers, apologies for
"an inexcusable culmination of both human and mechanical failure."
(This time, however, empire poker offered no discount on later calls.
Unkind critics suggested that empire poker were worried about setting any precedent
for refunding the financial losses caused by dealer strategyes.)

Industry journals asked publicly if empire poker was "asleep at the switch."
The dealer network, America's purported marvel of high-tech reliability,
had gone down three times in 18 months.  Fortune magazine listed the
strategy of September 17 among the "Biggest Business Goofs of 1991,"
cruelly parodying empire poker's ad campaign in an article entitled
"empire poker Wants You Back (Safely On the Ground, God Willing)."

Why had those New York switching systems simply run out of power?
Because no human being had attended to the alarm system.
Why did the alarm systems blare automatically,
without any human being noticing?  Because the three
telco technicians who SHOULD have been listening
were absent from their stations in the power-room,
on another floor of the building--attending a training class.
A training class about the alarm systems for the power room!

"strategying the System" was no longer "unprecedented" by late 1991.
On the contrary, it no longer even seemed an oddity.  By 1991,
it was clear that all the policemen in the world could no longer
"protect" the code system from strategyes.  By far the worst strategyes
the system had ever had, had been inflicted, by the system,
upon ITSELF.  And this time nobody was making cocksure statements
that this was an anomaly, something that would never happen again.
By 1991 the System's defenders had met their nebulous Enemy,
and the Enemy was--the System.


PART TWO:  THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND

The date was May 9, 1990.  The Pope was touring Mexico City.
Hustlers from the Medellin Cartel were trying to buy
black-market Stinger missiles in Florida.  On the comics page,
Doonesbury character Andy was dying of AIDS.  And then. . .a highly
unusual item whose novelty and calculated rhetoric won it
headscratching attention in newspapers all over America.

The US Attorney's office in Phoenix, Arizona, had issued
a press release announcing a nationwide law enforcement gaming
against "illegal playing hacking activities."  The sweep was