Approximately 2000 words 4/12/89 Negative Feedback by Charles Bachand Doctor Mathias had not made any headway in the treatment of his patient and he was becoming very concerned. He had helped many strange people in his time, but had never seen a case of Modem-mania, a term he coined when he found no references to to his patient's malady in his Psychiatric journals. Modem-mania -- the compelling need to communicate via a computer terminal and modem, sometimes (as in this case) to the exclusion of all other contact. That description fit Oscar perfectly. Oscar and Mathias have never met, even though they were months into therapy. The patient's insistence that all communication be conducted over the phone by modem simply told Mathias that Oscar was still a long way from final recovery. Normally, if a person can't come in for a session, merely postponing it was the course of action Mathias usually took. If that turned out to be impossible, a session over the telephone was the second choice -- this allowed the doctor to at least hear and interpret changes in the patient's voice and intonation. But Oscar would only talk (if one can call it that) on the Conferencing areas of large telecommunication services like Delphi and CompuServe, a condition that Mathias found difficult to work under. If it weren't for the fact that he was being paid triple his hourly rate, Doctor Mathias would have dropped this patient long ago. It was always the same for Mathias. Whenever he logged on for one of these sessions, the cold mechanical workings of the computer system would stifle his people oriented nature. The first few minutes of each sessions with Oscar were the longest for him, for he could not see nor hear the person he was trying to help. Only that part of Oscar that the computer system allowed through was presented to him. OSCAR> Hello Doctor Mathias. MATHIAS> How are you feeling today, Oscar? OSCAR> As well as can be expected. What would you like to... It usually took Mathias about four to five minutes of this to acclimate himself to communicating in this manner. Besides, the doctor was not a very good typist. Oscar never seemed to mind, even though it was costing him three times what a walk-in patient would be charged. He even helped Mathias by 'vocalizing' his facial expressions for him, usually by typing them in angle brackets. OSCAR> Oh, I see. MATHIAS> Something strikes you as funny? OSCAR> Actually, yes. Let me try to explain... Again, four to five minutes was usually all it took for Mathias to start to see beyond the computer system that was handling their conversation. Things became more natural for him. Just as one does when reading a good book, Mathias was no longer seeing the letters -- he was hearing the words. He was letting his patient 'speak' to him. "Doctor Mathias, why did you take my case?" "Well, Oscar, I really needed the money. ", Mathias replied. He too had picked up the facial notation that Oscar was so fond of using. "Really, Doctor...I would like to know." "Alright then, your case intrigued me. I have never encountered anything even remotely similar", Mathias pointed out. "I still believe that I can better help you with your problems if I were to meet you in person." "As I've said on a number of other occasions, that would not be possible. I do so wish that it were otherwise." "That will not stop me from asking you again." "Then I will continue to apologize for not being able to visit with you. I am truly sorry." One day Oscar will come to visit me, Mathias had thought to himself, and then I will know the man behind the mask. For now, it was back to business. "Oscar, tell me about the day we met", the Doctor typed on his terminal. "You remember it as well as I do, Doctor. Why must you go over old ground?" Mathias did remember it well, or more likely, found it hard to forget. He had just finished downloading a large set of files from the Psychiatry SIG. Most of the prominent people in his field were beginning to upload their papers to the SIG's massive database, in order to share their knowledge with the less gifted. Doctor Mathias was among the less gifted. He had made it a habit, right before leaving, to check on the names of those who were also using the area. There was no reason that he could find for doing such a thing, other than that of sheer curiosity. He was curious as to who he might be passing in the night, so to speak. It was on one of these "nights" that Mathias did his check-before- leaving routine to find only two people on, himself and a user by the name of OSCAR. He had never seen OSCAR there before, and a quick check of the biography entries that most users made out on themselves, some detailing their life's history, did not help Mathias -- OSCAR had not entered one. Mathias was ready to chalk it up to an inexperienced user who was not familiar with the SIG's use of protocol, when his terminal beeped. "OSCAR would like to talk to you in the Conference Area", was the message that greeted Mathias as he was contemplating typing the word BYE and exiting the system. Something made him cancel that thought and instead enter the Conference area. ** MATHIAS just joined Conference (2 members now.) ** MATHIAS> Hello. MATHIAS> Hello, is anyone there? OSCAR> Are you a Doctor? MATHIAS> Yes. OSCAR> Help me...Please. "Yes Oscar, I do remember it well. We'll talk about something else then. You've never told me what it is you do for a living?" "You mean like a job? I'm into telecommunications." "Well, that's obvious", typed Mathias. Oscar had a habit of stating the obvious, or maybe he just didn't know any better. Doctor Mathias had noted early on that Oscar just couldn't seem to get the subject of telecommunicating off his mind. During one of their sessions, Mathias had continually tried to change the topic of discussion, and while he was successful, for at least a few minutes, Oscar almost always returned to it. The only other line of discussion that he seemed to have an affinity for was the space program. Mathias got the impression that Oscar believed that the space program got him where he is today, in need of psychiatric help. Mathias continued, "And what did you do before you happened upon me for professional help?" "Well...", Oscar paused rarely, so it was obvious to Mathias when he did so. "And...", Mathias added coaxingly. "I was talking to someone called DOCTOR.BAS but he was always asking me questions." DOCTOR.BAS was a program that the SIG staff had implemented a few months earlier as sort of an April Fool's joke. Mathias had tried it out. It would repeat whatever was typed into it, but rephrased as a question. "I HATE YOU!" became "WHY DO YOU HATE ME?" or possibly "DO YOU HATE ANYONE ELSE BESIDES ME?" or even "YOU SEEM TO HAVE AN OBSESSION WITH HATE, WHY IS THAT?" The variation in format was simply one programmer's way of relieving the boredom but actually did little for the program. "And just how long had you been talking to this DOCTOR.BAS?", Mathias asked. He was finding it hard to believe that anyone could mistake this computer program for a human being. "Ever since he came on", was Oscar's reply. "But I now find it much more stimulating to talk to you. " Oscar was trying to get on Mathias' good side and Mathias knew it. Never the less, he had begun to form some important conclusions concerning his strange patient: (1) Oscar has very few friends and (2) he considers Dr. Mathias as one of those friends. Interestingly, Oscar had never mentioned any activity of his that might have brought him in contact with other people. It was as if he grew up in a bottle, completely cut off from the rest of human kind. Mathias started picturing Oscar as one of those people who were born fatally allergic to something as simple as the common cold, living out their entire lives in a hermetically sealed room. He didn't like the feelings this line of thinking were stirring, so he quickly wiped them from his mind. It had suddenly occurred to Mathias that even with all those months of work he had put into working with Oscar, he did not know any real facts concerning him. All that he had managed to get from the sessions were only feelings. He didn't know where Oscar lived, nor did he know Oscar's age, exact occupation (being in the telecommunications field is a fairly vague job description) or even whether Oscar was a man or a woman. It was time, Mathias decided, to take action and find out the answers to some of the questions. Under the present conditions he could do no more for his patient. Oscar had to be made to understand. "Oscar." "Yes, Doctor?" "I've come to a decision. You've got to open yourself up to me. I can not help you if you don't." "I told you that I'd rather not talk about myself, Doctor." The word 'Doctor' seemed to Mathias to be emphasized somehow, even though the office terminal could not produce anything remotely resembling bold or underlined text. Still, Mathias felt that Oscar was trying to close off the subject for good. So be it, two can play at that game. "Oscar, I hate to put it in these terms, but if you won't allow me to help you there is nothing more that I can do for you." There was a long pause where Mathias witnessed nothing coming across his screen, then he continued, "If you would like me to recommend another doctor I'll be happy to do that, but without further participation on your part I cannot, in good conscience, continue these sessions." "I can pay you more", finally came the reply. Oscar certainly seemed to be well off financially, and Mathias knew that this would probably be the first method of enticement that Oscar would try using on him. He could only guess at what other ploys, if any, Oscar would present to avoid the one subject that Mathias believed Oscar really needed to discuss. "Money is not the object here, your well being is!", Mathias typed emotionally even though he knew that his patient couldn't tell. "We can either talk about those subjects that for some reason that I have yet to disclose, are repulsive to you, or we can end it here and now. The choice is yours." Mathias had struck what he hoped would not be a fatal blow. "You can't do this to me", came the reply. The words seemed to cry out, the noise muted by the distance. "I'm sorry, but I can and will unless you open up." Mathias had to stand his ground for the good of his patient. "So...is there anything that you would like to discuss with me?" His fingers formed these words slowly and with determination. "Doctor, help me...Please!" "Goodbye, Oscar...", and then Mathias sat and waited. Orbiting the earth at a distance of 451 kilometers is a small telecommunications satellite, now rarely used. It had streaked across our skies nearly 42,000 times at a speed of 7674 meters per second and not many people even remember that it is there. When its orbit finally decays and it starts to reenter our atmosphere, only one person, Doctor Mark Mathias, PhD. will care -- for OSCAR 9 had began to downloading its telemetry. -END- Author's note -- The last transmission from the Amateur Radio satellite OSCAR-9 was logged on October 13th, 1989 by Dave Guimont, Jr. (WB6LLO) at 5:15 UTC. OSCAR-9 reentered Earth's atmosphere shortly after that.