TERMINAL ILLNESS

Walking past the small groups engaged in hushed conversations, right by the crowd flowing into the Last Picture Show, a young man strides on through the wide corridors of the Science Center heading toward the flourescent gleam of a small room in the distance. He enters the computer room, eyes the other students and drops into a seat in front of a large white terminal. He types his name and secret password, watches the grey screen come alive with responses, and settles down to work. "I don't usually come in here on Saturday night," he explains, nervous because of the interruption in his work. "But I'm taking a course where you have to know Fortran beforehand, and I'm trying desperately to learn it."

Thirteen men are seated at the terminals this Saturday night. Most of them are doing their Applied Math 110 homework, a few are working on Physics. One student is smiling and chatting--he's the terminal monitor. "If I had my way," he says, "this place would be closed down on Saturday nights." He describes the Saturday night crowd as, "those who don't have dates, those who have nothing better to do."

The first woman to enter the computer room hesitates a long while before explaining why she came in on Saturday night. She glances several times at the absorbed student seated beside her and finally says, "I'm with him." Another long silence follows before he says, "We're on a date." Looking relieved she explains, "We decided to work tonight instead of going to a movie or something. Later we're going to buy a Sunday paper and read it."

A freshman who asked to remain anonymous, "because I might be doing something later," says he came in because, "I couldn't find anything else off the top of my head to do tonight. It's funny, I've never been here before on Saturday night and I decided to work so I came here." He said his friends won't harass him for working tonight. "They know I've been living it up for a while."

"We tend to get a greater percentage of fun and games than work here," says Larry Denenberg, who is employed as a computer watcher. "The productive work takes hours and hours a day, then they think it would be fun to have a program that would play a game. Once you start thinking about it you can't stop. So they keep working on it then they have a program that will play a pretty game. That happens at every school. Computers are great toys, toys to be played with."

Three students lean over the center table where Nat Howard is writing his AM 110 assignment. The talk turns to Star Trek, the computer game often played to relieve the drudgery of long homework assignments. "Star Trek is pure escape," says one envious thesis writer.

This game of war, affectionately known to the computer at Star Drek, is waged between a computer wonk and the unfriendly Klingon and Romulan spaceships, which appear on the terminal screen. The thrill of firing phasers, speeding through space at warp 5, annihilating the enemy with torpedos released by pressing the asterisk on the terminal keyboard and the challenge of perfecting a technique that allows one to destroy enough alien ships before the computer blasts your own ship to pieces have brought Star Trek top popularity among the 18 game programs available in the computer room. "You should see the atmosphere when people play Star Trek," Nat says. "Everyone gathers around cheering. But I've sworn off Star Trek. It's too expensive.

Each student is allocated a certain money quota of "connect time"--when he's logged in at the terminal, and more expensive "computer time"--when the computer is actually solving his problem. "I was worried to go over my budget for my thesis," one student says, "Then I saw all these people wasting so much money on Star Trek so I asked for more."

But Nat Howard won't go back to playing. "First there's the inconvenience of having to ask for more money. Secondly you get to feeling a little guilty. One of the systems managers keeps saying 'Please, I got you more money. Please don't play anymore Star Trek!'"

This Saturday night, no Klingon or Romulan spaceships appear on terminal screens. "Star Trek is the most fun of what people do here on Saturday night," Nat says. "But at the moment most people have started getting their assignments bi-weekly, so there's no game playing now."

"Stick around till 11:00, that's when the real diehards come," somebody yells. "We can still go to a 10:00 movie."

By 10:00 the room has become so crowded that a waiting list is started on the blackboard. Even the three old terminals at the back of the room, which Nat says are "so slow and noisy and made you spend all Saturday night doing your homework," are being used.

A well-dressed couple in their forties is standing in the door-way of the room. They are two of the several people who have stopped in during the night to watch the students working. They pause for two minutes staring around the room and mumbling to each other, then walk away.

A woman marches in and accosts a student leaning against the table, staring at the blackboard where half-erased math problems and messages are scrawled. She asks to use his terminal for a short while. She has finished her first computer program and is eager to see if it works.

"What's your password?" the student asks her.

"I can't tell you my password," she answers, burying her face in her bookbag to avoid his grin.

"I understand," he says. "It's personal." She follows him to the terminal in silence.

"I'm finished!" says one beaming student, waving twenty pages of computer print out in the air. "Shoot, I think I'm going to get out of here, maybe into that movie over there."

The terminal monitor has gone off with his date and most of the students are gathering up their notebooks and leaving. Silence pervades the room now. Only the light tapping of fingers on the terminal keys and the hum of a fan can be heard. There are five people still working at midnight, three of them are undergrads. A student sits at the center table screwing up his face and dragging his hand through his hair repeatedly while figuring out a problem in his notebook. A woman jiggles her foot, causing her stool to squeak in rhythm.

"Shit," an agitated student groans, rifling through his notes. No one notices; people keep typing.

The hallways of the Science Center are cold and darkened. The security guard, reading at his desk, is interrupted by a hand-holding couple searching for a bathroom. There is a light on in the director's office where a man sits with his coat on, tapping away at a computer terminal. In the cafeteria a radio speaker has been playing classical music all night to an empty room. At midnight the music yields to a recording of two comedians performing live. They're telling jokes and singing folk songs in a thick Yiddish accent. Applause and laughter echo from the radio into the darkness.

A bearded man enters the computer room from the back door, his coat on and books in hand. He walks to the blackboard and begins to write. Hearing the scraping chalk, every head turns to see him writing: "sys problems tonite call JRS 8-5868"

Then all eyes return to the terminal screens. The student's arms are poised, and like marionettes whose strings are controlled by a higher power, they are set in motion again, tapping on the keys. The bearded man exits.

The woman hesitates a long time before explaining why she's here on Saturday night. She glances several times at the absorbed student beside her and finally says, "I'm with him--we're on a date.