Chapter 3 of Loki’s Trojan

Bare Interlopers

To Bare

“If a man shouts to bare in a forest with nobody around to hear,” on the muddy bank of a secluded woodland pond, the Iranian-Canadian asked a pointless question in his loudest voice, “does he make any noise?”  He was too bare and close to the Alaska Highway.  The sound of vehicles could reach to his ears so it was likely that his yell could’ve carried back.

Deep in Bare Country

Despite his nearness to the sparse traffic, separated by only a bare strip of woods, Tariq stripped bare and felt the sun glowing hotly on his bare skin.  In other times he was here, his solitude had been undisturbed.  This tiny lake was not quite visible from the road.  He only found it when he spotted a wooden fish sign tacked to a tree.  According to the angler’s club notice, the still water was stocked with trout but the programmer had never tried a hook or line.  The water was nearly too cold to bare.

After escaping from 9/11, Tariq had come to one of the remote parts of Canada to find beautiful boreal serenity like this and a safe place to work.  His bare eyes scanned the man-made miniscule mere: the borrow pit wasn’t natural.  Heavy equipment excavated a deep hole to gain earthen fill for the adjacent roadbed.  Rain and snow runoff water filled the depression and now it was an unintentional lake, with steep mud banks instead of sand.

A few insects hovered nearby, looking for a tasty bit of bare human flesh to nibble on but Tariq paid them no heed.  They could light on his bare body but before they had time to bite his bare skin, the bugs would be in a sink or swim situation—not unlike the one the programmer was metaphorically facing.

Swimming Bare

As he stretched luxuriously in the warmth, with a buffeting breeze to stir and tickle his body hairs, he thought back to his first visit to this glade.  Then, his mind was in turmoil and it still was but now in different ways.  His software germinated from a concept envisioned at this very spot.

The software developer had spent the next few years writing the code and his current plan evolved out of the progress.  Now, that program was completed.  The bare naked recluse was as prepared for the next phase as he could be.

A large horsefly buzzed in like a Sea Harrier Jump Jet to land on his bare shoulder.  Those bite hard enough to take out a divot of bare flesh.  Tariq sprang into the air and his shallow dive had his bare stomach nearly skipping on the surface like a tossed flat rock.  His body form had also undergone changes since that first visit here.  Gone was the yo-yo shape that Alexandra Awi had teased about.  With three to four days per week in the gym and eating healthy in between, he had shed almost a third of his mass.

His first visits to the gym were only the bare essentials to make good on promises to his daughter.  The workouts also made him forget his cravings for nicotine and allowed him to sweat away frustrations from his familial loss.  With some early success, Tariq became hooked on the feeling of being strong.  His moobs were now pectorals that didn’t need a training bra.

Nearly too Bare to Bare

A few overhand strokes took the swimmer to the middle of the small lake. The sun had warmed the surface water but it was much cooler in the depths.  He tried to keep his bare body horizontal in the temperate strata.  He stopped there to tread water.

Completing a pirouette, Tariq surveyed the banks and enjoyed the unrivaled sensations of swimming in the nude.  The smack of his nearly too bare to bare dive had awakened several beavers from their basking.  They were now paddling in threatening circles to warn him away.

After so many of regular stops here to skinny-dip, the overlarge rodents should be used to him but animal instinct told them how they must react.  The bare naked programmer swam around the periphery of the semi-submerged den and recalled how this exact action gave him the initial idea and the bare outline for his code.

Bare Pit and the Bare Den

The beavers built a dam that stopped the outflow from the pit—but they don’t actually own the water or even the pond.  Their work was a blockage and the dike only gained a few extra inches of total depth.  The water itself suffered the consternation of having to work harder and with much less efficiency.  Tariq had then watched a pair of squirrels copulating on a log and he put the concepts of sex and the beaver’s water weir together.

Too bare to bare

Computer software applications need to have digital intercourse with the machine hardware but there was no valid reason why they couldn’t fornicate outside the unholy wedlock of Bob Wall’s interface program.  Corporate suits could threateningly swim circles in the pool behind their leaky dike but the waterscape didn’t belong to them.  Computer equipment receptors and application outputs have to connect but Wall Soft Systems didn’t own the respective sex organs.

Using that principle, Tariq had written some tight code to do the same job as the clunky standard but that handled the interactions of hardware and software in an entirely different manner.  That application was now finished and the developer had already begun distributing it through the shareware system.

“We’ll see how they try to unscrew themselves now.”  He ducked his head under the cool surface and took one strong breaststroke before letting himself drift like a surfboard in the calm pond.