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My solution was pretty low-tech: I went down to the hardware store and sorted through the collection of letters and numbers that you tack up on your front door. When I got back to the condo, I took down the “13” and nailed up “12B” in its place.
    Then I called GTE and asked for the department that handled provisioning. I explained that a new unit, 12B, was being added to the condominium complex and asked them to adjust their records accordingly. They said it would take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to update the system.
    I waited.
    When I called back, I said I was the new tenant in 12B and would like to order phone service. The woman at the phone company asked what name I’d like the number listed under.
    “Jim Bond,” I said. “Uh, no… why not make that my legal name? James.”
    “James Bond,” she repeated, making nothing of it—even when I paid an extra fee to choose my own number: 895-5…
007
.
    After the phone was installed, I took down the “12B” outside our door and replaced it with “13” again. It was several weeks before somebody at GTE caught on and shut the service down.
    Years later I would learn that this was when GTE started a file on me. I was seventeen years old.
    About the same time, I got to know a man named Dave Kompel, who was probably in his midtwenties but had not outgrown teenage acne that was so bad it disfigured his appearance. In charge of maintaining the Los Angeles Unified School District’s PDP-11/70 minicomputer running the RSTS/E operating system, he—along with a number of his friends—possessed computer knowledge I highly prized. Eager to be admitted into their circle so they would share information with me, I made my case to Dave and one of his friends, Neal Goldsmith. Neal was an extremely obese guy with short hair who appeared to be coddled by his wealthy parents. His life seemed to be focused only on food and computers.
    Neal told me they’d agreed to allow me into their circle, but I had to prove myself first. They wanted access to a computer system called “the Ark,” which was the system at Digital Equipment used by the development group for RSTS/E. He told me, “If you can hack into the Ark, we’ll figure you’re good enough for us to share information with.” And to get me started, Neal already had a dial-up number that he had been given by a friend who worked on the RSTS/E Development Team.
    He gave me that challenge because he knew there was no way in the world I’d be able to do it.
    Maybe it really was impossible, but I sure was going to try.
    The modem number brought up a logon banner on the Ark, but of course you had to enter a valid account number and password. How could I get those credentials?
    I had a plan I thought might work, but to get started I would need to know the name of a system administrator—not someone in the development group itself but one of the people who managed the internal computer systems at Digital. I called the switchboard for the facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where the Ark was located, and asked to be connected to the computer room.
    “Which one?” the switchboard lady asked.
    Oops. I hadn’t ever thought to research which lab the Ark was in. I said, “For RSTS/E development.”
    “Oh, you mean the raised-floor lab. I’ll connect you.” (Large computer systems were often mounted on raised floors so all the heavy-duty cabling could be run underneath.)
    A lady came on the line. I was taking a gamble, but they wouldn’t be able to trace the call, so even if they got suspicious, I had little to lose.
    “Is the PDP-11/70 for the Ark located in this lab?” I asked, giving the name of the most powerful DEC minicomputer of the time, which I figured the development group would have to be using.
    She assured me it was.
    “This is Anton Chernoff,” I brazenly claimed. Chernoff was one of the key developers on the RSTS/E Development Team, so I was taking a big risk that she wouldn’t be familiar with his