RWHO

Friday, 11:54 p.m.

The parking lot was almost deserted as he pulled in. “And, why not?” mused Zubair as he headed towards his office, “Only a geek would want to check mail on a Friday night.”

The grad student’s office was deserted too. It was close to midnight. Even Carolyn wasn’t in tonight. She was defending in a week and had been a permanent lab resident for the last month. But not tonight.

He entered the little room in the back, which he shared with two other grads. He didn’t feel like turning on the lights. The fluorescent street lights pouring in from the large bay window were enough.

He quickly logged in. Great! He had new mail. And there was the one he had been eagerly waiting for—the one from Farah. On a whim, he had decided to write to her on soc.penpals. She was just the kind of person he had been looking for. He spent a few excruciatingly painful days before he received her response. Since then, they have been writing to each other quite often. Tonight, he was debating whether to ask her for her phone number. “I wish I had more guts,” he sighed in exasperation.

The sound of a door opening interrupted his reverie. That might be Carolyn. He heard someone walk into the other small room, the usual hangout of the Indian grads. Very soon, the gentle tapping of keyboard sounds wafted into the room.

Zubair did an “rwho”.

That must be Rakesh. He didn’t know Rakesh too well. Trust another desi to be logged in on a weekend night.

Well, he did it. He finally gathered up enough guts to write to Farah for her phone number. He had to be careful. He didn’t want to sound too eager, but he had just begun to realize that his interest in Farah was now more than platonic. So he would really like to meet her and get to know her better.

“There, that’s it. No risk, no gain”, mumbled Zubair as he sent the email on its way. There is nothing more to do than wait until Monday. Farah never logs in over the weekend. He logged out. He decided to walk over to Rakesh and say hi. Maybe he was going over to Dan’s housewarming party tomorrow night.

The other room was also dark as he peered in through the door. Dark, save for the dim glow of the screen. Somebody was still logged in. Strange. He hadn’t heard Rakesh leave. Oh well, time to go home.

Saturday, 10:34 p.m.

“The party’s just great, “ thought Zubair, wiping tears from his eyes. Rhonda had been regaling them with more of her funny stories. They sounded funnier when one had a pint or so of Samuel Adams Dark resting gently in one’s stomach. Dan’s a great host. He had arranged for an unlimited supply of beer. And good beer at that.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zubair spied Rakesh. He turned around and waved to him, and Rakesh grinned and walked over to the group.

“Hi, Zubair! How’s it going?” greeted Rakesh.

“Good. How about you? You were on campus pretty late last night.” “Huh?” Rakesh looked at Zubair in puzzlement and said, “I was out of town and didn’t get in till this afternoon.”

“Strange! I did an rwho and saw ‘baliga’ logged on to ‘dobie’”.

“Oh. My login name is rbaliga. Baliga’s the login name of…” Rakesh paused suddenly in mid-sentence.

Zubair felt as if something was amiss. The whole group had grown quiet and was looking at him weirdly. Rakesh and Susan exchanged knowing looks.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” quizzed Zubair.

“Are you sure you saw Baliga logged in?” Rhonda asked quietly.

“Of course! I mean, I didn’t see anyone, but I heard someone come in. I went to say hello, but he had probably stepped out. He was still logged in, though. Hey, what gives? Aren’t there any other Baligas in the department?”

The silence in the room was deafening.

“Let me tell you a story,” started Rhonda. “This happened last spring. You weren’t here yet. Ramesh Baliga was a grad student in the department. He was a strange fellow. He would spend most of his time in that room. He was always logged in and doing some work. He was a genius, no doubt. He did phenomenal research his first year and already had two journal papers to his name.”

“He was intensely competitive,” interrupted Wen Jing.

“That he was,” continued Rhonda. “He would hate to lose out to anything. He would take every loss as a personal affront. That year, he was in the running for the school’s Outstanding Researcher Award. You must have heard of it?”

“Yup. Heck, if I can get my simulation to work, I want to try to wrangle that this year.” Zubair answered.

“Well, good luck,” wished Rhonda. “Anyway, his only other competition was Wen Jing here. Ramesh was sure he was going to be the one. You could tell it by the way he talked. But when the award was announced, Wen Jing was the one who got it. Ramesh was devastated. It was as if his world had collapsed around him. The night after the award was announced, Ramesh was back at his usual place, logged onto ‘dobie’. Oh my god, it was exactly a year ago!”

“Jesus H. Christ!” whistled Dan.

A strange murmur echoed throughout the room.

“Hey, what is it?” asked Zubair. “What gives?”

Rhonda looked at Zubair and had a strange expression on her face.

She said, “Ramesh killed himself that night!”

rwho

Rwho is a Unix-based network protocol that displays information about users logged into a local network, such as their username, the name of the machine they are logged into, and how long they have been idle. It stands for “remote who”. Newer and more secure protocols, such as the SNMP protocol for network monitoring and the SSH protocol for remote logins, have primarily replaced the rwho protocol.