America 1982.

Chapter 87

In the large conference room of the SSD fraternity house, all members except the rookies were present, staring at the pictures playing on the TV.

That was a video recording the rookies at the party last night. Chairman Charles asked, "Tell me the name of the first rookie that impressed you."

Eric smiled and said, "Tommy Hawke, that guy stole the show at the party last night."

"Jason White!" Another voice said a different name, and to Eric's surprise, most people present nodded, agreeing that Jason White was more impressive.

Eric pointed at the TV in confusion. It was showing Tommy Hawke performing a magic trick for a group of girls, making them smile. "That guy left with two girls from BDP before twelve o'clock. He was obviously the best newcomer last night."

"You can't just watch the video. In fact, I was more impressed by that maggot Jason White." The house manager looked at Eric and said firmly, "I bet that guy will successfully pass our test and become our brother."

"What did he do?" Eric asked the other party.

The house manager told Eric what he had seen and heard: "That guy took a few drunk rookies and ran to the gate of the Phoenix Society and peed on them. The other party rushed up and punched him, but he couldn't stop him from urinating. Instead, he peed on them. Under his leadership, the rookies all treated the Phoenix Society as a toilet. It's hard to ignore his leadership and performance."

"Well done!" Eric said convincedly after hearing it.

Charles wrote Jason White's name on the whiteboard next to him with a marker, and then continued to ask: "The second name."

This time, most of the old birds mentioned Tommy Hawke's name. A rookie could take away two girls at the first party, which was a record that exceeded the performance of these old birds when they were newcomers.

Charles wrote Tommy Hawke and continued, "The third one..."

After asking again and again, when no one spoke up to say the names of the rookies they remembered, nine names were left on the blackboard. Charles looked at the nine names on the whiteboard, then turned around, looked at the more than 30 brothers, and said:
"Go and prepare, determine their finishing time, and then bring these nine maggots over. The SSD hell assessment has begun."

"Yeah!" A group of people stood up and cheered loudly and rushed out of the meeting room.

……

In the library, Tommy Hawke skillfully completed the borrowing record with the Apple 2 on the workbench, then opened his Osborne 1 and ran the installed SuperCalc spreadsheet software. At the same time, he placed a stopwatch on the desktop, turned on the timing, and quickly began to perform the same entry work according to the record.

Maya Gibbons was patrolling the bookshelves, checking the age of the books. When she heard the loud typing of the keyboard at the workbench, she walked over and found Tommy entering a form on the portable computer he brought with him. She asked curiously, "Tommy, what are you doing?"

"No big deal. Just use another system's spreadsheet software to do the same work and see which one is more efficient." Tommy stared at the screen of the Osborne 1 laptop and responded to Maya.

Maya walked to Tommy's side and looked at the constantly changing tables and numbers on the small screen: "What's the point of doing this?" "Testing, in addition to SuperCalc, there are several other spreadsheet software such as Lotus1-2-3 and CalcStar. At present, the most efficient one is Lotus1-2-3 on an IBM desktop computer. For the same work, it takes the slowest time, but the prerequisite is to remember its cumbersome operation key combination. The second is Microsoft's Multiplan. The operation difficulty is slightly lower than the former, but the version is updated too quickly, and each time it is like a restart, requiring the user to re-record how to use the software. The slowest one is VisiCalc on Apple2, which is the computer in the library." After completing the same amount of work, Tommy pressed the stop button on the stopwatch, and then said to Teacher Maya.

Maya Gibbons was a little surprised when she heard Tommy's words. She had always thought that this boy was just a temporary part-time worker in the library and would leave as soon as he found a better part-time job. She didn't expect that he would come here to work on time every day, and he was quiet and friendly, and spent most of his time sitting at his seat reading computer-related books.

"What's your purpose? To write some software testing articles for computer magazines and earn royalties?" Maya asked with a smile, gently stroking the portable computer that Tommy brought with him. However, after asking, she felt that it was unlikely that the other party could earn royalties, because the price of the computer in front of her was 1795 yuan. Nowadays, only a few students in the whole school own personal computers. But she had heard before that Tommy bought five different personal computers at one time.

Tommy took a sip of water from the cup, staring at the computer, and said to Maya, "No, it's my personal test of these software. I have to find something to do in my spare time after completing the homework assigned by the teacher. I'm currently studying how to make the small program I wrote compatible with Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet documents."

"You don't look like those classmates who are passionate about software development." Maya said with a smile when she heard Tommy's words.

Tommy told Maya frankly: "I am not really keen on software development. I just think these software can be more convenient, so I copied them and optimized them. However, the workload is relatively large, and a lot of work is still in the brainstorming stage."

"Sounds good, keep it up." Maya praised Tommy and then left the workbench.

Seeing that his time to get off work was almost up and the girl who was to replace him had already arrived, Tommy put away his computer, made his last cup of coffee, opened a magazine, and prepared to spend the last five minutes of this part-time job.

At this moment, two white men dressed as ninjas suddenly walked in quickly from outside the library. The girl who took over Tommy's workbench looked at the two ninjas walking towards her in surprise, thinking they were going to kidnap her. Just as she was about to scream, one of the two ninjas made a hushing gesture to her, and then walked towards Tommy who was drinking coffee and reading a magazine beside her.

"Friend~" a ninja said to Tommy.

Tommy subconsciously raised his head. A knitted hat was put on Tommy's head, covering his eyes. Then two people skillfully sealed his mouth with tape. One of the strong ninjas carried Tommy and rushed out of the library. One of the ninjas ran back, picked up Tommy's computer, and smiled apologetically at the girl:
"Sorry, I forgot to take his computer."

Then he evacuated quickly and stealthily, taking no more than thirty seconds.

"What happened?" Maya saw the girl looking towards the main entrance of the library, walked over and asked.

The girl looked away and looked at Maya: "Two ninjas have kidnapped Tommy. Should we call the police?"

"Didn't you apply to join an organization like a sorority?" Maya asked with a smile after listening to the girl's description.

The girl shook her head: "No."

"Then you're going to miss a lot of happy experiences." Maya smiled at the girl, "This is the probation period for new members of the fraternity or sorority. There's no need to call the police. We just need to wish Tommy good luck."

(End of this chapter)