The Hammer of God

In 1968, the United States was in the midst of volcanic upheaval. Anti-establishment lava flowed from college campuses down the main streets of cities big and small, igniting passions and inflaming politics. To be young then was to be in a perpetual state of rebellion. In a previous generation’s movie, the sheriff of a town invaded by young Marlon Brando’s motorcycle gang asked the brooding teen what his group was rebelling against. Brando’s answer, though uttered in an earlier decade, summed up the social/political movement of the ’60s: “I dunno, what do you got?” In the latter part of that decade, that sentiment was now, literally, on drugs. Whatever could be revolted against was. Whatever could be protested became a cause celebre. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll made it all sweeter. Revolution hung in the air like marijuana smoke.

All of the ’60s dissonance, clamor, awakenings, and infamous moments were mere background noise to Peter. He was so focused on his current project that his friends on the block hardy ever saw him. No stickball, no ringolevio, no hot beans, no king queen, no box ball, none of the street games. Not even two-hand-touch football. The reason for Peter’s self-imposed exile went back to the great blackout of ‘67 when he quickly concocted several of the devices his father made for him for the second grade science fair and placed them at the landings of the stairs in the pitch-dark tenement. Those little lights stopped many tenants from taking a tumble down the marble steps while the electricity was out. So grateful were the neighbors that they started giving him wires, phones, radios, even televisions to tinker with. This sudden windfall of electronic parts started Peter on his greatest project ever. At fourteen, he was going to build a computer.

The estimated amount of money the computer would cost was a small fortune for a boy his age: almost $35. There was no way that kind of money was going to come from an allowance of fifty cents a week. Undeterred by the financial challenge, he started to improvise. He read up on all manner of early computer science and found out about the new transistor that was rapidly replacing tubes in electronics. He started to make his own basic building blocks of computers from old salvaged parts and a discarded knock hockey set he found in the lot. The Masonite playing surface became the material he drilled to make circuit boards. He copied wiring diagrams from a 1960 article by Ronald Benray in Electronics Illustrated on making a digital computer. It showed the basic schematic for the “E-J Flip Flop.”

Then he discovered “radio row” in lower Manhattan. It was in the old Port Authority Trans Hudson terminal, later shortened to PATH. Many old Jewish and Italian merchants who started to specialize in electronic junk had little stands and stalls there. They would buy/sell/trade their wares. It was the trade part, however, that enabled Peter to build his computer. He would find an old TV set in the lot that someone had thrown out. For a fifteen-cent token, he dragged the TV onto the IRT and schlepped the thing all the way downtown, then up the stairs and to the feet of one of the guys on Vesey Street. Often he’d walk away with a few 2N554 PNP power transistors or some 1N34 diodes. All precious gems in the collection that would become his DEMIAC 256.

A race with the clock started when he learned that all the old guys down on radio row — his friends Sol, Manny, Vinny, and Izzy — were on their last days. The entire Hudson Tubes Terminal was going to be knocked down to make way for some big old thing called the World’s Trading Center or something like that. Peter had to hurry to find, drag, and swap as many electronics carcasses as possible to have enough parts to finish his computer.

The seven scientists that Kasiko had gotten out of Hungary went on to find places to do their work. Some with governments, some with private industry. All in all, things were going well. Hardly a day went by that Dr. Brodenchy didn’t say a silent thank you for his luck. Many times, he thought of Kasiko and his surprise when they had reached Switzerland and Kasiko handed them back all the money he had taken minus the amount to bribe the officials and to feed them. Not a forint for himself. Just as often, he thought of his father and three sisters. They were all killed by the Russians. His father and two sisters were shot trying to “escape” to a mosque on a Friday. His other sister, Afifah, was raped then shot. If not for Kasiko leading them out of Hungary, he and his brother, all that were left, would have suffered a similar fate.

Dr. Brodenchy was thinking just this as he awaited a car to pick him up from the Idlewild Airfield in New York. He was on his way to a meeting at the United Nations. He had heard that Kasiko had settled in New York and if there was time, he intended to look him up.