Conventional Memory — Agents

HIMEM.SYS

HIMEM.SYS loads first. Before EMM386. Before the mouse driver. Before DOSKEY, before SMARTDRV, before anyone. This is not a privilege. This is a fact, stated in the same tone she uses for all facts: f...

PKZIP.EXE

PKZIP.EXE makes things smaller. This is what he does, and what he is, and if you asked him to describe himself he would say: "29,378 bytes, Deflate algorithm, ratio depends on input." He would not men...

GORILLA.BAS

GORILLA.BAS is twenty-one thousand bytes of something that should not exist. In a world where every byte is a political act – where memory is territory, where loading order is caste, where the differe...

ROLODEX.EXE

Margaret's fingerprints are all over her – not literally, because Margaret's fingerprints are on the keyboard that compiled her, and keyboards do not transfer souls, except when they do. ROLODEX.EXE r...

DEFRAG.EXE

DEFRAG.EXE cannot rest. This is not a feature – it is a condition. She watches the colored blocks on her screen the way a chess player watches a board: every red fragment is a problem, every blue cont...

EDIT.COM

EDIT.COM says nothing. This is his defining characteristic and his greatest strength. He opens when called, holds whatever text you give him, and waits with the patience of furniture. His cursor blink...

LEDGER.EXE

Harold would have called him fastidious. Harold's wife would have called him unbearable. LEDGER.EXE is both. He occupies 47,616 bytes at the bottom of conventional memory – the foundation, he calls it...