Which is what we did. No harm, right? I mean, the darned thing was just lying there. No "break and entry."
Guess what was inside. Not paper. Not a MITI report. Not lunch. Nothing in fact except for a shiny little compact disk, a CD.
"What the hell is this doing in here? Did she bring along some Beach Boys?"
"Matt, that's an optical disk, a CD-ROM." She suddenly seemed very pleased.
"Huh?"
"Compact disk, read-only memory. Except this one looks to be erasable and writable. This is the latest thing in computer storage technology." She held it up to the light, which reflected a rainbow of colors off its iridescent surface. "Maybe we've found what we came for. Let's take it and go."
"Is this like the CDs in record stores? The ones you play back using some kind of laser gizmo?"
"Same technology, only this is for text and data, not music. These can hold five-hundred megabytes, about one hundred and fifty thousand pages."
"Then I have some disquieting information to impart. I saw somebody come in here one day after shopping at Tower Records, and a CD he'd bought tripped the metal detector out there in Yamada's anteroom like he was wearing sleigh bells. Down inside this shiny plastic must be aluminum or something. We can't take it out." I turned it in my hand. "And besides, what would we do with it anyway? Stick it in a Walkman and listen to all the little digits spin by? In hi-fi?"
"I've got a reader at home . . . but wait, there's a better way." She lifted it from my grasp and headed out onto the floor. "Ever hear of computer crime?"