The Monitor Read online

  I felt a moment of pity for Venita/Julie. Adolescence was a hellish time to live through, with your body playing all sorts of tricks on you and your frontal lobes unable to keep up. To have to go through the most self-conscious time of your life in a body that would be the butt of cruel jokes and cutting remarks would be a level of hell Dante hadn’t even known about.

  Well, if she was willing to behave herself, Babel would not ever have to meet the real Julie Madison. I shrugged as I took a copy of the image of the computer club, a screen capture of the full page complete with photo, and created a bookmark to the web page. I was a reasonable person.

  I turned full attention back to Babel. Why couldn’t Venita be frolicking in the word games, conversation, and general silliness that was the open room in Babel? Tracy was taking everyone on a psychological journey that she’d learned about in her university Introduction to Jung course. People were being told to describe what the tree looked like that they stopped beside on the path, and then to look down and pick up a key, and then describe it.

  Gandalf: This is like Myst!

  Kara: I think a lot of computer games are like Jungian dreamscapes. Or in some cases, nightmare scapes!

  Carlin: You got something against computer games, Kara?

  Kara: No shit, Sherlock. I had to get a laptop so I could log on to chat at all. Hubby plays Tomb Raider for hours at a time, and Kid is hooked on her Sims.

  Gandalf: You ever try Myst? That is one freakin’ weird concept.

  Carlin: I spent about a month on it a year or two ago and managed to get through it. Course, I had some help from a cheat site on-line.

  Kara: I couldn’t get past the first four places on that island. I admit, though, I used to love those little Hugo games on DOS shareware. I think I went through three of them.

  Tracy: Okay, I have three key descriptions in. Any more coming in or should I take you further down the path?

  Gandalf: Further! Further!

  Maia: Is it further or farther in this case?

  Vixen: Why don’t you ask Sanders?

  Maia: Is he around?

  My antennae began to quiver. Why would Vixen refer Maia to Sanders? Damn, while I was nattering with Vixen about Thea, I should have pumped her about Sanders, as well. I might have known she’d have some inside dope on everyone in this place. It was a wonder Chatgod hadn’t hired her as monitor.

  It seemed that Sanders wasn’t around, and while Tracy talked them down the path toward a door, I decided to take another tour of the private rooms. Maybe it was time for Alvin to have his little chat with Venita.

  Sure enough, Venita and Theseus were at it hot and heavy. It would have been interesting to see how Julie managed to avoid the censure of the librarian while writhing on the screen in front of her. Surely she couldn’t be sitting there, stonelike, as she created her web of virtual jism and other body fluids with which to entrap Theseus.

  I wrote a quick report of intent to Chatgod, detailing the offer I was about to make to Venita, and I copied the message to Alchemist. Then, under the hood of private messaging, I hailed the teen princess of priapism.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: Hi there, toots. You know, we have some standards here and you’re flying way off the radar of appropriate behavior.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: Since when is a private room censorable? Are you reading my discussions? That’s outrageous!

  PM from Alvin to Venita: Who are you going to complain to? I own the boat, I say who sails in her. I’m not kidding, kiddo. If the authorities come through checking for kiddie porn, you and your virtual blow jobs could pull us off the ‘Net.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: So what are you saying?

  PM from Alvin to Venita: I’m saying, either you and the old guys cool it here and play nice or you take your sugar daddies and go play elsewhere.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: And what if we don’t? There’s not all that much you can do. What are you going to do, ban me?

  PM from Alvin to Venita: If I have to.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: Well, that is just so unfair. I’m not the only one having cyber-sex in your precious Babel, you know.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: You’re the only one doing it who can’t get a driver’s licence. Or, come to think of it, a part-time job.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: Nobody else knows that, Alvin. I swear to god. I tell them I just look young for my age, but that I’m in college.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: What would your parents think of your actions here?

  PM from Venita to Alvin: Oh sure, tell them if you think they’re going to give a damn. I promise you, I haven’t told anyone I’m underage.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: I’m sure you don’t tell them the whole truth, honey. That’s one of the wonderful things about the Internet, isn’t it? The power to reinvent one’s self. Thing is, I know how old you are and you can bet the police will know how old you are, and I can’t afford that kind of hassle. So, you can cart old Theseus off somewhere else, or you can tell him how old you ­really are and start behaving yourself.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: He wouldn’t care. If I told him I was really thirteen he would come in his pants. I think you’re being really unfair. It’s not like we’re hurting anybody at all.

  She had a point, but I knew that if we did have a killer wandering through Babel, it would only be a matter of time before the Mounties and INTERPOL were all over the server. If they caught one whiff of Venita, we could end up looking like the bad guys instead of the victims. I had to get this Lolita to don her little heart-shaped shades and scram.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: Really? And do you think Theseus would be having quite the fantasies if he were to see a picture of you with your school computer club?

  PM from Venita to Alvin: You wouldn’t!

  PM from Alvin to Venita: You don’t want to find out what I would and wouldn’t do, little girl. Now, either you clean up your act, and that means No Cyber-Sex in Babel, or you leave Babel. That simple.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: You’re a prick, you know.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: Sorry, honey. Them’s the rules.

  Idly, I clicked on the bookmark to the computer club page in another window. I was glad I’d taken a copy of the picture, because Venita/Julie hadn’t wasted any time yanking it off the school web page.

  PM from Alvin to Venita: I’ve got a copy of the photo. Don’t worry, kid. Puberty isn’t a terminal disease.

  PM from Venita to Alvin: You win, asshole. Too much lag in this crap site anyhow.

  Venita: Baby, put it back in your pants for the moment. We have to check out of here.

  Theseus: *whimpering* What’s that, darling?

  Venita : Come on, hon. Let’s take it to IM. I don’t like the smell in here.

  Theseus: Whaa?

  Venita has left the building.

  Theseus has left the building.

  Okay, one problem solved. I loaded a copy of the incriminating JPEG onto the Babel server and transferred the screen capture of the site to the server as well, wrote another short report to Chatgod and Alchemist, and went back out to see where Tracy had managed to lead the crowd. They were in some sort of tunnel inside a mountain. Maia was seguing off on a story about her claustrophobia. Boy, could I relate to that. I logged in as Chimera and joined her in the discussion.

  I chatted for a while, continuing to keep an eye on things, but Venita was true to her word. Who knows, maybe the library in Oxnard closed early. I was hoping for the best from her but was ready for the worst. Sanders never did pop in the entire time I was holding down the fort, and I went to bed wondering what he’d been up to, and fretting away at the continuing puzzle of who the hell he was.

  Thanks to Venita, and maybe Carl Jung, I had lurid dreams involving masked men, a tree in a forest, Steve, and kilt pins. I was relieved when my alarm rang in the morning, although I didn’t feel in the least bit rested. I unwound the twisted sheets from my sweaty body to escape my cocoon, and wondered at the whole concep
t of sexual fantasy and pornography. Any time I had ever stumbled onto a porn site, it had done nothing for me. I would rather have one solid man than all the virtual lovers in the world.

  Speaking of solid men, maybe I could lure Steve out for a lunch. I shook off the bedclothes and dragged myself to the shower, whistling Ravel’s Bolero.

  30

  Steve was busy, but Denise was free for lunch, which would suit me just as well. I had wanted to pump her a bit about the fellows from the gala, and I figured she would be rested enough to indulge in a good gossip. We didn’t call it gossip, of course. If we acknowledged it beyond conversation at all, we tended to refer to it as analysis. Sort of critiquing the performance art that is life.

  Whatever you called it, I wanted to know just how much Denise knew about the crowd we’d been hanging with that night. While I had been finding out so many interesting things about other folks in Babel, I figured I might as well find out who the fellow closest in geographic proximity was. I had checked through the registration procedure for Sanders much the same way we’d traced Thea and Venita, but for some reason he had managed to sidestep some of Chatgod’s security provisions. He was listed as Thomas Chatterton, from Edmonton. Either Chatterton was a reference to the faker-poet or just a pseudonym for a chat-room denizen, but it certainly wasn’t his real name. I had not been introduced to anyone named Chatterton at the gala, and, if there was one thing I was positive about, it was that Sanders had been one of the crowd there.

  Well, if the registration wasn’t going to do it, maybe talking with Denise would. We were meeting at The Upper Crust, one of the better places near me. Their carrot soup was to die for.

  It took me five minutes to get from my door to the restaurant, even allowing time to agree with my neighbor, Mr. MacGregor, that it did seem milder than this time last year. Denise was already ensconced in the corner table at the back, under one of the most amazing prairie paintings I’d ever seen. That’s the thing about The Upper Crust: they act as a sort of art gallery for a few of the more interesting artists in town. This painting offered the wheat field, in its ultimate white-gold blondness, under a malevolent prairie-storm sky. This is what those camera commercials had been aiming for, but it was impossible to film something this dramatic. It was too momentous for reality-based media; it had to be painted, or sung in high opera. I checked the artist: Ian Sheldon. I checked the price and sighed. Someday.

  Denise looked like a million dollars. U.S. dollars. She had on brown leather trousers, and a thickly knit cream overtop. A leather thong holding a ceramic pendant draped from her neck, and small, thick gold hoops hung in her ears. She smiled as she saw me walking to the table, and the image of the supermodel vanished. Her smile was so real and wide and wrinkle-unafraid that she managed to make everyone around her delighted with her grace and beauty rather than envious of her wardrobe and style.

  “Randy! I am so glad you called. Another day and I was going to go and rout you out of your little cyber hidey-hole. We hardly had any time to talk at the gala. What did you think of it, really? It went well, I thought, no?”

  I grinned, shrugged my bomber jacket off and onto the chair, and reached for the menu. “First things first, Denise.”

  “Yes, they have carrot soup, and I’ve already ordered for us. Now tell me what you thought.”

  “Well, first of all, I think it was splendid, and you looked fantastic, and I am thrilled to have got those opera tickets. How many people actually were there? I can never estimate a crowd.”

  “We sold five hundred tickets, but I have a feeling not everyone came. We made $350 at the coat check, though, so either there were some high rollers there or we had at least that many people there. Of course, some folks tip a toonie nowadays, and some double their jackets, so who knows?”

  “A lot of interesting-looking men there.”

  “Why, Randy Craig. I think it’s terrible that women on the arms of presentable and eligible men should actually be surveying the scene.”

  “To tell you the truth, that’s about the only time I ever bother to look at anyone. If I’m totally solo, I figure it’s going to translate as me being desperate and on the make. I noticed you were getting your fair share of attention, though. Has Chick Anderson called you since that night?”

  Our soup and a plate of focaccia bread to dip in ­another swirly plate of oil and balsamic vinegar arrived just then. Maybe it was the reflected color from the soup, but I swear Denise blushed just a bit as she replied.

  “Actually, Chick and I went out for dinner last night.”

  My eyebrow went up in the international symbol of “tell me everything.”

  Denise smiled. “He’s very nice for a millionaire.”

  I almost snorted carrot soup through my nose. “I don’t have that much experience with moneyed folks to know, one way or the other. I didn’t know you did, either.”

  “Oh Randy, you know what I mean. I don’t mean to get all Irwin Shaw on you, but there really is something different about the rich, isn’t there? Maybe someone should do a survey on when it is that people with money forget what it was like not to have money. I know my father can’t recall getting bailed out by my maternal grandparents when he was doing grad work and living in married students’ quarters. My grandmother tries to remind him of that any time he begins bellyaching over the price of a university education today. But I look in his face and see that he really believes I should be able to fly home every holiday on my budget and that I am somehow just crying poor to flout him. And, of course, Chick has no idea what poverty might feel like. He was born rich, and having all the money you’d ever need to do whatever you dream up is how he knows how to live. Period.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say. I’d never thought about it before, being so solidly middle class, but there must be a distinctly weird shift in perception for someone who never had to worry about money. Just think of never having to check the prices on a menu before ordering what you’d like to eat, never tallying up what was in the grocery basket before reaching for the bag of cookies, never heading past the new arrivals for the sales rack. I shook my head slightly. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “So, what does Chick do with his time? Does he work for the family business?”

  “In a manner of speaking, I guess he does. He is on the board and he owns stock in the company. I think he is above what they refer to as the ‘working rich’ out in Riverbend and Terwillegar. He is the moneyed class and has an office and a secretary and a membership to the Centre Club.” Denise smiled. “On the other hand, he is a very sweet man who obviously makes a point of making himself pleasant to whomever he wishes to be with. Do you know, he went out and bought Life of Pi the day after the gala and read it so that we’d have something to talk about when he called me? That is more dedication than I’ve seen in a graduate student trying to sign on an advisor.”

  I had to admit there was something very flattering about the idea of being courted with that sort of effort. Especially given the obvious pluses someone like Chick Anderson brought with him. A tiny flicker of envy tried to ignite inside me, but I had to admit that Denise really deserved a good guy. She was often pursued, but at the same time she’d had to spend an inordinate amount of time letting totally inappropriate fellows down easily. It was time she had some sugar. The fact that Chick took her work seriously enough to make an effort to understand it was a very good sign. I grinned at her, and it was as if she could read everything that had gone through my head. She grinned back, and I suppose we looked like every two women discussing an admirer have looked since time began. There really is nothing new under the sun. Except for maybe the Internet, which seemed to be what Denise wanted to talk about now.

  “How is your on-line job going?”

  “My distance teaching or the monitoring?” I asked, but I already knew which job she was referring to. Denise had been worried about my involvement with this job since the beginning. Maybe Chatgod’s warning to tell nobody about the job w
as to avoid this very sort of haranguing from friends and family.

  “The monitoring, of course. Are you getting paid regularly? Has anything weird happened?”

  “Well, actually, there is something sort of weird going on. And it has to do with the gala, funnily enough.” I told her generally about Sanders, about not letting him know where I lived, about him talking about the gala on Babel. In spite of herself, Denise was captivated.

  “So tell me again why you didn’t just let him know you were from Edmonton, too?”

  “I value my privacy on-line. Besides, being a monitor makes me have to stand a bit beside, rather than in, the full swing of things.”

  “Bulltweet, Randy Craig. You are afraid of getting involved with this man because it’s all of a sudden too real. When you could just flirt from a distance, it was one thing, but, if you met face to face, then you’d have to decide whether you and Steve were really serious and actually make a decision.”

  I opened my mouth, ready to counter her accusation, and then just looked at her. Maybe Denise was right. I was a little phobic about committing. Steve had wanted to take our relationship further last year, and I’d been so leery that we’d decided to give up on things for a while. Now he was back in my life, and I was still keeping him at arm’s length. And the whole Sanders problem was just going to exacerbate things. That really was why I hadn’t let Sanders know my location. It would be one step ­closer to learning my identity, and all of a sudden there would be two men in my life when I wasn’t even sure I wanted one. I definitely didn’t need one who spoke cryptically of death and assassination.

  “Well, you may be right, but right now I just have to figure out which of those guys is Sanders.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  “Because it would mean a whole heck of a lot of explaining, wouldn’t it?”

  “Explain that you had to keep mum because of your job.”