The Monitor Read online

  “No! I was told not to tell anyone about the job. I shouldn’t even have told you. As far as everyone is concerned in there, the systems operator is Alvin, and he owns the server and runs the chat for the revenue from the advertising banners. They know nothing about me or Alchemist being paid monitors, and they have no idea about Chatgod.”

  “That is just too freaky, Randy. Have you mentioned any of this to Steve?”

  “Of course I have. It’s not freaky; it’s just another ­universe.”

  Based on Denise’s reaction to the secrecy aspect of my job, I certainly wasn’t going to explain that Sanders might be more than just an interesting fellow in a chat community. Until I tracked down Tremor and had a better handle on what the heck was going on there, there was a chance that Sanders might be involved. He had appeared once out of the blue, just like Tremor; he had fudged his identity when registering; and he lived a little too close for comfort. If he was one of the bad guys, I didn’t want him knowing exactly what block I lived on. It was enough for Denise to think I just had a salacious curiosity about Sanders.

  Denise grudgingly agreed to pump Chick Anderson a bit about his involvement with the Internet and to drop a suggestive comment about Thomas Chatterton to see if he rose to the bait. “Not that I think Chick has anything to do with the Internet, you understand.”

  “Of course not. Just consider it an exercise in semiotics. Discover whether there is another level of meaning to his words.”

  She hit me with her shoulder bag. “Your irreverence for theory is going to get you into trouble someday, Randy Craig.”

  31

  If Denise was going to concentrate on Chick, as I am sure she was all too happy to do, I would have to do my own investigating over Alex Danvers and Winston Graham. Since I had no idea where to find Graham, I picked Danvers as the next on my list.

  I left Denise at The Upper Crust and crossed 109th Street to wait for a northbound bus. Within minutes, I was walking through the boxy canyons of the downtown core toward the postmodern spires of Grant MacEwan College. There is something about the city-center campus that just makes me happy, especially when approached from the 105th Street corner. The first building has wood paneling, which then morphs into sandstone, and then concrete and glass. The spires of concrete are also the air intake for the ventilation system, so they’re not completely useless appendages. A huge clock hangs on a glass wall above the main doors on Building Seven. You can sit behind it in huge comfy chairs in a reading section in the Learning Resource Centre, what we pre-computer-chip types used to call a library. Each section of the campus is numbered according to the block it takes up on the city grid; business courses are mainly in Building Five, the science and arts-related courses cling around the LRC in buildings Six and Seven, and the Sports and Wellness Centre is located in Building Eight. A parkade is, I suppose, technically Building Nine, though there is talk of another building of classrooms as well as a dormitory soon to be built.

  The English Department is in Building Six, on the second floor. I still wasn’t sure what to say to Alex Danvers but thought I would figure out something on the spur of the moment that might sound more realistic than a rehearsed speech. Of course, I had no idea what Alex’s timetable might be, or where his office was ­located. I technically shared an office with seven other part-timers and had a mailbox in the general office, so I decided to just wander in there for starters. I joked a bit with the secretary about being the invisible person, then riffled through the pile of paper in my mail slot.

  There were two MacEwan Todays, the staff circular; a United Way envelope; invitations to two book rep displays, one of which I had already missed; a note from the chair reminding us to get our text selections in for the next term, which didn’t apply to me since the distance course had only one choice of reader; and a note from one of my distance students who had happened to be on campus and tried to look me up. I dumped everything except the latest MacEwan Today into the recycle bin. What had happened to the promise of the paperless society?

  I took a look at the other mailboxes. Alex Danvers’s was empty. So was Valerie Bock’s. I knew where Valerie’s office was, so I decided to amble down to see her. I could say I was looking for Alex to discuss some distance issues with him. Or I could just say hi. She had seemed really approachable the other night at the gala. Maybe there was a friend waiting to be made there.

  I nodded at several people down the hallway of offices, halfway recognizing them from the initial departmental meeting in August. Finally, just as I passed the washrooms and break-through hallway, I reached Valerie’s office. And the door was ajar.

  I knocked on the door frame, and Valerie, who had been working with her back to the door (something I could never do), turned sharply. Her smile started as soon as she saw me, originating in the eyes. Even without the sparkly dust in her hair, red highlights shone in the light from the huge window that was the fourth wall of the office. In repose, Valerie’s face would be conventionally pretty, but there was nothing restful about her. Her attractiveness was in her motion, her actions and reactions to what was being said. She was a perpetual-motion machine, one of those people who seemingly maintain their figure by constant fidgeting. Her booted leg was crossed over the other but bounced to a beat of some salsa music she was listening to inside her head.

  “Randy! How nice to see you again so soon. Isn’t that the way, though? Sort of Jungian synchronicity. I find that whenever I teach Robertson Davies, there are coincidences bouncing out all over the place, more than I recognize at other times. Do you think that is possible, or do we just see them more when we’re tuned in to expecting them? Ooh, wouldn’t that make a great essay topic? Hang on a tic.”

  She scribbled something on a notepad shaped like a penguin, and then turned the force of her personality back on me. I bet none of her students ever nodded off in her class.

  “I miss being able to come up with my own essay topics. Distance teaching has its advantages, but some of the sacrifices, like those prefabricated learning packs, take the joy out of it all,” I admitted.

  Valerie nodded. “That’s why I can’t stand teaching distance. I need to be able to look my students in the eye to know I am getting through to them. I don’t know how you and Alex stand it. At least Alex has a few face-to-face classes to keep him going.”

  “Does Alex not like distance teaching?” I asked. “I thought he was really the big computer whiz.” This was a stab in the dark. I had no idea whether Alex was a Luddite scratching things out with a quill pen or a geek hard-wired into the computer world.

  Valerie smiled, the way a mother smiles over a child’s precocious comment. I had a feeling she didn’t consider computers the wave of the future. “Well, he has some real concerns over the concept of community in an on-line course relationship. I think he tries to find a new path in his work, something more than just correspondence courses with high-tech delivery, you know? But it’s difficult. There is resistance, on the part of the students most of all. A lot of people who benefit from the distance courses we offer are not really clued into the Internet world, you know. Sometimes they are taking the course via distance because they’re so isolated from the mainstream that it’s a last resort. So, as a result, the students most likely to benefit from distance courses are not the ones most likely to enrol in them.”

  This sounded like a discussion that Valerie and Alex had thoroughly hashed out already. It still didn’t tell me whether Alex Danvers could be my Sanders, but I was beginning to wonder. Even though it sounded like Alex had both a real and philosophical interest in the concept of the Internet, I couldn’t imagine him being on the ­flirting prowl when he was attached to someone as vibrant as Valerie.

  Of course, that was a specious argument, as divorce statistics all over the continent showed. There was no telling what could trigger the dissolving of a relationship. Maybe Alex Danvers was secretly having cyber-­relationships behind his lady’s back. It was possible, I knew that academically, but
I didn’t understand it internally. I would never understand the workings of the devious mind. My modus operandi had always been to finish one thing before beginning something else. If everyone operated this way, of course, there might be less acrimony, if just as much heartache.

  So who knew? And how would I find out? I was running out of things to chat with Valerie about when Alex himself popped his head around the door. He was dressed in a thick black turtleneck and black wide-waled corduroys, looking utterly professor-like even with the black leather jacket hooked over one thumb and shoulder.

  Valerie lit up like a neon light. And here I thought she was intense before. He beamed back at her before he noticed me tucked into the student chair beside the door.

  “Randy! Great. I was just coming by to see if I could coax Val out for lunch, and here you are. Can you come, too? I have a craving for sushi. Let’s go to the Mikado and bully them into letting the three of us have a little room to ourselves.”

  Valerie raised her eyebrows and looked at me, with the I’m-game-if-you-are look she must have perfected in junior high.

  I grinned. “Sushi sounds great.”

  Valerie pulled on a stunning red and black shawl with Salish-looking ravens embroidered on it. It flowed to her knees, and looked terrific. I complimented her on it as we strode down the hall to the staircase.

  “Isn’t it marvelous? Alex bought it for me when we went to the Learneds in Victoria last time. I was worried that it wouldn’t be warm enough for our Edmonton winters, but have you noticed our Edmonton winters ain’t what they used to be?”

  “You, sir, have exquisite taste,” I said to Alex, who was grinning at Valerie in adoration. I had a feeling that I could just sit back and enjoy my sushi. I wasn’t going to find Sanders sitting with me today. This man was utterly besotted with a fabulous woman.

  It was while we were crawling into the tatami room and fitting our legs under the fake low table at the Mikado that it occurred to me that I could quiz Alex more about his former student Winston Graham. That way, I could cleanse my conscience about sitting around enjoying raw fish while I should be finding a killer. I doubt if Inspector Morse ever worried about that sort of thing while he holed up with his music and booze, but I had a classic Canadian conscience. This meant that as long as I could justify an action, or the Americans were doing something even worse, I didn’t feel quite so guilty. Besides, this was my second sit-down lunch of the day, when usually I noshed on a bagel and an apple. I definitely needed to avoid guilt any way I could. Guilt can go to your hips faster than chocolate.

  Valerie and I each ordered a Bento Box Number One, which had sushi, tempura, teriyaki chicken, a salad, rice, and a bowl of miso soup to start with. Alex was more adventurous and ordered miso followed by a bowl of chirashi and two pieces of octopus sushi on the side.

  It wasn’t long before we were tucking into our food. Alex and Valerie were good company, and it seemed like the conversation had only taken brief pauses for ordering and settling in. Otherwise, we were still on the same thread of conversation that had begun in the hallway at the college.

  “Pretty soon this whole area will be swarming with walk-in traffic,” Alex was commenting. “Right behind us this whole Railtown area is adding condo towers, and the dormitory across the way will be teeming with students avoiding cafeteria food. Then there are all sorts of developments around Oliver, and I have a feeling that it will carry through all the way to 107th Street.”

  “That’s going to take some heavy regentrification, Alex, unless you think the exotic massage studios will meld into the new populace?” Valerie laughed.

  “Well, since a lot of that populace is going to be perpetual students congregating around the downtown undergraduate university, I can’t see Sinderella’s Massage doing much to outrage. Of course, I am not so sure any of them would ever have the money to keep places like that afloat.”

  “Speaking of perpetual students, tell me more about that fellow we met at the gala, Winston,” I suggested. “Were you serious about his lifestyle, or was that exaggerated for his entertainment?”

  Alex shook his head. “Oh no, if anything, I was being way milder than the reality of the situation. He pops up on my radar every so often, mainly working in pizza joints or mowing city verges to make enough money for tuition. The man is amazing in his scope of interests. One year he will be studying classics and philosophy, and the next time I run into him he’ll have switched into astrophysics. Mostly he is working in senior-level courses, too, so I am assuming his grades are good enough to allow the prerequisite courses. I understand he’s an asset in every class he attends. He’s up on all the reading, he speaks up in seminars, and he engages other students. All in all, the level of the discourse rises exponentially when Winston is in the room.”

  “Damn. They should pay him to attend classes,” I said admiringly.

  “No kidding. I think his goal is to take every class the university has to offer in his lifetime,” laughed Alex.

  “I don’t know,” mused Valerie. “Maybe he is like Kafka’s hunger artist, only maintaining his fast because he hadn’t found anything he really liked to eat. Maybe, if Winston found something he really enjoyed, he would settle in and become a specialist.”

  “But the Renaissance Man is what we really need now, Val. There are too many specialists. They can’t talk to each other without a translator for all the jargon. When something goes wrong that is outside their direct purview, what can they do but call in another specialist? What about the jack of all trades who can see the problem from different directions at once?”

  “It seems to me that you either get that sort of person with a Winston-like program, or you look to the rural farmer who has learned to make do,” I said, thinking of my uncle, who could weld any broken piece of equipment back into shape, after having driven it back to the farmyard with gum and binder twine holding it together.

  “Exactly what Sharon Butala says, Randy,” agreed Valerie. “She says we’re decimating the rural world at our own peril. And she’d be right. How many Winstons are out there, after all. And when it comes right down to it, could Winston get the furnace going again?”

  “Interesting question. Could he, Alex? How handy is Winston, or is it all book-learning? Is he into computers? Or machinery?”

  “Well, I know he worked on the grounds crew for the university for a few summers, so maybe he knows his way around a basic motor and engine, and I know he did some computing, because he was doing some sort of theoretical engineering with probabilities and worst-case scenarios at one point. After a conversation with him around then, I avoided walking across the High Level Bridge for almost a year,” Alex laughed ruefully.

  I decided I didn’t want to even think about it.

  So, Winston had computer experience, and he knew his way around the inner workings of probability programming. There was a chance that Winston Graham was my Sanders. From what I was learning about Alex in the meantime, I could almost write him off. His ­specialty in English had been Melville and Hawthorne, and, while he knew his way around computers for distance work, he professed not to like them all that much. Valerie seemed far more sympathetic to the age of silica than Alex, and I was already certain she couldn’t be Sanders. I tucked into my last California roll and decided my next step would be to track down Winston Graham, professional student.

  32

  Of course, that wasn’t my next step at all, since I got home to find three messages from Steve on my answering machine. I dialed back his pager and then sat down at the computer to mark an essay that was sitting in my Inbox on my e-mail. If I never read another paper about the death penalty in my life, I would be immeasurably grateful. This one wasn’t too bad, but the student lost points for being unable to soften up her antagonistic readers with any form of de-polarization and for waxing on with too many emotional outbursts. Emotion was no way to win an argument against someone who didn’t agree with you.

  I really did care about teaching rhetoric t
o my students, because I figured that, if you could see how words and phrases could trigger reactions and manipulate people, you could be more wary of propaganda and more purposeful in your own persuasiveness. Of course, if you didn’t care about your own language and its many twisty tricks, you deserved who you voted for.

  Steve called back about three minutes after I had mailed back my marked and annotated version of the essay and recorded the grade in my distance-course binder. I clicked onto my bookmarked astrology site and waited for my horoscope to load while I listened to him berate me for not owning a cell phone, for never being easy to locate, and for not having called him before lunch. The screen finally loaded and I read:

  “Cancer: What to you will seem an obvious path may be less clear to others. Trying to explain your methodology will prove difficult. Smile and acquiesce, since arguing would be futile. On the plus side, you’ll be considered irresistible by everyone you seek to ensnare.”

  Well, if the stars said to make nice with Steve, who was I to argue?

  “You’re right. Maybe I should get a cell phone. I went down to Grant MacEwan to get my mail and ended up having lunch with Alex and Valerie, who you met the other night, remember? So, what’s on your mind?”

  “It occurs to me that you’re right in the middle of something again, something that I am working on. We need to talk.”

  “Oh, Steve, do I have to go down there? I just got in.”

  “No, I can come there. But I mean it, Randy. This is official stuff.”

  “Does that mean I can’t make you coffee?”

  I could hear the smile crawl into his voice. “No, it means we have to keep our clothes on while we drink it. Put the coffee on now.” And then he hung up.

  I went to put on the coffee. And some lip gloss.

  33

  Steve was at my door within twenty minutes, even without a cruiser at his disposal. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever it was he had to say, but I really had no idea what that could be. It’s not as if I even jaywalk.