The Monitor Page 3

  PM from Chimera to Sanders: Nice picture, sir. *smile* You’re right, of course, it does help to hang a picture on some particulars.

  PM from Sanders to Chimera: I’m from Edmonton, in Canada. What about you?

  I sat back so quickly, I might have bruised my vertebrae on the back of the chair. Ohmigod, it was one thing to chat with a fascinating, witty man over the ’Net. It was quite another to know he lived in the same small city. I stared at the screen, sweating slightly, as if he might suddenly appear at my main floor apartment window.

  I couldn’t help it. As much as I approved of basic honesty on the ’Net, I couldn’t open myself up to this sort of thing, especially because it might jeopardize my job as monitor.

  PM from Chimera to Sanders: I am from the ether. *smile* Everywhere and nowhere.

  There was a long pause before I received a reply.

  PM from Sanders to Chimera: Ah, a mystery woman. *smile* How fascinatingly enticing. Good night, my ether woman. *kiss*

  It was a good thing Jackal came on about then, with some stupid fantasy pics he kept trying to post. Blocking the pornographic ones took my mind off the man who, somewhere in my city, was thinking about me, and probably wondering.

  6

  I don’t want anyone getting the idea that I’m some sort of cyber-junkie who spends her life in gray sweats in front of her computer, so I’d better explain something about myself. I’m ­thirty-something, in fact, more “something” than thirty, and after about ten years as a freelance writer, I had gone back to university to do an MA on an interesting Canadian author. After getting the degree here, I found myself settling in Edmonton, teaching freshman English as a sessional lecturer at the University of Alberta. I liked the hours and I had also more than liked the man in my life, one of Edmonton’s Finest.

  But both the job and the relationship had fizzled recently, the job because of university cutbacks, and the relationship likely because of my own insecurities. Steve had wanted something permanent, and I just wasn’t ready for it. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be. There’s an intensely selfish streak in me, and it makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to meld myself into half of a couple with any ease.

  So, instead of working as a sessional at the U of A, I was now technically across the river at Grant MacEwan College. Except that I was really in the dining room of my apartment, since the only courses I’d managed to get for this winter term were distance ones. I had two sections of English 111, which was called Communications but really amounted to an essay-writing course. I wasn’t knocking it, though. The whole world could use practice in formulating logical arguments, as far as I was concerned. Students worked from a packaged set of lessons and e-mailed me their queries, quizzes, and essays, and I responded in kind. The chair of the English department had halfway promised me some classroom work in the spring term, so I was biding my time, trying to make the salary from two classes stretch.

  Thank goodness the rent on my apartment was cheap, and thank goodness I liked lentils. I’d dropped about fifteen pounds since the previous summer, but that was just fine, aside from having to shell out for a new pair of jeans. Life is just chock-full of silver linings. And, aside from Denise’s admonitions, I was enjoying the monitor job. I decided I had time to head down to the Safeway for some salad greens before I needed to log in for the evening.

  I was about halfway to the Safeway on Whyte Avenue when I happened to meet Dr. Flanders. He is a cute little button of a man, a retired professor of Canadian drama in the English department of the U of A. He has an uncanny ability to remember the name of every student he’s ever met, I’m sure, and he greeted me like a long-lost friend.

  “Randy! You look marvelous! How have you been keeping yourself? I saw your piece in Alberta Views last summer on the rise of bed and breakfasts in Alberta. Did you get to try any of them for the article?”

  We went on to speak of the differences between English breakfasts, the horror of fried bread, and ­traveling in general, but after about ten minutes he seemed to collect himself.

  “Well, it’s been lovely to see you, but I must get these bananas home before they freeze! Take care, dear,” and off he fussed down the street.

  I found myself smiling the rest of the way. Dr. Flanders did that to me. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the fact that I sensed he really liked me, the same way old boyfriends’ mothers did. I am one of those incredibly unthreatening people, I guess. Old folks talk to me on buses, cashiers tell me their problems as they ring in my purchases, acquaintances at parties tell me their innermost secrets. I must have a trustworthy look about me, or maybe I just don’t move quickly enough. Children don’t seem to bother with me much, but it’s a mutual thing. Although I’ve met a few I like, for the most part they seem to be just apprentice people. They can call me when they’ve got something interesting to say.

  I was wandering the canned goods section, admiring the colors, when a man bumped into me backing away from the pear halves. We muttered our apologies and I continued down the aisle, but found myself glancing back at him. Might he be Sanders?

  This was getting ridiculous, having my cyber-world infringing on my real life, and I cringed to find myself thinking *LOL*. I grabbed two packages of rice cakes and headed for the produce section. I picked up some bananas, apples, tomatoes, and lettuce and made my way to the fifteen-items-or-less cashier.

  While it was interesting to muse about Sanders, the person who really had me daydreaming was Alchemist. His dry humor about the folks on Babel made me laugh, even when I was away from the terminal, but I never found it cutting or offensive. It was as if we were smiling at the antics of cute creatures a bit further down the food chain, like watching chimps in the zoo. I grinned to myself. I wasn’t sure who would take umbrage with that statement more—the residents of Babel, or Jane Goodall.

  It was five-ish before I got home again, and the waning sun was directly on a line with my kitchen window, making it enjoyable to unpack and shred lettuce. I tossed up a salad, sliced a hard-boiled egg from the fridge into the bowl, and put the rest of the salad-ready lettuce into a plastic bag for tomorrow.

  I refuse to eat at the computer terminal. Somehow I feel that if I stay away from it during mealtime, I am not truly addicted. So, instead, I munched on my salad and read the latest Reginald Hill paperback at my kitchen table, approximately three and a half feet away from my computer.

  Once dinner was out of the way, I tidied up the kitchen and took a general swipe around the living room. The downside of small quarters is that you need to keep things put away and clean in order to exist without madness encroaching. The upside, however, is you can practically stand in the middle of the room and reach anywhere to pick things up. I moved into the bedroom to pick up some clothes for the laundry, and then even swirled some toilet-bowl cleaner into the bowl for good measure before heading to my desk.

  Quarter to seven. Well, I grinned, it was my first week on the job, it wouldn’t hurt to look eager. I logged on, using the custom page Alchemist had designed for me the evening before. It was oddly gratifying to have “Welcome Chimera! It’s so good to see you!” appear in bold white letters on the black screen. Several one-button choices appeared below that. I could log in immediately to any of the rooms, or lurk as Alvin. The Alvin choice could also be accessed later with a quick HMTL code, so I went in as Chimera to see what was shaking.

  There were several PMs listed for me, but I scrolled past them at first to get a sense of who was in the room, and what was happening currently. Not too much, it seemed. I counted Carlin, Kafir and Kara, and Maia, who was very likely waiting for Vixen.

  Alchemist had pointed them out as probably the most stabilizing influences on Babel, and he was probably right.

  Alchemist: It’s the women who set the tone of the community, I think. We’re just lucky we’ve got Vixen and Maia. They keep an eye out for newbies, and know ­exactly how far the general gaiety on the public screen should go. Others take their cue from them,
at least on the public screen, and people are drawn to their good humor.

  Chimera: What do you know about them?

  Alchemist: One is from Arizona and the other from Halifax. They met here, and they’re always saving money to get one of them enough plane fare to visit the other. They’re good people.

  I agreed with his thumbnail assessment. While the median age at Babel seemed to be about thirty, I sensed that both of these women were slightly older, perhaps in their early forties. They were both obviously well ­educated and witty. Maia, I had gathered, was divorced, and Vixen was a housewife with a computer jones. They shared a flock of male admirers and consistently made newcomers welcome. It amazed me that they were friends, since they could so easily have become rivals, but there was a bond between them that everyone could sense. They had each traveled to each other’s homes, and were in the midst of planning a shared holiday to Mexico for the next winter.

  These were the women who started up games of Truth or Dare, who teased other regulars, and who maintained the peace when the younger crowd began roughhousing with idiotic expletives. My job was bound to be easier when either one was in Babel, since everyone seemed to rise to their expectations. Tonight, I marked time with Maia, laughing at her descriptions of her day. She had a way of making everyday chores into adventures. Today her washing machine had packed it in, and she was busy describing the people she’d run across in the coin laundry she’d had to use.

  Maia: There was one fellow there who kept his dryer going for three loads, just so he could watch my filmies whip round in the little round window. *grin* I wanted to ask him if he’d heard of cable, but thought better of it . . . *shudder*

  Carlin asked Maia to describe her “filmies,” and Maia responded by hitting him with the feather duster she and Vixen had invented to fend off the overly adventurous. Occasionally they would post it as a pictograph that looked something like ----------------------(((((((((((((((. Men panted to be thwacked with the duster, which only went to show.

  Vixen bounced into the room, and I faded back while she and Maia caught up with each other’s days. I didn’t bother going into their PMs much. While they kept up a running flirtatious patter to the general room, to each other they mostly discussed Vixen’s son’s school triumphs and Maia’s home-business ventures. Occasionally Vixen would give Maia a new recipe, or Maia would describe a hairdo she thought Vixen should try. It was like Mae West and Lauren Bacall with their hair in curlers talking over the backyard fence. I knew they received lots of PMs from the men in the room, but they were always kind and seldom sent anyone away miserable, although I doubted many got more than a batted eyelash for their troubles.

  I read my PMs after posting my own *hugs* in return. Most were from Alchemist, who apparently had had to leave early this evening and so couldn’t hand off, but would try to pop back later for a bit. I was surprised at my own disappointment not to find him there. It was as if I’d been cleaning the house for his visit on my screen, I realized. I was getting more and more confident on my own, but it certainly helped to have a mentor there beside me for the first week or so, anyhow.

  There was also a PM from Sanders, posted some time in the middle of the night: “Couldn’t sleep. I see you in the ether. Hope to connect soon.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I was smiling. I shook myself and cleared my private messages to keep better track of the public screen. Although using the frames version of Babel slowed me down a bit, it helped me keep track of the current users as well as watch the board. Alchemist had promised me that a newer browser would speed things up a bit. I was hoping installation wouldn’t be too onerous.

  At about 9:00 p.m. my time, 11:00 Babel time, ZZBottom appeared. I had been making some notes and developing some ideas on how to chase him away from Babel without causing too much friction. That was essential, as Alchemist had advised. Although our business was to keep things smooth and legal, we had to be careful about angering potential hackers. A disgruntled hacker could wreak as much havoc as a disgruntled postal employee in a clock tower, even with all the safety measures that Chatgod implied were in place.

  I gave him a few minutes to start contacting his gambling devotees, and then, just before he closed the bets, I pushed my magic button, which created a temporary freeze on refreshing in Babel and thus created the most dreaded of all chatting occurrences, lag. Although several innocent people would suffer “chattus interuptus,” I had a feeling it was going to drive ZZBottom crazy. Crazy enough, I hoped, to take his bookmaking elsewhere.

  Lag occurred for all sorts of natural reasons, of course. A hub on the Web could be down somewhere, causing the refresh rate to drop to negligible. Boze, a veteran chatter, had claimed he had managed to paint his entire house during lag times. I was hoping that some well-placed lags could keep enough regulars from placing bets on time with our resident bookie that he would decide to head for greener, faster pastures.

  I watched the clock, reset Babel nine minutes later, and popped into ZZBottom’s PMs to watch the results. I found myself giggling while watching his attempts to placate the angry bettors. I checked my watch against the racing form I’d bought earlier in the day. From my calculations, my next hit would be the 7:05 at Santa Anita. If I averaged two lags per night, I was betting ZZBottom might be taking his bookie joint elsewhere before the end of the week. That is, if I were the betting type.

  7

  A couple of days later, Alchemist and I were crowing over ZZBottom’s swift departure. I had a feeling, though, that my co-worker was ogling one of the newbies, a woman named Senta who had a slightly zaftig way about her. Although I had never seen him act more than mildly flirtatiously to anyone, he had seemed a trifle distracted ever since she’d logged on.

  Regardless of Denise’s opinions of chat rooms, and even barring my view of Venita and Theseus’s liaison as warped, chat rooms held very little overt carnality. They reminded me of church potluck suppers at times, or half-forgotten parties my parents had either hosted or I’d melded with 1950s television, where faithful couples and bashful singles were somehow free to flirt and tease with no repercussions. The art of flirting had become a ­casualty of the 1990s, with all the fear of sexually transmitted diseases and political correctness.

  With the anonymity of the Internet, chat rooms, at least the best of them, had managed to revive that art form. Of course, the better the chatter was verbally, the better the flow, and the more ardent the admirers. You could see that in Maia and Vixen. They understood the concept of flirtation and of the party atmosphere that Babel generated.

  I was watching a couple I’d seen together on a more regular basis in the last few days. Relationships were so incendiary in cyber. Entire romances could play out in a matter of weeks. Thea, it seemed, had been introduced to Babel by another ’Net-girlfriend, Kara. She and Milan had connected very quickly, or else they’d already known each other from some other chat site. I wasn’t sure. I­ ­wasn’t too sure, either, about Thea’s emotional stability; she had made a few comments about an unhappy marriage. They say nothing can break up a happy marriage, but the Internet was getting a very strong reputation for being an enemy of that sacred institution. If Thea was having trouble at home, a cyber-affair with Milan wasn’t going to do anything to patch things up IRL. I pulled out one of my colored cue cards and made a note of their names. I had a feeling Chatgod wouldn’t be too happy to have more gristle for the Ann Landers types to gnaw on.

  I didn’t know how I felt about the whole real-time versus cyber-time debate. There were people who could make a very good case for the concept that cyber-­relationships could remain in the fantasy realm while real life continued, unscathed. However, the more of oneself one put onto the screen, the more intense the relationships one evolved. This was why I worried more about those with handles that were actual names than those who adopted personas like Vixen or Maia, or indeed Chimera.

  The potency of words was what had attracted me to chat rooms in the first place, but they became
a double-edged sword when coupled with the loneliness of those who were pulled toward computer screens. Lacking body language, folks invested more in terms of opening themselves up emotionally to others as they formulated relationships. Compared to real-time couplings, where the physical aspects often took over, leaving it longer to get to know the inner workings of your partner’s mind, cyber-relationships plumbed the depths of emotions, dreams, and fantasies of people who had yet to lay eyes on each other.

  Thea seemed to be lapping up Milan’s attentions like she hadn’t been noticed in years. If that didn’t say something sad about the state of her marriage, I don’t know what could. It may be that her marriage was on rocky ground, but she seemed to waffle when any of the more hard-headed women in Babel suggested she pack and walk. Milan struck me as a sensitive sort; he paid compliments to the shyer women and connected in a ­friendly way with various men. Moreover, he had a vocabulary that could melt ice in Inuvik, and that was the coin of the realm in Babel, for sure. Thea was blossoming like a time-lapse rose.

  I made a note to keep an eye on them and clicked back onto the general screen. Almost automatically, I banned Geoff L, knowing he’d be back in another manifestation in a couple of minutes, foaming at the mouth. I wished his mother could keep him on his meds and gangsta rap out of his boom box. I was getting tired of him posting obscenities. I checked my watch. It would soon be time for the western shift to get on in full swing, and Geoff L lived somewhere on the eastern seaboard. He had about another half an hour before he petered out.

  Alchemist popped back on my screen to say goodnight just as I returned to my desk with another cup of coffee: *grin* They’re all yours, be gentle with the puppets, Chimera, see you tomorrow!

  I posted back a quick goodnight *hug* and settled into my chair. One of the things I liked best about Alchemist was his ability to spell and type clean postings. Not that I was immaculate. I had to watch my typing, I consistently seemed to get dyslexic with the word just. It ­usually came out jsut. At least no one would think I couldn’t spell, though. Of course, they might think I was sloppy, but heck, I could live with that.