Chapter 2: Cyberspace Knows No Bounds

It was nearly midnight and I was back on the cyberstreets. There’s a whole virtual world hidden behind the one we see with our eyes. In my mind, that virtual world is more real than the spring rain that had returned late tonight. April showers bring May flowers as the saying goes. In cyberspace I could have flowers whenever I wanted them.

I was working on a contract that I’d put off while we were tracking the identity thief. I regretted ever having taken the job. But she’d been so convincing and so vulnerable.

It’s one thing if an abused wife comes to me and asks me to investigate her husband’s online activities so she’ll have evidence that he bragged about hurting her and can justifiably sue for divorce or even press charges. I’d had one case like that in the past year. I was only too happy to help her nail her shit-bag of a husband.

But the young widow who came to me with her deceased husband’s laptop seemed so sweet. She was hanging on to the dream of her husband and wanted anything of his that she could get.

Better to stay living in her own virtual world instead of his, I say.

It was a sad story. Her husband was killed in action during his second tour of duty, just days before he was scheduled to come home. What they shipped instead was not her living, breathing love, but a flag-draped coffin and a footlocker full of personal belongings. In the trunk was her husband’s laptop computer.

It was password-protected, of course. There’s an military regulation on basic security measures in the field. I suppose a soldier’s laptop could be a security risk if it fell into the enemy’s hands. But the army is surprisingly lax about giving the same device to the family of the deceased. Apparently they place a lot of faith in the family of fallen soldiers, or in the impossibility of breaking the password.

Of course, that’s false assurance. If I have the computer, I own everything on it.

That’s what she said she wanted.

“We’ve been married two years. We were together as much as possible for four years before that. He was my high school sweetheart,” she told me. Twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Pretty in the way that all young women are pretty. Maybe fresh is a better word. The makeup she wore amounted to a little foundation to conceal the bags under her eyes. It had been a month, but her eyes were still red from crying. “We got married after his first tour of duty. We didn’t have the money before that. I thought we’d have a normal life after that. But they offered a big bonus for him to take a second hitch. It was enough that when he got back we could put a down payment on a house. It was our dream.”

I let her play out the story the way she wanted it to happen. I’ve had dreams myself—and disappointment.

“They called me last week and told me I could pick up his effects. I had to drive down to Lewis-McChord to get them. They didn’t even deliver them.” The tears dried in a streak down her cheek. She was suddenly very angry. “Isn’t that a stupid word? Effects? I gave them my husband and all they could give back was a stupid trunk full of ‘effects!’ I hate them!”

“Why do you want to do this?” I asked. “Your memories are happy. Why do you want to dig into the computer?”

“Because ... I can’t help but believe that somewhere in there ... he’s ... he’s still alive.”

I took the laptop from her hands. I had a bad feeling. People live double lives all the time. Was he really as wonderful as she thought? Or when I opened the laptop, would I find the Sergeant Mason that was still living there was someone different than his young widow imagined?

“You know I could find out something bad. I’m not suggesting that I will, but what will you do if the husband you remember is not the same as the one I discover?” I asked.

“It doesn’t make a difference. Back it all up so I can see it and then wipe the disk and reformat it. I brought all the software. I’m going back to school and I’ll need a computer.”

“What else?” I asked softly. She hadn’t told me everything yet.

“Mike was an avid gamer and was real into social media. We used to joke about all his virtual friends. But ... it really is a community, isn’t it? They deserve to know he’s gone and that he gave his life for his country.” She paused and dabbed at her eyes before she went on. “I don’t want to know who they are. I don’t need a hundred or a thousand unknown people telling me about Mike. But please tell them that I thank them for being his friend and that he is at rest.”

I suggested she see a counselor before she made a final decision. She was adamant and suggested that if I was unwilling to do the job, she would find someone else. Since she’d come on the recommendation of a mutual friend, I didn’t want to blow her off. So now, just a couple of days from when I told her I’d have it ready for her, I pulled the laptop out of its case and set it on my desk. I pulled the drapes and turned off all the lights except the keyboard lamp at my desk. The world around me went dark.

When I’d recovered from being dumped six year ago—at least recovered sufficiently to function again—I found this efficiency apartment on Capitol Hill. The SoDo loft I moved from had been designed to show off a rising star in the tech world—someone who had loud parties and beautiful artifacts. Like Hope. The little apartment I moved to was a cave where I could hide and lick my wounds. In the intervening years it had become a refuge from the real world and a gateway into whatever I wanted in the virtual world.

My new neighbor, Eric, helped move my meager possessions into the room. There was some television show about gay guys helping straight guys look good. Eric could have run that show. He made decorating suggestions. He would be very pissed that Cali was doing my makeover. His efficiency apartment the floor below mine was identical. He’d explored dozens of tricks to optimize the space.

Then he saw that all the furnishing I had was a recliner. My box of clothing, computer equipment, stereo, and one painting made the room look huge and empty.

“We need to go shopping,” he said brightly. “I have a pickup truck. Let’s go to Ikea!” I declined, politely.

“First, I want to paint.”

“Oh yes. I see you in pastels. Blue would go so well with your eyes.”

“Black.”

“Oh Honey, she really did a number on you, didn’t she?” I just shrugged my shoulders back at him, so he continued. “All right, Hamlet. Black it is. But you do not want to paint these walls.”

“Why?”

“You’ll never get them white again and your lease specifically states that you will leave the apartment in the same condition as you found it, including white walls. Just ask Jared.” I remembered my apartment manager having pointed that out when I signed the lease. I sighed.

“But I need it to be black.”

“Okay. Here’s what we do...”

It was a genius solution, a little more complex than just painting the walls, but worth it. During the decorating that followed, Eric and I became good friends. Jared even approved the plan with the stipulation that I had to restore the apartment to original condition before I left. He collected an additional month’s rent as a damage deposit in case I skipped and he had to hire painters.

We hung paintable, strippable wallpaper and painted the room. We hung black drapes. We tacked black fabric to the ceiling. When we were done, I had a black room in which even the glow of the monitor was absorbed and sound was muted by the soft surfaces.

I had my ‘mantuary,’ as Eric pointed out. He warned me that no woman in her right mind would spend the night there. I asked if there was a way to ensure that no men would, either. He had the good grace to laugh. And leave.

I was in my own little womb, and it was my gateway to cyberspace.

Who are you really, Sergeant Mason?

His widow had filled out an extensive questionnaire. She didn’t understand at first why I wanted things like names of brothers, sisters, parents, pets, schools, mascots, and hobbies in addition to social security numbers, serial number, addresses, and birthdates. Once I explained that passwords were rarely random, she filled out the form with more information than I was sure was necessary. In an effort to make a password memorable, people often use familiar names, numbers, or terms for their password.

I was prepared to enter all the information in a database and let my software do the work of cracking the password. I set the computer up on a wired network and then attempted to access it with my own computer, plugging in each potential password in succession from the database. I have secondary software that will write variants of words, substituting numbers for letters and capitalizing first letters of syllables, among other things.

I never needed to run the software.

Elaine831, his wife’s name and birthday. Testing shows a 72% strong password rating. Unless you happen to know his wife’s name and birthday and the fact that Army regulations stipulate that “passwords must be at least an eight-character string using the thirty-six alphabetic-numeric characters. At least two of the characters should be numeric.” Just like the Navy.

I entered the virtual world of Sergeant Mike Mason.

Through his journal and photos, I followed him down streets I’d never walked where every shadow could be a sniper. He ducked into a doorway, swinging his rifle left and right as the light on his helmet swept the room. In the empty silence that greeted him, he allowed himself a deep breath, shook the sweat out of his eyes, and then moved back into the street.

By the time I tracked him for a quarter of a mile, sweat was running down my own forehead. My heart was racing when I heard shots fired. He slammed himself against the wall, trying to disappear against the rough surface behind him. The shots were a street over. Not his responsibility. Another deep breath and he forced himself to move forward again.