I marvel at how many left-wing thinkers I have run across on-line, given the general tendency for technological geeks to lean to the right. Think Bill Gates, after all. But more and more I was finding a tendency to see the Internet being used as a space for organizing activists and setting up manifestos. Whether it was searching for intelligent life in the rest of the universe or trying to feed the multitudes, the web was right there.
I tossed my two bits into the army discussion, which was that I didn’t look all that great in camouflage, and sat back to watch. I was trying to puzzle through how I could flush out Sanders. I looked at the copy of the list of names and e-mail addresses I’d made, first for Ray and then for Steve. Sanders’s information was at the top of the shortened form I’d printed off for Steve and myself. Thomas Chatterton, [email protected]. How was I going to figure out who he was? Maybe I could just e-mail him and ask him outright. I did a mental double take. Why not? In the hubbub of the gala, how many e-mail addresses and phone numbers had been exchanged? Why couldn’t I just e-mail him as Randy Craig and ask him out for coffee? He would assume I’d got the e-mail address from him at the gala or from one of our mutual friends. Then whichever of the three men met me, in a very public place, would be my Sanders. I could decide then whether to let out my alter identity as Chimera.
Maybe this chatter e-mail was only for his on-line world, but then again, maybe not. I couldn’t see what harm it could do to try. I clicked open my Eudora e-mail program, and hit the button for new messages.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: coffee sometime?
Hi there,
I was wondering if we could meet for coffee to discuss some mutual acquaintances. Would Java Jive in hub tomorrow at 2 be convenient?
Thanks,
Randy Craig
I read the message over several times, trying to see it from all angles. If it was Winston Graham, he might think I was referring to Alex and Valerie. If it was Alex, he would probably think I meant someone at Grant MacEwan. If it was Chick Anderson, he might think I meant Steve, but more than likely would figure I meant Denise. Whatever the case, I was pretty sure whoever got the message would recall me from the gala, if he had been focused enough to report to complete strangers that I’d bid and won the opera tickets.
I hit Send and went back to monitoring the action in Babel. It could be ten minutes or several hours before Sanders checked his e-mail. I wasn’t counting on a reply right away.
40
The corner of my screen began flashing its little mail indicator about an hour after I’d sent the e-mail to Sanders.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: coffee sometime?
Hello!
Coffee at Java Jive is always a welcome idea. Tomorrow at two would be grand. See you then!
>Hi there,
>I was wondering if we could meet for coffee to >discuss some mutual acquaintances. Would Java >Jive in hub tomorrow at 2 be convenient?
>Thanks,
>Randy Craig
Damn, he hadn’t signed his name, which would have made things so much easier. I had a feeling he was toying with me, and that I had somehow laid myself open to being spotted as a Babel chatter by using this particular e-mail address, but what the heck. I would just bluff my way through and claim he’d given me that address when we’d met at the gala. Anyhow, if I felt I could trust him, I would likely tell him my chat identity. I didn’t need to let him in on the whole monitoring job, after all. One layer of secrecy at a time would do.
The rest of the evening wasn’t a dead loss. Sanders showed up in Babel shortly after I read his e-mail answer to me, but Chimera had logged out by then, and I was monitoring invisibly. He flirted quite generally with Vixen and Maia, and joined in a discussion of which 1970s and 1980s television shows promoted a distorted view of North American life to the Third World.
Maia: We jumped from The Waltons to Dynasty. I am not sure people don’t think we all live in mansions.
Vixen: Or with roommates we get along with in enormous New York apartments, which we somehow pay for on waitressing wages.
Sanders: And then we wonder why people flood Immigration Services.
Gandalf: Heck, maybe we should all move to TV Land. Sounds like that is the place to live.
Maia: But you can’t blame people for assuming that is the status quo, now, can you?
Sanders: When has fantasy ever been anything like reality?
Vixen: But TV is all about reality these days.
Sanders: But that is these days, dearheart. You were just making references to the ‘70s and ‘80s, which I’m not sure I’m not too young to remember.
Vixen: *snort*
Maia: *sugared* Well, you could always catch them on Nick at Night like the rest of us precocious spring chickens, honey!
Sanders: *LOL*
Gandalf: What the heck does it matter what people think of how we live? They’re going to hate us no matter how we live, right?
Vixen: I don’t think so, Gandalf. If we could all see each other a bit clearer, I am sure that we’d be that much closer to harmony.
Sanders: I am not so sure that if my child was dying of starvation in my arms, I would be more understanding of someone whose greatest worry was whether she could afford orthodontia for both of her perfectly healthy children.
Maia: *sigh* When you put it that way, we might as well all just slit our wrists and get the guilt over with.
Vixen: Oh Sanders, Maia. This is getting too heavy for me. I can take only so much imperialist guilt per day. Besides, tomorrow is my day to work at the food bank, so I feel I’m entitled to a nightmare-free night of it. Ciao, bambinos!
Sanders: Sweet dreams, heavenly creature.
Maia: Nighty-night, Vixie.
Gandalf: See ya!
Dilly: *hugs* G’night, Vixen!
There was more of the same when Maia left ten minutes later. Sanders stayed to discuss some chess concepts with Gandalf, but pretty soon the evening regulars were packing it in. The Australians weren’t up yet, and Tracy from Singapore was chatting with Flora from Malaysia before heading to the hospital where she worked. Once again, my shift in Babel was coming to an end.
Of course, tomorrow would open up a whole new door to the chatting concept. Tomorrow I was going to have a face-to-face meet.
41
I recall several long on-line thrashes about whether to call face-to-face meetings between on-line friends meets or meats, since cyber-space was considered a distinct world from where flesh and blood, ergo meat, walked about and interacted. Something about referring to human beings as meat just felt wrong to me. I resolutely thought of face-to-face meetings as meets, and I was almost as highly strung as I had been in school before track meets. I changed outfits three or four times getting ready for my date with Sanders, and when I finally decided that I was wearing the right sweater with my clean dark jeans, I slobbered toothpaste down the front and had to start over again. Finally, I managed to get out of the house wearing a sand turtleneck, jeans, and my leather jacket. I had to go back for a hat as soon as I hit the back door. It was definitely winter, even though this year the ground was staying obstinately brown. I think it feels colder when there is no snow, although, given it was January, it was allowed to be cold just on principle.
I was really cold by the time I hit campus, so I decided to deke into the Law Building and take the walkways through to HUB. I passed through the edge of the Fine Arts Building and crossed the pedway over the same place I’d waited for Ray Lopez just a couple of days earlier. I really was expanding my horizons, meeting all sorts of new people. Denise would be impressed. She was always after me to make more connections, to network my way into a full-time position somewhere. The networking I’d done lately might not lead to any full-time jobs, but it certainly had expanded my social calendar.
I was fifteen minutes early, so I de
cided to buy a coffee and sit at one of the small tables located down the middle of the mall. Whoever he was, Sanders had replied to Randy Craig. He knew who I was. I would just let him come to me.
I wasn’t completely surprised to see Winston Graham slide into the modular chair across from me. In fact, I was pleased that neither Denise nor Valerie needed to worry about philandering men. Of course, it didn’t mean I was any less nervous about things. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to manage this conversation without giving too much away. While I was planning to admit to being in Babel, I didn’t want to give away my level of involvement. Chatgod and Alchemist both had been very specific about the need to maintain discretion about how much overseeing and control might be involved in the community. No one, after all, wants to think that Big Brother, or in this case Big Sister, might be watching them.
“Hi there, Randy! I was intrigued to hear from you. Do you need another coffee? Dark or mild?” He waved away my attempt to offer him some money with which to buy our coffees and swirled off into line, all overcoat and scarf. In many ways, he was exactly how I had imagined Sanders to be. He had to be slightly older than I, maybe even in his late forties. His hair was beginning to get a a salt-and-pepperish look at the temples and sides, but he still had plenty of hair, and it was slightly overgrown out of what had probably been a very good style. My bet was that some stylist at a discount hair salon or even a beauty school had a soft spot for this guy and gave him a hundred-dollar haircut for six bucks whenever he bothered to come by.
He was smiling as he came back toward the table and it occurred to me that he might even get those haircuts for free. There was a real charm in his smile, a high-wattage interest in whomever it was directed to. He placed the coffees on the table and then hung his bookbag over the back of his chair and sat down, shucking his coat off behind him, covering the bookbag.
“There we go, comfortable seats, good company, and coffee. What more could a man ask for?”
“Thanks for meeting me on short notice.”
“No problem. One of my greatest strengths and/or weaknesses is my eternal curiosity. It’s what has pushed me into the life I lead, and, if my mother is to be believed, may eventually be the death of me.”
“Oh, I hope not. I’m really impressed by your drive toward the whole Renaissance-man thing.”
“My mother wasn’t. She thought I should settle into one field and discover happiness through repetition.” He grinned. “What she was really campaigning for, of course, was grandchildren. Oh well.”
“Well, to satisfy your curiosity on one point, I asked to meet with you to discuss some mutual acquaintances.”
“Right.”
“On-line mutual acquaintances.” I paused. “I feel somehow as if I’ve been deceiving you, though it’s certainly not personal and there has been no malice in my motive. The thing is, though, we know each other from Babel. My handle in there is—”
“Chimera.”
Okay, so I had got it wrong. It wasn’t Sanders who would be the one shocked by the revelation. It would be me. Had he known all along?
As if he could read my thoughts, which possibly he could, given what Steve called my anti-poker face, he hurriedly continued. “I didn’t know before, but it all fell into place just now as you were talking.” His face registered pleasure and a little bit of extra concentration, as he readjusted all his previous on-line conversations with me to fit the picture he now had of me. It was much the same thing I had been doing while he had been putting milk in our coffee cups. “So, the mystery lady was closer than I might have imagined. I can understand your desire for anonymity, of course. That’s one of the great freeing things about on-line discourse, the idea that you may never have to meet whoever it is you’re talking to. You can be utterly vulnerable or, alternately, utterly false. It cramps things if someone shows up at your shoulder who is too close for comfort, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know. How do you feel about it?”
“How do I feel? I think it’s great. I’m all for face-to-face conversations. Most of the reason I went on-line was experimental, and to find the lost art of conversation. Maybe I am just getting too old for the average person here on campus, but it seems more and more difficult to engage in an argument about philosophy or ethics or even the superiority of one writer over another. Unless I’m willing to discuss hockey or The Sopranos, I haven’t a hope of an interesting conversation around here. Now it may just be that we review our past with the proverbial rose-colored glasses, but I am sure discussions were more spirited and interesting about fifteen or twenty years ago.”
“You may be right,” I grinned. “I know that it is almost impossible to engender an argument in class anymore, and I recall some real doozies when I was a student.”
“Yep. Ennui sweeps the world. So, that is why I decided to explore the on-line world of chat and community. I’d read Wired and, of course, Virtual Community and figured that I might find like-minded people in the cyber-world. And for the most part, I was right.”
“Not completely satisfying, though?”
“No, not for someone like me, of limited resources. There are some folks in various communities who have face-to-face get-togethers all the time. That augmentation, for me, is where the real thing would come from. This disembodied community is very dissatisfying. Like a peep show when you really want contact.” He looked straight at me quickly, maybe to see if he’d offended me with his simile.
“I guess you never bought into the telephone campaign of ‘reaching out to touch somebody,’ eh?”
He laughed. “Exactly. However, while for me it would have been far more interesting to have met up with you for a pizza shortly after we’d met on-line, this is better late than never, and I can certainly understand why a woman on-line would want to maintain anonymity.”
“Thank you. I have to admit, it was a decision I had a lot of problems with. Part of me has been very, very curious about you. Part of me has been worried that a meeting like this will change the dynamics of Babel for me.”
Sanders (I still couldn’t think of him as Winston) shrugged. “I doubt things will change all that much. After all, look at all the people in Babel who have met face to face. Vixen and Maia. Vixen and Lane. Diane and Trudy are sisters, I think. And Thea and Milan, of course. Nothing seems to change once they’re back on-line.”
“Well, actually, it’s Thea and Milan I needed to talk to you about,” I admitted. He looked surprised by that. I wondered briefly whom he expected we’d be talking about. “I’ve been contacted by the police because of my involvement in Babel. Apparently, Thea’s husband was murdered in Austin, and the police think that the killer came from Babel, or that Thea met with him to conspire there, or something. All I knew to tell them was that Thea hadn’t been around in weeks, and that Milan was looking for her and Tremor was looking for Milan. It occurred to me that they might have talked with you, too. So, I thought I’d get hold of you and see what you knew, or if they’d talked with you.”
Even as I said it, it sounded sort of lame. I wondered if I was managing to pull it off.
“No, the police haven’t contacted me, but that’s probably because I input a false name and address in the registration field. Why would they track a murder in Austin to Edmonton, though? It’s not as if Babel is routed here.”
“They said something about a high density of action from here in Edmonton. I have a feeling it’s more than just you and me logging in from here.”
“Did you tell them about me?” He asked it casually, but I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise ever so slightly.
“I mentioned that you had said you were from Edmonton but that I didn’t know who you were. I figured I owed it to you to track you down and let you know they would likely be looking to talk with you, too.” He nodded, and I think he seemed satisfied with my answer.
“Well, do you have a name of whom I should contact at the police station?”
“Actually, he’s probably
not at the police station, but he’s police. His name is Ray Lopez and I do have his phone number.” I took Ray’s card out of my bag and was hunting for a scrap of paper, but Sanders already had his datebook out of his pocket and a pen. I passed him Ray’s card, and he noted down the penciled-in number on the back as well as the Austin police number, which I had noted but never bothered to phone for confirmation. Of course, Sanders didn’t have a policeman boyfriend to introduce Ray, and I was rather impressed by his thoroughness and foresight.
Just thinking of Steve must have been infectious. The next thing Sanders said was, “So, I suspect the fellow with you at the writer-in-residence festivities was your significant other?”
“I’m not quite sure how one describes our relationship at the moment, but it is significant, yes.”
Sanders shrugged. “So, I never stood a chance in the first place. I couldn’t figure out how my gold-plated flirtations were getting great reception with everyone except you. Of course, you knew me to be nearby, and you were otherwise engaged.”
“A lot of folks on-line are ‘otherwise engaged,’ though. Do you mean to say that you can flirt with married women and make conquests? Is everyone on-line unhappily married?”
“On the contrary, I think a lot of people on-line are very well grounded in their own realities. Cyber-space is a different animal, though. I don’t think it counts as much in people’s minds, or perhaps there is an edge of danger and excitement that is akin to Mardi Gras where everyone can wear masks. People at masquerades are able to explore their fantasies with impunity. Shy people can speak out without fear. Besides, no one can tell they are shy because they can begin again, brand new, in a brand-new world. It’s my theory that marriages are stronger as a result of on-line chat rooms. Couples don’t need to receive all their validation from the other anymore.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, this is mostly cobbled together from some old courses in family dynamics and personal relationships, but look at the demographics from when there was only one job per family. The man leaves for the day and connects with people of both sexes, receiving commentary on his performance, and even compliments on his tie. By the end of the workday, he has received all the strokes to his ego that he requires. He then returns home to discover that his wife has been without that sort of feedback. It’s somehow up to him alone to give her that validation for her efforts in keeping house and nurturing the children and shopping wisely for provisions. What took seven or eight people to stroke him, he has to do on his own for his wife. What do you suppose the likelihood of that is?”
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