The Blue Nowhere

him and his new wife, who’s really nice, and you and he sometimes go into his den and debug script together or play a MUD game.
    And guess what?
    The world believes you. Because in the Blue Nowhere the only thing people have to go by are the bytes you key with your numb fingers.
    The world never knows it’s all a lie.
    The world never knows you’re the only child of a divorced mother who worked late three or four nights a week and went out with her “friends”—always male—the other nights. And that it wasn’t her failed heart that killed her but her liver and her spirit, which both disintegrated at about the same time, when you were eighteen.
    The world never knows that your father, a man of vague occupation, fulfilled the only potential he’d ever seemed destined for by leaving your mother and you on the day you entered third grade.
    And that your homes were a series of bungalows and trailers in the shabbiest parts of Silicon Valley, that your only treasure was a cheap computer and that the only bill that ever got paid on time was the phone bill—because you paid it yourself out of paper-delivery money so that you’d be able to stay connected to the one thing that kept you from going mad with sorrow and loneliness: the Blue Nowhere.
    Okay, Bishop, you caught me. No father, no siblings. An addictive, selfish mother. And me—Wyatt Edward Gillette, alone in my room with my companions: my Trash-80, my Apple, my Kaypro, my PC, my Toshiba, my Sun SPARCstation. . . .
    Finally he looked up and did what he’d never done before—not even to his wife—he told this entire story to another human being. Frank Bishop remained motionless, looking intently at Gillette’s dark, hollow face. When the hacker had finished, Bishop said, “You social engineered your whole childhood.”
    “Yep.”
    “I was eight when he left,” Gillette said, hands around his cola can, callused fingertips pressing the cold metal as if he were keying the words. I W-A-S E-I-G-H-T W-H-E-N  . . . “He was ex–air force, my dad. He’d been stationed at Travis and when he got discharged he stayed in the area. Well, he stayed in the area occasionally. Mostly he was out with his service buddies or . . . well, you can figure out where he was when he didn’tcome home at night. The day he left was the only time we ever had a serious talk. My mother was out somewhere and he came into my room and said he had some shopping to do, why didn’t I come along with him. That was pretty weird because we never did anything together.”
    Gillette took a breath, tried to calm himself. His fingers keyed a silent storm against the soda can.
    P-E-A-C-E O-F M-I-N-D . . . P-E-A-C-E O-F M-I-N-D . . .
    “We were living in Burlingame, near the airport, and my father and I got in the car and drove to this strip mall. He bought some things in a drugstore and then took me to the diner next to the railroad station. The food came but I was too nervous to eat. He didn’t even notice. All of a sudden he put his fork down and looked at me and told me how unhappy he was with my mother and how he had to leave. I remember how he put it. He said his peace of mind was jeopardized and he needed to move on for his personal growth.”
    P-E-A-C-E O-F . . .
    Bishop shook his head. “He was talking to you like you were some buddy of his in a bar. Not a little boy, not his son. That was really bad.”
    “He said it was a tough decision to leave but it was the right thing to do and asked if I felt happy for him.”
    “He asked you that? ”
    Gillette nodded. “I don’t remember what I said. Then we left the restaurant and we were walking down the street and maybe he noticed I was upset and he saw this store and said, ‘Tell you what, son, you go in there and buy anything you want.’”
    “A consolation prize.”
    Gillette laughed and nodded. “I guess that’s exactly what it was. The store was a Radio Shack. I just walked in and stood there, looking around. I didn’t see anything, I was so hurt and confused, trying not to cry. I just picked the first thing I saw. A Trash-80.”
    “A what?”
    “A TRS-80. One of the first personal computers.”
    A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G Y-O-U W-A-N-T . . .
    “I took it home and started playing with it that night. Then I heardmy mother come home and she and my father had a big fight and then he was gone and that was it.”
    T-H-E B-L-U-E N-O-
    Gillette smiled briefly, fingers tapping. “That article I wrote? ‘The Blue