The Blue Nowhere

Phate.
    Renegade334: Yeah how?
    Triple-X: Just started talking to him in a chat room. Helped me debug some script. Traded some warez.
    “This guy is gold,” Tony Mott whispered.
    Nolan said, “Maybe he knows Phate’s address. Ask him.”
    “No,” Gillette said. “We’ll scare him off.”
    There was no message for a moment then:
    Triple-X: BRB
    Chat room regulars have developed a shorthand of initials that represent phrases—to save keyboarding time and energy. BRB meant Be right back.
    “Is he headed for the hills?” Sanchez asked.
    “The connection’s still open,” Gillette said. “Maybe he just went to take a leak or something. Keep Pac Bell on the trace.”
    He sat back in the chair, which creaked loudly. Moments passed. The screen remained unchanged.
    BRB.
    Gillette glanced at Patricia Nolan. She opened her purse, as bulky as her dress, took out her fingernail conditioner again and absently began to apply it.
    The cursor continued to blink. The screen remained blank.
    T he ghosts were back and this time there were plenty of them.
    Jamie Turner could hear them as he moved along the corridors of St. Francis Academy.
    Well, the sound was probably only Booty or one of the teachers, making certain that windows and doors were secure. Or students, trying to find a place to sneak a cigarette or play their Game Boys.
    But he couldn’t get ghosts out of his mind: the spirits of Indians tortured to death and the student murdered a couple of years ago by that crazy guy who broke in—the one who, Jamie now realized, also added to the ghost population by getting shot dead by the cops in the old lunchroom.
    Jamie Turner was certainly a product of the Machine World—a hacker and scientist—and he knew ghosts and mythical creatures and spirits didn’t exist. So why did he feel so damn scared?
    Then this weird idea occurred to him. He wondered if maybe, thanks to computers, life had returned to an earlier, more spiritual—and more witchy—time. Computers made the world seem like a place out of one of those books from the 1800s by Washington Irving or Nathaniel Hawthorne. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and The House of the Seven Gables . Back then people believed in ghosts and spirits and weird stuff going on that you couldn’t exactly see. Now, there was the Net and code and bots and electrons and things you couldn’t see—just like ghosts. They could float around you, they could appear out of nowhere, they could do things.
    These thoughts scared the hell out of him but he forced them away and continued down the dark corridors of St. Francis Academy, smelling the musty stucco, hearing the muted conversations and music from the students’ rooms recede as he left the residence area and slipped past the gym.
    Ghosts. . . .
    No, forget it! he told himself.
    Think about Santana, think about hanging out with your brother, think about what a great night you’re going to have.
    Think about backstage passes.
    Then, finally, he came to the fire door, the one that led out into the garden.
    He looked around. No sign of Booty, no sign of the other teachers who occasionally wandered through the halls like guards in some prisoner-of-war movie.
    Dropping to his knees, Jamie Turner looked over the alarm bar on the door the way a wrestler sizes up his opponent.
    WARNING: ALARM SOUNDS IF DOOR IS OPENED.
    If he didn’t disable the alarm, if it went off when he tried to open the door, bright lights would come on throughout the school and the police and the fire department would be here in minutes. He’d have tosprint back to his room and his entire evening would be fucked. He now unfolded a small sheet of paper, which contained the wiring schematic of the alarm that the door manufacturer’s service chief had kindly sent him.
    Playing a small flashlight over the sheet he studied the diagram once more. Then he caressed the metal of the alarm bar, observing how the triggering device worked, where the screws were, how the power supply was hidden. In his quick mind he matched what he saw in front of him with the schematic.
    He took a deep breath.
    He thought of his brother.
    Pulling on his thick glasses to protect his precious eyes, Jamie Turner reached into his pocket, pulled out the plastic case containing his tools, and selected a Phillips head screwdriver. He had plenty of time, he told himself. No need to hurry.
    Ready to rock ’n’ roll. . . .

CHAPTER 00010000 / SIXTEEN
    F rank Bishop parked the unmarked navy