The Blue Nowhere

newsgroup sometime—like alt.hack. Half the postings are about taking down Pac Bell switches or cracking into the White House and the other half are about the caffeine content of the latest soft drinks.”
    Bishop poured himself a Budweiser. He glanced at Gillette’s arm, the tattoo of the seagull and the palm tree. “That’s mighty ugly, I have to say. That bird especially. Why’d you have it done?”
    “I was in college—at Berkeley. I’d been up hacking for about thirty-six hours straight and I went to this party.”
    “And what? You did it on a dare?”
    “No, I fell asleep and woke up with it. Never did find out who did it to me.”
    “Makes you look like some kind of ex-marine.”
    The hacker glanced around—to make sure Jennie was gone—and then walked to the counter, where she’d left the Pop-Tarts. He opened them up and took four of the pastries, offered one to Bishop.
    “Not for me, thanks.”
    “I’ll eat the roast beef too, ” Gillette said, nodding at Jennie’s sandwiches. “It’s just, I dream about these in prison. They’re the best kind of hacker food—full of sugar and you can buy ’em by the case and they don’t go bad.” He wolfed down two at once. “They probably even have vitamins in them. I don’t know. This’d be my staple when I was hacking. Pop-Tarts, pizza, Mountain Dew and Jolt cola.” After a moment Gillette asked in a low voice, “Is your wife all right? That appointment she mentioned?”
    He saw a faint hesitation in the detective’s hand as he lifted the beer and took a sip. “Nothing serious. . . . A few tests.” Then, as if to deflect the course of this conversation, he said, “I’m going to check on Brandon.”
    When he returned a few minutes later Gillette held up the empty box of Pop-Tarts. “Didn’t save any for you.”
    “That’s okay.” Bishop laughed and sat down again.
    “How’s your son?”
    “Asleep. Did you and your wife have children?”
    “No. We didn’t want to at first. . . . Well, I should say I didn’t want to. By the time I did want to, well, I’d been busted. And then we were divorced.”
    “So you’d like kids?”
    “Oh, yeah.” He shrugged, brushed the pastry crumbs into his hand and deposited them on a napkin. “My brother’s got two, a boy and a girl. We have a lot of fun together.”
    “Your brother?” Bishop asked.
    “Ricky,” Gillette said. “He lives in Montana. He’s a park ranger, believe it or not. He and Carole—that’s his wife—have this great house. Sort of a log cabin, a big one though.” He nodded toward Bishop’s backyard. “You’d appreciate their vegetable patch. She’s a great gardener.”
    Bishop’s eyes dipped to the tabletop. “I read your file.”
    “My file?” Gillette asked.
    “Your juvenile file. The one you forgot to have shredded.”
    The hacker slowly rolled up his napkin then unrolled it. “I thought those were sealed.”
    “From the public they are. Not from the police.”
    “Why’d you do that?” Gillette asked coolly.
    “Because you escaped from CCU. I ordered a copy when we found you’d skedaddled. I thought we might get some information that’d help track you down.” The detective’s imperturbable voice continued, “The social worker’s report was included. About your family life. Or lack of family life. . . . So tell me—why’d you lie to everybody?”
    Gillette said nothing for a long moment.
    Why’d you lie? he thought.
    You lie because you can.
    You lie because when you’re in the Blue Nowhere you can make up whatever you want and nobody knows that what you’re saying isn’t true. You can drop into any chat room and tell the world that you live in a big beautiful house in Sunnyvale or Menlo Park or Walnut Creek and that your father is a lawyer or doctor or pilot and your mother is a designer or runs a flower store and your brother Rick is a state champion track star. And you can go on and on to the world about how you and your father built an Altair computer from a kit, six nights straight after he got home from work, and that’s what got you hooked on computers.
    What a great guy . . .
    You can tell the world that even though your mother died of a tragic and unexpected heart attack you’re still real close to your dad. He travels all over the world as a petroleum engineer but he always gets home to visit you and your brother for the holidays. And when he’s in town you go over to his house every Sunday for dinner with