“You don’t mean to tell us, dear,” Evelyn Culver said with a scowl of maternal concern — she employed Dianne in her unisex hair salon, the Easy-Clip, and fretted over her like a mother — “that you’re involved with the Internet? All those gossip lines that we’ve been hearing about?”
“It’s called IRC–Internet Relay Chat,” Dianne replied curtly. “And we don’t gossip, we have enlightened discussions. Which is more than I can say for the chin-wagging that goes on around this table most of the time.”
“But good grief, girl! Don’t you read the newspapers? There’s something nasty going on in the world of computers. Some sort of ‘predator,’ according to the Sun. Several Internet users from right around here have been killed! Strangled! Found with traces of blue twine wrapped around their necks!”
Mrs. Aird was still mired in the terminology. “Maybe smurfing has got something to do with computer games. Like you draw a smurf on the screen, and then make him hop.”
“All right, so you met this person on the Internet; then what?” Evelyn boldly discarded a heart. “Was it love at first sight? Did he wink at you out of the screen or something?”
“You don’t actually see each other. It doesn’t work that way. You talk to one another by typing words with your keyboard.”
“Sounds boring.”
“And unromantic,” Winona sniffed.
“Actually, it’s kind of neat,” Dianne insisted. “You’re anonymous, so you can try on new identities. You can be anything you want to be — a rocket pilot, a doctor, a stewardess. While you could really be, say, a clerk.”
“Or a murderer,” muttered Evelyn darkly.
“If you want smurfs in your life,” said Mrs. Aird, shaking her gray head in perplexity, “you only got to turn on the TV every morning and there they are, scurrying all over the place.” She laid down her cards. “I’m out. See? There’s my two runs of five in the same suit. I’m winning. What’s next?”
The others threw down their hands in disgust. Evelyn shoved her chair back sharply and went off to root in a cupboard for something that would augment the depleted chips and dip. “Give us the lowdown, Dianne,” she said over her shoulder, dragging out a bag of pretzels that were left over from New Year’s. “So you met on the Net, or whatever you computer geeks call it. But what happened exactly? We want the details.”
“The juicy details,” Winona Delmare added.
“There are no juicy details. We met in the MUD, actually.”
“Where?” Mrs. Aird’s eyes blinked several times in quick succession.
“In the MUD. The multi-user dungeon. One of the chat rooms, okay?”
“And what,” Winona asked, “is a chat room, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Dianne’s pretty face tightened at their collective obtuseness. “A chat room is a sort of electronic place that you key into. There are different rooms for different interests. This particular one is for singles. They call it the Lonelyheart’s Cafe.”
“A cafe, huh?” Evelyn was back at the table rattling the bag of pretzels over the chip bowl.
“In the mud, she said!” Mrs. Aird remarked with stem disapproval.
“The Lonelyheart’s is where people from all over the world — people with computers, that is! — can meet electronically to talk about their love life.” Dianne seemed to be avoiding their gaze. “Naturally,” she admitted, “they are mostly folks who haven’t got one — a love life, I mean — but who would like to have one if they could arrange it, even one that’s made out of electrons.”
“Is that why you went surfing in there, dear?” asked Winona Delmare with a catty tone to her voice.
“Of course not!”
Dianne squared her shoulders angrily and snatched a pretzel. She was one of the prettiest girls in End of Main and didn’t need anyone to remind her of it. She had dated every eligible male — even, rumor had it, some who were not so eligible — but apparently up to now had found them all wanting. “I was curious, that’s all. And I’m glad I was. This is a nice person. And so knowledgeable. He says there are two new classes of people in the world — the information rich and the information poor — just like in the Middle Ages before the printing press was invented. Back then it was books people didn’t have. Now it’s computers. So he collects old computer equipment and distributes it to the underprivileged. He says it’s a duty.”
“I’m sure he’s well-meaning, dear,” said Evelyn, “but you could of gone to a dating service a whole lot cheaper. What’s all this costing you, down there at the bottom line? I mean, in addition to forking out the three thousand, plus tax, in the first place.”
“It’s a hobby. I don’t care what it costs. But my biggest expense right now is my Internet connect time. It adds up fast. And as for equipment, I’m going to upgrade my hardware just as soon as my new Computer Warehouse catalogue arrives. Last month I got the telephone answering-machine feature.”
“What?” snapped Evelyn Culver. “You mean I got to talk to a computer next time I phone you?”
And Winona Delmare said, making out as if she were completely flabbergasted, a plump hand spread wide across her breast, “Upgrade the thing already? Hell’s bells, dear, you only just got it.”
“I’ve had it for months. It’s a fast-moving technology, and it costs money to keep up with it. Already I need more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a faster modem. You can never have a fast-enough modem, too big of a hard drive, or enough RAM, according to Timothy.”
“Aha!” said Evelyn, pouncing. “So it’s Timothy, is it?” She gave the others a shrewd look. “And if he’s telling you to replace your brand-new computer parts, let me guess what he wants you to do with the old ones.”
“Send them to him, of course. What else? It’s charity for the underprivileged.” Dianne said it with pride.
“Rams and modems,” muttered Mrs. Aird grumpily. “Smurfs and mud. Why can’t it be like the good old days — root-beers and hula hoops.”
“Maybe,” went on Dianne, deliberately ignoring Evelyn’s insinuation about the motives of her new acquaintance, “while I’m at it, I’ll get myself a faster CD-ROM drive and send my old one of those to him as well.”
Mrs. Delmare looked baffled and put off. “It’s like alphabet soup. It don’t make a lick of sense.” She glared at Evelyn. “Are you going to just sit there? I played that diamond, for Pete’s sake! It’s your go, for crying in the sink!”
Evelyn threw down a club, addressing Dianne.
“This guy must think you’re made of money, dear.”
“Money’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just that your RAM — that’s the machine’s memory, if you want to know — and your hard drive — that’s like a filing cabinet where you can store information — are like closets and cupboards. Timothy says that no matter how big they are when you first get them, they’re way too small for you before you know it.”
“My memory’s fine,” said Mrs. Aird proudly.
Winona rolled her eyes. “God help us. Your memory was tight in the hips the day you got it.” She looked at Dianne. “I made mine bigger without driving a nail — my closets and cupboards, that is. All’s I did was to kick out Wilbur and replace him with my little Shih Tzu, Dodo. His junk took up the space of three vacuum cleaners. He must of had five or six old jackets there on every hook. When he finally run off with that sexpot from the Gimli Marina, I called the Goodwill to send a truck around and wound up with more space than I know what to do with.”
Dianne shrugged. “Whatever works for you, Winona. But you can’t kick a husband out of a computer, can you?” She twitched her nose, reconsidering. “Well, I suppose you could, but I don’t have a husband. Anyway, this is the most exciting hobby I ever had. And if keeping up with it benefits the disadvantaged, well then, so much the better so far as I’m concerned.”