So, no messages, no mail.
But now someone was contacting me, with a message that made me want to load every weapon in the house.
Later that day I went into town and picked up my mail at the post office, a counter in the Pinette General Store. The store is in a big rambling building that was built in 1825 and has wide floorboards, worn down in the middle by generations of Mainers. Everything from battery cables to soup mixes to motor oil is stocked on the sagging shelves. It’s owned by Miriam Woods, a woman with dark brown hair and even darker eyes lightly framed by wrinkles. She was widowed five years ago when Mr. Woods was downing a pine tree and misjudged the tree’s fall. Besides being the store’s owner, the postmaster (or postmistress, I can’t keep track of what’s what nowadays), and one of the town’s three selectmen (or selectwomen), Miriam is also my unofficial intelligence source for what’s going on in town.
She had on jeans and a University of Maine sweatshirt, both of which fit her nicely. The store was nearly empty of customers when she reached under the counter and handed over my thin collection of mail. After the usual chitchat of small-town happenings, I said, “I was wondering if I could borrow your son for a while.”
“Eric?” she asked.
“Well, yes, unless you have a couple of stealth sons living in your basement, that’s the one I’m talking about.”
She took a rubber band, snapped it in my direction, and asked, “How about tonight?”
“Tonight sounds good.”
“How does dinner sound?”
“Sounds better,” I said. “And dessert?”
Another snapped rubber band, this one striking my shoulder. “Hardly. This is a school night for Eric. He’ll be in.”
“Fine, then. Rain check?”
A wink. “Always.”
The mail took about a minute to flip through and dispose of, and I went home to shower and change. I had time to kill before heading over to Miriam’s, so I turned on the computer and logged onto Mycroft-Online. The chubby, cheery mailman waved his hand at me.
You Have Mail.
I double-clicked on the icon and up popped another message:
TO: Sopwith 12
FROM: Anon666
We know you’ve read the message, so stop ignoring us. You’ve been a bad boy and we have the evidence. Unless you pay up, we’ll let the world know about it. Reply now.
Some possible replies flitted through my mind, most of them containing words that the Catholic nuns had once said would tarnish my soul. So with thanks to the Sisters of Mercy, I sent a quick answer back:
TO: Anon666
FROM: Sopwith 12
Tell me more.
I left it at that. I spent the next hour exploring the computers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and downloading photographs of Jupiter.
Before dinner I was in Eric’s room as his mom hurled herself around the kitchen downstairs. Like most relationships, mine and Miriam’s is based on trust, friendship, and treaties. One treaty revolves around the kitchen. I stay out of it while she prepares dinner, and when I’m cleaning up she’s on the couch with a magazine or newspaper.
Another treaty — unknown to her but one I set up a while ago — dictates that I treat her fourteen-year-old son, Eric, as a real person, not as an impediment to my “getting lucky,” as some men tactlessly put it. In return, he speaks to me in whole sentences and doesn’t ask embarrassing questions about my future plans with his mother. He’s tall, almost as tall as I am, and slightly gangly, with his mother’s brown hair and eyes. His room is tiny and cluttered, the walls bedecked with posters of sports stars and space shuttles. But there’s a tidy place around the computer, which he bought a couple of years ago after working long hours at the local lumberyard.
He’s had far more experience exploring cyberspace than I have. I got right to the point when I sat down on his bed.
“I have a little computer problem, one I don’t want your mother to know about,” I said.
“Oh?” he said, smiling at being taken into my confidence. “With hardware or software?”
“Mailware, if there’s such a word,” I said. I pulled out two folded pieces of paper from my pocket, which were the first and second e-mails from Anon666, with the body of the messages cut away. I passed the papers to him.
“I got these messages this week, and I want to know where they’re from,” I said. “I don’t know anybody called Anon666.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, looking over the papers. “What online service are you using?”
“Mycroft.”
He looked at me, smirking. “Come on, Owen. Get out of the Steam Age. Upgrade yourself, why don’t you?”
“One of these days, but not now. What does this tell you?”
He looked over the papers and said “Hmm” a few times and then passed them back to me. “Black and deep.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look at the header.”
“The what?”
Eric, God bless him, was patient with his elders. “Just above where it says To and From. The header information, all those letters and numbers. That tells you how the message got from the sender’s computer to your computer. There are a number of systems and computers it passes through to get to your little computer, hooked up to your girlie-man online service. The header tells you how it got there.”
I looked back at the numbers and letters.
“And what does it tell you?”
“Third line down. Phrase there says ‘anon.service.se.’ That tells me that whoever sent this message sent it through a mail-forwarding computer system in Sweden. Message goes there and all other forwarding info gets stripped out, so when it pops up in your mailbox, you don’t know who sent it. Could be someone in Siberia, could be someone in Portland. Perfect way to send anonymous messages.”
“Any way of finding out more?”
He laughed and leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I mean by black and deep. This is serious spookland stuff. Even if you sniffed around in Sweden you wouldn’t find them. Maybe you could get the sender’s real ID from the National Security Agency folks down in Fort Meade — man, they’ve got computers you wouldn’t believe.”
A friendly voice from downstairs. “Hey, guys, come on down! It’s getting cold!”
“In a sec, Ma,” Eric said. He looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, Owen? Someone sending you death threats?”
I shrugged. “Just junk mail.”
After dinner Miriam walked me out to my truck. It was a cool night, but there was a warm smell of things growing and coming back to life that promised a long summer. We walked hand in hand and she turned to me as we reached my truck’s door.
“Thanks for a good night,” I said.
She squeezed my hand. “My pleasure, sir. And did you get what you needed from Eric?”
“Sure did,” I said. “I had a little bug with my computer and he fixed it for me.” Which was mostly true.
“And how long did it take him?”
“About thirty seconds.”
She laughed. “That’s my Eric.” And as quick as her laugh, her mood turned somber. “Computers will take him far, if I can ever afford to get him into college.”
“There are scholarships, you know, and grants.”
“You must not read the papers anymore, Owen,” she said bitterly. “We’re in an era of self-sufficiency. Every man, woman, and fatherless son for himself.”
“Don’t fret,” I said. “I’m sure something will come up.”