She popped into Victor’s cubicle, grabbed a loose chair. "This better be good, Victor."
"Judge for yourself, Dixie Mae." He looked at his display. "Oops, I lost the window. Just a second." He dinked around with his mouse. "So, have you been putting your name on outgoing messages? That’s the only way I can imagine this happening–"
"No. I have not. I’ve answered twenty-two questions so far, and I’ve been AnnetteG all the way."
The fake signature was built into her "send" key. Mr. Johnson said this was to protect employee privacy and give users a feeling of continuity even though follow-up questions would rarely come to the original responder. He didn’t have to say that it was also to make sure that LotsaTech support people would be interchangeable, whether they were working out of the service center in Lahore or Londonderry–or Los Angeles. So far, that had been one of Dixie Mae’s few disappointments about this job; she could never have an ongoing helpful relationship with a customer.
So what the devil was this all about?
"Ah! Here it is." Victor waved at the screen. "What do you make of it?"
The message had come in on the help address. It was in the standard layout enforced by the query acceptance page. But the "previous responder field" was not one of the house sigs. Instead it was: Ditzie May Lay
"Grow up, Victor."
Victor raised his hands in mock defense, but he had seen her expression, and some of the smirk left his face. "Hey, Dixie Mae, don’t kill the messenger. This is just what came in."
"No way. The server-side script would have rejected an invalid responder name. You faked this."
For a fleeting moment, Victor looked uncertain. Hah! thought Dixie Mae. She had been paying attention during Mr. Johnson’s lectures; she knew more about what was going on here than Victorthe- great-mind. And so his little joke had fallen flat on its rear end. But Victor regrouped and gave a weak smile. "It wasn’t me. How would I know about this, er, nickname of yours?"
"Yes," said Dixie Mae, "it takes real genius to come up with such a clever play on words."
"Honest, Dixie Mae, it wasn’t me. Hell, I don’t even know how to use our form editor to revise header fields."
Now that claim had the ring of truth.
"What’s happening?"
They looked up, saw Ulysse standing at the entrance to the cubicle.
Victor gave her a shrug. "It’s Dit–Dixie Mae. Someone here at LotsaTech is jerking her around."
Ulysse came closer and bent to read from the display. "Yech. So what’s the message?"
Dixie Mae reached across the desk and scrolled down the display. The return address was lusting925@freemail.sg. The topic choice was "Voice Formatting." They got lots on that topic; Voxalot format control wasn’t quite as intuitive as the ads would like you to believe.
But this was by golly not a follow-up on anything Dixie Mae had answered:
...
Hey there, Honey Chile! I’ll be truly grateful if you would tell me how to put the following into italics:
"Remember the Tarzanarama tree house? The one you set on fire? If you’d like to start a much bigger fire, then figure out how I know all this. A big clue is that 999 is 666 spelled upside down."
I’ve tried everything and I can’t set the above proposition into indented italics–leastwise without fingering. Please help.
Aching for some of your Southron Hospitality, I remain your very bestest fiend,
–Lusting (for you deeply)
Ulysse’s voice was dry: "So, Victor, you’ve figured how to edit incoming forms."
"God damn it, I’m innocent!"
"Sure you are." Ulysse’s white teeth flashed in her black face. The three little words held a world of disdain.
Dixie Mae held up her hand, waving them both to silence. "I ... don’t know. There’s something real strange about this mail." She stared at the message body for several seconds. A big ugly chill was growing in her middle. Mom and Dad had built her that tree house when she was seven years old. Dixie Mae had loved it. For two years she was Tarzana of Tarzana. But the name of the tree house–Tarzanarama–had been a secret. Dixie Mae had been nine years old when she torched that marvelous tree house. It had been a terrible accident. Well, a world-class temper tantrum, actually. But she had never meant the fire to get so far out of control. The fire had darn near burned down their real house, too. She had been a scarifyingly well-behaved little girl for almost two years after that incident.
Ulysse was giving the mail a careful read. She patted Dixie Mae on the shoulder. "Whoever this is, he certainly doesn’t sound friendly."
Dixie Mae nodded. "This weasel is pushing every button I’ve got." Including her curiosity. Dad was the only living person that knew who had started the fire, but it was going on four years since he’d had any address for his daughter–and Daddy would never have taken this sex-creep, disrespecting tone.
Victor glanced back and forth between them, maybe feeling hurt that he was no longer the object of suspicion. "So who do you think it is?"
Don Williams craned his head over the next partition. "Who is what?"
Given another few minutes, and they’d have everyone on the floor with some bodily part stuck into Victor’s cubicle.
Ulysse said, "Unless you’re deaf, you know most of it, Don. Someone is messing with us."
"Well then, report it to Johnson. This is our first day, people. It’s not a good day to get sidetracked."
That brought Ulysse down to earth. Like Dixie Mae, she regarded this LotsaTech job as her last real chance to break into a profession.
"Look," said Don. "It’s already lunch time."–Dixie Mae glanced at her watch. It really was!–"We can talk about this in the cafeteria, then come back and give Great Lotsa a solid afternoon of work. And then we’ll be done with our first week!" Williams had been planning a party down at his folks’ place for tonight. It would be their first time off the LotsaTech campus since they took the job.
"Yeah!" said Ulysse. "Dixie Mae, you’ll have the whole weekend to figure out who’s doing this–and plot your revenge."
Dixie Mae looked again at the impossible "previous responder field." "I ... don’t know. This looks like it’s something happening right here on the LotsaTech campus." She stared out Victor’s picture window. It was the same view as from her cubicle, of course–but now she was seeing everything with a different mind set. Somewhere in the beautiful country-club buildings, there was a real sleaze ball. And he was playing guessing games with her.
Everybody was quiet for a second. Maybe that helped–Dixie Mae realized just what she was looking at: the next lodge down the hill. From here you could only see the top of its second story. Like all the buildings on the campus, it had a four-digit identification number made of gold on every corner. That one was Building 0999.
A big clue is that 999 is just 666 spelled upside down. "Jeez, Ulysse. Look: 999." Dixie Mae pointed down the hillside.
"It could be a coincidence."
"No, it’s too pat." She glanced at Victor. This really was the sort of thing someone like him would set up. But whoever wrote that letter just knew too much. "Look, I’m going to skip lunch today and take a little walk around the campus."
"That’s crazy," said Don. "LotsaTech is an open place, but we’re not supposed to be wandering into other project buildings."
"Then they can turn me back."
"Yeah, what a great way to start out with the new job," said Don. "I don’t think you three realize what a good deal we have here. I know that none of you have worked a customer support job before."
He looked around challengingly. "Well I have. This is heaven. We’ve got our own friggin’ offices, onsite tennis courts and health club. We’re being treated like million-dollar system designers.
We’re being given all the time we need to give top-notch advice to the customers. What LotsaTech is trying to do here is revolutionary! And you dips are just going to piss it away." Another allaround glare. "Well, do what you want, but I’m going to lunch."