The Third Person

On-screen, a small bland man was reporting exciting news in a voice that was attempting to be calm, failing only slightly. He was telling us – repeating, most likely – that half of the computers in America were off-line. Servers were just collapsing. There were literally hundreds failing every minute.

‘Yes,’ Dennison said, nodding. But his tone of voice was very close to that of the newsreader, and I got the impression that he didn’t entirely agree.

‘You realise,’ I told him, ‘that we’re going to burn for this? They’re going to fucking arrest us. And probably shoot us.’

Nobody knew what was happening, the newsreader told us. Experts were being consulted from all over the world, and there were already reports of servers crashing in several different countries. This was going to be – as I mentioned – really, really bad.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘We’ll see.’

I shook my head. Dennison was clearly a man who needed his priorities whacking with a hammer, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. Graham had sent me the text, and off it had gone, destroying everything in its path. I could only hope that the entire net was brought down by it, because that was probably the only way that – when the dust had settled – we might escape from this anonymously. But that just seemed inherently undesirable. I liked the internet; I wanted it to stay where it was.

On the screen, the newsreader was explaining that a growing number of internet mail accounts and websites were inaccessible. Government sources suspected a hacker of instigating the attack. If so, it was suggested, it would be the worst instance of computer crime in the history of the world. The perpetrators would be fucking arrested, and probably shot.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘At least your e-mail is working.’

Dennison looked at me.

‘What?’

‘You got mail,’ I said. ‘Just as you called me. So your account is still working.’

I trailed off and stared back at him. And then, after a second or two more of this, we got up without a word and went back upstairs to read the e-mail.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The day was beginning to die. There were still a few hours of daylight left, but even so: the sun had broken the backbone of the sky, and now it was falling. The air was that little bit colder and you could tell that the clouds gathering at the base of the horizon were going to stick there and darken, swelling up until they filled the world with dusk and then finally solidified into a night sky. Dennison told me it was raining back in Bracken; he’d heard the forecast while I was in the bathroom being sick.

‘I’ll drive you,’ he said.

‘You don’t have to.’

He shrugged.

‘At the moment, I’ve nothing to hang around for. And apart from anything else, I want to see the texts at that house.’

I’d given him the address of Hughes’ mansion. He’d told me that the texts there represented a new form of life, and that there was no way he was risking them falling into someone else’s hands. And perhaps there was some clue in them as to what was happening.

Ten minutes later, anyway, we were on the motorway – doing pretty much the reverse of the journey I’d made that morning, but at roughly twice the speed. Dennison had a fast car, and he was flooring it. I wouldn’t have cared if we crashed. The cars we were passing were like dreams.

I kept glancing down at the printout on my lap.

A blank e-mail, sent both to Dennison and my own account, but the header information told me everything that I needed to know. Everything, but it also led to confusion and mystery. The attachment, however, was clearer.

I said, ‘It has to be her.’

Well, it had certainly been sent from Amy’s e-mail address: the one that I’d set up for her in the second week we were going out. That address was the only one she ever used. When we first met, she didn’t know much about computers and so I’d said that I’d sort one out for her to save her the bother. Maybe I’d made it out to be slightly more complicated than it was: some stupid attempt to impress her a little. I can’t remember. It wouldn’t surprise me.

‘It took me quarter of an hour to explain what pop mail was,’ I said. ‘Even then, I don’t think she really got it.’

Dennison didn’t say anything. He just concentrated on the road.

‘I don’t think I explained it too well.’

Just show me how to use it, she said.

It doesn’t matter how it works.

Do I need to know how the tv works? No.

Do I need to know how the lightswitch works?

Sidling up to me, sly grin in place.

Do I need to know how you work to use you?

I swallowed the memory. ‘She never changed her password. We used to check each other’s mail all the time. But nobody else knew the password, apart from me.’

‘No?’

‘I don’t think she ever told anyone else.’ I shook my head. ‘I mean, why would she have done that?’