Monk was almost happy. He had bought a laptop yesterday and he spent all afternoon cleaning the keyboard, under the keys and the mouse. He had almost rearranged the folders in the computer but Natalie had stopped him.
"It won't work that way, Mr Monk," she told him.
Julie had helped him set up the Internet on the computer. "It's a way of finding out new information," she told him. "It's like a library."
"We'll be back tomorrow," Natalie told him as she left with Julie.
- *
Monk clicked on the little red fox button. No, icon, he corrected himself.
It did nothing.
Oh! He had to double-click.
He double-clicked.
The browser window opened. Monk stared at the Google search box. Now what could he look up? There were so many possibilities! He could look up new ways to clean his bathroom. He could discover new and better vacuuming methods. He furrowed his brow.
And then it hit him. He could look up Trudy.
Slowly, he typed in her name. T-R-U-D-Y M-O-N-K.
And then he moved the pointer to the search button and clicked.
Monk stared at the thousands and thousands of entries. There was no way he could read so many entries.
Maybe he could try something else? He could look up his friend Stottlemeyer. Slowly, he deleted the word Trudy and typed in Stottlemeyer.
As the page loaded, Monk looked again at what he had typed. M-O-N-K S-T-O-T-T-L-E-M-E-Y-E-R
He was about to press the backspace button again when he looked at the second entry.
"Monk slashfic".
"I wonder what that could be," Monk said to himself. He clicked on the link.
"MonkSlash. Because he needs the love."
Monk blinked. He stared at the pictures. They were of him, Leland and Randy. Together. He recognized some of them.
With trepidation, he scrolled downwards to read.
- *
A few hours later, Monk still sat there staring at his computer, open-mouthed in horror.
There was somebody out there, or somebodies out there who believed that he was having relations with Leland or Randy, or sometimes both of them at the same time! And obviously both Leland and Randy were together.
He wondered briefly whether it was Marci again but he then dismissed the thought. She seemed to want him for herself.
Monk shuddered.
Some of the things people described him doing. He never even knew that people could do those things. How was it possible? He certainly wasn't that flexible.
He scrolled to the bottom of one story and saw a "Leave a comment" link.
I can tell these people that they are completely and utterly wrong, Monk thought as he clicked the link.
- *
A few hours later, Monk clicked back to the site and discovered he had received a response.
How dare you say that? Monk and Stottlemeyer are destined to be together!
Monk felt slightly sick. He responded: That is patently untrue. Adrian Monk loves his wife Trudy.
A few minutes later: You obviously haven't been watching canon properly! Trudy is dead.
Monk frowned. He didn't know what canon was but he knew that his wife was dead. He still loved her. He didn't even take off the ring.
With a sigh, he typed another response.
- *
A day later, Natalie let herself into Monk's house with her spare key.
"Mr Monk," she called. "Are you okay?"
She didn't hear a response so she walked to the living room where she could hear the clacking of keys. Monk was sitting there, typing furiously into his keyboard.
"What are you doing?"
Monk waved a hand at her. "I am fixing things. It's all wrong!"
Natalie was puzzled and looked over his shoulder. It looked as though he was writing some sort of story.
Oh well, she thought, at least he's being creative!