09-23-97

Red_Queen paraded through his dreams as a headless Queen of Hearts-which was rather ironic-typing at a keyboard, leaving him clues, escaping all notice. He flattered himself Red_Queen was looking for him, guiding him-him!-along. How many weeks ago had he come across TheRedQueen in that stupid chat room? As with most events in his life, he'd forgotten exactly when.

As soon as he'd made the leap back into his old life, Neo couldn't believe how he hadn't recognized "TheRedQueen" for who he really was. Red_Queen was a hacker alias that had disappeared years before he'd ever gotten into the game. A legend with an equally legendary flame-out, though no one knew the hows or whys. No one ever did, but hackers across the globe thought the return of Red_Queen, even if it wasn't the Red_Queen, was reason enough to party. Red_Queen's most unexpected return from the dead.

Neo understood what they did not: if it was really Red_Queen, then Red_Queen had jumped ship. No way a hacker would disappear and resurface so neatly years later. He smelled conspiracy and trap all over this resurrection and avoided talking directly to Red_Queen. He pulled the information from others stupid enough to risk it. It was a way to keep in touch as well as an exercise, seeing if he could, successfully and without detection, hack the hackers. The eerie thing was that he could. Easily.

Red_Queen seemed to know this. However long ago it was now, at the new start, he had skimmed a few hot spots for TheRedQueen and stumbled across Red_Queen. Like a fool, he'd jumped in immediately, seizing on the possible connection. Red_Queen acknowledged his silent entrance simply:

Red_Queen > Hello, Neo.

He'd literally pulled the plug. In what he later considered the most superstitious, nonsensical move of his adult life, in the instant his brain processed both Red_Queen's greeting and the fact that he had not, at that stage, introduced himself, that second, he was at the circuit breaker, throwing it. He'd had an irrational fear that Red_Queen would crawl out of his computer and do...something, something not good. God, the damage, the irresponsibility of it, the amount of time it took to check over every aspect of his machines to be sure nothing irreparable had occurred.

The greeting meant Red_Queen wasaware of him, his efforts. This was decidedly not a good thing if Red_Queen had turned government. It took countless, cryptic reassurances from the entity calling itself Red_Queen for him to accept that the most improbable had happened-Red_Queen had returned after years of silence. The why he couldn't begin to fathom, but he knew it, believed it.

Now, he lived it. Visions haunted him even when he was awake. Red_Queen's few messages, all sounding rehearsed yet effective, interrupting his thoughts, becoming his personal mottos. Work was an absolute nightmare; the steady clacking noise of other people typing was slowly driving him up the wall; he suspected Red_Queen was among them, taunting him, getting closer just as a tease, sussing him out, seeing if he was worthy.

Red_Queen There's a difference between a trap and a test.

Neo did his best estimation as to what would be worthy. Laws in cyberspace ceased to exist. For a lark, he stole credit card numbers online, bought insignificantly expensive gifts and gave them to the Salvation Army. Nothing that could be traced back to him. Once he tested those tepid waters, he took a deeper breath and dove into the abysmal deep, the mother load-city central servers and so on upwards, all the way to the White House, if he could manage it. To his not so very great surprise, the protection around local records was actually worse than around sites like Amazon. After all, it's only identity, not money. That didn't really bother him. He needed tests to be sure he was in the right place.

That's why he was still awake at four am, ready to figure out if he'd made it as far as he'd thought. Don't piss in your own pond, he decided, subsequently locating his test site in a random location chosen in the most low-tech manner possible-closing his eyes, flipping to a page in a United States atlas, and pointing a blind finger onto the page. Now, the registrar for jury duty applicants in Westchester County, New York stared back at him from his monitor. His finger hovered above the 'delete' button, trembling. This was another one of those last steps before a fall, one of several he'd taken lately.

Red_Queen > There's a difference between a test and a choice.

A choice. You have a choice. So make it.

He deleted the data. In a processing age, the modification, with his equipment, took some few seconds, the longest of his life. Neo forced himself to back out of the connection slowly, doubling back to be sure all records of his intrusion vanished as he severed himself from the other server. His desktop replaced the connections he had opened, stupidly sitting there as if to say, "well, what now, genius?"

I have no idea. This was true.

Then, I think I just did something incredibly stupid. This was equally true.

"Oh my God," Neo whispered. How long would it take someone to know the information was missing? It was currently five am in New York. Four hours to the start of the business day. Four grueling hours he would have to wait until the most mundane of the mundy civil servants got to his terminal to call out names only to find the roll-call blank. Or would someone check before start of business? In some freak, serendipitous coincidence, he had never been called for jury duty. When did all that start?

Maybe someone else was watching. Red_Queen. Red_Queen had to be paying attention. He knew everything about Neo-more than Neo felt comfortable with anyone knowing. Incredibly, he felt he trusted Red_Queen. That was less comfortable still, the uncanny sense that Red_Queen was on his side. For all he knew-actually, hard-evidence knew-Red_Queen was an ambush; maybe that line about the trap had been a last-ditch, respectful warning from one fallen pro to another.

Still, Neo wanted Red_Queen to notice. He needed Red_Queen to be witness-without proof, hopefully-to the first strike of Neo, to know that he'd been the one. He'd be a name in his own right, with the wrong people, if he wasn't careful. Was Red_Queen the wrong person?

I guess I get to find out now.

He circled the net. Not five minutes had passed since he'd extracted himself from the connection in New York. It was too soon. Too soon for anyone except Red_Queen, he corrected himself. Or, maybe, the mythical Morpheus. Ha-ha, mythical. He laughed aloud at his pun. I need more sleep. But he knew he wouldn't be getting any, not tonight. He sank into a chat-one he'd only ever skimmed before; Red_Queen never went to the same place twice, either for justifiable safety or to maintain the appearance of it.

Cobra_Cmdr Morpheus' in the news again

AtsukoS_hell He for real, you reckon?

Cobra_Cmdr He's *Morpheus.*

AtsukoS_hell He can't be real.

Cis He is!

Cobra_Cmdr The government's got pictures of him, the only ones. top secret.

AtsukoS_hell No way we could get past NSA for that.

Cis Ooh, now you've gone and tempted me.

Cobra_Cmdr Been nice knowing you, Cis.

Cis fuck off Cobra

A second before he would have abandoned this trio, Neo felt it. No announcement, no moderators on these boards-no one confessed here but none worried about what they said either. Just before it happened, he knew it would. He felt it.

Red_Queen Congratulations, Neo.

Cobra_Cmdr the fuck?

AtsukoS_hell oh god

Cis sweet Jesus

Cobra_Cmdr Neo who?

His hands floated above the keys, his mind above the stars. It was too weird. No, weird didn't begin to approximate what it was. Red_Queen was here. Red_Queen knew.

AtsukoS_hell Are you really him?

Red_Queen Depends

Cobra_Cmdr Never heard of you.

Cis Shit for brains

AtsukoS_hell Morpheus?

Cobra_Cmdr WHO are you?

Neo's hand flew away from the keyboard as if burned. He tumbled backwards onto the floor. Morpheus wasn't real. They'd said so. No matter how stupid that sounded, he clung to it. No way. No way, this is crazy! He shuddered; how many times had he said that the last time he'd been in the game? It's what had made him drop out, this promise, this threat of the insane being perfectly rational. Dazed, he crawled back to kneel before the monitor, a proper penitent.

Red_Queen I know who I WAS when I got up this morning

Cis what are you doing *here*? No one special here

Cobra_Cmdr Hey!

Red_Queen but, I think I must have changed several times since then.

Red_Queen Wouldn't you agree?

The chat self-destructed. Neo found his blank background screen once more commanding his attention. Red_Queen knew.

Holy shit!

Red_Queen was Morpheus?

Not possible. Morpheus didn't exist. He was the Keyser Soze of the hacker world, the story you told to friends-if you had any friends you trusted so far as that-to seem important, well-versed. But those other three had called Red_Queen Morpheus. Again, they'd said so, they'd said Morpheus was real There were pictures of him for Christ's sake! Not that he'd seen them-point of fact, no one had, but they existed, right? Neo sank back onto his heels.

Coincidence. It could be a coincidence. Red_Queen might not be Morpheus at all. He shivered. It didn't matter if Red_Queen wasn't Morpheus, could just be a rumor Red_Queen started to increase his own importance by association. The point was that Red_Queen didn't need to start that rumor. Red_Queen was infamous enough in his own right.

Grim resolve, more terrible still than his decision to throw himself back into this work, formed in the pit of his stomach. He felt leaden and burdened yet light and burning. Red_Queen seemed to know where he was and when. Red_Queen determined all points of contact with him, and Neo had thus far accepted that arrangement, seeing as Red_Queen's timing was impeccable. No more. Morpheus was famous. Morpheus had a record. Morpheus he could track. Find those pictures-if they actually do exist...

With any luck-which seemed to teem about him these days-he could connect the two, determine some pattern that revealed the mystery of Red_Queen through the high profile of Morpheus. There were no questions without answers, no riddles without punch lines.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

His own voice surprised him. It sounded raw. Why had he said that? Neo had no idea. He sprawled out on the floor and was soon dead asleep in a dreamless, endless nothing, shock granting him a few blissful hours of sleep he'd not expected to get. His resolution, he recognized as he passed out, would have to wait until after work.

He'd probably be late again.