CHAPTER 00101110 / FORTY-SIX

Lying on the grass, smelling dirt, rain, and the faint scent of lilac, Wyatt Gillette blinked as the searing spotlights focused on him. He watched an edgy young agent move cautiously toward him, pointing a very large gun at his head.

The agent cuffed him and frisked him thoroughly, relaxing only when Gillette asked him to call a state trooper named Bishop, who could confirm that the FBI's computer system had been hacked and that the people in the house weren't the MARINKILL suspects.

The agent then ordered Elana's family out of the house. She, her mother and her brother walked slowly out onto the lawn, arms raised. They were searched and handcuffed and, though they weren't treated roughly, it was clear from their grim faces that they were suffering nearly as much from indignity and terror as if they'd been physically injured.

Gillette's ordeal, though, was the worst and that had nothing to do with his treatment at the hands of the FBI; it was that he knew that the woman he loved was now gone from him forever. She'd seemed to be wavering on her decision to move to New York with Ed but now the machines that had driven them apart years ago had almost killed her family and that was, of course, unforgivable. She would now flee to the East Coast with responsible, gainfully employed Ed, and Ellie would become to Gillette nothing more than a collection of memories, like.jpg and.wav files – visual and sound images that vanished when you powered down at night.

The FBI agents huddled and made a number of phone calls and then huddled some more. They concluded that the assault had indeed been illegally ordered. They released everyone – except Gillette, of course, though they helped him stand and loosened the cuffs a bit.

Elana strode up to her ex. He stood motionless in front of her, making not a sound as he took the full force of the powerful slap against his cheek. The woman, sensuous and beautiful even in her anger, turned away without a word and helped her mother up the stairs into the house. Her brother offered a twenty-two-year-old's inarticulate threat about a lawsuit and worse and followed them, slamming the door.

As the agents packed up, Bishop arrived and found Gillette being guarded by a large agent. He walked up to the hacker and said, "The scram switch."

"A halon dump." Gillette nodded. "That's what I was going to tell you to do when they cut the phone line."

Bishop nodded. "I remembered you mentioned it at CCU. When you first saw the dinosaur pen."

"Any other damage?" Gillette asked. "To Shawn?"

He hoped not. He was keenly curious about the machine – how it worked, what it could do, what operating system made up its heart and mind.

But the machine wasn't badly hurt, Bishop explained. "I emptied two full clips at the box but it didn't do much damage." He smiled. "Just a flesh wound."

A stocky man walked toward them through the blinding spotlights. When he got closer Gillette could see it was Bob Shelton. The pock-faced cop greeted his partner and glanced at Gillette with his typical disdain.

Bishop told him what had happened but said nothing about suspecting Shelton himself as being Shawn.

The cop shook his head with a bitter laugh. "Shawn was a computer? Jesus, somebody oughta throw every fucking one of 'em into the ocean."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Gillette snapped. "I'm getting a little tired of it."

"Of what?" Shelton shot back.

No longer able to control his anger at the cop's harsh treatment of him over the past few days, the hacker muttered, "You've been dumping on me and machines every chance you get. But it's a little hard to believe coming from somebody with a thousand-dollar Winchester drive sitting in his house."

"A what?"

"When we were over at your house I saw that server drive sitting in your living room."

The cop's eyes flared. "That was my son's," he growled. "I was throwing it out. I was finally cleaning out his room, getting rid of all that computer shit he had. My wife didn't want me to throw out any of his things. That's what we were fighting about."

"He was into computers, your son?" Gillette asked, recalling that the boy had died several years ago.

Another bitter laugh. "Oh, yeah, he was into computers. He'd spend hours online. All he wanted to do was hack. Only some cybergang found out he was a cop's kid and thought he was trying to snitch ' em out. They went after him. Posted all kinds of shit about him on the Internet -that he was gay, that he had a record, that he molested little kids… They broke into his school's computer and made it look like he changed his own grades. That got him suspended. Then they sent some girl he'd been dating this filthy e-mail in his name. She broke up with him because of it. The day that happened he got drunk and drove into a freeway abutment. Maybe it was an accident – maybe he killed himself. Either way it was computers that killed him."

"I'm sorry," Gillette said softly.

"The fuck you are." Shelton stepped closer to the hacker, his anger undiminished. "That's why I volunteered for this case. I thought the perp might be one of the kids in that gang. And that's why I went online that day – to see if you were one of 'em too."

"No, I wasn't. I wouldn't've done something like that to anybody. That's not why I hacked."

"Oh, you keep saying that. But you're as bad as any of them, making my boy believe that those goddamn plastic boxes're the whole world. Well, that's bullshit. That's not where life is." He grabbed Gillette's jacket. The hacker didn't resist, just stared at the enraged man's face. Shelton snapped, "Life is here! Flesh and blood… human beings… Your family, your children…" His voice choked, tears filled his eyes. "That's what's real."

Shelton shoved the hacker back, wiped his eyes with his hands. Bishop stepped forward and touched his arm. But Shelton pulled away and disappeared into the crowd of police and agents.

Gillette's heart went out to the poor man but he couldn't help but think: Machines're real too, Shelton. They're becoming more and more a part of that flesh-and-blood life every day and that's never going to change. The question we have to ask ourselves isn't whether this transformation is in itself good or bad but simply this: Who do we become when we step through the monitor into the Blue Nowhere?

The detective and the hacker, alone now, stood facing each other. Bishop noticed his shirt was untucked. He shoved the tail into his slacks then nodded at the palm tree tattoo on Gillette's forearm. "You might want to get that removed, you know. I don't think it does a lot for you. The pigeon at least. The tree's not too bad."

"It's a seagull," the hacker replied. "But now that you bring it up, Frank… why don't you get one?"

"What?"

"A tattoo."

The detective started to say something then lifted an eyebrow. "You know, maybe I just will."

Then Gillette felt his arms being gripped from behind. The state troopers had arrived, right on schedule, to return him to San Ho.