This New Internet Thing, Chapter 23

I wrote a book. The publication date is May 29, 2024 (if you’d rather not deal with Amazon, your bookstore can also order it from the distributor Ingram Spark, or print-on-demand if they have the equipment). You can read it for free here, although it’ll be in serial form. My fond hope is that you’ll find it so compelling that you just buy the book instead of waiting 8 months to see what happens. There will be a chapter each week, 33 in all.

In Chapter 22 (notes), Len and Dan discover it’s not nice to fool the locals if you’re an outsider. Also, the dogs Mickey and Gretchen step out and take a starring role! Take a bow, dogs. You’re the best. In this chapter, their adventures take them into the national news!

Reading in serial form has a long and honorable history. My cover artist sent me this “Read Like a Victorian” website. Enjoy.

=================== The Dynamic Duo ===================

Janet answered the phone. An official-sounding voice asked,

“May I speak to Mrs. Janet Saunders, please.”

“This is she” she said, her fright level rising. The voice explained that her father had been admitted to the emergency room in Placerville after an altercation, and he’d named her as his emergency contact.

“Oh my God. Is he OK?”

They tried to assure her that this was just a precaution, and Mr. Saunders was in good condition. He had a friend with him who was also injured, a Mr. Markunas. She thanked them and hung up.

Walt could tell something was wrong. She told him the story, and he went into the garage and got his shotgun. He said, “I’ll kill him, whoever it is. Let’s go!” and got in his truck. Janet screamed but got in, followed by Bernie. They hardly spoke at all while they drove up to the hospital. Walt refused to talk.

At the hospital, the front desk told them that Mr. Saunders and his friend had been treated and released. They drove to the cabin. A police car was parked outside. Inside, Len and Dan were sitting with Detective Griffiths, who had Gretchen’s head on his lap. Dan had a Band-Aid on his forehead. Len and Dan were drinking Scotch, while the detective sipped from a glass of iced tea.

Janet ran in and hugged Len. After a while, she said,

“So, Dad, are you sure you’re OK?”

“I’m fine, sweetie. You should have seen the other guy!” 

“And you, Dan! How are you?” Dan assured her he was fine, too. Len introduced her to the detective. He and Walt already knew each other from way back, since Walt had been coming up here since he was a boy.

They all sat down. The dogs all wagged their tails and sniffed each other ecstatically.

Detective Griffiths stood up and said, “I think you’re in good hands now, Mr. Saunders. I’d better get back to work.” Gretchen looked like she really wanted to go with him.

Walt said, “Before you go, Frank: can you tell us what happened?”

“Well, Walt, you know I can’t talk about ongoing criminal cases. But just between us: Mr. and Mrs. Redding were pretty upset about what happened to Helen. The whole town is, actually.”

Janet said, “Upset about what happened? She was stealing from a charity, for God’s sake. And she didn’t even get arrested!”

He put up his hands. “It wasn’t really about her getting fired, as I understand it.”

They all looked at him quizzically and waited for the explanation.

“Helen got kicked out of her church group for helping someone gamble. The Seventh Day Adventists take a pretty dim view of gambling.” He added quickly,  “And stealing, too, of course.” 

Janet said, “Playing bingo? That’s ‘gambling’ to them?” The detective just shrugged and turned to go. Mickey ran over to him, and he bent down and scratched his ears. “Bye, bye, brave boy!”

Len smiled. Walt asked, “Why, what did Mickey do when all this was going on?”

Dan laughed. “Mickey was right there, helping, weren’t you, boy?” Mickey wagged his tail.

Len said, “Mickey’s a lover, not a fighter!” Everyone laughed, and Mickey made the rounds getting petted. The detective left.

They told the story over and over and then Walt went out and got a pizza for them. Janet offered to drive Dan home in Dan’s car if he wasn’t up to driving. Dan said he was all sobered up now, so he’d be fine. Janet and Walt both had to go to work on Monday, so they left, too, after Janet told Len to ease off on his crime-busting activities. Len said he’d learned his lesson.

Later that night, a reporter from the local newspaper called him, having seen the case on the police blotter. She seemed particularly interested in the Silicon Valley “angle,” although Len didn’t quite see why that was such a big deal. He told her how his daughter’s friend Dan had used his software tools at Oracle to help figure out where the money was going,and tried the Internet, but really, Len could have done it himself; it was just sorting a few hundred records. He didn’t tell her about any of the sneaky stuff they’d done. Len emphasized that the important thing was the great work that Sierra Helpers was doing, and how some people were stealing from them.

She said, “Got it. So, this Dan Markunas friend of your daughter: he’s involved in the Internet, somehow?”

“Yeah, I guess he is, but that had nothing to do with this case.”

“And your daughter, Janet, is, too?”

She asked some more questions, and then thanked him and said she’d call back if she needed anything more. Len had a queasy feeling that her story wasn’t going to be quite what he would have written.

* * *

Matt and Miriam’s lawyers were in constant contact about the divorce settlement. Matt was thankful he could afford that service: at least he didn’t have to deal with her directly. He wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, so if he happened to join a startup, she wouldn’t get any of the stock. Fortunately, she also apparently wanted to marry this Patrick jerk, since he seemed to be going places. “Unlike a loser like me, who’s only getting options in a hot company like Oracle!” Matt had heard through the grapevine that Patrick was at Microsoft now.

So Miriam had to be mentally computing how much money Patrick was going to make with all his Microsoft stock. Plus, Seattle was cheaper than Silicon Valley, so they could get a much better house up there.  “It’s easy!” she used to tell him. “Why the hell can’t you do it?” 

He was glad he didn’t have to listen to that shit anymore. Oracle stock was rising steadily. It wasn’t as spectacular as an IPO, but most people outside the business only hear about startup success stories. All the startups that flame out or never even launch a product just get swept under the rug and forgotten. Meantime, the unlucky people who went to work there sweated 24x7 and dealt with naked egos, sociopathic executives, and vulture capitalists. Oracle was a nice, stable company that wasn’t going out of business anytime soon. And they had a fitness center on site and a good cafeteria.

She’d brought up this startup thing several times, before they split up. He was sick of explaining to her that great ideas were a dime a dozen, and it was executing them that was hard. She didn’t want to hear it. Everyone she met in her psychological practice had tons of money or at least pretended to, and dammit: she was going to get some, too!

* * *

Cassie was trying hard and mostly succeeding in keeping a stiff upper lip about work at Palm, despite the fact that the Zoomer sales were disappointing. Her work level had settled back to something like normal, at least. The engineering team was hard at work speeding up the Zoomer and fixing the problems that had trickled in.

Jeff and Donna were relentlessly positive, though. They were holding the company together purely by force of personality. Everyone seemed to trust them to figure something out, and if they didn’t — well, it was still a positive experience that they’d all enjoyed. Actually, she felt closer to the group than she had when they were in a big push. Now their real personalities were coming out, and she discovered she really liked these people.

She thought all the time about adopting a child. Before the Zoomer launched, it was “I’m so busy, how would I have time to raise a kid?” Now it was, “What if the company goes under and I’m an unemployed single mom?” Her mom was no help at all; she just thought Cassie should get married and then the problems would go away.

The men in high tech were mostly jerks. She couldn’t stomach the thought of tying herself to one of those. Maybe she should do like Janet and marry a solid, blue-collar guy, who didn’t think he knew how to do her job better than she did. The problem was, she didn’t know any of those. Maybe Walt could fix her up? “Now there’s an idea,” she woke up one morning thinking. It would be embarrassing, for sure.

* * *

On Tuesday morning, Matt got in early and was scrolling through the newsgroups when he saw a story:

Internet Crime Fighters on the Job!

A local man busted an embezzling ring with help from some Internet wizards, and was hospitalized for his trouble yesterday. A retired police dog, Gretchen, played a heroic role in the altercation.

[It went to explain how two Oracle employees had deployed the power of the database and the Internet to figure out who was stealing money from a local charity, and how Len Saunders had been assaulted in the streets for it. The story named Dan, but not Matt.]

He ran down to Dan’s office, but he hadn’t come in yet, so he just sent him an email about it. His friend Mike came by and asked if he’d seen the news yet. They were talking about it when Dan walked in.

“Oh, my God, Matt, we’re famous! This must be our fifteen minutes. I’ve been waiting for that.”

“You mean you’re famous! It didn’t even mention me.” said Matt.

“Yeah, well, it’s a cruel business, this ‘fame’ thing, Matt.“

Mike said, “So have you hired a press agent yet, Dan?”

Dan pretended to take a notebook out of his pocket and jot down that idea.

Mike asked, “Give us the lowdown, guys. What really happened? Did the press get it all garbled yet again?”

Matt said, “Yeah, Dan. Is that Band-Aid on your forehead just for show, or what?”

Dan told them the whole story, putting particular emphasis on Gretchen, the retired K-9 dog, who’d behaved so heroically. Matt enjoyed recounting his sleuthing with Dan. A small crowd had gathered as they talked.

Sarah, a tech writer whose entire job often consisted of getting information out of engineers, finally said,

“So the whole ‘Internet’ connection was that this guy up there emailed you an attachment, and you hunted around? Is that it, or have I missed something?”

Matt said, “That’s pretty much it, Sarah.” 

“And the ‘high-tech tools’ you used to crack the case were: you sorted some records in Excel?”

Dan said to Matt, “Can’t put anything past her, can we?”

Dan left to call Len, whose phone was busy for most of the morning. Finally he sent him an email asking him to call.

Then Janet called, and she was in a panic. Her dad was suddenly a celebrity, and everyone at work was asking her about it.

“Oh, God, Dan, why did you get him into this?”

“Why did I get him into it?” he objected. “Your dad got himself into it. He was already hip-deep when I got in.”

“Yeah, I know, Dan, I’m sorry. I just feel so bad with him up there and reporters calling him non-stop. I bet they’re camped outside his door by now.”

Dan sympathized. He hadn’t been able to talk to Len either so he didn’t know what was going on up there. They hung up. Matt came by, and he was excited.

“Hey, Dan, do you see the opportunity here?”

“No, Matt. Opportunity for what?”

“You and Len are now celebrities in the brand new field of Internet crime busting! You can fucking own it.”

Dan laughed out loud. “Internet crime busting. By emailing attachments around?”

“Hey, read the press. They make it look like you’re Sherlock Holmes and Watson for the network age.”

Dan just shook his head. “Actually, I was thinking more Batman and Robin.”

“These imbecile reporters,” he said to himself. “If the facts don’t fit the legend, print the legend.”

While he was thinking about reporters, his phone rang, and it was someone from Press Relations at Oracle. She warned him not to talk to reporters at all, since the story said he had used Oracle resources to track down this case. He didn’t try to argue with her; he just got her phone number and said he’d pass it on to any reporters who called him. She also reminded him of the policies on using corporate resources for non-Oracle work.

* * *

Len’s phone rang early that morning. This was unusual, since he didn’t have many clients anymore.

“Hello, is this Len Saunders?” the voice asked. “This is he” he answered.

“Mr. Saunders, my name is Jennifer Mauger and I’m calling from the Associated Press.”

“The Associated Press! Are you sure you have the right number?”

“You’re the Len Saunders who was assaulted yesterday for busting up an embezzling ring?”

He laughed. “An ‘embezzling ring’? Two older ladies stealing some money to play bingo? That’s what you’re calling an embezzling ring?”

Jennifer didn’t want to argue about his characterization of the story. She pressed on.

“There’s a story in a Sacramento newspaper about this incident, Mr. Saunders. Would you care to comment on it?”

Len said he hadn’t seen the story, so she read it to him. It seemed to lean heavily on the high-tech connection between him and Dan, Dan’s use of the Internet and on his executive daughter, and especially on whether this signaled a new trend in using the Internet to solve crimes. The story explained, for the benefit of readers who’d never heard of it, that “the Internet” was a brand new thing that was starting to break out of the closed academic world it had grown up in.

Len thought back to the conversation with the reporter on Sunday night. He hadn’t thought much about it since then, and figured this was going to be a Page 10 story, if it even got printed. He recalled that the reporter did ask him a lot of questions about the Internet, but he told her it was not a big deal. He decided to call her and set her straight again.

Before he could find her number, the phone rang again. It was another reporter, who said he was from UPI. He patiently answered that guy’s questions, which seemed to be even more stupid than the previous one’s. This guy was also not much interested in Len’s downplaying of the incident.

Then it was another reporter, and another. For one call, he had to put the phone down because a reporter and a cameraman were knocking on his door. He politely told them he had no comment for them and closed the door.

This was getting ridiculous. He decided to take the dogs, get out of the house, and go somewhere they couldn’t find him.