Neither Night Nor Day

I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se’nnights nine times nine
—Macbeth I.iii

It was nearly midnight and I was back on the cyberstreets of Seattle. There’s a whole virtual world that underlies the reality we see with our eyes. In my mind, that virtual world is more real than the spring rain that had returned late tonight. April showers bring May flowers as the saying goes. In cyberspace I could have flowers whenever I wanted them.

This was the kind of case I hate. It was obvious to me that nobody wins. I should never have taken it in the first place. But the young widow seemed so sweet and vulnerable. She was hanging on to the dream of her husband and she just had to know if the real man had been as devoted and loving as she thought.

Better to stay living in her virtual world instead of his.

It was a sad story. Her husband had been killed in action in his second tour of duty, just days before he was scheduled to come home. What they shipped instead was not her living, breathing love, but a flag-draped coffin and a footlocker full of personal belongings. In the trunk was her husband’s laptop computer.

It was password-protected, of course. There’s some sort of army regulation these days about seeing that basic security measures are adhered to in the field. I suppose they think that a soldier’s laptop could be a security risk if it fell into the enemy’s hands. But they are surprisingly lax about giving the same device to the family of the deceased. Apparently they place a lot of faith in the family of fallen soldiers, or in the impossibility of breaking the password.

Of course, that’s false assurance. If I have direct access to a computer, I own everything on it.

That’s what she said she wanted.

She was so devastated by the loss of her husband that she couldn’t sleep at night. She wept all the time—including while she was in my office. She had to know if he was as devoted to her as she thought or if there was something he hadn’t told her. Was he having an affair? Was she the only one for him? She couldn’t let him rest until she knew. She begged me to look at his computer and tell her if there was anything on it at all that showed he was unfaithful to her, and then to return the computer to her with the password unlocked.

It was a no-win situation. I couldn’t tell for sure if she was hoping he had been unfaithful or that he hadn’t. On one hand, if he’d been unfaithful, she could move on with her life. Let her love be buried with him. She could let go. On the other hand, if he had been as devoted as he appeared, she would have the comfort and joy of knowing she had been fully and completely loved. But the way it was, she couldn’t mourn in confidence or put him out of her mind. She just had to know.

We talked about all this and I suggested she see a counselor before she made a final decision. She was adamant and suggested that if I was unwilling to do the job, she would find someone else. Since she’d come on the recommendation of a mutual friend, I didn’t want to blow her off. So now, just a couple of days from when I told her I’d have it ready for her, I finally pulled the laptop out of its case and set it on my desk. I pulled the drapes and turned off all the lights except the keyboard lamp at my desk. The world around me went dark and I entered the virtual reality of Corporal Mike Mason.

***

When I’d recovered from Hope dumping me six year ago—at least sufficiently to function again—I found this little efficiency apartment on Capitol Hill. My loft had been designed to show off a rising star in the tech world with loud parties and beautiful artifacts—like Hope. This little apartment was a cave I could hide in and lick my wounds. But in six years it had become a refuge from everything in the real world and a gateway into whatever I wanted in the virtual world.

As my neighbor Eric was helping move my meager possessions into the room, he started making decorating suggestions. He lived in an identical efficiency the floor below mine and had explored dozens of tricks to optimize the space. Then he saw that I had a recliner chair and a box of clothes.

“We need to go shopping for you,” he said brightly. “I have a pickup truck. Let’s go to Ikea!” I declined, politely.

“First, I want to paint.”

“Oh yes. I see you in pastels. Blue would go so well with your eyes.”

“Black.”

“Oh Honey, she really did a number on you, didn’t she.” I just shrugged my shoulders back at him, so he continued. “All right, Hamlet. Black it is. But you do not want to paint these walls.”

“Why?”

“You’ll never get them white again and your lease specifically states that you will leave the apartment in the same condition as you found it, including white walls. Just ask Jared.”

“But I need it to be black.”

“Okay. Here’s what we do…”

It was really a genius solution and during the decorating that followed the next week, Eric and I became good friends. My apartment manager, Jared, even approved the plan with the stipulation that I had to restore the apartment to original condition before I left. He collected an additional month’s rent as a damage deposit in case I skipped and he had to hire painters.

We hung paintable strippable wallpaper and painted the room. We hung black drapes. We tacked black fabric to the ceiling. When we were done, I had a black room in which even the glow of the monitor was instantly absorbed.

***

Who are you really, Corporal Mason?

I’d had his widow fill out a rather extensive questionnaire. She didn’t understand at first why I wanted things like names of brothers, sisters, parents, pets, schools, mascots, and hobbies in addition to social security numbers, serial number, addresses, and birthdates. Once I explained, however, that passwords were only rarely random, she filled out the form with more information than I was sure was necessary. In an effort to make a password memorable, people often use familiar names, numbers, or terms for their password.

I was prepared to enter all the information in a data base and let my software do the work of cracking the password. I set the computer up on a wired network and then attempt to access it with my own computer, plugging in each potential password in succession from the data base. I have secondary software that will write variants of words substituting numbers for letters and capitalizing first letters of syllables.

I never needed to run the software.

Elaine831, his wife’s name and birthday. Testing shows a 72% Strong password rating. Unless you happen to know his wife’s name and birthday and the fact that Army regulations stipulate that “passwords must be at least an eight-character string using the 36 alphabetic-numeric characters. At least two of the characters should be numeric.” Just like the Navy.

***

I followed him down streets I’d never walked where every shadow could be a sniper. He ducked into a doorway, swinging his rifle left and right as the light on his helmet swept the room. In the empty silence that greeted him, he allowed himself a deep breath, shook the sweat out of his eyes, and then moved back into the street.

By the time I tracked him for a quarter of a mile, sweat was running down my forehead as well. My heart was racing when I heard shots fired. He slammed himself against the wall, trying to disappear against the rough wall behind him. The shots were a street over. Not his responsibility. Another deep breath and he forced himself to move forward again.

At the next door he repeated the process. Enter. Sweep. Breathe. He was no longer certain if the droplets running down his cheeks were his sweat or his tears.

At the end of the street, a Humvee with a man in the turret waited for him. The door opened and he dove in. Two others joined him. They moved out, returning to base. They joked and laughed. There had been no one there in the empty buildings waiting to attack them. Got them on the run now, don’t we? They’ll never show their faces here again.

I trailed along watching, seeing for the first time the threats the young soldiers saw in every shadow, every bump in the road.

After the threat was removed, he sought the comforts all soldiers seek. He read email from home and talked to Elaine. There was no beer to be had. All he wanted was someone to talk to. The time difference dictated that she go to work and they had to break off their conversation before he was finished talking. There were lots of places online where he could find a comforting shoulder to cry on. Every day he was frightened. Every night he was awakened by any noise. He was exhausted. He just craved human comfort.

The chat room he chose was like any other in the long line of sleazy and dark holes where he could get lost. But this one was special. She was special. The first time he saw her webcam he thought he’d just seen Elaine. Of course, Elaine would never do the things this woman did. She’d never dance like this in front of so many men. But every time he saw her, he imagined for just a moment that it was Elaine—just trying to ease his constant fear and loneliness.

He was going to stop coming here. He wouldn’t come back tomorrow night. The dancer wouldn’t miss him, and if she did, he wouldn’t know about it. He just needed to spend a few more minutes with her.

***

Corporal Mike Mason’s life came to an end before his story was finished. He’d gone where I could not follow. I was snapped back into the reality of my black room, my armpits sweating and my head aching with fatigue. In front of me, only the glowing screen of his computer.

How was I going to answer his wife’s question? Had he been faithful to her? They were only pictures and chatrooms and webcams. He’d only been there because he was so lonely. And because she looked like Elaine. Surely though, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She was only concerned about the real world, not the virtual one.

I backed up his email to her, his daily journal, and his photos and music onto a thumb drive and shut down the computer. Then I turned to my own computer to write my report.

“I found no evidence on this computer that would suggest romantic or sexual involvement with a person outside his marriage. Attached is a backup of his personal files. I recommend that to fully optimize future use of this computer and ensure against the limited threat of viruses, that the drive be wiped and the system and desired software be installed fresh. The computer will then be fully usable or salable with a current value estimated at $450.”

By the time she could get the computer to another expert for analysis, the 21-day retention of browser history would have expired. There was little chance that Corporal Mason’s virtual life would ever impinge on the memory of his real life.

Now they could both be at peace.