Yamaguchi’s mother (addressed to him through his AfterNet address), asking him whether he knew why she hadn’t returned her messages.
How the hell did she get my email address? he wondered, then realized she probably just looked it up from his postings. I really shouldn’t post my address everywhere. I hope I don’t have to change it. He sent her back a message saying that Linda was sick and that he was sure she’d return her email messages once she felt better.
And he got back a real response from AfterNet security.
From: (Steve Howland)
[email protected]To:
[email protected]Subject: Re: Missing persons inquiry 20041219-0324
Date: December 19, 2004 5:34 p.m. MST
Dear Officer Munroe,
I’m sorry about the delay in getting back to you regarding your inquiry about Brian Thompson (minerofLove). We always want to work with the police, but your situation made it difficult because we can’t normally initiate a trace based on an email request, but my supervisor said to go ahead because it’s you.
Mr. Thompson last logged in to denver.theAfterNet.net at 3:35 p.m. MST December 11 from the downtown branch of the Denver Public Library. He used a public terminal, stayed on 23 minutes and went to the entertainment forum. He didn’t leave any messages. He doesn’t use the AfterNet as his email server, so we don’t know when he last checked his mail, but his address is
[email protected], so I’m afraid you’ll need to get any other email information from Microsoft.
If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me again, or if I’m off duty, just tell anyone at
[email protected] that your case number is 20041219-0324 and they can look up this incident.
Thanks,
Steve Howland
AfterNet security
Munroe sent a quick email to Brian’s mother, quoting the message from AfterNet security and also asking whether she’d heard from Brian. Then he opened a browser and went to the Denver subdomain of the AfterNet and the entertainment forum. He did a search and looked for all the messages that were posted in the forum from Dec. 5 through Dec. 11. Most of the messages were mundane: some Christmas party invitations (including a Christmas Eve get together at the downtown Tattered Cover sponsored by the AfterNet — I should remember that ), a poetry reading by a disembodied author ( I won’t remember that ) and a plug for the Christmas lights at the Denver Botanic Garden.
So far, Munroe didn’t see anything that would be of interest to a disembodied 23-year-old out-of-towner. Of course, it was possible that a message that referred to an event during that timeframe had already been removed. So Munroe left a message in the forum asking any visitors whether they knew of such an event. He wasn’t optimistic — many of the visitors to the forum were one-time or infrequent visitors, but he couldn’t think what else to do. He also sent another message to AfterNet security to see if they could retrieve deleted messages, but he wasn’t hopeful about that, either.
Munroe spent the rest of the night and the early morning reading. He had discovered Project Gutenberg and right now was devouring Edgar Rice Burroughs. He’d remembered reading A Princess of Mars as a kid and now the idea of the ageless John Carter, fighting man of Virginia, delighted him.
About 9 a.m. Monday morning one of the detectives in missing persons came by and taped something on the side of Munroe’s terminal, with the note “Thought you’d find this funny.” It was a cartoon and was adapted from the old New Yorker cartoon showing two dogs at a computer and the caption, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This one showed the Grim Reaper, with the trademark sickle, sitting at a terminal and the caption, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re not dead.”
Munroe stared at it awhile and just couldn’t find the humor. He knew what they were going for, but it just didn’t have the right — something. He