16 04:43:31 REMOTE FROM DCCSYS
RECEIVED: FROM UUPS15 BY DCCSYS.DCC.COM ID AA02599;
TUE, 16 JUN 4:42:19 PST
RECEIVED: FROM UWA.PCM.COM.EDU BY UU5.PSI.COM
(5.65B/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINET)
ID AA28153; TUE, 16 JUN 04:24:58 -0500
RECEIVED: FROM RIVERSTYX.PCM.COM.EDU BY UWA.PCM.COM.EDU (4.1/SMI-4.1)
ID AA15969; TUE, 16 JUN 04:24:56 PST
RECEIVED: BY RIVERSTYX.PCM.COM.EDU (920330.SGI/5.6)
ID AA00448; TUE, 16 JUN 04:24:56 -0500
DATE: TUE, 16 JUN 04:24:56 -0500
FROM: CHARON @UWA.PCM.COM.EDU (AFRIEND)
MESSAGE-ID: <[email protected]. COM.EDU >
Sanders stared. The message hadn't come to him from inside the company at all. He was looking at an Internet routing. Internet was the vast worldwide computer network connecting universities, corporations, government agencies, and private users. Sanders wasn't knowledgeable about the Internet, but it appeared that the message from "Afriend," network name CHARON, had originated from UWA.PCM.COM.EDU, wherever that was. Apparently some kind of educational institution. He pushed the PRINT SCREEN button, and made a mental note to turn this one over to Bosak. He needed to talk to Bosak anyway.
He went down the hall and got the sheet as it came out of the printer. Then he went back to his office and stared at the screen. He decided to try a reply to this person.
FROM: [email protected]
ANY HELP GREATLY APPRECIATED.
SANDERS
He pushed the SEND button. Then he deleted both the original message and his own reply.
SORRY, YOU CANNOT DELETE THIS MAIL.
Sometimes e-mail was protected with a flag that prevented it from being deleted. He typed: UNPROTECT MAIL.
THE MAIL IS UNPROTECTED.
He typed: DELETE MAIL.
SORRY, YOU CANNOT DELETE THIS MAIL.
What the hell is this? he thought. The system must be hanging up. Maybe it had been stymied by the Internet address. He decided to delete the message from the system at the control level. He typed: SYSTEM.
WHAT LEVEL?
He typed: SYSOP
SORRY, YOUR PRIVILEGES DO NOT INCLUDE SYSOP CONTROL.
"Christ," he said. They'd gone in and taken away his privileges. He couldn't believe it.
He typed: SHOW PRIVILEGES.
SANDERS, THOMAS L.
PRIOR USER LEVEL: 5 (SYSOP)
USER LEVEL CHANGE: TUE JUNE 16 4:50 PM PST
CURRENT USER LEVEL: 0 (ENTRY)
NO FURTHER MODIFICATIONS
There it was: they had locked him out of the system. User level zero was the level that assistants in the company were given.
Sanders slumped back in the chair. He felt as if he had been fired. For the first time, he began to realize what this was going to be like.
Clearly, there was no time to waste. He opened his desk drawer, and saw at once that the pens and pencils were neatly arranged. Someone had already been there. He pulled open the file drawer below. Only a half-dozen files were there; the others were all missing.
They had already gone through his desk.
Quickly, he got up and went out to the big filing cabinets behind Cindy's desk. These cabinets were locked, but he knew Cindy kept the key in her desk. He found the key, and unlocked the current year's files.
The cabinet was empty. There were no files there at all. They had taken everything.
He opened the cabinet for the previous year: empty.
The year before: empty.
All the others: empty.
Jesus, he thought. No wonder Cindy had been so cool. They must have had a gang of workmen up there with trolleys, cleaning everything out during the afternoon.
Sanders locked the cabinets again, replaced the key in Cindy's desk, and headed downstairs.
The press office was on the third floor. It was deserted now except for a single assistant, who was closing up. "Oh. Mr. Sanders. I was just getting ready to leave."
"You don't have to stay. I just wanted to check some things. Where do you keep the back issues of ComLine?"
"They're all on that shelf over there." She pointed to a row of stacked issues. "Was there anything in particular?"
"No. You go ahead home."
The assistant seemed reluctant, but she picked up her purse and headed out the door. Sanders went to the shelf. The issues were arranged in six-month stacks. Just to be safe, he started ten stacks back-five years ago.
He began flipping through the pages, scanning the endless details of game scores and press releases on production figures. After a few minutes, he found it hard to pay attention. And of course he didn't know what he was looking for, although he assumed it was something about Meredith Johnson.
He went through two stacks before he found the first article.
NEW MARKETING ASSISTANT NAMED
Cupertino, May 10: DigiCom President Bob Garvin today announced the appointment of Meredith Johnson as Assistant Director of Marketing and
Promotion for Telecommunications. She will report to Howard Gottfried in M and P. Ms. Johnson, 30, came to us from her position as Vice President for Marketing at Conrad Computer Systems of Sunnyvale. Before that, she was a senior administrative assistant at the Novell Network Division in Mountain View. Ms. Johnson, who has degrees from Vassar College and Stanford Business School, was recently married to Gary Henley, a marketing executive at CoStar. Congratulations! As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms. Johnson . . .
He skipped the rest of the article; it was all PR fluff. The accompanying photo was standard B-school graduate: against a gray background with light coming from behind one shoulder, it showed a young woman with shoulderlength hair in a pageboy style, a direct businesslike stare just shy of harsh, and a firm mouth. But she looked considerably younger than she did now.