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14.

WolfGirl96 Lionel, is that you?

SFWired1 Fancy running into you again.

WolfGirl96 It’s not an accident. I was looking for you.

SFWired1 Are you a stalker?

WolfGirl96 No!…Wait, what’s a stalker?

SFWired1 Someone who obsessively pursues someone else. Forget it. It was a bad joke.

WolfGirl96 How about a good joke, then? What’s black, white, and green all over?

SFWired1 I don’t know, what?

WolfGirl96 A panda during mealtime.

SFWired1 That is not a good joke.

WolfGirl96 Don’t blame me. I read it on the back of a cereal box.

SFWired1 OK, I gotta ask—how old are you?

WolfGirl96 Seventeen.

SFWired1 Huh. I probably shouldn’t be chatting with you.

WolfGirl96 Why?

SFWired1 You’re younger than I thought.

WolfGirl96 My dad says that age is just a number, boundaries and limitations should be based on intellectual capacity rather than the date of your birth. Why? How old are you?

SFWired1 Your dad sounds like a piece of work. I’m twenty-one.

WolfGirl96 Did you go to college?

SFWired1 I graduated from Stanford a year and a half ago.

WolfGirl96 Isn’t that pretty young to be a college graduate?

SFWired1 I was kind of a kid prodigy. I started college at 16. Finished in 3 years and when I graduated I got recruited for this job.

WolfGirl96 And do you feel like a tool of the industrial-technological system?

SFWired1 What???

WolfGirl96 Having a job. Your personal agency being sacrificed to the god of corporate profit. Your life being reduced to routine obedience and oppression. Does that ever bother you?

SFWired1 Where the hell did you get that idea?

WolfGirl96 Something I read.

SFWired1 Hey, Jane? You’re weird.

WolfGirl96 I know. I’m sorry.

SFWired1 That’s OK, I kind of likeit.

WolfGirl96 So, here’s the reason I was looking for you. I need some advice. I want to find information about someone who died 13 years ago. Is there a place I could do that on the internet?

SFWired1 Use a search engine.

WolfGirl96 Tried it. Got nothing.

SFWired1 Then try going to a library. If you know where they died, the library there will have microfiche of the local newspaper, with obituaries.

WolfGirl96 I think she lived in Silicon Valley. Where is that, exactly? Should I go there?

SFWired1 Silicon Valley isn’t really a place. Well, not a city at least. It’s kind of the whole metropolitan area between San Francisco and San Jose, grouped together by profession. A mass delusion, you could say. Anyway, you need something more specific than that.

WolfGirl96 Oh. Another issue is that I only have her first name.

SFWired1 All you have is a first name and no place of death? Well, you got me there. Sorry.

WolfGirl96 So there’s no secret online database that only insiders know about?

SFWired1 Ha. Not yet. Maybe someday. The big secret of the internet is that there is no there, there. It’s still more hype than reality.

WolfGirl96 I think it’s pretty incredible.

SFWired1 You’re easily impressed.

WolfGirl96 And you’re really jaded.

SFWired1 You’re not wrong, Jane.