Chasing Mercury

by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  “In English, Eleanor. Can’t you see the girl’s eyes are glazing over?”

  “I am speaking English. I don’t know how to explain it any other way.” She sighed and put the spoon she’d been holding on the counter.

  “Lay it on me. Who knows, I might be a big time computer nerd,” said 4B. Her smile gave Nora a little encouragement to try to explain.

  “I found a way to bridge the user privacy/targeted marketing gap for online retail. The program I developed uses an algorithm to parse certain information so the originator can predict behavior and then discretely market to them without spamming or stealing personal information from them. Like I said, the concept isn’t unique. People have been doing it for a long time. But the predictive algorithm that protects people’s identity is all mine, and it’s what sets it apart.”

  “The damn internet is full of companies collecting and selling information about people that they have no business having!” declared Aunt Mace. “Or worse! Damned NSA! National Security Agency, my patootie! More like Nosey Scumball Assholes!”

  Nora shrugged and laughed along with 4B before she continued.

  “I had to do a project my senior year in college, where I majored in programming and engineering. Aunt Mace was uploading her ideas to a simple website I designed for her to display her homesteading ideas. Her work started to go viral as social media became more popular. She was getting major attention, but none of it was making her any money. She was spending more money on the servers she had to employ to keep up with the traffic hitting her website than she was bringing in. One day she joked that she could break even if she got a consulting fee for the ideas she came up with. So, I worked on it for my senior project.”

  “How does it work?” asked 4B. Nora wondered if 4B was just being nice by asking, but she tried to explain.

  “By tracking unique image codes embedded in advertisements that, when triggered, will initiate an alg—“

  “English, Eleanor!” Aunt Mace interrupted with an impatient wave of her hand. Aunt Mace rolled her eyes and turned to 4B. “There’s some code on the pages, and somehow there is some matching of the whatchamacallits to the IP addresses, which tracks behaviors and files it away somehow. But the main thing is humans can’t see it, and they can’t take the information out of it,” explained Aunt Mace. Nora was impressed by how much Aunt Mace retained of the technical detail, for all her bellyaching about the technical speak.

  “That’s pretty much it. It’s also the unique aspect that sets it apart. The program can only suggest options to the user, who gets to choose to use it or ignore it. Depending on what the user selects, the program drives traffic back to Aunt Mace’s website where the user can create an account, become a contributor, or buy something. Contributors get to trade with each other and Aunt Mace. Those who just want to purchase can do just that. The whole process is meant to be gentle and non-invasive. Users can accept the invitation or ignore it and they’re not bothered again. They can be anonymous or be themselves. Privacy is a priority.”

  Nora paused to see if 4B was still with her.

  “I think I get it,” said 4B.

  “See Eleanor? If you speak in regular people language, their eyes don’t get that glassy look.”

  “Thanks for the lesson, Aunt Mace,” Nora intoned.

  “The end result is that people are more active when they feel safe, and active people spend more money and attract more users,” added Aunt Mace.

  “I don’t claim to understand all of it, but it sounds very smart,” said 4B, sounding impressed.

  “Damn smart, actually. She founded an entire company on it,” bragged Aunt Mace, dealing a new hand.

  “I thought you said you were a computer doctor,” said 4B, glancing at Nora. “This sounds a lot more complex than fixing computers.”

  “The fixing of computers is what I do now. I sold the software company before I moved up here.”

  “For a pretty penny, too,” chimed in Aunt Mace. “She never has to work again if she doesn’t want to. Neither would her kids, if she had any. Or her kids’ kids. Or her—”

  “I think she gets the picture, Aunt Mace,” interrupted Nora, embarrassed. “And look who’s talking. Your website community runs itself. She has the most loyal fan base on the internet.”

  “It’s a hobby. I like to do it.”

  “I like what I do, too,” said Nora.

  “You wouldn’t know it from the names you call some of those computers you bring home to work on,” laughed Aunt Mace.

  “Oh, those names are for the people who abuse their computers with some of the garbage they download onto them.”

  “You should see some of it,” laughed Aunt Mace.

  “Viruses?” asked 4B.

  “She’s talking about what they download along with the viruses.” Nora laughed.

  “Let’s just say that we have a lot of lonely people up here in Juneau. The winters can be sort of long… and the people who produce some of the content those lonely people use for company aren’t quite as privacy minded as our Nora,” offered Aunt Mace with a wink.

  “Oh! Porn!” laughed 4B, covering her mouth as she realized what they were talking about.

  “Yep,” said Nora. “Behind Utah and Hawaii, Alaska is the most active state per capita for viewing porn. Most of my work comes from cleaning up the malware people don’t know they’re downloading along with the porn.”

  “The first time Nora told me what she was doing and mentioned the word Trojan, I actually thought it was a safe-sex thing!” cackled Aunt Mace.

  “She shows you this stuff?” asked 4B, looking slightly uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Nora, needing to explain, hoping 4B didn’t all of a sudden see her as some sort of pervert, sharing dirty pictures with her frail and aged aunt, of all people.

  “I heard some interesting sounds coming from her front porch one day as I was puttering around in the garden. I could see Nora sitting at her desk, but the sounds coming through the window were very… interesting. Nora didn’t answer my knock, so I went in and what I saw over her shoulder… well, let’s just say that what was displayed on the screen was not something my Nora would be into. Me either. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude. Porn definitely has its place in a healthy—“

  “Aunt Mace!” yelled Nora.

  “Oh c’mon, Eleanor! I may be old, but I ain’t dead—yet! But even I have my lines.”

  “So you see some gross stuff in the course of your work?” asked 4B.

  “A little,” admitted Nora, giving 4B a relieved smile. There was no telling where Aunt Mace would have gone, had 4B not diverted the conversation. “Mostly it’s just fetish stuff. I figure it’s ‘to each his own’, you know? Sometimes I see some pretty hardcore stuff that isn’t okay.”

  “Nora busted up an international pedophile ring from up here a couple of years ago,” interrupted Aunt Mace with a proud look on her face.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I was cleaning up the temp files on a laptop and saw… some stuff no one should ever see. I called the cops and we set up a sting. It was mostly a couple of folks who moved up here from the lower 48 thinking geography somehow protected them. That’s the thing about the internet. You’re only a data stream away from the furthest place. Stupid, sick idiots. Anyway. Hundreds of people, all across the globe, got busted the day the sting went down. I’m glad to say I haven’t wandered across anything like that accidentally again.”

  “’Accidentally?’ As opposed to what? You say it like you might wander across it on purpose otherwise,” said 4B.

  “It’s another thing she does that’s changing the world,” said Aunt Mace proudly, getting up from her chair at the table. “Tell her, Eleanor, while I go wash my hands before dinner. Holding all of those shitty hands—“

  “Aunt Mace!” laughed Nora.

  Her aunt grinned mischievously as she shuffled to the restroom to wash up, and Nora was happy to hear her sound more and more like h
er old self. For the first time in a long time she had hope that Aunt Mace would pull through this awful sickness. Nora also had the medication, which was in the refrigerator. She had plans to start her aunt on it after dinner.

  “So, what’s this other thing you’re doing to change the world? You’re a surprising and remarkable woman, Nora Kavendash.” 4B rose from her chair at the table and approached Nora, taking the dishtowel Nora had draped across her shoulder and putting it behind Nora, so she could pull her close with it. 4B kissed her. “It sounds like you’re some sort of technical genius and a cyber cop on top of it all. It’s pretty hot.”

  Nora smiled and kissed 4B again. She was proud of all of her work, even the mundane jobs she did to help her fellow Alaskans out, but she was proudest of her work to find and prosecute predators of children. She had no problem telling 4B about that.

  “I created a program that searches for predators online. So, in a sense, I do go looking for it on purpose, but it’s all contained in the program. When it hits, I just ship it to the authorities and I never have to see anything. The one glimpse I got the first time was enough to make me sick forever. I’m happy I get to help send those sickos to jail.”

  “So you are some sort of cyber cop, then.”

  “Only without the uniform or gun.”

  “That’s pretty sexy. I always thought working in computers was a sexy profession—what, with all of the insertion, submission, RAM, GUI, hard drives…” joked 4B, batting her eyes at Nora.

  “Oh. You know how to talk dirty to me,” whispered Nora, turning down the fire on the sauce and stealing another kiss before Aunt Mace returned. “Then, let me tell you about the software side, and the bits and the bytes…”

  “Okay, you two! Enough of the technical foreplay. You’re going to ruin my appetite!” laughed Aunt Mace, sitting down at the table. They hadn’t even heard her come in.

  Aunt Mace’s energy faded quickly after dinner and she went to bed soon after they finished eating. Having insisted, 4B washed the dishes while Nora went through a stack of mail—much of it from the airline—and when they were finished, they went back to Nora’s place. As they climbed the short set of wooden steps up to the front door of Nora’s tiny A-frame, 4B walked slowly, staring at the clear, black sky blanketed with countless stars.

  “The universe seems to go on forever from here. I’ve never seen so many stars,” she whispered, holding tight to Nora’s arm. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I take it for granted now. When I’m down in the lower 48, I have to keep telling myself it isn’t overcast when I can only see the brightest stars. But it rains so much here, we have more overcast days than not.”

  “There’s something sweet and piney in the air.”

  “Ah, the sweet smell is the crabapple trees down by Glacier River. Aunt Mace used to pick them for canning, but this year she wasn’t up to it. So they’re falling to the ground and rotting. We might get to see some bears down there tomorrow gorging on them. The pine smell, well, that’s obvious with the cedar and hemlock all around us.”

  4B closed her eyes and breathed in.

  “I could get used to this.”

  Nora hoped 4B would have some time to do just that, but she didn’t say it. There was no need to press it. Things would fall into place the way they fell into place.

  Nora flipped a switch on the wall as they passed through the spacious mudroom and a lamp in the corner of the living room illuminated the cozy space inside of the cabin. The house was one large open room off of the initial mudroom. Gleaming wood floors throughout the house matched the rough-hewn pine paneled walls and high wood-beamed ceiling. A set of rustic glass-paned doors was centered on the back wall, which opened to a closed-in porch on the back of the cabin. A small kitchen with well-kept original appliances from the fifties took up the far right corner of the room, and an open office space, scattered with computer equipment in various stages of dismantle, took up the opposite corner. The entire front half of the space was a living room filled with soft leather furniture and built-in bookshelves, with a big wood stove in the corner. The front wall was composed almost entirely of windows. A huge rag rug that had been in the family for generations covered much of the floor and a scattering of smaller rugs dotted the rest of the floor space. A narrow set of varnished wooden stairs rose up from the left, ending at a loft landing outside of Nora’s bedroom. The one bathroom in the house—if you didn’t count the property’s original outhouse, which was just beyond the back porch—was upstairs off of Nora’s bedroom.

  Nora looked around and was glad to be home.

  “I love that I know where you live now. I can see you sitting in the chair over there near the stove on a snowy evening reading a book,” said 4B, pointing to Nora’s favorite chair with matching ottoman. 4B looked around. “But where’s your cat?”

  “How’d you know I have a cat?” asked Nora. She sniffed the air, mortified that Tack might have forgotten to keep the litter box clean while she was gone.

  “Hairs on your clothes. Your backpack was full of them.”

  Nora laughed. Java, her longhaired, mostly black cat, liked to lie in the clean clothes fresh out of the dryer. All of her clothes were covered in a fine layer of the clingy hair. She had gotten used to carrying a lint roller with her on trips a long time ago, but it had seemed pointless to use it when she had ended up wearing half the forest in her clothes after the airplane had gone down.

  “You’re good. Maybe you’re a detective in your real life.” She smiled at the familiar shrug 4B gave at Nora’s continuous guesses at 4B’s profession. “She’s around here somewhere. Java! Come here, girl,” called Nora, looking up at the loft where she expected to see a curious head peeking down at them between the burnished wood railings. Normally, Java would have run to her when the front door opened, but 4B was new—not to mention the cat was probably punishing Nora out of spite for having been gone so long. It didn’t matter that Tack always gave her more treats than Nora ever did.

  “Hold on a minute,” said 4B, stepping in front of Nora and encircling her waist with her arms. “I can’t wait to meet Java, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been alone, and I need a real kiss.”

  The kiss was slow and deep and Nora lost all sense of anything else except the way her body reacted to 4B’s touch. It was a new feeling, the hyper-awareness 4B’s kisses gave her. Every inch of her skin sang, and the soles of her feet seemed to be the only things tethering her to the earth while her heart soared into the stratosphere. She felt herself swell and flutter. Her lips became a focal point for the electricity that expanded throughout her body. Everything that wasn’t 4B in her arms receded from her thoughts.

  When their lips parted, Nora was out of breath. She leaned her forehead against 4B’s and enjoyed the feelings coursing through her body.

  “God, I love kissing you,” sighed Nora.

  4B’s voice was breathless, too, and deep when she spoke.

  “Would it be rude for me to ask you to take me to your bed right now? I’d love a tour later—and, of course, to meet Java, but I want you first.”

  In answer, Nora took 4B’s hand and led her up the steep stairs to the loft and through her open bedroom door. Moonlight shone through the large bedroom window, illuminating a large brass bed covered in a cream colored duvet. Nora took 4B by both hands and pulled her to the high, soft bed situatiated in the middle of the room. When the back of her thighs touched the edge of the mattress, she turned 4B and kissed her, pushing her onto the bed.

  “I enjoyed visiting with your aunt, but the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about doing this,” said 4B, looking beautiful lying on the duvet, wrapping her legs around Nora. Nora, who was still standing next to the bed, bent forward so she could put her hands on 4B. 4B sat up and slid her lips along Nora’s jawline. She left a tingling trail of kisses and nips down Nora’s throat. Each sensation went straight to Nora’s center, and Nora pressed into 4B as she lifted her head to provide unobstructed access.
/>
  “You do incredible things to me with your mouth,” whispered Nora, as she slid a hand up the bottom of the long-sleeved t-shirt 4B wore under an unzipped fleece vest. Nora’s fingers skimmed over twitching muscles as she caressed the silky skin of 4B’s abdomen and ribs, reaching up to cup her breast. The thin fabric of 4B’s bra slid beneath Nora’s palm, and 4B’s nipple responded. 4B gasped when Nora rolled it between her fingers, sending a shot of expectation down to Nora’s center.

  4B tangled her hands in the hair on either side of Nora’s face and pulled her head down to her breast. Nora moved the shirt and vest up, pushing the bra over to put her mouth on the warm bare skin. The velvet texture of 4B’s nipple brushed against Nora’s lips and she moaned to feel the tip grow even firmer against her tongue. 4B arched into her and Nora wrapped her in her arms, holding her close as she kissed her breasts, only stopping when 4B untangled her arms from around Nora to pull everything off over her head. Nude from the waist up, 4B leaned back on her elbows and raised an eyebrow, nodding at her hips, indicating to Nora the rest was her job. Nora gladly performed the task, removing the remainder of 4B’s clothing, kissing the skin she exposed. Her mouth watered as she slid 4B’s panties down her thighs, wanting to taste the warmth that hid between them. But she wanted to go slow. She satisfied herself with kissing the crease at 4B’s hip, inhaling the fragrance of what would come.

  When Nora dropped 4B’s jeans to the floor, she stood and studied the body before her. They hadn’t turned on the lamp when they entered the bedroom but the moonlight illuminated everything. 4B was a silver-toned portrait, edged in soft light, taking Nora’s breath away. Shadows defined her valleys, and light poured over the pale expanses of smooth skin. Nora stared as 4B waited, her abdomen lifting with each breath she took. Nora’s fingertips pulsed with the desire to trace every inch of 4B’s skin, to learn every line and memorize every curve.

  “Now you,” whispered 4B moving further onto the bed so her legs no longer dangled over the side. “I need to see you and feel you against me.”