Darknet

by John R. Little

  She paused and tried to figure out which of those ideas she might believe was true.

  “I have no fucking clue, to be honest. I just was grateful and didn’t want to question anything.”

  “Yeah.” Maria held up her glass. “Here’s to the fourth bringing you a little bit of your own independence back, babe.”

  Cindy laughed and clinked glasses, knowing that freedom had been on her mind a lot the past couple of weeks.

  “So . . .” She started to say what was on her mind but couldn’t figure out how to start.

  “So . . . ?” parroted Maria.

  “See, I interviewed this guy last week. Ryan found him and it was like the weirdest thing.”

  “Yeah? Weird how? Weird kinky? Cause I could get into that, you know.”

  Cindy didn’t like lying to her friend, but she felt embarrassed about the truth. It was she who had asked Ryan to book the guy onto her show. She had chatted to a stranger on the Internet recently and she wanted to know more. She wanted to know what was possible.

  “Weird like he knew about things that the rest of us never hear a damned thing about. Something he called the deep web. It’s stuff on the Internet that nobody really knows how to find.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, you know how Google knows everything right? If you ever want to find out about the most obscure thing, you can search and get back a ridiculous number of hits. He actually asked me on-air to search for ‘snow sandals.’ Who the fuck has ever heard of snow sandals? Anyhow, I did it and got back 26,000 hits.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. You can find anything on the Internet.”

  “But it turns out you can’t.”

  Cindy stopped when she realized her wine glass was empty. She waved to the waitress who was slouched behind the bar, bored with having so few customers.

  “What can’t you find?” asked Maria.

  “There’s 500 times more stuff out there on the Internet than Google knows about. Five freaking hundred!”

  “Get out! That’s ridiculous.”

  “Most of it is incredibly boring, like corporate finances and shit like that. But there’s other things, dark things, dangerous things. It was just an amazing interview.”

  “Who was this guy?”

  “From the university. Doctor Rusty Moore.”

  Maria shrugged. Cindy wasn’t surprised, because she’d never heard of the guy before, either.

  The waitress brought over two fresh glasses of the Merlot and took away the old ones.

  “Wish I could still smoke in here,” said Maria. “I liked the good old days.”

  “You haven’t smoked in years.”

  “Still liked the freedom to do it if I wanted.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “So what are these dark things you found out about?”

  Cindy smiled. “He didn’t give me enough details. We ran out of time, but that’s what I want to find out.”

  * * *

  They stayed out till almost midnight, Cindy feeling choice and freedom and relief wash over her like a morning shower, and she loved it. She didn’t want it to end, even when Maria started yawning.

  Cindy stared at Maria, wanting to say something—anything—that would keep the night going. She knew she could do it. She could switch the chat back to the deep web and give some of the hints that she’d heard yesterday. She was hesitating, though, and she wasn’t sure why. Partly it was because she wanted to experience it herself before talking about it.

  And what better time?

  “You really gotta go, girlfriend?”

  Maria yawned again and nodded. She swallowed the last drops of wine in her glass and said, “You need me, you call. You know I’ll be there.”

  “I do know.”

  Cindy tried to smile, but it was forced. She tried harder, not wanting to make Maria feel guilty. When that didn’t work, she decided it was just time to get moving.

  “I’ll e-mail you, babe.”

  The two girls hugged and started toward the exit. Suddenly, Maria stopped and turned to Cindy.

  “Something’s wrong. More than normal. You want to talk? Really talk?”

  Cindy blinked away tears.

  “God, we’ve been at it four hours. I’m tired, too, you know.”

  Cindy wanted to hug Maria, hold her tightly and tell her everything that was on her mind, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair.

  “You get the first cab. You’ve got work in the morning. I get to snooze till long after you’re adding up debits and credits or whatever the fuck you do.”

  Maria laughed. “Well, really, if you need to talk, you know I’m there.”

  “I know.” Now Cindy smiled for real. Two taxis arrived soon after and the friends said good-night one last time.

  * * *

  Cindy’s cab dropped her off at home a little after 12:30. She thought she’d be dead tired after being out so much later than normal, but she actually felt invigorated.

  She wanted to find out the secrets that the Internet had been hiding from her. Talking about the deep web with Maria had excited her. Part of her wanted more,

  (freedom)

  more knowledge, more understanding of what really was out there. It reminded her vaguely of some of the old-style NASA space missions that sent robotic probes to the outer planets of the solar system, returning incredible photographs of Jupiter and Saturn. When she saw those images, she gazed in fascination, knowing that this was the first time in human history people could see close-ups of planets a billion miles away. That night, she walked outside after dark and stared up at the sky, just marveling at what might be possible.

  This felt the same. The deep web. Her radio guest the week before had called it the wild, wild west of the Internet.

  She wanted it.

  She walked into her house and set the security alarm. The home she shared with Tony and Avril was a sprawling rancher in west Seattle that backed onto a wooded area, and about a half-mile beyond that, the waters of Puget Sound flowed.

  Cindy checked on Avril. She was sound asleep, dead quiet in her bed. Her blonde hair was wrapped around her face like seaweed and Cindy carefully moved it to the sides. Avril was a pint-sized version of her mom, and at times Cindy actually could feel they were twins. She remembered exactly what it was like to be a ten-year-old skinny blonde girl with a lopsided smile.

  “I love you, sweet-pea,” she whispered.

  She shut Avril’s door, careful not to make the slightest sound, and then she peeked into the master bedroom.

  Tony was sleeping, quiet snores escaping rhythmically, as if matching a hidden metronome.

  Good, she thought.

  Once he was out, her husband was a sound sleeper. He wouldn’t wake until his clock radio burst on at 6:00 a.m. Five days a week the radio woke her too, and she always started the day with the tiny irritation of knowing that he deliberately tuned the radio to a station other than the one she worked for.

  She clicked the bedroom door shut and walked to the other end of the house, where Cindy and Tony shared a studio office. One side had an elaborate computer system hooked up to the best stereo and video equipment Tony had been able to find. Money wasn’t a concern to him, since Cindy always made enough money to cover any bills he ran up.

  Her side of the office was plain. She just had a Samsung laptop sitting on a rickety folding table she’d picked up for thirty bucks at Wal-Mart.

  She waited for Windows to boot up and tried to remember what Dr. Moore had talked about.

  “You need to download Tor,” her guest had said. “It’s an acronym for The Onion Router, which is meaningless to most of us.” He laughed when he said that.

  Cindy launched Google and typed in Tor. The first hit was a site called www.torproject.org and she clicked the link.

  There it was.

  “That was too easy,” she said.

  She started to read some of the information on the page but quickly got bored. It was just repeating t
he basic stuff she’d heard from her guest, but he’d been much more entertaining. Tor allowed people to use the Internet anonymously with no chance of anybody seeing what she was doing.

  Cindy hesitated with the mouse cursor hovering over the Download button.

  Do I really know what I’m getting myself into?

  She stood up and stretched and then walked to the kitchen, taking two cans of beer from the fridge. Cindy rarely drank alone, but somehow tonight it seemed like she needed a bit of additional strength to push that damned button.

  Besides, what’s a couple more after drinking so much with Maria?

  She popped the tab, took a long drink and then stormed back to the laptop and didn’t hesitate. She pressed the Download button and watched as the Tor software marched through the cable system to find a home on her hard drive.

  Download Complete.

  “That was fast.”

  She thought about phoning Maria to tell her what she was doing, but of course her friend wouldn’t have appreciated the call this time of night.

  Cindy McKay smiled. She knew how to smile like a professional, not because she learned it for her radio interviews, but because she was lucky enough to be born with the kind of naturally brilliant smile that everybody she knew wished they had. The only other person she knew with a smile like that was her own daughter. Twins in a pod.

  My little pea-pod.

  Cindy jerked her head when she realized she had already started running the software. She started poking around and looking at what she found.

  When she realized what she was looking at, a small part of her remaining innocence died.

  * * *

  Three hours passed before Cindy managed to stop herself from looking at the wonders of the deep web. She wanted to keep going, but the radio would start playing country music in only a couple of hours. She had to be asleep when Tony woke, and she knew it was going to be hard to find that sleep after what she’d seen.

  She took six empty beer cans and rinsed them before tossing them in the small recycle bin by the back door. She felt utterly sober. When she crawled into bed beside her husband, she closed her eyes and tried to stop tears from leaking out.

  She’d found that the seedier part of the deep web was sometimes called DarkNet.

  Somewhere in the deep recesses of the Internet, she imagined DarkNet smiling. One more customer had arrived.

  Chapter 2

  June 30

  Earlier that day, a man walked into the Seattle First Music store carrying an acoustic guitar by the neck. It was black with the middle section converging to a midnight blue.

  He looked sheepishly around and saw a clerk standing behind the counter.

  The clerk was Tony McKay, Cindy’s husband. He heard the bell jingle as the customer walked into the store but he pretended not to. He looked at the display of picks sitting on the counter, moving a couple of them as if wanting to be sure they were lined up perfectly.

  “Hey there,” the man said. “Can you help me?”

  Tony looked up and smiled broadly, allowing the customer to relax a bit.

  “Course I can help you, sir. We’re always here to help.”

  “I bought this guitar last week from the other guy. He said if it wasn’t my thing I could bring it back.” He lifted the guitar with both hands, as if it were an offering to the music gods. “Guess it just wasn’t what I was looking for.”

  “No problem at all. We stand behind all our products.”

  Tony took the guitar and looked at it closely, pretending to admire the colors, but in fact he was checking to be sure there was no damage. He remembered every aspect of that guitar, since he’d never seen one exactly like it in his life. It’d been for sale in the store for six months, and he’d been sad when Jesse sold it.

  “Love the colors,” he whispered. “I almost want to buy it myself, but I’ve got too many.”

  The customer nodded. “I thought it’d be great, but you know, it just didn’t feel right in my hands. It’s not the one that I really can live with.”

  Tony said, “I hear ya. I know exactly what you mean.”

  He lifted the strap over his shoulder and started to strum a chord.

  The customer glanced at his watch, but Tony pretended not to notice. He pressed down on a couple of frets and played another chord. And another. Then he started playing for real, the familiar music of the song’s intro filling the store. He loved playing that song.

  He cleared his throat and started to sing along with the music:

  Silly songs, silly girls

  Riding down the highway to Long Beach

  Silly summer, silly love

  Make my life the stuff of dreams…

  All of a sudden the customer started to laugh, taking Tony by surprise. He stopped the music and paid attention to the man for the first time. He had a full brown beard that carried a streak of gray to match the wisps on top of his head. Older than Tony.

  “Funny?”

  “Just that I haven’t heard that stupid song in, what, ten years?”

  Tony laughed along with him. “Yeah, it’s been a while since I made it a hit.”

  The man stared. “You?”

  “That’s my song, mister.”

  “You’re Tony McKay? Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause no offense.”

  Tony grinned and took the guitar off, hanging it back up with dozens of others that hung on hooks from the ceiling.

  “No worries, amigo. At least you remember who I am. More than I can say for a lot of people.”

  “It was a good song for its time. It was everywhere.”

  “That was what they call a magical summer. I was 24 when I wrote it, 25 when Paul McCartney was on Larry King and mentioned it. Couldn’t help be a hit after that, could it?”

  The man shoved his hand into his pocket. “Here’s the receipt.”

  Tony looked at it. He’d paid $480 for a guitar that was worth about $200. Good job, Jesse. Too bad it didn’t stick.

  He rung the void up on the POS system and handed the man a receipt back. “It’ll be reversed on your credit card.”

  “Thanks.” The man hesitated and added, “I just think it wasn’t for me.”

  “Don’t give it a thought. Look around and see if anything else appeals to you.”

  “Maybe.” He turned and looked up at the other guitars hanging, but he didn’t seem to be that interested.

  Somebody told him he got ripped off, Tony knew. Well, no skin off my nose.

  “Hey,” the man said as he turned back to Tony. “You sell sheet music, right? You got the music for Summer Drive? Maybe I’ll learn that. Kind of a souvenir from meeting you, you know?”

  Tony laughed. “Sure. Sheet music is alphabetical by title over to the far end.” He pointed toward the old cedar cabinets that held copies of thousands of songs.

  When the guy went to look, Tony sat back on the stool behind the counter and tried to unclench his hands. He knew he looked totally relaxed, but all he wanted to do was fucking strangle the asshole. He’d laughed at his song.

  A few minutes later, he heard the bell when the man left without buying a copy of the music.

  * * *

  Tony spent the rest of the afternoon behind the counter. Only two other customers came in, and they were both just lookie-loos. After working at the store for more than a decade, Tony knew within seconds if somebody walking in the door actually wanted something or if they were just killing time. He never bothered with them. When he first started working there, he had tried. He’d go over and flash his million-dollar smile and be the stranger’s best friend, showing him or her the latest instruments or cleaning accessories or music or whatever they pretended to be interested in.

  Hey, there was always a chance they’d buy, right?

  Nope. He didn’t waste the energy anymore.

  Sometimes, though, a real customer would come in. They’d be focused and clear and would glance up at the guitars, or they’d look around to see the
drums at the far end of the store, or they’d zero in on Tony and ask about clarinets or oboes or trumpets or whatever else was on their mind.

  Those were the customers Tony took care of these days. At 39, his bones were starting to creak, and he felt the first twinges of age seeping through his joints.

  Besides, he had better things to do than waste his time on fake customers.

  After the guy left who didn’t buy the sheet music for Summer Drive, he couldn’t help thinking back to that magical summer.

  Tony had been 24. He’d wanted to be a musician since he was 13, and his life had revolved around learning the guitar and very little else. He grabbed three friends for backup and finally decided the time was right.

  They called themselves Tony McKay and the Bouncing Marlies. Stupid name, he told himself. Wish I’d known that back then.

  Tony fronted all the money. $2,000 to record and press 500 copies of their first album, called Our First.

  Stupid title.

  Tony sent 100 copies to every radio station he could find in the Pacific Northwest, along with a press release he composed announcing the debut album from a fabulous new indie group. He encouraged the stations to play Summer Drive, because it seemed the most radio-friendly. He thought it would remind people of Bachman Turner Overdrive, even if nobody else really ever noticed the resemblance.

  Once each week, he’d phone each station, but nobody wanted to talk to him. There was only one station he knew of that inserted the song into their rotation . . . WHSI in Tacoma. It was a tiny station with a listening audience of only about 10,000 people.

  The DJ was a woman named Cindy Jameson. This was long before she rebranded herself as Cin.

  Tony called her every couple of days to encourage her to keep playing the song, and she did. She laughed with him on the phone, which he thought was special until a year later when he realized she laughed with everybody. It was why her fans loved her.

  As complete coincidence would have it, that summer Paul McCartney was touring and performed at the Seattle Kingdome.