Page Ch. 04

"Yeah, he's got a system in here somewhere and it was accessible from outside; that's how he took control of the cameras and reviewed the footage."

"Oh," I say feeling really foolish. "So it might be in the cloud already?"

"I hope not, but I need to check. I've already disabled external network traffic, but I'm thinking maybe I should locate the system here and physically disconnect the external connectivity altogether, but that might alert someone. How well do you know Gary?"

"Pretty well, I think. Of course, I thought I knew you too," I say trailing off. "What about the hacker, the files and the condo?"

"Well, from the files I've examined, it looks like bpodq is gathering basic data on you. I'm looking for any patterns out of what she's gotten into now and there's still no activity at the condo."

"That all sounds good, I guess."

"Let's get you set up on the new laptop so you can change all of your online account passwords and stuff," she says. She gets up and heads to the bedroom for the other laptop. "The thing that concerns me is that she's probably being paid to do it, so your finances probably aren't the target."

I sit and stew with that thought until Page returns, "What do you think they want?"

While she sets up the laptop in front of me she responds, "Well, I'm not sure. Have you been working on anything in the House that might be of interest to foreign governments?"

"Not really, I am, or was, on the Education and Workforce House Committee. I guess I had interactions with some foreign corporations regarding that, but not really governments unless they were behind those corporations somehow."

"I keep running up against some serious defenses. You know, it feels like I'm getting blocked at every turn and lots of wild goose chases. I may need to get some more help."

"More?"

"Shit," she mutters.

"Page?"

"I keep saying too much," she says self-admonishingly.

"Too much? I can't make out most of what you're telling me."

"We're getting side tracked again; let's focus on the laptop."

"Okay," I say dejectedly.

I find myself staring vacantly at her tee-shirt and I can't help feeling like a kid with his hand being smacked back from the cookie jar. I want to know what all of this is about and the technology is beyond me.

"Hey, come on, pay attention," she says, tilting my head away from the nipples poking through her tee-shirt and toward the screen. "This is your logon information," she says, swiveling her computer around to show me an open window.

It's a weird user name I never would have used, but instantly recognize and remember. "That's a long password."

"Yeah, but it's a phrase we both know and few would guess, especially with the numbers and symbols."

"I thought you told me not to store or write down my login information -"

"This is a special program that encrypts the file, you just need a good strong password to keep people from getting into it."

"That's a pretty neat thing, do I get that?"

"Yes, after you log in." I finish typing the password and press enter. The system comes up nearly instantly. "See this icon? That opens the program where the password information is stored. It'll open up your file so you can enter and keep track of all your accounts."

"I just use one password."

"Not any more, mister. This icon is an anonymous web browser and this one will launch your VM."

Page continues to show me how to start up the virtual image of my old system. She's actually upgraded the operating system, the anti-virus and somehow maintained my files. She shows me how to open up programs I need and how to use them inside the VM. Everything works just like it was my old PC; in fact as I worked on this new virtual version, it seems significantly faster than my old PC. Additionally, I slowly realize that I'd probably have made a complete mess of it if I'd tried to upgrade it myself.

"It's a lot to take in, Page."

"You'll get it, you're a smart guy."

"Not about this stuff," I say with a sinking feeling in my gut.

"I'll walk you through doing your first account. Go get your wallet and let's do your bank account. I'll also show you how to tether to your phone."

Once I'm back with my wallet, she connects up my burner phone to the computer and shows me how to use it as an internet connection. Then she guides me through getting online so I can change the password. I make the change and put the new information in the password safe software and feel slightly better.

"Does everything here look about right," she asks, as we look at my balance.

"Yeah, I've been saving due to my upcoming unemployment."

"Any other savings or financial accounts we should check?"

"All I have is a 401K." I knew I should be saving more, but I hadn't really thought about it much.

"Do the financial ones first, then update all your e-mail and vendor accounts. Okay, you've got this, right?"

"Yes, you can work on other stuff. I'll do these and let you know if I see anything weird or get stuck."

Page goes back and sits in her chair and turns her laptop back around. While I spend the better portion of the morning going through all my online accounts and changing the passwords, Page is working away on her laptop. She keeps twirling her long hair in her left hand and running it across her cute little mouth. Occasionally, there is a look of concern on her face or a wrinkle in her nose as she types furiously.

I do all of my accounts, even the ones that will be expiring at the end of my term. When I am finally done, I tell her and then make us a couple more espressi with cream. As I deliver hers, I linger to look over her shoulder, wondering what she's working on. She has over a dozen windows open and appears to be playing that game again in the largest window that is on top. Although, I notice she isn't really playing, since the window isn't full screen like it'd been the other day and she's only typing inside a small window within the game. Her left hand leaves the keyboard as I continue to stand beside her. I realize where it's gone suddenly, when I feel a light brush against my leg followed by her slender fingers grasping me by my balls firmly.

"Oh, um - sorry, I just wondered what you are doing."

She looks up at me with a wicked grin, "You aren't playing fair, Ryan. This is like looking at my board while playing battleship."

"Well, you've seen just about everything I have, physically and virtually," I complain defensively, as she loosens her grip slightly.

"Hmm, I guess you're right. Look, I can't tell you everything you want to know or even show you or allow you to see; it's prohibited."

Prohibited? I almost bite my tongue as I nearly spit that word back out at her. She sees the question in my eyes, her expression softens and she strokes my cock softly now. A chill runs up my spine and down my cock at the same time as I shudder.

"Suffice it to say, I'm getting some help." She stares into my eyes and answers my next unasked question, "Yes, from someone in the game. We use it to communicate sometimes."

I'm now wondering if she was playing at all when I came home early the other day. Of course, I have no idea how to tell what they were really doing; it looked like a fancy computer game, but there'd been so much going on when I'd seen it. They could have been chatting about me and I'd have never known.

Impulsively, I ask, "Did you put the game on my computer too?"

"Actually, I did and I've got an account for you to use," she says as she opens another window with a user name and password and spins the computer around. "Put these in your password file too."

Obediently, I sit back at my seat, create a game account entry in my password file and put the information in there, wondering how I get to the game. Page seems to anticipate the question again as I look up at her across the table.

"There's another VM on your laptop with the game," she says walking around to me. "Right click the VM icon and open this menu item." When I do there's a frozen picture of the game that looks like it's already running. "Okay, so VMs can be 'paused', and that's what I'd done to that one. Press this start icon." After just a couple of seconds the VM appears to be running and the game screen comes to life. "Now you just need to log in with that information."

When I log in, I see I'm in some type of virtual world. An odd feeling rolls over me, something akin to 'welcome to the Matrix', because I'm on a virtual machine in a virtual world. Page goes back to her seat and some text pops up on the screen like I'd seen on hers. Purple text says, "I'm going to invite you. Click accept."

"Is that you doing that?" I ask.

"Yeah, click accept." I did and it happens just like she's described. "There are a couple of character faces in the upper left corner of the display, see them? That's you and me, we're on a team together now. Anytime you log in you can see me, just click the icon with a shield at the bottom."

"Okay."

"There are some other people on our team. You can chat with them if I'm not around. You should always make sure they are on that list before you respond to any chat."

I pull up the list and look, "So you're Shiva?"

"Yeah, that's my toon's name. It is a play on a bunch of different words: the Hindu god, the Jewish time of morning, the Sanskrit 'the auspicious one', but the real reason is because my character is a rogue and she uses daggers to shiv people... so she's a shiv'er or Shiva."

"Oh, I see." I'm wondering why she's given me this long explanation. I'm looking around and trying to move my character and randomly pressing keys when the list pops up again. There are only three of us in the list, so I ask, "So this Leda is who you're chatting?"

"Yes, and you can talk to her too. We use the game to 'hide in plain sight' sometimes and we have add-ons to encrypt things we don't want being seen by anyone."

"So if I pause the VM, it'll log me out of the game?"

"Yes, eventually the session will time out on the server."

I click the pause button for the VM as I mouse over the yellow symbol. I'm feeling pretty overloaded with all of these details and my breathing doesn't feel right. My heart is racing and the room feels like it is spinning until her words cut through my thoughts like a knife; sling-shotting me back from my momentary vertigo and near panic attack.

"Oh, you didn't chat me," Page says, almost disappointed.

"I'm sorry, I - um - I just - I feel like I'm out of my depth here, Page. All of this stuff - all of these events - and us and -" I break off, feeling lost in the vast array of unknowable things that have spun into my life.

She gets up and walks around to me again, her warm embrace is accompanied by kind words and gentle pats on my back, "Ryan, it's going to be okay."

"I feel like I'm slowing you down. I want to know all this stuff, but -"

"It's fine. I got a bunch done, you've gotten your accounts all squared away and we're getting some help."

"How do we know who can be trusted?"

"We can trust Leda."

"How do you know?"

"She trained me and you know her."

"Mom?" I ask, as I wonder what the heck Mom had trained her to do.

"Close, it's her sister."

"Reba? Gosh, I haven't seen her in forever."

"Her condo is just off campus and it was the one place Dad let me go after we moved out to Palo Alto."

"She's still teaching at Stanford?" I ask ponderously.

I think about the last time I'd seen Mom's identical twin during one of the earliest visits I'd made out to see Dad and Page. She had lived much closer when I'd been young, just a few blocks from us actually. She'd babysat me for Mom before Page was born. I'd even stayed in her home a couple of summers while Mom and Dad traveled abroad. She'd taken the job at Stanford shortly after Page was born, but had come to see us during the summers. Since college, I'd been so wrapped up in my life, I had neglected my family or any real possibility of starting one of my own.

"Mostly she does research but teaches an advanced comp sci course on current topics each semester. Look, we should avoid using her name when discussing this stuff, just the alias, okay?"

I sit silently thinking about all this new information she is just kind of dumping on me. I'm staring at Page, who now that I notice, looks so much like both of them. All three of them have longish auburn hair, hazel eyes and a petite frame. She's still standing by me rubbing my shoulder, trying to relax me. I can tell she knows she's blowing my mind with every minuscule piece of information she allows me to have and wonder if this is part of why she gives it so grudgingly. Slowly I become aware she's speaking again.

"Ryan?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's take a break and get outside."

"You're done?" I ask surprised and maybe a little relieved.

"We can be done for now. I've set some things in motion, so we can take a 'play' break and then maybe get some lunch or dinner."

I can see the deep concern on her face. Taking a play break seems a good idea, so I use every ounce of my resolve to remove her anxiety over my mental state and say, "Yeah, let's get out in that snow."

Forcing a smile actually lifts my mood slightly and Page practically skips to the bedroom. I follow after swallowing the remaining volume of my espresso. In the room, she is putting on new underwear, but is dressing in yesterday's clothes. I have no doubt that there will be another snowball or ten, so I follow suit. We hadn't brought a bunch of clothes, and after she had taken me down so easily in our tussle when we arrived yesterday, I figure I might be spending some more time on the ground. Of course, I'm wondering how I might cheat somehow to even things up.

At the front door, we don our coats, open it slowly and traipse out into the snow. The porch is packed with several inches of snow blown in from last night's storm. Snow on the driveway is probably about calf deep and all tracks and footprints are covered over. It's a very wet snow and Page, as expected, immediately runs out into the yard. I barely have the door closed when the first snowball hits me in the face.

"Hey, those are heavy," I complain, as I bend on the porch to pack my own lighter one. She's off behind the car and my throw misses, skidding down the rear window and off the trunk.

Page holds up the new ball it made. "This stuff packs easily. We should build a snowman."

I lob another quick one at her that hits her arm and ask, "You calling a truce?"

"Yes, if you help me."

My laughter is uncontainable now. "Okay, I'll help."

Together, we start rolling snow balls along the gentle slope of the hill. The previous snow is icier underneath, but the new wet snow rolls up quickly increasing the size of our snowballs. I start thinking this might be the quickest snowman I ever built. I'd only gone about thirty steps and the ball was well past my middle thigh.

"You want the base bigger than this?" I ask her.

She looks over at me in astonishment. Her snowball is only about half the size of mine. "How'd you do that so quickly?"

"Come here, I'll show you." Page walks over and I have her roll it. "Put your hands like this and twist it a little after every other step or so."

She pushes the ball along several steps and it just keeps getting bigger. At a certain point, it is becoming too large for her to push and she looks to me for help, so I take back over. The thing is now nearly as high as my midsection and nearly even with her chest.

"This big enough now?" I ask laughing out steam into the cool air.

"Yeah, I haven't gotten to play in the snow for almost nine years, so I don't really know what I'm doing."

"Well, we should get it to a good level spot and pack snow around its base."

I do that and she goes back to make her snowball larger. By the time I've got the base ready, she's rolling a nice midsection sized ball to me. We work to get it into the indentation I'd put into the base. With the midsection on, the top of our snowman was now at my eye-level. She quickly rolls a proportional sized head and I set it upon the top.

"This is the kind of snow that may well be gone tomorrow," I say as I stand back and look at our work.

"At least you get snow here. I think Palo Alto had a snow in 1967, before I was even born, but I haven't seen a single snowfall while I've lived there."

I take her hand, "You don't know how much I've missed you. It wasn't really within our control, but I wish it'd been different."

"Yeah, me too. Let's go explore," she says pulling me along.

"Well, I've been here before. I haven't seen the entire property, I think it's about a hundred acres, but there's a pond over that hill," I say pointing in the direction we're walking.

"Neat," she says continuing towards the top of the hill trudging through the snow drifts.

We walk and talk. The hike gives us time and I feel Page finally loosening up as she fills in some details on her life. It's odd that we hadn't had these discussions before, but I'm happy she seems to finally be opening up. I learn that Dad's import business is struggling. She isn't saying everything she knows and I can tell, but I don't push.

She tells me a little about her ex-boyfriend, Carl, who was using her as a beard to gain better access to Dad. She'd had her suspicions about him, because all he ever wanted to do was go to movies and eat out, but the whole thing with Dad had caught her off guard.

I also learn that she hasn't really been in high school. She completed her requirements two years ago. She's never been challenged by anything and has been holding off on attending college. I wonder about the page gig she'd done and how she'd gotten into that without being in school.

"Okay, I haven't wanted to push too much, but how did you manage getting into the page program for the House if you weren't in high school?"

"A combination of contacts and hacking," she admits with a blush.

"Contacts?"

"Aunt Reba, knows some folks and I was 'sort of' enrolled in the summer high school program at Stanford when I applied. She's been lobbying me pretty hard to continue with my education."

Her phrase, 'sort of', worried me a little and I just couldn't let the hacking thing go. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say I hope you hacked something the staff at the House looked at and not them directly?"

"Oh, yeah, I've never done anything against our government, Ryan. I wouldn't."

"Well, what about the money then?"

"I earned it. People with certain skill-sets can set their price. Plus, I've invested a bunch of my earnings too. That's why I'm in no hurry to make any big decisions about education. There's a lot in the world that I want to see and I've only been a couple of places so far."

Surprise fills me again as I realize she's got more money than what I'd seen in that duffel bag. I guess I can understand her position. If I were a genius, and could easily earn a boatload of money, I might rethink getting further education myself and plus traveling can be quite educational too.

I find myself asking, "Did you keep your earnings secret from Dad?"

"Oh Ryan, that's all part of the mess I left. When I was here last fall, I opened an account with Mom. She has left my money alone and recently removed herself from the account when I turned eighteen. But Dad - well, he's a scoundrel."

"So, in the past, Dad took some of what you'd earned?"

"Nearly everything! And then Carl and he -" she sobbed.

I feel like shit for pushing too far, but grab her and hug her close. "I'm sorry, Page. I think it's better to get all this out. I swear, you can trust me," I offer as I push the wet hair from her face.

Her sobs turn to anger, "That fucker's gonna pay -"

It seems like every time Dad comes up, she gets extremely pissed. "So, I guess the argument about 'everything', included his taking your money?"