Subject: [New Story] The Riverbank
Date: Tue May 09 17:44:19 MET DST 1995

The Riverbank

By Ben Romer

======================================================================

Waves spread outward as the stone left my hand, their peaks slowly
moving away from the shore. I watched them, the lights from the
atomic powerplant reflecting off of their edges, sparkling, flashing,
reminding me of the blinking screen at home, the one that told me
I was alone again.

I'd been dumped, via e-mail.

I suspected something as I entered my apartment, somehow it had seemed
empty, solitude whispering at me from the corners. All of my things
were there, undisturbed. It made me wonder, what do I really have?
Aside from my deck, the simple futon bed that we slept in, and a few
cheap trinkets, I had nothing.

I was in shock for a few seconds after my monitor delivered her letter,
disbelieving, tracing the mail path to make sure it wasn't a spoofmail.
The message had originated where it ended up.

I couldn't believe it, what had I done? I wasn't even aware that there'd
been any problems -- it had been the best time of my whole life. I was
fresh out of college, I had a good corporate position lined up, and then
she appeared, things couldn't be better.

Mabye I can find her, I thought, so I connected to the net with my deck
set to scan for all uses of credit cards in her name. The list stunned
me. Four different hotels, twice a week; fairly expensive rooms, too.
She had told me that she was staying late at work, and she'd be home
after I was asleep. She'd never said what it was she was doing, though.

The moon gazed down at me as I sat on the riverbank, my gaze following
the ever-expanding waves of the water. I still didn't understand it
all, but as I sat and contemplated the water, things became easier.

A cricket began to chirp in the distance.

Her letter had been very simple; "I'm sorry" was all it said. Sorry
for what? Was she sleeping around on me, or was I imagining it all?
I'd crossreferenced the entries for the hotels with other uses of her
credit, found dinners for two, room service bills, casino debits.
She'd spent about twenty grand, give or take five-hundred. But she'd
never asked me for money, and never seemed to be broke...

I ran a quick check over her credit records. The expense list seemed
endless; a few expenses looked suspicious, like one rather large bill
for an Ares Weapons delivery. There was only one deposit. It was from
an anonymous Swiss deposit retransmitter.

Was she involved in some kind of crime?

I heard a snap behind me, turned, saw a squirrel bolting away. The
leaves rustled from the wind, and the waves still spread outward, the
peaks dissapearing into the distance.

I thought about how I had hacked into the retransmitter's records, and
crossreferenced the deposit numbers with the source. Money from
someone I'd never heard of before, a name I'd be hard-pressed to
pronounce, much less know. It looked African or mabye South American.

I decided to investigate some of the other bills instead. She had
purchased a high-power military weapon from Ares, and currently was
booked on a one-way flight to Brazil.

I deposited extra credits from my own account, to make the ticket she
had a round-trip ticket. Then, I'd come here, to the riverbank, to think.
The river always, always had cleared my thoughts and shown me what I
should do.

It accepted the waves, let them dissapate, and continued on its way.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
GLASS_AVENGER                           <bmromer@cs.millersv.edu>
*__  __    __  *__   __    __  __ __ ____ __   _  __  ____ ___*
//\\ ||   |/\| //\\ //\\  |/\| || || ||__ | \\ | //\\ ||__ ||\\
||   ||   |\/| \\_  \\    |\/| || || ||   |  \\| ||   ||   ||//
\\ _ ||   |/\|   \\   \\  |/\| \\_// ||   |*  \| \\ _ ||   ||\
 \_/ ||__ |* | \\// \\//  |  |* \_/  ||__ |    |  \_/ ||__ ||\\
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Life is a prism; people are crystal; what we see is an image,
 a refraction of the truth, not what is really there."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
My Homepage: http://cs.millersv.edu/~bmromer/homepage.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=