RJ--all we see--our breathing

It took Greg two days to find the history list. He sent Amy every URL on Anna's log in the system. He offered to send backup copies of her hard drive, but warned that this would mean breaking and entering into Anna's room--which might not be a good idea under the circumstances. "Let's keep this as virtual as we can," he concluded. "and burn these notes <g>"

Amy glanced through the list first. There was nothing obvious--no maps of strange locations, no love letters, no sites promising cheap airfare at exotic locales. Some odd bookmarks, through. Riot Grrls. Amy had never thought of Anna as that rebellious, that outright angry. But it could have been under the surface, a thick strong undertow belying the calm, unquestioning surface. This led to "Fuck This Shit" and the cafephreaks Superhighway Truck Stop. Cyberfriends of Anna's, perhaps? Or had she seen these Berkeleyites on the real streets? When Amy e-mailed the grrls, they replied that they had never seen Anna.

All of the last four sessions had ended with 404 errors--yet when Amy went on the next to last URL, all the links from that particular page worked.

Sophie cornered her in the kitchen at 3 a.m. as she grabbed another cup of coffee. "And just what could you possibly be doing on line all that time, child? You should get some rest."

Amy told her about the URLs. Sophie snorted. "In the first place, if Anna had gone off on her own, which I very much doubt, she wouldn't have made it that obvious. And in the second place, if some nasty electronic weasel or other had gotten her, then there wouldn't be any trace of it on her computer, now would there? But if you think you need to follow that trail, girl, then you are going to have to do it right. And proper."

Amy nodded. Taking her now cold coffee back to the backroom, she started to systematically go to each URL on the list, starting from the beginning of the list. She needed to know everything Anna had done.

Amy could trace the few weeks of Anna's studies: a bunch of sites on kinetic energy (she played a bit with the kinetic energy experiment, but failed to reach any results) and particle physics. She forwarded Oxford's list of useful web sites to her physics prof. Anna hadn't followed any of these links, but Amy traced through them just to be sure they were a false trail.

Anna had looked through most of the links from the Open Page, carefully scrolling down other people's lives. Amy did the same, jumping off diaries when Anna did, reading lives:

A 22 year old stuck in Sierra Vista whose mental sewage includes campaigns to rid the world of tampons
A group of tales that she was pretty sure were not fiction.
Crystal notes tied up in a virtual chrysallis

It took her three days to follow each URL to its conclusion. And Amy still refused to give up.

in banks / below the river / changes inform / our breathing / thus we know / precisely what / matters

if there are / other waters / we can not / know them / all we see / in rivers / is their presence