RJ--all we see--thus we know

After going through the URLs a second time, and then a third, Amy e-mailed Greg for Anna's password.

Greg called her with the password. "In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. But you had better know what you are doing. The password is enter+into, all lower case. Let me know what happens."

Amy thanked him and went back online, this time using the Berkeley network connection and Anna's password. Went to the URLs just before the ending 404 errors on Anna's last four sessions.

The first two were physics assignments--one from the prof and one Amy had put up for her own homework. But the last two were sites for rivers. When Amy entered the first site, on the Mississippi River this time, she saw a blinking URL at the top left of the screen. When she moused over to it, it began to settle down and glow a faint off blue purple. Amy looked back at the empty bed in the back room and closed the door. Then she clicked on the URL.

The site was a wide muddy river--and she was looking down into the water as if on the far side of a bridge. The water ran past her, moving out from the monitor in dark convex and concave diamonds, the sheen from the sun continually moving on the water's dark surface. Staring into the screen, Amy watched as things flowed past: a stick with moss hanging from one end, a green and purple iridescent-throated mallard, a toy raft.

When she looked up, she could see the other bank only dimly in the far reaches of the monitor. She peered at it, making out houses and tied up barges, and live oak trees. The scene moved as slowly as if she were staring from a window onto reality.

As she reached to touch the water on the screen, the images shifted to a white chart map with banks and soundings. Long elliptical rings marked the depths, still in fathoms. Amy couldn't remember how deep a fathom was and thought suddenly that that mattered. Very much.

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