My story..continued.

The years went by, I got relocated. Ended up doing grunt work for the company's new Asian wing. Nothing too challenging..building databases, network security. Still, it paid the bills. Last I heard, Gates had been inducted into the super secret top level of ComDyn. Good for him. I heard that you usually had to pawn your soul (and other things) just to get noticed. Me? I was too much of a loner, and my code rating was just above average. Better than your average graduate, but still not good enough to join the top brass. Since I didn't have much of a life, I went back to the chatrooms. I prefered the text-based channels, for some reason. 3D was a moot thing back then, since every pimply-faced 12 year old could afford to have a state of the art number cruncher in his bedroom building disguising his puny little self with muscles, a big penis, the like. For me? Naah. VR was a bit too..virtual. I vaguely remember courting (or trying to court) girls during my teens. Awkward, lumbering, the school klutz. Didn't get me many dates..but I figured I didn't really miss anything. The text channels..that's another story. You could find all manner of people online. Some veterans from the BBS days, pedophiles trying to make one last score before the feds and Interpol caught them, weird-ass drug dealers...or simply other people, hoping to make a real connection in an otherwise over connected world.

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. I returned to the chats like a thirsty camel to an oasis. Every night, after work, with the consistent hum of my server droning in the background, I scoured the channels. Whatever life I didn't have offline, I got back in spades online. I didn't really set out to get laid or anything (although I never shied away from a chance..my life in computers didn't manage to snuff out that part of my humanity) but for awhile..it was good. I felt almost..normal. Little black words on a screen. Binary bits and bytes. All of that suddenly meant more to me than all the human interaction I'd ever had in my short life. Who cares if the person on the other side was a dog or a 50 year old pervert? There's never any certainty in real life, so why should there be any online? Encounters came and went. Some I even met face to face. Others I slept with. Everyone knew a relationship based on ones and zeros couldn't get far. No one expected anything more..and after awhile, I joined them. How little I knew.

Part three soon, people.