Page 187 of Nearly Roadkill
“I love you too. But this is really important.”
“Sure thing, punkin’. Shoot.”
“Y’know that Scratch and Winc story I’m working on forThem?”
“Ummm, you mean the story you’ve been working on for what, a year now? That story? Sure, kiddo, what’s up?”
“I’ll get right to the point. Why does Toobe’s old IP address lead me to your door?”
Dead. Fucking. Silence. And then…
“Oh man, listen… I can’t talk right now. Hang tight. Give me an hour, and I’ll get back to you.”
And he hung up.
I called him back, but it went to voicemail.
Six times, it went to voicemail.
But in exactly one hour, the doorbell went ding-dong.
NEARLY ROADKILL, THE REALLY FINAL EPILOGUE
Right, so my dad is standing in the doorway.
“Hey D.I.”
“Hey… Toobe.”
He winces but gamely follows me into the living room.
“Okay, you got me,” he says. “But I have a great reason.”
Over the next hour, he tells all about the NDA the government made him sign in exchange for dropping all charges related to selling illegal bypasses. According to the terms of the agreement, he was not allowed to speak about any of the events that led up to the Internet shutdown. To anyone, not even any of the other players. But, over the next thirty years, he was able to develop a tunneling technology so he could talk to Scratch and Winc and Jabba and Gwynyth without getting caught by government surveillance.
“Wait a minute. Winc?” I ask. “You said Winc? Winc’s alive?”
“Oh yeah,” says my dad casually. “Alive and kicking. And when you first told me you were gonna work on this story, I told the two of them.”
I sit down. Then I stand up. Then I sit down again. I don’t know whether to be mad at him or hug him.
“I seem to have that effect on people,” he says, looking down at his feet.
He tells me that all three of them were bound to silence by the NDAs.
“But we wanted you to get the whole story, so we, well, um…”
My antenna goes up. “You what? You what, Dad? Or should I call you Toobe?”
He sighs and summarizes:
Apparently, when I showed such interest in the story, he contacted Scratch and Winc so the three of them could find the best chat logs and journals, direct messages, and all the good stuff that painted the true saga of Scratch and Winc.
I feel all the air go out of me.
“So my super-sleuthing skills were bullshit? You fed me everything? What about the chatbots? The Jabba archives? I know for a fact my FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests netted some great stuff.”
“They did, they did,” he answers. “Seriously, D.I. Drew, it was your super-sleuthing skills that unlocked all the information; we couldn’t just hand it to you, or to anyone. We’ve been wanting to tell this story for the last thirty years, and we couldn’t. It would’ve meant prison. But you found this story, and you told it. And now that it’s out in the open, we can be too. So thank you, Detective Inspector. Your reporting set us free.”
