Read Ask for Free Online

so the incriminating
site disappeared.
    She hadn't really been looking at it. No,
not really. No she wasn't.
    Just glancing out of habit.
    Whenever things with Nomad didn't go well,
she couldn't help but go back and page through the other profiles,
scrolling through perfect, plasticky faces, vague attributes, likes
and dislikes, favorites, habits, deal breakers. Sometimes, she even
entered a few search terms. New York, NY. Post-modern literature.
Dancing.
    There had to be some in these dark corners
that weren't liars or commitophobes.
    But it was just a habit to look.
    She pushed her computer out of the way and
flipped open a little mirror on a stand, turned on a lamp on a long
neck that arced over her head, making her desk into a
halfway-decent vanity table. She looked herself in the eye and saw
the guilt there.
    Sorry, Nomad.
    **********

 
     
    Spinach.
    He turned the limp leaves over with his
fork. A piece of garlic rolled onto the bedspread. He speared the
garlic, blew on it once, twice, then ate it. He leaned over, yanked
a tissue out of a box on the desk and scrubbed at the spot of oil
on the quilt for a moment before giving up and tossing the crumpled
tissue on the desk.
    Spinach... Spinach...
    One unenthusiastic fork tine picked at
another leaf of the stuff.
    He typed awkwardly with one hand – the hand
that wasn't busy with spinach. The keyboard wobbled, balanced on
his knee as he sat legs crossed on the bed. He paused for one
moment and considered his dinner. Then he put his fingers to the
keys again, and typed the new name into the registration form.
    Username: Spinach
    First name: Spin
    Last name: Nach
    SSN: ...
    He clicked over to a document full of 9
digit numbers. Scrolling through them he picked one, then and
copied and pasted it over to the registration form.
    It was some dead guy's. He wouldn't miss
it.
    No one would check it unless someone
complained – there were just too many names to check all of them.
It wouldn't matter anyway. By the time anyone complained, he'd be
long gone.
    He hit Enter, breezed past the welcome
screen – he really didn't need to see it for the hundredth time –
and two seconds later he was at a new inbox. Stark and empty, it
was just like all the others he'd created. He clicked over to
another window and entered the new address.
    And then, over a dinner of cold spinach, he
read the evening news.
    Behind that, another screen was open. He
kept his eye intently on the news, trying not to look for the
bubble that he hoped would pop up, as it so often did:
    "Nomad, are you there?"
    But it didn't come, and the news
continued.

 
     
    ~~~~~
    "The threat to individual identity is
unprecedented in this medium. A person's beliefs, opinions,
knowledge, and esteem – the very foundations of our identity – are
subject to assault on a daily basis. The aggressive and persistent
disagreement that we see on almost every page on the internet is a
challenge, a social, intellectual, and emotional challenge that is
immensely hurtful to these pillars of personal identity.
    This body has the obligation to uphold those
rights articulated in the 28th Amendment to the United States
Constitution: that everyone has the right to an identity, to safe
guard that identity, and to face any threat to that identity.
    Congress must facilitate the defense of these
rights."
     
    from the testimony of Everett Smith,
    National Digital Identity Initiative
coordinator
    SOAPI Hearing
    November 15, 2016
    ~~~~~

 
     
    THREE
     
    Morning light woke her.
    She pushed herself up from the blankets,
threw a pillow out of her way and stumbled the two steps to the
desk. One hand rubbed her half-open eyes, the other opened her
computer.
    The site still glowed from last night.
Nameless strangers with plasticky faces stared out at her. Guilt
twinged her gut and she shut the site away quick. Night had slept
away her anger.
    She swallowed.
    Even with no one looking, she felt her
cheeks burn, feeling embarrassed about her own