A. Barrett - Love Is Power, or Something Like That - Stories

“Four hours.” Samu’ila held up his hand with his thumb folded.

The attendant extended the ticket to Samu’ila with one hand and stowed his money in the desk drawer with the other. Then she announced, with the singsong of a catechismal recitation:

“The printer is out of order. If the computer hangs, restart it. If it takes forever to open a page, I am not the server. Please, don’t call me for anything.”

Used to her ways, Samu’ila said, “I know.”

She picked up her book, put up her feet. Samu’ila leaned forward to check the time on her mobile phone, which lay on the desk. It was 8:23 a.m. — he straightened, turned around — and yet the cybercafe was almost full. He saw an unoccupied computer at the back of the room. He started toward it, and walked into a blast of cold air; the spot he’d chosen was in the path of the second air conditioner. He ignored the cold, pulled out the chair, sat down, cracked his knuckles, blew out his breath through pursed lips, drew out the keyboard panel, and punched in his ticket password. The computer screen flickered alive. With a wide grin Samu’ila bent forward and tip-tapped his way into the phantasmagorical realm of the World Wide Web.

There was an offline message in his Messenger box.

Where are you? I need to chat with you now! Please!!! Lotsa love. .

The message was from Ben. Ben: the sexagenarian widower whom he had met three weeks ago in an online dating chat room. Ben: the wealthy American retiree with no children and five dogs. Ben: the lonely old man who would do anything for him. Or so he said.

An instant message box popped up on the screen. It buzzed without sound, one time, two times, three times.

You there?

Samu’ila typed his reply.

Yes luv.

Hi sweetie! Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting forever for you to come online. .

I’m sooo sori dearie, I had some problems @ home. Missed u lots!

Missed you too! Watch the screen. . have I got a surprise for you!

Samu’ila waited, his fingers poised over the keyboard. The chat box showed no typing activity, so he placed his hands on his head, interlocked his fingers, and leaned back in the chair. He stifled a yawn as his eyes traveled the room. His attention was drawn to the front: the man sitting at the computer beside the attendant’s desk was talking into his mobile phone. The man’s voice was loud and unabashed: bank details, professional credentials, and payment figures spilled from his mouth. His left hand waved in the air as he chattered into the phone clutched in his right; his flailing hand was at odds with the cajoling of his tone. A smile spread over Samu’ila’s face as he listened to the thickness of the man’s accent, the obviousness of his Americanese; but the smile dissolved when the man tossed the phone on the table and, with a shout of joy, high-fived himself.

Samu’ila returned his gaze to the screen in front of him, his thoughts occupied with drafting a phrase that would convey the right mix of surprise and gratefulness. A webcam request appeared on the screen, and, on reflex, he clicked ACCEPT, only realizing what he’d done when a pair of eyes blinked at him.

“ Ah!” he cried out, and jolted back his chair in alarm.

The eyes stared straight at Samu’ila, pupils digital gray, whites gleaming. Then the eyes drew back from the camera and Ben’s face swung into focus. The webcam picture was grainy, the movements were delayed and disconnected, and Ben’s skin was sea-bottom white in the darkness that framed his face.

Samu’ila raised his hand, pinched his nose, pulled it, and scratched his cheek. The eyes on the screen, so far away and yet so near, made him feel naked, exposed. Then Ben lowered his eyes, ducked his head, and a splash of large red text appeared in the chat box.

Can you see me?

Samu’ila released his breath and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed his discomfort. When he turned back to the computer there was a screed of instant messages. Let the old guy suffer small, he said to himself. He watched the face in the screen, noting the comb-teeth eyebrows, the pocked nose and squeezed nostrils, the discolored bags of skin under bulging eyes. It was only when Ben began to send “pleases” that stretched from end to end of the chat box that Samu’ila relented, and typed his reply.

I can c u.

The first time Samu’ila entered a cybercafe, he was sent by his older brother to deliver a love letter to a girl his brother hadn’t the courage to approach himself. Samu’ila was eleven years old. He thought the cybercafe was some sort of game arcade for adults, but he soon discarded that idea, convinced of the seriousness of the proceedings in that room by the examinations-hall intensity that hung over it. Word had reached him about the Internet, cyberspace, the World Wide Web, but he hadn’t a clear idea of what it was. He had suffered the usual run of fantastical stories that were the stock-in-trade of schoolboys. He had heard that one could watch any movie and music video on the Internet for free. He had been wowed by the revelation that anybody could play any computer game of their choice with an opponent across the world. He’d had his dreams hijacked by the story of the girl who sent love letters to a boy she didn’t know, who, when he opened them, was transported to her bedroom to watch as she lay naked and performed magic tricks with a cucumber. He had been told that any item, from a paper clip to a cruise on an ocean liner, could be purchased on the Internet with a mouse; that there were machines called “search engines” that manufactured answers when questions were fed into them. He did not believe these stories, not until the day he stood behind his brother’s love interest and watched with glazed eyes as she proved that everything he had discounted was true.

In the early days, when his compulsion still had the glow of innocence, Samu’ila used his childhood charm to extract from his parents little amounts of money. His excuse was candy, but he saved up every kobo to spend in the nearest cybercafe. When his father complained that he would lose all his teeth to rot, and his mother rolled her eyes and sent him off to his father, Samu’ila, to maintain his habit, began to steal.

The day Samu’ila turned fourteen his father sat him down for a man-to-man talk and asked him what he wanted to become in life. When he said, “A doctor,” his father laughed long and hard and then turned serious again and said, “No, not what you think I want you to become, but what you want.” Succumbing to sincerity, Samu’ila confessed that all he wanted to do was sit in front of a computer and surf the Web. His father was shocked by this evidence of a malingering spirit in his son. To absolve himself of blame, he told the boy:

“Do whatever you want, my son, but make sure you make money doing it.”

Samu’ila took his father’s advice to heart. He opened his eyes and noticed he was the only one in the cybercafes he frequented who wasn’t there to make money. All around him were 419ers and green-card gamblers, credit-card thieves and e-mail hackers, software pirates and cyber impersonators — hope merchants and dream chasers all of them, but rooted in reality by the pursuit of money. He, too, would make money, he decided. As part of his plan, Samu’ila played truant at school, and turning his transport and lunch allowance into seed money, he dedicated his time to expanding his Internet knowledge.

By the time Samu’ila met Ben, he had become as proficient with the mores of cyberspace as a worker ant with its duties. He could register e-mail accounts in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. He could download and upload gigabytes, convert and compress.abc through.xyz file extensions. He could extract e-mail addresses, generate bogus online personas, and spam whole country populations with the click of a mouse. He owned eleven e-mail accounts, all of them with different names and nationalities. When he gatecrashed the dating chat room where he spotted Ben, he was masquerading as a twenty-three-year-old Liberian widow who was stranded in Nigeria without friend, family, or hope. Ben took one look at his profile photo — which he had lifted from the obituary of a drowned actress on the Web site of a Martinique newspaper — and fell in love.