UNDERGROUND

When Electron and his sister arrived at the hospital, the nurse’s face said everything. They were too late. Their father had died ten minutes before they arrived. Electron broke down and wept. He hugged his sister, who, for a brief moment, seemed almost reachable. Driving them back to the house, the family friend stopped and bought them an answering machine.

‘You’ll need this when everyone starts calling in,’ she told them. ‘You might not want to talk to anyone for a while.’

In the months after his bust in 1990 Electron began smoking marijuana regularly. At first, as with many other university students, it was a social thing. Some friends dropped by, they happened to have a few joints, and so everybody went out for a night on the town. When he was in serious hacking mode, he never smoked. A clear head was much too important. Besides, the high he got from hacking was a hundred times better than anything dope could ever do for him.

When Phoenix appeared on the front page of the *New York Times*, Electron gave up hacking. And even if he had been tempted to return to it, he didn’t have anything to hack with after the police took his only computer. Electron found himself casting around for something to distract him from his father’s deteriorating condition and the void left by giving up hacking. His accounting studies didn’t quite fit the bill. They had always seemed empty, but never more so than now.

Smoking pot filled the void. So did tripping. Filled it very nicely. Besides, he told himself, it’s harder to get caught smoking dope in your friends’ houses than hacking in your own. The habit grew gradually. Soon, he was smoking dope at home. New friends began coming around, and they seemed to have drugs with them all the time - not just occasionally, and not just for fun.

Electron and his sister had been left the family home and enough money to give them a modest income. Electron began spending this money on his new-found hobby. A couple of Electron’s new friends moved into the house for a few months. His sister didn’t like them dealing drugs out of the place, but