It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter
Chapter 13

Tanner Griffen left the Church of the Divine the same way he'd gone in, turned the corner and was soon back on Route 40. He scrolled through his personal playlist and selected a particularly abrasive track by Shovel Bastard. A graphic EQ bounced as the sound of amplified wood and steel being tortured played at maximum volume.

He travelled at 90mph until his geographical position became meaningless, unattached to his recent activity or his connections, until it just became longitude and latitude and nothing else. He didn't stop for toll roads, traffic, pedestrians, roadblocks, or stop lights. In fact, none of these things would ever stop him again.

In time, he reconnected with his old compatriots on the hacker scene, who were delighted to have him back in the fold. They read the truth, such that it was, about his recent activities and studied the data, pored over the crisscrossing happenings that made up his loss of himself and subsequent rediscovery.

The underground criminal scene soon got to work giving Tanner Griffen jobs to do. Kidnapping of CEOs children, heists of large amounts of digital currencies and daring penetrations of large-scale data centres, including one particularly spectacular raid in which Griffen caused an entire server farm to physically melt into a pool of stinking, poisonous plastic.

He was all over the Grid, attached to a vast array of criminal activity, to the point where the words Tanner Griffen became a byword for disruption, hailed by those on the wrong side of the law, and playing the role of boogeyman for trainee OraCorp Security officers. He would never age, never get caught, and never die ever again.

Tanner Griffen was still not a very nice man.

Henry Thorner crouched in the drizzle of a crisp February morning. Before him lay the headstone of Martha Thorner. He placed the fresh flowers into the vase, as he always did at the beginning of the month, and sighed deeply.

"I'm retiring, sweetheart," he said to the flowers, and the stone, and the dew on the grass around him, all the places that Martha lived now. "The work just dried up, I guess everyone who's lost has now been found. Or the people who are lost just like it that way. Either way, there's no point keeping up the rent on the office. The guy from downstairs is expanding his operation anyway, so he'll take it on."

He rubbed his gloved hands together. "You know I told you about that Griffen case a few months back? Funny thing. The sister, the one who hired me? I can't get in touch with her. I wanted to tell her what happened to her brother, I thought she deserved the truth. I spoke to some of her friends, they say her brother came and took her with him. I didn't know what to make of that."

"Come on dad. It's freezing!" came a voice from the end of the path.

"Listen, I've got to go. Linda is here, she says 'hi' but she hates cemeteries. We're going to get coffee. I wish you were with us. I love you."

He stood, buttoned his coat and turned slowly away, picking up the pace as he met his daughter on the path. They linked arms and strolled into the February mist.

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