I stepped out the other side in the basement of the Zornov's bungalow to the hum of cooling units that couldn't quite stop the extra heat of all the computers my friend, Simon Clement, kept running 24/7. No wonder the bespectacled young man was so pale-the hacker known online as BitsandBytes-rarely left the underground, his entire existence wrapped around the monitors he stared into, the screen contents manipulated by his fingers flashing over his keyboard.
Grateful for the distraction, it didn't take me long to turn from crushed by my daughter's rejection to engrossed in the concern both Owen and Simon radiated as they watched me cross to them. Thank goodness for disaster or I'd be a pile of weeping patheticness by now.
Didn't say much about me, did it?