We Own the Sky(84)

The encryption is relatively simple and uses a standard algorithm. I search around on the web for a password cracker and find one I haven’t heard of called Slain and Able. In about ten seconds, it gives me Nev’s password in plaintext.





Grossetto

I log into the forum again, reactivate Nev’s account, and reset his password. In his mailbox, there are 15,462 messages.

Subject: Can you help?

Sent: Thu Jul 10, 2010 3:27 pm

From: Htrfe

Recipient: Nev

Dear Nev,

I’m  writing  from  Australia.  In  2007,  my  daughter  was  diagnosed  with  a medulloblastoma that has spread to her spinal cord.

I  have  been  reading  about  your  experiences  at  the  clinic  of  Dr.

Sladkovsky and wondered if you could help get us an appointment. The

waiting list currently seems quite long and we don’t have much time.

I look at the date. 2010. Seven years ago. I click on another message.

Subject: options

Sent: Mon Jan 20, 2011 3:36 pm

From: BlueWarrior

Recipient: Nev

Dear Nev,

Hi  there  I’m  Marnie  from  Utah  in  the  United  States.  I’m  writing  you because  I  am  very  interested  in  the  protocol  that  your  son  took  and  the drugs  he  has  been  given  at  Dr.  Sladkovsky’s  clinic  in  Prague.  My daughter has recently been diagnosed with...

A breeze chills the bedroom and I start to shiver. I click through the inbox, scanning the contents. There are emails from all over the world: Utah, Madrid, Arbroath, Rapid City, Bratislava.

I sit up in bed and put on my reading glasses. Did the treatment really work?

That was what they all wanted to know. They had heard bad things about the clinic—but then they read about Josh. There was a waiting list, though. Could he put them in touch with someone at the clinic who could get them bumped up the list? Because if it worked for Josh, then surely, surely, it could work for...

I keep reading, trawling through the messages, refilling my vodka glass again and again. Nev wrote back to all of them. He wrote page after page, telling them about Josh, immuno-engineering, the clinic in Prague. He told them to never give up, to never take no for an answer, because what, after all, did these doctors know. He asked about their mothers, their children’s schools, the troubles they were having with the in-laws. He knew the name of the family dog and the state of their lawns.

I carry on reading, and soon it is night and the moon is lighting up the room.

As I click through various folders, there is something that catches my eye. In his Drafts, there are about twenty messages that look like templates Nev has used. In one, he introduces himself and tells Josh’s story; in another, he gives details about Dr. Sladkovsky and the clinic. As I am reading, certain passages and phrases jump out at me and I am sure that I have seen them before.

Joan, every day it’s like watching planes crashing. Planes full of children that could be saved...

I  just  wanted  you  to  know,  Kevin,  that  I’m  thinking  about  you  all  and crossing fingers and legs and toes and everything really.

There is hope, John, there is always hope. Never give up, my friend.

I always knew I wasn’t the only one. I knew that he wrote to other parents—

he told me as much—but as I look through my own emails from Nev, I find

those same exact sentences, the only difference being mine or Jack’s name.

I click on another message in his Drafts.

Matilda’s probably a bit young for Minecraft but Josh is really into it at the moment.  He’s  just  built  this  castle  and  said  he  wanted  to  send  it  to Matilda to cheer her up. (I told him Matilda was poorly.) I’m sending you a screenshot. I hope Matilda likes it.

Attached to the message is the 8-bit Minecraft image I remember so well: the blocky portcullis and turrets, the sign that, this time, says “Matilda’s Castle” and not “Jack’s.”

I click on the next message in the Drafts folder, and it is blank except for an image. I open it and it is a drawing I instantly recognize, a drawing I think I still have somewhere on my laptop.

The drawing is of a little boy, with a bandage around his head, sitting in a hospital bed. Two dinosaurs dressed as nurses are carrying a tray. I remember how much Jack liked the dinosaurs. I remember how he asked if his bed could be moved outside, so he too could sit under the fiery yellow sun.

Anna had been right all along. Nev was a shill for the clinic, a con man

preying on the desperate. I’d been had.

  *

I am still in bed, reading through Nev’s messages. I pour vodka into a toothbrush glass and drink it straight down. It stings and I retch in my mouth, but I do another shot and all I can taste is minty antiseptic and vomit.

It all seems so obvious now, when I look back, when I unpick all the details. I never thought that I would fall for such a scam: taken in by a screen name, an avatar, like one of those poor fools who give their life savings to a foreign bride they met online.