the fun of the Internet was kicking ass. After all, I hadn’t taken my fight to him. Unless of course, that had actually been Gabriel.
Wait.
I opened the original message again and hit the moderation tools link on it. The user’s IP address showed up, with an option to block or ban the user. I clicked a link to open another website that would locate the origin of the poster.
New York City. Interesting.
It wasn’t definitive by any means, and likely far-fetched. Still, who else would go out of their way to defend Gabriel as a “well-respected reviewer”?
I finished my coffee and muffin as I quickly read through the rest of my messages. Then I remembered I hadn’t checked back on the TotA site for a response from Jaclyn. As I walked, I pulled up her board to find a message from her.
Pumpkin!
It’s been too long! How are things? I have to admit, I’m curious to know why you’re interested in our sweet drummer boy, but I won’t pry. Much. :)
Not sure what you’re hoping to discover. I’m sure you’ve already read his bio on the blog. We’ve got some collected vids of him drumming. He tends to favor the DW Design Series for his toms and bass drum, and Zildjian cymbals . . . but somehow I don’t think that’s what you’re after.
If you want to know something specific, like about his temperament or whatever, feel free to ask. I won’t pretend to be the resident expert, but I’m happy to share what I can.
Jaclyn
What could I ask her discreetly? What would I think if she had started digging for intel about Walking Disaster’s bassist Mark Townsend out of the blue?
I stopped at the corner so I wouldn’t run into anyone as I typed a quick response.
Jaclyn,
One of my friends told me she met Shane recently and thought he was super cute. She wondered if he was seeing anyone and whether there were any red flags. I did poke around your forum a bit, but I don’t think she’s looking to dig up his whole dating history.
Pumpkin
She could at least point me in the right direction. With her lax moderating, anything terrible about Shane would still be on her forum somewhere. And the Internet was forever.
But all I wanted to know was whether he was someone to steer clear of. I didn’t want to learn about his every past girlfriend. Not via a fan forum at least. Jaclyn might not value privacy, but she and I had different philosophies on what constituted boundaries. And here I was breaching one.
I dropped my phone in my bag and headed toward the nearest subway station. I felt like I’d already put in a day’s work, and I hadn’t even arrived at my real job yet.
The subway took forever, so by the time I made it to Midtown, I was a bit later than I’d intended. The office bustled with activity as I set up my workstation. On my way to grab a second cup of coffee, I craned my neck to peer into the corner office where a long-haired hippie sat at his desk, talking on the phone. The placard beside the door read: Lars Cambridge. The editor and head honcho of the Rock Paper. An enormously influential man. A legend really. Goosebumps ran down my arms just knowing he was behind that door, probably making magic happen.
Would I ever get to meet him? I concentrated on breathing normally so I wouldn’t alert everyone in my vicinity that I was a freak and a total fraud. How had I ended up in the coolest place on the planet?
As soon as I sat back down at my desk, Byron called my name from the meeting room.
“You coming?”
I furrowed my brow. Crap. I needed to put a reminder on my phone. Not a great way to start the day. I undocked my laptop and carried it with me into the meeting room intent to listen and learn.
On the overhead screen, Ajit had pulled up a web page covered with graphs. “There was an unusual surge overnight. Nothing too concerning, but I got an alert and went to investigate.”
Dave leaned in. “Around what time?”
“Sometime after midnight. Load average was coming down by the time I logged in.”
I watched the interchange between the two developers, wondering if there was any chance an invasion of trolls in a comment section of a review could cause the servers to experience heavy load. I’d managed to optimize my own website