He really had no idea what was going on. First he hadn't taken the time to listen to the details as he said he would race right over, but then Marsha wasn't able to explain much between fits of sobbing. The only thing he could do right now was try to get to the hospital safely and see how he could make sense of it all. On a type of automatic habit from driving for some 30 years, the car and he drove to the hospital and even found parking.

He could barely recognize his own voice when he stopped to talk to the person at the reception area that seemed way too cheerful for the circumstances. "I am Duncan Saunders and I need to know where my brother is, er where his remains are. Marsha Saunders is with him." The woman typed in the information and consulted her computer screen. For some reason, she wasn't getting the information she needed. She excused herself for a minute and went to ask the woman at the other desk, returning a few minutes later with directions to the hospital morgue.

His mind raced in a thousand directions as his feet followed just the one awful direction. He had never seen anyone dead before, let alone anyone known to him. This was his brother Ben. His younger brother at that! He steeled himself inside when he saw Marsha slumped over in a chair in the waiting room. He went to comfort her as best he could. She clung to him like she needed his very breath for strength herself as she sobbed uncontrollably. A Social Worker was there in a few minutes and offered some assistance and also some needed background information.

Apparently, Ben had been out with their dog for a long walk when a stray Rottweiler had attacked his dog. He tried to break up the fight, but the dog had severely mauled him in the process. His own dog, wounded, took off. Neighbors had called 911, animal control and tried to help but didn't seem to know this person or the dog. When the rescue unit arrived, they were challenged to even keep him alive for the short ride to the hospital. All they found on him was a set of house keys, some spare money, a sticky pad paper with some hand written letters on it that seemed to be a code of some sort. Fortunately, one of the triage nurses at the hospital recognized it as an URL for the WWW and she wondered if that might help solve the mystery as to this person's identity. Since the hospital itself wasn't on the Internet yet, she called her husband at home and had him pull up the address. It was a homepage for a man that was just starting up a business close by. In all likelihood, this victim had just wandered past, stopped in for a yarn with the gentleman, and gotten the address of a new homepage. Not two minutes later, they had him on the phone.

His name was Kevin Brinker and he was just starting up a computer consulting business from his home. Hours before he had visited with a man who had been walking a dog. He told John his name was Ben Saunders. He had left HIS homepage URL along with a phone number. There had even been talk about doing some business together in the future.

Even though they now had the phone number and a name, a call to his home wasn't enough. A child's voice on the voice mail announced that messages could be left for Bennie, Marsha, or Ben. How hard it was to leave a message. Instead, the triage nurse had another idea. She asked her husband to bring up Ben's homepage to see if he mentioned his workplace or his wife's workplace. Sure enough, along with a picture of the family, was a reference to his wife's occupation and a link to the company where she worked.

Soon Marsha was receiving a kind of call that everyone dreads. She would be right there. Once there, and understanding as best she could what she must do, Marsha called Duncan in for help. There they now stood, not wanting to go into the morgue and at the same time, desperately wanting to get it over. Yes, it was him. Would that horrid image of him in that drawer ever leave their minds? Why didn't they clean him up more before he was viewed? Well, there was nothing left to do except to sign papers and to collect the few things that had been in his pocket. Duncan took Marsha home in her car to wait for their 7 year old son Bennie to come home from a friend's house. Somehow, details like how he would get his car would have to wait for later.

The did their best with Bennie. There was no easy way to tell a child he no longer had a father and most likely, he also didn't have a dog. They all cried more than they knew they could and kept trying to reassure each other by saying they needed to all help each other get through this terrible time; Ben would have wanted it that way. It didn't help much, or for long, but grief has a way of taking over in a numbing way that helped everyone get through the funeral and the whirl of decisions and details.

No word yet about the missing cockapoo, but no one was willing to give up hope. It was too important to have a shred to hold on to at this time. Duncan had even volunteered to make some flyers on the computer. Marsha wanted Duncan to take the computer home with him. She was bitter, rational or not, about how she had been cheated out of what turned out to be too precious time with her husband.

She blamed the computer; almost like it was another woman. Duncan had never used Ben's computer but he was fairly familiar with a similar the one he needed at work. When he signed on, he watched it set up, but then noticed that it went directly into a script of some sort. It seemed to be calling out.

"Ahhhhh" that must be the modem hooking up with the Internet. When this TCPman thing was all done, he noticed there was a work group with different icons that he had never seen before. One was for something called mIRC, another was for Eudora, one was for something called Internet phone as well as something called Cuseeme. He did recognize the name Netscape, but he had never used any of these before.

He got into File Manager and tried to see what was in each of these directories. The mIRC one was filled with things called logs. Some logs seemed to be numbers, some seemed to be people's names. Mildly curious, he hit on the item "#Snugglenest." He did not expect to see what showed on the screen. Here was what appeared to be a dialog between a man and a woman. The woman's name appeared to be Genvieve and the man's seemed to be Tnderhart. This exchange was quite intense. It quickly became clear that it was a conversation between two lovers and Duncan began to feel like a voyeur reading such intimacy.

Shining it off at first as a romance novel of sorts, he closed that window and went back to file manager. He noticed a log called "status" and looked in there for any information about the status of this particular directory. After scrolling through a lot of information he also didn't understand, he noticed an odd thing. A short list of people's names were highlighted. He then saw a line that read "bsaunders is now known as tndrhart." What in the world did that mean? Ben hadn't had the chance to talk to Duncan about the specifics of the Internet, but it seemed like Ben was able to change his name and had actually been the man conversing with this Genvieve person.

His mind, already numb, was now was reeling. He got out of that program group altogether and went into a graphics program where things were more familiar. It seemed to take him forever to make this simplest of all flyers, but he just couldn't concentrate. Finally it finished printing and he shut down the computer. He hadn't a clue as to how long he sat there, just staring at the dark screen. He felt shaky and realized that he hadn't eaten all day. He grabbed some nondescript food from the nearly empty refrigerator and went to bed.

"What a life!" he thought as exhaustion overtook him at last. Things seemed finally past the frenetic stage when a loved one first dies. Friends and family swarm everywhere with helpfulness, interference and activity. Everyday tasks then demand attention and people turn their primary focus elsewhere. Duncan was trying to not be like that as far as Marsha and Bennie were concerned. He spent the majority of his free time with them, filling in as best he could and also gaining support for his own loss. In some countries and religions, it is the duty of the brother to marry the sister-in-law to make sure care was given to the family. He was grateful that was not the case with his own religion or era. While he had always enjoyed Marsha, but could NOT fathom seeing her as a spouse or lover in any conceivable future.

If the glaring truth be known, he couldn't really see himself tied down with any spouse or full-time lover. He had tried at various heart-throb points in his life, but nothing had clicked just right for him to feel that sense of commitment. Now, facing the loss of his brother, he felt even more disconnected to the world of people. Death brings up many personal issues for people. Duncan was discovering that no matter how hard he tried to minimize what was going on, he was struggling himself. He couldn't concentrate at work, which was not at all safe for a man whose job required great attention to detail. When his boss suggested Duncan take a 3 month sabbatical, a company benefit after 10 years of service, he got a bit miffed. Eventually, he saw the wisdom in the timing and straightened out his affairs to be gone temporarily.

Duncan had never NOT worked. He started way before anyone around him at the age of 7 with doing yard work and odd jobs for the neighbors. It seemed, looking back, he had always been at school or work and he had no clue as to what to do with himself. The horrid image of Ben would keep him up at night more often than he would admit to anyone, so he found himself trying to stay up until his body made the sleep decision for him.

One late night, he was out of good reading material to help stave the night's emotional pressure, so he thought he would try to crank up that computer again. Once again, without knowing the mechanics, it seemed to get him right into the Internet. He decided to click on the mIRC icon as that was the place that had those unexplainable stories. It took a bit, but he seemed to be connected with a place that was telling him rules of being there. He read all the information and followed its suggestion of typing in /join #newbies. In a flash, there he was in a window of that name. All these names kept flying past his screen as he watched; some of them even kept writing "hi bsaunders."

He stared at the banter and questions others had and he tried to get the gist of what was going on. Finally he noticed that someone had told him to type in the box at the bottom of the window where the flashing cursor was and then press enter. He tried it with a simple "hi" and he could see it on the screen along with everyone else's. Someone named Pixi was being very helpful and was telling him how to do everything from how to leave a channel to how to do private messages.

This was quite an interesting place at 3 in the morning. People seemed to be from all over the world and it seemed like people were just coming and going all the time. Soon he started saying "hi" and "bye" to people to for the courtesy of it as well as the practice. He could see how his brother might have found this interesting, especially if there were other channels, especially if there were channels like that #snugglenest that he had seen.

He asked his new buddy Pixi (odd that he was thinking of these electrons on a screen as a buddy when he didn't even know the gender or age of this person) how to see if there was a channel called #snugglenest or to find out if there was a person there named Genvieve. When he learned how to find out about channels, he saw that there was no such nick or no such channel. He was a bit disappointed. He told the channel "good-bye" and closed down the computer. This was the best time he had in weeks. Coincidentally, he slept soundly as well. ("sheeesh had 2 hours passed in what seemed like such a short time?")

When Duncan got up and moving later that day, he decided he would go and see that man Kevin Brinker. If you thought of it, Kevin was the last person to see Ben alive and he also might have some answers about some of Duncan's computer questions. It was really amazing to realize that if that nurse hadn't been so computer literate, poor Ben might not have been identified as soon. Fortunately Kevin was at home with the door open in his garage "office." Duncan introduced himself and asked if he could speak with Kevin for a few minutes. Kevin seemed very glad to see Duncan and was very forthcoming about all the things he could remember about that brief time with Ben. As far as the computer went, he was trying to set up a computer consulting business and HTML authoring business so he would be happy to come help Duncan at his inherited computer. They set an appointment for the following evening.

Kevin seemed right at home when he got the computer cranked up the following night. He was very clear and thorough in his explanations of things and Duncan even took notes. He went through each of the programs that were so puzzling to Duncan and before the evening was over, Duncan felt like he could tackle most of the basics on his own. Kevin emphasized he was just an "e-mail away" and would be happy to help Duncan out anytime he had any questions. Right now, Duncan had just one thing on his mind; to understand this big puzzle about what his brother had been up to as "tndrhart" with this "Genvieve."

The first thing Duncan did was to see if there were any of these gif things that Kevin had talked about. He sorted through all the files in file manager and finally found a directory called "g.gifs." He was not prepared for what he saw. If this woman was for real, she was stunning in her own way. There were lots of different poses of her, each one more alluring than the previous one. She was striking enough to be a model, but these pictures were candid home pictures and without pretense. He was taken most by her eyes. Maybe it was the software and not true to life, but the brilliant green in her eyes, sparkled with a sense of adventure. Her flowing, thick auburn locks on her shoulders that softly framing her face, made him remember that he had always been a sucker for red-heads. He had never talked about such personal issues with his brother, so he hadn't a clue that his brother Ben shared that bias.

Duncan found himself staring at her pictures. There were lots of logs too. All sorts of different names of channels they must have set up for each other. He didn't feel quit right reading all those logs, like he was a peeping Tom, but he was so compelled and intrigued by it all, he shoved away his guilt. It was amazing really. From what he could gather, she was from a small town in France. How in the world did his seemingly happily married brother, get so involved with a woman half way around the world? "Who was this tndrhart that he didn't know posing inside his own brother? "Who WAS this Genvieve?" he thought to himself as he pried himself away from the computer in a race to get to bed before the sun rose.