Jeff dared not think what crept into his mind. He dared not let his thoughts go there. Internet romances were not on his list of acceptable things, but inter-department romances were — and not even prohibited by company policy.

Alilshy: Well, now that you are here, what shall we do?

Igor: *checking notes*

Alilshy: Ok. Me too

Igor: BRB

Jeff flipped through his papers he kept just for Sword Dynasty looking for the notes he had taken the night before. He remembered some dwarf — another dwarf different from the first — telling them what to do with the talisman. He was sure he wrote it down.

Just then, the family that lived upstairs came in and the kids were screaming wildly. Jeff thought maybe they were hurt, slipped to the door, and peaked out through the little window beside it. He didn't see anything suggesting other than pouting children, so he hurried back to his papers.

However, between rifling through his notes and trying to be a good neighbor, too much time had passed and the games inactivity timer had deemed him "away from keyboard." The last two entries on the chat window stared back at him.

SYSTEM: Your buddy, Alilshy, has logged out

SYSTEM: Igor, you have been logged out for inactivity

Jeff muttered some guttural growl and moused into the userID field, typed "Igor," then tabbed to the password field and completed his login.

SYSTEM: Welcome back Igor, you have been away for (0) days

Jeff smiled and wondered if that zero would ever be anything higher than a one. He took a sip of water and waited, notes found, for his friend to log back in.

SYSTEM: Your buddy, Alilshy, has logged in on server 5

Igor: Hi there. WB

Alilshy: Sorry. Trouble finding notes. Got distracted. All good here, now

Alilshy: Ready?

Igor: Let's go

The night passed quickly and Igor and Alilshy collected the necessary items to complete the next phase of the quest. They stayed up longer than usual to get it done and kept most of their conversation focused on the quest.

Jeff crawled into bed very satisfied, still wondering if Alilshy might be — might just possibly be Janis, the sys-admin in the other wing.

I'll have to get Doug to tell me her game name . . .

He thought about asking Alilshy, but feared to violate the taboo. There was nothing wrong with asking a real-life person about their make-believe RPG identity. But going the other way — asking the character about a real-life identity was treading on thin ice. Over time, things would slip out, as with Hack-master, but Jeff did not want to push it.

I'll ask Doug, he decided, then rolled over and drifted off to sleep.

Walking into the office that next morning, it was immediately obvious that there would be no talk of Sword Dynasty. Their wing was in chaos.

"Virus," Doug said as he hurried for the server room with a stack of back-up tapes.

He need not say more. If Doug's one word announcement wasn't enough to tell Jeff what was happening, the smug looks of the Unix and Macintosh people were. Windows had been once more attacked.

Jeff's I-I group had to write their applications for Windows (though they kept data on a Unix platform) because they relied on their international partners to supply their own hardware. Thus, a Windows virus was a scary thing to their group, whereas other groups could stand around stoically sipping their coffee watching.

About three-fourths of the groups in the wing I-I shared relied on Windows for project development, so a breach in network security, a virus, or other threat to their systems was a big problem. Suffice to say, Jeff never got around to talking to Doug about Janis (who he assumed was sipping her coffee smugly watching the windows teams in her wing).

An hour later than usual, Jeff rolled into his apartment. He rushed to his sofa, downloaded that day's Windows patch, installed it on his laptop, and logged in to Sword Dynasty. Alilshy was already on line.

Alilshy: Hi. I was afraid you weren't coming

Igor: Problems at work. Sorry. Had to stay late

Alilshy: Oh. I thought maybe you had grown tired of me

Igor: That's crazy. You're a great friend

There was a pause that followed this statement that seemed far too long, and Jeff wondered if something had happened. He looked at what he had typed to make sure no strange twist of meaning had slipped in as a result of some typo, but found nothing. He scanned for possible double meanings, but everything he said seemed straightforward. He could only guess by the silence that either his "friend" remark had unsettled her, or something in real life had distracted her. Finally, her reply came.

Alilshy: Do you really think of me as a friend?

Igor: Of course I do

Alilshy: :-)

There was another long pause. Jeff wanted to say something to assure her of his high regard, but feared saying more would give her the wrong impression.

Of course, if this is Janis, then maybe that is the impression I want to give. The other side of his brain quickly responded. Shut up. You're being bad. Alilshy seems moved by your calling her a friend. Don't spoil it.

Alilshy: What happened at work?

Jeff concluded that she was passing on to a safer subject, so he let her.

Igor: The Nuke-U virus. My team got hit bad. Thanks for back- ups!

Alilshy: Sorry to hear that. Some of our office had it too

Igor: Did you lose anything?

Alilshy: Not me. Unix girl here. And Macs. Only a few Macs, though

Jeff could not believe his eyes. I have to talk to Doug tomorrow!