ereabouts?" His best
offer. You'd have to be seriously repulsed by someone to turn down
Keo's.

"Ulua with black bean sauce--I'm going to regret this," she said.

"Great. No. I mean, we'll have a nice lunch. See you there," Joe bailed
before she could change her mind.

4

Joe put down his fork. "Lemon grass," he said with satisfaction. Mo was
eating rapidly; she raised her eyebrows.

"So, what have you been up to?" she asked, breaking off a piece of
spring roll.

"I bought a computer."

"Ughh."

Joe laughed. "I hate them, really. But they're good tools--I bought it
for the Internet, so I can trade stocks."

"I'm remembering," Mo said between bites, "what they say about how to
make a small fortune on Wall Street."

"How's that?"

"Well, you start with a large one."

"Ha, ha. That's one method I can't use."

"I should have eaten breakfast," she said. "What is the damned Internet
anyway?"

"Mo, I have to warn you--the last ten people that asked me questions
like that are lying face down."

"I can take it," she said.

"It's a way of moving information around," Joe said, "that doesn't
require a dedicated phone line. The telephone system works like a
string stretched between tin cans. Two people monopolize the string
until they're done. The Internet is different. Info is coded and split
into small packets. Each packet is numbered and addressed; it heads
toward its destination by any route that is open; it doesn't have to
travel with its sister packets. A program at the receiving end collects
the packets and reassembles them correctly. No need to dedicate one
string to one conversation at a time." Joe paused for breath. "The
Internet is a lot of fat strings with packets zipping through. Each
year the strings get fatter and the packets zip faster."

"Where did you learn this stuff?"

"Right up the road at the university. I actually have a degree in it."

"You don't look the type," Mo said.

"You say the nicest things. The Internet is here to stay. Twenty-some
years ago, when I was a student, I typed an algebra equation into a
computer; it was beamed from an antenna on top of the engineering
building to a satellite and then down to an antenna at MIT in
Massachusetts. A few seconds later, blak, blak, blak, the answer came
out of the printer, back from MIT. That was state of the art, a marvel.
Now, my God!" Joe paused. "I'm going to make money on it."

"Is that what you want to do, Joe, make m