Free Streams of Babel by Carol Plum-Ucci Page A

cap, Nestlé Crunch bars, Instant Quaker Oatmeal, Oreos, video games
Doom
and
Doom II,
a John Grisham novel translated to Urdu, and Slim Jims.
    What I really want I cannot have, which is Gap jeans and Prada sneakers. In this village, expensive clothing might imply we are doing enormous favors for Americans, and considering some of our clientele of late, I would not like to wear them at my funeral.
    I send my message scrambled, which will drive Hodji crazy upon receiving it in Karachi when he returns to his office late tonight. He will think I have important news and unscramble it to find only my eloquent speech. I find this quite funny. It is a serene afternoon. The extremists are not stirred up.
    I switch screens because I hear them grow quiet, which means they are no longer looking on eBay. Sure enough, they are watching reverently as screen name StarFind, who USIC has discovered is a high school mathematics teacher in Hamburg, chats away about Americans decreasing certain gifts to Israel. It makes the listeners grunt with satisfaction. I have read it all before on many of the sites where I seek intelligence to sell to Roger and Hodji.
    I check upward in their chatter, just to be sure I have not missed anything. Then I plug keywords into one of the search engines I initially designed for my father: "Colony One," "vinegar," "rivers," "run red," and click GO.
    I have been strategically put by Uncle Ahmer to find chatter containing these words after Hodji paid eight hundred dollars for one scripted conversation I sent them last November. I had seen chatter posted by a log-in VaporStrike, though I could dig up no information as to his identity. It read, "
They will anoint the waters with Red Vinegar—rivers will run red in Colony One.
" As it sounded like a threat, I flagged it, translated it from Arabic to English, and sent it to Uncle Ahmer, who sent it on to Roger and Hodji in Karachi. Hodji showed up within twenty-four hours, with the eight hundred dollars and specific instructions for Uncle Ahmer to keep an eye out for further chatter containing these terms.
    Roger and Hodji know that Uncle Ahmer does not hack or v-spy. He is nothing but a voice box for my computer skills. But the USIC officials cannot get past my age. They always approach him, not me. He is content with this arrangement, because he gets to keep most of the dollars that way. I don't care about dollars as much. I care more for my adrenaline rushes.
    My program automatically searches not only this chat room but 217 others I have recorded because extremists have been known to chat in them. It searches them in both Arabic and languages using the English alphabet. The agents tell me very little, but I can figure out much just from my own searches.
    It is obvious to me that "anoint the waters with Red Vinegar" is a terroristic threat, possibly to do with poisoning a water
supply. Another post, to VaporStrike by an Omar0324, read, "
Waters will run red in Colony One ... Waters will run red three hours from Home Base in December ... They will drink in December and die like mangy dogs in April.
" Hence I know that probably somewhere on this planet, people are drinking poisoned water that is slowly compromising their health, and they may not become aware of it until April. I don't believe the chatter is a hoax, but finding the flesh and blood behind these log-ins is a problem. Omar0324 hides behind a Yahoo! address, which is untraceable even to me, same as VaporStrike. These extremists and Colony One could be anywhere on this planet.
    I know USIC has searched in Africa for Home Base because another chat room I scripted had this English in its chatter: "
American intelligence agents took three of our comrades in for questioning in the Sudan yesterday and tested six wells. They almost fell in, pfwaal
" I don't know what led USIC to the Sudan, but because of another post, I believe Colony One is in America. VaporStrike told two online cronies on December 29, "
Waters