Free Watchlist by Bryan Hurt

until next month?” The man was alternately wearing and holding a large sombrero.
    Googling at the border. Christ. Greg had vested out of Google six months before, cashing in his options and “taking some me time,” which turned out to be less rewarding than he’d expected. What he mostly did over the five months that followed was fix his friends’ PCs, watch daytime TV, and gain ten pounds, which he blamed on being at home instead of in the Googleplex, with its well-appointed twenty-four-hour gym.
    He should have seen it coming, of course. The US government had lavished $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border, and hadn’t caught a single terrorist. Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search Right.
    The DHS officer had bags under his eyes and squinted at his screen, prodding at his keyboard with sausage fingers. No wonder it was taking four hours to get out of the goddamned airport.
    â€œEvening,” Greg said, handing the man his sweaty passport. The officer grunted and swiped it, then stared at his screen, tapping. A lot. He had a little bit of dried food at the corner of his mouth and his tongue crept out and licked at it.
    â€œWant to tell me about June 1998?”
    Greg looked up from his Departures . “I’m sorry?”
    â€œYou posted a message to alt.burningman on June 17, 1998, about your plan to attend a festival. You asked, ‘Are shrooms really such a bad idea?’”
    The interrogator in the secondary screening room was an older man, so skinny he looked like he’d been carved out of wood. His questions went a lot deeper than shrooms.
    â€œTell me about your hobbies. Are you into model rocketry?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œModel rocketry.”
    â€œNo,” Greg said. “No, I’m not.” He sensed where this was going.
    The man made a note, did some clicking. “You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail.”
    Greg felt a spasm in his guts. “You’re looking at my searches and email?” He hadn’t touched a keyboard in a month, but he knew what he put into that search bar was likely more revealing than what he told his shrink.
    â€œSir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.”
    â€œBut the ads don’t mean anything,” Greg sputtered. “I get ads for Ann Coulter ringtones whenever I get email from my friend in Coulter, Iowa!”
    The man nodded. “I understand, sir. And that’s just why I’m here talking to you. Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently?”
    Greg racked his brain. “Okay, just do this. Search for ‘coffee fanatics.’” He’d been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was called Jet Fuel. “Jet Fuel” and “launch”—that would probably make Google barf up some model rocket ads.
    They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Halloween photos. They were buried three screens deep in the search results for “Greg Lupinski.”
    â€œIt was a Gulf War–themed party,” he said. “In the Castro.”
    â€œAnd you’re dressed as . . . ?”
    â€œA suicide bomber,” he replied sheepishly. Just saying the words made him wince.
    â€œCome with me, Mr. Lupinski,” the man said.
    By the time he was released, it was past 3:00 a.m. His suitcases stood forlornly by the baggage carousel. He picked them up and saw they had been opened and carelessly closed. Clothes stuck out