Free Googleplex by James Renner Page B

said Sara’s partner, a round fellow named
Henry who worked for a PNC mortgage loan office in Cleveland. “It
was creepy. Wasn’t it, Sara?”
    “I wouldn’t say creepy, Henry. It felt like being
violated. It was a kind of rape. Really. I mean, you pull up your
address on Google Earth and, boom, there’s a picture of your house
taken from the street when you didn’t know they were even there.
Nobody asked our permission. I mean anyone could pull up that
picture. Thieves. Rapists. Scouting for victims. I mean what if I
had been standing at the window, naked, just out of the
shower?”
    Alan, who knew Sara would never stand near a window
naked unless the shades were drawn and the lights were out, laughed
quietly. Trish shot him a look.
    “It’s not funny,” said Sara.
    “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
    “See what you think. Get your laptop out. Let’s take
a look. You might feel differently if you pull up the picture of
your house and there you are in the front yard pulling weeds with
your ass crack hanging out the back of your jeans.”
    Alan shrugged and went to look for his macbook.
    Sara’s neck was turning red. It did that a lot when
she got overheated about an idea. “I mean when does it stop? You
know that right here in Akron, at that Goodyear hangar, they’re
building a new kind of blimp that flies into the stratosphere and
takes high-resolution video that can read license plates on the
ground?”
    “I haven’t heard that,” offered Trish, who was making
fast work of the chardonnay in her deep glass.
    “It’s true. They want to film us 24/7. Know our every
move.”
    “But Sara,” said Trish. “You work at the Olive
Garden.”
    Just then Alan returned with the laptop. He placed it
on the coffee table and sat on his knees to work it. In a minute,
he was typing their address into Google. A small orange street map
appeared. He clicked on a green man to the left of the map and
dragged it over to his road. The window changed, became a
photograph of a beautiful colonial with a wide flowerbed full of
petunias and heather outlining an English lawn. They all craned
their heads around Alan to see the screen.
    “Okay,” he said. “What am I looking at?”
    “That’s the Carney’s house, up the street,” said
Trish.
    “Ah. Right.”
    Alan clicked on an arrow and the view swiveled. Their
house came into the shot, a brown Tudor with the paint peeling from
under the eaves where the Winters gnawed at it.
    “Get closer,” Sara insisted.
    Alan clicked on another arrow that scooted the image
further down the road until the view was directly in front of their
home. Some months ago, that Google van with its 360-degree camera
array sticking out of its roof like a periscope, must have driven
by quietly snapping pictures. Trish’s Saturn was parked in the
driveway. Judging by the blooms on the apple tree these photographs
had been taken sometime in May. Five months ago?
    “See,” he said. “No ass crack. No naked Trish at the
win…”
    He stopped short when he saw it. A second later Trish
let out a surprised hiccup.
    “What the hell?” she said.
    “What?” asked Henry.
    Trish pointed at the window. It was maybe a foot
square, on the second floor above the front door, where the roof
climbed to a peak. There were a couple problems with this window.
First of all, it didn’t exist. At least not anymore. As long as
Alan and Trish had lived in the house, the front wall above the
door had no window. But more alarming was what was standing just
inside the window.
    “Who’s that?” asked Sara.
    “I have no idea,” said Alan.
    It was a girl’s upper torso and face, that much was
obvious. A young girl, maybe eight years old, in a red jumper with
blond hair hanging to her shoulders. Her mouth was open as if she
were laughing. Laughing or…

    “Jesus, Alan,” said Trish. “Is that girl
screaming?”
    “Wait,” he said. “I know what happened. I mean, the
Google truck or whatever must’ve come by when