Sam grinned, and had anyone see it, they would have had a problem describing the gesture. Evil, insidious, mischievous… all seemed to apply. It was actually anticipation, because Sam had finally escaped the clutches of the myriad number of things that had conspired to keep her away from her favorite activity. Homework was done, dinner was eaten, and now she was going to be able to lock herself in her room for the night without raising any suspicions.

The computer booted up while she changed into more comfortable attire, ridding herself of everything save a pair of loose, comfortable baggy old boxers that she’d had for years and a tee shirt that probably should have seen the bottom of a garbage can ages ago. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, keeping the irksome mass from falling in her face, and there was a glass of juice sitting on her desk, just in case she got thirsty. So, with all battle supplies at the ready, she settled down into her computer chair and waited.

It took a little while to pull up the AOL program. It kept insisting on updating itself all the time, and she watched impatiently until that little blue rectangle gave over to the sign-on screen.

The cursor moved down the list of her names, finally clicking on RY1010. Nimble fingers quickly typed in her password… all of her passwords were the same, just to keep things straight. Cronkite, because she figured that no one would ever be able to figure out what it was, thus safeguarding all of her secrets behind the lock and key of eight little letters.

The hiss and whine of the modem was muffled, and she watched as the connection sprang up. 45333 bps… not too bad. Sometimes the phone lines got tricky and only let her have 20000. She wasn’t really sure what the difference was, but it always made her feel better to see something large up there.

"Welcome. You’ve got mail." Someone had told her once that you could personalize those things, could replace what had to be one of the most annoying automated voices ever created with anything that you wanted, but she hadn’t taken the time to do it yet. It seemed like too much trouble, though she imagined that it was probably far easier than the complicated maze of unintelligible computer commands that she was imagining.