F2f (R)

A filmmaker idly responds to a murder threat posted on an electronic bulletin board and receives a cryptic warning that her life is in danger from a madman stalking the Internet. Reprint.

Would you invite a serial killer into your home?

If you have a computer and a modem, you may have already opened the door....

The Verba Interchange is an electronic bulletin board, a virtual meeting placewhere anyone with a computer and a modem can exchange views, flirt, or arguewith complete anonymity. But an ingenious serial killer is using the vastpotential of the Net to choose victims for a deadly f2f--a face-to-facemeeting.

"Your life is in jeopardy. As you read this, you are within reach of amurderer. Death stands behind you, silent and unseen. At any moment you mayfeel its chill breath on the back of your neck... "

So begins a macabre message posted on Verba, under the innocent-sounding aliasSnowflake. Most of its readers assume the threat is a bizarre joke; a fewreply, their responses ranging from disgust to insult, from attempts to reasonto outright challenge. To each he sends a warning: "You have been noticed."

Filmmaker Kate Lavin is one of the Verba subscribers who have attractedSnowflake's attention. She is disturbed by his warning, but with the passingweeks her concerns are pushed aside by work and her worries about herex-husband, computer genius Ellis Hoile. They have maintained a bittersweetfriendship, but now Ellis is consumed in a new project that makes use of hisquirky brilliance...and that makes Kate uneasy.

Then the first body appears, with a cryptic message to taunt investigators.Shortly after, another Verba subscriber dies. The police have no clues--anddon't even yet know what connects the victims. It will take a mind asbrilliant as the killer's, with as bold a disregard for convention and the law,to crack the warped code of a murderer's logic... before the rest of the nameson his list--including Kate's,--become names on homicide case files.

F2F is a taut and terrifying tale of random violence--all the more compellingbecause it could be true.

Copyright 1996 by Phillip Finch.