UNDERGROUND

might get the hint. Maybe, if Phoenix couldn't hear someone shouting advice at him, he might at least listen to someone whis- pering it. But no. Phoenix was far too thick for that.

The Internet - indeed, all hacking - was out of bounds for weeks, if not months. There was no chance the Australian authorities would let a front-page story in the Times go by un- heeded. The Americans would be all over them. In one selfish act of hubris, Phoenix had ruined the party for everyone else.

Electron unplugged his modem and took it to his father. During exams, he had often asked his father to hide it. He didn't have the self-discipline needed to stay away on his own and there was no other way Electron could keep himself from jacking in - plugging his modem into the wall. His father had become an expert at hiding the device, but Electron usually still managed to find it after a few days, tearing the house apart until he emerged, triumphant, with the modem held high above his head. Even when his father began hiding the modem outside the family home it would only postpone the inevitable.

This time, however, Electron vowed he would stop hacking until the fallout had cleared - he had to. So he handed the modem to his father, with strict instructions, and then tried to distract himself by cleaning up his hard drive and disks. His hacking files had to go too. So much damning evidence of his activities. He deleted some files and took others on disks to store at a friend's house. Deleting files caused Electron considerable pain, but there was no other way. Phoenix had backed him into a corner.

Brimming with excitement, Phoenix rang Electron on a sunny March afternoon.

'Guess what?' Phoenix was jumping around like an eager puppy at the other end of the line. 'We made the nightly news right across the US!'

'Uhuh,' Electron responded, unimpressed.

'This is not a joke!' We were on cable news all day too. I called Erik and he told me.'

'Mmm,' Electron said.