The Blue Nowhere Second Posting

Deaver, Jeffery. The Blue Nowhere. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.

Section II (cont.)

12 (second half) and 13
Holloway, in searching the computer files of Jamie Turner, remembers briefly his high school days. Holloway is depicted as an brilliant, disenfranchised teenager. He is ignored by his parents (who are consumed in their own lives and work) and he is marginalized by his teachers and peer groups at school. Holloway was non social, bored, and isolated. At seventeen years of age, he decided to become someone else just as he had done in the on line games he was playing. He social engineered a position in another school and became popular. While playing this acceptable social role, he was instrumental in his parents and brother’s demise. He later went to Princeton and at one time held remarkable computer positions. Now he is playing his game with Jamie Turner.
In the Crimes Unit, Gillette has been given full control over computer access and associated decisions. He cuts important lines of computer communication to prevent Phate potentially turning his game upon them. Bishop trusts Gillette and lets him do this.
Gillette’s work for the Crimes Unit is productive; he finds Phate’s true identity and some work history. He also identifies Phate as a co-leader of an on line gang, The Knights of Access. The other gang leader is identified as Valleyman. The crime investigation group recognizes Phate’s overall goal; to kill as many people as he can in one week.

The problem of capturing the interest and energy of gifted children is underscored in these two chapters. The crucial role which parents play in the development of their children is underscored. The ultimate crime of the century in regard to internet use is may be that of the invasion of privacy of all kinds, personal, corporate, and national, and the subsequent use of that information for bad.

14, 15, and 16
Most significantly to the story development, Gillette builds a bot to search for Valleyman, Phate, and Holloway. Gillette’s bot yields a message from a character known as “Vlast.” Vlast uses an internet server from Budapest and the reader is introduced to some background of the numbers of hackers in Budapest and why. Another character, “Triple X,” is found with Gillette’s bot. Gillette is able to engage in a “conversation” with Triple X where he discovers a few things about Phate’s program, Trapdoor. His conversation is cut short, however, due to a fault in the cloaking device supplied by Miller.
An abbrevated history of the Silicon Valley is presented. Its beginnings are in David Starr Jordan’s venture capital in a little known invention called the audion tube. The tube’s potential in electronics helped to create the Valley’s industry and changed the world.
Jamie Turner is presented as a disenfranchise child just as Phate is and with the same problems and potential for developing into an angry, isolated person.
Phate is updated by Shawn regarding the progress of the Crimes Unit as to his identity and automobile make. Phate goes to the St. Francis Academy and waits for Jamie Turner to come out….just as Phate has so engineered it.

The Silicon Valley history was very interesting. The history of the Budapest hackers was interesting. An internet world exists about which the average person is oblivious. The hack and chat rooms are presented as without rules and wild and dangerous.

17
Phate captures Jamie and uses him as access to “Booty.” Booty is killed. It was Booty that was Phate’s target; Jamie was the “trapdoor” to Booty. Gillette is at the crime scene. He offers council to Jamie when the school vice principle does not. Gillette is suggested as the Crime Unit’s internal spy. Gillette escapes the Crime Unit through the fire alarmed door just as Jamie had done at the school. Officer Bishop feels personally betrayed.

In this chapter, school authority figures are shown as detached and incapable of providing personal support for students. They appear unemotional and, in a sense, robotical. A dysfunctional computer addict is shown as more capable than anyone to help the boy in need. Most of the personal relationships in the story are fractured. The computer is personalized as a “co-conspirator” in Booty’s death. Booty is the second death in the week's "game." The appearance of Gillette at a crime scene seems a bit of a stretch in the story development for a prisoner serving a sentence in a federal prison.