I head upstairs and it’s just where I suspected—across the landing from the master bedroom, a newish Dell with a monitor that’s older than the computer. I tap the mouse, happy to find the machine on standby. password. password1. password1234. nicholas1234. Password1234 and I’m in. Obviously people who don’t even lock their doors are hardly going to do any better with their computers. With a couple of clicks the ProRat tool is installing, bedding in, like a stowaway.

When it’s finished, I eject my USB and send his system to sleep so he’ll find it just as he left it, push the mouse back to the center of its gray pad, slip out of the study leaving the door ajar, pull his front door behind me carefully but firmly so I can hear it click but no one nearby would hear it slam. And then I have to hold back the temptation to run, forcing myself into long strides in case I bump into someone and need to feign a stroll.

Back at Lolly’s house, in the guest room, across the landing from the master bedroom (the same room Nick uses as a study). In terms of layout and structure, the two houses are twins. It looks like my desk in Lolly’s guest room is even in the same place as Nick’s desk in his study. Ever since I learned how easy it is to hack webcams, I always keep a piece of tape over mine. Not fifteen minutes ago I was in the equivalent room in his house looking at his monitor. Now I’m in the guest room of my grandmother’s house, looking at my laptop, through his monitor, and into the same room. It’s creepy, looking at my computer screen and seeing a room exactly like the one I’m in but with a different life filling it, like I’ve just moved again with my parents and forgotten where I am. He has lots of books, hardbacks with dark spines segregated from the bright dwarf paperbacks, and instead of awkward watercolors he displays what looks like framed newspaper articles, maybe ones he won awards for. That annoys me.

I route my IP through a proxy server; better safe than sorry. Then into the back end of his operating system to run a quick script

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

<meta name=‘viewport’ content=‘initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no’>

<meta charset=‘utf-8’>

<title>Simple Polygon</title>

<style>

/* Always set the map height explicitly to define the size of the div

* element that contains the map. */

#map {

height: 100%;

}

/* Optional: Makes the sample page fill the window. */

html, body {

height: 100%;

margin: 0;

padding: 0;

}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div id=‘map’></div>

<script>

and wait.