That pointed at the government, which implied politics and organized crime. Maybe there were terrorists back then, she considered. Maybe these people were somehow connected and had their eye on Shrew, all because she’d been foolish enough to take a job she knew nothing about and served at the behest of anonymous people who might be criminals.

For all she knew, the technician on the phone was a criminal, a terrorist, or a government agent, and this business about the Marilyn Monroe photograph launching the mutant worm was an attempt to muddy the waters so Shrew didn’t figure out what was really going on: The website had self-destructed like those tape recorders in Mission: Impossible, because without intending to, Shrew had inserted herself into the middle of a massive plot against a world power or an Evil Empire.

She felt extremely confused and overwhelmed by anxiety.

“You realize, I hope,” she said to the alleged technician, “that I have no idea what’s going on. I want no part of it, and never intended to be part of it. Not that I know anything. Because I certainly don’t.”

“It’s complicated,” he said. “Even for us. I’m trying to tell you this is a very sophisticated code someone’s written. Has to be. By code I mean a computer program that’s embedded in something that seems innocuous, such as a data file or an attachment.”

She didn’t care what he meant, and she didn’t care that the mutant worm couldn’t be stopped and that all attempts to shut down and restart the system had failed. She glazed over as the technician suggested they could attempt loading an archived earlier version of the Gotham Gotcha site, but his only other available servers didn’t have much disk space and were much slower, and that also could cause a crash. Possibly, they should purchase a new server, but that couldn’t happen instantly, and he’d have to clear it with the “business office,” and in the UK it was five hours later than it was here, so he wasn’t going to get anyone.

He pointed out that loading an earlier version would also mean Shrew would have to repopulate the website and repost all the latest information, and fans would need to be alerted that e-mails and images they had sent should be resent. The fixes required of Shrew would take days, maybe weeks, and the public was going to be angry, and those who most recently had joined the site wouldn’t be in the older version of the database and would be deeply offended. The website could be down for days. It could be weeks.