In character Greg was using the Net, and specifically the newsgroup alt.visa.us, to help him cope with the visa’crats.
“It makes no sense to me that the U.S. government won’t let in someone with a college degree that’s in demand in this country,” Sue wrote, “and who speaks English with such a sexy accent.”
She had one last update later in June: “There’s one thing you have to change in your chapter, and it’s just one line. I went to the oncologist and he said I’d had enough tissue regeneration that was healthy to give me some hope of being able to have kids. So I guess I just might get to explore the world of labor pains and stretch marks after all. Ugh.
“And I know this sounds cheezy, but would you mind altering names?”
I was happy to oblige.
“The press here in Kansas City,” Sue said, “has an absolute field day with stuff like this. A guy got a mail-order bride from Russia a year or so ago, and they had a five-part segment on his life story in the paper and on the news. I’d just rather not be looked at as someone who had to go to a whole other country to find a date. Which is how my father puts it *sigh*.”
Oh, she had finally told. I wished I could see her father’s face when Greg actually materialized in K.C. In the most direct way Fred Olson* might understand how fortuitously the Net had enlarged his daughter’s range of choices. What counted wasn’t her finding a man, but the best man for her—whether he was next-door or an ocean away.
So that was how matters stood with Sue and Greg as the presses were about to turn. I pondered the visa problem. Damn the feds. Already the ayatollahs of the Senate had been trying to turn the Internet into Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, while the crew in the White House was crusading to make the Net more snoop-friendly. Now Washington was getting in the way of both a romance and a more definitive ending to my love chapter.
As I typed those words I was listening to a RealAudio replay of Senator James Exon pushing his censorship bill on the Senate floor—an outrage that could harm not only net.sex but net.love, given the major danger of abusive enforcement. I loathed the man’s voice. The bullying selfrighteousness struck me most of all. Exon’s tone was too close to that of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, the anti-communist zealot from Wisconsin. In a very narrow way I regretted that the Cold War was over. Now the bigots and bullies could focus on domestic troublemakers. Listening to the digitized Exon, I heard him say that a Nebraskan football coach had cheered him on. I reflected. Perhaps the senator and the coach could do a RealAudio broadcast from the locker rooms and show that in their territory even the after-game talk was G-rated.