Richard Rosen had an idea something was wrong when Par didn't show up for a meeting some ten days before the hearing, but he kept hoping his client would come good. Rosen had negotiated a deal for Par: reparations plus fifteen days or less in juvenile prison in exchange for Par's full cooperation with the Secret Service.
Par had appeared deeply troubled over the matter for weeks. He didn't seem to mind telling the Feds how he had broken into various computers, but that's not what they were really looking for. They wanted him to rat. And to rat on everyone. They knew Par was a kingpin and, as such, he knew all the important players in the underground. The perfect stooge. But Par couldn't bring himself to narc. Even if he did spill his guts, there was still the question of what the authorities would do to him in prison. The question of elimination loomed large in his mind.
So, one morning, Par simply disappeared. He had planned it carefully, packed his bags discreetly and made arrangements with a trusted friend outside the circle which included his room-mates. The friend drove around to pick Par up when the room-mates were out. They never had an inkling that the now eighteen-year-old Par was about to vanish for a very long time.
First, Par headed to San Diego. Then LA. Then he made his way to New
Jersey. After that, he disappeared from the radar screen completely.
Life on the run was hard. For the first few months, Par carried around two prized possessions; an inexpensive laptop computer and photos of Theorem taken during her visit. They were his lifeline to a different world and he clutched them in his bag as he moved from one city to another, often staying with his friends from the computer underground. The loose-knit network of hackers worked a bit like the nineteenth-century American `underground railroad' used by escaped slaves to flee from the South to the safety of the northern states. Except that, for Par, there was never a safe haven.
Par crisscrossed the continent, always on the move. A week in one place. A few nights in another. Sometimes there were breaks in the electronic underground railroad, spaces between the place where one line ended and another began. Those breaks were the hardest. They meant sleeping out in the open, sometimes in the cold, going without food and being without anyone to talk to.
He continued hacking, with new-found frenzy, because he was invincible. What were the law enforcement agencies going to do? Come and arrest him? He was already a fugitive and he figured things couldn't get much worse. He felt as though he would be on the run forever, and as if he had already been on the run for a lifetime, though it was only a few months.
When he was staying with people from the computer underground, Par was careful. But when he was alone in a dingy motel room, or with people completely outside that world, he hacked without fear. Blatant, in-your-face feats. Things he knew the Secret Service would see. Even his illicit voice mailbox had words for his pursuers:
Yeah, this is Par. And to all those faggots from the Secret Service who keep calling and hanging up, well, lots of luck. 'Cause, I mean, you're so fucking stupid, it's not even funny.
I mean, if you had to send my shit to Apple Computers [for analysis], you must be so stupid, it's pitiful. You also thought I had blue-boxing equipment [for phreaking]. I'm just laughing trying to think what you thought was a blue box. You are so lame.