WHEN NICK ARRIVED HOME, HE IMMEDIATELY went to his room, turned on his computer, and logged into TAP Something about what he’d said to Taj that night had bothered her. What makes you think it’s part of TAP? There had to be something in that.
He studied the site intently and noticed something in the upper corner of his home page. A logo. Shaped like angel wings. He’d never noticed it before, but then he’d never really looked before. Like a lot of kids, he used TAP to get in touch with people, put up some fun stuff, but he never really thought twice about it.
TAP had always had a somewhat hokey feel—there were no ads on the front pages, and the whole site looked like something designed by your kid brother on Dreamweaver. It was part of its charm.
He clicked through the home pages of all his friends. Each one had the same angel wings in the upper left-hand corner. He checked blog pages, mail pages, video pages. There it was, over and over again. Right behind the “Welcome to TAP.com” box. Come to think of it, the logo looked a whole lot like the angel wings tattoos everyone was sporting. What gave?
Nick studied it thoughtfully. Then he sent an IM message to the one guy he was sure would know the symbol’s provenance. Eric was always connected, he IMed from his cell.
HunterN: Hey e, what up. Have you seen this before?
He cut and pasted the angel wing sign onto the screen.
crashnburn: looks like a logo
HunterN: yeah I know it’s a logo, see, it’s in the upper left-hand corner of all TAP pages. Is it theirs?
HunterN: doesn’t YourPage own TAP?
crashnburn: Yar. but their logo is the little people all lined up.
Nick had seen that logo before—it was all over TAP as well. It looked like a bunch of restroom door icons lined up together. Seeing it always made him want to find a bathroom.
HunterN: so what r u sayin
crashnburn: maybe someone else owns YourPage?
HunterN: could u check it out?
crashnburn: Sure.
He waited a few minutes, clicked on a couple of music sites, read some gossip on TAP. Maxine was talking shit about him all over the Web. Ugh.
A few minutes later, there was a ping on his screen.
Instant Message from crashnburn: ACCEPT?
Nick clicked yes.
crashnburn: Found it.
crashnburn: YourPage is owned by Werner Records, the big music conglomerate.
HunterN: You mean they bought out YourPage when it was getting big?
crashnburn: No. the opposite. They set up YourPage to put out TAP.
HunterN: That’s weird, isn’t it? Didn’t those two guys Jim Freestone and Mark Riley set up TAP at USC?
crashnburn: nope. looks like they were hired to start TAP. From the corporate docs I was able to hack.
HunterN: Thanks e. I owe you.
crashnburn: No worries. Hey, did you hear about the bear and the bunny shitting in the woods?
crashnburn: mr. bear asks mr. bunny, mr. bunny do you find shit sticks to yr fur? mr. bunny says, why no, mr. bear, it doesn’t.
HunterN: uh-huh
crashnburn: so mr. bear picks up mr. bunny and wipes his ass.
HunterN: classy, e. real classy.
crashnburn: i do my best. LOL. Hey, any word on your sister?
HunterN: no. it sucks, rents think she’s just pulling a ‘fish.’
crashnburn: sorry bout that, sure she’s fine.
HunterN: hope so.
crashnburn: All right. Be strong. Later.
Odd that one of the most popular websites online was actually created and owned by one of the biggest music conglomerates in the world. That certainly deviated from the standard Silicon Valley success story—two college kids set up a site and got all their friends to join, then their friends got all of their friends to join, and before you knew it, local newscasters were talking about how dangerous the site was, and there were hundreds of articles written about the safety of kids online, but by then the college kids had sold out and collected their millions.
Eric was telling him the complete opposite—that the company had hired two college kids to set up a site to front TAP.