[ WP ] You start to suspect that your 'computer illiterate ' grandmother is actually the premier hacker in the world .

`` Honey, the email is broken again. Do you mind coming over and fixing it?'' 
 
 She used AOL in 2016. She was a nightmare. The concept of holding down multiple keys at a time was as foreign to her as streaming porn, torrenting software, or buying drugs with bitcoins. 
 
 And she wanted me to `` fix her email''.. Again. 
 
 `` Sure gram. Think you can bake me some cookies? Give me a couple hours. James is playing outside.'' 
 
 ***** 
 
 She lived in a typical small town New England house, about a mile off the coast. It could have been a postcard if it were n't for the ramshackle effect the lack of maintenance had taken on it. It's funny. In 1993 she was on top of everything but by'94 it was like she just stopped caring about anything except TV and forwarding emails. 
 
 Twenty-two years later we were hoping she'd go back to scrap-booking. 
 
 I'd just lost a job in IT. A lot of people had been laid off since the `` 20-LD!?'' virus had hit the net. There was so much damage to infrastructure a lot of governments and corporations had decided to go back to pre-digital technologies. Mostly people online were just looking at pictures of cats, pretending their lives were great on social media, and masturbating. 
 
 Things had definitely gotten more simple for me and my family since I lost my job. No more sixty hour work-weeks, plenty of quality time with the kids, and I was learning to enjoy cooking. If she'd asked me five years a go to fix her email.. Well.. I'd have just been too tired to help. 20-LD!? changed that. 
 
 Rebecca came home from work early. She was looking great since she got out of office work. Finally finished her degree in special education. All that running around with those kids had helped her shed the baby weight. She positively glowed in the May sunlight. 
 
 Her arrival gave me time to go out down route one and make it to Gram's house a little early. I called her, thinking maybe I could pick her up some groceries, but she did n't pick up her phone. Maybe she was puttering around the house, as was her wont. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I pulled up, the fence needed mending. I carefully closed the latch and quietly meandered up the walk to her door. I knocked but there was no answer. My anxiety piqued a bit so I let myself in. Nobody around here locks their doors. That's that small town life for you, I guess. 
 
 `` Gram? I do n't smell cookies!'' 
 
 `` Robert! Oh Lord, give me a minute I was n't expecting you so early.. Or did I lose track of time? Lord.. Maybe I really am getting too old!?'' 
 
 ``... I'm early.'' 
 
 Something about the way she said, `` too old..'' There was a strange amount of irony in her inflection. Grandma was getting on in the years, she did n't move very quickly. I always assumed a sense of humor was one of the first things to go. 
 
 When I headed into her sitting room I glanced at the monitor. She walked in from the kitchen with a nervous look on her face. 
 
 `` What did you say?'' 
 
 `` Too old, dear.. Maybe I'm getting too old..'' 
 
 `` Are you running linux, grandma!?'' 
 
 She smiled at me, and I shuddered. What the fuck was going on here?
