Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson Read Free Book Online

anybody who isn’t suffering from some kind of mental disorder. But machines can’t
do it. They need an IP address or an e-mail address or a handle to identify someone. Change those identifiers and that person becomes invisible to them. If what you’re saying is true, you
have discovered an entirely new way of getting computers to think. One might even say that with this botnet, you have endowed your little desktop machine with intuition.”
    Alif glanced at Abdullah out of the corner of his eye. He sat with a pronounced slouch, his large feet bent at the toe where the rim of the wastepaper basket met the floor.
    “You say that so calmly,” Alif said.
    Abdullah got up.
    “Yes, because I’m not convinced it’s actually true. It’s impossible, as you yourself said. There must be some other explanation for your botnet’s unusual rate of
accuracy. Regardless, it’s a very, very clever trick, and I salute you.” He grabbed his messenger bag off the bed. “You need to get out of the house more often, Alif. You’re
looking very peaky.”
    * * *
    He kept his promise: he made himself invisible to her. Using the profile of Intisar that Tin Sari had created, he instructed Hollywood to mask his digital presence. If she tried
to visit his Web site—if she even got that far; he hid it in the dark web where it was safe from prying search engines—her browser would tell her it did not exist. She could create a
thousand new e-mail addresses and send him messages from each one: they would all bounce. A search for his names, given and professional, would yield nothing. It would be as if he had vanished from
the electronic world.
    He did not have the heart to turn his weapon on himself. The very thought of making her invisible to him was too much to bear. He left Hollywood connected to Intisar’s machine, reasoning
that the additional data from Tin Sari might provide an even more complete picture of her digital self, and that this in turn would help him understand these somnambulant patterns, this
language-beyond-language he had discovered through her. It was not spying. He didn’t read her e-mail, after all, or check her chat logs: he merely studied the patterns Tin Sari detected in
her words. He told himself he had moved beyond mourning into pure science. Sometimes he was even convinced.
    Midway through October, a sandstorm blew in from the interior. All morning Alif lay in bed listening to a cacophony of female distress on the roof: the maid, Dina, and Dina’s
family’s maid rushed back and forth to bring in the laundry before it was stained by the rich mineral silt choking the air. He ground his teeth and heard microscopic grains of dust pop
between them. No matter how well one taped the windows, it inevitably seeped inside, propelled by some unknown and perverse force of nature. Soon he would get up and go over the inner recesses of
his computer tower with his mother’s hair dryer on a no-heat setting, a trick he’d learned from sandstorms past. He closed his eyes against the gray half-light. It could wait a few more
minutes.
    A thud against his window pane made him jump. He scrambled out of bed: on the ledge outside sat the black-and-orange cat. She looked at him entreatingly, ears flattened, coated in yellowish
dust.
    “Oh, lord.” Alif peeled his homemade perimeter of duct tape off the glass, opening the window a few inches. The cat squeezed through and flung herself into the room. She landed near
the foot of his bed, sneezing.
    “Look at you, you’re filthy. I barely recognized you. You’re going to get sand everywhere.”
    The cat sneezed again and shook herself.
    “You’d better not make any noise or the maid will come after you with a broom. And don’t pee on anything.” Alif pulled off the
thobe
he’d worn to bed and
selected a black T-shirt from his wardrobe. After he was dressed he opened the door to retrieve the breakfast tray of flatbread, white cheese, and tea the maid had left