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Did you ever wonder why so many Net pages seem to be down all the time, or never seem to get any visitors, even when they have brilliant designs or are wonderfully placed? I used to. A lot of the explanations seem to boil down to technical faults, but they never seem to explain why as opposed to how. It's always something about the server being down for unforeseeable reasons, or that there was a fault in the line or something equally unsatisfying. Up until a few years ago, I'd have said the same thing as all the other techies: there aren't any reasons why it happens, it just does.

It's amazing how wrong you can be, isn't it?

Back in my university days, I used to work in an Internet cafe, although that's talking it up. It was basically a greasy spoon which had gone a bit upmarket. The owner had rented the empty shop next door, installed a few wall desks and bought some computers on the cheap. He then got some cheap deal on broadband, and he was away. It was popular with the students; mostly because it served cheap food and coffee, but also because computers up at the uni were always very busy, making it difficult to get Internet time. It was also open twenty-four hours a day.

Because I was doing computer science, I got a job there fairly easily. I was the technician, which was short-hand for underpaid, overworked fixer and waiter if it got too busy.

I liked the job. It didn't pay too well, and the hours were pretty awful ”I was on the graveyard shift, eight to three” but when I used to hand over the shop, I always walked home, and I loved that. Edinburgh is at its most beautiful when the sun is still a faint memory from the night before and the sky remains unblemished by the dawn. The streets in winter, with their foggy coat and pewter skies, still remain one of my fondest memories from my time there. And then there is the wind. It reddens cheeks and noses, biting and snarling as it flies through the streets with ice on its wings. Most people don't know how to enjoy the winter, how to allow themselves to be swept up in it and carried along by it. They huddle inside, crouching around their fires or rubbing up against radiators like cats in from the rain. Winter may be bitter, but it's my favourite season. It's the only time of year when spoken words become visible; they hang in the air like ghosts of conversations past.

It was winter when I finally left Edinburgh. I had completed my course in July, and was at a loss as to what to do with myself. Like most recently graduated students, I imagine. So I stayed in Scotland, quietly waiting for something or someone to come along and change my life, or at least offer me a decent job. I stuck with the job at the café - what point would there be in finding another low-paid job if I didn't intend to stick at it? So I carried on making coffee, serving the night-owls and wondering whether or not I should start sending my CV out. I guess I just wanted to wind down after nearly two decades of education, have a little time off from working and stressing about stuff. I deserved it, after all.

On the fifteenth of December, a quiet night, I had given up puttering around the place, looking for things to do. There wasn't anything to do, unless someone came in, and that wasn't likely; the students had all gone home for the winter or were hibernating in their rooms against the worst of the cold.

It was just after midnight when the fourth customer of the night came in. The others were long gone, having checked their email or webpages and disappeared. The bell jangled in the back of the shop, making me put down my book. I was reading some piece of trash masquerading as a detective novel, feeling faintly ashamed at enjoying its simplistic dialogue and the gung-ho, stick-'em-up antics of the protagonist. It made a nice change from books which were inches thick and had hard drives as their main characters, though. That being said, I had also been dipping into a techjournal (on paper, and I know that is something which is beginning to date me) which was about the new developments in sbc.

My fourth customer of the night walked up to the desk as I was coming out of the office. He reached the other side of it just as I reached mine, and I greeted him.

"Good evening," he said. He was wearing sunglasses, oddly, and a slightly scruffy looking pinstripe suit about twenty years out of date. No hat, no coat. I thought he might have been a student; they're always going in for odd fashions, and as it happened, that year it was City-Gent chic. It made a change from ripped jeans and greasy dreadlocks for a while, I suppose.

He spoke with a local accent, and asked about our rates.

"Well," I said. "You buy one of these cards-"

"You're not from here?" he interrupted.

"No," I said. "I'm from just outside London, originally. Anyway, you buy one of these cards, and you slot it into the machines on the desks. They come in prepaid amounts, and each card can be used at any time after you buy it until it's all used up." He nodded.

"I see. . . And how much time would I get for a fiver?"

"We charge at one euro an hour, so five hours," I said. He whistled. I noticed again that he wasn't wearing a hat or coat. His skin was very pale ”not terribly unusual in Scotland, I admit” and I could feel how cold he was. Another aficionado of winter, presumably.

"Not bad, not bad at all... OK. I'll take a five euro card," he said, reaching a chalky hand into his jacket for his wallet. As he walked over to the desks and chose a computer, I bustled about behind the counter, trying to look busy. The owner had recently instituted a special after-midnight offer of a free cup of coffee, and this guy just about qualified. He looked up from slotting the card into the machine next to the computer he'd chosen. "Oh, don't bother," he said. "I don't drink coffee." He smiled without opening his lips and turned back to the screen, touch-typing an address into the browser. I was at a loss.

"Oh. Can I get you some tea, or something. . . ?" He shook his head.

"No, but thanks. You don't have what I drink. I'll be fine here, thanks," he said, as the site came up. I shrugged, and went back to my book. Every few minutes, I glanced up at the screen in the office that showed the shop through the hidden cctv camera.

* * *

After a while, I realised with a start that I'd read twenty-something pages. I put the book down, intending to quickly glance at the camera, see nothing suspicious, and go back to my journal. I looked, and then jumped up, running back into the shop.

It was what I'd seen on the screen. The guy was standing in front of the computer, his sunglasses off, eyes screwed shut. A sickly blue light, beating like a heart, throbbed around the monitor, seeping between where his fingers were pressed tightly on top of it. I must've made some sound, because his hands came away from the top, and he span around to face me. His lips were drawn away from his teeth, showing elongated canines and a divided tongue. His eyes were open wide as he snarled at me like some kind of rabid animal. His eyes still frighten me a little. The pupils and irises were both blended together into one seamless mass of black, and there was movement there. In the hyper-acute perception that comes when you're scared and on an adrenalin high, I saw little white numbers: ones and zeroes, cascading in lines down the centres of his eyes. He moved towards me, and I felt shaky with fear. My legs wouldn't work. My heart was hammering. I knew for certain that I was about to die.

The bell jangled, and the owner came in. Even through my fear I caught his usual smell of whisky and cigarettes. He bustled in, and stopped. The customer span, grabbed his sunglasses, pushing past him as he ran out of the shop. The owner immediately started asking what had been happening. I felt my heartbeat slowly return from its dizzying heights as I ignored him. My hands were shaking. He asked if I was alright, and I nodded. He seemed pleased enough, for about two seconds. "Hey!" he shouted. "What have you done to this thing?!" He pointed at the computer that the guy had been using. Its screen was flickering black and white, a mass of uncoordinated shapes blinking on and off behind cracked glass, and there were handprints in the top of the monitor. He touched one, and swore loudly. It was hot, the plastic almost liquid.

I gave my notice. To be more accurate, I walked out and didn't come back. I only stopped to phone a taxi. I didn't feel like walking home alone that night. When I got there, I started packing.

I was on the London train the next morning. I soon fell asleep, lulled by the rhythmic rocking of the train over the rails. A sleepless night and the worst fright of my life did more than any sedative ever could. I slept, but I don't remember what I dreamed about. I don't want to remember.

***

After about four years of working in various horrible, but well-paid, short-term tech work, I managed to scrape together enough money to open a shop. I got in on the sbc wave just at the right time, when everyone was updating, refining and changing their computers in offices and homes up and down the country. Semibiological computing is common now -only antique stores keep silicon anymore, and the new orbital station's mainframe will be an sbc-ai- but back then, it was the big news in computing. Debates raged about the usefulness and even the morality of it. Others were more prosaic and concentrated on the legalities. The European Federation has always been rather more sensible about scientific research than the US, mostly because we've kept fundamentalist sects as far away from government as possible. It seems like a sensible thing to do, on the face of it. Nowadays, religious belief is the exception in the Fed, the polar opposite to our cousins across the water who seem to be in some kind of faith-based arms race with the Muslim League. Sbc is all over the place now, but back then it was still a baby-science, and like a baby, it grew quickly, but slowly enough. Luckily. Luckily for me and all the other people who'd trained in silicon-based computers. It gave us time to get out of the business or adapt to its new form.

It made me fairly well off; I ploughed money straight back into the shops and strengthened them, until I had, if not an empire, at least a minor principality in the computer world. I'm never going to give the Gates family a run for its money, but I don't ever have to worry again. At least, not about money. You see, one of the things I did with some of my profits was open up one, then two and so on, Internet cafes. I knew the business already, so it seemed a sensible proposition.

I like to keep an eye on things, and so I drop in on various shops and cafes now and again, just to make sure things are running smoothly. I get weekly reports from all my managers, but there's nothing like being at the coal-face to really give you an impression of how a shop is running. Sometimes, just for kicks, I might even serve a few customers. One of my managers, though, has been reporting an unusual number of downed computers recently. They've been burned on the monitors, leaving scorch marks and mysterious handprints. Screens have been left cracked and beyond repair. Keyboards have melted and bio-suspension hard-drives have boiled and died. There's no clue as to why, and my repair people are baffled and unhappy. I'd close the cafe down, if I didn't know it would soon start somewhere else.

I saw the first one, and the others have obviously cottoned on to the trick. They're clever, and they always find a way to survive, somehow. They're legendary for it.

***

I found some of my notes from uni the last time I moved house. For extra credit, I'd attended a brief course on sociology and the new computer age. One thing stuck with me as I reread my crumpled notes, deciphering my scrawled attempts at shorthand and abbreviations. Something the lecturer had said which I'd copied down verbatim leapt right out at me:

Our society is dependent upon computers. We have evolved into a symbiotic relationship. Computers rule the world and the man without a computer is a pariah. Social growth and computer growth have become the same, and this means one thing: that we are feeding ourselves on them.

And it struck me, then.

If we can adapt in this way, why can't vampires?