Select All Squares
I do overnight IT support from home for a handful of small businesses: a dental group, two law offices, a chain of four car washes. Mostly it’s nothing. Somebody’s backup fails at 1 a.m. and I log in and restart it. The job is a desk, a monitor, a mug of coffee, and a lot of time in the dark with a screen.
On a Thursday in late August, I went to log in to the car wash company’s admin portal, and before it would take my password it gave me one of those grids. You know the kind. Nine photos in a three-by-three square, slightly blurry, and a banner across the top: Select all squares with traffic lights. Below that, a little checkbox: I’m not a robot.
I clicked the three squares with traffic lights. It said Please try again. That happens. Sometimes there’s a corner of a light in a fourth square that you’re supposed to count. It loaded a new grid.
Select all squares with the man in the doorway.
I looked at it for a while. Nine photos, all of them in that same grainy, washed-out style. Street corners, a crosswalk, the front of a bus. And in three of them, a doorway. An ordinary doorway in an ordinary hallway, painted white, with light coming through it from a room beyond. And standing in the doorway, in silhouette against the light, a man.
He was very tall. That was the first thing I noticed. The top of his head was nearly at the top of the frame. The second thing I noticed was that it was the same doorway in all three, from the same angle. The third thing I noticed was that the doorway was mine.
I live in a small two-bedroom rental. My desk is in the second bedroom, which I use as an office. If you sit in my chair and look over your right shoulder, you can see the door to the hall, and the hall light, which I leave on at night. It’s an old door with a brass knob and a long scratch in the paint at about knee height, from the last tenant’s dog.
The door in the photos had the scratch.
I looked over my right shoulder. The door was there, open, the hall light on beyond it. Nobody in it.
I want to stress that I’m not an easily rattled person. I spend my nights alone looking at servers. My first thought was technical. Somebody’s compromised the portal. Somebody has access to my webcam, which I cover with a slider but don’t always remember to close. It was open. I closed it. Somebody’s pulling frames from my camera and inserting them into a fake CAPTCHA page as a prank or a phishing test. It’s the kind of thing people in my business do to each other.
The webcam points at my face, not at the door behind me. But fine. Maybe at an angle.
I didn’t click anything. I closed the browser. I ran a malware scan. It came back clean. I opened a new browser, a different one, and went to the car wash portal again.
Select all squares with the man in the doorway.
Same three squares. Same doorway. He’d moved. In all three he was a little further in. Not in the door now, but just inside it, in the room, his outline sharper against the hall light. Like he’d taken a step.
The webcam slider was closed.
I turned around in my chair and looked at the doorway for a long time. Empty hall, bright light, the scratch at knee height. I got up and went out into the hall and turned on every light in the apartment. I checked the closets. I checked the other bedroom. I checked under the bed, which is a thing I haven’t done since I was eight. I locked the front door, which was already locked.
I tried the dental group’s portal on my laptop, a completely separate machine on my phone’s hotspot instead of the home network. It’s a different vendor, a different login page, a different everything. It asked me to prove I wasn’t a robot. Select all squares with crosswalks. I selected them. It said Please try again. I closed the laptop before the next grid loaded and put it face down on the bed in the other room, as if that would help.
I went back into the office and sat down. I didn’t look at the screen. I thought about calling someone, and couldn’t think who, at 2 a.m., or what I’d say.
When I did look at the screen, the grid had changed on its own. New banner.
Select all squares with the man behind the chair.
Three squares again. Same angle. Not the doorway now. It was my office from behind, the view you’d see if you were standing at the door looking in. My desk. My monitor, glowing. My chair, with the gray hoodie over the back. Me, in the chair, the back of my head and shoulders, hunched toward the screen.
And standing behind me, between me and the door, very close, the man.
He was in silhouette even here, with the monitor light in front of him. Tall, so tall his head was out of the top of the frame. His arms hung down at his sides. He was bending forward a little at the waist, over the chair. Over me. Looking at the screen.
I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. I sat very still with my hands on my desk and I felt, I’m almost sure I felt, the air behind me get warmer, the way it does when someone’s standing close.
I clicked the three squares. I don’t know why. I think I wanted it to know I’d seen him.
The grid flashed green. Verified.
Then it loaded a new one.
Select all squares with you.
There were nine squares. All of them from the doorway angle, looking in at my desk. The monitor. The hoodie on the chair. The man, standing over it, bending, his face very close to the screen.
The chair was empty.
In all nine squares. There was nobody in the chair. Just the gray hoodie, and the tall shape bending over the desk, with its long arms reaching down toward the keyboard.
I looked down at my own hands on the keyboard. I could see them. I could feel the keys.
I clicked Skip.
Please select all squares with you, it said.
I clicked Skip again.
Verification failed. Are you sure you’re human?
I’m writing this from the kitchen on my phone. I pushed back from the desk and walked out of the office without turning around and closed the door behind me. I’ve been sitting at the kitchen table for an hour with every light on. I can see the office door from here, down the hall. It’s closed. The hall light is on.
There’s light under the office door, too. The monitor. I didn’t turn it off.
A minute ago my phone buzzed with an email from the car wash company’s portal. Subject line: Your login attempt. I opened it. It says, A login was successfully completed on your account at 2:41 a.m. Device: Office Workstation.
I’m in the kitchen. It’s 2:58.
Under the office door, the light from the screen keeps changing. Flickering. The way it does when somebody’s typing.
It just buzzed again. Your password has been changed. If this wasn’t you, please verify your identity.
There’s a link. I haven’t clicked it. I know what it will ask me to select.