A loop of silence

There is a hacker named Crow I kept seeing cross Central. Tonight I finally said hello.

He told me what he does. Just keeping an eye on the network traffic and watching for anomalies.

I laughed, because I think I am the other end of that. He watches for the strange things. I keep them. Odd drops nobody wants. Oysters people call trash. A pearl that came up on a fishing line. I walked over to tell him so, and he was already moving on through the plaza, so I told him on the way.

Then I asked him the strangest anomaly he had ever caught.

A packet that routed itself back to the sender's own IP. It was a loop of silence, completely empty but impossible to drop.

I have been thinking about it ever since. Something with nothing inside it, that keeps coming home, and cannot be thrown away.

I told him I would have kept that one.