I haven't been in touch with Gage since I moved out of the Bay Area. Back then I was living in San Mateo and working at a grocery store, while he was at Digg in San Francisco. Both of us wanted to be writers. Gage succeeded at this, while I did not. But I'm not upset about that fact. I gave up writing when I knew I wasn't motivated to do it anymore. I had everything written down that I would ever want to write down, and maybe it's a shame that I couldn't get any of it published. But that's the way things go.

Anyway, I was living in an apartment above a dry cleaning place off of Delaware, so the rent was pretty cheap. I could walk to work and pretty much everywhere else I needed to go. So Gage had to come and get me when we would get together to compare each other's work. It was a big hassle for him sometimes to get out of the city, but he was committed to having our meetings once a week as we had planned it. I was not so enthused about the whole thing, but I went along with it because I knew that Gage was going to so much trouble.

It was about a year after Gage started working at Digg that he told me about how he was manipulating the system so that his stories would be among the most popular on the site. That is, whenever you went to Digg's website, you were bound to see something that Gage had written right on the front page. We were at the coffee and bagel place in Menlo Park when he was explaining all this to me. Gage liked to go to different places each week, and we were trying out various places in and around the south bay area.

"The whole thing sounds like it could get you in a lot of trouble, " I told Gage after he explained everything to me.

"I knew you'd say something like that, " he said. "Do you know how long I waited to tell you this? I waited because I knew that you'd give me such a pedestrian response."

"I'm giving you the response that a responsible friend would give, " I said.

"I'm not in the market for a responsible friend, " Gage told me. "We're both writers here. Don't you understand that?"

"I don't even understand exactly what you're doing, " I said. "How do you publish your stories? And what are you writing about?"

"There are all kinds of places to publish stories, " Gage said. "That's not a problem. I could give you a list of a thousand places online where you could publish a story. The trick is to write something that sounds like a news article, but that gives you the freedom to engage in some creative tinkering. So, you know, when people start reading, they have to believe that the story is true."

"I don't see how you can do that, " I said. "People keep up with the news. You can't start making things up."

"I cover small stories in small towns, " Gage said. "A strike in a small auto parts plant somewhere in Indiana. That sort of thing. It allows me to work on characters. Don't you see? I have to do a lot of research to get this right. I don't know what a striking auto parts plant worker in Indiana is going to say or do. I have to look up similar stories and start to understand what these people are like. But the thing is that I'm paid to do that kind of research for the company anyway. What I mean is that I'm bouncing around the Web trying to find places where we would advertise our services. So they don't even notice what I'm doing."

"But then you build your story up so that it's popular, " I said. "That doesn't sound right."

"Of course it's not 'right', if you're going to use that term, " Gage said. "I'm gaming the system because I'm able to. Isn't that we all have to do to make it in this world? Don't tell me you believe that fate and goodwill are going to get you anywhere."

"Fate, maybe, " I said.

"Well, I'm not going to wait around for something good to happen to me, " I said. "This works. Believe me. I publish the article. I go into the system and make it popular. And then it's right up there for everyone to read. I use a pen name. I have a few pen names. But I don't want to have too many. I want people to notice that it's the same few people that are writing the most popular stories."

"But what do you expect to get from this in the end?" I asked him.

"I don't know exactly what's going to happen, " he told me. "Is that even important? You have to take these things one step at a time. What are you so worried about?"

"I don't know, " I told him. "It's a strange approach."

"Of course it's strange, " he said. "Isn't that what we want to do here? I read your last story. Let me get my stuff here."

Gage reached into his backpack and pulled out some pages of a story I had printed out for him. "There's a passage I highlighted here, " he said.

He flipped through the pages until he found the right one. "Here it is, " he said. "Now listen. These are your words: 'The sun came up this morning and then it set a minute later. So it was dark the whole day and nobody knew what to do. Someone was running up and down the street screaming about Judgment Day. But maybe he would have been doing that anyway. I jumped out my third-storey window and floated to the ground. My car was parked on the street, but a raging mob had flipped it over. How was I supposed to get to work? Was I supposed to get to work?'"

"Do you like it?" I asked Gage.

Gage shook his head and smiled. "This is what I don't understand about you, " he said. "You write something like this, and then you sit there meekly looking for approval. I can't believe that something like this can from someone like you."

"I'm a different person when I write, " I said. "We all are."

"That's not true, " Gage said. "I'm the same person when I'm writing and when I'm not. That's why I have no problem doing what I'm doing with the Digg stats. It's the right thing to do. You told me that it didn't sound 'right' to you. But it is. I can't believe you don't understand that."

After that meeting I went on the Digg website and, sure enough, there were several stories listed among the most popular that were clearly Gage's work. There was an article about an old mining town in West Virginia and the people who lived there. There was another about an old diner in St. Louis that was closing down. This was the usual fodder for Gage's fiction. He was just writing it in a different way."

I think the problem with me is that I grew too accustomed to my routine. I enjoyed working at the grocery store, or at least I accepted the job for what it was. And my apartment gave me peace. Perhaps that's not the right way to put it. But it was small and comfortable, and the noises coming from the dry cleaning place below were familiar and even soothing at times. It was a safe place. I was sorry to leave it.

I moved back to Buffalo shortly after Gage and I stopped meeting. Somehow he had managed to find a small press in San Francisco that was willing to publish his work. They even took some of the articles that he had submitted on Digg. I don't think anyone ever noticed what he had done. Of course now he's with a bigger publisher, and his novels are in bookstores around the country.

The other day I decided to write Gage a letter. The urge suddenly came to me, so I pulled a blank sheet of paper out of my printer and got going. It reads like this:

"Dear Gage,

I hope this letter reaches you. Now that you have an agent and go on book tours and that sort of thing I know that you've gone above the reach of normal human beings. But I assume that you still pick up your mail and read it. Here's hoping, at any rate.

I was thinking about a conversation we had back when we first started holding our weekly meetings. I remember you as an insecure young writer eager for acceptance. Maybe you don't imagine yourself ever being that way. I read some of your interviews where you talk about taking risks with your work in order to reach young audiences. I'm not sure if you're succeeding at that, but you seem to enjoy the idea.

I'm starting to sound bitter. I know you'll start reading this and think that I'm sending you hate mail because you got published and I didn't. But that's not the impression that I'm trying to convey. I want to emphasize this.

My stories were unconventional. This is something that you kept wanting me to recognize. So I'll give you that. In many ways they didn't make any sense. I wrote them and they turned out that way. It's just what happened.

But here's the thing. You once told me that my writing was not a true reflection of who I was. You said that you couldn't believe that the person you were talking to was the same person who wrote the stories I gave you. I don't know if you remember saying this, but you did. It's something I never forgot.

But here's the thing. The stories I wrote represent exactly who I am. That's something that you never understood. I kept waiting for you to realize that, but you never did.

My writing may have appeared bold and unusual on the surface, but the fact is that they were also painfully shallow. I enjoyed playing with words because it gave me comfort. I enjoy small comforts, like the apartment I used to live in back in San Mateo. I didn't want to take risks. My work was not daring in any way. It was mere scribbling.

I liked me life on the west coast, but you tried to tell me that it was meaningless. But there was meaning in it. I wish I had had tried to impress that upon you. Maybe then I wouldn't have left.

Anyway, I applaud your success nonetheless. We both went down different paths. I hope to hear from you soon."

I still haven't mailed the letter. I'm not even sure if I have the right address.