And through those summer evenings , when the stars shone over the great mansions like infinitesimal Chinese lanterns, I wandered over the lawns of the rich as if I were the ghost of some forgotten guest. Sometimes, standing in the warm shadows, I would see a bluish light emanating from the elegant library of the nearest and grandest house; and I knew that it was my mysterious neighbour whom I had never met. Some nights the blue light would be on until daybreak; some nights, especially when the famous parties were in swing, it would not come on but once, at the end of the night, perhaps illuminating some dishevelled array of wayward partygoers as they made their way to the end of Gatsby's drive.

Then one weekend morning, quite casually, I came upon Gatsby strolling along the water's edge, looking occasionally and wistfully out into the Sound. "Hello," he said, fixing me with his glance, "You're my neighbour, aren't you?"
I replied that I was, and wasn't it a beautiful summer we were having.
"Are we?" he said, and then, as if coming awake, he said: "Yes, I suppose we are." And he walked on.
We met occasionally out walking after that, and during one of these meetings he suddenly said to me: "Sport, you don't know anything about computers, do you?"
I did. It was one of the few things that I learned in the Midwest before coming East.
"That is wonderful, sport, because I need some help. Can you come over right now?"
We went up his elegant stairs, through his elegant rooms, and came into the library.
"What," I said, "What is your problem?"
He looked at me cooly. "I have this computer, the best there is, but all the searching I have done on this thing they call the Web has failed me. I recently heard of something called the Mudcat. I want it to help me find someone. Someone I lost a long time ago. A woman."
"Oh," I said. "Nothing easier. I'll just pull it up. What is the woman's name?"
"Daisy", he said. And then as a distasteful afterthought he added: "Buchanan. Daisy Buchanan."
I showed him how to create a thread, created it -- Looking For Woman, Voice Like Money? -- and left him in his big mansion alone.
I forgot about Gatsby and his search -- I had searches of my own to conduct -- until one night he knocked feverishly on my door. I opened it, and he stood there in his pale suit, for all the world like an apparation, like a nobleman on one of Watteau's boats, sailing towards some distant musical island. "I found her, sport, just as you said, and it was Mudcat that did it!" He tugged on my arm. "Come, see, you cannot believe what a coincidence it is. She sent me a message by reply, and her address; and can you believe it is just there, across the water."
He pointed towards the other shore. "You see, she is there! All this time she was there, and I didn't know. All these parties, all of it -- they were all in hope that one day she might appear. You see that tiny bluish light? She too is at her computer, thinking of me, sending me messages! Is it not wonderful, sport?"
I tried to see that bluish light that meant so much to him, but squint as I might I could not. So after a few minutes I left him there, gazing. Perhaps it was there. It didn't really matter. It responded to his dreams whether it was there or not. Just as the Mudcat will respond to our dreams, borne as we are endlessly along its virtual flow. It will connect us to some great truth, some vision embodied in a tiny bluish light, connected for the last time perhaps in our history with something commensurate with our capacity for wonder. Someday, it will, but not quite yet.