I desperately wanted to talk to an electrical engineer named Mark Thorson. The man was a regular in several Usenet newsgroups, an obvious Net old-timer. And a crucial player in the story of Super Blue Green Algae and the Net. But he wasn't answering my e-mail. I sought him because I had determined, after a short review of a few years of blue-green algae-related Usenet postings, that when Cell Tech said "a response to misinformation on the Internet," Cell Tech meant, "a response to Mark Thorson." Thorson is a one-man anti-Cell Tech propaganda machine. For the past four years, in almost every single instance in which a Cell Tech distributor has posted a message in either the sci.med.nutrition or misc.health.alternative newsgroups, Thorson has come blazing in with a cut-and-paste flurry of facts about health dangers associated with blue-green algae. "My agenda is to bring an end to the abuse of the Internet for commercial advertising purposes by Cell Tech," wrote Thorson. He signed one message, "We're the Internet. To protect and to serve, that's us!" Thorson took his campaign seriously. After reading the Scientific American article by Wayne Carmichael, he spent hours in the Stanford Medical Library. He obtained Cell Tech's FDA file. He conducted detailed comparisons of the amounts of nutrients, amino acids and minerals in a day's dose of Super Blue Green Algae and more conventional "nutritive supplements" like bananas or eggs. A college major in neurobiology, he scoffed at claims that blue-green algae eaters owed their energy boosts to glycogen, or neuropeptides, or B-12. He was convinced that Super Blue Green Algae contained a pharmacological agent -- anatoxin-a -- that acted as a stimulant. When he tried it himself, the algae made him "wired," he wrote. Finally, late one Saturday night, he called me -- and then refused to talk. He told me that he would soon be forced to give a legal deposition in a blue-green algae-related law suit. He would not comment, on or off the record, until after the deposition. The deposition, I later discovered, was related to a personal injury lawsuit that a Pennsylvanian named Samuel Fineman had filed against Cell Tech. According to court documents, Fineman, an insulin-dependent diabetic, was claiming that "shortly after ingesting" Super Blue Green Algae, he had "suffered severe and adverse reactions, including but not limited to flushing of the skin and numbness of both arms and hands, lower legs and feet." Furthermore, after contacting the president of Cell Tech, Marta Kollman, "for information and assistance," the complaint alleged that Kollman had "refused to provide [Fineman] with information and/or assistance regarding his symptoms." Neither Fineman nor his lawyer would comment on the case, due to go to trial this fall. Other algae experts familiar with the details also refused to comment, as did Kollman herself, except to tell me that the lawsuit, which she claimed was the first in Cell Tech's 14-year history, was "ludicrous." Ludicrous or not, the lawsuit was the story behind the "misinformation" story -- the missing link I had been unable to find on the Internet that explained Cell Tech's home-page defensiveness. But though the lawsuit is invisible on the Net, ironically, it turns out to have been heavily shaped by the Net. Several people familiar with the case agreed that Fineman's legal strategy and research rely on information harvested online -- a low-budget answer to a cash-strapped plaintiff's dreams. Several days after my first brief conversation with Thorson, he called me again. Cell Tech, said Thorson, had dropped its efforts to subpoena him, and he was now more willing to talk. Thorson is confident that he has made an impact on Cell Tech: "I think I've been very effective. The level of abuse of the alternative medicine and nutrition newsgroups is much less now then it was in, say, 1995. It's very quiet out there, in terms of algae. I can go for weeks waiting for someone to post something." At least one Cell Tech distributor acknowledges that Thorson's postings had caused him to question whether he should be consuming blue-green algae. "If it wasn't for the Net I wouldn't know what I do now," says Ralph Castro, a Long Island psychologist. "At first, I believed that the feelings of energy that one gets from the blue-green algae were due to nutritive effects. But now I believe there is a psychopharmacologic effect. But I don't know for sure. All I really know is what I've read on the Internet." Thorson believes he knows why so many people are pumping up Cell Tech's sales: He thinks they may be addicted to a drug. "It definitely felt to me like a stimulant," said Thorson, describing his own experience. "It gave me a feeling of floating or flying on air ... I can see why people would enjoy that." After talking with Thorson, I saw puzzle pieces fitting into place. What was visible through the Net alone -- that festival of unmediation -- offered only an uneasy reflection of offline reality. But it did suggest that there was a new power afoot in traditional information dynamics. A flame war in cyberspace ... a showdown in district court. There was no real dividing line. The lawsuit would bring together algae experts, Cell Tech executives and Internet gadflies. The Internet was facilitating an ecology of information that knew no boundaries, virtual or real. But by now, I was frustrated with sifting through old Usenet postings and engaging in off-the-record phone calls. I craved more direct information. I purchased some blue-green algae and started popping capsules. And yes, there did appear to be something happening here. I felt pepped up, even a little jittery. I had convinced myself that some kind of biochemical action was going down. I could feel it in my bowels. But even that wasn't enough. I had exhausted the Net and made all my phone calls. The time had come to travel to the source -- to the town that time forgot: Klamath Falls. NEXT PAGE: Klamath on site