When mythic Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur's labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread, she set a precedent for the bewildered victims of a twenty-first-century Minotaur. In this radical reinvention of the ancient story, the labyrinth exists again - in the endless maze of the Internet. The only path through the alienated landscape lies in the threads trailing from chatrooms where strangers sit trapped and alone before their screens, assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of Horror, the Minotaur himself.