by James Luceno
“42212-667-6766,” Felix said, picking up at last.
“Felix McTurk?”
Felix waited. The phone's video-display screen remained blank. “That depends on who's calling.”
“A prospective client, Mr. McTurk.”
To Felix's trained ear, the caller was a kid making use of a voice processor to sound older. There was, however, a trace of an accent he couldn't identify.
“You mind telling me who gave you this number, Mr….”
“Gitana,” the voice told him. “Magyar Gitana. And I'd rather not reveal the source, Mr. McTurk.” “Is this a data case, Mr. Gitana?”
“I need help with the transferal of some sensitive information. The run will have minimal environmental impact.”
Felix directed a puzzled frown at the phone. “Environmental impact?”
“Would you be willing to fly for me, Mr. McTurk? It's what you do best, isn't it?”
“Well, I'm as good as most and better than some,” Felix lied. “The problem is, my cybersystem is, uh, temporarily out of commission while it undergoes an upgrade.”
“For our purposes, it would be best if you did not fly from your personal system.”
“Back up a second,” Felix said. “You've got the wrong number if you're planning an illegal run. Just how sensitive is this information you want transferred?”
“Its value to me is incalculable. I have reason to believe that certain outside agencies are also eager to lay hands on it.”
Felix jotted notes on an electronic pad. “Are we talking about federal agencies or private ones?”
Gitana fell silent briefly. “Maybe both.”
Felix shook his head in impatience. “We're getting nowhere fast. How do you figure I can help you if I don't have access to a cybersystem?”
“I've already taken the liberty of signing you up for an introductory tour of the Network sponsored by Virtual Horizons on Broadway near Thirty-third Street.”
“I'm listening.”
“Be there for the ten A.M. tour and I'll meet you inside the Network at precisely ten-fifteen. At that time, I will furnish you with additional information regarding the data I wish retrieved, along with instructions for redepositing them.”
“Frankly, I don't like the sound of this.”
“My sources tells me that you once had a thriving business, Mr. McTurk. I can put you back on the fast track. Call up your bank records.”
“What?”
“Humor me. It will benefit you greatly.”
Felix called his bank records on-screen. One moment there was $301.27 in the account, and the next there was $29,301.27—enough to cover almost all his debts. He stared at the figure in disbelief.
“The adjusted amount will remain, whether or not we succeed in our mission. Should we succeed, you can expect an additional fifteen thousand dollars by no later than three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”
Felix was already calculating how he would spend the extra bucks. “One thing,” he said after a moment. “Let's suppose the Network meet doesn't go as planned. How do I get in touch with you?”
“You don't,” Gitana said with a note of finality.
Tech and Marz gazed groggily at the glowing display of the laptop. Neglecting homework assignments and dinner, they had spent the entire evening attempting to discover the identity of “MSTRNTS,” and their efforts had left them screen-weary. They had performed Network searches on dozens of names and possible words, and on hundreds of permutations of those same names and words. None, however, had furnished any conspicuous links with the gremlin that had emerged from Subterfuge or from the EPA.
Yawning loudly, Tech ordered their favorite search engine to see what it could do with the words “mystery notes,” which Marz had come up with while doodling in the margin of a sheet of homework.
The laptop emitted a chorus of chirps and text filled the screen.
“‘Musical notes that once emerged mysteriously on analog and other low-tech recordings,’ “Tech read aloud. “A music store in Philadelphia, another in Phoenix. A specialty bookstore in London… yada, yada.”
He scrolled down, then suddenly stopped and sat back in plain surprise.
“What is it?” Marz asked, leaning over Tech's shoulder for a better look at the screen.
“Harwood Strange.”
Marz's brow furrowed. “I know that name from somewhere …”
Tech tasked the laptop to conduct a search on Harwood Strange. “A hacker from last decade,” Tech said as he perused the data. “Became a kind of recluse after a hack that went bad—real bad. Some run that threatened national security or something.”
“Wait a minute,” Marz said. Pivoting the laptop toward him, he did rapid input at the keyboard. “Harwood Strange wasn't just any hacker. He wrote The Strange Manifesto—his vision of the Network as free cyberspace without filters or speed traps. He was a visionary, man, a real eccentric.”
Marz tapped the screen with his forefinger as ad ditional text appeared. “Harwood Strange was a musician.”
“Yeah, and…?”
Marz turned to his brother. “Mystery Notes was the title of his most famous DVD.”
Chapter 6
“Mr. McTurk, we're thrilled that you have chosen Virtual Horizons to introduce you to the wonders of the Network,” Virtual Horizons’ tour guide, Ms. Dak, said when Felix showed up for the tour his mystery client had booked for him. “Have you ever flown before?”
“Only the friendly skies.”
“Friendly skies?”
“An old advertising slogan,” Felix explained. “Before your time, I guess.”
Dak smiled. “Well, I'm certain I would have laughed if I had understood the reference.”
Felix suddenly felt old. He figured Dak for about twenty-one. With her perfect teeth, bottle tan, muscles shaped by machines, and form-hugging clothes, she was typical of the new executive class. As fresh and bright as the new century itself.
“Is this tour for business or pleasure?” she asked.
“Pure pleasure,” Felix said.
She escorted him into a waiting area filled with other tourists, many of them actual tourists visiting New York City—some thirty people from obscure nation states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East where accessing the Virtual Network was still a dream.
Felix handed over a credit card and submitted to a face-recognition scan. Then a technician not much older than Tech showed him to an interface recliner that was a much more padded affair than Data Discoveries’ refurbished dentist's chair. Once seated he was fitted with a visor, earbeads, and a motion-capture vest and introduced to the basics of operating the multibutton joystick and the foot pedals. The technician explained that while most of the initial piloting would be done by Virtual Horizons, there would a short period at the conclusion of the tour where everyone would spend ten minutes sampling some of the immersive thrill rides offered by Grand Adventure.
Felix noticed straight away that the motion-capture vest was dialed down to the lowest setting, since it wasn't uncommon for novice flyers to experience vertigo and mild nausea.
Regardless, his palms were already damp with sweat.
He nodded to the tourists seated in the chairs to either side of him as a sweet-smelling female attendant with a delicate touch ran a quick test of the interface wardrobe and hookups. Additional instructions were given through the earbeads and de livered in the carefully modulated voice actual flight attendants employed.
“In the event of an emergency exit…”
Felix was so accustomed to Jess and Marshall's casual attitude toward cyberflying that the tour suddenly struck him as novel and daring. No sooner had Ms. Dak and the young technician donned their wardrobes than Felix's visor went from transparent to Network-active mode, and the virtual ecology—the unreal estate—of the Network began to take shape before his eyes, making him feel as if he were gliding above a glowing, multileveled cityscape of gargantuan domes, pyramids, spheres, and towers rising up in
to an impossibly blue sky.
A few of the other flyers gasped in astonishment.
A wave of dizziness overcame Felix, and a rivulet of sweat took a bumpy ride down along his ribs. He hadn't always been a fearful flyer. But then, the Network hadn't always been quite so real.
Cybervehicles of all description were moving along the grid's busy thoroughfares and crosslinks. Though most of the vehicles were mass-produced craft resembling ultralight gliders, jet planes, SUVs and sports cars, every so often a custom craft would flash into view, exuberant with strobing lights, spotted as a jungle cat, or designed to convey some sense of the craft's pilot.
Felix wasn't surprised to find that the bus he and the rest of Virtual Horizons’ tourists were flying was adorned with advertisements for the company itself.
The slogan read, VIRTUAL HORIZONS—OPEN YOUR EYES TO A BETTER REALITY!
The mellifluous voice of Ms. Dak drifted through the headset earbeads over a subdued soundtrack of cloying music.
“Welcome to the world of cyberspace,” she began, “and the adventure of a lifetime. Some of you might be feeling a bit dizzy at the moment, but the feeling will pass shortly. Just sit back, relax, and leave the piloting to us.”
Felix took her at her word and settled back into the comfy flight chair.
This isn't so bad, he told himself. He could handle this.
“If you look to the left you can see the spire of the CiscoSoft Telecomputer Construct,” Dak continued. “And off to the right as we continue our slow spiral down toward the heart of the grid stands the landmark IBM storage facility. The cityscape of constructs along the eastern horizon belongs to Mitsuni, and the enormous medieval castle in the distance is the headquarters of Peerless Engineering, which created much of what you're seeing.”
Felix took a long calming breath. The descent was smoother than any Jess or Marshall had ever taken him through. He sensed that he was in the hands of a veteran pilot. Because piloting was by and large a function of state-of-mind, it said a lot about a cyberjockey when he or she could keep the ride unruffled and the maneuvers to a minimum. Virtual Horizons wasn't in the business of provid ing the kind of thrills you could get in the arcades, in any case.
The tour was closing on InfoWorld when Felix began to experience a subtle change. By degrees his virtual seat was dropping behind the rest of the group, and the ride was becoming jerky. A glance at the visor's time display confirmed his suspicions: Magyar Gitana was inside the Network and trying to assume remote control of him.
Without warning he felt himself being sucked into a headlong dive parallel to the banner-plastered cliff face of InfoWorld. Despite his best effort to remain calm, a protracted ahhhh! tore from his mouth and his sweaty hands tightened on the padded arms of the flight chair.
Within seconds he was being propelled at high speed down the Ribbon, then powered through sudden turns, rocketed across canyons, spiraled through windows and insertion points, and finally shot toward the stylish headquarters of Worldwide Cellular.
His stomach heaved, and an acidic taste back-washed into his throat.
Then the accented, falsely deep voice of his client whispered through the earbeads.
“I'm so glad to see you, Mr. McTurk,” Gitana said with adolescent enthusiasm. “Please remember to remain aware of where you are in the real world, and refrain from further outbursts of excitement.”
That wasn't excitement, Felix wanted to tell him, that was panic! But he managed to keep silent.
“We'll be entering Worldwide Cellular,” Gitana went on. “Once inside, I'm going to steer you to the data I want you to retrieve, which are nested close to Cellular's switching nucleus.”
Felix cursed to himself. Gitana hadn't said anything about pulling off an infiltration run.
“Perhaps you're thinking that this constitutes theft. But I assure you that the data bundle belongs to me, and that I'm doing no more for myself than what you do for your clients. As to why I'm not making the retrieval myself, let me say simply that, at present, I lack the resources.”
Felix barely kept from speaking out loud.
“I'm aware that Virtual Horizons’ joystick doesn't allow you to perform a fraction of the tasks you can perform through your office cybersystem,” Gitana went on. “But even its limited abilities will allow us to accomplish our goal. Flick your joystick to the right if you understand all that I'm telling you, and so I can see that I have full control.”
Felix did as Gitana requested.
“Good,” his client said. “Once I've steered you into the switching nucleus, use your controller to highlight and drag the data I indicate. You may find it a bit cumbersome, as we're going to be uploading several terabytes of information. We're going to insert the dragged package into a cellular call I will place at the appropriate moment. Is that clear?”
Felix nudged the joystick.
Gitana proceeded to foil Cellular's security programs by deploying chaff clouds, program dazzlers, and logic bombs from a seemingly limitless arsenal of espionage weaponry. Confronted with this, Felix felt useless. But the more he studied the route Gitana was laying out, the more he saw room for improvement. He used the joystick to plot what he thought might constitute a safer path.
“Yes,” Gitana said. “I see what you're getting at.”
The course of Felix's liberated bus seat was adjusted. He began to feel his heart race as Gitana guided the pod deeper into the virtual construct, straight into Cellular's core. An entry port blinked open, and the visor showed a color-coded vista of converging cell-phone calls and pager transmissions resembling tracer rounds fired from ground-based artillery.
Then they were inside the nucleus and tearing along the route Felix had helped to plot, cloaked from infiltration filters arrayed like suspension bridges across immeasurably deep canyons.
Gitana indicated a neatly wrapped but enormous parcel of data concealed among the millions of calls. Felix feared that dragging the data could affect the entire operation of Worldwide Cellular. Trusting that Gitana had considered the repercussions, he clicked and dragged the data from its nesting place.
Immediately Gitana launched Felix from the core into the operating system and presumably toward the call to which Felix was supposed to affix the pilfered terabytes. The trajectory took him through a web of phone calls, surely disrupting service to tens of thousands of cell-phone users. Felix couldn't imagine what the massive data bundle contained, but he scarcely had time to think about it before security programs designed to resemble giant steel-jawed wire cutters poured from the tap Gitana had sunk into the switching nucleus and hastened after him.
Felix stifled an alarmed outburst and began to flick his joystick incessantly.
“Change of plan,” Gitana said, after what seemed an eternity. “We'll have to deliver the data in person. Hang on, Mr. McTurk.”
Boosted from Cellular with extraordinary velocity, Felix gave silent thanks to Virtual Horizons’ flight attendant for having damped down the motion-capture vest. With the security cutters still in close pursuit, Gitana launched him breathtakingly high above Cellular, then sent him streaking across the grid like a meteor. Felix watched the Ribbon, the Peerless Castle, and the dreaded Escarpment disappear below him, and all at once found himself free-falling toward a nondescript eight-sided construct located in the Wilds of the Network.
“Drop the data bundle into the octagon,” Gitana said without his usual calm. “Drop it now! Hurry!”
Harwood Strange was widely profiled on the Network, but if he had an e-address or a phone number, they were either unregistered or listed under a different name. Stumped, Tech and Marz had set about locating and downloading a copy of Strange's Mystery Notes DVD-ROM. Fleetingly popular a decade earlier, the self-published interac tive album featured track after track of extraordinary music, each composition linked to various Network sites. Contact information provided with the album had given the brothers a starting point for tracing Strange's current whereabouts.
On learning that he lived in eastern Long Island, only an hour's monorail ride from the group home, they had decided to pay him a personal visit.
School would have to wait.
The town was small and weather-beaten, the shingled homes bleached gray by the nearby ocean. From the elevated monorail, Tech and Marz had gotten glimpses of working farms, fruit stands, vineyards, and fishing boats returning with fresh catch. The first hint of spring was visible in the green lawns that fronted enchanting homes. Surveillance cameras were obvious at the monorail station, but scarce in the town itself. Painted signs posted in the central square warned against loitering, boarding, ‘blading, and noise. A plastic playground sat inside a circle of cushioning material.
Strange's address corresponded to an apartment over a bait store in sore need of renovation. A creaky, dilapidated exterior staircase ended at a door stripped bare by wind and salt spray. The boys picked their way to the top and, after a moment of hesitation, knocked.
The man who eventually answered was a stooped giant with long, unruly gray hair and a thick beard. He was wearing a hooded cloth bathrobe that was spattered with either different colors of paint or various foodstuffs—egg yellow, strawberry red, coffee brown, jalapeño green. He gave his head a sudden tilt that slid wire-rimmed glasses to the tip of his long nose, and he looked Tech and Marz up and down.
“The lawn doesn't need mowing and the windows don't need washing.”
The boys traded glances. “We don't do that kind of work,” Marz said.
“Well, you should think about doing it. You can make good money.” His gray eyes narrowed behind the rectangular lenses of his glasses. “Don't tell me you're selling cookies.”
“We're not selling anything or collecting for anything,” Tech said.
“Then I can only assume that you're lost.”
“Not even—if this is 466 Maple,” Marz told him.
The man twisted around to regard the rusted numbers nailed above the door, then eyed the brothers once more while he scratched at his beard.