by Eric Brown
She was filled with a sudden heady impulse. She leapt to her feet and found her backpack. She raced around the room, digging out her old clothes and full canisters of spin. Five minutes later she had all her worldly possession stowed in the backpack.
She’d leave the pack here and go look up a few contacts who’d buy the hardware; she wouldn’t get the full price, but they’d pay her fast. She could be out of here on the eight-fifteen to Montreal...
She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. A bunch of needles glinted in the light of the fluorescent.
The two dozen viral programs she’d used over the past year and a half.
She had a idea.
Why not? she asked herself. Christ, why not?
She sat on the swivel chair and powered up her com-system for the very last time. It’d be sweet, she thought. She might not succeed, but it’d be so sweet trying. And who knew, but one of the viruses might find its way through, undetected.
The irony of it, she thought. Virex, or whoever the hell they were, burned by their very own bugs ...
She pulled on her headphones and touched the screen. She traced the route through the cyberverse to the now redundant zone where the Methuselah Project had had their site, where Halliday had nearly got himself burned. The site was no longer there, but that didn’t stop Kat. For the next two hours she worked through a thousand subcodes, translating the program traces the Project techs had left scattered across the cyberverse like spoor. She came across a big zone, loaded with a site that was restricted, as she’d fully expected.
She worked at vracking through the defences. She had the advantage of not needing to enter the site through VR; it would be enough merely to establish contact with the site via her system.
An hour later, around four in the morning, Kat found her way through. The screen before her flooded with code which she speed-read in an attempt to make sense of where she was.
She smiled to herself. The site bore all the signatures of the Project, the bastards who’d robbed her of the past eighteen months.
There was a lot of activity on the site.
She decoded the text, wondering what the hell they were doing in there.
The site was emptying, fast. A billion bits of information - more, Kat was unable to tell quite how much - was leaching away from the zone every few minutes. They were sending a barrage of coded signals out of America, right across the Pacific, to Japan.
She picked up the needles and inserted them with loving care into an array of ports on her touchpad. They slipped home with satisfying ease. She fingered the pad, instructing the attack to commence.
She launched the viruses together, intending to hit the site in a rapid, quick-fire blitz. One by one the viral programs would easily have been repelled; but they stood a chance of causing damage if they arrived en masse.
And even if nothing happened, the act of trying would be cathartic.
She watched the screen as the viruses hit home and, one after the other, were rendered harmless, fizzling into oblivion like spent fireworks.
She smiled to herself. At least the bastards knew, now, that she had seen through their duplicity.
She was about to cut the connection when the screen filled with text. She speed-read the code, translated the information. Something was coming down the line, fast. She thought it was a burn, at first. She was about to kill the system and quit when a woman’s face appeared on the screen and stared out at her.
‘Who the fuck,’ she said, ‘are you?’
The woman was pretty, Oriental, maybe Chinese. She smiled. ‘I’m Kim Long, Kat. We need to talk.’
Kat pushed her swivel chair away from the screen, as if the Chinese woman posed a physical threat. ‘How’d you know who I am?’
Kim Long wrinkled her nose. ‘Come on, Kat. How do you think? We’ve been following you as you traced us through the ‘verse. Very well done. You’re a star, Kat.’
‘You’re Virex?’ she said in a small voice.
‘We prefer to call ourselves the Methuselah Project,’ Kim Long said.
Kat shook her head, not quite believing that she was having this conversation. Wasn’t Kim Long the name of Halliday’s ex-girlfriend? Hadn’t she died a week or so ago?
‘Hey, I thought you were dead. Murdered, right?’
‘That was part of the project—’
‘Hal took it real bad, you know that?’
‘How is Hal?’
Kat shrugged. ‘He’s... like, he’s okay. Uses VR too much, but he’s surviving.’ She stopped and stared at the image of the Chinese woman. ‘So ... what do you want?’
‘We want to show you where we are,’ Kim Long said, smiling out at her. ‘I’ll give you the geographical coordinates, okay? Then, will you contact Hal Halliday and tell him that I want to see him, one last time, and say goodbye? Okay, here’s where we are ...’
Kat recorded the woman’s words, shaking her head. ‘You’re leading us to the base of the Project?’ she said.
‘We’re leaving now,’ Kim said. ‘But I know that Hal’s been trying to find us, and I want to talk to him before I go.’
‘What—’ Kat began, leaning forward.
But Kim Long had cut the connection.
All thoughts of Saskatchewan forgotten for the moment, Kat reached for her com and got through to Halliday.
* * * *
Twenty-Five
They picked Kat up on the corner of Bowery and Canal Street.
Halliday pulled into the kerb and Kat leapt into the back. ‘Hiya, Barney. Halliday, how’s it going?’
‘Give,’ Halliday said, turning in his seat and glaring at the woman. ‘Information, now. Why the hell you hang up like that?’
‘Back off, Halliday. You think I was gonna spill everything over the airwaves with who knows what fuckers listening in? Get real.’
Barney said, ‘First things first, Kat. Where they based?’
‘Nyack. Somewhere three kays north of the town.’
Halliday U-turned and headed north. ‘I know it,’ he said. ‘I was there the other day. So how come the cops found nothing when they searched the place?’
‘You know the cops,’ Kat said. ‘Couldn’t find their ass in the john.’
‘You sure about this? I mean, one hundred per cent absolutely positively certain?’
Kat rolled her eyes. ‘Listen up, Halliday. There was enough e-activity going out that place to light up New York at Christmas.’
Halliday got through to the NYPD and asked for Jeff Simmons. Seconds later his big face filled the screen. ‘That Hal? How’s things?’
‘Some information you might be interested in, Jeff. We’ve traced the Methuselah people.’
‘No kidding? Good work. Where the hell are they?’
‘You’re not gonna believe this, Jeff. How about trying that big weatherboard place north of Nyack.’
Jeff peered out at him. ‘This on the level, Hal?’
‘According to reliable sources.’
‘I’ll get a team up their pronto. Don’t go anywhere near the place until we’ve staked the house, okay?’
‘See you up there, Jeff.’ He cut the connection.
Halliday accelerated north on Madison. It was six in the morning and the city was coming to life. Dawn light duelled with the holo-façades, and won: the fancy frontages wavered with shades of wan pastel in the weak sunlight, showing ghostly images of the original buildings underneath. Few vehicles were on the streets; they’d have a clear run up Interstate 87.
Halliday held fire with the question he most wanted to ask, in fear of hearing what he didn’t want to hear. He’d held Kim’s body in his arms in the dead woods above Nyack, and now she wanted to say farewell to him. Some kind of recorded image, he thought. Some kind of fucking lifeless construct.
Barney turned in his seat and looked at Kat. He hadn’t worn the chu since yesterday evening, and Halliday was getting used to the face of the stranger.
‘So how you locate th
e source of the site, Kat?’ Barney asked.
She hung between the front seats, peering ahead. ‘I’ll be honest, guys. Technically, I didn’t find it.’
‘I thought you said—’ Halliday began.
‘Listen up. I was monitoring the old restricted site. You know, Halliday - the one that nearly burned you?’
‘How can I forget?’
‘They’d closed it down after you got in there, but there were still traces, faint links to another site they’d established since. I’d accessed it, and then I got a big incoming. Christ, I thought it was some kinda burn at first. Before I could disengage, there was this Chinese woman on the screen, staring out at me.’
Halliday gripped the wheel, staring at the road. They were leaving Manhattan, the sun rising through the smog to their right.
Why would Kim’s construct contact Kat? Why, he wondered, would she want to say goodbye to him?
‘What she say?’ Barney asked.
She shrugged thin shoulders. ‘She simply gave me the coordinates of the US base of the Methuselah Project.’
‘Just like that?’ Halliday said. ‘I mean, it doesn’t make sense. They’ve been trying to avoid us for weeks.’
‘Yeah, but according to her things are different now. They’ve come to the end of whatever they’re doing, and they’re outta there.’
Halliday shook his head. ‘She didn’t tell you what it was they were doing?’
‘Uh-uh. She wouldn’t say.’
He nodded. Before long, maybe, when they arrived at the weatherboard place and Jeff’s men made sure it was safe, they might find out what the hell was going on.
‘Before she signed off, Halliday,’ Kat said, ‘Kim told me to tell you that she wanted to say goodbye. She said tell Hal that I want to see him.’
He felt his palms break into a hot sweat. He wondered who might have programmed the construct to say goodbye. It was a joke too sick to contemplate.
They passed the turn-off to the Cyber-Tech headquarters over at Archville. Eighteen months ago he had headed this way, for a showdown with the rogue AI, a shoot-out more bloody and traumatic than he’d feared.
The showdown this time, at least, would be far from bloody. No shoot-outs, he promised himself.
They passed over the Tappan Zee bridge, the wide Hudson a muscled, muddy brown beneath them. The far bank of the river was stippled with an array of dead tree trunks. He made out, pale in the morning light, the artificial holo-forests south of Nyack. It seemed a long time since he had last been this way, not just a week or so but a lifetime ago.
He turned the Ford right and followed the coast road north through Nyack, heading towards the Hook Mountain State Park. They passed through the desolation of the dead forest, as devoid of life as a war-zone.
Kat shivered. ‘This place gives me the creeps, Halliday.’
‘Perfect location for a hideaway. Who’d think of coming out here for a quiet Sunday afternoon picnic?’
A kilometre from the turn-off to the weatherboard house, they were stopped by a police road-block. A state trooper stood beside a low-level laser-cordon. Halliday rolled down the window and showed his ID.
The trooper waved them through and they headed up the deserted road. In the distance to the right, through the denuded masts of a hundred pines and firs, he caught sight of the white-painted house.
They passed a line of police cars and a couple of armoured vans. Kat seemed to shrink in her seat. ‘Christ, all these cops give me the jeebies.’
Halliday slowed and turned down the narrow, rutted track.
Barney looked at Kat. ‘Hey, you’re working with the cops now. I’ll be surprised if they don’t give you a commendation.’
‘Can’t wait,’ she muttered.
A cordon of lasers lanced through the forest, surrounding the house in a vast purple hexagon like a computer graphic. The cordon was patrolled by armed cops at regular intervals. A dozen cars, squad vehicles and unmarked, jammed the track. A personnel carrier, its rear doors open wide, stood beside the open gate of the perimeter fence.
Halliday saw Jeff Simmons and three other plainclothes cops standing just inside the gate, wired up with headphones and mics. They were staring up at the weatherboard house, talking among themselves.
He braked the Ford and accompanied by Barney and Kat crossed to Jeff and the others.
The lieutenant nodded at Halliday. ‘We’ve a team going through the place, Hal.’
‘Found anything?’
‘They checked the ground floor and upper floors first. Nothing. Just like the other day.’
‘And the basement?’
‘Like a World War Three bunker down there, Hal. No wonder we never found anything the other week. Vault doors a metre thick. We went in with cavity detection equipment, found the chamber and blasted the doors open.’
‘No resistance?’
‘They’ve been in there ten minutes now and not a thing.’
‘What’ve they found?’
‘Lots of VR equipment, com-systems... you name it, it’s down there.’
‘But nobody at home?’
Jeff shook his head. ‘Place is empty. They’re going though it now for booby traps. Should be clear in ten, fifteen minutes.’
Halliday turned at the sound of a car engine approaching along the track. He experienced a sudden sensation of déjà vu as he watched a cream-coloured Mercedes halt beside the personnel carrier.
A burly bodyguard jumped from the passenger seat and opened a back door, and a thin figure dressed in an impeccable grey suit stepped out and approached, leaning on a walking stick.
Halliday looked at Barney. ‘Tell me this is the real world,’ he whispered.
Wellman raised his stick in greeting. ‘Halliday, good to see you.’
‘Christ, Wellman. You’re the last person I was expecting to see up here.’
‘My people have been in touch with Simmons for the past week. As soon as you contacted him, he informed my staff.’ Wellman’s face was thin, marked with lines that had not been there at their last physical meeting, eighteen-months ago. But he looked fitter than the construct Halliday had encountered in VR yesterday.
‘Seems like you’ve done it again, Halliday.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing to do with me. Meet my technical assistant, Kat.’
The thin, black-clad woman stared at Wellman. ‘You knew my brother, Joe,’ she said. ‘He worked for you.’ And died for you, too ... Halliday saw the unspoken accusation in the woman’s eyes.
‘He was a brilliant mind, Kat. We were very close.’
Kat opened her mouth to say something, a look of hatred in her eyes.
To defuse a potential scene, Halliday took Wellman by the elbow and assisted him towards the gate. ‘There’s a team going through the place. They’ve found a bunker full of VR stuff and com-systems...’ He told the executive what Kat had discovered that morning.
He hesitated. ‘It’s been a long time, Wellman. It’s good to see you in the flesh at last.’
‘Eighteen months? A lot has happened.’ Wellman glanced at him. ‘You look ill, Halliday. Cut down on the VR, okay?’
‘I think you told me that once before.’ Halliday hesitated, wanting to ask Wellman something but unable to find the right words. ‘You’re taking a risk,’ he said at last. ‘I mean, venturing out ... Wouldn’t you be better off in VR?’
‘Better off? VR’s all very well, Halliday, but it isn’t the real world, where things happen, things that matter.’ He laughed. ‘But don’t quote me on that.’
He paused, then went on, ‘But things are changing, Halliday. Very soon, believe me, it will be the place where things will happen that matter.’
‘You mean,’ he glanced over at the stranger who was Barney, ‘recorded identities, or whatever they’re called? Copied personalities actually living in the Net?’
Wellman gave him a quick glance. ‘So you know,’ he said. ‘I never had you down as the technical type, Halliday. Yes, that wi
ll certainly change things. The world will never be the same again.’
Halliday said, ‘Have you thought about...?’
‘What?’ Wellman sounded surprised. ‘Recording myself, my identity?’ He waved. ‘Of course, the board think it would be a good idea, to ensure that I was still around to steer the ship, as it were.’