Ekko smiles and nods through the whole explanation, pretending he understands everything that I'm saying. It reminds me of my own father when I would explain a new game to him. He tries his best to pretend we're having a conversation. He raises his eyebrows when he should find something interesting and laughs when he should find something funny, but he has no idea what I'm talking about.
“But none of that matters,” I say trying to summarize it up for him and myself. “All that matters is that we failed.”
Ekko rests his hand on top of my bald head and rubs it a few times, saying, “It matters that you tried. Doesn't it?”
“I guess.”
“Of course it does. You broke into a data-bank. You stole the data. You fought the DgS and got away. Seems to me, you did everything right.”
“But the data-”
“Wasn't what you were looking for. I can understand that. But that's the data's fault, not yours.”
His logic is too simple. He's looking for an emotional response. I don't have one.
He sits down on the edge of his own bed. “You said that the data you found contained DOTgov secrets...”
“Just some classified documents about expenditures and credit stuff,” I say, running two fingers along the tube of vitapaste to force the last few drops out.
“That's strange.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, tossing the empty tube into the door of the trash collector.
“Don't you think DOTgov would have more activities happening in DOTcom that they would want to keep secret?”
“There's only one data-bank in a domain. Any data they store has to go through that bank. If it existed, it would have been there.”
Ekko rubs his chin for a few moments before he says rather simply, “What about the data they don't store? The things they delete.”
“Any trash files that the data entry clerks find, they put back on the data-carriers and send them off to the trash bin.”
“Have you looked in those files?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, a little frustrated that I have to explain all of this to him. “You don't get it. Those files are garbage. Spam-casts, incorrect calculations, outdated avatar items.”
“Government secrets?”
I laugh, but it falters as the possibility sinks in and I mumble, “I mean-”
He continues his thought. “Seems to me that deletion would be a pretty good place to bury something you don't want anyone to find.”
I speak aloud as I try to work out the theory. “If they're deleting their secrets at the end of the day-”
Cyren pops into my view, pacing back and forth as she says, “It would make sense as a sort of 'nuclear option.' If you can't successfully secure something, you make sure it doesn't exist.”
“Breaking into the Trash Bin again isn't an option. InfoLock closed Worlok's backdoor and layered a ton of new security measures on top of the whole domain. Even with the NPCs' help, it'd still take months to find a hole. If there is one.”
Ekko says, “Why can't you steal it before it gets deleted? Before the data is placed in the Trash Bin?”
“How are we supposed to do that? Wait for a data-carrier to drop out of the sky from DOTgov and try to rob it on the super-highway before it reaches the data-bank?”
Ekko smiles. “I imagine it would require more planning than that, but why not?”
“'Why not?' Do you know how hard it is to break through the security armor of a data-carrier?”
Cyren stops pacing, flashes me a direct gaze, and says, “Nothing is impossible. It's just data.”
I laugh harder. “It's data being transferred at a few hundred zettabytes.”
Ekko looks uncomfortable when he realizes I'm no longer talking to him, but I don't have time to worry about it. My pulse is racing as a thousand artificial intelligences in my mind work on the problem.
“You're already considering possible ways to overcome the mobility issues. I can feel it inside you. You want to try it.”
“I can't help it if the gamer in me wants to figure out the strategy of defeating this problem, but that doesn't mean I actually want to try.”
She grins, both devious and innocent. “Yes, you do. Look at you. I can feel you piecing it together, looking for the opening, the loophole, the flaw in the system.”
“That's not... I can't...”
I rub my head, knowing it's a waste of time to argue with Cyren.
With a long sigh I finally admit, “We're going to try to rob a data-carrier, aren't we?”
Cyren slaps me on the back, her black lips pulled back in a smile as she shouts, “That's the spirit!”
01011111
I'm sitting on the edge of an on-ramp sign for the DOTgov domain with my feet dangling over the edge, watching vehicles rush underneath me on the thousand-lane super-highway. Traffic is moving slow at this hour, with billions of accounts filling the lanes, each one as diverse as the avatars driving them. They create a blur of colors and shapes that form a single entity, like digital fluid being flushed through the system. They look alike to me, the mindless drones going about their day with no idea what's going on under the surface of the graphics.
Cyren appears next to me and says, “They've chosen their reality, their game world. Like you chose yours. This is what comforts them. This is what makes them feel safe.”
“But it's a lie,” I say, almost pitying them as they continue on their way, never going faster than their allotted bandwidth speed. “They're not safe. A sense of safety, of security, is intangible. It's more like an emotion than something you can possess.”
“And like a lot of emotions,” Cyren says, “it doesn't have to be real, they just want to feel it. And once they do, most of them will do anything to hang onto it. The idea of letting go of something like that is too scary of a proposition for most.”
I wrap both my hands tightly around the metal bars of the on-ramp sign, trying to contain my frustration as I say, “So you think that even if they knew the truth, if they knew that DOTgov had the ability to watch anyone whenever they want, in NextWorld or IRL, using their own eyes as cameras and ears as microphones-”
“I think most people would find it comforting, like having a guardian angel sitting on their shoulder.” Cyren stares down at the lanes below as the silence of our pessimism hangs in the air until she finally says, “Maybe they just need to be offered something better. Something better than safety.”
“Like what?”
“Like... freedom.”
I try to picture what that word means and my ideals fall apart. Idealism isn't enough anymore. My ideals look a lot more like naiveté with every day that passes. So I admit a harsh truth.
“I don't know if I would have given up the safety of our game world for freedom.”
“But that safety wasn't real either.”
“Wasn't it?”
“Remember the giant worm that ate our world?”
“Sure, but-”
And then I realize I was doing it too. Living in a constant state of denial. I refused to admit the imperfections, all so I could say I experienced something so perfect.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you I did it too? All the NPCs. We were toying with our emotions too much, ignoring the logic of the situation, because we wanted to think we won. It meant the struggle was over. We could relax knowing there was no more game to play. No monotonous existence of kill, loot, level, repeat.”
“Doesn't sound so bad.”
“Because for you it was a choice. That was the reality you chose. We had no choice. We were programmed.”
A thought slides across my mind. It's a terrible thought, a selfish thought, a thought I would never want Cyren to know I even considered. But she sees it like every other thought I have.
“Of course I chose you. I think you were my first choice. My first real response. No code. No program. It was... emotion. It was love.”
I reach over and place my hand over hers. She sm
iles at me.
“That was a moment of perfection.”
I try to speak, to use actual words to describe how I feel, but I struggle, unable to find what I'm looking for in my limited vocabulary. Words feel like nothing more than random combinations of meaningless sounds compared to the pure joy I feel when Cyren is near me.
With a single smile she reminds me that she can feel everything I'm feeling. It's a smile that overwhelms her and she succumbs to it willingly.
“You want to know a secret?”
“You have a secret?”
She shrugs her shoulders playfully.
“Completely unfair.”
“What is?”
“The fact that you get to have secrets, but my thoughts are wide open to you.”
“You have things you want to hide from me?”
I try desperately not to think of a hundred of my worst thoughts as those exact thoughts rush through my mind. She's laughing so hard that she wraps both arms around her stomach and rolls over onto her side.
“Not funny.”
She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself and says through a chuckle she can't shake, “Don't worry about it. You should see what flies through your head when you're dreaming. I've seen worse and I still love you.”
“Can we get back to this secret you've been hiding from me?”
She rolls her eyes and says, “It's not like that. I just... This might sound terrible, considering what our friends are going through right now, but I was thinking today about what I wanted to do with you once I'm out of your head. Once I'm free.”
“And?” I ask, maybe a little too eagerly.
She smiles at me with an excited twinkle in her eye as she says, “I want to play a game.”
“A game?” The question fumbles out of my mouth as my brain tries to reroute where my anticipation was.
“Crazy, right? But if I'm being honest... Yeah. That's what I want. I want to play a game with you. Something completely different from DangerWar 2. Something without any NPCs or Level Zeros. Something mindless and fun.”
I stare at her.
I just keep staring at her.
“What?” she asks, glancing away bashfully.
I blink a couple of times, regaining my focus before I say, “That sounds... perfect.”
She kisses my forehead, then my mouth.
“That day will come.”
“I won't stop until it does.”
“You're ready to do whatever it takes? To fight? For us? For our friends?”
I lower my head and my voice lowers with it as I answer, “Absolutely.”
“Good,” she says, standing up and peering into the sky as a shiny object breaks off from the DOTgov sphere high above us. “Because we've got incoming.”
01100000
I jump to my feet and squint my eyes, barely making out the shape of a data-carrier heading toward the on-ramp. The data-carrier is an automated vehicle built for one job, nothing more than a metal box with wheels. A metal box with wheels that travels extremely fast.
“Okay, remember to breathe and count your marks. You can do this. You just need to get your timing right. It's only math.”
It's really, really complicated math. Luckily, I have thousands of NPCs in my head, doing the calculations for me.
As the data-carrier drops toward the surface of NextWorld, it builds speed. My calculations change, increasing velocity and momentum, decreasing time and distance, carrying the lag modifier, and converting the results to a digital space compiler. I factor in the size and shape of the vehicle and what kind of target area that gives me. The final total becomes a timer in the corner of my vision.
I activate my piggyback software and a hefty iron hook appears in my hand. I reel back my arm as the timer reaches the two second mark, watching the milliseconds spin away. I swing my arm forward before the timer stops, needing the hook to land precisely on the tail end of the data-carrier. Right before the timer hits zero, I close my eyes, but when a solid vibration runs through my arm and there's a sudden sensation of being pulled down a super-highway at exorbitant bandwidth speeds, I know it worked.
I open my eyes and see the iron hook stuck in the armored shell of the box-shaped data-carrier. I'm holding the hook tightly in one hand, but as the speed of the data-carrier increases, my senses lag. Sounds stutter, images buffer, and my avatar skips frames of animation when I move.
“Traveling at this speed, your account has 59.4 seconds before you experience a complete signal tear,” Cyren yells in my ear, trying to be heard over the rushing lanes of traffic.
Camels gallop alongside us, their feet leaving trails of fire behind them. A rocket with wheels attached screams past us in another lane. A pogo stick cracks the pavement, threatening to pierce the street every time it slams into the ground. A lion the size of a bus roars from a few lanes over, its enormous frame pulling a tiny chariot.
We're completely surrounded.
Just like we planned.
I start counting the traffic within reach of my piggyback software, but the NPCs already have a total. It's cutting it close, but it'll be enough.
With the iron hook still pierced into the side of the data-carrier, I select a reversed-clone copy of the software from my inventory and another hook appears in my other hand. I attach one end to the data-carrier and twirl the end with the hook in preparation. I scan the lanes again, eyeing the vehicle we're passing in the next lane. A group of DOTbiz workers zip past in their company car. I release the hook and it catches in the passenger side door.
Instead of me being pulled to them and sharing their bandwidth, like I'm doing with the data-carrier, the reversed software rips their sedan from their own lane and yanks it toward me, slamming the vehicle into my lane and dragging it behind. With an additional four accounts sharing the data-carrier's speed, not only does the vehicle slow, but my own lag increases, and my avatar's image flutters. I select another copy of the software and hook an account that's surfing down the highway on a flying guitar. We slow down even more.
Copy after copy, I create a train of vehicles, all connected to the data-carrier, each one eating up more of the bandwidth. Each one slowing us down, creating lag on the data-carrier.
“Bandwidth speed is in the green zone,” Cyren shouts. “You have 36.2 seconds before we reach the data-bank.”
My avatar is shaking all over, blinking in and out of existence worse than Ekko ever did in DangerWar 2. If I wasn't attached through the piggyback software, My connection to any vehicle would break down and I'd be left standing in the middle of the super-highway. I try to open menus with a swipe in the air, but they never receive the full command from my movements. This is the worst lag I've ever experienced.
I hope it's enough.
I place both of my hands on the back of the data-carrier as they blink in and out of existence, never quite able to form a solid state. Yet I can feel the armor. And as soon as I do, a pop-up warning appears, kindly letting me know that: “You do not have authorization to access this vehicle. DgS has been alerted to this suspicious activity and will be arriving shortly to assist you with this error.”
“It's okay. We knew this was going to happen. Just concentrate. Time the lag jumps.”
My hands keep flickering, shivering, flashing. I blink to the repetition, trying to find the pattern. I remember all the times that Xen told me to clear my mind. My brain shuts off and I give over to the natural flow of the data. Blink. Blink blink blink. Blink blink. Blink.
The moment I sync up with the flickering of my avatar, I push forward as I blink. I still feel the armor as it wraps around my hands, then my arms, then my face. It touches the outside of my body and the inside.
It's there, but I'm not.
I fall past the armor as I open my eyes, my avatar taking shape again, reappearing as I stumble into the cargo hold of the data-carrier. I'm standing between two shelving units, each of them filled with different colored cubes of data, each color representing different ty
pes of information. Financial transactions, site log-ins, sensory recordings, cast logs, advertisement tracking, etc.
I rush down the aisle, my eyes scanning each shelf, looking for that glimmer of white that represents DOTgov data. I reach the end of the aisle and step into the next row of shelves.
“24.5 seconds before we reach the data-bank.”
“Not helping,” I growl back at her as I look back and forth, up and down, searching for that one color.
At the end of the second row, on the bottom shelf, barely peeking out from an over-sized orange cube, I see a corner of white.
“Kill the piggyback.”
The NPCs deactivate all of my piggyback software and the lag drops out from under me. The speed of the data-carrier picks up, and now that I'm inside the vehicle, my avatar solidifies without any of the signal tear.
I backhand the orange cube out of the way, knocking it across the cargo hold. The white cube isn't any bigger than my fist, but when I pick it up, it's heavier than it should be.
“It's using an intense compression algorithm,” Cyren says, explaining the unusual size. “There's a lot of information in that little cube. Raw data. Unsorted. That has every file that's been marked for saving and every file that's been marked for deletion.”
I select my copying tools from my inventory and an old camera appears in my hand. I point the lens at the white cube and push the button.
“You've got 10.9 seconds before we reach the data-bank.”
The autofocus spins back and forth, trying to capture a perfectly clear shot so that there's no data corruption in the copying process.
“ETA 5.5 seconds.”
The autofocus keeps working, the adjustments becoming smaller and smaller as it hones in on the shot.
“2 seconds.”
There's a blinding flash, but when the burst of light subsides, I not only see the white cube in my hand, I see another in my inventory.
“Got it,” I yell.
End Code Page 5