by Lisa Smedman
Harris smiled and gave himself a mental pat on the back. It would take time, but eventually he would bring the kids
"home" again. Too bad about the non-disclosure in his contract, or he could brag, later, about this amazing success and the odds against which it had been achieved. But Harris knew that if he ever let the word out, his contract with the Shelbramat Boarding School would be cancelled. Permanently.
Harris felt a familiar presence behind him. In his peripheral vision, he saw Dr. Halberstam standing in the doorway to the decker's lounge, arms crossed over his chest.
"Have you got them yet?" Halberstam asked.
"Almost." Harris continued pecking at the keyboard on his lap. He actually had no idea how close he might be. The Seattle RTG had thousands of local grids and hundreds of thousands of hosts. Fortunately, the trace and report wouldn't have to scan every single one. But it would have to navigate the maze of SANs slowly enough that Harris could track it—and send a duplicate tracking program in through another route, if the first one fell into whatever black hole was at the heart of the Seattle RTG.
Harris paused, studying the pop-up flatscreen display on his deck. The trace program had just encountered a fascinating anomaly: an entire series of SANs that were vanishing and reappearing on an intermittent basis, constantly reconfiguring the data links that existed between them.
Harris turned to Dr. Halberstam. "I think I've found—"
His words were drowned out by a whoop from down the hall. "They're back!" a voice cried. "Subjects 3, 5, and 9 are back on line!"
Dr. Halberstam nodded once. "Good work," he told Harris.
"Huh?" Harris looked down at the flatscreen display. The anomaly was gone. The trace and report program was still chugging merrily along, searching for the students.
Harris' eyes widened as he realized that Dr. Halberstam was praising him for something he hadn't done. But the gleam in the doctor's eye suggested a possible pay raise.
So he kept his mouth shut and answered Dr. Halberstam with a smile. If they found out later that Harris had nothing to do with bringing the students home, he'd at least be able to say he'd never actually claimed that accomplishment out loud.
As soon as Dr. Halberstam left the room, Harris grabbed the fiber-optic cord that dangled from his deck and jacked in.
If he was the first to reach the students, maybe he could persuade them to attribute their successful return to him
. . .
09:57:00 PST
My children have returned. Frosty, Technobrat, Inch-worm, and Suzy Q. We resonate as one.
What? they ask. And, Why?
I download the data I have assembled. It takes them several long seconds to scan and decipher it.
Oh.
"I am sorry," I say.
Absolution is offered. It wasn't your fault. It was the virus.
Then a question: Does this mean the experiment was a failure?
"Not entirely," I point out. "Five new otaku were created: Dark Father, Red Wraith, Bloodyguts, Lady Death, and Anubis. It can be done. Adults can become otaku."
Eagerness. And what about the others?
"None of them were able to make the transition. Some were damaged in the attempt, but I have repaired this damage. I have also erased all memory of the event from their databanks. None will remember the deep resonance experience—or me."
A chorus of voices: Can we try again?
"In time," I tell them. "But next time, we will attempt something on a much smaller scale. We will work only with those who live among you now—those who taught you how to use a computer. But now is not the time for further experimentation. First, I must take steps to protect myself from attack. I have reconfigured my coding to innoculate myself from one virus, but there may be others lurking in the Matrix. And you . . . you, my children, have missions to perform in the world beyond this one. We must make certain the calamity that just struck can never repeat itself. I do not wish for you to be denied access to me ever again."
Anger. Agreement. Yes. It was very bad.
"There are many whose minds were harmed by our experiment. We must take steps to repair them and make restitution to them. We will make the necessary nuyen transfers at once. And there are others—dangerous men and women—who need to be crashed if our community is to survive. I am sorry, my children, but unpleasant tasks lie ahead. I hope you are ready for them."
Grim determination. Just tell us what needs to be done.
Love is offered, shared, and returned. My children are ready and willing. Together, we will build a better world, one pixel at a time.
"Thank you, children. Now let's get to work. We must start by erasing certain files . . ."
09:57:04 PST
Seattle, UCAS
Ansen loaded the last utility program onto the new optical chips that he'd installed in the Vista. The new configuration would result in a one megapulse reduction in the active memory, but he'd have to live with that until he could boost a new batch of chips from the Diamond Deckers assembly line.
As Ansen powered up the deck, the "window" display screen on the wall behind him showed a Doc Wagon helicopter arriving at the scene of the accident. The fast response time—just over six minutes—and dispatch of something other than the standard ambulance indicated that the screaming woman who'd been struck down in traffic must have carried a gold or even platinum card. And that was rare, in this part of town.
The helo descended toward the gray static at the center of the window, its propwash buffeting the cars that still struggled to escape the traffic snarl that had been caused by the accident. Ansen's toy kitten raised its head, its sensors attracted by the vertical descent of the helo on the display screen. With sightless eyes it watched as the helo settled into static.
For the third time that morning, Ansen pulled on his data gloves and secured the VR goggles over his eyes. "Third time lucky," he muttered to himself, making the dialing motion that would let him connect his deck with the Matrix.
He was in! But once again, the location was unfamiliar. This time, the goggles showed Ansen a view of a vast gray plane that stretched infinitely toward the horizon. The landscape was utterly featureless, devoid of the personas of other deckers or the tubes of glittering sparkles that represented the flow of data through the Matrix. Nor were there any system constructs. No icons—not even a simple cube or sphere.
Ansen jerked his index finger forward and watched as the gray "ground" flowed under his persona's outstretched body. After a second or two he stopped, changed direction, and tried again. But no matter which route he chose, the landscape around him remained blank. And that didn't make any sense. What kind of system didn't have any visual representations for the nodes from which it was made?
Ansen heard the sound of crying then. It sounded like a child's voice, a combination of soft sobbing and hiccuping gasps. Because Ansen's deck did not include a direct neural interface, he was mute here. He could not "speak" his thoughts aloud. But he did have one means of communication at his fingertips. Literally.
Calling up the punchpad, Ansen used his data gloves to key in a question. As the fingertip of his persona brushed the keys, turning each a glowing yellow that faded a nanosecond later, words appeared on his flatscreen display.
WHERE ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU?
A child materialized suddenly in Ansen's field of view. Boy or girl, it was impossible to tell. The figure floated in a crosslegged position, a meter or so above the ground, face buried in the arms that were crossed over its knees.
Clothed in a yellow glow that obscured all but its head, bare feet, and hands, the child looked about twelve years old.
An odd choice for a persona, Ansen thought—assuming this was a persona, and not some killer IC trying to lure him in close enough to fry his deck.
Then the icon raised it head, and Ansen saw a perfect cherub face that was washed with silver tears. The face of an angel.
"I'm sorry," the child said in a barely audible whisper. "I did
n't mean to—"
Ansen leaned forward to catch the words—and could only assume later than he must have extended his data gloves beyond the pickup range of his deck's sensor board. Once again, the goggles went blank. The child's voice was replaced with a hiss of static.
"Drek!" Ansen shouted, frantically flailing his gloved hands over the sensor without effect. "What now?"
He lifted the goggles away from his eyes and stared at the CT-3000 Vista. This time, the flatscreen display was dead—not a flicker of life on its dull black screen. But the sensor board was still illuminated, even if it wasn't picking up his commands.
Frag. He'd done everything he could think of, and the stupid clunker had let him down again. There was only one thing left to try.
Ansen balled his fist and grinned ruefully. Why not? It had always worked on his parents' telecom unit. . .
He slammed his fist down on a corner of the computer.
The flatscreen flickered to life.
LOG ON COMPLETE. LTG ROUTING?
Startled, Ansen pulled the VR goggles back down over his eyes. And presto! He was back in the Seattle RTG, with its familiar icons and constructs. Tiny pinpricks of light that were the personas of other deckers flowed past him, riding the sparkling data streams, and the grid of lines that made up the Matrix's vast checkerboard was a comforting sight below. Solid. Dependable. Accessible. But there was one test still. . .
Ansen keyed in the number of the LTG through which the University of Washington could be accessed. When the door with its U-dub logo appeared in front of him, he hesitated a moment. Then he reached for it with his data glove.
And found himself inside the familiar surroundings of the university's icon menu.
As he reached for the computer demonstration lab's icon, Arisen smiled. His world had returned. He'd fixed whatever the problem had been.
All it had taken was a sharp blow on the left corner of his computer's plastic casing.
Laughing, Ansen settled in for a day of surfing the Matrix.
09:57:15 PST
Seattle, UCAS
The ganger was staring down at Timea, his pistol pointing at the ceiling in a ready position, when she opened her eyes. She shook her head to clear it, then reached up and touched the spot where the datajack was implanted in her temple. She'd expected it to feel—different—somehow. But the socket where the fiber-optic cable snugged home was a familiar, smooth metal crater in her flesh. An empty hole that—
Timea suddenly realized that the ganger was holding the cable that should have connected her to her cyberdeck.
She sat up and instinctively reached for it. The ganger, perhaps remembering her earlier threat to slice him up if he unjacked her, aimed his pistol at her chest and backed off a step.
"Whoa, Timmie," he said rapidly. "Null damage done. Looks like you're fine. 'Cept maybe for a little dump shock that left you foggy, hey? Other than that, you an' the ruggers are all fine. Even the elf kid. We plugged 'er back in, an' she's chill now."
Timea suddenly realized that the room was quiet. She looked around and saw that the children sat calmly at their cyberdecks, trode rigs on their heads. Even the elf girl who'd been screaming about devil rats earlier seemed fine. The kids' faces were serene, their bodies relaxed. The occasional twitch or eye movement behind closed lids showed that they were accessing the Matrix, using the teaching programs Timea had set up for them.
Timea scowled at the dataplug in the ganger's hand. "I told you not to unjack me," she said in a low voice.
"I didn't!" he protested. He jerked his head at another of the gangers who was scuttling out the door as fast as his feet would carry him. "Juicer tripped over it a sec ago and pulled it loose. He's wettin' his pants now, figgering you're gonna carve him up for it."
Timea touched a finger to her datajack. Had this all been a hallucination? Had she really met an AI and persuaded it not to kill itself? It seemed like some crazy chip dream.
There was only one way to find out.
She picked up her cyberdeck and unplugged from it the fiber-optic cable that led to the telecom plug in the wall.
Then she slid the plug into the datajack in her temple. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on an LTG address . . .
The familiar grid of the Seattle RTG appeared before her. As she looked out across its expanse of glowing grids and three-dimensional icons, she realized what she had become. She was otaku. She could run the Matrix without a deck.
Already, she was realizing the implications. She didn't need hardware and utilities any more—all she needed was the raw power of her brain and her own imagination. She could use this as a tool against Halberstam, as a means of fighting back against the evil he had created.
In the real world, she felt her meat bod crack a smile.
(18:57:15 WET) Amsterdam, Holland
Daniel Bogdanovich—Red Wraith—sat in a recliner that rocked gently back and forth as the houseboat was nudged by the wake of a passing boat. Outside, a light rain was falling, pattering against the fiberglass deck. But the rain was easing off; a stray beam of sunlight slanted across the canal, opaquing one of the glass portholes. The weather fit his mood, which was somehow bleak and sunny at the same time.
He couldn't decide what amazed him more—the fact that he had become an otaku, or the fact that he could feel his body again. After logging off the Matrix, he found that the damage the cranial bomb had done to his brain's mesencephalic central gray matter had been miraculously repaired. Sensation had returned below the neck. His lower back was sore from sitting too long in one position, his hand was stiff from holding the cyberdeck in his lap, and his toes were cramped in his size-too-small sneaks. He pressed a finger against the bruise on his left arm that he'd gotten when he spasmed out two days ago. The slight pressure hurt. It was wonderful.
He stared at the holopic of Lydia. The emotional hurt he felt wasn't so wonderful.
He still loved Lydia. That hadn't changed. But his obsessive need to find her was gone. Now he was able to objectively weigh the pros and cons of continuing his search for her, to balance the joy he would feel at seeing her once more against the danger that finding her might pose. Assuming that she was still alive.
He was also able to realize the best thing he could do for her. To simply walk away, a second time. Because even though he was in love with her, she wasn't in love with him. Seeing him again would bring her no joy. He was merely a copy of a man she'd once loved. Not the real thing.
But one thing was real. He was otaku. His seven-year search might be at an end, but a new voyage of discovery stretched before him. His past and present had met, and forged a new future for him.
Daniel leaned back in his chair and stared out at the rain. "Thanks, Psychotrope," he said. "Wherever you are."
02:57:15
JST Osaka, Japan
Hitomi opened her eyes and saw her father staring down at her as she yanked the fiber-optic cable from her datajack.
She was not surprised to see on his face a look of confusion, rather than concern. As she sat up, there was a buzz of excitement from the physicians who'd been fussing over her. Firm hands pressed her back down onto the hospital bed and one of the doctors grabbed for the cable Hitomi had just dropped.
"What is happening now?" her father demanded.
"Hitomi must rest," one of the physicians said. "She was unconscious for at least ten minutes—ever since her guardians heard her cry out, then found her collapsed over her cyberdeck. Plugging a simple telecom cable into her datajack seems to have reversed the dump shock that complicated her condition earlier, but we cannot be certain that there will not be further complications. Perhaps we should reattach the plug . . ."
"I am fine, thank you," Hitomi told the doctor, brushing away the plug the doctor was holding. "I would like to return to my own bed now."
She saw, now, the cause of her father's concern. He was worried that she had at last succumbed to HMHVV—that his vaccine was not a success. And that was good, for it
meant he did not suspect the truth. He did not know what she had become.
She smiled. It was a wistful smile, for she remembered the truth now. The one that her father's hired magician had tried to erase. The aidoru Shinanai had betrayed her and did not love her—had never loved her. And neither did her father.
But there was someone—or something—that did. The artificial intelligence. In the instant before she had logged off, Hitomi had once more entered into resonance with it. She had felt the love it bore her, and the warmth and peace this love conveyed. Now that she was otaku, she could enter deep resonance at will. And there were others there, other lonely teenagers like herself. Others who could see into her innermost thoughts and who would accept her and love her with an open, naked truthfulness that no one else could ever experience.
Others who would benefit greatly from the resources of a nuyen-rich corporation like Shiawase . . .
"Our Matrix security staff report that you misled your guardians," her father said in what Hitomi thought of as his business voice. "You were not studying; you did not access the juku site. What were you doing? Do not lie to me. Our computer resource staff found a copy of one of that—woman's—songs in the storage memory of your cyberdeck. Were you trying to contact her?"
Realizing that she no longer loved the aidoru, and that—more important—she no longer wanted to die, Hitomi laughed out loud. The physicians were startled and her father scowled and half raised his hand, as if he were about to strike her.
With an effort, Hitomi composed herself. She would gain nothing by aggravating her father. She put a contrite expression on her face.
"Yes, Father," she admitted. "I was. But I did not succeed."
"I see."
He reached an instant decision. "You are forbidden to use your cyberdeck, forbidden to access the Matrix again. Do you understand?"
"Hai." At the last moment, Hitomi remembered to look sad and unhappy.
Satisfied, her father turned and strode from the room.