Hackers

by Jack Dann

  You—you are mostly in the airspace above the bed, touching down frequently, using it as trampoline and safety net. Every three-year-old bouncing illicitly on her bed probably aspires to your level of intensity. You've got the VR rig too, you've got the Datagloves, you've got Velcro bands around your wrists, elbows, waist, knees, and ankles, tracking the position of every part of your body in three-dimensional space. Other than that, you have stripped down to voluminous plaid boxer shorts and a generously sized tank-top undershirt.

  You are rocking out. I have never seen anyone dance like this. You have churned the bedspread and pillows into sufferin' succotash. They get in your way so you kick them vindictively off the bed and get down again, boogieing so hard I can't believe you haven't flown off the bed yet. Your undershirt is drenched. You are breathing hard and steady and in sync with the rhythm, which I cannot hear but can infer.

  I can't help looking. There's the spawn till you die tattoo. And there on the other breast is something else. I walk into the room for a better look, taking in a huge whiff of perfume and sweat and beer. The second tattoo consists of small but neat navy-blue script, like that of names embroidered on bowling shirts, reading, hack the spew.

  It's not too hard to trace the connections. A wire coils out of the guitar, runs across the floor, and jumps up to jack into Evan's badass media processor. You have a wireless rig hanging on your waist and the receiver is likewise patched into Evan's machine. And Evan's output port, then, is jacked straight into the room's Spew socket.

  I am ashamed to notice that the Profile Auditor 1 part of my brain is thinking that this weird little mime fest has unexploited market niche order now! superimposed all over it in flashing yellow block letters.

  Evan gets so into his solo that he sinks unsteadily to his knees and nearly falls over. He's leaning way back, stomach muscles knotting up, his wet hair dangling back and picking up detritus from the carpet as he swings his head back and forth.

  This whole setup is depressingly familiar: it is just like high school, when I had a crush on some girl, and even though I was in the same room with her, breathing the same air, sharing the same space, she didn't know I existed; she had her own network of friends, all grooving on some frequency I couldn't pick up, existing on another plane that I couldn't even see.

  There's a note on the dresser, scrawled on hotel stationery with a dried-up hotel ball-point, welcome chaz, it says, jack in and join us! followed by ten lines of stuff like:

  A073 49D2 CD01 7813 000F B09B 323A E040

  which are obviously an encryption key, written in the hexadecimal system beloved of hackers. It is the key to whatever plane you and your buds are on at the moment.

  But I am not Chaz.

  I open the desk drawer to reveal the room's fax machine, a special Kensington Place feature that Marie extolled to me most tediously. I put the note into it and punched the Copy key, shove the copy into my pocket when it's finished and leave the note where I found it. I leave the two six-packs on the dresser as a ritual sacrifice, and slink out of the room, not looking back. An elevator is coming up toward me, L M 2 3 4 5 6 and then DING and the doors open, and out steps a slacker who can only be Chaz, thousands of snowflakes caught in his hair, glinting in the light like he's just stepped out of the Land of Faerie. He's got kind of a peculiar expression on his face as he steps out of the elevator, and as we trade places, and I punch the button for the lobby, I recognize it: Chaz is happy. Happier than me.

  TANGENTS

  Greg Bear

  Hackers often end up exploring unknown territory, sometimes inadvertently. As the brilliant story that follows suggests, though, sometimes the way you look at the things you find may be every bit as important as what you 're looking at . . .

  Born in San Diego, California, Greg Bear made his first sale at the age of fifteen to Robert Lowndes's Famous Science Fiction, and has subsequently established himself as one of the top professionals in the genre. He won a Nebula Award for his pyrotechnic novella "Hardfought," a Nebula and Hugo Award for his famous story "Blood Music," which was later expanded into a novel of the same title, and a subsequent Nebula and Hugo for the story that follows, "Tangents." His other books include the novels Hegira, Psychlone, Beyond Heaven's River, Strength of Stones, The Infinity Concerto, The Serpent Mage, Eon, Eternity, The Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, and the critically acclaimed Queen of Angels, as well as the collections The Wind From a Burning Woman and Tangents. His most recent books are the novels Moving Mars, Heads, and Legacy, and, as editor, the original anthology New Legends. He lives with his family just outside of Seattle, Washington.

  The nut-brown boy stood in the California field, his Asian face shadowed by a hardhat, his short stocky frame clothed in a T-shirt and a pair of brown shorts. He squinted across the hip-high grass at the spraddled old two-story ranch house, whistling a few bars from a Haydn piano sonata.

  Out of the upper floor of the house came a man's high, frustrated "Bloody hell!" and the sound of a fist slamming on a solid surface. Silence for a minute. Then, more softly, a woman's question, "Not going well?"

  "No. I'm swimming in it, but I don't see it."

  "The encryption?" the woman asked timidly.

  "The tesseract. If it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic."

  The boy squatted in the grass and listened.

  "And?" the woman encouraged.

  "Ah, Lauren, it's still cold broth."

  The boy lay back in the grass. He had crept over the split-rail and brick-pylon fence from the new housing project across the road. School was out for the summer and his mother—foster mother—did not like him around the house all day. Or at all.

  Behind his closed eyes, a huge piano keyboard appeared, with him dancing on the keys. He loved music.

  He opened his eyes and saw a thin, graying lady in a tweed suit leaning over him, staring. "You're on private land," she said, brows knit.

  He scrambled up and brushed grass from his pants. "Sorry."

  "I thought I saw someone out here. What's your name?"

  "Pal," he replied.

  "Is that a name?" she asked querulously.

  "Pal Tremont. It's not my real name. I'm Korean."

  "Then what's your real name?"

  "My folks told me not to use it anymore. I'm adopted. Who are you?"

  The gray woman looked him up and down. "My name is Lauren Davies," she said. "You live near here?"

  He pointed across the fields at the close-packed tract homes.

  "I sold the land for those homes ten years ago," she said. She seemed to be considering something. "I don't normally enjoy children trespassing."

  "Sorry," Pal said.

  "Have you had lunch?"

  "No."

  "Will a grilled cheese sandwich do?"

  He squinted at her and nodded.

  In the broad, red-brick and tile kitchen, sitting at an oak table with his shoulders barely rising above the top, he ate the slightly charred sandwich and watched Lauren Davies watching him.

  "I'm trying to write about a child," she said. "It's difficult. I'm a spinster and I don't understand children."

  "You're a writer?" he asked, taking a swallow of milk.

  She sniffed. "Not that anyone would know."

  "Is that your brother, upstairs?"

  "No," she said. "That's Peter. We've been living together for twenty years."

  "But you said you're a spinster . . . isn't that someone who's never married, or never loved?" Pal asked.

  "Never married. And never you mind. Peter's relationship to me is none of your concern." She placed a bowl of soup and a tuna salad sandwich on a lacquer tray. "His lunch," she said. Without being asked, Pal trailed up the stairs after her.

  "This is where Peter works," Lauren explained. Pal stood in the doorway, eyes wide. The room was filled with electronics gear, computer terminals, and bookcases with geometric cardboard sculptures sharing each shelf with books and circuit boards. She rested the tray precariously on a pile of flopp
y disks atop a rolling cart.

  "Time for a break," she told a thin man seated with his back toward them.

  The man turned around on his swivel chair, glanced briefly at Pal and the tray and shook his head. The hair on top of his head was a rich, glossy black; on the close-cut sides, the color changed abruptly to a startling white. He had a small thin nose and large green eyes. On the desk before him was a high-resolution computer monitor. "We haven't been introduced," he said, pointing to Pal.

  "This is Pal Tremont, a neighborhood visitor. Pal, this is Peter Tuthy. Pal's going to help me with that character we discussed this morning."

  Pal looked at the monitor curiously. Red and green lines shadowed each other through some incomprehensible transformation on the screen, then repeated.

  "What's a 'tesseract'?" Pal asked, remembering what he had heard as he stood in the field.

  "It's a four-dimensional analog of a cube. I'm trying to teach myself to see it in my mind's eye," Tuthy said. "Have you ever tried that?"

  "No," Pal admitted.

  "Here," Tuthy said, handing him the spectacles. "As in the movies."

  Pal donned the spectacles and stared at the screen. "So?" he said. "It folds and unfolds. It's pretty—it sticks out at you, and then it goes away." He looked around the workshop. "Oh, wow!" The boy ran to a yard-long black music keyboard propped in one corner. "A Tronclavier! With all the switches! My mother had me take piano lessons, but I'd rather play this. Can you play it?"

  "I toy with it," Tuthy said, exasperated. "I toy with all sorts of electronic things. But what did you see on the screen?" He glanced up at Lauren, blinking. "I'll eat the food, I'll eat it. Now please don't bother us."

  "He's supposed to be helping me," Lauren complained.

  Peter smiled at her. "Yes, of course. I'll send him downstairs in a little while."

  When Pal descended an hour later, he came into the kitchen to thank Lauren for lunch. "Peter's a real flake," he said confidentially. "He's trying to learn to see in weird directions."

  "I know," Lauren said, sighing.

  "I'm going home now," Pal said. "I'll be back, though . . . if it's all right with you. Peter invited me."

  "I'm sure it will be fine," Lauren said dubiously.

  "He's going to let me learn the Tronclavier." With that, Pal smiled radiantly and exited through the kitchen door, just as he had come in.

  When she retrieved the tray, she found Peter leaning back in his chair, eyes closed. The figures on the screen were still folding and unfolding.

  "What about Hockrum's work?" she asked.

  "I'm on it," Peter replied, eyes still closed.

  Lauren called Pal's foster mother on the second day to apprise them of their son's location, and the woman assured her it was quite all right. "Sometimes he's a little pest. Send him home if he causes trouble . . . but not right away! Give me a rest," she said, then laughed nervously.

  Lauren drew her lips together tightly, thanked the woman, and hung up.

  Peter and the boy had come downstairs to sit in the kitchen, filling up paper with line drawings. "Peter's teaching me how to use his program," Pal said.

  "Did you know," Tuthy said, assuming his highest Cambridge professorial tone, "that a cube, intersecting a flat plane, can be cut through a number of geometrically different cross-sections?"

  Pal squinted at the sketch Tuthy had made. "Sure," he said.

  "If shoved through the plane the cube can appear, to a two-dimensional creature living on the plane—let's call him a 'Flatlander'—to be either a triangle, a rectangle, a trapezoid, a rhombus, or a square. If the two-dimensional being observes the cube being pushed through all the way, what he sees is one of more of these objects growing larger, changing shape suddenly, shrinking, and disappearing."

  "Sure," Pal said, tapping his sneakered toe. "That's easy. Like in that book you showed me."

  "And a sphere pushed through a plane would appear, to the hapless flatlander, first as an 'invisible' point (the two-dimensional surface touching the sphere, tangential), then as a circle. The circle would grow in size, then shrink back to a point and disappear again." He sketched two-dimensional stick figures looking in awe at such an intrusion.

  "Got it," Pal said. "Can I play with the Tronclavier now?"

  "In a moment. Be patient. So what would a tesseract look like, coming into our three-dimensional space? Remember the program, now . . . the pictures on the monitor."

  Pal looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know," he said, seeming bored.

  "Try to think," Tuthy urged him.

  "It would . . ." Pal held his hands out to shape an angular object. "It would look like one of those Egyptian things, but with three sides . . . or like a box. It would look like a weird-shaped box, too, not square. And if you were to fall through a flatland . . ."

  "Yes, that would look very funny," Peter acknowledged with a smile. "Cross-sections of arms and legs and body, all surrounded by skin . . ."

  "And a head!" Pal enthused. "With eyes and a nose."

  The doorbell rang. Pal jumped off the kitchen chair. "Is that my mom?" he asked, looking worried.

  "I don't think so," Lauren said. "More likely it's Hockrum." She went to the front door to answer. She returned a moment later with a small, pale man behind her. Tuthy stood and shook the man's hand. "Pal Tremont, this is Irving Hockrum," he introduced, waving his hand between them. Hockrum glanced at Pal and blinked a long, cold blink.

  "How's the work coming?" he asked Tuthy.

  "It's finished," Tuthy said. "It's upstairs. Looks like your savants are barking up the wrong logic tree." He retrieved a folder of papers and printouts and handed them to Hockrum.

  Hockrum leafed through the printouts. "I can't say this makes me happy. Still, I can't find fault. Looks like the work is up to your usual brilliant standards. Here's your check." He handed Tuthy an envelope. "I just wish you'd given it to us sooner. It would have saved me some grief—and the company quite a bit of money."

  "Sorry," Tuthy said.

  "Now I have an important bit of work for you . . ." And Hockrum outlined another problem. Tuthy thought it over for several minutes and shook his head.

  "Most difficult, Irving. Pioneering work there. Take at least a month to see if it's even feasible."

  "That's all I need to know for now—whether it's feasible. A lot's riding on this, Peter." Hockrum clasped his hands together in front of him, looking even more pale and worn than when he had entered the kitchen. "You'll let me know soon?"

  "I'll get right on it," Tuthy said.

  "Protégé?" he asked, pointing to Pal. There was a speculative expression on his face, not quite a leer.

  "No, a young friend. He's interested in music," Tuthy said. "Damned good at Mozart, in fact."

  "I help with his tesseracts," Pal asserted.

  "I hope you don't interrupt Peter's work. Peter's work is important."

  Pal shook his head solemnly. "Good," Hockrum said, and then left the house with the folder under his arm.

  Tuthy returned to his office, Pal in train. Lauren tried to work in the kitchen, sitting with fountain pen and pad of paper, but the words wouldn't come. Hockrum always worried her. She climbed the stairs and stood in the open doorway of the office. She often did that; her presence did not disturb Tuthy, who could work under all sorts of adverse conditions.

  "Who was that man?" Pal was asking Tuthy.

  "I work for him," Tuthy said. "He's employed by a big electronics firm. He loans me most of the equipment I use. The computers, the high-resolution monitors. He brings me problems and then takes my solutions back to his bosses and claims he did the work."

  "That sounds stupid," Pal said. "What kind of problems?"

  "Codes, encryptions. Computer security. That was my expertise, once."

  "You mean, like fencerail, that sort of thing?" Pal asked, face brightening. "We learned some of that in school."

  "Much more complicated, I'm afraid," Tuthy said, grinning. "Did you ever
hear of the German 'Enigma,' or the 'Ultra' project?"

  Pal shook his head.

  "I thought not. Let's try another figure now." He called up another routine on the four-space program and sat Pal before the screen. "So what would a hypersphere look like if it intruded into our space?"

  Pal thought a moment. "Kind of weird," he said.

  "Not really. You've been watching the visualization."

  "Oh, in our space. That's easy. It just looks like a balloon, blowing up from nothing and then shrinking again. It's harder to see what a hypersphere looks like when it's real. Reft of us, I mean."

  "Reft?" Tuthy said.

  "Sure. Reft and light. Dup and owwen. Whatever the directions are called."

  Tuthy stared at the boy. Neither of them had noticed Lauren in the doorway. "The proper terms are ana and kata," Tuthy said. "What does it look like?"

  Pal gestured, making two wide wings with his arms. "It's like a ball and it's like a horseshoe, depending on how you look at it. Like a balloon stung by bees, I guess, but it's smooth all over, not lumpy."

  Tuthy continued to stare, then asked quietly, "You actually see it?"

  "Sure," Pal said. "Isn't that what your program is supposed to do—make you see things like that?"

  Tuthy nodded, flabbergasted.

  "Can I play the Tronclavier now?"

  Lauren backed out of the doorway. She felt she had eavesdropped on something momentous, but beyond her. Tuthy came downstairs an hour later, leaving Pal to pick out Telemann on the synthesizer. He sat at the kitchen table with her. "The program works," he said. "It doesn't work for me, but it works for him. I've just been showing him reverse-shadow figures. He caught on right away, and then he went off and played Haydn. He's gone through all my sheet music. The kid's a genius."