Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  Once again, the scenario was over the top, much more than necessary to troll for the kind of information Jay wanted. The man never let one simple vision serve when he could do nine visions complicated. And even the public scenarios he chose were major sensory sims, like that stupid climb up Mount Fuji. Please.

  Keller grinned at that memory. That had shaken old Jay up some, when he’d gone over in persona and sat down right next to him. Old Jay hadn’t expected that.

  When the boat got within range, Keller laid the rifle’s forestock on a gnarl of root and aimed. The rain slashed down hard, the wind blew, and the scope was wet and blurry. The trawler was bouncing up and down on the rough water, and enough of it was sloshing up through the mangrove roots to keep Keller soaked, despite the raincoat. It wasn’t an easy shot.

  He managed to put the first round into the wheelhouse side window, shattering it, but missing Jay by a good foot. He worked the bolt and fired again, aiming at the hull just below the normal waterline when the boat came up on a wave. He ejected the empty shell and chambered a third round, which he fired at the life preserver hung next to the wheelhouse. Must have missed that completely, he didn’t see it hit.

  The boat chugged on, no sign of Jay, who must be ducked down inside the wheelhouse, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Enough. He had other business to which he needed to attend. This was fun, pulling Gridley’s chain, but Omega was coming, and they had less than a week to get ready. Not nearly enough time. He was going to have to let this go. Too bad.

  In this scenario, which was Jay’s, Keller had a small boat hidden behind the mangrove island in the swamp flats just short of the Gulf where some nameless river emptied into it. Probably it had a name, come to think of it, since Gridley did stuff like that.

  Keller dropped the rifle, for which he had no further use, and worked his way to his boat. Might as well check things out as he left. Gridley wouldn’t have come here if he hadn’t been looking for something in particular, and maybe Keller could spot it.

  He reached the boat, and started to untie the line that kept the craft from drifting away. When he did, a monstrous figure rose from the water like the creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Keller froze.

  The monster said, “Surprise!” and Keller realized it was a man in scuba gear and a wetsuit. Behind the face mask, he recognized Gridley’s basic persona, which looked pretty much like the real man.

  Gridley had a big knife in his hand. He smiled and moved awkwardly toward Keller, his flippers slapping the water noisily—

  Keller bailed.

  CyberNation Train Baden-Baden, Germany

  Keller came out of the scenario cursing. Dammit! He had underestimated Gridley again! He should have known better! He threw the wireless sensory gear down hard, and regretted that instantly. These headsets weren’t cheap. If he broke it, the replacement would come out of his budget.

  He picked up the set, touched the test button. The diodes lit up green, one after another.

  Thank God for small miracles. He put the set down more carefully, hanging it on its rack.

  Overconfidence had been the downfall of a whole lot of programmers, and he had seen it happen enough to know nobody was immune, even him. Gridley might have opted for the status quo, turned into a fedhead, fat and happy, but he still had some moves. Keller was better than they’d been in college, but it wasn’t smart to think that the Old Thai had stayed where he’d been. He was, after all, the head of Net Force’s computer operation. He might not be as good as Keller was, but he wasn’t a total lubefoot, either.

  It was too bad he didn’t have time to call Jay out for a full wrangle. To make it a one-on-one, no-holds-barred. To show Jay who was better now.

  Well. There was no help for it. And no real harm done. Keller’s net persona was a mule, a Joe-average construct that didn’t look like anybody in particular, certainly not his real self. Even if Gridley had seen him, he hadn’t seen anybody he could put a face to.

  And even if he had known who it was, well, so what? Knowing who and figuring out where he was, finding him and doing anything about it before Omega launched wasn’t going to happen. And afterward? Jay wouldn’t be able to do much to him then, either.

  The train was moving. That very morning it had left the siding where it had been for days, and was now only a couple hundred kilometers northeast of Dijon, France. It would arrive at the border shortly, where it would turn around and head back toward Berlin. The powers that were in CyberNation did not want their three mobile centers anywhere near their headquarters in Geneva. The ship was in the Caribbean, the train went back and forth between Berlin and the French border, mostly, half-loaded with tourists who knew nothing of the high-tech gear on board the other half. The third station was on a barge ostensibly being rebuilt at a shipyard in Yokohama, Japan, though it could be hauled off at any time. If the German authorities being paid to ignore the train developed pangs of conscience, or if the Japanese harbor officials who were bribed not to worry themselves overmuch about the repairs on the barge suddenly went mad, the ship was the safety, the most secure backup. If something happened to the train or the barge, or both, the ship would be the base nobody could legally touch. But any one of them was enough by itself to get the job done. All three were similarly equipped, and what one did was quickly uploaded to the others, so that at any given moment the lead team was never more than a few hours ahead of the others. Major data transfers were done four times a day in all directions, so if the train or boat or barge was suddenly hit by a giant meteor, there wouldn’t be more than six joint hours of work lost to the remaining two centers.

  It was a good system. Not Keller’s design, but good, nonetheless.

  Well. As much as he’d like to square off with Gridley and kick his ass, he had to get on with it. Omega was coming, and his group wasn’t going to be caught short. Maybe after it all came down he’d go find Jay and show him up, but that would just have to wait.

  Washington, D.C. The Zoo

  Jay and Saji walked along, looking at the tiger cage. It was cold enough so the big cats were inside their heated enclosure. A lot of the less furry animals seemed to be. For a long time after he had been mauled in VR by such a creature, it had been all Jay could do to look at the tigers. Now, he made a point to stop by the zoo every so often to remind himself.

  He was only paying half his attention to the walk though, and, of course, Saji noticed.

  “Where are you?” she said. “Not here.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about the fishing boat scenario. I think I know who the shooter was.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “Well, when I ran the lists of the best computer programmers graduated in the last ten years, I came up with quite a few I knew. Me, for one. A lot of guys I went to school with at CIT, others I knew from the net and web, conferences, like that. Some of them I’ve kept in touch with, others kinda drifted away, so I tried to run down some of the guys I used to pal around with that I haven’t seen in years.”

  They passed the brown bear compound. The bears weren’t around. Hibernating maybe?

  “Yes,” she said. “And…?”

  “A couple have died. One in a car wreck, one from cancer. Most of the rest of them went into the field and have done pretty well. A few dot-biz millionaires, some commercial software producers. Some got out of the field, went to work in other areas. One woman I knew who was an ace programmer opened a chain of daycare centers for school kids. One guy writes comic books and TV shows. A few did well enough to quit work and live in Hawaii or somewhere. A couple dropped out completely to raise organic carrots or whatever on dinky farms in Footlick, Missouri, or like that.”

  “Yes. And…?”

  “Two are missing. No record of them. Didn’t die, didn’t get married or change their names, just dropped off the face of the Earth. One of them was a weirdo we all expected would go ballistic one day and assassinate somebody. The other was one of my best friends, a
guy named Jackson Keller. We exchanged a couple of Christmas cards after school, and then lost track of each other.”

  “I see.”

  “The thing is, I can’t imagine he would drop out of the biz. He was gung ho, like most of us. I figured they’d have to haul his body away from the console if he died. But there’s no sign of him anywhere from about three years after we graduated. Poof.”

  The insect house was not far ahead. It was always warm in there, if kind of humid, but it was getting chilly, and Jay nodded at it. “Let’s go look at the bugs.”

  Inside, small children darted from window to window, looking at giant cockroaches, horned beetles, and all kinds of scorpions from around the world. It felt like a jungle, warm and damp, though the lights were fairly dim.

  “So you think maybe this weirdo is somehow part of things?”

  He shook his head. “No. I think it’s the other one — my old buddy Keller.”

  She looked at an albino beetle the size of a mouse as it lumbered over a floor of fine-grained sand. “What makes you think that?”

  “A couple things. The weirdo — his name was Zimmer-man — never had the chops to make me look bad in VR. Keller wasn’t quite as good as I was, but he coulda gotten better. And I’ve been thinking about that climb up Fuji-yama. When the old Thai guy came and sat next to me. That’s what Keller used to call me, back in college. Jay, the Old Thai. He was a year or two younger than most of us, a child prodigy who finished high school at fifteen.”

  “You think the VR construct was a hint?”

  “I think so, yeah. And you know what it really feels like? It feels personal. Like this guy knows me, wants to screw me up. And his stuff is like the stuff Keller used to do — he was always big on ambushes. He used to say if you are going to duel with somebody, shoot ’em in the back before they see you coming, it’ll save you a lot of grief. Their fault if they weren’t paying attention.”

  “Huh,” she said.

  “ ‘Huh?’ That’s the best you can do?”

  “What do you want me to say? Yes, you must be right, you brilliant stud!”

  He grinned. “That would be okay, I like the sound of that.”

  She grinned back at him. “I bet.” She looked back at the beetle. “So, if this is true, how do you find out for sure? And then what?”

  “Well, to start, I can dig deeper in public records, see if I can find Keller anywhere. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe he’s got a job in Silicon Valley somewhere running some company and I missed him.”

  “Maybe he changed his name,” she said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “For all your smarts, you sometimes miss the easy stuff, Jay. What if he got into debt? Maybe some kind of white-collar crime? Needed a fresh start. Or just went bonkers and decided to start calling himself ‘Ra, God of the Sun.’ ”

  Jay watched the bug in the glass case going about its business. It had found something in the sand and was digging it up. Jay halfway expected to see the insect unearth a tiny human skull. “I don’t think so. If he had, there’d be some record of it under his old name. First things I checked were criminal records, B&D stats, and Deja, and he was active on the net until about five years ago. After that, he’s just gone. You’d think somebody who was planning on leaving would say good-bye — he was on a lot of newsgroups and professional pub pages, then he stopped posting. I had a searchbot scan all his postings: There’s no mention of being in trouble with the law, or in debt, or wanting to change his name. One minute he was there, the next, he was gone.”

  “Black helicopters got him?” she said.

  Jay smiled. “Uh-huh. Don’t forget, I know where those guys hang out.”

  The beetle came up with something that looked like a little ball made out of Tootsie Roll, and proceeded to roll it across the stand toward a far corner of the cage.

  “All right, then,” she said. “Hunt him down and find out what he’s been up to.”

  Jay nodded. Yes.

  27

  Washington, D.C.

  The ceremony was outside, a bright June afternoon. A sea of graduates in blue caps and gowns sat in folding chairs in front of a raised platform. On the stage, a speaker called out names, and students walked across the stand to collect their diplomas. Most of the students looked happy as they accepted their sheepskins and shook hands with the principal. A couple of the boys mugged and did silly waves. One boy flashed the crowd, showing off jockey undershorts. A typical high school graduation, “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background, the proud parents smiling, crying, fanning themselves with programs, watching their progeny morph from children to semi-adults.

  Later, a tall blonde girl stood with her arms around two of her girlfriends while her parents, then the parents of her friends took pictures.

  As the festivities wound down, students hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, punching shoulders, a father and son walked side by side toward the parking lot. The family resemblance was strong, the boy a younger copy of his father. The father stopped walking and said, “Here, son.”

  The boy took a small plastic card from his father, looked at it, then back at his dad.

  “Your first year of membership in CyberNation,” his father said. He was blinking back tears.

  The son looked amazed. “But — but you think this is stupid!” He waved the card a little.

  “Times change, son. People change, too — they have to, or they miss what’s important in life.”

  The boy looked at the card.

  “Your mother would have been so proud.”

  Behind them, a woman — the spirit of the boy’s mother — shimmered and appeared ghostlike into view. The father and son looked at the spirit, who smiled at them.

  With the spirit of the wife and mother watching, the boy and his father embraced.

  “CyberNation,” said the deep voice. “It’s today, it’s tomorrow. It’s forever.”

  A small graphic appeared under the father and son, and in small print the words CYBERNATION appeared.

  * * *

  Michaels pointed the remote at the television in disgust and clicked the set off. “Have you seen this? A three-hanky commercial for an Internet service.”

  Toni came out of the bathroom with the electric toothbrush in her mouth. “What?”

  Michaels waved at the television. “The CyberNation ad.”

  She held up a hand, a “wait a second” gesture, then went back into the bathroom. A moment later, she was back. “Let me go check on the baby,” she said.

  “Already did. He’s sleeping like a rock.”

  She moved to the bed and sat. “You were saying something about the TV?”

  “Yeah, the CyberNation tear-jerker commercial.”

  “Which one? The old lady abandoned in the nursing home by her children? Or the young guy talking to his wife’s tombstone?”

  “The high school graduation.”

  “Oh, that one.”

  “These guys put Coca-Cola, the phone and insurance companies into the minor leagues. Most manipulative thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Wait until you see the thirteen-year-old girl orphan on the street and the cop who comes to help her,” she said. “Equal parts of pathos and pedophilia.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t they have any shame?”

  “Not if they sell the product.”

  He shook his head again.

  “So, have you thought any more about what we talked about? Guru?”

  “You really want to do this?”

  She nodded. “Yes. She’s as much my grandma as anybody. Every day from the time I was thirteen until I went off to college, I spent two hours with her. Sometimes at her house, sometimes on the steps out front, sometimes in the park. Rain or shine, whatever else was going on, she was there for me. She gave me a skill that’s the core of who I am. Whatever else happened to me, I was always sure I could take care of myself if somebody wanted to put his hands on me and I didn’t wa
nt him to. It was the basis of making my way in the world. If all else failed, I could kick somebody’s butt. I didn’t have to be afraid.”

  He smiled at her.

  “She’s useful here. Little Alex loves her. I love her. And I owe her. For so much. She’s eighty-five, she won’t be around much longer.”

  He chuckled. “She’ll probably outlive us all.”

  “Alex—”

  “Okay. If you really want this, then, yeah, okay. Ask her.”

  “You sure?”

  “What I’m sure of is that I want you to be happy. Whatever it is. If that means having a coffee-swilling deadly old nanny living in the guest bedroom, what the hell.”

  He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile any bigger. She hugged him, and once again he marveled at how good that made him feel, to make her smile.

  What was it Jay’s girl Saji had said recently? Making somebody smile lightens your karmic burden? Well, if that was the case, he intended to be karmically clear on Toni’s grins alone, if he could.

  CyberNation Train Kassel, Germany

  The train was stopped, some kind of mechanical problem, just outside Kassel, still three hundred or so kilometers southwest of Berlin. Some of the team had taken the opportunity to get off and stretch their legs, but Keller saw no reason to do so. He had never been a fan of outside. When you could go anywhere in time or space in VR, could control the weather, the smells, the action, why would you bother tromping around in the cold and dark next to a train track in the middle of nowhere? Where you had no control at all, save that of your own body’s ability to come or go? That’s what the Luddites didn’t understand, that virtual reality was so much better than the real world because you could make it do exactly what you wanted it to do. No wild cards, no chance that you would be caught in an unexpected snowstorm, or bitten by a mosquito chock full of malaria. In VR, life was what you wanted it to be.

  This was the real reason that CyberNation would succeed, more than anything. As VR became more and more like RW, the ability to have anything you wanted, to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel it exactly as you wished it to be, that was heaven. Give the people what they want. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. That was always how it had been, and that was how it was going to continue to be.