Timea had no idea where she was. She'd logged onto the Seattle RTG through the clinic's Redmond address, but instead of the familiar grid she found herself in a tunnel whose walls blurred past as she rushed toward an impossibly bright light. The dizzying sense of uncheckable momentum brought back a painful memory. She'd experienced exactly the same hallucination after she'd taken the straight razor and . . .
The scene had shifted then.
What followed had proven equally horrific. She'd regressed to the size of an embryo, and had gone through the whole miraculous process of development. She'd felt her tiny body changing, growing—then experienced the Painful wonder of being born. Until an abortion cut that experience short.
She
was the aborted fetus, the embryonic being whose life was being terminated. Except that she had been full grown, an adult with full awareness of what was happening to her . . .
The trash. They'd thrown her dying body in a trash can. And then the lid had started to close. Frantically, Timea had scrambled upward with bleeding and broken hands, had managed to pull herself partially out of the dumpster. With one last Herculean effort, she tumbled over the lip of the dumpster and landed on—linoleum tiles?
After a moment of disorientation, her surroundings came into focus. She found herself lying in a corridor that stretched to infinity in front of her and behind her, with impenetrable darkness at one end and brilliant white light at the other. The linoleum floor beneath her was stained and heavily pitted with scratches, as if some wounded creature had dragged itself along the floor with its claws. Somewhere in the shadows at one end of the corridor the beast waited for her, ready to take its revenge . . .
Shuddering, Timea stood up. She looked back over her shoulder, waiting for the beast to emerge from the shadowed end of the tunnel-like hallway. In the opposite direction, the bright light somehow seemed equally menacing.
The walls on either side of her were painted a faded white and were covered with graffiti. None of the graffiti was legible—the tags were meaningless scrawls and the Pictures were just smears of paint. Dull reds and blacks and blues, like the ink in a faded tattoo.
Timea tried touching one of the pictures, thinking it might be an icon. It looked vaguely erotic, the outside suggesting a couple embracing in a tight clinch.
Shame. She was disgusting, dirty. They all knew what
she had done. They'd watched in revulsion while she did this to him, looked on in disgust while she took him into
her
—
Timea yanked her hand away. The wash of raw emotion left her shaking. It was like a simsense recording in which only the emotive track remained. Sex had never been like that for her. This had to have come from some twisted porn upload.
She shivered as she looked closer at the other kons on the walls. The smears of paint now looked frightening, dangerous. Some suggested acts of violence, others had the outlines of people cringing in fear or doubling over in pain. Timea's eyes narrowed. Had the kids at her clinic blundered into this place and touched one of these emotive icons? Was that why they had started screaming? If so, where were they now?
The hallway was empty except for Timea. Doors lined the walls on either side. Each was inset with a tiny pane of glass that was reinforced with crisscrossing wires. Timea stood on her toes and peered in through one of the windows, but as soon as her eyes came level with the window, it shimmered and became a mirror.
She glanced at her own reflection, wishing now that she had chosen a different persona icon. The kids at the clinic knew what she looked like online, but in their terrified state they were unlikely to recognize her as a friend. The sallow skin, the discolored bandages that hung from her forearms like funeral wrappings, the elaborate Egyptian style headdress with its grinning jackal head—none of these would inspire confidence or reassurance now. The kids would probably run in terror from the desiccated mummy that was Timea's online persona.
The door had a handle—probably the access node for whatever system or host connected to this one.
Timea tried it, but the handle did not turn. The window cleared, however.
Peering inside, Timea saw what looked like the virtualscape of the teaching program that came with Renraku's MatrixPal cyberdeck. Brightly colored spheres, rectangular blocks, hexagons, and pyramids—all UMS icons for the various forms of node to be found on the Matrix—rotated gently in a vast room. Other icons represented the most commonly used system operations and utilities: a cartoonish hollow glove with pointing finger for log on/log off operations; an old-fashioned hardcopy book and quill pen for read/write and download/upload; a digital compass for locate file or host operations.
Floating in the air amid the icons was a silver-skinned, hairless human. Its naked, metallic skin was utterly featureless and Timea could not tell if it were male or female. Its knees were drawn up into its chest and its arms were wrapped around them. Its head was tucked into its chest, concealing the face. It was the standard UMS icon for a decker's persona except for one detail. Instead of being metallic like the rest of the body, the head was made of clear glass. A scene was being projected inside it, like a hologram inside a decorative glass sphere. It was difficult to make out details from this angle, but from what Timea could see, the scene involved a crashing VTOL and exploding nukes. The images of destruction strobed back and forth, every now and then juxtaposed against the closeup of a bearded dwarf's screaming face. The holo looked like the preview for some sort of action simsense experience.
Timea released the doorknob and the window mirrored over.
She tried a dozen more doors, getting increasingly anxious as she saw that none of the children from her clinic were in any of the rooms. Where were they? Each of the windows gave a view much like the first: a decker surrounded by icons. In each case the persona's transparent head held an animated hologram.
Some showed scenes of family life—what looked like bad home trideo—while others were as action-packed and abstract as the first. All were vaguely disquieting, but Timea couldn't put her finger on why they made her feel that way.
She continued jogging from door to door and peering into rooms, but couldn't see any of the clinic kids.
Just deckers with standardized UMS icons. If the kids weren't here, then where were they? There had to be a way out of this host.
Timea had almost given up when she found an unlocked door. When she touched the handle it turned slightly, and when she peered in through the window she saw only the UMS node and utility icons—not the decker she had come to expect. She used an analyze utility to check the handle for IC, saw that it was clean, then activated her deception utility. Glittering gold dust shimmered into existence on her skin and mummy bandages, and a golden mask settled into place over her eyes. She turned the handle—and suddenly found herself inside the room. The door had disappeared behind her and none of the walls held an exit—it seemed the only way out was through one of the icons that bobbed gently in front of her.
Welcome,
said a soft, feminine voice with a hint of an Asian accent. Timea looked around but could not see the speaker. Perhaps this system's audio programming didn't include a visual component to go with it.
Are you ready to begin your lesson?
Timea ignored the voice. Her deception program would handle whatever programming was activated next, allowing her to blend into the background of this system. She touched one of the rectangular blocks—a system access node.
But the familiar rush of movement didn't happen. The node seemed to be inoperative. Frowning, she walked to another node and touched it instead. Nothing.
Timea held out her hand and materialized a brilliant turquoise scarab beetle on her palm. She set it down and waited expectantly for it to scuttle away, but the beetle ran around and around in circles, refusing to set out in any specific direction. Altering its programming slightly, she keyed the browse utility in on a number of LTG addresses, but the beetle couldn't seem to get a fix on any of them. Frustrated, she at last input the address of the Shelbramat Free Computer Clinic. The program should at least be able to lock on to her own jackpoint. But it couldn't even do that.
Instead it gave a shrill
chirrup
and flipped over on its back. It lay there motionless, legs in the air, then dissolved into a puddle of turquoise pixels.
"Drek," Timea whispered. "I really am hooped."
The soft Asian voice was still speaking in the background. . .
.and this is a datastore,
it explained patiently. A flowing red cube appeared just in front of Timea's face, locking her line of sight. Veins of gold ran through its marbled surface.
It contains useful information. Can you access it?
Timea angrily batted the cube aside. It flew across the room and smashed into a sphere-shaped icon, sending the slave module ricocheting off a wall. Timea tried to move forward, then cried out as pain exploded in her hand and shot up her arm in a burning wave.
You're not trying hard enough,
the voice scolded. The red cube appeared where it had been, a few centimeters in front of her face. Timea moved to side-step it, but the node tagged along with her, instantly materializing in front of her even when she ducked down suddenly or dodged to one side.
Concentrate on what you want the form to look like,
the voice continued.
The node is trapped with blaster IC,
which is why your hand is hurting. You will have to crash the IC first. To begin the complex form, think about
something big and destructive. The bigger you imagine it, the more powerful it will be. . .
Timea stared at her hand while the voice droned on. Her skin was red and raw, covered in weeping blisters. The gold dusting of the deception program had been burned completely away, leaving her hand and fingers bare.
"Blaster IC, huh?" she murmured to herself. "Felt like fraggin' black IC to me."
Blaster IC was dangerous—but only to a cyberdeck. It was a proactive intrusion countermeasure that waited for the decker to try to access a node, then engaged her in combat. At worst, it would slag a deck's MPCP. But that shouldn't
hurt.
Not like this.
Timea resisted the urge to suck on her burned fingers. She told herself that the injury wasn't real—that this was just some ultra-high-rez program that was using simsense to simulate pain. Funny, though, that she couldn't feel her meat bod. She should have at least had a dull awareness of whether she was sitting or standing, whether she was fresh or tired. But there was nothing. Just the throbbing ache of her burned hand.
The voice had paused, as if waiting. Now it took on a faintly menacing tone.
If you don't create a complex form you
will be punished. Crash the blaster IC. Now!
"I don't have a crash utility," Timea said. She felt a little foolish, talking to thin air. "I don't want to run this program today. I just want to find my kids and get the frag out of here."
For a moment there was only silence as the red cube bobbed gently in front of Timea. Then the voice came back.
You have failed a second time to create a complex form. You are a bad girl. You must be
punished.
"What the frag is a complex for—"
One of the dangling bits of bandage on her arm sprouted a tiny green flame. Timea tried to smack it out, but like a relentless fuse the fire spread rapidly up to her arm. As it reached bare skin, she screamed in agony. Within a nanosecond, flames covered every centimeter of her body. The smell of burning cloth and hair filled her nostrils as her flesh began to sizzle and pop. Pain shot through her body, nearly doubling her over.
She held her arms out from her sides, trying to avoid the additional pain of burning flesh rubbing against burning flesh.
Frantic in her agony, she tried to activate her mirrors' utility. She was barely able to concentrate through the haze of pain, but somehow she got it up and running. A mirror image of her persona, complete with mummy wrappings and headdress, appeared on the opposite side of the red cube. It instantly burst into flames and began to scream—and the pain Timea had been experiencing stopped. Her skin still tingled and itched, but the absence of pain was an overwhelming relief. She sagged to her knees, dimly aware that the decoy she had created was doing the same thing. A halo of blue-white fire engulfed it, washing Timea with its heat.
That was an interesting form you created,
the voice said.
But it needs some modifications. How about this?
The gold-veined cube that had been blocking her line of sight blinked out of existence. Timea looked up.
The icon her mirrors utility had created had changed. It was male now, younger and more human-looking.
Then she reeled back in horror as she recognized her brother's face.
"Nate!" she screamed. "Oh, spirits, no!"
As the flames winked out, the figure collapsed to the ground, a charred and smoking ruin. Smooth brown skin had ruptured from the heat like an overcooked slab of meat; steam rose from the reddened crevices. Melted chunks of track suit stuck to the body like obscene scabs. The pinky ring she had made for her brother from a soda tab was a melted blob of slag on his bubbled finger. Nathaniel's head was turned, and his oozing, sightless eyes stared up at Timea accusingly.