Authors: James Luceno
With any luck, Tech told himself, the run Felix had agreed to would provide the answers to all his questions, as well as close the case. Felix could have demanded huge amounts of money in payment. But unless Cyrus was withdrawing from a trust fund set up by Skander Bulkroad, the funds the AI had already transferred to Data Discoveries had to have been illegal transfers of some sort, and the last thing Felix needed was to become embroiled in yet another cybercrime.
Tech was putting the finishing touches on the chair's control pedals when the videophone chimed.
“He's punctual, I'll say that much for him,” Tech heard Felix say.
He rolled out from under the chair and was back on his feet by the time Felix was answering the call.
“Mr. McTurk, I'm ready when you are,” Cyrus said over the phone's speaker. “I'll be waiting just
outside the Peerless castle on the Ribbon side of the moat and drawbridge.”
“Good enough,” Felix said, trying his best to sound sure of himself. “I'll meet you there after I've retrieved what you need.”
Felix deactivated the phone and walked wordlessly to the dentist's chair.
Isis handed him a brand-new, super-slimline visor. Felix whistled softly as he examined the high-tech-looking sunglasses.
“Smooth.”
“These are the latest thing in wireless eyephones,” she explained. “You can make menu selections by centering your cursor over an object and simply blinking your right eye. Like this.”
Isis winked, and Felix laughed as he slipped the visor onto his head and adjusted the fit.
Tech planted himself in front of Felix at the foot of the chair. “Make sure to keep your vest active so Marz doesn't lose track of you.”
“At least Felix is smart enough to wear a vest,” Marz said angrily from the console.
Tech ignored the retort. “Felix, you sure you won't let me make this run? I mean, you're not the world's greatest flyer.”
“I won't risk having you end up like Harwood,” Felix said, then added, “Besides, now's as good a time as ever to conquer my fear of flying.”
Tech's concern went up several notches. “Oh, so it's okay for you to take the chance of ending up like Harwood?”
Felix waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.
“Quit worrying, Tech. I've got two—make it three—supertalented cyberj ockeys and a semicoherent AI watching my back.”
Tech managed a smile. “Okay. Just watch out for Scaum. That thing is one bad-ass program.”
Like most of the Network's major constructs, Peerless Engineering offered tours and other entertainments to entice frequent flyers. Visitors entered the construct by way of the Ribbon tributary that led to the castle's towering front gate.
Felix knew in advance that the Peerless tour would be nothing like the interrupted one he had taken through Virtual Horizons with guided flights through the grid, brief stops at what were fast becoming the Network's landmark structures, and fifteen minutes of fun on a thrill ride inside one of the entertainment complexes. What Peerless provided instead was a virtual tour of the
history
of the Network from the earliest years to the development of the commercial grid—as interpreted by Peerless Engineering. The fact that the tour was equal parts education and advertisement made it similar to the corporate-sponsored rides that were once popular at theme parks.
When Cyrus had first proposed the plan, Felix was certain that having to sit through some mind-less Peerless tour would pose more of a challenge than actually executing whatever act of sabotage or subterfuge the disjointed AI had in mind. But as it happened, Cyrus was interested only in that part of the tour that took visitors into Peerless’ library
database, much of which had been compiled by the company's founder and chief executive officer, Skander Bulkroad.
Over the years, the sixty-eight-year-old Bulkroad had written dozens of electronic books, hundreds of articles, and a slew of essays and manifestos that were available only through the Network on subjects ranging from economic theory to self-help. With the click of a button, you could listen to Bulkroad lecture about history or share his personal vision of the future. Anyone so inclined could also peruse selected excerpts from Bulkroad's personal journals.
In the past decade alone, and in keeping with his company's technological leaps, Bulkroad's written and digital-video output had nearly doubled.
Felix was piloting one of Marz's more prosaic cybercreations—a compact, polka-dotted vehicle resembling an Amazonian beetle. Having signed up for the tour under a phony name, he had requested access to the database and been transferred to the virtual office of the database's curator-librarian—a tiny, pink-haired woman, pleasant-looking, although a more pixilated cyberpresence than Felix would have expected from Peerless.
Following Cyrus’ instructions, Felix asked to view a specific entry from Bulkroad's journal that went back more than fifteen years.
It was inside the entry that the missing part of Cyrus was concealed.
To his surprise, Felix found that he wasn't alone in the database. Fifteen other guests were accessing books or articles. To keep from entering level after
level of virtual space—a process that was dislocating to some—researchers frequently chose to create active windows in their visors within which text or video could run, much as if it were being displayed on a separate screen. Cyrus’ instructions to Felix, however, were that he should enter the requested journal entry fully.
The request accepted, an image of Lord of the Manor, Skander Bulkroad, filled Felix's visor.
A rotund man of medium height, Bulkroad had somewhat blunt features and a paunch he wore proudly beneath a tunic of medieval design. His melon of a head was completely hairless, and his hands were stubby and thick-fingered. The deep-red walls of the room he inhabited were adorned with priceless works of art and ancient weapons. Bookcases, suits of armor, and pieces of classic furniture surrounded a hand-woven rug of exotic design. Rare-metal sculptures and artifacts of extinct civilizations rested atop marble pedestals, and a gilded chandelier hung from the center of a vaulted ceiling.
The journal excerpt was from a speech Bulkroad had delivered a decade earlier to a gathering of corporation CEOs and world leaders.
“The Virtual Network offers vast opportunities for business and pleasure, and I am determined to see Peerless Engineering take the lead in opening this realm to the world at large. It is a matter of being able to provide a suitable and affordable operating system for the new class of enhanced cybersystems that are already in vogue. As regards the Network itself, we will expand in all directions
to house a cityscape of virtual constructs, which Peerless is now leasing to corporations, governments, universities, and a multitude of specialinterest groups. This is the ‘unreal estate’ of the future.”
Felix shifted his view from Bulkroad to objects in the background, many of which were interactive as indicated by pop-up menus. By clicking on an interactive item—certain texts, sculptures, or furnishings—a description of the item could be obtained, along with information regarding how and when the item had become part of Bulkroad's extensive collection.
Although not indicated on the menu—but known to Cyrus and now Felix, the small coat of arms embroidered on Bulkroad's medieval tunic was also interactive. Purposely inserted by Peerless programmers, the family emblem provided access to the code that supported the entire digital-video presentation.
Felix targeted the coat of arms and blinked his right eye.
Instantly he was delivered into a completely different space—a world of zeros and ones that constituted the language of all computers, thinking or otherwise. But it was in the spaces between the zeroes and ones that Cyrus’ missing part was hidden.
Felix immediately began to highlight and drag the scattered fragments into a folder he and Cyrus had created before Felix had entered Peerless. Since he wasn't pilfering or duplicating essential code, the contents of the folder wouldn't be detected by
the copyright sentinels who presided over the database. On emerging from the castle, Felix would transfer the folder to Cyrus, who in turn would presumably drag it back to his octagon and perform whatever collating or organizing was necessary to restore himself to full, or fuller, function.
Felix concentrated on his task. He tried to keep from imagining what repercussions his actions might have to the journal entry itself. Suddenly, however, and with less than five hundred gigabytes of code remaining to be pasted into the folder, he was dragged back into the digital video.
The room was dramatically altered.
Parts were missing from the furnishings—carved legs, cushions, drawers, or pieces of armor—and in several cases items had vanished entirely, leaving bright-white blemishes in the video. Skander Bulkroad's thick lips were moving out of sequence with what he was supposed to be saying. The phrases, in any case, sounded like processed babble. The puffy face of Peerless's CEO was frozen in an expression of either pain or outrage. Degraded, the deep-red wall behind him resembled the leaping flames of a bonfire or funeral pyre.
Bulkroad's rheumy eyes seemed to be staring directly at Felix when a monstrous creature, black as midnight, oozed from the room's deteriorated walls and pounced, gobbling up Felix's beetle craft as if it were a midday snack.
“What's he doing?” Tech asked, ceasing his pacing to peer over Marz's shoulder at one of the monitor screens.
“He's still in the library, but he doesn't seem to be moving,” Marz said, staring at the screen in incredulity.
“Are you sure you have him?” Tech growled.
“Yeah, I'm sure.”
Tech gritted his teeth and shook his head back and forth. “Something's wrong. If he'd finished retrieving everything, he'd be long gone from the database by now. I told him not to do this.”
“We could try to hail him,” Isis suggested from the other side of the console.
“You think that's safe?” Marz asked. “We don't want to blow his cover.”
Tech paced through a quick circle. “Do it,” he said finally.
Marz enabled the communications program and brought the headset microphone closer to his mouth. “Felix? Felix?”
“We're not getting through to him,” Isis said after a moment.
Tech hurried to the dentist's chair and bent over Felix's reclined body. Isis joined him there.
“His breathing's too fast,” Tech said worriedly.
“Like he's having a nightmare or something.”
Marz gulped audibly. “That's the way Harwood sounded.”
Isis reached for the eyephones. “Should I pull him out?”
“No!” Tech blurted. “Don't touch anything.”
The videophone chimed and Tech rushed to grab the call.
“Tech,” the AI started to say.
“Cyrus, what's going on? Felix isn't moving.”
“Scaum has him,” Cyrus said dolefully. “I don't understand how it became aware of what Felix was doing, but Scaum most certainly has him.”
Tech ran for the couch, extending one hand to Isis. “Quick, give me a visor.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I've got to reach Felix before Scaum does to him what it did to Harwood!”
“You'll never be able to get to Peerless in time,” Isis said, even while she helped him slip his feet into the redesigned ski boots.
“Maybe not by the usual routes,” Tech said, slipping on the shades, “but I know a shortcut.” He glanced at Marz. “You still have the course Harwood and I took through the delivery entrance?”
“Of course I have it. What do you want to fly?”
Tech thought for a moment while Isis checked the fit of the headset, visor, vest, and boots. “No point in being low-key. Give me the DB5. Max her up, bro.”
Marz nodded soberly. “You got it—bro.
” “Once I'm inside the construct, you can direct me to the database.”
Tech ran a finger across the sleek visor. But before it went active, Isis took Tech's face between her hands. “Hurry back, Tech. I'll be waiting for you.”
Tech called on the power of the enhanced cybersystem to propel the silver Aston Martin DB5 down the Ribbon. Narrow-bodied and low-slung, the armored cybercraft gleamed like a newly forged sword.
He told himself that instead of flaunting the DB5's power he should imitate Harwood's careful and precise style, but his hands and feet refused to yield to caution. Right foot heavy on the accelerator pedal, he wove in and out of traffic, illegal detector and stealth programs enabled to alert him to the presence of speed traps, roving enforcement, or anything else that might delay him.
The grid was gaudy with flashing lights and busy with Saturday-night surfers cruising the chat rooms and role-playing arenas for cute meets. Tech was no stranger to those places, but they felt suddenly alien to him. He wasn't a cyberjockey now, hell-bent on
placing first in the arenas or demonstrating his mad skills at Network flirtation. What days earlier had been a virtual playground had since become a realm in which good and evil did battle, and the lives of friends and loved ones could be forfeit.
The Peerless Castle soared into view at the far end of the Ribbon, with tens of thousands of flyers queued up, awaiting access. As he and Harwood had done on their joint run, Tech steered himself west. But he hadn't gone a block when he decided that even that approach was too meandering.
Impatience overcame him once again.
“I need a more direct course to the delivery entrance,” he told Marz and Isis. “Use Turbo seven point five, and whatever shortcuts you can find.”
“Could make for a bumpy ride,” his brother warned.
“Hit me!”
“Okay, hotshot,” Isis said. “You want speed, you got it.”
Tech had scarcely relaxed his grip on the joystick when they assumed control of his craft and whipped him through an abrupt left-hand turn and down a near-vertical chute. At the bottom of the chute, the route became an undulating ascent that tossed Tech around like a kayak in class-five white water.
Dead ahead lay a shopping mall, but Marz and Isis didn't even bother to reduce his speed as they took him through the congested entrance. Shoppers and browsers were knocked aside as he mowed a path down the center of a broad corridor, streaking past stores, kiosks, and waterfall and
fountain effects. Public-safety programs took shape in his wake, but before they could so much as mount an organized pursuit, the DB5 was outside the mall and plummeting toward the dolphin-crowned entry gates of the National Aquarium.