Authors: James Luceno
You just couldn't help but wonder who some of these people were in the real world, despite what their user profiles stated. So-called experts claimed
that the identities people adopted in the Network represented everything they wished they could be in real life. But Tech didn't buy the theory. Network identities were more like funhouse-mirror reflections: the virtual you was just barely askew of the real you. Although in his own case, Tech liked to think that he was the same person in both realms—a born explorer in search of adventure.
“You're getting quite a rep, kid,” Bios7 went on. “You think you're ready for the race I have in mind?”
“Try me. I'll understand if you want to keep it private—just so there won't be too many witnesses to your defeat.”
“Private's the last place I race, slacker. We run the Ribbon.”
The challenge took Tech by surprise. To hackers, cyberjockeys, and frequent flyers, the Ribbon was the Network's Main Street, its Times Square and Sunset Strip. You couldn't get more opposite of private than the Ribbon.
“What's the matter?” Bios7 asked. “Afraid of getting ticketed by Network Security and having your wings clipped?”
“The syscops would have to catch me first,” Tech said. “And I haven't been caught yet.”
“Then let's do it. Straight down the Ribbon, from CyberSquare to the Peerless Castle. Once around, and back to the strip.”
“Uh, Tech,” Marz interrupted worriedly. “We don't have time for this. We're already late.” “Ah, your navigator to the rescue,” Bios7 teased.
“I can beat this guy,” Tech boasted.
“No doubt, Tech,” Marz agreed. “So why waste time racing?”
“Racing is never a waste of time,” Bios7 said.
“This'll take five minutes,” Tech told his brother over a confidential audio channel. “Besides, how's it gonna look if I turn down a challenge from Bios7?”
“Who cares how it's going to look?” Marz said. “We've got work to do.”
“And we'll get to it, bro—right after I wipe the smirk off this joker's face.”
Marz considered making a stronger argument for not racing, but only for a moment. Competitive runs that pitted seasoned flyers against one another were more about pride than victory. And he knew his brother. There was no changing Tech's mind once he had been dared. So instead Marz took a long swallow of Impact soda and called up a detailed map of the Ribbon. While the map was resolving on the largest of the office's monitor screens, he began loading additional software Tech would need for the race—command, control, and collision-avoidance programs—along with a batch of Tech's favorite music files, most of which were fast, crunching, and loud.
This wouldn't be the first time Tech had raced outside one of the closed circuits, but each race had brought him closer to being flamed by Network Security—the syscops—and getting caught could spell serious trouble for Tech, Marz, and Data Discoveries.
Tech reopened the audio link to Bios7.
“I'll meet you on the Ribbon, chump. Just be thankful we're not racing for system passcodes.”
Bios7 laughed heartily. “You're the one who oughta be thankful. You get to lose to the best.”
Once more Tech muted the audio feed and swiveled the dentist's chair toward Marz's workstation. “Open the garage,” he said with more than a hint of impatience. “I'm going to need some Venom.”
A database of vehicles designed mostly by Marz, the virtual garage contained more than thirty custom crafts appropriate for everything from racing to off-Ribbon adventuring to certified espionage missions. Some of the ships—like the Fireball Tech had flown in the Death Run challenge—were sleek and aerodynamic looking, while others were deliberately retro and ungainly, intended to attract as little attention as possible. Still others were tributes to ground effect or aerial craft lifted from popular books or blockbuster movies.
If judged by the Network adage that a cyberflyer was only as cool as what he or she piloted, then Tech and Marz would have been in the running for the hippest flyers on the grid.
Tech exited Grand Adventure's volcano-shaped entertainment complex at the controls of the boomerang-shaped Venom, whose crimson luster was every bit as iridescent as that of
Bios7's burgundy saucer. The fingers of his right hand tapped the buttons that studded the batwing control pad affixed to the joystick. With the Network Positioning System enabled, he used the virtual keyboard to enter his destination. It was a bit like typing in the address of some site in the old World Wide Web, but with a couple of major differences. First of all, you got to see every site that was located between your starting point and your destination; and second of all, you
literally
got to see them—fleshed out as constructs of every conceivable design, in full surroundsight, and haloed by other flyers entering, exiting, or simply lurking about with no fixed destination in mind.
Positioned between Grand Adventure and the head of the Ribbon was CyberSquare, a meeting place and hangout for frequent flyers, and sometimes a launch point for illegal races.
Bios7's saucer was parked at the southern perimeter of the square when Tech maneuvered the Venom down to the grid's principal horizontal axis.
“Nice ship,” Bios7 quipped. “Does it actually fly?”
“You'll see soon enough,” Tech said.
Bios7 snorted. “Our crafts are rated almost equal for endurance and speed. So I say anything goes—malfunctions, pilot errors, oversights.”
“Force commands?” Tech asked.
“If you think you can handle them,” Bios7 said.
“You'd be surprised what I can handle.”
By then word of the one-on-one race had spread through the Network, and untold numbers of spec
tators were lining up along the Ribbon to watch. The lots fronting the hot spots and hangouts— Ziggy's Cyberchop Shop, the Opposite 7, Sinema—were quickly filling to capacity with heavily customized cruisers, cybercycles, and other craft of wide-ranging design. Wagers were being placed.
To both sides of the broad avenue that was the Network's commercial zone rose unimaginably tall towers, some reminiscent of buildings drawn from old cartoons, and others so detailed you could swear you were back in the real world. Encased in plasmascript advertising banners, the towers were home to dating services, brokerage houses, PG and adult entertainments, role-playing realms, religious instruction, martial arts and wrestling matches, TV shows and movies, music raves, and live chats that had been going on for years.
Beyond the towers and the deep canyons that separated them spread a span of cubes, spheres, and pyramids that were corporate headquarters, storage facilities, data libraries, and outposts for syndicate neural nets. Elsewhere were cathedrals, arenas, and wooded parks.
At the far end of the Ribbon, rising from the heart of the grid, loomed the fairy-tale castle of Peerless Engineering, the multinational corporation that had wrested control of the Network from the cyberwizards who had designed it. Peerless also had been largely responsible for making the Network accessible to anyone with a cybersystem, a willingness to explore, and a tolerance for mild vertigo.
Side by side, Tech and Bios7 moved their craft onto the Ribbon. Tech took a calming breath and told himself to make his hands and feet extensions of his mind.
“You ready, hotshot?” Bios7 asked.
“I was reincarnated ready.”
Piloting a lipstick-shaped craft to a position between the Venom and the saucer, a girl named Eye-Catcher counted down from ten and the race began.
Traffic was heavy as the racers shot straight down the center of the Ribbon. Tourists tried to move out of their path, but some weren't quick enough. Tech could only guess at the number of browsers and lurkers he and Bios7 displaced or knocked off-Network in their rapid passing— though Marz could be counted on to furnish him with the exact number at some point after the race.
Navigating the avenues, alleys, overpasses, and tunnels of the Network was similar to moving about in the real world. The speeds you could attain depended on power, timing, traffic flow, and just how much you were willing or able to bend or break the rules. Anyone with a fast machine could perform the equivalent of running yellow or red lights, passing on the inside, slipping into high-occupancy lanes—even though flying solo—or taking advantage of any number of shortcuts. But if you had a really fast machine, loaded to the max with the necessary software, you could not only reach speeds impossible to attain in the real world, you could also overcome some of the protocols that governed movement inside the Network. You
could not only pass laterally, but also ascend or descend to other levels, piggyback yourself to other flyers, go
through
buildings as opposed to around them, enter utility shafts, or drop down into the assembler-code corridors that sustained the grid itself.
Tech and Bios7 did all these things as they jinked and juked toward the Peerless Castle. In Tech's headphones the earsplitting chords of Thunder Cracker mixed with the resounding encouragement of spectators parked along the course.
Neck and neck and resolved to disable each other, they hurled commands over their audio link. Bios7 tried for a force skid while Tech was writhing through a dense cluster of frequent flyers, but Tech managed to regain control of his ripped racer and counter with a low-fuel command. The maneuver cost Bios7 precious seconds while he rushed to refresh his ruby saucer by drawing from the power cells of a surprised lurker, and Tech shot into the lead.
At the base of the Peerless Castle, the Ribbon divided into three lanes. The two outer lanes encircled the virtual construct, clock- and counter-clockwise, while the middle lane coursed over a broad moat and led directly to the castle's portcullis—its principal gate.
All three lanes were heavily patrolled by security craft, but the central one was also reinforced by antiviral and barrier programs that protected Peerless from acts of cyberterrorism. Peerless was the big kid on the block, but its authority was often being challenged by one start-up company or an
other. A flyer could find him or herself in deep strife for even venturing too close to Peerless, let alone for trying to outwit the speed filters to race around the castle at top speed.
The plan called for Tech and Bios7 to take the counterclockwise lane and complete one lap around the craggy mountain from which the castle rose. The first to arrive back at the Ribbon would be declared the winner.
Taking advantage of his small lead, Tech whipped the Venom to the right. But just short of the divide, and making it appear as if he had succumbed to one of Bios7's force-head wind commands, he allowed Bios7's saucer to edge alongside him on the inside.
Tech watched his visor displays, waiting for his opponent to accelerate; then, when the two ships were almost even, Tech slipped into the saucer's data drag. At the same time, he nudged Bios7 into the center lane, and shouted, “Force steering lock!”
For a moment, it seemed as if Bios7 had been caught off guard and would have no choice but to shoot across the castle's drawbridge and wrestle with the security patrols stationed there. But at the last instant, the saucer slewed effortlessly back into the right lane and again pulled alongside Tech.
“Nice try, kid,” he said, “but you've used that trick once too often.”
With a staggering surge of power, the saucer cut diagonally across the blunt nose of the Venom to recapture the lead. Flat out, the two ships tore into the banked curve.
Behind the turreted castle, the grid all but disappeared into a featureless black abyss.
The Escarpment, as it was called, was equivalent to a ten-thousand-foot sheer drop into nothingness. It had been engineered by a group of renegade hackers who had been Peerless's competitors in giving form to the Virtual Network. Peerless had tried on numerous occasions to delete, move, or bridge the abyss, but the company's cybertechnicians had been unable to break the code the hackers had used in creating it.
Had Peerless been successful, the Network would have been able to expand into the Wilds, which lay to the south, far below the castle. But as it was, the Wilds remained a fringe outlaw zone with sites seldom visited by the tourists and shoppers who patronized the Ribbon.
A few daredevil flyers had tried to bridge the abyss in their own fashion by soaring over the edge at top speed. But none were known to have accomplished the jump. While getting nailed by a syscop or a security patrol could not only knock you off-Network but also leave you with a boiled brain and a toasted cybersystem, a plunge into the abyss could render you unconscious or worse.
A third of the way around the embankment, Bios7 began to power down and hug the inside of the curve. It was the safe and sensible thing to do— the only sane way to circumnavigate the castle— and Tech knew that he should follow suit. But he just couldn't bring himself to fall in behind the saucer. In a race like this, you lived or died by tak
ing risks. Instead, he increased his speed, hoping to take Bios7 on the outside.
“Ease up, Tech,” Marz warned suddenly. “You can't hold the curve at that speed.”
Gritting his teeth, Tech tightened his grip on the joystick but didn't lift his foot from the accelerator. “I can do this, bro. I can do this.”
Racing on the grid required deep-immersion techniques, and therefore was universally condemned by the watchdogs of the Network. It had turned the younger generation into Net addicts. It tampered with reality by blurring the distinction between the real and the virtual. And then there were the actual physical dangers associated with the cybersport. Racing threw a flyer's nervous and circulatory systems into overdrive. It stressed the kidneys and adrenal glands, battered the eardrums, and bombarded the optic nerves with images. It tricked the body into activating all sorts of fightor-flight loops.
And yet Tech ate it up—all of it.
“You sure know how to put on a show, I'll give you that much,” Bios7 said as the two ships raced at top speed toward the high point of the embankment.
“Save it,” Tech barked, fighting to keep control of his ship. “You can give up now if you want.”