Authors: James Luceno
“What's a ‘MSTRNTS’?”
“Could be a she,” Marz said.
“A she?”
Marz reached over Tech's shoulder, moved the cursor, unlocked the caps key, and inserted a period and space. “Ms. Trents. See?”
Tech laughed through his nose. “Like the letters on a vanity license plate.”
“Might even be a vanity plate.”
Tech considered it briefly. “Then why not Ms. Trants, or Ms. Tronts. Or even Ms. T. Rents?”
“Okay,” Marz conceded. “But those still make her a she.”
“Not necessarily,” Tech said, typing. “If it's like a vanity tag, then maybe m-s-t-r is short for ‘mister.’ “
Marz plucked his lower lip. “Mr. Nats, Nets …”
“Nits, Nots,” Tech completed. “Could be any one of them, or something completely different. Maybe there's another hint in the download. We could run it through Codebreaker, or we could bring the mini to one of the cypherpunks down-town.”
“We could,” Marz said slowly, “but I think our little blue gremlin is already telling us what to do: Bring it to ‘MSTRNTS.’ “
They stared at the letters for a long while.
“Ms. Tree Nuts?” they asked each other at the same time. Tech punched Marz in the arm and broke out laughing.
As long as they were together, life didn't suck.
Felix sat staring at the flashing countdown icon he had moved to the corner of the office's main-display screen—the only screen that was still working. Felix had exactly sixteen hours ten minutes to settle up with Network Security and the EPA, or Data Discoveries would be history.
“How much money do I owe in fines?” he asked the computer.
“$28,865,” the system replied in an electronic monotone.
“Twenty-eight thousand?” Felix mumbled in disbelief.
Most of that amount was in interest, springing
from unpaid vehicular emission-control and garbage-recycling violations. He refused to even think about his soon-to-be-overdue rent and insurance payments.
“How much is in the account?” he asked at last. “$301.27.”
Hopeless,
Felix thought. He supposed he could throw himself on the mercy of the court and plead for a week's extension, but what good would a week do?
He was angry with Jess and Marshall for adding to his financial woes, but he couldn't blame them entirely. He was the one who had allowed the fines to pile up and compound. The boys had deserved the dressing down they had received, but Felix already missed them and feared being estranged from them even more than being put out of business.
He let go a prolonged exhale that marked an official end to the day that was supposed to have been the first day of his new life. Then he activated the office answering machine, which told him that he had had three calls—better than three times the usual number, zero.
All three were routine requests from people who had fallen prey to the complexity of modern life. One woman's money-market funds had disappeared overnight. The bank claimed to have an e-authorization for withdrawal, but the woman claimed that she had sent no such authorization. A second woman had purchased a round-trip travel package to Tibet only to end up incarcerated in the
capital city for not being able to show a prebooked return flight. A father of three was looking for his eldest son who had left home with all of dad's ATM and credit cards.
He rubbed his eyes as he regarded the screen. None of the cases would pay much, but they would at least help cover the fines.
Precisely at 8:00
P.M.
the private videophone line intruded with a series of tones. The caller obviously had access to Felix's personal number, so odds were in favor of the call being legitimate and not an attempt to get him to switch his long-distance service or donate to Casualties of the Stock-Market Crash.
“42212-667-6766,” Felix said, picking up at last.
“Felix McTurk?”
Felix waited. The phone's video-display screen remained blank. “That depends on who's calling.”
“A prospective client, Mr. McTurk.”
To Felix's trained ear, the caller was a kid making use of a voice processor to sound older. There was, however, a trace of an accent he couldn't identify.
“You mind telling me who gave you this number, Mr….”
“Gitana,” the voice told him. “Magyar Gitana. And I'd rather not reveal the source, Mr. McTurk.” “Is this a data case, Mr. Gitana?”
“I need help with the transferal of some sensitive information. The run will have minimal environmental impact.”
Felix directed a puzzled frown at the phone. “Environmental impact?”
“Would you be willing to fly for me, Mr. McTurk? It's what you do best, isn't it?”
“Well, I'm as good as most and better than some,” Felix lied. “The problem is, my cybersystem is, uh, temporarily out of commission while it undergoes an upgrade.”
“For our purposes, it would be best if you did
not
fly from your personal system.”
“Back up a second,” Felix said. “You've got the wrong number if you're planning an illegal run. Just how sensitive is this information you want transferred?”
“Its value to me is incalculable. I have reason to believe that certain outside agencies are also eager to lay hands on it.”
Felix jotted notes on an electronic pad. “Are we talking about federal agencies or private ones?”
Gitana fell silent briefly. “Maybe both.”
Felix shook his head in impatience. “We're getting nowhere fast. How do you figure I can help you if I don't have access to a cybersystem?”
“I've already taken the liberty of signing you up for an introductory tour of the Network sponsored by Virtual Horizons on Broadway near Thirty-third Street.”
“I'm listening.”
“Be there for the ten
A.M.
tour and I'll meet you inside the Network at precisely ten-fifteen. At that time, I will furnish you with additional information regarding the data I wish retrieved, along with instructions for redepositing them.”
“Frankly, I don't like the sound of this.”
“My sources tells me that you once had a thriving business, Mr. McTurk. I can put you back on the fast track. Call up your bank records.”
“What?”
“Humor me. It will benefit you greatly.”
Felix called his bank records on-screen. One moment there was $301.27 in the account, and the next there was $29,301.27—enough to cover almost all his debts. He stared at the figure in disbelief.
“The adjusted amount will remain, whether or not we succeed in our mission. Should we succeed, you can expect an additional fifteen thousand dollars by no later than three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”
Felix was already calculating how he would spend the extra bucks. “One thing,” he said after a moment. “Let's suppose the Network meet doesn't go as planned. How do I get in touch with you?”
“You don't,” Gitana said with a note of finality.
Tech and Marz gazed groggily at the glowing display of the laptop. Neglecting homework assignments and dinner, they had spent the entire evening attempting to discover the identity of “MSTRNTS,” and their efforts had left them screen-weary. They had performed Network searches on dozens of names and possible words, and on hundreds of permutations of those same names and words. None, however, had furnished any conspicuous links with the gremlin that had emerged from Subterfuge or from the EPA.
Yawning loudly, Tech ordered their favorite search engine to see what it could do with the words “mystery notes,” which Marz had come up with while doodling in the margin of a sheet of homework.
The laptop emitted a chorus of chirps and text filled the screen.
“‘Musical notes that once emerged mysteriously on analog and other low-tech recordings,’ “Tech read aloud. “A music store in Philadelphia, another in Phoenix. A specialty bookstore in London… yada, yada.”
He scrolled down, then suddenly stopped and sat back in plain surprise.
“What is it?” Marz asked, leaning over Tech's shoulder for a better look at the screen.
“Harwood Strange.”
Marz's brow furrowed. “I know that name from somewhere …”
Tech tasked the laptop to conduct a search on Harwood Strange. “A hacker from last decade,” Tech said as he perused the data. “Became a kind of recluse after a hack that went bad—
real
bad. Some run that threatened national security or something.”
“Wait a minute,” Marz said. Pivoting the laptop toward him, he did rapid input at the keyboard. “Harwood Strange wasn't just any hacker. He wrote
The Strange Manifesto
—his vision of the Network as free cyberspace without filters or speed traps. He was a visionary, man, a real eccentric.”
Marz tapped the screen with his forefinger as ad
ditional text appeared. “Harwood Strange was a musician.”
“Yeah, and…?”
Marz turned to his brother.
“Mystery Notes
was the title of his most famous DVD.”
“Mr. McTurk, we're thrilled that you have chosen Virtual Horizons to introduce you to the wonders of the Network,” Virtual Horizons’ tour guide, Ms. Dak, said when Felix showed up for the tour his mystery client had booked for him. “Have you ever flown before?”
“Only the friendly skies.”
“Friendly skies?”
“An old advertising slogan,” Felix explained. “Before your time, I guess.”
Dak smiled. “Well, I'm certain I would have laughed if I had understood the reference.”
Felix suddenly felt old. He figured Dak for about twenty-one. With her perfect teeth, bottle tan, muscles shaped by machines, and form-hugging clothes, she was typical of the new executive class. As fresh and bright as the new century itself.
“Is this tour for business or pleasure?” she asked.
“Pure pleasure,” Felix said.
She escorted him into a waiting area filled with other tourists, many of them actual tourists visiting New York City—some thirty people from obscure nation states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East where accessing the Virtual Network was still a dream.
Felix handed over a credit card and submitted to a face-recognition scan. Then a technician not much older than Tech showed him to an interface recliner that was a much more padded affair than Data Discoveries’ refurbished dentist's chair. Once seated he was fitted with a visor, earbeads, and a motion-capture vest and introduced to the basics of operating the multibutton joystick and the foot pedals. The technician explained that while most of the initial piloting would be done by Virtual Horizons, there would a short period at the conclusion of the tour where everyone would spend ten minutes sampling some of the immersive thrill rides offered by Grand Adventure.
Felix noticed straight away that the motion-capture vest was dialed down to the lowest setting, since it wasn't uncommon for novice flyers to experience vertigo and mild nausea.
Regardless, his palms were already damp with sweat.
He nodded to the tourists seated in the chairs to either side of him as a sweet-smelling female attendant with a delicate touch ran a quick test of the interface wardrobe and hookups. Additional instructions were given through the earbeads and de
livered in the carefully modulated voice actual flight attendants employed.
“In the event of an emergency exit…”
Felix was so accustomed to Jess and Marshall's casual attitude toward cyberflying that the tour suddenly struck him as novel and daring. No sooner had Ms. Dak and the young technician donned their wardrobes than Felix's visor went from transparent to Network-active mode, and the virtual ecology—the unreal estate—of the Network began to take shape before his eyes, making him feel as if he were gliding above a glowing, multileveled cityscape of gargantuan domes, pyramids, spheres, and towers rising up into an impossibly blue sky.
A few of the other flyers gasped in astonishment.
A wave of dizziness overcame Felix, and a rivulet of sweat took a bumpy ride down along his ribs. He hadn't always been a fearful flyer. But then, the Network hadn't always been quite so
real.
Cybervehicles of all description were moving along the grid's busy thoroughfares and crosslinks. Though most of the vehicles were mass-produced craft resembling ultralight gliders, jet planes, SUVs and sports cars, every so often a custom craft would flash into view, exuberant with strobing lights, spotted as a jungle cat, or designed to convey some sense of the craft's pilot.
Felix wasn't surprised to find that the bus he and the rest of Virtual Horizons’ tourists were flying was adorned with advertisements for the company itself.
The slogan read,
VIRTUAL HORIZONS—OPEN YOUR EYES TO A BETTER REALITY!
The mellifluous voice of Ms. Dak drifted through the headset earbeads over a subdued soundtrack of cloying music.
“Welcome to the world of cyberspace,” she began, “and the adventure of a lifetime. Some of you might be feeling a bit dizzy at the moment, but the feeling will pass shortly. Just sit back, relax, and leave the piloting to us.”
Felix took her at her word and settled back into the comfy flight chair.
This isn't so bad,
he told himself. He could handle this.
“If you look to the left you can see the spire of the CiscoSoft Telecomputer Construct,” Dak continued. “And off to the right as we continue our slow spiral down toward the heart of the grid stands the landmark IBM storage facility. The cityscape of constructs along the eastern horizon belongs to Mitsuni, and the enormous medieval castle in the distance is the headquarters of Peerless Engineering, which created much of what you're seeing.”
Felix took a long calming breath. The descent was smoother than any Jess or Marshall had ever taken him through. He sensed that he was in the hands of a veteran pilot. Because piloting was by and large a function of state-of-mind, it said a lot about a cyberjockey when he or she could keep the ride unruffled and the maneuvers to a minimum. Virtual Horizons wasn't in the business of provid
ing the kind of thrills you could get in the arcades, in any case.
The tour was closing on InfoWorld when Felix began to experience a subtle change. By degrees his virtual seat was dropping behind the rest of the group, and the ride was becoming jerky. A glance at the visor's time display confirmed his suspicions: Magyar Gitana was inside the Network and trying to assume remote control of him.