Memories End

by James Luceno

  “Untested. But if you're used to 3.1, fasten your seat belt.”

  “Thank you, Menem.” Harwood shook the man's hand with affection, then gave him a Global One debit card.

  Menem accepted the card and ran it through the swiper.

  “Aren't you worried about being traced?” Tech asked in concern.

  Harwood shook his head. “It's a blind account.”

  “I'm sorry, Myst'ry,” Menem interrupted, “but the scanner rejected it. Says you've overdrawn your account.”

  Strange frowned in puzzlement. “There must be some mistake.”

  Menem's enormous shoulders heaved. “Wouldn't be the first time.”

  “Well, no matter,” Harwood said. He fished another debit card from his wallet and handed it to Menem, then he looked at Tech. “Perhaps I should hire Felix to find out what became of my credit, huh?”

  Tech was all for the idea. “He could sure use the work.”

  Chapter 10

  Tech and Marz spent the evening repairing and defragging Felix's cybersystem and installing several of Harwood's artillery programs, including one called Armor, which was capable of firing bursts of disabling code at hostile programs. Marz also installed the Mach Two software packages Harwood had purchased from the Boruans, along with the Turbo program Menem had given Harwood. He hated not having the time to run diagnostics on the soft. But Harwood had said that they should trust Menem.

  Of course, Menem—Tsunami—was the person who had sold Tech and Marz Subterfuge, but no one was mentioning that.

  If the office was a mess before they had entered, it qualified as a certifiable disaster now with pizza boxes, soda cans, bags of chips, containers of salsa, and candy bars strewn over nearly every horizontal surface.

  Tech hadn't been surprised to find Data Discoveries vacant, for unlike most data dicks, Felix was, generally speaking, a day person. What was surprising was that the access lock on the cybersystem had been lifted, which meant that Felix had some how found the money to pay his fines.

  Tech hoped he hadn't turned to outright crime.

  Two hours earlier, the building's security guards had paid the office a visit when they realized that Tech and Marz had yet to sign out. But Tech had explained that they were doing necessary repairs, which would probably be completed by midnight.

  They had considered swinging by Safehaven before they went to Data Discoveries, but had ultimately decided to give the group home a miss. By then Fidelia Temper would have learned that they had cut school—again—and that they had also failed to turn up for 6:00 P.M. room check. Chances are that they would have ended up with detention, or worse, confined to their rooms.

  While he worked, Tech's eye fell on the cell phone number written on the hemp-paper envelope in which Skeleton Key had been packaged. It was Isis’ number, penned in bright colors in her bold hand. She had made Tech promise to call and had threatened that she would come looking for him if he didn't—which to Tech seemed like a nolose situation.

  But the fact that Isis had been on his mind all evening—to the point of distraction—was not necessarily a good thing because that had happened before with other girls and nothing had come of all the thinking and daydreaming. Whether upstate or in the city, the girls he had met just hadn't been interested in the Virtual Network, or classic horror movies, or snowboarding stats.

  He had been to one or two parties over the years, but they had turned out to be catastrophes. Minutes into each, everyone had fallen in with their separate crews, and since most of the geek-clique Tech hung with hadn't even been invited, he had been left pretty much on his own. Once he had ended up watching SuperDVDs with the partygiver's younger brothers, and another time he had passed the entire party trying to impress the DJ with his taste in tunes.

  He wanted to believe that with Isis it could be different—at least they had the Network in common—but he didn't want to pin his hopes on that only to be disappointed once again.

  At nine o'clock, someone rapped lightly on the office-door's glass panel.

  Marz answered the knock and Harwood Strange edged inside carrying two shopping bags bulging with yet more junk food and additional software he had picked up after he and the kids had parted ways at the Hackers’ Outlet.

  While Tech and Marz chowed down on tacos, Harwood inspected the console and monitors and made a few minor adjustments to Marz's installations. That much done, he began to circle the refurbished dentist's chair, frowning the whole while.

  “It's not a Mustang Bucket, but you can fly from it,” Tech said between mouthfuls of taco. “I'll take the couch rig.”

  “I'm not sure I do want to fly from it,” Harwood said. “Brings back too many uncomfortable associations. Twice yearly cleanings, Novocaine injections…” He closed his eyes and shuddered.

  “Check it out,” Tech encouraged. Then, just as Harwood was lowering himself tentatively into the chair, he added, “You know the drill.”

  Harwood stiffened and Tech and Marz laughed in delight. Marz handed him an NPS-equipped motion-capture vest.

  “Forget the vest,” Harwood said while he adjusted the foot pedals to suit his long legs and swung the joystick's batwing-control panel into position. “This isn't going to be a thrill ride.” He looked at Tech. “We're going to do everything with as little flair as possible. Are we in agreement?”

  “No hotshot maneuvers,” Tech said.

  “Remember that.”

  Marz was gaping at Strange. “But, but, you still have to wear a vest. It's the best way for me to keep track of you.”

  “You and every other hacker with a Network Positioning program.” Strange shook his head firmly. “We're going in under the radar, and I mean to keep us there.”

  “But suppose you have to perform a graceless exit?” Marz pressed. “Without the vest, how are you going to know when your blood pressure and heart rate are back to normal? Flying without a vest is like… like walking a tightrope without a net.”

  “You'll just have to trust me, Marshall.”

  It was the first time Tech had heard Harwood sound so serious. He shrugged out of his vest and set it down on the couch.

  “You, too?” Marz said in dismay. “I don't like it, Tech.”

  Tech nodded his chin toward the dentist's chair. “We'll do it his way.” When Harwood swung to him, he added, “Exactly where are we going, anyway?”

  Harwood looked him in the eye. “To get answers—Peerless Engineering.”

  In search of somewhere to hide from victims of the Global One crash, Felix decided to visit the boys at Safehaven. On his way to their room, he stopped to say hello to some of the group home's younger residents who were gathered in the common room watching TV or logged on to the Network.

  Aqua Brockton, the Romano twins, and the tow-headed boy nearly everyone referred to as Go-Bop greeted Felix as if he were Santa Claus making a surprise midsummer appearance. Never one to disappoint—at least not when he could help it—Felix handed out gummy toads and game disks that would run on the communal room's outmoded multiplayer deck.

  Felix hadn't been raised as a ward of the state or in a group home but he hadn't had much of a home life, and he could empathize with the kids’ yearnings for family and security. Still, the way Felix figured it, he hadn't turned out all that bad, and he trusted that the kids would eventually be able to overcome the challenges of their uncommon upbringing and lead fulfilled lives. Despite the occasional arguments and fights, Safehaven had a sound atmosphere of community, and none of the kids wanted for friends.

  They tried to entice Felix into playing one computer game or another, but he told them he had important business to discuss with Tech and Marz and had to be on his way.

  Farther down the hall, he poked his head into Fidelia Temper's office.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in cheerless surprise.

  “I, uh, just figured I'd see how the boys were doing.” He hoped he didn't sound as anxious and furtive as he felt. But apparently he did b
ecause Fidelia's well-worn scowl transformed into a look of suspicion.

  “You mean they're not with you?”

  Felix's brow creased in bafflement. “I haven't seen them since yesterday.”

  Fidelia stood up and stepped out from behind her desk interlocking her bony hands in worry. “I was certain they were at your office. I tried phoning, but I kept getting a busy signal.” She sneered at Felix. “Business must have picked up.”

  Felix nodded and swallowed. “Booming.”

  Fidelia paced to the center of the room. “You know they cut school again today.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Felix said.

  “This can't go on,” Fidelia added. “In a couple of years, they'll be on their own. But until then they are required to attend school if they want to continue living here.”

  “Maybe I should just adopt them and home-school them,” Felix mumbled.

  Fidelia stopped pacing to regard him. “Why not save everyone the trouble and get them into juvenile detention.”

  Felix snorted. “Gee, and I was hoping I could count on you for a reference.”

  Fidelia glowered at him. “In the event they contact you, Mr. McTurk, remind them that final room check is at eleven-thirty. If they're not here by then, the consequences will be swift and harsh.”

  At Data Discoveries, Tech and Harwood had their headsets in place, their hands on the joysticks, and their feet clipped into the control pedals. Propped on the office's vinyl couch, Tech had his feet wedged into a pair of ski boots specifically adapted to snug into Network-interface plates installed on the wooden floor. The royal-blue boots were nowhere near as responsive as the chair's pedals but they did the job, and the resilient couch made for a decent copilot's seat. Marz sat at the console surrounded by keyboards and display monitors, different programs running on each.

  “All clear,” Harwood said from the dentist's chair.

  Marz opened the garage and his and Tech's array of custom vehicles winked into virtual existence. Harwood voiced an exclamation of delight.

  “Whoa! Marz, my man! All these are your designs?”

  “Some of them come from books and movies,” Marz said. “But, yeah, we designed them.”

  “Marz rocks!” Tech added, giving his brother a thumbs-up.

  “I knew I'd picked the right wingmen,” Harwood said. “Obviously you were being modest when you described yourselves as cyberjockeys.”

  “Pick whichever ship you want,” Marz said.

  “I'm honored. But, in fact, I've brought my own craft. It's already loaded in the system.”

  “The guitar,” Marz guessed after scrolling down the screen.

  “A Flying-V, to be precise.”

  Tech was tempted to select their pride and joy, the silver Aston Martin DB5—an armored ground-effect vehicle loaded with defensive software. But he recalled what Harwood had said about going in under the radar and instead chose the least flashy of the MX motocross bikes, which were common on the Network.

  An instant later, Tech's visor changed modes, from transparent to active, and the grid became visible. As ever he felt as if he were free-falling, face-first, from a great height. The sight of other flyers in their various craft reinforced the sense that he, too, was at the controls of a vehicle— encased in code, as cyberjockeys said. But without his thrasher tunes and a motion-capture vest to provide the illusion of movement, the Network seemed eerily silent and remote, like a rough cut of a CGI movie waiting for a soundtrack.

  Harwood's voice issued through the right earpiece of Tech's headphones. “Can you hear me?”

  “Five by five.”

  Harwood's rock-star guitar eased alongside Tech's MX cybercycle.

  “We'll follow the Ribbon as far as the AmTel construct, then alter course and head west.”

  “But Peerless is due south.”

  “We're not going to approach the castle from the Ribbon. We'll use the delivery entrance.”

  “Roger that.”

  Tech followed, watching Harwood maneuver himself through traffic. For a lunatic hacker, there was nothing fancy about his flying. He didn't try to push too hard, and he stayed within the posted speed limits. By timing his maneuvers precisely, however, he was able to advance effortlessly through the flow, the way only nonpiloted craft did, in perfect harmony with the machine code itself.

  They approached the Peerless Castle from the west, though it could have been from any direction, since the construct remained the same castle from all vantages, with turrets and crenelated towers rising from a mountainous base of ramparts and revetments. Diving for the western ramparts, they gradually fell into line with thousands of data packages queued up for receiving: e-transactions, receipts, mail, and faxes.

  “Launch the Romulan soft,” Harwood told Marz. “Task the program to cloak us as shipping manifests.”

  “Done,” Marz replied.

  Tech watched as Harwood's guitar transformed into a document icon similar to those streaming toward the castle. His visor display indicated that the cybercycle had transformed, as well.

  Skeleton Key provided them with a code for clearing the security booths located at the entry ports that dimpled the base of the castle. But Tech was unimpressed. Any cyberjockey worth his code could have gotten as far without the help of the program Harwood had bought from the Boruans at considerable expense. But they were in outlaw territory now, risking brain damage or a prison sentence if apprehended, and Tech was eating it up.

  “Follow me closely,” Strange interjected.

  Tech tweaked the accelerator to decrease the distance between them, as Harwood's disguised craft began to negotiate a bewildering maze of routing paths. Tech doubted that he would have been able to find his way out of the featureless labyrinth without help. Vests or no, he hoped that Marz was still managing to map their path.

  “This is the same route I took ten years ago when the castle was still under construction,” Harwood said over the scrambled audio channel that allowed them to converse without being over-heard. “I'm surprised that Peerless hasn't sealed it. In fact, I can still read the code markers I inserted so I could find my way out.”

  Harwood showed Tech how to detect the cleverly concealed markers—shaped like musical notes—then he pried open a port that admitted them to an active area wallpapered on both sides with hundreds of similar portals. But instead of accessing any of them, Harwood began to maneuver straight down the center toward what at first glance resembled a maintenance hatch floating directly in front of them.

  “This wasn't here last time,” he said, coming to a halt in front of the circular port.

  “It doesn't look newly installed,” Tech said.

  “Marz, does this hatch appear on any of the charts?”

  “Not even on Blueprint,” Marz replied over the scrambled channel.

  “Can we open it?” Tech asked.

  Harwood advanced on the gateway. “Marz, run Skeleton Key again and see if any of the passcodes will open this thing.”

  Back in the office, Marz glanced at Tech and Harwood while the program opened in a corner of the screen. He clicked and dragged the image, allowing the codes to scroll down the side. He felt as if he were a safecracker waiting for the tumblers of a lock to click into place. Suddenly Skeleton Key highlighted a complex series of passcodes.

  “I've got it,” Marz announced. “Them, actually.”

  “Just as I suspected,” Harwood said. “Deploy the passcodes sequentially, Marz, and let's see what happens.”

  Marz set himself to the task and a long, nervous moment later the hatch irised open. But as close as Tech and Harwood were to the portal, it was impossible to tell what lay beyond.

  “Well, Tech, are you ready for some real adventure?” Harwood asked.

  “I was designed ready.”

  “Then here we go.”

  They moved forward carefully, but they had scarcely crossed the threshold when they were dragged deeper inside, at increasing speed. All at once, the
bottom dropped away, and they began to fall, gaining even more speed. Tech thought about the abyss that opened behind the castle and wondered if they hadn't somehow left Peerless and plunged over the edge of the Escarpment.

  If so, they would know soon enough.

  But just as suddenly they began a steep climb. Faint light illuminated the virtual walls of a narrow conduit that twisted and helixed without vertical or horizontal intersections.

  They moved through the conduit for a long while. Tech began to suspect that they had become caught in a cyberloop and that Marz would have to perform a reboot to extricate them. Then, without warning, they were outside the conduit and drifting across an expansive computerscape of rugged constructs startlingly unlike the geometric structures that graced the Network.

  “What is this place?” Tech whispered into his microphone.

  “I'm not sure,” Harwood said. “I've never seen anything like it.”

  Poking through a swirling blanket of electronic haze, the constructs resembled upthrusts of jagged rock out of some bygone age or extraterrestrial landscape. Constellations of data extended to all sides thick as snowflakes in a blizzard. But the background—shot through with flashes of forking electricity—was neither the black of deep space nor the blinding pearl of a whiteout but a con stantly shifting curtain of muted rainbow hues reminiscent of the aurora borealis, but utterly comfortless.

  Many of the constructs appeared to be under construction and were girded by data scaffolds that made them look as foreboding as medieval battle fortresses.

  None of that mattered, however.

  As frequent flyer, gamer, and racer, Tech had visited an endless variety of virtual worlds and was not easily impressed. Anyone with a vivid imagination and a thorough knowledge of code could create an astounding environment. But it took a particular kind of genius to create a world that convinced a flyer he or she had entered a separate reality. It was like when you watched a horror movie. You had the option of letting yourself be frightened by the special effects or of pulling yourself out of your suspension of disbelief by turning away from the screen to remind yourself that you were actually in a theater. The same held true for the Virtual Network, where the illusion depended on your willingness to surrender to unreality and ignore that cyberspace was nothing more than an agreed on simulation. But even deep immersion flyers couldn't sustain the illusion indefinitely. Sooner or later you were bound to remember that you were not in a real place, but in a chair somewhere with a data visor strapped around your head.