The Accidental Hero

by Matt Myklusch

  “Do not be alarmed by the multiple projections of my avatar,” Virtua told Jack. “You aren’t seeing double or octuple, as the case may be. I’m just running some additional programs in the background while we talk. I’m trying to finish upgrading the data center to version 27. I trust you don’t mind.”

  Jack shook his head no as Jazen helped him inside. Jack could barely walk straight. He was blinded by the multimedia light show, and his equilibrium was completely thrown off with his right eye—which, by all rights, should have a Rüstov mark on it—somehow seeing the room better than his left did. It was a realization that did nothing to ease Jack’s concerns about his Rüstov connection, but he forced himself not to think about that.

  “I’m sorry to call you here on such short notice, Jack,” Virtua said. “But with the recent unpleasantness so prevalent in the news, I decided it was time you and I had a little chat.”

  “Circlewoman Virtua,” Jazen began, “surely you can’t believe that Jack has anything to do with—”

  “And I wanted us to talk sooner rather than later,” Virtua continued, raising her voice to talk over Jazen. Jazen shut his mouth. He and Jack traded uneasy looks. The Circlewoman was not in a good mood this morning.

  “No problem,” Jack said to her. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Truth,” Virtua replied instantly, turning to look Jack in the eye. “Truth, justice, and the Rüstov.” Her image flickered with displeasure when she noticed a SmartCam that had followed Jack in from the street. “However, I would prefer a true face-to-face for this conversation, which is why we will have the discussion elsewhere. We will speak in my home.”

  Jack was confused. “Your home?” he asked. “You don’t live here?”

  Virtua shook her head. “The data center is just a hardware accessory plugged into the machine that is Machina. It’s an access point to cyberspace. That is where I truly live.”

  “I’m going into cyberspace?” Jack asked.

  “I need to see you with my own eyes,” Virtua replied.

  “What you see of me here, this is just a hologram created by Projo, my image-caster.” The Circlewoman gestured to the orb-shaped projector that followed her everywhere. “Projo helps carry my face and voice to the Unplugged World, but these are only images of the face I have chosen as my avatar. My core program, my ‘self,’ resides in C-Space. This way.”

  Virtua led Jack through the data center with her glowing image in constant flux. They weaved their way around mainframes and servers, and a new image of Virtua waited around every corner in a fresh color, sporting a new and different wardrobe. Eventually, Jack turned the last corner and was shocked to find several long tube-shaped aquariums filled with blue-green water. There were people floating inside all of them but one.

  Jazen took note of Jack’s increased heart rate (projected at an additional 35 beats per minute), heightened pulse (23 beats per minute), and, of course, his obvious increase in oxygen consumption (heavy breathing). “Don’t worry, Jack,” Jazen said, drawing attention to the diving suits with special breathers and the virtual reality headsets with cyberspace viewfinders worn by all the people floating in the water. “These are sensory deprivation tanks. Bi-orgs need them to enter cyberspace.”

  Jazen went on to explain that jacking into C-Space can be jarring, but the tanks help calm the traveler so the bi-org mind can communicate with the landscape of the Mecha mind. The sensory deprivation tank eliminated all sights, sounds, and smells in the physical world, so there was no confusion distinguishing between the Infoworld and the Unplugged World. “It’s also safer in the water,” Jazen pointed out. “Less chance of anyone coming to harm in the physical world through any sudden movements.” Jack watched the people in the water jerk around like puppets on a string. He wondered what they were all seeing.

  Jack put on his wet suit, which was also a cybersensor suit that would track his body’s vital signs and display his highly elevated stress levels on a holo-screen. As Jack entered the tank, Projo beeped out a snarky comment about how nervous Jack was, and wondered if he had anything to hide. It didn’t look good to have a suspected Rüstov sleeper agent here in the data center, he said in a series of high-pitched squawks and squeaks.

  “I’m right here, Projo,” Jack said. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room.” Jazen and Virtua turned toward Jack with surprised looks. “And I don’t have anything to hide,” Jack added. “I’ve just never done this before and I’m a little tense, that’s all.”

  “Jack… did you understand Projo’s beeping just now?” Jazen asked.

  “Yeah, why?” Jack replied through his headset.

  Jazen looked at Virtua. “It’s just… unusual,” he said.

  “Very unusual,” Virtua said, intrigued as well. “Please excuse Projo, he’s merely reacting to the all-too-popular opinion that it is dangerous to train you in the use of your powers. And yet I’m beginning to wonder… I think we will try something different today, Jack. Normally, we would emit an ultrasonic frequency to put you into a half-sleep state and complete your dive into cyberspace, but I think today we will leave the rest to you.”

  “Leave it up to me?” Jack gulped. “What are you talking about?”

  “Please join me anytime you are ready, Jack Blank,” Virtua said. A wry smile formed on her lips. “But don’t keep me waiting too long.”

  With that, the Circlewoman’s avatar blinked out, along with all the holo-screens and data center lights. Jack was alone with his fellow submerged bi-orgs, Jazen, and Projo. The room was silent and dark other than the low hum of the computer servers and the glare of the SmartCam’s spotlight. Now Jack’s stress levels really started to climb.

  Every stat on Jack’s cybersensor suit’s readout was redlining. “Jazen, what is she talking about? Join her anytime I’m ready? I don’t know the first thing about cyberspace dives. I can’t control these machines.”

  Before Jazen could reply, Jack heard Virtua’s voice through his headset. “Have you ever thought of simply asking the machine for help?” she said.

  Jack blinked. “Asking?”

  “Try to make friends with it. See if it will trust you.”

  “Make friends with it? It’s a machine.”

  “So am I,” Virtua replied. “So is your friend Jazen.”

  Jack nodded. “Good point,” he said, feeling a little foolish. “Sorry about that.”

  “You should be,” Projo beeped out.

  Jack rolled his eyes at Projo. He was doing his best to ignore the cranky image-caster. Still, hearing Projo’s beeps in English again did get Jack thinking. If he could understand machines… then maybe they could understand him, too. Maybe he didn’t have to control machines. Maybe if he just asked nicely, they would do what he wanted, whether he knew how they worked or not.

  “Open your heart and mind to the machine,” Virtua told him. “Believe me, Jack, every computer in Machina knows you. They know what the NewsNets say—that you are a Rüstov spy sent to infiltrate our city and that the Rüstov have returned because of you. We all have reason to fear the Rüstov here in Machina. After all our trouble with one Great Collaborator, we want no association with another traitor. But if you hold nothing back, these machines will know your heart. And if my fellow machines will trust you, perhaps I shall too.”

  Jack nodded and did as he was told. He stared into the viewfinder with an open mind and an open heart.

  Hello, um… cyberspace? How are you doing?

  Lights flickered in the data center, but nothing else happened.

  Oh-kaay… I hope everything is cool over there. My name’s Jack. It’s… nice to meet you, 1 guess…

  The data center remained powered down.

  Listen, don’t believe everything you read about me. I’m really a nice guy. Really. Do you think you can let me in?

  Nothing happened.

  … please?

  Bubbles started flowing up in Jack’s tank like a Jacuzzi. Bright light f
illed the water, and an ever-so-faint high-pitched tone cried out. Jack’s vision blurred and 1.2 seconds later, he was cyberspace-bound.

  Cyberspace was the exact opposite of the data center. In C-Space, Jack found an infinite amount of data flowing across a digital landscape like sweet music. It was a brilliant masterpiece, a triumphant symphony of code drafted by a million composers, each with their own vision and song that somehow gelled perfectly with the collective work of their peers. Every algorithm, soaring strings. Every info packet, roaring horns. Every data byte, a note perfectly placed, precisely on key, and in time with every other. Cyberspace was poetry in motion.

  Jack stood on a white sandy beach of glistening silicon that brushed up against crystal glowing water. Out at sea, programs surfed data waves into the shore. Behind Jack, an information superhighway with an endless stream of flowing info-light charged past him. Behind that, smooth colors filled the air, rolling out like ripples in a pond, and running through the entire spectrum with each new color blending softly into the next. Jack saw an aurora borealis of information and computer code that at its tiniest level was a digital mosaic of rapid-motion video and high-resolution still images. And Jack could see it all. He could appreciate the beauty of both the large and the small with equal measure. Everything was talking to Jack, and Jack understood every word.

  Virtua was nowhere to be found.

  A gentle breeze blew across the beach, and Jack saw all the micropixels that made up the cyberworld around him flip over like tiles. They moved in a steady wave, falling like dominoes, reformatting his surroundings. When the last one fell, Jack was standing in Virtua’s home. Virtua’s real home.

  The wind was a command. Jack felt it run a program that transformed the endless horizon of sandy shores into Virtua’s gilded palace. Here Jack found all the comforts that were lacking in the data center. Jack stood in a cushionfilled parlor worthy of a sultan, surrounded by pillows on all sides. Big ones, the size of hippos, filled with feathery goodness. Little ones, speckled with tiny jewel designs and tied off with little tassels at the corners. Curtains were draped over the lounges like cabana covers, and old-fashioned lanterns with multicolored glass panes floated about the room giving off a soft, warm light. In the center of it all, on the biggest pillow Jack had ever seen, in front of a reflection pool filled with scattered rose petals and floating tea lights, was the Circlewoman Virtua. She was clapping.

  “Bravo, Jack. Bravo. Welcome to cyberspace. Can I offer you an Energon beverage?

  “Uh… sure,” Jack replied, though he had no idea what an Energon beverage was. The drink came to him in a glass that crackled with energy. Jack was hesitant to put it to his lips, but not wanting to be rude, he tried it anyway. The voltage tingled Jack’s insides on the way down, which he thought was kind of funny because his insides weren’t really in cyberspace at all.

  “What do you think?” Virtua asked him.

  “It’s like drinking electricity,” Jack said. “In a good way, though. Thank you.” Jack looked around Virtua’s lavish parlor in awe. “This isn’t what I expected at all,” he told Virtua. “I thought your home would be more”—Jack searched for the right word—“technical.”

  “I prefer a soft pillow to computer hardware any day,” Virtua told Jack. “You don’t approve?”

  “No, I approve,” Jack said. “I like it way more than the data center.”

  Virtua laughed. “I’m not surprised. In the Unplugged World, human senses have a difficult time processing Mecha environments. Here in cyberspace, our minds are on equal footing. Here you can see things how we see them. Please. Have a seat.”

  Jack started toward the lounge that was closest to him, but stopped himself when the pillow started whispering something back to him. The voice was soft, low, and in another language, but somehow Jack understood. And somehow he knew that it was the pillow talking. It said he didn’t physically need to go anywhere, reminding him that his body wasn’t in cyberspace, only his mind was. Jack didn’t physically move from the beach to Virtua’s home. Cyberspace moved for him.

  “Can I…,” he started to ask Virtua.

  Virtua raised a hand in the air, as if to say, “See for yourself.” So, Jack asked the pillow to come to him, and come to him it did. As the cushion digitized, vanished, and reformulated beneath him, Jack learned something new about himself. He could talk to machines. Yes, he could impose his will on any machine that he understood the inner workings of, but he could actually talk to them too. He could ask them nicely for help and see what happened.

  “I can see why Stendeval has taken such an interest in you,” Virtua told Jack. “Your powers appear to be growing by the day.”

  Jack looked around, letting his mind reach out to the rest of the room. The voices of other programs started to fill his ears. “I think you’re right,” he said, trying to sort them all out. “Does that worry you?”

  “Don’t you think it should?” Virtua replied. “When you consider that most of this city believes you to be a Rüstov spy, something that is already associated directly with my people, I should say that any actions on my part to expand your power should certainly worry me.”

  “Right.”

  “That said, as long as you’re talking to machines,” Virtua advised Jack, “you might want to ask them how they work as well. With their help you’ll learn much, much faster. You just have to ask nicely. As I’ve heard many bi-orgs say, you catch more flies with honey. Although I can’t understand what bi-orgs want with any flies, let alone more of them.”

  Jack chuckled and thanked the Circlewoman for her advice. He couldn’t quite figure out what this meeting was about. On the one hand, Virtua was worried about his powers. On the other, she was giving him tips on how he could learn more. It was confusing, but he did notice that the hard edge he had observed in Virtua’s voice back in the data center was gone now that they were here in her home. “If you don’t mind me saying so,” he began, “you seem a bit more relaxed in here than you did out there.”

  “I have reason to be,” Virtua replied. “It’s getting ugly out there, don’t you think? I’ve been through this before. Thankfully, we can still speak freely in C-Space.”

  Jack leaned back in his seat, enjoying the privacy that Virtua’s cyberhome afforded them. “It is nice to get a break from all those stupid cameras Smart has everywhere,” he agreed.

  “Jonas’s SmartCams are a nuisance, yes,” Virtua admitted, “but we Mechas have endured worse. Much worse. The Peacemakers… they practically ran Machina for years after the invasion, and the Mechas who live there suffered greatly. Believe me, if you weren’t under Emissary Knight’s protection first, and the Inner Circle’s protection later, you would have tasted the Peacemakers’ brand of justice long before now.”

  Jack leaned forward in his chair. “Yesterday I thought the Peacemakers were going to arrest some kid just for saying hi to me on the street,” he said.

  Virtua shook her head. “Even today, with Rüstov sightings dwindling, they wield more power than free people should ever grant figures of authority. And now people want to return their numbers to post-invasion strength. It seems that rumors are all that is needed for Jonas to keep his private army strong as ever.”

  “You think all these Left-Behind sightings are just rumors?” Jack asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Virtua said. “Not really. When rumors are reported as fact for a long-enough period of time, people eventually lose the ability to tell the difference. But I do wonder… why is it that we never actually see any of these Left-Behind infiltrators on the NewsNets? Circleman Smart has cameras everywhere. If Revile and these others are all truly back in the city, why is there never video footage of anyone but you?”

  It was a good question, Jack thought. It did seem odd that he should continue to take up so much news time, given everything that was supposedly going on in the city.

  “As far as I am concerned,” Virtua continued, “the only confirmed Rüstov sighting
… is you. Now, tell me the truth, Jack, it’s what we’re here for. Are you a Rüstov spy?”

  Jack grimaced. It was just as he feared. Virtua was questioning his loyalties like everyone else. It seemed he had lost her support now too.

  “No,” Jack told Virtua sternly. “I’m not.”

  Virtua studied Jack for a moment. “Fair enough,” she replied, surprising him. “I believe you. Congratulations, Jack, you will have my friendship and support, as well as my vote for a place in the School of Thought.”

  Jack looked at Virtua like she was speaking another language. He couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you serious?” he asked. “You trust me? Just like that? No test?”

  “On the contrary,” Virtua began. “I’ve been testing you from the moment you arrived here. The Energon beverage you drank allows me to track your brain wave activity here in cyberspace. If you were lying, I would know.”

  Jack frowned. “So, you just tricked me, then,” he said, pushing his glass away.

  “Please understand, the proof is not for me,” Virtua told Jack. “I am going to be attacked in the media for siding with you again. Of this I have no doubt. I was actually satisfied that my instincts about you were correct from the start. When I first met you, I saw a child standing up to the Rüstov, beating them in a way no one had ever done before. Even if I did feel otherwise, I trust Stendeval, and his belief in you is evidence enough for me. I believe that education is an inherently good thing. That teaching you will not empower a future enemy, but rather prevent you from realizing that fate. I want you in the School of Thought, but as a Mecha I cannot be too careful where the Rüstov are concerned. I need to be able to validate my opinion in the public eye for my safety and the safety of my people.”