by Tom Clancy
Dwyer and Metz were taken to Arlington Hospital, where they were identified by their parents. "I can't understand it," Metz's mother, Quinne Ryan Metz said when interviewed Monday morning by local media. "She was such a normal girl, she did well at school, there weren't any family problems, we were very close… " Relatives of Malcolm Dwyer declined to speak to reporters.
Police investigating the suicides had no initial comment. They would not confirm or deny the suggestion that both teens had been regular users of the controversial "Deathworld" Net environment run by morbo-jazz star Joey Bane. Calls to Joey Bane Enterprises were not immediately returned Tuesday, but a Netted template press release from the firm's public relations department, issued to the media on Tuesday evening, stated that the managers of the Deathworld environment, because of privacy issues, do not comment on user information unless specifically required to by subpoena or other court order according to the guidelines established by the Protection of Personal Data Bill-
Charlie gulped. "Nothing," he said. "I gotta go get ready for school… "
He headed out, but not upstairs, where his books and the take-to-school computer were. He headed for the den and swung into the implant chair. He closed his eyes, twitched the implant awake. It lined up with the Net server and activated. Things went dark-
A moment later Charlie was in his workspace, down by the big worktable in the shining wooden-benched operating theater. The sun was already high there, pouring in the windows. It was noon in London.
"Nick?"
No answer. Charlie was a little surprised by that. He and Nick had for a long time maintained a "live shout" link between their two workspaces: when one of them said just the other's name by itself, while working, the computer would open up a portal between the two spaces without further fuss. If he was going to change that, he would have told me…
"Main routine," Charlie said.
"Here."
"Link to Nick Melchior's main Net address."
"Linking now."
Suddenly the air around him went bright, and a sign appeared in it, hanging in front of him: SERVICE SUSPENDED. Now, that's weird-Charlie thought, until abruptly that sign flickered, to be replaced by another: FORWARDING.
Has the family changed its master Net address or something? Charlie wondered. It did happen. People changed providers from time to time if they didn't like the service they were getting, but Nick hadn't mentioned anything like that-
There was another flicker, and then Charlie found himself looking at Nick, who was sitting in a bare, white space, in an Eames chair, reading his mail in the form of the usual various floating icons, little colored or flashing cubes and spheres and pyramids and other isometric threedimensional solids hovering around him in the air. "Nick?" Charlie said.
Nick looked up. "Oh, hi. Come on in."
"What's the blast?" Charlie looked around him with some bemusement. "Where's your workspace? You get tired of Castle Dracula?"
Nick grinned. "Mr. Tact. Nope, my folks pulled the plug on me. Sorry if it's a little bare in here… I haven't had time to refurnish yet. I was mostly occupied with getting the forwarding routine installed around the service block my folks had the provider put in."
Charlie's eyes went wide. "Well, at least you're still online."
"Yeah. It's just a public-terminal account at the twenty-four-hour printing and mailbox place down in the Square, though. I can't spend as much time as I would usually. I have to sneak out to use it. Listen," Nick said as Charlie opened his mouth to say something. "I can't be with you long, I have to get back into Deathworld soonest. I'm on the verge of going seventh-circle, but my last save didn't take and I'm having to re-create a lot of stuff in off-peak."
"I won't keep you," Charlie said. "But listen, did you hear about those two new suicides?"
"Yeah." Nick actually shrugged. "The usual. They got tired of it all. The world stank, and they ditched it. And who could blame them? Anyway, they got a little media exposure on the way out. And they're probably better off. I mean, they couldn't be worse off than to be alive in this world… "
This was so astonishing an assessment, and so utterly unlike anything Nick would normally say, that Charlie's mouth simply hung open for a moment. Finally he managed to say, "What about your folks? What happened to make them yank your boards?"
"My dad got the last Net bill a couple of days ago and pitched a real extinction-level fit," Nick said, and shrugged again. "You know me, though, I can't let it get me down. Got too much to do in the real world. I'm working my way down through the dark, down to the real stuff." He grinned. "You should hear some of the lifts I found down there! The best Bane stuff isn't out on open release, not by a long shot. He's been saving the best for his own people, for us Banies. You really should come down with me and have a listen for yourself."
"Uh, maybe over the weekend. Look, I gotta head out, it's school in an hour. Wanna have lunch?"
"Can't today… I've got to get off-campus and make the most of that access time-it's the only time of day when my folks don't really have a clue what I'm up to. Mornings and evenings, they may have their suspicions, but at lunch I'm free. Look, I gotta go, the system's ready for me."
"Yeah, okay, I-"
Nick's image vanished.
Charlie stood there for a moment and hardly knew what to think. It's like the pod people came to visit and took my buddy Nick. Who the heck was that??
For a moment more he stood there, irresolute. "Seven A. M." said the clock in the corner.
"Thanks," Charlie said. He was distracted, though. This is just too weird. But… Deathworld. And then… these two kids.
He started to worry.
After a moment he tried to be reasonable, to talk himself out of it. Nick was sensible, Nick was perfectly sane, Nick would never try anything like killing himself-
The normal Nick wouldn't, Charlie thought.
He stood there and sweated. Unlike most of his classmates at Bradford, Charlie knew what death looked like. There were some awful memories from his very early childhood that were not shadows. They were all too solid, and he did not access them willingly. But they were stirring now. And he didn't like the idea of possibly having that kind of memory about one of his best friends.
He's not suicidal, though!
Yet, said the skeptical part of his mind, the part that his Mom said was capable of "Olympic-level worrying." But what the frack can I do?
Charlie thought about that for a moment.
Then something occurred to him, an idea which he rejected, and then considered again.
"What time is it again?" he said.
"Seven oh two."
"Thanks." And now the question is… would he be in the office this early?
Well, I could always leave a message. Either way, it's worth a try…
"Main routine," Charlie said. "Address book." "What address, please?"
"James Winters, Net Force."
"Trying that commcode for you now."
Charlie swallowed. All Net Force Explorers had a comm-code for Winters, as their "head honcho" and liaison to the main organization. But relatively few of them ever used it-mostly because it was understood that, except in an emergency or a situation involving the safety or security of people using the Net, if anyone misused it, he or she would shortly be out of the Net Force Explorers on his or her ear. Charlie had been contacted by Winters once before, with no bad results. And he'd contacted Winters once before on his own recognizance, and hadn't gotten in trouble-but those calls had involved much more important business. Now, even as he waited, Charlie was beginning to have major reservations over whether Winters would consider this situation anywhere near as important. If he starts thinking I'm taking advantage or something-
Nonetheless, Charlie stood still and waited.
"Winters," said the voice almost before the virtuality settled in around Charlie. Winters's office, as it revealed itself a blink later, was relentlessly plain-a metal desk with neat piles of papers
, printouts, and datascrips, a pen stand with a U. S. Marine insignia on it, a couple of file cabinets, one of which at least, Charlie suspected, was actually a Net data storage facility in disguise, dusty venetian blinds, and outside of them, a not-overly-inspiring view of a parking lot. The only soft touch about the place was the see-through bird feeder on the outside of the window, which was full of peanuts even though theoretically you were supposed to stop feeding birds after the first of April. The window, the walls, and the filing cabinets, maybe, were real. Everything else Charlie was seeing, he knew, was virtual, an expression of Winters's own workspace, or as much of it as he wanted you to see. Behind the desk sat the man himself: tall, lean, and hard-faced, with his trademark buzz cut looking even buzzier and shorter than usual. Winters must just have had a haircut. He did not look like someone whose time it would be smart to waste. But all the same, his gray eyes were friendly and interested, even at this hour of the morning.
"Charlie," said James Winters, and looked him up and down. "Been a while since we touched base. You're up early."
"Uh, so are you."
Winters shrugged. "Occupational hazard," he said. "One of the few times of the day when the link doesn't go off every five minutes."
"I wanted to catch you before I had to go out to class, if you have a few minutes," Charlie said.
"No problem at all. Come in, take a seat."
Charlie walked "in," sat down.
"How're your mother and father doing?" Winters said.
"Uh, they're fine. Dad's getting ready for some kind of in-service presentation on spinal surgery. Mom's doing a continuing education unit, something about the new nurse practitioner requirements."
"And you? You're coming up on end-of-term time," Winters said, leaning back in his chair. "How's the accelerated program coming along? Any problems?"
"Nothing serious," Charlie said. He did not feel this was the time to mention his personal feelings about calculus, or the fact that his accelerated program required that he take it, or the fact that he had never heard of any doctor needing it.
"'That's not what your calc instructor says," Winters said, casting an eye over a glowing-outlined "text window" hanging in the air near his desk. That window looked transparent to Charlie, but he was certain it didn't look that way to Winters.
"I passed the test the second time," Charlie said, instantly breaking out in a sweat.
"I see that. Aced it, too," Winters said, and produced a small smile. "Better than I did the second time. Or the third, or the fourth. Relax… you're doing okay." That window vanished. "But this doesn't have anything to do with school, I take it."
"Not exactly," Charlie said. "I'm following up on something I'm curious about."
"Oh?"
"Deathworld."
Winters's eyebrows went up, and he folded his arms. "Saw that in the news, did you."
"That last double suicide, yes," Charlie said.
"No connection has been established," Winters said, "between the suicides and the virtual operation."
"Net Force checked it out, I guess."
"Very completely, after the first two." His eyes rested thoughtfully on Charlie for a moment. "No reason for you not to be given a few details, I suppose. Computer? Insight investigations. Deathworld." Another window opened, and Winters glanced at it. Text scrolled down and through it, and though Charlie could see it this time, it was reversed.
"The first one was in April of 2023," he said. "A young man, aged eighteen, then a young woman aged sixteen, about three weeks later, in early May. While little notice was taken of the first suicide, the second one began to raise concerns that something untoward might be happen- ing. So an investigation was started. At about the same time the two sets of parents began to demand that Deathworld be shut down and Joey Bane be taken to court for reckless endangerment, corruption of youth, you name it. They felt sure that the site was feeding its users subliminal content of some kind, concealed messages that caused their children to kill themselves."
Winters raised his eyebrows. "Anyway, the investigation went forward. Six Net Force undercover operatives were dispatched to check out the Deathworld operation from the inside. Another four-overt agents examined the company's books, programming, and physical plant, and did a guided analysis of the virtual operation's code with the 'SysWatch' code sifter." He scanned down a little more of the text, shook his head, sat back again.
"And they didn't find anything," Charlie said.
"Nothing whatsoever. Clean bill of health," Winters said. "The place may look dysfunctional or even amoral to some people, but it's clean. Queasy-making, but clean."
"What did the kids' parents do?" Charlie said.
Winters sighed. "They continued to agitate for something to be done about the site-preferably to get it shut down. One of them, the mother of the first suicide, the boy, tried to get her senator and local congressman to put special bills through the House and Senate to that effect. That didn't come to anything, which is no surprise… the congressional calendar doesn't have time for all the things on it to start with. The other parents did the talk show circuit, gave a lot of interviews to the tabloid press, and they still send out periodic press releases to the various Netcasters and news agencies." He shook his head again. "Not that it's had much effect on Deathworld, or Joey Bane. If anything, it's publicity that increases usage. And truly, without any evidence to suggest that the site really is doing anything to unbalance people… "
Winters turned to look out for a moment at the morning sun beginning to come in through his blinds. Then he glanced back at Charlie. "What brings this up right now?" he said.
"I've got a friend who's all of a sudden interested in the place," Charlie said. "Real interested. In fact, lately he doesn't seem able to talk about much else."
"I take it this isn't normal for him."
"No," Charlie said. "And with these new suicides…"
Winters leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. "When you have the volume of people using Net-based facilities that we routinely have these days," he said, "the trouble is that almost any death, no matter how it looks, can genuinely be random." He touched a spot on his desk, and another window, a smaller one, opened itself in the air. It had nothing in it, as far as Charlie could see, but one long string of digits. "Here's today's bonus question," Winters said. "How many people are on the Net right now?"
Charlie tried to catch a glimpse of that long row of digits, but the problem was that almost all the numbers were changing so fast they were a blur. "Worldwide, or just nationally?"
Winters grinned. "Always the right question, with you. Worldwide."
Charlie tried to remember the last set of figures he'd heard. "A quarter of a billion?"
"Try five times that," Winters said, and flicked a finger at the window he'd been watching. It spun so that Charlie could read it. Most of the numbers were still bright blurs, but Charlie could see the numbers 1,263… and then two more sets of three digits each after that, all impossible to read.
"One point two billion and change," Winters said, "just at the moment. It's a function of the time of day. Australia's having its after-dinner entertainment, but most of Greater Asia is still at work. Europe and Africa and Russia are on their lunch breaks, mostly, but they'll be back to work shortly. And the East Coast is up checking the news before it heads in to the office."
He leaned back and looked at the numbers. "The 'tide' ebbs and flows as the Earth turns and the terminator moves," he said, "but the number where the wave 'crests,'
at the time of greatest usage, rarely drops below nine hundred million anymore. And it grows all the time as the Netted-in population grows. So, with this information in hand… a question. How many of those people are dying right now, while they're on the Net?"
Charlie opened his mouth and then closed it.
"You see the problem?" Winters said. "Let me whittle it down a little, since our viewpoint at the moment should probably stay strictly jurisdictional." The n
umber in the window changed, grew smaller. "On this continent alone, there are a hundred and eighty million people using the Net right this moment. So, consider the statistics. Do you know how often someone dies in North America? Whether they're on the Net or not? From all causes."
"I'm not sure."
"Nineteen per minute," Winters said. "That's an average, of course. You get statistical clusters when there are a lot more deaths than that, and statistical 'dry spots' when there are many fewer. On the same average about fifteen children are born per minute… with the same kind of 'real-time' variation on the average. But considering that at peak times maybe half the total population might be on the Net, when their particular moment to die comes along-" He raised his eyebrows. "You can see how we get small clusters of numbers that seem to mean something, but don't necessarily. It tends to make us cautious about chasing patterns that almost inevitably turn out not to be patterns at all. And when you extend the statistical sampling to include the rest of the planet-you see how deceptive the numbers can become."
Charlie nodded.
Winters sighed and leaned back again. "We only have so big a budget," he said. "And there are a lot of people who watch very carefully how we use it. So Net Force has to be very careful of how we chase after data. Granted, we provide an important service. But no one likes a government agency that starts thinking itself too important to use its budget wisely. The day we stop producing results to match our output of funds…" He shrugged. "That day we, and the whole Net environment in our jurisdiction, are in big trouble."
"I see," Charlie said.
Winters paused as a small knocking sound came from the window, specifically, from the peanut feeder, where a small brown bird had just alighted. This in itself was nothing unusual, but the bird immediately picked up a peanut from the feeder, dropped it four stories, then picked up another one, and dropped that, and picked up another one, and dropped that…
