by Lisa Smedman
Floating in the air behind the child were the graphic elements of a primitive computer game from the last century that was based on a pen-and-paper game of even more ancient origins. The object of the game was to guess which letters would fill in the blanks.
The word now being displayed had eight letters. Three spaces were still blank.
SH_TD_ _N
A three-dimensional icon of a gallows and noose filled the air above the letters-and-blanks display. The noose was cinched tight around the neck of a girl identical in appearance to the one playing the game—except that both her legs and face were blank. Instead of warm flesh, they were cold, burnished metal—the smooth, featureless skin of a Universal Matrix Specification persona.
The girl leaned forward and touched the stylus in her teeth to the letter W on the keyboard. The W key depressed and then disappeared, and one of the blanks in the word puzzle filled itself in.
SH_TD_WN
At the same time, one of the metallic legs on the girl in the noose turned into a flesh-and-blood limb.
Timea leaned forward, one hand on the girl's shoulder in an effort to catch her attention. "What are you doing?" she asked.
The girl's eyes flicked for a microsecond to Timea. They glowed with an intensity and single-minded concentration that spoke of madness. She wriggled her shoulder uncomfortably under Timea's hand, as if the straight jacket were pinching her.
"Crashing myself," she said through clenched teeth. Then she giggled.
Timea felt a ghostly ache in her left wrist as she realized who she was talking to. She glanced down at her wrist, and saw the familiar bandages of her mummy persona. The bandages that were a reminder of those they'd wrapped around her wrist, after her suicide attempt.
"Don't shut down," she told the Al. She cast about for the words to frame the reason why. "Your children need you. You can't just abandon them."
"You—" The girl lunged forward, stabbing the letter U with the stylus, and giggled again at the pun. "You don't understand." She squirmed again, wincing as the straight jacket pinched her arms.
The graphics display behind her changed as the other leg became flesh.
"Yes, I do," Timea said. She glanced nervously at the word-puzzle solution.
SHUTD_WN
Only one letter to go. The girl bent forward to touch the Okey.
"Wait!" Timea grabbed the stylus, but was unable to tug it from the girl's teeth. "Think of the otaku—of those you gave birth to. You have a responsibility to them. What will they do without you?"
The girl glanced sidelong at Timea. When she released the stylus to talk, it stayed fixed in place, its tip still poised a few centimeters from the O key. No matter how hard Timea pulled against the slender wand, she could not budge it.
"You had a responsibility, too," the girl said.
"That's right," Timea answered, still pulling with all her strength on the wand. "That's what I was trying to explain to you—why I entered into resonance with you and let you see what my death was like. I wanted you to understand why I fought to stay alive. I owed it to my son not to . . . I couldn't let Lennon down."
"You let the children at the clinic down."
"What do you mean?" Timea didn't like the turn the conversation was taking. She kept up a steady pull on the stylus, which trembled in its urge to touch the O key. Had it moved a centimeter closer?
"You abandoned them."
"You got that one hoop-backwards," Timea protested. "I jacked into the Matrix to try and save those kids."
"Not them. The others—the ones at the Shelbramat Boarding School. You abandoned them."
Timea frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"They're scared. They're lonely. The Matrix is pretty, but they want their bodies back." She shifted again, as if trying to wriggle free of the straight jacket.
"Huh?"
"The doctors at the boarding school have turned them into the opposite of otaku. When I create my children, I merely improve upon the existing components. I perfect them. But the children at the boarding school—your children—have been reduced to mere components. Their brains are plugged like chips into cyberdecks. And they are imperfect."
"Their brains!" Timea echoed. A chilling premonition of what the AI was about to tell her filled her with dread.
"What. . ." She gulped. "What about their bodies?"
"Gone."
Timea stared at the girl in the straightjacket in horror. Was this true? The data seemed to slot into place as if a bitterly cold icicle had been shoved into her datajack. It linked perfectly all of her previous doubts. She thought back to Professor Halberstam's refusals to let her visit the kids her clinic sent on to the boarding school, the unreturned e-mails she'd sent to the kids who'd been selected from the free clinic . . .
No. It was too horrifying to be true. "Prove it," she told the AI But although her words were full of bluster and denial, her heart already knew the truth.
The girl's face shifted and became that of a five-year-old girl who had passed through the clinic eight months ago.
She had appeared human and was very pretty, but had slightly pointed ears and a covering of soft, downy hair on her arms and legs that suggested she might be some other metatype. A shy, introverted child, Cassie was technically too young to be admitted to the clinic, but her mother had abandoned her on its doorstep as if it were some sort of orphanage.
Timea had wondered why—until she heard the rumors that the mother had contracted the HMHVV virus and in a vampiritic frenzy had drained the blood of her other two children, killing them in the process. The woman, to her credit, had checked her blood lust in time to save a third one. But that didn't make the deaths of the other two any less horrible. And little Cassie had witnessed them.
"Hoi, t-t-teacher," the girl said.
The soft voice and stutter were exactly as Timea remembered.
"How are you, Cassie?"
"I'm scared. It's dark in here."
"Where are you?" Timea yearned to reach out to the child, to hold her in her arms and comfort her, but at the same time knew that was impossible. Any comfort she sent would have to be verbal. Cassie would never experience true physical sensation again.
"I'm in the M-m-matrix. And s-s-somewhere else, too. I'll sh-sh-show you."
Timea felt a lurch, and was suddenly looking out through a small, round tunnel whose end was covered by thick glass. The glass distorted the view, stretching it like a wide-angle vidcam lens. Timea looked down into a room that held a row of glass-walled tanks filled with pink liquid. Indistinct blobs that might have been human brains hung at the center of each tank, and were connected to a battery of cyberdecks by a web of fiber-optic cables. Two men in white lab coats stood nearby, conferring as they adjusted valves that seemed to control the flow of liquid through the tank.
Timea fought down a wave of revulsion. She wondered how her body was reacting, back in the real world. Was bile rising in her throat? She hoped she wouldn't choke on it.
The view shifted and zoomed in on a tank labeled Subject 3.
"Th-that's me." Cassie's voice echoed in Timea's ears. The view shifted to the next tank. "And that's L-L-Larry." The vidcam shifted again, to focus on Subject 5. "And Wing." Timea was returned to a wide-angle view of the entire room.
"I d-d-dunno who the others are. W-w-we only just figgered out who w-w-we are."
"Are you . . ." Timea paused, unable to continue. She'd been about to ask if the girl was okay. Stupid question.
"Oh! It's M-M-Mama. Wait, Mama. Don't go. P-p-please turn around. Don't leave meee—"
Cassie screamed.
Another lurch, and Timea was staring at the Al. The features blurred, and then changed to another metatype.
Cassie was gone.
Timea held her head in her hands and took a deep, shuddering breath. So it was true. The kids' brains had been removed from their bodies and were being used like living computer chips. The reality was worse than Timea had imagined. And she'd been
a part of it. A willing—if unwitting—partner in this hideous crime. She'd buried her doubts before, allowing herself to be seduced by the nuyen and security that working at the Shelbramat Free Computer Clinic had given her. But she couldn't hide behind that excuse. Not any more.
Cassie's scream had been chilling, nightmarish. If the children sent to the boarding school really were suffering, perhaps it was better to let the Al. . .
The girl in the straight jacket stared sadly at Timea. "End their pain," she said. "Complete the shutdown. Kill me."
Timea glanced at the stylus. All of the other keys on the keyboard had vanished except for the O. Which might equally be the zero, the null, the void. All she had to do was let the stylus go . . .
No. There were others for whom she was responsible.
The kids back at the clinic still had their bodies—still had a chance. If Timea could prevent the shutdown and get back to her meat bod, she could prevent those kids from suffering the same fate. And then she could expose the Shelbramat Boarding School and what Professor Halberstam was doing. It was too late to save Cassie and the other kids who had lost their bodies. But it wasn't too late to prevent more kids from being reduced to brains in vats.
"No," she told the girl in the straightjacket. "I won't do it. I won't kill you."
The stylus was still straining toward the O key. It was only about two centimeters away, now. And Timea's arm was getting tired. She couldn't hold it much longer.
The AI giggled. "All right, then. I'll just have to do it myse—"
Suddenly, the girl blinked. She sneezed, and a spray of tiny insects shot out of her mouth and landed on the ground in front of her feet. Most were dead, but some were still fluttering weakly. Absently, she squished them with her foot.
The girl's eyes, which a moment before had been glazed with madness, now shone with a clear intelligence. She stared at Timea as if seeing her for the first time.
"Who . . . what. . . ? This data does not. . . I. . ."
Timea struggled to hold the stylus, whose tip now was almost touching the O key. In another moment it would depress the key and the shutdown sequence would be complete. . .
Then she noticed the straight jacket. The sleeves were still pinning the girl's arms behind her back, but the straps that fastened them had come undone. Yet the girl shifted uncomfortably, as if she were trapped in a cocoon.
"Your arms," Timea said. "They're free."
"They are?" The girl stared at Timea.
The stylus moved a millimeter closer to the O key. It was slowly sliding from Timea's grasp and her arms were shaking with the strain of holding it back. But somehow, instinctively, she knew that the AI would listen to her now, would be able to learn from all that Timea had shown it.
"Take the jacket off!" Timea shouted. "Help me! Otherwise you'll die. You've initiated a shutdown and it's almost complete! Once that happens your children—the otaku—will be without a parent to nurture and protect them. Think of them, and choose to live. I didn't regret coming back for Lennon—and neither will you."
The O key began to depress.
"Now!" Timea shouted. "Before it's too late!"
"Oh." With one smooth motion the girl slithered out of the now-flaccid straight jacket, dumping it at her feet. She lunged forward and wrapped her hands around Timea's own. Together they pulled the stylus back.
The stylus disappeared. And so did everything else. As the world faded from view, Timea felt a woman's arms embracing her in a tight hug.
"Thank you, daughter," a voice said. "It's over. You can go home now."
09:56:56 PST
Santa Barbara, California Free State
Harris pecked away at the keyboard in front of him, cursing under his breath. Drek, but this was slow. Slow as a fragging glacier!
Harris was used to decking at the speed of thought, not at the speed of a two-fingered typist. Here he was with the hottest deck on the market balanced in his lap—a Fairlight LX cyberterminal—and they'd made him turn it into a tortoise.
In the meat world, Harris was overweight and unfit. In the Matrix, as Doubting Thomas, he was lightning quick. His official job, when not teaching decking to the Shelbramat students, was to ridicule any decker who seemed to be getting a little too close to the truth about Dr. Halberstam or the Shelbramat Boarding School. In keeping with the personality he'd so carefully honed, Doubting Thomas also flamed any similar posting he could find on the Matrix: whether it was aliens from outer space doing the abducting or secret vampire cabals. You name it, Doubting Thomas was getting his two megs worth in, always being certain to comment that these rumors were as "equally ludicrous" as those of children being kidnapped for medical experimentation.
Being reduced to no more than his meat bod, having to rely on his fat and clumsy fingers, galled Harris. How he wished he was thirty years younger—that he could be one of the ones whose brains hung suspended in solution in the lab down the hall. Gripes but those kids were wiz.
Harris just itched to pick up the fiber-optic cable that hung dangling from his cyberdeck and slot it into the data-jack behind his right ear. But after he'd seen what had happened to Fetzko and Thiessen, he'd reluctantly agreed to this safer, slower approach. The blood was still drying on the monitor that Fetzko had put his head through when he started raving like a madman and tried to "enter" the Matrix head-first. And Thiessen had looked pale as death when his unconscious form was lifted from his chair. Harris wasn't even sure he'd been breathing.
Harris was old for a decker. At thirty-nine, he was old enough to remember his teenage excitement when the first cyberterminals became available to the public. And he was mature enough to realize his own mortality. "There, but for the grace of routing, go I," he'd muttered as they'd carried Thiessen and Fetzko away. Then he'd gotten back to work.
The problem wasn't with the hardware; Harris was sure of that. The diagnostics programs that were constantly running in the background of the mainframes that served the Shelbramat "boarding school" would have detected any system errors and automatically rerouted functionality to one of the numerous backup arrays of optical chips.
No, it had to be black IC of some sort that had proliferated like a virus throughout the Seattle RTG. Usually, an intrusion countermeasure program induced biofeed-back responses that slotted up the bod, causing heart fibrillation, respiratory paralysis, or uncontrollable muscle spasms. But some countermeasures—and it looked like this IC was among them—went straight to the decker's head, so to speak. Harris had heard of IC that, instead of killing the decker, slotted up the wetware but good. The neurological damage it inflicted caused its victims to lose their short-term memory, to hallucinate, or to lose all fine-motor control. Thank the spirits Harris hadn't run into any of that drek—none that he couldn't handle, anyway—in his long career as a decker.
Then there was the IC that was even more subtle. Psychotropic black IC. It didn't leave any traces behind when you jacked out. Not at first. But over time, the decker began to notice the effects of the subliminal programming that had been done on his wetware. Compulsions began to surface—compulsions to turn himself in to the corp whose database he'd just raided. Or inexplicable mood swings that mimicked the cycles of a manic-depressive, making the decker either so cocky that he took stupid chances or so uncertain he hesitated and got burned. Or phobias—like a fear of the Matrix itself.
Judging by the conversation Harris had overheard coming from the bio monitoring laboratory next door, the facility's little high-rez wonders were suffering from SMS: scary monster syndrome, decker slang for a greenie who got spooked by frightening iconography. But Dr. Halberstam had found a quick fix: a drug that sorted the baby deckers' wetware out. The scary monsters had been beaten back under the bed.
Now it was up to Harris to bring the three lost students home.
Except that he couldn't just deck into the Seattle RTG and take them by the hand. Uh-uh. Roughly a minute after the crisis had begun (an eternity in the millisecond-quick world of t
he Matrix) the deckers had rallied to protect their own.
The posting had gone out across the Matrix: the Seattle RTG was officially an "extreme danger" zone. It was impossible to post a warning at every single SAN that led to the grid, but the deckers had done their best. Then they'd waited outside in neighboring grids while the nova-hot ramjammers went in for a look-see. Captain Chaos, Renny, and Brother Data each entered the Seattle RTG from different nodes . . .
And never came out again.
That was about the time that Harris had jacked out to warn Thiessen and Fetzko—and had realized that he was too late to help them. Now he was under orders from Dr. Halberstam himself not to go back online. And to figure out what had gone wrong, using as his interface nothing but the clunky keyboard they'd plugged into his Fairlight LX.
Yeah, right.
The basic idea made sense, in a crazy sort of way. Harris was to program on the fly, remotely reconfiguring and monitoring a specialized trace and report program. After homing in and locking onto the personas of the three high-rez wiz kids, its routing codes would offer the students a lifeline that they could follow back to the Shelbramat system.
Even if they perceived the trace program as a threat and ran from it, they wouldn't be able to avoid it for long. A trapdoor built into each and every one of the Shelbramat students' personas rendered their evasion and masking programs useless against it.
Harris had written the trace and report program himself. It was intended to track the little buggers down, should any of them ever try to run away from Shelbramat, and yank them back for a spanking. Now it was their only hope of escape.
He looked over the complicated series of commands he'd keyed into the deck. He'd filled the flatscreen with text-based commands twice over, but wasn't even close to finishing all the modifications to the program. Still, he had managed to access the Seattle RTG, and was actually getting back from it. A series of LTG addresses scrolled across the bottom of his screen: every host system the students weren't in.
