Overclocked

by K S Augustin

  “We speed up,” Tania said, “is that what you’re say­ing?”

  “We call it ‘clock­ing up’, but it’s the same concept.”

  Her eyes widened. “‘We’?”

  She thought back again to the gi­ant white rab­bit but still didn’t feel com­fort­able enough to share that strange con­ver­sa­tion with Carl. Not yet.

  He waved her ques­tion away. “I’ll ex­plain that bit later.” He took her hands and stared into her eyes. “As far as I’m con­cerned, I’ve been bat­tling the Rhine-Temple bot­net for close to fif­teen years now.”

  She stared back at him. “Fif­teen? Years? A dec­ade and a half?”

  “That’s what it feels like. I’ve been afraid to ask this ques­tion, but I’ll ask it now. How long has it really been, Tania?”

  Her gaze dar­ted over his fea­tures, at the grey­ing hair at his temples, the slight fur­rows on his fore­head and the faint lines fan­ning from his eyes and trail­ing down his cheeks.

  “You mean, how long since you were in­ser­ted into the Blue?”

  Carl pursed his lips and nod­ded.

  “You were in­ser­ted at nine-thirty in the morn­ing,” she said. “Yes­ter­day.”

  He looked in­cred­u­lous. “A day? I’ve only been here for one day?”

  “No more than twenty-four hours.” Tania’s voice was faint. “I came as quickly as I could.”

  “I tried to make con­tact sev­eral times over the years,” Carl told her, his voice an­guished, “send you in­form­a­tion about the bot­net, but you dis­ap­peared com­pletely from the Blue. All I found was a piece of flat va­cant land where the Base­ment Five block used to be.”

  Then the spike in traffic that Don showed her had been Carl try­ing to con­tact them. Fol­low­ing on from that, maybe the board’s col­lect­ive fear of a for­eign gov­ern­ment at­tack­ing them was noth­ing more than a fantasy brought on by Carl’s de­term­in­a­tion. But then, if it wasn’t for that fantasy, she wouldn’t have been given the go-ahead to enter cy­ber­space.

  “We were afraid of a se­cur­ity breach,” Tania said gently. “Don ordered all the DMZ serv­ers to shut down last night. We only had the Base­ment Five private net­work run­ning. The serv­ers are up again now. The build­ing you knew should be back.”

  She hes­it­ated. “But there’s some­thing I still don’t un­der­stand, Carl. Why do you look as though you’ve aged so much? This isn’t the real world. As I said, you’ve only been away for one day.”

  He smiled rue­fully. “That took me a little while to fig­ure out, too. I didn’t mind. It gave me some­thing to do while I was wait­ing for the Rhine’s next move. I think it has to do with our self-im­age. Ac­cord­ing to my in­ternal clock, I’ve been here for a long time so my brain changed my self-im­age to match.”

  Tania frowned at him. “You’re say­ing that your sub­con­scious thinks you’re in your late forties now?”

  “Must be.” His grin was rue­ful. “And maybe some of it is a psy­cho­lo­gical ef­fect from bat­tling the Rhine-Temple. I can’t think of any other the­ory that fits.”

  Now that she was over the shock of his ap­pear­ance, Tania had to ad­mit that, even with a few lines on his face, Carl Orin was still one of the most at­tract­ive men she had ever seen.

  They both stared at each other for a long mo­ment be­fore Carl chuckled.

  “Now don’t go try­ing to make too much sense of all this. We’re deal­ing with two huge vari­ables here. Cy­ber­space, which we’ve only just be­gun to ex­plore, and our own brains, which is an­other fron­tier we’ve barely be­gun map­ping. Put them to­gether and I’m sur­prised I don’t see gi­ant sea ser­pents rid­ing ima­gin­ary waves between levels.”

  Tania couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from in­side her. It was partly re­lief but she was also start­ing to like the newer, gentler Carl. Damn her.

  He sobered. “You have a choice now, Tania. I wish I didn’t have to spring it on you so quickly but I’m run­ning out of time.”

  He poin­ted at the traffic mov­ing be­low their feet. “See that?”

  Tania took a few mo­ments to fo­cus, then she saw what he was re­fer­ring to. A thin sil­very thread stretched across the high­way, stay­ing mi­ra­cu­lously in­tact des­pite the traffic that whizzed above it. Tania tracked the thread up the side of the build­ing where they sat. To the disc that swayed gently on its hook at her belt.

  “That tether tells the Rhine-Temple that there are ac­tual hu­mans in cy­ber­space,” Carl told her. “Ra­tional, ad­apt­able hu­man be­ings, not ri­gid, static com­puter net­works. After our first couple of battles, it learnt about me. Learnt I was a dif­fer­ent kind of creature. So it cre­ated an army of spe­cial­ised bots to track and des­troy hu­man be­ings. It wants to kill us be­fore we can kill it.”

  Tania felt a chill travel up her arms. “So what are you say­ing?”

  “You need to go back. Re­turn to Base­ment Five, tell them what I’m do­ing and tell them to hold on while I try to des­troy this thing.”

  “By your­self?”

  He shook his head. “Not by my­self. I have friends. But I’m the only one run­ning the mara­thon. The oth­ers pitch in when they can, but they’re just sprint­ers.”

  “And what do I do?”

  “You wait. You tell Don and you wait for my sig­nal.”

  “When will that be, Carl and how will we re­cog­nise it?” Tania’s voice stretched with the ten­sion thrum­ming through her throat. “How will we know if you’re still fight­ing...or if you’re dead?”

  He swal­lowed. “I guess....” His voice husked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I guess a real-time week should be enough time, one way or an­other.”

  She tightened her lips. “What’s the al­tern­at­ive?”

  “What al­tern­at­ive?”

  She glared at him. “There’s al­ways an al­tern­at­ive. What is it?”

  He slanted her a long look, a smile twitch­ing the corner of his lips. “You stay here and help me. To­gether, we des­troy that red-tentacled mon­stros­ity. But...you cut your tether. That’s the only way to guar­an­tee a min­imum stand­ard of safety from the Rhine’s seeker bots.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  “Cut your tether?”

  She nod­ded.

  “You open it and is­sue the shut­down com­mand. You have to do it twice, con­firm­ing the com­mand each time.”

  Sounds of faint traffic, a hum rather than a roar, drif­ted up to Tania. The si­lence between her and Carl was com­plete. He watched her as she mulled over her thoughts and she watched him against the back­drop of a slowly-ex­pand­ing, sen­tient bot­net.

  She wanted to go back to her world. Con­tinue her re­search. Lec­ture.

  Find a man?

  She tried to dis­miss the ques­tion but that wasn’t fair. In­tim­acy was as much part of the hu­man con­di­tion as ac­quir­ing know­ledge. And Carl Orin….

  Her gaze roamed his face again. She was still so mad at him she thought she could nail him a good one but events in cy­ber­space had moved too fast to al­low her her dose of right­eous an­ger. And, damn him to hell, be­sides be­ing hellishly good in bed, he was also one of the smartest men she’d ever met. She hadn’t come across that com­bin­a­tion too of­ten.

  Fi­nally break­ing eye con­tact, she looked down at the disc at her belt, pon­der­ing it for sev­eral long minutes. When she clicked open the lid, she was sur­prised that her hands weren’t shak­ing. The small screen showed the pack­ets of data, in­dic­at­ors of her po­s­i­tion and status, trav­el­ling back to Base­ment Five. Us­ing the small thumb key­board, she entered the com­mand to ter­min­ate the tether.

  “You have to enter it in twice, you say?” she asked, not look­ing up.

  “Twice.”

  Tania con­firmed the shut­down the first time and one of the icons along the up­per rim
of the disc’s lid flashed am­ber. She took a deep breath and typed the com­mand in again. When the second con­firm­a­tion flashed on the screen, she hes­it­ated only for a second be­fore com­mit­ting to her de­cision. As the icon blinked red, the sil­ver line van­ished from her belt.

  For bet­ter or worse, she had ter­min­ated her tether. She just hoped to hell she had done the right thing.

  As Carl watched Tania, a de­li­ri­ous form of joy filled him. He had missed her so much. Missed the feel of her body next to his, warm and soft from sleep. Missed her acerbic wit and the not un­pleas­ant way her per­son­al­ity rubbed up against his. Missed the sharp in­tel­li­gence that lurked in her tawny eyes.

  Back when he was young and stu­pid—oh, maybe a day ago real-time, he ad­mit­ted wryly—he thought life was a game and the ob­ject was to amass as much prestige and money as he could. There was noth­ing and no wo­man Carl Orin couldn’t coax around to his point of view. He was the first guy in his high-school class to get laid, one of the first hack­ers to crack into his bank’s sys­tems, and the first com­puter spe­cial­ist to enter the Blue. He was Base­ment Five’s poster-boy and he had lived up to that im­age even in cy­ber­space, view­ing the in­form­a­tion land­scape around him as noth­ing more than one more puzzle for him to con­quer.

  It had taken en­forced solitude, and a few vis­its from a friendly yet in­sist­ent gi­ant white rab­bit, to make him see the truth. What he needed was not to be the richest man he could be. Or the most at­tract­ive. He needed to be the best man he could be. Which was why he was still in cy­ber­space, rather than try­ing to find a way back to the lab. The Rhine-Temple bot­net was more than a semi-sen­tient ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­fec­ted pro­cessing cycles. It was his test. His trial of fire. The ul­ti­mate or­deal, and an op­por­tun­ity to prove to him­self that he had really grown up, that he was worthy of call­ing him­self an adult rather than an over-eager, over­sexed teen­ager.

  And, as if he was part of some mythic quest, Tania Flowers had dropped into his home at ex­actly the right point, just be­fore he was about to com­mit sui­cide.

  Carl watched Tania enter the shut­down com­mands in her tether and, no mat­ter his noble in­ten­tions, he couldn’t force him­self to stop her. He might be con­demning her to an ac­cel­er­ated life in the Blue, but he needed her with a yearn­ing that was al­most phys­ical.

  He would make it right for her, pay her back for this sac­ri­fice, he prom­ised him­self that much. He would find the time to trans­fer all his as­sets to her name, launch her back to real­ity, and wish her all the best in a world he would never be part of again.

  Be­cause by the time she made it back, he would be dead. That was the only way.

  A flash caught his at­ten­tion and he saw the tether wink out of ex­ist­ence a split-second after Tania jabbed a but­ton on the small thumb key­board in front of her. She looked up at him but, be­hind the de­fi­ance, he saw a tremor of fear. He didn’t blame her.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now we re­lax, while I fill you in on what I’m plan­ning.”

  He got to his feet and she fol­lowed suit.

  She looked at him in dis­be­lief. “Now we can re­lax? We couldn’t have done that be­fore? You couldn’t have taken time out of your busy sched­ule to fill me in on the grand plan be­fore I ter­min­ated the tether?”

  He knew the heat in her voice had more to do with ap­pre­hen­sion than an­ger.

  “Not while the tether was alert­ing every ran­dom seeker bot out there to your pres­ence,” he said. “Now that it’s gone, we can take our time.”

  He launched him­self from the roof of the tall grey block and, with all the grace and pres­ence of a sharp-eyed rap­tor, she fol­lowed. He wasn’t used to the com­pany, to the feel of someone next to him as he soared through cy­ber­space. It felt..good.

  There was little hes­it­a­tion in Tania’s move­ments as they ar­rowed in on his apart­ment/lab and Carl real­ised he was proud of how fast she was ac­cli­mat­ising her­self to the Blue. He was sure it had taken him longer. He re­membered the days of in­tense loneli­ness and aim­less wan­der­ing be­fore he had dis­covered the gen­esis of the Rhine-Temple bot­net. He had watched the bot­net grow, ori­gin­ally drawn by its un­char­ac­ter­istic struc­ture, then fas­cin­ated and re­pelled when he fi­nally figured out what it was try­ing to do. When the first spiders from the bot­net de­tec­ted him, Carl knew he had no choice. It was either ac­tiv­ate the tether and flee to the safety of Base­ment Five. Or break it, stay in the Blue, and try to find some way to des­troy the mon­ster.

  Every now and then, he’d meet someone. A per­son who man­aged to stay in cy­ber­space long enough to clock up and carry on some mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, but such epis­odes were few and far between. And between his in­nate stub­born­ness, the Rhine-Temple, and the oc­ca­sional dis­trac­tion, it had taken years be­fore he real­ised what was miss­ing from his life.

  Tania.

  She had star­ted out as his rival and a po­ten­tial con­quest. The wo­man he needed to best, both men­tally and sexu­ally, in or­der to win the prize as the world’s first cy­ber­naut. Did he have some­thing to prove? Of course he did. He was the en­fant ter­rible, the self-taught hacker who had pro­gressed from be­ing al­most a high-school dro­pout to own­ing his own high-tech con­sult­ing busi­ness. He knew he didn’t have the qual­i­fic­a­tions of his rival, Doc­tor Tania Flowers, nor the in-depth know­ledge of how in­form­a­tion slot­ted to­gether. Where Tania had lo­gic, he op­er­ated on in­tu­ition. It was good enough to land him a spot at Base­ment Five, but the lack of formal edu­ca­tion had made him feel de­fens­ive through the en­tire period of tests and tri­als.

  And now?

  He looked at Tania as he ushered her through the front door of his “apart­ment”.

  Now, after more than a dec­ade of self-re­flec­tion, Carl de­cided that he didn’t like his real-time self any more. The sooner it was gone, the bet­ter, and he saw his im­pend­ing death as a form of atone­ment. The ul­ti­mate apo­logy. He only hoped she ap­pre­ci­ated it.

  She turned to face him the mo­ment he shut the door.

  “You said you had a plan?”

  Had he ever been that im­pa­tient, he wondered, and con­ceded that he prob­ably had.

  “We have time.”

  Strange how he had needed to speed up in or­der to learn how to slow down.

  He moved through the lab, tidy­ing up but, in real­ity, just keep­ing his hands oc­cu­pied while he tried put­ting his thoughts in or­der.

  Her voice drew his at­ten­tion. “How much time?”

  “You won't give up, will you?” He smiled to soften his words. “Okay, here goes. At the be­gin­ning, the Rhine-Temple moved very quickly. I didn’t think I had any room to move at all. I’d watch it in the morn­ing and, by the time I paid a re­peat visit in the even­ing, it would have doubled in size.”

  “What I failed to real­ise,” he said, mov­ing to his small pod of liv­ing room space, “was that the first growth is al­ways phe­nom­enal. Like watch­ing em­bryonic cells di­vide.”

  He sank into a plush chair and ges­tured for her to do the same. After a slight hes­it­a­tion, she cau­tiously ac­cep­ted the in­vit­a­tion.

  “But then it be­comes like that game of cel­lu­lar di­vi­sion. You know, when cells die un­less a series of con­di­tions are met.”

  Tania frowned. “Do you mean the game ‘Life’?”

  She was so quick. She knew in­stantly what he meant. At one time, their be­ing on the same wavelength scared the hell out of him. It made him want to dom­in­ate her. Now, he just sat back and smiled, a small curve of pride on his lips.

  “Ex­actly. How does it go again? Cells di­vide but with con­straints. If they can’t find food in an ad­ja­cent cell, they starve and die. If they’re sur­roun­ded by sim­ilar cell
s, they also starve and die.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “some­thing like that.”

  He could feel the im­pa­tience rip­pling off her and hid his smile. “So, when I first cut the tether, I thought I had been watch­ing months of in­cred­ible growth and I made the in­cor­rect as­sump­tion that it would con­tinue at the same pace.”

  “But it slowed down in­stead?”

  “Right. The bot­net had to move in or­der to ex­pand and, as you’ve no­ticed, there isn’t much of an in­form­a­tion high­way between levels in this uni­verse.”

  “Just flat lay­ers, one on top of the other.”

  “Flat lay­ers,” he re­peated, nod­ding his head. “Not only did the Rhine-Temple have to ex­pand and not can­ni­bal­ise it­self, but it also had to cre­ate its own ver­tical ‘streets’ to go from one layer of the Blue to an­other.”

  “And that took time.”

  “Lots of time. Lots more than I had ex­pec­ted.”

  Enough time for him to come up with a plan. It wasn’t per­fect, but it was the best one he had.

  Sud­denly, his hands ached with the need to hold her. It had been so long since they’d em­braced and she had con­sumed al­most every wak­ing thought of his that hadn’t been fo­cused on how to des­troy the Rhine-Temple.

  Know­ing he was tak­ing a chance, but un­able to stop him­self, Carl moved to her chair. He saw the sur­prise and war­i­ness in her warm eyes and the flush that heated her cheekbones un­der her lus­cious tanned skin, but he con­tin­ued to draw closer.

  Ex­pect­ing a re­jec­tion, he was sur­prised when she shuffled over, giv­ing him some space on the cush­ion.

  Now what was he sup­posed to say?

  Sorry I was such a bas­tard to you, but a dec­ade and a half of al­most sol­it­ary con­fine­ment has a way of sharpen­ing a man’s thoughts?