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How was that possible?
“Tonir
“Urn. Yeah. Guru is here.”
“Really? That’s great. How is she?”
“Fine. She came to watch Little Alex so I could go back to work.”
Alex didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Coincidence,” he finally said.
“She said I’d be going back to work sooner than I expected. She got here ten minutes ago.”
There was a long pause. “Coincidence,” he said again. “I have to believe that. It’s too spooky otherwise.”
‘Tell me about it.”
“Coffee is ready,” Guru said from the kitchen. “Hello to Mr. Alex.”
“Guru says hello.”
“I heard.” Another pause. “Well, you might as well come on down here. I really do need all the help I can get.”
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
Michaels cradled the receiver and shook his head. Someday, he was going to have to sit down with that old lady and ask her how this tenaga dalam, the “inside magic” she claimed to know, worked. There was probably some scientific explanation, but damned if he could figure out what it was.
Meanwhile, he had bigger problems. He voxaxed Jay Gridley.
‘Talk to me, Jay.”
“We got it tracked to Blue Whale,” Jay said.
“Which is?”
“Major West Coast backbone server. Couple-three big nodes there.”
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: happened?” m’t know yet, boss.”
find out.” I’m gone.”
chaels stood and headed for the door. His phone was ; to ring in a minute or two, and the director of the [would be on the other end of the connection, wanting what the hell was going on. Since he didn’t have ng he could tell her, he wasn’t looking forward to nversation.
secretary looked up at him as he passed her desk. i going to the bathroom,” he said. “When the director , tell her I’m indisposed.”
said, ‘Take your virgil with you. I don’t want pyelling at me.”
was short for Virtual Global Interface Link, a slightly larger than a cigarette-pack that was a modem, computer, weavewire fax, GPS, credit : scanner, clock, radio, TV, and emergency beacon all e. They weren’t common devices, not in the version els had, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out : die FBI had his virgil monitored and sat-tracked 24/ IfThey said this was for the safety of high-level person, If you had a powered FBI-issue virgil attached to your , you could run, but you couldn’t hide, and unlike the Jian models with fudge-factors built in to keep terror- i from using them to guide ballistic missiles to targets, military GPS was accurate to within a couple of feet, els was fairly sure it would work even if it was off. ‘ you actually went to the rest room and took the virgil
you, they could tell which stall you were in. P^attery is dead,” he said.
ff Uh-huh,” Becky said. “Right. And there aren’t a half- en new batteries in your top desk drawer where they ays are?” |T11 replace it when I get back.”
NET FORCE
“Chicken.” “That’s me. Bye.”
San Francisco, California
The night was alive with flashing lights, fading sirens, and the crackle of fire dining on everything it could chew and consume.
The building, a five-story job built after the big quake of 1906, was burning like, well, like a big house on fire. Black smoke poured from the upper two stories, flames shot out through imploded windows on the third floor. Pumper engines filled the street with red lights and throaty mechanical drones. A hook-and-ladder with a mounted inch-and-halfer giraffe line blew water into the upper story, while ground-based hydrant-fed three-inchers as stiff as wooden beams spewed water into the third and fourth floors. Cops kept the lookie-loos back, and firefighters ran back and forth, moving hoses, gearing up with air tanks and masks, doing what they were supposed to do.
Jay Gridley, dressed in a stiff and clumsy fireman’s turnout suit-coat, bunker pants, gloves, boots, and helmet, light reflecting off the glo-flex strips on the clothing -stood with a group of other firelighters near one of the building’s entrances.
A captain stood there in front of a chart on a stand. He listened to a handheld tactical radio, looked at the team, and said, “Okay, here’s the situation. We got the building cleared of people so far as we know. Fire started on the third floor, which is two-thirds engulfed, and is spreading laterally and going up fast, but the first two floors are still cool. I want your line here.” He pointed at the chart. “Baker and Charlie squads are entering the structure from the east and south, and setting up here, and here.”
Gridley wasn’t up to speed on real fire fighting tactics.
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CYBERNATION
started creating this scenario a few days back, but n’t had time to do the research, so he doubted this was ‘ it would work in RW. Would they go into a building ground floor if the floors above it were burning? , something he’d want to do. His scenario was based at vids he’d seen, and everybody knew the never let truth get in the way of a story.
ely, in VR, it didn’t actually have to mirror It didn’t even have to look that good, unless you 1 to invite somebody else in to play. It was only the entive types like Jay who wanted die scenario to i real as possible-most people didn’t bother. For Jay, st of his creation would be to bring in a squad of Ifirefighters and have them look around, nod, then say, this is how it really is.” He figured if you could I somebody who really knew what it was like, you had at scenario.
people could buy off-the-shelf software and be ly happy. Most people weren’t Net Force’s top VR Smokin’ Jay Gridley. If he couldn’t do it right, a’t want to do it.
captain finished his directions. The team started i the building, dragging a stiff and heavy pressurized c. The power was out, so they switched on helmet and i-carried lanterns. The sounds they made were loud in i darkness, and the roar of the fire a couple of stories > muted but audible, the building vibrating as it was eaten alive by the orange monster. A lot of fire- anthropomorphized fire, Jay knew that much. r talked about it as if it were some kind of malevolent rather than what was essentially a real fast ver- \. of rust-oxidation and combustion … ck at Net Force HQ, Jay and his team were working computers, trying to find the source of the problem Jlue Whale-and they weren’t alone-but hi this see- he was about to take a turn up a dark hallway by elf to get closer to the source of the fire. Not some
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thing any sane fireman would do, and certainly not alone, he knew at least that much.
As the team moved to the location where it was supposed to deploy its hose, Jay slipped into the stairway and started climbing. The smell of burning material and the hint of smoke in the stairwell was a nice touch, he thought, congratulating himself.
As he climbed to the second floor landing, then past it, he suddenly thought about Saji. Despite her life-is-about- suffering Buddhist thing, she was very excited about their upcoming wedding. And while the idea of being without her and back like he’d been before they had met was as bleak a scenario as Jay could imagine, he had to confess to himself that he’d had some second thoughts. Getting married had never really been in Jay’s life plan. Oh, sure, he had figured there’d be women in his life, maybe even children someday, but the reality of it was different than the vague imaginings he’d had. That he would marry a Buddhist he’d met on-line while recovering from an induced-stroke-a woman whose net persona had been that of an old Tibetan lama-had never figured into his fastasies. And now that the actual date had been set and the plans were being carefully laid, the idea that he was going to be married to somebody had begun to hit home.
One woman, for the rest of his life. Day in, day out, always around… v
Yeah, the sex was great, and yeah, he loved her, couldn’t really imagine being alone, no Saji around; still, there was this … finality about the idea of saying “I do” and signing a lifelong contract that had never really occurred to him until it was actually staring him in the face…
He got to the third floor. Took off his right glove, pressed it against the door. The door was cool to the touch. He took a couple of deep breaths of the stale- tasting compressed air from his bottle, then reached for the doorknob. Worry about getting married later. Right now, he had a job to do. Some guys were screwing with
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