What a waste of a great talent.
Well. He had made his choice, Jay. Now he’d have to suffer the consequences. The train was leaving the station -no, the rocket ship was lifting for the stars, that was better-and Jay hadn’t booked passage. He would be left behind. Sad.
CyberNation was going to become reality, that Keller never doubted. How long it might take, exactly how and when it would come to pass, well, those were not things he could predict with certainty, but the end was a foregone conclusion. This was the information age, the time when knowledge and accessibility to it were the two most important things in the world. That genie wasn’t going back into the bottle, not ever. The world was going to undergo a change like nothing it had ever seen in all its history.
Jackson Keller was the best of the best, and he was leading the way to change.
One of the netweavers, Rynar, had just pulled his sensory gear off and was stretching when he saw Keller come in.
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“Jackson,” he said. “How are we?”
Keller smiled. It was a running joke-Cyber- I Nationalists often spoke in collective terms.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Keller said. “What is the 1 status on Attack Beta?”
“Going quicker than we’d hoped,” Rynar said. | “ZopeMax programming is one hundred and nine percent of goal. DHTML and GoggleEye Object Links are six by six.”
“How is Willie’s Ourobourus?”
“Well, the python is choking on its tail a bit, but he says he’ll have it fixed in a day or two.”
Keller nodded. “Excellent. Anything new I should know?”
“Well, Net Force is after us. Perhaps we should be quaking in our shoes?”
They both chuckled.
“Do they have anything?”
“No. They don’t have a clue. Don’t know who they are ‘chasing, where to look, how we did it. I think you give your old friend Gridley too much credit, Jackson.”
“Maybe. But he’s pulled down some other big players who didn’t give him enough credit. Better safe than sorry.”
“I hear you. We’ll keep shifting the cover.”
Keller nodded again. He headed for his own workstation. There was much to be done yet. Best he get to it.
Net Force Shooting Range Quantico, Virginia
John Howard had already put half a box of ammo through his revolver waiting for Julio. It was the first time he’d been to the range in at least a month, and he felt a little rusty. He was used to stopping by once or twice a week, and since he’d been gone, making the drive from town
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seemed like a real chore sometimes. Just for fun, he’d been shooting 9mm. His Phillips & Rodgers K-frame revolver was unique among wheelguns, in that it would load and shoot dozens of different calibers, ranging from .380 auto to .357 Magnum, this made possible by a clever spring device built into the cylinder’s rod housing. You had to adjust the sights if you wanted to do precision work when you changed calibers-the flat-shooting nines went to a different point of aim than .38 Special wadcutters or .357 hollowpoints did-but at combat distance, it didn’t matter all that much. A couple of centimeters one way or the other, it didn’t make any tactical difference.
He’d reset his command ring before starting-he was inactive, but still technically on call-so he was good for another thirty days before they changed the codes. So far, the smart-gun technology the FBI mandated for all its small arms had not failed any of Net Force’s operatives, though there were supposedly a couple of incidents at the FBI Academy range with Clocks where there were failures to fire. Howard didn’t know if that was due to the computer-operated smart tech, or the Tupperware Clocks, but he hoped it was the latter. What you did not want was for your weapon to turn into a paperweight when the bad guys started shooting at you.
And, while he worried about that, so far at least eight or nine regular FBI agents had lost their handguns in fights and the smart guns had saved them from being shot by their own weapons. If you weren’t wearing the control device, either a ring or a watch, the guns using them simply would not go bang. Made keeping a piece at home in a drawer at night safer, too. While Howard’s son was trained to shoot, and well past that age where he might accidentally blast himself or some playmate, a lot of federal employees who carried guns as part of their daily wear had small children at home.
Well. It wasn’t really his problem at the moment, was it? He was on “extended leave,” which was probably a prelude to full retirement. Somebody else’s worry, now.
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CYBERNATION
Here finally came Julio. Howard nodded at him. “Lieutenant.”
“General. Sorry I’m late. Your godson.”
“How is little Hoo?”
“Oh, he is fine. It’s Joanna and I who are tearing our hair out. How come you didn’t tell me what would happen when he got seriously mobile? One second you’re standing there trying to take a leak and he’s in the doorway, the next, he’s in the kitchen pulling stuff out of the cabinets. It’s like he can teleport-zip, and he’s gone!”
“You have to kidproof the place, Julio. Get those little latches that install inside doors and drawers, plug all the electrical outlets, put everything you value high enough so he can’t reach it.”
“Right. We thought we had done that. Yesterday, he climbed up onto a chair, leaned over, and punched the power control on the DVD player half a dozen times before I could grab him. He’s turned into this little tornado that destroys everything in his path. We clean the house top to bottom, spic-and-span, and five minutes later, there are toys, books, food, clothes, you name it, piled a foot deep everywhere. I’ve been picking peanut butter out of my running shoe soles for a week.”
Howard chuckled.
“It’s a conspiracy, isn’t it? Those of you who have had children deliberately kept the knowledge from those of us who didn’t, right?”
Howard laughed louder. “Of course. If people knew how much trouble they’d be, they’d never have kids, and the race would die off. Soon as you figure this out, you get a call from the Parent Police, and you have to take the secrecy oath.”
“Once I would have thought that was funny. Now, I halfway believe it.”
“You going to shoot, or are you going to bitch?”
“Well, sir, bitching is more fun, and probably I’m better at it, since I’m getting more practice doing that than
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shooting. The little brat is a full-time job. I get to sleep maybe two hours uninterrupted a night.”
“Life is hard.”
“Like you would know? How is retirement, General? You been gone a while now, you sure you still remember how to shoot? The bullet comes out of that end, right there.”
‘Tell you what, Julio, I could leave this handgun on a shelf for ten years and still be able to outshoot you. I’ll spot you the first attacker, just so I don’t take advantage of a tired and bleary old man such as yourself.”
“Keep your charity. I’ll shoot your ass off half-asleep and with one eye closed.”
“Not with that beat-up old Beretta of yours, you won’t. I’ll even let you use your cheating laser grips.”
“I don’t need those to beat an armchair, nap-taking commander such as you, General Howard, sir.”
Both men laughed.
Gunny came on the intercom. “I hate to interrupt your waste of good ammunition, General Howard, sir, but you have a com.”
“Tell them to call back later.”
“It’s Commander Michaels, sir.”
Howard looked at Julio, and his old friend smiled- butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“You knew he was going to call me, didn’t you?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what the general is talking about.”
“He’s going to ask me to come back, isn’t he?”
“What-I’m a mind reader now?”
Howard shook his head. He went to take the call.
3
In the Air over the Central Atlantic Ocean
Roberta Santas prowled up and down the aisles of the private jet, a stretch 737 rigged with all the comforts needed to keep a bunch of corporate fat cats happy. No gym, but at least a couple of flat spots wide enough to lie down and stretch out. That was good, ’cause sitting for a long time on a plane trip could cause blood clots in your legs. Santas had an aunt who died that way. She was taking a trip from Rio to London, and she’d been jammed into one of. those little seats between two other people for like eighteen or twenty hours. Only time she had gotten up was to go pee, and then only a couple times, ’cause she didn’t want to cause the guy sitting on the aisle any problems. For being so nice, Aunt Maria had gotten a blood clot that had cramped her leg so bad she’d started screaming. They were a thousand kilometers away from anywhere, and by the time they landed, the clot had broken loose and gone to her heart or lungs or something, and she’d been dead ten minutes before they got her off the plane.