It was a good system. Not Keller’s design, but good, nonetheless.
Well. As much as he’d like to square off with Gridley and kick his ass, he had to get on with it. Omega was coming, and his group wasn’t going to be caught short. Maybe after it all came down he’d go find Jay and show him up, but that would just have to wait.
Washington, D.C. The Zoo
Jay and Saji walked along, looking at the tiger cage. It was cold enough so the big cats were inside their heated enclosure. A lot of the less furry animals seemed to be. For a long time after he had been mauled in VR by such a creature, it had been all Jay could do to look at the tigers. Now, he made a point to stop by the zoo every so often to remind himself.
He was only paying half his attention to the walk though, and, of course, Saji noticed.
“Where are you?” she said. “Not here.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about die fishing boat scenario. I think I know who the shooter was.”
“Really? How so?”
“Well, when I ran the lists of the best computer programmers graduated in the last ten years, I came up with quite a few I knew. Me, for one. A lot of guys I went to school with at CIT, others I knew from the net and web, conferences, like that. Some of them I’ve kept
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ich with, others kinda drifted away, so I tried to run some of the guys I used to pal around with that I en’t seen in years.”
ey passed the brown bear compound. The bears n’t around. Hibernating maybe? .es,” she said. “And… ?” “A couple have died. One in a car wreck, one from Most of the rest of them went into the field and done pretty well. A few dot-biz millionaires, some nercial software producers. Some got out of the field, to work in other areas. One woman I knew who was x programmer opened a chain of daycare centers for of kids. One guy writes comic books and TV shows, did well enough to quit work and live in Hawaii ‘somewhere. A couple dropped out completely to raise nic carrots or whatever on dinky farms in Footlick,
or like that.” :r”Yes. And … ?”
“Two are missing. No record of them. Didn’t die, didn’t married or change their names, just dropped off the of the Earth. One of them was a weirdo we all ex- would go ballistic one day and assassinate some- y. The other was one of my best friends, a guy named ckson Keller. We exchanged a couple of Christmas
; after school, and then lost track of each other.” “I see.”
“The thing is, I can’t imagine he would drop out of the He was gung ho, like most of us. I figured they’d ave to haul his body away from the console if he died, lut there’s no sign of him anywhere from about three
I after we graduated. Poof.” The insect house was not far ahead. It was always warm there, if kind of humid, but it was getting chilly, and By nodded at it. “Let’s go look at the bugs.” Inside, small children darted from window to window, oking at giant cockroaches, horned beetles, and all kinds scorpions from around the world. It felt like a jungle, i and damp, though the lights were fairly dim.
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“So you think maybe this weirdo is somehow part of things?”
He shook his head. “No. I think it’s the other one-my old buddy Keller.”
She looked at an albino beetle the size of a mouse as it lumbered over a floor of fine-grained sand. “What makes you think that?”
“A couple things. The weirdo-his name was Zimmerman-never had the chops to make me look bad in VR. Keller wasn’t quite as good as I was, but he coulda gotten better. And I’ve been thinking about that climb up Fujiyama. When the old Thai guy came and sat next to me. That’s what Keller used to call me, back in college. Jay, the Old Thai. He was a year or two younger than most of us, a child prodigy who finished high school at fifteen.”
“You think the VR construct was a hint?”
“I think so, yeah. And you know what it really feels like? It feels personal. Like this guy knows me, wants to screw me up. And his stuff is like the stuff Keller used to do-he was always big on ambushes. He used to say if you are going to duel with somebody, shoot ’em in the back before they see you coming, it’ll save you a lot of grief. Their fault if they weren’t paying attention.”
“Huh,” she said.
” ‘Huh?’ That’s the best you can do?”
“What do you want me to say? Yes, you must be right, you brilliant stud!”
He grinned. “That would be okay, I like the sound of that.”
She grinned back at him. “I bet.” She looked back at the beetle. “So, if this is true, how do you find out for sure? And then what?”
“Well, to start, I can dig deeper in public records, see if I can find Keller anywhere. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe he’s got a job in Silicon Valley somewhere running some company and I missed him.”
“Maybe he changed his name,” she said.
“Why would he do that?”
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“For all your smarts, you sometimes miss the easy stuff, | Jay. What if he got into debt? Maybe some kind of white| collar crime? Needed a fresh start. Or just went bonkers [and decided to start calling himself ‘Ra, God of the I Sun.'”
Jay watched the bug in the glass case .going about its t business. It had found something in the sand and was [digging it up. Jay halfway expected to see the insect un; earth a tiny human skull. “I don’t think so. If he had, |there’d be some record of it under his old name. First i things I checked were criminal records, B&D stats, and |Deja, and he was active on the net until about five years lago. After that, he’s just gone. You’d think somebody who was planning on leaving would say good-bye-he was on a lot of newsgroups and professional pub pages, then he stopped posting. I had a searchbot scan all his postings: There’s no mention of being in trouble with the law, or in debt, or wanting to change his name. One minute he was there, the next, he was gone.” “Black helicopters got him?” she said. Jay smiled. “Uh-huh. Don’t forget, I know where those guys hang out.”
The beetle came up with something that looked like a little ball made out of Tootsie Roll, and proceeded to roll it across the stand toward a far corner of the cage.
“All right, then,” she said. “Hunt him down and find out what he’s been up to.” Jay nodded. Yes.
27
Washington, D.C.
The ceremony was outside, a bright June afternoon. A sea of graduates in blue caps and gowns sat in folding chairs in front of a raised platform. On the stage, a speaker called out names, and students walked across the stand to collect their diplomas. Most of the students looked happy as they accepted their sheepskins and shook hands with the principal. A couple of the boys mugged and did silly waves. One boy flashed the crowd, showing off jockey under- shorts. A typical high school graduation, “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background, the proud parents smiling, crying, fanning themselves with programs, watching their progeny morph from children to semi- adults.
Later, a tall blonde girl stood with her arms around two of her girlfriends while her parents, then the parents of her friends took pictures.
As the festivities wound down, students hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, punching shoulders, a father and son walked side by side toward the
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parking lot The family resemblance was strong, the boy a younger copy of his father. The father stopped walking j and said, “Here, son.”
The boy took a small plastic card from his father, | looked at it, then back at his dad.
“Your first year of membership in CyberNation,” his | father said. He was blinking back tears.
The son looked amazed. “But-but you think this is |”tupid!” He waved the card a little.
“Times change, son. People change, too-they have to, |or they miss what’s important in life.” The boy looked at the card. “Your mother would have been so proud.” Behind them, a woman-the spirit of the boy’s mother-shimmered and appeared ghostlike into view. The father and son looked at the spirit, who smiled at them.
With the spirit of the wife and mother watching, the , boy and his father embraced.
“CyberNation,” said the deep voice. “It’s today, it’s tomorrow. It’s forever.”