Problems

by Fred Warren -

Anya Sherikov's virtual office was a tidy environment with a wide desk, high-backed leather chair, walls lined with video monitors, and a collection of fragrant flowers in terracotta pots at the corners. A little ceramic dog with a bobbing head adorned the desk, and she gave it a nudge out of habit before unlocking the door to grant entrance to whoever was leaning on the visitor’s chime.

Security Officer Nigel Cromwell came bustling in, followed by Victoria Remsen, who was looking uncharacteristically professional in a white lab coat. Vicky slammed her hands onto the desk and leaned forward until she was nearly nose-to-nose with Anya. “Miss Sherikov, we’ve got a big problem! Somebody broke quarantine, and there are spiders running loose on the station!”

Anya gently pushed her back a few inches. “The pest-control systems will deal with them. This happens occasionally. Some gourmand lets his delicacies incubate a day or so too long, and…”

Cromwell waved her off. “No, Anya. This is a large-scale infestation. Some stupid gaggle of meat-bag revolutionaries have brought up fertilized eggs from Eclectia in quantity, and not just the small species. The hatchlings are moving through the ductwork and in the gaps between decks. Lasers and microbots are getting some of them, but not enough. I can keep our habitat safe, but the colonists are in for a fight like none they’ve seen since the original Founding. They’ve brought Hell onto Avenir. Again.”

Vicky nodded. “I’ve been reading up on what history we have about the first time this happened. It isn’t pretty. They grew fast, and some of these things were huge. The spiders’ venom caused hallucinations and psychosis before it killed. Most of the casualties were from poisoned colonists attacking each other.”

“Any help we provide must appear to spring from a routine order issued by the Avenir leadership,” Anya replied as she did her own historical search. “What do you think, Victoria? Is there anything we can do that won’t stir much attention?”

“I can direct a nanofactory to accelerate production of the standard antivenins we manufacture for Eclectia, so there’ll be more on hand once they figure out what’s going on. Until then, I can cycle pesticide into the ventilation system, but it won’t work on all the bugs, and it could make a lot of people sick on the lower levels where there’s no filtration.”

“Better than them dying, I suppose. Have you informed Captain Aziz?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t seem very worried. He said something about ‘acceptable losses’ and ‘facilitating the Plan.’ He smiled a lot.”

Anya sighed. “When is he not smiling? I’ll monitor the situation and try to identify the conspirators. Victoria, dispense the pesticide, but begin with small doses, so we can gauge its effects.”

“I’m not stupid. You think I’d just dump it all in at once?”

“Yes. Despite your many wonderful qualities, dorogoya, you have an affinity for mayhem.”

Vicky’s self-righteous ire dissolved into a sullen pout. “Okay, I would have, but now I won’t. You’re no fun at all.”

“Off with you, then. Nigel, let me know if there’s anything you need in support of our habitat defense.”

“Hmph. I can’t imagine needing your help, but thanks for the offer.” Cromwell scanned the displays covering the walls of Anya’s communications nexus, and jabbed a finger at one of them. “What were you doing when we came in? Who’s that girl?”

Anya didn’t look up. She began typing commands on the keypad set into her desk. “She’s one of the Gamers I’m watching until you finish repairs on the network firewall. She seems to be oblivious to our presence, so all’s well.”

Cromwell glared at her. “Just make sure she stays that way. I’ll have no time for anything but spiders for the foreseeable future.”

Anya paused her typing and smiled affably at him. “Of course.”

#

It took a few moments to make the transition back into the valet. Melanie was poking him in the shoulder and squinting into his vacant eyes. “Sir? Mr. Butler? Are you okay?”

Anya shook his head and blinked his eyes. “Ah, I’m sorry. Software update. They happen at the most inconvenient times. However, we must end our conversation, and you must return to your quarters immediately and secure all doors and vents. I’m told there is a security problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“One that will become your problem if you don’t hurry. I enjoyed our chat, and I think I can help you, but we must meet again later.” Anya clamped one of the valet’s arms firmly around Melanie’s shoulders and ushered her outside. “I will make what arrangements I can in the meantime to ensure there are no negative repercussions from your excursion into the private network. Until then, farewell.”

#

Melanie lingered in the corridor a moment, still shivering but elated that she’d accomplished her mission. Carson would stop chasing the Dreamers, and things would return to normal.

Something skittered across the toe of her boot. She looked down to find a small, red-striped spider lifted up onto its hind legs a few meters away, forelegs waving in the air, fanged mouthparts working rapidly and drooling viscous slime. She stared at it in fascination—bugs weren’t supposed to be able to get onto the station, especially not the upper levels. Where did this one come from?

It looked like something out of ArachnoHunters. She hated that game. When one of the spiders caught someone, it wrapped them in silk and then slowly sucked the life out of them. Whatever sadistic method the game employed to simulate internal organs being liquefied gave her diarrhea in real life for two days afterward.

She backed away from the spider, trying to keep her body as still as possible. Without warning, it hurled itself at her, leaping a half-meter into the air and nearly closing the space between them.

Melanie screamed and sprinted down the corridor, not daring to look behind her.

Tea

by Fred Warren -

“A cup of tea, miss?” 
 

“Yes…that would be nice. Thank you.”

Anya Sherikov maneuvered John Milton’s cyborg valet to the bar and filled a copper teakettle she found there with water. It was awkward, using this body like a puppet. The interface was anything but smooth, and it was more difficult to multitask. She felt as if she was swimming about in an ill-fitting suit. A portion of her awareness was racing through the Avenir databases, looking for information on this tense, mousy girl who knew far more about the Dreamers than she ought. It was fortunate she’d turned up at Milton’s door before Cromwell found out about her.

Perhaps I can manage to save her life, if she doesn’t know too much.

The valet’s hands trembled as Anya made him pour the tea leaves from a small canister into a mesh strainer. She had to pull her attention away from the database to avoid scattering them onto the floor. She was already tiring—this would have been difficult enough without the added burden of her illness draining her strength. Meanwhile, Melanie Hunt shifted in her chair, crossing her legs, then uncrossing them, her eyes darting around the room, like a caged animal searching for an exit but finding none.

“This…this is a nice room. Is that real wood paneling?”

“Yes. It is an extravagance, but Mr. Milton found it soothing.”

“Who gets his apartment now that he’s dead?” Melanie grimaced. “Oh…sorry, that’s a rude question, isn’t it?”

“Some business associate, I presume. I am not privy to the details of his will. There are no living relatives.”

The water began to burble within the kettle, and Anya found the data she’d been looking for. Interesting. This was no idle Gamer. Melanie was the daughter of third-tier Aristocrats, but she had opted for technical training, graduating near the top of her class and earning an assignment to Avenir Network Control, all without any discernible influence from her parents. She was skilled in computer programming, cybernetics, and simulation theory. Her graduation project…

Chyort. If she was half as good as her resumé, this was going to be trouble.

The teakettle whistled, and Anya managed to pour the tea through the strainer into Melanie’s cup without spilling a drop. She delivered it on a matching saucer with a curt bow, then seated the valet on a chair opposite the girl. “Now, tell me why you’re here.”

“Well, it’s mostly about my brother. He has this obsession with the Dreamers. He thinks they’re real and that they’re using a huge chunk of network server space to run their virtual heaven. One of his buddies died trying to hack through the firewall, and that scared everybody away for a long time. It left a crack that lit up a couple of days ago, and three of us went in to check it out.”

“Check it out? How?”

“I didn’t want anybody to risk their lives on this crazy beetle hunt, so I sent Audrey through the opening in the firewall to recon what was inside.”

“Audrey?”

Melanie grinned. “Flat Audrey. She’s an AI...a database worm. I created her for my tech school graduation project. She camouflages herself to infiltrate an operating system, then she soaks up every byte of formatted information she bumps into.”

She slipped that thing into Paradise and out again without leaving a trace? This girl was the most dangerous threat to the Dreamers’ security in a hundred Foundings.

No, not a threat. Deep within Avenir, inside her life-support pod, Anya was smiling. An opportunity.

She kept the valet’s expression carefully neutral. “Impressive. What did you learn?”

“Not much. Everything was military-encrypted except user data on the person who had interfaced with the network through the firewall…John Milton. That’s when I figured it out. The stuff behind the firewall was business data, maybe some of it on the gray side of legal, or worse. Everybody knows…knew…Milton was a wheeler-dealer. It makes more sense than a play world for brains in a vat, or whatever.”

“If you’re correct, I would expect Mr. Milton to be very unhappy that his confidential data had been compromised. Why did you come to see him? Did you intend blackmail?”

Melanie jolted upright, fluttering her hands. “Oh, nonono…nothing like that. I don’t care about shady business contracts and I'm not short on money, believe me. I just wanted confirmation. For my brother. If he knows there’s nothing interesting behind that wall, he’ll give up his insane quest to find the Dreamers and go back to gaming. His friend got roasted for breaking that firewall. I don’t want that to happen to Carson.”

“I understand. You must love your brother very much.”

“I do. And I feel responsible for him. I’m the only contact he has with the real world. It’s hard enough to know I could lose him to the Games. Death for real…I don’t think I could bear it.”

There was an insistent ringing in the part of Anya’s consciousness that wasn’t controlling the valet. An emergency summons. She turned her full attention to it, pushing herself into her virtual office space within Paradise.

#

The valet went slack, eyes glazed, head lolling to one side.

Melanie drained her teacup. “This is really good. Could I have another...” She stared quizzically at her host for a moment, then slowly leaned forward and waved a hand in front of his face. “Hello? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

No response. She was pretty sure this wasn't normal operation, but there wasn't much  in the way of diagnosis she could do without her tool kit. “Soooo,” she said, standing up and edging backward toward the bar, “Maybe I'll just...go ahead and pour it myself.”

Afterlife

by Fred Warren

“Move the colony.”

It was a throwaway line, something John would toss out for a few cheap laughs at a cocktail party, a bit of cynical commentary on the state of Avenir Eclectia. It wasn't a call to action. No one but the lunatic fringe would seriously consider it. The Avenir space station might have been born an interstellar transport, but in the hundreds of Foundings since its arrival at 94 Ceti, it had added a panoply of pods and modules and bays and docks, like a hermit crab adorning its seashell home with bits of flotsam and jetsam, until its spacefaring origins were obscured beyond recognition.

But the Dreamers had not forgotten, and they were working patiently, incrementally, and invisibly to make Avenir a spaceship once again. John had no doubt they would succeed, and his business instincts screamed at him to seize their invitation to unlimited power and leverage. They controlled the nanofactories, the computer network, and who knew how many key government officials. Their virtual world was amazing, even when experienced through an obsolete interface. Part of him longed for the full experience. Sensations, smells, tastes, sights beyond his wildest imaginings, so vivid as to make the distinction between real and virtual irrelevant. Islands, and birds.

And there was Anya.

Something still held him back. All dreams came at a cost, and this one was no exception. He'd never thought much about his fellow colonists, other than as human resources or business competitors, but now as he wandered the station, ranging farther than he ever had before, he found himself looking at their faces, pondering their fate. From the idle rich of the upper levels to the desperate poor begging for scraps in its depths. Aristocrats and merchants, Peacekeepers and Enforcers, dockworkers and technicians, fishmongers and beetle butchers, pickpockets and orphans. Who would be taken when Avenir shed its encrustations and blasted away to a more hospitable star? Who would be left behind? Would they find a way to survive without the station's technical resources? Would the colony devolve into barbarism, a handful of scattered tribes clinging to life as both hunters and prey of Eclectia's giant insects, slowly suffocated by the planet's corrosive atmosphere?

What did it matter? The colony was dying anyway. The Dreamers knew this. The only way to save any of it was to move along with whatever they could salvage. From that perspective, his choice was either to remain as he was, gathering wealth and gilding his own pleasures as best he could until the end, or to join the Dreamers, where he would have a voting stake in the colony's future--and the power to shape it.

When John thought about it that way, there wasn't any choice at all. He found an observation gallery in an obscure corner of one of the station's lower levels and gazed out at the feverish countenance of Eclectia and beyond to shattered Sheba and the leering glow of the Whale Star itself. It might be the last time he saw them face to face, with his own eyes.

“You've made up your mind.” The image of Anya Sherikov stood beside him in her shimmering red dress, her eyes merry.

“I can't even have the privilege of a quiet moment with my own thoughts?”

“You will succeed me as Communications Officer. No one can intrude upon your privacy without permission, save Captain Aziz. Even he must knock first.”

“That's reassuring.”

“We wagered among ourselves how long it would take you to deliberate. Captain Aziz thought you would decide within the first day. Victoria was less optimistic.”

“How much less?”

“She said I'd probably find you dead drunk in a dockside bar two weeks from now.”

“Vicky is one scary little girl. What about you? What was your guess?”

Anya smiled. “You're right on time.”

“Congratulations. So, what now?”

“Look over there.” She pointed toward the window. A Hawthorne-class VIP shuttle had just cleared its moorings and was falling away from the station toward Eclectia.

It exploded in soundless flash of white light.

“The official records will state that all occupants, including one John Milton, were lost when their spacecraft suffered catastrophic engine failure en route to Adagio. Your personal assets have been dispersed and controlling interests in your various business ventures transferred to your partners. It's time to take up residence in Paradise, John. Welcome to your afterlife.”

#

Melanie checked the address again. It had taken a little digging, but she was certain this was where he lived. She smoothed her tunic and trousers and brushed a stray wisp of hair from her eyes before ringing the chime.

A thin, pale man wearing a plain black suit opened the door. His face was void of any emotion as he examined her. “May I help you, Miss?”

“I...my name is Melanie Hunt. Are you Mr. Milton?”

“No, this unit served as Mr. Milton's valet. I await re-purposing.”

It was a Frank. Melanie swallowed hard. She had to see this through, for Carson's sake. “I need to speak with Mr. Milton. It's urgent. Tell him it's about the Dreamers.”

The cyborg butler was still for a moment, then it blinked twice. When it spoke again, its voice was higher in pitch, almost feminine. “Mr. Milton died early this morning.”

“What? Oh...oh, no. I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Thank you. I...I hope they find you a good job.” She had to fight an impulse to flee. Turn away, and take one step at a time, like a sane person.

“Wait.”

She spun around. The impassive face wore a softer expression. It was smiling. There was just enough curve in the mouth to make it certain. Franks weren't supposed to feel emotion. Was this a new feature, special for rich owners?

It opened the door wider and bowed. “Come in, Miss. Perhaps I may be of assistance.”

Download

by Fred Warren

Melanie stood in the shadow of the obsidian mountains, alone this time. No ninja outfit, no dodging and weaving her way from boulder to bush, trying to hide from an enemy that wasn't there. Most of all, there was no Carson and no Hamsa. She'd catch hell later for doing the retrieval without them, but they'd just slow her down.

This place, deserted or not, gave her the creeps. It felt haunted. The twisted drill bit embedded in the fractured cliff ahead was Jumbo's Folly, the headstone of a reckless gamer who died trying to break into whatever was protected by the mysterious black wall. Carson thought it was Paradise, the fabled home of the legendary Dreamers. Melanie thought he was nuts.

He'd abandoned life beyond his simulation couch, but he was her brother. She'd never abandon him.

Whatever it was, it didn't want visitors. Two days ago, Carson and his friends had detected a data leak here, and she'd sent a reconnaissance AI into a crack in the firewall. By now, the chameleon program should have filled its memory with the information they'd need to penetrate the enclave without triggering a lethal response.

It was time to recover Flat Audrey and get out of here.

“Audrey, return.”

The slender black ribbon that dropped from the gash in the cliff lay in the grass for a moment, then curled up on itself like a tiny serpent, whistling in a reedy voice, *MISSION COMPLETE.*

Melanie picked it up and set it in the palm of her right hand. “Welcome back, Audrey. How are you?”

*I AM FINE. I AM FULL. I DO NOT LIKE THAT SYSTEM.*

This was an odd status report, even from Audrey. “What don't you like about it?”

*MANY HOSTILE SECURITY PROGRAMS, ALL PURPOSED TO DESTROY INTRUDERS. WE SHOULD LEAVE NOW.*

“No argument here. Were you detected?”

*NO. I AM EXTRAORDINARY.*

“Yes, you are. Let's go home.”

It was a relief to get out of the gaming rig. Melanie used the suite's interface to transfer Audrey from the network into a memory stick, then she returned to her own room and plugged the stick into a stand-alone workstation. She didn't want anybody else seeing what Audrey had discovered behind the firewall.

She opened the first archive and groaned. It was encrypted.

“Audrey, why didn't you decrypt this data?”

*UNABLE. MILITARY-STRENGTH ENCRYPTION. I AM NOT THAT EXTRAORDINARY.*

Melanie chuckled. There weren't many AIs that could make a synthesized voice sound sad. The developers usually didn't bother. Audrey, however, was a labor of love.

“It's not your fault, baby. I programmed you.”

*YES, IT IS YOUR FAULT.*

“Saucy girl.” Melanie could still hack the encrypted files, but she'd have to call in a favor from one of her tech school classmates who had a bone to pick with the Peacekeepers. “Is anything you collected not encrypted?”

*YES. OPEN ARCHIVE 8034-A. INTERFACE DATA AND ID OF GUEST USER EXTERNAL TO NETWORK. ARCHAIC ADAPTER SPILLED DATA THROUGH GAP IN FIREWALL.*

“Do tell. This must be the guy who lit up Jumbo's Folly. Let's take a look.” Her fingers flew across the touchpad, and lines of data, readable data, flowed across the screen. Technical specifications of the user's simulation rig. Network addresses. Data volume and rate of flow. At the end of it all was a standard colonist identification code cluster. And a name.

Melanie blinked. “John Milton?”

She knew the name. Milton was a celebrity, a big-shot businessman, an import-export broker. It didn't make sense. This guy was too busy making money to waste any time on sims. He played his games in the real world with real people. What possible connection could he have with the Dreamers? Why would he care?

He wouldn't.

Melanie smiled. That was the answer. There weren't any Dreamers. The obsidian firewall was there to protect records of shady business deals, or embezzlement, or bribes paid to government officials. That would make a lot more sense than a play world for disembodied relics of a bygone age. If she could prove it, her brother would lose interest in Jumbo's Folly, and the firewall, and the missing memory blocks in the network servers. He'd go back to his friends and his games and stop risking his life sticking his nose where it didn't belong.

It was time to pay a visit to Mr. John Milton.

Flatworm

by Fred Warren

“Ninja outfits, Carson? Seriously?” Melanie wrestled with the black mask shrouding her head and face. The eye slit had somehow gotten turned around the wrong way and she couldn’t see anything. Virtual reality could be amazing, but she still didn’t see the point of the sort of realism that simulated clothes going askew.

“You said we have to be stealthy. And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Rhino?”

She gave the mask a final yank and glared at her brother. “This isn’t a game, Car…Rhino. We’re not going to sneak up on the firewall and stab it with a knife. I mean, look at it.”

The firewall manifested in the simulation as a towering range of obsidian mountains spanning the visible horizon--enormous, black, jagged teeth poised to devour the twilit sky. Melanie, Carson, and Hamsa crouched behind their rally point, a low hillock that felt profoundly inadequate to screen them from any observers watching from the heights.

“All right, fine! It makes me feel less…visible, okay?” Carson shoved the dagger he’d been fiddling with into the belt of his shozoku and turned away.

“Skitterbug.”

Hamsa chuckled. “You’re on point, Mouse. What now?” Even in ninja garb, his avatar looked more like a sumo wrestler than an assassin.

“Where’s Jumbo’s Folly?”

“It should be right in front of us,” said Carson. “Look for a glow at the base of the mountain. There should be a crack where Jumbo broke in.”

“There!” Hamsa pointed to an indentation in the obsidian wall, about 200 meters away and slightly to the right of their position.

Melanie squinted in that direction. “I don’t see…wait. You’re right. There it is...that hazy green patch. Good eye, Orca.”

“How are we going to get over there without anybody seeing us?”

“I don’t think there is anybody. From what you told me, Jumbo didn’t encounter any resistance until he started his hack. The defenses don’t kick in until they sense an intrusion.” Melanie stood up. “Follow me.”

Carson didn’t move. “Uh, Sis...how about Orca and I wait a few paces to make sure they don’t have some kind of death ray aimed at you?”

Hamsa grabbed Carson by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “C’mon, Rhino. Mouse is in charge. We have to follow her orders.”

They trotted in a loose column toward the green glow. She’d die before giving Carson the satisfaction of betraying her own fear, but Melanie found herself checking the mountainside every few seconds from the corner of her eye. There were no signs of life, yet she could feel a kind of pressure from it, a massive power, coiled and waiting.

But nothing happened. Nothing moved on the silent monolith of ebony glass. No alarms sounded; no death rays flashed out to meet them.

As they drew nearer, the glow coalesced into a zigzagging crack that traveled 10 meters diagonally upward from the mountain’s foot. There was a pile of rusty scrap metal with bits scattered across the ground, and something that looked like a huge, twisted drill bit wedged into the obsidian where the crack began.

The remains of Jumbo McLaren’s security hack, left behind by its incinerated creator.

Hamsa shook his head. “It’s too narrow. We’ll never fit into that.”

“We don’t have to.” Melanie fished around in a pocket of her shozoku and pulled out a short length of fabric, a few centimeters wide.

“What’s that?”

“Not what. Who. Gentlemen, meet Flat Audrey.”

“It looks like a piece of tape.” Hamsa bent down to take a closer look.

“Audrey is a sophisticated micro-AI, optimized for information collection. A flatworm. She was my tech school graduation project. Say hello, Audrey.”

The fabric curled up into an S shape and warbled, *HELLO, AUDREY.*

“Oh, yes,” Carson sneered, “Very sophisticated. Does it tell jokes, or does it just sit there, being a joke?”

*I GATHER INFORMATION. I DO NOT TELL JOKES.*

Melanie swatted Carson’s head. “Pay attention. Audrey will go into the crack, follow the data leak, merge with the network inside the firewall, and camouflage herself as a diagnostic subroutine. She’ll collect information for a couple of days, then return to us. She’s got 20 teras of storage.  I’ve instructed her to pinpoint weaknesses in the security protocols, analyze their encryption scheme, and collect access keys. With that information, we can find our own way in.”

“You’re an impressive little bug, Audrey,” said Hamsa, nudging Audrey with a finger.

*I AM NOT A BUG. I AM A FLATWORM, BUT I AM IMPRESSIVE. THANK YOU.*

Melanie smiled inside her ninja mask. “Audrey also enjoys compliments.”

She drew a katana from the sheath strapped to her back and gently placed Audrey on its tip. “All right…if we get any reaction at all from this, everybody logs out immediately. Understood?”

“Understood.” Hamsa took a step back.

Carson hesitated a moment. “Be careful, Mel.”

Melanie extended her arms, slowly pushing the katana’s blade toward the crack in the mountain. She inhaled sharply as it entered the aurora of green mist surrounding the crevice, but there was no change in the glow, or any other sign of trouble. She positioned the blade’s point as close to the opening as she could without touching the obsidian. “Audrey, deploy. Recovery in 48 hours.”

*DEPLOYING.* The flatworm extended itself and slid into the gap like a tiny snake, its skin instantly matching the color and texture of the volcanic glass, and vanished.

Melanie pulled back and returned her katana to its sheath with a sigh. “She’s in. Now, we wait.”

Orca

by Fred Warren

Melanie closed the maintenance access panel on the contoured platform that supported Hamsa El-Hashem's--Orca's--swollen body. Swathed in a black simsuit and matching helmet, the nickname was apt. He looked like a baby whale strapped to a slab in some deranged zoologist's lab, awaiting dissection. The two cyborgs keeping silent vigil at the foot of the table only reinforced the mental image. Even the air in the narrow compartment smelled faintly of formaldehyde.

She shuddered as she moved to the control console on the opposite wall and toggled the comm circuit. “All done. You now have industrial-strength surge protection between the network and your sim interface. Nothing short of a lightning bolt is gonna get through that.”

The reply was deep and raspy--and it came from the blob on the table, not the console. Orca reached out toward Melanie with one hand. “Thanks, Mouse. I hope it's enough.”

It took both of Melanie's hands to enfold his. “Enough? Weren't you listening, Hamsa? I told you, nothing short of...”

“You never saw the vids of what happened to Jumbo, did you?”

“No. I didn't. You guys said he took some electrical feedback when he cracked the firewall, and it killed him.”

“It didn't just kill him, Mouse. It cooked him. His simsuit melted into his skin.”

“Don't worry. This mod will give you enough time to bail before anything gets through.” Melanie hoped her voice carried more conviction than she was feeling now. Shells. What's hiding behind that firewall?

He pulled his hand back, giving one of hers a squeeze as they separated. “You better go suit up. Rhino's getting itchy. The Folly's been hot 30 minutes now, and it's never stayed active more than an hour.”

“Keep him on a short leash until I log in. I'm on point for this op. You both promised.”

“Yeah, and we both still think you're crazy. This plan of yours better be something special.”

“It is. Count on it.” Melanie gathered up her tools and moved toward the door of Orca's apartment, taking care not to touch the cyborgs as she passed them. It was totally irrational, but they made her skin crawl.

Orca called out after her. “Hey, Mouse, how's Rhino looking? I mean, for real?”

She didn't turn around. “I don't know. Carson...wouldn't let me in. I had to pass the parts through a slot in his door and upload instructions to his Franks over the net. I'm praying they didn't screw up.”

“That's too bad, but I can understand why he wouldn't want you to see him like this. Like me.”

“Well, I don't understand. He's my brother. I don't care what he looks like. I want to hold his hand. I want to feel him breathing. For all I know, he's already dead, and I've been talking to some souped-up A.I. the past two months.”

Orca chuckled--a metallic, rattling sound. “No, you'd know the difference, Mouse. Better than anybody.”

Folly

by Fred Warren -

Melanie swayed as her equilibrium adjusted to the sudden transition from prehistoric jungle to corporate briefing room. Carson was standing beside a tri-D map of the Avenir cyberspace projected in midair, arguing with his buddy, Orca. He hadn’t even changed out of his camouflage battlesuit.

Wow, this must be important.

Orca was stabbing at the diagram with an index finger. “Don’t do it, Rhino. It’s a really bad idea. There’s a reason we call that place Jumbo’s Folly.”

“Jumbo was my friend. I have to follow through on this for him, or his death won’t mean anything.”

Death?

Melanie staggered around one arm of the U-shaped conference table and grabbed her brother’s arm. “What are you talking about, Carson? What’s Jumbo’s Folly?”

“It’s the big one, Mouse. The ultimate access…the door to Paradise.” His eyes were shining with an excitement she hadn’t seen for a long time.

“Paradise. You mean that storybook land where the Dreamers are supposed to live?”

“It’s real. Here, look at the map.” He flicked at the image with two fingers and it spun slowly clockwise. Nodes and connections illuminated. “Avenir is only using 40% of its server capacity, but we keep bumping up against storage limits. Where’s the other 60% going? The network addresses are indexed, but we can’t access them.” He pulled the image to a halt and waved a hand across it. A thick, black line lifted up, encircling a large sector of space. “They’re protected by the thickest firewall anyone’s ever seen, right here. Jumbo tried to hack his way in, and he almost made it.” Carson pointed at a red dot glowing at an edge of the black circle. “That’s it. Jumbo’s Folly…and it’s active again.”

“He died there?” Her brother’s lean, chiseled avatar towered over her. It bore little resemblance to the genuine article. She wondered if his real body could still stand at all.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to pound through this idiot’s thick skull,” said Orca, who must have jumped in from a sports simulation. He was wearing a blue uniform with thick shoulder pads and a silver helmet with bars across its face. There was a blue lion stenciled on the helmet, and the number 74 was emblazoned in white on his jersey. “Whatever lives behind that firewall caught Jumbo when he broke through, and it fried his brain.”

Carson slapped Orca’s helmet. “But the point is, he broke through. And if what’s behind that firewall is important enough to defend, it’s important enough to investigate.”

“I think Orca’s right,” Melanie said. “I don’t want you going anywhere near that place.”

“Listen, guys…I loved Jumbo like a brother, but he only played the games one way: full power, straight ahead. I don’t intend to go pounding on that wall where he left off. I’ll take a look, assess the break in the firewall, and if it looks promising, we’ll come up with a plan to exploit it without killing ourselves.”

Orca took a step back. “Hold on a minute. Who’s this ‘we,’ Rhino?”

“You, me, and Mouse. She can rig our hardware to give us more protection against power surges. We still don’t know what’s behind the wall, so can’t risk taking an army in there. Not yet.”

“No way, Carson.” Melanie shook her head. “Mom would never forgive me if I let you do this.”

“I’ll go in with or without you, Mel, but I’d rather have you watching my back. Come on, Sis.” He gently squeezed her shoulders. “This is important. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t ask you. Please. For me.”

She squirmed and pushed her brother’s hands away. “All right, already. But we do the recon together, and I take point.”

“You? Why?”

She grinned. “Because I have an idea how to poke the beast without waking him up.”

Gamer

by Fred Warren -

The velociraptor tore Melanie’s leg from her body, showering her in blood, heedless of her screams. Her finger convulsed on the trigger of her submachine gun, but the bullets found no purchase on the dino’s armored hide.

“Should have loaded AP rounds, Mouse. Maybe next time you’ll listen to your big brother.”

“Shut up, Carson. And quit calling me Mouse.”

“That’s Rhino to you, Mouse. Would you please hurry up and die so we can restart the level? Man, I hate team survival criteria. I could have plowed solo through this lame scenario in five minutes, tops.”

“Stupid lizard’s still chewing on my leg. Aaagh, why does it have to hurt so much? If you’d laid down some covering fire, genius, I might have made it across the clearing. Using your teammates as bait…Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch…doesn’t inspire confidence in your leadership.”

“Not a scratch on me. Maybe if you could learn to follow orders, you’d live longer.”

“There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ Carson. Ohmigosh…here it comes again.”

“Heh. Nope, no ‘I,’ just ‘meat.’”

The raptor’s jagged teeth ripped into Melanie’s torso, causing her simsuit to generate a convincing impression of her body being chewed in half. Her vision went full red, then black. “All right, that’s it. I’m logging, if only to reassure myself that all my parts are where they belong.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sis! One more run, please! I promise I’ll watch your back this time, and I’ll let you have your pick of the loot.”

“50-50 split.”

“70-30.”

“60-40.”

“Okay, okay. 60-40, you harpy. I should have locked you out of my circle when I had the chance.”

“Yeah, right. Who else would get your hardware upgrades for half-price and install them for free? Well, mostly free.”

“Chiseler.”

“I love you too, big brother. Give me five minutes…it still feels like my guts are hanging out somewhere.”

“Your guts are right where they belong, Mel. See you in five.”

Melanie smiled. He was a jerk, but he could be so sweet, when he wanted to.

She groped around with her right hand, found the bailout switch, and slapped it. After her visor cleared to pink translucence, she pulled off the tri-D helmet and ran her fingers through her hair. She hurt all over. The games were fun—when she wasn’t getting stabbed, shot, torched, or eaten—but she didn’t share her brother’s obsession. There were too many interesting things to do in the real world, and there was no way she’d ever let her body degenerate into a flabby sack of lard like Carson and his pals. Slugs, everyone called them. Carson wore the name like a badge of honor.

She sighed, levered herself up from the gaming couch, and staggered to a basin set into the wall where she could take a drink and splash water on her face.

Carson was the only reason she played at all. She’d promised their mother she’d look after him the day he’d filed his Writ of Independence, after he’d locked himself into a gaming suite with two caretaker cyborgs. Now, she was his only contact with the world beyond the game servers. It helped being a computer tech. She understood the games and could do depot-level maintenance on his simsuit and interface hardware. He couldn’t dismiss her along with the rest of Avenir Eclectia as an irrelevant distraction from the virtual world he loved.

So he wasn’t lost to her. Not yet.

Melanie stretched her cramped muscles, luxuriating in the relief it granted from the ache and burn of the simsuit’s lingering effects. She owed herself a hot bath later, and that thought was incentive enough to hop back on the couch and don her helmet one last time for the day. She checked her chronograph and swore—eight minutes since she’d logged out. She swatted the login switch, steeling herself for a lecture.

Her vision tunneled, expanded, and refocused, and a flood of sensations from the simsuit rushed through her body. She was back at the rally point for Chrono Marines, surrounded by leafy, steamy jungle, the air alive with the calls of exotic wildlife and insects. A dino roared in the distance—probably a tyrannosaur. She gripped her weapon tightly and scanned the undergrowth. She was safe from attack here, but the sensory immersion was so complete, she couldn’t help feeling as if something might pounce on her at any moment.

She checked her ammo, then swapped the default magazine for a clip of armor-piercing bullets. It stung her pride, but she wasn’t going to be some overgrown lizard’s chew toy twice in one day.

Where was Carson? By now, he should have been giving her an earful for being late. Melanie keyed her mic. “Car…Rhino, this is Mouse, in position at the rally point. Do you copy? Over.”

There was no response, just a faint static crackle in her headset. “Rhino, Mouse. I’m at the rally point, awaiting orders. Please respond.”

There were two short beeps, indicating a connection from outside the game. “Mel, something’s come up. Log out of CM and jump to Conference Room Seven.” Carson’s voice was strained and shaky.

“What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Better than fine. I got a call from Orca a couple of minutes ago. Jumbo’s Folly just went hot.”