thing was, it would have felt just great to do it, too.
He sipped at the soft drink. Life had been easier when he'd been into
computers. He sat at home, jacked into the web, lived his life in VR.
Once he'd discovered girls and boomerangs, things had gotten a lot more
complex. Nothing risked, nothing gained--but nothing lost, either. But
the thought of going back to where he'd been before, a web-head with
butt calluses from sitting in a chair? That just didn't resonate. Data
interruptus, Jimmy-Joe would say.
The tournament had been canceled after all the crazy stuff. He'd never
even gotten a chance to compete. Given all the other crap, winning or
losing a contest like that meant zed, but even so, he wondered how he
would have done.
'Hey, Ty.'
He looked up to see Nadine standing there.
'Hey,' he said.
'Couldn't sleep?'
'Yeah.'
'Me, neither.'
They stood silently for a few seconds.
'You want a Coke?'
'I'll just have a sip of yours, if that's okay.'
'Sure.' He passed her the plastic bottle and watched her sip from
it.
She handed the bottle back to him.
'You think it's true?' she said.
'That somebody did it on purpose?'
'My dad thinks so, and he knows about stuff like this, so, yeah, I
think so.'
'Why? Why would somebody do a thing like that? Zap people and make
them go crazy? Make people hurt each other?'
He shook his head.
'I don't know. I can't think of any reason good enough.'
'I didn't like how it made me feel,' she said.
'I was so angry. I wanted to hurt people. I didn't care about them at
all. I was watching the vids on the news. They showed a Catholic
school somewhere. Some nuns beat a janitor to a pulp. How could that
be? Something that could make nuns do that, that's really scary.'
He could see she was on the edge of tears, really upset.
'Yeah. Scares me, too. But it's okay. My dad is going to get the
guy. It'll be all right.'
'You think so?'
'Yeah. I do.'
She gave him a little smile, and he felt better himself.
He took another sip from the Coke. He hoped his dad would kick the
guy's ass.
Monday, June 13th Gakona, Alaska
Howard was still peeved. The marshals were supposed to meet him at the
airport, but his plane had been delayed an hour coming out of SeaT ac
and they hadn't waited for him. He hated being late, but there had
been no help for it. He couldn't really bitch about it officially; Net
