into mindlessness.
Demogorgon.
It fitted.
Two years older, he put on a circlet for the first time and began his sublimation to Comnet. Dreams within dreams he cycled down and around. It surprised him with pleasure. His mind went into the wires on other people's wings and he flew, seeing the possibilities. He tried to learn the way but it was beyond him, frustrating him. He looked for assistance as the ideas grew into grandeur. When he found it, the new art form was born. It was a long gestation. Hundreds of cascading experiences, small in themselves, built into a framework of desire, a mature, full- blown version of his childish desire to create. Without warning this house of cards tipped and fell, sliding memories breaking into the cloud-rimmed sky of the Illimitor World.
Dumbfounded, his original turning continued. Ariane was there, and Tem, and the rest. Confusion that he knew must mirror his own showed on their faces. 'We were with you,' said Vana.
'I know,' he said.
Centrum began to feel the invaders, multiplying like a disease through its subsystems. It was an alien program moving through its circuits, stronger than any taken in before. Demanding action, it cast about for the ancient means of its defenses.
Circle back through the memories. There must have been a way, though in the beginning there had been nothing to fear, no other life. The Starseeders thought of everything. Their successors developed what was needed.
The years began to reverse themselves as the stack pointers moved back through the files, activating search commands. It was located.
Though its physical sensorium was frozen and meaningless, it was as yet unnecessary. There were no physical invaders. That did not make them less dangerous . . . rather more so. Deep within its memory, work vacuoles began to stir, to form themselves in a composite conceptual being, set to goabout their tasks after an agelong silence, after a time of nonbeing. The first primitive intelligences began to awake, too simple to wonder who or where they were. It went on.
To Ariane, this was not at all like a dream. A hard, sharp reality composed of a world, her friends, and the improbable thers. But in the moments after reliving sections of Demogorgon's past, which had seemed just as real, there was a strong sense of disbelief which could find no handhold in the realism around her. The camp chair bit into her thighs. 'How,' she said, 'do memories function within this program?' She started to stand and, perhaps not surprised, became incorporeal. It ran like a film. . . . She flew on the wire without imagery, an electronic ghost of herself cruising the circuits of Globo Entertainment Net in search of the glitches that bedeviled the commercial paradise. The world was without form, and void, save for when she stepped into the comlines of others, checking to see if a sensed power surging had disturbed anything.
A bright spark up ahead . . .
. . . and a bulbous sheik sat in the midst of his harem in a gorgeous turquoise-encrusted canvas pavilion that rustled in the gentle, dry breezes blowing in off the blindingly bright silver desert. Enormous turbaned eunuchs (mostly black but with a few token Caucasians to avoid a lawsuit) stood silhouetted at every entry point, heavy- bladed falchions at the ready. There were a hundred women here, every one of them slim and dark and willing. They rubbed his hands and feet, fed him and sucked at him as he sighed, mindless ...
. . . she dropped out of the circuit, smirking somehow within. Why did they do it? People took from the wires something that was readily available in the real world. Why bother? Especially considering that they were powerless to affect the outcome, could only feel and not do ... yes, for a certain kind of person, perhaps that was a reason in itself. A spark flared ugly red nearby and she drove swiftly toward it, rescuing superheroine . . .
... a woman lay in the strong, gentle arms of her
Annenian lover and suddenly screamed. The dark, hawk-faced man began to melt LSD-style, flesh, then muscles, then bone dribbling away, eyes flattening and trickling down onto her breasts, dripping to the carpet from erect, sensitive nipples. She screamed and strong hands suddenly burst through the wall and slapped him back together. The woman sighed and resumed her kissing, tasting the man's sweet tongue. . . .
Behind the walls of pseudoreality, Ariane finished patching the damned thing and sailed off, feeling smug. Have to alert the Assembly monitor about that one. The foolish program was interactive enough to accumulate errata after a few hundred uses and disturb the paying customers. Most 'net works were stable, could only do a few prescribed action-sequence choices forking from predefined nexi, but they were getting more complex, better, as those who controlled the 'net relaxed the rules, more assured of their technology. This only made her job more difficult, since many of the sequences were assembled by free-lancers, and bugs proliferated.
Another spark, cool blue, and she peeked at it briefly. . . .
. . . The man stood before a huge, formally garbed audience. He was handsome, and young for his heavy responsibility, and seemed well liked by the people he served. 'Ask not what your country . . .' he began, in rich, mellow tones, directly contravening two centuries of political ideal . . .
. . . and she dropped away. Historical dramas were even less to her taste than sexy romances. Well, everybody to their own preferences.
