He hated the idea of involving civilians, especially given where the investigation was heading, but their options were severely limited. The MIS experts had had months to scrape every useful bit of information from the damaged VRP. Maybe there was nothing more to scrape, but Larsen wasn’t ready to give up. A few days ago, he had asked Bassett to provide him with a list of civilian experts, ideally VR producers and designers, whose expertise exceeded that of the MIS specialists. The list was shockingly short. Over forty per cent of the bestselling VRPs came from the same source. Tracing that one source, however, was comparable to the old-fashioned adage of banging one’s head against a brick wall.
‘We know she is a she, and that she is trading under the name of NanoC,’ Larsen continued. ‘But not only is her identity protected by some of the strictest corporate confidentiality rules, she has actually invested a small fortune to remain anonymous. We are following the legal route of forcing her lawyers to lift the confidentiality clause, but at the same time we are… exploring other avenues. We will have her soon,’ he added, and it was hard to tell whether he was trying to convince himself or the General.
‘Good luck.’ The silhouette nodded and the black image vanished.
Toscano could have sworn it was the most preoccupied silhouette she had ever seen.
Somewhere in the Afro-European Alliance
Later the same day
‘Operation Ouroboros is a go,’ the black silhouette announced.
‘Chance of success?’ the caller asked.
‘Dependent on too many factors to predict with any degree of accuracy.’
The caller sighed. Being a mere observer never came easy to men and women of action.
‘Anything you can do to boost the odds?’ the caller asked.
‘Plenty, but I won’t do it. They are on their own.’ The silhouette’s mannerisms indicated impatience.
‘Any point in asking why?’
‘No.’ The silhouette broke the connection.
CHAPTER 1
Chandler N-Suit Research Base
North-West Lyon
Afro-European Alliance
Monday 20 April 2725
DAY 1
Elite Eloise Moretti extended her knees with perfectly measured force, allowing the diving board to give her maximum spring and height. She gracefully arched her body through the air before snapping into a perfectly controlled tight ball at the apex of the arch and rotating forward at a blinding speed. Time seemed to freeze as she enjoyed the cool breeze on her wet skin, trusting her body to do just the right thing.
She had never done four rotations before, but knew it would be perfect the first time.
Opening her shape just before hitting the water, she broke the surface of the Olympic-size swimming pool with the grace of a swan. It was perfect. The VRP was perfect. Yet again she had created a masterpiece. Everything was there, the look, the feel, the smell and that something that made her VRPs not merely great but simply superb.
Leisurely, she continued the dive all the way to the bottom and arched her back gently to swim along the white tiles for a few metres, her eyes open. The virtual mask was fixed tightly to her face, keeping the virtual water away from her nose and the chlorine-bromine mix from her different-coloured eyes. The virtual light above the surface reflected just right through the three-metre-deep water of perfect viscosity and gentle turquoise tinge.
A tiny drag to her right foot shattered the perfect illusion, and she frowned as she twisted around to see what was causing the problem. Somehow the virtual water seemed to think her foot had a kink, or maybe a sixth toe sticking out at an angle. It was nothing more than a few millimetres away from reality. Hardly something anyone would notice, but Eloise Moretti wasn’t one to accept such imperfections. Especially not in a VRP that was likely to secure her financially for the rest of her life, and then some.
It was her sixth such VRP that year alone, but that hardly mattered. The precision was her passion, and the reality in virtual reality was the holy grail, whether she was creating one of the soon-to-be-bestselling VRPs throughout the whole Afro-European Alliance or a little self-indulgent treat just for her own personal use. Even a fraction of a millimetre was unacceptable. Nearly four millimetres, as she judged the discrepancy, was an absolute abomination.
Eloise kicked quickly off the bottom, suddenly aware that she had been submerged for longer than her lungs could comfortably cope with. Her body, deeply bruised and battered from the morning of hard exercise in one of her favourite martial arts VRPs, protested against the effort, but she took no notice of it. She never noticed such inconsequential obstacles when she was at work.
Her strong, lean arms pulled her wiry, androgynous-looking body out of the water, and she sat on the edge of the swimming pool. She was in her early fifties, but no one brought up in an era without nano-tech would give her more than thirty years. Her tall body was fit, emanating a radiant and healthy glow, and there wasn’t even a single wrinkle in sight.
Her light brown skin glistened with beads of water as she frowned in thought. She took the mask off her face and ran her fingers through her comfortably short crop of platinum hair. A holo-console appeared in front of her at a tiny flick of her right hand, displaying lines of code. She used the same hand to swipe megabytes of the code away as she zeroed in on the problem, almost as if drawn like a magnet to the line where the mistake was likely to be found.
‘Hmm…’ she grunted unhappily, her eyes—one blue, one hazel—narrowing.
This wasn’t as quick a fix as she had hoped, and then she would have to test it over and over again and fine-tune the changes for hours. Her stomach rumbled loudly and she sighed.
‘Fine,’ she mused. ‘Hot shower, food and maybe a little massage before I get back to this,’ she promised herself, while her mind indulged her thoughts by considering a
