Cybernation

The man removed a folded parchment from his jacket. The yellowish document was sealed with a dollop of orange wax, imprinted with the signet of a local marquis. Jay expressed his thanks as he took the parchment, thumbed the seal open, and unfolded the document.

Sure, he could have downloaded this file to his system and scanned it. And sure, if he needed hard copy, that would be courtesy of the office printer, on so-so grade ink-jet paper and not parchment, but what the hell — if you couldn’t have fun, why bother?

It was what he had come to find, but a quick read told him it wouldn’t do him much good. The hackers who had attacked the net servers were too good to leave an obvious trail he could follow. The marquis could not point him in the right direction, lo siento.

Oh, well, how big a surprise was that? The shock would have been if somebody good enough to rascal their way into major computer nodes had left obvious clues to back-track.

“Personal call override” came a warm and sultry voice. “Saji on line one.”

Jay cancelled the VR scenario with a finger-weave in the sensor grid and told his phone to put the call through. It came across in visual, so he could see her sitting in the kitchen at home. She was, as always, beautiful.

“Hey, babe,” he said.

“Hi, Jay. Have you once more made the world safe for democracy?”

“If you count Republicans, safe enough. What’s up?”

Saji — Sojan Rinpoche, his fiancee and the world’s most beautiful and bright woman — said, “My mother needs my help picking out the bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“And I can help you do this how?”

“Not at all, wiseguy. I was just calling to let you know I was going to look at bridal magazines with her.”

“In Phoenix?”

“No. She’s visiting my aunt Shelly in Baltimore. I’m going to take the train up for the day.”

“You’re gonna ride the train to Baltimore? Are you crazy? The local is full of perverts and weirdos! Why don’t you just do it in VR on the net?”

“Because it isn’t the same for my mother, she wants to sit next to me on the couch, and I’m trying to connect with her on this. You want her to like you, don’t you?”

“Well, sure. But — what’s this got to do with liking me?”

“You want me to tell her you said I couldn’t go see her?”

“I didn’t say that. And it wouldn’t do me any good if I did say it, would it?”

“No. Besides, I used to take the train to see my aunt every time I came to Washington, three or four times a year. Nobody ever bothered me.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you as a courtesy, idiot-mine. I don’t recall either of us planning on putting anything about ‘obey’ into our vows.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t mean to come off as some kind of authoritarian jerk here or anything, sweetie—”

“Oh, I don’t think of you as authoritarian at all, Jay.” She batted her eyes at him theatrically and gave him a big, fake smile.

“You’re a Buddhist, you can’t convince your mother that VR and RW are essentially the same?”

“They aren’t, and you know it. We’ve had this discussion before.”

He grinned. Yes, they had. Several times, and a couple of those were after mad and passionate lovemaking.

“I’ll be back before it gets late, and I’ll have my com. I’ll call you when I leave for home.”

He nodded at her. “Okay. It’s just that I worry.”

“I know. It’s sweet. Don’t do it anymore. I’m a big girl; I can take care of myself.”

“Not so big.”

She laughed. “I love you. See you later.”

Jay nodded, and said, “Love you, too.”

She disconnected and his screen went blank.

Given that she had hitchhiked across most of Southeast Asia when she was seventeen — once fending off a gang of bandits who wanted to steal her backpack — and ended up in a temple in Tibet where she stayed for three months, Saji could indeed take care of herself. Riding a train to Baltimore and back shouldn’t present much of a problem. Although he felt that since they were getting married, that should become his job, taking care of her.

He wondered if most guys felt that way about their bride-to-be.

Well. He could watch her anyway. When you were Smokin’ Jay Gridley, the fastest computer cowboy at Net Force, tapping into the surveillance cams on the trains that ran the corridor between D.C. and Baltimore was nothing. He could do that one-handed, with a head cold and a hangover. Saji didn’t ever need to know, and if something happened, Jay could have the transit cops there in an instant.

On the Bon Chance

Jackson Keller went to the main computer complex. There were only eight programmers and netweavers here, aside from himself, but they were certainly among the top twenty or thirty such people worldwide. Bernardo Verichi from Italy, Derek Stanton and William Hoppe from the U.S., Ian Thomas from Australia, Ben Mbutu from South Africa, Michael Reilly, the Irishman, Jean Stern the Israeli, Rich Rynar, the Swede. There were a few better, but the ones without vision didn’t interest him. Keller’s people had to be good, but as important as that was, they also had to be believers.

Skill without direction, without purpose, was wasted.

It was too bad he couldn’t approach Jay Gridley. Jay was the best he’d ever known, as good in school as Keller himself had been, maybe even better. They’d been friends then, trailblazers on the web, adventurers in cyberspace. But Jay had gone over to the dark side, become a Net Force op. One of the enemy. A man whose vision now stopped at the end of his nose. He fought to preserve the status quo, he lived in a tower of decay.

What a waste of a great talent.

Well. He had made his choice, Jay. Now he’d have to suffer the consequences. The train was leaving the station — no, the rocket ship was lifting for the stars, that was better — and Jay hadn’t booked passage. He would be left behind. Sad.

CyberNation was going to become reality, that Keller never doubted. How long it might take, exactly how and when it would come to pass, well, those were not things he could predict with certainty, but the end was a foregone conclusion. This was the information age, the time when knowledge and accessibility to it were the two most important things in the world. That genie wasn’t going back into the bottle, not ever. The world was going to undergo a change like nothing it had ever seen in all its history.

Jackson Keller was the best of the best, and he was leading the way to change.

One of the netweavers, Rynar, had just pulled his sensory gear off and was stretching when he saw Keller come in.

“Jackson,” he said. “How are we?”

Keller smiled. It was a running joke — Cyber-Nationalists often spoke in collective terms.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Keller said. “What is the status on Attack Beta?”

“Going quicker than we’d hoped,” Rynar said. “ZopeMax programming is one hundred and nine percent of goal. DHTML and GoggleEye Object Links are six by six.”

“How is Willie’s Ourobourus?”

“Well, the python is choking on its tail a bit, but he says he’ll have it fixed in a day or two.”

Keller nodded. “Excellent. Anything new I should know?”

“Well, Net Force is after us. Perhaps we should be quaking in our shoes?”

They both chuckled.

“Do they have anything?”

“No. They don’t have a clue. Don’t know who they are chasing, where to look, how we did it. I think you give your old friend Gridley too much credit, Jackson.”

“Maybe. But he’s pulled down some other big players who didn’t give him enough credit. Better safe than sorry.”