mention P. J. Farris.'
'Full house.' David laughed.
'And you can be sure Mr. Slaney will be there, right at center stage.'
Off in the living room an antique clock chimed the hour. 'It's time,' Leif said.
A new set of orders to his computer, and they were out of his virtual workspace, bouncing almost at random through the Net. The idea, David knew, was to lay as confusing a trail as possible between this computer and wherever they were going to launch the hacking program. If their attempt to break in was noticed, it should be impossible to trace it back to here.
The images on the display seemed to spin and swoop, making David wish he hadn't been quite so enthusiastic at dinner. At last they stopped in a grayish blank space.
'This used to be long-term storage-coincidentally enough, it's in one of the computers in the building where Alan works,' Leif announced with a grin.
'We're lucky he didn't decide to expand Latvinia and erase your little hidey-hole,' David shot back.
'Anyway…' Leif gave a few more orders, and the Amorph blob popped into existence in the middle of the dust-gray floor. Looking at a piece of paper, Leif recited a long Net address string. The Amorph icon faded from sight.
'I won't ask how you got that,' David said. 'Now are you going to burn it, or eat it?'
'Let's leave it for later,' Leif said, 'when we know whether or not we get in there.'
They sat in silence, watching the dead boring image of a drab, empty room. David yawned and stretched. He rocked back and forth in his seat, wondering if there was time for a bathroom break before Amorph opened the way up for them. He glanced over at Leif.
'I told you this program takes its time,' Leif defended himself.
'I know,' David said. 'That's the difference between what you see on the holovids and reality. Now I'm just wondering if we're missing out on any good holo shows while we wait.'
At long last a portal of sorts began constructing itself in the inactive storage space. The empty doorway was the same sickly greenish-white as the Amorph amoeba.
'Looks like we're in,' Leif announced.
'My turn now,' David said. He called up his virtual bag of tricks, and gave the order to proceed. Leif had already programmed his system to respond to David's voice commands. They went through the portal, and found themselves in a disturbingly familiar room. It was the study/library from the palace in Latvinia-just multiplied by about twenty times. There was a ton of stuff filed away in here.
'Good luck,' Leif muttered.
David pretended not to hear. He began deploying his weapons-directory crunchers, an internal searchbot program, even a file-viewing utility-and set to work.
After a long while David leaned back, listening to his neck crack. The more he'd wormed his way through Slaney's system, the farther and farther he'd hunched forward. 'What's our time look like?'
'You've been grinding away in there for about an hour and a half,' Leif replied. 'Amorph took about forty-five minutes to get us in. We've still got about two hours. What have you got?'
'Not much,' David admitted unhappily. 'I've found bits and pieces of the Latvinia program, but he's not running the sim from this system-it just doesn't have the juice.'
'That's a good thing, isn't it?' Leif asked. 'A simple- minded computer means less stuff to be found.'
'Yes-and no,' David replied. 'I keep coming across archived information files-stuff that's been downloaded from the Net, compressed, and stuck in storage. It may all be garbage-handy tips on how to build your own world.'
'We knew he'd been downloading a lot of stuff on that,' Leif agreed. 'On the other hand, this archived stuff could turn out to be his private journals from the time he was eight.'
David nodded. 'It just takes time to uncompress files, read 'em, and make a decision about whether or not they're useful for our purposes. We could be pawing around until midnight.'
'Or?' Leif asked.
'We could copy it all-download it, and then paw around in your space until midnight.'
'Could we fit it in the corporate storage we-um- borrowed?' Leif asked.
David nodded.
'Okay. Let's do that. Then we can both paw.'
The download went quickly enough. While that happened, David checked to make sure he'd left no traces of his presence. 'We probably should cover our tracks. Otherwise, isn't Slaney going to notice that his security has been neutralized?'
'I'll take care of that,' Leif said, 'after you leave.'
David pulled out, and Leif began issuing commands. The phosphorescent portal collapsed in on itself. 'Now Amorph will just disentangle itself,' Leif announced. 'When it's through, we'll just have that shapeless little icon sitting on my shelf in my home space again.' He gave another order, and a duplicate viewing station to the one Leif had set up for himself popped out of the wall. 'That side okay for you?' he asked, pointing to it.
'Fine,' David said. He plunged into the archives they'd acquired, bursting out one document from every folder. Then he hit one section that caught his interest. David decompressed document after document, growing more and more worried as he read. He was so immersed, he didn't even notice Leif come over and give him a shake. Then he realized his friend had been calling his name.
Leif peered at the holotext. 'When I have to go that far to get someone's attention, it's usually because they've discovered a set of naughty image downloads,' he teased. 'I was just going to tell you that the Amorph icon turned up-we're out clean. But now I wonder what's gotten your attention.' He wrinkled his nose. 'All I've turned up is recipe files for creating more realistic sims.'
'Yeah, there are a lot of those,' David said, tearing himself away from the display. 'This stuff is more theoretical… but a lot more worrisome. You know how hackers sometimes joke about forbidden subjects? That's what this stuff is: 'how-to' diagrams on circumventing safety protocols when creating an off-Net virtual reality. Programming tips on giving you absolute control of the virtual environment while in veeyar. Reports on experiments to disembody human intelligence and port it onto the Net-'
'The old 'ghost in the machine' thing, huh?' Leif looked slightly scornful. 'That's like the old-time alchemists trying to turn lead into gold. As far as I know, nobody's ever succeeded.'
'Yeah-what worries me, though, is seeing all this stuff archived in one place. Put it together, and you've got a guy who doesn't want to be a ghost in the machine. He wants to be the disembodied supreme being of his own little universe.'
'The god of Latvinia,' Leif finished, a worried expression coming over his features. 'What happens to the beta-testers when he tries this transformation?'
'I don't know-but I don't like this file I've been reading. It comments on the possibility of disembodying one or more persons to come along essentially as subroutines in this private universe.'
'Who would agree to that?' Leif asked in disbelief.
'This stuff doesn't necessarily talk about bringing them along willingly,' David replied. 'It just discusses the need for random interaction in the new environment.'
'Translated, even people with a god complex might get lonely once they've been reduced to electrons.' He shook his head. 'But this is plain science-fiction-no, fantasy.'
'I wish that were true,' David said. 'Not many people know it, but there have been experiments in disembodiment. The results-well, the experiments themselves have been hushed up. But I don't think they could have been promising.'
He turned troubled eyes to Leif. 'Alan may be clever, but I don't think he's clever enough to pull this off. If the rumors are right, every researcher who has ever tried this has either ended up with severe neurological damage'-he hesitated-'or dead.'
Chapter 18
