Overclocked

  Tania skimmed the but­tons and pressed the second icon from the left. It was dec­or­ated with a thumb in the “up” dir­ec­tion.

  “I made it here okay, Don,” she mur­mured.

  On the screen, a blue dot—her ac­know­ledge­ment—trav­elled against the tide of on­com­ing am­ber and dis­ap­peared to the left. It would make its way, via the serv­ers, to one of the mon­it­ors in the ob­ser­va­tion room. She knew Don would breathe a sigh of re­lief that the first hurdle had been over­come.

  But then, hadn’t Carl also done that?

  Tight­en­ing her lips, Tania closed the tether unit and hooked it back on her belt.

  It had been pitch black when she ar­rived, her mind’s way of shield­ing it­self un­til it made sense of this new world. Now, the space around her was gradu­ally light­en­ing, like someone slowly turn­ing a dim­mer switch. As she watched, frame­works star­ted to form around her. They re­solved into skel­et­ons of build­ings. Level by level they formed, the thin lines snap­ping into place with swift pre­ci­sion. Once the wire­frame was com­plete, de­tails star­ted to ap­pear. Tania saw in­terior floors and steps be­ing ad­ded, the start of fur­niture ap­pear­ing in rooms be­fore ex­ter­ior clad­ding ob­scured her view.

  She star­ted walk­ing down what was swiftly turn­ing into a boulevard, build­ings spring­ing into be­ing on both sides of her as she looked.

  If she con­cen­trated hard, she could see in­side some build­ings. Even back to the wire­frame, if she wanted. Those were un­se­cured net­works, open to any­one with the curi­os­ity to ex­plore them. Other large grey blocks were com­pletely smooth and opaque. They were prob­ably banks or gov­ern­ment net­works. Some of the grey blocks spor­ted door­ways perched in­con­gru­ously halfway up the sur­face or at the top­most storey. Those were entry ports for those with the cre­den­tials, and abil­ity, to enter.

  Tania stared up at one such door­way. Against what looked like grey pol­ished con­crete, it was an ec­cent­ri­city. She saw an eight-pan­elled solid tim­ber door, three steps lead­ing up to it and a carved por­tico above it.

  It had worked in the sand­pit, but she wondered....

  Con­cen­trat­ing, she fo­cused on the old-fash­ioned door­way. With an ini­tial wobble that turned into some­thing smoother, she slowly rose. The door­way came closer. She kept rising. Fi­nally, she was on par with it. Step­ping for­ward, she stood on the bot­tom step and turned.

  Around and be­low her, cy­ber­space was laid out like a bust­ling night-time city. The tiny dots on her tether screen re­vealed them­selves as wheel­less vehicles trav­el­ling along wide free­ways, some slower than oth­ers. Some­times she would see sev­eral vehicles, slim and fast like mo­tor­cycles, merge into a single, big­ger unit and speed off down a street.

  She turned back to the door and saw that it was now dom­in­ated by a large brass es­cut­cheon. Her prox­im­ity had triggered the pass­word pro­tocol, con­jur­ing a lock on the pre­vi­ously un­marked pan­els. Tania didn’t have the key. It might have been fun to at­tempt a breakin—she thought she knew enough about bank­ing sys­tems to get past at least the first level of se­cur­ity—but she was on a mis­sion. With a tight smile of re­gret, she stepped away from the door and se­renely floated back down to street level.

  Maybe next time.

  The level of com­plex­ity that was still form­ing around her was amaz­ing, and Tania thought the mass of de­tail would make her job that much harder. How was she go­ing to find Carl in all this mad bustle? The sand­pit had been a tiny one-road town com­pared to the met­ro­polis that now sprawled in every dir­ec­tion. Which way should she go?

  Some­thing buzzed in her ear for a split-second and Tania re­coiled. It soun­ded like a bee. A very angry bee. In cy­ber­space? She frowned, in­stinct­ively swat­ting at the space be­side her head. There were no an­im­als in the Blue. Not un­less they knew the fun­da­ment­als of com­put­ing and had man­aged to source a neural head­set in their nat­ive hab­it­ats.

  She smiled mo­ment­ar­ily.

  And heard some­thing else.

  It soun­ded like a cush­ion hit­ting the ground be­hind her and Tania twirled. Un­be­liev­ably, in front of her stood a large white rab­bit wear­ing a plaid waist­coat and sport­ing a walk­ing cane. The tip of the cane was carved in the shape of a dragon’s head. Tania usu­ally liked rab­bits, but this one towered over her by a head, not count­ing its ears. Was this a de­lu­sion brought on by her thought of a rab­bit-hole when she was first in­ser­ted?

  “You’re new here,” the rab­bit said.

  “Who the hell are you?” Tania de­man­ded, ig­nor­ing the im­plict ques­tion in the rab­bit’s state­ment.

  The rab­bit cocked its head to one side. “You can call me Kru­lik.” Its voice was male.

  Tania took a mo­ment to steady her breath­ing. Of course she was right. There were no an­im­als in the Blue. The rab­bit in front of her must be an avatar, a rep­res­ent­a­tion of a per­son, just as she was. Ex­cept, while she still re­tained her hu­man form to ex­plore cy­ber­space, this per­son had de­cided to ap­pear as an over­sized rab­bit.

  “What are you do­ing here?” she asked, eye­ing it sus­pi­ciously.

  “No doubt the same thing you’re do­ing here. Ex­plor­ing.”

  Tania wanted to ask the rab­bit about Carl but re­membered Don’s words about for­eign gov­ern­ments. Was this Kru­lik char­ac­ter a for­eign agent? He cer­tainly hadn’t come from Base­ment Five.

  “That’s right,” she said, after a tight second. “I came here to have a look around.”

  Was he try­ing to lull her into a false sense of se­cur­ity by ma­ter­i­al­ising in such a ri­dicu­lous out­fit?

  “You’re dressed like someone else I met.”

  Des­pite the tenor of its voice, Tania real­ised that this “Kru­lik” char­ac­ter might not even be male. After all, it had lied about its ap­pear­ance, pro­ject­ing it­self as an an­imal rather than a hu­man be­ing. Why not lie about its sex as well?

  “Am I?” Tania tried to ap­pear un­con­cerned. “I’m sure there’ll be many more vis­it­ors around here as time goes on.”

  “You’re try­ing to find him, aren’t you?”

  “Find who?” she cadged.

  “Carl. Carl Orin.”

  Tania star­ted. She couldn’t help her­self. “What do you know about Carl?”

  “I was there when he ter­min­ated his tether.”

  Tania was over­come with con­flict­ing im­pulses. Should she ask the rab­bit more about Carl? Ig­nore it and con­tinue on her way? From her ini­tial re­ac­tion, it was already too late to pre­tend that she didn’t know what it was talk­ing about.

  “He had a good reason to do it,” the rab­bit said. “Ter­min­ate his tether.”

  Tania took a step back. “I don’t think I want to know any more.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know where he is now? I could take you to him.”

  Was Carl still alive? In their brief­ings, both Carl and Tania had known that there was al­ways the chance of some­thing cata­strophic oc­cur­ring. Some­thing that would des­troy the mind while leav­ing the body in­tact. Tania didn’t want to ad­mit it to her­self, but the thought had been nig­gling at her ever since Don told her about Carl’s ac­ci­dent. What if he had severed the tether be­cause...his per­son­al­ity had been des­troyed? By the rab­bit?

  Tania took an­other step back.

  “Thanks for the of­fer,” she said, keep­ing her voice calm, “but I think I’ll do a bit more ex­plor­ing.”

  She turned and star­ted walk­ing away from the gi­ant rab­bit.

  “Be care­ful out there,” it said, from be­hind her. “You’re run­ning barely above hu­man-nor­mal. That gives any­body the chance to at­tack you.”

  Tania kept walk­ing, de­lib­er­ately keep­ing her gaze to the front.


  “Stay in the less-pop­u­lated areas un­til you clock up. You’ll know where they are by the width of the pipes. The big­ger the pipe, the more traffic it car­ries.”

  The rab­bit’s voice began to fade.

  “We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”

  When the si­lence stretched to ten seconds, Tania fi­nally turned around. The rab­bit was gone.

  What the hell had that been about?

  To her chag­rin, the rab­bit had spoken some truth. The en­gin­eers at Base­ment Five already knew that routes of high data traffic would ap­pear as wider and busier roads. But what were the “pipes” the rab­bit spoke of? And what did it mean by “clock up”? And, now that she thought about it, where were the vehicles she had seen from her vant­age point at the bank’s door­way? If they rep­res­en­ted data pack­ets, they should have been swarm­ing around her. Yet, the boulevard was as deser­ted as a ghost town’s main street.

  Shak­ing her head, Tania re­sumed walk­ing.

  The rab­bit in­tim­ated that Carl was alive and that it could take her to him. If it was speak­ing the truth, surely that meant he wasn’t that far away?

  She stopped at a cross­roads and looked in the three dir­ec­tions avail­able to her. Grey fea­ture­less blocks of vary­ing height lined the streets, dis­ap­pear­ing into the dis­tance. She caught an oc­ca­sional dot of col­our mov­ing along the streets and blinked. The dots dis­ap­peared.

  Was she see­ing things now? Was there some kind of psy­chosis that af­fected people in­ser­ted into cy­ber­space? Tania looked down at her tether, flip­ping open the lid. Ac­cord­ing to it, she had been in­ser­ted eight minutes ago. That was two minutes longer than any of their sand­pit ex­cur­sions. Strange how it seemed a longer time, now that she thought on it. She would have es­tim­ated she had been in cy­ber­space for an hour at least.

  Tania clicked the lid shut, chose the left street and con­tin­ued walk­ing. Des­pite her mis­trust of the rab­bit, she had picked the nar­row­est of the three choices avail­able. If there were agents of a for­eign gov­ern­ment in­filt­rat­ing cy­ber­space, they would prob­ably use the wider, more fre­quently used streets to travel along. She hoped that, by choos­ing the equi­val­ent of a side street, she would be avoid­ing dis­cov­ery by them.

  The rush­ing in her ears that she first no­ticed upon in­ser­tion had changed. In­stead of one big wa­ter­fall, Tania was now hear­ing a series of wa­ter­falls. It was dif­fi­cult to make out, but some rushes soun­ded slower than oth­ers, as if they were trick­ling from streams in­stead of gush­ing from the ends of rap­ids.

  As she walked, more lights began to blink be­side her. Am­ber, green, red, blue, magenta, yel­low, cyan. Some ap­proached her head-on be­fore veer­ing away at the last minute. Oth­ers brushed past her so closely, she thought she felt the breeze from their passing gust against her arms.

  She was also clear­ing blocks at a faster rate. It had taken roughly thirty minutes to walk the last block. Now, Tania found her­self at an­other in­ter­sec­tion after only fif­teen minutes. She turned to check, but the length of each block ap­peared the same.

  When she faced for­ward again, a mov­ing block al­most col­lided with her. Tania threw her­self to the side and watched with hor­ror as a long green trailer sped over the spot where she’d just been stand­ing. She blinked and solid ob­jects sud­denly co­alesced be­fore her eyes. Cubes, rect­angles, spheres. Bear­ing no wheels, they bobbed cen­ti­metres above the street, hurt­ling down the road. Rather than two lanes as she had sur­mised, it ap­peared she was now walk­ing be­side an eight-lane high­way. Each lane was full of traffic, the space between each ob­ject barely enough for her to fit between. The roar­ing in her ears had fi­nally re­solved into the sound of these trav­el­ling vehicles. They must be what she had seen from the bank portal but why hadn’t she seen them at street level be­fore?

  Tania slowly got to her feet and dus­ted non-ex­ist­ent dirt from her pants. Minutes ago, she had been alone along a deser­ted high­way. Now, that same high­way was filled with streams of fast-mov­ing traffic in a vari­ety of shapes and col­ours. She looked up and gasped. Above her, a net­work of roads mirrored the land­scape she was tra­vers­ing, also car­ry­ing mo­bile threads of traffic. And above that. And above that again. Tania knew that, if she con­cen­trated, she’d prob­ably be able to see an al­most in­fin­ite num­ber of levels both above and be­low her.

  This was the Blue. Not the safe equi­val­ent of a sleepy coun­try town she and Carl had prac­tised in, and not the cold bar­ren empti­ness that she had seen when first in­ser­ted. Now, Tania could fi­nally see the mag­ni­fi­cence of cy­ber­space. And while its bones might be cool blues and greys, it was brought alive by speed­ing poly­hed­rons of warm col­our. Data, rush­ing to and from spe­cific points, moved like fire­work flashes. Tania felt her face be­ing lit up by each ob­ject that passed, the breeze of their passing brush­ing her cheeks and nose.

  It was beau­ti­ful.

  And she thought she un­der­stood the rab­bit’s term now. It had spoken of “clock­ing up” from “hu­man-nor­mal”. That would have been her when she was first in­ser­ted, her brain used to op­er­at­ing at a par­tic­u­lar speed. The speed of the hu­man world.

  In the Blue, her brain had to ad­just to a dif­fer­ent rate of change, one much faster than what she was used to. This was the world of mega-and tera-flops made real and her brain had needed time to ad­just. It had star­ted with static ele­ments, like se­cured net­works, be­fore filling in the data path­ways. She thought of them as roads, while the rab­bit ob­vi­ously saw them as pipes. Then, lastly, she saw the ac­tual data pack­ets as they sped their way through cy­ber­space. She had never thought of data pack­ets as things of beauty be­fore. Now she knew how wrong she was.

  A yel­low cube, brush­ing close, brought her back to her senses.

  There was a path­way between the build­ings and the high­way. This would be where pack­ets dis­en­gaged them­selves from the rib­bon of traffic, await­ing en­trance to their des­ig­nated net­work. Tania walked its length, hop­ing no packet would dis­en­gage and crush her. Then the traffic began to slow down. She re­cog­nised it as her brain fine-tun­ing the ad­apt­a­tion, not so much slow­ing the traffic as giv­ing her mind a boost of speed.

  As an ex­per­i­ment, she opened her tether again. Ac­cord­ing to the in­stru­ment, she had been in­ser­ted nine minutes and four­teen seconds ago. She con­tin­ued star­ing at the tether’s small dis­play, but the seconds’ in­dic­ator didn’t click over to fif­teen. She stood and watched for what she es­tim­ated to be a good minute. The num­ber of seconds didn’t change.

  As she snapped the lid shut again, Tania real­ised that she was now truly a part of the Blue, op­er­at­ing at the speed of cy­ber­space. She had been clocked up.

  Chapter Four

  She found Carl a day later, ma­chine time. She was skim­ming levels, float­ing up­wards and down­wards, try­ing to fo­cus on build­ings that looked dif­fer­ent, us­ing the level where she had been in­ser­ted as her home loc­a­tion. She figured that Carl would need a patch of real es­tate some­where to es­tab­lish as a base, and that he would make it as dis­tinct­ive as pos­sible in the hopes of at­tract­ing pos­sible res­cue parties.

  This begged the ques­tion of how, with so much in­form­a­tion to sift through, she would be able to find the right place in an ac­cept­able period of time. The only tac­tic that seemed to make sense was typ­ing “Carl Orin” into the little screen on her tether. When she ex­ecuted the com­mand, the uni­verse around her star­ted to re­arrange it­self. The change wasn’t massive. The high­ways, build­ings and vehicles looked much as they did be­fore. But there was a subtle dif­fer­ence in the kinds of build­ings she now saw. Fewer banks, for ex­ample, and more com­munity groups and cor­por­ate fire­walls. These loc­a­tions were where Carl Orin had been in th
e re­cent past, leav­ing traces of his pas­sage, like sticky fin­ger­prints on a stain­less steel wall. Be­ing di­gital, how­ever, the traces were either there, or they weren’t. It was im­possible to tell ex­actly how long ago Carl had vis­ited a par­tic­u­lar site, al­though Tania was hop­ing that a greater con­cen­tra­tion of vis­its within a par­tic­u­lar loc­al­ity meant that Carl had fre­quen­ted the area more re­cently. With de­term­in­a­tion, she fol­lowed her in­tu­ition and began look­ing dir­ectly for Carl’s di­gital hand­prints.

  When she fi­nally found his refuge, Tania had to ad­mit to her­self that the build­ing was cer­tainly dis­tinct­ive. Built as a single-storey cube, its ex­ter­ior looked ex­actly like the cor­ridor lead­ing to her apart­ment, right down to the flecked brown car­pet that covered it. Even the num­ber on the door was her apart­ment num­ber.

  212.

  She raised her fist, hes­it­ated for a second, then knocked.

  Si­lence.

  She was won­der­ing whether she should knock again when the door was flung open and Tania found her­self star­ing down the large black bar­rel of a weapon.

  “Wha—”

  “Who the—? Tania, is that really you?”

  The bar­rel dropped and her up­per arm was grabbed. She was yanked in­side and the door slammed shut be­hind her with a solid thud.

  Tania saw an in­terior that only su­per­fi­cially re­sembled her apart­ment and a man who only su­per­fi­cially re­sembled Carl be­fore she was slammed against the wall. The gi­ant gun bar­rel ap­peared again, aimed between her eyes. Tania’s at­ten­tion was riv­eted to it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tania Flowers,” she said. “Carl, what—”

  “What was the name of our lab?”

  “It didn’t have a name.” She felt her ir­rit­a­tion rise. “We called it Base­ment Five as a nick­name.”

  “Where was the last con­fer­ence we at­ten­ded to­gether?”