Terminal Connection (11 page)

S
teve swam to consciousness. His body ached, his mouth was dry, and his head throbbed.
Where am I?

Steve opened his eyes. It was pitch black and he couldn’t see a thing.
What did I drink last night? I must have blacked out.
He checked his back pocket. His wallet was gone. He checked his front pocket. So were his keys. He had been rolled. Wait. The ground was soft.
A bed, a hotel
? It smelled like roses.

The scent carried his memories to him. In a flutter of images he saw it all—Brooke’s friend’s death, the defect, Allison, and Syzygy. Syzygy’s piercing gaze stayed in his thoughts. The man’s gaze tore into him. How had Syzygy done it?

His heart pounded in his chest and his thoughts became sharp. Steve sensed someone standing there, watching him. He reached for the lamp’s switch and knocked over items on the bed stand. His keys hit the floor with a familiar jingle. Steve pulled the miniature chain under the lampshade and flooded the room with light.

The room was empty. Relieved, he laughed and looked around. Pink. The bed comforter was pink with embroidered roses.
Allison.
He smiled. She was nowhere in the room. “Some honeymoon,” he muttered.

Steve glanced around and found his laptop at the foot of the bed. He grabbed it, popped it open, and booted the system. Once the icons appeared, Steve pulled up his session with Syzygy.

He saw Syzygy had sent electrical signals to all his senses. It had not been high enough to cause a seizure. Syzygy could not bypass the hardware limits, but it did spike his senses beyond the software maximum levels.
How?
It didn’t make sense. The software checked the sensory limits on any interaction that took place in VR.

Syzygy had engulfed him. Perhaps the Nexus got confused. It could have viewed their aliases as a single object. Because the Nexus assumes no one is going to try to hurt himself, it wouldn’t bother checking the safety limits as Syzygy attacked him. Could he fix it?

He could, but it would require a few months of programming. He had made the assumption throughout all the programs. He would have to modify almost half of them.

He remembered something else. Syzygy could hear them talking on the direct link, which was impossible unless Syzygy was physically plugged into the Nexus. How had Syzygy gotten around this? Whoever he was, he knew more about the Nexus’ design than Steve did. Impossible. He had built the damn thing.

The message icon blinked in the upper left corner of his laptop. He clicked it. An email message from Allison appeared on the screen.

TO: Steve Donovan

FROM: Allison Hwang

SUBJECT: We got him!

Our friends at DARPA caught Syzygy ten minutes ago. His real name is Xi Quang.

Thanks,

Allison

The name surprised him. Steve thought he knew everyone who could tamper with the Nexus, but he did not recognize this name. His gut told him something was wrong. How could someone he had never heard of know so much about the Nexus?

Steve clicked the reply button and sent a message back to Allison.

TO: Allison Hwang

FROM: Steve Donovan

SUBJECT: re: We got him!

Allison,

Is he a colleague of yours? I’ve never heard of this Quang character. Only a handful of people could have messed with the designs the way that Syzygy did. Quang must have had help. Please send Quang’s Nexus by priority mail to my home:

Steve Donovan

267 Cabrillo Dr.

Walnut Creek, CA 94065

I’ll check the logs and confirm whether the attacks came from him.

Thanks,

Steve Donovan

Steve gathered his things, checked out of the hotel, and headed to the airport. After half an hour, he boarded a plane and took his seat. He shifted but could not get comfortable. His nerves felt on fire.

Something wasn’t right about Quang. He couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. Frustrated, he looked at his watch. It was 9:00 p.m., still early for Ron. Putting on the Nexus, the system connected wirelessly with the plane, and entered another world.

The temporary waiting area for the Nexus website was gone. Instead, Steve entered the nearly completed lobby. Ron was there. He surveyed the final updates to the room and shook his head. The virtual architects swapped in and out various fountains in the sitting area of the lobby.

“Ron?”

Ron turned. “My friend, how have you been?”

“Fine. Is everything okay with the lobby?”

“Oh yes, you and your girlfriend did a wonderful job of mopping it up.”

Steve looked down.

“So, are you hitched?”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“Come on. You’re a fast operator. When you get past yourself, these things don’t take long.”

“That’s nice. What are you doing?”

Ron sighed. “You know, when I was going into retail there were only three things that were important—location, location, and location. You techno geeks really screwed things up with VR. Location doesn’t mean squat now. Do you realize that now I have to track a million things and wear a million different hats because of you?”

Steve laughed.

“One of those hats is interior design. So tell me, which fountain do you think I should use here?” Ron motioned to one of the architects. “Can you bring up number three?”

The architect spoke a few commands and a fifteen-foot fountain appeared with a single white pillar in the center supporting three basins stacked on top of one another. The top basin was five feet in diameter, the next basin was closer to ten feet, and the last basin was almost fifteen feet across. Water cascaded from tier to tier; the flows formed a thick unbroken veil of water around the entire circumference of the top two tiers. The water roared like Niagara Falls and foamed as it hit the pool beneath it. A thick, lowlying fog clung to the fountain’s base and dissipated a few feet away.

“I don’t know. It’s a bit much.”

“I could shrink it down.” He turned to the architect. “Reduce the size by thirty percent.”

In a second the architect had reduced the fountain down to ten feet, and the sound of the water came up an octave. The fog remained heavy.

Steve shook his head.

“Okay, how ’bout this one?” Ron turned to the architect. “Can you pull up number seven?”

The architect spoke a few more commands. The fountain winked out and was replaced by a fifteen-foot copper tree. Copper limbs radiated from a thin central pipe, branching repeatedly until each limb ended with an upturned copper leaf. The leaves were colored with beautiful hues of red, blue, and green from natural corrosion. Water spewed upwards out the top of the central tube. It came down like rain spattering off each of the leaves. The water pooled together as it dropped from leaf to leaf, forming little streams until it plummeted into a large sandstone basin surrounding the base of the tree. The sound was beautiful, just like rain.

Steve nodded. “Better.”

“Keep it,” Ron said over his shoulder.

Steve stared at the ground. Things weren’t adding up. What if his gut was right? What if they found out that Xi Quang wasn’t Syzygy?

“Is something wrong, my friend?”

“Ron, does the alias Syzygy mean anything to you?”

Ron laughed. “I don’t know anyone that uses it, but syzygy is a word I used in hangman as a kid.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. Ron never struck him as being that literate. “So, what does it mean?”

Ron shrugged. “I never cared to look it up. I just used it because the word has no vowels. It’s impossible to guess. So what type of picture do you think I should put over here?”

Steve stared at the ground. Syzygy was a real word. The definition had to be important. Sometimes, a hacker would use an alias to represent an aspect of his personality; or sometimes he would pick an alias name that portrayed how he wanted others to view him. Either way, a hacker never selected an alias at random, murderer or no murderer. “Thanks, Ron. We’ll catch up later.” Steve moved to press the portal button

Ron grabbed his wrist.

“What?”

“Austin is stressing you out, isn’t he?”

Steve nodded.

“I can’t say how I know, but don’t worry. Things will work out soon.” Ron released his arm and returned to ordering his interior designers.

What the hell was that about?
Steve pressed the portal button. “Home office.”

He returned to the dark virtual room without walls, a crisscross mesh of green lines extending to infinity in all directions. “Jan, please display the definition of Syzygy.” A wall of platinum appeared before him. Etched into its surface was the definition:

Syzygy \Syz*y*gy\ (s[I^]z”[I^]*j[y^]), n. ; pl. {syzygies}

1. The point of an orbit, as of the moon or a planet, at which it is in conjunction or opposition; commonly used in the plural. For example, the straight line connecting the earth, the sun, and the moon, or a planet when the latter is in conjunction or opposition.

2. The coupling together of different feet; as, in Greek verse, an iambic syzygy.

3. The intimately united and apparently fused condition of certain low organisms during conjugation.

He could feel a thought forming in the back of his mind. His head felt like a raging river, a jumble of disjointed thoughts and ideas. Syzygy’s attack had clouded his mind worse than alcohol ever could. He thought hard, kicking against the currents of thought. It was no use. Finally, he let go. He let his thoughts drift into murky torrents, jumbles of abstractions. He closed his eyes and slipped under, flowing with the river. Like an unexpected current in a river, he sensed an insight coming after him. It washed over him.

There it was. Even if they caught Syzygy, another murderer could step in and simply take Syzygy’s place. No, finding Syzygy was a short-term solution. They had to recall the Nexus and replace the bad hardware component—the Signal Amplifier.

Steve remembered the memo. What would it cost to replace the part? He racked his brain. It had to be less than $2.50 for the parts; something wasn’t right. Austin said they couldn’t afford the repair at the time but Steve knew the margin. Austin had bragged that they could clear over $625 per unit after he negotiated the price with their distributor. Why then had Austin said that they couldn’t afford the Nexus’ repair expenses? Austin had said that they were tight on funds. How many units had they sold? Almost twenty million. Nexus Corporation should be doing better, much better than it was.

Tomorrow I’ll check the books and see what has happened.
Austin was so cocky that he probably had messed up the accounts without being aware of it. Steve hated finances. His stomach felt sick.

B
rooke shifted uncomfortably in her wheelchair. Its locked wheels creaked in angry protest and broke the silence of the library. Brooke cringed. No one looked in her direction. Her Portal Sphere’s microphone was not sensitive enough to broadcast the sound to the rest of the people in the virtual room.

Brooke grimaced. The motion had awakened a thin thread of pain that ran from her left shoulder down to her wrist. It asserted itself as another reminder of the accident. She wished her dad would let her use the Nexus instead of the Portal Sphere. It didn’t make any sense. He had enough of the machines lying around. Why didn’t he just give her another one while he was tinkering with hers? Brooke shook her head. With the Portal Sphere she could still sense the wheelchair beneath her.

It had been almost a year since the car accident left her mother dead and Brooke paralyzed from the waist down. Brooke sighed. A year was not long enough to adjust to everything. At least her dad had survived the accident.

She rubbed her shoulder as the nerve in her arm throbbed again. Why wouldn’t he let her use the Nexus? Exiting VR, Brooke checked the time. It was 9:17 p.m. He had forgotten again. They weren’t going out on the town as he promised. She laughed at the concept—Dad out on the town. Although she loved him to death, he was somewhat of a social retard. Well, if he broke his promise to her, then the Nexus was fair game. Besides, he hadn’t forbidden her from using it, just asked her to wait.

Brooke rolled into his office, careful not to disturb the piles of papers and books that littered the floor. Despite her best efforts, she bumped the desk and a larger pile toppled off the desk and blocked her path. Determined, she reached around the desk and pulled open the top left drawer. Brooke fished blindly through the drawer’s contents until she found the Nexus. She returned to the living room, locked the wheels of her chair as a precaution, and put on the Nexus.

In her own private room, she scanned the virtual landscape that her dad had made for her. Suspended two hundred feet above the ground, the four-tiered tree house surrounded an enormous sequoia. Each tier consisted of long, redwood planks supported by a large branch. Ladders linked the tiers together. The four tiers faced the four corners of this imaginary world—north, south, east, and west. The perspective from each, however, was the same. A forest stretched to the horizon in all directions. Her dad promised to install a lake for her when he had the time.

“Yeah, right.” Time was something her dad never had for her. Although he made many promises, he was always busy with work.

Brooke walked around the second tier of the tree house. It felt good to have her legs back, alive and beautiful again. Each time she reentered VR, however, it felt more awkward. Her body was forgetting how to walk. At least the ever-present pain in her shoulder was gone. She looked around the flat and thought of calling Charlie, her dad’s virtual dog. No, she decided. She wanted to be discreet. Charlie would squeal for sure. Brooke opened a portal and said “Stephen Hawking’s School Library.”

Like the entire high school, the library was virtual, an expansive room with a high domed ceiling, carpeted in red velvet, and paneled in luxurious cherry wood. Soft light evenly bathed the room, despite the fact that there were no lamps or ceiling lights. In fact, there were no distractions of any kind—no doors, no windows, and no decorations. The room was still, blanketed in a cathedral-like hush. The sounds of rustling pages and murmuring voices magnified the silence. No wonder they called it
The Coffin
.

Walking to one of the shelves, she pulled out a book labeled Mrs. French’s 6/12 Chemistry Exam. As she opened the book, a portal appeared.

Brooke walked through the black void and entered an endless dark space. The test question was as she left it Tuesday before she found out about Camille.

A few yards from her were three vibrating round spheres, about the size of basketballs. One represented oxygen and the other two hydrogen atoms. They revolved slowly around one another. Brooke sighed and kicked her legs as if she were swimming. As she drifted toward them, she saw that each sphere was comprised of a tiny nuclear core surrounded by an opaque spherical cloud, a blur of electrons. From class she knew the cloud consisted of a few electrons. However, they were small enough to exhibit quantum behavior; the electrons appeared in multiple locations at once. She stopped in front of the spheres.

Brooke grabbed the oxygen atom, tucked it under her arm, and reached for a hydrogen atom. The hydrogen atom vibrated wildly and shook loose from her grip before she could get a handle on it. It floated away at a rapid pace.

“Damn it! Computer, drop the temperature to minus one hundred Celsius.”

The computer complied and the atoms stopped vibrating. The temperature she was feeling, of course, didn’t change. Only the simulation did. The hydrogen atom that had drifted away bounced off an invisible wall and drifted back to Brooke. Irritated, she grabbed the other hydrogen atom, which hovered in front of her. She then took the oxygen atom in her other hand and tried to join the two. As the atoms drew near each other, they repelled one another. She pushed harder, but they would not bond.

“What’s wrong now? Why can’t anything be easy?” she muttered.

She attempted to bring them together once more, this time watching their electrical fields. A dimple appeared on the oxygen atom’s surface in its electron cloud. That’s right. The electronic field around an oxygen atom was not balanced. Although it needed the hydrogen’s electrons, it would bond only on two locations over its surface. She studied the atoms. The energy field of the oxygen atoms appeared to be thick. She didn’t have the positioning right. She held the hydrogen atom between her knees and rotated the oxygen atom in both hands until she found a spot where the electrical field was thinner and more transparent. She let go of the hydrogen atom and bumped it with her knee like a soccer ball up to the oxygen atom in her hand. This time, the hydrogen atom lurched toward the oxygen atom and attached. Their electric fields merged and formed a single surface that enveloped both of them.

One down, one to go.

The other atom had returned to her. Without too much trouble, Brooke was able to repeat the procedure. She attached the second hydrogen atom to the oxygen atom, forming the familiar V-shape of a water molecule.

The disembodied voice of the computer said, “Congratulations! You have completed problem four. Now, on to problem five. Frozen water is unlike most other frozen fluids. Please experiment and determine the difference.”

The void filled with movement. Other water molecules appeared and bounced off each other and the invisible walls of the void. A few of them bumped against her. They felt soft and resilient. The way they surged back and forth, pushing her around, reminded Brooke of swimming in the ocean when she had the use of her legs. She remembered the surf and how out of control she felt. Brooke reveled in the memory until a molecule rebounded off her head.

“Computer, what are the conditions?”

“Standard room temperature and pressure. Time has slowed proportionally to match your simulated size.”

“Computer, please lower the simulated temperature to minus twenty Celsius.”

Again, the temperature on her skin remained the same but the molecules slowed noticeably and stopped trembling. A group of six formed a hexagon, their V-shaped legs pointing inward. Several rings formed. The rings collected and stacked on top of one another to form a crystal. The crystal rose. It pushed the loose water molecules aside until it was at the top of the room. Over the course of several minutes, Brooke watched as the V shapes extended the structure into a complex lattice. In the end, no free molecules remained.

“Computer, the answer is that ice made of water is lighter than liquid water. Usually, a solid is heavier than its fluid counterpart, because the molecules pack closely together. However, water ice is less dense than fluid water.”

“Brooke, please clarify. Why is water ice not denser?”

“Because water ice forms ring-shaped crystals which leave a lot of empty space in the center of the crystal structure. Thus, the molecules do not pack as closely together as in their fluid form.”

“Correct! This concludes your practice chemistry lab. Please review problems one and three. You had difficulty with these two problems, Brooke.”

“I know, I know,” Brooke said.

The room dimmed and went black.

The scene dissolved into her virtual tree house. She felt empty and did not want to return to her physical body, at least not yet. Why go back to the wheelchair when she could be in here? There were still places to explore.

She glanced over at the well-stocked bookcase on the tier. Each book represented a site she could visit on the Internet. Her dad had installed the bookcase as a way to control her comings and goings since he did not trust the V-chip. She ran a finger over the titles. Most were nonfictional titles and themes—famous people’s biographies, scientific subjects, and how-to books. Her dad did not believe much in games or game sites.

What’s this? A title caught her eye:
The Mars Lander
. That was odd. She didn’t remember this title being here before. Her Dad didn’t buy fiction. Was it a new addition? She grabbed the title and sat down on the wooden floor. The book, really a booklet, contained just a couple of pages.

The title across the top of the first page read,
Visit Mars
. Beneath it was a map of Mars. The next page was titled,
The First Manned Expedition to Mars
. It had animated pictures on the left-hand side and a description on the right of a fictional chronology of the planned mission. It was likely some promotional material that her dad had picked up. He was constantly supporting various causes. She selected a picture at random and touched its smooth surface. The promo music for NASA played. Next to her, a portal opened with a whoosh. She got up and stepped through.

Brooke found herself wearing a spacesuit. A jumble of red rocks, covered in a thick layer of crimson dust, surrounded her. In the distance, the sharp peak of a mountain loomed above the Martian landscape. She couldn’t remember its name. Brooke noticed that her entire body felt different. Mars’ weaker gravity made it feel as if a great weight had been lifted from her. She looked down and took a tentative step forward. A small cloud of dust wafted up from the surface, settling in the thin Martian atmosphere.
Cool.
She took a second step.

Pain, like shards of glass etched across her mind. She fell or was falling. Color swirled across her vision. A metallic taste made her gag. What was happening? The colors settled and she stopped spinning. She was looking down at her withered legs and the wheelchair. “Jesus,” she gasped. A wave of nausea hit her as her body reeled from the sudden trauma to her senses.

“Brooke … told … use this! Are … listening … me? … Brooke?” Her dad’s voice faded in and out. Her dad stood over her, holding the Nexus in his hand.

Brooke clutched her head and screamed. “Stop it!” She grabbed the wheels of her wheelchair and pushed. They didn’t budge. “Shit!” she gasped. Tapping the wheel locks, she freed the wheels and raced toward her room.

“You don’t understand,” her Dad said.

Brooke slammed the door behind her.