Virtually True (24 page)

“What was the info?”

“Fuck if I know. I didn’t have time to study it while I was inside. I did make a personal copy, but the CyberFucks took it. All I know is that it has to do with some weapons. But what in this world don’t?”

“Weapons. Like technology?”

“Something new, something complex and dangerous, but I don’t know what. When I got out of the program, the CyberCops were waiting. They accessed the data, smashed my equipment, and left me.” Odessa’s about to set up the final access routes when
logjam
flashes on the screen. “Fuck. Must be satellite interference or a power drain.”

As Odessa searches for the miscue, muttering under his breath as if words will make things happen, True thinks about
logjam
. A word that conjures up something. From his past.

Odessa punches a box underneath his console and
logjam
is replaced by
proceed with access plan
. Sighs, then says, “Yo, man, last thing.
You’re
scaling the net.”

“Me? Why not you?”

“I got to stay here and make sure you get your ass out, both cheeks intact. This is one complicated ether-route.”

“What about Reiner?”

“Why the fuck should Reiner go through? You’re the one with the skills. You need me to tell you I think you’re good? You’re good. Excellente, man. You got flair. A natural. That’s rare.”

“I can’t go.”

“Well, I ain’t going. Like I said, this is a two-person setup. And Reiner doesn’t do shit like this. She’s from the old school. Does everything primary source.”

“How old can her school be? She’s, like, thirty-five.”

“Try sixty.”

“No.”

“Fuck, yeah. Surprised you didn’t know. Which is another reason she can’t go. All that plastic surgery and drug therapy’s weakened her heart, her insides are rotting. You know how much shit she has to pump into her body to stay the way she is? Time moves forward. Try to stop it, it’ll fuck you up. Look inside her and you’ll see someone hurting worse than you and me.”

“She told you this?” True’s irrationally jealous.

“No. You think I’d work for someone I didn’t check out? Reiner’s background wasn’t easy to find, but it wasn’t hard either.”

“What else you find out?”

“TUS.”
The usual shit.
“But trust me, she can be trusted. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“She’s never rocketed through electric space?”

“Never. She’ll trip a trap, get us all smoked.”

True can’t face going through virtual reality again. He’ll never get out.

Reiner breezes in. “I smell scoop. Let’s get started.”

True tries to detect age lines, bloodshot lines in her eyes, wrinkles, gray hair. But Reiner looks a robust thirty-five. The drug therapy would bleed Fort Knox. No wonder she grows her own food.

“What are you looking at?” she says to True.

“Nothing.”

“I finally got over to the phone bank and tried to access those tabloid stories on Sato. It occurred to me since WWTV records pieces right off the air—and I never heard of any virus that could attack broadcast tapes—I might be able to access them. The stuff is well-protected, as you know, moated against hacker fiefdoms, attack plagues, whatever. I thought they might be shielded from Sato’s eraser plagues.”

“But they weren’t, were they?” True waits for Reiner to lie. She could have contacted WWTV, erased the stories herself. What if Odessa is wrong about her? Maybe he’s living lies, too.

“No, I got them. They’re just useless.”

Reiner’s legit. Either that, or she got word True tripped the security field.

“The stories are utter bullshit,” she continues. “I mean they paint Sato as a crazy fucker, but that doesn’t mean anything. They were way off. They even got his first name wrong. The only interesting fact was that it mentioned his association with the bosozoku. And you and I did have a run in with them. But every time something fucked up happens, they blame it on the bosos.”

True knows the stories are useless; he watched the tape and arrived at the same.

“We’re ready to rock.” Odessa hands True a headset. “Got to go dinosaur. You haven’t worn a head jock in a while, right? Tough. The power keeps snuffing. Since this is a delicate op, and we can’t let anyone notice any power drain, we got to use this.”

True holds the headset loosely in his hands. Doesn’t want it.

Reiner flicks at Odessa with her fingers. “Why are you giving it to him? I’m going in.”

“Fuck no. True goes.”

She grabs the headset. True doesn’t resist.

“Reiner, Reiner, Reiner,” Odessa says in rhythm, “This is some heavy shit in there. I know you haven’t jacked in, and now is not the time for sightseeing. Dig? Let my man True go through. He’s been there before, knows the shit. Does it like you sleep.”

“I pay the bills. You guys are just guest stars in my reality.”

Odessa slaps the console table. “Reiner! You ain’t going to come back if you go in. That’s the real deal, babe. You want to fry your brain? Your heart’ll explode. I know you ain’t no bodacious thirty-something pussy. You double that, and your insides are begging for time off the time block. True goes. It’s the only way.”

“You think I’m going to let some VR junkie fuck this up? We’ve come too far. Besides, you hear our friend True here talking? He doesn’t want to go. He’s scared of what he’ll do in there, aren’t you, True honey?”

True keeps quiet. Feels like he has no balls, no brains, no basic reason to argue.

“Fuck. Reiner?” Odessa throws up his hands. “Fine. Pay me.”

“After the job’s done.”

“If anything happens, how am I going to get my money?”

“I’ve taken care of that. True has it.” She hands True her WWTV specially encoded debit card. “The ADC code is inside the gift I gave you at the airport.
Wakatta
?” She pumped the code for her automatic debit card inside his wrist-top. True has the number right there. For all Odessa knows, it’s scratched onto some trinket in her apartment.

Odessa reaches across True for the headset. Reiner won’t let go. “You’re making a mistake, but that’s your problem. But if you want to go inside, I got to readjust it a little.” Reiner gives it up. Odessa shrinks the size.

“Me and True are going to pull you out at the first sign of trouble. While I handle the hardware, he’s going to be watching the action on the monitor. He’ll see what you see. There’s a micro-camera and two-way mike in the headset. Don’t talk back when you’re inside unless you want to come out. Some security phalanx might pick it up. Just listen.” Odessa clutches his head, feigns shock. “I’m asking
you
to keep your trap shut and listen? We’re totally fucked.”

Reiner blinks. “Up yours, Odessa.”

Odessa checks the headset connection. “If my man here says for you to move left, you move left. If he says to leave something alone, no matter what it is, you listen. He knows the deal inside this cyber-ghetto. I’m going to be busy monitoring for trouble.”

“OK, Mommy.”

She puts on the headset, gives the thumbs up, and Odessa punches in the commands. On the surface, it’s a deceptively low-tech console. Just a screen, control board, headset, wireless connectors; True, Odessa, Reiner. Power radiates from the pulsing box at Odessa’s feet. Odessa’s personal design and architecture, billions of bits of memory and instructions, strands of DNA coding, binary pathways, circuits, mind paint, and electric protoplasm.

She’s walking on a path paved with zeros and ones. Although her feet move at a constant rate, she’s picking up speed. A frown.

True grabs a plastic can of Sapporo out of a floor fridge, pops the lid. Odessa gives him the eye and True hands him one, too.
This is going to take a while.
“That’s normal, Reiner. Just binary codes, junk mostly. Keep forward.”

Reiner nods, then flies.

Up ahead, a topographical map of the world, mountains of data anchored on flatland. The two biggest are the U.S. and Japan, followed by India, once the world’s number three software producer. Now, like Pakistan, it’s dead, just its data scavenged after the war.

“That’s right, Reiner. Fly to Japan, and when you get to that enormous mountain of data, jump to the top,” True says.

Reiner looks like she wants to say something.

True senses fear. “Don’t worry, Reiner. You’ll find it easy to jump. I know it looks big, but there’s no gravity except the gravity you make.”

She jumps too hard, overshoots the data, but drags a foot on the tippy top. Stops, looks down.

True knows what she’s feeling. It’s coming back. Stomach whirls, head twirls. He takes a long sip of beer. Swishes it around his mouth, reveling in the flavor, the chill on his tongue. Swallows, says, “There are doors and windows, Reiner. Whatever you do, don’t open the door labeled Business Transactions. That’s a good way to get speared by laser bolts. We’re going in a window. The doors are too dangerous. You need a password or to be able to finesse it. The window marked Publications is a good one.”

Next to him, Reiner mimes opening a window. Is this how he looks when traveling data streams? Grasping at nothing except what’s in his mind?

She crawls in the window. True notices how damp she is. Motions to Odessa.

“If she’s sweating now, she’s going to be flooding my console in a few minutes. Give her this.” Odessa hands True a bottle with a hyposhot on the end. True guns it into her arm. Fluid replacement. True’s mind shuttles back to when he was found dehydrated, close to death, the last time he binged on VR. It’s good he didn’t have one of these hyposhots; otherwise, he’d still be inside.

Reiner looks around the publications room, billions of books with their titles stretching to infinity up, down, forward. Each section is labeled.

True sees her mouth
eigo
, Japanese for
English
. “Wondering why it’s in English? Thank Odessa. Smart software.”

“Brilliant software.” Odessa continues to scan.

So far, so good, but True knows the real deal’s ahead. “See that trap door? Open it and take the dataslide down to Real Estate Publications. This is all legit research, so no worries. Yet.”

Reiner takes the slide at a thousand miles an hour, categories arpeggiating downwards. Since she’s thinking real estate, that’s where the software takes her. There are a series of doors labeled Prices, Available Real Estate, Condominiums, Co-ops, Houses, Buildings, Land/Plots, Rentals, Transactions.

True says, “Go into Transactions, and when you get inside there should be a number of hallways you can take. Whatever you do, don’t take the one labeled Recent
Transactions. We’re going in a different way.”

Reiner opens a door and True watches her confront a series of snakelike tubes corkscrewing into silver- and gold-gilded clouds. “Take the tube labeled Land Transactions, Past 10 years. It’s next to recent Land Transactions. Jump. Think Tokyo.”

Reiner soars upward, screaming past places—Beppu, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nagasaki, Osaka, Sado, Sendai, stops at Tokyo and prepares for entry.

“Wait!” True snaps. Something’s not right.

 Reiner’s hand remains poised.

“What’s up?” Odessa’s scanning turns up empty.

“Bad feeling. Notice we haven’t seen any traps, no cops, no other researchers? If someone is expecting trouble, they’d be right here. And Reiner’s DNA’s on file, so she could end up flatlined if she opens that door. Another worry I have. Was it a coincidence we found that Matsuo Realtor guy phased out?”