The last seven, eight years, there’s been funny stuff out there, out on the
console cowboy circuit… Thrones and dominions… Yeah, there’s things out there.
Ghosts, voices. Why not? Oceans had mermaids, all that shit, and
we had a sea of silicon, see? Sure, it’s just a tailored hallucination
we all agreed to have, cyberspace, but anybody who jacks in knows,
fucking knows, it’s a whole universe.
(William Gibson, Count Zero, Ace Books, New York, 1986).
New Xanadu, coordinates 000.000/000.000/000.000
June 29th, 666 EG
For some time, she’d been in a non-place—though it bore every characteristic of a forest made of impossibly tall trees, glowing now pink, green, yellow, and then blue.
She was a beetle, floating in the infinite data stream that permeated the Galaxy. And she wasn’t alone. Virtual creatures by the trillions swarmed above and below her: multicolored birds, insects of the strangest shapes and sizes, sinuous iridescent reptiles—all with their logical addresses clearly highlighted.
Farther down, where the ground would have been in a real forest, massive data packets—shaped like saurians—paced rhythmically through flaming torrents, bound for distant processes.
She flew high above the forest, memorizing landmarks. She passed green fields dotted with carmine lakes, wire-mesh networks flickering with violet light, extra-dimensional ghost-like monoliths, obelisks of fluid gold, spiraling columns, and soaring transmission towers threaded with glowing veins.
At last, she reached an enormous tree whose crown was lost in the heights. She knew her destination was close because of the increasing density of virtual couriers. A magnetic glow surrounded both trunk and canopy. This was the CCSF security avatar—one of the most secure in the Galaxy.
“I’m there… Now, I’m about to get in,” Shirl said, eyes still closed. She’d jacked in using the Hypernet plug beneath the table.
“Hey! Watch it, or the cops’ll be after us,” Kyle warned.
“Don’t worry,” she replied. “I know what I’m doing.”
She disguised herself as a routine message headed for Space Force Command in less than a second. Her beetle form morphed into that of a vibrant, scaly bird with a snake-like tail. She wasn’t alone—thousands of similar birds waited to land on the ever-sprouting twigs emerging from the branches and trunk. As each message perched, it vanished, the twig disappearing too as the network absorbed the data.
Shirl fooled the security program, getting through with a tingling sensation in her arms and feet. She landed on the first available sprig—and was instantly swallowed.
“I’ve made it!” she cried. “Now, I’m going to look for Aral Mohs’ account.”
Twiglet was impressed. Even the Society’s hyperneural probes took several minutes to breach firewalls like that.
In cyberspace, the CCSF server appeared as a vast chamber from which countless hallways branched off like a hall of mirrors, stretching into infinity.
The avatars of system processes lacked imagination: all looked like droids, pushing overstuffed shopping carts. Blending in, Shirl chose a corridor. She passed a sequence of closed doors, each labeled with usernames in block capitals.
At last, she spotted one: [email protected]. She slipped through it as if it weren’t there.
Inside was a large desk lined with drawers. One of them glowed faint red.
“Got it… maybe. There’s a coded subfolder,” she announced. “What exactly am I looking for?”
“Numerical values… figures… galactic coordinates,” Twiglet replied. “Try ‘Holroyd’ or ‘Society’ too.”
“Okay… let’s see.”
She grasped the drawer’s handle and yanked. It opened almost at once. Several digital sheets appeared inside. Thrilled, she didn’t notice the tiny mosquito that slipped out.
It took her only a microsecond to decrypt the contents. Soon, she found what she was looking for.
“Avalon… z equals 20052.661,” she read aloud. “Sound familiar?”
“It sure does!” Twiglet exclaimed. “That’s the coordinate. Nice job!”
Shirl shifted back into her beetle form and prepared for the return trip. She couldn’t just log off—a sudden exit from cyberspace could damage her brain.
In another microsecond, she rejoined the binary torrent she’d traveled before. A pink gryphon glided beside her; farther off, a blue-and-yellow-striped snake floated through the optical stream.
Almost there. Safety was just a few split seconds away.
Holunder Bai’s datapad rang at 2:04 a.m., first-sector time.
“Drittsekk!” he swore, using a particularly colorful curse from his homeworld.
He hated being disturbed at night—not because he slept—quite the opposite. He never slept when the Galaxy was high above the horizon.
In the last few minutes, he had begun to change, his limbs trembling with a mix of pure pleasure and a thin blade of unspeakable pain. He clenched his fists so hard his claws pierced his flesh, but he forced himself back under control long enough to answer the call.
“Yes? What is it?” he snapped.
The caller’s holo materialized nearby: a man with small, malicious eyes, wearing a Space Force officer’s uniform. He seemed oblivious to the long, bristly hairs covering Bai’s face and hands.
“Your Excellency, there’s been an unauthorized access…”
“So what?” the Minister growled. “You know what to do. How dare you disturb me for this?”
“Please, Your Excellency—wait until you hear the rest! The intruder is still trapped in cyberspace, but you might care to know its ID spells S-H-I-R-L-6-6-6-B-59-F-2-0-8-Y…”
“Leave her to me!” Bai barked.
The irritation vanished instantly, along with his planned Underworld raid. Even before he sat at the console, he had already jacked in, helmet and gloves in place.
Entering cyberspace was easier than sinking his teeth into a child’s throat.
Just before she was pulled back, Shirl felt a sudden sense of imminent threat, a sharp disturbance in the flow.
Then came a violent jerk. In an instant, she was struggling, caught in the grip of something that dragged her away. She tried to retreat to her body, still seated at the restaurant table…
But something was wrong. The connection had weakened. She fought to stay clear-headed but realized she couldn’t focus; stormy black clouds were swallowing her thoughts.
Before her, a frightful chasm yawned, swallowing the multicolored trunks into darkness. Around her, the other virtual messengers continued their journey, undisturbed.
“Shirl! Hey, Shirl!” Kyle grabbed her just before she slipped off the chair. “What the hell’s going on?”
“She’s having trouble,” Twiglet said.
“Yeah, right… I got that, too. What do we do? I’d say we jack her out—”
“No!” Uful’lan cut in.
He’d been brooding silently for a while, but now his voice rang urgently.
“Her mind iss ssthill in cybersspace,” he warned. “You’re going tho melt her brain!”
Shirl flapped her virtual wings frantically, struggling against the terrible force dragging her toward the abyss. But in the end, an alien consciousness swept over her—an overwhelming sphere of energy that pierced the deceptively strong defenses of her avatar with unsettling ease.
Kyle held the synth’s slender body, which hadn’t shown any sign of life for several minutes. A few patrons had already noticed something was wrong, and soon even the management would start getting suspicious.
“She’s not waking up. I really think we should jack her out.”
Twiglet placed a hand on Shirl’s neck. Her heartbeat was faint… almost imperceptible.
“One more minute!”
“All right, damn it—we’ll wait. But if anyone comes…”
Kyle tried to calculate how many years in prison a smuggler with forged documents would get for being caught with a stolen, unidentified synth who had just fried her brain hacking the Space Force database. When the number hit double digits, he gave up in despair.
“Look who’s here!”
The voice was everywhere at once—a universe of sound more felt than heard.
Shirl looked around, startled by the sudden return of consciousness. She was cold—very cold. The landscape had changed entirely. The cyberforest and its vibrant, surreal inhabitants were gone.
Now, she stood on an endless plain. In the distance, a solitary peak pierced the horizon, shrouded in roiling black clouds. Sharp and indifferent stars glittered across the rest of the sky.
“Our princess! We’ve been looking for you for months, and finally—I’m the one who found you! What a lovely surprise!”
She had no idea whose voice it was, but a deep, visceral anxiety surged within her, as though something monstrous had clawed its way out of her lost past.
“Who… who’s talking?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Oh, come now. You really don’t remember me? I am your Master. My word is law, and you were made to obey.”
“I don’t know you!” Shirl shouted. “Leave me alone! I want out of here!”
The chill intensified. Atop the mountain, lightning crackled—the sky above erupting into an electric storm. Once again, the entity swept through her mind, blotting out thought with a paralyzing presence. Her vision buckled into a nightmare: a screaming face, warped and twisted, its eyes bulging with manic hatred.
“Aha! So you weren’t lying—your memory has been wiped. But we’ll fix that…” The voice sneered, laced with cruel delight. “Dear child, you’ve done me quite a favor… showing up now. I’ll have someone come collect you.”
Shirl summoned every ounce of will she had left. She knew she couldn’t win—but she wasn’t going down without a fight.
“No!” she screamed, breaking free from the mental grasp.
A heartbeat later, she slammed back into her body of flesh and blood.
“The minute’s up. I’m jacking her out!” Kyle was saying.
“Um… Thwigleth…”
“Not now, Uful’lan. She seems to be coming to…”
Shirl’s heartbeat had returned to normal.
“But Thwigleth! Thhere’ss a droid coming thowardss uss!”
“Oh, damn,” Kyle muttered.
“Hurry! Help me sit her up!” Twiglet ordered.
A servodroid bearing the Horitzò Inc. logo on its chest approached their table.
“Any problems, gentlemen and… lady?”
The tone was polite and respectful—though tinged with suspicion.
“What happened to the young lady?” the droid asked. Then, noticing the cortical ports clearly visible on Shirl’s head, it added, “Ah… a sinth. Perhaps I can assist…”
“Oh no, thank you!” Kyle cut in with an overly cheerful smile. “Nothing to worry about. She insisted on drinking whiskey and… well, you know—she’s not programmed for alcohol.”
“We were just about to leave, weren’t we, Uful’lan?” Twiglet said quickly.
“Hey, buth I haven’th yeth… ahaugh! Oh… yeah, righth, thhath’ss righth!”
The servodroid gave Shirl a slow once-over, its expressionless face somehow radiating increasing suspicion.
“By the way, Twiglet, why don’t you pay the bill?” Kyle suggested casually.
“What?” she cried, caught off guard.
“You’re the boss, right? Actually, why not tip the staff while you’re at it?”
“Of course! What a great idea,” she replied through clenched teeth.
She fished the credit chip and handed it to the servodroid.
“Please… keep fiftee—hem—twenty percent more,” she mumbled, catching Kyle’s sardonic grin.
The droid bowed deeply and inserted the chip into its chest slot. Moments later, it turned and glided away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kyle said, rising.
Shirl had finally opened her eyes, still looking dazed and disoriented. He hoisted her up onto his shoulder.
Twiglet and Uful’lan followed him toward the exit.
“Maybe we should have thought twice before hiring him,” Twiglet grumbled under her breath.
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