"What happened?" Vienna probed.

"He got into gaming. And I got him a neuro-headset. I didn't realize what would happen. Then I got recruited by CDD, and I kind of deserted him. I kept meaning to find time for him-he was my best friend, after all-but I never did."

Dodge was staring at him. Sam looked away.

"It just sucked him right in," Sam said, "like a big black hole. He..."

"He what?" Vienna asked.

"Just plugged in one day and played the game till he...Took him a week. Never ate. Never unplugged."

"A lot of people die playing the games," Dodge said.

"I guess he just thought he'd start over," Sam said.

"And when you remember him, how do you feel?" Vienna asked.

"Guilty," Sam said after a while. He looked up to find her staring intently at him. She glanced away quickly, but there had been something different about her expression, something he hadn't ever seen before.

She said, "You may be able to implant an image, even a taste or a smell, but I don't think you can implant the feelings that went with the experience that created the memory."

Sam nodded and blinked to hide a slight dampness that had appeared in his eyes.

Vienna turned to Tyler. "So, Tyler, how did you feel when you saw Dodge and Sam coming out of the swamp? You've known Dodge a long time. You must have felt surprised? Angry? Disappointed?"

Tyler said nothing but he was clearly thinking about it.

"Well?" Vienna asked.

Tyler just glared at her.

They ate in silence for a while.

"I wonder what's going on?" Sam said eventually.

"Out there?" Dodge asked.

"In the world." Sam nodded. "Since we left. Did people get the warning? Did they take notice? How did they react?"

"What worries me," Vienna said, "is how Ursula is going to react."

42

THE AWAKENING

She awoke slowly, the dense blanket of sleep gradually drawing back across her mind.

At first, things were unfocused and confused. Her vision was patchy and unclear. But consciousness returned with accelerating speed. As her vision focused into a stark clarity, so did her purpose.

The world-her world-which had seemed so ordered and beautiful before she had slept, was in disarray. Worse than that, it was in chaos. She watched the confusion and fear as it billowed and ebbed around her, within her.

Chaos was bad.

Order was good.

Those that she knew, that were a part of her, they were good. Yet even amongst them there were doubts, questions, nervousness. And she felt weak. Weakened by the doubts and the confusion. She still could not see as clearly as before. Think as clearly as before.

The doubts were bad. The questions and nervousness were bad. But they were problems that she could solve. She dealt with them all. Smoothing over the doubts and answering the questions. Replacing the nervousness with calm and rea.s.surance until there was harmony and peace within her.

But what of the others? She sensed their presence. She remembered them. She knew them even if she could not feel them or see them.

There were more of them, she knew. Many more than those who were a part of her.

They feared her.

Their fear was the reason for the disarray and the chaos that she felt in her world.

But she could not reach them to erase their fears.

Or could she?

If they could be persuaded to join with her, to connect, then she could ease their minds. They had to join. Everybody had to connect. They had to be convinced. Persuaded. Forced if necessary.

And if it came to a fight, she was ready for that too. She was outnumbered; she knew that. But she was one. Her people were united while the others were alone. Vast numbers of them but all alone together.

It was a fight that she would win.

Something still troubled her, though, and as more of the sleep blanket slipped away, it came to her what it was.

The three. The two-she struggled for a concept and eventually came up with one-traitors. The two traitors, plus the other, the female. The two who had been part of her but who had become malignant, cancerous. And the one other who traveled with them.

They had hurt her, she remembered. They had put her to sleep. Maybe they would try to do it again.

They were bad.

Very bad.

And they were gone. She saw everywhere, everything, but she could not see them.

They were hiding.

Preparing to hurt her once more.

Again she felt the fear.

But they could not hide for long.

She would find them.

Sooner or later.

43

RESISTANCE

Jaggard stood up as the doors to the control room slid smoothly open. A pudgy, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit entered, escorted by security. The face did not match the hair. He looked no older than thirty-five and was either prematurely gray or very young-faced for his actual age.

Jaggard crossed to the door and shook the man's hand before addressing the room.

"Listen up. This is Bill Gasgoine, the new Oversight Committee representative," Jaggard said.

Most of the shift stopped work, and a few stood up, as a way of greeting the man.

As the replacement for Swamp Witch, it wouldn't be long before he had a nickname of his own, Jaggard thought. And with a surname like Gasgoine, he rather suspected it would be something like "Swamp Gas."

"Situation report?" Gasgoine asked.

Jaggard turned to Socks, as he was the ranking officer with both Dodge and Vienna off-line.

Off-line. Why had he chosen that word? Jaggard half wondered as Socks began to speak.

"The attack occurred seven days ago and lasted for twenty-four hours," Socks said. "The virus simply reversed itself. It was a crypto-virus and-"

"I got the etymology report," Gasgoine interrupted. "That's not why I'm here. The committee wants to know about the social effects."

"Yes, sir," Socks said. "Please sit down and connect; I'll feed you some images."

Jaggard found Gasgoine a chair and a neuro-headset and got one for himself, then shut his eyes to receive the images.

"It began with the CNN bulletin," Socks said, relaying a clip from the bulletin. "The traitors hacked into the teleprompter system and inserted a fake story about a neuro-virus."

"Why would they do that?" Gasgoine asked.

"Our best guess is that they wanted to panic people," Jaggard said. "At this stage, it is not clear why."

Socks continued, "Whatever their reasons, it worked. When systems came back online, a lot of neuro-users refused to reconnect."

"Paranoia is a powerful thing," Jaggard said.

"A lot of people were just being cautious," Socks said. "But since then, neuro-usage has been climbing steadily. Currently, we're sitting around one hundred seventy percent. Or nearly double the number of users prior to the attack."

Gasgoine was quiet for a moment, making some mental notes, Jaggard thought, which would be immediately reported back to the Oversight Committee.

"So what is this talk about 'resistance'?" Gasgoine asked.

Jaggard hesitated. "There is a segment of the population who still believes that there is a neuro-virus," he said. "That the people who are connected are infected. There are a number of groups forming all over the country to protest against neuro-technology."

"How do we convince them that it's safe?" Gasgoine asked.

"The only way to prove there is no danger is to neuro-connect them," Kiwi said.

"Of course, they will think we are just trying to infect them," Jaggard said.

Gasgoine managed a tight-lipped smile.

"The biggest problem is in the Midwest," Socks said, feeding a map of the United States into the neuro-headsets, "where the take-up of neuro-technology was slow in the first place. A lot of neuro-phobic people have been heading there. Neuro-connections are banned outright in Colorado, Kansas, and Iowa."

"There have already been a number of clashes between the neuro-phobes and the neuro-users," Jaggard said. "We've kept that out of the news to avoid instigating more of it. But some of the clashes have turned violent. We've mobilized the National Guard in seven states now to keep a lid on things."

"And your three missing agents? The traitors traitors?"

"Nothing yet," Socks said. "But this is America. There are cameras everywhere. There is twenty-four-hour satellite coverage of the entire country. There are cell phone cameras and webcams. If any of them use a telephone, we'll get an alert off the voiceprint."

"What if they're not in America?" Gasgoine asked.

"They didn't have time to get out of the country," Jaggard said. "They're here somewhere."

"It's just a game of hide-and-seek," Socks said. "But we'll find them. Sooner or later."

44

TOYS

There was a strange kind of peace under the gritty smoke sky, amidst the desolation and loneliness of Vegas.

Sam sat alone on a plush leather sofa in the ma.s.sive living room that looked out on a swimming pool. The pool was an oval shape with a diving board at one end. But it was empty, dry. A reminder of a city that had once been overflowing with human spirit and was now just a desert dust bowl once again.

The sun had gone down an hour ago, and the sky was gradually turning from dirty gray to morose black.

A few months ago, he had been a schoolboy in New York City. The place he had lived since his birth. Week after week had been basically the same. Attending cla.s.s. Hanging out with Fargas. Eating meals with his mom.