Cyberdrome Read Free Page B

in person?”
    “Well, not in
person . I was down on a planet and he was in the local Survey Vessel. Why?”
    She still looked
confused. “Could he have been speaking to you from here?”
    Maya shook her
head. “Absolutely not. I was in a Level-10 interface and we spoke together—it
wasn’t a recorded message. Why are you asking me all of this?”
    Angela looked
up. “Well, according to my logs, Mathew Grey is not currently interfaced.”
    It took a moment
for the doctor’s words to sink in. “That’s not possible.”
    At that moment,
an alarm went off and a message came across the intercom. “Code Seven Alert.
All employees return to your duty stations. This is not a drill.”
    Maya stared
blankly at the doctor for several seconds as the words sunk in. Code Seven
meant something was wrong inside the simulations. She turned and rushed out the
door.
    She took the
elevator up three levels, transferred to another tube, and finally reached the
main control level. After submitting a fingertip scan, she passed through two
thick steel doors and stepped into a brightly lit, circular room filled with
about a dozen people. In the center, a meter-wide transparent column rose out
of a circular console and nearly touched the two-story high domed ceiling. It
looked like a high-tech aquarium filled with glowing green water, except that
the water was actually DNA-based liquid memory.
    Rebecca Leconte,
a middle-aged woman with white hair and a youthful figure, stood near the tower
looking up at something Maya couldn’t see. Maya adjusted her contacts to the
room’s frequency and a large floating angelfish appeared in the air in front of
Rebecca. The fish was talking.
    “So you see,
Rebecca, there really is nothing for you to be concerned with.”
    “Kill that damn
alarm!” Rebecca yelled. When the alarm died, she turned back to the floating
fish. “We currently have over forty people in direct neural interface in this
facility, Ceejer. I
need to know exactly what kind of threat we’re up against. If you can’t tell
me, I’m going to order their retrieval at once .”
    The angelfish
wiggled its fins, as if agitated. “As I have already stated, Rebecca, my defenses
are more than adequate to handle this situation. I have already ordered my
Sentinels in to capture the rogue entity. If it cannot be contained, it will be
deleted, I assure you.”
    As Maya watched
from just inside the door, she saw the fish morph into a large hairless cat.
Whatever its shape, the holographic image was a representation of C.J.E.R.—the
Cyberdrome Jurisdictional Enforcement Routine. It was the program ultimately
responsible for monitoring all life forms inside Cyberdrome’s many simulations,
both digital and biological.
    “I think I’m
going to start the retrieval anyway,” Rebecca said, “just to be safe.”
    The cat sat down
on the tower’s console and licked one of its front paws. “Need I remind you
that disconnection from a direct neural interface operating at the current
speed requires at least thirty-three minutes?”
    A young
technician named Brad spoke up. “We can do an emergency disconnect, can’t we?”
    The cat turned
toward the young man. “Thirty-three minutes is the minimum estimated time it
takes to retrieve all neuroprobes from the subjects. Disconnection before
neuroprobes are removed will result in a twenty-nine percent chance of brain
damage.”
    The cat turned
back toward Rebecca. “Time in my world is passing substantially faster than in
yours and I expect my Sentinels will have the intruder captured long before you
could even begin disconnection.” The cat paused and stared off to the side for
a moment before continuing. “In fact, my Sentinels are now entering the memory
sector containing the intruder. Please stand by while I monitor.”
    The cat
dissolved into a swarm of particles and then disappeared.
    Rebecca turned
to Brad. “God, I hate talking to that thing. Why does it have to change into
all of those