Matrix Man Read Free

weeks before. That allowed her to apply the rent money to her various loans. She'd made lots of sacrifices to get the implant, but it was worth it.
    Reaching up, she grabbed one of two available cords, pulled it down until she had the right amount of slack, and gave a little tug. A brake locked the cord in place as she inserted the jack into the side of her head.
    She loved the rush. The sudden expansion of consciousness as the computer's artificial intelligence was added to her own, the feeling of power as a small army of machines prepared to obey her every command, and yes, a sense of comradeship that she didn't find anywhere else.
    Each piece of equipment had its own identity, its own individual purpose within the overall system. A system which depended on her for control and guidance.
    Kim smiled and allowed herself to fall into the darkness between mind and machine. But it wasn't dark for long. Three-dimensional graphics popped into existence and rotated in front of her mind's eye. Some remained static, while others moved and pulsated in harmony with the equipment they symbolized. And as Kim checked each display, she was met with a characteristic greeting.
    The slower, less intelligent components provided a predictable "A-okay," or "all-subsystems green," while the more intelligent modules responded with greetings like, "Good morning, Kim. Five out of six video storage banks are running normally. Number six, however, has experienced intermittent drive problems, and will remain off-line for the rest of your shift. Have a nice day."
    But regardless of these lesser personalities, Kim was always aware of the editing computer, a Grass Valley Ultima better known as Val.
    Val sat at the very top of the electronic hierarchy, and supervised everything from Kim's smoking to the number of video dropouts during a four-second length of video. Val was by far the most powerful of the many computers which made up the system and, outside of Kim, the most important. It was Val who brought the many subsystems together and welded them into a single unit.
    "How's the bird?" Kim thought as she ran down a mental checklist.
    "Comsat DN476 is in geosynchronous orbit over North America and reports all systems in the green," Val replied softly. "Correspondent Corvan is feeding bars and tone."
    "Good. Let's see 'em."
    A row of vertical color bars suddenly appeared on the holo screens above her head. By comparing Corvan's color bars with a similar set generated by her own equipment, Kim could assure a perfect alignment between the two sets of gear.
    The fact that Corvan had two cameras at his disposal—the eye cam and a robo cam—which looked like a cross between a bat and a TV camera—made her task more difficult.
    The robo cam was useful, but incorporated a lot of low-quality components. That made it hard to match the robot's video output with Corvan's top-of-the-line eye cam. Since Kim couldn't increase the quality of the robo cam's output, she had to pull Corvan's down and that went against her grain. Still, a match was better than switching back and forth between two disparate video sources, so Kim was forced to accept it.
    The steady tone signified that the audio was A-okay, starting with Corvan's implants and running through the uplink, the downlink, and her own equipment. It reminded her of the slogan over the door at T-school. "This TV is some complicated shit."
    It was time to get things rolling. "Val, tell DN476 that we're going live at 0600 straight up. That's five minutes from now and counting."
    "Roger," Val said smoothly. "Four fifty-nine and counting."
    Kim sighed. "All right, give me Corvan."
    As Val opened the two-way intercom, Kim heard a soft tone inside her head and knew that Corvan heard it too. His reply was bored. "Yeah?"
    "Seattle here. We have systems lockup and we're four-thirty from air."
    "Roger that," Corvan replied. "Lockup with four-thirty to go."
    The conversation was so normal. Where was the dreaded