Memories End Read Free Page B

have accomplished the jump. While getting nailed by a syscop or a security patrol could not only knock you off-Network but also leave you with a boiled brain and a toasted cybersystem, a plunge into the abyss could render you unconscious or worse.
    A third of the way around the embankment, Bios7 began to power down and hug the inside of the curve. It was the safe and sensible thing to do— the only sane way to circumnavigate the castle— and Tech knew that he should follow suit. But he just couldn't bring himself to fall in behind the saucer. In a race like this, you lived or died by taking risks. Instead, he increased his speed, hoping to take Bios7 on the outside.
    “Ease up, Tech,” Marz warned suddenly. “You can't hold the curve at that speed.”
    Gritting his teeth, Tech tightened his grip on the joystick but didn't lift his foot from the accelerator. “I can do this, bro. I can do this.”
    Racing on the grid required deep-immersion techniques, and therefore was universally condemned by the watchdogs of the Network. It had turned the younger generation into Net addicts. It tampered with reality by blurring the distinction between the real and the virtual. And then there were the actual physical dangers associated with the cybersport. Racing threw a flyer's nervous and circulatory systems into overdrive. It stressed the kidneys and adrenal glands, battered the eardrums, and bombarded the optic nerves with images. It tricked the body into activating all sorts of fightor-flight loops.
    And yet Tech ate it up—all of it.
    “You sure know how to put on a show, I'll give you that much,” Bios7 said as the two ships raced at top speed toward the high point of the embankment.
    “Save it,” Tech barked, fighting to keep control of his ship. “You can give up now if you want.”
    The motion-capture vest, which both monitored a flyer's vital signs and enabled a navigator to keep tabs on his pilot, made Tech feel as if he were being crushed against the right side of his cockpit, and the wireless joystick shuddered in sympathy.
    “Okay, kid,” Bios7 said soberly. “Let me know where you land,
if
you land.”
    The saucer had just dropped back when the Venom began to spin through a dizzying succession of counterclockwise circles. Tech's hands slipped from the control stick, and he thought he was going to throw up. The castle became a smear in the visor. He tried valiantly to steady himself and his ship, but his best efforts weren't good enough.
    The Venom rocketed over the brink of the Escarpment with nowhere to go but down.
    “Be seeing you,” Bios7 said as Tech plunged into darkness. “In the end you're just another flamer. All show, no go.”

Chapter 3
    Tech fell in gloom. The joystick felt lifeless in his hand, and the power chords of Thunder Cracker sounded as if they were coming from underwater. He wondered whether he'd simply crash and burn or wake up in a hospital bed, laid low by a case of cyberstupor.
    He could almost taste the bitter pill Bios7 had made him swallow.
    Then, against all expectation, the Network began to flicker back to life in Tech's visor, and the music returned to normal volume.
    Marz's voice cut in. “Are you all right?”
    “I think so,” Tech said.
    “Good. Then I feel okay about calling you a total jackout.”
    Tech accepted the rebuke. “Stupid, stupid move… I had him.” He took a long, puzzled look at the featureless spheres and cubes that surrounded him. “Hello, where am I?”
    “You're in the Metroplex Enforcement District,” Marz said angrily. “I managed to deploy a safety chute just as you were going over the edge.”
    Tech shook his head in disbelief. “Man, I must have caught a data current. But at least I didn't drop out of the grid, right?”
    “Bios7 set a new record for a Ribbon run,” Marz took clear pleasure in saying. “He told me to tell you, ‘Better luck next time.’ ”
    “Next
time I'll go with the Mirage,” Tech fired back. “At least that