Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

For the first time she started understanding the appeal the Daemon must hold to a broad cross-section of people. It was a chance to start over. Daemon operatives had said it provided medical care. Retirement. Debt relief. No wonder. It was essentially a tax on corporations—one the corporate attorneys couldn’t dodge by moving their headquarters to Bermuda.

Philips got up and flipped through the catalogs and advertisements above the open trash can lid. Clothes, housewares, department store sales, all went into the circular file. An online gaming ad, into the trash. A pet medicine ad—

Wait a second.

She stopped for a moment then retrieved the online gaming ad from the wastebasket. And stared at it. Oh my god. . . .

She groped for the kitchen chair and sat down, feeling her pulse pounding. The ad was a four-color, oversized enameled postcard declaring a “100-Hour Free Trial Offer” for CyberStorm’s massively parallel online fantasy game, The Gate .

And Jon Ross was staring back at her from the front of it.

It was unmistakably him—a computer graphic rendering of Ross as a roguish game character.

She laid the card on the kitchen table and recalled the first time Ross arranged a clandestine meeting with her. It was in Sobol’s online game world, and he’d designed his avatar to look like her : facial geometry is a code the human mind is uniquely suited to decipher. He’d used the trick to sneak past her group’s automated filter system. To find her before she found him. Now on the card in front of her, the animated thief avatar in medieval leather armor had Jon Ross’s face. Ever since his near assassination in China, she’d wanted to see his face again. To know he was alive.

She closely examined the postcard. Sobol’s company, CyberStorm, had gone bankrupt years ago, but the massive online game he created had been folded into one of the subsidiaries of a massive media conglomerate. She flipped the card over and saw a printed code for logging on to the game and initiating the trial subscription. There was also a street address for CyberStorm Entertainment in small letters at the bottom—an address here in Columbia, Maryland.

She felt even more elated. But then—he was still in China. He couldn’t be here. Could he?

Philips dropped the card into the trash can, having committed everything she needed to memory. All it took was a glance. She followed it quickly with a supermarket circular then lifted her foot, and let the plastic lid close.

It was a two-story, nondescript concrete office building, surrounded on three sides by woods. A small parking lot ran around behind it, but there weren’t many cars.

Philips glanced around but saw no one observing her. She entered the unlocked vestibule, knowing the address on the postcard placed CyberStorm in Suite G, but there was no Suite G on the lobby directory. There were only traffic engineering and accountant firms—no gaming companies.

She walked upstairs and moved down the musty-smelling hallway. She came across no one. Finally she found herself standing in front of a wood veneer door marked SUITE G. There was a ten-key pad on the wall to the right of it. With one more glance to see that she wasn’t followed, she tapped in the code she remembered from the postcard.

The door buzzed open. She grabbed the lever handle and pushed inside.

As the door clicked closed behind her, she glanced left and right in what appeared to be an empty office suite. There was a reception area, but no furniture except for a single folding table set up in the center of the three-thousand-square-foot space. Upon it stood a computer and a twenty-inch flat-panel monitor screen that was already turned on. It displayed the log-on screen for Matthew Sobol’s infamous online fantasy game, The Gate . A desk chair and a computer headset were already waiting.

Philips just smiled. Just like Ross . . .

She sat down in the chair. It had been a while since she’d logged on to The Gate , but she still knew how to navigate the interface. She donned the headset and keyed in the “trial” subscription code.

The screen popped up a “Please Wait” message while the game loaded. It was a powerful machine because soon a breathtaking virtual vista spread out before her in all its 3-D glory.

From a first-person view, her avatar stood at the edge of a terrace overlooking a vast cave. It looked to be a couple thousand feet high and miles long in either direction. Luminescent material coated the walls of the cave, casting a soft glow into the air. A glittering city spread out along the floor of the cavern beneath her, with a river bisecting it. Several waterfalls descended from the ceiling like veils. Most of them disappeared into a cloud of mist above forest-land at the edge of the city; others cascaded down the sides of the cave itself. The sound of the water was a pleasant white noise. As she looked across to the far side of the huge cavern, she could see villas set into the wall like balconies. She could also hear music and laughter in the distance, with other player-character avatars moving around, call-outs floating over their heads.

It was beautiful. She spent several moments just staring at it.

Then she heard someone speak in her headset. “I beg your pardon, my lady.”

Philips turned her avatar to face what looked to be a non-player-character—or NPC—a servant of some type in house livery. She knew it was a bot, a simple AI program that could respond in limited ways, or be scripted to perform actions. She could tell because it bore no call-out above its head.

The avatar bowed before her and swept his plumed hat off his head. “My lady, Master Rakh will be very glad when he hears that you’ve arrived safely. May I ask you to remain here while I fetch him?”

Philips knew what to do. She could either right-click on the servant and select from a list of options to respond—or . . . She decided to speak directly into the headset mic. “Yes.” She knew Sobol’s speech recognition was pretty good.

The NPC nodded and smiled. “Excellent, my lady. I don’t think the master will be long.” With that he marched off in a hurry, placing his hat back on his head.

That left Philips some time to explore the terrace. It appeared to be the garden of a several-story villa built into the rock face. Fountains, statues, and ornamental plants filled the area. She had to admit that the 3-D renderings were well done. Sobol’s game engine was popular for a reason.

Philips walked over to a fountain that depicted something like Poseidon riding a chariot drawn by sea horses. She looked down into what she knew was particle simulation water and saw her own reflection staring back at her. Her avatar was fashioned to look like her real self. She was looking at her own image.

In the real-world office, Philips smiled. Her character wore a beautiful dress that appeared to be silk with a brocade wrap. There was also a glittering jeweled necklace—not the type of thing she would ever wear in real life, but she figured no indigenous people could be brutalized in the diamond trade here in fantasyland.

“I hope you don’t mind the outfit. I didn’t know what to get you.”

Philips looked up to see the avatar of Ross that was depicted on the postcard ad. He wore leather armor and a sword at his side—the prosperous rogue. She smiled in the real world, happy to see him, even if it was just a 3-D model.

“Mr. Ross.”

They approached each other and stood at arm’s length.

“I’ve been so worried for you, Nat.”

“I’m fine, Jon.” She turned to face the vast cave beyond the terrace railing. “What is this place?”

“Do you like it?”