Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

Zai laughed thankfully and let Samantha take her through the open link, pausing long enough in the connecting portal to drop the fragmentor. It exploded behind them, destroying the passageway. There were millions of other ways to reach them, but this route was now closed.

Zai hit the home key on her wristband. It chimed and she was greeted Devin's voice.

"Thank god you made it," he said breathlessly. "Let's log out of here."

"No," Zai shook her head, griping Samantha's hand. "I'm not leaving her."

"The area is clear," the ISF commander said, his earlier sarcasm absent. "If you have no further need of us..."

Dana merely nodded, and the commander excused himself, taking what he'd witnessed here to haunt him the rest of his days. The forensics team had made quick work of the girl's machine, and now Dana searched the feedback scrolling along the technician's monitor for anything recognizable.

They were running a data-harvesting program over Samantha's flash drive. Even if she had taken precautions to delete all evidence from it, bits of data always remained. Every time something was "deleted" from a computer, it was simply marked for overwriting. Completely cleaning a machine was nearly impossible. So much information was stored in temporary and log files that traces always remained.

While the technicians brought in the mobile lab, Dana was learning more about the girl. At eight years old, the complexity of her computer crimes defined her as a child prodigy. Her parents, Dana guessed, were oblivious. Samantha was not enlisted in any special school programs, and there were no aptitude tests on record in the public education database. She was eight years old, but her parents had kept her out of public school. Dana dwelled on how, thanks to technology, the apple could fall very far from the tree.

Samantha's body was at least a week old. The cause of death was neglect. The child's ribs were apparent, the cheeks and eyes sunken. She starved to death standing on her feet.

Dana's attention was brought back to the scrolling data on the screen. "Stop there," she jabbed a finger at the text, freezing the search, "'XYBR', that's what I'm looking for, a connection to Xybercorp."

The technician squinted at the text, "I can run a search for it in the data we've collected so far," he looked and shrugged, "It's a stretch though. We're not getting much data back from this machine. The owner used a pretty advanced cleaning program on it."

"Where did this reference come from?" Dana asked, tapping her finger on the monitor.

"That..." the technician paused to scan the context, "came from a history table."

"A VR history table? A Web address history table? What kind of table?" Dana demanded.

"I don't know," the technician shook his head. "Just a history table, and this is an entry in it. That's all I can tell you. I might be able to learn more when we finish cleaning the machine. You know, we usually have network support for this."

"No time," Dana dismissed the idea and continued searching the ASCII jungle.

"I see it," Dana froze the screen on another code string, "That's a Web address history reference isn't it?"

The technician squinted at the piece of text, it was part of a web address followed by a date string, "Possibly, but we don't know if we're looking at the same file. Besides, that address is in Ireland."

"Where they're working on new battle-bot control software," Dana had been cramming on Xybercorp, wholly owned DataStreams subsidiary, all morning.

"True," the Technician admitted, "but I would hesitate to connect the two references. The main problem is that XYBR's a stock ticker symbol. It's a financial reference, not a web address."

"What's all this nonsense following it?" Dana's finger traced a string of characters seeming to run forever, highlighting it with her touch..

"Don't know," the technician shrugged. "Possibly a media stream of some sort."

"Play it," Dana ordered.

"Detective Summerall please," the technician said, "You have to let me do my-"

"Stuff it," she ordered. "Play the media thingy."

He sighed and selected the text string with his forefinger, tapped to cut, and then tapped to paste it into another window, "This will take a few tries."

He saved the file in several audio formats, but the media player returned errors and dissonance. Then he ran through the video formats, more gibberish. His third save into a VR compression opened it.

The window was a first person perspective without sound. It bobbled and became blocky with low resolution, revealing what looked like toy robots and a cloaked figure. The jerky perspective was frustrating. For a second the camera revealed the cloaked figure's profile, a young girl. The camera hovered at her shoulder, alternating between her and something else. Finally the girl turned away, leaving the camera to watch her leave, robots following, and returned to the thing.

He looked into the camera, his eyes intensely serious. There was a flash of something inhuman, a blur of teeth and eyes. The clip ended.

"Good enough for me," Dana muttered.

"What was that?" the technician asked uncomfortably. "Some kind of video game?"

Dana did not answer. Instead she made a hand-gesture to speed dial the extension where Devin and the blind girl were working. The phone rang a full minute before Alice picked up.

"Yes Dana?" Alice demanded impatiently.

Dana was confused, "Alice? Is that you?"

"Yes it is," Alice replied quickly. "I assume you are calling to check on Devin's investigation?"

"Yes I am," Dana answered. "How did you know it was me?"

"I recognized the digital signature of your cell phone's white noise, not to mention your biorhythms." Alice cut to the point, "Devin and Zai are online, and exhibiting the heart palpitations and excessive muscle tension associated with a stressful situation. Their inability to log out implies they are prisoners of the cyc hive-mind. This should confirm your suspicion that the DataStreams I-Grid hosts Flatline and the cycs. I must go now."

"Alice wait," Dana commanded. "Go where? What are you doing there?"

"I need to access the World Wide Web to complete our research," Alice answered. "I am preparing to go online with the cyc I have merged with."

"What?" Dana was shocked, "I forbid you to go online. You're a security hazard. We don't know anything about what's happened to you. If you go online you could-"

"There is no time for this," Alice cut her off, "I am no longer part of your agency and I do not recognize your authority. I will call when I have further need of you."

"Alice?" Dana heard the line go dead. "Damn it Alice!"

Another series of hand gestures and she speed dialed the Authority, attempting to find someone who could stop Alice, but was met with a recording stating the phone system was down. Dana knew Alice was behind it. The woman identified with the AI's above her own species. Regardless of her intentions, Alice was betraying the human race.

An air-raid siren wound up into a blare outside the house. Dana's radio squawked, and an alert came over the speaker. It was from a Government-Contract Coordinator several miles away, in the city's center. An army was invading DC.

Dana saw the ISF officers scrambling into their vehicles through the nearby window, and she grabbed the technician's collar, hauling him to his feet, "Give me your keys."

He fumbled through his pockets as Dana dragged him through the house and across the front yard. The ISF vehicles were racing away, and Dana put the tech into the forensics van, catching the keys as he dropped them. Swinging into the driver's seat, she started the engine and punched the accelerator to gain some ground on the train of emergency vehicles speeding toward the Memorial Bridge.