Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

The helmet hummed briefly with electricity, the cooling fans whined as the system warmed up and began the process of logging her onto the World Wide Web. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise as the electrical field surrounded her head. People told her she was imagining this, but they didn't sense it because they were too distracted with the helmet's light parade as it adapted the visual displays to its user's retinas.

"BlackSheep avatar loaded and active in ideonexus portal," the headset notified her. Zai's personal avatar was her brother's design; he said it fit her personality. She wasn't sure how to take this, but she did enjoy the controversy and thought it fit her handle perfectly.

"Access electronic mail, instant messenger services, and online desktop," she commanded. After a moment, she added, "Access media player, load composer Smetana, piece 'Die Moldau'."

Her system communicated with servers online, sending the account keys required to access her files. "Die Moldau" began playing in her headset. Smiling, she paused, letting herself enjoy the piece in full surround sound, a brief moment of clarity.

"You have eight new messages in your inbox, 10,384 in your Junk Mail folder," the headset stated. The moment of clarity was gone.

"Empty Junk Mail," she commanded. "Retrieve message one from inbox."

"Message one from xt110356-cammile249 at mxlplx288 dot biz," the headset read, "Subject 'Absolutely Free.'"

A seductive woman began speaking, "Do you like hot-n-horny teens doing the most depraved-?'

"Pause," Zai said, and the message cut off. "Mark as spam. Retrieve message two from inbox."

She fumed quietly, rolling her gloved fingers along the chair's arm impatiently. Someone had bypassed the Junk mail filter on her inbox. The system administrators would identify the method and prevent it from happening again, but tomorrow morning another advertiser would figure out a new way to sneak in.

It was an endless battle between advertisers' attempting to get their message into mailboxes and system administrators struggling to protect their customers from such nonsense. Many advertisers employed fulltime programmers using Trojan Horses, new mailing techniques, and corporate espionage to slip their advertisements past junk mail filters. The system administrators hired Network Security experts to combat the new methods and stop leaks in the dam before the invader could sell their method to others, and flood the server with a junk mail tidal wave.

Some advertisers pre-sold the potential to get past network security and packaged advertisements into "Junk mail Bombs", which they detonated, blitzing the system's customers with a barrage of junk e-mails, and filling every user's inbox with hundreds of advertisements. This happened to Zai once, and it took her the entire day just to sort the legitimate mail from the junk and clean out her system.

The irony was the complete ineffectiveness of junk mail as an advertising medium. The average user could spot an advertisement from a mile away and delete it without giving the advertiser any opportunity to deliver their message. Far from promoting their products, these unsolicited, in-your-face announcements left most users with a negative perception of the company associated with them. So much effort placed into defeating the machines, only to be thwarted by the last line of defense, the human mind.

The second message was another advertisement. Any e-mail with the title "SYNTAX ERROR" was an advertisement. Zai ground her teeth in frustration, deleted it, and said, "Retrieve message three from inbox."

"Message three from Omni," Zai smiled and her frustrations melted. "Subject 'Want to finish our chess match?'"

Omni's voice came over the speaker, "Hey BlackSheep, I'm skipping school today so if you happen to be online I thought we could finish our game?"

"Delete message," she told the system, "Query instant messenger. Report status of the avatar 'Omni'."

The system responded immediately, "Avatar Omni status is 'available'."

As if on cue, Omni instant messaged her, "Hey BlackSheep."

"Hey Omni," she replied. "You skipped school again today? How will you ever graduate at this rate?"

"I've got a plan," he sounded amused. "I'm going to break into the school's servers and give myself straight A's."

"You've been hanging out with your hacker friends again," she sniffed reproachfully. "Don't say I didn't warn you about those types. You're setting yourself up for trouble poking at that hornet's nest."

"I'm not worried," he replied smugly. "I've got protection."

"Well, you're very full of yourself today," she noted. "Looks like I'm going to have to take you down a few notches on the chessboard. Eh? Put you in your place?"

"I'm feeling confident there as well, today I think I'll break your winning streak. I came up with the perfect solution to your bishop, rook combo attack. King's knight five to King's Bishop eight."

"Oh please," she waved a hand dismissively, remembering the positions of the pieces on the board. "I can see that fork coming a mile away. Did you forget I can think 16 moves ahead? Queen's rook two to Queen's Bishop five." That would expand the threat of her Bishop's attack as well as prevent the knight from forking her King and Rook.

"Hey," Omni's voice betrayed his surprise. "You haven't logged into the game room yet."

"Sorry," Zai smiled sheepishly, her overbearing confidence at this sport sometimes made her impulsive. She clicked the command line toggle and spoke directly to her personal computer, "Instant Messenger, resume chess match with Omni." The helmet made a futuristic teleportation sound, signaling she was now in the room with him. She clicked the command line button again, "Instant Messenger, execute pirouette." Her avatar would do the little dance Omni found so amusing.

Instead he sounded bewildered, "How did you do that?" he asked. "You just remembered a game we were playing from two days ago?"

"The same way I always remember where we leave off," Omni's question perplexed Zai. "It's what makes me so unbeatable. Isn't that why you enjoy playing against me?"

"Of course it is," there was an inexplicable confusion in Omni's voice. "I guess I never quite realized the extent of your abilities. Tell me, how many unfinished games are you currently storing? How many can you play simultaneously?"

She depressed the command line toggle and told her avatar to shrug, "Don't know. The most I've played simultaneously is fifteen, but I could have taken more... it's your move by the way."

"Yes it is," Omni's tone was devious, like a prankster trying to pull a fast one on her. It was out of character for him, "King's Bishop eight to queen's bishop seven. That's a remarkable level of multi-tasking you have."

"Queen's Bishop five to-" she stopped when she saw the dilemma, it was seven moves away, but taking the Knight would let Omni trade his rook for her queen, an unacceptable loss. "I see you've been thinking about this."

"You could say that," there was more amusement in Omni's voice now. "I've been thinking about a lot of things, but I've devoted better than average resources to you."

Another odd statement, something was definitely off about her friend today. "This is too smart for you. Are you using a chess master program to calculate your moves?"

"What makes you say that?" there was no surprise in his voice, only amusement. Zai's suspicions shot through the roof.

"Because it's the kind of move a computer would make," Zai stated. "It's the kind of brute force thinking I'd expect from an algorithm. That's pretty sad Omni, you know better than to try something like that and not expect me to call you on it."

"You are very perceptive," Omni's voice took another strange tone she had never heard in him before; it was sinister. "Have you ever beaten a computer opponent?"