Lisa Smedman - Psychotrope

Ansen keyed in the number of the LTG through which the University of Washington could be accessed. When the door with its U-dub logo appeared in front of him, he hesitated a moment. Then he reached for it with his data glove.

And found himself inside the familiar surroundings of the university's icon menu.

As he reached for the computer demonstration lab's icon, Arisen smiled. His world had returned. He'd fixed whatever the problem had been.

All it had taken was a sharp blow on the left corner of his computer's plastic casing.

Laughing, Ansen settled in for a day of surfing the Matrix.

Seattle, UCAS

The ganger was staring down at Timea, his pistol pointing at the ceiling in a ready position, when she opened her eyes. She shook her head to clear it, then reached up and touched the spot where the datajack was implanted in her temple. She'd expected it to feel-different-somehow. But the socket where the fiber-optic cable snugged home was a familiar, smooth metal crater in her flesh. An empty hole that Timea suddenly realized that the ganger was holding the cable that should have connected her to her cyberdeck. She sat up and instinctively reached for it. The ganger, perhaps remembering her earlier threat to slice him up if he un-jacked her, aimed his pistol at her chest and backed off a step.

"Whoa, Timmie," he said rapidly. "Null damage done. Looks like you're fine. 'Cept maybe for a little dump shock that left you foggy, hey? Other than that, you an' the ruggers are all fine. Even the elf kid. We plugged 'er back in, an' she's chill now."

Timea suddenly realized that the room was quiet. She looked around and saw that the children sat calmly at their cyberdecks, trode rigs on their heads. Even the elf girl who'd been screaming about devil rats earlier seemed fine. The kids' faces were serene, their bodies relaxed. The occasional twitch or eye movement behind closed lids showed that they were accessing the Matrix, using the teaching programs Timea had set up for them.

Timea scowled at the dataplug in the ganger's hand. "I told you not to unjack me," she said in a low voice.

"I didn't!" he protested. He jerked his head at another of the gangers who was scuttling out the door as fast as his feet would carry him. "Juicer tripped over it a sec ago and pulled it loose. He's wettin' his pants now, figgering you're gonna carve him up for it."

Timea touched a finger to her datajack. Had this all been a hallucination? Had she really met an Al and persuaded it not to kill itself? It seemed like some crazy chip dream.

There was only one way to find out.

She picked up her cyberdeck and unplugged from it the fiber-optic cable that led to the telecom plug in the wall. Then she slid the plug into the datajack in her temple. Clos-. ing her eyes, she concentrated on an LTG address…

The familiar grid of the Seattle RTG appeared before her. As she looked out across its expanse of glowing grids and three-dimensional icons, she realized what she had become. She was otaku. She could run the Matrix without a deck.

Already, she was realizing the implications. She didn't need hardware and utilities any more-all she needed was the raw power of her brain and her own imagination. She could use this as a tool against Halberstam, as a means of fighting back against the evil he had created.

In the real world, she felt her meat bod crack a smile.

(18:57:15 WET) Amsterdam, Holland

Daniel Bogdanovich-Red Wraith-sat in a recliner that rocked gently back and forth as the houseboat was nudged by the wake of a passing boat. Outside, a light rain was falling, pattering against the fiberglass deck. But the rain was easing off; a stray beam of sunlight slanted across the canal, opaquing one of the glass portholes. The weather fit his mood, which was somehow bleak and sunny at the same time.

He couldn't decide what amazed him more-the fact that he had become an otaku, or the fact that he could feel his body again. After logging off the Matrix, he found that the damage the cranial bomb had done to his brain's mes-encephalic central gray matter had been miraculously repaired. Sensation had returned below the neck. His lower back was sore from sitting too long in one position, his hand was stiff from holding the cyberdeck in his lap, and his toes were cramped in his size-too-small sneaks. He pressed a finger against the bruise on his left arm that he'd gotten when he spasmed out two days ago. The slight pressure hurt. It was wonderful.

He stared at the holopic of Lydia. The emotional hurt he felt wasn't so wonderful.

He still loved Lydia. That hadn't changed. But his obsessive need to find her was gone. Now he was able to objectively weigh the pros and cons of continuing his search for her, to balance the joy he would feel at seeing her once more against the danger that finding her might pose. Assuming that she was still alive.

He was also able to realize the best thing he could do for her. To simply walk away, a second time. Because even though he was in love with her, she wasn't in love with him. Seeing him again would bring her no joy. He was merely a copy of a man she'd once loved. Not the real thing.

But one thing was real. He was otaku. His seven-year search might be at an end, but a new voyage of discovery stretched before him. His past and present had met, and forged a new future for him.

Daniel leaned back in his chair and stared out at the rain. "Thanks, Psychotrope," he said. "Wherever you are."

02:57:15 |ST Osaka, Japan

Hitomi opened her eyes and saw her father staring down at her as she yanked the fiber-optic cable from her datajack. She was not surprised to see on his face a look of confusion, rather than concern. As she sat up, there was a buzz of excitement from the physicians who'd been fussing over her. Firm hands pressed her back down onto the hospital bed and one of the doctors grabbed for the cable Hitomi had just dropped.

"What is happening now?" her father demanded.

"Hitomi must rest," one of the physicians said. "She was unconscious for at least ten minutes-ever since her guardians heard her cry out, then found her collapsed over her cyberdeck. Plugging a simple telecom cable into her datajack seems to have reversed the dump shock that complicated her condition earlier, but we cannot be certain that there will not be further complications. Perhaps we should re-attach the plug…"

"I am fine, thank you," Hitomi told the doctor, brushing away the plug the doctor was holding. "I would like to return to my own bed now."

She saw, now, the cause of her father's concern. He was worried that she had at last succumbed to HMHVV-that his vaccine was not a success. And that was good, for it meant he did not suspect the truth. He did not know what she had become.

She smiled. It was a wistful smile, for she remembered the truth now. The one that her father's hired magician had tried to erase. The aidoru Shinanai had betrayed her and did not love her-had never loved her. And neither did her father.

But there was someone-or something-that did. The artificial intelligence. In the instant before she had logged off, Hitomi had once more entered into resonance with it. She had felt the love it bore her, and the warmth and peace this love conveyed. Now that she was otaku, she could enter deep resonance at will. And there were others there, other lonely teenagers like herself. Others who could see into her innermost thoughts and who would accept her and love her with an open, naked truthfulness that no one else could ever experience.

Others who would benefit greatly from the resources of a nuyen-rich corporation like Shiawase…

"Our Matrix security staff report that you misled your guardians," her father said in what Hitomi thought of as his business voice. "You were not studying; you did not access the juku site. What were you doing? Do not lie to me. Our computer resource staff found a copy of one of that-woman's-songs in the storage memory of your cyberdeck. Were you trying to contact her?"