Psychotrope

09:52:32 PST

Dark Father heard Bloody guts cry out and turned to see what the fool had gotten himself into this time. A second ago, the troll decker had been a distant speck, almost to the top of the wall of skulls. Now he was plummeting down toward Red Wraith…

No, not Red Wraith. Toward another decker, one he'd never seen before. A dark-skinned woman in a tight, gauzy wrap and elaborate headdress and-Dark Father strained to see details-what looked like frayed evening gloves on her hands.

Dark Father grimaced as he realized that the troll was about to crash into the other decker. He held his breath and half turned away, not really wanting to watch but held in horrified fascination just the same.

Then the world shifted beneath his feet. Suddenly sideways was down. Dark Father fell onto the wall of skulls, which a second ago had been a vertical surface. He struggled to free himself from the tangle of fiber-optic cables and then rose to his feet on the bumpy floor. The rounded skulls were slippery under his feet, like wet cobblestones.

He looked up and saw Bloodyguts tumbling along the floor in a tight somersault. The troll rolled end over end twice more and finally came to a stop within touching distance of the new arrival.

His curiosity piqued, Dark Father made his way back to where a rather shaken Bloodyguts was climbing to his feet. It was slow going-Dark Father had to brace a hand against the mirror that now formed a wall beside him and pick his way carefully through the tangle of fiber-optic cables that littered the floor. He saw that Red Wraith was heading back from the opposite direction. Because he walked above the floor-rather than on it-he reached the others long before Dark Father did.

By the time Dark Father arrived, the three were already deep in conversation.

"… so this is the Seattle Visitor Center database?" Bloodyguts was asking.

The female decker nodded and said something about accessing an LTG address. Now that he was closer, Dark Father could make out the details of her persona. She'd chosen to appear as a black woman-although her skin had a grayish tinge, just as his own skin did in the real world. It looked as though patches of mold were growing on it. Her arms were wrapped in mummy bandages and her jackal-headed headdress was gilded and inset with sparkling gems. Like the rest of them, her persona icon was that of a dead creature. Dark Father wondered if she too had once died and then been reborn…

"What happened then, Anubis?" Red Wraith asked her.

Dark Father decided not to comment on the fact that they had failed to introduce him.

"I saw him-uh, Bloodyguts-falling toward me. I knew there wasn't time to get out of the way. I remember thinking that maybe this system was patterned after an old-fashioned funhouse like the one we used to have in the Squatter's Mall. It had a big, mirrored tunnel that rotated. It wasn't virtual at all-you actually had to climb through it. I remember wishing that I was inside that tunnel instead of here, that the walls and floor would rotate…"

She shrugged. "I guess I must have created a program that edited this system."

"Just like you created that crash utility out of thin air," Bloodyguts said.

"Try to do it again," Red Wraith suggested. "Edit the system's axis and rotate the floor back where it was."

Anubis closed her eyes a moment, as if in deep concentration. A frown creased her forehead. Then she opened her eyes and shook her head.

"I can't," she said. "I don't know how I did it."

Bloodyguts gave her an encouraging look. "But you were able to create a utility by the sheer force of your will alone," he said. "You said that the teaching program called it a 'complex form'-the same words that Fuchi exec used in his memo. Looks like the otaku can not only deck without a deck, but create and run utilities without software."

"Maybe it's instinctive," Red Wraith offered. "Something that only happens in situations of extreme duress. During the late twentieth century, there were reports of soldiers in combat spontaneously developing 'psychic' abilities-what we'd call magic today. Military memoirs are full of stories of soldiers being able to 'feel' a land mine before they put their foot down, or walking through dark jungle on a moonless night and stopping just centimeters short of the trip wire for a booby trap. Or seeing tombstones in the eyes of a buddy who was going to die that day… They couldn't control it, either.

"Some researchers speculate that stress had triggered early manifestations of magic, long before the Awakening. Maybe we're seeing something similar here-the awakening of a new ability, triggered by a combination of whatever 'experiment' we were subjected to, combined with the high stress of cybercombat."

Dark Father listened patiently, trying to follow the conversation despite the fact that he had missed the preamble.

"What you're proposing is an impossibility," he said after a moment's thought. "Writing a program from scratch takes hours or days. It must be the same for the otaku and their complex forms."

"Ritual magic takes days to prepare, too," Red Wraith observed. "But adepts are able to spontaneously cast spells. Maybe stress plays a part there, too."

Dark Father snorted. "I thought you were the doubter of the group," he said. "You don't believe that Als exist when there's plenty of evidence to suggest that they do, but you believe it's possible to create a utility program at will or to perform a complicated series of editing commands instantaneously…"

Red Wraith shrugged. "I have to believe the evidence of my own eyes. And of my own gut. Something just feels different about the way I've been interfacing with this virtualscape. It feels like, like…" His voice trailed off as he sought words for something he obviously found difficult to describe.

"I feel it too," Bloodyguts said. "And I do believe Anubis when she says she created that program on the fly. You saw the results: I would have been a mirror-smear if she hadn't."

"If only it were true that stress could trigger this ability, we could all escape from here." Dark Father stared meaningfully at the troll. "Certainly the aggravation of dealing with such knob-headed-" Then he froze as he spotted his reflection in the mirrored wall beside him. Instead of showing the familiar top-hatted black skeleton that was his Matrix persona, it reflected Winston Griffith III as he looked in the real world: a dapper black man wearing a three-piece suit. His head was bald and his face was devoid of eyebrows or lashes, and his skin held a grayish tinge-one that was slowly increasing, even as he watched. And his nails were growing into long, curling claws…

Dark Father's finger bones clicked against the bones of his palm as he instinctively balled his fist. The reflection on the wall beside him mirrored his action, and for a moment the claws were hidden. Then they emerged from inside the balled fist, erupting through the backs of his hands like sprouting vines.

Dark Father glanced nervously at the other deckers, but they were engaged in a debate over whether or not they could spontaneously create a utility that would help them log off this system. Looking back at the mirrored wall, Dark Father saw that their reflections were also different from those of the persona icons who stood in front of him. Anubis was a young black woman with close-cropped hair that was shaved high around the datajack behind her left ear and slots in her wrist that probably housed some sort of cyberware. She wore jeans and a fiber-mesh vest and looked street-smart-lower class but too clean to be gutter scum.

Red Wraith's reflection was that of a lithe-looking white man of about forty with chrome-pupilled eyes and wavy brown hair that had receded to leave a widow's peak. The back of his neck was horribly scarred, as if from some ancient injury. The tip of one of his fingers-the right index-had bent back at an odd angle, like an opened hatch. Projecting from the stump was a needle-thin bit of steel.

Bloodyguts… Well, what had Dark Father expected? The troll's reflection was that of a living man, rather than a rotting zombie, but Dark Father was willing to bet that he still stank. He was perhaps in his mid-twenties, wearing a sloppy track suit with sweat stains under the arms. The hair between his horns was uncombed, and his jutting yellow teeth looked as if they could stand a good brushing…

As if sensing that Dark Father was looking at him in the mirror, Bloodyguts turned. Dark Father felt his cheekbones go hot, as though he had flesh there that was capable of holding a blush. He turned, flustered, trying to step between Bloodyguts and the reflection of his ghoulish self.

"Hey, look!" Bloodyguts shouted. "The mirror's reflecting our meat bods!"

Dark Father felt a prickle of dread run through him as the others stared at his reflection in the mirror. The ghoulish gray pallor was pronounced now, and his claws were several centimeters long. He saw that his reflection was grinning in fear, revealing sharp, feral teeth. He quickly pursed his lips shut and tucked his hands behind his back, but it was too late. The others had seen. They knew.

"Spirits be fragged," Red Wraith said in a hushed voice. "You're a ghoul. I didn't think it was possible for ghouls to run the Matrix."

Anubis took a step back from Dark Father, as if he were a leper. Steel blades shot out of the arm of her reflected image. She raised her arm defensively, as if about to fend off an attack.

"Yup," Bloodyguts said. "He's a ghoul, all right. Nice suit, too."

"No!" Dark Father shouted. "I'm not a ghoul! The mirror is a lie. I'm human! Human!"

"Do you think we can trust him?" Red Wraith asked. "I wouldn't turn my back on him in the real world, but here in the Matrix…"

"Doesn't matter to me if he's a ghoul," Bloodyguts said with a shrug. "One of my best chummers is a ghoul. Poor fragger has to keep it under wraps, though, so the bounty hunters don't get him. I know how it feels, always having to watch your back. And how it feels to have people judge you by the way you look, rather than the programming power of your wetware. I can understand why…"

"I don't want your pity!" Dark Father screamed.

He turned, cringing from the looks he saw in their eyes. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. They'd found him out. They knew. If only there were a way out, some place to hide…

Four cracks appeared in the mirror, forming a door-shaped frame around the reflection of Winston Griffith III. Inside the rectangle of cracks, a round dark circle appeared just to the right of his hand-a door handle. Dark Father lunged toward his own reflection, grabbing for the handle. He wrenched the door open and leaped into the mirror, into the reflection of himself…

The virtualscape shifted.

He was in a jail cell with concrete walls. There was no door. Only a tiny window high in the rear wall, its grimy glass set well back behind a thick iron grill. The floor was bare gray concrete, as was the ceiling. A foul-smelling toilet sat in one corner, next to a chipped ceramic sink. The opposite wall held two metal bunks.

A child sat on the upper bunk-a boy about twelve years old. His head was shaved bald except for two tiny tufts of electric blue hair that had been gelled into hornlike points. He was human, but his features were a mix of racial groups. His skin was white and freckled, but his eyes had a slight fold that hinted at an Asian ancestry, and there was a slight thickening of the lips and nose that suggested Afro. He was dressed in one of the bright yellow, laminated paper suits they gave to mental patients at the hospital-a jumpsuit without sleeves or pant legs, made of tear-resistant material that could not be ripped up and made into a noose.

As the boy looked him over, Dark Father nervously fingered the noose at his own neck, adjusting it like a suit tie. He glanced around, looking for an exit, but didn't see one. He was stuck here-temporarily, of course, until he found a way out. But at least the mirror was gone.

"Hello, Winston," the boy said.

Dark Father felt his hands tighten on the noose. He'd been almost ready to relax after escaping his reflected image. But now he felt real fear. This decker knew his name. Was this Serpens in Machina in a different persona-or one of his accomplices? Dark Father took a nervous step back, stopping only when he felt the sink on the wall pressing into his back.

"How did you know my name?" His voice was a dry croak.

"I know everything," the boy said. "In the moment that I re-created you, I uploaded all of your memories, all of your secrets. I am a god."

"A what?" Dark Father's mind was reeling. Should he send his smart frame after this decker, who seemed to have accessed Dark Father's secret? No, that wouldn't work. He'd modified that program to search and retrieve data on the otaku; it no longer had its original search and destroy coding.

Maybe he should attack…

"No, you shouldn't," the boy said. "I told you-I'm a god. I'm all-knowing and omnipotent. I can do anything."

He flicked his finger in an idle gesture. Instantly the noose that Dark Father was wearing cinched tight around his own neck. Dark Father's vision blurred as the attack program did something it had not been programmed to do-attack its own user. Stars appeared before his eyes and the prison cell narrowed to a tunnel. Any moment now, Dark Father would lose consciousness…

The noose suddenly loosened and he could breathe again.

"See what I mean?" the boy asked.

Dark Father nodded mutely. "Yes," he gasped. "You're a god."

"Don't you dare try to use a complex form against me."

"I won't," Dark Father promised. "But who are you?"

The boy smiled. The glint in his eyes gave the smile an evil cast. "I am the leading player," he answered. A hard-copy printout whose cover was emblazoned with the word SCRIPT appeared in his hand. He tossed it contemptu ously at Dark Father, who tried to catch it. But the script disappeared halfway across the room.

"The what?" Dark Father asked.

"The officer in charge," the boy said. Heavy gold epaulettes appeared on the shoulders of his paper jumpsuit. They sagged, and large rips appeared in the supposedly untearable fabric. Then they disappeared.

The boy jumped down off the bunk and stood in front of Dark Father. "I'm the sysop," he said. He mimed drawing a rectangle, and a cyberdeck appeared in front of him. Its keyboard began clicking madly while he held it in his hands. Then he crumpled the deck up like a piece of paper and tossed it into the toilet. Dark Father heard the sound of the toilet flushing.

"The sysop," Dark Father said, a note of hope in his voice. "Then you can show me the SAN that will allow me to return to-"

"Nope," the kid said. "You're stuck here. Just like me. We're SAN-less in Seattle."

"But if you're the sysop…" Dark Father shook his head. "If you're the one who programmed all of this, you should be able to… I mean, you'd think-"

"You think a lot of things!" the boy shouted suddenly.

"I don't-"

"I'll show you!"

The boy vanished. In his place stood a tentacled, green-skinned monster. Its bloodshot eyes were set into its torso above a gaping mouth that drooled foul-smelling slime and its tripod legs were hairy and warted.

Dark Father pressed himself against the cold cement wall.

"You think I'm an alien from outer space," the creature said in a deep, bubbling voice that sounded like a cross between someone talking and retching. "You think I want my children to conquer the Earth. That's why we cut the brake line of your car."

"Not me," Dark Father protested. He had no idea what the creature was talking about. "I didn't think anything of the-"

The space alien vanished. In its place was a shimmering being of light, filled with multi-colored sparkles. "You think I'm a great spirit that managed to manifest within the Matrix," it said in a soft whisper. "But what do elves know? They're just empty-headed daisy eaters-right?"

"I read about an experiment where they tried to force a spirit into the Matrix once," Dark Father answered carefully. "Back in 2054. I think it was some kind of light spirit, though I never heard of one of those before. I remember, because one of those pirate propaganda stations made a big fuss about how only an ork girl could-"

"A non-human," the being of light said, echoing Dark Father's tone of polite disgust. The other decker had shifted his persona back into the shape of a young boy-a young ork boy. Dark Father suddenly realized that he had better keep his opinions to himself. Especially if this decker knew his real name.

The boy disappeared again. In his place was a miniature replica of a Matrix system-a series of hexagonal purple GPU and SPU nodes, linked by beams of ruby laser light.

"You think I'm an artificial intelligence," a heavily reverberating, electronic-sounding voice said. "That's what you put in your report to the Aztechnology board of directors. But my children discredited you. Your suicide confirmed that yours were the ravings of a madwoman. Als don't exist."

"You sound like Red Wraith," Dark Father muttered.

The boy reappeared-in human form, this time. He sat on the upper bunk with his back to Dark Father and his arms wrapped around his knees. He hummed tunelessly to himself and rocked back and forth, staring at the wall.

"Uh…" Dark Father realized that the other decker hadn't revealed his name. "Sysop?"

The boy just kept humming. He looked like one of the kids on the hospital's psych ward-the ones who had been orphaned during the Euro-Wars. Raised in automated nurseries without ever having had the benefit of human contact, many of them had suffered irreversible psychological damage. They displayed behaviors like the one the boy was exhibiting now-rocking, repetitive motions that had been their only form of physical stimulation when they were infants, nervous habits that they carried through into adult life.

Dark Father had a chilling thought. Was the programmer who had created this system mad?

He tried again to catch the boy's attention: "God?"

"Go away."

Dark Father had a sudden realization. "Your 'children'-are they the otaku!"

"Frag off! They don't love me any more. That's why I won't let them in. Now shut up. I don't want to hear about them anymore!" The boy rocked more violently. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"Then you must know what deep resonance is," Dark Father continued, heedless of the fact that the boy had jammed his hands over his ears. "You're the one behind the experiment. You can tell me what's going on-"

"You!" The boy spun around on the bunk to stare at Dark Father. "You're the one! You're the one who tried to kill me. I hate you! I HATE YOU!"

Twin beams of rippling force shot out of the boy's palms. They struck Dark Father's chest, propelling him violently backward. He slammed into the cell's cement wall with such force that he heard his bones cracking. Then the wall behind him gave way in a shower of concrete and dust and he flew through the air. Another shift…

He landed on his back, stunned, and saw Lady Death looking down at him, a surprised expression on her makeup-white face.

"Konnichiwa" she said, extending a slim hand to help him up. "Where did you come from?"