Free Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon by Robert N. Charrette Page A

could perceive it. The icon had no objective reality. It simply indicated where the decker was engaged, an analog for his activity among the datalines, optical chips, and computer architecture that was the Matrix. There was no place for spirits in the electronic world. Souls were the province of God, and when the body died they went on to His judgement. No machine could hold them back.
    There had to be another explanation. Sam's program continued to run as he pondered the riddle. While his own icon remained stationary among the tumbling alphanumerics, nearly transparent because his cyberterminal was engaged in a "flow-through" search, the Jiro icon passed him. It gave no sign that it noted his presence, no hint of recognition. Sam felt simultaneous disappointment and relief. Even a ghost of Jiro could not have passed without acknowledgement. Whoever was using Jiro's icon was a stranger.
    Sam's fingers flashed over the keys of his cyberterminal. The flow-through program disengaged and he activated the program he had named Tag Along. When the terminal brought Tag Along to active status, his icon flashed opaque, resolving into the standard Raku salaryman icon. Sam stood and placed himself behind the Jiro icon, pacing the intruder step for step and turn for turn. Occasionally, Sam's icon flickered suddenly to a new location, "teleporting" with the power of Tag Along to remain out of the Jiro icon's line-of-sight and thereby out of the operator's awareness.
    The teleport was a function of the program that Sam didn't understand. He knew why it operated, he just didn't know how . But then, he was a user not a programmer. He didn't have to know. The ability had proven helpful in the those first few months after the kidnapping incident and that was enough for Sam.
    The death of Jiro's wife had affected the young decker radically. His behavior had become erratic, leaving him surly and solitary where he once had been open and sociable. Renraku Corporation had reacted to the change, solicitous of its employees' welfare. When Sam reported the addition the young decker had made to his Matrix icon, the company psychiatrist agreed that monitoring was a reasonable precaution. The physician had authorized company software experts to write and emplace a custom watchdog program that would allow another decker to follow Jiro as he moved through the Matrix. Hardware modifications and custom software embedded in Jiro's cyberterminal workstation made the watcher invisible to the senses of Jiro's icon.
    Sam had persuaded the psychiatrist that he was a good choice as a watcher. After all, Sam was one of the few people at the arcology who knew anything about Jiro. The doctor agreed that Sam might have a good chance of noting anomalies in Jiro's behavior, possibly picking up subtle references to past events. In fact, the doctor had agreed so readily that Sam suspected he might have done so because the plan was good therapy for Sam himself. Sam didn't care. Therapy or not, he wanted to watch over Jiro. Their experiences at the hands of the shadowrunners who had hijacked their shuttle had created a bond between them. Sam could not abandon Jiro, especially after seeing how easily his friend absorbed the nihilistic attitude of Alice Crenshaw, the other survivor of the hijacking.
    The Jiro icon moved out of the datastore and deeper into the computer system, jolting Sam with a sudden shift in perspective. He was no longer accustomed to the forced movement of Tag Along. It had been months since the psychiatrist had certified Jiro as stable and thus discontinued the Tag Along authorization.
    Sam fought off the disorientation, focusing on the task at hand. If this wasn't Jiro, then someone had entered the Renraku system illegally. No legitimate user could operate with someone else's persona programming; they wouldn't have the codes or know the passwords to unlock the software. Sam had a duty to the corporation to prevent misuse of the system.
    He thought briefly