Free The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 by Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, Mercedes Lackey, Ken Liu, Brad R. Torgersen, C. L. Moore, Tina Gower Page A

foreboding—dark inside with a blackened ring around the port where a firewall had once flamed. No telling what had wandered in there. All the place needed was a sign: THIS IS A TRAP, DUFUS. COME RIGHT IN .
    He pulled out his wand with his right hand and waved a work light sphere into existence with the other. With the bright light preceding him, Marcus confidently walked into the machine.
    The first software he saw was a keyboard driver.
    “Hey, guy, what computer is this?” he asked.
    “CLACK, CLACK, CLACKITY, CLACK … busy … CLACK CLACK ,” the driver said. “Master types commands to kill you. CLACK CLACK CLACKITY ! ”
    A sudden whoosh and a wall of heat caused Marcus to whirl around. A white hot firewall now closed the exit port. He gestured at it to re-open a port— any port would do right now—but nothing happened.
    The pounding of heavy boots caused him to spin again, this time to see heavily-armed and armored gigantic troll-like virus fighters bearing down on him waving swords, battle axes, and rifles with wicked-looking bayonets as long as the rifles.
    “Gotta scoot, dude,” the keyboard driver said, rushing off, CLACK ing rapidly again.
    Marcus groaned. These were no friendly McAfees or Nortons—rule-abiding, virus-squashing officers. No, these guys were coded on steroids. Mean, nasty, powerful! No rm spell would even scratch them.
    He waved his wand and his most powerful debug spell sizzled out and hit the first troll. No effect. It should have slowed the monster down to a crawl and revealed its internal workings. After that, just tear out statements and variables and it was over. No problem, except, nothing happened.
    He unlimbered his sword. Have to do this the old-fashioned way. Chop them into separate subroutines that would fizzle into oblivion.
    The keyboard driver had returned, slipped to the back of the pack. There was rapid CLACK ing and as the leading four trolls rushed him, their armor got thicker! Some human programmer was working real-time against him!
    But the thicker armor added weight and the trolls’ reactions were sluggish now as they struggled in slow motion to ram their bayonets through Marcus. Whoever this programmer might be, he was not very good.
    Marcus chopped at the trolls with his sword. It wasn’t easy, but big chunks were falling off.
    CLACK, CLACK, CLACKITY, CLACK!
    The programmer was fast on the uptake. The armor on all the trolls slimmed down and they duplicated until the memory around him was full of angry, hungry trolls with fast reflexes and anxious to taste his virtual blood.
    However, their very numbers hampered getting at him and the computer’s CPU was grinding down under the load. Suddenly the trolls were slow again, and so was the human programmer as he continued to duplicate them, adding yet more load.
    Marcus chopped a few of them to bits, but he could sense the CPU wavering and—although his virtual body’s code, written by him, was markedly more efficient, he felt like he was fighting in mush now. He didn’t want to be here when the computer crashed, like in the next few milliseconds. Hell of a way to die for someone as good at coding as him—embarrassingly so, even.
    He switched his sword to his left hand, parried a bayonet thrust while pulling the abort button from his pocket, flipping the safety cover off with his thumb. Holding his breath, he pressed it. Click!
    * * *
    Marcus rolled through an open port on the old server in the shop’s backroom, expanding to full size, and gracefully springing to his feet. He sheathed his sword and—
    Bill—in his fifties, rotund, and bald as the proverbial billiard ball—was coming in holding a cup of coffee. He dropped both the cup and his jaw. The cup shattered, the brown fluid from it staining the ancient, already-discolored linoleum, but neither Marcus nor Bill noticed that.
    “You’re … you’re …” Bill said with several gasps.
    Marcus was running his hands over his body. He was the