Free Overclocked by K. S. Augustin Page A

his apart­ment/lab and Carl real­ised he was proud of how fast she was ac­cli­mat­ising her­self to the Blue. He was sure it had taken him longer. He re­membered the days of in­tense loneli­ness and aim­less wan­der­ing be­fore he had dis­covered the gen­esis of the Rhine-Temple bot­net. He had watched the bot­net grow, ori­gin­ally drawn by its un­char­ac­ter­istic struc­ture, then fas­cin­ated and re­pelled when he fi­nally figured out what it was try­ing to do. When the first spiders from the bot­net de­tec­ted him, Carl knew he had no choice. It was either ac­tiv­ate the tether and flee to the safety of Base­ment Five. Or break it, stay in the Blue, and try to find some way to des­troy the mon­ster.
    Every now and then, he’d meet someone. A per­son who man­aged to stay in cy­ber­space long enough to clock up and carry on some mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, but such epis­odes were few and far between. And between his in­nate stub­born­ness, the Rhine-Temple, and the oc­ca­sional dis­trac­tion, it had taken years be­fore he real­ised what was miss­ing from his life.
    Tania.
    She had star­ted out as his rival and a po­ten­tial con­quest. The wo­man he needed to best, both men­tally and sexu­ally, in or­der to win the prize as the world’s first cy­ber­naut. Did he have some­thing to prove? Of course he did. He was the
en­fant ter­rible
, the self-taught hacker who had pro­gressed from be­ing al­most a high-school dro­pout to own­ing his own high-tech con­sult­ing busi­ness. He knew he didn’t have the qual­i­fic­a­tions of his rival, Doc­tor Tania Flowers, nor the in-depth know­ledge of how in­form­a­tion slot­ted to­gether. Where Tania had lo­gic, he op­er­ated on in­tu­ition. It was good enough to land him a spot at Base­ment Five, but the lack of formal edu­ca­tion had made him feel de­fens­ive through the en­tire period of tests and tri­als.
    And now?
    He looked at Tania as he ushered her through the front door of his “apart­ment”.
    Now, after more than a dec­ade of self-re­flec­tion, Carl de­cided that he didn’t like his real-time self any more. The sooner it was gone, the bet­ter, and he saw his im­pend­ing death as a form of atone­ment. The ul­ti­mate apo­logy. He only hoped she ap­pre­ci­ated it.
    She turned to face him the mo­ment he shut the door.
    “You said you had a plan?”
    Had he ever been that im­pa­tient, he wondered, and con­ceded that he prob­ably had.
    “We have time.”
    Strange how he had needed to speed up in or­der to learn how to slow down.
    He moved through the lab, tidy­ing up but, in real­ity, just keep­ing his hands oc­cu­pied while he tried put­ting his thoughts in or­der.
    Her voice drew his at­ten­tion. “How much time?”
    “You won't give up, will you?” He smiled to soften his words. “Okay, here goes. At the be­gin­ning, the Rhine-Temple moved very quickly. I didn’t think I had any room to move at all. I’d watch it in the morn­ing and, by the time I paid a re­peat visit in the even­ing, it would have doubled in size.”
    “What I failed to real­ise,” he said, mov­ing to his small pod of liv­ing room space, “was that the first growth is al­ways phe­nom­enal. Like watch­ing em­bryonic cells di­vide.”
    He sank into a plush chair and ges­tured for her to do the same. After a slight hes­it­a­tion, she cau­tiously ac­cep­ted the in­vit­a­tion.
    “But then it be­comes like that game of cel­lu­lar di­vi­sion. You know, when cells die un­less a series of con­di­tions are met.”
    Tania frowned. “Do you mean the game ‘Life’?”
    She was so quick. She knew in­stantly what he meant. At one time, their be­ing on the same wavelength scared the hell out of him. It made him want to dom­in­ate her. Now, he just sat back and smiled, a small curve of pride on his lips.
    “Ex­actly. How does it go again? Cells