Where I blog now
All righty. For anyone checking up on me, first -- this blog still stands, because this NaNoWriMo story is complete in this spot.

But for other stuff, you can find my general cultural blog at Confessions of a Cultural Idiot, my book-related blog at Bookishgal, and my editing/writing blog (which I've only just started) at Shiny Ideas.
- posted by Phyl @ 6:31 PM 0 comments

 
Just checking...
...to see if this blog still works on the "New Blogger" before I switch all my blogs to WordPress.
- posted by Phyl @ 6:44 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 15
Back to the Very beginning of the story

Back to Chapter 14 - part two

"The major difficulty," said Mr. Ian Woon, "was that I was so closely tied to the school that any investigation I did would be suspect. I could either be accused of using ISCE to try to interfere in one of the world governments, or the school itself could be suspected of being an accomplice in whatever plot was uncovered."

"So you had to bring in someone who wasn't connected to you," supplied Toshi.

The six of them sat with Mr. Woon in a little lounge attached to the main school assembly area. They could hear the buzz of the rest of the student body and ISCE faculty and staff outside, as they prepared for the ceremony. There was still a lot of chatter out there, as everyone's holiday had ended up being two weeks longer than expected. But when everything was considered, two and a half weeks for the governments of the world to find all the facilities involved in the plot, and clear everything away – it wasn't too bad.

Mr. Woon nodded at Toshi's remark. "I had no idea," he said, "that there could be such danger involved, or I would never have chosen this method. I thought that Miaki would discover the information and somehow make it public. But I didn't realize that there would be other connections that would draw in more students." He glanced at Kenji, who flushed a little and looked at his hands. "I thought perhaps he would involve you, Toshi, but no others."

Julie asked, "But how did you even know Miaki would come to school? He'd already stayed home the first year. What if he didn't change his mind?"

"Well," Mr. Woon said sheepishly, "I did what I could to influence him."

"What he's trying to say," Miaki said, "is that he came in person a couple of months before this term, to ask me to come here."

"In person?" Chika said. "That's amazing. Nobody else has ever been personally invited by Mr. Woon."

"Well," Woon remarked with a reminiscent smile, "not since the first couple of years of the school. We had a very small staff then."

Miaki elaborated, "He didn't say anything openly. But some of the things he talked about – the facilities, the access the school had to things – gave me the idea that maybe I could find out more about what happened to my father."

"This was deliberate, of course," Woon said. "I hoped he would begin to think along those lines. I apologize now, Miaki, for being so manipulative."

"It's alright," Miaki said. "I was already looking for ways to investigate. If it hadn't been here, I'd have been trying elsewhere. Probably illegally."

Julie snorted. "As though your activities here were pure and unblemished."

He laughed. Julie thought, happily, that he was starting to laugh again, rather a lot. He still tended to keep to himself, or only hang out with the other five, but she thought that would probably change now, with time. It was kind of a sad thought, really, that the six of them would probably start to branch out more now. She hoped they'd always stay friends on some level.

"My only regret," said Ian Woon, "is that the plot I suspected turned out to be so widespread and advanced. And that it involved the people it did."

Kenji managed a little smile. "It's alright, Mr. Woon. I know who you're talking about. I'm getting used to it. And I'm...I'm honestly glad we stopped him now, rather than later."

"I don't know if it's any consolation, young man," said Mr. Woon, "but he never did purchase you a place at the school. I always wanted you here, as much as Katsu. I know you have proven to all your schoolmates – in fact, to the entire world – that you belong here."

"Oh, look at him," Julie said, "he's blushing again!"

"Stop that. I can't help it," Kenji mumbled, his head lowered.

Toshi and Miaki grinned at each other, and once again Jin thought how much alike they looked, despite their different hair and eye colours. She remembered the way, after they had been engulfed by the students and staff and answered as many questions as possible after their adventures leaping among the simulations, the two of them had managed at last to slip away. Jin had left just before them, and had found herself yet again in the position of eavesdropper as they paused in a hallway near the women's dorm wing, on the way to their own dorm.

Miaki had put a hand on his cousin's shoulder and smiled. "You saved my life again today. How many times is that? I've lost count."

"Now, don't be melodramatic," Toshi had said lightly.

"I'm serious. Right from that very first day, when I found my father dead. If you hadn't come when you did, I think I would have followed him."

"I know," Toshi said quietly, his head turned away. "And I thought that's what you were doing today, when you made Kenji let you go. We had finished the job and exposed the plot, and now you were finally letting yourself die."

"You thought I was committing suicide?" Miaki was surprised. He bowed his head. "Of course you did. I talked like it often enough. I'm so sorry. But I really wasn't doing that. There wasn't any other way of getting everybody out, unless Kenji let go of me."

"Okay, so now you're back and the job is done. What now?"

"What do you mean, 'what now'?"

"Do I still have to watch you every minute, to make sure you'll still be here tomorrow morning?"

Miaki thought it over. "No," he said finally. "I think I'll be okay now. I'll really be okay, Toshi. Thanks to you and our friends."

Jin still hugged the word to herself, even now: friends. Miaki was not just her partner in class work, he was her friend. And she wasn't merely his friend – she was his "very tall friend." As he constantly told people, to their bewilderment.

He seemed to have guessed at least part of what she was thinking, for he now glanced over at her and smiled knowingly.

Whereupon Julie, too, glanced at her, with a knowing smile of an entirely different sort. Jin grimaced at her, but she was totally unrepentant.

The best thing that had come out of all of this, Jin reflected, determinedly ignoring Julie, was the reconciliation between Miaki and Kenji. Indeed, if anyone knew what it was like to lose your father, it was Miaki, and he treated Kenji with astonishing gentleness. In the last three weeks of extended vacation at the school, they had often been seen sitting off in a corner somewhere, in the cafeteria or a lounge, talking quietly.

That smile of Miaki's – that sweet smile that totally disarmed you and revealed the lovely soul that had always been inside somewhere – was often on display these days. There were wounds that needed healing, for most of them, and often the healing factor was turning out to be Miaki himself.

Now someone popped a head through the doorway and said, "Mr. Woon, we're just settling everyone down now, so you can come out onto the stage at any time."

"Thank you." Ian Woon turned and surveyed the six of them as they all stood, preparing to go out and be awarded and speechified and thoroughly embarrassed by adulation. The little man winked at them and said reassuringly, "I promise not to drag it out too long. But you knew you were going to be famous, didn't you, once you decided to broadcast to the whole world?"

"I believe," said Miaki drily, "that that was Toshi's entire goal."

"Mr. Woon," Kenji said. "This awards ceremony isn't being broadcast outside the school, is it?"

Mr. Woon stopped at the door and looked back at him, not replying, but giving him a wry smile.

"Oh no!" Kenji moaned. "The whole world is going to see us!"

"Don't worry, Kenj," Toshi said, slapping him on a shoulder. "I'll stand in front of you so they'll only see me."

"There is one way," Chika said, "that you could make it up to us for embarrassing us in front of the whole world, Mr. Woon."

"And what is that, young lady?" he asked.

"You could tell us where ISCE is really located."

He regarded her silently for a moment, and then finally said, his eyes twinkling. "Very well. ISCE is located on the outskirts of Tokyo. It is contained in a very large building disguised as a fish packing plant." And he turned and went out the door.

The six of them looked at each other.

"Is that true?" said Julie. "It can't be true. Is it? That's a really stupid place to put a cyber space school. Don't you think? What do you think? Is it true?"

The others burst out laughing. "I have no idea," Chika said, "whether it's true or not. And he's never going to tell us."

"Then that," Toshi said, "is our investigative project for next term. Agreed?"

"Agreed," they said. And followed Mr. Woon out the door.

###
- posted by Phyl @ 4:09 PM 1 comments

 
Chapter 14 - part two
Back to Chapter 14 - part one

They logged out immediately, flinging off their equipment to surround Miaki's chair. Chika leaned over his slumped figure, feeling for a pulse in his neck. Julie was almost hysterical. "I didn't mean this to happen, I didn't, I didn't!" Jin wanted to shake her or slap her or something, but stood almost paralyzed as she watched Chika trying to find out if Miaki was dead.

Kenji had fallen to his knees on the floor, sobbing, his fingers dug like claws into his flaming hair. Somebody should comfort him. Miaki had been right – this wasn't Kenji's fault. Even though he kept shrieking, "I killed him, I killed him!"

There seemed to be a commotion at the door. Dazedly, Jin looked over and saw most of the students who had remained at ISCE for the holiday. They were shouting, and banging on what almost looked like glass across the door. What on earth -- ? Ah, a force field of some kind. Julie's and Kenji's work, to keep anyone from stopping them at their important task. And these students had obviously seen the broadcast they had sent out, or they wouldn't be here.

Which meant that it had worked. The whole world knew about the plot, and something could be done. They had succeeded.

"I can't find a pulse!" Chika cried. "Miaki, wake up! You can't be – you can't be – "

Jin saw everything through a daze of inertia. She should move – should get Julie to remove the barrier at the door, give her something constructive to do – should help Kenji stop crying somehow – but she couldn't seem to move. Until she realized what was missing.

"Toshi," she said suddenly. "Where is Toshi?"

He was at the terminal beside Miaki's. His head had fallen forward onto the terminal desk. One hand hung limply down the side of his chair.

Chika's face was ashen underneath the orange streaks. "I...thought he had ahold of me," she breathed. She looked like she was going to faint. "He...he was right behind me. I was sure he was." She reached her hand toward his neck, to test for a pulse, but she couldn't bring herself to touch him. "He was right behind me," she whispered.

Julie had managed to stop her hysterical wailing, and moved closer to Toshi's chair, now crying softly. Kenji staggered to his feet, his face blotched and wet with streaming tears. "Then I failed!" he said. "I killed them both – Miaki and Toshi – they're dead – just like Miaki's father – "

Julie hiccupped, and pressed a hand against her mouth. "Wait," she said. "Wait. I'm not sure – "

Chika whirled on her. "Not sure about what??"

"Toshi got me to make him some small programs last week – I'm not sure – he – he might be trying to bring him back!"

"Then we have to log in again!" Kenji cried, leaping to his terminal and fumbling with the goggles. "We have to help – "

"There's nothing we can do now," Chika said. "They're way beyond where we could find them. You could feel that black whirlwind; it was more than we could ever handle. If we try to get back in, we'll just get ourselves killed."

"I don't care!" said Kenji, trying to tug the goggles away from her. "I have to do something to help!"

"All we can do is wait," Julie said. "Toshi's almost as good as Miaki with these things. If anyone can do this, he can."

"Who are you to tell me to do anything?" Kenji shouted. "If it weren't for you and your little programs, we wouldn't have lost them in the first place!"

Julie's face twisted and she sank into a nearby chair, burying her face in her hands. Kenji stepped to her side, stricken.

"I'm sorry, Julie. I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it. It's not your fault." He pulled a chair up beside her and leaned forward. They threw their arms around each other and wept on each other's shoulders.

They had no idea how long to wait. They sat in a semi-circle behind the two people – two bodies? – at the terminals, for several minutes. When Chika finally got up the nerve to feel Toshi's neck, she could feel a pulse, very slow and faint. When she tried again with Miaki, she really wasn't sure. She didn't think there was anything there, but then again, there might be, so slow and faint that it was virtually undetectable. She wished she knew what to do. She sat back down and they waited several minutes longer.

There were still people in the doorway, trying to get through. One of the professors, in fact, had come to the door and was working at disabling the devices that Julie had set on the floor to either side of the door. He didn't seem to be having any luck.

"Shouldn't you open the door now?" Jin said.

"No," Julie said, having almost cried herself out, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. "I don't want them in here – I don't want to talk to anyone – till we know one way or another."

"You're already talking, to me," Jin said reasonably.

"Yes, but you're different," Julie said unreasonably.

"Then how long should we wait?" Chika asked. "How long till we do know, 'one way or another'?"

"I don't know."

Chika stood up again, and leaned over to feel Toshi's neck one more time. As though triggered by her touch, his head suddenly jerked up with a deep gasp, as though he had surfaced from the bottom of a lake. Indeed, he was still gasping as he wrenched off his goggles, pushed Chika aside, and leapt to Miaki's chair, trailing wires from gloves and boots.

"Come on," he gasped, not daring to remove any of Miaki's equipment. "Come on! I know you're there – wake up, dammit!" He knelt by his cousin's chair and pled softly, "Miaki. Wake up. I – we need you. Come back."

Miaki's fingers moved, slightly. Then he, too, lifted his head with a gasp. Toshi pulled off his goggles and he looked around vaguely, having a hard time getting his bearings. He blinked, trying to clear his head, as his cousin pulled off gloves and boots.

"Tosh...?" he whispered.

"Welcome home," Toshi said. He was crying.

"What did you do?"

"Did you think I'd just let you go without putting up a fight? You know I'll never do that. Never."

"Toshi." Miaki pulled him close and held him. "I could feel you – right away – through everything else."

"Through the pain. Those bastards like to make it hurt – and boy, did that hurt. Any longer in the middle of that, and...but it's over. We got them, and we got out, no matter what they did. They're never going to hurt us again."

"But how...?"

"Julie made me a little something. I left a special marker at the gazebo, and managed to tack one onto you just as you were falling. That's how I found you in the middle of that – that – " Toshi's eyes darkened and he bowed his head.

Miaki shuddered. "Don't think about it. It's over; you said so."

They looked up simultaneously, to where Julie stood, both fists pressed against her mouth. As they stood up, Toshi reached for her and pulled her into a three-way embrace.

"It's alright," Miaki said, as she started to cry again. "Your little program saved me, too. That's the most important part."

He gave her a big squeeze and then stepped over to Kenji. Who was crying again too. Miaki pulled him close and hugged him.

"My brave, brave friend," he said. Which made Kenji cry even harder.

Then, it seemed, they were all hugging in one big group. Jin saw that sweet smile again, directed at her, before being engulfed by it all. She thought, suddenly, that she was so happy that she didn't care if they stood here like this for days. Crying.

Miaki said, finally, "We're such a bunch of blubbering idiots. They're going to stick us all in an asylum after this."

And then they were laughing, and laughing, till Julie had the hiccups, till Kenji was laughing and crying at the same time, till Chika had thrown herself on a chair, so weak from laughing that she couldn't stand up. Julie finally went over to the little box placed inside the force field, the box that controlled it. She poised her hand above one of the buttons on its top panel.

"Ready?" she said. "We're going to have a lot to answer for once we open that door."

The six of them looked around at each other, savoring the comradeship. But finally, Miaki crossed his arms and leaned casually against a terminal screen, smiling. "Ready," he said.

Chapter 15
- posted by Phyl @ 4:05 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 14 - part one
Back to Chapter 13 - part two

Kenji moved more quickly than he thought possible, grabbing without much hope at Miaki's flailing hand as he went by. Miraculously, the two hands met. Miaki dangled in the voracious wind, hanging above the ravenous, whirling blackness below the window. He swung his own free arm once, twice, and then managed to throw it upwards and grab Kenji's arm with a second hand. But that was as much as he could manage. The furious pull of the sucking wind was almost irresistible.

"Pull him in, hurry!" Toshi screamed. He was helpless to do anything, only held back from swirling into the blackness, himself, by the corner of the ledge and frame, and Kenji's outstretched arm. Neither he nor Chika could move, without probably sending all three of them hurtling into the whirlwind – and probably to their deaths.

"I'm trying!" Kenji gasped. "Hold on – Miaki, hold on – "

"I'm holding – I can't pull up – it's so strong – the wind – "

Kenji tried to pull, but he couldn't manage to bend his arm. He tried to lean his body back, and pull the whole arm further in, but the force working against him was just so strong! Miaki hung there like a dead weight, feeling heavier and heavier by the second. If he could only get close enough to try to grab the window sill himself – but the wind was pulling and pulling at him –

Chika barked, "Julie, hold his legs. We'll try to hold him so he's not fighting against his own fall!"

Kenji's feet were spread wide enough that she couldn't grab both his legs, but Julie wrapped her arms around his right knee, cursing that she didn't weigh more. She could feel his thigh muscle straining to keep his hip pressed against the window ledge. How could she possibly feel that? she suddenly wondered. This sim was too, too real. It was more apparent than ever that if they fell into this horrible wind, it would kill them.

She could feel Jin leaning against her, an arm around her waist. More weight! Good. Every little bit would help Kenji stand securely. If only he could manage to drag Miaki back in!

On the other side, Chika tried to lower herself enough to wrap her own arms around either Kenji's leg or his waist, but there was just enough space between him and the left window frame that she was almost sucked out. Again, only his outstretched arm prevented her. Toshi, holding for dear life to the frame, managed to free a hand enough to grab her upper arm and help her inch back closer to the frame so she could get a hand on it too. But as before, if not for Kenji's arm, they would both have been swept in.

Still Kenji strained to pull himself backward. Miaki was literally trying to "climb" his arm, trying to move his gripping hand farther up to grab higher up on Kenji's sleeve. But for some reason, his hand slipped, as though the sleeve was slippery. He tried again, seemed to get a better hold, and then he slipped again, sliding back down.

"I – I don't know what's wrong!" he gasped. "Why can't I get a grip?"

"Keep trying!" Kenji cried. "I can hardly move! I'm trying, but – Toshi and Chika will fall in – if I move too much!"

"Then don't!" Miaki said. "I'll keep trying."

Again and again he seemed to make some headway, pulling himself up Kenji's sleeve, then somehow losing his grip and shifting back again.

"What are you doing?" Kenji cried suddenly. "You're letting go!"

"No I'm not!" Miaki gasped. "You're pushing me away!"

"What are you talking about? I'm not pushing anything – " Kenji stopped with a sudden gasp. "No. Oh no. Oh no."

"What is it?" Toshi cried frantically. "Why can't he hold on?" He could now see it himself: Miaki was really struggling to keep his grip. "Kenji – hang onto him! Hang on!"

"I'm trying – but it's pushing – it's pushing – "

"OH NO!" Julie suddenly screamed. She got onto her knees and peered over the window ledge. "Oh no, Kenji, no! What have I done??"

"What do you mean?" Toshi yelled. "What's happening?"

"My repelling program!" she shrieked. "It's pushing him away! It won't let Kenji hold him! It won't let them touch! I made it so it would push Miaki away if they touched too long!"

Toshi gaped at her in horror. At last he managed to ask, weakly, "Why? Oh Julie – why have you done this?"

"I forgot!" She was crying now. "It was after Miaki attacked him – I was just trying to give him some extra protection – I didn't think it – I didn't think it would hurt him! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Kenji could feel the push growing stronger and stronger. His hand ached from the force with which he was trying to keep it closed around Miaki's hand. "Julie!" he yelled desperately. "You have to alter the program! Stop it! Do something!"

"I can't!" she wailed. "It's in the wand – in my room! I don't have the data!"

Miaki had stopped trying to climb Kenji's arm. He had stopped everything, except just hanging on as hard as he could with both hands. He had become so still that Kenji was afraid he was already – already –

Their eyes met, and held.

"Kenji."

"No," Kenji whispered.

"Let me go," said Miaki.

"NO!" Kenji cried, echoed by Toshi.

"Miaki, are you crazy?" Toshi yelled. "Here – let me try – " He attempted to wriggle past Chika, hoping to get to Kenji's other side, but the wind caught him and would have pulled him through if he hadn't caught Kenji's arm.

"Let me go," Miaki repeated. The force pushing him away was making it harder and harder to hold on. He felt like his hands were covered in butter, while weights of several tons hung from his feet.

"I'm – not – letting – you – go!" Kenji clenched his teeth and tried heroically to pull his arm in – but Miaki didn't seem to be coming with it. He just couldn't seem to lift him back toward the window. "Hang on – just a bit longer!" he said. "We'll think of something!"

"No." Miaki closed his eyes for a moment, and a holoscreen sprang up beside him. He curled his fingers into the material of Kenji's sleeve to hold himself just a little more steady while he concentrated on the holoscreen. His lips moved a little, and the screen disappeared. "There!" he said. "Jin's got everything. She can log you out now!"

"Then you log out too!" Kenji said.

"I – I can't. I just tried. You – " Miaki gasped as he almost slipped again. "You have to – step through the wall into the gazebo! You can't – get me through it – "

"We will! We'll manage – "

"No! If you let go enough to try to walk through – and still have me dragging on you – you'll all fall in! Kenji – you have to save them. You have to let me go!"

They stared at each other for what seemed like an hour, Kenji's face twisted in anguish, and Miaki's calm and quiet. Jin had already called up a holoscreen with Miaki's data on it. She blocked out every thought, every grief, every consideration except the one task he had given her: opening the door that would let them escape.

"I – I can't!" Kenji cried. "Miaki, I can't do it! I DON'T LET MY FRIENDS DIE! Please, oh please, don't ask me to do this! There has to be another way!"

Then Miaki smiled the sweetest smile any of them, including Toshi, had ever seen on his face. "It's alright, Kenji," he said. "Don't be afraid. This isn't your fault. It's not Julie's fault. No one will ever think that."

"Please..."

"This is our choice, together, my friend, Kenji. My friend. We have to save them. You're losing strength – your other arm won't hold much longer – "

"I can hold it! I can!" Kenji wept. Yet he knew Miaki was right: his left arm, that held Chika and Toshi back from the maelstrom, was weakening and shaking.

A gap opened behind them. Jin could see the gazebo and its garden, through her own tears, just two feet away.

"She's done it," said Miaki, and smiled that sweet smile again. "My very tall friend, Jin. Time to let go, Kenji, and get them out. Let go." He released the hand that had been hanging onto Kenji's sleeve.

Toshi was screaming, flailing at Chika, who could barely hold him back. Kenji's arm was going to give at any moment, if they didn't get out of here.

He looked down into Miaki's gently smiling face, and closed his eyes. And loosened his aching fingers. "Miakiiiiiiiiii!" he heard Toshi scream in agony as he felt Miaki's hand slip from his grasp. And then he felt Julie tugging on his leg, pulling him just close enough to the opening behind them that the shrieking wind lost its hold on him. He fell through into the gazebo, almost on top of Jin and Julie, with Chika landing on him, still holding his left arm.

Chapter 14 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 4:03 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 13 - part two
Back to Chapter 13 - part one

"Thanks," Jin said. "Sorry I fell behind."

"You have to use the bigger avatar, Jin," Miaki said. "You'll have bigger strides and you'll be able to keep up better. We don't want to lose you. Nobody will think you're lying. So use it, okay?" He flashed her a quick smile.

She made the adjustment, and then started walking along the bookshelves, staring at as many titles as she could. She didn't even register them herself, so intent was she on keeping fairly close to the others, but she knew everything was being recorded and broadcast, so it didn't really matter.

She turned a corner and bumped into someone. It wasn't one of her fellow-students, but seemed to be a library user. Until she recognized Mariko Suzuki, professor of terraforming at ISCE. And until she realized she could see right through her.

"Miaki!" Jin screamed. "Someone's followed us in!"

He was there immediately, grabbing her hand as Toshi grabbed his, and in a twisting instant they had jumped out of that simulation and into another, opened up by Chika.

Now they were in a gigantic warehouse, with banks of shelving on huge metal scaffolds rising row after row above them almost to the roof, at least four stories above them. As they dashed up and down the rows between scaffolds, they began to recognize that this was a storage facility for emergency equipment. Sleeping bags, water jugs, emergency rations, generators, communication equipment, batteries. And row upon row upon row of radiation suits, like the ones that were being tested in the nuclear winter simulation.

"Those bastards," Toshi said. "They're really planning to zap everybody with nukes, and wait it out till the rest of the world submits to them."

"We have to stay in this one as long as possible," Chika said grimly. "Let's let the world see how thoroughly they've been planning this."

They recorded as much as they could, but the warehouse attendants soon noticed them, and began running toward them. At the same time, the apparition of Mariko Suzuki reappeared behind them.

Kenji ran a few steps ahead and reached a cross-aisle. "This way!" he called, and as they ran past him, he swept his arms against a large stack of water jugs, and hurled them into the aisle in the way of professor Suzuki. They continued running up and down the aisles, throwing batteries and food cans and sleeping bags into the aisles to obstruct their pursuers.

Toshi was already choosing the next simulation, and as Yoshida's program tugged at them again, he eluded it still again, pulling the six of them out and slamming the door against both Yoshida and Suzuki.

Another storage facility. Full of weapons, and boxes and boxes of ammunition.

"I hate these people," Toshi growled, bending over, hands on knees, and panting from all the running. "Miaki, how close are we to being able to log out?"

"Soon," Miaki said, still frowning at his holoscreens. "I've almost figured out the block."

"And Julie? What about the tracking tags?"

"Close," she said. "But if Miaki can log us out, it won't matter."

"We still broadcasting, Chika?" Toshi asked, moving on.

"They're seeing everything. We're doing fine."

"And Jin," Toshi said suddenly. "You're taller."

Miaki glanced over and grinned at her. "She's taller than any of us, really," he said, then laughed. "I think your avatar's blushing, partner."

"It is not," she retorted. Then she looked over her shoulder. "I think professor Suzuki has found us again," she said, as the air behind them began to shimmer and the professor's form to appear.

Julie said suddenly, "Kenji, if we're in a simulation – but not – do you think your sparkly coloured balls might work as a distraction?"

"I'll try them," he said.

"And I'll try something else," Jin said. "Something like the very first sim Miaki and I partnered in."

They began to trot down the aisles of this warehouse, as they had the other one, pursued by professor Suzuki's avatar. It wasn't clear why she kept running after them. What could she do even if she grabbed one of them? Was she hoping to log out, and take a captive with her? Or what, exactly?

They didn't want to find out. So Kenji dropped behind and began creating the coloured sparklers that Julie wanted. He sent them flashing and flying from all directions and angles, swooping at Suzuki's head and shoulders, forcing her to duck and hopefully blinding her a little.

Jin augmented his work by trying to manipulate the simulation itself. She couldn't make it show a place that was different, because it was linked so intimately to the real world. But the parts of it that remained a mere simulation, she could manipulate a little bit. So professor Suzuki found herself running into invisible walls and being forced to turn corners that took her away from her quarry. After a few minutes, she was far behind them and they were free to collect data on the weapons warehouse.

But once again, they felt the tug of Yoshida's program, trying to take them away.

Toshi said, "Alright, I'm sick of this. I'm going to try something to get rid of Suzuki, at least. Then we'll deal with Yoshida."

He made some calculations and waited as long as he could, actually allowing Suzuki to start catching up with them. Then he twisted them away from the weapons warehouse, and took them back to the nuclear winter simulation. This time, they were wearing the suits with the highest protection.

"Step back from the entry point," he commanded quickly.

"Toshi, are you sure we should stay here?" Chika said uneasily. "We don't want to expose ourselves to too much radiation."

"We should have time," he said shortly. He was already manipulating a few more parameters, frowning in concentration.

A moment later, professor Suzuki appeared again, virtually in front of him. Somehow he had restricted the choices this time, and she appeared wearing the suit with the least protection from radiation.

"Sorry," Toshi growled, glaring into the face plate of her helmet. "But you've asked for this."

He grabbed her arm, catching her off guard, and swung with all his might. She staggered, barely keeping her feet, until she lost her footing at the edge of the dead stream, and plunged face-first into the evil, oozing mud in the center of the stream bed. With great difficulty she pulled herself up out of the sucking muck, onto her hands and knees. Frantically she brushed the radiation patch on one arm she could see the deep blue already shading to dark purple. No one could guess how much of that radiation was getting through the suit.

She glared venomously at Toshi. "You won't escape, any of you," she promised. "Yoshida will see to that. And if you try to go back to ISCE, we'll kill you."

Then she logged out.

"Toshi." It was Miaki, staring white-faced at his cousin. "What have you done to her?"

"Nothing permanent," Toshi said calmly. "If she gets to ISCE sick bay right away, she'll be fine. All I've done is remove the pursuit. Now it's your job to get us logged out." And with the flick of a hand, he pulled them out of the nuclear winter sim, and back into the desert.

Miaki worked fiendishly at his holoscreens, as they made two more jumps. At the second jump, they felt a tugging from two directions, behind them and ahead of them, before Toshi resolved the difficulty and got them back into the library.

"Miaki, you've got to do it soon!" he said. "I think they're fiddling with the sims themselves. I don't know if we'll be able to do this much longer."

"Just one more," Miaki said. "Almost ready...almost..." His fingers and hands flew, his eyes darting from screen to screen to screen as he made his final calculations.

Yet again came the tugging. "Alright," Toshi muttered. "One last time. Back to the engine lab."

Twist. The library disappeared, and there they were, one more time, in the small hallway by the janitor's door.

It caught them before they had time to react. A wild, rushing wind was flowing down the corridor toward the hall with the long window. With a scream, Julie was swept off her feet and flung toward the corner. Kenji was right behind her, and as they were flung around the corner, tumbling, they crashed into the lower wall below the long window.

The window whose glass had somehow vanished, opening not into the large engine testing area, but into a huge, sucking, black maelstrom that whirled and roared below them.

Julie crouched on her hands and knees, pressed against the lower wall, while Kenji had managed to get onto his feet, knees and hips against the wall and one arm stretching to grasp the left frame of the window. He reached across just in time, because Toshi and Chika came hurtling toward him and crashed into the open space barred by his arm. If it hadn't been there, they would have flown through the window and plunged into the maelstrom.

Behind them came Jin, literally taken off her feet and blown through the air, even with her taller avatar. Miaki had grabbed her hand and was digging in his heels, skidding as the wind pulled them inexorably toward the window. With his free hand he grabbed in futility at the wall of the janitor's hallway, but then they were past it and in the open. He had just enough time to pull his free arm down, slam it across Jin's body, and thrust her low enough to crash into Julie and the protective wall.

And then he hit the window ledge, full force and off balance. His arms swung wildly as he tipped, and with a cry of terror, he went over.

Chapter 14 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:59 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 13 - part one
Back to Chapter 12 - part two

Toshi gasped unbelievingly, and the others stared in horror. In all their care to watch Miaki, to make sure he didn’t do anything drastic, none of them had thought to watch Kenji for the same reasons.

He stood pointing the weapon at his father, his hands shaking. Kazuo Tanaka stared at what seemed to be the ghost of his son, holding a very real-world weapon, and hardly even looked surprised. His eyes flicked briefly to the five apparitions coming through the door behind him, then settled back on Kenji.

Professor Yoshida said, "So they did learn to use our simulations after all. I suspected something was going on, but I thought I had guarded the sims securely enough to keep them free of unwanted attention."

Kazuo remarked to his son, “I assume one of these avatars is Miaki Nakamura, then? You couldn’t have learned to do this on your own, so he must have helped you.”

Miaki dissolved his own disguise and allowed his avatar to reflect his true face. The hatred emanated nakedly from him, but the man merely smiled.

“No more intelligent than your father, I see,” he said. “You should not have tried to interfere with me. There was no need for you to share his fate.”

“That’s enough!” Kenji hissed. “I’m not going to let you hurt Miaki or anyone else, ever again!”

“Oh, really? And you’re going to stop me with that thing, are you?” Kazuo laughed.

“Yes!”

“Don’t be such a child, Kenji,” his father said. “You know you don’t have the nerve. Put it down and let me get on with my business.”

He didn’t give any indication that he saw professor Yoshida sitting slowly down beside the nearest terminal. But Toshi surreptitiously messaged Chika to keep track of that terminal and make sure he didn’t do anything funny. Meanwhile, Toshi kept the broadcast going, just in case.

“No!” Kenji said through clenched teeth. “I’m putting a stop to this – this ‘business’ of yours! You must have thought I’d never find out that you killed my brother – “

“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t kill Katsu.”

“You used him as a guinea pig in your simulations! And he died – he died!”

Yoshida said, “That was entirely accidental – “

“It doesn’t matter,” Kenji said. “The two of you might as well have held a gun to his head yourselves. And you – father – you plotted, and schemed against the whole world, to stage a military coup in the Pacific Rim, and when Miaki’s father accidentally found out, you killed him too.” He couldn’t stop the tears from starting, even as he shouted, “Well, it’s over now, father! You’re going to pay for everything! I’m – I’m going to kill you!”

Miaki’s breath caught as he stepped up beside Kenji. So realistic was the avatar that it reflected the feverish flush on Kenji’s cheeks and the tears streaming down his face, and the awful grief screaming from his green eyes.

“Look at you, blubbering like a baby,” Kazuo mocked. “Do you expect me to take this little drama seriously?”

“How could you do all this, father?” Kenji demanded. “Katsu honoured you! He believed in you! We both did! How could you do the things you’ve done?”

“Katsu at least was a man. He did what I expected of him, and didn’t cry about it. You’ve always been such an emotional, bumbling fool. If I could have my way, it would have been you in that first simulation and not him. You sicken me.”

There was a deadening weight sitting on Miaki’s chest. He felt as though the breath were being crushed out of him. All he could think about, all he could remember, were the words Kenji had spoken while Miaki held him in a cage of power, threatening to use him against his father. ‘He’ll let me rot in this simulation rather than let himself get into that kind of trouble!’

And his own reply: ‘Fathers don’t do that. Not to their own sons.’

But Kenji's father did. Kenji's father wished his second son had died in the VR simulation instead of his first. He didn't seem to care that someone had died – he just wanted it to be Kenji instead of Katsu. How could he think such a horrible thing?

Still Kenji’s hands trembled, so that he could hardly keep the weapon pointed straight. “It – it doesn’t matter what you think any more.” The tears wouldn’t stop, they wouldn’t, but he didn’t care! “You’re – you’re not my father. You are dead – you’re dead – “

‘If it’s any consolation to you,’ he had said to Miaki. ‘My father, too, is now dead. To me, at least.’

“I’m dead, am I?” Kazuo repeated mockingly. “Then get it over with, you cowardly little worm! Go ahead and shoot me if that's what you really plan to do!"

He stood and waited, and all but tapped his foot impatiently. Kenji stared at him, weeping, the weapon continuing to shake in his hands. He took a sharp, sobbing breath, and Kazuo actually laughed.

"You can’t do it, can, you? I knew it. You little coward. You have no brains and no talent, and you definitely have no backbone. Go off and play with your little friends and let the adults get back to doing their grownup work.” And as though to emphasize his utter contempt for his son, he turned his back on him, picking up a report from his desk and flipping it open.

As he saw the rage explode into Kenji’s face, Miaki had one more swift flash of memory: Toshi, in the hallway after they’d discovered how Katsu Tanaka had died, asking softly, ‘Can you possibly think you’ll be the same person after you’ve killed him that you are right now?’

Kenji Tanaka, one of the kindest, most generous – and most forgiving – people that Miaki had ever met. About to shoot his own father in the back.

Miaki hurled himself forward, knocking Kenji’s arm aside just as he fired the weapon. Kenji staggered and tried to aim again, but Miaki held his arm, wrestling with him.

“Damn you!” Kenji shouted. “Get out of my way!”

“Don’t do it! Don’t do this, Kenji!”

“You wanted to kill him yourself!” Kenji raged incredulously. “Why are you stopping me? Let me do it for both of us!”

“I know I wanted it.” Miaki’s eyes, too, were streaming with tears. “But not this way – please – not this way – we can’t do it like this!”

“Let me go!” Kenji screamed. “Let me kill him! Let me show him – let me show him – “

Chika gasped and yelled, “We have to get out of here!” just as professor Yoshida clicked something on the terminal and said, “Got you now.”

There was a sudden twisting all around them, and abruptly they stood in the nuclear winter simulation. And just as suddenly came the twisting again, and they stepped into the hallway in the biochemical lab.

Miaki and Kenji had been thrown off-balance by the sudden leap between sims, but now Kenji righted himself and yelled furiously, "What did you do that for? Damn you, why did you stop me?"

"How could I let you kill your own father?" Miaki gasped.

"How could you not?" Kenji shouted. He was still weeping. "He deserves it! He killed – he killed – "

"I know. Oh Kenji, I know. I'm sorry."

Kenji swung a fist, and although it came nowhere near his target, Miaki yelped in pain and staggered backward, a livid welt angling across the red streaks on one cheek.

"I hate you!" Kenji cried. He threw another blast and Miaki crashed against the corridor wall with a cry of pain. He hunched there, arms over his head and across his face, making no move to fight back. "I hate you!" Kenji said again. "One chance – I had one chance – and you stopped me! You should have been thanking me for doing it for you!"

"Alright, that's enough," Toshi said, pinning Kenji's arms from behind. "I know it hurts, Kenji, but we have to let the authorities handle it. They'll get him now, I promise. Just let it go. We're done."

"You guys, you can't fight about this now," Chika said. "I got us out of there because Yoshida was trying to set some kind of tail on us and trap us. I'm still not sure I evaded him."

Even as she spoke, they felt a strange tugging sensation, as though something were trying to grab them and drag them somewhere. "That answers that question," Toshi said. "Let's log out, quickly."

"That's just it – we can't," Chika said. "That's why I jumped the sims. He's got someone at ISCE blocking us so we can't log out."

"Then we jump again," Miaki gasped, already opening the connection to another sim, "until I figure out how to break through the block."

"And until," Julie said, beginning her sentence in the biochem lab in the morning and ending it in a desert at sunset, "I find a way to break his tag on us."

Jin looked around at the large construction equipment and the lifeless desert environment. "Terraforming practice," she said. "They're pretending it's Mars."

"I wish we were on Mars," Toshi muttered. "Kenji, are you alright?"

"Don't talk to me," Kenji snapped. He continued to glare at Miaki, who stood a few paces away, surrounded by holoscreens.

"Stop sulking," Julie commanded. "I need you to help me get rid of Yoshida's tags. His are almost as good as mine, and they really stick." She pulled at his arm until he dragged his attention away from Miaki, and joined her in her calculations.

"If we're going to be jumping around," said Toshi suddenly, "let's try to get to the sims that show what Tanaka is up to. We're still broadcasting. Let's show everybody exactly what the details are."

"Good idea," said Miaki without glancing away from his screens. "Pick a sim, and go for it." The tugging was starting again. "Hurry, Tosh," he added.

Once again they jumped, and found themselves again in the biochemical lab. Toshi led the way in a dash through the hallways, splitting the broadcast into several screens comprising what each of their avatars was seeing as they moved along.

"Sweep the hallways as you go," he said. "We're broadcasting everything you're seeing. Get as much data out there as you can."

Jin tried to stare at every doorway they passed, and to stare into every window, to give the best picture she could of not just the names of each separate lab, but the work benches and what was going on inside them. But she found that she was falling behind the others. Before long it was coming down to a choice between lagging behind (and missing it when they jumped to another simulation) or recording the data she thought the world needed to see.

The others had rounded a corner, and she trotted to try to catch up. Suddenly Miaki was there, backtracking, as the tugging began yet again. He grabbed her hand and pulled her even with him, almost dragging both of them through the opening Toshi had made into the next simulation.

They stood in a library. With actual paper books in it.

Chapter 13 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 12 - part two
Back to Chapter 12 - part one

The first thing they had to do was alter their avatars, to make them fit into this simulation properly. Jin and Miaki crept toward the corner and peered around. For the moment, the windowed hallway was clear and they could peer down into the testing area. With Chika’s help, using the security camera in that hallway, they copied some of the uniforms and faces of people working below. Then Miaki quickly sent coding to everyone so they could incorporate some of the features from those people into their avatar selection.

If they stood too much in the open, none of these features would disguise the fact that they looked more like ghosts than actual solid people. But if they kept to the shadows or stayed far enough away from lab workers that nobody could see through them, they might pass without too much comment from anyone.

Even after they had done that, they still proceeded as cautiously as they could down the hallways. Thanks to Miaki’s and Jin’s solutions to the communication problem between simulations, Chika could access the security cameras ahead of them as they went, and help them avoid corridors with people in them. It was harder now than it had been on previous visits, because of course they were visiting during working hours instead of in the evening.

“You know what that means, right?” Julie said. “It means that ISCE is in the same time zone as this laboratory.”

Toshi grinned at her. “Maybe we’re going to be the first students who ever figure out where ISCE is located.”

“And after that,” she said, “maybe we can tackle the really hard problem, and find out where the dishes under the tables in the cafeteria come from.”

Toshi threw back his head and laughed, whereupon Miaki snapped, “Be quiet, you two! We don’t want to make anyone come to find out what the commotion is.” Toshi obediently subsided, but he rolled his eyes at Julie in such a Julie-esque manner that she had to stifle another laugh of her own.

Miaki stood at a corner by the junction of two corridors. He peered around, holding up a hand behind him. After a moment, whoever he had been watching was gone, and he motioned for the others to follow him around.

They knew when the meeting was, between professor Yoshida and Kazuo Tanaka, and had left themselves time to find out where it was. Chika had the room number of the office where they were meeting, but it took a while to understand the floor and office numbering system in the building. By that time, they were getting close to the meeting time, and sped as quickly as they could down the hallways, past offices and laboratories and meeting rooms and workshops.

Sometimes they had to go through some rooms to get to others, or to get to more private corridors. They discovered that one of the qualities of being in the real world but not really part of it was that even if a door was supposed to be locked, they were able to open it. So they were able to get into labs that were normally accessible only to high-level lab employees.

One of these labs was very disturbing, seeming to be a research workshop for hand weapons creation. There were large cannon-like shapes sitting on pedestals, middle-sized things that looked like something to hold on one's shoulder, and more hand-sized weapons. The far wall of this lab was mostly window, and they saw a very large firing range on the other side, where the weapons were tested. Several lab workers were in the firing range now, and the students watched in horror as targets at various distances were literally vaporized.

Kenji picked one of the hand weapons from a nearby desk. It looked much like a simple pistol, with a tiny LED screen stuck onto it, and a couple of buttons where the trigger used to be. "These look really serious," he said.

"Put that thing down, you don't know how dangerous it might be," Chika said. "Let's keep going."

They were close now. Just one more short corridor, and at last they came to the small room where Kazuo Tanaka and Masuyo Yoshida were already holding their meeting. They could see the two men through the window in the upper half of the door – professor Yoshida's graying hair and casual jacket contrasting with Kazuo's jet black hair and impeccably tailored suit.

This was obviously a room for visiting officials, having only a desk, a table with a terminal, and a small meeting table with three chairs around it. The men sat at the table, with their backs to the door, obscuring the sight of the documents spread on the table before them.

"Tosh?" was all that Miaki said, but his cousin nodded immediately.

"We'll listen a minute, and I'll start the broadcast," he said. He concentrated a moment, then cupped his hand against the door. Instantly, the words spoken inside the room could be heard by the six of them, as Toshi's communications program reached inside. He raised an eyebrow at Chika, who smiled.

"I've got my program poised at the entry point of all the broadcast networks," she said. "When we're ready, it takes over."

And they began to listen.

It was clear that the two men felt free to speak with complete freedom, and that they had no fear that they could possibly be overheard. Nor had they wasted any time in getting to the meat of their project. They appeared to be laying out an overview of a planned coup d'etat in the Pacific Rim government.

Chika flipped her metaphorical switch, and grinned at the others. They were now broadcasting everything they heard.

"The simulations are almost perfected," Yoshida was saying. "We'll be able to control all the most crucial Pacific Rim moon properties from your military compound. They won't be able to come near you, but you'll be able to keep an eye on everything they're doing."

"Good," Tanaka said. "And can we also threaten the other alliances if they refuse to cooperate with us?"

"Yes. We've got several sims that take us into their facilities. India, Germany, Brazil – they'll find important things like airports and industrial centers blowing up if they don't cooperate. They'll buckle under quite quickly, I think."

"Don't count on it," Chika muttered under her breath.

"Good work," Kazuo said. "At our end, we've recruited most of our key people, and they'll be ready when the time comes."

"What is left to be done?"

"The biochemical weapons have been designed, and all that's left is the mass production. We've almost decided on the engines for launching the weapons rockets into space. And the other weapons, mostly hand weapons, are being tested right now. We should decide within a few weeks which ones we want to produce, and then we'll get the factories going."

"So what sort of timetable are we working on now?"

"I should think that this time next year, we'll have complete control of the Pacific Rim Alliance," Tanaka said. "And the submission of the other alliances. So you'll have time, if you like, to add a few more tricks to your simulations at ISCE."

"They don't really need more 'tricks', but it's always good to keep refining them," Yoshida said.

"And equally important," said his co-conspirator. "You'll be able to oust Mr. Ian Woon altogether, and we can use ISCE as a training facility for our top officials. We'll bar students from the other alliances, so our people will remain better trained than anyone else."

The students stared at each other, aghast. But before anyone could say anything in response, Kenji pushed past them all, shoved the meeting room door open, and yelled, "You're not going to take over my school – or, or the Pacific Rim – or anywhere! We're going to stop you!" He glared at Tanaka and Yoshida, who had instantly sprung to their feet and backed away, and he corrected himself. "I mean – I'm going to stop you. I am."

And he lifted a pair of shaking hands, holding the weapon he'd picked up in the earlier lab. He pointed it directly at his father and added softly, "I'm going to keep you from ever hurting anyone again."

Chapter 13 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 12 - part one
Back to Chapter 11 - part two

The day had arrived.

The six of them sat at the same table at breakfast, as they had done yesterday, the day after exams were over.

They had reasoned yesterday that it probably wasn’t going to matter if they were seen together: the cafeteria was raucous, as most of the students were staying only long enough to eat, and then would be departing home for a week, on a stream of shuttles. There was a steady migration of students from one table to another, wishing each other a good holiday, letting off steam from examination relief, and just generally socializing. Breakfast yesterday morning was quite a long affair.

They even had a lot of people dropping by their table, despite the fact that Kenji hadn’t been able to make a lot of friends so far, Jin was shy and still didn’t know a lot of people very well, and Miaki had been so obsessively preoccupied that he hadn’t gotten acquainted with anyone except these five people. But Toshi had more than made up for Miaki’s reticence, Chika of course knew a lot of students after 2-1/2 years at ISCE, and Julie was quite popular.

They had hoped perhaps to discuss a couple of minor things, but finally gave up and went with the spirit. Chika soon had a circle of third-years around her, Toshi wandered to a nearby table, and Julie entertained the ever-interested Akio of the blue hair.

Jin had sat back and enjoyed the mood, thinking it would probably help them relax a little, before they had to get down to the serious work at hand. Miaki had glanced at her with a wry little smile, understanding just a little bit how out of place she felt. He had occasionally looked at Kenji too, but his expression then was much more complex.

Kenji had sat much like he was this morning: silently, eating slowly, and keeping his thoughts to himself. The cafeteria was much more subdued than it had been yesterday. Probably 90% of the students were now gone, and the rest were congregated at a few tables, talking quietly. The school had planned several field trips for those who hadn’t been able to go home, and there were many simulations available for recreational purposes, but for most of the time, the students who had stayed were on their own.

“I’m not very hungry,” Julie complained. She wasn’t in a good mood this morning, knowing that her family was gathering at home without her.

“Neither am I,” Toshi said. “But we should probably try to eat what we can. Who knows how long this is going to take?”

Jin wasn’t hungry either, but she was eating dutifully. So were Chika and Miaki. Kenji was trying, but he kept putting down his utensils, clasping his hands together in his lap, and enduring periodic spells of shivering. Jin saw Miaki watching him with narrowed eyes.

“Are you alright, Kenji?” she asked softly.

He didn’t look up, but nodded shortly. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He was rubbing his hands together as though trying to warm them up.

Chika, who was sitting on his other side, touched one of his hands. “You are freezing,” she said. “Are you sure you can do this? You really don’t have to if it’s going to be – “

“I can do this!” he snapped. Then he looked at her, mortified. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But I can do this. I have to. For Katsu.” He finally reached under the table, grabbed a cup, and ordered up some hot tea.

Miaki put down his own utensils and sat looking sightlessly into his plate, his hands resting motionless on either side of it. Jin bit her lip, wishing she could say something comforting to him. He had as many personal reasons to be nervous today as Kenji did.

But Toshi was watching him, she saw with a small burst of relief. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to Miaki. So she and Julie and Chika would have to do the same for Kenji.

Soon enough – sooner than any of them really wanted – breakfast was over. They all put their dishes away and looked at each other solemnly.

“Let’s take different routes to the VR room,” Chika said, and everyone nodded. One last precaution. Julie and Kenji would check the security devices they had set up along the way toward the room, and the others would arrive at intervals.

Jin, surprisingly, found Toshi catching up to her as she made her own way to their rendezvous.

“Where’s Miaki?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for a moment. “He wanted to walk there alone,” he said, finally. “I hope he’s not…” He shrugged. “I hope he’s going to be alright. In some ways, he’s been working toward this day for a year and a half. It’s a tough day for him.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Again the momentary silence. Then he glanced sidelong at her and said softly, “Afraid. Yes, I guess I am.”

“Of…?” There was no answer. “Toshi,” Jin said. “What is he going to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something terrible. It’s just – “

“What?”

“From the very beginning, he’s…he’s said he’s not sure he’ll survive this. I…I don’t know if he’s going to come back. I don’t know if he wants to.”

She stopped in the empty hallway and put a hand on his arm. “Toshi. If he chooses not to come back – that’s his choice. Not yours. Remember that.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand, and nodded. Then he continued on toward the VR room.

By the time everyone had arrived, Toshi had regained his usual cheerfulness. Jin thought it might have been a little forced, but the others didn’t seem to notice. Well, except Miaki who, she saw, put a hand on Toshi’s shoulder as soon as he came in, and left it there as they discussed last minute things.

And then, finally, they were in the gazebo, and then in the grey simulation. All the programs and alterations had been downloaded yesterday. If they’d forgotten anything crucial, it was too late to do anything about it now.

“Everyone ready?” Chika said, looking around. “Right. Here we go.”

They found themselves in the hallway beside the janitor’s closet. Toshi ostentatiously opened the door and peered in, then said reassuringly as he shut it, “Yep. We’re in the right place. I’d know that broom anywhere.”

Julie laughed, having finally regained her good spirits now that things were underway. Jin smiled at Toshi’s grin, then watched it fade as he glanced at Miaki. His cousin hadn’t even noticed him, so intently was he peering toward the corner, where the long, windowed hallway was to be found.

Chapter 12 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:36 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 11 - part two
Back to Chapter 11 - part one

They continued experimenting, standing inside one simulation while calling up another one, and then calling up another. They could take the route further in by going all together, or someone could go into another simulation while the others stayed behind in the previous one.

They debated for a while about the logistics of the whole thing. On one hand, they might be stepping sideways into a new simulation each time, as though the grey simulation were a corridor with many rooms coming off of it. In that scenario, they were exiting one simulation entirely, and then entering a different one. What seemed to support this view was the fact that some of them stood inside simulation number two, while others had gone into two further simulations and then straight into number two again. The two groups met at the same place as before, suggesting that the exploratory group had stepped out of the other two simulations and back into this one.

In another scenario, however, each simulation they called up might be “nested” inside the previous one so that the sims were related to each other like boxes within boxes within boxes. At first this scenario seemed to have been disproven by the way someone could step out of sim number four and back into sim number two, to meet the people still in number two. If the sims were all “nested,” surely when the exploratory group stood in sim four and called up sim two, they’d be calling up a completely different version of it, and would not meet the others who were still standing in the first version of sim number two.

Yet they did meet each other, so this suggested that the subsequent simulations were not nested.

But then Julie discovered that the more simulations people called up from inside other simulations, the fainter the locator signal grew. This suggested that the explorers were going farther and farther “inward,” with more layers of nesting simulations interfering with the signal.

It was a paradox they couldn’t seem to resolve.

"Alright,” Miaki said finally. “I suggest that until we have more data, we should treat the sims as though they’re nested.”

“I agree,” said Julie. “Until I can get the locators adjusted, we need to behave in ways that won’t put our contact with each other in jeopardy.”

Chika nodded. “Which means that we have to set a limit on how far in any group can go. I’d say only two simulations farther in than the group that’s closer to the outside. We just can’t risk losing each other.”

“So,” Toshi said. “We have two problems to solve now. First, how to keep our locators in view of each other. And second, how to send messages between simulations. Because I’m getting an idea how we can expose the Pacific Rim plot, if we can just get those problems solved.”

They finished for the evening, and each set out to work on specific problems. Julie and Kenji worked on the locator problem, Chika and Toshi worked on the communication, and Miaki and Jin tried to discover the nature of the barrier that separated someone in sim number two from someone in sim number three. If they couldn’t figure that out, then both the locator and the communication problems probably couldn’t be solved at all. One sure way of finding out would be simply to try to “jump” from one locator to another, but Miaki insisted that that would only be tried as an absolute last resort. He avoided referring to any reason why, but they all knew the main reason: if the wall between sims was essentially impenetrable, then whoever tried the experiment would probably die.

There couldn’t have been a worse time to have to work so hard. The school was moving toward a week of intense exams, and at least some of their attention had to be paid to course work and studying. It was something of a mercy that all the other ISCE students were studying intensely, so a little extra weariness and circles under the eyes weren’t out of the ordinary. Talk in the cafeteria began to revolve almost entirely around two topics: the upcoming crucial exams, and the week that they would all have off to recover (either back at home or here at the school) when exams were over.

But the extracurricular explorations of the six investigators became suddenly more urgent, as exam week dawned. At mid-evening on the night before the first exam, Chika sent a confidential, highly-encrypted message to the other five: while perusing some of the faculty records she had discovered that professor Yoshida would be leaving for five days, the day after the last exam, leaving a teaching assistant to evaluate his students’ test results. Yoshida himself was going back to the Pacific Rim region, but not going to his home. He was, in fact, leaving to meet with Kazuo Tanaka at the space engine testing laboratory. Their first meeting was scheduled for the second day after the last exam.

They had a quick meeting in the grey simulation, just after supper.

“This could really be it,” Toshi said enthusiastically. “If we can somehow eavesdrop on that meeting, this whole thing might break open.”

“But we can’t,” Julie said. “We won’t be here. We’ll be visiting home by then.”

“I won’t,” Kenji said. “I’ve been planning all along to stay at school during the break.”

“I’ve already messaged my family that I’m staying too,” Chika said.

Julie was dismayed. “Are you saying we have to cancel our break and can’t even go home? I’ve been looking forward to the break for the whole term. I’ve…,” she grimaced a little sheepishly, “I’ve really been homesick.” She looked to Jin for agreement. “You must be going home too, aren’t you? Aren’t you going to visit your family?”

“I’ve been planning on it,” Jin said quietly. “But now…” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Toshi said, “Julie, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. It’s okay. It’s not like we were drafted into this. If you’re that homesick, it will really do you good to get home for a few days. Do you have a lot of sisters and brothers?”

“Twelve,” she said, and laughed at the others’ expressions. “Well, my dad was married once before he married my mom, and they had five kids. One set of triplets. Then my mom had twins, and five others. We’ve…got a loud house.”

Toshi whistled. “I just bet you do,” he said, then grinned. “And maybe that explains a few things. You’d sure have needed to find ways to defend yourself and distract people’s attention away from you, to get any privacy.”

She laughed again. “Yes. My older brothers used to try to read my private journals, and they always managed to figure out my passwords. So I had to learn how to divert them to other sites.”

“But it sounds like you’re all pretty close.”

“Yes. Our family get-togethers are the best thing ever.”

“Then I think you should go,” Toshi said.

“But what about you?” she asked. “Are you staying, or going home?”

He didn’t move, and his expression didn’t change, but to all intents and purposes he might as well have glanced at Miaki. “I’m staying,” Toshi said. “We both are.”

After all, thought Jin, what did Miaki have to go home to? She suddenly wondered where he had lived, after his father had died. She suspected he’d been in no shape to move into a place of his own, alone. Had he gone to live with Toshi’s family, then?

Unexpectedly she remembered Toshi’s own comment, when the group had been trying to decide whether to report Miaki’s attack on Kenji to the school officials: ‘He made me come to school without him last year, but I won’t let him do that again.’ Of course Miaki had lived with his cousin’s family. Toshi probably wouldn’t have let anything else happen. Nor would he have left Miaki, unless he knew he was leaving his cousin with someone who cared about him.

“Toshi,” she asked. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No,” he said.

She nodded to herself. Cousins, best friends, and virtually brothers. It explained a lot.

“You know,” she said. “I think I’m going to stay. My parents are both university professors, and they’re going to be very busy with end-of-term paperwork, anyway.”

Julie looked around at the others, and finally shrugged ruefully. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I’d better stay too. I know Kenji knows our security arrangements as well as I do, but it’s not fair to dump everything on him at the last minute. So…I guess I’ll stay.”

Miaki surveyed her. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked quietly. “You know this could be dangerous. I don’t want you to feel pressured.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “What kind of friend would I be if I left you all, just when it got dangerous? Besides,” she added brightly, “if we expose this plot and save the world, think how jealous my brothers and sisters will be, that I get to be so famous.”

“Good,” said Toshi. “And now that we know the roster, I can tell you my own little surprise. I think I’ve figured out how to communicate between sims when we’re inside the grey one.” In the midst of the general exclamation, he laughed and said, “Well, okay, it wasn’t just me. Miaki sent me some of the specs he’d worked out, and made a couple of suggestions about angles I might want to look at. A couple of them were very promising, so I started fiddling. I’ve coded a couple of things that we can try out, and if they work, then we’ll incorporate them into our avatars, and into Julie’s locators.”

“Trying them out will be the real challenge this week,” Chika said ruefully.

“Let me and Miaki do that,” Toshi said. “I think I can spare a little time, and I don’t think Miaki ever needs to study for anything – “

“Not true,” Miaki murmured.

“ – so we should be able to test the programs ourselves. Then we can just incorporate them the morning after exams. If any of us are still awake.”

“And if they work,” Miaki said, “we’ll use them to access as many broadcasting avenues as we can. Because when we start exposing this plot, I want it to be viewed as widely as possible, across the world.”

They stared at him. “Across the world?” Chika said. “That’s…very ambitious.”

“It’s a plot with world-wide implications,” he said darkly. “If we try to go to a few authorities with disks of information, they’ll probably dismiss everything, if they even look at it. But if we can get our discoveries onto world-wide broadcasts, so people in the world can see what we see, as we’re seeing it inside the simulation – there’s no way anybody can explain it away.”

They digested this proposal in silence, trying to encompass the implications, not to mention the responsibility. If they were going to broadcast to the whole world, they had better get it right. They would have only one chance.

Julie jumped on a crucial implication almost immediately. “I can see I’m going to have to build even more defenses in the next week. Because you just know ISCE itself will try to shut us down, and then everyone else outside after they try. We’re going to have to make sure they can’t do it. Kenji – can you work with me on this?”

They knew she wasn’t just asking for his partnership. If anyone might turn out to be a “weak link” in this final project, it could be him. He was working to expose his own father, after all, and send him to prison, probably for the rest of his life. If he had any reluctance to throw himself into this wholeheartedly, it was understandable. But they had to know it now, so they would not rely on him for something he couldn’t bring himself to do.

But he nodded immediately, his jaw tight. “I can do it,” he said. “I don’t even care if I fail my exams. This is too important.”

“Alright, then,” Julie said. “We’ll make sure to find time for it.”

And that was it. They arranged for one more meeting at mid-week, after supper, just for an update. Then, the day after exams, they would incorporate the final security and communications programs. And the day after that – they would find the meeting between professor Yoshida and Kazuo Tanaka, and eavesdrop on it, starting to broadcast what they saw if it turned out to relate to the plot they’d uncovered. And hopefully it would all be over.

Chapter 12 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 11 - part one
Back to Chapter 10 - part two

"What we finally found," said Jin as their avatars relaxed in the entryway gazebo, "is that the featureless simulation is a sort of gateway. We could all sense that there was something there, rather than nothing. But that something wasn’t yet anything real. It was basically just a potential, waiting to be filled."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Chika asked.

Jin consulted the notes on her holoscreen. "It means that it’s a simulation that can access all of them. You can be in the grey simulation, and pull up any of the other special sims without logging out of it and into the others."

Miaki manipulated a couple of holoscreens and said, "There. I’ve sent all of you the details." He and Jin waited before going on, as the other four quickly consulted the new data and got caught up.

It had been a tense week past. Now that they were suspicious that they might have been watched from the very beginning, they had halted all their investigations while they went over everything they’d done so far. They looked at every possible log of their activity and tried to alter it; they double, triple, and quadruple-checked every security measure they’d taken so far and added several more; and they even tried to examine the logs of all online activity of ISCE faculty and staff members since Miaki’s very first foray into illegal territory several weeks ago.

That last task was difficult. For a few days, even with her more advanced knowledge of ISCE systems and procedures, Chika beat her head in futility against the wall of security surrounding staff and faculty records. At last Miaki joined her, and essentially invented new ways around the security. These had to be far more complicated than what he’d used to break into the less advanced systems protecting the Pacific Rim government site, and Chika’s head spun as she strained to follow the intricacies of his devices. She suspected that the things he’d come up with over the past week were things that had never been done before, anywhere. And all he seemed to need to do was recognize a problem, think about it for a bit, and then realize how "obvious" the solution was.

She was getting an education, first-hand, in why exactly the entire school had been buzzing with anticipation when it was known that Miaki Nakamura would finally be coming to ISCE this term.

Julie and Kenji had worked just as closely and intensely to devise even more diversions and plausible illusions to protect the six of them in their explorations. Miaki had helped there, too, linking things together in even more intricate nets than they had envisioned. He had done it at more of a distance, though. He and Kenji spoke even less now than they had before. It wasn’t that they held any animosity toward each other, but rather that they were helpless to know how to build any kind of relationship when their lives were caught in such a web of terrible connections.

Jin, meanwhile, had drawn everyone’s efforts together and analyzed them as a whole, pointing out gaps and suggesting ways to fill them. Toshi had taken her work and begun to cross-reference even more widely, trying to analyze the cyber activities of the entire institute. He also went back over the external logs, looking for interaction between ISCE and anyone in the Pacific Rim government. It was probable that such interactions had been disguised somehow, but as Toshi remarked, they didn’t have Julie, Kenji, or Miaki on their side. Whatever disguises were used, he was confident he’d be able to see through them.

He also worked with Julie on a couple of small things of his own, but kept silent about them to the others. He liked having a few backup macros and programs available, in case of emergencies. And given how close they were coming to figuring things out, and how serious the plotting appeared to be, he thought he just might need them.

By the time the week had passed, the six investigators felt much more confident of their own security. And they had discovered that there was indeed communication between the Pacific Rim government – most precisely the department of defense, in which Kazuo Tanaka played a prominent role – and certain faculty at ISCE. Professor Yoshida appeared to be the primary contact at the school, but there were a couple of others who worked with him: a female Terraforming professor, and the professor of Space Health and Bodily Dynamics, who also taught the main physical education classes. All three of them were Pacific Rim citizens.

Jin had also carried most of the work of analyzing the grey simulation, while Miaki worked with the others. For some reason, she had felt the same as he did: there was something significant about this very odd simulation, if they could just figure out what it was. It couldn’t be accidental, that this simulation had been included in the special private folder with the others that impinged into the real world.

And at last, she had understood what the significance was, when she realized that everything in the simulation seemed to point outward, beyond itself. Yesterday she had shown her data to Miaki without telling him what her conclusions were, and waited to see if he would come to the same conclusions. He had gone very still, going over everything twice. And then he’d looked up at her, his eyes sparkling with delight.

"Well done, Jin," he said. "You’re absolutely right." He had, of course, understood both the data and its conclusions, and the workings of her own mind. Once he’d seen the data, he didn’t even need to ask what her thinking processes had been or where they’d led her. He knew.

And so here they were today, trying it out for the first time. The others had finally looked over the data, and were ready. Either Jin or Miaki could take the lead, but she looked over at him and nodded for him to go ahead.

He called up the simulation, and they entered it through the doorway he created in the gazebo. It was a bit disconcerting to step toward a little fountain surrounded by roses in the garden outside the gazebo, and find oneself instead standing in the center of a featureless grey nothing, as though stepping into a mist.

Once they were inside the sim, Miaki said, "Bring up the list of special simulations, Chika, and pick one we can try."

She designated what seemed to have become their usual experimental sim: the engine testing laboratory, and the janitorial hallway. The other five watched Miaki’s moves as he accessed the grey simulation’s special abilities and reached beyond it to the chosen sim. There was an odd twisting sensation, and then they found themselves standing beside the janitor’s door in the laboratory hallway.

Toshi whistled appreciatively. "This is amazing," he said. "Is this simulation as real as the original? Can we affect the real world in the same way?"

Jin answered, "All the specs say yes. You can do your experiment with the broom again if you want to make sure."

"Before we do anything," Julie said, "show us how to log out again. Which one are we logging out of? Do we have to log out twice?"

Miaki said, "It will be enough to log out of the grey sim. That automatically logs you out of both."

"Good," she nodded, then asked briskly, "And what sort of record do we leave behind us? If someone were to look at our personal logs, which simulations would be there? How traceable are we?"

"That’s the best part," Jin said, trying not to sound too satisfied and smug, since this had been one of the first things she’d checked. "It’s the same with the log-out. As far as our logs show, we have only logged into the grey sim. I’ve seen nothing that leaves traces of whatever simulations we visit from inside the grey one."

"That’s fascinating," Chika mused. "So I wonder what would happen if someone logged into the grey simulation later, looking for someone. Would they be able to find the person they were looking for?"

"I don’t think so," Miaki said. "I think they’d have to know which second simulation to call up, to follow the person into it."

"That could be dangerous," Kenji said. "If one of us was hurt in a simulation, couldn’t we be lost completely?"

"Why don’t we try an experiment?" Julie suggested. "Hopefully my locators can overcome the searching problem. If they can’t, I’ll try to adjust them somehow."

They all logged out again, and then Chika and Toshi went back in. The others gave them a couple of minutes to choose a second simulation and go into it, and then logged back in. They stood in the middle of the grey mist and looked for the orange and yellow locator signals.

And found them. But they were somewhat fainter than they would be inside a normal simulation, and they gave no clue what simulation needed to be called up, to follow them in. Nor did it seem possible to message in or out. Julie recorded the data and looked it over thoughtfully, once they all logged out again.

"I need to devise a way to jump straight to the locator," she mused.

"And go blind into the second simulation?" Chika said uneasily. "That seems a little risky to me."

"I wonder," said Toshi, "if we could end up slamming into a wall and not managing to get in. And what would happen to us if we did that? Flat as a pancake and trapped inside?" He glanced sidelong at his cousin. "Or worse?"

"I think that could happen," Miaki said. "I think we should set a rule that none of us ever uses this sim alone. Two people at least, and maybe even three, so hopefully there’ll always be someone who can come out and notify the others where to go. But never go in alone."

Julie glanced at him speculatively. "Unless you decide to break the rule and go off on your own again? You do tend to do that." He raised a sardonic eyebrow, but made no answer.

"I want to try something else now," Jin said. "I think that we can go farther in than just one simulation. I think we can be in a second sim, and step into a third. And more beyond that."

Toshi gave a great whoop. "That is fantastic!" he said. "We don’t even need to use any other sims directly, then! And we can’t be detected. This is the most amazing simulation yet!"

"Don’t get too excited," Chika cautioned. "Remember how risky this one is too. The possible dangers might be too much of a tradeoff, for the seeming convenience."

Chapter 11 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 12:17 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 10 - part two
Back to Chapter 10 - part one

Julie tried to be reassuring. "Oh, I don't think you can blame an accident on your father. He wouldn't have deliberately put his own son in danger."

"Yes he would. He's done it twice now."

"How can you say that? When was the second time?"

"Can't you guess?" Kenji laughed, and it chilled them. They'd heard that laugh before, in the simulation when Miaki had had him trapped, and had hoped to use him to bring his father running.

Toshi's gasp cut the air sharply. "Kenji. You're not thinking of the simulation where you and I almost..."

"What do you think?" Again the painful laugh. "The simulation was there, and then it was taken out of that folder right after our accident. How do you suppose that happened? And don't you remember, Toshi – we went in there together because I asked if you'd consider helping me get a little more experience."

"Yes, but that was you, not your – "

"He suggested it," Kenji said. "We'd been messaging the night before. He suggested I try a simulation I hadn't tried before. Like a moon walk."

"He said that? He actually suggested a moon walk?" Toshi asked shakily.

"He did more than that. He suggested I ask Miaki to go with me." The others watched him, horrified, as he related his story, his face growing more sickly white by the moment. "I – I was too intimidated by Miaki, so I asked you instead, because you were so friendly. And so you went with me – and then the rock fall happened. And it wasn't an accident. It wasn't an accident."

"That's impossible!" Julie said. "Your father wasn't in the simulation with you. He was on earth, not the Moon. He couldn't control what happened to you in the simulation. It was just an accidental rockfall. How could it be anything else?"

Jin said, "I read all the reports. The wall of the crater was considered very geologically stable. No one's been able to figure out why it suddenly fell. But the crater and sheds," she suddenly remembered, "are in the Pacific Rim area of control on the Moon."

"It wasn't an accident," Kenji repeated as if by rote, staring at his hands, whose trembling could no longer be concealed. "He used my brother as his first guinea pig, and Katsu died. And then he tried to use me to – to – " As though he couldn't stop it happening, at last his head lifted, and his wide, anguish-filled green eyes moved to Miaki's face.

They stared at each other for a very long time, their expressions of horror almost mirrors of each other. Then Miaki spun around and fled the room, with Toshi close on his heels. Kenji buried his face in his hands and began to weep.

Toshi caught up to Miaki near the gymnasiums, when Miaki finally stopped, leaned one hand against the wall and stood there, head lowered, panting and waiting for his cousin to come up beside him. The corridor was dark here, and they stood in deep shadow, with only a glimmer of light from a lamp on the wall farther down the corridor, where it joined another hallway.

"Don’t think about it," Toshi said in a rush, putting a hand on Miaki’s shoulder. "It didn’t happen. He didn’t get you, and both Kenji and I came out alive. Don’t think about what Kenji’s father was trying to do."

"Don’t you understand?" Miaki said. His voice was so low that Toshi had to lean close to hear. Miaki looked sideways at him, his eyes cold and narrow. A stray flicker of light from the distant lamp seemed to strike reddish sparks from his hair and kindle a small flame in his dark eyes. "When my father stumbled onto Kazuo Tanaka in his online search, Kazuo’s response wasn’t just instinctive and defensive. He knew who he was killing. If he didn’t know right then, he made sure to find out. And just in case I had any information about my father’s death, he tried to kill me too. And he didn’t even care if he killed his own son in the process."

Toshi leaned back against the wall beside him, his shoulders slumping. Now standing between Miaki and the distant light, his profile was limned with gold sparks from his own bright hair. "This gets worse and worse," he said. "It’s turning into a real nightmare."

"I swear, Toshi," Miaki said, even more quietly. "Once we’ve got everything we need to reveal this conspiracy – he dies. Kazuo Tanaka dies."

And...you’ve decided you’re going to be the executioner? Is that it?"

"He murdered my father. He’s tried to kill me, and almost killed you. Don’t I have some sort of right?"

"I don’t know." Toshi lifted his head and looked upward at the shadowed ceiling. A gleam of blue flashed from one of his eyes. "Maybe you do. Maybe it’s only right." He took a long, shaky breath. "But you’ll destroy yourself too, if you kill him. And then Kazuo Tanaka will have taken away both my uncle and my...best friend. I don’t know if I can bear that."

Miaki slammed his other hand against the wall and now stood leaning against it with both fists. "What do you want me to do, then?" he cried. "Just let him go?"

"I don’t know. Miaki, I don’t know the right thing to do, here," Toshi said, his hands open helplessly. "I just don’t want him to take you away too. Can you possibly think you’ll be the same person after you’ve killed him that you are right now?"

Miaki averted his eyes. "He’s already made me a different person," he said. "It’s too late."

"No he hasn’t. Not yet."

A long silence. "I don’t know what else I can do," Miaki whispered.

"Well, you can start by thinking about something else. If he suspected you knew he’d killed your father, and if he’s even tried to kill you once – then maybe he’s watching you at the school. Or has someone here watching for him." Toshi paused at Miaki’s sharp intake of breath, but the other said nothing. He was listening, though, so Toshi went on. "What if he’s gotten a co-conspirator to watch you? Maybe professor Yoshida. Or maybe others that we haven’t discovered yet."

"Then...we could all be in danger."

"Yes. Despite every precaution we’ve taken. It’s like Chika said before –- there’s a bigger picture here that we can’t forget. This isn’t just about you and Kazuo Tanaka. It’s not even about you and Kazuo and Kenji. It’s about Jin and Julie and Chika too, and whether they’re in danger."

Miaki stood in silence for a moment. "And about you," he said.

"Well yes, there is that," Toshi smiled briefly.

Miaki lifted his head. "Then I guess we have to go back over everything we’ve done so far, and make sure we’ve covered our tracks."

"Always remembering that the teachers here are generally smarter than we are, and could have ways of weasling into our passwords and other protective measures, that we don’t even know about."

Miaki cast him a sidelong glance. "I don’t know if they’ve ever encountered anyone as devious as Julie, when it comes to 'protective measures'. And," he added sardonically, "I don’t think they really know what I can do either."

Toshi smiled again, crookedly, with affection. "I know they don’t. I know you as well as I know myself, and you leave even me lost, half the time. So if you really set your mind to it, I think you’re probably the only person who can make sure we’re hidden from their scrutiny."

"If it’s not already too late," Miaki said.

"So you see. You’re right -– it’s terrible what’s happened, and Kazuo Tanaka is a nastier person than we ever dreamed he was. I think I’d call him downright evil. I hate him almost as much as you do -– after all, he almost killed me too. We’re right to be as horrified as we are. And it’s hard to get past that, to think clearly about everything else. But we have to, Miaki. If we’re going to stop whatever Tanaka is involved in, and stop him from doing the same horrible things to maybe millions of other people, we have to swallow all the horror, no matter how unfair it is that we can’t go after him and blow his brains out and feel a lot better. We have to get on with the thinking part, I’m afraid."

Miaki took a long, slow breath. "Damn, Toshi," he said softly. "Do you know how much I hate it when you talk common sense to me?"

Toshi grinned. "I know. I try not to. But I get this weird compulsion every now and then, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist and see if there’s a prescription for it."

His cousin lowered his head again, and laughed helplessly. "Don’t," he said. "I don’t think I’d survive a day if you did.” He reached out a hand, blindly, and found Toshi’s arm and gripped it. "I’ll try to stay sane, Tosh. Just for you."

"Good. Because one of us has to," Toshi said, drawing yet another reluctant smile from his cousin. He turned Miaki toward the far corridor, and they headed back to their dormitory.

Chapter 11 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 12:05 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 10 - part one
Back to Chapter 9 - part two

"Spin was part of the study of atomic particles for some time before scientists made one of the remarkable discoveries in connection with the phenomenon," said professor Narita. "This was the suggestion that whatever happens to an elementary particle in this area of space, exactly the same thing will happen to its counterpart," he waved an arm, "out there, wherever it is in the universe. It will happen simultaneously, without any intervention between the two. No medium to convey the action in a split second from one particle to the other, no billiard ball hitting another billiard ball hitting another – nothing. Two particles perhaps separated by billions of miles, yet if you act upon one, you act upon them both." He peered at the first-year class over the tops of his glasses. "Needless to say, while the theory is mathematically solid, it's been very difficult to prove conclusively. They very act of trying to observe the particles alters them in the first place. Nevertheless, research continues, and scientists are fairly certain the theory will be proven in the near future."

"Sir?" asked one of the first-years. "Weren't they trying for a while to use the theory to create new methods of communication across distances in space?"

"Yes," professor Narita nodded. "There have been some promising results, but nothing reliable enough, yet, to start building comm systems around. Even when the experiments seemed to work, the quality of the communication was quite poor, and they certainly weren't going to start building anything based on it, until it improved. One could compare it to reverting back to Morse code after fibre optics were developed. So any communication results are still far in the future."

Miaki stretched his legs out under the desk and asked, "Do you think, professor Narita, that this concept of spin would ever have implications for VR simulations?"

Again the tall, slender man at the front of the room peered over his glasses, smiling slightly. "I'm surprised you even ask the question, Miaki, to be honest. Remember that we're speaking of 'virtual' reality in that case. Whatever effects happen in a virtual world, we put there by choice, by programming them in. There can be no question of a particle in one part of a virtual world affecting a particle somewhere else in that virtual world, unless we designed it that way."

Jin knew that that wasn't what Miaki had meant at all, but she noticed that he didn't pursue the question further, lest anyone remember how interested he'd been. She made sure not to do more than glance at him, but she knew what he was getting at. He was very interested in the means by which a VR simulation could be used to influence the real, non-virtual world. Perhaps, somehow, it might be the "spin" connection between particles. If that were the case, research into the phenomenon was much further along than professor Narita indicated.

And that would bring up the question, yet again, of how much the professor really knew – whether he was lying in what he taught, or whether he really believed it. In the week since the six of them had begun investigating the simulations in the special folder, they were no closer to answering the question of how involved the school might be in the plot they were uncovering.

But one thing they were more and more certain of: that the military department of the Pacific Rim Alliance government was using those special simulations to further some sort of plot to stage a coup in their government, and change that region's stance in relation to the rest of the world. Undoubtedly their stance after taking over the Pacific Rim would be far less friendly than it was now.

This was a personal matter for five of them: Toshi, Miaki, Julie, and Kenji were all Pacific Rim citizens from the East Asia side, while Jin's family (her grandparents' families had both moved to Vancouver when they were children) were citizens in the Western North America side of the region. Yet even Chika, coming from the South Atlantic Alliance province of Brazil, knew that the security of the whole world could be in jeopardy if one of its regions turned against the others. So it affected all of them.

And Kenji and Miaki were affected far more personally than any of the rest. The group didn't generally refer to their specific situation any more, but one look at Miaki's rigid stance and averted face and Kenji's obvious misery, when the Pacific Rim plot was discussed, revealed how close to the surface things still were for both of them. At least Miaki was no longer directing his animosity at Kenji; he had remained true to his promise. But the two of them were far from friends. For one thing, Kenji clearly suffered from vicarious guilt, the more he learned about his father's plots. And while it was still hard to tell, Miaki undoubtedly had not forgiven himself for taking his rage and grief out on Kenji, and hurting him so badly. So the two of them worked together alright when necessary, but there was no camaraderie there, as there was for the others.

Meanwhile, Chika had messaged all of them to meet her briefly after classes this afternoon, and before the evening meal. As the first-year physics class ended, Miaki left the room with the general stream of students, and Jin straggled behind after packing up her books. They both headed in the same general direction, but she made sure to take a separate route. Another thing the group had become almost fanatic about was making sure they were rarely all seen together.

Eventually they all ended up near the change rooms adjoining the gymnasiums, and Chika led them on toward a VR room generally used only by fourth-years. It was smaller than most, with only eight terminals and a couple of full-body VR tubes, but the furnishings were just a step above the usual terminal rooms. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and some of the equipment seemed to be trimmed with gold foil. The far wall, beyond the two short rows of terminals, actually had a tapestry hanging on it.

"For some courses," she explained, "third-years can partner with fourth-years for special projects, and I signed up for one the other day. We came here, and I saw something that made me do some more investigating into the background of the special sims."

She turned them to look at the wall beside the door they had just entered. Upon it hung a gold-tinged plaque, mounted on dark, polished wood. Chika stood back while the others leaned forward to read what was etched onto it.

'In memory of Katsu Tanaka, one of the finest students ever to study at I.S.C.E. He will be missed by his class-mates, and by his father Kazuo and brother Kenji.' And it gave the dates of his birth, and his death.

The others stood in silence for a moment, and Kenji hung his head, blinking.

Julie finally said, softly, "Wow, Kenji. He must really have been a great person, for the school to honour him like that. You didn't say he'd been a student here."

"He was," Kenji said. "He was in his fourth year..."

"And," Chika said, "he died at the school, didn't he?"

"Oh no!" Julie burst out. "Really?"

"Yes," Kenji said. "He had some sort of seizure."

"That's what the school told you?" Chika asked.

"My...my father told me," Kenji said, shifting uncomfortably, almost pointedly not looking at Miaki, who was equally as pointedly not looking at him.

"That was the public story," Chika said. "But I got curious, and looked through some of the records, when I realized he'd died here. The story you were told wasn't the truth, Kenji."

He eyed her uncertainly. "What do you mean? Why wouldn't they tell the truth about something like that?"

"Because," she said, "he died in this room. Inside a Virtual Reality simulation."

Miaki's head snapped toward her, his eyes sharpening on her face.

Kenji gaped at her. "No," he said faintly. "That's...that's not what happened. He was diabetic. He hadn't been eating properly. He...he had a seizure. That's what happened."

"I'm sorry. I really hoped the reports were above board," Chika said gently. "But I had already seen his name, when I was looking at the user logs for the special simulations. I'd seen his name three times in the logs, and wasn't even thinking of a connection at first. But I suddenly realized that the date of his death was the same as the date of his third log-in. And then I just had to hack into the medical records to find out for sure what happened."

Kenji had begun to shake. Jin pulled out a chair for him, and Julie pushed him down onto it. Toshi, meanwhile, stepped closer to Miaki.

"Alright," Jin said. "You'd better tell us what else you've learned, and let's get it over with."

Chika replied, "The thing is that I had already heard about this, but I'd forgotten the student's name. When I was a first-year, the third and fourth-years sometimes used to talk about the guy who had died in a simulation a couple of years before that. It was the only time a student had ever died at the school. It totally went out of my head till I saw this plaque and made all the connections.

"What I learned is that they began introducing the special simulations about five years ago, and fourth-year students were just beginning to test them. This was the very first of those simulations, and Katsu Tanaka was one of the first two students ever to use it. Something went wrong the third time he logged in, and they took it – and two others they'd just added – offline for several months until they could tweak them to work better. So none of those fourth-years did any more work on them. The use of the new simulations didn't really get underway till the next year."

"Who?" Miaki asked. "Who took them offline? And who authorized them in the first place?" Surprisingly, she hesitated. He barked, "Chika! Who did this?"

"Miaki," Toshi said quietly. "Calm down. Just let her tell – "

"It was my father, wasn't it?" Kenji said.

"Well..." Again Chika seemed to hesitate.

"How could it be Mr. Tanaka?" Julie asked. "He doesn't have any say in how the school teaches things, or what equipment it uses. Does he?"

"He doesn't," Chika said. "It was actually professor Yoshida, the fourth-year Advanced Space Cyber Electronics teacher. He added the simulations into the curriculum."

"Then he's the ISCE mole," Julie said. "We finally know who – "

"Where did the simulations come from?" Miaki interrupted, his fierce gaze never once leaving Chika's face. "Did he code them?"

She didn't seem happy. She bit her lip momentarily and then seemed to brace herself. "No, he didn't code them, though I think he was the one who tweaked them. They originated...they came from an office in the Pacific Rim military department. They were authorized by – "

"My father," Kenji said again.

"Yes. I'm afraid so."

They digested this news in a long silence. Kenji's face was pasty white, and he clasped his hands together in his lap as though to hide the fact that they were trembling.

Toshi murmured at last, "His son..."

"Yes," Kenji said. "He killed my brother."

Chapter 10 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:12 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 9 - part two
Back to Chapter 9 - part one

"But that means it was real," Kenji said. "There'd be no point if it was just a simulation. So that was a real place somewhere in the world. Someone is trying to test different suits against real radiation."

"The question," Chika said slowly, "is why?"

Again a silence that was already becoming familiar, as the six of them let the question and its possible answers sink into their minds.

"This," said Julie faintly, "is going beyond scary."

Toshi turned to her, suddenly. "You did set up that warning system?" he asked sharply. "In case someone starts coming to the VR room we're using?"

"Yes," she answered shakily. "But I'll double and triple check it after we're done here."

"And maybe," Kenji said, "we can rig it so that if anybody at the school detects it, it will point them to some other system so they won't actually find it."

"Yes. We'll work on that tomorrow."

"But first," Miaki said, "I think we should try another simulation or two. To see what the pattern is."

He volunteered to go in first the next time, to check if it was safe. As he chose a simulation from the list, he altered his avatar – to look exactly like Toshi. He raised an eyebrow, then smiled in answer to Toshi's grin, and adjusted the avatar instead into a stick man.

"Much more accurate," Toshi commented to his back as he went through the door.

That simulation was a biochemical laboratory. In the same way that Toshi had appeared in a deserted hallway in the first sim, they entered this one in a short hallway by an emergency door that exited into a stairwell. And beside that door was a janitorial storage room.

"What is it with these janitor's rooms?" Toshi said, peering inside. "Do the designers of these sims have a clean fetish, or something?"

"I imagine they enter here because these places aren't used much, especially in the daytime," Chika said.

"Which doesn't bode well for us, actually," answered Toshi. "If the janitors only work at night, we're bound to run into one eventually."
Miaki started toward the end of the hallway, but Chika held him back for a moment. Her avatar took on a momentary inward look, and then a couple of holoscreens appeared around her. "I found a way to trace back to the security camera system, and alter it here, without having to leave the sim myself," she explained. "I'll extend the last view it had, of an empty hallway, and just keep that latest view rolling through any camera we walk under."

"Good thinking," he said. "Better to do it as we go along, than have to go back and erase it after we're done."

They walked through a few hallways and peeked into a few labs. They had to be more careful here than they'd been in the engine testing facility, because more people seemed to be working a late shift than they had in the other building. This meant that they didn't have a lot of time or freedom to explore what sorts of research were being done here. But they did learn a couple of important facts.

"Have you noticed," Jin commented as they drew away from another door covered with glaring warnings, "that all of the research has to do with extremely toxic and dangerous substances? At least, on this floor?"

"Yes," said Toshi. "And I also noticed that we weren't offered the choice of protective suits in this sim, either."

"Have you also noticed," Kenji said suddenly, "this this is a Pacific Rim government facility?"

A small silence. "Yes," Miaki said quietly. "I noticed." The two of them avoided each other's eyes.

"Well, I've seen enough of this one for now," Toshi said. "Let's get out of here."

They logged out and stood back in the entry room, surveying its drab, empty walls. Julie said, "It isn't late. Do you want to try one more?"

This time, the simulation was very odd, with no "reality" to it at all. They found themselves standing not even in an empty room, but rather on a formless grey surface that either stretched infinitely in all directions, or curved itself upward to meet itself overhead. It was impossible to tell.

They took a few steps away from their starting point, but never ran into a wall or a barrier of any sort.

"This is the weirdest sim I've ever seen," Chika murmured. She held out a hand, trying to touch something, but found nothing. And yet...she still had the impression that there was something there.

"Jin," Miaki said. "Can you – "

"I'm already analyzing it," she said absently, watching her holoscreen. "It's not just an empty sim. There's a mechanism to it, but I'm just not sure how to access it, or what it does." She spent a bit more time looking it over, and then shook her head. "I won't figure it out while we wait, so I think I'd better copy it and spend more time on it later."

"I'll help with that," Miaki said.

"Then I guess we might as well call it a night," Chika said.

They stepped out of the sim, back into the entry room, to discover that the entry point had changed. Instead of being the nondescript empty dormitory room, it was now a gazebo in the midst of a very accurately simulated garden on a warm, sunny day.

"Alright, this is too weird," Julie said. "Where did this thing come from? Did we get into a different sim without noticing? Or has someone detected us somehow?" She worriedly called up a holoscreen to check her advance security system.

Jin said, "Don't worry about it, Julie. Miaki did this."

"Really?" said Julie. "Miaki, is she right?"

He was back to his normal avatar, and stood a little apart, hands in pockets, hair falling across his face. He shrugged. "Well...yes," he admitted. "It will only show up this way for the six of us, though."

"But when did you do this?" Chika said. "It's amazing. It must have taken you hours to construct."

He shrugged again, looking away.

Jin smiled. "I bet it didn't. I bet he wrote this program while we were looking through all the sims tonight." He flashed her a quick glance, and she caught just a glimpse of an answering smile in his eyes. "I knew it," she said.

"That's my boy," Toshi grinned. "All those hidden talents, just bubbling away while nobody notices." He looked around. "Nice work."

"Very nice," Chika said. "I'm very impressed. And very thankful that we don't have to face that awful empty room again." She regarded Miaki thoughtfully for a moment. "Yes, I'm quite impressed. I knew you were good, but never realized just how good."

"How did you guess, Jin?" Julie wondered, but Jin just smiled and murmured, "Oh, I've seen him do it before."

"Meanwhile," Toshi said, sensing how uncomfortable his cousin was getting with all this, "before we log out of here we should decide our next steps. Let's decide now, so nobody can overhear us."

Chika planned a couple of things: she would research the simulations on the list in the special folder, to try to find out who had designed them and put them there. And she would try to find out what students or faculty had actually used them, and whether they even knew if these simulations impinged on the real world. The question was whether people at the school were mere guinea pigs, or if some of them were actual accomplices. None of them was ready, yet, to entertain the thought that the institution as such was part of a dangerous conspiracy.

Julie and Kenji planned to discover all the means they could, to safeguard the six of them while they were in the VR world. The first priority would be to refine Julie's security watchdog system, so that it would divert attention away from itself even if it were noticed. Then they would look into some way of achieving portability, if they had to change rooms unexpectedly. Right now, Julie had merely set the small innocuous metal box on the floor just inside the doorframe, but it needed a better disguise.

Toshi would work with Chika on uncovering the origins of the secret VR simulations, and he also decided to work on disguising their own log-ins from the school's internal systems. If someone at ISCE were really involved in something illegal and dangerous, somebody or some system would probably sit up and take notice, eventually, of how frequently the six of them logged on, and logged on at the same time. Explanations of "practising for a class" would be dismissed without much work, and other explanations suspected pretty quickly.

"In fact," he said, "I think I'll devise an algorithm that not only changes the time of our log-ins, so they don't match, but also attributes the log-in sometimes to people other than us. Someone who wasn't online at the same time, and who could have an extra log-in or three in their record without it being questioned."

"While you're at it," Chika said crisply, "see if you can make it disguise which sims we visit. The last thing we want is for anyone to notice we're visiting these secret simulations."

"Gotcha," Toshi said.

Miaki and Jin, meanwhile, would try to analyze the strange, grey, featureless simulation. There had to be a reason why it was included with all the others that were very detailed and which intruded into the real world. They would also help Chika and Toshi draw connections among all the sims they had looked at so far.

When they finally logged out, they were all quite satisfied with their evening's work.

Jin was the last to leave the room, and Miaki immediately lagged back in order to join her as they all walked down the hall from the VR room.

"You're not using the taller avatar lately," he remarked.

"I decided I was being too vain," she said. "I know they're just avatars, and we can make them into anything we want – like your stick man – but I felt I was making changes for reasons that weren't very valid. So, I'm very short in real life, and I'll be very short in the VR world."

"I see," he said, and they continued walking in silence. But just before they turned different ways, to go back to their separate dormitories, he said quietly, "Just for the record, Jin. I think of you as one of the tallest people I know." And he walked off down the corridor without looking back, speeding up a little to catch up to Toshi.

Jin watched him go, and shook her head with a little smile. That Miaki. You just never knew, with him.

But what a very nice thing to say.

Chapter 10 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 2:06 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 9 - part one
Back to Chapter 8 - part two

They stood inside the same featureless, empty dormitory room that the first-years always found themselves in.

"Ugh," said Chika. "I'd forgotten how ugly this room was. I promise, the entry points get much better as you get more advanced."

"Nice to know," Julie said. "I've always thought it was pretty unbearable. I thought they meant it to encourage us to get out of the entry room and into the simulation as quickly as possible." She smiled at Jin and Kenji, who stood beside her.

Miaki, standing by himself near a corner, looked around the room contemplatively, as though noting its true drabness for the first time. He had behaved pretty much normally the last two days, during classes and when he had passed any of them in the hallways. He might have been slightly less communicative than usual – if that were really possible – but it was understandable, given the events of the last few days. If he seemed reluctant to meet anyone's eyes, and tended to hang back a bit, it wasn't hard to know why.

"Of course it doesn't matter, technically," Chika continued, her mind focussed on the job at hand. "The main thing is to make sure we can access the sims we need, from this first-year starting point."

"Not usually," said Toshi. "I already checked. But I've made shortcuts for all of us, that we can stick into our personal folders and access from here." He quickly sent the shortcuts to the others, adding, "I've given them really innocuous titles to disguise them a bit, and I've added a couple of other security features. But you'd better password them to death."

As they saved the shortcuts, Chika reminded them what she and Toshi planned to do first. "We'll do what we did the other night: I'll hack into the security camera system, and Toshi will quickly go into the sim, grab a broom, and bring it into camera range. You'll all stay here till we confirm that we're affecting the real world through this sim, and then we'll start peeking into a few others."

It was a very quick exercise. Chika set up a split holoscreen where the other four could see what she saw from the security system, and also see what Toshi saw as he walked around in the laboratory simulation. They watched him pick up a broom and carry it to the corner, peeking around to make sure the windowed hallway was empty. And they watched what looked like a ghost of himself walk into Chika's view, broom held out before him. The broom was completely solid and opaque, while they could almost see through the faded version of Toshi.

He paused a moment by the long window, looking down, so they could get a quick look at all the testing areas and the engines. But he had to duck back fairly quickly, to avoid even his "ghost" being seen by the few people down below.

Shortly thereafter, he and Chika both popped back into the entry room.

"There," Toshi said. "You see how weird that is? But it absolutely proves that with those special simulations, we're having an effect in the real world. I have no idea how they do that."

Chika mused, "I think I'll try to ask some fourth-years about the work they're doing, and try to find out if they even know they might be influencing the real world. It's possible they all think they're working in ordinary simulations that are just a bit more complicated than usual."

"If that's the case," Julie said, "then they might just be guinea pigs. It might be someone higher up who's trying to develop these simulations, and they're trying them out on the students."

"Which is even more infuriating," said Toshi. "There's a real possibility of danger if you don't know you're in the real world. Kenji and I know that very well."

Chika said, "And that casts doubt on ICE itself, doesn't it?"

The six of them stared at each other in momentary silence, absorbing the implications of this.

Toshi stirred uncomfortably. "I just...I can't believe that the school could knowingly be involved in anything that would put the students in danger. Or anything that would subvert the security of the world either. And yet...it would sure put a different perspective on that big money donation the other day."

"It would call Mr. Woon himself into question," Chika said.

"But remember," Jin put in. "Mr. Woon seemed to make sure to remind everyone that no matter how much money was donated, ICE wasn't going to be influenced to favour the donor."

"It seems to me," Miaki said, "that we're not going to answer any of these questions till we explore more of the simulations."

"Right you are," Toshi said. "So let's look at the list, and decide which ones to go into next. And by the way. Remember how that moonwalk simulation disappeared from the list Kenji and I were working from, after we'd had our adventure there? Well. I found it again, in the really advanced list."

"One more suspicious thing," said Chika as she called up the list in question.

They examined it for a moment, and then decided on one called "Winter."

"I'll go in first," Toshi said, "just to make sure nobody's around to see us." He altered his avatar till it had black hair and green lightning bolts across its face. "So I hopefully can't be identified," he grinned, stepping through a newly-opened door in the wall, into the simulation.

They could see the yellow glow that indicated his locator, but couldn't see the simulation unless he sent a signal back via holoscreen. He didn't need to anyway, signalling immediately that it was alright for them to come in.

The simulation was extremely drab. They stood beside a small stream that appeared to have been almost choked to death by having piles of dust poured into it; only at the very centre did there seem to be a strip of thick, gooey mud slowly flowing. Most of the vegetation along the stream seemed to be dead, though only recently: the grasses, while drooping over or even lying on the mud, still retained faint traces of green, and the overhanging trees seemed only recently to have dropped their leaves, which had turned a greenish brown. Across the stream was an old abandoned house. They guessed that it might have been painted white at one time, but the paint had discoloured to a sickly grey, and was mostly peeled off. They could see chunks of it lying on the brown grass around the house.

The students themselves found that they were wearing heavy, enclosed suits something like the earliest spacesuits worn on the Moon.

Kenji flexed his arms and commented, "They look cumbersome, but I think they move more easily than those first spacesuits."

"So where are we supposed to be, exactly?" Julie wondered. "Some sort of disaster scene? I'd almost think Mars, actually, like this was simulating a failed colonization attempt. But then, it would have to be an actual VR simulation instead of something in the real world. Is there any way we can tell?"

"Not yet," Chika said. "But I have a feeling that all the simulations in this folder are going to turn out real, and not just VR."

Jin stepped closer to the edge of the stream and frowned down at the dead grasses.

"Don't get too close to the mud," Chika said. "If this is real, someone would see the footsteps and start getting suspicious."

Jin nodded. "I wonder what made all the vegetation die. It doesn't look like natural autumn death."

"Maybe," Kenji said, "they're testing a plant virus."

"But that wouldn't explain the paint," she said, waving a hand toward the house.

Toshi flexed his arms much like Kenji had done, and examined his suit more closely. "It's true, this thing is very flexible," he said. "When I first came into the sim, it had a menu that said 'Choose Suit'. I just picked the first on the list, and it must have applied to the rest of you too. I guess it meant these spacesuits." He peered at the almost translucent strips that ran in a wide band down each of the forearms. "I wonder what this stuff is. Look – it's changing colour. Nice blue. Maybe it's changed by body heat...?"

They all heard Miaki's sharp gasp, then he barked, "Get out of this sim! Everyone – get out now!"

They snapped back into the entry room, spurred by his urgency.

"What's going on?" Chika asked. "What happened?"

"Those strips," Miaki said. "Radiation detectors. We were only there a few seconds, and they were already heading past blue toward purple."

"Winter," Jin said. "The file name -- they're talking about nuclear winter."

"So...they were testing how much radiation would kill the plants?" Julie said.

"No," said Toshi suddenly. "They're testing the suits. That's why that menu showed up, so you could pick which suit you wanted. And I just picked the first one without thinking. It was probably the least safe one, being first on the list..." He looked suddenly sick.

"I don't think we were there long enough to take serious damage," Miaki said quickly, to reassure him.

Chapter 9 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 1:56 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 8 - part two
Back to Chapter 8 - part one

"So what we decided," Chika said, "is that we're not going to report you." Miaki bowed his head again. It was hard to tell whether or not he was relieved. Chika went on, "Part of the reason is what you've already been through, and Kenji defending you. But we need you to keep working with us, for something more important. And even Kenji understands this, and agrees about it. You're going to have to work with the rest of us on the larger problem we've discovered. We can't have you running off on your own any more, to try to get your revenge on Mr. Tanaka."

Miaki's hands clenched into fists. He didn't look up. "So that's where it ends? I have to visit my father's grave and know who murdered him, but just let it go?" It sounded like he was weeping.

"No." Toshi put a hand on his cousin's hair. "Miaki, wait. Don't lose hope yet. Let us tell you everything. Chika and I found out something last night. We were right – some of the VR simulations at the school do intrude into the real world. It didn't strike me right away, but I've been thinking about the list of simulations today. They're all military in some way."

"That was worrisome enough," said Chika, "but I'd forgotten to tell Toshi what I found out when I double-checked the specs for one of them last night. It was a military rocket laboratory that isn't on any publically-known government register in the world."

"Which is very suspicious," said Toshi.

"But the other thing I found out when I checked the specs to get into the security camera system – is that it's a laboratory inside the military of the Pacific Rim government."

Miaki's head shot up. They could see that there were, indeed, tears in his eyes. But his eyes had sharpened on Chika's face, full of intense excitement despite himself.

"Pacific Rim...," he breathed.

"Yes," Toshi said. "It might explain the big money donation yesterday. And Mr. Tanaka is obviously connected somehow. And if the secret is really big – then if your father accidentally stumbled on some information about it – that would explain why Mr. Tanaka killed him."

"So you see," said Chika. "We're going to insist that you stop your own investigations and work with the rest of us. But it doesn't mean you have to abandon trying to bring your father's killer to justice. If there is a military plot going on, contravening all world peace agreements and putting the world in danger – and if we can find the details and help to bring down the plot – the man who killed your father is likely to fall as well. You can add your evidence to everything else we find, and the authorities will deal with all of it."

"But investigating the larger plot has to be the priority," Toshi said. "I want to bring my uncle's killer down almost as much as you do, Miaki. But I've agreed that this larger danger has to be investigated first, even if it means sacrificing our family's need for justice. The big question is whether you can agree to this too."

The cousins' eyes met and held for a long time, Miaki's darkly shaded and overshadowed by his dark hair, and Toshi's bright beneath his sunny hair. None of the others could tell what communication might be going on beneath that intense gaze, but after a moment they saw Toshi smile fondly.

"I knew you'd understand," he said.

Miaki turned toward Chika. "I can agree to that."

"But what we need if you're going to work with us on this," said Julie, "is some sort of guarantee that you're not going to go off the deep end again. Which is a problem, because I don't know if you can give us that, Miaki."

He leaned back against the wall and made his fists unclench. He looked very weary. But his eyes were clear as he looked back at her. "I will never do anything like that again," he said. His eyes moved to Kenji's strained face. "I mean it, Kenji," he said softly.

"Yes," said Julie. "I really believe you mean it now. But what if you get another shock, like you did yesterday? You seemed to have total control of yourself for a few weeks, and then you find out about Mr. Tanaka and all that control gets blown to bits. How do we know it won't happen again?"

His hand moved to the chain around his neck. Toshi had grabbed it last night and returned it to him when they'd gotten back to his room. His fingers found his father's literary medal and clasped around it. "I swear it," he whispered, "in the name of my father. Let him curse me from his grave if I ever do such a thing again."

They greeted this declaration in silence, searching his solemn face. But Toshi flopped himself onto his back on the bed, propping himself up with his elbows.

"I case you haven't figured it out," he said, "that's about as solid a guarantee as you can possibly get."

"Alright," Chika said. "I think you're right. We'll hold you to it, Miaki. I think we all need a couple of days off, so let's meet again two nights from now. And I think it's a good idea to meet in the room you went to last night. Not as a reminder of what happened between you and Kenji, but because it's fairly out of the way and not used much."

Toshi added, "We've started thinking that if there's some element at ISCE that's involved in something covert, maybe we'd better take even more precautions than we've taken so far. Julie's already working on setting up some kind of advance warning device to tip us off if anyone comes near the room while we're all in the VR world. And we've got other things we're going to try, too. But starting in that room is a good way to go, for now."

Chika asked, "Is that okay with you, Kenji?" He nodded. "Right, then. Let's all get a good night's sleep tonight. I think we need it." She opened the door, and ushered Kenji and Julie through it, before departing herself.

Jin went to the desk and pulled out the chair. "Come and eat, Miaki," she said. "I bet you haven't been able to eat all day. But I think you'll feel better now."

To Toshi's surprise, Miaki obeyed immediately, going to the desk and sitting down. Sitting at that level, he had to look up at Jin's face, though only barely. "You didn't say anything that whole time," he said. "Do you really hate me?"

She laughed. "Are you afraid I've put poison in the food?"

To Toshi's further surprise, Miaki actually laughed back, a little. "No," he said. "Though you probably should have." His smile faded. "But I still...don't get..."

"I was there when you found out for sure about Mr. Tanaka, remember?" she answered. "I made sure they knew how bad it was when you found out. But what you did to Kenji was very bad, too. I wanted them to decide what they've decided, but...I didn't really think I could try to push the decision either way. I felt it was Kenji's decision to make. We all did, really. I was just hoping this was the way he'd go. He's a very good person, Miaki. Very brave when he needs to be."

Miaki bowed his head. "I know. And I'm..."

Jin put a hand on his shoulder. "You're a good person too. I know that, Toshi knows that, and I think the others know it too, or they wouldn't have decided the way they have. So don't worry about things now. Just have something to eat and get some sleep."

He touched her hand for a moment, and nodded. Though even after she'd finally left, he sat in silence for a moment, brooding.

Toshi remarked from the bed, "Look, cousin, if you don't get on with eating supper before it gets any colder, I'm going to grab it and eat it myself, to justify having brought it all this way. That hot plate, burning my delicate hands, while it smelled so good all the way down the hall and it was so hard on me and I used so much self control and didn't have even one teeny little bite – "

He broke off in consternation as he saw Miaki's shoulders starting to shake. But his cousin suddenly threw back his head and laughed. He kept laughing, helplessly, as Toshi pushed himself off the bed and moved to the desk. Toshi grinned down at him, then took a fork, stabbed a piece of fish, and tried to jam it into Miaki's mouth. Miaki knocked it aside and it fell on the floor. For some reason, this struck him as funny too, and the laughter started all over again.

The two of them laughed like that for a long time, Miaki calming down enough to start eating, and then catching Toshi's eye and bursting out again. The meal did get eaten. Eventually. But Toshi didn't mind how long it took. He knew the laughter was mainly a release of the terrible tension Miaki had felt all day, and it probably wouldn't make much difference to how he felt tomorrow. Yet all Toshi could think, through the unexpected happiness he felt, was that he hadn't seen Miaki laugh like this for over a year.

* * * * *

Julie had stopped with Kenji when they reached his door, and asked to come in just for a minute. Chika had raised a speculative eyebrow, laughing a little as Julie rolled her eyes at her, and then continued out of the men's dorm wing by herself.

Once inside Kenji's room, Julie quickly got down to business.

"I know Miaki has made that big promise," she said, "but I still think you need a little protection, just in case."

"Do you?" Kenji asked uneasily. "He seemed to mean it. I thought so, anyway."

"You're probably right, but I still think it would be a good idea to give you something extra. Hold still." She pulled her little "wand" out of a pocket, and changed a setting on the tiny panel on its side. Then she took Kenji's hand, with its locator ring, and waved the wand over it.

Kenji turned his hand over a couple of times, looking at the ring, examining its metallic sheen. It neither looked nor felt any different.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I've set it to protect you in the VR world," Julie said. "It will let your avatar and Miaki's interact at a distance, and even interact up close for short periods of time. But if there is any prolonged contact with his avatar, yours will start to repel it."

"You mean, actually push it away?"

"Yes. So if he was trying to hold you in one place for a long time, you'd automatically push him away. You might not be able to get out of the sort of cage he had you in last night, but he wouldn't be able to hit you. And if he grabbed you really suddenly, with more than normal force, the pushing would start sooner."

Kenji didn't seem entirely comfortable. "And you think I really need this?"

"I hope not. But I think you're better safe than sorry," she said. "In fact, I'm trying to refine the program, so he can never stop you from logging out either. That's a bit trickier. And you probably won't even need this much protection. But at least you'll be safe now if he does blow his cool again."

Kenji flexed his hand once more, then smiled ruefully. "Okay, if you really think I should have it. I guess it can't hurt, can it?"

"No," Julie smiled back. "It can't hurt at all. Especially if you keep it private. The fewer people who know about it, the less likely he'll be to find out, and figure out a way to get around it. So don't tell anyone, okay?"

"I won't."

After she had gone, Kenji got ready for bed. Chika had gotten him to remove the makeup before they went to Miaki's room, so his assailant could see the full results of the beating last night, but he still felt like washing his face again. That stuff really stuck. He gave himself a thorough wash, and finally crawled into bed. He laid in the dark for a while, trying not to think. Of course it was hopeless, since it had only been 24 hours since he'd found out the awful truth about his father.

So many things he and Miaki now had in common, in such a twisted way. So many hurtful, haunting things.

Kenji gingerly touched the cut by his mouth. He could feel the weight of the altered ring on his finger, and enclosed it with the fingers of his other hand.

He still wasn't comfortable with the idea behind Julie's new program, but he guessed it made good sense. He'd just have to assuage his uneasy feelings by reminding himself what she'd said. It was just a precaution, that he probably wouldn't need. Nobody even needed to know it was there. And it couldn't possibly hurt anyone.

Chapter 9 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 1:51 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 8 - part one
Back to Chapter 7 - part three

Despite their general rule that the six conspirators shouldn't sit together at meals, Jin and Julie made straight for Chika's and Kenji's table at breakfast. Chika had chosen a table in a far corner, hoping it was out of the way enough that other students would leave them alone. She had put Kenji so that his back was to the rest of the cafeteria. But his bright auburn hair was hard to miss, so Jin and Julie found him almost immediately.

"I didn't think he'd even come to breakfast," Julie said.

As the two girls took their seats across from their friends, Julie peered at the young man's face. He didn't seem to have bruised much from last night, though there was a nasty cut at the side of his mouth.

Chika caught the examining look. "I went to his room early. I sort of thought he'd be trying to hide in there, and I was right. So I fixed him up and made him come to breakfast."

"What do you mean, 'fixed him up'?" Julie asked.

Kenji seemed to be trying to shrink into his shoulders. "She put makeup all over my face," he muttered.

"I did," Chika smiled complacently, buttering her toast. "And you can hardly see a thing. Except that cut, which was a bit too much to cover."

Julie remarked, "He can tell people he walked into a door." Kenji cast her an incredulous look.

Jin asked softly, "How are you doing, Kenji? Really?"

He stared down into his untouched breakfast and shrugged. "How do you think I'm doing?" he said. "I'm just fine. For someone whose father bought him a place at ISCE, and then...and then turned out to be a...a..."

"I understand," she said. "I'm sorry."

He shrugged again, disspiritedly. It wasn't hard to understand why he looked so miserable.

Julie looked up, past his shoulder. "Well," she said. "I see almost all of us are here."

Kenji jerked around to look, and then relaxed back into his chair when he saw that it was only Toshi, approaching hesitantly. "I...hope you don't mind if I'm here for a minute," Toshi said, taking the eat between Chika and Julie, and leaving the chair beside Kenji empty. "I'll just get a plate and take it...back to..."

"That's fine," Chika said. "Better that he stay where he is today."

"Yeah, well, I already put in a sick day for him," Toshi said gloomily, pulling out a plate and setting it in the center, then pressing the buttons for the breakfast menu.

"And then what?" said Julie. "What happens after the sick day? Does he pretend to be sick in his room for the rest of the school year? Do we report him and get him kicked out of school? Or does he get away with attacking Kenji, and just go on like nothing's happened?"

"For what it's worth," Toshi said, "he doesn't expect to 'get away with' anything. If you all decide to report him and get him kicked out, he'll go without protest." He watched the plate fill up with toast. He pulled out another plate, to great breakfast for himself, and then put it away instead. "I don't think I can eat this morning."

"So he'll just quit?" said Kenji. "Just like that?"

Toshi ran a weary hand through his hair. He looked like he hadn't slept all night. "There's no reason you should believe this, Kenji. But Miaki is...I guess the only word to use is 'sorry', but it's such a lame word it can't even come close. If you could have seen him during the night...well. Anyway. He's sorry. So, yes. If you all decide to get him expelled, he'll go. And," Toshi said, standing up and picking up the plate, "so will I."

"Come on, Toshi, that's ridiculous," said Chika. "You don't have to ruin your own life just because Miaki's a jerk."

"He's not a jerk," said Toshi. "He's...broken. He made me come to school without him last year, but I won't let him do that again. I'm not leaving him alone again till he's better. That's all."

"Then I think," said Jin, "that we'd better meet after classes and talk about everything, so we can decide what to do and not leave either of you waiting. Don't you think?"

Toshi's lips twitched in a faint, rueful smile. "That's fine with me. We can talk between classes and supper, and then I'll take a meal to Miaki and you can all come to his room after that."

After he left, the remaining four looked soberly at each other.

"I can just imagine how easy it's going to be to concentrate on classes today," Chika said. "I know I'm going to be trying to think this through, all day."

"So am I," Julie said. "But really, most of us have less say in this than we think."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it seems to me," Julie went on, "that the one with the most to say in this decision has to be Kenji. No matter what I want to decide, at the end of the day I think I'm just going to agree with whatever he wants."

"Good point," Chika said. "And I think you're right. We'll talk it over, but I think Kenji has to have the final veto."

Jin pretty much agreed, but didn't say anything. Kenji, too, was silent, still toying with his food and not eating. If it was possible, with this vote of confidence from his friends he looked more miserable than ever.

* * * * *

If that day was long and tense for the five who spent it in classes, at least their studies diverted their minds somewhat. But for the one who waited alone in his room for their verdict on his future, it felt like a hundred years.

Of course, for some of the time he wasn't really thinking at all, just staring at the wall in a sort of frozen despair. Sometimes he passed almost an hour in that limbo, and noted the clock in surprise when he surfaced again. When he did try to think, he found his mind circling and circling inexorably around two things: the memory of walking into his father's office to find the man dead on the floor by his terminal, and the memory of last night's violence against the son of the man who had killed him.

He knew – as certainly as if his father had told him – that his father would hate what he had done last night. It had been a betrayal. He had behaved...he had behaved as Kazuo Tanaka had behaved a year ago, against an innocent person who had accidentally found himself in a situation he hadn't expected and hadn't chosen to be in. It was unforgivable.

And he would never forgive himself.

Toshi checked in as often as he could during the day, but even his comforting presence couldn't penetrate the frozen grief.

When the door opened again, just after the supper hour, Miaki expected just Toshi with a plate of food. He had tried to eat the toast this morning, but had immediately brought it back up. Lunch had been the same. So it had essentially been 24 hours since he'd last been able to eat, and he had finally begun to feel a little hungry. He was sitting at his empty desk and decided just to stay there, so he could start in on the food right away.

But as Toshi entered, followed unexpectedly by the other four, his appetite vanished again. In fact, he felt a little sick. And as Kenji came into the light of the lamp near the door, and as the cut by his mouth and all the bruises on his face became glaringly visible, Miaki was swept helplessly to his feet.

They watched him back away, his face white beneath the red stripes, with what looked like fear. Then he moved to his bed and sat down, shakily. He leaned against the wall by the bed, drawing his knees up and lowering his arms and head onto them. Only Toshi, who had come closer, heard him whispering, "I can't. I can't. I can't."

Toshi quickly set the plate on the desk and sat down beside him. "It's alright, Miaki," he said softly. "It's going to be alright."

Chika seemed to be the spokesperson. "I'm glad to see there's a bit of remorse here, at least," she said. Then, at Toshi's look, added hastily, "Alright, Toshi has told us there's been a lot of that. I see he's right. But I'm sure you'll understand that for most of us, our first thought was that you should be reported for the way you attacked Kenji. And expelled from the school, if not worse."

Miaki made no reply, but kept his face averted.

Since this was pretty much his normal mode anyway, Chika went on, unperturbed. "But of course, none of this is that straightforward. We've also had to remember what happened to you a year ago – and how hard it would have hit you to finally find out who – " She hesitated.

"Who killed his father," Kenji said tightly. "You don't have to keep yourself from saying it. We all know it was my father."

She answered with surprising gentleness, "Yes. But we can try to keep from rubbing salt in your wounds as much as possible. Which is why," she turned back to Miaki, "we finally had to remind ourselves why you lost it the way you did. You've been living with this for a year, when everyone else thought it was just an accident. So...it had to really hurt, and be very hard to deal with when you saw the records from Mr. Tanaka's terminal, and then saw him up there making all nice with Mr. Woon."

Julie added, "We know you hate when Toshi tells people about you, but he's tried to give us some idea how badly it hit you, how your father died, and the way you found him."

"Sorry," Toshi murmured. "I thought they had to understand that you weren't just being some emotionless revenge machine. There was more to it than that."

"Though Toshi wouldn't really have had to tell us those things," said Chika, "because the one who really convinced the rest of us about it was Kenji."

Miaki's head jerked up. "Kenji?" he said incredulously.

"Yes. He's the one who reminded us how much it hurts to lose your father in a really horrible way. And how much a person flounders, trying to come to terms with it. He's very eloquent. As you can imagine."

Miaki stared at Kenji, who seemed determined not to look up but to stare at his hands, twisting together. But Kenji finally seemed to sense the scrutiny because finally he said, quietly, "If it's any consolation to you, Miaki...my father, too, is now dead. To me, at least."

Toshi's breath caught. Miaki looked as though he'd been stabbed to the heart.

"No," Miaki said, his voice shaking. "It's not a consolation." It was Kenji's turn to look up, startled. But it was clear how Miaki meant what he was saying. "If I could change it – change or undo everything that's happened – I would."

"I know," said Kenji, opening his hands helplessly. "And...so would I."

Chapter 8 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 1:42 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 7 - part three
Back to Chapter 7 - part two

Kenji gasped. "I – I don't understand. I don't...Miaki, why? What do you think he's done? Why are you doing this? Why??"

The narrow smile faded. If it was possible, Miaki's eyes sharpened even more, now tinged with rage. "What do I think...? I don't think, Kenji, I know. I know exactly what he's done. Kazuo Tanaka murdered my father!"

Kenji stared at him, frozen in horror. Toshi moved up to the energy wall beside Jin, and leaned his hands and forehead against it. "Oh no," he moaned. "Oh no. Miaki."

"That's why," Jin said dazedly. "That's what happened, then. That's the information he found last night. It’s why he wouldn’t tell me the name. And when he saw the video today...Kenji's father, making that donation..."

"Something broke," Toshi whispered. "Jin, we have to stop him. We have to get him out of here, before he...before he does something terrible."

"I've been calling to him," she said softly. "He doesn't hear me. Or won't hear me."

Kenji finally found his voice, ragged and terrified as it was. "That's not true!" he cried. "It's a lie! My father would never do such a thing! Never!"

"Of course you'd cover for him," Miaki sneered. "Or...or did you know all along? Is that why he bought you a place at ISCE? To find out if I knew who killed my father? To spy on me?"

"No –- I swear -– he didn't! He didn't do any of it! Miaki, it's not true, you have to believe me, none of this is not true!"

"What a little dupe you are." Again the cutting contempt. "Do you mean that when you call home, he never asks about any of the students? He never asks about me by name? Does he ever do that?"

Kenji's breath caught and he grew utterly still, staring at Miaki's face. Then he said, barely whispering, "It...it doesn't mean anything. Everyone's heard of you. He just...wants to know how you’re doing..."

"I'll bet he does."

"But it isn't because of -- of what you’re saying. Miaki, you have to believe me! My father can be hard, sometimes, but he'd never k-kill anybody. He'd never do that. No matter what you think -- "

"I tell you, I don't think, I know! I know, Kenji! Look at this. Look at it!" Miaki called up a holoscreen right in front of Kenji's face and began to scroll the evidence he'd found, last night with Jin. She couldn't read it from where her avatar stood, held back from the scene, but it was obvious what it said. Obvious from Kenji's changing, crumbling face, as he watched the evidence scroll by, telling the awful truth line after line after line.

It wasn’t a mistake, then. Kazuo Tanaka had murdered Miaki’s father.

Kenji slowly sank to his knees, and Miaki made the holoscreen follow him, hanging before his eyes even when he tried to turn his head away. "No," Kenji moaned. "Please...no!"

"You see?" The words snapped out. "I followed the trail my father left me before he died. I followed it all the way back, to the source. He was just doing research for a novel! He didn't know what he'd run into. It was an accident. But that signal leads back, to the government, to your father's office, to his terminal where Kazuo Tanaka was logged in at that very moment! He did it, Kenji! He sent the signal that killed my father! He didn’t even stop long enough to find out if it was a mistake!"

Kenji buried his head in his hands. Toshi wanted to follow suit.

Chika stepped up behind Toshi. "Miaki, this is enough. Let him go," she commanded.

He looked over at her, ignoring Toshi as though he weren't even there, and laughed nastily. "Oh no, not yet," he said. "Not till I get his father."

"If his father committed murder, then go after Kazuo Tanaka. Kenji has done nothing to you. Let him go."

Miaki turned away. "No. I'm not letting Kazuo slip through my fingers. He could easily suppress the evidence and do away with me once Kenji is free. But when he is in jail, and a copy of this evidence is in the hands of the authorities – then Kenji can go. Not until then."

"Oh, you fool," Kenji said, surprising everyone. "You damn fool." He looked up and began to laugh suddenly, a high-pitched laugh bordering on hysteria. "You don't know about me and my father, do you? He couldn't care less about me. It was my brother Katsu he loved, and Katsu died five years ago. I'm just a poor substitute, who never measures up. Father goes through the motions, trying to make me into somebody, but I'm never good enough. Never."

Miaki frowned. "So?"

"So! This will be the last failure – the final way I've inconvenienced him by not being my brother. Do you think, if he's really the type to murder an innocent man just for stumbling accidentally into a forbidden site, that he'd care for a single second about turning himself in to free me? He'll let me rot in this simulation rather than let himself get into that kind of trouble!"

"You're lying."

"Try it," Kenji said, his lips twisting in a bitter smile. It was horrifying, to see such an expression on his normally friendly, shy face. "Threaten him if you want. Hold me hostage as long as you like. See what he does. See if he even replies to you."

Miaki stared at him. "You're lying. He wouldn't do that to his own son. Fathers..." He faltered on the word, and Toshi could see the memories in his eyes, and the never-ending grief. "Fathers don't do that. Not to their own sons..."

"Maybe yours didn't. But mine's the one who's alive and kicking."

Kenji didn't mean it the way it came out, and he was aghast the moment he heard himself saying it. But it was far too late to take anything back.

"Damn, Kenji," Julie muttered.

Miaki gasped sharply at the words. His hands, held out to either side from setting up the energy walls, began to shake. "You're right," he said thickly. It sounded like he couldn't get his breath. "My father is dead. Dead. And nobody...nobody knows what I...what I..."

Toshi knew, oh he knew. He remembered. Coming into the house a moment after Miaki had gone in. And starting to run down the hall as he heard his cousin screaming, and screaming, as though he were being tortured.

Miaki still couldn't seem to get his breath. Toshi could almost feel him cracking, even from behind the energy barrier. "He – he killed him. My father, the – the best person – the best person who ever – and he killed him!"

"I’m sorry – oh, Miaki – I’m sorry!" Kenji said.

"Sorry??" Miaki cried raggedly. His face exploded with rage and he slashed one arm toward Kenji in fury.

The walls around Kenji vanished, but a wave of energy hit him full on instead, and he flew backwards off his feet, with a sharp shriek of pain. He rolled and rolled, and was just getting back onto his hands and knees when Miaki came at him again, throwing blast after blast of energy at him, knocking him backwards and backwards as he threw up his arms in a futile attempt to protect himself.

"NO!" Toshi shouted. "Miaki, stop it, stop it, stop it!" he screamed, beating his fists against the transparent wall.

"Log out, Kenji!" Chika yelled. "Log out, you idiot!"

Jin turned on her. "If he was able to log out, don't you think he'd have done it by now? Miaki's got him trapped somehow!"

"Miaki, please, please!" Toshi's fists continued to bash the energy wall, and he was dimly aware that Chika and Julie were ramming against it as well. "Oh Miaki, you can't do this, you can't, oh please, don't do this!"

"He won't listen." Jin was crying. "I've been trying, before you got here. He just won't listen."

Kenji tried to fight back, staggering to his feet and throwing himself at Miaki, but somehow the barrier between them prevented him from touching his attacker, while Miaki was still able to reach him. He swung his fist again, and yet again Kenji staggered backward in pain, as the blow landed on his face.

The avatars were so realistic that he was bleeding. Bleeding from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and gouges all over his chest. They had to stop this, or he would be in terrible danger.

Toshi screamed, "Miaki please – oh please – I'm begging you!" Again and again he beat his fists at the energy wall.

And at last, he felt it starting to give. He sensed Julie standing beside him, her hands pressed against the invisible wall, her eyes closed as she concentrated. She had learned from Miaki, after all, when they had bypassed those security barriers a few evenings ago. Surely she could use Miaki’s own tricks to get around this one, somehow.

She made a gap, which widened slowly until there was room enough for Toshi to leap through. He felt it completely collapse behind him as he rushed at Miaki from behind, grabbing his arms and yanking him backwards.

"Stop this!" Toshi yelled. "Miaki, you have to stop!"

They were all through by now, yet none of the others could reach Kenji yet, through the barrier that Miaki still held around him. He managed to get to his feet, reaching for Chika as she tried to push her hands through to him. But Miaki managed to land another couple of blows, knocking him down again.

Toshi wrestled with his cousin, and finally threw him down, shouting at him, "Miaki, you damn fool, you can’t do this! You have to stop!"

"I don’t have to stop anything!" Miaki yelled furiously. He didn’t bother with power blasts this time, but scrambled to his feet and swung his fist at Toshi.

Toshi ducked it and continued shouting, "You can’t do this! Kenji hasn’t done anything to you! He’s not his father! Miaki, I’m begging you, stop hurting him! Stop being like Kenji’s father! Miaki, please, please! This isn’t who you are! You don’t hurt people like this! You’re not this kind of person!"

He grabbed Miaki and swung him around to look at Kenji, who yet again was laboring to his feet. He was gasping in pain with every movement.

"Miaki," Toshi said. "Look at him. Look what you’ve done. This isn’t who you are. Please, Miaki. Don’t hurt him any more."

He saw it hit his cousin, really hit him, dousing the fury like a bucket of freezing water. Miaki’s eyes widened in shock, and his whole body began to shake in Toshi’s grasp as he took in the wounds and the blood.

"Just let him go," Toshi whispered.

Miaki’s fingers gave a little twist, and the barrier vanished. Chika dashed to Kenji’s side and held him up as he started sagging again. "Log out," she said briskly, and followed him out of the VR world. Julie snapped out immediately afterward, and after a moment of hesitation, Jin turned away from the cousins and logged herself out as well.

"Come on," Toshi said. "Let’s get out of here and get you to your room." Miaki nodded dazedly, and their avatars disappeared together.

As Toshi pulled off his equipment, he saw that Chika was already at Kenji’s side, helping him to stand up. She cast a venomous glance at Miaki. "Put him in his room," she said, "and lock him in there somehow, till we decide what to do about this." And then she and Kenji were gone.

Miaki still seemed to be in a daze. He had pulled off his boots and gloves, but when he tried to stand, his knees seemed to give out and he sagged to the floor, leaning wearily against the wall of his terminal cubicle. Even when Toshi knelt before him, his eyes couldn’t seem to focus, but looked right through his cousin.

"Miaki…?" Toshi ventured, warily.

"So." Miaki managed faintly. "If that isn’t who I am, then…who am I?" At last his eyes focused on Toshi’s face, weary and sad. "Who am I?" he said again, softly.

Toshi put his hands on his cousin’s shoulders and said unsteadily, swallowing the tears, "You are my cousin. My family. My best friend. And you’re not alone."

He got Miaki to his feet, and after murmuring a heartfelt "Thank you," to Jin and Julie, walked with his cousin back to the men’s dormitory. As they approached the door to Kenji’s room, Chika came out. Toshi stopped briefly, but Miaki continued on without looking back.

Chika said quietly, "I managed to sneak him in without anyone noticing how beat up he is. Did you see? All the bruises he had in the VR world, he has in the real world. Something is really going wrong, Toshi."

"You’re right. We have to figure it out." Toshi glanced at his cousin’s retreating back. "With or without him," he added tersely. "There’s something bigger going on here."

"You’re right. And we’ll talk about Miaki tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’d better get some sleep. And like I said…keep him to himself for now. I'll keep an eye on Kenji, since he's still really upset."

Toshi nodded, and followed Miaki down the hall and into his room. When the door closed behind them, once again he grabbed his cousin, whirling him around and slamming him back against the door. Miaki gasped and his head fell forward, his hair falling across his face.

"Dammit, Miaki, we were right by his door!," Toshi snarled. “You didn’t even stop to find out how he was! How can you be like this? Don’t you even care how he’s doing, don’t you care what you did to him?”

He stopped suddenly, at the sound of Miaki’s shaking breath. His cousin lifted his head and his hair fell away from his stricken eyes. And Toshi saw at last the tears streaming and streaming down Miaki’s face.

"Oh Miaki," Toshi whispered. He pulled his cousin into his arms and held him tightly as they cried together.

Chapter 8 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 4:03 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 7 - part two
Back to Chapter 7 - part one

Toshi was a little irritated that Kenji hadn't shown up, but considering the little show his father and Mr. Woon had just put on for the school, it wasn't really surprising that he'd gone into hiding. Toshi decided that when he and Chika were done tonight's investigation, he'd stop in at Kenji's room and try to cheer him up a little.

The two of them seemed to have arrived before everyone, as it turned out, since Jin, Julie, and Miaki weren’t here yet either. Maybe they and Kenji were just delayed with other first-years, and would all come in a few minutes. Whatever the case, Chika decided that she and Toshi should start on their own, and Kenji could join them later if he did come with the others. Their group had decided to explore a specific advanced simulation, to try to find out whether it impinged on the real world or not.

The test had been Toshi’s idea. If they could find a simulation that took place in a location with a security camera, then one of them could do something in the simulation while the other tapped into the camera system to see if it caught the action.

“After all,” Toshi said, “if there had been a security camera in that shed on the Moon, it should have caught the rock fall, right?”

“Yes,” Chika had mused. “But would it have caught images of you and Kenji, even if you weren’t actually physically there? I wonder what it would have seen, in the space that the two of you occupied in the simulation.”

“Maybe we looked like ghosts. Or else there were these weird empty spaces in the middle of all that rock and rubble. That’s what we need to find out, if we can find a security camera in one of the real world simulations.”

Tonight, they had hit on such a simulation surprisingly quickly, though not unexpectedly. Toshi reasoned that something like a laboratory was likely to have watchful cameras everywhere, and sure enough, there were at least two laboratories clearly identified in the simulation list. They picked one randomly, and logged themselves into it.

It was some sort of complex for developing and testing rocket fuels, apparently. They found themselves, initially, in an empty hallway outside a janitor’s closet. (Toshi checked; yep, full of brooms and cleaning equipment.) As they walked down the hall, turning a corner, they came upon a wide window with thick glass and embedded mesh, that stretched for about twenty feet along the wall around the corner. The window looked down into a large area that almost looked like a warehouse, except that it contained several different types of rocket engines, each in its own insulated section.

Wherever this lab was located, it must be after working hours, since there were no tests being conducted. But there were still several people down there, checking gauges, cleaning up after earlier tests, and generally preparing the area for work that would be done there tomorrow.

Chika and Toshi pressed themselves against the wall away from the window, to keep from being seen by anyone below.

“That’s impressive,” Toshi said. “I wonder if they use this to actually simulate tests that the students can get involved in, or if they only get to look.”

“They must be allowed to get their hands on things,” Chika said. “I don’t see the point, otherwise. And look,” she pointed upward.

There it was: a camera along the solid wall at their back, pointed so that it took in the windowed hallway and undoubtedly also some of the activity in the testing area below.

“Good,” Toshi said. “Shall I go into the security system, or do you want to?”

“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll do it.” And her avatar popped out of sight.

Toshi inched a little closer to the window, smirking to himself, “Funny, how I always seem to be the one left in danger in the simulation. At least there’ll be no rock fall. I hope.”

He peered down into the testing area, trying to identify something. He wasn’t sure if this was supposed to simulate a government lab, or if it represented a company somewhere. Probably a government, given the number of engines down there. In fact, yes, now he could identify at least three different company logos on various engines. So this was a government lab, where sub-contracting companies brought engines – spaceship engines, he suddenly realized – for testing and integration into the larger government plans.

He really wished he knew which government. He hadn’t checked many details before they’d gone into the simulation. Chika would know by now, of course, as she used the simulation specs to get her into the security system. For an uneasy moment he thought of Miaki’s forays into a government system, and wondered if he should check on his companion.

But then she messaged him to log out, and when he met her in the school system entry point, he could see that everything was fine.

And she had momentous news. “I could see you, Toshi,” she said. “You didn’t look like a real person, because I could see through you, a little bit. But I saw you there, and I could see what you looked like.”

He paused and tried to digest this. “This is…incredible. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.” He peered at her. “Did you erase me off the record, by the way? I’d hate if someone came looking for me.”

“Of course. Don’t worry. But I don’t know what to make of it,” said Chika. “Why haven’t they told us about this? We’re the students who are supposed to be using the simulations. Shouldn’t we know that in some fantastic way we’re actually functioning in the real world, not the VR world?”

“Unless it’s only revealed to fourth-years,” Toshi mused.

“Are they sworn to secrecy or something? As far as I know, that’s unheard-of too, at ISCE. It’s all supposed to be open. Not secret like this. This really bothers me, Toshi.”

He said suddenly, “We still don’t know if we can really act in the real world. I should have grabbed a broom from that janitor’s closet and brought it to the other hallway. If you could see that on the security system, then we’d know for sure. Maybe we should go back in – “

He stopped with a little gasp, just as Chika said, “Oh no, what’s happening?”

They had both received the message at the same time: an urgent message from Jin, saying only, “Please come! It’s Miaki! Please come! Please come!” It was set on repeat, sending the same frantic call over and over again.

Toshi and Chika stared at each other. Chika tried to message back, to see what was happening, while Toshi tried to zero in on Miaki’s locator.

“She’s not answering!” Chika said. “I can’t get through, or get any answer.” She immediately tried to message Julie instead.

“And I – I can’t find Miaki!” Toshi cried. “I have a sense of Jin’s signal in the VR world, and Kenji’s – but not Miaki!”

He was beginning to log out as Chika began to exclaim, “Wait, don’t log out, let’s find Jin in the – “ He yanked off his goggles and was ripping off the gloves and boots as she logged out herself and continued: “ – the VR world! Toshi, it will just waste time if we try to find them in the real world – “

“I can feel him!” Toshi said. “Don’t you get it? I can’t find him in the VR world, but I can feel his locator out here! Do you – do you know what that means??” His voice rose until the note of panic was unmistakable. “They’re all out here – Miaki and Jin and Kenji – but there’s only Jin and Kenji inside! That means – “

“Toshi, it doesn’t have to mean – “

“It means he could be dead!” Toshi cried. The panic was in full bloom now. His hands and feet were free of the equipment now, and he leaped up and began to run, wildly, all his attention fixed on the locator that would guide him to his cousin – or his cousin’s body.

“Damn,” Chika said, vehemently. She messaged Julie to find them in physical space, and jumped up to follow Toshi.

* * * * *

Toshi skidded into the VR room and flew to Miaki's side, with Chika close behind him. His hands shook as he lifted Miaki’s head and touched his neck, feeling for a pulse. He could have wept in relief when he found it, even if it was racing for some reason.

“Toshi, it’s not what you think,” Chika said. “Look.” She held up the chain that Miaki had tossed aside, his father’s medal and his locator pendant dangling from it. “I don’t know why he would have taken it off, but – “

“He didn’t want to be found.” A new pang of fear stabbed the pit of Toshi’s stomach. “Oh Chika – what is he doing in there??”

He whirled around to another terminal, and as he grabbed the goggles he looked back at his cousin, sitting utterly still at his own terminal, with Jin and Kenji to either side. He was so afraid, and he didn't even know why! But he knew that something terrible had happened to Miaki, and that he had been expecting it without even realizing it.

No, not "happened to." Miaki had deliberately taken off his locator pendant and left it behind. Miaki was – he was doing something terrible. Somehow, he had snapped, as Toshi had hoped and prayed he would not. And Toshi was more afraid than he had ever been in his life.

Just as Julie burst into the room, Toshi resolutely rammed the goggles on and jumped into the VR world, his stomach tightening around its knot of fear. He wasn't going to let – whatever it was – happen, without a good fight.

He didn't bother trying to trace his way through the normal paths of the simulation, which was a very simple sim of hallways and empty rooms. He focussed his locator and immediately found two signals in the distance: one green, for Kenji, and the other blue, for Jin. With a dark gap between them, where there should have been a red signal. Oh Miaki, Miaki, what are you doing??

Toshi tensed himself, and simply leaped the distance. Before he managed to orient himself, he sensed Julie and Chika popping in behind him, and again felt that impulse to weep in relief. It was awful, feeling so alone and helpless.

He saw that they were all in a very large, empty room. Jin's avatar stood in front of him, standing with her hands up, as though pressed against a glass wall. There really was an almost invisible wall there, of energy, holding her back despite all her efforts to pierce it. And on the other side…

On the other side was Miaki. One hand out, having set up the energy wall against Jin. And the other hand – oh no, oh no, Toshi wanted to scream. With the other hand, his cousin controlled an enclosure, like a small circular cage surrounded by glass, composed of the same adamant energy that held Jin back. And inside this enclosure, on his hands and knees, was Kenji, staring up at Miaki in bewilderment and fear.

"Now he'll see," Miaki was saying. "He'll find out now, you just watch!" He hadn't even modified his avatar, yet his eyes almost shone with a wild intensity, and there was a strange, tight glee in his voice that would have made the hair on the back of Toshi's neck stand up in the real world.

"I don't understand," Kenji said. "What do you mean? Miaki, I don't get it! Why are you doing this to me? Why are you so angry with me?"

"With you?" Miaki's voice dripped contempt. "You're nothing. I couldn't care less about you."

"Then – then why are you doing this? Miaki, why?" Kenji got himself to his feet and put his hands up, touching the energy field. Instantly he cried out in pain and recoiled in reflex, leaping back and encountering the field on the other side, making him cry out again. "What have I done?" he moaned, hugging his arms tightly across his chest, not daring to move again. "If I'm nothing, then why are you doing this? Let me go – please, let me go!"

"Not until he comes instead!" Miaki growled.

"Who? Who do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about!"

Miaki's smile was the most frightening thing Toshi had ever seen. He should do something to stop him, but he couldn't. The scene in front of him was so tense, so terrifying, that he couldn't bring himself to move. He sensed Chika behind him, quickly probing the energy barrier, trying to find a way through, but even she was doing it surreptitiously, afraid of what Miaki might do if he realized what she was up to.

"Who do I mean?" Miaki said softly. "Your father. I'm not letting you go until he gives himself up."

Kenji gaped at him. "My – my father?" he stammered. "Do you know him? What's he got to do with – You don't even know him. What do you mean?" The red hair on his avatar stood out starkly above his white face. Even in simple simulations, Toshi thought, the avatars at this school were amazingly detailed and accurate.

"I'm going to send him a message." Miaki smiled again. "'If you want to see your son alive again, you will turn yourself in to police immediately.'"

Chapter 7 - part three
- posted by Phyl @ 3:58 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 7 - part one
Back to Chapter 6 - part three

For all the next day, Jin couldn't shake a feeling of vague, unfocussed unease. Miaki seemed mostly normal again when they worked together on their VR exercises in the morning. Mostly. He was no longer talkative about himself, as he'd been last night, but then, that openness wasn't his normal mode anyway, was it? But although he seemed more able to concentrate on their class work today than yesterday, it was as though he had programmed half his mind to work on it, almost robotically. Whereas, the other half of his mind, the place in which he was really living and thinking today, was somewhere else entirely.

So in his class work in the VR room, he was attentive and sharp, and impersonally courteous to Jin, and nothing more than that. To her query about his state of mind he crisply answered, "I'm fine," and went on to something else.

But now and then, the less robotic part of him would seem to surface from...wherever it was...and his eyes would darken and narrow as it peered from behind them. And when this intense, calculating gaze would land accidentally on her, that was when her uneasiness increased. She had no idea what she was worried about, but there was no doubt in her mind that she should be worried. The grieving, vulnerable person whose cold hands she had held last night seemed utterly gone.

Just one day, he had asked for. But already by lunch time, Jin was becoming sorry she had promised him even that.

Classes came and went, and then the evening meal in the cafeteria, and then before everyone got down to doing their studying for the evening, all the students and faculty gathered in the same auditorium where the first-years had congregated on the first school day. There was such a total school gathering once every week, where announcements were made, socials were announced, and all that sort of thing. Jin sat with Julie, Akio, and a couple of other first-years, but as all the other students made their way into the large hall with the mountain vista at the front, she ignored her companions and craned her neck, looking for Miaki. When she found him one row behind and across the aisle to the right, she felt an inexplicable relief.

A few minutes later, the school officials and instructors appeared on the platform at the front, and the announcements began. Everything went the same as always, until the very end when the mountain vista on the front wall changed, and a different window appeared. It was much smaller than the screens that covered the front and side walls, but still large enough that the person on the screen was visible to all.

It was Mr. Ian Woon, the founder of the Institute for Space and Cyber Exploration. The students had been addressed by him only once before, on the first day of school, when he'd briefly delivered a welcoming speech before allowing the on-site school administrators to take over the meeting. He was legendary, among students and world scientists alike, having founded the school almost thirty years ago and having kept it to exceedingly high standards. He was now rarely seen by anybody except by these remote broadcasts, since he was a bit of a recluse, but word had it that he was by no means retired. He still, apparently, kept an active watch on the school's administration, and showed no signs of planning to hand it over to anyone else.

He was a short, wizened man, probably in his eighties by now. But his black hair still only had streaks of grey in it, and his dark eyes were alert and piercing behind his wire glasses, contrasting with a benevolent smile. He stood before the students in an impeccable grey pin-striped suit, and seemed to beam at them.

"Good afternoon," he said. "I am pleased to see you all, and I hope you are enjoying your studies. There is no end to the fascinating things in our world, and our universe, and if this school is helping you discover them, then we are serving a great purpose. I especially hope that all of you in your first year have become comfortable, and are learning great things." There was a murmur of appreciation as he paused.

Mr. Woon smiled. "But I know you would rather not be in a boring meeting, when you are so eager to get to your evening studies...," he paused for the appreciative groan, "...so I will not go on and on. I merely wished to announce a very generous donation to the school, and give you a chance to thank our benefactor." He motioned to his right, and another man moved into the screen.

Julie leaned over and whispered, "Who is that?" Jin shrugged. The face on the screen wasn't a face she knew.

"This," said Mr. Woon, "is Mr. Kazuo Tanaka, who represents the government of the Pacific Rim Alliance."

Julie gasped sharply. "Jin!" she whispered. "Is that Kenji's father? That's his name, isn't it?"

Mr. Woon continued, "Mr.Tanaka has, today, on behalf of the Pacific Rim Alliance, donated ten million credits to the Institute for Space and Cyber Exploration. I am sure you all wish to express your thanks to the Alliance, for its generous contribution to the school."

The assembly applauded enthusiastically, partly because it was expected, but largely in genuine appreciation. It was an amazing sum. Yet there was also a murmuring undercurrent, as a few people recognized the man's name, and began passing the information along. Several people were already looking around, trying to find where Kenji was sitting.

Mr. Woon, however, was not finished. "One of the great achievements of this school, from the very beginning, has been its intention to educate the best scientific minds in the world, regardless of economic status or national origin. This is why there is no tuition required of students, but each student is approached by the school on the basis of achievements and abilities alone. In return for this egalitarian approach, and neutrality on the part of the school, governments and institutions all over the world have recognized and appreciated this institution for the quality and character of its graduates. Many of them have donated funds toward the running of the school and the tuition of students, desiring us to continue in this neutrality and egalitarianism. And we accept their donations in that spirit. Therefore, Mr. Tanaka, we again accept this donation, in the independent spirit of equality and neutrality. The Pacific Rim Alliance is more than generous, and is to be commended for encouraging this spirit."

Mr. Woon was smiling benignly as he shook Mr. Tanaka's hand, but Jin had the sudden thought that he had, in fact, just finished issuing a warning to Mr. Tanaka: the school will not be compromised by any amount of money. He probably made the same comments to anyone who wanted to donate.

If KazuoTanaka perceived Woon's comments as a warning, though, he gave no indication. "Thank you, Mr. Woon," he said. "We have benefitted as much as any other part of the world, from the expertise of your graduates. How can we not express this gratitude, except by helping your institute to continue its great work? We consider this donation only a small payment of our debt to your school." He shook Mr. Woon's hand.

That should have been the end of it, but Mr. Tanaka, too, had more to say. He adopted an almost-conspiratorial smile and told his audience, "I'm especially privileged that our government wished to donate to the school this year. It's more meaningful to me, personally, than it would have been in other years, since my son Kenji has just begun his studies at I.S.C.E. this year. So I am very happy to be the spokesman for the Pacific Rim Alliance in this matter, since it also allows me to say what a proud father I am. So thank you, Mr. Woon, for giving me this opportunity."

Akio smirked at Julie and Jin. "See?" he whispered, not very quietly. "That's how he got in."

"You don't know anything," Julie retorted.

Jin glanced around the large room as the applause burst out again and Mr. Woon made a couple of quick closing remarks. She didn't really expect to see Kenji, since he was probably sunk deep into his chair by now. Poor guy. Everyone was wrong, of course – he really did belong here. But nobody would believe that now.

She couldn't find him, unsurprisingly. But as she glanced back at Miaki, her eyes stopped abruptly on his pale, rigid face. He was staring fixedly at the two men on the screen. No, not at the two men – at one man. His wide, dark eyes were fastened on the face of Kazuo Tanaka so intensely that it was a wonder Tanaka couldn't sense it. Miaki's hands were clenched on his knees with such force that his knuckles were white.

Jin's unease of the day suddenly crystallized into something very close to fear, though she had no idea why. But when Miaki stood up and stalked out of the auditorium just before everyone else got up, she murmured, "I'll see you later," and slipped out of the room after him.

She followed him at a distance. She wasn't sure why she didn't do as she'd done last night: just approach him, ask if he was alright, and offer to help. But there was something different about him tonight. She wasn't sure if the ferocity of his gaze tonight was still a residue of his discovery last night, or if somehow there had been a new development. Again she told herself that she should just ask him. But still she lagged some distance behind him, relying on Julie's locator to keep from losing him.

At one point, near the entrance to the men's dormitory wing, Miaki stopped. Jin watched him from down the corridor, from behind a juice vending machine. The hall became crowded fairly quickly with students returning from the auditorium, but thanks to the locator, she could tell that he hadn't moved.

A few minutes later, she sensed Kenji's approach. He walked along the wall, his head half-turned toward it, as though trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Nobody was saying anything nasty to him, but he was certainly getting the nasty looks. He looked like he just wanted to slink into the safety of his room and not come out again for the rest of the day. Jin wondered if he even remembered that the six of them were supposed to be having another investigative session tonight.

But now Miaki stirred, and she sensed him approach Kenji, stopping the other in the hallway. She slunk into the shadows beside the vending machine and watched. She knew that if either of them decided to check, their own locators would pinpoint her immediately. But neither seemed to be paying attention to that sort of thing right now.

Miaki was saying something, but she couldn't hear what. Kenji was shaking his head. She could almost imagine him saying, "I just want to go to my room. I don't want to do anything tonight." But now Miaki placed a hand on Kenji's shoulder, as though offering some sort of comfort. And it seemed to have worked, because Kenji turned and began to walk down the hall the way he had come. Miaki followed him, and eventually took the lead, while Jin again followed at some distance.

To her surprise, Miaki wasn't heading for the VR room where the others would shortly be meeting. As the crowds thinned, she finally heard him saying, "There's something I want to show you. I'd rather go to a different room for a minute, if you don't mind."

A different room, indeed. There were other VR rooms, with fewer terminals, that were meant to be used as backups, or practice rooms, or overflow rooms if there were a lot more students than usual in some year. The one Miaki went to seemed to be the farthest away of any of them, several corridors down from the one they normally used.

When Jin finally arrived at the door, she saw Kenji already at a terminal, gloves and boots on, and goggles in his hands. He still seemed doubtful, but Miaki stood beside his chair, smiling at him. "I'll be right behind you," he said. Kenji at last put on the goggles and logged into the system. His body sagged a little as all of his senses became enveloped in the VR world.

Miaki stopped behind his chair and put both hands on Kenji's shoulders. Jin couldn't see his face, but she heard his chilling words: "I've got you now, you bastard."

And then he quickly sat at the next terminal and donned his boots and gloves. He hesitated a moment, then pulled off the pendant with Julie’s locator device, and tossed it into the next terminal cubicle. Then he logged into the system.

Jin stood frozen in the doorway for a long, horrified moment. But finally she ran to a third terminal and, hands shaking, put on the VR equipment. Before logging in to the VR world, she sent a frantic signal to the others, hoping they got it soon. Whatever she had been afraid of all day was coming to pass, and she didn't know if she was going to be able to stop it.

* * * * *

Chapter 7 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:54 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 6 - part three
Back to Chapter 6 - part two

The wild careen through the simulation, and the subsequent analysis, paid off. Miaki's group returned to the big file room the next night, making their way slowly and carefully. The markers Julie had set two nights before helped them move more quickly than they otherwise would have, but they still had to be very careful, because there were more security obstacles set now than there had been last time. They could find these far enough in advance, though, that they could leap between them quite quickly.

Once they came to a security barrier, it was Miaki's turn to really shine. He had, apparently, spent half the night taking Jin's analysis of the security and finding a way to get around the barriers. He had borrowed from Julie's distractive techniques, and created coding that would surround the barrier codes, reflecting back to them what they expected to see. It took a few moments each time to set the coding, but once in place, the protective covering allowed the three infiltrators to slide by the barriers without creating the slightest ripple in their serene existence.

"Great work," said Julie after the first one was set. "I'm impressed." Miaki bowed.

When they reached the file room, or more accurately given its size, the file warehouse, Miaki started toward the aisles of cabinets that he'd narrowed his search down to, two nights ago. Julie followed a little behind, watching the surroundings warily, while Jin guarded the portal into the room. She set up a field to hold it open if there were another alarm, hoping it would hold long enough for the others to get back. She stretched her sensors outside the file room as far as she could, to get as much warning of trouble as possible.

Julie gazed around at the general layout as Miaki searched for his specific area. "This really is the government, isn't it?" she said. "There's the Natural Resources section...and there's the Transportation department. Miaki," she wondered suddenly, "which government is this, exactly?"

"That's one of the gaps in the data," he said. "I'm not sure, yet. I'm not even sure of the department yet. That's part of the problem, since we've come in such an obscure back door."

"How are you going to find what you're looking for, then? If you're not even sure where you are?"

"I've got an almost-complete personal log-in I.D.," he said. "That will get me close enough to fill in the last gaps, I think."

"You mean, you'll actually know who..." She didn't want to complete the question.

A long pause. "Yes," he said. "I'll know who." He continued his search in silence.

They got very close that evening, but Jin started getting the sense of something – or someone – beginning to stir in the distance, questioningly. So they had to stop just short of the goal, and log out for the night.

"Next time for sure," Miaki said, as they took off their goggles and other equipment. Jin could hear the tension in his voice, and as he lowered his goggles, she saw him staring into an imaginary distance, his brown eyes wide with anticipation. Or rather, something like anticipation, but much darker. Two nights from now, he was going to find out who murdered his father. How would someone handle such a thing? What was he going to do, once he knew? Jin had to suppress the automatic urge to shudder.

The other group took a few minutes longer to log off, but Miaki, Jin, and Julie waited for them tonight the way the others had waited for them last time.

Eventually, the others moved. Toshi blew out a long sigh as he reached up, took off his goggles, and swivelled his chair around while he removed the gloves and boots. He blinked a couple of times to reorient himself to the real world. Chika and Kenji were following suit.

"How did it go, Tosh?" Miaki asked.

"We got into the folder," Toshi announced triumphantly. "Next time, we should be able to start walking through the sims, to test them for real world infiltration. How about you?"

"We're fairly close," Miaki said casually. "We'll probably find something in a few days, maybe."

Julie and Jin shared a look behind him, wondering why he was downplaying how close they actually were? Julie shrugged a little, and they said nothing.

"Good," said Toshi. "Excellent. We're all making progress, then."

"Meanwhile," said Chika, stretching and yawning. "I really need to get some sleep. Great work, you two," she said to her own group members, "and I'm glad you're getting close, Miaki. I think we make great teams. Good-night, everyone."

All of them were pretty tired, so they welcomed their beds. Next morning, as Jin joined Miaki for their regular VR class, she had to remind him of things a few times, and even correct a few mistakes. Wherever his mind was, it was not on the class.

At last he created a private bubble around them in the simulation they were working in, and said, "Jin, I'm sorry I'm such a bad partner today."

"It's understandable," she said. "I hope you've noticed I'm not complaining."

"Thank you. And...," he hesitated. "Thank you for not saying anything last night, when I didn't tell the others how close we are. I just...really hate broadcasting all of this to people."

"I know. I guess that's why we both kept our mouths shut." She wondered if she should ask the question that had been in her mind since last night. She decided to go for it, since he seemed to be speaking more openly about it right now. Who knew how long that would last, if she didn't take advantage now? "Miaki," she said slowly. "Are you...going to be alright? It's going to be hard, finding out. How...how can I help?"

He lowered his gaze, watching his avatar's hands clenching in front of him. He deliberately made them unclench, but even then, tension made his left hand pull agitatedly at the blue bandana wrapped around his right wrist. "I'm...I'm fine, Jin," he said at last. "I don't think there's much anyone can do. But...thank you. You're a good person."

She saw him take hold again, then. He switched off the private communication bubble, and resolutely turned his attention toward their class work. But he did, at least, give her a little smile before he clammed up this time.

Nevertheless, she wondered about him for the rest of the day, even after they'd finished their morning's work together and separated for the rest of their classes. She saw him once or twice throughout the day, and each time she saw him, the expression in his eyes was darker, more inward-turning. And at supper that evening in the cafeteria, she had a clear view of him, two tables over. He didn't appear to be hungry at all. Instead he sat stiffly at the table, not even noticing his food, but clenching his plate so tightly on both sides that she thought he might break it.

Jin paced restlessly through the early evening in her room, completely ignoring her studies. Finally she stopped herself, thought things through as carefully as she could, and then announced to the room: "Of course he will."

And so it happened that when he snuck into the VR room late that night, one night earlier than he was supposed to, Jin was already waiting for him.

He stopped short in the doorway, and stared at her.

Jin shrugged apologetically. "Sorry," she said, "I knew you'd want to find out when you were alone, because you don't want anyone watching you get the bad news. But you're still going to need someone along to watch your back."

Miaki leaned against the doorframe, bowing his head and crossing his arms on his chest. "Jin, don't do this. Please."

"I'm sorry, Miaki. I can't let you go in there alone." She sat down at a terminal and started putting on her equipment. "I'll try to give you as much privacy as I can. Let's get this over with."

He seemed to realize that it was pointless to argue with her. Silently he took his place at the terminal beside her, and donned his equipment.

They made the journey quickly, thanks to the careful work they'd done last night. This time, Jin set her security guard at the door, and then ventured halfway in while Miaki took the last few steps alone. That was all the privacy she could allow him.

Yet she knew the moment he had finally found what he was looking for. He stumbled into view from behind a file cabinet, a holoscreen flashing information near his face. And even as an avatar, his face was white.

His hands clutched convulsively at his hair and he hunched over, moaning, "I was right! Oh, I knew it, I knew it! I was right! What am I going to do?"

Jin had expected him to lock up and say very little once he'd collected the information. This reaction was worse than anything she'd imagined. He was so distraught, he seemed on the verge of not being able to function at all. She had to get him away from here!

She drew closer, but wasn't even sure if he saw her. He kept moaning to himself, "I was right, I was right!" Jin touched his arm and he gasped, whirling to face her, staring at her as though he didn't know who she was.

"Come, my dear," she said softly. "Let's get you out of here. We'll go find Toshi, alright?"

He stared a moment longer and then managed to nod. She took his hand and led him out, silently thanking Julie and the more-composed Miaki of last night for making the way out so easy.

She made sure he had logged out before she did so herself. She pulled off her goggles and turned his chair to face her as he fumbled with his own VR equipment. His face was just as white in real life as his avatar had been, the red stripes livid against his skin, his eyes wide with shock. Jin pulled off his VR gloves and took his hands. They were ice cold, and shaking in her grasp.

"Miaki, listen to me. I think we need to call the nurse, alright?"

"No," he managed to say. "Just...wait. I'll be okay."

"You don't seem very okay to me."

"It's just...the shock, you know."

"I know. That's why I think we need to take you to someone. If you won't let me call the nurse, let's call Toshi instead."

His fingers tightened around hers. "No," he said. She could see him taking hold of himself yet again, taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. He pulled his hands free. "I'm okay. See? I just need a few minutes to...assimilate everything."

"I just don't want you to be alone right now. You look terrible."

For an instant, a flash of pain jolted through his eyes before he bowed his head again. "I know," he said softly. "But I'll feel better in a few minutes. And Jin...I need you not to tell the others about this. Please?"

"Not even Toshi?"

"Not even him. Especially not him. I...I just need a day or so, to let it sink in, and decide what to do. Will you give me that, Jin?"

"I just don't understand why you won't at least let Toshi take care of you."

"He babysits me too much already. And...there are some things he just can't carry for me. This is one of them."

She regarded him for a long time, biting her lip. "I don't like it, but...I suppose if it's just for tomorrow..."

"Thank you. I'll be alright, really. Please don't worry about me."

"I can't obey that one, I'm afraid," she said. "But at least I can keep my mouth shut for a day. But I'm going to be checking on you first thing, when we get to class tomorrow morning."

"I'm sure you will." His lips twitched with faint humour, and he stood up. "I think...I need to try to sleep right now. I'm glad you wanted to help me tonight, Jin."

She, too, stood. And as he turned to go, she touched his arm. "Miaki...?" He paused. "Can you...tell me who it was?"

He turned back and, unnervingly, touched her hair. He smiled gently and – there was no other word for it – kindly. "No," he said. "I'm sorry. Not yet."

And then he was gone. And Jin spent another night lying awake because of him, wrestling down the urge to call him and make sure he really was alright.

Chapter 7 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 6 - part two
Back to Chapter 6 - part one

When they arrived in the VR room after supper that evening, Chika was already there.

"How did your project go?" Julie asked immediately.

"Pretty well, I think," Chika said.

"Everyone seems to be able to concentrate on school work without thinking of this other little project," Julie muttered.

"Speak for yourself," Toshi said, coming into the room with Kenji. "I might as well not have been at school the last two days, for all I managed to learn. But I did manage to write a couple of things for us, that will falsify the logs of what simulations we use. They'll even log us into different practice rooms so it doesn't look like the six of us are always meeting in the same room at the same time."

"What a paranoid lot we are, aren't we?" Julie laughed.

Miaki came in shortly thereafter, and the moment had finally arrived. They all looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then wordlessly chose terminals and donned their boots, gloves, and goggles. Most of them had been living with excitement and anticipation, but now the solemnity of what they were trying to do seemed to descend on them. For the first time, the risks and consequences rose to their minds in a very real way.

When they gathered in the empty dormitory room just inside the default VR simulation, Miaki looked around at each of them. "This is it," he said. "It's not going to be easy. If anyone wants to back out now, I won't hold it against you."

No one said anything. Which in itself said everything.

"Alright," said Miaki. "I've just sent all of you the program I wrote to disguise your ID's. It'll work with Toshi's program and make it very hard for anyone to follow where we've been, or even know for sure who we are. Now. My group will have Julie to throw distractions at anyone who tries to follow us at the other end..."

"...and we," Toshi grinned, "have Kenji, another expert at throwing people off the track in an emergency." He laughed at Kenji's sheepish expression, then continued, "And Jin and I will stay in contact as much as we can, so we can monitor each other for trouble."

"Good. Then I guess we can get started." Miaki turned, made an opening in the wall in front of him, and prepared to step through.

"Wait," said Jin. As she looked around the group, Miaki slowed, but without turning back. "Everyone...good luck. Be careful. Please."

Miaki stopped then, and looked over his shoulder, at Toshi. The cousins regarded each other in silence for a moment. Then Miaki murmured, "Please take care of yourself," and stepped through the doorway he'd made.

As he watched Jin and Julie follow, Toshi said softly, "And you be sure to come back." He saw Chika's eyes on him, and turned toward their own task, saying cheerfully, "Right then. Let's start going through the ICE simulations."

The goal for Chika's group, as she and Toshi had decided, was first to go through ISCE's public simulation folder (that is, available to all students except very novice first-years), pick a few sims that looked fairly complex (and were emulating actual real-world locations), and test them to see if they could find any that had an impact in the real-world situation they were supposed to depict. If they found none (which was pretty much what they expected), then the really challenging part would start. They'd have to hack into the private simulation folders, available only to instructors, some researchers and professionals who came here on grants to further specific training goals in their real-life jobs, and advanced fourth-years who were doing final training for existing real-world work on their chosen career path.

Chika set their entry simulation into a simple form, just a room with three desks. Each of them sat at a desk and ran through assigned lists of simulations, weeding out all but real-world sims and then going more carefully through the list that was left, eliminating any that looked unlikely.

At first they thought they could just go by title and the brief specs included in the listings, but for some simulations, they had to pop into and out of them, to be sure what they actually were. So it took just a bit longer than expected, to get through the public folders.

But by mid-evening, they were finished. And the list that remained was, as they'd feared, pretty small. There were only four possibilities in the public folders, and two of those could be eliminated quickly by Chika just ducking her head in and out.

"I've worked on both of those," she said. "They look pretty real at the beginning, but there are some elements that are very far-fetched when you get further in. So those are out." It didn't take much longer, running through the specs and some details of the other two, to eliminate them as well.

So. The real meat of their project would be found in the private folders. But they'd always really known that, so they weren't too discouraged. Toshi had worked on some hacking shortcuts for them, while Kenji was studying for his exam and Chika was finishing her class project, and now it was time to start that really tough work.

"How are the others doing?" Chika asked, before they began.

"Jin reports that they're getting close to where Miaki tried to go before," Toshi said after pausing briefly to check with his counterpart in the other group. "They're going more slowly than he went by himself the first time. They want to be more cautious, but she also says that the system has set up some defensive blocks that weren't there before. According to Miaki and Julie. So it might take two or three tries before they have a chance of getting in. But they're still undetected, as far as she can tell."

"Thanks to you," Kenji murmured.

"Thanks to both of us. Now. Let's get working on these private folders."

Toshi's summary was accurate: Julie and Jin had followed Miaki slowly along the paths he had originally taken a few days ago, working toward the government files. Julie's job was to watch for detection along the way, and help Miaki probe through the barriers that had stood in the way before, and which had been erected since the last time he'd been here. Jin's job, at least in the beginning of the exploration, was to watch the wider net around them, for detection from unexpected sources, and to make sure that nobody was coming up behind them.

Miaki had speculated that one of the reasons they hadn't been caught last time was that government sites get probed all the time, routinely. Their defenses were adequate the vast majority of the time, and the only time they really paid attention was if there was evidence that someone was getting further in than reasonable defenses allowed. The new barriers that had been set up since last time were, still, routine responses to a stronger probe than usual, and in fact, probably went up automatically.

When they were detected again this time – because they would be, and this was actually part of Miaki's plan – still more notice would probably be paid. He wasn't sure if the defenses that came up after that would be automatic, or if they'd finally draw the attention of living minds. He suspected the latter. But even that, he'd quickly explained to Jin and Julie before they began, wouldn't necessarily work against them in the end. They had an advantage in that this was an old system, and even when attended to by living coders, there was only so much they'd be able to do with the system they had.

But that was to be worried about later, after they'd finished this evening's excursion.

They crept along slowly, following the route Miaki had used the first time, simulated as a long, almost featureless corridor. When they came to a barrier, Jin helped Miaki to encircle and analyze it, and then Julie and Miaki got busy coding a way to get around or through it, while Jin watched for signs of detection. She had already composed her own program to record all the details of what they were doing; that was part of tonight's strategy.

At one point Miaki said, "If you can create some sort of unnoticeable markers – something like you stuck on me last time – I think I can embed them along the path so we can get here more quickly next time."

"I can do that," Julie said, and called up another holoscreen beside the three she was already using. Jin's program dutifully took recorded it all.

They found the huge room again, with the quaint filing cabinet simulations. Miaki took a few steps inside, while Julie and Jin peered in from the doorway.

"I still can't believe," Julie said, "that anyone still uses this archaic format."

"Well, we're still using it in some ways ourselves," Jin said. "We still talk about 'folders'. That's what they used to use in the real file cabinets."

"Yes, well, all we use is the word," sniffed Julie. "This is so old they're almost still using the real thing."

Miaki was scanning the labels on the nearest file cabinets. When he was done, he quickly looked further down the rows. "Okay," he said. "I've got an idea how much further in I'll have to go next time."

"Do you want to try it now?" Julie asked.

"No. I think we'd be pushing our luck."

"Now, there's something new," she remarked. "Miaki Nakamura, being cautious."

Gratifyingly, he flashed her a brief smile. Then, "Any sign of detection yet, Jin?" he asked.

"Nothing close," she said. "Maybe a few glimmers a couple of hallways away."

"Then I think we should trigger it ourselves," said Miaki. "I want a really good display of their fireworks to analyze, before we come in for the real thing, next time."

"Alright," Julie said briskly. "Fireworks. How do you want to trigger them?"

"Well...how about this?" He raised an insouciant eyebrow, went over to a file cabinet, and gave it a good, hard kick.

They got their fireworks, alright. In fact, if Julie hadn't dived for him and yanked him through the door, Miaki might have been trapped inside the file room. "You crazy idiot!" she yelled, even as the three of them turned to race back the way they had come.

"Just cover our tracks!" he grinned, leaping in the wake of the two girls.

Julie had warned Jin about what to expect when the alarms started, but there was nothing quite like the reality. If she'd had a nanosecond free, she'd have had to fight the urge to look over her shoulder to see how close the response was coming, but it was already frighteningly clear as she monitored her holoscreens. She watched Julie throwing distractions at the followers, saw which ones worked and which didn't, saw which type of defense could be fooled by what means. And saw how awfully close the pursuit was.

She dutifully followed the tangents Julie devised to lead pursuit away from connecting to the school, even though she wanted to rush straight to the safety of the VR room by the most direct way possible. But the tangents and the distractions were gradually working, as pursuit began to divert in other directions and slowly drop off altogether. Jin scanned behind them as deeply and thoroughly as she could, in case some surreptitious pursuit was still holding on to them. The others paused as she did this, waiting. Finally, she nodded to them. No pursuit anywhere in sight.

Julie did a scan of her own, in case they had secret markers attached to them. She, after all, knew exactly what to look for, since this was one of her specialties. At last she, too, nodded and said, "We're clean."

Miaki whooped, leaped up onto the ceiling of the simulated corridor, and ran on it all the way back to the school.

When they had reached the starting room and logged out, Julie leaped to her feet and started in on Miaki. "What are you, an idiot?" she said. "Kicking the filing cabinet like that! They were on us so quickly – "

"They would have been on us that quickly no matter how we triggered the alarm," Miaki retorted. He actually grinned. "Relax, Julie. I didn't make anything worse than it was going to be anyway, and we expected that."

"What's this about a filing cabinet? And alarms?" Toshi stood nearby, leaning against a terminal, his arms crossed. Behind him sat Chika and Kenji, all of them apparently finished their own exploration and waiting for the other group to surface.

"It's nothing," Miaki said. His colour was high and his eyes almost literally sparkled. "We got to where I'd gotten last time. But I decided that before we went further, we should trigger their detection systems, and record how they behaved, so we can study them and plan ahead how to work around them next time. You got everything, right, Jin?"

"Every last impulse," she said.

"Still," Chika commented, "it was pretty risky. I'm glad you got back intact."

"I think Julie's right – you are an idiot," Toshi laughed, and Miaki grinned back. At that moment they looked remarkably alike. "But as long as you got the information – and didn't get caught – I guess it's alright."

"That's not the point," Julie said. "It's like he wasn't even taking it seriously. It was dangerous in there!"

Miaki looked at her, and his smile vanished. "I know it's dangerous," he said. "I know it better than you. And I never forget it. Never." He turned away and walked out of the room without another word.

Julie threw up her hands in frustration. Toshi put his hands on her shoulders and smiled ruefully. "You're right, it was very risky. And he's really an awful jerk sometimes. Sorry, Jules."

The next evening, they held a secure messaging conference from their rooms rather than venturing back into the VR room. They had a lot of reporting to do anyway, and needed time to analyze what each group had found the night before. Chika's group had come close to breaching the private, advanced simulation folders, and expected to get in tomorrow night. Jin had done most of the analysis of the government web defense system by now, helped by Miaki later in the day, and they thought they could probably get in the next evening and finally start looking through the file cabinets.

After they'd discussed everything and planned when to meet the next night, Julie got a private message just before logging off: "Sorry I over-reacted last night. I really wasn't trying to put us at risk. I'll give you more warning next time. Miaki." She sent back: "I shouldn't have let my surprise make me yell at you. I know you were being careful this time." She hesitated, then added: "It's great when you laugh like that. Julie."

* * * * *

Chapter 6 - part three
- posted by Phyl @ 3:47 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 6 - part one
Back to Chapter 5 - part two

He was still in the grip of the nightmare even as he could feel himself trying to pull free. He could feel the bedcovers while still standing in the dream, gaping in horror at the body of his father sprawled at his feet. They constricted, restrained him, wrapping up his legs so he could not run away, blocking his arms so he could not reach out and grab his father and shake him awake – wake up – not dead but asleep, surely just asleep – wake up – wake up –

"Wake up! Miaki! It's alright, I'm here – wake up!"

He wrenched himself out of the nightmare at last, flinging the covers away and making himself sit up. There were hands holding him, gripping his shoulders, stroking his hair. It was only a dream. Just a dream.

"Father...?" he croaked.

Toshi gave his shoulders another squeeze. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry – it's just me."

Miaki rubbed his hands wearily over his face and through his hair. "What are you doing here?"

"You programmed your scanner to recognize my baby blue eyes, remember?"

"I know that." Miaki waved that irrelevance away. "But why did you come in? Was I..."

Toshi said softly, "You were yelling when I came in, but I couldn't hear you outside, if that's what you're worried about. I just had a hunch, that's all. I know the nightmares tend to go in cycles. I thought you were probably due for more, about now." Miaki looked at him; the glow from the monitor on the desk made his golden hair glow a sickly green.

Toshi examined Miaki in turn: his skin was a pasty yellow in the dim light, his eyes standing out dark and hollow, half-hidden by the strands of hair that hung over them, limp and damp. It had been a very hard dream this time, but Toshi already knew that, from the way Miaki had been screaming when he burst into the room.

Miaki was actually smiling right now, a little. "Do you have an equation for calculating when my nightmares will come?"

"Or a gut feeling," Toshi said.

The smile faded as Miaki sighed. "Well, this time you're wrong. They're not coming and going in cycles any more. I've had nightmares every night since we got here."

Toshi's breath caught. "Why didn't you tell me? We should go to the medical office. Maybe they can give you something to help."

"I doubt it. But if I told them...how long do you think it would be before they decided I was really unfit for school, and sent me away? I can't let them do that."

"Miaki. We have to do something. You can't go on like this."

"I can do it as long as I have to." Miaki bowed his head, his hair now completely covering his eyes. He closed a hand on one of Toshi's hands, still on his shoulders. "Listen...Tosh. I have to say something..."

"No. You don't."

He could hear the fear in his cousin's voice. But he must say what had to be said. "Toshi...it really doesn't matter about the nightmares. I'm not sure I'm going to survive this, anyway."

"That's not true. We're in this together – we'll finish it together, and we'll come through the other side."

Miaki sighed again. "You know what they did to father. The same thing could happen to me. Julie already showed me that I can make some bad mistakes. You have to be ready for it, if it happens."

"It won't. I won't let it."

Miaki looked into his face again and their eyes held for a long time. "Tosh...if you start to cry, I don't think I can bear it." His own voice was alarmingly unsteady.

Toshi managed to smile, painfully. "Then stop saying such sad, stupid things. If I cry, it – it's only because you have such a low opinion of my ability to keep you safe. That's all. I'm crushed."

"I know you're joking, but believe me, if it's possible to come out of this alive, I know it will only be because you've been with me all the way. You know I know that. But I just want you to know – to believe, because it's true – that if something very bad happens...it will not be your fault."

Toshi pulled him close, gritting his teeth and blinking furiously to keep the tears from coming. It took a long time, but he felt his cousin gradually begin to relax against him.

"I just wish...," Miaki breathed, "...that I could sleep...just one night...without remembering..." And then he was asleep again, this time peacefully and, thank goodness, dreamlessly. Only then did Toshi relax too, finally allowing the tears to well up and slowly creep down his cheeks.

* * * * *

Before the six of them finally got down to their real business, they had a few more meetings where they planned their strategy first. They had to be sure to maintain their ISCE studies as well as this additional project, or their own futures would suffer (not to mention that if they were kicked out of ISCE, they’d lose access to all these spectacular facilities). But more than that, they had to plan exactly how a group of students could possibly use the ISCE system, undetected, to hack into government files as well as the school’s own files. And if they could actually do that – what exactly were they looking for, anyway?

Miaki shared parts of the disk that he’d brought with him to school, parts that he said were pertinent. Only Chika asked him what else was on the disk, and he fixed his steady, intense stare on her. “Personal matters,” he said, and turned to other things.

Chika watched him contemplatively, and noted Toshi’s uneasiness as he, too, watched his cousin surreptitiously. There was more going on here than Miaki was letting on. She wondered if Toshi actually knew what it was, or merely had suspicions. She’d have to watch both of them. It wasn’t that she disbelieved what Miaki had said; there was more than enough evidence to support his claim that his father had been murdered, and that there was both a government and a school connection. But he had obviously left out some details, and those could be crucial.

There was also a tugging in two different directions, when it came to the purposes of the group. One the one hand, you had the questions surrounding the murder of Miaki’s father. But on the other, you had the hitherto impossible, yet suddenly apparently actual, intrusion of a VR simulation into the real world. This was unprecedented. It could be an amazing, wonderful breakthrough that ISCE was going to share with the world once they found a way to make it happen on demand – or it could be some terrible secret that needed to be revealed to the world, to make sure it could never be mis-used.

ISCE had never been directly involved in anything that had hurt people, and they had always maintained strict neutrality when it came to world affairs. Indeed, the school’s willingness to educate people from all over the world in complete equality had played a large part in the gradual development of peaceful relations that the world’s nations had enjoyed for the last three decades. Their students tended to go from this school out into the world in a spirit of cooperation, eager to build and develop more and more processes and systems that would further the peace and well-being of the world. The few students who had gone on deliberately to do things that had caused damage in the world, the school had utterly and publicly repudiated, and usually those students’ governments and employers had followed suit.

So if there were things going on now that were harmful to individuals – like Miaki’s father – or larger groups (imagine how a VR simulation could be mis-used if it could intrude into the real world!) – Chika believed it had to be an aberration. And both the school and the world at large must find out about it, so someone could put a stop to it. If the harmful thing were a part of ISCE itself, well…it would have to be rooted out, so the school could regain its peaceful purpose and get back on track.

Chika had to chuckle a little, as she thought all this through. She didn’t tend to be an idealistic type, being of a more pragmatic bent. But ISCE was one of the few institutions in the world and on the Moon that came pretty close to living up to an ideal. She didn’t want to see that change.

It bothered her that Miaki was so obsessively focused on his father’s murder, even while she understood why he was. She just thought that maybe they needed to pursue the larger issue first. If they solved that, they might also solve the murder, since it was likely that the two were related.

But she wouldn’t be able to force him, and she could see that Toshi was going to side with him if she made it an issue. So she suggested instead that they work in two teams.

“Miaki, now that you have a few better techniques available,” she said, “you could try again to break into those government files, and follow the lead your father sent you. Julie’s been with you on your first try, so she could go with you, and Jin too, as your regular partner. Meanwhile, Toshi and Kenji and I can do some work trying to find out what’s going on with the VR simulations. How does that sound?”

He contemplated this. “I think that’ll work,” he answered.

Toshi added, “But we would report back and forth on what we find, to make sure we’re pushing in the same direction. And in case one group finds something that is important to the other group’s investigations.”

"Which I think we will eventually," Chika said.

Finally they set a start for their serious work: two evenings later. It couldn't be earlier because the first-years had an exam tomorrow, and Chika had a class project to complete for the following morning.

"There's one more thing," said Julie. "I think we should try to avoid sitting at the same table too much, at meal times. If anyone becomes suspicious of one of us, there could be problems for all the others if we spend too much time together in public."

Miaki added, "And I'll work on a way for us to disguise ourselves from the school system. They can also get suspicious if they track our ID's and see us going into places that students aren't supposed to go. Or even if we go into the same places too often."

They separated that evening, feeling like they really were about to accomplish something, now that they were working as a team. For the first-years, it was hard to leave the work behind and study for their big exam, now that they were on the verge of getting started in their investigations. But Jin gritted her teeth and shoved Miaki's concerns to one side of her mind while she buckled down to her own studies. Julie had a harder time concentrating, and her mind kept darting back to the programs she was composing to help escape pursuit once they got back into the government systems. But she was pretty good at thinking on her feet, so she didn't suffer as much as she might have in the exam, from darting between her studying and her program writing.

Kenji just smiled ruefully and said, "I have no idea," when Julie asked how he did, after the exam. And Miaki merely shrugged. She rolled her eyes at Jin when he did this, and Jin had to cough heartily into her hand to disguise her giggling. They probably hadn't needed to ask, anyway; he always seemed to sail through his regular studies even when most of his mind was concentrated on his private business.

Study the next day was almost impossible, as they anticipated getting back to the more interesting and risky work that evening. At lunch, Julie had to ask Jin to remind and explain to her the things they had both just (supposedly) learned that morning. Jin was almost smug as she reiterated everything nearly perfectly.

Chapter 6 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:37 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 5 - part two
Back to Chapter 5 - part one

A red glow appeared nearby, and then Miaki stood beside her.

“Have you figured it out yet?” he said.

“No. Have you?”

“I haven’t found him. But I recognize the patterns.”

Was he nuts? The patterns were so wild, so intricate, how could anyone make sense of them? Jin saw him smile very slightly.

“You’re looking too close,” he said. “Think about it.” He glanced to the side, to where a bright yellow glow was bouncing from pattern to pattern off in the distance. You could almost feel Toshi’s frustration from here. Miaki smiled again, with unconscious fondness.

Jin tried to reduce her attention to the flaring distractions all around her, and somehow expand her vision to see the patterns as a whole. It was very difficult, especially since green balls were still exploding fizzily and inexorably drawing her eye when they did.

But suddenly, she got it. Even the green balls were part of it.

“Fractals,” she said.

“Exactly,” said Miaki.

“So, if we follow the patterns themselves, we could be searching forever.”

“Yes. And it won’t help if we try to go up a level, or go deeper. We run into the same problem.”

Jin now saw Julie’s purple glow in another direction, doggedly following one of the patterns, tracing it step by step in its repetition.

“This is a good one,” Jin said.

“Yes. I wonder how he found it.”

They turned around and around, examining the brilliant colours and patterns all around them, peering at the green balls which all were not Kenji. Now that they understood the nature of the simulation, they realized how pointless it was to move in any direction. Maybe there were limits to Julie’s locator after all.

“Wait,” Jin said suddenly. “Turn off your colour perception.”

Miaki peered questioningly at her, but tweaked the control at the same time she did.

They stood in utter blackness. Not a single pattern or false green signal was now visible. And yet, not far away at all, there was still one bright signal that was unaffected by their tweaking of the simulation’s controls. It glowed a steady green.

“Gotcha,” Miaki said softly. Instantly he vanished from Jin’s side and reappeared beside the green glow. As Jin joined him, she heard him murmur, “Found you, Kenji.”

Kenji’s avatar appeared immediately, his face startled. “Hi,” he said, laughing a little, sheepishly. “I thought I’d managed to trick everyone.”

“Only for a while,” Miaki said. “I’ll always find you eventually.”

Jin’s avatar probably echoed the questioning expression on Kenji’s face, but she shrugged away Miaki’s odd comment, and said, “You almost did it, though. This was brilliant. I guess I’d better message the others, to save them hunting for the rest of their lives.”

Almost immediately the other three appeared beside them, as Jin sent them the coordinates.

“That,” said Toshi with feeling, “has got to be the weirdest, most maddening thing I’ve ever seen! Kenj, where did you find this sim? It’s brilliant!”

“Well, I…” If his avatar could have blushed, it would have been doing so. “I sort of…made it myself. At least, in the beginning, before ISCE asked me for it. They’ve really expanded it since then.”

Chika whistled appreciately. “You made this? And ISCE wanted it? I’m very impressed.”

“My professor thought it was good enough to send them a copy to look at. They really liked it, so they asked if they could develop it further. They paid me a bit for it, and said that I’d get regular payments if they use commercially. I guess it’s mostly for teaching purposes, but something commercial could come up sometime, I suppose. I don’t know what sort of commercial use it could have, but you never know.”

“There, what did I say?” Toshi grinned. His avatar looked a little manic, his already-spikey hair much pointier in the VR world and his eyes exaggerated. He slapped Kenji’s avatar on the back. “I knew you belonged here! Now I’m wondering if I do!”

Julie was already musing about modifications to her creations. “So, diversionary signals that almost matched your own signal, but bounce in several different directions, to distract pursuit. Good tactic," she said approvingly. "I'll try to program that into all the devices later. It’ll be easier if you can do this automatically, instead of having to write the macro on the run."

“Since we’re looking at tricks,” Chika said, “I can teach you a few things we’re starting to learn in third year. Except…let’s get out of this simulation first. It’s still making me dizzy.”

It was getting late, but they spent a few more minutes in the entryway to the VR world, where Chika taught everyone else several ways of appearing to be in one place longer than they really were, and suddenly appearing in a different location as though out of nowhere. These appearances were deceptions, merely disguising the movements they were actually making. But when she was done, Miaki added some tricks of his own, teaching them not just to seem to flash instantly from one place to another, but to find a shortcut to actually do it.

Even Chika had never learned this. She stared at him in amazement. “Who taught you this?” she burst out. “I’ve heard about it, but could never figure out how.”

“I’ve had a year to learn,” was all he said, and continued his instruction.

They all went to bed that night with fuller heads than they’d woken up with that morning. Jin and Julie, talking softly as they made their way back to their rooms, laughed a little as they wondered if they’d manage to sleep.

“That fractal simulation is going to haunt my dreams,” Julie said. “I was almost ready to jump out of it. It made me nauseous. How did you figure it out?”

“Miaki gave me a hint,” said Jin. “He said not to look at the individual patterns, but to try to see everything as a whole. But it wasn’t till I got the hunch, to turn off all the colour, that we found Kenji. If I hadn’t thought of that, we’d still be lost.”

“You really do work as a good team,” Julie said. She smiled slyly down at her companion. “This could be the start of something, Jin.”

Jin rolled her eyes with a grimace. Julie’s laughter was still bouncing at her when she went into her room and closed the door.

The three young men also walked together back to their rooms, Toshi strolling at Kenji’s side while Miaki walked behind them.

“Kenji,” Toshi said, “I’d say you won the game tonight.”

“Well…it’s not like we were really trying to win,” Kenji said. “I just thought it would help if we tried out Julie’s locators in a really complicated simulation. Then maybe the realistic sims would seem a lot easier, even if they were complicated too.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what sort of real-life simulation could be as crazy as that one. That was good thinking.”

They arrived at Kenji’s door, and stopped. The lights in the corridor had been dimmed for the night, so they stood in shadow. Miaki peered sideways at Kenji, his eyes gleaming from beneath the strands of his hair. He remarked quietly, “There’s a lot more going on in that head of yours than you let on, isn’t there? You’re quite the surprise.”

Kenji regarded him, for some reason strangely uneasy. “Oh, um, I don’t know,” he stuttered. “I, I just don’t talk about things, much.”

“All sorts of mysteries,” Miaki said. “We should explore them sometime.”

“But anyway,” Toshi grinned. “That was very impressive tonight. And I think you’re going to give me nightmares with that sim of yours. I hope you sleep better than I’m going to.”

Kenji laughed self-consciously, peered into the eye scanner, and passed through the door into his room.

As the door closed behind him, Toshi turned to his cousin, his smile completely gone. “What are you doing, Miaki?” Miaki raised an eyebrow and said nothing, turning to go. Toshi grabbed his arm, for a moment feeling Miaki’s wrist twisting underneath the bandana wrapped around it. “I mean it,” said Toshi. “After seeing that sim, do you still think he shouldn’t be at ICE?” Miaki shrugged. “Then what? Do you have something else against him?”

Miaki turned a pair of bright, intense eyes on his face. Toshi, like Kenji a moment before, wrestled with an inexplicable unease. “Why should I have anything against him?” Miaki said. “Go to bed, Tosh.” And his wrist twisted out of his cousin’s grasp as though it were coated in butter.

Toshi flexed his hand a couple of times, silently watching Miaki walking down the hall without a backward glance. It had been a long time since his cousin had called him “Tosh,” the companionable shortening of his name. It should have been reassuring. Yet the mockery in his voice had been unmistakable.

Toshi wished he knew why it filled him with dread. But it seemed that it wouldn’t be Kenji’s simulation that kept him lying awake half the night, after all.

Chapter 6 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:30 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 5 - part one
Back to Chapter 4 - part two

Jin had thought Miaki took her seriously already, as they worked together in their regular class exercises. But after the six of them formed their little investigative group, she seemed to move beyond "being taken seriously" into a completely new level. It wasn't that he actually talked to her about his father, or his suspicions about the school; his confidence in her didn’t extend to confiding in her about personal things. But there was a new assumption of equality, somehow, as they worked together. He expected her not merely to be capable of doing her part in their work together, but to actually do it, without fanfare or display. And, to Jin's private pleasure, she always did. It was never difficult. She was turning out to be better, at almost everything, than she had ever expected, even knowing her own strengths pretty well. It was gratifying, partly just for her own sake, but also when she realized that she really was not going to let him down.

Miaki himself also seemed to rise to a new level: it was as though his focus had sharpened and his confidence level had risen. Somehow, he just seemed to have a better idea what he wanted to do and how he wanted to use his studies to achieve his goals.

Jin speculated that some of the change stemmed simply from relief: that he wasn't alone, that someone else knew about the things that had tormented him for the past year, and that there were people who were going to help him. People who might actually become his friends.

She didn't dare say that out loud to him, of course. The very thought made her chuckle ruefully to herself. She wasn't stupid, after all. But the occasional flash of a smile or casual warm gesture on his part became a bit more frequent now. The last thing she should do was to draw attention to this, or it might stop altogether. But these were encouraging signs. Despite the fact that Miaki kept to himself and discouraged friendly overtures from the students in general, he might find himself with friends after all. As long as no one drew his attention to it while it was happening.

Once in a while she wondered if he had thought about what he would do once he'd found out more details about his father's murder, and… what? Brought the murderer to justice somehow? Funny, now that she thought about it, Jin realized that nobody in their little group had thought even that far ahead. But surely Miaki had. What was he hoping to do, once they knew who the murderer was? If she asked him, would he clam up immediately?

And then, what about afterward? If they solved the murder and everything was resolved and the right people punished, what were Miaki's plans for the rest of his life? When he'd originally been coming to ISCE, before his father died, what had he been hoping to do with his studies? Astronautical work? Terraforming? Or had he planned to be like her dormitory neighbour, Hikari, and go totally cyber and never actually leave the earth?

She wondered if even Toshi knew. She also wondered if it would be an invasion of privacy to ask him.

The first-years had gone well beyond learning how to use ISCE's VR system and merely "tinkering" with things like avatars and background settings. They were finally getting to the meat of things. They had all, of course, learned long ago to write VR programs themselves, to a fairly sophisticated and detailed level. But none of them had yet learned to write programs of the accuracy and detail of the simulations at ISCE. So that's what they were beginning to do now, in their afternoon classes after they had spent the mornings working inside the simulations.

And of course there were other types of course work as well. Astrophysics, for working with the space program. Geology for future terraform work, not so much on the Moon but definitely on Mars. And biology, for the day, hopefully well within their lifetimes, when Mars could be seeded and gradually shaped to be a living planet.

The terraform and biology courses were the most interesting to Julie, who some day wanted to join a colony on Mars and help make it livable. She was joined in this interest by Akio, he-of-the-blue-hair, at whose table they had sat on their first morning here. He frequently sought out their table again, ostensibly to compare notes with Julie on the subject, though Jin privately suspected that his enthusiasm wasn't entirely related to academics. He didn't seem to get the response he hoped for from Julie, though, despite her friendliness the first day, and her general agreeableness now. She was very immersed in her studies, and often preoccupied even during free time, and while Jin knew exactly why, Akio of course didn't have a clue. So Julie treated him in a friendly, very general way, and seemed not even to notice that he'd have liked it if she were more than merely friendly.

Julie, in fact, had more than a few projects on the go, most of them related to the secret enterprise she was involved in. A couple of days after their group had formed, as they met once again in the advanced VR room, she told everyone that in a few more days she'd have finished something that would be very useful in their endeavours. But on the evening that she finally produced a little box containing several small metallic objects, they weren't at all what anyone expected.

"Jewellery," she said. "Ear rings, pendants, rings. Take your pick, but everyone take one."

Miaki's scorn was instantaneous. "Jewellery?" he burst out. "This is the 'very useful' thing you've been working on? What do you think this is, some sort of treehouse club?"

Julie answered coolly, "You haven't even looked at them. Of course I don't think that; how stupid do you think I am? You're forgetting my specialty. Take a look at one, before you grovel and apologize."

Toshi had already picked something out of the box – an ear ring that was of brushed metal with the ISCE logo engraved on it – and was peering at it from all sides. "This isn't an ordinary ear ring, is it?" he mused. He glanced keenly at Julie. "Should I be asking what's inside?"

She was almost smug. "You should. It's a location device. Dual purpose, in fact. If you rub the logo a little bit while you look around the room, you should get a slight prickling sensation that points you in the direction of a similar device."

Toshi held the ear ring with the fingers of his left hand while stroking the logo with the fingers on his right, while he pointed his hand in the direction of Julie's box. His left hand jerked immediately and he dropped the ear ring. "Ouch! Well yes, it did show me there were other devices in the box, but..."

"There won't be so many in one place after this," Julie said. "But you're right, it's not very refined for physical, real world location. It will have to serve just to provide general directions. And don’t worry, it really won't be that strong once there are only six of these things floating around. But in the VR world, it will help you see anyone else who's wearing one of the pieces, and not just see them, it will help guide you to them. Or them to you. Once everyone has picked a piece, I'll tune each one to broadcast with a different colour in the VR world, so we'll be able to find everyone specifically."

"Now, that," Chika said, bending over the box and rummaging through it, "is extremely useful. Especially when we all get doing different tasks but want to report to each other." She rummaged around and picked an ear ring with a small stone that matched the orange streaks on her cheek.

After she'd put it into her ear, Julie waved a little wand in front of it. "There," she said. "Yours will show up as orange."

"Too bad, Kenji, your colour's gone," Toshi said, ruffling the other's hair.

Kenji blushed a little. "I think I'll have a ring," he said. "Maybe...green?"

"Done," Julie said, fiddling with a tiny panel on the side of the wand, and waving it again. She did the same for Toshi's ear ring ("yellow for your hair," she said) – her own ear ring ("purple, for mine") – Jin's ring ("blue for me, please," said Jin) – and Miaki's pendant – red. She could almost hear him thinking, "red like blood," as she stood before him with the wand.

He pulled out a chain that already hung around his neck, with another small pendant hanging from it. Julie reached for it without thinking, and felt his fingers tense as though he wanted to snatch it out of her hands.

"A literary medal," she said, peering at the writing.

"He...was a writer," Miaki said reluctantly. "He was researching for a book."

"It's a nice medal. And you’ll see, my pendant is very lightweight so the two together won't weigh you down much."

He unhooked the chain and slipped the pendant onto it. It was similar in design to Toshi's ear ring, the burnished metal almost matching the metallic sheen of his father's medal. As he bowed his head to re-hook the chain around his neck, he murmured softly, "And I apologize."

"It's alright," she whispered back. "I was so busy trying to surprise everybody that I didn't explain very well at first." She turned back to the general group. "Now. Don't you think we should put on our goggles and try them out?" She waved the electronic wand across the remaining items in the box to make them completely neutral, and shoved both wand and box into a pocket.

Her little devices worked like a charm. Toshi devised a game wherein they chased each other through several different simulations one after the other, each simulation chosen by a different person, and the choice not revealed to any of the others. That would be part of the game: trying to find the simulation in the first place and then going in to find the person who had chosen it.

It was almost ridiculously easy. The different colours shone like beacons, and they could find each other almost immediately. But surprisingly, there was one person who stumped them for a while.

When Kenji had chosen his simulation, and messaged them that he was ready, Jin jumped into the VR starting place slightly before the others did. She was already running through the list of available ISCE simulations on her holoscreen when she sensed the others popping online around her. She glanced aside briefly to see Miaki nearby in the empty dormitory room, his avatar again slightly exaggerating certain features, like the size of his eyes, the spikiness of his hair as it hung across his face, and the glow of the red stripes on his cheeks. He could do what he wanted with his avatar, but when she accessed her locating device, she could see the tiny ball of red, glowing energy at his center, revealing perfectly that it was him.

The same went for the others: there was Julie with her purple, Toshi with his yellow, and Chika with her orange.

Jin turned her attention back to the search for Kenji. Her locator was homing in on his signal, and yet…and yet at the same time it was not. The signal seemed to be coming from more than one direction. In a couple of simulations on the list, she saw what was supposedly the tell-tale green glowing ball, but in neither case did it seem as strong as it should be. And in fact, as she paused to peer more closely, each of the signals faded with a little burst.

There were others, perhaps stronger, but still with something not quite right about them. Jin sensed Toshi popping out of the starting room and racing into a simulation after one of them, and she thought, “He’s making a mistake.”

Finally she narrowed it down to two simulations, and scrutinized them more carefully. One signal was slightly stronger than the other, which was beginning to fray at the edges. Aha!

She opened and stepped into the simulation with the stronger signal, just as Toshi popped back into the dormitory room behind her, muttering in frustration.

This simulation had to be the weirdest thing she’d ever seen. There was nothing as realistic as the Moon walk simulation that Toshi and Kenji had gotten caught in. This one was utterly abstract. It was like hanging in black space, with nothing but coloured lines swirling in complex patterns at her feet and above and below and all around her. She followed the lines carefully at first, worrying what might happen if she stepped off. But when her foot slipped, she discovered that new lines were created under it, branching off from where she stepped, in newly-created patterns – some of them moving vertically rather than vertically. When she followed the new patterns, her entire orientation then altered, as though a wall had now become a floor.

All the swirling lines were of different colours, which was very disorienting. Jin fought to keep from getting dizzy as she started leaping the gaps between lines. Each different pattern had at its center a small, brightly glowing signal that gleamed green. Some of them occasionally started fizzling and then bursting in what appeared to be showers of sparks. Others dashed around crazily, following the curling lines until they vanished into an infinite black distance. Still others sat still, at the center of their intricate patterns. But none of them were Kenji.

Chapter 5 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:23 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 4 - part two
Back to Chapter 4 - part one

"We need privacy," she said. "Later."

They ate as quickly as they could, though again, Miaki hardly ate anything. Julie whispered in Jin's ear, "Maybe he absorbs nutrients from the air, like a plant or something." Jin made a great show of fiddling with her glasses to hide her smile, while Julie stifled a giggle.

When they had finally finished, they followed Chika through the corridors toward the VR room. Toshi seemed to have developed a fondness for his two VR partners from this morning, and spent the time tossing jokes at Kenji and trying to make Jin smile. The more attention he gave her, the shyer she felt, which seemed to delight him.

Miaki walked behind, watching, and Julie walked near him. At one point when he glanced at her, she raised her eyebrows questioningly. There was still a question he was supposed to be answering for her.

"After we're done here," he said, and looked away.

When they arrived in the VR room, they moved in to the centre aisle between two rows of terminals, rather than to the side where the VR tubes were.

"I think I can live without going near them again today, thanks," said Toshi. He pulled out a chair, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning on the back. Jim and Kenji pulled out a couple of others. Julie leaned against one of the dividers between terminals. Miaki did the same, a couple of terminals away, his arms crossed.

Chika stood in the middle, and now held out a small device. "I think you should hear this," she said. "I was checking world news late in the afternoon, and this had just been posted."

She pressed a button.

"Moon officials," said a brisk, female voice, "are still trying to explain an incident earlier today in a remote equipment storage crater. An avalanche was triggered along the side of the crater, completely crushing a storage shed. While such events are not unheard of, particularly in mining areas on the Moon, this incident is different in that there is evidence that several people were on the scene as the avalanche occurred. Footprints in the moon dust indicate that at least four people stood outside the shed, and there appear to have been others inside at the same time. No footprints lead away from the area, and there is no evidence of a vehicle being used, but when the debris was finally cleared away, no bodies were discovered. When pushed for further details, officials would only say that the incident is still under investigation. But a source inside the Moon Mines and Resources department says that investigators are uncertain whether the avalanche was caused by the intruders, which seems unlikely, or whether they merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Investigators are also mystified as to who the intruders might have been, and especially how they arrived on the scene and left again, without any traces of a vehicle."

Chika pushed the button again, and the voice stopped.

There was a long, stunned silence. Miaki and Toshi lifted their heads at the same time, and their eyes met and held.

Kenji finally spoke. "You mean...that wasn't a simulation?" Silence. "Does this...does this mean...we were really there??" His voice cracked on the last word.

"That's impossible," Julie said flatly. Then wavered. "Isn't it?"

"It's supposed to be," said Chika.

Jin said calmly, "Let's think this through. Did anyone notice other footprints when you arrived? I'm sure I didn't."

"There weren't any," Toshi said. "I remember thinking that there was a flaw in the simulation, because there should have been footprints at least from when they built the shed."

"But that shouldn't have any relevance," Julie said. "It could have been a flawed simulation, but still not related to anything that was happening in real life. It's not supposed to matter what the simulation looked like."

"There's more," said Chika. "After I heard the news, I went back to the tubes and checked the logs for the simulation. But they were blank. There was no record of that simulation ever being used. In fact, I went looking for all the simulations available to students, right up to fourth-year, and there was nothing resembling it. I went back to my personal record and got the info for it, and it simply wasn't there."

"Toshi," said Jin. "How did you find the sim?"

"It was just there, on the list," he said. "Moon walk, storage crater. Just one of the Moon walk simulations, like all the others. There wasn't anything to make me think it was different."

"But it was," Jin mused. "Obviously."

"But it couldn't have been," Julie insisted. It was unclear if she was trying to convince them, or herself. "It's just not possible to step into a VR simulation and find yourself really in another place. We couldn't really have been there. I mean, remember when we got here. Toshi and Kenji were here, not there. We saw them. They were physically here."

"And yet, something really happened on the Moon," Chika said.

"That has to be just a coincidence," said Julie.

"Maybe," Kenji said, "we should report what happened, to the teachers or somebody."

"No," said Miaki abruptly.

They all looked at him. Toshi's eyes narrowed speculatively. "Do you know something about this simulation?" he asked quietly.

"No," Miaki said.

"Then why shouldn't we report it?" Miaki turned away, his arms still folded across his chest, his hair falling across his eyes. Toshi pushed himself off his chair and went to him. "Miaki," he said. "Why shouldn't we report this?"

When Miaki looked up, his eyes went to Julie instead of to his cousin.

She said slowly, "Does this have...something to do with...?"

Toshi looked from one to the other. "What's going on?" he asked. "What does she know?"

Miaki said, "I don't know if this is directly related. But I know that...whoever murdered my father, they have some connection with ICE."

The only sound was Kenji's sharp gasp. Miaki stared at him, hard, for a long moment, and then turned away again.

"Murdered," Chika said faintly. "I knew he was dead, but...murdered? Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it was someone from ICE?"

"I don't. I just know there's a link somewhere."

When he didn't elaborate, Julie supplied a few more details for him: "His father sent him some data just...just before. I didn't realize...Miaki, you said there was a government link. You didn't say anything about the school."

"I don't know what the school's connection is. Yet."

He looked back to his cousin, and their gaze held for a long time. Toshi turned to the others and said quietly, "If he thinks there's something strange going on here, I know enough by now to believe him. And the way my uncle died...dying somehow inside the VR world so his real world body died too...well, that's too much like what almost happened to me today. I'm willing to wait, before reporting it."

"So the question," Julie said, "is whether Miaki's going to let us help him find out the truth." To his accusing stare she answered, "There's more than just me involved now. Sorry. We can keep it quiet, so only the six of us know what's going on. But we're all a part of it now. And you know you can't investigate all by yourself."

"She's right," Toshi said. "I think we can really help. That is..." he looked around. "Everyone who wants to. Or at least who won't let anyone else know what's happening."

"I'll help," said Jin. "Naturally. Miaki and I work very well together." She was rewarded with what was almost a warm glance from the young man in question.

"I don't know what I can do," Kenji said, "but I'll help in any way I can."

Chika looked from one to the other of them, and took a deep breath. "Miaki," she said. "If you can show me what it is that makes you believe your father was murdered, and that there's a link to the government and to ICE...I'll help too. I'm a third-year, and I can probably do things that are more advanced. And I can access programs and sims that a first-year can't. Or even a second-year," she added, glancing at Toshi.

He regarded her with his long stare. "I have a disk," he said.

"Alright," she answered. "I'll come to your room and look at it. So I guess I'm in."

Chapter 5 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 3:19 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 4 - part one
Back to Chapter 3 - part two

Miaki almost flew down the corridors, following Jin to the advanced VR room, with Julie and Chika close behind them. The room was deceptively quiet when they burst through the door. It looked much like the room that the first-years used, with three rows of terminals in the centre. But along the outer walls there were tall, people-sized glass tubes, where more advanced users could don a full body-suit for an even more real and intense Virtual Reality experience.

They found Toshi and Kenji inside two of these enclosures. Toshi had collapsed inside his tube, half-lying, half-sitting against the glass, eyes closed and face white. His hands twitched a little, and his breath came in short, rapid, shallow gasps. Kenji, in the next tube, was on his knees and bent over. At first they thought he was motionless, but it became clear that in fact he was straining very hard, the sweat running down his face. He made no sound.

Jin explained quickly, as Miaki flung open the door of Toshi's tube: "He was doing a moon simulation. He asked Kenji to come along. I was with Kenji, so he invited me to observe. There was a rockfall – the bottom of a crater – we can't get Toshi to wake up!"

Miaki lifted a shaking hand toward Toshi's pale face – and stopped. He seemed unable to move, his eyes wide with horror as he stared at his cousin.

Julie pushed past Jin and put a firm hand on his shoulder. "You're not too late this time," she said. "Come on. Let's get in there with him."

All four of them dashed to terminals and started hurriedly to put on the gloves, boots, and goggles. "How do we find the simulation?" Miaki asked sharply.

Jin said, "I've got the address. Send me your log-in IDs when you're in, and I'll pull you into it."

They logged in as quickly as they could, and almost instantly they were on the Moon.

So many sensations flooded in at once, one of the hardest to deal with being the diminishment of gravity. Julie staggered a little, and Chika had to grab her arm till she could stand up properly. "It's hard to get used to the first time," she said. "Try not to move too much."

They were, as Jin had said, situated in a small crater. There were several sheds in a row, and some machines whose purpose wasn't immediately clear. But they didn't care anyway; the newcomers were most concerned with the shed at the end of the row. The side of the crater had collapsed in a huge avalanche behind and upon it, caving in the shed roof and making two of its walls tumble inward.

They could see inside through a large gap in the front wall. The roof of the shed appeared to have collapsed on top of Toshi: he had fallen back against some sort of box or chest on the floor, and chunks of the roof had fallen on him, trapping him there. In fact, another section of the roof would have fallen on top of the first fall, burying him completely, were it not for Kenji, who knelt at Toshi's side, holding the second section away by supporting a large roof beam on his back.

Sure, the gravity of the Moon was one-sixth the strength of earth gravity. But the entire mass of the avalanche was pushing down on that beam, and even in one-sixth gravity, that was a terrible weight.

Both young men were in space suits. It wasn't clear what might happen to either of them in real life if the suits were punctured inside the VR simulation. But Miaki seemed to have no doubts on the matter, as he scrabbled through the rubble, frantically pushing aside rocks and debris to get to his cousin.

He was already calling, "Toshi! Toshi, wake up!"

"I've been...trying," Kenji managed. "Doesn't...hear...wake up..."

"Toshi! Listen to me!" Miaki cried. "Wake up! Come on, Toshi!" His cousin's head, upper torso, and one arm were free. Miaki grabbed his shoulders tried to shake him. "Wake up, Toshi!" he cried again.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that," said Chika. "If he's got broken bones within the simulation, you could do more damage to him that way."

Julie reached up above Kenji, to try to remove some of the debris bearing down on him, but he gasped, "No! Change balance...might...all come down..."

She snatched her hands away and looked around helplessly. She and Jin shared a look. There was nothing they could do. It seemed to be all up to Miaki.

He called and called. A couple of times, Toshi seemed to stir, but he never opened his eyes behind the visor of his space helmet. His breath seemed to be getting shallower.

"You can't – you can't!" Miaki cried. "Don't do this! Toshi – please, please wake up! Toshi, please!"

At last there was a reaction. Toshi took a deeper breath than usual and slowly turned his head toward his cousin's voice. His lips moved a little, and finally his eyes opened, very slowly. They focused with difficulty on Miaki's face, and then the corners of his mouth turned up the merest bit.

"Oh thank god," Miaki said. "Toshi. Can you hear me? You have to log out. Can you do that?"

"M..Mi...?"

"Toshi. Try to listen. You have to log out of here."

Toshi took a long breath. His voice was a faint whisper. "Can't...hurts..."

"It'll stop hurting when you're out! You just have to concentrate long enough to log out and you'll be alright. But you have to log out!"

"Too...late..." His cousin's eyes were already closing again.

"No! Toshi! Don't do this! Don't die – please don't die! Toshi – DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" It was a cry of agony from the core of Miaki's being.

Toshi's eyes opened again, and again he focused them on Miaki's face. He grimaced in pain as he forced himself further awake. "Tyrant," he gasped. And his avatar vanished as he finally managed to log himself out.

The rocks that had covered him settled abruptly into the empty space. The rest of the debris in the shed shook, and began to collapse with a deep rumble. Miaki turned toward Kenji, who was foundering under the suddenly shifting weight, and their eyes met. And Miaki logged out.

Chika yanked the two girls out of the shed, yelling, "Log out! Everyone! Kenji, log out!" She waited till Jen's and Julie's avatars vanished, and then the avalanche began again, and the shed was engulfed as she pulled herself out of the simulation.

Miaki was already in the tube with Toshi, holding him tightly and rocking, back and forth. And to Chika's relief, Kenji had lifted his head, getting off his knees and sitting on the floor, leaning wearily against the glass behind him. She opened the door of the tube and offered him a hand up. But he shook his head tiredly, breathing hard and wiping an arm across his sweating forehead.

Toshi put a hand on Miaki's arm, squeezing it tightly. "That was close," he said softly.

"You crazy fool," Miaki answered hoarsely.

"But I wasn't. It was supposed to be routine, or I'd never have gone in. I wouldn't have taken first-years with me if I thought there was any danger. That avalanche came right out of the blue." He sat up, finally, and winced, touching his chest. "Ouch. That still hurts." He took a couple of cautious breaths. "It really does. That's more real than it's supposed to be." He looked his cousin in the face. "Hey. I'm alright. You got me out. Everything's alright now." He squeezed Miaki's arm again. Miaki bowed his head for a moment, averting his face.

It was hard to say which cousin gave the most help to the other in getting the two on their feet. Toshi seemed to have more aches and pains than he expected, and Miaki was still shaking. But as they came out of the tube, Toshi stepped into Kenji's tube and offered a hand, as Chika had done.

"I think you saved my life, holding that rubble off me till help came," he said. "Thank you."

"As if I'd have left you there," Kenji shrugged.

"Well, it kept me alive, and that's pretty important to me. Come on. We'd better get out of these suits and go get lunch. I am starving!"

He grinned down at Kenji, who laughed a little and accepted his hand up. "Me too," he said.

They all returned to the cafeteria, where Toshi and Kenji positively wolfed down their meal. Miaki, by contrast, seemed hardly able to eat, but could only toy with his food while staring at his plate. Julie, sitting across from him, could almost feel him trying not to show how afraid he had been to find his cousin in such danger. And it was almost palpable, that he was keeping himself from stealing glances at Toshi to reassure himself that he really was okay.

Toshi understood, though, for which Julie felt a sudden irrational gush of gratitude. He was describing the moon walk, trying to make light of it, but occasionally he'd give Miaki a little dig in the ribs, or toss him a bit of a grin.

"I don't really understood why the rocks came down, though," he said. "We're working more with actual Moon simulations now, and I wouldn't have expected they'd let second-years into a sim that could be dangerous."

"They don't," Chika said. "They don't even let third-years into dangerous ones, though ours are getting pretty complex. They don't let students start dealing with really dangerous situations till fourth-year, and then they really major on them. So I'm very surprised. I wonder if two different sims got crossed up, and you were practicing in one that was meant for fourth-years."

"But should that matter?" Jin asked. "Shouldn't even fourth-years be able to log out even if they're in danger inside the simulation? ICE wouldn't actually put their students in real danger. Would they?"

"I didn't think so." Chika took a bit of her taco and mused thoughtfully in silence.

"Well," said Toshi, "I won't be going into that one again without an advisor around, that's for sure."

"Neither will I," Kenji murmured.

Toshi grinned at him. "No matter which upper-level student tries to get you in, saying 'Come on, it will be good experience'. Eh, Kenji?"

"I may ignore upper-level students completely from now on," Kenji said.

Later, as Jin and Julie walked together to their next class, Julie wondered, "So, why did Toshi invite Kenji along with him in the first place?"

"He didn't exactly say," answered Jin. "But I think he can tell that Kenji's not feeling very confident. Remember when he kind of corrected Akio, and told him to give Kenji a chance? I think he's trying to help him out."

"And it turned out the other way around," Julie said. "Kenji helped him instead. It's a good thing Toshi asked him, instead of going in alone. A good thing he took both of you in, actually. Kenji probably couldn't have called help in soon enough if he'd been alone."

"He was concentrating so hard on keeping all those rocks off Toshi," Jin agreed.

"Did you see Miaki's face when he arrived and found him in the tube?" Julie shuddered.

"Just like his father," said Jin. "I'm glad this turned out different. Has he told you if he's going to let you help him, yet?"

"I think maybe he was going to, just before you came running. I'll have to ask him after supper."

But by the time the evening meal rolled around, they had other things on their minds yet again. Between their last class and the start of the meal, each person who had been involved in the Moonwalk simulation incident received an email from Chika, with an urgent request to meet back in that VR room right after they finished eating. They congregated once again at the same table, but Chika shook her head when asked what her summons was all about.

Chapter 4 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 3 - part two
Back to Chapter 3 - part one

"Trapped!" he cried, an unexpected note of anguish in his voice. "Trapped inside! Exactly the same way."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Julie said. She grabbed his arm and dragged him back toward the door. It was ajar, just enough to slip back through, thanks to the guard she'd set there as she came in. She signalled it as they passed it, and it blew very satisfactorily. It sent all sorts of false traces in countless directions. Maybe not quite enough to disguise their escape route completely, but certainly enough to delay whatever might follow them.

They passed three more of her guards, which blew with equal effect, before she spoke again. "We'll have to go back almost to where you started," she said, "and then double back a bit so our last traces can't lead them to the school."

Miaki nodded curtly, and followed her lead. He even contributed some data to help her find some winding paths that could throw off pursuit even more.

By the time they reached the boring, featureless dormitory room at the school, they were certain they had thrown off anything that had tried to follow them. They were undoubtedly helped by the fact that ISCE itself had one of the best security systems in the world. Whatever they might have missed in protecting themselves, the school's system itself probably caught.

Julie turned on Miaki and commanded coldly, "You log out first. Now. I'm not letting you try to go back while I'm logging out."

He grimaced resignedly, and his avatar winked out. She waited a moment, till she was sure he was really out of the system, and then logged out herself. She leaped out of her chair, hurling her goggles onto her terminal, and almost literally ripping off the gloves and boots. She dashed over to Miaki's terminal, but was already yelling before she got there.

"What do you think you're doing, you maniac? Infiltrating a government site? Are you totally insane? Do you want to get the whole school into trouble? I've heard of student stunts, but this is the absolute worst! What were you thinking?"

He was sitting slumped in his chair, staring morosely at the goggles in his hands. "Leave me alone," he muttered.

"Oh, that's nice. That's really nice. I just saved your skin, and all you can say is to leave you alone. And let me guess – you're going to try again, aren't you? If I don't watch you like a hawk, you'll go back in, won't you? And probably get caught."

"I'll be more careful next time," he began, but Julie interrupted.

"Oh no you won't. I'll get Toshi to stop you. Maybe I'll report you to the school."

"No!" He was so aghast, he almost looked afraid. He leaped to his feet. "You can't. I have to get back there – I have to!"

"Why? So you can prove you're better than the rest of us? You won't prove it to me, after I've seen you being so sloppy. What could possibly be so important that you want to go back there, especially now when they'll be watching for you? What could possibly make you so totally stupid?"

Miaki slumped back into his chair. "You don't get it. You don't understand."

"No I don't. But unless I get a very good explanation, I'm going to report this to somebody, so you can't try this stunt again."

His hands clenched into fists on his knees. He took a deep breath, as though he were going to speak, but seemed to be struggling. At last he seemed to take hold of himself. He looked up at Julie, his face tight, and said, "I have to go back because I'm trying to find out who murdered my father."

Julie flopped into the chair at the next terminal. Her stomach felt like it had fallen through a sudden deep hole. "Murdered?" she whispered, her heart pounding in her throat. "Toshi said he was dead, but...he was murdered?"

"Yes." Miaki bit off the word, averting his face.

"How do you know? And what does that have to do with that government site?"

Another deep breath. He obviously didn't want to talk about this. "Before he...before it happened...maybe while it was happening...he emailed me some data. I think he could feel himself getting caught. I think he thought I could use the data and follow him in, and get him out. Except some of the data got burned up as he sent it. And I didn't come. I was graduating. I was gone all day, and...didn't come."

"Oh, Miaki." If she thought he would accept it, she would have put her arms around him. She couldn't imagine the pain, and of course the guilt, that he must have been feeling since graduation day over a year ago. She remembered how he had been at school: not really boisterous, but very easygoing. He had laughed quite a lot, she remembered. And now look at him.

She realized another thing. "And that's why you decided to come to ICE after all, isn't it? Because you can do things with their equipment that you can't do anywhere else?"

A very long silence. "Yes," he said at last.

"And the data your father sent you leads somehow to that government site?"

"I didn't know where it led until just now, because some of it was missing so I couldn't tell. But yes. That's where it leads."

"So that's where you have to go."

"Yes."

Julie thought for a long time. She knew she was going to regret this, but... "Well, you'll need me to help you, then."

His breath caught. "No."

"Look, I know what you're probably going to say. I have no right to stick my nose into your private business. And it's dangerous, and there's no reason why I should put myself into danger when it was your father, and it's your job to do this. Right?"

"Yes."

"But it's too big for you to do it alone," Julie said. "It takes so much of your attention following the data in, that you hardly have any attention to spare to make sure you get in undetected, and can get out again. We saw exactly how that worked out, just now."

"I'll be more careful next time."

"You won't be able to. They'll be watching for you. It's going to be even harder next time."

He said between clenched teeth, "Then I'll get caught and they'll do the same thing to me that they did to my father and you won't have to worry about it any more. Alright?"

"And we'll find you dead, and I'll have to know the rest of my life that I might have been able to help keep you alive. No thanks." Julie could see that he was going to keep resisting the idea, but maybe she could short-circuit his automatic heel-digging. "Tell you what," she said. "Think about it for a day or two. You probably shouldn't go back in so soon anyway, since they're on such high alert. Give it a few days to see if they find us – because this affects me too, remember – and if it looks like I managed to throw them off the track, then you can decide."

Miaki considered this for a moment, then his large brown eyes fixed themselves on her. "Tell me one thing," he said. "Why are you so interested in helping me?"

"I have no idea," she said bluntly. "Maybe it's your charm."

For one brief, gratifying instant there was a flash of humour in his eyes, and then he looked away. "Maybe," he said. "Alright. I'll think about it. For two days."

Julie insisted that he leave the VR terminal room first, and again there was the slightest hint of a smile in his eyes as he recognized her caution. He raised a sardonic eyebrow at her, bowed, and left the room without looking back. She contemplated hiding his goggles, but she'd have to hide every set of goggles in the room if she did that. She'd just have to rely on the logic of the arguments she'd made to him, and hope he didn't try anything more for the next couple of days.

After breakfast that morning, she confided to Jin, telling her everything that had happened. Jin tried not to let on that she knew, but of course Miaki guessed it anyway, since she and Julie hung out together all the time. He didn't say anything, but when they met in the VR classroom, gave her such a knowing look that she blushed, and fumbled a bit as she put her equipment on.

Then she took hold of herself and got down to real business, as she had the first day they'd worked together. She, too, said nothing about what she knew, but she knew it hung between them as they went through their class exercises.

Things went on fairly normally, albeit with this undercurrent running beneath, for a couple more days. Julie knew that Miaki should be giving her his decision today, but as lunchtime arrived, she hadn't seen him so far. She hardly knew what to wish for: his agreement that she would help him do something very illegal and possibly dangerous, or his insistence on doing it alone. If he made the latter choice, then she'd have a choice of her own: whether to let him do things the way he wanted and wash her hands of him, or to tell Toshi or even the school officials, and get Miaki into serious trouble. What a choice.

Chika was sitting alone at a table, and Julie joined her. Jin was off somewhere, taking the chance to observe some work in the more advanced VR rooms, and hadn't come back yet, so she was a bit at loose ends. But she'd only just sat down and started contemplating today's menu when Miaki approached the table. Uh oh. This was probably it. Or rather – once the meal was over and they could talk privately, that would be it. He must have decided. Julie's hands were clammy, just thinking about it.

And then, very suddenly, everything changed in ways she would never have expected. Because Jin came hurrying in, and rushed over to the table. But it wasn't Julie she addressed; it was Miaki.

"You have to come!" she said, out of breath from running. "Toshi's been caught in the VR world – he's been hurt somehow – Kenji's trying to keep him from being hurt worse, but we can't make him wake up and we can't get him logged out!"

Chapter 4 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 2:59 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 3 - part one
Back to Chapter 2 - part two

It had been several weeks since the last nightmare, but now that he was here, he should have expected more of them. Tonight's was the same as always: the memory of graduation day, and coming home at the end of the day, angry and planning to confront his absent-minded father for missing the ceremony altogether. Only to find the man lying on the floor, dead, still wearing his VR equipment.

Miaki sprang up with a gasp as he wrenched himself out of the nightmare. He was momentarily disoriented, looking around wildly at his unfamiliar surroundings, but finally he recognized where he was. His room was dark, except for the faint blue glow from the terminal at his desk, which he never turned off. He contemplated lying back down and trying to go back to sleep, but he knew from experience that it wouldn't work. Both his mind and heart were racing, and it would take hours for them to slow down again. By then it would be time for breakfast. So he might as well get up and do something constructive. Maybe the nightmare was a signal to him that it was time to begin what he had come here for.

He threw back the covers, quickly washed up, and pulled on some clothes. He'd go straight to breakfast when it was time, rather than coming back here.

He snatched up the disk he'd brought to the school with him, and slipped out of his room, quietly making his way out of the men's dormitory wing and toward the VR terminal room.

* * * * *

Julie couldn't sleep, so she decided to try a little solo VR practice. Students were allowed to practice outside of class and homework time if they wanted to, provided they stayed within certain limits, so now seemed as good a time as any.

She crept down the corridor in her slippers and sloppy clothes toward the room that her group always used in their classes. She flipped on her terminal, and while the program started up, she sat down, took off the slippers, and put on the VR boots. As she then pulled on the gloves, stretching and flexing her fingers, she contemplated a whole new marketing idea: fashionable VR wear. But she smiled away the idea with a little shrug, and reached for the goggles.

"What are you doing here?"

Miaki stood in the doorway, staring at her like she'd broken into his room. Julie stared back. He approached slowly and stood above her, looking down. The light from her terminal made his skin pale, and his eyes seem darker and larger than usual. The red streaks on his cheeks stood out like bloody slashes across his face.

"What are you talking about?" she said.

"Why are you here?"

"Why shouldn't I be here? What are you doing here? I couldn't sleep, so I came to practice for a while. Did you have insomnia too?"

He regarded her in silence for a moment, and then turned to move to his own terminal.

"A real party guy," Julie muttered, slamming her goggles on.

"Just stay out of my way," she heard him say, half in and half out of the VR world. Stay out of his way? she thought irritably. We'll see about that. She was already composing her little sub-routine in her mind as the VR world settled completely around her and fully took over her senses.

The default entry point for terminals in this room was that boring, empty dormitory room they had encountered during their first day of exercises. Even after just a few days at the school, Julie was thinking that the entry point could really use a facelift and re-design. Just like the boring, grey boots, gloves, and goggles.

Miaki appeared in the room only a moment after she did. He gave her the merest glance, but she could see the same warning on his face that he'd made before. He turned away from her and opened a doorway, stepping through and snapping it closed behind him.

But not quickly enough, Julie congratulated herself smugly. If there was one thing she was very good at, it was writing quick little programs to do private little tasks. He didn't know that. And the last thing he'd be expecting was that she'd so quickly manage to set a tail on him, especially when his warning had been so clear.

It wasn't really acceptable, she knew, to spy on a fellow student or anyone else. And most of the time, there would be automatic safeguards against it. But it was just so irritating that Miaki Nakamura could be really unfriendly and rude, yet issue commands that he expected to be obeyed without question, like she was some minion. If he'd said nothing, she'd never have tailed him. He'd brought it on himself. Right? Right.

It wasn't that she actually followed him; she had come here to practice certain things, and that was what she started now. But she produced a little window at the edge of her vision, that she could glance at from time to time to see what Miaki was up to. He seemed to be doing fairly innocuous things for now, so she basically ignored him. It was enough, really, that she was "disobeying" his "command" and asserting her right to do what she wanted. The fact that he didn't know she was doing it just made it more privately satisfying.

She continued with her chosen exercises: avatar modification, modification of the visual field, setting of parameters, creating of shortcuts. They were still pretty much stuck in creating settings, which was a bit of a rehash of things they already knew. But somehow everything was very different in the ISCE system, which was so much more complex than any systems they'd studied on before.

Julie settled for an avatar similar to her regular physical appearance, except that the purple lightning bolts in her dark hair glowed fluorescently. She tried several different representations of her surroundings: a comfortable home atmosphere; a hi-tech space station; a labyrinth of caves. For each one, she had to set enough parameters that the system would be able to continue the representation no matter how many pathways she took. It basically had to be able to be left alone after it was set, so she could concentrate instead on what the real task was. At every turn of a corner, toward some repository of data, there had to be the representation of an info terminal in the home atmosphere, or a niche piled with stone tablets in the cave. Forget to set some parameter, and you could walk into a cave that was suddenly filled with numbers.

In the midst of her creative efforts, she glanced at the tailing window to see what Miaki was doing. He seemed to have settled for the default grey, featureless corridors supplied by the system. Which meant that practicing what they had worked on in class was not what he had come here for.

What, then, was he actually doing? He had made no changes to his avatar, or any other features that she could detect. Julie could see his face, very intent, frowning in concentration. He had several small windows open around him, that his eyes darted at one after the other as he progressed swiftly through the corridors. One window might have been a map, except that it wasn't something he was following; it was something he was creating. Other windows contained data that seemed to be streaming in from nowhere. He must be working from a discrete personal disk, rather than drawing on the system.

Very, very interesting. Now Julie was really curious, rather than merely rebellious. Miaki was doing some sort of project all his own, that had nothing to do with their classes. Trying to get extra credit or something?

She continued her own work, but now with only half her attention. Miaki seemed to know where he was going – up to a point. It was as though he had partial information, and was trying to find his way somewhere by making intuitive leaps to cross gaps in his data. Julie drew some data from her tail, and recognized some of the addresses with a gasp of apprehension.

Government addresses?

To be sure, this was no class assignment. ISCE would never allow its students to go romping through government locations. What did this guy think he was doing??

He had come to a connection that was difficult to open, and had to work for a while to get in. Julie watched in admiration as he circled around it, niggling out the little loopholes and back doors, sneaking into a small opening here, climbing through a metaphorical window there, and discovering little trap doors. And that was just the first of the difficult entry points. Each one he came to after that was harder than the one before.

"He'd better be setting some escape routes," Julie thought. She wasn't sure he was, though. If his avatar was a proper representation, he was now working more intensely, pushing himself further and further, his eyes wide and feverish. He seemed to be very near whatever it was he was looking for. And she could see no sign that he was creating a quick escape route in his obsessive drive to reach his goal. He kept checking his primary data stream, comparing it to his current location, and looked like he was about to crow with exultation. He must be very near.

She abandoned her own exercises and hurtled after him on the path he had created. Her mind worked furiously as she went, as she set guideposts at intervals, and linked them with triggers that could snap them shut and spray deceptive shrapnel in a split second when needed. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it very stupidly, considering he was a genius.

She finally caught up to him after he passed through another difficult door, which he had just succeeded in opening. It was manifest in the VR world as a very thick vault door, hanging with all sorts of locks. Inside was a vast room full of VR file cabinets, of all things. This was obviously a system that had existed for a while, and had eventually been integrated into the VR net, but where no one had ever bothered updating its virtual manifestation beyond its old visual. Julie didn't think she'd ever seen a real, physical filing cabinet in her life. But here was a visual based on that archaic information storage method. How quaint.

"Soon," she heard Miaki say. He was almost singing it. "Very soon now!"

"Not if you get caught," she said tartly, and was rewarded as he whirled toward her in horror.

"What are you doing here?" he gasped. "Get out!"

"Not till you come with me," she said. "What the hell are you doing, infiltrating government data? Do you honestly think you can get this deep and not be detected?"

"I'm doing fine! Get out and let me finish!"

He turned from her and advanced into the data room. Julie grabbed his arm, half pulling him back. He jerked furiously, trying to pull away, when suddenly the room was bathed in red light and an alarm bell began to ring. It was a slow ring at first, but they could already hear it speeding up as the extent of the intrusion became evident to the system.

"Look what you've done!" Miaki yelled.

"That's not me – I've been covering my tracks the whole way!" Julie retorted. "That's you, and all you. I watched you – you were hardly taking any precautions at all as you came in."

"I was doing enough – I was watching for any signs of detection – "

"Not very well. You didn't even know I'd set a tail on you."

"You what??"

"Look, I'm not going to explain everything here. We've got to get out, and we've got to do it now."

The bell had morphed into a shrieking siren by now, and the red light was flashing blindingly. Even Miaki, in his desire to stay, could see that it wasn't possible now. They turned together, but he gasped again, as he saw the vault door closing.

Chapter 3 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 2:27 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 2 - part two
Back to Chapter 2 - part one

Jin and Julie found seats somewhere in the middle of the room, and heard someone murmur nearby, "Is that...do you think that could actually be real? Is ISCE on the top of a mountain, do you think?"

The continuing question, for all students, from the first day of classes till they graduated. Nobody ever seemed to know. They had all arrived in closed shuttles, and would leave the same way at the end of the year.

"Quickly, everybody," said one of the instructors, a hidden amplification system carrying her voice through the room. "Don't be distracted by the scenery or we'll have to dim it; take your seats so we can get started."

The students hurried to obey, and then the instructor dimmed the scenery anyway. To the sounds of dismay throughout the room, she smiled in response. "Sorry," she said. "But I know from experience that you won't be able to concentrate with all those mountains trying to grab your attention. We'll turn them back on afterward."

"So they aren't real?" someone called out.

The instructor smiled again. "They might be," she said noncommittally, and got the general laugh she expected. "That will be one of the private projects you can work on if you get bored with your school work." Another laugh. "But on to business, and I'll be quick. We'll all meet here before classes on the first day of each week, to discuss class-related news. In a month, after you know each other a bit, you'll be electing class officers. But today's main purpose is to divide you into five groups for the first class. You'll work with the same people each morning for the first few weeks, as you do your group Virtual Reality classes. So if you'll check the screens in the arms of your seats, and enter your student I.D., you'll see which group you've been assigned to."

It didn't take very long for everyone to know which of the five groups they belonged in. And then one by one, the instructors at the front called for a particular group to follow them, and the students in that group left the room.

To their gratification, Jin and Julie found themselves in the final group together. (Jin thought perhaps Julie gave Akio a glance of regret as he walked past in group four.) They noticed, as they got up to follow the original instructor, that Kenji Tanaka was going toward the door ahead of them. And Miaki Nakamura was following, the last to exit the room.

"We're all here, it looks like," Julie said. "Hikari was right. That was quite the table we sat at last night."

They were led to a room with twenty plexiglass cubicles, each containing a terminal, a chair, and the usual VR goggles, gloves, and boots. The students donned the equipment while the instructor, who introduced herself as Ms. Ito, explained that they were going to go through some preliminary exercises first, just to refamiliarize themselves with anything they might have let slip over the summer, and also to assess whether anyone had missed learning any small thing they would need to know for the course. The major things, naturally, they had become adept at already, or they wouldn't be students here.

They were randomly put into groups of two, and Jin found herself paired with Miaki for the first VR exercises.

At first she was a little unnerved, but then her common sense took over. He probably didn't know that she knew about his father. And even if he did, what did that have to do with working together on a Virtual Reality exercise? Nothing, obviously. So she'd better just forget the personal stuff, and concentrate on why they were really here.

As she put on the goggles and clicked into "Exercise One" on her terminal, she felt the familiar sensation as her outer senses faded into the background and the inner senses came to the fore. The Virtual world snapped quickly into her visual, while the other sensations arose more gradually, so that her sense of balance could be retained and not be overwhelmed.

She quite liked operating in VR, so she didn't mind the changes in sensation. The VR world settled on her skin like a glove, an embrace that she welcomed. When she felt totally enclosed, she expected that that would be all, as usual. But this time the changes went much, much further than that, further than they ever had before. She had always retained a little sense of her physical body before, on any equipment she'd ever used. But this time, as the VR world settled onto and around her, even her own physical body faded from perception until it was gone entirely.

She heard the gasps around her, both of amazement and consternation, and realized instantly that she was hearing them from inside the Virtual world rather than from outside in the real world.

She'd heard that the ISCE VR equipment was the most advanced in the world, but nothing had prepared her for this. She and the other students stood inside a replica of one of the empty dormitory common rooms, and they were really THERE. Every element was exquisitely accurate, to the finest detail. And when Jin walked over to a chair and touched the back of it, she really walked there, and she really, really felt the chair back. There was nothing coming from “outside,” and everything “inside” was perfectly real.

"This is unbelievable!" Julie said, joining her in touching the chair. "Have you ever had it like this before?"

"Never," said Jin. She glanced at Miaki, who was standing to the side, turning his hands over and over as he looked at them, absorbing the strong sensations. Then he flicked a finger and there was a holoscreen in the air beside his face. To get accustomed to operating within this system, he started tweaking his VR avatar very slightly; his eyes grew a bit larger, the reddish glints in his brown hair just a little more pronounced. After adjusting for a few more seconds, he nodded briskly to himself, and turned off all the tweaks. Then he narrowed his eyes and started running lines of numbers across his screen, too quickly for anyone else to follow them properly.

Jin concentrated, herself, in that inner way that they’d been taught, and brought up a holoscreen for herself. Hers glowed with red lines, while Miaki’s had been blue, and hers was perhaps a bit larger. In fact…speaking of larger… She found the file she needed, and started testing a couple of things of her own.

“What we’re going to do today,” came the voice of Ms. Ito from all around them, “is direct you through a series of relatively simple exercises, to test your reactions and your knowledge of methods. When you leave this room, there will be less physical detail, but we’ll work back up to that by the end of the morning. We want to test your own visualizations and adjustment to changes first. So don’t bother changing your avatars today, or trying to control the visuals. We’ll add those layers as the week goes on.”

“Are you inside, or are you watching from outside?” asked a student.

“I’m inside with you, but I’m dispensing with an avatar altogether for now. It gives me a more global view, so I can keep an eye on all of you. So. Are we all ready? Is everyone with their partners?”

Julie smiled at Jin, then disappeared and reappeared beside her designated partner. Jin turned toward Miaki, to join him off to the side, but found that he had already moved to join her. He gave her one glance, but said nothing and appeared to ignore her after that. Jin sighed inwardly, and braced herself for a workout without any real teamwork.

The door of the room opened, and they walked through it, one pair at a time. As soon as they left the room, they lost sight of all the other students, and found themselves in the plainest possible representation of a long, grey corridor.

“Please proceed forward,” said a metallic voice. “The exercises will manifest at intervals along the corridor.”

They began to walk, Miaki in the lead. He said softly, “I’ll watch to the right and above; you watch the left side and the floor.”

“Got it,” Jin said.

The first exercise came upon them almost immediately, a sudden opening in the left wall, and blocking off of the main corridor. This was followed in quick succession by similar shifts, right, left, above, below, forcing them to change direction so quickly that they could easily become lost. Occasionally they came upon a two-pronged fork in the corridor, or even an opening with several possible choices of direction.

“This way,” Miaki said, the first time they had to choose. Next time, he said only, “Jin?” She understood immediately; they would alternate making the choices.

Eventually they were made to choose more and more quickly. When one of the choices took slightly longer than it should have, Jin felt the opening that they walked through closing behind her, and even painfully nipping her heel as it caught her. She said nothing, just grimacing, but somehow Miaki sensed it.

“Here,” he said, stepping a little to the right. “Let’s go side-by-side and stop that.”

“Or both get caught,” she said ruefully.

“Don’t worry, we won’t get caught again.” To her surprise, he flashed her a brief smile, and they went on.

Before long, they were jogging to keep up, but Miaki was determined to keep the promise that they wouldn’t get caught. He even grabbed her hand to make sure she’d be able to stay with him and not fall behind.

“I think we’re almost done this one,” she said. “They’re getting close to a speed vector that exceeds the parameters of a mere test.”

“I think you’re right,” said Miaki, as they burst through a doorway into another room resembling the earlier empty dormitory room, except that this one was about twice as large in every direction. They released hands and turned around and around, waiting for another door to open, but nothing happened immediately.

Jin turned back to the doorway they’d come through, and her holoscreen popped back on. “I know we’re not supposed to do things with the visuals, but I think I’d better mark this door.” She found its location quickly on the schematic, and set a marker there that was tuned to her specific session I.D., so she was unlikely to lose it. Just in time, too, because the doorway vanished almost immediately. The walls shifted and the room changed shape, but there was the marker, in the same location, secure from the deceptive visual shifts.

“Smooth work,” Miaki said approvingly. He looked around the room and called softly, “Are we done?” There was no answer.

“We might as well look around while we’re here,” Jin said, and expanded the schematics till they hung around her on several different holoscreens.

“More than one way to do that,” she heard Miaki say. Then he tensed and launched himself up and into the center of the room, somersaulting as he flew across it. He landed with one foot on a wall and the other on the ceiling. A trail of numbers streamed behind him as he leaped again, kicking one leg higher than his head as he twirled around and landed, crouching on both feet and one hand, on a wall near Jin. Around and across the room he went, practicing moves and trailing those numbers, evanescent and sparkling, as he went.

Jin stopped her own analysis and watched him. He was probably teaching himself the limits of his agility in this VR world, but he also seemed to be enjoying himself. He even whooped a couple of times when he executed an especially spectacular move in mid-air, landing where he wanted, and landing perfectly. The strings of numbers stretched across the room from corner to wall, ceiling to floor, like the fine strands of a spider web.

Finally, Miaki somersaulted off the ceiling, produced an old-fashioned clip board out of thin air, and handed it to Jin. “Got the schematics,” he said, over-casually. The strings of numbers in the air faded and went out. She tucked the clip board under one arm and clapped. He bowed and then looked at her in puzzlement. “Your avatar is flickering a little bit, Jin. What’s the matter?”

If he was looking at her in real life he’d see her blushing. But her sheepish, uncomfortable expression told the tale anyway. “Oh. Well. I hadn’t gotten it quite right before they started the exercise,” she said. Glumly, since it wasn’t holding anyway, she switched off the changes she had tried to make. And suddenly her avatar was much shorter, matching her height to his the same way it was in the real world.

“Ah,” was all he said, for at that moment the metallic voice spoke again: “Congratulations on completing part one of exercise one. For part two, you will retrace your path precisely, and return to your starting location. Begin now.”

Nothing changed in the room, and no doors opened, but Jin’s marker still gleamed at her. “This way,” she said briskly. She put a hand on the wall where the marker stood, checked the schematic, and made the switch that created the opening and the corridor beyond it.

The way back was much more difficult than it had been coming out. Not because they had forgotten all the turnings, since they discovered quickly that both of them had memorized the turns equally well, and were equally able to rehearse them backwards. But as they went back – moving as quickly as they could, once again to avoid the closings of the corridor behind them – they were bombarded with distractions. Things leaped out at them with a roar, the floor fell out from under them unexpectedly (and they had to re-create it, so as not to take a different path back), colours flashed at them, all sorts of things.

They developed a rhythm, loosely based on their previous pattern of alternating with each other in choosing their direction. One would address the distraction while the other would find the next correct turning. Or if they both needed to do something to deal with the distraction, they seemed to do just as well with their alternating pattern. This rhythm and cooperation became so much a part of the underlying base of their reactions that they worked almost automatically, freeing their minds to concentrate on recapitulating their path in reverse, back to their starting point.

They did it flawlessly and were, in fact, the first of the students to arrive back where they began.

“Well done,” Miaki said. And then, before the others finished the first exercise, the metallic voice set him and Jin another one, involving colours and resolutions.

The exercises seemed to fly by. And in all of them, the working rhythm Jin and Miaki had found in their first task stood them in good stead, and continued to develop as the tasks became more and more complex. Jin’s initial worry that there would be no teamwork had long since vanished. Instead, the two of them worked together as smoothly as though they had teamed up all their life. They anticipated each other’s moves, and even the most cursory instructions one gave the other were immediately understood and acted on. For every sudden, seemingly impulsive move Miaki made, Jin was there backing him up, and when a firm and solid decision was needed, Jin made it immediately and Miaki followed her lead.

They arrived for the last time back at the empty dormitory room, and were greeted by the avatar of Ms. Ito herself.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve had a very impressive morning. I think you’ve finished all the exercises at least half an hour before the others are expected to. You’re both very adept at this work.”

“Thank you,” said Jin. Miaki asked, “Can we make the pairing permanent? Or will we have to change partners? I’d like to work with Jin for the whole term.”

“I think that’s possible,” Ms. Ito smiled, “if it’s agreeable to Jin.”

“Yes,” Jin said. “I think we work well together.”

“Then it’s settled,” said the instructor. “And now I think you can just enjoy a free half hour before the lunch hour. You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks,” said Miaki. He walked away without another word or a backward glance.

The morning of camaraderie was over, apparently. Jim shrugged ruefully to herself, and returned to her dorm room to wait for Julie to come back and compare notes. She checked her email while she waited, and was surprised to find an email from Miaki.

‘This should help stop the flickering,’ was all it said. The attachment was a small program that was designed to solidify and make permanent any changes she might make to her avatar. The email had been sent while they were still working in the VR world. He had to have created the program in the midst of some very busy exercises.

Jin read it three times, and then walked slowly to her bed and sat down, lost in wondering thought.

Chapter 3 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 4:40 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 2 - part one
Back to Chapter 1 - part two

"PICT!" Akio boasted, standing by the breakfast table and sticking his chest out proudly. "Paris Institute of Cyber Tech. One of the best schools on the planet!" He grinned at his breakfast companions, the red light from the Mars screen darkening his blue hair almost to brownish purple.

"Not bad," said Hikari, cutting a slice of bacon and delicately collecting it on her fork before eating. "It's got a very good reputation. What about you?" she asked another of first-years at the table.

Jason said, between mouthfuls of oatmeal, "Silicon Valley Cyber."

"What's that?" said Akio. "Never heard of it."

"Your loss," said Jason.

Akio grinned. "Well, you're here, and you're from that school, so it must be good. Or you're so good it couldn't keep you down." He grinned again, and Jason answered with a grin of his own. Akio walked around the table full of fellow first-years, unable to settle down to his meal in his excitement to get started today. "What about you, Julie? And Jin? What schools did you graduate from?"

"Tokyo Cyber/Space," said Julie.

Akio whistled. "Good one," he said. "If my family hadn't been posted in Europe, I'd have gone to Tokyo too. And you, Jin?"

"Mumbai Tech," she said.

"Another good one." A quick stream of electronic music emerged from somewhere on Akio's person, and he pushed aside the several scarves that hung from his neck, till he found his communicator. "Have to remember to turn the sound off," he muttered, "or they'll do it for me." He peered at the little screen of the communicator and grinned yet again. "My dad. Third 'good luck' message this morning so far. He's very hands on. So, Hikari." He got back to business, putting the device away again. "What school have you come from?"

"Rio D," she said. And that was all she needed to say, as her five breakfast companions regarded her in sudden silence and respect. Rio de Janeiro Cyber Space Institute was acknowledged by all as the best cyber and space exploration school on earth, bar none. Except for ISCE, of course, which was the step beyond for all of them.

"Very good," Jason said, finishing his oatmeal. "I'm sure you'll excel here, then."

Akio scooted around to behind Hikari's chair, and leaned over her shoulder. "Hikari, my new very good friend. Will you marry me? Or at least let me copy your homework?"

The level of excitement at this table was easily matched at other tables, especially where first-years congregated. For most institutions, the first day of school would be taken up with bureaucratic matters: consulting with counselors to set up course work, registering for various things, and so on. But not for ISCE students. All of those things had been arranged beforehand, throughout the summer for first-years, and during the last week of the previous year for returning students. All of them arrived with their course schedules set, all registrations finished, and all forms properly signed or otherwise electronically certified.

So on their first full day, today, they were ready to start right in. Jin and Julie had gotten swept along with the crowd as they left their dormitory, falling in with Hikari, another first-year, who turned out to be the one whose room was between theirs. They had landed at this table where Akio was holding forth, and the growing excitement made the girls almost as unable to finish their breakfast as he was.

Julie had glanced around the cafeteria to see where last night's dinner companions might be, and found Kenji almost immediately, keeping his head down and not saying much to anyone as he ate. Much like last night, in fact. Chika stood beside another table, hand on someone's shoulder, as she appeared to be visiting and catching up with students from last year. And Toshi, his hair gleaming, was laughing hilariously at another table further down. But Miaki didn't seem to be here. Maybe he was the type who slept in and skipped breakfast.

Hikari and Akio had immediately set about finding out about the other first-years at their table, in a ritual of situating that was common in all schools. Jason had tried to fake some sort of nonchalance at first, but it hadn't lasted. There was no false modesty among them; they all knew they stood among the highest echelons of students who had combined space and cyberspace studies, no matter which school they had graduated from. But ISCE was for the elite even among those students, and for many of them it still seemed like a miracle that ISCE had approached them to study here. (Nobody ever actually applied to this school. ISCE came looking for them, choosing the people its administrators decided would perform best here, and in cyber/space exploration after they graduated. This was why most students were surprised and excited when they were approached, because no one dared to assume that they might be the sort of student ISCE would desire. The school always approached new prospective students just before the end of their graduating year, partly so they'd have the whole summer to get over their shock and be ready to study in earnest when they arrived at the institute.)

"What do you think you'll concentrate in?" Hikari now asked the table.

"Mars!" Akio said immediately, flipping back a couple of his scarves. "Mars all the way. I've been simulating at home all summer. When they get going on the first colony, I'll be there."

"I think I want to aim for Mars too," Julie said.

"Colonizing or terraforming?" asked Jason. "I don't really want to live there – but I'd love to help with the design."

"I think I'd like to live there, at least for a while. And help to polish it up once you earth-movers are done."

"Oh, I don't plan to be an earth-mover," Jason shook his head with a laugh. "I'm going to draw up the plans and order the earth-movers around." He had finally abandoned all reticence.

"What about you, Jin?" Akio demanded.

Jin suspected that he felt she was too quiet, because he kept asking questions when she didn't volunteer things. She said, "I haven't decided where to specialize yet. I think I'm going to stay general, at least for first year, till I see what takes my interest. Or what I'm best at."

Hikari said, "I'm Cyber all the way. I'm not sure I'll even visit the Moon, actually. I'm more on the theoretical side."

Before anyone could ask more questions, they looked up to see Toshi approaching the table. "Good morning, lowly first-years!" he called as he drew near.

Akio's face changed as he prepared to take affront. Julie said, "Don't let him bother you. He's just joking. He's a good guy."

Toshi smiled at Julie and Jin. "I just wanted to find you again and wish you good luck as you get started today. Are you nervous?"

"No," Julie lied, as Jin murmured, "A little."

"Don't worry, it'll be okay. They start you slowly and work up. By the end of the week, you'll be in full swing and loving it."

"Thanks, Toshi," said Julie. "It's nice of you to come by and let us know."

"Now I need to find Kenji and wish him good luck too."

"Kenji Tanaka?" Akio's ears perked up. "Do you know him? What's he all about? I've heard things..."

Toshi eyed him. "Oh? What things?"

"Well...just that maybe he shouldn't be here at all. I heard some of the guys at the table last night saying they thought his father got him into the school, and...maybe he doesn't really belong here."

It was a rare occurrence, considering ISCE's independence in almost everything, but it did happen occasionally. Someone whose family had "pull" with someone important managed to get their son or daughter on the list of prospectives. Most of those buckled under the weight of study requirements (and their own lack of real qualifications), and were gone within a month. A very few had discovered, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that they were really capable of doing the required work, and began to shine. And without exception, all of those had gone on to become independent thinkers, who no longer allowed their lives to be dictated by the pretensions of their important parents or families.

Toshi's smile faded and he fixed a long stare on Akio's face. Julie had a fleeting image of Miaki's face last night, wearing the same long stare. It wasn't hard, at this moment, to recognize that Toshi was his cousin.

"Look," he said. "Maybe that rumour is true and maybe it isn't. The point is that none of us knows if it is or not. It's not fair for us to start acting like it is, when we're really completely in the dark."

Akio's jaw lifted. It looked like he was going to take affront after all. "Maybe you're right," he said. "But you should have seen him slinking around the dormitory halls before bed last night. He doesn't look like he thinks he should be here, either."

"Have you ever thought that he might just be a quiet sort of person who doesn't socialize much?" Toshi put up a hand to forestall a retort. "Listen, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I just think we should give the guy the benefit of the doubt until we know something for sure. It's just not fair to assume something negative about him. And anyway, if the rumour turns out to be true, well, he won't be here very long, will we? And then we'll probably know." Akio just looked at him, so Toshi flashed a smile. "C'mon. You're all first-years together. Give him a chance, and if you turn out to be right, you can ask me a favour that's really humiliating. How about that?"

Akio couldn't help but laugh at that. "Okay, okay," he said. "You're on. One month, he gets."

Just as Toshi turned to go again, Julie said, "How is Miaki today? I don't see him anywhere."

"Oh, he's off looking for classrooms or something. I'll make him eat breakfast from now on, but I thought I'd go easy on him the first day." Laughing again, Toshi went off to find Kenji.

Hikari watched him thoughtfully, and remarked, "I don't know, Akio, about Kenji Tanaka. Maybe that guy is right. I don't even know who Kenji's father is. Wouldn't we have heard of him if he was important enough to get his son into ISCE? Who is his father?"

"I hadn't heard of him either," Akio admitted absently. "But everyone was talking about it at supper last night. I think someone said his dad's got something to do with government finance." He had other things on his mind already, though, as he cast a questioning glance at Julie. "Who was that guy, anyway?"

"Toshi Nakamura," she said. "We sat at his table last night."

"Nakamura. Then I'm right – you were talking about Miaki Nakamura, weren't you? Toshi's brother or something?"

"Cousin. So you've heard of Miaki, I guess."

"Everyone was talking about him last night," Akio said. He grinned, "Well...when they weren't talking about Kenji Tanaka. But it sounds like the guy is a genius, even for ISCE. And he actually turned them down last year. What's the deal with that?"

Julie and Jin shared a glance, reaffirming their intention not to explain the real reason why Miaki hadn't studied here last year. It was just too sad, and even if he was a little rude, he deserved his privacy, and to grieve in peace.

"We don't know," Julie said. "He was just at our table last night, with Toshi. He hardly said a word."

"It sounds," said Hikari, "like you had quite a table." A quiet bell chimed from somewhere, and she looked up. "That's to tell us we have five minutes to finish breakfast."

All of them, even Akio, hurried to finish, not wanting to be caught and left hungry by mid-morning. But Julie murmured quietly to Jin, "Do you remember, though? Miaki knew Kenji's father's name last night, and it seemed to mean something to him. Maybe he's heard the rumours too. Maybe he knows more about them than the rest of us."

"Maybe," Jin said. "But Toshi's right: we still don't know they're true. I don't think we should believe them till we know for sure. Just think how we'd feel if someone decided something like that about us, and we couldn't defend ourselves."

Breakfast ended over shortly after that, and a new current of excitement swept over the students. Everyone seemed to be putting away their dishes at once, pushing their chairs back, and surging toward the door. Julie glanced at Akio as their own table rose, and commented, "By the way – nice hair. I like the colour."

He grinned. "Thanks. Yours is pretty cool too."

Jin rolled her eyes and smiled to herself, amused. Some things remained the same, no matter what kind of school you went to.

The first-years had all received email this morning instructing them to follow the green fibre-optic signals toward their first class meeting. There were no other coloured signals running along the bands on the walls, though; the second, third, and fourth-years all knew where they were going by now. Those students vanished down various corridors pretty quickly, going to their own class meetings, and soon the first-years were left on their own, following the green flashes along the wall.

The first-year meeting room was large enough to hold the 100 new students, and in fact easily twice that many. Each student felt the urge to gasp as he or she walked through the door. The facing walls, and both the side walls, displayed a fantastic mountain scene on their wall-sized screens. It was as though the room were situated on the edge of a jutting cliff in the Alps, its glass walls revealing glittering, snow covered mountains on all sides with deep, shadowed valleys slashed between them. The scene portrayed the early morning, as it was at ISCE, and the sunlight on the snow was almost blinding.

There was a podium at the front of the room, with an apparent steep drop behind it, and five instructors seemingly standing precariously on the cliff edge. And over to the left, in the farthest seat in the back row, sat Miaki Nakamura, slouched down with one leg lifted and his foot pressed against the back of the seat in front of him. So this was where he had come, instead of going with Toshi to breakfast. More than a few curious eyes turned in his direction, but he acknowledged nobody.

Chapter 2 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 4:32 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 1 - part two
Back to Chapter 1 - part one

The young man's eyes darted upwards again, fixing themselves on her face, before glancing over at Chika. "Yes," he said shortly. "I'm Miaki Nakamura." He volunteered nothing more, apparently determined to finish his meal with the least amount of socializing possible.

Miaki Nakamura. Julie hadn't seen him for more than a year, since he had graduated from her school, a year ahead of her. But everyone had known how brilliant he was, even people in other schools, apparently. Chika didn't seem to take the hint that he wanted to eat in silence.

"I remember hearing about you in my first-year," she said. "Everyone was looking forward to having you here last year."

"And then all they got was me," Toshi said.

"We lived through it," Chika said. "But I remember when I was a first-year, all we heard for most of the year was that Miaki Nakamura was coming next year, and that ISCE would never be the same. In fact, ISCE was lucky to get him, instead of the other way around. So what happened, Miaki? What were you up to last year?"

He didn't reply. But he had stopped eating, hands on the table, his fork in one and his knife in the other. Toshi laughed, a bit half-heartedly, and said, "Oh, this and that. He's here now, which is all that matters – "

"Well, it must have been something important," Chika persisted. "Who actually turns down a scholarship to ISCE? I think you'd be the first person who ever did that, Miaki. So it must have been really something, that was more important than ISCE – "

Miaki stood up. He placed his fork and knife slowly and carefully on his plate, turned on his heel, and walked away, toward the cafeteria door. Not once even looking at Chika or anyone else at the table.

Julie remarked thoughtfully, "That's a bit...weird. I don't remember him being like that, at school. I remember him laughing a lot. That's why I didn't recognize him at first. Maybe he just got here and he's tired..."

Chika said, "No, that was just plain rude. If he thinks he can treat people that way just because he's so brilliant, he's going to get a big surprise here."

Toshi watched his cousin go, then turned back to Chika. "That's not really it," he said uncomfortably.

"ISCE might be an elite school," Chika continued firmly, "but there's not much room for that sort of snobbery."

"Really, Chika, it's not snobbery," Toshi said. "That's not it at all."

"Then what is it? Does he even want to be here? It doesn't look like it. If he doesn't want to be here, he should just leave. Go back to wherever he was last year."

"No!" It came out more loudly than Toshi had intended it. He bit his lip as he realized that students from other tables were starting to look over to their table. All trace of his former light manner had vanished. His bright blue eyes were shadowed as he muttered, "You don't get it. You don't want him to go back to where he was last year. Anything but that."

Even Chika was stopped in her tracks at the sudden change in his expression. The four of them stared at Toshi as he stared in turn, troubled, down at his plate.

"So..." Kenji hesitated. "Where was he, then? Last year?"

"Recovering," Toshi said tightly. "It happened right after he graduated. His father – my uncle – wasn't at the grad ceremony. He went home and found his father lying on the floor by his computer, wearing all his virtual reality equipment. He was dead. Died while he was in the VR simulation. And Miaki thinks...well, anyway. He was dead, and Miaki...had a hard time."

"I can just imagine," Kenji said faintly. "If I found my father that way...I don't know what I'd do."

"That's awful," Julie said. "No wonder he was so quiet."

Jin murmured, "Maybe we should have found a different table and not bothered you."

"No, that's okay," Toshi shook his head. "It doesn't make sense for him to try to avoid being with anybody, or he might as well not be here, like Chika said. He's here to get going with his life again. So he's going to end up sitting at the table with people in the cafeteria. That's just part of the deal. But...but I do have a favour to ask all of you, now that you know."

"Go ahead," prompted Julie when he paused.

"Well, it's just – he's trying to get over it. It was probably a bad idea for me to tell you what happened, but I didn't want you to think he was just being snarly for no reason. But – but please don't tell anyone else, okay? If he thought everyone else knew what had happened, I think he'd leave ISCE, and then I don't know where he'd go, or what he'd do. I want him to stay here, where I can keep an eye on him. I really should have kept my mouth shut, and I'm going to from now on. Please don't tell anyone else about this."

"Of course we won't," said Jin. She glanced at Julie, who nodded her agreement.

"And I won't ask him so many questions next time," Chika said.

"I won't say anything either," Kenji volunteered.

"Good. Thanks. I appreciate it. Now I should go find him, and make sure he's okay." Toshi pushed his chair back, and then regarded the three first-years with a bit of his former good humour. "By the way. When you're done with your meal and dishes, you just shove them back into that space under the table, right in front of you." He was putting away his own dishes as he spoke. "When you do that, the little opening closes, and everything is taken care of. We don't know if everything de-materializes, or if there's an actual washer under there, but there will be clean dishes under there next time someone sits down. That's another non-official project that ISCE students work on: to find out what goes on under there. We think maybe the third-years get taught how it works – "

"No we don't," said Chika.

" – but they never tell." Toshi flashed Chika a quick grin, and then he and the grin were gone, vanished across the room and quickly through the door.

"Well," Chika said. "That was quite an introduction to life at ISCE, wasn't it?"

* * * * *

The room was unpopulated and dimly lit, but all the equipment was still visible and identifiable. The terminals and ports in their cubicles separated by plexiglass; the chairs; and most especially the VR goggles, gloves, and boots in their little niches under the terminals. That equipment wasn't actually visible, since the little lamps above each terminal cast shadows over the niches. But he knew they were there.

He walked down the row, behind the chairs, till he reached the eighth terminal, the last one. Reaching into the niches he found the goggles and pulled them out, turning them over and over in his hands. They were silver right now, but the students would be able to tweak them into preferred colours tomorrow, when they began their advanced VR studies.

Those other goggles had been green.

His hands stopped, gripping tightly.

"Father," he whispered, "whoever did it to you, I swear I'll find them. And when I find them..."

He knew what he would do. But for some reason, he couldn't make himself say it. He stared at the goggles in his hands, the words blocked in his throat.

"You don't get your log-in password till tomorrow," said a voice from the doorway. "So maybe you should just go back to your room and get ready for bed."

Toshi was leaning against the side of the door, bare arms folded casually across his chest, one leg straight and the other bent, the picture of cool relaxation. He stood entirely in shadow, but stray light photons seemed to catch gold sparks in his hair and blue glints in his eyes.

"I just thought I'd check out the equipment before we get started," Miaki said.

"I know. I thought you would. Which is why I came here first."

The two cousins regarded each other, Toshi from his shadows, and Miaki with his hands illuminated by the terminal lamp, but other shadows cast up onto his face and eyes from his own lower jaw and cheekbones. Bizarrely, the red streaks on his cheeks seemed to glow as though he had set bands of fire into his face.

Toshi looked away. "Are you absolutely sure?" he asked quietly. "Are you really going to try?"

"Yes," Miaki said. Then he said abruptly, "You told them why I left, didn't you?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, I just sort of blurted it. I won't do it again. I promise. And I made them promise not to tell anyone else. I hope they're better at keeping their mouths shut than I am."

Miaki gave a little shrug, and stuffed the goggles back into their niche. "You're right, I should really go to bed," he said.

He walked back down the row of terminals, toward the door. He wore a bandana around his neck, as Toshi did, except that his was blue. So was the one wrapped twice around his right wrist. Both of them moved in and out of the light as Miaki passed each terminal.

When he reached Toshi in the doorway, he stopped partway through. Toshi could see his profile for a moment, as still as death, and then Miaki's dark eyes turned and fixed on him.

"Don't tell anyone else," Miaki said.

"Or...?"

A quirk of the lips, barely perceptible. "Or nothing, I guess. As if I could do anything to you. Just don't tell anyone else."

"I won't," Toshi said.

Then Miaki was gone into the darkness of the corridor. Toshi leaned a moment longer against the doorframe, his eyes moving up and down the row of terminals, with their lamps and their chairs and those damn VR goggles.

At last he stirred, straightened up, and followed his cousin into the darkness.

Chapter 2 - part one
- posted by Phyl @ 4:10 PM 0 comments

 
Chapter 1
Some people called it the "Ice Palace," a frivolous and entirely inaccurate nickname, albeit cute and friendly to those who marvelled at its reputation but had never been there. Others, given its hidden location and the security that surrounded it, called it the "Ice Fortress," though not everyone approved of the warlike sound of that name. Still others chose the minority pronunciation of the institution's acronym, "ish," and made up other names, but those rarely caught on. (Very few people made up names based on "isk," another possible pronunciation.)

None of these nicknames actually fit the real acronym, and certainly none of them remotely captured the real nature, scope, and purpose of the place. There was far more to this institution than most people could begin to imagine. That, of course, was part of the fantasy that made them want to speculate.

Whatever short name one ended up giving it, the Institute for Space and Cyber Exploration – ISCE – was the one place that all serious cyber students and astronaut hopefuls aspired to, more than any other institution on earth or the moon. It was telling that the further along the actual students got in their four-year study program there, the more likely they were simply to call the place "ISCE" (pronounced "ICE"), and be done with it. What this signified about the attitudes and even the psyches of these students, none of them tended to divulge. Most probably didn't even think to analyze what it meant; they were too busy pursuing their taxing and exciting studies.

First impressions, though, suggested none of the legendary, enigmatic names. Julie and Jin stood in the doorway of the student cafeteria, and viewed the large, busy room with not a little disappointment.

"It sort of looks," Julie said at last, "like an airport lounge."

An airport lounge, or even a drinking lounge attached to some posh restaurant. There was no serving line with its row of cooks spooning portions onto plates; instead, there were only circular tables, each one with six very comfortable leather-upholstered chairs around it. On each table was a lamp that cast soft, nonintrusive light, and the ceiling was low, with recessed lighting, that bestowed a dim, intimate atmosphere despite the size of the room.

Of course, the quiet intimacy of the room should have been rather offset by the spectacular scene that took up the entire cafeteria wall facing the two girls: a wide view of the curve of Mars, with at least two moons moving slowly around it. The entire wall must be a screen, receiving a feed from one of the many satellites observing the red planet, in preparation for the imminent colonization work.

Yet even this scene contributed to the calm, almost elegant atmosphere. The deep darkness of space beyond the planet did nothing to lighten the room, while the reddish light of the planet itself seemed to blend with the soft lighting from the tables and the hidden lights in the ceiling.

Posh restaurant lounge, or perhaps a spaceport lounge reserved for the highest dignitaries of earth. But nothing suggesting a fortress, or even a palace. And nothing that hinted at whether they were above- or below-ground, which was one of the mysteries about the place that no ICSE student had yet solved.

"Well," said Jin. "It looks like we'll have to search to find a place to sit."

They had been on the last incoming shuttle of the day, and it looked like they were among the last to arrive for the evening meal, too. They had met for the first time on the shuttle, and had decided to look for their dormitory rooms before heading for the cafeteria. They seemed to share a scepticism about whether their luggage would really arrive safely in their rooms without them, so they took the quick detour just to make sure.

Sure enough, the luggage was already in place in their rooms, though they had no idea how it had actually gotten from the cargo hold of the shuttle to the correct dorm location. But once they had reassured themselves (and discovered that there was only one room separating them), Julie and Jin went looking for the cafeteria. That search, too, went very smoothly, since all they had to do was speak the word "cafeteria" into a speaker on the wall, and the red signals moving ahead of them on a fibre optic band along the wall guided them all the way there.

But most of the tables had already filled up. It was obvious who the returning students were: there were several groups of tables full of students greeting each other, laughing, telling the stories of how they spent their summers, crossing to each other's tables as they recognized familiar faces. New students were more subdued, collecting together at more quiet tables, casting nervous and surreptitious glances at the noisier tables, wondering how long it would be until they were equally comfortable.

"Doesn't look promising," said Julie, but then Jin touched her arm and pointed.

"There," she said. "There are only two people at that one."

She led the way to a table far off to the right, near the wall at that end of the room. The two girls made quite a contrast. Jin, her long black hair swinging down her back, was so short that Julie could look over her head at the table as they approached, even though the shorter girl held herself to her fullest height. Jin dressed fairly conventionally, considering her age and the type of students who pursued the courses that were taught here: she wore a simple black skirt and white shirt.

Julie, on the other hand, was not only taller but dressed more in keeping with her peers: purple tights and a top, or maybe a tunic, that looked like it was either made of feathers or diaphonous strips of cloth. They shimmered in all colours as she walked. Her black hair was adorned with streaks of purple that looked like lightning bolts. The purple matched her violet eyes.

She and Jin walked toward the far table, and saw that there were two guys sitting there, half turned away from the rest of the room.

The blond guy looked up as they approached. Before he could say anything, Jin pushed her glasses higher up on her nose and said, "Do you mind if we join you here?"

"Not at all," the blond guy smiled. His darker-haired companion didn't look up.

Jin took a seat that allowed her and Julie to sit together with one seat on each side between them and the two young men. That way, each grouping could maintain a bit of privacy if they wanted to.

The blond guy didn't seem to want to, though. He looked across the table, the soft light glinting from his short, spiky hair, and said, "Hi. I'm Toshi. I can see that you're first-years, and I think this is your first time in the cafeteria. Am I right?"

"How could you tell?" Julie wondered. She glanced at his companion and paused. He looked familiar, for some reason. He kept his head lowered, his dark brown hair hanging over his eyes. But he had a couple of red pointed stripes across his right cheek, and they were really ringing some bells in her mind.

Toshi said, "You have that look of people trying to figure out where the food comes from around here. Or," he added, looking at Jin, "you did have that look."

She seemed already to have figured it out. There were plates set into recesses under the table edge in front of each person. Jin took hers out and set it in the center of the table, under the lamp, which was set into a low arch. There were small buttons on the arch, as well as a little screen, and she peered at them speculatively.

"Press 'M' for 'Menu'," Toshi said. "You can get quite a selection, and really tweak things the way you like. 'D' brings up the menu for drinks. You don't have to worry about spilling anything if you order a drink and you've forgotten you put a plate under instead or a glass or a cup. It can tell when you don't have the right dishes."

"What is 'S" for?" Jin wondered.

Toshi grinned impishly. "It's for 'sweet stuff'. My favorite category."

Jin pressed a couple of buttons, and presto! A meal of fish and vegetables appeared like magic on her plate.

"That," said Julie, "is awesome."

"There aren't many places in the world that have these gadgets," said Toshi, "but ISCE is one of them. Nothing but the best, here."

Julie put her own plate under the lamp, and made a couple of selections. "Awesome," she repeated, as the food appeared from nowhere. "How do they do it?"

"We don't know," Toshi said. "It's one of the ongoing non-secret secret projects in the student body, trying to crack the code. But nobody's figured it out yet, as far as I know. There's a rumour going around that you finally learn how, in fourth year. But nobody in fourth year will ever admit it."

"What year are you in?" Julie asked.

"Second. And my cousin Miaki, here, is first-year like you." Toshi nudged his companion, who merely glanced up and raised an eyebrow at him.

"My name is Jin," said the shorter girl.

"And I'm Julie," said Julie. "Sorry, I was just so interested in how this thing works."

"No problem." Toshi adjusted the red bandana around his neck. "It's pretty easy to get overwhelmed by this place at first. It doesn't matter how hi-tech your previous school was, it's not going to be anything like ISCE."

"Um, excuse me?" came another voice. A young man with flaming auburn hair edged up to the table, as though trying to be unobtrusive.

A pretty hard job, with that hair, Julie thought. She shoved her own hair off her face, to get a better look.

"The tables all seem to be full," said the newcomer. "Can I...sit here?"

"You can sit anywhere you want," Toshi said. He leaned back in his chair, straightening his sleeveless black vest, seeming to enjoy his duties as host. "Have a seat and I'll show you how to get your meal."

"Oh, I know how to do that," said the young man, sitting down. "My dad showed me – "He glanced up and then away again. "Anyway. I know how it works. Thanks."

Toshi opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment they were joined by yet another newcomer. A tall, olive-skinned young woman, dressed all in black, with black spiky hair and a couple of orange stripes down her left cheek, came to the table and sat herself down without the tentative permission-asking of the first-years.

"Hello, Toshi," she said. "Good to see you. How was your summer?" She pulled out a plate, waited for the red-haired guy to finish, then stuck the plate under the lamp, punching buttons perfunctorily.

"Chika," said Toshi. "Nice to see you too. I'm helping some of our first-years get acquainted with the technical joys of the cafeteria. My new friends, this is Chika Martinez, one of our illustrious third-years. And Chika, this is Julie, that's Jin, this is my cousin Miaki, and that's – what's your name?"

The red-haired guy looked up suddenly, as though startled. "Oh. I'm Kenji Tanaka," he said, bowing slightly. "Nice to meet you. All of you."

For the first time, Toshi's companion spoke, looking up sharply. "Kenji Tanaka?" he said. "Are you related to Kazuo Tanaka?" Julie saw that the pointed red stripes were on both his cheeks. He looked more familiar than ever, but she couldn't quite remember why.

Kenji hesitated, and then shrugged slightly, ruefully. "Yes," he said. "He's my father."

"I see," said Toshi's cousin. His dark eyes stared unblinkingly for a few seconds longer, and then he returned his attention to his plate, his hair falling over his eyes again. His hair glinted momentarily with reddish sparks, perhaps tinged that color by the light of Mars, looming on the wall screen behind him.

Chika, in her turn, was making connections of her own. "Your cousin, you said, Toshi? Is this who I think it is? Is this – "

"Miaki Nakamura!" Julie exclaimed, finally remembering.

Chapter 1 - part two
- posted by Phyl @ 3:58 PM 0 comments

 
Changing Gears here
Okay, I never did do the NaNo last year, because I got so furious about the stolen American election that I dropped the NaNo and started writing my essays on "How Fundamentalists Think." (Click on my name to get my list of blogs, and find the ExFundie blog.)

But I did finish the NaNo this year, and I'm going to post it for some friends to read. So, here we go!
- posted by Phyl @ 3:48 PM 0 comments