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Authors: Richard Bard
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Shamer investigating?
His avatar respawned and he dove into the game with a
vengeance, his thoughts shooting, blasting, and shredding anyone in sight.
The sooner the game was over, the sooner he’d get answers.
***
In the control room, Jiaolong sat
back in his Captain Kirk chair and watched the action on the primary wall screen.
Lin stood beside him while Zhin and Min watched from his other side. Pak and
his engineers were at their consoles.
“He’s doing much better,” Pak said.
“But nothing close to what he’s done in the past,” Zhin
added. “He hasn’t earned the robotic swarm perk once.”
Jiaolong scratched his chin. After a moment he turned to Pak
and said, “You’re certain there’s no root-level activity?”
Pak studied the data streaming on several open windows on
his monitor, then glanced toward the engineers seated on either side of him.
They shook their heads. Pak turned toward Jiaolong. “Still no breach.”
What was different now? Jiaolong wondered. In every previous
instance that TurboHacker had been engaged in the game, Pak’s team had
encountered evidence of his incursions. The occurrences had been seemingly
random, and none had resulted in any apparent damage to the program. But that had
only served to magnify Jiaolong’s concern. What was Marshall up to? More
importantly, how was he doing it? Despite the world-class expertise in this
room, every effort to discover TurboHacker’s back door had turned up nothing. Plus,
the game’s subliminal inquiry program, which had performed beyond Jiaolong’s
expectations with every other player, had failed to yield a single result with the
American’s game play from home. They hadn’t even learned his first pet’s name,
much less the passwords to the top-secret networks he was contracted to protect
as part of his consulting business. So the programmers had created a more
aggressive program, designed to work with the modified headset TurboHacker now
wore. It would not only glean his secrets, it would also track the origin of
any incursion attempts. They hadn’t activated those features yet. They planned
to wait until tonight’s tournament, when the American’s consciousness would be distracted
by his high-level opponents.
But the man’s poor performance in the practice sessions angered
Jiaolong. Even in the face of threats toward the man’s wife, TurboHacker
continued to toy with him.
He pounded the armrest with his fists.
Lin lay her hand over his, brushing it gently. He exhaled. She’s
right . Frustration is a waste of energy. One way or another, we’ll get
the truth out of the American . If not now, then certainly when they
returned to the village. Marshall wouldn’t last long under Min’s interrogation.
On the screen, Marshall’s avatar died in an ambush between
two other players. Jiaolong shook his head. The ambush had been poorly staged.
The TurboHacker he’d played against in the past would’ve seen right through it.
He turned toward a screen with a close-up view of Marshall’s pod. The man
appeared fully engaged by the game. Why, then, was his performance so poor? It
was as if he was...
An entirely different person?
The muscles at the back of his neck tightened and he sat
straighter in his chair.
“Activate the inquiry routine.”
Chapter 10
Hong Kong
T HE
GAME WAS NEARLY OVER when Marshall felt a tickle at the back of his
scalp. The new sensation interrupted his immersion in the action, reminding him
of the technological leap Jiaolong’s people had perfected to make the brain-to-machine
interface so seamless. It was truly astounding. But the secrecy? The
abductions? This was about far more than the game. But what? Thought control?
Could that work two ways? Was there such a thing as a computer virus or worm
that could be planted in a human brain? Was that what this was all about—some
sort of brainwashing? He didn’t think so. No, it had to be something simpler
than that, something Alex had apparently
His avatar respawned and he dove into the game with a
vengeance, his thoughts shooting, blasting, and shredding anyone in sight.
The sooner the game was over, the sooner he’d get answers.
***
In the control room, Jiaolong sat
back in his Captain Kirk chair and watched the action on the primary wall screen.
Lin stood beside him while Zhin and Min watched from his other side. Pak and
his engineers were at their consoles.
“He’s doing much better,” Pak said.
“But nothing close to what he’s done in the past,” Zhin
added. “He hasn’t earned the robotic swarm perk once.”
Jiaolong scratched his chin. After a moment he turned to Pak
and said, “You’re certain there’s no root-level activity?”
Pak studied the data streaming on several open windows on
his monitor, then glanced toward the engineers seated on either side of him.
They shook their heads. Pak turned toward Jiaolong. “Still no breach.”
What was different now? Jiaolong wondered. In every previous
instance that TurboHacker had been engaged in the game, Pak’s team had
encountered evidence of his incursions. The occurrences had been seemingly
random, and none had resulted in any apparent damage to the program. But that had
only served to magnify Jiaolong’s concern. What was Marshall up to? More
importantly, how was he doing it? Despite the world-class expertise in this
room, every effort to discover TurboHacker’s back door had turned up nothing. Plus,
the game’s subliminal inquiry program, which had performed beyond Jiaolong’s
expectations with every other player, had failed to yield a single result with the
American’s game play from home. They hadn’t even learned his first pet’s name,
much less the passwords to the top-secret networks he was contracted to protect
as part of his consulting business. So the programmers had created a more
aggressive program, designed to work with the modified headset TurboHacker now
wore. It would not only glean his secrets, it would also track the origin of
any incursion attempts. They hadn’t activated those features yet. They planned
to wait until tonight’s tournament, when the American’s consciousness would be distracted
by his high-level opponents.
But the man’s poor performance in the practice sessions angered
Jiaolong. Even in the face of threats toward the man’s wife, TurboHacker
continued to toy with him.
He pounded the armrest with his fists.
Lin lay her hand over his, brushing it gently. He exhaled. She’s
right . Frustration is a waste of energy. One way or another, we’ll get
the truth out of the American . If not now, then certainly when they
returned to the village. Marshall wouldn’t last long under Min’s interrogation.
On the screen, Marshall’s avatar died in an ambush between
two other players. Jiaolong shook his head. The ambush had been poorly staged.
The TurboHacker he’d played against in the past would’ve seen right through it.
He turned toward a screen with a close-up view of Marshall’s pod. The man
appeared fully engaged by the game. Why, then, was his performance so poor? It
was as if he was...
An entirely different person?
The muscles at the back of his neck tightened and he sat
straighter in his chair.
“Activate the inquiry routine.”
Chapter 10
Hong Kong
T HE
GAME WAS NEARLY OVER when Marshall felt a tickle at the back of his
scalp. The new sensation interrupted his immersion in the action, reminding him
of the technological leap Jiaolong’s people had perfected to make the brain-to-machine
interface so seamless. It was truly astounding. But the secrecy? The
abductions? This was about far more than the game. But what? Thought control?
Could that work two ways? Was there such a thing as a computer virus or worm
that could be planted in a human brain? Was that what this was all about—some
sort of brainwashing? He didn’t think so. No, it had to be something simpler
than that, something Alex had apparently
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