Carbon City could feel him touching it. Cal knew this as he surfed its networks, delved into its grid. To him the city was a maze of three-dimensional cubes and grid patterns with information as its inhabitants-names, addresses, numbers. The people that owned them were insubstantial, inconsequential to him. Cal wanted their information, not them. He wanted their souls, so to speak.
Cal was a hacker. He rode the Web like a ghost, seeking out targets. He was like a hunter, he told himself, with accounts as his prey, but he had rules. He didn’t take from those who could afford it, and made sure he left no trace. He wasn’t even after the money-just the information. The people who hired him wanted the money. He was just their supplier. No one ever knew he was there-except for the city. And it felt his touch.
Cal tried not to be too intrusive. I’m just poking around, he thought defensively, while he looked. He circled his targets carefully, sizing up their terrain, looking for their weakest points of entry. It’s like a game, he thoght. If I can’t get in, you win. But if I do, then I win. Fair’s fair, right? The city never answered, but he knew it could hear him, sense his intentions.
“I get worried,” his girlfriend and roommate, Alyssa, said after his latest dive. “You act like the city’s alive. It’s just a place.”
“I know that.” Cal took his headset off. “But it’s got layers and levels that most normals don’t see. To them it is just a place. But to someone like me, it’s a whole other world-a universe.”
“And you’re it’s god?” Alyssa skeptically asked.
Cal shook his head. “Hardly. I’m just a guy, who knows how to dive deeper than most. If there’s a god down there, I haven’t seen him.”
“What would happen if you did?” Alyssa asked. “What if it decided it didn’t want you there?”
”Haven’t found out yet.” Cal put the headset back on. “Mind if I get back to work now?”
Alyssa sighed. Sometimes she wondered why she stayed. The money wasn’t the reason. Cal’s personality certainly wasn’t. She could have left a long time ago, but she stayed. She wasn’t sure why. Loyalty, love, seeing something in him that used to be there but wasn’t anymore? Maybe someday he’d get tired of it, come back to the real world. Until then, she would watch him dive, and wait…
Cal found a new target. A whale of an account, hidden behind fake addresses. It was tempting, and for a moment he wondered if it might have been a trap. It had back doors that had been left unguarded, so he opened one and went in.
Numbers streamed around him, dancing in a symphony of light and particles. Cal felt like hooting when he saw what was there. Then he started picking, like the kid in the proverbial candy store, grabbing goodies from the shelves. This is too easy, he thought.
Something grabbed at him from behind. It felt like claws, tearing at him. A security program, lurking in one of his “prizes” that had sprung to life. I knew it, he thought, as he fought to free himself. Way too easy…he blacked out, his world shutting down like a TV being turned off.
Cal blinked. He was lying on the futon sofa in his living room, Alyssa sitting over him, her expression turning from worry to relief as he opened his eyes.
“What happened?” he asked. “I remember a security program grabbing at me…”
“You just went limp in your chair.” Alyssa helped him sit up as she gave him a beer from the fridge in the kitchen. “At first I thought you were dead. It scared me to death. I did the only thing I could, I unhooked you. You’re completely unplugged now.”
“Yeah, I can feel it.” It was true, he couldn’t feel Carbon City in his brain anymore. He looked at his headset, sitting on the coffee table. “Damn. I should have been prepared. Next time…”
Alyssa looked at him. “Next time? I thought you’d died. I don’t want there to be a next time.”
Cal looked back at her. “It’s what I do,” he started to say, but the words died in his mouth. Finally, he added, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll…take a break. I can get a straight job, be one of the normies for a while. After that…I guess we’ll wait and see.”
Alyssa looked gratefully at him. “I’ve been waiting to hear that for a long time. Yea, let’s just…wait and see, okay?”
Cal nodded. The city had felt him, he realized, and reached out to touch him back. Now that he knew how it felt, he wasn't sure he wanted to back to diving.
Maybe it was time fro the two of them to start living.
THE END