The Boy Who Fell from the Sky, Jule Owen [classic romance novels txt] 📗

far wall of his room, a message materialises in front of him. An advert for security software: “Act quickly to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime offer!”

“Accept,” Mathew says, smiling. “Who am I today?” 

“You’re Difficult Child – I’m Sleeper. I have news.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Ithaca is unhackable. I know this will not especially impress you, but it impresses me. At first, I thought there wasn’t even a network there. There is a fairly normal one, however, and something else, something beyond any kind of technology I’ve ever seen; and it’s all rolled in a kind of wrapper like an opaque, slick, wet ball. Once you think you have a handle on it, it slips through your fingers, but not in any brutal kind of way. It’s a curious thing. It’s like it smiles at you before it goes. It’s way beyond me. I’d like to get some other friends to check it out. Are you okay with that?”

“Go for it,” Mathew says.  

He pings Clara. “Back home,” he says.

“How was it?”

“Horrible.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not much. It just makes me feel terrible. Like I’m no longer in control of myself.”

“You never were.”

“I guess. I have news about our friend. Can you come over tomorrow?”

“Yes, for a short while.”

Later, Mathew and Hoshi are sitting in the kitchen watching the Canvas. They have eaten. A newsreader is announcing that the government is investigating plans to ban the Blackweb. 

His mother studies him and says, “I don’t want to know what you’re up to. I don’t want you to explain, but please be careful.” She rises slowly. “I’m exhausted. I’m going to have an early night for once.” She leaves the room and climbs the stairs slowly, wearily. 

While Leibniz is cleaning around him, a written message comes through on his Lenz. It’s from an unknown sender. It says: 

Don’t believe everything you hear. Trust what you know. Remember the Nexus is physically in the control of the SIS. The Blackweb is not. Learn to use quantum key distribution. Photons generate an encryption key and anyone intercepting the key touches the photons. They can’t find you without telling you they are searching for you. Work with people you trust to create a maze to play in. They will never find you.

“Who is this?” Mathew messages back. 

But there is no response.

15 Letting Go the Dragons

DAY SEVEN: Sunday, 28 November 2055, London

Mathew wakes early and lies awake pondering the dragons and Project Yinglong. Still in his bedclothes, he sits at his desk and works on some fixes to align with Eva’s code base. Building a little routine, he addresses the bulk of differences in syntax and edits the rest by hand. It’s easier than he anticipated. He’s decided to upload an updated version of the dragons’ code base to Eva’s world, so the dragons can grow, breed, and evolve.

His mother says her goodbyes through the door.

“Is O’Malley in there with you?”

“Yes, he’s here.” 

“Don’t let him out,” she says.

“I won’t!” he replies with slightly less conviction than he used to have.

After breakfast, he checks into the school register and browses through the modules he has planned to complete, but he doesn’t have any enthusiasm for it. Wandering aimlessly, he finds himself in the Darkroom and logs on to the Blackweb, where he finds Eva present and sends her a message. 

“Can you talk?”

Her armchair materialises in the Darkroom. She has her legs curled up in it and appears as comfortable as O’Malley does in his bed upstairs. 

“How’s the robot soldier rally going?” he asks.

“They’ve taken their sabre rattling on tour. It’s in St Petersburg now. TV’s still full of it, though. Good news is my dad has gone. He’s a propagandist or journalist, take your pick, for one of our state-sponsored channels. He’s gone to cover the circus, and I’m home alone.” 

“Great! Because the dragons are ready to be released.”

“Good to know. Your world awaits you.” 

“Our government is threatening to close the Blackweb.”

“Yes, ours too. But it’s all talk.”

“Yes, you said so last night.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Quantum key distribution. Remember?”

“I know it’s one of the reasons they’re going to have trouble shutting us down, but I didn’t message you last night.”

“Someone did. It came through on the Blackweb as an anonymous message. I thought it was you.”

“Nope.”  

“That’s odd.” 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know who else it could be.” He thinks of his hacker friend. “Or maybe I do . . .”

“It could be a scatter message from some of the people on Psychopomp or MUUT reassuring their user base. They might be worried people will be frightened off the service. There are some things you should be doing, if you don’t know already, to set traps around your connection and also to jump to random locations. I’ve virtualised all my data and hidden it dispersed in different places. The virtual worlds I’ll create for you will be literally no place. But the first one is set up, so we should go.”

“If you give me access, I’ll upload the Yinglong code.”

“Doing so now. Get your bits done and then meet me here in five minutes. I’ve established some additional security. It represents itself visually to you, and I want to show you how to get through it.”

He receives a location and then an invitation to a holosession and pulls on his skullcap. He doesn’t sit, having a notion this session will be interactive. 

After a few moments of darkness, foliage begins to grow all around him. A single leaf at first sprouts from the Darkroom floor, curling upwards on a thickening stem, then others grow from the ceiling, crawling across the back wall. He has to move his foot as tendrils grasp at his ankle. Moving through the spreading green, he brushes leaves and branches from his face. Then before him is a large wooden door at the top of some grey steps in a high stone wall. The door has a round rusted iron handle. He tries to open it, but it’s locked. 

“You need to do this.” Eva is suddenly beside him: a diminutive person, her head barely reaches his shoulder. He likes that she hasn’t chosen to appear as an avatar. Or perhaps she has. He supposes he wouldn’t know. She runs her hand along the wall. “Three across, fourteen down.”

“Pi.”

She smiles. “We’ll keep changing it.” 

The brick comes loose. She retrieves a large key. 

“There’s no keyhole,” he says.

She pulls a knife from a belt around her waist he hasn’t noticed before. 

“You have one too,” she says. 

He looks down at his waist. So he has.

She cuts her finger and smears a symbol on the door. It’s the Greek letter gamma. “Again, we’ll change it regularly.”

A lock appears. 

“How did you do that?” he says.

“It’s reading my bioID.”

“You got those too, huh?”

“We’ve had them for ages. There were never any civil liberties to speak of in Russia, remember.” 

“I suppose not.” 

“I’ll enable it for you too, so you can come in on your own, anytime you like. We’ll need to exchange a bit of data after this session.”

Eva puts the key in the lock, and the door swings open. 

They step into a large open space. A fertile grassland spreads before them, spotted with moss-covered granite rocks, rolling to mountains, skirted by forests. It is a lush alpine world.

“This is amazing, Eva,” Mathew says. 

They start to walk. 

“The dragons are over there,” Eva says, pointing. 

He sees two crates, the sort used to transport animals, with wooden plank sides and bars at the front. As they approach, he spots the dragons, larger and wilder than the ones he has in the house. They’re restless in the confined space and come to the front of their crates, biting at the bars. 

“You should let them go,” Eva says. 

“Yes.” Mathew climbs onto one of the crates, the one housing the female, and raises the bars. She comes crashing towards them, stretching her wings, breathing fire. The grass in front of her singes black. In this world her actions do have consequences. Mathew is grateful it’s only his virtual body that’s vulnerable to harm. The female looks back toward her mate and lets go a tinnitus-inducing screech.  

Mathew climbs onto the second crate and frees the male. In keeping with his programming, the second dragon leaves the crate more cautiously, sniffing at the unfamiliar grass, and spooking when Mathew jumps off the box. 

The two dragons go to one another, bashing heads and wrapping necks. The female surveys acres of sky. She beats her wings and lifts off, whirling around, climbing higher and higher above their heads, catching thermals. The little male clumsily follows after her. 

They watch for a while as the dragons fly into the distance, their bodies illuminating periodically with fire. 

“I think you may have a few forest fires on your hands,” Mathew says. 

Eva shrugs. “Hey, it’s your world,” she says. Then, turning and nodding in the direction of the forest behind them, she says, “I built you a hut, in case you wanted to come in here and explore and watch them for real, as it were, and stay for a while. There’s real weather in this world, you know, and it’s not always nice. Of course, you may prefer to watch them on your Paper.” 

She leads the way to a little copse. Sheltered amongst the trees is a small wooden house. They go inside. It’s furnished rustically, with a log fire blazing in a wood burner, a rug on a rough wood floor, and a rocking chair with a blanket. 

“It’s a Russian hunting lodge,” she says. 

“I love it,” Mathew says. “Thank you, Eva.” 

“It’s the only house in any of my worlds. If you go through this door here, there’s a shortcut back to reality.”

He follows her through and finds himself back in the Darkroom, facing her in her armchair. 

“Well, that was fun!” she says. “I’d better run. Let’s keep in touch. If you want to discuss the world, or the dragons, or anything else, let me know.”

“I will, for sure.” 

At four o’clock he’s standing at his bedroom window. Clara’s car makes its appearance in spite of the newly erected roadblocks, and he wonders if she’s chipped too by now. 

Mr Lestrange does not appear in his bay window. He thinks about what Wooden Soldier / No Right Turn / Sleeper said about Lestrange’s home network being impenetrable and hopes his hacker friends are having some luck. 

Mathew turns his gaze back to the road. Clara is staring right at him. She holds up her hand, half a salute, half a solidarity wave, and he mimics her gesture. She smiles and he smiles back, and then she disappears. 

Automatically, he turns from the window and runs down the stairs. Clara’s car is just turning out of the street. 

Mathew steps over to the front door of the house next door. There is no bell, so he knocks and waits. Time passes. The door remains closed. He knocks again, louder. The door stays firmly shut in the sphynx-like house. 

He looks at the window. The curtains are drawn. He’s never noticed them drawn before, but then he’s never really paid attention. He tries one last time. 

“Mr Lestrange!” he says loudly to the unresponsive door.