Cyber Way by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, High Tech, Fiction
ISBN: 9781857230109
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 1992-05-27T23:00:00+00:00

"Pleasant. Cushiony and warm. It tingles the way your foot does when it goes to sleep, only it was not in any way irritating or painful. I wonder. If you hadn't stopped me, if you had cut the cable after I had entered fully, would I have been trapped in there, wherever there is? Or would I have ended up on the other side of the wall when the connection was broken? That would have been awkward." He nodded at the monitor. "That's an exterior wall. The only thing on the other side is a thirty-story drop."

"Well, if it don't want to be shut down, maybe we can figure it out some. Anyone can see that it's real pretty, and it's fun to stick your hand in. What else is it good for?"

"To search for something without looking," Ooljee murmured. "That is what the Hand-Trembling ceremony is about. That's exactly what we did."

"Lay off the superstition," Moody snapped. He was frightened but not intimidated. Vernon Moody hadn't been intimidated since he was eleven years old. "We've got ourselves an extranormal spatial manifestation generated by the Kettrick template. It's an outgrowth of a standard mol-lyweb and it can be terminated the same way. The chant you used, the hand trembling? Aural and visual stimuli. Nothing mystical about that. There are plenty of contem-

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Hlan Dean Foster

porary programs that rely on those for activation." He concentrated on the zenat and on what he knew of suggestion-intensive webwork, refusing to think about Holy People or old gods.

"Forget for now how the template originated, how old it is or how it came to be. Let's deal with what we have. You say this hand-trembling ritual of yours is designed to help search for something without looking. Well, we've found something. You thought it might be some kind of database. Maybe it is. It just has a little more depth than what we're used to.

"If you don't find what you're looking for, you're supposed to hear this Gila Monster's voice. Okay. Ask it something. Try accessing verbally. If it was set up in Navaho, then I imagine that's what it'll respond to."

Ooljee hesitated, showing mat he had yet to contemplate this line of thinking. "How do I know what to ask it?"

"Ask it anything. Say hello, curse it, insult its origins. Either nothing will happen or something will."

"Sure. It responded to the chant, didn't it?"

The chant he'd borrowed from the library, via a child's spinner. It would be all right, he was sure. He had to be sure or he couldn't do it. What did they have to lose, so long as he didn't put his arm back through the painting? Though the sensation had not been unpleasant. It had almost been...

Moody's tone was sharp. "You're drifting, my friend."

Ooljee started to argue, then nodded slowly. He stared at the hole in die wall, the hole into elsewhere. The detective was right. It was a physical manifestation of the real world. It had to be, else he would not have been able to interact with it.

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