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Inquisitors, including allowing them access to the Jerusalem node. Israeli
Prime Minister Avashalom Chotzner said, "Israel intends to cooperate with the
investigation into the Temple Rock hijacking in whatever way it can. The rest
of the world should do the same."
The Order of Islam has already listed its protest at the world court. The
Grand Inquisitor, however, could not be reached for comment.
Chapter 8 Page
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"Soulless bastard."
To escape the constant pounding of the images of Mai's death, I crumple into
myself. My motion triggers an automatic escape response.
A sudden silence makes me open my eyes. I slowly lower my arms from where they
protectively cover my face. I am kneeling at a crossroads, on a simple
gravel-and-dirt road. In the distance I can see a yellow house and a barn.
Wheat fields spread out in all directions. A cloudy sky illuminates the golden
shafts in dappled waves. The air smells clean and dry.
I've dropped down into mouse.net.
Mouse.net is where I was born, my ancestral home. Like a world traveler
returning to a small town, I can't help but notice its lack of sophistication.
Whoever programmed the field has the sun's pattern on a short repeat. Patches
of wheat have simply been copied and pasted to fill the horizon. There are no
birds or insects chirping or buzzing. It's neither hot nor cold.
Part of that is because mouse.net was never intended as a tactile medium.
Though my father built it to act as an alternate LINK for the poor and
disenfranchised, he mostly intended it for sending and receiving information.
He never expected people to live here, to create personal spaces for
themselves. But they do millions of them.
Mouse.net is not technically a separate space. My father created it by means
of a very subtle virus called mouse.nest, which stole space from the LINK.
What isn't stolen exists on junk, pieces of forgotten hardware that are still
in operation merely because people forgot to shut them down when the LINK went
active.
I stand up slowly, feeling a bit wobbly. Bushing the dust off my knees, I
glance upward at the LINK that divides the blue sky like a river of electrical
sparks.
"Dude, you shouldn't be here."
I turn around to see a knight in mud-spattered armor astride a jet-black
horse. The horse's breath comes out in huffs, as if it has been galloping
hard. The knight points a bloodied sword at my chest. "They're totally coming
for you, man."
"Who, good sir knight?" I ask.
"Sir? Oh, right. The game." The image of the knight disappears and is replaced
by a young black woman with tight curls of hair cut close to her scalp. She
wears ripped jeans. On her T-shirt is emblazoned some kind of heraldic shield.
"You're Page, right?"
I nod.
"Then you should hide. The zombies are on the warpath." She pulls on my elbow
and coaxes me off the road and into a shallow ditch.
"Maizombies? Why?"
"That stunt you pulled in Brazil, natch." She urges me into the wheat field.
"Come on."
"What stunt?" The spiny, sticky wheat buds brush against the thighs of my
pants. I feel more exposed stumbling through the field than I did standing in
the middle of the road.
My would-be rescuer stops her insistent pulling to glare at me. "You acting
like you don't know?"
"I'm not acting," I say.
She cocks her head and squints into my face, as if she's trying to decide if
she believes me. "Well, Mouse's Page claimed the attack on Mai's shrine in
Rio. Her encryption key was all over the place."
"Mai's shrine was defiled? It's that what they were talking about?"
"Oh, yeah. Basically, you told the zombies they were fools to believe in Mai.
Said you'd kill Mai again if you had the chance."
My knees fold under me, and I sit down. I put my head in my hands.
"I didn't want to hurt her," I manage to say. My mind is a blur of memories, a
mix of emotions. Mai and her bandmates had celebrated that first night in
Jeddah. She'd drunk too much, mixed too many blue pills with the white ones. I
don't know; I hadn't been paying close attention. I was sulking, planning an
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escape. The yakuza had trapped me inside Mai's neural net, so when she passed
out I took control. I walked her unconscious body through the streets looking
for someone with the kind of equipment I needed to escape.
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