Beyond The Network

The Landscape plagued him all night. He could not sleep. Could not put the image out of his head.

Even though he had all but forgotten about it when he was running home earlier, he was reminded of it by his mother's in the kitchen. Most everyone had Landscapes – 3-dimensional models of scenic vistas in some imaginary land – but the image in his head was different.

He was standing on a hill of sorts. Before him, he could see a river of clear blue water. Trees surrounded it on either side. Large animals – for that is what they must be, the animals from fairy tales told to children – stood munching on the green BioTurf. He could see several houses – inefficient constructions, all shaped differently and awkwardly.

In the distance, he could see another hill, this one covered with taller buildings. Closer to those of the day, but still awkward and mismatched. A thin pall of smoke hung over them.

This scene inexplicably elicited a feeling of longing. Longing for what? He had never seen such a place, not in another Landscape, not in a Movie. Yet somehow, it felt more homelike than the house he was in right now, the house where he had grown up ever since he was born.

"Control: open Ana."

Ana was an old program in The Network. Her name came from ANalytical Application; she was one of the first programs for analyzing and compositing data. Despite her being written a whole 90 years before, she was amazingly fast and efficient; that is why John52fe preferred her over AdvA, which everyone else seemed to be using.

"Ana is online. Please enter your request."

"Analyze data in short-term memory." He subconsciously gave Ana access rights to the image currently in his short-term memory.

After a pause (for this wasn't the Library and data was being streamed a considerably larger distance), Ana responded. "It's a scene from before The Network came into existence."

"Get location of object just analyzed."

"Location unknown. 00000000:f.g__--"

"Get creator of object." Why had Ana just thrown garbage data at him?

"Access denied for user John52fe. You do not have the proper credentials to access this information."

John52fe was confused. Ana had never acted like this before. Must be a glitch, for Ana had never given him the dreaded "Access denied" error.

"Ana: disconnect. Control: EnterSleep."

It was 1:07:32 AM, and he dozed off, waiting for the wakeup signal for the next morning. It was a Day 7, thus no school, so he could sleep in.

John52fe awoke at exactly 8:00:00, feeling refreshed. The Network's built-in wakeup signal, configurable via thought, made alarm clocks, caffeine, and drowsiness obsolete. He got out of bed, enabled cloaking mode, and went across the hall to the bathroom. After he came out, he disabled cloaking mode and put on his real clothes – they had been cleaned in the middle of the night by the service bots.

His family was downstairs, sitting around the table, eating breakfast. Synthesized proteins, vitamins, and minerals, all in tasty packages resembling ancient foods such as pancakes and sausage links. Real meat had stopped being grown way back in the 2200's, due to the considerable amount of space, time, and waste involved.

From where he stood, he could hear bits of weakly-encrypted conversation going on between his father and someone at the door. Your typical business-related talk. John52fe groaned inwardly; he did not understand business. It was difficult and boring to him.

He sat down at the table, and the SmartFood serving mechanism tastefully arranged the food on a plate and placed it in front of him.

As soon as he had eaten, John52fe left the house, and went over to the transport station. Anyone ages 6 and up could ride a transport module, provided they had the money. He entered one now, waited until the system identified him and charged him the fee of 50 UCU; then he was whisked away across town at a terrific speed.

He couldn't wait until he had his own car. His parents promised to get him one when he turned 21, the legal age to own and operate one. Driving was almost paradoxically simple – an 8-year-old could do it – but laws were laws, and he could do nothing about them.

The transport module stopped at Station 6f3e:09 and John52fe got off. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. John52fe began walking down the street of Sector 6f3e. This was the business and commerce section of the city; here were the myriad office buildings, shopping malls, climate-controlled relaxation rooms...

Presently, he found himself in an alley of sorts, hemmed in on both sides by two large buildings. This was a more decrepit part of the sector: stores that had lost their business were closed, with antitrespassing fields erected around their perimeter. A few scraps of litter blew across the ground. He found himself in a dead end. As he turned around to go back, something caught his eye. He picked it up.

It was a data card. A thin piece of plastic that contained embedded data which was read by a computer terminal – quite outdated in the present age of The Network, one would think. There was no marking on it, save for one name: N3ox^[3].

He put it in his pocket and went on.

Jeremy1449 was waiting for him where he had promised: at the corner of Cloud Café, a lone place in the midst of silent office buildings. John52fe did not have very many friends, and despite them not hanging out together much, Jeremy1449 was the one person he trusted more than anyone else in the world.

"I've got something to tell you." John52fe needed to get this out, and quickly. "You know Satch3r yesterday... he mentioned something about life outside The Network. You know, like, before the world around us was created."

Jeremy1449 listened intently.

"Well, I got carried away and went to the Library and looked it up."

"And?"

"I found a bunch of stuff and it all seemed really boring and everything. But then I saw this thing, like a Landscape, but it just felt so... homelike, I don't know how to explain it. Thing is, I've never seen this before."

A new light shone in Jeremy1449's eyes. "Heck, yeah! I know exactly what you mean!"

John52fe looked at him, bewildered. "You mean you've seen it too?"

"No. It's just that I..." He broke off, staring into space. John52fe followed his gaze and noticed that he was staring intently at a beautiful girl sitting in front of the Cloud Café.

"Jeremy1449?"

"Uhh... sorry. As I was saying, I've felt like this world here just doesn't seem quite right. Like, that humans were never meant to be in some augmented reality like we're in right now."

This all made sense to John52fe. Jeremy1449 was one of those with a somewhat different philosophy on life. John52fe had always seen The Network as a normal part of life, while Jeremy1449 lived as he chose and couldn't care less what others thought.

Jeremy1449 stood up. "Wanna go to a Movie?"

"Sure." He had had enough philosophical thinking for now. A Movie – a fully-immersive 3D experience, similar to the composite in the library, albeit not as involved – would be the perfect thing for him. It would put his mind off of the many thoughts that plagued it.

The two walked down the otherwise-empty street. A business district was generally not known for its bustle of traffic at this time of the day. They had a good amount of ground to cover before they reached the Theater; they went by foot to save money.

As they walked down a dark, narrow tunnel between buildings, John52fe almost ran into a somewhat elderly man, who was holding out something that shone faintly, and muttering under his breath. John52fe leaned forward to get a better glimpse.

"Ya want sum?"

"What is it?"

"It's the sh*t man. Gonna f*ck ya up reeeeal good." Suddenly, the man lunged forward and plunged a syringe into John52fe's exposed neck.

"NO!" Jeremy1449's warning came too late. John52fe had barely had time to cry out, and he was hanging limp. The man let out a raucous laugh.

"What did you DO to him? Hey, come back here, you f*g!"

But the man was gone.

Chels9b01 was sitting in front of the Cloud Café, sipping her UltraProto shake and reflecting on her life. She loved sitting out here, in front of the Cloud Café, gazing down the street. Not many people passed through this way, except those who worked in the office building.

Suddenly, a dark-haired boy burst out of the tunnel down the street, with a panic-stricken expression on his face. He ran towards her. "Help," he panted. "My friend's been drugged or something. In that tunnel."

Chels9b01 looked at the person in front of her. Jeremy1449. Age 18. In 12th grade at School fb2:03. Same school as her. He seemed genuine enough. And what more could she do? She stood up, tossed her UltraProto in the nearby trash receptacle, and followed Jeremy1449 as he ran off in the direction of the tunnel.

John52fe was right where he left him, lying motionless. Jeremy1449 and Chels9b01 lifted him gently and proceeded to carry him through the tunnel. "I know where to take him." Chels9b01 led the way through the streets and alleys, until they arrived at the door of a ground floor apartment. She pressed her hand to the access panel on the door, and it swung open.

They entered and laid John52fe down on the air sofa. "Andy2ddf, you there?"

Andy2ddf, a stout, middle-aged man, came into the room. "Who have we here?"

"Some friends. Listen. John52fe^[4] got drugged by some guy out in the street. Can you do anything about it?"

"I'll see what I can do." Andy2ddf, a doctor by hobby (though doctors were virtually unnecessary in these times), took out his Medical Kit, a palm-sized box with a sensor on a thin wire, and placed the sensor in John52fe's mouth. He allowed the device to probe into John52fe and detect anything abnormal.

After a seemingly excruciatingly long wait, the device glowed green and displayed a long list of statistics. Andy2ddf laughed. "Ah, it's your typical brain-screwing crap that just knocks you out for a bit. Nothing serious at all. He'll be back to normal within an hour."

And sure enough, not long after, John52fe stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up slowly. "Where am I? Jeremy1449?"

"Yeah. You got drugged by that guy in the street. Andy2ddf said it was nothing serious though." John52fe got to his feet. He felt almost completely normal now. "Well, I guess we'd better get going." He went towards the door and opened it.

"John52fe! You can't! It's past curfew." Indeed, it was past curfew. 9:30:06 PM to be precise. "I guess you guys will have to spend the night here."

"You guys are probably hungry." Andy2ddf went into the kitchen and opened a package of synthesized protein and placed it in the InstaCook oven.

They ate hungrily.

"So... do you live here?" John52fe asked Chels9b01.

"No. Andy2ddf is just an old family friend."

"Oh."

"I overheard you guys talking out by the Cloud Café. What was it that you were saying?"

"Well, mmm..."

"Was it about going beyond The Network?" Andy2ddf's voice pierced through John52fe's thoughts.

"Y-yes," he stammered, not knowing what to make of it.

"Me and Chels9b01 have been contemplating on that, I'll be honest. And I believe there is a way of getting out of The Network. It just won't be easy, cause it requires you to get out of it mentally as well as physically."

John52fe felt like he was in a daze. Here were three people who believed that one could get out of The Network. Yet he himself had thought about life outside The Network, life before The Network came into existence.

"So you want to go to a place beyond The Network?" John52fe suddenly felt a thrill he had never experienced before.

"Yes."

"Oh." John52fe extracted the data card from his pocket. "Do you have any idea what this is?" Andy2ddf looked at the card carefully. "It looks like one of them old cards you'd stick into a terminal. Though they're obsolete."

"Wait... didn't you have one of those old terminals lying around somewhere?" This time, it was Chels9b01 who felt a thrill inside of her.

"Come to think of it, I do."

"Come on, let's get it!"

The four went down the smooth hallway and came to a miniature storage rack. After pressing his finger to the access panel in front of it, a storage daemon appeared. "Please enter the item you'd like to extract from storage."

"Item: terminal, model number: f03029df201010"

"Item found. Micrologix Ultra Terminal."

"Extract and quit."

A panel opened in front of them, and the terminal arrived, moving atop a conveyor belt. It was an old Micrologix terminal from the 2300's, from back before the time that The Network was fully developed. It was a 1-foot by 1-foot square, 4 inches or so in height.

Jeremy1449 carefully connected the terminal to the auto-sensing SmartPower socket in the wall. "Terminal: start." He had to use interop mode when speaking, as a Terminal this old was not connected to the human communications channel of The Network. The terminal booted up almost instantly.

John52fe inserted the data card into the front of the machine. "Terminal: get card info, format as text."

The image projected by the terminal now looked like this:

"The last line sure looks promising." They had never heard of hackers before, except in Movies and the like.

"So what are we gonna do, find this N3ox?"

"Yeah, why not."

"Terminal: more."

"End of file reached (0 bytes.)". There was no more data.

Andy2ddf wanted to know more. "Control: open AdvA. Analyze terminal information."

AdvA took a long time, but eventually the information was displayed to Andy2ddf. "N3ox will help you do what you may otherwise think impossible."

"So that's that."

After putting the terminal back into storage, a unanimous decision was made to leave the next day. First, they would try to find N3ox. Then, they would try going beyond The Network, with N3ox's help. After all, he made the impossible possible.

John52fe, lying awake on the floor of Andy2ddf's apartment, could not sleep once more. So much had happened today. He was going to do what he once thought impossible: go beyond The Network. His new friends wanted to, and so did Jeremy1449. And quite frankly, he had no point in staying right here. His life was not particularly great as it was.

"Control: open Atlas." Atlas was a mapping program that contained a map of the entire world.

"Atlas is online. Please enter your request."

"Get directions from here to Town 429, Sector 0322."

After a somewhat lengthy pause, Atlas responded with an easy-to-follow scale map, complete with estimated route times. 3.5 hours by skycar, 19 hours by standard transport module, 27 days 5 hours walking. He would need a permit to use a skycar without accompaniment by an adult, as he was under age 21; someone like Andy2ddf sure was helpful in these situations.

Oh well. Tomorrow was a new day. He would be counted absent from school, but so what. This was more important than school, especially considering that he was ahead. Plus, N3ox would likely allow them to get past the mandatory attendance patrol.