Virtual Vandals nfe-1 Read online

  “Oh, perfect,” Matt groaned as the others laughed. “This jewel-guy didn’t have any lips at all!”

  Sandy Braxton caught up with Matt that day at lunch. “So? Have you read any of the information on that datascrip I gave you? I found a big file about how many Civil War generals were officers together in the Mexican War. Hancock and Armistead both served together in Winfield Scott’s army. Lots of the officers who were in Pickett’s Charge were also in the attack on Chapultepec Castle — including Pickett and James Longstreet.”

  “That’s really interesting,” Matt said nervously. With his visit to Maxim’s, he hadn’t even looked at the scrip. “Maybe we can make that the opening of our report. Can you tell me some more?”

  Sandy glanced over to one of the tables in the cafeteria. “I was going to sit with some of my friends….”

  Matt followed his eyes. Of course, it was a group of Leets — and there were three blond girls. “Well, maybe we can do it in between bites,” Matt suggested.

  Sandy shrugged and led the way to the cafeteria line, where they loaded a pair of trays. Then Matt followed his new friend to the table full of Leets.

  One of the girls looked ready to say something as Matt took a seat, but Sandy quickly spoke up. “This is Matt Hunter from my history class. We’re working on a project together.”

  The girl muttered something to her friends. All Matt caught was “—could’ve taken the geek to another table, then.” The rest was drowned out by a wave of laughter and one girl’s “Lighten up, Tricia.”

  Matt did his best to control his expression, ignoring Tricia’s nasty comment, pretending to be interested as Sandy rambled on about ancient history, while forcing down cafeteria mystery-glop and keeping an eye on the three blond girls. It was like juggling four things at once. Matt could only hope he didn’t drop one.

  For instance, he had to listen to enough of what Sandy was saying to say something himself every once in a while. And he couldn’t make it obvious that he was checking the girls out. As far as he could figure, any of them could be the mysterious CeeCee.

  Each girl seemed to hold her head at an angle and laugh as they joked and teased one another. And all of them, blond or brunette, twirled their hair around their fingertips as they talked. Some of the stuff they said he didn’t even understand. They either had their own in-group lingo, or they were using slang that hadn’t caught on yet with the rest of the mere mortals at Bradford.

  “So, you going to the VIP-VP at Lara Fortune’s on Friday?” Tricia asked.

  Apparently her slang was too advanced for one of the girls. “The VI-who-what?” she asked.

  “VIP, very important person; VP, virtual party,” Tricia explained with a toss of her head.

  Another girl rolled her eyes. “Krishna, but virtual parties are so…so heatherish.”

  Matt got that comment. Heather was a very old-fashioned girl’s name, from before the turn of the century. The girl was saying that virtual parties were pretty much past it. When he stopped to think about it, the last one he’d been to had been for a friend’s seventh birthday.

  “Not this one — it’s going to be red-line all the way. Her daddy shelled out big bucks for a way unbelievable locale. I know my dad blew a few zeroes for my virtual gown.”

  “Gown?” the other girls chorused.

  “It’s gonna be drop-dead formal,” Tricia announced smugly. “No proxies allowed — just your image and whatever someone can hack up for you.”

  “I guess it will have to depend on my programmer,” one of the blondes said, twirling a lock of hair tightly around her forefinger.

  “Not much time,” Tricia warned.

  The other girl shrugged and grinned. “That’s what performance bonuses are for.”

  Matt had to hide a grin of his own. Some poor programmer was in for a busy week. He forced himself back to Sandy, who was finally running down on his verbal data-dump.

  “It’s interesting stuff,” Matt said, “good for a few paragraphs maybe, but I think you’re going overboard. These guys knew each other for years and years. This is just one small story.”

  Sandy looked disappointed. “But I thought—”

  “We’re supposed to concentrate on the Civil War, not stuff that happened almost twenty years before,” Matt said.

  He tried to ignore the sneering comment from one of the girls as they got up to leave. “A real Dexter,” she muttered — another way of calling him a nerd.

  Lunch was almost over, and everyone began leaving their seats. Matt rose, too, then suddenly froze.

  “What’s the matter?” Sandy asked.

  Matt pulled his eyes away from one of the lunch trays the girls had left. Sitting on the plastic was a little bow, woven together from strands of blond hair. He’d seen CeeCee tie a little knot like that at Maxim’s!

  “That girl who was sitting here,” Matt said, tapping the chair in front of the tray. “I don’t think she’s in any of my classes, but she looks familiar.”

  “Caitlin?” Sandy shrugged. “Maybe you saw her on holo with her dad — Senator Corrigan?” He paused for a second. “If you’re interested, well, I wouldn’t say you were out of your league.”

  Yes, you would, Matt said silently.

  “But Cat Corrigan is sort of — high maintenance — you know?”

  Caitlin Corrigan. Slur those initials together, and you got…CeeCee.

  No, Matt thought, he didn’t know much about Caitlin Corrigan. But he meant to find out.

  Leif Anderson looked better when Matt came visiting him again through his computer. Although he sat in the same chair, Leif’s face wasn’t as pale, and he wore jeans and a sweater instead of pajamas and a robe. “How’s it going, Sherlock?” Leif asked with a grin.

  “I may have a suspect from the Leets at school,” Matt reported. “Caitlin Corrigan.”

  Leif’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa! The Senator’s daughter?”

  “What I need to know is how to get next to her.”

  Leif didn’t seem to find that funny. He sat straight up in his chair, his lips going thin. “So you thought you’d check in with your old pal Leif to get a few lessons in social climbing?”

  Matt was surprised at the sharp response. “I–I just thought that you knew these people.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean that I like them,” Leif shot back, then rubbed his forehead. “I’m still feeling crummy,” he confessed. “You’ve been in touch with me. So have David, and Andy, and most of the Net Force Explorers I know. A couple of pals here in New York have called to see how I was doing. But most of my rich so-called friends haven’t even bothered to punch in my number.”

  “That sounds pretty cold,” Matt said.

  “As far as those kids are concerned, I am a social climber.” Leif grimaced. “My father is a self-made man — that makes us what these folks call ‘new money.’ Cat Corrigan’s great-grandfather collected the family loot that paid for her grandfather’s political career. Her dad’s, too.”

  “So what are you saying? She’s way out of my league?”

  “I’m saying you can’t get in with that group — you can’t compete with their money.” Leif raised a finger. “But most of them, all they’ve got is money. When you’re rich, you don’t need brains, or hard work, or the other things we think are so necessary for success.”

  All of a sudden, Matt found himself remembering Dr. Fairlie’s annoyed comments about Sandy Braxton. “I think I know what you mean,” he said.

  “Skill and sneakiness can beat money any day,” Leif told him. “It’s how I got in with these people. You’ve just got to be outrageous.”

  Matt nodded. “Like that crazy stick-figure proxy of yours.”

  Leif nodded. “Exactly. How can you catch her attention, and make her want more?”

  A faint smile came over Matt’s face. “I’m beginning to get an idea, but I’m going to need your help. We’ve only got a couple of days to get ready.”

  I guess Tricia was righ
t, Matt though as he synched in to Lara Fortune’s virtual party. The locale was red-lined all the way — and it had cost Papa Fortune a lot of money. Matt seemed to be standing on the inside wall of a clear plastic disk orbiting high above the Earth. The planet looked like a grotesquely inflated moon looming over them. Fluffy white clouds spread across blue oceans and brownish-green land masses. Matt squinted at the edges of the cloud cover, trying to spot a familiar landmark. There — in that open spot — a small spit of land jutted into the sea. It had to be the distinctively hooked arm of Cape Cod….

  Matt grinned. Of course. They were in orbit over Washington.

  The illusion was perfect, down to the smallest details. Matt watched as clouds shredded away from the Virginia coast, revealing the city. A girl peering through one of several telescopes by the wall suddenly squealed. “There’s my yard! And my mom is waving up at me!”

  Matt shook his head. The greater the detail, the more expensive the sim. Lara’s dad had certainly dropped a lot of zeroes on this one.

  Music blared overhead, and Matt looked up to find that some people had abandoned the disk-floor to float and dance in microgravity. Not the nasty-mouthed Tricia, of course. She stood in her expensive gown, clinging to the edge of a table.

  Cat Corrigan must have had better spies. She wore a silver-blue silky jumpsuit that was perfectly suited for low-G dancing. Laughing, the blond girl spun in midair. Then she spotted Matt.

  Or rather, she spotted the stick-figure proxy Matt had worn to the party. Caitlin bounced through the other dancers in a mad scramble, climbed down to where Matt stood, and goggled at him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

  “Just checking out a suspicion, CeeCee,” Matt replied lazily. “Or should I call you Cat? I’ve been trying to track you down ever since I saw you hit that girl at Maxim’s. You’ve got a couple of virtual tricks I’d love to learn.”

  Caitlin continued to stare as if any words she might say would choke her. But she didn’t get a chance to say anything.

  At that moment, another blond girl, wearing an even fancier jumpsuit, came up to them. “I don’t know how you got in, but if you had an invitation you’d know that proxies aren’t allowed.” Lara Fortune turned to Caitlin. “Friend of yours, Cat?”

  “N-no,” Caitlin Corrigan gulped. Her eyes still hadn’t left Matt’s proxy.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Matt said. “I’m sure I have my invitation somewhere.” He went through the motions of a man searching his pockets, which looked ridiculous on a stick figure. “Aha!” he exclaimed, pulling something out of thin air.

  It wasn’t an invitation icon, however. Matt shook out something that looked like a rubbery black pancake.

  “What is that?” Lara Fortune demanded.

  Matt tossed it to her. It landed on the front of her lace and spandex jumpsuit, creating a disgusting inky smear down the front. “It’s a virtual stain. Pretty neat, huh? Or then again, maybe not.”

  Lara’s response to the destruction of her costume was an ear-piercing scream.

  For a second, Matt felt a stab of conscience at wrecking the girl’s party. He’d thought maybe if he played it for laughs — but this wasn’t funny. He had to keep acting as if this were fun, though.

  Matt stepped back. “Maybe I should try and distract you.” This time he came out with what looked like a handful of small pebbles. He turned to a nearby table, where a complicated collection of tubes created a microgravity fountain over the punch bowl. But when he tossed his handful of pebbles in, the contents of the bowl began to bubble and send up clouds of steam. Then came a muted baBOOM! A mushroom cloud of punch rose into the air and began drifting lazily downward in the low gravity. The muffled explosion caused screams and stares.

  Cat Corrigan tried to brush off the sweet, sticky drizzle that began coming down on everybody in the room. “Yuck!” she cried as punch began soaking into her outfit and hair. But she was biting her lips to keep from laughing.

  It’s only a sim, Matt kept telling himself. It’s not like I’m doing this in the real world. But a furious Lara Fortune had already whirled off to get her parents. In a second, Matt knew, automated security would be closing in on him.

  “Take it easy, Cat,” he said with a nonchalant wave. “By the way, nice party.”

  From the way Caitlin came dashing at him, Matt wondered if she were going to try tackling him to keep him there.

  But all she did was yank loose one of her earrings and stuff it into his hand. “Figure it out when you’re well away from here,” she muttered in the midst of the chaos. “Just get out — now!”

  Chapter 5

  Saturday morning, Matt asked some of his Net Force Explorer friends to make a virtual visit. They all hovered in Matt’s personal veeyar, leaning over the floating marble slab/table, examining the earring Caitlin Corrigan had given Matt the night before.

  “So, at least you wound up with a souvenir from your party-crashing,” Andy Moore said. “You think this Senator’s kid likes you?”

  “That’s not the point,” David Gray said. “You usually can’t just take off virtual bits and pieces and have them survive. This earring should have faded away when Matt cut his connection with that party. Since it didn’t, we know there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

  Silently, Matt handed over a program icon from the collection on his marble desktop — the magnifying glass.

  When David held it over the earring, tiny letters sprang into being in the air — thousands of lines of them. David fiddled with the magnifying glass, making the holographic image larger, then scrolling the lines up and down.

  “So,” he said in satisfaction, “it’s a program — a communications protocol.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been simpler if she’d just passed on her telephone number?” Andy asked.

  “Maybe,” Matt admitted. “But these are Leets we’re talking about here. Rich kids. What I’m interested in is the programming, though. You guys are more up on that than I am.”

  Although Matt had programmed up the virtual stain he’d used on Lara Fortune’s dress, he’d depended on Andy for the punch-bowl surprise. “What can you tell me?”

  Both boys began scanning through the lines of programming language. “It’s very good, if a bit flashy,” David said. “It compresses a lot of information into such a small artifact.”

  “Professional,” Andy added.

  “Professional as in very good amateur, or is it the work of a paid program designer?” Matt asked.

  “No way this could be homemade,” Andy said. “There are copyright notices on some of the subroutines. This is commercial program coding — very high-end, special-designed stuff. Expensive.”

  “So Caitlin couldn’t have written it herself?”

  Andy shot him a surprised look. “I didn’t know Caitlin Corrigan was a hacker.”

  “Neither do I,” Matt said. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Somebody had to write the coding that let the virtual vandals take over the Camden Yards computer sim system, not to mention the programming wrinkle that lets these kids hurt people in virtual realities. Let’s call him — or her — the Genius. From what you’re saying, I can scratch Caitlin off my list as the brains behind the vandals. She doesn’t do her own programming.”

  Andy gave him a shrewd look. “Are you sure you’re not letting her off because you like her?”

  Matt could feel his face growing warm as he tried to defend himself. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  I hope not, he thought.

  “Whether she’s the Genius or not, Caitlin is my connection to the other virtual vandals,” Matt said. “That’s what I’ve got to keep my attention on.”

  “Right.” Andy gave him a wry grin. “Whatever you do, don’t think about the fact that she wants to see you again.”

  “I could kill that idiot,” Matt muttered as he sat in his room, facing his computer console.

  Andy Moore had a nasty habit of dropping little bombs into a conve
rsation that could go off minutes or even hours after he’d gone — like that little zinger about Caitlin Corrigan.

  It was now early afternoon. David and Andy had left ages ago. Mom and Dad were out taking care of errands. And Matt sat staring at his computer with sightless eyes.

  Just don’t think about it. The words seemed to echo in his head.

  An old story he’d read as a kid came out of his memory. A man suffering from a terrible illness went to the Wise Man of the Mountain to find a cure. “It is easily done,” the Wise Man said. “You must go through a day without thinking of elephants.”

  Of course, that didn’t cure the sufferer’s disease. How can people spend any period of time not thinking of something they’re consciously trying to avoid? The thought keeps popping up, like a pesky toothache.

  Matt sighed and settled himself in his computer-link chair. He forced himself to relax, letting the chair’s receivers tune into his implants. Telling the thought to go away didn’t seem to be accomplishing much. Doing something was the answer.

  In this case, the something would be a virtual visit to Caitlin Corrigan.

  Matt opened his eyes and found himself floating in the starry twilight, facing the unsupported marble slab. In the middle was Cat’s earring, right where they’d left it. Matt reached out, then suddenly pulled his hand back. Instead, he went for the glowing red pawn Leif had given him.

  Glancing down, he saw he’d been reduced to a stick figure again. Only after donning the proxy disguise did Matt take up Cat’s earring and the lightning-bolt teleconnection icon.

  An instant later, he was flashing across the neon cityscape of the Net. Matt found himself passing several governmental constructs. Not surprising, he thought, when you consider that Caitlin’s dad is a Senator.

  But suddenly, before he got too deep into government territory, the communication protocol sent him veering off. This was the equivalent of a wealthy, quiet neighborhood on the edges of the government’s systems. The virtual houses were large, but not quite as self-indulgent as the vampire castles or the mansion that housed Maxim’s.