Ragnarok by Ari Bach Page A

they could see the netscape from his eyes. There were only a couple hundred users, visible ones at least. He put out a heavy array of feelers and detection routines so that if anyone approached, he’d know. The appearance was indeed that of a black rocky mountain, riddled with grottos and cells along a single spiral road climbing up the steep cliffs. The few avatars were like a line of parasites roaming across it. Yoshi was about to start up the Gullinkambi program when a large gargoyle avatar approached him. He kept his distance, as did the gargoyle. A standard assurance on the Crag. The gargoyle spoke in a high, weak voice.
    â€œWould you like to buy some fresh baked cookies?”
    â€œNo, thank you, I’m just heading to the financial sector,” he replied. The gargoyle moved on, and Yoshi thought back to his watchers, “I assume you didn’t want any local value pairs? They make fine souvenirs, but who knows what else he baked into them?”
    V team didn’t respond. Yoshi headed as promised to the financial sector, a short ways up the Crag. He glanced down at the rock, nothing like the colorful plastic and glowing cartoon labels of the rest of the net. It was meaty, flaking like dead skin. Its resolution was grainy but not low. The place wasn’t cheap, cheap as in the Undernet just looked like a lack of textures and poorly assembled polygons. The Crag looked like it had been meticulously designed to feel gritty. More than that, it felt not so much like a mountain as a giant animal horn, owing to the swaying deformation of the road and the sinewy layout between the ingrown caves.
    All the avatars kept their distance. Everyone on the Crag was cautious in the extreme to let others know they would do no harm, and wanted no harm done to them. Some were blanks, others were beasts. One avatar was a perfect likeness of Abraham Lincoln, another was just a mess of legs and eyes. But all were whisper quiet. It was oddly like the atmosphere of a library site. Though library sites lacked the glimpses Violet could see as Yoshi passed various grottos. One held a pharmaceutical meeting, clearly labeled as the KVH drug company meeting with members of the Janjuweed. Another held what looked like a classroom. All the student avatars were joining hands with a tentacled being, repeating a mantra, preparing for some unspeakable ineffable something.
    The financial sector made more sense. There were mercenary ads. Any of them could be Mishka. They were as simple as “Have microwave, will travel” and complex as a total readout of available militaries and off-planet resources. Conventionally, one would have to reply to each ad to learn the identity of the poster. There appeared to be under fifty mercs so it was a possibility, but one to be avoided if they could find Mishka’s ad, buy her services, and lure her into a trap. Or better yet, simply trace the origin and find her unannounced.
    Yoshi produced the Gullinkambi and set it on the pathway so it would recognize the site to be hacked. Once activated he would be able to see names and providers behind each page. Yoshi would only need to log the results, return to safety, and V could handle the rest. He prepared to activate the little blue rooster.
    Suddenly a bright flash illuminated the Crag. There was a disturbance on the road nearby. A small avatar of a little green man with a giant wrinkly brain was destroying a larger troll avatar with something that manifested as lightning. Dozens of avatars looked on as the very lifecode of the troll was spewed onto the Crag for all to see. It wasn’t like the scattered programming in a disarming protocol—it was brain code getting deleted. Incomprehensible strands of information that made up the user’s consciousness and thoughts getting ripped to shreds. The troll avatar remained on the cliffs like a corpse, hollow now and transparent but lingering, sickly. Violet could almost smell it. The little