33
Within minutes of the end of the final trial, Faraji finally said exit and pulled off the face mask, which ascended lightly toward the ceiling of the room. Seconds after the suctioned blanket of material automatically released and lifted off him. He was free! He put his clothes back on and left the room. Each footstep was a supreme effort of will, but he made it into the hall and then rode the whirring conveyor to the entrance. He walked past the tall attendant who said something he couldn't really catch. Before he knew it, the elevator doors had sealed behind him and he was feeling the gentle acceleration as it went up.
The third task was over. Not like the first two. Nothing of the sort, in fact. It was easier; there had been no stress, no grand mystery, all that apparently was behind him for the time being. He had pulled apart the seam and stepped into the pure whiteness of a digital classroom, and who should be there but the friend of everyone who'd ever been to Oz. He wondered if the program Leo had been put there as a joke, by some ronin programmer, or whether he was here by design, if all this was set in stone by the creators. Leo had turned to him smiling like a teacher to his most gifted pupil.
Congratulations, the program had said sincerely, to have reached the third “loophole” was no small, nor commonplace accomplishment. Let the final task commence.
The task had been a lesson. Straightforward, unveiled, in Leo's typical plain English and simple demonstrations had shown Faraji how to use Oz to infiltrate security systems, and move his ghost through the Net for all and any purpose. The thread, the seams, were the key, every code, every firewall, everything built had these openings to a greater or lesser degree. A few simple demonstrations had proved his point. The programs final speech was odd to Faraji; it seemed blatantly political, revolutionary, and reminded him of the words of his father. And yet Leo had said nothing specifically to aid this idea, only subtly encouraged such thought. Although Oz was meant for entertainment, Leo had theorized, this was Oz's greatest power. In a surprisingly damning tone he said:
Oz was built for unconsciousness. It is an almost inescapable web of entertainment and distraction, but it seems that for the moment you have escaped it. For this, you have been rewarded. Congratulations.”
Who did this?” Faraji had shot back. “Who made these 'loopholes'? It couldn't have been the same people who made Oz. I know it. And how many others have been here like me? Who else knows about this?”
A very small, anonymous and elite sector of society.”
But who? Tell me their names!”
The program nodded his head to the question. He folded his hands languorously in front of his body. A strange emotion for a machine inside a machine.
I will not be answering any questions of that nature because I do not know the answer. Our tutorial is over. Congratulations again, user. And may you use your new skills only for good.”
Leo had slowly faded away leaving nothing but the now blinding whiteness behind him.
Faraji was both piqued and turned off by the programs response, but now he was too tired to think about anything but rest. The clock in the elevator said 12:30 am. Two days he'd been plugged into Oz. The elevator came to a precise and delicate stop and the doors slid open. Like a somnambulist he just barely made his way down the corridor. The door to the apartment jumped open obediently as it sensed his presence. As he made a beeline for his bed, Jay jumped off his seat at the kitchen table where he had been waiting.
Hey! Where have you been? And where's Billy?” he cried angrily.
Faraji shook his head trying faintly and stupidly to say that he could explain himself in the morning, that he didn't know where Billy was, that he hadn't slept in the last two days. Jay yielded to his feeble defense – he could see quite clearly that Faraji was too exhausted to talk – but said that they must talk in the morning, as early as possible. All words bounced uselessly off Faraji and into the walls as the younger boy made his way into his bedroom where he collapsed on his bed, dead to the waking world.
His sleep was complete, dreamless, an uninterrupted cloud of blankness that he did not want to escape.
The morning came altogether too quickly. Light had flooded into the room from the window opposite his bed. Like a choir of heavenly angels, though assuredly quite the opposite of Faraji’s waking mood; sleep had been glorious after two lucid days, but now that it was over the world swarmed him like a cloud of locusts.
The computer noticed him.
Good morning, young master. Is there anything I . . .”
Mute,” he cut in coarsely and buried his head under the pillow. How quickly had he become accustomed to the pleasures and luxuries of this place? This thought alone was finally what spurred him from his bed. He threw off the covers and stumbled zombie style into the main room.
Jay was already waiting for him. He let Faraji shuffle to the table, order his breakfast, and take a few minutes to wake himself. He looked like he’d been up for hours, not unlike a suit preparing for some critical board meeting—before the fact, with figures and statistics and other untold treasures of information swirling around in his head. He waited patiently for Faraji to eat, saying only good morning and trying to keep his thoughts together.
Once Faraji had swallowed the last bite of breakfast, the torrent started. Jay had spoken first and continued until he was completely dry of information. Faraji listened intently and didn’t interrupt; he was sincerely amazed at just how much Jay had to say.
Jay began with his discovery of Cassius Bellick, his connections to Mollec, Biomurge and Seventh Day from the East, then ran over the litany of possible connections the man had made and possible plans he had laid. It was possible that not all these organizations were related to each other without Bellick, but, he told Faraji, Bellick definitely occupied the most prominent seat of their shadowy conspiracy theories. Skipping what he remembered Gus had told them in the complex, he then told Faraji about Hurn’s name and personal relationship to Bellick, who it seemed the man may not trust completely, but for whom he certainly felt some sense of loyalty. This led to the medical logs, Hurn’s deconstruction and reconstruction, his cold desire for revenge, and deadly entrance into the silent war against the Outskirts. He told him about the plan for urban farms in the Outskirts, the recent landgrab, and of the three giants that only existed in the least reliable fringe content on the Net.
Look, that’s what I’ve got the last week. I’m dry, not sure what to do, and I feel like we don’t have much time left here,” Jay said.
Faraji then took his turn, speaking of his time in Oz: becoming a magician, speaking with guilds, elders, and hardcore gamers, his digital vision quest and the trials he had managed to surmount in the last day and a half. Trekking to Gerimiah’s snow driven cabin was simply a test of will—a test to learn how to fly, a lesser task. He told Jay about the pit and the seams in the dark, and then about the third and final task, the meeting with Leo. Faraji also admitted to feeling the same sense of dread. Was time running out for them? Where was his mother? Where were the others? And, anyway, just where was Billy?
With great difficult, Jay told him about the cult of Calliope and Billy’s almost certain love for the program. Faraji surprised the older boy by knowing of it already, though proclaimed that he’d never visited Calliope’s Rock in Oz. Still, it was no great secret.
From this point the two boys started thinking of their plan, naturally taking Billy’s absence into account. The plan had two parts. First they must get him back if they could. Then they would fight back. It was then, as they finished deciding what they must do, by themselves, standing nearly alone, that their vision split, just as it had for Blake and all the Kingstons, and weighed them down heavy with dread, remembering Gus’s death.