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Four cracks appeared in the mirror, forming a door-shaped frame around the reflection of Winston Griffith III. Inside the rectangle of cracks, a round dark circle appeared just to the right of his hand-a door handle. Dark Father lunged toward his own reflection, grabbing for the handle. He wrenched the door open and leaped into the mirror, into the reflection of himself…

The virtualscape shifted.

He was in a jail cell with concrete walls. There was no door. Only a tiny window high in the rear wall, its grimy glass set well back behind a thick iron grill. The floor was bare gray concrete, as was the ceiling. A foul-smelling toilet sat in one corner, next to a chipped ceramic sink. The opposite wall held two metal bunks.

A child sat on the upper bunk-a boy about twelve years old. His head was shaved bald except for two tiny tufts of electric blue hair that had been gelled into hornlike points. He was human, but his features were a mix of racial groups. His skin was white and freckled, but his eyes had a slight fold that hinted at an Asian ancestry, and there was a slight thickening of the lips and nose that suggested Afro. He was dressed in one of the bright yellow, laminated paper suits they gave to mental patients at the hospital-a jumpsuit without sleeves or pant legs, made of tear-resistant material that could not be ripped up and made into a noose.

As the boy looked him over, Dark Father nervously fingered the noose at his own neck, adjusting it like a suit tie. He glanced around, looking for an exit, but didn't see one. He was stuck here-temporarily, of course, until he found a way out. But at least the mirror was gone.

"Hello, Winston," the boy said.

Dark Father felt his hands tighten on the noose. He'd been almost ready to relax after escaping his reflected image. But now he felt real fear. This decker knew his name. Was this Serpens in Machina in a different persona-or one of his accomplices? Dark Father took a nervous step back, stopping only when he felt the sink on the wall pressing into his back.

"How did you know my name?" His voice was a dry croak.

"I know everything," the boy said. "In the moment that I re-created you, I uploaded all of your memories, all of your secrets. I am a god."

"A what?" Dark Father's mind was reeling. Should he send his smart frame after this decker, who seemed to have accessed Dark Father's secret? No, that wouldn't work. He'd modified that program to search and retrieve data on the otaku; it no longer had its original search and destroy coding.

Maybe he should attack…

"No, you shouldn't," the boy said. "I told you-I'm a god. I'm all-knowing and omnipotent. I can do anything."

He flicked his finger in an idle gesture. Instantly the noose that Dark Father was wearing cinched tight around his own neck. Dark Father's vision blurred as the attack program did something it had not been programmed to do-attack its own user. Stars appeared before his eyes and the prison cell narrowed to a tunnel. Any moment now, Dark Father would lose consciousness…

The noose suddenly loosened and he could breathe again.

"See what I mean?" the boy asked.

Dark Father nodded mutely. "Yes," he gasped. "You're a god."

"Don't you dare try to use a complex form against me."

"I won't," Dark Father promised. "But who are you?"

The boy smiled. The glint in his eyes gave the smile an evil cast. "I am the leading player," he answered. A hard-copy printout whose cover was emblazoned with the word SCRIPT appeared in his hand. He tossed it contemptu ously at Dark Father, who tried to catch it. But the script disappeared halfway across the room.

"The what?" Dark Father asked.

"The officer in charge," the boy said. Heavy gold epaulettes appeared on the shoulders of his paper jumpsuit. They sagged, and large rips appeared in the supposedly untearable fabric. Then they disappeared.

The boy jumped down off the bunk and stood in front of Dark Father. "I'm the sysop," he said. He mimed drawing a rectangle, and a cyberdeck appeared in front of him. Its keyboard began clicking madly while he held it in his hands. Then he crumpled the deck up like a piece of paper and tossed it into the toilet. Dark Father heard the sound of the toilet flushing.

"The sysop," Dark Father said, a note of hope in his voice. "Then you can show me the SAN that will allow me to return to-"

"Nope," the kid said. "You're stuck here. Just like me. We're SAN-less in Seattle."

"But if you're the sysop…" Dark Father shook his head. "If you're the one who programmed all of this, you should be able to… I mean, you'd think-"

"You think a lot of things!" the boy shouted suddenly.

"I don't-"

"I'll show you!"

The boy vanished. In his place stood a tentacled, green-skinned monster. Its bloodshot eyes were set into its torso above a gaping mouth that drooled foul-smelling slime and its tripod legs were hairy and warted.

Dark Father pressed himself against the cold cement wall.

"You think I'm an alien from outer space," the creature said in a deep, bubbling voice that sounded like a cross between someone talking and retching. "You think I want my children to conquer the Earth. That's why we cut the brake line of your car."

"Not me," Dark Father protested. He had no idea what the creature was talking about. "I didn't think anything of the-"

The space alien vanished. In its place was a shimmering being of light, filled with multi-colored sparkles. "You think I'm a great spirit that managed to manifest within the Matrix," it said in a soft whisper. "But what do elves know? They're just empty-headed daisy eaters-right?"

"I read about an experiment where they tried to force a spirit into the Matrix once," Dark Father answered carefully. "Back in 2054. I think it was some kind of light spirit, though I never heard of one of those before. I remember, because one of those pirate propaganda stations made a big fuss about how only an ork girl could-"

"A non-human," the being of light said, echoing Dark Father's tone of polite disgust. The other decker had shifted his persona back into the shape of a young boy-a young ork boy. Dark Father suddenly realized that he had better keep his opinions to himself. Especially if this decker knew his real name.

The boy disappeared again. In his place was a miniature replica of a Matrix system-a series of hexagonal purple GPU and SPU nodes, linked by beams of ruby laser light.

"You think I'm an artificial intelligence," a heavily reverberating, electronic-sounding voice said. "That's what you put in your report to the Aztechnology board of directors. But my children discredited you. Your suicide confirmed that yours were the ravings of a madwoman. Als don't exist."

"You sound like Red Wraith," Dark Father muttered.

The boy reappeared-in human form, this time. He sat on the upper bunk with his back to Dark Father and his arms wrapped around his knees. He hummed tunelessly to himself and rocked back and forth, staring at the wall.

"Uh…" Dark Father realized that the other decker hadn't revealed his name. "Sysop?"

The boy just kept humming. He looked like one of the kids on the hospital's psych ward-the ones who had been orphaned during the Euro-Wars. Raised in automated nurseries without ever having had the benefit of human contact, many of them had suffered irreversible psychological damage. They displayed behaviors like the one the boy was exhibiting now-rocking, repetitive motions that had been their only form of physical stimulation when they were infants, nervous habits that they carried through into adult life.

Dark Father had a chilling thought. Was the programmer who had created this system mad?

He tried again to catch the boy's attention: "God?"

"Go away."

Dark Father had a sudden realization. "Your 'children'-are they the otaku!"