After registering with forged IDs, Shinonome and Beria headed to a private booth in an internet café that looked more or less the same as the ones he remembered.
The booth had a net terminal for BCI — a cyberdeck — and you connected to it lying down.
“Alright, connecting.”
“Yeah. Right now I want to know two things: whether Jane Doe really is just a name for corporate operatives, and who benefited from the Atlantis Land Systems semi-bioweapon grab. Try not to let Jane Doe know you’re looking.”
“Understood.”
Beria plugged the cable into her BCI port and lay back.
A vast ocean of information spread across Beria’s field of vision.
It resembled the chaotic streets of Sector 13/6 — advertisements glittering and flashing everywhere, and underneath them, information stacked in messy layers.
Beria noticed that she had a flat-textured, low-polygon body she could freely move around in the Matrix.
She started investigating the phenomenon immediately.
The search method was simple. Just bring to mind whatever she wanted to find, and her body in the Matrix would race toward it, crashing into a filtered ocean of results.
The first result was: Change your avatar easily! An ad.
She ignored the ad and moved to the next result.
The next was a site that looked legitimate: On Network Avatars.
Beria reached out to it and expanded it.
“Welcome to the Next-Generation Collective Knowledge Encyclopedia. We are here to help you find answers. However, this site consists solely of volunteer-written articles, and we cannot guarantee legal, medical, ethical, or political accuracy.”
A female voice read this aloud, and she moved on to the article in question.
“Avatar (Matrix). An avatar is the form by which selfhood is defined in the Matrix. In the visualized Matrix of recent development, avatars are indispensable. Without one, a range of problems will arise.”
Beria scrolled through the article.
“An avatar is what makes you you in the Matrix. The Matrix is a vast and boundless network space. However, in the pre-visualization era of the Matrix, avatars did not exist.”
I wish they’d explain this more simply, Beria thought as she scrolled on. The article kept going.
“In the pre-visualization Matrix, avatars were fragile things. Engineers who lost track of their avatar, lost their sense of self, became stranded in the vast Matrix, and entered brain-dead states were a constant occurrence.”
Summarize. Three sentences, Beria instructed the system.
“An avatar is your anchor in the Matrix — it keeps you from losing yourself. The appearance can be customized freely, like choosing an outfit. But you cannot dive into the Matrix without one.”
So this avatar business was essential to functioning in the Matrix.
It made sense, really — an undead with no body and only a soul was a fragile thing. The soul needed a body. The avatar was the body to which you entrusted your soul in the Matrix, Beria concluded.
This particular avatar, however, appeared to be standard equipment on the internet café’s cyberdeck — changing its appearance here would just reset when she logged out.
To have her own Matrix login ID, she didn’t need the citizen ID that had caused them so much trouble, but she would need a personal cyberdeck.
She searched for the price of personal cyberdecks. Ads at the top again, naturally.
She ignored the ads and looked at pricing sites.
Cheap ones started at 800 new yen. High-end went up to 20,000.
Mid-range sat around 5,000.
“Oh, right. I need to look up Jane Doe.”
She searched again.
“Welcome to the Next-Generation Collective Knowledge Encyclopedia. We are here to help you find answers. However, this site consists solely of volunteer-written articles, and we cannot guarantee legal, medical, ethical, or political accuracy.”
Back to that site again.
“Jane Doe (Corporate). Jane Doe is slang for a corporate operative. The term originates with the author Emmanuel Goldstein, who wrote Hexarchy: How the Six Rule the World, an exposé on the Big Six multinationals.”
So Jane Doe was confirmed as a term for corporate operatives. That checked out.
She moved on and searched for the Atlantis Land Systems semi-bioweapon theft. The number of results dropped sharply.
A handful of news sites came up. That was all.
Hunter International convoy robbed of Atlantis Land Systems prototype semi-bioweapon in transit. Terrorism suspected?
Atlantis Land Systems pitches new semi-bioweapon to Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.
South African Army adopts Atlantis Land Systems new semi-bioweapon.
Only one relevant article, and even that was a few thin lines.
“Basically nothing here. So this is the Matrix.”
Just then, something like static flickered nearby in Beria’s vision.
“Hey there, little lady. Looking for information?”
The static kept its form as static and addressed her in a voice clearly run through a modulator for privacy.
“And you are?”
“Not in a position to give a name. Not when little lady here is accessing from an internet café — minimal ICE, no privacy worth speaking of.”
“Oh. You can tell that just from looking?”
“Of course. One look at that avatar is enough.”
“So what would it take for you to tell me who you are?”
Beria asked.
“Come back when you’ve got minimal ICE and a personal deck. Then I’ll show you the real Matrix.”
“Looking forward to it. Though right now we’re short on money. Could you at least tell me about ICE?”
“Look it up.”
And the static disappeared.
“Cheapskate.”
Beria grumbled and immediately searched for ICE.
ICE. Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics.
These days it existed mostly in the form of programs rather than actual hardware, but it was a defense system designed to protect against unauthorized access.
All kinds of ICE were on the market, and alongside them, all kinds of icebreakers — programs that cracked ICE and enabled unauthorized access.
Beria was completely absorbed in the subject and kept digging deeper and deeper.
Then suddenly the Matrix vanished, and she was staring at the ceiling of the internet café.
“You alright?”
Shinonome looked at Beria with concern as she lay there disoriented.
“The Matrix—”
“Yeah. Time ran out. I called your name a bunch of times and you didn’t answer once, so I started thinking something had gone seriously wrong.”
Mold got in your brain or something, Shinonome said.
“We need to save up. Getting information costs money too, apparently.”
“I figured. For now we just have to grind.”
How much do you need? Shinonome asked.
“Cheapest option is 800 new yen, but I’d really want 5,000.”
“Don’t cut corners on equipment. If we’re buying, let’s buy the best.”
“That’s 20,000.”
“That’s a lot.”
We’ll have to do a serious amount of work, Shinonome said.
“For now, we keep it simple and save. We can’t come here too often either. Just the usage fee is 50 new yen. I was fine because I had manga to read.”
“I got a lot of searching done in the Matrix too. Time well spent.”
Beria said this and stretched.
“Alright, let’s head out and eat. What do you want?”
“Sushi.”
“Fine. Cheap synthetic stuff, as usual.”
They left the internet café and stepped back out into the stench of Sector 13/6, and ate their processed sushi.
After that, Jane Doe showed up with a job.
This kill was a stray dog.
A man who’d been an illegal mercenary for one of the companies and had since gone freelance.
Ex-illegal-mercenary through and through — he kept careful watch of his surroundings. Left no trace in the Matrix, no trace in any public system records.
But he couldn’t escape Beria’s familiar.
They found him, and put him down.
Same as always — Shinonome kicked his physical enhancement up to speed and hit with Moonlight in one strike.
The spray of blood was a familiar sight by now.
If I ever went against Jane Doe, this is probably how I’d end up, Shinonome thought, and disappeared into the crowd.
……………………