Part 12 (1/2)

The whole sky turned blood-red, displaying a blue number: 300. It went down to 299 after a second. No-one quit the system. They stood on the street and looked up at the huge countdown in the sky. The whole World, the whole universe kept a mutual silence. People crowded and said nothing. It seemed that each one of us was counting down the final seconds of his or her life.

I had never seen such a grave scene since I first had come to MUD. No-one was hurrying anymore. Not now that we had less than five minutes till the end of the World.

Something flew overhead, circled over the crowd. A light shone up, lit it in a circle of flame. It was a Wizard. Suddenly, a wiry voice broke the silence. ”One seventy-eight, one seventy-seven, one seventy-six...” The voice was harsh. It sounded like someone's final voice. It was frightening. People listened quietly, waited quietly. A girl beside me began to cry. There were tears in all kinds of colours, blowing amongst the crowd. I thought: she must have got a Dynamic Expression Tracer. My nose grew warm too, but I refused to set the ”Cry” command. Sadness permeated the crowd and there was crying, crying....

Under the b.l.o.o.d.y red sky, the number grew smaller and smaller, nearly at zero.

”I didn't expect to be so sad....” Porket said. ”Goodbye!” I hugged him closely. ”Come back after you die!” He raised his hand, wanted to say something, but couldn't continue.

The time had come.

The whole World froze at that moment, including Porket's hand: splas.h.i.+ng tears, simulated sad faces. Everything froze...and slowly, slowly faded out, faded into a rimless dark. A window appeared. ”MUD system has shut down. Thank you for your support.”

I took off the headpiece and just sat there. The true tears disobeyed my command, falling down my face. The s.p.a.ce around me seemed full of grey air. Outside, the noisy world was still there, and it seemed there had never been a MUD system, that this external system had never been shut down. Looking out of the window, I saw many skysc.r.a.pers rising over the modern mist. The sky was grey, the buildings were grey, the world was grey, and the world was real. Time went by peacefully without any graphics. Who said time did not exist? I sat down on the chair. My gaze took in the door to the bathroom, the door to the bedroom...then the door to there.

I had not been out of the apartment for three years.

What should I do? I felt sick. I thought it might be the absence of the virtual s.p.a.ce simulation. I had heard someone call it MUD Syndrome. I knew nothing about medicine, but I knew it was an addiction, and if it was that then we were all junkies.

The grey wall around me asphyxiated me. Outside, the world was the same grey. I paced back and forth in the room, taking deep breaths. My sight was blurry. To avoid fainting, I ran into the bedroom, threw myself onto the bed and fell into a sleep haunted with circling blocks of primary colours.

The alarm woke me up. I surfaced as from an abyss, staring around me without comprehension. It was 4:00 p.m. already. The computer told me there was an urgent email for me.

I went and opened my mailbox.

Dear ****: Hi!

I am One More Sight of You. I have not contacted you before. I found your mailbox address from MWA. Please read the following words carefully.

Hacking the core system of MUD by a secret hacker organisation--Hacker's Cave--caused the shutting down of the MUD system. MWA a.n.a.lysed the attack course, and has gathered 10890 Wizards to back-trace the attackers in the past few hours. We ask you for your help. Please connect to the following address: temp.mud.tsinghua.edu.cn This is a temporary command centre. It supports an emulation-type MUD-7 service, which means you can access it with your terminal with the same effect as a real MUD system.

Yours, One More Sight of You 11/04/2097 09:21:37 GMT.

We strike back! I put on the headpiece and connected to the address at once.

A long path. The red wall on each side of it nearly touched the sky. I moved quickly. Figures appeared and disappeared around me. They were all Wizards, shuttling between sites, collecting information, tracing the attacking hackers. I felt the fire of battle burning in my heart. We strike back! It was a mistake for them to treat MWA as a group of managers. Here were the best master hands, and they would teach these hackers a lesson.

A Wizard who looked like an angel flew down from the sky and touched me with a box. ”Okay. You've pa.s.sed the ident.i.ty verification. Follow the arrow, please.” Then he turned and flew back into the sky.

An arrow appeared above me, showed me the direction. Following it, I came to the control hall. Strangers were standing in groups, talking to each other. One of them saw me and walked over to me. ”Are you the first hacked account--Xingxing?”

I nodded, wondering who this guy was.

”I am One More Sight of You, the Arch-G.o.d of MWA. Welcome to the Discussion Hall of G.o.ds!” He introduced me to the others.

”Ah! Nice to meet you all!” I knew these G.o.ds would never come out unless an extremely important event had happened.

”Let's start! We've found the headquarters of the Hacker's Cave, but met with very strong opposition and were unable to penetrate their defences,” One More Sight of You said. ”We've processed a total of seven attacks, but they all failed. Luckily, we found their leader's address in one of the sorties.”

”What?” I was shocked. You should know that the most difficult thing on the Internet is getting the real ident.i.ty of somebody. And revealing someone's ident.i.ty was a disgraceful thing. You couldn't play anymore if you publicised somebody's real ident.i.ty in MUD.

”It's true. One of our commandos broke into their file system for thirty-two seconds and downloaded a few files. We discovered that one of them was a love letter that their leader wrote to someone, and we found his address in the letter.” He showed me the address. ”We've decided to face the real person,” he said.

”Fine,” I said. Then, as he waited, ”But what do you need from me?”

He didn't answer me, but turned to the others. ”Because you live closest to him,” one of them said, ”we need you to solve this problem.”

”Do you mean you know my address?” I asked coldly.

”As managers of MUD, we know every user's address,” One More Sight of You said. ”Things will get worse the longer we stand here and just talk. We need to initiate a powerful approach immediately.”

”What kind of approach?”

”How did those hackers treat you?” he asked me.

”They killed me.”

They nodded to me but said nothing. I looked at the floor for a few seconds. Then I said, ”Okay, I will go.”

They smiled. One More Sight of You came over to hug me first, then the others did the same thing. ”You will be a hero in the history of MUD!” they told me.

Quitting the Internet, I took off my headpiece and washed my face in the bathroom. I went into the back room, opened unused cupboards, brought out a dirty coat, shook it, and put it on. Dirt and dust made me cough. I closed my eyes, thought back for the address and the door pa.s.sword. I opened my eyes and took out a box from under the bed. I opened it, took out the gun, loaded it with bullets. I wasn't a fierce or cruel man, but it didn't pay to cross me. I went back, turned off the computer. I felt calm.

I could see the corridor when I opened the door to there. I faced it for the first time in three years. It didn't seem to have changed much. I gathered my courage and stepped out, went to stand before the lift. The sound of the door closing behind me made me freeze, and I almost ran back home at once. But I soon controlled my absurd alarm and regained my confidence. ”It's nothing,” I said, speaking out loud, and pushed the lift b.u.t.ton. Nothing happened. Did I need to find any keys first? I looked around and laughed. This was the real world, there were no rules here. I found a notice that said the lift had been damaged. I said, ”d.a.m.n it!”

I walked down the stairs.

The light was off. I watched the dark stairs and felt afraid. Could it be outer s.p.a.ce? I held onto the wall and climbed down step by step. Good, there was a light three floors down. I counted the number of floors whilst I was going down. I lived on the seventeenth floor of the building, so that would be...three hundred and forty stairs. G.o.d!

The eleventh floor. My legs began to ache. The distance I had walked here was longer than I did on an ordinary day. More stairs materialised on every corner, endlessly. There wasn't a single person in the corridor. It was as quiet as a cemetery but for the sound of my breathing. I began to doubt whether I would ever see the ground.

Finally, pa.s.sing a corner, I saw a door marked Exit. I walked over and pushed it open.

Noisy world.

Cars, people flowed on the busy street. There was such a variety of colours, beautiful colours below the grey world seen from my apartment. The billboards, the cars, the walking girls, even the rubbish bins beside the street were so colourful. And the sound. The sound here wasn't so pure, so perfect as in MUD. But these sounds made me feel fresh and cool. Catching sight of a streetcorner, my heart beat faster. A six-floor building was over there. It looked very special amongst these skysc.r.a.pers. My target was in a room on the fourth floor there. I put my hand into my pocket, touching the gun, and walked forward, step by step.

There was an iron fence around the building. I pulled open the gate and it made a grating sound. Had he heard it? Was he watching me? I looked for his window but could see only blinds. The door to the building was unlocked. I walked in. An old man popped his head out and looked at me questioningly. I smiled and pointed upstairs. He nodded, gla.s.sy-eyed, without any expression. The dilapidated stairs were covered with a dirty carpet. I stepped up carefully. My legs ached again. Some beggars were sleeping in the corridor. It was difficult to believe that the best hacker in the world lived in such a place. I steered clear of them and stepped up to the fourth floor.

n.o.body was there. I looked around. Maybe some of them were protecting him, so I had to be careful. The sound of the city was far away. I walked to the door slowly, checked that no-one was there, and keyed in the pa.s.sword.

The door slid open quietly. There was a hallway two or three metres long. I could hear rock music at the end of it. The living room was strewn with take-away boxes, papers, dirty clothes. Blinds covered the windows. The music came from a room next to the living room. I took out the gun, stepped soundlessly to the door of that room, and pushed it open.

A man sat there with his back to me, wearing a headpiece of a type I'd not seen. The screen in front of him displayed data, a lot of it. It seemed to be Internet addresses. He didn't hear me, but was nodding his head and wallowing in the world of rock music and the Internet. His hands moved on the keyboard quickly, the data changing at his command.

I stepped behind him and raised my arm. The muzzle of the gun was only twenty centimetres away from his head. My hand shook a little. I took a deep breath, held the gun steadily, and aimed at the centre of his head.