Overclocked by K. S. Augustin Page A

un­der­stand why they should be after my tether. I don’t know how yours got severed or why you say you won’t come back.”
    She paused, then con­tin­ued in a more broken voice. “I don’t un­der­stand why you look so old. Carl, what happened to you?”
    Carl tried cov­er­ing his face with one hand, then let it drop. He looked de­jec­ted, his one­time ex­pres­sion of smug self-sat­is­fac­tion pulled down by age and worry.
    “I was about to ask you why you still look so young, but then I real­ised that it doesn’t mat­ter how you look out there.” He jerked his head and Tania knew he was re­fer­ring to the real world. “In here, you can look how­ever you want. How­ever you feel.”
    “I don’t un­der­stand.”
    They stared at each other.
    “Come with me,” he said. He sighed heav­ily. “You need to un­der­stand some­thing. And then you’ll have a de­cision to make.”
    She mo­tioned to the front door. “What about those bots? Are there any more of them wait­ing out­side for us?”
    “We got them all.” He smiled grimly. “Sen­tience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
    Tania didn’t un­der­stand that last state­ment, but she let it slide. Her ex-rival, ex-lover was look­ing tense and hag­gard and she was will­ing to cut him some slack if he was will­ing to ex­plain ex­actly what the
hell
was go­ing on.

    They left the apart­ment and im­mersed them­selves in the multi-di­men­sional world of wild cy­ber­space.
    “Can we talk here?” Tania asked. “Or will there be more of those bots out there, listen­ing for us?”
    Carl looked at her, an eye­brow lif­ted. “The bots were after you. And no, they’re not sens­it­ive to sound.” He looked around. “Not that sound, as we know it, ex­ists here. This is all made up any­way.”
    He took her hand and watched her face as they both lif­ted into the air, a slight smile play­ing around his lips.
    Tania knew what to ex­pect. She had done it her­self at the start of her in­ser­tion while search­ing for him. But that still couldn’t stop the feel­ing of ma­gic that en­gulfed her.
    Fly­ing. That nor­mally happened in her dreams but here, in the Blue, she was con­scious and ra­tional and could dir­ect wherever she wanted to go. The only thing miss­ing was a breeze blow­ing against her face and she wondered if she could pro­gram that in for a fu­ture visit.
    She looked down at where the fin­gers of her hand were en­meshed with Carl’s and snuck him a quick look.
    He had changed.
    The man she had known for the past half a year was brash and cocky. He had given her the best or­gasms of her life then, after the last one, left her, blind­folded and ob­li­vi­ous, in her bed. And he had done all of that, just so he could get the coveted po­s­i­tion of first Base­ment Five op­er­at­ive in­ser­ted into cy­ber­space. She knew all about
that
Carl and could ima­gine him pulling her along im­pa­tiently in or­der to get to his des­tin­a­tion. She could ima­gine him mak­ing fun of her for her tardi­ness, or at­tempt­ing to get her into bed at the first avail­able op­por­tun­ity, killer bots or not. She could
not
ima­gine him trav­el­ling at a steady pace, happy to have her hand in his. Their cur­rent speed was too do­mestic a pace for the Carl she’d known.
    No, this man ap­peared to be a much more mel­low and meas­ured per­son. He had guided her out of the apart­ment with a gal­lant ges­ture that looked so nat­ural, even as Tania hes­it­ated at its ali­en­ness. Not at the ges­ture it­self but at the fact that it had been Carl who had made it.
    Could someone really change in the space of a day, from op­por­tun­istic bas­tard to ap­proach­ing nor­mal? Gra­cious even? It beg­gared be­lief.
    The two of them soared up through sev­eral vir­tual city­scapes, neatly dodging the vehicles that sped along the high­ways.
    “There are tril­lions