Death Match - Diane Duane [14]
She laughed at him. Catie had long been used to this kind of comment from her friends, both those at school and even those who were also Net Force Explorers. She had been in soccer leagues of one kind or another almost since she was old enough to walk, partly because of her dad’s interest in the sport, but partly because she liked it herself. Then, later on, as virtual life became more important to her, Catie began to discover its “flip side”—that reality had its own special and inimitable tang which even the utter freedom of virtuality couldn’t match. There was no switching off the implant and having everything be unchanged or “all better” afterward. Life was life, irrevocable, and the cuts and bruises you carried home from a soccer game were honestly earned and genuine, yours to keep. Some of her friends thought she was weird to take the “real” sports so seriously, but Catie didn’t mind.
“To each his, her, or its own,” her father would say, chucking aside some rude review of one of his exhibitions, and picking up the brush again. Catie found this a useful approach with the virtuality snobs, who usually had what passed for their minds made up and tended not to be very open to new data.
“Nope, nothing new to exhibit,” Catie said. “Except for a new interest. A slight one, anyway. Spatball.”
“Huh,” said Mark, glancing around. The space was beginning to fill up fast now, a couple of hundred kids having come in over the space of just the last few minutes. “The last refuge of the space cadet, one of my cousins calls it.”
“It might indeed be that,” Catie said. “I’m in the process of making up my mind. Meanwhile, Squirt, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“Yeah?”
“My workspace management program is beginning to sass me.”
“Oh?”
Mark looked completely innocent. It was an expression which struck Catie as coming entirely too easily to him. “It’s getting positively sarcastic lately,” she said. “This wouldn’t be anything of your doing, would it? Some little bug you slipped in?”
“There are no bugs,” Mark said virtuously, “only features.”
“Yeah, well, this ‘feature’ has you written all over it.”
He acquired a very small smile. “Just a little heuresis, Cates. It only does what it sees you doing. So if it’s getting sarcastic—”
She took a swipe at him, and missed, mostly on purpose. At the same time, Catie had to grin a little. “So the computer’s chips are turning into chips off the old block, huh. Cute. One of these days you’re going to do something too cute to allow you to live any longer, Squirt.”
He gave her a look that suggested he didn’t think this was all that likely. The problem was, Catie thought, that he was probably right. Assuming that he survived through his teens—for Mark’s “scrapes” were many and varied, so that Catie thought it was probably miraculous that his parents hadn’t simply killed him by now—the talent that got him into the scrapes would eventually take him far. For all his tender years, Mark was a native Net programmer of great skill, one of those people who seem to be born with a logic solid in their mouths and are better at programming languages than spoken ones. There was very little that Mark couldn’t make a computer do, and the more complex the computer was, the more likely Mark was to deliver the results. But he would also find a way to enjoy himself in the meantime…and his enjoyment could occasionally also mean your annoyance, if you let him get away with it.
Catie gave him a look. “If the management system starts interfering with my space’s functioning,” she said, “I’m going to debug the software with an ax…and then hunt you down and take the lost time out of your hide. Meantime, what’s on the agenda tonight? I didn’t have time to look at it before