"'That's not what your calc instructor says," Winters said, casting an eye over a glowing-outlined "text window" hanging in the air near his desk. That window looked transparent to Charlie, but he was certain it didn't look that way to Winters.
"I passed the test the second time," Charlie said, instantly breaking out in a sweat.
"I see that. Aced it, too," Winters said, and produced a small smile. "Better than I did the second time. Or the third, or the fourth. Relax… you're doing okay." That window vanished. "But this doesn't have anything to do with school, I take it."
"Not exactly," Charlie said. "I'm following up on something I'm curious about."
"Oh?"
"Deathworld."
Winters's eyebrows went up, and he folded his arms. "Saw that in the news, did you."
"That last double suicide, yes," Charlie said.
"No connection has been established," Winters said, "between the suicides and the virtual operation."
"Net Force checked it out, I guess."
"Very completely, after the first two." His eyes rested thoughtfully on Charlie for a moment. "No reason for you not to be given a few details, I suppose. Computer? Insight investigations. Deathworld." Another window opened, and Winters glanced at it. Text scrolled down and through it, and though Charlie could see it this time, it was reversed.
"The first one was in April of 2023," he said. "A young man, aged eighteen, then a young woman aged sixteen, about three weeks later, in early May. While little notice was taken of the first suicide, the second one began to raise concerns that something untoward might be happen- ing. So an investigation was started. At about the same time the two sets of parents began to demand that Deathworld be shut down and Joey Bane be taken to court for reckless endangerment, corruption of youth, you name it. They felt sure that the site was feeding its users subliminal content of some kind, concealed messages that caused their children to kill themselves."
Winters raised his eyebrows. "Anyway, the investigation went forward. Six Net Force undercover operatives were dispatched to check out the Deathworld operation from the inside. Another four-overt agents examined the company's books, programming, and physical plant, and did a guided analysis of the virtual operation's code with the 'SysWatch' code sifter." He scanned down a little more of the text, shook his head, sat back again.
"And they didn't find anything," Charlie said.
"Nothing whatsoever. Clean bill of health," Winters said. "The place may look dysfunctional or even amoral to some people, but it's clean. Queasy-making, but clean."
"What did the kids' parents do?" Charlie said.
Winters sighed. "They continued to agitate for something to be done about the site-preferably to get it shut down. One of them, the mother of the first suicide, the boy, tried to get her senator and local congressman to put special bills through the House and Senate to that effect. That didn't come to anything, which is no surprise… the congressional calendar doesn't have time for all the things on it to start with. The other parents did the talk show circuit, gave a lot of interviews to the tabloid press, and they still send out periodic press releases to the various Netcasters and news agencies." He shook his head again. "Not that it's had much effect on Deathworld, or Joey Bane. If anything, it's publicity that increases usage. And truly, without any evidence to suggest that the site really is doing anything to unbalance people… "
Winters turned to look out for a moment at the morning sun beginning to come in through his blinds. Then he glanced back at Charlie. "What brings this up right now?" he said.
"I've got a friend who's all of a sudden interested in the place," Charlie said. "Real interested. In fact, lately he doesn't seem able to talk about much else."
"I take it this isn't normal for him."
"No," Charlie said. "And with these new suicides…"
Winters leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. "When you have the volume of people using Net-based facilities that we routinely have these days," he said, "the trouble is that almost any death, no matter how it looks, can genuinely be random." He touched a spot on his desk, and another window, a smaller one, opened itself in the air. It had nothing in it, as far as Charlie could see, but one long string of digits. "Here's today's bonus question," Winters said. "How many people are on the Net right now?"
Charlie tried to catch a glimpse of that long row of digits, but the problem was that almost all the numbers were changing so fast they were a blur. "Worldwide, or just nationally?"
Winters grinned. "Always the right question, with you. Worldwide."
Charlie tried to remember the last set of figures he'd heard. "A quarter of a billion?"
"Try five times that," Winters said, and flicked a finger at the window he'd been watching. It spun so that Charlie could read it. Most of the numbers were still bright blurs, but Charlie could see the numbers 1,263… and then two more sets of three digits each after that, all impossible to read.
"One point two billion and change," Winters said, "just at the moment. It's a function of the time of day. Australia's having its after-dinner entertainment, but most of Greater Asia is still at work. Europe and Africa and Russia are on their lunch breaks, mostly, but they'll be back to work shortly. And the East Coast is up checking the news before it heads in to the office."
He leaned back and looked at the numbers. "The 'tide' ebbs and flows as the Earth turns and the terminator moves," he said, "but the number where the wave 'crests,'
at the time of greatest usage, rarely drops below nine hundred million anymore. And it grows all the time as the Netted-in population grows. So, with this information in hand… a question. How many of those people are dying right now, while they're on the Net?"
Charlie opened his mouth and then closed it.
"You see the problem?" Winters said. "Let me whittle it down a little, since our viewpoint at the moment should probably stay strictly jurisdictional." The number in the window changed, grew smaller. "On this continent alone, there are a hundred and eighty million people using the Net right this moment. So, consider the statistics. Do you know how often someone dies in North America? Whether they're on the Net or not? From all causes."
"I'm not sure."
"Nineteen per minute," Winters said. "That's an average, of course. You get statistical clusters when there are a lot more deaths than that, and statistical 'dry spots' when there are many fewer. On the same average about fifteen children are born per minute… with the same kind of 'real-time' variation on the average. But considering that at peak times maybe half the total population might be on the Net, when their particular moment to die comes along-" He raised his eyebrows. "You can see how we get small clusters of numbers that seem to mean something, but don't necessarily. It tends to make us cautious about chasing patterns that almost inevitably turn out not to be patterns at all. And when you extend the statistical sampling to include the rest of the planet-you see how deceptive the numbers can become."
Charlie nodded.
Winters sighed and leaned back again. "We only have so big a budget," he said. "And there are a lot of people who watch very carefully how we use it. So Net Force has to be very careful of how we chase after data. Granted, we provide an important service. But no one likes a government agency that starts thinking itself too important to use its budget wisely. The day we stop producing results to match our output of funds…" He shrugged. "That day we, and the whole Net environment in our jurisdiction, are in big trouble."
"I see," Charlie said.
Winters paused as a small knocking sound came from the window, specifically, from the peanut feeder, where a small brown bird had just alighted. This in itself was nothing unusual, but the bird immediately picked up a peanut from the feeder, dropped it four stories, then picked up another one, and dropped that, and picked up another one, and dropped that…