Matt nodded. “Like that crazy stick-figure proxy of yours.”
Leif nodded. “Exactly. How can you catch her attention, and make her want more?”
A faint smile came over Matt’s face. “I’m beginning to get an idea, but I’m going to need your help. We’ve only got a couple of days to get ready.”
I guess Tricia was right, Matt though as he synched in to Lara Fortune’s virtual party. The locale was red-lined all the way — and it had cost Papa Fortune a lot of money. Matt seemed to be standing on the inside wall of a clear plastic disk orbiting high above the Earth. The planet looked like a grotesquely inflated moon looming over them. Fluffy white clouds spread across blue oceans and brownish-green land masses. Matt squinted at the edges of the cloud cover, trying to spot a familiar landmark. There — in that open spot — a small spit of land jutted into the sea. It had to be the distinctively hooked arm of Cape Cod….
Matt grinned. Of course. They were in orbit over Washington.
The illusion was perfect, down to the smallest details. Matt watched as clouds shredded away from the Virginia coast, revealing the city. A girl peering through one of several telescopes by the wall suddenly squealed. “There’s my yard! And my mom is waving up at me!”
Matt shook his head. The greater the detail, the more expensive the sim. Lara’s dad had certainly dropped a lot of zeroes on this one.
Music blared overhead, and Matt looked up to find that some people had abandoned the disk-floor to float and dance in microgravity. Not the nasty-mouthed Tricia, of course. She stood in her expensive gown, clinging to the edge of a table.
Cat Corrigan must have had better spies. She wore a silver-blue silky jumpsuit that was perfectly suited for low-G dancing. Laughing, the blond girl spun in midair. Then she spotted Matt.
Or rather, she spotted the stick-figure proxy Matt had worn to the party. Caitlin bounced through the other dancers in a mad scramble, climbed down to where Matt stood, and goggled at him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“Just checking out a suspicion, CeeCee,” Matt replied lazily. “Or should I call you Cat? I’ve been trying to track you down ever since I saw you hit that girl at Maxim’s. You’ve got a couple of virtual tricks I’d love to learn.”
Caitlin continued to stare as if any words she might say would choke her. But she didn’t get a chance to say anything.
At that moment, another blond girl, wearing an even fancier jumpsuit, came up to them. “I don’t know how you got in, but if you had an invitation you’d know that proxies aren’t allowed.” Lara Fortune turned to Caitlin. “Friend of yours, Cat?”
“N-no,” Caitlin Corrigan gulped. Her eyes still hadn’t left Matt’s proxy.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Matt said. “I’m sure I have my invitation somewhere.” He went through the motions of a man searching his pockets, which looked ridiculous on a stick figure. “Aha!” he exclaimed, pulling something out of thin air.
It wasn’t an invitation icon, however. Matt shook out something that looked like a rubbery black pancake.
“What is that?” Lara Fortune demanded.
Matt tossed it to her. It landed on the front of her lace and spandex jumpsuit, creating a disgusting inky smear down the front. “It’s a virtual stain. Pretty neat, huh? Or then again, maybe not.”
Lara’s response to the destruction of her costume was an ear-piercing scream.
For a second, Matt felt a stab of conscience at wrecking the girl’s party. He’d thought maybe if he played it for laughs — but this wasn’t funny. He had to keep acting as if this were fun, though.
Matt stepped back. “Maybe I should try and distract you.” This time he came out with what looked like a handful of small pebbles. He turned to a nearby table, where a complicated collection of tubes created a microgravity fountain over the punch bowl. But when he tossed his handful of pebbles in, the contents of the bowl began to bubble and send up clouds of steam. Then came a muted baBOOM! A mushroom cloud of punch rose into the air and began drifting lazily downward in the low gravity. The muffled explosion caused screams and stares.
Cat Corrigan tried to brush off the sweet, sticky drizzle that began coming down on everybody in the room. “Yuck!” she cried as punch began soaking into her outfit and hair. But she was biting her lips to keep from laughing.
It’s only a sim, Matt kept telling himself. It’s not like I’m doing this in the real world. But a furious Lara Fortune had already whirled off to get her parents. In a second, Matt knew, automated security would be closing in on him.
“Take it easy, Cat,” he said with a nonchalant wave. “By the way, nice party.”
From the way Caitlin came dashing at him, Matt wondered if she were going to try tackling him to keep him there.
But all she did was yank loose one of her earrings and stuff it into his hand. “Figure it out when you’re well away from here,” she muttered in the midst of the chaos. “Just get out — now!”
Chapter 5
Saturday morning, Matt asked some of his Net Force Explorer friends to make a virtual visit. They all hovered in Matt’s personal veeyar, leaning over the floating marble slab/table, examining the earring Caitlin Corrigan had given Matt the night before.
“So, at least you wound up with a souvenir from your party-crashing,” Andy Moore said. “You think this Senator’s kid likes you?”
“That’s not the point,” David Gray said. “You usually can’t just take off virtual bits and pieces and have them survive. This earring should have faded away when Matt cut his connection with that party. Since it didn’t, we know there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
Silently, Matt handed over a program icon from the collection on his marble desktop — the magnifying glass.
When David held it over the earring, tiny letters sprang into being in the air — thousands of lines of them. David fiddled with the magnifying glass, making the holographic image larger, then scrolling the lines up and down.
“So,” he said in satisfaction, “it’s a program — a communications protocol.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler if she’d just passed on her telephone number?” Andy asked.
“Maybe,” Matt admitted. “But these are Leets we’re talking about here. Rich kids. What I’m interested in is the programming, though. You guys are more up on that than I am.”
Although Matt had programmed up the virtual stain he’d used on Lara Fortune’s dress, he’d depended on Andy for the punch-bowl surprise. “What can you tell me?”
Both boys began scanning through the lines of programming language. “It’s very good, if a bit flashy,” David said. “It compresses a lot of information into such a small artifact.”
“Professional,” Andy added.
“Professional as in very good amateur, or is it the work of a paid program designer?” Matt asked.
“No way this could be homemade,” Andy said. “There are copyright notices on some of the subroutines. This is commercial program coding — very high-end, special-designed stuff. Expensive.”
“So Caitlin couldn’t have written it herself?”
Andy shot him a surprised look. “I didn’t know Caitlin Corrigan was a hacker.”
“Neither do I,” Matt said. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Somebody had to write the coding that let the virtual vandals take over the Camden Yards computer sim system, not to mention the programming wrinkle that lets these kids hurt people in virtual realities. Let’s call him — or her — the Genius. From what you’re saying, I can scratch Caitlin off my list as the brains behind the vandals. She doesn’t do her own programming.”