Overclocked by K. S. Augustin Read Free Book Online

the lid. Ac­cord­ing to it, she had been in­ser­ted eight minutes ago. That was two minutes longer than any of their sand­pit ex­cur­sions. Strange how it seemed a longer time, now that she thought on it. She would have es­tim­ated she had been in cy­ber­space for an hour at least.
    Tania clicked the lid shut, chose the left street and con­tin­ued walk­ing. Des­pite her mis­trust of the rab­bit, she had picked the nar­row­est of the three choices avail­able. If there were agents of a for­eign gov­ern­ment in­filt­rat­ing cy­ber­space, they would prob­ably use the wider, more fre­quently used streets to travel along. She hoped that, by choos­ing the equi­val­ent of a side street, she would be avoid­ing dis­cov­ery by them.
    The rush­ing in her ears that she first no­ticed upon in­ser­tion had changed. In­stead of one big wa­ter­fall, Tania was now hear­ing a series of wa­ter­falls. It was dif­fi­cult to make out, but some rushes soun­ded slower than oth­ers, as if they were trick­ling from streams in­stead of gush­ing from the ends of rap­ids.
    As she walked, more lights began to blink be­side her. Am­ber, green, red, blue, magenta, yel­low, cyan. Some ap­proached her head-on be­fore veer­ing away at the last minute. Oth­ers brushed past her so closely, she thought she felt the breeze from their passing gust against her arms.
    She was also clear­ing blocks at a faster rate. It had taken roughly thirty minutes to walk the last block. Now, Tania found her­self at an­other in­ter­sec­tion after only fif­teen minutes. She turned to check, but the length of each block ap­peared the same.
    When she faced for­ward again, a mov­ing block al­most col­lided with her. Tania threw her­self to the side and watched with hor­ror as a long green trailer sped over the spot where she’d just been stand­ing. She blinked and solid ob­jects sud­denly co­alesced be­fore her eyes. Cubes, rect­angles, spheres. Bear­ing no wheels, they bobbed cen­ti­metres above the street, hurt­ling down the road. Rather than two lanes as she had sur­mised, it ap­peared she was now walk­ing be­side an eight-lane high­way. Each lane was full of traffic, the space between each ob­ject barely enough for her to fit between. The roar­ing in her ears had fi­nally re­solved into the sound of these trav­el­ling vehicles. They must be what she had seen from the bank portal but why hadn’t she seen them at street level be­fore?
    Tania slowly got to her feet and dus­ted non-ex­ist­ent dirt from her pants. Minutes ago, she had been alone along a deser­ted high­way. Now, that same high­way was filled with streams of fast-mov­ing traffic in a vari­ety of shapes and col­ours. She looked up and gasped. Above her, a net­work of roads mirrored the land­scape she was tra­vers­ing, also car­ry­ing mo­bile threads of traffic. And above that. And above that again. Tania knew that, if she con­cen­trated, she’d prob­ably be able to see an al­most in­fin­ite num­ber of levels both above and be­low her.
    This
was the Blue. Not the safe equi­val­ent of a sleepy coun­try town she and Carl had prac­tised in, and not the cold bar­ren empti­ness that she had seen when first in­ser­ted. Now, Tania could fi­nally see the mag­ni­fi­cence of cy­ber­space. And while its bones might be cool blues and greys, it was brought alive by speed­ing poly­hed­rons of warm col­our. Data, rush­ing to and from spe­cific points, moved like fire­work flashes. Tania felt her face be­ing lit up by each ob­ject that passed, the breeze of their passing brush­ing her cheeks and nose.
    It was beau­ti­ful.
    And she thought she un­der­stood the rab­bit’s term now. It had spoken of “clock­ing up” from “hu­man-nor­mal”. That would have been her when she was first in­ser­ted, her brain used to op­er­at­ing at a par­tic­u­lar speed. The speed of the hu­man