ERIC VINCENT
THE THIEF OF THE NET
The thief of the net
Web: http://ericvincent.no-ip.org/
© Eric Vincent 2003. All rights reserved. Idea and title of Anice, from www.anice-fiction.com Every resemblance with having existed, existing or coming situations or characters would be a pure coincidence.
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Rain hammered the zinc of the gutters, playing an allegro rhythm on metal. Its acidity increasing, logical consequence of the ultimate stage of pollution, gnawed all materials. The enterprises specialized in the renovation surfed on the wave of the economy: the terrible atmosphere provided them innumerable opportunities. The sellers of protective combinations didn't get out pain and the man engulfing himself in the narrow gray and drab alley was joy well of it. Without his second skin made of Kevlar and fiber of carbon, the precipitations would have damaged him dirtily. A regrettable damage because this man was merely Neo, one of the Anice-fiction stars, the most famous on line publication site. Of publication simply! Since 2015, the traditional publishing houses didn't stop collapsing, to the profit of the sites on Internet. The purchase of traditional books with prohibitive price lowered as the homes equipped themselves with high-speed links and as they reached the free literature. The generation been born with Internet, with a mouse transplanted between the hands, constituted the new slice of the twenty thirty years and it persisted to read on line, abandoning the paper, downloading the longer narrations on multimedia omni-books, reading in any conditions, including in a good hot bath! Among the authors stars of the e-book, Neo represented in the top 10 of the French, the young and least young people adoring his compilations of sketch of robots and his anthology of the crazy challenges. The writer spun to quick pace in the minuscule arteries of the city, ignoring the shelters equipped with ultrasonic sounds crushers and fans, braking the molecules of water and hunting the harmful miasmas, good for the imprudent. Neo had an idea only in head: to write, to write and again to write. His brain had just changed in magic caldron: the announcement of the permanent and successful colonization of the Moon overheated his sharpened neurons. The use of shuttles propelled with laser put the natural satellite to some minutes from the Earth. Soon, the spatial tourism would see the day. The Moon would be the play ground of agronomists developing some revolutionary cultures under immense greenhouses, using the ice of the star to stem the thirst of their plantations. Some hotels, some dwellings would emerge thanks to ores pulled to innards by armies of robots. Some what to excite his imaginary without limit! Neo passed a door fading away to his demand, the high tech home answering the voice. He did an obligatory passage by the sieve of decontamination where an electrolysis ridded his shell of water while separating it in molecules of dioxygen and dihydrogen. The harmful elements were recovered and agglomerate to form the fossilized fuel. Neo undressed and threw hiss combination carelessly on the sofa. He rushed on his new acquirement, the incarnation of the future that he imagined: the Nex 3D Virtual, a revolutionary computer, gift of the Nex company anxious to sponsor the most famous authors of the Web. The 3D Virtual represented the best to surf on Internet: a ray laser integrated scanned the user's body, the machine created a faithful representation of it in synthetic pictures and it was projected on the potentiality of the Web for summit meetings, the furious chats and proceedings on the existential questions of life: what is there after the death? Is it better to have the buttons looking like Tagada strawberries or a stomach making a noise of machine wring to wash when it digests? It would allow him to show his true face on the forums of Anice-fiction.
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The 3D Virtual started in less than five seconds and executed the author's topographic summary, curling the perfection. Neo got settled comfortably on minister's armchair and covered himself with a helmet preserving him of the nightmarish world to plunge him in the one of the dream, with his friends. Isolated of the sort, he couldn’t foresee the continuation of the events. The laser of the 3D Virtual sped up a brief second with an extraordinary intensity, generating a terrifying shock without being deadly. The machine unlocked the entry of the apartment and masked men penetrated in the dwelling. They seized the author, lying on the vitrified public prosecutor's office. *** The first impressions of the young blond woman with harmonious shapes, stretched out on tiles made of teak, amounted to the pain. Anice carried the hand to her chest and localized the sensitive zone; the laser had hit her at the plexus, contrary to all expectations. She separated a flap of her shirt and the vision of a zone hesitating between the bruise and the black confirmed her sensations. The aspect of the hematoma indicated that her unconsciousness had not lasted more than three or four days. Taking little by little her minds, her first questioning was about her environment. A fog to cut with a knife surrounded her of all parts. "Some fog and tiles made of wood on the soil? Curious mixture!" She noticed understandably. "What is, this place as living as a hospital ghost? What occurred?" Again, she carried the hand to the aching chest. The memories came back with slowness. The new computer delivered by Nex, rewarding a success passing the limits of the French speaking countries, had behaved at the very least strangely. The laser, too powerful to be standard on this model, the black hole that had followed. The second question was: why? Why this aggression, this real kidnapping? - Is there someone? A masculine voice close to her bawled, using an accent smelling good the Walloon. - That way! Anice replied, guiding her interlocutor with her typical Mediterranean intonations. Some cool and humid volutes emerged not a man but four characters of which a blond woman with a size and a pace similar to Anice, except that she was full of moles. One of the three men was enough young, big, slim, a true engraving of fashion. The two other were not behind, displaying measurements of the elite of the models. The most threadlike took the floor with his Nordic and shooting accent. - Hello! How are you? - Anice! And you? - Anice? Anice of Anice-Fiction?! The strong man wondered. - In flesh… the muse of the site started on the tone of the joke.
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She decided otherwise and became pale. The interviews of the site, made more than ten years before and re-actualized via Chinese portraits, quizzes and challenges, came back her in memory. - Bert? She dropped at random to the attention of one of the characters. - Present! He retorted without lacking aplomb. And the youngster, there, it is the elected, Neo. Anice found strength to smile: Neo, the elected! The declaration had staleness from Matrix. - Doesn't laugh you, Anice! Neo is indeed the elected of the group. - I am attached to the mayor of my township, the concerned person commented. Elected, what! - The beautiful youngster, there, it is my pal Guigui, a pure product of the Waterzoï and the French fry, all as me. As for the magnificent mom who is here, it is the one that is at the origin of the crypt tales, the set for the children who are not cold to the eyes! Her name is Sab. Anice took time to think some seconds, just to sum up a situation diving in the puzzlement. Unknown places, unknown faces but recognized minds. The unique tie uniting them was Anice-Fiction, the site that had made their glory, their celebrity on the Web. Did it have to lead them toward the misfortune? She could not solve herself of it but the evidence was obvious. - Did you receive a Nex 3D Virtual? The saint of the authors of the Web quizzed, hit-onthe-fly. - Yes, Sab answered first of all. This wild mechanics doesn't have a coin of philosophical sense. Its bad karma doesn't have an equal that its absence of conscience of the respect of the human person. It manhandled me before even that my fingers skimmed its keys. Now, I believe to be able to affirm that the machine is made to supplant the man in his work but created also to delight him his place in the human hierarchy, restoring him at the prehistoric and dusky larva state. - Forgiveness? Neo wondered. Can you activate your decoder? - She would glue this damned machine well to the breaking, Bert translated while pruning the details to good knowledge. - Very so-called! Guigui Annotated. We have all received a Nex and we have some all took full the pear. I doubt that the whole set is deficient. - It is in the domain of the possible, a small chubby fellow added, come out of the interminable fog. - Who are you? Bert swung. - Maxim, "the Mussel", to serve you, the children! The engineer programmer that I follow affirms that a set of machinery can present the same defect. Why? These bicycles went up by entirely programmed robots to be autonomous. A regulating amiss and they derail, producing hardware that the humans charged of the quality, don't control anymore, preferring to sleep lightly behind a heap of palettes rather than to inspect with a gnarl the
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products of their factories. However, even though this machinery derailed, there is a thing that crumples me. - What therefore? Anice increased, anxious to know more. - Why didn't I succeed to debug it? Dirt of contraption! Joking apart, there are only some authors here! - How do you know it? Bert Operated. - I crossed several guys and girls in fog. - Did you see some pretty? Guigui Cut. - I want, my nephew, the Mussel pursued. Yeah! It was a parade of authors lost in the mash of pea. In bulk, I crossed Guss, Christy, Jead, Harry, Mulder, Evil Drax, Iness and Sef. I forget some presumably. - Solely authors of the site, Anice confessed, knowing them all by heart. - Ah yes, of course, GP Gweltaz, the author of Coda, The Mussel pursued. He decided to split fog while walking the most right possible. He entertains the hope to escape the stagnation while applying this strategy. - Not silly! Bert remarked. Not silly, in fact! We should make some as much. This room is not infinite. - A room? What lets you think that we are in a room? Guigui asked for. - Soil is tiled, Neo noticed. The silence got settled. The reflection discriminating of the youngest among them underlined the side "production" of their meeting. - So only this flipping fog agreed to rise… Bert released. As if a good genius had heard him, a light breeze rose and started the scattering of the fine droplets of water in suspension. Little by little, the panorama took shape owing their amazed eyes. Japan of the sixteenth century. To loss of view, the Japanese, green, in bloom, hilly country, offered a landscape of post card. By them, a house with the traditional Japanese shapes, with the sliding openings and the traditional terrace with tiles made of teak. At some meters from there, a small bridge stepped over a basin surrounded of plants, of judiciously arranged pebbles, of flowers to the colorations granted according to the rules of the ikebana, the Japanese floral art. The beauty of the places extracted an admiring hiss of the assembly of the authors. Since they were present in these places, they improvised a visit. *** A deaf and regular growl filled air, also transmitting some vibrations in soil. An army of samurais was in order of walk, obedient to one innumerable Lords of the war dress anxious to cover himself with glory, advanced by the desire to increase the surface of his earths. The troop, endowed with torchlight whose flames split the ambient obscurity, sped along right in their direction, trampling on the cultures of the peasants without the least regret. Instinctively, the authors, joined by Jean-Luc, the nice inhabitant of La Reunion island, adept of the histories of shade and sorcery, had thrown themselves behind shelters of fortune. Among them all, Bert was the one who trembled the more. Hey yes! Our nice
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eater of mussels didn't have the French fry! It was even Sab that must interrogate him, seeing that he curled the despair: - Bert? But what causes a fright in your deep soul? - I am afraid that there are some… zombies! - Zombies? Let's go, Bert! You don't have wondered only one instant that this kind of idea could be only the fruit of the starts of your subconscious, in opposition with your unconscious, driving back preconceived and prefabricated visions by our society in dwindle, playing on our fears to push us on the path of life which, is not besides in advance completely written. - Hey? Bert dropped. - In bulk, you invent, my pal! Guigui lightened. You read too many dull novels when you were small! - I am not sure of it, Anice pursued while raising the nose above a grove. Watch! The furious horde fell on the group of writers. The riders didn't have anything common with valorous samurais fighting according to a precise honor code, based on an absolute devotion, punishing the least mistake by a hara-kiri in good and due shape. These men left the hell straight ahead, the eyes out of orbits by the unconscious hate, sloughed in machinery to kill until more thirst. They didn't have a leader and appeared guided by the black magic. Their sabers sprang of the sheaths and whirled time and again, triggering panic among the adepts of Anice-fiction. Associated to howling of unverifiable beasts, their gesticulations produced the waited effect: a disorganized stampede, a fold on the rear in fourth speed. Only Neo disobeyed to the general rule; he stood between the thrown very quickly cavalry and his friends. He concentrated some seconds, making abstraction of the ambient tumult and raised the arm in the enemy's direction. A throw of green light pulled itself of the palm of his hand, enlarged, intensified and hit the first attackers full on. The vanguard was watered copiously, the energy unseated the riders with a surrealist violence, projecting them to several score meters of their settings. While biting the dust, the first victims were dislocated. Neo pursued the slaughter in the hostile ranks. His second hand was used for the same task, stopping clean the assault, opening a breach in the battalion, spreading terror among the inferred creatures to generate it. Soon, there were more men on the ground than men on horseback. The speed and the efficiency with which one of the youngest authors of science-fiction of the Earth hit, generated a stop of the hostilities. More that this sudden discovery of the real nature of Neo, it was the turn of the events that surprised the group. The samurais had vanished literally in the nature, unobtrusive of the landscape, taking their deaths and their injured. They had left in smoke, mingling with the fog that rose again. - Good blood! Jean-Luc exclaimed. It looks like sorce… - No! Anice cut. -… ry, Jean-Luc finished. Mist become thick in some seconds, didn't put anymore of time to disperse itself a second time. The prairie had disappeared, replaced by a dark and troubling forest. The foliate with the twisted shapes evoking some malformations threw their gigantic shades on the
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pure and hard of the writing and the on line edition. The ululations of owls barn-owls either worse, the screams horrible of the hulotte, generated some supplementary thrills. - I wanted to warn you, Anice added, visibly too late. - Of what? Jean-Luc asked for. - All this is not real, Anice pursued. - Yet, this tree is well there! The islander retorted while hitting the trunk of a hundredyear-old oak. - This tree was not there five minutes ago, Neo decided. We are not in the Japanese past or in any medieval kingdom. We are in 2015, to one time where the technology joins the science-fiction, where all is possible. I am not more a terrific mutant endowed of terrifying powers. I imagined everything. I ignore where we are but this place is conceived to give birth to our ideas, to our imaginary. Anice understood it, I think. - Indeed, Neo, this last confirmed. - It passes the understanding! Bert Wondered. I dreamed of zombies and they disembarked. Yet, the tree is real! Neo knelt and collected some dead leaves. He crumpled them in the palm of his hands and entertained the peel of the tree. He aimed his virgin leaves to Bert, the distrustful to find the report. This last raised the glove and compared the leaves and the peel. His senses were not deceived longer. - I would say it’s the same matter! - Exact! I can even tell you what it is: polypropylene agglomerated to the linen, hemp and the polyamide of benzoate. - Can you translate? Guigui asked for. - Artificial plastic! A new voice replied. They turned around all toward the newcomer. - G.P. Gweltaz! the Mussel exclaimed. Finally, you joined us! - Very obligated, the friend. Do I imagine that these ladies are Anice and Sab? - Yes, the creatures of the no so weak sex answered. - I am Bert! The king of the sweltering writings protested. - Neo, the concerned person said temperately. - Guigui. - Jean-Luc. - And Max the Mussel, G.P.Gweltaz finished, that I met has little. - We are to the suit! Bert stated. All animators of Anice-fiction. What for? I don't know anything of it! Do they maybe to cut us in small discs? The ineffable Bert continued, always as optimistic in his visions of the future. - Or then, a mysterious blackmailer is going to force us to write a rose-water novel, Guigui joked. - You are not so distant of the truth, G.P. cut. - What? Explain yourself! - I walked straight ahead since I arrived here. These places possess a finished limit. This is a gigantic production, like in the move “Truman Show”, especially orchestrated for us,
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the authors with a collective imaginary, with sliced individualities and with an unequalled mentor. - What is the aim? Guigui added. - To let us imagining and concretizing resources of our brains. - They would rob us? Bert wondered. - Yes. - Why? - I don't know. Considering the means put in work, the economic profit of this production must be giant. It is sufficient to be thirsty so that water sprang of a fountain emerged of nowhere. I am sure that it is sufficient to be hungry to discover no far from there, in a clearing, a banquet and of what to feast. - The idea seduced me! Jean-Luc protested. I have the stomach in the heels! I didn't swallow anything since my arrival. - Just a last precision, G.P. warned We are not to the suit. Some authors who participated at the site through 3rd millennium, the cyborg and our other works are missing. Either they wander in the immensity of the places, or they have not been taken, either they were… eliminated. - Do you think about a game?! Sab got excited, dismayed to the idea to be the object of bets, of beastly shouts on the odds of the some and of the other. - I don't know. What is sure, it is that one of the major authors of the site misses to the call. He wrote some very short stories, short stories, set down manuscripts, undergone the fire of the questions and raised some challenges. - Challenges? Neo said. Shit! Eric… - Yes, Eric is missing. - No precipitation! The Mussel tempered. He was a former programmer, he didn't let himself trap by the computer. Didn't he receive the poisoned gift maybe? - Yes, Anice released. The young woman appeared to know more that she didn't tell some. Or then, this dark history affected her more especially, being at the origin of the birth of the most prolific group. - All authors received this machine. The Nex society addressed me a delivery order. Eric received a machine. His absence is… No! I hope that it was sufficiently shrewd to escape the laser. - Unless that he was right on one point… Sab suggested. - Which? Bert get. - Not enough talent to interest our captor. - Do you joke? Neo annotated while raising a dark look. - Yes, of course! He will have more luck than we. - And if we raised the camp? Jean-Luc indented. And if we tested the magic of these places? - I suggest that we satiated ourselves and that we looked for an emergency door of exit, Anice concluded. The proposition was adopted unanimously, the young woman having known how to federate the group always around innovative concepts, in spite of the strong
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individualities. At the detour of a grove, they discovered a castle from where escaped some flattering aromas. As anticipated, as… imagined. *** Spectator fascinated by the small screen, Lore alias February 88, delighted herself of the movie of the weekend "Virtuality Show". The movie of the weekend didn't have anything anymore common with the everlasting retransmission of Sunday evening. It was an innovative concept, a first French broadcast, a world first event: the movie, realized in direct, began Saturday morning and ended Sunday evening, with a CSA cut between two hours and six hours in the morning, letting leisure to the actors to make the pause, the catnap or to deliver themselves to other distinctly jollier activities. The movie in direct, realized with a barded of special effects having to succeed to 100%, without advertising cut (what dream!), without fall during the installation. The advertising beating around this global event had only started Wednesday preceding the direct. The secret had been preserved until the last instant, in order to bring up a more passionate intrigue. But was this real? The movie was not rigged, like these broadcasts of yesteryear where the sleeping was extracted from a scenario in the least detail? Who were these strange actors, as photogenic the some that the other? Were they indeed those that they pretended to be? Lore sensed it with fright. If the advertisements shone by their absence at the time of this first, Lore had to have made her parents spit one thousand euros to enjoy the Pharaonic spectacle. The benefit had a cost… However, she would not ever have preferred to be the witness of this masquerade. When the generic had paraded on the stretched maximally screen (its soft structure conferred it a bounded variable geometry between fifteen centimeters and hundred fifty centimeters of diagonal), she had become pale. Anice, Bert, Guigui, The Mussel, Neo, even her dear Sab had been transported in the heart of the script that the authors wrote, lived and whose television delighted themselves. They were all there, except some she belonged. Why? Why them and not her? Why imply them in a fantastic world? To cut up them of their most brilliant ideas? If it was the case, the instigator was going to desist. Neo, the brilliant Neo, had pierced the mystery. Henceforth, the involuntary heroes of this sinister stuffing looked for a door of exit instead of generating the products of their fantasies. The palpitating heart, Lore crossed the fingers so that her friends escape their jailer. *** - It is by there! Gweltaz said. Yes! It is there! We hold the good tip! Yes! I touch the surrounding wall. He hit the partition in order to make the other hear the metallic resonance. The gong reassured some but worried others. In particular Anice, for that partition of metal rhymed with capital punishment. Prisoners they were, prisoners they remained, in spite of their fundamental discovery.
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- Who played us a remake of “Truman Show”? Bert exclaimed. - Me! A voice come out of hidden surrounding walls in the landscape declared. A hologram emerged from nowhere and materialized the rubicund, jovial and nearly barefaced face of a fifty years old man. The landscape had dimmed as if an invisible hand had turned the button of a rheostat. - Who are you? Bert thundered, ready to unpick some with the unknown. - Max Schindler. The authors of Anice-fiction stared themselves as if the imminent arrival of one meteor had just been announced to the radio. In old truck drivers of the writing, the accomplices didn't ignore this name but they put a face on this patronymic for the first time. Max Schindler, discreet man, lived aside from the fires of the rail while presiding the most powerful group of press and edition of the world. However, since the years 2010, his gigantic business collapsed little by little. The literary edition branch based on paper endured a keen competition since these years where the authors had taken the power, sustained by the readers greedy of quality writings offered in quantity. Schindler max operated reconverting of capital and activity. But this change required the training of a new profession and the discovery of virtual talents. How attract some authors become free electrons, gainful via advertising contracts, according to the audience and the critiques of sites? - What do you want us? Anice asked for. - I want you! Your ideas, your imaginary! All your intelligence, all your union, all your talents, to generate a fantastic story, the most fantastic story ever written. I will market it under all its shapes: video games, novel, movie, television, board games, amusement park. You will be the stars of a new Internet site that I named lovingly Max-Fiction. For it, the engineers of Nex created Onyx, a gigantic computer endowed with an extraordinary machinery, pipelines distributing water under all its shapes, liquid metal and liquid plastic permitting all madness, holograms concretizing all your ideas, even maddest. It creates more quickly than its shade, it can manage several hundreds of characters, to put in stage a medieval battle, to make you cross a black hole, to travel in the time, to give you some extraordinary powers. It answers the least desire. - And if we refuse? - Impossible! You are trapped in these places, I can guarantee it to you! Don't look for a door of exit, there is not some. Comfort yourselves! You are the stars of “Virtuality Show”, the first movie realized in direct on a whole weekend! You will understand well quickly that there is only one solution: to play the game. Farewell and produce well! On these inflicted pains, Max vanished in nothing, letting them an uniformly white landscape, similar to the writer's virgin leaf. Neo was the first to break the silence hugging the dismayed aid. - I don't believe a word of these salads! We entered in the madness of this type, there is fatally a means to get out!
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- Okay with you, guy! The Mussel added. We are taken in a box of canned food and we are going to find the can opener. We add some authors with the imaginary without boundary-mark, it is our strength! Let's invent a means to escape! - Very well spoken! Jean-Luc exclaimed. We could start with raising the inventory of our belongings. - Our belongings? G.P. inquired. - Yeah! I always have my multifunctions watch on me. It can be useful. - Anice, Sab said. You are strangely silent. Must I discover in this atypical attitude a centered reflection tentative on the essential questions or on a synthesis of our kidnapping? In manner of answer, the mentor of the Internet site shook the head in a negative way, swinging her right-hand ponytail on the left. Her look went from one to the other, in quest of answers to her interior questioning. - What’s the trouble? Guigui asked for. - A strange sensation… Anice blew. - Which? The pal of Bert continued. - The face of Schindler is not unknown for me. His look. I don't know where… I don't know… Ah! So only we could connect on the Net! - We can it! Neo Cut. Let's use our power of imagination! - How? - Let me do… The young man departed and closed the eyes. Het concentrated. Screens of welcome of hundreds of thousands of Internet sites emerged of soil and started spinning them all around. Parading as the pages of a mail-order catalog, the words, the colors, sprang by millions. - Go there! Throw a research on this guy! Bert implied. Anice interposed her hand, seizing Anice-fiction. She skimmed the plan of the site and selected the links. There, she browsed the list in detail. Finally, she stopped her choice on a particular site and visited it thoroughly, persuaded to find for what she looked there. A feminine intuition guided her. She trusted her instinct. Suddenly, she stopped on the cover of a book named "Dangerous Mirages". She read the summary: the story narrated the wandering of a man taken by the alcohol, by the desire of self-destruction and related his fantastic redemption thanks to an angel sent in mission, an angel finally bringing him the love for that he asked body and screams. The cover, constituted of a photo of a face partially appearing at the bottom of one glass of alcohol, perfectly illustrated the subject. Anice concentrated on the face seriously concealed by the bronzed liquid. The look… This look was the one of Max Schindler! - Lord… she sighed. Look at these eyes!
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- These eyes? Sab said, intrigued. What do you do on the site of Eric Vincent? This look for… These eyes… These eyes! No! It is not possible! Not Eric! Not Eric! Eric is Max Schindler! He… he… Sab losing her words, what was a height, Neo took the relay, accustomed to this kind of exercise since “the 3rd millennium”. - He infiltrated at home, he played the game, he cored us whereas we welcomed him and he betrayed. - Good blood! We saw nothing! Bert exclaimed. Among all writers, Anice was the most affected. She had gone to look for Eric, glimpsing an interesting potential in him, a powerful creator of which the abundance of his writings testified. She had welcomed him in the big family of Anice-fiction. He was only an usurper, a hermit crab of the literature, a parasite. She poured a tear mingled of disappointment and rage. *** The stupor past, the prisoners had wakened up. The inventory of the advantages had proven to be skinny. To their asset, the writers of the Web had a watch of diving endowed with an altimeter indicating that they were at fifty meters under ground. Neo, very connected on the high tech gadgets revealing his love of the future, possessed a bracelet a priori more interesting. However, the GPS system of his watch was unable to deliver the least information at a similar depth and his integrated compass seemed overcome, unable to find the north or one of the other cardinal points. They would need such an auxiliary not to turn in circle. They probed the metallic partitions since hours, without success, when they agreed an earned pause. - It leads to nothing! G.P. infuriated. I begin to believe that Schindler, alias Eric Vincent, said truly. There is not the least door of exit! The walls give out the same sound. Soil idem. Following words of G.P., full of common sense, the actors of the nightmare stared themselves. Of concert, they raised their heads in direction of the sky. Jean-Luc was the most expeditious to react. He concentrated and imagined an immense palm. The tree took shape of liquid materials and nearly solidified instantaneously. With a particular mastery, he started the ascension, hoping to knock a ceiling. He was hardly distant of soil about two meters that the palm disappeared as by enchantment and that he fell heavily on soil. - Ouch! He complained while regaining the floor of the cows more quickly than he hoped for it. - The machine betrayed itself! Neo exclaimed.
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He collected some curdle and swung them in air, at random. They hit the ceiling at four meters, maximally. The impression of volume and infinity was only a lure. - The exit is up there! Neo stated. I am sure of it! From then on, his friends imitated his gesture intended to probe the ceiling of the fortress, until a sound defers the other. All the team bombarded while taking care that the heavy and sharp repercussions don't take place on the colleagues. *** The method of the poll had carried its fruits. The onyx of Nex stubbornly refusing to grant the scales, ropes, lianas, cranes, elevators and other means of elevation, the members of Anice-fiction had delivered themselves to the game of the human pyramid. The strongest at the basis, the light men above, the two only women on top. Sab was the first to raise a pitfall with the joy of Hillary defeating the Everest for the first time. While pushing her two hands, she felt a strange contact. The thousands of alveolar papered the ceiling: some concentrated fiber optic, ideal to reproduce any sky. She hoisted herself to the superior level and made slide a scale of service until soil. Even though other authors of Anice-fiction always wandered in the immensity of this secret jail, it was vital that they explore the floors and that they find the exit. They would have enough time well then to claim for the troops and denounce their misfortune by the medias. One by one, they joined Sab and Anice, without Onyx can prevent them, incapable to act out of its environment. A relative darkness reigned in this dedicated area full of material destined to make live their dreams. Only some pallid lamps demarcated the path for the technicians so that they don't get lost in this maze. - I didn't believe that we would manage it as easily, Guigui suspected. Certainly, this mad could not create an enclosed, regionalist universe but to let escape us… - Hey! The Mussel exclaimed who had moved away of a few score of meters of the group. Come to see! The other ran after his demand. - Watch! These numbers delimit the zones and there is a plan. We are there and if I understood well the legend, here, this is a staircase to go up to the superior level. - So Schindler lets us arrive until there! Bert grumbled, seeing decidedly all in black. - Who doesn't tempt anything, doesn't have anything! The Mussel ascertained, borrowing an expression passed to the posterity. Trust my sense of orientation! With me, you don’t need any GPS or compass. We are stuck in a gigantic shell and the shells, it knows me! They fit together the step of Maxime, being sure not to fall nose to nose with musclemen of Eric Vincent or Max Schindler, not knowing really how to name him. The traitor certainly reserved them a special surprise. The machinery spread on hundreds of meters, or even of the kilometers. As far as their look went, it had there only cable harness, hoses, cases, machinery and relays. The basement of their jail was certainly conceived in an identical manner. Whatever was the traitor's megalomania, it had swallowed a real fortune!
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The thief of the net
They arrived at the staircase and borrowed it, remaining on their guards. Jean-Luc supervised his electronic altimeter, parking their vertical position. As they climbed the walks, the hope to leave was born again some. - We have some meters to clear, Jean-Luc declared. - I see a door! The Mussel roared, always at the head of the cortege. - It is too easy, Anice mumbled. Too easy. Eric is a true multiple doll. You remove a layer and you discover a new one. The last year, he had invited me to visit his new site. I had remained amazed by what he had accomplished. Behind a classic enough conception of the menus always leading to more numerous writings, he had filled his site of indications to collect, of hidden doors leading in a real labyrinth where one could discover the secret texts, the deep thoughts, the real pains. He had created a site as if it was about a representation of a nightmare, mingling the humor and the concern closely. - Do you dread that he did a Freudian transposition of his angers and his internal fears on the conception of our jail? Sab worried. - Yes… - Hey! The door is open! The Mussel gloated. Come! Come! Co… Oh! Shit! - What? Bert said. What is there? No… It is not true! Tell me that it is a new illusion. Neo, Jean-Luc, come to see that! The door gave on a sort of hangar where innumerable cases made of wood were stocked. Large tinted glass windows filtered the mortals solar rays and offered the landscape as a bonus to the eyes of the Anice-fiction writers. A landscape made of desolation, congealed for the eternity, where hopeless wind didn't sweep the gray dust. A vision that had been a dream in other circumstances. - The Moon! The voice that they hated henceforth annotated, retiring of hidden loudspeakers in the partitions. Hey yes, dear Anician friends! I ordered the construction of this basis on the Moon in order to assure me of your full and whole cooperation. Amusing, this is not? - I want to leave! I want to leave! Sab squalled. Let me see my children again! Please! You are father, you must understand. - I perfectly understand, dear Sab. I have been separated of my children all my life, only seeing them on too rare occasions. But, what I have to say, will comfort you. You are not dived in any environment. Onyx can give birth to your dreams, to your nightmares, to your desires but it can become also a nightmare. The one or the one that will have been the most fertile for the realization of this adventure, the most ingenious and simply, the survivor, will win his liberty and the insurance to live his feather fatly until the last of his days. The other will lose all. Yes, you are going to ask you the question: are you going to disown your liabilities to win the celebrity and the absolute wealth, to remain in life? Question typically existential, dear Sab! I am going to feast and to exploit the least of your ideas. Ah! A last precision to the attention of Bert: this game is not a simple remake of “Truman Show”. I added a little “Cube” there also. Good luck and good writing! The voice was quiet. - What does he want to say? Guigui exclaimed.
15
The thief of the net
- That there are some traaaapppppssss! Neo squalled while he fell in the emptiness, soil having escaped under his feet. The other underwent the same fate, slippery inexorably in angled ducts, until they regain the area where Onyx would serve them and would track them. All emergency pitfalls were welded instantaneously. The movie had just begun hardly… ** *
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