Excerpt: Nerdscape

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TWENTY
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"Alright, want to know what happened last night?" Billy asked.

"What happened?"

"You know that storm last night? Lightning struck our house, right on top, right up there." Billy pointed directly above his bedroom window, on the roof.

"Whoa, no way," Amy said, gaping and pushing up her glasses.

"Way. Right when I was online with you, you know? And I blinked out or whatever?"

"That's when it happened?"

"That's when it happened. But wait, it gets better." Billy removed the plastic dust cover from his keyboard as he spoke. "Mom and I checked the place for fires and what not, and when I got back to the game, I was gonna chat with you. And that's when I hit this."

Billy pointed to the mysterious Enter key, and Amy leaned in to get a closer look, and then suddenly jerked back. "What is it?"

"You know, I'm still trying to decide that," Billy said. "At this point, all I know is what it's not."

"Come again?" Amy kept staring at the swirling, nickel sized oval above the Enter key.

Billy ticked the points off on his fingers. "Okay, it's not a dream, because you're seeing it too. And it's not me being crazy, unless we're both crazy here."

"Okay, then what is it?"

"Amy, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but I think it's a door."

There was a pause as Amy slowly brought her eyes from the keyboard to Billy. "You're right. I think you're crazy."

Billy chuckled. "Well then that makes two of us, man, because I've been questioning my sanity the whole time. Seriously, though, this is what I hit."

"You hit this?" Amy pointed to the mysterious key.

"I hit it, and then I," Billy said, pointing to his chest, "was in there." He pointed to the computer monitor.

There was another pause, and Billy could almost see the wheels cranking around in his friend's brain. Then Amy said, "No, no, no. Come on."

"Man, take as much time as you need. That's why we're here."

"Billy, that's just crazy talk. People don't, I mean, it's software, it's electrons and--"

"You're preaching to the choir, man," Billy said, raising his hand. "I'm telling you, there is no other explanation. I was in there last night."

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
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"Okay, let's recap what we know," Billy said, holding up two fingers. "A, we know it's a wormhole, and b, it has two mouths, one on my keyboard, and one on the current game's screen." Billy held up a third finger. "And c, it doesn't matter how many people go in, right? I mean, it's not like it closed after one of us entered. You could go in, too."

Amy's eyes brightened and she bent to her notepad. "Number three, wormhole traversable by multiple objects."

"Right. Traversable. You worry me sometimes, you know that?"

"What do you mean? That's just what it's called, tra--"

"Okay, okay, nevermind. So, moving on, if we know we can both go in, that means, hypothetically speaking, any number of people can go in."

Amy paused in her note taking. "We can bring a whole group in there with us."

"Talk about your killer LAN party. That beats anything else out there. The internet, Battle.net, Gamespy, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, all of it, they can't touch this."

"No way, this is a whole new thing. You can actually get in the game." Amy sounded distracted, like she was seriously considering the impact of what they were saying.

"That's right. Think about what this could mean. We could start charging admission for it, you know? Create our own online service. People would flock to us."

"Wait, dude," Amy said, snapping out of her thoughts. "No, this isn't ready for that."

"What do you mean? Man, we could create our own online thing, call it Billy Net, or Wormhole Net or Nerdscape or--"

"No, Billy, listen to me. Bad things could happen."

"What are you talking about? We've already tested this feature. We know it works, 'cause we went in there."

"Theoretically, yes, we've tested, though not on the scale you're talking about. Besides, something doesn't feel right."

"Hey, we've tested and it's fine. If it works for two, it'll work for two thousand. Look, I'm talking big bucks here, man. We could strike it rich doing this, selling this service."

"No, no, there's something else we have to think about." Amy used her pen to scratch her head.

"What's that?" Billy couldn't help sounding a little snippy. Amy just wasn't seeing the opportunity here.

"I'm not so sure we want this getting out yet. Maybe we should just keep this to ourselves for now, you know?"

"What? Why? That's missing the point. You're not seeing the opportunity--"

"Billy, think about it. We're talking about a wormhole here. We're talking about a scientific discovery, just like if someone found Atlantis or made a time machine or something. This is big, really big."

"Yeah, I know it's big."

"But I think it's too big, and who do you think's gonna come sniffing around once they find out about it, once we start blabbing it to everyone?"

Billy saw where she was going. "The government."

"Bing. One hundred dollars for Billy Stutzman."

"And what would they do?"

Amy shrugged and folded her arms. "Oh, I don't know. Take it away from us? Deny us any hope for privacy or any kind of normal life? You know that, dude. They'd take our lives from us."

"But we'd be rich and famous, wouldn't we?"

"You don't know that. My mom said there were a bunch of natural born geniuses and idiot savants in the fifties and sixties who made lots of scientific discoveries, but once the government got a hold of them, nobody heard from them again."

"Well then how does your mom know about them?" Billy asked.

"She just does."

"I thought your mom worked at Applebees?"

"Billy, that's not the point. We don't want the governent after us, period. Besides, is that all you want, dude? Money? We have this now," Amy said, pointing to the notebook, which now represented their wormhole. "I don't want to give that up yet."

After a pause, Billy took a deep breath. The fall air smelled good out here. She was right, of course. Why did girls have to be right all the time, even nerd girls? "Okay, neither do I."

"Good." Amy returned to the notepad. "So, we know it's a wormhole with two mouths, one on the keyboard and one on the current screen, and we know multiple objects can traverse it. What else do we know?"