Excerpt: Cyber Fairies

1. A Bad Taste

Zip wrinkled her cute little nose.
She was such a girl! Zap thought in disgust. Twin or no, she annoyed him badly at times like this. Worse, she was A Her delicate, delectable color electrolight only made him look clunkier and more awkward. “What is it this time?” he asked, irritation making his own electrolight glow a sullen, sour green. He picked up three messages from cyber IP address and ate them slowly, savoring every 1 and 0. The old lady who used this address called herself used the screen name “Grandma” and her messages tasted warm and friendly, like cinnamon and coffee.
“That was a horrible message!” Zip replied. “It tasted sharp and sour, kind of like almost throwing up.”
Who could resist Zip? Certainly not Zap! He melted. “Here. Have a little of Grandma’s message to sweeten it a little. We’ll detour to deliver the bad-tasting message first, before we deliver Grandma’s.” He tore off a piece of the message for her, then downed the rest of it quickly to keep her from twiddling the rest away from him, too.
Everybody loved Zap. Long, silver hair, eyelashes reaching past her eyebrows, a delicate ice-blue electrolight that turned a vivid electric blue when she was angry. That cut button nose. Full mouth. Flowing movement that so filled with grace the humming cyberwaves themselves seemed clumsy. Not to mention the soft, whispery voice, the beautiful smile, and the gentle, warm demeanor.
Sure made him look look like a clunk! He hated the peach-colored hair so fine it made him look girlish. And the pink eyes with girl-lashes didn’t help. His burly electrolight was the only masculine feature he had, except for a square jaw, but its pale green color didn’t help. No self-respecting man male cyberfairy should be forced to go through life in pastels. It made him sullen and surly, because that way he could at least be as green as sour apples. He’d seen pictures of them here and there on the cyberwaves.
“Yes, that’s better,” Zip told him. “Not much, but it helps.”
If it had really helped, she’d be asking for more. Zap furrowed bushy peach eyebrows, worry starting to gnaw at him. “What’s the IP address? Let’s get rid of that one ASAP.”
She retried The He glanced “Just follow me,” she said, and took off down along the lightning.
Zip wasn’t moving very fast today. They were passed by three cyberfairies, and once in awhile Zap had to drag her off the lightning and into hiding when a cybertroll or cybervamp came by. Routers flung them in new directions several times. The long tri had drained her face of color, so that it appeared almost white. She slowed further, and twice she had to step off the lightning to double over, groaning in pain.
“Zip?” Now Zap was Something was very wrong and Zap’s worry skyrocketed to alarm. “Is this still from the same message?”
She nodded without speaking. “It hurts,” she whispered. “It burns ...”
“What kind of e-mail can do that? Zip, what’s in that message to make it so ... caustic?”
“It’s pretty awful,” she whispered. “Here, read it for yourself. It’s encrypted.”“ She retrieved the message from her electrolight and handed it to him.
Curious and anxious, he read took it. Electricity sizzled from the tips of his toes to the tips of his orange hair. “This is bad. This is really bad.”
“I know. I don’t really want to deliver it, but I have to. It’s what we do. And I don’t want a visit from a cybergoyle.”
“Who says we have to deliver it? Did you read this?”
Zip’s face seemed to pale. “We’re not supposed to read messages. Besides, who has time to read? There are only so many nanosecs in an hour, you know.”
She’d read it.
And that meant she knew exactly what she had been tasked to deliver. No wonder she was ill.
The message didn’t mention any names, not even the sender’s or receiver’s. The e-mail addresses were used names were 12345@who-me.com and 54321@who-me.com. Nothing helpful there at all.
[delete above]
“We need help with this,” he told her. “I’ve never seen this kind of encryption before. I know 4,762,591 encryption codes, but this isn’t one of them. We need expert assistance.”
Tears sprang to Zip’s eyes. “Who? Who would know, if you don’t?” Her face screwed up in pain, and she began to cry softly.
“Just leave it here, on the cybertrail. Maybe some cybertroll will eat it and get a big bellyache.”
“Or maybe some young, susceptible cyber fairy will eat it and hurt as much as I do. Someone who isn’t as strong as I am. Maybe someone who could die of it.”
“We could watch for Gruff, that mean old cybertroll, and leave it just a little ways ahead of him.” Agitated, Zap tugged at a smooth, silky-fine strand of peach hair.
“We can’t, Zap. It wouldn’t be right to do this to someone else, even a troll. Maybe we can give it to a cybergoyle.”
“And be arrested for not delivering it? Might as well ask to go to jail. That would be on our permanent records!”
“We could explain ...”
“And be referred to the nearest medward–after delivering the message. He’d check to be sure we did, too. We don’t really know what the message says, so anything we say would be attributed to an illegal effort to delay message delivery. Or worse.”
Zip gasped in pain and fell to her knees. “We have to do something. It’s killing me!”
It hurt. Oh, it hurt to see his twin in such pain. Zap paced in agitation, felling the wrench of sympathetic pain in his own electrolight. It was a nasty rip, and yet nothing compared to his twin’s agony.
“We have to know what’s in that message. This goes way beyond a bad taste from mean words and foul language. There’s something destructive in that message. Once we know what it says, we’ll be able to know better how to deal with it.”
“How? Who?” She gasped the words, clearly unable to manage more.
“I can talk to other encryption specialists, see what they may know. But they’ll be riding the lightning, too, and it may take awhile to get contact them all. How long since you ingested that foul e-mail?”
Zip crumpled to the lightning, curled around her electrolight. “Probably ... ten or fiteen nanoseconds?”
“Come on. At least let’s get you to a medward and see what the medtechs can do.”
“Nothing, Zap. They can do nothing. The damn message isn’t in my electrolight right now, and it still hurts! Whatever is hurting me, it won’t stop just because the message has been removed.”
“You don’t know that! Come on. I’ll carry you, if I have to. You need help I can’t give.” He lifted her gently, over her protests, and carried her back onto the cybertrail in his arms, “accidentally” leaving the foul e-mail behind.
“No, wait!”
Drat. She’d caught him at it.
“Pick up the message, Zap. We can’t leave it lying around to hurt anyone else.”
With a sigh, he squatted low enough that Zip could pick up the message without him putting her down. Then he made her give it to him, so it wouldn’t continue to hurt her.
He carried it in his hand, afraid of possible contamination to if he put it in his mouth, and raced along the lightning as fast as he could with the added weight of his sister.
Somewhere, somehow, he would find a way to translate that message. He had a really bad feeling about it, far beyond simply making his sister so ill. And whatever it was, he feared it might be beyond anyone’s ability to cure.
The first router they hit caused him some problems. Two cyberfairies at once somehow seemed to confuse it, as if they were a whole new cyberbeing it didn’t recognize. Going through holding hands had never been a problem, and as long as Zip no longer carried an e-mail, it shouldn’t separate them, sending them different directions.
This router tended to be a little cranky, anyway, though, so he kicked it once–hard–and cussed at it for a couple of nanoseconds. It wasn’t even that intelligent, more or a drone than a being, really, but finally it seemed to accept the new dual being and booted them hard back onto the lightning.
The next router was a newer model, and it acted on the message’s address even when it was in his hand instead of his electrolight. His fear for Zip spiked as he realized how far off course they were. How to get through a router and go where they wanted to go, rather than where the message needed to go?
He began to look for a waystation, where a station master, usually a cyber ogre, could help them figure it out. If anyone understood the lightning, it would be the station masters at each server, responsible for troubleshooting the entire internet.
It was starting to look like help for his sister was much farther away than he expected. At this rate, it could take nanominutes to get her some help! If she could last that long.
They got rerouted again, just when he thought they might be approaching a waystation. And again. Gnashing his teeth in frustration, he left the cybertrails and headed straight across the cyberwaves, hoping they wouldn’t become hopelessly lost in the ether. There were no defined trails here, neither the normal ones nor the lightning the cyber fairies used to speed their messages to recipients. Only a morass of ether, with no signposts, no defined destinations, like being lost in the middle of the oceans he’d read about here and there.
He could be going in circles and never know it. And being lost meant Zip could die before he could find her some help.
Why didn’t he just leave the letter somewhere? Drop it where she didn’t see? Without the message, they could go where they wanted through the routers. E-mails weren’t always the highest priority, as far as he was concerned, and this was a prime example.
At last he found a waystation, although why one would be needed out in the middle of nowhere, he couldn’t imagine. Someone, probably the station master, saw them coming and came out to greet them.
Zap had forgotten just how big and ugly an ogre could be. He didn’t visit waystations very often, so he didn’t see ogres much, either. Station masters were the problem-solvers and troubleshooters of the lightning, and sometimes they could be very busy, but most of the time there was surprisingly little for them to do. The internet almost ran itself these days.
This particular ogre wore the official headband that marked his status as a stationmaster, one of the troupe of cyber beings who kept the internet running smoothly and safely. He was taller than ten cyberfairies, with pebbled gray skin and lowered brow. Fortunately, cyber ogres weren’t as stupid as they looked, or they would never be able to perform the complex tasks required of them.
“Ho, strangers!” he called in a deep, gravelly voice that seemed to shake the cyberwaves. “What brings you out into the middle of nowhere?”
“Help!” called Zap. “My sister needs help, and the routers won’t let us through because we bear a message we dare notn abandon.”
The ogre raised his bushy eyebrows. “Come into the waystation and tell me what you need, and why. My name is Selinon, and I will help you if I can.”
2. Encryption

Zap had never been inside a server before. The space felt roomier than he expected, a morass of neatly stored cables, wires, and boards. A pleasant, soothing blue light suffused the box, and a the gentle murmur of electricity lulled him. What could possibly go wrong in a place like this?
As long as the cyber ogre had eaten recently. Selinon was clearly a professional, but if an ogre hadn’t fed recently, well, it could be a problem for his guests. Somehow, he Zap felt reassured this ogre would at least apologize as he devoured them.
Then he realized: The cyber ogre was living in a food source. He could dine on blue light electricity any time he liked, at no risk to the internet, the waystation, or his guests. Zap relaxed. his twin
“Allow me,” said Selinon, holding out his arms.
Zap still had to force himself to release Zip to the station master.
Selinon carried her to a thick pallet of blue light and laid her there gently. Zip groaned and curled up around her electrolight.
“Hmm ... “ the cyber ogre growled, “I was about to ask where it hurts, but it’s clearly your electrolight.” He turned back to Zap, who knelt anxiously next to the pallet. “Tell me everything you can about what happened.”
He did, leaving nothing out.
“Can you retrieve the message from her electrolight? That should help ease the pain.”
“Oops. I forgot to mention, the message isn’t in her electrolight anymore. I have it, but I carry it in my hand. I’m afraid to eat it, seeing how much it hurt her.”
Bushy eyebrows raised once again. “Why would it still cause such pain?”
Zap bit his lips anxiously. “I don’t know. At first we just wanted to find a medward, but we couldn’t get there.”
Selinon scratched his chin. “I may have something that will make her throw up. That might help. Hmm ... Why this message and no others?”
“She said it tasted really bad. You know, like child porn, only worse.”
“May I see the message, please?” Selinon held out a huge hand. The polite request was a formality; he Zap figured he always got what he requested and so expected it.
Zap laid the message on his palm.
“Hmm ... it tingles unpleasantly. Go scrub your hands, Zap. You don’t want any residue on you.” He indicated the location of the washroom with a wave of his hand.
When Zap resturned, Selinon was frowning at the glowing message, as if studying it and not liking it. “This can’t be good,” he announced. “I can read over two million encryption codes, but this isn’t one of them. And the feel of the message is bitter and cold.
“Why don’t you take Zip to the washroom and dose her from that purple bottle, while I check out some other code breaking software?”
Another command, phrased as a polite request. Zap would rather stay here and learn about new encryption sources, but he couldn’t abandon his twin, either. Torn, he opted in his Zip’s favor and carried her to the washroom. The dark purple liquid in the dark purple bottle looked and smelled nasty. And it would taste even worse. He dreaded the next half hour.
What could possibly be more fun than holding your sister’s long, silver hair back while she puked her electrolight up?
Fortunately, she didn’t carry any other messages at the time. This could A nasty virus imbedded in an e-mail could make cyber fairies sick like this, too, but he’d never seen it this bad. No, this wasn’t a virus; it was the message itself.
He gave Zip a cool, creamy medicine to soothe her ravaged electrolight, then left the depleted and exhausted cyber fairy to sleep on the pallet.
“Eureka!” Selinon cried in triumph, stirring the blueness around them. “I have the message! A friend of a friend of my second cousin’s brother’s wife found the code, or something close to it. I was able to extrapolate what couldn’t be decoded.”
“Already?” Zap was impressed.
Selinon grinned. “It turned out to be an old, old code, before the internet–or even Arpanet, its predecessor. It’s not It wasn’t even digital, until the wife scanned it in. It should be available to all our encryption specialists now.”
“So what does the message say?” Zap craned his neck, trying to see the clean message, even though it was impossible, even with Selinon sitting on the floor.
The cyber ogre’s face fell. “It’s bad. Worse than a ten gigabyte pileup on the lightning. No wonder your twin was so badly damaged. This We’ll check it out, of course, but if it’s as genuine as it appears on its face, this message could affect every cyber being in the world.
“Someone’s plotting to overthrow destroy the internet. If they succeed, it will mean the death of trillions of beings. If it targeted just the cyber goblins and vampires, I wouldn’t mind. It would make all our jobs easier. But it’s not a targeted attack. Everyone, and everything–software, hardware, even the cyberware–would be destroyed. It would be devastating for the human world, but fatal for us.”
A heavy fist closed around Zap’s heart, and a touch of dizziness made him sway on his feet. “What do we do? How can we stop it from happening?”
“Hmm ... We won’t know the answer to that until I talk to my superiors. We’ll check it out, see if it’s someone playing stupid human games, or if it’s a real threat. Once we know the answer to that question, we can decide what we need to do next.”
“Doesn’t Zip’s being disabled by it prove that it’s genuine?”
“It’s evidence, anyway, but it’s not proof in and of itself. The investigation should determine the act should find actual proof, if it exists.”
Zap paced, forward and back, forward and back, the length of a broad cable above the floor. “How long will the investigation take, do you think?”
“Hmm ... it’s hard to tell, but it could take awhile. Maybe a couple trillion nanoseconds.”
“That long! But this is a dire emergency!”
Selinon scratched his chin again. Something dry flaked off and drifted to the floor. “You have to remember that human time moves much more slowly. They won’t have had time to do anything in a couple trillion nanoseconds. They can’t even compose a message that fast! We have plenty of time for an investigation and decision.”
“But ... “
Selinon bent a stern look at him–rather frightening, really, considering how big and tough he was. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot. These things happen in their own time.”
Zap’s skin shivered. “Knickers?”
“Look it up.” Selinon turned away, back to the cables and wires. He touched something somewhere–Zap wasn’t sure what–and a faint sizzling sound blitzed the room for a nanosecond or two.
While Selinon touched base with his superiors, a very frustrated Zap did exactly what he said. He looked up “knickers in a knot” to see what that meant. A touch of his electrolight to the blueness surrounding him gave him access to just about anything digital. He found what he was looking for fast, but he still didn’t understand. Knickers were women’s underwear in an ancient time? Of course knickers would be knotted at the knee; that’s what the style was. So how did that get come to mean “don’t get upset”? He looked that up, too, but somehow it just refused to make sense to him. Humans could be so strange sometimes.
Selinon turned back to him. “I’ve forward the message to my superiors and they’re cyber-convening now. Why don’t you try to get some rest? I’ll wake you when I hear back from them.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“You have to be tired from carrying Zip so far, through untamed cyberwaves.”
“I’m not, though. I’m too hyper to be tired. I won’t be tired for a long time yet.” Zap stuck out his jaw pugnaciously. Not that he really wanted to have a row with an ogre ...
“Then go for a walk. You’re underfoot, and I have work to do.”
“Fine. I’m going.” Zap whirled and strode for the door, angry at the suddenly less equable treatment he was receiving. He stepped foot outside, then hesitantly stepped back in. “Uh ... Selinon? How do I keep from getting lost?”
Suddenly the big cyber ogre burst into laughter, the roar of it nearly lifting the hair off of Zap’s head. The cyber fairy wasn’t sure whether to be frightened or reassured by such laughter.
“I’m sorry,” Selinon grinned at him. “I forgot you don’t know the wild spaces cyberwaves like I do. Of course you would be confused. There are subtleties and nuances in the flow of the cyberwaves that can tell you direction. I can teach that to you in a nanosecond or two. But the flow changes sometimes, and that has to be learned by experience. Let’s be safe. I will put a beacon here, above the door, and so all you have to do is remain within sight of that beacon to find your way back. Maybe by that time, you’ll be tired enough for some sleep.”
Selinon placed a small large, throbbing red light above the door on the outside. Since the door was sized for an ogre instead of a fairy, it should be visible from a long ways away.
Swallowing some of his agitation, and recognizing that it came from worry about Zip, Zap said, “Thank you, Selinon. I can never repay everything you’re doing you’ve done for us. We are in your debt. And I won’t be gone long, because I’ll be too anxious to hear news.”
“If I get news before you get back, I’ll flip the switch to blink the light, so you can return quickly.”
“Thank you,” Zap replied lamely. What more could he say? He turned and stepped out the door, walked two dozen paces, and turned to look at the red light from this orientation. As long as he kept it in sight, he should be fine.
Now if the powers-that-be would just hurry up. Zap was suddenly worried about a lot more that Zip’s health, and their immediate absence from work. He was worried about survival. Everyone’s survival. In his gut, he knew the threat was real; he just wanted official acknowledgement of that. Pressing his lips firmly together, he lifted into the cyberwaves at an angle, tried a few somersaults and spins to get the feel of it, and checked his orientation against the red light. Yep, it was still easily visible.
Zap relaxed and began to enjoy his flight through the cyberwaves. It felt something like a vacation–the equivalent of the humans’ “day at the beach.” Now, if he only knew what he needed to know, he could relax completely.