Overclocked | Page 5

Kel," he said. There was an odd, snuffling noise in the
background. Static, maybe? 2.0 splashing in the bath? "Kelly?"
The line went dead. He tried to call back, but didn't get anything -- no
ring nor voicemail. His phone finally timed out and said NETWORK
ERROR.
"Dammit," he said, mildly. He clipped the phone to his belt. Kelly
wanted to know when he was coming home, or wanted him to pick
something up for the family. She'd leave voicemail.
He was testing the power-supply when his phone rang again. He
snatched it up and answered it. "Kelly, hey, what's up?" He worked to
keep anything like irritation out of his voice. He felt guilty: technically
speaking, he had discharged his obligations to Ardent Financial LLC
once the Ardent servers were back online. The past three hours had
been purely personal -- even if he planned on billing them to the
company.
There was sobbing on the line.
"Kelly?" He felt the blood draining from his face and his toes were
numb.
"Felix," she said, barely comprehensible through the sobbing. "He's
dead, oh Jesus, he's dead."

"Who? *Who*, Kelly?"
"Will," she said.
*Will?* he thought. *Who the fuck is --* He dropped to his knees.
William was the name they'd written on the birth certificate, though
they'd called him 2.0 all along. Felix made an anguished sound, like a
sick bark.
"I'm sick," she said, "I can't even stand anymore. Oh, Felix. I love you
so much."
"Kelly? What's going on?"
"Everyone, everyone --" she said. "Only two channels left on the tube.
Christ, Felix, it looks like dawn of the dead out the window --" He
heard her retch. The phone started to break up, washing her puke-noises
back like an echoplex.
"Stay there, Kelly," he shouted as the line died. He punched 911, but
the phone went NETWORK ERROR again as soon as he hit SEND.
He grabbed Mayor McCheese from Van and plugged it into the 486's
network cable and launched Firefox off the command line and googled
for the Metro Police site. Quickly, but not frantically, he searched for
an online contact form. Felix didn't lose his head, ever. He solved
problems and freaking out didn't solve problems.
He located an online form and wrote out the details of his conversation
with Kelly like he was filing a bug report, his fingers fast, his
description complete, and then he hit SUBMIT.
Van had read over his shoulder. "Felix --" he began.
"God," Felix said. He was sitting on the floor of the cage and he slowly
pulled himself upright. Van took the laptop and tried some news sites,
but they were all timing out. Impossible to say if it was because
something terrible was happening or because the network was limping

under the superworm.
"I need to get home," Felix said.
"I'll drive you," Van said. "You can keep calling your wife."
They made their way to the elevators. One of the building's few
windows was there, a thick, shielded porthole. They peered through it
as they waited for the elevator. Not much traffic for a Wednesday.
Were there more police cars than usual?
"*Oh my God* --" Van pointed.
The CN Tower, a giant white-elephant needle of a building loomed to
the east of them. It was askew, like a branch stuck in wet sand. Was it
moving? It was. It was heeling over, slowly, but gaining speed, falling
northeast toward the financial district. In a second, it slid over the
tipping point and crashed down. They felt the shock, then heard it, the
whole building rocking from the impact. A cloud of dust rose from the
wreckage, and there was more thunder as the world's tallest
freestanding structure crashed through building after building.
"The Broadcast Centre's coming down," Van said. It was -- the CBC's
towering building was collapsing in slow motion. People ran every way,
were crushed by falling masonry. Seen through the port-hole, it was
like watching a neat CGI trick downloaded from a file-sharing site.
Sysadmins were clustering around them now, jostling to see the
destruction.
"What happened?" one of them asked.
"The CN Tower fell down," Felix said. He sounded far away in his own
ears.
"Was it the virus?"
"The worm? What?" Felix focused on the guy, who was a young admin
with just a little type-two flab around the middle.

"Not the worm," the guy said. "I got an email that the whole city's
quarantined because of some virus. Bioweapon, they say." He handed
Felix his Blackberry.
Felix was so engrossed in the report -- purportedly forwarded from
Health Canada -- that he didn't even notice that all the lights had gone
out. Then he did, and he pressed the Blackberry back into its owner's
hand, and let out one small