Exodus Read Online Free PDF Page A

escape, release.
    Mara scoops up the globe. Palm-snug yet weighty, it has the feel of glass but a look of burnished metal. At her touch the globe begins to tingle, activated by the electriccharge of her body. Colors start to swirl across its surface like clouds or shadows and a glow emanates from the core of the globe as its tiny solar rods power up.
    With a thumb and forefinger, Mara presses on the hinges that are placed on opposite poles of the globe and in one smooth motion it breaks open to form two half spheres. The flat surface of one half is a compact keyboard, the other a blank screenpad.
    Mara slips the crescent-shaped halo over her eyes to make a sleek visor. She picks up the little silver cyber-wand, taps a swift command upon the tiny keyboard, then scribbles a series of cryptic symbols upon the screenpad—the beautiful, complex language the cyberwizz has taught her, that merges alphabet, hieroglyph, and number. The symbols gleam and fade, each one superseded almost instantly by another. Over the years, Mara has picked up cyberwizzdom with the greed and instinct of an animal on the scent of a hunt.
    The cyberwizz powers into action. The halo glows and the swirling colors of the globe quicken and intensify. Mara stares into the halo, consumed by the vision she has called up. Excitement surges through her limbs as she exits realworld and plunges into cyberspace.
    And the magic begins…
    Mara zips and zooms
.
    Wizzing far beyond realworld
.
    Fast and free in the glittering strands of the Weave
.
    Joy-rush is amazing. Mara verves down a shimmering vertical strand to land on a wide electronic boulevard that’s lined with buzzing, sparking towerstacks—colossal Weavesites that reach ever upward and onward
.
    Up ahead on the boulevard, a gang of hazard spiders scuttle out, flashing red for danger. Alert for oncoming hazards, Mara sees none and spurns the red spiders with ease. Her path ahead seems clear. But in the Weave things are rarely as they seem. Every one of its glittering electronic strands splits into infinite possibility, an endless unfolding of choices
.
    In cyberspace there are no rules, no limits. Anything might happen
.
    Mara zooms onward, ready and alert. She keeps a wary eye on the dark alleys between the towerstacks, on the lookout for the sleek, sly stalker that she sometimes senses. She never manages to catch more than a glimpse of whoever or whatever it is—just the glint of watchful eyes and a stealthy presence in the shadows that sends shivers down her spine
.
    Now the great boulevard breaks into sudden rubble. Here, mighty towerstacks have crumbled into giant junk heaps. Mara scoots up one to see what she can find among the ruins. At the peak of the flickering junk mountain she sits down and sighs with pleasure
.
    It’s beautiful, so beautiful
.
    The Weave glitters all around, as far as she can see. A vast datascape. The electronic knit of a billion computers. From here, on the top of the junk mountain, it looks stunning, but Mara knows that up close those glittering strands are bleak ruins and wasted boulevards. Their brilliance comes from the great spill of electronic litter that leaks from all the Weavesites. In the lonely back alleys behind the main strands and in the giant shadows of the tumbledown towerstacks, these rotting heaps of electronic rubbish have somehow sparked their own lifeforces to mutate
into the strangest forms—weird Weave-creatures born of decay and chaos
.
    The Weave is wild and savage. Thrilling and scary. Here Mara owns a freedom that’s impossible in real-world
.
    It’s the best place ever
.
    Mara snaps to sudden attention. Something’s happening. Something big. A raid? An attack? By whom, what? She feels the electric surge race across the network of communication strands. Whatever it is, it’s coming straight for her. She scrambles from her exposed position on the data mountain but is only halfway down when it hits
.
    A pack of