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flying cyberdogs
.
    Fast and furious, short wings crackling, electronic jaws agape, and jagged teeth glinting, they spit their venomous froth of data-decay. They’ll rip her to shreds. Mara grips her cyberwand, furiously dodging, desperately trying to keep her hands and head steady as the cyberdogs snarl and snap around her. She keys a frantic command into the cyberwizz…
    â€¦ and zaps them all to bits. Shards of electronic dog scatter satisfyingly all across the Weave
.
    Venomous stuff! A truly elegant kill
.
    Her moment of glory lasts just long enough for her to zip onto a bridge that rises up out of the ruins. One instant she is zooming along the bridge path, zinging with joy, the next the bridge crumbles into nothing and she is hurtling off its broken end—down, down, down into a meltdown of electronic blue
.
    Backtrack—now!
    But she can’t. She’s out of control and there’s nothing she can do to stop. She crashes head over heels through
the strands of the Weave. On and on she tumbles, falling helplessly, until at last the glittering strands end
.
    Amazed, Mara hurtles into dark, unknown regions of cyberspace. She has fallen right out of the Weave
.

FOX IN A FOREST

    A giant, glistening coil looms up, surrounded by darkness. She must slow down—she’s going to crash. But some vast magnetic force is pulling her onward and with a great
whoosh
the coil sucks her in and now she’s zooming helter-skelter down a spiraling silver vortex—or is it up?
    Just when it seems the crazy helter-skelter will never end, Mara shoots out into a crackling haze of ice blue static, so blinding it must have fire at its heart
.
    Wow
.
    Amazing
.
    She slows to a soft tumble. Something vast glints, then is lost again in the blaze of icefire. Mara stares as the vision glints and fades, glints and fades. She concentrates harder and the hazy vision forms into a thick trunk of unimaginably colossal towers, topped by a ferocious geometry of networks and connections. It looks like a gigantic crystal tree
.
    Mara stares wide-eyed, stunned by the vast, unearthly beauty of it. She tries to move forward but doesn’t know how. How do you move through an ocean of static? The haze around the crystal tree-towers shimmers intensely, seems to rise up like a wall. Then Mara sees—it is a wall, a massive guard shield. Still, there must be a way
through. There’s always some tiny glitch that an ace wizzer like Mara can trick a way through
.
    But this is not the Weave. This is the unknown. The majestic towers look like something out of a fairy tale
.
    â€œOnce upon a time,” Mara whispers, thrilling at the words that always began a story. “Once upon a time, in a time out of mind…”
    Her whisper radiates ripples in the ice blue static. The most incredible thought strikes
.
    â€œWho are you?” a voice demands out of the blue, sending jagged shock waves through the cyberhaze
.
    Mara jumps in fright and looks all around. There’s no one to be seen
.
    â€œWho are you?” the voice demands again; a husky, hungry voice. “And what do you know about once upon a time?”
    â€œI’m Mara,” she whispers nervously, searching frantically for the source of the voice. “Who are you? Where are you?”
    â€œI’ve been watching you for a while,” is the only reply
.
    Shivers run down Mara’s spine as she senses the stealthy presence that must be the sly stalker, the one who’s been tracking her, shadowing her movements on the Weave. But how on Earth did he—it sounds like a he—follow her here? Mara’s heart thumps as something begins to form in the cyberhaze. A pair of disembodied, untamed eyes stare at her through the blue. Mara stares back in fright. Two sharp points appear above them. Ears? Now, below the eyes, a long white streak tipped in black forms into a doglike muzzle. There’s the sudden flash of a tawny tail…
    A fox!