MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 7

The dragon gave no reply. Jonah took another step towards it, looked closer. His chest had tightened until he could hardly speak, hardly breathe, but he had to know.

‘Dad... Is that you?’

‘Jonah...’ the dragon said in his father’s low voice. Jonah had almost forgotten how soothing it was. Had his father been hiding down here all this time?

‘Dad, why have you...’ Jonah started to ask, relieved, happy and angry all at the same time at the discovery that his father had been in hiding. But when the dragon continued to speak over him, Jonah’s heart sank with the realisation that this was just a copy of his dad’s avatar reciting a recorded message.

‘...If you have found this avatar, then I am gone. And I’m so sorry for that. I don’t have time to explain now, but there are parts of my life that I didn’t share with you. For your protection, Jonah. But if you’re seeing this recording now, then I may not be able to protect you any more. I am sorry that I won’t be there to see you grow up. You have so much potential, even if you don’t see it in yourself just yet. But other people will spot it and you will be a guardian of hope in these confused worlds.’

Jonah’s dad had never spoken to him like that when he was alive, and Jonah caught himself reaching out and touching the avatar, as if by holding him it would make him come back.

‘But, Jonah, there is something you must do for me, and for a higher cause. I need you to filter my avatar onto yours. Find my friend Axel; he’ll know what to do next. I wish I could tell you more, but the less you know, the safer you and Miriam will be. Please do this for me, Jonah. I love you, my boy.’

The program stopped and the dragon held out both of its talons for Jonah to reciprocate. He knew that grabbling them would authorise the filtering process, illegally taking his father’s avatar as his own.

It was the most dangerous decision of Jonah’s life.

Matthew Granger had checked into the grandest, most expensive suite of a top Paris hotel. Money was no object to him. His now-defunct government may have thought they had seized his fortune, but they hadn’t found a tenth of his online accounts.

The directeur d’hôtel had recognised him, of course, but for a price, he would keep the identity of his infamous guest to himself.

Granger’s Millennials had kitted out the adjoining suite with the most advanced computers on the market. His computers. He had been out of circulation for years, but still his competitors hadn’t caught up with him.

He had brought his best programmers here too, those who had remained loyal to him during his imprisonment, none of them older than twenty-five. They were tapping away at their datapads, looking in on the Metasphere from the outside, sifting through terabytes of information.

It felt good to be out of prison, but Granger didn’t feel free, not yet. He knew he wouldn’t feel free until he was back where he belonged, back in control.

At the age of six, Matthew Granger had lost his whole world. A Marin County car crash had claimed the lives of both his parents. He had lain in the twisted wreckage of their people carrier for over four hours, expecting to die himself.

The doctors had amputated his legs at the quads. They had told him he was lucky to be alive. Granger hadn’t felt lucky.

The uncle who had taken him in had been awkward with children, but brilliant with computers. Under his care, Granger had learned how to build a new world. A world to which he could escape. A world in which he could walk, and more.

A world in which he could fly.

His invention of Web 4.0 had made him rich: a billionaire by age twenty-six. He had had enough money, at last, to commission NASA to construct one of his earliest designs: his cyber-kinetic walking system. Matthew Granger had spent twenty years of his life confined to a wheeled prison. No longer.

How frustrating for him, then, to have swapped one type of prison for another.

Officially, the charge had been tax evasion. Granger knew the truth, however. The major governments of the world had been in trouble for some time. With more and more business being done online, they were struggling to collect enough tax income to sustain themselves. Granger, on the other hand, had been doing very nicely, thank you, from his small cut of every transaction conducted inside the Metasphere that he had built.

The governments had wanted that money. Granger had refused to give it to them, any of it. In a panic, they had invoked an obscure United Nations resolution, twisting its wording to suit their ends. They had effectively nationalised the Metasphere, taken over its running between them, while Granger had been arrested on their trumped-up charges and locked up safely out of their way.

He was caught by surprise, sold out by a traitor on the inside he had yet to discover. The feds had pounced on him and perp-walked him in front of all the cameras they could pack in front of the courtroom. He was caught by surprise, but not unprepared. Matthew Granger always had a contingency plan.

‘It’s confirmed, sir,’ reported one of Granger’s programmers, a petite young woman whose name he had never bothered to learn. ‘It is him, the name from the watch list.’

Granger leaned over her shoulder, checked the data on her screen. ‘So,’ he breathed, ‘he is alive, after all.’

‘He’s been doing his best to stay hidden,’ said the programmer. ‘His avatar hasn’t been scanned anywhere for three years, two months and—’

‘How did you find him?’

‘His avatar code sequence was flagged in an error report. I don’t understand, sir. Why would he resurface now, after all this time?’

‘He must have heard I was free,’ said Granger, who had always had faith in his own importance. ‘It must have panicked him, made him careless. This could be a problem. He worked as my pilot for almost a decade. He flew me to every one of the Four Corners. He’s the only man alive – apart from me – who can find them.’

‘You think he might be a threat, sir?’

‘I’ve always had my suspicions. The last time I saw him, he was running into a burning building. They never found his body. Why hide from me? Why, unless he has betrayed me? Why, unless he was a sleeper Guardian agent all along?’

‘What should we do, sir?’ asked the programmer.

‘Trace the source of that error report,’ instructed Granger. ‘Find Jason Delacroix – in the real world, I mean – and kill him!’

<<Jonah's just made a choice. He chose to Filter his Dad's avatar. Everything else in this book, and in the entire series, will stem from this one, instictive choice. Jonah will have to deal with the unintended consequences of his action.   Have you ever made a decision with consequences you never expected?  What happened? J>>