(5 of 10)
We are allowed to take 15-minute breaks every four hours. So I crank up the Home Theater, just to blow the carbon out of its cylinders, and zip down the main street of the Metaverse to a club that specializes in my kind of tunes. I'm still ``wearing'' my Raster uniform, but I don't care -- I'm just one of thousands of Rasters running up and down the street on their breaks.
My club has a narrow entrance on a narrow alley off a narrow side street, far from the virtual malls and 3-D video-game amusement parks that serve as the cash cows for the Metaverse's E-money economy. Inside, there's a few Rasters on break, but it's mostly people ``wearing'' more creative avatars. In the Metaverse, there's no part of your virtual body you can't pierce, brand or tattoo in an effort to look weirder than the next guy.
The live band onstage -- jacked in from a studio in Prague -- isn't very good, so I duck into the back room where there are virtual racks full of tapes you can sample, listening to a few seconds from each song. If you like it, you can download the whole album, with optional interactive liner notes, videos and sheet music.
I'm pawing through one of these racks when I sense another avatar, something big and shaggy, sidling up next to me. It mumbles something; I ignore it. A magisterial throat-clearing noise rumbles in the subwoofer, crackles in the surround speakers, punches through cleanly on the center channel above the screen. I turn and look: it's a heavy-set creature wearing a T shirt emblazoned with a logo HACKERS 1111. It has very long scythe-like claws, which it uses to grip a hot-pink cylinder. It's much better drawn than Raster; almost Disney- quality.
The sloth speaks: ``537,824,167,720.''
``Hey!'' I shout. ``Who the hell are you?'' It lifts the pink cylinder to its lips and drinks. It's a can of Jolt. ``Where'd you get that number?'' I demand. ``It's supposed to be a secret.''
``The key is under the doormat,'' the sloth says, then turns around and walks out of the club.
My 15-minute break is over, so I have to ponder the meaning of this through the rest of my shift. Then, I drag myself up out of the couch, open the front door and peel up the doormat.
Sure enough, someone has stuck an envelope under there. Inside is a sheet of paper with a number on it, written in hexadecimal notation, which is what computer people use: 0A56 7781 6BE2 2004 89FF 9001 C782 -- and so on for about five lines.
The sloth had told me that ``the key is under the doormat,'' and I'm willing to bet many Simoleons that this number is an encryption key that will enable me to send and receive coded messages.
So I spend 10 minutes punching it into the set-top box. Raster shows up and starts to bother me: ``Can I help you with anything?''
By the time I've punched in the 256th digit, I've become a little testy with Raster and said some rude things to him. I'm not proud of it. Then I hear something that's music to my ears: ``I'm sorry, I didn't understand you,'' Raster chirps. ``Please check your cable connections -- I'm getting some noise on the line.''
A second figure materializes on the screen, like a digital genie: it's the sloth again. ``Who the hell are you?'' I ask.
The sloth takes another slug of Jolt, stifles a belch and says, ``I am Codex, the Crypto-Anarchist Sloth.''