Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

  ***General, recommending you search for a configuration similar to yours, if it exists. Unknown whether, after assimilation, a previous config is maintained…I will have to study this. Execute search algorithm and narrow search parameters to configs that vary from yours by less than five percent***

  Winger figured that made sense. He seemed to be drifting over an infinite plane, crisscrossed with rivers of light going in all directions. As he drifted further, he saw that each river of light was made of the same cotton balls he had seen before, discrete clumps that he figured must be packets of data, coursing to and fro. It was like watching a great city at night, from a mountaintop, all its streets and highways aglow with pulsating light.

  Which river to take? That was the question.

  Winger let the search algorithm do its job and found himself drifting steadily in one direction. After a time, he was floating directly over one river, like a stuntman about to drop into an onrushing stream of traffic.

  Have to trust the system, he told himself. The algorithm maneuvered him over the flow, then with his eyes squeezed shut, deftly inserted him into the rushing stream. He was buffeted a little, banged around from oscillating cotton balls, but it wasn’t bad.

  I could almost get used to this. What a train ride.

  And in seconds, he found himself kicked out of the traffic flow and hurtling toward a great orb of light above him. It was like falling into a star. Again, he closed his eyes and was quickly enveloped in a world of light.

  When he opened his eyes, Winger saw he was approaching a great wall of spinning cylinders. From briefings at Table Top, he recognized the structure. Some kind of firewall; he was nearing a port or a landing. With no effort on his part, he slowed before one of the cylinders for a moment. There was a staccato flash of light, like a strobe effect. The cylinder slowed its rotation and he drifted into it, through an opening of something like louvers. He came out the other side and somehow knew he was at Port A, Node 27356, Server Bank One, Aurora Data Center…the thoughts just appeared in his mind, as if he had just recalled it. How the hell did he know that?

  That’s when he sensed a presence nearby…a familiar config. Was it--? He looked around. Nothing. More cottonballs cramming through the louvers. But there was something. He could sense it. A burst of heat. Some static. Turbulence ahead…something was roiling the cotton balls, pushing through.

  Was it--?

  “Doc, is this what I think it is?”