Multiversum (14 page)

He typed the book's title and subtitle into a search window to look through the results: not only intercepted text messages but also blogs, social-media posts, and internet sites.

One hit showed up.

It was a blog called
The_great_web_robbery
.
That's interesting
, thought Marco, raising an eyebrow. From his research it would appear that the blog was quoting from Thomas Becker's book. But as soon as he'd entered the URL, he was confronted with a message:
This blog has been removed due to violation of copyright laws.

‘Damn it to hell!' exclaimed Marco, running his hands through his hair. He took off his glasses, set them on the desk, and rubbed his forehead. He closed his tired eyes.

The text message was about an ebook that's vanished from the internet. I have to find it.

When he opened his eyes again, his computer screen had gone black.

He clicked the mouse a couple of times. Nothing happened. The screen stayed black. He hit the space bar, but nothing happened either. He checked to make sure that the surge protector into which the various computer cords were plugged was lit up. The orange light was glowing; it couldn't be an electrical malfunction.

Suddenly, a window opened in the lower right-hand corner of the monitor. A blue panel with a tiny white rectangle blinking in a corner.

‘What the hell …? Why did it just go into DOS mode?'

Marco sat there gazing in astonishment. Then he grabbed the mouse and discovered that it was completely useless in that situation. He was about to type something on the keyboard when the cursor started to move across the window.

It came to a stop in the centre of the window. The letters started to take shape before Marco's dumbfounded and frightened eyes.

I don't exist

The phrase changed its position in the window and then started to proliferate, multiplying until it had filled every corner of the panel. The light of the CPU under the desk went out.

The computer ground to a halt with a short, sharp hiss.

‘Shit, a virus!' Marco swore.

Someone's taken over my computer
, he thought. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Could a virus really have gotten into the operating system? That was unlikely, considering all the antivirus programs he had installed and updated constantly. Still, it was possible, given that hackers all over the world were coming up with new viruses every day, and even he couldn't be prepared for every unexpected attack.

Marco tried to restart the computer, unsuccessfully. He unplugged it and then plugged it back in, before deciding the PC was completely out of order.

On his right, the Mac was still glowing at maximum brightness, the way he liked it. On his left, the Dell laptop was stuck on the Amazon page where he'd searched for the book by Thomas Becker a few minutes earlier.

Marco placed his hand on the controls of the electric wheelchair and backed up into the hall. Then he swung around 180 degrees and steered himself towards the kitchen.

As soon as he was inside, he clapped his hands and the lights turned on. The kitchen table was a mess. Dirty dishes stacked in a sloppy pile. A bottle of mineral water without a cap. Scattered cutlery, a drinking glass, crumpled napkins, and crumbs everywhere.

Marco opened one door of the cabinet and pulled out a jar of coffee. He went over to the stove and reached for the coffee maker, unscrewed it, and tossed the used grounds into a plastic bag hanging from the handle on the kitchen window.

‘It must be a hacker. A hacker who's better than me. Maybe it's a joke. Or a challenge.'

When he went back to his study with an espresso in his right hand, he wheeled straight over to the Mac's keyboard. He opened a new page and typed
Thomas Becker
in the search window.

‘A musician … a champion kayaker … no, none of these,' he said, shaking his head.

A symphony of car horns broke the silence. The sound was coming from the street outside the living-room windows. Marco looked up, as if following the direction from which the noise was coming. Outside the window, he could see nothing but the façade of the apartment building across the street, with all the roller blinds of the various apartments shut tight for the night, clothing hung out to dry on a balcony here and there, and lots and lots of dish antennas.

He picked up the cup and drank the rest of the coffee. Then he looked back at the screen of the Mac to continue his search.

‘No! Not this one too!' he exclaimed as he looked at his 24-inch Apple monitor, which had gone completely black.

He sat there without moving. He felt helpless. He, who could have written an instruction manual for any of the three computers on the desk in front of him.

He was almost afraid that the blue panel would reappear any second now.

He was right to be afraid.

When the window reappeared and the little white rectangle started blinking, Marco was ready and his fingers hit the keys.
This time I'll beat you to it, you can't fool me.

Who are you?
he typed. The cursor went back to the start of the line and went on blinking for a few seconds.
Have you had enough fun in DOS?
he added immediately after that.

The answer came back like a slap in the face.

You idiot, I'm inside your Mac. You can't open a DOS window on a Mac.

Marco sat there in silence, his hands frozen in place, his eyes wide open and staring at the screen. He'd stumbled into a trap like some novice. It was only beginning to dawn on him now: the hacker's open window was something far harder to explain than a simple DOS function.

‘This bastard is controlling my computers from the inside …' whispered Marco as he nervously bit his fingernails. Another phrase was typed before his eyes:
Tell me why you're looking for information about me on the internet. Who do you work for?

Who are you anyway? What the hell do you want with me?
Marco typed rapidly.

I don't exist.
You're just talking to yourself.

Marco didn't know what to say. He couldn't work out what kind of crazy situation he'd gotten himself into.

I was just trying to find a book. I typed the author's name into the search window and then …

Marco shook his head as he waited for a response. Then, baffled, he read:
The author you're looking for doesn't exist.

Are you Thomas Becker?
he wrote, taking a stab in the dark.

The little white rectangle blinked for a few more seconds. Then the Mac, too, ground to a halt.

18

‘Damn it!' Marco shouted over and over again, to the two black screens in front of him.

I'll have to take them apart and reassemble them
, he thought as he looked at the PC and the Mac, both so disconsolately silent.
Just who the hell is this Becker? How can he be capable of doing all this?

From his mobile phone, which was sitting on a cabinet in the front hall, came the ringtone that alerted him to a new text message. It was the opening bars of the chorus ‘O Fortuna' from Carl Orff's
Carmina Burana
. Marco spun around, and then steered his wheelchair into the hall.
It must be Alex
.
Maybe he finally managed to recharge his phone,
he decided, before picking up the device and reading the display.

1 new message
Unknown sender

Marco heaved an angry sigh. A phone call could come from a blank number, but things weren't so straightforward when it came to text messages. He selected the message and read its contents aloud: ‘
I took a look at your files. That's some interesting software you're putting together.
'

Marco sat frozen, petrified, until a noise from the study caught his attention.

A few seconds later, the Mac's screen lit up again, and a deafening German rock anthem burst forth at full volume. Marco covered his ears as, one after another, every file in his operating system opened up and appeared on the screen. The files flew into the Trash folder all by themselves, and then the computer emptied it.

‘You bastard!' shouted Marco as he sped his electric wheelchair towards the desk, as fast as it could go.

It didn't take him long to figure out that he'd been checkmated. The mouse refused to respond to his commands. The keyboard was dead, too.

A Word window opened suddenly.

Somebody's better than you
, said the text.

He's deleting everything! Damn it!
Marco thought it over for a fraction of a second, then he leaned towards the surge protector all three computers were connected to and yanked the Mac's plug out its socket. He quickly shut down the session on the PC laptop, the only computer left running.
Becker must think I'm a danger to him somehow
, he mused as he steered his wheelchair to the bathroom.
Either he's a lunatic
,
or else he really does know something and this whole thing is much bigger than I thought.

‘I have to find out,' he said aloud.

At that very instant, the PC laptop started up all by itself.

Meanwhile, at that exact moment, in Melbourne, Alex had left the internet café, still drenched from head to toe, and had started walking down a street that ran parallel to the Esplanade. At every intersection, he could glimpse the ocean beyond the line of palm trees that separated the two sides of the road, while his iPod distracted him with a playlist of random songs, after the track by Tesla. Alex half closed his eyelids, trying to make out, through the driving rain, the twenty metres or so ahead of him. In the distance he could just see the glow of a McDonald's. By the time he reached it, there wasn't a single person in the street. The thunderstorm had driven everyone inside. Only the occasional car went racing by every now and then, spraying water as it went through puddles.

Alex walked into the fast-food outlet and went up to the counter. A very tall young man, who wore black skinny jeans, boots, a spiked choker around his neck, and a mohawk, paid and walked away from the counter with a tray in his hands. Alex glanced at the menu overhead and ordered a burger with extra bacon and a soft drink, without even removing his headphones. Then he sat at a table. The place was almost empty. Aside from the young punk, he spotted a man in his early fifties eating a sundae by himself, with an elderly labrador retriever lying next to the table, and a young couple in their thirties who gazed into each other's eyes and fed each other French fries, with loving smiles on their faces.

Alex reached his hand into his backpack, which was lying on the ground. He pulled out Klavan's book but realised that he had no desire to read. He pulled his iPod out of his jacket pocket and set it down next to his tray. The display showed
The Wildhearts — I Wanna Go Where the People Go.

He bit into his burger as the punk walked past him, heading for the exit. He looked at the guy's T-shirt. The words
Orion's Belt
in Gothic letters appeared over a tribal symbol and a few glowing dots that formed a constellation. Three of the dots were bigger than the others, and were clustered close together.

It must be the T-shirt of some band
, thought Alex. But the words had triggered a forgotten memory. Sudden as a feeling of déjà vu; clear, as if it had happened the day before. He shut his eyes as the scene surfaced in his mind.

‘
My daddy always tells me lots of stories about the stars.'

‘What are stories about the stars?'

‘Yesterday he told me one about a hero. He was the handsomest man on earth. And in the sky, his constellation is the brightest and most beautiful.'

‘What's his name?'

‘Orion.'

Alex opened his eyes wide.

‘Of course!' he exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the table. The girl behind the counter shot him a dirty look. The labrador on the old man's leash looked up and barked.

Orion's Belt! That's the name for the three stars that were close together on the T-shirt.

Alex took a ballpoint pen from an outside pocket on his backpack, and wrote on the back of the cardboard container his burger had come in, which he'd shoved into a corner of his tray.

Remember, Alex? If we wanted to travel, we stared at the belt
.

He went on re-reading the phrase, while deep inside him he was starting to realise just what awaited him.

He jumped out of his seat, grabbed his backpack, and left the McDonald's.

Outside, the thunderstorm was still lashing down, the puddles lining the sidewalks were still growing larger, and the faint lights of the shop signs were blurring into the background. Alex walked quickly, staring straight ahead of him. The road that ran to the hotel had no awnings or overhangs to shelter him. But he didn't care about that.