Freedom TM

wide plaza that surrounded the house. As he came into view, with his well-known high-quest icon, the crowd roared their approval and parted to let him pass.
    He finally reached the line of razorbacks, and as he tried to slip by, they moved to block his path. He knew they couldn’t attack him—he was a member of the darknet—but neither would they let him through.
    Loki’s booming voice spoke in the air nearby while Loki watched from a hundred feet away. “What do you think you’re going to do, Sergeant? You’ll never get near me.”
    “Whether you like it or not, Loki, you’re one of us.” Sebeck couldsee the darknet feeds in his HUD display going haywire with news of the defeat of the plutocrats—but also at the rise of Loki. Hundreds of thousands of network members responded as they saw live video of Loki facing down the Unnamed One, and no one able to constrain him.
    And then a D-Space light flashed and a familiar form emerged from the network. Roy Merritt’s avatar started walking through the swarms of razorbacks—straight toward Loki. His two-hundredth-level call-out was burning above him. The crowd went completely silent.
    Loki just stared, obviously trying to figure out what to do, but still the Merritt avatar walked on.
    Merritt’s avatar walked past Sebeck, who stared in shock.
    Video of the encounter was being taken by a hundred darknet cameras in the crowd and simulcast throughout the network. The crowd listened closely as Merritt came alongside Loki. Merritt’s voice appeared in the air as well, calm and in control.
    “Sir, I need you to stop what you’re doing and come with me.”
    Loki looked around to the crowd. “What is this?”
    “Sir, a critical mass of network citizens strongly disapproves of what you’re doing. I need you to stop immediately and come with me. It would be much better if you cooperated. Would you do that for me?”
    “Fuck you! Roy Merritt … you’re a toy, an AI puppet that all these little users have put together.”
    “Sir, prosody tells me you’re upset. I came here to help you.”
    “Help
me
? I don’t need help!”
    “Please, sir—”
    “What are you going to do to me, Roy? You’re a fucking ghost!” Loki turned to the crowd. “No one’s powers can be turned on me. That’s part of the
peaceful
nature of our new society, isn’t it?” He laughed. “I’ll do what I damned well please!” Loki sent a command that caused his army of razorbacks to surge forward, smashing at the mansion doors.
    “You leave me no choice, sir. I’ll need to hold on to these.…”
Merritt’s avatar reached up its hand and actually pulled the level numbers off of Loki’s call-out—suddenly dropping the numbers down from sixtieth level to merely tenth level.
“… until you feel better.”
    The Merritt avatar was no longer two-hundredth level—he was now only one-hundred-fifieth level, and it was immediately apparent to all that the Burning Man had sacrificed his own levels to disable some of Loki’s.
    Loki watched in mute terror as all of the razorbacks around him and the microjets in the sky suddenly turned and departed. He got off his bike and staggered, finally falling to his knees in the realization of all he’d just lost—and the price he’d paid as well.
    Even as people watched, Merritt’s levels started to rise again, as people from around the darknet donated hard-won levels—at a ratio of a thousand to one— to replace those Merritt had tied up.
    In just a few moments, Merritt was back to his maximum two hundred levels.
    Merritt stood over Loki.
“Sir, we all need help from time to time. That’s why there’s more than one of us.…”
    Loki stared up at an avatar created out of the popular will of millions of people—programmed to react in times of dire need. It was apparently part of the darknet. And what the darknet was evolving to become.
    Loki collapsed onto the ground, silently wracked with sobs, his metallic eyes unable to shed tears or look away. The crowd, no longer hostile, gathered around him. A nearby woman placed her hand on his shoulder.
    Merritt turned to the crowd.
“Everything’s okay here folks. Nothing to see.…”
    And suddenly Sebeck heard a chime. He looked to see a gold-colored Thread wind away from him, leading north, toward the distant horizon. “Price!”
    “I’m right
here
, man.”
    “We need to find our gear.
Now
.”
    “Can’t it wait?”
    “No. We’ve got to leave right