LeeSki_SkiMore's SciFi Site: Lev.UP, the Future.Novel, page 6

Carefully, he saved all the data that read defect free. It took him a long time after that
to get anywhere with the terribly long stream of what looked like max-felony downtime
retro-virus code snippets. Eller eventually managed to hack out large chunks of what
really was pre-unification, pre-World TelCo, U. S. of A. spy.espware applets. Years old,
to be sure, in a time when a second was forever, but these wares were of a two-bit
variety so close to a multi-processor's heart that they possessed a timeless potency.
He wrote, sprayed, rewrote, then debugged again, over and over, best-guessing the
missing bits as well as he could. He would run them, then sit back to watch them fail.
One rare summer day, something went right. The expected crash never came. It
began repairing itself. A few micro-milli-secs after that it went to work fixing other
damaged programs Eller had found, but forgotten, left only to litter his files.

Jump.
Call.
Subroutine.
Number, number.
Software edge.
Software's edge.

"Time to hide a few things," said Eller to himself, as he eased away from the crumbling
redwood log. Without even realizing he had done it, Eller focused his Six-D VR eyeware
lens implants on the barnet's menu. Clic'd the restroom icon.
He turned toward the rustle of leaves in his holo-stereo ear implants. An opening
appeared in what had been solid greenery. He walked into a leafy tunnel shot with
flickering rays of bright sunlight.
Eller needed to have a more recent history of being at Quints. He mentioned it to the
govware.
The barware was crap to the govware's worm. With great appetite, it ate. Crunch.
Crunch. Crunch. Eller became a dear friend of the barnet.

Eller exited the shadowy tunnel. He entered a tree-lined meadow showered in bright
yellow sunlight. A light breeze gently stirred the tree-tops. The govware was still
running, so Eller clic'd gov.real.
The greenery went ghostly as the tunable, full-spectrum, data, power, and illumination
photon-emitter panels that roofed the stained, e-z clean, reflecto-paint-covered concrete
walls of the restroom became visible. Pale white porcelain columns rose up from the
edges of the liquid-metal shine of the spongesteel floor.
The forest was almost gone. The barnet's VR ghosted by the govware's fed.real filters.
Eller in Ellerland-- his preferred state, hacked into a bleak reality. His anti-wonderland.
Regardless of the govware's two-bit tricks, however, he didn't have much time to be
careful in. Even with the govware covering his movements, each second increased the
probability that an impossible-to-resolve processing conflict might occur.
During the robbery, one of the ways the govware had covered up had been to send
millions of disguised spy.espware agents out into the net. The little time-bombs that
survived caused a wide range of decoys, including drop-outs, all over the net. It had also
been a lot easier to hide Eller's movements from the net when he wasn't 'really' there.
Eller was really in the barnet, and being invisible wasn't that easy. A drop-out from the
barnet, literally, right on top of his hiding place, right then, could only be a disaster. It
was sure to be checked to death by the Chi' 'Crete's copnet. If the drop-out involved
something like a collision with a person, well, Eller would be forced to flee, the comp
abandoned. Most likely to be caught.