Lev.DN.....Index.....Identity Crisis, page 11 (c)1996 Lee Skidmore.....Lev.UP

latest version of the Acid Worm that the Anti-Hack Squad had cleaned out of the citynet. In range of the car's security system he took out the blob. Johnny opened up the hacker program. Under the cover of making an official police inquiry into ownership and registration, the program interviewed the car's security system. The worm ate its way in through the car's cop query channel, where it slurped up the car's operating codes. A soft click came from the Scintilla's door as it unlocked. Johnny pulled it wide, then slipped into the caress of synth-leather covered smartseat. A sweet voice greeted him that said, "Hi Bob, no messages waiting. All my systems are in tip top condition. Would you like a traffic map?"

Now the Worm loaded Johnny's voice files, deleting the owner's files. 'DONE' flashed almost immediately in the blob's display. Johnny tossed it onto the passenger seat.

"Hi car. Give me a map to the South Hampton residence of Terence Du Quesne."

A broad green line jumped from the windshield. It painted the parking lot's asphalt, showing the way out. Below that, the holo-dash flickered. Johnny saw a thin, crooked line join a thicker one embedded in a map of the island. Route 27, the only way in or out from the end of the whale-shaped island's Atlantic dipped lower fin. Unless he felt like swimming back to the city.

Johnny stuck his finger into the holo-dash at the end of the red line, and said, "Zoom." Two stylized stick streets, sparsely dotted by widely spaced brown boxes, grew, rushing towards him from the end of the line. A thin tan rectangle showed the public beach at the edge of the row of summer mansions. One box fairly close to the tan rectangle was filled with a winking green light.

Johnny said, "Cancel dash map." The holo-dash shifted. A collection of graphs sprang up around a cartoon car. Johnny squeezed the column's accel-bulb as he gently tilted the stick to follow the map's line still traced on the windshield out of the parking lot.

Lev.DN.....Index.....Identity Crisis, page 11 (c)1996 Lee Skidmore.....Lev.UP