Man and dog walked on in silence. Behind them, drops of rain began to patter down on an abandoned gun left lying in the shadows.

Samuel Verner had never believed the stories about the Ghost in the Machine.

However bizarre the tale, there was always a reasonable explanation. Some stories were pure fantasy while others were hoaxes by wiz-kid deckers or outright lies by incompetents seeking to hide their mistakes. There was no evidence for a disembodied sentience in the Matrix.

Now, under the electronic skies of the Renraku arcology’s Matrix, he began to wonder.

A persona icon had entered the datastore where Sam’s own projection was at work. The core of the icon was the standard Renraku corporate decker, the chromed image of a proper salaryman. The Raku logo pulsed in blue neon on the left breast, shoulders, and back of the figure’s suitcoat. The chrome reflected the swirling numbers and letters that were the datastore’s visual representation. Harsh red lines striped the icon’s surface like angry wounds, rude shadows of the luminous outline that surrounded the humanoid shape.

That wireframe simulacrum was a caricature of a kabuki clown. Any patron of that bawdy Japanese theater form would recognize this figure of pathos who inspired laughter among those spared the larger-than-life trials of the clownish victim. Sam was familiar with the image in the kabuki, and he was also familiar with it here in the Matrix. The hollow clown and its corporate core was the adopted persona icon of Jiro Tanaka.

But Jiro had been dead for at least three hours.

Just before beginning his work for the day, Sam had made an unauthorized access into the arcology’s hospital data bank. Jiro’s file was closed but not yet sealed. Within the file, the patient log recorded the cessation of Jiro’s brain activity at 06:03 PST. Sam was saddened but not surprised; the young corporate decker had been sinking steadily for five days since his accidental fall from the promenade in the open mall. The two-story drop to the concrete had shattered bones and ruptured organs. The doctors prognosis had been pessimistic, citing possible brain damage and an apparent lack of will to survive.

Yet now, Jiro’s persona icon was active in the Matrix, threading its way through the mazes of data, It moved slowly, hesitantly, like a newly freed spirit adjusting to a novel form and abilities, Ghosts made little enough sense in the real world; they had no business in the analog world of the Matrix. This consensual hallucination used by computer operators to manipulate the immense dataflows at incredible computer speeds was not a real “world.” It had no way to trap and hold souls.

Some of the rogue deckers infesting the datanets claimed that a decker’s soul could be left trapped in the Matrix when some killer-countermeasures fried his brain. Sam had seen enough scientific documentation to know that such rumors were fantasies. The persona icon was only a placeholder, a marker that indicated where an operator’s attention was focused in a computer system. It had no existence, even though another operator in the same part of the system could perceive it. The icon had no objective reality. It simply indicated where the decker was engaged, an analog for his activity among the datalines, optical chips, and computer architecture that was the Matrix. There was no place for spirits in the electronic world. Souls were the province of God, and when the body died they went on to His judgement, No machine could hold them back.

There had to be another explanation. Sam’s program continued to run as he pondered the riddle. While his own icon remained stationary among the tumbling alphanumerics, nearly transparent because his cyberterminal was engaged in a “flow-through” search, the Jiro icon passed him. It gave no sign that it noted his presence, no hint of recognition. Sam felt simultaneous disappointment and relief. Even a ghost of Jiro could not have passed without acknowledgement. Whoever was using Jiro’s icon was a stranger.

Sam’s fingers flashed over the keys of his cyberterminal. The flow-through program disengaged and he activated the program he had named Tag Along. When the terminal brought Tag Along to active status, his icon flashed opaque, resolving into the standard Raku salaryman icon. Sam stood and placed himself behind the Jiro icon, pacing the intruder step for step and turn for turn. Occasionally, Sam’s icon flickered suddenly to a new location, “teleporting” with the power of Tag Along to remain out of the Jiro icon’s line-of-sight and thereby out of the operator’s awareness.

The teleport was a function of the program that Sam didn’t understand. He knew why it operated, he just didn’t know how. But then, he was a user non programmer. He didn’t have to know, The ability had proven helpful in the those first few months after the kidnapping incident and that was enough for Sam.

The death of Jiro’s wife had affected the young decker radically. His behavior had become erratic, leaving him surly and solitary where he once had been open and sociable. Renraku Corporation had reacted to the change, solicitous of its employees’ welfare. When Sam reported the addition the young decker had made to his Matrix icon, the company psychiatrist agreed that monitoring was a reasonable precaution. The physician had authorized company software experts to write and emplace a custom watchdog program that would allow another decker to follow Jiro as he moved through the Matrix. Hardware modifications and custom software embedded in Jiro’s cyberterminal workstation made the watcher invisible to the senses of Jiro’s icon.

Sam had persuaded the psychiatrist that he was a good choice as a watcher. After all, Sam was one of the few people at the arcology who knew anything about Jiro. The doctor agreed that Sam might have a good chance of noting anomalies in Jiro’s behavior, possibly picking up subtle references to past events. In fact, the doctor had agreed so readily that Sam suspected he might have done so because the plan was good therapy for Sam himself, Sam didn’t care. Therapy or not, he wanted to watch over Jiro. Their experiences at the hands of the shadowrunners who had hijacked their shuttle had created a bond between them. Sam could not abandon Jiro, especially after seeing how easily his friend absorbed the nihilistic attitude of Alice Crenshaw, the other survivor of the hijacking.

The Jiro icon moved out of the datastore and deeper into the computer system, jolting Sam with a sudden shift in perspective. He was no longer accustomed to the forced movement of Tag Along. It had been months since the psychiatrist had certified Jiro as stable and thus discontinued the Tag Along authorization.

Sam fought off the disorientation, focusing on the task at hand. If this wasn’t Jiro, then someone had entered the Renraku system illegally. No legitimate user could operate with someone else’s persona programming; they wouldn’t have the codes or know the passwords to unlock the software. Sam had a duty to the corporation to prevent misuse of the system.