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Aleksey Savchenko and Bert Jennings

CYBERSIDE

DEDICATION

To my beautiful wife Victoria and my son Kyryl for all the love and understanding they give me, to my family and “extended” family at Epic Game and all the game industry that have always been my never-ending source of inspiration.

To my very good friend Alice, who once told me that it doesn’t make any sense to be afraid of anything and so I never did again.

Aleksey

For my Father, thank you for sharing the love of reading with me.

Bert

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Alexander, Sergey, Chris, Scott, Evan, Svetlana, Olesya, Tim, Mike, Ilya, and Michael. Without your help, this book will probably won’t be written.

Aleksey

For Scott and Evan, without either of you, Cyberside would not be a reality.

Bert

Chapter 1: “Taciturn”

His worn, dusty jacket normally feels like a second skin, but as Taciturn stands at the crossroads overlooking the valley below, he contemplates taking it off. Even as the sun sinks behind him, he can’t help but notice how warm it is.

Unusually so.

It’s likely nothing more than the byproduct of an overloaded network, or perhaps simply a remnant of faulty code. But by any reckoning, something doesn’t feel right. This far out into the Cyberside, details are often overlooked. How many people even know about the sleepy cattle community before him? Nestled within rolling hills, the meager township barely merits a first look, let alone a second. Taciturn supposes that may be precisely the point.

A warm breeze stirs the thin strands of black hair straying from beneath his bullhide hat. With one hand, he pulls the wide brim down to just above his eyes.

His other hand rests on the grip of the pistol holstered low on his thigh. As his fingers slide across the polished grain, Taciturn inventories his remaining cartridges, his eyes scanning the heads-up overlay before him. Satisfied with his findings he nods the display away.

“Not making that mistake again. ”

The wind picks up, and a cloud of information dust swirls in the heat, forming a dust devil. He tracks the vortex of discarded data as it begins its meandering journey down towards the serene landscape below. Modest cottages and unassuming frame homes cluster around a main street of shops and businesses running parallel with the nearby riverbank. Even from a distance, it’s not difficult to mark the decidedly suspicious lack of activity throughout the quiet countryside.

This rural, family-centric paradise had once beckoned new Cyberside arrivals to establish a life far from the hustle and bustle of the ever-more-congested real-world cities. Enticed by the promise of a simpler way of life, the settlers had come in their droves, hoping to start anew.

Whatever rustic wholesomeness those earnest pilgrims had once come seeking, a palpable pall now hangs over these territories, the state of the remaining community a mute testament to the radically-diminished population. Relegated to a small cluster of data nodes on some server in the Real World, this town represents just a minute, backwater portion of the sprawling, generated world known as the Cyberside. Much like the run-down state of the township, the Cyberside is, if not a broken dream, then at least an eroded one.