The word was burned into his inner eyelid, just as the greeting it replaced had been. Pip? Who or what the frag was a pip? Was that some sort of Japanese word, like otaku?
Not yet otaku! This was obviously someone who knew about the experiment. Perhaps even the sysop or programmer behind it.
"Where are you?" Bloodyguts asked out loud. "Can you access this node?"
The words appeared at a painfully slow pace, one letter at a time. Judging by the rate of transmission, a keyboard was being used. If this was the sysop, he or she wasn't a very good speller-or else was typing madly in the meat-world, unwilling to correct a mistake when seconds within the Matrix counted for so much.
"Can you help me log off?" Bloodyguts asked.
"Can anyone else help me?"
The answer was even slower in coming this time, as if the other decker were considering the question.
What the frag? Spirits were part of the natural world.
They couldn't enter the Matrix-and wouldn't survive inside it if they could.
Perhaps there was another way out. "What is deep resonance?" Bloodyguts asked. "Can it help me to perform a graceful log off?"
For a moment, Bloodyguts thought the connection had been broken. But he could still feel the slide of blood flowing up his arm and the tickle of it creeping under his right eyelid, drop by drop like reverse tears.