"Chapter5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carpenter Matthew)

Nebulus stood up from a kneeling position on the
asphalt street of an unknown city. It was dark, actually
gray in color and the clouds in the sky were moving very
fast. The surrounding buildings stood like monuments
compared to Nebulus' small body. A little piece of
newspaper skipped by along the ground behind his feet.
The long street he was looking down seemed to go on
forever. The city was completely deserted.

"Strange" he told himself outloud. "Oh, well, let's
get going." He began walking in the direction of the first
gate to get into mainstream cyberspace. A few steps and
he leaned forward to the ground and shape changed into a
sleek black sports car, one of the new European cars that
can top 300 mph. Fat tires, no rear view mirrors; kinda
like an old Countach he thought to himself as he squealed
his tires and flew down the streets.

"Great. Traffic jam already." In the near distance
he could see lots of people trying to get into the gateway.
"Always a bunch of jerks who don't know there way
around the block yet." With a glance skyward, he pulled
off the ground and moved a story or two above the rest of
the traffic. Flying over the crown was fun. The first
gateway was breached easily and he soon got back onto
the road and cruised into the highways, the internet
highways that connected to everywhere in the world, and
then some.

After only a little time, his speed began to slow.
Actually he began to slow immensely, eventually coming
to a complete stop. 'What the hell is going on?' he thought
to himself, checking all of his systems. Then he began to
shape change back into a person, except he hadn't chosen
to do so. 'Somebody's taking control of my environment.'
Then he began to fly backwards, completely out of
control. He fought to stabilize and he tried to stop, but
eventually was thrown back into the crowd of people
waiting at the gateway entrance. With an additional
thrust, he was tossed into the crowd, landing on the hard
asphalt just like everyone else had.

"What the hell is going on!" he yelled at the top of
his lungs as he stood up, wiping himself off. The area
around he began to change and soon he was standing on a
computer generated grid. No streets. No buildings. Just
grids. He continued to look around, finally running his
identifier program. In a few seconds an arrow appeared
pointing in the direction off to his right, toward the