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a world traveler, and the fact that she spent more time in faraway places than she did at home was what had led to Tech and Marz's eventual enrollment in Safehaven, where it was believed that they could be better supervised. Everyone involved in their relocation had been convinced that the brothers’ repeated school absences and minor troublemaking were due to the fact that they'd grown up with too much freedom. But, in fact—and much to the continuing dismay of Safehaven's director and councilors—Tech and Marz's penchant for skirting the rules had only increased since the move to New York City.
    It wasn't that they hated school or were incapable of learning. They simply had a difficult time adjusting to the drudgery of homework and the narrow-mindedness of certain schoolmates who refused to accept that Tech and Marz were, well, different.
    For as long as he could remember, Tech had always had trouble staying seated at a desk, raising his hand before answering questions, or caring much about spelling and basic math skills—since even the simplest computers had spellcheck and calculator functions, and Tech couldn't ever picture himself being without a computer. But he wasn't a cybergeek. He thought of computers as vehicles, no different from snowboards, ‘blades, or mountain bikes when you got right down to it. Computers provided him with a means of reaching the edge and riding that edge for all it was worth.
    For Tech, cyberflying was an extreme sport—the
extremest
of sports.
    Marz, by contrast, had been a worry to any number of teachers and guidance councilors precisely because of too much sitting—in front of screens of one sort or another, music synthesizers, or with books far more advanced than those being read by his age group. He took little interest in sports or social activities, but when it came to designing and customizing cybercraft, there were few that could touch him.
    Short and dark-complexioned, with a headful of brown curls and eyes like mood rings, Marz was contemplative and self-possessed, while loose-limbed, blond-haired Tech was dismissive and quick to anger.
    When they were young, the fact that their aunt had elected to dress them in items she brought back from remote areas of the world rather than in the latest mall fashions further distanced the brothers from their classmates and had often made them objects of ridicule or worse. Tech had been able to handle whatever anyone dished out, but the razzing had been hard on Marz, and Marz's sensitivity had turned Tech into a fighter.
    Tech never looked for fights. But anyone who messed with Marz could count on quick retaliation from his older brother.
    So they had made the most of their aunt's travels and the gullibility of the caretakers in whose charge she left them to avoid school as often as possible, bonding as only brothers could even in pursuit of their separate obsessions. Relocated to New York City and placed suddenly under the supervision of strict disciplinarians like Fidelia Temper, they had been forced to find more creative ways to skip school. But, as before, they could invariably be found exploring the infinite realms of the Virtual Network, the one interest they shared.
    Tech and Marz weren't the first kids of their generation to realize that the world they had been born into had been mapped to the square inch from space and largely drained of real-life adventure. Tropical forests of the sort Tarzan had swung through and that had once concealed the cities of vanished civilizations had all but disappeared, and with them had gone countless species of spectacular animals. Advances in satellite telecommunication had made it possible to make and receivephone calls from anywhere on the globe. Similarly, locators—worn on wrist or belt or implanted beneath the skin—had made it all but inconceivable that one would ever become lost, kidnapped, taken hostage, or grabbed by an angry parent and spirited off to Pakistan or Patagonia.
    Privacy had