The Artifact

Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom—and warfare.

Ray wondered if that’s all the artifact was—a little statue to be placed on a bookshelf in a fancy home office. Code drops in the Net often took the shape of such objects, but when touched, they were supposed to turn into something else, something virtual yet tangible like a sword or avatar or database of personal information for all users of a certain copyrighted drug. Sometimes they were nothing more than code sitting in a buffer that could be copied out and saved to an immersion rig for later viewing.

Her little plaster bust appeared to be neither.