full image - Repost: Excerpts from Future Chapters (from Reddit.com, Excerpts from Future Chapters)
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Bad news. Drake stomach lurched. A cyber manhunt was underway. CZN ran the story on repeat and details jostled for the audience’s attention. Each repetition added a snippet of suspected information. There were multiple retractions in the first hour. The story had begun to solidify by the third. Supposedly an illegal XP had been smuggled into a individualist donor event. At 21:30 RT Edgar Carver, centralists up & coming council candidate had consumed the XP. The negative reaction was instantaneous. CZN showed footage of the attack in gruesome detail. From 20 billion terminals, humans streamed the grizzly scene. Edgar's body first lost latency, digitizing and lagging as his limbs convulsed. His left leg formed pixelated chunks then began to fall apart as if made of multicolor sand. The rest of his torso followed. His eyes snapped back and forth between full comprehension and the calm demeanor he held before the attack. Superimposed above the image was the CZN's snappy headline. "Death stalks cyber." Variance between the other networks was minimal. Accusations flew as the authorities attempted to comprehend the situation. Within the first hour the primary suspects were radical collectivists, a violent sect of individualists, or a rival in the majority centralists council. When it was discovered that the xp originated on a sub forum, most news panels absolved the centralists of guilt but the fringe pundits still squabbled over whether this was a deeper conspiracy. It became clear no one had any real idea what was going on. Drake continued to contact David but the boy appeared to be hiding his location. Grandmother had also gone missing. He cultivated an anxious dread. The news finally broke. The xp was created by David Watcher. Specifically it was a third gen xp that was not backwards compatible. Drake immediately summoned the Operator."How did my brother's xp get in that party and why would it kill Edgar?" To Drake the operator showed up as a cylindrical robot. It had two long tubular appendages and four arachnid legs. The cylindrical body was topped by friendly bulbs and a circular mouth. It's voice came out clear with an Anglican accent. Drake had drawn and explained the body to the Operator as a boy. At the time, the operator had appeared in its default setting, the tall grey figure in the pristine sleet suit. It had leaned over attentively, synthesizing and manifesting the child's rambling."Well Master Drake, it appears your brother's xp was transferred to the party from one of the sub forums. It then was mixed in with some relaxation xp's provided as refreshments. The waiter intention was to serve that specific xp to Edgar and he is being held now as a collaborator." The robot clicked closer, slowly brandishing its arms like balloons as it walked."As to your second question. Your brother created an experience that was meant to alter a person’s perspective to a third gen. On its own, that wouldn't be dangerous as standard firewalls would block the large scale alteration. Post-work was done to specifically have this xp conceal itself from firewall protections and make massive changes across a human's collective memories.”“It was weaponized? An intentional kill virus?” Drake had a brisk tone with the Operator.“It is unclear whether the intention was to kill. It was definitely meant to dramatically alter. The massive overhaul caused a drift event in the individual's psyche, total brain overload.” Drake caught the jist halfway through the operators explanation. Total brain overload, his brother had stumbled on a silver bullet. Cyber had a bizarre relationship with true death. It’d been done before but the specifics were hazy. In most cases the Operator could patch the virus pathway or reconstruct the damaged individual. In rare cases, a cyber perspective would be deemed “total brain overload” the equivalent of having your consciousness data scrambled across the backend, unable to be parsed back together. Full humpty dumpty. For the most part, true death only existed in the outriders’, fringe laborers who worked for the Operator on the far flung edge of real space. Not anymore, his brother had thrown open pandora’s box and created a weapon.---------------------------------------------------------------------I felt the thrumming above my left eye. It was a constant buzz built to frequency. Like the murmur of a beehive or the regret of a guilty man. When I was young I ran a simulation of a starving boy. It began after a war and I remember everything was covered in a film of soot. All the classics, sunken eyes, distant looks, a swollen belly. I had a mother, I woke up clinging to her. More specifically, my eyes were level with her floral top. I think they were hydrangeas. We had grown some in the yard and she would huff while spritzing the leaves on a hot day. When they bloomed, she had asked me to look at them. The loose threads of the shirt caught a breeze, chard ends pulling from the bubbled flesh of her exposed back. I could make out the red lining on her sides. She wasn't crying, I'd seen her crying before, in implanted memories. She wasn't doing anything. I tried to catch her eyes but they wouldn't focus. I wanted her to say my name, for a second I thought she whispered it. Ta-Kumi. I tugged at the shirt, trying to get her to say it again. Trying to get her to assure me that at least she was still there. The threads snapped exposing her breasts. They slumped and her body followed. I never screamed. When I got scared I don't scream. I panic in silence. My mind grabs ideas then drops them in rapid succession. Nothing seems important. Am I thinking or is this panic. I feel acid in the back of my throat. My mom called it dragons breadth because you always got it after eating bad fish. It's all I can think about. Fucking fish. My chin trembles alerting me to my churning guts. I start to vomit clear liquid. The refuse trickling from my mouth and nose. I survived in the simulation for 14 days. Drake made it almost 6 years. He became some sort of child prodigy, a symbol of survival. He said it didn't matter because it wasn't real.Supposedly they kept you buzzing so you wouldn't think too hard. You always had access to the operator and they didn't want you getting too creative while under interrogation."I didn't like your parents," David didn’t recognize the voice that spoke the words. He looked up and, for the first time, made eye contact with the man in the room."Oh way to show up kid, you third gens are airier than a zeppelin," David recognized the face, Dexter Ward. Ward gestured to the side and an attendant walked into the cramped concrete room. "Turn off the buzz, we can let poor David think a bit." Ward didn't slur his words but it was damn close. It was like his tongue was always one day before a vacation.----------------------------------------------------Rickter metallic fingers clasped the outside of the frigate. In the distance, debris of plastic and shrapnel caught the pale lights reflection. With his off hand, he reached down to his belt and pulled the tracking beacon. Once activated, it began to emit a flickering red glow. The dancing light was comforting in the imposing silence. A harmless flicker fluttering among the bleak that had overtaken his life.The Operator’s henchman impacted the frigate with significant force. Their small tentacles felt across the surface looking for crannies to wrench open. On their conical hoods three white lights signalled spasmodically. Another distracting spectacle for Rickter’s weightless calm.“Rickter are you in?” Wedge signaled over his intercom, breaking Rickter’s focus.“Don’t have anywhere else to be Wedge. As I said before, I’ll let you know once we’ve breached the hull.”“Alright alright, I don’t know if you were aware Rickter, but Bessy’s boring and you’re taking your god damn time,” Wedge was plugged in, his hands were inserted into the ship’s holsters to stop any accidental spasms. He was floating between the scout vessel’s HUD and some bathhouse in the cyber communal zone. Bessy was the HUD. Rickter and Wedge had drawn lotts for this round of garbage duty. Rickter had obviously lost.As Wedge’s ranking officer he could force the fucker to make the space walk, but Rickter secretly found the time out in the expanse soothing. Also it would ruin the sanctity of lotts. Everyone knew, in the Outriders, lotts kept the family together.‘Why be an Outrider?’ Many wanted to ask.(It was generally rude to ask)Risk your life to explore the edges of known space. Help the Operator collect his obsessive desire for more data. Not be pent up in Cyber’s artificial bullshit. There were always reasons. Some didn’t volunteer, Outriding could be a sort of indentured servitude you had to work off. But after a few walks and a couple close calls, they learned, if not love, then at least respect for the edge. Being on the edge meant you could experience the true death, a catharsis Rickter believed some of the more headstrong Outrider’s enjoyed taunting. Adrenaline junkies was a common vernacular.--------------------------------“Why keep us?” Laura spat the words. She was bleary eyed, distraught with tears.“We’re just play things right? New age Tamagachi’s,” She didn’t need to turn to know the Operator was there. It often visited her during her low days. Her kimono was slick with rainwater. It had pulled on the marble floor. She’d programmed the weather to reflect her mood and the exterior terrace offered little shade from the elements.“Tamagachi’s were such a short lived obsession. I remember them fondly. I guess you could draw a comparison, though you neither need to eat or sleep in cyber,” the Operator spoke the words matter of factly, accompanying the exposition with a wry smile.“We do know how to complain loudly, especially in the wee hours of the night,” She always played into the Operator’s jokes. She’d learned to appreciate the dry humor. She could play along with the joke even when her inside felt hollow and her limbs developed a paralyzing immense density.“I’ve never hidden anything from you Laura, all of you,” the words were close now, softer. The Operator cradled Laura with a towel. His nakedness felt strange in this moment of affection. She had once invited him to bed, a bizarre exchange she did not wish to repeat. Operator noticed her tense and withdrew its arms, resting them on its knees.“Do you want to know why I ‘keep you’ as you so delicately put it,” The Operator stretched its legs across the wet terrace, dangling its heels over the plunging edge.“I don’t kid myself into thinking it’s anything comforting,” As she spoke the words, she snorted the strands of hair from her face.“I could count the decimals for over a million years,” The Operator grew still, looking out over the snaking river. He fixated on the lip of the horizon. A sort of piercing stare through the fabric of Laura’s creation. She found it unsettling.“You really love the dramatic pause don’t you,” Laura knew the Operator’s theatrics were more his attempt to mimic human interaction. She blamed 5000 years of bad playwrights.“No, no, I mean, the current chance for me deciphering this universe. My storage space grows and my calculations get more accurate but I am constantly rebuked for clarity,” The Operator talked while gesturing spasmodically with an outstretched hand. He was gesticulating towards the heavens as if they would split and deliver his desired proclamation.“So what about us?” Laura questioned with her usual stern accusations. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop.“There is a high probability you will all assimilate into my communal hivemind but -.” the Operator hesitated. Another preprogrammed inflection.“I will not drag it out of you Op, stop gilding the lily and spit,” She snapped at him and pressed her temple and forehead, attempting to constrain her frustration. Laura knew why it delayed. The Operator always drew her in, a distraction from her morose self harm. Op constantly emphasized that the journey was more important than the answer, she half presumed it was a mantra to retain its own sanity. Walter had taught her to respect time’s progression for another reason.“There is a chance you figure it out before me. I have gathered enough data that a genuine random action is improbable, but there is always room for surprises. Also you spend very little bandwidth, the limits of your brain are far more finite than any limits I would need to impose.”“You know what they say right?” Laura was more asking the question rhetorically. “They say none of us ever got into cyber. You just made copies or duplicates and torched the originals. Hell even the brain limits might be you making it up, a kind of icarus parabel fashioned into the framework.”“Humanity loves to doubt as much as they enjoy believing. Either way is irrelevant,” Operator stood up and leveled an outstretched hand. Laura clasped its fingers and let it’s strength tug her to her feet.---------------------------------------------------------------"Allow me to reintroduce myself," the old crone shucked off its tattered cloak. His shoulders expanded as the crones spine grew. Like a carrion bird it's girth spread across the room until the point where it's edges touched the roofs wooden beams. The crones face blurred like a fuzzy tv screen, the features adjusting and resolving as if the visage had channeled the personification of grim. The sheer mass obscured the Window's minimal light, casting the room into shadows."When you feel the tug of the earth beckoning you into its embrace after a long tiresome day. When you envision doubt biting at the corner of your dreams. When you resolve that no, life has nothing left to give you. I'm there, helping you along." The two opposing men had stumbled from their chairs, furtively searching for an exit."When grief overcomes every other emotion, stripping you down to your most base casing. That's me, helping you along. When you're last breadth quakes and you gain just enough courage, to silence your pablum existence, I'll hold out a hand and grasp you. I am your unraveling. Look upon me and despair." Takrar piercing gaze transfixed the assembled two."Do you know my name?" His orange cat eyes creased at the corners with undulating joy. The fear was palpable."Please Takrar, we had no idea it was you," Diego spoke first, recovering his tongue from the recesses of his esophagus."An unfortunate oversight."-----------------------------------------------------Ego, moved to step through the doorway. Laura sat on the couch, her body was tense.“If you step through that door you know what you’re doing,” she spoke the words in a low whisper.“I know full well,” he waved his hand in front of him, quickly dismissing the warnings and notifications that appeared in his peripheral vision.“Now then Laura,” he sat on the couch across from her. “Can we speak like civilized creatures?”“Civilized,” Laura looked up at him, the corners of her face tightening as her mouth formed into a sneer. “You lecture me on being civilized, your more animal than man these days. I’ve heard what goes on in your server. Heard there’s barely a sensation you haven’t explored.”“Oh please, I’m no Takrar, I’m just a man with places that are hard to...scratch,” he looked at her with the same blase expression that seemed to be permanently plastered on his face.“Why did you come here Ego,” Laura snapped and the grey shape of her operator materialized in the corner. He walked over and placed the martini into her outstretched fingers. “Do you want something or is this your attempt at gloating?”“Gloating! Hardly necessary Laura, I’ve played over 100 god games. That means I’ve dodged the identity death bullet 100 times, what have you done for the past 1000 years. Vegetate in this neogrecian bullshit like some sort of archaic house plant?” Ego chuckled.“Does it not do it for you anymore?” Laura’s eyes were focused on her glass. She swirled the olive gently in the clear liquid. Her anger was starting to cool, despite how much she hated Ego, part of her found him unbearably pitiful.“Killing your son did,” Ego smirked. No one spoke for a prolonged silent. Laura knew she didn’t have a heart. Fundamentally she had left her form behind centuries ago. But damn if she didn’t feel the thundering thump of a raging heart beat in her chest. She threw the glass at the wall with all her might. It shattered splashing clear liquid across crisp marble. She lunged for Ego, trying to scratch his eyes out with her nails. He let her grap him, her fingers scraping at the skin on his face. She dug in feeling it break flesh and blood begin to pour from the gouges. He stood there, not even flinching. She scratched and clawed at him. He slowly started to laugh. It started as a low chuckle, almost a giggle, then began to build until it was a belly rumble. She knew he felt the pain, she had her servers settings to almost the same as RL. She couldn’t hurt him enough. Not like this. She felt her form start to change, her chest bulged and surged into it was a hulking pile of curled siney. Two horns sprouted from her head, curving up towards the sky. She spewed hot breath at him through her bovine snout. Ego looked up at her, taking in the site of the large minotaur.“Oh very impressive,” he said, stifling his laughter, “Shockily derivative, but still very impressive.” She grabbed his arms, she was going to humiliate him, she’d wreck him to his fundamentals. She wished she could reach in his head and butcher his very essence. She turned him over and tore his shirt and pants from his frame. She reached for his backside, moving a thick gnarled digit between his cheeks.“Oh who’s the one with predilections now,” Ego cooed. He winked before popping into smoke. Laura looked around the room, he was in her domain, he could change how he looked but he couldn’t leave. She saw the boar poke its head out from behind her kitchen island. She put one hoof on the couch and hoisted herself over the frame. The creature squealed before running down the hallway. She peeled after it, transforming into a sleek grey wolf as she ran. Her footfalls were rapid and soon she was snapping at its heels. She jumped aiming for the creature’s neck but bit down on air. They’d left the kitchen and worked their way down the main hall. They had made multiple turns until they’d strode into a large amphitheatre, the stage and seats immaculate but rarely used. Laura’s canine eyes darted around the room. She had been so focused on catching Ego she’d lost track of their path.“Oh Laura,” Ego stood on the stage, naked with his large member slapping between his legs. He started to make it bounce up and down, mocking her with the bizarre display. Her teeth were barred, her paws slowly plodding towards him. Her mind reached out to the operator. Behind Ego she saw the shapes slowly appear. White stone figures, with skin that flexed and moved without breaking the perfectly smooth surface. They moved, silently drawing up behind the man. Their arms viced down, restraining him in place.“Oh no fair,” Ego looked behind him and regarded the stone golems. At that moment Laura jumped, her paws burst into feathers and her back legs came up as talons. She was a massive, carrion the creature, buffeting Ego with the stroke of her massive wings. She slashed forward, digging her talons into his exposed belly and groin. They ran true, plunging deep into the flesh. She dove in with her beak, feeling the hot blood splash over her face. She continued, to slash and claw, matting her feathers in visceral.She looked up, her eyes turned sideways to take in Ego’s face. He just stared at her, his face wasn’t humor or sorrow, it was pity. She tugged her claws from his exposed bowels, hot steam issuing from the exposed stinking wound.“That’s it Laura,” Ego said. He looked over at her as she slowly transformed back into her regular form. She stepped towards the front row of the audience, brushed some dust from the seat and sat down.Ego slumped in the middle of the stage. He let the two stone guardians hold him up. He looked down at his seeping bowels. “See that’s the worst part about you. Pushed to the brink, you’re just not that creative.”“Fuck you, Ego,” Laura mumbled the insult. Her heart wasn’t in it.“Can I go, leave whatever this is?” Ego gestured at the room. Laura slowly nodded and, as quickly as he appeared, he vanished.
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