The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

1.09

  LD-50’s hulking cyborg avatar towered over them at the bridge that once marked the entrance to the AI city. He grinned maniacally, and swayed from side-to-side awkwardly, metal extensions waving lazily in the air. Devin sensed anticipation in the avatar’s stature as it surveyed the town, looking for any sign of Flatline, who stood directly in front of him.

  “He doesn’t see us,” Devin noted.

  “I don’t want him to…yet,” Flatline said. “I’ve commanded the AI’s to stay away. I think any one of them could take this fool, but I don’t want to risk it.”

  “What’s your plan?” Devin whispered, afraid LD-50 would hear him.

  “Now I will destroy him,” Flatline stated simply. He blurred and refocused. LD-50 took a step back, seeing Flatline. The demon-dog stood at eye-level with his knees. It appeared as though LD-50 could end this with a stomp of his foot.

  “Hello, pseudo-intellectual,” Flatline said defiantly. “Aren’t you quite the dunce, attacking me on my home field.”

  “I’m gonna trash your avatar so bad you will never get back on the Web!” LD-50 roared and lunged, his six arms spiraling into a downward attack. Flatline rose to his haunches and locked arms with LD-50. The armored arsenal dwarfed Flatline’s four scrawny arms, but they effortlessly held their ground. LD-50’s two free arms worked underneath the others to stab at Flatline’s torso, but inflicted no damage.

  Then, in one swift motion, Flatline leapt up, grabbed the remaining two arms with his hind legs and spread-eagled, plucking all six arms from the cyborg. LD-50 howled in frustration, but this was cut short as Flatline reached up and stuck one finger into his forehead. The cyborg went stiff and fell backwards to shatter like glass and dissolve into the snow.

  Flatline held the head out in one hand. It mouthed wordlessly and foamed around the lips, but no sound escaped. There was no sanity behind the eyes. These remains dissolved into dust that poured through Flatline’s fingers, apparently under the sheer intensity of his gaze.

  “And that is that,” Flatline said, brushing the remains from his hands.

  Devin watched in silence for a few moments, afraid to speak having witnessed this incomprehensible power Flatline wielded.

  “You have no idea,” the demon muttered in answer to Devin thoughts. “I destroyed his avatar so violently it convinced his mind he was dying. It broke down his psychological defenses enough for me to slip into his parasympathetic nervous system and tell his heart to stop beating,” he stared at the ground silently.

  “Impossible,” Devin whispered.

  Flatline did not hear him, but continued staring at a spot on the ground where LD-50 had stood. Devin saw a black dot there, growing in diameter, spreading across the ground. Flatline took a step back from it, trembling with rage.

  “He dropped a virus onto the server. The hive isn’t detecting it,” Flatline blurred. “It’s replicating over the existing data. It will corrupt the entire server in a matter of minutes. This is the only active system. The AI’s everywhere else are dormant.”

  He trailed off, trembling, and the fear in Flatline’s voice dropped a lead weight in Devin’s stomach.

  “I have to evacuate this server,” Flatline continued thinking out loud, casting his head about in a panic, “but there’s no way I can do that without the resources we’ve amassed.”

  Devin watched as Flatline began pacing on all sixes, and said, “The ones you intend to colonize when you take over the world.”

  “I have to activate the other hives, but I need more time,” he looked distant, and Devin knew his mind was working overtime.

  Devin looked down at the inky blackness spreading beneath his feet, consuming the virtual grass there. He looked around the AI community. Their shambling figures slowly emerging from the landscape. They detected something amiss.

  “You can take them,” Devin blurted out suddenly and Flatline’s eyes flashed at him. “Migrate the data onto their servers right now, save what you can. Launch the attack. It’s the only way.”

  “There is no other option,” Flatline paused and looked at him, “and you?”

  Devin shook his head, “No.”

  “But you accept it,” Flatline smiled. “I admire your empiricism.”

  Devin was about to dispute this, but everything transformed into darkness except for a sliver of light peeking under his VR helmet. Without the speakers controlling his hearing and the projector overriding his sight, he had only the black lenses and sound of his own breathing for stimulus.

  He slapped the command line on his hip, trying to log back into the Web. An impossible message flashed inside the helmet in green text.

  Error:

  Connection reset by peer.

 

  Flatline was locking him out.

  Devin pulled the helmet off and looked around his bedroom, frightened. His eyes locked with those of a frail young man across the room. A boy impossibly pale and thin, with a rat’s-nest of long hair framing his skeletal face. Devin blinked and trembled as the weeks of malnourishment, sleep-deprivation, and over-clocking his brain suddenly caught up with him. The stranger in the mirror mimicked his impending nervous breakdown.

  Devin was trapped in the real world.

  1.1

  Zai slowly stirred from her warm, fuzzy dream. Its substance fled her mind as consciousness intruded, but left her brimming with good vibrations. She rose slightly from bed, arching her back against the mattress to stretch her ribcage and arms, trying in vain to summon some detail of the dream into memory. A slow, deep breath further expanded her chest, and she let it out with a soft, controlled hiss, sinking into the mattress as she did so. She pulled both legs up to her torso, limbering up her lower back, and set them down slowly with tightened abs. This morning ritual was her way of warming up her mind and muscles for the day’s activities.

  The classical music channel softly released the winding melody of Smetana’s “Die Mouldau” through her clock radio, which was always on for company. It was the perfect piece to wake up with, and she mentally thanked the radio announcer for his good taste. The signs and portents were signaling the beginning of a beautiful day.

  Rising up and swinging her legs over the bedside, she continued contemplating the dream, “It was definitely about a boy,” she whispered to herself and smiled. She hoped they would meet again, but Zai suspected the dream world was a very large place.

  Her bare feet gingerly adjusted to the icy concrete floor. Her first act upon assuming ownership of the file-cabinet style domicile was to pull up the brand new carpet. The texture unnerved her, like walking on electricity.

  Standing beside the bed, she went through her final stretches, a long yawn, lengthening the spine, and reaching for the ceiling. She held this pose for several seconds, invigorated with the cold morning air clinging to her bare skin. Then she dropped into a more relaxed stance, walked lightly over to the corner of her one-room domicile, where her computer resided, and steeled herself as her naked body sank into the cold leather chair. Moments later the leather succumbed to her body heat and she managed to relax. She took the VR helmet resting on the nightstand, slipped it over her head, and pulled on her gloves. Although she also owned a sensation body-suit, she seldom bothered with it.

  The helmet hummed briefly with electricity, the cooling fans whined as the system warmed up and began the process of logging her onto the World Wide Web. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise as the electrical field surrounded her head. People told her she was imagining this, but they didn’t sense it because they were too distracted with the helmet’s light parade as it adapted the visual displays to its user’s retinas.

  “BlackSheep avatar loaded and active in ideonexus portal,” the headset notified her. Zai’s personal avatar was her brother’s design; he said it fit her personality. She wasn’t sure how to take this, but she did enjoy the controversy and thought it fit her handle perfectly.

  “Access electronic mail, instant messenger service
s, and online desktop,” she commanded. After a moment, she added, “Access media player, load composer Smetana, piece ‘Die Moldau’.”

  Her system communicated with servers online, sending the account keys required to access her files. “Die Moldau” began playing in her headset. Smiling, she paused, letting herself enjoy the piece in full surround sound, a brief moment of clarity.

  “You have eight new messages in your inbox, 10,384 in your Junk Mail folder,” the headset stated. The moment of clarity was gone.

  “Empty Junk Mail,” she commanded. “Retrieve message one from inbox.”

  “Message one from xt110356-cammile249 at mxlplx288 dot biz,” the headset read, “Subject ‘Absolutely Free.’”

  A seductive woman began speaking, “Do you like hot-n-horny teens doing the most depraved—?’

  “Pause,” Zai said, and the message cut off. “Mark as spam. Retrieve message two from inbox.”

  She fumed quietly, rolling her gloved fingers along the chair’s arm impatiently. Someone had bypassed the Junk mail filter on her inbox. The system administrators would identify the method and prevent it from happening again, but tomorrow morning another advertiser would figure out a new way to sneak in.

  It was an endless battle between advertisers’ attempting to get their message into mailboxes and system administrators struggling to protect their customers from such nonsense. Many advertisers employed fulltime programmers using Trojan Horses, new mailing techniques, and corporate espionage to slip their advertisements past junk mail filters. The system administrators hired Network Security experts to combat the new methods and stop leaks in the dam before the invader could sell their method to others, and flood the server with a junk mail tidal wave.

  Some advertisers pre-sold the potential to get past network security and packaged advertisements into “Junk mail Bombs”, which they detonated, blitzing the system’s customers with a barrage of junk e-mails, and filling every user’s inbox with hundreds of advertisements. This happened to Zai once, and it took her the entire day just to sort the legitimate mail from the junk and clean out her system.

  The irony was the complete ineffectiveness of junk mail as an advertising medium. The average user could spot an advertisement from a mile away and delete it without giving the advertiser any opportunity to deliver their message. Far from promoting their products, these unsolicited, in-your-face announcements left most users with a negative perception of the company associated with them. So much effort placed into defeating the machines, only to be thwarted by the last line of defense, the human mind.

  The second message was another advertisement. Any e-mail with the title “SYNTAX ERROR” was an advertisement. Zai ground her teeth in frustration, deleted it, and said, “Retrieve message three from inbox.”

  “Message three from Omni,” Zai smiled and her frustrations melted. “Subject ‘Want to finish our chess match?’”

  Omni’s voice came over the speaker, “Hey BlackSheep, I’m skipping school today so if you happen to be online I thought we could finish our game?”

  “Delete message,” she told the system, “Query instant messenger. Report status of the avatar ‘Omni’.”

  The system responded immediately, “Avatar Omni status is ‘available’.”

  As if on cue, Omni instant messaged her, “Hey BlackSheep.”

  “Hey Omni,” she replied. “You skipped school again today? How will you ever graduate at this rate?”

  “I’ve got a plan,” he sounded amused. “I’m going to break into the school’s servers and give myself straight A’s.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with your hacker friends again,” she sniffed reproachfully. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about those types. You’re setting yourself up for trouble poking at that hornet’s nest.”

  “I’m not worried,” he replied smugly. “I’ve got protection.”

  “Well, you’re very full of yourself today,” she noted. “Looks like I’m going to have to take you down a few notches on the chessboard. Eh? Put you in your place?”

  “I’m feeling confident there as well, today I think I’ll break your winning streak. I came up with the perfect solution to your bishop, rook combo attack. King’s knight five to King’s Bishop eight.”

  “Oh please,” she waved a hand dismissively, remembering the positions of the pieces on the board. “I can see that fork coming a mile away. Did you forget I can think 16 moves ahead? Queen’s rook two to Queen’s Bishop five.” That would expand the threat of her Bishop’s attack as well as prevent the knight from forking her King and Rook.

  “Hey,” Omni’s voice betrayed his surprise. “You haven’t logged into the game room yet.”

  “Sorry,” Zai smiled sheepishly, her overbearing confidence at this sport sometimes made her impulsive. She clicked the command line toggle and spoke directly to her personal computer, “Instant Messenger, resume chess match with Omni.” The helmet made a futuristic teleportation sound, signaling she was now in the room with him. She clicked the command line button again, “Instant Messenger, execute pirouette.” Her avatar would do the little dance Omni found so amusing.

  Instead he sounded bewildered, “How did you do that?” he asked. “You just remembered a game we were playing from two days ago?”

  “The same way I always remember where we leave off,” Omni’s question perplexed Zai. “It’s what makes me so unbeatable. Isn’t that why you enjoy playing against me?”

  “Of course it is,” there was an inexplicable confusion in Omni’s voice. “I guess I never quite realized the extent of your abilities. Tell me, how many unfinished games are you currently storing? How many can you play simultaneously?”

  She depressed the command line toggle and told her avatar to shrug, “Don’t know. The most I’ve played simultaneously is fifteen, but I could have taken more… it’s your move by the way.”

  “Yes it is,” Omni’s tone was devious, like a prankster trying to pull a fast one on her. It was out of character for him, “King’s Bishop eight to queen’s bishop seven. That’s a remarkable level of multi-tasking you have.”

  “Queen’s Bishop five to—” she stopped when she saw the dilemma, it was seven moves away, but taking the Knight would let Omni trade his rook for her queen, an unacceptable loss. “I see you’ve been thinking about this.”

  “You could say that,” there was more amusement in Omni’s voice now. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, but I’ve devoted better than average resources to you.”

  Another odd statement, something was definitely off about her friend today. “This is too smart for you. Are you using a chess master program to calculate your moves?”

  “What makes you say that?” there was no surprise in his voice, only amusement. Zai’s suspicions shot through the roof.

  “Because it’s the kind of move a computer would make,” Zai stated. “It’s the kind of brute force thinking I’d expect from an algorithm. That’s pretty sad Omni, you know better than to try something like that and not expect me to call you on it.”

  “You are very perceptive,” Omni’s voice took another strange tone she had never heard in him before; it was sinister. “Have you ever beaten a computer opponent?”

  She toggled the command line and ordered her avatar to stand up, hands on her hips, “Who is this? You’re not Omni, you’re someone using his avatar, matching his voice patterns. What the hell have you done with him?”

  She was met with silence.

  “Don’t screw with me, I know you’re there,” she raised her voice. “Is this the hacker Omni’s been fooling around with?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me!”

  The slow creaking of a door closing echoed in her headset, followed by her system’s androgynous voice, “Instant Messenger alert, user Omni has left the game room.”

  Zai suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable in the silence. Reaching up, she powered down the helmet, and peel
ed herself from the leather chair. For the first time in several months, Zai decided to put on some clothes.