Becoming (Core Series Book 1)

by Ronnie Barnard

  The rain let up and after a while it started to drip. In the distance he could make out daylight approaching, the dawn of a new day....

  Maybe he could hack the facility servers to get Core operational. Excitement ran through him at the thought. “Yes!” he said, and his voice echoed down the road. The car took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Jason concentrated on the facility, connecting to see what he was up against. He let the connection build the game world in his mind this time. A firewall flamed up.

  This fire was malicious. It bubbled like the surface of the sun, forming darker spots that slowly disappeared over time. His avatar stood before this fortress of fire, a tiny dark figure. He could not see beyond the flames.... Jason felt fear sizzle along his spine. He would have to find a way through before he could know what else he was up against.

  There were pathways through the fire, but they were protected by gun turrets and military personnel who glowered darkly at every packet of information entering the port. As Jason watched the scene, a couple of packets arrived at the check point. They were obliterated by a laser weapon. All that remained was a black mark that slowly faded away.

  He created a packet of his own which looked similar to those had been allowed to pass, and sent it towards the port. The gate control interrogated his packet and destroyed it on the spot. Jason’s stomach fell and he felt numbness in his wheels. He intercepted the closest packet, copied the header information and placed a Trojan into the message section of the packet and sent it through the port. The firewall allowed the infiltrated packet to go through.

  Relief washed over him and he felt a surge of triumph. The picture behind the firewall expanded, showing a single lane of traffic to the router. Jason’s packet was thrown onto a track heading for a secondary routing server that led to a different subnet. He followed the packet to a voice server, which accepted voice packets and routed them along to the intended voice devices on the network. The voice server unpacked the Trojan, which contained a jump instruction in the executable portion of the message content. The voice server processed the packet and executed the jump instruction, thus allowing Jason access to the server.

  The Trojan connected his brain to the voice server, and Jason could suddenly hear a multitude of conversations. The noise was deafening, and jolts of pain shook his body. On the side of the road, the car shook as well. Jason slapped a noise filter on the connection and felt the voices drop to a murmur in the background.

  He drew up a network diagram from the local routing table and found all the telephone and voice-over-IP end points connect through the server. There were thousands of end points.... He saw layers of networks below and above him. Some were wider than others; some carried data traffic while others carried video packets.

  Jason frantically searched for a way to connect to the data subnet, which would give him access to the mainframe that was situated in the centre of the facility. Parts of the mainframe appeared to be connected to the voice server, of course. He raised his brows in realisation (the wipers on the car lifted in response). It made sense! They gave Core access to the internet and she monitored incoming calls. Sometimes she made calls on their behalf. Of course the mainframe had access to the telephone network. He made a connection to the mainframe voice channel, sending his Trojan with the packet. Moments later, the connection was made and Jason was inside the mainframe.

  The mainframe was massive; millions of operations executed simultaneously. Jason searched for Core’s presence on the server. He spent a full hour scanning through millions of files, digging through logs and other structures to find the main operations directory.

  He finally found a boot sequence editor in a sub directory off the main drive, and executed the application. The application presented him with a couple of choices, which represented themselves as floating buttons: one of them read “System Reboot” in red lettering. Jason selected it.

  Processes started to disappear from the mainframe: connections closed and applications stopped. The mainframe would be back online in a few minutes, and Core’s main AI cortex would boot with it...or so he hoped. He felt the connection closing as the application using the Trojan was shut down, and watched as the firewall flickered and then went dead. Jason kept a constant ping alive, looking for the way in.

  Cars drove by, passengers craning their necks to look into the tiny car standing next to the road. It was dark and raining so thick that you could hardly see the road under your tires. Why was the woman driver of that tiny car wearing sunglasses?

  Jason was soaked to the bone. He didn’t feel like a car, after all—to him the wheels were his legs, and driving was running. He felt cold drops of water fall on him and dribble down his sides. He looked at the world through the headlights.

  A white Ford drove down to the end of the road and turned left down Johnson road, towards Browns plains. The ten minutes of the reboot flew by, although Jason could remember an earlier ten minutes that felt like a lifetime.... The constant ping hit the dead firewall time and again. Then, the whole thing sprang to life, burning white before it resumed the dark spot pattern. The packet traffic started to flow once more.

  Jason sent the same voice packet through the firewall, repeating the Trojan deployment until he reached the mainframe. He felt a weight on his chest as he anticipated and dreaded what he would find....

  The system was the same. Core’s cortex did not boot.

  Jason felt the world drop from under his feet. His knees buckled weakly.

  Passersby wondered why the Mini Cooper seemed to lose its clearance. Hydrolics, perhaps?

  He would have to enter the facility and hard boot the server in person, and perhaps even remove the block or repair what damage they had done to her. The commander must have disconnected her from the network or switched her off completely. She might still be alive, but with no way to access the network...it would be a hellish prison, for her, to be trapped like that. The possibility existed that, if he managed to get her started, her knowledge and everything that made her Core would be lost.... He contemplated this possibility for a moment, and decided to try. If worse came to worst, he would find the snapshot.

  Jason left the Trojan connection in place in case Core managed to get through. He drove on towards the junction in the road, but instead of turning right into Johnson’s road he crossed and headed past the nursery on his left. The road curved up a hill. At the top of the hill stood a colossal tree, whose low-hanging branches nearly brushed the car’s roof. Jason parked under the tree and shifted back into his human form, catching the brain-dead woman’s body (Core’s new body...) before she fell on the ground. Her limp body was warm—the Nanites worked to keep it running. Jason hit himself on the forehead. “Darn idiot!” he said aloud. “Why didn’t you think of it earlier?”

  He could have uploaded a version of himself into the empty body. Then, it could help him enter the facility. Well, he still could....

  His mind connected to the female’s brain, this time uploading control and monitor systems. He felt his body double in size, his mind compensating for the sudden addition of limbs and bodily functions. And that was all it took.

  Together, they ran across the road and jumped clear over the fence. Jason heard a gasp from behind him. They skidded to a halt and looked back to see a man staring after them with his mouth hanging open. The man must have been watching him the whole time. Jason did not even think that people might be watching. He scolded himself again and made a pact to be more careful in the future. He found solace in the fact that no one would ever believe the guy, should he be silly enough to tell what he saw. Unless someone from the facility heard, and they guessed....

  No, he decided. I got lucky this time. He smiled at the man and waved, then turned around and disappeared at full speed.

  They ran towards the entrance to the tunnel, avoiding the motion sensors and cameras that were placed at several points around the facility. Security would be on full alert after the sudden mainframe reboot. The Trojan le
t him know that several administration applications were scanning for viruses and checking communication channels. Jason decided to back out to the voice server and keep the connection open from there.

  They reached the side of the tunnel entrance moments later, without being detected. He scanned the entrance and found several motion sensors embedded in the walls around the opening of the tunnel, forming a cobweb at the entrance. These sensors were motion sensitive. The electrical engineering he had learned told him that these particular sensors were designed to trip only if a body of a particular size crossed the threshold. Anything smaller than a cat would be just fine. But he would not be able to shift into a cat, because Core had told him before that he could not become something smaller than his relative mass.

  He and the woman shifted into two, extra-long garden snakes and slithered across the ground. They moved slowly, and made it past the opening of the tunnel before they shifted back to human form. They ran silently down the tunnel, apprehensive of further sensors. A third of the way down, they came across a military watch post. It consisted of two soldiers who sat on guard, watching the outside entrance to the tunnel. Two spray lights pointed up the tunnel and two pointed down.

  The guards lounged around, seeming bored. Jason picked up a rock the size of a tennis ball and threw it down the tunnel. It hit the wall a couple of hundred meters past the guards, making a loud noise as it ricocheted off the walls.

  Both the soldiers jumped up like one man. “What was that?” one asked. He shook in his shoes. They slowly walked down the tunnel together, their weapons ready. They stopped right at the edge of the light and waited for more noises or footsteps or.... Jason and the woman ran forward, past the guard post, and then backed up against the side of the tunnel wall. He shifted them to become part of the rock formation.

  “These tunnels are old. Must have been a rock falling off the wall,” the other guard remarked as they turned back, walking cautiously to their seats. “Do you think we should report this?” He conspicuously looked downward and adjusted his belt.

  “You’d better. The commander said to report anything, and he was in a foul mood since they lost those crazy robots and the guy....” The first guard sat down with his gun over his legs. He shook his head with disappointment.

  “You’re right. It would be better to tell, even if it is nothing.” The second guard picked up the two way radio. Jason did not wait to hear him report a rock fall in the tunnel to a powerful commander who had been shamed by failure. They slowly moved down the tunnel, hugging the sides, disguised as part of the rock. When they reached the edge of the darkness, they shifted back into human form and switched to night vision.

  The tunnel remained dark and clear all the way down, until it ended in a metal frame. A door was situated in the middle of the metal frame, which would give them access to level twenty-six. He listened for any life on the other side of the door and heard nothing.

  Jason shifted into a liquid and flowed through the key hole, oozing down the other side of the door and forming a puddle on the floor. The woman soon followed. When both of them were through, they shifted back into their natural forms. The laboratories were still out of use because of Damian’s first attack, but they had at least been cleaned, and repairs were underway to fix the walls. The halls were empty; it was still too early for the repair crew to arrive, and the workers had been reassigned to other floors or had been given a short break until the floor was ready for use once more.

  Together they ran down the corridor to the Holoroom door. It had been shut and was locked with large metal beams on the outside, which were held in place with large padlocks. Jason and the woman melted to the floor and oozed beneath the door.

  The inside of the room was dark. Jason assembled into his human form, and walked forward apprehensively, closely followed by the woman.

  He thought he could hear the low sound of breathing.

  “Core?” he asked softly.

  “Jason!” Core shouted. “You are alive! What happened? What are you doing here?” Tears clogged her voice.

  “I came back for you,” he said. His heart raced and his stomach flipped and flopped. Where was she?

  “You shouldn’t have....” Her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “Susan risked everything for me by restricting me to the Holoroom. She disconnected the Holoroom from the network and told me to stay put instead of shutting me down completely...but I am trapped in here. My only solace was that you were safe...and that you would have found a way to upload the copy of me into a body.” Her voice was husky with tears.

  “I know. I did get away and found a body, converted it.... Where are you?” He looked into every nook and cranny. Why hadn’t she come to him already? He wanted to hold her again, in his arms....

  “I don’t have enough power to use the Holoroom. I can’t even use the cameras,” she said. He had never heard her so depressed before, and was glad he’d returned when he did. “Why did you come back, then? Where is the copy of me?”

  “That’s why I am here. I could not get the upload to take control of the body. I think the download did not complete...? I have the body here, right next to me. I uploaded control systems into it, so that I wouldn’t have to carry it around the whole time.” He laughed, embarrassed at his actions. “I thought I could find the snapshot here, maybe get you booted up long enough for you to upload directly to it,” he said. “I did not expect to find you operational.”

  “Operational,” she said with a hollow sneer.

  Then she burst into fresh tears. “That is brilliant!” she exclaimed.

  He felt the touch on his mind and immediately accepted her. Joy and overwhelming relief brought tears to his cheeks. “I thought I lost you!” he confessed. “And now to find that you have been trapped here...no copy would have comforted me, if I knew you were trapped. I’m so glad I came back,” he whispered. “Upload right now, I will tell you everything later. I couldn’t stand to lose you again.”

  “Almost there, my love,” she said, and those last two words sent a thrill down his spine. Hearing her voice again was already enough to overwhelm him. He felt his connection to the woman’s body break, and the brain-dead patient fell limply to the floor. “Uploading now....”

  “How do you do it?’

  “I upload my whole mind into the body, and then I enter and take control.”

  “How would you transfer someone else into the brain, and then get that someone to take control?” he asked.

  “You can’t. You have to enter the body, take control yourself and then leave. Once the brain begins to function—no matter who fills it—the personality that occupies the brain will take over.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that! Still, I am glad I came back to find you.”

  “Me too...although I was so scared when I heard your voice. I thought you had been captured. A hundred other scenarios played in my mind, and for the first time I had no way to find out the truth....”

  The body on the floor shook a couple of times and then shifted into the body of the woman he had fallen in love with.

  Jason held out his hand and pulled her gently upwards. Their eyes met and for a fleeting moment he was sure he saw a glimpse of her feeling for him. Slowly, she reached up and put her arm around his neck. Her hand ran through his dark hair, pulling him closer to her as her soft lips eagerly sought his. How could he but give in to her hunger? He felt dizzy from the intensity of her passion. What strength did he have to resist her when the sweet smell of her gorgeous body was so intoxicating?

  His mind raced...and his feelings for her got the upper hand. For a moment, the lust he had so carefully controlled overtook him. With eagerness he consumed her presence.

  Core struggled to loosen his shirt buttons. Jason breathed hard; he tore the shirt clean off his chest, revealing chiselled abs. She ran her hands along the curves while she looked deep into the water blue of his eyes. He bent down and picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Th
ey fell on the bed that materialized, where he loosened her shirt with eager hands, his breath warm on her neck.... A soft groan escaped his throat.

  Several minutes later they lay back, breathing hard. She marvelled in the moment, the adrenaline that coursed through her veins. “Sorry,” she said after a while. “I never thought I would see you again...and now I can feel you. I can actually touch you with normal flesh. Jason this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Just a short while ago I thought I was doomed to suffer this hell...now I am a person, and they can’t ever switch me off again!” Tears of joy and relief streamed down her face. “Look, real tears!” She shook as sobs racked her body.

  “Shh....” He held her tightly. “We are together, now, forever.” Jason stroked her hair and back while they lay on the floor. He felt whole—more whole than he thought he could be. His insides were calm and warmth radiated from her touch. “Shall we get out of here before they try to catch us?” He lifted her chin. “Getting shot still hurts, believe me.” She just sobbed and he continued to comfort her.

  Finally she sat up, leaning on one arm to stay upright. She wore a low-cut red dress, and her lush brown hair hang loose over her shoulder. Her cheeks were soaked with tears. Jason wiped them clear with the back of his hand, pulling her towards him and kissing her again.

  I could get used to this, he thought, smiling at her.

  “We can’t leave yet,” she said. “We have to shut down the facility...we need to destroy all of the serum research, or else they might find out what we have done. We cannot afford for them to get hold of this technology—not ever.” She stood up, pulling Jason by the hands.

  “I agree. How do we do that?”

  “We have to go down to the basement, where my mainframe is located, and remove the shutdown override. But I will have to hack into the mainframe and plant a virus to remove the software overrides.” She led him towards the door.