01111010
I slam my fist against the log-out button and as soon as the real world returns to my view, I yank the feeding and waste tubes from my body, ignoring the pain. I slam the palms of my hands against the glass case and the lid flops open. I drop down to the E-Womb in the stack that holds Xen and look at the tiny monitor next to the latch. It clearly reads “Disconnected,” so I open the lid and grab a hold of Xen's body. It drops into my arms and I struggle to pull the feeding tube from his throat.
Before I know it, Fantom and Grael are next to me, trying to help. Once we free him from the tubes, we manage to get him out of the E-Womb and onto the floor. I check for a pulse, but there's nothing. Fantom shoves me aside and begins CPR, blowing into his mouth and pumping his chest.
I helplessly watch her switch between breathing and heartbeats. My hands are shaking, shivering with panic. I keep forgetting to breathe until my lungs force me to gulp an anxious breath. Tears drip down my cheeks as the pumping of his chest slows. She tries again to push air into his lungs, but when she pulls away from his mouth, she leans back with a terrified look on her face.
“No,” I say, begging her with one word.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers, shaking her head and repeating, “I'm sorry.”
Grael backs away from all of us like he's afraid to get too close to our pain. He's staring at the body on the floor, unable to speak.
“This isn't real,” I say. “This isn't happening.”
Fantom reaches out and touches my hand but I pull it away from her as my stream of tears turns into uncontrollable weeping. She lunges for me, forcing me to accept her embrace. She hugs me tightly, like she's trying to stop me from physically falling apart.
“He's not gone,” I say, but I'm not sure anyone can understand me, my defiant tone lost in my sobbing. “He can't be gone.”
Fantom strokes the top of my bald head, trying anything to calm my violent shaking. As she does this, my thoughts race to the others and my body tightens up again.
I shove Fantom away and with sharp breaths I ask, “Did everyone...? Is everyone safe?”
Fantom wipes the tears from her eyes and nods. “Before I logged-out, I saw Cyren and Anna-Log escape out the back door.”
My body almost collapses with relief. I'm not sure what I would have done if I lost her too. A part of my soul is already trickling out with every tear that drops from my eyes. I'm not sure my mind nor my body could have handled that much loss. That much pain.
“What do we do?” I ask, trying to take one step. Any step. “What do we do now?”
Fantom glances at Grael, but he's still staring at the body.
“I... I don't know,” she says. “We need to... we need to say goodbye.”
The thought forces more tears from my eyes.
Fantom reaches out and touches my shoulder. “I'm sorry, Cowboy.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes and say, “No. No, you're right. We need to do this.”
There's no time for denial. There's no time for selfish mourning. I need to process this. I need to keep moving. Forward.
Grael mumbles, “That denial of service attack will only keep Worlok from logging-in to his E-Womb for so long.”
I slam my fist against the floor, my sadness turning into anger. “He's going to pay for this.”
With a worried look in his eyes, Grael says, “We can't go after him. Not now. He's too dangerous. Denial of service weapons are one thing. It's like a game. A punishment. A respawn timer. But that gun? We can't go up against that thing.”
“I don't have a choice.”
Fantom's head droops as she speaks, like she's ashamed to say what she's going to say. “Yes, you do.”
“He killed my best friend!” I scream, appalled that she could consider the idea of letting him get away with it.
“And DOTgov is about to delete the love of your life.”
I grab the sides of my head and hold it as closely to my chest as possible, hiding from the pain of her words.
“I'm sorry. I really am. But if we let him do what he wants to do... it solves our problem for us. He stops Global President Chang and Eyekon makes sure the Digital-Characters live.”
I'm already forming the argument to her logic in my head. I'm ready to debate her with another string of “what-ifs” and “Yeah, buts” when I look down at Xen's body. His lifeless corpse lays between us all. No thoughts. No feelings. No soul. And there is only one debate in my mind.
I look at Fantom and calmly ask, “What would Xen want us to do?”
She opens her mouth, but stops, her mind stalling. Instead of speaking, she sucks in a breath and looks down at Xen. She studies him for a while before she looks back at me.
“He'd want us to stop Worlok, yo.”
“Xen would never want anyone to die,” I say, nodding my head in agreement. “He'd never want his best friend to become a murderer, even if it was through complacency. He'd always search for the better answer. He'd always search for the idealism in any situation, no matter the sacrifice.”
“Should we say something?” Grael asks. “Like... a funeral or something. I didn't know him well, but he was a religious person, right?”
I nod my head and say, “Yeah. But not here. We'll dispose of his body and... we'll do something in NextWorld. I think he'd prefer that.”
Grael logs back into NextWorld to contact Anna-Log, who hacks into the internal systems of the prison tower. Fantom helps me wrap Xen's body in a drop cloth we find in the janitorial cart I originally pushed into the room. It takes us longer than it should because I keep breaking down. Fantom offers to handle it herself, but I refuse her offer. It's something I need to do.
Anna-Log manages to open up an elevator that leads to the basement. I load the wrapped body into the cart and Fantom joins me as I push it to the bottom of the prison tower. Within the waste disposal room where I entered the prison tower, we find an incinerator designed to dispose of papers and other physical media.
Neither of us speak, but I place my hand on Xen's chest, close my eyes, and silently vow to always remember him. To always remember his words. To always remember his ideals.
Fantom kisses his forehead and whispers something in his ear. After that, we both hesitantly push the body into the incineration chamber. I watch the glow of the flames for a few minutes as they flicker behind the protective glass. I feel no pain for the body that's being turned to ash. That vessel of flesh and muscle was not Xen. That thing no longer contains the friend that I loved. Wherever he is, perhaps it's better than this world. Perhaps Xen found the truth he always sought. Perhaps he can be at peace with the knowledge he so desperately wanted.
01111011
“Xen was my friend,” I say, my words shaking in my chest as I try to push them out. “He was the first friend I ever had. And for a long time... he was the only friend I had.”
I've given a speech for Xen before. That time was different. That time it was for his partnership ceremony. That time I was awkward and scared and wanted it to be over. But this time I don't want it to end, because if it doesn't end, if I keep talking, then I don't have to say goodbye yet.
The people in the crowd, standing in the field of golden wheat, are wearing countless different faces. Some cry. Some weep. Some look somber. Some look stoic. Others wear a fake smile, trying to give me strength enough to get through my eulogy. Others offer a true smile, a knowing smile that Xen would not be unhappy about his life ending, or the way it ended.
“Xen believed a lot of things. Different things at different times in his life. Some of these things I disagreed with. Some I outright laughed at him for. But the one thing I never denied... the one thing that I always respected him for... was his ability to believe. The faith he possessed transcended a philosophical logic or religious dogma. It was a thing that burned in his heart. It thundered in his soul. It was released from his body with every breath. Every smile. Every time he entered a room.”
I scan the faces looking at m
e and I see so many that I don't recognize. Friends I never met. Congregations from churches I never attended. Bands and DJs that I never listened to. He touched so many lives just by... existing.
“One of the things he always believed,” I say, glancing at Cyren on the side of the stage, “one of the things I now know to be true, is the equality of all intelligences. Whether biological or digital. And I don't think Xen could rest in peace if we didn't also take a moment to remember all those that we have lost in the last few weeks. Those Digital-Characters whose souls he believed to be no different from his own.”
Some in the crowd exchange uncomfortable looks. Others nod their heads, like-minded individuals who feel the loss of the DCs as much as the rest of us.
“But as we gather today to mourn the loss of our friend, our family member... we must also cherish the time we had with him. We must celebrate the life that made our lives so much better. We must look into the sky and offer a smile in return, because Xen is most certainly smiling down at each and every one of us.”
I swipe my hand in the air and close the screen with the text of my speech displayed on it. Cyren puts her arm around me and squeezes. I offer a weak smile to her in thanks for her support and put my arm around her as well. We both feel the pain of his loss, and we both need support. Today, we need to lean on each other.
Many of the people in the crowd shake my hand and thank me for my kind words. For Xen's sake, I accept the thanks, ignoring my discomfort with all the attention. A band takes the stage to play one of Xen's favorite songs. I want to stop and listen, to try to hear what he heard, but when I glance to my right, I lock eyes with Raev. I offered many people an encrypted invitation to what needed to be a secret funeral, and I hoped Raev would accept, but Cyren warned me not to get my hopes up. She warned me of what such a deep scorn could do to someone's decision making, no matter if they would regret it someday or not. And as I look into Raev's eyes, that is exactly what I see. Scorn.
“Go to her,” Cyren whispers in my ear.
“She doesn't want that,” I say. “She hates me. And she has every right to.”
“No. She doesn't.”
“Of course she does. I proved every fear of hers to be valid. She warned me that this would happen. Like you warned me not to trust Worlok.” For a moment, I understand Raev's hate for me a little too much. “Why don't I listen? None of this would have happened if-”
“Stop it.”
The voice comes from behind me. When I turn around, I see Fantom and Anna-Log. Fantom's usual white kimono decorated with yellow flowers is replaced by an all black kimono. Her hair is placed in a tight bun. Her skull face paint is gone. Now a single black stripe covers her eyes. There's an empty look in her eyes, like she doesn't dare allow her feelings to take over.
“If you listened to either Raev or Cyren, we'd all still be in that prison, bein' tortured every day for information they could use to find more hackers. You saved lives, Cowboy. And Xen saved yours. Don't take that away from him by blamin' this all on yourself, yo.”
I look through the crowd, searching for Raev again, but she's gone. Either consumed by the crowd, or logged-out. I'm not sure if I should feel relief, but I do.
“I'm sorry to do this now, but we need to talk,” Fantom says, pulling the wooden needles from her hair and letting her black locks fall across her shoulders. “Worlok's denial of service would normally run out in about three days. Which may have been true for someone who sits and waits for the service attack to run out, but Worlok's too smart for that. He'll create a scrub center to clean the incomin' traffic, or redirect it all to a null interface. My guess is he'll be back in NextWorld by the end of the day, yo.”
“And he'll launch his attack as soon as he's back,” Anna-Log says.
“Which means that at this point, even if we could manage to open some kind of dialog with DOTgov, we won't have enough time to prove the legitimacy of the threat before his cyberterrorists start attackin' from all sides.”
“DOTgov isn't prepared for that kind of all out assault,” Anna-Log says.
I can see the calculations, the problem-solving that's happening behind Cyren's eyes. She's trying to balance the impossible equation and make zero equal one at the end of it all.
“Even if we warn DOTgov, and even if they're on high alert, Worlok still has the gun,” I say, trying to remind us all not to get lost in the pile of problems we have. “He is our number one priority.”
“And it would take DOTgov who knows how long to come up with a fix for that,” Anna-Log says. “By the time they figured out a way to patch NextWorld and stop the gun from killing anyone...”
“Global President Chang would be dead and NextWorld would be at the mercy of Worlok and his gang of cyberterrorists.”
There's a pause while we all let that image sink in. The vision of what NextWorld could become in a state of anarchy is almost paralyzing.
“Wait a minute,” Fantom says, looking at Anna-Log. “What you said... about patching NextWorld...”
“What about it? That's what they'd need to do. Fix the flaw in the nanomachine connection that he's exploiting.”
Fantom swipes her hand in the air and opens a screen, excitedly scrolling through information. “How could I be so stupid?”
“What's happening?” I ask Anna-Log, but the small girl just shrugs her shoulders.
Fantom answers for her, still scrolling through information and selecting certain pieces of code to copy. “I was the one who originally found the flaw. Except it wasn't a flaw. I was usin' the same technique that DOTgov uses to spy on people. They access our nanomachines and watch us through our own eyes.”
Anna-Log opens her own screen when she catches onto what Fantom is saying. “That must be the same protocol they're using to tell the difference between Player-Characters and the Digital-Characters we hacked. The ones we gave the ability to operate like PC accounts. If DOTgov tries to connect and doesn't find nanomachines on the other side, they know that they're not connected to an E-Womb, so they must be DCs!”
“Exactly!” Fantom shouts and I see a small amount of pride shimmer in her eyes for her young protege.
“Wait,” I say, trying to keep up with the conversation between two people who understand way more than I do, “I thought you blocked our nanomachines on these clean accounts so DOTgov couldn't spy on us. Wouldn't they think we were DCs then?”
Fantom rolls her eyes at me and says, “It doesn't work like that, yo. They still get a ping response. Like a message that says, 'yeah, I'm a nanomachine, but no, you can't access me.'”
The hope in Cyren's eyes builds into tears. “You can do this? You can shut off their access? You can eliminate Worlok's ability to kill and DOTgov's ability to tell us apart from PCs?”
Anna-Log confidently says, “This is what hackers do. We find flaws so they can be fixed. And in my mind? This is most definitely a flaw.”
“But if we write a patch for NextWorld,” Fantom says, “we're still goin' to have to upload it to the DOTgov servers.”
“But the access point is inside the DOTgov domain,” Anna-Log points out. “And the only way we'd gain access in time is with President Chang's approval.”
“Is Chang going to agree to a plan that means giving up their ability to spy on us?” I ask. “Do they know how to operate without that kind of control?”
“With what Worlok can do... Chang ain't gonna have much of a choice, yo.”
Cyren looks at us with worry. “We're still talking about infiltrating the most secure domain in NextWorld. Even with the Digital-Characters that are left, I don't think that's realistic. We're good, but we're not that good.”
I consider the problem for a second before I realize I've faced the same problem in too many games to count. There's always a point where there's too many enemies for me to fight alone, yet when I played solo, teaming up with other players was never an option. So I would wait on the sidelines until another group drew their attention. As they battled the enemi
es, I could slip in unnoticed and grab the prize. It was dirty, but it worked.
“We should be able to slip in while the DgS is busy defending the domain from Worlok's army.”
Cyren shakes her head, “We can't sit back and wait for Worlok and his group to attack. Not when he has the ability to kill people. We need to get in before he has the opportunity to use that gun ever again.”
“We don't have a choice,” Fantom says. “What we're talkin' about... causin' such a commotion that all of DgS is distracted? We're talkin' a big attack. Huge. And in order to do that, we need an army. Worlok is the only one who has one of those.”
“That's not necessarily true,” I say, pulling out the pistol that Fantom made me. “When you gave this to me, you told me that using it was like a game. Point and shoot.”
She shrugs and asks, “So?”
I smile with a new-found confidence and say, “I think I know where we can find an army.”
01111100
The gates of the original DangerWar look old. Outdated. The graphics need an overhaul. The font is straight out of the last decade. Even the music would be considered “retro” at best. But I'm so full of nostalgia when I walk up to the site that I can't help feeling the same sense of wonder that I did the first time I saw it.
The area in front of the gates is no longer full of crowds of Player-Characters eagerly rushing toward the entrance. Now, only a few mingle around the gates. Mostly older PCs that haven't moved onto the next best thing. There are most certainly better games out there. Better graphics. Better weapons. Better worlds. But sometimes the classics can maintain something the new ones can't harness. A simpleness that's genuine, honest, pure.
“I haven't been here in... a long time,” Grael says, looking up at the grandeur of the gates. “I have to admit... it kind of makes me feel old.”
“Not old,” I say with a wink and a smile. “Experienced.”
He chuckles. Cyren interlocks her fingers with mine as her armored avatar steps up next to me. We share a look, one that says things no words can. It's a confident, loving look that reminds us both that we're partners. Forever.
End Code Page 17