End Code

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  The screams and gunfire and airplanes and racing vehicles that surrounded me are fading. Any gamers that didn't log-out are being frozen, one-by-one, in Infolock's beams of light. I'm still shooting as fast as I can with Grael firing by my side. Saucers continue to fall, officers continue to shatter into pixels, but they keep getting closer, and I keep allowing the creeping feeling into my mind that if I miss one shot, they're going to break through. That thought is enough to distract me.

  When Grael is struck by the light beaming out from the belly of a saucer, I don't spin around fast enough. Another flying saucer swoops in behind me and strikes my avatar with its light as I lift my pistol. I'm looking down the barrel, through the sights, directly at the center of the silver disc, but I can't move my trigger finger.

  “You're never going to stop, are you?”

  The voice is coming from the silver disc, mechanical and distorted, but I still recognize it immediately.

  “Raev.”

  “First you took the love of my life from me, and I had to sacrifice the rest of my life to get him back. But you weren't satisfied, were you? No. You had to go and get him killed.”

  “I didn't... Raev, please. You don't understand.”

  The top of the silver disc splits open and I see Raev sitting inside the cockpit. She's surrounded by controls. Flashing lights, blinking buttons, and tiny screens of scrolling data. She releases the control stick in front of her and crawls out, dropping from the vehicle and walking toward me. When she's a foot away from me, she stops and slaps me across the face. It doesn't physically hurt. InfoLock still has to follow the player-vs-player rules. But it still hurts me. The look in her eyes. The pain she's feeling. It's something I can't imagine. Or maybe I'm choosing not to.

  “What are you doing here, Arkade? Do you even know anymore? Or are you so caught up in your delusions of grandeur that you no longer consider the consequences of your actions?”

  “You've got to let me go, Raev. There's no time to explain-”

  “No,” she says, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “You're not going anywhere except to mind prison, where you should have been all along. Where you can't ruin anymore lives.”

  “Raev!” I scream her name with the volume hack turned all the way up, hoping to break her out of her disillusionment. My voice rattles the few remaining flying saucers still in the air as I scream, “They're going to kill her. Do you understand that? They're going to delete Cyren forever.”

  With her eyes barely open, she appears unshaken by my words. “You took Xen from me. Be thankful they're only taking an NPC away from you.”

  I'm about to scream again, summoning every nasty word that I can think of to unleash upon her, but another voice cuts me off. A soft voice. A kind voice. A voice that nearly brings both Raev and I to tears.

  “Raev, I know that you don't mean that.”

  When Raev steps out of the way, I see what must be an illusion behind her. Or a sick hoax. A graphical glitch. A bug in the system. Anything but what I actually see. Because what I see is my best friend, smiling back at me.

  01111111

  “Xen?” His name becomes a gasp as I lose the breath from my lungs.

  His gaunt cheeks round out as he smiles even bigger. “Hello, Kade.”

  It looks like him. The same avatar. Same orange robes that he designed to look like some old Tibetan monk. Same bald head. Same skinny body. But it can't be him.

  Cyren leans in closer to the screen. “No way,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand. “He did it.”

  Raev looks back at me, her eyes huge with fright. She wants me to say something, anything to make sense of this. But I have nothing. We're both staring at a ghost. A ghost that we want to be real with every ounce of our being. I want it to be so real so badly that I'm afraid to speak in fear that he'll disappear again.

  “I'm sure this is quite strange for you,” Xen says, opening his arms wide like he's welcoming us both into a hug. “I'll admit... it's strange for me too.”

  “You're dead,” Raev says. “You died.”

  “That's true,” he says as he steps closer to her, but he stops his advance when she backs away from him. “But we both know that death is a loss of the physical form. I am disconnected from the body. Neither alive, nor dead.”

  She now looks more angry than frightened. “What are you saying? That you're some kind of spirit?”

  He laughs softly to himself and says, “I wouldn't exactly call it that. In fact, Cyren was the one who came up with the name for it.”

  Raev looks back at me like I know what he's talking about. I glance down at Cyren's screen.

  “It's his End Code.”

  “His what?”

  Xen speaks calmly, as if what he's saying is the most normal topic of conversation. “When I spoke with Cyren about religion... especially the idea of a soul, she was fascinated by the concept. After searching through the archives of DOTgod, she found similarities between many belief structures and what she saw inside of Kade's nanomachines.”

  “It was the connection to your mind,” Cyren clarifies. “Your thoughts and memories and emotions. It's what made you... you.”

  “Yes!” Xen says with excitement. “But the amazing thing was how similar it was to Cyren's code. The programming that made her what she is. Ones and zeroes. So we began to try to figure out a way to meld the two. A digital soul that could leave behind the physical world and be uploaded into NextWorld.”

  I'm still lost in a vortex of emotions and confusion, but I see Raev's face soften. She steps closer to Xen and reaches out with one hand. He stands perfectly still, smiling back at her as she brushes the tips of her fingers against his cheek.

  She whispers the words, but I still hear her ask, “Is this real? Are you real?”

  “As real as any of this,” Xen says. “As real as Cyren and the Digital-Characters. As real as your thoughts or your emotions or your memories. As real as the love you feel for me.”

  Raev blurts out a whimper of relief as she falls into Xen, burying her face in his chest and shaking with every tear that gushes from her eyes.

  When I glance down at Cyren, she's wiping a tear from her eye as well.

  “Even if what he says is true,” I whisper into the screen, “this End Code is just a copy of Xen... isn't it?”

  “Am I just a copy?” Cyren asks.

  “No. I didn't mean... I wasn't-”

  “The End Code isn't a copy. It's a transfer. It's everything that made Xen who he is, converted into binary and placed inside NextWorld.”

  “But he isn't alive.”

  “So? Neither am I.”

  “But you never were. You and the Digital-Characters are something completely different.”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe we aren't. Maybe you just haven't become us yet. Maybe this is his digital after life.”

  I glance over to Xen and Raev, still caught in an embrace they never thought they'd share again. I want to believe. A part of me needs to believe. But like most things, when it comes to Xen, maybe it's enough that he believes.

  I try to get closer to Xen, but I'm still frozen in place, locked in by the beam of light from Raev's flying saucer. Xen notices this and points at me.

  “Let him go, Raev.” He glances around at all the gamers across the surface of DOTgov. “Let them all go.”

  She glances around at the aftermath of the battle and I see something strange in her eyes. There's a shift backward, to the person I met when she partnered with my friend. A shift back to someone full of a vibrant hope. A person who enjoyed life and all its possibilities. And that person is horrified by what she sees.

  She falls back into Xen's chest and says, “I... I'm so sorry. I thought I lost you and I was...”

  He runs his fingers through her ribbon hair and says, “I know. I know.”

  Before Raev can make a move to help us, another two saucers fly over the horizon of the domain and zoom in close to where we're standing. They split from
each other and flank us.

  “Sorry, Xen,” the voice from one of the saucers says, “but that isn't Raev's decision to make. What you've all done here is beyond illegal. You're all going to be locked up for a long, long time.”

  Raev throws her fists out to the side as she screams, “Mom!”

  A beam of light shoots out from one of the saucers and strikes Xen. His avatar jerks as the light freezes him in place. Just like a PC.

  That's when the sky turns black. Clouds roll in from every direction, covering the normally placid blue tone that covers the general domains of NextWorld. Rain begins to fall, lightly at first, but quickly turning to large globs of water that slap against our skin. A rumbling in the clouds ushers in a flash of lightning that arcs down from above and strikes the metallic sphere that is DOTgov. I'm blinded for a second, but when my vision returns I see a blackened, marred hole in the surface of the domain.

  Raev turns to me and asks, “Was that you? How did you-”

  “That lightning bolt was a forced entry,” Cyren says from her screen. “But it also looked like a mass teleportation. Someone, a lot of someones, just broke into DOTgov.”

  A screen blinks open in the corner of my view and Fantom is staring at me with her eyes squinted. She looks angry, but she isn't saying anything.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Did you find Chang?”

  “Yes, we did,” a voice from off camera says. “And I can't thank you enough for taking care of all that pesky security for us. The last time we talked, you didn't agree with my tactics, nor did you want to help me accomplish my goal, yet here you are, making this whole ordeal so much easier for me.”

  The camera zooms out to reveal the rest of the room. Fantom and Sektor are standing in the Global Presidential office that I've seen in so many news-casts. As the camera continues to zoom out, I see the reason for Fantom's distress. Worlok's cyberterrorists are surrounding the room with their guns drawn. When the camera finishes zooming out, it reveals the source of the voice, but I already know who it is.

  Worlok stands behind a large oak desk, pointing his solid black pistol at the forehead of Global President Xiong Chang.

  10000000

  Worlok pulls back the hammer on the pistol and presses the barrel harder against the Global President's forehead as he says, “Do you have a few minutes to spare?”

  Xiong Chang grits his teeth and says, “I don't know who you people are, or who you think you are, but my security will-”

  “Will what?” Worlok says with a laugh. “Will they be decimated by an army of hackers because they are woefully unprepared and under-qualified to deal with a situation of this magnitude? I couldn't agree more.”

  The room of cyberterrorists join in his laughter. Fantom and the hackers from Sektor glare back at their former leader. I can see the itchy fingers of Fantom twitching next to her sidearm. She wants to grab for it. She wants to test her luck and take the shot. But she's smart. She's waiting for her moment. But with that many denial of service weapons pointed at her group, I'm afraid that moment may never come.

  “Now then... you sit back and relax while we prepare the video-cast we'll be sending out to the citizens of NextWorld. We wouldn't want to shoot you in the head while no one is watching.”

  Xiong Chang stands up from his desk and defiantly faces Worlok. “Young man, if you think I'm afraid of this software weapon you've created, then you are sorely mistaken. I am the Global President. I am the founding father of NextWorld. I will not bow down to some hacker just because he's figured out how to force a log-out.”

  Worlok tilts his head to the side like he's trying to understand Chang's defiance. Then he laughs and taps the pistol against his own head like he's scolding himself.

  “Silly me,” Worlok says. “I completely forgot to show you what this can do.”

  With no hesitation, and without even looking, he points the gun across the room and fires. The bullet strikes Anna-Log in the back of the head. Her body drops, and when it hits the floor, it shatters into thousands of pixels that sprinkle across the office before dissipating into the air. Fantom screams. All of Sektor flinches, their instinctual need to fight back making their bodies jerk, but the cyberterrorists raise their pistols and force them to hold their position. Fantom doesn't acknowledge their threat. She falls to her knees and touches the ground where Anna-Log's avatar disappeared.

  “Go ahead, Mr. President. Check the domain records. You can plainly see that this gun didn't just log her out from NextWorld. It actually reprogrammed her nanomachines so that they stopped her heart. Genius, right?” He allows a smile to appear on his face, showing off every one of his teeth. “As much as I'd like to take credit for the idea, I'm a humble man. It was actually that little lady that found the original exploit that made this all possible. Let's hear it for Fantom, everybody.”

  Worlok slowly claps his hands together as the rest of his group chuckles to themselves.

  Fantom looks up from the floor and says, “You sick son of a-”

  “Careful, now. This domain isn't labeled for adult content. You'll get fined for indecency,” Worlok says with a slight laugh.

  He points the gun toward Chang and forces him back into his chair. Chang looks up at Worlok from the corners of his eyes, which are now filled with a panicked fear that he cannot hide.

  “Now that's the look I needed for the video-cast. When the people of NextWorld see you begging for your life... they will know exactly who's in charge.”

  “Who are you?” Fantom asks, covering her face to hide her tears. “You used to be a good man.”

  “A good man? No. I was a weak man. It was people like you that convinced me I needed to take some idealistic path to reach my goals. You and Sektor were the ones that talked me into the idea of 'hacktivism' and 'peaceful solutions.' Hacktivism.” A mouth appears on his face so he can spit on the ground in disgust. “What a joke. All that gets you are slow results that people forget a few days later.” He presses the gun harder against Chang's forehead. “This? People aren't going to forget this.”

  I look away from Fantom's video-cast and lock eyes with Xen. “We have to stop him.”

  “How?”

  “He can't kill you,” Cyren says from her screen. “His gun needs to log you out before the nanomachines reprogram your heart. He can't log you out.”

  Xen closes his eyes, showing disappointment even though he's frozen in place. “I have the same abilities as any regular Digital-Character. He might not be able to affect my account, but I can't affect his either.”

  “We gave Cyren and the other DCs the same abilities as Player-Characters. Maybe we could-”

  “Maybe. With some serious programming, it's possible we could give him something similar,” Cyren says, “but we don't have that kind of time.”

  “What about you?” Raev asks. “Couldn't you and the DCs stop him? His gun wouldn't work on you.”

  Cyren looks over her shoulder at the group trying to hack an exit, but the leader of the group shakes his head. “We're still trying to find a way out.”

  “Moms!” Raev yells at the ships next to her. “Just let them out!”

  There's a long pause before one of her mothers replies, “I'm sorry, dear. Even if I thought that doing so might save our Global President, after you and your friends broke in the last time, we put a lot of restrictions on access. Even from our own accounts. We can't just flip a switch and open the doors.”

  “Besides,” Grael says, “it's too risky to send them in. Worlok undoubtedly has a way to delete them. They'd be right back in the Trash Bin and he'd be free to do what he wants.”

  There's a rumble of thunder in the distance. I glance back at Fantom's feed and watch as Worlok's group of cyberterrorists set up a screen in front of Chang's desk. I'm sure somewhere Eyekon and the other DCs that agree with Worlok's tactics are spamming NextWorld with video-cast requests. We probably have less than a minute before the majority of NextWorld is watching.

  I look back at Raev
and say, “I can stop him.”

  “We haven't prepared your End Code for upload,” Xen says. “If you die, that's it. There's no coming back.”

  “We don't have time to argue. Just let me go. Let me do what needs to be done.”

  Raev glances at Xen, looking for a confirmation. He looks back at me with a worried hesitation.

  “Xen... you have to believe in me.”

  Xen takes a deep breath and says, “Do it.”

  Raev climbs back into her flying saucer and starts pushing buttons on the control panel.

  The condemning voice of one of Raev's mothers shouts from her flying saucer, “Young lady, I hope you realize that what you're doing-”

  “Mom!” Raev yells. “Shut up!”

  She pushes a final button on the control panel and the beam of light disappears. I regain control of my avatar and take off running, moving as fast as I can for the blackened hole that Worlok's lightning bolt blasted through the surface of the domain. I look at Cyren's screen and see her staring back at me. I can tell she's doing her best to restrain herself. She wants to call out to stop me. She wants to beg me to save myself instead of her. But she also knows it's pointless.

  “I need you to put me in contact with whatever civilian DCs are still left from DangerWar 2,” I say to her as I leap into DOTgov. “Tell them I need their help.”

  10000001

  It takes me two minutes to find my way through the scarred entrance and into the deepest center of DOTgov. The lightning bolt arced left and right, snaking its way through the different chambers of the domain. Offices and monitoring rooms are burnt wide open. Employees stand back, cowering away from me as I run past them, holding both of my pistols at the ready.