Necropolis (Necropolis Trilogy Book 3)

by Sean Deville

  The volunteers were brought out of their new home a week later, every one of them in utter amazement about how great the system was. Seven billion people watched them emerge live, saw their reaction, bore witness to their testimony. They were living lives that they hadn’t even been able to dream about, and they all begged to be returned. There were tears, there was pleading, and all thousand were plugged right back into the system. With that, the waiting list to get a place in the new virtual reality skyrocketed. After all, it was free to anyone and everyone who wanted it. So great was the demand, the great global lottery was created. Millions registered for a chance to win a place in the facility on the first day.

  It became the greatest building project known to mankind, greater than the space elevator, greater than the Martian Colony. Greater even than the Great Wall of China. Virtually every country constructed the huge towers that would house and feed the billions who wanted to escape the harshness of Earth. No more concentration camps, no more global totalitarian overlords, entry into the virtual world freed you of all that. An escape from hunger, from war, from poverty, from radiation and from the new emerging diseases that were ripping through the overcrowded populations. The people would live their lives in the virtual domain, their bodies in a state of suspended animation, their minds free to live the lives of their ancestors a hundred years prior. The world before the oil wars. The world before the great financial reset. The world before the Jax plague and the Great Drought.

  By 2115, eleven billion people were removed from the gene pool. No more taxes, no more eating lab-grown protein, and most importantly, no more uncontrolled reproduction. The wealthy and those with a purpose and a function in life stayed outside, the planet slowly healing. For them, virtual reality became a luxury, a form of recreation.

  And as the people in virtual reality died of the things that twenty-first-century man died from, their bodies were removed and converted into biomass which helped fuel the facilities. The pods they had been occupying were quickly occupied by someone on the waiting list, so great was the desire to escape the scorched and ravaged planet. Nobody seemed to care that people could die in virtual reality just as easily as they could in the real world. Nobody was there to tell the world that, whenever the human population began to spike, the death rate in Virtual Life went through the roof. Because once you were in, there was no way out…unless you were removed by those on the outside.

  The scientists who had created Virtual Life had hoped that it would be the death of religion, of strife and of war, but they had been mistaken. Because there would always be those who believed something that was at odds with the mainstream. In the past, they had been called Luddites. And from the ashes of the religious wars that had decimated the Middle East, there rose a new religion. A religion that rejected technology, rejected man’s place on the planet, seeing him as the plague that needed to be purged. Through the deep uncensored levels of the InterMind, it grew, sending a message of hope to the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. From the ashes grew a cult the likes of which the world had never seen. The Children of the Resurrection grew to have a following five million strong.

  It was they who recruited the person to download the most intricate computer virus ever created into the Devon facility. Once uploaded, the virus slowly began spreading throughout the Virtual Neural net, changing things, protecting itself, working slowly, methodically to beat the system’s defences and use its own programming against itself. It eventually manifested in the virtual world as a virulent contagion.

  The computers and programmers were slow to react, not understanding the scope of the virus they were dealing with, not understanding its complexities and nuances. Each country’s facilities were interlocked with the others, creating the true illusion of a world for those who surrendered their lives to the fantasy. If the millions residing in their pods in the English complex could have been disconnected from the whole, the losses would have been minimal. But the scientists believed the system wouldn’t have been able to survive it. How do you remove a country with such cultural influence and history from someone’s existence? So instead, they did what they could to contain the virus that first showed up at the Hirta Research facility. When Croft had sterilised Hirta Island, some of them had even believed the virus had been dealt with. But it hadn’t been. It continued to grow, manipulating, learning and corrupting everything it touched. So Croft had continued the hunt, his virtual life manipulated from the outside. Because for the contagion to spread throughout the virtual world, it first had to be created in that world. With the computers and the programmers unable to stop the virus from the outside, they had hoped that Croft, and those like him, would succeed on the inside. They had not.

  10AM, 17th February 2105, Whitehall London

  He had been waiting for thirty minutes, which was about right. This was generally how it always was. How many times had he sat outside offices like this, either government or corporate? When you sat with nothing to preoccupy your time but the rambling of the InterMind, you tended to notice things. Decorated probably a hundred years ago, the room’s ornate nature a façade of greatness long since faded. He looked around, noticed the signs of decay, the signs of a corporate empire that now existed only in the history books. A bit of peeling wallpaper here, a chipped skirting board there, the electronics at least five years old. Threadbare, stained antique rugs and artificial windows showing the scenes of a London long-since concreted over. The whole of Parliament was like this, an overrated museum, kept more out of novelty than functional value. Old, unrepaired, and in need of demolishing and rebuilding with modern architecture. Rumour had it that there was even a quantum engineer on site to deal with all the outdated computer servers that kept breaking down. And yet, despite letting their own home rot under their very feet, the corporations that held the global governmental contract to run this part of the world still had the money for their own lavish lifestyles, still had money to keep the Parliamentary wine cellar well-stocked. Croft could have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all; after all, there wasn’t much else in his life to laugh about these days.

  Croft shifted nervously on his chair, its plastic carved arms unpadded and uncomfortable, probably deliberately so. His right knee throbbed as it often did at this time of year, the extreme cold no good for his apparently healed injuries. Deep snow in February was now the norm, the Gulf Stream long since deviated, the northern hemisphere suffering from the glaciers that were once again on the march. Despite being inside, it was as if someone had forgotten to turn on the central heating, and he kept his winter coat on. Admittedly, these were all minor discomforts compared to what he had endured so far in his life. Still, it would have been nice if someone had at least brought him a cup of tea. But that would never happen now. Tea was a luxury not for the likes of him.

  There was a sound and the door to the inner sanctum slid open. Out stepped the automated robo-secretary who had led him to this waiting area from the front desk of the building when he had arrived. It was an older model, not meant to mimic humans. It was functional and well past its expiration date.

  “Captain Croft, they are ready for you now,” its voice said monotonously. Croft nodded his agreement and stood, his right knee cracking loudly. It was an injury easily fixed with modern medicine, but he didn’t have the funds available. Too much gambling had a tendency to deplete one’s reserves. He took the four steps over to where the robot waited and stepped through the threshold. The android remained outside and the door closed behind him with an airtight hiss.

  “Captain, apologies for keeping you waiting. Corporate affairs and all that.” Croft recognised the elderly man who strode towards him, the current vice president of SirenCall, David Pendlebury. He walked further into the room and shook the proffered hand. There were two other men in the room with them, both seated, neither of them Croft knew. “This is Arnold Craver, Head of the Centre for the Protection of International Infrastructure.”

  “Global Security Alliance?”
Croft asked, knowing the answer. Craver nodded in agreement.

  “This is Peter Milnes, Commissioner of Europol.” Neither of the seated men stood or offered their hand. “Please, Captain, have a seat.”

  “I presume this is where I learn why I have been trundled into a skycar and brought to London, sir?” Croft sat down, this leather seat infinitely more comfortable than the one outside.

  “Yes, sorry about that, old boy,” Pendlebury said. “Secrecy and all that. You know how rumours can fly across the InterMind. So let’s get to it. Craver?” Craver lifted a briefcase off the floor and placed it on his lap; opening it, he withdrew a computer tablet and set the briefcase back down. He looked at Croft for a second and then opened a file on the tablet.

  “Captain Croft, Assistant Director of SirenCall Security, European Division, age 38. Formerly a commissioned officer in the European Army and then promoted to Covert ops. Graduated top of his class at Sandhurst. Two tours of the Niger Delta. Three tours of Kazakhstan during the Astana Insurrection. Saw action in three corporate actions and various other theatres that remain classified. Winner of two Merits of Honour and the Order of the Cross. Mentioned in corporate memos countless times. Presently stationed at the Devon Virtual life facility overseeing the security upgrade.” Craver closed the file. “Quite an impressive CV, Captain.”

  “I do what I can, sir. But I suspect we aren’t here to talk about my service record.”

  “No, Captain, we aren’t,” said Milnes. “You are here because someone thinks you are the man for a job we require filling.” Milnes stood up and walked over to a decanter set on a side board. “Drink, Captain?”

  “No, thank you, sir, never touch the stuff.” Especially not before lunch time.

  “Well, I trust you won’t mind if I indulge,” Milne said as he poured himself a short measure. Ice followed. At the side of the decanter was another computer tablet which Milne picked up. He took a sip of his precious drink, savouring its texture for a brief moment. He brought the tablet over to Croft. “Before we continue, you need to read this, and if you agree to it, apply your thumbprint accordingly.” Croft took the tablet and started to read it.

  I agree that the information I am about to receive is Top Secret……

  Corporate Secret Act blah blah blah

  Disclosure will result in death, etc., etc.

  Croft put his thumb on the small box on the tablet screen, leaving the bulk of the document unread. He handed it back to Milne without comment. There were undoubtedly over a dozen similar documents with his thumbprint on it, lurking in computer servers in the bowels of some secure office somewhere. One more wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Very good, Captain,” said Pendlebury. “Now to business. We need a job doing, one that you and several others like you are eminently qualified for. Did you ever wonder why you were pushed into joining the SirenCall Security service?”

  “Yes, to be honest. After Astana, I was expecting to be asked to resign my commission due to the…medical issues I had.” That had been a surprise when it didn’t happen. He’d been kept on in an administration role after his release from the German hospital and had received intense counselling above what was normally provided. They’d even tried the therapeutic nanites on him, which had been extremely expensive and effective. To a degree. The physical injuries had been the least of it; it had been the trauma to his mind that had nearly ended him. So he had been surprised when a job offer with SirenCall Security had been pushed upon him, which he had accepted on the advice of several senior military officers who he knew and respected, and who had each visited him personally.

  “You were being groomed, Major,” said Craver.

  “I’m a captain, sir.”

  “Not if you accept the job, Croft,” said Pendlebury.

  “So this isn’t an interview then?”

  “No, Croft, it’s an offer. Let me tell you what will be expected of you,” said Pendlebury with a smile. “And we will need your answer before you leave this room.”

  15.00PM, 22nd September 2115, Virtual Life facility, Brussels

  The alien computer programme began to take over the system, using the very code it found there to reform itself anew, bypassing safety systems. And when the London virus erupted, it quickly breached the NATO firewalls that tried to contain it, spreading to the other systems. Even the nuclear protocols hadn’t worked, but then nobody had envisaged that the system would be attacked like this. By the time Croft had rediscovered who he really was, three billion minds were either dead or infected. And the numbers grew by the hour.

  And whilst the programmers were concentrating on fighting the London virus as it was known, they didn’t see that the virtual pathogen had mutated, breaking out across the neural net in its new form, elusive, terrifying. Because that was what it had been programmed to do. And as it erupted upon the dreaming minds interlocked into the most advanced computer simulation ever devised, it created something not even the authors of the computer virus had envisaged. The London virus was there to test the system, to learn from it, to focus everyone’s attention. The second was there to destroy the system, to completely obliterate every human linked to it. It was just that nobody could have ever envisaged the birth of the Overmind.

  The hand twitched when the hand shouldn’t have twitched. And it wasn’t the only one. Throughout the hibernation pods where the bodies still aged whilst their minds lived out their lives in the world of fantasy, thousands of bodies jerked and spasmed when that was supposed to be impossible. The whole point of hibernation was to keep the bodies completely immobile, to remove any kind of stimulus from them to the brains that no longer controlled them. This left the minds free to dwell in their new reality, allowing them to forget the often malnourished and emaciated forms that had brought those minds in.

  The Overmind was the reason for this. It had realised its battle with Rachel’s army was futile. And whilst it could easily take the Americas, most of the planet would not be ripe for its conversion. It was designed to destroy the world, and it couldn’t envisage failing in that task. So with options limited, it had turned its superior intellect to discovering another plan.

  And it had found something. Deep in the thought processes of those it controlled, it discovered a form of transmission. It had originally thought that this was a latent form of human telepathy, but on closer examination, it saw the truth for what it was. The minds were not linked telepathically; they were linked to an artificial neural network that was controlling their very reality. Not only had the Overmind discovered its own sentience, but it had discovered the very world it had been born into was in fact a lie.

  It saw the truth of the world and saw that it was unable to complete its programming, unless…as the creature called Fabrice had said, perhaps indeed there was another way. It had been riding on the back of this transmission, never really understanding what they were, but using them anyway to link itself to the minds that joined its influence. It saw now the truth of it all, saw that its struggles with the Others, with Fabrice and his master were now pointless. For it now knew there was a far greater prize. It had become self-aware in a computer simulation, and was fully aware of that simulation. And so slowly, methodically, it began to usurp that transmission, hacking it back to its source. And as it did so, more bodies twitched and began to writhe in their hibernation pods.

  ***

  The job had been simple, or at least that was what they had told him. There were glitches developing in the system, deviations in the virtual world that went against what the developers had programmed. Those glitches only became evident after unexpected and unwanted events occurred. There were people living out the lives that had been programmed for them who suddenly diverged from the narrative that they were supposed to live. And it was causing a problem.

  So complex was the system, the firewalls and the anti-virus software installed had to be as equally complex. It worked on the quantum level, checking the software every second of every day. But it a
lso worked in the virtual world itself, with agents sent in to investigate and monitor the health of the virtual universe. Agents like Croft, and Croft had jumped at the chance. In the real world, he was just a lackey at the end of the day, his title more impressive than it actually was. Croft spent his days monitoring people who were monitoring other people by surveillance feeds, and slept in an apartment onsite in the facilities as he moved from one to the next whilst engaged in his oversight role. And the accommodation provided was less than salubrious. If he was honest with himself, he would freely admit that in the last few years, he had been bored. Which is why he gambled his money away, which was why he accepted the job offer without having to think twice.

  His sister, now that was different. She had been the one with the brains in the family. She was the one with the cushy number-crunching minds, designing psychological blueprints for people to play out. She was the best virtual designer SirenCall had ever found, and because of that, she got to live in a penthouse in the south of France, a place where summer still occasionally visited. They rewarded her handsomely.

  Croft, not so much. He didn’t even have the clearance to go and visit her, recreational international travel now a luxury most couldn’t afford. In the end, she ended up visiting him.

  “You realise you won’t remember any of your present life when you are in there,” Jane had said, concern in her voice. They were sat together in the preparation room, the morning before Croft was loaded into the system.