The softwire : Virus on Orbis 1

by PJ Haarsma

  Every discarded file, unused code, or anything else the computer no longer needed ended up in the trash. There was no organization, and bytes and data were strewn everywhere.

  I pushed into the trash archives and immediately stopped.

  Standing at one end of a large channel filled with data garbage was the little girl I always saw in my dreams. She was holding the file clearly marked Ketheria.

  “Hey!” I shouted at her.

  The little girl was startled. She threw down the file and ran.

  “Wait, don’t go. Who are you?”

  When I pushed toward her, the little girl fired a stream of dazzling green electrons straight into the channel on the floor. They were just like the ones that had cloaked the mysterious program I had found trashing Weegin’s World. Instantly, a pile of trashed data files morphed into a menacing form whose enormous clawed hands thrust toward me. The little girl had used the discarded computer code to create a monster.

  The creature’s head, with its shining white eyes, rose above the channel in the floor. Its gaping mouth moved closer, as if to swallow me whole. Saliva dripped from fangs protruding from its dark green head. The monster closed on me quickly before I could retreat. A gigantic four-clawed hand whipped around and grasped my face. I screamed as I felt its claws cut into my skin.

  Wait, I thought. If she can create this thing, why can’t I uncreate it? I’m still in the examination room, I reminded myself.

  I closed my eyes in the face of the monster, interfaced with the computer, and deleted the trashed files. When I opened my eyes, the monster was already disintegrating. Bytes and pieces were falling off as the rest of the files flushed out through the channel in the floor. The garbage beast’s fangs were now reduced to large harmless holes. It was not long before the shape of the monster was barely recognizable and then — nothing. I was in the trash drive alone. The monster, the file, and the little girl were nowhere to be seen.

  In the examination room, Theylor waited patiently.

  “You were gone a long time. Your vital signs appeared very weak,” Theylor said.

  I stared at the O-dat for a few moments, taking in what had just happened.

  “I . . . if . . .” I looked at Theylor.

  “Are you all right? Remember,” Theylor warned, “never let your entire essence enter the computer. Always remain grounded to the outside world.”

  “Why?” I asked, knowing I had stretched my essence very thin.

  “Chances are you won’t be able to get back out and your body will die.”

  “You never told me I could die in there.” The words tumbled from my mouth.

  “I understand some earthlings like to refer to the phenomenon of the soul. If you separate from your body, your soul will be lost in the computer forever,” said Theylor, getting up and glancing at the ceiling.

  I wanted to tell Theylor about what had happened. “The file was in the trash. I saw it,” I told him instead.

  “Very good.”

  “The computer couldn’t recognize it because the file had been deleted. If you had accessed it from your terminal, the computer would have known it was there and returned it to you, right?”

  “That is right.”

  “Then, really, the computer did know about it. Is it possible for a file, say a virus, to exist without the central computer knowing about it?”

  “It is impossible, Johnny. Everything that happens on Orbis 1 is recorded inside that computer. It is a very, very intelligent machine. Try to comprehend its ability to translate all the different languages instantaneously. If there were something foreign in the central computer, the computer would know about it. It is that simple.”

  Theylor looked at the ceiling again. In the cell above me, a new arrival slithered across the floor. A snotty trail of brown goo followed the alien wherever it went.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Theylor was frowning. “They are known as slopcrawlers,” he said, staring at the alien. “Symbiotic creatures. They reside inside other organic life-forms — other hosts.”

  “Where is his host?”

  “Slopcrawlers are neither male nor female. They take the identity of their host in most cases.”

  “Why is it here?”

  “I really do not know. I must leave you now, Johnny. Get some rest.”

  I sensed that Theylor was hiding something from me, but I didn’t know what. He was no longer concerned with what was inside the central computer.

  “But . . .”

  “But what?” Theylor’s right head turned to me.

  It was useless. Theylor would not understand what I had seen. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Johnny, you would tell me if you found anything unusual in the central computer, correct?”

  I remembered Max’s warning. “Of course,” I lied.

  I sat in the rounded corner of my cell and watched the slopcrawler spread snotty brown goo all over my ceiling. The creature was methodical. It circled back several times to ensure that every centimeter was covered. I found following the creature’s movements relaxing, and just watching it gave me time to think. My life on Orbis was nowhere near what I had hoped for. Especially since the Citizens believed I was a threat to their lives. How would I convince them that something was inside their central computer? I knew I was right. I was absolutely convinced that this virus was causing the malfunctions, but who was going to believe a knudnik, let alone a softwire?

  As I waited for someone to visit me, time seemed to stretch endlessly. When the slopcrawler seemed happy with its work, I picked up the slack and anxiously paced my cell. Maybe Theodore would come this time. It didn’t matter. Anyone would do, really. Maybe Max had found some new information or something that would help me prove to everyone that it wasn’t me, and they would let me out of here. These and a million other ideas raced through my mind as I walked back and forth.

  Suddenly, the blue in my transparent cell blinked out for a fraction of a nanosecond.

  Did I just see that? I stood very still in the middle of my cell. Then, for a split second I saw the cell walls disappear, I felt sure of it. I looked up, but the slopcrawler was circling again and didn’t seem to have noticed. I waited for it to happen again. Nothing. You’re going crazy in here, I told myself.

  There it was again!

  I could not deny it this time. I was looking directly at the floor when, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, it disappeared — or at least it looked that way. I sat on my sleeper and stared at the floor, waiting for it to change. I was interrupted by the swish of the door opening.

  “Max!” I was glad to see her and my sister.

  Ketheria walked over to me and stared at the same spot. She looked at me and then took a seat next to me on my sleeper. Max remained in the doorway, her face drained of all color.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Max. Ketheria shook her head slowly.

  “Boohral’s dead,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “He died in his sleeper. They say he was murdered.”

  “But what —?”

  Before I could finish, the entire cell shuddered and dislodged from whatever was holding it up. Max screamed as the cell tilted forward and crashed hard against the cell below it. Ketheria jumped on top of me.

  “Hold on!” I shouted as an alarm rang out somewhere in the building.

  The cell shook again, and the wall with the only door to my cell blinked out, revealing curved glass and metal hallways. My cell was only a holograph? It was just an illusion? Within seconds I saw astonished prisoners moving along the hallways, past my open compartment.

  My cell tilted forward and shook once more.

  “I think we should get out of here. Now,” Max said.

  “I’m right behind you,” I said.

  Then, as I moved away from the sleeper, the ceiling gave way, or rather, it simply turned off.

  “Watch out!” Max screamed, but it was too late.

  The slopcrawler lande
d squarely on my back, knocking both of us to the floor. I was covered in nasty brown goo.

  “What’s happening?” said the slopcrawler, its mouth only a slit in its pointed face.

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said, trying to remove the creature’s excrement.

  “I think we should move away from these cells,” the slopcrawler offered.

  Max helped Ketheria, and both of them found solid ground in the hallway outside the cell. The slopcrawler struggled to move up the sloping blue box toward the girls, but every time it wriggled, its long body only slid closer to the opposite edge of my cell. I turned to help it, but I slipped on the brown goo and landed hard. Before I could get up, the entire building seemed to shudder. The wall that looked out over the abyss blinked off. I watched an entire blue cell below mine dislodge and plunge into the void. The slopcrawler was about one meter from the exact same fate.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  I braced myself against the sleeper and (against my own wishes) tried to grab the slimy creature. My hand plunged into the goo, searching for something to hold on to.

  “Hurry, JT!” Max shouted.

  Under the slopcrawler’s coating of slime was skin like sandpaper. I managed to grab a fin or an arm, and I pulled. The slopcrawler moved a little closer, but not enough. At least it stopped sliding.

  In the hallway, Max lay on her belly while Ketheria sat on Max’s back. Max stretched forward with everything she had, but I remained just out of reach.

  “You’ve got to get closer!” she yelled. The cell shook again. “Hurry!”

  I pushed against the sleeper while Max leaned farther into the cell. Ketheria wrapped her legs around one of Max’s and grabbed onto a corner in the opening. We still lingered, fingertips apart.

  I repositioned myself, switched hands, and reached for Max. Without hesitation, she grabbed my goo-covered hand, just as the floor holding us up blinked off for the last time.

  I watched my sleeper tumble into the darkness as the slopcrawler and I struggled frantically to avoid following it. The only thing that prevented us from falling was Max’s grip on my hand. The slopcrawler’s goo, however, would not let that last long.

  “Pull!” I screamed.

  “You’re slipping!” she cried.

  “You have to!”

  The slopcrawler whipped its tail over my head in an attempt to grab the same corner Ketheria gripped, splattering all three of us.

  “It’s too far,” I said, and with that the slopcrawler began to expand, or rather stretch, reaching twice its former length.

  “Johnny, you’re getting heavier. I can’t hold on.”

  This is it, I thought. This was how I was going to die. I felt Max’s hand slip. I tried not to look down, but the slopcrawler’s wiggling was loosening my hold.

  The slopcrawler tried again. It hit the corner, but its tail slid off.

  “Again!” I yelled.

  “Hurry,” Max said.

  The slopcrawler whipped past me one more time. When its tail hit the corner, Ketheria plunged her hand into the slopcrawler’s slimy appendage and held it against the wall with everything she could muster. Underneath all that slime, the sandpaper skin held and the slopcrawler began to retract — pulling me up with him. Max got her other hand onto my forearm and helped pull us through the doorway that once led to my cell.

  “Thank you,” the slopcrawler said.

  “Thank you!” I replied as Max wiped away some of the slime.

  “Sorry about that. A nasty distinction of my species.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s keep moving,” Max said, looking into the enormous hole over the abyss. Other compartments still fell, some with their occupants trapped inside. We joined the others scrambling through the hallways.

  “This is the way we came,” said Max as she and Ketheria retraced their steps.

  The Center for Science and Research was in chaos. Aliens of all sorts crept, floated, and scampered through the hallways, searching for an exit.

  “Don’t go that way, Max,” the slopcrawler said.

  “How do you know my name?” Max asked.

  “I was one with your Guarantor, Boohral.”

  The shock of hearing Boohral’s name stopped us short, and we both turned to look at the slopcrawler. Ketheria ran into me and got a faceful of goo.

  “What do you mean?” Max asked.

  “Slopcrawlers, as you call us, live inside Trefaldoors in a perfectly symbiotic relationship. We breathe for the Trefaldoor. We absorb carbon dioxide while expending oxygen, enabling the Trefaldoor to live in this environment. It has always been a convenient relationship. Once the Trefaldoor matures and develops its own lungs, we are freed, to mature and develop according to our own stages of life. But here on Orbis, adult Trefaldoors still need us to breathe. Boohral’s life on Orbis meant imprisonment for me.”

  “That seems to be a theme on Orbis,” I said.

  “If you lived inside Boohral, then you must know who killed him,” Max said.

  “And you know what was on the computer drive he had at the tribunal,” I added.

  “What drive?” Max asked. “That’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is. You don’t know what Boohral did at the tribunal,” I told her.

  Ketheria was now leading the way as she pushed through the debris and the crowds of stranded aliens.

  “And you don’t know that Boohral discovered a camp of Neewalkers hiding deep in Orbis 1,” the slopcrawler said.

  “What’s a Neewalker?” I asked, but before he could answer my question, the wall next to us exploded.

  “I’m afraid that’s a Neewalker,” said the slopcrawler. “Run!”

  Stampeding toward us on mechanical stilts were six creatures, half-humanoid and half-machine. Strapped to their oversize arms were all kinds of weapons — cannons, handguns, even swords. One Neewalker fired another shot, and the slopcrawler ducked.

  “This way!” Max screamed, and I scooped up Ketheria, never taking my eyes off the monsters.

  “Why are they trying to kill us?” I said.

  “I think they are only trying to kill me. You are just in the way,” said the slopcrawler.

  “Great,” Max said, and we followed her down the corridor.

  The Neewalkers were surprisingly agile atop their mechanical legs. The motorized sound of their legs grew louder as they gained on us. The slopcrawler could move very quickly, but it still lagged behind.

  The Neewalkers fired again, and the wall next to me erupted in flames. Another shot hit an escaping alien as it made an unfortunate turn around the corner. Its yellowish skin splattered the wall in front of us. We weaved through the hallways of the Science and Research building as the Neewalkers destroyed everything in sight.

  I turned around and stopped at a security panel that controlled a door dividing the hallway. I quickly interfaced with the scanner and the door blinked into place.

  “Go, go, go!” I yelled.

  The door lasted no more than a few seconds. As the Neewalkers tore straight through it, the security alarm screeched frantically. The Neewalkers reloaded on the run and continued blasting at us. Max turned the corner first and stopped.

  “Go the other way — this is a dead end!” she cried, but it was too late. The Neewalkers were too close. They had cornered us.

  “You should know better,” breathed the yellow-eyed Neewalker. His voice was raspy and mechanical, like a bad signal. “You were doomed when your foolish host spoke up.” Antennas protruded from its skin through a collar that surrounded its bald white head.

  The Neewalker pointed his weapon at the slopcrawler.

  “But we didn’t say anything,” pleaded the slopcrawler.

  “Then you should be careful about what you think, slimy one.”

  I accessed another security panel, looking for something, anything, to use.

  Help, I pleaded silently.

  Then a blinding flash filled the
hallway. In an instant the Neewalker was disarmed.

  “Space Jumper!” roared the Neewalker, and the others spun around, ready for combat. For the first time I saw fear on their faces. The air seemed to buckle and a Space Jumper materialized next to me. He was like no one I’d ever seen before: he was huge and equipped like a military machine. With one swoop of his arm, the Space Jumper scooped up all three of us.

  “The slopcrawler!” I yelled.

  The Space Jumper reached out with his other hand and grabbed the slopcrawler around the neck, and then we were gone. My mind washed away, replaced with flashes of the cosmos, and I lost all sense of balance. But the thing I remember the most, the sensation I could not shake as my body tumbled through time and space, was the overwhelming stench of feet. Yuck.

  An instant later we tumbled from the Space Jumper’s grip and landed in an open field. The Center for Science and Research building was nowhere in sight. I stared in utter amazement at our rescuer while Max, still on the ground, crawled away.

  “The slopcrawler!” I said.

  All that was left in the Space Jumper’s right hand was a fistful of goo.

  “I’m sorry,” the Space Jumper said. “But you are safe and far from trouble.”

  His mechanical voice was amplified through a mouthpiece that was attached to his molded helmet. The Space Jumper searched the field using a small telescope attached to his left eye. The other was covered in dark green glass.

  “How did you get on Orbis?” Max asked.

  “There was a distress call from another Jumper,” he replied.

  “He wasn’t with us,” I said.

  The Space Jumper looked around again; he seemed anxious. “Follow the curve of the ring toward the crystal moon,” he said. “This will get you home.” Then the air buckled once more and the Space Jumper was gone.

  “Wait!” Max yelled. “Don’t leave us here!”

  “Wow,” was all I could say.

  “How will we get home now?”

  “Follow the crystal moon,” I said, still staring at where the Space Jumper once stood.

  “How? There are two of them.”