Rune Source: A Virtual Universe novel (Rune Universe Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

The orange veins disappeared soon from my view, replaced by the normal show of lights and impossible colors, and by visions of other worlds and other people, even farther away than my Alien friends.

  The Cole that reached the other end of the tunnel was more similar to them than to a human being. Calling them Aliens suddenly seemed distasteful. Like calling a brother ‘That slimy guy from planet Vega.’

  As always, they were waiting for me with a mixture of wonder and fear that the constant interaction between us could do nothing to curb.

  The Signal in their homeworld wasn’t much different from ours. A tall, black spire with their Core far in the distance.

  Since I’m the Translator, I’ll translate the scene so we don’t delve in nonsensical descriptions about multi-dimensional tendrils.

  Three androgynous persons were waiting for me in the spire. The first two I knew. One was an older, “Wise man” kind of deal from back in the history of their civilization, recently revived to deal with the changes my presence (no, the existence of humanity) had brought on their world. The other was just the Emperor.

  The third guy-or-gal was thin and there was something unnerving in the way he wore his virtual skin. Like his eye-tendril—I mean, his arms—were a bit too tall on his torso for my taste.

  “Greetings, foreigner Cole,” called the Emperor as I exited the bridge and it closed behind me. His expression was grim—more than usual—and his eyes shone in the mad way that Emperor’s eyes usually did. “We’ve been expecting your arrival.”

  “Emperor. Your Wiseness.” I shook their hands (I mean, not really, but metaphorically) and looked at the third person, unsure how to proceed. Normally, we were alone in the Signal—with their world’s council looking at our conversation from afar. All the glances I had from their world were through Rune’s holograms, images, and their own descriptions.

  The third person took a step away from me like my touch was poisonous. I raised my metaphorical eyebrow and turned to the Emperor. “One of your scientists?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “He arrived a day ago, with dire news. I’m afraid we can’t continue our relationship, foreigner Cole.”

  “What?” Was he… was he breaking up with mankind?

  The mysterious man finally spoke. His words came heavily accented, like he’d just learned the Alien language. A nasty suspicion brewed in my mind.

  “Your kind bear the stench of Abomination! Even now, we can detect its influence on your Core. Do you really thought we wouldn’t notice?”

  “I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re going to speak more clearly than that,” I told him.

  He’s like me, I realized. A Translator for someone else. One of the others, the ones who were hiding.

  The PDF (hell, and the UN and a good chunk of mankind) had spent months idly wondering about the strange warning the Aliens had given us the first time I contacted them.

  They’d lived, collectively, in isolation, wondering about the reason why all the communication from the deep universe was kept as “please, cease further attempts at talking.”

  According to our Alien friends, they suspected the cosmos was full of hundreds (that they could track) civilizations along our development path. None of them wanted to talk.

  Had they been hiding from us this entire time?

  “You should hear what he has to say, foreigner Cole,” said the Wise Old Guy. “This man may be crass, but I suspect it’s fear which dulls his mind. And the warning he carries perhaps can still save your species.”

  “The best you could do, at this stage, would be to glass your planet and destroy your connection to the Nest,” said the other Translator.

  “Nest?” I asked. In response, he gestured around us.

  Signal. Got it.

  “In my culture, you need at least a moderately good reason to destroy life on Earth,” I told him. My virtual heart pounded in my chest. The Aliens weren’t an emotional species, so feelings were more like a tint in my vision than hormones flowing through my bloodstream and drugging my brain. Fear was purple. Anger was red, of course.

  The stranger felt very red and my own vision was more and more purple. Something was wrong.

  “Foolish!” he said. “How very foolish. Your destruction is already assured. By your own hand, at that. It’s only a matter of deciding in what way your collective will face the darkness. And this decision will have to be fast. The infection is already spreading.”

  I looked at the Wise Old Guy. “Wiseness, do you mind…?”

  “The warning,” he said. “We suspect it was about a sickness. A sickness of the Nest.”

  I raised my eyebrow in a very Derry-like manner. “A sickness? Well, I fail to see the problem. The Signal is separate from the world, it can’t affect it.”

  “Foolish!” exclaimed the stranger.

  For a brief second, I considered the galactic implications of punching him in the mouth. “If you actually explained to me what’s going on instead of telling me how fucked we are, perhaps I’d listen to you.”

  “Do you really think the Nest does not affect the Upper Layer?” That had to mean reality. I traded a glance with the Wise Old Guy to confirm and he nodded at me. “How foolish! The Nest is there for all intelligent life to discover when they’re ready. When their tools are advanced enough to interact with it. Your presence proves this is not different with your kind, as it’s not different anywhere else in the universe. Thus, your world already interacts with the Nest, and then it’s vulnerable to the sickness.”

  A sickness of the Signal that can spread to the devices we use to connect to it.

  A shiver came down my spine. I recalled the Emperor’s warnings the first time we met. They were alone in the universe, and no one but us answered the calls.

  If all civilizations were vulnerable to a sickness when they first linked with the Signal, and said sickness was contagious (otherwise, this man wouldn’t be here breaking up mankind and Alienkind), the correct response of the other civilizations, the ones who somehow survived their own first link with the Signal…

  Quarantine.

  I had to go back. To warn them. We needed to be ready…For what?

  “This sickness. What does it look like? What does it do? Is this like a computer virus…?”

  How do we survive it?

  The man shook his head and I caught a hint of sadness in his gesture. “Abomination. The sickness is the product of a vulnerability in the Nest. We’ve seen it happen. The spread starts small and then grows until it collapses. In very lucky cases, one in a hundred, the species infected survives their tools, but their connection with the Nest is forever severed. In the unlucky cases, their own infection spreads to other species and brings them down too. Thus, some of us try to warn newcomers to the Nest. To stay away until the danger has passed. This has happened many times before, young one.”

  Okay. I was more scared now than I’d ever been before. But I still had no idea what the sickness was.

  “What does it look like?” I repeated.

  The Wise Old Man drew closer to me and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “We already asked what the sickness is. You have to understand, it looks different every time. Sometimes, it’s an AI. Sometimes, it’s what you call ‘a computer virus.’ Sometimes…it’s something else entirely. Mistakes. Software that creates an infinite loop.”

  “Cancer,” the stranger added. It wasn’t the word he used, of course. But the meaning was clear. “Abomination is a cancer in the Nest. A cancer that eats away at the Core of a species until there’s nothing left. It doesn’t travel through space. It starts in your mind. It thrives because there’s a vulnerability. That’s why it will kill you. There’s nothing to stop its growth.”

  I felt my blood freeze solid. The expression on his face was grim, the same one a doctor had when telling a patient his sickness was terminal.

  Getting anything else out of the visitor was impossible. Abomination this, sickness that. It was clear he’d come to warn the Aliens
, not to talk to me. At least the Emperor and the Wise Old Guy had decided to break up in person with me, otherwise, I have had no idea…

  “You must return to your Core now,” said the Translator. “Every minute you spend here, the tendrils of the infection may inch closer and closer. The bridges must be closed, once more.”

  “I see,” I said in a whisper. My heart ached with the desire to return home, to warn everyone, but I knew this chance at figuring out what was going on would not happen again.

  Something in my expression must’ve reached the other Translator, because he sighed. “My species is taking a terrible risk by coming here in the first place. The infection may extend to our own Core if I delay too long. Please, understand. Would you not do the same in my place? The safety of everyone I love, of everything we’ve achieved, is at risk.”

  Yeah, I guess I can’t fault you, I thought. In his place, would I have acted differently?

  Perhaps I’d have been less of a dick. But that could be argued.

  “Don’t worry, I’m leaving soon,” I told him. “But put yourself in my shoes, at least. If what you’re saying is true, everyone I love is in terrible danger. Is there anything at all I can do? You’ve obviously accessed the Signal—the Nest—and you’re not infected. What makes your species different?”

  The man appeared doubtful. He began to shake his head, but the Wise Old Guy intervened in mt behalf:

  “C’mon. Don’t be a dick. It’s in the nature of all living things to protect their existence.”

  “Well said, Your Wiseness,” said the Emperor with a deferent nod.

  “We survived because we moved slowly,” the Translator finally said. “Thought things over. After we discovered the Nest, we didn’t just jump into it or activate it at the first opportunity. We studied not only what it could do then, but what uses it could have in the future. In the end… it may very well have been luck. One of our scientists found out about the vulnerability. The rest was the work of our statisticians. We knew, thanks to the existence of the Nest, that we weren’t alone out there. But communications were silent. This vulnerability was a risk every species smart enough to access the Nest would face. We didn’t know it could be spread. We didn’t know it was a disease, an abomination…Until we did more research. After our first xeno-archaeologists were trained. What saved us were our precautions. We built another layer on top of the Nest. Made sure no member of our species could ever access any deeper layer of the Nest than our own. In this way, the vulnerability couldn’t be triggered by accident, since it couldn’t be reached anymore.

  “I’m sorry, young one. But my kind never faced the crisis yours is going through. We nipped it in the bud. And as I said, Cores of the ones that did face it, and did survive it, are not active anymore. I don’t know their methods, so I can’t speak on their behalf.”

  Fuck. So, the best cure was prevention. I recalled the streaks of orange energy back on the bridge.

  “I see,” I mumbled. My mind was racing as fast as my heart. I had my suspicions on what the abomination—the cancer—could be. Data has “weight.” And it’s trivially easy to replicate. We thought the Signal had infinite processing power.

  A computer virus built to create copies of itself, as fast as it could, using the Core’s power to fuel its growth. An infinite blob of corrupt data.

  Cancer.

  “I’m sorry,” the man repeated. “But you have to leave now. The risk is not linear, but exponential. If the abomination manages to cross this bridge, it’ll take it less than a second to reach my own world.”

  The bridge opened behind me. It looked normal. Healthy. But if I understood the Translator’s warning, the initial spread would start slow. First, two copies. Then four. Then sixteen…

  It would get out of control.

  He was right. Quarantine was the right idea. Keep the infection limited to a portion of the Signal where it could move no further. That’s why everyone in the know didn’t dare reach our way…If they timed it wrong, they could get infected even if their connection lasted only a single second.

  The Translator was right. His world was risking it all to save the Alien people. He was a saint. Hell, every second I refused to leave…

  There are worlds out whose Cores are filled to the brim with this… cancer. And it somehow overflows into the real world and kills it…

  I imagined a flood of sick meat oozing from mindjacks all over the world. We’d begun to rely on the Signal more and more as a species. Drones were connected to it, now, since it was more secure than normal WiFi.

  “Is there a way we can close the bridge on our end?” I asked. The idea of being responsible for two apocalypses was too much to stomach.

  “The connection has to be two-fold. Don’t use it again, in case a young civilization is just now activating their Core and looking to reach out to the stars. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, young one.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  I turned to the Emperor and the Wise Old Guy. The Emperor’s expression was anxious and focused on the bridge behind me like he thought he would see the infection flood into his world any second now.

  “Goodbye. We never thought this would happen,” I told them. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Wait, Cole,” the Wise Old Guy said. “This isn’t your fault. Remember, this is a risk every single civilization undergoes. And only a few make it through.”

  And humanity drew the short end of the stick.

  I turned to leave, but then the Emperor rushed to my side so fast I instinctively raised my arms, thinking he was about to attack me.

  Instead, he pressed a cluster of data into my hands. “In case you manage to survive. So you don’t forget about us. If we’d had more time… I think we could’ve achieved great things.”

  The data pack was an image of his real world, taken by their satellites. A bright globe with green clouds dancing over silver oceans and yellow continents. I could see strange constellations surrounding the planet, stars that humanity’s eyes couldn’t reach even with current technology.

  For centuries, we’d dreamed of the day we’d meet others like us. People would’ve killed and died gladly for the chance to hold an image like this one in their hands. They’d have thought it to be the beginning of something wonderful.

  But this one was an ending.

  With a nod, I put it in my inventory and crossed the bridge. I felt like I should have added something to the Emperor’s parting words, but my own failed me.

  Not long after the Alien spire had disappeared behind me, I ran into the first orange veins poisoning the bridge.

  8 CHAPTER EIGHT

  ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR WORK

  STEPPING on the veins did nothing to me, which was a relief since walking back was my only option at getting out of there. I ran the rest of the way, as fast as I could, while wondering if I would find anything to return to.

  When the portal opened to our own end of the Signal, I let out a sigh of relief. I jumped out and the portal closed behind me.

  The spire was a bright orange, and the thunderstorm surrounding the core was now a mixture of that color and the healthy green. This, I barely registered. Because standing in front of me was Savin Keles.

  The other Cole, with his back turned to me, tried to confront him just as I stepped out of the portal. Keles was faster, though, and the former prophet opened Cole’s Options window and shoved him out of Rune with a flick of his finger.

  What the fuck—

  We were now alone, the both of us. He looked at me with eyes that were clearly non-functional, and smiled. Strings of energy connected the fake body to a fucked-up cloud of data and pixels.

  “Ah, just in time. You’re the one I really wanted to meet.”

  One of the secretive alien species had broken their silence to tell me an infection was spreading at home. I returned to meet face-to-face with the insane motherfucker—a dead insane motherfucker—that had started a cult in San Mabrada only to get minions for his space
ship.

  I could put two and two together.

  “You’re dead,” I pointed out. “Just in case you don’t know. I saw your body. You’re not the real Keles, you’re a copy with his memories.”

  The other Cole must already be warning everyone. I have to buy him some time.

  “Oh, again?” Keles frowned, or at least tried to. Whatever textures he’d stolen to build his body didn’t include a frowning animation. A lot of creepy smiles, yes. No frowns. “Please, don’t repeat the conversation I already had. That one was very boring.

  “Indeed, the meat version of Savin Keles has been discontinued,” he went on. “This is a natural development. Meat Keles’ only goal in life, as it turned out, was to usher forth the arrival of the true Keles. And now I’ll put in motion the historical forces that are my destiny.”

  “You do like to say your name a lot,” I told him. “Your code is glitchy, Mister True Keles. Perhaps the historical forces of destiny could spare a better scanner, next time?”

  “What—fuck you! Genius and insanity both come from mutations! You’re only a failed experiment yourself!”

  There it is, I thought with a brief smile. That’s his spot. Now that I’ve masterfully pissed him off, I only need to…

  To be honest, I hadn’t gotten that far in my plan.

  Keles stepped forward like a marionette pretending to walk. “As we were talking, I scanned your build. You have access I don’t have. Just like the last Keles’ goal in life was to bring me unto the world, your meat-self goal was to create you. For my benefit. As you see, it all matches.”

  I took a step back as I tried to fight back panic. I had no equipment (not that I had any hopes it would be useful against him), nor knew anything about how he worked.

  I may be a program, but I can’t do anything like the orange goo he’s making. What the hell?

  My feet reached the edge of the spire and I almost stumbled down. The idea of endless falling flashed through my mind and I jumped back, almost into Keles’ smiling mug.

  “Welcome home, Cole.” He put a cold finger to my chest as he cackled with triumph.