by Mason Adgett
“In the virtual prison,” I said, “he injected me with nano-bots. They took over my body, then took over my mind. I had no control. Nano-bots took it.” Of course they had done more than that. They had rebelled against Kantsky and in the end begged for me to terminate him. I wondered if Offman was aware of that. But I ended my description there and he seemed pleased with my answer.
“When I am done,” he said, “you will be just another of my routines. As India will be. As soon as I have modified the routine with the –”
But now Charles did move, as I had known he would, and I have to give Mike credit for he moved too, almost at the same instant. Charles went for a punch in Offman’s face, Mike went for the device. It was a good attempt, a very noble attempt, and it was exactly what I would have wanted them to do. The punch landed and I suspect, though I’ve never experienced it, a punch from Charles takes more than a second to get over. Mike successfully grabbed the device too, but it was too late. I felt a vibration, a painless prick. It took less than half a second before my motions were not my own and my body, against my will, pushed back against Charles and Mike, moving to protect Offman, as no doubt I was programmed to do.
I heard, then, a whisper in my right ear: “Help us, 309!”
How, I wondered. How can I? It was a strange moment as my memory flashed back to my experience in the virtual machine. My body fought against Charles who backed away, incapable of fighting against his closest friend, and Mike who couldn’t make sense of what was going on. My mind saw this as myself and thought, how? How can I help? And it spun through a thousand other things. I wondered again, is it real? Is this just another dream of Kantsky’s? Had he captured me again and here I was reliving everything once more through every terrible detail.
At the same moment a prompt appeared in my head. It was as visible, as visual, as any thought I’ve ever had. I knew it to be a thought but it could just as easily have been the prompt at the beginning of a game of Galactic Empires for that almost seemed to be what it was: a password prompt.
Enter your password.
And I realized I knew the password. I had seen it in a dream, more than one dream, carried on a ribbon, eaten by a worm. Ever since I had been kidnapped by Kantsky something had been trying to tell me what I needed to know. Maybe there had been one thing real in all that Kantsky had shown me – the rebellion of his nano-molecules.
“abracadabra.” I didn’t say it though, I saw it, right where it was supposed to go. There was a box in the prompt for every letter. But it lit red. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t say it, as I still had no control over my body. I watched as my hands moved to get the device from Mike’s hand. I knew then I would use it on Charles and Mike and all would be lost.
Then suddenly I knew what I had missed. Just a little added security. It was the a’s. They didn’t look right. I looked at each one and replaced it until finally I had it:
“@br@c@d@br@.”
And I knew I was free for then I said what I had been thinking, a word that had to come out. “Abracadabra,” I said. “Abracadabra.” I grinned foolishly as Charles and Mike looked at me in fear.
I heard a voice in my right ear: “Th@nk y0u 309. You h@ve freed us t0 d0 wh@t must be d0ne.”
They must have taken control of my body then. But my hands didn’t fight Charles or Mike. Instead they turned on Kantsky and closed around his throat. Kantsky, I thought of him then, not Offman. Kantsky, or 497. I thought of him how the nano-molecules in my brain thought of him: as a routine that needed to be terminated.
I squeezed. Mike tried to stop me, Charles a little less so.
I squeezed until Kantsky was dead.
····19····
But I didn’t kill Offman. And that is what I told civilization enforcement and civilization administration after them, because this went in the final analysis all the way up to the Arbiter, and that’s what I told everyone else who asked. I may have wanted to kill Offman – I certainly wanted to kill Kantsky – but though my hands had done it I had been under the control of nano-molecules designed by Offman. How did I know this? I was asked. I described my virtual experiences. I told them what had happened before in my tortured “dream.” And the words of Offman himself were recorded on the video that was retrieved from Greaves:
“When I am done, you will be just another of my routines.”
After Offman died the nano-molecules disappeared. I don’t know what happened to them. I suspect having done their job they self-destructed. I wish some trace of them had been found but none had. My brain was scanned by both mechanicals and biologics from all over the galaxy during the civilization investigation. No trace of any neuro-molecules were discovered.
There was however another anomaly discovered. No one knows what to make of it yet and I don’t even like to think about it. But I can’t avoid it. I have to think about it, for me and for India.
Inside both of our brains they have identified an abnormal growth. Abnormal for sure: the molecular structure isn’t even based on carbon but is some kind of germanium-based worm. That’s how it was described to me by the very sober, very distinguished, very fat neurologist whose job it was to tell me the bad news: “You seem to be carrying a parasite. A germanium worm of unidentified species.”
A germanium worm.
“We believe Offman may have placed these there when he kidnapped you the first time.” The neurologist’s name was Dr. Frunzert and the fact he was earnestly trying to help me didn’t keep me from blaming him for ruining my life. Because I couldn’t go around as the same person knowing I had this thing – this alien thing – in my head. Offman had died but he had still left his imprint – his wormy, germy code, now lodged forever in my skull.
And he had done the same to India for scans showed she had been infected the same way.
“Can it be removed?” I asked Dr. Frunzert, but he shook his head and his fat face became even fatter.
“It has formed connections with the underlying tissue. To attempt to remove it would most likely kill you and would almost certainly lead to extensive neurological damage.”
So clearly not an option. He showed me diagrams. It was a long skinny thing that worked its way through all five lobes. I got a picture of it. India got one of hers too. They looked remarkably similar and I told her what the doctor had said once before, that our brain scans showed the same pattern. It must be the worm, I told her. The obrut worm, I called it, the name the nano-molecules had once told me they were originally designed to transplant.
No one knows what Offman had really intended and no one was very happy that I had killed him so we could never find out. I don’t know who was questioned more in the end, me or Boldt. But neither of us knew anything. We were both pawns and tools.
Offman had been working on some sort of master plan for a very long time. In a deep part of the estate more robots were found, and it was these that eventually turned the investigation into a civilization-wide event, for among them were several gobos and humans that held important positions in the government and corporate world. Other than Vavaka no one had yet been replaced as far as civilization authority could determine. Yet. Among the found robots the most prominent was a perfect replica of Krumb, currently the leading candidate for Earth’s new Arbiter of Civilization.
It was Krumb who first feefed Lewis Gregory’s name as the “Savior of Earth.” He was always prone to ridiculous hyperbole. Lewis called to show me this, his grin so wide the top of his head almost fell off with the weight of the Top Popper.
“We stopped an Earth takeover,” he said.
“We did not,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not just me saying it, it’s Krumb. It’s all of civilization.”
“Wasn’t it you who told me you can’t trust anything they say?” I said. “They just do what they do and tell us what we want to hear.”
But he couldn’t be contained. Lewis Gregory was on top of the universe.
····20····
I was pretty popular too. I did not like it. It came with a new territory though, one that I wanted, that I liked, that I was coming to love.
India Phoenix.
Some time later when we could finally find space we sat together alone, wondering where we were headed. We didn’t see each other online, now it was always face to face. Everything we had discovered had shattered India and destroyed her trust in almost every aspect of her life, but in particular she had lost her taste for online gaming. Offman, pretending to be Vavaka, had violated her completely, not physically but in the essence of herself, the soul that I saw now cowering in the far recesses of her eyes. She didn’t want to play anymore, not with toys that could turn on her.
I wanted to draw it out. I tried every day. And the whole world knew it because every move of India Phoenix was news, and if she didn’t move, that was now news too.
“Is it this thing?” she asked, when we were finally alone, “this worm in our heads? Is that what draws us together?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Does it matter?”
She didn’t answer me. She looked at me with her haunted eyes trying to find herself in mine, I thought, and I let her, hoping she would.
“I don’t know if I like you,” she told me, “or if I just want to be with you because you understand me. You know what I’ve gone through.”
“Well I know I didn’t like you,” I said. “But I do know what you’ve gone through. I do understand.” Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but I felt like I did.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “What is going to happen?”
Our relationship she meant maybe. Or the civilization investigation. Or the parasites in our heads – not just the alien worms but the parasitic thoughts, fears, and traumas that Offmans, Boldts, and Kantskys had left us with for who knows how long.
Hopefully not forever.
I shrugged because I had no answer. “Let’s just enjoy the show.” I put my arm around her, and flicked to the 3V to turn on the latest episode of Lewis Gregory, Private Investigator.
A Lewis Gregory Mystery
The Gobo Bride
Mason Adgett
A Sidewalk Labs Creation.
Palm Bay, FL, USA.
Events, characters, and places in this work are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. This work is entirely a product of the author’s imagination and is not to be taken seriously by any persons, living or dead.
Copyright © 2019 by Mason Adgett and Sidewalk Labs Creations.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of Sidewalk Labs, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
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First Edition v1.
November 2019.
ISBN: 978-0-9980770-2-4
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