kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"Blood.0"

words

The sun rose in a violent expression of it's love and caring for the world. Or at least those who enjoyed the brighter side of it. I closed my eyes tightly and wished that I was dead. But death was not allowed. I had a burning purpose, a purpose that fulfilled me and promised me release as I followed it; a purpose that tormented my waking and sleeping moments when I did not. My eyes half-slitted, I nudged the rat that had chosen to rest upon my body. As I shifted its position the wind picked up and wafted the sickening sweet smell of death towards me. "Quaint," I thought. My stomach the final resting place of some poor, forgotten critter. Just as this dumpster would be mine if I did not move soon. Trash collection was today and the assholes working for GDI didn't take kindly to revenants.

Carefully I dislodged the rat, hoping that it had not picked up too many flies or maggots over the night. It had. I rolled over, falling to the ground like a stoned cat. Always land on your feet. It's just that they aren't the support they used to be. I picked myself up off the ground, trying to straighten the rags of what once was a stylish business suit. Computer Technician. That's what I had been, in that other life, when joy and human passions were still a concern of mine. Not for very long though. It wasn't her fault. She hadn't been careless. She had been one of the best. Someone turned her in; one of her supposed friends. I just had to find out who. And kill them.

It hadn't been that long since I'd met her, in linear, mortal time. It had been mere years since she had made me her protege, and shown me the wonders of what was slowly becoming the Matrix. It had been a lifetime though, since I'd known the happiness of her company, the mental and physical stimulations that her presence had given me. It had been a lifetime. Mine and hers. I'd met her in school; or rather in one of the school's computers.

I'd considered myself an intelligent, disillusioned youth. I knew the darker sides of life, the drugs, the gangs, the petty penny ante cartels ever present in the city. I hadn't known anything. It was my third year of high school. As a Junior I was lazy and demeaning. The teachers were my obvious inferiors. They said they taught for the joy of sharing knowledge, yet as far as I was concerned they had no knowledge to share. Certainly not with me. I made token appearances to a few of my classes, spending most of my time in one of the various computer labs. Computers were my talent; my flair; my life. I thought I knew it all, would always know it all, was the best. I ran a small elite electronic bulletin board system, and was well thought of in the circle-jerk wannabe hacker communities. I was the only local board that could offer anything close to zero day warez. Most everything I lifted from a board in Canada, but they didn't know that. I just said I had my sources. I'd cracked a few of the older games myself: nothing that ever required true talent. But I knew I was good. I was destined for greater things.

In the computer lab I was actually helping a college professor with some experiments he was conducting. He'd put me on the payroll after I showed him his medical files. Simple proof that I could pull that sort of thing; nothing malicious. That was beneath me. He was doing case studies of how poeple reacted to various stimulations on the cortex of the brain. Cutting edge technology.

Cognitive science had started to consider itself a serious science in the mid to late 1900's. By the turn of the century this interdisciplinary field comprising of experts in psychology, computer science, biology and neurobiology had nearly usurped those fields. By 2015 it was THE science. The internet which once had been everyone's domain was quickly becoming an elitist proving ground. Simple scripting languages such as the Hyper Text Markup Language survived in some places until the turn of the millenium. Version seven was its downfall, when it proved to contain an inherent inability within itself to do anything fully interactive. JavaScript was a fluke that lasted about two years, while actual Java lasted well into 2009. But the real coders were sitting in the back rooms, torqued up on colas claiming such ingredients as 'mad dog weed', 'St. Johns Wort', 'Witch Hazel', 'Skullcap', and 'Golden Seal'. The new specs for a language devoted to virtual reality were being discussed and the betas had just come out. That was the birth of the true matrix. What my pet professor was working on was destined to become what others had merely fantasized about for years. A true data jack.

The prototype I worked with was really just a skull plate with 'trodes hanging all about me. A few on the tongue, VR goggles, cheap speakers over my ears. Dogs were still being used to test the effects of direct spinal interaction. I had built my own little playroom in the Matrix. Separate from the rest of the world. I pushed the VR to its limits and asked for more. I made white noise generators for every sense. I designed simple scripts that cycled through various feelings; emotions were beyond the limited connections as of yet, but I was ready to toy with those as well. I made mental screen savers and jokingly distributed them to those that considered me a friend.

I spent twenty hours all told simply sculpting a persona for myself. I started with a simple drow elf template from old Dungeons and Dragons. Then I played with it. Dark grey skin, long fluorescent green hair down to the small of my back. Black pupils, black retinas; the aqueous humour a black, sinuous fluid with areas of matte black swimming around as if separate organisms. My fingernails were long and pointed. Not painted, but inherently a semi-luminous blue. My lips were small and thin; red lines across an aristocratic face. In the matrix, my persona wore an 'expensive' white silk shirt and long grey slacks. I walked silently through the matrix without shoes; I had managed to find a slight loophole in the engine and had removed the noise that movement generally produced.

I had talent. And then one day I found her there. In my room. My private room that was all but disconnected from the Matrix-at-large. This being was invading my personal space. But gods, she was beautiful. Of course that was simply her persona and my hormones speaking, but even under the rush of those I could tell she had carefully sculpted her body; intelligence shone from her eyes. I would have pinched myself but I still at that point was operating under the limited sensorium. Of course a pinch would neither waken me nor prove the validity of what stood before me. I stared. She smiled.

"So you're the one they've been talking about, eh? You don't look like much. Is this little cubby-hole the best you can do? Please don't tell me I've wasted my time coming here. Not that the way in was difficult, but I do have other things I could be doing." She looked at me quizically, waiting for some reaction, some response. I suppose I was supposed to do something spectacular and win her over. What a bitch! What an attitude! I was in love. I was done for.

"What, cat got your tongue?" She laughed and pulled a wiggling fleshy thing out of a rip in the matrix; she flicked it like a bottlecap, and as it flew in the air it turned first into a spinning silver dollar and then a dove that flew through the ceiling. She was good. The Matrix didn't like things that had no basis in reality. The engine was made to conform to the general physics of the mortal world, and various fundamental principles. 'Magic' was not allowed. Old-time gamers called it paradox.

She trilled a laugh and smiled coyly. "Perhaps now is not the best time. I shall give you a week to think on things. Think well." She walked towards me and of a sudden my peripheral was filled with kaleidoscopic images while my direct vision was blank nothingness. When my vision returned she was gone.

That week was a frenzy of thought. I told no one of her appearance and nearly began to believe it a dream. However. I did my best to prepare. I checked all the boards I knew of for simple ways to explain what she had done. I followed up rumours of underground cults, societies, hackers in the woodwork. While I found nothing that could tie itself to her nor hint at what she did exactly, I did hone my skills and found one way that I could perhaps actually assume control of part of another's persona.

It involved capturing an interrupt that was usually reserved for, of all things, refreshing the virtual surroundings. An error in the program's engine allowed one to slip in slight modifications of the raw data as long as crc checks were kept consistant. In the time alotted I could not find the exact specifications for any of the data, so I had to content myself with the brute force method. I was ready to show her what I could do. Perhaps she would accept me.

I was waiting for her next time. She came in through the door, politely. "So. Got anything good for me?"

I sprung the trap on her, executing the code that had been painstakingly stored into the room over the last week. Her persona stumbled, and then regained her balance, still disoriented. I had shut off her stimulus completely. "How is this?" I asked sarcastically, at that point full of myself. I had done it. Not expecting a response, I laughed at my own question, and was about to return her senses to her when she actually replied.

"Not bad. You might actually have potential." Her face began to melt and the rest of her persona followed in a grotesque display of internal organs. The shell fell to the ground, an aborted fetus slowly seeping into the ground. She stepped out of the shell in another paradoxical manifestation of what seemed like pure will. This time she was in her full glory. I was.... almost scared.

She stood six feet tall, the most luscious succubus I had ever seen. Not that I had ever seen one. Red, bony wings sat behind her shoulders, folded neatly, complacently. Her face was a mask of feminine beauty while her eyes still shone with the same intelligence of which I was just beginning to grasp the magnitude of. Her skin was a darker shade of black than mine if such a thing were possible. She nearly seemed to soak in light from the area around her. Perhaps she did. She had the talent. Her eyes were an emerald green of striking intensity, and her body was clothed simply in a light blue-green kimono. The fabric shifted gently, patterns slowly swimming about. Her form and features were both more intimidating and more alluring than I could comprehend. "So. Are you ready to learn?" I stammered my assent still in awe of her and her capabilities. "Then perhaps a proper introduction is in order." She lifted her hand in front of me, waiting for me to take it. "I am known as Lady Lucifer. Friends know better than to call me anything other." Nearly quivering in fear and anticipation, I took the simulacrum's hand in mine, shaking it gently, carefully.

"I'm... Solace. Jonathon Solace."

"That sounds like a real name to me. You nead a nym. A handle. Something that sets you apart from the lamerz and the poseurz. Think on it. I'll leave ya with a little reading material, and an address. When you think you're ready, look me up. The guys at the door will be waiting for you. Have something real to call yourself. Until then, I bid you adieou." At that, she turned around and before I could defend myself, before I could stammer after her... she disappeared through my door. That was definitely a trick I wanted to learn.

I left my abode and jumped to a dns for better details on locating said address. A slim artie answered in her "pleasant", simulated voice. If I'd been paying more attention to her I would have sworn the Domain Name Server stuttered when she came to the most specific part of the address. The addressing system had both become more and less complex than the system of previous eras. A few more descriptive endings had been added on while more exacting "physical" descriptions were added to the beginning. At times it led to a wholly thrashed object-oriented mess... "42.cell.18.hanger.31.warf.bumbfuck.egypt.gov". But in this case it was rather informative and, once translated from the unrecognizable ip codes "11.128.19.36.43" spelled out quite plainly where I was to go:

"2439.Blight.Berkeley.CA.usa.pub." Further searching on the address revealed what once would have been the "title" of the "document." The name of the establishment, as it were, was "The_Dragonz_Eye." Set in the middle of slum hell.

Lady Lucifer had set me a task that I was determined not to fail. I had passed what seemed to be her first testing of my abilities and willpower. I was up to it. The next three nights I did not sleep. I'd sit outside in the moonlight, swatting at mosquitoes, burning trick upon trick into my mind. Free interrupts, unprotected vectors, pointers... and best of all: what the raw data really meant. With this I could perhaps throw that professor some tidbits that would show him the errors in his ways. Slip him a little information and get a pay raise. All without compromising one thousandth the data I'd been handed. Burning and churning in the back of my mind was the realisation that I needed to pick a real handle. I thought for brief moments of using the same name as I used on my bulletin board system. Two main reasons not to, though. The first is that would give a link between me in real life to my persona in the Matrix. It would give someone the ability to track me down. Hazings, razzings, physical flamings weren't above many of the scum that inhabited the Matrix. Secondly... 'Overlord' just seemed so juvenile to me now.

During the days I nearly locked myself in the computer labs breaking only for brain food during lunch. I'd run out, grab some Cheeze-its, a pack of Skittles, a pack of M&Ms, and I was right back at work. I put the system through more testings than I could have ever imagined earlier. Flaws in the way ray tracing was handled could add eerie effects to anything if you knew what values to put in. With help from the new "documentation", I protected my room from all sorts of devious intrusion measures. The spools of code were called intrusion countermeasures. Ice for short.

The simple ice I put up were harmless and would take care of most lamerz trying new tricks. A lock on the door, one-way windows: simple stuff. The ice I set up to take care of those who knew a little more went from frustrating to dangerous. In those days nothing could be done to the meat... the living flesh of the user. Data jacks would make the users both much more agile and also much more at risk. For now the best I could do was either mindfuck the user or perhaps fry a little of their hardware remotely. For someone who tried to set their object clipping in such a manner as to let them walk through part of the house, I had a nasty surprise. They'd walk into themselves, their body becoming a mental moebius strip. If they were using a cheaper system this would simply lock it up; they'd have to reboot. More expensive systems that could actually handle the computations involved at the rate forced upon them ran a danger of actually heating up to meltdown or simply not even allowing a warm reboot. Powering down for a few minutes would be required. Someone simply trying to extend their senses into the room would hit a rather interesting collage of the white noise generators I had earlier devised. From what my friends had told me of their bad acid trips, this was one to behold. You would feel blue ripping through your flesh, hear the bittersweet taste of blood, and taste fires smouldering upon your tongue. Of course at this time all this was visual for anyone but me. But simple visual served my purpose; they could not intrude. Bodily or without.

And as I toyed with these I toyed with a nym. Trying to feel out what kindled my intellect and being. Slowly I realised that I was attracted to the flames and blood that I had created. Flowing with these feelings, I decided to redecorate. Blood and fire it would be, a heaven of Hell, so to speak. Slowly, a gentle fountain sprouted in the center of my room. Deep red blood oozed from a granite head stuck in a pose of ecstasy and torment: neck ripped asunder, head thrown back, howling silently only able to express its pure emotion visually. The sheets of blood that slowly cascaded over the edges of the fountain burst into flaming droplets that flared into nonexistance before they hit the onyx tiles of the ground. Magic wasn't as hard as it had seemed. All it took was knowledge.

My success and creativity emboldened me. I was going to openly attach my abode to the rest of the Matrix. I simply needed to change the outside a little bit. The simple default box I had nearly been living in slowly curved, losing it's edges until it was a beautiful obsidian sphere. Comets of blood began to orbit it atomically, and they became another layer of defense. If a persona came within a certain number of pixels of the comets, the comets would break into nearly infinite infintesimal shards of frozen blood, threading through the persona. They would coalesce and continue their sentry as the persona fell into separated globs. That would require a refresh or reload, if not a reboot. I considered it a warning. Those who had my permission could walk through them unharmed and walk through the obsidian walls into my private chambers. The address Lady Lucifer had given me was deep in the heart of the slums. Big timers hung out there, and while I was down there I'd scope out for a site to link myself to.

Lastly was the nym. Blood and Fire. Sounded like a husband and wife team. I needed something singular that still had the same emotive force. Bloodfire. The elitist in me screamed b|udphyr3. Once my mind settled on Bloodphyre, I felt an unbelievable surge of energy within me that nearly disconnected me entirely from reality. I was power. I was nightmare, death, and dream. I was Bloodphyre. I was ready.

I removed the sensorium and realized it was time to head home. It was going to be a long night of rest and relaxation. Tunelessly whistling, I shut everything down and left the room. The night passed with dreams of love, lust, knowledge, and heavy metal.

I was at the school early just waiting for the chance to get in, to ditch class and get to the computer center. Every iota of my being was just waiting for the meet. Two minutes in front of the school and I was done waiting. I looked around, jumped the fence, and prowled quickly down to the computer facility. Prying open the window, I let myself in, and got to work. It was still a half-hour 'til dawn. Sensorium on and I was lightning. I looked at the address and thought about life seriously. Relegating my pulse to nearly human, I began to navigate to the nether regions of society. Cautious lightning.

Down the wire and from public node to public node. These days the matrix was just beginning to bloom. It was still the idealistic anarchy. IP addresses were randomly assigned, linked to whatever was convenient. The idea of a fully interactive three dimensional space was just beginning to spark in some designer's mind. As it was, networking protocols handled data transfer through several, often several hundred, points... they simply shunted you to where you were going with no thoughts as to the in-between. More secure in some ways, but most of that security lay in the fact that people did not often blatantly see what loopholes lay inherently within the process. Poeple were still fixated on the theory of the phone line, that nothing existed in-between yourself and the being on the other end. No thought to the miles and miles of fiber optic cabling, photon enhancers, and relays. People were still fixated on the web PAGE idea, separate and *cough* supposedly oh-so-unique. Even while the pages themselves were now mostly three dimensional and supported intelligent, real-time multi-user interactions, most people hadn't even begun to fantasize about what would happen if this supposed virtual reality were truly made into a little virtual world. Sure, people had written about such a thing back before the net itself had been invented -- people's brains simply hadn't CLICKED yet.



And so it was I arrived, wary, at the entrance "page" for the Vulgar Tarot. Really quaint place. The graphics were actually well-defined, although so far, the actual interfacing looked like they simply ripped it off a sample "door" application. I had to give it to them, though: They had really nice conceptual imagery. Kudos to the artist. My entire vision was filled with the hanged man tarot card gently swaying in three dimensions, waiting for my input. The card flew in a dark, molten background that slowly melted and rejoined in blood red and deep purple patterns. It's "physical" being was lined with a simple white border that delineated it from the background. It was most definitely an "object." Within the border a man hung, of course. Hanging by his feet, he grinned and recited a litany of words.

"surrender... breaking old patterns... resolution... freedom from self-imposed limitations..." At this, he stretched himself and grabbed his ankles, and began untying the knot. "unlimited life-force... different postures and perspectives... awakening..." His eyes lit a deep amber as, still holding the ropes that had held him captive, upside-down, he righted his position. Slowly, still somehow holding himself aloft, he began rewinding the rope around his neck and his tone began to get darker and darker. "preoccupation... arrogance.... absorption." With this final word uttered, the noose finished, he released his grasp upon the rope. The rope began to uncoil as if from out of nowhere, and he fell outside the border of the card, shrinking from sight. All of a sudden the card jerked taut and the image faded to white.

A much more modern card faded into view. A joker, heads up and down, grinning and laughing, realtime. These were either masterful daemons or some punks actually stood around as door guards here. I wondered what their compensation could be. It certainly wasn't alcoholic; not from a virtual pub. I doubted it was monetary. Well, this was the underground, of sorts. Perhaps favors for favors. At first they were oblivious to me. They were engrossed in the world's lewdest one-upmanship joke and riddle fest. Some people have nothing better to do. I cleared my throat.

Each of them blinked the one eye they had, and I felt them looking at me somehow. Most likely at that point they were scanning me for virii and other such play toys. My respect for the establishment grew. The top one spoke then, a rude, disinterested, let's get this fucking over voice. "State yer business."

"Chummer," the second one threw on. Undaunted, I persevered. I was going to meet HER here.

"Nym's Bloodphyre. I'm looking fer a Lady." The misheard the capitalization used. The top one spoke.

"Ain't gonna find no lady here, that's for sure. Lissen kid, you oughtta return that suit your daddy bought ya and head, if'n ya get my meaning." The second one guffawed hilariously at the first's wit. However, they'd been relaxed enough in my presence for me to get the vital information that I was to put into use momentarily. I stared down the first joker's head. My eyes began to glow red, and slowly, slowly the card began to turn.... spinning, two dimensionally... most likely causing the two gate guards to stare at their spinning screens in wonder. If they'd been jacked it would most likely have driven them dizzy at the least.

"Lady Lucifer," was all I muttered as I stepped into darkness. A faint "Oh." drifted uncertainly down into my consciousness. The cards stopped moving as my presence disappeared from that 'page.'

The next image that came to my vision was that of a pub. Somewhat shaken by the entrance, having suspected nothing more than a non-animated card that one would walk through... certainly nothing as disturbing as what had flashed through my brain... I reminded myself of where I was and what my reasons for being here were. And then I allowed myself a glance around.

The visuals here were not just your average Joe Schmoe collage of irrelevant sprawl goers and "One Hundred and One Fixtures for Any Page". Physical textures and smells and the like were not actually implemented, those still being researched experimentally as my data jack attested to, but short of that I would have sworn that the cobbles beneath my feet, the candelabras all about, and the mahogany walls were quite real. I "took a table" and waited.

I was not disappointed. Lady Lucifer stepped around from behind me shortly. I smiled at her, this time. She of course smiled back. It seemed like we were nearly on even footing now. I had proven myself, even though I still lacked her savvy, and did not have her complete arsenal of knowledge at my disposal. To use a phrase most apt in the realms of the intellectual: "Waiting is." It seemed I was still too nervous the schoolboy to speak, though. Noting this she took the lead.

"Seems like you've done well for yourself so far. Knowledge is grand, is it not?" she asked rhetorically. "Have you thought of how to support your knowledge, and your quest thereof, now that you have been given a taste?" It was blatant that this was not a rhetorical question, yet I had no idea what she was asking, let alone what sort of response she expected from me. But if my stunned silence dismayed or annoyed her at all, she did not let it show. "Very well, then. I shall put it this way. The information given you is not all there is to know. That is obvious, no? This information was also not gathered by one person. It was gathered by many. We truly are entering the information age, where intellectual copyrights are becoming the norm as opposed to the exception. This information was paid for with other information, ideas, theories, facts, tricks and tips, all traded out for more of their like. But not always does one have information to trade with. That's where knowledge of how to use the information comes in. People like me, and perhaps you." I still stared at her, dumbstruck. A large part of my mind was trying to encapsulate her speech and make sense of it, but also fragments of my mind kept bouncing into eachother repeating how beautiful she was. Beauty not in the purely physical sense but in the full permutation of the word... mentally, physically, and emotionally. "Lissen. Do you have any idea what I do? How I support myself? My connections in and out of this world?" I shook my head negatively. I honestly had never given thought to life. Some juvenile part of me insisted that it would always be this easy. Go to school, skip class, go home, eat, sleep.... repeat as necessary. "I'm a runner. I deal in information. You can consider that first page of inpho I hit you with a quick fix. Free, the first time. I see in you the potential to be much more than a buyer though. I think you could be a runner as well. A runner isn't simply an information pimp, though. A runner is a broker, banker, and inventor all in one. A runner deals. Buying, trading, selling information. Always trying to increase the global intellect, sometimes parting with it altruistically, sometimes keeping yourself fed. A runner watches tabs. Information can be loaned in guaruntee that the person who it is given to will use it to create or garner more information which will be passed back through channels to you. Increase the global intellect. And a runner creates. A runner sits down and ponders the mysteries of life, existance, and the little black box, and figures out what makes it tick. Information can be stolen either directly from the minds who first try to hide it, or it can be stolen unobtrusively, as one examines and slowly recreates the mental processes that led to a discovery. Increase the global intellect. With this as a premise what do you think of your future?"