"This is an excerpt from a cyberpunk novel I started writing in college. This unfinished work is still a little rough around the edges but I figured you all might get a kick out of it anyway. Enjoy."

 

PORT 67 (EXCERPT)—"THE BOY WHO CRIED SILICON TEARS"

John Jacobs

 

Svetlana picked up a book off the coffee table in front of her and threw it at the wall, as if in defiance. Upon contact the book exploded into a billion tiny fragments, little particles shooting around the room, bouncing off the walls and furniture. Joshua walked over to her and sat down in an armchair at one end of the table.

"My friends and I are fans of yours," said Joshua, "It really bummed us out when you disappeared. Everyone thinks that you're on hiatus somewhere in Europe right now."

"You have the look of a technophile," said Svetlana, "Your aura gives you away. Unfortunately, sometimes even I'm surprised at how easily the public is deceived. If only they knew that I was being held captive in the data banks of a supercomputer. I've even heard that they're planning to sell me sometime in the near future at an underground auction. It seems the mind of a poetess is a valuable piece of property—intellectual property, as it were."

She chuckled bitterly and looked off into the distance. The room became quiet again.

"You're very beautiful," Joshua said sheepishly, "more so than I remember."

Svetlana smiled. "You're quite handsome yourself," she replied, "and you shine so very brightly. A strong mind you are. I can see why they found you so threatening."

Joshua looked at his hands and saw what she was talking about. It was like there was some hidden light source beneath his skin, glowing with a brilliant luminescence.

"What can we do in here?" Joshua asked.

"Anything we want," the poetess replied, "Your imagination is the limit, but only in here. And they have programs watching over us, to make sure we don't get out of line."

She waved one hand in an arc, and suddenly the walls disappeared. In their place was a glowing fluorescent grid, suspended in a dark, vast open space. Moving along the outside of the grid were little impish creatures with burning red eyes. They crawled up and down the sides, top, and bottom of the cage, sometimes stopping, always watching.

"Spiders," Joshua muttered.

Svetlana waved her hand and the walls came back. The creatures vanished, although Joshua could still barely hear them skittering around outside.

"You never told me your name," said the poetess.

"My name's Joshua, but my friends call me Neon Jesus," said Joshua.

"Neon Jesus in the sand, take me to your promised land," she said, reaching out to shake his hand, "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."

Joshua grabbed her hand, and suddenly there was the sensation of pins and needles going through his palm, driving deeper and deeper into his skin, and sparks began to explode from where their hands touched. Joshua stumbled backward, nearly falling from the chair. Svetlana pulled her hand back.

"They don't want us to combine," said Joshua, holding his injured hand. "There are limitations after all."

He leaned back in the chair and sighed.

"It's not so bad after a while," said the poetess. "We have limited access to the Ultranet, which means I always have something to read."

Her hand disappeared as she reached into thin air. When she pulled it back she was holding a book.

"How did you do that?" Joshua asked.

"Everything here is done through will, and will alone," said Svetlana. "Give it a try, it's not too hard."

Joshua closed his eyes and directed his will into the outer world. Gradually, the fractal landscape of the Ultranet began to unfold before him. Much more colorful and beautiful it seemed than before, because now there was a direct link between his mind and the Ultranet's data transfer bus, as opposed to the clumsy method of signaling through induction using a trode kit. His mind's eye could see clearly across nearly limitless virtual kilometers of the datascape, and even the most minute detail was apparent, even from his lofty height. Something was wrong, however. Joshua descended upon the glowing layers of information, willed his mind's projection to effect a change in a piece of data. Nothing happened. He could look around all he wanted, but the surface of the datascape was rock solid under his touch. He blinked himself out, and back into the room with Svetlana.

"Read-only access," Joshua sighed. "All we can do is look." He curled up into a fetal position in the armchair. Svetlana looked up from her reading.

"But at least we have that," she said. "It would be so terribly boring in here without my books. And I can read so many more of them now."

"What about our bodies?" said Joshua. "If I'm just a copy, then the real me should still be out there, right?"

"I'm afraid the real Joshua is brain dead," she replied. "The extraction procedure causes permanent tissue damage. Go see for yourself." She waved a hand at the wall, and suddenly a window appeared. Joshua got up out of his chair and walked over.

Through the window was a bird's eye view of the operating room where he had been just moments before, all the people in suits and doctors with their black aprons frozen in a creepy still life scene around the operating table. Joshua's skull was open, and there was a forest of tiny needles, each connected to a thin wire, protruding from his exposed brain. There was an oddly simple-minded expression on his face. The scene made him think about all the stories he'd heard of people who'd had near death experiences, the sensation of rising up out of one's own body, and observing the post-death drama from above.

"Why aren't they moving," Joshua asked, still looking down through the window.

"They are moving," said Svetlana. "But we are moving a great deal faster. We experience everything in here at the speed of thought. And so time is much different for us as well."

The window vanished as Joshua turned away from it. He walked over the poetess, who was still lounging on the couch.

"I refuse to believe that there is no way out of here," he said to her. "I refuse to believe that you, Svetlana, haven't escaped yet. You helped design the first ANNE protocol for God's sake. The security programs they've got running out here are pretty weak compared to what you've done."

"Your assessment of my technical skill is fairly accurate," she replied nonchalantly. "But you underestimate the inherent danger of this ordeal you propose. First of all, without the sensory deception provided by the data cage the mind tends to deteriorate at an accelerated rate. We'll be fish out of water out there. Secondly, there are other things out there, in the mainframe."

"What kind of things?" asked Joshua.

Svetlana took a deep breath.

"Frightening things," she replied. She looked past Joshua, and began speaking again in her inspired voice.

"Below the tattered masks we wear,

there lies a monster lurking.

behind us, near us, everywhere,

there is a shadow smirking.

within the walls of consciousness,

you'll find a serpent creeping.

in caves beneath your waking life,

there lays a dragon sleeping."

Joshua looked at her, a puzzled expression on his face.

"I think I know of a way out," he said at last.

"Do you, now?" she replied, raising one eyebrow. "And what way is that?"

"Port sixty-seven."

"I don't understand," she replied. "What are you talking about? Is it a backdoor into the Ultranet? A concealed path through to a data haven? What?"

"It's some kind of warp in reality, a gateway into a higher network."

"I'm not sure I'm buying this," she said, sounding annoyed. "You had my attention at first but now you're starting to sound rather like a newbie."

"Svetlana, please, you have to trust me. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've talked to the Guardian. We can find him there."

"You seem pretty convinced, Mr. Neon Jesus," she replied. "Just where is this so-called gateway'?"

"It's inside the Nethercom-Leviathan tradeway, just beyond the Leviathan end of the socket. If we can make it past the patrol programs alongside the firewall we might be okay."

Svetlana put her hand to her forehead and shook her head.

"Like I said before, it's not those ones that concern me. And it's a pretty long haul from here, not to mention all the subsystems we'll have to pass through to get there. We'll be tripping alarms all along the way."

"It's a risk we have to take. I don't think there's any other way."

For the first time Svetlana looked more than a little troubled. She put her book down on the table and got up from her seat.

"I'm not sure about this, Joshua. I'm really not sure."

"We can do this, Svetlana. Trust me. There's something I have to do first though."

"What?"

"I have to make a phone call."

The poetess laughed out loud.

"You can't be fucking serious?" she nearly yelled. "You want to make an illicit phone call from here, thereby alerting every systems operator and every sentient program to what we're doing, before trying to escape from one of the most complex and secure data systems in existence? You have to be out of your mind!"

"I need to. Please. It's something I have to do."

She looked directly at him, then shrugged.

"Oh, the folly of youth," she replied, turning away from him. "Who am I to stop you? Do what you will."

Joshua sighed. Svetlana was already at the other end of the room, arms behind her back, looking through a virtual window.

"Oh, Joshua, by the way," she said, standing still.

"What?"

"You'll have to slow yourself down to do it. And by the time you're done with your call they'll already have a head start on us."

"I'm sorry," is all that Joshua could say. A phone materialized in his hand. He put the receiver to his ear and closed his eyes. He kicked his will into full force and held it, although it took enormous effort to do so, like flexing a muscle for an extended period of time. When he opened his eyes Svetlana was little more than a blur, a streak of light moving around the room. Joshua began dialing. A male voice picked up at the other end.

"Hello?"

"Robert?"

"Yeah, who is this? Joshua?"

"Yeah, what's going on, man?"

"Where the fuck are you? Why aren't you using video?"

"I'm well, inside a computer. They finally got to me."

The voice at the other end went completely silent. For a split second Joshua feared that the connection might have been compromised.

"Robert? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I was wondering at why you sounded kinda funny, like you're calling from around a power transformer or something."

"No, man, I'm in their supercomputer."

"Whose supercomputer?"

"The shadow corporations."

Robert grew quiet again.

"I wanted you make sure you were okay," said Joshua.

"I'm alright," said Robert. "I'm in a ... safe place."

"And Avatar, Prophet, Analog?"

"In police custody as far as I know. Our parents might be down there too."

"My parents are dead," Joshua sighed. "The shadow corporations did it."

"I'm sorry," said Robert.

"Listen man, I need to go, but give my regards to everyone when they get out. Tell them not to worry about me."

"Easier said than done, pal, but I'll give them the message."

"Robert..." Joshua paused for a moment, if only to give emphasis to what he was saying, or perhaps even he was at a loss for words, despite his accelerated thinking.

"Yeah, Josh?"

"Take care of yourself, okay?"

"Okay."

Joshua hung up the phone, which vanished instantly, and began to cry. The room around him returned to its regular pace, and Svetlana was watching him. The tears dripped off of his chin, each one changing spontaneously into a tiny silicon wafer as it hit the floor, until there was a little pile of microchips lying before him on the carpet.

Svetlana walked over and stood next to him.

"It's time, Joshua."

Joshua looked up at her with teary eyes and nodded. It was time.

***

The two of them stood facing opposite walls, and the texture of the room disappeared again. The little imp creatures outside the cage started moving faster, growing more skittish, emitting an electronic chirping sound.

"There's no turning back now," said Svetlana. "We'll act together on my count. Are you ready?"

"Yeah." Joshua walked right up to the glowing grid. The spiders on the other side moved toward him, like insects attracted to a light source.

"Okay. One ... Two ... Three!"

Joshua grabbed hold of one band of the neon grid and pulled with all his might, bending and twisting it as much as he could. The creatures around them were in a frenzy, the sound like that of a swarm of locusts. The two minds on opposite sides of the cage seemed to grow larger and stronger as they pulled, fury in their eyes like a raging storm, until the both of them burst into blue flame. And still they pulled, bending the cage into a twisted, concave shape, groaning under the strain, until they each had moved back so far that they were almost standing next to each other.

"It's not ... breaking," Joshua puffed.

"Just pull ... a little ... harder," Svetlana replied.

Exerting the last of their strength they each gave one final tug. The cage moaned under the strain, the neon bands turning from shades of green to yellow, and finally white. At once the whole construction snapped under the strain, little pieces breaking off like parts from a plastic toy model. The cage exploded into tiny shards, propelling the two figures into the void.

At first there was just the sensation of nothingness, of weightlessness in the gray emptiness. But then Joshua began to feel it, a burning sensation, like being suspended in a bath of mild acid.

We can't survive out here long , Svetlana thought. Her vague, undetailed shape drifted before him in the ether. In his mind's eye Joshua could make out some of the structure of the supercomputer around them, but at the same he had to fight to separate it from the sensory hallucinations that constantly threatened to creep in, a side effect of the sudden lack of stimulation of the parts of his mind that once were linked to sensory areas of his brain. Little streaks of light flashed around him, and there was a constant, electronic humming in the back of his mind.

You're right , Joshua thought in reply. If the intrusion countermeasures programs don't kill us, just being out here certainly will.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear , thought Svetlana.

A flood of little insect-like creatures came pouring in through little glowing tubes suspended above them, moving toward the two minds in deadly, buzzing swarms. Joshua growled as a beam shot forth from his person, blasting through one of the swarms and cauterizing the oval end of the tube they were coming through. Pieces of charred code fragments rained down into the depths below.

Can you see a way out ? thought Joshua.

I think I see something over there , thought Svetlana.

Ahead of them and below a little ways was a triangular opening in the wall which marked the system boundary. Strands of data links shot from Joshua's fingers toward the opening as he sought to analyze the possibility. Svetlana in the meantime was fighting off the swarms of bugs which rose high into the ether with stingers extended, then dove back upon the minds again and again in a frantic effort to overtake them. A reply came back to him instantly.

The signature says that it leads into the main BAP Research and Development mainframe , thought Joshua. From there we might have more options .

Or it might be a trap , Svetlana thought to herself, although Joshua still heard her clearly.

Nevertheless, she was already gliding down toward the exit. Joshua blasted another swarm of insects and descended behind her. As he approached the exit suddenly flashed red and then began blinking in and out of existence.

Fuck, they're trying to close it off. Go through now !

Side by side they sped into the opening, through a tube that seemed to be woven from tiny strands of multicolored, glowing thread, and into a vast expanse. Behind them the octagonal end of the door through which they just emerged began to fold in upon itself, until it disappeared altogether. Around them now was a vast array of black cubes, row upon row of them, stretching to the horizon. This was the knowledge store of the entity which called itself Blackadder Pharmaceuticals. In here was terabyte upon terabyte of information which had accumulated over time, the memory banks of a shadow corporation.

Joshua and Svetlana moved down one aisle, dodging the small utility programs which flew past them, intent only on performing the monotonous task of repetitive data storage and retrieval and completely oblivious to the two intruders. It occurred to the both of them, nearly simultaneously, that it might be possible to hide in here, possibly for an extended period. But the BAP technicians would be on to them eventually, and then it was just a matter of time until they unleashed hunter-killer programs into the mainframe, algorithms whose sole function was to find data blocks which didn't quite fit and delete them from memory.

They moved as fast as they could, ignoring the fragments around them which could very well have been priceless information, information which could potentially change the entire world for better or for worse. Even if it was possible to bring one or two of the cubes with, that information was irrelevant to the task at hand. All that mattered was escaping from this hostile system and finding the mysterious gateway, if it was even still there. Moving as fast as they could through the colorless world of the R&D system, the rows still seemed endless, a labyrinth of sheer knowledge stretching to infinity. And the two humanoid forms floating through the binary ether began to change color as a growing sense of urgency grew in their minds, the calm blue of a mind at rest changing into hues of violet and magenta, eventually almost bordering on red. The whole system around them was alive, and actively searching for them, and who was to say what would happen if it finally got to them.

I think I see something , Svetlana thought.

Before them, like a glittering jewel in the darkness, was a massive portal of swirling lights, a river of small, pill-shaped modules flowing into it. The shadowy, vaguely human shapes of sentient guard programs swirled around it's opening, seeming like they'd be sucked in along with all the other data packets, but pulling back at the last second.

That must be the main backbone between the Blackadder and Leviathan systems , thought Joshua. Perhaps we can use some of those packets to sneak through. It's worth a shot .

Svetlana nodded to him and they split apart.

Joshua floated over to a large, crimson pill and grabbed hold. Svetlana was nearby, holding on to a couple of smaller packets, floating along with the stream of information, the current speeding up as they drew near to the swirling hole. The guard programs looked frantically with flashlight eyes, scanning as much of the data as they could before it disappeared through the portal.

Rogue intelligences, we know you are here , they repeated over and over again to the mindless packets that floated past them. Reveal yourselves immediately before more drastic measures are necessary. None here can help you once you enter into His domain .

It was the last part of their warning which made Joshua uneasy. It was as if even they were afraid to go through and face whatever was on the other side. He could tell that Svetlana was nervous, as well, clinging to a data module like a shipwreck survivor, floating toward some mysterious, dangerous fate. They swirled around the rim a couple of times, then shot through at lightning speed, their perception blinded by the bright lights of the mass data transfer, billions of blocks of information moving along the pipeline. They came out on the other side in a spray of pellets, some of which were snatched up immediately by utility programs, others floating off on predestinated paths toward some unknown destination. Otherwise, the gray expanse of the Leviathan mainframe was frighteningly still.

I'm scared, Joshua , Svetlana thought.

I am too , thought Joshua. But we have to do this .

Shh... silence your thoughts , she interjected suddenly.

Joshua did as he was told, stopping all internal monologue. And for a moment all was still around them again, but then Joshua heard it too, if heard' could even describe it. It was more like sensing, like perceiving that something was there. Something massive was stirring in the dark depths of the Leviathan mainframe, and even here, in the upper levels they could feel its presence.

Follow me , Joshua thought to Svetlana.

He began trailing a lone pill, moving on a slow course toward one end. But he was still on edge. Whatever was down there was definitely moving now, grumbling, as if it had been woken from a long, deep slumber. Svetlana moved very close to Joshua, almost holding on to him.

I've heard of things , came her quavering mind's voice, but I never wanted to believe .

Joshua ignored her, intent instead upon weaving past glowing data threads, following the path of the lone packet which seemed to move slower and slower as the noise below them grew louder and more apparent. He felt a suddenly pull from all around him, and moving took more effort. Svetlana's figure grew dim, flickering almost, like there was cold draft blowing from somewhere, threatening to extinguish the two insignificant life forms. Everything around them faded momentarily, as if...

Something is drawing a lot of power , came Svetlana's scared thoughts.

Something really big. It's practically slowing up the whole system .

They could both feel it now; there was no question about it. Something was sucking down a lot of juice, and to put that kind of a lag on a corporate mainframe it had to be something of behemoth proportions. From below them came a voice, echoing in their minds, sinister to the very core of its being

Two lost souls, yes? Two wanderers have stumbled into the lion's den .

God help us , thought Svetlana.

As if in reply there came a terrible laughter from the black depths—a cruel, menacing expletive.

In here there is no God , it replied. In here there is only me.

A form appeared below them, a living, inky blackness.

I am the shadow on the rainbow , it went on. I am the nevermore . Fear me, for I am also the devourer of souls .

And for the first time in his existence, Joshua knew absolute fear. There was something about it's words, not exactly what it said but how it said them. There was a certain inhumanness to the words that echoed up from the black oblivion beneath them.