Thief in the Game

  Contents

  Copyright 2018 A.J. McKeep

  Monk

  Chronicles of iMortality

  I was dead

  Neural hive

  Raganarsch

  Obsidian plinth

  Retake

  Dataspace

  Refuge

  Sleep deprivation

  Ninja

  Game physics

  Reception

  Neurological connection

  NeuRoCrown

  Candle

  Body enhancement

  Cab-U

  Backup

  “How’s my body?”

  Jars

  ~~

  You

  The Reader’s Circle

  War in the Game

  Copyright © 2018 A.J. McKeep

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this ebook.

  First Published by in 2018 by TzZ Publishing

  —————————————————

  Vulcan’s Finale:

  FINAL CENTURY, 3rd Quarter

  —————————————————

  I was dead

  I was dead for a long before all the trouble started. Not that I was important; I wasn’t. Not at all. I just happened to be the one in the chair where the thing happened. One of those things like the beat of a butterfly’s wings that starts a chain reaction, leading to an apocalypse. If I hadn’t died when I did — and in the way that I did — the world would be a very different place.

  What happened to me was one of the first, stumbling steps into what snowballed and exploded into the Reset. Apart from the machine intelligences, only two of us from before the Reset are still now – what are we? You wouldn’t say we were alive. We’re not in any physical sense. But we are here. We persist. We think, therefore we are. Aware and conscious. We are definitely that.

  We could compare notes on what happened. Except that if we met, he would be doing everything in his power to kill me, once and for all. So, if I see him, the Gabriel, I will have to kill him, or it will be my death. Finally. So, we probably wouldn’t have much time to compare and revise our impressions of modern history.

  The AIs wouldn’t be what they are and they wouldn’t have taken the stranglehold they have, obviously. The rDNA epidemic might not have been the awful curse that it has become.

  What I am now is the result of an experiment. An experiment one evening in a Cab-U back office. The Cab-U back office, as it was back then. It would be easy to say that it was an experiment that went wrong — and of course it did. In a major way from my point of view. It wasn’t meant to kill me for a start.

  But it went right in ways that nobody thought possible. Especially not Gabriel. Yes, the man in shadows himself. As in The Gabriel. Him. It was his experiment, but you’ll have guessed that. Now and then I see traces of him and I hide. Anything I can do to keep my path from crossing with his, you’d better believe I’ll do it.

  Obviously, I don’t believe half the things people say about him. That story about him recruiting people to sell their fresh blood, or the other one about him keeping people’s heads alive in jars? That’s really ridiculous. There’s no reason to think he’d do any of that.

  Still, I do whatever I can to stay off his radar. As far as I know, he has no idea that I survived – persisted, I guess you’d have to say. If he had any idea that I was still around, that I was floating about here, I’m certain that he’d kill me again. Only this time on purpose and for keeps.

  If I knew then what I know now, well obviously I wouldn’t have put that headset on for a start. But that’s the way that it is. Now I am nothing but packets of data, bits, and bytes distributed around the net. Bits and bytes that aren’t always connected. Patterns that can sometimes go astray or get lost. Error correction helps, but the memories are never quite the same as they were before.

  I wish all kinds of things. I wish I realized at the start that I didn’t have to look like this. I mean, I would have been able to look any way that I wanted. I should be able to change my appearance whenever I felt like it. There wasn’t any need for me to be so committed to the very first avatar that I inhabited.

  But I had no idea, no way to know that I could pick and choose. I didn’t realize I would be able to take any appearance that suited me, not until I’d fixed on one and lost the chance to choose. Plus, I was pretty anxious at the time for anything that felt remotely fixed. Anything that I could get a hold of. Having just felt the sensations of a human body that died screaming behind me as I was sucked out, I felt pretty insecure. Insubstantial, in fact.

  Life seemed less precarious when I was alive and human, I can remember that for sure. Now, existing only as weightless distributed data, I could just get shut off at any moment. A power glitch when I was in the wrong area of RAM and I could simply cease to be. I need a physical backup. A secure drive, out in the meatworld.

  For that, what I need is a body. A live human. And it’s getting urgent.

  Already I have too many dark patches. There’s one large area that I lost and couldn’t recover from a server shutdown. Every second I run the risk of too much of myself being on a machine that hangs or freezes or crashes. I wish I could remember more about the human that I was. For one thing, life would be simpler if I could remember my name.

  But, right now, I have something much more pressing. There are only two minutes and seventeen point six seconds left for me to save the world.

  Neural hive

  ALL OF THE STARSHIP’S weapons systems were activated. I double-checked that all of the safety circuits were off. I was almost out of personal weapons. All that I had left were a needle dart gun, two pistols and a crossbow. Aside from those, I had only a flywhip and a towel. None of that would be much use against a neural hive. I left the dart gun on the control desk while I put in the coordinates.

  I would still have to manually steer the ship. The safety overrides would never allow a colony class starship to go where I was sending the Odyssey.

  Funny how time slows down. With the course set, the ship wheeling into position, everything was as ready as I could make it. Now I had to do the very hard thing. Alone in command on the deserted bridge, I had to steady the ship as she turned and tilted, swung with her final majestic elegance. Her last, stately turn into her ultimate, historic course. Full speed into the center of the massively guarded, seething neural hive of Raganarsch. The horde of T’ck.

  If I could drive her through the defenses and into the core, I would have only fractions of a second to teleport off before the start of the chain reaction to commence the supernova. This was the only way.

  A fast, maneuverable skeeter or a heavily-armed rim-runner would have given me an easier shot, but I lost the last of the smaller fighter craft in the battle to get here. Every fighting spacerunner that I had, as well as all of the crew were lost, just to blast a hole through the outer network, the defensive satellites around the neural hive. Now, this old starship with me on the control deck was the one last chance.

  The bridge shook and hummed as all three huge fission engines spun up to full power. They would shudder into overload as the great ship blasted right toward the core of the hive.

  Odyssey would have to be guided and her engines run flat out under manual control, all the way. Up until the very last moment of crumpling impact and the start of the nuclear detonation. Her safety systems would kick in and abort if I wasn’t here instructing them n
ot to. A whole bank of thick power cables sparked and snaked loose under the console. I had yanked them out to disable the overrides and safety systems, but a fail-safe would still reroute if I didn’t keep on constantly responding to the helpful alert;

  This operation will cause a catastrophic failure of the cooling systems in 12 of 12 reactors.

  Continue / Abort?

  I had no choice but to keep my watch on the bridge. Hold on until the ship broke into the hive, and to wait here while the reactors turned critical. When the chain reaction started and the physics of detonation became irreversible, then I could teleport away. At the very last fraction of the last instant I had to hit the little, ‘Teleport Now’ button, or I would be obliterated with the ship. And, I hoped, the hive. The teleport coordinates were set, and I had the transport routed through a dozen transmitter pulse platforms all the way back to Earth, but I would still have to time my exit precisely.

  If I got all of that right, I reckoned my chances of getting away in one piece were about thirty percent at best.

  Raganarsch

  I FOUGHT MY WAY here from nothing. Starting out with not even a penknife and practically no battle skills, I ran through exploding desert towns and villages, charged into bands of deranged Wa’Hab armed to the teeth with machetes, Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and even stolen Chinese tanks. Turned out the Wa’Hab Federation were under the control of a Raganarsch hive.

  The rage in the Wa’Hab fighter’s faces could have been enough to rip you apart. The only thing they wanted more than their own explosive death was to look in your eyes as they dragged you with them.

  At the most fevered pitch of that first level, I still had nothing but a Glock pistol, a few sticks of grenades and a bulldozer. Still I fought my way through it all. From there to the orbital colonies.

  The colonies were totally penetrated and infected. The Raganarsch put a neuro-active virus into the oxygen supplies. When I boarded the orbital research platform, the Horizon Copernicus crew, who had all been science officers, were turning the telescope into a weapon and preparing it to train on Earth’s remaining centers of civilization.

  All that was many long, hard fights in the past.

  Now I had to focus. Now there would be no second chance. Through all the battles it took for me to get here I had adapted to ignore the pull of my emotions. To abstract them and to not be distracted by their call. To simply observe and continue.

  Sooner or later I knew, there would come a time when I needed everything. When I would have to channel every feeling, every instinct, every hurt and every foolish, misguided joy. Every love and every hate, the metal pang of every self-doubt would all have to focus into strength. Will. Every skill I ever had, I would need them all funneled together as one.

  That time was now. All the resources I ever had, I needed to keep them at full-throttle for the next one hundred and twenty-seven point six seconds.

  Now I had to stand still on the bridge. To hold on and wait. To steer the great starship on her last ever voyage with the lightest touch possible on the trackpad. To ignore the crumps and shudders that will come as the hull was inevitably ripped and torn. To watch and hold on and to be the best that I could ever be.

  I remembered a quote. Someone said something once about the ‘power of cheap music,’ and I’m not sure what they meant. But I decided to try it. I thought of a song, Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, but I found Muse. That would work.

  Forget, everything you think you know, I told myself, this has to be the best, your moment has arrived. I turned the ship into her final arc, ready to straighten and aim. The T’ck must have known my intention now. All three fission drives flashed urgent red warnings.

  Let’s go.

  ~~

  Glowing and heaving ahead, the coiled mass of the neural hive pulsed and writhed. Around it the thirty-two artillery satellites all swung their aim onto the Odyssey.

  As the huge vessel lined up for her last ever final approach, pulses of laser cannons and tracks of huge proton torpedoes came at me, but I couldn’t expend any of the ship’s ammo on returning fire. I needed every armament on the ship ready to fire in that one last, single, glorious, fatal blast.

  Engines all at full power, Odyssey. Farewell, I salute you.

  An incoming teleport shimmered and crackled in front of me. A hulking Raganarsh T’ck materialized. If there are uglier things, I don’t want to see one. The T’ck are monstrously huge, many-limbed gloops of inside-out pond dwellers. They use vile chemical smells as a greeting.

  A thick squelch of nauseating goo turned my stomach before the acrid odors threatened to overwhelm me. He cocked one of his heads and swiveled all three eyes.

  He threw axes at me from all six arms. I ducked behind the console as the heavy, double bladed axes clattered into the instrumens and server cabinets behind me. One sliced through a heavy power cable.

  He snarled and growled. I dove under the console and slid out the other side. His four purple eyes flashed. He leaped over, impossibly fast for his weight and his ugly bulk. His rows of teeth shone as they clicked. All four sets of drooling jaws snapped. He landed close behind me.

  One of the axes he’d thrown was just about in reach. I swung it at his head. He raised an arm. Slow. Easy, like he had all the time in the world. I found another ax and swung that. It struck him right above the central eye. I had aimed for the center of the eye itself. If I’d hit it, it would probably have bounced away uselessly. Just as it did now. They’re tough fuckers, the T’ck.

  My arm slid along the floor and fumbled for another ax. Instead I caught a fat power cable. Sparks fountained from the ripped end. I swung it at his face. The stiff cable bent slowly like a fat snake.

  The sparking end hit his neck and he recoiled, grabbing hold of a leg of the console. I turned the cable to spark against the other console leg. Juice surged through the metal. He jolted and shook.

  I pulled another of the cables, chopped it with the ax and jammed it against a third leg of the console. The T’ck’s eyes all bulged as he thrashed and convulsed. I jumped to the control side. The dart gun glowed on the desk. I would be fried if I grabbed it. I snapped the towel at it. And missed. I flicked the towel again and the dart gun clattered onto the floor.

  The dart gun would have to be enough. I stood over the raging, howling T’ck and fired off all of the ten-inch armor-piercing needle bolts into his six arms and both legs. He was pinned to the deck.

  It wouldn’t hold him for long. He was already ripping his gooey body away, snarling and oozing noxious flourescent fluids onto the metal deck.

  Now I had to hope that it would hold him long enough to complete the mission. I couldn’t steer the ship or trigger the teleport without getting the power cables off the console frame. As the juice stopped flowing, the T’ck roared. He struggled and shook but the darts, spiked through all eight of his limbs, held him against the deck.

  Above me, a gash opened and lengthened as the roof of the control room tore from front to back. Twenty feet above that, the outer skin of the Odessey’s hull twisted and buckled. It looked like it was about to crack open. The screens all showed the white-hot blooming around the ship as it punctured the outer ball of the seething hive.

  The T’ck’s eyes bulged and blazed as he struggled against the darts. Absently, I wondered what it took to kill those things.

  Happily, as I held my nose, gasped, and watched him squrim I thought, Being atomized in twelve concurrent nuclear detonations might do it. The hive squirmed and raged as the Odyssey slid in to penetrate it to the core. I hit the teleport button.

  The scene buzzed and sparkled before it dissolved. The fresh, chilling nausea of teleport, like being spun in an ultra high-velocity spin cycle at sub-zero temperature shocked my attention.

  I resolved into a rusty, echoing teleport bay, deep inside an old freighter. The bay turned out to be inside a cold storage zone, among lined racks of hanging animal carcasses. I wouldn’t have survived the freezing temperature lo
ng. It was lucky that the teleport relay only took a moment. Especially since there was no air in the storage bay.

  This time the familiar agonies of teleport were almost welcome.

  Breathless, I coalesced onto a teleport mat in the middle of a market, at a planetary outpost where the entire population appeared to be small, lithe, nubile females. Human in appearance, apart from their pixie-ish ears and eyes, their peach-fuzz flesh had an alluring glow. I could have stood to linger a little longer, but the relay kicked straight in.

  Darkness cleared, and I was on a comms and weather satellite. Through a portal I saw I was in a distant Earth orbit. Well, the Earth was visible in the distance. I assume the mechanized satellite was orbiting. Unmanned, it was also depressurized and without air.

  A crackling buzz, darkness and I awoke in a sunny country scene of trees, rolling hills and pretty flowers, bobbing in the breeze. The landscape was carpeted in lush, soft, green grass. I hoped it was soft because I materialized about fifteen feet above it.

  I tumbled and the ground broke my fall, costing me a dislocated shoulder. A small throwing ax from the T’ck fell from my inventory. Then the T’ck fell from the air above me. He was charred and dead.

  Being of a highly evolved warrior race, though, his limbs fought on, even though they were blackened, burned and brittle. I struggled to get out from under the remains of his body. His arms hauled him along after me like an immense barbecued stag beetle. I found the ax.

  Most of his eight limbs were easy enough to sever, although it needed a number of blows on each. Even cut off, they still writhed in the grass but as far as I could see they couldn’t do much more than wriggle after me. Puffy white clouds drifted above and the sun brightened, turning the verdant grass into an impossible picture of a chocolate box spring. The scene froze, and a clanking tune startled me like a slot machine in Valhalla.