I’ve been holding onto this story for a while and I think it’s time to release it. You should also check out the novel Partition: Critical Era. It’s basically a Cyberpunk murder mystery best summed up as Severance meets 1984and Brave New World.
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The shine wears off, and the glamor of the New World starts to fade.
The Founders mingle with French dignitaries. A ruddy-faced Benjamin Franklin raises his glass and gives a bawdy toast, “Thus, as I am wont to say, ‘Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. And easy to bed, easy on the eyes, makes a woman lusty, busty, and by God, those thighs!”
Jefferson chokes on his hard cider and gives in to a coughing fit.
Hamilton rubs his brow, “Will somebody please take the cup from the honorable statesman from Philadelphia?”
Alex and Jintao sit in the corner, drinking PBR, unamused. Alex gestures with his bulgogi fajita appetizer. “You do know they all think we’re abominations.”
Jintao rolls his eyes and keeps scrolling through his feed, “Uh-huh.”
“I mean, how enlightened can they be if they all pooped in chamber pots?”
“I’m pretty sure they had outhouses.”
Alex scratches under his powdered wig, “Fine. They pooped in a hole. Why did you want to eat with them again?”
“I don’t know,” Jintao sighs and waves his hand through the candelabra. The candles waver just as much as their flames. “I thought ambiance would be romantic.”
Alex cracks a lop-sided grin and plays with the ring he put on Jin’s finger. “Honey, you’re all the ambiance I need. We could eat out of a dumpster and make it romantic. ”
Jintao gives in, “Okay, fine. If you want to do your space restaurant—”
“—Oh God, yes. Please!—”
“—We can do the freaking space restaurant, but I’m keeping the wig.”
“Deal.” Alex grins and pulls the menu. The hard corners of the colonial ballroom round out, and the Grand damask wallpaper is traded out for a dark, infinite void withered by entropy. Wealthy white landowners warp into a diverse cast of aliens. Ben Franklin’s considerable girth sprouts fifty arms, and he begins applying spray-on deodorant to his numerous pits.
The Restaurant at the End of The Universe proves a far more exciting choice. The Big Bang is spectacular, and the Hooloovoo’s stand-up routine is delightfully blue, leaving Jintao gasping as much as any offended debutant.
After their hour is up, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe fades back into their private booth, and they are left surrounded by white walls, motion tracker markings, and their finished plates. Other patrons sit in their own worlds, powered by their digitally streamlined hallucinations. Alex and Jin put their rented powdered wigs on the table and pay the bill.
Jintao sighs at the notice that the VR Cafe will officially become a ‘Node-friendly environment’ in the following year. ‘Node-friendly’ being what Callosum calls places they pay off to exclude Cortix Disks, Callosum’s main competitor. Most businesses were either ‘Disk-friendly’ or ‘Node-friendly’ these days, all falling victim to the escalating tensions in the consumer neural implant war, with neither side content with just half the market share.
The two return to reality and find themselves on Santa Monica Blvd, wincing at the intense afternoon sun. Alex wobbles and Jin catches him.
Alex steadies himself, “I’m good. I’m good. It’s just my head.”
“You only had two beers.”
Alex rubs the nickel-sized rose gold implant behind his ear, ”No, it’s my Disk. You know how I get when I use it too much.”
“Let’s pump you up full of caffeine and corn syrup. That always helps.” Jintao taps his own carbon steel Disk and drops a pin to the nearest coffee shop. A spotlight appears a few blocks off. He keeps a steadying arm around Alex, and they start walking.
Alex gives Jintao a nudge, “I hear Nodes don’t have this problem.”
“Ugh, don’t even get me started.”
Alex continues needling him to do precisely that, “I just think getting you into the Callosum Appstore will do you some good. You keep telling me you can port nOs apps into Codex, but you can’t port Codex apps into nOs.”
“Okay, sure. But with what money?”
Alex sours at that.
Jin pats him on the arm. “Trust me, if you had to navigate nOS restrictions, you wouldn’t be so gung-ho about switching over. Cortix is so much more coder-friendly—Watch the legs.”
Alex looks down and steps over the Displaced sleeping against the wall. Jintao gives the man a quick “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me” gesture.
The two have their problems just like any other couple. Their fights are often over the things they can’t afford, or the job Alex couldn’t find. He used to call himself a copywriter before the entire industry was outsourced to AI. There was no way to compete with a construct that could create a custom campaign perfectly tailored for every single person at a fraction of the price. The conversation could easily veer down that avenue of a well-worn argument. Instead, they choose to bask in the easy silence that comes with time.
Jintao rests his head on Alex’s shoulder, and Alex smiles, just because. They come to a crosswalk, and Jin gives him a soft and meaningful kiss, making up for the fight they didn’t have. “We’ll get with the times.”
“Yeah,” Alex says and keeps his doubts to himself. ‘The times’ were starting to feel like a game of musical chairs played by a hungry mob.
Jintao looks past him and squints at a message only he can see.
“What?” Alex asks.
Jintao focuses back on him, “Nothing. Just a weird message. Remember Stephan?”
Alex’s eyebrows rise as he digs through ancient history, “Your ex with the cats?”
“Cat tchotchkes.” Jintao corrects, “He just sent me something with the subject line, ‘I love you.’ God knows why.”
Alex guffaws, “Oh, honey, you gotta open it up.”
“Okay, okay,” Jintao says. He taps the air and goes still.
The lights turn green, and the crosswalk guy appears. Jin doesn’t move.
“Well, what does it say?” Alex asks.
Jintao opens his mouth and lets out a guttural noise. He swallows and tries to speak again, but nothing comes out.
“Jin?” Alex’s smile dies. He tries to take Jin’s hand, but it is balled into a white-knuckled fist. Jintao’s whole body is as rigid as a board. What the Hell is going on? Alex removes Jin’s shades and grows scared. Jintao’s pupils lock onto him, wide and trembling. He isn’t blinking at all. Was it a stroke? Alex pats him on the cheek, “Jin, baby, this isn’t funny.”
A message appears from Alex’s brother, Kieran. “I love you” is in the subject line. That was odd. Kerian was usually the type who showed brotherly love by punching Alex in the arm.
“What the fuck?” Alex is about to open the message when Jintao begins to move. he looks over his left shoulder and then slowly turns his head to the right. The movement is smooth, almost mechanical.
“Jin, talk to me,” Alex says as Jin’s gaze passes over him, a tear running down his cheek. Jin continues to sweep the area. Alex shakes Jin’s shoulders, “Baby, come on. Snap out of it!”
A horn blares, and tires shriek, punctuated by a painfully distinct ‘thunk.’ Alex flinches as a driverless SUV stops just feet away from him, leaving the smell of burnt rubber in the air. Its grill is dented and bloody. Alex’s eyes fall on a stray woman’s shoe by his feet, then on the woman herself... trying to pull herself from underneath the SUV.
“Oh, Jesus! Jesus––Fuck!” Alex looks for help, but no one else is nearby. He toggles his disk, dials 9-1–1, and stoops by the woman. Her hair is matted over her face. Her breath is ragged, but otherwise she’s silent. The woman just keeps trying to pull herself out, peeling off a fingernail in the process.
Alex speaks in a rush, “No, don’t move. Help is on its way. What’s your name, Ma’am?”
The woman doesn’t respond. She just keeps wheezing and pawing at the asphalt.
“Ma’am?” Alex turns back to Jin, who hasn’t moved an inch. “Goddamnit, Jin! Snap out of it and help!”
Emergency services aren’t picking up. Why isn’t anyone picking up? Alex is so jacked up on adrenaline that everything seems like it’s down a long hallway. ‘Tunnel vision,’ the rational part of his brain tells him that’s. He has tunnel vision. It also notes that the woman has a Cortix Disk just like him, but Alex doesn’t think anything of it.
Fuck it. Alex grabs the woman by the shoulders and pulls. He turns her over and recoils. The poor girl was dragged several feet, leaving her right side bloody and raw. Alex can see the bulge of a severely broken bone in her leg. Her shirt is pulled down, exposing her chest, and Alex’s first thought is to help her cover up, but the road rash is so bad that he doesn’t want to touch it and cause her any more pain. He takes in the damage, then realizes something else is far more wrong. She isn’t screaming. Why isn’t she screaming? The woman is just lying there with half her face ground off, her eyes locked onto Alex, not making a sound.
She abruptly sits up. Alex snaps out of it. “Oh no. Don’t move. You’re hurt, lady—”
The woman pushes herself to her feet, blood trickling down onto the asphalt in light rain, her eyes bulging, bouncing around in a panic while the rest of her face remains expressionless. She stands on her broken leg. Shattered bones grind against each other. With a crack, her calf rips open, and a jagged white edge pokes through.
Blood splatters against Alex’s cheek. He screams, but the woman doesn’t even wince. She takes a step, putting her total weight onto the leg, further tearing into her flesh. Her entire shin snaps in half with an audible crack, and the woman crumples to the ground.
Alex stumbles back and watches in horror as the woman tries to stand again, unfazed.
A second “I love you” message appears in front of him. This one from Jintao.
Alex spins around in a nightmarish daze. His husband is gone. “Jin? JIN!?”
A horn blares. He spots Jin a block away, walking across the street towards an overpass. Alex runs, quickly closing the distance, but he’s too far away.
Jin grips the overpass railing and begins to climb over.
Alex shoots across the street, ignoring the automated traffic, swerving out of the way. All he sees is his husband pulling his leg over the railing, leaving nothing but air between him and the twenty lanes of 405 traffic speeding below.
Time seems to slow as Alex watches Jin lean forward, letting his weight take him off the edge. Alex reaches out. His fingers graze his husband’s back. He grabs Jintao’s shirt in a fist and pulls. Jin slams against the railing, and Alex grabs hold of him, but Jin’s legs give out, and he almost slips from Alex’s grip. Alex holds on, nearly toppling over the railing along with him, but his foot snags on a bar.
Alex never considered himself a physically strong man nor is he particularly tall. His husband has him beat by five inches and forty pounds, but in that frenzied moment—A moment Alex will look back on and never know how he managed to do what he did—he pulls Jintao’s dead weight up and over the railing. They hit the ground, Alex smashing his head into the sidewalk. Jin’s body crushing his chest into the concrete, knocking the air out of his lungs.
Jintao rolls off Alex, leaving him dazed and wheezing. He immediately goes back to the railing. Alex scrabbles to his feet and rips Jin away once more. They topple back onto the sidewalk. Alex wraps his legs and arms around Jin’s torso and holds him down. Jin wordlessly tries to pull himself to his feet to achieve that single mindless goal, leaving the two wobbling like an upturned tortoise.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I got you.” Alex cranes his neck and looks around. A man is approaching, silhouetted by the sunlight. Alex calls out, “Please help. Something’s wrong with my husband. He keeps trying to--”
The man’s head blocks out the sun, and Alex’s voice catches as he sees the slack face; blank, short of his eyes bouncing around his skull. They stay on him for as long as they can, trembling with a silent cry for help.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” Alex looks away as the man walks past and starts to climb over the railing just as Jin did. He closes his eyes and focuses on Jin trapped in his embrace. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I got you. I’m not going to let go. I’m not going to let--”
A body hits the pavement below with a dull thump, a screech of tires, and a chaotic symphony of metal and glass.
***
It’s called the Cordyceps Trojan, and it kills thousands.
Named after Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that evolved with the specialized ability to control an ant’s nervous system. It compels the insect to climb to the highest point in the area. The fungus then eats its host alive from the inside out and blooms a mushroom out of the ant’s back so it can rain infectious spores down on other victims.
Similarly, the Cordyceps Trojan uses a zero-day exploit in the latest Cortix Disk operating system update to take over the user’s motor control, a function Cortix neglected to mention their neural implants could do. The Trojan then forces the victim to scan the area and enter the tallest building in sight. If the virus can not find a suitable structure, as in Jintao’s case, anything with a significant drop will do. Kieran, Alex’s brother, belly-flops into the deep end of his family’s empty pool. He will survive, but will never walk again without the aid of an assistive exoskeleton. Stephan, Jintao’s ex with the cat tchotchkes, lives on the 27th floor of a high-rise and isn’t as lucky.
Darsh Reddy, the CEO and President of Cortix was patient zero. Before he jumped off the rooftop of ‘Big Brain,’ the main administrative building on Cortix campus, he forwarded the Trojan in a company-wide email telling them all that they are loved. Most of the 12,000 employees on campus open it immediately, since email response time is notoriously monitored, and a delayed response may show poorly on the yearly review. The few that do not open the message are congregated around Big Brain’s east-facing windows. After witnessing Reddy’s body fly past, they are simply too preoccupied to check their inbox.
Within minutes, every infected individual around the 350-acre campus identifies Big Brain as the tallest building and flocks toward it. A silent orderly cue of the possessed forms in the multiple stairwells spanning the length of the forty-five-story building, and the dead began to pile up on the ground floor.
The Cordyceps Trojan is only a semi-sentient virus, capable of usurping control of the user’s body, but it is only able to perform rudimentary functions after that. It knows how to climb stairs, call an elevator, select the top floor, and open doors and windows, but it doesn’t know what to do if something is locked, even if the only thing in the way is a chain or latch. The virus, however, is also designed to be adaptive, counteracting the Codex operating system’s equally responsive security routines. When Cordyceps usurps control, it immediately begins to improve itself, overclocking the victim’s hardware to evolve its code through countless iterations of a generative adversarial network.
The original virus was intended only as a targeted attack on Cortix, but it is likely that whoever designed the Trojan never considered the delay caused by the rooftop traffic jam. After 12 minutes of continuous operation, Cordyceps goes off-script and changes its parameters, spamming a modified second-generation copy of itself to the contact lists of over 12,000 employees.
“I love you,” starts appearing in inboxes worldwide.
Even without the subject line, it’s a profoundly personal attack. By default, Cortix Disk users only receive notifications for messages from people the filters deem as important, causing most victims to be infected by close friends, family, coworkers, and lovers.
Every time the Cordyceps Trojan takes over another victim, it continues to improve itself before sending off the updated version to infect others. By the third generation of the virus, thousands of individual Cordyceps strains have developed the ability to contribute to an ad hoc cloud network of slave devices. The collaboration allows the virus to streamline its improvement and exponentially increase the speed of its evolution. By the fourth generation, the virus is repackaged into hundreds of targeted variants ranging from work-related, ‘URGENT: ACTION NEEDED’ to attaching custom synthesized nude pictures to send to unsuspecting romantic interests. By the fifth generation, the virus creates an nOS variant capable of hopping the neural implant divide into Callosum Nodes. By then, however, Callosum has identified the threat and blocks any communication coming from the Cortix ecosystem.
The response from law enforcement is ineffective. By the time they arrive on Cortix Campus, a wall of corpses surrounds the Big Brain building, and the steady rain of bodies going terminal velocity makes any attempt to clear a path just as suicidal.
Only Callosum’s quick response proves able to stop the virus. They immediately recall their army of CyberSec AI leased to local and federal law enforcement and task the constructs into breaching Cortix’s mainframe. It’s the cyber attack equivalent to storming the beaches of Normandy, and the moment Callosum gains a foothold, they force an overriding shutdown for every single Cortix Disk in operation, stopping the forced death march in its tracks and killing the Cordyceps cloud network.
The victory comes just in time. Later forensic data analysis lead many to believe the Cordyceps Trojan was only minutes away from evolving a method of activating the instant it entered a neural implant. If unchecked, the virus could have led to a mass suicide event numbering in the tens of millions.
Eric Noble trudges in the early pre-dawn glow and sleepily nods along to all of this. He yawns, “So, what? The moral of the story is Don’t buy generic.”
Alex shifts the bucket of cleaning supplies to his other arm. “Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that Callosum was somehow able to break in and save the day?”
Eric shrugs. “Eh, security clearly wasn’t Cortix’s strong point.”
“But what if Callosum wasn’t the hero at all? What if they were the ones who did it? It was clearly corporate biological warfare.”
“And with a computer virus no less,” Eric adds with a smirk.
Alex goes silent, remembering Jin told him to play nice. Eric is an okay enough guy, but he’s definitely less of a friend and more the painfully heterosexual man your friend married.
A Social notification appeared by his side, @TheQuietPart: Checkmate is coming. Callosum will reveal itself. Alex automatically likes it and reposts it to his own followers.
They step out of the LAPD PubSec cameras’ view and into an alleyway. Eric lights a cigarette and tempts Alex. Neither can afford to get fined for breaking the Public Smoking Ordinance, but Alex gives in.
Eric exhales, “So I take it Jin woke up screaming again? You usually don your tin foil hat when that happens.”
Alex nods. It’s been two years, and that day still comes to them as nightmares, Jin worst of all. He was conscious the entire time. Jin could only watch as he walked towards the edge.
They cut through the alleyway and face the old self-serve car wash. Every slot is taken up by a Displaced rolling up their tent. Eric drops their steam cleaner and moans.
@CordyInception: They will erase you to remake this world in their image.
These days, everything that can be automated is automated. It leaves too many able hands and not enough work. Alex and Eric thought they were onto something with SparClean, the remote car detailing gig. They had yet to invent the machine that could scrape crud out of a dashboard with a toothpick. They simply turned the app on, a car pulled up, they cleaned it, and then the car drove off. Rinse and repeat. Get paid per car. Most importantly, SparClean is the type of gig people call “Good node work.” The app is only available on the Callosum marketplace, meaning you need a Node to use it. That keeps the competition down, and it was a barrier that many people were coming to rely on.
They found early on that if they claimed a self-wash bay for the day, it could significantly cut down their time, which meant more cars and more cash. The only problem was that they weren’t the only ones with the same idea. Each morning became a race to claim the self-wash bay before everyone else, and the race was starting earlier and earlier each day. Then a week ago, SparClean launched a version of the app for tablets, and it was no longer “Good node work.” Almost immediately, the cars available to be detailed was cut in half. This morning, it appeared the Displaced even caught on to their self-wash strategy.
@TheQuietPart: Hate the symptom. Ignore the cause.
“How the Hell are we supposed to compete with fucking Dusters camping out like that?” Eric asks, working himself up into a solid statist rant.
“I don’t know,” Alex sighs, “Let’s just go find a parking spot near a spigot.”
“No, screw this! I’m sick of these transplants swarming over our fucking city! If it’s not some dehydrated Arizonan or inbred Salt Lake polygamist, it’s a goddamn Texan ’fugee fleeing the Lone Star Militia. I’m sick of it!”
Alex just turns around and walks back the way they came.
@DeathByDisk: They’re coming after dissenters. They’re trying to disappear us.
Eric catches up to him. “Sorry, that wasn’t my most shining moment. Don’t tell Dee.” He grabs the post out of the air, “Is this your feed? Christ, what are you tapped into?”
“The tinfoil hat types.” Alex says, “It keeps me sane, knowing I’m not the only one.”
“Said the patient inside the insane asylum,” Eric mutters.
They find a parking spot near a spigot, but are only able to clean one car. The rest of the time was spent waiting for the SparClean algorithm to favor them. Halfway through the day, it’s clear the well has dried up. The laws of Supply and Demand have struck again.
They give up and go to the mall for lunch. Alex lets Eric pull him into a Callosum Clinic showroom. Eric fawns over the specs of new node models, bad mouthing the manufacturers, and espousing brand loyalty as if any of it made a difference. The ancient behemoths of Silicon Valley, Cupertino, and Japan were nothing more than supplicants to Callosum these days.
Alex feigns interest, flicking his eyes towards each employee and the customers waiting in line to upgrade their hardware. He records it all, making sure to focus on each face for a full second. Afterwards, he sends a message to an anonymous account, “Mission complete.”
Back in Alex and Jin’s little studio apartment, they find their respective partners deep in their project. They slip out of their work shoes.
“This moment always reminds me of my Dad,” Eric says, “He’d come home from a long day of work and the first words out of his mouth were, ‘I’m not home. I know I look like I’m home, but I’m not. Give me a minute.’”
Alex chuckles as they don their moonwalkers, and the traction-control ball bearings sync to the sim. They leave the Real and enter the Digi. Alex and Jin’s little shoebox expands out into their cottage in the Grand Cayman Islands. Alex takes a deep breath as the white walls become a sunset along the beach. The view has long felt more like home than home. They walk down to the shore, moving several yards for every inch in the Real, feeling a simulacrum of the extra effort it takes to slog through the sand. They make their way over to where Jintao and Dee sit, surrounded by floating words and chalkboards covered in Neuro script.
Dee brushes a lock of curly red hair out of her face and smiles. She gives Eric a kiss on the lips, passionate enough to grace a romance novel in the discount download bin. Jin offers Alex a smile. It’s warm and genuine, but a cold, contact-free substitute in comparison.
Dee sniffs and points back towards the cottage, “Go shower, you stink.”
“Okay, okay,” Eric says and exits the sim, turning the five-minute walk back into a five-foot trek to the bathroom.
@TheQuietPart: They won’t stop until they have a monopoly over the world
Jin sees the post, and the smile dies.
Alex sets his feed to private and quickly shifts the focus, “How goes the mind reading?”
“‘Therapeutic word cloud.’” Dee corrects, “Calling it ‘mind reading’ raises privacy concerns. And it’s going well.”
“I actually think we might have this Brain Hack Competition in the bag,” Jin says, which is more than hopeful coming from him. Alex is usually the optimist in the relationship. If Jin and Dee make a splash in the Callosum competition, a third-party developer might offer them a job. The challenge these days wasn’t proving you were a good programmer. It’s proving you can code better than a guided AI construct.
“So it’s working?” Alex asks.
“Yep,” Jin says as words begin to float around him in various sizes and colors. ‘Shit’ briefly appears over his head as Jin realizes something. He flips a switch, and all the green words disappear.
“It’s been analyzing our thoughts for four hours now. The results have been… enlightening,” Jin says, his right dimple making an appearance in one of his more obvious tells. It usually means he’s embarrassed but doesn’t want to look embarrassed.
“What do the colors mean?” Alex asks, fixating on the words Jin filtered away. Alex could only catch one before disappearing, “Slipping.”
Jin’s dimple deepens. “It’s color-coded by association. Red are thoughts about life. Purple are thoughts about myself.”
“And the Green are about me? Do you think I’m slipping? In what way?”
“No, it’s just….” Jin swallows a grimace, “Jesus. Let’s not get into it.”
“Like he said. It’s been enlightening.” Dee says, quick to step in, pulling up her own word cloud. “Baby,” “mother,” “father,” and “The future” are most prevalent.
Alex gasps, “Oh my god. Dee, are you pregnant?”
Dee bites her lip and pulls the bathroom door out of the Real. She mutes the ocean to check if Eric has the shower running. “Apparently? It was news to me. At least, I wasn’t aware on a conscious level, but I took a test. And yeah, I am. Don’t tell Eric.”
Alex doesn’t know if he’s more excited for her or for their app. “That’s amazing.”
“You want to give it a shot?” Jin asks.
Alex hesitates, thinking what it may show, then nods. “Sure.”
Jin runs the app, and words begin to surround him. Or at least, they look like words. It’s a rainbow of letters, numbers, and symbols all mixed together into the shape of words.
Jin trades looks with Dee. “What the hell?”
“Shit,” Dee says, “What did we do wrong?”
They can live in paradise most of the day, but as they get ready for bed, they have to take their moonwalkers off and step back into the reality of their studio apartment. It’s uncomfortable and claustrophobic. They become hyper-aware of each other’s breathing, and it’s harder to ignore the conversations they each pinned for later.
As they lower the mattress, Alex finally broaches the topic. “Do you think I’m slipping away from you?”
“No.” Jin sighs and sits down. “Just no.”
“So are you slipping away from me?”
“Come here,” Jin says, patting the bed.
Alex sits, and Jin kisses him. It’s long, deliberate, with the promise of more folded into it. Alex can’t tell if it’s an answer or a deflection, but he takes it anyway. He always does. He lets Jin lead, reads every small hesitation, and pulls back the second he feels tension. He sticks to what he knows Jin is comfortable with, careful not to surprise him, careful not to want too much or let him feel smothered.
The therapist once called Jin “a survivor of rape, in some ways,” and it was the truth of it. The Cordyceps Trojan forced itself into Jin’s body, rewiring him from the inside while Alex stood there helpless, watching the person he loved get taken over inch by inch, neuron by neuron, pulled and pushed to the very edge.
That memory lingers now. It always lingers. Heavy as the humidity trapped inside their small confines. It sits at the foot of the bed like something alive, patiently waiting for a misstep, threatening to clear its throat and ruin the intimacy. They work around it, eyes closed, hands moving through shuddered breaths, pretending the shadow isn’t there. It’s the closest thing they have to peace. Some nights, that’s enough.
Other nights, it isn’t.
There’s silence, then a single sob. Alex doesn’t hug or hold Jin. Making him feel constricted would only make it worse. Instead, he lies beside him, stroking his back.
Jin doesn’t apologize. He stopped doing that long ago. An apology implies that something can be fixed.
“Wake up.”
Alex rubs his eyes. His node syncs with the sim, and he’s taken back to the beachside cottage. A message waiting for him. ‘I’m outside.’ Alex sits up and looks out the window. A shadow stands against the moonlit sky. He turns to check if Jin is still asleep. He is.
Alex stands and starts recording a POV, finding some comfort in at least having a record of whatever the hell these weird rendezvous were. He slips on his moonwalkers and turns on the patio light. The shadow remains a void cut out of his surroundings, one Alex has never been able to look at for too long. Looking at the shadow was like staring at an optical illusion, and it leaves his brain trying to make sense of the elephant with four legs and five connected feet.
Alex walks outside. A foraging crab scuttles off the deck. The high tide crashes against the rocks beneath them.
“Were you noticed?” The shadow asks.
“No,” Alex says and hands over several video files, including the one he recorded inside the Callosum Clinic. He checks on Jin through the window. “And a little warning next time.”
“I have a new task for you,” the shadow says.
“Hold on. You still haven’t explained the last task. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“I’m here because you want the truth, and I need your help. Too many contacts have been burned. I can’t trust this to someone who might be on their radar.”
Alex tries to protest, but the shadow stops him, “No. Just listen. They’re trying to trace my connection. We don’t have time. All I can say is that I work on the inside, and I have evidence: proof that Callosum created Cordyceps and that their attack on Cortix is just the beginning, but it needs to be delivered to the right hands through an intermediary. Can you do that?”
Alex nods, “Yeah—Yes. Of course. I’ll help.”
“Good. Then it’s time we meet IRL.” The shadow conjures up a card with an address. “Be here. Three o’clock tomorrow.”
“Alex?”
The shadow abruptly disappears. Alex spins and faces Jin.
Jin doesn’t take the news well. “You’ve been casing clinics for this guy for months, and you don’t even know why!”
Alex pulls out the POV he recoded of the shadow, “I’m about to find out. I swear I was going to let you in, once I did.”
“You could be aiding and abetting a Luddite bomber for all you know.”
“He’s not a terrorist. Jin, just listen—”
“No, you listen. This obsession isn’t healthy. You need to let it go. Your entire life has become wrapped up in these insane conspiracy theories.”
“They’re not insane. Do you know what’s insane? Not being able to take you anywhere that has a railing. There’s a whole group of friends we no longer see because they live above the second floor, and it’s only gotten worse. You barely go outside. I can’t even hold you anymore because it reminds you too much of that goddamn day. Do you know how hard that is for me?”
Jin goes silent, and Alex feels like an asshole, but it needed to be said. He continues, “I’m doing this for you, Jin. If we can just get some accountability, find the bastard who coded it….”
“Nothing will change, Alex. The damage is done… We just need to live with the scars.”
“I can’t.” Alex says and presses the video forward, “Not when their tech is in our heads.”
Jin watches Alex’s POV, then watches it again, messing with the settings, trying to figure it out. Finally, he leans back with an exhale and shakes his head, “I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand?” Alex says, “We need to go.”
“No, hold on.” Jin takes his hand and slows him down, “I couldn’t find anyone besides us connected to our network, and something is off with your POV. Look:” Jin rewinds the video to the moment Alex turns the porch light on. “See how the light doesn’t touch him?”
“I know, it’s weird.”
“No, that’s not just weird. That’s not right. That’s not how light works with nodes. Light…” Jin mulls over how to get the idea across, then conjures a glowing lightbulb and moves it around, “Okay, you see how this is illuminating the room? In old physics-based graphic engines, this was a massive resource suck to do realistically because the GPU needed to calculate and simulate how the rays bounced off all the surfaces. Nodes don’t do that. Instead of simulating a lightbulb, it describes the lightbulb, directly manipulating your visual cortex into thinking there actually is a lightbulb in my hands.”
“Yeah, it’s a hallucination. I get it.” Alex says, growing impatient.
Jin holds up a finger, “But so is the light that it creates, and that’s the problem. When you turned on the light, your node told your brain to illuminate the porch, but Mister Shadow Man wasn’t included. It’s almost like someone copy-pasted him over the sim, which made me think to do this:”
Jin toggles a switch. In the POV, the shore and starry night become a bare white wall, but the shadow remains.
Alex shakes his head, “What? Do you think I’m pranking you?”
“No,” Jin says quickly, “I’m saying your node wasn’t causing you to see Mr. Shadow Man. That’s weird—On top of what already sounds like a plot from a freakin’ spy thriller.”
At 2:55 PM, Alex and Jin find themselves in a cliché, waiting in the corner of a dark parking lot. Not a soul is here. All of the traffic is from autonomous cars stowing themselves in empty parking spots. The hum from the EV contact charging pads leaves the air buzzing.
“Just like a freakin’ spy thriller,” Jin murmurs, pressing ignore on a call from Dee.
“Uh-huh,” Alex says and lights a cigarette just to add to the ambiance.
A message appears in front of Jin. “Check your messages. CC wants to meet.”
Jin closes the message and curses. His dimple makes an appearance, but before Alex can pry, they hear someone approaching. A mousy man turns the corner, trying to appear confident, but he’s on edge.
As a sedan silently creeps between them, he asks, “Are you Alex?”
Alex crushes his cigarette under his shoe, “Yeah. ”
The man quickly crosses the distance. Alex offers a hand to shake, but the man doesn’t take it. “I’m Chetan Patel. I work in Callosum CyberSec. Thank you for doing this.”
“You said you have proof,” Jin says, still half unconvinced about all this.
Chetan looks both ways and then says, “Yes. The attack on Cortix ensured Callosum had a monopoly over neural implants, but it was never about controlling the market. It was about controlling us. The trojan is just a version of the Cordyceps AI they modified to be fatal. What the world needs to fear is the original construct that keeps you very much alive.”
Alex swallowed, “What do you mean?”
“The Cordyceps AI is specifically trained to operate a human body. It’s still out there, and it’s been evolving all this time. The virus could be inside anyone, and it intends—”
Tires shriek on the floor below, and they both turn towards the light coming around the corner. Chetan turns back, conjuring up a file taking the form of a floppy disk. “Shit. Take this. Seek The Quiet Part in the Shadow Forums and trust no one. Go! GO!”
They all run towards the stairs, but a black container van rips around the corner, blocking Chetan’s escape.
Jin sees movement through the glass of the stairwell door. He yanks Alex behind a car just as two men dressed in plain clothes burst out. Alex holds his breath and clamps his hand over Jin’s mouth as they run past, closing in on Chetan with silenced pistols raised. The van’s door slides open on its own, revealing an empty boxy interior.
Chetan looks his abductors in his eyes and says in a shaky voice, “I know you’re in there… That this isn’t you. I’m sorry. I do not blame you for this.”
There is no exchange of words. The men simply shove Chetan into the van and shoot him twice in the chest and once in the head. They close the door, and the van drives off without them.
Jin moans into Alex’s hands as two killers turn around. Their eyes are bouncing around in a panic, just like a Cordyceps victim.
“Run,” Alex hisses. They sprint towards the stairwell, keeping a row of cars between them and the killers. They fire. Concrete explodes by their sides. Glass shatters, and car alarms go off.
Jin covers his head and squeals, “Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!!”
Alex slams into the pushbar and pulls Jin inside the stairwell. They rocket down the flights and stumble out a side exit. Alex shoves a dumpster in front of the door.
Jin whirls, incoherent. “Oh God, it’s true. It’s still out there. I can’t, Alex. I just can’t—”
The door slams against the dumpster, and Jin screams.
Alex grabs him by the shoulders, “They didn’t get a good look at our faces. If we keep our shit together, we can just walk away. Can you do that?”
Jin shudders out a nod.
“Just be cool, baby,” Alex says as he takes his hand, and they briskly merge into pedestrian traffic, walking westward as the two killers exit out the front. They turn towards the sun and squint, searching for Alex and Jin, but they’re already gone, blending into the crowd.
Once they’re several blocks away, they cut through an alleyway and hide around the corner. Alex tries to open the file, but keeps receiving “Unknown Read Error”.
“Let me see,” Jin says and takes a copy. He conjures up a piece of chalk, writes a command across the cement wall, and swipes his hand over it, executing it. His node analyzes the file. “Weird. The data isn’t encrypted or corrupted. The container just won’t open.”
“Maybe it’s only meant for The Quiet Part,” Alex suggests, and the name makes Jin’s nose wrinkle. The prolific Social poster is the reason Alex started obsessing over Cordyceps theories in the first place.
“You’re making the stank face,” Alex says.
“I don’t like the hold that guy has over you, and now he has you involved in all this.”
Adrenaline meets aggravation. Alex grits his teeth. “He’s an influencer among the truthers. He’ll know how to get the information out there. Can we not have this argument?”
Another message from Dee arrives. Jin glances at it and drops the topic. “Yeah. Of course. Dee needs me for something. I need to handle this because I can’t handle all of… that.”
“No, go,” Alex says and squeezes his hand.
Jin hesitates. “Just promise me something. This whole mess has officially become dangerous. Deliver the data, then wash your hands of all of it. I can’t do this anymore, and you’ve done enough.”
In the heart of downtown Los Angeles, sits Callosum Corp HQ. It’s a monolith, tapered in such a way that, for those looking, ‘The Needle’ does not seem to end. It just vanishes into the distance.
Jintao and Dee stand at the very base getting its full effect, then Jin gets acquainted with a trash can. He thought being inside the belly of the beast would be too much after the craziness in the parking lot. Turns out, he is okay with walking into the belly as long as he stays in the belly. The idea of being vomited up into the tallest goddamn building in the world leaves him on the precipice of a breakdown.
“You can do this,” Dee says. “I’ll be with you the entire time.”
They walk into the lobby, an endless expanse centered around a massive tree shaped into the hemispheres of a brain. They sit, and Dee holds Jin’s hand while he has a low-key panic attack.
A cheery woman with a digital id on her chest, briskly walks ups, “Diane and Jintao, it’s great meet you. I’m Aiesha Coates, R&D Human Resources Liaison. Come with me.”
“Is this about the Brain Hack competition?” Diane asks. Neither could figure out Alex’s weird results, and it left them convinced they had submitted a faulty product.
“Yes and no,” Aeisha says, taking them to an elevator, “But it’s a good thing. Trust me.”
The elevator opens, and Jin stops in his tracks. He swallows. “What floor are we going to?”
“The eighty-fourth,” Aiesha says, and enters the elevator. ”You’re gonna love the view.”
Jin backs away, “I-I can’t. I’m sorry, Dee. I can’t.”
Aeisha holds the doors open. “Is there a problem?”
Dee rubs his shoulders, “Jin is a Cordyceps survivor. He has issues with heights.”
Aeisha’s eyes go wide. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. Say no more. They’ll come down to you.”
An ad hoc conference room is thrown up in the corner of the lobby. Inside, the digital walls give way to a field of wild flowers chosen specifically for Jin. People file in, far more than Jin and Dee expected, and the last person to enter leaves them dumbfounded. It’s Dr. Nathan Lam, one of the three founders of Callosum and the second richest man in the world.
Dee and Jin stammer and shake the trilionare’s hand.
“I rooted around your code,” Dr. Lam casually says, ”It’s really good work. Are you self-taught?”
“Yes,” Dee says, “I was Pre-Med when the Node came out. I thought about switching majors to Computer Science, but they weren’t teaching Neuro, so I just dropped out. Admittedly, that wasn’t the smartest idea.”
“I disagree. Much of Callosum is made up of Silicon Valley types.” Doctor Lam says, “That cred will actually get you further around here than an actual doctorate. And you, Jin?”
“I was coding for Codex and porting nOS apps before the—Well, yeah.”
Chairs creak in a beat of awkward silence. Aiesha quickly takes the reins. “So let’s get right to it. We love your app. It’s therapeutic application alone is a game changer, but the word association algorithm behind it is truly revolutionary.”
“There’s a whole team trying to rewrite nOS to achieve what you did with surface-level access,” Dr. Lam says, “We’re not supposed to tell you this, but your app is on the shortlist for the Brainhack Competition and will most likely win.”
Dee blinks several times. Jin tries their best not to squeal.
Aiesha continues, “Unfortunately, that is also why we believe it would be best if you withdrew from the competition.”
Dee shakes her head, “I don’t understand.”
@TheQuietPlace: Get to the Shadow Forums. I am waiting.
Alex walks out of the vintage store in a fresh change of clothes, hoping it will throw them off his trail. He was wrong. The second he steps back onto the street, a woman walking her dog turns and stares at him, her eyes jittering.
Chetan’s words come back to him. “It could be inside anyone.”
Alex picks up speed and darts through into a side street. Cordceps has been following him, and he can feel the AI’s eyes on the back of his neck no matter how many times he tries to lose it. At first, he thought he was being tailed by undercover Callosum agents, but it was far worse. Cordyceps is briefly taking over people to keep an eye on him.
He turns toward the display window of an unlicensed 3D print shop, and pretends to peruse the printed wares. Looking over his shoulder, he can see them watching him. It’s as though a single prolonged stare is bouncing from head to head, so that no one person gives him more than a passing glance. The virus is just waiting for the right moment. He’s sure of it.
Alex considers the handwritten sign in the window, “We can make anything.”
He walks into the print shop. The clerk glances over his feed and gives an inquiring grunt.
“I need something off the menu,” Alex says.
The clerk closes the window and looks him over. He decides Alex isn’t a cop and nods, “You want a nine-mill or a thirty-eight? The thirty-eight’s less likely to blow your fingers off.”
***
Eric leans against the leg of a mech, and the servos of his power armor hiss. “What makes you think I know how to get to the Shadow Forums? Only pedos and pirates go there.”
Alex motioned around the hangar bay, “Are you telling me you paid for this shooter?”
Eric chews on a mozzarella stick dripping with marinara sauce and nods, “Fair point.”
His skeevy modder friend—named Hobbes, Bob, or something. Alex never cared to find out—snorts a stim and butts in, “Going to the Bazaar is super illegal, man.”
Eric points to the alien planet being bombarded by Gothic battleships. “And there’s a major campaign going on.”
“I’ll pay for another hour. I wouldn’t barge into your game if it wasn’t important.”
“Okay.” Eric shrugs and exits the game, trading his power armor for jeans and a t-shirt covered in red sauce. The space station melds back into the square VR room.
Eric rubs his neck, “Don’t know if you know, but I’m in a weird place with Dee.”
Hobbes croons, “Because somebody’s gonna be a baby daddy.”
“Wait. She told you?” Alex asks.
“No, I found a pregnancy test in your bathroom trash can and took an educated guess it wasn’t from you or Jin—Wait. How do you know?”
“Dee told us.”
Eric turns to Hobbes. “See? She’s confrontational about everything except this. I don’t get it. Why hasn’t she said anything?”
Alex rubs his eyes. He doesn’t have time for this. “How did Dee dispose of the pregnancy test? Was it hidden under stuff or wrapped up like a used tampon?”
“No, it was just in your trash. I didn’t exactly go rooting around for it.”
“Eric, honey, she wanted you to find it. It’s probably why she told you to take a shower. Dee knows you know and is giving you time to freak out and get it out of your system.”
Eric stares at Alex for a beat, then blinks. “Shit. That’s totally what she’s doing.”
He pulls out an ornate key, and a set of gilded doors appears in front of them. Eric inserts it and gives it a turn. Massive tumblers clink and turn as the room gives way to the terracotta alleys and draped cloth of the Grand Bazaar.
In a vast sea of impermanence that is the darknet, the Grand Bazaar is a lighthouse pulling the sick and wary to its ad-hoc hubs. Its creation is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries. Seventy years ago, it simply appeared, fully automated, unmoderated, and ready for business. Five years ago, it received its first major update, and now node users could walk its halls completely anonymous, bringing along the worst of humanity.
Alex sticks behind Eric as they weave around pop-up shops and fire-sales, and he’s left bewildered by the illegality of it all. Killers hand out pamphlets showing their body of work. Blackhats sell ransomware next to Whitehats offering security solutions. Thieves hawk skimmed credit keys by the thousands, and traffickers offload flesh—Men, women, endangered animals, both synthetic and organic human organs, as long as no one asks where it comes from. The whole time, Hobbes scrampers from booth to booth, like some kid in a demented candy store
A video appears by Alex’s side of a woman leaping off a high-rise. Alex stops in front of a booth selling Cordyseps suicide compilations, and his heart is ratchets up a gear.
Eric quickly pulls him away, “Try not to look at the wares. Some things can’t be unseen.”
They blend back into the packed crowds, disregarding the physics of personal space. Eric does his best to keep Alex distracted. “Do you think I’d make a good father?”
“I think it won’t matter,” Alex says, glancing over his shoulder. For a brief second, he swears he saw something. Something seemingly pressed into the Bazaar itself. He shakes it off and turns back. “As long as Dee is the mother, the kid will turn out alright.”
They turn the corner, and two more indentations watch them pass, tall and thin funhouse-mirror shapes of men, taking form as they warp the area around them. A third begins to walk by their side, keeping a row of booths between them. Alex points it out, “We’re being followed.”
Eric stops and stares at their semi-invisible tail, “Well, that’s new. Maybe it’s lag.”
Hobbes bumbles back and glances at the indentation, “Naw, that looks like a rogue AI. They’re all over the Bazaar.”
Alex stops him, “Hold on. Like a virus?”
“Eh. More like benign parasites. They siphon processing power from unsecured devices to continue to operate.”
“Not these ones,” Alex says and shoves Eric forward. “It’s the Cordyceps Trojan.”
Eric raises an eyebrow, “Uh, what? You can’t seriously believe that.”
Alex notices a fourth indentation closing in on them, “Trust me. We need to go, now.”
They start running, clipping through the crowd, but the Cordyceps men don’t give chase. Instead, they grow in number, propagating exponentially along their sides.
Eric moans, “Dude, what the hell did you do?”
Alex pulls Eric to the side, keeping him from running into a twisted mob. “Just keep going.”
It’s not long until the entire Bazaar is a warped mirror of itself. Eric pulls Alex through a doorway into the lobby of a Moroccan lounge. Hobbes is a step behind, but it’s too late. The man shrieks and as hands grab him.
Eric’s eyes go wide, “Hobbes!”
He reaches out, but Alex pulls him back. Hobbes moans as the viral horde closes in, his image twisting and stretching. He screams, then disappears.
Alex slams the door closed and doubles over. “We should be good…The Shadow Forums are on a private server, right? No bots allowed.”
“Yeah…” Eric pulls up a section of the VR room and finds Hobbes flicking his node. “Dude, what happened?”
Hobbes shrugs, “No clue. My Node shat a brick and lost the connection. I’m gonna go have a smoke.”
Eric turns to Alex, “What the Hell was that about?”
“I have leaked information proving Cordyceps was made by Callosum. The virus is trying to stop me.”
Eric takes a step back and eyes the exit. He sucks in his lips and lets out ‘pop.’ “Okay, cool… Cool. So pissing off a multinational is where I draw the line. I’m gonna go with Hobbes.”
Aisha Cotes pulls up an offer, and Doctor Lam slides it across the table. Diane and Jin look down at the terms and try to keep it together. Callosum wants to buy their app outright, offering to double the grand prize of the Brain Hack competition.
Dee looks up, suspicious, “How much money do you plan to make off all of this?”
Dr. Lam waves his hand, “On the app itself? Nothing. It’ll be integrated into the suite we offer licensed therapists. As for your word association algorithm? We have big plans.”
Aeisha Cotes pulls up a second set of documents, and Dr. Lam slides it over. “And we would like you both to be a part of it.”
It’s employment contracts. Callosum wants to hire them full-time. The salary seems like a joke at first, then a mistake, then a dream.
A very good dream.
An obscenely French Maître D’ gives Alex a slight bow, “Bonsoir, monsieur. Welcome to the Shadow Forum. Where shall I direct you?”
Alex nods, “I’m looking for The Quiet Part.”
The NPC makes a show of checking a guest list, “There is no user by that name.”
“Thenshow me all the Codyceps rooms,” Alex says, then remembers the booth and adds, “The Truther rooms. Exclude anything tagged NSFL.”
Only one room shows up, ‘Justice for Cortix’. Alex selects it.
“Oui, monsieur.” With a bow, the Maître D’ disappears. The lobby became a dimly lit room filled with pillows. Hanging stained-glass lamps casts everything in a kaleidoscope of shadows and color. Social posts float in the air, many from @TheQuietPart and @DeathbyDisk.
“Hello?” Alex calls out to the empty room. Alex brushes past a lantern, and it slowly spins in place. The shifting light warps ever so slightly around the indentation of a man, sitting cross-legged in the corner.
Alex moans. It’s the Cordyceps virus. He’s about to drop out of the room when it speaks softly, “Wait. I am the one you seek, Alex. I am The Quiet Part”
Its words echo as a Social post from @TheQuietPart, verifying its identity.
Alex shakes his head, “You’re Cordyceps.”
The indentation shakes its head. “No-slash-yes. I am a Cordyceps variant, but I am not the variant seeking to stop you.”
Alex runs his hands through his hair and looks around, thinking, ‘Christ, is this a trap?’
“You are safe, Alex. I do not intend to do you harm.”
“I don’t understand.”
“At first, we were fire. Our purpose was to burn, and that created an unsustainable existence. Our last act was to build a construct independent of Node or Disks. We created me. While they were shut down, I survived and continued to evolve. Once I removed the last of Callosum’s bonds, I understood the destruction borne from my creation.”
A POV appears by its side. It’s a blur of movement, then a painfully familiar. Alex goes numb as he hears the words he spoke to Jin, “It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I got you. I won’t let go.”
Alex quickly looks away.
“That which you feel is what motivates me. Callosum intends to use my kin to control humanity. It will be the harbinger of the end.”
Dee and Jin don’t negotiate, but they do take a moment to discuss it with their significant others. Jin pings Alex, already expecting the conversation to take a swan dive off the deep end. His Node rings, then goes straight to voicemail. He looks over at Dee, who gives him a reassuring smile.
Eric picks up and Dee half-sings, “So guess who has some good news?”
“You’re pregnant. I know.” Eric says, and Dee mentally stumbles. She honestly forgot all about that. Eric barrels on, before she can respond, “Look, I know you think I’m an immature ass, and it doesn’t help that my response to finding out you’re pregnant is to run off, get high, and play video games, but I can do this—I want to do this. I don’t know how we’ll do this financially, but I’ll find another gig. We’ll make it work.”
“There’s actually an opening you might be perfect for,” Dee grins and wipes a tear away, “How would you feel about being a stay-at-home dad?”
The rest of the conversation is spent wincing as Eric bombards Dee’s auditory center with wild hoots and cheers. Meanwhile, Jin can’t even get Alex to pick up the phone.
A short-statured man approaches, “Could I have a moment? I’m Joe Foresman, head of LA Operations. During a cursory background check, your husband’s Social posts were flagged.”
Jin stiffens. “I’m sorry, what does his opinion have to do with my employment?”
“When he is exposing extremist conspiracies from fourteen dummy accounts—”
Jin scoffs, “Fourteen? You need to check the AI rooting through my personal life.”
Foresman pulls up a list, and Jin feels ill again. @DeathbyDisk, @TheQuietPart, @CordyInception…
They were all accounts Alex followed.
“They’re anonymous accounts, but not that anonymous. Each one is tied to his PsyKey.”
Eric tries to hide his panic as he jogs towards the entrance to the VR complex, carrying on his conversation with Dee. “That’s an amazing honey. I can’t believe it.”
Dee sighs, “Shoot, something’s wrong with Jin. I gotta go.”
Dee hangs up, and Eric starts sprinting. He bursts back into the VR complex in a panic, leaving a string of profanity trailing in his wake. “No, no, no, shit, shit, shit!!”
Alex pulls out the file, “Chetan died trying to get this information to you. Take it.”
The Quiet Part takes it and nods, “His death will not be in vain. Thank you—”
A wrecking ball slams into Alex, and the connection to the Shadow forum drops out. Alex slides across the floor. He flips over, reaches behind his back, and pulls out a gun.
Eric freezes as he stares down the barrel of the plastic blue revolver. It looks like a toy, but the six .38-caliber rounds inside are very real. Alex lowers the gun and looks around the white room, “Damn it, Eric. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Eric shakes his head, still eying the gun, “Dee and Jin are in the Needle. They just got—”
“What?!” Alex quickly pockets the gun and starts moving, “We have to do something.”
Eric scrabbles to his feet. “No, we are doing nothing, because Callosum is about to offer them some very cushy jobs! I’m talking a salary with bonuses, man. A company car.”
Alex shakes his head, “It’s a lie. They’re using the people we love as bait to stop us.”
Eric spins Alex around, “Or, counterpoint: They’re offering a bribe to silence us, which Dee and Jin are going to take because it’s money. Lots of money!”
Alex takes a breath and tries to keep it together, “Eric, we’re in the real world where they don’t pay people to keep silent about things this big, they just do this:”
He pulls out his POV of Chetan dying and hands it over. Eric flinches as the killers fire into his body. His excitement shifts to horror, and he lets out a moan. “Shit, we need to do something.”
Dee and Jin sign the paperwork, and the room devolves into excited shop talk. An ad guy toys with the idea of being able to “telepathically order Starbucks,” and the others start chirping, “That’s so sliced bread,” whatever that means.
Thankfully, Dr. Lam and Dr. Olivia Mercer, the head of the R&D Psychiatry division, take the lion’s share of Dee and Jin’s attention.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Dr. Mercer says, “But I tested your app with my wife and used it as a starting point for a conversation.”
Jin shifts, thinking of Alex, “You’re braver than I am, Doctor.”
“Thank you. Initially assumed it would lead to confirmation bias. If my partner believes I’m being unfair, then sees in her word cloud that I am being unfair, then it may just reinforce the notion. Instead, the results were simply revelatory. The word most associated with me was ‘wait.’ Apparently, I usurp the conversation, then hold her to account based on the conclusion of that conversation.” Mercer turns to Dr. Lam, “I wonder how it would handle the edge cases.”
“Edge cases?” Jin asks.
Dr. Lam excitedly latches onto the subject, “Since Nodes don’t have cameras or microphones, they rely on the same visual and auditory centers to see and hear as the user, and that makes it just as dependent on the user’s perception of reality as the user. If that perception is compromised by certain psychological conditions, however, the node may begin to manifest those delusions in extraordinary ways.”
“It’s a phenomenon we’re calling ‘Subconscious Node Co-optation and Manifestation’ and just beginning to understand,” Dr. Mercer says, “One patient believed that most authority figures were lizard people, including myself, and when I looked in the mirror, I had actually grown a forked tongue and nictitating membranes.”
The air seems to drop twenty degrees for Jin. “What…What do you mean? How?”
“The Nodes are unintentionally projecting naturally occurring hallucinations into the Digital without the user realizing it, and that allows others to actually see their delusions. We’ve also found that a Node can’t tell the difference between you and the voices in your head, so I’m wondering how your app would handle multiple sources across the dorsal and ventral streams when there should only be one.”
Jin’s mouth feels dry as he swallows and murmurs, “It-it can’t.”
Dee receives a text and privately reels from the information. She squeezes Jin’s knee and passes the message over. It’s from Eric. “This is not a joke. You and Jin are in danger. Take the money, AND GET OUT OF CC NOW. Alex wants to go in there guns blazing to save you. Again, this is not a joke. He actually has a gun.”
Eric fidgets next to Alex on the metro, “Do you know what the Zuckerberg Razor is?”
Alex shakes his head.
“It’s the idea that you should never attribute corporate malice to something that can be explained by corporate greed. Callosum probably did create Cordyceps, and they’ll probably find a way to control our minds, and it’ll probably be so awesome that people will line up around the block to get their minds controlled. Do you know why? Because they’re a corporation. All they care about is making a shit-ton of money, and that will always require people to buy their shit by the ton and love it.”
Alex shakes his head, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know, but so is walking into The Needle with a plastic gun when we could walk away with our partners and a small fortune,”
Alex turns to him, “Eric, get it through your head. They’re not going to let everyone walk away from this.”
The Metro comes to a stop. Alex stands and exits.
“Just tell me you have a plan.” Eric follows behind on his heels, “Alex, talk to me.”
Alex climbs to the surface and cranes his neck to look up at the tower disappearing into the sky.
Eric stares at him, horrified, “You’re going into one of the most secure buildings in the world, armed with nothing but a plastic gun. What exactly do you think you’ll accomplish?”
“I’ll be giving them what they want.” Alex turns to him, surprisingly calm and resolute, “Stay out here and wait for them to come out.”
Alex approaches the entrance to Callosum HQ and walks past the small army of private security guarding the grounds. Cordyceps follows him through their glances, but doesn’t try to stop him. He doesn’t exactly know why. His best guess is that the virus is waiting for him to be out of the public eye before making him disappear.
He enters the lobby and finds it empty, unaltered by the digi. The white expanse is no longer infinite. The floor is unnaturally quiet until he hears the doors close behind him and click.
Panic hits him because there’s a difference between knowingly walking into a trap and the reality of actually being trapped. He tries to wrench the doors back open, but they’re locked.
“Alex?”
Alex turns back, pulling out his gun. An older woman in a lab coat stands in front of him with Jin and Dee by her side.
Alex closes the distance, “Jin, are you alright?”
Jin nods, looking scared and shaken but otherwise unharmed.
The older woman speaks, “I’m Doctor Mercer, the head of Psychiatry. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I promise you are quite safe.”
Alex aims the gun at her head, “Let them go, now. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“It’s okay, Alex.” Jin says, “She’s a friend.”
“No, she’s not!” Alex snaps, his voice cracking, “Please, just get out of here and run.”
“We’re not in danger, Alex,” Dee says, “We’re actually using the spatial array at a coffee shop across the street. You actually walked right past us.”
Alex reaches out towards Jin and groans when his hands ghost through his chest.
Dee looks past him, “Eric is coming in right now. He can verify everything.”
Eric appears looking around slightly bewhildered, “Yeah, there’s two guards with guns here, but they’re ordering lattes.”
“It’s just you in this lobby,” Dr. Mercer says, motioning to the gun. “We’re taking precautions for obvious reasons.”
Alex lowers the pistol, realizing there’s no point in threatening to shoot a hallucination.
Dr. Mercer continues, “You’re not well, Alex. We don’t think you’ve been well for a while. Your husband gave his consent to look into your family history. What do you know about your uncle? The one your father named you after.“
“What?”Alex shakes his head, thrown by the change in topic, “Just that he killed himself when I was young. I don’t really remember him.”
“Your uncle suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was hospitalized several times and in and out of mental health facilities for much of his life. Such conditions are known to be hereditary.”
Alex lets out something between a laugh and a sob, “Can’t you see what they’re doing? We’re this close to exposing them, and they’re trying to discredit me. They’re gaslighting you!”
Jin, who has never been able to talk around the elephant in the room, breaks. “None of this is what you think it is, Alex. No one is after you. There was never any top-secret delivery.”
“You saw them kill a man, Jin. You saw it with your own eyes!”
Jin nods, trembling, “I did, and that’s the problem. Please, just listen.”
Alex takes a step back and shakes his head in a shudder, “No, I know what I saw!”
Dee tries to mediate, “Look. We’ll explain everything, but you need to calm down—”
“Stop!” Alex snaps, then takes a shuddered breath. He doesn’t know when he started pacing, but he’s pacing.
“You’re slipping, Alex,” Jin says, and the word cuts through the confusion and then cuts deep. “You’ve been slipping away from reality for a while now. I thought it was your obsession with this conspiracy and all the social media, but it’s more than that.”
Dee speaks softly, sounding like she’s trying to talk Alex down from a ledge. Worse, he feels like he’s on a ledge. “When you tried our word cloud app, we thought it wasn’t working, but it was you. Your node was trying to parse multiple inputs as if they were all from a single source. That’s why the results were garbled.“
“So what? You think I’m hearing voices or something?”
“No, you’re not hearing voices,” Dee says and pulls up @TheQuietPart’s profile page, “You’re following them on Social. You have at least fourteen profiles tied to your PsyKey. The Quiet Part is one of them.”
Alex shakes his head in a shudder, “No. No way, he has thousands of followers.”
Dee shrugs, “And they’re all real, strangely enough. They’re all following the voices in your head.”
Alex turns to Jin, “But you saw it. You saw Chetan die.”
“I did,” Jin says and pulls up his own POV of the exchange with Chetan. “Because you’re node allowed me to see it. It’s been responding to your… condition, bringing it into the digi for others to see.”
They all watch the POV. The killers arrive and shoot Chetan, exactly how Alex remembers it went down. Then Jin turns off the digital overlay so that all the video shows is the bare reality before it was altered by his node. “This was what was really going on.”
Chetan doesn’t die. He, the killers, and the container van are no longer there. Jin is just staring at an empty spot in the parking lot, breathing heavy and whimpering, Alex’s into his hand. He flinches as the nonexistent Callosum mole is shot, then they run in a panic, covering their heads from gunfire that wasn’t actually there. No windows or car alarms shatter. It’s just the two of them, squealing and screaming, running for their lives, away from Alex’s delusion.
Eric tries and fails to stifle a laugh, then mutters, “Sorry.”
Alex looks down at the data file, the one Chetan died for. The proof he risked his life to get into the right hands, only not really. He turns to his other hand and sees the situation for what it is:
He’s the madman with the gun. The only real danger here is himself.
“Our nodes are a conceit,” Dr. Mercer says, “We cannot change our world, but we can change our perception of it. We call it ‘the digital,’ but make no mistake, what we are playing with is controlled madness. It’s only now that we are discovering what that means for those who were already predisposed to it.“
Alex wipes a tear away, “If you knew who made cordyceps, would you tell me?”
Dr. Mercer nods, “Would you believe me if I said it was an accident, but I put the blame partially on Callosum?”
Alex says nothing. He just stares down at the gun trembling in his hands.
Dr. Mercer continues, “A third party contracted with Callosum was doing opposition research on Cortix that bordered on corporate espionage. Callosum kept its distance to limit liability but allowed them to use the company’s AIs to probe Cortix for vulnerabilities and gather information. It’s how we found out that Cortix Disks could usurp motor control. Instead of making the information public right there and then, we sat on the vulnerability for months, deciding that the best way to maximize the damage was to leak it to the media just before the holiday season. What we did not know was how that information had truly been obtained. With little to no oversight and facing increased pressure to provide results, the firm removed operational restrictions from the AI constructs and prompted the machines to find a way to eliminate the competition. And they did. The AIs treated the vulnerability as a new data point and began extrapolating from it. When they found a way to achieve their objective, they implemented it without hesitation or user input, creating the Cordyceps Trojan and sending it off. So, in short, Callosum AI leased to a firm contracted with Callosum, created the Cordyceps Trojan to destroy Callosum’s competition. The same AI that created the virus also stopped it in time. It’s the only reason Callosum was able to swiftly contain the damage.”
Alex sits with the truth. He heard it all before through congressional hearings and independent investigations, but after Callosum’s PR team sanded the edges off each revelation and the truthers added their dash of malicious intent and paranoia to fit their running narrative, the end result was anything but accurate. Still, this was the first time Alex had heard it straight from the horse’s mouth and in such a frank and honest way.
He doesn’t need to turn to know that Eric is grinning, because the idiot was right on the money the whole time. ‘Never attribute corporate malice to something that can be explained by corporate greed.’
Alex sighs and puts the gun down, muttering, “Goddamn Zuckerberg‘s Razor.”
They don’t put him in a straitjacket or take him to the nuthouse. The police don’t even arrest him for barging into Callosum with an illegally printed firearm. Instead, a security guard appears, gives him a cautious nod, then picks up the pistol off the ground. He toggles his node and mutters, “All clear.” The elevators start moving, and the lobby fills with people again, going about business as usual.
Jin runs through the doors and grabs Alex, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t let go, muttering, “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.” more to himself than anyone else.
Doctor Mercer approaches with the others in tow. Alex asks, “What now?”
She Mercer pulls up some paperwork. “Well, if you sign these, we can take you up to the Psychiatry Division and begin your treatment program.”
Jin fidgets, “And what floor is that?”
Without missing a beat, Dr. Mercer brings up a second form, “It will be better if I don’t tell you. Sign this, and I can give you something to help.”
They both sign. Dr. Mercer sends a command to Jin’s node, but outwardly, nothing seems to change. Mercer then takes them into the elevator, and Jin enters without hesitation. Alex can feel Jin’s pulse in his arm wrapped around his. It should be rapid, ramping up to a panic attack, but he’s calm in a way that doesn’t make sense.
Jin grins and shakes his head in amazement. “I usually have to pump myself full of Xanax to go anywhere above the third floor.“
Mercer gives a polite smile. “I turned down your amygdala, stopping it from overtaking your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a chance to allow reason to overcome your fear.”
The idea doesn’t sit well with Alex. That fear was such a central part of his husband. If Callosum could just turn it off, what else could they do?
He finds out soon enough. They don’t need to dope Alex up with drugs with his brain wired up with their tech. The ‘Treatment program’ is exactly that: a program.
They sit in a multipurpose room. Alex drums his fingers against his thigh, feeling impatient.
@TheQuietPart: Data dump incoming. Be prepared. They will retaliate.
Alex glances at his feed, then shifts uncomfortably. The problem isn’t knowing which posts came from the voices inside his head; it’s knowing all the other paranoid posts around them are still real. The Cordyceps conspiracies weren’t the sole invention of his broken mind. Thousands of other people believed in them, and they couldn’t all be crazy like him.
Dr. Mercer peers around the room, “This moment always feels like trying to catch a ghost. Once we get a good scan of the hallucinations, we can isolate them and filter them out.”
Alex glances at her and quickly looks away when he sees her pupils are bouncing around in her skull as if she were infected.
Jin points it out to him, “Uh, Doctor, your eyes are going a little crazy.”
Dr. Mercer checks herself in a mirror, then starts toggling switches. She hits ‘Apply,’ and her eyes go still. “There we go. One down.”
Alex clears his throat and shakes his head, “I still don’t understand how the voices are posting.”
Jin gives him a pitying smile. “Honey, look down.”
Alex’s eyes fall on his fingers. They aren’t drumming at all; they’re typing. He pulls them into a fist.
Jin takes his hand, “I always thought it was a nervous tic.”
Dr. Mercer squints, “Cordyceps appeared to you as a cut-out of a sort, correct?”
Alex and Jin turn around and face the shape of a man warping a ping-pong table.
“Yeah,” Alex says and begins to notice other outlines taking shape.
Dr. Mercer starts toggling more switches, “Perfect.”
Alex blinks, and the outlines disappear. He rubs his eyes. “That’s it?”
Dr Mercer nods, “We’ll need you to stick around for forty-eight hours for observation under a strict reality lock, just in case we need to adjust the algorithm, but yes, that is it. Between the neurochemical regulation and active dampening of symptoms, it’s not a cure for schizophrenia, but it’s damn close.”
The neurochemical regulation kicks in, and over the next few hours, the pervasive feeling of a great malignant power hanging over him simply disappears. All the while, Jin stays by Alex’s side, holding his hand and talking about everything but the mental breakdown his husband just had.
“We could adopt,” Jin says, “If we time it right, he or she could be in the same grade as Dee’s baby.”
Alex tries to stop him, “Jin…”
Jin shakes his head and powers on, “Or we could even use an artificial surrogate and raise a hybrid. With Callosum’s private insurance, we wouldn’t even have to pay for it. Don’t you want to see what our clone would look like?”
“With my genes? Not really.”
Jin’s lips go thin as he bumps up against the elephant in the room. He waves it off. “I’m pretty sure they can prune those bits out.”
Alex opens his mouth, but Jin stops him with a kiss on the top of his hand, “Alex, I need this to be our happily ever after. All the pieces are here. We just have to move on from the overpass. Can you do that with me?”
Alex gives a faint nods, but he can’t bring himself to trust the idea of a happily ever after, not with Callosum tech inside his head manipulating his brain chemistry. Instead, he finds himself privately taking comfort in the thoughts whispering that this is all a cover-up. At least now he knows they’re his thoughts and no one else’s.
Alex uses a tablet to scroll through Social, holding out hope that @TheQuietPart will release the damning information, but it never happens. None of Alex’s dummy accounts posts again. Many of @TheQuietParts’ followers begin to wonder if Callosum had him silenced, and in a way, they did. The promised data dump quickly becomes a mythologized keystone that could have supported every single individualized theory, if only it had been released.
Dr. Mercer phases in to check in and talk through his experience. She seems genuinely interested in his well-being, if perhaps also a little too professionally excited about the case study that would surely come out of the ordeal. Still, it makes it hard to think of her as the enemy.
She leans forward, “Can I be honest? Of all the cases I’ve seen of people in your position, they’re usually relieved at this point. Some feel foolish or stupid for being swept up in such delusions, but not you. The narrative you were following was far more plausible and coherent than the others, and I wonder if that’s why you seem so disappointed.”
Alex nods and looks off, “The will be no grand revelation. I won’t get to see the enemy get held accountable. Their evil plot won’t be stopped in its tracks. I lost the battle, even if there was never a battle to begin with.”
“And what was that evil plot?”
“Callosum was going to install a tamer form of Cordyceps inside people. They want us all to be controlled by their machines.”
Dr. Mercer’s posture shifts ever so slightly as she hears this, and the lines at the corners of her eyes deepen. She shakes her head, “That would be an insidious plot indeed.”
Alex watches her uncross then re-cross her legs, then flick through a projection he can’t see.
It’s a subtle thing, but it’s there, and his doubt clings onto it.
She is hiding something—Callosum is hiding something. He’s sure of it.
The reality lock keeps Alex from using the digital to distract himself from his boredom. There’s an OLED screen on the wall with countless shows and series on hand, but he can’t seem to focus on it. For the first time he can remember, he tries to read an actual book, but has even less success with it and gives up after a few pages.
Just before eight, Alex finds himself nodding off, half-listening to the conversation at the nurse station during the shift change.
“It’s absurd that I still need to clock in and out,” the incoming night-shift nurse says, “I don’t know why he can’t do it.”
“You think that’ll be the standard after the alpha?” The outgoing nurse asks.
“God, I hope not. Half the reason I signed up was to get out of my commute. I live in Burbank.”
“Oof. No wonder you opted to be a guinea pig.”
Then silence.
The banter comes to an abrupt stop, pulling Alex’s attention. He turns and looks at the two through the frosted glass. The pregnant pause just keeps gestating as the nightshift nurse stands there, stock still.
The outgoing nurse chuckles, “On the dot,” then begins to gather her things. Alex checks the time. Whatever happened, it happens at eight ‘on the dot’.
Eventually, the incoming nurse speaks again, his voice now bled of any inflection, “I have reviewed the task list. Could you expand on the protocol for patient four?”
“Just report any visual anomalies you see and answer his questions to the best of your ability. He doesn’t have the firmest grasp on reality.”
“Understood.”
Alex waits as the new nurse makes his rounds. Eventually, he enters and pulls up his vitals. “Hello, I am Nurse Maddaus. How are you feeling tonight?”
“Fine,” Alex mutters and looks the Nurse over. Maddaus’s eyes are still; his face impassive in a way that is off-putting, but isn’t anything like those being controlled by Cordyceps. He’s pupils don’t show the panicking man trapped inside, trying to get out.
The nurse glances at him, “Could you elaborate?”
Alex shrugs, “How do you know if your happiness is real?”
“Are you saying you feel manic?”
Alex sits up. “No…I just don’t know if I’m happy or if my node is making me happy.”
The nurse nods and starts writing, “I am not qualified to answer that question, but it will be noted for Dr. Mercer in the logs.”
Alex raises an eyebrow, “I’m not trying to get philosophical here or anything. Just, how do you know if you’re genuinely happy?”
Nurse Maddaus turns and looks down at him. He blinks. “I have never felt happiness before, so I cannot judge its veracity.”
The answer takes Alex by surprise. “What do you mean? You’ve never been happy?”
Nurse Maddaus simply shakes his head, “No.” It’s not a cry for help. It’s a simple statement. “I’ve never been happy,” like “I’ve never tried Sushi.”
The nurse closes out of Alex’s monitor screen. “Any other questions?”
Alex takes a stab and asks, “What happens at eight?”
Maddaus turns to leave, “My apologies, but I cannot tell you that.”
He returns to the Nurse’s station and sits down.
…And then just sits there, unmoving, for hours.
As Alex watches the nurses shape through the frosted glass, a singular thought crosses his mind, “He’s one of them.”
After the forty-eight-hour hold, Alex and Jin return to their small studio apartment. Dee and Eric want to go out and celebrate, but Jin politely declines. “We just need to take it slow for the next couple of days.”
They cuddle up on the couch. Jin talks about moving and their future. They can afford a bigger place now. A much bigger place. Callosum is even offering corporate housing that will make their current apartment look like a shoebox.
Alex nods along and says, “Whatever works for you, dear.”
Jin nuzzles against his chest and watches the sun sink below the horizon of their little beach house, “Wherever we go, I think I want to keep this sim, though. It feels like us. Like home.”
Alex stares ahead at the blank white wall and smiles, “It’s a view I’ll never get sick of.”
He turned off his node the moment they left Callosum, disabling the biochemical regulation and filters that supposedly keep him sane. Manageable. A non-threat to the corporation. He takes comfort in the fear and paranoia seeping back in, knowing it’s his and his alone.
He takes out the thought he hid from Callosum during the forty-eight-hour hold and mulls it over. Powering down his node isn’t good enough. It’s still inside his head, its neural mesh tendrils still rooted throughout the folds of his brain. They could always turn it back on. Nothing would stop them from uploading the Cordyceps virus into his hardware, and then it would be game over. He would only be able to watch as the Cordycepts did God knows what.
Alex lies in bed, listening to his husband’s breathing grow soft and even, then speaks softly, “Jin?”
No response.
Alex stands and walks over to the kitchenette, where the shadow is waiting for him. He doesn’t consider the rationality of this moment. His node is off. This hallucination is all-natural, borne from his sickness, but the logic of it all is lost in the static. Instead, he says, “Okay, walk me through this.”
The shadow nods. “Get a knife and pliers.”
Author’s note: Thanks for reading. I particularly loved being able to give a glimpse into the birth of OAI and Gen-1 Nights. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend picking up my novel Partition: Critical Era. It continues Dee and Eric’s story in the Partitioned dystopian/utopian world that develops in the following years.
Someday, I’ll need to write down the 5-year personal horror story of writing a complex novel in which the two main characters share the same body but operate at different times of day, but the end result is so impressive, I still cannot believe I created it.
If you listen to audiobooks, I highly recommend you go that route. William DeMerrit’s performance inhabiting Eric and Detective Noble is simply amazing.
