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 1984 and Brave New World.
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 into 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 waved 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 and 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 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. Her 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 laying 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, unphased.
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 man strong 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. Jins 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 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 mentioned 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, the every infected individual around the 350-acre campus identify Big Brain as the tallest building and flock toward it. A silent orderly cue of the possessed forms in the multiple stairwells spanning 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 to counter 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 only intended to be 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 twelve minutes of continuous operation, Cordyceps goes off script and changes it’s 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 message 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 develop the ability to contribute to an ad-hoc cloud network of slaved 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 the threat identified 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.
This is phenomenal worldbuilding! The way the Cordyceps Trojan evolves through iterations while hijacking victims is genuinely chiling because it feels like a plausible extrapolation of current AI and neural tech. The detail about it spamming contacts with "I love you" makesthe horror way more personal than some generic apocalypse virus.