Chapter 42: Dungeon Diving?

6:38 PM July 10th

Ripley

Disengaging from her mind was nauseating, it was like plugging a hole that spilled pure intimacy and connection. The sudden stop of the pressure from her mind was a whiplash into my own thoughts.

“That was… intense.” It was the only comment I could make.

“I should have warned you.” Mirage sounded guilty, ashamed at what had happened. “I kept the limitations minimal so that it would be quicker, but maybe that just put through too much information for your Feature to read at once.”

“Well, this power of mine is an unknown. We’ll just have to do some more testing.” I then coughed out quickly. “With others too, I’ll make sure Diamante puts a blanket on his emotions. That’s a bit… too weird even for me.”

She chuckled lightly. “Diamante’ll probably have you read braille before he lets you read his own frame.”

“Is he… are all of you…”

Topaz spoke before I could complete. “Possessing really weird Implants? Honestly, yeah. Mine and my brother’s came from the same MALformed, it produced two hella weird SIMs instead of just one…”

My gaze turned to Missy. “You too?”

“In a sense.” This was the first time she wasn’t open to me.

“You’ll be surprised when she shows you what she can do.” Topaz side-eyed her. “She’s insanely tight-lipped about it, even I don’t hear a slip of its deepest secrets from her.”

A sly smile danced on her face. “I know what to trust you with, and it’s not secrets.”

“Touché.” He grumbled, before tapping the Netportal Cube on the floor. “Now are you two lovebirds gonna enter or not?”

Mirage flashed him a deadly look at the phrase, but had a heat simmering in her neck. I just clenched my jaw tight, afraid that any word I let out would only dig my grave deeper.

“Ripley.” Mirage addressed me, this time pulling out a wire from her own Neuroframe. It was much thicker, numerous tubes coiled up into an end-plate that was spiked. She pulled something out from the briefcase and attached the angular trapezoid onto the plate. “You ready? Be warned… it will be far more… intense this time around. Turning the Proxy Protocol into a two-way street means less filters, you’ll be using my mind as a shield for the delve.”

“I’m ready.” My throat was dry, first attaching into the briefcase which sent a sharp whistle through my thoughts. Once she plugged her own frame into it, the whistle became a humble tune of her inner thinking — a stream of information that let me know her thoughts as though a manuscript to act out. It was sort of like being submerged into a jelly of light and color, where all your actions felt sluggish.

Then I picked up the heavy chord slithering out of her frame, the thickly coiled metallic serpent ending with a pyramidal head meant to fit over my own frame. I attached the interface over on, a satisfying click acting as the prelude to an overwhelming implosion of raw mental processing.

The briefcase separated our minds just enough that neither of us was consumed by it. But it was painful as it was mesmerizing to be drawn into the depths of a Tier III Adapter.

Every nerve of my body felt like it was being sucked into the metallic plate, a giant vacuum feeding on the mental existence of myself. I was being pulled through the pulsating wire that was now shining with a Golden undulance, the pulsating glow carrying my presence.

It clearly wasn’t harmless for her as well, forcing the entirety of another person into your consciousness would be as agonizing as a body losing it. She writhed like a seizure was upon her, a much more different showcase of my own pain appearing through eyes that had been hollowed up by the sharp sword lodged in the back of my neck.

Speaking of, how was I looking into my eyes? Then I realized I wasn’t, as the hands attached to this body were disturbingly feminine. Nails painted a dazzling violet with a starry night across them.

“Now I get what it’s like to have someone else in your head.” Twilight’s voice came from… everywhere. “Hold on, try to form an avatar.”

It was weird, how was Twilight even looking at me when Mirage was twisting up in pain with closed eyes? That simple thought revealed my body to break apart, a deconstruction of my physical existence into motes of light that periodically recombined.

She was… reconstructing my body using my own proprioceptive awareness through this connection? And as I broke even further, I vanished further into the threads of Mirage’s mind.

“Uhhh… Ripley, an Avatar? You’re making me feel bloated.” Twilight groaned as my own mental burden came solely upon her.

I gave a mental nod, unknowingly jerking poor Twilight’s head. She was not happy, said that it almost broke her neck. I didn’t question how that was possible, but instead focused on not merely being within Mirage’s mind, but a part of it.

I felt a sudden ease as a hand pulled out of Twilight, my own doubling from hers. It was freaky. A ghost peeling off a mortal vessel type of freaky.

“You’re really doing it like that?” Mirage’s voice came from her physical form, her knees tightly held to the chin of her pained face. “I’ll make it easier for you.”

Persona Protocol is active…

At once, me and Twilight split into two beings. I saw her like she was really there, standing in the thresholds where Mirage’s consciousness wasn’t focusing on. As the physical eyes of Mirage tracked me down, a cone of light overlapped, physical existence writing itself where Twilight stood.

“That’s cool.” I whispered.

“You’re naked.” Mirage said tiredly, bags under her eyes. “Can you make some clothes?”

Mortified, I stared down and… okay I wasn’t technically naked. My entire body was smooth and flickering, as though only partially constructed from the real thing and where my dick should be was just a vague mound of light. “Uhhh. I’ll try?”

I pulled onto the Dataweaving Feature I’d mimicked from Mirage’s frame, it was a weaker copy only accessing her development up to V.1.00.

Update Summary:

* Increased ability to form virtual Avatars

* Lowers visibility within the NetScape

* Ability to create basic DataShields

* Ability to create basic DataCleavers

* Protocol: Avatar Stability allows greater control over Avatar’s resistance to NetScape degradation. [Error: Unable to mimic protocol, instead the Adapter has an increased baseline stability as an Avatar.]

The summary begged the question, why on earth were all her earliest developments related to delving into the Net? That was unusual for a beginner with Dataweaving, normally they started with basic DataShields or modifying Shardware Warpcode.

Forming armor had been simple, as I simply felt my skin extend outwards into rough slabs of metal. A form I was most comfortable with, soldering the joints together until it became a dark armor like military gear over my physical body. It wouldn’t actually protect me, since it was made of me… but it would protect my dignity. Finally, I decided I’d try and carve out a mask, a sleek black helmet that wrapped around my face to protect my identity.

I didn’t press on the question about Mirage’s unique Implant Development, she plugged into the cube. “We’re delving.”

“Adios!” I heard Topaz salute. Then slowly, one by one, the world itself began to disintegrate into shadows. All three Personas faded into Mirage’s body, until, even she dissolved into darkness. Then the light exploded, and I was within a world of pure data.

———

??? ?????

The SurfaceNet [Standard Sub-Layer]

Walls of broken light beamed at me from every direction, a crackling blue of code all swarming in one direction — downwards. If I could describe it best, it was a labyrinth of pulsing light with an eternal darkness visible through the cracks.

“You with me?” A voice called from behind me, a voice similar in clarity to a pearl’s shine. I looked back, witnessing a queen-like figure float behind me. She was… beautiful.

A gown of shadows and light curved along Mirage’s Avatar, flowing like water over the intricate angles that shaped her. It trailed up to her face which was concealed behind a mask, correction — three masks blended together… all of them flowing in and out as a seamless transition. A star eclipsed by a moon that gradually phased through all its cycles before returning to that of Silver-light.

A mirage of the stars.

“Yeah…” I nodded, slumped at the beauty of what I was seeing.

“Right… this’ll be easier now that you’re an avatar.” She pointed two fingers at me, each alternating with a black or white talon. Silver bubbles blew out of each, flowing towards me like a guiding wind carried orbs filled with the dreams of youthful children. They popped around my ‘armor’ inscribing a silverish glow of binary-like text that hardened over the malleable code.

“A DataShield?”

Focusing on it gave me a pop up.

Tier I DataShield… Error [Unable to analyze.]

Grade: Silver

Effects: Unknown

“Can’t see what it does.” I pointed out to her, hoping she’d share some details.

She wasn’t all too privy. “Protects you… but I’ll give you something fancy.”

A wicked smile appeared behind the shifting mask of her face, I didn’t need to see it to know. Several thicker bubbles gathered around my right and left arms, sticking together until my makeshift gauntlets became more robust and sharper.

“DataCleavers too?” The excitement was palpable. “This is… alot. Like pricewise.”

“Specifically, it’s used enough Warp Energy to make up 3 Bronze Shards.” She pointed out, sending a heartache through me. Had I just earned myself a debt of 15,000 Shardyne? “But don’t worry, we’ll make it up on our delve downwards.”

She sounded so casual about it. “What do you mean?”

A hint of excitement creeped inside her voice. “There’s another term for those who dive into the Net. You ever played one of those games? Some people like to call us… Dungeon Delvers.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

———

So far, our descent was quite literally… a descent. Mirage navigated ahead of us through corridors of light and darkness, pointing out curiosities here and there. Like, oh, if you enter through that door you’ll find an archive of dog-behavior instructions for android pets, or how some areas of the Net were meeting grounds for virtual transactions of illegal goods, calling out to a shady passaged labeled ‘Aunty Holly’s Avatar Salon.’

Strangely, walking through here didn’t drain any stamina out of me, it was as easy as thinking. I didn’t even need to turn my head to know what was behind me, there was just a three-dimensional sphere of knowledge filtering into the avatar every second. Then, eventually, we would find some broken hole in the ground, a Fracture Point in the net’s code, she called it. A shortcut of sorts.

“Hold up…” She stopped me by another Fracture Point, a ravenous smile all through her face. “Bandits down there.”

“Bandits?” I laughed, she got really into treating this like a game.

“Yup… Muramasa.” Shadows slicked down her arm, appearing more solid with a blood-red viscera coating it until it formed a bow.

“…Muramasa?!” My voice grew quite a bit more strained, Muramasa Dynasty was the oldest and arguably the most dangerous criminal organization in the District.

“Calm your tits.” A red glow flickered as she plucked weaved a bowstring, refining the weapon down until it was slender and perfect in her grip. “Your shield encrypts your identity, it’ll do that even out of the Net as long as you don’t take too much damage down here.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Scared? I was too.” A sad look smeared in my mind, from her mind.

I took the invitation. “You first delve into the net? How long ago was it?”

“Too long ago.” Without another word, she dove down into the fracture, pushing deep into the unknown. I followed through, and instantly I felt that something was off.

Alarms went through with my passing, a thin wire snapping at my descent through it. The fracture point was being tracked.

“Two of them, boys!” One of the Muramasa goons raised a blade at me, his entire body was a pulsing mess of black vines. Another was nothing but an eyeball, and the final was a hulking ogre of red flesh. Some individuals were quite creative with their Avatars. I was just an armor of black metal.

Mirage’s bow shot forth a single arrow of silver coated in shadows, it curved through each of the three… digital monsters in one single streak of black. They all moved forward as though nothing happened, each of their bodies flaring up a dull gray glow of Iron.

“Shit, was that Silver?” One of them, the ogre, stopped to look down at the growing black wound.

“Fuck… I think we just met… Mirage.” The eyeball one of them realized. Then he split in two. The shadowy wound where he’d been struck exploded.

The other two followed not soon after.

“Oh… okay.” Never, ever get on Mirage’s bad side within the Net. “How’d you do that?”

“I did that.” The black and red arrow returned to Mirage, a mouth growing from it’s silver head. “And you’d best behave unless you want me in your head. Ripley Donovick.”

“Uh… so that’s Midnight.” Mirage said, whispering something to the arrow which curled back into her sleeve. “It’s simple really, how I did that, I mean. You weave data into a bow, lock in a really powerful execution of Warpcode as a Datacleaver and just… launch it forward like an arrow.”

I tried doing it, a few globs of my own Warpcode spilled out from my hand. Golden in color but shaping them was like trying to get clouds into shape by blowing on them, even with the Dataweaving Feature, I could barely manipulate any of the data that wasn’t in contact with me.

“Like I said, it’s all about how you envision it. Choose something you’re comfortable with, something you want to control.” She guided her hands over my own, and I could feel our mental presences colliding the closer we got. She gripped a strand of my Gold, shaping it like it was flowing water and poured it into a vessel.

“You don’t have a Tendency yet so it’s a bit more difficult. Give it a purpose… use your own Features to guide it into a form. Mere imagination gives it a shape — knowledge gives structure.” I felt her thoughts simmer in with my own, showing me how to better frame the budding weapon.

“Well…” I gathered myself, thinking of something. I could use my Preservation Matrix as a baseline, but I needed more than just that…

Staring up at her, I pushed my curiosity through our mental link. “What do you use to give Warpcode purpose?”

“I don’t. Midnight gives it the purpose, she becomes a vessel carrying my… desires. I simply execute her protocol. It’s more efficient — they’re the weapons and I’m the warrior.”

“I… well let’s see.” Imagine the Warpcode into something I’m comfortable with, easy then — a foundation for structure. The golden blob slendered down into fine sheets of metal, some thicker and some buzzing. Shardware, glimmering pieces of plating floated out of me.

“Then I can…” Then imagination to guide it into a purposeful shape… to Persevere. To protect myself… but was that enough? I was just the battery, meant to charge up Mirage’s far more deadly assault. My role in this had to be framed around her.

We were in the same skull after all, my preservation extended to her.

“To protect you then.” I thought, but all my thoughts were reality in this realm. As I spoke the words, they echoed through the built up ‘Shardware’, piece by piece connecting into a form I’d always imagined as a fantasy.

Four golden arms floated out of my back. An Arachne.

I was so entranced at the sight of the two golden arms peeking over my shoulders that I’d ignored the feelings threaded in our bond. Was that… embarrassment from her? It felt like walking through mud that tickled you.

“Um… okay.” She laughed through, but the awkward air had settled into place like a building that had crashed down. “Thank you?.

“Sure.” I tried to stay calm, I really did but even the four arms to my back cowered in cringe.

“Moving on.” She coughed. “See that?”

“See…” Oh… oh? Where all three bodies had died was now a floating shiver of Iron, a distortion of space colored a dull gray. “Is that… Warpcode?”

“Yup — remnants of their Datashields and Cleavers.” She floated over to it, a tap of the thing draining into her body, her body briefly engulfed by what seemed to be flames made of metal that died on contact with her. “Not as much as when you consume a BUG, but it’s enough to probably get you an update if you absorb maybe three or four. For me, it’s just a recharge of spent energy.”

“No shit.” Replacing that awkwardness was a chill of anticipation. “Why didn’t I dive in sooner?!”

———

Attacks like that weren’t uncommon, it turns out that we were in somewhat of a universal alleyway for avatar mugging. She explained that there were secure pathways to the AbyssNet layer, sort of highways used for big transfers of code. Those were relatively safe, but the passengers were monitored by corporations and criminal organizations, so they became areas we wanted to steer clear from. There were also whole cities and towns made on the net, entire communities of digital Avatars.

The grandiosity was astounding.

Where we were acted like a sort of the backrooms of the public-space. An in-between area of pure data transfers and a few stabilized platforms to support Avatars that maintained them, she said entering the Data-Surges where the transfers happened was a surefire way to die at my level.

“It would… scatter you into a million places at once. The deeper you go, the faster it becomes. A single second in there could see you whisked away to Europe if you entered one at the VoidNet layer, that’s assuming you survive it.” The warning behind her words carried something of an experience that there was no questioning.

Over the next few… hours. We were attacked several more times, and it wasn’t until my fourth and then ninth Warpcode consumption that I got updates.

Psyche V.1.08 has updated to V.1.09

Effect: Increased confidence when talking to an entity the Adapter considers attractive.

Huh? Was that the update I’d been waiting for all this time?

“Huh.” Mirage peeped as she saw the screen appear in my vision, and my attempts to claw it away as well. It might as well have been a direct alarm to the inner workings of my caveman brain.

Fortunately, the second update was a tiny bit more needed.

Data Mimicry V.0.07 has updated to V.0.08

Effect: Increased speed of reading live Warpcode from a Neuroframe.

It also ticked up my development through the Foundation stage… I was now at 3%. After nearly two weeks, yeah things had really slowed down.

After what could have easily been half a day, we managed to delve deep enough to the point where the blue walls darkened into a gray contrasting with the black void…

———

Some digital hours later

The SurfaceNet (Iron Sub-Layer)

“So the Iron-Grade Warpcode we’re in now… why can’t we just absorb it?” I tapped one of the walls, it pulsed eerily against my knuckles like it was alive and reactive.

“We’ll be hunted.” She said simply, a bubble forming from her hand to show a humanoid machine halfway between liquid and metal. “Just avoid interacting with The Framework. Should have mentioned it sooner but… especially don’t destabilize it. It’ll call in what are called Sentinels, mindless AI soldiers. They’re a NeoCore countermeasure system to keep the Net secure from Net-terrorists and MALware attacks.”

Got it… I spent the remaining time making idle small-talk, sometimes Daylight or Twilight would appear by my side and make conversation with me. Daylight said how it was her job to keep us hidden, something-something about masking our presence using Iron-Grade cloaking protocol to blend in with The Framework.

I’d tried to dig in a little deeper about Mirage’s specifics about her Features. Even though I’d read them, I’d only actually gotten the scope of their development progress and a summary of their updates up until V.1.15. After which I couldn’t pry in any more.

“Why don’t you wait until you’re better.” She teased with an honest grin.

“You’re not worthy of such knowledge.” Came Midnight’s more harsh reply.

“What is Midnight’s deal anyway, I get it that each of your Persona’s have a different… personality, but how’d that come to be anyway?” I asked.

“I got the Persona Protocol at Version 3.00 of my Psyche Feature. I suppose the easiest thing to say is that there was trouble regulating my… emotions. They overflowed, so I needed baskets of Warpcode to feed them into. Midnight’s actually the oldest of them.”

“So she’s a vessel for your rage?” It was my best guess.

“No.” I didn’t expect her to say anything after that, I was wrong. “My… negative emotions, mostly contempt.”

“Contempt?” If I was getting her to speak more, then I would gladly indulge. “You loathed the world or something?”

“I felt like I did, and I still do. My Persona’s don’t mean I stop feeling those emotions, just that for some moments I can have someone else think about them for me. It lets me focus, be… vigilant.” She spoke quietly throughout it all.

“Well… I just suppose, I don’t have a great grasp on who you are? All of you? They seem like real people even if they’re a bunch of Warpcode managed by a Feature, but what about you? Are you just a summary of them combined, or are you entirely separate?”

All three other Persona’s shut their mouths, and even I was waiting for Mirage to answer. “They’re not real people, Ripley. They’re tools for me… that’s how they started, anyway. I didn’t make them into functioning beings of self-actualization, it just ended up that way.”

She didn’t answer my actual question. “Well… they say your Features adapt to your situations, why did they become more… alive?”

“I don’t know.”

I did. It wasn’t all too difficult to guess either, just thinking about topics like imaginary friends in the first place.

She wanted friends, she was lonely. What she sought was… connection. Deep inside, I felt what seemed like snapped threads to something that meant a lot to her. A purpose.

Racing to catch up to her, I let my hand find purchase on her shoulder. “I’d like to get to know you, and I mean… you. I spend all my time with these other versions of you in my head but… I want to know all of you. Contempt, reflections, hopes — and you.”

She paused in her tracks, her thumb running over her other fingers, then she sighed. “You don’t. I’m not someone worth knowing like that — you already know that Psyche adapts to your past horrors.”

“I do.” I stared into the pulsing floor. “As much as I don’t talk about it, I don’t think it’s really healthy to have a Personality Matrix embedded in my head as a replacement for therapy.”

Her eyes opened at me, even if they were facing away. “Installed before you even got your arm, your mother still doesn’t know, right?”

“She still thinks everything I’ve become is all from Psyche.”

She slid away from my grip. “What is it that you want from me, Ripley?”

“I just… I guess some company.” I admitted. “Never met someone who’s replaced talking to someone by inserting a bunch of code into their head. Other than when I stare into the mirror — I guess it’s nice having someone to relate to.”

“It’s not that uncommon.” She scoffed.

“Fine. I just want to get to know someone as pretty as you.” The words left my mouth without the normal filter in my head to block them… fucking Psyche.

“I’m not pretty, it’s all fake.” She wasn’t phased by it. “I don’t even know what I would have looked like if I just grew up… naturally.”

“You would have still charmed me.” Yeah, I don’t think there was any hiding it now.

Silently, she started moving on. I should have felt dejected, but when I saw Daylight excitingly appearing in front of me with a simple thumbs up, I wasn’t.