෴Raz෴
෴Bee෴
෴Braithwaite෴
෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴
Rage Against a Machine
෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴
Raz woke up at his desk. He wiped the drool off his face with the sleeve of his dress shirt. A glance at the clock confirmed it was late.
Probably just as well I had the blinds closed. Can’t be seen sleeping on the job. Should have gone home hours ago. Too many of these long days and long nights. At least I’ve got the Director gig pretty much in the bag. Probably need to start making time for things other than work.
The thought of taking more time for himself and Sia, maybe even a vacation, sounded wonderful. The thought was immediately followed by a stab of guilt and an imagined lecture from his dad.
No no. Even you took time off. Hell, you got a six-month sabbatical to study the Atacama Desert anomaly just last y—
Somehow, he’d allowed himself to imagine his dad was still alive. The sabbatical in question had happened over a decade ago. Worse, he’d been given the chance to go with him, but stayed home for no good reason.
Sorry mom. I never told you I’m sorry for that. I took six months we could have had as a family and split us up. Who could have known how soon he’d be gone?
With a long breath, Raz got up and looked around the office. Outside, his department was quiet. Only the night time safety lights were still lit. No doubt everyone was long since home by now. He glanced at the bank of light switches on the wall near his office door. They were all turned to the off position.
Hmm, I could call Sia and get dinner with her, but this late, she might just think it’s a booty call.
He could admit to himself that a booty call also sounded pretty good.
Something large and heavy shifted in the shadows along the far wall.
Thinking of the custodial personnel and their heavy carts, he called out. “That you Mark? Let me know if you want the lights turned on.”
The sound of something large shifting reached him again. Then he heard a sound like an office chair falling over.
His mind rushed to the story he’d heard just last… Well, sometime recently. The details seem fuzzy. He didn’t worry about that. The story was about someone’s pet tiger getting loose in a suburban neighborhood.
Tall enough to see over the cube walls, he saw one of the low walls jerk to the side suddenly, a snapping sound and screech of tearing sheet metal.
His hand went to his concealed carry holster. It wasn’t there. Another cubicle fell with a bang. Eager to at least see what he was dealing with, he turned to hit the lights. The switch bank was gone.
Huh. I could have sworn I used to have light switches right outside my office. I need more caffeine or something.
His desk phone started ringing.
The hidden large form seemed to become agitated at the sound. A roar like a blender the size of a semi truck, screaming in pain filled the air.
Raz shut his door and grabbed the handset. “Hello?”
“Raz, it’s me, Bee. You need to get out of there right now!” The voice on the line sounded off, like a completely familiar voice, played back with unexpected sound effects.
“Bee? Bee who? I don’t—”
“Right right. You don’t know me then. I’m a friend, the best one you’ll ever have. The implant is simultaneously stimulating old memories, and your fear center.”
Raz turned to peer out of his lit office into the darkness where something seemed to be lurking in wait. His reply was barely over a whisper. “Something’s wrong! I think there’s some kind of animal loose on the 17th floor! I need you to get security up here, and maybe animal control. I’m going to wait in my office until it’s safe.”
“No! If you stay there, we’re both worse than dead.” The somehow familiar voice replied immediately. “You have to run. You know this building well. Avoid the entity, and follow the mistakes!”
The call cut off with a whirring whine, then a low, synth heavy voice spoke. “Remain still. Be calm. Ignore this. It will end soon.”
The second voice clinched it. Raz dropped the phone and ran to the door of his office. He made his way toward the elevator. A soft sound behind him spooked him into a large conference room.
He peeked out the door back the way he’d come. Emerging from the shadows was his coworker Walker. Not that he liked that weasel, but better Walker than someone’s pet tiger.
“Oh my god man. You scared the crap out of me!” Raz exclaimed to Walker.
Walker smiled, but something about the expression looked wrong. His black office slacks ended in a trail of something like smoke that clung to the ground, and held together and moved in a coherent vaguely tentacle-esque manner, in exactly the way that smoke doesn't.
Raz closed the conference room door and turned the courtesy lock. The Walker thing advanced toward the door as Raz backed up from it. Retreating into the room, the long boardroom style table put a stop to his movement.
“Let me in.” The Definitely-Not-Walker said in a voice like gnashing metal on glass, “Let me in and this can be easier.”
“No thanks man. I think I’m good with you out there.” Raz looked around for a way out. Not-Walker raised a fist, his smile turning cartoonishly distorted, revealing the inside of its mouth to be a flashing line of red characters.
Ok, guy has hexadecimal in his mouth. That’s totally a normal thing to be in someone’s mouth, right?
Raz suddenly had the oddest feeling like someone should have been responding to his sarcastic internal dialog.
Not-Walker’s fist impacted the tempered glass conference room door with a slam and the grinding, cracking sound of thick panes of glass cracking.
Raz spun and looked for a way out. The rear of the conference room was a wall of thick glass windows.
This conference room doesn't have a window, does it? How do I follow a mistake?
A door that definitely had never been there before next to the window caught his eye.
Ok, that I can do.
He made it through and slammed the door behind him just as the tinkling sound of shattering glass reached his ears.
He was on the stairs. An interfloor landing. There was no door behind him. He touched the wall, his hand found only the same dry, rough surface of the pre-stressed concrete slabs he’d seen hundreds of times when taking the stairs.
The sign at the top of the stairs going up read Basement B.
I work on the 17th floor, what the hell is going on?
The sign at the door at the bottom of the downward stairs read Basement A.
He glanced back up at the upward stairs. The sign now read. “Wrong way.” A quick glance downward revealed the sign going downward now said “Wronger way.”
Wronger isn't even a word! Wait, does that mean I need go that way? What kind of mistakes am I following?!
He looked down at the lower sign again. It now featured a picture of a cigarette and the words “Thank you for surrendering peacefully.”
The upward sign now said, “Resistance is” with the final word flickering between ‘useless’ and ‘necessary’.
A glance down and the sign now said, “Please continue to waste time reading signs.”
He deliberately didn't look at the sign above him as he ascended toward the next floor. The door opened onto a flat concrete wall. Cautiously, he closed it, and opened it again. It was still a concrete wall. A door closed somewhere below. Raz didn’t wait to see what it was. He ran up the next two flights of stairs.
That door opened onto his floor. The Not-Walker was near the door, approaching on persistent smoke feet. It opened it’s hexadecimal mouth and roared a sound he hadn’t heard since the days of modems.
Without waiting to see what it did next, Raz slammed the door and fairly flew up the next two flights. The door was labelled with a scrolling screen of hexadecimal interspersed with blocks of what looked like assembler and even binary.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Not-Walker pounded on the door below him. A glance at the clouds of concrete dust and fist shaped dents in the door told him it wouldn’t hold for long.
Raz threw the door open and instantly found himself somewhere else.
An utterly flat, featureless plain surrounded him in every direction.
I’ve got to be dreaming. I need to wake up.
He could only see a few feet, but somehow knew the plain plane around him went on forever. It was simultaneously pitch black, but he could somehow see a bit. His own body glowed in a pattern of reds and blues.
That means something! I know it!
As he walked, he could feel directions that somehow felt wrong, dangerous even. He avoided those directions, and wandered in the directions that felt safer.
Raz wandered the plain plane for what felt like a very long time before something changed around him. The change was so slow, so gradual, he wasn’t sure how long it had been going on when he finally noticed it.
The darkness was shifting around, slowly giving way to light. The growing light illuminated dark clouds of smoke roiling and swirling in the directions that had felt dangerous.
The growing light revealed a figure in the distance. He was battling some kind of amorphous blob. In the remote half-light, the figure there looked familiar. More than familiar, something about the small figure in the distance drew him, called to him.
Dad? Is that you out here?
As soon as Raz began moving toward the far off figure, the open space between them began to fill with more of the strange moving smoke-like substance.
If this stuff wants to cut me off from another survivor, we need to get there!
Again, Raz found himself questioning his use of the royal we, even as he sprinted across the flat. As he neared the other man, the smokey enemy relented, pulling back from them both as if to watch what happened next.
When he closed with the familiar looking man, he called out. “Hey dad, how do we get out of here?”
The figure turned around. Dressed in cargo BDU pants, utility boots and a ripstop technical shirt, he looked almost just like Raz, except somehow slightly different. In that instant, Raz finally realized he was naked.
Was I naked the whole time? How did I not notice this? What happened to my shirt?
The other Raz nodded, “Sorry I’m not your dad, although I think he’d be proud,” his smile turned melancholy for a moment, before the urgency of the situation asserted itself. “It’s about time you got here. Now that we’re together, maybe we have a chance.”
“Why do you look like me? Why are you dressed? Why am I naked?”
The dressed Raz cocked his head to the side and shook his head slowly with a sigh. It was a very familiar move, and one Raz didn’t like being on the other end of one bit.
“I’m Bee. I am you, or at least a chunk of you. We need to reunite and figure out how to fight this thing.”
Raz suddenly knew why the voice sounded familiar. It was his voice, the way he heard it when hearing a recording of his own speech. He looked at the slightly wrong version of himself and wondered if that was what he really looked like, without being seen in a mirror.
“Ok, let's say I believe you. What do we do?” He finally asked, mindful of the circling tentacles of dark smoke around them.
“This.” The clothed Raz swung his hand and smacked the naked Raz on the forehead.
The false scenario fell away in a rush. Raz looked around with new eyes. He realized he truly was surrounded by darkness, seeing things through his additional sensoria. The clouds had to be some way the implant was attacking. That meant…
“Bee,” he said to his clothed counterpart. “Good to see you again.”
Bee smiled warmly. “The feeling is mutual, but I think we’ll need to skip the touching reunion and get to the issue at hand.”
Raz looked at the circling smoke tentacles. “Yeah. That’s a problem. How do we fight them?”
Bee sighed. “Now that we’re together, they’ve changed their behavior. Unfortunately, I think they might have been just a distraction.”
Raz watched the hypnotic swaying tendrils of solid smoke for a moment before shaking that off and glancing upward. The source of the light was a giant glowing pane of crystalline glass. Already too close, and descending toward them at an uncomfortably fast pace.
“I think you’re right.” Raz pointed upward.
“Oh? I see, that does look like a problem.” Bee looked up, his brow furrowed. Seeing his mannerisms from the outside still felt weird to Raz.
“Yes, that must be the implant, or at least what we can perceive of it.” Bee agreed.
“I think it wanted to separate us, somehow divide and conquer. Now that we’re together, there has to be a way to beat this thing.” Raz asserted, feeling less confident than he sounded.
Bee looked at the wall of glass coming down to crush us. “I don’t see a way to combat this. It has no visible weaknesses.”
Raz flashed to a discussion he’d once had with his father. He’d been trying to impart some wisdom about a strong mindset and wide scope of skills and knowledge. He kept coming back to one point. ‘In the end, when all else fails you, your mind is your best weapon.’
Raz smiled to himself at the memory, set his feet and braced himself to catch and stop the descending glassy doom. “Wrong. There’s always a way.”
Bee looked on, shaking his head. “I don’t think this is the way. We should evade this attack.”
“Sorry Bee, look around. It’s everywhere. There is no evading this one. We’re together, so it’s time to—”
The wall slammed into his outstretched arms like he’d been hit with an explosion. Somehow he knew that a hit like that in reality would have shattered every bone in his arms.
No! I can hold this. In this kind of place, willpower is it’s own strength. I. Got. This.
Despite the pain, his arms held. To his surprise, the glass halted its descent. Raz grunted and coughed. His arms slowly forced down until he was holding the glass wall on his shoulders.
Bee looked around, his eyes scared. “I don’t know what to do! I can’t leave you, but this is foolish!”
The wall on his shoulders rested there like the weight of the world. Raz struggled and strained, slowly forced into a squat, then to one knee. The crushing weight on him utterly relentless, intolerable.
Unable to spare much breath to talk, Raz grunted out his next thought. “You. Need. Me. I. Need you. Integrate.”
A light came on in Bee’s eyes. “Of course. I should have seen it. That’s why you’re in charge of ideas. Allow me to help.”
Bee stepped behind Raz, and lifted with him.
Suddenly the intolerable weight seemed like maybe, just maybe, it could be managed. As he got back on his feet, the crushing weight seemed almost trivial to push back. Raz realized Bee had vanished. He was alone on the flat plain, holding back the weight of the world on his shoulders.
[Not alone. Never alone. I’ve got your back.]
Holding the weight of the world suddenly didn’t seem like such a big deal. Raz looked into the thick wall of glass, and realized the inner surface was crawling with symbols, words. He recognized algorithms and clear text, among hexadecimal and machine code.
Still holding back the glass, he pushed his awareness into it. Seeking to understand, to find the weakness it had to have. The longer he watched, the more sense it all made.
This is programming way above my level. Lucky for me I don’t have to write it, just figure it out.
Deeper in, the symbols became almost alien in nature. Neither machine code nor anything else he recogni—.
He brought up the image of the sheets of metal given him by The Ancient One. Specifically, the final one. The one that didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of them. Two strings of decoded symbols in particular.
Like a decoding key, the alien symbols resolved themselves into something he could understand.
It was running a program. Of course it was. It was waiting for something, some triggering event.
It’s waiting for someone to put their DNA on it and become this chip’s master.
[Consistent with what we know. I have good news. I have found a way to activate White Fire in a quite apocalyptic manner. I will not survive, but you’ll be protected.]
Nope. No grand self sacrifice moments. But I like the concept. I’ll keep it in mind if we ever need to. I have another idea.
Although the weight felt more manageable, it still pinned him right there. Raz had a bad feeling the moment someone put their finger on that spot, this fight would enter the ‘sudden death’ round.
We’re going to use a highly controlled burst of White Fire on the chip itself.
[This seems like a very risky move. The chip is built to kill us if we manage to resist it too well. If you blow up the chip, we might not survive. We are not currently able to survive small intracranial explosives.]
Raz thrust his will deeper into the web of symbols and moving pulses, searching, searching, then first finding one string of familiar code and setting it aside, then finding the exact string of code he’d recognised as critical in the moment.
No. Not that. This thing locks onto DNA, but it’s surrounded by my DNA. So why doesn't it just lock onto me? There has to be a lockout, something preventing exactly that. Answer, this bit of code.
With that, he jerked the string of code out of the glass and crushed it between his glowing hands.
The instant the code crumbled into motes of light, the dark glass above became permeable. It began to glow with a soft radiance. The same symbols and pulses that had moved sluggishly across the unactivated chip now sped by almost too fast to follow as it came to life.
Except, the implant also registered him as the controller. So whenever he focussed on a bit of that code, it paused, and revealed itself to him. At this point he looked at the first chunk of code he’d found.
I think this is a remote access code. Some kind of backdoor to use on other chips. It has logic to determine what generation of chip to use which backdoor key on. Which means…
He went hunting through the code again, until he found the code that would respond to such an override request.
Change the locks, then bar the door.
With a flick of will, he first changed the coded key, then disabled the implants ability to hear such a request.
Dummy! Find the kill code and disable it! Should have done that first.
A short search uncovered not one but several ways to activate the implant kill code. He checked each line and function for traps, then removed them.
This seems almost too easy. I expected complicated code and logic traps.
[Perhaps the maker doesn’t expect anyone to ever see this code.]
Good point.
Finally, he’d killed all the code that could kill him. The command to harmlessly shutdown the chip was there at his mental fingertips. He was ready to activate that command, but hesitated. Instead, he dove back into the code and found the full initialization sequence. With the chip registering him as the owner, it was only too happy and helpful. He found the details nearly instantly, and confirmed that the initial response would be the same.
That reminds me. Later, when we’re not sitting around chained up naked in the least fun way possible, I need to use Somatic Restoration and see if I can protect myself so the implant can’t kill me even if someone figures out how to reactivate—
The cell door opened. Another Braithwaite stepped inside. He used a hard truck to bring in a large box. This simulacrum lacked the multiple targeting chevrons the other had retained. Raz remedied that situation with a quick flicker of intent.
Ready to fry the next one. His doubles seem more like copies, less fully independent than Hex’s aspects. So, the problem is, if he can just pump out these copies, I have to kill them both together, or find another solution.
The new arrival crouched in the far corner of the room like some kind of lab coat wearing gargoyle and stared at Raz.
Just when I think this guy has reached maximum creepy.
He’d clearly realized the protective garment was pointless, but this one had some kind of device strapped to his chest.
Damn, that’s the heart monitor thing. That means Hex is in range. I suspected she was near. Can’t just destroy everything. Bee, how long has it been since she put it on me?
[3 minutes 46 seconds.]
Put the timer up next to the clock. I’ve got an idea.