Sigun was reclined in his levitating pod. He had just awoken from the long simulation Mughal Quest, where he had lived the life of an ancient emperor. The experience had been so convincing that he had not engaged reality for roughly a week, drones taking care of his waste, hygiene, and general maintenance. As he commanded swathes of troops to victory, signaling the firing of cannons and directing steel clad cavalry, perfected his hand at calligraphy, and enjoyed the company of a royal harem, he layed like a vegetable in the real world, fed and hydrated with a network of intravenous tubes that protruded from his levitation pod, which was, more than simply a transportation device, more aptly described as a house, refrigerator, bed, supercomputer, plane, submarine, ship, and storage unit combined.

Upon awakening from one of his virtual journeys, Sigun always encountered a reality that seemed lackluster, unable to approach the vibrant electricity of the other side. The colors were boring, the air stale, the sounds brusk and distasteful, and a general sensation of depression and dissatisfaction pervaded, much like the truth an addict or alcoholic meets upon coming down from a fantastic high or intoxicating hallucination. This was the just reality Sigun now contended with, accompanied by a strong pain in his lower back and throughout his limbs, which had already begun to atrophy and deteriorate despite the wonders of consumer medication. He had been particularly at a loss without the company of L. Fauni and even Roask, who, despite his peculiarities, was the one person in his network that seemed to have a genuine, human quality about him.

His eyes needed time to readjust to the natural light, and with a virtual binge of the length he had just undergone, it would take hours or even days to feel back to normal. In fact, his entire body would need some time to readjust to reality. Advanced, electronic binary signals were delivered down his optic nerves and worked in tandem with biological neurons, activating his visual cortex. Microspeakers implanted in his inner ear could generate any sounds necessary during internal immersion. A grid of wires mapped within the man resembled the branching veins and arteries that make up the circulatory system capable of replicating all kinds of sensation. Virtual reality or simulation could be best conceived as a dream state. Just as in a dream, sounds could he heard, sexual stimulation and arousal felt, sights beheld, and movement perceived...

To alleviate a cramp in his lower back Sigun selected a painkiller by shifting his pupil in the motion of a figure eight, a needle in the levitation pod quickly delivering his dose into a vein in his arm. He ordered the levitation pod to land and struggled to raise himself as he grasped two metal bars that ran alongside the bed like a seat. His fat combined with the weakness of his muscles impaired the poor being, threw his arms, tremors ran as he was finally able to stand. Tears filled Sigun’s eyes as the memories and sensations of reality began seeping back into his consciousness.

Of all people on Earth, he alone was best aware of the fact that a life full of consumption and plenty could be as depressing, painful and unfulfilling as one of material simplicity or so called poverty. Indeed, since he was always full, he never experienced the satisfaction of eating, the sweet sensation of relieving his hunger. Virtually always medicated and painless, Sigun had forgotten the preciousness and value of health itself. Indeed, a life of excess was simply a curse in disguise, as the tears rolling down his face themselves proved. Sigun was, on the outside, a model consumer, but within, his life was in a state of emotional turmoil and spiritual chaos. He was a man afflicted by excess.

Even with a cane he struggled to walk, slowly making his way to the balcony of his flat, which was rather dimly furnished for a man of his status, spending so little time engaged in the real world that he had no real use for much decoration. Despite this, Sigun owned an entire floor of the skyscraper building he inhabited, the most coveted and iconic piece of real estate in the consumer capital, towering above everything around by hundreds of meters. It was shaped like a great pyramid coated in pure gold. As he approached his balcony a sliding metal door automatically opened and he stepped outside. The balcony wrapped around the entire skyscraper like the threads of a screw, and he began a stroll around, surveying his kingdom below.

There were no streets, but a steady flow of drones and pods shifted through the air, disappearing into the horizon or into various other skyscrapers or down hatches that lead underground, their movement analogous to the movement of particles and cells in the blood, circulating vital resources to the organs of the consumer city. He met eyes with the nutrient processing plant, a towering half dome of steel. A slit periodically opened at its apex as supply pods, large blimp shaped craft, came to dump loads of leftover organic material, left uneaten or expired before consumer use. From beneath the structure, expired subterraneans were ground up and supplied to the plant via great metal shafts, fed into the dark brown concoction to add to its protein content.

He glanced at his news feed and headlines from Sitma were listed. It appeared that consumer hegemony was guaranteed as footage of multiple nuclear detonations flashed in the upper right hand corner of his field of vision. He took a deep breath and exhaled. A reminder flashed in his display tab concerning an event he was invited to attend on the martian colony. The celebration of a nation wide, mandatory software update announced to occur in the coming months where consumers would enter a hibernation state as drones and machine intelligence performed upgrades to their internal computing and simulation systems. Sigun sighed, he was excited but it felt the universe was moving too quickly. All he hoped for was silence as he ordered an interplanetary transport drone and a change of clothing to transport him to the colony.

A courier made his way to Allistair Jaffari’s camp where he found the leader in one of his usual cross legged positions, his eyes cast out over the jungle beyond. “Commander, we’ve had reports of widespread technical failure, it appears some sort of sophisticated, malicious software has infected our infrastructure and is rapidly spreading. Unknown hostiles have carried out a number of raids on our guerilla battalions. Three nuclear detonations have been reported as well, sir. And those are only the reports that have come through since the technical blackout.” Perhaps this was the end, Jaffari thought. He held on, though, knowing that every stretch of progress is bound to terminate in some sort of setback. His communication tablet had already been infected by the software, the screen only displaying what seemed a fabricated reconnaissance or evacuation point where displaced Sitmians should congregate. It was as if a gargantuan tsunami had overtaken Sitmia, as if the consumers were previously not engaged in war and had only just utilized their entire potential.

“We need to go incognito, under the radar. Order all commanders to terminate their use of any communication technology and to disregard any messaging received from the devices. Orders are to decentralize and take to the jungles, we will spread out and return to what we do best, guerilla warfare. We’re going offline.” “Yes, sir”, the courier replied promptly, before running down to pass on Jaffari’s orders by word of mouth to the group of commanders. Jaffari got up and began descending his mountain command point to the small village located below. Sitmian huts were assembled and a number agricultural production units were scattered about, each appearing like a giant egg. They quickly grew special seeds possessed by the Sitmians, each seed housing genetic information produced from years of past experimentation and research which resulted in the rapid maturity of crops. The genetic manipulation and energy optimization and size of the resulting fare, and the comparative ease of setting up the production units and camps made it very simple for the Sitmians to not go hungry.

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Something was amiss, Jaffari thought. He met with Rama and other members of his original battalion and inner circle before they collected essential belongings and set off through the jungle. Jaffari met Rama’s eyes. “Something is out there....” Rama nodded, it was like the two men and the group had travelled back to when they were mere foot soldiers of the Sitmian resistance. A heavy rain was falling and the sky was filled with a deep, dense grey, unbroken like one massive cloud, its edges and boundaries out of sight. The humid air stuck to the skin and felt inescapable, and with no wind circulating, the gases slowly drifted through the trees. Periodic calls and wild howls announced to any potential intruders the possession of territory or the desire to mate. “Let us head to the coast. Clear our minds. We can organize our thoughts and may come across some promising signs.”

A macaw leaped from a low hanging branch, unsettled by the marching group below or perhaps sensing some other danger, its rainbow feathers easily navigating through the web of twigs and branches as it disappeared through in the canopy. Billowing clouds began appearing in the east, unnaturally thick and low to the ground, perhaps fallout from one of the nuclear detonations that had struck Sitima. It appeared like a harbinger of death or malice, and as it continued approaching from the East its thickness grew, with darker grey and even black tones composing its billowing clouds. The group followed Jaffari as he put on a mask and pair of goggles.

Overhead a group of high flying destroyer drones roared through the air, disappearing and reappearing in the dense atmosphere. A geographic analysis camera, constantly surveying the land below, detected the Sitmian camp that Jaffari and his crew had just moments ago abandoned and effortlessly launched a barrage of bombs. A chamber gate fixed on the bottom of the ship opened, releasing gallons of CY8, a bacteria which would contaminate the water and life of the surrounding region. If one were to return to the camp in the following days, they would be greeted by limp, lifeless plants, bending over in the shape of inverted parabolas, losing their strength to stand.

Jaffari signalled the party to pick up their pace as shrapnel, dirt, and other organic material began raining down overhead. Electricity filled the air, adrenaline rushed through their veins and thunder rang through their ears. They were sprinting through armageddon, descending into chaos, rushing through madness, watching the order of the world shatter as actors in a final scene, witnessing the countdown of their race and civilization. They began sprinting through the woods, tens of thousands of years of evolution leaving them hardly separate from their ancient ancestors, who once too sprinted through jungles and vast plains, hunting and on the run from the hostile, savage beast that one may call nature.

Likely the exact coordinates of the outpost had been calculated using information provided by the software virus that had seeped through the Sitmian infrastructure, and like a deadly plague or epidemic, was carried from one entity to another, unrelenting in its spread. Having been at the camp only minutes previously, Jaffari and his inner circle would have become ashes, dust in the wind, obliterated by the density of force released in a battle drone’s payload. The party continued heading to the coast, unperturbed.

On the other side of Sitmia, Abbad was continuing his march to his assigned evacuation point, the coordinates flashing on his device, which also displayed his location and direction. He was not so confident about using the technology, the touchpads and other devices were usually only handled by his group’s command. The pain in his head continued to throb as he recalled the beasts that had overtaken the party. Were they creatures of the Sitmian jungle? Consumer tools of war? Or something else… Abbad continued his march, and more flashbacks began to flash through his memory. Han Giru, slipping out of the door after embracing Abbad goodbye, coming home and checking his status, offering him his doses of medication. Where had he gone? Perhaps he was still in that same room, waiting for Abbad to return...

Abbad ducked as a pack of fighter craft passed through the sky overhead, their silhouettes appearing against a deep red, orange sky, pitch black like crows or vultures. They were the spherical sort of craft, and, being powered by completely silent gravitator engines, the sound that they produced as they sped through the air was the result of making contact with the gaseous atmosphere at great velocities. The three craft spread apart and from one another, and from beneath each of them a solid, triangular surface of high powered lasers emanated, shaped like a sensu or Japanese folding fan, the lasers scorched the Earth below, turning the vibrant fauna and flora into a charred black as they progressed through the air. Smoke began billowing from the scorched Earth as the lasers continued combing through the jungle. Complete and total indiscriminate destruction…

The bright, yellow-red triangular lasers emanated from a single point from beneath each craft as they shifted through the air in a perfect row. The base of one fan shaped superlaser surface was perfectly adjacent to the base of the next, and all three combined to destroy kilometers of land in just seconds, like a modern take on the fabled napalm used by protohuman warriors in those ancient lands of Vietnam. Abbad felt a chill pass through his bones, silent cries of agony seemed to come from the trees around him, perhaps sensing the efficient, cold, and calculated slaughter of their brethren to close by. Abbad began running to the evacuation point, he was getting closer as the sky lost its orange and yellow hues as a deep, dark red black took over, lit up and dampened by the smoke and small fires lit up and prompt distinguished by the jungle rains. More spherical ships passed overhead, bright lasers falling like the rains of hell from their underbellies, and fighter drones rushed through the air.

A countdown appeared on the device, signalling that evacuation ships would soon be landing. Abbad started sprinting, the throbbing pain in his head becoming more excruciating as he weaved, inhaling the smoky, thick air. He was beginning to lose his sight from the combination of foggy surroundings and thick rain and his suit heavy from all of the water collected in his boots and outfit. The sky was now pitch black, and the bright yellow fires seemed to form a great ring around him, their flames dancing in the ghost like smoke. Abbad noticed some artificial lighting centered directly at the evacuation point, and, as is appearing out thin air, more Sitmian soldiers appeared, all moving in the same direction.

As he arrived, the counter had just died down to zero, and the troops seemed all equally bewildered and shell shocked, some perhaps having travelled for days or weeks after losing touch with their commanders and companions, directed only by the technology with which they had access. There must have been hundreds, even thousands of Sitmians gathered there, all battered and beaten, holding on to life with the last of their strength. Suddenly, all the soldiers turned, beholding triangular laser walls pouring down from the darkness above, slowly increasing in size as they approached. They were the same kind that Abbad had noticed previously, and it then clicked. These were not evacuation coordinates, it was all a guise to form a dense collection of Sitmian troops, easily slaughtered in one fell swoop.

As quickly as he had approached the evacuation point, he began sprinting away, yelling to his Sitmian brethren to run for their lives. That bright red wall of death quickly approached as fight drones crashed down through the trees, picking off Sitmians with directed beam pulses and gravitator bombs, ripping them up one by one. Abbad tripped, and crashing onto the ground he simply froze as he saw a red wall, now only hundreds of meters from him, spreading for kilometers in each direction, inescapable. The blood red filled his pupils as he saw the Sitmians reduced to ashes as the wall passed over them, incinerated in virtually seconds with the trees and everything else around them. Abbad closed his eyes for the last time, offering one last prayer to his tortured world.