Theo was on his way to the next victim he had been assigned to investigate. As he did every day, he sent a short message to Kara before stepping onto the scene.
TM: I’m about to start working. I hope you have a great adventure today! 😃
TM: Love you! ♥
KM: ...
Kara was the only one that Theo ever actively watched and waited for a response, and not just lately. Ever since he was a kid when he first got the girl’s number, he would stare at his mobile or any other display and wait, sometimes for hours, for her response. It was rare that she wouldn’t respond at all. It was like they had been playing a decades long game of ‘last word’. However, Theo had a job now, so when he saw the three dots disappear without a response, all he could do was sigh and continue with his day. He played with his digital cat, Chess, until he arrived at the scene.
As the vehicle was moving at speed on the autoway, well over 100 mph, it began suddenly slowing to a stop, a sensation that was quite alarming to Theo until he realized that he was approaching the crime scene. There was a line of police vehicles along the side of the autoway underneath an overpass. The right-side doors opened, encouraging Theo to get out on the side of the road without the ballistic objects that would kill him immediately, which is exactly what happened to the victim he was there to see.
Theo began walking down the road. Even though there were a line of vehicles between him and the active autoway, it still felt very unsafe to be there. Eventually, the line of police vehicles ended. There was a crowd of cops standing outside of the scene, cordoned off with digital police tape. Theo weaved his way through and into the scene where he first saw two black rubber lines about 5 feet apart that extended for hundreds of feet in front of him. Only about 20 feet from where they started, and directly under one side of the overpass, Theo found spots of blood. Then, the next stretch of road had large spots and spray, a shoe, and then a long, wide, red streak, all leading up to the back of the autonomous vehicle that had been in the accident.
The vehicle was likely totaled, judging by the outside state of it, though the cabin was pristine save for the coffee spilled all over the interior. The passenger had already been checked for injury and allowed to leave by the time Theo had arrived. All he was here to do was to see the body. Theo walked around to the front of the vehicle.
The victim was broken, mangled, and wedged under the front bumper of the car. The damage to his body was enough to make him completely unrecognizable, but luckily, his Brainstem Interface was still intact and functioning. His public profile was accessible immediately.
Jackson Edwards was a freelance web developer and a recluse who lived his entire life online from a nearby apartment building. He only had a few personal connections, primarily his family, but he was unmarried and lived alone. After entering his credentials, Theo first checked Jackson’s socials. They all looked to be pretty usual. Nothing seemed to stand out there. Theo had investigated a few other suicides since Christina, but he had determined them as genuine suicides with nothing connecting them, nor any indication of criminal involvement or intent. He pulled up his CCTV access and began a search based on some of the flipped images Theo pulled from Jackson’s social media, just as he had done for the past few suicides but had come up empty in those cases.
While he waited, Theo pulled up the live view of the cameras overlooking the autoway he was standing on. Once pulling up a few different angles, he began winding the footage back. He saw the moment Jackson fell onto the autoway. Theo was surprised to see that Jackson’s image wasn’t hacked and hidden from the cameras. Theo followed Jackson’s moves in reverse to the point that he came out of his apartment, then watched it back in real time. From the second he emerged from his apartment, Jackson was clearly in distress.
The man was cowering and flinching and seemed to be frantically trying to get away from something. He could barely take a few steps before he would throw himself against the wall or to the ground. He went down the stairwell, stumbling down half of the steps, and fully falling and rolling down the last flight to ground level. He ran outside and paused to look at the skyline and all around him with a look of absolute horror on his face. A woman walking by saw his distress and appeared to call out to him, which was inaudible to Theo’s perspective.
Jackson turned toward the woman, and appeared completely terrified by her, falling back onto the grass, then turning and running down the walkway as fast as he could, directly onto the overpass that would be his doom. Once on the overpass, he ran from one side of the path to the other, then fell against the concrete barrier. While facing away from the barrier, he crawled to his feet, and then backward over the barrier, falling directly in front of an automated vehicle on the autoway below.
Just to be sure, Theo ordered a toxicology screening for the victim. He wanted to be sure Jackson wasn’t on some extreme hallucinogenic. For the same reason, Theo requested access to Jackson’s visual data stored on his interface. In response, he received a message from Bell-Westbrook Cybernetics legal department regarding the reason for access. Theo sent along a warrant stating Jackson was being investigated as a victim of murder. That was all that was needed.
A list of videos popped up in Theo’s vision, which in itself was strange. Usually, video would start recording as soon as the interface was turned on, whether it was just a visual implant or a full brainstem interface, and it would record constantly, leaving a single video file that was the last 72 hours, at least, of the victim’s death. Jackson had 4 videos, meaning 3 gaps that according to the timestamps, were about an hour each for the past 3 nights. Theo selected the most recent video; its duration was barely over 4 minutes long.
Jackson had awoken with a start large enough to throw him out of his bed. He rolled around on the ground, grabbing at his body and checking his hands. He sighed with relief, then rose to his feet, throwing his comforter back onto the bed, and moving to the bathroom. He turned on the light and looked at himself in the mirror. Jackson was in a flop-sweat. He rinsed his face with water and took a few deep breaths. The breaths gradually turned into heaving. Thick, viscous fluid began drooling from his mouth and nose, and he started spasming as if he were trying to vomit. Jackson then watched through the mirror as a few long, thick strands emerged from his mouth.
They were the legs of a creature emerging from his throat. Theo thought that it was that of a giant centipede, but when Jackson grabbed it and began pulling it out, Theo realized that it was a creature unlike anything he had ever seen. The body, instead of being a chitinous shell, looked like it was made of soft, pliable skin. When Theo looked more closely, he could see that each segment was a twisted, malformed human face caught in the grips of complete agony.
“What the fuck!” Theo shouted. He was watching Jackson’s view through both eyes, as if he were actually there, and reacted exactly as Jackson did, trying to grab the creature and pull it away. When Theo wasn’t able to grip anything, he came to his senses, blindly fiddling with his stylus to pause the playback and opt to watch it through a window, instead of in full detail. He ordered an autopsy, and for someone to search his premises immediately, then Theo continued playing the video, it was still quite jarring. “Jesus Christ, what the hell, man?”
The creature was longer than Jackson’s arm and was writhing around and wrapping itself around his hands as he pulled. The creature was dripping in a translucent yellow-brown fluid that seemed to be flowing from the orifices of the faces that made up its body. Jackson struggled to keep a grip on the creature, but finally, the length of it ended with long, jagged pincers. Once it was free, Jackson threw it into the tub, and crawled away from it. He convulsed again and vomited a sizeable volume of the fluid. He finally started catching his breath as he got to his feet and watched the bathtub. The creature began crawling up the wall and onto the ceiling, then approached Jackson.
The closed toilet seat began shaking, then opened, revealing another creature emerging from it. He saw much smaller ones coming from the sink and tub drains as well, hundreds of them. Jackson closed the bathroom door and stepped back. He watched as the small ones started coming through the gap under the door. A movement through the window beside him caught his attention. It was supposed to be dark out, but there was a distinct red glow in the atmosphere, flickering and bellowing as if there was a nearby fire. Then a large shadow fluttered by the window, startling the already nerve-wracked Jackson. He took a half-step away from the window.
Suddenly, the window crashed inward as a winged monster came flying into his apartment. It knocked over a shelf filled with books and loudly screeched with a massive needle-toothed hole nearly the size of its body. It climbed around with the hooks on its wings, and with long, spindly forked legs, it snatched one of the centipede-worms and devoured it. Jackson turned tail and sprinted for his front door. Once in the hallway, he looked toward the elevator, but saw several smaller, but still sizeable flying creatures crawling around along the walls and floor.
Though they were without discernable eyes, they seemed to turn and look directly at Jackson. When he took a step back, they lunged and started flying at him. Jackson turned and ran the opposite direction. Up until that point, Theo was convinced that the things Jackson saw were real. They were certainly detailed enough and were interacting with the environment in a way that Theo had never seen in an AR app. Theo pulled up the feed from the CCTV cameras and synced it to Jackson’s video.
Watching from the outside again gave Theo a modicum of relief, knowing that the things weren’t real. He still wanted to check Jackson’s apartment to be absolutely sure, but when Jackson stepped outside, it became even more clear. Jackson saw the city in the grips of flame and destruction. He could see swarms of the flying nightmares in the distance, and could hear explosions, screeches, and screams. The woman who called out to him in reality, sounded like incoherent, hysteric shouts to Jackson. She appeared to be running toward him, away from something that was chasing her.
From the alleyway behind the apartment, a new creature appeared standing nearly 15 feet tall on several thin, spider-like legs. Its torso was long and flat, with a vertical toothed maw at the top, and extended, spindly appendages, like tentacles with a bone structure. It was fast, closing on the running woman within seconds and wrapping her leg with one of its bony arms. The woman fell to the ground, knocking her head against the concrete, dazing her for a moment as the creature lifted her into the air.
The thing wrapped another tentacle around the woman’s other leg, and the woman again began screaming as it pulled them apart. The screams went from terror to agony as Jackson heard the bones in her hips pop and crack. Blood stained her clothing when her flesh tore, and her sounds became gurgles. When her clothing gave way, her leg came free with a significant portion of her lower torso, and her intestines spilled out onto the ground. Jackson fell backward, watching as the creature bring the dripping limb to its mouth, where the razor-sharp teeth removed and consumed the flesh from the bone within seconds.
Jackson scrambled to his feet and began sprinting down the walkway toward the overpass. Another large flying creature swooped out of the sky toward him, causing him to stumble, trying to avoid it. The thing dove a few more times before it landed on the path beside him. Jackson backed away from it, falling against the barrier. The creature slowly approached him. There was only one way that Jackson could go to avoid it. He scrambled to his feet, climbed backward over the barrier, and fell 16 feet onto the autoway below. Jackson yelled out from the pain of breaking several bones upon landing. He tried to push himself off the ground, but the pain was too much. He heard an ear shattering screech and looked up just in time to watch the flying creature plow directly into him.
The whole experience sent chills down Theo’s spine. He wasn’t excited to watch it again. He closed down his video feeds and noticed that he was still standing on the autoway, looking at Jackson’s corpse wedged under the front bumper of a mangled vehicle. Theo recorded a walk around the scene, getting his face very close to the corpse and the viscera that lay all over the road. Virtual police tape was the only thing that separated him from the other autos that could do exactly the same damage to him, so he didn’t waste any time doing the recording. Jacque probably wouldn’t be happy with the fidelity of the digital recreation, but Theo didn’t want to spend any more time on the autoway than he had to. He sent the video to Jacque with an apologetic emoji attached, then returned to his vehicle, having it take him to Jackson’s apartment.
Just as he had expected, nothing was particularly out of place. The window was unshattered, there was no residue from the creatures, and there certainly was no evidence of a woman being torn apart. The opposite, in fact, considering the woman herself had already given a statement to police, saying she saw the guy freaking out and thought he was having a bad trip. Though Theo didn’t see any evidence, he grabbed the nearest officer wearing an HMD and had him use his human eyes to look for anything conspicuous, with no result.
Theo could only make the determination that what Jackson had seen was entirely digital. An Augmented Reality app of some sort, not dissimilar to Chess, Theo’s kitten companion that was softly purring from its curled-up position in one of his coat pockets. Augmented Reality apps and games weren’t uncommon. Theo had experienced several, but the realism and amount of detail and interactivity seen in Jacksons vision was far beyond anything he had personally experienced. He did a quick search online for discussions or reviews regarding apps or games with the level of detail he witnessed. The only thing coming back was a horror addon for Wanderlust. While it had some AR elements to it, the addon just didn’t look to match the level of insanity, nor were any of the monsters very similar.
The facial recognition scan came up with almost nothing. Jackson was a hermit, spending entire months at a time inside his home, having everything he needed delivered to him. Though, there were a few hits, during the periods in which his vision recorded nothing. They were all caught through reflections, where the real image was hidden through a hack. It was just like with Christina, even down to his lurching, apparently drunk manner. He began following Jackson’s trail of shadows.
During each of the missing periods, Jackson seemed to have gone on the same route. Theo didn’t get as much as he wanted, but it did appear that Jackson was visiting a few spots near where Christina’s ghost had been seen, but Jackson himself didn’t go anywhere near Shadow Recording. Theo spent a few hours trying to narrow down the two’s intersecting paths but was unable to do it to a satisfactory degree. Eventually, he felt like he was wasting time and decided to switch, taking a look at Jackson’s interface activity.
Again, there were portions missing during his periods of absence, so Theo could only work with what he had. By this time, Theo was starting to wonder whether there was a connection to Wanderlust. Christina was mentioned as being a fan, but while Theo did notice that Jackson had a few hours logged, most of his activity wasn’t game related at all. He spent most of his time programming or participating in online communities. There were nearly a dozen sites where he was an active user, but by far, he spent the most time on an app simply called ‘Forums[i]’. Theo had heard it spoken about before, by Christina’s boyfriend, and by Kara herself shortly after first getting her brainstem interface.
At the time, the app was only available to those with a brainstem interface, thus making Theo unable to join, but now that he checked again, a few years later, he saw that it was now available to HMD and Vis/Aud[ii] users like him, and even the lowly desktop and mobile users in flatland as well. Theo downloaded it and ran a police account setup utility and logged in as a user with specialized law enforcement privileges. The first thing he did was contact the admin bots to request access to Jackson’s full account history. As expected, they requested a warrant to do so, Theo responded by sending the warrant, informing of the victim’s death, verified by his own still active interface, and that the user’s death is suspected to be murder. Theo was in his account within seconds and decided to start at the end. The last interaction Jackson had before his final disappearance and ultimate death was a private message from a user with a simple name.
Synapse: You wanna see something really scary?
He had received messages from this person previously as well, none of which were responded to. They weren’t the only one that had words with Jackson, however, nor was Synapse the worst. Jackson’s online persona was loud and prideful, which often came across as arrogant and stubborn. As such, he had received threats and slurs from dozens of users, each one becoming a suspect and receiving a police-issued request for comment and access to their location history on the night of Jackson’s death. Most of the requests went through with an automated warrant, and several had already responded within seconds, but the warrant was denied in the case of Synapse for insufficient evidence.
Theo looked over all of the messages from Synapse. While Theo did infer a threatening undertone, there was nothing in the messages that fit the legal definition of ‘threat’. At best, it might be considered cyber bullying, but on that point, there was nothing the police could do as it was solely the responsibility of the admins and moderators of the site to manage that. Theo began looking through the logs of the individual forums that Jackson was active in. There were a lot. More than Theo was comfortable reviewing himself. He expected he was going to have to requisition an intern or two to help but held off doing it just yet.
There were a few different levels of interactivity in Forums. Each room had live channels where full body avatars would meet and interact in real time. Everyone was able to observe the live channels whenever they wanted no matter what platform they were using, but if a user wanted the full body experience, they would need a Brainstem Interface to do so.
Every word spoken through the avatars was transcribed and added to that forum’s text log, where it could be responded to by non-avatar users. The log was much easier to browse through, but Theo could also watch Jackson’s conversations from his own perspective through his video records. Again, Theo started at the end, choosing to watch Jackson’s last interaction in Forums, specifically, the Boston Area Tech Philosophy forum.
The visualizations upon entering the room were flashy and beautiful, and filled with particle effects. First, a large glass table appeared in front of him, followed closely by a dozen comfortable-looking chairs, a handful of them already claimed by people who, visually speaking, could barely be considered ‘people’ at all. The rest of the room materialized, revealing them to be seated in a spacious conference room. On one side was a large array of seats, set up like a lecture hall or bleachers. Many of the seats were taken by black-void silhouettes of people that represented the non-avatar active users. The opposite side of the room was a glass façade providing a breathtaking view from the top of a tower, but judging by the degree of the curvature of the Earth below, it was a much higher tower than any Theo had ever been in. Jackson started speaking. His words appeared in the log as he spoke.
DarkmatterDisaster: Dubai again? Can’t we get a few more location in rotation?
FoxyFrosting286: Take another look.
The person responding had a woman’s voice but had a mechanical body in appearance. The curves in the metal and plastic implied a feminine form, but her arms were detached, floating gauntlets. Jackson stood up from his seat and walked to the window, then looked down onto the world below. Theo didn’t think he had acrophobia, but he felt like he might develop it based on their considerable height. The tower was sitting on a river delta with a bright blue sea on one side, and verdant flowing plains on the other. There wasn’t another building as far as the eye could see, which, at this altitude, was a significant distance.
DarkmatterDisaster: I guess it’s alright.
TornadoFloramuffin: Jesus, Dark, nothing’s ever good enough for you, is it? Lol
Tornado was also apparently a woman in voice, but Theo wasn’t quite sure whether a fantasy storm elemental really had a gender.
DarkmatterDisaster: I dunno. I always preferred the default room.
FoxyFrosting286: What, you mean the empty black void?
DarkmatterDisaster: Yeah.
DufferCuffer857: Booooring!
Duffer appeared as a more realistic Avatar. A human male in a fine, dark suit would have been out of place among the otherworldly style of his company, were it not for his glowing eyes and mouth.
DufferCuffer857: Why even get an interface if you’re going to do something so basic?
DarkmatterDisaster: Part of why I wanted an interface was so I could shut out the chaos of the real world. There’s always just too much going on.
DufferCuffer857: Really? Too much?
TornadoFloraMuffin: Yeah, I gotta say the opposite too. Meatspace is way too slow for me.
FoxyFrosting286: Agreed.
DufferCuffer857: Why you gotta be so square, Dark? Look, he’s even still using his default avatar.
DarkmatterDisaster: No, no! I added a beard!
DufferCuffer857: Oh, yeah, that makes a difference!
FoxyFrosting286: lol
TornadoFloraMuffin: You know I’m not one to yuck someone else’s yum, but, I mean... Come on.
DarkmatterDisaster: I just enjoy being myself in stuff. I always made my character look myself in videogames since I was a kid.
FoxyFrosting286: Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that your interface made a copy of you as a starting point to do more creative stuff.
DufferCuffer857: If you’re trying to escape the real world, it doesn’t really make sense to have an avatar that looks like you, does it?
TornadoFloraMuffin: I’m not sure why you want your avatar to look like you in the first place, especially when you watch the kind of porn that Dark likes. Could you imagine being recognized IRL?
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DarkmatterDisaster: Whatever, guys.
DufferCuffer857: Aww, looks sounds like Dark’s having a bad time!
FoxyFrosting286: What’s wrong?
DarkmatterDisaster: Had another nightmare last night.
FoxyFrosting286: Really? Another one?
TornadoFloraMuffin: That’s two nights in a row, isn’t it?
FoxyFrosting286: What was it this time?
DarkmatterDisaster: Pretty much the same as last time.
DufferCuffer857: All the crawly things coming out of your throat?
DarkmatterDisaster: And other places too.
FoxyFrosting286: Woof.
DufferCuffer857: What do you think it means?
DarkmatterDisaster: I dunno, but I’ll say this, they’re absolutely the most vivid dreams I’ve ever had in my life.
TornadoFloraMuffin: How sure are you that they are, in fact, dreams?
DufferCuffer857: Uhh...?
DarkmatterDisaster: What do you mean?
TornadoFloraMuffin: Well... you know... how can you be sure that it’s not your interface doing something funky in your sleep?
FoxyFrosting286: I’ve had interface bugs while I sleep. Shit’s real fuckin’ annoying, but it’s usually just the OS crashing and restarting or an audio notification or something. Nothing even close to having a nightmare like the one Dark describes.
DarkmatterDisaster: Yeah. Also, I don’t think that’s how the interface works.
TornadoFloraMuffin: How would you know?
DarkmatterDisaster: Uhh... I’m a programmer?
TornadoFloraMuffin: Dude, you’re a web developer.
DarkmatterDisaster: Yeah. Web development is programming.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Technically.
DarkmatterDisaster: What’s your point?
TornadoFloraMuffin: My point is: I may not be a programmer of any kind, but I’m pretty sure that programming websites is not the same as programming for a brain-computer interface.
FoxyFrosting286: She has a point...
DufferCuffer857: Yeah. In fact, the only person I know of that has some experience programming a BSI is-
DarkmatterDisaster: Don’t even fuckin’ say it.
Synapse has entered the forum.
DarkmatterDisaster: Jesus Christ. I swear this guy can read our God damned thoughts or something.
The new user was a void that grew from a small shadow. Within that void were dozens of faces, completely obscured except for the eyes and crooked teeth in a jagged smile. The largest, central one served as the focal point for their avatar.
Synapse: Not everyone’s, Dickmatter. It’s just so easy to read yours.
FoxyFrosting286: Hey Syn.
DufferCuffer857: Yo.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Welcome back.
Synapse: What the hell kind of greeting was that? Y’all need some lessons in etiquette.
DufferCuffer857: Whatever, dude.
Synapse: So, what’s the current topic?
TornadoFloraMuffin: Dark had another nightmare.
Synapse: Oh, did he now?
TornadoFloraMuffin: We were discussing whether it was actually a dream and not some bug in his interface.
Synapse: That’s pretty stupid.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Dude...
DarkmatterDisaster: What is your problem, man?
Synapse: I have no patience for idiots talking about things they don’t understand.
TornadoFloraMuffin: I never claimed to be an expert on anything, Synapse, I was just adding to the conversation.
Synapse: Well, if you had thought about it for even a second before those words drooled out of your mouth, you’d have realized that interface bugs don’t present themselves as fully realized nightmares.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Not so far, but we have no idea how Neural-AIs’ programming works anymore. We can barely read any of their code, let alone be able to identify a bug.
DufferCuffer857: You could argue that AIs are just a series of bugs that somehow work, kind of like evolution.
Synapse: That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s wrong on so many levels. The two have nothing to do with each other.
FoxyFrosting286: Makes sense to me.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Same here.
DarkmatterDisaster: Is Syn the only one that doesn’t understand how two concepts can have similarities?
Synapse: You’re simplifying these concepts to a point where they have no nuance and have lost all of their meaning. Why even use language at that point? It’d be more fitting for you all to use grunts and groans instead.
FoxyFrosting286: God, what is with this dude?
TornadoFloraMuffin: It’s all the fuckin’ time with this guy.
Synapse: What, are all my big words hurting your feelings? This is an adult forum, get over yourself.
DarkmatterDisaster: Just ignore them.
FoxyFrosting286: I’m trying. It would be much easier if I could mute or block them, but that doesn’t seem to work at all.
DufferCuffer857: How has this asshole not been banned yet?
DarkmatterDisaster: I have no fuckin’ idea.
Synapse: I’m not doing anything wrong. You’re all just being soft-skinned little snowflakes.
DarkmatterDisaster: Snowflakes, huh?
DufferCuffer857: Alright, I’m outta here.
DufferCuffer857 has left the forum.
DarkmatterDisaster: See? This is what happens when you open your mouth, Synapse. You kill the whole fuckin forum.
Synapse: If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.
TornadoFloraMuffin: You’re going to find yourself the only cook in a burning kitchen pretty soon.
FoxyFrosting286: Pretty sure we already lost Meg because of you.
Synapse: Whatever. That bitch couldn’t argue her way out of a paper bag to save her life.
FoxyFrosting286: That’s it for me. Catch you guys whenever.
FoxyFrosting286 has left the forum.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Do mods even exist anymore? This guy has to have been reported by now.
DarkmatterDisaster: Yeah, I know they have. But that doesn’t stop me from continuing to try.
TornadoFloraMuffin: Alright, well, until something happens to him, there’s really only one thing I can do.
TornadoFloraMuffin has left the forum.
Synapse: I guess it’s just you and me, Dickmatter.
DarkmatterDisaster: You are a terrible person. I’m ashamed to be the same species as you. I’d ask mercy for your soul if I believed in God, or that you had one to begin with.
DarkmatterDisaster has left the Forum.
Already, Synapse seemed like a very abrasive person, and, being the last person to communicate with Jackson, was now top of the list of suspects, though at this point, the list was really only one entry long, and Theo’s suspicion at this point was shaky at best. He continued looking through Jackson’s previous message history.
Jackson wasn’t a bad guy from what Theo could tell, though he did sometimes put off an air of smug superiority, it usually seemed to be in jest, and was often completely overshadowed by the appearance of Synapse. Wherever Theo saw Synapses name pop up, he scanned all of his words for anything tangibly threatening. He was hostile and abrasive in every encounter toward anyone and everyone daring enough to speak to him, but he was clever, and cautious not to carry it over the line.
A conversation nearly a week prior had caught Theo’s attention. The topic of discussion in the same Boston Area Tech Philosophy forum had landed on the very addon to Wanderlust that Theo had been reading about, a self-contained game simply called ‘The Horror’. Most of the forum were afraid or otherwise uninterested in trying it out, but one user by the name of MegiddoWillow9 spoke about how absolutely terrifying the experience was. They mentioned how the game was set up.
The player was at first guided down a corridor and given a series of varying authored scares, using the BSI’s ability to monitor heartbeat, adrenaline, and other stress factors to determine the user’s greatest phobias. Once finished, the player is free to explore and try solving a simple, if time-consuming puzzle, and the game dynamically produces personalized scares. Meg, as the other forum members called her, was deeply afraid of clowns and spiders. She said she felt the spider-clowns touching her, and clown-spiders crawling all over her, even biting and cutting her at times. But, by far, the worst thing she felt was a profound and persistent fear of being raped and violently tortured.
Traditionally, it was something that wasn’t touched on in popular videogames, even the horror ones. Sexual violence was often a surefire way to send a game to the bottom of the ratings pit, though Meg said that it never actually happened, and she quit the game before it came to that. They asked her if the monsters, setting, or dialogue might have impressed such a sexualized fear on her, but based on her descriptions of how the creatures were attacking her and reacting towards her, they didn’t seem inherently sexual. Even after watching footage clipped from her experience, the clown-spiders, while definitely terrifying, didn’t exactly feel rape-y.
That’s about when Synapse entered the Forum and began slut-shaming Meg, somehow twisting her perfectly rational fear of rape into a projection of her own dark and masochistic sexual fantasies. A flame war ensued and similarly ended when most of the users had left the forum. Theo checked later visits by Jackson to the same forum and saw that Meg never appeared again. Then he looked further at her username. MegiddoWillow9. At first, he thought Megiddo was a strange long form of the name Meg, or a Spanish or maybe Italian thing, but then it hit him when he searched the word origin. Megiddo is the name of an ancient city in Israel and was one of the words that Christina Auburg had used in some of her pre-BSI usernames.
Finally, Theo was able to link two of the suicides together directly, and he was pretty confident that he now had what he needed to get information, not just about Synapse, but the rest of the users on that forum as well. Theo checked to see if there were any other forums both had frequented, but only found the one. Theo sent a warrant for access to MegiddoWillow9’s Forums history, as well as that of all users who had communicated with both her and DarkmatterDisaster. However, there was an immediate roadblock.
While Christina had been known to use ‘Megiddo’ in several of her older, pre-BSI online profiles, none of them matched exactly to ‘MegiddoWillow9’. Furthermore, since Christina’s interface was destroyed, Forums was unable to contact it to verify her death status like it was able to with Jackson. In order to get the warrant approved, a certificate of death needed to be sent to the admins, who would then verify whether MegiddoWillow9, in fact, belonged to Christina. Theo sighed with frustration. Without the warrant for Christina, the warrants for the rest of the forum, and specifically for Synapse, weren’t likely to go forward. It could be hours at least, or days depending on how competent the system was feeling.
There was little more for Theo to do but wait. He played with Chess as his vehicle adopted an idling pattern, and after a few minutes without input, took itself to an auto charging lot. Theo created a personal account for Forums. He could have continued using the police access account for greater privileges, but it was also obviously a police account, and wouldn’t work well for live observation and interaction with the communities. Instead, he opted to use an old username he loved that wasn’t affiliated with the police. At least not officially. Once the setup was complete, he selected a few forums personally interesting to him, like classic movies and television shows, documentaries, true crime mysteries, kittens, puppies, and unhinged UAP conspiracies. Lastly, he selected and entered the Boston Area Tech Philosophy forum.
HardBoiledDick44 has entered the forum.
Theo was greeted with a few text ‘Hello’s, and a few people laughing at his username, but there weren’t any BSI users online at the moment. That was fine. Theo was okay just chatting with the lowly text-only users in the forum. He wanted to immediately hone in and discuss Synapse and how other users in the forum felt about him, or other notable interactions they’ve had or witnessed, but felt that it wasn’t a very low profile way to start an online stakeout. Instead, he simply asked whether other non-BSI users felt that getting the upgrade was worth the cost.
The first thing other users brought up was that while paying out of pocket for a Brainstem Interface and Surgery could be in the tens of thousands or more, many jobs would cover the cost, and the government provided grants for students, the military, and people with lower economic status. Then Theo asked about the non-monetary costs, about the possibility of hackers, viruses, or implant rejection.
The hacker argument was waived away just like Theo had done in the past. Bell-Westbrook, the leading cybernetic tech and software giant, was also well known and highly praised for its cybersecurity suite. There were no high-profile cases of BSI hacks or viruses, and any that did come out were quickly refuted using the interface data themselves. As for rejection, there are tests done before the procedure that can test for implant rejection, and it could be prevented with inoculations and treated with drugs. As long as the procedure was done by a BW licensed surgeon using BW developed techniques and machines, and the patient followed all of the necessary pre- and post-op guidelines, the risk of rejection causing permanent damage was incredibly low, and there had never been a reported death from the procedure or the implant itself.
Theo tried to argue that since these things haven’t happened in the past, it doesn’t mean they can’t happen in the future. He asked whether it was technically possible to hack or infect brainstem interfaces. Nobody could give him a definitive ‘no’, though the discussion did evolve into whether it was possible to ‘hack’ someone with no cybernetics at all. Social engineering then became the topic of conversation, and when the forum began arguing whether social engineering was considered hacking, Theo saw that it had already been hours since he had started.
The vehicle had finished charging and moved him into a parking garage. Theo gave the digital cat sleeping in his lap a few scritches and checked on the status of the warrant for MegiddoWillow9’s account information. It still hadn’t gone through. Theo sighed and decided to call it a day, setting his destination to The Endless Wit to slam a few Dr. Peppers before heading home.
When he arrived, Theo went straight to his table and ordered his non-alcoholic beverage. Shortly after receiving it, as he was playing with his kitten and smoking a Phantom cigarette, the young woman he had met the other day apparated from the darkness and slid into the booth opposite to him.
“Mind if I sit here?” Lily asked, already getting comfortable. Theo acknowledged with an inviting gesture. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Likewise.” Theo said.
“How are you feeling today?”
“That’s an interesting question. Something I might hear from a therapist.”
“Not a friend?”
“I’m not so sure what we have is a friendship.”
“How long does it take for a friendship to form?”
“I... uh... Well, I’m not sure, if I’m being honest. But I’m certain that it’s more than one conversation.”
“How about two conversations?”
“I suppose that depends on the conversation.” Theo said.
He drank, then continued smoking and playing with Chess on the table. In the moment, he had forgotten that they were only visible to himself. Lily didn’t seem to bat an eye.
“And how many conversations does it take to become lovers?” Lily asked. Theo raised an eyebrow. It was quite the flirtatious question, but her demeanor suggested that it was a genuine one. He wondered whether she remembered that he had already told her he was married. He wondered whether that’s what she was inquiring about.
“There’s likely an average number of conversations that it takes, but it is possible to become lovers without a single word spoken.”
“Is that how it was for you?”
“Uhh... I... suppose so.” Theo didn’t exactly feel proud about the true story of how he first met his wife.
They were a couple of young, horny teenagers, their already chaotic and uncontrollable sex drives amplified by Ecstasy, among other drugs. In a perverted game at a party, the two of them, having never met each other beforehand, were locked in a small room after having all of their clothes stolen by their ‘friends’.
“Was it love at first love?”
“No... I don’t think so. It did take a few more conversations before I was sure that I was in love with her.” Theo said.
He remembered enjoying the experience in the moment. The feelings he felt were burned into his memory, even now, decades later, but as soon as he had come down from his high, he felt an overwhelming sense of regret and shame. He became convinced that he had raped Kara and felt like a monster for weeks afterward. The feeling only intensified when he saw her at school. She saw him as well, and it seemed like they couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into each other. The whole time, they were unable to look each other in the eyes. Eventually, Theo couldn’t stand the guilt anymore, and in a public, and somewhat humiliating display, he apologized to her and groveled for her forgiveness.
Kara laughed at him, which Theo would find out later was a nervous laugh, not out of mockery and pity like he had thought at the time. Theo fell into a torrent of self-hate-filled emotions that threatened to tear apart his psyche until Kara caught him when he was alone and explained the situation. She confessed to Theo that she had felt exactly as he did, that she was the one that had taken advantage and forced herself upon him. Over the course of that conversation, the guilt and self-loathing washed away, and when Kara asked if he wanted to try again, only this time without the drugs or the ‘encouragement’ of their friends, they were both left with a memory they could cherish. Theo didn’t feel like they had fallen in love at that moment as much as lust, but it wasn’t long before the two were spending every possible second together, and remained that way through high school, college, marriage, and the birth of their child.
Completely lost in memories, Theo had forgotten about the woman sitting across from him. She didn’t seem to mind. The bartender set a drink on the table, which Lily grabbed after he returned to tending the bar.
“What about you?” Theo asked as she drank.
“What about me?” Lily replied.
“Well, anything, really. I don’t know anything about you. What was it you asked?” Theo thought for a moment. “Do you have a lover... that you loved at first love, or whatever?”
“Nope. I’ve never experienced it.”
“What? Love... or sex?”
“Either.” Lily said. Theo turned his head in bewilderment, not expecting that answer. While he was a married man, he was also a heterosexual male, and he wasn’t blind. He would have considered Lily to be breathtakingly beautiful, had his breath not already been taken by another. Lily saw the confusion in his face. “Is that strange?”
“No... I mean, it’s not bad or anything, but it’s not very often that such an open and attractive young woman would be inexperienced in that regard.” Theo inspected her form a bit more closely. He remembered their last discussion in which they discussed her age. He thought she had said she was 22, but now he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know if she had changed her appearance in some way, but after a few seconds, instead of creepily ogling her, he opted to come right out with his next question. “How old are you, really?”
“I’ve read that it’s poor etiquette to ask a girl her age.” Lily said with a smile.
“Frankly, I was thinking more about the legality of you being here.”
“Why? I haven’t purchased any alcohol.”
“That’s fair... but... are you even 18?”
“... Why?” Lily said again, through a grin and squinting eyes. “Are you thinking about doing something that would require me to be 18? Or, are you one of those guys who hopes that I’m younger?”
“Jesus, no.” Theo said with a laugh. “I’d like to point out that you’re the one that brought up the sex stuff, which is fine. I’m not a prude or anything, but I would feel a lot more comfortable knowing I wasn’t discussing that shit with a literal child.”
“Okay, okay!” Lily said. Theo’s discomfort made Lily giggle. “I’ll admit that I’m at least 21. Is that good enough?”
“Sure...” Theo said. He wasn’t quite sure he believed her, but he couldn’t be bothered to ask for an ID or access her profile. He would just be sure to avoid buying her alcohol, which was already his plan anyway. “Also, I feel like I need to say again that I’m married.”
“I imagine that means something to some people.”
“Okay.” Theo said. He chuckled and leaned forward to emphasize his next words. “To try and alleviate any potential confusion, I will make this as clear as I possibly can. I am not interested in a sexual relationship in any way, physical or otherwise, with you or anybody else that is not my wife.”
“She’s a lucky lady!” Lily said, then paused to take a drink. The way she maintained eye contact gave Theo an idea of what her next question was going to be. “Does she feel the same way?”
Theo didn’t answer the question. He trusted Kara, and always had. She gave him no reason to distrust her. Even before she sank into her interface, the only other people that she really knew were Jacque and his husband, Chris, and Theo was pretty confident that they weren’t interested either. However trustful Theo was, he still accepted the fact that he didn’t have eyes on her at all times, nor did he want to intrude on her privacy like that. It was always possible, if unlikely, that she could do something behind his back.
As his train of thought drifted, his mind settled on the memory of the agreement they had made regarding digital sex. Before Kara got her BSI, and even before their vis/aud implants, they agreed that they could do whatever they wanted through a digital medium, as long as it never resulted in an offline meetup. When Kara did get her brainstem interface, she brought up the conversation again. She wondered, since the sensations and presence were so real, if it changed how he felt about her seeking out VR pleasures. Theo said that it didn’t, and that he just wanted Kara to enjoy herself to the fullest extent that she could. He still felt that way, but he wondered if that was one of the reasons she was so addicted to her interface.
“It seems pretty great, what you two have together.” Lily said, nursing her drink and playing with the tip of the straw. “I’d like to have something like that someday.”
“It shouldn’t be too hard. If you’re comfortable approaching unfamiliar men in a bar, then you shouldn’t have any issue meeting new people. Though, I do have concerns about the safety of such an approach.”
“It’s fine. I’m an excellent judge of character.”
“I’m sure you are. Do you have any prospects? And again, just as a general rule of thumb, married people shouldn’t qualify.”
“Hmm... well, in that case, I’m afraid not. It seems all the good ones are taken. Of course, there are a ton of bad ones that are taken too.”
“Are you actively seeking out bad ones too?”
“Sure! Maybe not to fall in love with, but to have a little fun.”
“So, you’re into bad boys then?”
“And girls, too. But maybe not in the sense that you mean.”
“Okay... then define ‘bad’ and ‘fun’ for me.” Theo said.
“I like to seek out the dregs of society, the murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and the otherwise harmful and sadistic, and I like to mess with them. I like to take whatever power they think they have and turn it on them.”
“Oh?” Theo said, leaning in. He was now a bit more interested in the conversation. “I have to admit, that’s not quite the ‘bad’ or ‘fun’ I was expecting. You’ve done this before?”
“Sure!” Lily said with a smile but then paused for a moment. “Well, maybe not in person, but online.”
“Ah, okay. But here’s the question... how are you so sure that they are rapists and murderers?”
“Like I said... I’m an excellent judge of character.”
“Right...” Theo chuckled. “There are so many things wrong with that. The internet is filled with fiction. You could come upon plenty of people who want to commit murder. Hell, if you could convict people of simulating a murder, you’d have damn near a hundred percent of all BSI owners in prison just for trying out Wanderlust. But if you’ve seen evidence that real people are actually being victimized, I’d first ask, again, how you were sure it wasn’t simulated, and then I’d ask why you didn’t pass that information along to the police, or FBI or whatever.”
“I’ve sent plenty of tips.”
“Plenty?”
“And, to be fair, some of my tips do result in investigations and convictions, but it’s much less likely to happen when the victimizer is a part of the police, FBI, or any other positions of political, financial, or religious authority.”
“... How many times have you done this?”
“Would you believe me if I said I lost count?”
“All without an interface?”
“Not a brain interface, no.”
“Seems like it would be an awfully time-consuming hobby. Unless it’s your job?”
“I suppose you could call it that. I’m just... made for it, I guess.” Lily smiled. Theo was now wondering whether she was religious, or if it was just common vernacular, but didn’t care to push in that direction.
“You said you ‘take their power and turn it on them’. What does that mean?” He said.
“A little social engineering, a little not... just to help encourage them to reveal themselves or make it a little harder for them to continue doing those things.”
“So, you manipulate and hack people, coercing them to confess? And you do it as a hobby? To me, that sound pretty close to vigilantism.”
“It’s all completely legal. Or, not illegal, at least.”
“Oh, you’re an attorney too?”
“Well, not quite. It would probably be more accurate to call me a ‘student’ of law.”
“Oh? Harvard or BU or what?”
“Both. Kind of. I’m not a registered student. It’s in a more ‘over the internet’ kind of thing, but some of the information I access does originate from those schools.”
“I gotta say, I don’t have much faith in your justice system, or that it’s as legal as you claim.”
“That’s your prerogative, but I ask, how much faith do you have in the American justice system?”
“Not much, I’ll admit...” Theo wanted to add that it was coming directly from a member of the Boston Police Department but didn’t care to share that part of himself just yet. “But it isn’t entirely influenced on the whim of a single person.”
Lily didn’t respond with words. A look was all that was needed as she sipped at her drink. Theo finished his, then grabbed his coat and slid out of the booth.
“Well, good luck on your hunt for love... or hate... or justice or whatever.”
“Thank you, Theo.” Lily said. “And good luck with your wife!”
It was a strange thing to say, but Theo didn’t think much about it. He waved to the bartender on his way out and returned home. He felt the worry building as he approached the door. It was a regular occurrence by now. He pushed through the fear and his front door. Theo was so racked with worry that he couldn’t breathe in the distance between the entrance and the bedroom. He creaked the bedroom door open to see Kara lying in her place on the bed, facing away.
Theo noticed two empty MRS bottles sitting on the bedside table, relieving some of his tension, but Kara was laying completely motionless. Her breathing had become imperceptibly shallow. Theo moved to the bed and took a seat, coming down just hard enough to try and elicit a reaction, to which there was none. He reached out and touched her shoulder, searching for warmth and a pulse. Finding them was a little more relief, but he needed more. He brushed his thumb gently against her skin.
When Kara set her hand on Theo’s, the majority of the weight of worry was lifted from his shoulders. The tension in his chest was released and Theo breathed deep. Kara said nothing. She didn’t need to. Theo kissed her forehead, then stood up to clean the bottles away and finish changing out of his work attire.
After dropping the bottles in the recycling, Theo grabbed a fresh bottle for himself and instead of returning to his room, went to the small living room and sat back in a recliner facing a bare wall. He drew his stylus and opened a window against the wall, then spent a few minutes browsing a few favored video streaming apps, before selecting a classic television thriller. He watched, taking sips of his MRS, pretending it was his favorite beer. It would have been a lot easier with a BSI.
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[i] Forums: An online collection of forums. Many are simple text, image, and video forums, but the primary appeal is the ‘live’ forums, where users can immerse themselves in a high-quality digital avatar in order to interact with other real-time users. Uses the same engine, and works as an addon to Wanderlust, though can be used independently.
[ii] Visual-Audio Interface (Vis/Aud, VAI): Generally, consists of visual cybernetics, like a display mesh surgically implanted in the cornea, or a full prosthetic eye replacement.