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Trapped in Hyperspace

Episode 4: Under Control

[Time to impact: 00:38:45]

TOM strode into the armory with Clyde at his shoulder. The Absolution's weapon stash was on the small side, due to it being an interstellar broadcast/exploration ship rather than a military, security, or police agency vehicle. It offered a double rack of Kiefer B-9 plasma pistols, a single row of Kiefer A-1 vacuum assault rifles, and a moderate store of explosive charges. Walking up to a storage unit, he selected an A-1 and held it vertically to examine it. Satisfied, he jerked his arm up and back down again, using the rifle's momentum to pump the slide. "If Swayzak won't let me shut them down, then I'll just shoot them down." He and Clyde took off into the deeper bowels of the ship.

The pair soon reached the cargo bay personnel door. There was no air to carry the sounds of anarchy from inside, but TOM could just barely feel the metal floor vibrating from the DOKs' mindless weapon discharges. "I don't have enough arms to hold more than one thing right now, so you better take this." He motioned Clyde over and, fumbling with his weapons, attached the B-9 plasma pistol to the tool-grip beneath the helper robot's eyeball. "You're my mobile holster. Come in if I need that, got it?" Once Clyde confirmed its orders, TOM gave a weary groan. "This is not gonna be fun." The DOKs had recently been critical in getting the Absolution out of a tight spot, and it was to his chagrin that the few survivors of that ordeal now had to be wiped out. "Feels like I'm blowing off another engine. Alright, let's get this show on the road."

When he stepped out of the Absolution's narrow hallway and into its spacious cargo hold, the DOKs were everywhere, firing sporadically. Resigning himself, he braced the A-1's stock against his hip so he could use the slide to lock in its photon grenade setting, then aimed for the tightest cluster he could see. With a mighty blast, the discharge turned all three DOKs into glowing scraps, launched him off his feet, and jerked the weapon out of his hand all at the same time.

Flying back out of the personnel door he had just walked into, he slammed into the wall and clattered to the deck plating. Clyde calmly watched it happen. TOM retrieved his weapon and marched in again, giving Clyde a warning gesture. "That better not show up on YouTube."

But back inside he had bigger problems: his popularity with the DOKs had gone south. Their defensive programming had clearly been triggered, which put him under a shower of blaster fire as soon as his foot was in the door. He locked in the rifle's cutting laser setting with the same one-handed method he had used back in the armory, jerking the gun up and down curtly. It wasn't so easy under pressure. While staggering back and forth through the incoming blaster fire, he felt the rifle slide out of his hand, fumbled to get the stock under his arm, finally got his finger on the trigger, nearly dropped it a second time, and somehow managed it all without getting shot.

The red beam he fired sliced through one of the DOKs, which crashed and rolled to a stop. He dove behind it to avoid the subsequent volley of plasma bolts. When it ceased, he pushed himself up and took aim over the prone DOK. But his cover, apparently, was not one hundred percent disabled. Before he could return fire, it reached up and yanked the gun right out of his hands. He stared at his empty hands, then looked up to see the butt of the rifle swinging toward his face, knocking him back into the open.

"Ugh ... Yeah, this is just what I need today," he groaned, rising shakily to his feet and reaching out for his plasma pistol. "Clyde!" While the prone DOK readjusted its grip to fire the weapon on its own, as it was designed to do, the remaining robots zeroed in on him with their own blasters spitting away. TOM glared impatiently over his shoulder to see a frightened Clyde peering nervously through the personnel door. "CLYDE!"

The robot darted in, slapped the pistol into TOM's open hand, and fled the scene as fast as possible. "Not a good time to be a coward, Clyde," he scolded.

The swarming DOKS deployed a new tactic: taking up positions at random intervals and circling him like a cyclone, half clockwise and half counter. The grounded DOK, firing his stolen rifle, sliced the air near him. It was the only target that wasn't confusing him, so he pumped plasma into it until its arms flopped down. Done with that one, he started taking shots at the surrounding DOKs, adding to the storm of energy-blasts that were zipping through the air in all directions.

"Like shooting at lottery balls ..." he complained. They were moving at their top lateral speed and continuously crossing one another's paths, but he managed enough hits to take one down. "Jackpot!"

With fire coming from every angle, he was forced to lurch and sidestep wildly to make himself a tough target. That was put to a stop when some stray fire hit the grounded DOK, stimulating its power core and causing an explosion. The concussion hurled him off his feet and sent the pistol flying out of his hand. And as if he hadn't been dealt enough punishment, his flailing body intercepted one of the circling DOKs in mid-flight. The two landed in a messy tumble.

Longing to get back to the cyberverse where damage wasn't so permanent, TOM staggered halfway to his feet. He was stopped upon realizing that his useless arm was tangled up with the DOK's. "Great, what else can go wrong?" The DOK he was stuck to answered by using its free hand to punch him in the face, making his head snap around with the sound of heavy-duty metal striking a circuit-protecting helmet. But in that moment, his gaze was inadvertently directed toward the A-1 assault rifle, having landed nearby. He blocked the next punch from the clinging DOK and began a cumbersome, painfully aggravating journey across the short distance to reach his gun. All the while, his vicinity was being pockmarked by plasma fire while he was forced to block blows from the tangled machine that kept pummeling him. He solved both problems by grabbing the opposite edge of the abusive DOK's head and hauling it around to shield himself. It worked; the thing was torn up by friendly fire, which included getting its arm blasted off. TOM shoved the smoking carcass away and dove for his rifle. Scooping it off the floor, he slashed sideways with the cutting laser, taking out one of the two remaining airborne DOKs. He turned to the other one and carved an uneven line from its thruster array to its turret-like head, opening up a hot, steaming fissure of molten robotics. A moment of stillness ticked by before the very last DOK dropped and hit the deck, splitting in half like a chopped log. Then it was just another piece of carnage littering the cargo bay floor, just like the rest.

TOM dropped his gun and sighed heavily. "Sara would've been able to just shut'em down. But me?" He gave a wry chuckle. "I'm lucky I'm not dead!"

Immediately, Clyde was at his shoulder with what sounded like a satisfied whistle, earning a glare from TOM. "Yeah, and you had my back the whole time, right?" It squawked back while the Clyde already in the cargo bay took inventory of the damage. "Tell you what: if I ever need a partner who's really good at running away, I know who to call. Anyway, we still have problems." He pointed at his familiar Clyde. "You, put the guns away. And you," he gestured to the busy Clyde, "come with me."

TOM and the other Clyde raced to the reactor room together. The lights were out, making his personal LEDs bright shapes in the dimness. He could barely make out the reactor's hulking frame.

"Okay, you're getting the hyperdrive under control," he instructed, trying to get his mind on the new task in lieu of the chaos he had just dealt with. He paused, nursing a throbbing in his helmet that was probably being caused overtaxed circuitry and cognitive functions. "You don't have to battle any viruses ... at least I don't think ... so this shouldn't be tough. Get to work." He placed a cutting/soldering instrument in its tool-grip, but it squealed at him before he could part "Huh? Oh, sorry." TOM fixed the tool so it pointed forward. He was starting to lose it. "There, heh, now you can actually see what you're doing." But Clyde complained again as he turned away. TOM sighed and switched the tool on for it. "Are you sure you can handle this?" A positive beep. "Good. Then it's time for me to get Sara."

On his way to the Absolution's communications bay, TOM had to stop. The pain and numbness from his first contact with the virus was still lingering in his legs, making standing more of a challenge than it should have been. More than that, his whole body was starting to feel slow and clunky for some reason. Could the artificial gravity have been infected? He started forward again, but that caused the Absolution's hallway to swim in his vision.

Who was he kidding? It was obvious to anyone that he was using up energy faster than his core could produce it. He had been pushing himself all day, from the repairs and maintenance in the morning to the disaster currently going down. Add to that the constant reconfiguring of his brain every time he jumped in or out of the cyberverse and it was no surprise that he was exhausted.

I'm not gonna drop dead right in the middle of all this, he ordered himself. No way this jerk's gonna win. Not while he still has Sara ... Somebody's gotta shut Swayzak down. Or at least shut him up. He marched unsteadily onward.

His familiar Clyde located its captain and accompanied him the rest of the way to the communications deck. They entered and stopped out in the middle of its disc-shaped platform under an enormous, panoramic canopy.

Both now stood before a hurricane of hyperspace colors. Despite the state of urgency, TOM took a moment to gaze deeply into the swirling ether. The turbulent cosmic energy rushed straight at them and flashed by on all sides of their vision as the Absolution arrowed through hyperspace towards its final destination. From his superluminal perspective, those brilliant colors appeared to surge away from a central point; a sick feeling settled in his gut as he reminded himself that that central point was Earth.

Clearing his head from this dark reverie, he turned to Clyde. "Most of Sara's systems are based here—"

"As am I!" Swayzak bellowed. TOM's robot equivalent of a headache swiftly returned. The bay's four main arm-mounted screens pushed together, each one displaying one-quarter of a giant Swayzak profile. "You'd better hope that luck is on your side, hero," he taunted. "You'll need every bit of it to have any chance of prying her out of my grasp!"

"Hey, last time you wished me luck, it paid off," TOM retorted, putting aside his fatigue. "Thanks a lot, bonehead."

"Oh, but you're beginning to run low," replied Swayzak, unfazed. "You wasted time reactivating your stabilizers so you could remain intact and 'save the day'. But all that means is you'll be in one piece when you crash into the Earth! The navigation systems that tell you how much time is left only serve as a countdown to your doom! And you haven't even fixed your hyperdrive yet!"

"Hyperdrive's being taken care of," TOM countered confidently.

Down in the reactor room, a vital-looking component snapped away from the mess of severed circuitry that Clyde had created with its tool. The helper robot stared at the empty space into which it had fallen while its tiny brain considered whether or not it was critical to the hyperdrive's function. After nearly a minute of deep contemplation, it came up with nothing and turned back to the disorganized chaos that had once been the hyperdrive controls.

"Thanks for the concern, but we have everything under control."

"You have everything under control? Ha! You can't stop me," Swayzak ranted. "Give up! None of you have a chance."

Undeterred, TOM shot back, "'None of you' have a chance? Guess I'm not the only one busy takin' you out." He leered at the virus mockingly, waving his fingers. "What's the matter, big guy? Startin' to freak out?"

That touched a nerve. Now that his control on the situation beginning to slip, Swayzak's temper was following suit. And as long as TOM kept up with the nonchalant, unconcerned attitude and sarcasm, it was bound to keep slipping. "Shut up, you damned interloping fool! You're all fools!"

"Yadda, yadda. Peace out, Lava Lamp." TOM physically shut down the screens. He explained to Clyde, "We gotta keep him mad, not thinkin' straight". What he didn't say to Clyde was that he was actually worried. For all his arrogant bluster and bad dialog, Swayzak really was a threat. TOM knelt and opened the data port needed to access Sara's systems one last time.

"Watch my back," he instructed. "I'm gonna go in and get Sara. If this doesn't work, you better start looking for another job." Clyde whined. "Just a joke. I'll be right back ..."

A mental fade ...

A rushing feeling ...

... And he was back. This time, there were no servers that needed cleansed. As Swayzak had recently mentioned, he had already spent enough time getting things online. The only server that needed cleansed of viral infection now was the virus's own. That was where he would find Sara ... an ironic statement, considering where he was now. The communications bay server contained Sara's most-used and most critical cognitive functions. Those functions, represented again by holographic Sara imitations, towered over him like the skyscrapers of an urban jungle. As with the stabilization systems, the light was gone from their eyes and their arms moved limply, wrists up and fingers down, carrying out Swayzak's commands with a mechanical monotony. The evil light glimmering within their transparent bodies was more more disturbing now due to their size.

"Let's hope I can pick her out of the crowd." TOM pulled off his iDisc again. He touched a spot on the disc's surface, making a control pad appear on it. From the list of functions that came up, he selected and activated the virus scan. Find the virus, find the AI.

Then, from far behind him, he heard the broken syllables of what sounded like a voice-synthesizing program. "Introo-dur deetek-ted."

He felt like slapping his forehead with the disc. Not a second, and he was already in the thick of things. Allowing the virus scan to continue running, he turned to face his new adversaries and threw his weapon.

The attackers bore down on him with a pair of dangerous-looking bikes for which the unofficial name was "streamcycles." Adjacent to one another, the two vehicles inadvertently caught the iDisc between their front wheels and bounced it rapidly back and forth in the tight space. It ricocheted from front to back, busting them up simultaneously. Both wiped out and slid to a stop on either side of TOM. "Looks like you can still jack a ride in the cyberverse." He caught his disc and mounted the slightly-less-damaged streamcycle. Glancing at the disc, however, killed his good mood. The scan had come up with nothing. "He's hiding himself. That jerk." And hiding well, considering Sara had designed that virus scan. "That probably just means he can reverse-engineer programs from Sara. Just like he's doing with my body and iDisc. Now how am I gonna find them?"

But there was a darker truth: this also meant that Swayzak was indeed more than just a complex virus. The ability to rip that kind of programming out of an Advanced AI Matrix, as well as the mimicry his iDisc's capabilities, could only be found in another AI Matrix.

As he scanned the environment visually, the alleys and corridors networking the Sara-shaped system towers began echoing with a clamor that gave him a sinking feeling. An entire army of streamcycle engines was closing in. He kicked his shanghaied ride into gear and took off just as the area exploded with dozens of red-lit TOM-shaped viruses on streamcycles. He quickly left them in his dust in favor of the empty routes of the cyberverse.

Once he felt confident of having a sufficient lead, he glimpsed back. The avenue was clogged edge-to-edge with pursuing viral minions, roaring up on him. Worse, they had a speed advantage thanks to the damage he'd earned his ride with. "Where's Pac Man when you nee-gyaaah!"

An enemy had sped up and rammed him from the side, violently nudging him toward the system towers they were shooting past. Maintaining his balance and steering straight with only one arm proved to be a major struggle on its own without someone trying to kill him as well. He rammed back with a Herculean, if wobbly, effort. Static flew as their sleek vehicles scraped flanks. Another spoof drew up outside the first one to add its weight to the push.

With a burst of recklessness, TOM leapt off his streamcycle and over the first angry driver just as it swerved in again, allowing it to plow his vacated bike into an avenue. Both vehicles nailed the side of a tower and exploded against a giant Sara foot. He alighted on the further streamcycle and, instead of wrestling for possession of it, jumped off. With the ground rushing up to pulverize him, he activated his iDsc's streamcycle subroutine, which launched a stream of parameters to form a sleek shape that quickly filled in with code. He landed not on the road, but on the seat of a blue and silver-white streamcycle.

Wheels met digital tarmac. He jerked his new bike to one side, jabbing the spoof he'd just used as a springboard. The enemy vehicle tumbled and planted itself in front of the wave of pursuers. He sped up, leaving the crashing noises behind.

However, he failed to notice the ninja-like spoof that had managed to cling to the back of his bike when he'd destroyed its transportation. Unseen, it plucked its razor-edged disc free and began clambering up toward his back.

It doesn't look like Sara's even around here, TOM thought as a sense of despair crept up on him. I guess I need to access another server to find her. He saw the edge of his local server approaching. The ground dropped away sharply and yielded to a black abyss of cybernetic emptiness.

He casually skidded to a halt near the edge in the same second the hostile hitchhiker was preparing to lash out. Out of the corner of his vision, TOM was more than a little shocked to see the spoof leap out of nowhere and go flying out into open space. "W-T-F!" He watched it disappear into a tiny orange dot droning out a flat, "Errooooorrrrr ..." "Well that was weird." After it was gone, he decided not to idle and peeled out.

The swarm of streamcycles poured after him as he led the chase along the edge. Not far away, he could see another one of the Absolution's servers like an island in the ocean. A line whipped out from his streamcycle and secured a link with his destination. Executing a hard turn, he sped out onto the cable-thin link with the deep emptiness of cyberspace whooshing by below him. Unable to do this on their own, the copies were forced to funnel onto his link and continue the chase in single file.

"Let's see if I can pull this off ..."

At the last second, he leaped backward while returning his streamcycle to its disc mode. Had he a stomach, it would have gone to his throat. He allowed his momentum to cover the remaining distance, landing with inches to spare and more than a little scraping and tumbling. Then he scrambled back to the edge and with a sweep of his disc severed the link. The copies dropped all at once and crashed into the solid wall below, each at a slightly lower point than its predecessor, until every last one of them had plummeted into the blackness.

"How do you expect to win, Swayzak?" TOM said for his own benefit, although the attempted boast came out as a weary sigh. "These guys can't think ... hew ... on their feet."

Unready to continue, he sat down and flopped onto his back. One minute and he'd be up for another round. "... How can I expect to beat him if I'm totally drained?" He groaned with frustration. "Maybe I can reprogram the iDisc to ..." The words died on his metaphorical tongue as something up in the cybernetic void caught his eye. He felt like an idiot for not having noticed it until now, even with the chase having distracted him. "Man, I'm blind as a bat ... pun intended."

A pinnacle of light was beaming up into the sky overhead. TOM, laying on his back, was looking right at the spot where it hit the lowest part of the cyberverse's atmosphere. Projected against it was a triple-bladed radiation symbol. Same as the one on his chest.

"Oh-KAY, then," he grunted approvingly. Back on his feet and feeling just a little bit re-energized, he stared out at the signal's origin, which was shining up out of the black, hazy void. "Pretty good, Sara. Guess I am on my way!"