DISCLAIMER: The World of Darkness, the Virtual Adepts, the Technocracy, the use of the words "Awakening" and "Empowering," and the rules of true magick in general is the property of White Wolf. All individual characters are mine, though.
"Simon, I'm going to take my lunch break now, so if there's anything you… Hey, what are you doing?"
Diana was very right in asking. I do not usually sit cross-legged on the floor, in the far corner of my office, sketching frantically on a notepad. That was, however, exactly what I was doing right now. Part of me had the decency to feel ashamed of being caught in this position, but another part pointed out that I'd already made a fool of myself in front of Diana today, so this wouldn't do much either way. The overwhelming majority of me, however, simply didn't care. I felt numb inside.
"Writing down questions," I said weakly. I held up the notepad as proof. I was halfway down the third page.
Diana nodded slowly.
"O… kay…" she said warily. "Why aren't you doing it at your desk?"
"Don't trust my computer," I said miserably. I was fully aware of how insane that sounded, but I was past caring at this point. I had gone out of my mind. That was all there was to it. And there seemed to be very little I could do about it, except keep scribbling down my questions. Perhaps I'd be cured if I could get them all answered. Of course, then I'd have to stop coming up with a new one every other minute or so…
"I see…" Diana said. Her big, dark eyes shifted front side to side. I didn't think she was really nervous – if nothing else, I didn't really think I looked very threatening at the moment – but she seemed uncertain. Poor woman, I couldn't rightly blame her. "Can I see your questions?"
I didn't have the strength to say now. My mind had been running on the highest gear for three hours now; that sort of thing left you feeling empty and worn out. I gave her the notepad. She eyed through it silently.
"You are," she remarked, "demanding answers to pretty much every great philosophical mystery in the world. Oh, and then there's lots of stuff here about that bitchy guy who called you earlier. Along, I notice, with one or two questions along the lines of 'Where does seedless grapes come from?'"
"Always wondered that," I mumbled, staring at the floor.
"I think they take ordinary seeds and do some stuff to them so they change into seedless-grape seeds," Diana supplied.
"Oh."
"The rest will take a little more time, I'm afraid," she said. She raised one hand to cover her mouth. Was she smiling? Really! My insanity was no laughing matter. "Why this sudden interest in theology and agriculture?"
I shrugged.
"I don't know. These questions just keep occurring to me. So many questions…" I shook my head. "It started with Patrick, but now I feel like I want to know everything. I think you'd better call the cops or whoever it is who takes away madmen. Those guys in white coats, whatever they're called… Could I have that back, please? I want to add that question to the list."
Diana obeyed. I wrote What are those guys in white coats called? at the next available row.
"Do you have to know for sure?" Diana said. "Because there's not a person on Earth who doesn't have some sort of opinion about things like 'Is there a God?' and 'Are people basically good or basically evil?'"
"I don't," I pointed out. Diana wrinkled her brow.
"Really? You don't have a clue? Didn't you go through that stage as a teenager when you thought about things like this?"
"Sure," I said. "But my parents told me to stop wasting my time and put my energy on studying."
Diana gave off a snort of laughter.
"Nice parents you've got. Okay, look, I think it's great that you have a crawing for information, but you don't have time to do this now. You've got an annual report to present. Tomorrow."
"Can't," I said miserably. "Can't focus. Everything's too interesting."
"Wait a second."
Diana went back to her desk, rummaged through a drawer, and held up a diskette with the triumphing smile of a Paladin finding the Grail. She inserted it into her computer and entered a few commands.
"Come and look at this for a while," she said.
"No, no, no," I said tiredly. "No computers. Computers are out to get me. I've got questions about that too, you know."
"Yes," Diana said merrily, "but this is a nice computer. It wants to be your friend. Come and look at it."
I glared at her. She smiled back at me. I surrendered and looked at the screen.
It didn't seem to be showing anything except some kind of screensaver program. All over it, colours were swirling and mixing, breaking apart and merging back together in a pattern that seemed to have very little organisation and even less meaning. I stared blankly at it. There was something very relaxing about it.
"Yes, look at the colours," Diana whispered dreamily in my ear. I hadn't seen her move. I didn't want to take my eyes away from the display. "Stop thinking, stop hurting, stop wishing… Just look at the colours… and be still…"
I could feel her breath against the side of my head. It was soothing, like a mother's caress – not that my mother had ever been one for caresses. The tension was disappearing from my muscles. The turmoil in my mind was starting to calm down, sinking back to the bottom of my soul.
What remained of my consciousness suddenly realised that this was also something strange; also something I should know about. A spark of panic appeared in the tranquil waters of my mind, fighting to bring the rest of me back from the warm lassitude that had enveloped me.
I felt the stillness decrease, just a little, because of my efforts.
I can fight this!
But in the end, I didn't want to. I was too tired. The fear ebbed away and I let the colours take me. The last thing I remember is Diana's voice, quiet and introvert.
"Well, then, Simon… What are we going to do with you…?"
After that, things are spotty for a while. My memory is vague and surreal, like recalling a dream – but why would anyone dream of working? Because that's what I did; I worked, efficiently and well, without a thought in my mind that didn't have to do with the next calculation to make, the next paper to read, the next message to send. No questions bothered me. No strange emails appeared on my computer. The last twenty-four hours might as well have been nothing but a figment of my imagination.
Finally, I was done. Everything handled thoroughly and well; all finished to the board presentation tomorrow. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in that, and if I felt somehow… empty… well, that was nothing I should worry about. An alcoholic undoubtedly felt empty, too, once he had given up the bottle. The things that fulfilled us were rarely good for us; the proper, healthy thing to do was to look past what you wanted to what you needed. To what was right and good for you.
Not until I was driving home did I start to wonder exactly what it was I was missing. Something had been taken, something had been removed. Something that had hurt me, but also made me feel… elevated.
No. That thought felt wrong.
Not removed. Hidden. Covered. Dampened.
All right, all right, so something had been hidden – but I still didn't know what. It had something to do with Patrick, and… and Diana… but…
The questions. The realisation made my eyes go wide. I had had so many questions in my head, for too many to cope with. And then Diana had said… had said…
Look at the colours.
Look at the colours, and be still.
It came back piece by piece, everything up to that point. And then it was just blank. My next memory was working. Without a question in my head.
Peculiar.
"Diana's a part of it," I said out loud. I was alone in my car, thank heavens, otherwise people would have been looking very funnily at me indeed. "Whatever it is."
I tapped my fingers against the wheel, thinking hard. That gave me four people who were all trying to pull my strings. There was the hacker who had gotten into my home computer, and the hacker who had gotten into my office computer. I couldn't believe that they were the same person; the former had been threatening, but the latter had just been teasing. In an inexcusably annoying way, true, but still just teasing. Then there was Diana. And finally, there was Patrick.
And Patrick was a greater mystery than the other three combined, because I had known him for all my life, and I had never once realised that there was something out of the ordinary with him. Not with his infrequent visits, not with his seemingly random orders, not with the apparent power he had over me. Or, for that matter, with the fact that he never seemed to age. In my earliest memory of him, he had been my father's age. Now he was my age.
There were certain things, I had always felt – up to today, that was – that you didn't question. Some things were like the sky or the sea; they were just there, and it didn't do anyone any good to think about them, because the answer to every Why? was always just Because! Patrick had, without me giving it any thought, been transferred to that category. Why did he do the things he did? Because.
'Because' didn't feel like an adequate answer anymore.
I parked my car in the garage and got into the elevator up to my apartment. Whatever Diana had done to me, I reflected, was wearing off. I didn't feel swamped with questions anymore, but I felt curious and inquisitive. The existence of God could wait; right now, I wanted to figure out just what the hell was going on around me. And doing that, I might be able to figure out what was happening to me.
If Diana's… hypnosis, or whatever you should call it… was losing its grip of me, did that mean that she had intended it to be a temporary thing only, or was I just fighting my way past it? The answer to that might be crucial.
As it was, she had done me a favour; I was ready for tomorrow and wouldn't have to make a fool of myself in front of my fellow directors by admitting that I wasn't quite done yet. That would probably not have been the case if I had had to cope with philosophy, conspiracy theories and general enquires running through my mind all day. But had she meant to do me a favour? Or had she tried to put my mind back to sleep permanently? To turn me back into an unquestioning pawn for Patrick?
Because that was what I had been, wasn't it? Patrick had told me to study economy. Patrick had told me to start working for Greystone. Patrick had told me that I must do everything I could to get promoted. And I had obeyed him every step of the way. Because I had never, ever questioned him.
It was time to start doing some heavy questioning.
Locking the door to my home, I decided that, for now, I would thrust Diana. I supposed that I had every reason not to. She knew more than she was letting on. She had access to whatever supertechnology the hackers and, I had to assume, Patrick had. I should really thrust her considerably shorter than I could throw her, but…
But she had called Patrick 'that bitchy guy.' That didn't sound like someone who was working for him. Patrick wouldn't accept that kind of attitude in a subordinate.
Isn't that a bit thin? a voice said in my head. Hardly what you'd call conclusive evidence.
Maybe. But I also liked her. I was starting to realise, with a certain amount of surprise, that I didn't like Patrick. Never had, for that matter.
Oh, come on! That's subjective!
Reality is subjective… another voice whispered. What did that mean, exactly? I was way past the point where I could just write it off as nonsense. What had my cliché-crazed hacker friend meant by it? More to the point, why had he assumed that it would annoy Patrick to hear it?
Or was it I who should have been annoyed to hear it? If Patrick was really my father – and that would indeed answer at least one question out of the millions I had – then my last name should rightly be Farson and not Stromberg. But that didn't make sense. Reality is subjective – that meant nothing to me. It sounded vaguely philosophical, but it was obviously a false statement. Reality was very much objective, no matter how much people might wish it otherwise. There was no reason to tell me those words in such a smug, menacing way, like they were an insult to everything I believed in.
All right – back to the previous assumption. Why would it annoy Patrick?
Well, because Patrick was Patrick. He didn't like things that were subjective. If something was subjective it meant that someone could have another opinion about it than him and still not necessarily be wrong. As far as Patrick was concerned, to disagree with him was to be wrong. I could certainly believe that the mentioning of something that sounded like the worst kind of crystal-waving New Age philosophy would drive him into a rage, especially if there was some deeper meaning to it for him.
I glanced at my computer with a sting of fear, but it just stood there, silent and peaceful. I took up the phone instead, dialling my parents' number.
It rang six times before my father answered, sounding groggy and cranky. I supposed that old men needed their sleep, but I couldn't sympathise with him right now. Not if he had been lying to me my whole life.
"Stromberg," he croaked.
"It's me," I said. "Who's Patrick?"
"Simon?" I could almost see how he blinked and wrinkled his brow, trying to wake up enough to deal with this. "Whasse matter…?"
"Patrick Farson. Who is he?"
"What do you mean?" He sounded a little bit less groggy, but he sounded just as cranky. "He's your godfather. He's a friend of the family. You know that. Why're you calling me up at…" He made a pause. "… at half past midnight asking me this?"
"Because I need to know, father." I bit my teeth together. "Where did you meet him? What does he work with? I don't know anything."
"Ask him yourself!" my father snapped. "Can't imagine what you're thinking, calling me at this ungodly hour…"
"He wouldn't answer any questions I asked," I said. I wasn't entirely sure that that was the truth – he had answered my question about if it was possible to feed electricity into a disconnected machine – but I was sure that I couldn't get in touch with him. I didn't have his number or his address; he had always contacted me. "Where did you meet him?"
It was silent in the other end for a moment, except for my father's ragged breaths.
"What does it matter?" he then growled. "Calling me in the middle of the night and asking me…"
A cold premonition went through me.
"You don't know, do you?" I said with a hint of dread in my voice. "You can't remember how you met."
"So what if I can't?" my father said grumpily. "I'm an old man. Memory's slipping."
I winced. My father was in his early sixties, and no matter how much he might complain about his aching joints, there was nothing wrong with his memory. At the very least he never seemed to have any trouble remembering everything I owed him, and how little I had done to repay those depths.
"Sorry for wakening you, father," I said gently and hung up. I stood by the phone for a long while, staring into space.
Patrick had done something, probably before I was even born. He had used some sort of technology, something like what Diana had used on me perhaps, to make my parents think of him as someone who had always been there and who was a natural part of their lives. Just as I had done.
What sort of game was he playing with the Stromberg family?
And how could I stop him? Was there any way at all that I could stop him? What if he said, in his special, commanding voice, 'go jump out in front of a train.' Would I do it?
I was very much afraid that I would.
The next day I spent going over the year's progress with the rest of the board, which is not something I wish to elaborate on. It involves listening to endless reports and paying enough attention that you can part-take in the following discussion and come with intelligent suggestions on how various trends can be maintained, enhanced or diverted. It is enough to make a strong man cry with pure boredom.
A certain type of strong man, anyway. I don't think anyone actually finds these meetings funs, but a lot of my colleagues appear to derive a strong sense of satisfaction from them. They are elite players in the game of business. They are forcing an unwilling world to hand over its money to them and the company. They are doing what they like doing, and they are doing it well. Being happy is more than just having fun.
Happiness is, however, not something I have put a lot of thought into. Most of my life, I have simply done what I have been expected to.
About halfway through the meeting, it occurred to me that that might not be the cleverest way to live your life. At the very least I should ask myself why I was expected to do these things. What had I, when it came right down to it, achieved?
Well, I had quite a bit of money, power and personal prestige. If someone asked me what I had done with my life, I could definitely hand over a progress report. I might not have been overly happy, but I had certainly been productive.
On the other hand; I didn't really need all that much money. I was living in pretty much the same way as I had three promotions ago – the extra cash was just piling up in my bank accounts. My interest in luxury was limited. It was certainly nice to be able to have lunch in fine restaurants every day, and there is something to be said for driving a BMW and wearing custom-made suits, but the effort used for getting those things seemed a bit overly high.
Power was a pleasant thing to wield, certainly. Being able to get the world to do it your way satisfies something deep within most people – a memory, perhaps, from that long-ago time when we were at the bottom of the food chain and had enough trouble just keeping the world from deleting our entire species. But considering that Patrick could just snap his fingers and have me do anything he wanted to, all power I might wield was largely illusional, really.
I could appreciate prestige, but I wasn't entirely sure who I was trying to impress. My parents? They had to be proud of me, as long as I didn't screw up too badly. It was in the parent job description. Patrick? To hell with him. Myself? Well, there was that warm inner glow of a job well done, but…
At about that point I realised that I had been staring into space for ten minutes and had no idea what the director of television (comedy division) was talking about. I took a firm grip of myself and managed to keep my existential angst down for the duration of the meeting.
To my great gratitude, it didn't take as long as I had thought it would. It had been a rather undramatic year, really. We were making money. We were following our development plan. We were actually, on the whole, doing a darn fine job, which my esteemed colleagues decided to celebrate with a big dinner together. I was invited along, but decided not to go. I had a bit too much on my mind to be entertaining company at the moment.
I went to my office to do some thinking. Of the two places where I was comfortable and at home, this one had the friendlier computer.
It was rather tragic, really, the grounds on which I made decisions these days…
Diana was there, though. I suppose I should have realised that she would be – directors do work hard for their money, but secretaries work hard for considerably less money. Life isn't fair, unfortunately – though I might have been less philosophical about it if I was a secretary instead of a director, I must admit.
I didn't really want to meet her at this point, but once I was through the door to her office, I didn't really have any way to retreat with dignity.
"Hi," she said. "Did the meeting go well?"
"Yes… er…"
How do you talk with someone who, as late as yesterday, hypnotised you through the use of some sort of superadvanced computer software and now refused to acknowledge that fact? I mean, it's not really something you can work into the conversation. Besides, what if you do bring it up and the other party refuses to admit that it happened? Then your next stop is the nuthouse.
And to look at it from another angle, even if you decide not to talk about the whole hypertechnology hypnosis part, what do you talk about? Having a thing like that in the back of your head makes it rather hard to come up with smalltalk.
Maybe that is why I said what I did next.
Though I wouldn't count on it, considering.
"What's it all about?" I said. "Life, I mean. What are you supposed to do with it, when you get right down to it?"
Diana smiled and scratched her head.
"I could check my job description, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to know the answer for questions like that," she said amiably. "I kind of specialise more in questions like 'How many copies of Path of Black Fire did we sell last year?' and 'At which time am I supposed to have lunch with the principle for the School of the Arts?'"
I felt rather silly, but then, I didn't really think I could make more of a fool of myself in front of Diana than I already had. For that matter, I didn't really think she'd care if I made a fool of myself. She'd just think it was funny.
"Yes, but you said that everyone's got an opinion," I argued. "So you've got to have one, too. Can't you tell me what it is?"
"I knew it was only a matter of time before you realised the depths of my divine wisdom," Diana said smugly and leaned back in her chair, her arms lazily folded behind the back of her neck. That position put certain aspects of her into focus. I did my very best not to notice. And failed, of course. The male perception has its own priorities. "Well, let me put it like this, what do you most want to do right now?"
There was no way I was going to tell her that. So I went for what I had most wanted to do when I stepped through the door. It was still holding second prize, anyway.
"I want to know who Patrick is and what he wants with me," I said.
"See? Then that's the meaning of your life," Diana said proudly.
I immediately spotted a flaw in that reasoning.
"What if I changed my mind and want something else?" I pointed out.
"Then the meaning of your life will change too," Diana said without missing a beat.
I pondered that for a second, while she grinned in that annoying, disturbing, infuriating, adorable way at me.
"So what you're saying," I said, measuring every word, "is that the purpose of life is to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it?"
"Can you think of anything better?" she said simply.
I couldn't. But I had a strong feeling that I ought to be able to. The whole point of a meaning with life, after all, was that it was fixed. Specified. Something to hold on to and use to chart a course. To have the meaning of life be to just follow your impulses, I felt, was rather like removing the whole point of the concept.
"All I'm saying," she said reasonably, "is that either you can go nihilistic and say that nothing matters, or you can just assume that everything you want or do shakes heaven and earth. And the second one is more fun."
"I'm sure there's some sort of logical flaw in that," I said in a suffering tone of voice. I knew that I was beaten, but I didn't want to leave the battlefield without putting up at least a token defence.
"Probably," she said happily.
I pulled up one of the chairs that were there for the use of people waiting to see me and sat down.
"If I ask you a question," I said, "will you give me an honest answer?"
"You never know. I just might."
I supposed I couldn't really expect more than that at this point.
"Am I going insane?" I said.
Diana clicked her tongue, her expression thoughtful.
"It might end up that way," she said after a moment. "But in that case, it'll be an effect, not a cause. And I think you can get through it."
That didn't make me feel that much better. I wasn't as sure as she of my own mental stability. A bit more of this, I felt, and I would crack like an egg. Not because of the general weirdness that had suddenly entered my life, but because of this endless, infernal curiosity and self-analysis that I apparently couldn't shake free of. I felt as if my entire personality was being peeled like an onion. And the really bad part was that I was the one doing the peeling. I just couldn't help myself.
"Well," I mumbled. "Thanks for that. I don't suppose you'd care to tell me just what is happening to me?"
She shook her head.
"I can't. Not yet, anyway. I've got… people to answer to."
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I had intended to point out that I was the person she was expected to answer to. But that would have been rather naïve, I supposed. Corporate hierarchy had very little room in this.
"So there really is a conspiracy going on here?" I said slowly.
She grinned, a bit sheepishly.
"That's such an ugly word. Besides, there are not enough of us to be a proper conspiracy." Her smiled died away. "And now I've probably said too much already."
"I would not want to put you in trouble," I said, realising that it was true. Not because there was a proper way to behave, but because I honestly did not want to cause difficulty for her.
That, I couldn't help noticing, was an unexpected development. I had acted selflessly all my life, always putting the group's interests ahead of my own. But I had done that just because, well, that was how you acted. That was how a proper human being acted. This was something else entirely.
Being nice because you wanted to be. Hmm. Such a strange concept…
"That's sweet of you." She smiled at me. "It'll be okay, Simon. I promise. I went through it and came out all right. So can you."
I blinked, startled.
"You went through…?"
She chuckled.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not unique. What's happened to you happens to people all the time. Think of it as a second puberty, except that less than one in a thousand goes through it. I call it the Empowering. I've talked to others who call it the Awakening. It's a matter of what aspect of it you want to emphasise, I guess."
That actually did make me feel a bit better. This thing had a name. Something that had a name could be defined. What could be defined could be controlled. Besides, a lot of people apparently went through it. Diana had gone through it. That meant that it probably wasn't going to kill me, or drive me insane.
Probably.
"Thank you for telling me," I said sincerely.
"Yeah. Well." She grinned wryly. "Wouldn't do to have you running around without a clue. No matter how fun it is to watch."
I harrumphed.
"I'm glad that my misery is a source of amusement for someone," I said with exaggerated suffering in my voice.
"You'll look back on this and laugh someday, I promise," Diana said lightly.
"You know, I've never liked that expression. Why should I suffer just to entertain my future self? What's that bastard ever done for me?"
Diana laughed. She had a very appealing laugh, I noticed, soft and clear and happy.
"There is that," she agreed, still chuckling. "See it as charity to yourself. They do say it begins at home, and last time I checked, you lived alone."
"You can see it that way, I supposed." I winced. "Here's an idea. Have dinner with me tonight. It'll be fun. I can cross-examine you about Empowerings and conspiracies and things like that, and you can cleverly sidestep all my questions and eat for free while you're doing it."
Diana tilted her head and looked at me, amused.
"Are you asking me out?"
"Well…"
"On a date?"
"Certainly not," I said dryly. "I can't date my secretary. How would that look?"
"So I shouldn't wear something tight with a plunging neckline?" Diana said innocently.
I pondered the image those words conjured up for a moment.
"Do all Empowered people care as little about how things will look as I seem to do at the moment?" I said, resigned.
"The best kind does."
I have gone insane, I told myself as I stepped out of the shower and started wiping myself with a towel. I have finally gone insane. It's the stress. Yes, that's it. Too much stress. Some people can take a high-pressure job and some people can't. I, to my shame, can't. I'll end up in a straightjacket before this is over.
I had actually asked my secretary out to dinner. Forget the General in Beetle Bailey – at least he had a sensible secretary with the wits to turn him down. I, on the other hand, had Diana Helsing, a woman apparently completely unaware of just how much of a fool I was making of myself. She wasn't exactly looking well herself, but at least she would be seen as intelligent and sensible, if perhaps a bit overly much so. I had money. Going out with me was a clever move, rather than one inspired by pure lust, as the case apparently was with me.
What had I been thinking?
Okay, so maybe I knew what I had been thinking. Quite a large part of my brain was still thinking it. What I wanted to know was why I wasn't thinking what I should be thinking, which was about what was proper and fitting.
"Oh, get a grip of yourself!" I sighed as I put on a pair of trousers.
Yes. I had to get a grip of myself. I shouldn't be thinking like this. I had already stated to myself that what people thought of me wasn't important as long as I could prove to myself that I was, indeed, doing exactly what I should be doing. That, apparently, was part of what it meant to be Empowered. Whatever that was.
Well, yes – all that was still there. I could feel the inquisitive mindset sitting in my head. It was just temporarily covered with conformist panic and could therefore not help me at present. It would probably be back to harass me later, but now that I needed it, it wasn't doing a damn thing for me. How typical.
I couldn't keep from laughing a bit at myself. Dear God, but I was a mess. Of course, I was a mess with a date, that had to count for something…
When I stepped out into the hallway, buttoning my shirt, I saw that my computer was running. I tried to convince myself that I had been the one to switch it on. A few days ago, I probably could have done it. Right now, however, my ability to fool myself had decreased drastically.
"All right, spit it out," I said wearily. "Hurry up, though. I've got an appointment."
Big, red letters appeared on the screen. They were shivering and dripping. I winced. A message written in virtual blood. A ghost story for a new century, perhaps.
We see you, Farson.
"I'm not Farson," I said. "Which, as I recall, I've already informed you of."
The words melted together in a big blob of red. Then new ones formed out of it.
Reality is subjective, Farson.
Slowly, I started to relax. Clearly, this was just the same message displayed again. Maybe there was some subroutine in whatever weird program was doing that, making it repeat itself every other day. In which case, I was under no obligation to talk to it. I could just finish getting dressed and leave, and then it could blab on without me.
That theory was quickly blown to pieces as a third message appeared.
The time has come, Farson.
Then the entire screen shifted, turning into a kaleidoscope of prisms and fragments and geometrical shapes, in every colour of the rainbow. I scratched my beard with one hand and absently kept buttoning my shirt with the other. Well… this was new…
I flinched as I heard a buzzing sound and saw a flash of electricity connect the monitor with the desk for a brief second. A moment later, there was another one, between the harddrive and the floor this time. The air started to smell like burned plastic. I felt my hair break free of the careful combing I had subjected it to and stand up in every direction.
What the hell…?
I slowly backed away, towards the front door. Should I run for it? Was this thing going to explode? At this point, the fact that a computer contained nothing explosive did nothing to make me believe that it could not blow up, should my enemy want it to. Either he knew the laws of physics hell of a lot better than any scientist I had ever heard of, or he could just ignore them when he wanted to.
Something kept me back, though. It was the damn curiosity again – the same, I daresay, that killed the proverbial cat. Something was happening. I wanted to know what it was. It felt wrong to turn my back on it and flee for my life. Death, it seemed – to part of me at least – was a cheap price to pay for satisfying my curiosity.
Madness!
But even so.
However, nothing exploded. Instead, the flickering shapes no the screen started to take a kind of form. They gathered into an uneven disc, forming pointy ears, elliptic eyes, a broad nose, an impossibly wide mouth with triangular teeth in it…
A face. But not human by any stretch of the imagination. It was a little like a chimpanzee, but apes tend to be ugly in a somehow lovable way. This chimpanzee looked cunning and mean and predatory. And it was still made up of geometric forms; all hard, sharp edges and mind-numbingly complex patterns, without any of the softness of real life.
A scream came out of the speakers, shrill and furious. The resonance was strange; I got the feeling that it had been created by someone mixing frequencies together, rather than by the rather more simple method of recording a living animal's sound.
At this point, my curiosity decided that all right, enough was enough. It had had its fill now. If I wanted to get the hell out of there, I was very welcome to do so. I turned around and tugged at the door. It didn't budge. For a moment, I stood dumbstruck; then I realised that I had locked it when entering, and I had to unlock it to get out.
And at the moment, my panicked brain couldn't recall where I had put my keys.
I glanced over my shoulder, without being able to help myself. What I saw made me doubt my sanity for about the thousandth time in the last few days. The ape-thing was leaving the screen, sliding out of it and becoming three-dimensional, in some twisted mockery of a birth. Its long, skinny arms flailed around, seeking support to pull it further out. I heard the legs of the chair scratch against the floor as the ape-thing managed to pull it towards it. For some reason, that made it all seem real. Regardless of how impossible all this was, the creature was interacting with the physical world. Which meant that it could interact with me if it wanted to.
Had I had any doubts which sort of interaction it was aiming for, they had died when I had heard that scream.
I remembered that my keys were in the trousers I had used for work, and they hung on a chair in my bedroom. I had to cross the living room to get there.
Shit.
I ran for the bedroom door, staying as far away from the data-spawned monstrosity as I could. It was free up to the waist now, a long, lanky shape made out of a myriad of angular forms. It screeched at me as I rushed past, and a slender arm lashed out at me. It wasn't long enough to reach me, but the attempt still made me gasp.
I reached the chair and fumbled through the pockets of the pants. For a nightmarish moment I couldn't find anything. Then my hand closed around cold metal. My keys! Hallelujah! Now I just had to make that run one more time, and then…
When I turned around, the ape-thing stood in the doorway. It had managed to get loose faster than I had thought. It raised its head and screamed at me again, that artificial-sounding scream of pure, dumb hatred that made my skin crawl.
"Go away!" I cried. "Go away!"
It didn't. Instead, it took a wary step in through the door. If there was sentience in those angular eyes, I didn't see it, but it still moved with purpose. It was a computer program, it occurred to me. It was a computer program that had left the computer.
So that's what they really look like, I thought, terror-dizzy. Gosh. If I had known that, I wouldn't have been so calm about working with them all the time.
I lifted the chair and threw it at the creature. As I said, I'm a big guy. I can put a lot of strength into something like that.
The ape-thing was knocked to the floor. Though it looked a bit like it was made out of steel, the sound of its body hitting the floorboards wasn't that of metal against wood. It was a drawn-out, painful hum, like the one you get when your computer is acting up. After a hundred system malfunctions, I had come to know and hate that sound. Now it offered some hope, though. Maybe this thing could be hurt…
Or not. It threw the chair aside and got up, apparently no worse for its experience. It hissed at me and continued its slow advance. I backed away, glancing at the window. Four floors? Could you survive a jump like that? Probably not. You'd break every bone in your body.
The creature took another step. Was that expectation I saw on its artificially simian face? I supposed that it was not that far-fetched. Humans are made to reproduce, so for most of us, the most enjoyable thing in the world is having sex. This thing was made to kill people. It stood to reason that it would find it pleasant.
It didn't seem that I could stop it, either. It was faster than me, and I couldn't harm it. If I had had a gun, maybe, but not with just hands, feet and whatever improvised weapon I could get my hands on here. I didn't even have anything hard left to throw at it.
My eyes fell on the bed.
The creature gave off a surprised shriek and stopped in its tracks, as if it could read my mind. I felt a surge of returning hope slam into me. Not so invincible after all, you little pest?
I ripped the cover from the bed and threw it over the creature.
The cover landed peacefully over the monster, turning it into a lump on an otherwise flat surface. I heard a muffled scream, and the lump started moving, trying to get to and edge. I growled like an animal and threw myself at it, wrapping the cover around it and lifting it into the air. It struggled in my arms, but it didn't have enough freedom to put any strength into its motions.
No time to bother with latches. I slammed the package into the window with all my strength. There was a sharp sound that seemed to be as high as a gunshot, and a network of cracks appeared over the glass.
A sharp claw bit through the cloth and cut into my wrist.
I hit the window again, screaming in panicked rage. This time it broke apart, showering the street below with glass.
A hand made of fractals and geometry stuck out through the widening whole in the cover, reaching around blindly. A burning pain started to grow in my wrist; I wasn't sure how badly the thing had cut me, or what the effects of being wounded by it were. For all I knew, it was poisonous. For all I knew, there were consequences of being touched by a computer program that I had never heard about – on account of it never having happened to anyone but me!
I put the cover-bundle out over the empty street and allowed it to unroll. The ape-thing screamed and held on to it with one clawed hand, as it was hanging over the forty-foot abyss. It looked up at me. This time there was hatred in its eyes, no matter how soulless.
I grinned insanely at it. I couldn't help myself.
"Screw with me when I've had a rough week?" I said pleasantly. "Bad idea."
Then I let go of the cover. The monstrosity screamed one more time, but that sound was cut off as it hit the pavement. In its stead, that error-sound reached me, rising quickly to an almost unbearable volume… and then fell silent.
I sank down by the wall beneath the window and panted. My wrist was killing me. Three deep gashes stretched across it, all at least three inches long. My heart was pounding like it wanted to leave my chest. I was soaked in cold sweat, making my shower earlier a complete waste of time.
Okay, let's see. I had to call someone to fix the window. I had to bandage my wounds. I had to take another shower. That should take, hmm, an hour more or so.
"Hello, Diana?" I said, just to see how it sounded. "I'm going to be a bit late. I've just wrestled a nightmare from beyond the fields we know…"