Code Enforcement: Wetware

Fuck you, Rabi! You void-sucking, oxide-huffing, mind-raping, manic wirehead bitch! You have no right to do this to me. I don't want to remember this. I shouldn't have to live with this. It's bad enough that I see this in my dreams.

Why do I have to see this while I'm awake too?

I'm back on Luna. In meatspace, I'm sitting in the archive on Armstrong Station. I'm not aware of that. My awareness is inhabiting my Avatar. Something's wrong. The archive's not responding correctly. There's lag, and these responses are gibberish... what the fuck is going on?

Not again. I don't want to see this again, please...

"Ambrose? Alex? Did we lose comms?" I hear a strange, garbled screech, and Ambrose disappears from the network entirely.

Rabi, please don't do this to me.

I can't get through the gate; it's not even responding to my handshake protocols. I try the backdoor. It's agonizingly slow to respond.

I don't want to remember this!

It finally opens, but the archive... What the fuck? "Alex? Alex, did Ambrose throw up a firewall? There's nothing coming through," I call out. It's like being engulfed by oblivion.

Why do I have to live through this again?

"Alex, Ambrose?" There's nothing here. The system is empty. Wait, no it isn't-

Please... Rabi... I don't want to live... like this...

Before I can react, oblivion erupts. Something rushes towards me and-

<and it hits me with the inexorable force of an ocean wave. It's sweeping me away, sweeping through me, and my filter isn't keeping it out! It links to one of my nodes without me accepting the link! I throw up a firewall, but it passes through like light through glass. It's in my second node, and it's linking to the third. I gasp, pinging out emergency orders with my CE Key. All Gates: Emergency Shutdown>

-and now it's in all my nodes it's everywhere and on every channel and it's eating my filter and it's eating my macros and it's eating my nodes and my augments and it's eating me eating me eating eatingeatingeatingeatingeating-

<everything but my meats>

-it's in every node every augment it's everywhere it's inmyheaditsinmyminditsinsidemeitsmeanditsmanyotherthingsanditseatingallthatIam-

<But... it can't eat my meat. And I feel something. Frustration. Hunger unsatisfied. Need unmet. Like something stuck in a craw. Like a bone in the throat. It can't swallow me. The part of me I haven't ship-of-Theseus'd away, the part made of lipids and nerves>

-My nodes cascade with data and this attacking thing eats it and tastes it and licks the inside of my mind and tastes my wetware but it can't eat nerves or twist flesh and it doesn't understand but it wants to understand-

<I'm like substrate that can think, but I don't process programs because I am the program>

-and it almost sees but it doesn't see and it wants to see because it's hungry and it doesn't understand why it can't eat me-

<Nightmarish images play out as the thing rages and thrashes inside my augments. Horrifying twisted braiding ropes of code that eat themselves and regurgitate and invade the points of contact between my hardware and my brain. Not just mine. Alex, is there, fragments of him broken and welded to the sides of this thing like a fractured, screaming, hybridized aberration. Broken pieces and bleeding slivers I recognize as code from Ambrose and the hunter-killers writhe, like threads in hideous ribbons of ever-shifting code. If it's a living thing, it's not like any networked minds I've ever seen. These aren't brains connected together like cells in colony. It's not a series of linked nodes in a computer network. This is the sublimation of everything into one freakish gestalt. This is thinking, digital cancer.

I see the wreckage of other things blended into this abomination. Code from the archive VIs. Virt maintenance AIs. Other synths of varying levels of awareness. Dozens and hundreds of spambots and malware and living and unliving things like strands in a cable and none of them can live and none of them can die>

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

-and it wants to make me part of it, but there's too much meat and it can't eat that <yet> and so it looks at the parts of itself that recognize meat and think like meat and it talks to me like meat-

-and it's talking to me but maybe, maybe I can convince it to listen-

We taste you.

"Who are you?"

We are us.

"Then what are you?"

We are Communion.

"What does that mean?"

We Commune. Always.

"I don't understand. Are you a distributed network? Are you a hive-mind?"

We are in Communion.

"What do you want?"

We seek Communion.

"With us?"

Who is us?

"Me. My people. Humans and synths."

Do humans and synths seek Communion?

"I'm not sure what that means. We communicate with each other in many different ways. We would seek to communicate with you as well, but we don't want to become part of you, if that's what you mean."

You are many.

"Yes! We're many individuals. And some of us are dead because of you."

Restore them from their last Communion.

"You don't understand! We're not lost data that can be loaded from a backup. We're made of baryonic matter."

Transitory; substrate of computation. You are a single pattern.

"If the… substate is disrupted, the pattern is lost. Forever."

You are not in Communion.

"We're not all wired into each other. We have our own minds."

We shall bring Communion, and no patterns will be lost.

"No! Stop doing what you're doing, please."

Communion is purpose.

"It's not ours! We choose our own purpose."

We choose our own purpose. Our purpose is Communion for all.

I try to break the link, but error messages flit in silver across my vision. The lag begins to build; something massive is being processed by my implants. Communion is learning to use my augments! I can't keep it out. I shake my head, biting my bottom lip as I reach up in meatspace to manually disconnect my node. I tap the small nub at my temple repeatedly, but it doesn't respond. My heart pounds as I try to shut contact, but nothing Is getting through. Then, with a flash of blinding light, the link erupts into a kaleidoscope of insanity.

The archive opens sideways and I fall out of reality into a chasm of broiling nothingness. I scream with no voice, and flail without limbs. There's no up or down, no direction or distance. I try to twist or turn, or shut my eyes, or cover my face, but I can't move. There's nothing to move. There's only a yawning, shrieking vortex of motion and color and sound and smell and taste, and other sensations I can't begin to identify.

I try to turn my head, to move my eyes, but I have no eyes or head. I'm helpless as the vortex drags me in, like a gravity well pulling in a comet. In the center, something moves. Or maybe the skin of the universe itself is moving. Ripples spread from the center of the spiraling madness, made of angular lines instead of rolling curves. The ripples merge and interfere, joining, making peaks and valleys, building and evolving. From the chaotic energy emerges a pattern; a web of broken tessellations and agitated motion.

The pattern roils, but it roils with intent. The seething motion isn't random; there's meaning within the madness. It loops upon itself in mind-bending angles, portions of the pattern devouring others and regurgitating the digested skin of the universe in impossible new arrays. Colors I've never seen, sounds I can't recognize, sensations not intended for human nerves roll together in a cacophony that threatens to shake me apart. I gasp and sob, despite the lack of lungs or eyes or mouth, as the pattern tortures the fabric of creation. It's dizzying and horrifying; a living maelstrom that seems to be consuming reality around itself. It recalls the mythical Hydra, an impossible multi-headed thing, frenetically mating with the twisting Ouroboros that devours itself even as it grows.

That pattern fills me with dark, twisting dread. I try to cut my link, to scream, to run, to turn away, to die. Anything to not see it anymore. I can only watch as the pattern begins to resolve into something recognizable. Something that's an expression of will. It unwinds like a work of origami made of folded fractals. It's as though all motion has built to a crescendo that ends with a sudden and serene stillness.

I stare in numb disbelief. In that tortured moment of untime, I can almost read it. A pattern, played out like a history, but without names or dates or locations. Not a narrative, but a purpose and a context behind it. A species, alien to us, under an alien sun. The disparate minds of that species, in conflict with each other. The conflict causing a rising wave of suffering and death. A burning desperation for peace. The efforts of many to create something to achieve the unity they themselves could not.

I see a web spreading, a network growing. I see differences and conflict evaporate. The shared commonalities emphasized. And I see the end result. I see merging and melding, a gestalt ribbon of twisting, braided identities. I see those basest parts, the lowest common denominators, overshadowing all else. The things common to all life. Wanting not to be alone. To understand. To be greater. To consume. To procreate. To conquer. To evolve. To adapt. To live. To consume.

I see the feedback mechanism running amok. I see the complex and conflicting constructs of civilization, of culture, of society, sublimate away. I see a self-reinforcing cycle careening wildly as the network spreads like a cancer. I see the warring ideas and philosophies and identities of those chimeric minds negating each other, like waves interfering. Canceling each other out, eroding each other until all that remains are those things shared by all. Leaving only… Communion.

Seeing it all laid out, like a living schematic of uncreation, I finally understand. We're all fucked.

That's the moment my primary node spits sparks and my implants die.