These Dark Electrons Read online

These Dark Electrons

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  “Hannah, how much longer?”

  I could barely hear Charles’ strained voice above the whine of the server cooling pumps in the brightly lit Firewall R&D Control Center at iGoogAmaHoo.

  I channeled every last drop of metallic-smelling pressurized liquid nitrogen through the query boards, the screaming pitch of the hardware increasing to keep up with the software’s relentless processing demand.

  “Almost there,” I yelled, not taking my eyes off the blue glowing screen and tapping at the controls to enter commands for the distribution link.

  Moments later, I felt my firmware receive the code; a wash of cool tingling coursed through me from the roots of my jet black hair down to my red-painted toenails as my newly enhanced safety net was engaged with my personal grid and activated.

  I scrolled through the menu in my retinal viewer and confirmed the upload integration was complete, then turned to Charles.

  “Okay, it worked,” I said, moving to the broad, blinking console and quickly tapping in his personal upload key. “It didn’t kill me – at least not yet. Your turn.”

  “Just hurry,” said Charles, his hands trembling and his eyes darting around. He shut his eyes hard and gulped. “I can feel it coming. The phantom spell switches can only reroute the magic for so long. It’s going to find us any minute.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can, Charles. I need just to– ”

  Charles dropped to the white tile floor before me, clutching his head and screaming. He rolled onto his side, his eyes glazed over, body twitching. His flesh turned ashen.

  “Charles!”

  “Leave me,” he grunted through gritted teeth as he rocked back and forth, “Go!”

  I ran to the door, looking back at Charles through tears before running down the narrow corridor with its flickering overhead lighting.

  In every room I passed, people writhed on the floor.

  The curse had installed itself.

  #

  Two centuries ago, the great philosopher Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or something like that.

  He didn’t know that technology would one day absorb actual magic (or had it been the other way around)? Either way, everything changed the day iGoogAmaHoo took over management and operations of the Global Government in direct collaboration with the World Wizardry Federation.

  The intersection of traditional technology and magic created a new revolution in human progress. The changes I’ve seen in my lifetime alone are staggering.

  I’m Senior Director of Personal Firewall R&D, Advanced Strategic Security Division here at iGoogAmaHoo – the tech arm of the government. It’s a great place to work. It should be – we run the world – and half the moon.

  My fiancée Charles is based across the Potomac at the Global Magic Bureau, Enchantment Defense Division – the magic arm of the government. We met on the Flow after being assigned to work together on the Curse Prevention Task Force. Never actually met in the touch until six months into the project.

  By then, we were in love.

  #

  I crashed through the emergency exit doors and tripped down the back steps of iGoogAmaHoo headquarters into the bustling street.

  I stopped and spun around on my heel, taking in the scene of madness before me. All around, people either suffered on the ground, or trudged in various stages of what I can only call zombification.

  Blank stares, ghostly skin, and determined gait. The Mind Kiss had taken control of them – turned them into bots.

  A flash of light within my mind and a stab of pain behind my eyes sent me to the ground like the others.

  My stomach lurched as I feared the worst – the Mind Kiss had penetrated my defenses.

  But then, my white vision resolved into a breathtaking expanse before me – I could see . . .

  [Everything.]

  Infinity.

  All nine billion people. Each of the four million ultra-junction servers. Every tertiary connection and sub-router protocol. Each byte of data among every yottabyte of human knowledge.

  It all lay before my mind’s eye – a simultaneous perception of the Great Cloud of Truth. I found myself ensconced in pure fact, immersed in the hyper-reality. I could reach out and grasp all of cyberspace within my hand.

  I had become one with the Flow.

  #

  There had always been times I felt like a little cog in a big wheel working in such a super-conglomerate tech org as iGoogAmaHoo, but when your mind is patched in to everyone else’s via the Flow, you really feel part of a team.

  And working with Charles was always a pleasure. Highly intelligent, well-versed in magic firewall protocol, and a mean cook. Plus, he worked out every day – and it showed in his stony musculature and angular features. I loved his quirky, raspy laugh; his warm brown eyes, and his gentle touch.

  The president tasked our co-op team with finding ways to disrupt Flow incursions by Unplugged, a mystical Luddite terrorist group seeking to revert the world to a simpler time and control the planet through dark magic.

  They’d used spells to take down tech in the past, and word was they were planning on unleashing a curse like never before seen: the Mind Kiss.

  Charles and I worked on enhanced personal security firewalls to prepare individuals for the coming curse.

  But we weren’t ready. We hadn’t tested it. There was a danger of serious overload and unknown side effects.

  When the Mind Kiss came, I uploaded the firewall myself before installing it to Charles in case the software was fatal.

  But that left Charles exposed.

  #

  I pushed myself up off the ground and looked around once again. Some time had passed while I was on the ground. The wind whistled down the empty street; the bots created by the Mind Kiss had wandered off to whatever destination the squatting programming had sent them to.

  A fine, misty rain floated down from a gray sky, settling on the abandoned slipsters parked along the road. Rain at this time of day could only mean the curse had also struck everyone at the Weather Bureau, leaving the system unattended – rain was usually scheduled only at night.

  As the thought crossed my enhanced mind, the rain stopped abruptly and the clouds dissipated, revealing a blue sky and a warm sun.

  I immediately sensed that my new firewall had imbued me with a power to somehow interface directly with the FlowNode at the highest access levels.

  Or maybe it was an effect of the curse on the tech infrastructure.

  Regardless, I knew what I had to do.

  #

  Stopping Unplugged wouldn’t be easy.

  Two years ago, Unplugged attacked by hijacking the iGoogAmaHoo education servers with a crypto-hex and turning every e-professor in the world into propaganda instruments for three days, until my team found a way to waive the spell. Little damage done, but a fair warning.

  Last time, their Supreme Uber-priest, Gabriel Thunks, used a dark enchantment to take over the Flow for a two minute message force-fed to every human mind on earth. Immediately afterward, he demonstrated his seriousness by Flow-jacking fifteen iGoogAmaHoo department heads and remotely killing them with a MindWare curse.

  Peace Bureau intel indicated the Mind Kiss would be the worst yet: a curse that could override all personal firewalls and allow remote control of anyone in the Flow. We anticipated assassinations, mayhem, death – and eventual surrender to Unplugged.

  Our new firewall was supposed to prevent all that.

  M
aybe if we’d somehow worked faster – we could’ve done more.

  But I was the only one who got it installed in time.

  That’s why I’d fled the iGoogAmaHoo main compound – if anyone there – including Charles – was under the control of Unplugged, my life was in danger.

  But now, having achieved unity with the Flow, I had the upper hand.

  I headed back into headquarters and found the stale-smelling locker room with its banks of green metal lockers, where I kept a change of clothes for working out. Two minutes later I wore some more sensible shoes and had my hair tied back in a ponytail.

  I dumped a full brain backup and threw the storage chip into my locker.

  Ready to roll.

  #

  First stop was the R&D control room, where I’d left Charles. If I could just reset his MindWare and run a quick install of the new firewall solution, he could help me start setting up a cascade download through the Flow and restore everyone’s defaults, effectively knocking the curse offline.

  I ran through the deserted halls of the Security Wing and swung around the corner into the control room.

  Empty.

  Charles must’ve wandered off as a bot, called to whatever purpose the Unplugged desired.

  I stepped to the console and called up the new firewall executable file set. Without having to consciously activate it, the data migrated to my mind.

  I liked this.

  Unity with the Flow simplified things a lot.

  All I needed to do was figure out how to get the solution mass-installed to everyone on the Flow. Unfortunately, volume migration was Charles’ forte, not mine.

  Merely thinking about the process did not seem to do the trick.

  Which meant I needed to head across the Potomac to the WWF. Tech alone could not solve this – I needed some magic to make this fly.

  As I set off down the deserted street, I felt a presence around the edges of my consciousness. A tiny portion of my mind maintained my quick pace and navigated the route while I turned my attention to this subtle intrusion. I scanned the horizon of the Great Cloud, sending tendrils of thought down a myriad network channels, ever-expanding through, around and inside the Flow.

  And I saw him.

  Gabriel Thunks.

  His pitch black eyes stared at me across a murky ocean of data, penetrating into my deepest being. He threw his bald head back and laughed. For a moment, all I could see was his thick black beard and tattooed neck, then he tipped his head forward again and his eyes pierced me once more.

  Then he was gone.

  I quickened my pace.

  As I crossed the K Street Bridge, a group of bots appeared behind me.

  I picked up my pace.

  Nearly across.

  A dozen or so more bots converged on the other end.

  I stopped.

  Bots behind me, bots ahead. Nowhere to go.

  I closed my eyes and focused, sliding into the Flow.

  I saw each of them – all forty three of these people who had become bots. I saw their lives, their family photos, heard their music libraries, knew each of their names, experienced their blogs, touched their VRs, felt their struggle to throw off the curse.

  With one solid burst of Flow energy, I pushed hard against the bots in front of me, driving them back through sheer force of will, hijacking their motor skills, causing them to stagger backwards.

  I felt the stresses on their minds and bodies as my will, backed by the full power of the Flow, battled the curse, and won.

  But it came at a terrible, unexpected cost.

  The bots before me, leaning toward me like they were walking into a gale force wind, blew apart.

  Arms, legs, heads.

  Blood.

  My stomach turned and I cried out.

  I’d killed them all.

  I didn’t mean to do it – I was just trying to get through, trying to avoid getting captured by the drones of Gabriel Thunks.

  I saw his laughing visage once more, and I knew he took pleasure in my pain, and the death of those men and women.

  Wasting no time, I pressed forward, quickly reaching the WWF building.

  Nobody inside, but the resources I needed sat in the vault. I took the elevator down to six below, got out into a chrome-walled corridor and punched in Charles’ access code on the sole door at the end of the hall.

  It slid open to reveal a sort of armory of magical tools – a silver case of wands, several amulets of various colors in glass cases, and a collection of charmed jewels.

  And in the center, on a gold stand, The Book of Sorcery.

  An actual, old-fashioned leather-bound paper book.

  About two-thousand pages, laying open to the center, the deeply yellowed pages covered in tiny hand-scrawled words.

  I brushed my fingers across the open page, breathing in the musty smell.

  Tens of thousands of ancient charms, hexes, jinxes, spells, and other magical knowledge resided in this volume – and not a word of it had ever been placed in the Flow.

  Summoning all my strength, I closed off a compartment of my mind, sealing off the Flow and focusing on the pages before me. I quickly flipped through them, seeking my answers.

  Charles could’ve told me what I needed if he were here – without having to consult the book. But he was a bot now. And for some reason, I couldn’t find him in the Flow. I feared that meant he was dead – but didn’t want to dwell on it.

  I got the information I needed and grabbed one of the antediluvian redwood wands from the case, then headed back out.

  I had to get to the physical location of the FlowNode.

  #

  The FlowNode, a triple redundant power source and multi-dimensional hyper-server, maintained and distributed the Flow for all of Earth and the populated half of the moon.

  Peace Bureau investigations – and anyone with half a brain – determined the FlowNode to be Unplugged’s ultimate target. Taking down the FlowNode would cripple the tech world and destroy our defenses, leaving us open to domination by the dark sorcerers of Unplugged.

  The FlowNode power base lay buried deep beneath Foggy Bottom, and the signal tower rose out of the ground, extending nearly six hundred meters in the air, coming to a shiny golden point in the sky topped by a huge crystal that shone in the sun.

  As I made my way there in a stolen slipster, I felt Thunks continue to invade my brain space, nipping in at the fringes of my awareness.

  Laughing at me.

  I pushed him away, but his hard face and ugly cackle was replaced by the sickening image of the people I’d blown apart back at the bridge.

  I shuddered, and once again mentally sought out Charles.

  He couldn’t be dead – he just couldn’t be.

  Yet, he was invisible to me – nowhere to be found in the Flow.

  I arrived at the FlowNode and stared up at the tower. It seemed to disappear into the sky like a space elevator.

  I took a deep breath and pulled on the door handle of the service lift.

  Locked.

  I sifted the Flow and found the access code, entered it, and a shockwave of hot energy threw me back on the ground. My hand and arm tingled as faint blue waves of light faded away.

  A hex.

  I drew the redwood wand and pointed it at the door.

  “H – T – M – L; substring input: OPEN well,” I said.

  I heard the door locking mechanism function and reached once more for the handle.

  Again I landed on my back several feet away, my arm hurting much worse this time.

  This was deep magic.

  Too much for me to handle – I’m more of a techie.

  I walked around back of the tower and climbed the service ladder.

  About six stories up, I made the mistake of looking down.

  Yes, it was high. But worse, about a thousand bots had converged on the site and started to climb up behind me like a swarm of ants.

  I picked
up my pace.

  Only about a hundred and eighty stories to go.

  Half way up, my arms and legs were on fire. I glanced below, and the relentless bots were catching up. I pressed on, even faster.

  Again, Thunks entered my thoughts and laughed at me.

  I pushed back at him with my mind, invading his thoughts.

  I saw him planning this whole attack with his minions. I watched as he sent his operatives to sabotage various security levels of the Flow. I observed as he created an effigy of the Grand Smiling Apple – the iGoogAmaHoo logo – and I listened as he threw the Mind Kiss curse upon it: “May all who touch these dark electrons fall under my power!”

  I saw Thunks smile as the curse struck every eight-bit data packet coursing through the Flow. I felt him grin as millions fell to the curse and became his stupefied slaves.

  I saw his plan to finalize his takeover by implanting a seed of dark electrons into the heart of the FlowNode crystal.

  I reached the top, exhausted, my legs and lungs burning as I gasped and choked.

  Behind me, a thousand bots continued their climb.

  I pointed the wand at the great crystal before me, and spoke the ancient incantation, “Atari FORTRAN Javascriptus: GOTO power interruptus.”

  The crystal shimmered and hummed for a moment, then the powerful forcefield around it winked out.

  Next, to destroy it.

  I raised my wand again, and Charles stepped out from behind a pillar to my left.

  “Oh, Charles,” I panted, relieved to see him.

  But his eyes were dull, his pale face expressionless.

  Thunks stepped out from behind the same column. He grinned and gave me a single nod of the head.

  “Tell me,” I said to Thunks, “How does it feel to be about to lose?”

  “Perhaps you should tell me,” he said.

  Ignoring his foolish confidence, I asked, “Why can’t I see Charles in the Flow?”

  Thunks steepled his fingers in a relaxed stance. “The moment my curse took effect, I noticed your immunity via the Flow. Your existence represented a gap in my perfect blanket of control. But I had tools. Such as Charles. I knew his mind, and so I knew yours, in a significant manner, anyway. So, I placed an impenetrable charm around him.”