Artist: Emma Fujikawa
It’s weird being in two places at once. My body sits reclined at my desk, a flesh-heap hooked up to my hardware, while my avatar wades through the digital void of the net. I bypass corporate asset protection firewalls and undercover CopBots as a crowd of users tries to size me up and sniff out what I’m holding while I navigate the Pathway, dressed in a workaday leather jacket and jeans.
A notification appears in my feed.
< Running late. Be there soon. >
We could have done this off-net, away from the strobing lights and pounding audio that feels like I’m getting clocked in the head with every line of code running in the background. It’d be easier that way. Moving illegal software is stressful enough without the added fanfare.
But life on the net is what people live for. Less social pressure. More anonymity and freedom to do the kind of shit we do. The net is easier, too. Why mess with traffic or risk getting roughed up when you can do everything from home?
The idea of the future is what people love about life on the net. The spectacle of the neon rain soaking the artificial nighttime. Fixing your avatar just right so you can be who you want to be at all times. Be who you really are.
And if getting digitally pummeled is what it takes to help erase my mistakes, then I’ll put up my dukes and take a few on the cheek because illegal doesn’t mean illegitimate. People deserve to have the software I sling at the rate I’m selling it. It’s all about access. My software gives people access to optimize their gear. No corporate price-jacks. No software/hardware incompatibilities. The stuff people wouldn’t need if it weren’t for the arbitrary data caps and bandwidth throttling. But if the corporations won’t play fair, why should we? We don’t owe them anything.
I round the corner to our meeting spot. A dime-a-dozen digital café. A hub for new users to get their feet wet on the net. A place for wannabe hackers. Neopunks flashing their shit, trying to look tough. Important. These places are information playgrounds for serious folks. Easy pickings. Fucking dopes wouldn’t last a minute on the Pathways I used to frequent.
The buyer still hasn’t shown and for the briefest moment—a hummingbird whisper—I consider I’m being set up. Could be that they’re just spooked. First time buyer, maybe. Or perhaps, distracted by the ads on the way here, tantalized by what the net markets have to offer, they blew through their cash. Only takes one click.
I consider taking a seat as planned, sip on automated espresso. Instead, I stroll past the café just in case, and head for a dive bar off the beaten Pathway. No one follows. It’s just me and the neon breeze.
I message the buyer, < Café felt off. Sending you the address to a bar. Keep to the Pathway on the address and you’ll be fine. >
< nb nb. >
Something about the reply begins to jostle a memory loose, but I can’t quite place it. Nb. I figure they meant np, no problem. A typo. Who knows? I alter the code as I walk. Just a line here or there, tweaking the right bits so I end up on the Pathway I want to be on. The ones you have to know about in order to find. It isn’t that it’s tough to navigate. It’s more about the privilege of being privy to the info. A wrong line of code isn’t the end of the world. It’s like walking down the wrong street off-net. You may get lost. No problem. Unless you end up in the wrong kind of neighborhood, then you might have many problems.
That’s how this place feels, like a wrong turn.
It’s purposeful though. A warning to those who wander in by accident: Turn around. But I’m not here by accident. I meander toward a vending machine beside the front entrance. Prices haven’t changed. Options haven’t changed. I consider punching the well-worn button B9, my favorite digital hallucinogen, but instead I tap A4 and watch a bag of chips drop from its coiled dispenser rack. Nostalgia will be my drug of choice tonight. Have to maintain a clear head while making deals these days. Keeps me straight. Keeps me breathing.
I sit at an empty barstool and stare at a warped version of myself in the mirror behind the bar, lined with bottles programmed so well you’d think they’re real, especially if your hardware is good enough. I order a scotch. Then a water. They taste how I remember them. I think about all the time spent here in my twenties, when I was fucked up both on and off-net. I existed in a digital haze. Gaps in my memory so big a train could run through them. Wish I could I say I didn’t miss it, not the time spent here, but the fluidity of youth. When the ticking clock telling you to make something of yourself seemed to run in slow-motion. Maybe I was just moving too fast to notice.
Time is weird on the net. Measured in megabits per second. Users are all manifestations of data being thrust here and there and it feels seamless—until it doesn’t. That’s how I know something is off. I feel the lag. It starts as a subtle pull. There’s another message from the buyer, but it’s gibberish, like a cat walked across the keyboard. The glinting liquor bottles twist and blur into kaleidoscopic lines. Then the lag shifts from subtle and inconvenient to overwhelmingly slow and paralyzing.
A barrage of pings come through my audio feed, alerts from the bot watching my off-net security system.
#
The feeling is like I’ve walked into a room, and the moment I crossed the threshold, I’ve suddenly forgotten where I am and where I came from. That’s what improperly disconnecting from the net is like. A confusing cacophony of neural static as my two worlds compile and run into one another again.
Someone is screaming at me, but my senses are dull and it sounds like it’s coming from underwater. Synaptic lag. I look around, vision blurry, and almost run my kill switch program—corrupting all my gear. Software. Hardware. Everything. A hard reboot, but evidence gone.
I focus and see an old friend, Trevor, dragging a body through the doorway.
“You’ve got to help me,” he says and kicks the door shut.
The deadbolt, still in the locked position, has ripped apart the catch and doorjamb. The door creeps open to the dark hallway. My first instinct isn’t to help, but to call Trevor a piece of shit. Tell him to leave. Call nine-one-one. His problems weren’t my problems any longer. That ended a long time ago, just like our friendship did when I quit dealing narcotics. Trevor stopped hanging around after I got clean. When I quit selling to him. Cutting him deals. Funny how that works.
“I don’t have to do anything, Trevor.”
His name lingers in the air, and I consider that I’ve never met anyone named Trevor who didn’t have trouble clinging to them like flies on shit. In this case, trouble’s a mid-twenties blonde. Trevor grips her under the shoulders and lugs her farther into my apartment. Her shoes slide across the floor, leaving a small trail of gravel and grime for me to sweep later.
“Do it for her,” he says, knowing goddamn well the weight of the look he shoots me. The way he emphasizes the word her. The memories it trudges up. The mistakes.
“Shut the fucking door and help me,” I say.
A quick assessment of her clothes tells me she was ready for a night out. Trevor’s moving impossibly fast, but moments like these tend to pull time like taffy, stretching it thin until you can see through it. Her eyelids flutter like a dreaming dog’s. The unnatural pink hue of her irises tells me she’s either wearing contacts or she’s augmented. But knowing Trevor’s type, she’s geared up.
I kneel and check her airways. She’s not seizing, but her eyes keep dancing. I yell at him to grab the bag. He knows the one. Narcan. Epinephrine. The kind of stuff I needed before I sold software. The reason I deal only in software now.
“She’s goddamn overdosing, man. Get it together.”
I rotate her slightly and notice she’s burning up, but it’s localized to her head and neck. She’s got a single socket implant behind one ear. A neural jack behind the other. I turn to Trevor, his eyes all bloodshot and panicked. He’s shaking his head no because she’s not overdosing.
“She’s overclocking.”
And there’s the slightest grin on his face. Accidental. Nerves betraying him. Some information I’m not privy to, but he seems to be amused. The slimy fucker.
I don’t have time to ask questions. Instead, I tell Trevor to grab all of the icepacks from the freezer and place them around her head, while I grab my interface cables. I connect to her neural link and am bathed in neon.
#
Navigating her BIOS should be easier than this, but this isn’t the first time she’s overclocked. Her boot data has been corrupted, scarred, and there’s static everywhere along the Pathway, making it difficult to traverse. She’ll need a true tech to fix her right. Her augment system is fucked, but if I can manually reduce her settings back to normal processing levels, I might be able to keep her hardware from frying her brain or giving her permanent nerve damage. Won’t save her from eventual surgeries, but should be a hell of a lot cheaper. Hopefully less painful, but probably not.
The typical Pathway is blocked, encrypted in a series of randomized loops that are programmed to maximize the effects for a set duration before timing out. I recognize it, because I wrote it. She’s overclocking on my shit.
“Fuck.”
The program is meant to maximize system processing, and performance. Lets you run all sorts of programs you shouldn’t be able to do. Ignore bandwidth throttling. But it’s bypassing the intended Pathway, linked so the surges are hitting her hardware receptors for an on-net high of a lifetime. Misuse of a good thing.
This is the kind of thing Trevor would abuse. Always pushing things. New highs were only new for so long, but I never sold him software.
I move quick, taking a back channel, until I’m finally able to restore her hardware to default settings. I stick around and keep an eye on her processing temps.
While I wait, I poke around in her memory. I shouldn’t, but I have to know where she got my shit. Was it Trevor or coincidence? Residual messages float around in here. Pieces of conversations she’s had with a familiar user. The handle and last IP match the user I was supposed to meet at the café before I was yanked from the net. The last thing he said before I hooked up my interface cables. I’ll keep her cool, no biggie, no biggie—the user’s shorthand nb. Nb. Trevor’s look. The got you smirk. He knew it was my program. He knew I’d never sell to him if I knew what he was doing with it.
The blonde’s temps are stable. There’s nothing else I can do, but disconnect and let her ride it out and hope the neurological damage doesn’t leave her with chronic pain or worse, but I won’t hold my breath. He let her run the program for far too long. Too many times. Well, no more.
#
The plan was to beat Trevor’s ass when my mind returned to reality, but he’s gone, along with a myriad of loose microchips and hard drives from my desk. I disconnect the interface cables linking me to the girl. The floor is slicked with sweat as she shakes, coming down hard. Her neon pink irises fade to a beautiful, natural hazel as her augment system crashes. She won’t remember anything clearly, her memories corrupted by carelessness. Hers and mine.
I move her to the couch and place a blanket over her. I replace the icepacks with cold ones, wrapped in dishrags, and occasionally monitor her breathing.
My hardware dings, a message from the user—Trevor—asking me if she made it. Playing with me now.
I contemplate my move. Trevor thinks he’s got me. Can’t go to authorities about the gear he boosted, even if I wanted to, given it’d be coded as digital paraphernalia. The girl was ODing on my software. Probably thinks I’ll jump on the deal to recoup my losses. Then what, Trevor? Going to set me up? Get me busted so I’m off the market. Then use the gear he stole to take my place?
< C’mon man. No hard feelings. Deal still on? >
I’ve told him no a thousand times. I’m not selling to him again. Quitting him wasn’t enough though. It doesn’t matter what I’m selling, people will find a way to drown in the neon rain. And the Trevors of the net will be there to hold their heads under. Life on the net is living in desperation, treading in the digital sea. Addiction. Users, all. I’ve gotta be done for good—with everything. We all sell shit. Products. Drugs. Our names. A good time. No ethical consumption under capitalism. Maybe it’s a bad excuse, but I did it to keep the fucking lights on. Trevor? It was for control. To have power over people’s habits.
He can’t have that kind of power any longer. I’m going to have to boost it from him.
And to do so, I reply yes and wait for Trevor to log on using my gear. I don’t bother using spare interface cables. Instead, I log on to the net using a proxy user. There are messages from him asking where to meet.
< The café. Same Pathway as before. >
I need this to be public. Flashy. It’s the only way to combat the noise of the net. People need to know I’m gone for good.
I guide my proxy using the command prompt, no need for graphical interfaces. I know these Pathways like the back of my hand. I wait for Trevor to sit before I remotely disable the firewall protections on my gear. He won’t know what the nagging pings picking at his brain are. It doesn’t take long—mere milliseconds—for scavengers and neo punks to catch wind of an easy haul. But on here? Time can be weird. A virus stripping you of all your data, unraveling your digital DNA, can feel excruciatingly slow.
< Smthng’s wrrrrrong. i needd to baaaaiillll sryy >
The words appear on my monitor. A cat on his keyboard.
The Pathway is lagging due to the high traffic of users watching this unfold. I wonder how many of them have been misusing my software.
And how many will stop?
I type nb. nb and initiate the kill switch program, forever trapping Trevor in two places at once. Thrust into a state of constant synaptic lag. His thoughts stretched and pulled thin to where he can see through them, but they’ll never snap. They’ll pull and pull, unraveling his mind until he rots, a flesh-heap at his desk. Eventually, I sweep the trail of grit and grime from the floor and wait for the blonde to wake up, taking care of Trevor’s mess one last time.
Michael Bettendorf (he/him) is a multi-genre writer from the Midwest. His short fiction has appeared at Cosmic Horror Monthly, Mythaxis Magazine, the Drabblecast, and elsewhere. His debut experimental horror novel/gamebook “Trve Cvlt” was released by Tenebrous Press (Sept. 2024). Michael works in a high school library in Lincoln, NE. Find him on Bluesky @BeardedBetts and www.michaelbettendorfwrites.com.
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