Preface
The story I am trying to get out of my head cannot be understood without knowing some things which I can just write in the middle of my story.
The general setting is a sort of not to far off future. Computers have advanced to being almost completely brain like. The Internet is generally a virtual reality world, and AE Technologies is a network service provider.
A jack is a direct link into ones spinal column just below the brain. It is safest to be laying down when inserting it. It is also a prerequisite to have surgery to use this form of the Internet, not everyone is completely comfortable with having information moving in and out of your brain to another persons. Each jack has a form of a fire wall, to stop the sort of thing that caused the main characters problems.
Chapter 1
Fallout
Eleven days. Has my body died yet? Did I even continue breathing when my consciousness was ripped away from my body and trapped in the corridors of cyber space.
The DA worm struck like the flu, killing indiscriminantly each person logged into the AE Technologies main server. It had somehow been planted in the source after one of my routine maintenances. After a quick scan and update I logged in for some trouble shooting. As soon as I entered the lobby of the site my entire vision was consumed by distortions in the room. Gaping holes, that showed shimmering black masses behind it, covered the walls.
Suddenly I was being impaled by a gelatinous spear, protruding from the wall. The fire wall installed in my jack was visualized as shattering like a glass glob that surrounded me. I opened my eyes and was quickly assaulted by the double vision of experiencing two realities. I began scrambling at my jack as I felt the creeping feeling of the virus ripping information from my mind. Sadly, it was all in vain, and all senses ceased working.
I awoke, you could call it, in Sub1. Sub1 was where you started after logging in, and was also a main communication hub. Visually it was an infinitely spanning grassland, with a few pine trees scattered in what looked like a random pattern. It wasn't endless though; at the ends was Sub2 through Sub5, and it expanded out three more times to relieve server load.
My PDA began to vibrate at my waste, I lifted it to see a message from another system operator.
"The server will be down for maintenance, please sign out
immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.
- AE Tech SysOp, Corban"
The few hundred people who were within my sight began to fade out as they either logged out or moved to different servers. I tried to blink open my eyes, to try and find my grasp on reality, but only the sight of grass and pines lingered. I flailed my arms towards the back of my head, fumbling with the representation of my hair. There was no ghost sensation of either my chair or the jack. I fell backwards onto the ground, the thud of pain wasn't surprising, but I had no certainty that it wasn't just a signal sent to my brain to keep me from doing foolishly dangerous things in this farce world. My mind screamed at my body, "Move! Work! Sit UP!" The sheer impossibility of this form of existence had encompassed all my thoughts and paralyzed me. Finally all my consciousness left me, the grass under my body fell out, and my whole world went numb.
My eyes finally opened, this time it had to be real. My limbs were all in pain, my mouth dry and my throat filled. I tried to lift myself up and tear at the tube in my throat. But my arms didn't rise, they had been strapped down. I began to gag, yet it was all dry heaves. A door slammed open and shouting filled my ears. It all became white noise though, and slowly faded out. My eyes slipped closed, and my world fell out for a second time.
To awaken sweating in grass after a prior waking strapped to a bed can be very disorienting. The grass tickled my neck, but that was the only good feeling. The pain was coming in waves from my limbs and throat. Exhaustion was slowly dissipating, and the sound of voices echoed throughout the area. People were connection back into Sub1, server maintenance must have just finished.
Sitting up and giving the horizon a quick look, I marveled at the sight of people flashing into existence. It wasn't anything truly special to see, but it was something like a sunrise, 'naturally' occurring and an almost divine sight which whispers into your ear, "Life!"
The burden of impossibility was staggering. My mind running loops and retracing the day. My PDA began to buzz to life at my waste. I lifted it up to see the little mail icon flash intensely as if it were a command to read my mail. Clicking the icon listed three messages; two from Corban and one with a randomly jumbled subject and sender. The fist message from Corban was about what I should check for after the last update, it was all basic protocol. The other one said that there were some errors in the patch files, and to wait for further notice to update. It was almost ironic, being stuck here just because I didn't check my mail early enough. The third mail though, had only one coherent and readable line: "The DA has struck, and all minds will be purified." The meaning appeared at the time as simply a letter delivered by the viruses creator as a sort of brag, but it wasn't important.
I finally decide to send a message to Corban after gawking at my mail for a few minutes. I tried to keep it simple, and the general gist was to meet me in the main lobby of the site, no matter how unplausible it seems. I quickly typed the URL into my PDA, and instantly my eyes vision shifted to the main lobby of AE Technologies site. Corban was standing in the center of the hospital white room. He was a tallish man with blond hair that always looked tousled, and deep blue eyes in his fragile face. He was showing stubble on his usually clean face, I don't remember him looking like this. He ran over and hugged me, the pressure of his embrace might not be real, but the man cried towering over me. He whispered into my ear, "It is you, Bishop. I though it was just a cruel joke. I've been waiting here for five hours, and have been worrying about you for six days." My mined railed at this, and I nearly collapsed in this gentle giants embrace.
