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Virtual Reality
She tumbles through cyberspace, in the shape of an adorably cute puppy-cartoon, harmless, offending no-one. Pale beige-brown, rounded paws, fluffy ears, and a waggy tail. The works. The shape looks slightly out of place amongst the chromed superrealism of the standard data-constructs, but no-one associates this image with a predator, which is what she is; a data-shark. This cutesy exterior covers a whole series of the most vicious and relentless attack routines available on the system. She bounces off panels, making her leisurely way down a darkened corridor. Around her, neon lines and iridescent panels flicker like an advertising executive's dream of a television station-ID clip. More conventional data constructs - metallic hawks, glowing spheres with legs of burning orange light - click past and step over her. Eventually, she reaches a quiet corner of the system and settles down to wait, as gently as a dandelion puff-seed. A potential target; the stylised androgyny of a Straight. There is a standard shape used by Straights; a thin, fair-haired child, insufficiently defined to be able to determine, from its looks alone, whether it is male or female. Ghostly, pale. And easy prey. She sits back, dips her head to one side and wags her tail. The Straight glances over at her, curious; then it approaches and holds out a tentative hand. At that instant, she strikes. Her limbs shoot out, stretching, becoming tendoned sticks layered with muscle. The body elongates, ribs standing out in ridges; the cute exterior melts away, and her real shape shines through like a skull beneath rotting flesh; a wolf, rows of jagged teeth glinting in the half-light. Before the Straight can respond, she pounces, taking its throat in her jaws. it is only symbolic of what its routines are doing at a more elementary level, but she shakes the Straight, head snapping back and forth, appearing to tear its throat. The Straight screams silently. She twists around in the void, their forms lit by glowing green grid-lines which border the walls of the virtual construct until she is behind the Straight, her paws over its shoulder, claws sunk well into its imaginary flesh. A brilliant white flare appears between her hind legs, extending out towards the Straight's writhing rump; then, with a scintillating flash, the flare buries itself in the Straight's body, burrowing up along its spine, insinuating its light and its form within the body of its victim. Within seconds, the data-shark has assumed the form of the Straight, her old form faded, evaporated, and she has gained access to all of the victim's faculties. Hidden within her new form, which appears to be just as innocent as her previous one, she roams cyberspace, looking for new prey.
You place the electrodes over your temples, sit back in the chair and try to relax. You think of all the times you've been in VR, mentally rehearsing the sequence of tiny moves in the muscles around your temples which, in VR, are translated to menu selections, allowing you to alter your preferences, change your location, leave the system if you want to. Forget that the node you're entering isn't generally accessible from the net, that it's hidden, possibly illegal, where illegal things might happen. Forget that a lot of your friends have heard of this node, but none of them ever came out of it to tell you what happened in there. You touch the contact and there's that feeling of falling backwards through your chair (much like the THC Rush), your vision dims, there's a twinge down one side, and you're in, floating in the grey, bottomless void, the preferences menu floating before you, writ in green neon. Your eyes jerk down to the coordinates, set them to the numbers you were given. A flaring red grid appears before the menu; this is a private node. You give the password; the void and the menu fade. It comes up quickly. You're in your own body, naked, standing on a grey stone floor. A small room, walls also of grey stone. You pad over to the closest wall, feel the surface. It's glass-smooth, the joins between slabs a feature of the wall, painted in. You look around; the cell is bare, the only feature a tiny window high up on one wall. Pale sunlight streams in, draws a square on the opposing wall. You begin to panic. You can't access the menus. You jump, but can't see out the window. Your fingers scratch against the smooth walls, sliding down with the same degree of friction you'd expect from smooth polished stone. You sit down in one corner, and watch the square of sunlight. You watch for what seems like well over two hours, but it doesn't move. Uh-huh. |
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All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |