Tag: postdigital

VIN 11: Postdigital Unity

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

As you age, you begin to see trends. Not the fads you saw in youth, but actual trends. They’re like fads but over long spans and incorporating them as well. They’re longer-form gravitations toward ideals. Cyclical recurrences of formerly-existent-but-now-refined ideas.

And the fact is, the vast majority of the first-gen postdigital kids (millennials?) are a bunch of weird creatures.

That’s not to say bad. Never mistake weird for bad. Gates was weird. Think he had it easy before he was making money? No way, man. He was fucking weird. Jobs was weird until he died. It was why he died; rejecting medical treatment in place of home-remedies and warm thoughts.

Fucking weird.

And it doesn’t just extend to intelligence types– though some call Jobs a con-artist before an innovator. That he was likely both is neither here nor there, as everyone’s the same in most ways. It’s merely context that changes. Humans have to be to survive. That’s Humanity. It’s adaptation. It’s Evolution; finding ways to thrive despite extreme, organic adversity.

Do not deny it’s truth. Rather, revel in it; first-gen postdigital kids, (millennials) are the weird generation.

Probably ‘cause we’re all prototypes raised dyslexic on television-frames and text flashing by at light-speed. By the time we’d finally taken our Ritalin and calmed down, it was lunch time and recess. After that, we came in exhausted, completely unaware of the world we were actually experiencing.

Once we came of age, we decided to slow down. Entirely.

Our generation has come to a screeching halt. Not only because of the economy, and external factors, which press in at us with each moment; but because of the sheer want to finally experience something without being forced through it.

This will hit deeper for some than others, but all of you know what I mean:

I recall being educated, but I do not recall my education.

A simple, yet resonant sentiment.

Thousands of years ago, when humans were first socializing into groups more complex than tribes, education was imparted through the same trial-error-observation platform used by all of science today. It was interpersonal in nature, but it was the same, conceptual idea.

Science as it is known today did not exist then. It could not. Not enough reference of civilization– or history– existed yet to be acted on by the call-function.

But now, times have changed. Technology has hurled us headlong. At speeds even we can’t comprehend. The issue is one of grasp; having any on the matters at-hand. As a civilization, Humanity is completely unprepared for the social requirements of a next-level society.

This is bad. Potentially, catastrophically so.

Historically, the less socially-prepared a civilization is to endure a change, the more likely it is to utterly collapse. Ultimately, Rome’s collapse was seeded by its inability to get anything done. Its politics and civics, until then its greatest strengths, began to collapse under the weight of their maintainers’ ignorance.

An innocent ignorance, to be certain, but one all the same. Worse, one no less harmful for it.

Likewise, the same is evident in Central and South Americas cultures whose great achievements rival that of the Pyramids. Ultimately, their culture died from failing to accept the very people they bled for the gods were the ones building their temples.

Eventually, something had to give. So it did. Simple as that.

Unfortunately, it also took with it much collected knowledge in the crossfire. Of all ancient cultures only the Egyptian knowledge is best kept, but notice their name absent above. Though the aforementioned are hardly the extent of cases, they are ideologically different. Egypt did not fall. It ceded its cultural prowess to Rome.

True, it did so largely as a result of decline, one culture’s decline is eternally another’s rise. A sentient species cannot exist culture-less. As postdigital humans can no longer exist information-less. Thus, culture moves always. And like all things, along paths of least resistance– and much too fast for any pre-digital age record-keeping methods.

It is only the postdigital world that can reconcile this; by becoming one culture, unified and constantly changing together.

Guardians of Liberty: Part 2

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

2.

Making it Through

The last few levels were swarming. Like the zombie apocalypse vids popular when N1T3 was a kid. Except, instead of mindless drones shambling for meat, it was University and Marine washouts looking to hone blood-lust for the highest salary.

The second team of them appeared just below the fifth floor. They were tramping between foyers when he caught sight of them. That he’d made it so far without running into them told him the thoroughness of their search. He hesitated, holding his breath, and waiting.

If he knew anything of the growing plague corp-sec was becoming, it was their method of operation. Corps were all about area-denial, especially near their borders. N1T3 was technically bordering on their turf, he’d known it all along. Until now, it was the safest way to maintain supply-routes, but he had other places to crash.

Places he’d long ago planned to retreat to, if necessary.

Everyone like him had them. Never as a paranoid delusion, but rather, as a forethought to bulwark against tidal oppression. Problem was, N1T3 realized hiding against a wall; there was a major difference between planning for something and experiencing it.

With the latter now upon him, he wished he could have planned better. Then again, he’d never expected a corp-sec battalion to swarm. Even that had seemed the realm of delusion right up until Clockwork and An33$A bought it.

Now, he wished he’d bought a tank; a fighter jet. Or else built some sort of orbital platform to live on. Then, he wouldn’t be crouched in filth, heart ready to give out, with an army between he and any relative safety– an army looking only for him.

The feet tramped up, hesitated at a door. It opened, then closed, and everything was quiet. A door shut and latched below, forced him to swallow hard. He nearly choked, fought back for fear of the sound it might make.

His body launched itself down the next few floors like a ghost atop a bullet-train.

He knew only each step; the one to come. Each measured, planned without thought but on sheer will and want of survival. He found himself between the second and first floors in a breath. Inside the first in a thought.

He stopped, starring down the main-lobby of the office building at what had once been the front doors of an accounting firm. The lobby elevators bulged beside stairwells, taunting fattened caretakers into tempting the dual fates of poor, physical conditioning and heart-disease; and taunting N1T3 in to testing his luck that someone wasn’t watching.

He wasn’t how he’d made it past the first two teams. Making it this far made him want to re-examine his perception of the universe.

No time. The doors lay straight ahead.

Too obvious to run. Just beyond that last pair of elevators, squads of itchy trigger-fingers whipped into a frenzy from corporate propaganda. Hungry, abused dogs looking for a meal; N1T3 the jackrabbit. If they caught him, they’d fight over scraps for days.

His only hope was in the moment-to-moment. The step-by-step. Then again, hope was thin. Especially in the face of hot lead.

He shouldered his way along the wall, creeping forward as near to the corner as willing, and then some. He hesitated at a shuffle of clothing from one side. A hint to the shadows revealed the at-ease group of armored and armed wannabe-mercs; No-one had expected him to make it this far.

All the same, he wouldn’t overplay his hand. Not when one bullet shy of dead with hundreds in reserve. He had to play it just right, use the shadows, or he’d eat every one.

One breath at a time. He made for the far-side of the corridor, blending with the shadows.

He hesitated, corp-sec greenies stirring. The lifers, career soldier-types not good or smart enough for officer’s school, but unable to crunch numbers or run tech all day. Like most of corp-sec, these people were damaged goods. Less likely to be rabid, but no less prone to it.

Not surprising, considering what their job required of them.

N1T3 made himself as small as possible and slipped from the wall. He cut across shadows for a column, the cover it provided. He slipped out again, hoping to be lost in the background.

Suddenly, flashes:

A spot-light. His body tensed, worked. The hounds scrambled. The jack-rabbit took flight. Seconds. Days. Then a first spat of gunfire. N1T3 was half-way to the doors.

No-one could’ve expected the swiftness of his flight. N1T3 included. Pure terror fueled long-dormant energy reserves. His legs were lead, yet moved at light-speed. His heart had stopped but his body surged with fresh fluids.

He reached the revolving doors. Second and third rounds of gunfire ricocheted off metallic frames, rippled storm-proof glass. N1T3 stumbled, scrambled, re-centered gravity and fell into the street. His footing returned in time for beams to light over him. He sprang across the street, at full-sprint by the near-edge of the building.

Overhead, the buzz of unmanned drones running face-recog rained over N1T3. His body launched sideways, around, putting as much distance between it and they as possible before finding a way to break line of sight.

N1T3 was down 366th, around a corner, out of sight in a heart beat. The meat-drones had already lost him, but the metal ones were death on his tail. Their buzz was persistent, relentless, vibrating after him like cold death.

But they were programs. His malfunctioning mind knew. And really, he knew programs better than anything. Hardware. Filled with software written by he and his peers. All he needed was one, good angle. One moment of broken, line of sight. Enough for a second’s lost tracking.

He weaved to and fro, making toward the street’s far-side, and an awning there. It wrapped around its building, shielding the doorway from the elements by nestling it beneath concrete supports and glass panels.

His chance; he took it.

His legs pumped. Shoe-rubber smoked across concrete, asphalt. He was under cover. The drones appeared. Zoomed under the awning after him, followed it around– the obvious path; the one their simplistic programming determined he’d follow.

He ducked back and around the small, concave of steps between the door and the central awning’s support. He hesitated a blink, then booked it back into the open; back the way he’d come. The destroyed remains of the former London commercial-downtown became little more than a blur of neutrals smeared with red from terror and desperation.

N1T3 became conscious of himself again somewhere near his destination– and the smell of the stagnant Thames.

Rivers weren’t much use in an age of drones and automated transport; which meant an old dock, in disrepair and seemingly little more than forgotten sewage access, was hardly conspicuous.

All the same, he made sure he wasn’t watched or followed, stealthing through as many shadows as possible. The light he was forced to cross made him little more than a flit– a figment of imagination, appearing and disappearing in the corner of a blinked eye.

He slipped through the underground-access door, shut it just as quickly.

The pounding in his ears gave way to a distant, eternal drip of a neglected and ailing pipe. With it, some part of him finally relaxed. He knew the place well, had established it years ago. It was the same place he and his buddies used to go to get high as kids. The kind no-one knew about decades ago and history had ensured was forgotten since.

N1T3 was safe. If only for now.

He shuffled along the dark hall toward its center, a room where he’d stashed supplies long ago. His mind still fought to grasp what had happened; that corp-sec had actually found him– and right after Clockwork and An33$A bought it.

Bought it?

No. Were murdered. Hunted down. Exterminated. Why?

Why not? N1T3 and the other hackers had known for years the net was a ticking time-bomb. It was the only reason or explanation for why they could be prepared like they were. The problem was, they knew they were at war. As soon as N1T3 hit the net again, they’d know how serious things were.

Vets like him would already be packing up, hitting the road to reset just for safety’s sake.

Vets like him, if any existed still– N1T3 refocused, found himself leaning on a patch of damp, moldy wall with the same tranquility he could only imagine came at the first drops of euthanasia; released tension, lost fear, knowledge that this at least, was almost through.

He managed to float along its dissociative effects, manufactured of blood and fear, to the shadows of an already-darkened room. Beyond it, into another barred by a simple combination lock on an innocuous looking latch; enough to deter most intrusion. Any practiced sleuth would’ve noticed the age difference between lock and surroundings area. But a practiced sleuth wouldn’t have been there without knowing something was anyhow.

N1T3 entered a series of ones and zeroes on the combo lock, then let himself in through the narrow door. He emerged in something not dissimilar from where he’d come. The whir of old hard-coded builds kept the small, recycling humidifiers and de-humidifiers running. Their job crucial to keeping the servers optimal. If the air became over-saturated with heat or moisture, the gear suffered.

Because of their access-points, they could be adjusted and monitored remotely, but only if they functioned. Then again, programmer screwing up so crucial and simple a job wasn’t taking it seriously. That wasn’t an option anymore, even for the less-than-pros emulating N1T3 and the other Hackers.

This place, and any others like it, were about to become the last bastions of digital freedom. Corporations had assured as much tonight.

N1T3 had a few things to clear up and out, a few stress tests to run, but he settled into the place as if he’d never left it. He fell into writing up his story, splicing-code to ensure the information was relayed everywhere it counted. He finished, hunched over his keyboard and half-sinking forward in despair.

The code compiled and the bot engaged, posting to the series of forums and boards he frequented. He finally slumped back to stare at ceiling-graffiti he or someone else had left in their youth. The phrase was simple, resonant, and utterly hopeless; A better way?

Short Story: Bright Futures

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Rain slicked roads shine from countless headlights of rush-hour victims, jam-packed in carpool vans. Faces of every age and origin stare in sordid envy; the auto-car lanes and their continuous stream of traffic. Never the same people, yet always the same car, and somehow always moving, passing. The spite in onlookers, palpable as their own lust for the speed they lack. The irony, not one of them having anywhere remotely important to go.

Certainly, not important enough to justify the strength of such emotions. Collectively however, Humanity had nowhere more important than where they were headed.

Jackstaff was the sort of city that made people believe in reincarnation and resurrections. It had lived and died, then lived again; all more than once. It was the American west-coat’s Phoenix, sinking into the decay of old age only to burn and be reborn newer, more beautiful than ever.

Its most recent rebirth, from a social standpoint, was still occurring. Arguments could be made the birth had passed and infancy had begun, but truly, the umbilical to the mother-event had yet to be cut. That metaphorically-great, burning bird, was the advent of a technology that had literally begun to revolutionize the world.

Like auto-cars, this tech everyone wanted, for one reason or another. And for one reason or another, few could afford access to it. At least, outside certain black markets still largely specializing in its prototypes.

The tech, known officially and “Integrated Optical and Aural Control Heads-up Displays,” was well-known in some circles (and fast becoming known in others) simply as HUDs. The first in a new generation of elective, assistive augmented implants, these “augs”were civilization’s first, true-to-life step toward post-humanism.

On smaller scales, that evolution had already been in human hands for centuries now. From Pasteur’s discovery of vaccines to Fleming’s creation of penicillin, to the gene therapies fighting or righting defects and deformities (however confined to the upper class). Until now however, nothing Humanity had done had quite crossed the boundaries, or blurred the lines of, what made one human.

Few knew this truth as well as Kayla Lexington.

At just over five-feet tall, Kayla was the perennial odd-child out. Since birth, Kayla had been too small, too smart, too mature, or too something to fit anywhere. In school she got by on a relatively dull and stable home-life, and eventually, recreational drug use.

She attended state college on scholarships and grants, too focused and overloaded with work to do much else. College ended and she found herself too inundated with job offers in various C-S positions to do anything but dive straight into work, responsibility, and adulthood.

That all changed at Arc Systems. Software Titan and recent partner to long-time Med-Tek demigod Cameron Mobility, hired Lexington in with a slew of others as part of Arc’s expansion into the same type of R&D that made Cameron a Trillion-dollar Mega-corp.

In effect, Arc needed programmers to help create, update, and secure the increasingly emergent field of bionic prosthesis. This new era of bionics, investors were assured, would revolutionize medical technology.

Kayla Lexington knew otherwise. She saw then, as others did later, that the field was uneven. Too closed and isolated between Cameron Mobility and its main competitor, Byrne Corp, the field could never thrive. Simply, the corps had rigged match after rigged match of an entire sport, andin a slow but certain destruction of the very game they relied upon to survive.

Conscious or not, it was done through various cost-cutting decisions, by myopic executives with hard-ons for money yet possessing no fiscal sense.

Fact was, no innovation had come from Med-Tek that wasn’t somehow connected to either company in over a century. Prosthesis R-and-D suffered as a result. The patients dreadfully so. The designers, engineers, coders, all of them were– had been— building off one another for generations.

Not an original idea had come about in more than twice Kayla’s life-time. For tech, that level of stagnation was as good as extinction. What it and everyone else involved, needed, was complete revitalization.

Lexington approached her superiors with a request; a small team of coders, designers, and engineers for less than a month, on a radical redesign of several well-established prosthetic models all-but-perfected, decades ago. Her aim was to show the proper talent in the right space, could do anything.

The request was granted on the grounds of her obvious intelligence, and the company’s possible gain, as well as the short time the diversion required. In short, because Kayla offered them the perfect cost/risk/time ratio.

With only a week of prep beforehand, she assembled her team and the various detail. She and her chosen few took to isolation, spending three uninterrupted weeks of meetings, brainstorming, and spit-balling in a mountain-ski resort.

The twenty-four year old woman without a place took to carving one out.

The days became invariably the same; rising for four-star resort-meals between bouts of meetings finely interspersed with Kayla’s rigid adherence to down-time. In most instances, hot tubs and heated pools amid frigid air; or snowboarding and skiing via the company’s blank-check; lounging and gaming, drinking or drugging in the meantime.

As much as she insisted on that down time, she too, insisted on the rigid adherence to work, meetings, designs, arguments. Even if unstructured, more open-air and brainstorming sessions, she ensured everyone knew their importance and attended. Given what she’d provided, the team obliged.

Even decades later, Kayla Lexington remembered the night it became clear. The night she knew that uneven field was the result of something deeper– the night she first dreamt the post-human dream.

Distant diamond-dust glittered with the first rays of moonlight beyond floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors, framing her temporary wooden balcony. Earthen warmth from wood set off the perpetual winter beyond, hiding even the faintest glow of the resort below. Kayla was nude.The cleaning girl she’d taken to likewise behind her, watching from the fur-lined bed.

Hardly her first or last experience with a woman, Kayla still found something summed up in her– what had caught her eye about her. What it was,really, couldn’t be explained until later.

Cara was pretty but rougher– the type whose potential partners often fled from intimidation before opening up. Kayla was certain she was younger than she’d said, even less experienced than could be mistaken for. Yet, she was an entirely devoted lover. Kayla guessed they could’ve shared a one-night stand and she’d have shown just as much selflessness.

Yet her world– its society– demanded everything about her not only should not exist, but could not exist. And still she did.

The mountaintops dissolved before Kayla as she brokered an image of not only her future, but that of Humanity’s:

Arc’s group had only a few days left. By then the company would sink or swim with Kayla’s budding-career. Unfortunately, nothing they had yet would prevent that. As a result, the pressure was mounting. Her own tension, peaking.

If her choice of partner had been any more or less innocuous, or Cara even a modicum different than she was, Kayla knew history would never have taken its course. Fortunately for the world, Cara was herself

She spoke three seemingly innocent words, “Aren’t you happy?”

Their tone said all; told of constant pain, emotional and otherwise; habitual disregard for I and the knowledge that one day it might very well be all she knew; yet it told how she’d grown to accept that, moved on. Most of all, it told of a lost, wandering creature whom sought only to leave their mark in even one moment of happiness– joy– even if she couldn’t have it herself.

Something deeper stirred in Kayla Lexington then, something that didn’t quite make sense. A flickering film-reel of Humanity joined it; its masses undulating through time through traffic jams, clogged sidewalks, workers in mechanical motions.

It continued on, spiraling backward through eras of history she wasn’t sure she knew. Images depicting society’s evolution, but in reverse. Onward, back through eras of steam-trains disgorging crowds, to village-squares of huts overrun by crowds and haggling and hawking wares.

On and on it went until, perched just below the starry sky that burned despite the vision; two hairy creatures joined at the groin for no purpose beyond sheer, animal compulsion. It was then that she knew; Humans had changed.

And Cara proved it.

The undulating masses were no longer the hunter-gatherers of their ancestry. They were masses of cells amid faceless organisms; corporations, companies, governments, families. They were beyond what Humans had once been. As with all organisms that wished to survive nature, they’d been forced to evolve or die. Not only as one, but as their collective; Humanity.

She could think of no better example than her employers and her retreat; its very purpose was to combat stagnation with the search for vigor, revitalization. She saw only one path forward– for Cameron, for Arc, for society– and it came with two, hyphenated words; post-human.

The rest is history. Kayla answered Cara eventually, and more satisfactorily than the girl might’ve intended. Then, when her rigid schedule demanded it, Kayla left Cara smoldering in her room until she could return and reignite her. That last few days of that retreat were passed with tireless work.

When Kayla finally returned, Cara at her hip, she gave the corps what they’d paid for and demanded a raise. Then, she took control of the new Bio-Augment division of Arc-Cameron.

And somehow, even though it had taken its first steps into its new future, Humanity as a general rule knew only the envy of traffic-jam auto-cars– Ironic given how much brighter each person’s future now was, and how utterly blind they were to the dullness left behind…

Guardians of Liberty: Part 1

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

1.

Losing Home

Rain drummed at a steady spatter atop sheet-metal, occasionally breaking into sprints on gusts of cold wind. The rooftop shack, built twenty-stories above-ground atop a former office-building was once a mere lean-to over a series of electrical panels, pipes, conduit, and miscellanea that formed the building’s vital-systems loop.

Before, the place had leaked, bowed in the wind, and damn near blew down with each breath. Since then, its innards had been stripped, its holes patched and reinforced, its structure made sound, and the leaks more or less stopped. While it remained the size of a dual cupboard, forced to contain all the requirements for human living, it was enough to house everything needed for postdigital living as well– In other words, tech.

A lot of tech.

A grid-hack fueled all of it, mini-fridge and hot plate included. Though the former tripped breakers most wet days, the plethora of computer and server gear never wavered. It was too important, had its own electrical and digital taps, expertly applied and maintained. Meanwhile the bathroom was an old toilet just inside roof-access and jerry-rigged with rain catchers to flush and fill— or else, a proper angle off the rooftop to the desolation below.

Between bodily and technological functions Martin Black, better known as N1T3, might as well have been server equipment himself. He was jacked-in every moment; had learned to hack the world around it so he’d never have to leave the net.

The few people he did meet or see, came to him. Even the roughest knew not to violate the sanctity of his place. Not because they respected or feared him, but rather, because they knew of the importance of his mission. They wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

But there were no visitors today. No guests. At least, not yet.

Finally forced to get up or piss his pants, N1T3 stepped into the rain, unzipped, and let ‘er rip. Cold rain pelted down in five-pound drops over the distant drone and auto-car static wafted in from the nearby city. Gusts pelted sounds and rain in equal measure. Already layered in clothing from the drafty, sheet-metal walls, N1T3 barely noticed.

Urban-armor of layered cloth and leather served its purpose dutifully, no matter the weather. N1T3 was glad for that.

Rain and piss followed gravity down, meshing and melding until no difference remained. N1T3 blew a hit from beneath his layered hoods and finished with a waggle, shove, and zip. He about-faced for the shack and returned to work.

N1T3 knew nothing outside the net. There, he was a powerhouse. Unstoppable. Even if he’d managed time for a life outside it, he’d never have kept up with it. He was one of a handful of people whose life passed in written code, tested, compiled and made live for the sake of the greater good.

The “how” was a lot more difficult than the why, but the why was simple; people needed him. People like him. The how of that was equally as simple; to safeguard their freedom and liberty, no matter how overplayed it sounded.

The net was fracturing into two, distinct entities; the light-net and Darknet. The latter had ensured the fracture would never again threaten certain, basic freedoms. N1T3 and others like him, by design or coincidence, were its sentinels; guardians of liberty and freedom and leaders of a postdigital rebellion whose spine was an abstract. It existed only in concepts and theorems, and digitally rather than analog.

Static software in an eternally dynamic system.

In a pre-digital age, such sentinels were never needed. Neither they, nor those they were meant to serve, existed.

But things had changed.

The pre-digital age had given way to the postdigital with no delineation or hint of the transitory state between– that is to say, the nether-realm of quantum mechanics between 0 and 1. That fickle bitch of nothingness, in neither program nor switch, whose existence made possible compounding errors, ghosts, AI– everything damaging to a functioning system but that was ultimately life, the possibility of it.

That nether realm was the simultaneously all-important and utterly vestigial “in-between.”

Instead of being used for greatness though, its was used to gorge oneself in copious, material consumerism, and gorging of propaganda. Everyone knew it too. Yet none cared. All of Humanity was guilty, but some were still barely coping, if at all.

Others, like Martin Black– AKA N1T3, were doing their best to ensure the future wasn’t heading where it seemed to be. They’d seen Humanity’s treacherous path for what it was, were curious first off before coming to understand and acting reflexively in defense.

N1T3 personally recalled the Takeover; he and the other so-called “hackers” main question then had been, “should we do anything?” Media and propaganda said no. Counter-culture said yes.

But the question was never if the path existed, simply if it could be avoided or was worth the effort.

N1T3 made himself wealthy and famous in the meantime, but with the kind of wealth and fame that was shape-shifting and more infamy than not. He could be assured at least, he’d eat the rest of his life and never fear missing a meal– much more than could be said of the average person.

His main mission however, was ensuring people could one day learn to do the same if they so chose. Obviously, they hadn’t yet. Or at least not enough, judging by the world’s state. Society wasn’t ready for full-on change yet, but it was coming and they were warming to it. Meanwhile others, like N1T3, had and were waking to the present-reality, its ill and stagnated effects from the lack of change.

Meantime, N1T3 and his ilk were living gray lives. Ones assuring their asses could be hauled in, made examples of with their lives forever upheaved despite nothing lasting sticking to them. While in most circles, N1T3’s people remained unknowns; in others, they were the sole public-enemy.

He’d never understood it either.

N1T3 sat in his chair to watch the his feeds lighting up. Forums. RSS feeds. Newswire vids– Countless sources of information, self-curated and aggregated, were showing something massive had occurred, was occurring; a glitch in the society’s system for the worse.

He’d been up precisely long enough to piss. In that time, something had happened. Something big and bad. People weren’t sure of its entirety, but its existence was identifiable quickly by its negative space.

N1T3 was no stranger to net-side alarms. Often it was from other Hackers, Guardians like him going offline, not reporting in regularly (in their way), or altogether disappearing, sometimes for months at a time but never forever.

Forever wasn’t really a thing that existed in N1T3’s world. Despite its seeming existence in infinity, forever was a different concept. It was external to the world of systems, 0s and 1s. Infinity was a recursive loop running until the end of time.

Time was less than forever. Forever was beyond that of time’s meager constraints. It was the nothingness after universal heat-death. A world outside the world of systems, where its rules weren’t applicable. Indeed, a world and realm most Human-thought could barely breach.

N1T3 sat in his chair to watch the RSS feeds lighting up. He’d been up precisely long enough to piss. In that time, something had happened. Or, had begun to. Something people weren’t sure of, but whose existence was quickly identifiable by its negative space.

The hackers’ places were lighting up. People were going nuts. Billions of gigs were being exchanged in seconds. The net had slowed to a fraction its normal bandwidth. London-wide, the power was dipping, straining. The hackers, their people, were panicking. Markets would soon start fluctuating.

N1T3 stilled his racing heart long enough to think: A few hackers had gone offline earlier in the night. Not uncommon nor earth-shattering. Rolling brown-outs often tripped spliced breakers from rippling voltage. Nothing to do after but reset your systems or spend a few hours replacing grid-patches at-worst. Pains in the ass to be sure, but nothing life-altering.

Until today.

N1T3’s feeds were constant streams of intel scrolling by at lightspeed. Alarms were going off. Everywhere. Digital, silent alarms, but alarms. It didn’t take N1T3 long to figure out why; Clockwork had been offline hours now; too many hours. CW was the type of hacker that earned his name from a rigid adherence to certain protocols and schedules. Now, he was late.

More than that, everyone suspected he was involved with An33$A, another hacker who often went quiet the same times as Clockwork. Everyone figured they were fucking, or equally afflicted by some habit, but no-one had proof– just vague knowledge.

The hacker-world thrived off vague knowledge though. It was all any hacker needed to operate. Everything else was improv, reading between the lines.

News-vids were coming in; couple, presumed dead in a building fire. Poor side of town. Clockwork’s main server was down, its remote back-ups still running.

Any hacker running their own gear knew how to track certain things related to anonymous users. For people like N1T3, Clockwork, An33$a; anyone could pretend to be them, but only they could launch messages from one of their own servers.

And all of Clockwork’s servers were up, save the one he’d most recently been using to broadcast from. Exclusively. It was as if finding a person’s favorite shirt with them conspicuously absent, and it freshly bloodied.

N1T3 tapped a macro and readied a ping in a terminal, then macro’d another series of numbers. The pings checked out. All of them. Clockwork’s servers were up. An33$a’s too– except the ones suddenly confirmed as registered to a freshly burning building.

N1T3 was hyperventilating. He and the others hadn’t gotten where they were without seeing the forest through the trees. He racked a macro across the keyboard and the humming drives began to roar. Programs and messages executed in lock-step tandem, burning aged processors with the effort.

High-burst messaging systems N1T3 had long ago concocted began transmitting and posting pre-written messages. The drives ramped up. The screens flickering past were suddenly clear. A momentary, steady glow, and they flickered off. Fried plastics and metals smoke accompanied steel-warping thrums.

N1T3 wasn’t paying attention. He’d stuffed his bug-out bag of everything vital, then bolted for the rain just as the first wisps of over-volted system tinged his nose. The rig had already cooked itself off, was now making its point better known. N1T3 had designed it that way; the gray area of his life, his work and mission, demanded the contingency.

And not a moment too soon.

He hesitated at the door, ears and eyes peeled through rain. Something cracked behind him. A chunk of rooftop went missing. The softball-sized divot exploded into dust. He reacted, bolting again. Snap-shuffle rhythms from distant sniper-fire traced his path in hunks of pulverized building. N1T3 weaved on instinct, fleeing for the stairwell door; Inside was safety. Maybe. Probably not.

But it was better than this.

Each step was an eternity. Terror burned his veins and throat. His instincts and body said to work. It did. He wasn’t sure how. He managed a half-stumbling terror-sprint to hurl himself inside all the same. The door’s jamb sparked as he dove through. G-Forces slammed it shut.

Hyperventilating but unwilling to stop and breathe, N1T3 had only moments or minutes; neither was long enough. If what they’d done to Clockwork and An33$A held through, they were already in the building. Strike teams would be moving in.

Distant, feet pounded echoes up a stairwell confirming his fears. Corporate security was moving to eliminate a suspected terrorist– that’s what they’d bill it as. Clockwork, An33$A, N1T3 if he weren’t smart, careful. And now.

He slowed his pace to breathe, uncertain he wasn’t too terrified to move, and surveyed his surroundings:

He found himself in the uppermost lobby, more a maintenance area than anything habitable, but his toilet reminded him he knew the place better than he thought. A stairwell door burst open to the booted foot of a commando dressed in Kevlar. A flash-light swept its beam from the end of a rifle at the newly vacated area. The strike team filed in, silent– as if it were necessary after their obnoxious entrance.

They swept past the door to the bathroom, aimed for the steps ahead. A commando in the middle of the line paused at the open, elevator doors, leaned in to look down, flash-light sweeping the shaft into empty blackness below. Another lit the upper-edges from an angle, illuminating the forward corners.

Just behind them in the blackness of the door’s overhead ledge, N1T3 stilled himself, perched in utter disbelief at what was happening. Even the game corp-sec thought it was playing wasn’t being played right. He was glad for it of course, but the irony was there.

The pair of lights did one, last sweep, then pulled away. Boots tramped toward the rooftop door.

N1T3 considered stopping to check his pants, couldn’t. The place was too exposed. Soon enough they’d notice the server was fried, start locking down the building. They wanted to catch him sticking around, or deny any opportunity of ever coming back.

He finally breathed; he’d live. The shack was a home, but ultimately, his home was a digital one; an abstract. The idea itself modular, able to handle anything, in its way. He heard the rooftop door shut and fled for the shadowy stairwell. Even then he knew it was only his first encounter with corp-sec.