As/Is







4.22.2008



Digital Puke


He jettisoned from the net forever. They killed his Avatar somewhere in the out world of second life when the World of War craft hordes came calling for him to invoke the infocalypse.

When I met him on the train he was almost pwned. The Debian tattoo throbbing beneath his cheek identified him as geek godfather. Those misshapen eyes represented the last of the best cyberpunk warriors operating on the old net. His frazzled appearance on this train could only mean one thing. The countdown to the infocalypse had been triggered.


“We don't have time,” I said to him. He gave me the nano disc as the first spasms rocked his slim frail body. Fear dripped from his eyes as he waited for my antidote. It came in the form of a script I had written on one of those nights when sleep is a mere distraction in the grander scheme of things. It was the most beautiful code I had ever written. It was also the most dangerous.

He copied it quickly into his handheld that magically appeared out of a geek pocket. I tensed when I saw it. Possession of that technology meant that you were either the most wanted black hat or an agent in the highly feared world's cyber division. He looked like neither with his hands trembling over the keyboard as he ran a series of tests on my script.

“This is not a quick fix,” I said. He nodded understanding. “My code will reverse engineer the first part of their Trojan. You will have about ten minutes to puke it all out. Only the spam bots will come out. You will have to hack your own dreams to find the source code and delete it.”

He smiled for the first time revealing the designer teeth of true deep net junkies. There were only a few shops on the planet where you could get these specialized encrypted jobs done. The teeth hooked you straight into the Metaverse on the fastest internet connection not even the richest man on earth could afford. It was all about trust and skill and nothing else.

Another spasm rocked him. I nodded for him to begin the compiling of my code. It would either fry his mind or free him. He hissed when the wifi connection of his teeth jacked into the handheld. There was a moment of suspended digital animation and then he hit enter on the keyboard.

He screamed beyond terrifying. It was the most inhuman sound I have ever heard. It penetrated deeper than I ever wanted life to. It sounded like death itself finally triumphant over the last vestiges of our fragile stubborn existence.

“Damn damn damn man. Shit what the hell is happening to you man?”

He answered with more screams and retching except nothing was coming out.

“Talk to me man, talk to me soldier!”

“They got him good huh?”

“What what the hell? I whirled around. A frail man stood there with the eyes of Einstein.

“You are so right man,” he quipped. “He's got their hell inside for sure.”

“What the hell are you?” What are you talking about?”

“We are their slaves now. We are the tech indentured servants man.”

“Stop talking bullshit man the infocalypse has not started yet. They need his brain.”

“Alright,” he said opening an identical handheld like my screaming friend's own. “Come and see for yourself.”

I saw but still wouldn't believe. My primitive brain refused to even consider what I was seeing on the screen. It was at once beautiful and terrifying. I gasped and shuddered as I witnessed the fateful reprogramming of the human interface.