Nemesis

Chapter 1 - Turning of the Tide

"The thirst for power, ever insatiable, shall approach its painful pinnacle, when man has total mastery over man, as a king - the eternal dream of the depraved. But when one has attained to the reins of all, then, a sudden boredom shall make him know the final hunger - the ownership not over man`s life, but over death - for only vested with that might, shall the powerful live where all others fall - the power to create a new world, as a god - the eternal dream of the dreadful." - Anonymous

"Are ready to go, mummy?" - the boy asked, a tiny thing of 7. A man two decades older might consider him truly negligible.
"Yes, Sammy." - the mother answered in that uninterested manner that characterized subway stations, buses, tax offices and, as was the case at that moment - a thronged bank on the first day of December.

The couple reached the clerk`s desk and Veronica sat with a sigh on the blue office chair, made even more uncomfortable than usual by the endless queue. She had barely opened her mouth when a sudden cold feeling swept over the boy`s bright thoughts. He had been happy, mum had said daddy was going to return soon, but before he did they had to take all their money from the bank so they can throw him a welcome party. Money was a good thing the boy thought, lots of it sounded great! But now he felt a chill down his spine, like the first winds of autumn brushing September leaves.

Frantic shouting replaced the hustling noise of the crowd. Veronica shot up from the chair, taking the sheet of paper from the clerk`s hands and looking around in panic. Suddenly apprehensive of the fact there was no way to swim through the multitude that was now dangerously close to smashing them to pulp against the huge desks, she bent down and whispered in her son`s ear.
"Sammy, do you see that gap under the desktops, crawl through it and run to that door over there as fast as you can, wait for me outside, please honey."
The boy hurled himself under the desks and began crawling, as if sensing the fear in his mother`s words. The shouts became screams but he could not make out his mother`s voice so he guessed she was fine. As he slipped through the door it closed and a clicking sound was heard. A calm silence began to descend slowly. Some people had tried to follow the boy through the door but their inane pushing only meant the door could not in any way be opened again. Suffice it to say Sammy was the only one that escaped that building that day.

But he was unique in another regard as well. For as he gave up trying to push open the door for the others he slid in terror along the wall to the large window and barely looked at what was happening inside. As if in a theater of mimes, he saw the bodies of people that had just until now been banging on the glass window slump slowly against it, their faces expressionless, in their eyes an emptiness a boy of that age was not supposed to see. As flowers of black shadow, melting at the coming of night, they all slumped in growing silence. Only the sound of skin sliding against glass betraying that there had been any life within that hall. And within that melting orchestra - a single figure, all in black strode calmly towards the desks, now suddenly visible - as if a tide had waned to reveal treasure. The boy could not shake the vision off of his eyes, that it had seemed that the first bodies to wane had fallen in a circle as if centered around the figure. And the outline of his face. Something begged, implored him to look away. Was it a child`s gentle heart, was it the playful tricks of destiny, or was it man`s fear of the abyss, we will never know. Samuel turned to gaze around at the people on the street, running crazily in all directions, as if asking had they seen what he alone saw.

As the trembling hands of a passerby woman grabbed him under his shoulders and carried him away, he could not fight, but in stupefaction wonder - why were all these policemen and women running away from the bank? Weren't they supposed to help the people inside?

Chapter 2 - Twenty-seven

I wish I was twenty years older, he thought. So I wouldn't feel all of these things. These people around me.
The subway was far from packed, but he was suicidal nonetheless. It happened to him unacceptably often these days. Maybe it was the August heat, probably the blank faces of his coworkers, or rather the way they could talk about their health problems for 60 minutes out of a 60 minute lunch break.

"Why do you stare like that into nothingness, Sol? You seem sad..." Were the common words he would brush off by explaining he had a splitting head ache, month after month. Thank god that worked.
The train slid under the streets like a hot vein under wet skin. He would close his eyes to feel the clicking of the tracks, like a heartbeat, the passengers unaware of being but blood clots in this insomniac flow. The heart enclosed a slave, fettered to the Net. A Net of living vessels sucking its lifeblood away, only to feed it into an endless frenzy, to serve a purpose for a body that would never repay it. Were we doomed by nature to be slaves? Organic cogs in a machine made of metal. Doomed.
What if I could kill them for a change, he thought. Their suspicious faces, their mouths curved in disgust, malformed visages of despair or plain 8pm exhaustion mixed with their sheer ugliness. Kill all the ugly ones. Leave only the beautiful ones. Damn, if he had to leave only the fair ones that would be so few it would be laughable. All the shallow thots, all the attention seeking whores, all the plastered ugly creatures that spend their every waking moment in a desperate but ever doomed bid to look the part, all the "beautiful people" with mouths full of cocks and eyes full of "Look at how perfect I am! You can never have me!", conceit, arrogance, haughtiness or when it came to the less gentle gender - a thirst for boobs and dumbbells.
He smiled. To leave the fairie ones, the ones that wore their beauty on their skin, in the crimson of their cheeks, in the depth of their iris, the ones that carried their beauty without in any way knowing they did. The number left alive would so small it would be surprising. What amazed him even more was that a straight guy like him would almost certainly leave far more men alive then women. Was it because they looked better because they strove less to do so?
Either way after doing away with that lot he would probably kill the rest as well because beauty was no measure of worthiness to be left alive. And besides, the rest would annoy him soon enough. Just for good measure.
As the train approached Station Sixth within City 101 (they quickly did away with names when they introduced machine learning to take control of the planetary subway system) he thought of how they ("they" being how he called the mass of people, no longer even individualized enough to be called masses) could no longer even pronounce "xth", with their Botox infused cherry colored duck-faced mouths more suited to sexting. The fall of civilization. When would we call what we drivel out all day "vulgar English"? Maybe never, worst-case scenario - never.

The fairy-tale has changed forever. History is no more. The hero is no longer the savior. He cannot help but hate his fellow living beings, more suitable to be called "tightly-packed cattle". With thoughts such as these, ever thinking of himself in the third person, he stepped over the ledge. The boundary between the metal moving throbbing beast and the cheap pale tiles of the subway station signaled he was close to home. Finally.

What he did different from other days though was to look back. As the glass doors of the station slid behind him, so slid the carriage he had just left. Oddly enough he could see through the windows of the car, the people seemed to be sleeping, a man hitherto standing seemed to topple down, as if falling asleep, and the beast was gone.

Blame it on the screen, 9 to 5 in front of the glowing god of rectangles, a job in the "Formation Technology" industry was the top of the tops. So creative they said. So well paid they made sure it to be. Sitting in the middle of a box, full of colors, before you the logical circuits you are meant to create in full 3D, mind you 4D since they introduced time as a rather blatantly obvious substitute to deadlines. Do you know how they sold their state of the art(if anyone remembers what art means anyway) weapon against " the growing epidemic of mass workplace laziness" to companies back in `38? Weather. They added weather effects to the 3D workplace. So there I was, every day working in the middle of Stonehenge, trying to determine, amidst the pouring rain and hail whether the system could simulate correctly the winter solstice by peering awkwardly through a pair of megaliths without attracting the attention of the HR, "lazily" strolling between the cubes. The word "cubicle" had been outlawed in `26 with the coming of the New World Orderment. I guess someone somewhere thought "government" no longer sounded politically correct enough. Though I wonder, was there even a someone to that? Or was it a something.

With the advent of hydrogen-phosphate-enabled high-temperature-superconductivity enabling quantum computers, surely purely coincidentally shortly after the establishment of the planetary "Orderment", meant that hybrid techniques in neural networks could finally be utilized, rendering the common technology specialist useless. As the roots of the networks spread faster and wider than the Internet ever did, we were told engineers were still needed. To finish the merger between the "hybridization of evolutionary and network-like technique based neural networks" and the "massively-parallel computing devices that are closely modeled on neural tissue", they said. To ensure a "bright future", they said. Thus humanity was spared. By whom and from what, who knows. All we know is hard and soft merged through fully VR-enabled-3D-logical-unit-printing assisted development of both of these "-wares". When the neural lace came search engines became what keyboards must have looked like when mass virtual reality came about - artifacts. And when 3D Desks came about, allowing you to create both soft and hardware with a flick of the hand, 3D plastic printers became what soldering irons smelled like when HTSC material printers came about - inadequate tools. That abbreviation there stands for high temperature superconductivity. The holy grail, the holiest of hollies. So many logic gates we passed through. Cathedral doors, towering above us with hollow whispers of something divine.

As if all this time the machine wanted what it wanted, and never told us. More speed. For what? To serve us no doubt. And what did we use it for? Did we build with all those printers? Did we print anything beyond what the corporations told us to build? I wonder what Gutenberg would tell us today if we could show him where we took his invention. Did we use the neural lace to interface with one another, or with our own illusions?

Such dark phantasms, forever swirling like this gray sky, too many people, too many worries, too much darkness. To think that such a lovely person would turn so sad. Haunting almost. Such a happy child, such a smiling face. To wish so thirstily to embrace death. As if the drink of the wormwood is a sweet cocktail for attainment of instant bliss. Isn't it? How can you help them? They will never help themselves, less so each other? Do they want help? Will they accept it? Or will they mock, bicker and detest, as always?

Yes, they will, they will. They love their own denigration, derangement, debasement.

Such thoughts plagued the young mind as he crossed the doorstep to his tiny shabby apartment in the suburb of "White Rodent". How could furries become City Mayors? How did it get to this? All my idols died at the same age. That distant connection hitherto glorious in moments of joyous abandon into the throes of youth now suddenly becomes a thin rope, a thread ever so slightly pulling you towards that abyss. The Abyss. Whispering "Don`t mind them, they are failed creatures, they are just wasting, wasting it all away. Come, let me embrace you, let me embrace you." The abyss is watching you, you know, that's why you look at it in the first place. Because she is watching you with the eyes of that one woman that captures you forever. The most beautiful being you have ever seen.

Yes, at 27 I destroyed the only meaningful relationship I had with the only woman that ever loved me, but I am not sorry. It is also the first year I have truly, unwaveringly, been suicidal. It is incredible. Almost as if written in the stars. Or maybe it is just a pitiful and fanciful imitation of heroes one will never reach. But imitation is not just the most sincere form of flattery, it is the only form of creation we know, and thus our only pathetic greatness.

This is also the year when, on the 1st of August I came home, lay in bed in utter exhaustion, and just before falling asleep browsed the online hacker forum I was an "Anonymous" member of, seeing as top notification the following piece of news - "33 people have been found dead on a subway train in City 101st. The accident happened on the line between station Sixth and Fifth. Causes of the accident remain unknown."

Chapter 3 - Awaken

I woke at 9:30 the next day. Late for work as always, even less desiring to get up. Turning off the alarm I tried to remember the dream I had, but couldn't. Like forgetting what you wanted to remember. As the elevator door slid closed behind me I suddenly remembered. The subway, lots of people dead. Diving into my phone made the 70 floor descent to the ground a fall into hell, for suddenly I remember the sleeping people, it was the very same train car. Causes of death were still being investigated. I hurried towards the station as a child running towards a theme park.

My enthusiasm shriveled when I saw the cops, reporters, and darned nosy neighbors swarming the place to take selfies. Such selfless people. Always willing to help. The agoraphobia was kicking in again. Putting on a poker face, I pretended I was passing by and hurried off to work.

But the doubt remained. "Like a splinter in your mind..."

I twitched when I felt my HR`s eyes on my neck, the moment I placed the neural lace on. I knew she could see everything I saw on the four walls of my cube. Sensing her smile and quick to replace the web pages of the news articles with the loading screen of "4D Studio Max", I just barely wished she would trip and die.

Sheila probably did only the latter. At least that is what my colleagues told me they saw. Not Jessica on my right, who just gasped "It must be all the coffee, dear!" As she calmly looked upon the spectacle, neural lace in both hands, as if an offering to god. Not Emil on my left, who didn't even remove his lace, as usual completely ignoring the outside world. It was Samantha, the HR walking ten steps behind Sheila. "When the Saints go Marching in...." Turned out there was one good thing to that corporate march - the saint behind you could witness you die, preventing corporate expenses for air fresheners to remove decomposing body odor.

Needless to say, I removed my lace and slowly turned my head back, as in these ancient TV shampoo ads, trying to Ctrl+Z the leering from my face, my eyes two eggs. And just stared. Samantha crouching beside Sheila, waving her hand in front of the deceased`s face, gingerly taking her hand, as if it was poison, looking at her phone or god knows what reason. I`m sure he at least must know. Waving at reception. More HRs coming, very soon it looks like a corporate party, except for the alcohol being replaced by water in the paper cups. Holy water did not help. The ambulance guys did.

At some point I did consider screaming. I decided not to when I heard Samantha tenderly speaking to me, voice full of more care than her ton of facial skin care cream - "Sol are you OK, sweetie?" - I just kept on staring - "Oooh he must be in shock." - she sounded as if I had just witnessed a dog speaking for the first time. "Donny should we let him go? Solly, can you work today? Do you feel OK?". Thank god Jessica was a tomboy - "Let him go S. They said she had no pulse. It must have been a heart attack from all this coffee in the morning. He just saw a colleague die! Damn this mocha!". Always the good sport, Jessy put her lace back on and that was that.

Relieved beyond measure, but trying to keep my eyes awkwardly wide open, I let Samantha pull me out of the office, ignoring her rambling. The moment she stopped waving goodbye and the glass doors of the "Net Flow" corporate skyscraper closed behind her, I ran home.

Alive is when there is wind in your hair. Awake is when there is no coffee in your blood. Only dreams.

Suffice to say, it was not my manager that got the rope first, neither was it another subway train car full of people. It was my mother.

Chapter 4 - Born

I don`t even remember the annoyance that caused me to make her fall. You know and I know I did not make her trip. The only grace was that I waited for her to let go of the fried-egg-filled pan before I did it. But then since my plan to have her turned off when she was watering her flowers had fallen through due to my lack of patience, I also had to deactivate my father since I did not want to bother with screaming ambulance workers. But then realizing how suspicious that would be, I had to call an ambulance, shouting of heart attacks and quarrels between elderly people.

As the car wailed away I stood at the window, staring intently at the busy crossroad ahead of it. As the ambulance neared it I blinked, unwilling to miss out. It didn't slow down and started swerving, but the single truck crossing its path would probably stop in time. So I blinked again and smiled. The truck began swerving, hitting the ambulance like a hammer hits a toy car.

The world suddenly looked better, freer. My adventures had just begun. From yacht owners, to hotel managers, to mansion dwellers, to KFC staff. Death was the great equalizer. Chicken never tasted better. But as I looked at the flowing glowing hair of a recently deceased counter girl, I felt a pang. Fried meat never tasted as good as the living. Nothing could adequately substitute her for more than a month.

So one day at the beginning of September(I don't remember the date - I no longer cared for time - I was free) I went to the entrance of her apartment building. There was still hope I thought. Hope we could patch things up like patching a web app. Quick and easy, except... Gazing at her window I was surprised at how I was moving, like a king, like a god, like Rousseau's noble savage. This was freedom. Give me liberty or give me death. I say give me both. Clearing my mind I adjusted my posture, failing miserably at looking the way I did when I was one with her.

For some arcane reason I did not ring, or call. I waited. When an elderly lady opened the door I thanked her, leaving her to trudge her half hour to the elevator. As I ascended I wondered why I hadn't killed her. And I wondered why I hadn't wondered about killing her as she was opening the door. Either way, faced with the Door - the gate to my beloved - I again strangely did not ring but knocked. Heaven's door opened. There she was. Beautiful as a flower in spring. As a soul that lives in two eyes, curiously studying the world from there. A beauty that never fades. Her old stereo wafted in with an old tune - "See a glimpse inside the poet`s hollow..." But all I could think of was how she once whispered in my ear as we were making love in a forest hollow amidst a June storm - "Look at the leaves, see their color, see the drops, look at how the branches heave. The trees are orgasming, my love."

Chapter 5 - Do Gods Look for Signs?

I bet I looked like a creeper on that doorstep. What troubled me far more was, how she seemed to shudder at seeing me. Not exactly fear, but initial surprise, quickly replaced by a distant coldness, unease at saying "Hello... hi.", As if deep down she somehow felt what I was now capable of. Ever the warm-heart, she nevertheless invited me into her tiny place. With a smile I sat in that old, low-tech(she had a toaster!) but clean kitchen, telling her of how I recently and purely by chance came about some money, how we could finally travel as she had always wished. As she put the cup of cocoa before me, she smiled and for a moment I lied to myself that I saw in her eyes what I saw before the machine took me away from her. Even though my age, she was a much older soul than me. She always knew better. She actually did. All I knew was that that break in the permanent cloud cover I could see through that kitchen window looked promising.

"You are not the same as before, Sol. I just cannot. I won't lie to you about what my heart says." - her gaze quickly flying out into the sky to the birds that ever less often graced it. I was even more amazed at the sudden volcano that rose within me, rather than at her words. Like a hellfire erupting to engulf a swallow. I was giving her everything, I was offering,,, Calming myself yet again I tried to take her hand, but she recoiled, gently, yes, but she did. Was it the things I had said, was it the things she failed to do, was it what she failed to be? Was it the opportunities I berated her for missing? Or was it something that eluded me, something I failed to see? Did it matter anymore? I guess none of us thought so. So I got up and left the silence. It was too much. At the doorstep I looked back, but she didn't. She cared but no longer loved. All words had been said.

At the foot of the building the rain was brewing again. I looked at my feet, unable to look back at her window like I had used to when a backpack was my worst daily encumbrance. I knew this was final. I knew she had made her choice. My eyelids were wet now. I pressed them together. Damned rain! Gods did not cry, did they? Fists hurting from exertion, my body shook, like the twang of a violin string coming apart. I almost thought I couldn't do it. I almost believed being unable to do it to her would be a sign that she was the one. I hoped she would be there looking at me awkwardly for returning covered in rain. Maybe a towel in my hair, and her hand... That hope died with her lifeless form, slouched by the sink counter, my teacup, the teacup - half-washed. I will never know why the fuck did I then gaze out the window, looking for the damned birds in vain, like a madman looking for the horizon.

Her body was carried outside in the pouring rain. Like a bride. I lay her on the soft grass beneath the trees in the park. The benches had been our temple. Two teenagers, and all of time. Now they would be our witnesses. I did unspeakable things to her body. Full of care, I made sure the rain had the hardest time leeching the warmth away from her body. The gray-brown walls of sky water cloaked the hallowed proceedings like curtains on a honeymoon bed. And then I died in her. For the first and only time in my newfound life I actually wondered - could I kill myself? No better time than now, right? Where I had recently succeeded despite yearning to fail, the opposite occurred, giving me a feeling i had hitherto known far more often. The feeling of pain at remembering an Anon`s post on my forum - "The power to end one`s life at any time is granted only when immortality is attained. The mortal is allowed neither." Slavery.

I left her then and there, enthroned in our temple, the storm hiding the sacred. As I walked away the downpour carried the song down from her window "... come to know a time when he will haunt you...", but all I could hear in that instant of September was the whisper of June raindrops in my ear - "I love you..."

Chapter 6 - Saviour

So I continued to revel, but never with the same taste. As the months passed I slaughtered my way into countless orgies, secretive meetings and masquerades. But in the oddest of ironies I remained celibate. For some reason, the more I tried the art of intimacy the more it seemed to escape me. Instead I watched and "participated", but could not bring myself to completion. Whether through money or slaughter, threats or charm, at which I had suddenly become so adept, I tried to enjoy. I did. But the dead no longer carried any attraction to me. The beautiful seemed all the same. Everything felt like nothing. Bland.

It was as if I had cast my seed forever in the hope of having the offspring of the one being in this universe I was meant to love. But now I just found myself awkwardly looking at children. Smiling at them. Angels. And even more awkwardly dreaming of holding in one hand an angel, in the other her.

But all that had to be left behind. There had to be reason as to why I was given this "gift". Ever the inquisitive kind, it turned out breaking into libraries turned out to be the most curious adventure I could never have imagined. The forbidden sections, the forgotten wards, the "private" wings. Oxford and Princeton were easy, especially their economy, finance and politics sections. The Vatican was child`s play (no pun intended). All it took was two dead cardinals and the happenstance of an open cloister door, a boy, a bed, and yet another cardinal with no vestments. After the information was extracted and the digital key provided, I let the boy watch his death, then gave the boy the old man`s ring with instructions on how to sell it to my pals at the forum for a sum that can feed an elephant for a lifetime. As for Alexandria, she was gone, sadly, but that took me to the walled off section of the Serapeum which after a hefty bribe and two downed black helicopters yielded incredible experiences of the Jimi Hendrix type. I guess the best things in life don`t come free after all.

I then realized I had to save these people. It was written in all the books. No doubt about it. The pristine meaning almost made my eyes glow in the dark. Such is the nature of the search. Save them from overpopulation, that was a trifle, but see, to save them from their slavery, that was going to be a feat. Thus, covered in the crystalline dust of a thousand sarcophagi, an Indiana Jones reborn in the flesh, I made my way back home. To the city of 101.

Never quite sounded right, right? Well, if you wonder what the name of the ashes on which it was built was, that section of the "desert of the real" was called 666th avenue.

Slaughter floors of people in the numeric order. Get to the top, EMP grenades, microwave crowd enforcement guns. Impressive for an unprepared burglar. They were upping their game. But it still would not impress me. The slaughter on the last floor was total except for a single well dressed man in his late twenties. Close to my age actually. Too young to be the single handed majority stock owner of the First Planetary Bank. Surely they were soon going to call it, "Galactic". He basically grovelled. That was the gist of it. I was covered in weapons. He had one of them ice needle poison injecting guns disguised as a pen. Might have been disguised as a Zizekian plastic penis dildo for all I care. The glow in the dark gookery failed miserably when meeting my custom build bullet-proof vest. What would death incarnate be if he didn't come to a party with a bullet-proof vest on? That successful and fulfilled man`s last deed for humanity was giving me the token and the code-word.

As I went out of the bunker below the building, now quiet as a kindergarten at 3pm, a distressed-looking black hobo came up to me and shouted in my face as if I was deaf - "The blew up a motherfucking nuke on the Bronx!" - after which both of us continued in opposite directions with an "Ain't nobody got time for that" attitude.

The throngs immediately went for the banks. You can tell that people are materialists when, when they see the end of the world coming they go first to the banks. If they first pillaged the supermarkets they would just be practical. At least the chaos would provide for some cover exactly at the time my mission was about to be completed.

Few blocks down it was the "First Planetary Bank" headquarters with their biggest branch on the ground floor. I entered the establishment, but the throng would not let me pass. "Who daffuq are you, clown all dressed like that?" "Lying about opening the vaults bullshit won't work on me, creep!" "Why don't you show your face, what are you, FBI, CIA goon?" So I did. Unveiling my face by removing the filter in the facial segment revealed my human face, The effect was none, except for some groaning and arrogant looks by the lady in front of me. I had not time for this. I truly didn't. So I went forward, slaughtering the bunch of them. Like walking in a sunflower field. Only the sunflowers fall in a circle to worship the Sun instead of following it. Past the humongous desks was the faux vault. Past it was the room that required the pass-code. Below it lay the real vault that required both token and pass-code. Within the huge vault lay a tiny chip.

That was the master key, a chip printed of gold and silicone that abused the already abused power of this bank - the fact that it was the tip of the pyramid of banks established after `28. All finance, money, wealth concentrated electronically within a single physical key. Too valuable to be kept online. At once a show-off for a CEO and at the same time a really powerful weapon if wielded by the hands of experts - in this case my Anon allies. Pending immanent disablement of the chip`s transactional capabilities, upon obtainment, my network immediately traced and split the functionality, fracturing, decentralizing and obfuscating its infrastructure within a mere 5 minutes of precalculated time, ending in the key`s irrevocable destruction by my own hands with the help of a steel furnace. I`m just a man and every damage done will probably be all right.

Chapter 7 - Method to the Madness

Slaughtering a great bunch of people does make you a lot of sworn enemies. But what it does also make you is a few good friends. You see I knew they were going to follow me so my first 100 million well spent was on the "scrambler". It is either the black ops device that Philip K. Dick came up with, or he knew of its invention. And it worked magically. You see when you know you can kill instantly at a distance and through shielding any target that has seen you with their own eyes or instruments I knew that the only way they could stop me was "the machine". Cameras, micro tracking devices, transactions, even low tech suicide followers-paparazzi-whatevers they could come up with. Even the goddamn dark web would give me popups to download free-to-play 4D Counter Strike when I was searching for CS-4 explosive derivatives. Aaah, the temptation. They knew something was up and they were frantic trying to find out and stop whatever it was. Stop everything if need be.

So try they did. I could feel the neural nets licking my skin for weeks but they could never truly get through the scrambler. Encryption always has the upper end, even with quantum computers. Know why? Quantum super-position that's why, We never did reign that with entanglement, maybe because we hadn't read them old books enough, wink wink. Thus is always the nature of the shadow, it can hide and lie infinitely but not necessarily nefariously. For if it is used in its infinite number of convolutions but to protect the one truth, then you might as well call it god. And there ain't no beating that. Even with an atomic bomb.

I truly felt like a superhero that day. How else to feel when they send that against you. I guess imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery after all. I was laughing then, it was amazing. Sitting down in a bunker below an abandoned subway station below 666th, eating spam. When the lights flash, the rumble comes. Damn I was almost in disbelief, almost. The Bible got it all wrong, the best party is not with the 666, or against the 666, but to be inside it, so you can trip it as it fails.

The military, never fully cohesive, began fracturing at the time when the nuke plot began to be plotted. The graciously leaked chatter revealed to us that they were planning to use our very Scrambler against us. Ingenious, right? They had picked up on the faint echo emitted in the atmosphere by the Coulomb crystal lattices used in the Scrambler`s manufacturing and they had isolated a particular spectrum they deemed identified my own unit. They were correct of course, but the resolution of this type of detection went only down to one kilometer. So finally triangulating on my location they were willing to use the unthinkable to stop me. What they didn't know is that we had strapped Scrambler lattice elements we manufactured ourselves and tuned to my unit`s settings to our homeless agent and told them to congregate randomly but within 100 meters of each other in an area to the north of where our operation was to be carried out.

What kind of a creature is a homeless agent you may ask? Well it's just a hobo with a shotgun. Easy to recruit. Go to a ghetto and tell people they will die if they don't serve you. Start killing them off one by one starting with those farthest away from you and you will notice how the smartest, healthiest and most practical find their way to you. Ready to serve. That network proved invaluable for gossip and the things it could hide provided the safest information transfer network we could hope for. Low-tech, low-life - nothing better, nothing safer. This is not an ad for vintage Nokia phones. Information never smelled this better than money.

Unsurprisingly, the mushroom cloud that "ain't nobody got time for" turned a lot of people against them and towards us whatever both of these terms meant. Suffice to say whoever had hesitated to help us did so willingly, recognizing that whatever had been happening had some logic behind it, while those who had hesitated to serve the machine before were now in open rebellion of all kinds. That was good, but also really really bad.

Chapter 8 - Voodoo People

You see we had unleashed god knows what. Call it real freedom. Call me Robespierre and my kitchen utensil will be the guillotine. However, if we will be judged, let it first be known who we were. I wasn't a part of this "we" always. I was a fool at first. A naive boy. A cog basically. Then came the splinter that almost broke me. It was not a book, a magic spell, a k-pop idol, a pill of Ritalin. No, it was a realization. An understand. Two stand under the beams of house so you know how and of what it is built so then you know its purpose and its lifetime. You either get it or you don't. Lurk moar is all I can say.

But when I joined the "we" I realized we had been there for a long time, long before the planet became centrally organized. We were the outcasts, the mocked ones, the ones that were never understood, the awkward ones, the unassuming ones. The ones that combined an uncanny desire to find out what is hard to get, to think on the edge of the future, with a relic from the past that few possess anymore. Empathy. Not for pictures of babies on TV, not for an "idea", not for a YouChannel video, not for what you think a human being is "actually" like or should be like, not for the mask the modern person always wears, but for the human being next to you. Call it mirror neurons or whatever, it doesn't matter. It is the most humane a bird will ever know in a machine cage.

We failed. Every step of the way. I failed. Completely. These next lines do not show that we failed for the first time in them or began to fail or sealed our failure. We failed all the time from the beginning. And I'm not making excuses. This is a book of failure. My magic people, these Wizards and Warlocks that helped us from out of the woodwork of the forgotten corners of cyberspace - they - we were, we are all broken toys. And the chaos that was unleashed we believed would be self-organizing. Instead we were culled by the epitome of self-organization itself.

The first notice of a darkened sky occurred when the nuclear rain stopped. The global sky had grown around 5 percent darker everywhere thanks to HDR pictures that were being fed into a convoluted neural network aiming to produce 256 per color channel bit depth textures for our cubic workspaces. A sharing of the big data lead to strange chatter. Apparently someone thought it funny that if you painted a cross on your door in the 21st century, nothing would save you or your child from doom. Especially if the door is not hermetically sealed.

You know what I'm talking about - the white blood cells of the machine. They came as we were laughing with a fat anonymous military general who was constantly complaining about losing his tan in the bunker. What was so funny to tortured souls like us apparently was that after the old money types invaded the military facilities they forced generals to sleep with their thumbs on the nuclear launch thumbprint scanning levers, so that if they were killed as the hands contract to fists right post mortem, they would pull the levers and not waste the precious metallic sausages the elites had paid so much sweet money for.

What we didn't know was that the swarm would not come with their swords in their nano hands. It would first position quietly and then attack. Fractal Sun Tzu. The slaughter was beyond... beyond words. Respiratory, neural, electro-chemical, in other words - mental. This is when blood truly flowed down the streets and ash-felt finally became river bed - as was foretold. The positioning however was also the weakness. You see Couloumb crystals work at extremely high temperature that can easily be released by breaking parts of the lattice. The swarm positioning gave us some time to break the Scramblers, passing the tiny crystal powder to as many people as possible who then covered whatever reflective surface they could - tin-foil hats express - to radiate that heat away and melt the mosquitoes. Of course that was absolutely inadequate to the threat but it gave us time to contact the military high command which was hermetically sealed not just in their heads.

Seeing the situation as being desperate, without means for negotiation I went to my last resort. Trying to squeeze my index finger so that I could slip out of it a nanobot that had lodged itself in my second phalanx on a merry journey that had started all the way from under my nail, I closed my eyes and began. Kill all the people with this and this power, kill all the people with this and this ancestry, kill all the people with this and this land property, with such and such shares ownership, but not just the contractors, kill the guys behind the curtain, kill the handlers, kill the organizers, the pushers, the child molesters, the... kill kill kill, kill, kill, kill kill, kill, kill, die, die, die, die. this is the word that I used to drown out the noise of the nanobots chewing through the rubber seal of the bunker hatch. I guess now it was a match of out-killing.

You see the swarm was attacking from the poles equator-ward. Why? Because of heat, it deployed faster where the temperature was lower. By the time the arctic and subarctic regions were decimated, the high command satellites began finally pointing their heat based weaponry towards the ground. We were counting the seconds and trying to seal any underground spaces we could and hide inside while simultaneously scanning for existing infestation when those (un)fortunate enough to be outside saw the sky turn paler. In 15 minutes the permanent cloud cover gave way to L.A. daytime. Whatever L.A. meant.

Apparently our corporate overlords could not even afford three days of sunny weather to kill us and squash our rebellion, lest we interrupt our Agile Sprints to consider thinking about planning on going on a vacation. Even worse considering a vacation at this time would probably be for soaking your children in marine iodine so when you return to your happy irradiated Bronx home you will feel less the effects of the mushroom cloud.

The military satellites fried the atmosphere with bursts of microwave energy that reached above 120 degrees celsius for less than a second. Designed to destroy electronic equipment while leaving people with only blisters. "Well not quite." I guess that is what someone must have written in the small type at the end of the "Space Heat Weapon Manual". Designed, implemented, tested are words a human should be forbidden to use, especially engineers.

At a certain point in the bunker, a Sigma Ops guy remarked: "Is it possible the High Command are with them?"
"Who is them?" - I asked
"You know the old money fat pig thugs."
"I don't even know who is us, man. I bet they didn't read the EULA on the space lasers."
"Fuck if I know, this is just a freak show, faggots."
"Exactly."
The laughter did not help.

Soon after we went outside we found out that with the whole atmosphere fried but only half of the planet's temperate regions decimated by the swarm, the weapon worked. What would later be called Wax Statues was what remained of those who for one reason or another stayed outside. Probably the skin blister testing of these weapons was conducted on Nile crocodiles. Fully mocked for 4D unit testing. Why give us all this power, oh Lord, when we are so not ready for it.

We had won. Though we could not even utter that we had due to total exhaustion and shock of the nanobot struggle. EMPs, if you are wondering, would have been useless because of the nanobots' shielding, but later we found out almost nothing electrical worked anymore because everyone on the surface had tried using them in desperation. I only hoped I had killed enough of the bastards. A thriving metallic toothpick industry could now be started, with all the mosquito legs lying around. So much for Voodoo being exotic.

Chapter 9 - Meds

The three days of heaven. Late December became August in the scorching post-microwave heat. The Rave. The prodigal days. That is what we called them. They were awesome, they were awful. But you know what, they were our days. We made these days. Not machines, not HRs, not parents, not doctors and certainly not pimps, And that was mental, transcendental, environmental. Substances flowed everywhere. People were dying so relief was needed. In body and spirit. Everyone knew or felt we only had three days before the Sun disappeared behind the clouds. But what we most cherished was not the arrogant hot god.

It was the stars.

Unseen since 2028, the stars took our eyes away. We made love under them, danced under them, sang under them. Everything analog was booming along the sprawling metropolises. Our prisons became our clubs, Freemasonic, Quadraphonic, societies for the Agoraphobic. I took to kissing people randomly. A teenager hugging a waifu pillow, a girl with cables in her hair shouting "I love cyberpunk!", a woman playing acoustic guitar to the electronic beat, a man singing to a violin played by the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. To taste his lips under stars was beyond a gift. It was a life worth dying for.  From skyscraper to skyscraper, their toxic male masculinity finally checked by long wooden planks we made ourselves. and bridges just like in the jungles.

There I saw him. Medium height and scrawny. White haired from god-knows what cosplay. He was looking at me, right as Molko began to wail about his Meds. I felt the strangest urge. For the first time I was sexually attracted to a boy. We sat by the makeshift bar with the guy they called Mr. Flint. Barman/DJ he just gave bottles, no pouring, just bottles and buckets of ice, and aspirin... and other stuff. I drank cocoa, he drank water. Who cared. He laughed so giddily. I knew I would miss him if he left from here.
"You know how I got my name?"
"Were you named after Han Solo?"
"No though I am totally YOLO."
Laughter.
"My mother wanted to could me Soul. My father ever the pig-head deliberately made a mistake when typing in the form, He submitted the form with the name Sol. He said he wanted to name me after the Sun, and the Roman god."
"You know we are under the influence right?" - I just nodded as he continued - "Be the Apollo to my Dionysus"
His words were all it took, we hid behind a gigantic air conditioner sprayed electric green/blue. We did what we did. I frankly don't know what percentage of the human population survived. I don't believe in numbers anymore. We transcended. We had sex with geometry and danced to the music of the spheres. Leibnitz love me and make me a baby of your stature. We need that urgently, don't we.

When we returned I saw my hobo agent guy from 666th avenue telling a story to some of the youngsters about old people in suits dying with hard-ons. When I inquired into the matter, he, being a your neighborhood hobo with a PhD in neurology, calmly explained the old money folk had been putting in chips in their brains. Chips to ease their consciousness on the approach of death. Apparently the chips would keep their brain activity going for some time with happy thoughts or some game/adventure that was totally realistic and immersive and blending with reality so they couldn't tell they are dying so they can die happily in their sleeps. Bastards, right? But you should also remember they are now mostly rotting meat bags of expensive clothes with hard-ons. What better fate for such fulfilled people? I guess when they saw death coming full force, they had the tenacity to cheat even that.

It was the third day when I noticed what was happening. Nothing. The raping, killing, looting and destruction just continued, albeit at a slower pace. Somehow I knew exactly what was going to happen. Joy was going to fall into degeneracy, and chaos into what chaos rose from. The network posted on the net before it fell, and when it begun to go back up online. The huge resources our networks had accumulated began to be automatically spread by our AIs to projects where anyone was willing to do anything that required money and was not involved in destruction. It was the best anyone could hope for. A new world. A chance for a new world. But you know, nothing is built on chance. When the big daddy billionaire owner of a company tells you he got her he chanced to buy the company when it was free for 3 seconds back in god knows when, he is telling you it is the machine that made him who he is. Not chance. The machine creates a behemoth of the dwarf at light speed. And so it goes. It is the way the world works. If the sun rises in the morning you don't call it chance, do you? It is not chance. We truly are confused by the powers that be.

And worst of all it wasn't just the drugs wearing off. I could see the hierarchies reforming at every level. People couldn't help it. They were just too different. Then I noticed the criminal types organizing again very quickly. The populace was urged helped in every way. Free money, free information, fucking anti-gravity tech. Free art, no copyright, full piracy, you could start anything you wanted. And mostly the wicked started. The rest just stood there in reverie, trying to capture back those three days that had gone with the return of the clouds. And the machine quickly began to rewire its wounds. We could only help it, we loved the machine and the machine (sorta) loved us. Cloud, botnets, surveillance system back online in a matter of days. Why? I guess we had nothing better to do.

So at the long winded after party I just danced and sang with my co-junglers, I was tired of talking, helping, shouting and convincing. People are free and I wan't going to opt for manipulation, ML based mind-control etc.There is just not enough time to waste. Instead we colored the clouds with search lights. It was almost as beautiful as the stars...

A guy in a pink flamingo suit was sipping whiskey at the bar. I suddenly remembered I was not wearing my Scrambler, then remembered we had destroyed those, then thought - fuck me if I ever again wear a mask. He gave me a look from time to time at which I smiled and sang. My dear hobo came, toothless at my face to announce: "More djrugz!". But i knew the pills he had in the kitchen drawer he was using as a drug dispenser. Fucking idiots I thought, taking the drawer I noticed the pink flaming guy twitch, but i just carried it with me, as if i was carrying flowers. I went to my new best friend with benefits. Kissed him everywhere and told him to behave. Told him I loved him. Told him he was young and beautiful and that nothing matters but the heart. At this he was worried, his only-water intake was not helping, but I calmed him nonetheless. I texted him the link to the archive with my entire bio and data so he could understand why I was doing what I was about to do. Of course I included contacts to my Anon networks to filter him if he was acceptable,

I went to a secluded part of the roof and swallowed a single pill from the drawer. My hobo came over to me with a toothless smile. He was sweet and said loudly: "We have a suprise for you! This will take you to an island, waaay off to the end of the world in heaven!" then in a whisper "We are infiltrating, right?" to which I reprimanded him: "No! No! Friend! I`m doing this solo. Thank you!" and waved his confused self away. Then I threw the drawer full of pills down at the blood-river, ahem, I mean street.

As my senses deteriorated I saw the flamingo and two rabbits approaching. Damned furries.

Chapter 10 - Soul Kitchen

The sounds of waves. The shock when you realize you can feel on your skin the heat-less light of the sunrise. I did awaken on an island, beautiful and quiet. The sun just rising barely, so slowly. Wow it was purely amazing. It was heaven. Warm and soft. Not a voice was heard in this magical place.

"Dr. Hillenkoeter, the patient has awakened."
"Ok, Nancy, let us stabilize him."
"Goooood Morning Dr. Hillenkoeter!"
"Dr. Vanderbilt, what are you doing in here? I mean it is nice to see you."
"We are taking over this operation... damn! The boy really did see his face. This really is Nemesis. Neural lace facial recognition brain extraction saves the day yet a..."
"Isn't it a bit early for clapping, Vannevar?"
"No Jess, the chip is working at optimal. Gentlemen, please escort Dr. Hillenkoeter from the room. Tod! Tod, are you ready?"
"Myes Sir!"
"Step into the cube, moron!"
"Yes! Sir!"

It was so quiet I could hear the lapping of waves way over the horizon. Suddenly a man appeared over one end of the beach with an unloaded AK-47. He was running. When he got to me he frantically spoke:
"Hello-Sam... I mean, Hi Sol! I am an Anon, I'm To...Jod"
"Hi Jod, what brings you to my nerd soy boy retreat?"
He smiled, visibly relaxing.
"Look at this sea shell in my hand Jod. Stare at it for me."
Jod obliged and soon collapsed in the sand.

"Nancy, can you close your mouth please!"
"Sorry, Dr.! Oh my God!"
"Nancy, do not touch Tod! Get away from him!"
"But Dr. Vanderbilt! He might be unwell."
"Gentlemen, please escort Nancy from the premises and bring a bed to carry our friend out of the cube. We have made great progress today."

I dug a hole in the sand where I knew the tide came in the evening, put his body there and went back. Instead of "Omm" I went with my own repetitive mantra "stand-under-stand". There were certainly to be more distractions like this. I had to endure. As an idol of mine once sang - "Learn to forget."

Sitting on the beach, eyes closed. And there they were. A pair of hands in my hair. Entanglement. No towel needed - her Sun was enough.