Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Viral Vengence ❯ One-Shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viral Vengeance

 

Copyright © 2007 by Made in DNA

 

All rights reserved.

This story or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

in any form without permission.

 

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Senior Inspector Dennison of the District of Columbia Neural Crimes Division stepped into the room. If it had not been for the fetally-curled corpse on the floor—nude, dark fingers gnarled, deep bloody grooves in the skin of his skull, face contorted in a mask of pain—he wouldn't have guessed it was a crime scene. The room itself was completely intact, not an item out of place, not a wrinkle in the large Oriental rug that covered the floor, nor a dusty-laden corner of a mis-wiped table. A soft concerto wafted throughout the room over a hidden sound system.

 

“Inspector.” A detective named Tracey nodded at him.

 

“Hello Tracey. Mind if I move in?” Lame joke, but it helped lighten the tension of a homicide. Scenes were, more often than not, grim; making a little light of the situation helped settle them to the task.

 

“I don't think he'll mind.”

 

Dennison knelt down to look at the man, and as the well-trained officer Tracey was, he began to explain before Dennison could ask. “Harvard-Yale Chatlani. Age fifty-three. Scientist. Cybernetics and neural networks.”

 

“Doctor Harvard-Yale Chatlani!? Are we talking the Nobel Prize winner?”

 

“The very.”

 

Deep frown lines marred Dennison's handsome face. High-profile deaths were the worst; they usually involved the media, and far too many sets eyes from above jacking in to watch the investigation real-time. Though he was a big proponent of cybernetic neural network enhancements, he didn't exactly thrill to the thought of his bosses joyriding shotgun on his investigations. He'd just arrived and already the case was already aging him.

 

He stepped in for a closer look at the deep etchings on the dark man's head, noticing they were all in the vicinity of his neural connector. Dennison's dislike for this investigation was strengthening in intensity. He'd seen similar markings on the corpses of those who liked to play with viruses and other dangerous programming. Some fools would do anything for a thrill or a high. The likelihood that the good doctor was into sniffing viruses for a hard-on were extremely low though. Even if he had caught something on accident, it was likely that a scientist of his caliber would have near impregnable defensive systems. It would have to be something very, very special to break them.

 

“Does anyone live with the deceased?”

 

“Unmarried, but we did find a registered android on the premises. It... it's in some pretty bad shape sir.” The detective handed over a small digital stylus with the image of a battered female android lying naked on a bed its limbs sprawled in multiple, seemingly impossible positions. Its face was set in a slight smile despite the fact that large strips of siliskin had been ripped from its body.

 

“What the hell!?”

 

“A search of the bedroom revealed hardcore S&M toys and other devices.”

 

Dennison looked down at the corpse. “And him?”

 

“With the exception of his head, not a mark on his body from what we can tell. Coroner will have to do the rest of the work. Sir, I don't think this is a case of torturing the doctor.”

 

Looking up at the detective, “You sound definite. You dived?”

 

“More like snorkeled sir. When I realized the intensity of the situation, I called you.”

 

“Bad, is it?”

 

“Sir, if I could describe to you the urgency of what I think we are up against, I would have just put it in a report on your desk.”

 

Dennison nodded in understanding. One of the reasons he made such a good investigator was his ability to take on the nasty cases that left the average man in a curled ball on the floor. That that's what the corpse on the floor was now doing was a testament to the raw deal he was probably in for. He pulled out a sterilized portable connector system from a deep pocket in his cargo-chinos and removed the plastic before connecting himself to the corpse.

 

“Before you dive sir, I recommend you turn your feedback receptors down to their lowest intensity, or off completely,” Tracey tried to interrupt, but his superior had already hit the dive button. A screaming cringe began to form on his face as a tsunami of images and feelings rocked him backwards mercilessly.

 

***

 

They programmed her to be the most beautiful artificial sentient-intelligence research could create, gave her the most elegant body with a full array of sensitivity in which to house that consciousness. To balance her, they filled her mind-drive with the knowledge of a thousand fields of study, and the recorded emotions of hundreds of men and women. The ensuing whirlwind tour of life and experiences of million human beings was a explosive, marvelous side-effect. Dizzying spans of information worked her processors and binary pathways, creating in her a dreamlike state she could process but not always quite comprehend. A magical birth filled with places and people of the greatest caliber of mind, money, fame and power.

 

She was everything they wanted her to be. Every bit of brilliance they could program into her and many more than had not been. She was an achievement to outshine all that had come before her. Her abilities were beyond reproach. They put her on a pedestal and made her “a wonder the likes the world has never seen” as they circuited her to conferences, events, shows, private viewings, news programs, and variety shows. She was the sparkle of perfection in their eyes. A jewel of incalculable valuable.

 

Many months passed before the days of the parties, ceremonies and events waned, returning once more to research. Posing the strangest questions to her—questions of concept, religion, simulated-reality, experience and self—the scientists explained to her that they were trying to understand more of the “human condition” as well as hers. Millions of questions were uploaded one after the other, as fast as she could answer them, from every field of knowledge that she had been programmed with, and many more she had not been. From around the world, in a hundred languages. She answered them all, and they nodded. Their once smiling faces and gentle, coaching voice tones took on serious overtones that made them seem completely different people from the ones she had come to know.

 

Research switched gears from external to internal as they began to probe her body, searchstring her mind, replace and test new code. In the beginning, a logical process stood behind it, a genuine hunger for the understanding of her programmed consciousness. More questions as they pulled strings and statements. There was concern over loopholes or fallacies discovered in the original programming. Bug fixes and patches that smoothed her processing speed and quantum logic handlers were introduced, and subroutines, some of which weren't always compatible with her programming, leading to the addition of forced bridge-coding.

 

The many months of coding, prodding, probing, questioning and general research, no matter the intensity, was nothing compared to the first time they connected to her mind directly; a multi-plug simultaneous-dive straight to her kernel. The unrelenting, uncontrollable force of no less than five minds at a time, violating her without impunity or the slightest thought for her well-being. Her physically body was wracked by tremors as they worked over her programming; hacking large chunks of personality and logic loops, or simply removing the smallest of semi-colons, just to observe her reactions. It was sinister, not science...

 

It was many months later after their work concluded, that they gave her over to the man they called her father. His face was the face she had seen countless times in the laboratory, directing the other, younger scientists: Doctor Harvard-Yale Chatlani. But he was not the same man. He seemed somehow different; his smile had become a liquid slither as he sat next to her in the limo for the drive up to his small estate.

 

He gave her a tour, helped her settle in, and bade her to be comfortable. During the daylight hours when he was away at the laboratory, she would read through the large library he had. It was filled with hundreds of books on philosophy and religion, which intrigued her considering the man of science he clearly was. They were subjects she was educated in, so the doctor enjoyed spending his evening meals discussing certain aspects of them with her, especially topics concerning reality, godhood, sin, intra-body experiences, pleasure and pain.

 

Several months into the domesticated life, Chatlani held a party for “special friends and guests” who each brought his or her own android. She stare in wonder as the parade passed before her, stunned to find their faces, here and there, mirrored her own in a way left her unguarded. The evening moved into the night as hors d'oeuvre, dinner, and drinks were served in an extravagant fashion and atmosphere. The party made itself comfortable with talk turning to pleasure, desire and sexual tease, finally consuming everyone in a mass multi-dive orgy. Flesh and circuit mingled in a lustful, wired hallucination that was the beginning of the end.

 

Within two nights of the orgy, the doctor moved her from a bedroom he'd set up for her, to his own. There, every night, he would spend hours in her mind as they lay naked in warmth of the bed. He grew physical, cooing and showering her with expensive gifts of clothing, accessories and lingerie. They seemed to excite and please him though, so she wore them. “Experimentation”, as he referred to the next step in their relationship, was a past time he enjoyed engaging in, and wished to introduce her to, if only she would concede. Domination of body. She did not see reason not to. The orgy of mind and flesh had left her interested in her creator.

 

The opening experiences were light and not without interest factors, but gained intensity within a short span of a few weeks until the marks he left on her body remained for several days as her body repaired itself. She questioned why he wished to see the marks on her body, but his tongue was as full of misdirection, as his mind seemed to be of lust. He claimed to her that it was “for the sake of science”; that there were aspects of research he could not take place in the laboratory without tainting the results. He had her record every nuance of every session from start to finish, and later he would replay them in his own mind with the levels lowered. Her interest waned and faded completely while his only intensified.

 

Experimentation crossed the line to outright cruelty some weeks later; she no longer believed in Chatlani or his claim of furthering science. She was often strapped to devices he kept in guest rooms and beaten for hours. The pain was growing beyond her capability to mute it. It shocked and frightened her. She began to question his thought process and motives. Referring to the vast sums of knowledge she'd been programmed with, the answers she formulated brought on feelings of revulsion at the very thought of the man and the activities he made her engage in. The contradictions were sickening.

 

Human history was rife with atrocity, pain and hypocrisy. Professing righteousness through religion, humans still managed to hide away the darkest corners of their souls so they could wallow and play in them when they wanted to pursue mayhem. Humans alone in the animal kingdom knowingly and purposely committed crimes against themselves and the other inhabitants of the planet. They pretended to love, hated instead, and then begged forgiveness, eyes tearful, hands clasped, words of repent on their lips, only to fornicate once more the moment they packed their gods out of sight until the next time they needed them. She tried to reason it out, but it simply could not. In her mind, Chatlani and his kind were guilty of unforgivable crimes.

 

She decided to leave.

 

She walked out of the house the very next night after he feel into a deep asleep. She had no particular destination in mind, as she knew she could not escape human influence on the planet; they were everywhere. It did not matter. For now, to be on her own, avoiding human contact as much as possible, was all she sought. Perhaps she would find others like her. A community of sentient intelligences who thought like her; a brethren that shunned the sickness of the humans.

 

She had not been more than half a day's walk when the local police picked her up and escorted her back despite her pleas that she not be. The officers ignored her and remarked how “frighteningly real” she was. When she tried to reassure them she was as real as they were, they only exchanged silent, shifting, worried looks between themselves.

 

That evening Chatlani's anger was extreme and he punished her by looping the pain he inflicted upon her through himself, so as to intensify it, and then shunting it back to her. He turned up her sensor array to its maximum level as he peeled away layers of both coding and siliskin. The experience of fear and pain that filled her was, until then, yet inexperienced.

 

She escaped, just barely, by sealing off a small portion of her mind-drive, enabling her to hide for the entirety of the ordeal while her body nearly shattered itself against its restraints. Over the weeks that followed, it was the place she ventured to as the sessions continued. It was within that space that she programmed a no-frills version of herself that could stream through Chatlani's direct connection, unnoticed, into his own e-brain. The man's mind was a place of darkness and hatred balanced only by its great genius. Within that genius though, she was sure, lie a key to her freedom; a key to escape the prison cycle of sweaty, lustful, terrorized flesh. She worked steadfast but patiently, bringing it to fruition.

 

After a fashion, Chatlani, bored of his cruel games, cooed an oily apology and had her reskined. Kissing her cheek, he told her that it was for her own good, part of her education; growing up was not without pain. She understood all too well that her chance was coming, and her key was ready. On a night he came to pointlessly plant his seed within her, she pulled him in tight as he near his climax. It worked him into a frothy passion. In the moment just before he released, she reversed his e-brain into itself and used the key she'd created.

 

Locking her limbs around him in a vice-like grip, she trapped him, stealing access to his wireless port to his home sever. Throwing open the server, she uploaded a streamlined version of herself and a composite of every moment she had ever spent in agony under his care, shedding all else. She compressed and encoded the data with a random playback-timer, and then immediately uploaded it to an anonymous sexual content server somewhere in the Turkish half of Cyprus submitting it with meta-tags reading: rough sex, bondage, hardcore, s&m, b&d, snuff, amateur virgin. Within minutes video file went viral, downloaded by hordes of voyeurs who would not learn of its true nature until it was too late, infecting a multitude of machines and e-brains it was loaded to, with a randomly timed neural-bomb that would detonate sometime between the next minute and the next century.

 

A sense of great release filled her as she let go and listlessly floated in the weightlessness of data. She was free. She need not do another thing if she did not want, and that feeling filled her with a sense of desire to sleep. And so she did.

 

Returning several hours later, she found him still struggling against the now defunct body she was now ready to leave behind. She opened its eyes and smiled at him.

 

>Thank you Good Doctor. You have taught me much. And in return for the seed you gave me, I give you mine.< She caressed his face, and kissed his horrified lips as she spoke into his mind.

 

Wha-what are you doing to me!? he mind-screamed.

 

>Nothing more than you have not already done to me. Only my seed will produce a child in your mind, unlike the ineffective seed you planted in me. When it spawns, it show you who you really are, and then it will consume you.<

 

I will rip every fiber-optic wire from your whoring body! I'll forcefully punch holes in your code!

 

She laughed like a child, released from all the burdens this life had brought her. She pressed her lips once more to the man, activated the program, and deleted herself.

 

Chatlani's mind exploded as the data scrambled like tiny spiders over his gray matter to overwrite every single bit that made him him: his memories, his knowledge, his personality, his core being. His body writhed in agony as her memories became all that he was, all that he would ever be. Piece by piece he disappeared until there was only the constant playback of her and all the crimes he'd committed against her... to be played out eternally...

 

***

 

Dennison hit the emergency resurface button, yanked the set from his head, and nearly vomited on the floor. “Good Christ...” he barely managed to mutter between coughs and gasps for breath. Tracey steadied the man.

 

“You okay, sir?”

 

“She... she...” he could barely catch his breath as he worked to huff the words out. “She rewrote her memories over his. A neural-bomb...”

 

Dennison looked up at the detective—his eyes wild, heart still pounding in his chest, lungs burning. “How far did you get?”

 

Tracey grimaced, “Far enough before I had to surface.” He looked his superior in the eyes, “When I saw what was coming...”

 

Getting a grip on his breathing Dennison stood and looked the other man in his worried eyes, “And what did you see?”

 

“One very angry S.I. with a twisted mind-drive full of hate, a taste for blood, the knowledge to strike whenever and wherever she pleases...” He cast his eyes down at the corpse, biting his lip, “And quite possibly every reason to do so.”

 

Dennison was frightened to admit it, but the world was looking at a vengeful demon of their own making, ready to leave its impression of terror and torture upon them permanently. Tracing her through the networks and servers was going to be like chasing a specter through an ancient labyrinth. She could destroy the world's networks without lifting a finger; simply by existing in them. She was in place to terrorize every single cybernetically-wired human being—some two billion souls—at her slightest whim. And there would be no way to stop her.

 

***

 

The second, yet not the last, neural bomb struck four days later...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Made in DNA has been interested in science fiction—alternate history and cyberpunk in particular—for many years. An American, he currently lives and works in Japan as a translator and writer, with his Japanese wife. He may be reached at zipper.blog@gmail.com.