literature

Search Word - On The Line

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It all started as it ended. On the line, the flat line that is. I was technically, if temporarily, dead. A routine virtual break-in gone bad and I hit Black ICE. Electric pulses flew through the equipment to the brain and then ...

White.

The last thing one expects to encounter during a near death experience is emptiness. In my last few seconds I expected my life flashing before my eyes, instead, there was whiteness. The few seconds it took for my partner to pull me out of it, by manually pulling the electrodes off my head, translated to many minutes in virtual time. But in that last second before I left the whiteness of the "Flatline" a boy appeared, younger then myself and frighteningly transparent. He reached for me and disappeared into the haze of the real and the smell of burning skin.

Who would have thought that something as logical and structured as cyberspace would have something as illogical and unusual...

as ghosts?


I wouldn't talk about my near death experience for days, until I remembered hearing about a similar happening. At the time I had dismissed it as mere hyperbole, stories told to frighten newcomers. Now, I wasn't so sure. In search of an answer I went to the Tri-Color Café.

The Tri-Color Café is a bar, somewhat cleaner then traditional hacker’s bars. I went there often; it was in the shadow of the uncompleted World Trade Center Memorial. Through the narrow slit of the alleyways you can see the campfires of the squatters on the highest built levels, prime homeless real-estate. Brightly lit at all times the café was themed around an old computer that the owner had found. Nearly two feet in height it stood in a Plexiglas case, glowing with the same three primary colors as the rest of the Café, showing scenes from cult favorites such as Starcraft and UT.

When it came right down to it the reason I went there was because it was the only place in "realspace" that I had heard the stories, whispers in the VEB.


Yellow and blue lights played over my seat, mixing to green on the white surface of the table. I had asked the bartender if he knew of anyone who had seen something weird in a cyberspace construct. He merely scoffed and pointed to a man nursing a drink and feebly attempting to finish off a big sandwich. His name, well his nom de guerre, was "Soulless."

Somewhat ironic.... considering how he turned out. A bit of twisted prognostication on his part perhaps?

"You saw a person?" Soulless asked. "An actual apparition?"

"Yea." I responded. "I had flatlined, technically dead. According to my partner I was gone for nearly a half minute."

"Was it someone you recognized? Do you think it was a near death hallucination perhaps?"

"No." I shook my head and shrugged. "It didn't feel like that at all, it seemed too real."

"I thought so also. I've seen them twice."

"Them?"

"In Black ICE, the first time was an accident. A mistaken calculation somewhere and I ended up in whiteness. Right before I was pulled out I saw a ghostly form."

"And the second time?"

"I went out to a different system and threw myself into the ICE. There was one there, a person, a shade, a..."

"Ghost?"

I doubted this man's sanity. Soulless had gone into possible death, head first. He seemed more suicidal then anything. Soulless said he heard a word from the apparition before he had been pulled out: "Wait."

Together we began to try and discover more about apparitions. Scattered around the 'net were more such tails. Shaken hackers recounting appearances of people inside the deadly black ICE. Explanations ranged from glitches in the security program's codes to "lightside" hackers on the other side of the corporate firewalls controlling the ICE. A few spooked raconteurs told us of being touched by "them" and coming out of the construct with the body part that was touched spazing. In all the tales we heard there was one consistency, there was something under the ICE.

The Tri-Color Café was our meeting place for a second time. We decided to work together, to investigate the Black ICE. We both knew what it was and what it did, Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, a modern day firewall run by an AI. The main difference between ICE and security programs of the past was that ICE was aggressive and Black ICE doubly so. That and the fact that Black ICE’s electronic feedback made it deadly.

Weeks of investigation led us to the a large company in charge of weapons development for the US government. We both were in Soulless’s apartment, the 51st floor. We had decided to work together in real life in order to have an added measure of safety. Together we jacked in and, disguised as independent researchers, began to look through the documentation on ICE and Black ICE. We were sitting in the outer rooms of the system looking through manuals when Soulless was struck with inspiration.


"Look at this document." Soulless pointed at a line. "It says:
'The Artificial Intelligence endowed upon all Seuretran Security systems ensures that the system will learn from all it's mistakes, taking any problems and errors and incorporating it into it's memory.'"
"So?" I responded. "All AI does that. It's practically part of the definition. "

"No, All AI learns from it's mistakes but very few will remember the actual errors."

"So?"

"So now we know what the specters are!"

I started to ask what he was talking about but he zoomed off into the system towards a core surrounded by Black ICE.

I had started a trace to follow him but unbeknown to me his fate had already been sealed. Armed with what he discovered he had thought to combat the ICE, to slam in and survive. His knowledge had made him overconfident.


I telescoped to a stop, cyberspace stretching back into shape around me. Black ICE, a huge monolith of black, mirrored, pain for the unprepared, stood before me. I had no doubt that Soulless was inside.

I charged into the ICE, praying that experience would take me through the pain and back out of the system, and hoping that I would drag Soulless with me.

I was plunged into whiteness.

The whiteness covered me. Blinding. Deafening. Then noise, more frightening then the silence. I knew a automatic program had kicked in and was bringing me out, but I still was afraid. I turned to see Soulless. He stood before me, translucent, like a colored shadow.

He stood before me, serine, but looking concerned.

"I've been absorbed by the ICE, an overestimation. Too late for me, get out."

I was pulled out of the ICE almost immediately after. Soulless was next to me, a line of drool traced it's way down his face and his eyes were blank. I shivered at the sight, he was brain-dead. I wonder if this was what priests of the past pictured when they thought of a man without a soul.

I continued my research without Soulless. I felt that I was close to discovering some way to help or communicate with those who were killed, and their personalities absorbed by the ICE. With months of work, I isolated my self from the world. Once, right before my final expedition into the ICE, I visited the Tri-Color Café. No one there even recognized me. I doubt anyone noticed when I did not return again.

I had spent the time to prepare myself for a journey to the ICE. I was unable to do much too protect myself, only hope that my program to pull me out would work once again. I arrived at a secure system and worked my way to the Black ICE.

It was then, standing before a huge black wall,  that I realized how cold ICE felt in the cyberspace. I think now that perhaps it was the same chill one gets in a graveyard on a warm summer day. A call to the small part in everyone that yearns for eternal rest, an end to the fragility and complexity of morality. I dived in and it felt like swimming in the artic. Then there was whiteness, emptiness and the knowledge that somewhere, instead of the sound of life, was the steady flatline of death.

I gasped. Attempting to find the way out, but I was lost in the cold whiteness, unable to find a way out I stretched, searched and swam, but the Black ICE was too quick, too smart.


I have been able to create one program. Something that took advantage of the absorption factor of Black ICE. It would best be termed a beacon, or perhaps a more appropriate name would be a message in a bottle. That IS the usual medium used by people who have been stranded, is it not? It would sit in the ICE and whenever someone, like yourself, came in it would leave a message with them. When, if, they got out it would appear in their viewer, just like this has. All one had to do is get out of the ICE.

But, you should return and perhaps not worry about what happens after you enter the whiteness. Its not bad or painful, just lonely.

It's so very lonely.... on the line.
Another story set in the cyberpunk Search Word Universe (which I created). I was aiming for a cyberpunk ghost story in this one.
© 2004 - 2024 Phifty
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