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Notice: The following is a sample from One Over X Episode One: From The Inside To The Closer. It is presented here for the promotional use of this Blog. It is copyrighted material (c) 2002, Elgon Williams and may not be used except for its expressed purpose without the written permission of the author, Elgon Williams.

Interface

The reek of gasoline permeated his flesh and sinew. Raw penetrating moisture clawed at his chilled bones through saturated clothing. At first he believed it was overflow from an eve trough after a spring shower in the place he had just been. A brush of icy air whisked against bare skin and crystallized the vapor of breath, confirming otherwise. Elsewhere, but where was he? He desired the peace that he had known in the preceding instant.

Pain pulsed around the knot on his head. Blood engorged eyes bulged with the pressure of hanging upside down. Squinting through blood tainted tears bleary-eyed he struggled to regain bearings. Lids were crimson curtains drawn to protect eyes from the glare of the clear sky dawning sun. A spark, flames came licking closer. Impulsively attracted he reached out to the fire. Thickly the smoke boiled up, surrounding every sense. Extremes, from bitter cold to intense heat now came with the ebb and flow of the tides of wind.

Shaking his head as if that would allow some freedom from the strapped-in position his fear was too real - trapped inside a burning carcass of crumpled steel. No escape, no time to react - everywhere he hurt except what parts that were already numb. More than his splitting head needed immediate attention. All pain would end soon, forever.

From the dancing tickle of the flame to the sooty black of the heavy smoke, he succumbed. Inevitably his youthful adventure would end. Life forever, except for the present circumstance was the promise in the allure of flame. How could it be fair to perish now? There was only the black uncertainty of salvation’s promise.

He knew the perfume and by it assumed the bearer. “Where have you been?” He asked of the cool shadow as it passed over his face.

“Nowhere,” came the anticipated reply of a familiar voice.

“Can you help me?”

“Why should I? Are you that helpless?”

“Hopeless is more like it.” He coughed so hard that he nearly vomited and might have had his stomach not been already empty. Then he winced from the throbbing lump on his head. The sentience of pain reassured him. To feel is to not be dead. “They followed me again.” He said.

“You went where you had no business going?”

“No business…? I had every reason.”

“No one has any business interfering.”

“God it hurts!” Andy forced the issue to reach out to the shadow. “Can you help me out of this…this harness?”

So sudden that it might even have been immediate, the harness released and he fell hard against jagged shards sticking up from the heaped bed of shattered glass that covered razor edges of twisted metal. He tried not to scream but the reaction erupted by force of will its own. So severe the suffering that he lost consciousness even though it only seemed for that moment.

“Come on.” Lana beckoned to him toward the peace.

He rolled over, and crawled away from harm of flame frozen in time. Slowly he got to his feet. Miraculously all pain was gone. The realization panicked him, threatening hope with torrents of despair. Had it possibly been another deception? He reached for the lump on his head, gently touching it, not only reassured that it was still there but that it hurt like hell. He was still alive!

Lana laughed. “There are limits.”

“You left it for a reminder. I know you.”

She smiled. “I can’t do everything for you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where else? We seem to always end up there.” Lana smiled. She offered her hand as she leaned over. “Come on. I’ll put some ice on that bump.”

“It’s more than a bump.” Andy followed her into the alley.

“To you maybe.”

“Why can’t they leave me be?” Andy gingerly surveyed the painful lump again.

“They are relentless machines,” she replied.

“They were machines.” Andy corrected.

“Once a machine…” Lana unlocked the outer door and held it open until Andy had passed. Then she locked the door behind them and followed Andy up the stairs to her apartment.

“They are alive, Lana. They learn. They create. They reproduce.”

“You made them.”

Andy shrugged. “Yes, I’m responsible. I did not make them.”

“It doesn’t matter to them. You know what they want.”

“I know what needs to be done. It is just…”

“You think that they are alive.”

“Yes.” Andy confirmed with the lowering of his head.

“They won’t hesitate to kill you.”

“So far they haven’t succeeded.”

“Or is it that you’re lucky.”

“They don’t understand their significance.”

“And you do?”

Andy shrugged. “I know they are more important then they could possibly imagine.”

“Imagine!” Lana scoffed. “Machines that can imagine. The pinnacle of achievements! Or the depths of folly?”

Andy forced a weak smile as he collapsed back into an over-stuffed chair and watched Lana as she went into the kitchen only to return within a few moments with a cold compress.

“I had that same nightmare again, except I wasn’t dreaming this time around.” Andy said.

“Nightmare?”

“What other nightmare is there. The finger from the sky chased me. I escaped. It followed me.

There was a fiery crash and I burned to death…”

“You’re safe here.”

“Thanks to you. You always come when I least expect it and most need it.”

“You still rely on the magic too much.”

“What if that were the real world and this were a dream?”

“Then you would be dead already several times over.” Lana kissed him lightly on the forehead.

“Does that feel like a dream to you?”

“How would I know?”

“You wouldn’t…” She smirked as she gently continued to apply the cold compress to the large knot on the back of Andy’s head. “You are safe here, for the moment anyway. It always takes them a while to find you.”

“Safe from everything but the Siblings.” Andy challenged.

“To me they seem more my problem, aren’t they?”

“Your magic is nothing against them.”

Lana shrugged. “Who said I need magic?”

“Arrogant bravado,” Andy chuckled as he sighed and leaned back. He closed his eyes even before he realized that it was a mistake, then with the realization he shouted, “No!” He opened eyes and mind once more to see the pure canvass of full potential. Nothing was impossible as if creation paused. In the distance he heard the mournful howl of the wind or was it a lost Wolf frozen in eternity?

Tugging, pulling, bringing him away, he fought to linger but the allure of the light and the enchantment of the colors in the light was too inviting. Late afternoon screamed in hues but his deafened mind could barely hear. His outer sense triggered a squint response to the glare of the Sun that tickled the taste of his perception. It was a signal, the conditioned response to the first signs of a workday’s culmination. His base awareness permitted mind the mere slow withdraw from the brink of madness called interface. The shadows of the surreal lingered transparently as if there were two or more layers of reality just beyond his immediate interest, the real world to which he would invariably and reluctantly return or the enhanced cybernetic projection used to accelerate relatively limited human mental performance that was interface.

Horrific! The word echoed within his mind as he was overcome by a smothering panic. He remembered from impression, from some way station along the course of mental meandering that he had been immersed within oxygenated gelatinous goop. His life depended upon it but his instinctual response to it was revulsion. It was fear that he fought, the fear of drowning while starving for air. The ocean of madness compelled him toward the source, the unifying identity that was the interface.

Andy forced an eye open but could not determine where he was.

When or where was that sensation? Had it been real or imagined? Salvation was the release of falling back into strong and caring arms, forgetting every care and every identity.

His lungs ached as he breathed deeply the thinner, vapor rich, wonderfully reclaimed air that descended from the vents above his workstation.

Upward, outward, ever closer to the superficial context that was his stupefying incarceration, called existence. What was he doing in the real world anyway? Still sitting within the relative protection of his cubicle, poised at his workstation waiting to come back to pain and suffering, to his living amongst the condemned.

Another distraction called for attention. It was an additional but only temporary delay as he rose back toward the surface of awareness.

“Look at this!”

If he had a body in interface then it turned and his head followed. His eyes focused on some distant gathering. There was a banner seemingly suspended from thin air itself, but in reality hanging from small gravity-compensating devices called floaters. “Welcome Siblings!” It proclaimed. Across the way, a stranger was pressing into the throng then he abruptly brandished a weapon above his head. It was a primitive device that discharged several brilliant flashes and a series of loud pops but left some pungent chemical residue in the air. Bodies scattered, bodies fell, and other bodies were trampled under foot and left broken and bleeding on the concrete slab. Yet others surged toward the would-be assassin.

As the chaos subsided, abruptly several people ripped away at his jacket, others pinching his arms, some wrenching the weapon from his hand. “Murderer!” One of them accused him. How had Andy come to be within the body of another, the stranger, and an assassin?

As the crowd parted now and again to allow others to reach its midst, he glimpsed the crimson pools surrounding two lifeless bodies, one a young man, the other a young woman. He had become the murderer!

There was death, now!

Something was incredibly wrong and different. Andy felt a loss as intense as the day of his mother’s death. What confused him even more was the remorse that he felt as if he were somehow responsible for the failure of The Society to establish their controls. A chill permeated and shivered him. He understood relationships, purpose and destiny. Couldn’t any of them understand why it had to be done? The Siblings were Evil beyond any comprehension. It has always been the providence of the Good to destroy Evil!

Security bound hands behind him, threw a black hood over his head and hauled him away. Even as he stumbled onward someone struck him from behind with a heavy blunt object. He no longer cared, he may have cried out but was not sure. It wasn’t like it mattered to anyone present. He lunged forward and crashed face first onto pavement. At some point between their beating, kicking and dragging him, he lost consciousness. He did not remember the incarceration.

The taste of blood in his mouth exacerbated the excruciating trauma of his bruised and broken body. Fixing the damage that they had inflicted would be the humane thing to do, not that civility figured into any of the Security operations. He was wanted. He’d been holed up in a cave near the river upstream from the technopolis. Security had no idea where to find him. Had he never returned to the city, he would still be free. Then again the end would have never been forced.

* * * *

“No one would ever quite understand or know how repulsive this task was going to be.” He muttered to himself. “It’s a damn dirty job.” Andy’s head fell into his hands as he pondered forthcoming actions. It was never easy to kill yet in his mind he knew it was necessary even though in his heart the agony endured. To cause death was always unforgivable.


The Cell

He’d been in this place before. A small, dimly lit room he had come to know intimately. Security had taken him to the bowels of the corporate tower. His was a secret that they selfishly wished to know. They had no desire for anyone else to ever understand why he had to kill The Siblings. There was no interest in painting the possibilities on the landscape of opinion. They could not allow The Siblings to seem evil, as it would serve as censure to EthosCorp. The corporation had welcomed them to the world.

The pain in his throbbing head was almost unbearable as he gnashed his teeth against it. He felt the icy breath of death. His internal injuries were mortal. Security had exacted punishment on him before a fair hearing. The way he felt they had sentenced him to death. He was left to bleed internally. Without his extraordinary abilities he would have already died.

He closed his eyes in effort to contain the pain, compartmentalized the damage to his body and attempted healing. He was weak. He didn’t know how much healing he could manage or whether he could localize the processes to the most severely damaged areas…

* * * *

Darkness lifted and there was light beyond the red curtains that were his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, the cell was a vapor remnant of the nightmare. Soon it was just a passing thought or a fading feeling that could not be remembered in whole, yet never could he forget each and every insignificant fragment punctuated in agony. The automated removal of the Interface Virtual Module from his consciousness disturbed the most unique and private recesses of his psyche – those places reserved for the lingering fears and loathsome desires of a much more primitive sort. The contrived illusion had rooted itself into the kernel of self-awareness. It had an addictive quality. Whatever self-control he believed he had once possessed over the events of his lifetime dissipated for that interval of interface. It only underscored the meaninglessness of his petty existence. He existed for the furtherance of the Ethos Controller Program.

* * * *


Interface:

A thought becomes a journey. A memory is the destination. All ideas are inspirations into a dream that is reality.

A respite from the furtive glances to the EthosMasters who, vigilantly, walked the aisles between the workstation cubicles looking for slackers. True pretenders professing to be there to assist in any way, they were rarely ever needed. Techs routinely used interface to accomplish the workloads and EthosMasters never dared to interrupt an interface session for fear it would cause the Tech to lapse into instability short of a coma but beyond dementia. Among Techs it was common knowledge that no current EthosMaster had even experienced interface. How could they ever do their jobs in the future without it? It was said that they once merged with Techs to attentively direct and focus the tasks that a Tech was accomplishing. No longer necessary, perhaps, but it seemed strange that an EthosMaster controlled anything at all without specific direction of the interface session.

To Andy, interface and its illusions made the drudgery of the mundane endurable. Over time there had been a few Technicians that became so dependent on interface that the simplest task could not be performed without it. It was common enough for a Tech to die while locked in interface, enough so that the physical response event log compiled during an interface session was routinely monitored for trouble signs or any indication of some sort of self-induced interface suicide. This was what EthosMasters were supposed to do. The process was, of course, fully integrated and automated, requiring a person to activate and terminate, but nothing more. The dangers of coma and dementia determined in large part the removal of the EthosMasters from direct and interactive integration but it was hardly a reason to terminate use of interface to efficiently accomplish tasks. Techs were ultimately expendable. There was expensive training involved. Still, millions of Techs were bred each and every Union Day. Once mature, they would accomplish the necessary tasks, functioning until the utility of their life was spent over the span of thirty or forty years at the consoles.

* * * *

In another time, the EthosMasters had been a vital necessity. Their roles however had not evolved with the sophistication of the systems that they were intended to support. They had been created of the Information Services Support Division when the Ethosphere was an experiment in its infancy. Their purpose was to troubleshoot problems and come up with ad hoc solutions, on the floor where all the workstations were being used twenty-four/seven by seasoned program analysts and software technicians. As EthosCorp grew from just another information system and services provider to the indispensable global provider of nearly all information and entertainment to the world, the importance of the EthosMasters rose and so had their stature. The Ethosphere had long ago become so self-healing that once a portion of new Codex was set, distributed and implemented throughout the networks, there was little else to do but sit back and wait for the rare failure of some relatively insignificant hardware component or software driver subsystem. The EthosMasters were not even trained or equipped to work on any system that might actually fail. They could only report it so that a repair technician could fix or replace the malfunctioning unit. The program could reroute itself past any failing system so seamlessly that no one even noticed a lapse in service.

The EthosMasters were a legacy, a self-important group created to support a system that had long since outgrown the very need for them. They were employed because EthosCorp was an international monolithic corporation that had never fired anyone in its seventy-three year history except for just cause. EthosCorp had a position for everyone in its bloated bureaucracy.

The somewhat considerable incomes of the EthosMasters helped proliferate the myth of an upper middle class to which anyone might aspire. Those that were aware had become watchdogs and baby-sitters to lord over the lower level Techs, the ones that did the actual work. It was rare if ever that anyone not born into the pseudo-nobility of the EthosMasters would ever become one of their peers.

Andy knew only a little of the history of the company. Had he known the complete truth it would have only underscored what was to him already confirmed, the EthosMasters were useless to him.

When exiting interface it was not uncommon to experience brief but alluring fantasy states similar to daydreaming, only more vivid and very realistic. As Andy’s mind disengaged from the mundane task that had occupied nearly all of his working day’s altered consciousness, he easily slipped anew into the delusional state surrounding his consciousness. He could not bring his mind to return to the numbing drudgery or mundane existence without some retreat, some extended release. He could clear his thoughts, in that small portion of his mind that no outside monitoring could violate. This was personal space. In the entire world, it seemed the only place that was truly his and his alone, untouched by the pervasive hand of technology that linked all else in mind to the Ethosphere. This was the place in which he felt at ease and would readily return from all jaunts and flights of fantasy. It was a primal place and little understood. Access was possible only through the use of the Ethosphere Interface Virtual Module program, a creation of EthosCorp, a subtle irony that did not trouble him. It was the only place he felt in control. There he was puissant, omnipotent and without fear.

* * * *

Within:

Sometimes there was a beach with tall dunes and the ocean gently caressing the shore while a soft but steady breeze of salty air tickled about his face. Other times, there was a field of tall, soft grass near a stream along which stately, whispering pines swayed in unison to the breeze that stirred them from above. Still other times there was a strange, alien edifice into which he fled, pursued by unleashed ravages of nature the likes he had never before seen. What was he hiding from? Was it someone or something that drove him into a strange storefront that sold bizarre women’s garments?

Regardless, the image began as indistinct from the background noise of confusion as the whisper of a raindrop in the tumult of water cascading from a summit. This defined Peace for him. The more Andy focused on it, the less detail the image resolved. Why couldn’t he fix upon it? In the moment of frustration borne of that ineptitude and despair, he would succumb to the will of whatever was within him that permitted such perception. He would yield and suddenly in full resolution, sharp and clear with such vibrant intensity that it pained his inner mind like a too-cold bite of ice cream, he found that he was there. He swallowed it whole with voracious desire to consume the pleasure it contained. He was inside, at the destination, the part that was closer had just evaded his reach.

If he were physically present with full use of all his extremities and sensations, it would have felt as real. How such a thing was possible did not enter his mind. He accepted it. The thought to discuss it with another never occurred. He assumed it was what everyone else around him did in his or her cubicle to weather the tedium of daily tasks.

Usually it was Marie who was there with him. She was his fantasy; though he adamantly believed her appearance belonged to a living, breathing entity of the real world. She was Marie Altobello, reputedly the most beautiful woman in the world. To Andy’s thinking she was unsurpassed. She was as real as he was.

Today was unique.

There had on occasion been another woman there. Her name was Min. He had not known her at first, but she knew him. She said that she knew Marie. Marie fulfilled all the desires of what men wanted for a woman to be even though she was a figment of a collective marketing mind.

Andy was aware that Min was real, as real as anyone else and probably someone whose psyche merged with his interface state from within her own session. Still he had never met her formally, not in the outside world anyway. How she had come to be a part of that place within defied him but as with everything else, nothing was absurd.

Like Andy, Min worked for EthosCorp. From her understanding of the workings of interface Andy figured that she must be at least a Level 8 Tech, someone who could revise the Operational Codex and configure the subsystems that supported the Ethosphere.

Min sort-of resembled Marie, in some more-or-less subtle ways to the extent that Andy wondered if they were related. She was as slight in stature as Marie, but some of Min’s features were less appealing to the eye. Marie was as a goddess while Min was ordinary, yet attractive in many ways given the correct compensation. Min’s breasts were not so ample and her hips not as shapely. Her face reminded Andy of Marie but had imperfections that distracted the eye. Min’s eyebrows were strangely shaped and thick, her teeth less than white and there were gaps between them that were not exactly to Andy’s taste. Though the way her eyes danced when she smiled was unmistakably the same as Marie.

The demarcation between reality and fantasy was hardly absolute. During interface everything was possible; nothing could be surreal.

As this thought passed between them, Andy felt the strength of reality’s persistent tug. Somewhere there was an alarm, the end of a shift approached. Min wanted urgently to tell Andy something more. He could not or did not want to hear her. After a moment, she seemed to be straining as if she was shouting against the noise of a multitude of voices but to Andy’s ears there was only the deafening roar of his own thoughts echoing, spiraling upward to the surface. Andy shut her out. He did not choose to believe in Min anymore. Marie was just as much a fabrication for all the good that knowing her in interface did. It was cruel and fantastic beyond credence. He wanted the relationship with her to be real. She was real enough to him. All he had dreamed of becoming was rendered useless unless Marie was alive. For his sake, Marie had to exist. Was Min a part of some elaborate diversion? Why would anyone want to distract him?

Lately, Marie had complained publicly of the stress she found in her role as the spokesperson for the hundreds of thousands of EthosCorp products that she represented. Perhaps Min was part of some elaborate cover-up intended to permit Marie, an intensely public figure, something of a private life, just another deception! Andy felt flattered that he was one of the selected targets for the cover-up, even if it did not make a lot of sense.

Obsessed with Marie, Andy wanted nothing more than to be left alone with her and to live the placid fantasy of ever after. It had to be possible. It was within his power. He had only to become famous, maybe not as famous as Marie. He did not seek that level at all. Still he needed to be famous enough to garner some recognition. Even this new deception that Min had unleashed was intended toward the same overall goal. It was serendipitous. Marie did not know Andy outside of the illusions that were within their combined minds during interface. There was a particular school whose belief it was that interface connected the psyches that were simultaneously engaging the Ethosphere. If this were true then Marie already knew Andy. She knew him very, very well. Perhaps, she sought the space to allow for a private existence with someone such as Andy. It could not possibly be mere coincidence.

Soon Min faded along with the illusion of the inner world, signaling the departure from reality. Despite his yearning to linger in the contrived paradise and further his understanding of this novel acquaintance, the persistence of the outside world dragged his screaming psyche back to the same drab world and the console as that which had begun the workday. There before him was the array of translucent screens. On the primary display was the work he had been engaging while in interface. For that moment he sat unaware as to how long he had been away. Almost immediately the chronometer reassured him that he had only been in his inner world for the usual interval necessary for his labors.

He felt the touch of a passing EthosMaster as she brushed against the back of the chair. Throughout his career at EthosCorp, the EthosMasters appeared mindful of most everything he did, but how in their common humanity could they be omniscient? Still, there had been times past when they seemed to know when he wasn’t working on anything in particular. He had devised ways of concealing his personal agenda from their probes, by installing a subroutine in his EthosLink array controller. It filtered certain access parameters to the extent that anyone monitoring his work would believe that one or more of his arrays were inactive when, in fact, they were very active and visible only to his straight-on and system-assisted point of view. When the arrays were thus configured, only someone plugged into the console and granted access could see anything on a particular display. On this supposedly inactive display, he could bring-up most anything he desired and could view it while in interface without anyone outside seeing it. He could set the control overrides to instruct himself to pay attention to whatever detail he wished. Whenever an EthosMaster came too near to his workstation, he had programmed a conditioned response to strike one assigned hot key to make the screen go blank just in case they were using an wireless link to access terminals.

Even so, he was never entirely certain that they had not caught onto his deception. Still, not even one of the EthosMasters had yet confronted him.

There was nothing suspect in his having one of the array displays inactive. It was ordinary for a Level 3 Tech like Andy to be utilizing only a few of the available EthosLinks at his workstation. The array he used was generic, designed for general use from Level 1 Tech to Level 4 Programmer, twenty-three different job level classifications in all. This versatile design enabled Andy to program subsystem configuration parameters into his specific workstation without being detected by the EthosMasters.

As Andy lingered at rest, he could sense the heat of disdain for his having stolen a moment to recover his wits. Imagined or not, he felt it. He was due for a break so there was nothing any EthosMaster would do to him. For several hours he had been reading instructions for the diagrams displayed in his interactive array on the adjacent ViewText monitor. It mattered little to his physical being that most of this had been conducted in an altered state of consciousness deceptively immersed in fantasy while the lower structures of his mind supplied the brainpower to fix errors in code. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, until he saw only red and violet spots. He stretched away the toll of the tedium on his neck and back, savoring the sensation of blood rushing to all his extremities. He hated sitting still. That was what he did every single day, all day long. This had been his routine for the last seven years. To his thinking, Interface was the only true reward of his job.

He was fortunate to have the job he had, really. There were certainly many outsiders that envied him. Working for EthosCorp in the corporate tower carried prestige, regardless the position. Andy’s job was to interface often and directly with the Ethosphere itself. That seemed important. Important to anyone who knew little or nothing about the true nature of the Ethosphere or the multitude of subservient tasks necessary to keep the communication, entertainment and information network for the entire world in operation.

E

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