| |
The
quiet insistent beeping of his watch alarm broke his concentration
and brought him back to reality. He didn't know when it had
started. As he looked at the time/date sequence on his screen,
he realized he had been logged in for nine days. Nine days. He
was stunned. Where had the time gone? He realized he stank, and
was covered with a thin film of sticky sweat. He felt around on
the desk for a pack of cigarettes, and fished the last one out,
flinging the empty pack back aside. The first long pull tasted
like vomit, and he thought something might have spilled on his
smokes, until he realized he was tasting his breath.
He had been
so close this time; he could feel it. He had been searching the
vast cyberverse for months now, looking for the answers that he
knew had to be there. The signs had been there, pointing the way,
and yet he could never seem to find that magical URL which would
answer all of his questions.
It had started
innocently enough. He was a programmer, and consequently spent great
quantities of time on the web. He had been socially active online,
participating in chat groups, discussion lists, huge technology
forums where the greatest minds in the world dissected Electronic
Consciousness, attempting to understand the evolution of this beast.
More and more, he was seeing great minds railing out against the
technologies they had helped to create. But it wasn't so much the
inevitable backlash against technological progression that got his
attention, as it was the private hushed conversations that occurred
in the shadows. He had begun to seek out those conversations, looking
to unveil the mystery that they hid.
It was a year
before he had even the first piece of the puzzle. He had been lurking
on a discussion board started by some hackers who apparently believed
that the Internet had been started to simulate the mind of God.
They conversed in an archaic lingo, describing bizarre rituals they
performed, post modernist hybrids of high magic and technology.
He was convinced they were absolutely nuts. Yet, his mind wouldn't
let it go.
This global
mass of fiber optics and servers, the logical connections, why not,
he wondered. The damn thing didn't exist for real anyway. It was
a virtual connection, pulses of energy being routed through virtual
machines along virtual pipes. Why couldn't it be the mind of God
manifest through man? The comparisons between the internet and human
neurosynaptic pathways were striking. We had built this thing using
our own brains as a blueprint, without ever realizing it. What had
driven this? Whose plan was it?
He had purchased
the software through a website that specialized in less than ethical
applications of programming. It promised it would allow him to point
at any individual network connection, and view all the data that
came across it in encapsulated binary packets. Another application
would translate it into text, and he could scroll through it at
blinding speeds using his intra-optical monitor, scanning for certain
keywords.
He had begun
spending all of his time focused on this search for something, and
he wasn't even sure what it was. Millions of files a day raced past
his eyes, and his hard drive was rapidly filling with enigmatic
files he had saved for further investigation, files with cryptic
names like Apocrypha.asp, Elohim.YHVH, creatix.bat. His voice mail
and email were also rapidly filling, with angry messages from employers
(make that former employers) and bill collectors. He took no notice
of any of it, however. His sole purpose in life was to watch the
code streaming half an inch from his pupil, relentlessly scanning
for the key--that singular string of data that would identify God.
He stubbed
out his cigarette, stood, and stretched, his body protesting loudly
in a series of pops and pulls. He realized he was ravenous, but
a quick check of the refrigerator showed nothing that had been edible
any time recently. He splashed some water on his face from the sink,
quickly brushed his teeth, and changed into jeans and a light shirt
in preparation for the necessary venture outside.
As he walked
down the sidewalk to the corner market, it started to sink in exactly
what condition he was in. People that he passed were quickly averting
their eyes, wrinkling their noses, moving well out of the way. He
saw the gleam of a madman's passion reflected in the fear in their
eyes. It used to be said that madmen were those who had gazed upon
the face of God, he thought to himself. Perhaps there was more than
a grain of truth in that. He chuckled bitterly, much to the dismay
of the elderly woman exiting past him, trying not to hurry.
An hour later,
feeling much closer to human after a meal of convenience store fare
and several cups of coffee, he sat down at his desk once again.
He lit a cigarette in the absent minded fashion of one who has performed
an action so many times that it requires absolutely no thought.
His eyes were already poring over the reams of paper he had printed
the night before. 113,862,741 URLs turned up when he searched for
God, but hours of scanning revealed that they were all written by
and for humans. Well, he thought, only one way to find it.
He picked up
the cable and inserted it into the NSI port behind his left ear,
and let the initial vertigo of having all of his senses bypassed
wash over him like a cold static wave. He never got used to that
feeling, no matter how many times he logged on. This time though,
something was different. He couldn't quite place it, but there was
a buzzing in his ears he didn't like.
He was starting
where he had left off, before he had been forcibly disconnected
by sources unknown. It was a private portal that listed its links
only as numbers. When he selected the link, it queried him with
a number, and a field to be filled in. He entered random numbers
several times, but after three tries, the server yanked his connection.
Before, the site had a warm and welcoming feeling, but now it seemed
cold and concrete.
As he approached
the menu wall once more, the buzzing in his ears began gaining in
intensity. The view seemed to get darker the closer he got. Just
as he was reaching out to select a link, he saw a flash of movement
out of the corner of his eye. There was someone else here! He scanned
left trying to see, but the shadow filled his field of view suddenly,
and he had only enough time to blink before he felt the impact to
his head.
He screamed.
He didn't know
how long he screamed, only that the distant noise he heard couldn't
be anybody else because he was alone in the apartment. The visions
that ripped through his brain took away any ability to function
or move; he was powerless to do anything except watch.
And he saw.
A vast void, inky blackness swarming with undefined shapes. A voice,
oh god that voice, ripping through the blackness like fire and music
and blood. It was followed by light, burning, brilliant, brightness
that sheared away any sense of self or privacy. Who could hide from
the light of the world? Then followed a steady rush of images almost
too fast to follow: a water covered ball swirling in space; land
thrusting through the water; life swirling in a brine pond, exploding
into a swarm of animals that rapidly shifted through marine, reptile,
avian, mammal, man.
He saw the
man open his eyes in wonder. For a brief moment he spun in a utopian
paradise, then bucked back, revolted, as he felt the evil enter
that place, like forcible sodomy. Then, the darkness came in waves,
as he saw the progression of man, hand in hand with the progression
of evil. He saw war, jealousy, adultery, hate. He saw men of power
rape and pillage, bathing in the blood of the conquered. He saw
the kind looking man approach the little girl with a small smile
on his face, and hold out his palm with a piece of candy in it.
He saw the atrocities that followed, and was vaguely aware that
he had vomited on himself. He saw all of this, but underneath it
was something else.
At the edges
of his consciousness, he could vaguely make out a pattern of energy
coming together, individual pulses of light, touching, reaching,
joining. As he watched, the pattern became clearer and clearer,
and he realized they were forming a face. Suddenly, more than anything
in the world, he did not want to see that face.
Tears ran down
his face, and his low gibbering gradually became a soft whimper
as the pattern coalesced. He understood now what it was all about--man's
incessant drive to connect, to network, to tie all known knowledge
together on to a series of rapidly pulsating lights through spun
glass. As the face took shape, the eyes slowly opened, and he screamed
again, until mercifully, there was no more, and he sank into the
blackness.
The police
detective stood over the slumped figure in the chair, looking pityingly
down at the softly whimpering man whose eyes were devoid of consciousness.
He turned to his partner.
"This is the
12th one in two weeks," he said. "What the hell was he looking at?"
"I'm not sure,"
came the reply, "We're trying to figure it out now. Whatever it
was, I don't think he liked it."
"Sir, we've
isolated the data stream that he was accessing last, but there is
somewhat of a problem," the police tech at the PC reported, "I don't
think it's going to be any help."
"Why is that?"
"Because it's
just raw system code, sir. It doesn't have any text translation,
it's just the code that drives the internet."
"Let me look
at it," the detective responded, and crossed to the monitor. "Oh
my god," he exhaled, and sat down heavily. On the monitor, over
and over, the binary streamed unchanging.
00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110
00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110
Copyright
© 2000 Chris Jenkins All Rights Reserved
comment?
discuss this article on our discussion
board
|
