by Roland Byrd
Hell’s Tower
One Thousand Steps: The Beginning
By
Roland Byrd
Copyright ©, 2013 Roland Byrd.
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, or incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals are purely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1-940324-13-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-940324-13-5
The Beginning
Epilogue
The Beginning
They say it’s one thousand steps to Heaven but only one step to Hell; like the old, children’s game "Chutes and Ladders", just with chutes everywhere and only one ladder. I used to think I could climb that ladder. But every time I tried I slipped and fell.
And here I am, in Hell...
The single window in my cell is barred. The transparent aluminum, so streaked with grime and soot that sunlight trickles in like water through a clogged drain. No one cleans these windows. They never touch anything above one-hundred levels; it’s not safe, the air is too thin, the weather too unpredictable...
There are many reasons, excuses really.
Since my small slice of reality sits on the north-east corner of level two hundred-fifty, my window is stained for time eternal, just like my soul.
I used to press my face to the window in hopes of seeing something, anything. But I gave that up long ago. I never saw more than a lightened smear, shapes couldn’t penetrate the filth, and my heart couldn’t take the disappointment.
My cell is only two paces wide by four paces long. I'm not tall, just five eleven. But if I stretch, I can touch the ceiling. The walls are bare metal, seamless. No decorations are allowed. There’s nothing to look at, only gray metal
Hell.
Since I was thrown in my cell—five years ago, unless my haze of memory fails me—I've seen guards only twice. Each time they escorted new prisoners to their final resting place.
I don’t mean their death.
I refer to their cells. Their new homes, from which they’ll watch, immured, as the remaining days of their lives pass them by like royalty parading by peasants, without noticing or caring about their existence.
My prison—Hell’s Tower—isn’t an ordinary penitentiary. It's where they send the worst of the worst. Only the vilest criminals come here. And no-one who's entered this place as an inmate ever gets out alive.
No-one.
Hell's Tower is shielded from all known forms of radiation. Inmates can’t access entertainment or information from the outside. Even the Cerebro-Net—the constant humming backdrop intertwining nearly all humankind—is stopped by its walls. Our neuro-receivers lay dormant, wasting away, rotting like our lives.
A small keyboard and monitor built into the back wall of every cell allows inmates access to the tower's library and a simple word processing program. The monitor is molded into the wall under a sheet of indestructible trans-plate, the keyboard is secured under trans-film—its nearly indestructible counterpart. Each keystroke is logged. Nothing gets past Hell’s Tower’s surveillance.
Or does it…
Visitors aren’t allowed—ever. Human contact is nonexistent.
No prisoner interaction is permitted—who knows what we'd do to each other or the plans we might hatch if it were.
You can't shower. If you want to exercise, you’d better get creative because you only have the walls, floor, and your body to work with.
Each cell has a toilet the size of a basketball, molded into the floor. Every Monday a sparse allotment of wiping paper appears in the replicator. Once a year, on the anniversary or your incarceration, a new jumper materializes.
Happy Birthday…
A sink that holds half a liter and runs only cold water is built into the cell floor. If you care about washing, that's what you use. The floor also has a mouse sized hole near the corner of the cell—you couldn’t squeeze your hand into it if you wanted. If you did your hand would vaporize instantly. That's the incendiary chute.
Twice daily a paper tray with bland finger food appears. There's no way to cut your hair or shave—we're far too dangerous for that.
You exist.
You think.
You can’t stop thinking.
That’s all you can do, replay every mistake you’ve ever made, over and over in exquisite detail, dancing with madness through the end of your days.
If you’re here, you’re unwanted, unneeded, forgotten. No-one cares about you. You’ve lost the right for that. You’re less than human. When you die, the guards will throw you in the main incinerator with the rest of the trash, clean your cell, and bring in the next idiot.
Is this cruel?
Perhaps...
Perhaps not…
You must consider, weigh whether the crime justifies the punishment. Ask yourself, “what is fair?” If someone in your family was destroyed; what punishment, revenge, justice…would you demand for the guilty?
There’s no death penalty. Not anymore. Considered inhumane by our enlightened society, it was abolished in the latter half of the twenty-third century. So, like rabid monkeys in a dilapidated zoo, we sit in our cells and rot.
I’m sure some here profess their innocence.
I don't. I'm not innocent. I never intended to become this monster. I never meant to take that first, long step to Hell...
But I did.
I wasn’t always like this, evil, vile, twisted, hungry. I was like you. I had a family: a wife and children whom I loved dearly. I worked hard, earned a good living, and did all the other things humans are supposed to do.
But then I strayed.
I began doing things humans should rise above. I started acting like an animal—hunting the weak and sickly. My deeply hidden, base instincts began taking hold of me. I started enjoying the chase, the kill. And I hate myself for it.
The Cerebro-Net was my downfall. It ensnared me.
Like all of us; my C-Net hardware was installed when I was a child, before I entered school. Everyone knows you can’t function without it—at least not in this world, not today. The C-Net binds the fabric of society, all business, education, and most entertainment pulses through its ethereal web.
As I grew, the constant humming mind-contact was my companion. I could instantly access almost anything I desired. But there are times—as a child’s mind develops—that limits should exist, times when critical cognitive processes form, when unlimited access to experience is damaging, damming healthy development.
I had no limits. My parents could have locked down my access, should have protected me.
But they didn’t.
Instead they left me wide open. The C-Net was my playground, my teacher, my friend. But like the drug pusher who befriends you until you’re hooked, the C-Net promises miracles then delivers torment.
The CNA—Cerebro-Net Authority—polices the network. They do their best while allowing free speech. But where do you draw the free speech line when so many villains hide behind its shield?
Still, the CNA tries to keep traffic legal, children safe, and to protect good people from bad. Yet despite their best efforts, dark places lurk in that ether-realm; places hidden from those who don’t know where or how to
look.
It was by accident I found that first place…
I was goofing off when I should have been working. My mind raced through the traffic flow of the C-Net, weaving in and out of info-streams like a skycycle on the express. That’s when I stumbled across an intriguing site.
On the surface it looked safe enough…common enough. It featured pretty women in swimsuits. But once I passed the pleasing exterior I was assaulted with images of sex and drugs and violence that swept through my mind like a wildfire in a parched forest.
And then the virus hit.
Malicious code hacked my neural interface, stole my motor control, locked me in place, blocked my optical nerves, blinded me.
My vision was disabled but my mind’s eye was thrust headlong into their high-res virtual din of iniquity. Images from their site filled my mind. They triggered my kinesthetic integration controller and overwhelmed me with physical pleasure that bordered on pain. I was trapped, a puppet with tangled strings jerking madly to their will.
I struggled in vain to break free. Using every trick I knew, I fought them until something deep inside me woke. Then my struggling lessened, eventually ceased.
To my horror, I began enjoying the experience. Detached fascination filled me. I stopped fighting, gave up, and allowed them to twist and turn my mind into something of their creation. Like a thirsty dog, I lapped up their degradation and filth and begged for more.
Only then, my entrapment complete, did they release me.
My vision flooded back, blinding me with brightness. I’d fallen to the floor panting; sweat streamed across my face, stinging my eyes. I blinked furiously to clear
