The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  When we reach the end of the hall, two large doors stand in front of us. A scanner above the door waves a laser over our bodies, communicating with our nanomachines and detecting our identities. When it's finished, the doors slide open, revealing the law room.

  The circular room is surprisingly small. Three screens sit across from the doorway, with a camera placed below them. A fourth screen sits off to the right, away from the others. The floor looks like the DOTgov flag. A single bulb rests in the center of the ceiling, with a glowing light beaming directly at the large yellow star on the floor.

  The DgS officers push me toward the center of the room and force me to stand in the spotlight. They remain within arm's reach of me, as if I pose some sort of risk.

  I glance over my shoulder at my father sitting on a small bench near the door. He gives me a nod of recognition, or maybe it's meant to be encouraging, either way it angers me. I want him to fight, I want him to save me, but he just sits there, helpless.

  The three screens blink to life. An avatar of a judge appears on each one, but each avatar looks exactly the same. I'll never know who condemns me. They're faceless authority figures.

  The judge in the middle clears his throat and says, “User name: Arkade. You've been accused of seven counts of cyberterrorism including: inappropriate bandwidth usage, the disruption of network infrastructure, aiding and abetting a known hacker, the exploitation of unstable programming, digital extortion, harboring rogue artificial intelligence, and fraud.”

  I smirk at the screens and say, “That's all you could come up with? You sure you don't need time to slap some more charges on there?”

  The judges all glare at me, but it's the one in the middle that asks, “Are you refusing to confess to these crimes?”

  I let out a heavy sigh and say, “Yes. No. Whatever. Let's just get this over with.”

  The judges glance at each other and the two on either side nod their heads at the one in the middle.

  The avatar in the middle bangs a gavel down three times and announces, “The tribunal has officially begun.”

  00111110

  The first stage of the trial consists of the three judges reading obnoxiously long descriptions of legal jargon. They explain each of my crimes in excruciating detail, presumably so that I understand exactly what they're accusing me of and can't later claim any kind of ignorance to the law. This goes on and on until my eyes glaze over with pure boredom.

  The second stage utilizes the fourth screen in the room to show a video-cast of different conversations by witnesses. It doesn't take me long to realize that what I'm watching are private conversations, recorded inside NextWorld, unbeknownst to the people involved. Xen and Raev are speaking to each other in a private chat room. Ekko and his partner are talking in DOTsoc. Grael is speaking with his employer in DOTbiz. Klok is discussing what happened to him inside the game world with other players. It's strange, almost voyeuristic, watching their conversations. Everyone knows that privacy doesn't exist inside NextWorld, but seeing the watchful eye of DOTgov firsthand feels wrong, like I should look away out of respect.

  They edit descriptions together so that the events play out in a linear fashion, recreating the story from beginning to end. It starts with my entrance into the game with Xen, my meeting with Fantom, her grouping with Ekko, Klok, and Cyren, the log-out failure, our adventure, and finally my decision to stay in the game world.

  When the videos end, the judge in the middle clears his throat and asks, “You'll now have the opportunity to offer your rebuttal to anything said by these eye witnesses.”

  I glance over my shoulder at my father. He gives a single, firm, shake of his head.

  They were telling the truth. All I'd be doing is filling in my point-of-view, which doesn't matter to anyone but me. Should I try to tell them how Cyren makes me feel and how I'd do anything to have that back? Should I explain love to them?

  I turn away from my father, toward the judges, and bow my head.

  “Very well,” the judge says, grumbling with a passive boredom. “We hereby find you guilty on all counts.”

  My father whimpers behind me. We both know what the punishment is for cyberterrorism. Mind prison. A lifetime spent logged-in to a virtual world devoid of stimuli. Like a sleeping state where you're aware of every second. My hands shake as I face the rest of my life.

  “But,” the second judge says, “while there is no denying that your actions should suffer severe consequences, we have concluded that we should also take into account the age at which you made these decisions.”

  I look up. A moment of hope. A moment where I think they might let me go. A moment where I think that I might see the virtual world again.

  The third judge leans back in his chair and says, “By all accounts, you were a child when you committed these crimes. A child that was so obsessed, so addicted to these... games, that he was willing to do anything to keep playing them. You're sick... not evil.”

  “Therefore,” the first judge speaks up again, “we have chosen to forgo the usual punishment. We will still place you on the DOTgov cyberterrorist list and deny you access to any form of digital communications for the remainder of your life, but instead of serving the usual prison sentence, we will be placing you in a rehabilitation facility until an expert panel deems you fit to return to your tower.”

  The judge slams his gavel down and the screens go black. The tight grip of the two DgS officers wrap around my skinny forearms and yank me toward the door. My father hurries behind me.

  “You did well, son. We couldn't have expected a better outcome than that. You should consider yourself very lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  I try to swim through my disillusionment as the officers force me into an elevator. Before long, they're shoving me on to my bed face first and roughly unlocking the handcuffs. They disappear out the door without a word, leaving me alone with my father.

  “I wish there was more I could do,” he says, his voice sounding like a light breeze. “I wanted-”

  “You got what you wanted,” I say, cutting him off.

  He reaches out toward me and says, “It's for the best. Before you know it you'll be back in your old room and we can meet every day in the tower communal area and-”

  “I'm tired.”

  He rubs his tongue against his gums and says, “Sure. Of course. I'll be back before they... I'll see you before you go.”

  I curl up on the bed in the fetal position, like I used to do inside the E-Womb. I hear the door hiss shut as my father leaves the room. When he does, I roll over and stare at the ceiling.

  I don't know how to handle what's inside of me. When I watched those videos, it made me realize how much I took my friends for granted. Now that I know I may never see them again, it's like DOTgov has stolen more of my heart. It doesn't matter if they lock me in a mind prison, or a rehab center, or my own tower room. Any life without Cyren is going to be empty.

  As these thoughts consume me, I notice my vision blur and wobble. I rub my eyes and see a flicker when I open them, as if my brain was experiencing bandwidth lag for a moment. Then text appears in front of me, not on a screen, but in front of my face, floating inches from my eyes. One letter after another, as if I'm watching someone type in real-time.

  “Arkade?”

  I wave my hand in the air, trying to swat at the word in front of me. My hand passes right through the letters. I rub my eyes with the tips of my fingers again, but when I shut my eyelids, the letters are still there.

  “What is this?” I mumble to myself.

  The letters spelling out my name in front of me disappear and the words: “I can hear you” appear in their place.

  I look around, expecting to see someone else in the room, but no one is there. Have I finally lost it? Am I going crazy? Or is this some kind of feedback, a flashback from being logged-in for so long?

  Words type in front of me again: “I have input access to your retinal nanomachines and output access to y
our vocal nanomachines. You can see what I type, and I can hear what you say.”

  I open my mouth to reply, but I stop myself, afraid to say anything. Is this some kind of joke? Who would have access to my nanomachines remotely? That's impossible. Isn't it?

  “Give me a second. I'll get you out of there.”

  Could DOTgov be doing this? Maybe they're testing me. Maybe they're trying to see if I'm going to be a flight risk or not. There's a large CLUNK as the lock on my tower room door releases.

  The text reads, “Follow the arrow.”

  A glowing arrow appears in front of me as if it were lying on the floor, pointing toward the tower room door.

  “I'm not going anywhere,” I say, confident in the fact that I'm calling DOTgov's bluff.

  “Yes. You are. Now move!”

  “How are you doing this?” I ask, reaching out and trying to touch the words again, amazed by whatever technology is making this possible.

  The words appear across my vision quickly, like the sender is furiously typing them. They fill my entire vision. “Really? Is that really what you want to talk about right now? Do you want me to explain how I reversed the I/O protocols of the tower nanomachine scanners so that instead of a read-only format they can send write commands? Or do you want to follow that arrow I'm displaying on the floor and log back into NextWorld?”

  I glance at the door when the words disappear. “Why should I do anything that you're saying?”

  “Because,” the words type, slower and more thoughtful this time, “Cyren hasn't been deleted yet.”

  I stand up. The words floating in the air are burning into my eyes. They remain in the same position, almost mocking me with their simplicity. I want to reach out and hold them, to pull them closer so they can make me safe again.

  I try to reply, to form words when my thoughts are nothing but a whirlwind, but I only manage to stammer, “Who-who... who are you?”

  The answer appears in front of me: “A friend.”

  00111111

  As soon as I step out the door, a sense of freedom washes over me. It isn't a singular sensation. The openness of possibilities mixes with my extreme loneliness. The empty hallway shatters the safety that the monotony of my disconnected tower room brought me. I'm exposed. At any moment a camera or a sensor or a real person could see me and bring this all to a tragic end. Then I think of what the words said.

  “Cyren hasn't been deleted yet.”

  It's all I need to press on. I follow the glowing arrow toward my goal. When I reach the end of the hall, I hear the door of one of the tower rooms open behind me.

  “Quick! Open the hatch!” appears in the air.

  On the wall there is a label on a small door that reads: Waste Disposal. I cringe at the thought of what's inside, but when I hear a voice coming from the open doorway of the tower room behind me, the sound forces my hand. The hatch lets out a gaseous release of air when it unseals and the smell almost knocks me from my feet.

  “Get inside.”

  I reread the words and wait for the sender to retype them, assuming there must be a mistake.

  When the arrow points at the opening, I whisper, “Are you serious?”

  “This is the only way. Go. Now.”

  I glance back at the doorway and see a figure emerge. My instinctual need to hide pushes me through the small opening. I have to stop my body from sliding down the chamber, the walls slick with an unknown slime. There's a trickling stream of liquid constantly running between my fingertips. I press my hands firmly against the metal, trying to keep myself from falling through the angled shaft. The glowing arrow points upward.

  “You need to climb.”

  I let out an already-exhausted gasp of air and push myself upward. My fingers and toes press hard against one wall, with my back shoved against the other. Loose screws and bolts scrape against me, tearing my flesh. Combined with the foul smell of the vapors inside the chamber, I'm reminded of how awful reality can be.

  I'm not sure how far I make it before my arms shake, threatening to give out and drop me down the metal shaft.

  “You can do this.”

  “No,” I say through gritted teeth. “I can't.”

  “You have to.”

  I want to argue. I want to give up. I want to crawl back out of the hatch and hide inside my room, but I think of Cyren. I think of her rippling muscles, and her black lips, and her defiance that would never allow her to give up if I were the one in danger. My arms stiffen with a new resolve and I inch myself upward.

  It feels like hours pass. The words in front of me intermittently provide messages of encouragement. When I shut my eyes, the arrow and the text appear inside my eyelids, streaming straight to my retinas.

  “You're almost there. You should see a mesh wire covering the opening to a horizontal shaft just above you.”

  Sure enough, a few feet above me the glowing arrow points at a ventilation shaft. Warm air blows across the sewage drain. My legs shove upward and I'm looking into the blowing breeze, enjoying the heated air as it tickles my shivering skin.

  I stick my fingers through the wire cover and yank on it as hard as I can. The cage-like fence bends outward before popping free. I let it drop down the shaft. It sends a loud scraping noise echoing through the chamber as it falls past each floor. With a final heave, I manage to wedge my elbows inside the opening and lift the rest of my body inside. My arms and legs melt on to the floor, every muscle accepting my weakness.

  “You need to keep moving.”

  “I can't,” I say, barely able to catch enough breath to speak.

  “Opening your door alerted security.”

  “Give me a second.”

  “We don't have a second. It will only be a matter of time before they send search drones into the ventilation shafts.”

  “Where am I going? What's your plan? I can't go through any checkpoints without them scanning my nanomachines. They'll find me eventually.”

  “We need to get you to another tower so you can get aboard a train.”

  My eyes blink open. I've never been on a train before. Not in the real world. I've never wanted to go anywhere that would require that kind of transportation.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere safe.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You'll be in NextWorld eventually. That's all that matters.”

  They're right. Whoever is sending this text is speaking to me in a logical way that I can appreciate. It doesn't leave any room for doubt. I push forward. Like a machine.

  The heat of the ventilation shaft is nice at first, but soon my body is sweating. My skin swells. My lips grow chapped and my mouth drys out. I'm scampering through the shaft, trying to get to my destination quicker.

  When I see an opening in the floor of the shaft ahead of me, I move faster. I press my face against the metal cage that covers the opening, trying to suck in some of the colder air from outside.

  “Back up!” appears in front of my face, but the cool air feels so good that I ignore it.

  “It's that politician's kid,” I hear a voice say from directly below me.

  I open my eyes and look down on a group of five armed officers from the DgS. The visors that normally shield their faces are casually raised as they talk to each other.

  “You mean that twerp that logged-in to that game for all those years?”

  “That's the one.”

  “You realize they've been paying for that kid to play games all day with our global credit budget?”

  “Oh, I know. I've been telling my partner for years that they should just unplug him and see what happens.”

  “That'd fry his nanomachines.”

  “Who cares? Just because his father is some kind of bigwig in DOTgov, that don't mean he should get any kind of special treatment. What do you think they would do if one of our kids got trapped in there? They'd turn them into a vegetable before we knew what was what.”

  “Still don't make
it right.”

  I'm so lost in the conversation that I don't realize how much of my sweat is dripping through the mesh wire covering. A rather large droplet hangs from the tip of my nose, but before I can wipe it away, it breaks loose and plops on to one of the officer's forehead. She looks startled for a moment and when she peers up to see where the drip came from, I push myself away from the opening. I think I move quickly enough for her not to see me, but the sudden shift of my weight makes the thin metal bend underneath me.

  The text changes to: “GO! GO! GO!”

  I lunge down the chamber on my hands and knees as I hear one of the officers yell out, “He's in the ventilation shaft!”

  01000000

  I can hear shouting through the metal walls of the ventilation shaft. Security guards are yelling at each other in the hallway below me. They're trying to follow my movements, trying to figure out where I'm going to end up. It sounds far from organized. Some of them think I'm heading toward higher levels. Some of them think I'm heading toward lower levels. When they decide on their own courses of action, they spread out in multiple directions.

  “You're lucky.”

  “No matter how many times people try to tell me that, I still don't believe it.”

  “You're going to be a lot less lucky if those guards catch you.”

  I can't argue with that.

  At the end of another long chamber, there is a large fan spinning, cutting through the beams of light from the other side. There are no other chambers leading off of this one.

  “Now what?” I say, annoyed that the glowing arrow led me down a dead end.

  “Keep going.”

  “I can't. There's a fan blocking my path.”

  “Go through it.”

  I actually laugh. It's a cold, dark laugh, but it's still odd. I'm not sure I remember the last time I laughed. Not in the real world anyway.

  “I can't go through it. The fan is active. I mean, if I go through it, this conversation is going to get cut short. Along with my neck.”