End Code

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  Without a single question as to my destination or purpose, and with a trust that I will probably never understand, he simply says, “Be safe.”

  “I will,” I answer back.

  But I'm lying.

  There's nothing safe about what I'm about to do.

  01100011

  The clean account that the NPCs set up for me to live with Ekko and his partner allows me to safely walk through the tower without worry. This fact doesn't stop me from tightening up every time I pass through a security scanner, nor does it grant me the strength to make eye contact with any of the DgS officers I pass, but in the end I'm able to board a train for Old Russia without issue. I sit down next to an elderly woman who spends the entire ride telling me about her trip and how her son was granted a child license and that she's traveling to meet her new granddaughter. I smile and nod as best as I can.

  Luckily, the passenger train moves faster than the cargo train I took to Ekko's tower. I reach my father's tower room with a little over two hours left on the validity of the mind prison password.

  It takes me a moment, but with Cyren's encouragement, I push the buzzer next to the door. When there's no answer, I push it again, this time holding it in for nearly a minute. Finally, the door slides open and my father appears on the other side.

  It takes him a second to respond to the sight of me, but when his eyes enlarge, his hands lunge for me, grabbing onto my shoulders and yanking me toward him. One hand grabs the back of my head and pulls me into his chest, burying my face against his paper-thin shirt.

  “Where have you... what have you...”

  He doesn't know what he's trying to say, what he's feeling. He's grasping for anything.

  “You shouldn't draw attention to yourself,” Cyren says into my ear. “They may be watching him.”

  “Dad, we should go inside.”

  He looks down the hallway cautiously and pushes me inside. I glance over at the mirror screen above the sink. A news-cast is playing. The sound is muted, but I can see a video of my gargantuan-sized avatar standing over the super-highway right before I logged-out.

  My father steps in front of me and grabs me by the shoulders again, staring into my eyes. I try to look away, but I see the glisten of tears forming in his eyes.

  “Dad...”

  “No,” he says. “I need a second.”

  “We don't have a second,” I say, pulling away from him. “We need to talk. And we need to do it fast.”

  “It was you,” he says, pointing toward the mirror screen. “I knew it was you. They told me they arrested you, but when I saw this hacker... this super-user on the news-casts, breaking into data-banks using a cowboy avatar... I knew it. You're him... aren't you?”

  I don't know why I'm hesitant to tell him. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of his reaction or frustrated that I will have to explain to him how or why I do what I do, but he sees through my silence and knows the truth.

  “I knew it.” His eyes go distant, cold. “You can't be here. You have to leave.”

  “Tell him why you're here. Be honest.”

  I inhale as if the air will inflate my resolve. “I wouldn't have come here if it wasn't important. I need your help, Dad.”

  The shock on his face is salted with disgust. “My help? With what? This rebellion against DOTgov? Did you really think I would help you with that?”

  I don't listen to Cyren. I just lash back.

  “No! Of course not! A true patriot would never put his own son before his government!”

  He swats at the air, dismissing my accusation. “It has nothing to do with patriotism. Like your little crusade has nothing to do with changing anything. You're just attacking something because... because that's all you know how to do.” He looks exhausted by his own words. “It's those stupid games you play. All they've taught you is reflexive reaction. Shoot this, kill that, destroy, destroy, destroy. Is that how you really think you accomplish anything in life?”

  “He doesn't understand your motivation. Don't argue with him. Talk to him.”

  I release the air from my lungs to deflate the anger that's building inside me. How do I change the mind of such a stubborn man?

  “Dad, what I'm doing isn't a rebellion. It isn't a crusade. I'm not trying to topple the government. I'm trying to-”

  “What? Are you just causing chaos? Just having fun? My god. You aren't a rebellious teenager. You're a toddler that's knocking over his tower of blocks. This is some kind of infantile attempt to-”

  “Dad!” My voice breaks into such a shrill tone that it stabs at the air, cutting off his rant. “This isn't about me. This isn't about DOTgov. This isn't about patriotism or rebellion or... or any of that. This is about my friends.”

  I'm panting, trying to catch my breath after rapidly shooting the words from my mouth. But it worked. He pauses, raising one eyebrow.

  “Your friends?”

  “Yes,” I say at a much more normal volume. “My friends. Xen and Fantom and Worlok and... and Cyren.”

  I leave out the thousands of NPCs stored in my nanomachines. Cyren has told me in the past that some things are better left unsaid.

  My father points at the mirror above his sink. Now a video is playing from six months ago. I'm dodging between DOTgov officers as a data-bank explodes behind me. It was an early hack. Sloppy.

  My father is nearly growling as he asks, “What does that have to do with your friends?”

  I close my eyes as I speak, somehow hoping that will hide me from the pain of the truth. “They were arrested. When we broke into the Trash Bin. They were put in mind prison for helping me. It's my fault they're in there, Dad. I'm responsible for getting them locked up and it's my responsibility to get them out.”

  All of the sudden, his entire attitude changes. His anger and frustration melts into sympathy for his delusional child. “Son. If they were sent to mind prison, there isn't anything you can do. That place is for cyberterrorists. There's no appeal process. There are no court procedures you can go through. It's off the books. It's as close as we get to the death penalty these days. Your friends are-”

  “No.”

  “-gone.”

  I want to lash out again. I want to tell him how fearful he became after my mother died. I want to accuse him of his addiction to inaction.

  “Hurting him won't make you feel any better,” Cyren says, resting her nonexistent hand on my shoulder. “Focus on your goal.”

  I breathe, slow and steady. “You're wrong, Dad. They aren't gone. In fact, I know exactly where they are. That's why I need your help.”

  “What do I have to do with this? I have no influence in DOTgov anymore. Your criminal behavior saw to that. I work for an agency in charge of DOTedu's curriculum now. There are no more favors left for me to cash in.”

  “I don't need you to ask for any favors. I don't need you to do anything, really. The reason I've been breaking into the data-banks is because I've been looking for information on the mind prison. And I found it, Dad. I found everything I need to save my friends. All I need now is a DOTgov account so that I can get inside and-”

  “My account? You want my account?”

  “Temporarily. Just to move around inside without drawing attention. I'll switch yours with my own. You'll still have a clean account and-”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Once you're inside... even if you find your friends, do you really think you can walk out of a secret prison with your gang of cyberterrorists? What's your plan?”

  I mentally ask Cyren, but she reluctantly answers, “We're still working on it.”

  I'm about to answer, to tell him that there is no plan and he should trust me because I'm his son. But then I remember what Cyren taught me about empathy, to look at the world from someone else's point of view. My father isn't going to allow his son to risk everything. And that's because he already lost my mother. The most important person in the world to him. His wife. The woman he loved.
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br />   And so I tell him about Cyren.

  I tell him about how we met. I tell him about every battle where we fought alongside each other. I tell him how we both felt like outsiders, yet felt accepted by each other. I tell him about our first kiss. I tell him about the home we made inside DangerWar 2 and what we both sacrificed to try to save it. I tell him about the lengths in which I went to save her from deletion. I tell him about where she is now, and how much she's helped me to understand other people. And myself. I tell him how much I've learned about coding and programming and hacking and the inner workings of NextWorld. I tell him about Fantom and how she is the only one that can remove Cyren from my nanomachines, free her to live a life inside NextWorld. I talk from the heart, speaking the truth that weighs on my chest both as a suffocating responsibility and a swaddling blanket of security.

  I'm not sure what I expect. Maybe for him to cut me off and tell me to quit lying or talking fantastical nonsense. Maybe I expect him to get confused halfway through my explanation and tune me out. But as I tell my tale, the defiant look in my father's eyes softens. He uncrosses his arms and sits down next to me. He listens, really listens, as I talk about love and what it means to me. It's like he sees me for the first time.

  As I finish talking, Cyren appears in the room. Tears are streaming down her cheeks, but I know it's not sadness in her eyes.

  She just mouths the words, “I love you.”

  “I felt that way once,” my father says, his voice shaking. “Your mother was... my everything.”

  I put my hand on his back, my palm pressing between his shoulder blades as I ask, “Dad, what would you have been willing to do to save her?”

  “Anything,” falls from his mouth without a second thought, but he catches himself and says, “but this is different. You're talking about code. An NPC. She isn't real...” He glances at me with a weak, pleading look. “Is she?”

  “Right now, I don't care if you believe me that Cyren is real. Do you believe that what I feel is real?” I stand up from the bed and look him in the eye, stronger, older, more confident than I ever have in front of my father as I ask him with a punching finality, “Do you believe me when I tell you that I love her?”

  01100100

  There's no tearful goodbye. There's no emotional breakdown. There's no uproarious celebration. The shift in attitude when my father allows Cyren to switch our accounts isn't monumental, at least not outwardly, but when he clasps my hand in his and wishes me luck, a wall around my heart shatters. I really couldn't ask for anything more. To ever think my father would tell me he loved me, or was proud of what I was doing, would be the same as asking him to change his species. My father is who he is, for better or worse, but finding that common thread, that link between us, creates a relationship with him that I've never felt before. When we recognized the relationship between his love for my mother and my love for Cyren, we could finally see eye to eye. We could finally act like family.

  The train ride to Old Japan is fast, and when we cross the expanse of murky water between coasts, it's the first time I see something other than towers. The distance is disconcerting. Being able to see so far, being able to see the horizon, is overwhelming. The only other time I've been able to see off into the distance like this is in a virtual world, and for a few seconds, it's almost like I'm safely back in NextWorld. But soon enough we reach the other coastline and my window is filled with the blur of tower walls zipping past.

  As we near our destination, I become increasingly aware of my own anxiety. I've been blocking it out, keeping my nervousness at a distance, fooling myself into believing everything was going to work out. But now, as I get closer and closer to the location of the prison, the fact that I'm traveling with my father's account attached to my nanomachines makes my hands shake against the seat.

  “It's going to be alright,” Cyren says when she notices the biological change inside me.

  “Is it? I'm walking into this place blind.”

  “You're not blind. We'll be right there with you. We have blueprints and guard shifts and-”

  “Is that enough? I mean, if I somehow manage to get inside without anyone questioning why a low level DOTgov employee is entering a secret prison, you don't think anyone is going to wonder why someone my age is wandering the hallways?”

  Cyren appears in the seat next to me with a coy smirk on her face. She crosses her arms and leans away from me as she asks, “Do you really think we can't come up with a better plan than 'walk in the front door and wander around?' When do you think you'll stop underestimating what thousands of digital intelligences are capable of?”

  “Maybe, I don't know, you could fill me in on the plan. Or is it a surprise?”

  She laughs as she sets her hand on my knee and says, “Okay. Okay. Just breathe.”

  “I'm breathing.”

  “No. You're gasping for air. You know that you're no good when you're panicking. You need to stay calm. Center yourself. Find your balance.”

  She's right. Again. I close my eyes, take a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. My breaths become small and easy. My muscles relax. The grip I have on the seat loosens.

  “Good,” she says, cupping my hand between hers. “Now, we analyzed the layout of the scanners and the main entrance isn't a possibility. It's manned by DOTgov security. Even with the password, they're going to ask questions... questions we don't have answers to.”

  “I'm really trying to have confidence in your plan, Cyren, but this isn't-”

  “Just listen. Once you're inside, the scanners aren't going to care who you are, as long as you're a part of DOTgov.”

  “I'm still not hearing your plan to get me inside. The main entrance-”

  “-is not the only way in,” she says with a smile. “If you must know, I actually got the idea from you.”

  “How so?”

  “When you hacked your avatar to appear as data marked for deletion. That was smart.”

  “Thanks. But I'm not an avatar anymore and neither are those guards. We can't hack the real world.”

  “No. But the mind prison is made up of multiple levels of E-Wombs designed to keep the prisoners logged-in twenty-four hours a day. That means there are waste disposal units that have to enter and exit the facility. We can hack the waste disposal units to see you as... excrement.”

  The magnetic rails release a low tone that makes my ears pop as the train slows and enters the Old Japan station. I continue waiting for Cyren to laugh. The plan must be a joke. There's no way I'm getting inside a waste disposal unit.

  “Yes. You are,” she says very pointedly. “There is literally no other way. The tower has no windows. Nothing goes in or out. Everything they need to survive is on site. The ventilation is pumped across miles of underground filtration tubes. Waste disposal units are the only things that enter or exit directly into the tower. We've figured out the path for Old Japan's waste disposal. This tower's waste disposal unit will carry you directly to the mind prison.”

  Imagining what's inside those things makes my stomach turn. Collecting the entirety of what every tower runs down their sink or flushes down their toilet, waste disposal units are unmanned, flying plastic tubs of liquid awfulness. Even if I was lucky enough to crawl inside an empty one, it would still be filled with an odor foul enough to knock me unconscious.

  “I'm sorry, but this is our only option.”

  “I'd rather try to fight my way through the front door,” I say unconvincingly.

  When the doors of the train slide open and the crowds of people elbow their way past each other, I'm still sitting. The NPCs urge me out of my seat and I find myself fighting my way out of the train with the rest of the bodies. I keep telling myself why I'm doing what I'm about to do. I remind myself what the end goal is. I picture all of us, all of my friends, together again. Safe. Secure. Free.

  Cyren guides me through the halls and elevators until I reach the corner of the bottom floor. It's colder in the lower levels.
Everything looks aged. Spots of orange rust run down the walls like a corrosive liquid. These are the floors that once housed the initial tenants, the very first citizens that signed up for a new way of life.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Outdated technology,” she says as she walks alongside me, her hips swaying with confidence. “It's the easiest to hack.”

  I stand silently in awe of her. She smiles back at me, reading my thoughts.

  “Here,” she points at a small doorway on the wall. “This is the-”

  “I know what it is,” I say, remembering the waste disposal passageway I was forced to crawl through when Fantom helped me escape my own tower.

  “Touch the screen,” she says, looking over my shoulder.

  I wipe the dust and grime off the screen next to the small doorway and press my palm against it.

  When the screen registers my father's account, Cyren winks at me and says, “Be right back,” before disappearing.

  I keep my palm pressed against the screen, watching the graphical interface glitch out a few times before blinking back to life.

  Cyren appears next to me again and says, “All set. Climb on in.”

  The label was scratched off long ago, but when I open the hatch and release the gaseous odor, there's no mistaking the smell of sewage. I laugh at the absurdity of it all and crawl inside before I think too hard about what I'm doing. My body barely fits through the opening, but once I'm inside the foul smelling chamber, the shaft is much larger. I press my bare feet against one wall and my back against another. The walls are slippery, coated in slime and mucus. When I crawled up the shaft in my own tower, I was on a higher floor. It's worse on the bottom floor. The bodily waste of every floor above me travels through here.

  “I barely made it the last time I had to crawl up one of these things.”

  “Don't worry. Falling down will be a lot easier than climbing up.”