Project Northwoods

by Jonathan Charles Bruce

  “Enough!” Arbiter shouted, lunging forward with his fist above his head. The distance between them vanished as he brought his hand down in a crushing blow. In the last instant, she became a black, cloudy blur and the attack merely powdered the concrete of the walkway. He looked up, and Zombress was reclining in front of him, her head on one hand and the other pushing her glasses up lazily, with a thumb on one side and her index finger on the other.

  She smiled lazily and leaned forward. “Well, if you wanted to get in between my legs, Arb–”

  His hand grabbed her throat, cutting her off. He stood, yanking her into the air. “This time, you’ve gone too far!” he bellowed. She rolled her eyes, which he responded to by squeezing her throat tighter. “Where is Dark Saint? He tried to stop your plan!” He shook her when she didn’t speak. “Answer me!”

  Zombress hated to do it, but she had no choice. She had spent this long not touching the bastard, but she had to act quickly. Grabbing his arm for leverage, she swung her body back, then forward, thrusting her foot into his face. It was painful using her neck as a pivot, but she couldn’t risk being dragged away. The blow must have shocked the arrogant Bestowed, for he dropped her, covering his face as his oft-broken nose gushed. She collapsed to the ground, coughing, but she couldn’t waste time recovering. She scrambled to her feet, and then, sure enough, the pain hit her.

  She found it just as difficult as always to avoid screaming in agony as her face felt like it was being smashed under a building. Zombress stood, trying to get used to it, ignoring the way the world turned red as individual droplets of water materialized out of the damp pavement and climbed toward the sky. Motionless, defenseless, all she could do was listen as Arbiter stomped his way toward her.

  It took a great deal of effort to propel herself up, over him, then plummet downwards toward the sigil she had painstakingly carved into the concrete. She partially collapsed on it, but the golden etches burst to light, even though the first markings she made were starting to fade. Through the blinding protestations of her nerves, she stood up. Arbiter took a cautious step away from her. She cocked her head to the side, wheeled her arms and shouted, “Song of the Dark Mother!” The ground produced a bright blob of greenish light, wobbling and quaking before reaching a height of ten feet.

  It exploded with a tremendous flash. Zombress was already running when it popped, unleashing a horrific squealing to accompany the bright burst of light which had blinded anyone not looking away. A gaudy power, to be sure, but incredibly effective at making sure no one followed her.

  She moved so quickly that her motion was perceivable only as a miasmic haze. Zombress was already halfway up the steps to the Guild, and even Arbiter’s eyes would need a few more moments to adjust. In any case, the distraction had been successful. Provided she was quick, she could grab Aquaria and slip out the back before anyone noticed.

  Maybe.

  Mollie had never been more aware of her own mortality than she was at this moment.

  The threat of deletion had always seemed so comfortably far away, something that happened to unloved gaming programs or ineffective video editing software. At some point, entropy would break down the computer she called home and Arthur would move her to another location, secure and safe and able to continue learning.

  He always told her, from the moment he brought her home after saving her from the Guild’s deletion squad, that she could never venture far. That there were people who knew about her and didn’t take kindly to the fact that he stumbled upon a self-aware program. She didn’t care, as the idea seemed preposterous while Arthur was able to keep her safe.

  That just blew up in her face, didn’t it?

  She entered the Guild’s security computer and, after moving through some folders, came to the realization that something was stalking her as she was trying to find the surveillance videos. Not finding anything of value, she turned her attention to the stalker by copying a piece of her software as a self-deleting cluster bomb, one of her many tools with which she could disarm or destroy an aggressive anti-virus program. A useful skill she had developed through Arthur’s occasional purchase of security programs that she could study, disarm, and destroy. After all, she was a virus. A plucky, talking virus, sure. But most people wouldn’t take kindly to anything of the sort, even if it could provide breakfast conversation and a dissertation on the rise of anarcho-syndicalism.

  Whatever was following her had prepared for her defense.

  It destroyed the bomb so quickly she barely escaped the video folder intact before it aggressively started quarantining her possible hiding places. In a moment of what could be construed as panic, Mollie realized that it had preventatively shut down access to the Home Drive, no doubt realizing this was where she had originated. She had no choice but to flee, hoping that Arthur would understand and that she could reconnect with him somewhere along the line.

  AMALIA, Artificially Made Advanced Learning Intelligence Agent, moved through computer files by copying and pasting itself in a new folder and deleting the original. Up until now it had worked fine, but someone must have anticipated it and developed a counter-program. It dogged her endlessly, as though every move she made left some kind of trail for it to pick up and follow.

  Thanks to a remote user logged in to check their e-mail, she was able to flee the Guild Computer’s network and slink onto a home computer. But the access point had clearly remained open, and it was a moment longer before the entity followed her. Luckily, Mollie ducked through a list of IP addresses readily available on the e-mail server, chose one at random, and dove through.

  She had no idea where she was, but all the text files had extra u’s in them while still retaining much of American English. Once she had processed the fact that she was in England, the quarantining of files started. She flitted through more IP addresses, and found one which was perfect.

  Mollie found a social networking site, a small server but large enough to at least keep the thing chasing her lost for the moment. She flitted back and forth through files and folders, trying to find someone or something in New York. When she was able to find sixteen usable addresses, the quarantines started. Mollie panicked, and began to copy herself in place. Once, twice, three times…

  Fourteen addresses still were open.

  Four, five, six…

  Twel– ten addresses were unquarantined.

  The copies were only partial programs, essentially lobotomized shells of her core program. They all had a similar suicide code, a malicious executable which would essentially delete the entire root directory with everything inside it if that thing cornered them and tried to erase or otherwise restrict their movement.

  She couldn’t afford to wait. She released the mindless clones as eight addresses remained available.

  Mollie darted through in tandem with five of the duplicates. The sixth mindlessly bobbed back in the servers of the social network, unable to move as the electronic nightmare smothered all escape routes and closed in on the clone.

  The rest of the copies were lost to her, but she didn’t care. They didn’t think or feel quite like she did. They would experience no fear and there was no guarantee that the malevolent software would go after any of them once it had feasted on the unlucky program left behind.

  Back in New York, she wafted in the ether of a cable company’s servers. Despite the constant influx and outflow of information, it was calmer. She flitted through different folders, honing in on billing information. Once there, she sifted through scads of information, trying to locate someone who lived in the same apartment as Arthur…

  It was here.

  Mollie froze. The amount of data should at least buy her some time, but she didn’t know how it was even tracking her. Could she zip through a data file? Could she open nearby files at all or merely access the binary? She had gotten so lazy, so used to reading things in English, that the prospect of evaluating pages of ones and zeros was daunting, especially with that thing chasing her.

&nb
sp; She couldn’t tell if or how the thing was moving. But it seemed to operate similarly to her. Maybe it could only quarantine nearby files and folders. That would make sense… kind of. Instead of scanning from a fixed location, like a typical program, it seemed to physically roam in search of threats. If that was the case, it was following her based on the detritus of binary she was leaving behind.

  Desperately, she was scrolling through the billing information now. Mollie had to work quickly, as her pursuer was guessing where she was going based on the path she had just taken. It may not know exactly where she was, but if it could quarantine files and trap her there, all it had to do was guess where she was based on her movements.

  Mollie experienced something akin to relief as she found someone living at the apartment complex, their IP address listed in their file. Darting out of the folder, she made her way through to the network as a whole. Swarming behind her, the program quarantined dozens of outlets at once, trying to pin her in place. But the guesses were mostly wrong, and the one she was looking for was open and sucking in data like a whirlpool.

  Because it was a Digital TV Recorder.

  It was chaotic, to be sure, but the device’s operating system was familiar enough for her to adapt to and scan the network relatively quickly. It became apparent that someone was stealing her host’s cable, something which Mollie immediately took advantage of by darting through the connection.

  Here, the data extended to the thief’s computer, and she gleefully infected the fruit-themed operating system. She took a moment to check the active programs, found that the owner was currently on yet another social networking site and had recently chatted with a girl named Stair McWethy. The name rang familiar, Mollie remembering Arthur describing a red-haired girl whose father had threatened her creator with words like ‘pedophile’ and ‘murdered-in-a-dumpster’.

  To possibly buy her more time, she performed another copy-paste-lobotomy before Mollie fled to Stair’s computer. Once there, she overtook the monitor-mounted camera and microphone and peered out into the room.

  Pink. Everything was pink. Mollie suspected even the lights were tinged pink, but it may have been white light succumbing to the overwhelming pinkitude of the bedding, wallpaper, decorative rugs, bunnies, lampshades… the only thing that wasn’t was the girl working diligently on what looked like a giant mechanical bumblebee missing its wings. She cross-referenced her picture on the social website and came to the conclusion that the girl earnestly singing along to the 80’s synth-pop on her headphones was Stair.

  Her entrance point was quarantined, the other computer now infected with her pursuer.

  “Stair! Stair McWethy!” Mollie said before becoming painfully, annoyingly aware of the fact that the speakers had been physically turned off. Terror at her muteness was made all the worse as she was convinced the anti-virus was digesting the fake Mollie and realizing that it lacked the creamy brain filling of the real thing. The laptop computer was an old model, wired to the internet as opposed to wirelessly collecting and sending data. She needed to get the girl’s attention.

  Mollie opened the word processor and typed out, “UNPLUG THE COMPUTER FROM THE INTERNET.” The girl was still bobbing up and down to the music in her headphones. A few seconds passed, wherein Mollie fully understood the human idiom of ‘moving slower than molasses’. “STAIR, I AM ARTHUR LOVELASS’S COMPUTER PROGRAM. YOU NEED TO HELP ME.” Still, nothing. “THERE WILL BE INFINITE CANDY FOR YOU.” The girl stubbornly refused to look over, instead opting to focus on her… whatever it was. “KSDSHLSJKHDSLJDHS,” she typed out in annoyance, before erasing it. “IF I DIE, I’M GOING TO BE VERY DEAD, I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT.”

  While Stair just sat there, Mollie had never, ever, ever been more aware of her own death than at that moment. She became keenly aware that she would never hear Tim and Ariana arguing again, see the sky, watch the news, read a book… and there was Arthur, her clueless programmer who had gotten her into this mess and yet she couldn’t think of a single way she wanted to punish him because, at this point in time, all she wanted was for the girl to turn to the screen and do something, anything, to save her so she could just see her useless Arthur again and thank him for giving her everything she had ever wanted and that she was going to spend any free time he wanted with him to show just how much she appreciated…

  “Shit battery-operated piece of crap,” Stair said, standing up and pulling the earphones out. “Would it kill you to buy me an iPod?” If Mollie had a heart, it would have skipped a beat. The girl turned toward the computer and stopped as she stared at the screen. “Dad?” she called out as her eyes flitted nervously over the text.

  “DON’T CALL YOUR DAD. HE THINKS ARTHUR IS A PEDOPHILE. JUST UNPLUG THE INTERNET AND I WON’T UPLOAD THE VIDEO OF YOU SINGING RICK ASTLEY TO YOUTUBE.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  REPRIEVE

  June 18th, 2011

  After Midnight

  THE DOOR TO THE APARTMENT BURST OPEN. Tim and Arthur, wet and dirty from the resuming rainfall, scrambled in.

  “Get the blinds!” Arthur yelled to Tim as he slammed the door, locking and latching it.

  “I’m all over it!” Tim vaulted over the sofa, nearly tripping over it as he did so. Yanking the string, the blinds came smoothly down for a quarter of the way, only for one side to stop while the other continued without it. “Damn it!” yelped Tim, trying to rectify the blind-related mini-disaster which seemed to make the looming threat of… whatever it was… much bigger.

  Arthur fell against the door and slid down. He hit the floor and scrambled to remove the bag of spray paint cans from his wrist, sending it clattering to the floor. With a deep breath, he shoved his head in his hands. “I don’t think anyone saw us.”

  “You better hope that’s the case, Arthur Ashlie Lovelass.” Arthur’s heart stopped at the mention of his middle name, and decided to skip yet another beat in recognition of the voice that snarled it. He looked up at Ariana, arms folded and glaring icily at him.

  Arthur stood up and took a step toward her. “Ariana, we’ve got to…”

  “What happened to Talia?” Tim shouted to Arthur as the blinds were making their way incrementally downward. “Did you see where she went?”

  Before he could answer, Ariana shot the same irritated look in his direction. “Who’s Talia?”

  “Talia Illyanovich,” explained Arthur.

  She turned to look at him in disbelieving annoyance. “The vapid whore from channel thirty-seven? What would she be doing at the Heroes’ Guild?”

  “She was there to see…” Arthur started, then stopped. He gave her a sideways look. “Who said anything about the Heroes’ Guild?”

  Ariana threw an angry gesture toward the kitchen. Sitting in the dining area trying to look disinterested, Stair suddenly turned a shade of pink. To her side, a foreign laptop computer sat next to his. She slowly turned his computer around to reveal Mollie, whose iris had contracted in an effort to look like she wasn’t there.

  “She told her,” Stair offered meekly.

  “Traitor,” Mollie sighed.

  Stair looked at him for a moment, smiled briefly, then went back to staring at her computer. “Hi, by the way.”

  Arthur moved toward Mollie. “I thought you had run off! What happened?”

  “Run… you said she was with you!” Tim yelled from across the room.

  Ariana intercepted Arthur and shoved him backward, much harder than he had thought possible. “What happened was you, Arthur, put your friends in the stupidest possible position for all of you!” She put her fingers to her head. “How could you have thought this was a good idea?”

  “Look, Ari, I don’t want to…” Arthur stuttered.

  She looked up at him, squinting. “I was not talking to you.” She turned to Tim, who had managed to finally negotiate the blinds fully downward. “Timothy James McFadden…”

  “It wasn’t anything serious!” Tim didn’t move from his position, instead opting to peer out the wind
ow through a tiny gap he had made with his fingers in the blinds. “We just wanted to mess up the place!”

  “Maybe I should go…” Stair uneasily slid off her chair.

  “Take me with you,” whispered Mollie.

  “Sit your ass right there, Stair,” ordered Ariana. Stair did exactly what she was told, sitting ramrod straight and staring off into the distance.

  “Why are you even here?” Arthur asked, as though he was aware of her for the first time.

  “I was promised candy at one point,” Stair said meekly, looking at Mollie. Mollie responded by dimming her iris.

  Ariana looked at her, spare hostility boiling over toward the younger girl. “Sure! Grab some snacks!” Stair shrank under her gaze before Ariana snapped her attention back to Arthur, sending a shudder down his spine. “Better get cozy. Arthur loves to make a fool out of me in front of an audience.”

  Arthur’s mouth worked for a moment before he could summon words. “Ariana, what is your…”

  “What is it today? Your dick feeling small and you decided to drag Tim along for a suicide mission?”

  Arthur took the only route out he could see. He pointed at Tim. “He could have said no!”

  At this, the blinds guardian whipped around and pointed right back. “And let you get your dumb ass murdered? I don’t think so!”

  “Arthur did guilt us into going,” Mollie muttered.

  Arthur glared at the computer. “Thanks.”

  Ariana took a deep breath, her fingers on the bridge of her nose. “Alright, everyone calm down.” It was a strange statement coming from her. When she looked up, she had a glassy-eyed look of forced serenity which at once calmed and terrified Arthur to his very core.

  “We…” he started.

  “He,” Tim interjected.