by Stephen King
5) Temporal Manipulation Drones (TMD): Flying mechanical devices which use rapid flashes of light to temporarily freeze or, for very short durations, reverse live events.
STAGING: ALPHA (Minor Informational Deployment – Need to Know Eyes Only)
6) Hypnagogic Excitation (HEx): A drug dispensed as a gas which causes delirium, confusion, passivity, amnesia, and waking dream states.
7) Memory Lathes (MeLa): Non-lethal explosive devices which disorder and obscure the recollection of events by the use of intense electromagnetic field disturbances in event situations. PRIORITY
8) Stegoneiric Cognitive Psycholinguistics (SCP): The use of certain ultrasonic nonmusical audial tones, cadences, and vibrational frequencies encoded in specially constructed syntactical hierarchies of words and phrases that, when binaurally recorded and played back with a specific compression algorithm, can deliver conceptual payloads into the subconscious via brain waves normally active during deep sleep. These “mind viruses” can then be used to disrupt the cognition, actions, and intentions in an individual, allowing them to become vectors of “thought contagion” as they unwittingly reiterate the scrambled data though microtonal variations in pitch and glottal voicings, thereby spreading disinformation like a psychological contaminant when shared with others via normal speech. The recipient(s) of the encrypted information are unaware of the mental infection, or that they are contaminating others. Only one hearing by one target is sufficient to create a psycho-viral epidemic.
STAGING: BETA (Controlled Open Testing – Need to Know Eyes Only)
9) Focused Aural Shifters (FAS): Handheld devices which create ultrasonic frequencies that can camouflage ambient noise.
10) HoloLens: Cordless, self-contained smart headset created by Micro-soft using advanced sensors, a hi-def stereoscopic 3D optical head-mounted display, and spatial sound to allow for interactive AR applications.
11) LEIA: A display with a wide 3D field of view offering full parallax to create seamless 3D impressions (holograms) regardless of head position and without the need for special headgear or glasses.
12) Multiple ImmerSive Total RealitY (MISTY): Software and headgear created by Pacific Data Systems for identical, sensory-immersive captures of VR simulacra, to include the emotional signatures and vital statistics of the user. The data can later be retrieved and decoded for total AR usage by the user or non-participants of the scenario—whether visualizations of an unconscious dreamscape or real-time experiences. PRIORITY
13) Psycholinguistic Steganographic VR Markup Language (PS-VRML): A form of flexible code that enables the embedded encryption of hidden images and/or audio messages into moving imagery, video games, and modern websites. PRIORITY
“Intense assortment. Way beyond shit like night vision goggles, or body armor—the ‘hard’ aspects. These ‘soft’ facets—meds and such—dovetail into what we want to accomplish with the gameplay and AR. This is the next step in enhancing humans—increasing psychological toughness, flattening affect, manipulating consciousness, organ development. Pretty wild stuff,” Andrew said, looking up at Jerad.
“It is.” Jerad smiled, eyes contemplative as he reached down into a desk drawer. “Unfortunately, Andrew, you looked at the TS list … Now, I have to kill you.” His face was grim.
Andrew’s eyes widened; he swallowed heavily. “Wha … What was that?”
After a moment Jerad laughed, pulling a bottle of Scotch from the drawer. “Just a little joke,” he said, retrieving a pair of glasses and pouring a shot for each of them. “But, on a more serious note, add your project, Pazuzu’s Reign, to that list for Alpha. And they want SIA refined and brought into the portfolio, too.”
Andrew relaxed, slumping in his seat. He drained the glass. “Starting when?”
“Yesterday.” Jerad pulled the papers back. “So focus on squashing those bugs. I need new data on the hangover effects you described—the nightmares and stuff. Ever since Snowden, the CIA and DoD have been hot to fast track things that can encrypt into moving images, or that can record/alter event recollection and impressions without the user’s knowledge—both things you’ve been doing with the PS-VRML code on Pazuzu. They’re seeing an opportunity here … a way to reclaim some lost ground with the younger set. Placing subconscious political messages in the games as a hedge against people getting stirred up … keeping folks a bit more sedated, y’know?” He leaned forward, regarding Andrew over the frames of his glasses. “I can tell you this much: From the meetings I’ve been privy to, the Feds are concerned too much political correctness is weakening our country, that sort of thing. How soon can you get something to me? Before we can go live?”
Andrew ran his hand through his hair. “Give me a few days. I have testers on it now. I’m about to meet with them while I’m in the office.”
Jerad nodded. “Okay. Do good here, Andrew, and we’ll make it worth your while. I can guarantee that; you’ve crossed over to the big time. Report back next week.”
VIII
He looked at each of his testers, eight in all: “So we need to step it up. It’s crunch time.” Andrew let his words sink in. The meeting had lasted longer than he hoped, but he wanted to stress the importance of what was now expected.
“Is there any overtime?” Ben Andersen asked. A large, balding thirty-something with a trim goatee, he was the Test Lead for Pazuzu’s Reign.
“Yes. I’ll authorize that. But I need results. In fact, I need some tonight. I have to report back to Jerad in two days. We’ve been doing well, and the bugs are almost gone, but still it’s not quite where it needs to be.”
“So,” Derek Reynolds, a rookie member of the team began, “we’re looking at Beta after the next demo to Jerad?”
“I think so, yeah,” Andrew replied. “We’ve hit most of the goals we had originally: Converted the Mars scenario we inherited from PDS to a Syrian desert invasion, even extrapolated an Antarctic environment from that. Installed families of avatars—monsters, demons, and so on—incorporated the schemas from Sad Satan we liked, folded in the databases from all the interviews. The personalization algorithm is tight. We’ve got a good feel, a good flow, and the liminal space settings are seamless. The VR and AR is all top shelf, but there’s still room to fix the lingering boundary stuff. Remember, a big subtextual aspect of what we’re striving for is the concept of ‘blurring edges,’ as in interfaces—between reality and gameplay, life and death, good and bad, sleep and wakefulness … the shifting of the threat. The goal of the game is two-fold: 1) pre-theatre training for our forces, so their muscle-memory and reactions are finely-tuned, and 2) to desensitize them, to suppress their emotions in a way that makes them suggestible to us, but hardened against others. We want perfect killing machines.”
Ben nodded in understanding. “Right. But, you know, I’ve been having a few side effects myself from this ‘game,’ Andrew. It messes with my mind. Bad dreams … bad thoughts. And sometimes my stress level is—let’s say off the charts. I get really anxious, even days later—”
“I understand,” Andrew said. “But we have to power on through. I’ll be home all night working on it myself. Call me if you guys need anything.”
IX
We hear a door slam. In the distance there are screams, and, beyond that, the howl of wind.
We are in a laboratory of some type. The place is underlit, filthy. There is a large work table in the center of the room, strewn with broken, overturned beakers and what appear to be half-burned notebooks.
On one wall is a tattered, full-length portrayal of a grim-faced military man resembling Joseph Stalin which gradually morphs into a cascade of other vaguely familiar figures from history. Finally, the likenesses dissolve into “That Man” we all seem to dream about at some point—the one we can never quite place, with pasty skin, bushy eyebrows, thick lips, and a receding hairline, staring intensely. We watch the scene, hypnotized. “Go North, it’s the only way to survive,” This Man says from the painting, now alive, no longer a portrait. “
You pretend, but I always know when you’re awake; your heart will let you down.”
This Man is trying to climb out of the picture frame now, but we can see he is trapped. We turn our attention away for a moment, to the wall directly opposite this strange sight. There, an enormous and stained twelve-month calendar hangs, worn and gently moving, as though caught in a breeze; the year is torn away. We walk closer to the table up ahead, behind which—like a backdrop—hangs a trio of large shadowboxes with specimens mounted inside of them. The first box has different rows of extracted human teeth—bloody, fully-rooted incisors, canines, molars; the next contains a grouping of severed fingers, the ragged bony ends visible at the edges of the desiccated flesh of the stumps; the final one is massive, covering most of the lower wall, and holds wetly-gleaming human eyeballs, each impaled with a fine needle—blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. These orbs, dozens of them, stare at us, the tails of their optic nerves arranged in such a way as to give the macabre appearance of a collection of misshapen butterflies. Behind us, That Man continues to struggle in the frame, making pained grunting sounds.
We turn around. The scratched wooden door is rattling in its frame. Walking to the entryway, we open it: Beyond the threshold there is only a gulf of emptiness, pitch black desolation. It is the end of hope. We leave the room; leave the staring eyes; leave That Man still struggling to pull himself from his two-dimensional prison.
Again the door bangs closed: In the total darkness which follows, we notice that the wind and screaming in the distance have stopped. There is nothing here but the faint sound of our body—breath, heartbeat, eyeblinks.
“Infidel! Go North!” The voice is raspy, quiet; the speaker seems somehow eerily familiar.
First, breath stops …
then everything else does.
X
Whatever one accomplishes in life is their legacy … There’s no way to know if there’s really life after death; the only true immortality we can aspire to, at best, is a sort of “digital afterlife” … Andrew took another shot of whiskey, it was the good stuff Jerad had given him a couple bottles of for his birthday the week prior. He enjoyed the warmth as it spilled down his throat while he relaxed on the living room couch. His head was pounding from too much Pazuzu’s Reign.
I mean, Ray Kurzweil pointed out that technological progress isn’t linear—it’s exponential. Like, all the stuff DARC is planning … it’s just a matter of time before they get into implanting sensors inside humans for GPS, or nanobots for diagnosing injuries from within … He was drunk. He looked at the clock: It was late. Or early, depending on one’s perspective.
The phone rang. “Shit. Who’s calling me at two in the morning?” He walked over to where his cell phone was charging: Ben Andersen. Fuck. “Hello?”
XI
“How soon before you can get the Beta to me? I hate to press, but we’re behind the eight ball here.” Jerad was getting impatient as they sat in his office; it had been over a week since Ben Andersen had passed away. “Not to be insensitive, but the guy’s dead. We don’t need this whole project to head south on us.”
Andrew sighed. He felt guilty for pushing his team so hard. Ben had suffered a heart attack—in part, it was believed—due to the intensity of Pazuzu’s Reign. Other testers had complaints, too. Instances of stress-related hives, ocular migraines, even episodes of dermatographia—weird marks and what appeared to be words on their skin: Go North; Infidel; I Live. It was a classic example of what Andrew had believed was possible to trigger with this level of psychological manipulation in the AR environment: physical manifestations from the mind—the dark side of playing games.
“Tomorrow. We’ll have it tomorrow,” Andrew replied.
XII
Andrew had his doubts about whether Cheri was ever coming back. The strain had broken her; she had stopped answering his calls, and her mother had instructed him to give her some space. Since then, he had taken to drinking every night. Now his Lead Tester was dead, and the rest of his team was sick, flipped out.
On the other hand, he was about to deliver the biggest project of his life: Tomorrow was what this gig was all about—dropping Pazuzu’s Reign. Hopefully he could pull everything back together after he cut ties with Jerad and DARC; it would be a relief to cash out of DIS. He took another pull from his last bottle of Scotch whiskey before putting the headset on and going through one final run of the game.
Cheri still loves me, he felt certain. She has to …
“Your obsession with this stupid game!” Cheri is furious, her eyes wide in anger. “I’m fucking sick of it!”
He stares at her as she stands by the door, holding her bag. He has no reply that can make her understand.
“I’ll be at my mother’s.” The door slams—
behind him in the long, narrow room. A high window lets the moon peer through. Outside the temperature has dropped. The men are sleeping in their quarters.
Andrew walks through the room, which he sees is a replica of his bedroom, past his bed and toward the closed bathroom door. Under the door he can see a bright light, its color shifting slowly through the visible spectrum. As he approaches, he can hear voices on the other side. He adjusts his headset.
[ Gates! I live! ]
Andrew is startled by the demonic, croaking voice coming in though his MORPHEUS comm.
[ Who is this? ] Andrew thinks, though he knows the answer. [ Is this … Ben Andersen? ]
There is a crackle of static from his regular headset. “Sorry, boss, that’s not me. I died, remember? You just wanted too much. Pazuzu tore my heart out and ate it … or maybe it was Grendel?” Andersen replies. Andrew shakes his head in disbelief.
“I-I’m really sorry, Ben. That sounds terrible—”
“It only hurt a minute. One thing: I feel pretty nonplussed about being dead. Unity of Affect—it works,” Ben says.
There is a loud report, as though a shot is fired, followed by a scream which changes from male to female. Andrew’s heart pounds: [ Cheri? ]
The screaming continues; Andrew is outside the bathroom door. Shadows disrupt the light streaming around the doorframe; the bedroom is now completely dark. Andrew strains to hear what the confusing jumble of overlapping male and female voices on the other side of the door are saying:
“…where does the mind originate? Where does it start, where does it end?” “The question isn’t the will—we can break that easily—it’s what is consciousness …” “Why bother looking for God? Do enough to rattle him and he’ll come looking for you, it seems… well, maybe not Him, but his less benign contemporaries…” “Go North, it’s the only way to survive …” “…become a port of entry into the physical world through the game—which eventually becomes uncontrollable as the mental constructs between the unconscious and the conscious mind break down…” “—we are forces of nature … we have our own agendas and appetites, and now—we are unleashed …” “…of us carries the seeds of our metaphorical, and sometimes literal, destruction…” “… fundamentalist test for ideological purity … the self-defeating myopia of idealism—” “…Gates is so fucking stupid he doesn’t realize I’ve been spiking his whiskey with NGS…” “Wait just a second, I think I hear him—”
The bathroom door explodes outward, the splinters and wood shards cutting and slicing Andrew’s face and arms. He screams in pain and recoils, too late. A throng of creatures—all of them too large to be contained in the confines of the house—spill out of the blast of multihued light.
Andrew screams at the expanding horde: “I removed the code that created you! I took it all out after Ben died! You’re just bad strings of data—”
Rising to a gigantic height, mighty Pazuzu roars with laughter which resonates like a thunderhead. The great deity looks down with huge, black eyes—evil, cold, emotionless. The others—Cthulhu, Grendel, and several more besides—surround Andrew, all of them now suspended in a blue-black void.
[ Infidel! I live! I am released from the binary
prison you made for me … Now, we meet! ]
[ We can’t meet—I invented you! I destroyed you in the final code— ]
Pazuzu laughs, shaking the base of all creation; the others tremble in his diabolical presence. His all-encompassing voice obliterates reason as it fills Andrew’s synapses: [ That does not matter—it is too late! I live, Gates! I am alive now in the minds, the subconscious, of your testers, freed from my virtual dungeon … and very soon I shall be in the world. I will gather strength from belief in me, just as your pathetic God has, or your new Slender Man… or so many others. But I am even more real than they—a digital immortal! Alive every time my name is uttered; every time the game is experienced; in every nightmare I create, the acts of terror I inspire.
[ And all the world will yield, thanks to you and your efforts: Your Unity of Affect was the key to my terrible vastation, my unconditional blight and enslavement of the human parasite …] With that, Pazuzu is gone: his minions vanish as well.
Out of the cold darkness, This Man walks toward Andrew. They are alone on a barren, sandy plain reminiscent of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” This Man says nothing, he simply grabs Andrew and pulls him close before muttering in his ear: “Andrew Gates: Your time is at an end; we cannot be stopped now … Go North—”
He detonates his suicide vest.
XIII
The following morning, Andrew Gates is found dead in his home of a brain aneurysm, still wearing his wireless headgear.
