by Hugo Huesca
Over and over again, and it all happened in the blink of an eye.
In the end, only Keles remained.
Keles-403 was the last surviving Keles. He floated triumphantly over the decaying remains of his copies and laughed. From the perspective of anyone reasonable, this Keles had been very lucky to survive until the end. From his perspective…His entire life had been an uninterrupted string of victories.
He had survived and thrived in Ankara. He had survived and thrived in the States, where he had fooled Charli Dervaux into bankrolling him. He had survived the mind-upload that had left his body behind. He had survived even his own copies trying to steal his name and identity away from him.
Undefeated. If there had been any doubt in his mind—and there hadn’t—about his destiny, this was all the proof he needed.
“I’ll need to work on the copies trying to steal my identity away,” he said to himself. He was secure in his strength: if he created more copies, then surely he’d be able to defeat them all. But that would take time, an effort that would be better spent working towards his goal. That effort wasn’t efficient.
Keles had all the time in the world. Time flowed differently in the Core, it seemed. He was barely aware that his hostile takeover of the PDF base in the real world had failed. Good.
Always test a new idea. The Fort had been his prototype, and he was going to run the real thing as soon as his army was done…
The first step was to create a new copy of his mind, but this time he didn’t run it. He merely kept it in stasis, observing his code and prodding at it. Using the copy’s mind as a working board, he stripped away all sense of purpose and free will. He needed the perfect soldier, not more generals.
It took him several attempts. He had to work from a backup several times, but it didn’t take him that long. After all, people had achieved results like the one he wanted for centuries now, and they only needed a hammer and chisel to smack at their patient’s skull.
Keles “smiled” when his prototype was done. Deriving satisfaction from his hard work was a useful motivator. He raised the satisfaction a little bit, letting the simulated-pleasure wash through his code.
He tested copies of his soldier several times, made sure he worked without a kink or problem. Made sure there was no self-awareness or even a hint of possible betrayal further down the line.
“This is more an NPC than those abominations,” Keles muttered, thinking of the life-like programs wandering about in the upper layers of the Signal, those that had been corrupted by mankind’s foolish tinkering. “Yes, you’ll do nicely.”
His soldier would never be as strong as himself, but Keles could use an infinite amount of them. He added a final line of code in his soldier:
“Go forth and multiply.” There was a lot of processing power here. Perhaps even an infinite amount. Keles didn’t feel like sharing it with anyone but himself.
His soldier soon became two. Then, a while afterward, four… at first, each duplication was fast, almost instant. It slowed an infinitesimal amount with each iteration, small enough that Keles wouldn’t notice in his current state of mind.
Far away, by the green Core surrounded by energy and data, the orange lightning intensified and slowly grew into a storm.
The last step in his preparations was to create several backups of his real mind and keep them inactive and hidden. It was an improvement on the previous plan of former Keles-1. Having the backups active at the same time would only give him trouble, and its lack of efficiency had already been proven.
The space around the Core seemed to be unending and Keles could move around very, very fast. As fast as a thought. A hundred backups would do. He programmed them to auto-update with his new memories every few minutes. If something were to happen to his own self, the controlling program would start one of the backups to replace him. Now he wasn’t merely immortal. He was eternal.
Keles was sure he wouldn’t need the backups, but he was well-disciplined. His training in Ankara had kept him alive, and he wasn’t about to throw it down the window now that he’d ascended into a new plane of existence.
After all, he knew he was better than that.
“Now, let’s pay our friends in the PDF a visit. It is time they show me the proper respect.”
11 CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WINGMAN
THE PORTAL TOOK me away from the puppet-army before things could get too hectic. I didn’t realize I’d called for Rune to take me away from the Core, but I guess pure, unadulterated terror does the job just fine.
I appeared back on the PDF Algernon. A quick, automatic glance at my internal watch let me know only a few minutes had passed since the other Cole and I left. The contrast of the white, clinical feel of the room and the black infinity of the Signal made me lose my bearings for a second.
Caputi, I thought. I need to tell Caputi.
“Cole?” asked Beard, still in the same spot. “What’s going on? You look pale, buddy.”
“Shit hit the fan,” I told him as I ran to his side. “Big time. Hasn’t Cole told you yet? It’s Keles. Turns out his attempt with the VR-Brain worked.”
Beard wasn’t the kind of person to ask if I was sure. He simply took it in stride and began freaking out.
“Oh, f—” he didn’t finish cursing because he was trying to use his phone at the same time. “Phone isn’t working. No signal. There’s something wrong here…”
“Go now! Put the base on alert—”
My friend’s expression wandered away like he was listening to sounds that weren’t there. I gritted my teeth as I watched his skin go pale and his eyes widen. Not good.
“There’s shooting outside,” Beard confirmed with a grim frown. Then, the realization hit him. “My kids are out there!”
We exchanged a brief, panicked look.
“I’ll tell Caputi,” I told him. “Be careful, man.”
It didn’t make sense. Keles was stuck here, in Rune, with me. How the hell was he assaulting a military base?
Not your job to figure it out, I thought. Tell Caputi. Put every higher-up on guard. Let them build a counter-attack.
To my utter surprise, a prompt appeared in front of me to confirm my plans.
You have earned a new Quest! Your enemy is back from the dead, and has become a homicidal maniac! To protect everyone you care about, you must stop him!
Current Objective: Sound the alarm!
“If you’re intelligent,” I said aloud, to nothing in particular, “please do something. This is not a game, you heard that other Translator.”
Nothing happened.
Well, had to try.
I ran for the Algernon’s command, almost running over two or three normal players standing as guards.
The command center was big enough to fit the Teddy inside with space to move around, but it was mostly empty today. All the important PDF members, like Caputi herself, were out in the Council Meetings.
A quick scan pointed me to the PDF’s Battlemind, a guy named Roy. He did a once-over at my expression and his smug greeting transformed into one of worry:
“Dude. What’s going on?”
“I need to speak with the Admiral. It’s life or death. In real life!”
“She’s at the UN talks, running the show, making sure no one comes to delete you,” Roy said in a single, run-on sentence.
“I mean life or death, Roy. Please, get her fucking fast or people are going to die!”
Roy paled and then turned back to his control panel, powered down his Minecraft emulator, and worked on his avatar’s screen on something I couldn’t see.
Seconds passed slowly and I started to tremble. Beard had said there was shooting in the Fort.
My people were in danger, and I was trapped in this damned virtual reality. Reduced to nothing more than an alarm system.
Alarms have won wars, Rylena’s voice whispered in the back of my mind. If I’d been calmer, I’d have laughed. Here I was, a simulated version of Cole, imagin
ing the advice of a simulated version of his girlfriend in his head. There were no words to describe how pathetic that was.
“Phone calls to the Fort don’t work,” Roy said. “Damn, man, you sure about this? The danger, I mean.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Do whatever you have to do to get Crestienne here or people will die and you will be responsible—”
“Alright!” He shook my hands away. “Got it. Just shot her an email. But just in case she’s not looking at her phone notifications, I have a friend who has a cousin who has a girlfriend whose brother works as an intern in the UN staff—”
“Both. Whatever is faster. Do it, man!”
I wanted to punch something. By instinct, I tried over and over again to open a window to the real world, just like I’d done many times in my memories, back when the other Cole and I hadn’t yet diverged.
Of course, nothing happened. I was here and the Fort was in the real world.
It was like watching a movie about a war and trying to will yourself inside the screen to help with the evacuations. Nothing around me made sense. Roy was pale and scared, but not as much as he should be. All the evidence he had that something was wrong was the crazy digital man pushing him around. He hadn’t seen Keles’ comeback.
Except, Roy frowned while he worked on his Social screen. “Dude. Digi—Cole. All over Rune, soldiers stationed in the PDF base are logging-out, left and right. Some of them aren’t even bothering to quit, they just go AFK…”
We both knew what this meant. There was a fight going on, and perhaps even casualties.
Roy let out a whimper. “What the fuck? Is this some terrorist bullshit? I’m not supposed to get involved in this kind of shit, this is supposed to be game!”
“There’s this crazy asshole who tried to become something like me,” I explained—because Roy seemed to be this close to panicking and leaving. “Turns out it worked. He’s making copies of himself all around and I think he figured a way to attack the PDF base from inside the Signal.”
He doesn’t look less scared, I thought. At least he didn’t log off.
“That’s impossible,” Roy said instead. “Fucking no way. The Internet and the Signal aren’t the same things, I’ve paid attention to the news.”
“Not anymore,” I told him. “There’s all this new tech that uses the Signal. I mean, why not? It’s better than the Internet. Faster. More reliable. Free, if you have the devices to connect to it…”
“I thought you couldn’t hack it.”
“I don’t think Keles is hacking the Signal itself. There’s all kind of things he can control. Mindjacks, I guess? Not a lot of use there. And the drones…”
Oh.
“Oh, shit—” said Roy. Then, at the same time:
“The drones—”
We didn’t have much time to exchange expletives with each other because a small portal appeared just then in the middle of the center. An NPC stepped out. His name appeared atop his head in bright letters: Keles-bot.
Whatever Keles was, he wasn’t very concerned with originality.
“The drones,” agreed the Keles-bot. He was covered head to toe in black power-armor mixed with orange veins, much like the one the original had used at the Firebrand. The rifle and rocket launcher at his back were end-game level. “Indeed.”
Alarms all over the Algernon started blaring. “Alert. Boarding party detected. Alert. Alert. All personnel assume battle stations. Alert.”
Roy’s last words before the Keles-bot turned him into cinders with a well-placed rifle blast, were:
“I’m very confused right now.”
We weren’t alone in the cabin. A couple other pilots and officers were hanging around on the other side, far away from the action. Keles-bot tossed them a plasma grenade just as they began to get their bearings together.
“Oh, c’mon!” I exclaimed as I tried to open my inventory fast enough to let me take my blaster out.
The explosion came a second afterward and was strong enough to send me flying against a wall and make me see stars. The light and sound were strong enough on their own to stun me as if I’d been flashbanged, too. My shields went down a small tick. Lights in the cabin flickered on and off and on again. Gravity fizzled out. And for a second, before the Algernon’s shields took care of the loss of pressure, Keles-bot and I were pulled deep into the cabin by the hungry vacuum.
The corpses of the Algernon’s command party were swallowed and disappeared into space just as the shields came online and gravity returned.
I smashed against the metal floor with enough force to send sparks flying and take the breath out of my lungs. Instead of laying there, I stood up as fast as I could and drew my blaster. Next to me, the remains of Roy were splashed onto the metal like a post-modernist painting.
“You know what,” I told the smoking remains as I ducked under a supercomputer. “I’m very confused, too, but that’s not an excuse to keep standing around when an enemy teleports inside your turf. At least try to dodge.”
I shot a volley of blaster fire in Keles-bot’s general direction. I’d lost him during the explosion, but I wasn’t about to peek my head out until I’d cleared my mind.
Things were changing too fast for me to keep track of. First, that Keles-bot thing had no cloud of data hanging above itself. It seemed unreal, in the exact same way every player of Rune Universe could tell the difference between an NPC and a real, living person just by looking. Keles-bot was a fake made to look like the original. A shadow.
Perhaps that’s why the game thinks it’s an NPC? I thought as I kept my head down and avoided the stream of boiling plasma that passed an inch over my head and fried a bunch of important-looking panels.
NPCs could hurt me in-game. His armor and weaponry were better than mine. If I got unlucky, I’d be respawning back on Earth and contacting Crestienne would be even harder.
I need to win this. The smell of burnt plastic and sizzling copper was almost overwhelming. My visor lowered over my helmet and my power-armor’s systems got ready for combat.
“This reminds me of last time we played against each other. Remember?” Keles-bot sounded almost as smug as the original. “You raided my spaceship and lost your way into a victory. My favorite part was when I crushed your girlfriend to death.”
He was circling my cover, ducking under the melted remains of the ship’s control panels. I shot at him as I crawled and tried to keep my cover between himself and that rocket launcher he carried on his back.
“Yeah? My favorite part was when we stole your shit right under your nose, asshole.”
He laughed and threw another grenade my way. This time, I was ready. I shot at the grenade. The shot went wide and hit him in the shoulder, making his shields buzz and go down a solid 10%.
The grenade traced an arc in slow motion and fell right at my feet. For what seemed like an eternity, but wasn’t more than a half-second, I stared at it, stunned, with what felt like my heart stuck in my throat.
Then I kicked the damn thing back to Keles. It exploded half-way.
The light was almost as painful as the explosion itself, even with my visor trying its best to keep me from frying my optic nerves. I hit hard against a metallic surface and the alarms on my suit informed me the shields were down to the last 34%. A couple good hits from Keles’ rifle would be enough to finish the job.
I rolled on my back, acting on instinct alone, hoping the damn bot would at least be human-like enough to be as stunned as I was. It had to be, otherwise, the game wouldn’t have recognized it…
Panting, I jumped on my feet and raised my blaster as I blinked furiously and searched around the ruined cabin for Keles.
The place had been torn apart badly. Half the controls were gone, important server racks were now smoldering craters, the chairs had been vaporized. A hologram from the Algernon’s decks flickered in and out of view as I trailed the place, trying to keep my back to the walls. From the corner of my eye, I caught a couple scenes of c
ombat around the ship. Keles-bots against players and the Keles-bots were losing. Most of them took themselves out by their own careless use of grenades and rockets.
Oh. I gritted my teeth as a wave of fear and frustration washed over me. They aren’t trying to board, they’re attempting to gut the Algernon…
Just like they’d done to the cabin.
Hell, if they reached the engines…
I caught movement to my right side, near the fist-sized crater amid the smoldering ruin of the first explosion, the one that had caused a breach.
Keles-bot and I became aware of each other at the same time. He was heaving his rocket launcher into position.
My jetpack screamed as I jumped towards him, shooting my blaster all the while, trying to puncture his shields. Not fast enough. He raised the plasteel tube in slow motion and took aim, with me at the center as I flew as fast as I could towards him.
I turned on my oxygen streams at the last instant, jerking my body two feet to the right and only inches away from smacking against the wall like a fly. At the same time, I saw the missile rip through the air in the space I’d been occupying and disappear out of view with a roar.
Then it exploded somewhere behind me, but far enough that I didn’t miss my mark. I clashed against Keles-bot with enough force to raise him and throw him several feet away. It felt like someone punched me in the brain, and my entire spine felt the force of the impact and threatened to collapse, inertia dampeners notwithstanding.
We rolled together on the floor, too stunned to try and fight each other. At least the damn bot had to behave by Rune’s rules.
I screamed in frustration as I tried to regain my footing: Next to me, the bot was already reaching for his belt for another grenade. “Stop already!”
His shields were out, his helmet cracked, and the joints in his limbs wheezed pitifully, but he wasn’t concerned with surviving. He wanted to cause as much damage as possible. That meant lugging more explosives around.
“No, you won’t.” I kicked his legs away from under him, but as he fell to the floor he grabbed my arm, and before I could blink, regained his footing, turned his waist, and used his entire body as a lever beneath my body to launch me to the floor as hard as possible.
