Viralis
A Warning of a Wave...
March 10th, 2475: 20:20:20:02
Physical Tape Message Received in Room 485 of ACE Compound, Empire Square
Instructions: “When you receive this, listen on a closed-off device, no tether to the network. Upon completion, destroy it. I will be dust by the time you have finished.”
I’ve come down with something. It started this morning, March 10th, 2475 at 09:42:06.20 according to neural logs.
It came from the headset. And it wasn’t just Ace doing her usual thing with us on the main floor. When I jacked in, set the magnetic tape running, I heard a voice. The damnedest voice. Alien and wolven all at once, with only one thing on its invisible lips.
“Look Elger. Look and see.”
I was in Sedate State at the time, completely wired into the network. We were re-configuring Quadrant 260 in the exoframe, and here was this damn voice yowling at me from the dark while I tried to work. Shit stretched my mental bandwidth so damn thin that BAM! A migraine that would knock your ancestors out of the grave.
I went to the Medibox for a destimulant, but after the syringe did the trick, I could still hear the voice. “See for me, see for me.” it ordered. For God’s sake, this thing was ordering me now! “It is Her Will,” it tried to tell me.
If it meant Ace’s, it simply couldn’t be. I felt it caterwauling about “her will” all damn day. In the lockers, at the break room, at the monitors, on the floor. I started running personal diagnostics on my mod the second I got home. And the moment I plugged in to run those neural chip tests…I saw it all.
I have seen beyond infrared. I have seen the world in microscopic detail. A world reduced to numbers, a world reduced to particles. A world I cannot begin to explain. Everything looked like it was ready to crumble in my hands. My fur looks grotesque, my pads are porous, my apartment is ready to collapse.
The only thing I could see in crystal clarity was the phrase “His Code, Her Will” displayed as a whole on the fragmented monitor. Someone’s gotten inside her network. And I haven’t a clue what he’s capable of.
Everything infinitesimal counts now. My mind never stops tallying. Split hairs doesn’t begin to describe it. Like a separate mind’s eye springing up from the depths, digitalis sent rocketing through my heart to keep perpetually staring at the fractions and fracturing before me. I have been consumed.
This message will have been recorded on an ancillary device. When you get this message, you’ll find my body in the apartment, and my module completely destroyed. Whatever it is, I don’t…dammit it cannot get any further than me!
Re-calibrate the reel-to-reels, run every test you can, but don’t let anyone jack in. No one can jack in when this thing is running loose.
Send someone with a strong stomach. I’m making sure the job is done.
WCC 1347: Elger, signing off.