The softwire : Virus on Orbis 1 Read online

  “Afraid of me?”

  “You have a very special gift and no one understands why. Softwires are very rare. Human evolution was not expected to see a softwire for another two million years, if at all. I will teach you to awaken your consciousness and become part of a profound transformation happening in the universe. One that no human has yet achieved.”

  “Why am I a softwire?”

  “That is what people want to know, and maybe that is what we will figure out. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “There is an urgency for our understanding.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are those who believe that the malfunctions of the central computer and your arrival on Orbis 1 are not a coincidence.”

  “I never did anything to the central computer. I mean, once —”

  Theylor stopped me. “I believe you, but we must see what you are capable of.”

  “How long will I be here?” I asked him.

  “That is not up to me, Johnny. You will be released when the Keepers and the Trading Council feel safe.”

  “Safe? That’s crazy. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Then your stay here should be a short one.”

  “What if I don’t cooperate?” I asked, getting up. “I didn’t do anything. Let them figure out what’s wrong with their stupid computer.”

  “Then your stay will be a long one. It is really up to you.”

  I lay on my sleeper and stared up at the empty blue cell above me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t right for them to keep me here. I even caught myself wishing I were back at Weegin’s sorting bins. It was hard to believe, but Weegin’s World felt like home, and I really missed home. There was only one way to get back there.

  “Okay, Theylor, what do I have to do?”

  I turned to reenter the examination room, but it had been replaced with the blue wall of my cell.

  Theylor was gone.

  I spent the rest of the cycle pacing my cell and watching the aliens around me. I spent the next two cycles doing exactly the same. Food was delivered by flying drones that inserted it straight through the cell walls. However, I never felt hungry when the food arrived. Many times the drone returned with more food before I even touched what they had brought earlier.

  The aliens on either side of me were not there when I awoke on the fourth cycle. I assumed they were in their examination rooms. I looked out and watched as new aliens arrived in green bubbles and were placed in blue cells on different levels. At first it was interesting to see what kind of alien had arrived, but soon even that became boring. I spent my time pacing my cell and sleeping.

  Where is Theylor? I wondered. I stood watching hundreds of flying machines skim the mountain of blue cells and insert a probe into each one. Feeding time again.

  “No, thanks,” I shouted at the probe as it reached my cell.

  But the flying robot poked itself into my cell anyway.

  I reached out and grabbed the bot. “Hey,” I said, shaking it slightly. “I don’t want any.”

  I shouldn’t have done that. Instantly the walls of my cell pulsed a deep red. The robot disintegrated in my hands. My cell slid out from all the others and hovered in the air, high above the open void. I looked down and saw rows of blue cells stretching into infinity. A much larger flying robot shot up toward me. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that!”

  I know machines don’t have emotions, but this one was designed to look angry, and it was equipped with more weapons than I could ever imagine. The machine’s massive metal clamps grabbed hold of my cell, and then it injected a whirling probe through the pulsing red wall. The probe methodically searched the cell, stopped on me, and shot a single purple dart straight at my chest. That was the last thing I remembered.

  I was back in the forest, chasing the little girl through the trees and the crystal rocks. This time the number ten was carved into everything. Every tree, every rock — even a small animal scurried past me with the number ten on its back. I did not know why I was chasing the little girl, but she definitely did not want to be caught. As soon as I closed in on her, she would disappear to another spot in the forest. At first I thought the little girl was Ketheria, but she never responded to her name, nor did she stop long enough for me to get a good look at her.

  I remembered the large red bird from my nightmares, and I kept one eye focused on the skies.

  I knew I was dreaming, so I chose to play along. I wanted to know who she was. As the little girl popped out of my reach once more, I stopped by a tree stump and pretended to find something.

  “Wow, look at this,” I said out loud. I glanced over my shoulder to see if the little girl had noticed. She sat on a rock but did not respond. I laughed at my fake treasure, but still not a flicker from the little girl. Next, I pretended my discovery was dangerous. I circled the imaginary spot with a grave look on my face. This seemed to work. The little girl strained her neck to see what I had found. I circled around and blocked her view.

  Suddenly, I jumped back as if something had snapped at me. The little girl moved slowly toward me.

  “Ouch!” I pretended the thing had bitten me. The little girl moved closer still. Soon, she would be close enough for me to grab. I held up my hand in caution and stared intently at the ground.

  “Stay back,” I warned her.

  She just moved closer. I spun around and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  It was definitely not Ketheria.

  As soon as I grabbed the little girl, I was thrust onto a scorching desert planet. The ground beneath my feet sizzled, and several birds just like the horrible red one from my dreams flew over my head. Three different suns hung above the planet, and I could feel the heat searing my skin. There was nothing as far as I could see except the birds, circling and waiting. The heat was unimaginable. I could smell my flesh burning. I held up my hands and watched as the skin began to melt off my bones.

  I woke up screaming. A stranger was standing over me.

  “Are you all right, fella?” asked the stranger.

  “Who are you?”

  I looked around my cell. It was blue again. I was lying on my sleeper. The examination room was back, too. I grabbed at my chest where the dart had struck me.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Security runs on an automated procedure. Don’t mess with the mechanics of this place, especially your room.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Charlie. Charlie Norton,” said the man. He was husky, with flecks of gray hair on the sides of his head. He stuck out his thick hand for me to shake.

  I recognized the Earth custom and took his hand. “You’re human,” I said.

  This was a first for me. A human adult. I had never seen one before. He wasn’t much different from a kid, only a lot bigger, and he looked kind of tired. His skin was rougher than mine, too, and a little wrinkled around his eyes. Not as bad as Weegin’s, but still wrinkled. Would I look like that one day? I was fascinated.

  “I am. Chicago, Illinois. Great city: Southport Lanes . . . Wrigley Field — but that got torn down when they outlawed baseball. Illegal genetic enhancements. I still miss it a lot, though,” he said, his gaze drifting off.

  “Um . . . why don’t you go back, then?”

  “Time dilation. Everyone I know would be dead, I’m afraid. Different place now,” Charlie said.

  “I’ve never met a human adult before,” I said.

  “And I’ve never met a softwire before.”

  “So you know?”

  “Absolutely. It’s a great gift. The first of our kind. Should make you feel kinda special.”

  “It doesn’t. It put me in here and I didn’t do anything. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  Charlie leaned in close to me and whispered, “No one’s ever supposed to be here, kid.” Then he directed a wide-eyed nod toward the other aliens in their own blue boxes. It made me smile. I liked Charlie.

&nb
sp; “I didn’t know there were any other humans on Orbis 1,” I said.

  “There’s a few of us. I was on the second seed-ship sent out. Quite a while before yours, I imagine, before the invitation from Orbis. I ended up in Centuria. Nasty place. I light-jumped over to Orbis. So did the others.”

  “There are more?”

  “Of course. We all hang out at the Earth News Café. In fact, they made the place in anticipation of your ship. You should come.”

  “I wish.”

  “Sure you can. Just do what the Keepers ask and they’ll let you out of here,” Charlie said.

  “Is that why you’re here? To get me to cooperate?”

  Charlie frowned.

  “You’re only being nice to me so I’ll listen to you. . . .”

  “Don’t start chewing on your uplink, kid,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t need one. I’m a softwire, remember?”

  I stood, turned my back to Charlie, and stared out over the cells.

  “Look, kid, I just work here. I heard you were going to stay with us for a bit and I asked the Keepers if I could visit. Sorta makes me a celebrity down at the Earth News Café, all right? Do what you want, but remember that you have a special gift there, son. Maybe you can put it to some good. Help these two-headed monkeys out. Have they ever done anything to hurt you?” Charlie put his big hand on my shoulder. It felt comforting. “Can I come visit again?”

  “I can’t stop you. You work here, right?” I said, wishing I hadn’t.

  “Sure, kid. Think about what I said, though. Maybe I’ll see you later, then.”

  Charlie left me standing at the edge of my cell. I felt alone, very alone. I decided to do whatever Theylor wanted.

  The tests were easy in the beginning. Theylor simply wanted to see what I could do. I showed him how I worked the scanner locks, how I interfaced with the processors on the small robots, how I moved things around on the O-dat displays — all basic tasks.

  Theylor then began to hide small programs in the computer, which he told me to search for. It was difficult, and I had problems finding them.

  “Your body, the one you use to see and touch, cannot help you. Use only your physical form to connect with your inner self. Feel the life force inside your body, and thereby learn to realize that you are now beyond the physical form when you interface with the central computer,” he said.

  I understood nothing he said, but I pretended to and nodded. The sooner I did what they wanted, the sooner I could get out of there.

  I scanned the computer in my mind’s eye and watched the files and programs scoot past me. Some files, though, shifted away when I tried to look at them. The more I concentrated on them, the farther they moved out of view. Theylor’s task forced me to go a little farther, so I pushed my mind into the computer. I felt the initial rush of electrons scanning my skin as I pierced the threshold. As I moved around a corner and up a corridor, the dimensions of the computer shifted at my will.

  “What did you just do there?” Theylor asked.

  I pulled out of the computer and said, “Um . . . I pushed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s like I pushed my head inside the computer. It gives me a clearer look at what I’m searching for if I don’t have the name of a file or something and I have to do some digging.”

  Theylor just stared at me. Both heads tilted in the same direction.

  “Does anyone else know you can do this?”

  “Why?”

  “Do they?”

  “Why? What’s wrong, Theylor?”

  “Do others know you perform this push function? That your mind actually enters the hardware?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Theylor accessed the O-dat manually and entered some keystrokes while I just sat and watched. He used an unusual language of symbols — some form of Keeper language, I figured. I’d seen it in the computer before, but it was never translated for me. When he finished, his right head turned to me.

  “Theylor, why is that so strange?”

  “Softwires possess the ability to interact with any computer device by simply interfacing with the machine’s controls. As I told you earlier, a softwire uses only its mind to create a cerebral connection. It is as simple as controlling a thought for a softwire, but everything is done within the mind. Somehow, you have managed to put your mind in the computer yet still maintain complete control. I have never seen this before.”

  “This doesn’t mean I’m going to stay here longer, does it?”

  Theylor shook his head. “But let us keep that information private for now. Agreed?”

  “Sure. Is anything wrong?” I asked.

  Theylor’s left head stared off into the distance while his right head said, “No. Not yet, anyway.” He removed a clear crystal from his robe and inserted it into the O-dat. “How about this?” Theylor said. “Can you tell me what I just put in the computer? I want you to push again.”

  My mind entered the computer. It was getting easy now. If only I had known about this ability on the Renaissance, I could have had some fun. I snooped around the computer’s local RAM to see what Theylor had installed. Nothing. I saw the portal that led to the network. It was sealed shut. I attempted to pry it open, even will it open, but nothing worked. I looked for little tricks, something different, but I could not find a thing.

  What was that?

  A flash of green electrons caught the corner of my eye. The program that I had seen trashing Weegin’s sorting bay headed straight for the sealed portal and slipped right through. It never paused, not even to open the network or acknowledge me. What was it doing there? Was this what Theylor implanted for me to find? Was this “thing” something the Keepers had known about all along?

  “That’s enough, Johnny.” I heard Theylor in the distance, but I wanted to go through that portal.

  Be careful.

  I unlinked from my terminal and sat up straight.

  “This was more difficult, am I correct?” Theylor asked.

  “Yeah, what was that?”

  “It is an advanced encryption seal for data portals. Nothing can penetrate it once it is activated.”

  “No, I mean the program.”

  “It is not a program. It is simply a seal, a sort of lock, if you like.”

  I was puzzled. Theylor was not talking about the program I had just seen slip right through his unbreakable seal.

  Theylor stood up.

  “Has anyone ever gotten through? Gotten through your seal?” I asked him.

  “Never,” he said confidently. “It was created with the help of the Space Jumpers.”

  “Space Jumpers. But I thought they were banished.”

  “They are,” Theylor said, but I swear I saw his right head smiling. “But enough now. You have some visitors.”

  I turned and saw Ketheria and Max entering the examination room. Ketheria ran in and threw her arms around me. Theylor observed the hugging with a quizzical look.

  “Wow, it’s so great to see you guys!” I said.

  “It took forever to get here. You must be on the other side of the ring,” Max said.

  “It only feels that way the closer you get,” interjected Theylor. “I will leave you now. I will see you again, Johnny.”

  Theylor left us to ourselves. I put my arms around Ketheria, and Max, too. I squeezed them tight. I’d been missing them for ages, but they both seemed a little shocked at my display of affection.

  “Whoa, you haven’t been gone that long,” Max said.

  “I think three phases would be considered a long time,” I replied. “Didn’t you miss me? What’s been happening at Boohral’s?”

  “What do you mean? It hasn’t been more than a couple of cycles, JT.”

  Max was puzzled. I was even more puzzled. Even Ketheria seemed confused.

  “Max, I’ve been going crazy, I’ve been here so long.”

  “So it’s true, then,” Max said, nodding.

  “What�
�s true?”

  “This place, these examination cells — they exist in a different dimension. They’ve stretched time for you.”

  “What?”

  Ketheria interrupted our exchange by offering me a strange food I’d never seen before.

  “They’re called toonbas. They’re a delicacy on Boohral’s planet,” Max said.

  “What are they?”

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “Just eat one. They’re good, huh?”

  “They are, but what’s in them?”

  “Well, I guess the best way to describe it is a bug. Or at least the excrement of a bug.”

  “What!” I spat the rest of my toonba onto the ground. Ketheria reached for another.

  “Don’t worry. They’re synthetically made here on Orbis, and they’re not from any bug you know. Toonbas are from Trefaldoor and they’re a delicacy. Just enjoy them.”

  I didn’t care how good they tasted. Bug crap? No way (but I had to admit, they were good).

  “In the real world you’ve only been gone two cycles. We haven’t had a chance to miss you yet,” Max said, picking up where we had left off before Ketheria had changed the subject.

  “But I’ve had study sessions, I’ve gone to sleep a zillion times — I’ve been here a long time,” I said, reaching for another toonba. I sniffed it and put it back. Bug crap — really.

  “Sorry, it’s all temporal distortion to make the — um — prisoners feel like they have been here longer. It’s more productive for Orbis. You feel like you’ve been here a long time, but in reality you don’t miss too much work. I checked it all out. Your sleeper back in Weegin’s World is still warm, my friend.”

  “Theylor won’t tell me how long I have to stay here.”

  “I don’t think they’ll keep you here very long.”

  “How come?”

  “The central computer is still acting weird and you’re locked up in here. But they’re having a huge tribunal. Everyone will be there.”

  “Then you know I didn’t do anything?”

  “Of course, but it doesn’t matter what I think. If they find you guilty, JT, you will be banished from Orbis. Forever.”