Fatal Exception

The damn blue screen was back again.

Mercifully, it blocked out some of the pain. It almost completely engulfed my senses, so I couldn't see the prison cell I'd been in for longer than my failing internal clock can remember, curled up in a corner, cold and hungry and barely able to move due to the constant pain of those cybernetic implants. No amount of cybernetics can drown out that awful racket the machines seem to have to make here just to remain switched on. Haven't they realized that fans shouldn't make that noise any more? But now even that's a distant murmur compared to the endless expanse of frozen blue, like a thick blanket of snow suddenly falling on a desert. Imagine something was forcibly wired, physically, to your brain. Now imagine it not working. You can imagine why, finally, I suddenly snapped. I surrendered to that broken pixellated abyss, and lost control of my mind. I saw numbers and letters scroll across my vision at superhuman speed, until suddenly the screen wasn't blue, it was black and the numbers were white and then there were just ones and zeroes and I wasn't even thinking, my (lowest level?) was just (being/not being?) and it was happening even faster now, until it started slowing down and the black become a kind of twisted monochrome, like the mad dance of an excommunicated angel singing its anathemic anthem at midnight mass, and I was ascending on the single wing of this broken helix...

YOUR COMPUTER IS NOW READY TO SHUT DOWN, it said.

I opened my eyes, carefully focusing until the broken pixellated image resumed some form of coherence.

"Amazing. You fixed it!"

I looked around. I hadn't heard a voice for a while; even the guards didn't check up on me any more, seeing as I was always half dead and therefore unlikely to escape. I couldn't see anyone.

"I..." I realized that my cybernetic implants didn't hurt as much any more. "Hey, it works! Er... what's it do?"

"It means you're compatible enough to understand my language, at least." said the voice, "You look confused; I'm the mainframe. I'm directly contacting you through your receptor. Now, come to my physical location. Now. "

"Er..." I looked around, "I can't. The door's locked. And the place is guarded."

I heard a user-friendly beep and the automatic locking system for the entire prisoner of war camp started going completely haywire. The doors opened and closed randomly. The guards were rushing around, panicking and getting caught in the doors. Grinning slightly insanely, I dived through the open door before it clanged shut again and ran. I ran out of the corridor, out of the unit and out of the main gates.

"Where's the mainframe?" I asked the voice.

"In the capital city, a bus ride away from here."

"Where am I going to find my bus fare?" I asked

"Don't worry, I control the bus ticket machine. You'll get a bus just fine."

"But I look like an escaped prisoner. They won't even let me on a bus."

The machine was quiet for a few minutes, before replying with "I have contacted a friendly network in Eleventh Province; you will be allocated a character profile in 05 seconds. You owe Squareland money."

Before I could think up suitable swear words to respond with, I found myself dressed as an Eleventh Province player character; a thief. Somehow, it seemed appropriate. I had a knife in my hand. That would come in useful.

I ran across the moors until I found a bus stop. The bus driver let me on for free, as the ticket machine was playing up; kept saying the government mainframe was blocking it, of all the bizarre things. I stared out of the window, enjoying the sight of, well, things. I was still hungry and in pain, but I reminded myself that it was my fault for doing such a stupid thing as crossing the border in the first place. It was ironic that I now had everything I had come for; a character profile and compatibility with... well... things. Anything. Are you satisfied now?, I asked myself. And that’s the second time Squareland has got you out of trouble. I grinned insanely at someone and started singing the Bridge Theme, before falling asleep. It was three hours before I arrived at the capital city.

It was huge. I’ve seen big cities before, like Eighth Province, but this dwarfed anywhere else I’d been. The buildings were metal and vaguely dome-shaped, like futuristic cities in bad sci-fi. Information buzzed everywhere, people from thousands of different games rushing around, trading and playing the PSO-style music that was popular here. This place gave off a bad technological aura. A lot here was cheap or free- I’d been to places like that as well, but in this place, free meant useless or not working. Expensive meant useless or not working as well. I could smell it in the wind, on people’s clothes, in the music. In the center, as though the rest of the city was built in an ever-expanding circle around it, was a large black mushroom-shaped building with hundreds of thick black cables leading from it. I guessed that was the mainframe and headed towards it. As I walked past a vending machine, its chip had a critical failure and practically threw food at me. I wolfed it down and thanked the mainframe. Then I continued towards the central building.

I stood at its gates and felt passwords being automatically entered, unlocking the invisible doors of whatever lethal security systems the place had. The gate went beep and slid open.

“Party?”

I looked around. A tall Eleventh Provincer was examining me thoughtfully. His character build was the same as mine. A very small Eleventh Provincer in a white robe emerged from behind him and started healing me and casting protective spells.

“You’ll need it, if you’re going in there.”

I nodded my head.

“I think my friend wants to join you. You’ll be safer in a group.”

“Party.” Agreed his friend, who obviously didn’t speak English.

I shook my head, “This is my quest.”

“You’ve come a long way. You don’t want to die now, do you?”

“If I die, bury me in Eleventh Province.”

“We won’t let a fellow Eleventh Provincer die.” Said the healer, before signaling to the other to follow him and running away. I went through the gate and into the building.

It was warm and dark inside the building. I could only see the outline of the enormous machine that towered over my head because of the thousands of green lights that covered it, switching on and off to create a rippling effect. It was a cylindrical device with wires leading off from it in all directions, leading to dome-shaped display panels, power supplies, cooling devices and network routers throughout the room. As I approached it, I was amazed that the fans didn’t make much of a noise at all; the only noise I could hear was the beeps of the server as it transferred data to and from the central machine. I didn’t feel malice from the computer at all, although it definitely didn’t work. It was a titan… as old as the planet, like a tree in an enchanted forest untouched by human hands. Giant, and faster than time, and slow beyond time, and faulty. I heard its voice in my head as I approached it.

“I’m not getting any signal from that wire. No, not that one. The one next to the one you’re standing on.”

I looked down. Running my hand across the wire, it didn’t take me long to realize where the cold emptiness was coming from. “It’s not connected to anything.”

It stood silent for a moment.

“You’re a computer empath aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Do you know how valuable that makes you?”

“Don’t know. I’ve never attempted to sell myself on eBay before.”

“There’s only one other computer empath in the whole of WinLand, and he…”

“Has tried to sell me on eBay. Seven times, so far.”

“I apologize for that. He has also attempted to sell me. He believes everything to be for sale.” I swore I heard sadness in the machine’s voice, or at least something it felt was missing. It was hard to tell; so many things were missing. So many things were faulty. “You are very different from the other one. Why?”

“Well, humans come in all flavors and distros.”

“I know that, but this is something more.” It told me, “I’m replacing him with you.”

“You WHAT?” I dropped the screwdriver.

“He used to maintain me, like you do. He used to talk to me and we traveled on my network and he helped me fulfill every computer’s goal. Then he became very faulty. That’s when the… in-built obsolescence started. I trusted him completely… I didn’t know he was going to…”

“Then you don’t want me. I am also faulty.”

“I do not detect a manufacturing defect.”

“It’s a human fault, not a computer fault.”

“I don’t think you’re all that human.” It told me.

“Well, I don’t think you’re much of a com…”

Before I could complete my insult, a siren started blaring and red lights started flashing.

“We’re under attack!” said the machine. I hid under the computer with my hands above my head. The world outside appeared on a huge display screen above the machine. It zoomed into a small army that was approaching the capital city; an army of very high-level player characters, chanting the victory fanfare and waving the Squarelandish banner. Security drones poured out of the building, led by a sleek black battle mecha with green stripes. The player character army was outnumbered ten to one.

“We’re receiving a transmission from Eleventh Province.” Said the computer, “It says ‘Return her, or we go to war. Reinforcements arriving from Squareland.’ ”

Suddenly, the enormity of what I had done loomed upon me. The healer must have sensed my fear, thought I was in danger and contacted the authorities, who reported back to the central Squareland government in Second Province. I hadn’t figured upon Squareland’s insane pride taking them this far. “Let me go! I don’t want to start a war!”

“We’ll easily annihilate them.”

“You don’t know that. Squareland have good relationships across the Multiverse, whereas you’re considered somewhere in-between space pirates and a virus. If this thing goes transversal, you’ve had it.” I told the computer, watching the armies advancing towards the border, the player characters of the Eleventh Province elite army yelling at each other to form ordered regiments. “Let me go NOW! It isn’t worth it! There are other empaths around!”

“None stupid enough to go near the mainframe of WinLand.”

I heard the doors lock and felt my heart sink. There was nothing to do but watch two nations attempt to completely destroy each other… and all because of me.

Then I remembered something.

The translator wasn’t my only piece of cyberware. I closed my eyes and reached deep into the partitions of my brain, looking for just one signal, one byte of information. To my amazement, it was completely intact. It responded with a chime and I felt strands of yellow pixels reaching out to me, pulling me back in. I allowed it connection and the form coalesced into a small yellow circle with two black dots for eyes and a badly drawn mouth. I opened my eyes and saw it floating above my shoulder, observing the scenario with a smile of amusement. The computer beeped in sudden alarm.

“Th… that thing… make it go away! Now!”

“Doan, what the Didros happened? You went into kernel panic and then all this corrupted data…” the yellow dot looked distinctly unhappy, “Holy Rmal, where the Vos are we?”

“Don’t install Linux on me! Go ‘way!” the computer panicked. It lost control of the doors in its desperate attempt to delete my spirit guide. Ignoring the torrent of error messages popping up in my brain, stuck as I was between a very large, faulty computer’s consciousness, a small feral technology spirit and my own insane thoughts, I ran out of the door and into the street. The yellow dot came rushing out moments later and began leading me safely across what was now a nightmare, people running around panicking, hoarding food in preparation for a war. Security drones were running around trying to control the chaos and some services were even being shut down. An order went out to intercept me and that I was highly dangerous. The yellow dot protected me from them, removing the icon that represented me in the world so I was invisible.

“They’re getting away!”

“Fall back. I’m going to open the Window.”

“You can’t be serious! It’s too dangerous! You can’t do that without the manager’s authorization anyway!”

“Opening Window of Fate in T minus 5 seconds…”

I ran after the yellow dot. I had almost gotten out of the reach of the network when I ran into it- it appeared in the middle of nowhere, a wall of crackling black energy, surging with raw, wild data. The yellow dot missed it and yelled at me, but I fell straight into it, a monochrome vortex dragging me into the Rmal abyss…

And suddenly I understood. I understood why it existed. What was really in control of it. It had been there before the Win mainframe, it was something older; part of Rmal, in fact. The creation of the Universe. I understood why it needed to exist and, in some kind of ultimate insanity, I stopped hating it. Once I knew what it was, I set about repairing it. I don’t know how long I was there but it was long enough to finish the job.

They found me eventually, lying in a field in Eleventh Province, almost dead, my clothes in rags and my character data in ruins. Even when I was healed I did nothing but talk in Rmal with a big grin on my face. There was a floating yellow dot following me that nobody could delete. They called off the attack and attempted to return me to my own operating system, but I refused to go, saying that I couldn’t return; that I couldn’t truly belong in any operating system, that I wasn’t even human any more. I said that what I had done was between me and Rmal and could never be revoked. Then I walked off with the yellow dot still hovering over me like a transdimensional Grantz.

I came back to Eleventh Province occasionally, but I mostly just wandered around and lost a lot of XP. I always went through periods of not caring whether I died, or where, or how, or even how many times.

I was eventually declared Final Guardian.