Con Code Read online

  Appropriate for Teens, Intriguing to Adults

  Immortal Works LLC

  1505 Glenrose Drive

  Salt Lake City, Utah 84104

  Tel: (385) 202-0116

  © 2019 Aften Brook Szymanski

  http://www.aftenbrook.com/

  Cover Art by Mackenzie Seidel

  https://mackenzieseidel.weebly.com/

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For more information email [email protected] or visit http://www.immortal-works.com/contact/.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-7339085-1-1 (Paperback)

  AISN B07Q36V4XV (Kindle Edition)

  In remembrance of my dad

  He had a remedy for every ailment and a chaser for every remedy—I’m sick without you

  I miss you, Dad

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Untitled

  Four stories below, marchers demonstrate contempt for my existence, kept at bay by armed security. Picket signs with red-lettered protests tangle amongst the gathered crowd. People press toward the ‘Do Not Cross’ line marked with yellow caution tape. Not exactly the welcome parade I was once promised.

  NuvoMundo TeleFormacion films both the crowd and my window at regular intervals. Even though the Mexico facility where I uploaded speaks English, the major world powers—in the form of the Intercontinents between the Tropics borders—control news outlet stations and get to name them what they choose. The constant attention keeps my mind off everyone I left behind inside the game.

  It’s been weeks since I uploaded to the mortal human realm, where second chances don’t code themselves through the air and rematerialize with full health scores. There are no hacks for appeasing the masses of donors’ families juggling emotions of mourning and vengeance or whatever drives their apparent loathing of a gamble that didn’t pay off with an everlasting relative.

  I drag one finger down the plastic ribs of the window blinds that conceal me from view. They’re not unlike my non-human bone ribs structure. Except mine are metallic and supposedly have holes throughout to lighten the weight of my steel frame and allow for life-supporting liquid to connect my joint movements to my brain function. It’s not my bones that feel hollow, it’s something else. Like I’m missing the battery pack to my soul.

  I can’t help but feel like I’ve been constructed out of rusted leftovers instead of highly scientific alloys designed for efficiency. I guess that fits with all aspects of my existence—spare parts. Every motion feels poorly balanced while I navigate this gravity ruled world.

  “Move back.” A white coat robed tech slaps my hand away from the strips of plastic I’ve pulled so low fingers from the exterior crowd begin to indicate my position. The angle of the camera shifts to include the now covered window.

  A large screen TV covers half the wall, ceiling to chair rail. On screen, cast by clear electronic lighting, a sharp-jawed man with a high part and excited hands continues to point toward the building behind him, assuring the raging crowd that the “first successful human intelligence transplant will soon be ready to greet the public, reuniting a donor with their no longer grieving family members.” Even though no one below had the appearance of grieving, they look ready to fight each other for who gets to take my longest leg to the salvage yard.

  “I told you to stay away from the windows.” The tech speaks to me as if I’m a toddler learning language and unable to interpret directions. It works to my advantage. I tilt my head to one side as if I’m trying to force my computer language brain to translate his words.

  Producing language proves harder. Like it only goes one way for my brain. Maybe some part of my computer brain isn’t translating as it should like the output got dinged during the body transplant process. There are three main languages globally—Spanish, which dominates the Western Intercontinent band, and Mandarin and Arabic in the Eastern Intercontinent band.

  English stubbornly lingers outside the Tropics. In Mexico, pretty much everything clings to powers of the pre-war past. We of the Outercontintents lost. Which means the English language we speak, lost. Here, they hold onto things after they’re dead. Evident by the fact there are still people living here in a city incapable of producing edible vegetation, and whose only export is labor.

  A low thud draws my attention back to the television screen. A reporter lunges out of the path of a flaming ball as it’s lobbed toward the building. I brace like I’m going to feel the impact.

  Nothing shifts below my feet. Then I realize the earlier thud was the impact, the television has a slight delay from the action outside. Slowly, I turn back toward the window, aching to pluck the blinds and fire back.

  How long does Dr. Spaulding intend to keep me here? It won’t take long for the protesters to learn how to make a more effective bomb. Not that they’d stand a chance against me if I had a green light to defend myself. My greatest strength in the game happened to be my brutality in survival. Why design a game with violent ambition embedded in progress, if it’s not to be applied to the result?

  Where I fail is movement. Dr. Spaulding can’t show me off if I don’t give the appearance of humanity. I’ve never been inside a human body before, real or otherwise. I’ve been in an image of one inside the game. But this monstrosity of a shell with its weak location of metal joints and thin tubes of lubricants running below the synthetic skin is all drag and cockeyed. Not like in the game where, even with half my body dragging after an explosion, I could push on.

  I can’t even sit correctly. I don’t know which muscles to fire first. It should be first nature for a human, but I can’t get the sequence right. Every motion is choppy. I try to skip muscle groups and ligament connections to achieve large motions. In my head, I can think, ‘sit down’ and it’s one motion from standing to sitting. It happens that fast. I program the action in my brain—sit. The second I bend in half for sitting, the entire world falls on its side. Me with it.

  The tech leads me in a soldier-walking motion back to the white-papered doctor’s bench. Not because that’s how they want me to walk, it’s just the best I can manage. The more I think about how to move, the worse I am at it.

  Three more white-coated wearing techs enter the room, each holding manila file folders in the air as if
the thickness of paper stacks matter. “This one can be ruled out,” the first tech announces and slaps his folder against his free-hand. I can’t tell if he’s beating it for not being the one or high fiving the fact that the donor information it holds is off the hook of having to claim me as ‘itself’.

  These techs have a thing for blank canvases. The more I familiarize myself with them, little details stand out like glitches in a document that’s been copied and pasted too many times. I notice the inconsistencies first. Like with Gordon, his thin blue tie and crisp vest and white shirt are consistent. The buttons at his wrist cuff aren’t. His right cuff is made up, but his left is undone. Stalagmite hair frozen in place with product in a manner meant to look messy. This leads my curiosity to the rest of his appearance—crisp attention to detail at every seam and corner except for the soft turns of his face and what I suspect is dark liner drawn around his eyes. I imagine he’d be a fem in the game. Where he lacks height, he makes up for in style.

  The subsequent techs announce their failure files as well, all waving them, fanning them, thumbing through the thick pages of a life that didn’t ‘make it’ like all of this is going to spur my memory and I’ll announce, “Oh yes! Now I remember who I am—gamer number oh-three-nine.” Announcing distinct personalities is less overt.

  I could claim GenE247, as I did during my time inside the game, but GenE has a real file associated with her real name. And a real family who really knew her and her real personality. GenE knows how to sit and what face to make if she were pretending to not understand someone. And her real family would recognize someone posing as her and claim fraudulent upload.

  All I can do is go slack in the cheeks. I’ve been told I hold my cheeks too rigid and high. But that can’t be my fault. I’ve never had real cheeks. These are mechanical pads attached to a metal skull frame made to look the way I described myself after I woke up, being careful to mix features in hopes of not matching any profile pictures they might have on file.

  I don’t really know if there’s a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to ‘hold’ cheeks. Are they something you hold? That’s one of those human phrases I mess up. I’m not used to idioms outside the game.

  I only know the useless crap Ace uploaded into my personality, which makes me wonder. Ace programmed me to assassinate his competition within the game. Except he accidentally set me to the ‘murder all the things’ mode, and I shot, ripped apart, and otherwise dismembered my way through the system.

  Nice programming.

  The sound of breaking glass precedes another low thud from outside. Next comes a small ball of fire, popping and dripping flame trails. Sprinklers in a ceiling cough and sputter.

  “Get down!” I shove Gordon aside and launch myself under a table. Gordon looks shaken and is moving far too slow to outrun the rain. “What are you doing?” I scream into the room. “Take cover.”

  “The sprinklers will put out the fire. It’s not that big of a threat,” Abby says. “Just some stupid protestor trying to intimidate us.”

  How can she be so stupid? “The rain.” I pull tight so that no part of me will fall prey to acid rain. “It’ll melt your skin.”

  “Dude, was there no water in the game?” Gordon pushes himself to his knees from where he crumpled after I pushed him with all my steel force. “She doesn’t understand indoor sprinkler systems at all.”

  Ben shrugs, making no effort to help Gordon up. Like the others, Ben stands in the open, unconcerned with the sputtering ceiling rain spouts. All of them interchangeable in my mind—lacking personality and weight. Like paper. The techs are nothing more than paper to be stacked aside—out of my way until I know what to do with them.

  Water drenches the tech files. “Move the files,” Gordon says. It’s too late. Countless lives of donors documented on the pages, lost. Gordon stacks the soggy files, cursing and shaking water off his arms, despite the fact it keeps spraying.

  I stay where I am, under the table. No one screams out in pain, or horror, from the falling rain. It’s weird. A drop splashes at my foot. I pull my mechanical legs in closer. The hundreds of tiny splashes static morph through my audio tubing into more of a sizzling sound. The yellow glow of the lighting tinges with memories of inside the game. Skin melting, code corroding, I tuck myself as tightly as I can, imagine I’m a ball of tin. I compact so tight, I can feel the gears flipping binary inside my head. Binary is familiar, I can work with it, manipulate it, change it. That’s not a human way to think though. I need to be human here. What’s the programming at the core of human thought? Can I work with it? Is there no changing human programming?

  The sizzling drips fade. I uncurl and move so I can glimpse the culprit, desperate to analyze the expression behind the action. Beyond the dirtied glass are narrowed eyes and hands to shield the sun. I can’t read humans like code. They’re chaotic and don’t follow logic. I narrow my eyes, focusing my sight to better study the crowd outside.

  Someone from the mob below caused me to feel back inside the game and I want to spit acid in their face. I realize it’s extreme, but I said, ‘want to’ not “I’ve devised a three-step plan to spit acid in their face.” In my head, every image of melting skin, disintegrating players, and faces twisted in terror and agony play on repeat. I move toward the blinds looking for the culprit. Ready to eliminate the inconvenient source from causing any more disruption to my ‘how to move like a real human’ lessons. Security on the street pushes clear plastic shields against anyone standing close enough to touch the yellow tape. I’d do better than push them back.

  “What’s your Gen?!” Abby tech shouts at my side. The words reform to the setting as a tech moves around me to rush the soaked files to a dry location. “Watch it, Jen!”

  I don’t move. The tech must go out of her way to get around me. I’m in a paperweight shell and have yet to be given an objective. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still playing a game. Everyone in this room is either an obstacle or competition. Abby, the female tech, might be both.

  She has a tight ponytail that pulls at the edges of her eyes. Everything about her is tight. She wears a white coat like the other techs, but hers is size extra small even though Abby is solidly a regular small. Her wrists extend beyond the cuffs by more than an inch. Her pants suction against her legs, which are peg-like anyway. I don’t know about Abby’s need for oxygen. She doesn’t seem to be into breathing, at least not based on her apparel choices. Her facial expressions follow suit—tight, darting, and often pulled and squeezed at the edges.

  “Jennie, come on,” Gordon announces near the doorway. “We’re moving rooms.”

  I step back in a stumble, realizing I’m targeting shots in the crowd, despite not having a weapon in hand. I turn quickly to see if anyone notices. The workers in the room all stare together at the television reporter. How easy would it be to pick them off in order to act on my personal directive to terminate outside threats?

  Too easy.

  Did the vulnerable and fragile human race, in their attempt to protect themselves while still furthering technology, accidentally upload an immortal, unbreakable, serial killer into their midst?

  Water drips from my synthetic skin at a faster rate than it pours off Gordon’s white coat. No matter how much liquid the fabric absorbs, it won’t protect what it covers if, in fact, the humans have erred in their efforts to protect human interests.

  Our new room is one floor higher than the previous location because somehow one additional flight of stairs defends against fire grenades.

  Humans are stupid.

  The entire level is a duplicate of the fourth floor. Same diamond-patterned tight woven carpet with the same path worn at the center of the hallway. Apparently, these people prefer to walk dead center in an open hall, not to one side or the other.

  The room we enter houses less equipment than my previous quarters. One thing it has in common with my room from level four is a large screen television taking up nearly the entire upper half of one wall. Ben
finds the remote and flips to the same channel as below—NuvoMundo news channel.

  Abby, closes one eye then rapidly opens it again toward Ben. It’s less than a second of movement, without the other eye mimicking the gesture. Ben is tall with broad shoulders and a broad stomach to match. He has a sharp jaw and dull eyes with heavy eyelids. His tight hair only grows on the top of his head and neatly over each eye. He has the stance of a person uncomfortable with the fact his gut extends beyond his waistband.

  Ben strains a laugh, his head bobs slightly as if the gesture Abby made is some kind of code between them. I copy her actions in no direction in particular. I don’t get it.

  Repeating the gesture in Gordon’s direction, I realize I’ve just sighted him in like I would with a weapon. When I blink, my fingers squeeze the same as if I’m pulling a trigger against the butt of a gun.

  A familiar voice, high and sweet, full of life and lies, causes me to unclench and turn. She can’t be here. She’ll ruin my cover. But…

  She can’t be here. She can’t.

  “Welcome Donors, to the game of life. Humanity’s best and brightest have ensured a safe and fulfilling environment for persons suffering terminal diagnosis.” Purple hair bounces around GenE’s perfect features. No liquid-red smears the image.