Hive Minded, Part 3

Hive Minded

It was darker than usual on the server. Normal day/night cycles exist, but this was far more ominous. I sat at my desk, toiling away at nothing. The door to my office slowly creeped open. I looked up to see what new client found their way to me. Slowly, their face moved into view.  It was WnDy. She peered at me like a floating head. Her smile stretched unreasonably across her face. I wanted to stand up. But I was stuck fast to the chair. My avatar just wouldn’t respond. I watched in horror as anteni slowly sprouted from her forehead. Her eyes, becoming huge and black. Suddenly her hair sprang out of it’s neat bun into six long legs. The WnDy bug latched onto the door and scurried up to the ceiling.

I was now frozen with terror as the thing made its way above me. I looked up into it’s black eyes staring down at me. Then it let go. The creature turned in midair. Its legs reaching out for me. I sat up panicked in my bed.

This is what happens when you try to sleep without Lucid.

The door opened a little. I looked over at the light to see who was coming to check on me. WnDy stood in the doorway.

“Candice, you’re heart monitor just spiked. Are you ok?”, she asked, never losing that smile.
“Yea, fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Alright then, I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

I can’t keep living like this. It’s been days since I’ve been back online. I need to know who is watching me. Hell, maybe they’ve given up by now. It took all the courage I could find to put that hood back on.

The world fell away and Lucid came online. I was at my usual spawn point, my desk. I looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But I knew better than just assume things were back to normal.

I pulled my hat down off the coat rack and started the Private Eye program. I didn’t have to look far. The black bug sat perched in the corner of the room. It’s anteni swinging wildly in my direction.

I had to stay calm and think about this rationally. The bug couldn’t actually be an insect. But it was definitely modeled after one.

“Maybe I could get it to accept a trace program”, I thought to myself.

I took a tracer out of my coat. As soon as the trace came online the bug shuttered. It’s anteni now swept back and forth toward my hand. I stretched it out and watched as its attention followed.

“Oh, you’re detecting pirate code aren’t you, little guy”, I said to it for some reason.

I gotta say, talking to it helped calm my fears a bit. Slowly I sat the trace down on the desk and stepped back. The bug now transfixed on the trace leapt from the wall and landed on it. I watched in morbid fascination as the thing ate the trace. It jumped back onto its perch. Carefully I put my hand on the desk and pushed for the trace program to be displayed. It wasn’t there.

The bug hadn’t just eaten the code; it had destroyed the program. The trace screen did list this office as its last location. Which means that it fired once just before it was deleted. That was a bit of useful information.

I pulled up my terminal. The bug didn’t like that at all, but it’d have to eat my desk to stop that. Not saying it couldn’t, but it seemed unlikely. I began coding a new virus. What I needed was a way to dissect the bug. I needed to pull it apart and see what made it tick, who was controlling it.

I labeled the new virus “Roach Bait” and pulled it out of my coat pocket. The bug immediately locked onto it, as if it could smell the malicious code. I tossed it onto the desk. The bug lept from the wall and caught the program in mid air. I stumbled back in a mild panic.

The program was devoured in a matter of seconds. Then the bug scurried up to it’s post. However, a second bug now sat on my desk. A copy made by the virus. I sat down in my chair and watched as the bug on the wall slowly fell apart. Scattering away in a breeze that couldn't be felt.

I loaded my terminal back up and looked into the copy of the bug. It had several layers. The first being the insect construct itself. There I found an author tag, “Liccardi R and D”. So, the bug belonged to the makers of Lucid. That scared me a little.

The second layer was its drive. I found a very complex pattern recognition system. It was operating almost like a consciousness. The author tag on that, “Sonadim Corporations”. I had never seen anything like it. The program was making decisions based on previous experience. Previous experiences that were all fabricated.

I started looking at its motivations. First, it was to seek out any unauthorized code. Which explains why it was in my office. The entire building is unauthorized. The second directive was to destroy any malicious code. And the third was to seek out a specific person. The data file on ‘who’ was encrypted.

This brought up so many questions. The first was if I was the suspect the bugs were looking for. But it was probably only drawn to my illegal tech, not me. Since I could only see them using unauthorized programs, it made the most sense.

I got to its final layer. Deep in the code was a connectivity program. This program let the bug communicate with all other bugs in real time. If one of them found something, the others would know immediately. This sent a shiver of panic through my spine.

I looked up in the corner of the room, through the brim of my hat. Sure enough, a new bug sat watching me. Its antenna pointing at its dead brother on my desk. At this point in time, most people would walk away. But I couldn’t. There was a mystery here. And that’s what I do. I’m Cade Lamont, The Best Private Detective. And I have the fake certificate to prove it.

I began working on another virus. Something that would let me get between the bugs body and its mind. Took me almost two nights of work. But soon I had finished “Hive Vision”.

I pulled the virus out of my pocket and tossed it onto the desk. The bug on the wall did exactly as expected and ate it. With the virus implanted I loaded my end of the program. A pair of bug like sunglasses manifested in my coat. I put them on.

I was looking at my office but from the vantage point of the bug on the wall. The first thing I noticed was the red square around me. It was tracking me to some degree. I reached up and adjusted the glasses, pushing a command into them. The connectivity of the bug let me jump from one to another.

I noticed red squares on almost everyone. It must be part of its search. Each red square a failed match to its encrypted file. I jumped through a few more. There were so many. I started flipping even faster. Looking for something, anything to tell me the purpose of these things.

Suddenly, I was staring at a nurses station. I watched as charts were passed back and forth. I recognized these nurses. I sat with my mouth open as I saw my room come into focus. The door slid quietly open and there I was. In bed with the white Lucid hood over my eyes. And a green square around my body.