The Bugs, Part 2

The Bugs

I had been awake for several hours now. I could feel the pain in my head threatening to go from a dull roar to a thunderstorm. When this happens I normally just pull on my Lucid hood and go back to sleep. It’s my mask. Out here, I’m just sick little Candace Lamont. But inside Lucid I’m Cade Lamont, the private detective. The strange thing is I always felt more comfortable as Cade. Like I didn’t fit into the skin I was given.

Before I could get situated, the door slowly creeped open. My condition, myalgic encephalomyelitis, made it hard to take loud noises. So, my hospital door was marked with a quiet sign. The face of one of the nurses, Stacie, popped into the room. She smiled at me when she saw I was still awake.

“Lunch?”, she whispered.

I wasn’t feeling very hungry. My prolonged stay in the real world had left me kinda nauseous. So I shook my head, no. The nurse looked back over her shoulder and then at me again.

“I want you to meet someone. We have a new prototype on the floor and she may be checking in on you.”

I sat up in the bed and tried to look presentable. Stacie pushed the door open and behind her pushing a lunch cart was another nurse. She followed Stacie into the room leaving her cart outside. She was a small, unremarkable woman. Her blond hair pulled back into a bun made her look professional and sorta cliched.

“This is Wendy”, Stacie whispered.

Wendy walked up to the edge of the bed. Something about her made me just a little uneasy.

“Pleased to meet you, Candice”, she said in a low voice.
“Likewise”, I said nodding at her.

With very little warning, Wendy just walked out of the room. I looked at Stacie. My confusion must have been noticeable.

“She’s not a real person.”, Stacie began to explain.

That statement made me curious, but the storm in my head was beginning to rage hard and my discomfort must have been noticeable.

“You get some sleep. I just wanted you to know she was safe if she wandered in here without me.”

I smiled at Stacie as she walked out the room. “Not real...”, I thought to myself. I had to know more. Fortunately my office inside Lucid was the perfect place to find out. I relaxed into the bed and pulled on the white hood. I felt the world begin to drift away as the Lucid system pulled me into a controlled sleep.

I opened my eyes and I was sitting at my desk, Wendy’s face still bothering me in my mind. There was something familiar about it. I put my hand on my desk and pushed a command into it. All the made up certificates on my wall disappeared, leaving a large blank screen.

I focused on her name, “Wendy”, and the hospital I was living in, “The Liccardi Institute of Health and Medicine”. The search page appeared on the wall. But Wendy had auto corrected to “WnDy”. It wasn’t a name. It was a model number.

WnDy was a joint venture by The Liccardi Foundation and a tech group called Sonadim. Sonadim was a familiar name; a few years ago they invented the Synthetic Consciousness. At first, it was believed to be a method to reconnect with departed loved ones. But that was all shot down when a man filed a lawsuit against his ex wife for using it to resurrect her son. Identity laws got stricter that day.

Now they make the popup people that try to sell you things at shops. That’s when it hit me. WnDy’s smile. It was the same stupid smile the pop ups had. The interesting part was the body, it looked absolutely human. But the search page gave me little on that. All it would tell me is that the body was what The Liccardi Institute contributed to the project.

Fortunately, you can’t keep info from me. I had many ways of finding things out. I’m not the best cyber detective in Lucid for nothing. Or at least that’s what the fake certificates say. To get into the Hospital’s files I’d have to do a few not so legal things.

First, to secure the office. I pushed a command into my desk. The lights in the room turned red. I cleared my mind. But before I could do anything the lights switched back to normal. I looked around, very confused. I put my hand on my desk and asked for a diagnostic.

The wall showed that there was a connection to my office. Someone was inside with me. Carefully I stood up and took my hat off the coat rack. I put it on and loaded the “Private Eye” program. At first the room looked empty. No invisible person, which I was expecting. But then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.

There was a large bug perched in the corner of the room. It’s long black body seemed seated in place. While it’s anteni swept back and forth wildly. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m very glad no one was around to see my six foot five, manly avatar shriek and shudder like the sixteen year old girl I really am. I grabbed my coat and ran out of the office.

The hallway wasn’t safe either. I counted three of them on my way down to the chinese restaurant. All about a foot long. All black. All creepy. I must have been noticed. I’ve never seen cyber security like this. But there was little other explanation.

I momentarily thought about un-Altering myself. But I didn’t want to do it where they could see. I’d be banned for sure. I thought about just logging off. But I could still feel the pain in my head. It was duller now. But it’d be worse if I woke up.

Maybe if I went to a public place. I got into the phonebooth and dialed a number for the center of town. I stepped out onto a busy street. Hundreds of people working and playing in Lucid casually walked around me. I lowered my viser looking for anything out of the ordinary, no bugs.

I walked for a few hours just trying to calm my paranoia. If they were just in my office they had to be targeting me. I slipped into invisible mode, not wanting to be around people for the moment.

Looking through the visor of my hat I could see the world when I wanted. Everything calmed down. I glanced again just to make sure I wasn’t being noticed. And something strange crossed my screen.

In the window of the shop across from me was a pop up talking to a man and his daughter. The ad was for some sort of new game. But just behind the pop up I could see something moving. I started walking over. Ignoring everyone but the pop up. As I got into the store It crawled up on his shoulder. The bug was waving it’s anteni in my direction. It seemed almost drawn to me. I stumbled backwards as it scurried in my direction. In shear panic I sprinted through the door. But the street was swarming with the things.

I logged off. I sat up in the hospital bed frantically gasping, my panic subsiding into furious pain. I laid back down in hopes it would stop. The door cracked open. I squinted toward the light. In walked WnDy. Her eyes fixed on me for a second. Her smile seemed to widen a bit. Then she closed the door.