A Dark Matter - Net

Storm by S Shepherd
Part I
'A City Gone Mad', read what remained of the tabloids front story. A writer for the Daily Herald
Newspaper was expressing his combined fear and anxiety over the recent events taking over the
city of New London. The stock market crash two months earlier had triggered massive job cuts,
bankruptcy and foreclosure across the suburban sprawl collectively known as New London.
Crime was on the rise and many people had been left homeless and jobless.
Prior to the crash many of the city's rich, and elite fled to their privately financed hideaways
across the world. Only to return a year later and find everything in Ruins, Literally.
As a jet flew across the devastation and carnage below the aboard passengers could see fires
breaking out all over the city, gang's waring and looting all of what remained of the now emptied
supermarkets and hypermarkets in and around central.
Camden Market east London was now an underground complex built to withstand another attack
by the now militant nationalists whom occupied most of the upper city's danger zones and was
now a security laden labyrinth of consumer access zones - shops and retail units connecting the
underground with a steady supply of munitions and food.
Above the ground the war raged. On the ground where once stood the artisan and student 60's
styled market now obliterated stood SIMIAN 5 an elite combat warrior sworn to protect and
uphold peace in this sector at any cost. He carried an array of redundant systems all wired-in all
replaceable at a moments notice.
The heat-seakers wove between the east-ends streets towards Camden. Through spittalfields and
up over the burnt out shells of London's pre-collapse decadent architecture, destination Camden
market.
Zeroing in on their target the SIMIAN unit responded by erecting its surface-to-air weaponry
hoping for the best, but it was too late. His last remaining thoughts were of the pancakes he loved
to cook in his underground lair amongst the other creatures of his kind, all mutated, all cybernetic.
SMASH a warm orange glow drew the planes occupants attention to the scene of devastation.
"The networks down...!" she shouted, everyone on the plane cheered and toasted their success.
Then something jolted the plane. Suddenly the left tail wing went spinning past the startled
onlookers as the plane banked over the scene below. Some-kind of projectile object looking like a
mutated head filled with electronics had collided with the planes rudder moments earlier.
The plane began to spin hurtling towards the now blackened site of the missiles impact. Stopping
short of the ground, as it appeared to be caught in a massive net strung out over the city like some
vast invisible web.Designed to protect city dwellers from satellite fallout and space debris now 
appeared to serve a different purpose. Invisible to the naked eye consisting of thousands of tensile 
filaments latticed across the sky, each able to carry the weight of a jet, and connecting each building
 in a complex web of information, and decay.
Decay that resulted when the remains of a business or a group of business went bankrupt - their
files and in fact their very existence was strewn about the rooftops of the city. Caught in the net.
Bodies limbs, secretary's, pda's and laptops all grew thick with the phosphorous 'goo' that
engulfed everything on the web that stayed for too long. They say that the source of the 'goo' is
from the myriad of underground perverts that trawl the web in search of innocence defiled.
However others rightly blame the precollapse governments whose job it was to regulate
technology before it reached its end user.
As the plane rocked to and fro its occupants soon realised their fate and struggled to free
themselves from the plane. However the heavily charge static forces bound the plane and its
occupants as they frantically reached for the emergency exit panel.
Sarah oconnoly, 24 woodgrove crescent was the first. A major in Art and Science from Harvard
Poly now specialised in recruitment for JBR international consortium. Recruitment was a byword
among down-dwellers or sub-netters for the gestapo of the new world order - anyone who worked
in recruitment stood between a real-life above the net and one where survival and sanity became
a priority over mp3's and movie download speeds. Above-net dwellers lived a life of illusions
spent in a protected web of cultural artifacts borrowed or stolen from the old city and used to
contact their past owners to service their living hosts.
The web was a shield used to prevent illusionary powers from being used in the subnet
dreamscapes which were now underground.
However the web could easily turn against those it protected as it too had a need for power and
took from the living above and most often from below the net.
She reached across the door panel straining against the invisible forces, her face contorted, PDA
in her left hand she managed to run the program - she'd gained from a sub-net source for a cool
million should the worst ever happen. It just had. She ran the program and the force abated. The
program ran an endless routine of arrays and formula's originals - devised to predict and evade
the webs propensity to consume the society that created it. Its neural-net architecture was unique
to its creator and brought her a five minute eternity before the plane and everything in it was
consumed.
She fumbled for the door latch watching the seconds diminish she knew what it wanted and she
threw herself at the door several times until it broke free of the hinges and she fell....
helplessly and out of control onto the white transparency of the web-scape. The city beneath
churned and darkened as she climbed down towards it. The web tore at her slacks revealing
bruised thighs, tearing at her blouse and leaving thin cuts across her breasts and upper body
until she could no longer hold on ...she fell.

Jeff looked out from his two storey tenement and caught a glimpse of the net as it refracted the
lights of the city. Shimmering for a brief moment and then disappearing into the gloom like vapor that
surrounded here and there patches of phosphoresce, glowing with the days fresh kills. He took a
pair of binoculars from the antique chest, next to the window, he'd managed to smuggle into his
domicile and surveyed the devastation above and below the net-scape. The wreckage of
something caught his eye burning bright with phosphoresce he zoomed in to reveal a plane. 'Just
another drugs shipment most likely', he thought as he took another drag on his narco-device.
 
The police and the net worked together. Intel transcended from paid observers who wore implants
connected themselves regularly to the web through the job-centre portholes. Each time they
dialled a number, information about them uniquely tied them to the events they had witnessed
uploaded. Unwilling or unable to partake in the events - opportunity's for criminals to take,they  merely
passively observed and recorded the information for retrieval. But the police wasn't interested in
issues over black markets and real estate fraud, they really wanted to stop the trade in narco-devices
and their manufacture. This was the primary source of funding for the various underground terrorist 
 groups operating throughout the net 's sprawl.
 Free crime ran rampant as the police chased these phantom crooks.

Nobody was safe.

The cctv network was useless and although useful at the time of it's inception became unusable
in the public domain. Camera's were everyplace and sophisticated but who was watching wasn't
regulated and in fact there were better way's to observe people without camera's.
Informants received drugs and prosthetics in exchange they provided passive knowledge about
underground groups, their defence ability's that kind of thing.

Jeff was in it up to his eyeballs. Two implants one just behind and above his left eye and the
other in the temporal gyrus recorded an assimilation of neuro impulses - never-trains. Which
when reconstituted in the job-centre phone line relayed the experiences of the day.
He tugged heavily on the narco-device the label on the capsule read never-mind consortium.
Never-mind passive surveillance and abstraction. Never-mind and JBR were at war. Never -mind
ran most of the terrorist operations in the city, covertly and used informants like Jeff to control
these instruments of terror through subversion of the cause or current ideology. They'd soon
become a tool, useful in the struggle against JBR's totalitarian tactics.
He lowered the binnoc's and picked up his telescopic rifle its sight held each of the remaining
members of the flight. He counted six. All were corporate all had suites on now partially eaten
away by the goo. The plane itself had now been partially dissolved. He could even make out the
eye's of one of it's occupants - a victim of the net, twitching as the net ate away slowly at his face.
Urrghh... Jeff grimaced. It was like the web had sped up the process of decay for each victim,
whilst still keeping them alive long enough to keep them conscious. He knew the fate of each but
had desensitised it enough not to flinch a millimetre. His job was to kill anyone from his side who
wound up in there. If any of his people got caught in the web he would have to take them out or
risk having their memories on display at JBR.
Jeff panned down to the city streets below and switched to infrared. There amongst the decaying
remains of last weeks garbage and the rats scurrying to and fro, lay a body warm and alive. He
could make out the breath as a vapour that dissipated on contact with the outside. She was
breathing. She was alive.
A flood of anxiety took him over. He calmed himself and zeroed in on her head. She moved only
slightly as if peacefully asleep and disturbed by his intrusion.
Amid the city's chaos this was a truly unusual event a semi naked goddess of a women fallen
from the net and alive. This beckoned further investigation. Further study.
To leave the sanctuary of his domicile was a challenge enough.
The route down to the city wasn't easy he clambered out the window his door nailed shut to
prevent any unwanted callers, paranoia for Jeff was a way of life. Being an affiliate member of
never-mind gave him few friends and many enemy's.
The adjacent roof was his way down. He fell and slid across the tiles and onto the window of an
abandoned tenement. On the way out he looked on the mirror to straighten his hair, tucking the folds
of his rubber jacket into each other and fastening the zip to the collar. Satisfied he left and hustled
down the street adjacent. Hands in pockets head down as he walked past a squad car, police
meeting point , a trap zone - the police often congregated in area's where they knew they could run
someone down and perform a mind-jack for something petty.
He moved quickly and yet gave nobody cause to give chase or take notice. As he neared the
street where she lay he relaxed and out of view of any potential threats he ducked down into the
alley way and found her there in the flesh and what beautiful flesh it was. He knelt down beside
her hesitant at first and stroked her face, as he did she awoke. A tear trickled down her face and
her head moved instinctively towards him fear in her eyes, seeking help. He helped her.
Her arm weak unsteadied against her own weight he lifted her up until she was supporting herself
entirely on his shoulders.
She said, 'where?' He said 'Who?'. They followed the alley way around the block and emerged
somewhere out of site he said, 'wait here' she quivered felt sick and promptly threw up beside him
he look down and looking back up their eyes connected. She understood she was safe if she
stayed put. He came back moments later with a long jacket, brown leather with fur he'd borrowed
from one of the local girls around the corner. Cost him 50 cred's. 'here' he said offering it to her
she was too weak to take it so he put it over her shoulders. She looked like one of the girls now.
She would go unnoticed. No one would think anything of it. They walked together her arms
clasping tight around him her face pressing against the folds in his rubber jacket. They neared the
crossing and then the sky broke and rain pelted down drenching them in an instant before they
had reached the other side. There was a crack of thunder and then nothing until the next burst.
Radiation storms over head routinely cleansed the web and released water collected in the
clouds and mist that enveloped it helping to disguise its existence. As the water particles
collected on the web it could be resolved more easily by onlookers. A factor known to be
correlated with terrorist uprisings.
The web couldn't be observed and that was its power even with infra-red image proc technology
its appearance was illusive transient its position undetected. It fed and grew inside buildings. No
one detected it but it was there immersing itself in the thoughts and activity's of daily life like a
parasite feeding off the living, draining their memories slowly, and then when it had the chance
making a kill. Like a python fast, over in the blink of an eye, and all that remain's was the corpse of
some unlucky soul spinning helplessly through the air. With the drugs everyone was on, nobody
noticed or even cared Never-mind played both sides feeding the web and keeping peoples minds
under a veil of dystopian ideals and drug fuelled narcolepsy. The terrorists it funded were useful
they knew the web was an unassailable target. Where was it. When was it. How could it be undone.
Who was responsible. All of these questions where neatly introduced into the minds of the activist -
Jeff's job and others like him merely had to be there at their inceptions.
The target was JBR the biggest exploitative enterprise - the bad guy the one everyone knew
would have created the web if they'd had the chance. The one whose biggest client was the now
defunct public sector, the police and even the military. But the real war as Jeff knew but kept
hidden even from himself was over information. In proffering lies he had become more acutely
aware of the truth such that it haunted him yet he could do nothing about it. Who was the real bad
guy the state or never-mind or both perhaps never-mind was the state.
He wondered about the artifacts they kept in those high rise castles and used to divine the spirits of
the dead. He wondered if this was the key and what it took to find out. If the past held some key
to subverting the web. To change its creation. To making it somehow different. He became anxious
as he pondered the inevitable. That to change the past to change everything would be to remove
reality and not escape it and Jeff was a realist he didn't want change he wanted an exit strategy.
PartII available on request from s.shepherds@yahoo.co.uk    Download   PartI
or from ZayPAy 


To read 'The Machinist' click here.