LEON AND THE CLOAKED NODE
With the pale glow of the grid as he looked upon the schematics of the topography of an Ancient old server, the walking ghost in the machine made his way the old codes and avatars that haunted the old server. Old programs that died eons ago the way an old battle
Field would look after years of decay ruined access ports viruses running loose like bugbears from a corrupted EQ server gone rouge. Even though he was of the code and not of flesh anymore still the faint effect of a shiver went down his spinal construct. He had not thought the place would be in such a shambles since his transcendence to the code. His facial features were near the same as they were in his death, youthful with a thinning hairline and only slight wrinkling under his eyes that shown his true age and experiences with life itself and other dimensional planes as well. He continued thru the server walking upon things long dead, things of MS and code from a place that had long since seen his hatred in a cyber wilderness that betrayed his own age by time. The server’s node was faint and ebbed save for the password encryption access portal that glowed in old Arial format. An old AV Construct was approaching him after he entered and was accepted as a normal piece of software; the shapely form of a late friend’s figure appeared and approached him. Lady Jen is expecting you; Her Ladyship would be most pleased to receive you in the Unreal Directory, Please to follow me….
The Construct of this old friend was striking just about the same height as Leon himself,
Clad in a tunic of red submicron type velvet and hung about with a pair of bracers a necklace with a glowing blue diamond icon around her neck. Walking with the glow of the simulation light orb emitting from her left hand, her hair was placed up by a twin set of slender type daggers holding the tresses of her ebony smooth hair. Her skin as a light mahogany and eyes of ever-changing flecks of silver and grays. Before she turned from him and started down the directory structure he had glimpsed old scars that the Original “meat” ver had upon this ver of his old friend. This facsimile didn’t have the simulated type of AI (artificial intelligence) that of the other type of AI’s he had encountered from other places he had been to. He followed her as he walked thru seeing fragments of things he himself had worked on ages ago, now thinking upon how far he had transcended himself he let out a small chuckle on what he knew now and what he could if code would allow, but as with all things there were rules and he wasn’t want to break them, twist and bend maybe but never break. They walked thru the My Documents directory sector of the server and marveled at some of the ancient pictures that were os some semblance of his own past life and others he had known in the past. At last the misty construct paused before a folder opening that resembled a Set of Darkened Oak Doors with Chinese Dragons intertwined together she placed her hand upon the mouth of one of the dragons and as she did so he swore the dragon and closed its mouth around her hand and had bitten it off, but this was a trick of the eyes he thought as she drew back and her hand was intact. The construct turned to Leon and spoke her first words since she had encountered him upon the entrance of the server. “Lady Jen awaits your arrival within.” Estranged by the construct he almost wished to reach out and brush the construct’s cheek but refrained reminding himself that he could not go back to the past nor could he reverse that which happened to the “real” Misty. He walked thru and was dazzled by the way the program simulation code was still in exactly the same way as he left it in! The spiraling staircase, the huge anti-area where the castle broke off in several areas via spawning points once the vision returned and his attention regained himself he walked into The “Library” and in the center of this huge secret treasure trove of ancient texts, manuals, manuscripts and how to readme’s . He turned and saw Lady Jen; the poignant facial features of her timeless beauty never changed though, her lips that of which were red of strawberry soda, her skin like cream, and hair of a Strawberry blonde fade to it, almost as if the model had been a redhead of sort when “Jen” was created and hardcode with some experimental AI code that allowed her to evolve paste her creators and coders and has since survived and lived in this server since times and ages hence the time of Leon’s demise and rebirth into something/one more. They said you had gone from the realm of the living, Leon mcnichols; I had intercepted an email stating such over 1560+ Yrs ago. Apparently you had died 1567 yrs ago from injuries you had taken on bravely while self sacrificing yourself to radiation poisoning while you saved over 2 Billion people of Russia and saved the part of what was known as Siberia and the rest of the known world in some small part. I must say you look very well considering. The Legendary Police officer and Ex Hacker shuffled uncomfortably and seemed to tilt his head with the collar of what was his long coat. There was a hint of a wince accompany the reply he gave her. I’d had enough. Surely you know me well enough by now to understand I’d never let a single life be taken while I had strength and movement within myself. Someone who had taken crap from lots of people take and take more but never did I complain and while once on vacation in The Russian free state Chernobyl 3 decided to do a replay of its grandmother, someone had to help clear out the area and take control of the cooling chamber since everyone was trying to get out anyway. But if no one had tried to stop the reactor from blowing it would have been a waste anyway because the reactor would have gone nuclear and Hinders of millions would have died. After the reactor had been taken care of, I was evacuated to a secret global laboratory where they said I would die from radiation poisoning. It was all I could do from grabbing one of the lab coats and looking in their face and say “Duh” that’s what happens when you try to cool down a reactor chamber without able to gain access to the actual control room. But I Digress, these people were funded by a number of Corparations and Governments and they needed someone to use to complete their little pet project up with and it seems that I was one of those particular people and was at the right place at the right time at the wrong scenario. They took my body explained to me that I was to take part in a process that would allow the human mind walk in a PC as a Virtual Construct of themselves while the Lab Rats work on a replacement or cure the meat host body. I of course had no choice in the matter. They took me in scanned me and my DNA and my brain wave Alphas to Zeta Brain wave Patterns and hard encoded My personality, my dna code and My Memories into Virtual Ware and Built a Virtual me which is now what you se before you now. I took off when I knew they had messed up and lost my body to the radiation poisoning and they wanted to just delete me from existence, that’s when I ran and told them I was never going to be deleted till I could find another human body which was willing to take me in. Unfortunately the world ended over 1531 Yrs ago and Humanity as we know it is gone because someone named Sadam allowed the Al Cida to release a Biological weapon that wiped out the world and then dropped an H bomb to clean up the human waste issue.
That which could not afford to make it or couldn’t reach 4 miles underground was screwed. That meant that I no longer had any mean to return to my meat self and die like a regular Joe, but seems I was destined to become a ghost in the machine and it’s been a long time since I even seen Hibernation myself. Lady “Jen” tilted her head this time and said Ah so the smoke and mirrors issue was just your inadvertent vanishing act then? But in reality it WAS Humanity that had messed up asked Lady “Jen”? But what do I have that you would require? I have no way to return your body to you; you are still stuck as a virtual construct. Leon regarded this with high regards of what was said. Well I was here for the taduki patch, Lady “Jen” nodded again AH the Taduki patch that patch just owns the world if it’s allowed to make a big hit here huh? Lady “Jen” signaled Misty to retrieve the patch from the ancient archive & tomes of The Ancients. As Misty came back she lit the charcoal by Leon which was VR of actual lighting Pillars she returned and applied the patch to Leon with a pinch of apple spice and a bitmap of a gundam unit with the full schematics as well. As soon as the patch was applied things were a lot brighter for him it seemed as the patch was re working you doing with me and the patch now applied I will not have a fear of driving thru with the illness going away bun then again there was something quite wrong indeed.
So lost to him his thoughts to rue and reverie, he didn’t hear the huge worn HDD that was the way in to the “library” he sought refuge to. The library fell away and he stumbled though a node a foreign node where cascading cryptic wing dings and fearful administrators howled from that which was the multiple platform abysses. As the blackness overtook him the construct understood that this timeframe the code offered not another life This time it offered him naught but a altered life instead much less heroic than his first, but much more final. Off in the distance on another plane in this realm of cybermancy he heard the faint familiar voice misty that started to scream. Then there was nothing saves for the encompassing light. End of Chapter One.