The Story so far:
Always: Some people have psychic powers. They move things with their mind, float around, prophesise, etc.
1963: Would-be pioneer of LCD screen technology George H. Heilmeier falls down some stairs and dies. Without him, CRTs remain standard.
1984: The Wired is made public- like the internet but you have to plug your brain into a computer to access it. You sleep while your mind surfs.
1999: Due to corporate personhood, H.A.P (happy) Electronics Company wins the presidency.
2001: :/
2022 (yesterday): A 23 year old named Amstrad goes to bed with a fever.
When he wakes up twelve hours later, a wall in his closet-apartment has moved about an inch closer. It’s also a different wall. What used to be tac-hole ridden white drywall is now a sleek black sheet of metal. All the shit that used to be on the wall- mostly job listings and magazine covers- lay scattered on the carpet, tacs included.
Amstrad stands up from the bed and waves his hand, telekinetically folding the mattress back up into the wall. He squeezes past the dresser to enter the bathroom, salvaged from an airplane. He washes his face and slaps himself so hard that his hand stings. He shimmies back into the apartment’s one standing spot, on top of his posters.
“What the fuck!” he shouts. He kicks and punches the wall. “What the fuck!”
He puts his gun in his boot, puts on his fluffy jacket, and is out the door. The first thing he notices is that the wall extends into the hallway. To the left: normal long corridor. To the right: a black sheet of metal. Down two flights of stairs, Amstrad is leaning across the counter to the building’s manager.
“My wall’s different.” Amstrad seethes.
The manager is reclining in her seat and reading The Times. A flickering light punctuates her lack of reply.
“I don’t have many square feet up there! You can’t just take ‘em!” Amstrad presses.
“You should have received a text yesterday notifying you of the construction.”
“Wha- when did construction start?”
“Ten hours ago.”
Amstrad whirls around and opens his flip phone. He had gotten the text. He whips it closed.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Tower.”
“For what?”
She shrugs.
Amstrad runs outside. Cars and bikes and hoverboards slither through the worming crowded masses of the street, corralled by walls of dripping wet tenement clusters. Storm clouds paint the noon sky black, and obscure the tops of buildings. Amstrad shields his eyes from the rain and looks up at his apartment.
Thirty stories as usual, and coming from it, a black tower reaching above the storm clouds. A dim red light pulses beyond the darkness. He looks around. No one cares. He goes back inside.
“Where’s the door?” he asks.
“To what?” the manager asks.
“The tower.”
“No door.”
“No door?”
“No door.”
“No door!”
She nods solemnly and raises her newspaper again. Amstrad notes a picture on the front page. The Shakespeare statue in Central Park is kneeling. Whatever.
He storms out. There’s gotta be a door. He begins to circle the building, hoping to find some offshoot of the tower that can be entered. In the back parking garage he overhears the echoes of a woman talking to a local vagrant.
“No door?” she asks.
“No door.” the vagrant says. “It was the wildest thing- construction team came in here and tore the place all the way up and way down below the bedrock for the tower. Done with it all ‘fore sunrise. Never seen nothin’ like it.”
Amstrad sees that she’s shaking the man’s hand and walking away. She’s got short black hair and combat boots, but not in a fashionable way. It seems like the idea of seasonal fashion trends would be news to her. Amstrad waves to her from across the garage. She stops walking.
“Are you trying to get in the tower too?” he asks.
She nods.
“Want to work together?”
She waits for a second, then gestures for him to follow her.
“I’m now going to the pedway.” she says. “If it goes low enough, it probably has an entrance there.”
Amstrad nods along. “I see. Did your room get shrunk too?”
“No.”
“So what’s up then?”
“I’m an urban explorer. I go parking here sometimes.”
Amstrad nods. He thinks about it for a second, and tilts his head. “‘Go parking’?”
“I drive and then I park for like a minute and then I drive and look for another good parking spot. I’m pretty techy with it.” she chuckles to herself about how she’s tactfully understated her parking techiness. “You got a good garage here. Damn good garage.”
“Uh. For sure.”
The tower goes through the pedway. They stand in front of its black metal shell like a pair of idiots. No door. The woman starts lightly knocking on it while circling the exposed walls. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head.
“Lower.” she says. “Sewer time.”
She leads him through alleyways and tunnels of the pedway. The kind that only exist by omission, never by design.
“What’s your name?” Amstrad asks.
“Cairo.” she says.
“I’m Amstrad.” he says. “This tower goes like an inch into my apartment.”
Cairo stops for a moment and turns to him. “The fuckers.”
Her sincerity shocks him. He nods. “I’m taking that wall down if whoever’s in there doesn’t do something about it.”
Cairo fist bumps him.
“Did you hear about the Shakespeare statue? Like how it’s kneeling now?” Amstrad asks.
Cairo shakes her head. “No. But it’s a shame about statues coming to life these days. They never used to do that, right? Like that kid this morning.”
“What kid?”
“The one at the library.”
“Ahh. Okay. Yeah.” Amstrad didn’t want to hear any more than that.
“Do you think if the kid were made of stone too he would have had a fair shot?”
“Uh.”
“No, you’re right. It’s still a lion.” she chuckles. “What was I thinking?”
Neither of them want to speculate on how stone might have begun to move in either case.
They continue down a rusted ladder into a dripping sewer tunnel. The smell is heinous. Green floodlights cast their shadows large across the opposite brick wall. They pass a small village of homeless living out of discarded barrel drums and car tarps among the muck. Cairo seems to know them and greets some casually as they go along.
They slip under a chain link fence guarding a much cleaner sewer area for computer cooling fluid. Down branching tunnels, the liquid is pumped through grinding water mills watched over by heavily armed teenagers in beach chairs, most smoking flavored cigarettes. Some give side eye to the pair, but none ask questions. They arrive at the base of the black tower.
Waves of heat radiate from industrial fans blowing like jet engines over the rushing fluid that goes in and out from the base of the construction. In the middle of all the clamor, there’s an automatic double door not unlike that of a mall. Cairo fist bumps herself. They step inside.
The door closes behind them and the sounds of the fan become muffled. It’s a brightly lit lobby with a red carpet and tastefully modern chandelier. Glass walls to the left and right show that most of the space is saved for supercomputers. On the glass, there are a few large-print photos. Most of different parkways in and around the city, a couple of an old man in sunglasses, and one large one that looks like a single family home in an ocean of concrete. Next to it, there’s a tiny diesel car and a gas pump. It says gas is 6.80. There’s an oilfield with their rising and falling rigs in the far distance.
Cairo stares at the last one for a while before musing: “California…”
The rest of the room leads to an elevator. No one else in sight.
An intercom crackles: “Uhhhhhhhhh… Hello…?”
“You built into my apartment!” Amstrad shouts. “I’d like to speak to who’s in charge!”
There's some motion and indistinct whispering over the intercom. They barely make out phrases like: “totally poor”, “got past the fence”, and “fuck it”. The voice returns. “If you’re here for the ceremony, you can come join us, but only if you don’t mess anything up. I am having a Great Becoming.”
“Are you up there?” Amstrad asks.
“... Uh… yeah…”“I’m coming up.”
He motions for Cairo to follow him. They get in the elevator. It only has two buttons: lobby and ceremony. Amstrad folds his arms and telekinetically presses the ceremony button. Behind them, there’s another big photo of the old guy:
Amstrad’s trying to ignore it.
“You’re one of them psychics.” Cairo observes.
“Oh, not really. I can only do like ten pounds. Nothing special about my powers like the ones you see on TV.”
She looks at her hands. “If I could do without these things, they’d be gone.”
Amstrad nods at her.
She seems deadly serious.
“So you’re just here for the love of the game?” Amstrad asks.
“Yep. And to see you totally scuz this corpo, dude.” she chuckles. “It’s gonna be so sick.”
“Well I don’t wanna- like- kill him,”
“Uhhhh yes you do bro.”
“I just want my wall back.”
She shrugs and leans back
“I’m not gonna kill him.”
She shakes her head and smiles. “You brought the gun, though.”
“Well yeah, I’m not stupid.”
The doors open to a wide showroom with a model of New York as a floor. Floodlights project a moon-like glow across the buildings. You’re supposed to take a pamphlet off the top of the One World Observatory and walk through the Hudson.
At a glance, the model has far more highways than normal. The buildings are fewer and taller. Central park is paved over.
“Welcome to a new vision of a new New York-” a feminine, robotic voice begins to fade in over speakers built into the ceiling.
Amstrad is already halfway past the exhibit. Cairo stops to pick up one of the pamphlets and notices that she’s either the first person to do so, or the tray was overfilled before they got here. As she skims it, she catches up with Amstrad as he trudges through another exhibit.
Video projected onto the walls of a long hallway show people walking next to you. It's like you're walking together on a sidewalk. They’re all plugged into handheld computers and walking with their eyes closed. The voice returns. “Going somewhere?” the video dissolves to the same people performing a blood scan and then having a robotic arm place a coffee cup in their hand. “Getting a drink?” the same people sat in a movie theater, all with their eyes closed and headphones on. “Or going to see a movie?” they’re all together now, no one touching, no eyes open. Smile for the camera. “There’s a website for that. One website for that.”
The word
NWRK is projected onto the walls over and over again.
“Newark…” Cairo whispers.
“NeW
YorK. Your only website- your only need.” the voice says.
Amstrad feels sick.
They get to the end, another double door. Amstrad throws it open.
There’s a robot like a pogo stick on wheels waiting for them. It’s got a CRT monitor for a head. Green text scrolls across it:
>Hello! :] Welcome to The Ceremony! :D Your host, Horst Belforion, has accepted your impromptu attendance with some frustration… :p His Great Becoming is a serious matter. :| Please state for my records that you will not be raucous during the ceremony. :[
Amstrad walks past it. “Horst? This guy’s named Horst?”
Cairo follows.
The robot desperately tries to keep pace.
The hallway is dimly lit and winding. Along the walls are rows and rows of canvas oil paintings of abstract anguish and powerful knife strokes, along with enlarged magazine posters that have been scrawled upon. Every monitor depicted in a poster has been painted with a face writing in pain. Children have been drawn in, connected by the brain to the computers. In red paint along the walls: CHARMORAG! CHARMORAG! SUMMON YOUR CHAMPION! OH DAEMONIC PRINCE! And so on. The robot glides in front of them.
>Horst is a real talent, huh! :D But I must stress, please do not be raucous during the ceremony… :( Any small part going wrong could be terrible for the results! :O What do you say? :]
Amstrad looks past it. There’s a man sitting on a velvety bench in front of a pair of doors where the hallway ends.
“Is that him? Horst!”
> Please stop mister. >:|
The man looks over. He’s wearing a light fedora and trenchcoat. He’s studying a picture, but hides it in his coat when they come into view.
“I won’t be raucous.” Amstrad says dismissively, and walks past the robot.
Cairo stops walking, shakes her head, and sits down on the ground. “I can’t promise that. I’ll be right here.” she starts reading the pamphlet some more.
Amstrad shrugs at her in an exasperated way, and goes to the man in the trench coat.
“Horst?” he asks.
“Not quite. Private eye Porco Hackett. Consultant for The Times.” he flashes a news site issued license to kill.
Amstrad looks at the doors. “What’s the story?”
“This Horst Belforion built a transmission tower to summon some magical artifacts through the Wired sent by what he believes is his daemonic patron called Charmorag. Looney stuff. We’re sitting outside the room where he’s all plugged into his supercomputers to send his soul to Hell and get the objects. His pops and mom and sister are all in there trying to get him to stop before he kills himself.”
Amstrad puts his hands on his hips. “You mean he built a chunk outta this apartment for the world’s most complicated suicide booth?”
“Not suicide, he doesn’t think he’s gonna die. The guy thinks he’s going on some quest. Shame for the family, I understand. They’ve been at it for an hour now.”
>Horst’s plans are entirely feasible and based on scientific fact! :O Though detractors have long disparaged his claims of daemons creating the Wired as a hyperspace to communicate, they have never been fully disproven! >:]
Porco side-eyes the robot.
Amstrad turns to it. “The Wired created by daemons? Like, the internet was already there and we just found it?”
> Yes. :]
“And it was made by extradimensional daemons?”
> Yes! :D In the pamphlet- wait :o
The robot wheels back over to Cairo to stop her from crawling towards them on the ground.
“I’m going in.” Amstrad says.
Porco holds out a hand. “I wouldn’t-”
Amstrad kicks open the door.
It’s a domed room much like the lobby, with modern and tasteful decor suspended above heaps of servers, monitors, and wires frayed like matted hair. Electricity thrums like ocean waves. Seated in the middle of the chamber is a chiseled white guy with dozens of wires going into his neck and head. Around him are three less chiseled white people begging at him.
“Horst?” Amstrad shouts.
They all stop and turn to him.“Uhhhhhh… yeah?” says the man in the chair.
Amstrad walks up next to the family. “We’ve got a big problem. Or no, you’ve got a big problem.”
The old man who he presumes is the father pushes Amstrad away. “Begone with you- Thousand Words! Fetch the vagrant!”
The robot wheels in. >You promised not to be raucous >:O
“Thousand Words, get all these people out! I will start the process!” Horst screams.
The family erupts into argument. Thousand Words bumps into Amstrad to try and move him. Porco’s walked in with a tape recorder and is pretending to simply mosey around. Cairo is suddenly next to Amstrad.
“You built into my house you fuck!” Amstrad screams over the commotion. No one’s listening. “I’m gonna take that wall down, hear me? I’m not some bug you brush aside you- you idiot! I have rights!”
>Do NOT interfere with the structure of the walls!! >:O It will compromise Horst’s Great Becoming! >:[ And you do not have THAT many rights! :/
“Enough of all of you!” Horst bellows, straining against his chair. Psychic force shoves everyone across the room, towards the door.
Cairo elbows Amstrad, “He’s psychic too.” like it might be an icebreaker at a party.
“You’re throwing away the fortune!” The father yells.
“You’re inhibiting my potential! Thousand Words! I must be alone!” Horst lets out another burst of psychic energy and they’re all flung out the door. It slams shut and locks.
“Horst! My boy!” the mother wails.
Amstrad leaps to his feet and helps Cairo up. “Fuck this noise. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” she asks.
“Where do you think?”
“Yo Amstrad.”
Amstrad swings the hammer at the wall. “What?”
“This pamphlet is preeetty interesting. Lots of business-like words. Some photos of dead bodies.”
Again he smashes into the wall, and the metal cracks. He turns to her. “What?”
“Yeah. Mostly CIA test subjects. It says that once Horst has the Power Glove and the Spellseer Glasses he will ‘ascend beyond cellular human consciousness and be able to influence the zeitgeist as a child does his sandbox’.”
Amstrad’s hammer chews through more insulation. He pries it out and wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Well that’s weird. Do they have one in english?”
“It seems like if he’s wearing these glove and glasses, he’ll be able to change human cultures by just being there. He could be like ‘everyone shit themselves’ and we’d all be like ‘hmm it would be cool to shit ourselves’. And it says he would also have unlimited psychic powers. Unheard of levels of power.”
“Cairo, disregard that. It’s nonsense. No one is ever gonna have shit-yourself-infinity-powers.”
She shrugs.
Amstrad pries the sheet of metal away and tears out the filling. Behind the exposed wall is Thousand Words.
>STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP! :’O
“Move this wall back!” Amstrad yells.
>You have severed a hyperneural link! >:O Horst had successfully sent his mind to Hyperspace, but can no longer return alive! :’(
Amstrad stops for a second, hammer in the air. “I- I told you I was going to do this!”
>Horst didn’t listen. :(
“Is… is he dead or something- like, did he already kill himself, then?”
Cairo is quietly laughing in the hallway. Amstrad glares at her.
>If you save him, we will move back the wall! :< We’ll even give you extra space, if we can. :o
Amstrad, still winded, sets down the hammer. “Save him? What do you mean?”
>I have proof if you let me show you. :| Horst has been in contact with an extraplanar daemon his entire life- they can only be reached via the Wired, which the daemons created as a gateway to Hyperspace. :p Recently acquired TOP SECRET military intelligence documents proved Horst’s hypothesis. :]
Amstrad squints in disbelief. He looks to Cairo for another read on the situation. She’s smiling and nodding real slow, real confident.
“Wuh- I- I don’t even like this guy. He’s like- trying to make the city worse and shit. And why me? Why do I have to save him? Can’t you rich people call the jawbreakers?” he stutters.
>If Horst tries to return now, I won’t be able to retrieve his signal! :’O His mind would be eternally lost in Hyperspace. :( But if someone else (who is psychic) went in with him and held him back for another fifteen minutes or so, both could return safely. :D If you do that for us, I have been given permission to promise you anything you desire! :O
Amstrad thinks for a moment, smirks, and hides it again. “Anything I desire?”
>Anything :I
“I want a villa in Manhattan that overlooks Central Park. And all of Horst’s money. And this stupid tower gone.”
>Done! :D
“Done?”
Amstrad and Cairo make pointed eye contact. She gives him a thumbs up.
>It’s a deal. :]
“Fuck. Let’s see the proof.”
They climb through the wall.
They’re led through hot server rooms and ten identical locked doors strewn between hastily finished walling. Through the last lock, there’s a safe. It’s stuffed to bursting with CIA dociets, scientific records, photos of scientists next to computers big like houses, and monitors with that same blurry face, contorted in agony. Each picture is marked for destruction. Dry blood is on some of the papers. It occurs to Amstrad that it was likely someone's life’s work to leak these documents.
And that somehow this asshole Horst got them. Horst and his daemon.
Digging further, there are pictures and descriptions of the first trips into the Wired. Prisoners getting the jack put into their spine and being hooked into the ‘information network’, as they were calling it then. There are hundreds of postage-stamp sized portraits of dead bodies taken like mug shots. Some of them kids. The most successful ones, kids.
He looks again at the blood stains. A daemon, he thinks.
The largest dossier is about Robert Moses. You know, the architect. Amstrad picks it up and begins to sift through it. He sees the list of stuff he made. He sees the picture from the elevator, here labeled 'ROBERT MOSES pictured with the suspected SPELLSEER GLASSES'.
His eyes fall back to the blood stains. Back to the goofy looking glasses. “I’m just here for my room.” Amstrad whispers. An affirmation, conscious or not. Not here to save people, not here to do the right thing, just here for the room. Maybe even squeak it out with a bigger one. Maybe this guy won’t be so bad for New York. We survived Robert, right?
“I’m in.”
Thousand Words leads them back to the ceremonial chamber, where the family has left, but Porco remains.
“Back so soon? What’s going on?” Porco asks.
Amstrad ignores him and they enter the chamber.
The robot turns to Cairo. >She must wait outside. :/
Amstrad shakes his head. “No way. I demand it.”
>I must insist. :\
“It’s good man. I’m techy, I got you.” Cairo makes a light nod to Porco. “I’ll keep an eye out here.”
Amstrad sighs and the door to the chamber closes.
>Ready to be hooked up? :D