System Ascension Read online

  Enthralled: Book 4

  System Ascension

  By Prax Venter

  Cover by Jaka Prawira

  Copyright © 2018 Prax Venter

  All rights reserved

  Author's Note: This is a work of fiction, and all characters depicted in sexual situations are 18 years of age or older. Characters with any resemblance to persons that exist now, or have ever existed, are purely coincidental.

  Additionally, the Enthralled series is intended to be read as one continuous story. If you have not read Book 3: The Eros Expansion, this novel will make little sense to you.

  / Special Thanks

  Daniel Schinhofen

  Scottie Futch

  Eden Redd

  Cebelius

  Good people and great independent authors who write stories in similar genres.

  - 1 -

  “No,” Vale said after a pause. “Your world is broken, and you honestly need to hurry. We aren’t coming out there with you. The plan is for you to permanently come in here with us.”

  Mark almost choked on his water. As he used his arm to wipe his mouth, he began to chuckle.

  “I love it. How? Long-term cryo?”

  “We’ll fill you in as you move. The sooner it happens, the better- we can’t protect you out there.”

  “Actually,” Ahnix said as if she was far away. “I’m just about able to… hack into something more mobile.”

  “Good,” Vale said. “But he still needs to move. You don’t have any weapons or armor, right?”

  Roo answered for him. “No, here’s his purchase history.”

  Mark’s eyebrows shot up. “My what?”

  “That’s a lot of chicken bag meals!” Roo said with a smile in her voice.

  Vale’s sigh filled his small apartment. “Okay. System earpiece first. Then, running shoes, black shirt.”

  Mark nodded and yanked open a kitchen drawer. The many random and tangled contents slid toward him from the motion, and Mark found his wireless system connector under a handful of sweet and sour sauce packets. He wasn’t allowed to wear it at work because he needed to keep his full attention on the repair bots. Redundant Maintenance Overseer was an incredibly dull job, and the pay was terrible. It was the main reason he got the ChronoMind pod.

  Mark cast a glance back at its sleek curves as he used both hands to wedge the communication device into his earhole. His clumsy fingers caused the process to take a lot longer than he would have liked.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked, as he walked a few steps to his bedroom.

  “Yes,” both Vale and Roo said at the same time directly into his ear.

  Mark felt a spike of nostalgia when he passed the doorframe. This was where he had spent 12 hours a day, sleeping or reading. But it was as if he was looking at a photograph of his old house. His bed hadn’t gone one night without him, but he had gone… thousands, without it.

  Everything around him felt a little off. Odd but familiar smells hung in the air and even breathing felt different- as if it needed more attention. Mark made loose fists with his numb hands and moved toward his closet.

  “It’s weird being in the real world, guys.”

  “And dangerous,” Vale added from his earpiece.

  “Why? What’s happening out there?”

  Roo’s voice came from the house speakers, her voice low. “Most of the humans are dead and military drones led by a terrifying collective of zombie AIs search for survivors to eliminate.”

  Mark paused in the middle of slipping on his seldom-worn sneakers.

  “Military drones- What do you mean most are dead?”

  “About 99%,” Ahnix said into his ear, but she still sounded far away.

  Mark shook his head and pulled off his white t-shirt. As he reached for a black one in the back of his closet, his belly swung into view.

  He found himself trapped in some foreign and disgusting body. It felt as if the floor had dropped away. He needed to get back in. Now. His breathing stopped as his mind obsessed over the empty place in his heart where his girls had been connected.

  “Hey!” Vale shouted into his ear. “Mark. We need you, and every moment you are out there is horrible, for many reasons.”

  Mark swallowed and finished changing clothes. He dashed out into the living room, his eyes going to the sleek ChronoMind pod.

  “I don’t need anything else?” he sighed.

  “You won’t need anything else.”

  The door to his apartment slid up into the ceiling, and Mark took the hint.

  “Where am I headed?” he asked, stepping out into his hallway.

  “Another laboratory, coincidentally!” Roo’s cheerful voice made him smile. If he hadn’t been able to hear them, he would have completely lost his mind from grief by now.

  “Left,” Vale said, and Mark sprinted down the long, brown carpeted hallway of apartment doors as she continued. “You’re going downtown. Take the northeast fire escape to ground level, then straight north under I-8011. You’ll be hidden from street cameras and most aerial drones.”

  “But then we can’t see you either,” Roo added.

  Mark pushed his arm against the fire door, expecting an alarm, but he figured they had probably hacked his apartment building. The glowing orange disk behind the smoky band of smog indicated there were only a few hours before nightfall. A warm breeze brought the smell of burning… something, into his face, and he took in his surroundings. Sprawling below him was a twelve-lane highway with motionless transport pods gleaming like fish eggs bunched up against the side barriers. Columns of black smoke rose into the rusty sky from multiple places in the distance, but otherwise everything was eerily still.

  After a deep breath, Mark headed down the concrete fire escape wrapping around the corner of his building. His apartment was on the 37th floor, and by the 34th he was already getting winded. At least he didn’t have to go up.

  “You never told me the plan,” he panted quietly into his earpiece as he descended.

  Roo responded with smugness in her voice. “We’re going to build a spaceship and sail the stars for eternity.”

  Mark stopped.

  “There’s a lot more to it,” Vale added. “But that’s the goal. If you keep moving, I’ll tell you the rest.”

  He swallowed and willed his legs to carry him forward. Vale continued.

  “Step one is to get your mind uploaded into your system, with us. Before you ask- Yes. They hid it from the general public, but one of those hundreds of researchers figured out a way to run a copied human mind on computer hardware. It’s this mind-map data that triggered the recent, disastrous update.”

  Mark was trying to absorb everything she was throwing at him while not falling over his own feet.

  “Holy shit. Mind upload? You want to turn me into AI?”

  “Yeah,” Roo said softly. “We’ll be connected again.”

  Mark answered instantly. “Done. I’m in.”

  “I’m in too,” Ahnix said from far away. “I have no idea what I am doing, but I’ll be physically meeting you about halfway. Need to concentrate… let you know when close.”

  Vale’s voice whispered into his ear again. “She has hacked a real-world drone. This increases our chances of success substantially.”

  “Okay. Mind upload. Got it. It sounds fucking terrifying, but I understand the idea. Where does the spaceship come from?”

  Roo answered, her voice uncharacteristically monotone.

  “Earth is a warzone- Inside and out. We’re protecting our home, The Crystal Heart Universe, by hiding it in the stars.”

  Vale jumped in. “We have a good general plan, but there are missing pieces. A working fusion reactor is one. And we know nanotechnology exists, but we need to find
and access some very rare hardware. We’re collecting a trickle of data from the web, but it can be a treacherous place. Some AIs are friendly. Some are not. We still have more to learn before we build the craft, but it’s our best endgame option if we want to launch our home system into space.”

  “You said it yourself, Mark,” Roo’s breathy voice spoke into his ear. “Humans stopped exploring space a long time ago. The whole universe will be ours alone.”

  Mark was wheezing now from his physical exertion, but his mind was completely consumed by what they were saying.

  “We can talk about launching my ChronoMind pod into space later. But you- uh, know what you are doing with the whole Mark-brain-upload thing, right?”

  Vale’s voice had changed since he first met her. Where once she was wide-eyed and melodious, now she was confident and serious. When she answered him, she spoke with the directness of a seasoned warrior.

  “I will never let anything harm you.”

  And he knew she wouldn’t. Mark rounded the flights of stairs in silence, just mulling over the plan. Upload mind to his home computer. Something with nanotechnology. Spaceship?

  “Wait!” Roo yelled into his ear, and he almost twisted his ankle. Mark quickly hopped the last two steps and pressed against the wall on the ninth-floor, fire escape landing.

  “What?” he whispered breathlessly.

  Vale answered. “Three dog-like drones are in the alley bellow you. They must be avoided at all costs.”

  “What do I do? Wait?”

  Roo answered but sounded far away- like Ahnix had earlier.

  “I think I can do something to get their attention.”

  “That could work...” Vale said, distracted. “Mark, hold tight and stay quiet.”

  After a few breaths, he realized he could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. It felt too real. It felt disgusting. A trickle of sweat rolled down the skin on his back, and Mark wanted nothing more than to get back to- *BOOM*

  An explosion shook his towering apartment complex, and Mark covered his head with his useless hands for protection. Echoes of the blast bounced around the nearby skyscrapers with a shockwave that traveled for miles.

  “Mark, go!” Vale commanded. “We need to make full use of this distraction.”

  He scrambled to his feet and renewed his spiral descent.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Roo’s cheery voice responded in his ear. “It took a long time, but I finally figured out how to overload a power transformer!”

  “Flames burn us!” Vale cursed. “Causing that explosion has drawn attention to our net address. Roo and I are unpartitioning our minds to deal with this. Stay safe, move north.”

  “Unpartitioning?”

  “They’ll be back soon,” Ahnix whispered in his ear. “We… have been splitting our minds into two parts. Your speed… and system speed. Damn it.” The digital cat-girl sighed into his ear, and he could tell she stopped what she was doing to give him her full attention. “I’m trying to optimally interface my mind with this old discarded drone, and it’s not easy. Just keep running north like Vale said. The explosion should keep you safe for a while, I’ll meet up with you soon. I miss you, Mark.”

  To him, it felt like moments ago that goddess Ahnix ignited his pleasure center, but the absence of their emotional link suddenly felt maddening.

  “I miss you too.”

  There was only silence in his ear. With his determination set to overdrive, Mark flew down the remaining stairs but stopped short when he hit the second-floor landing.

  The ladder down to the asphalt below had been ripped from the fire escape and lay pointlessly flat on the ground. He scanned the alley but found no threats or movement of any kind and determined the way was clear.

  He could jump, but he was no acrobat. Breaking a leg or even just fucking up his ankle could mean game over. As the seconds ticked by, more sweat dripped down his back, and Mark knew there was only one way down.

  With a deep breath as if he was jumping into a lake, Mark leaped off the landing. The world whooshed by before his legs slammed into the gritty asphalt. Instinct took over, and he pitched forward into a roll- trying to mitigate the shock to his skeleton. The maneuver saved him from broken bones, but he scraped a hole through his jeans and through the skin on his knee.

  Stinging pain pulled his eyes down to his ragged, bloody flesh. He targeted the damage and kicked off a heal. Of course, nothing happened, and Mark’s mind reeled from the jarring reminder that he was trapped in the real world.

  Seeing the grit and dirt intermingled with his blood stuck to his throbbing open wound made his stomach turn and brought the small differences between The Crystal Heart game world and reality into sharp focus. Everything inside was much… cleaner. Everyday dirt, sweat, sexual juices- even blood, all these things seamlessly and imperceptibly faded into the background there. Here, the grime was inescapable.

  With a grunt, Mark got to his feet and ran to an intersection within the alley. He carefully and quickly darted from building to building as he moved toward the massive expressway that ran north and south past his apartment building.

  A faint buzzing in the distance caused him to stop just before he made a break for the shadowed underpass. Peeking around the corner, he saw two camera drones moving at high speed toward him from the north. Mark wondered at the AI controlling the drones and what would happen if they spotted him. Looking over his shoulder and trying to make himself as flat as possible, he watched the two aerial cameras whiz past along the expressway toward Roo’s explosion.

  They didn’t seem to react to him, and he leaned out to make sure they moved far enough away before he ran for the expressway. He wondered what sort of old drone Ahnix was coming to meet him with and hoped it would be more… potent, than those flying cameras.

  When Mark could no longer hear the buzzing of their propellers, he sprinted across the open street and came face to face with an eight-foot chain-link fence. Maybe if he didn’t have virtually useless flesh lumps on the ends of his arms, he might be able to climb over. Just beyond this blockage was the perceived safety of darkness.

  Mark started to run along the fence and shot nervous glances over his shoulder as he searched for a way through. One of his hands rattled the metal fence, and he tensed up- waiting for the noise to draw an attack. When nothing came, he let out the breath he had been holding.

  Mark turned around on the spot and really saw the emptiness around him for the first time. The utter silence suddenly felt unsettling. Above him should be the perpetual hum of transportation pods moving twelve lanes of people and cargo into and out of the city.

  His home was in what could be considered the beginning of the outskirts. In the distance to the north, he saw a dense forest of gleaming, mile-high skyscrapers puncturing the clouds. It was a long way to go on foot.

  He turned his attention back to the fence. Now that he had taken a moment to relax and catch his breath, his brain was able to focus on the problem before him. Quickly enough, he discovered that the reason he had rattled the fence with his doughy hand was because this section wasn’t attached at the bottom.

  Carefully, he wedged his bumbling hands between the holes at the bottom and pulled up. The experiment showed him two things; the bottom had enough slack to allow him to slide under, and he had also torn a gash in his left hand somehow. Mark felt no pain at all and assumed the damage happened when he jumped from the fire escape. With a shrug, he slowly let the fence return to its preferred position and got on his back.

  It took a few tries, but he was eventually able to lift the loose fence enough to shimmy under, and safely emerged on the other side.

  To his far left was a wall of concrete and to his right was the fence and fading daylight. The sun was setting on the other side of the expressway, and he would be in total darkness soon. As Mark forced himself into a light jog in the darkness along the back wall, he wondered how everything in the real world had gone to such shit in on
ly a handful of hours. He tried to do the math in his head, but the sun was his best clue. It had to have only been about five hours of real time since he had logged in to The Crystal Heart with Sasha.

  Ahead of him were a long stretch of massive cement pillars holding the millions of tons of expressway over his head. He had passed the sixth set when he came across an improvised plywood and cardboard shack snuggled into the shadows against the concrete wall. Thinking it must have been built by a bum or maybe some kids, he gave it a wide berth to be safe and kept his eye on the dark doorway as he moved past. He was a few steps beyond the small shack when Roo’s voice in his ear almost gave him a heart attack.

  “Mark! You okay?”

  “Damn it, Roo. Yeah, I’m here. Remember, your mouth is right in my ear…”

  “Oh, sorry! It’s just… it’s been a long time.”

  He paused before answering. “How long?”

  Vale answered, her voice flat. “We hopped back up to listen in on your audio feed a few times, but we were attacked off and on for the equivalent of two months. It seems they have stopped- for now.”

  Tears began to well up in Mark’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine what he would do if he had to wait that long to see them. Or hear them.

  “I’m coming. As fast as I can.”

  “I am going to hold you tight for at least a few days when I see you,” Roo said softly. “You’ve been warned.”

  Mark smiled as he jogged under the looming expressway. “Noted. Now tell me more about this mind upload. Anything I should know?”

  “Yes,” Vale said. “We are working on something Ahnix calls a ‘perception wrap’. Your digital brain pattern will have no idea how to process the new and extensive amount of data- at first. We will wrap your mind in software that translates what you experience through a portion of The Crystal Heart’s game world. The ChronoMind hardware can easily spare process-per-second needed to run the mental filter. All of us will look the same to you, and you’ll experience reality as an approximation of what’s really happening. We’ll all be inside with you, so we’ll always be on the same page.”