Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

"It doesn't matter," Zai said. "We have to get out of here, now."

"I don't know where we are on the Web," Devin said, "anywhere we run will be local. They'll overtake us eventually."

"There's an ideonexus portal near here," Zai listened around the landscape, her system describing the locale, and pointed into the distance. "We can take their router someplace the AI's haven't reached. That might free us to find our way home."

Devin was amazed, "How do you know that?"

Zai shrugged and started running in the direction, pulling Samantha behind her, "I pinged every neighboring address until I got a number I recognized. We can follow the numbers to ideonexus. I live out here remember?"

Devin followed with one last glance at the spreading cyc canopy. The savannah faded away and they were running through a long, brightly lit tunnel. Devin saw no end to it, but Zai pressed on with purpose. She missed a step when the rumbling sound filled the corridor. Samantha looked behind and Devin saw her eyes bulge. She sprinted ahead of the trio, pulling on Zai's arm urgently.

Devin looked back and regretted it. The corridor was a flood of rushing black nonsense. Various appendages shot out of the mass, and the tide swallowed them again. It swirled like a whirlpool, flashes of eyes and circuitry appearing and disappearing, along with pieces of the disintegrating corridor. The passageway's lights flickered and dimmed under the onslaught.

"Go!" Devin shouted to the others. He pulled out his sector editor and clicked the trigger urgently, unleashing volley after volley of destructive code into the juggernaut. The plasma orbs flashed on contact with the biomass, creating small gashes, instantly swallowed, erasing any evidence of damage.

Devin passed a fork in the tunnel and realized Zai and Samantha were no longer in front of him. He dropped the weapon and ran with renewed panic. The corridor faded away and Devin found himself running through a corporate brochure web site, an English garden filled with statues and overgrown foliage.He stopped and looked around. There was no sign of Zai or Samantha anywhere.

A vibrant logo zoomed out to confront him; it read 'Olsen Insurance.' A chatbot in the form a friendly old man ambled out from behind it. "Welcome to Olsen Insurance," he said, "your source for insurance with a personal touch."

Five cobble stone paths radiated from the corporate logo. The chatbot continued its sales-spiel as Devin searched desperately for a place to go. The chatbot squawked, like a record needle ripped across the grooves, and bubbled away into black crud, dissolving into the green grass. Veins spread out from the black pool it left, infecting the surrounding ground.

Devin sprinted away just as the spot erupted into a fountain of living chaos. Tendrils whipped through the air where he just stood. The link Devin took was chosen at random.

"Ooof!" he crumpled over a mahogany desk, stopped dead in his tracks.

"Hello, I'm Tracy Johnson," a cheerful woman's voice greeted. Devin looked up to find a sales-woman beaming an artificial smile at the thin air above him, "and I want your business! As your agent..."

He stood up and looked around. There was no door. He ran to the large window with a view of the ocean and opened it. Reaching through, his hands stopped on a smooth flat surface like a television screen.

The room trembled and Tracy fizzled slightly. The walls and ocean view cracked, oozing black. Devin backed away from the window and into a bookshelf.

Of course , he thought and scanned the titles there. Most were documents and policy options, but one title leapt out at him, "Favorite Links." He pulled the book down and it opened automatically in his hand. Without reading he stabbed his finger at a random hyperlink in the list.

He was running along a dirt path, following a stream of water. A park ranger came up to run along side of him, "Hello! And welcome to the Official web site for the Shenandoah national wildlife refuge! Is there anything I can help you with today?"

"Yes," Devin shouted between breaths, there was no hope of finding the others. He needed a non-local system to put some distance between him and the cyc tide, "Direct me to the National Park Services web-site."

"We lost that man!" Samantha exclaimed. Zai had sensed Devin falling behind them with dreadful fatalism. He was lost when they shortcut through the Associated Press Newsfeeds. Zai could only hope for his safety.

Zai's system described a subway terminal. This was good. The hyperlink would deliver them directly to ideonexus. Then they could locate a network still free, maybe China or Australia.

"Access hyperlink to ideonexus-dot-com," Zai commanded and was rewarded with the sound of a rushing train. Samantha gasped in either awe or discomfort. She was piggybacked to Zai's avatar so long as they held hands, meaning she saw the world Zai heard. One second they stood in a subway station, the next they were whooshed along at hundreds of miles per hour to the ideonexus portal.

Zai squeezed Samantha's hand reassuringly, "Stay close. I'm going to move pretty quickly to find our way home."

"Okay," Samantha said, squeezing back. Zai found the fear in the girl's voice upsetting on so many levels, and it left her confused, but the present crisis allowed no time for cognitively sorting the emotions out.

The rushing air stopped and Zai was confronted with hundreds of people conducting their everyday business online, transferring to and fro across the Web. Zai let go a quick sigh of relief; people meant the cycs were not here yet. Now she had to find a way back to her body.

"Hold on Samantha, I'm going to send us home," Zai hit the home key on her wristband- bzzzzzzt! "Dammit!"

She checked the network status, the portal replied, "Address not found. Please try again later."

Then Zai heard the signature rumbling and whispers. Samantha cried out in alarm, and other user's exclamations quickly joined her. Clenching Samantha's hand, Zai bolted ahead, trying to distance themselves from the swelling doom behind them.

From Samantha's perspective, the crawling mass flooded in from the subway where they just emerged. Users all around were swept into the whirlpool of chaos. Others tried to run, but were snatched up in black tendrils.

Zai fled through the station, testing links as she ran, "Access entertainment."

"Site unavailable, please try again-"

"Access society."

"Site unavailable, please-"

"Access current events."

"Site unavailable-"

The entire portal was a cacophony of fear and panic. Screams cut short as the biomass consumed them. The cycs were conquering the Web too fast; Zai's human reactions could not hope escape it.

"I can't log out! I can't log out!" a man shouted in fear to Zai's left as she tore through the stunned crowd.

No human can escape it , Zai stopped and crouched to grab Samantha's arms, "Samantha, I need you to find a way out of here fast. Can you do that?"

Zai's system told her the girl was nodding. Then she vanished, leaving Zai holding thin air. Zai dropped to her knees and waited tensely, humming softly to herself, attempting to block out the surrounding horrors. Samantha was now her only hope.

The rumbling grew into a roar and the panic intensified. The situation was too nightmarish, not being in an SDC, but actually separated from her body. Was she like Samantha, a ghost, running loose in the circuitry?

Zai took a fragmentor off her utility belt and primed it. If the cycs ingested her, they would swallow it as well. When she ceased to exist, the primer would release and the device would detonate, causing insignificant damage, but it provided a minor comfort knowing she would cause some indigestion going down.

The rushing water roared in her ears, and then Samantha was taking her free hand, "I found a way. Let's go."