One of the things that I’ve come to expect when it comes to the different worlds that I travel to, is the unexpected, now that’s not to say that things for this get boring, believe me they don’t. However every once in a while you’ll come across one that is so different that you’ll wonder what path they took in order to get where they were then. Like take for example one world were clothing was completely forbidden, everyone walked around without a stitch on. The only thing that people wore was just accessories like watches or jewelry, things like that, but anything else, forget it. Upon that world I spent five hours after I got there in a single room because they wouldn’t let me out. It was the first time that I actually folded down the suit and put it into standby mode for the very first time.
Believe me that was one world that I was actually thrilled to get off when I could. However it was only going to be after I served a penalty time for what I had done when it came to the suit that I would be able to leave since they wouldn’t let me do it before. I know that I could’ve just triggered it and left, but I figured that I’d check out the world more, and part of the penalty time was getting to do exactly that.
The next world that I traveled to was one that was extremely techno, all to the point that I had to wonder if I actually returned to another world that I had visited prior, and I know that I hadn’t. The one main difference between them was that this one didn’t have someone ruling over them like a nut case.
The place was a complete technological marvel, everywhere and everything that I looked and looked at was just tech, and this was literally in a 360 degree arc that I looked in to. It was almost like I had leaped into a huge computer core, complete with flying vehicles, and even a few times I had to move out of the way to make sure that I didn’t get hit at all.
After flying around for a bit, I noticed a rooftop park and decided to land there, even though I didn’t know what in the world the rules of law were for this world, I figured that the landing pad there was a dead giveaway for please land here (plus there was a bunch of other vehicles there as well all parked.
As I walked around the place, I noticed that everyone that was there, men, women, and the kids were all wearing a kind of head set with a holo projector on them. I scanned the device and noticed that it was an information feed of sorts, projected as a holo screen in front of the wearers eyes, however when I scanned the feed that was going into each of them, that’s when something different took place.
It seemed that when I scanned the head sets, the system noticed that I wasn’t hooked into the fed and had decided to change that, only problem was, my system was separate and independent of the rest of the world. This was done both for security reasons, and the fact that I never stayed on one world long enough. I mean I could learn the information and history about that world, but that was as far as it went.
“Excuse me sir, but you’re going to have to let the data feed enter into your system.” A voice said from behind.
I turned around to see a law enforcement type person standing next to me, like he had just teleported right to the spot that he was currently standing at, and he too was wearing one of the headsets. “Ah excuse me, but two things here, one who the hell are you, and two considering that I’m not from this world, that right there is actually out of the question.” I told him.
The guy chuckled. “I know and understand that sir; we’ve been tracking you since you arrived on our world about twenty minutes ago. We’ve been trying to connect you up to our data stream, but for some reason we’re encountering firewalls that we’ve never seen before ever. We thought that we could overcome them by now, but clearly that hasn’t happened. We even tried brute force, and even that failed. So they sent me instead to travel by primitive means in order to be able to ask you in person.” He stated.
I looked at him, and then around the place. “Yeah I was wondering about that, how in the world did you get here that fast any way, I don’t see a transport, did you teleport in or what?” I asked him.
He looked at me for a second and didn’t say anything, that’s when something hit me. If he had teleported in, then I would’ve heard something, and I didn’t heard anything at all, which only meant one thing. I stepped up to him and waved a hand at him. It passed right through him. “As you can see, I’m actually not here, I’m a hologram. Normally we would just be making contact with you through the data stream; however we had to use the old holo-projectors here in order to make that contact and request for access of the data stream to you. So please the access.” He asked again.
I looked him dead in the eye. “The answer to that is going to be no.” I told him.
“Trust me on this, you’re going to want to access the data stream, and before you ask, no there is no guest stream, just the main one. Believe me, you’ll understand everything one you get access.” He told me.
I sighed and walked through him. “Believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to, actually no I don’t. But the reason for that in first place is because of what I’ve been through in the past, and that is the number one reason why I don’t want this in the first place.” I told him as I looked out on the city.
“You’re thinking that we might try and take over the suit, and that there’s someone bent on trying to control everyone and everything here. Actually that’s not the case. No the reason is because there’s a separate world here, one that you actually cannot see, not unless you’re hooked into the data stream can you see it. Besides we happen to have a guest stream, which is where you’re going to be entered onto, plus it allows you to be able to leave and not have a single trace left in your system at all. You can even scan the stream if you wish to know that there is nothing there at all.” The guy told me
I decided to at least scan it to find out everything that was there, but to leave the hook up alone; after all I wasn’t going to be too easy in getting to when it came to this suit. I switched over to scan mode, and noticed that there were several data nodes all over the place, and that this was where the information was coming from, the data stream if you will. I did an extremely deep scan of the node, and discovered something that I couldn’t honestly believe, that unless I got hooked up, there was an entire level to this world that I would never be able to see. A level that on my home world they were only just discovering with virtual reality, but this here went well beyond virtual, however the only way that I was going to be able to see it was by hooking into the stream, something that I wasn’t ready yet for. I dove below what I was seeing there to check out the code that the stream was made of and started checking things out, and at first there was things there that I almost didn’t understand at first, but the more that I looked at it, the more that I began to realize what was going on here. Even though there was a guest level, the problem with it was that it didn’t include all of the code that was needed in order to be able to fully get around, no for that you needed to get hooked up into the main stream, and for that, I wasn’t about to after the coding that I saw for it. Not only would the stream fully connect with you, but there was an underlying code that took over everything including your mind, to the point that you because almost literally one with the system. However I understood in a way the need for it, but it was the implementation that I didn’t like, the code was hidden so that the people couldn’t see what the truth of their world really was.
Then I noticed something else, something that was meant to stay hidden from the main stream, and something that wasn’t even supposed to be noticed by the stream at all. It seemed that there was another group of people that were using the stream against its self, one that seemed to be a part of the population, but at the same time, hidden. That was when I noticed that the coding changed, like it had noticed me and decided to see what I was all about, but it gave me a burst of something that left and came into my system, one that I knew I needed to read after I left the stream.
Once out, I looked around and noticed things differently than I had before, people interacting in a different way than I first saw, like there was something there that I couldn’t see, something that unless I did hook up with the main stream I was never going to be able to see. “I understand why you want me to hook up into the system for. However it seems that there’s more here then what you’re willing to tell me, beyond your being a hologram.” I said as I walked through him and towards the edge over looking the entire city.
The guy looked at me like I just suddenly had a second head appear. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about sir.” He said to me.
I had read the message that seemed to have escaped the ones in control, it told me to go down and that I would get more information after. I turned around to look the guy dead in the eyes. “Honestly, I do believe that you do.” I told him as I did a back flip off the edge and took a dive right for the bottom of the planet.
In a split instant, the entire world around me slowed down to nothing, nothing in the entire world was moving at all, and I was the only one that was. I had experienced this before, but never at this level. It was like something was trying to prevent me from leaving the platform, but it just couldn’t grab a hold of me in time. Then time caught up and I was within near terminal velocity before my glider that I had called caught up to me and got to me in time for me to get on board and prevent me from going into terminal.
I turned on the thrusters and started moving faster and faster down into the city’s lower level areas, areas that I think the system didn’t want me to see at all. Something that I honestly don’t think that the system wanted anyone above to know ever, and as I looked around I noticed that the nodes were missing here, they couldn’t track me here and even I started to wonder what might be awaiting me here. Once I got to the lowest level, I just floated slowly along the ground and kept looking around the place.
“Welcome, you’re near your destination, we’ve been waiting for you.” A female voice spoke up in my ear.
That right there was not only unexpected, damned near took me off guard for it. “Who is this, what do you want, I got you message and I’m here, now who is this?” I asked the voice.
“Everything shall be revealed in time, you are twenty meters to your destination.” The female voice spoke.
Everything in here was dark, and there was nothing giving off any kind of light at all and even thermal couldn’t shed any light on the subject at all. I was in the dark on all levels and it drove me a bit nuts on that too.
Suddenly light came on in every direction that nearly had me if the suits HUD hadn’t compensated at literally the last second. The system detected the power serge and adjusted the vision just in time. “Stay where you are or you will be shot.” A male voice called out.
“Yeah, like that’s going to work.” I stated. “Look I was sent for here, and if you and this female voice I’m hearing aren’t going to give me answers then I’ll just leave.” I stated.
The lights started to dim down, and enough that I could get better look at not only who was there, but at the same time who I was talking to in the first place. First thing that I noticed was the way that the people were dressed, nothing like it was above, everyone here was in a different state of dress as if something had been preventing them from dressing better. I slowly stepped off the glider and continued to look around the place, and the chamber that I was standing in, which mind you wasn’t that big really, and that surprised me a bit right there. There were no windows aside from the two doors in the place, everyone it seemed was either gathered right there in that chamber, or they were outside trying to either see in or listen in on what was going on. “So now that you’ve brought me down here, who was the voice and what’s going on here, aside from the mind control that’s happening above our heads right now?” I asked.
The man that stood directly in front of me and the glider stepped forward. “That voice is our computer A.I. She currently goes by the name Alice, but she had a prior name that’s been lost to time. The city above is currently under the control of an A.I. that goes by a different name, one that we’ve stricken from ourselves in order to not ever be caught by the forces above.” The guy explained. “I’m surprised that they didn’t try and bring you into their system that they have up there.”
I smiled under the helmet mask, and looked towards the ground before folding my helmet back into my suit. “They did try, but the mistake that they made was letting me look into the coding of their system, that was when I caught Alice’s message to come down here, however she didn’t give me her name at the time, I figured that was only to make sure that she didn’t get caught so that way it could be left as background noise that came into my computer system. It seems that since the moment that I arrived on your world that they had tried bringing me into their system, but since they had never dealt with something like what I’ve got, they got blocked on every attempt that they made. They even sent someone in holographic form to try and sway me. Nothing worked, though I must say that I almost went onto their so called guest network before I caught the message. I had already seen that the guest network wasn’t one that I was going to be getting out of any time soon, that it was just a connection to the full system.” I said to them as I looked around the place still.
The guy smiled. “Good, then you’re one of us, you were able to resist their system and set up completely, and there was nothing that they could do about it. We’re trying to fight a war that’s been waging for several years now, but it’s not a war that actually involves guns or bombs, more like a secondary world were the people of this world in truth are caught in the middle of this world and have no idea what in the world is going on. An augmented reality if you will, but with very real world dealings, as you could see from the world above our own.” He said as he pointed and looked up. “Come we’ll show you the rest of this place, and then you can decide if you would like to help us, or leave this world for another.” He said.
This guy whomever he was, had actually given me the choice on if I wanted to help or to leave, sometimes when something like this happened, I pretty much was never given the choice. However since I had already seen the world above, and had seen things that I realized I didn’t much like, it was leaving a world as a bunch of yes people doing what they have been told, and having no choice. For me, I already hadn’t been given much of choice the moment that I had hacked into their system and checked out the coding that was there. This was something that I had to deal with and yesterday.
We went from the chamber to another room, one that was far bigger than even I had realized was possible, and then I realized what I was looking at here. “This is a city, a city below the main city.” I stated.
“Yes it is, this city is for those that know the truth and wish to live free, and sometimes you do have those that want to leave and travel to the city above. When that happens, then they asked to have parts of their memory wiped clean, so that way, they don’t let the others know about what’s going on right below them.” He stated. “For those above, once they start to come to some sort of clue about what’s really going on, that’s when Alice finds them and directs them here. Once they arrive here, that’s when we personally interact with them. Till then, we pretty much have to stay out of the above.”
The apartments as I came to think of them, were like dwelling chambers with raggedy curtains covering the entrances, it was like something out of a post apocalyptic world, and I had only partly been on one of those worlds before, and I had only buzzed through that world. This was a post world of its own type, and they hadn’t blown each other up yet, but then with the weapons that they had been using, that was something that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon. At least I hoped it wouldn’t, but as far as I could see, beyond the people, it was two computer programs that were fighting it out between them. “You do realize that you’re going to have to fight back harder than what you’ve been doing right.”
He didn’t turn back to look at me, he just kept walking, through different areas and corridors of the place, “I know that we’re going to have to fight back harder, but what you don’t understand, it’s the nodes that are above us that are giving the people the problem in the first place. We’re trying to defeat those nodes. We have people actually living above us right now that are fighting for us, taking over nodes and spreading out the truth when they can, believe me it’s not something that happens to be easy, but it is a way that we can fight back on their level and in their world.”
We walked into a room just outside the main living area, and the place looked like it was full of computers, at least in different set ups. Beyond that there were monitors all over the place. “What is this place?” I asked.
“It’s one of several computer stations that hack into the nodes to be able to help get the message out about the truth of the above world, however we can’t always use the same computers all the time since there are viruses that are always being sent out by the computer nodes systems.” He told me.
We walked to a door on the other side of the room and I could see from the look on his face that this wasn’t something that was normally seen by anyone. “I take it that you have something on the other side here that isn’t seen by anyone normally?” I asked.
He looked me directly in the eye lenses. “Yes you’re right.” He whispered as if he was going to do something to me. “This is the one place here that with the exception of a few, no one enters EVER.” He said as he turned to the door and opened it up. “This is Alice.”
We stepped through the door and entered another chamber, but this one was different from all the rest of them. Not only was this the only door to the chamber, but there was something in the center of the chamber. I walked around and looked, and what I saw not only took my breath away, but floored me.
The object in the center of the room was a computer system, and that computer system was hooked up to a single human being, a female human being. Alice.
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Felix Sanchez
Carrier for Martinez News-Gazette, Martinez, CA
Alhambra High School
Class of '97
