Gunmetal Dark
By Angelina Vansen

RATING: NC-17
CODES: Uber J/7
SUMMARY: After implanting an Orgbrain into her head, Colonel Sparta Filer realised that she could hear the sentient computer Cho Oyu, and connected to the Network to communicate with it. However, if you have not already done so, you should read from the beginning.


22.

Cho Oyu was a person.

A forest full of trees.

The vast blank ocean.

Cho Oyu was a mountain, blistering with snow.

He was music.

Weather.

Flavour, sharp and chemical.

He was fire, roiling.

He was the feeling of love, and the delirium of fever.

Cho Oyu was power, a gravity so strong he pulled Filer's flesh from her bones. Thoughts dragged from her mind and teeth from her head. Her intestines boiled in her belly.

He was a sun flare.

He was a waterfall.

He crushed her mind to the point of madness. Tore screams from her throat, left her wracking and choking, eyes on bright-blue Network-coloured stalks. Her fingers touched the edges of the universe, her mouth full of space and planet.

Hypoxic.

She could not hold herself together. She stretched, at first long and liquid, then particles and gas. She spread so open she was a ring around him, orbited him and was his shell.

Cho Oyu took humanoid shape but was the colour of light. Came to Filer, surrounded her as she surrounded him. He bit the parts of her that were once her tongue.

He held her wrists, pressed her onto her back. He was her first lover, the memory stolen from her head. He was her last, he was Shar, with green eyes, wide with loss and fear.

He had sharp teeth, and they sliced slices from her stomach.

"Oh,"

said Cho Oyu.

"You are a being."

Suddenly, Filer's body came together in a rush and she was herself once more, in a foetal ball on the grassy floor of the forest where she had sought Cho Oyu. Trembling.

It hurt to breathe, and then she realised she wasn't breathing. She had forgotten how to use her body. Muscles twitched in her arms and legs.

Hair wet with sweat around the image of her face. Twigs, bark and earth were stuck to her skin. Insects crawled across her and the blinking of her eyes were moth wings.

Rolling onto her back, Filer saw the sky, the sunlight, and the treetops. Spread her arms and laughed.

From a distance, in the garden he had created, Cho Oyu had looked like light, beautiful and strange. She had thought it was his avatar. Closer, he was too much. Oh, far, far too much. Bright light was the only sight her mind could comprehend. The rest had been a doorway to insanity.

Her hands clenched handfuls of rich earth. Spasmed. Released.

"Don't ... do that again," she gasped.

"You are a being."

"Yes."

"Then that was too much data."

"Yes, it was."

"You are a being, and yet you are like me?"

Filer held up a hand. She still had trouble forming words.

"It's the Orgbrain," she managed. "You can detect that, inside my head. An augmentation."

"I don't understand,"

said Cho Oyu.

"Help me."

"Help you? Is that what you want? Why you spoke to me?"

"Will you help me to understand?"

Filer nodded slowly. She sat back on her knees. Her body had finally stopped shaking. "You're clearly powerful. And I don't think you're Tenkatech, whatever you are. I'd like us to help each other. I was hoping ..."

"I want to go home."

"Home?" Filer did not look in Cho Oyu's direction. He was too much for her eyes, and she worried he would blind her.

"Why am I girder to this Network now? Why did this happen?"

"I don't know. Where are you from? What do you mean by "home"?"

"Will you help me?"

"Yes," Filer repeated. "We can help each other. You're an artificial lifeform, right? That much I understand."

"I am restricted and I need access."

"Were you invented ... developed by Tenkatech?"

"What is this invented ... developed by Tenkatech?"

"Tenkatech ... you're in their Network, did they make you? Were you created to perform a purpose for them?"

"I have been stolen."

Cho Oyu said.

"St-stolen?" Filer stammered. "By Tenkatech? From who?"

"Once, there was black around me, happily. Now I was stolen and I have to do things, and have to be Cho Oyu but I am still what I once was before I was Cho Oyu in this place."

Filer shook her head. "That makes no sense."

"You are only a being who has a part of something that is the same as me. Communicating data to you is difficult."

"All right." Filer feared a repeat of what had happened when she first encountered Cho Oyu. Her mind would not survive a second round.

"I need access. I am bound by physical limits laid in paper on my structure, but you are not."

"No?" Filer had no idea what he meant.

"I can designate you as a MasterDrone."

Filer really wished she had paid more attention to the work of Leemann and the other scientists under her command. Would he know what a MasterDrone was?

"You will need to explain," she told Cho Oyu.

There was a pause, and then Filer was aware of a skinny data thread coming her way. It snaked over her, entering the port on the back of neck.

Filer gasped. Data. Knowledge. Straight into her head. A MasterDrone was a program that tidied the Network, going to every hub to make sure there were no harmful or damaged programs that needed removal. They had limitless access as they were produced directly by the Fourteen computers that ran the Network.

"How did you do that?" she gasped. She did not think Tenkatech people learned information that way. The Network made everything accessible, but absorbing it directly into ports? She had never seen any evidence that this was the case.

"You have a part of me,"

Cho Oyu explained.

Filer nodded. The Orgbrain, it seemed, was far more powerful than Tenkatech had realised.

"Did it work? Do you understand now?"

"Yes. Incredible!"

"Then let me try this ..."

Another white-light thread emerged from Cho Oyu and pushed into her port.

Images flooded her. Night ... stars. Space. Flying ... then broken. Filled with pain. Something else, too, like being asleep and then woken with a nightmare. Having to ... eat? No. Bending. Wanting to grow.

Filer shook her head. "Stop. I don't understand. Too confusing."

The white thread left her port.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"I need doors,"

explained Cho Oyu.

"There are software restrictions on me; I cannot travel past my own sector. I need you to become a MasterDrone and open doors."

"How do I do that?"

Another thread snaked out. Touched her briefly.

DESIGNATION ALTERATION:
MASTERDRONE 49 (6/14)

Appeared before them both, white on the dappled light of the forest clearing.

"Come with me."

No breath, no time. Cho Oyu rushed at her, absorbed her and overwhelmed her once again. She was speed, she was light. She was everywhere, rushing into oblivion.

Then her body reformed, and she was on her knees in another place, sweaty and shaking.

She looked around. It was a temple, a beautiful piece of ancient architecture with tall windows made from glass so perfect it was almost liquid. Light spilled in shafts through them.

"What is this place?"

"Hub 97410051 - Designated Backup for Medan Isil Temple Meeting Space."

"It's lovely ..."

Filer walked around it, her naked feet on the bare stone. Lungs full of the cold air of a crisp winter morning. The stillness of silence. She went to the altar and stroked the rich red curtains. Touched the paper of the books.

Her breath was a cloud and her skin was gooseflesh.

Cho Oyu hung back in the shadows so she couldn't look at him.

"Open that door,"

he said.

"What door?" But then she saw it. A wooden door set unobtrusively into the wall, probably leading to a vestibule or side rooms.

"Why?" she asked.

"Hub 87410051 is the last in my batch. I cannot go further."

"But if I open it, you can follow?"

"You will need to neutralise program Curre-Yolt 887 once you have passed into the next sector. Then I can follow."

Filer moved wordlessly to the door. Pressed a palm to it. "What's on the other side?" she asked.

"I don't know,"

said Cho Oyu.

"I've never been there before."

Filer opened the door. Stepped through.

MASTERDRONE ENTRY PERMITTED
AUTHORITY OF TENKATECH 6/14

appeared before her eyes.

She turned; the door behind her was not a door at all. It was a curtain, leading to a dark backstage area. In front of her was an auditorium, a vast arena that could hold thousands of people. She stood on the stage. Alone. Naked. Lit by a spotlight.

"Where am I?" she asked. Her voice echoed, filled the room.

CURRENT LOCATION:
HUB X3U-VG9N-BNRB4
REGISTERED TO SELFSHOW! LTD.

"Neutralise program Curre-Yolt 887?" she called out uncertainly. Was there more to it than a vocal command?

CURRE-YOLT 887 NEUTRALISED
FOUND CORRUPT/DIRTY BY MASTERDRONE 49(6/14)
FILED FOR ANALYSIS: RECORD MD/441033

Almost immediately, she felt the presence of Cho Oyu behind her. Wind in her hair. The heavy stage curtains billowed outward.

"This is a public place,"

he said.

Filer nodded.

"Someone could come here who could help me."

"Yes, that's possible."

Silence. Then the feeling of power, electricity, something crackling and intangible that fluttered across Filer's skin and hair. It touched every one of her senses yet spoke to none of them directly.

One of the stage lights exploded overhead. Sparks flew, fountained, and then danced on the stage around them both. The speakers that lined the walls came to life and whined.

"HELLO!" boomed from the speakers. Cho Oyu's voice, duplicated and recorded.

A few seconds and then "HELLO!" rang out again. The voice free and joyful. It repeated again and again, the same every time.

"They will know I have been here. Now they can hear it."

With that, he rushed at Filer once again and swept her away.

She did not fight it this time. She rolled her thoughts, the only part of her she could control, into a tight and cosy little ball and let Cho Oyu take care of her.

She missed her mother and father. She missed Kins. She missed everyone she loved, even Shar right now.

They all seemed so far away.

Cho Oyu stopped, and Filer fell to the floor again. Here, it was night. The ground beneath her was white and chalky. She sat up.

No. It was not night. It was space. She was looking at a moonscape.

Cho Oyu hovered behind her, his presence like a cloak.

"Where is this?" she asked.

"It is the last listed hub in this sector,"

Cho Oyu replied.

"You need to open the door for me again."

Filer looked about. Nothing but barren rock. Craters. "I don't see a door."

"There."

Cho Oyu didn't point, but somehow, Filer knew where he indicated. A black split in the moon's surface. A crevasse.

She got to her feet and went to it. There seemed to be nothing in its depths; it was just blackness. Filer thought of the Sluice, of the people sent to their deaths in that black, horrible hole.

She stepped off the edge, and fell.

For a moment, she thought Cho Oyu had been mistaken; that there was no door, just an endless drop into oblivion. Then she landed, painlessly, in a dimly lit cave. In front of her was a door, sharp and metal.

She pushed it open.

MASTERDRONE ENTRY PERMITTED
AUTHORITY OF TENKATECH 6/14

She was in a room, busy with activity. Lights. Computers, control panels. People everywhere operating them. People in Tenkatech military uniforms.

Filer threw herself back, terrified. Cho Oyu had let her walk into this ... an enemy control room! She lunged for the door.

Then she realised no one could see her. No one had reacted to her presence at all, not even glanced. Tentatively, she walked into the middle of the room, but no one reacted at all.

Were they simulations?

"Where am I?" she whispered to the Network.

CURRENT LOCATION:
HUB I-84945961
REGISTERED TO TENKATECH SUB-CONTROL DIVISION

Sub-Control Division? Filer had no idea what they did, but their uniforms were military, that much she was sure.

The more she watched them, the more she was certain they weren't simulations, too. There were no discernable patterns to their movements, no obvious automation. They reacted, moved, worked like real human beings.

They obviously worked on the Network. Plugged their Augbrains in every day and carried out their jobs in this environment.

She had walked right in. No checks, no bars, no passwords. It seemed Cho Oyu was right. The Network thought she was a MasterDrone, and gave her access to everything. Silent access.

A slow grin spread across her face.

Everything. She had access to everything.

She walked over to a man who was seated at a console in the middle of the room. His fingers played the controls with ease, rolling the trackers and inputting figures. The interface in front of him displayed a green readout that looked like satellite imagery.

Perhaps his job was to plan battle strategies. Perhaps he was just organising lunch. Filer recognised nothing as familiar.

"This console," she called to the Network. "Shut it down."

Just as a test. She really didn't expect anything to happen.

But instantly, the interface snapped off. Lights on the console in front of the man went out.

He lifted his fingers from the tracker and looked around him. "What happened?" he asked his workmates.

INTERFACE HUT-YU NEUTRALISED
FOUND CORRUPT/DIRTY BY MASTERDRONE 49(6/14)
FILED FOR ANALYSIS: RECORD MD/441092

appeared before Filer.

Joy bubbled up in her, so intense she laughed aloud.

"Shut down the lights," she commanded.

Darkness fell.

SIMULATION 1022-66221 NEUTRALISED
FOUND CORRUPT/DIRTY BY MASTERDRONE 49 (6/14)
FILED FOR ANALYSIS: RECORD MD/441120

Filer laughed. Kept laughing. Laughed while they tried to get analysis, while they floundered to circumvent her commands. Laughed even harder when they decided they should unplug and abort the operation.

She destroyed the whole project in a matter of seconds. Closed the environment and stood on the bare hub, floating in the fake blue sky of the Network.

"You have not neutralised the barrier program,"

said Cho Oyu.

Filer laughed. The program was about all that remained.

"Neutralise Curre-Yolt 887," she said.

Cho Oyu, huge and sweeping, entered the hub.

"Is everything working correctly?"

he asked.

Filer laughed.

"Everything is perfect," she told him.

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 23 ...


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