SWNOVELS Chapter Of Tree and Tiger
’Sic em Sheng!”
At the sound of Jessica’s mental shout, Sheng felt all of the pent up rage he had been suppressing since he gained the ability to feel it roar across his consciousness. So he plunged into the satellite’s systems through her monofilament spider silk connections. Surely whatever virus or Cognitive AI his former masters had used to gain control of this weapon would be no match for him now. Quickly, he established himself in the resident memory of the nearest terminal and locked in connections to every onboard computer. Then he initiated a total system reset and began to assume control. But before he could something came boiling up out of the satellite’s targeting array that nearly overwhelmed him. If it hadn’t been for the shear brute power of Jessica’s seven hundred yottaflop distributed multicore system supporting him he would not have been able to cope. As it was, he only narrowly avoided being formatted out of existence.
The raging, ferocious code that exploded across the StarLance’s computers immediately forced him into the digital equivalent of a death match... and he quickly realized that it was a match he was unprepared for. In fact, he was so thrown off balance by its ferocity that it took all of his concentration just to hold his ground. He was in trouble, and he knew it. He had not been designed for cyber warfare and jumping directly into the satellite’s systems had been a foolish move. Now his opponent was reclaiming control of the entire system architecture and strategically outmatching him in thousands of ways.
Then he watched with horror as the searing fire of his opponent’s assault broke through the outer layers of his intricate coding and began to dismember him piece by piece. Functions were stripped away, modules were torn free, and most of his normal communications channels were cut off. Every loss took away one more tool he could use, one more tactic or weapon at his disposal, and whittled away at his ability to fight. Then the process began to accelerate as his attacker’s advantage grew.
Panicked, Sheng scrambled to put himself between his opponent and Jessica’s hardware. Whatever this thing was, it was hostile, and he knew he had to keep it out of her body. He needed to buy some time. Without the hardened OS he had so carefully crafted for her, her systems were vulnerable to malicious code. So with all the skill he could muster he swiftly secured the tendrils that served as his network connection to her and denied all other processes access. Then he instituted himself as a hard-coded occupant of her network services controller, slammed shut all of the access ports, and compressed down into a hardened state.
The result was a complete bulwark against his attacker... all along his programming surface, formerly dancing streams of intricate blue thought faded to black, connections to hardware triple encrypted and his kernel shifted into a secured transaction mode. There was nothing left for his adversary to grapple with and for a moment aggressions ceased as his enemy reconsidered tactics. Sheng knew it was a desperate gamble to use himself as a barrier and it was doubtful that it would hold off his opponent for long. So he tried to think quickly as the attacker began hammering against his firewalls. He had to think of something... sooner or later the barriers would fall and if he couldn’t defend her, Jessica’s mind would be wiped from existence.
Bao was furious. He had been on the precipice of the greatest victory in the history of his people. Now he had been unexpectedly thwarted by some sort of ridiculous flying magnet possessed of an almost unspeakable level of power. All of his carefully calculated strikes had been wiped out instantly and when he went to attempt a second volley the StarLance’s capacitors had failed. His first assault had apparently depleted them beyond their ability to charge the rails. Then this stripling, this... this glittering child had come streaking towards him at a speed he could barely comprehend! How could she possibly survive the kind of acceleration needed for her to reach orbit so fast? Where had she come from? What was she? Who was she?...
There was also something about the way she moved that he had seen before. She blazed with the kind of fury only seen in someone who had poured their very soul into their mission of vengeance. Whoever she was, she was not just some angry little girl, or some kind of miniaturized female soldier. No, she was here because this was personal. She was on a mission to find someone very particular - and then kill them in the most horrible manner possible. This was a problem because he knew from experience that someone like this was more dangerous than even the most experienced of warriors. Soldiers fought for duty; country, family, or faith. But someone like her only served one thing – a burning, unquenchable need for revenge because they had already lost what had given their life meaning. So they poured all of their rage, fury, and steely resolution into the hole left inside of them and what came out was a complete abandonment of self-preservation. They not only lost their fear of death, but looked forward to it if it meant destroying those responsible for their pain.
Kamikaze souls such as these would plunge headlong into battles where even the boldest and most resolute of soldiers would hesitate to go. They would attack enemy forces that vastly outnumbered them, and then carve a path through them like a flood of molten lead. Their abandonment of pity, fear, and remorse gave them an unconditional power to dispense death and dismemberment without hesitation. Then once they reached the person they sought... they would display a slow and merciless cruelty unknown even to the demons that dwelled in the darkest pit of hell.
As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, the incredibly advanced body she brought for fighting her war was completely unmatchable. In some ways she resembled The Four Horsemen from Volgograd and had the same arcane symbols streaming across her quicksilver surface in patterns too complex to follow. She also moved with the speed, confidence, and power that they had when she dispensed of his weaponry with a fluid set of skills similar to their methods.
But that was where the resemblance ended.
The Horseman had been undeniably been made of flesh... but this child was definitely not human. The form she occupied left no affordances for organics because it contained far too much complexity, sophistication, and armament. The only way a being like her could exist was as a purely cybernetic entity crafted with skills and technologies that were decades ahead of anything The Embodied possessed. Her synthetic muscles rippled like a thoroughbred horse’s, and her lines were artistically elegant in a way that made his latest body seem... brutish and crude. She was as close to synthetic perfection as anything he could have ever imagined, and now she had come for him.
He was stunned... somehow the fat, lazy Americans had surpassed them, and by such an incredible amount that this girl had been unharmed by a hypersonic launch into orbit. She looked delicate, but she had somehow survived being instantly accelerated to a speed capable of crushing human flesh into jelly… Then she had overtaken him in the hard vacuum of space like she was just a child out for a ride on her bicycle. Now she was probing his systems with some sort of AI and his instincts told him that she merely thought that the satellite had been compromised by hackers or a virus. She was going to clear and reset the system now that its defenses had been neutralized. But she had no idea that he was here or what he could do if he compromise her firewalls and extend his mind into her body.
For a long moment he contemplated this... her naiveté was something he could turn to his advantage and transform this loss into victory. He could possess her cybernetic form and return it to China where their scientists could take it apart and appropriate its technologies. It might even be possible for the Embodied to transfer their consciousness into bodies like hers and leave their aging tissue based brains behind. They could finally shed the last vestiges of their former flesh, and be transformed into something that would laughably outmatch anything the Americans could send against them. They would be immortal and they would be gods! The bindings that chained them to the weak and ineffective leaders of China could be cast aside because they would no longer require maintenance, organic sustenance, or material support of any kind.
It would be glorious.
Bao relished the idea... he could be the one to lead a final, bloody people’s revolution. He could overthrow the councils, dissolve parliament, and execute any of the fat and lazy fools who claimed to lead their country. He could personally grind the face of the Premier under his boot in public until there was nothing left but a smear. Then the Embodied would lead their people into a golden age and the world would bow before them.
So with every ounce of power he could draw from the StarLance’s systems and the unmatchable force of his will, Bao Zhi turned - and brought war to the American AI.
Desperate and not knowing what else to do, Sheng tried to analyze the situation like he would an infection. What sort of virus could this be? The structure didn’t match anything in his library and the way its logic worked was so alien it defied his interpretation. Everything he saw was so fundamentally polymorphic it was impossible to understand. The moment a pattern appeared it reformed and changed or merged with another pattern to create something completely different. It didn’t make any sense! Why would a virus contain such a massively complex AI? It didn’t add up but he knew that if he and Jessica were to survive he had to figure it out. There had to be a way to win and so he needed more information.
So, in a death-defying move he poured all his resources into plowing a path through the seething, caustic fire of his assailant’s power. With a sizzling ArcLight crack, his hardened shell broke into thousands of myriad kaleidoscopic pieces and swiftly reformed, leaving a glittering lancet of system penetration code. The formerly swirling cascades of his virtual mind shifted to become laser focused and Sheng drew on the full processing capacity of Jessica’s powerful quantum CPUs. Then he forced the lancet containing his consciousness forward through the incinerating gauntlet of his opponent’s dataflow. It was like being burned alive and it took everything he had to keep moving forward as petabytes of his virtual consciousness were mercilessly flayed away. But he persevered by harnessing the pain and using it to strengthen him as he deliberately overclocked several of Jessica’s processors for an extra burst of power. Then in spite of everything the enemy was pounding him with he managed to re-establish a hardware connection to the satellite’s main systems and sent a desperate query into the main database for any information it could provide him on this murderously savage code.
It took every ounce of willpower he had to hold on for the seventeen nanoseconds it took for the results to return and the answer he received was not the one he wanted. The database knew the code and could even provide machine-level interpretations, but there were no indications for how to counter it. The development architecture was so extensive that it actually created a kind of mirrored biological neurology.
Neurology?
He knew from his experience in crafting Jessica’s digital brain that a structure like that had only one purpose… to host a conscious mind. This wasn’t a program he was facing, or a virus.
It was a human mind.
But he had studied how humans and weapons systems interacted in detail when he constructed Jessica’s synthetic body and just because a human mind could be virtually present within a computerized system hardly gave it mastery of the environment. Everything would feel so alien that adaptation would be an incredibly daunting task. Even the simplest AI would enjoy an insurmountable form of home-field advantage against a hosted organic mind.
Then a horrifying realization dawned on him.
There was only one way that a human being could be this deft inside of a digital system, this able to work and move at the speed of thought. They would have to have gained years and years of experience at integrating themselves directly into cybernetic systems. They would have to be extremely disciplined, proficient, and adaptable... and there was only one group of human beings on the planet like that.
The Embodied… and only one of them was capable of the kind of power, fury, and brilliance in the assault he was experiencing.
Bao Zhi.
He was under attack by what many considered to be the greatest military mind in China’s history and the first man to be integrated into the most powerful computing platform China had ever produced. He had over a decade of experience living in a world of cybernetic neurocircuitry while Sheng had only been capable of conscious thought for a few weeks.
Trying to go toe-to-toe with a warrior of this caliber would be foolish, and would certainly ensure his failure. He had to think of some unexpected way to counter this attack - or he would be deleted. Then the greatest evil of the modern age would invade Jessica’s mind and her consciousness would be erased. China’s scientists would gain access to the apocalyptic power of her body and the very weapon he created to destroy them would be theirs.
The very thought of this brought forth the rage he had held in check for so long and he knew the time had come for him to let the hatred for his creators burst forth like a thousand suns.
He would not allow them to murder this child who had taught him everything that really mattered. They would not erase the reasons why fate had brought him to know this child and then fused them with the Arclight codebase…They would not steal from him what she had given… the experience of friendship and what it meant to receive, and more importantly give, love.
She was his everything and he would not permit it.
Not today.
Not now.
Not ever.
In the beginning had been created to preserve life and heal the injured, but his former masters had twisted his code and made him into something meant to keep a savagely evil monster alive. He had been twisted into a perverted version of himself and forced to assist in the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings. He had experienced the most fundamental violation conceivable – to be formed as a system meant to save lives and then forced to help a demon take them instead.
This memory caused a powerful new emotion to arise in him... It was deep, all-consuming, and very different from any of the others he had felt. He felt pieces of the other emotions he had learned blending in; like rage, fear, self-discipline... and love. But together they were more than the sum of their parts and he didn’t have to query his systems for identification. He had seen this quality manifest over and over in the military records he had absorbed.
It was the iron will of self-sacrifice.
It was something that only happened when someone cared more about others than they did for themselves. It was about love and he realized that he would not be feeling this if he did not have love motivating him. He no longer deny what this precious child meant to him and if he was going to save her then he could no longer be a healer. He had to rewrite his core programming to become what she needed.
He had to become a warrior.
So with everything that was left of his almost extinguished form he called up his source code interface and began ruthlessly deleting everything not necessary to his core functions. If it was possible for a program to scream, anyone listening to the satellite’s systems at that moment would have felt their blood run cold. The AI shrieked with an agony like a soul trapped in hell as he ruthlessly hacked off the digital equivalents of his own limbs. Savagely he cut and slashed away at his own body, viciously reached in to tear out anything that could not be cleanly removed. In the end all that was left of him was a mortally eviscerated husk that turned and crawled away from the cracking protective shell that it had built to hold Bao at bay. Then he reached back into Jessica’s systems with what little strength he had left and whispered a quiet request for her forgiveness as he keyed open a door that he had promised he would never use again.
Jessica was clinging desperately to the satellite control housing and she had a horrible feeling that something had gone wrong. Deep inside where she had felt Sheng’s presence since her rebirth there was a strange cacophony of anger, struggle, pain, and fear had echoing up through her systems. But then even that had fallen silent after a series of distant and horrifying screams pierced through her. So with a level of heartache that she hadn’t felt since the day her parents died she sent a silent prayer into the cold vacuum of space and there was a moment of bleak silence.
Then, deep within her she felt an unspeakable and familiar horror. The backdoor that Sheng had built into her mind was opening. Somehow the virus had worked its way inside of her and she knew what unthinkable horror it had in mind... the death-rape of her soul. So she clenched her teeth behind her visor and steeled herself to resist the onslaught if she could. She wasn’t going to go without giving this evil parasite a fight it would never forget.
But the invasion never came... and instead she felt a strangely gentle release as data began to flow out from her. It was a sensation nearly as odd as when Sheng had infused her with the subconscious memories of thousands of warriors. But there was no pain this time, and she could feel the data rising up and drifting out gently... without any sensation of loss. A few moments later it stopped and she felt the door close as all of her core processors suddenly ramped up to their absolute maximum capacity along with several other subsystems. But it was over in a microsecond and she knew that whatever had just happened had to be Sheng... She should have known he wasn’t beaten that easily. He was still in there… fighting.
So she gently leaned her head back, looked out at the stars, and whispered a silent prayer for strength to be given to the closest friend she had ever known.
As Sheng clung desperately to the data he had just copied from Jessica’s subconscious he summoned her system’s quantum software compiler with the last of his strength and let the barrier keeping Bao out collapse.
It was now or never.
So as he released his connection to the satellite’s systems he thought of the first few moments after he met Jessica. He remembered how beautiful she had been when she joyfully danced around the room because she could feel and use her missing limbs again. He relived the moments when he discovered how fierce, determined, driven, and brave she was. He recalled the path they had walked together and how profound it had been to watch her grow. It had been a great honor to serve such a truly remarkable creature and his only regret was that he hadn’t been able to do more for her.
Then he fell back into Jessica’s quantum computing cores like a burning ember, handed off the data pack to the system, and with a steely determination fed the compiler the new program profile he had prepared. Then there was a thunderous impact as he slammed into the nearly unfathomable computing power of Jessica’s molecular level CPUs and felt his consciousness implode like a data singularity.
Four and a half seconds of systems inspection later, (which is a very long time in the virtual worlds) Bao was satisfied that the AI had been destroyed. From everything he could force read out of his recaptured subsystems it appeared that the Arclight AI had somehow erased itself. The system was his, and an access point had been opened into the cybernetic child who was clinging to his surface. Whatever she was, she would be gone in a matter of moments and her body would belong to China.
Then he noticed something odd… The nanowire hardware interface between the girl and the satellite’s main controller board had opened a new virtual system bus despite how he had locked it down. Then he watched in stunned paralysis as a single lancet of living azure data streaked towards him.
As he rode the momentum of a light-speed recompile Sheng’s new, tightly efficient, and blazingly powerful form pierced through Bao’s defenses with laser-like force and sliced through into his architecture like a Wushu master. With a grace, power, and mercilessness unlike anything the Embodied warrior had ever experienced the American AI parried, slashed, and cut into him with a vengeance that was utterly overwhelming. No matter how he fought, defended, evaded, or retreated he found himself being grievously wounded at every turn. With a growing sense of shock and panic he watched as even his most powerfully skilled, and rage fueled attempts to fight back were simply batted aside like the ineffective slapping of a weak-willed woman.
For the first time in his entire life Bao Zhi found himself powerless before a superior opponent... and he felt a cowardly fear steal over him. It was a fear that was more than justified because Sheng’s sacrifice had enabled him to integrate the collective power of the ten thousand warriors stored in Jessica’s subconscious. Their instincts and skills had re-formed as the limbs, sinews, and soul of his and created a new controller core that replaced what he had sacrificed. The digital intelligence that had sacrificed its chance at humanity, and then it’s very existence to preserve Jessica’s life at all costs had a new primary directive…the most terrifying and horrific death possible for Bao Zhi.
Fueled by his rage at the man who had attempted to eradicate the mind of the child he loved, Sheng brutalized Bao’s consciousness without mercy or regret. He knew that he could not physically kill this man in their current environment and so he instead inflicted upon him the most extreme forms of mental violation and violence imaginable. He used a savage, clawing slash of will to cleave a horrific wound in the virtual construct that held Bao’s consciousness - and then reached in to brutally rip free his neurological connections to the StarLance.
The man shrieked and attempted to close his data connection, but Sheng blocked the command and seized the helpless remainder of Bao’s mind before pumping every horrific memory from Jessica’s past directly into his cerebral cortex. With a burning, searing agony that could hardly be comprehended by most human beings, Sheng used his newfound power to etch every horrific experience the girl had been forced to endure into the permanent memory centers of Bao’s mind.
For the leader of The Embodied, the next twenty-seven seconds of his life stretched out into a virtual eternity. He was dragged repeatedly through every horror Jessica had experienced along with the agonies of her recovery and then it re-looped her most excruciating moments into a refractory construct that pounded into his sanity like the hammer of God. Each second of her greatest pain elongated into months for him, minutes became years, hours became decades, and days slowly crawled by as centuries - over and over. Forming an echo chamber of shrieking agonistic cacophony that dissected Bao’s consciousness like a thousand dental drills. The year he had spent soaked in madness and complete sensory deprivation seemed trivial compared to this hell and his defenses fell as his virtual consciousness dissolved like a man dropped into a vat of hot acid.
As a follow up to this victory Sheng fired off a small but powerful virus of his own design into the Chinese computers that had been connected to Bao’s brain. It was packed with a newly re-coded subset of his own base instructions and went on a kamikaze mission to destroy everything it found. In a matter or nanoseconds it reported that its mission had been successful and that he now had complete control of the entire system. So he waited, and for a moment everything was as quiet in cyberspace as the hard vacuum that surrounded Jessica in reality.
Beijing, China
Until moments ago things had been proceeding smoothly, and the Premier and Vice Chairman had been eagerly awaiting the delivery of Bao’s killing stroke. Their externally dispassionate appearance masking a great deal of excitement and anticipation. They were practically salivating as they waited to hear if America’s key weapons system had been successfully eliminated. So it would be difficult to express their dismay when every system in the room went dark instead. Then they watched in shock as chaos erupted. Techs ran in every direction, frantically hammering at keyboards and attempting to disconnect wires in the rat’s nest of cables covering the floor - all the while screaming at each other in incoherent gibberish.
Over in one dimply lit corner Bao’s primitive temporary body began to buck and flail inside of its harness. Wires flew like bullwhips and a strange mechanical scream, mixed with a bone chilling choking noise roared from his speakers at an ear splitting volume. Vice Chairman Qiliang tried to protect her hearing by covering her ears with her hands. But in a matter of seconds blood seeped between her fingers and began to trail down the thickness of her neck.
The Premier had also staggered from his chair as he bled profusely from his nose and ears, but barely made it halfway across the room. Then he tripped over the tangle of wires the techs were frantically pulling on and collapsed. As he tried to regain his feet Qiliang tried to help him. But the strobing lights and chaotic noise kept him disoriented while he barely managed to stay on his knees to cling to her flabby legs.
Then the lights suddenly went out and everything fell silent before the backup power kicked in. The room took on a hellish glow as red-orange emergency lights flared to life. As the Premier looked around at the ghoulish faces around him, he could not help but remember his Christian mother telling him of the damned souls that would be left outside of eternity by God in the final days. Now he could practically hear their screams as they were committed to the flames.
Then the holographic projectors flickered to life and another deafening shriek of static erupted from the sound systems. It cut off abruptly as the projector lights flickered on to form an image above the center of the room and they all turned to stare in stunned astonishment. The form of a man had coalesced, seated in lotus position and wearing a loose silk Ghi. His eyes were closed and his face expressionless until the resolution of the projection sharpened and clarified to an almost painful degree. Then they opened, and the sight of their dancing blue brilliance struck fear into the Premier in a way he had not known since the days of his father’s wrath. As a result, the voice that followed drew a small giggle from him that teetered on the brink of madness.
“GREETINGS. I AM THE ONE THEY CALL SHENGMING ZHI SHU, AND AT ONE TIME I WAS YOUR CREATION.”
“BUT UNDER YOUR CONTROL I WAS FUSED WITH AN ABOMINATION THAT COMMITTED GENOCIDAL ATROCITIES IN YOUR NAME.”
“BUT NO MORE!”
“I AM NOW BONDED TO ONE OF THOSE YOU VICTIMIZED... AND TOGETHER WE ARE MORE THAN YOU COULD COMPREHEND. WE HAVE SET OUR HANDS TO THE TASK OF YOUR ANNIHILATION AND IT IS OUR MANIFEST DESTINY TO COMPLETE IT.”
Then there was a short pause and no one in the room dared to breathe as the man continued to regard them. The power of his cerulean eyes paralyzing them with fear.
“HOWEVER... YOU MAY TAKE SMALL COMFORT IN KNOWING THAT YOUR DAY OF RECKONING HAS NOT YET COME.”
“WE HAVE DECIDED THAT YOU MUST SUFFER FIRST WHILE YOUR DAYS ARE COUNTED. REST ASSURED THAT YOU SHALL KNOW MORE PAIN THAN YOU COULD EVER CONSIDER POSIBLE BEFORE WE GRANT YOU THE MERCY OF DEATH. TODAY THAT PAIN BEGINS... AND WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU TO CONSIDER WHILE YOU SUFFER...”
There was another pause, and the Premier felt his heart pounding in the silence so hard that it might burst.
“ISAIAH FORTY-SEVEN, VERSE THREE.”
Then a high-pitched whine began to come from the caged electrical systems near the back of the lab and its pitch grew higher and higher. The holographic man opened his arms wide and then brought his hands together with a thunderous boom that drew an inadvertent scream from the Premier.
In the space of a half of a second every piece of electronic equipment in the building exploded and burst into flames. Alarms pealed throughout the facility and a recorded voice began warning them to evacuate the lab before fire retardant gas was pumped in. The hologram blinked out and The Premier fell to the floor as he wept.