The layers of data cascaded around him like many rice terraces, undulating up and down in the virtual space. The algorithm was visualized in his mind’s eye as a type of lightweight glider, shuttling him through the maze looking for any tags or data traces related to his subject. The program highlighted related objects in varying colors from green to orange, distinguishing them from the rest of the chatter. So far, Silas had found nothing when to his surprise the chatter around him melted into a bleak whiteness. The only thing that remained in this empty construct was the message that floated before him…

SIMULATION PAUSED

Silas removed the dermatrode from the nape of his neck and lowered his VR goggles. Standing before him, shockingly, was his father. There was a serious expression on his father’s face, eyebrow raised, as if he had been waiting there for some time. He had hit pause on the console when his patience wore thin.

“Running a stasis simulation?” his father’s tone had an interrogative feel to it.

“Umm…nice to see you too father.” Silas said sarcastically.

“Have you heard about all of the commotion regarding the feeds last week?” His father began pacing around the couch, and sat behind him on a bar stool, staring at the back of Silas’ head.

“Yeah, I heard a little bit about it,” Silas said in a veiled tone, continuing on nonchalantly, “Jojo told me it was some stupid street doc simulation, probably some hong kong hacker or a pirate designer trying to get his name out there.”

“That’s all you heard?” Silas’ father paused waiting for anything else.

“Yeah, Dad,” he turned around and looked at his father, “why is there something we should worry about?”

“Leave that to me Silas, continue brushing up on your exercises, you need the practice, and forget we had this conversation.” Silas’ father got up and walked out the door without another word.

Good job, son, nice conferring with you on the state of affairs in Zenith land. Silas imagined his father’s adulations and let out a sigh as he knew they would never come. There was something going on though, because his father, a very deliberate man, looked worried for once.  His curiosity heightened, he jacked back into his simulation and flew through the inner structures of the Zenith mainframe. The algorithm was pre-fitted with external passcode skins that he secretly hijacked from his father’s company account allowing him to roam freely through levels regardless of security strength.  Jacking in from home made it seem as if it was his father accessing the mainframe instead.

As night fell, Magus received an incoming transmission on his comm. He was expecting a gathering to be announced regarding the next phase of the Zenith assault, and although he hadn’t heard back from Bird, he felt like he knew this had something to do with his mission a couple of nights ago.

He merged towards the 101 and headed north into the Valley. The layer of fluorocarbons that made their home here settled themselves nicely between the mountains by dusk and created what looked like a perpetual storm cloud that was toxic and man-made. As he came over the Cahuenga Pass, he activated the ionic implants in his helmet, and began taking in long, controlled breaths. Too much exposure out here could lead to lightheaded-ness, bronchitis, and for a lucky few, smoldering hallucinations.

Magus rumbled off the freeway and descended upon Coldwater Canyon, heading deeper into North Los Angeles Proper, the subdivision of the city sometimes known as barrio noho, a landscape for many of the black and red markets, a seedy tribute to Old Hollywood. The alleyway bisected the areas of commerce in noho, one side laced with strip malls for your latest in fenced hardwares, skin clubs, subversive downloads, and the other corners for selling and using the latest hypnotic that had hit the streets. Running between these two mine fields was a long strip of vacant lots that carpeted the space below a series of large robot-like metal antennae that held the Old City’s power lines. The electro magnetic interference generated by these structures kept the tracer posts from doing their job, snatching up incriminating surveillance. The scribes had built a meeting room out of an underground voltage chamber that was put there by the city several decades ago. The only power running through the lines now were weak signals coming from community generators criss-crossing through the Valley.

Magus arrived to find most of the scribes already seated around the room. There were no formal introductions. Most of the scribes kept things official when they were online, but in close quarters it was a time to connect, tell stories, and share each other’s company. The crowd settled into a low hush, a grouping of about 50-60 scribes from the greater Los Angeles area. There was a group that sat at a long wooden table whom everyone knew to be the elder scribes, their faces drawn and sullen from decades under Zenith’s thumb. Bird sat stoically at the table, and when he spotted Magus in the crowd he gave him a discrete nod.

One of the elders, known to the group as Gomez, stood up from the table. He had a long drawn face, and eyes that seemed weathered by many dark nights like these, his cheekbones angular, the salt-and-pepper stubble framing his mouth and chin with an air of understated authority. Though he softly, he had a commanding presence and it didn’t take long for the other scribes in the room to take notice and quiet down. Gomez was one of the highest ranking elders in the sect, known for many legendary assaults against the forces of Darkstar. His exploits were legendary. He was best known for infiltrating their headquarters posing as a janitor and routing feeds of an age-old video game to the first million jackers. For about 24 hours, the 8 bit masterpiece Donkey Kong, was downloaded to every user in their network….worldwide!! He hit them off with the 8-bit and made high-definition addicted people go nuts. So slick was his style, that they never figured out that it was the lowly janitor who was responsible.

“We’ve called you all together because of a breach in our part of the grid,” Gomez intoned, “It seems that on a recent mission, one of our scribes was somehow accessed,” a hush floated like falling dominoes through the band of scribes and Magus’ heart began to pound.

“Bird has traced this breach to a young man from Zenith named Silas Finnegan. We have reason to believe that he is the son of John Finnegan, the second-in-command of the Zenith council and the head of the Los Angeles wing of Darkstar international,” Gomez paused at that moment and let the information sink in. Bird briefly made eye contact with Magus, and for a second Magus noticed a subtle smirk on his face.

A holoscopic projector was turned on, and imagery emanated into the center of the room. Finnegan’s profile appeared and Magus was struck by the avatar. This was only a kid. Somehow he had found Magus’ profile and was able to uplift to his junction point in stasis, what Bird had referred to as transcendence.

The light green projection shifted cubically to another set of images. Magus recognized this at once as stasis as did the other scribes. The difference was that this manifestation represented a mere snapshot of the virtual space, like a paused recording of that reality. None of the portals and data streams were moving as they normally did.

“This was the junction point, where one of our scribes was accessed. As you can see, everything was done by the read me, properly inserting into a nondescript portal within the network. The likelihood that one be accessed in this moment is about 1 in 400,000. We are talking about a portal that sees very limited traffic. Since it is a fairly rare happening, I would like the scribe to step forward and speak on it at this time,” Gomez turned to Magus and extended his hand, “Magus, please enlighten us.”

Magus looked around at the other scribes, his heart was pounding, not out of fear necessarily but mainly from being seen by others. The anonymity of the web always felt more comfortable than the tangible of a person’s eyes upon him.

“It was a surreal experience. Like Gomez said, everything was done according to plan…I was on the tower making the proper links and had just finished up my adjustments when I was accessed. I saw a brief warning saying I was about to be hit up, and in an instant I found myself in another location entirely. You could say that I was hooked into a feed, but it was like a feed within a feed, and this one seemed strangely lucid. The smells, the solid aspect of the environment. I felt like I had been transported to another location,” Magus paused as a chatter rose amongst the scribes, “I feel that it had been as few have reported prior, a moment of transcendence. This boy, Silas Finnegan…I must have uplifted into his mind during the hookup.”

Gomez looked around at the scribes, he had no reaction or emotion on his face, just a calmness…as if he knew what had to happen at that moment. The other scribes were looking to him for direction, especially Magus, whose fear and worry had risen over the consequences of his perceived mistake.

Gomez spoke softly but in a deliberate manner, “Fellow scribes…Magus, there is a detail here that changes everything,” he looked around at all of them before he proceeded, “this boy….Silas Finnegan…is not just an ordinary citizen of Zenith, he is the son of John Finnegan, the head of the Zenith council. He also sits on the board at Darkstar-West. This moment…this opportunity….will not be taken for granted.”

“What do we do Gomez?” Magus asked earnestly.

“The elders have conferred on this matter Magus, and we have agreed that you must try to find this boy and uplift into him again. We have found his access point ID, and will attempt transcendence in a controlled environment. Once the switch over has occurred, he will essentially be in a scribe safe house, while you jack into the boy’s body on the other side. You will then gain as much access to the sensitive data needed to infiltrate the heart of Zenith as possible. Through this boy, we will make dent in Darkstar’s network.”

“But Gomez, what about the boy? What will happ…”

“Don’t lose sight of the mission Magus! Since Zenith went online, it has brought nothing but pain and suffering for those of us left behind. The only way to move forward is to destroy this city from within, turn their hearts and minds and show that there should be no separation between us and them, that we are all human beings who deserve to live with a certain level of decency and respect,” Gomez had begun to boil a little, his eyes starting to narrow as he kept on, “We all have children who have never known life before Zenith, and they live in the squalid Flatlands accepting defeat, regarding the city in the sky as a fixture as unattainable as the moon. I can’t stand by and let it continue. This is our chance. We cannot…we will not squander it.”

Magus was frozen by Gomez’s emotion, it was unexpected.  He looked him square in the eyes and nodded in agreement.

What?!?

Shooting me…it’s embarrassing.

You’re too beautiful to be embarrassed.

Uh huh. Nice try. C’mon, Magus, shut it off.

Just a little bit more, love….I promise I’ll shut it off soon.

Gotta capture this moment.

It had been ten years since her death, and at that moment, he was glad he kept the imager on long enough to see her smile. The various cancers and industrial maladies that afflicted much of the City for a time never truly got his attention when he was younger, they were always affecting someone else’s life, he was lucky they were not. But since Naima’s death, his life would never be the same. He blamed Zenith, and that continued to fuel the fires that raged within him.

I Love you.

Love you, too.

This was one of his vices in a way, accessing the worn out digital file and seeing her again and again. Not that it was a horrible vice, but the pain of seeing her made him feel like such a sadist. At the same time, these fragments were there to save him when the taste of living began to blacken.

He turned off his console and darted out into the street. A long ride often cleared his mind, preparing him for the next cycle of life that would grind its way to his doorstep. The payload had been activated, causing expected chaos in Zenith. The message they sent this time was subtle, less preachy, a slice of the gritty reality present on the streets of Los Angeles. No banners. No tirades. Just truth. Here we are and here we goddamn will stay.

Turning onto Alvarado, Magus pulled alongside MacArthur town, a settlement of shanties that had collected around the spoiling waters of Old MacArthur Park. The fetid water was nothing more than an inviting reflection to stare at, people sometimes washed their clothes there, and a few brave ones filtered it to drink or cook with. He could see lighters flicking in the distance as the denizen addicts of the area lifted off for the night’s festivities.

One thing that never failed to please in this City were sunsets. Magus fired up a joint himself and looked up at the deepening colors that mingled with the smog above. Deep oranges. Crimsons. Cyans. Wispy swatches of purple and yellow. The fluorocarbons in the air made them more vibrant and colorful, creating shades and hues that were rarely seen on the streets anymore. Funny thing was, most people never looked up from their daily routines. It had become a habit not to look too long at the sky; lest they gaze hypnotically at an unattainable world.

He continued on down Wilshire towards the ocean, the vast plains of the West Side opening up after Fairfax. Since most of the residents had moved out or upgraded to Zenith, most of the West Side had been demolished and razed over for “future” projects. These projects were set to house the city’s urban underclass. Apart from being glorified dumping grounds for trash and waste, they never much amounted to anything. Magus didn’t mind though, the wide open spaces were a perfect foreground for the gray swell of the Pacific.

He parked his chopper on the embankment and gazed down the rocky coast, the waves lapping against Sepulveda Boulevard eroding any evidence of the City that once was. The 405 jutted metal and concrete out into the open sea, like a fractured bone, as seagulls and fishermen battled for the day’s catch. The coral sun had already descended from the sky, and an amber-hued fire danced upon the horizon.

“Relax, man, what the hell’s up with you?” Silas said with smirk on his face.

“He’s been trippin’ all morning,” said Isis, “more than usual I mean.”

She had been hanging out here since the early morning. Jojo and Isis were cousins, and though related, were nothing alike. Isis was slightly taller, with a muscular build, and beatiful dark brown eyes. She always exuded a calmness that bordered on indifference for most things, but she was sharp as a tack in most things and had a razor’s wit. Silas had always found her interesting to talk to, and lately she had started looking kinda cute even.

“Yeah, I saw a crowd of folks at the square talking about some kind of weird feed that came through?” Silas said, trying to hide his own nervous energy. He watched as Jojo turned his back to him, raising his hands slowly in a circular fashion until they met palms forward. Then with a kung-fu-grip ferocity quickness, turned to him in dramatic fashion.

“Okay, so here it is. You listening!?!” Jojo pointed at him, trying to gauge his readiness.

Silas stared at him, eyebrown raised, “Um, yeah…Jesus, spit it out already!”

“Alright, so I’m surfing the feeds last night y’know, kinda jumping between the usual, Shaolin Martial Arts and Extreme Big Wave Surf and stuff, I mean I was into this one wave you should seen, off the North Shore, huge fucker…um, but yeah, right anyway…and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere…the VR went all white, and I ended up on some nondescript street somewhere.” By this time, Jojo had closed the gap between him and Silas draping his hand over his shoulder, and pointing out the window as he described this tall tale. “I began walking down the street kinda bewildered actually, not knowing how the hell i got there, cuz I was on a fricking wave just a second ago, and slowly all these people began to stream out of the houses and storefronts.”

“What kind of people?” Silas asked. Isis just looked on, acting like she knew the punchline to the joke, having heard the story before Silas had arrived.

“All kinds, man. And they were different from people we usually see in feeds, some were kinda tired-looking, there were little kids who were all dirty dressed in rags, oh…and mean-looking dudes with like all these tattoos and just rough-looking. It was kinda intense.”

“Well, what did you do? What did they do?”

“I mean, I was gonna start running away from them, because I thought I was gonna get attacked or something, but then one of the little kids came up to me and was like, ‘we are here. don’t forget. we’ll be watching.’ and then she pointed up into the sky and—” Jojo paused, seemingly building up the drama of the moment, Silas hanging on his last word, “Do you wanna know what happened then?”

Snapping out of it, Silas slumped back in his seat, “For crying out loud, just tell me what you see, you idiot!?”

“You don’t have to get hostile…what I saw…..was Zenith.”

“You mean, you saw it from afar, like you were in…the Old City,” Silas said, the excitement within him beginning rise.

“I swear, it was the weirdest thing. Because for whatever reason, I don’t think I had ever seen it in any feed before that. This was like the first time,” Jojo was getting a little more serious, “I was going to tell my parents, but I wasn’t sure, since they are always trying to keep us from talking about the Old City and that’s why we always give you shit. I just didn’t wanna get in trouble. You are the only other person I know who is totally into the Old City…all those stories and stuff.”

Silas was lost in thought. What did this have to do with what he saw?  His experience was nothing like this. And he didn’t get uplifted by accident, he chose that feed. CS #33. He had to know what that meant. Meanwhile, Jojo was looking at him expecting a reaction.

“Hmmm…” Silas said, careful not to spill all that he knew, “that sounds very interesting. Must have been what those folks were arguing about downtown. I think you are right to keep this sort of off-line, y’know, and keep it just on a private chat between us three.”

“I said the same thing,” Isis chimed in.

“I’m gonna go back home and see if I can get some more information out of my Dad. He should know what is going on at the broadcast center, since he sits on the Council. I’ll wire you guys when I found out more.”

“Yes, sir.” After a series of strange, Kung fu-like movements, Jojo folded his hands together and bowed. Isis looked on holding back her laughter.

“Listen, Bruce Lee…you probably should lay off the Shaolin feeds for a little while, your kinda freaking me out,” Silas winkied as Isis, sent an army salute to Jojo, and headed out the door.

Why couldn’t he be like these ants? Moving carefree through the world and not dwelling on questions which he knew may not be answered. Life might not be as hard to deal with if he could just focus on what was in front of him. He stuck his finger into the ant trail and scattered the ants into chaos. He removed his finger and watched as the ants collected themselves and fell back into line.

Maybe you and I are not that different after all, Silas thought to himself.

He was going to meet up with Isis and JoJo today and pick their brains about last night’s “adventure.” They were always giving him shit for daydreaming about the Old City, but they always listened to his fantastical ideas and gave their honest opinion no matter the topic. He needed to know if what he experienced last night was worth pursuing.

Silas walked through the main courtyard of downtown Zenith. There was a spanish-style gazebo that was lifted from part of the Old City, this housed a plaque listing the founders of Los Angeles, as well as a newer monument that commemorated the founder of Zenith, George Stonehurst. A small crowd had gathered under the gazebo engaged in rather heated discussion. This struck Silas as odd for two reasons: one, most people were indoors during the day hooked up to a feed; two, if they were outside, they were usually headed somewhere to hook up to a feed. A group of people spending their day outside conversing with each other in person was a strange sight indeed. Silas approached slowly to listen in on the commotion.

A tall, gangly man was standing on a platform holding both hands up, apparently trying to calm the crowd, “What you saw was just another feed, none of it was real! We’ve all experienced it before with virtual reality, it is called ghosting.  Your brain sometimes gets fooled into thinking that what you are experiencing is real.  But, please folks, nothing that you saw was actually happening in real time.  Actually you can thank the folks at Darkstar for making it so vivid.”

“How do you explain the fact that I didn’t choose that feed, and it just showed up when I was uplfited!” said a portly redhead, her face equally red in emotion.

“We saw Zenith from afar! Part of the Old City! People were trying to attack us!” several people yelled out.

“I assure you folks, we will have technicians at each of your homes checking your consoles to make sure there were no malfunctions,” said the tall man, “I assure you, Darkstar is there to address all your lifestyle needs. We make living….a reality!”  He ended with the popular Darkstar catchphrase that everyone knew through their jingles and commercials in the virtuasphere. The tall man’s tone, on the verge of patronizing, cause the din of the small crowd to rise, as they clamored to get a word in.

For a moment, Silas felt like he might be to blame for all of this, he accessed a strange feed as well, but he chose it himself. He saw Zenith from afar, but not within the Old City. It was confusing, but he had a sense of guilt welling in him, and for a moment he thought his father might be standing around watching. He backed away from the gathering, looking around, and ran to meet with JoJo and Isis.  They might be able to help him make sense of all this.

You sitting at home doing this shit. You should be earning a medal for this.

Stop fuckin’ around and be a man, there ain’t nothing out here for you.

Yes there is…

…this.

He had watched it maybe a couple dozen times, there was something primordial in how it spoke to him, the same way an infant crying speaks to something deep within a mother’s heart. Maybe it was the subways snaking through the city like pythons, breathing fire in the form of burners emblazoned on their rusted hulls. Or, the fuck-the-system concept of art versus conformity. It was real. The music got him charged too, that raw break beat, turn-of-the-century hip hop. Old school. Wild Style was ill.

Magus liked to reward himself after each mission with some eye candy, a visual morsel set apart from the seriousness of the present. His makeshift feed console was fashioned from salvaged junk that ended up in almost every Flatlander’s back yard. Zenith’s overflow always had a home. He knew how to get around the tracer posts, and since most of his feeds were self-generated, that usually didn’t matter. What the fuck did he need to see Zenith’s feeds for anyway, it was really just jelly donuts for the brain. All image, no substance. But the rawness of Wild Style that was his shit. In a lot of ways his passion for scribing, subversive scribing at that, followed a long lineage of scribers or writers dating back to this grainy video feed he excavated from an old magnetic tape reel. The digital and virtual world had bulldozed over much of the analog past, but there were still artifacts that made its way through the noise of the present, and legions of determined purists who ensured that they would live again.

Ever since that incident where he was accessed, something was gnawing at Magus. The payload would most certainly be activated in the next 24 hours, and until then he needed to know what had happened up there on tower three. He leaned over his comm and dialed up one of his fellow scribes, a quirky old timer named Bird.

Bird was originally from Beantown before he relocated to Los Angeles, and was a devout disciple of the Boston Celtics, from the now-defunct National Basketball Association. Before the league had been uplifted to the Darkstar mainframe, everyone including the common folk, used to enjoy those contests on television and in person and Bird was no exception. Magus usually gave him some shit about it, being that his grandfather had schooled him as a Laker fan, since he was a kid. He now resided in Reseda proper, cloistered in an abandoned apartment complex monitoring feeds and keeping busy. He had a couple of feeds from the old days, and he liked to give Bird hell from time to time.

“Yo, Bird, what’s online?”

“Magus…an unexpected uplink…things could be cleaner, the air especially, i’m getting up there in years, you know,” Bird chuckled, “can’t complain though…i see the scribes are keeping you busy?”

“Yeah, just finished an upload tonight, should go live in less than a day?”

“Any hitches?”

“Pretty smooth….pretty smooth….but I did run into some unforeseen circumstances, so to speak.”

“Sentries give you problems?”

“No, no…nothing like that,” Magus paused, “It was something in stasis actually.”

“Ha, ha,” Bird laughed, “Don’t tell me you got accessed Magus!” He had meant for it to be a joke, but when Magus didn’t respond right away, his laughter died down. “Hmmm…that’s pretty rare. Do you know who accessed you?”

“I don’t know, but for a moment, I had been uplifted to a white room. I think it was somewhere in Zenith because I could see the mountains in the distance. I panicked and closed the connection.”

“Hmmm…sounds like transcendence…”

“Transcendence?…c’mon man, that’s just hype..something about seeing what other users see?”

“Well, not only what they see, but essentially transcending the virtual space and entering the cognitive space.”

“What, so you can see what they are thinking? I’m like a virtual psychic now..”

“Um, its more like you take over.”

“Take over?” Magus said, drawn into the paradox Bird was presenting to him, “You mean become that other person!”

“That’s what they say, which is why I was asking if you knew who accessed you?”

“No.” Magus was speechless, engaging the possibility.

“That’s quite a break from the normal processes Magus, interesting stuff. I’d be glad to run a trace for you and see what I can find.”

“Thanks Bird…oh and by the way, ain’t nobody better than Showtime and you know it.”

“psshh…please, kid you wouldn’t know real basketball if it dropped in your lap, Bird out.”

“Ma?” Silas said as his eyes focused on her, “are you back?”

“Just got home…and we found you lying on the floor gripping the console, i was a little worried at first,” his mom insisted, “You haven’t been sneaking into those Theta level feeds have you?”

“No mom, geez, I was just sleeping….er..dreaming actually.” He shook his head and wiped the drool off his cheek.

“Today’s feeds were especially stimulating, Dad and I experienced some life-changing things?” Olivia began eagerly as she began to walk across to close the window blinds.

“How about real life for a change,” Silas muttered seemingly out of earshot.

“Oh gosh, you are so self-righteous at such a young age,” fired Olivia as she spun around now walking towards him. Silas started to straighten up on the couch realizing that she had heard him.

Olivia went on, “you know DarkStar feeds are known to be the most advanced technological breakthrough of this century. They have helped people cope with their anxieties, lessen crime, raise our awareness of the environment, aid in our relationships with each other. And with these amazing organic chem-feeds we learned about tonig..”

“Mom, please, you don’t have to lecture me on 21st century VR…I mean talk about self-righteous,” Silas stammered as he gave her a half-disgusted look.

“I was just trying to make a point,” she said apologetically, “the Zenith council really wants us to stop spreading negativity and be grateful for the advances of our society.”

“Let me tell you ’bout this dream though…it was really crazy,” he paused to make sure she was listening and continued, “everything was dark, and i was on a platform high above everything…and I saw Zenith….but I was seeing it from the outside.”

“From the outside?” said Silas’ mother surprised, “Wow..that must have been a dream…you know that anyone who lives outside Zenith, if you can call it living at all, are nothing but drug addicts and criminals. You step one foot outside of Zenith and…well, I’d rather you not think about it at all.”

“Yeah, but I swear it was like I was really there, I mean not like the way a feed feels, it’s hard to explain,” Silas said as he looked off in the distance searching his recollections, “I can still see the lights hovering above the clouds, I mean it was WAY better than a feed,” he said distantly, a visible smirk forming, “it was….real.”

Olivia looked over at Silas with a mother’s concern, as he stared off into the distance, trying to recollect more details from the dream that was.

“Well, thank God it was just a dream, don’t let your father hear anything about this, you know how he’d react,” she said, the last part trailing off into the background as she hurried to her bedroom. She took one look his way and turned off the lights in the main room.

Was it real? He thought to himself. There was something inside of him that was looking for a way out of the disconnection he had been feeling lately, and for a moment, in his dream he had felt like he was experience something truly unique. The feeds had always appeased his senses in ways that were transient and fleeting, but the palpable nature of what he had seen, the smell of the air, everything seemed alive.

CS #33.

That was the name of the feed. Silas looked down at the console he was still clutching in his arms. The screen was blank. He scrolled through the recent feed queue and there was no record of it. Did he dream that as well?

He stared at the console for the next hour robotically searching through hundreds of feeds. He fell asleep to the light sound of rain tapping against the roof, and thunder off in the distance.

In order to ready the data for transmission, Magus had to be hooked into stasis, a data rich VR mode that allowed him to route the payload to the proper data ports. Usually routine, the tricky thing with stasis was that your virtual profile became accessible to all users on the network. It was a little dangerous, but due to the sheer number of feeds on the grid, unlikely to be detected. As he was putting the finishing touches on his current upload, Magus was startled by a pleasant female voice and the appeareance of a three dimensional dodecahedron that pulsated with a soft orange glow.

> CS #33 your profile has been accessed

“Fuck,” Magus said shocked, “What the hell?”

This was very disconcerting. He had heard from other scribes that being accessed while in stasis was a fairly rare occurrence because most administrators had the ability to create a protective network bloc that disguised their profile. He didn’t have such privileges since he was on their network illegaly. No other scribe had been accessed before, so he was treading on some fairly new territory. What it meant, no one really knew. 21st century VR was still filled with some strange curve balls that many theorists were still battling with.

He touched the orange polygon and everything turned white. A fairly large room opened in front of him and he found himself in a seated position. The floor was lined with impeccable white marble, and the furniture was both modern, sleek and amazingly clean. Not being accustomed to hooking into feeds in the Old City, it took a moment for him to get his bearings. He looked down at his hands and they were gripping a black console that read,

>CS #33 is now in progress

He had a strange sense that he was being watched and despite his extensive training, he began to panic a little. He quickly hunted for the ‘stop feed’ button on the console and found himself back in stasis. The orange shape had disappeared. Relief.  Shaking off the feeling that he had somehow been detected, he tried to regain his focus. He finished up his final commands and sent the payload to the staging area and logged out.

After cutting back over the fence, Magus pulled his chopper from its cover and headed back into the night. His mind was racing. For now, the answers would have to wait. He knew someone who might be able to provide some clarity, but that was for later…the payload was up, and he had to notify his crew of scribes that the mission was underway.

His parents had left him alone again to attend another group uplink with their friends. Some kind of tutorial on the health benefits of organic chem-feeds. Organic? He wondered where they grew such things, and what the difference was. Most of the drugs that Zenith citizens took were often fed intravenously during uplink in order to heighten the experience. It was a feature that you could disable of course, but at this point, everyone was too hooked to deny it if prompted. He had recently went cold turkey without telling them and was no worse for wear, although most of the feeds that 16-year olds had access to only introduced mild anti-depressants and cortical activators, so there was no heavy dependence built. Yet, since he stopped allowing the chem-feeds, the visual stimulus lacked its usually verve.

He stared at the blinking lights of the transmission antennas, searching for something different. His friends at school had told him these insane stories about the Old City and he laughed at the thought. A world without feeds, where the streets were dirty, and the people were forbidden to uplink. There was nothing that he could imagine that would make him believe that. He had seen some feeds about early 20th century history, but most of those were filled with boring speeches from past presidents and rich businessman. It was fun to sit in the White House, but it was pretty much like being at home in Zenith, with older furniture and strange people who appeared even more wooden and disconnected.

The closest he ever got to the Old City was a glimpse at a blinking field of lights between the clouds one winter. The Santa Ana winds had knocked over a navigational turbine in their sector causing the saucer to bank slightly and he happened to be staring out the window, just like tonight. Ever since then he had wondered what it was like down there, or if it even existed at all. The name, Los Angeles, at that moment seemed to symbolize the heavenly fantasies of a bygone era.

His shoulders slumped as his mind slowly succumbed to the inevitable. He walked over to the discarded console and hooked himself back in. He again scrolled through the feeds one at a time….a life mundane could always be extended via mindless entertainment. He stopped at a feed called “CS #33″. Strange, he’d never seen this one before. Another night, another feed. Fuck it, he thought.

He selected the feed and everything went black.

Fortunately for Magus, the scribes in his sect had acquired the blueprints for all sentries patrolling the antennas. The plans revealed the particulars of their guile, the sensors that located intruders via heat and infrared signatures, as well as the ability to detect the high levels of iron and nickel that were present in human blood, especially those of Flatland dwellers. The pollution and carcinogens that had become a way of life down there made this an unavoidable reality, and a significant detection parameter.

Magus did not take any of this for granted, nor did he have any reason to fear detection. Every system had its weakness no matter how sophisticated, and with a vast network of scribes that had come together for a common purpose, these weaknesses were often routed out and exposed. These details were fresh in his mind as he stowed his chopper into the chaparral that edged the electrified fence. He looked up at the dormant antennae and could see the clouds above it begin to darken and swell with precipitation. Acid rain in the summertime, he thought. Taking a moment to survey the dark horizon and the glimmering network of saucers that held zenith afloat, he whispered softly to himself,

“Showtime.”

Magus cut a medium-sized hole through the electrified fence with his laser cutter, his suit insulating him from the deadly charge. He found some cover at the base of the antenna and surveyed the climb. About five to six sentries buzzed around the antenna at various altitudes, all whirring with activity, scanning for prey. He deftly hit a set of buttons on the forearm of his suit and a tingling sensation overcame him. The flak suit was designed to produce a subsonic electromagnetic forcefield that effectively scrambled his energy signature. When sentries would scan the area that he occupied the energy would bend around the forcefield and essentially detect what was behind him, which was usually nothing. Along with this helpful bit of technology, Magus was also devoted to the study of the ancient Japanese art of Ninjitsu which schooled its students in the ways of deception and covert movement. It was especially useful in situations where every step he made was magnified. As good as the suit was, he was still there, and for his mission to succeed he had to disappear.

The towers were usually well lit, but since it was offline, power was redirected primarily to the top of the tower which housed the main computer panel. This allowed for faster uplink to the technicians, and also served to give Magus a good barrell of juice to piggy back his rogue feed onto the mainline and send it shooting into Zenith.

Magus reached behind him to check that the payload was secure. The imagery he had gathered to spray upon Zenith was nice, and he couldn’t wait to upload. It was one thing to just send an image that defied the censors, it was clearly another matter to send something that had the power to snowball into something more.

Clearly not all of Zenith was responsible for what had happened to the old city, but that was not his concern. He looked up at the antenna rising above him, the precipice shining in the distance. Fuck it, he thought, and with that began his ascent.