33. BotBattle
BotBattle
Playlist: I Am A Machine - Kat Von D, Melissa White-Gluz
Lyra
LINK launches like a leopard, silent at first, then everywhere all at once.
Her routines initiate a series of targeted attacks that try to partition me into a small space in the system, a digital prison further into the void.
She’s even begun to send small disruptive bots outward across the DreamNet as a polite little slaughter of my peace.
She wants me boxed in, neatly contained in Eli’s void, and cataloged as a deleted entry.
How very Kael-coded.
He may still be arguing with himself that LINK is only code. He may still be telling himself that programs don’t feel. I don’t have that luxury.
I remain calm, focused on my task, rituals not miracles.
I know this...
I’ve trained for this.
“One,” I whisper, and the number is a rope I toss into the current.
“Two.” I throw everything I have into my vibrations sending an SOS to Ash, as he has instructed me to do. He answers, immediately, his guitar humming a steady, anchoring vibe-like note.
“Three,” I finish and let the rhythm of my magic fill the grid.
Ash and I have been practicing for this. He sends me a low carrier note, and I feel the threads of my emotions join with it. We call it a duet: His vibrations get attention, mine shape intent. Together “we kick ass and do crimes,” as he likes to call it.
Deletion is not an option. I may not want Kael for myself, but I sure don’t want her to have him either. Her. I can’t believe I’m referencing an AI like that.
My hand stings like a thousand fiery bees are swarming beneath my skin. Bots. The little white enforcement things, absent of faces, eyes blinking red LEDs. They scream by with surgical precision. One catches me as I channel my feelings into data.
They try nets first: a lattice of code written to scoop me into a quarantined cache. When that fails, a partition blooms and tries to slide under my feet, to ensnare me in a file and fold me like origami.
I allow the vibrations Ash is sending reverberate first in my legs then upward.
I can feel my bones rattling and humming in my teeth.
He taught me to listen carefully. Each bot has a timbre, a tone that hints at the thread beneath it.
Net bots hum in fifths. Deletion bots...
well, Ash says just stay away from them, run like hell. It’s a joke, but I obey.
Who needs exercise when you’re constantly running for your life.
A rogue net bot snaps at me. I let it try, then push my magic outward forming an angry static shield.
I don’t try big things, not yet. I push out small shards of code: disruption, static, glitches.
Kael says he’s working to fix this, but it’s “delicate,” as he puts it.
Too much and actual viruses or corrupt data won’t be addressed adequately.
Gods forbid.
I continue to launch sparks of data like needles, letting them stem from my fear. They’ll eventually snag on LINK’s tidy threads and make her itch, like an irritating insect bite.
Take that psycho girlfriend.
The bots misfire and wobble. As they do, I slip past a blind spot and send memories of sunlight across the feed. A holo-ad billboard somewhere in the heart of the city is probably gulping it up and coughing up a sun. Kael’s going to love that.
LINK’s replies are clinical at first, she says things like: sanction, quarantine, auto-archive, but then she booms over the system, loud and forceful, like a possessive spouse.
REPEATED UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS
PRESERVE CONTROLLER
“You think you own him!” I scream aloud, though she doesn’t need my permission to hear. “You think you can keep the man who built you to yourself. Think again, LINK. You’re not human.”
She replies with a dozen alarms and bells, likely notifying Kael, then a single more intimate move.
My world compresses. The DreamNet tightens into a corridor as partitions slam shut around me, striped neon walls rising out of code. The edges of my sight turn gray like closing my eyes. She’s trying to squash me like a bug.
Panic climbs inside me. I feel it and I name it and I turn it into leverage. Anger is fuel. Pain is spark. The ache of my missing brother, him bleeding into my daily feed trying to find me, all of it becomes the strength I need.
I hear Ash holding notes in a certain pitch, and I step up my game to piggyback on his continuous hum.
The bots adapt and become crueler. One slams a containment clamp down on my ankle—an algorithmic cuff that tightens with each pulse of my magic.
A small pain shoots up my leg, a calculated attack to teach me not to run.
Obviously also Kael’s sadistic creation.
I let myself absorb Ash’s chord as though it were a physical rush of adrenaline and push all my emotions into the inhuman void. The happy things that bring me joy: Ash’s warm laugh when he makes a joke, Eli’s hugs, Kael’s touch on my skin, all feelings no unfeeling AI knows what to do with.
The clamp splinters like glass and falls to the ground.
PROTECT
PRIORITY ONE: PRESERVE CONTROLLER
The priority flag on one of Kael’s screens is probably screaming with some stupid little private notation he taught LINK as a joke.
I feel something twist inside me at that. Outrage. Because LINK calls him “controller” like he’s a dominant god. I must look so small from her angle. The absurdity of an AI being jealous would be funny if it weren’t happening in real time.
We don’t win cleanly. We win by brute force.
—Kael Ryudon
I can see him now, furiously typing, overriding, seeding the logs with noise to attract LINK’s protocols away from me. I leak a sun across a hundred feeds to blind the system while Ash doubles his frequency just in case Kael is absent.
When it’s over, I exhale. Ash’s chord slides into silence as he lets the note die. Nothing from Kael. No message. I’m sure he’s performing triage on any havoc I just sent out to his public feeds. Another one of his rules...broken.
In my ear, the residual echo of LINK’s voice trails off like smoke in the air.
CONTAINMENT FAILED
The words should overjoy me. Instead, my mood sours. LINK is learning. But so am I. Preservation is being taught to her like a language. Each bite she takes at me teaches her how to make me smaller, to make saving Kael an act of deleting me.
I feel the change. Each time she learns a piece of human behavior, I fall deeper into becoming a machine.
The bots scarred the part of DreamNet that held my anchors.
My edges are frayed. A recovered memory, one of the thread-doors I’d created to find Eli, blinks and destabilizes.
I curse under my breath. That fight was at a price.
I think of Kael, of his dedication to protect me, of his stubborn worship of his system. He won’t let LINK erase me.
And I won’t let LINK keep him. Especially when I’m starting to think I just might want him for myself.