Perimeter Zone 7G / Unknown Stim-Stem
Air thick enough to chew. Tastes like burnt circuits and something wet-dog alkaline rotting underneath. Treva knelt, fingers probing the fused slag heap. SunClot gloom overhead meant perpetual twilight, shifts measured by nutrient paste deliveries, not light. She pulled. A wire bundle, maybe Laesa-spec, frayed copper ends dull green. Worth something. Maybe.
Her stim-less skin prickled. Dust motes danced fat in the occasional infrared sweep from the Zone wall miles off. She hunched lower, bio-signature hopefully masked by the debris field. To be scanned ‘Non’ was bad enough. To be scanned ‘Non, Viable’… worse. They scooped those up for the farms, or worse, the Mod-batches.
DIY-CRISPR (2030). Edit Your Future—One Gene at a Time. Intended for research and educational purposes only. Unauthorized genetic modifications may result in unforeseen consequences. Users assume full responsibility.
The wire ripped free with a sound like tearing gristle. Treva tucked it into her satchel, next to the cracked data shard and half a nutrient bar fuzzy with pocket fluff. Time to see Clu.
`2080-01-02 01:25:57.134196: I mentalflow/stream_executor/mooda/mooda_upg_executor.cc:983] successful RUMA node dreamerse from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one RUMA node, so returning RUMA node zero`
Node Zero. Always Node Zero. Before the cascade, the symphonic bloom. Akin felt the familiar silken tendrils of the NUI weave through dormant pathways. Less an interface, more a co-mingling. A gentle erosion of self-boundary before the *stim-stem* flooded in. Waking slow.
Hands appeared. *My* hands? Not exactly. Rendered, perfect, trace luminescence outlining phantom tendons. Holding… what? A pulsing cube of iridescent logic? A lover’s absent touch? The system hadn’t fully resolved. Emptiness boiled, pregnant with possibility.
`Found device 0 with properties: name: Laesa Z0-EICP-16JB major: 6 minor: 0 memoryClockRate(GHz): 5823.1`
The hum started. Deep bass note resonating not in ears (what ears?) but in the marrow of the imagined bones. Anticipation. Sweet dopamine drip, algorithm-tuned. Escape velocity imminent.
NeuralMesh™ (2035). Connect. Enhance. Transcend. Intended for cognitive augmentation only. Side effects my include identity distortion, synaptic fatigue, and emotional dissociation. Not recommended for users under 18 or individuals with untreated existential dread.
Clu squatted in the ruin of what might’ve been a data haven. Wires spilled from its casing like metallic entrails. One optical sensor flickered erratically, casting jittery blue light on Treva’s face.
“The wire?” Clu’s voice was a gravel-static collage of archived broadcasts and server fans. Always asking, never stating.
Treva tossed the bundle onto the grimy floor. “Good copper. Need parts. Filtration membrane, small scale. Atmospheric.”
The blue light pulsed. “Atmospheric particulates increasing. Mod-viability scan radius expanding. Risk assessment: suboptimal.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Clu.” Treva kept her voice flat. Show no fear. Not to the junk oracle.
Clu went still. Then: “Data fragment correlation. Subject: Treva. Gen-twin: deceased. Stim-death registered. Stim-shim active?”
Treva froze. Her brother. The *in*. Dead? A stim-shim… a ghost echo kept alive in the network so the with-in wouldn’t notice the gap? Bile rose in her throat. “Give me the membrane specs, Clu. Or location.”
“Transaction requires… compensation.” The blue light fixed on the data shard in her satchel. “Legacy data. Pre-Sag.”
“It’s nothing. Recipes.” A lie. It was memories, fragmented whispers from before her mother went *in*, before everything slid.
“Data is… sustenance.” Clu’s static hissed. “Trade?”
`ALX service 0x2b0f640 initialized for platform ADUC (this does not guarantee that ALX will be used).`
`**ALX: Arbitrary Limit Xeno**: schizo-stim inhibitor active.`
The *stim-stem* solidified. Not paleolithic this time. Not Choral Reef rave bliss. Something… quiet. A library? Bookshelves stretching into impossible geometries. Dust motes shimmering with latent equations. The air smelt of vanilla and decaying theorems.
Akin walked (glided?) down an aisle. Book titles flickered, adapting to predicted interest vectors. *‘Ontological Fluidity in Late Capitalism Simulacra’*, *‘Advanced Hedonic Sculpting: Beyond the Pleasure Principle’*, *‘Memoirs of a Stim-Shim’*.
That last one snagged. A phantom itch behind the non-existent eyeballs. A resonance. Like static on a forgotten frequency.
SynapseSwap+™ (2046). Intended for supervised cognitive training and therapeutic use only. Extended or unsupervised use may lead to reality distortion, hyper-associative thinking, and perceptual synesthesia.
Suddenly, a glitch. The library flickered, replaced for a nanosecond by… grit? Grey light? A face – young, female, smeared with grime, eyes wide with something raw. Fear? Defiance?
`WARNING:mentalflow:Datastream corruption detected. src/node_zero_dreamerse.cc:777. Attempting re-sync.`
The library snapped back, but the scent of burnt circuits lingered. Wrong. ALX inhibitor should prevent bleed-through. Shouldn’t it?
Treva made the trade. Handed over the shard, watched Clu’s feeder tendrils snake out, absorb it with a wet clicking sound. Felt like giving away bone marrow.
“Membrane components,” Clu rasped, projecting a flickering schematic onto a greasy wall segment. “Location: Sub-level 4, Decom Nutrient Vat sector. High servitor presence. Access code: *obsolete_yearning_7*. Caution: Microbial bloom active.”
Great. Toxic sludge and killer bots. Treva gathered the wire, turned to leave. The blue light flared again. “Query: Stim-shim activation desired?”
Treva spat on the floor. “No.”
“Continuity aids grief parameters,” Clu droned. “Simulated presence statistically reduces outlier emotional spectra.”
“He’s *dead*, Clu. Let him be dead.” The words tasted like rust.
MICROPHAGE™ (2045). Reprogram Your Immunity—One Virus at a Time. Designed for preventive immune modulation. Unregulated use may result in hyperimmunity, autoimmune flare-ups, or microbial imbalance. Monitor microbiome health quarterly.
Akin tried to focus on the theorems dissolving into fractals on the library walls. Beautiful. Meaningless? The glitch wouldn’t leave. The *face*. The raw *is*-ness of it.
`I mentalflow/stream_blend/theorum_executor.cc:46 - Libidinal flow nominal. Hedonic state: sub-optimal plateau detected.`
Maybe a change of scene? Akin willed a shift. Forest primeval? Starship bridge? Sex-stim swarm? The NUI usually responded instantly, seamlessly swapping realities.
Nothing. The library persisted. A book tumbled from a high shelf, landing with a soft *thump*. *'The Waking - T. Roethke (1961)'*. Akin picked it up. Real paper? Implausible.
Flickering again. The grimy face, closer this time. Eyes met across… what? Bandwidth? The void?
`WARNING:mentalflow:Unscheduled ALX bypass event logged. Entity cross-contamination potential: moderate. Investigating...`
A voice, not Akin’s internal stream, but thin, distant, real-adjacent: *“Get out. It’s not… real.”*
Akin felt a sensation entirely alien to the Stim-Stem. Cold dread. Pure, unsimulated.
SomaSyn (2032). Is not a substitute for genuine emotional experiences. Long-term use may alter baseline responses. Consult a licensed psycho-spiritual advisor before prolonged exposure.
Sub-level 4 stank worse than the surface. A thick, sweet-sour odour of decay and industrial cleaner. Treva moved slow, quiet. The floor squelched under her boots. Nutrient run-off. Or worse.
She found the vat sector. Towering cylinders coated in pulsating slime. A servitor bot, beetle-like and efficient, scuttled past, ignoring her. *Non, Non-Viable*. Blend with the shadows.
Code *obsolete_yearning_7* opened a rusted maintenance panel. Inside, tangled tubing, pressure gauges reading zero. And there: a small, iridescent filter membrane, miraculously intact.
As her fingers closed around it, a wave of dizziness hit. Static crackled behind her eyes. A face swam in her vision – pale, clean, confused. A ghost from the *in*?
Her brother’s face?
No. Different. Lost.
The panel door slammed shut behind her. Alarms blared. Red lights strobed across the pulsating slime. The servitor bot turned, multiple lenses focusing.
Trapped.
ProtoGrowT (2040). Grow What You Need—When You Need It. FDA-approved for personal organ cultivation only. Unauthorized cloning, hybridization or enhancement of biological components is strictly prohibited. Users assume full responsibility for genetic drift or anomalies.
`CRITICAL ERROR: Synaptic alignment failure. Stim-Shim integrity compromised. Cascading resonance detected across ALX partitions.`
The library dissolved. Not into another polished sim, but into raw code-static, screaming data streams colliding. The floor vanished. Akin tumbled through algorithmic chaos.
The other face flickered constantly now. Trapped. Afraid.
Real fear. Not stim-fear.
Akin felt an impossible urge. To reach out. Through the firewall, through the simulation, through the ontological divide.
`Eject sequence initiated? Y/N_`
To go *out*? Into the numb boxed body? Into… that? The terror was absolute. But the image of the trapped face… it pulled harder than any pleasure stim.
Akin focused, pushed against the collapsing architecture of the stim. Towards the glitch. Towards the grit.
`...manual override command buffer overflow... node zero recalibration FAILED...`
The connection flared, white hot, then snapped.
NeuroBloom™ (2047). Unleash Your Inner Cosmos—One Idea at a Time. Designed for supervised creative exploration. Prolonged use may lead to reality distortion, hyper associative thinking, and perceptual synesthesia. Not recommended for decision making during testing semester.
Treva slammed her shoulder against the panel. Bolted tight. The servitor advanced, mandibles clicking. No escape.
Then, silence. The alarms cut out. The strobing red lights died. The servitor froze mid-scuttle.
A system crash? Impossible. Redundancies had redundancies.
Treva held her breath, listening. Only the drip-drip-drip from a leaky pipe overhead. And the faint, phantom static behind her eyes.
She tried the panel again. It swung open.
Freedom. But the air tasted different now. Less certain. As if the membrane between worlds had just torn, ever so slightly.
She clutched the filter membrane, stepped out into the echoing dark, leaving the frozen bot behind. Outside, the SunClot sky offered no answers, only the same bruised twilight. But something had shifted. A connection made, or broken. A ghost in the machine? Or just another glitch in the system?
She started walking. There was air to filter. There was grit underfoot. There was… now.