literature

The World in the Box

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Her homepage was blaring about another death, but it was nowhere that Chandra knew, so she ignored it in favor of reading about the continued affairs of her favorite celebrities, writing a quick message on a discussion board and bouncing from forum to forum, checking on her friends and updating her Flash games.  Then she settled into her work; managing several blogs and businesses for her clients.

She was far too busy to notice that around her, the shadows were changing.

In fact, she was in the middle of answering a question from a customer when she felt something ice cold draw across her neck.  For an absurd second, she thought Did I leave a window open?  But that was ridiculous; she didn't have any windows in this room; the outside world was too distracting.  Then she felt something warm trickle down her neck and she reached up and touched it.  It took only a moment for her to realize that it was sticky, warm, and then…

With little more than a whisper, she toppled over sideways, blood pooling around her.  The shadow stepped over to the computer and then with a few deft movements, placed a flash drive in the port, downloaded a program and stepped back again.  The computer hummed to life and then, as though the fingers of woman's ghost were dancing across the keyboard, the dead woman's work resumed.
~
xxxx years ago…
He was born via in-vitro fertilization because his mother wanted a child, but didn't want a husband.  She picked his father out of a catalogue and never met him.  Since he was conceived in a tube, she was able to build him the way she wanted; she made him clean of genetic disease and decided his appearance ahead of time. Then she drifted through pregnancy, talking in lofty tones about all of the programs he would be enrolled in, the careful counting of calories to be certain she would gain just enough weight to keep him healthy, but not so much that she would not be able to get it off again and pushing maternity wear through her company so that she could use it.

After he was born though, she paid him enough mind to name him John, plain and respectable, and then handed him off to the nurses and her nanny and began a strict regime of dieting and getting back to her career.  As he grew older, she introduced him to the only friends he would have: the internet and the games therein.  The internet made an excellent babysitter and she was able to ignore him.

He was a genius when it came to computers.  By the time he was eight, he was a prolific hacker; eleven and he had built a program that would make robots seem the equivalent of children in mannerism, intellect, and capacity.  As he whiled away the hours, meeting people only through their avatars and talking to them only in text, a part of him came to realize that he was truly alone in the world; none of these people were real; they were just words and pixels splayed across the screen.  By the time he graduated his online classes at the tender age of fifteen, he was certain of it: the only people in the world was himself and his mother who ignored him anyway; along with a few people he saw now and again who were contacts of his mother's.

But then, his mother died and he was forced out into the real world.

It had been a quiet sort of death; one day she had been doing eight projects all at once and then, at three forty two p.m., she had fallen down, a shocked look on her face.  She had been forty, just on the threshold as a heart attack risk and her job had pushed her over the edge.  She had died in a near instant and her son, a genius and handsome as well, but with no social skills, had been left to fend for himself; a five year old trapped in the body of a seventeen year old.  It was then that he realized that the world was full of people, real people, not just avatars on a screen.  

He plunged himself in the real world with all the fervor of someone eating something delicious for the first time ever, but he was labeled 'strange' because of his intellect and his awkward social skills.  He never dated, except in online games, and when he spoke, it was in the strange, halting language of the texting.  While some people understood him, none of them were in a position to give him a job, an education, or even any real friends.  He retreated back to his digital world and realized something terrible: none of the 'real' people were anything like their online personas and he found that the real thing was a pale comparison to the online versions.

It would have been so much better if humanity had been largely wiped out and existed only in the world of the internet.  After all, they spent so much time there anyway; even those who called him strange spent all their time online.  What difference would it make except that they wouldn't be trapped by their bodies; no need to eat or sleep or have children, or work or go to the bathroom.  They could just stay forever in the computer, talking and learning and sharing.

And he wouldn't be alone.
~
It took him years to work out the programming that would allow him to copy people.  He had to figure out which sites people went to and what they did there and that took a lot of hacking and comparing.  When he was twenty five, he came to the horrible conclusion that this work could not be done in his lifetime.  There were billions of people in the world and to figure out what each one of them did online would take centuries.  He needed a shortcut.

So, he began to explore website design.  On his twenty-seventh birthday, he had done it: he created the penultimate social network that brought in thousands every day; all of them active at least once a day.  He called it The World in the Box.  No one got the joke and its popularity soared.  It was just like the 'real' world; people could work there, talk, order things, date; in short, do everything they did in life, but all in one place.  Then it was an easy task to keep track of what everyone was doing.  From there, he worked on his programs that would keep the person active on the website even if they weren't actually there.  That took him another several months and then years to make sure that every user had a program specific to him or her.

He thought that the next step would be the most difficult, but to his surprise, it turned out to be simple.  He didn't think of the pile of flesh and hair sitting on the chair as anything but baggage, something that was weighing down the person inside and so disposing of it was easy, merciful even.  With the blood of the body still running down his wrists and arms, he then stepped around the body and downloaded that person's program.  Within moments, the computer was humming and the person was safe inside the virtual world he had created.  The whole thing had only taken a matter of minutes.  Then, he disposed of every body in that home and with tender care placed them on their computers where they would thrive forever.

The shells of the people proved a bit more problematic.  He managed to solve it by butchering the bodies and hiding the parts all around the house, the dumpster out back, and buried in the soft garden outside.  It was hard work and it wasn't at all fast, so he realized that soon he would have to figure out a way to quickly get rid of the bodies.

Then he moved onto the next house.

By the time dawn came, he came to the realization that he was saving humanity from itself and that added fuel to his plan.  He was doing the right thing; he knew that now.  He went home and waited to hear about his work, but nothing came for days.  Since everyone socialized in his world, no one missed their bodies and that made him even more frantic to move the 'real' world into the paradise he created.  Every night, he went through the homes and moved people into his world and left their butchered bodies behind.  As he saved more people, he got faster at disposing of the bodies and sometimes he was able to use power tools and even wood chippers to get rid of them all the faster, though this was messier; the first time he tried it, a bloodied hand and a jagged chunk of skull had flown out and nearly struck him.  After that, he tried to butcher the bodies by hand as much as possible.   

He came to think of himself as their savior, an angel coming to lift humanity to paradise, finally, after millennia of toiling in hell.  He wouldn't get to join the online paradise until he was done, but that was only right, that was the role of the savior.

By the second month, people were coming to the realization that something was going on.  Police from all over globe came together and compared notes.  Someone was murdering countless people and wouldn't stop until he or she was made to.  John, watching the news and the talk on his social network, bit his lip and realized that in order to save humanity he'd have to step things up.  While the police set to searching for him, he retreated and began to work.  He needed a way to dispose of bodies faster and in greater numbers.  It was looking at the array of viruses and programs still to go out that he got his idea.

A plague to sweep through the air they breathed and lift them from their bodies.  A virus to set them free and a virus to bring them to paradise.  It had a pleasing symmetry.  So, with the dried blood of his last kill on his hands, a woman who had been so wrapped up in the internet that she hadn't even realized she was dying until she was too late, he set to working on the perfect airborne virus; one that would be completely fatal and kill them fast since he didn't want people suffering before entering the gates of Heaven-they had suffered enough on this Earth.

It took him a year to perfect his virus, one year while the police circled around him like hounds and the humans he had yet to save continued to suffer.  He felt their pain like a knife in his side and each night he started his work by telling the universe that he was one step closer, that he would save them all soon.  It came to an end one summer night, thirty years after starting his glorious campaign.  He had the virus bombs ready to go; one for each major city in America and from there he'd move to the rest of the world.  He was about to head out when,

"We have your house surrounded.  Come out with your hands up."

Frantic, a rabbit at bay, John looked out his narrow window and saw a double ring of black clothed man, all carrying guns, and all pointing straight at his home.  He couldn't possibly move the bombs out of his bolt hole, so he threw a tarp over them and while the front door crashed open and the police charged in, he bolted into his cellar and from there out his escape tunnel.  He knew that this would happen; people never wanted to be saved; one had to take things into one's own hands.  He had the formulas for his virus safe in his pocket and the sample vial with a single dose for copying; he could rebuild.  He shoved a USB drive into his computer and typed a quick command: RUN in One Hour, just in case.  Then he ran through the tunnel and then burst out of his neighbor's ancient garden, the gentle old woman being one of the first to be saved and thus not needing her gardens.  Then he fled through the shadows, hearing the dogs barking behind him and the sirens blaring.  He had to be very careful not to fall or the precious vial would shatter and kill him before he was ready to go.  In fact, he was so consumed by protecting his sample that he didn't notice the two black clothed men until they had tackled him, flung him to the ground and pinned him, shining a flashlight right into his eyes and blinding him.

"Holy hell," one man said, looking into the exquisitely carved face of his prisoner with mussed golden hair from the fall and blue eyes blinking furiously against the light.  "He looks like an angel or something."

"Of course I do," John babbled, nearly incoherent with fear and despair.  "I am one, sent to bring humanity up to the gates of heaven.  My heaven, a virtual world of peace and joy."

"Crazy," the other officer said and the two of them hauled John to his feet.  

"Humans don't want to live in this world anymore!" John ranted, trying to fling himself away from the men.  "They want to live in the world I created.  Just look!  How many of you talk to each other anymore face to face?  Why work in an office when you can be at home, safe?  Why go anywhere when you can just go online and see it?  That is the world I created and it's a paradise where all humanity will go!  Just let me finish, I'm almost done."

The officers shook their heads at each other and threw him into the back seat of the car.  But they hadn't noticed the little vial that John had.

"Then I will just go," he said, his face damp with tears.  He felt terrible about leaving so many to writhe in hell, but he had no choice.  He smashed the vial and breathed the virus in.  The cursing of the shocked officers sounded loud at first and then fell away to a hum.  There was a peculiar darkness interspersed with strange silver lines and grids and John fell into them, feeling connected to everything for the first time in his life.  His final thought was only guilt that he wouldn't get to bring everyone here.  

An outsider no longer; his computer hummed to life and the program that was John entered The World in the Box; he was finally home.
My first horror for :iconguildofwriters: theme contest. I'm not into slash horror, so I had to do something more thought provoking which wasn't easy!

Word count: 2489
Genre: horror/cyber horror/science fiction
© 2010 - 2024 Tanashai
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BellaNellaMorte's avatar
BLOODY HELL TANA!!

This is really on another level of scary..