Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 30 - Trial By Bottomless Pit
-Planet fall
1000 metres
It was so familiar to him now, falling through the troposphere, powered burns taking him to his position, and then a kilometre above the virus hits. It was always the same, the digital stream of data flooding memory banks, corrupting drives.
800 metres
There it was, some new player screaming for victory, it was always the same . . . the full immersion didn’t happen until you had been ejected from the ship, every hundred metres you fell towards the planet, represented more data being extrapolated, subverted, and returned to your mind.
Malcraft had wondered on many occasions how they got a different player each time to scream the victory cry, thus spreading the virus. He figured the game designers must have created an actual virus that temporarily took over your speech parameters.
He was sure that the scream would have come from a new player, if you were twisted enough to play this game by choice, you only played it once, not many could handle their mind being stripped in such a brutal way.
The surprise of Krusher9 was never revealed, because upon completion of the game, your memory of the incident is wiped, a benefit of it being a full immersion QSID-type game, your mind was quite literally not your own when you entered Krusher9.
Malcraft had played the game so many countless times that the memory-wipe no longer seemed to work on him, he remembered ten thousand agonising deaths within this environment. To him it wasn’t a game, it was his personal perdition, he was locked in an unending state of digital damnation, the souls of the vanquished and his tormentors alike, burned a deep mental filigree within from which he would surely never recover.
He thought back to the second time they had made him go into the game, he couldn't bring to mind the first, but it was that second time that bore the real significance.
The games designers had warned that should a player be so bold as to play Krusher9 twice, that the time distance between the two occasions, should be no less than three, objectively real, years. Malcraft had reentered the game within hours of his first try.
He still remembered how the virus sequence made him feel that second time, the feeling of having his mind changed into a cold, logical, killing machine was something indescribable. The closest thing Malcraft could relate it to would be if somebody with very large, and very sharp bony fingers, clamped onto your skull, and slowly began to tear your brain through the back of your head. Whilst at the same time, sticking a jagged crystal into your ear, and playing through it every piece of music ever made at the loudest possible volume without making your head explode.
They had put him in a psychiatric virtual for a subjective year, which equated to around five minutes in the real, and then they threw him straight back in. By the time they asked him to kill Amorphia, Malcraft’s mind was so fragmented that it was hardly reasonable to consider him the same person he had been just a few years previously.
600 metres
He could hear the confused cries coming over his comms, the chatter was always different for this bit, later in the game they would remember, later, when their humanity had been partially returned to them.
Malcraft wondered when he started to enjoy the killing so much, perhaps it was the same time he accepted the bottomless pit of his suffering. It didn’t matter, he knew that if he was to survive this Hades, then he needed the acceptance, he needed the hatred, the barbaric glee. It was this that gave him control over Krusher9 like no other.
The virus affected him in the same way as the others, he still turned into a machine, the difference was that Malcraft had nothing left to lose. He was able to retain a level of consciousness within Krusher9 that nobody else could, still able to think beyond the boundaries of the game.
300 metres
In another one hundred metres the comms blackout would happen, and they would wake up on the planet surface faced with the irony of Krusher9, the ones that came to kill the humanoid machines, have themselves become unthinking mechanoids, primed for battle, ready to kill.
0 metres
Systems check . . .
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 29 - Fragmented Reality Lost Histories
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 28 - Clones - A Lasting Morality
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 27 - Primal Loss
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 26 - Shadows Past
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 25 - Mind Loss
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 24 - The Immorality Of Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 23 - Descent On Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 22 - The Mars Problem
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 21 - Thought Patterns
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 20 - Reality Dysfunction
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 19 - The Lost Scream
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 18 - The empLink Story
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 17 - A Problem With Time
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 16 - Neither Here Nor There
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 15 - At The Edge Of Madness
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 14 - A Sense Of The Real
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 13 - The Search For Truth
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by @nekromarinist
Original words by Cryptogee
Makcraft is definitely somebody or can I say something that is Willing to undergo change but the enhancement to him made it really seem like he can not stop killing after all that was what he was designed to do, however, is he still really a human? Or has he been turned into something else?
Ha... @cryptogee, this means K-Rox is in more danger than he knows. Can he work with Malcraft, if part of the memory returned to him includes the death of Amorphia in Malcraft's hands? But then again, he is still a novice in the game and Malcraft has mastered the game to a certain degree, which makes him, Malcraft, vital to K-Rox's success.
Is Jemima coming into the game to observe, to help or to hinder K-Rox?
I can't wait to see the sparks fly when K-Rox comes across Malcraft.
I wish at the end of the story this Krusher9 game will be deleted. Even though I believe that many who leave this game will have such a reverberating thrill that they want to enter again ( like Malcraft?) But probably you choose a twist that hints towards all starting anew. :)
interestingly violent but it seems not so surprising if his world is in digital damnation and barbaric manipulation.
I'm really scared of seeing ghosts..... 👻
Great post