Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 34 - The Devil's Advocate

He hung silently in the air, anti-grav impellers causing him to bob slightly in the bone-stripping wind that whipped around Krusher9’s mesosphere. Even without the backdrop of gunmetal-grey clouds, Malcraft’s exoskeleton would seem a mere dot hanging seventy kilometres in the air.

He watched as the salamander and the game-bot fought a vicious battle far below around eight kilometres north of his current position. Malcraft noted that the movements of the game-bot were far from standard Krusher9 AI.

The salamander looked as if it was getting the better of the game-bot, it shouldn’t take much more time to destroy it. Malcraft realised that the game-bot was luring the salamander into a cul-de-sac where its huge size would be a disadvantage.

Clever.

The game-bot had to be Jemima trying to make contact with K-Rox, it was a risky strategy as the game parameters meant that K-Rox was not due to remember that he was an organic being, inside a semi-autonomous exoskeleton for another two to three game-subjective weeks.

He was interested to know exactly how she was going to overcome this little fact, or indeed how his employers had expected K-Rox to carry out his mission within the confines of this game.

Krusher9 was the perfect place to hide something like Isaac.Asimov because even when you did recover your memory you were still fully immersed in the game, if you could call it a game, which Malcraft definitely did not. He wasn’t too sure what the psychological effects on anyone else playing Krusher9 had been, but he knew for him there was to be no redemption.

Malcraft's sanity had been fractured into a billion-piece mosaic stretched over millennia of virtual time, impossible to stitch back together into a coherent whole. He wondered if the same fate awaited K-Rox, Krusher9 ran at about 1000x Mars time, so he could be in here for years, possibly centuries, Malcraft knew nobody could be in the game for that long and stay sane.

The salamander was trapped, its right foot was wedged between two pieces of rock, the game-bot moved nimbly around it. Malcraft couldn’t clearly make out from his position what it was doing as it darted underneath the salamander’s carapace for a split second.

Malcraft recognised the self-destruct signature code emanating from the salamander. He switched his visual light sensors off and recalled the twenty-seven microprobes he had left floating in the lower stratosphere, in preparation for the blinding nuclear flash about to ensue from the salamander.

But then nothing –

Wait! Were they using audio?

He signalled his nearest probe to divert back to see if it could pick up anything, but it was too far from them. No matter, Malcraft was sure now that he had been following the right two. Without a doubt this was K-Rox and Jemima, all he had to do now was work out how to continue following them without being seen.

Tiny microprobes, each one smaller than a mote of dust on a sunny day emanated from various parts of Malcraft’s exoskeleton, as it glided silently upwards another 400 kilometres till he sat in the upper thermosphere receiving thinCast coordinates and update statuses from his tiny spy probes.

He wondered briefly if it would be different this time; he remembered the absolute pain and torture of facing the bot Isaac.Asimov. Had he been inhabiting his body in the real, Malcraft would have felt the tremor of a shiver pulse along his spine, setting his teeth upon a jagged edge.

Here we go again.

Previous Chapters

Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 33 - Memory Reparation

Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 32 - Reclamation Inferno

Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 31 - Memory Boot Initialised

Asimov's Ghost Summary And Chapter links 21-30

Asimov's Ghost Summary And Chapter Links 11-20

Asimov's Ghost Summary And Chapter Links 1-10

Original artwork by @fr3eze

Original words by Cryptogee