Server Extant

Morghain was sleeping when Kyle returned her call.

‘Hey Morghain’, came Kyle’s familiar voice.

‘Kyle.. hey where have you been lately? I called you.’

‘Yeah, sorry to jump right to the point, but I saw something today that worried me.’

‘Yeah?’ Morghain found her head clearing. ‘What?’

‘Listen do you know if Leo- I mean Carnivous, ever went ahead with his pain feedback rig?’

‘He got the prototype worked out. I don’t know if he ever built it though. I helped him with modding the interface. It was pretty hard, because the Id controller doesn’t allow channel feedback so you have to proxy it in an I.C.’

‘I think he built it.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘I visited him today and I saw something on him. Some sort of rig, allot of wires, connecting to his whole body. I couldn’t get a good look at it, but it wasn’t a mocap. It was homemade.’

‘He didn’t tell me.. but now that you mention it, Cubist said something too. About how Carnivous seems to feel pain. He said his Id is his own flesh. He said he thought Carnivous was beginning to go crazy, hallucinate sensation in his virtual body. But that would explain it, I guess.’

‘Jesus! Why the fuck would you encourage him to go ahead with something like that?’

’Me? A bunch of us were screwing around one night and you said they should make some sort of pain feedback suit, so when you got hit, you’d hurt. Went on about how it’d ‘totally give you an edge,’ blah, blah.’

’I did?’ Kyle was taken aback. ‘I got to stop hitting the bong’ he thought.

‘Carnivous worked out the electronics. I did an I.C controller for him on the agreement he’d give me twenty percent if he became a tech billionaire.’

‘But who would buy something like that?’

‘I dunno’ shrugged Morghain. ‘Lunatics? Gaming fanatics like your brother? If the pain is real, the concentration becomes total. Look how he fights.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

’Sorry Kyle, I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I didn’t know he’d do it. I didn’t know he’d done it.’

‘Why didn’t he come to me?’

‘I don’t know. It’s easier to open up to people you know online. It’s like an emotional prophylactic. I think I’m the only one on Knet who knows his real name, apart from you. And maybe he never thought you were one hundred percent with us.’

‘I guess so..’

‘Also, you’re a shit coder.’

‘Do you know how he’s living?’ asked Kyle.

‘I don’t know anything about your brother’s life. Or yours, if I think about it. Or mine, if I really think about it.’

‘Mine’s great. It’s like a safari with tits.’

‘Oh good.’

‘My brother, on the other hand, is living in a condemned building that smells like piss. He nailed himself inside his apartment, with a hole cut in the door to have food shoved in. He’s stealing power off the mains and paying for bandwidth off his G.I.’

‘Oh. Bad.’

‘I think he’s going crazy Morghain. I don’t know what to do.’

‘I could show you the I.C specs?’

‘Would that tell me much?’

‘Not really, you’d have to see the electronics to know anything. But it did have a distribution system that dispersed variable electric charge to two hundred and forty anodes. I guess those are the pain feedback points. And there was one main stem.’

‘What’s the main stem?’

‘He wanted an override for the safety. That would allow current to discharge into the rig, direct from the capacitor.’

‘Why would you want that?’

‘You wouldn’t, unless you wanted to kill yourself. Oh.’

‘Kill yourself?’

‘Yea-a-h, that just occurred to me.’

’You think he’s going to kill himself?’

‘No, no!’ said Morghain, hastily. ‘No, definitely not! No, I’m sure he’s got allot to live for-’

‘I just finished explaining to you that he fucking doesn’t!’ yelled Kyle.

Kyle felt a tightening in his chest. A panic he had suppressed for eleven years.

‘Kyle, calm down. You’re jumping to a pretty big conclusion.’

’Do you think that, if Carnivous died, Leon would want to stick around? And you think pain is a motivator, how about death? Wouldn’t that push Leon even closer to the thing he wants, total immersion in Knet?’

‘I dunno, Kyle, that’s a stretch. I really don’t think your brother’s..’ Morghain trailed off. She was about to say ‘that crazy’ but couldn’t quite bring herself to.

Kyle thought of the black mouth cut in the door, the stench of squalor it exhaled. The pile of garbage and fast food containers under the blank concrete of the apartment block. His brother was in there, wearing that thing, and no one in the world cared or knew. Nothing to live for. Nothing but Knet. Nothing, but to be Carnivous.

‘Alright, I’m coming back online. Is my Id okay?’

‘I dunno. I assume it’s in the clan vault.’

‘Can you meet me there? I need your help Morghain.’

‘Sure Kyle. But don’t panic. I’m sure your brother’s okay.’ Even as she said it, however, Morghain wondered what exactly constituted the condition of ‘okay’ in respect to Carnivous. Then there was the small matter of him pissing off Motor. She felt an unease, a contagion from the fear in Kyle’s voice.

‘Although’ she admitted, ‘he has been getting into some shit, lately.’

‘What shit?’

‘He attacked Epsilon, killed the controller. Everyone’s saying it’s war with P-Fed. Allot of people here are kind of pissed about it.’

‘Holy shit. By himself?’

‘No, some of the idiots went with him. He got himself on all the gaming channels. The Jerries mentioned it. So you know Motor knows his name.’

‘Fuck.’

‘But the P-Fed is gearing up for the tournament, so I dunno.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Wow, you really have been out of the loop, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve been doing a Knet detox. Cold turkey.’

‘Motor’s put together the first all-server deathmatch. Looks ma-a-assive. So maybe he’ll get distracted and forget all about us. And your brother.’

‘I’ll meet you at the clan hall.’

‘Okay. But don’t-’

The little icon went dark. Morghain stared at it for a moment, then yawned, stretched, and leapt lightly out of her hiding place, across the darkened canyon tops.