Cyberman

[Katzaniel]

Midnight.

 

Anthony sighs inwardly. He likes his friends, he even enjoys going out with them when he can. But too often he feels like it is more of a duty than a break. He is busy, he can't afford to take all this time off of work, but he doesn't want to lose his friends either. They only call him once every few months; he knows that if he ever started to say no when they called, they would probably stop calling altogether.

 

"Hey, what's up, man?" Josh looks concerned.

 

"Oh... nothing, I guess I'm just tired." Anthony shrugs. He knows he shouldn't feel this way, but mostly he just wants to let them talk to each other so he can work out when he will be able to repay that bank loan. But it was not to be. His friends are having one of their rare let's-include-Anthony-in-the-conversation moments.

 

"How's the business?" Not that they really care. It is just something to say to him, and he knows that any run of the mill answer will suffice.

 

"It's fine," he replies. "Routine as usual, and routine is good. It means nothing is going wrong." He smiles to show that it was a joke, but it only results in polite laughter. In truth, Anthony liked it when things went wrong, because it made work interesting and gave him a challenge to occupy his thoughts. It was when things were not routine that he thrived, working late into the night and early in the mornings. He wishes again that he were working on this night.

 

They ask him a few more questions about his internet business. Most of them don't really understand what it is he does, exactly. All they know is that it takes up a lot of his time, and earns him enough money. He answers politely, hoping they can't tell that his mind is not wholly with them. After a while they run out of questions, and a little while after that, there is a lull in their conversation, and Anthony makes his exit, telling them he isn't getting enough sleep lately. Probably true, but not his primary reason for leaving.

 

On the drive home, he turns up his music and turns his thoughts to work. He will get up early in the morning to make up for tonight. And if he can attract just four more orders by the end of this month, he will be out of debt. He doesn't even notice the drizzling rain pouring down around him.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

Anthony's clock alarm drills at six the next morning and he rolls out of bed, hits the button and trods down the hall to the kitchen. He really is tired, but it is a necessary sacrifice. He needs to work to make money, and he needs money to live. When he is out of debt, he will be able to sleep in all he wants. That's the point of having your own business, right?

 

Pouring himself some cheerios, Anthony does notice that it is raining. It is storming now, too. What a dreary day. He tips the milk onto his cereal and brings it into the den with him.

 

He turns on the computer and works for about half an hour, eating between lines of code, not really paying attention to anything. Then, without warning, lightning strikes the house. It must have gone through his cables, too, because he feels a minor surge go through himself from the mouse. It is a strange sensation, warm and tingly, but only for a moment. Anthony stands up and walks around the room once, feeling fine. Nothing wrong with him. Realizing it would be foolhardy to continue working, he quickly saves his file and exits the program. Then he reaches down to turn off the power, and blacks out.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

It takes a moment for Anthony to realize that he is still awake. He hasn't blacked out at all, but something is very strange.

 

He can't see anything, or not quite. He thinks maybe he can make out some lights in the distance, but they sort of skitter around his vision. Mostly it is just dark. He tries to move and feels a sort of drifting sensation. Not feeling his body, he freaks out and tries to remember what exactly happened. As the picture forms in his head of himself pressing the power button on his computer, he sort of sees the image in front of him, like a ghost version of himself made up of light. Before that can even register in his mind, he finds himself zooming toward that image and merging with it. He opens his eyes, confused to find them closed, and takes a gulp of air. He finds himself sitting again in his chair with his finger resting on "power". Quickly he jerks his hand away, standing up and tripping over his chair in the process of backing up.

 

What had happened? It had to be his imagination. It was silly to be afraid, obviously he was just dreaming. Maybe lightning had struck again, knocking him unconscious this time. He just needs sleep. With the storm around, he really shouldn't leave the computer on, he could lose all his data, lose his entire business. But he finds that he can't do it, he can't reach for that switch again. He turns around and heads for bed with the machine still on, sinking into bed with a strange sort of desperation in his head, finding some much needed rest.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

Days later Anthony is still leaving his computer on when he's done. Logic tells him that the lightening must have struck again, but his fear surpasses that knowledge and every time he reaches for the switch, he finds his mind recoiling. So he ignores its glow, ignores the hum, ignores his fear.

 

One day it grows too much for him. He can't live not knowing whether he imagined that strange floating feeling, those unfamiliar lights, that unique sensation of becoming himself. The day's work done, he sits in the chair for a few minutes steeling himself. It wouldn't happen again, it couldn't. But if it didn't, what did that mean? That he had imagined all of that wasn't comforting either. Breathing unevenly, not knowing what to expect and not knowing what to hope, Anthony hits the power.

 

And finds himself instantly in the same blackness as before. His heart skips a beat. Panic swells up within him and his mind reels forth the image of himself, but he gets ahold of himself and beats it down. A calm curiosity takes hold of him. He knows how to return. What he doesn't know is where he is. He concentrates his mind on figuring that out. Exploring. Floating in nothingness, unable to feel his body or anything else, he lets his mind roam.

 

What he finds is not so much a view but an impression of his surroundings. It is like a half realized dream, part of him is insisting that none of this is possible, but at the same time he knows that there isn't really any other explanation. Either he has gone, almost overnight, absolutely and delusionally insane, or... or he is inside his computer. Looking around, he sees, or feels, files floating around inside entities that must be folders. Only somewhat convinced, he projects his senses and discovers all the familiar elements of his computer - his documents, his colour scheme and icons and shortcuts. His games, none of which he had played for years, always too busy. The internet. He reaches toward it and is welcomed with his homepage, his online business site.

 

But this could just as easily still be a dream. There is no proof, not even the realness of real-life to make him think he's really here. Only an illusion that is far too unreal even for a dream to tell him that this might, despite everything, be really happening. In an inspiration, he concentrates extra hard for a moment and creates a file. He calls it "cyber" and writes inside of it a dazed, chaotic description of his surroundings. Then he reaches again in his mind for the power switch, sees the ghost image, and finds himself in his chair.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

Anthony goes to bed that night without looking for the file. He doesn't really know why he doesn't look, but some part of him now feels settled with itself, at rest with the matter. The next morning and for many days afterward he settles back into his routine. He wakes up early in the morning, eats breakfast and settles to work at whatever the day's business has set for him, meeting with clients, making payments to the bank, or just sitting down and programming. And every night before he goes to bed, he looks for a second at the power switch before deciding to leave the computer on, and going to bed.

 

He tells himself that it's faster to leave it on all night than to sit through the boot-up every morning, and time is more important than electricity. He tells himself that it might well save power, with the length of time he's working on it, it is actually more efficient to have it running all the time than spending the energy to power up and power down. He tells himself that after being hit by lightening while on, maybe the computer would be damaged if turned off. He tells himself that it's force of habit. And soon, that is exactly what it is. His only reminder that something has changed in his life is the faint hum eminating from the den while he sleeps, and in time that too becomes normal.

 

Then one day after Anthony hangs up the phone from speaking to an impatient client, he is surprised to hear it ringing again. He picks it up, expecting that the woman must have forgotten something she wanted to tell him. Instead, he is informed by the compassionate man on the other end of the phone that his parents have died in a car crash.

 

Devastated, he barely manages to finish the conversation. He drops the phone reciever and doesn't bother to pick it up. He curls up on the floor and sleeps right then and there, having terrible recurrent nightmares about how long it had been since he'd talked to either of them, how young they still were, how painful the accident must have been.

 

Sooner than he wants to, he begins the painful process of explaining to people what happened. Since he works alone, it isn't very long before clients are phoning and asking why their software is late. He tearfully tells them that he doesn't know how long it will be, he can't work on it now, his parents are dead. Some of them, expressing regret, withdraw their requests from him. They apologize for his loss, but they need the program right away, they will offer him their business when he is done mourning. He feels that he will never be done mourning.

 

Anthony's friends stop by, offering regrets and offering help. They bring food, they bring flowers, they bring compassion. He is glad of them, but doesn't know how to talk to them, can't find any words. Little by little, as time passes, they stop coming. He is cooking his own suppers again, he seems to be better. What else can they say to him? What else can they do? Wanting more than anything to be alone, he tells them when they ask that he is managing all right, that he is getting over it. He tells them thank you, and they leave him alone.

 

He cries himself to sleep every night for months afterward. They weren't ready, he wasn't ready. After he had paid off his loans, once his business had started making enough money for him to live comfortably, he was going to buy them gifts. He'd been going to spend more time with them. He was going to do so much more than he had been doing. Their only son, and they had not heard from him at all the weeks before their death.

 

Anthony is woken one night by the humming of the computer. He lies there for a while, unable to recapture his slumber. The noise interferes, but the grieving is worse. After a while he gets up and goes to the machine, sitting down in the chair and looking blankly at the screen. Then he opens up a text editor and begins to write.

 

Words spill from him. Hours pass to find him still typing madly away. He covers his range of emotions about his parent's lives, their sudden death, the kind of son he'd been. He is strangely soothed by getting it down in writing and he is soon venting about his strained relationship with his friends, his lack of a girlfriend, his inability to play sports. Always the thread is related in some way to his mourning and he weaves the words about, covering every facet of his and their lives. When he's done, he lays his head on the desk and sobs.

 

A calmness begins to enter into his being. Anthony has finally managed to purge some of the worries and regrets that he had been carrying around. He starts the process of coming back to himself, and he looks for a place to save his writings. In rooting around his computer for a non work related directory, he stumbles across the file called "cyber". Anthony saves what he's written in the same directory, then goes back to open the old file.

 

In rereading it, the memories of the blackness are recreated so well that Anthony decides there could not be any explanation for the experience and for the existance of the file other than that it had been real. He reaches once again to turn off the computer.

 

Anthony lays in the darkness for a while, thinking. He thinks of his parents, of his friends, of a childhood girlfriend. He thinks of his lonliness and his aspirations and weighs them together. In the timeless night, he rereads the efforts of the past hours and then reads it all again. He aligns his emotions and comes to terms with his past. And he decides that there isn't much to drive him home.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

After Anthony is finally able to come to grips with himself and with his parent's deaths, he also knows that there is no real reason to go back right away. Sure, he still cared about his business, but there was no longer any sense of urgency. True, he didn't want to lose his friends, especially since they had been so helpful and kind in the last little while, but they weren't going to be calling him just yet, and if they did they would understand his reluctance to pick up.

 

Instead, Anthony decides to explore. Not his own computer; he knows that well enough. This time, he follows some light-corridors for a while until he comes to what must be another person's computer. The light is almost blinding, here, and he realizes that this means it is on. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registers the fact that his own computer must be off, then, when he's inside of it.

 

When he adjusts to the light, Anthony realizes that not much is different from the appearance of his own computer. Gliding around, he is able to figure out which file is open, noting from hindsight that it should have been obvious. He reads for a while. It is some sort of history essay. Just to see if he can, Anthony corrects a typo in the file. The stream of words irregularily appearing at the end of the file stop for a moment. A brief pause. The confusion is almost tangible. Anthony regrets the action, but when the words start coming again, he soon loses interest.

 

Down another corridor. Probably wires, Anthony thinks. This time he finds a chat room, bubbling with personalities. Curiosity piqued, he manifests himself as a name in the list of people in the room. He is surprised but eager when not only does it appear there, but the words "Cyberman has entered the room." appear on the person's screen. Excited, he concentrates on creating a user description for himself. He doesn't understand where in cyberspace the description exists, but he can tell very quickly that it's not on this computer. It must be wherever he is. It occurs to Anthony that if all the computers in the entire world were turned off, there would be no cyberspace. No internet. Or would there? If it would still exist, it must do so in the place that he is now.

 

Looking back to the screen, he notices that someone is talking to him. They want to know where he is from, how old is he? Obviously he's a man, they laugh. By the way they like the name. But they want to know more. Proud of himself and growing steadily more enthusiastic, he makes up a history for Cyberman. With his mind for the first time in a long time off of the subject of his parents, Anthony really begins to enjoy himself, enjoy being Cyberman. Wherever it is that he is right now, he exists only as this character. Cyberman lives in a family of six, is twenty five and has a girlfriend. About the only thing about Cyberman that is consistent with what Anthony had been was the age. Cyberman is good at sports and has many close friends. Like everything online, what is witnessed by others is the only truth. Cyberman exists because there is no other way to verify anything. And when the computer goes off, none of it matters.

 

Anthony, masquerading as Cyberman, has a good time chatting. When he notices that all of the original personas had left, he decides it's enough for now. He can't remember how long he's been there, but he says goodnight and returns through the cables to his own machine. When he pictures himself pressing the switch and finds himself again in his body, he is surprised to note that his body is not tired or hungry. He falls asleep thinking of his parents again, but for the first time since their deaths he does not cry.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

Upon awakening, Anthony lies staring at the ceiling for a long time before moving. He feels more refreshed than he has in recent months, and that in itself is a strange feeling. Guilt comes to him for feeling good, but he knows in the back of his mind that it is about time he came to grips with it. With their deaths, he affirms to himself. He should not be ashamed to think the words, either.

 

Going back even past the accident, Anthony realizes just how long it had been since he had ever enjoyed himself so much. Last night, he had connected with people that, though somewhere across the globe, understood him better than his friends ever had. He had laughed and chatted with them, and they had enjoyed his company. Anthony knew now that he had put too much priority on his work and for too long. Since he had already lost all of his current clients, it was a prime opportunity to take a little vacation.

 

Getting up now, he makes his bed, showers, makes some toast. He considers calling his friends, but even Josh whom he had known since elementary school did not understand Anthony. No, he would go back to the chatroom and talk to the friends he had met last night.

 

Without the trepidation he had previously experienced, Anthony sits down at his desk and presses the power button. Instantly the darkness is around him, but he feels lighter than air. He really feels like he belongs here. Down the lightpaths he travels, reaching a computer that is on. The person is not on the internet, though. Should he open it up, or find someone with their browser already open? Anthony is suddenly aware that last night, he had decided to leave only after all the original users had left. What had happened to the person whose computer he was using? Hadn't they noticed that the chatline was still open after they had disconnected? There must be a way to get online without actually opening the window, and this must have been what happened previously without his realizing.

 

Concentrating, the young man succeeds in finding a connection. Like a beacon, the internet lies before him, bright and exciting. Vast and ready to be explored, full of databases like treasure troves of knowledge, the internet was everything he had ever wanted. Behind the scenes of the actual computer, and doing this consciously for the first time, Anthony feels powerful. Fighting down the feeling, he realizes that he should be able to do this on any internet capable machine. And since he had opened and altered files on his own computer while it was powered down, he should be able to connect to the internet from there as well. So he moves back to his own terminal and finds the world wide web once more.

 

Unburdened from his body, he soon discovers that surfing the net really feels like surfing. Anthony flies across the links and into the depths of information and games like Spiderman flies across Manhattan. Cyberman he truly is. Resting, he absentmindedly sorts through some chat lines, considering which one to join. Altering his description to "recently broken up", he settles for one called "Karaoke Singles Bar". The karaoke was a bit of a joke, but every so often someone would relate a line from a song into the conversation and everyone would laugh.

 

Very quickly, Cyberman notices Angel_A. She is nice to everyone, and has a great sense of humour. She likes his jokes as much as he likes hers, and he soon finds himself in a private message with her, discussing religion and politics and other topics normally taboo for a first date. She has her own opinions and some of them differ from his own, but he feels that he really connects with her and they have many of the same core values. All too soon, though, she excuses herself, saying she has to be up early the next day, but will she find him on another day?

 

Yes. Absolutely yes, though he doesn't show his enthusiasm quite that much. He knows that he can't scare her off by being too eager, especially on the internet he must not come across as a stalker. And so, though he settles down to a routine of sleeping two or three hours, eating one meal, entering his computer to work for an hour or two and surfing for the remainder of every day, he doesn't return to that chat line for nearly a week.

[Katzaniel]

As the days pass, Anthony finds more and more things that he is capable of doing. He can alter information in a database simply by being on a site that connects to it. He can search through vast amounts of data in a very small amount of time, coming up with whatever picture, website, chatline, or even IP address that he has in mind. He can monitor a chatline without actually being on it. Mindful always of how important it is not to appear as a stalker, Cyberman actually has the potential to be the most efficient and well-resourced stalker ever.

 

Resisting the temptation to search Angel_A's computer, he instead hovers over the chatline until she logs on, then waits about half an hour. Anthony is fairly pacing the lightpaths in impatience, carefully watching someone's computer clock click by the seconds until at nearly 26 minutes he can no longer stand the waiting. He manifests his presence.

 

She wasn't planning on staying long, it turns out, but is willing to stay to talk to him. Anthony hopes he isn't imagining the eagerness. Angel_A asks where he's been for the last few days, and he indicates that he's been busy, doing work, and only been able to log on a few times. He expresses a fraction of the regret he really feels that he hasn't met up with her.

 

They talk again, this time about less serious things. She'd seen a good movie the night before. He'd read a good book. He had, actually, but of course he didn't tell her that he had found it online and discovered that he could absorb its contents in a few minutes of reading. All too soon she excuses herself, though. Her mother is calling her.

 

Cyberman tries not to follow the line to her computer, but his is was weak. He desperately wants to know that she is going because she has to, not because she's grown tired of him, or he'd pressed too hard or not hard enough. He hesitates only a moment before plunging himself through the lightpaths and into her machine. There he waits painstaking moments as she exits the chatline, then closes the internet connection, saves and closes a word document that he barely manages not to read, and then logs off the computer. Shutdown a moment later, and he is left in blackness to celebrate.

 

Edit: I can't get through a single post without reverting to third person!

Edit 2: Hmm, not sure where that came from, I meant without reverting to past tense.

Edited June 21, 2005 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

Anthony, excited and happy that Angel_A seems really to like him, decides to return home for a while to sleep. The transition from Cyberman to Anthony is habitual, now, and moments after making the decision he is sitting in his den chair. Not getting up immediately, Anthony instead relaxes there, feeling the seat pressed against his body and marvelling at how he'd never really noticed that before. Of course he is soon thinking about Angela, as he pronounces it in his mind, and feeling drunk with joy.

 

Soon his thoughts turn again to his parents, and Anthony feels a little guilty for feeling so happy when they are dead, and so recently. But it isn't really recent anymore, he tells himself. And after never having had a serious girlfriend, Angela is the best thing that could happen to him. Of course that makes him wonder what role the whole "out-of-body experience" had had in it, but he pushes that out of mind. It's natural that not needing as much food or sleep would mean he'd spend more time doing other things. Of course he'd had no time before. So he had struck onto this lucky, if rather strange, phenomenon... anybody would enjoy it the same way, he decides.

 

He realizes that eventually, he's going to run out of food. Some of the things in his cupboard are probably already going bad. Then the money in his bank account would begin to run dry. Yes, Anthony comes to the conclusion that he will need some sort of income, and soon so that people don't wonder about how he is surviving. It doesn't occur to him to wonder why he has not worried about this before, or mourned for his parents since his trips to cyberspace became routine. It does occur to him that with his abilities over databases, he could easily tranfer over money to his account from others. Hundreds of accounts over the world, and tonnes of people who would never miss it. But moral values push that thought away before the impossibility of the transfers not being noticed even has a chance to rise to the surface.

 

But, how to restart his old business when people would have trouble getting ahold of him by phone? Possibly he could just let the answering machine get it and check in periodically, but people would get suspicious fast. Or, failing that, they would decide they didn't like working with someone to whom they had never spoken, or who didn't return calls more than a couple of times a day. Well, there were lots of bigger sites all over the internet that were impersonal enough for that to be normal. A few dozen employees working halfway across the world, and people expected to deal by e-mail and order forms. Perhaps he can simulate something like that.

 

Getting hungry, Anthony finally stands up and heads to the kitchen. He prepares some microwave macaroni in a sort of trance, working out the details in his head. While he eats, he works out how he'll make it seem like a well-established company. While he washes his dish and fork, he designs the look of the site. Undressing in his bedroom, he plans how to set up the money transfer. Then he lies awake for a long time trying to stop thinking about it before he finally falls asleep.

Edited June 21, 2005 by Katzaniel

[Katzaniel]

For a while, Anthony keeps up a routine of sleeping for a few hours and eating a portion of food each day before disappearing into the computer. With the ease of control over his computer that Cyberman has, the web site only takes a few days to start up, and soon he is doing what would otherwise take twenty employees, in only four or five hours of work. Customers come, spend money, and leave satisfied. Cyberman enjoys the work, but spends as much time on chatlines, working over timezones so as to not appear to be online too much, and talking to Angel_A whenever he can.

 

Cyberman soon divulges to her that much of his description is not true. By this time, he regrets ever lying in it, but he tells her as much, and she forgives him. She's not exactly a sports-nut anyway, and is herself a bit of a loner. It turns out that she is herself an avid video-gamer, and likes things like roleplaying, and had been afraid to admit it. She's nearly done a degree in Chemistry, she says, though she isn't sure what she's going to do with it.

 

With the encouragement of Cyberman, Angel_A pulls together a few of her friends and starts a weekly online gaming session. Anthony finds himself looking forward to this time nearly as much as he does chatting with Angel_A alone, because he relates to these people, and they genuinely like him. Ted, a self-described big man who enjoys playing ogres, and loves to shout "Smash!" at things before flattening them. Especially things that annoy the other characters, though the players themselves enjoy Ted's character as much as they enjoy pretending to be annoyed with him. Damon, who plays a weak-kneed cleric who always runs away, but then lives in order to heal the others. Jessica, whose favourite is a tough female monk, the scourge of the party's enemies. Jeff, who plays anything from a gnomish fighter to a female ogre to a bard with amnesia. His characters are always creative and fun, but never manage to survive long. And Angela herself, as she lets Anthony know her name is, who prefers magical characters, and leads the party off to find unicorns and other fanciful goals when it is her turn to DM. Cyberman feels right at home with these people, and laughs and jokes right along with them.

 

It is not long before the young man is spending nearly all of his time in the computer. He rarely reflects anymore how strange it is, or regrets not seeing his other friends. He runs his new business as if he had forty employees, fifty, as he tires of other pasttimes. And always there is Angel_A. He resists spying on her computer, but he keeps a database of anything she tells him, afraid to forget. He learns to sense when she comes online, from anywhere on the internet, but of course he can't appear to spend every moment waiting for her, so he hangs back occasionally, tensely pretending to be elsewhere.

[Katzaniel]

Summer comes, and Angel_A tells him that she's going on a vacation. Italy, she says excitedly. She's especially looking forward to seeing Venice and riding a gondola. She'll be gone for a month, and won't have access to a computer, but she will miss him, and will be online to tell him about her vacation as soon as she returns. She laughs about what her mother will say about that, but promises it nonetheless.

 

Cyberman briefly considers finding out her address and sending her an internet-capable laptop, but realizes immediately it's a stupid idea. First, Angel_A isn't going to appreciate a gift that makes her wonder where it came from, or realize that he had gotten her address somehow. Second, he wants her to enjoy her vacation, not spend all her time updating him. He vows not to begrudge her the time alone, in which he succeeds, but also to put her out of his mind for a time, in which he fails.

 

One evening, Cyberman is hanging out in a chatline and simultaneously playing online Tetris when he gets a dull, creepy feeling in the back of his consciousness. He ignores it, and very soon he's forgotten about it. He keeps talking to his internet buddies, who at the moment happen to include Jeff, and keeps absentmindedly guiding the blocks to the bottom. He had gotten the game to over level two hundred, because he can control it at even the fastest speeds, and filled up the high-scores with his name. It isn't very exciting anymore, though, so after a while he stops.

 

Jeff is avidly describing himself on a lion, prancing around the room after a virtual rabbit, and everyone is laughing and joining in the chase. Someone describes it running into a hole; someone else pretends to follow, and get their head stuck. Soon there are ten rabbits, and getting into all sorts of trouble. Cyberman wishes Angel_A were there, but succeeds in having some fun without her anyway.