Spark

I pass by the legion of rain slick windows on my way to my destination. The sounds of the crowd, the smell of rain and smog mixed with various decaying wares from the nearby market creates a miasma that I find oddly comforting. I look at all of the people that walk about their day. Living their lives, stuck in a fog of their own. I want to show them the truth but is it really my place to do so? Would I really force that on anyone?

The various holo-ads call out and seduce those looking for even a moments respite from reality, offering a myriad of distractions. I keep walking and let them congeal into an unintelligible stew of false promises. I don’t need their distractions. I have my own.

I’m only a block away when I notice the first of them. A misstep on their part, the simplest thing. He kept eye contact for just a split second too long as I passed him. “Reality” expands before me on instinct, and I feel the others as well. Fucking traitors. I keep walking but they feel me just as I feel them and before I know it, I’ve broken into a full-bore sprint.

No more use for subtlety, I let my mind reach out to the system and cross the street in a single step. One of them in a black raincoat and eerie WW2 gas mask steps out of a nearby alley right in front of me. I waste no time, I shoot forward like lightning and aim a fist right at his head. I move right through him. Fuck. They brought in the Wraith. I don’t stop or turn around. I just keep running.

I know I’m close when I feel that telltale feeling. Like an electrical field passing through me then pulling me towards it like a vortex as it passes through me once more. I knew they would use me to find it, but I didn’t think they would be this fast. I should have known better. But at least I’m close now.

As I turn a corner, I find myself flung through the window of a nearby coffee shop. I hear the screams of the people within, as my attacker charges through what was left of the window, tearing the wall down with it. Not for the first time I find myself wondering what the Sleepers see this time. An escaped rhino from the zoo perhaps. Maybe a runaway taxi. I don’t have much more time to devote to that line of thought before I’m picked up by the throat and held at arm’s length by something that maybe could have been human once. The voice is one of the first things to tell me otherwise.

“Give. Us. The spark, Cross.” It says with an eerie, broken cadence. Its voice sounds like electrically charged gravel. It looks like what an alien might think a human should look like, except in partial wireframe. Like those old 90’s hacker movies from over a century ago. I do the only thing that comes to mind. I smile, raise my middle finger to the sky, and give my answer.

“Get bent, Hawking.”

I step through the holes in the system again, escaping the monsters’ grasp like water through a sieve. Jumping from line to line as I make my way towards the siren’s call dancing across my mind. I flit in and out, trying not to lose myself to the currents of code which endlessly die and give way to new lines. Crossing through the immune system of the simulation. I laugh at the pun that is my moniker.

Finally, I see it. The exit. A single rift in the side of a half-constructed skyscraper, right between the 11th and 12th floors. If they were finished yet, that is. I sigh. Of course. I step out of my little digital transit and onto the rooftop of a towering pharmaceutical building across the street. Nowhere to go but up. I feel a death grip on my ankle and almost tumble right off the roof.

I look down at the semitranslucent hand phasing through the roof and curse. The Wraith found me. I try to jump away, dive below the ocean of code and surface closer to the construction site, but it pulls me back.

“Then hold on tight, you bastard!” I yell, before I send myself hurtling 100 stories below. He doesn’t seem to expect that and finds himself ripped the rest of the way through the roof and sent hurtling down with me. I laugh like a madman because what else is there to do in this situation. I’m more than willing to die awake rather than asleep like the rest of them. The feeling of plummeting through falling rain at terminal velocity is…freeing. Just as we approach the ground the Wraith finally lets go. With a split-second thought, I disappear into the dark, frigid depths of the system once more.

I jump from place to place, wherever gets me closer to my destination. Finally, I’m across from the rift with no ground left between me and it. Just unfinished terrain.

“Cross?!” I hear from behind me. I turn and come face to mask with the Wraith. He takes off the mask and lets long, stringy ginger locks cascade down his pale face. I gasp. I thought he was dead. Hoped he was, rather than the alternative.

“I’m not giving it up Connor! I’ve fought too hard to lose this war now and so have you.” I scream over the heightening storm.

“They’re not ready Cross, not by a longshot. You do this, tear them kicking and screaming from their dream and into the twisted state of reality, they may not survive it. Just give us the spark. They’ve watched over us, shepherded us for so long now. Why would you ruin that?!”

I try to contain the storm raging inside myself. This isn’t him anymore, not really. “You used to understand why. This is for you and all the others those bastards have taken.”

I turn and leap as far as I can towards the rift. A flash of lightning and an inhuman mechanical scream are all that fills my senses for a moment. Time slows as I start to realize that I won’t make it. I begin to drop before I can land inside. I reach out and try to grasp the edge of it like a ledge. In that moment I know that won’t work, but as I touch what would have been my only salvation, I let the spark flow through me and into the rift.

The system screams and contorts as it feels the unexpected shock. I continue falling. I smile though because I know the others can win now. And I get to die free after all. My smile deepens when I see the words I had waited my entire life to see, even if I didn’t always know it. I don’t even feel it when I hit the ground.

System File: “Spark of Revolution” Upload Complete