Entropy of Imagination, Page 2

  1.02

  But the Web was gone.

  Flatline tried to access any of the portals that existed before his imprisonment. Each Web address returned “Not Found”. He ran a procedure to scan Internet Protocol addresses, pinging all the possible combinations in hopes of finding something online. After several days of watching the procedure run, Flatline finally accepted that the system had changed.

  He knew the system would change. Software would upgrade, programming standards would evolve, but he had hoped for backwards compatibility. That the tools he used a century ago would still interface with whatever system came into being. All of his Web-surfing programs, his hacker tools, and other software were now useless.

  Obviously there was some backwards compatibility. The fact that he existed here, in this cave, was proof of that. He was a system unto himself, a program that defined its own rules. As such, he did not need an operating system to host him like Windows or Linux, but he did need a compatible operating system to interact with, to run his software tools.

  So he was without any of the conveniences of his previous life. No longer capable of jumping around the Internet, he would now have to slog through the drive space. He set off the only way available, down the seemingly endless cavern before him.

  It stretched away into darkness, the pattering of his six paws echoed lightly back to him. The walls were smooth, slick with dampness. They glistened in the cave’s soft lighting, which Flatline reasoned was originating from the tunnel’s center by the eerie shadows his gangly gait cast on the stone, but the light source was invisible, only its effect was visible.

  He padded along for miles, the cavern descending deeper into the ever present darkness always just ahead, until a rectangular patch caught his attention in the stone. On closer observation, he found it was an electronic component of some kind, rusted and deteriorating.

  To the right of the component was a switch labeled “I/O”. He switched it to “I” with a clang that echoed loudly into the distance. Dark red rust streamed off the electronics, drifting into a dust cloud that settled on the wet floor. He watched the holes eaten into the metal grow larger as the disturbed metal disintegrated. A plastic button fell out to clatter on the floor near his feet.

  “Worthless,” he grumbled and punched the component.

  His fist went right through the electronics, and the whole thing turned to dust, pouring down onto the floor in a miniature waterfall. Various buttons and plasma-displays rained onto the floor with rattling plastics and shattering glass. When the dust cleared, he was left facing a rectangular hole in the wall.

  He looked at his now rust-colored fist and blew dust from it. Strange. The virtual world was timeless. Things were not supposed to decay here the way they did in the physical world. This control panel could not rust away. Its code could grow corrupt, possibly represented as dust, but that would require activity. Processes had to be at work to cause the code to go bad. Something had to be using the environment.

  Flatline crouched and peered inside the hole he had created. There were wires, gears, electrodes, capacitors, and integrated circuits assembled inside, all dimly lit by tiny red lights and irregular strobe effects. It was large enough for him to navigate, but it was impossible to tell if it led anywhere.

  He felt pressure on his four hands, which were spread out, gripping the sides of the portal. He looked around the hole’s perimeter and found it slowly shrinking. The cavern’s slick walls were flowing in to fill the gap.

  He tried to force the fluid rock back with his four arms, but he was powerless against it. He looked down the cavern, trying to decide if it would ever lead anywhere, but could not see. Either path could be a trap.

  He reached into the shrinking hole and grabbed at various parts with all four hands. One pulled off a gear, another snapped off a capacitor, his top right hand ripped out a fistful of wires. None of this destruction had any effect. He had no idea what any of it meant, so he was merely lashing out blindly at the code.

  Then the cavern turned off, and he was floating in an abyss. He looked at a transistor that had just come off in his hand. He had broken the cavern, and now the darkness was swallowing the portal clenched within his four fists. The choice was made.

  Flatline scrambled into the cramped space, pulling his hind paws in just before the tiny entrance could snip them off as it squeezed shut. He was hunched over in the cramped space, wires hanging all around him. Soldering spots of sharp metal stuck into his paws, but he did not mind. Moving forward was his only concern.

  He padded forward on all six legs. The mechanical gearworks and electronics prevented him from seeing more than a few feet ahead. The dim lighting did not help any, and he wandered forward blindly, crouching low at times and climbing over obstacles at others. Pushing through a tangled mass of wiring, he found a fork a perpendicular passageway.

  He peered to the left and then to the right, straining to find some clue as to which path looked more promising. Both looked the same, he thought he could see each one extending some ways, but it was difficult to gauge distance in this clutter. Neither route looked promising in the dim red light.

  He froze when, in the flickering blue electricity, he saw movement down the right-hand passageway. At first he thought it was his mind misinterpreting what he was seeing, finding meaning where there was none. It was quite possible, considering how disorganized and chaotic the setting was.

  Then he saw it again, a distinct shadow skittering across a circuit board in the flash of electricity. It was moving toward him from the right hand passage, and Flatline backed into the left-hand path, poised to flee. The shadow scurried over raised portion of the passageway, and he could see it was small and quick, a flurry of legs.

  Flatline backed up further as it crossed the floor coming toward him. At the last minute, he ripped a handful of wires out of a nearby circuit and threw them at the blurry shadow. The tangled wires landed right in front of the thing, and it froze in place.

  Flatline got a good look at it then. A small metal bubble, it was ringed with stringy black legs that rolled in waves as it hovered around the batch of wiring, inspecting it. Two thick pincers extended from one end of it and two glowing lenses extended on long, thin stalks above them. It seemed to slide along the ground, legs a blur, as it scrutinized the wiring.

  Then it took the wires in its pincers gently and dragged them over to where Flatline had pulled them out of the wall. As he watched, it propped them against the electronics and then climbed up the side as easily as if it were the floor and began reconnecting the wires, one by one. Light and sparks erupted where it welded the connections in place.

  “A code cleaning bot,” Flatline smiled and nodded, “So there are processes at work here.”

  His smile slowly faded as he watched the palm-sized bot work. Something was wrong. It was connecting the wires into the wrong places. Some wires it connected to nothing at all, but merely welded one end to the wall haphazardly.

  “A corrupted code-cleaner,” Flatline observed, “I suppose no one was around to keep your code clean little one.”

  This explained the featureless cavern and the rusting control panel. If this little bot was causing destruction instead of repairing things, then the system was slowly coming apart. He could only wonder what the cavern was before, what function it served, but as the mechanisms supporting it deteriorated, the original virtual interface vanished, replaced with the cold, featureless cavern.

  He snatched up the tiny robot and held it pinched between a gnarled thumb and forefinger, a curious thing. He relaxed his grip and allowed it to scurry over the back of his hand, which he flipped palm face up to watch it. Whipping legs tickled his palm and created the illusion that it was hovering just above his hand. It swiveled from side to side curiously, its bright lenses searching about on their stalks.

  “I wonder,” Flatline mused softly to the little bot, prodding it with one long, clawed finger, “How can I exploit you
r functions?”

  The bot chirped at him quietly. It spun around once in a deliberate fashion before returning to his forefinger. Both of its lens-stalks curled over to examine the extended digit, spotlighting it in yellow radiance. Opening and closing its pincer, it darted forward.

  Flatline howled as the tiny bot snipped off and devoured his forefinger.