Hell's Tower: One Thousand Steps: The Beginning

them. My shirt stuck to my back, my chest. I lay there for a long time wondering what happened, feeling vile and disgusting and at the same time secretly exhilarated.

  But how..? How could I tolerate what I’d experienced? How could I find it remotely exciting or even…desirable?

  Shaken and disgusted, feeling violated, I told myself, never again. I’d never visit that site, never let them control me.

  But the damage was done.

  No one knows what happened that day. I never asked for help or discussed the day’s events. If I had, if I’d asked for help, I wouldn’t be here now.

  But I didn’t.

  So here I am...in Hell.

  Within days I found myself having urges. Unnatural desires swept over me at inopportune times. My mind kept fleeting back to memories of the site that captured me, basking in filth. Whenever I was alone, I found myself wandering through the C-Net; absently drifting back to that place. At first it seemed accidental, like when you’re wandering the streets and end up at an old friend’s house.

  I tried to fight it. But fighting only gave it power.

  I’d force it from my mind; fill my thoughts with wholesome things. But those horrible images were burned, etched deeply in my soul. It seemed the harder I fought, the stronger my darkness became. A vicious cycle began. Fighting was all I knew. I hadn’t the tools to deal with this and I was too afraid and ashamed to ask for help.

  Without realizing it, I helped them craft their cage and placed my mind securely within.

  I couldn’t escape.

  Over the next few months it often seemed, that without knowing how or what I was doing, I’d find myself in that place again, looking...watching…experiencing, hating myself afterward.

  “Never again,” I’d swear, “I’ll never go there again!”

  Each time I meant it. And each time I failed because a promise is meaningless if you do nothing to change. I built mental walls to block the filth but never cleaned my psyche. Within a few days my walls would leak and the filth seeped in. Soon after, I’d find myself immersed again in filth, lies, and degradation.

  And so the cycle continued.

  In time I surrendered to the feelings that had been awakened. I gave up the fight and offered my soul, a sacrifice to my primal urges and dark stirrings.

  At first I was content to visit that site alone, but soon my carnal desires grew tired, bored with the same experiences, hardened. I began seeking other, darker places.

  I found them.

  For evil knows when a man’s heart is steeped in wickedness. Then evil pursues him, hunts him. And there’s no escape.

  But at that point, who is the predator and who is the prey?

  I hungered for the experience. Like a starving man lusting after a small morsel of spoiled food, I failed to notice its rankness and gorged myself anyway. My obsession grew until it didn’t matter how often I visited those sites and ingested their filth, it was never enough.

  Never!

  As I absorbed more I needed more and more. Like an addictive drug, it controlled me; screaming for my attention at all times, forcing me to need it.

  My job suffered, then my family. I won’t trouble you with the fine points. I’ll only say in time I lost both.

  After my wife kicked me out, I lived on the streets of Old Chicago, dwelt in shadows; slithered among the latticework of girders that sag under the weight of its new name sake.

  The dark land, another world between the base of New Chicago and Old Town—as locals call it—the slums of the slums was my home.

  How can I convey the hopeless misery there? Words fail me but I’ll try.

  Unless they come in a full squadron, armored, and carrying the latest weaponry, police won’t even set foot in Old Town. It’s too dangerous. And the citizens down there just aren’t worth the effort or their lives.

  I devolved until I was reduced to a creature of primal needs and desires. I ate when my body demanded it—whatever food or small animals I could scavenge or catch. I slept when exhaustion pulled its curtain over my consciousness. I stopped recognizing when one day passed and another began.

  When I was awake I existed solely in the C-Net—reality had no meaning.

  Yet as far as I’d fallen, I might still have been salvageable. If I’d cast aside my pride, admitted my weakness, and asked for help, I could have gone on to live a normal life.

  But I didn’t ask for help because I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.

  I was entwined in the cycle, strapped down by the bondage of sin. Freedom had been ripped from me. Worse, I’d willingly surrendered it. That’s how addiction ensnares victims. The darkness promises new experiences, entices with the illusion of freedom to act as you choose. It even lets you nibble at the bait while it sits and waits… Then, once it knows you’re oblivious to its danger, it numbs you and slowly sets its hook. You don’t feel it pierce your soul, you heart, your mind. And when you finally realize something’s wrong, it’s far too late.

  I’d fallen so far. I lived only to discover new and more degrading experiences.

  And yet, even then, I’d physically harmed no one. I hadn’t broken any laws.

  Then, one day as I lay in a dark alley amidst a pool of my own excrement and urine, I felt it, a glitch in the C-Net.

  My world swum, spun like a Salvador Dali dreamscape, then coalesced. It was as if I saw reality for the first time. Details were heightened, clarified. I could see the connective information flow, data streams, billions of packets flashing by like photons from a supernova.

  I focused on a river of data skating across the surface of a nearby building. As I drew closer I could see the conversations and images, hear the sounds, read the currents. I was no longer someone riding the data streams; I was one with them. I began tracing junctures and links, searching through parent directories, slipping past firewalls and intrusion detection systems effortlessly.

  As I toyed with my new-found power and awareness, I realized I could sense the neural interfaces of others accessing the C-Net. I reached out experimentally to the nearest one. I modified my packet headers to seamlessly merge with their data stream. I sneaked past their firewall and intrusion detection software as easily as a child wandering through an open gate. The antivirus started sniffing around and I convinced it I was harmless with a shift of my code.

  I was in, directly interfacing with their wet-ware. Their mind was vulnerable, completely open, a treasure trove before me.

  It was a woman. Charlotte was her name—I don’t know why I remember her name, probably because she was the first. I wish I couldn’t. I wish I could forget.

  But I can’t.

  She was twenty-four and extremely excited about something. I dug around and found that she was getting married the next day. Then, intrigued about what my new-found power allowed me to do, I really went to work.

  As I dove deeper into her mind I discovered that no memory of hers was hidden from me. Everything she’d ever experienced, everything she’d seen or felt or thought, was mine to relive. I watched, fascinated as the images shifted around me.

  At first I was careful as I searched her mind for an occasional titillating memory. But my hunger grew with each one I found. I quickly tired of waiting and found I could search faster and faster. My capacity to absorb information seemed limitless. Her life flashed through my mind in a whirl of time and sensory exhilaration. I lost all sense of self and humanity. I started ripping, shredding through her mind, selfishly snatching the memories I wanted, saving them, stealing them.

  Then, something alarming happened. I sensed Charlotte fading. Her memories dimmed, went dark and I was back on the outside, in the main current. No matter where I looked, no trace of her was found.

  She’d vanished!

  Was that possible? Could a person, any person, disappear from the data flow, cease to exist? I was so troubled that I exited the data current, opened my eyes, and for the first time in years tried to interface with the real world.

  Stum
bling through the streets I wondered, “What had I done?” The question plagued me, circled my mind like scum in a slow drain.

  The next morning news feeds splattered the C-Net with the story of a promising young actress, Charlotte Fredrickson, who’d died while eating dinner at Franco’s—an upscale Italian restaurant in the heart of New Chicago.

  Witnesses claimed she dropped a forkful of food and started screaming, “Get out of my head!” repeatedly before falling to the floor in an apparent seizure. Though medics responded promptly to the call, Charlotte was dead when they arrived.

  Preliminary autopsy results indicated her mind was wiped so thoroughly that even her autonomic functions had shut down. Her lungs stopped receiving signals to breathe, her heart stopped beating…total system failure.

  One female newscaster stated cheerily, “The killing is apparently the work of an unknown hacker or virus. An unnamed source at the CNA slipped us a copy of an internal report. The CNA report says, and I quote, ‘this new and unusual threat, the likes of which we’ve never seen, would create widespread panic if word of it were leaked…’”

  Then the newscaster looked straight into the camera, adjusted her blouse, and smiled in a way that seemed to imply she hoped panic would ensue. “But we believe you deserve and can handle the truth.” She winked and continued, “All citizens are warned to update their AV code, Firewalls, and IDS systems immediately.”

  Then she shifted to the financial news without missing a beat.

  I’d killed her…

  I thought about