Hell's Tower: One Thousand Steps: The Beginning

turning myself in briefly. But in twisted denial, I rationalized my crime and eventually convinced myself that I wasn’t a murderer. After all, I’d never meant to hurt anyone, to harm Charlotte. It was an accident.

  Why should I lose my life and freedom over an accident?

  In my heart though, I knew what I’d done. Even if the gravity of it hadn’t penetrated my conscious mind, my heart knew. My soul ached and the nightmares began.

  Over the next few days I fought to stay away from lurid images and sites. I resolved to never again invade another’s mind. And I meant it. I’d never felt so strongly about avoiding something as I did about staying out of others’ minds.

  The problem, I understand clearly now, was though I’d made this resolution I never did anything to change myself. The barriers I placed around my mind were paper-thin, without substance. And as you might imagine, they quickly tore under the weight of my habits and strain of my desire.

  I’d hoped the change in my perception of the C-Net was temporary, that I’d soon lose this new awareness—and with it my ability to enter people’s minds.

  It wasn’t.

  Everywhere I looked, living data-streams danced and played around me. Even with my eyes wide open the chaos of the C-Net coated my reality, hung in the air like a glistening black web spun by a giant spider stoned on acid.

  Yet unlike a web, the tangled mass of data-streams pulsed with life. People and vehicles passed unaware through them without breaking the flow. The strands penetrated buildings, signs, roads, and most solid objects, passing through without leaving any sign or mark. When a strand met an object it couldn’t penetrate, it instantly rerouted.

  Nothing disrupted the flow.

  I learned to focus on a stream, to sample it without merging with it. I could read the packets and understand their content while keeping my perception open to the world around me. This allowed me to quickly sort the madness and choose data-streams that fit my mood. For once I merged with a data-stream it engulfed me, became my reality, and overpowered all my senses.

  Time passed, as it will, after Charlotte’s death. The news feeds, eager as bored children for something new, found other dramatic stories and stopped sensationalizing her demise. The CNA relaxed their hunt for her killer as other threats emerged.

  And my quest to avoid harming others continued. My turmoil within raged. Every time I sensed a deviant data-stream I longed to merge with it, to experience the base reality and give in to my primal desires. I fought these urges with all my might. Yet it seemed the harder I fought the stronger they became.

  “Why me?” I lamented to my supernatural opponent. “Why won’t you leave me alone?” But self-pity only strengthened desire’s hold on my soul. Everything I did fueled the monster growing within me.

  I was losing control. Like a man staring at death down the barrel of a charged plasma rifle, I could feel my imminent demise. This plight was beyond me. Soon the urge became more than I could bear.

  I surrendered, gave up, gave in.

  “It’s okay if I only visit softer sites…” I reasoned, failing to understand that this act, this seemingly small step, actually brought me teetering to the edge of Hell’s chasm because it launched the cycle anew.

  Every passing day pushed me further over the lip of the yawning abyss. I walked a tightrope of razor wire but fooled myself into thinking I strolled down a broad avenue. For that’s the way with addictions. We tell ourselves whatever we need to hear to justify our actions. And worse, we believe our own lies.

  And though I’d sworn to never hurt another, I was haunted by the impact of my encounter with Charlotte. Her death tormented me. And yet, nothing had ever thrilled me so, as the journey through her mind. Nothing I found filled the need or satisfied the desire that that encounter had created within me.

  I felt like a man surrounded by fine food and drink. I could smell it. I could see it. I could touch it. I longed for it in ways I’ll never be able to express. But I only allowed myself to eat stale bread and drink muddy water.

  I dove headlong into madness. After all, how long could I deny myself something so vital to my survival and hope to keep my sanity?

  I searched the C-Net for new modes of gratification and thrills to fill me. But all I wanted was another Charlotte. I was keenly aware of the minds around me. They called to me, their secrets begged to be released.

  And soon...

  So soon after my failed attempt at morality, I began to reason that Charlotte hadn’t been injured after all, that it was a conspiracy against me and newscasters had made up the story about her death. And that even if she’d really died, it must have been a fluke.

  I’d be more careful next time.

  Next time...

  My resolve, decimated by my desire to know the unknown and taste the forbidden, shattered. I sought another mind.

  His name was... I can’t remember his name. How pathetic the creature I’d become, to reduce another human being into an object so thoroughly that I didn’t even know his name.

  He was an older man. I’m not sure why I chose him. Was it convenience? Was it his behavior in the C-Net? Was it fate? I’ll never know.

  At first I moved carefully through his memories, making sure I left no mark. Caution slowed my search. The enticing memories seemed few and far between. But I knew they were there and quickly grew frustrated at the limitations caution imposed.

  “What will it hurt to move a little faster?” I wondered, then rationalized it couldn’t really hurt him. And even if it did, the damage would be minute. Brains are resilient after all.

  It was an easy step from thought to action. So, like a car moving out of the slow lane, I increased my speed to what I thought reasonable.

  I was immediately rewarded with an intimate memory. My hunger grew. I increased my speed and found more and more. Each reward was like a burst of energy fueling my search, moving me faster through his mind. Before I knew it, I’d lost myself in the moment and cast all caution aside.

  His mind contained countless memories ripe for the taking. It should have been overwhelming. But I was not bound by physical limits like sight or real-time. I sorted, experienced, and tore through his mind at the speed of electrons. Only the resistance of his wet-ware and synapses limited me. Searching faster and faster, I sought the memories and feelings that enticed me. Slowing only when I found something interesting, I ripped through his life in minutes.

  As with Charlotte, as I neared the present, his mind slowed, stopped, then disappeared. I was thrust back in the main data current.

  Enraged at losing contact when there were still memories to explore, I seized the data stream of the mind nearest me and blasted through its defenses. My invasion lasted only moments before I was forced out of that mind too.

  Base desires and darkness drove me. Conscious thought ceased to exist. I was like a shark, operating on pure instinct. And like a shark in a feeding frenzy, I attacked another and another as the pool of mental carnage grew around me.

  And so it truly began.

  They tell me forty people fell to me that day. I don’t remember. At the time, I’m not sure I realized what I was doing. I’m not sure I could have stopped if I had.

  But my conscious knowledge of my actions matters naught.

  I am guilty.

  I made the choices that plunged me into this hell, turned me into a mindless killing machine. Each wrong choice changed my mindscape and made it easier to justify the next. You might think the site that grasped my mind and infected me responsible for my demise. But in my heart I know better—do I still have a heart? I understand now, I always had a choice.

  Quick as it was, I could have asked for help at any point during my downfall. But like an alcoholic lusting for the next drink, I’d fooled myself into thinking everything was under control until it was too late.

  I heard once about a fish that lived on Earth before the biosphere was nearly destroyed. A piranha, I think it was called. It was a relatively small fish that liv
ed in the tranquil and seductive rivers of the Amazon. Yet for its size, it was one of the most destructive and vicious animals alive. A school of piranha could reduce a one-thousand pound mammal into a skeleton in a matter of minutes; something as small as a human took seconds.

  I was the piranha of the C-Net. Swimming along its currents, I fed on the unaware, reducing them to dead husks in minutes. And worst of all, I’d become so adept at matching security protocols and signatures that there was no defense against me. No firewall could keep me out. No antiviral software could detect me. No intrusion detection device could identify me.

  I was invincible!

  I binged. Every day I stole more memories, lived more lives, left more corpses.

  And even though local news feeds buzzed with news of the mysterious deaths, authorities didn’t seem to realize they were connected.

  Not at first.

  After all, the C-Net encompasses the whole of human space—one hundred worlds and growing. Just because the minds I took were close in the C-Net didn’t mean their bodies were physically near or even on the same planet. My victims were scattered across every inhabited world. Two, three, even twenty people, dying on any planet on the same day was hardly considered odd.

  Why would it be?

  Then people started putting the pieces together and wide-spread panic ensued.

  But what was behind the deaths? Was it a virus or a glitch in the code? Was the C-Net infrastructure corrupt? There were many theories, none of