The Byte, Aryan Jassal [distant reading TXT] 📗

Sector 2617. When I entered the sector, I saw ten rooms, five on each side, made entirely out of glowing electric blue walls.  

One of the RoboCop put its arm inside a receptor planted on the door of a room labeled Room 2. It instantly swung inwards. They threw me in. I fell with a thud. “Ouch! NO! You stop! What is this? Wait ­” I was cut off due to the loud bang of the door. Great! I thought.  

I stood up and brushed my clothes. I was starving, so I ate some of the food I brought with me. After finishing my meal, I sat down and summed up the happenings of the day. I hacked the game to let me in. My laptop sucked me in. I met IC-People. I got arrested. What a great day, I thought. Then, I scouted my ‘prison.’  

Jackpot! The prison walls were made of glowing electric blue, and green connector lines made cuts at random places. It was a dense network of it. On the walls and the ceiling, there were small components everywhere.  

There were small resistors to long ICs. (Not the working kind this time) I am that kind of person who packs random stuff in their bag and knows about electronics. There might be a Breadboard. (Hint - it does not need soldering to combine pieces.)  

I shuffled through my stuff, and as expected, found it. I mended random stuff and made a device which will connect to the loose sockets of prison, short-circuit and fry the internal electronics. I could go wilder and make a ‘Trojan Horse Chip,’ but that will take a lot of time and might not work and alert the RoboCops.  

I worked on the short-circuit chip. Finally, it was done! “Oh, Yeah,” I whispered. I connected the crazy contraption to the two thick connector wires. I heard the similar click of the door being opened. My circuit grew very hot in a period of milliseconds. I dropped it. The door clicked shut again.

Thankfully, it didn’t sound the alarm. Was there even an alarm?  I inspected the circuit closely for the reason of overheating. In the middle of the circuit, my error shorted the two terminals. So that was the reason for the overheating of my contraption and the opening of the door. I took out some duct tape (I seriously have no idea how these things are turning up in my bag) and taped one end of a loose wire to the thick wire and, as I got ready to bolt out, taped the other wire as well.

The door clicked open. I threw open the door and as I was about to get the hell out of this crypto-world, I heard a voice. “Who’s there,” a voice cried. “Who are you,” was my instant reply. “Thank God,” cried a voice from room 1.

Then the voice started sobbing uncontrollably.   I was relieved myself! I finally found a human girl (I hope) in this crypto-world. But wait! What was this girl doing in here? Why? How did she come here? How long was she here? A million questions reeled in my mind.

 I decided to ignore them and ran back in to grab another piece of wire and touched the contacts of my ‘circuit-fryer’ to two thick contacts going in to her room.  

The door clicked open. I kicked open the door and then I saw her for the first time. She had long brown hair, green and fierce eyes, but her clothes were a simple T-Shirt and a shaggy pair of Jeans. She was looking as if she would kill someone on sight, but her eyes were sending a completely different message.

She looked broken inside, all her sanity gone. She was becoming a machine, eating meals at a given time, then sleeping or crying in her free time. I felt sorry for her.  

But, with the given case, I could not show much sympathy. I grabbed her arm and ran. I just wanted to go away from this living hell. All the Sector names blurred together as we ran faster and faster. All was going well until our encounter with a rogue RoboCop.

Uh-Oh!

We encountered a corner so we had to take a turn. Unfortunately, a RoboCop was guarding that hallway and caught us by surprise. The only way out was a shortcut named “My PC” which was to our right.

Unfortunately, that girl was frozen with fear and in my way, so I tackled her just as the RoboCop zapped the lines beneath us. The charge traveled to unknown distances, maybe even corrupting some of those ICs. The first one to recover was me. I tugged at that girl’s arms.  

That got her out of their trance. She ran with me towards “My PC,” with a RoboCop not far behind. I kept running. When I entered “My PC,” there were multiple hallways. Not wanting to change my direction, I ran straight forward. I only had time to read the title, “USB Drive.”  

Huh? Someone else has access to my PC, I thought, as I remember that there was no USB drive plugged in beforehand. I looked back and saw that the RoboCop was trying to reach us, but it couldn’t. I heard a robotic voice announcing, “Ejecting Drive.” No wonder he couldn’t get in. Just then, the blue glow went dim. The bright green lines went dark.  

That girl tugged at my sleeve and motioned me to follow her. I first scouted Sector 1 of the drive. It was deserted. The lights were dim, but the green connectors were glowing. Okay, I thought. I sat down on the now-dim blue floor and made sure that I wasn’t sitting on those green connectors.  

The girl sat down next to me and finally spoke, “Thank you for saving me.”

Her voice was firm, but unsure and uncomfortable. I wanted to change the topic but I had just remembered something. She might be hungry. She would already be starving. I don’t even know for how long was she in this crypto-world.

I gave her my sandwich which I brought for me. She gratefully accepted it in silence. Even I was somewhat happy for her. There was an eerie silence as she was eating the sandwich. I didn’t like the silence and decided to break it.

“My name is Aden Stone,” I said, “What’s your name?”

“Lucy Brown,” she said, “I’m thirteen. And you?”

“I’m thirteen as well. What a coincidence,” I said.

She smiled at me, but her smile didn’t have any warmth. After that, she went back into eating. She was literally inhaling the sandwich. Just watching her eat made me hungry as well. I took out a burger and started eating it slowly.

I was again, thinking about the happenings of the day. If you could call it day, I thought.

First, I got sucked in my laptop. Then, I got shocked, literally. After that, I got apprehended by the RoboCops, got myself stuck in prison, busted out, met Lucy, ran, met a rogue RoboCop, jumped in flash drive, and now we are stuck here. Great! Just great!

“How’s the outside world,” Lucy asked in quivering voice, breaking the silence.

“Wh-What,” I asked, caught off-guard. I looked at her. Her eyes were teary. I started racking my brain for reasons. How could I forget? Even she had a family!

 “I asked, how the outside world is,” she asked again.

“Since how much time are you here,” I said, “To give you the appropriate information.”

“Alright,” Lucy said, still teary. “I’m here for eleven years.”

“What?! For eleven years,” I said.

“Yes.”

“How are you still alive?”

“Those bytes keep sending me human food. Somehow they got the recipe of the food.”

“But how–”

I was cut short by the room suddenly brightening up again. The USB Drive might be plugged in the system. I rose up so suddenly that I almost fell again.

There was a flood of bytes. They all had a screen on their chest which read a number – either zero or one – Binary Numbers. They might be carrying crucial data into this USB.

That went on for about an hour, so I carefully sat down back again, careful not to sit on those connectors. Lucy had paused eating and staring at those bytes, her expression was saying, I would kill you if I had enough energy.

I got Lucy’s attention and told her to eat her food as I ate mine. We both finished our meals in silence. When the flood ended, the lights stayed on for a few more minutes. Thankfully, no byte entered our sector.

I decided to scout the new arrivals. The first ten sectors were empty for some reason. The eleventh sector had so many bytes that it was difficult to calculate. Then I remembered the exact size of a sector. It was 512 bytes.

The bytes were themselves disabled, but their screens displayed a binary number. Lucy gasped when she looked at the bytes. “What’s wrong,” I asked.

“It’s a virus, a Trojan-Horse virus. The most deadly type of computer virus,” Lucy said.

Someone was planting a virus on my computer, and I didn’t like it. When I come out of this place, I’m going to find the person who planted the virus and punch him a billion times.

Then I remembered something – my Magical Backpack. I unzipped it and, of course, found a wire. I connected it to the two thick power terminals going into that sector. When I connected it, the screens of all of the bytes went dark. I had to kick the wire aside as it was literally glowing hot.

When the power came back on, all the screens now read a zero. I had successfully formatted sector 11 of the USB. I hoped that the virus will not be able to run. In between of my thoughts, the light went bright again. We quickly ducked just as a million bytes rushed out of the USB.

Both of us were too shocked to say anything. We watched in silence the parade of the byte. When it was over, we ran over to the exit. I straight went to the sign labeling “Exit”. Lucy followed me. Outside, it was total chaos!

The Virus Attack

 

Random bytes sprawled in our path, all of their black boxes cut in half. The single corrupted sector was not enough to disable the virus.

They had a fight going between the computer’s antivirus and the virus. The virus was winning for now. The screens have disappeared and they were dressed as normal bytes now. I rummaged through my