Entry #22
Title : Programmer's Masterpiece
Pairing (if any)/genre : Gen, Sungmin-centric / Sci-Fi
Rating : R (mention of prostitution)
Summary : He pushes kilobytes together, making megabytes, making gigabytes. It’s like a little sand castle, except he’s made it his domain. Sungmin laughs at that, his ‘domain.’ Sungmin.com, the start of the new Web. He hums his own jingle and watches as the walls stack high.
Sungmin sits back in his seat, slowly connecting into the computer system. Browser windows pop up in his vision and he exits them carefully, and then watches as his character lifts itself to its feet. Pixilated polygons show a generic 3-D figure, but anyone who looks can see where Sungmin’s cash credits went to. Blue high-definition wings are attached to his character and when he passes someone on the Web, Sungmin always smirks when they double-glance.
He begins his job carefully, filtering out hidden cookies and spyware as well as the small viruses, blue three pronged outlets that like to try and connect onto the 3-D computer figures like ticks. Commonly known as a Virus Detector, Sungmin’s job isn’t the most exciting thing in the virtual world, but it is dangerous. At any time, he could accidentally intercept a virus that might latch onto his avatar instead of the planned trajectory, and all his cash credits would spiral into a virtual black hole; his life would be ruined. Because of which, although it’s a high-paying credit job, it isn’t very popular.
Still, Sungmin can only smile as he shifts the double entendre advertisement to swipe the key logger behind it. It scrambles in his grip, desperately copying the coding in his grey figure but quickly fizzles; the simple mechanism fries as it hits the wing’s coding. Sungmin laughs, and flings it in the pile with the viruses, watching as they feast on it like scavengers.
As the day wanes and the viruses come out with the hackers - dark multi-pixilated figures that blend against the programming’s background - Sungmin clocks out, slowly detracting his hands from the needle port adapters, and then reaching behind his neck to unhook the audio adaptor. Shaking his head lightly, his hair falls over the visor-like mechanism and he blinks once… twice, still seeing the viruses and hackers working at the programming. He swipes the visor off quickly, putting it on the desk beside him. The world disappears and Sungmin is fully disconnected from the Web.
In the real world, Sungmin is average looking. His hair is black, just like the rest of the population; it tickles the tips of his shoulder blades, and he has a habit of pulling the ends, tugging on them when he’s nervous. His face is rather mousy looking, and he looks down when he walks, making him appear shorter than he truly is. The confident figure on the Web becomes a nobody, and he likes it that way.
His hair is mussed, and he tousles it carefully with his hand, sighs when it only rolls back into place. His workroom and bedroom are mere steps away from each other, and when he falls on the bed, he lets out a strangled breath. The high-tech bed starts to meld to his body, vibrating acute points so as to massage his aching muscles. Sleep feels like it comes all too easily, and he dreams of endless drones marching through programming, tearing through the coding like they’re mere kilobytes.
Rather than an hourly wage, Sungmin’s job pays by virus volume. He works hours that fit his schedule, making it busy work. He then throws himself into it like a workaholic; the following 24 hours are spent avoiding it like the plague. He spends his extra time (that being the time not at work, and not catching the much-needed wink of sleep) at the Mesh, a club maybe ten minutes Expressway away.
The Expressway was a tubing system that was similar to the old-fashioned subway. Each person had a tube that they bought, fitted with gravity stabilizers, depressurizers, and even oxygen masks that form-fit perfectly to his facial structure. Commonly referred to as EGS, the Electromagnetic Gauge Structure moved fast and had the owner’s DNA inputted completely into its system. Because of which, EGS wouldn’t open for anyone else and there was no way for them to be stolen.
The Mesh is a small venue, one of those hole in the wall places that you had to know where to find. After prostitution became legal - as long as there was proof of protection - places like the Mesh became more common. Now, women and men with able bodies and minds work there in between their virtual jobs. At the start of their shift, they step into a soft liquid dough substance that completely forms to their bodies, and takes their shapes. Customers pay a fee, and also step into the mesh, their bodies melding instantly. Inside, an electrical current flows through, quickly and easily, without any pain, and, more importantly, without letting the customer know what’s hit them. It grafted itself to their brains, and their virtual fantasy instantly played out, seeing whichever female or male their deepest darkest lust desired. For the more exhibitionistic customers, there was a single-body option, where they performed their sexual acts along the walls lining the entrance.
The meshing separated the two through a thin layer and the dough material acts like a full-body condom, hiding both participants of the act. It was completely clean and the material it was made of was hypoallergenic. Some people were disgusted, thinking it was no different than a machine, but most, after taking the time to experience it, were hooked.
Sungmin didn’t particularly dislike or like the effect, or the lingering greasy feeling afterwards, but it was a comfort, and, in a world like this, he would take anything. He cups hard ass cheeks, and presses their virtual bodies together, trying ignore the fact it’s another man’s body against his, trying to forget the taunts as a child, focusing instead on this body that will disintegrate, disappear in moments after he releases. Watches as it pixelates into oblivion, and leaves unaffected. He always fights the viruses harder after that, laughing brokenly as he sees them fragment like his dreams.
It’s a harder day, today. The virus volume is high, and Sungmin is also having a high annihilation rate. They come in floods and sometimes they nip at him; attach like real-life ticks and suck, suck, suck at his coding. It leeches at his energy, and just as he swats one down with his Norton Ghost shield, he’s in time to see the encoding of the entire Web flicker. The blue and white lines stutter, short-circuiting and then everything goes black, silent. When Sungmin tries to unhook from the port adaptors, he realises he can’t. His virtual body jerks like an epileptic as he attempts to move his real hands, shake his head and get the audio adaptor, or the visual adaptor, something off. But he can’t.
Instead, he’s stuck with little kilobytes of white pixels on the motherboard like fallen stars.
He doesn’t panic. Simply sits down, wraps his blue wings around himself - radiating light like a deity - and sings.
It feels like he’s been sitting there for hours, maybe even days. With no light and no connection with his real body, he notices neither hunger, nor thirst, not even the subtle back ache from sitting in the chair too long. Every now and then he hears a steady beeping, almost insistent, like it’s attempting to wake him up, and then his wings rustle, and it fades away.
He hears scuttling sometimes, like the little viruses are trying to situate themselves. It becomes comforting after awhile, knowing he’s not alone, knowing that maybe sometime he’ll be rescued.
He finally unwraps himself from his virtual cocoon, staring around with pupils blown wide, attempting to catch any and every light. It takes him a few moments before he realises his character is virtual and goes through his inventory. Somehow, it survived the system wipe-out and he switches the eyes out for night contacts, changes his skin colour to black-blue and he blends with his surroundings.
Growing bored with the emptiness, Sungmin gets up and inspects the white kilobytes littering the motherboard. They can still be used, vacant space that is just full of possibilities. As he gathers them, he watches as they magnetise together, coming so close that he has to use all his strength to separate them again.
He pushes kilobytes together, making megabytes, making gigabytes. It’s like a little sand castle, except he’s made it his domain. Sungmin laughs at that, his ‘domain.’ Sungmin.com, the start of the new Web. He hums his own jingle and watches as the walls stack high.
Sungmin feels himself flicker between his virtual self and real self one day. It’s strange, almost as if he’s in two places at once. Like a bad video reel, the images come in and out, and he sees white suits, hears that beeping, steady, slow, and breathes in, and then he’s back in the darkness. He can’t decide which one is better.
The lights are coming back. As he builds up the virtual realm, coming up with new scripts, new HTML coding, Sungmin knows that what he’s created is his own. For a moment, he contemplates putting up blocks, making it so that no one can access it, so that the Web is never quite as stable again. Yet the feeling of being alone is so mind-consuming, and he knows that he could never do it.
If only he could get out.
‘He’s not waking up. He’s been like this for almost three months now. With the Web down, and no way to access any other hospital, we might have to pull the plug.’
‘We have to wait. The Expressway has to start working again soon!’
‘With the Web gone, everything has crashed. Nothing works anymore.’
It’s a city, now. The viruses have given up attempting to crack the coding after watching as their fellow creatures burnt out immediately. The wing’s coding lies dormant throughout the entire thing, but it pulses like an animate creature. Sungmin lays back, wings propping him up comfortably, and stares at the blue skyline.
He figures it out. He knows how to let them in again.
Twisting the coding like a DNA helix, he shapes it, forms it into another pair of wings, the kilobytes flickering, magnetising and demagnetising, pushing against each other, but it’s the perfect balance. The same amount of force pushing them apart pushes them together, and the power of it sends a pulse of energy throughout the entire Web, stretches the boundaries, and it’s like Sungmin can see the Web coming back to life.
He wonders how long it’ll take to have company, but then the beeping comes back full-force, and he breathes, breathes, breathes, and his wings are gone.
The white walls are closing in on him. They’re so bright, bright with the light, bright when he can’t shade his eyes with his wings, can’t switch from night contacts to regular. Everything is mussed, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.
They come in one day, all ceremonial and professional. Sungmin can’t remember the last time he’s had to tug at his hair, but he pulls it so hard he has strings of hair tangling in his fingers so quickly it’s like he never stopped. He got used to being in his element, being in control, and now he’s draped in white fabric, and trapped in a single room with no scuttling, no electrical pulses, no animation in the air.
They take notes as he tells them what happened in his comatose state, making little hesitant grunts and condescending breaths. It isn’t until he describes the wings’ coding merging with the entire Web base code that their eyes start to light up and they look at him with more respect.
By the time the ‘interview’ is finished, Sungmin is exhausted, having been used to barely speaking, and the men seem more than satisfied. With curt nods and the parting words, “We’ll be speaking to you again soon,” they finally leave.
He’s left curled in his bed, dreaming of blue wings and friendly viruses.
His mind blanks sometimes, forgetting modern languages, and he ends up repeating JavaScript under his breath. Other times his eyes flicker like they’re in an REM state as he attempts to read the binary coding of the walls in front of him: 0111011101101000011010010111010001100101011101110110100001101001011101000110010101110111011010000110100101110100011001010111011101101000011010010111010001100101.
And then they shift, Sungmin blinks, once, twice, three times, watches as the zeroes and ones merge into a colour. White.
Sungmin gets sent home. Finally. They’ve completed test after test after test, and if he were to be holed in there for one more minute he would just explode. A nurse comes in silently, wheeling a wheelchair with him. Sungmin stares for a moment, looking at the man and then back down, “I can walk.”
“It’s standard procedure, sir. We have to escort you out just until the entrance.”
Sungmin paused for a moment more, ready to kick up a fuss, but to be honest, he was tired, and if he got to be lazy for just a few more minutes, he would be lazy. He slumped into the chair, and the nurse chuckled quietly, “Thanks.”
“No problem. Push away, oh mighty nurse.”
This place is not a home. Sungmin looks around himself, taking in the décor, the simple layout. Realised that he spent almost all his time outside of his house, or in the virtual world, and it’s barely inhabitable. The computer is still hooked in the back, but it doesn’t look nearly as appealing. The blue wings float to the top of his thoughts, but then the squalour that he lived in disgusts him and he pushes all other thoughts down. He rolls his sleeves up. It’s time for some cleaning.
It takes him two weeks. Every time he gets somewhat started, he looks around himself and sees all the rest that’s left, and quickly becomes overwhelmed. After the first few days of that, he learned to put up a sheet on the doors, or turn off all the rest of the lights in the house except for the room he’s in, and that way it wasn’t so horrible. Sungmin repaints the dining room, a pale yellow so that when the sun shines, he hardly has to turn on the light at all. He learns the hard way that he should have taped the wooden framing before painting, but a wash cloth and sore muscles later, the wood has hardly any paint on it.
His room turns out to be a splatter of colours. Sungmin had put down a sheet on the bed, around the floor, even taped up the framing, but it was the doorway that did him in. After thinking about it, Sungmin realises that running with paint and running with scissors should have the same rule: don’t do it. He was excited, the colouring was a pale eggshell blue, he was sure it’d make his room feel like the sky, and then he tripped on the threshold, and the paint went everywhere.
Sungmin had stared in shock for about ten minutes, but by the time he was conscious enough to do anything, he liked the blue on white, and left it. It was a job well-done.
Sungmin breaks a tile when the doctor calls. The phone hasn’t run in ages, and he drops the tile on the bathroom floor, stares between the phone and the cracked tile and answers carefully. They want him to come in to check his head, make sure there aren’t any lasting effects. He’s also to complete a sleep lab, where they would watch like hawks, analysing each toss and turn through the night.
He’s penned in for the next day and sleeps fitfully that night underneath paint-splattered walls.
He’s cautious - walking out in the open. He had had all of the equipment delivered to his door, communication made through e-mail. They idea of seeing people again, being amongst them, it honestly scared him. The comfort of his blue wings, pulsing with energy and aw power, was gone, and now Sungmin was left with nothing.
He inches through the door carefully, a mesh beanie one pressing his hair down along his face, and he hunches his shoulders. Sungmin walks quickly, almost a jog, swipes his fingers into the port adaptors and his EGS comes rushing in. The hospital is five minutes by Expressway, and the entire time, Sungmin is fighting a panic attack.
By the time he gets out of the EGS, his entire body is vibrating like a chime, and he has to close his eyes to fight the dizziness. He sways slightly, takes in a stilted breath, and then almost passes out when someone’s arms come around his shoulders.
“Breathe.” The voice is calming and Sungmin obeys without thinking, “Breathe.”
Sungmin takes another deep breath, and slowly, ever so slowly, he calms down. The arms radiate a warmth similar to his wings and he wants them to wrap around him completely, engulf him like a cocoon.
He leans into them, listens to the “oomph” as he knocks the breath out of whomever it was behind him and peacefully passes out.
Sungmin wakes up to hospital scrubs and a dry throat. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, and his teeth have a film over them. He rubs a finger over them absent-mindedly while he wonders how long he was out. Slowly looking around him, his finger pauses in mid-stroke when he notices the nurse standing in front of him with a bemused (yet stern) expression.
“You’ve been out for about three hours now. You were dehydrated, sleep-deprived, malnourished, and generally just letting yourself waste away.” The nurse glares at Sungmin with a disapproval that makes him flinch, “We’ll be conducting the sleep lab later tonight, around ten.”
Sungmin slowly tugs at his hair ends with enough force to pull out random strands. The strands wrap around his fingers, and he glances at them briefly, rubs his fingers to rid of them, and then tugs again. It’s like a silent mantra and he loses himself in it.
Sungmin walks into one the new virtual-reality interconnect stores. The walls are made of multiple screens, and the effect makes Sungmin think of a house fly. Each one shows the wares that the owner is attempting to sell. There are different skin colours, some eye colours, and as Sungmin moves closer to the back of the store, the cash credit prices go higher and higher.
Stores like these were triangle-shaped. The cheapest credit items were at the front of the store, with plenty of room for those that could afford them, but as the credits got more expensive, people wouldn't even bother coming back. It was almost as if, if they couldn't afford it, why bother looking at what they can't have?
Sungmin never was one to conform, and as he moves farther back, he leaves curious stares behind. He lets his fingers trail over the screens, laughs when he brings his fingers back completely covered in dust. In between some of the screens, though, there were small screens, fitted almost so as to be looked over. When he looks over them, he wants to laugh aloud. They're like those 'hidden bargains' that the older stores used to have. There are virtual mods in some of the screens that have at least 50% off the credit price and some are even cheaper. Yet, in the back, there's a screen that shines an incandescent blue.
It's like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and Sungmin is drawn to it. His finger touches the screen lightly, and the screen reacts differently than any of the others. His finger port adaptors spark lightly, and immediatley his avatar is showing on the screen with the blue wrapped around it. Falling over the figure like water, the blue freezes like ice at the avatar's feet, and begins pulsing. It explodes around the screen, and Sungmin would have taken a step back if his finger wasn't glued to the screen. Suddenly everything is black, and the blue have become wings. They're not solid, rather shaping and forming constantly into different types of wings: birds, butterflies, maybe even an angel's.
Without thinking, Sungmin inserts in his credit number, and buys them. (Afterwards, he'll cry for his last three paychecks.)
"Sungmin, we're ready for you now."
The room is a painted a warm colour, with sensual lights. The bedding is comfortable, but the doctors tell him to fall asleep laying on his back, and he has wiring connected all over his body. A video camera is pointed straight at the bed, and after thinking for a few minutes how kinky it'd be to have a video camera in his own room, Sungmin drifts asleep.
One moment. Maybe two, and they're there again, waking him up. The sun is up and shining, and Sungmin blinks blearily. He rubs his hand against his eyes, pulls off the cords and yawns, realises he hasn't brushed his teeth in at least 24 hours now. He claps a hand over his mouth and looks down at the covers.
Some men come in with his clothes and bag, and he runs to the bathroom to change and brush his teeth (he checks discretely for any cameras in the vicinity first, though).
When he checks out, they give him some paperwork, tell him to expect their call, and Sungmin is homeward-bound. The walk to the EGS isn't so bad this time. Sungmin thinks it's because he can remember the arms around him, decides to refer to the nurse as his angel.
He comes home, sets his bags on the table, and for the first time since he was found in the coma, for the first time since he restarted the entire Web, he turns on his computer. It starts slowly, like it's waking up from a long sleep, and he sits down in the chair. He attaches his audio connector to his neck, puts on the visual visor, and inserts his finger port adaptors into the computer panel. The virtual world swims into view, and he's immediately attacked by e-mails.
His job as a free-lancing Virus Detector is no longer required since the overhaul of the programming, and as the only one who's truly able to handle the system, they've promoted him to Web Design Master. Sungmin.com is now a reality, and it's just too much for Sungmin. He didn't do anything, it was the wings, it was always the wings that did it. Sure, he knew how to put coding together, he knew how to take it apart, but the firewall that killed the viruses on the spot, that was the coding in the wings.
Even now, they flow behind him like animate objects, like there's something behind them controlling each little move they make. They curl up in the edges, like they're smiling, pleased with this new universe that they helped create. He can only imagine the mastermind behind their creation.
The call comes when he's in the shower. He's expecting it, worried, hoping that he's all well, that everything's alright, so he ends up pulling a towel haphazardly around his waist, running out towards the phone jack, and forgets the main rule. Don't do it. His feet slide out from underneath him, his towel lands somewhere or other, and he almost lands head first onto the counter.
His heart sounds like the pounding of a racehorse and he swears he just saw his life sizzle in front of his eyes. Sungmin takes one deep breath, and then answers the phone all casual-like, "Hello?"
There's no answer from the phone, and another bell rings, and Sungmin can only stare at the phone stupidly before realising it's actually coming from the doorbell.
He bends over carefully, ties the towel around his waist with two knots, and opens the door carefully.
The nurse from the hospital is standing in front of the door. He's dressed in casual clothes, a sweatshirt and baggy pants, and Sungmin doesn't see any hidden folders or backpacks. "Hello."
"Hi, my name is KyuHyun. Could I come in?"
Sungmin acts the good host, gives KyuHyun something to drink, offers to cook (which KyuHyun turns down, thank god; Sungmin hasn't cooked in ages, but the delivery men nearby know his usual), and then leaves him briefly to put on underwear and clothes. When he comes back, KyuHyun is inspecting the house, running his fingers down the painted walls, a smile on his face when he comes across dried streaks of paint where Sungmin didn't do the most wonderful.
Sungmin watches quietly for a little bit, curious as to what KyuHyun's going to head for next. Still, even he's taken aback when KyuHyun opens the shoe closet door, and fingers the backs of his shoes with soft fingers. And then KyuHyun chuckles, "Such small feet."
"My balance is absolutely atrocious."
KyuHyun almost jumps backwards, and a very unmanly squeak comes out of his mouth. "I was just-"
Sungmin laughs aloud, grinning widely, "So what's up, Mr. Nurse? Why're you visiting me?"
Straightening his sweatshirt carefully, KyuHyun clears his throat, "The doctors at the hospital decided that we just wanted to check out your computer, to see if there was any possibilities that any electricity might have exceeded your port adaptors, your visual visor, maybe even the audio port. I'm the local computer geek, so they wanted me to check it out. Would that be alright with you?"
"You've already inspected my shoes; I think my computer should be fine."
KyuHyun had the decency to look somewhat ashamed, and followed behind Sungmin quietly.
Switching on the light, Sungmin stands by the doorway as KyuHyun gets on the chair and inserts his finger port adaptors into the computer, not bothering with the audio or visual ports. The computer hums with life, and when Sungmin glances at KyuHyun, he's surprised to see KyuHyun's eyes going into REM. Sungmin's about to manually disengage KyuHyun from the computer when he realises it's strings of coding in KyuHyun's eyes, almost as if he has visual adaptor contacts. But those would be super high tech gadgets, equipment that wouldn't come out to the general public for at least another five to ten years.
The computer hums again, but now it's almost a sound of pleasure, as if the motherboard was being stroked in all the right connectors, and a hologram like beam comes from Sungmin's visual visor.
The blue wings shimmer in and out of reality, and Sungmin has no idea what to say, what to think, and it's almost calming being completely blank. With a wrenching sound, and a darkness that meant that every single fuse in Sungmin's house, and maybe all the house's in the surrounding area, blew out, they shine with that same incandescent blue light from before.
KyuHyun slowly disconnects from the computer, and they both glance at each other before concentrating on the wings.
"How'd you bring them over here?" Sungmin's voice is quiet, in awe.
"Raw energy. That's what they were made of to begin with, you know."
"But they were virtual, they can't be real."
"What are you looking at, then?"
And Sungmin laughs, too scared, terrified, so ecstatic to do anything but laugh. "My wings."
Sungmin doesn't dare touch them, too afraid that the power he thought was so comforting, could hurt him in the real world. But as soon as he moves, the wings turn towards him, and almost as if they knew that they belonged together, attach themselves to his back.
KyuHyun watches with a twisted smile, "You should be able to sleep well from now on. Ignore the doctor's orders, and if you ever want to go outside with other people, ask the wings to go into convert mode."
"Sungmin.com, the start of the new world." A young man with brilliant blue fire eyes walks along a black walkway with white pixels. "Expressway, EGS, the World Wide Web. It all starts here." He gestures out at the empty space, and blue fire comes from his arms, position behind his back, and shimmer as fluid wings.
Pairing (if any)/genre : Gen, Sungmin-centric / Sci-Fi
Rating : R (mention of prostitution)
Summary : He pushes kilobytes together, making megabytes, making gigabytes. It’s like a little sand castle, except he’s made it his domain. Sungmin laughs at that, his ‘domain.’ Sungmin.com, the start of the new Web. He hums his own jingle and watches as the walls stack high.
Sungmin sits back in his seat, slowly connecting into the computer system. Browser windows pop up in his vision and he exits them carefully, and then watches as his character lifts itself to its feet. Pixilated polygons show a generic 3-D figure, but anyone who looks can see where Sungmin’s cash credits went to. Blue high-definition wings are attached to his character and when he passes someone on the Web, Sungmin always smirks when they double-glance.
He begins his job carefully, filtering out hidden cookies and spyware as well as the small viruses, blue three pronged outlets that like to try and connect onto the 3-D computer figures like ticks. Commonly known as a Virus Detector, Sungmin’s job isn’t the most exciting thing in the virtual world, but it is dangerous. At any time, he could accidentally intercept a virus that might latch onto his avatar instead of the planned trajectory, and all his cash credits would spiral into a virtual black hole; his life would be ruined. Because of which, although it’s a high-paying credit job, it isn’t very popular.
Still, Sungmin can only smile as he shifts the double entendre advertisement to swipe the key logger behind it. It scrambles in his grip, desperately copying the coding in his grey figure but quickly fizzles; the simple mechanism fries as it hits the wing’s coding. Sungmin laughs, and flings it in the pile with the viruses, watching as they feast on it like scavengers.
As the day wanes and the viruses come out with the hackers - dark multi-pixilated figures that blend against the programming’s background - Sungmin clocks out, slowly detracting his hands from the needle port adapters, and then reaching behind his neck to unhook the audio adaptor. Shaking his head lightly, his hair falls over the visor-like mechanism and he blinks once… twice, still seeing the viruses and hackers working at the programming. He swipes the visor off quickly, putting it on the desk beside him. The world disappears and Sungmin is fully disconnected from the Web.
In the real world, Sungmin is average looking. His hair is black, just like the rest of the population; it tickles the tips of his shoulder blades, and he has a habit of pulling the ends, tugging on them when he’s nervous. His face is rather mousy looking, and he looks down when he walks, making him appear shorter than he truly is. The confident figure on the Web becomes a nobody, and he likes it that way.
His hair is mussed, and he tousles it carefully with his hand, sighs when it only rolls back into place. His workroom and bedroom are mere steps away from each other, and when he falls on the bed, he lets out a strangled breath. The high-tech bed starts to meld to his body, vibrating acute points so as to massage his aching muscles. Sleep feels like it comes all too easily, and he dreams of endless drones marching through programming, tearing through the coding like they’re mere kilobytes.
Rather than an hourly wage, Sungmin’s job pays by virus volume. He works hours that fit his schedule, making it busy work. He then throws himself into it like a workaholic; the following 24 hours are spent avoiding it like the plague. He spends his extra time (that being the time not at work, and not catching the much-needed wink of sleep) at the Mesh, a club maybe ten minutes Expressway away.
The Expressway was a tubing system that was similar to the old-fashioned subway. Each person had a tube that they bought, fitted with gravity stabilizers, depressurizers, and even oxygen masks that form-fit perfectly to his facial structure. Commonly referred to as EGS, the Electromagnetic Gauge Structure moved fast and had the owner’s DNA inputted completely into its system. Because of which, EGS wouldn’t open for anyone else and there was no way for them to be stolen.
The Mesh is a small venue, one of those hole in the wall places that you had to know where to find. After prostitution became legal - as long as there was proof of protection - places like the Mesh became more common. Now, women and men with able bodies and minds work there in between their virtual jobs. At the start of their shift, they step into a soft liquid dough substance that completely forms to their bodies, and takes their shapes. Customers pay a fee, and also step into the mesh, their bodies melding instantly. Inside, an electrical current flows through, quickly and easily, without any pain, and, more importantly, without letting the customer know what’s hit them. It grafted itself to their brains, and their virtual fantasy instantly played out, seeing whichever female or male their deepest darkest lust desired. For the more exhibitionistic customers, there was a single-body option, where they performed their sexual acts along the walls lining the entrance.
The meshing separated the two through a thin layer and the dough material acts like a full-body condom, hiding both participants of the act. It was completely clean and the material it was made of was hypoallergenic. Some people were disgusted, thinking it was no different than a machine, but most, after taking the time to experience it, were hooked.
Sungmin didn’t particularly dislike or like the effect, or the lingering greasy feeling afterwards, but it was a comfort, and, in a world like this, he would take anything. He cups hard ass cheeks, and presses their virtual bodies together, trying ignore the fact it’s another man’s body against his, trying to forget the taunts as a child, focusing instead on this body that will disintegrate, disappear in moments after he releases. Watches as it pixelates into oblivion, and leaves unaffected. He always fights the viruses harder after that, laughing brokenly as he sees them fragment like his dreams.
It’s a harder day, today. The virus volume is high, and Sungmin is also having a high annihilation rate. They come in floods and sometimes they nip at him; attach like real-life ticks and suck, suck, suck at his coding. It leeches at his energy, and just as he swats one down with his Norton Ghost shield, he’s in time to see the encoding of the entire Web flicker. The blue and white lines stutter, short-circuiting and then everything goes black, silent. When Sungmin tries to unhook from the port adaptors, he realises he can’t. His virtual body jerks like an epileptic as he attempts to move his real hands, shake his head and get the audio adaptor, or the visual adaptor, something off. But he can’t.
Instead, he’s stuck with little kilobytes of white pixels on the motherboard like fallen stars.
He doesn’t panic. Simply sits down, wraps his blue wings around himself - radiating light like a deity - and sings.
It feels like he’s been sitting there for hours, maybe even days. With no light and no connection with his real body, he notices neither hunger, nor thirst, not even the subtle back ache from sitting in the chair too long. Every now and then he hears a steady beeping, almost insistent, like it’s attempting to wake him up, and then his wings rustle, and it fades away.
He hears scuttling sometimes, like the little viruses are trying to situate themselves. It becomes comforting after awhile, knowing he’s not alone, knowing that maybe sometime he’ll be rescued.
He finally unwraps himself from his virtual cocoon, staring around with pupils blown wide, attempting to catch any and every light. It takes him a few moments before he realises his character is virtual and goes through his inventory. Somehow, it survived the system wipe-out and he switches the eyes out for night contacts, changes his skin colour to black-blue and he blends with his surroundings.
Growing bored with the emptiness, Sungmin gets up and inspects the white kilobytes littering the motherboard. They can still be used, vacant space that is just full of possibilities. As he gathers them, he watches as they magnetise together, coming so close that he has to use all his strength to separate them again.
He pushes kilobytes together, making megabytes, making gigabytes. It’s like a little sand castle, except he’s made it his domain. Sungmin laughs at that, his ‘domain.’ Sungmin.com, the start of the new Web. He hums his own jingle and watches as the walls stack high.
Sungmin feels himself flicker between his virtual self and real self one day. It’s strange, almost as if he’s in two places at once. Like a bad video reel, the images come in and out, and he sees white suits, hears that beeping, steady, slow, and breathes in, and then he’s back in the darkness. He can’t decide which one is better.
The lights are coming back. As he builds up the virtual realm, coming up with new scripts, new HTML coding, Sungmin knows that what he’s created is his own. For a moment, he contemplates putting up blocks, making it so that no one can access it, so that the Web is never quite as stable again. Yet the feeling of being alone is so mind-consuming, and he knows that he could never do it.
If only he could get out.
‘He’s not waking up. He’s been like this for almost three months now. With the Web down, and no way to access any other hospital, we might have to pull the plug.’
‘We have to wait. The Expressway has to start working again soon!’
‘With the Web gone, everything has crashed. Nothing works anymore.’
It’s a city, now. The viruses have given up attempting to crack the coding after watching as their fellow creatures burnt out immediately. The wing’s coding lies dormant throughout the entire thing, but it pulses like an animate creature. Sungmin lays back, wings propping him up comfortably, and stares at the blue skyline.
He figures it out. He knows how to let them in again.
Twisting the coding like a DNA helix, he shapes it, forms it into another pair of wings, the kilobytes flickering, magnetising and demagnetising, pushing against each other, but it’s the perfect balance. The same amount of force pushing them apart pushes them together, and the power of it sends a pulse of energy throughout the entire Web, stretches the boundaries, and it’s like Sungmin can see the Web coming back to life.
He wonders how long it’ll take to have company, but then the beeping comes back full-force, and he breathes, breathes, breathes, and his wings are gone.
The white walls are closing in on him. They’re so bright, bright with the light, bright when he can’t shade his eyes with his wings, can’t switch from night contacts to regular. Everything is mussed, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.
They come in one day, all ceremonial and professional. Sungmin can’t remember the last time he’s had to tug at his hair, but he pulls it so hard he has strings of hair tangling in his fingers so quickly it’s like he never stopped. He got used to being in his element, being in control, and now he’s draped in white fabric, and trapped in a single room with no scuttling, no electrical pulses, no animation in the air.
They take notes as he tells them what happened in his comatose state, making little hesitant grunts and condescending breaths. It isn’t until he describes the wings’ coding merging with the entire Web base code that their eyes start to light up and they look at him with more respect.
By the time the ‘interview’ is finished, Sungmin is exhausted, having been used to barely speaking, and the men seem more than satisfied. With curt nods and the parting words, “We’ll be speaking to you again soon,” they finally leave.
He’s left curled in his bed, dreaming of blue wings and friendly viruses.
His mind blanks sometimes, forgetting modern languages, and he ends up repeating JavaScript under his breath. Other times his eyes flicker like they’re in an REM state as he attempts to read the binary coding of the walls in front of him: 0111011101101000011010010111010001100101011101110110100001101001011101000110010101110111011010000110100101110100011001010111011101101000011010010111010001100101.
And then they shift, Sungmin blinks, once, twice, three times, watches as the zeroes and ones merge into a colour. White.
Sungmin gets sent home. Finally. They’ve completed test after test after test, and if he were to be holed in there for one more minute he would just explode. A nurse comes in silently, wheeling a wheelchair with him. Sungmin stares for a moment, looking at the man and then back down, “I can walk.”
“It’s standard procedure, sir. We have to escort you out just until the entrance.”
Sungmin paused for a moment more, ready to kick up a fuss, but to be honest, he was tired, and if he got to be lazy for just a few more minutes, he would be lazy. He slumped into the chair, and the nurse chuckled quietly, “Thanks.”
“No problem. Push away, oh mighty nurse.”
This place is not a home. Sungmin looks around himself, taking in the décor, the simple layout. Realised that he spent almost all his time outside of his house, or in the virtual world, and it’s barely inhabitable. The computer is still hooked in the back, but it doesn’t look nearly as appealing. The blue wings float to the top of his thoughts, but then the squalour that he lived in disgusts him and he pushes all other thoughts down. He rolls his sleeves up. It’s time for some cleaning.
It takes him two weeks. Every time he gets somewhat started, he looks around himself and sees all the rest that’s left, and quickly becomes overwhelmed. After the first few days of that, he learned to put up a sheet on the doors, or turn off all the rest of the lights in the house except for the room he’s in, and that way it wasn’t so horrible. Sungmin repaints the dining room, a pale yellow so that when the sun shines, he hardly has to turn on the light at all. He learns the hard way that he should have taped the wooden framing before painting, but a wash cloth and sore muscles later, the wood has hardly any paint on it.
His room turns out to be a splatter of colours. Sungmin had put down a sheet on the bed, around the floor, even taped up the framing, but it was the doorway that did him in. After thinking about it, Sungmin realises that running with paint and running with scissors should have the same rule: don’t do it. He was excited, the colouring was a pale eggshell blue, he was sure it’d make his room feel like the sky, and then he tripped on the threshold, and the paint went everywhere.
Sungmin had stared in shock for about ten minutes, but by the time he was conscious enough to do anything, he liked the blue on white, and left it. It was a job well-done.
Sungmin breaks a tile when the doctor calls. The phone hasn’t run in ages, and he drops the tile on the bathroom floor, stares between the phone and the cracked tile and answers carefully. They want him to come in to check his head, make sure there aren’t any lasting effects. He’s also to complete a sleep lab, where they would watch like hawks, analysing each toss and turn through the night.
He’s penned in for the next day and sleeps fitfully that night underneath paint-splattered walls.
He’s cautious - walking out in the open. He had had all of the equipment delivered to his door, communication made through e-mail. They idea of seeing people again, being amongst them, it honestly scared him. The comfort of his blue wings, pulsing with energy and aw power, was gone, and now Sungmin was left with nothing.
He inches through the door carefully, a mesh beanie one pressing his hair down along his face, and he hunches his shoulders. Sungmin walks quickly, almost a jog, swipes his fingers into the port adaptors and his EGS comes rushing in. The hospital is five minutes by Expressway, and the entire time, Sungmin is fighting a panic attack.
By the time he gets out of the EGS, his entire body is vibrating like a chime, and he has to close his eyes to fight the dizziness. He sways slightly, takes in a stilted breath, and then almost passes out when someone’s arms come around his shoulders.
“Breathe.” The voice is calming and Sungmin obeys without thinking, “Breathe.”
Sungmin takes another deep breath, and slowly, ever so slowly, he calms down. The arms radiate a warmth similar to his wings and he wants them to wrap around him completely, engulf him like a cocoon.
He leans into them, listens to the “oomph” as he knocks the breath out of whomever it was behind him and peacefully passes out.
Sungmin wakes up to hospital scrubs and a dry throat. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, and his teeth have a film over them. He rubs a finger over them absent-mindedly while he wonders how long he was out. Slowly looking around him, his finger pauses in mid-stroke when he notices the nurse standing in front of him with a bemused (yet stern) expression.
“You’ve been out for about three hours now. You were dehydrated, sleep-deprived, malnourished, and generally just letting yourself waste away.” The nurse glares at Sungmin with a disapproval that makes him flinch, “We’ll be conducting the sleep lab later tonight, around ten.”
Sungmin slowly tugs at his hair ends with enough force to pull out random strands. The strands wrap around his fingers, and he glances at them briefly, rubs his fingers to rid of them, and then tugs again. It’s like a silent mantra and he loses himself in it.
Sungmin walks into one the new virtual-reality interconnect stores. The walls are made of multiple screens, and the effect makes Sungmin think of a house fly. Each one shows the wares that the owner is attempting to sell. There are different skin colours, some eye colours, and as Sungmin moves closer to the back of the store, the cash credit prices go higher and higher.
Stores like these were triangle-shaped. The cheapest credit items were at the front of the store, with plenty of room for those that could afford them, but as the credits got more expensive, people wouldn't even bother coming back. It was almost as if, if they couldn't afford it, why bother looking at what they can't have?
Sungmin never was one to conform, and as he moves farther back, he leaves curious stares behind. He lets his fingers trail over the screens, laughs when he brings his fingers back completely covered in dust. In between some of the screens, though, there were small screens, fitted almost so as to be looked over. When he looks over them, he wants to laugh aloud. They're like those 'hidden bargains' that the older stores used to have. There are virtual mods in some of the screens that have at least 50% off the credit price and some are even cheaper. Yet, in the back, there's a screen that shines an incandescent blue.
It's like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and Sungmin is drawn to it. His finger touches the screen lightly, and the screen reacts differently than any of the others. His finger port adaptors spark lightly, and immediatley his avatar is showing on the screen with the blue wrapped around it. Falling over the figure like water, the blue freezes like ice at the avatar's feet, and begins pulsing. It explodes around the screen, and Sungmin would have taken a step back if his finger wasn't glued to the screen. Suddenly everything is black, and the blue have become wings. They're not solid, rather shaping and forming constantly into different types of wings: birds, butterflies, maybe even an angel's.
Without thinking, Sungmin inserts in his credit number, and buys them. (Afterwards, he'll cry for his last three paychecks.)
"Sungmin, we're ready for you now."
The room is a painted a warm colour, with sensual lights. The bedding is comfortable, but the doctors tell him to fall asleep laying on his back, and he has wiring connected all over his body. A video camera is pointed straight at the bed, and after thinking for a few minutes how kinky it'd be to have a video camera in his own room, Sungmin drifts asleep.
One moment. Maybe two, and they're there again, waking him up. The sun is up and shining, and Sungmin blinks blearily. He rubs his hand against his eyes, pulls off the cords and yawns, realises he hasn't brushed his teeth in at least 24 hours now. He claps a hand over his mouth and looks down at the covers.
Some men come in with his clothes and bag, and he runs to the bathroom to change and brush his teeth (he checks discretely for any cameras in the vicinity first, though).
When he checks out, they give him some paperwork, tell him to expect their call, and Sungmin is homeward-bound. The walk to the EGS isn't so bad this time. Sungmin thinks it's because he can remember the arms around him, decides to refer to the nurse as his angel.
He comes home, sets his bags on the table, and for the first time since he was found in the coma, for the first time since he restarted the entire Web, he turns on his computer. It starts slowly, like it's waking up from a long sleep, and he sits down in the chair. He attaches his audio connector to his neck, puts on the visual visor, and inserts his finger port adaptors into the computer panel. The virtual world swims into view, and he's immediately attacked by e-mails.
His job as a free-lancing Virus Detector is no longer required since the overhaul of the programming, and as the only one who's truly able to handle the system, they've promoted him to Web Design Master. Sungmin.com is now a reality, and it's just too much for Sungmin. He didn't do anything, it was the wings, it was always the wings that did it. Sure, he knew how to put coding together, he knew how to take it apart, but the firewall that killed the viruses on the spot, that was the coding in the wings.
Even now, they flow behind him like animate objects, like there's something behind them controlling each little move they make. They curl up in the edges, like they're smiling, pleased with this new universe that they helped create. He can only imagine the mastermind behind their creation.
The call comes when he's in the shower. He's expecting it, worried, hoping that he's all well, that everything's alright, so he ends up pulling a towel haphazardly around his waist, running out towards the phone jack, and forgets the main rule. Don't do it. His feet slide out from underneath him, his towel lands somewhere or other, and he almost lands head first onto the counter.
His heart sounds like the pounding of a racehorse and he swears he just saw his life sizzle in front of his eyes. Sungmin takes one deep breath, and then answers the phone all casual-like, "Hello?"
There's no answer from the phone, and another bell rings, and Sungmin can only stare at the phone stupidly before realising it's actually coming from the doorbell.
He bends over carefully, ties the towel around his waist with two knots, and opens the door carefully.
The nurse from the hospital is standing in front of the door. He's dressed in casual clothes, a sweatshirt and baggy pants, and Sungmin doesn't see any hidden folders or backpacks. "Hello."
"Hi, my name is KyuHyun. Could I come in?"
Sungmin acts the good host, gives KyuHyun something to drink, offers to cook (which KyuHyun turns down, thank god; Sungmin hasn't cooked in ages, but the delivery men nearby know his usual), and then leaves him briefly to put on underwear and clothes. When he comes back, KyuHyun is inspecting the house, running his fingers down the painted walls, a smile on his face when he comes across dried streaks of paint where Sungmin didn't do the most wonderful.
Sungmin watches quietly for a little bit, curious as to what KyuHyun's going to head for next. Still, even he's taken aback when KyuHyun opens the shoe closet door, and fingers the backs of his shoes with soft fingers. And then KyuHyun chuckles, "Such small feet."
"My balance is absolutely atrocious."
KyuHyun almost jumps backwards, and a very unmanly squeak comes out of his mouth. "I was just-"
Sungmin laughs aloud, grinning widely, "So what's up, Mr. Nurse? Why're you visiting me?"
Straightening his sweatshirt carefully, KyuHyun clears his throat, "The doctors at the hospital decided that we just wanted to check out your computer, to see if there was any possibilities that any electricity might have exceeded your port adaptors, your visual visor, maybe even the audio port. I'm the local computer geek, so they wanted me to check it out. Would that be alright with you?"
"You've already inspected my shoes; I think my computer should be fine."
KyuHyun had the decency to look somewhat ashamed, and followed behind Sungmin quietly.
Switching on the light, Sungmin stands by the doorway as KyuHyun gets on the chair and inserts his finger port adaptors into the computer, not bothering with the audio or visual ports. The computer hums with life, and when Sungmin glances at KyuHyun, he's surprised to see KyuHyun's eyes going into REM. Sungmin's about to manually disengage KyuHyun from the computer when he realises it's strings of coding in KyuHyun's eyes, almost as if he has visual adaptor contacts. But those would be super high tech gadgets, equipment that wouldn't come out to the general public for at least another five to ten years.
The computer hums again, but now it's almost a sound of pleasure, as if the motherboard was being stroked in all the right connectors, and a hologram like beam comes from Sungmin's visual visor.
The blue wings shimmer in and out of reality, and Sungmin has no idea what to say, what to think, and it's almost calming being completely blank. With a wrenching sound, and a darkness that meant that every single fuse in Sungmin's house, and maybe all the house's in the surrounding area, blew out, they shine with that same incandescent blue light from before.
KyuHyun slowly disconnects from the computer, and they both glance at each other before concentrating on the wings.
"How'd you bring them over here?" Sungmin's voice is quiet, in awe.
"Raw energy. That's what they were made of to begin with, you know."
"But they were virtual, they can't be real."
"What are you looking at, then?"
And Sungmin laughs, too scared, terrified, so ecstatic to do anything but laugh. "My wings."
Sungmin doesn't dare touch them, too afraid that the power he thought was so comforting, could hurt him in the real world. But as soon as he moves, the wings turn towards him, and almost as if they knew that they belonged together, attach themselves to his back.
KyuHyun watches with a twisted smile, "You should be able to sleep well from now on. Ignore the doctor's orders, and if you ever want to go outside with other people, ask the wings to go into convert mode."
"Sungmin.com, the start of the new world." A young man with brilliant blue fire eyes walks along a black walkway with white pixels. "Expressway, EGS, the World Wide Web. It all starts here." He gestures out at the empty space, and blue fire comes from his arms, position behind his back, and shimmer as fluid wings.