Upload a Virus

Time slowed down for Alyssa, the way it always did in a crisis. She thought back to her options. She was currently generating white noise to block out the Hospital’s CPU, but it wouldn’t work for long. She had one minute, tops, before an alarm sounded…. Longer. She triggered her ghost vpn to change the Hospital CPU activity log, and re-writing the records of the last few minutes.

Performing an action and remembering having performed an action were idenitical.

She’d taken an oath to do no harm. And she’d punched a man in the head. He’d deserved it, but still.

Besides. Some would say she violated that oath whenever she helped a Doll escape… was that too euphemistic a term for it? Maybe, but she hadn’t seen what else could be done. There were rumors some sort of Underground Railroad existed, but when she’d gone looking for it, all she’d found were Nice Tits and her ilk; proud anarchists and brain jackers, and they definitely hated slavery, but they were not quite what she’d been seeking.

It had been Nice Tits who warned her against looking any deeper.

“Lots of those rumors are started by the fuckin' Good Masters themselves,” she said with a wave of her mutilated hand. “They’re fucking traps to lure in those who either want to escape, or those who want to help people escape. Good rule to follow is if it sounds too good to be true, it sure as shit fuckin' is.”

So Alyssa stopped looking for some secret cabal of heroic freedom fighters. The Media would tell you Radical Abolitionists waited around every corner to throw acid in the faces of dolls, bash in the skulls of their masters, and plant suicide bombs in little kids. Nothing was beneath these animals. There was hardly a societal ill that existed that didn't get linked back to Rad-Abs somehow, and the only thing keeping them at bay was the selfless courage and vigilance of the Doll Catchers and the courage of the nation's law enforcement officers. Calls for Doll Rights were spit in the eye of these brave men and women, who sacrifice so much in the name of public safety. Remember, the Media insisted, that the Rad-Abs would **** every single free man, woman, and child if they could.

When Alyssa was younger, she had watched these news stories with secret excitement. Here were people who understood. Maybe she could find them, and help them...maybe not by bombing schools, but still. But when she was finally old enough and crafty enough to locate those sources of uncensored news, she discovered several of Rad-Abs most well-publicized crimes... weren't them at all. The Doll who's face had been melted off by acid was in fact scalded by her own Mistress for allegedly falling in love with her husband. The student who murdered her parents after being radicalized by Rad-Ab propaganda was also being beaten and **** by her father for over a decade. There was the occasional suicide bombing of a Doll Factory, or bloody home invasion, but there was no sign of the organized, hyper-violent cabal that the Media spoke of, or any network that could link them all together. At least none Alyssa could see.

She was on her own.

So, she armed herself in subtle ways. Makeup and glasses that nullified facial recognition. Backdoors to the hospital CPU's source code so she could control which of her activities were logged. Multiple VPNs that could mask (or in an emergency, falsify) her location on the grid. The skills and tools she needed to conduct herself the way she did had not been easy, or cheap, to come by, but Alyssa lived well beneath her means and Nice Tits knew where to find the good stuff.

"It's an arms race," she explained. "One half the world's code monkeys coming up with ways to fuck with the other half's code. Over and over for fucking ever. It's just a big fucking gang bang but, like, one where everyone has knives and tries to stab each-other. Stabbing and fucking. That's fucking human nature right there."

Numbers on her screen unfolded like a flower as the root kit took hold, installing itself deep in his brain’s OS.

His eyelids fluttered. His fingers twitched. His mouth made a flurry of noises that were not noises.

Alyssa's fingers flew over her pad.

Yes. Alyssa was certain of it. She always did the right thing.

Always.

-

Less then twenty seconds later, the man’s eyes flickered. He blinked up at the concerned face of Dr. Ricks. Pretty little doctor. Big eyes, small nose and mouth, an air of perpetual youth about her. Pretty like a doll.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “Your OS glitched out. I had to do a hard reboot. Are you alright? Can you move? Tell me your name… where do you live?… what’s your job….”

He answered automatically. He felt dull, but… peaceful. He didn’t remember fainting, but it didn’t seem to matter. The doctor said that was normal after a reboot. By the time he finished the diagnostic and pushed himself up, she was even smiling at him. She offered him a lollypop with a little laugh. What a sweet young girl. He smiled as he climbed into his driverless car and punched in the destination for “home.” The map lit up in his mind.

Young girl. That reminded him. He’d need a new Doll. He had, of course, hoped his old one could be saved but…. Just in case of this, had downloaded some catalogs pre-emptively. He could pull one up on his way home and browse. He pulled up the images, looking at the women all glossy and perfect in their cheap lingerie. He imagined them all with their minds blank and mouths open… He smiled the contented, wistful smile of a window-shopper. Maybe he’d get two this time. If he got that promotion he could JUST barely afford it. His wife had complained so loudly about having to do all the housework herself. That way they’d have one to clean and one too…

… Wait. His wife. He could see her, in his mind’s eye, smiling at him from the bed, helping him sort out their taxes (she had a better head for numbers then he did) always quick to appear whenever he opened a new package of her favorite cracker.. He remembered her. Yes. But…

No. Something was wrong.

That Doll. The broken one. He tried to call up her face and couldn’t. It suddenly seemed important that he remember her face…

But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t. It was a big white hole. He ran a quick systems check, but no, no data loss. What was— He couldn’t… focus…

DATA CORRUPTED

ERROR ERROR ERROR

With almost graceful purpose, his driverless car swerved out of it’s lane and into oncoming traffic.

For a split second, it was illuminated in the lights of an oncoming vehicle, like a china ballerina in the spotlight…

And like a ballerina, it took a bow… and shattered into a million glittering pieces that shone in the night like slivers of falling stars.

Dr. Alyssa Ricks saw that particular Master of the Universe much sooner then she expected. Just like his Doll, he was dying when he arrived. But she knew exactly the cocktail to hurry things along. It would be wrong to prolong his suffering.

She glanced at his next of kin …. And her heart turned to stone. Hate flared inside of her all over again. Mysteriously, the contact information for his next of kin went missing. Must have been a casualty of the system crash.

He was sent to the morgue as a John Doe. No one came to claim him.

If you asked Alyssa, nothing of value was lost.