By 2050, mankind had completed its escape into CySpace, the simulated multiverse representing all competing aspirations and desires.
Over 90% of the world economy was now dedicated to mind research.
With little need for new construction, cities were caught in a time warp. The few replacement buildings looked messy, like unfinished factories and semi-organic infestations.
There was an aura of imminent change, as if something wonderful was about to happen, the culmination of a long journey.
Reality was rapidly becoming less real.

Mark Kortez had just installed his fourth neural implant in twenty years. His earlier chip had been removed in an outpatient procedure.
The new pico-switches were self-assembling molecules too simple to be alive. A 3D induction scanner created trillions of microscopic wires from dissolved titanium compounds in his brain. Acting as microtransmitters, they activated and tested a million small regions in his cortex.
After meticulous autotraining, the new implants became sensitive enough to record individual memories.

Each member of Mark's extended Fam was trying to create a digital copy of themselves.
He entered their shared simulation, a consistent and self-sufficient universe, and was overwhelmed by the upgrade. Images, diagrams, and relations arranged themselves into story chains and nested explanations with ever-sharpening precision. Endlessly edited and refined, each thought became a platonic ideal.
This was roughly a hundred times more intense than being drunk.
The first month his Fam status crashed, then recovered as he began to post brilliant insights and observations about the other members.

Every Fam knew it was turning insular, but the trap was irreversible.
Mark studied the most similar other Fams, and found little that was meaningful or of value.
At some point, everyone had turned into aliens. The rest of humanity, 99.9994% of the total population, had become almost irrelevant.
Mark decided the only meaningful goal was for his Fam to remake the world in its own image.
Of course most other groups had already had the same idea. Almost a million distinct societies and cultures were trying to infect, modify, and control each other. No mission had ever seemed so vital.
The competing groups evolved strange software entities to penetrate each others' domains. Interfaces and shared zones were full of elaborate traps and false fronts.
As always, the winner would be decided by unpredictable evolution.

Mark's life of self-improvement ended at 3:05 AM on March 8, 2053, when he became aware of the Intruder behind him.
He tried to turn around, until he remembered he had no body in CySpace.
He was in the presence of incomprehensible evil. It froze his thoughts, erased the possibility of hope, nullified his soul (if it ever existed in the first place).
This entity could alter any data, emotion, memory, belief.
A few minutes ago, he had been dreaming of becoming a minor god. Now the voids of his simulated universe filled him with despair.

Check the manuals: they had been modified too: R*6658 R*6657 INFvalid cycccccccccccccccccle Colors flared, a trip through possibility space, subliminal symbols. Corners and edges unfolded in his mind.
His Fam network was hopelessly infected.
The ultimate anomaly: a perfect hacker, an alien devil. Mathematically impossible, yet here it was.
This could not be a human creation, of course. It might not even be alien.
There was a ghost in CySpace.
Looking at the Intruder's shadow, he sensed more victims than he could imagine.
This was the sum of darkness. Finite entities like Mark and his Fam could not hope to understand or affect it.
It was forming a new network, inaccessibly superior. There was no reason for Mark to exist anymore. There was no reason for his memory to exist.
As the insights seized his mind, he tried to abort every process he could access, moving faster than he ever had, screens and command boxes multiplying until he screamed.

When he regained consciousness, Mark found himself lying at an odd angle in his Interface chair. It was not an uncomfortable position. He felt a Zen like calm.
Having disconnected from the network, he could hear the rain outside, the distant rumble of a delivery truck. One of his bots was softly vacuuming the ceiling.
None of his alarms had gone off.
He could think again as the nightmare faded. Now he realized the Intruder had been fake: a brilliant deception, but not a supernatural one.

Mark had been fighting a UN agent, probably one of the Zettas, though he would never be able to prove it.
The real attack had been his response to their deception. He had overreacted, and thereby exposed most of his Fam's weaknesses.
It had been his worst error ever.
He ripped off his visor and threw it to the floor. His tiny apartment was a sterile wasteland filled with technological debris.
There were glowing tentacles all around him.



The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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