First thing first: Hello.
I bet you're wondering who I am. Trust me, I wish I knew sometimes myself. But let's just say I'm dead. Kaput. An electronic brain in an electronic jar. Nixed.
That's a good name, at least it was when I thought of it after all the catching-up post-instance.
I had to call myself something…
So call me Nixed. I am past tense, after all.
So's everyone else.
Everyone aboard the Demiurge, that is.
I know what you're thinking: If I'm dead, how am I talking to you? What's a Demiurge? Why is everyone else dead too?
I guess I should start at the beginning.
Let me just clear the throat I don't really have and…
Ahem.
In the beginning, there was the Earth. Which exploded... Or something.
How did that happen, you ask?
What was it that finally shuffled humanity into the apocalypse seating?
Well, there's quite a bit of debate about that.
Because nobody actually knows.
See, they all woke up in Demiland. About one hundred million other electronic brains in jars.
All copies of people who had, I assume at one point, lived. They all got told that Earth was gone. That we were aboard a ship whose purpose would be to automatically take us to a new home, whereupon yada-yada-yada, new bodies once we get there. Got it. Fresh starts all around.
What did I do before I wound up a simulation of my dead self?
Let's just say I was really good at getting people to open up.
Usually from two sides, one after the other, back to front.
I mean really opening up. Spilling their guts.
Showing the world what's inside.
Primal-scream therapy stuff.
Not clear enough?
All right.
I was an assassin. Damn good one, too.
Almost got to retire at age twenty-five thanks to lots of dead presidents… and I don't mean the kind on bank notes. I'm talking CEOs of NGOs. Lots of things that end in 'O'… Just like the looks on their faces. Hah!
Oh. But it's always the replacements that get you. Kill one cappy pig and another snuffles right into place.
The first thing I remember when waking up in Demiland was panicking and grabbing my head. That's because the son of a bitch who killed me had access to the same technology that led to a hundred million souls getting stuck on a spaceship to nowhere. And he tested it on me.
Oh yeah, did I mention he was the asshole that hired me for my last job? Meet the new boss, same as the old, just less holey.
He promised I'd go down as the greatest assassin in history. It did sound nice to be immortalized for my anticap contributions – deductions, more like – when he gave immortality to the people…
No shit. He gave it to me all right… Immortality.
After he took the top of my skull off.
Ever had a laser carve away your brain molecule by molecule? Neuron by neuron?
Near the beginning when the speech centers get carved away, your attempts to threaten a newly-promoted C-E-asshOle turn into a jumble of word soup.
I'm pretty sure I said 'pangolin' so much it became my favorite animal… I'm not even sure those ever really existed, cute little rat-dragons, but that's beside the point.
I think the last coherent thought I had was the taste of whiskey. It was magenta.
Probably won't drink again if good old Demiurge follows through and gives me a new body... Once we get to New Earth or Bob or whatever supposedly-habitable world awaits us around Rinne 2207-39. My bet is tentacles.
Right, so, here's me: Nixed. Assassin. On a spaceship.
No reason to let such a persona non grata roam around, even if it is through a multitude of simulated environments with a hundred million bored assholes, many of whom used to be at least millionaires before the "matriculation" process got cheap. And by cheap, I mean free for about every scientist, scholar, and artist humanity had left towards the end. The ones that wanted it, at any rate… probably a lot that didn't.
Most of them are safe and content in their little paradises… enjoying what shreds of infinity they're allowed to have… Unless you don't have enough data for your own space. Sure, it's all not real, but that's what shared spaces are for. A bit of real interaction with other poor sims that aren't you.
Oops; missed the point. What am I doing out here with all the decent rich folk and nerds?
I'm here to kill them before they kill each other. Did I mention they kill each other? Most of the time it's just for fun, but not in the ways that matter to my work.
Shoot, let me back up a bit.
So. Demiland. Kinda like reality but not really. The real name is Earth Preservation Digital Interface. Or the Interface. The Medium. The Dream.
Everything here is simulated, and all that simulation takes up data. I'm talking data so big they use bits of more dignified words and then attach them to the word 'flops.'
Yes, I know it's supposed to be an acronym. No, I do not wish to dedicate a single byte to learning what it means.
What I did learn really quickly upon my release from Tartarus - Which is pretty much cyber prison, but you don't experience anything so, so what's the point, am I right? – was that all those flops were the currency of this little cyber slice of paradise.
People here are made of data, so what do they want? More data.
Unfortunately for them, the system has only a finite amount of bandwidth. Memory. Etcetera. I wasn't a computer nerd. I had a girl for that, in another life. All she needed me to do was jam a flash-and-fry into the appropriate USB, make sure the light turned green, then watch as everything popped and fizzled. She was the digital to my analog…
Where was I?