But fun, I hope 
Hi guys, this is the first chapter of a story I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks called ‘The Synet Protocol’. I anticipate that the finished story will be about 100 pages, but I’m way too impatient for feedback to wait until I’ve done all that, so here you go. There’s some strong language, particularly towards the end, and one scene of moderately strong violence so if you’re sensitive to that tread carefully
What I’m really, really interested in are your answers to the following questions:
1). Is it readable? Enjoyable? Do you (assuming you’re into this kind of stuff) want to read more?
2). Is it clear? Were you comfortable with the idea of the Synet and (roughly) how it works?
3). What do you think of ‘The Spider’? Do you think he is an unsettling character? Do you want to find out more about him and what he’s done?
Please bear in mind that, as this is just the first chapter, there isn’t an enormous amount of action taking place. There’s some action, sure, but not as much as there will be in later chapters. I’m still setting the scene, getting the characters into position etc… I’ve given you a brief synopsis of the story so you can see where I’m going.
Synopsis
*Humanity has advanced to the point where ubiquitous and miraculous technologies have obviated the need for war. Not least among these technologies is The Synet. A gigantic free-floating database containing the sum total of all human knowledge. People connect to Synet using neural implants and can instantly download or upload as much information as they please at will. People can even converse over Synet, temporarily leaving their bodies to surf the ether with their companions. Thanks to Synet, it is finally possible to live a true life of the mind.
One day, a terrible virus is uploaded to The Synet. It infects everybody who links into it. The consequences are apocalyptic.*
The first chapter introduces the three main characters, Sherrod, Thorburn, and Harry Callaghan (who’s named after Dirty Harry on purpose, btw - it becomes something of a running joke in the later chapters of the story) who will lead the fight to reclaim civilisation from the infected. I hope you enjoy it.
The Synet Protocol
Chapter One
Harry Callaghan whistled for his briefcase and adjusted his tie infront of the hallway mirror. The briefcase, meanwhile, dutifully logged itself on to the Synet, located Harry via his unique I.D. number and transmitted its location on a blueprint of his house directly to Harry’s prefrontal cortex. Ah, the study. Probably under the desk. He’d lose his head if it weren’t screwed on. Harry jogged to the study, grabbed the case and, via Synet, sent start-up instructions to his car. As he hurried down the hallway he heard the car engines growl into life and the doors click open.
He swung himself into the driver’s seat and called up the address of his office on the on-board computer. “Drive” he ordered. The car shunted into first gear and carefully edged itself into the steady onrush of traffic.
Harry reclined in his chair and, pressing the neural implant buried under the skin behind his ear, once again logged into the Synet. He accessed his vault and downloaded the meeting minutes he’d put there the previous day. The Synet was about to undergo a colossal upgrade to accommodate the volume of new users and he (he!) was in charge of the whole shebang. Exciting times. Of course, service would have to suffer for a few weeks. There would be a lot of pissed off users unable to access their memory journals, work memoranda, or use the Synet’s ‘Empath’ function to keep in touch with relatives abroad. “Well” Harry thought “Tough titty”. The work needed to be done. The Synet had originally been designed to accommodate a mere 200 million users at any one time. In light of the population explosion of the last two decades, this number was woefully inadequate. Once Harry was finished, the network would be able to handle upward of 2 billion people without breaking a sweat. Already there were signs the system was creaking at the seams. Reports that documents had been lost, garbled, or translated into Chinese, memory journals choc full of pure fiction, and empathiversations (or ‘empies’) disconnected in mid-flow were becoming increasingly common. No, the work needed to be done, and there was no time like the present. One of the first things he would do is fix it so you didn’t have to keep logging in whenever you moved from your house network, to your car, to your office. Bloody inconvenient, it was.
Harry’s car swung into the carpark and gingerly nosed its way into his parking space. He hopped out, a definite spring in his step for all to see, and approached the elevator. He, yet again(!), logged into the Synet and accessed the work server. Once it detected his presence it sent the lift down to the carpark. Harry stepped in and pressed floor 87. One good thing about technology today, if the Synet was unreliable, these new turbo lifts were an absolute boon. Besides, he rather enjoyed the gentle pressure of G-forces on his face and shoulders. Eleven seconds after he had pressed the button, the lift doors opened on the 87th floor and the onboard computer wished him a good day by name.
Via Synet, he entered his computer password and headed to the coffee station. The machine coffee tasted like shit, but it was better than nothing. With his double-choc, no fat, triple caff latte in one hand and a data tablet in the other he sat and, pushing his chair back, leaned back and kicked his legs out underneath the desk in an exaggerated pose of relaxation calculated to annoy everyone who saw it, a pose which was abruptly broken by a yelp of pain from under the desk.
“The hell?” Harry exclaimed “Who’s under there?”
A small, olive-skinned young man with a scruffy mop of jet black hair scrambled out from under the desk and gingerly rose to his full height, which was only 5 4", a pair of pliers in one hand and a clutch of wires in the other.
“I’m so sorry Mr. Callaghan. I was just repairing your carpet. It hasn’t been cleaning itself properly”
“No need to apologise, Sherrod.” Harry said “I kicked you, after all” Sherrod laughed nervously at this, and Harry noted, with a flicker of irritation, that Sherrod always acted as though someone was just about to hit him. Scared and stupid is no way to go through life, son. “Do you need some more time?” he asked.
“No thank you Mr. Callaghan. I was pretty much finished”
“Good. *Thank you Sherrod”
As Harry watched Sherrod scurry off he fixed his back with a pitying gaze. Poor guy, he thought. He had that thing, didn’t he? Some rare kind of epilepsy or something. Meant he couldn’t have an implant. Imagine that, being completely cut off from the Synet, from the sum total of all human knowledge. Harry supposed he had to respect Sherrod a little bit. After all, whereas Harry’s schooling merely comprised controlled downloading sessions from the Synet, and had lasted all of six months, Sherrod had learnt everything he knew from tablets, holograms, and hard won experience. Hadn’t downloaded any of it. Must’ve taken decades. Even if the best he could do was fix coffee machines and carpets, it still must have been tough. Man, what must life have been like when everyone had to learn that way?
A small blue light began flickering in the upper right quadrant of Callaghan’s field of vision. Ah, call waiting. He got up and strode to the breakroom, colloquially known around the office as the departure lounge. He sat in a plush, reclining faux-leather armchair, affixed an oxygen tube into his nostrils, touched the implant behind his ear, and, mustering full concentration, imagined a string of digits, 2-7-4-5-7-1-4-8-D, his personal Synet passcode. At his command, the breakroom melted away, and was replaced by an all encompassing vista of pure black, broken only by the pale blue light persistently flashing on the edge of vision like a beacon, and three neon green words, horizontally aligned, reading ‘Download’, ‘Upload’, and ‘Empath’. Harry focussed hard on the latter option. The menu dissolved into a milky white light. Harry felt his muscles begin to slacken. He loved this part. As his consciousness melded with the welcoming interface of the Synet, his body, completely relaxed, slid 2 or 3 inches down in the armchair. His head lolled to one side. He looked for all the world like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Once his consciousness had finished pouring itself into the Synet, the pale blue dot suddenly expanded to fill his whole field of vision, and emblazoned on the centre of this vista were the words “Call Waiting. Answer? Drop?”.
“Answer” Harry thought, firmly. In the same instant he heard a familiar voice, although it would be a mistake to say he really “heard” it. The voice, recogniseable as originating from an entity other than himself, seemed to nonetheless rise unbidden from within the deep wells of his own consciousness, as if the thought had been implanted by a 3rd party. Which, in fact, it had. The entity in question was his wife.
“You bastard!” she exclaimed. Harry was immediately assailed by a roiling melange of powerful emotions. Jealousy, hurt, an abiding lust for vengeance, his wife’s message was coloured with all of them. There was something else as well. Another emotion he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“Oh shit!”. Harry thought “Drop! Drop! Drop the call!”
“Oh no you don’t, you sonofabitch” his wife shot back. “You’re gonna wanna listen to this. Besides, you’re gonna need to know where to pick up your stuff!”
Oh, great. Kicked out again.
“YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT I’VE KICKED YOU OUT AGAIN!” the message barrelled into his consciousness with the force of an express train. “It’s not as though you don’t give me enough reason, Harry!”
Harry forced his own inner monologue into silence and focussed exclusively on his wife’s thoughts. He concentrated, hard.
“Eleanor, baby, clearly you’re upset”
“Clearly!”
“And I’m sure you’ve got good reason. I’m a fool, I’m stupid, and inconsiderate, and I don’t know how good I’ve got it, but…for the life of me I can’t figure out what I’ve done this time.”
“I got the credit bill today”
Hmm, so far so good. Fool though he certainly was, he’d never leave anything incriminating on his own credit receipt.
“The WORK credit bill”
Oh, shit.
“Yeah” his wife continued “Mister Bigshot Synet project manager gets them delivered to his home computer now, doesn’t he?”
They never told him that.
“And whoever Loretta is, we owe her, and all her friends at the New Las Vegas House of Lust more than a pretty penny, don’t we?”
Yes, we did.
“Honey, I can explain”
“Don’t you ‘Honey’ me, you piece of shit! I’m going to divorce you for this, Harry Callaghan!”
“Listen to me, it was Boscoe’s stag do. I lent him the card in case of an emergency. I swear. I wasn’t even there.”
“Oh yeah? Where the hell were you, then?”
Harry’s mind raced. Where could he have been the weekend of August 25th? Then it hit him.
“Why…I was with you, light of my life”
“Oh, bullshit”.
Was that a note of doubt? Harry believed it was. He pressed on.
“Yeah, remember? We stayed in and watched that, what was it called? That movie with Tyler Lake. You like him, don’t you? You know the one I mean. ‘Go Your Own Way’, or something like that?”
“Go OUR Own Way”.
Even in that brief response, Harry could sense his wife’s emotional tenor had changed, from incandescent, righteous fury to shock, self-doubt, and regret. Nearly there.
“Yeah, you know. It’s the one where he gets the dog and they enter that cross-country Skybike race.”
“Was that the 25th?”
“Sure it was, honey. I know because it was the weekend before Jordan’s birthday.”
It was a good moment to drop their son’s name. Nothing like reminding a woman that she’s part of a family to put her in the mood for reconciliation.
“I know I watched it, but I don’t remember watching it with you.”
“Sure you did, sweetheart. Remember, I went to bed early 'cos I had one of my headaches”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. How else would I know?”
The movie channel credit receipt, that’s how. That piece of shit movie stuck out like a sore thumb among the 20th century classics that Harry enjoyed. Eleanor only used the movie channel to watch pieces of shit with that dickless, anvil-jawed, no talent Tyler Lake asshole in them.
“So you see, while giving Boscoe the work card was undeniably a very stupid thing to do, and while I’ll certainly have words with him about its inappropriate use, I think you can agree that your anger, while certainly righteous in intent, was misplaced on this occasion. Would you agree?”
“I…I’m so sorry Harry. Stupid, stupid bitch!”
Her sadness hit him like a tidal wave, and she certainly hadn’t meant to send that last part. Harry felt the beginnings of a lump in his throat. Time to extricate himself.
“It’s all right honey. We all make mistakes, and even I have to admit, it didn’t look good, did it?”
“I guess not”
Harry sensed the beginnings of a smile on the other end. He relaxed.
"I’ve got to get back to work. See you at six?
“Okay. Love you, Daddy”
“Love you too, Smurfette”
The call disconnected and Harry was abruptly returned to reality. He stood up and punched the air triumphantly. Yes! Off the hook! The old horndog rides again! God bless dumb, beautiful Eleanor. God bless her shit awful memory for absolutely everything, and God bless the power of suggestion.
He sauntered back to his desk and pressed a button at the bottom of the monitor. Immediately, two steel arms sprung from the top, each projecting a separate, holographic screen around the tangible middle one. A similar device sprayed a holographic keyboard onto his desk. Harry began to type furiously, flipping icons from screen to screen with a wave of his hand. He was designing a new application which would allow Synet to welcome users by name, rather than I.D. number. Harry valued that personal touch, and despite his recent elevation to upper management, his coding skills were still as sharp as cut glass. It was inconceivable that he’d helm a project of this magnitude without getting his hands dirty. As he worked, he made a mental note to buy Eleanor some flowers.
Thorburn reclined against his battered old Skybike, and lit a cigar. Christ, there was nothing like a good smoke after a tough shift, and fuck all those busybodying cocksuckers fixing to ban 'em! He knew he should quit, for his daughter’s sake, if nothing else. She was always pestering him, in her own way. Over Synet, or with her eyes, those beautiful ashen green eyes…
His reverie was interrupted by the harsh blare of his Skybike radio “232 come in. Over.”
“232 checking in. Over”
“We have a disturbance over at Western Valley apartments on the corner of 212th and Baxter. Prowler call. Over.”
“Negative, operator. I’m off duty. Over.”
“Uh, negative to that 232. Check your watch. You still have six minutes. Over.”
Thorburn knew it was useless to argue.
“Okay operator. You know you’re a real pain in the ass, over.”
“If I’m pissing you off, Thorburn, you grizzled old fuck, I must be doing something right. Over.”
Thorburn laughed and mounted his bike. He flicked on the siren and revved his princess up into the sky. From this privileged vantage point, he was able to make a bee-line for the intersection of 212th and Baxter.
He hovered over the corner and peered down. One of the buildings, about three down 212th, was merrily ablaze. Fire crews milled around the bottom, spraying water and retardant gas through heavy-duty hoses. Everything seemed to be under control. Thorburn radioed dispatch.
“Operator, this is 232. What the hell are you doing spoiling my weekend with a fire call? Over.”
“232, we received a call about a prowler, no mention of a fire, over”
Curious, considering the size of the fire. Why would anybody calling about a prowler not bother to mention it, just in case? Thorburn manoeuvered the bike round to the back of the burning building. He could see that it backed onto the Western Valley apartment complex. One, and only one storey had a back window open. Strange sight, considering all the fumes. He decided to check it out.
The battle-fatigued old bike slowly dropped out of the sky until it was level with the window.
“Hello!”. Thorburn shouted. “Anyone there?”
Nothing. He moved closer until he could almost stick his head into the open window.
“Hello? Anybody home? Just your local friendly neighbourhood policeman. Just need to ask a few questions. Anybody home?”
Still nothing. That was when he saw it. The foot, jutting into the hallway. *The body it belonged to, obviously prone behind the wall. Thorburn unclipped his gun, dismounted the bike leaving it hovering in the air, and stepped onto the fire escape and into the apartment.
“Police!” he shouted, his voice powerful and ringing with unquestionable authority. “I’m armed. Show yourself.”
He approached the edge of the wall and took a deep breath. One, two, three. He spun around the corner in the firing position. And he saw.
The walls were so thickly coated in blood, it looked as though someone had decorated a red wall in patches of white. Arterial gouts had sprayed the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. It looked like a lost Pollock in gaudy monochrome. The bodies were everywhere, in various states of obvious distress. Several were half on and half-off the sofa. Others lay on the floor. One was draped over the upturned television, the picture dyed a garish red blaring toward the ceiling. There were children. Oh God, there were children here. Thorburn snatched at his radio.
“232 needs assistance! 232 needs back-up. Western Valley apartments on Baxter. We have multiple homicides. 232 requests IMMEDIATE assistance!”
The front window was open. Thorburn ran to see outside and caught a flash, a glimpse of a black trenchcoat tail vaulting over the apartment’s garden wall.
He rushed back to his bike, leaping through the open back window and landing square on the saddle. He revved the engine and sped into the twilit sky. He flew high above Western Valley apartments.
“232. Suspect fleeing on foot. Black trenchcoat. Considered EXTREMELY hostile. Request immediate assistance.”
“Copy 232, pulling up live street feed…cross referencing with description”
Thorburn flipped down his visor, doubled the magnification, scoured the area. He waited, praying, for dispatch to come back with something. The wait was agony.
Thirty seconds later his radio crackled into life.
“232 this is operator. Suspect sighted. Black trenchcoat. Corner of Waltz and Sutton. Over.”
“Copy dispatch. In pursuit. Over.”
“Summoning back-up. Over.”
“Copy”
“And Thorburn, take care of yourself, buddy”
He smiled grimly as the Skybike pivoted toward Waltz and Sutton.
“Copy that. Out”
Thorburn’s battered old Skybike screamed in pain as it dove toward the street. The engines threatened to cut out as the pavement rushed up to meet them. With moments to spare, Thorburn spun the gears into full reverse and threw the rear take-off thrusters wide open. The effect was extraordinary. The bike dropped from 200mph to a full stop in two seconds, landing comfortably on the corner of Waltz and Sutton. Thorburn dismounted, drew his gun, and scanned the crowd for a black trenchcoat. Almost immediately, he saw his man, tall, hands in pockets, sauntering along the opposite side of the street some 50 meters away. *He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. But there was something about him, something Thorburn couldn’t quite articulate. He cocked his gun and radioed dispatch with an updated location. He would have been content to hold back until reinforcements arrived, when his suspect stopped, checked his watch - again, there was something weirdly disjointed in his movements - and suddenly ducked into an alleyway.
“You’re mine, Shitbird” Thorburn thought, grimly. He ran to the alley, still pretty light on his feet for a fifty-four year old, took a breath and threw himself into the alley’s mouth in the firing position.
“Freeze!” he roared “Armed police!”
The suspect stood in front of a dumpster at the end of the alley, silhouetted in the neon haze of a barsign. He had his back to Thorburn and his head was buried behind his upturned collar. He stopped, slowly raised his arms to his sides and straightened himself up. Thorburn realised just what it was about the man that had previously given him pause. He was tall. Astonishingly tall. Seven feet if he were an inch. And his limbs. They were so spindly they were totally out of proportion to the rest of him. He was able to touch both sides of the alley with ease. He’d actually been hunching himself on the street. Thorburn approached.
“Hands on your head! ON YOUR HEAD! Interlock your fingers! On your knees! KNEES!”
The suspect knelt, his hands on his head, staring straight ahead with an expression of murderous fury.
“232 to dispatch. Request immediate back-up to Strickland alley on Sutton.”. Thorburn walked round to face his captive, and caught the full force of his malevolent glare. He cocked an eyebrow in amusement.
“You tryin’ to eyefuck me, shitbird?”
The suspect took a deep breath, and Thorburn, afforded a better view of his proportions, marvelled at the tiny circumference of his waist. The man looked like a spider, almost as if he had been assembled from the spare parts of other human beings.
“Well?” he asked “You gonna give me any trouble, psycho?”
Silence.
“I’m sorry” said Thorburn, feigning a exaggerated tone of apology “You must have gotten me confused with a man who repeats himself” he nuzzled his gun against the man’s temple.
“Do you have a wife, officer?” the man asked, his voice high and wavering, as if suppressing a deep wellspring of violent impulses. “Girlfriend? Kids?”. Thorburn stared.
“Because if you do” the suspect continued “I’m going to find them. I’m going to find them and oh, I’m going to hurt them”
Thorburn cocked his weapon “Think you’re brave, huh? We’ll see how brave you are when you’re strapped down in a vaporisation chamber. And I’ll tell you now, the last thing you’re ever gonna see, is my face, smiling at you through bulletproof glass”
The spider laughed at this, a high pitched, girlish squeal which reverberated between the alley walls, echoing, as though it were tumbling through a sewer pipe.
Thorburn stared in mute amazement. Where was his fucking back-up? It was safe to say that the vast majority, maybe even all, of the criminals he had cornered, and there had been many over the years, faced him with a mixture of fear and shame, or at the very least a kind of unreasoning apprehension. And it was true what they said, fear stank, and Thorburn had become sensitive to the odour in his time. But this man? He was clean. He betrayed absolutely no fear at all.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“Oh, everything. Nothing. You. You amuse me, officer. So brave, so righteous. With absolutely no conception of what’s about to happen, to you, to everyone.” he convulsed under the weight of a galloping peal of laughter. As he bent forward Thornburn saw that, where he, and pretty much everyone else had a neat, unobtrusive Synet implant scar, the entire back of this man’s neck was a twisted whorl of oak brown scar tissue, threaded with what looked like microcircuitry. The spider laughed, harder and harder, his hilarity feeding upon itself. Between the sobs of mirth, and as his back-up finally pulled up to the mouth of the alley, Thorburn could discern two words, repeated like a mantra.
“It’s coming.”