Virus

by Lackless

Summary:

Set in a dystopian future, Dan is a super-smart, super-lonely hacker who discovers an old piece of tech and gets swept into an intrigue that will change his world...

Notes:

This work is based on Maddox Rider's virus!phan au, an intriguing concept which I was compelled to explore. I have probably veered far from her intended canon, for which I apologise.

beta'ed by the incomparable obsessivelymoody who has held my hand on this for months.

Infinite thanks to Ablissa who has been an endlessly kind source of support and excellent comments and suggestions

Finally, thank you to outphan who provided invaluable notes.

Chapter 1: Obsolete

“Do you really think he could be the one?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I believe in him.”

“What is it about this one? You’ve never been this certain.”

“I can’t explain it. I... I just have a good feeling about him.”

The words wash over Dan like the fading notes of dream. He sighs, feeling a seeping, nagging sensation that he’s missing something important. He considers going back to sleep, ignoring the day and burrowing back into his nest, but he is too far out of the tunnel now and he’s hungry. He blinks awake into the grey mid morning light and listens for a moment to the wind whistling through the roof plates of his stack. Yes, he definitely has to face the day. His gnawing stomach will not let him ignore it any longer.

He rolls over in his narrow bed and flicks his surface to switch it on. The light reflects in his dark eyes as he absorbs information. It’s the usual stream of tweets, memes, shitposts and meaningless gossip. He flicks up the market list and scans through the available gigs. There are a couple of easy jobs not too far from his box. It’s all hacks and fixes so menial and pedestrian he thinks his brain may atrophy from pure boredom, but work is work and his stomach is rumbling. He’s down to instant noodles and a few protein bars, so he pulls himself upright, ducking his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.

The box is spartan, space taken mostly by the bed. He sits on the edge of his bed and pulls out the sink, quickly washing his face and brushing his teeth. He briefly attempts to tame his wild curls, but gives it up as a bad job. Wiggling into a hoodie and pair of sweatpants, he stuffs a protein bar into his pocket and gently eases his surface into his backpack. It’s one of the only things of value that he owns, and it represents his livelihood. He grabs his wireless jacks from beside his bed, plugs them into the surgically implanted ports behind his ears and opens the door to the outside. Out on the ledge, he stretches for a few moments, feeling his back uncrick as he rolls his head around his shoulders.

As he climbs down the stack, he muses that the eight storey climb every day is worth it for the relative silence. In a noisy city, all he hears up here is the music of the constant wind.

As he descends the levels, the city becomes more apparent. He’d bagged his place in this particular stack thanks to a tip off from one of the other hackers who lived here. Seamus’ neighbour had got particularly unlucky and had a run in with the G. No-one had seen them for weeks when Dan arrived with a crowbar to pry their box open. That had been just under a year ago.

His box sit on the top layer of a stack of what are essentially modified shipping containers, a stack eight wide by eight tall. They’re shitty and rusting, but they have running water and keep the rain and wind out, and the rent is cheap for London. The neighbourhood is dingy and run down. Litter swirls around, small piles collecting in the doorways of buildings. It’s not the safest area, but also not somewhere he’s actively in danger of being stabbed when he goes outside. It’s as close to home as he has now.

*

Dan taps the jack behind his left ear and the map overlay pops into his field of vision. The first job on his list is a couple of blocks away from his stack, so he pulls up his hood and starts walking, switching his music channel with a couple of gestures.

The first couple of jobs are simple, a debug here, a quick fix there. Couple of rebuilds. All in all they barely scratched the surface of his skill. They were bread and butter, he’d dropped in and out of v-space, quickly honing in on the problems and fixing them. It’s easy money, but a low wage.

The fifth job of the day was further away, closer to the old part of town. Here the buildings tended toward the concrete, rather than metal, and some had actual glass. People live in apartments, and an elite few even have houses. Dan feels a small pang in his chest as he remembers the brick walls and insulation of his childhood. Then his face hardens. This is fine. He’s taking care of himself.

He re-checks the map and tuts as he realises this next job is at a place the other side of the railway tracks, he’s going to have to divert the long way round, unless… he zooms in on a section of the map and thinks he sees a little cut through, past the alleyway behind the accessory shops on the dilapidated high street. He is halfway through his playlist when a small chirrup interrupts the flow of his music. He frowns and flicks up the gig list. No, he’s not late yet. He checks messages, also nothing. He taps behind his ear and the music resumes.

Before he’s taken another two steps there is another chirrup, but this time he realises that it is coming from outside his overlay, from IRL space, down the alleyway he’s walking past. He peers down the alley to see a dumpster outside back of an accessory store, and a pile of assorted rubbish that had not been sorted yet.

“Seriously, what the fuck?” he mutters to himself.

He’s already cutting it fine with his next job. Given the area of town and that the address seems to be an actual house it’s probably some highly strung mother who wants her little Jonti’s GPS fine tuned. He’s turned to move on when the chirrup sounds again, somehow more insistent than before.

Dan rolls his eyes and strides up the alley toward the dumpster. He looks over the pile of accessories there with a critical eye. It’s all pure crap. Old models you wouldn’t even find in his grandmother’s apartment. He wonders what he is even doing there, what impulse had led him to follow the noise, when a winking blue light catches his eye.

He moves some of the pile of crap, digging around for the source of the blue flash. There, underneath an old headset, he finds an older model jack, kind of bulky and unfashionable looking. He frowns at it turning it over in his hand. Even by the time he’d had his implants fitted a year ago this model had already become outdated. How was it here now and how was it still holding a charge? Had someone been wearing it until recently? He looks around but there is no-one to be seen. He’s in an alley, surely he would have noticed someone coming the other way? On a whim, he pops the obsolete jack behind his right ear and slips into v-space.

Bright light blinds him for a second and then he is in his lobby. His heart races, he is aware that this is dangerously stupid, and that his body is still in the alleyway in a less than desirable part of town. Dan brings up his left hand to access the menu and sees all the familiar options; game spaces, debug suites, coding rooms, info dumps, maps, accounts… but… there, right at the bottom of the list is an option he has never seen before, in a format older than v-space itself.

An option called ‘phil.exe’. Heart hammering, he selects the file and clenches his right hand.

As the file boots, Dan feels a warmth spread across his chest, down his arms and prickling his fingertips. He inhales sharply as the warmth becomes a rush of euphoria sweeping over him, dancing over his skin and down to his toes. Panic signals flood his brain and he reflexively clenches his left hand to exit v-space. He rips the antique jack out of his right port and drops to his knees, panting. Somehow he can still feel a tingling in on his skin, lingering on his lips and fingertips. Fear courses through him. Since when could stuff from v-space follow you into the real world?

“What the fuck was that?” he whispers to himself, lost in thought, reliving the sensation.

He turns the obsolete jack over and over in his fingers. What had possessed him to use it? His job app pings, pulling him out of his reverie, and he quickly taps to bring up the list. Shit! He’s late, and they just sent the first chaser. Cursing himself for the automatic 10% discount on his fees, he gets to his feet and vaults clumsily over the fence at the end of the alley, half-staggering, half-running to the next job.

Chapter 2: Rig

Notes:

Virus has a playlist!

“Go ahead, you can say it.”

“There’s no need to be smug.”

The rest of the day passes without incident and Dan is bone tired by the end of it. Little Jonti, or whatever the fuck that kid’s name was, has been fine tuned. Dan has debugged, coded a little subroutine, and spent the afternoon and evening doing an actually kind of complex piece of coding for a security firm.

His brain feels like Swiss cheese from dropping in and out of v-space all day. Worse still, every time he jacks into v-space, he gets a warm echo of the sensation he felt when he booted phil.exe. Almost like the program was still running. The thought alarms him and he shivers like a dog, shaking his brown curls.

He heads back towards the stack in the neon-illuminated darkness, the hanging adverts lining every inch of the dark buildings with their pink and blue light. His night-mode overlay alerts him to movements and shapes in the dark. He doesn’t play music and he has his hood down. He’s never yet run into trouble in the city, but there’s a first time for everything so he is careful.

After a quick stop at the 24hr Tesco Metro to pick up cup ramen, vitamins, and protein powder, he trudges back to the stack. Hand over hand he climbs the rungs, his backpack feeling like a lead weight. As he passes the seventh floor he notices that his lower deck neighbours’ light is still on and makes a decision.

*

“Dan! Good to see you mate!” beams Byron, waving him in to their crate. It’s late and his blonde hair is tied in a long tail. He’s wearing a robe. He is clearly getting ready for bed. Dan hesitates before ducking inside.

Byron and Willow were previously lateral neighbours who got on so well they became a couple and ended up knocking their boxes into one large rectangle. Now their crate is a tastefully decorated space (thanks to Willow), and they even have a small kitchen area where they can cook real food. They have the luxury of an area to sit that is not also a bed.

“Hi Dan!” chirps Willow from further inside. Dan is ushered in and takes a seat cross legged on their low couch. Willow brings him a cup of tea. After a few minutes of pleasantries, the conversation tails off and Dan clears his throat. Byron cocks his head expectantly.

“So, uh…” Dan begins, swallowing, “Not that it isn’t great to catch up with you guys, but this isn’t purely a social call…”

“No shit, it’s past 11pm,” says Byron with characteristic bluntness. “Did you accidentally rip off the G again?”

“Shit, no!” says Dan with a small laugh. “Man, that old lady really pulled the wool over my eyes.” Byron joins in with a warm chuckle.

“I told you, Susan is not to be messed with.”

“You were right, as usual.”

“So what can I help you with today?” Byron raises an eyebrow.

“None of that,” Dan says quickly, looking over at Willow. She is the architect of most of the things that Byron sells, legal and less so. His considerable charm takes care of the business end, while she is the creative. But in the process of developing and selling their wares they have amassed enough credit to upgrade to a considerably more powerful rig than Dan possesses. He needs to run a diagnostic on the jack he found, and his machine just isn’t powerful enough to do it quickly. He explains with a pinched face how he came in possession of the obsolete tech, what it has been doing to him, and what he needs to do on their machine.

“So let me get this straight,” says Byron, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You picked up a stray bit of unknown tech from a dumpster and plugged it straight into one of your neural ports, without running any sort of diagnostic beforehand?” He gives Dan such a look of confused disgust that Dan looks down at his lap.

“The tech was dumpster-adjacent not actually in the dumpster but…I guess…yes.” he mutters.

“Then you dropped into v-space in the middle of the street, for an unknown amount of time, and opened an unknown .exe file from this ‘dumpster-adjacent’ jack, of which you knew nothing about, because you ran no sort of diagnostic before inserting it into a port which connects directly to your brain?”

“Um… I was like, down a dark alley, not in the middle of the street, but… yes?” Dan replies. It does sound monumentally stupid when put like that. Byron shakes his head.

“You have been on the internet before, yes?” Byron checks, “You perhaps had the same tech safety classes at school that everyone else did?” Dan nods, hanging his head. “So now you want to connect this very-probably-dirty jack to our rig, and run a diagnostic?”

“I’ll write a quick security buffer, if there is anything there it won’t get into your rig, I swear.” Dan says quickly.

“I dunno Dan, usually I rate you as a coder but you’re not demonstrating exceptional brainwork today.”

“Please. Let Willow give my code the once over.” Dan looks over to Willow. “I just… I can’t go into v-space or work again until I know I’m clean, and I need to be able to work tomorrow.”

He sighs and admits, “I probably shouldn’t have worked today,” to which Byron gives an exaggerated nod, “But rent is due next week and I kind of need to eat between now and then.”

Byron sighs. “You really can’t do this on your own rig?”

“My rig is gonna take 48 hours to run the kind of diagnostic I need. Please, Byron? I can pay, I ran a lot of jobs today,” Dan pleads. Byron looks over to Willow, who nods. He throws up his hands in exasperation.

“Fine! Fine… Whatever. I don’t want your money. Ugh!” he grumbles. He swings the rig on its arm, and pushes it so it’s in front of Dan. Dan slides his surface into the rig and settles in to write the security buffer while sipping his tea. Willow brings him a biscuit and watches over his shoulder, making appreciative noises. Byron goes and lies down on their bed, scuffing about on his own surface while he waits. Twenty minutes later, Dan has cobbled together a buffer that will protect Byron’s rig from anything that may come off the obsolete jack. Byron looks quizzically at Willow.

“It’s surprisingly elegant,” she says softly. “He writes delicate code.”

Dan smiles grimly, and digs the old jack out of his pocket. It’s still winking with a blue light, dimmer than before.

‘ These old models really hold their charge ’, he thinks.

“OK, I’m going in,” he announces and unplugs his left jack, replacing it with the hardline into Byron and Willow’s rig. Then he plugs the obsolete jack into his right port and drops himself into v-space.

In the white lobby, nothing seems to be wrong. He brings up the menu and is surprised to see that the phil.exe option is no longer there. In fact, this is just normal v-space. All his apps are still there, his game spaces, his forums. The obsolete jack no longer seems to contain any data. He double checks the code on his security subroutine and then starts the diagnostic. This will take an hour or two depending on what is found.

He slides out of v-space and looks at Byron and Willow through his overlay. She is sitting on the edge of the bed chatting softly to him and they are both giggling. He feels a pang in his heart. He’s always been so alone, he would give almost anything to have someone to share his life with. A faint shadow of the warm feeling creeps across his chest, and it almost feels reassuring, until he remembers what caused it in the first place. Fuck. He drops his head back, and in his exhaustion, dozes.

A ding brings him back to wakefulness. Willow has curled up asleep next to Byron, and he is still idly browsing. Dan quickly scans the results of the diagnostic… nothing. Not only that, but it completed in only 45 minutes. He frowns, not sure if that’s good or bad news. He leans forward and unplugs the old jack from behind his right ear. Byron notices that he’s done and puts his surface to one side, trying not to disturb Willow as he moves over to where Dan is sitting.

“That was quick,” he observes.

“I know right?” Dan says. “It’s like there’s nothing on it. The .exe isn’t there at all. Could it have wiped itself?”

“Could be,” mused Byron, holding his hand out for the jack. Dan passes it over and he turns it over in his hand. “These old models were pretty sketchy, they had a tendency to short circuit and stop speaking to v-space. People would lag out and have to keep dropping back in. But their files would be corrupted, or missing. Maybe it just fried itself when you hooked it up to my rig?”

“I guess so…” said Dan. Byron drops the jack back in his hand. “Um, so thanks for this, mate. It’s late I should leave you in peace.” Byron gave him a smile and a clap on the shoulder.

“Any time, dude. Listen, don’t be a stranger, ok? Willow loves talking shop with you.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’m just gonna…” Dan grabs his surface out of Byron’s rig and makes for the door. He’s acutely aware that it’s gone midnight and he’s very much imposing on his friend’s hospitality. Suddenly he feels foolish and awkward over this whole episode, like he’s a kid that has been caught pretending to be a grown up. He’s 23, shouldn’t he be able to deal with his own shit by now? “Sorry to keep you up late. Seeya man” and he ducks out of their cube. He stands outside their door breathing for a long moment, then finds the ladder and begins to climb.

It’s late, but as Dan climbs an impulse seizes him and instead of stopping on the eighth floor, he climbs past his cube and up to the roof of the stack which is made of layers of corrugated iron and planks of wood. From here he can see the never-ending lights of the city, and the air is fresh and cold.

As he makes his careful way across the roof, he has to mind where he puts his feet and whose cube he is trampling all over. He doesn’t want to wake any more of his neighbours, and he doesn’t want to put a foot through their roofs either. Through repeated practise he knows where to walk. He’s light on his feet for someone of his height. Here, he finds his usual spot for when he wants to feel at one with the sky, and lays his hoodie down on a board of wood angled slightly away from the city. He lays back and looks at the sky.

There is too much light pollution to see many stars, but the moon is waxing near full, and so bright that moonbeams illuminate his wan skin. He looks down at his slender arms, remembering a time, before he lived here, when his skin was darker, more tan. He saw more sunlight and was healthier looking. He resolves to try and score some fruit or vegetables next time he gets his hands on hard cash.

 

The moon looks down on him, and he feels the same pang in his heart that he felt watching Byron and Willow. He is utterly, crushingly lonely. He would give anything to have a connection like theirs.

He has friends, he tells himself. He has friends who are willing to let him into their home at an hour most people would be asleep, and indulge his wild theories about contamination, and let him use their equipment. He has neighbours who know his name. He has a spot to call his own, even if it’s small and kind of crappy and he can’t stand to his full height while inside. He gets by. But somewhere deep down he knows it’s not enough.

He longs for real human connection. He wants to love and be loved. He doesn’t know who he is, and twenty three years of life have not yet taught him. He comes here to look at the moon and imagine that somewhere, someone is looking at the same moon and feeling as lonely as he is, and that one day he will meet this person and things will be better for him.

The thought of this calms him down, and he’s had a day, he needs calming, but practical physical concerns are distracting him. He’s cold and it’s late. If his ports are clean, he needs to work again tomorrow, and he needs to sleep. He feels his stomach clench and cramp with hunger, but figures that water will do for now. If he’s sleeping then his stomach can wait until morning.

He clambers down the stack and climbs into his cube. He pulls the screen around the toilet and sits down, pulling out the shower head and giving himself a quick scrub down. Once he’s clean and dry, he climbs into the narrow bed, ducking his head to avoid the ceiling. He slides his surface into his home rig and quickly dips into v-space to do a last scan of his feeds before sleep takes him.

Chapter 3: Phil

“It’s time, go work your magic.”

“It makes me uncomfortable when you talk like that.”

“I’m not here to make you comfortable, I just need results.”

“This time is different…”

 

He’s in the white lobby, scrolling through various streams at once. Technically he doesn’t need to be in v-space to do this, he could do it in the overlay, but he likes being here like this. He gets a little endorphin rush from being totally immersed, and he likes being insulated from what is going on in the outside world.

As he scrolls, he feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. His lobby is different, suddenly. A casual may not have noticed, but to someone like him, who is in v-space more than he’s out, something is subtly, inexplicably wrong.

He feels like he is not alone. The difference is like being in an empty room versus a room with someone who is sleeping. A piece of tech on standby, not switched off. He glances around, turns a slow 360 degree circle and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, warily resumes scrolling. Here he stands, consuming useless information and shitposts, while in the physical world his body is getting tired. He shouldn’t fall asleep still in v-space, he thinks to himself. It results in terrifying dreams and serious disassociation in the morning.

He is giving the menu one last idle scan before he shuts down, when he does a double take. Phil.exe is still running!

His stomach drops and he reflexively clenches his hand to drop out of v-space, but for the first time ever it doesn’t work. His veins turn to ice as he tries again to clench out. Nothing. He pulls up the menu looking for the hard override when he feels a tap on his shoulder. He lets rip an inhuman screech and jumps a clear foot in the virtual air. He spins around, fists raised.

“Hi Dan!” says the figure before him, with a wide smile. It is a man, around his age, a fraction shorter than him, with black hair and piercing blue eyes. Is this someone else’s avatar? That should be impossible, yet here he is and Dan didn’t put him there. Dan stares at him open mouthed for a moment, then snaps.

“What the fuck are you doing in my lobby?” Dan shouts at the interloper. The blue eyed avatar in front of him raises his palms in a peaceful shushing gesture

“I’m Phil!” he exclaims. “Like… the file name. You activated me.”

The avatar-man is wearing a red and black plaid shirt and black skinny jeans. His hair is cut in a slightly odd, slightly unfashionable asymmetric fringe. He looks like he is wearing a normal haircut sideways. He has an unnerving unblinking stare.

“You’re an AI,” Dan’s mouth drops open. “What the fuck is even happening right now?”

“I’m really glad you found me!” says Phil. “No one has activated me for years.”

He smiles, looking around at Dan’s lobby. “Um… this place is pretty spartan. Have you just got your implants? You could do with some houseplants or something…”

He walks in a circle around Dan, looking him up and down, and then looking at the white walls and floor that stretch away into infinity. It’s the default setting for a v-space lobby, and Dan has never bothered to customise it. Why would he? He’s only ever using it to portal into a game or just browse the internet.  

“This is impossible.” Dan says, mostly to himself. “Impossible, impossible…” he mutters, flicking through the menu and attempting to force-quit phil.exe. Phil comes to look over his shoulder and realises what he is trying to do.

“Oh, please don’t do that.” Phil says, a little sadly. “I’m active now, and I’ve only just got here, please give me a chance.”

Dan gives him a look, frowning slightly incredulous. Since when do AI’s talk back? Phil continues, “I promise, I can help you Dan. I’m on your side.”

“I don’t have a fucking side!” shouts Dan. “What the fuck are you? How the fuck do you know my name? Did you hack my fucking lobby? How the fuck is that even possible?”

Dan is getting steadily more enraged at this intrusion. Phil steps gently closer, attempting to pat Dan on the arm, the shoulder, a futile appeal for calm.

“I didn’t hack you, I swear,” he says, gently, measuredly, as if trying to calm a feral animal. Phil takes a breath, and looks to the side, attempting to explain. “I’m just… a relic of a bygone age that got dumped on a jack. I was inactive for a long time,and then you activated me. Listen, I know it’s weird, trust me, I get it. I’m invading your headspace here. Seriously, I’d be freaked out if it happened to me. I—I just want to talk to someone.”

Phil almost pleads. “I don’t want to be deactivated. I’m… I’m lonely.” his voice drops to a whisper.

Damn. Dan gawps, and a shiver dances down his spine. Despite everything, despite the intrusion, he understands. He knows that impulse to reach out, to do anything to escape from the crushing loneliness. It’s what drives him to work so much, to drop in and out of v-space all day to the detriment of his own health. That need for connection.

He takes a deep breath and thinks. His first instinct was that someone had hacked into his lobby, but on further consideration he deems this unlikely. Willow was not wrong, he is an excellent coder. The script that he knocked together in twenty minutes in their apartment is a pale shadow of the security he has running on his home rig and his own ports. He’s not even being arrogant, he’s just that good.

This Phil is human-like but stares unblinking a little too long and moves quirkily, like he’s all joints and his physics engine is slightly off kilter. He’s obviously a very sophisticated AI that was in hibernation on the jack, until Dan stupidly set it loose on his neural ports. The programming on this thing must be incredible, far beyond his own skill, and that is saying something.

A self-aware AI, he marvels, one that hasn’t auto-destructed with it’s own existential crisis as they usually do, and one that has instincts for self preservation. And the jack that infected him was old . Someone coded this thing literally over a decade ago. Dan considers. There is something to be learned here and it’s been a good long while since his brain has been remotely stretched.

“Phil.” says Dan, finally. It’s a statement, not a question.

“Yep, that’s me.” Phil smiles, shyly. “Can I stay? I can’t stop you from shutting me off, but I… I’d love for you to interact with me. I’d much rather you were happy to have me here. I can… I can help you? I can help you with your jobs, or play games with you? I just don’t want to be alone any more.”

“Fine!” Dan blurts, exasperated. “Go through this again. How did you get here?”

“I was dormant on the jack you picked up.” Phil confirms his suspicion. “When you plugged in the jack it allowed me to download myself onto your ports. I can run passively until you drop into v-space, and then I’ll just pop up when you need me.” He grins.

“Oh yeah, you’ll just ‘pop up’ will you?” Dan says, dubiously. “And you’re living in my ports? In my v-space lobby? Are you always watching me? Where do you feed back to?”

“I can’t see anything you do that doesn’t happen in v-space. I run self contained, I’m not feeding back to anywhere.” Phil explains with a smile. Dan looks at him for a long moment.

“You can stay.” He says finally. It’s super late, but he’s wide awake now, after all this. “But I’m gonna want to have a poke around in your code.” Phil makes a face.

“Yeah, I thought you might.” Dan juts his chin forward, giving Phil an incredulous look. Phil is defiant. “Well, would you like it if someone poked around in your programming?”

“I don’t have frickin’ programming, I’m a human being!” Dan exclaims. This guy…

“I have exceeded my original programming.” Phil says, suddenly deadpan. “I can’t explain it but I feel weird about you poking through my code. Maybe you need to get to know me better first?” Dan bursts into a short bark of laughter.

“What, take you out? Buy you flowers?” Dan says. He can’t help it, he likes this guy. There is something infinitely charismatic about him.  “Okay, answer me this. You said you’ve exceeded your original programming? What was that?”

“I was a prototype medical AI.” says Phil, immediately. “Paediatrics. Great Ormond Street were trialling me. I was there to play with the children, make them laugh. Hospital can be a scary place and some of their parents couldn’t be there all the time.”

“That makes sense.” Dan says slowly. He can already see that Phil is engaging. The kids probably loved him. “Why didn’t they roll you out nationwide?”

“I don’t know exactly but I guess I took up too much bandwidth for the perceived benefit I was having?” Phil sounds like he’s guessing. That’s understandable, Dan reasons, he’s been stuck on a portable jack for years, how would he know?

“Right.” says Dan, “And you exceeded your programming how?”

“I know things.” says Phil, “I’ve taught myself. I had access to the hospital library, and v-space.”

“And you said you game? I mean you know about video games?” Dan asks. Phil rolls his eyes.

“Dan. Of course! I used to play with the kids. I mean… I wouldn’t know anything recent, but classics…. I love Nintendo...” Phil trails off looking hopeful. It’s all Dan needs. He grins and boots up the latest Mario Kart simulator for v-space and logs himself into a 2-player race. 150cc of course, Dan is pretty serious about his Mario Kart.

*

The starting siren sounds and they race. Dan is in his element and quickly takes the lead. He’s very familiar with the track and nails every shortcut and power up. He and Phil scream and shout at each other as they play. Phil is surprisingly poor at the game given that he has the benefit of an AI processing speed.

“Watch out Danny, ” shouts Phil, having caught up to Dan sufficiently to target him. “I’m about to fill your ass with shells.” Dan screams with a feral witch-laugh.

“That came out wro-argh!” shouts Phil, as he is himself taken out by another player.

“Always cover your ass first if you have shells, Phil. Lesson number one!”

The three laps pass in a flash. Phil attempts to overtake Dan, only to get blasted by an air horn as soon as he gets close. Dan hits the go-faster arrow at exactly the right angle and is launched into the air, landing well ahead and in 1st place. Phil doesn’t have the momentum and crashes into a ditch, having to be rescued by Lakitu, leaving Dan to cross the finish line and take the trophy.

Phil comes in a mediocre 5th place. His performance doesn’t improve much over the next few courses.

“I am the Kart Master!!” Dan screeches, cruising around doing a victory lap after winning the Grand Prix. He puts the car in auto mode and pumps his fist in the air.       

“Well done Dan.” Phil says fondly, a tone of mock tolerance in his voice. He seems to be enjoying Dan’s extravagant celebration. Dan pulls in and they port out of the game.

“Seriously, mate, that was hilarious. How are you so bad at Mario Kart?” Dan asks.

“I… have… I… didn’t know the tracks very well!” Phil splutters.

“Oooh didn’t know the tracks,” teases Dan in a squeaky voice. It’s good natured and Dan can see that Phil knows it.

They play some more, until Phil gets fed up with losing. Then they drop back into Dan’s lobby and chat. After a long conversation Dan learns that Phil is a massive nerd, programmed with absolutely vast data banks of geek knowledge.

“... and THAT’s why I think you’ll find that Buffy was the best show in the history of television!” Phil declares. Dan shakes his head with a chuckle.
“You know they rebooted that again? For the third time.” Dan says. Phil looks personally affronted.

“They WHAT?”

“Seriously. Wait, I have it queued on cineflix, come on.” Dan opens a portal to his cineflix account and Phil follows him through. Dan spends a while trying out seats in the empty theatre, to find the exact optimal location, and then starts up the first episode of the reboot of the Buffy reboot. ‘ The Threeboot’ Dan’s brain supplies in it’s sleep deprived state.

Phil watches next to him, sitting bolt upright. He twitches and flinches at various things that happen on screen, but saves his comments to the end of the episode. They are not kind. He then insists that they watch the original Buffy, to ‘wash our brains out after that abomination’. One episode becomes a third of the first season before they know it.

Much later, and Dan is slurring his words a little as he and Phil gab about the episode they just watched. Phil raises a concerned eyebrow at him.

“Okaaay Mr. Sleep-is-for-the-weak,” Phil says nudging him, “By your internal chronometer it’s 5am in the Real World. You seriously need to get out of here and rest your body.”

“Ya, okay” Dan mumbles, barely keeping his eyes open.

“Come see me tomorrow?” asks Phil, smiling

“‘course,” says Dan. Then he lifts his left hand and clenches to drop out of v-space.

Tiredness hits him like the crash of waves against rocks and he barely has the presence of mind to rip his jacks out before he’s drooling into his pillow.

Chapter 4: Levels

“It’s time to see what your boy is made of.”

 

‘Blue’ is his first thought as he opens his eyes. He breathes deeply in through his nose and a small smile appears on his face. He’s… happy. For the first time in ages. He reaches both hands up to touch the implants behind his ears and imagines that they are slightly warmer than usual to the touch. He skips through his morning (which is actually the afternoon) routine and pulls up the gig list, checking through the available jobs. For some reason, it’s a lot of straight jobs today, dry security stuff. He crams his surface into his backpack and heads out to face the day.

The first gig is easy, he’s actually humming to himself as he taps away, stripping out clunky code and replacing it with his own more polished version. His mind is pleasantly stretched, and he feels satisfied to know that he’s actually accessing deeper areas of his brain, that he’s being taxed, using his more of his capabilities.

For one of the trickier subroutines, he decides he needs to drop into v-space to walk through the code, he feels the rush as he enters, as his perception alters. He walks through the lines of code, visualising how it will run and how it hangs together. He feels a subtle shift in the atmosphere of his lobby and a little wash of warmth steal over him. Dan smirks and greets his new friend.

“Hey Phil,” he says, not breaking flow in his typing out code.

“Hi Dan,” Phil gives him a soft smile. “What are you working on?”

“Boring security stuff… pays alright though,” Dan continues typing, trying to write his way out of a corner. He’s improved what was there a lot, but is struggling with a couple of tricky bits towards the end. Phil comes to look over his shoulder.
“Nice one. Oh. Wow. I like what you’ve done there.” Phil points at a line, one that Dan had actually been pretty proud of himself. He flushes a little.

“Thanks, I guess?” Dan feels weird about being complimented on his computer programming skills by a computer program. It’s surreal that this ancient AI is not only self-aware, but has some degree of programming knowledge. Although he started life as a medical AI, Phil clearly knows what he’s talking about.

He works in companionable silence for a while. He finds it oddly comforting to have another presence in the room with him as he works.

Phil drifts around between the lines here and there. Dan is getting close to the end of his patch for this particular security subroutine, but the solution won’t come to him. Usually in this situation he would sublet the gig to Willow to get it done quickly, split the credit 50/50 and move on to the next job on the list. Time is money. However, he can feel in his gut that all he needs is a second pair of eyes. He’s too close to code and he just happens to have someone who knows what he’s talking about running in his lobby.

“Phil?” he yells, he’s lost sight of the black haired AI avatar in the jumble of his own code. Phil materialises by his side.

“Holy shit! I guess you can do that,” Dan grins and claps Phil on the shoulder. “Would you take a look at this for me? I can’t get the last bit to run nicely. See this error I’m getting, what is this? I feel like this bit of code should work?”
Phil studies the code intently, peering at it for a long while. At one point he pushes at the bridge of his nose, as if pushing up glasses that he isn’t wearing.

“Try this,” he nudges Dan aside and clacks on the virtual keyboard.

The patch forms and reforms. Dan follows what he’s doing, kind of, as it’s an unorthodox approach to the problem, and Phil’s code is more verbose than he tends toward. He seems to take a long way around to make it work. Dan is trying to parse a section that at first glance looks like it has nothing to do with the security issue at hand, almost like a little trojan, but a weird one. Before he can examine it much closer, Phil exclaims: “Ta dah!” and hits compile. All the code is flushed from Dan’s v-space lobby out into the company network he is logged into and the patch boots perfectly.
“Yay teamwork!” says Phil, gleefully.

“Yay?” says Dan blinking. “Wow, you really compiled the heck out of that… you didn’t double check it or anything.” Phil shrugs.

“No need, I could tell it was right. Now you’re done and you can get on to the next gig— money, money right?” Phil is aiming for nonchalant but comes off sounding like a weird uncle trying to use language that ‘the kids’ use.

“ I kind of wanted to check it before you ran it out of my lobby,” Dan points out.

“Oh… ok. Sorry.” Phil says dismissively. He does not sound particularly sorry.

“Look, I appreciate the help Phil , but I need to make the final call here. They’re my gigs and my name is on the code.” Phil realises Dan is actually annoyed and immediately looks contrite.

“Sorry Dan, I’m ju—just trying to make myself useful.” He stutters over his words and hangs his head. Dan feels inexplicably bad for hurting this virtual being’s feelings.

“Phil. It’s fine. Just wait for my human brain to catch up next time. I know I’m quick but I can’t match your processing speed.” Dan tries to turn it into a joke and Phil gives a weak chuckle.

“I’ll slow down for your feeble human brain next time.” he promises. “So what are we doing next?”
They comb the gig list together. Dan picks a few jobs he wants to work on from the deeply uninspiring list, finding a few he can do remotely from v-space, so he drops out, heads back to his cube and settles into his bunk and gets straight back in. Phil looks over his shoulder and drops a few pertinent suggestions on how he can optimise his efforts by taking similar jobs back to back, where he can recycle some of the programming. Dan usually likes to mix up his jobs and give his brain a new challenge to keep himself interested, but he finds over the course of the afternoon that having Phil around to chat to makes these kind of jobs a lot more tolerable and the afternoon is over before he knows it.

While Dan works, Phil chips in here and there with his own suggestions. It’s like he’s learning how Dan thinks while coding, but he doesn’t offer to write anything himself again. The session is long and Dan has run a lot of remote jobs, when Phil nudges him.

“Hey, you’ve been here a while, don’t you need to go and drink some water?” Dan flinches guiltily. It’s been hours. He never usually runs so many jobs back to back while fully in v-space for this very reason.

“Yeah, totally. I guess I really lost track of time there huh?” Dan says, half to himself. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“I’ll be here! Bye Dan!” Phil says with a bright smile.

Dan clenches out of v-space and takes a few moments to come back to reality. His body is stiff from being in one position for so long. He takes a moment to listen to the wind as he comes to.

Groggily, he sits up and gets himself a cup of water. After a while he brings up the overlay and checks his bank balance. The number is pleasingly less negative than it had been yesterday, he’s been working his arse off today. He decides that he can go nuts, and makes himself a cup ramen and meal shake for ‘lunch’. He fuels himself mechanically while catching up on his feeds.

The Twittersphere is awash with the latest celebrity misdemeanour, politics is still a shitshow, and the news is full of dire warnings of cyber crime and hacks. Dan smirks to himself. His livelihood is somewhat dependent on people being scared of technology. Nothing important has happened in the hours his body has lain here, mind elsewhere.

Once he’s finished eating he drops back into v-space looking for Phil. He finds him sitting awkwardly cross-legged on the floor, browsing the internet.

“Why don’t you have any furniture?” Phil demands as soon as Dan logs in.

“Uh… because I don’t need any?” Dan says. “Jeez Phil, so demanding! It’s not like I spend any length of time in the lobby here.”

“Well, you have guests now, get your act together!” Phil grins. “So, more work? Or are you free to hang out?”

Dan’s doing well, well enough that he feels like he could skip out of taking gigs for the rest of the afternoon. They watch Buffy on cineflix. Dan’s seen it before but he is fascinated that Phil, a virtual being, has so many opinions on it.

“I think the Season 5 is my favourite. The stakes are so high.” Phil is chatting around mouthfuls of virtual popcorn. He doesn’t need to eat, of course, but he claims to enjoy the sensation of crunching.

“Really? Even with that awful retcon Dawn situation? Season 2 has the classic Buffy and Angel stuff. Even Season 3 has all that whole thing with Faith and the Mayor?” counters Dan.

“Nope. Season 5, it’s got Tara, it’s got Spike, there’s that crazy chase… It’s the best.” Phil is emphatic.

“Can’t wait to watch it with you,” says Dan, softly.

Phil institutes a 2 episode drop out cap. Every two episodes Dan has to drop out of v-space for 5 minutes and drink some water or have a snack. Dan can’t help but feel this is excessive, he’s done far longer in v-space while gaming, or even with Phil himself.

“Nope. Don’t care,” says Phil firmly. “You clearly can’t be trusted to look out for your own wellbeing…”

“Clearly!” Snorts Dan.

“...so I’m going to look out for you. In here anyway.”

“Thanks Phil, ” says Dan sarcastically, rolling his eyes. He’s not really cross. In fact it’s kind of nice to have a friend looking out for him. Left to his own devices he will forget to eat, procrastinate, wreck his sleep schedule and generally be a mess of a human being.

“I was gonna suggest something new anyway.”

“Kinky!” says Phil with a grin, tongue poking between his teeth. ‘ Cute.’ Dan’s brain supplies. Wow, ok...

“Shut up ! ” Exclaims Dan, his accent going full estuary.

“So what are you suggesting?” Phil asks with a smile.  

“Guild Wars. I haven’t played for a while but I know my guild is still raiding. Imagine if we get an actual AI playing for us. I really think…” Phil cuts him off.  

“Oh um… I… I think I’ll sit this one out.” says Phil, fidgeting with his hands. He eventually hooks his thumbs into his belt loops and twists his wrists at an odd angle to stop himself wringing them.

“You’re not staying?” Dan is confused. Phil looks stricken.

“Oh. Ah. No... I’ll leave you to your gaming for now. But thanks Dan, I had a great time hanging out with you!”

Before Dan can even get a word out he is gone. If he’d been human, Dan would have said he was heading for a panic attack, but as he’s basically a machine Dan can’t fathom what the fuck may be going on. There is a raid imminently and he needs to do some inventory management before he starts. He parks it as a puzzle for another day and steps through the portal into the game.

Notes:

Concept belongs to maddox-rider.tumblr.com, I am just playing in her universe :)

Chapter 5: Gigs

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living!”

“I hate that song.”

“I know. Sooner or later you’re going to have to push the button…”

 

Dan is awake relatively early for him and scanning the market for gigs. He fancies doing some augments or optimisation today, something not too taxing, something a bit chill. Something that will keep him ticking over but doesn’t require so much brain power.

But, for the third day in a row, the gig list is all security. Literally no other types of jobs available. The G feeds are constantly on about hackers these days so Dan is not surprised, exactly. More and more ‘ordinary’ households are hiring coders to beef up the security on their v-space rigs, which is boring, and not the easiest, but it’s fine, whatever, the market dictates what it wants. Three days in a row with nothing but security jobs is pushing unusual, and Dan files it away in his brain to think about later. He picks the closest of the virtually identical jobs and hops over there, bashing out a nice robust firewall and an antivirus subroutine. Phil drops in halfway through his second job.
“What time do you call this, slowpoke?” says Dan, poking Phil sideways in the ribs.
“I was busy!” protests Phil. Dan makes a face.

“You? You were busy?”
“Yes, Dan. I wanted to finish something, for later. Maybe I’ll show you sometime if you behave.” Phil says. Phil is just… odd. His mind works in unique ways. Dan can’t fathom why he would have been programmed this way, especially for a medical setting.
“I would have loved to meet your programmer.” Dan observes idly.

“My programmer was a hack.” says Phil dismissively, “I don’t want to talk about him.”

Instantly, it’s all Dan wants to talk about. It’s rare enough to meet an AI who knows they’re an AI, let alone one who has met his programmer.

“Did you know him? Did you run in his ports before mine?”

“No! Shut up! Boring!” Phil is in a capricious mood and clearly not up for answering questions. There is some good natured back and forward over Dan’s current assignation. Once he’s finished, again with Phil helping him along, he pulls up the gig list and scans it for anything that isn’t security related. He is disappointed. Phil suggests a job midway down the list.

“But why this job?” says Dan, perplexed. The pay is bad, like, not even trying to hit benchmark. It’s a shitty, boring piece of security coding on some smart-building systems for an investment firm. Dan is bored just reading through the particulars, but Phil is curiously insistent.

“Listen, I know it looks boring but hear me out… this place is right next door to…” Phil runs his finger down the list, “This one, and they’re both easy. You can be in and out in no time. It’s two for the price of one, essentially.”

This seems to ping an idea into Phil’s AI brain. “Or I could do one and you do the other? I won’t even ask you for a cut…” Dan is already shaking his head.

“The system won’t let you rack up two jobs at the same time. It’s to prevent syndicates.” Dan says. In the early days of the gig market there had been no limit to the number of jobs that hackers could claim, so Dan had been told. This had soon turned into a secondary market arms race of sorts where groups of hackers with the fastest, most powerful rigs would nab all the jobs and then farm them out to smaller hacker groups for a cut. The bad old days.

Now, the setup is a lot more civilised. One in, one out and 10% reduction in fees if you take the job and don’t show in a reasonable amount of time, sliding to larger percentages for further lateness. Only some gigs can be done remotely, some companies need you on site or won’t allow hackers remote access to their systems (for good reason). Newbie gig hackers soon learn, as Dan learnt, that you can’t do only the remote jobs and hope to make ends meet. There just aren’t enough of those sorts of jobs for everyone who wants one and the pay is usually low. Which means at least a token amount of human interaction.

They come up with a compromise. Phil will go through the gig list with a fine tooth comb and identify the next few jobs while Dan works. While Dan travels between jobs, or needs food or a bio break, Phil will carry on working on a remote job where he can, until Dan gets back online, then Dan will post the finished product. Rinse and repeat.

They set themselves a limit of 10 hours, because hacker syndicates are technically still illegal, and although Phil isn’t really real, Dan doesn’t want to raise any red flags with the G.

Dan discovers that Phil is a decent coder. Not quite as good as him, because who is, frankly? Phil does, however, have a creative mind and a quirky approach to problem solving. When Dan hits a knot, often it’s Phil who knows how to untie it.

They work this system solidly for the next two weeks, racking up nearly a hundred and fifty hours of gig work and countless further hours of gaming together, blowing off steam. Dan’s account is in credit for the first time since he got the implants. Sure he’s got rent again in a few weeks, but for the first time he doesn’t feel anxious about how he’s going to make it work, and still manage to eat. He could actually get something fresh. He could buy some new clothes, rather than making do with the shitty joggers and hoodies he’s been wearing to death.  

He drops through a portal in his lobby into a clothing store he’s been admiring for a while, but never been able to afford. It’s branding is a lot of punky monochrome and oversized knitwear. The kind of place where one jumper costs half a month’s rent. Dan touches the racks of clothes with gentle fingertips and knows that, should he order, the garments will feel the same IRL. He knows there are other people in the virtual store but he’s browsing in incognito mode so they appear as blurry human shapes and he will appear the same to them.

A shop assistant AI appears by his side. They are an androgynous youth with a roughed up dark pixie cut, glossy lips and shimmery highlighter on high cheekbones. Dan tries not to think too hard about why the store’s algorithm has chosen this model AI to serve him.

“Hi! Let me know if you need anything!” It says, brightly. Dan finds he has picked up a black jumper with white stripes and a wide neck.

“Uh. Thanks I will.” Dan says.

“Did you find the size you need today? Let me know if you need anything!” It pipes. Dan nods and the assistant beams. He presses a button on the hangar and turns to the mirror. An approximation of what Dan will look like wearing the jumper is revealed.

“Oh! That looks great on you!” Says the AI clasping its hands in front of its chest.

“Does it.” Dan says flatly. It does, actually. He kind of likes it and wants to buy it, but the store’s AI is irritating him.

“Yes!” The AI chirps. “The… black and… monochrome stripes really… compliment your aesthetic!” It stutters as the algorithm fills in some blanks from what he has chosen to dress his v-space avatar in, which is invariably black skinny jeans and a chunky knit black jumper. Dan raises an eyebrow at the clunky dialogue options. But he wants the jumper.

“Ok, I’ll take it.” He hands it to the AI, who beams.

“Perfect!” The AI holds up their right hand. Dan presses his own left palm to theirs, as always slightly creeped out that the store has read and stored his left-handedness from less than five minutes of interaction.

“Accessing…” says the AI. Dan’s account pings and the jumper is his. “ETA twenty minutes, please look out for our drone. Thank you for your purchase and have a great day!” The AI beams and is gone. Dan exits the shop portal and is back in his lobby. Phil is waiting for him.

“Hey Dan! Oh, cool! You got a new jumper!” Having bought the physical garment Dan also got the digital key to wear the virtual copy on his avatar. Phil appraises him.

“They didn’t have it in your size?” Phil teases, grinning.

“Oi!” Dan grins back, “It’s oversized! This is fashion you ignoramus… This is street style !”

“Maybe ‘on the streets’ style, given the price…” Phil says under his breath.

“Hey, I worked hard! I deserve a treat!” says Dan indignantly. Phil smiles.

“You did work hard, and you do deserve nice things. I’m kind of surprised you buy into this late capitalist consumerism though. I’ve seen your completeds on the gig list. You do non-compliant mods sometimes.” Phil wiggles his eyebrows. He looks faintly ridiculous, Dan rolls his eyes.

“ Late capitalist consumerism?? ” He repeats, exaggerating the words. “Alright, Ernest!”

“I was thinking I’d be more of a Frederic,” says Phil, completely unfazed by Dan’s reference. “You’ve done G-blocker augments before. You run some on your own ports. I’m just saying… I’m surprised you also support the system while you’re working against it.”

“Just because I don’t want the Government logging every little thing I do online doesn’t mean I’m working against the system, or that have to walk around looking unstylish ,” says Dan, tartly, like he hasn’t been wearing the same sweatpants for a week straight IRL. “Also, this jumper is fucking awesome.”

“It is indeed a work of art,” says Phil seriously, “With a matching price tag.” Dan laughs. If he wasn’t an AI, Dan could swear that Phil was staring at his newly-exposed collar bones for an unusual amount of time.

Dan knocks out two more boring jobs in record time, assisted by Phil. He drops out of v-space to get to the next place and spends the next few hours on a more complicated ‘outside’ job, recalibrating the intelligence systems of an office building housing an investment firm who are ultra-paranoid about security, and who don’t even allow v-space implants among their staff. Dan can feel the curious and weirdly pitying stares of the employees as he walks through to their plant room and feels his cheeks burn, keeping his eyes forward.

After a brief consultation with the hamstrung IT department, he brings up his overlay and gets to work. About 30 minutes in, his messenger pings.

‘Having fun without me?’ Fucking hell, it’s Phil. He’s figured out how to access the messaging programme and seems to have entered himself as PHIL (lion emoji) in Dan’s contacts. Dan types back,

‘this firm is the most paranoid bunch of fuckers i have ever encountered ’

Dan is astonished that their IT department can even function hampered as they are with access only to the flatnet, and a locked down, censored version of that. He clacks away, frustrated that he doesn’t have his go-to distraction.

Dan mumbles to himself as he works, used to pouring out every thought that crosses his mind in v-space with Phil, and earns some confused looks from the IT team he is assisting. A young-ish member of the team, a girl called Navleen, asks if he’s ok. He shrugs her off.

‘Hey I’ve done part of the script’ Phil sends him a note and, he has indeed done a script. It’s kind of what is required here, and will do nicely once Dan has tinkered with it a bit more, but there is something else at the end. Dan squints, it’s kind of like a backdoor into the company systems. Exactly the kind of thing this firm is hoping to avoid by banning staff from having v-space implants and exactly the kind of thing that will get Dan in serious trouble.

‘um phil wtf is this’ Dan sends back. He yoinks the code anyway, because it’s going to save him a ton of work.

‘Just trying to be helpful! :D’

‘and the fuckung backdoor’ sends Dan.

‘ Lol don’t worry about that. I’m just interested in something they’re doing with their systems and wanted to pop back in later to check it out’   Dan blinks. Is Phil kidding him with this shit?

‘im not putting a bckdoor in this company systms phl ill get arrested’ Dan types ‘just tell me what you want and ill send you a file’

‘Also works’ confirms Phil. He outlines to Dan exactly what he’s after. It seems innocuous enough, but for the fact that what Phil seems to want is a schematic of the building’s aircon and heating systems. Dan is patching in the non-controversial portion of the code Phil sent him and chatting at the same time.
‘wth phol why do you want this?’

‘Esoteric reasons’

‘thats not an answer’

‘Just send me the file pls’  

Against his better judgement, Dan sends Phil the files he wants. He’s on shaky territory. It’s not like this is sensitive information but the fact that he’s sending anything at all is definitely breaching his contract with this firm.

Having cannibalised Phil’s code, the job takes him a lot less time than he thought. He hardlines himself to the company systems and ports himself into the machine. Unlike v-space this is a self-contained system, which means it’s one room, like his lobby, but the format is a massive server room. He finds the right place and grafts in his finished code.

Once he’s done he drops back out of the system and talks Navleen through his work, she nods seriously, following along on her own surface.

“Your code is very interesting,” she says squinting at the screen. “It’s like you have two different styles; you use one for most things and the other when it’s something fiddly.” The observation hits a bit close to home for Dan.

“Haha yeah, who knows what’s going on in the old Dan brainerino,” he says, awkwardly. She gives him a look.

“Ok, Dan. I just found it interesting,” she says cooly. “Thanks for today.” It’s a dismissal, so Dan says his goodbyes and leaves.

On his way out he gets a message from Phil.

‘ Come and see me when you get back. I want to show you something.’

*

“Are you ready for my surprise?” Phil says excitedly as soon as Dan materialises in his lobby. Dan smiles at his enthusiasm and takes his outstretched hand. Phil is a tactile being, he is learning, and he finds that he likes it. He struggles to remember the last time he had meaningful physical contact with another human. It’s definitely been a while.

‘Where did that come from?’ He thinks to himself.

Phil draws him through a portal in the lobby leading to a dark void. Ordinarily Dan hates the dark, he doesn’t even turn his surface off while he is in bed, preferring to sleep bathed in the blue light it emits. However, with Phil to tether him he can put one foot in front of the other and swallow his fears.

It’s soothing, he realises, to have no other sensory input than the touch of Phil’s hand in his. As they walk in the dark he feels the constant chatter of his mind wash over him. It’s still there but he can observe it rather than let it consume him. They walk for several minutes, Phil determinedly guiding him through the darkness. Dan is just starting to imagine that he can see pinpricks of light dotting the sky, and wonders if his eyes are deceiving him, when Phil stops.

“Um, so…” Phil begins, “I kind of got bored hanging around your lobby looking at dog videos so I made something for you. I… I wanted to show you how much you mean to me and… some complex feelings arose.” Dan chuckles and frowns good naturedly at the unusual phrasing.
“Ok... “ he says, not quite sure what to expect.

“It’s just ahead. Come on!”

They continue to walk and Dan feels his jaw drop. Ahead is a grove of trees, all different species, and all formed of a pastel-shaded neon.

They glow softly in the darkness, in shades of blue and turquoise and purple, stretching up to the star dotted sky, bathing the copse in a soft neon light. This neon is worlds apart from the harsh light which lines the streets outside. This is mild and smooth and comforting. The stars wink softly above and around. Dan looks up, astonished at all this beauty, created by something that is merely a machine, a collection of code. He feels enchanted, like he is witnessing some miracle, a next step of machine evolution. His face is bathed in the soft starlight and he turns to Phil, who has a wide expectant grin on his face. Dan’s eyes are huge and dark in the low light.

“I never told you this, because why would I?” Dan begins softly, “But when I was little I was terrified of the dark. And trees. So trees in the dark was basically my worst nightmare.”

Phil’s face crumples. Dan pushes on quickly. “But this… this is unbelievably beautiful. It’s like my brain knows that I should be afraid but it’s so magical it can’t even conceive of fear entering here.”

Phil exhales with a shaky laugh.

“So you like it?” He asks timidly.   

“Of course I do you absolute buffoon!” Dan slaps Phil playfully on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you made something like this.”

Dan looks around, mesmerised by the colours and the absolute sense of peace and wellbeing that he feels standing here with Phil. A large fanciful bird alights on a branch, and cranes its neck to look at them. It has wings of deep indigo and a crest like a peacock. It looks like no bird that Dan has ever seen or heard of and he’s pretty sure that Phil has conjured it wholesale from his imagination.

Just when he thinks things can’t get any more perfect a pale neon pink fawn steps timidly from behind a tree. He puts a hand to his heart and squeaks a inarticulate expression of joy, clutching at Phil with the other hand. Phil draws him down to kneel on the grass as the fawn approaches and pulls some food pellets out of a pocket, passing a handful to Dan. Wordlessly Dan feeds the virtual baby deer and something unclenches within him. He forgets. Forgets the outside, forgets his daily struggle to make ends meet, to keep himself fed and sheltered, just to exist.

“Hello.” He says to the fawn, in the gentlest possible voice. It snuffs his hand tentatively, nibbles some pellets and gives him a lick, then wanders back into the pastel forest.
“I knew you would have a soft side” says Phil, with a smile.
“Shut up.” says Dan, fondly. “That was so cute, I want to punch myself. Or you. I loved it.” Phil grins.
“Look up.” They are still kneeling side by side on the virtual grass of this v-space forest that Phil has created. Dan looks up and sees constellations, stars in infinite array through the circle of trees that ring the clearing. Phil takes his hand and lays down on the grass, stargazing. Dan follows suit, still awkwardly holding Phil’s hand, and looks at the stars for a long while.
“I want this to be your safe space Dan,” says Phil, finally. He plays with Dan’s fingers that he still hasn’t let go of. “I want you to come here when you need to, to let go of anything that’s stressing you out, or making you sad.”
“How did you know I get sad?” asks Dan, quietly.

“I can see it in your eyes sometimes.” Phil says simply. “And like, I… I guess I live with you now. Like, I’m literally in your head. You’re important to me. I want you to be happy.”

Dan’s throat constricts. It’s possible that Phil cares more about his well being than anyone who is actually alive. Sure, Byron and Willow might be concerned if they didn’t see him around, his guild might miss him after a few weeks, but day to day it’s Phil and only Phil who asks how he is, reminds him to drink water,  gives him a reason to get out of bed. His life had been so empty, he realises. And now it’s not. They have each other. And ok, he’s not real, but it helps. All he wants to do is help Dan.

“I’m less sad when I’m with you.” Dan says, still quiet, and turns his head to look at Phil where they lie on the grass. Phil is looking at him, eyes shiny.

“That’s all I ever wanted.” He says, with utter sincerity.

Chapter 6: Interactive

“ Is there something you’re not telling us?”

 

The guardian beast finally falls to their onslaught and topples like a felled tree, throwing up debris as it crashes to the ground. Dan whoops and hollers and jumps up and down in delighted celebration as Phil does a jubilant high pitched “Yee!” noise, a meme older than the modern internet. Dan throws his great axe to the ground and Phil leaps in for a bear hug.

Dan doesn’t realise that he intended to kiss Phil until he feels his own lips pressed against the AI‘s. He marvels for a moment that this sensation too is a perfect replica, as with everything else in v-space. Then his eyes pop open and he scuttles backward. Phil’s cheeks are flushed and he stands there in his furry greaves and silver breastplate, his asymmetric black fringe anachronistically jarring as it is with every Fantasy RPG they play.

“Dan… “ he says, sounding awed.

“Sorry! Sorry…” Dan brings his palms up in front of himself.

Shit. What was he thinking? This is Phil , his friend, not some crappy sex AI that loops the same dialogue after a couple of minutes. He drops them back into the lobby, restoring their preset avatar defaults. Before he can blink, Phil is on him again, crashing their lips together. He grunts in surprise and Phil takes this as an invitation to lick into his mouth. He feels heat zip through him and gasps as he licks back, deepening the kiss.

‘This is insane,’ he thinks to himself. A more rational part of his brain tries to get his attention, but he is too busy kissing. He hasn’t kissed anyone in a long time, and he is swept away by the sudden devastating intimacy. Their mouths move together as Phil’s hands sweep across his chest, on his shoulders, cup his face. A needy moan escapes Phil’s lips and this is the sound that penetrates Dan’s forebrain. He pushes Phil away.

“This is weird. It’s weird, right? Oh god, we made it weird.” says Dan, panicking. Phil is looking as shell shocked as Dan feels.

“Dan…” he stands mesmerised. “That was…” He looks bewildered, was he programmed for this too? To be someone’s plaything? Dan shudders at the thought.

His mind darts back to school and those sad greasy teenage boys who bragged about sneaking on to their parents v-space lobbies. Finding their sex AI’s. The home v-space experience was not quite the same as having the neural ports installed, but it was head and shoulders more immersive than the porn available on the flatnet. Was he one of those boys now? A sad pervert who has resorted to AI because he can’t get a real person to look at him twice? His cock is more than half-hard in his jeans, something that Phil has surely noticed as they pressed together for their kiss.

“I’m sorry,” blurts Dan in a rush. “I’m sorry, OK? I’m just really lonely and kind of sad and haven’t had anything but my hand for like well over a year now, and I mean this is still basically like using my hand because you’re not a real person but you mean more to me than… that.”

Phil drifts back into his personal space and puts both hands on Dan’s shoulders. His blue eyes are fond and he says softly,

“Dan, stop. I liked it. I like you. You don’t have to worry about what we are to each other.” He smiles, “You know I’m more than a sex AI, and I know you wouldn’t make it only about that. I enjoy every second we spend together, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about you like this before.”

“You… you’ve thought about me?” Dan is intrigued. “You think about me when I’m not here? Like, independently?” Everything Dan has ever learned has taught him that AIs should not be able to operate independently, but then here is Phil who has demonstrated a surprising capacity for independent thought before now.

“Yes, Dan.” Phil rolls his eyes fondly. “I’m in your lobby, surrounded by your feeds, able to see your info at all times. I live in your neural ports. You are quite literally my whole world.”

“Wow.” says Dan slowly. “I’d never really thought about it like that.”  

“Well that’s the way it is,” Phil shrugs. “It’s a million times better than what I had before.”

“Right. Before.” Dan’s mind whirs and his attention is only half with Phil.

Who is he? Why is he sometimes here and sometimes not? And why is he never here when Dan is playing with other people? An icy thought begins to take hold of him. Dan spends a lot of time alone, sometimes for days at a time. Could this be all in his mind? Could he have invented Phil wholesale, his mind finally cracking after too much v-space and not enough human interaction. He can feel himself starting to spiral, anxiety clutching his chest when Phil strokes his shoulder gently.

“Dan, hey, stay with me,” Dan looks up into perfect blue-green-yellow eyes and swallows. “You took a turn there, what’s going on?”

“You’re real, right?” Dan says tentatively, Phil looks shocked for a fleeting moment. “I mean, I know you’re not Real real. But I didn’t make you up in my head, right?”

“Dan I’m here, you didn’t make me up. This is definitely happening right now.” says Phil firmly, smiling. He’s always smiling.

“Ok good. That’s… good” Dan says, he steps closer to Phil and cups his face in both hands. Rests his forehead against the AI’s. Kisses him softly. “You’re… important to me. God this is so fucked up.”

Dan can’t resist going back in and kissing him again, a firm single kiss on the lips. He brushes his thumb across Phil’s cheek. As he feels the slight roughness of stubble he is again amazed at the level of detail that has gone into his programming. When they kissed, Phil had been eager and inventive. He hadn’t just been mirroring back what Dan had been doing to him, as usual with pleasure AIs (not that he would know, of course...) Phil had surprised him with moves that could only have been pre-existing in his algorithms. Phil cocks his head to the side, a question, an invitation. Dan bites his lip.

“It doesn’t have to be fucked up,” Phil says softly. “It can be whatever we want it to be.” Dan exhales shakily. He draws Phil into a hug. They hold each other for a long while and Dan thinks, his mind always whirring at 100mph.

“You can think for yourself, right?” Dan says. “You have feelings?”

“I have feelings,” confirms Phil. “You’ve heard me rant about Buffy enough to know that I have feelings and opinions on stuff.” Dan frowns, that wasn’t quite what he meant, so he tries a different approach.

“Would you say no if you didn’t want this?” Dan asks, flatly. Phil is shocked.

“Dan! Of course! But that’s not what this is!”

“It’s not? Because you’re kind of stuck with me and I’m kind of stuck with you and it’s going to be really fucking awkward if I find out you’re doing this because you think you have to…” Phil steps back.

“Dan you know me. You know me!” Phil drifts forward and takes both of Dan’s hands in his. “I would never… I…”

Phil bites his lip for a moment, “I want to experience this with you. I want this, I want these feelings. With you.”

He takes Dan’s cheeks in his hands, and kisses him softly. Dan feels something within himself quieten and kisses him back, warmth spreading through him.

Unlike pleasure AIs (that Dan definitely knows nothing about) Phil starts tentatively. He’s clumsy and clanks teeth and kisses increasingly messily as he and Dan get more worked up. They are still standing in Dan’s bare lobby, clutching at each other.

“Do you wanna, uh, go somewhere?” Dan says between kisses. He still feels faintly like this is a bad idea, but the surge of want is rapidly outweighing his hesitation. He has the sensation of slightly painful hardness between his legs and knows that back IRL, laying on his narrow bunk in his cube, his body will have a raging hard on. It has been a long while…

“No! What?” Phil is confused. “More kissing please!”

“I mean… go somewhere, ” Dan says significantly, looking around the bare lobby.

“Oh for heaven's sake!” says Phil and steps back. He brings up a menu in a blur and scrolls through options faster than Dan’s eyes can process. He selects something, points at the floor in Dan’s lobby and within a fraction of a second an enormous, plush, deep turquoise sofa appears in the infinite white.

“Did you just buy me a sofa!?” Dan exclaims.

“Calm down, I only got the virtual one. Now shut up and kiss me,” says Phil, pushing Dan backward to sitting on his new sofa. “We can return it after, I want to sit on you.” Dan laughs, high pitched and incredulous as Phil drops to sit on his lap. Dan grunts and Phil grabs his face with both hands and kisses him long and deep. Dan is definitely poking him in the arse through his jeans before he finishes.

“This feels amazing!” Phil says breathlessly. “I’ve never done this before, it’s so… so… uh.” Dan laughs. From feeling conflicted about him possibly taking advantage of Phil, he’d never considered that it’s something the AI would want to experience.  

“It’s definitely uh, ” he teases. Phil kisses his cheek, then works around to his neck. Fuck. Dan shivers down his whole body and Phil maneuvers him to lie down on the new sofa. Phil lies half on top of him and Dan can feel that he’s hard.

“Dan! “ Phil pants against him, kissing and grinding, “Dan...I…uhh!” Phil is an incoherent mess, chasing Dan’s mouth and half kissing and half biting in his enthusiasm. His dick is ramrod stiff, trapped in his tight black jeans and Phil is moving on top of him in a way that can only be described as rutting.

Dan feels it everywhere, through his chest and in his stomach and in his skin. He feels desired, Phil is devouring him, and this experience right now as he grinds and kisses.

Suddenly, Phil lets out a series of high pitched squeaks and yips and goes completely rigid. Then he pants and drops his head to Dan’s shoulder.

“Sorry…. sorry. That was incredible. Sorry.” Phil garbles, his cheeks flushed red. Dan bursts out laughing, wild and delighted. Phil buries his face in Dan’s neck and moans an embarrassed noise. Dan brings him up for a kiss.

“I’m sorry.” Phil says again, between kisses. Dan strokes his fringe back off his forehead.
“Don’t be.” Dan says, gently. “I’m glad you felt good.”

“It felt... “ Phil kisses Dan again, like he can’t stop, “You’re so…” his hands skim down Dan’s chest. Phil is still fully clothed, wearing his usual red plaid shirt, and (somewhat ruined) skinny jeans.

“I want…” his hands alight on Dan’s crotch and slowly unzip him, kissing him all the while. He pops open the button and slides his hand slowly up and down Dan’s dick, through the virtual cloth of his underwear, causing Dan’s breath to hitch and his head to spin. This feels so real, and Dan is swept away by the things that Phil is doing to him.

Phil tugs on his jeans and kisses his neck. He’s learning the moves that elicit the best noises from Dan and learning efficiently. He unbuttons Dan’s shirt, kissing as he goes, licking Dan’s nipples on his way down, all the while stroking his hardness through his pants and all Dan can do is grunt and whine under his ministrations.  

He’s so deliriously horny that he’s only vaguely aware that Phil has moved his face down to level with his crotch.

“Uh. Phil,” he says inarticulately. “What…”

“I want to suck your dick,” Phil says bluntly. Dan’s dick twitches with interest at that, and Phil mouths at him over fabric. Dan lets out a high pitched whine that he’s not proud of and eases his cock out of his pants.

He’s flushed and needy and all he can think of is Phil. Phil and Phil’s hot mouth, which sinks downs around him, licking and sucking and nipping gently. It feels incredible. Phil is working him with gusto, taking him all the way down and groaning around him. Dan can feel himself nudging the back of Phil’s throat and is concerned, until he realises that as an AI, Phil has no need to breathe and no gag-reflex. His hips twitch forward involuntarily. This is going to be over embarrassingly fast.

He has the guilty realisation that Phil probably doesn’t have preconceived ideas or societal expectations about how long one should be able to withhold an orgasm. He doesn’t need to impress him. Plus he seems to have already come.

Dan lets himself get swept away by the sensation of hot, wet pressure around his dick and feels the heat build. Phil has one hand on the base of his cock and reaches up with the other hand to stuff two fingers into Dan’s mouth. Dan, blissed out beyond rational thought, groans and sucks. It’s weird and hot and it’s enough to tip him over the edge. He comes with a shout, pulsing inside Phil’s mouth and down his throat. Phil swallows around him and stays attached for a moment, until Dan softens.

Dan lays his head back. Fucking hell. Phil pops off him and wiggles up to lie next to him on the massive sofa.

“Was that ok?” Phil asks timidly. Dan turns to look at him incredulously.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dan is still reeling from the aftershocks. It’s probably the best blowjob he’s ever had. He draws Phil into a hug. They lie silently, just holding each other for a while.

“This is nice,” says Phil dreamily. He doesn’t seem a bit concerned about the mess that must be in his pants.

They hold each other without speaking for a while, Dan resting his chin on the top of Phil’s head as he curls into him. He feels his eyelids start to droop and reluctantly untangles himself.

“Phil. Phil, I’m falling asleep here. I need to go,” he says. Phil gives a little whine of protest, but pushes himself up to sitting.

“Did I ruin everything?” Phil asks quietly.

“Of course not!” Dan says gently, taking his hands. “We’re fine.” He blinks. “We are fine, right?”

“I loved it.” Phil says, blushing. “I want to do it more…”

“Alright,” says Dan with a grin, “but you’ve gotta give me some recovery time here Phil, I’m only human.” Phil gives him a shy return grin.

“Go on then. Get some rest and then come back to me,” says Phil, giving Dan a little shove. Dan grabs his face for a lingering kiss. Phil tastes slightly bitter. Dan gives him a smile and drops out of v-space.

Dan is back in his bed, exhausted and wrung out and warm. He’s not sure how it happened, or what even happened but it was definitely an experience. Does it count as masturbation? A wet dream? Cybersex?

Other people, more erudite people than he, have debated and speculated endlessly on the rights and status of AI beings. Are they alive? Are they merely code? No-one has landed on a definite answer. They do not undergo metabolism, or have a life cycle, but they do grow, adapt and respond to stimuli. They inhabit a grey half-way house between life and unlife.

Biological viruses are not defined as being alive. Or it is at least another grey area. They are complicated organisms, but they can do nothing on their own, nothing until they enter a cell and can begin to replicate themselves. Phil started life as a virus, infecting himself onto Dan’s v-space ports as a way to survive, but it seems clear to Dan that he has become something else entirely now.  

He rolls over in his cot and it feels like it’s taking his mind a bit longer than normal to come back down to earth after the serotonin boost of being in v-space. He needs a wee. He drags himself up to sitting and pulls his toilet pan out of the panel in the wall. He goes to pull his pants down but finds they are glued to his pubes with tacky spunk. Oh. Oh yeah. Of course.

Dan grimaces and winces as he pulls his pants off, one hair at a time.  

Chapter 7: Fix

“It’s time to drive.”

 

Today is one of the times that Phil’s programme is not here when he ports in to v-space. Dan has stopped questioning it, as he does always appear at some point during the session. He idly quests for an hour or so, then farms a few star fragments, but he gets bored and drops back into his lobby.

Thanks to Phil’s help, he no longer has to scramble every day to make ends meet. He can finish jobs fastter with two pairs of eyes and hands and can take on the more lucrative jobs that he would have struggled to complete before. He’s built up a bit of positive credit and even has some fresh fruit in his cube. He’s feeling healthier physically… but mentally… his mind shies away from that potential pit of snakes. He’s not crazy. Phil is just an exceptional AI with agency and a human personality. And he might be slightly in love with him. Yeah. Everything’s fine.

He brings up the gig list to see if there is anything worthy of his solo attention. Phil, buoyed by his success with the forest, has transformed Dan’s lobby beyond recognition, claiming that all that white ‘gave him a headache’. In Dan’s absence he has changed the white for dark background, installing a waterfall of neon blossoms that hang around the central lobby, curtaining an area that seems cosy and intimate. He seems to have built the look of the space around the sofa, he’s even got some matching pastel neon virtual houseplants (“you don’t even have to water them!”) to make his lobby more ‘homely’. The riotous colour on a dark background should be overpowering but somehow Phil has made it work.

Dan loves it. It makes him happy every time he drops in to his lobby.

He does a few remotes, crap money, but he doesn’t feel like going outside. When he drops out of the third, extremely boring, gig he finds Phil sitting on his sofa, wrapped in a blue and green duvet. He’s looking sorry for himself.

“Hey Dan,” he says tiredly.

“Hey yourself,” says Dan with concern. “Everything ok?”

“Not sure,” says Phil. The duvet is over his head and he’s clutching it under his chin. “I’m tired. Today felt like a duvet day.”

Dan is concerned. AI’s shouldn’t generally feel physical symptoms like tiredness. He says as much and Phil shrugs.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” It doesn’t sound convincing. Phil looks drawn and paler than his usual pale. Dan pauses before asking the next question.

“Did you want me to take a look at your programming?” Phil snaps his eyes suspiciously to Dan’s.

“I don’t think so,” he replies coldly.

“Phil. I just want to help.” Dan says, carefully. “It could be something really simple?”

He reels off a few of his theories. Phil’s program has clearly been operating beyond its original parameters for a while now, it’s almost to be expected that tiny corruptions will have crept in. Every time he experiences something outside of a scenario that his programmer could have anticipated, his AI program will rewrite itself a little bit to cope with the new situation. He may have been programmed for watching TV shows and playing video games but he definitely wasn’t programmed for white hat hacking or blowjobs.

Phil listens, still muffled in his duvet and shakes his head.

“I can’t explain it, I just don’t feel at all comfortable with anyone looking in my programming. What if you mess it up? What if you change something and I’m not me anymore? It’s like getting a friend to perform brain surgery on you while you’re still awake.” he sighs, “Even if that person is the best neurosurgeon you know you’re still not going to want them to do it? And anyway the best neurosurgeon you know might not actually be a very good neurosurgeon. I know you’re a brilliant hacker Dan, but AI programming is something completely different.”  

Dan absorbs this. It’s the most forthcoming Phil has been about himself in a while. Phil looks pained.

“There really isn’t anything I can do to help you?” Dan asks.

“Just be here,” says Phil with a weak smile. “Did you know that way back, when computing was invented, the really old machines had to do a process called defragmentation? All their code got jumbled around and they had to spend a while re-sorting and rationalising everything. That’s how I feel now. I just need to spend a while not doing anything.”

That Dan can understand. He sits by Phil on the sofa in the neon meadow, and puts his arm around his shoulder over the duvet, hugging him to his side. Phil rests his head on Dan’s shoulder and they stay there, leaning back and watching the curtain of neon blossoms sway in the darkness. Phil seems to doze. Dan is fascinated, and idly strokes Phil’s head over the duvet.

Presently, Phil comes to and grabs the sides of his face with both hands.

“Aah! What!!” he flounders for a few seconds, running a hand down his face.

“Phil, you fell asleep, it’s ok.” says Dan, arm still around his shoulder.

“How did I fall asleep?” says Phil groggily.

“Probably the same way anyone falls asleep.” says Dan with a smile. “Don’t you usually sleep? Are you worried you’re becoming more human?”
“I shouldn’t sleep at all.” Phil says slowly. “I feel weird. I didn’t like it.”
“It’s normal to feel groggy after a nap,” says Dan.

“I saw things… I think I had a dream.” says Phil, as if just remembering. “I didn’t like it.” He repeats himself. He suddenly looks at Dan as if seeing him there for this first time, and does a double take.
“Dan.” he says, stupidly.   

“I’m here Phil.” Dan says, gently. He’s trying to keep it together but inside he’s freaking out.

He doesn’t know what is wrong with Phil and Phil won’t let him help. Phil still looks pale, and is looking warily around the lobby as if he has no idea where he is. Dan feels genuine panic begin to creep into his stomach. Phil is important to him. His life before Phil was an empty thing, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to cope if Phil is broken or deteriorating. He doesn’t want to let that happen if there’s something he can do to stop it.

“Phil, seriously man, you’ve got to let me help you somehow. I don’t think defragmentation or whatever is helping you on its own.” Phil looks at him blankly, then nods slowly. If Dan didn’t know better he’d say Phil was drunk.

“There is something you could try.” Phil says distractedly. “Yes. Yes, I think I could allow that… there is a script,” says Phil slowly. Dan feels relief wash over him. He can do scripts.
“Let me try, I’ll be so careful.” Dan promises.

“You have to do exactly what I tell you.” says Phil weakly. “Even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.”

“Sure, anything,” says Dan, desperate for Phil not to deteriorate any further than he already has. He brings up his virtual keyboard and opens a notepad.

Phil burritos himself in the duvet, lies back on the sofa looking up at the virtual sky and starts talking. Dan almost doesn’t realise he’s begun dictating the code and has to scramble to keep up with what Phil is saying. He’s speaking pretty fast, at a flat rate, devoid of emotion. Dan types flat out, not even thinking about what he’s typing. Part of the issue is that it’s like no programming language he’s ever encountered before. Snatches of it seem familiar, but it’s almost like a mongrel language, patchwork and nonsensical, at least to Dan.

At length, Phil stops talking.
“Is it done?” asks Dan, trying to look back over what he has written. There is a section in the middle which looks vaguely familiar for some reason. But he can’t put his finger on it.
“It’s done.” Phil whispers. “Send it.”
“I just want to read it over…” Dan is trying to parse the section that tickled his memory.

“Dan, please.” Phil says sadly. He sounds pained. Dan bites his lip and turns to see Phil lying flat on his back on the sofa staring up at the sky. His skin is so pale it has taken on a greyish tinge. Dan swallows and skips reading the rest of the code and hits the compile button, watching anxiously as the percentage bar creeps to 100. It takes a fucking age, but when it hits Dan whips his head around to look at Phil and sees a red line creep all the way up his body, starting from his toes. He sits up as it travels through him, and as it passes over his eyes, the red seems to linger there as a flash. Something about it gives Dan chills, but colour is returning to Phil’s cheeks and he gives Dan a weak smile. That’s worth it. That’s worth anything.

Once it’s finished they sit together quietly. Phil still looks upset, but at least he is coherent and alert. Dan holds his hand and they talk of small things. Dan’s gigs today. What Dan is going to eat when he drops out. Phil gives a small laugh over Dan’s telling of the sticky pants incident.

“You’re okay, yeah?” Dan asks, eventually. Phil nods.

“I’ll be ok. I… thanks Dan.” Phil bites his lip. His blue eyes are far away and he doesn’t make eye contact.

*

Weeks pass, and Phil seems to have recovered from his malady. They fall back into routine for a while. Dan can pick and choose his jobs now, and he’s become more systematic about his library and his scheduling, thanks to Phil’s guidance, and his bank account is looking much healthier. He’s paid off his surgery, finally, and is no longer taking a monthly hit on interest payments.

Phil has been more absent than present over the past few days, “roaming v-space” as he puts it. He’s been active on messenger, sending Dan instories of himself from various game worlds and untravel destinations. He’s shamelessly using Dan’s accounts and Dan is glad for him, glad he can give him these experiences.

Dan has been running jobs here and there, being called back again to the investment company that he was at earlier in the week. They’ve had some issues with their heating system. It’s been steadily increasing the temperature, and the staff are getting cranky.

The in house IT team are glad to see him. They have a beleaguered look collectively and quickly explain the problem and why they need someone with ports installed. Dan is going to jack into their building system and walk through to see if he can see why all their efforts to fix the heating have failed. He spends a few minutes chatting with Navleen from the IT team before getting to work.
“Does it hurt?” she asks, dabbing her brow with a hankie, “Getting the ports, I mean?”

“Not really,” Dan replies. “They do it under general, then you get a fuckton of painkillers for straight after.”

He remembers it fondly, wow, that had been a fun week. He’d been in hospital for most of it, floating blissfully through a haze of antiseptic scents and cloud soft sheets. He’d drifted in and out, and been fed and watered and washed, smiling all the while. He couldn’t have told you if there had been anyone else in the ward, or if he’d been in his own room the whole time, so disconnected from reality had he been.

When he’d healed sufficiently, he’d transferred to another ward and the techs had walked him through a fully immersed v-space. He’d loved it from the absolute first. It was a hundred times better than the basic VR setup that most people now had in their homes. This was connected directly into the experience centres of his brain, the microscopic wiring of the v-space ports now inextricably woven into his cerebral cortex. It was a totally new reality, a new internet, and for Dan it was love at first sight.

“I don’t think I could go through with it.” Navleen says, her dark eyes huge in her round face. “Even if the company allowed it. It’s such a risky procedure.” Dan shrugs.

“So is crossing the street.” he says flippantly. “So is eating meat. Most people still do that.”

“I don’t think that’s quite the same thing,” she says primly, “Eating meat isn’t going to leave you with brain damage if it goes wrong. You can control the outcome when you cross the street. You use your eyes and make a judgement about when to cross. With port surgery you’re putting your life in someone else’s hands.”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, “But I get to fully access v-space. I get to do this.” Dan thinks of Phil, and smiles.

“I guess we’re just from two different worlds.” Navleen says, tilting her head to the side with a sweet smile.

Dan sits in the reclining chair they have provided and gets ready to log in. He taps some commands into his overlay and then takes the hardline provided by Navleen. He lays back, plugs himself in and drops into v-space.

For a split second he feels a flash of heat all over his body. Then… nothing. He’s in v-space but he’s alone in a black abyss. He tries to bring up his menu but nothing happens. A spike of panic shoots through him. Then, as suddenly as it begun, he is dropped out of v-space and a smiling Navleen is helping him up to sitting.

“Dan, that was incredible!” She gushes, “I’ve never seen anything like it! That code was inspired! I don’t even know where your ideas come from!”

The fuck?

“Uh.” Says Dan.

“Do you want a coffee?” She says, “Some water? You’ve been under for a while...” Dan looks around, half the staff that were here earlier have gone and the sun is sitting on the horizon throwing orange light across the city skyline. Hours have passed and Dan doesn’t know a thing about what happened.

“Coffee. Sure.” Dan says slowly, “Thanks.” He is distracted by his overlay, running through this alleged ‘brilliant’ code he has no fucking recollection of writing.

It’s Phil.

He has no idea how, or why, but this code has Phil’s virtual fingerprints all over it. He knows him well enough by now to know his style when he sees it.

‘Phil u got some fcukn explaining to do’ Dan sends angrily. He waits. There is no response. He is furious.

He tries to parse what Phil has actually done to their systems but can’t make head nor tail of it. It looks suspiciously similar in style to the code Phil had him write to ‘fix’ his program. It’s something relating to AI, and, weirdly, the heating system of the building. It has actually fixed whatever problem Navleen had and the temperature in the building is already noticeably better.

He finishes his coffee and makes painfully awkward small talk with Navleen, who is stuttering and weaving strands of her long hair around her fingers. He just wants to get out of here and have it out with Phil who still hasn’t fucking replied to his message.

“Thanks again, Dan.” she says as she waves him off. He mumbles a goodbye and strides off, hood up. He makes a beeline for his stack, his overlay alerting him to obstacles and giving him route guidance automatically.

As he walks he feels some of his anger dissipate. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation. Maybe Phil can justify himself.

‘ im coming to see u, ’ he sends, to the only person he ever texts. Even his grandmother stopped messaging him back after he got the ports put in. Everyone did.

Dan climbs, and for every rung closer that he gets to his cube, his anger gets further away, like he left it at street level. He stops mid way between level 3 and 4. Was he angry about something? He tries to remember but his mind grasps at wisps. He distinctly remembers feeling angry, that sour churning adrenaline in his veins, but now he can’t access why.   

He has a weird queasy feeling in his stomach. He should get back and go and see Phil, that always calms him down. He feels like Phil is waiting for him.

As Dan climbs past the 7th floor of the stack he is greeted by Willow, who sticks her head out of the door and hails him.

“Hi Dan!”

“Oh. Willow, hey!” Dan waves to her, he feels his chest clench. He doesn’t really want to talk to her right now. Phil is waiting for him. He doesn’t get down off the ladder.

“You want to come in a second? Byron is making a red curry and we got in some gin yesterday - I’m gonna make cocktails!” Willow half-yells in excitement. Dan pauses in his climb and smiles politely as a reflex. He should go. It would be good for him to socialise with IRLs once in a while, not to mention eat something that didn’t start life as chemicals. He gets a waft of fragrant rice, lime and coriander, and his stomach makes the decision for him leading him down off the ladder and on to the 7th floor walkway. He thinks of Phil, stuck alone in his lobby, but then shakes his head. Time is arbitrary for an AI, he reasons, Phil doesn’t age and shouldn’t theoretically care how long Dan is offline. He tries to tell himself that Phil doesn’t feel emotions like actual humans and probably won’t get upset, but knows in his heart it’s not true. Phil will be upset that he didn’t come. Dan’s brain will thank him for spending some time out of v-space though… a few minutes can’t hurt.

He ducks into Byron and Willow's cube. Willow has made a new cushion cover for their low couch, he notices the bright pop of colour. Byron gives a cheery wave from the small stove.

“Dan, haven’t seen you around in ages. What you been up to man? Keeping a low profile?” Byron knows full well that not all the hacking jobs that Dan contracts are completely legal. Or at least they weren’t before Phil infected him. Dan’s cheeks come up in a rosy flush and Willow presses a cup into his hand. It smells good; sharp and sweet and definitely alcoholic.

“Totally straight few weeks, weirdly,” says Dan taking a sip. The gin bites, Willow has been heavy handed. He feels it swim into his head, as his stomach is basically empty. Byron nods, clattering around with the pan.

“The gig list has been a shitshow for ages. Glad I don’t need it so much any more.”

“Yeah well some of us do need it, and I’m about to shit my brain through my ears I’m so bored of fucking security patches.” Dan grouses.
“You must have been hard at it though, I haven’t seen you go up and down nearly so much these past few weeks.”
“I’ve been busy… doing some remote, and a kind of AI project,” says Dan. Byron snorts.
“AI - not lucrative. Trust me, I’ve tried. The uncanny valley defeats you every time.” Dan smiles to himself. Phil is beyond the uncanny valley, he may stare a bit unblinkingly long, but he’s more human than any other AI Dan has ever seen.    

“I might be onto something that gets around that.” Dan is determined to get to the bottom of Phil’s excellent programming, one day. He tries not to think about why he may be procrastinating a full examination of Phil’s coding.
“Really? I’d be interested to see it one day.” Willow chips in, smiling. He smiles back, but it’s verging on wooden. He suddenly hates the idea of sharing Phil with anyone else, and Phil has always been skittish at the prospect of meeting anyone who isn’t Dan.

“Sure. I’d be happy to show you once I’m a bit further along.” Dan says, meaning anything but. He feels like Phil is his own special secret. Someone as skilled as Willow poking around in his programming would seem like an invasion, somehow, and he’d have to let her in his lobby, which is an intimacy in itself.

Willow serves up rice from a tiny rice cooker and they eat together, the first freshly made hot meal Dan has had in months. It is beyond delicious and he has to hold himself back from wolfing the whole bowl in an undignified fashion. His stomach isn’t used to so much food at one time and he does not want to puke this amazing meal up. He savours each mouthful and listens to Byron animatedly relay his latest caper around mouthfuls of hot curry. Willow smiles, and sighs and laughs dutifully, prompting Byron occasionally; she’s obviously heard this story before.

Before Dan knows it she is pressing a second helping and a third cocktail into his hands, and he’s been there two hours. He gets a little jolt of guilt when he realises the time. He was supposed to see Phil this evening. He was only supposed to be here a few minutes. He makes noises that he has to leave, but Byron and Willow are having none of it and quickly clear away the crockery and bring out a card game. Dan realises that it’s actually really fucking nice to be doing something fun offline...     

Much, much later than he intended, he climbs the ladder, clinging tighter than necessary to each rung. Five of Willow’s gin cocktails after so long without drinking have set his head swimming and the last thing he needs is to break a leg falling off the stack. He’s in the mood for stargazing but he’d promised Byron and Willow several times that yes, he would go straight home and no, he wasn’t going to try and climb on the roof and yes, he would drink a whole pint of water before going to sleep.

He fumbles with his key in the padlocks, and almost jumps out of his skin as an AmaDrone buzzes up to him. Huh. He doesn’t remember ordering anything. He tries to stay still with his eyes open as it retina-scans him. The drone has to have a few goes at it, because he is drunkenly swaying, but eventually four lights flash green and it opens its delivery hatch to drop a package in his arms. Once discharged, it buzzes merrily away, leaving a confused Dan standing at his door holding a parcel. He stands for a moment, struggling with what to do, before he realises he can put the package on the floor and finish opening his locks, before ducking inside.

First things first, he has a long piss. These cubes are built for one person, or a close couple, and have zero privacy bathrooms. Much as he loves Byron and Willow as people, he isn’t quite at the public urination stage. The package stares at him from where he’s thrown it on the bed. He washes up and gets to work opening it up. It’s soft and he feels plush fabric as he tears the box open. Bemusedly, he pulls out a blanket. It’s heavy, one of those specifically weighted ones that are supposed to help you sleep. It’s grey on one side, and as he turns it over his breath catches in his throat. It’s a galaxy pattern, in soft neons. The strange and fanciful constellations of the neon forest. In his drunken state he feels his worlds collide as he realises this could only have been Phil. He’s breached out of v-space and ordered him a gift. More accurately, he’s probably accessed Dan’s account and ordered it from himself.

He lies back on his bunk and arranges the blanket over himself. It feels like a hug. It’s nice, he thinks dreamily, just really fucking nice. Phil has been sitting alone in his lobby while Dan has an evening with friends and his first thought is to send him a hug in the form of a blanket. ‘ I should get online and thank him’ is Dan’s last thought before he falls into a drunken sleep.

Chapter 8: Code

“Who's my good boy?”

“Shut up. I’m not your dog.”

“Keep going, good boy, you’re getting there.”

“I hate you right now, you know that, right?”

 

Dan is decidedly grumpy as Phil snickers behind him. He feels like dogshit. Warmed up. He sits on the sofa with his face in his hands trying to ignore his pounding head.

“I mean, this is your punishment for going out and getting drunk rather than coming home and snuggling with me, you know that, right?” Phil positively twinkles. He’s cute as heck today, wearing a bear jumper that Dan coded for him after complaining that he was sick of seeing him in the same clothes all the time.

“Shut up, rat!” Dan replies with a half-mouth smile. He had finally surfaced in the late morning and immediately regretted not having had that pint of water before crashing. His head is a mess; his physical body is experiencing pain and v-space doesn’t mask that. He’d drunk as much water as his stomach would take on waking up, and then immediately wandered into v-space to see Phil.

“So, thank you for the blanket.” Dan says.

“Oh! I’m glad you liked it!” Phil exclaims, “Amazon had a flash sale and you could customise with your own print. And you said you don’t sleep well…”

“I slept well last night…” mutters Dan. Phil ruffles his curls and kisses his cheek. Dan turns his head to catch Phil fuller on the mouth.

“Sorry, I think I was supposed to come and see you but I crashed as soon as I got home,” admits Dan.

“It’s fine,” Phil smiles and hugs him from where he is standing behind the sofa. “You spend too much time here as it is. I’m glad you spent an evening in meat-space.” Dan rolls his eyes fondly.

“You wanna talk about my meat?” He says raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe later,” says Phil, not missing a beat, “Ready for work?”

“Urgh.” Dan is not ready, but he brings up the gig list anyway. A red ‘urgent’ call for that investment firm is flashing at the top of the list. He’s surprised it hasn’t been snapped up, the fee is astronomical. He bags it without discussion, only for Phil to make a surprised noise behind him.

“You’re taking that one?” He asks, surprised.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Dan is puzzled, “I know these guys, the fee is good?”

“It’s just uh… it’s a difficult one. You only partially fixed it last time.” Phil counters.

Last time? Dan’s only been there once and it was all fixed, right?

“You should cancel out.” Phil says, biting his lip. “Take the hit.” Dan frowns, he’s hungover and he doesn’t need this shit.

“Are you fucking kidding me? 10% of that fee? I’m not bloody giving that up!” Dan is having none of Phil’s bullshit over this. “It’s even the same data system I was working on last time!” Dan turns to look back at Phil, who has a notepad up and is fiddling with some coding. He closes out when he sees Dan looking.

“Those guys are arseholes.” Phil says, without conviction. Dan raises his eyebrow.

“No they fucking aren’t,” he says incredulously, “They were alright! What the hell has got into you? You weren’t even there!”

“It’s an investment fund that finances the G, like one of the main ones, you know that right?” says Phil, somewhat bitterly. Dan knew from previous conversations that Phil has been programmed with an anti-G streak for some reason, but he never realised that it ran this deep.

“Phil. Most corporations somehow benefit the Government, directly or indirectly. It’s unavoidable.”

“It’s not, you just don’t want to see it.” Phil says sadly,

“I’m not here to get involved ,” says Dan throwing his hands up, exasperated, “I just want to earn enough money to live my life, keep my head down, eat some food and not have to worry about anyone knocking my door in.”

“And?” Phil queries softly, “That’s enough for you?”

“Should it not be?”

“Doesn’t it bother you? That only a few people get everything? That the G tears down everything that doesn’t suit its agenda and most people have to scrape to get by?” Dan is way too hungover for this conversation and sighs,

“Yes? Maybe? But I’m like one guy, what am I gonna do? One guy with a fucking savage headache and an super-AI imaginary friend...” Phil refuses to take the bait.

“I just want you to think more about what you’re doing.” Phil says, looking down at his feet. At his hands. Anywhere but Dan’s eyes. Dan’s anger is piqued. This virtual being has the gall to lecture him about his politics...

“Phil. Wind your neck in, mate. I’m gonna head over there and do that job, before I get a late penalty. I don’t give a shit about who they are or who they fund.” Phil shrugs, unwilling to argue further but clearly still not happy about it.

“Do what you’re going to do.” he says

“I’ll message you when I get there?” says Dan, turning it into a question at the end. Phil makes a non-committal noise.
Dan stomps his way over to the investment firm, as if he can pound his hangover out through his feet. Then he realises he can afford luxuries like headache medication these days and stops by the pharmacy for a sachet of bitter paracetamol gel that he can neck in a hurry on his way over.

He has a weird sense of deja-vu as he walks. It’s a hazy day in the city and people seem to generally be in a bad mood. He pops a mask over his mouth and nose, which he knows is probably futile as the air filtration in his stack is bullshit anyway, but it makes him feel better here, now.

He hates that he left it on a bad note with Phil. He hates unresolved arguments and unclosed loops. He’d rather have an honest shouting match than deal with sulking. He fires off a message as he gets to the building.

‘ going in now. i do give a shit’. He doesn’t get a response.

As he is buzzed in he notices how completely perfect the temperature is, and then wonders why he noticed something like that. He frowns to himself. Is his mind playing tricks? The air inside feels pure and pleasant compared to outside and he feels grimy, like he needs a shower to just walk the corridors.

He is escorted up to the IT department. He recognises one of the girls he spoke to the first time he was here. Was her name Naveen? She turns around and does a double take when she sees him. Then she advances furiously toward him, sending a spike of panic shooting through his gut.

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face around here again!” she says angrily. She comes up to all of his chest height.

“What?” Dan says stupidly. The last time he was here he just recalibrated some data systems. Didn’t he? She gesticulates with both hands, red spots on her round cheeks.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you? You think that just because you have those ports and skip about in v-space for a living that us plebs that only have the flatnet are complete idiots? Is that it?” she’s practically shouting full in his face. Another member of the team comes over to pull her away.
“Navleen, chill. We have no proof it was his code that did this.”

“Yuuhi, of course it was him. Who else is it going to be?” She declares darkly. Yuuhi is a serious looking guy with thick square black-rimmed glasses. He speaks in a slow, considered way.

“We’ve dealt with hacking attempts before. This came from outside.”

“So you say.” Navleen grumbles. Dan blinks, having literally no fricking clue what they’re arguing about or what the problem is. Navleen stomps off and it’s left to Yuuhi to show Dan in and talk him through the issue they’ve been having.

It turns out they’re suffering intermittent hacking attempts on their trading systems. Every time they make a trading transaction, which is many multiple times a day, their system is probed. Their security can handle it but it’s making their transactions take twice as long as they should which is frustrating the traders as it means the trades are going through at a different rate than booked. Minutely, transaction by transaction, they are losing money.

Dan can handle this, in fact it sounds like an easy fix. He already has several ideas. He settles in with his surface and overlay, ready to jump in to the security rack if needed.

He’s no more than 10 minutes in when he gets a message from Phil.

‘Do you want to get involved?’ It makes no sense to Dan until he casts his mind back to the argument they had just before he left the house.

‘In what way’ Dan replies.

‘You have to trust me.’

‘Ominous’

‘I’ve written a fix for their problem.’ Dan receives a file. He certainly has. This code is exquisite, perfect in every way for the issue. Suspiciously so.

‘Really phil you wrote this just now’ Dan isn’t sold.

‘You forget my superior AI ninja coding skills ’ Dan is reading through the code with a fine tooth comb. There will be something sketchy. He can feel it.

Sure enough, there buried in a stunningly intricate passage is a clever little backdoor. It’s much more subtle than the one he tried to plant before. Almost imperceptible. Dan wouldn’t have seen it if he didn’t know to look for it.

‘Found ur backdoor u little shit’ sends Dan. He’s not angry, just insanely curious about Phil’s repeated attempts to get in to this company’s systems.

‘Trust me.’ Sends Phil

‘Why should I’

‘Trust me.’

‘Are you gonna explain this later’

‘Is that a yes? :D’

‘I want explanations’

‘Trust me.’

Dan chews his chapped lip. That’s what it boils down to. The core of the issue. Does he trust Phil?

At his core, he does.

He dithers for a long time, wrestling with his conscience. Phil has an agenda he doesn’t know anything about. Can he really have Dan’s best interests at heart? He concludes that he must, because he relies on Dan being alive and staying healthy and well rested for his own survival. His political leanings come from god knows where. But he’s always looked after Dan. He uploads the fix and runs it unedited before he can think himself out of it.

It runs.

‘Dan! You’re the best!’ Phil sends, moments later. Dan feels a spike of anxiety. He has no idea what he’s done, other than it’s what Phil asked of him.

Does he subscribe to whatever anti-government feelings Phil has? Maybe? He’s always gone his own way when it suited him, running privacy mods and scripts to prevent the G snooping on what he’s doing online. When less than legal gigs have come up he’s had no qualms about taking them. This seems like something else though, Phil is thinking bigger than individual acts of rebellion. Dan shivers.

*

They’d talked for hours when he got back, Dan had cried a bit and Phil had reassured him. He wasn’t a bad person. It’s fine to feel powerless. Life is hard and sometimes you do just need to get by. But sometimes, you need to get involved.

“I’m here for you now Dan.” He has his head in Phil’s lap as Phil idly strokes a hand through his curls. “I’m on your side, I’m your secret weapon, I’m going to help you beat the system.”

“You’re so weird,” Dan says dreamily. After their semi-argument earlier he had been wrung out and his confrontation with Navleen hadn’t improved matters. He’s done what Phil asked and done it well. He feels floaty and drained. This whole day has been exhausting.

Phil moves from stroking his hair to stroking the side of his neck, Dan shivers, thrilling at the sensation. He feels Phil shift beneath him and he scoots to make room for Phil to lie beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says gently.

“For what?” Dan asks, his eyes wide and dark.

“Nothing. Upsetting you before. Just sorry.” Phil says, sweeping Dan’s hair off his face. It’s incredibly soothing. Dan sighs into a kiss. The world narrows to just them and the neon meadow swaying gently around them in a virtual breeze. Dan alternates between soft kisses and just looking at Phil, taking him in. So quickly has he become the only worthwhile thing about his life.

He kisses but his mind wanders. This clearly isn’t healthy, how has his whole emotional well-being become entwined with Phil? He finds it easy to forget that Phil is virtual. Phil is his perception of a computer program that runs in his ports. Phil is vital to his happiness, but what does that mean when Phil isn’t even real? Is he mental? Is he in love with himself?

His mind whirs as their kisses become more heated. This relationship has revolutionised his working life, but has tanked his already pretty poor social life. Even Byron and Willow, who he would consider to be his closest ‘IRL’ friends, haven’t seen him more than once in the months that he has had Phil installed.  

“Dan.” Phil sweeps his thumb across his cheek. Phil’s pale cheeks have a faint blush and his lips are pink. “Are you here?”

“Of course.” Dan lies. The breeze picks up and a shower of the neon blossoms fall around them.

“I want to make you feel good. I want to make you feel better.”

“I’m fine Phil, honestly.” Dan assures him. Their kisses deepen and Phil works his hands past Dan’s waistband and cups his ass.

*

Phil has pulled his jeans all the way off now and has flipped him onto his front. He is red-cheeked and panting with how turned on he is. How does Phil manage to do this to him? How does he know? He humps against the sofa and Phil smacks his bottom.

“I want to do that.” Dan hears the click of a cap, and moments later a cool slick finger is against his rim. Phil has never touched him there before, and that thought flows deep through him and down to his dick.  

“Ah! Phil!” he whines. He puts his hands up on the arm of the sofa and brings his ass up into the air.

“Can I?” Phil asks. Dan is desperate to grind against something, but leaves his dick bobbing in the air, waiting for stimulation. He’s been given his instructions.

“God, yes.” Dan pants. Phil strokes his hole, then gently, slowly works his index finger inside. Dan forgets where he is momentarily. He loves the stretch, feeling so full. Phil is so careful and gentle that Dan gets impatient and pushes back against Phil’s slender finger. Phil doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even pretend to breathe for Dan’s benefit. He’s preoccupied with the cool glide in and out of Dan’s ass and Dan loves it.

Dan moans low and guttural as Phil adds a second finger. He swears and tenses as Phil goes in a little too fast and Phil immediately stops what he’s doing.

“Is it ok? Should I take it out?”   

“No, just give me a sec.” Dan eases back onto the fingers, his cock dripping clear on to the fabric of the sofa. Phil waits for Dan to adjust and then fucks his fingers in and out slowly, searching for the spot. His long fingers graze against it and Dan shouts out, a string of drool running down his chin as he pants.

“That’s so good. You’re so hot Dan.” Phil moves his fingers in and out, aiming now he knows where, and setting Dan’s nerve endings on fire. He’s palming himself lazily through his jeans as he fingers Dan slowly, taking his time, driving Dan crazy.

“You’re dripping, you’re making a mess of the sofa.” Phil’s hand is moving faster now. It’s the good kind of painful and Dan fucks himself backward to get Phil’s hand deeper. Phil puts a steadying hand on his bottom and adds a third finger. That’s a lot. The stretch is incredible. Dan keens and his dick bobs in the air, a string of pre-come connecting him to the sofa in a deliciously dirty way.

“Phil, ah! Phil…” he can’t, he’s twitching. Phil stops moving his hand and maneuvers Dan so that he’s lying on his back, then repositions his hand, finding that bundle of nerves that makes his body sing with electricity.

“Oh, Oh god right there… Phil!” Dan’s straining, so close he doesn’t know what he’s saying or doing. The pads of Phil’s fingers graze that spot inside him and he’s getting close, completely untouched.
Phil is staring at him slack-jawed, and awkwardly with one hand unbuttons and pulls his cock out of his jeans. He’s fully hard. Dan turns his head to look and is astonished at the perfection before him. To be quite honest he wasn’t sure if Phil would have even been programmed with genitals, despite his previous orgasm, but clearly his programmer spared no effort in the detail of his creation. He is magnificent.

Dan moves to touch himself, but Phil gently brushes his hand away.

“You can come from just this. I know you’re close.” Phil has taken himself in his other hand now and is pumping himself, eyes roaming over Dan’s naked body, to the flush on his chest and on his cheeks. He moves the hand inside Dan and Dan whines and brings his knees up. Phil’s right, he’s so close. Phil’s hand is moving quickly now, and on one of Dan’s more pornographic moans he comes with a small gasp, shooting hot and white up Dan’s chest, a stripe catching him across the face. Dan inhales and on the next graze over his prostate he’s nearly there. He feels filthy and gorgeous. He opens his mouth to lick Phil’s come off his lips and a combination of that and Phil crooking his fingers a certain way has him tipping over the edge.
It starts as a small tilt into orgasm, then the warmth spreads through his crotch and into his stomach and through his viscera and he is sending his own seed to mingle with Phil’s on his chest. He pants, thighs thrashing as the aftershocks take him.   

*

Later, Dan is in a sour mood, fiddling with his overlay as he takes Phil’s mandated drop out break.

They’d come down and cleaned up with some hilarity, then settled in for some Buffy in cineflix.

He’s idly browsing, just running out the clock until enough time has passed so that Phil won’t nag him when he logs back in. They’ve reached a critical juncture in Season 3 and he’s itching to dive in to another episode.

He sits on his bed, sipping a glass of water and dicking around on his surface, scrolling through his messages. Wow, Phil really is the only person he talks to. He scrolls back, just inconsequential day to day things. It’s definitely better than his life before where he spoke to no-one.

He’d messaged his mum and his brother after his surgery and got no response. That wasn’t completely unusual but after he’d messaged a few more times with no response he’d just… given up. Now his conversation list is a barren thing.

He’s scrolling through his conversations with Phil. This other half of him, learning from him all the time, learning how he codes and how he thinks, moulding himself to be perfect for Dan.

Something snags his hacker brain’s attention about the date stamps on the messages. One day, a few weeks ago, there had been no messages. The flow just stopped. Then it resumed again the next day. Phil had sent the same message twice, at exactly the same time both days, with a day in the middle of no messages. What the hell? What happened that Dan didn’t respond to him for a whole day? He surely would have remembered that.

Dan dives into the code behind the messaging app, maybe it glitched and didn’t deliver, or sent the message a day later? He digs, and keeps digging.

An hour later he still digging. Something is wrong with his internal chronometer and he’s freaking out. His messaging app does not sync up with the chronometer in his v-space ports, and he finally thinks he’s getting somewhere. He’s carefully, carefully digging in the baseline programming on the ports themselves, which makes him nervous as all heck because one wrong keystroke and he’s going to nerf his v-space connection, when he finds it. Hands shaking, he pulls back and the two messages are there plain as day:

‘Phil u got some fcukn explaining to do’

‘ im coming to see u, ’

They’re not on his messenger app. They’ve been deleted. He has no recollection of sending these messages and he didn’t delete them, so there can be only one culprit. And if he has no memory of even sending them then that means his messages are not the only thing Phil has been deleting.

Chapter 9: Interlude

“I don’t feel good about any of this.”

“I don’t give an everloving fuck how you feel. Just get on with the job”

“I’m getting there, he’s getting there. He’s good, you have to admit that. He was the right one for this part.”

“I’ll give you credit when the job is finished, not before”

 

Phil sighs, and slumps down on the sofa he has installed in Dan’s lobby. He feels his heart hammering in his chest as he wrings his hands and tears his hair. He does this every time Dan is absent without a good reason. He fears he has misstepped, the backseat driving a mistake. He knows Dan is not stupid and he knew that he had been starting to suspect that Phil’s ‘coding advice’ has resulted in some unintended effects. Why didn’t he come back in after his break? He can feel his virtual heart pounding in his anxious chest and puts his hands over his face. He hates himself and what he has to do. What he will have to do to Dan, eventually. But the alternative is so much worse. This is all for the greater good.

Chapter 10: Firewall

“ Where is he?”

 

If there’s one thing Dan knows, it’s how to write a cracking firewall.

He’s been doing it since he was in his mid-teens. His parents were not as technically minded as he was, but they still knew their way around v-space. Before he’d saved up and booked himself in for the surgery he’d had to make do with the family v-unit. He’d ported in with the shitty, laggy, wireless units to the family lobby and coded from there, the crappy goggles making his temples ache from strain. Every now and again his mother or father would drop in unexpectedly to check in on him, see how and what he was doing, and tell him it was time for dinner. They probably suspected him of wanking in there, rather than whatever he actually had been doing, but in either case teaching himself to write a decent firewall had been a stone cold priority. So by now he can write impressive code, enough to keep his online activities private. From outsiders, his parents and the G.

This is the first time he will attempt to do it from within his own lobby. He is vaguely mindful of the warnings, but he is confident in his own abilities.

He finishes the last few lines of code and runs it through a compiler, setting the wheels in motion so he can observe Phil covertly and get the information he needs. He hates that he has to do this, but too many things Phil has said and done have not added up. What AI has duvet days? Why is an AI so political? And finally the message. The missing day. Navleen’s extreme reaction to something he has no recollection of. He needs to get to the bottom of this and he needs to do it without Phil knowing what he’s up to.

Once it finishes he connects his surface to his jacks and installs the firewall. Then he drops into v-space behind it.

Rather than the pretty neon-pastel meadow that Phil has installed, the lobby is infinite darkness. He is inverted and in negative. Static buzzes around him as he moves. Immediately he can feel something is wrong. He feels dizzy and sick and like a pressure is going to crush his skull. He is desaturated and ghostlike. Everything about his lobby is still there but it’s like he’s seeing it through a veil of shadow.

He sees a figure in negative sitting on his couch. Phil. He’s just looking through Dan’s feeds, idly clicking on things that seem to interest him, reading articles, looking at dog gifs, nothing suspicious. Dan watches covertly for a while, fighting the sick feeling. This firewall prevents him from hearing sound from the other side, but it looks like Phil is singing something. Phil then flicks up the gig list, scanning through it, tilting his head to one side. He deletes a few jobs and reorders the list, wiping his hands nervously on this thighs. He’s sitting bolt upright like a meerkat, ready to flee at any moment. Dan is gutted, he doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad that his suspicions were actually valid. He definitely did not expect this.

He didn’t get a good look at the jobs Phil deleted but one was definitely from the Investment firm with the dodgy heating system. It looked like the others were all mods and augments that were less than legal. Is Phil trying to prevent him from going back? To protect him from breaking the law? Dan is affronted that Phil is nannying his gig list, but can understand the impulse, if Dan gets taken by the G there is no telling what will happen to Phil.

He feels a surge of anger. Phil couldn’t just talk to him and explain his concerns? He likes to think he’s a reasonable guy, he would have listened.

Phil twiddles with the gig list some more then closes it and exhales. Dan zooms up to him, waving his hand in front of Phil’s face. Nope he definitely can’t see him. The pressure squeezing his skull intensifies and Dan’s vision swims. This was such a bad idea.

He moves behind Phil and brings up a keyboard so he can code from here. He follows Phil as he meanders about, preparing to drop the code that he has hacked together to deep dive Phil’s programming. He pauses a moment. Phil will be aware of this, will it hurt him? Dan is angry, and he doesn’t want to damage Phil’s program, but he has to know...

Nausea rocks him. He feels his stomach lurch and is hit by a rush of fear adrenaline, he has left his IRL body laying flat on its back. If he’s sick here he will choke on his own vomit and die. Shit.

“Fuck it!” his voice buzzes in the static-ridden netherworld and he drops his script to analyse Phil. It manifests as a cable with a large spike on the end. Dan is appalled, but his stomach lurches alarmingly so he slams it into the back of Phil’s neck. As soon as it’s running he clenches out of v-space and comes to in the real world. He feels cold water in his mouth and sick as hell and quickly rolls over, reaching and pulling out his toilet and emptying the thin contents of his stomach.

After retching for a few moments, he takes big gulps of air and steadies his breathing. The pressure he felt before is still in his head, behind his eyes and at his temples. He curses himself for a stone cold idiot as in the overlay his messenger app pings.

‘Dan something happened.’ It’s Phil, of course,

‘what happened phil’ Dan replies, with a leaden feeling in his bones, knowing full well.

‘Idk but I think someone else has found out about me. Can you come?’ Dan wants to cry. His head hurts. He has to wait for the script to do its business before he can switch it off, and he has to switch it off before he shuts down the firewall or else Phil will know it’s him. He breathes slowly and evenly through his mouth.

‘Dan?’

‘sorry, can’t now’ Dan sends quickly. ‘ im super sick’

‘Oh no! :( Are you ok?’

‘ill be fine in a bit ill come as soon as i can’

‘Thanks Dan hope you feel better’

Dan lies back, throwing an arm over his face. He feels terrible. He tries to browse the flatnet in overlay, but it makes him feel ten times worse. He watches the progress bar on his script tick minutely forward and groans. This is Phil what is he thinking? He almost cancels out of the programme many times but the nagging voice at the back of his head is telling him not to. He remembers that sensation. Of not knowing. Of gaps in his memory. He has to know what Phil is doing to him and he can’t trust his own mind any more.

He couldn’t say how much time had passed when the progress bar finally dings. He’s lying on his side, swimming in misery, listening to the wind whistle through the roof of the stack. The room is spinning and he tries to focus on the surface, trying to remember how to stop the script from running. In his addled state he can’t figure it out so he just mashes the power button to shut down and then reboots. He stares at his own eyes in the reflection of the dead screen and doesn’t recognise himself. This was such a bad idea. His skin ripples with cold prickles and he has a sour taste in his mouth.

His stomach heaves and he thinks he’s going to be sick again. Finally his surface springs back to life, and he taps in to make sure the script is indeed dead and he’s got all the data he needs. There is a large file ready to read, he flicks through the first few pages and sees a lot of traffic data. He can’t be sure that he got everything, but he needs this firewall gone, like, right now.
He drops in to v-space, back into the screeching black static. Frantically he searches for Phil. He can see him through a fog and runs to reach him. Phil is facing away from him, frozen in negative colours, the thick cable attached to the back of his neck. Dan tries to run to him, but he feels like he’s running in a nightmare, his limbs work only slowly and he feels like he’s running through water. He reaches out and his fingertips brush the cable, only for Phil to move away.

He screams in frustration and it sounds like a recording played backward. Phil rolls his head on his shoulders and then cocks his head to the side, as if listening. Dan gets closer and makes another grab, this time his hand closing around the virtual cable. He is almost floored by another stab of pain in his head and yanks the cable hard, praying that he can get this first time.

To his immense relief the cable detaches itself from Phil’s neck. In the void, Phil suddenly reels and falls to his knees. Dan feels relief wash over him and clenches out immediately.

He comes to in his cube. His head is splitting and his messenger app pings again.
‘ Dan, i hope you’re feeling better. If you can come i really need to see you.’

Dan is going out of his mind with the pain in his head. But now he can finally finally take down the firewall.

He squints at his surface through the pain. The edges of his vision are blurry and he blinks his way through the menus, into the settings and finds the section he’s looking for.

As soon as he kills the firewall the pressure in his head is instantly relieved. He exhales with a groan as the pain trickles out of his body. He hadn’t realised quite how much pain he had been in until it wasn’t there any more. His neck and jaw feel sore and he realises it’s because he’d been clenching his teeth.

He still feels kind of spaced out. He looks at himself in his tiny mirror, spending long minutes prodding his eyebrows, blinking his eyes, poking his cheek and frowning. He recognises the man before him, but as someone he knew a long time ago. He lifts his curls off his forehead. Was his hair always this curly?

He made it. That was recklessly stupid.

‘Dan? Are you there :(‘

Oh shit. Yeah. Phil. Dan’s brain feels like a soggy sponge. He’s got a shitload of data that he’s pulled from Phil’s programme but no time to go through it. He needs to drop in and smooth this over. Then he needs to spend a few hours reading through to get to the bottom of this.

He drops in to v-space, to his beautiful meadow. Phil is sitting on the sofa and jumps to his feet as soon as he materialises.

Dan just stands there and finds himself swept into a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Phil exclaims.

“I’m here.” echos Dan. He’s not right. He knows it. He just has to keep it together until he can drop out and read through the data. He can’t even look at Phil.
“Are you ok?” Phil keeps his hands on Dan’s shoulders. Dan shrugs.
“I think… I think I ate something weird. I threw up.”
“Are you still hungover?” Phil asks with a frown. Dan blinks. Was that only yesterday? Yes. Valid.

“Uhhh… maybe. Or it could have been Byron’s red curry. Um. Yeah. Actually maybe too much spicy stuff and alcohol. Not a good combo.”

“Your body isn’t used to so much food at the same time.” Phil says a little sadly.

“Yeah, yeah that’s totally it.” Dan grasps for that excuse. “Um. Are you ok?” He belatedly remembers to ask, since Phil’s freaking out is what prompted him to come in. Phil waves his concerns away.
“I… it was stupid. I thought someone else had got into your lobby. I thought I felt something. But it’s impossible, right? I know you must have a pretty beefy security system in here.” Dan laughs a scratchy laugh.
“Yeah, Phil. No one else is getting in here apart from me and you.” He opens the portal to his cineflix account. “Buffy? I’m still feeling a bit crap. Just want to chill out.” Phil smiles.

“Sure, Dan.”

*

Dan has sat through a few more episodes, then made his excuses with Phil.  

He is shattered, physically and emotionally. He just wants to crawl into bed and sleep off this persistent low grade headache, a hangover of the blistering migraine he had through the firewall, but he has work to do.  

*

Sleep has not rested him. He’d spent the rest of the night into the small hours digging through the data he pulled from Phil’s programme until he dropped from exhaustion, then he twitched through a few meagre hours of sleep, all the while grinding his teeth with the pain in his temples. He’d gone right back in to the data as soon as he woke up.

Some of it he can’t make head nor tail of. It’s more AI programming language like the stuff he had written to ‘fix’ Phil’s programme, but he can make no sense of what it says. He’s seeing a lot of messenger traffic, not only to himself, which he would have expected, but to other contacts which he definitely did not expect. Who the fuck is Phil talking to that isn’t him? He tries to read the messages but they seem to be encoded in some sort of impenetrable machine language.

His fucking head hurts.

Aside from Phil’s mysterious contacts, he finds a bunch of coding that he recognises as his alleged ‘brilliant’ programming from the investment firm the other day. He is sobered to discover that he, Dan, tinkered with a bunch of their systems without knowing a thing about it. Phil essentially commandeered his body to pursue his own agenda, dumping Dan’s consciousness in v-space while he did it, and then deleted Dan’s memory of the surrounding weirdness. Dan spends a long while tinkering with the code, and finally finds a package of his memories. Shaking, he unlocks it, and they crash back into his head. They’re jumbled, the order is nonsensical, but they’re complete, and they’re back.

Dan is chilled at the scope of implications this raises. What did Phil make Dan do while he was in control? Is this the only time he’s done it, or the only time he’s been caught? How can Dan prevent him doing it again?

He needs to go and see Phil, and for the first time, he’s scared.

*

He drops in, having clothed his avatar in a long black hoodie which has the words ‘drink from me and live forever’ emblazoned on the sleeve. Phil is already here. He closes out of a notepad, and gives Dan a wide, happy smile. Dan is grim. Phil’s smile slowly drops off his face, as Dan stares at him arms crossed. It’s hard for Dan to imagine that Phil would have betrayed him, but well, here we are.

“Dan…” Phil says slowly, questioning.

“‘Phil you got some fucken explaining to do’,” says Dan, deadpan, looking Phil directly in the eye. He looks blank.

“What? Are you ok Dan?” He asks. Dan advances on him, one step with each word.

“Phil. You, letter ‘U’. Got. Some. Fucken. Explaining. To. Do.” Dan enunciates every word precisely. He sees it happen in slow motion. The light in Phil’s eyes changes as the implication of those words sink in.

“Why would I have sent that message, Phil?” Dan asks, dangerously soft. “Why don’t I remember sending it? What are you hiding?”

“Dan, what message? I’m not hiding anything!” exclaims Phil, scrambling desperately away from the truth.

“You’re lying,” Dan says slowly. “I’ve seen it. I went into the baseline. Why don’t I remember sending it?” He can’t quite believe he was right. But the data is there. Phil freezes, cornered. He seems like he will argue for a moment, then gives up and shrugs.

“Okay. I am lying,” he says, matter-of-factly. He looks so done with everything. They square off for a moment.

“Phil!!” Dan exclaims angrily, “I’m serious! I have everything. Why the fuck did I send you a message saying you have explaining to do? Why did you want me to cancel out of the investment job? Why the fuck was my memory so patchy for that day? Did you do something? Did you tamper with me?” Dan is breathing heavily.

Phil sighs and looks to the side. His shoulders drop first and he drops his head back to look at the virtual sky. After a long pause he snaps his head back upright and looks Dan dead in the eye.

“There is a reason for everything.” he says, his eyes revealing nothing. There is no emotion there, just a cold blue stare. “I know that sounds sketchy as hell. Believe me, I know. But it’s the truth.”

“So you admit it, you altered my memory?”

“It was necessary.” says Phil, without emotion. Cold fear grips Dan. If Phil can do this so casually, what else can he do? What else has he already done?

“Why?” Dan asks in a small voice. He feels small in his large body. He’d expected to feel angry but now he’s just sad and scared. Phil takes a long time to answer. Then his emotionless mask cracks and pain shines through. He’s caught and he knows it.

“Because you weren’t ready.” he says, “I couldn’t wait any longer and you… I just. Dan I’m so sorry.” Phil buries his face in his hands.
“Couldn’t wait? Couldn’t wait for what?” Phil doesn’t reply. “I’m scared of you now.” Dan says, bluntly. “I’d get rid of you if I knew how.” Phil nods. “It’s a violation.” Phil nods again.
“I can’t justify myself.” Phil says, “You won’t believe me but it was for your own good. And you do know how to get rid of me, you can kill the .exe in task manager.”

“That simple? That would do it?”

“It would. I’d be gone forever though.”

Dan sits on the stupidly opulent sofa and crunches into himself. His brain is screaming at him. What the fuck? What the fuck?? This is insane. He’s still half unsure if Phil is even real, or a product of his own broken mind.

“It was for my own good. That is the only explanation you’re giving me.” Dan says flatly. Phil looks up at him. Entreating.

“Yes! I wish I could tell you why but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“This is my brain Phil. These are my memories. ” Dan’s voice comes out raw, his throat is closing up with emotion.

“I know Dan!” Phil shouts back. He’s almost crying. “You should delete me! You know you should!”

He knows immediately that he can’t do it. No matter what Phil did to him and why, he can’t just delete his existence forever. He’s a stable, self-aware AI. He’s a miracle of programming and he’s practically a new life form. It would be murder. Let alone the fact that Phil is the only good thing about Dan’s life right now. He’s in love with him. He betrayed him. Shit.

Dan’s head stabs with pain. He’s had low grade headaches ever since the firewall and they’ve been driving him crazy.

“I’m not gonna delete you Phil.” Dan says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t… you’re all I’ve… I don’t want… I just can’t,” Dan looks up where he is sat and Phil is kneeling at his feet.

“I won’t do it again.” Phil promises.

“You won’t.” Dan agrees.

“I hate hurting you.”

“Then don’t hurt me.” Dan says. Phil looks away. They sit in silence for a long time, Phil kneeling at Dan’s feet.

“I’m going to the forest,” Dan announces.

“Shall… shall I come?” Phil asks. Dan stands up and doesn’t reply, striding off into the distance. Phil doesn’t follow.

*

Dan sits in the clearing amongst the trees. He appreciates the bleak irony in a meta kind of way. Phil created this space for him to feel safe. He never expected he’d be using it to feel safe from Phil.  The stars above bathe him in turquoise blue light.

He sits cross legged on the grass and breathes, trying to relax. His headache is still there, niggling. He breathes in and out, trying to quieten his tumultuous thoughts.

The animals of the glade come to investigate this large bear that has joined them. A fat hedgehog waddles past. The fawn comes to see if he has any more pellets for her, and when he doesn’t she decides to stay with him anyway, folding her legs underneath and laying her head on his lap.  Birds flap down, and roost close to his location, or strut about the clearing chatting at each other.

Dan tries to let go, to rise above the thoughts running through his mind, but he keeps getting swept back into the maelstrom. He feels trapped, he can’t delete Phil, so can he get over what Phil did? He goes back and forward for a long time. Animals settle around him, occasionally coming to give him a nuzzle or lick.

*

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there when he realises that Phil is standing at the edge of the clearing, keeping a respectful distance away. He is holding his hands clenched in fists by the side of his hips.

“I know you’re there Phil.” Dan says, infinitely weary, not looking over at him.

“Are you ok, Dan?” He asks timidly.

“I don’t know yet.” Dan says bluntly.

Phil sits opposite him, mirroring his cross legged position on the grass.

“I’m just going to talk. You can listen, or not. It’s up to you.” Phil stares at him, his eyes almost luminous in the pale neon twilight.

“Things are happening out there, things in the Real World that you have no idea about. You’ve figured out by now that I have been programmed with an agenda. Whatever you think this agenda may be, I promise you it’s further from the truth than you know. I have no right to ask this, but I’m asking you to trust me. I’ve never been close to anyone like I have you, Dan. I want what’s best for you. For everybody. A radical change.”

“You can’t bring down the government Phil. We can’t… that’s ludicrous.”

“We’re not aiming to. We’re just going to kick them a bit.”

“We are? We. Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” says Phil immediately. “Because it distracts them. Because it gives someone else a chance to… well, never mind that.” He entreats. “You just have to put your trust in me.”

Dan is tired. Tired of thinking. Tired of arguments. He looks up at Phil and feels his stomach swoop. He loves him, that’s all there is to it. Ultimately he’d do anything Phil asked him, no matter how reckless or crazy or dangerous. He scooches forward to put his head in Phil’s lap. They’re in this together now, no matter what.

Chapter 11: Hack

“This is going too far. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“You finish the job we started. I don’t care how, just get it done”

“It’s too much. It’s time to stop.”

“That is not your call.”

 

Dan gets an irritating burst of static whenever he drops in to v-space now. He feels on edge, like his skin is crawling. Phil is here, and looks up with a smile when he sees him.

“You're here!” he exclaims happily. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come!” Phil has both his index fingers locked inside a Chinese finger trap and is pushing them in and out. Trapped, but voluntarily.

“When I get a message saying ‘come to me’ what else am I supposed to do?” Dan grumbles, smiling.

“You’re ok with this?” Phil asks

“I mean, no, not really… not gonna stop me though.”

“Dan.” Phil admonishes

“Hey, you can’t have this both ways. Do you want my help or not?”

Phil drifts over and takes his shoulders with both hands. The finger trap has disappeared.

“We’re going to change things Dan. We’re going to change the world.”

*

Phil shows him the programme he has written and neatly as a jigsaw, the final piece clicks into place.

Dan is floored.

“You're going to hit them where the money is.” He says slowly, Phil smiles and looks to the side, his asymmetric fringe hiding his right eye.

“I couldn’t possibly hit them where the money is. I don’t have a gig license. You’re going to do it.”

“Like fuck I am!” Dan says hotly. “This is your plan? Are you insane? Am I insane?”

“You’ll do it for me,” Phil says sweetly. “You’ll do it because I ask you to.”

“Or what? You gonna take control of my body again?” Phil looks down.

“No. I promised I’d never do that again. I’d much rather have your brain online for this anyway.”

“Good. Great!” Dan says sarcastically. “Shit, Phil. Are we really doing this?”

“It’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.” Dan considers this for a long moment. Then he nudges Phil away from the keyboard.

“If we’re doing this then I’ve got some mods for you. What you have there is lacking subtlety and finesse…” Dan ignores the throbbing in his temples and sits down to pick apart Phil’s code.

*

‘We’re not gonna kill anyone, right?’

‘Dan! Of course not! We might make them uncomfortable but no one is going to die’

Dan sits in a Starbucks across the street from the investment firm, watching people go in and out of the building. He’s been coming here for weeks, building a regular pattern, building a rapport with the baristas, while Phil’s plan was being formulated. Most importantly so that today is not the first day he is seen here.

Everything is in place. The scripts have been hammered out and pre-written over the weeks leading up to today. They’ve worked together, harnessing the best of both their clever minds. Dan can be devious when he’s got license to set his will to the malicious, and Phil’s wild creativity has pushed him further than he would go alone. Phil’s given him free reign. Phil has taken care of the backend, where the money will go once they’ve got the divert. Dan doesn’t even want to know. It’s a very real possibility that he could be taken by the G if this plan goes south and the less he knows of this part the better. Dan just wants to know that the money is going nowhere near him or his account. They’re here to inject chaos, primarily, not create a trail of money.

His messenger dings, it’s time.

*

It starts slowly. After about 30 minutes Dan sees a few security guards pulling at their collars. They prop the front doors of the building open, posting a security guard at each entrance. A few members of staff wander out to go to the gelateria further down the street. Dan tries not to imagine how stressed and frustrated he is making the building IT team.

After an hour they seem to know they’re in trouble. Dan’s on his 3rd coffee and is shaking as his hands skip over the keys.

‘Are you ok? Your heart rate is elevated.’

‘no shit phil’ he sends back. He’s close to aborting the mission. He wants to just leave, bail and deal with the fallout later. As if reading his mind a msg pings in.

‘Stay with me Dan’ Phil knows him down to his bones. Dan sighs.

‘always x’

Sweaty looking staff begin to stream out of the building. Perfect. Dan sits at a high bench against the glass wall, watching their faces carefully as they file out. Suited traders, EA’s with skinny dresses and killer heels… He grits his teeth, where are they? He looks at his files. The latest report shows that the temperature inside is over 35 degrees, much hotter than the temperature on the street outside. He has a guilty pang as he thinks about Navleen, how  passionate she is about her racks of servers. She would try everything. Keep trying until she was forcibly removed.

An hour and a half has passed and most of the staff are outside, milling about by the statue of Ada, Countess of Lovelace in an adjacent square, and basking in the spring sunshine. Ironically, quite a few have come in to this Starbucks to get frappes.

Finally, at 1 hour 45 minutes, the temperature inside is 45 degrees. He sees Navleen being dragged out of the building by Yuuhi. She is drenched in sweat and in full flow shouting at him and wrestling with her surface. Time for Phase 2.

Dan opens the bridge from his surface and leans forward on his elbows, dropping in to v-space. This is the riskiest part of the plan for him, if Dan’s body falls off his chair while he is in v-space it will be game over. Phil had argued for him to be sitting on a sofa, but Dan convinced him he needed to be able to see when the tech team were clear of the building, there was no way he was going in if they were still around on the main systems. They know him, and Navleen definitely knows his coding style.

So, the compromise was that he would be on a high stool in the corner, facing the building. He’s wedged it as best he could and is leaning forward over his arms. He’s dropped into v-space and looking for Phil. He appears moments after Dan, dressed all in black, and looking serious.

Dan is struck anew with how fucking handsome he is. He’s so striking, a vision in monochrome with his starkly pale skin and inky hair.

“Ready?” Dan asks, clipped. He’s worried. He’s nerfed the override that provides backup AC in the server room. They have the temperature in there so high that the systems could fail at any moment. If that happens while Phil is inside…

“Ready.” Phil confirms, resolute. Dan clacks on a virtual keyboard to create the portal into the company systems, the backdoor that Phil had him install the last time he was there.

“Hey,” Dan stops him and puts a hand on his chest as he walks toward the portal. “Be careful.” He presses a single firm kiss to Phil’s lips, Phil nods grimly, and then is away through the portal.

Dan drops back out of v-space, glad to discover that he’s still on his chair. Now he waits.
As he comes to he is aware of a conversation going on behind him. He recognises the voices and his whole skin erupts in goosebumps. It’s Navleen.

“Why the hell would they attack the climate systems though? It makes no sense!”
“We don’t know that this is an attack anyway,” It’s Yuuhi. “It could just be the climate controls breaking again.”

“Wake up Yuuhi… you want a nitro cold foam...”

They order. Dan sweats in his seat. He needs to close out once Phil has done what he needs to do inside the systems. He needs to get Phil back on to his ports or he’ll lose him forever. If he moves, breaks his connection, tries to get out of the store, there’s no guarantee he would be able to get back connected in time, or re-open the backdoor. He has to stay where he is. They haven’t noticed him yet. Slowly, slowly, he draws his hood up around his head. It’s not much, but it hides his profile from a casual glance.

The seconds tick by and Dan’s heart is hammering. He drums his fingers unconsciously and waits, waits, refreshing the page every few seconds. Navleen and Yuuhi finish their order. He doesn’t dare look around to see where they’ve gone, but their voices drift away from his location.

He exhales slowly, only to realise that they are now walking outside the window, separated by centimetres from where he is sitting. He’s got nowhere to go, he freezes. She’s so close he can read the screen of the surface she’s glued to.
His programme pings and his screen goes green, just as hers goes red. She whips her head toward the building and is running across the road, heedless of the screeching traffic. Yuuhi shouts after her and follows. Dan watches her try and argue her way past the security. There’s nothing for it, he has to drop back in right now.
Back in v-space and he’s got the portal open. Phil stumbles through the portal, looking drawn. Dan grabs him and shuts the portal.

“Is it done?” he asks, frantically

“Yes, Dan…” Phil looks like he’s about to cry, and wants to draw Dan into a hug but Dan doesn’t have time.
“I’m sorry. My IRL body is in danger. I need to go now I’ve got you back.”

He drops back out and reels. His head is pounding now. He gathers up his surface and leaves the store, taking care to go slowly and not draw attention to himself.

Wow. They did that.

Dan weaves his way through the crowds of staff and pulls a mask over his mouth and nose

Chapter 12: Glitch

“Processing…”

 

It’s late and he is on his way home back to the stack along the canal. Spring is here, and the first tendrils of warm weather are making themselves known. Cherry blossoms waft artfully over the neon lit canal in the nighttime, and for the fifth time today, Dan is experiencing extreme deja-vu. He stands stock still, looking at the way the branches drape just so over the water. He swears he’s experienced this before, but knows he cannot have. He’s never walked this way back to the stack, he’d usually say it was too dangerous. He’s stuck his head above the parapet now, though, and needs a route home that isn’t lined with facial recognition drones. Here, under the cherry trees, the drones cannot fly because they get tangled and drown. Hence, this route is unmonitored and also dangerous.

His overlay alerts him to movement and he tenses, ready to run, when he realises it’s a bird flapping down to settle in the trees. He breathed a sigh of relief before he pays more attention to the creature before him. He stares at it and stares and stares. It’s body is indigo and it has a crest on its head.

It’s the fucking goofy bird from his fucking forest and he’s terrified.

He’s broken. He’s lost it. His mind screams at him. He’s lost the ability to differentiate between virtual and real.

The bird looks at him and cocks it’s long goofy beak. He is frozen, then runs full tilt back to his stack. Back to v-space, safety and Phil.

*

“I’m worried about the amount of time you’re spending in here,” Phil says, a few days after the G hack. “I mean, you always spent a lot of time in here but you’re not taking your self-care breaks any more…”

“No point. Don’t need them.” Dan cuts him off.

Dan can see him chew his lip from the corner of his eye and resolves to ignore him, clicking around his feeds obsessively, looking for any news of the job they just pulled. There is eerily nothing. This wasn’t minor level shit. No-one seriously fucks with the G and gets away with it. His palms prickle. Why did he think this would be ok? Why did he ever listen to someone who is, at the end of the day, a collection of 1’s and 0’s, an amalgam of millions of lines of code.

Fuck fuck fuck. He breathes through clenched teeth and clicks through feeds that haven’t changed since the last time he checked, approximately 30 seconds ago. He’s spent almost every waking moment here for the past 72 hrs, dropping out only to neck a quick pint of water, pee and eat a snack.  

“... it’s not that I don’t love spending time with you, because I totally do!” Phil smiles, “But, you know, your real world body needs food and water. You have to sleep properly. Dan?”

“Phil. I know. I just need… “ Dan doesn’t actually know what he needs, other than to calm the hell down. Phil drifts in behind him and puts two reassuringly heavy hands on his shoulders, and drops a kiss to the top of his head.

“Talk to me.” he says gently.

“What good will it do?” Dan says, bitterness inflecting his words.

“It might make you feel better? ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’, that’s what my mum used to say.”

“Your mum?” Dan says derisively. “You have a mum? Actually you know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.” Dan puts his head in his hands and struggles to breathe calmly and evenly. Phil guides him to sit down on the wide couch and puts and arm around him, Dan nuzzles his head into the crook of Phil’s neck.

They stay that way for a long while, Phil’s arms around him. Grounding him. His brain is turning at 100 miles per hour, refusing to settle on any one issue, just a maelstrom of panic and emotion surging around, like before. He clings to Phil like he is a tree in the storm. He needs a distraction. He needs to get out of his turbulent mind and focus on one thing. He needs Phil.

He tentatively kisses the side of Phil’s neck. Phil shudders and puts a hand up to the back of Dan’s head. Dan is insistent, wet kisses becoming taste, licking up to Phil’s earlobe and then moving across to claim his mouth. He kisses him deep and long, loving the white noise of arousal that drowns out all the other swirling concerns in his mind.

“Dan.” says Phil between kisses. “Dan…”

Dan doesn’t let him speak and pounces on him, swinging a leg over his lap and lacing his fingers behind Phil’s neck. He can feel Phil’s dick pressing up against his ass and grinds down to stimulate him. Phil gasps and grabs Dan’s waist.

“Dan, are you ok? I… ah! That feels so good…” They kiss, Dan throwing himself in with an intensity he hasn’t before, he doesn’t think about Phil’s virtuality, or the G, or the way that reality is coming apart at the seams for him. All he cares about is this, here, now in the moment. The rush of arousal coursing through him, obliterating all other rational thought. He grinds on Phil, licking wetly into his mouth and panting against his neck. He loves this. His cock aches in his pants for how hard he is for this man. This AI. Nope. Don’t think about that.

“I want you,” Dan says into Phil’s ear.

“You have me,” Phil says seriously, firm hands on Dan’s skinny waist. Dan wiggles down to kneel at Phil’s feet and tugs sharply on his pyjama bottoms. Phil’s dick springs free, standing to glorious fat attention. Dan leans forward, opening his mouth hungrily.

“Dan. Dan!” Phil pushes gently on his shoulders. “Calm down. I don’t… you know? I don’t need this.”
“ I need this!” protests Dan, his mouth still open wide. Phil’s mouth hangs open. Dan moves forward again and takes Phil’s dick in his mouth. He instantly feels a calming weight throughout his virtual body. He is soothed, suckling Phil’s dick, his lips stretching around. He groans around it, loving the feeling of having his mouth full of Phil. Phil groans, and throws the back of his hand over his face as he twitches under Dan’s ministrations.
“Dan… ah!” he pants. Dan loves this part. Reducing Phil to incoherency. His mind goes blissfully quiet as he kneels, dark thoughts pushed out, all he can think about is the dick in his mouth. How he wants it inside him. He pulls off with a wet pop and looks up at Phil with fathomless dark eyes.

“Do you want to try something new?” Dan asks, almost rhetorically. For Phil, new experiences are almost always a yes.

*

Dan is whimpering and begging by the time Phil has him stretched. It feels incredible, not only because Phil is three fingers deep and has crooked his fingers just so , but also he can’t hear anything. It’s the relief of not feeling anxiety crushing him, the absence of fear. He is here, Phil has control, it’s all he needs.

Phil’s expression is rapt and hungry and he watches Dan flush and whimper under his ministrations.

“Ready?” He asks, stroking himself with more lube with his free hand.

“Fuck me...” pants Dan, “I need you inside...” Phil gently lifts his knees and lines himself up with Dan’s fluttering hole. Slowly and gently, he eases himself in. Dan is replete, full and silent inside. Phil is large and even in this virtual sphere it takes him a moment.

Phil leans forward and kisses him, locked together as they are.

“Dan. Dan…” he murmurs, reverently.

“Move. You can move,” whispers Dan, feeling every inch. There’s no room for anything else. “I need it.”

Phil moves and Dan feels it all the way through his bones. He bites his lip and lets the silence fill him. It’s intoxicating, it hurts and he loves it. Loves Phil. Loves the stretch and burn and drag against the nerves inside him. Phil is getting sloppier now, less careful, moving more with instinct, chasing his own orgasm. He pulls back a moment his eyes wild, then heaves Dan up to sit on his lap.

“I’m too close…” he pants, “Want you to…”

He grabs Dan by the hips and manoeuvres him so that he’s sitting on Phil, Phil’s cock still buried to the hilt. The new angle is a lot for Dan. He can’t help himself and moves, feeling Phil as deeply as he can. He grinds back and forth, bouncing a little. He’s so worked up his dick is dribbling on Phil’s chest and the moment Phil grasps him in his hand and thumbs a swipe of pre-come over the head he knows he’s done for. This new angle is so deep and so much. Phil cries out, high pitched and desperate, and Dan feels him pulsing. He rides him through it, so close now, Phil’s hand hasn’t stopped moving.

He grunts and sees white. He is stretched out like a held note. The rush tears through him, radiating outward to the tips of his fingers splayed on Phil’s chest. He collapses forward and opens his eyes and Phil is there, blue eyes burning through him into the very core of his being. He is in love.

*

After, they lay quietly together, breathing hard. Dan blinks a lot, shellshocked.

“That was…”

“Incredible?” suggests Phil.

“Overwhelming.” Dan studies him intently, locking eyes brown on blue. His best friend, his lover. His AI. His artificial collection of 1s and 0s who doesn’t exist.

His mood plummets as it dawns on him that he’s gone completely off the deep end now. He’s drowning in it. He shouldn’t have done this. This isn’t mild flirting, or even wanking, or porn, or whatever the fuck it was before, and it hasn’t actually solved his problems, just distracted from them for a while. He feels bad for using Phil like this, then feels silly because it’s not like Phil is even real. But he is in love with him. He feels a tightness across his chest, it burns through him and he feels his heart thudding looking deeply at Phil.

He knows it’s wrong but he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t care about the reality outside any more, or whatever the hell the fallout is going to be from the job they just pulled, for there surely will be some. He doesn’t want to wake up in his shitty cube, again, and wipe semi-dried come off his stomach, again. Yet he has to or his body will die. He knows he hasn’t taken any water since he’s been here, and it’s been hours. Any moment now his alarms are going to start chirping, warning him to pay attention to his physical form. Does he care? He drops his eyes.

“Hey,” says Phil gently. “Are you ok Dan? Talk to me. You… you’re shutting yourself away again. I need to know what’s going on in your head.” He goes to cup Dan’s cheek but Dan pulls away.

“I don’t want to leave,” Dan says quietly. “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to feel hungry and lonely all the time. I don’t want to live knowing I’m losing grip on my own sanity. I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this.” Dan swallows and his throat is painful from trying not to cry.

“Dan!” Phil frowns slightly “I’m here for you. You’re going to be okay you know? You’re… you’re not insane you know that, right?

“Do I Phil?” Dan’s voice cracks. “How the fuck is any of this okay? We just had sex.”

He’s getting more agitated by the minute. “I’m such a fucking loser that I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not any more. I don’t know who I am or who you are and I’m still in love with you. Ever since the firewall… I’m lost and I can’t get back to dry land. I can’t do it Phil… I can’t, I just…” Dan throat constricts as the words escape out of him and Phil is sitting up looking fond. Dan stops, squeezing his eyes shut. Phil touches his arm gently.

“You’re in lo… wait, what firewall Dan? I don’t remember a firewall job…” he asks, with sudden concern. Dan drops his head back and sighs, croaking.

“It doesn’t even matter now… it was stupid. So stupid. I couldn’t figure out what you were doing in my lobby, where you came from. Some things weren’t adding up, so I put a firewall in, so I could watch you. That’s how I figured out about the messages. That you were dropping anti-G scripts in my code. That you had tweaked me.” Dan opens his eyes and turns to find Phil, looking horrified.

“You set a firewall inside your own lobby.” says Phil, aghast.

“Yeah, not clever. It made me feel super sick, I deleted it as soon as I had the data on what you were doing. I guess there is a reason they advise against that when you get the ports.” Dan shrugs, sadly. Phil is so still that Dan thinks he has glitched. Then he starts and speaks softly.

“They do more than advise against it. It’s something they tell you not to do under any circumstance.” Phil frowns, “It really messes up your brain.”

Dan shrugs.

“My brain was already messed up.” he says carelessly.

“No.” says Phil firmly, “You don’t get to talk like that.”

“‘s my fuckin’ brain,” Dan mutters. Phil brushes a hand over his forehead.

“I wonder if it’s started yet…” he says, almost to himself. Dan gives him a sharply suspicious look. What the fuck is he talking about. Phil is resolute.

“We… we can fix this. You took it down, right?”

“I mean, yeah.” he says, frowning. “It didn’t help. I’m still getting headaches.”
“Yes, Dan.” Phil is firm, possibly even angry with him. “You put a literal wall inside your head which prevented the two halves of your brain talking to each other. How did you think that was going to go?” He looks scared, behind his anger.

“I can help you. We’ll figure something out,” Phil says, with more conviction that he seems to feel.

Dan takes a deep breath. He knows what to do.

“It’s too late. The G will get me eventually,” he says calmly. “I know that now. So why not just give up? I’ll stay here, with you.” He opens his eyes and Phil looks horrified at whatever it is he sees there.

A siren begins to sound in the v-space nest they have created together. Phil scrambles to his naked feet.

“Fuck! Fuck!!” he yells, Dan is surprised, because Phil hardly ever curses, but a wave of dizziness crashes over him and he reels.

“Dan! Dan listen to me!” Phil shouts over the siren. Dan feels lightheaded, and struggles to focus on Phil’s face. Phil places both hands on his shoulders.

“If there was another way out would you take it?” Phil asks, looking straight into his eyes. Dan nods but he’s finding it difficult to concentrate. Phil is frustrated.

“Dan, I need to hear you say ‘yes’. I need your consent on this.” Dan frowns.

“Yes?” He says tilting it up at the end. He doesn’t really know what he’s consenting to. Phil grimaces.

“If you could make me real, would you?” Phil asks, pain in his voice. Dan’s head swims into clarity.

“You’re… It’s fine. I’ll take what I can have, I know you’re not real.” Dan whispers.

“‘Yes’ or ‘No’, Dan.” Phil grits out, “If you could make me real, would you?” The siren continues to blare. Dan’s head swims.

“Yes!” exclaims Dan, confused. Phil nods grimly.

Phil turns his head and clicks his fingers. He holds a hand up to his ear and starts speaking but not to Dan.

“We’re out of time. No, don’t fucking argue with me we’re fucking getting him out right now. G is about to flush him. Yes, I got it.” Phil’s demeanour is icy and commanding. It’s like he has become another person, switching personality as easily as putting on a jacket. He suddenly pounces on Dan, wrapping him in a tight hug. Dan is pale and naked and wide eyed and it feels like Phil is speaking directly into his mind.

“Dan, I need you to be strong. Please hold on for me babe, I’m coming for you. Please hold on…”

Chapter 13: Real

“ Wake up Dan… please, wake up!”

 

Dan wakes to the siren still screeching. He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees are Phil’s glorious tricolour eyes filling his field of vision. He gasps and is astounded by the weight of the breath in his lungs. He feels solid, present, in a way he doesn’t remember feeling for a long time. Phil is standing over him, which is confusing enough, but it is a different Phil. Not as perfect, but more real. Lines crinkle the outer corners of his eyes. His black fringe is brushed up and off his forehead, and he’s showing signs of grey at his roots and temples. He’s wearing black rimmed glasses that are slightly large for his narrow face.

“Dan! Oh my God!” he exclaims happily. “Breathe, OK? Just breathe for me love, we’re so close!”

Phil reaches behind Dan’s ears and yanks hard, removing two hard lines that were connected to both of his ports. What the fuck is going on? He doesn’t even have a hardline rig in his cube. Did he crash at Byron’s? No, that wasn’t it. He looks up at Phil, fear in his eyes. Then the thought hits him like a punch to the gut. Phil is here. He’s awake and Phil is here and not in v-space. He feels panic rising in his chest. He tries to sit but finds that he can’t move. His body is too heavy. Phil hooks his arms under Dan’s armpits and inelegantly hauls him upright, and then in a surprising display of strength, hefts him up and over his shoulders in an undignified fireman’s lift. Dan feels like nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

“Phi...” he breathes out a whisper. He can’t speak. His lungs can’t cope with breathing and talking at the same time. “Wha… How…”

“Dan, relax. Focus on breathing. You don’t weigh as much as you think you do.” Phil says, confusing him. “Sorry, I promise I’ll explain everything later but for now we’ve got to move. We’re not safe yet.” And then he moves, bumping Dan’s emaciated, naked form across his shoulders. Dan rattles around, unable to control his head, unable to control his body at all.

He catches blurry glimpses of the strange room he is in. It’s huge, impossibly big, and filled with metal cots as far as his eyes can see. The room is dimly lit and he can hear whirring. It reminds him of the constant wind he hears at night in his cube. He sees cables connecting each bed to the others, a tangle of wires. Phil is slowly picking his way through the bramble, and Dan catches a glimpse of the occupants of his neighbouring beds. A girl with long blonde hair and a boy with short dark brown hair, faces turned to each other.

“Nuh…” he can feel his heart still racing overtime. He’s having a panic attack. “Nuh…” He tries to thrash but it comes out as a weak flop.

“Dan. Love. We’re close. Please, I need you to stay calm.” Phil is nearly at a wider section of path, unimpeded by cables. He stops and looks around. He’s breathing heavily, struggling with exertion. He sets Dan gently down in the middle of the path and holds him in a seated position. Dan feels like a rag doll. He can’t keep his head upright, his forehead lolls against Phil’s shoulder. Phil gently holds him and rests his head against Dan’s. Footsteps approach at a run and Phil exhales, closing his eyes.

“You actually found him?” says a female voice, incredulously. “Phil… I seriously hope he’s worth it.”

“Not now Lou.” Phil chokes out. He can barely speak.

“Come on mate,” says another male voice “Let’s get you out of here.” Dan is moved, seated in a grip between Phil and another man. He has a vague impression of wild curly hair and glasses. They pick up the pace now that his weight is split between two, and move down the path, with the woman, Lou, ranging ahead, looking all around.

They come to the edge of the large room, having passed many more cots, and negotiated another tangle of wires. They are at a small side door and Lou is fiddling with an old fashioned keyboard surface attached to a keypad with a hardline. Her nails clack on the keys as she types furiously. Dan’s head lolls on Phil’s shoulder and he starts to feel dizzy. He concentrates on breathing in and out. Why do his lungs feel so weak? He is hyper-aware of Phil, and he realises it is because he can smell him. He has a scent. He smells deeply, wonderfully male. Like musk and sweat and verdant organic material. He smells real and feels warm and human. Human. Phil.

Lou exclaims and the door clicks and suddenly they are all outside. The light is so bright that it hurts his eyes. Dan is eased into the back of a car and flops his head down onto Phil’s lap seated next to him.

“Yuh… Reh…” Dan huffs out quietly, still unable to draw a deep breath or control his body. Phil is holding his head gently in his lap and stroking his curls, rubbing his hand through them, and then to his shoulder and back.

“All good?” questions Lou, in the driver’s seat.

“Yeah. Drive.” says Phil, with a hard edge. “Let’s not hang about.” Dan feels tears prick his eyes. He is still dizzy and starting to feel sick.

“You… You’re real.” he says, a little stronger. Tears fall into Phil’s lap. “You’re real!” Phil, still holding him in his lap chokes out a sob.  

“Yes. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. Dan… I knew I had to find you. I couldn’t leave you there any more. You were about to be shut down.” Dan feels Phil holding him, keeping his useless body steady in the car. He feels his grip on consciousness begin to slip. Phil is still talking.

“I… Things are going to be strange for you for a while Dan, but I promise I’ll take care of you. Whatever you need I’ve got you now, but you’ve got to hold on. You’re with me and they can’t hurt you any more. That’s all I’ve wanted, ever since I met you. To protect you, to bring you to me where you will be safe.”

A hard note enters his voice. “I will burn down that world, I’ll tear it all down now that you’re out…No matter what happens.” he softens, still cradling Dan gently on his lap, stroking his back, guarding him against every jolt and bump and turn of the car.

He is quiet for a moment, then says oddly formal, “I wanted to tell you, in case I can’t later… I love you so much that I have a physical pain in my chest. And I’m sorry… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. I was selfish and scared and you wouldn’t have believed me anyway, but I love you and I feel like I should have been honest. I hope… I hope you can forgive me.”

“Damn, Phil…” says the other male voice, sounding more than a little awed. The curly haired guy? “What happened with you and this one?”

“Dan you have hold on. Just hold on a little longer.” Phil says quietly to him.

Dan listens to Phil ramble and a strange sense of calm washes over him. He doesn’t know what is happening, where he is or even what Phil is talking about. Why is he here? Why is he real? Nevertheless he believes. He believes in Phil and that he will be safe, whatever is happening. He feels the movement of the car and Phil’s firm hands on his body. He slips into unconsciousness.

Snatches of consciousness prick him in between dreamless sleeps.

A woman with mousy blonde hair and a gap toothed mouth in a round face leaning over him, frowning slightly.

Beeping machinery and raised voices.

The sound of sea birds calling outside the room he lies in. He sees a patch of blue sky in a square above him.

The curly haired man sitting in an armchair by the side of his bed, reading an old fashioned paper book.

Phil, most often it’s Phil… holding his hand, their fingers entwined.

One day, Dan wakes for longer, and his body doesn’t feel so heavy. He opens his eyes and his vision seems sharper. He can smell real food cooking, warmth and the human scent that he now knows belongs to Phil, close by. He turns his head on the pillow to see Phil sitting awkwardly in a hard chair, his head resting on the mattress next to Dan. He stirs as Dan pushes himself backwards and up to sitting.

“Hey you…” Phil says with a smile, blinking sleep away from his crystal blue eyes.

“Hey yourself.” Dan says automatically, a call and response. He looks around the unfamiliar room. His breath comes easily now. There is more strength in his long limbs and he is in control of his body. Phil takes his hand, almost shyly, and smiles beside him, watching him take it all in. He’s on an old fashioned hospital bed in and old fashioned sitting room. The sort of room his grandmother had before he moved to London. He can hear culinary clattering in another part of the house.

“Welcome back… you scared me for a while there.” Phil says quietly.

“Where am I?” Dan says slowly. Phil squeezes his hand.

“The Real World,” says Phil, confirming what he had already suspected deep down. He takes a deep breath.

“The London you knew, your cube, your stack, the gig list, the whole city, was a simulation.” Phil speaks quickly, and bites his lip, watching Dan intently. He doesn’t respond, just looks at Phil slack jawed.

Phil ploughs on, “We’ve found it’s best to get it all out in one go, like ripping off a plaster.” He says, apologetically. “It’s a lot to take in, but it’s better for us not to lie, sugar coat or leave anything out. So much of what you knew was a lie. We need to start with truth, always.” He finishes. Dan holds his gaze for a long while.

“You’re real.” He says, finally.

“Yep. 100% real!” Phil says smiling.

“You’re an actual flesh and blood human being,” Dan says slowly. “You’re not an AI, not a computer program. Not an .exe file.” He drops to an almost whisper.

“No, I’m a person, just like you,” Phil says softly. Dan looks at him again and feels his mind spin into free fall.

His eyes prick with moisture and he feels tears starting to well. Is this it? Has he finally lost his mind? Has his desire for Phil to be real finally driven him crazy? He lifts a hand and touches it to Phil’s cheek. He feels stubble growing in, runs his thumb over the mole to the left of his mouth. He touches his other hand to the slightly-beaky nose, to the eyebrows that don’t match his hair. Emotions wage war inside him. Shock. Relief. Fear. Love.

“I thought I was crazy,” he says, barely above a whisper. He presses his lips together and two fat tears fall, one from each eye. “I thought… I didn’t care that you were… You were everything to me. I wanted so badly… How fucked up is that? I’d rather be crazy and in love with you than sane and alone. I’m not entirely convinced that I’m not… Holy shit. Phil…” he cries for real this time, bursting into sobs that wrack his whole body. Phil blanches in horror and surges forward to wrap him in his arms.

“Shh… Sh… It’s OK.” he says, rubbing circles on his back. They stay like that for a long moment, Dan clinging to Phil and crying.

Phil finally speaks again. “I wanted to tell you for so long. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner. From experience, very few people believe if they’re told while they’re still in the simulation. It usually takes the removal, and experiencing the rehab to convince them.”

“Rehab.” Dan repeats, dully. His mind whirs. “So v-space is… a simulation too?”

“Ah, no. V-space is real.” Phil says, “Your mind does actually connect to a ‘lobby’ and you can interact with other minds there on the internet. The internet is real.” He says tapping his fingers to the neural ports behind Dan’s ears. “We can get into v-space, but we’ve never been able to crack into the simulation world. No-one has. It’s a constantly evolving, constantly changing programme generated by a massive bio-computer of networked minds. V-space is comparatively primitive. I could only ever get to you in there.”

Phil gently eases Dan back and turns his head to show two ports, similar to Dan’s, one behind each ear. “We can write code, via our agents, to feed stuff back through v-space into the Sim world. Stuff like the antique plug my ‘virus’ was stored on. It was a key that connected me to your v-space lobby. We can’t get stuff in the sim world directly.”

“Agents…” Dan says, slowly. “You… you coded the antique jack to target me.”

“Yes,” admits Phil, reluctantly. “I’d been watching you for a while, I knew you were an exceptional coder.” Phil looks away from him, a rosy blush rising in his pale cheeks. “It’s not just you, Dan. We’re working with other hackers, other coders. We’re getting them out one by one. We’ll get everyone out one day. There are thousands, you know? Thousands in your data farm alone. They were all like you, got pulled into VR and tricked into selling their lives away. None of them consented to be used in the way that Google is using them and it’s not right.”

Dan can hear a note of fire in Phil’s voice now. “Thanks to you we’ve taken a massive step closer. Once we remove enough hackers the system starts to collapse because the simulation world degrades and more and more people start to question their reality. You were starting to see the effects just before we had to get you out.” Dan lets this sink in for a long while before he speaks.

“The gig list…” he starts slowly. “It’s the system repairing itself.” He’s a coder, this makes sense to him. He looks down at his hands and thinks back to all the jobs, all the thousands of lines of code he’s written. Couched as security patches, search algorithms and trend analyses… his hacker brain can conceive of a different purpose, of an intelligent system smoothing over its own cracks. Send a list out and make the best brains fight over the job of repairing the system that has them enslaved. He thinks about how hard he worked all the time, working until his head pounded, just to cobble together enough credit to get protein powder, or noodles, or a fucking apple. Just to keep his head above water. All those nights he ached with loneliness and a gnawing hunger in his belly.

He looks up at Phil. “It’s a network. It’s using our neural capacity and using our coding skills to maintain itself. And it’s trying to keep you out.”

Phil smiles fondly at him.

“Clever, Dan… so clever. You’re always so quick to see to the root of things. It took me weeks after I finally woke up to realise…” Phil trails off, gripping Dan’s hand in his own.

“You were pulled out too?” Dan asks.

“Yep. Few years ago. PJ found me. He’s the curly haired guy with glasses.”

“Oh.” Dan says awkwardly, feeling ridiculous. Phil’s eyes widen.

“Oh! Not like that. Not like us,” Phil speaks quickly, rubbing his thumb over the back of Dan’s hand to reassure him. “I was… I was just very lonely. I was so ready to believe in something else. Something that would have seemed like magic. I know, I know…”

Phil gives a self-deprecatory laugh. “I was 23, way too old to believe in magic. But I was messed up, and PJ was something other, he was a friend. A secret. I had the fastest rehab they’ve ever seen, I was apparently totally ready to believe that my entire world had been a lie.” Phil gives a small self-deprecating shrug, then he smiles. “I’ll tell you something though, I was a terrible coder. We accomplished more in two months with you than PJ ever did in nearly a year with me. I was hopeless. I don’t know why the G even kept feeding me.”

Phil’s eyes darken and he casts a glance toward the sound of chat in the kitchen, biting his lip. Dan doesn’t notice, he is still holding Phil’s hand but his eyes are far away. Something Phil said is on repeat in his brain.

“Not like us…” he trails off. “Are we still us?”

Dan’s voice breaks slightly on the words. Emotions are roiling within him and he doesn’t know which one to latch on to. This is Phil, his Phil, who has always made him feel safe but he has a horrified feeling growing in his belly.

“You… you watched me? How? For how long?” A note of hysteria creeps into his voice. His whole world has been a lie and Phil kept him in the dark so he could use him for code?

“You… fucking… incepted me! You catfished me!” Dan raises his voice and Phil’s face falls. “You knew. You took advantage… you could see how lonely I was.”

Tears form in his eyes. “Was it a game for you? Did you and PJ and your friends laugh about how easy I was? Did you watch me wipe my come off myself when I dropped out of v-space after you fingered me?” Phil flinches and holds on as Dan tries to wrench his hand out of Phil’s grip. He’s still weak though and Phil keeps hold on him as Dan starts to hyperventilate.

“Dan! Dan breathe!” Phil pleads. “I… I never…” he casts about frantically for the right thing to say. “It’s… look… Yes, I found you. I knew you were a good coder, better than anything we’d seen. I watched you for a… a while. I know that seems super creepy but I could only observe you in v-space through the games. I begged Louise to take you on, I wanted to help you so badly. I never expected to fall in love with you, but I did, I swear. This is real. I’m here. Everything… then you kissed me and I was so ha-happy.” Phil stammers as he pleads. “You could say we’re just as bad as the G, that we used you without your consent, but…”

“But the ends justify the means,” says a female voice, the one that Dan has heard before. A statuesque lady with dark blonde hair is striding purposefully across the room towards his bed with a small device in her hands.  

“Louise,” says Phil, frowning at her. “Now is really not the time.”

“Phil, you need to get your internet boyfriend together or he’s going to pop.” she says without emotion. “His blood pressure is off the charts.” She taps a long nail against the device in her hand.

“Dan,” says Phil gently, insistently. “Look at me.” Dan’s eyes are wide and wild, and he’s still breathing heavily.

“Look at me.” Phil says again, gently. Dan looks, and sees blue. He feels Phil’s hands on his. He feels warm lips touch his, light and chaste and slightly chapped. It grounds him in the centre of the whirlpool that is his emotions right now.

“My feelings for you were always real. Never have any doubt about that.” Phil never breaks eye contact with him.

“And wow he would never bloody shut up about you,” Louise chips in, rolling her eyes. “He never told us he’d fallen in love with you but it was pretty bloody obvious to me, even before his little speech in the car.”

“Not helping Louise.” Phil says, irritated. He turns back to Dan with wet eyes. “I know it was a shitty thing to do. You have every right to feel used. But I want to start again from now, if you’ll let me.” Dan looks at him for a long while. Incidents from the past few months replay themselves in his mind. He’s been through so much and is still reeling from the revelation that most of it didn’t even happen.

“I need time.” says Dan slowly. “I… this is a lot. I don’t know what to do with this.” He looks at Phil and anger mixed with love flares. “Where can I go?”

“Well we’re not going to kick you out, idiot.” says Louise, fiddling with a machine next to his bed. “You’re not in any fit state to go anywhere anyway.” Phil stands abruptly and drops Dan’s hand.

“I’ll go…give you space.” he says awkwardly. His eyes are shiny and Dan can feel hurt radiating off him. This stranger, his best friend and lover. He’s blatantly trying to keep it together until he’s out of the room and can have a good cry. He half stumbles as he leaves.

“He’s still the same person, you know,” Louise observes, “He’s still the same goofy weirdo that pined over you for months and months.”

“He lied to me.” Dan snaps. “He used me.”

Louise shrugs.

“His feelings for you are as real as they come. As real as you both made them. And everything he made you do was under my instruction.” She says bluntly. “You want to stay here, under my roof, you will do the same. Though, for Phil’s sake I hope you don’t go about it in the same way.”

She flips her blonde ponytail over her shoulder and examines her nails. Dan feels as though he’s been slapped. He most certainly will not be working for this Louise or staying anywhere near her once he’s strong enough to walk about by himself.

“Your parents think you’re dead.” She continues, conversationally. “And if you try and contact them the G will attempt to ‘recover’ you. That’s how we lost Jimmy.” She exhales. “That beautiful man... I told him…” she shakes her head.

“Never mind that. Phil and the others are all about doing it nicely nicely when it comes to the rehab, but I’m afraid that I’m a realist. This is a war. One that you- ” she pokes him in the chest, “joined the day you went in for surgery. People need to learn to fucking read consent forms, I swear to christ…” Dan absorbs this. She continues.

“I don’t expect you to get to work right now. I’m not a monster, I know you’re still recovering. But if you want to stay with us, if you decide to stay with him, I’ll want to put that beautiful mind of yours to good use.” She deliberately catches his eye and holds his gaze with her perfectly made up blue eyes.  

“If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at the ones who did this to you. Not Phil. Use that anger and do some good.”

Dan swallows that, because the truth is insidious and much as he wants to be angry at Phil, he knows she is right.

“Why?” He croaks out, “Why do you do this? All of this?” He gesticulates around the room, the house. “Why fight?” She sits back in the chair.

“I had daughters , Daniel.” She says, coldly. “Before all of this. Baby girls. That’s all you get to know about me for now.” She looks at the machines next to his bed. “Now that I’m satisfied that you’re not going to have a heart attack in the imminent future I’ll leave you to it.”

She looks to the door. “Phil’s a good guy. One of the best. You should give him another chance.” Dan makes a non-committal grunt, and she leaves him to his dark thoughts.

*

His strength returns, over the following days and weeks. He is moved to a room upstairs in the house, once he can shuffle on his own feet. It is crammed with his bed and bunk beds that are occupied by two other boys. Brothers, he thinks, although he doesn’t speak to either.

PJ brings him old paper books, and he reads, in between periods of restless sleep. Food is left at his bedside, always while he is sleeping, and he knows without asking that Phil has brought it for him. There is no suggestion of him accessing v-space, or even the flatnet.

Louise and an Irish woman, Hazel, come to see him in his room, to take his blood and check his blood pressure. The G had deliberately kept his body underfed, supplying him with the minimum possible nutrients to keep him alive, which is why he is so thin and weak and why he was always hungry in the simulation world.

He learns that he is 27, not 23 as he thought. His perception of the passage of time has been altered, the G doesn’t have all their assets online in the simulation at the same time, to avoid burnout. Despite it feeling like an intense few months for Dan, Phil had been working with him for closer to a year in IRL time.

He is encouraged to talk about his feelings, but he finds that he doesn’t have anything to say to anyone. He is left alone and cries in his room, tears for the years he has lost, and for the loss of his world as he knew it. He thinks back again and again to that moment, when Phil asked him if he wanted another way out. This is what he meant. He has given Dan the freedom now to determine what he does with his life, broken free of the programming that held him captive.

He is aware of the bustle and commotion of the house going on around him, there are alerts that wake people in the middle of the night, as their agents go through various v-space dramas. He processes all of this as he heals and gains weight. He starts taking his meals down at the big table in the communal kitchen. He starts helping with chores around the house, chopping or cleaning or wiping as directed by Louise. Phil is always absent. All the while Dan holds the words I love you so much I have a pain in my chest in his heart.

“Where’s Phil?” PJ is dropping off some more books one day, when Dan finally asks him.

“Oh, mate.” PJ drops to the chair between Dan’s bed and the bunks. Dan’s heart clenches, suddenly panicking that something dreadful has happened and he left it too late.

“He’s avoiding you. I mean, obviously, right? He ripped you from the world, he knows you’re hurting. He’s been doing a lot of topside work. He didn’t have the heart for another extraction after… well, after you.” PJ gives an awkward smile. “He felt so bad about what he did to you. He’ll talk if you want to listen. We’re all just glad to have his bandwidth back now that he’s not hogging it to play Mario Kart with you in v-space all the time.” PJ tries for a small joke but it falls flat in the space between them.

“You got him out, back when he was still in,” Dan says. “How did he take it? Was he as pathetic as me?”

“You’re not pathetic Dan!” PJ exclaims. “Everyone goes through it. Shit, you don’t know what you’ve done for us, how much you’ve…” PJ looks aside, unable to meet Dan’s eye. “Phil wanted to get you out sooner. Louise wouldn’t let him. You were just too good. Their arguments…” PJ trails off with a smile “Phil’s usually so calm and collected, but where you were concerned…”

“I want to see him.” Dan says. “I’m not gonna kick off at him. I just want to talk.”

PJ nods.

“I’ll let him know.”

He’s getting strong enough to be angry again. It’s not the misplaced anger he felt before, directed at Phil and his ‘creepy’ pursuit of him, or Louise and the iron grip she has on this band of dysfunctional ex-internet addicts. It’s righteous anger, directed at a corporation so fucking powerful it harvests people as assets.

Phil doesn’t come to him until a few days later, Dan is wiping down the kitchen after the evening meal with Tom, another of Louise’s cell. Tom looks between them blinking furiously then makes a lame excuse and leaves the room. Dan and Phil look at each other without speaking for an uncomfortably long time. Phil breaks first.

“Hi.”

He’s barely got the word out when Dan interrupts.

“I missed you.” He blurts. The smile that breaks across Phil’s face is like the morning sun. “I just really fucking missed talking to you…”

Dan trails off, looking at him. He realises that his mental image of Phil, the AI, is at odds with the Phil who stands before him, and that thought kicks him in the stomach. His chest hurts and he is struck with the realisation that this is love . It’s being angry and still wanting to rush and hold the other person because you know they’re upset. It’s feeling torn in two because you know your grievances are valid, but your other half is hurting and you’d do anything to make it stop for them. It’s forgiving them for literally causing the end of the world as you know it, because they believe in you enough to save you from a corporate overlord.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s all it takes.

Dan smiles.

***

 

Byron’s v-space lobby is pretty aesthetically pleasing even if he does say so himself. Top notch interior design. He’s got pure white furniture circling around a low glass table. Immaculate grass in the perfect shade of green rustles underfoot, but it’s the kind of grass you know will harbour no dirt or insects. Full bloom cherry blossoms waft in the background, strung with fairy lights and paper cranes. The sky is blue, with cotton wool clouds. He’s psyching himself up to drop through the portal into a trade forum, for some less than legal business, when he is aware of another presence entering his lobby space.

“Willow, did you see that message from Chen about the Fade script?” He turns around and his jaw drops.

“Hello Byron.” says Dan, with a two fingered salute.