WPCA - Depths

The Technicolor verb of the pastel holograms blasted past on the periphery of her vision. Giant cascading mono-graphic entities displaying the latest and greatest in consumer items. Things for the home. Things for the family. The brand new hoverbike, the Yukazi Samurai. The horn of a slow-moving garbage disposal vehicle bellowed causing a number of pedestrians to jump back. Dressed in their singlesuits, most. Some, the hookers, the prostitutes, wore dual suits, clothes that covered in a strip around the waist and around the chest, covering and revealing at the same time. Built in microchips and holographic displays turned the clothes into their own advertisements. Sex shops and toys flashed flamboyantly along in a mismatched circle about the womans frame as they cantered about. A halo like that of an angel seduced by the darker side.

Madeleine rushed, skirting through the crowds on the edges and through gaps and openings. She could hear the ruffled people behind her squawking and flapping their arms in mid-stride as she rumbled past. Her heart was pounding. She saw in the corner of her vision, where her neural and cellular wetwiring interacted with her vision kept throwing up a word in bold, red typeface: INFECTED. Infected. A lie. It was the program again. She had dived into some nether region of the NETs. The mainframes where the arrays were undefined. Where there was data, but you couldn't see or understand it. Her avatar had drifted in the black sea, beyond the interpreted glow of the digital world. And when she had come back to her analog self, she had a new gift. A change, a morphing, a shift. Dizzying, she had unlocked things. A great many things were cast off, but never truly forgotten or lost. The NETs held everything, and things thought hidden could be found. Things thought buried could be unburied. And Madeleine had found just that -- a something.

And now it was overwriting the programming of her implants.

Military grade. It had to be that. She was rushing because she didn't know how much time she had until it overtook her. Until this virus, this computerized digital artifact overtook her analog self and overwrote her entire being. So much of the analog and digital were amalgamated into one. She was scared. She didn't want to lose herself. But...was it even possible? She was hoping the Advanced Neuroscience & Wetwiring Department of the St. Patrick's Hospital could help her.

Her vision crackled. White snow. White noise. It was like standing in a snowglobe. Someone was shaking her world and filling it up with dazzling sparkles.

"GO AWAY!" she screamed.

The crowd about her stopped. Jerked a moment. Eyes, weary, watchful, fearful, annoyed -- every spectrum of the emotional rainbow -- turned upon her. Then like a stop-motion camera jolting onto the next scene, they moved again. The stop in the automation of the human walking on the sidewalk ended, and they resumed their conveyor belt motion in their given direction to be deposited like varied and packaged goods. A bubble formed around Madeleine. She was given wide berth now. Nobody wanted near this young woman on the verge of tears who cradled her head in her hands, who got to her feet, who stumbled forward into a mad dash with brazen brunette hair blazing a broken and shaky path through the air and crowd alike.

A spattered response as a siren wailed for attention. Authoritative, it demanded respect. Whizzing past on invisible jets of plume, hot backwash assaulting the pedestrians below who made rude gestures at the passing so close to the ground. The vehicle dropped, a rock caught in gravity, before stopping dozens of centimeters above the ground. An officer stepped out, blue singlesuit with blastplates inserted. Pockets full of gear and a belt filled to near bursting. He was clutching his compact-slug thrower to his chest, black visored face scanning behind a veil of anonymity. His attention caught itself on the wayward child and he began to approach.

"Citizen," a voice barked out, loud, using not only his own audio enhancement but the speakers wired into the lampposts. Everyone halted, machines programmed by their masters. "Citizen Madeleine Young: halt."

She found herself turning, tear-flecked eyes seeing a monster. She screamed. Everyone near backed away. The officer began walking toward her, and she looked upon the faces of those around her. Dead, gone, lost -- lost within the NETs, uploading and downloading, showing what was happening to this girl now, soon, at what would be the hands of the government agents ready to sweep her up into their squadcar and into the night air.