“Did you feel that?” A squat, fat bluebird fluttered around, dazed and disoriented.
The cries of the wounded and confused groaned in chorus all around.
Another plump bluebird fluttered up next to her. “RT atKendrafan421138: Did you feel that?”
Yet another, with a crooked wing, appeared. “RT atAnnaBananna RT atKendrafan421138: Did you feel that?”
A fourth, fifth and sixth overweight blue avian approached.
•••
“Did you feel that?” a nameless revolutionary asked the dimly lit room. He literally had no name; most of them didn’t. It protected their identity.
He helped himself and the girl next to him to their feet. Several other unnamed avatars looked around for answers. Was it a raid? Were they discovered? Half of them were already filling their arms with supplies, ready to flee; the other half were filling their hands with iron and steel, ready for the fight.
Sim-Chris looked up from polishing his gun, cigarillo gripped tightly in his teeth. He wore a practiced look that could lead the casual observer to think he was unperturbed.
That he looked at all belied his concern.
Pillow Cat rolled herself right-side up (we think), mrowling anxiously.
“First you lose the target, and now this?” The cigarillo bobbed in time, punctuating his disciplinary growl.
“He was right behind me,” the enshrouded feline protested.
Sim-Chris stood, slamming his revolver down on the table. He nodded at four guerillas with the misfortune to be nearby. “Get out on the street and find out what’s going on.”
The four deputized another two recruits. They headed out in pairs to avoid drawing attention.
•••
“Did you feel that?” the Bastard Sun looked around suspiciously.
Skarpo picked himself up off the floor, and collected his unicycle. “Gee. What?” his words oozed with unhelpful sarcasm.
“It felt like the whole Storyverse shook just now, didn’t it?” the anthropomorphic sun asked without irony, peering out over his bifocals.
Skarpo sighed.
“Hm. No bother,” Bastard Sun mumbled, returning to his game of Scribblesquares Online. He didn’t know what he ever did before the Infi-Net.
•••
“Did you feel that?” Denthead asked no one in particular.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He was afraid to touch the keys again for fear it was something he had done.
His laptop had practically jumped off his… well, his lap.
He wanted to be done with this job so bad.
People were in the Infi-Net!
People!
And a giant weasel. A no-shittin’ giant weasel. Denthead had been sure that must be a 1337 name, like, \/\/0[\]|)3r \^/34$3|_, or some shit. He knew a Marvelous Marmoset out of Xasiux 9 who was really a teenage kid named Mark, or Greg or something. This was something else entirely.
On the other hand: a HyLon Processor? BioRAM? Psyche-infusing was the godsdamned future.
How did GoogolSoft jump so far ahead when even HappyCo. couldn’t master this level of tech? he caught himself wondering.
Who gave a crap, he resolved. He needed that processor.
Need got his pistons going again.
•••
“Did you feel that?” Sunshower, the intern, stopped suddenly and looked around. She was pensive, like she thought her parents were trying to come into the room.
Brin smiled broadly, perched over her naked, quivering form on the circular table. He looked up at the hundreds of monitors surrounding the table. His vision unfolded and progressed all around them. “Totally,” he confirmed before he commenced his regularly scheduled pelvic thrusting.
•••
“Did you feel that?” the farting panda asked a female orc amid the chaos of the marketplace.
The orc nodded in terror and wonder. The entire market, all of iBay, was in disarray. The constantly shifting cavalcade of merchants, hawkers, and spam-artists righted their tents, carts and stands. They asked each other what was going on, or who heard what.
The sky was lit with a new sun in a newly refurbished sky. This was taken on board surprisingly quickly. The ruling assumption was that someone had put a sun up for auction. (A cruel trick on the lone bidder from Calcion, who’s sun had only recently extinguished, throwing his homeworld into perpetual winter.)
The Lord of the Lemmings shushed the flatulent ailuropoda with a long, bony finger. He returned his attention to the small video monitor in front of him. He was standing at an Infi-Net iMail terminal. He hacked it by using a lemming with a USB jack rudely protruding from its mouth. It plugged into the machine, blinking patiently. “Everything’s going according to plan,” he assured the individual on the other end of the transmission.
Five or six minutes passed as the darkly clad Lemming Lord regarded the screen, occasionally looking around to people watch. Mostly they were crying and finding religion, he surmised.
“Would you relax, you big baby?” he instructed the screen. “The Infi-Net is splitting, just as we thought it would. Web rings become planetary rings, nodes become solar systems, systems become web-galaxies, etcetera etcetera, blah blah blah, anon.”
A faceless avatar sporting a beret and camouflage walked past with another, identical avatar.
Lord of the Lemmings waited until they passed. “It’s actually pretty neato,” he intimated.
Another minute of silence passed.
“I will, I will,” he agreed. “They’re on Planet Friendmonger, I’ll have to—” the Lord of the Lemmings’s mouth clomped shut for a few seconds. “Stop. They’re fine. It’s all fine. We’re winning. Yay!” Just for show he produced a lemming with a noisemaker in its mouth. The two confetti cannons scotch taped to its sides went off as it tooted in revelry. “See?”
A few seconds passed, the lemming man shielded the monitor from the prying eyes of passersby.
“Uh huh,” he mumbled affirmatively. “Mm hmm.”
Like a crazy person this continued for another 20 seconds.
“I’ll take care of it,” he interrupted the persistent silence. “You just relax. I have to go. I don’t want anyone to taste the signal,” he announced as he pulled the lemming out of the USB port. The latter half of his sign-off was lost in the rude hiss of disconnection.
It was time to reunite with his fellows, the Shadowstories. He needed them able-bodied and predictably dim. His impending godhood depended on it.
The Lord of the Lemmings merged seamlessly with the tide of people.
The faceless avatars with the berets came back around. They checked around the terminal suspiciously. It was unplugged.
One held up the stray cord and shook his head to the other before they moved on.
•••
“Did you feel that?” Grebok picked his head up.
“Yeah, I got it,” Chuckles answered, already standing. “See what you did?” he accused.
The Son of Drogmar took stock of their surroundings… again. He seemed to fall or get knocked unconscious every few minutes in this place. Where once-beglittered and white spaces outlined in blue had been, were now meadows, oceans, and islands… once again outlined in blue. “I did that?”
“I’m pretty sure,” the Avatar said. “With Sparky’s head.”
Speaking of Wonder Weasels, Sparky pushed himself, midsection first, off the sandy beach a small distance away mumbling, “—the shit?”
“Ow.” Gunther sneered and wiped his face, incidentally rubbing sand between his green-stained teeth. “Your OS is teh fail and blows your mom in the prison shower,” he announced without target.
Grebok looked over to a neighboring island.
Until now, all of his friends, family, and acquaintances had been still-life pictures, or crudely animated repetitions. The girl over there looked around in awe. Real awe. The kind they write about in religious texts. Awe that’ll make you shit your pants, and claw your eyes out.
There she goes, Grebok nodded sadly, as she did just those things.
A quick scan showed hundreds of other figures gawking at their limbs and/or surroundings. “Sorry.”
Lord Chuckles grimaced but nodded. It would be like staying mad at a dog, he figured.
•••
R.T. felt that.
Deep inside her gut, she felt that.
She writhed on the floor, clutching at her stomach. She bunched herself up onto all fours sputtering, and choking. One last ragged cough later, and a long line of black spit creeped from her mouth to the ground.
It looked like tar, only speckled like the night sky.
She was a projection. She wasn’t real here (even by her, admittedly ambiguous, standards).
How was she—the thought was cut short by another hacking fit.
More black tar flecked on her lips and pooled on the floor below her.
The flesh on her arm turned to metal. The metal rippled, formed a gyroscope which became a small transmitter which became an antenna which turned back to flesh.
She needed to find Brin… needed to tell him—
Another pang sent her head crashing to the ground, she seized in excruciating pain.
It felt like her insides were at war.
What was happening to her?
