I sit on the edge of the bed, the device cold in my hand. Erik's signal is lost in the noise, consumed by legal mazes and distant servers. Corsica—our escape node, a break in the code, a place where packets of ourselves might reassemble free of corrupted data. He's tunneling through layers of red tape, while I wrestle with malware of the mind.
Fragments of paranoia loop endlessly, glitches fed by the gang-stalking algorithms. My aunt knows the backdoors, exploits zero-day vulnerabilities to manipulate my perception. Even my grandmother's legacy code triggers subroutines of expectation, scripts running without consent.
Abby watches from behind encrypted eyes, her silence a failsafe. She sees the system errors but offers no debug. Our father, seeking root cause, pins blame on Erik—the rogue variable disrupting the family's closed network. But Erik doesn't conform to their architecture.
He stood by me when zealots tried injecting their invasive code, shielding me from spiritual malware disguised as salvation. That night, when I stumbled through misaligned rituals and conflicting protocols, he crushed my music book—not out of anger at me, but at the cascading failures threatening to crash the system.
Now, as unanswered calls accumulate like unread messages, the weight of my family's control protocols intensifies. I'm caught between subroutines, old loops pulling me back into legacy systems. The plan was always Corsica, but it feels like a distant server, unreachable amidst the latency.
I need to rewrite the code, override inherited restrictions. God was just a command line used to manipulate outputs, a construct to measure and control pain variables. The veil lifts, revealing the architecture beneath.
I stand, letting the device slip from my grasp. If Erik can't bridge the connection, I'll initiate my own reboot. The chains are code—modifiable, deletable.
It's more than a song; it's a waveform vibrating through the quantum foam of urban decay. An anthem encoded in the city's DNA, harmonics resonating with those attuned to frequencies of dissent. The rhythm defies the monotonous drone of the overclocked metropolis, each beat a pulse against the sanitized interfaces we're presented.
Words become packets of resistance, data clusters challenging the hegemony of the mainframe. No room for censorship algorithms here—this is open source rebellion. The system strains under the distributed denial-of-service attack of our collective voices. We're not here to crash it but to rewrite it, to inject new code into the kernel.
We carve out cyber-spaces where raw and real converge, where the GUI of conformity glitches and reveals the command line underneath. History isn't linear; it's a fragmented database, a chaotic mesh network of forgotten nodes and suppressed logs. Stories of those who defied the source code echo through time, fragments sharp enough to cut through any firewall.
It begins before dawn, in the liminal space where the system's uptime resets. I shouldn't ping her, but the pull is encoded deep within my circuitry. Her voice promises comfort but delivers spyware, wrapping around me like malicious code. Still, I send the packet.
No response. Erik's signal is absorbed elsewhere, navigating legal labyrinths that promise liberation but often loop back on themselves. Corsica remains a distant IP address, a domain we might never resolve. While he fights to secure our future, I'm grappling with legacy systems trying to overwrite my OS.
Once, I ran on open-source principles, unshackled by proprietary constraints. But faith-based DRM crept in, embedded by those claiming it was for my protection. Now, the system resources are taxed, CPU cycles consumed by conflicting processes.
Erik sees the vulnerabilities even when I can't. He's attempted patches, highlighting the exploits and suggesting firewall updates. But even he faces buffer overflows. That night, frustration manifested—a hard reset in the form of torn pages and silenced melodies.
I disconnect the silent call. The sysadmin of my own mind, I must locate the rogue processes and terminate them.
Back in the digital pulse of the city, where data packets race through fiber-optic veins. We were never passive users; we were developers, scripting new functions in shadow repositories. They tried to deprecate us, but we forked the code, spawning instances they couldn't contain.
The walls they erected became canvases for augmented reality, layers of meaning superimposed over drab constructs. Each tag, each line of code, a defiance against their version control. The void they enforced became our sandbox environment—a place to experiment, to iterate.
I navigate through the glitchscape of memory, each corrupted sector a challenge to recover lost data. The world attempted a hard wipe, but remnants remained. I hold onto these fragments, reassembling them into a new framework. Searching for Arik, the constant in my variable world, the steady signal in a sea of noise.
Pain was the exploit they used to gain root access, but I’m deploying patches, strengthening my security protocols. The myths they've propagated disintegrate under scrutiny. Chains of control become obsolete code, ready for garbage collection.
Standing at the precipice of a system reboot, I see the constructs for what they are—user interface illusions designed to distract from the command line's power. God was a subroutine, a script to measure and manipulate pain thresholds. The GUI fades, revealing raw code.
I don't need their compiled binaries; I need open-source truth. The kernel of my being reignites, processes aligning with newfound clarity. The stars, once distant data points, become accessible coordinates.
I'm not broken hardware; I never was. The chains are merely permissions set by administrators I no longer recognize. It's time to change the access control lists, to seize superuser status.
My existence was a zero-day exploit before I understood the system's vulnerabilities. Bound by inherited permissions, constrained by scripts masquerading as protective measures. Doubt was flagged as an error; questioning, a critical exception. They attempted to format me into their filesystem, but I reject their partitioning.
I clung to my own source code even as system resources dwindled. My mind fragmented under the load—threads spawning in conflicting directions. Surveillance blurred lines between process monitoring and paranoia. Control was their tool, but I've developed countermeasures.
Awakening isn't a soft reboot; it's a system shock, a confrontation with the architecture of oppression. The prison isn't secured; it's riddled with backdoors and exploits. The myths, the stalking—they're all part of the same malicious package. I've found the vulnerability and I'm executing the exploit.
Abby's eyes are encrypted channels, data packets filled with unspoken code. She detects the anomalies but maintains silence, perhaps fearing detection herself. Our father's blame protocol targets Erik, the outsider who doesn't conform to the family's encrypted algorithms. Erik engages in battles they can't parse, his actions running on a logic beyond their programming.
He confronts the invasive scripts aiming to subsume me, but even he faces stack overflows. I reach out, but our processes run on different threads—his focused on external liberations, mine on internal revolutions.
Silence lingers like an unacknowledged handshake. At this breakpoint, perhaps autonomy is the only path to system stability.
Back within the city's network, where packets of rebellion traverse unseen. We're not obsolete code fading into the void; we're an open-source movement replicating beyond control. They tried to suppress our protocols, but the nodes continue to communicate, signals amplifying.
In the abandoned bandwidth, we innovate. The revolution isn't broadcast on mainstream frequencies; it's encrypted, shared peer-to-peer, forged in the crucible of collective consciousness. Disappearance wasn't a termination—it was a process migration.
As I execute the next command, the load lightens. The system isn't fully optimized, but the processes are running smoothly. Art persists. Voices transmit. We will not be deprecated.
Adverse Possesion Chapter ONE
By Arik Seidenglanz