Project Tickle

By Dimitris Christou

Science fiction action adventure taking place in the world wide web of the near future. Icarus is a brave coder that decides to put a fight against digital depression. He's soon been pursued by the almighty Chocolate Fighters Group and helped by a weird A.I. called Gray. His adventure takes him to all shorts of weird places while his acquaintance with Electra changes his quest, and life, for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dimitris Christou
• Release date: Jan 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465901583

Book preview

Project Tickle

Published by Dimitris Christou at Smashwords

Copyright 2011-12 Dimitris Christou

Cover Artwork by Dimitris Christou

License Notes

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In the not so distant future a large portion of world's population lives virtual lives. Connected to machines, they spend time in imaginary worlds build by their own selves. The alienation, loneliness and generally poor living conditions lead most to a new form of depression. As a result the dream worlds that users were initially manufacturing, gave their place to virtual nightmares and odd, sick simulations.

The only, temporary, escape from digital depression is by consuming chocolate. When this became known, big corporations and governments rushed out to declare chocolate drug and use or possession became a hard punished crime. The profits were, as expected, huge and forced those involved to take steps in order to protect their investments and control the traffic of chocolate, inside or outside of the world network.

A panel established under the pretext of protecting the public from the new dangerous drug, the CFG (Chocolate Fighters Group). Free for access and intervention at any time in each area or system, CFG became extremely powerful in a short amount of time.

Chapter 1: VR Highways

Icarus sits on a bench near an elevated highway. In fact, his view includes several streets that branch, pass one above the other, spin and go far to the edge of the horizon. These roads are filled with cars, almost identical to each other, so many it looks as if the roads are made of metal automobiles. Every now and then, sounds of horns interrupt the relative silence and instantly cover the engine sound of thousands of cars that sit almost still in a virtual -traffic jam- reality.

On roadsides, and floating away from him, hundreds of small and large, bright animated ads do their best at selling a huge number of products. The whole picture is a weird, colorful spectacle in the eyes of Icarus.

He is drawn by an odd black and white advertisement about a poor miserable guy selling his belongings for some chocolate. He is forced by his sick addiction and becomes a thief just to get his hands on a small dose of the dangerous new drug. His babies, always in such case, kids are crying in their cribs, while their mother totally alone and helpless, sits between them and breaks in tears.

Shortly after, in big and bold red letters, the obvious conclusion appears. Say NO to drugs. Say NO to chocolate.

Icarus disgusted turns his head to the opposite direction. He is sure that the ad continues showing a beautiful healthy family, in full bright colors this time round, living a happy carefree life away from the dangerous drug.

Chocolate!

Icarus remembers eating lots of sweet chocolate bars when he was a kid and the greatest evil that he ever faced was a bellyache when he once had too many, accompanied by his mother's nagging for his unreasonable gluttony.

He once more felt that the image had the power to make us hate the stuff we once loved and love the things that used to made us sick and angry. He was clearly disgusted by the way things were shown to us all by the media. A voice above his head spoke with clear words.

Image is a powerful weapon, and like any powerful weapon out there, it’s placed at the wrong hands and used for the wrong reasons. Am I right Icarus?

You’re right Phoenix. Guess you had a good teacher...

I think I do.

A metal sphere in the color of sand with golden mechanisms, surrounded by soft white light flies over Icarus shoulder. Truth is that Icarus is not his real name but his user-name. Most Internet users avoid using their real names and personal information to maintain a degree of anonymity and acquire a certain sense of safety. Icarus has even more reasons to hide who he truly is.

During his visits on the web he always appears as a thin yet strong build robot with long agile hands and strong feet made out of glass. His face is also a metallic one piece mechanism that changes shape, form and expressions according to his thoughts, reactions and feelings.

Just a few inches above the body Icarus has designed as his web avatar, Phoenix is flying gently. Phoenix is an artificial intelligence machine coded by Icarus, a helping hand and information provider when online. Through it, Icarus can handle anything, control his navigation and even change the web world code he visits. Although Icarus is occasionally teasing Phoenix by calling it a simple virtual keyboard, he knows that his little assistant is a great piece of software. He is almost sure Phoenix is the most delicate, smart and simple piece of code he’ll ever produce. Calling Phoenix a simple virtual keyboard is totally wrong too; it’s designed to take voice orders and usually answers using a gentle female voice.

Icarus gets up slowly and gives Phoenix a simple order.

Can I have a count please?

Phoenix’s voice is clear and soothing.

Connected, nineteen thousand, two hundred and twenty four registered users and twenty three thousand and fifty six visitors.

Icarus moves his head sideways as he tries to capture the entire scene.

Virtual Worlds turning into sad spectacles. This is so odd. So many people… a river of souls that finds a virtual traffic jam entertaining. Especially since digital depression showed up all we see are virtual worlds turning into virtual nightmares. Dark, depressing places. I have to admit though that this one is ideal for our little test. Phoenix, execute the transformation program please.

Transformation software ready. We now have the ability to upload compatible files to this simulation. File conversion program is loaded. Administrator password overrun… done. We’re ready Icarus.

Let’s see. Taking control…

Icarus stands still for a while and soon huge illuminated letters appear above them. Letters form words within seconds while their shape and color keeps changing. A funny face appears on the robot’s head as he’s working hard to shape the meaning and look of his message. He soon reaches a point that seems satisfying. He stops and tilts his head to the sides to check his progress. A comical expression is drawn on his face while he’s looking at the result. Phoenix also reads Icarus message.

"You can’t be serious