Screenside Strikes Back, Triptych of The Reign of Never Death-3: Chronicles of a Stolen World, #6

By J. A. Hailey

WAR OF THE DIMENSIONS!

Esmeralda and BC set out on another spying mission, to investigate the body farming activities of the people who have stolen their way into immortality.
What they discover is way beyond their worst nightmares, and the virtual world of Screenside, consumed with guilt at its role in unleashing 666 on mankind, begins preparing for potential war, knowing itself to be the last line of defense, of a human world oblivious to the danger of apocalypse by plan!
Stealing empty bodies from the body farms of the digital people they call nonborns, they are able to go to war in virtual-managed human soldiers that can be ethically permitted to die in battle.
Virtuals have all the advantages when it comes to combat against human forces, not least of all being the extraordinary capabilities acquired by human bodies under virtual management.
Thus, when the Chinese nonborn begins genocide of unarmed civilians, forcing Screenside to commence a ferocious military assault on many fronts, the evil digital people of Never Death are soon cornered.
But cornering the Beast has always been fraught with danger, as it can do anything at all to preserve itself…

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. A. Hailey
• Release date: Nov 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393150817

Book preview

1

"Oh Jesus, please don’t let Esme die completely dead! Who will look after me? Who will look after me? Oh God, Esme, please don’t tell me you’ve died completely dead!"

Sabine, searching for Esmeralda in her head, sobbed and wailed while running frantically with Louis, from gunfire in an unfamiliar Arabian city, the rising sun casting pale shadows on the concrete, of tall lampposts, and trees planted full-grown.

With her head feeling strangely empty, of the virtual who had taken up residence in it for so many years, her faltering steps kept slowing, until coming to a stuttering halt.

"Louis, they’ve shot her! Esme has been killed completely dead," she bawled, shaking him by the shoulders, blinded by the tears flowing freely from her eyes. Blinking hard and staring into his face, she found that he too was crying. BC, this is supposed to be impossible, isn’t it, the death of a virtual?

BC’s not here either, Sabine, sobbed Louis, her boyfriend, and body-host of Screenside’s foremost senior, BC, Esmeralda’s life partner. A moment before we got to the intersection, he ran across the road, telling me he was going to pick up a car he knew of, from the time we were in the hotel around the corner, flying our spy helicopters. I think he’s also dead.

"Completely dead?"

As Louis, looking frightened, tearfully nodded yes, Sabine sensed the return of the confusing fog of her long-forgotten mental illness, and then, crying desolately and holding hands, she walked him back to the intersection at which they had turned off the main road, to put a concrete barrier between themselves and the policemen shooting from behind, at their fleeing group of children and teens.

None had made it to the intersection, with Esmeralda coming closest, but falling short by a few steps. Every single one of the dozen purposely-disabled kids had been shot, and while some, perhaps the lucky ones, were already dead and motionless, those still in the land of the living were clearly in their death throes on the pavement, twitching in their uniforms, of blue overalls with yellow sleeves.

Beyond being able to identify Esmeralda, in the body she had taken on for the flight, a now-motionless blonde teen girl, lying with hair stained dark, around a bullet wound at the base of her head, she would not have been able to say who was who among the children, as most had fallen face down on the concrete interlock pavement.

But even face up would have made scarcely any difference, to her attempts at identification of the virtuals she knew, as the bodies had been taken on in haste, without selection, just about ten minutes ago, and everyone had started immediately on the flight out of the hospital, running from overnight guards and newly-arrived policemen, shooting at the hundreds of them.

Watched from down the road, by the policemen who had shot these kids, she pushed at the dead girl’s shoulder, to turn her body face up, but the corpse was heavy and unmanageable, and she ended up only twisting the upper half, until Louis joined in and shoved the dead body at the hip, causing it to flip suddenly onto its back, the girl’s pretty face open-mouthed, her wide-open, startled blue eyes staring grotesquely at the sky.

Besides having no idea of which virtual had been in which body, Sabine had no real information on who had come in from Screenside, beyond being sure that the group of friends of the Paris group had arrived; but that would be only ten in all, the three other male seniors with partners, plus Jennifer and Candice with theirs.

Of course, BC and Esmeralda could have ordered absolutely anyone from Screenside, to come over and take on any physical-world duties whatsoever, but such orders, if given, would have been commands in the virtuality, and she would not have known.

Hundreds had come in to take on the chip-implanted kids, and they could have been anyone, because, though every virtual of Screenside’s two million beings did not have a lot of experience in managing human bodies, no virtual was altogether unqualified, as everyone had been outside, and had done some work, whether in mental patients, or in the motor impaired.

Even when running together, a few minutes ago, Esmeralda had been speaking with her in the head, using the little bit of herself she was keeping in the old host, which meant Sabine had had no impression that her virtual help of so many years had taken on another human body.

A second body being simultaneously helped by Esmeralda had always been the case, when Sophie-Marie, her human mother, was alive and in need of motor assistance.

But for these vegetable-type children, damaged on purpose inside their heads, a challenge for even BC and Caesar, Esmeralda had told her she would be transferring almost all of herself into the girl, to make her instantly functional, ‘but later, when we have gained experience of managing such totally-damaged humans, caretaker virtuals may not require much more than the usual amount, and we should be able to multitask in near normal manner’.

It was basically unimportant, from the point of view of ethics, whether the newly acquired body, utterly blank in the head, lived or died, as there was effectively no human in residence within it.

In their earliest days, of non-stop squabbling, when Esmeralda had first entered her head through the chip implant, and Sabine had discovered she could be physically controlled, to the point of being switched off from her own management, she had sneered. So, what happens when you are not in me? Go around hunting, wandering the world like a ghost?

No Sabine, we’re not spirits, in the religion and demonology interpretation of body-less beings, Esmeralda had answered, laughing. We live in a different world, a virtual one in the Internet, to which I shall take you when you start behaving yourself. We don’t wander in the human world at all; have our own to live in, and I am in you to help you overcome your disability. Just look at who’s walking so confidently on a busy road, wagging our lovely butt.

Already sexually active as one, they had both been sufficiently friendly to have laughed together, but the reality was that humans were an extra, as despite however they might be assisting a physical human, all virtuals would be functioning normally, without a break, in Screenside.

The computer was where life-force resided, and entry into humans, or any other activity, was simply a voluntary division of focus, which amounted to multitasking, at levels hundreds of times greater than humans could.

In the past, before she had died of cancer, Esmeralda would constantly be in her human mother’s head, helping her function normally, despite loss of mobility, caused in a car accident, while simultaneously living with Sabine, helping her overcome her mental shortcomings, to function comfortably in any situation.

This was the first time ever, that Esmeralda had excused herself from duty in Sabine’s head, because she had never been inside humans of such sickening levels of disability, as was the case with these teens and children, now lying dead on the road. These kids, who had been taken from a body-farm in the middle of a big city in the Arabian Kingdom, were altogether incapable of any voluntary physical functions.

Such badly-damaged humans had never before been encountered by any virtual, causing Esmeralda to decide on transfer of everything into the teenager she had picked up, and to employ her consciousness totally undivided, to get her out of bed, and running in the bodyguard group trying to get Sabine and Louis to safety.

Everything was, quite naturally, entirely to do with getting Sabine and Louis safely out of the Kingdom. As usual, they had been the hosting humans on the weeks-long, two-country spying mission, being undertaken by Esmeralda and BC, and the only parties capable of being injured or killed.

Although it was sure that the police force would not have let the humans escape without bloodshed, it had been Esmeralda who had caused the first fatality, in a sequence of violence that would continue escalating, with a kitchen knife flung thirty feet by Sabine’s hand, and buried to the hilt in the throat of a gun-wielding policeman, who had shot through the door to enter the dormitory.

The mayhem and desperation to run had commenced almost instantly thereafter, as a swarm of virtuals had raced in through the Internet, to take on human hosts, albeit non-adult ones, with the purpose of creating a crowd to cause confusion, and of using bodies to block bullets aimed at Sabine and Louis.

The only reason for their entry, at that point of time, had been to get the two humans involved on their side, out unharmed from an unanticipated danger zone.

The little girl’s spectacular aerial acrobatics, in which Lee’s game club people had thrown her, flinging her, spinning, almost thirty feet through the air to stab a cop, had undoubtedly been the absolutely impromptu foundation on which the entire escape attempt had been fashioned.

The virtual-controlled non-functional child had killed the first cop by stabbing him through an eye, as he had angled his head to keep track of her, while firing the odd bullet without any real hope of hitting her, and had then executed an unexpected and truly difficult second somersault, using momentum as only a virtual-controlled human body could, going on to provide a bonus fatality, by burying the knife into the head of the cop directly behind the first one.

Then, though the child had been shot dead in a hail of bullets, the dead cops’ handguns had been immediately acquired by two fast-moving virtual gaming females, in the bodies of other non-functional children.

Those two guns, wielded in typical millimeter-perfect virtual fashion, had held back the Kingdom’s forces, for just about enough time to allow Sabine and Louis to run down the long, open-fronted corridor, jump out of its end, and exit the hospital premises, by the gate behind the main building, the open areas already thronged with screaming, fleeing service staff.

Sabine, crying and looking at the slightly more grown-up kids, in the hope of identifying a virtual in one still alive, asked expectantly inside her head, Esme? But her caretaker and companion of so many years made no reply.

"Louis, Esme is totally dead, she sobbed, wretchedly. But how could a virtual die?"

Louis bent down, to peer at tarmac-level across the road. "There, I can see a body in the same yellow-blue uniform, lying on the road behind that pickup truck. It must be the body BC was in. I think he’s also completely gone. The cops were shooting like crazy. We’ve probably been saved from being shot, because you and I were running right in front, and the virtuals were providing cover for us, with the bodies of the kids. And it also might be to do with the fact that we are not in these uniforms, so could be members of the public."

"But the shooting has totally ended, said Sabine, in bewilderment. We are only a couple of hundred meters away from the corner point of the disabled-children’s hospital, and hundreds of these types of kids had been taken out by the virtuals. God, please, no. Have they all been killed? It’s absolutely quiet; not even a single shot."

She was undoubtedly right, for if the sound of firing was to be taken as indication of virtual-controlled children still running for their lives, its absence would mean that every single child taken out of the dormitories, was now dead.

People, from general public, could be seen occasionally running on the street, keeping low profiles and scuttling to get off it, obviously uninformed about who had been targeted for shooting, although there was no doubt that the Arabian Kingdom’s police force had been doing the shooting.

Sabine and Louis knew what was going on, and had been running with the intention of getting hold of a vehicle, to get to the airport. The farm bodies were all in uniform, and Louis was undoubtedly right in reasoning that the shooting people had not pursued the two body-hosts of Screenside’s top couple, as they could have easily passed off as members of the frightened, scurrying public.

Sabine sobbed wretchedly, for her partner and helper of so many years, her companion in everything, including sex, the virtual girl who had taken her out of the mental care home, and made her capable of functioning in the normal world, which was what her partner, BC, had done for Louis.

"We are alone in the world, Louis, like we used to be, and will now find out if our heads have been permanently repaired, or if we are to revert to once again becoming two mentally challenged people. Sure you don’t have BC at all?"

Louis shook his head negatively, crying, while reaching out to gently close the dead girl’s eyes.

"Darling, don’t cry. I know that BC did not communicate with you, in the way Esmeralda did with me. We have to get to the airport, wherever that is, somehow, anyhow. Charlie is coming in with an aircraft, to get us out and return us to Paris; might even be a fighter jet.

"It will be a terrible life, without Esme and BC, but someone or the other from Screenside will take care of us, and we need not fear a future in which we are returned to care homes and shelters, and become otherwise helpless.

I don’t know why they haven’t come in straight away. They must know that Esme and BC have been killed, and that you and I are alone in this Arabian city. In fact, there were so many of them at the farm, taking over all those hundreds of bodies.

Those kids are the ones who’ve got shot and killed, like Esme’s and BC’s were, said Louis. All unarmed...

Normally, they cannot be killed at all, Screenside’s virtuals, Sabine reasoned, trying to figure out what had happened. "If in us, a bullet would mean the end of us, death of the humans, and they would be back in Screenside.

"Because we have always been functional humans, even if insane, like you and I were, they come in as controllers with limited duties, without having to worry about the body, like balance, walk, toilet controls...

"But those bodies in the farms had no one at all in them; did not even know how to walk. Walk? They could not even stand, and if stood up, had no balance. Did not know how to talk. No control of body functions. Nothing, except breathing.

"So, unlike with us and others like us, the virtual helper would have had to go completely in; maybe transfer full consciousness into the body. And that might be why Esme and BC were able to be harmed."

Yes, agreed Louis. "When everything is in the body, it is certainly possible that sudden death of the body, could mean death of the virtual too. Maybe a virtual becomes like a human person then."

They wouldn’t have known the danger, said Sabine, tears running down her face. "Always in us, or in others like us, meant no one had ever transferred consciousness completely into a human.

"And anyway, there’s been no serious injury, leave alone death, to any of the people Esme’s friends were helping.

"All were in there; Jennifer, Candice, Wendy, Maria, Singh, Chang, everyone. All had got into bodies. Oh my God! Could they all be dead? Is that why no one is here to look after us? Someone should have been with us, immediately after Esme and BC had been killed."

As the two old friends from a mental home, hung their heads and sobbed, Sabine again asked hopefully, Esme? But there was no response, and her tears merely made wet the face of the teen girl who had been Esmeralda’s last human host.

It would undoubtedly be an impossibly hard life for her without Esmeralda, but Sabine had many strengths, and trying to figure out what had happened to the virtual girl, while also ensuring that she became a source of support for the weaker Louis, were factors in helping her control her emotions, despite the fact that loss of Esmeralda was hurting way more than the death of her own mother.

2

Neither of the two noticed the policemen down the road getting back into their vehicle, and both were startled to find the cop car alongside them, alerted to its presence, when the captain spoke from its window.

"Who are these children to you?" he asked.

"Nobody, sir, nobody," answered Sabine, hastily. It looked like some were still alive, so we came closer to check, and as a couple of them are not yet dead, we were wondering if we could find someone to call an ambulance.

We have called, said the captain. "Many ambulances are on the way, and not just here. We saw you running out from the hospital side of the road. Why were you in there?"

"Not inside, sir. We were outside when the commotion started, and ran with the people running. That’s all."

"Outside, huh? What is there outside? Where were you outside at such an early hour?"

You know, mister policeman, we were walking outside for exercise.

A message came in, on the police captain’s wireless set, and he aimed with his phone at her, to quite obviously take a photograph.

Sabine stood up to go. We’ll carry on walking, then. You have already called the ambulance, sir.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, said the captain, impatiently. "Let them first check your photograph at headquarters. This has been a violent insurrection, and we have to verify everybody’s identities; certainly, of anybody found in the vicinity, and this is vicinity to the extent of being practically within the premises of the hospital itself. Just be a little patient, for we will let you proceed on your way, as soon as we have the clearance."

They had no option, and stood around, waiting.

And then, the captain got a message that absolutely shocked him, causing him to hurriedly get out of the vehicle. Please get into the car, and be seated. Someone is coming to see you.

He said something in Arabic, which made the cops scramble out of the vehicle, and start gesturing at her to get into it.

Why? Am I under arrest? If I try to run, you could always shoot me, the way you shot so many children; like these ones.

"Lady, the one and only thing we cannot do is hurt you in any manner. Your photograph has been seen by my superiors, and you are to be safely held here. Someone very special is coming for you."

She did not get in, but waited standing.

3

The wait ended, when a top-of-the-line Mercedes drove up and screeched to a halt, its tires smoking, trailed at a distance by flashing police vehicles, utterly beaten for speed.

Every policeman, of the original four, stood rigidly at attention, heads down in extreme subservience, as an extraordinarily haughty local man, of about forty, opened the driver’s door of the Mercedes, and crooked a finger at Sabine. Come here, he said.

Sabine had learned to care nothing for the high-and-mighty, ever since she had received Esmeralda in her head, and was not used to arrogance or rudeness, and was, instead, in many places, herself considered a terrifying figure.

This was especially true in Arab areas of France, where she was known to all Arab gangsters and toughs, as Knife Noura, the legendary, bad-tempered killer extraordinaire, of Mad Max Habibi’s criminal gang, operating in the area around the Grand Mosque of Algiers.

But it was not reputation alone, as Esmeralda had found occasion to be violent, displaying extraordinary levels of temper and physical ability, upon Arab hoodlums who had foolishly crossed her path.

Now, her fearsome reputation had made her a magnet, for ordinary public to surround, whenever she walked through the toughest areas of her hometown, Marseille. The gangsters’ terror was most evident when adhering to Esmeralda’s no smoking policy, so unreasonable that it applied to the outdoors too, and toughs, every one of the prior-warned, instantly recognized by Esmeralda, stubbed out or hid lit cigarettes, not daring to blow smoke, even on the other side of a road!

But this was not France, and Esmeralda was no longer around to give her confidence, and so she walked meekly, as commanded, to the powerful man.

The arrogant Arab dignitary immediately left the car to receive her, thanking God, with arms raised heavenwards. "Almighty God, thank you, thank you. This girl is surely the very one, as was shown to me by Michael."

Beaming, he stepped forward, until he was just a foot away. "You are Esmeralda, are you not?"

"How do you know that name, sir? asked Sabine, tremulously. But I am not Esmeralda. My name is Sabine."

"Yes, yes, that was the name Michael told me, I now remember. You are the one Esmeralda lives inside. Somewhere in France, I believe. Don’t you know who I am?"

No, sir.

We met a few hours ago, in the hospital dormitory.

Oh, dear God, he was one of those things!

Her heart beginning to thump in horror, and the breath deserting her, she invoked the forbidding, silently reciting it in her head, vade retro Satana; get thee behind me, Satan!

The deathless body-changer stuck his arms out, held her by the shoulders, and began to tremble in delight and desire. "Yes, yes, God Almighty, this is the girl. I can feel the electricity in her, consuming me!"

He called the senior policeman over, and gave him an order, in Arabic, that made the cop wave out to the police cars, employing special hand signals. Forgive me, lovely lady, but what will be done now is designed to ensure that you are safe, said the beast. I do not want any injury to you, while you are being taken in my car.

Why, and where? The words barely came out sensibly, and her legs began trembling, as the dread overtook her.

He noticed, and smiled. "Where first, and the answer is that you shall be taken to my palace. For your information, I am the Territorial Prince, absolute master of this part of my father’s kingdom, and the giver of life and death.

"Why next, but that begins with a question. Do you know that the human body operates electrically? What I mean, is that it looks like flesh and blood and bone, but the brain, which is entirely electrical, sends commands, to muscles and joints, as electric signals, to make them do whatever it orders them to do."

Her terror prevented her speaking. This was a demon that permanently disabled children, on purpose. She could only nod, to let him know that she had heard it was something like he said.

"Yes. You are electrical, like every other human is. But you have exceeded everyone else in history, by having had a pure electrical girl living inside your body for many years. I have just now felt it. She has converted you, into the closest thing possible to an electrical girl."

He fondled his crotch. "I have told you who I am, and I shall give you this additional information, which is that I am feared by all for my anger. But you need not fear, as the only thing I want is your love. I want you to desire to please me, in the ways that, from all the girls in the world, only you alone would know."

He turned to the police captain, and gave some hand signals, indicating that something be done with Sabine.

Female police officers drove up immediately and claimed her. They were about to handcuff her, but the prince waved a hand, in an obvious order that no handcuffs be placed on her. Instead, he made the policewomen sit on either side of her, in the back seat of his car. No one else can touch you, so do not be afraid.

He got into the driver’s seat and, nodding in Louis’ direction, asked, Who is he?

Just a man, who stopped to look at those dead bodies I was looking at.

"But he seems excessively anxious, regarding your impending good fortune. Why?" He signaled the police captain to approach the car window. "Who is that man?" he asked.

"Together, Highness, they were looking at the bodies together, and talking with each other. Seem to be very close."

God is great, exulted the Prince. And in his wisdom, has given me the key to unlock. You, captain, arrest him, and deliver him personally to my palace. Intact. Immediately. He is not to be harmed; not even touched.

He drove off then, with Sabine sobbing and begging to be set free, and to be allowed to go on her way.

"Don’t cry. I will show you my power and my bounty, so that you discover, in your heart, such love for me, that you shall seek to give me pleasure, and long to yourself be enjoyed by me," said the prince, boastfully.

"Thus, it would be best policy, for you to immediately start thinking loving thoughts regarding me, even sexual ones, because I have been told that electrical girls can take lovers to unimaginable heights of ecstasy. And that is why I would like you to willingly give me your love.