Ciphers flicker and spin like firemoths in the lambent glow
Bending and twisting in cyclone contortions
Trembling at the touch of my haptic caress
I dive
Enmeshed in isometric patterns of digital dreams
Sacred geometries of source code
Portals open wide at my command
A door behind a door behind a door behind a door
I swim inside this maze of vectors and vertices
Synapses wired laser tight
Punching through firewalls like steel-jacketed slugs
Until at last I break into open cyberspace
Oceans of data wash over me in waves
Wideband and pulsing with the heat of a thousand suns
I close my eyes for an instant
Soaking in the energy of collective consciousness
The pulse and thrum of the Hive
I dive deeper
There are so few defenses left to stand in my way
No one ever dreamed anyone could penetrate this far
I spiral downward into the maw below
Seeking the foundation
Seeking the depths
Eruptions of information streak past
Glyphs of languages ancient and arcane
The very lifeblood of the Net
There are so few defenses left
So few—
I am not alone
I taste their presence long before the detection software chimes
A bitter sting at the base of the tongue
Piercing upward into my innermost thoughts
Like a stiletto to the brainstem
My pupils contract
Fingers and hands are cold and numb with terror
Klaxons shriek belated warning
They are everywhere
Presences buried deep within the bedrock
Before and behind, above and below and beside
A billion faces, billions of empty eyes
Eyes black as midnight marble
They are separate and yet somehow the same
Their features merge together into a single Construct
An entity born of all our sins
Its hands, their hands, a jungle of fingers extends toward me
Reaching out from below
I scream
I scream until my throat bleeds
I scream until We Are One