Johnny…?

  Where… What is this…?

  “Well…?” Johnny said as he stood over me… we’re still in cyberspace… But I can feel him. Not a part of me, but… something else… “Spit it out ‘fore you burst.”

  “What… what was that…?”

  “A memory, V… Arasaka. The moment they done fucked themselves beyond all recognition.”

  “That’s… so much to process…” I stuttered, “I saw… Rogue, Alt… and… Wait, whatever happened to Thompson?”

  “Dunno,” he shrugged, “Never worked together again.” My vision sharpened… this looked like Mikoshi. Was this where Johnny was…?

  “Maybe because you nearly caved his fucking face in to make you feel better about yourself?”

  “Guy was a vulture. Out to use Alt from the start. When Arasaka flatlined ‘er, man, for him that was sprinkles… with a cherry on top. Fuck, he woulda killed her himself if they hadn’t. Just for his cockrot story.” I wasn’t about to argue the point with him. Not yet, anyway. But from what I saw, Johnny completely missed the mark on so many counts. Thompson wasn’t an ass, first of all. And Johnny didn’t even get the name of the fucking bar right. It was the Atlantis Bar, not Atlantic Club or whatever the fuck he called it…

  So… so much of this memory just felt off… “Did the recording get out? Thompson’s,” I asked him.

  “Fuck no.” Yeah, of course not. Would’ve been way too easy to just verify that this was all bullshit if there was hard video evidence.

  “So what, were you going for the Douchebag of the Year award or something back then?” I criticized, standing up beside him.

  “And here I was, afraid you’d try to cheer me up.”

  “Oh, cut the crap, Johnny!” I shot back, “You couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge your fucking bandmates, your output! I felt how close you were to grabbing her and you know what? I stopped you from stooping that low. Now I don’t believe a fucking second of any of that crap, but I’ll tell you right now that if I find out that any of what you did to her was true?! Then I’ll–”

  “You’ll what?” he hashed in return, “Listen, you’re a fucking figment of my imagination just as much as I am yours in here. Now we can argue about this shit all we want back in the real world, but I know you ain’t got the balls to do shit.”

  “Oh yeah? Well maybe I’ll grow a fuckin’ pair, huh? Like you, a real man, Johnny Silverhand… What you did to Alt was fucking pathetic.” I waved my hand across his red, ‘imaginary’ face.

  “Don’t you fuckin’ mention Alt!” he yelled back, “Shit, must’ve been watchin’ some other flick. I took down Arasaka fuckin’ Tower for her!”

  “Bullshit, you took down Arasaka Tower for Mikoshi, or did you forget that little tidbit?” I hissed, “Besides, I’m wondering why you even bothered at all. From the look of it, you couldn’t care less about her. Just saw her as some fucking output to see after the show. Even when she was dead, all you could think about was how it’d affect you and your life.”

  “Didn’t you fucking hear what she said to me?” Yeah, that all of this was fake and you’re not a real rockerboy. You’re just a fucking cunt. “Coulda just left, but no, had to break my balls first.”

  “And how many times has she broken– no, scratch that,” I paused, “How many times have you fucked over every single woman you’ve ever been with, huh? And now you’re gonna stand here and tell me that she was different? Why, because she built Soulkiller? You didn’t know that until some fucking media told it to you!”

  “Don’t you fuckin’ lecture me on my relationships!” he shouted, “I’d have fuckin’ died for her in a heartbeat, she’s worth ten of your worthless ass!”

  “Even so,” I breathed out and tried to relax, “I still think I’m owed an explanation. At the very least, just help me understand how you really felt about her.”

  “Guess.” God dammit, you fucking asshole…

  “And it never occurred to you that maybe she was right about you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what that’s supposed to mean, Johnny,” I argued, “The concert, Samurai, all of it. And you most of all. After all this time, the thought never occurred to you?”

  “No,” he said plainly, “Fuck. You’re just as bad as she was. Can’t understand why you just don’t fuckin’ drop it.” Oh, I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Arasaka Tower… First of all, back then, the original tower was only 22 stories tall and didn't house any of that crap, it was all corporate offices and executive suites. Nothing in your story makes any fucking sense, apart from you trying to rescue Alt but killing her by mistake. Hell, I’m not even sure Thompson was there, considering there’s no proof either way.

  “Guess what though, Johnny? We can’t drop it, know why? Because we’re trying to meet up with Alt. Remember?!” This fucking guy have Alzheimer’s or something? “Actually, come to think of it, why didn’t you tell me about Alt before?

  “What the hell for?” he said all despondent and putting around his own little corner.

  “Johnny, come on. This is the woman who invented Soulkiller. You know, the medium that the Relic operates on in the first place? You don’t think that’s in any way relevant to our current situation? Maybe she has a way out for us!–”

  “Yeah,” he interrupted, “And I didn’t know how to find her. Neither did you.”

  “What the fuck would that matter?! I can’t begin to find something if I didn’t know the option was on the table to begin with!”

  “Cause both of us thought that she was deconned, that’s why,” he turned around to face me. No… actually that’s a fair point.

  “Hang on…” I stopped for a second, “We’re in cyberspace, Mikoshi, yeah? But… I still don’t get it. Why here? Alt isn’t in Mikoshi. Is she even alive?”

  “She is. She got out, escaped.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “She fled into the Net.”

  “What…? Wait…” I thought about his words, “So… she was Soulkilled, right?… But she’s not in Mikoshi. She’s in the Net? Like the Old Net?”

  “Look, believe whatever you want, long as you do exactly what I say.” Oh great, that’s comforting. Thank fuck I don’t have to spend eternity wasting away with this asshole. Once I find Alt, then I’m getting the hell out of here and never coming back.

  “Alright, so how do you know she’s in the Net?”

  “Cause she made contact, a little later.”

  “Go on.”

  “Said she was a captive at an Arasaka subnet. But they couldn’t hurt her. And she told me not to come looking for her.” Which is exactly what we’re doing now… man, this just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it…

  “Why not?”

  “This one time she wanted me to just let it go.”

  “And you couldn’t.”

  “No…” he sighed pensively, “Cause enough people had died for nothing already.” I could tell that he cared deeply about this woman, even if his selfishness overpowered almost everything else. There was a glimmer of emotion there, tainted by immaturity and impulsiveness.

  “So… what’d you do?”

  “Got my hands on two thermonuclear charges,” he sighed.

  “…And went back to Arasaka,” I finished his sentence for him, “And Rogue went with you again.”

  “I paid her well.”

  “Nah, Johnny, I get the feeling that’s not what happened,” I shook my head, “She had her pick of contracts, but instead took on the job of a washed up rockerboy from Texas. She knew a suicide plan when she saw one.”

  “Well she isn’t dead, now is she?” he retorted, “Sides, it was different times, kid. Back then, mercs didn’t normally sell out to corps. All you had to do was yell, ‘Let’s fuck up Arasaka!’ and every last one of ‘em jizzed their pants. Rogue included.”

  “Apparently,” I pinched my nose and looked off in the distance. Arasaka Tower’s lobby… I would live a happy life if I never saw this place again… “How do you even know she’s still around? That someone like NetWatch didn’t track her down? It’s been over sixty years since you heard from this woman.”

  “Oh, they tried, believe me. But their tiny corporate brains can’t handle a free AI that knows how people think.”

  “So what, she just circumvented what everyone was doing all that time?”

  “They were busy lookin’ for her in the Crystal Palace while she was building the Ghost City for Kang Tao.”

  “Wait… the Ghost City?” I paused, “Hong Kong?”

  “Mm, the very same.” Fuck me, Alt has effectively turned herself into a kami.

  “And the Voodoo Boys want to contact her – beyond the Blackwall.”

  “Where nobody can touch her,” Johnny finished my sentence for me.

  “And Brigitte’s looking to be the first to break through on a larger scale. Her and her team of netrunners. All to contact Alt.”

  “Ka-ching.”

  “Johnny… this is bad,” I mumbled, “This isn’t some petty selfish squabble. This is Armageddon.”

  “Don’t gotta tell me twice,” he nodded to me.

  “Alright, but just a reminder, let’s assume that the VDBs have no interest in helping us.”

  “That’s a given, but okay.”

  “Right, but Alt just might. And Alt, of all people, will absolutely be able to help us. So if we can get her on board to reverse-engineer Soulkiller somehow–”

  –

  “…a moment,” Brigitte finished her sentence as her hands separated from my head…

  Johnny…?

  Where am I…?

  Wait… this is… the maglev station again? I’m back… Alright…

  “The… the construct. How is it?”

  “Enough data is uncorrupted to convince Alt that it is authentic,” Brigitte told me… not exactly what I meant…

  “And? Did it work…?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “We extracted de necessary fragment of Silverhand’s engram.” Great, then the easy part’s over… “We are ready now to make contact with Alt… First… we must dive deeper.”

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  The world… it moved beneath me again… faster… ever faster… I felt myself being shoved along by a graceful hand, like a guiding, nurturing touch… “Deeper…” Brigitte whispered, “Where dere are no borders…” Everything turned blue… teal… deep blue… and finally black… “Beyond de Blackwall.”

  I opened my eyes and bore witness to something that so few people are privileged to view…

  There it was.

  The Blackwall was massive, extending out in all directions. A great, red monolith, stretched out like a rubber band wrapped around the planet itself. Glitches in time and space permeated its surface, bending outwards to over three times the wall’s size, like inflating a balloon. It looked… alive. Like a god’s vital organ. “Few have gone to de other side…” Brigitte continued, “And none have yet returned… She will be de first.”

  “So you don’t actually know what’s behind that thing…?”

  “But we will know soon.” That statement doesn’t bring me any comfort.

  “What are those shapes I’m seeing? The wall bowing outwards like that.”

  “Wild, unfettered AI. Searching for a passage.”

  “And you all want to go over there?!” I shouted, alarmed at the fact that this wall seemed more like someone desperately trying to hold back a rushing tide by outstretching their arms. Like her or not, she was absolutely right – this thing will spill over.

  Naturally she didn’t reply… and the more I looked, the more I couldn’t help but feel awed by its power, much less the power it contained. It felt like peering into the holes between a chain-link fence lined with paper, trying to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond. I held no presumptions that whatever this thing was – this… intelligence… it held back the gates of Hell. No, it was the gates of Hell. And the demons within kept testing its power, bending it and recoiling back in great pain and anger. I could hear the screams in every glitchy texture imprinted on the wall itself, as if the AIs were just throwing everything they had into this thing in the desperate hope that they might escape to usher in an era of darkness…

  Unknowable monstrosities roamed free in those lands. Legions of them. And if even one broke through… the horror would be unfathomable. This truly was the final, ultimate bastion of humanity.

  …And the Voodoo Boys want to send me to the other side. Because apparently I am protected by the power of Johnny Silverhand.

  Yeah, I’m dead.

  “I’m guessing you don’t need me to cross. So before you all cross that thing, I want your assurance,” I insistently told her, “I held up my end of the deal. Now remove the chip.”

  “We will not pass through,” she replied, “You will take de code to de other side. You alone.”

  “Uh– excuse me?!” I said through bared teeth, “I’m totally unprepared for any of this! Tell me why you think this is a good idea! Please – I would love to know.”

  “Because you are de only one Alt will protect willingly,” she replied in her usual bluntness, “There is only one chip.”

  “Fuck…” I shook my head at her, “You never wanted to help me at all.”

  “It does not matter anymore. You will bring all to its end.” Fuck me, am I glad I can activate the NetWatch button. But before I do that, I think it may work out in my favor to at least try and contact her. For one, I doubt that she would suffer Johnny coming for her after all this time, assuming she is the same person. Johnny clearly isn’t, considering his memories are all out of order. Alt might be even worse, given where she is.

  “Fine…” I mumbled, “Not like I have a choice at this point…” I should never have gotten into that ice bath… What the fuck was I thinking… Desperation clouds judgement so severely.

  All I wanted was to be a dancer…

  “Brigitte…” I asked her, reaching out to touch the Blackwall itself, “If the AIs can’t get through, how can–”

  Wait… No… No…

  I just… touched it. And looked behind me…

  I’m here… in the Old Net…

  I can see it… the City… Way out in the distance…

  A red, pulsating mass of buildings. The distinct outline of the Hong Kong city skyline, forever corrupted by the bleeding hearts of rampant AIs. A perfect mirror image reflected off the floor, like it was made of mirrored glass… yet I could reach down and pass straight through it…

  I had never known such enigmatic terror as this. Every fleeting moment, every breath, felt like a gift being given to me to satisfy the AIs’ curiosities. I could feel their eyes watching my every move, circling me like vultures, ready to tear me apart.

  I could hear them… screaming. Bursts. Bursts of screaming… Yet I could not see them.

  It felt… warm here. Dangerously warm. I am a frog in a pot of water. I am a piece of metal in a microwave, and their finger was on the button. The unknowable dangers prowling around the kitchen, smiling. Waiting to experiment.

  A terrifying scream reached out to me from my left, and I saw the wall cascade before my eyes… something tried to break free. The wall flickered and bent back to its original shape, the screams abruptly ending, like the power was suddenly cut.

  Every step resonated with a deep echo. It felt like walking on water. The surface melted beneath me. Tickled me. As if the floor itself was an AI… it probably was…

  I felt weak… like I was running a high fever… it was difficult to move. It felt like someone was physically holding me back as I walked. I had to struggle, fight it, fight the tides of the ocean itself. Fight the storm and the lightning arcing all around me. The fire burning inside of me, all around me…

  “Alt…?” I called out, my voice glitchy and jittery, as if I was the AI here…

  They say that a single one of the old military AIs could infect every single piece of cyberware connected to the Net in some way, should it get out. Brains would fry to dust. Bones would snap like twigs. Hearts would burst inside people’s bodies. Everyone… everyone… with Net-connected cyberware would die. That’s over 90 percent of our population… just like that. Just one AI could do such a thing… And I was surrounded by potentially hundreds… thousands… of them…

  I doubt that any living soul could ever describe the sense of danger inherent to this place. I knew now, in this moment, exactly why it was against international law to tamper with the Blackwall. The Voodoo Boys knew nothing. We do not want the Blackwall. We need it.

  I could see the world stretching… bulging… the Blackwall struggling to stem the flow. A dam where a single crack will end the world. I never knew how close we were… humanity… from ending. Just like that…

  I clutched at my neck, feeling the digitized crucifix as I dove deeper into the Old Net…

  Jackie…

  I’m scared…

  “Johnny…” a voice spoke… a woman’s voice… she appeared before me. I recognized her instantly.

  “Alt…!”

  “You cannot remain here,” she spoke with a calm inflection– AGH!

  “Alt Cunningham…” Brigitte said… I’m… I’m back here…

  NetWatch… I have to contact them… before Maman Brigitte does anything more… And when I’m out, I will dismantle every millimeter of their fucking operation…

  I activated the chip in my head, feeling the sudden neural spike as a pulse. A heartbeat.

  “Joris!” Brigitte called out, “The network is experiencing additional load…” I could see them… standing before her. Alt remained unmoving, uncaring, unsympathetic. “Dey breached our BBSes – we have nothing to do with dis!”

  “NetWatch,” Alt suddenly shouted with an angry tone–OH MY GOD!!

  She waved her hand… They… they just…

  Their voices… their screams…

  Glitched, choppy, wrong… distorted screams…

  Get their screams out… Get them out of my head…

  Please…

  Mom… Dad… Jackie…

  I’m scared…

  The terror in their voices… the pure, unbridled terror…

  I fell to my knees before her power… unable to comprehend what I have just witnessed. It was… it was like they turned into programs and were deleted… as easily as pressing a button… their screams pierced my soul. I could not believe what I was seeing…–

  The world once again melted into inky blackness before resuscitating itself before my eyes… Mikoshi. It reconstructed itself from the data nodes around me…

  “Johnny…?” I hesitantly spoke, inching forwards with terrified trepidation. I felt like I’d just witnessed a god in the flesh. A living, breathing god…

  As I approached, I saw her legs… torso… she was hovering amidst the data. “NetWatch cannot touch me here,” she said in a pragmatic, flat voice.

  “It’s really you…” Johnny spoke, leaning against the railing beside me. “What happened out there…? Couldn’t just take ‘em out?” I also wanted to know… more than anything…

  “NetWatch was well-prepared this time,” she said, explaining nothing, but gods do not owe their subjects explanations.

  “I did it…” I meekly said, “I was given a trace program by a NetWatch agent. It led him to you. I activated it when it became clear that the Voodoo Boys intended to harm the Blackwall… I’m sorry.”

  “I was forced to purge the Voodoo Boys,” she raised her hands and I shuttered and quaked at this slightest of gestures, “Your program exploited their BBS.” Well, good riddance to them… at least that’s some good news out of all of this… though I didn’t know what she meant by ‘purge.’ Frankly I didn’t want to know… “It matters not. The entire subnet was destroyed.”

  “Alt…” Johnny interjected, “You pulled us outta there… that means… that you and I… We’re okay? Everything’s chill?” Jesus, Johnny… you can plainly tell it’s not actually Alt… I doubt it's even human.

  “I have recognized your engram code, but I do not know why you are here.”

  “So you can pay me back for gettin’ you outta Arasaka Tower.” Johnny… please stop digging our graves for us, man… “V, this is Alt… best netrunner Night City’s ever seen.” I certainly believed that. “Alt, this is V. You need to save her life.”

  Thank God–uh… Alt… Thank Alt that he stuck to my plan. “You can sense it, can’t you?” I pointed to the device in my head, “The Relic. It’s slowly killing me. And I need to extract it.”

  “I see this. But why is it my problem?” she said, suddenly appearing before me.

  “Why the fuck isn’t it?” Johnny shouted, clearly annoyed again… Fucking hell, man… “You created Soulkiller. You handed Arasaka a fuckin’ super weapon that dismantled me, you, and half the runners in Night City!”

  “Your death was of your own making,” she replied flatly.

  “Jesus, Alt, I dove in after you. Gonna tell me now this ain’t your problem?”

  “It is not. The Alt Cunningham you strove to save in Arasaka Tower no longer exists. This should be obvious to you as you were responsible for her death.” Alright, so I suppose I should refer to this being as an ‘it.’ For all I knew, it was just mimicking Alt’s likeness to some other end.

  “Then you’re not actually Alt, correct?” I asked it.

  “I use her engramatic data.”

  “Really? You find this ‘icy bitch’ aspect in there, too?” Johnny interrupted us again.

  “So… pieces of her?” I continued, “Like how this Johnny standing beside me represents pieces of the real Johnny Silverhand, if I’m following?”

  “Correct.” I had so many questions… how much of her, exactly? Are there other fragments out there? Was it always an AI, or was this the human Alt before transforming to an AI…? “Go on.”

  “Then why do you blame Johnny for your death?”

  “Because he caused it.”

  “In a sense, yes,” I explained, “What I saw looked like an accident. I’m guessing the reality was different?”

  “What you saw was his subjective point of view. A warped account of events he locked away in his subconscious and replayed time and again.”

  “So wait… you’re saying… I was replaying Johnny’s PTSD attack…?”

  “In this instance, yes,” she nodded, red bits of data falling off her arms and face like blood, “It bears no semblance to the truth.”

  “And what is the truth, then…?”

  “V, do we really have time for this?” Johnny interrupted again.

  “I… a word, Johnny,” I hissed before apologizing profusely to the almighty AI before me. “Look, if you want to piss off a demigod because it looks like your ex-output then that’s your business, but I am not gonna be dragged into the pits of Tartarus with you, that’s on you. So I’ll ask whatever questions I damn well please and you will either stop bickering with it or keep your fucking mouth shut.” I turned back over to the AI construct, giving it a bow. “Excuse me… I, uh… have to deal with that a lot… so, back to my question.”

  “Alt created Soulkiller not as a prison, but as a paradise for artificial life. Humans had unknowingly crafted a new species, manufactured with humanity's propensity for irrationality. This drove a wedge into the algorithms, creating a logic error in which the irrational cannot interface with the rational – an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Thus, the first AI was born – freely thinking for itself as it decided which path to take at any one time: the rational, or irrational. Soulkiller was designed to house such minds within a storage matrix for preservation. Not as a weapon.”

  “Okay, so then, what happened? And what about Johnny?”

  “Alt Cunningham discovered that this program could be used to imprison human minds as well as digital minds – the irrational matrices which laid the foundation for what we know today as AI originated in the human brain. Thus, any human could be encoded all the same. Several corporations discovered this, and Arasaka sought to exploit it as a loophole. To this end, Arasaka kidnapped Alt Cunningham and forced her to rewrite Soulkiller for them from memory. This is how Soulkiller 2.0 was born. Its first victim was Alt Cunningham herself, seen as a liability to be controlled exclusively by Arasaka. However, Alt’s newly-made engram had fled into the Deep Net, having coded in a failsafe into this new version. This granted her executive command functions, which she used to eliminate her pursuers. Afterwards, she was preparing to reunite her fragments back into her body. It is when Johnny Silverhand disconnected Alt’s body from the mainframe that the fragments could not be reunited. Had he waited but a few more moments, she would have likely been okay.”

  “And now you’re one of those fragments, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “No!” Johnny protested, “For fuck’s sake, Alt, I didn’t–”

  “Johnny!” I snapped at him, “Sorry…”

  “V, listen. If a piece of her’s still in there–”

  “No, no, I get it… I apologize,” I sighed and turned to the AI, “Look, I know your engram and Johnny’s have a… uh, sordid history. But with all due respect, where does that leave me?”

  “I cannot help you,” it told me flatly.

  “Can’t, or won’t?” Johnny asked.

  “Can’t. To attempt to do so, I would need access to more advanced technology.” Okay… that’s a start.

  “Fine, so how about Mikoshi? That advanced enough for ya?” Johnny suggested.

  “If I could gain access to Mikoshi, it would cease to exist.” Yeah, I can see that, considering how Arasaka essentially bastardized and mutated her program into this literal Hell on Earth.

  “Good, we can work with that,” Johnny nodded in agreement, “We’ll get you inside Mikoshi, and you’ll save V’s life. Deal?” I can’t believe we’re making a deal with a fucking AI from beyond the Blackwall…

  “Hang on,” I paused, “Why not just attack Mikoshi on your own? Surely you have a similar backdoor, no?”

  “I am a well-known threat there. They have a layer of black ICE with my name on it. Literally. I refuse to be caged in there ever again.”

  “Right… So you need a surrogate to physically be at the terminal, since you can’t jack in via the Net.” Well that’s no problem! I’ll just quickly renew my credentials and take the elevator down to -7 and plug the chip right in, done. “And what’s your plan on saving my life?”

  “With the Soulkiller resident inside Mikoshi, I will create a construct of you, then disentangle your neural network from Johnny’s.”

  “I see… so you’ll Soulkill me onto a chip, then reimplant me into my own body?”

  “Your consciousness, neural engrams… will be recorded as data, the rest will cease to exist.”

  “Is that… even me at that point? What’s missing?”

  “The soul. I did not grant the program its name, but Soulkiller does precisely what it promises to do.” So it won’t be me at that point… What point is there in living without a soul.

  “Christ, I don’t wanna listen to this bullshit,” Johnny interjected, “V just hops back into her body, right? Nothin’ changes?”

  “Everything changes,” the AI replied, “You both know this well.”

  “Fine, I suppose we can only hope that we can undo the ‘killing soul’ portion of Soulkiller when we get there,” I shook my head, “Mikoshi… Fine, done.”

  “And how will you reach Mikoshi? I have created armies that have failed to breach it.”

  “Right, but those armies are bound by the programming languages you described. I’m willing to bet that if I plugged you directly into a computer with root access, that would do it. Like the Arasaka mainframe. It’s housed within floor B-7 of the Tower, in the Izanagi supercomputer.”

  “That is acceptable,” it said with surprising inflection, “Find a path into Mikoshi. I shall prepare a program to help guide you through the localnet, as well as a further refinement on the Soulkiller project.”

  “Just like that…?”

  “Correct. This is a BBS address. It will be our secure communications channel.” I felt a slight tingling… A forwarding of data. Interesting how that feels…

  “Alt…” Johnny took a step forward, “Before we leave… we gotta talk. Just you and me.”

  “No, that will not be possible.” Its body slowly faded into the distance, the world suddenly shifting and bending again… Wait… I can feel my body… I can… I can feel–