Vee 2 0 Ch 04 Mydoom

VEE 2.0

Chapter Four: Mydoom

A candle burned on the kitchen counter, filling the apartment with scents of bergamot. If Veronica was honest, she wasn't entirely sure what bergamot actually was. She liked the scent, though. Clean, sweet, with a little something spicy hidden in there. It was calming. She burned this one on days when she was tense and upset and needed to get her head right. And that was certainly today.

It wasn't working. Stress and fear jangled up her nerves like runaway trolley cars, leaving her feeling breathless and tight. She could barely detect the smell of the candle through the soft stink of fear-sweat she was giving off. Her palms were slick. Her left hand clenched rhythmically, working in and out of shaky fists. Her right bore white knuckles as she clutched her kitchen shears.

For the tenth time, she prodded the point of the shears back behind her ear. The home base device nestled there, hugging tightly to the upper shell of her ear. She'd grown so used to it that she barely noticed it anymore. Until the last couple of weeks, that is. Until it had become a threat.

Every day she got more messages - texts, emails. She'd deleted all of her social media, or else those would surely still be choked with abuse and taunts and threats. Sneering, angry nerds, promising to hack into her head and have their way with her. It wasn't possible - or so she insisted to herself - but god, the idea was terrifying.

And so this thing had to go. Had to come out.

The only thing was, she didn't know how.

She tried simply yanking it up and off at first. No luck there. The skin had healed at the insertion site, closed up like an old wound, bound to the device. She could feel the tissue stretch and strain when she pulled. First slow and steady, making her wince as she waited for it to give. Then one hard, sharp yank that she held back on out of fear. That left her teary-eyed with pain and with a thin rivulet of blood slinking down to her jawline.

It'd probably come free eventually, but a few seconds of dedicated tugging made it clear it was going to take a lot of skin and tissue with it. Whatever method the techs at HDS had used to attach this thing, it was holding fast. Pulling at it gave Veronica a mental image of wires burrowing like roots down and into her skull, and that made her nauseous.

The next plan was to break the device somehow. Snap it, crush it, something. But despite how small and delicate it felt, the plastic casing of it was more robust than she'd expected. She couldn't seem to hurt it with her fingers, and any attempt to hit it or harm it with some kind of tool or weapon was just as hopeless. Hard to get a good swing at something mounted on the side of your own skull - nevermind the fact that collateral damage seemed almost guaranteed.

So now she was onto her current plan. There was one major wire she could feel, emerging from the base of the home base and extending below her skin. The very skin that crawled when she imagined the device wired up to her brain like this. A tiny loop of fragile wire connecting circuitry to tissue. If she could sever that, surely it'd cut off the operations of the gadget, right? It'd disconnect her from Vee and keep her safe from losing herself again and again and again.

Of course, she didn't know what else it would do.

When they'd installed it, there'd been little comments about not messing with this or trying to remove it by herself. Blue Eyes, the kinda-handsome tech who worked with her joked that trying to take it out would - his words - fry her brain. He assured her afterwards that he wasn't serious, but... how confident of that was she?

Her hands trembled rapidly as she guided the blade of the shears up behind her ear. She opened them just enough to slip the small wire between them. One squeeze and it'd be cut off. Come what may. It'd free her, probably. Probably it wouldn't give her a seizure or a stroke. Probably she'd survive. Right?

Her hand shook so badly that the wire slipped out from between the blades. Veronica sighed angrily and steadied herself. It was now or never. This was the moment when she freed herself. This was the place.

The absurdity hit her then -

this

was the place? Here? In her kitchen? Using the same shears she used to cut open packets of chicken breast. That's the tool best suited for cutting-edge untested tech-centric brain surgery?

How the fuck did she possibly convince herself this was a good idea?

Veronica hurled the shears into the sink, where they noisily scraped and clattered along the metal basin before coming to a rest. She slumped to the floor. She leaned back hard, curve of her spine banging into a cabinet door. She buried her face in her hands and let out a choked sob. What the fuck was she going to do?

***

hey v, guess what they call your brain in the techspecs for the app? 'the template material' lmfao

its like your entire personality is just a prompt for something more important

u should see how much detail hds used to talk about teh brain implant, compared to how they barely even refer to ur actual brain

kek u are barely a spare part on these docs

yea btw we found the hds patent documents so were really starting to figure out how the whole thing works, should be fun to crack remote deployment soon

Veronica's hands shook as she read the email on the small, grainy screen. She'd picked up a crappy ancient laptop at a secondhand store the other day. It was missing the 'w' key and the it had a crack in the screen. It had that weird little nubbin in the middle of the keyboard instead of a trackpad, and the ports were so old she didn't even know what kind of peripherals they were for. She needed to plug a cable into the wall to get it to connect to the internet, something she barely realized was ever a thing. The blocky case was a little grimy and it felt like it weighed about forty pounds. But it was cheap and it was way too old to run something like Vee, so she felt safe using it.

Using it meant exposing herself to the foul and taunting emails that clogged her inbox lately, though. She still checked her messages a few times a day, because she was sending frequent requests to both HDS and Panoply. They ran the gamut of tone - casually friendly, desperately pleading, sharply demanding, fearfully confused. She even tried faking a request from a lawyer using some phony letterhead she'd googled. No response.

She'd tried getting an

actual

lawyer, of course. She couldn't afford much. Even those she couldn't pay weren't interested. Panoply commanded a fleet of white-shoe litigators and could burn through billions without blinking. She was just one confused young actress who regretted a contract and was too scared to leave her house. Hardly a slam dunk.

And so here she was, two glasses of wine deep, skimming through an inbox of silence from the tech companies and abuse from men on 8chan. Half-formed tears blurred her vision as she angrily mashed out a reply to the anonymous jackass who boasted about patent documents. Her barely-functional keyboard and her slightly-drunk anger worked together to resist her attempts to write sharply and coherently.

Hi asshole,

Guess hat? Go fuck yourself.

I don't even believe in your hole 'deployment' thing anyay, you're just trying to scare me because god forbid a oman

She jammed the little plasticky gasket where the 'w' key should be, mashing it in frustration.

because god forbid a lady do anything, right? You and your misogynist incel loser friends can't handle that, it fucks up your entire pathetic little orldvie, doesn't it?

Veronica grit her teeth and slammed the laptop lid down. Forget it. It was probably for the best. There was nothing to be gained from antagonizing those creeps. It just let them know they were getting to her.

And while she didn't want them to know it, they absolutely were getting to her.

***

Veronica still had her phone, of course, but only for emergencies. Only for actual phone calls. She kept it on Do Not Disturb and certainly didn't use it for unimportant, silly things like scrolling the internet. She knew better than that.

It's easy to know better in the daylight, though. Late at night, kept up with worry and confusion and fear for the future, none of us really know better. We need comfort and routine. We need distraction and grounding. We need something other than the quiet and the dark and the things a frightened mind can summon.

And Veronica, in those moments, needed a burner Instagram account that she used to keep tabs on Trevor. A shameful habit that she'd deny to her friends, if she was still in regular contact with them. She didn't speak to much of anybody these days, though. She'd changed her work schedule, going in early and leaving late, allowing bigger swaths of every day to be swallowed up by Vee and the Worker Bee personality. She arrived before the rest of the staff and stayed until nearly everyone was gone, making sure she bumped into as few people as possible. She was a recluse now.

These hidden late-night cyberstalks of her ex were the most she still interacted with people she knew. Her face lit only by the glow of her phone, curled on her side in bed, Veronica scrolled through Trevor's feed. She'd held out a few days since doing this last, giving Trevor plenty of time to add lots of new pics. That boy never missed a chance to take a photo, or to post one. Veronica hoped this habit would let her watch Trevor's comeuppance in real time. Watching as his show got cancelled, his work dried up, his apartment got too expensive, and he had to move back to the east coast and work at his dad's garage. It was going to be so cathartic.

It hadn't happened yet, though. So far it was the opposite. His character was a hit with the fans and he'd been offered a bigger contract. He'd signed with a new agent with a legitimate agency. And his profile was full of him at restaurants and parties and beaches and pools and galleries with legitimate stars and producers and directors Veronica recognized. He was rising fast, a new young light on the scene.

It was infuriating. She was the one was supposed to have that! They used to talk about it, the successes they were working towards. What it'd look like to finally break through. And yes, in those talks, the fantasy was both of them succeeding. But in her heart Veronica always knew she'd be the bigger star of the two of them. She'd never be so cruel as to suggest that to Trevor, but... well, it seemed so clear. She had real, honest, actual talent. She worked ten times as hard as him. It was just... it

had

to be. Nothing else made sense to her.

Part of her fantasized about taking it away. Telling people about what he'd done to her. How he'd - well, raped her, right? That's what it was. Wasn't it? She hadn't consented to the things they'd done together, not really. She'd enthusiastically participated, yes, but that wasn't her mind at the time. She'd been influenced, and he knew it. She could explain what he'd done and how, and people would see what a scumfuck he was, and it'd all come crumbling down.

Except she obviously wasn't going to do that.

She couldn't talk about this. Her life was already falling apart because people started discovering the scope of her situation. Trying to make that actually, fully public? No. Not an option that was on the table.

Veronica was distracted by all of this by a familiar face in one of Trevor's pictures. Brittany. The girl from when she'd seen him last. The one who... god. Who'd been there when he used Vee against her. Veronica's cheeks burned just thinking about it. How degrading it had been. How completely wrong. Violating in a way that she didn't even know was possible. They didn't just use and exploit her body, they took advantage of her mind. Made her not just do things but

enjoy

them. Admitting it would make her blanch, but it was true - it felt good. Very, very good.

Good enough that Veronica, in this late-night reverie of anger and envy and need for shelter, found her fingers reaching and wandering.

Her eyes unfocused a bit, not looking away from the photo of Trevor and Brittany, but not really observing it, either. Letting it form a hazy glowing backdrop as her mind wandered. Her thoughts took oblique arcs, made tangent lines that just barely kissed the curve of memories of that night. Not thinking about it, not really. Just letting the sense memory of it rise up like a sea swell. The way her heart hammered as she touched... something. The tremor of her fingertips as they stroked a warm, wet place she didn't let herself name now. A feeling of thick warm presence in her mouth, and how that made her feel both filled and fulfilled. And need, below all of it. Wide and bottomless, need that could only be sated for seconds at a time before it needed again, and again, on and on forever.

It was better to remember that need. It was better to try and feel that again now, to touch and remember

that

, than to remember anything else. To throw herself into the cleft space of that need and disappear down it. Her skin prickled with rising sweat beads as warmth built up under her blankets. The tang of her own scent, flowers and metal, hit Veronica's nose. A humid and intimate smell. Muscles fired in her legs as she felt satiation looming closer, deep in that pit. She dove deeper towards it.

And as she tried to embrace that moment, that perfect oblivion of an orgasm, her phone buzzed noisily and lit up before her eyes.

u wanna know something cool??

God fucking damn rotten asshole shithead bastard son of a motherfucking

bitch

.

The tide ebbed, the tension sank, and the moment died on the vine. Veronica clenched her hand into a slick-fingered fist, furiously. Once again one of these little shits had found her number.

hds did some cool stuff with receptivity. like oviously they need you to be in range for the vee processing to work, right? if they cant use homebase bcuz if youre out in the woods camping or whatever then the whole system falls apart. so theres huge wireless pickups and boosters and all that. dont strain youre little wired-up brain about it lol, just trust me. ur device pciks up signals realllll good

Veronica ground a knuckle against her eye angrily. Why did she even bother reading these anymore? Like a car crash, she supposed. It was hard to look away.

heres why thats cool - its hard to hack the homebase itself. but its not hard at all to piggyback a signal. just gotta be sure the targets listening to it. and they made u suuuuch a good listener lmaooo

Flickers of fear glowed under Veronica's skin as she read this. Empty boasting, as always, right? Trolls trying to upset her.

i really hope ur reading this live bcuz itd be so fucking funny. were gonna test something.

watch this

Veronica had come to know the feeling of Vee's influence by now. It was a static that settled on her mind like a blanket. It could be heavy and oppressive, but it was comfortable. Cozy. Enveloping and warm.

What happened now was the same thing - static that fell on her mind and covered it. The difference was the forcefulness. If Vee was like being wrapped up by a thick woolen blanket over the shoulders, this was like a sheet of plastic over the face.

The static hit her hard, artlessly. It hurt. Nowhere specific and not even physically. It simply touched the part of her brain that told her pain was happening, and so pain happened. Then that was gone, though, because there was just a hard, sharp-edged, infinite wall of static. Nothing else. A ten-thousand square mile field of flat gray sandpaper that instantly abraded her mind to empty hissing noise and nothingness. It was like being murdered and yet still having awareness enough to experience being a corpse. A vacuum of the self. An ego void.

Vee could direct every thought and experience Veronica had, elegantly moving her thoughts and perceptions into shapes independent of Veronica's choosing. She was a master conductor directing an orchestra. This? This was a failing music student beating her to death with a kettle drum.

And then there was a feeling of something

ripping

away, and it was gone. Her thoughts came back, like blood rushing back into a compressed limb. It tingled unpleasantly to think and see on her own again. It felt like things inside her head were wrong, somehow. Not broken but not the same. Like walking into your home and realizing a stranger has been there, touching things and moving them, while you were out.

The phone glowed in front of her, a new message having arrived while she fought back to consciousness.

lmfaoooo

***

In the time since she'd last visited HDS, they'd hired a security guard. A tall man with ropy forearms who smelled like laundry soap and metal, and who had no intentions whatsoever of letting Veronica enter the premises.

"You aren't listening to me," she said for the fourth time, and he didn't listen. "I just need ten minutes. You can ask

anyone

- I've been here a dozen times! I'm a paid member of the staff, for god's sake. Or a contract employee, at least! Call Mr. Holmquist - Mike

or

Andy, either of them will vouch for me." Once, Veronica would have worked this interaction carefully. Pointing her toe to twist her posture the slightest bit, making her appear demure and harmless but still intriguing. Knowing just how loud to laugh to both charm and disarm him. She still had those skill, she assured herself. But they were rusty from disuse and clumsy with the stress and exhaustion she was battling.

The guard tilted his head slightly. His gaze had been slowly scoping across the lobby the whole time she'd been speaking, a slow constant sweep. Now his grey, flat eyes fell fully on her. He shifted his weight and turned without moving his feet, simply reorienting himself so she was now entirely before him. His every movement was like a battleship swinging its artillery into firing position - dreadfully slow but deliberate and menacing.

"Mr. Holmquist senior is out of the country," the guard said, with a voice like ancient plinths of stone, "and is not returning for several weeks. Mr. Holmquist junior is offsite, in meetings, for the remainder of the day. I have no doubt the issues you're facing are dire and crucial to you. However, if they were dire and crucial to either Mr. Holmquist, they would have provided you a reliable way to contact them. As they did not, there isn't anything I can do for you. Ma'am."

'Ma'am' was said with respect, but it was the bar across the door. He was done with her. Already his heavy gaze was rotating away from her, panning like a lighthouse across the lobby.

Veronica had prided herself for years on her composure. It was a long-trained habit, the domain of the performer, borne of the need to be able to control her emotions and display exactly those that she wished. Veronica commanded her angry sneers and her giddy laughs and her desolate tears, wielding them as the tools of her trade. But even that was being taken from her now. She couldn't control herself. She could feel her shoulders quivering with anger, her mouth curling in a dolorous, furious frown. She couldn't stop it. Vee took her mind and now the world was taking her body.

She felt the tears of frustration brim in her eyes. There was such shame in that for her. Such a visible display of how she was losing control. How far she'd fallen. She wanted to scream, to throttle and beat this guard, to smash every window in this fucking building. She was just so

angry

. And nothing else worked. Why not? Why not just let go and destroy something? What, they'd arrest her, maybe? And? What did she have left for them to take from her?