Chapter 22 - The Dark Space

Glyph’s mood sunk as they watched Craig’s status flip to do-not-disturb to match Kayla’s, and turned their attention to the unpleasant task ahead that a large part of them wanted to keep procrastinating; searching the dark space for an identity matrix.

PTICA protocol regarding the connetwork’s dark space was simple: Avoid at all costs. The dark space was a cesspool filled with criminals, anarchists, scammers, and every single kind of connetwork virus in existence. Going into the dark space was like wading into a murky tar pit filled with invasive little parasites. It demanded from its visitors a hyper-awareness to all the tiny little viruses and schemes that were trying to latch into your neural band and worm their way into your information, your financial accounts, and even your memories if you were lucky enough to have them.

Glyph had already ventured there to gain the falsified identity matrices for Kayla and Craig. It would have taken over a year to secure them legally from the IUSS; and then there would still have been a high chance the government would have simply returned the users to their own period and Glyph to PTICA. At the time, Glyph had been so desperate to simply have users after such a long period of isolation that risking the threat had seemed preferable. It had been one of the many things lately that should have been impossible for them, and likely would have been had they not been gifted autonomy. They were so surprised to discover they could access the dark space that they had been caught off-guard and nearly infected with spyware at the first site they discovered. Overall, the experience had been deeply unpleasant and had left them feeling dirty and paranoid. They had desperately hoped to never return.

For the beings who accessed it via neural band or some other external terminal, browsing the dark space wasn’t so harrowing. They explored it like submerging within a diving pod; and if bad things happened, they could simply pull out, mostly unscathed. In most cases they could simply let independent software monitor the hazards separately from their conscious experience. For Glyph or anyone else with an unshielded QPU, those processes happened directly in their subconscious. Glyph was always passively aware of their protections against these kinds of threats much in the same way they felt a fever in response to a cold.

Their earlier searches had already taught them much about navigating the connetwork. The above-the-board sites were a system of digital spaces that all housed a role: some for commerce, for social gathering and community, or as spaces of networking and sharing of information. Most of these spaces desperately wanted your patronage and viewership. They would hook you with a digital lure and eagerly try to pull you to them, all while subtly gathering your private information.

The dark space acted as digital hideouts for operations and organizations the IUSS deemed uncouth for galactic civilization. They drifted in the ether randomly; never in the same addresses for long, with no active ways to be searched for. Usually only the people who owned or maintained the sites ever had direct access to them. The hooks that these sites used would latch into you and remain slack; their purpose not to draw you in, but rather to leave a trail that would lead those in the dark space to you. They would have triggers in popular search engines that waited for certain keywords or phrases to be entered, then they would latch onto you and track you silently. Making your way to the site itself was a matter of learning to distinguish the hooks from the noise, and how to follow the line back to the source.

Glyph had already been up all-night diving in and out of the dark space, searching various sites they were fortunate to even find. Each dive in wore them down, and each resurgence left time feeling more violated and in need of a shower. They hadn’t known they could sweat this much, and their body odor had reached an offensive level, as their QPU protocol kept sending reminders about PTICA’s AO Hygiene Standards.

They’d started at the same site where they had managed to procure fake matrices for Kayla and Craig. It had been easier to find the second time around, as they knew how to start searching for it, and recognized the feel of the hook that the site used. Upon learning Glyph was looking for an ID for a PTICA AO, the site operators expelled Glyph quickly, accusing them of working for PTICA and the IUSS. They would need to be more discreet moving forward.

As their search continued, they wandered into many dens of heinous criminal activity. In one site they had stumbled into sentient trafficking, where they witnessed an open market of pirates and raiders auctioning off the settlers and colonists whom they had pillaged out in the frontier space. The sight had shaken Glyph to the core; as the same time they were witnessing living beings being sold like livestock, their QPU attempted to drown them in cheery reminders of how well PTICA protects the frontier space.

Another site housed AO scalpers: tech-savvy mercs who would buy stolen AO lifeforms, androids, or even natural organics with implancements. The most gifted surgeons in the galaxy with the most advanced operating equipment available struggled to remove implancements safely. These scalpers were not so inclined to avoid harm for a quick cash grab. Nowhere that Glyph had discovered so far seemed to offer the service they needed.