Meghan Murphy
Sunglasses, lawn chairs, woolen parkas, and his favorite book. Erik watched Astrid build a snow-castle in the almost balmy Antarctic Polar Desert.
The sun was large in the sky. Too large. All projections said they’d be safe here… for now. The equator; uninhabitable. Antarctica; the new vacation destination. He sipped his tea and reclined his head, finger bookmark in place.
“Look! You can read it now!” Astrid’s voice drew his eyes to the large stone with ancient carving in the ice-melt. “What’s it say, Dad?”
Erik sighed, reopening his book, licking his thumb to turn the page. “Ragnarok, sweetie.”
—Meghan Murphy
The first sign there was something wrong was in the eyes. They were unblinking, vacant, hollow. Then came the violence.
Typically, when individuals are deep in the memospheres, they remain active and alert. Merely an augmented, augmented reality simulator existing entirely in the public domain.
No one had considered a virus embedded in the highest directory files of the Memory Library.
It began with historical data of popular files being ominously missing, seemingly deleted. But when they came back online, no one identified the corruption until it was too late.
We didn’t know it was possible to hack a human brain.
—Meghan Murphy