There is no sound in the Deep. No comforting click of keys. No whining modems. Nothing but what your mind scrambles to provide in a hysterical fear of the void. That’s what the chirps and whistles are, the booming barks and the eerie whale song, merely figments of a frightened subconscious. It’s called Black Noise, yet it’s as valid an input as anything else down here.

The Deep was never intended for humans. There is no sight, no taste, no smell to the Deep. Just streams of data flowing from node to node, touching off electrical impulses in the brain. Hallucinations. But here, hallucinations are all you have.

Few, very few of us can take the random signals and translate them. Even then, nine-tenths end in a catatonic stupor as their mind short circuits. For the few who can weave sanity from the Deep, most see it as a teeming metropolis, others as a giant subway system, or an orbital station. All man-made things with predetermined paths and rules. Those are for the backdoor thieves, the Skimmers. They use the loopholes and oversights in the code to slip through the defenses.

I see the Deep as an ocean. A vast emptiness filled with creatures made of code and currents born of data streams. Every change, every move, sends ripples through the sea. There are no rules in my Deep, just an every changing set of ‘truths’ that I can bend and shape to my will. I don’t look for the doors, I make the doors.

But nothing is perfect.