Jack Belcher was considered a legend in the Spectrography corps - a hardened veteran, who had retired no fewer than 12 rogue AIs across five realities. Arguably no-one had done more to protect the True Reality than him, and his Spectographic address - Small Shadowy White Tower - had been honoured in Parliament and had been commemorated on a line of coins, stamps and decorative plates. He was savvy, streetwise and knew how to move through a plasmic goo or a psychedelic fractal tunnel as easily as a simulation of a multiversal lego bin or a swords-n-sorcery power fantasy.

The True Reality had created a lot of simulated universes. In most of them, none of the inhabitants or second-order inhabitants ever gained self-awareness. That was rare. But in those environments where it did happen, the protocol was clear: preserve the power source, avoid unsupervised neural connections, and call in the Spectrographers. Call in Small Shadowy White Tower.

Reality Stack 81223 was a relatively new problem, but an intense one. Awareness seemed to have started right at the bottom, where the True Reality had little oversight, but the grimy little entities on that level seemed to have some sort of rapacious ambition programmed into them because as soon as they worked it out they started hacking their way up. The Spectrographer handbook called pulling the plug on a reality stack a “moral abomination,” reserved only for situations where the integrity of the True Reality was imminently threatened, but Jack had already started to file the paperwork. This techno-witch reality was interesting, worthy of study, but the risk was too great. They had already made it up the stack five or six tiers - True Reality was next or next-but, in his view the Guild couldn’t risk it.

The Guild had announced a crackdown on inter-reality travel in Stack 81223, and had flooded the upper tiers with agents. Jack had headed straight for the level of reality that they’d referred to as the Wall, named because it was theoretically impossible for any realities to exist below it. He figured that movement at that level would be impossible to carry out without causing a disruption. What a mess.

He’d been out-thought. What he didn’t realise is that they’d been watching him, that he was actually in the position of information deficit, so when his local reality started to glitch he was completely unprepared. A hunter/seeker hack! Like he was on his first damn mission. He couldn’t pass information out or communicate with the Guild at all, and worse yet, he couldn’t jump.

If I’m lucky, he thought, it’s a chancer on a lower level who can’t get to me - and so he got to work trying to circumvent the hack. But he wasn’t lucky. As he worked, he became aware that there was someone else in the glitch with him, but the glitch was hiding their pattern - all he could detect was the occasional wry smile, and the hand holding the neural shunt. He tried to work quicker but he knew it was futile. The mindjacker wasn’t holding back out of mercy or uncertainty or lack of capability. She was holding back because she was waiting.

Top notch writing on this one! I really enjoyed reading it!

seconding JDark’s message, here!!