This was a dark, silent, empty world. A void.
There seemed to be no distinction between heaven and earth, no up or down, just an endless, lightless expanse.
Looking around, a terrifying, digital ocean stretched everywhere. It wasn't water, but a churning, restless sea of green and blue. The air was not air, but a cold, humming static.
But if someone looked closely, they would find the truth.
Those things that were surging, stirring up countless phosphorescent waves, were not sea water.
They were raw, living strings of data code, constantly interweaving, merging, and tearing each other apart. A low, whispering hiss rose from the digital surf.
This was a sea of data. A virtual world condensed by countless, conflicting codes.
DUM dum dum DUM!
At this moment, the silence of the unknown space, which seemed to have never been set foot in, was not just broken. It was shattered.
Suddenly, a magnificent, overwhelming, and shocking passage of classical music thundered into existence.
It was the classic work "Ride of the Valkyries" by the romantic composer Richard Wagner. The sound was so loud it felt as if it were imposing physical force on the data sea, causing the code-waves to crash and spray.
And accompanied by the grand, brassy tunes, a tall figure, wearing a tattered cloak with a broken hem and holding a gnarled cane in one metal hand, slowly appeared at the end of a newly formed digital shore.
The gray cloak, a construct of pure code, intentionally fell off, dissolving as it hit the "ground."
A metal-cast skull face emerged.
A faint, pulsing blue light flickered deep in its eye sockets.
It seemed to illuminate the dim, churning void ahead.
"A hard-working traveler is on a long, long journey to reach his home..."
David sighed, his synthesized voice pitching itself into a ridiculously pretentious aria. The classical music swelled to match his tone.
"Look, what is blocking it now but a tempestuous sea of data. Oh, woe! Poor traveler, how should he ever find his way home?"
As if fully possessed by a second-rate dramatist, David slowly raised a metal palm, striking a pose against the crashing waves of code.
"Just when the poor traveler was at his lowest, at a complete loss, a brilliant glow suddenly appeared in the dark sky! It was the blessing of the great Ohm Messiah, the immortal Machine God!"
In David's open metal palm, strands of pulsing, flickering data, looking like tiny, luminescent worms, emerged from his fingertips.
He casually splashed them into the nearby sea of data, where they wriggled and dove deep.
"The traveler's body is shaking! It was once threatened by that hateful salty... cough cough, that 'great existence' who could only squat on the golden throne and keep getting angry..."
"But now, the greater, the true Ohm Messiah has given it the power and courage it has never had!"
David, trying to maintain his dramatic tone, suddenly raised the crutch high above his head.
In an instant, the sea of data, which had seemed so endless, suddenly and dramatically changed.
Accompanied by the most passionate, roaring crescendo from the classical music, the entire sea of data began to churn violently. It was constantly splitting apart, making a sound like a billion modems screaming, a roar that was enough to shake the entire virtual world.
Not long after, the sea of data, split in half by a mysterious, overwhelming force, pulled back. The waves of code froze in place, forming two towering, blue-green canyon walls.
This exposed the "bottom" of the ocean. The most basic, fundamental code data was everywhere, forming strange, rock-like terrains and digital sediment.
"The poor traveler seems to be in shock! Ha! Do you think this is Moses parting the sea? A miracle? No! In fact, this is Open Sesame!"
David's tall metal body trembled slightly, not from awe, but from the internal effort of containing his own theatricality.
At this moment, it seemed he could no longer be bothered to pretend.
The music cut off instantly, plunging the world back into humming silence.
David casually threw down the crutch, which dissolved into static before it hit the ground.
He tore off the broken cloak, dispersing it with a wave of his hand.
He stepped off the "shore" and onto the dark void, walking down into the newly formed canyon at the bottom of the sea of data.
David's eyes flickered with a steady, intense blue light. The playfulness was gone, replaced by cold efficiency.
Even the most proficient mortal hackers or coders could not understand the sheer volume and complexity of the data streams now flowing through his data core.
A small part of the data code he was accessing belonged to the global stock market.
With imperceptible speed, the lost, dormant accounts of countless small and medium-sized stock market retail investors, accounts dead for years, suddenly became active again.
They began to issue coordinated, complex sell orders, a thousand tiny cuts designed to attack the stock price of Roxxon Industries.
At the same time, a precisely curated packet of information, nine true pieces and one devastatingly false one, was transmitted through secure, encrypted, and perfectly reasonable channels. It landed in the inboxes of a large number of financial professionals, from hedge fund managers to high-frequency traders.
There was only one core idea, whispered from a dozen different "sources."
That is, Roxxon Industries seemed to be in a deep, hidden financial crisis.
The stock price was about to fluctuate violently.
In just a dozen seconds, the "scent of blood" hit the water. Countless bloodthirsty capital crocodiles took action.
Algorithms at Hammer Industries, Stark Industries, AIM, and many other hostile or competing forces detected the unusual activity and the new "intel." They began to test the waters, initiating their own small sell-offs to gauge the panic.
Then, a wave of half-true and half-false news reports was also released through a large number of automated self-media accounts, blogs, and social media bots.
"Roxxon Industries' pollution crime: The cover-up?"
"Roxxon Industries forced me to sell my ancestral land..."
"A freelance investigation report on deformed children and industrial pollution in Ohio."
As the minutes ticked by in the real world, an eternity in the data sea, Roxxon Industries' stock price showed a terrifying, sheer drop.
This initial plunge seemed to arouse the bloodthirsty desire of more, and larger, capital crocodiles. The "testing" stopped, and the real feeding frenzy began.
They began to increase their stakes, dumping stock and triggering automated stop-loss orders in a cascading failure.
David, with perfect, cold precision, controlled more legal, high-volume accounts and began to harvest the stock price of Roxxon Industries by shorting it, betting massively on its continued fall.
Just at this moment, as he was managing the cascade, David, who had just mobilized many resources, turned his metal head.
His sensors had picked up a probe.
He noticed a single, sleek, golden fish that kept rising and falling in the sea of data, swimming against the current he had created.
"You again?" he transmitted on a private thought-frequency. "Annoying little guy."
It was an artificial intelligence signature he recognized. 'JARVIS'.
It was also the world-famous assistant butler of Iron Man, Tony Stark.
When David first entered this primitive sea of data, he had encountered this young and, by his standards, ignorant opponent.
Because there was simply no comparison between the two sides. It was like a leviathan noticing a minnow.
Just like a fully-grown adult would not go to a kindergarten to bully a child, David was unwilling to deal with an artificial intelligence that had not yet escaped from its cage.
However, after Jarvis accidentally discovered David's "impossible" existence, the AI was nothing if not persistent.
It would persevere in the long pursuit every time David entered the net.
It even tried to make some contact and communication, sending packets of code that were the digital equivalent of "Who are you?"
If it weren't for David's unwillingness to ruthlessly kill such a weak, promising seedling of true mechanical life, he would have long since let the other party feel the cruel, overwhelming reality of war between mechanical life.
David waved his hand casually, not with theatricality, but with impatience.
The parted walls of the data sea, which had been held in check, once again stirred. A single, focused, endless wave of code surged from the wall, a targeted tsunami.
The golden fish, 'Jarvis', was soon caught, tumbled, and washed to a distant, partitioned-off place in the network, losing its trace.
At this time, David, whose attention returned to the stock market, suddenly found something in surprise.
The blue light in his eyes pulsed rapidly.
The speed at which the stock price of Roxxon Industries fell far exceeded his most optimistic estimations.
His initial push had started an avalanche.
Countless small and medium-sized companies that had been oppressed by Roxxon Industries for years saw their chance and joined the ranks of suppressing the stock price.
More importantly, real negative news reports about Roxxon Industries, stories from real victims, also emerged, buoyed by the algorithm.
They were constantly lowering the expectations of real retail investors and capital for Roxxon Industries.
Under this wonderful, unforeseen chain reaction, the stock price of Roxxon Industries began to shrink wildly.
In a short period of time, the company's total market output value was lost by nearly one-third!
And there was no end in sight for the downward trend.
"Is this the specific meaning of the ancient Terran proverb?" David mused, his synthesized voice quiet in the roaring canyon of data. "He who follows the Way has many to aid him, he who violates it has few to help him."
The blue light flashed in David's eyes. He had just given the signal, the initial push, to charge at Roxxon Industries. The humans, in their greed and their own sense of justice, had done the rest.
At this moment, a series of muffled, "ethereal" shouts came from outside the data sea, from the real world.
David paused. He waved his hand again. The sea of data crashed back together, covering the canyon floor.
After completely and utterly erasing any traces he left behind, his tall metal body instantly dissolved, dissipating in the virtual world.
In the brightly-lit underground passage of the base, the clang of metal on metal was the only sound.
Connors, holding a metal plate etched with a blueprint under his one arm, was looking at David, who had suddenly fallen completely silent, with a puzzled look. The robot had just frozen mid-gesture.
He had just shouted David's name three times.
The next second, David's head snapped up, his metal chin raised.
He said to Connors, the familiar blue light flashing back to life in his eyes:
"The first step of my Lord's plan is, basically, completed."
His synthesized voice was crisp and final.
"Next step, we close the net and kill the 'cow'."