The bus slowed to a stop. Quickly Jeremie hurried off, carrying his backpack and a single suitcase.  He began walking toward Cadic. Even though the bus stop was only a block from the school, with his heavy luggage it felt much farther. Jeremie had never been much on physical strength, but that had never mattered to him.

He turned his hear as he walked through Cadic’s front gates looking around. Many memories came back to him. He had stent many unforgettable days on this campus. More than most, but not because he had been held back but for other reasons. So many adventures had taken place here. But Jeremie shrugged off the memories for a little bit.  He headed toward the administration office.

Jeremie dropped this luggage in the waiting room and asked the secretary, “Is Delmas in?”  The secretary, one Jeremie had not seen before, nodded curtly. Jeremie understood and entered the principal’s office. Mr. Delmas sat behind his desk sifting through a pile of papers. His hair had turned completely white, deep wrinkles and ridges crossed his face. Jeremie smiled at the old man.

“Getting a little older aren’t we,” Jeremie’s smile broadened as he continued, “or would you rather not talk about it?”

Delmas looked up, then leaned back in his chair. “I thing I’ll take a leaf out of Jim’s book. Welcome back Jeremie.” Delmas stood up and walked around his desk, smiling he placed his hand on Jeremie’s shoulder. Delmas handed Jeremie his room key, and a few other keys and papers. “Now run along to class.”

Jeremie chuckled, “I’ll do that, sir.” After depositing his luggage in his room Jeremie began walking through the campus. A few new buildings dotted the campus, and a new fountain stood in the courtyard, but for the most part it looked the same. After checking his watch at a quarter after one Jeremie decided to head for his class room.

Cadic’s science building had not changed in the least. The empty halls looked exactly as Jeremie had left them. Even the annoying drip was still there. Almost by instinct Jeremie turned the corners to Mrs. Hertz class. No, that wasn’t right, it wasn’t Mrs. Hertz class any more, she had retired last year. Jeremie wondered why she had resigned as he moved along the halls.

Jeremie now stood in the doorway to the room that he had spent uncountable hours in. Jeremie smiled remembering the way the Mr. Hertz greeted her students on the first day of each year. Jeremie walked into the room and sat down in the chair behind the table in the front of the classroom. The late August sun filtered into the empty room, Jeremie smiled remembering Odd, on a day like this he would have fallen sleep listening to Mrs. Hertz. Jeremie turned around to face the black board and closed his eyes. Jeremie’s mind sunk into nostalgia.

After a while his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a bell. The same bell form Jeremie’s far off memories. Keeping his eyes shut Jeremie listened to students file into the class room. Soon the scuffling of feet and the scraping of chairs died down to be replaced by the low murmuring of the students talking. Jeremie caught a few phrases from the conversations.  Most of what he caught was idle speculation about the teachers that the students had had that day so far, or one that they would have in the rest of that day.

After a bit Jeremie stood and faced the class. “Good afternoon class. I am Professor. Belpois.”

“I would like for you to know a little about me. So when I call your name you may ask me any question that comes to your mind.” Jeremie said looking down at the student roster, “Brenda Sallir”

A girl with amber brown hair that fell past her shoulders stood up, “how old are you, professor?”

Jeremie had anticipated this question. He knew that his hair had wide streaks of grey, the wrinkles on his face were deep, and he looked five times older than he really was.  And he knew the answer would surprise his students. “I am 28. I sat in those seats that you are sitting in only 12 and a half years ago.” Seeing the disbelieving looks in his students eyes he decided to back up his case. “There is a plaque with my name on it dated twelve and a half years ago. Randy Kalliar!”

A boy with dark skin and dread locks stood. A deep voice asked, “Did you ever do anything exiting here? Because truthfully you seem like the kind of guy that would sit in his room studying.”

Jeremie smiled at this. “Let’s see here; I skipped class, broke curfew, I smuggled a girl into the school, left campus, and almost blew up the school. Is that enough excitement for you Randy? Suesan Orir-“

Jeremie was interrupted by a tall girl. The black hair, and hard expression, reminded Jeremie of Yumi. “My name isn’t Suesan, its Chi. Its my parents fault that I have such a stupid name. Any way, are you married?”

Jeremie’s heart faltered. His smile faded, this was the only question that he had feared. Jeremie paused for a second, before answering or rather he avoided the question. “I am afraid that I will not answer that question. But I will say this search as you might all you will find on my past social life is cryptic and puzzling. My advise, stay away from it. Deven Bowmen!”

Jeremie continued down the roster. This process was repeated each of the three other classes that he would teach.  In his second class a very short student asked him if he liked cheese. Eren Pripe was his name his short blond hair grew unevenly and his closed were obviously too big for him, but some how they suited him. In his third class a boy named Nat Cirer asked no question at all. He sat there in a black shirt and jeans. His dark hair was held in a pony-tail.

But when Jeremie was sitting in his room with a cup of coffee something tugged at his mind. A girl in his last class of the day. She was small and frail, she sat alone in the bake of the class. Her name was Grace Sharron.

But what was it that bugged Jeremie? It wasn’t the way she acted or the way she spoke. Really the only thing unusual about her was her hair. Though Jeremie had trained him self not to judge people by their appearance there was a horrible felling in his mind. This was a feature that he had seen on only two other people in all of his life.

She had pink hair. Pink hair, only slightly darker then Aelita’s. She had asked a unremarkable question but in her quiet, soft voice it sounded new and strange. She had asked him his first name. Pushing darker thoughts out of his mind he got up. Jeremie washed his mug and placed it on the counter of one of the schools teacher dorms. Then he decided to take another walk around the campus.

Jeremie tossed and turned in the small bed. Voices of the past echoed through his dreams.

“I’m sorry she’s gone critical”

“What’s going on?!”

“Jer… e… mie…”

Jeremie’s eyes flew open. It had been a month since he had started teaching at the academy. Every night for the last week  dreams had haunted his sleep. Jeremie looked at the clock, 1:48. Guessing that sleep was once again out of his grasp he got up. Jeremie walked over to the computer that the school had provided and switched it on. With out realizing it he had started to scroll through the student data base.

After a while Jeremie found what he was looking for. Grace Sharron. Opening her file Jeremie found nothing, nothing of interest. Blood type, height, weight, medical records, nothing. Or at least nothing Jeremie was subconsciously looking for. Until Jeremie spotted pictures of her parents.  Her mother was nothing special, long brown hair, deep blue eye, a king expression. But her father, at first glance nothing seemed Odd, but Jeremie knew there was something there. He stared at the face of the man identified as Eric Sharron.

After a fifteen minutes Jeremie saw it, he was Aelita, at least a male image of her. The hair was a dark maroon, but the brilliant blue-green eyes, the soft expression, the kind smile. The features of Aelita were mirrored on this man face. But then reason snapped Jeremie back to reality, Aelita had no other family, and she most certainly did not change. But it was all there. Skeptical, but intrigued Jeremie began a new search to find Eric Sharron.

After about two hours Jeremie had found Eric’s birth certificate.  He was born in a military hospital in America. The name of the mother was omitted from the certificate, but a link to a picture was provided. When Jeremie accessed the link he found nothing but a brief message from the U.S. government about how this picture had been removed for national security. 

Now as if released from years of slumber Jeremie’s fingers began to move across the keyboard, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Jeremie’s heart beet faster and harder. This feeling was gloriously wonderful. Jeremie was no longer the teacher at Kadic, he was the greatest hacker that ever lived, his youth returned, years of hacking difficult systems, of thwarting XANA, it all returned. And this time he was going up ageist the holy grail of security systems, U.S. governments most precious secrets were in here. But Jeremie was determined to get through. Nothing would stop him. Nothing.

The clock flashed 7:18, but Jeremie was still typing franticly. Then a box appeared on the screen of he computer. In the box there was a picture of a person he had never meet, but knew almost everything about. He had spent almost 2 years searching for her. fourteen years ago he had gone on a frantic search for information about her. The caption read Jamie Sharron. But the picture was unmistakably the face of the wife of Franz Hopper, Aelita’s mother.

Three days later, Jeremie was stifling a yawn as he waited for his second class of the day. Her hair was looking grayer than ever. After he revelation he had not had much sleep. But the discover, nor the dreams were the thing that was keeping him from sleeping.

Delmas entered the science classroom. Unlike Jeremie he was as old as he looked, then someone entered after Dlemas. The man was dressed in a lab coat. An insignia was emblazoned on his coat. With out introduction he began to speak.

“Professor Belpois, I think we may have found something that might interest you, I mean we just found it and I did not know if anyone would find it interesting, then when I learned that you were in the area I remembered you paper, I find in kind of strange that a scientist of your caliber would be teaching at a school, I mean I would think that you would be in some lab working on new theses, but that not the point, anyway we were investigating an old building that was scheduled for demolition, you know for bombs, radiation, that kind of stuff, but anyway, we found something very interesting and you are the expert on it so I had to come to you”

The man spoke in a rushed, barley audible, voice. Jeremie held up his hand to have the man stop talking, at this the man fell silent. “I really hate to interrupt such a fascinating story, but please can you tell me what you want, in one sentence. So that I may understand what you are so eager to tell me.” Jeremie said, a faint smile crossing his face.

The man looked at Jeremie for a second then continued at a slower pace. “Professor, I am part of a inspection team. My job is to find any radiation in buildings scheduled to be demolished, and determine if there is any threat to the area because of it. During a resent inspection I found an odd radiation signature. The building was already collapsing and we could not figure out why. But after further investigation we found, something very odd.”

Jeremie once again stopped the man, “I sorry to interrupt you once again, but I have no idea how this concerns me.”

“We found Epsilon degradation in the atoms in the building. Many atoms were in the final stages. So because you are the discoverer of Epsilon radiation I though you might be able to help us figure out were the radiation came from.”  The man said slightly abashed.

Jeremie stood up and walked over to the window and looked out at the track. A picture of two bulldozers tearing it to shreds passed though his mind. But the image quickly faded.

“The building, more specifically the abandoned factory, in question is rumored to be the sight of a lab of a little known scientist, Waldo Shaffer. Dr. Shaffer was said to be conducting experiments on turning physical matter into data, and storing it in a digital container. A process he called virtualization. The method that he used is unknown, it is also unknown if he ever seceded. But if he was using Epsilon radiation there is a distinct possibility that he could have achieved his goal.

I don’t know if you have heard, but Epsilon radiation converts matter into pure, high- energy protons. This leaves an energy imprint that could be picked up an converted in to digital file.” Jeremie said. After a short pause to see in the man had anything to say, Jeremie continued.

“Now Dr. Shaffer also participated in a government program during the Cold War, so if the government learns of this they will probably try everything to get their hands on the lab. And I would loose the opportunity of a life time, so please not a word of this to any one.”

Jeremie turned from the window to stare at the inspector. Doing his best to impress on him the importance of the he said once again “Not a word”

The bell rang, signaling the start of class. Delmas lead the inspector out of the room. And all was normal for a while.  But that night as Jeremie sat sipping his coffee, he felt the call of the factory. The call of the supercomputer, of his past, and the possibility of the future of his friends lives. Jeremie finished his coffee, washed out his mug, and began the long walk to an old abandoned factory.

Jeremie stood in the remains of the factory. Some of the iron pillions had rusted and tumbled. The floor was littered with the debris from the collapse ceilings. And the freight elevator was at the bottom of its shaft, it too was probably a pile of rusted scrap metal. The cords that had held the elevator were hanging limply on the pulleys.

Jeremie began to pick his way through the rubble heading toward the second entrance to the computer lab. The other portions of the factory were already partly demolished. Like the main room the ceiling of the boiler room was mostly on the floor. Many of the pipes had burst and their remains were laying alongside the chunks of the ceiling. About an inch of water covered the floor.

But when Jeremie dropped through a hole in the floor, into the labyrinth of small cramped passages that ran under the factory, he found them completely intact. Jeremie crawled along the passages toward the lab.

Soon Jeremie can to a smooth metal ledge, the ledge jetted out into blackness. Jeremie knew this ledge it stood just below a network of wires and pipes above a computer. But all the light in the computer lab had been knocked out. Jeremie moved away from the ledge, there was nothing so suggest that the way down wasn’t corroded, rusted or even still there. Jeremie reached into his pocket and pulled out a high voltage flashlight, he hadn’t come entirely unprepared for this. Shining the small beam around Jeremie found that not much remained intact.

The walls were rusty, and much of the metal sidings had fallen off onto the floor. The floor was covered with water. As the beam crossed over the computer a small colony of mice scuttled off the chair. They hadn’t done mush damage to the chair, but Jeremie could see that they had eaten through many of the wires to the computer. Most of the keyboard lay on the soggy floor. Some of the computers smaller screens were barely hanging on to the main screen. The computer was obviously inoperable. But the floor was still usable, and the hatch to the canner room was closed, preventing the water and mice from getting to the scanners.

Jeremie climbed down from his perch above the room, even though his beam only barley lighted the room, he managed to get to the dome of the holo-sphere. Jeremie thought about the first time he entered into this room. He had been amazed to find such a place like this in the factory. But now that was replaced by the sadness that this place had ad afflicted on him.

Slowly, painfully Jeremie slipped back into the past, about 11 and half years in the past.

As Jeremie sat in the dark room mind began to slide back.  A tear rolled down his cheek fell into the water.  The drip struck a chord in his memory.  Mere hours before his world had begun to collapse he had heard a drip exactly like this.  With that he gave in to the nostalgia, entirely.

 Jeremie lay is his bed once again he was a child.  He had been there awake in a limbo between sleep and restlessness. Too tired to get up, to awake to sleep.  So he lay there awake listening to the drip from the bathroom.  Jeremie tried to count the number of seconds between each drip.  But each drip came at a different pace.  Attempting one last time to go to sleep he turned over and closes eyes.  And waited for sleep to wash over him. 

Jeremie opened his eyes, the darkened lab seemed darker .  My whole than before.  Jeremie wondered why of this scene was brought through the mists of time.  A mouse dashed through the beam of the flash light. Again Jeremie felt his mind pushing him back again.

 Miss Hertz was mono-logging again.  Under normal circumstances Jeremie would be listening intently or taking notes.  But as time Jeremie was more interested in winning the battle between him and his eyelids.  Last night had been another sleepless night just as they had all been that week.  This was the fourth time that the battle had taken place.  Now just as if to bother him more the buzz in the back of his head began to grow louder. “Jeremie” Miss Hertz shrill voice sounded, “would you please demonstrate the difference between hydrochloric and sulfuric acids?” Jeremie looks up and saw two pieces of wood and two beakers on the front table.  Jeremie stood up and walked toward the front table, as he walked to the buzz increase louder and louder.  Jeremie was amazed that no one else seemed hear it. Jeremie now stood behind the front table, looking at the class Jeremie’s sight began to slide in and out of focus.  He put his hand out for the first visa wood.  The buzz was now unbearable.  He picked up the peace of wood.  The world fell away. 

Once again Jeremie was sitting in the darkened the lab.  Jeremie stood up and walked over to the decrepit computer.  You reached out his hand and felt the broken screens, Jeremie caught himself on one of the sharp edges of the shattered screens.  In jerked his hand away.  After examining his hand with the light of the flashlight he found no blood in your own back to the holo-sphere, and looked down into the even darker depths of the scanner room below.  Jeremie struggled to a grasp another memory.  His mind slipped away once more.

“Jeremie” a voice called out. Jeremie was laying somewhere but it was all black. “Jeremie, can you hear me?” The voice was Odd’s.  Jeremie opened his eyes, it was in the school infirmary, Odd, Ulrich, Aelita, and somebody else were standing around his bad.  The other person stood in front of the window so he could not tell who it was. “You doing all right, Einstein?” it was Odd again, his voice was shaky but genuinely concerned.  Jeremie turned his head to look at the shadow, but no one was there.

Jeremie tossed aside a large chunk of the wall that had fallen off. The first rays of sun light were filtering through a gap in the pips that covered the ceiling. Now Jeremie saw that the damage was more extensive than he had first guessed.  Jeremie want to leave the grim picture that was slowly coming to light. He decided that he would look at the other rooms of the complex. When Jeremie finally opened the elevator door he was not greeted by the familiar freight elevator, but instead by the dark elevator shaft.

Jeremie moved over to the ladder wrung on the side of the shaft.  Jeremie was never too afraid of heights, but a 100 foot fall into the broken, rusted remains of a freight elevator did not make him feel exactly at home.  Jeremie decided to forgo the probably highly radioactive scanner room, so he climbed father down.  Once at the computer room it took Jeremie a second to remember the correct impute code. The computer room with o lighting was pitch black, Jeremie pulled out his flashlight again.

The room was mostly intact. A few of the ceiling tiles had fallen on the lead casing of the supercomputer. Jeremie pushed these off. He walked over to the power switch, Jeremie waited for a second; the switch did not pop out. Jeremie fumbled for a manual open. He finally found it on the far wall, a small button with a dot with in three circles and for lines. But when Jeremie pushed the button he heard a click from the door. Jeremie feeling some anticipation of the new set of adventures pulled the switch.

A whirring noise filled the room, lights flickered on. The whirring grew louder and slowly the cylindrical computer rose up. A flash of light and it stopped. The computer now void of its previous resident still seemed to be menacing.

Jeremie slumped against the wall and stared at the supercomputer, this thing had ruined his life, yet he was going to attempt to use it to give back the lives it had taken. It would give them back, even if it Jeremie the rest of eternity. 

The past was calling to Jeremie again. The day of his graduation was calling him.

 Ulrich was looking out at the crowd that covered the game field. He was probably looking for Yumi, Jeremie had told him that she was in the hospital but he never gave up hope for here. But now when Ulrich saw that she was not there his face sank. Jeremie was too tired to try to comfort Ulrich, it had been another sleepless night, another sleepless week. The sedatives that he had been scribed had not worked at all. Now once again he was locked in battle against his eyelids. The class was now lining up so they could file into the chairs that were on the field. The graduation when slowly. After his name was called, and Jeremie received his diploma, he felt a dull pain in the base of his skull. After Odd the pain had been joined by a buzzing. Jeremie soon began to fade in and out of reality. By some miracle he managed to hold on long enough to see Aelita Ulrich graduate. Soon after that the buzzing mercifully faded away. Jeremie was for the most part conscience.  Now it was time for the picture of the entire graduation class. So the class of 2009 lined up on the stage. Then it came; a scream came from behind Jeremie. Lying on the floor was Ulrich, his limbs were twitching uncontrollably. Then Aelita fell, Jeremie just managed to wrench his eyes away from her to see Odd. Odd looked at Jeremie alarmed, then a blank look slid over his face and he crumpled. The screams of the students were now barely audible over the buzz that had returned. Jeremie kneeled down; he tried his best to say conscience. Jeremie felt the stage fall away, but he was still awake. Jeremie was dimly aware of being rolled onto a stretcher. Lights were flashing, and the buzz. Oh the horrible buzz, almost all sounds and sights and smells every sense was dulled by the buzz.

Jeremie opened his eyes, he glanced around wonder what had woken him. Jeremie heard his watch. That was what had brought him back from that terrible day.

As Jeremie walked through the courtyard of the school thoughts whirled around his mind. Struggling to hold on to one image or understand another thought Jeremie did not hear the soft click of a door shutting behind him. His mind gave no recognition to the breath of the man behind him. But the soft cough brought Jeremie back to the present day.

“Jeremie, what are you doing out this late?” it was Delmas. Jeremie reached out for an excuse but none came, so he remained silent for a while until something came to mind.

“A walk always calms my nerves, Jeremie. But normally at this hour people are asleep.” Delmas had come up with the answer for Jeremie. Jeremie turned to face the old man. For a second neither of the two did anything. Then Jeremie blinked, in the shifting moonlight the principal of Cadic academy looked like the old haggard face of Franz Hopper. But just a quickly as it had come the illusion faded away.

“Jeremie, this walk of yours wouldn’t happen to take you by a sewer grate in the park, would it?” Delmas asked with the skeptical look that he had use on students that had insisted that they were innocent. But what Jeremie saw and heard made his heart drop. How much did Delmas know?

Delmas continued to stair at Jeremie. The silence was broken by an even more devastating statement, “Jeremie, how much do you know about my brother? How deeply has he affected you life?” The tone was like that of when Delmas had talked to students, when he was trying to get them to tell him about the actions of the other students, when he insisted that he was on their side.

“I know nothing about your family, much less about your brother.” Jeremie said as he turned away, but he was afraid of what Delmas meant.

“Jeremie I know that isn’t true. You showed a glimpse of how much you knew this morning. What if I were to tell another name for Waldo Schaeffer, or Franz Hopper? What if I were to tell you that his real name was Augusts Delmas? Now as for how I know of the passages through out the school, they were discover sometime after you left, students were using as an way to get off of school grounds. Now, Jeremie if you don’t mind I would like to know what happened to my older brother after he left. And I think I may learn a little bit about the incident with you and your friends 11 years ago.”

Delmas ushered Jeremie in to his office and turned on the lamp on his desk. Delmas sat down in his chair and rested is head on his folded hands. Jeremie wondered how he would explain this to Delmas. He knew that even now it was unsafe to reveal the truth behind Lyoko. If he was to ever help the people that had meant so much to him it must remain hidden. So Jeremie began with a story.

2:47 showed the clock after Jeremie had finished his story. Jeremie told Delmas that Franz Hopper had been killed by the AI that he had created. That Jeremie and his friends had been enlisted to help. Jeremie explained a fictional seine of when XANA had manifested it’s self through the scanners, and that Franz Hopper’s last wish was to pass through the scanners after his death.

After Jeremie had finished Delmas had one question for Jeremie, “Jeremie why is it they you friends now lay in a hospital in a coma, looking like they are a thousand years old, and you got off with looking like you’re 70.

At that moment a vision of five teenagers laying in hospital beds, looking as if they were hundreds of years old, flashed inside Jeremie’s head.

For a second Jeremie faltered, but quickly regained his composure, “My friends were closer to the scanner when it exploded after XANA came out.”

 With that Jeremie stood of and walked to the door, as Jeremie put his hand on the door Delmas looked up at him and asked, “My I assume that you are going to go back to my brother’s lab to find a way to help your friends?”

Jeremie looked at him for a second then opened the door, “you can assume that”

And he left.

With a quick beep the silicon crystal lit up. Jeremie sighed; the super computer had suffered extensive damage in the time since he had left. Most of the circuits had collapsed and the rest hardware was extremely corroded. Even at its peak the supercomputer barley compared to a pocket calculator now.

Jeremie had taken up the job of upgrading and restoring the computer. Circuits were no longer made of gold or silicon, but rather were now nano-bot channels incased in silicon crystals. The old computer looked archaic next to the pile of brand new computer parts that Jeremie was trying to integrate in to, and replace with, the old computer.

Jeremie walked over to the lexscreen  that was monitoring the computers systems,

after a second a new line of text appeared on the growing lit. Jeremie sighed again and placed the thin pad back on the ground. The lexscreen was, aside from the right side, a rectangle with a fabric of nano-fibers stretched across the frame.  The right side looked almost like the cell phones that he had used as a child. The nano-fibers served as the touch sensitive surface and the actual screen.

            Jeremie walked over to a podium next to a large white circular pad. Jeremie tapped the center of the Lexscreen that acted as the control panel for the pad. After a second a blue glow rose from the pad. The light grew larger and brighter, then it flickered out. Now on the top of the white surface sat another pile of parts for the computer. Jeremie’s mind reminded him where the parts were coming from.

           The parts were coming from an underground where house in the northern part Scotland. The company that had made these top secret parts was a multinational cooperation hat supplied parts for the governments of different nations. And  this cooperation had employed Jeremie for five years. But now here he was stealing from VXC.

           But Jeremie pushed aside his conscience and began working again. Outside the late Sunday sun set. Hours passed, the clock on the portable Lexscreen showed 1:42 am. Jeremie looked into the 3 foot deep impression in the floor, the grey had been replaced by soft blue glowing crystals. Now only a 9 foot spire remained. The object was about 2 foot around, gold lines formed patters on the surface. Jeremie jumped down and walk the narrow walk way. Jeremie examined the object, there were two depressions over which were small bands of mettle. He saw that the band could be rotated.

           Jeremie turned the bands and heard a click, now he could feel the weight of the spire pulling his hands toward the ground. Jeremie tried to balance the spire but was unsuccessful. Jeremie lay the object on its side, being careful not to brake the fragile circuits. Then using the bands as handles Jeremie lifted the spire.  Carefully balancing Jeremie made his way to the edge of the impression.  With great effort Jeremie managed to get the object over the wall. Jeremie scrambled up out of the computer pit. Crystals, nano-bot channels silver hexagonal panels, a few nano-fiber optical wires, the pit looked like a futuristic city.

           A blip form the beaming pad consol brought Jeremie back to reality. The blip had alerted Jeremie that it was 5 minutes till two. Jeremie strode over to the podium and taped the lexscreen. The panel displayed figures, the time , and button to activate different programs.  Jeremie taped one of the virtual buttons and bad began tapping the new figures that had appeared.

           At 1:58 a globe appeared, a flashing blue hexagon rested over a point in Antarctica. At 1:59 the hexagon flashed yellow. The clock changed to two o’clock, a box came up saying “net work open”, and Jeremie’s fingers began tapping the virtual keyboard at the bottom of the screen.  At the top the globe was replaced by the blue print of a warehouse. With Jeremie still feverously taping, the image changed again.  It was like a bird fly through the wireframe maze of the warehouse.

          2:02 the display stopped inside a room. Inside the room hanging in mid air was a wireframe cylinder. Jeremie accessed the energy field projectors. Jeremie in his concentration failed to notice the irony in the naming of these devices. 2:04. Jeremie worked with the projectors. His goal was to turn the energy field that these emitted into a temporary teleported field. Two boxes came up, “action executed” and “net work closing in 45 seconds”

         38 seconds. Jeremie taped the display, a third box appeared “commence beam”

            35 seconds. Jeremie activated the beam

            33 seconds. The blew glow rose out of the pad

            25 seconds. The light now reached 3 feet in height

            15 seconds. The glow was 6 feet high.

10 seconds. The intensity of the light began to grow. 

5 seconds. The edges of the glow became more defined.

4,3,2, The light from the beaming pad disappeared, in its stead sat a light blue, five and one half foot cylinder. It was sleek, thin, and very new. A spider web of etchings covered the surface. Small silver letters identified this as RR4.

Jeremie looked at the RR4 marveling at the ease at which he had obtained it. “VXC always was too confident in their immunity. Probably the best part of that system was the closed networks. But they had to go and ruin it with the merge.”

Walking over to one corner of the room he picked up the last of the computer parts that he had taken from the first warehouse. It was a large ring of gold and crystal. Even without power it seemed to glow. The center of the ring was just large enough to fit the item that lay on the beam pad. Jeremie took the ring and jumped back into the computer pit, he carefully placed it over were the taller black spire had been held to the ground.

Jeremie retrieved the RR4 from the pad and easily lifted it over the center of the ring. Slowly, carefully, he slid the blue cylinder through the ring until he met the ground. A soft click and the little amount of weight of the RR4 was lifted. After a second the white etchings began to pulse with energy. The glow spread through the pit, all around Jeremie the pieces of a new super computer shown white.

The light faded, like the coals of a fire the soft blue glow that the crystals emitted remained. Jeremie looked at his creation with pride. The fifth greatest super computer in all of human history lay around him. Jeremie leaped out of the pit and walked over to the beaming pad and stepped onto it. The beaming pads available to the public were to unstable to transport humans but VXC had made this one along with the three others that were in the factory. Jeremie had gotten these just like every other VXC retiree as a parting gift.

Jeremie taped a blue circle on the Lexscreen panel and the room faded into blue. The blue was shortly replaced by another darker room. Jeremie could barely make out the continents of the room. The broken screens and key board were gone as were the mess of weirs that connected this room to the rooms below.  Instead over there the holo-dome had been 5 full-sized bioscreens now stood. The screens formed a semicircle in front of a slightly inclined chair.

Jeremie smiled at how far technology had come in his life. The LCD and plasma screens of his youth seemed ancient and crud compared to these marvels. Inside the thin layer of glass lived millions of radiation sensitive bacteria. The amount of radiation pumped through the nanites that lined the back of the screen told the bacteria in the area what color and how bright to glow. This allowed for the fastest, clearest, and most realistic picture ever. Not that Jeremie would be watching football. But even these paled in comparison to the rectangular black box that rested of a frame work of sensitized spider webs. Unless seen from the right angle the box appeared to float in midair.

But it was the box that out did every technological feat, aside from RR4, for hundreds of miles. When turned off the box seemed to contain just super fine black sand. But what it was, was an uncountable number of nano-bots. These nano-bots held a neuron framework, when the nano-bots worked together they could tell you what the time was, the temperature, the thoughts of 50 people around you, the price of stocks, the reason why the governor of Brazil would not be meeting  you for your four o’ clock appointment, and why you should never have expected him to, in about three seconds, and they would spend the first two and half seconds figuring out how to tell you all this information in only a two foot by one foot area.

Jeremie though back to when he had acquired this devise. He received it on his last night a VXC, it was only a couple months ago but already it felt like a lifetime.

"Jeremie was hunched over a lexscreen poring over the last of the data from his experiments. A soft tap came from the door. Jeremie looked over his shoulder at a young man. In reality he was about five years older than Jeremie, he look a couple decades younger. The man’s name was John Haren, he was one of the few friends he had managed to make in his 5 years at VXC.“Heard your leaving.” John sighed as he leaned against the door frame. John took everything like it was life at collage.“Not much of a choice” Jeremie said maybe a little bit more resentfully than he should have.
           

“Look, Jeremie, no one could have predicted or prevented what happened. It was a freak accident, a blown circuit. Quit beating yourself up about it.“John, I saw him, but I didn’t just have to see him die. I could have handled that. But no I saw him tortured to human limit and then beyond. Compared to that, death was merciful, painless. He had to endure eons of the worst kind of torture. I saw his face as oblivion engulfed him. And his last words they didn’t condemn me, like they should have. No, he apologized, his dying words were say that he was sorry for not being good enough. He wasn’t thinking of death, he was thinking that he had let me down, but it was the other way around! I should have been apologizing, but it was him! That is the worst thing about it.”

 By now Jeremie was crying, tears making rivers in the same places as they had all week. Jeremie hadn’t cried this much when his friends were suffering, why now. Why for someone he hardly even knew. He had been as much responsible for the lives of his friends, but then his tears had never flown this freely. Perhaps it was because he was responsible for this man that had died. Maybe it was because he was revisiting the memory of his friends. Or could it have been that this man was really dead, not ageing uncontrollably at a hospital, but dead and his family would never know how or why he had died.

John looked at Jeremie with a mixture of pity and sorrow. John had always know that the hard working and brilliant man that now sat at a desk with tears falling freely had gone through more than he let on. More than most humans. But this was finally confirmed by what he heard next.“And my friends could have had the same thing happen to them, and it would have been my fault. But I kept pushing them never realizing that this could happen to them.” Jeremie murmured finally finding what disturbed him most about this ordeal.

"Jeremie the circuit was previously damaged .It was no one’s fault. Rihab knew that there would be a chance of death but he did it anyway.” John said, this was followed by silence. Then John spoke again, “Jeremie I know you and I know you aren’t going to stop here, so I have a few things for you. John reached into the sack that hung at his side. Jeremie stared at his co-worker, he had pulled out a small rectangular black box. Jeremie did not know what it was but it obviously held significance.

“Jeremie this is the final product of a project started 5 years ago. It was my first assignment. It only took one year to design but four years for it to be completed. There are only three of these in existence until the next three come out in 4 years. This should be enough power for you to finish any project you take on. In a secure portion of the memory banks I have put a copy of the complete VXC data base. It will merge once you turn it one so that you can keep up with us.” John held out the box. Jeremie, stunned, slowly reached out and held the box. John dropped his hands and Jeremie felt how light the box was. John walked to the door, he looked back over his shoulder.

“Good luck Jeremie” And with the handsome brown haired man walked out of the room. 

Jeremie flicked back to reality. Jeremie put his hand on John’s gift. Feeling a new since of anticipation Jeremie slid the switch for the first time.

The bio screens flickered on. Jeremie looked at the rainbow of colors eminated from the small black box. The soft sand hardened into a smooth sheet, small pinpricks of light from below the surface made it looked like the clearest night sky he had ever seen.

Jeremie eased himself into the chair and glanced around at the large screens. A box flashed up on the far left screen, one of the motion sensitive cameras had picked up something. Jeremie was a small figure bent double running. He could see that the figure’s jacket was far too big for it. The student was followed by a much larger hulking person.

Jeremie guessed that the smaller figure was Erin Pripe, the other one was a complete mystery, but it was quite obvious that he wasn’t playing games with Erin at 2:30 in the morning. A second camera picked up the motion as the two figures made their way into the main room. Jeremie could see that Erin would pass directly over the beaming pad. On a whim Jeremie set the pad to teleport Erin when he stepped on it. As the large person gained on Erin, Jeremie got the feeling that if Erin was caught that things would get ugly.

Jeremie watched as Erin’s foot hit the center of the pad. The pad began to glow, tendrils of energy moved up Erin’s leg. Erin stood frozen with fear on the pad. The larger figure had also stopped. Erin by now as entirely engulfed in energy. Then much to the astonishment of Erin’s pursuer, disappeared. Jeremie smiled, imagining the look on this Neanderthal. A flash of light and Erin reappeared behind him.

Jeremie taped the smooth suffice of the nanoboard. Jeremie glanced over the logs of the transport and saved Erin’s data. After a bit Jeremie turned to face Erin. “A little late to be running around, I would think. It is about two thirty, and I do believe that tomorrow is Monday. I am glad though that you have history first thing, you won’t be sleeping through my class.

Erin blinked at Jeremie. Jeremie sighed, stood up, then sat back down. “What happened back there?”

Erin looked at his shoes. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that that was nothing. If I did not sweep you away you most likely would not be taking that test in my class tomorrow.”

“I was walking around the campus, about midnight I heard someone screaming. Behind the shed I saw Chi Oriran on the ground, you’ve got to help her!” Erin blurted out. The look on Erin’s face had changed from fear, to embarrassment, to utter distress. Jeremie sensed the urgency here.

“Then we will.” Jeremie strode over to the pad, pulled Erin back onto it, taped the Lexscreen and together they beamed out of the dark room.

As they quickly walked across the bridge Jeremie stooped down and removed the sewer grate. “Erin, we’re taking a short cut” Erin rushed back to the grate and climbed down it followed by Jeremie. The two rushed along the sewers, out of the corner of his eye Jeremie caught a glimpse of a group of students. He motioned for Erin to slow down. Together they edged their way back to where the other students were standing.

“What, don’t you talk?” A snide voice came from around the corner. A slow, deep voice came in reply, “Were is Erin Pripe?”

“Oh, so the giant likes the migit? Well guess what, he disappeared! Vanished in to thin air!” The shadows on the wall showed one shadow grabbing another one by the collar and slamming him against the wall, the second shadows feet were dangling about two feet above the ground. The deep voice with anger emanating from every word said, “Where is he, if you did anything to hurt him, I’ll return the favor a thousand times over. Now where is he?”

Jeremie turned to Erin, “Erin you see if Chi is alright, I’ll see you in a bit.” With that Jeremie slid around the corner. In the corridor stood Randy Kalliar, the two other boys were unknown to Jeremie. Randy looked over at Jeremie but returned is gaze to the boy. Jeremie walked over to Randy and place a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry Randy, Erin’s fine. And in a few seconds it will be as if none of this ever happened.”

Jeremie taped a small sky blue button on his collar. Blue rings shot up from the ground around Jeremie, at the same time blue rings were surrounding the factory. Then from Jeremie’s point of view the universe caught on brilliant white fire. The fire grew larger and engulfed everything. After a few minutes in the blinding light the white faded leaving in its place the factory with a still complete computer. Jeremie left the building to a brilliant Saturday afternoon.

Jeremie looked at the screen displaying the new program. The mass of code was the basis for a new AI, programming everything by himself would take years, and time was something Jeremie did not think he had. With a few taps on the nano-board he input the designs of the old scanner and the datalizers that he had worked on at VXC. Jeremie gave the final command to the AI, through trial and error find a design for the scanner that would expose the subject to minimal epsilon radiation. 

Immediately five simulations started, each one testing different parameters for the original scanner. All failed after about thirty seconds, there was not enough power to get them any were. Jeremie sighed, this would take a long time and he had somewhere he needed to be in a little while, so he left the computer to do its work.

Today Jeremie was scheduled to meet a student’s parents; he hadn’t paid too much attention to the notice so he really did not know who it was. Thankfully the sewers that lead to the factory were no longer in use, most buildings were going to the resource neutral method, recycling water with single toilet filters, eco-coolers, electronic paper. All of it was so different then when he had lived here for those years. Now the sewers were slowly being converted into underground walkways, this was one of those but it was fairly unused, but well tended all the same. Jeremie walked out of the public entrance this time, the old tunnel in the park was cramped and rusted, so this was a not only nice but less conspicuous.

Jeremie arrived in his room and checked the time of the meeting, 2:15. He was about 4 hours early but as he glanced over at the stack of electronic paper pads he knew he would be busy for that time. Jeremie was particularly forgetful, or lazy, he had just been spending so much time at the computer that he had neglected the piles of work that he was suppose to grade. So of the work was done neatly and correctly, others had put no effort in at all, some of the papers reminded him of Odd.  About halfway through the time Jeremie ran across the pad that belonged to Erin Pripe, the paper was technically all correct but the child had put the answers if such a round-a-bout fashion, or only answered the question if you read it differently than intended.

Jeremie smiled, the kid was quirky alright. But Jeremie was a teacher and he did have a job, but still the kid did put some effort into it. Jeremie marked the B grade box, attached a short message and sent it on. At that moment a soft knock came from the door way, Jeremie looked up and saw a young man with dark red hair standing in the door.

“Oh, come in, come in.” Jeremie gestured, the man grabbed to chairs from the rows of tables. He placed one in front of the desk and flipped the other one around and sat in it backwards. Halfway through the show a lady came in, long brown hair and a kind face. She sat down in the chair that her husband had pulled up for her.

“A pleasure to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Sharron,” Jeremie smiled. Mr. Sharron returned the favor, it was a warm comforting smile. The Mrs., however was a little reluctant to smile, but did evenutaly.

“Nice to meet you too Professor, our daughter has mentioned you several times in her postcards home. Seems you’re her favorite teacher.” The man spoke English, the accent would have placed him around Colorado. Sensing that it would be easier for all parties involved Jeremie began to speak in English as well.

“Well, I had no idea. She’s very quiet in class so I had no reason to believe that she enjoyed it.”

“Well she loves chemistry and physics, I understand you are teaching both.” This time it was Mrs. Sharron that spoke, she also spoke English but with a more English tone.

“Yes, the school has asked me to teach both, it does get a bit hectic. But it is enjoyable.”

The pleasantries were soon over and Jeremie got the idea. Grace was board, very board. The assignments were fun, but did not challenge her. While they talked Jeremie got an idea; if Grace was a relative of Aelita she would share much of the same DNA. Studying her might lead to a way to get a cure for Aelita and the others. Going out on a limb Jeremie suggested something.

“I have an off sight lab, if she would like to work with me there I would gladly have her help.”

“Hmmm, that could work.” Mr. Sharron said thoughtfully.

“Hold on, no offence Professor, but I don’t want my child going anywhere alone.” Mrs. Sharron interjected. Jeremie thought quickly, and came up with something (he was a geniuses you know).

“What if I opened it up as a club, have a couple other kids come in? I could select a few that were high in the class markings, and some in the lower and they could all help each other.” This choice might not be ideal, but I need to do something, and besides they all could help me, thought Jeremie.

Mrs. Sharron nodded, a few more pleasantries were had, and they left.

The next day Jeremie handed out a quiz. He couldn’t help smile at the expressions of the kids. Most sat there with their mouths open after reading the questions. Grace and another kid, Grant Onyx, just looked at the quiz and began to draw the answers. Randy Kralliar and Erin Pripe were the opposite ends of the spectrum. Randy turned the paper over and went to sleep. Erin ripped up the fist sheet he was handed, and when Jeremie handed him another he began to bang his head against the table repeatedly.

So the day after the quiz when Jeremie announced that four students would be drafted for an extra class held in the evening all four were agape.  The students were Erin Pripe, Randy Kralliar, Grace Sharron, and Grant Onyx.

Jeremie sat pushing his dinner around, in the time that he had left the school’s cafeteria had done what Jeremie had considered impossible, surgically remove every gram of flavor from the food. Jeremie looked through the one way window into the students side of the trailer. After a second Jeremie’s eyes found the members of his newest experiment; Erin was entertaining another group of people, he was always entertaining someone, but the people changed every week, Randy was on the other side of room with one or two other friends, all three of them were giving death glares to a gang of people across the room, two of which looked familiar. Grant was alone, slowly chewing his meal as he read the book in his left hand, and Grace too was by herself, headphones covered her ears as ignored the near plastic food in front of her.

How much these for appeared to be like the cohorts of his youth, how easy it would be to stereo type them as his friends. But as Jeremie well knew, these kids were not those people, the character quirks were so different, none seemed to have Odd’s iron stomach (thank god), Grace’s kind face was held in a sour grimace, each person seemed to be night and day to the other. Were Odd and Ulrich held some similarities Erin and Randy, or Grant for that matter, were so far apart it was hard to tell if they were even from the same planet.

Jeremie sighed and pushed himself up out of the hard chair and walked over to the window were the used dishes were place, and he sat down his plat. One of the few cafeteria’s perks for teachers were glass plates instead of biocarbenated plastic trays. Jeremie walked toward the entrance to the underground walkways. One week before the experiment would begin.

In a flash of blue Jeremie appeared in the dark computer room. The screens visible showed that the new scanner had been perfected and any risk factor was deemed negligible. Sitting down in the inclined chair Jeremie had the strangest feeling of being watched.

“Welcome back Jeremie,” a cool, metallic came from the speakers, a short pause then it continued, “Primary Objective completed, device that uses minimal amounts of Epsilon radiation to turn mater into energy and convert to digital storage facility for extended time. Completion time 10:57:54.”

Jeremie blinked, this was odd, the task had been given to the AI he had made, but speak had not been implemented into the program. But this train of thought was interrupted by the voice again, “Secondary Objective, impute by program AANB7-059I, ongoing.”

Jeremie had no idea what that program did. Jeremie taped the Nano-board, a box showing the summery of program AANB7-050I appeared. Apparently it was the base program for a scrapped VXC project to build a human interface. A second latter Jeremie was poring over the logs of the human interface project. The size of the project was staggering, voice command, mind reading, holographic terminals, and Jane. Jane was the code name for program AANB7-059I. The program seemed to have worked to perfection, a benevolent, self aware, ethical AI. Looking closer Jeremie found something a little bit more disturbing though, AANB-045C was an early version of Jane, nearly identical, except Zeus had a loop hole. The AI had found a way to override the ethical limitations placed upon him, make his own ethics, write his own rules, change his very perception of good and evil. In essence they had created a second XANA. Zeus was hard to shut down, he was only stopped by the next working personality to come along, Jane. After Jane had locked both Zeus and its self in a secure hard drive the drive was destroyed and a copy of Jane’s program was added to the VXC memory.

“Command; add program AANB7-59I to base code of AI 1. Integrate completely, have all decisions routed through said program.” Jeremie smiled, while voice command was a dry and embarrassing way to get things done, for projects like this I would be best not to program everything.

The voice played over the speakers again, “Name selection presses initialized.” Jeremie wondered whose idea it was to put a name selection program in. “Mind Scan initialized” He blinked, how did the AI get a hold of the nano-boards Mind Scan already? “Name chosen. Activating voice selections.” Jeremie thought well I sure hope it doesn’t chose some Cow boy accent.

A voice of a young girl came over the speakers, it wasn’t the voice of a child, but not quite that of a woman either, and it didn’t sound like that of a teen ager either. But the voice sounded pleasant, like some sweet memory that he had forgotten, like a person he had never met but seemed to know instinctively. “Hi! I'm Kari. Good to meet you!”

What do you have mayhem?

He’s gathering forces, four children?

Why would he need children?

One of them is her?

Her?  Why?

Are not for certain but, resemblance is obvious

Mayhym, find out what he’s learned.  How much does he know?

That’s not going to be easy, he’s taken up paranoia as a hobby.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he had security cameras covering his room.

You have clearance to do…  Anything necessary.

Yes sir!

“Jeremie, wake up. Hey wake up, Jeremie.” Jeremie groaned As he lifted his head. Slowly he blinked out the sleep from his eyes. Jeremie looked around the room, looking for the voice. “Hey Jeremie. It’s good to see you awake. Did you know you Talk in your sleep? You say funny things,” giggled.  Jeremie finally remembered what the voice was.

“Kari next time can you let me sleep?” Jeremie groggily replied. He could almost guess what was coming next. “And please don’t tell me what time it is.”

“Okay”

                “Hey, Kari, what time is it?” Jeremie asked the AI.  In the back of his mind Jeremie wondered if Kari would become like XANA. 

                “It’s 8:45, and it’s Monday.”

                “Bye Kari, ready for visitors tonight?”

“Bye, Jeremie! Have Fun!” Jeremie walked over to the beaming pad, in a flash all that was left in the room was a computer.  Wallowing in thought he walked back to the school.  The rest of the day when long normally, then the evening came.  Jeremie sat in his classroom, waiting for the students. 

                The first to arrive was Grace, she walked in, looked around, and seeing that nobody was there took her seat in the back of the room.  She waited for 5 minutes and then put on her headphones and out the rest of the world.  About 7 minutes after that Grant entered the room.  He was wearing his normal black shirt, and a pair of faded jeans.  He looked at Jeremie, glanced at Grace, and scowled.  Grant had his usual demeanor, was one of the reasons he was nicknamed the Crusher.  That and the fact that he seemed to be able to do everything on the first try, after which he would shame his opponents by telling them exactly what they did wrong.  Another 3 minutes and a shriek erupted from the hallway.

                “No! Don’t make me go in there. Those people hate me! No! No! No, no, no, no, no!” The screams of protest slowly grew louder until Randy walked through the door, dragging Erin. After a few last attempts at the door Erin called down and was released. A second after the dark hand let go of his shirt Erin made a mad dash for the door. Only to have the ground jerked out from underneath him, like a dog on a chain Randy’s hand held him inches from the door. Erin, obliviously now just making a show of it, was continuing to scrape at the ground.

                Jeremie got up and closed the door, after which Erin stopped the charade.  Jeremie looked at the four students, all who now were focusing on Jeremie. Randy and Erin were more attentive to him than the other two, who appeared board.

                “If you are wondering what you can possibly learn from even more time with me now is the time to ask.” Jeremie knew this was exactly what the in the seats were thinking. After a second of silence Jeremie turned his gaze down at the other two. “And if you are wondering how you can possible learn anything from more time with me, ask now.”

                “Ya, I have a question, do we all have to wear pink?” Erin asked, shoving a thumb in Grace’s general direction.

                “Oh, god, if I see you wearing pink, you shrimp, you will find yourself in the infirmary so fast you will think you were born there.” Grace snapped at the small boy. Erin fell to the floor like a bomb had gone off.

                “I thought you liked pink!”

                “Heck no, I hate pink. But do you realize who few things go with pink hair. Nothing, basically nothing but pink.” Grant turned a pulled a book out of his bag and began reading, obviously uninterested in the ongoing conversation.

                “Then dye you hair, and don’t kill me!” Squeaked Erin sill huddling on the ground.

                “I’m allergic to hair dye, and I wouldn’t kill you,” Grace’s voice suddenly became very sweet, “I would just severely maim you.”

                “Professor, she’s going to hurt me!” Jeremie looked down at the quivering boy. Jeremie reached down and pulled the mass of Jell-o from the ground.

                “Look Erin no one is going to hurt anyone. Calm down.” Jeremie turn so that he could gaze at every one. “You have been selected for off-sight study, for tonight I think it would be best if you chose the subject of study.”

                Randy slapped a hand over Erin’s poised mouth. Grace spoke first “Hydrochloric acid?” Grant continued to read his book, but did give a visible shake of his head.

“Professor, I have wondered what causes explosions?” Randy asked, this momentary lapse of concentration allowed Erin to tear the hand from his mouth, “BOOM” Erin was promptly returned to his silent state by a death glare from Grace. If death glares could really kill Grace would have been the most effective weapon of mass destruction in the world.

“Explosions it is,” Jeremie opened the door and began walking out of the building. The journey to the factory was quiet, which was unusual when Erin was around. The ladder to the factory proved a bit of a stretch for the children’s imaginations, but this was nothing compared to when Jeremie had Erin stand on the beaming pad.

“This may tingle a bit Erin, but you should be fine.” The look of astonishment on the children’s faces was priceless. A smile crossed Jeremie’s face as he asked “Who’s next?”

After finally getting everyone down into the computer lab, Jeremie entered. It was time to begin.

Dr. Racorson walked down the sterile halls of his work. While for some life at a hospital could exiting, his job could only be described as dull. Day in and day out all he did was monitor several very special patients. Low maintenance people, several people were paying a nice bit of change to have them in “the cups”. These devices were only used for long term patients; they monitored life signs, brain activity, took care of things that could not be avoided, controlled the IV, and kept them in a clean and stable environment.

In the endless hours that filled his day he had taken up puzzles. Su-do-ku, cross-words, anything to pass the time. The sanitation chamber opened, the doctor stepped inside and prepared for the blast of chemicals. The chamber kept any germs from getting in, or out. The human immune system was having trouble keeping up with the steadily increasing amount of SFB’s. The fist SFB, or Super Fatal Bactria had killed millions. In the years since treatments for it had been synthesized, but soon new ones evolved. Thankfully all of the SFB’s had an Achilles Heel, cancerous tissue. All of them lived and multiplied with a host cell, but the rapid division of cancer cells exceeded the Bactria.

But containment precautions had been implemented everywhere. Despite appearances, earth was in no utopian era. Finally stepping out of the other side of the chamber Racorson sighed. The doctor walked down the hall of the lobby side of the hospital, here things were less sterile, more real. Stopping in front of a metallic device built in to the wall he fumbled for his identification card. He slid it through a slot in the machine. Whirs and hisses came from the silver box. A few seconds later a slender thermos dropped in to the slot at the bottom.

Coffee was one of the few caffeinated drinks to survive the energy craze; most previously caffeinated soft drinks now had less harmful sweeteners and energy supplements. The doctor took a sip of the hot liquid and sat down in one the empty seats in the lobby of the hospital. The clanking and rustling of the hospital soon fell in to a rhythm.

Dr. Rocorson looked around, no one was around. Rocorson shook his head, couches don’t talk, he reminded himself. Deciding he was just tired he downed the rest of the coffee and placed the thermos back the machine. As he walked back toward the sanitation chamber he pulled out a small Lexscreen. No change, blood pressure, brain activity, temperature, all the same as when he left. A glance at a new box showed breathing to be somewhat erratic, but well within normality.

Far away from the quiet hospital in France, on the crime covered streets of a former suburb of New York a man looked over his domain. Escariot was lord of this town, not a soul was ignorant of his presence.  Escariot was snapped out of his stupor by the sound of metal falling. Turning on his heal he pulled out a jet black blade. The dagger was made from Night Shade, the darkest substance on the planet.  A blind slash at the night met with resistance. A second dagger was now pressed against his neck. With a sneer Escariot looked into the black mask of his assassin. With a flick of his wrist a bolt of electricity leapt from his glove.  But the streak of lightning failed to affect the assassin.

With inhuman speed the assassin flipped the crime lord on to the ground. The metallic voice of his opponent hissed in Escariot’s ear, “How dare you use my tool against me.”  The Escariot’s eyes grew wide. “Mayhem?”

“Yes, It’s time for you to repay your debt.”

The puzzle book lay on the floor, foot prints covering its cover. Life for Dr. Rocorson had changed dramatically in less than a week. His charges had come alive almost literally overnight. Not alive in the sense of walking around, but in comparison to the last twelve years of their lives they were running marathons. The four patients who had unnaturally aged several decades in a few hours, and until this week had laid in the deepest of coma’s were talking. The effort that they were expending was enormous. That combined with the resurfacing of the unknown radiation had the lives of themselves in mortal peril.

Right on cue the exact same phrase was repeated by the four, “Fire of Mind give us a call, give us an’ answer or nothing at all”

Rocorson’s head jerked up, had he really heard that. He checked over the vocal logs and the four had not said anyting. So he waited. The weak voices of the patients called out their call, “Fire of Mind, give us a call, give us an’ answer or nothing at all”

  “leave all” 

  The response was so quiet that Rocorson could barely hear it, but it’s origens were even more mysterious. The response seemed to come from everywhere. No matter how many times he tried he could no figure out the source.  Giving up after several hours, the doctor fell back into his chair. Soon he was lulled to sleep by the mysterious call and response.

“Fire of Mind, give us a call, give us an’ answer or nothing at all”

“leave all”

Twelve shadowy figures sat around a long table in a dimly lit room. The silence was periodically broken by the sound of glass on wood as a cup was set down on the table. Finally a thirteenth person entered the room, his cloak rippling as he walk he walked fluidly over to the empty chair.

“So kind of you to come, General,” The voice issued from one of the faceless bodies. “Especially when a problem of such magnitude presents its self,”

The General met this with silence. When it was obvious they he would say nothing the lights dimmed even further. A hologram of a building appeared in the center of the table, this picture was accompanied by a voice metallic. “Storage facility Abidon, located in Antarctica. Most notable items in storage: Project Rewind, Epsilon Core, Project Chaos, And Amigon control panel.” The Hologram faded and the lights returned to their former level.

“RR4 is gone. No living thing has gotten within 500 meters of the place in almost a year. How General did this happen?” A voiced hissed, all darkened heads turned to the general. An uncomfortable silence followed this. “I see, your lake of diligence is disturbing, general. How could someone break into the highest securely vault in the world and leave not even a subatomic trace of his existence. Lucky for you similar events have accrued all over the globe.”

A new voice continued the train of thought; this voice was that of a younger female, “Computer components, beaming pads, Lexscreens, and other miscellaneous things have vanished. As you know all Warehouses use different storage methods. There are no leads to the identity of the thief. But they do correlate to the emergence of a new supercomputer. A side from the disappearances of the components, the only indication of its existence if on a minor foot note in the database.”

The general swiveled to face the figure on his left, “And how, Markus, did a non-VXC computer appear in our data base. Unless of course the maker got a hold of a merge capable device and if he did he would have complete access to our database. There are things in there than even none of us know about.”

Markus turned to the General, the dim lights reflected of his eyes, making it just imaginable that there was a face on the head, “If the thief got RR4, he would be picked up in the merge, or if he had acquired the unaccounted Nano-board he would also have access to the database. However it is more possible that the maker of the computer was already aware of much of the database, even more likely it was a former employee of VXC. This is one of the problems with hiring the greatest minds of the world, they are so brilliant.”

The female voice broke in, “I believe that is covered, all former VXC members are watched. If I may, my portion of VXC would like to put up some names for scrutiny. Henry Macontosh, Marvin Micar, Graven Haggard, Jeremie Belphios, and Roth Lee. “

The General glanced toward the end of the table, “I know most of those, left because they fell behind. But who is Jeremie.” A figure press a hand to the table and the lights dimmed again, this time the hologram showed the face of Jeremie. The metallic voice sounded again, “Jeremie Belphios: headed the Epsilon Project, provided assistance in the Project Rewind, submitted resignation after a fatal accident with a prototype Datalizer, suffered from depression,  sleep deprivation, and Epsilon radiation effects at a young age.”

The general nodded. A voice from the right side of the table said, “I move that we send a virtual miner to the computer and recess until we get more information on this.” The rest of the figures nodded their heads in agreement, and with that the meeting ended.

One of the people made his way to a secluded terminal in a conjoining room. After a second a face appeared on the screen.  “Mayhem, make you move.”

On a plane crossing the Atlantic Ocean Escariot tossed his dagger into the air and snatched as it reached the peak of its arch. The pilot of the plane glanced back at the crime lord. The pilot, his co-pilot and Escariot were the only ones aboard the small plane. The pilot eased his fingers up the touch sensitive panel toward the Mayday light. With a deft flick of his wrist Escariot imbedded the dagger into the panel just in front of the hand. “Don’t even attempt that.”

The man swallowed and turned back to the controls.

Jeremie sat on the ground in front of a disassembled scanner, the designs that Kari had made were effective but it would take a while to finish. And most of the parts were very complex modifications to VXC hardware. But at least he was doing something. Concentrating on the task at hand he began to mindlessly mutter, “Fire of Mind give us a call, give us an answer, or nothing at all.”

“Leave All.”

Weeks of teaching after school sessions had invigorated Jeremie. Each pupil had made progress, even Erin was doing better. But what was had lifted him out of the pit of despair was the completion of the Digitizer. These events mixed with the beautiful weather prompted Jeremie to change his lesion plans for a few days.

The week had been taken up by several labs, Jeremie had brought out a few Ion accelerators and the classes were enjoying the time with them. Blasting a stream of highly charged partials into just about anything did have its excitement. Sparks, smokes, and remains of objects filled the room at the end of every day. Fascination was plastered all over the faces of the students when melting magnets suddenly became spike balls of destruction.

Jeremie realized that he loved teaching, as a tutor to Odd and Ulrich he had often got annoyed by the fact that it took several times to get something. But now that his patents, with others as well as himself, had grown he had become ever searching for the look of realization when a child finally understood something for a first time.

And then there was Kari, the program seemed to become more human every day. Like a child first learning about the world, Kari was eager to hear everything Jeremie had to say, and even what he didn’t. Kari had the ability to read his mind; Jeremie had asked her to not delve into his mind, and for the most part she had. Even his sleep had begun to improve, restless nights became few and far between. And on those nights he would converse with Kari.

As Jeremie looked over the class, this was their last day with the equipment, he felt joy. For once the tragedies of his previous life slipped from mind. He felt young again, energy and optimism filled his heart. What a wondrous feeling.

**

Several miles away Escariot too was buoyant with the feeling of ecstasy.  A place that he could terrorize anew had brought up his spirits significantly. As he quietly shut the door he became aware that his joy ride would end soon. This time the encounter was different.

Dagger met dagger and the two were immediately locked in a temporary stalemate. Mayhem leaned in close to the face of the crime king. “Your slow.” A shrewd grin flew onto Escariot’s expression, “Relax, you’ll get your little presents on you special day, half pint.” Mayhem’s dagger suddenly gave and flashed toward Escariot’s neck. But it was met again with the second weapon. “Time is running thin, as is my patents. Make your move, or find yourself in a very uncomfortable check.”

“Yes, I do suppose you would want smother mate wouldn’t you.”

“I merrily wanted you to act as a skewer, and I don’t want him to get any chances to discover.” Mayhem flicked the dagger out of Escariots hand a slid back into the shadows. The crime lord picked up his dagger. The first thing he would need for this adventure would be a few accomplices. No one too smart, the usual gang goon would suffice.

**

“Hey Jeremie, did you make this?”

Jeremie glanced up from the diagrams on the nano-board. On one of the displays a box displaying a spearhead like object had appeared. “What is it?” Several more boxes came up displaying lines of code. A quick summery showed that the thing had been riffling through the computers files. As for the actual thing it seemed to be a virtual miner program. The program had not sent any data back to where it came from, but it did seem very intent on finding something. “Can you get rid of it.”

“No, I’m getting something like environment aspects inaccessible. Got any ideas?”

Jeremie shook his head confused.

**

Doctor Rocorson seemed drawn to the room that he worked in more and more. As he had no family he began to spend most of his time in the small room. The voices had become louder, the call of the cryptic poem, and its even stranger response.

But Rocorson began to wonder if his mental stability was holding out. Voices from no were and now the lights. Periodically he would see wisps of light flit around the room, balls filled with a rainbow of colors. The mystery and beauty of these visions were as unnerving as the voices. Call, response. Poem, reprise. But still he was drawn to the room, almost like his subconscious was waiting for something. And the doctor wanted with all his heart to be there when it did.

**

In a cot in Africa an officer in the international peace force began to mutter in his sleep. On his dog tags was the name William Dunbar. The verse that was repeated held mystical powers “Fire of Mind, give us a call, give us an answer, or nothing at all.”

“Leave All”

The lights were flickering in the studio as Walter prepared for the evening segment. He settled in to the chair behind the desk. Looking in to the dusky area were the cameras were he could see someone holding up four fingers. The “On Air” light lit up and Walter looked at the cameras.

“Good evening, you’re watching the Evening news on channel 3. In local news tonight energy surges are being recorded throughout the city, crews are putting extra transformers into the grid to keep these miniature surges from doing any harm. In other news President of the Untied States, Mechel Whilham, is one another tour through the Middle East, oil reserves are being depleted at an even faster rate than projected.”

Dr. Rocorson watched the news shaking his head. He had been staring at the screen to avoid looking at the swilling wisps of light and color that were twinning themselves around the room. Unable to with stand it any longer Rocorson turned his gaze back to the glowing pods in which 4 people slept. The will of the wisps slide together forming a sphere of light. Rocorson tore his eyes away with great effort and turned back to the news.

***

Escariot perched on the edge of a building overlooking the hospital. On the street below three Lancers stood at different spots. Lancers were people who were always looking for a job, a sum of money or item of interest and you could have a Lancer do just about anything. The one job Lancers would not do, kill. The treat of Remrigon lay over any murderer. But for Escariot’s job that would not be a problem, all he needed was a distraction.

The street lamps suddenly shone and the road was lit like it was day. Then it went dark, the sound of shattered glass falling to the ground tinkled from all around. The hospital when dark for a second two, then it lit back up, then went black. The pulses soon became regular and less drastic, the lights faded off and on in a steady rhythm. Now Escariot had an idea of why he was heading into the building. Whatever, who ever, lay incapacitated in there had a lot more then the common cold.

Escariot raised his gloved hand, a bolt of electricity shot into the sky, the lancers began to walk toward the front doors of the hospital. Escariot jumped from his areal position on to the sidewalk below. When the four figures reached the sliding glass doors of the hospital they stopped. Normally a motion sensor would have had the doors slid gracefully open, but with the fluctuating power the doors could not open. They moved then stopped, and when they moved again they moved the opposite direction.

Impatient Escariot pulled out his dagger and broke the glass. The attendant at the other end of the lobby jumped. A chuckle escaped from one of the Lancers, “so much for a quiet entry”

Escariot scowled, a flash of synthetic lightning burst from his palm and caused the attendant to slip into unconsciousness. Stepping through the hole in the glass doors, Escariot looked around by habit. Three doors, plus the one behind him, two ISee cams, two of the doors required key cards, and the attendant’s window, the couches would provide temporary cover, the lobby looked like a bleak place to have a shootout.  Pointing at the non-protected door he signaled for a Lancer to check it.

A nod for the Lancer showed an all clear, just a grieving room. Escariot walked over to one of the locked doors, placing his gloved hand on the card reader he blasted it full of synthetic lightning. The crime lord yelp and jumped back, the card reader feel burnt to the ground. Shaking the gloved hand Escariot scowled, he had been shocked by a pulse of energy flowing into the lightning glove.

The door swung open with a light touch, the long hall behind the door had doors jutting of at regular intervals, the rooms were probably filled with the hospitals charges. One of these rooms held four highly valuable people. Turning back to face the lobby he shocked the other card reader, it too was burnt to a crisp by the two pulses of energy. A jerk of the head an two of the Lancers disappeared into the second hall, the third Lancer walked over to the open door, together the hired criminal and the crime lord proceeded down their own hall.

As they made their way down the hallway, kicking open doors, glancing inside, then moving on, the light continued to flicker. This only seemed to frighten the people more, as if having a person dressed in odd clothing kick open you door look around then leave wasn’t scary enough.

***

Elsewhere in the lights were flickering. In Kadic Academe’s Commons, the students were carrying on as usual, completely unaware that a hospital several miles away was being searched. They were more concerned about the electrical surges restricting their computer privileges, messing with the display on the TV, and the latest gossip of the day.

Jeremie entered into the former gymnasium as Randy humbled his third opponent on the sparing range on the far side of the room. The professor glanced around the commons; Grace was working diligently on the book of higher mathematics that Jeremie had given her, Grant was coolly blocking an attacking opponent on a second sparing mat, and Erin was attempting to watch the TV. Jeremie called out their names over the speaker system.

When they gathered at the door Jeremie ask for them to step outside. He attempted to begin his request but was cut off by Randy, “What’s this about, teach? I was on a roll.”

Jeremie sighed, no matter how many times he had gone over this in his head on the way over for the factory, this would still be very hard. He knew, that he had no idea how far this would go, and who selfish this request seemed. But he began with the line that he had thought over well, “I’ll tell you, just as soon as you answer this: can you keep a secret?”

A silence followed, Jeremie felt the need the fidget, but he tried his best to remain call in front of the students. Grace finally broke the pause, “What, I’m sure we can keep a secret, well except for the yaplete there.”

“Hey” Erin said, indignantly, but the look of defiance left his face quickly. A yelp erupted from the small boy as Grace’s foot hit his shin with tremendous force. Jeremie sighed again, with all of his effort he tried to keep the mood serious.

“Look you know that under no circumstances would I put you in danger, but I have to have your honest answer; Can you keep a secret?” Jeremie hoped that he had emphasized his point. The pause seemed to answer that question, and the nods that followed as the answer to the first questions. The nods were solemn and thoughtful.

As they made their way toward the factory Jeremie stumbled. Jeremie stood back up and shook his head. Whatever had knocked him down was of no importance now, no matter how strange or ominous it seemed.

When they reached the beaming pad Jeremie turned to face the children. Looking at them he felt guilt, whatever the miner program meant it was surly a precursor of another terrible adventure. But if they were ready for this than destiny had chosen them for this. “As you know below us is a supercomputer, but below that is something else. Approximately twenty years ago a scientist defected from a top secret program called project Carthage. He created the supercomputer to combat Carthage, he also created a self aware AI. This AI took the name XANA, and eventually it began to work on its own, the second part of the computer was devoted to a virtual world. This would serve as a safe haven for him when he was discovered by the governments of the world. Unfortunately for him XANA was unwilling to share the world with him, so when he and his daughter left this world for that one he was attacked, but managed to shut the computer down before his daughter was harmed.”

Jeremie paused, the next part he had never told to anybody, it was a secret he had sworn with his life to protect, but he pressed on, “Several years after that I found the computer. I turned it on, releasing XANA, eventually I, and several of my friends, managed to free the girl from the computer, but at the same time XANA was able to leave the confines of the computer. Eventually we did defeat XANA, but at a terrible cost.

“Below you are two pieces of technology that would spark a world war if their existence was known: RR4, a device used to revert time, and the digitizer, a version of a machene that will translate matter to data.”

Grant snorted at this idea, “How could those things exist, they defy the laws of physics” Jeremie activated the beaming pad, and Randy who was on it disappeared. “And that doesn’t?” Jeremie recalled Randy and looked at them solemnly, “I ask you now, making sure you know that I have no idea what will happen later on, will you help me, will you help the world?”

Erin was the first to give his answer, he walked over to the pad and said, “I might be insane, but Scotty, beam me up!”

Escariot and his companion moved down the hallway. A metal hatch farther down caught the crime lords’ eye. A sign on the hatch read, “Disinfected Area.” Signaling to the Lacer, Escariot slid open the door. The two stepped into the closet-like room. The door behind them slid shut with a hiss. A spray of foul smelling chemicals filled the air tight chamber.

The two criminals chocked on the gasses, the Lancer crumpled. Soon the air cleared and the second door opened. Escariot stumbled into a hall lined with metal doors. The ceiling was interrupted every few meters by a gap housing bulkhead doors. Beside each door were several security measures, palm pads, retina scanners, and a card reader, this was not going to be as easy.

A whistle sounded from the Lancers ring, two of the three lights faded. This foreboded bad tidings.  “What happened?”

“They’ve terminated contact, might mean several thins. They could have died, been caught, ran for it, what ever happened you can bet that it’s not good.” The lancer took the ring off his finger and dropped on the floor. With a crack and a puff of smoke the ring became a small pile of ash.  Escariot began to mumble something about the reliability of Lacers but was cut off by a siren.

The law was here, in whatever form it came it was trouble. At that moment the lights began to fluctuate rapidly. With a terrible sizzling sound the light exploded. Shards of glass fell from the roof.  On the other end of the hall the door to a second Disinfector was pulled open. Whatever had blown the lights had shut the electricity off too.

Escariot jump against the wall. A bolt of artificial lightning streaked from his hand toward the group of law enforcement on the other side of the building. A scream told the crime lord that he had found his mark.  The lancer slid in behind him and pulled out an ion accelerator. A bolt of blue light ripped from the small opening and flew down the hall.  Streaks of orange flew down the hall from the cops on the other end. Escariot grimaced; a shoot out here would end badly.

The crime lord placed his gloved hand on the door a few feet in front of him, a flash of light burst from the metal door. The glove had given the door enough power to open  just a bit, and fried the locks as well. The Lancer chuckled, “Lucky, Lucky. Not bad, for a blind mouse.”

The two ducked through the door, immediately after he was in Escariot forced the door shut. The door moved slowly back in to position, as Escariot struggled with the door, his hired assistant stood staring into the room. Once the door was completely shut the crime lord turned around. He gasped; in the center of the room was a glowing ball of light, smaller wisps of power drifted lazily around the sphere, moving in time to the pulsating glow of the globe.

A felling of warmth ran up Escariot’s left arm, glancing down he saw several of the wisps of color swirling around his gloved hand. A shift in the light revealed a man on the other side of the room. He too was transfixed on the will-of-the-wisp like lights floating around the room. Raising his hand Escariot attempted to burn the man to a crisp. But instead of a bolt of bright white roaring from his hand, the phantasms moved more rapidly and glowed with more intensity.  Whatever these were had absorbed the energy being released from the glove.

Suddenly the strands of light grew longer, they were being pulled into the globe in the center of the room. Like lightning they flashed into the sphere and disappeared. The lighted brightened for a second and then returned to the normal pulsating rhythm.

***

Jeremie glanced down at the display on the nano-board.  This would be the Digitizers first run, and he was a little anxious.  Jeremie sighed, calmed his nerves, and began to power up the machine. “Who wants to go first?”

The speakers relayed the response from the floor below, “I’ll go first. If anyone can survive this thing it’s me.”

“Oh yes, let the Neanderthal go first. Every lab needs a gunny pig, and an ape is as good as any thing.”

“Can it, pretty in pink.”

“Just go already. You’re annoying me, so just get in or I shall personally shove you in there myself” Jeremie scratched his head, this group was interesting. Randy, pompous, tactless, and overconfident, was defiantly the brawns of the four, but he was willing to do just about anything.  Jeremie began to open the doors of the Digitizer, “Get in Kralliar.”

Down below Randy eyed the clear angular structure that had opened up. The thing looked like a giant test tube laying on floor. The dark skinned boy pulled himself over the lip of the container and lowered himself into it. As he lay on his back the clear doors closed with an almost inaudible hiss. A speaker by his head let him hear what Jeremie was saying, “Create file… Matter scan.”

A band of light began to move of Randy’s body. Inside the orange light a red grid was projected on to his body. As the scan slowly moved up his body Randy laid his head back on the cushion. Soon the voice of Jeremie came from the speaker again, “Complete. Conscience probe.”  A blast of blue white light shown in his eyes, but before he could shut his eyes to block out the light it stopped. “Complete. Kralliar.MDC. Now we can begin:  Access file Kralliar.MDC…” A string of lights flash on along the tube, “Conversion…” The light grew brighter, then the lights appeared to rip themselves from their source, discs of light began to swill around him. They grew brighter and brighter until the world was a wash of white, “Digitize!”

***

Randy’s feet slammed into the ground. The world faded back, or a world faded, into view. Randy pushed himself from the sandy ground. The abandoned factory had been replaced by a sandy desert. Wind blew the grains into large dunes. The desert seemed to stretch on forever, desolate and scorching. A gust of hot wind blew Randy’s dark dreadlocks around. Looking up he saw an orange sky with no clouds and no sun, it was less like a sky that a dome of light hanging over head.

A stab of pain brought him to look down at himself, his outfit had changed drastically. The first thing he noticed was the leather belt straps. A belt, one wrapped around his right thigh, and a third hanging from his shoulder and going cross wised across his chest, one each of the straps were loops holding knives. Randy became aware of an object resting on his back, held on by the strap across his chest.  Reaching behind his head Randy found the hilt of a blade. He pulled it out of its sheath and gave it a twirl. The blade couldn’t really be called a sword, it moved in a subtle curve and was topped by a triangular head. One side of the blade was a single shape, the other had been split into two separate arches, meeting at the center with a tooth like junction.

The blade showed moved quickly and effortlessly. The loose shirt that he was wearing was worn and had its sleeves ripped off, the pants likewise were torn at the knees. Further inspection reveild a spring loaded knife on his left wrist and a small yellow gem set into his a shoulder pad on his right shoulder, the pad was attached to the same strap that held the large blade’s sheath to his back.

A column of blue light shot down from the sky. It made contact with the ground several yards from where Randy stood, as the column faded it revealed Grace. She stumbled as the light disappear, rising from her kneeling position she gave Randy a death glare. She had transformed quite drastically. Her pink hair had grown and was tied up in a ponytail, and her usual modest cloths were gone. Instead she was dressed in deep violet, a large portion of the midriff was exposed in-between the two parts. A black glove on her right hand reached almost to her shoulder. A braclet on her left hand held a small Indigo gem. The mini skirt was a mid-thigh level, and allowed for a lot of movement. It seemed as if a TV ninja had come to life. 

“Didn’t you mommy ever tell you it’s not polite to stare?”Grace remarked, snidely. She turned away and began to look over the new outfit.  She eventually realized that Randy remained transfixed on her. She waved her swiped he hand in his direction. From the hand three blast of pink flew toward Randy. Instinctively he ducked on arm protecting his face, but the pink things never reached him. They fell to the sand, when they were still Randy could see that they were throwing stars. Three pink, glowing, throwing stars.

“What was that for!? You could have killed me! But then again, they say you always hurt the ones you love.” Randy shrugged. A second later he was thrown backwards by Grace’s fist. The gloved fist was shrouded in pink energy.

“That may not have killed you, but the next one will.” Grace growled at the unmoving form of Randy Kralliar. At that moment the pillar of blue light returned, this time bringing with it Grant. The “Crusher” was covered in white metallic plates, on his helmet just below were the temple would be there was a small deep blue jewel. A robotic exoskeleton housed the dangerous kid. His eyes began to dart around his visor, mumbling incomprehensible things. Words like power reserves, arm shield, weapons, and interface pop up several times. After a bit Grant extended his are and opened his hand, with a flash a large gun appeared in his hand. Shouldering the gun Grant fired at the sand dunes, a light blue orb streaked from the weapon. When the orb made contact with the dune a massive explosion sent shock waves careening toward the three students.

Grant threw an arm in front of his face, as the shock wave hit a hexagonal shield protected grant for the force of the blast. The other two were not as lucky, Grace and Randy were thrown back several feet, landing on the sand with at thud. As they were picking themselves up the column of blue light returned. When the light disappeared there was a moment of scalene. When the moment passed Randy threw himself back onto the ground laughing, Grace covered her mouth to suppress a giggle, and a smirk appeared on Grants face. Erin looked around puzzled for a second, then he glanced down at himself and shrieked.

“Oh, come on! What gives! Why am I a werepuppy?” And that was the best description for it. Erin had become a two legged dog like creature. He was wearing a pair of loose fitting purple pants and behind his left shoulder was a white feathery wing. His head was human, but vey hairy, a scar slid down the left side of his faces. He was furry and short.

Grace was the first to comment on Erin’s new look, “Well Midget, let’s hope you don’t have fleas.”

“Don’t say anything.” Erin’s paw-like hands clutched his shaking head. He kept trying to reassure himself this was a dream, or other things to the effect of “This is NOT happening” When one hand slipped is brushed against the orange gem on one of the shoulder plates. The jewel emitted a shifting light and a rectangle of light appeared before him. On the rectangle were several numbers and gages, and a large box displaying Jeremie.

“Oh, hello Erin.”

“I’M A WEREPUPPY!!! FIX ME!!!”

Jeremie looked taken aback but quickly regained his composer, “The Digitization process reads your subconscious. This is what you chose, not me. Anyway, if the others could pull up the displays we can begin”

“Hold it, I didn’t chose this! Why am I a werepuppy! I’m telling you there was a glitch, come on something, Randy’s got enough knives to make a pincushion out of some one, Grace is a ninja, and Grant has the biggest gun ever. I can’t be a dog!”

The displays showed Jeremie heaving a deep sigh, “Look Erin, the process reads your subconscious, you can’t change unless the very essence of your being changes. This usually only happens if you are consumed by grief, rage, or hatred, none of which are good for you. But if you like I will tell you one of your powers.”

“What?”

“Hold out your hand, and focus on something around you. Now keep that in your head and imagine energy building up in your hand, and  release it.” Suddenly four streaks of yellow burst from the out stretched claw. The attack curved toward Grace, as it neared her Grace leapt high into the virtual air.  The streaks of yellow passed underneath her.  As she landed the four lights turned in a wide arch and came at her from behind. But before they reached her the attack dimmed and faded away.

Jeremie spoke again, “Those were mini-drones, they will follow a target as long as you can remain focused on them. But enough fooling around, the reason I sent you to this virtual world was to get rid of a miner virus, it’s located about half a kilometer from your position.”

Grant scowled, “You sent us here to get rid of a virus, couldn’t you have done that with a program? And why did you park so far away?” The displays showed Jeremie shaking his head. He looked and frowned, “The virus is in virtual space, only virtual entities can effect virtual entities. As for why you have to walk so far, I don’t know.”

Back in the lab Jeremie watched as four screens showed the location of one of the students. He was awakened from his pensively by Kari, “Come on, Jeremie, let me say hi to them. It’s boring just sitting here waiting.”

Jeremie looked at the middle screen as Kari’s chosen face appeared. The face looked to be about 13 years old, shoulder length, deep red hair, and sky blue eyes made her seem almost from a video game. She tilted her head and looked at Jeremie innocently. Jeremie smiled, the face was hard to turn down, but that was to be expected, she was created from Jeremie’s mind. She was what Jeremie always subconsciously wanted, almost. Everything she knew was either from his mind or her own reasoning, but she was defiant, always trying to know more and do more.

“Kari, not yet. Not while it’s still here. It might find you, and I… I…” Jeremie chocked at the thought of what might happen if the miner program did find Kari.

“You what, Jeremie?”

“I could never forgive myself for loosing you.” Jeremie swallowed the tears that were welling from the memories. Those words, they brought back terrible memories. <i> Aelita, I never forgive myself if I lose you. Come back, please, come back to me.<i>

“Jeremie, I know you would save me, right” Jeremie sucked back the tears and looked back up at the screen showing Kari. He managed to smile, “Right.”

***

Escariot slid down the wall. The room had grown stiflingly hot. With no windows or AC the room would only get worse. The crime lord closed his eyes, shutting out the light from the orbs. Then a thought occurred to him. He opened his eyes and glanced over a the names on the wall by the door. Surprised at his luck he grinned. His target was here, no wonder Mayhem had wanted them. These four were special, Odd, Ulrich, Aelita, and Yumi were about as special as they came.

With that he closed his eyes, fading into a light sleep lulled by the rhythm of the room.

“Fire of Mind, give us a call, give us an answer or nothing at all” But this time there was no response.

Grant was the first to see the dot in the sky. His visor pulled up the distance, speed, and relative size or the thing. But he kept silent, the “crusher” reached out his hand a summoned a new gun. The new fire power had a long skinny barrel and a large scope. He placed the sniper rifle to his shoulder and fired. His visor showed a clean hit, but the object remained.

“Miss, pretty boy?” Grace commented, hand on her hip and a snide grin on her face. Grant turned a put the barrel behind his head resting it on his shoulders. “I never miss.” As he said this the shockwave from the blast reached them wiping up sand into the eyes of the other children.

Erin was the first to recover from the gale of sand, “look out!” But the warning came too late. The large spearhead shaped object rammed into Grant sending him flying.  The creature took a slow, wide loop into the sky and took aim at Randy. As it near its front shown an electric blue. Randy wiped out his blade and swung at the thing. But when the blade hit the glowing half of the creature it rebounded, and Randy was hit square in the chest.

The spearhead continued to tear apart the children.  Their efforts were uncoordinated and tripped over each other several times. “Mini Drones!” The streaks of yellow raced toward the oncoming threat. But as they neared it Randy jumped into the path of the spearhead, the mini-drones slammed into his back, and a second later Randy was sent flying by the miner impacting him from the front.

Grant swapped out his riffle for a smaller weapon. But as he fired a spray of shots Grace let fly a handful of throwing stars. The two attacks collided with a defining explosion. But their target excaped with ease, and disposed of the ninja girl and the werepuppy boy. The creature made a wide arch as is accelerated toward  Randy, who had regained this position. The dark skinned boy looked at the digital ram that was racing toward him, almost unconsciously he pulled out one of the knives from its loop on his belt and launched it at the program. The knife dug it’s self deep into the creatures underside but had little effect. Randy once again found himself being slammed into the sky with the force of another collision.

The spearhead executed a wide turn reaming itself at the children again. Grant pulled the trigger of the digital weapon and an automatic spray of virtual bullets rained down on the digital ram. But to no avail the thing seemed immune to the small blasts.  But it apparently did fear the four streaks of yellow that were coming at it, the thing moved aside to avoided the mini-drones. But the mini-drones altered their course and began to follow the miner program. Unfortunately they fizzled out before they could ever reach the target.

Jeremie sighed as he looked at the gages and numbers that covered the screens, the children were using up to much energy. At this rate they wouldn’t be able to hold their virtual form for much longer. Several things the Digitizer had done away with, life points being one of them. The length of time that people could exist in the virtual world was limited by 2 factors; energy consumption and will power. Children were perfectly suited for this world, but the ones in their now where wasting their energy. If any of them lost their virtual form who ever sent the miner program would have some very, very interesting data to look through.

Grace fell to the sandy ground, she watched at the creature pulled up in a high loop. The knife that Randy had thrown into was still lodged deeply into it, at this point Grace’s mind whirred into action. Her favorite type of video games, strategy, had trained her mind to look for weakness, cracks in her foes armor. So when she saw that she saw the end of this battle.

“Sorry boys but this is my battle to win. So read them an’ weep!” She waited for the miner program to come at her. But the plan was interrupted by four streaks of yellow impacting the tip of the creature. The mini-drones forced the creature to alter its course hitting Grant. The boy in the Exeo-skeleton was knocked to the ground with a thud. He was joined by Erin seconds later by way of Grace’s fist.

While she was knocking around Erin, Randy was dodging the attacks of the digital ram. Breathing heavily he slumped to the ground, the miner program passing over him. And the program made another pass over the exhausted student he thrust a second knife into it.  The thing altered its course and aimed itself at the figure of Grace that was beating the stuffing out of a dog like human.  Grace and her victim were thrown skyward. Grace dropped the near senseless Erin and grabbed onto the digital ram.  And she hung on for dear life, the program, obviously not noticing its new passenger took a high wide arch into the sky.

At the peak of the loop the digital ram exposed its underside to the virtual sky. As the program began its decent Grace managed to get onto the exposed side, with all of her strength she punched the knives that were imbedded in the digital ram all the way through. The gloved fist, shrouded in a pink glow sent one of the knives to the ground with amazing speed. But that action caused the virtual creature to shake violently, throwing Grace off of it. And Grace fell about a hundred feet. Near the end she managed to right herself and land on he feet, but she buckled under the momentum at which she landed. The kneeled on the ground, recovering from the spectacular fall. The creature that had just had a knife shoved all the way through it did not fare as well.

The program, shedding data glided down to the ground, and with a very ungraceful landing smoldered on the sand. Small flecks of data rose from the crash site, making a haze around it. Then like a firecracker if exploded. The haze from the data eventually faded leaving the four children in an empy desert. They stood, or lay, there berating heavily, exhausted from the fight. Little did they know how close they were to the same fate that the miner program had come to.

After a few minuet they felt the energy come back, Randy slow rose from the ground and looked around. Then he screamed and jumped back, the outburst turned the others attention toward him. Floating about 5 feet above the ground stood a girl. But the oddest thing about her was she only stood about a foot tall, she looked to be maybe thirteen. She has a soft red hair, not carrot-top, but quite like a video game character.  She was clothed that way too, in designer clothes likened to the ones worn in the Final Fantasy games.

Grace tapped her gem bringing up the display and asked Jeremie, “We got a visitor down here. What do we do?” But Kari answered that question first, “You love me.”

“Hardly” Grace glared at Kari. Then she disappeared, seconds later she was sitting on the top of Grace’s display swinging her legs. She smiled an innocent smile, Grace returned the favor with a growl. Kari ignored her and looked around at the tiered students. The image on the display showed Jeremie rolling his eyes, “This is Kari, she exists in the computer as an AI program. More or less she is the operating system of this place.”

“Whoa.” Erin walked over to where Kari sat and looked at her closely. He hardly believed someone like that could run something like this. From her purch on Grace’s display she was a little higher than Erin’s level. The girl giggled, “I like you.”

Erin cocked his head to the side, not yet sure what to make of the virtual girl. Unfortunately that had the side of his head resting on Grace’s arm. It was there for a few second be for it, and the rest of Erin were thrown back into the air by Grace’s fist.

As Erin landed Randy too brought up his display, “Teach, where are we any way?”

Jeremie in his seat in the real world turned his head toward the screen devoted to Randy, “Well, technically you are inside the virtual space protocols of the super computer. Your bodies were converted into energy and translated into computer code. Your forms right now are a reflection of that code, held together by your body’s life forces. As for the name of this place, I don’t believe its old title is sufficient any more, it is built upon the ruins of Lyoko, but uses a completely organic code. So I figured that you could name it.”

“Resident?”

“The Digital World?”

“New France?”

“Nuevo France?”

“Idiot world.”

“Terra Machina”

After Grant’s suggestion there was a pause.  It was like a silent motion to seace nominations had been passed. Jeremie asked it Terra Machina was acceptable but Grace protested, “Are you joking, we can’t have a name like that. Way to make something so amazing so nerdy, pretty boy.”

She glared at Erin and Randy, who sheepishly avoided her gaze. Realizing that she had lost, she gave an indignant huff and accepted the name. Jeremies face disappeared of the display and was replaced by what looked to be a snow flake, Jeremie’s voice explained, “Terra machina is divided into 7 zones. The outer six can be classified by the types of climates they resemble: Arctic, Alpine, Arid, Temperate, Tropical, and Continental. In the center there is the 7th zone, urbane. Each zone has a varying types of structures that act as access points to the non virtual space data contained in the super computer. These structures also let someone gain access to a part of the super computer that controls the natural fields of the earth.”

Erin brought up his display as well and interrupted Jeremie, “Field, professor?” Jeremie, whose face had returned to the display, nodded, “Earth, and our presence upon it, generates several field: gravitational, magnetic, electrical, ion, even the atmosphere, radio waves, and our effect on space time are fields. So if someone were to control them they would have devastating powers, that is why I had you come here.”

Suddenly the sky changed drastically, now instead of a shining orange it glowed a deep navy blue. Small bit of data sparkled white as the flitted across the virtual sky. The temperature began to drop as well. One really didn’t notice that the virtual world had a temperature tell it began to change. It started to feel like night.  Randy asked the question, “Teach, what just happened? And why I the girl glowing?”

Kari beat Jeremie to it, “My name is Kari, get it right. And it’s night, what do you expect.”

Jeremie continued where Kari left of, “the super computer run on a slightly different clock than France. But right now it’s time for all of you to get back to the dorms. You may be saving the world now, but I’m still you teacher.” One by one they disappeared in a column of blue light, quite ready to get to sleep.

***

Elsewhere in the city a man by the pseudonym of Mayhem sat asleep at his own computer. Not being awoken by the beep from his computer he continued on in sleep. But whatever it was, was persistent. When several more noises from the computer failed to awaken the sleeping man a box popped up. In the box a seductively dressed woman  leaned against a invisible wall, “Ahhh, is the little Mayhem tired?”

This jolted Mayhem from his slumber, hastily he pulled his glasses from his white hair, “Nalla! Jeeze what’s the big idea?”

The woman in purple pouted for a second, “What no hi? No comments on my dress? Nothing? Oh fine then, SHE wants to talk to you. Good luck.”  She waved as she walked out of the box on the screen, the box disappeared and Mayhem tapped the touch screen just over a small blue square.  What greeted him was the face of his employer, or rather what could be assumed to be a face. Mayhem’s employer wore the usual VXC board attire, a cloak that kept their true identity secret. A feminine voice spoke, “Mayhem the miner failed to send back any data in the latest merge. Where is he?”

Mayhem shock his self and rubbed his eyes, removing the sleep from them. Then he looked at the few features that were eliminated by the light of his employer’s computer, “He took the children and left campus, apparently on a short notice experiment for the children. He came by me and checked with me.”

“Good, keep watch of him.” Mayhem could just make out her lips curl into a cruel grin. “Yes, keep watch of him, we want him to stay ignorant. He cannot interfere, neither of them.” Mayhem nodded and said, “The other one is being taken care of, very well.”

She nodded and her eyes glimmered then she disappeared. Mayhem sighed and shook his head his thin white hair shining in the dark room. Slowly he drew out a small computer chip and stared at it. Jeremie would never find his secret, not after his little lie. And there was nothing that could stop the plan from coming to fruition.

***

Rocorson raised his head from the table, the room was becoming unbearably hot. Now the simmering phantasm seemed less fanciful and more and more demonic. The bodies of his patiants were flailing in their pods, no matter how much sedative was pumped to their blood streams they continued their thrashing. Their bodies were on the verge of collapse from strain, the vision of hell was completed by their screams. They were yelling the same verse over and over, each time pausing as if to wait for the response. But when one failed to come they shrieked as if in immeasurable pain.

The doctor turned his head toward the two other people that had pulled themselves through the door not too long ago. Just below the sheiks one could hear a banging at the door. Under normal circumstances Rocorson would have called someone to take them away, but the lights had fried all the equipment in the room.  Then the shifting lights changed directions, the lights swirled around him and the other two. Rocorson could feel energy being drained out of him, slowly forced by the head and loss of energy he faded into unconsciousness’ open arms.

If the doctor had been awake the next events would have amazed and frightened him to no end. With a scream of anguish Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Aelita called out the verse again. This time they were answered, the voice was deafeningly loud, almost as if the whole of the universe was answering their cry. The same two word that had answered the incapacitated heroes soothed them with their return.

“LEAVE ALL!!!!!”

With this the ball of light and energy grew. The light changed to a blinding white, the sphere engulfed the Lyoko warriors and grew tell it covered Rocorson. Then it blanketed Escariot and the Lancer. When it had taken these to it found the walls of the room. Its growth stunted it continued to glow brighter and brighter. The shadowy forms of the seven humans faded into the light.

With a defining explosion the light disappeared. The police that were banging at the door were thrown back against the wall. Knocked out they failed to see a ball of light escape the room and out of the hospital. The will-of-the-wisp floated into the sky. It sat there above the city lights, above a block of darkness. Then it exploded, a flash of light swept through the city, light bulbs exploded, computers were wiped clean, whole houses caught on fire. And when the light from the blast faded the orb of light and seven humans had disappeared and a city was plunged into darkness.

But one part of the city lay untouched, even the power remained on for a while, Kadic Academe and the people inside a abandoned factory were ignorant of what had happened. Well most of them were, but Kari sat alone in a tower in Terra Machina’s center in full knowledge of what had happened. But wouldn’t realize why it happened, or what effect it would have on the world for a long time.

Only one person in the world had any idea of what would befall earth. And she sat looking at a countdown clock that had reached zero. Oh yes, she had an idea of what would happen, and who would play a part in it.

The shimmering black cloak slithered along the cement floor as its wearer walked through the tunnels of VXC’s headquarters. The cloak masked her identity, but to everyone in the facility her position was well known. As was her reputation, she smiled inwardly as people pulled away from her as she walked by them. Her eyes alighted on a young recruit, and from the look on his face he had gotten the briefing on her, his eyes grew wide as she purposely brushed against him. His body was rigged and the boy was shaking as she whispered in his ear, “Welcome to my little kingdom. Would you like to play a few games?”

She had to keep herself from bursting into a fit of giggles as the terrified boy shook his head, the gesture displayed his fear with stunning clarity. She faked a frown as she rested her hand on his shoulder, “Oh well, it would have been so much… Fun.” As she whispered the last word any spine that the new recruit had melted away, or it might have been the electrical shock that went through the boy’s body. He slid to the ground, unconscious, and slightly burnt around the edges. She bent down a slid her other hand from under her cloak, the hand delicately held a small pink rose. She placed it on the chest of the boy, she stood up and called to the nearest people.

“Take him to the infirmary.” As she walked away she turned back to the two that were picking up the boy, “Oh, yes, when he wakes up tell him I said hi.” Then she continued down the halls, people started to hurry by her a bit faster than before, soon she was walking alone in the hall. Now she let go the fit of giggle that had been building up, if you had no idea who the giggles were coming from they would have been like the sweetest music that you had ever hear. But for any that overheard the fit of laughter it would have been soured and dark. She continued down the hall that eventually returned to the normal bustle of life in the underground complex.  This was her little kingdom, for now.  She turned into her own private lab, away from the rest of the complex and protected, until the time came for its use.

She sat down at the computer alcove that was in the lab and tapped the screen. As she waited for the connection she rested her chin on her wrist and propped it up by putting her elbow on the desk in the alcove. The computer flashed a confirmation then displayed a man with stock white hair. The wire rim glasses blended in with the wrinkles that covered the ragged face, the man’s beard was as white as his hair.

“So we CAN pick up on the first ring.” Her playful manner didn’t faze the old man, even if he knew who she was. This was part of the fun with him, she always wondered how she effected him underneath that calm skin.

“Yes. If you are calling to know if I have managed to get in to his lab, I have not. He has taken some very acute measures to keep it hidden, acute, but very effective.”

“Well, he is THE Jeremie Belpois. Oh, the praise you lavished on him, he even may little Lizzy, look like five year old. She was a great actor wasn’t she, so good at hiding her little secret. But I guess I is to be expected that he would put up some camouflage. Hidden in a factory, more than likely undetectable to scans, you get the idea. But Mayhem, dear, if anyone can find a chink in his armor it’s you. So find it, pretty please?” She looked at the old man’s face and then severed the connection between their computers.

Leaning back she let the hood of her cloak fall from her head. Her long hair flowed behind the chair, cascading in streams of red and mahogany.  She unclasp the pin that held the cloak on and let it slide onto the chair. She got up from the alcove and strode over to the door, she tapped it and a small green light on it flashed red. She let herself slid into another chair, glancing over at the small display she told it to access a file. Laying her head back she slipped into a light sleep,  just enough so that her mind could steal away.

***

Jeremie sat in the teachers cafeteria, the food was the same as when he was a child. No matter what Odd said it was still as close to card board as was edible. Jeremie turned in his chair to face the one way window that looked into the chaos of the students cafeteria.  What he had taken to calling “his four” hadn’t bonded like his friends had, they were still scattered around the room. Not even an acknowledgment of their existence had passed their lips. But he was roused from his musing by the sound of the door opening. Glancing at the door he saw a tall raven-haired woman stride in.

Smiling Jeremie watched her stand before what was supposed to be chicken alfredo, but move on. As she made herself a salad from the materials provided Jeremie managed to catch her reflection in the window. Now he smiled out right, leaning on the table. “Who would of ever thought we would end up back here?”

The woman turned around looking at Jeremie, her face puzzled. Jeremie’s grin widened as his identity was remembered by the woman.  Realization turned to surprise and she realized what Jeremie actually looked like. “Einstein? No… Jeremie”

“Bright as ever, Sissy” He chuckled as he said her old nickname.

Elizabeth Delmas sat down across from the withered Jeremie, or at least he thought he still looked withered, but if he had actually taken the time to inspect himself he would have found traces of youth returning to his face. But there she sat across the table, like a beacon from the past, her hair had grown long and her face seemed to have gained some hidden quality. She seemed relaxed, peaceful, like she was truly herself, and like one of her many slaps that Odd had received Jeremie realized something; Elizabeth Delmas was truly one of the best actors in all of history. For the six years he had know her she had put on a charade, acted, flawlessly, too flawlessly.

“How life been for you?” Jeremie asked the only question that he could think of that wouldn’t seem like he was prying into her. She took a bit to respond, her eyes were tracing the line that criss-crossed Jeremie’s face.

But eventually she sighed, “Well, life is what life is. What I have done with it fills me with happiness, even if life, itself, does not.” Jeremie nodded, this was what Elizabeth really was, not an idiot like she portrayed herself to be. “I haven’t seen you here before?”

Jeremie chuckled, “I try my best to stay away from this, what are they calling it, food. I’d bet that the chicken is used in contraction projects as cement.” This provoked a laugh from the raven hair women. It was a clear, ringing laugh, the kind you might imagine as coming from a nymph from ancient times. For whatever reason she had hid this side of herself, but he decided not to pry. “I’m afraid I have not read through the faculty list, so what is your position here?”

Elizabeth sighed, “I’m attempting to salvage a drama department. But the kids, less interested in Shakespeare, more interested in their own hormones. I’ll admit that it is not a meaningful existence, but its rewards are sweet, when they come. “

Jeremie nodded, silently absorbing the sound of her voice. He had never really taken the time to notice Sissy. At one time she was an annoyance, and even for a time a member of their little gang. But she had never really passed the fringes of his perception. Then the bell rang and a ruckus arose from the other side of the two way mirror. Jeremie stood up, “No rest for the weary, no food for the hungry, no water for the thirsty, but yet I press on.”

As he left the building he couldn’t help but smile. His past didn’t have to haunt him, not all the time at least. Jeremie chuckled as he glimpsed Erin racing through the courtyard, Grace gaining on him, and he could just make out over Erin’s screams, “You’re dead, you hear me! Dead!”

***

Delmas picked his way through the rubble of one of the building that had been blown apart in the freak explosion last night. No one knew what caused it, but the death toll had stayed amazingly low. Only a few people had been drastically harmed, most of which were of a police team try to halt a break in at the hospital that he was climbing through. Even the people inside the decimated hospital had survived, but had the person that he was looking for. Was he alive?

He hoped that he would not find the body he was looking for.

“Hey, Jeremie?” A box popped up on one of the bioscreens. The box displayed a head and shoulders shot of Kari. Jeremie glanced over from one of the other screens. Immediately his eyes locked onto the celestial blue orbs of Kari’s eyes. Slowly he refocused on the her entire face, the swooping curves of her eye brows, the dark yet fragile red hair, and the complexion that would melt even the most callus of hearts. “Yes, Kari?”

“Do you know where the good dishes are?” The question seemed so random, yet the way the voice filtered through the speakers, it was clear that she asked in all seriousness. Blinking Jeremie asked, “Why?”

“Well I’ve got some company today.” The response jarred Jeremie, after the last incident he had set up security measures that would alert him is anything happened, how did another one get in? Sliding his hand across the nano-board he saved what he was doing. Flicking around little stars of light on the board Jeremie brought up a scan of Terra Machina. The camera of the scan zoomed into the Alpine Zone. The silhouettes of three gangly figures were scaling a mountain. The view was not detailed, and vague, but it was obvious that these figures did not come from the super computer.

Jeremie sighed, even though his first reason for starting his little class was to study the children in hopes of something, he loathed having to put more people into his nightmare. And because he had put up every measure of safety and secrecy that he could, he felt worse. He had consciously thrust them in to his story, a story that he felt would have even more twists, shadows, and pain that it told now. But they were in it already, get them in further could not make the future for them any worse than it would be otherwise.

“I think tonight we shall give our guest a fitting welcome.” Walking over Jeremie guess how the outsiders had gotten in. How, who, why?

***

With a blip Mayhem popped up on the VXC computer. The computer’s owner walked over to the small computer alcove. Delicately she slid herself into the chair in front of screen displaying the old ragged man that was named Mayhem. “Yes, My Mayhem?”

The voice was filled with hints of many intentions, some evil, others might have been more desirable. But none of them fazed Mayhem, little in fact fazed him anymore, so when he delivered the report, he did it without any hint of emotion.

“We have a small problem; they decided not to stick around for the performance, any of them; however they did take the time to make a big exit. Half the city, no one was harmed, but half a city. Half a city exposed to Epsilon radiation, a quarter of the city burned, an eighth of the city tuned to ruble, exactly one Lance, one Crime lord, and four lifeless bodes whisked away.”

Her expression tuned cold, the tilt of her lips turned arctic, and the glare in her imperial eyes turned positively sub zero.  The whole climate of the room dropped. The icy flames that licked her pupils must have been at least somewhat accurately displayed on Mayhems screen as he flinched. Mayhem’s continuation seemed dulled by the radiating cold, “However, I do have good news, first I can guess where our quarries snuck off to. A massive data burst occurred in an obscure Network Cloud, at the estimated time of departure. And second…”

The cold alleviated, and the room cleared. A message halted any other conversation; with a flick of her wrist she dismissed the connection with Mayhem. Pulling her cloak off the table it rested on, she fastened it around her, pulled up the hood and walked out of the room. The sound of her shoes echoed in the empty hall. Even though an unstated requirement for getting hired by VXC was not having a life, many attempted to have one within the confines of the sprawling facility. So their feeble attempts at anything were recently restricted to a small wing. So for the most part late in the night the halls were empty. All the peons of VXC were trying to simulate life in that wing. And any one that was going anywhere here was in their rooms or labs or in other people’s labs trying to squeeze out more secrets of the universe.

The mere fact that she was alone both seemed satisfying and depriving to her. She enjoyed seclusion, she lavished time alone, but now she was heading toward another secretive meeting of the VXC board and she had no entertainment. She enjoyed watching her victims squirm, she never harmed them, but the thoughts that see could see passing through their minds were delicious. Fear, confusion, and the natural, idea that walked through their minds, mingled with their common sense and caused sheer terror, that little demon Lust.

But it was all in good fun. In the empty halls her mind wandered. Incomplete thoughts rippled through her mind, frayed strands that melded together to form a jumbled mosaic. The thoughts soon fell into a rhythm mirroring the click of her walk. The slithering of the shimmering black cloak folded into the painting. Then they all stopped as she reached a small door. A hiss and it slid open reveling a dim room. A long glossy black table forebodingly dominated the room. The dusky lights that were placed around the room allowed for three dark cloaked figures’ outlines to be discernable. On the far side of the room several computer alcoves were set into the wall, separated from the room by sound-proof glass doors.

Slowly, almost invisibly she slipped into the room; she slid into one of the empty chairs. A muted blip came from the long table; small lights flickered beneath its service. The lights resolved into a small read out of the reason for the meeting. A grin flicked across her face, though none of the others saw if because of the cloaks hood. The room lay in a quiet slumber for a few minutes, in this time she realized that this was Mayhems little present for Jeremie. None of the others knew who was running the super computer, that scared them, but if they only knew even a sliver of all the things going on underneath their noses, they would be scared out of their minds.

Her peers on the VXC board were bureaucrats, removed and uninterested in the nuances and interworking of all the projects and experiments that took place in VXC. They only cared to look over the summaries of the large and conspicuous projects, or the ones they themselves ordered. They didn’t take the time to get the whole scope of the facility, or the things that were unauthorized, the dabblings of the special ones that managed to do the most progressive work under the radar. She had a better idea than any of these fools of what VXC really was.

Two figures whisked into the room, faces obscured, cloaked, and powerful. One of them spoke in a tell tale voice, its voice dipped and swooped in hypnotic waves, “I apologize for this inconvenience, and while a few others might not be able to make it, I think we can get started.”

The lights dimmed even farther and on one wall a large screen lit up. It showed a frigid mountain, near vertical faces surrounded a needle point peak, wings of feathery mist wrapped around the monolith. The sky was a dim silicon gray, slight ripples shimmered across it. The sheer size of the mountain seemed to dare physics itself to prove that it could not exist. Beyond it the foggy air gave the viewers a glimpse of equally stunning monuments. Where ever this was it was an extraordinary place, truely extraordinary.

***

Jeremie slumped back into the chair that overlooked the bio-screens.  How much simpler it had been when he was first doing this. At the drop of the hat they would all come running to the old abandoned factory, but now it was just a class. The children had their own lives to attend to, and as of yet the world wasn’t in danger. But Jeremie couldn’t get it out of his mind that asking the kids to join in on his little escapades through barely understandable loopholes in the universes primal code.

“Oh, come on, your being too hard on yourself. I mean, what are you going to do? Come in here instead?” Jeremie smiled at the face of the virtual girl. Jeremie nodded, life would be so much simpler if we were all computer AI’s.

“Alright, at least we got two of them. Want to open up the Digitizer for them, Kari?” Kari bobbed her head, wisps of silky rich red hair weaved around her face. Her face disappeared from the screen, replaced with a small conformation box. Unbidden tendrils of adrenalin seeped into Jeremie’s bloodstream, memories of countless transfers flashed through his mind. Near whispering into the air, he asked Erin, “Are you ready?”

There was a moment’s delay before the conformation. After this Jeremie let all the tension in his mind and body slip away, he returned to his element. Wildly his fingers danced across the starry surface of the nano-board, ripples jumping from where his fingers pressed against the glassy top. They preformed complicated jumps and leaps, sliding short distances small shooting stars followed his fingers. Then Jeremie began to recite the voice commands that shortened the intricate and eclectic dance of his fingers, “Access file Pripe.MTD! Conversion! Digitize!”

From the steely Alpine Zone sky fell a shimmering column of electric sapphire. After it faded a child sized werepuppy thing stepped on the frigid dry snow, Erin Pripe glanced around the toothy mountains. Small flashes of data whipped across the slate gray sky. With an electric hum a flash of blue rocketed down from the sky. As it lifted the figure of Grace Sharron entered the Terra Machina.

She shivered, her long pink hair shaking in the thin icy wind. A frigid scowl came to rest upon her face. “Ga! Why does it have to be so cold?”

Erin snickered quietly, “I may be cold, but--” The res t of the sentence was lost, lost in an explosion of digital energy. A shockwave threw Erin and Grace into the alpine sky, over the edge of their small alcove they sailed. Erin, being slightly lighter than Grace, flew higher into the air, until his arch came to an abrupt halt. Pain filled his vision as his back impacted a hard black bolder. He slid down its icy surface on to a small ledge, were he sat, crumpled and dazed.  Grace came to a slightly more comfortable stop, in a snow bank, on a large out cropping several feet below where she had started.

Slowly she picked herself up, brushing the moisture-less snow from her she glanced around, looking for the cause of their sudden departure. Clinging to the face of the closet mountain a spider like creature held onto the shear face. Four fleshy, joint-less, legs attached the machinoid body to the creatures claws. A diamond shaped head rested on its angular shoulders, no neck to be seen. The creature glared at her with glassy eyes. Lifting up its head it opened a toothy insectoid mouth and released a blast of red energy. Grace was petrified as the ball of crimson raced toward her, its malevolent light reflected in her eyes. Then with a deafening explosion all she saw was black.

She didn’t feel dead, she could still feel the infernal cold.  Slowly Grace became aware of the spasms of pain that fidgeted around her back. Then suddenly she realized part of the reason all she could see was black was that her eyes had involuntarily closed. From above Erin voice rang out, “Grace is dead!”

Opening her eyes she shouted up at the werepuppy, “No, shut up, Shorty! I’m not dead yet!” The monster on the on the other mountain let out a steely screech, it echoed forebodingly around the mountains. As it died down four streaks of orange light rocketed from just above Grace. The creature twisted away from the mountain face, releasing three blast of crimson light as it flew through the air. Flipping over the monster dug its claws back into the digital earth, letting lose a few more deadly blasts. Erin’s mini-drones quickly altered coarse, arching to intercept the blasts. Two of the six red blasts went wildly aria, the other four were prematurely detonated by the orange streaks.

The creature wrenched out a foot and dug it in again; it was walking up the mountain.  Grace raised her gloved fist, three throwing stars materialized in-between her fingers. Flinging down her arm the shimmering pink stars whisked out of her hand. Two of them dug deep into the spidery monster, the third continued into the dark depths of the canyon.

The arachnid was now almost at Grace’s ledge, she could hear the crunch as its claws dug back into the rock, and rip as they were pulled out. But together these fail to compare with the buzz that now surrounded the creature. Crimson power spilled from the mouth, a sickening hum accompanied it. “Mini-drones!” 

The mini-drones had no effect, the resulting explosions didn’t even slow the creatures pace. One claw made it over the lip of the ledge. A second soon followed, and finally the narrow diamond shaped head peaked over the edge. Grace’s mind screamed at her to run away, but her body wouldn’t budge.  She could fell the spider-like thing about to fire, then it stopped. The light faded way, as did the immobilizing buzz.

From above Grace heard Erin exclaim. Almost out of instinct she threw a punch at the imposing figure. And somehow the creature, even with its rigged face and unmoving expression looked surprised as it was thrown back into the canyon. Slowly it faded way, and after a second a blue white explosion lit up the black bottoms of the valley.

***

After Erin climbed out of the Digitizer he gave Grace a strange, inquisitive look, “How did you do that?” He asked excitedly.

“Do what?”

“Turn invisible. Gezz, that hot”

Jeremie heard a very painful sounding slap from his chair in front of the screen. Erin was probably going to be feeling that for a while.

The soft padding of fingers on nano-board filled the dark room.  A silvery glow laminated the tiered face of Jeremie. A wisp of white-gold hair hovered above one of his eyes, taunting him. But in his daze Jeremie stayed oblivious of the annoyance.  Boxes and words fluttered at daunting speeds around the bio-screens. Eyes moving in hypnotically from corner to corner Jeremie took it all in. Amid the mass of swarming data a Kari appeared.

“What ch’ ya doing, Jeremie?” Jeremie looked over from all the other boxes as they slowed to a halt. There was something oddly solicitous about the way the deep blue eyed girl had asked the question. Jeremie called her out “Let me guess, we have party crashers?” Kari nodded, her dark red hair swaying and bobbed in the digital display. Turning to another screen Jeremie began to tap on the nano-board again.

“Now what are you doing?” Without turning Jeremie replied, “Hacking the mobile network.”

“Why?” Looking back at Kari Jeremie smiled, sparkles of youth faintly visible. The jagged canyons and valleys that had lined Jeremie’s face for so long were fading. What were once fold upon fold of skin had lessened into deep scrunches, the spine web of deep shadowy gorges had been filled in to form dry riverbeds of old skin. A smile had replaced the old worn grimace, and streaks of gold were beginning to coat over the silver. In a miracle Jeremie was aging in reverse.  “Why? Because this way I don’t have to leave and go find them, but mostly it’s because this is more fun.”

After a few more seconds of hacking four greetings slipped through the speakers, then a moment passed and chaos broke loose. “Erin, why are you calling me?” “Calling you, why are you two calling me?” “I’m not even going to ask.” “Don’t kill me for answering the phone”

A second’s rest and Grant spoke up, “Professor?” Jeremie grinned sheepishly, it appeared he had been found out. He carefully formulated his word, not for his sake but for Erin’s, “Yes?” Any further conversation was blocked out by Randy, “Teach, you have got to give me her number.”

“Kralliar, if you even think about the thought of calling me you will be waking up in the hospital, with so many drugs in you, you’ll have trouble lifting your finger.”

Jeremie, sensing the doom that had dropped over the conversation, cut to the chase, “I need some pest control, any volunteers?”

Erin quickly responded, “Oh, pick me, pick me!” Aside from Erin’s enthusiasm it was difficult to get any further volunteers. Grace was unavailable to due to a swim meet, and Randy was occupied with an out of town Sparing tournament.

“As much as I love eating this sludge they call food, I suppose I will join Erin on this escaped.” Grant reluctantly caved. Several faint mechanical clicks flickered through the speakers as the four flipped of their mobiles.  Jeremie glanced over at Kari, who had questions sparkling in her sapphire blue eyes.

“I don’t think I can be an objective judge here, but they’re not very normal are they?” A faint smile spilled across Jeremie’s face, twinkles of mirth shined through his dark eyes. Shaking he head, “No their not very normal at all. But the saddest part of it is that most of humanity isn’t very normal either.”

Several minuets latter the motion sensitive cameras picked up two children walking through the decrepit gate way to the factory. One of the figures was short wherein an orange coat that hung down almost to his knees.  The other was tall, coal black hair crested his head. He was clad in a camouflage T-shirt and tattered old jeans. The unlikely pair hopped onto a slab of cement that sloped down to the subterranean floor. After slipping and sliding down they came to the opal white Beaming Pad.

Two Flashes light up the surrounding land in a brilliant starry blue. The desert was cold dark and desolate.  A rolling horizon separated the glittering sand from the glowing violet sky. The digital night was as silent as a tomb.  As Grant looked around his visor darkened, a grid work of green divided his sight. From above a voice echoed, “Your target is about half a kilometer south of you.”

Grant swung around to face south and stopped, Erin who had been digitized facing in that direction stood gaping at the same thing. An impossibly large pyramid shattered the sky, to see the top of the monolith was nigh impossible. Erin broke the trance, “You mean we’ve got to walk around THAT thing! That would take months!”

Lights flickering on the inside of his visor, Grant coolly contradicted Erin, “It is at least half a Kilometers tall, there is no way it has a base less than a kilometer. That means our query is hiding inside it.”

Erin stood still gazing at the structure for a second, then blinked. The silky hairs that covered him quivered slightly, conveying confusion, “Grant, can find a door anywhere?” And he was right, from their vantage the pyramid was smooth, not a wrinkle or crease stained its glassy surface, and they were within a hundred yards of its grandiose base. Grant began to walk toward the silvery structure, snapping for the third time from his trance, Erin soon followed. Seconds later they stood at the edge of the pyramid, a faint white glow emanated from its surface. Small streaks of light moved like whirligigs around on the building. Hypnotized by the spiraling lights Erin reached out to touch the giant.

The lights swarmed to his fingers coalescing in a bright pool beneath his wide spread hands. Erin jumped back from the light. A faint hum filled the air as the pool of light began to spread.  As the light reach about seven feet above the pyramids base if began to fade. The fading light reviled a new gap into the center of the pyramid. The doorway lead to no hall, in fact only the darkness showed that there was actually any hole there.

A white light flickered around Grant’s mechanical gloved hand, forming into a small pistol like apparatuses. The si-fi weapon was lifted to a firing position and Grant stepped through the gateway. Immediately he was swallowed by the darkness. After a second he put his head back out, “Come on Shorty.”

Crossing his arms and grumbling Erin followed. As he passed through the dark barrier an electric shiver passed through his body. Then icy shock slammed into his head, the shock of the pyramid had been one thing, the shock of getting slapped by Grace, quite another, but this was incredibly different. This was an obvious recognition of how far from earth Terra Machina was. A tall, incredibly thin spire stood in the very center of the massive room. A stair step base led up to several arches to the inner part of the tower. The tower was capped by a larger terrace, a small yellow orb above that. It was un unworldly sight.

“That is a tower, an access point to all of the computers functions, and to the controlling powers of the earth.” Jeremie sounded like he was going to say more, but was cut off by an electric buzz. In a fraction of a second a blast rocked the digital world. As the afterglow faded Erin, who lay on the ground shaken from the blast, saw Grant on kneeling on the ground. One arm was raised over his head, shielding him, from one of the plates on his arm a glowing hexagonal energy shield covered him. From the ripples rocking the shield it was apparent that the digital blast had hit Grants protection. Looking beyond Grant, Erin saw something else. A slim diamond shaped head, crystalline eyes reflecting the light of the tower, between the eyes was a small crimson insignia, but Erin was to far way to see what it was, but he was able the shout, “Zpider!”

Grant whipped around to where Erin had pointed as he screamed. Quickly raising his gun he fired, and missed. The machiniod creature was already thin the dimly light air, its fleshing limbs trailing behind it. Erin tried to concentrate to bring up some mini-drones, but the creature fired again. The trail of scarlet light slammed in-between Erin and the bio-suited boy. Both were thrown against the hard digital wall. Grant fired blindly, bolts of blue light ripping around the Zpider. The creature, unharmed by the poorly aimed shots, came down of the floor hard. The jolt gave Grant enough time to send another barrage of shots at the creature.  Several of them hit this time, but to little effect. Grant relizing that the pistil wasn’t strong enough disintegrated it.

Muttering, “digitize” a device wrapped itself around Grant’s arm. The blaster had two extremities that lay parallel to each other, three cylinders attached at about elbow length, and strip of flashing lights on its underside.  Pointing his weapon incased arm at the creature, Grant fired. A bolt of blue white light flew out of the firing gap. But never found a target, the Zpider had jumped high in the air again. The underbelly of the creature was just as armored as the rest of it, plate upon plate of white steel covered any weakness.  Grant tried to aim again, but was to slow, the digital beast slammed into the digital warrior.

If the Zpider hadn’t been trying to kill Grant it might have been a comical sight, a giant quadruped, half horrible stretched flesh- half cybernetic spider thing, crushing a teenage boy clad in a bio-suit, however it wasn’t comical, and it was about to get far worse.  As the digital beast jumped off of the boy a streak of red light rushed at them from the other side of the vast dark room.

“Two!? TWO! There are TWO of them. We’re getting murdered by one and there is another one!” Erin’s rant was cut off by the subsequent explosion. As he picked himself up off the ground Grant decided to go nuts with his blaster. The shower of green blasts slashed through the dark, one even managed to hit the nearest Zpider. The creature was knocked into the air spinning uncontrollably. When it slammed on its back into the ground Erin finally got a wave of mini-drones to materialize. The orange light arched around, hitting its target in multiple directions.

The Zpider couldn’t hold itself together after that. With an electric crack the dreadful creature disintegrated into a thousand packets of data. The eventful demise of the Zpider ruffled Erin’s sleek fur, “Oh, Yeah! 10 points! Who’s aw—“

Erin, who was getting really tiered of his rants getting cut off, was hit in the chest with a bold of digital energy. The explosion sent him flying backward, utterly defeated he rolled limply into the corner of the pyramid, where the roof met the ground. And he lay there, unmoving, limp, and dead looking. Only the information on his visor told Grant that the werepuppy was still alive.

Visor alight with informational displays Grant found his next target, quickly he replaced his blaster with a sniper like weapon. Raising it he fired, his visor replaced any need for a scope. Seconds later a blue- white flash signaled the demise of a second Zpider. “Headshot.”

Targets that weren’t jumping around, and didn’t have prior warning were defiantly easier to hit. “Grant you need to get Erin into that tower, now.” The voice from the sky wasn’t effected at all by the thick walls of the pyramid. But the urgency conveyed was imposable not to hear. Bending down Grand pulled one of Erin’s furry arms over his shoulder. He began the slog toward the tower at a quick but burdened pace.

A hundred feet to go and the glow from the tower was an enveloping light. The stairs proved more difficult for the quickly tiring boy.  Stepping over the last mettle stone step Grant threw himself through the arch into the tower. As he lay on the floor a small girl appeared before him. Deep, mystic red hair and brilliant blue eyes, Kari was a sight for sore eyes. But not a voice for sore ears, “You guys look pretty beat up.”

“Shut up.” The groan was almost a gowl, Grant’s tired face was contorted into a scowl.

“Don’t worry, Jeremie says the tower should restore enough energy for you to survive the materialization.”

“How long will that take?”

“An hour?”

The following day was not the most pleasant for the digital worriers; they were tired, sore, and all together grumpy. Grace and Randy’s constant prodding for the humiliating story didn’t help either. Nor did Chi’s gleeful cackles at seeing Erin to tiered to ruin her life.

***

The young man was nearly crumbling as he stood in front of the door. When a hand was placed on his shoulder he nearly exploded with fright. John looked at the wimp of an ‘professor’, sighing he asked the pile of jelly, “Why are you so scared? I mean it’s not like she will kill you, maybe extract or brain for experiments, but not kill you.”

John had to chuckle as his companion shrunk even lower into the floor. Grinning slightly, John turned and pressed his hand against the panel next to the door. After a second the hunk of mettle slid aside admitting them into the room. John walked in not failing to notice the onyx cloak that lay discarded on a table, this would be interesting.

From the room came a feminine voice, “Oh, John! How very kind of you to visit me.”

John sorted, reaching back he pulled his companion in, “Not like I had much of a choice, getting you miffed would not be in my best self interest. By the way I brought this little guy. Say hello Herb.”

Grace looked at Randy darkly, piercing daggers flying from her eyes like bullets. Kralliar stared back with equal intent. From across the room Ms. Delmas looked up from her tablet computer, and then looked back down. The dark pink haired girl was the first to speak, “Kralliar don’t you say it.”

Kralliar, as we all guessed said it any way, “You should really wear a swim suit more often.”  A gasp of pain later Randy was on the cold wet pool floor. Sissi looked up again and sighed, “Just clean up any mess you make, Sharron.”

Graced looked at the drama teacher innocently and pointed at the still, dark form of Randy Kralliar. Ms. Delmas nodded, “yes that is your mess.” The teen age girl looked down at the boy, glanced over at the wet stand that no one was sitting in. They were quite a ways from where her victim had landed. The soft lapping of the pool water drew her attention; the boy lay about a foot from the edge. Grace squatted down next to the incapacitated teen as smiled a wicked smile, “time to take a dip, monkey boy.”

Kralliar was awakened from his pain induced black out by his fully clothed body sinking into the cold water of the pool. He continued to sink until his feet reached the bottom. Positioning himself he pushed off back toward air. As he broke the surface he heard the cruel echoing laughter of Grace as she turned into the girls changing room.

He was interrupted from his scowling session by a soggy foot steps. Shifting his view he saw the black tenny and ragged jeans of the high school student know as ‘Crusher’ and the beat up sandel of the resident Waco. “Kralliar.”

“Onyx, Pripe.”

“Kralliar, Onyx.”

“Pripe.” A sort of awkward silence followed these disjointed greetings. Grant shivered as if shaking of some hideous thought. Squatting down he looked Kralliar, who was still treading and scowling, in the eye. “Kralliar, I never took you as the skull and cross bone kind of guy.”

Confusion echoed across Randy’s muscular face. Glancing over to the left of ‘Crusher’ he saw the blond pointing some were behind him. Fearfully he turned around, and there floating lifelessly about five feet way were his baggy pant.  Beyond those were a gaggle of teenage girls giggling at him.

Sissi looked up and sighed again. Noticing Jeremie walking toward her she shook her head, “Jeremie I don’t know how you do it.” Jeremie looked at her confused, the last echoes of Kralliar’s curses fading away, “What did I do now?”

“The weirdest things always happened to you then, and now you’re molding a new generation of wako’s” Jeremie smiled at the raven haired woman, “Let’s just say it’s a talent of mine. Though I don’t think you have a great amount of room to talk.”

As if on a brilliantly timed que Kadic’s currant drama queen made her entrance. Chi Orrent stepped into the pool house in a flamboyant two piece swimsuit. The brilliant yellow glimmered in the light flicked off the ungluing pool surface. To add to this most extravagant picture she let her presence be known with a bellowing announcement, “Your future goddess has arrived!”

Sissi looked at Jeremie with a face displaying annoyance, defeat, and a since of pleading,”She’s not my fault. Just remember that, I have no clam to her.”

Jeremie chuckled, “Actually I was talking about Delphiki. I think he’s currently trying to muster his courage to talk to Grace. Odd kid, yes I realize that coming from me that must make him a very weird child.”

Jeremie wasn’t actually too far off. The very strange kid known as Julio Delphiki was hiding in the stands of the pool searching for his heart throb. Unfortunately all he had gotten to day was a picture of her in a swimsuit and her pushing the muscular dolt into the pool. After that she had left the pool and exited through the girls changing room. Sighing he stood up and started walking down the bleachers. However in his dream like state he didn’t see the small biocarbon bottle that lay on the steps. As he put the weight of his body on the bottle it slipped away. His foot went up in the air, shortly followed by his the rest of his body.  The stairs had a slight incline that allowed the water to run of them, and in this case Delphiki to experience the same process. The momentum from his fall took him all the way to the bottom of the steps and on into the pool. On the way down he caught a very haughty Chi Orrent and took her with him.

“Delphiki! You’re Dead!”

****

Jeremie’s eyes widened momentarily, then quickly they became narrow slights. Sliding his fingers delicately against the nanoboard he zoomed in on an anomaly in the molecular make of the apple he had been testing. About one hundred trips through the digitizer had yielded about the same result as five through the old scanner. That was good, but this alteration was something else.

“Kari, can you tell me the mass density of the experiment.”

“Unchanged, why?” Jeremie shook his head. It was only one proton in perhaps trillions, but it had disappeared. The Digitizer was meant to perfectly reconstruct an item, without flaw.  Somehow it hadn’t, one proton was missing. The atom that it was in was unchanged; it was still the same element, the same weight, the same number of electrons, but without one proton. This defied the very laws of chemistry that he was teaching right now.

“I don’t know Kari. Just when you thing you can take something for grated it changes on you.” Jeremie started to prepare for another test, but his stomach loudly protested. Grinning sheepishly to himself he excused himself from the computer. Kari might just be a program but Jeremie made every effort to make her feel like a real person. That was what her program was meant to do, truly personalize the computer, make it a more personal experience.

Stepping on the beaming pad he sent himself up to the entry hall of the factory. He marveled at how easy the beaming pad had been, and how difficult the Digitizer was in comparison. The same technology but by changing the application changed the whole dimension. An encapsulated energy stream against data, the natural world verses a virtual universe, how different things were.

****

Jeremie placed his plat on the table and turned to the large one way window that looked into the students’ area of the cafeteria. For now the students seemed content to eat and talked. Faintly Jeremie wondered how long the piece would last. Jeremie looked around the students kindly, his little gang was as spread out as ever, outside of Terra Machina they were so distant.

Jeremie remembered the bond that had so quickly appeared after his own discovery of Lyoko. Then again these kids didn’t of the threat of death, or the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. How typical, it almost sounded like some sort television show. Jeremie quietly laughed to himself.

“What they’re not even trying to kill anyone yet, why are you laughing?” Jeremie turned his head and looked across the table. Sissi sat backwards in a chair, her chin resting on her arms. She glanced over at Jeremie and smiled. Jeremie shook his head and turned back to the window. To took a second but Jeremie realized the peaceful sight that he had seen just a few seconds ago was gone. It had been replaced by chaos at its finest.

Erin was shamelessly crashing his head against the table in fits of laughter. Chi was in a state of free fall, what the kitchen staff tried to pass off as potatoes was splattered everywhere, and Grace had Delphiki by the neck. Randy and his sparing gang looked to be on the edge of war with another group on the other side of the room; both team s had a mass of projectiles ready. Grant was probably the most disturbing sight of them all, a smile was plastered on his face that could only mean bad things. The rest of the students were cowering under the tables hoping for shelter.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, I blinked.

***

Delmas sat behind his desk, the penguin game that had infuriated him so was forgotten. In his had rested a small chip. It looked like it belonged to some ancient computer. The gold circets glimmered in the afternoon sunlight. Gingerly he turned the chip over in his palm. Somehow it seemed precious, like if he lost it there would be consequences. Shaking his head he stood and left, slipping the chip into his pocket.

***

Herb stood shivering against one of the cold cement walls. The dark room seemed to suck the life right out of him, and the woman replaced it with fear. His legs were rooted in ice, and his arms tangle in web. Well not really but they might of well been. 

Sarah looked up that the whimpering creature that John had brought. She glanced over at John, giving him a pleading look. He sighed and rolled his eyes, “I you want him to wet his pants go right ahead. Just don’t start experimenting on him, remember the last time you tried that. “

Herb shuttered, the last time the witch had hooked him up to the machine that she was working on he had not regained consciousness for a week. Not to mention that he was probably not going to have kids any more, not that he would have had them in the first place. Sarah stood up a shook her long mahogany hair. It fell to about midway down her back, she had a figure that would cause most men to try everything to woo her, it made Herb want to faint.

She put her hand on the wall right next to Herb’s head. Leaning in close she smiled, “Hi” That did it, Herb slipped to the ground unconscious. Sarah was slightly pouted, “He’s not very much fun.”

John grimaced, he definition of fun was as twisted as it could get. He hadn’t asked her if she had a pet as a child, afraid she would produce the carcass of the pet out of now were. “No, John I never had a pet, and even if I did I wouldn’t kill it. Killing is boring, I like to play games.”

John mentally smacked himself for thinking about her in the room. She probably was recoding all the thoughts in the room, trying to find… whatever it was she was looking for. She sat down next to John, her overly tight cloths rustling slightly. She laid her head on John shoulder and drifted off to sleep. She may be a crazy psychopath, but she had chosen him to show her real personality to. For what reason he couldn’t guess.

Slowly she mumbled, “The epsil… Soon we… The epsil… The epsil… Fire…Call…Answere…All…”

***

Jeremie glanced up from the nanoboard, “let me guess, company?” Kari blinked innocently and nodded. Jeremie sighed, somehow his life really seemed to be taken from the TeleScreens. “I’ll call them”

It didn’t take much to wrangle up an attack force. Erin and Grant were doing something that Jeremie figured it might just be safer not to ask about. However Grace and Kraillar were ready to go, even if Randy was a bit scared of the fact that he would be in close proximity to a bellicose Grace.

***

 Grace shook of the disorienting feeling of digitization and looked around. Ice as far as the eye could see. Terrible crevasses dotted the landscape were the immense glacier had collapsed upon its own weight. Silver white, stony blue the whole icescape shimmered in the light of the digital sky. Even the data bits that whizzed through that chilly blue sky seemed to shiver in the digital cold.

“Well it’s not the swim suit but I guess that that will work.” Grace shot daggers from her eyes at the raggedly clad, dark skinned boy. The expression that flashed across Randy’s face pretty much said ‘you can try to kill me, but I’d probably enjoy it.’ Grace shivered.

“I hate cold. Professor where are they, I need something to beat into oblivion.” A electric buzz answered her. The blast of red digital energy streaked from a crevasse several meters to Kralliar’s right. The attack missed both of them and rocketed into the sky where it exploded with a deafening sound. A metallic ring and Randy held his longest blade naked and poised.

Grace concentrated on her fist trying to collect enough energy to do some damage to the monster that was crawling out onto the icy plane. The Zpider looked terrifying in the light. This was Randy’s first experience with the thing. Its diamond shaped head swung around to face the dark skinned boy.  From its jagged jaw a second blast streaked. Amazingly Randy’s blade got in the way of the attack. The streak of digital energy glanced of the huge knife and landed in a fissure several meters behind the children. A metallic screech filled the air and a second wave suggested a second Zpider had been killed by friendly fire.

The first monster was furious. It threw itself into the air. Swinging its legs it began to spin. Just as its underside was about to reach a favorable position for attack Grace lept at it, her gloved fist blazing with pink power. She was knocked out of the sky by one of the creatures swinging claws. She gasped in pain as she fell back on to the ground. Breathing hard she pushed herself from the icy ground.

Randy was flung next to her, the Zpider digging its claws into the ice as it reoriented itself to solid ground. A couple of knives whizzed from Kralliar’s hands, two glanced off the tough sides of the creature, but rest stuck in the fleshy legs.  A deafening screech came from the creature.  The creature whipped his head toward the children. Randy just saw something that looked like a biohazard sign glow before was blasted sky high.

The red energy hit just in front of them, and the explosion tossed them like rag dolls. Grace rolled along the ground but Randy was lifted into a long graceful arch. He fell, and didn’t stop falling, the ground passed him and he kept going. Shortly he relized that he must have been flung into one of the gapping fissures in the ice. He grabbed his blade and shoved it into the wall of the crevasse. Quickly he came to a grinding halt. Hanging from the blade he wondered how far he had fallen.

The digital sky didn’t eliminate the dark ominous blue ice here.  He pulled out a small knife and shoved it into the slick wall. Randy had once fantasized about being a mountain climber, but this was ridicules. Next to him came a fuzzy glow. Sanding in the air next to him was Kari. She giggled at him, “Need some help?”

Grinding his teeth Karlliar stared at her. “Okay if you don’t want it I won’t help you” Swallowing his shame Kralliar mumbled. Kari furrowed her eyebrows, “Sorry didn’t catch that.” Randy grumbled it again, “What?”

“I SAID HELP WOULD BE NICE!!!”

Kari stepped back a little, her shoes were a soft yellow. She shrugged, “Okay, but you don’t have to yell. Jeremie said you have some sort of ability, should help you get out of this and probably help Grace, too”

Randy looked at her suspiciously, “So how do I use this ability?” Kari smiled and Randy didn’t like that cheeky smile. Kari put her hand up to about shoulder height and shrugged innocently, “I don’t know, Jeremie said you needed to figure that out on your own. Bye!” She disappeared with a soft glow.  Randy glowered at where she had been, fat lot of help that had done him.

Randy yanked out the smaller knife and plunged it back into the gritty ice several inches above the previous mark. Pulling hard he managed to get his largest blade free. He slid it into its holster and retrieved a second smaller knife. He stabbed the ice a little above the other blade. Slowly he started to make his way up the near vertical face.

It was a slow painstaking effort but finally Randy could see the light of the steely blue sky. Sounds of the battle floated down to him. A myriad of electrical buzzing punctuated by deadly explosions echoed off the crevasse walls. Kralliar haled himself over the ledge back on to the battle field. Looking up he saw Grace weaving around three Zpiders. She fluidly dodged bolts of energy and claws. Dodging was about all she could do.

Swinging her arm Grace let fly several pink throwing stars. Then she disappeared, Randy looked around thinking he had lost her in the fray. She reappeared beside one of the belligerent creatures, her gloved hand blazing with pink energy. The electric magenta fist slammed in to the hard angular side of the Zpider. The creature rocked but remained fairly upright. Grant snapped out of his stupor suddenly realizing what was going on and the fact that he was hanging on to an ice ledge next to a near infinite drop. Groaning he heaved himself back on to the ice. Grace and the Zpiders were too busy to notice the muscular boy stand up.

As Randy placed his feet back onto solid ground he felt something odd. An electrical shiver spun its way around his body. It felt sort of like you expect static to feel. It finally settled on his back, just were his blade hung. Randy reached up to pull out the blade, but as he reached up the gem on his glove caught his eye. It was glowing, the yellow gem was pulsing a soft gold. Kralliar did what he always did with something that intrigued him, he poked it.

Everything changed, the staticy feeling rushed through out his body, filling every part of him with the warm electrical energy. His body even seemed to glow with the same light as the gem. Unsheathing his blade Randy found it to be shimmering with the same energetic glow.  Now the Zpiders took notice of the glowing boy. One fired a blast of red light at him. Kralliar dodged it easily. He ran toward the beast in his way he left a ghostly after image of himself. The images faded as he moved away. He was fast, very fast, he closed the half a kilometer gap in about 15 seconds.

The closest Zprider let loose a beam of light, but it was batted way by Krailiar’s glowing blade. The reflected blast streaked into the sky and exploded. The shock wave knocked Grace over, but the Zpiders had focused their attention on Randy.  The dark skinned glowing boy swung the huge knife wildly as one of the mechinoid creatures leapt toward him. The randomness of his swings paid off. The curved end of his blade cut a deep diagonal upon the creatures face.  The Zpider collapsed and shrieked in pain. It heffeted itself up and then exploded. The blue white explosion knocked the other two Zpiders, along with Grant, away.

 As one of the creatures stood up a small pink throwing star implanted itself in its head, and it too died in a similar blue white explosion. This left one Zpider. Grace turned to it and a glowing Randy stood to face it. Grace said, “Monkey boy, we go on three.” 

“Wait, on three or three and then go?”

The creature was charging another blast. Grace heard the start of the paralyzing buzz that had trapped her before. “On three. One. Two.”

 “Three” Randy rushed forward, his wake marked with a stream of after images. He held out his blade and made a long cut spanning the length of the creature’s body.  Its legs severed the Zpider fell to one side and died in the usual manner.

Grinning Randy sheathed his blade and put his hands on his hips triumphantly. He looked over at Grace and flinched. She was walking toward him a murderous grin on her face. The glow faded from around Kralliar’s body. 

Jeremie sighed as he heard the screams of Randy. These were defiantly not the Lyoko warriors, but at least they were entertaining.