The Worlds Beyond: part 3
Ages:
01- around 10 or 11 in our years
10- 12 or 13
11- 14 or 15
* * *
Hack and Slash were cruising along the edge of the Firewall, aimlessly looking for somewhere to hide.
"How about here?"
"Nope."
"Here?"
"Too dark."
"Here?"
"Too light."
"O.K, here then?"
"Hmmm..."
Slash watched Hack eagerly.
"Nah."
Slash's usually amniable temper evaporated from all the recent strain he had been through. "Well PICK SOMEWHERE ALREADY!"
"Shhh! Quiet! What if someone *hears* us?!"
"Oh, don't worry, there's no-one down here. They're all at the front or in the game cube." Slash patted the cube right next to him.
"Oh yeah, the game cube..."
They both paused, and looked to the right.
"The game cube?!"
"Uh oh..."
"We've got to get outta here! If the game leaves and the boss finds us we're goners!"
"How did we get so close to it?!"
"Oh, I don't know, I wasn't looking were I was going!"
"Well me neither!"
"Let's get goi-"
But before they could run away, a shaky voice rang out "Wa-wa-wa-wa-rning, game corruption. Wa-wa-warning, g-g-g-game cor-r-ruption."
The ground started to rumble and move.
"Hey!"
"What's-"
"-going-"
"-on?!"
The cube walls twisted, and a bolt of light from the cube went rushing past Hack and Slash, hitting a wall. A crumpled form fell from it, unnoticed for the moment.
"Aggh!"
"Hey!"
The game cube straigtened and left with a flash. Hack and Slash turned pale (sort of) when the saw their boss standing near them. Megabyte had a frustrated snarl on his face, which grew no better once he saw Hack and Slash.
"What are YOU two doing HERE?" he practically hissed. The binomes from the game gulped and backed away slowly.
"Uh-" replied Hack in a very small voice, suddenly *very* aware of the fact that Megabyte was faster than him, had a set of very long, very sharp retractable claws, and looked as if he wanted to delete someone.
"We were just..."
Slash frantically looked around. This was not going well. He backed away a bit, and bumped into the person lying on the ground. In a burst of inspiration, he picked it up, and said, "Well, the gamecube was going funny, and-"
Hack picked up the line. "-We were just on our way to the front lines, when suddenly this, uh..."
"Person..."
"Thing..."
"Sprite..."
"Whatever..."
"There was this light or something and it came out of the game..."
"And it landed here..."
"So we flew down to investigate..."
"And it looks like a sprite..."
"And, uh, it looked kind of important..."
Megabyte's features became slightly less angry. "Fine. Leave it here, then return to the front."
"Yes boss." Hack and Slash zipped away as quickly as possible.
"Herr doctor?" Megabyte said without turning around. "What exactly happened in there?"
"Well, uh..." the binome composed himself. "It appears that the third Users entrance, combined with the machinery and the tear, crashed the game, with the interesting side effect of transporting a few game sprites into Mai- er, Megaframe."
Megabyte walked over to the sprite. It, or she actually, was lying in a heap on the ground. She appeared to be around 11. He picked her up. Strange. The clothes the sprite was wearing didn't seem fit for a medieval dungeon type game. There was something...wrong...about her. He couldn't place it. One of the reasons was that she had no icon. All of the AI sprites were supposed to have icons.
She coughed a few times, then moaned. Megabyte let go of her. He then blinked and looked at his hand. A few drops of red were scattered on it. The sprite stumbled, but managed not to fall again, leaning against the wall. Where Megabyte had touched her shoulder, a red stain was spreading across her shirt...
Red?!
The binomes murmured uneasily. The girl appeared to be a sprite, but red? Energy was supposed to be blue! And it didn't even look like energy. Energy glowed slightly and was different shades of color.
What kind of a sprite bled red energy?
"Oh man...what happened..." the girl managed weakly. She opened her eyes. "W-Where am I..." her voice trailed off as she took in her surroundings. "Erk." she managed, eyes bugging out.
The binomes and virus waited for a moment. The sprite seemed completely in shock at where she was.
"Erk..." she managed again. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, stopped, and stared at her hand, saying the first complete sentence they had heard from her. "Erk. What the...What the HELL happened to my hand?! Where AM I? Why do I look like a computer graphic?" She looked at Megabyte and, if anything, her eyes seemed to bug out even more. "And what the hell are YOU?!"
"You're new here, aren't you?" one of the binomes piped up.
"Huh? Hey, a...talking...whatever you are." she replied blearily. "How cute."
Megabyte turned his head and said quietly over his shoulder "Get an ABC over here. I want her taken to the Tor later for a PID extraction."
The binomes he had addressed saluted, then left.
"So, uh..." the sprite said, still in shock, "My name's Jill. Um. Those guys work for you?" she gestured to the binomes that remained.
"Yes, they do." the virus said, noticing the detached way the girl was acting.
"Oh, that's nice." She slumped down the wall, and started mumbling, "Oh God oh God this has got to be a dream this can't be real oh no..."
"Why not?" Megabyte said, puzzled at her denial. "I assumed all game sprites knew that there was a place outside of the games."
"Games? What do you mean, games? Are we talking about COMPUTER games here? What IS this?" Jill coughed again, and slid down the wall some more. "And what," she continued, "is a sprite?"
At this, everyone stared at her.
"Do you mean to tell me," Megabyte said slowly, "That not only are you unaware of where you come from, you don't even know what your own species is?"
"What? Of course I know what I am!" Jill said, somewhat irritated. "I'm a human being!" Jill looked at his blank stare and frowned. "And who and what are you?"
"My name? Megabyte. I'm a virus." He replied casually.
Jill goggled. "A virus? As in computer virus?"
"You aren't going to try to deny my existence are you?" Megabyte replied dryly. "Only someone's already tried to today and it can get quite annoying."
Jill just shook her head. There appeared what seemed to be a seven foot, shiny blue, deep and suave voiced, English speaking VIRUS standing over her. Weird. But certainly interesting though. Jill's vision blurred. She was aware that her mind wasn't exactly working rationally. "I think..." she said slowly, gazing at her shoulder in horror, "I think I'm losing quite a bit of blood..." she collapsed.
Megabyte stepped back a bit, surprised. The ABC arrived, and a couple of binomes popped out. "I've changed my mind. Take her to the infirmary and patch up her shoulder first. Then take her to the PID extraction chamber, but don't do anything with her until I say so."
The binomes put Jill on a stretcher, then into the cruiser.
"It should be interesting to talk with her a bit before infecting her." Thought Megabyte in the privacy of his mind.
***
Jake lay on the ground. He didn't open his eyes, but he was aware of voices.
"What the-"
"He came out of the gamecube-"
"He's hurt! Someone call an ambulance!"
"I don't know him do you?"
He wondered at the voices. Gamecube? What did they mean?
"O.K., son, we're going to take you to the Principal Office now... everything is going to be fine, don't worry."
Jake passed out.
***
Something similar was happening to Kevin. He hadn't woken up yet. His twisted body lay in a back alley somewhere in level 31. If it weren't for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest he would have looked dead. He would not be found by anyone soon.
Most binomes and sprites alike were afraid to go out into the streets, Firewall or no Firewall. They had seen how it flickered when the gamecube left. It was dimmer than before. The light of its walls flickered eerily over the city, promising doom. When that light went out... Kevin's breath hung in the air.
Moaning, he struggled awake and sat up in the dark alley.
"What the..." his breath caught in his throat as he took in the scenery. "Oh my GOD..."
***
Dot's awakening was not pleasant. She found a multitude of problems in the Principal office, including the ever weakening Firewall, the readings from the recent gamecube, and the strange sprite they had found outside the Principal Office.
Dot stood inside an examining room. The same one, in fact, where they had tried to figure out what was wrong with Enzo when Megabyte tried to take over his brain, and where Bob had glitch examined when the Codemaster locked it up.
Now, a young boy lay the examining table. The sound of his ragged breathing filled the office. Dot stared at him for a nanosecond. He looked a bit older than Enzo, but much younger than herself. His light brown, messy hair seemed finely textured. Dot's own hair was a lump of shiny black wires, but with *his* hair, every single strand was separate. It looked odd. The boy's rumpled clothes weren't in any style she had ever seen.
"He was outside the Principal Office, Ms. Matrix." a doctor informed her briskly. "He only seemed bruised a bit. Several witnesses said he came out of the gamecube itself before it left. We noted the game corruption, and it's entirely possible that Megabyte is responsible for this. The game sprite hasn't woken up yet, but seems O.K."
Dot's mouth tightened. Yet another life ruined by Megabyte. "Thank you. When do you think he'll wake up?"
"It should be any nanosecond now."
As if on cue, the boy stirred.
"Man..." he said. "What HIT me?"
He looked up at Dot and the binome.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
He screamed.
***
"What a fascinating sprite!" the doctor said, reading a few vid-windows on her. He and his medical team had bandaged her shoulder, and fixed a few other scrapes and bruises as well. He put down a complicated looking tool and set it on the table next to the vid-windows. "I hope lord Megabyte will let us do an autopsy on her if she happens to die in battle." He mused.
"Let us hope that is not soon, hmmm Herr Doctor?"
"L-lord Megabyte!" the binome whirled around and almost fell over. He hastily bowed. "Please forgive me, I did not hear you come in, we've prepared her as you asked."
"Good."
Megabyte stepped up to where Jill was laying on a horizontal padded board. She lay in a dark, circular room, illuminated by a few strong lights and a row of computers at one end of the room. In the middle of those was a chamber that looked somehow...frightening. It had smooth glass walls, complicated wires and panels, and a heavy lock on the door. Jill wasn't tied up, simply because there was no way for her to escape even if she wanted to. The doctor pressed a button, and jolted her to an upright position.
"Huh?" she said. She slid off the board and onto her feet. "Oh no...you guys are still here...this ISN'T a dream."
Jill took in the dark, circular medical room, starring at everything, and ending up at Megabyte and the doctor. "Okay..." she said slowly. "Uh...thanks for fixing up my shoulder."
"You're welcome." Megabyte replied. "Is there anything else that you need treated?"
"Um, no, thanks. Er, you don't happen to know how I got...uh, here, do you? Am I REALLY inside a computer?"
"What did you expect?" asked Megabyte, somewhat amused. It was as if the child came from another world entirely.
"Wires? Circuit boards? Not a whole civilization. My God. THIS is what's inside a computer? A whole little world?" Jill looked at Megabyte in growing amazement. "This is impossible. This is...well, pretty cool actually but computers are just a bunch of machines that you can play games on, not a tiny city!"
"What do you mean, playing games?" A growing suspicion was making its way through the virus' mind.
"If you'll excuse me for a moment..." Megabyte said. He walked over to the doctor.
"Herr doctor, do you happen to have the species of this...whatever she is?"
The doctor punched up a few vid-windows. "Yes, I THINK so. I didn't bother checking myself. I assumed she was simply a sprite." He tapped a panel. A vid-window popped up, and a computer's voice rang out through the dark room.
"FILE TYPE- USER."
***
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!!!" Jake was taking his journey a bit less gracefully. He scrambled off the table and backed away from Dot and the doctor, who watched, shocked at his reaction. "WHAT THE HELL *ARE* YOU? GET AWAY! OH MY *GOD*!!!" He stood there, panting, eyes wide. His body was tense, and he looked as if he was going to pass out again any nanosecond.
"Whoa! It's okay! Really!" Dot realized that moving from the game to Mainframe so unexpectedly must be a shock for him. She would have to calm him down "I'm afraid you're going to have to get used to a new way of life here. We know you're from the games, but you have to trust us. We've met game sprites before."
He settled down a bit, but still looked frightened. "Games?" he said. "What are you talking about? I don't come from any game."
Dot was taken aback. She had assumed he was a game sprite. Then she remembered: The hacked into game line. He might be from another system. Her mouth hardened again. This time Megabyte had dragged in someone from another city. "Where are you from, then?" she asked, trying to sound calming. "And what's your name?"
"Jake." He replied weakly. "And I'm from Toronto."
***
Across the city, something happened.
It wasn't obvious. No one noticed it. It mainly happened in the lower levels and Lost Angles. It certainly wouldn't have made any sense to anyone watching, but since no one except the nulls were, it was okay.
All across Mainframe, every single null lifted its head, and looked first at the Tor, the principal office, level 31, and back to the principal office again. And then, in unison, so high no one could hear it, they all screamed.
***
"I don't BELIEVE it." Breathed the doctor, looking over the charts in excitement. "It's true, she IS a User! This is INCREDIBLE!" no one was paying much attention to him as the binomes at the computers, Megabyte, and a few guards stared at Jill in shock.
"I've always prefered Gamer myself." Jill said non-plussed.
"You look just like a sprite!"
"Again, what's a sprite?"
"You don't know?"
As Jill continued her conversation with the binome, Megabyte stopped listening and thought.
A User... that would explain her surprise at where she was. It had been speculated, (and now proven) that Users didn't know what was inside their systems. That would also mean she knew nothing about gamecubes, sprites, or, for that matter, not much about viruses. A disturbing though flickered across his mind. Viruses- they were constructs of the Users themselves- this girl or any other of the Users they had traced in mainframe could be his very own programmer...
He shook his head. The idea of somebody knowing his circuitry, inside and out, chilled him slightly. It was far better to imagine his programmer as some far off, semi-omnipotent being. And Jill had called herself a gamer, which probably meant she specialized in dowloading gamecubes into her system.
"Lord Megabyte?" said the doctor. "I believe you might want to see this..."
Megabyte walked over, glancing at the User. He was amused to see her absorbed in a conversation with a group of binomes who were asking her questions hesitantly, warily keeping a large distance away from her. He turned his attention back to the binome. "Yes? What is it Herr doctor?"
The one punched up a few vid-windows. "We have a serious problem. From these readings, the longer she stays in her..."User" format, the sooner her powers will start to show up." He frowned and did something to the windows. A few charts flashed onscreen. "We have to convert her to a different format soon, or there will be tears all OVER the place from the extra power surges she'll generate."
Megabyte had been intrigued as soon as he heard the word power. "What can she do, exactly? And could we control her?" he asked.
The doctor muttered, "One moment please, my lord...here we go." Bringing up yet another chart onto the screen, the binome looked at it, gulped, and paled.
"Well?" said Megabyte, annoyed and curious about the reaction.
"Sufficient to say, my lord," the one said in a worried and subdued tone, "that there is no way we could possibly contain her for long with our current equipment. And if she figures out how to access her abilities, well," he laughed nervously, "Technically she should be able to do what Users have always done...move and delete files, download game cubes, etc..."
They both turned and stared at the cheerful looking girl. Jill seemed to be adjusting to her situation rapidly. She was looking around, seemingly amazed and delighted at her surroundings. It was hard to imagine that such a normal looking person could be so dangerous. Until you remembered the gamecubes, and how much damage they did.
"What format did you say we could turn her into?" Megabyte asked after a moment of silence.
The binome let out his breath, unaware that he had been holding it till then. He had been half afraid that Megabyte would try to use the girl the same way he had Hexadecimal, which could have led to disastrous results.
Already her presence was disrupting some of the instruments, though she seemed oblivious to this.
"Well, there's sprite, obviously, but from the list here, apparently she could, in theory, convert to a virus, binome...any format we want, really."
Megabyte drummed his fingers. He should probably erase her. Power not under his control was the one thing he couldn't stand. But if she was converted to a sprite, she would lose all her powers, and he DID need a sprite in some areas. And think of the information she held! She was a bit young but that was all the more time for him to mold her into a soldier. He would keep her around for now.
"Sprite." Megabyte declared. "Prepare the chamber."
The PID extraction chamber could actually be used for many other things, but was mostly feared for its primary purpose of breaking into and stealing Personal ID's.
He turned his attention to Jill once more. She was standing there, completely aware of the danger she was in, chatting with the guards. Megabyte narrowed his eyes.
"Enjoy it while you can, child." He thought.
***
Kevin had come to terms with his new reality more easily than Jill or Jake. He walked around, admiring the graphics in the place. He had come to a sidewalk running around a block, with a rail one side to prevent someone falling to the ground below. Kevin followed it, not knowing where else to go. The place was deserted. His shoes crunched on the walk, making a small and lonely sound. He shivered. This was definitely not a good place to stay for too long. As soon as he found someone-
His thoughts were interrupted by a vid-window suddenly popping up in front of him.
"Please pick your format for reconfigurment," said a soothing female voice.
"What the-" Kevin stared. A window similar to his computer screen was floating in the air. "What do you mean?" he asked, confused.
"You are currently in a very unstable state." Replied the voice. "Please pick your desired format for reconfiguration. Or if you prefer, the most suitable format can be auto-detected for you."
A list of names appeared on the screen. When he touched a name, it was highlighted. There were all sorts of things-data sprites, game sprite, high density sub-routine...unsure, Kevin said, "Uh-auto detect, please."
"One moment." The voice chimed. The window disappeared. "Format detected. Some discomfort will follow."
"What? Wait a second, I-" Kevin was interrupted again, as he was suddenly engulfed by a light for a moment. He screamed, and passed out again, a whirlwind of pain storming through his mind.