Fandom: War of the Worlds

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me and I don't intend to make any money with them. There are no intentions to infringe the rights of the legal owners.

Hey there,

Not much to say except that Marq, this one's for you -- enjoy.

Okay I'm gonna keep this quick and dirty, cause, well the story's only like 3 pages long anyway. . .

Notes -- Just took the characters from WOTW out for a little joy ride, plus the addition of one original character -- Geiar. There's like 3 bad words, but they're not terrible, you probably won't even notice them. Beyond that, this story was just for grins. A little day dreaming about a RDOD free world, LOL.

Enjoy everyone

JEn

By Jenna.

"Arrrgh!" Norton spun in his chair to see Geiar pounding her fist against the desk.

"Problems?" With gritted teeth she turned to face her mentor and growled.

"I have been trying to chat with Marq for two hours now and RDOD keeps slamming her! This is ridiculous!" Standing from her seat, Geiar stalked across the room and pulled a slim black case off a shelf. Norton was amused, she often got frustrated with doing things the 'conventional' way, but it was usually good for a laugh. "Good for nothing, low tech, piece of binary shit!" Geiar spewed as she tore the case open and pulled its contents out. Norton began to back away from her. She returned to her desk with a head set, gloves and a small collection of cables trailing behind. Dropping the headset and gloves in her chair, she climbed under the desk with the cables and began re-routing connections.

"How can anyone expect to do anything when you're constantly being bumped? Huh? Tell me?" Geiar was pissed. From beside the desk, Norton watched as she peeled away cables from the thick braid of wiring, the Cray's umbilical cord to the world, he called it. Eventually, she re-emerged with a light gray layer of dust over her hair and shoulders. . .and still pissed. "Better technology, my ass. I'll show whatever is in there better technology!"

"Geiar what are you planning?" Norton asked already knowing what she was up to. A wild look was in her eye as she glanced back at him. She donned the gloves and headset. Pushing the connection into her scalp she pulled the fine cable from the headset and linked with her terminal. Last, she adjusted the microphone near her mouth and the narrow visor across her eyes.

"I'm going in." Her jaw was set, a scowl was on her face, and Norton knew better than to try and stop her.

"This I've got to see!" he exclaimed, "Gertrude, home base." For the first time in a while, Geiar smiled. It made her proud to know he was curious. Typing in a few last commands, the whole system relinquished itself to her control. She was ready. Standing, she took in a deep breath and braced herself for the rush of entering the digital world.

Geiar shut her eyes tightly and grimaced. "I forgot how much this stings," she said through clenched teeth as she passed into another realm. From his own terminal, Norton watched Geiar's progress through cyberspace. This world doesn't really exist, he had argued. That is, until she showed it to him. Glittering digital horizons stretched out to infinitely as streams of data passed around her like currents of wind.

Turning around in a circle, it took her a moment to get oriented, then Geiar was off. Reaching into the void, she produced a glowing sphere, dug her fingers into it and cracked it open. Norton split his attention between watching the screen and watching Geiar. She was standing before him and moving as though she were actually holding the object he saw on the screen. In this world it was a pantomime and nothing more, she reached into the air and retrieved nothing. But in that world, her world, she was quickly obliterating any limitations the dimensional world had on her.

The sphere opened and fell away like shriveled petals on a dying flower. Inside a smaller ball of light and electricity snapped and sparked as it floated before her. She passed her hands over it and the image rippled into a plane of water. Geiar smiled. Norton was amazed. Dipping one finger into the water she began stirring the odd liquid until she created a whirlpool. As it grew, a thin finger of water twisted its way down from the pool pointing toward some invisible floor. The funnel continued to stretch until eventually Geiar reached deep into the maelstrom and turned it inside out. Snapping the water rope like a whip, it stretched into the void and connected with Marq's ISP. Instantly, Geiar was hyperlinked across space.

Geiar lurched forward. "Woah, what a rush," she gasped as her other hand instinctively covered her stomach. She appeared at the base of a large glowing blue dome. The omnipresent streams of data passed easily through the dome yet when she touched it, it resisted her. Geiar was stuck. There was no way in, she thought.

"Aren't you data, too?" Norton inquired as her lips curled into a devilish grin. He wasn't sure she could hear him, but it didn't stop him from asking. Slowly, Geiar brought her hands together as though she were praying, took a deep breath then pushed them forward and away from her body. Looks like something Harrison would do, he joked to himself. Then she raised them in a circle above her head and when she dropped them again, Norton watched as her digital figure broke apart and fell like confetti. The data confetti swarmed around itself for a moment then passed easily through the blue dome. Once inside, she easily rebuilt herself.

Geiar began searching for the culprit. Remembering what Paul had told her about cover, she tried to remain as nondescript as possible. It was very easy and incredibly difficult at the same time. This was a nearly empty world ruled by the cold laws of logic. It was populated by mathematical animals who knew nothing of emotion. 1's and 0's ruled their world, on and off, there was nothing else. Yet given extraordinary circumstances, they could turn their heads and witness something they did not understand. Geiar was just that, as long as they did not notice her she was fine, but to be noticed would cause errors, logic errors, and system failure. The whole network would fall like a house of cards as the data feverishly tried to assimilate her into their understanding. She'd be trapped in the crash.

The trick was not to draw any attention to herself, and they'd never know she was there. At first nothing seemed amiss until she was nearly hit head on with an out of control kernel of information. But she was able to dodge it as it flew past her head and out of the dome heading into virtual oblivion. Hiding behind a tower of spooled information, she peeked around again to see if anything more were coming her way. All was quiet.

Once again, Geiar reached into nothing and produced another sphere. This time when it peeled away, Norton watched as a flow chart was laid out before her. Small oddly labeled boxes were lined up in rows as Geiar began searching through them. Finding one that looked interesting, she pulled it off of the face of the chart and let it float before her. Wrapping her fingers around it, she pried open the box and looked inside. Nope, wrong one, she thought as she put the box away again. Second time, she found something more interesting.

"Hi Marq : ) ," Geiar said as the words appeared in the AOL IM window still anchored on her monitor.

"Where did you get off to?" her friend answered back. "I got RDOD'd again. . .<SCREAM!!!>"

"I know, trying to do something about it. . ."

"Huh?"

"Don't worry, just having a little fun ; )"

"Gods help me. . ."

"LOL"

Norton laughed at the transmission. But even he didn't know what Geiar had in mind, he was just along for the ride. Geiar lifted the box away from the chart and considered it. Hmmm. . . .I wonder. . . Reaching for the box's edges, she stretched it into a doorway she could step through. Exiting out the other side, Geiar watched unobserved as a tiny, seriously tiny, man hopped around maniacally before her.

"Pull!" he shouted as a stream of data flew past only to be blasted out of the sky with a shot of electricity. He laughed and Geiar's jaw dropped. This was RDOD? No way, this couldn't be. He might be a foot tall! She watched the little man dance around then produce a giant tennis racket and swing at another hapless stream of data.

"30-Love! A ha!" He taunted as the racket disappeared into nothing. Okay, great, I found him. Now what? Geiar watched as more data headed this way. "Ginsu Gold! It slices! It dices! It even cuts a hardened Military connection!" Geiar's eyes widened as she recognized the source of his next victim. Sorry, General, she thought. "And look, it still slices a tomato with ease!" Geiar shook her head, this guy just had to be taken out if only to put an end to his awful jokes.

Across the country an aggravated cry escaped General Wilson's office as he got bumped. "Dammit! Happened again!" Angry at being RDOD's latest victim, he starts indiscriminately hitting keys in a vain attempt to get back online. "How is this easier than interoffice mail?" He reached for his phone and called in the cavalry, his secretary. They both bent over the computer and glared at it as though it were a delinquent child.

In the lab, Norton rested his forehead in his hands and shook his head as the bad jokes continued to fly. "Pull!" the diminutive demon shouted again. Hasn't got much of a repertoire has he? Norton noted as he heard the tell tale, door slamming sound of Marq being bumped yet again. Reaching for a small notebook he added one more tick mark to an almost full page, snickered, then returned to his observation.

Geiar clasped her hands together then slowly began to pull them apart as a small ball of energy began glowing between her fingers. It grew as her hands separated until it was the size of a beefsteak tomato. Taking aim at the demon, she pitched it at him and nailed him in the back of his head splattering digital tomato juice all over him. The demon spun around and glared at her. Quickly she formed another one and threw it. RDOD dodged and sent a blast of electricity her way. She blocked it and fired back, the digital tomatoes forming quicker and quicker until she had an almost endless supply at her disposal. RDOD panicked as he began to lose ground.

Running from his attacker he cowered behind a data stack and hoped the evil creature tossing tomatoes at him would find her fun elsewhere. He wasn't so lucky. Geiar ran around the bend and saw RDOD skulking around the stack. She looked at the demon, then at the tall stack he cowered behind and it was her turn to wear the maniacal smile. Pushing on the stack it began to sway. RDOD stood in horror at it's base, caught like future roadkill in a Mac truck's headlights. Geiar continued to push and soon the stack spilled, crushing RDOD beneath it.

"What the hell?" General Wilson bellowed as the dreaded blue screen of death scrolled onto his monitor. "What did I do?"

Geiar climbed to the summit of the toppled stack and surveyed the damage. Heh. . .that'll take him a while to get out of. . . And just to add insult to injury. . . She looked around then pulled her flow chart out again. Straddling the fallen data, she studied the chart until she found what she was looking for. "Hmm. . .Napster, wonder if they're still around. . ." Reaching into the Napster box, she looked into their website and proceeded to initialize a download. Looking up, she saw a flood of data heading her way and Geiar began to run. Returning to her earlier doorway, Geiar passed through once again as the download hit the fallen stack.

"Norton, get me back!" Geiar barked. It was the first words she had spoken to him since this whole adventure began and he saw that she was quickly losing her strength. Racing to her keyboard, Norton entered a pre-set command and Geiar felt her body being pulled through cyberspace. Her knees began to buckle as she leaned forward for the desk top.

"It's alright, I got you," Norton said gently as he reached out for her as she tumbled into his lap. For a minute he let her relax there then began disconnecting her hardware as Geiar came back around.

"Thanks," she said quietly, embarrassed by her final weakness.

"No problem. . .what did you finally do?" he asked as she reached a shaky hand toward the keyboard to show him. Three keystrokes later, Kim Wilde began pumping through the speakers.

"You keep me hanging on?" He asked, amused by her choice of music.

"I wanted him to have something to remember me by." Geiar answered wryly as the elevator doors opened and Harrison walked into the lab. His jaw dropped when he saw her sitting rather comfortably in Norton's lap. Slowly, Geiar got up as Norton flashed his friend a devilish look.

"I'll take care of the equipment. Why don't you go take a nap, you're exhausted," Her mentor suggested. She passed Harrison on the way and he followed her to the elevator. He didn't know quite what to say.

"I was going to ask you if you wanted some company later," he said quietly as the doors opened and she boarded the elevator.

"Not tonight, I've got a headache."

End.