Written by Joshua Falken
Chapter 1 - Quantum Alteration
In the soft light of the Main Room of the System Mainframe's Principal Office, now known as War Room, a sprite sighed after reading the last report. Command.Com and Commandant Dot Matrix didn't like anything than she read.
Dot jumped when she felt a hand on her left shoulder. It was Matrix:
"Hey, what's going on, Sis?"
She sighed:
"Daemon almost got to break the Transportation Line between the Systems of the Sub-Net 216." Dot stood up and walked in direction of the door.
He bit the lower lip to control his rage, while he followed his sister. That meant that Daemon had discovered a way to detect the AVERT Netships that made the connection between several systems... if she could do that, she had practically won the war.
"But did she get to stop the shipments of supplies?"
"No. Your idea of netships convoys worked very well." Dot said.
Matrix shrugged.
"Well... all that time stuck in military strategy games was good for something."
Dot gave a sad smile for Matrix, when she stopped and leaned against the wall of the corridor, her gloved hand on her forehead.
"Are you alright?!" Matrix asked, concerned.
"Yes... I'm fine. It was just a dizziness feeling."
"Dot, have you been sleeping lately? Or at least resting?" He asked distrustful. He knew his sister very well.
"Just a little." She admitted.
Shaking his head, Matrix warned her:
"Sis, you have go sleep once in a while. I mean, I know that you are strong and that you have a lot of energy, but you doesn't have transfinite levels of energy, like Hex!"
Dot laughed.
"What's so funny?" He asked, surprised.
"I remembered how many times *I* had to give that speech to make *you* go to sleep!"
Matrix mumbled. She had made a point.
"And Bob? When will he return?"
"Today. He finished the training of the volunteers in System Berkeley and Mouse finished the security firewall for the system ".
System Berkeley was the newest ally of AVERT, and it was needing a task force to protect the system urgently.
Dot and Matrix talked a little more, until the System Voice echoed:
"Warning, Incoming Game! Warning, Incoming Game!"
"Defrag! I gotta go! And Dot... Rest a little, ok?" He asked his sister, before going to the game with a worried expression in his face.
Some time then, Dot was back to the War Room, monitoring the progress of the game.
"And then?" She asked Sperck.
"They are already in the last level. The User is still in the third."
The Command.Com caught herself biting the point of the thumb, in a sign of nervousness. Knowing that it was a somewhat easy Game, and that AndrAIa and Matrix were, perhaps, the best game specialists, due to their "field training", that Mainframe could want did not matter. She only got to breathe again when the Game ended. A perfectly comprehensible fact, considering what had happened during the beginning of the War against Megabyte...
A Vidwindow opened up:
"Hi, Dot! How are you?" Bob smiled. The Port of Mainframe was behind him.
"Bob! Did you already arrive?" His arrival was anticipated for two miliseconds later.
"Mouse discovered a shortcut." He gave a grin of "You-know-how-Mouse-is". "Where are Matrix and AndrAIa?"
"Inside of the Game, like you could ima..."
"Game Over! Game Over!"
"I think they aren't there anymore." Bob answered.
She smiled.
"I'm already going there."
As soon as the door of the War Room closed, Dot began to feel dizzy. Some nanos then, the indisposition had passed.
Half milisecond after that, they were gathered in the Core Control Room, the safest place of Mainframe. Bob had already told them about the volunteers in the System Berkeley, and now Mouse told about the System's defense shields.
"...They are not exactly the last version, but they will take care of the message."
"Thank you, Mouse. And about the protection of the transportation line?"
The hacker made a wry face. The protection was based on cryptography and hidden file force-field generation. The first part didn't have a problem, but the second one...
"It was the best possible." She answered dryly.
Everybody knew that that was true. There was a finite number of possible variations for the MS-DOS/Neumann Equation, and Mouse had already created most of them, and each version was more and more close of the previous one.
Dot closed up the meeting. Everybody stood up and went home. It was already end of cycle.
Dot sighed, revealing her fatigue. Bob kissed her in the neck and hugged her for some moments, knowing the responsibility that she had on her shoulders, before asking.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Dot couldn't avoid looking around of the interior of her apartment. It was a cozy, but at the same time, roomy apartment. Too roomy, she thought. It was the apartment where her family had lived before the Twin City Accident, and where she and Enzo had also lived after that. Now she lived alone there.
"Dot?" Bob asked, concerned.
"Huh? Oh, sorry! I was only thinking." She had a sip of hot chocolate. "Do you had any news about your family?", she asked carefully.
Bob closed the eyes and leaned in the sofa, a tense expression in his face. "None. I hope they are OK, but remain without know..."
She put the gloved hand in his shoulder, to assure him. Since the beginning of the war, Bob had lost the contact with his parents, what was extremely preoccupying for him, since they were in the crossfire line: his father, David Challenger, was simulation controller in the system NCSA-NSSL and his mother, Veronica Overdrive, was a Top-Level Guardian. Although he has not received any indication, he feared that his mother was now under Daemon's control.
"Well, if they really are just a tenth than you told me, Daemon will have serious problems."
He couldn't avoid a smile at that thought.
"You're right." He said, looking at her.
They were in silence for some time.
Dot looked at for the window. Everything outside was calm, silent. No one who saw that could suppose the danger that they were facing...
"And how is Phong?", Bob asked. "In your message, you said that he had left the UTI."
"He is better now, but he still needs special care."
Although his mind was sharp as always, Phong began to show the signs of the aging. His vision was more and more weak, and he had suffered a core.com attack. Now he was interned in Mainframe General Hospital, recovering from an energy line bypass surgery.
"I understand." Bob stood up. "I think I have to go now." He said, a little embarrassed.
Dot was in silence for a nanosecond.
"Well, it's still early." She said.
It was not. And both knew about that. Their feelings asked that they were together in the downtime, but the prudence said the opposite.
"Well, what about a good-night kiss?" Bob asked, to try ease the atmosphere a little.
She agreed.
In the moment in that their lips touched, we can say that they ordered the prudence to shut its mouth.
"Incoming Message! Incoming Message!"
The sound of the vidwindow, transmitted by the plug in her right ear, woke up Dot. Sleepy, she noticed that she still hugged Bob. She looked at the clock at her side. "5,034 ut!?", she thought, "Who would call at this milisecond of the morning?!"
With some reluctance, she released the boyfriend from the hug, and got up of the bed. "It had better be *really* important!" she thought, a little surprise for her irritation's intensity.
The message just consisted of one line: "Project Rainbow successful. Experiment with high energy sprite today. Dr. Iridium is the volunteer."
Her chin fell and she read the message again.
Yes, the message continued the same that she had read previously.
In a fracton of a nanosecond, she shook Bob for wake him up. "Bob! Wake up!"
"What?" He asked, still sleeping.
"They got the new equation."
When he heard that, he become completely awake, with a surprised expression in his face.
"But I thought..."
"That they were still in the theory." Dot completed. "Yes, I thought that too. But it seems that they got a quantum leap in the process."
Quickly, both they got ready to go to the Principal Office. Dot stopped in the door of the bedroom, her face showed a small uncertainty.
"What happened?"
A beat.
"Wouldn't it be better we went separated? Just in the case?"
A longer beat.
"You are right. I'll find you there."
Bob gave her a fast kiss on the cheek and teleported himself. As soon as the light of the process disappeared, Dot shook the head and she said, before leaving in direction to the Principal Office:
"What a mess!"
Dot and Bob arrived at the reception room of the Pentium Institute, where a green-skinned, black-haired sprite awaited them. He used a white lab coat and a red tie. He scratched the mustache, nervously.
"Hi Dot. Hello Bob."
"Hi Mr. Matrix."
"Hi Dad. Can we go to your office?"
vLater, they were in Dr. Andrew Matrix's office, director of the Institute. It was a small, but functional office. The disorganized table showed that Dot had inherited from her *mother* the habit for organization."Is it serious? Them really developed a new hidden file force-field equation?"
"Well... yes."
"You don't seem very secure." Bob commented.
"Well, the fact is that Project Rainbow is considered top secret, therefore my knowledge can only be based in that Dr. Cisco and Dr. Iridium told me about it. They think they have a definitive solution, but..." He stopped, seeming a little insecure.
"But?..."
Dr. Matrix decided to continue.
"Well, it is just a feeling. When a project begins accelerated in this way, there are usually problems. It is true that the tests with inert data and with a lieutenant binome who had presented himself as volunteer, didn't indicate any collateral effect, but, even so, I believe that they are going too fast!"
"Even so, I believe that they are going too fast!" Dot remembered her father's words, while she heard Dr. Cisco, a one binome, 60 hours old more or less. He described the basics of the invisibility process, but he was deliberately evasive about the details of the same.
"As you can see, the data don't show collateral effects due to the hidden file field generation..."
Dot's attention wandered to the center of the laboratory, where they prepared for the test with a high energy sprite. Dr. Hewlett Iridium was doing a last check in the instruments. She was one of the best mathematicians of AVERT, but Dot thought the doctor had an ambition in generating results that could endanger the project. But everything indicated that that had not happened.
"Attention. Test Rainbow-beta in final stage of preparation." One of the assistants announced.
"Do you want to accompany the test?" Cisco asked.
"Yes."
Moments later, everything was ready. Hewlett was standing up, in the center of a platform, between two special eletromagnets. At that same moment, in the Port of Mainframe, a Netship was being prepared for a field test of the new equation, in a covered dock. The countdown had begun.
"Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Activation!"
The eletromagnets began to emit neon blue force lines around the volunteer and the eletromagnets themselves. Hewlett seemed to be going through the reboot procedure several times.
"Vital systems nominal." She informed.
The force lines became weaker and Hewlett began to disappear. The assistants pointed for the platform, excited. The medical monitors didn't accuse any alteration.
"Great!" Cisco exclaimed. They had did it! There it was the final evidence!
On that moment, an alarm began to sound.
"Huh?!"
"Wait!" Hewlett yelled. "Something is wrong!" She lost the strength in
her legs and fell."Turn off the field generator!"
At that moment, a silver stream of energy broke out in the center of the platform, deleting Dr. Hewlett Iridium. The energy began to be thrown in streams for all the sides, deleting some of the lab assistants. The others ran to protect themselves.
A stream discharged in the direction of Cisco. Dot leaped, in a reflex action, removing him from the path of the stream. The energy reached a column nearby, without any obstacle. A girder that the column sustained fell over Dot.
Matrix ran as fast as he could through the corridor in direction of the test site of the Project Rainbow. He found Bob and Dr. Matrix trying to force the entrance in the lab.
"What happened?!" He yelled, alarmed.
"Something went wrong in the test!"
"And Dot?!"
"She is still inside!"
For the small window of the door, he saw the streams of energy emitted by the doomed experiment.
"Bob, why you didn't teleport yourself to remove Dot of there?!" Matrix asked, yelling.
Bob answered, punching the door.
"The laboratory is protected by a Faraday's Cage structure! I can't teleport inside there!"
"Spam!... Alright. On the three, we knock down the door! One. Two. THREE!"
Even the conjugated force of Matrix and Bob was not enough to open the reinforced door. Matrix looked at the window of the door.
"Spam! They have a lot of dump blocking the door!" Then he noticed where his sister was. "BOB! DOT IS STRUCK UNDER A GIRDER!" And the streams approached more and more of her.
"HEY!" Dr. Matrix screamed behind of them, carrying a solid high pressure tube pipe with difficulty. "We'll use that as battering ram!"
On that moment, they heard Dot scream.
"Ok. Ready? One. Two. THREE!"
Dot was coming out of under the girder, when she was reached by a continuous stream of energy, that crossed her body, like the eletromagnetic force of a magnet. She felt each part of her code being erased and reconstructed, erased and reconstructed, in a process that made each sensor of her body scream in pain.
She vaguely noticed when Bob, Matrix and her father entered, despaired, in the laboratory. Immediately, Bob created a shield against the streams, while Matrix removed her from under the girder and her father examined her.
In that moment, emergency teams *finally* arrived to the place and removed the other wounded people. Matrix carried his sister carefully, while she trembled her arms and legs as if the energy of the experiment was still flowing through them. Meanwhile, Bob used all his energy to try to contain that energy hurricane. Suddenly, the streams stopped, without explanation.
And Bob didn't wait for one, he ran in direction of the emergency medical department, where he knew that they would take Dot.
He arrived in the moment when Dot was placed in a stretcher. She trembled and writhed in pain.
"You will be OK, Dot." Dr. Matrix said while he examined her, praying that would be true.
Then... it happened.
A light halo passed through her body, as if she had rebooted. Then her skin began to disappear, as it was being melted down. The musculature and the internal organs were evident. Dot screamed. The spasms were strong enough to break the structure of the wireframe, the sprite version for the skeleton.
The musculature of her face began to disappear, revealing the blue, afraid and pained eyes. In the chest, there were no muscles, just the core.com, palpitating out of control. The energy lines of the body were visible, disappearing soon after. The musculature had left, just leaving the main organs and the wireframe.
The eyes disappeared, turning the orbits hollow. The core.com left the visible field.
She screamed as if a million magnetized needles were threaded in each millimeter of her body.
Then, just the wireframe was visible, and then, anything else.
The scream ceased.
The only thing that they saw was the padding of the stretcher, deformed in the form of a sprite's unconscious body.
Go to Chapter 2 - Partial Recover and Diagnosis