Aja hadn’t only suspended Lifelight here in Rubic City, she had suspended the entire territory. At that moment millions upon millions of people all over Veelox were lying in suspended animation.
“Everybody, listen to me!” shouted Aja. Nobody did. They were too scared. I can’t blame them. Their world was on the verge of crashing. Heck, if they weren’t scared, they should be.
“Please, let me speak!” Aja begged. But the questions kept coming.
“My whole family is on a jump!”
“We’ve got to get back online and get them out!”
It was borderline chaos. All I could do was stay out of the way and hope that Aja could handle this. Finally she went to the control panel and with a look of pure determination, pressed a large green button. A screeching horn sounded that forced everyone, including me, to cover their ears. I saw that the technicians on the monitors were cringing as well.
After a few seconds Aja took her finger off the button and the horn fell silent. The phaders and vedders went silent too. They must have been afraid Aja would blast them again. Aja hit another switch and spoke into a microphone on the console. Her voice was amplified throughout the pyramid and heard by the technicians on the monitors.
“My name is Aja Killian,” she said calmly. “I’m the senior phader on duty here in Rubic City. I’m the one who authorized the suspension of the grid.”
Everyone started shouting again.
Aja jammed on the horn. Again, everybody quieted down. She released the button, but kept her finger close, ready to blast it again if anybody got out of hand.
“We had an emergency,” she explained. “Jumpers were in trouble throughout Veelox.”
I looked at the wall of monitors and saw several of the technicians nodding. For the first time I noticed how young they all looked. I scanned the monitors, searching for at least one gray-haired, wise scientist who would save the day. There weren’t any.
“As best as I can tell,” Aja continued, “the processing code has been corrupted.”
People gasped. Whatever that meant, it must have been bad.
“How can that be?” a phader shouted, risking another blast from the horn. “That’s never happened before!”
I looked to Aja. This had to be one of the toughest moments of her life. She knew exactly how it could be. Things had gone whacko because she had introduced a bug into the system. A Reality Bug. Worse, it was a bug that Saint Dane had somehow made even more powerful than it was supposed to be.
“But it has happened,” Aja said firmly. “The jumpers are in danger. Suspending the grid was the only way to buy us time to solve the problem.”
Everybody seemed to agree. Score one for Aja.
“With the grid suspended, the jumpers are totally safe,” she continued. “I’ve been monitoring the situation and I believe I can ferret out the problem.”
“We can’t leave them inside like that,” a vedder called out.
“We don’t have any choice,” Aja shot back. “If we go back online without solving the problem, we’ll be back where we started and the jumpers will still be in danger.”
I saw a lot of nervous heads nodding in agreement.
Aja then said, “Who is the senior vedder on duty?”
A guy stepped forward who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “I just came on duty when the alarms started going off,” the guy said softly.
I’ll bet he wished he had overslept.
“How long are the jumpers safe with the grid suspended?” Aja asked.
“Theoretically, forever,” the senior vedder answered. “But it’s never been tried before, so who knows?”
“That’s okay,” Aja said confidently. “It won’t take forever to fix the problem. I’m going into the Alpha Core to start unraveling this.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” the senior vedder asked.
“Nothing,” Aja answered. “Just don’t go far from the pyramid. When I crack this, everyone should be ready to go back online.”
She then looked up at the faces on the monitors. “The same goes for all of you,” Aja said to them through the microphone. “Let me work on the processing code. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.”
It was a great performance. Aja had shown total authority, and from the looks on everybody’s faces, they believed she was going to solve the problem. The question was, did Aja believe she could solve the problem? I wanted to think so, but when she flipped the switch to turn off the microphone, I saw that her hand was shaking. Oh man. She was barely keeping it together.
She then glanced at me and we made eye contact. There was no mistake. She was scared. I hoped nobody else saw it. She then looked to the senior vedder and said softly, “You’ll take care of Alex, right?”
The vedder nodded sadly.
Aja gave me a quick look and said, “Let’s go.”
She then walked away from the console, through the crowd of technicians, and out of the control room. I’m sure she felt the heat of everyone’s eyes on her, searching for some sign of assurance that she would solve the problem.
I followed her to the far end of the glass corridor and up to a solid door marked ALPHA CORE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She took the same green card from around her neck and inserted it into a slot near the door handle. A metallic click signaled that the door was unlocked. Aja entered and I followed right behind her.
Inside was another control room that was a little different from the others. This one felt more important. Maybe it was because it was behind solid walls instead of glass. There was only one large monitor on the wall, and one control chair facing it. Beneath the monitor was a vast array of switches and knobs and lights, just like in the other control rooms. One arm of the control chair was extra long and held a silver keypad that looked way more complicated than the ones in the other control stations. I had no doubt that this was where we would have to undo the damage and save the territory.
Aja fell into the chair and started to cry.
Uh-oh. Not a good start. It must have taken every ounce of willpower she had to hold it together in front of the phaders and vedders, but now that we were alone, she lost it. I felt bad for her, but I was feeling worse for all those people who were stuck in the vacuum of Lifelight. Their only hope of getting out safely rested with Aja, and she wasn’t looking all that capable of saving anybody. Finally she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
“I didn’t want you here on Veelox, Pendragon,” she said. “Do you know why?”
“Uh … no” was my dumb but truthful answer.
“Because you’re you,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Give me a break,” she said with tears forming again. “You’re the lead Traveler. You swoop into a territory and take on Saint Dane like some kind of fearless savior. Denduron, Cloral, First Earth … every one a victory for the good guys. It’s all so simple for you.”
I wanted to laugh. I really did. Fearless? Savior? Me? Yeah, right. I didn’t know what stories she had heard, but her information was definitely twisted.
“I’m not like you,” she went on. “I’m not some big adventurer. What I am is smart. Smarter than you. That’s not a boast; it’s fact. My whole life I was trained to maximize my intellect. I lived with teachers and scientists. Evangeline was my only friend. It was a cold way to grow up. I hated it. Then one day your uncle showed up to tell me I was a Traveler. Suddenly it all made sense. I knew what I was meant to do. All the training and studying and loneliness I had to endure meant that I had the tools to protect Veelox. It was like I had suddenly come alive, because my life had purpose. I was all set to take on Saint Dane with the weapon I knew how to use best … my brain.”
Aja stopped talking. I think she was trying to hold back tears. She swallowed and said, “The reason I didn’t want you here, Pendragon, was I didn’t want you to take that chance away from me.”
I was slowly starting to get the picture. Finally. Aja had
been cold toward me because she feared I would take away the one thing that gave her life meaning.
“But as it turns out,” Aja continued, barely keeping her emotions down, “I not only failed to save Veelox, I made things worse. I didn’t stop Saint Dane, I helped him!”
“We don’t know that yet—”
“No?” she shouted, spinning the chair toward me. “I created the Reality Bug. It’s my fault that millions of people are in danger. And that Alex is … I thought I was being so smart, and all along I was doing the worst possible thing.”
“Aja, you have to understand,” I said carefully. “Saint Dane may have had a bigger part in this than you know.”
“No! I programmed it. I installed it. It was all me.”
“I know that, but like I told you, Saint Dane is more devious than you can imagine. I’m not saying he was by your side helping you program the thing, but he probably put ideas in your head. It could have started years ago. He might have been a teacher who first planted the idea about how Lifelight would be better if it weren’t so perfect. He could have been a phader who suggested it might be possible to alter the program, or a vedder who said it was impossible to be hurt while jumping. That’s what he does, Aja. He plants ideas. He gets you thinking in directions that seem right, but are totally wrong.”
Aja didn’t turn her gaze from me. It was the first time she actually listened to what I had to say.
“And it probably wasn’t just you,” I added. “I’ll bet he was doing the same thing with other phaders, and getting them to monkey with Lifelight so that when you installed the bug, it would blow up the way it did.”
Aja let this information work its way through her brain. I wished she had done that when I first met her, but hey, no sense in looking back.
“There’s something else,” I said. “I don’t know where you’ve been hearing these stories about me, but things didn’t exactly happen the way you think they did. Yeah, we’ve been able to slam Saint Dane a couple of times, but it wasn’t because I was a brave guy who charged in to kick butt and take names. Most of the time I was so scared I couldn’t think straight.”
“So how were you able to beat him?” she asked with a touch of confusion.
“Luck, as much as anything,” I said. “To be honest, I blew it on First Earth. If I had been alone, there would have been a disaster worse than what we’re looking at here. I’m still trying to figure how to live with that.”
“But it all worked out,” Aja said.
“That’s because I wasn’t alone. Gunny bailed me out. I don’t think any one of us can stand up to Saint Dane alone, Aja. Working together is our only chance.”
I hoped I was getting through to her. The future of Veelox depended on it, not to mention the rest of Halla.
I then added, “But what we’ve got here is a little bit different.”
“How?” she asked, confused.
I walked over to the vast console and looked at the sea of buttons and switches.
“The Reality Bug was a brilliant idea. If Saint Dane hadn’t stuck his nose in, it might have worked. But he did. We can’t change that. We can only look forward. Our job is to save Veelox. But first we have to stop the Reality Bug. I have no idea how to do that. But you do. I can be here to bounce ideas off of, but only you can stop the bug. So when it comes right down to it, you are going to get the chance to save Veelox.”
Up until that moment Aja looked like she was ready to crawl into a corner and shrivel up. But now the sparkle returned to her eyes. She sat up straight and put her yellow glasses back on. She stood up and faced me with the same confidence that I saw when she spoke with the technicians outside.
“Not a problem,” she said. “All I have to do is tap into the grid and purge the bug from the processing code.”
Whatever that meant.
“That won’t solve the larger problem though,” she added. “Once I’m done, Lifelight will go back to normal and Veelox will still be in trouble.”
“One step at a time,” I said.
Aja walked over to me and turned me around. I wasn’t sure why until I realized she was examining the cut on the back of my arm.
“Go see a vedder and get that taken care of,” she said. She even sounded like she cared. A little.
“You sure you don’t need me?” I asked.
Then … a miracle. She smiled. Was it possible? I’d like to take credit for getting her to lighten up, but the truth was that nearly causing the deaths of millions of people was probably earth-shattering enough to get anybody to see things differently … even an ego case like Aja. All I could do was smile back.
“It’ll take me less time to purge the Reality Bug than it will for you to get your arm fixed,” she said, then spun away from me and sat back down in the control chair. She pulled the control arm in front of her, ready to work. A few keystrokes later, the large monitor flashed to life. She had slipped into computer world, so I left her alone and went looking for some Bactine and Band-Aids.
The glass corridor of the core was empty and quiet. The technicians were gone and all the monitors at the control stations were showing the same blank green color. It was creepy seeing the place so dead, so I hurried to the end of the corridor to get out as fast as possible.
I stepped into the room with the long counter where I had been fitted with my silver bracelet for the jumps. It was empty too. I walked up to the counter and gazed at the portrait of young Dr. Zetlin, the inventor of Lifelight. He didn’t look like a genius. He just looked like a regular kid.
“Hiya, Doc,” I said. “This what you had in mind when you invented Lifelight?”
A voice then came from behind the counter. “Who are you talking to?”
For a second I thought it was the portrait, and it made me jump. But it turned out to be the Goth-looking vedder who had pricked my finger the day before.
“Uh, nobody,” I answered, embarrassed. “Hey, you think you could take a look at my arm?”
The vedder rolled his eyes. “If I have to,” he said, as if it were the last thing he wanted to do. I wasn’t sure why he minded so much. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. I unzipped my jumpsuit to my waist and pulled my arm out.
“Where did everybody go?” I asked as he examined my cut.
“They’re all up in the pyramid,” he answered. “They’re going to jump as soon as Aja gets Lifelight back online.”
Unbelievable. Even during a crisis, all these guys could think about was jumping out of there.
“What about you?” I asked. “Don’t you want to jump?”
“Not anymore, I don’t,” he said. “I’m beginning to think real life is safer than make-believe.”
That was good to hear. Maybe there was hope for the territory after all.
“It’s not a bad cut,” he said. “Your jumpsuit got it worse than you did.”
The vedder put an ointment on it and the stinging immediately went away. He then put a yellow pad over the cut and I was good to go.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” the guy said sincerely. “Aja is the best. If there’s anybody I trust around here, it’s her.”
I nodded. I really hoped he was right.
There was nothing else to do, so I wandered back to the Alpha Core to see how Aja was doing. The door was unlocked, and I slipped in quietly, trying not to disturb her.
Aja was totally focused on her work. I glanced at the large monitor to see that it was filled with several lines of computer code, each in a different color and each more complex than the last. Aja was furiously entering figures, and the data kept scrolling up with each new entry. She was good. My confidence rose.
“We’ve got a problem,” Aja said flatly.
So much for my confidence.
“I thought you said it would be easy to purge the bug from Lifelight?”
“It would be, if I could get to it,” she answered. As she talked, she kept inputting data. “The problem isn’t the Reality
Bug, it’s the origin code.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“The system is programmed with security codes that make it difficult to get in,” Aja explained while she worked. “It’s to keep unauthorized people from monkeying with the grid. I know most of the codes because I’m a senior phader, but … but …” She slammed her fist down in frustration.
“But what?”
“When the Reality Bug infected the grid, it went so deep that the only way to reach it is to get past the final code, the origin code. And I don’t know it!”
“Well, somebody’s gotta know it, right?” I asked, trying to be helpful.
Aja jumped out of the chair and paced. “Only one person knows that code.”
“So let’s go get them!”
“That’s not so easy. He hasn’t been seen in three years.”
“Three years? Who is it?”
“Dr. Zetlin,” answered Aja.
“That kid in the painting? How come he’s the only one with the code?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aja answered sarcastically, sounding like her old self. “Maybe because he invented Lifelight!”
Good answer.
“Besides,” Aja continued, “he’s not a kid anymore. He’s got to be in his seventies by now.”
“Fine. Let’s find him, make him some warm milk, tell him the problem and get the freakin’ code!”
“It’s not that easy,” Aja said.
“Why not?”
“Because Dr. Zetlin is in Lifelight, Pendragon.”
Oh.
That was definitely a problem. A really big problem.
Aja looked up at the screen and said, “Without that code I can’t purge the Reality Bug. And if I can’t purge the bug then we can’t put Lifelight back online.”
“And if we can’t do that, most everybody on Veelox is as good as dead,” I concluded. I was getting the sick feeling that Saint Dane was right. The battle for Veelox was over and he had won.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a Plan B?” I asked.
I fully expected Aja to shout something like, “No, Pendragon! There is no Plan B, idiot!” Instead she looked down. The wheels were spinning in her head. That was good. She had a good head with good wheels.