D. MacHale - The Pilgrims of Rayne

“Kick them aside,” I instructed.

Whatever they were, the sticks swept away easily, and we continued on. As we got closer to the end of the corridor, I could make out the doorway on the far end. Light was coming in from somewhere. We were able to move a little quicker and made it into the large ready room of Lifelight. Daylight was seeping in through holes that had been eaten out of the pyramid wall. It wasn’t bright, but we could maneuver. The room was as I remembered it. This is where Lifelight jumpers checked in for their jumps. Behind the reception counter I saw something that made me smile. It was a faded oil portrait of a sixteen-year-old guy.

“Who’s that?” Siry asked.

“Dr. Zetlin,” I answered. “The guy who invented all this.” “What exactly is this?”

“I’ll show you some things first. It’ll be easier to explain then.”

Beyond the reception area was a door that I knew would lead to the core-the central control area of the pyramid. The door was halfway open. It was easy to push it the rest of the way. I saw the familiar long corridor with glass walls. Most of the glass was still intact, though several large sections were shattered. Or missing. On either side of the corridor, behind the glass, were the control stations where the phaders worked to monitor the Lifelight jumps. The sight brought back a lot of memories. Not all of them were good.

There was barely enough light to see. We passed a few of the stations and the hundreds of screens that the phaders used to watch the various Lifelight jumps. The screens were dark of course. I wondered how long it had been since the last person had jumped. Siry stared at the technology in wide-eyed wonder. We took a few more steps, then something caught my eye. Ahead of us in one of the control stations, the quality of light was different. Up until then we had been relying on whatever sunlight leaked through the damaged pyramid. The light up ahead seemed warmer. We entered the control station. It looked exactly like the others. Dark, dead, dusty. Except for one thing.

“What is that?” Siry asked.

The control chair was empty. As I remembered, the control panel for each workstation was in the arms of the chair. There was nothing unusual about this one, except that a light was glowing. One single light. It was a small, orange circle that surrounded a silver button. It didn’t give off all that much light, but it was enough to create the warm glow that had gotten our attention.

“If that’s glowing, there’s power,” I declared. “Maybe we can figure out how to turn on a couple of lights.”

The Lifelight control station was complicated. I could have been flipping switches for a month without finding the light switch. Still, I had to try. I figured the best place to start would be with the button that was glowing. Made sense, right? I leaned over the chair and touched the glowing circle.

A single monitor in front of us flashed white.

“Wha-” Siry shouted in surprise and jumped back. This was a guy who’d never seen a TV.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s supposed to do that.”

We had power. My first thought was that I could now explain to Siry about Lifelight and Dr. Zetlin and the Reality Bug. I figured that seeing the hardware would make it easier to accept. Or at least understand. Or at least not think I was a total nutburger who dreamed the whole thing up. The screen flickered and fuzzed. I figured if I could turn enough of them on, we’d have light to get around.

I never got the chance.

The screen flashed white, followed by a swirl of colors that formed themselves into an image. The sight actually made me go weak. I had to sit in the phader’s control chair or I would have fallen over.

“What’s the matter?” Siry asked. “Who is that?”

I couldn’t talk, but it didn’t matter. The image on-screen was about to say enough for both of us. Just like old times. The screen showed a close-up of a girl I knew very well. She had long blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail, deep blue eyes, and yellow-tinted wire-rimmed glasses. She had on the same dark blue jumpsuit of a phader that she was wearing the last time I saw her. She stared right at us with the same intelligent intensity I remembered so well.

“My name is Aja Killian,” she said sharply and precisely. That was Aja. No nonsense about her. “I am the chief phader here in the principal Lifelight pyramid in Rubic City. I am also the Traveler from the territory of Veelox. This is my Journal Number Twelve. It may be the last journal I will get the chance to make. I hope someone, someday, will hear it.”

That day had come.

“Hello. Whoever you are. If you’re watching this, I’m hoping you already know of the desperate situation we face on Veelox. The virtual reality simulator called Lifelight has proved to be far more tempting a pastime than its inventor, Dr. Zetlin, ever anticipated. People come to these pyramids, slip into their Lifelight jump tubes, enter their own personal fantasies, and choose never to come out. The imaginary worlds that Lifelight creates are too real and too perfect for them to want to leave. It’s why I invented the Reality Bug. I tried to make the fantasies less appealing. It failed. My friends Bobby Pendragon and Loor helped avoid a major disaster by destroying the failed bug and saving thousands of lives. It only prolonged the inevitable. Veelox has since died a slow, agonizing death. I’m not sure which would have been worse.

“First to fail was the infrastructure of our cities. Drinking water became scarce because there was nobody to service the pumping and filtration facilities. Roads crumbled. The sewage system wasn’t far behind. As pipes burst, raw sewage fought with garbage to claim the streets. The cities slowly went dark as dwindling power supplies were diverted to keep the Lifelight pyramids functioning. Fresh food was unheard of Our main sustenance, gloid, became a valuable commodity. Vast stockpiles were used to feed the millions of people during their jumps, but the manufacturing of gloid ended. There was nobody to do it. Everyone assumed there would always be someone else to take care of business. There wasn’t. Everyone was in Lifelight. “Most everyone.

“I’m proud to say that many phaders and vedders worked tirelessly to keep Lifelight functioning and the jumpers safe. The hope among all of us was that someday, somehow, enough people would come to their senses and abandon Lifelight. At first we imagined enough people would rejoin reality so that we could revive our world. But time is merciless. The cities decayed beyond repair. Hope then became that enough people would eventually abandon Lifelight so that we could begin anew and create a new society. That day never came. It all happened so impossibly fast. I never appreciated how much effort it takes to keep society functioning, and how quickly it can all come crashing down.

“The inevitable finally happened. The jumpers in Lifelight began to die off. First it was the elderly, then those who already suffered from some sickness. All over the territory, the jump screens went dark. We stopped removing the bodies from the tubes. There weren’t enough of us to bury the dead. The Lifelight pyramids became tombs. The deaths actually prolonged the decline. Fewer jumpers meant less energy use, but it was only a matter of time. We soon reached the point of no return.

“Eventually people began leaving Lifelight to discover the horror that their collective neglect had caused. They left their perfect fantasy lives to re-enter a reality that had become a nightmare. Some chose to jump right back into Lifelight to live the rest of their days happily, no matter how short a time that might be.

Many decided to stay away from the jump tubes and rebuild their world. It was an impossible task. It had been too long. The city had become a dangerous place. Wild animals stalked the streets, foraging for food. They first attacked children and the elderly. People went missing. Nighttime was filled with the screams of victims as they were dragged off by savage creatures in search of meat.