D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

I was faced with a real dilemma. From all I’ve described to you, it must be clear that Aja wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. She had a quick temper that flashed nasty the instant someone challenged her. She was a proud person, and totally brainy. And she took every chance she could to prove it. That was the exact opposite of somebody like, say. Uncle Press. Uncle Press knew pretty much everything about everything, but never rubbed it in your face. I think that came from confidence. With Aja, I got the feeling that beneath it all, she wasn’t totally sure of herself, which is why she was always trying to demonstrate her brilliance.

But she was the Traveler from Veelox and we had to get along. If she was right and Saint Dane’s plan was already derailed, then everything was cool. We didn’t have to be friends and I could be on my way. But after hearing from Saint Dane about how he had already won on Veelox, and learning how Lifelight might have some problems, I had some serious doubts. I was pretty sure Aja and I were going to have to learn how to work together, and it was up to me to make that happen.

“Did you grow up here?” I asked, trying to make small talk.

“Yes.”

“In Rubic City?” “Yes.”

“When did you find out you were a Traveler?” “Two years ago.”

She wasn’t exactly being talkative. But I kept trying.

“How old are you?” “Eighteen.”

“Wow, are all the phaders so young?”

“You want my life story, Pendragon?” she snapped suddenly. “Here it is. From the time I was a baby I was raised in a group home. I never knew my parents. To this day I don’t know if I was taken from them or given up for training.”

Whoa. Lots of baggage in that one little sentence. I wasn’t sure which topic to go after first.

“Training?” I finally asked. I figured it was less emotional than the whole “raised in a group home” thing.

“The directors find gifted babies and train them to become phaders and vedders. From the time I was old enough to sit up, I was at a key panel learning how to write code. I was a full-time phader by the time I was twelve. Now I’m a senior group leader.”

This was good. She was opening up. “Who are the directors?” I asked.

“They make all the decisions when it comes to Lifelight. But to answer your question, yes. All the phaders are young. The vedders, too. The directors want the sharpest minds possible at the controls. But it’s more than that. As people grow older, they want to spend their time jumping, not monitoring. By the time a phader gets to be twenty-five, they pretty much take themselves offline.”

“And do what?”

Aja didn’t answer. Instead, she looked around. I took the cue and looked around too. What I saw was… a deserted city. Like I described before, it pretty much looked like any city on Second Earth, except there were no people. Garbage kicked around in the wind and collected in alleyways. Glass windows were so grimy there was no way to see through them. Vehicles were parked along the curb, but many sat tilted on flat tires. I had the feeling that at one time this was a busy place.

I was starting to understand the problem.

“They’re all in Lifelight, aren’t they?” I asked softly.

“Why would they live anywhere else when they can create the life of their dreams?” was Aja’s sharp reply.

“Is it like this everywhere?” I asked. “I mean, other than Rubic City?”

“It’s the whole territory, Pendragon,” she said. “Reality on Veelox only exists to support the fantasy.” She then looked right at me. “That’s why Saint Dane thinks he’s won. This territory is about to fall apart, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves.”

It made all sorts of sense. If nobody wanted to live in reality, then of course the territory would crumble. It made me think of a guy we used to go to school with. Remember Eddie Ingalls? He got caught up in playing one of those online fantasy games. He’d stay in his room on the computer for hours. I don’t think he even slept very much, especially on the weekends. He ended up spending so much brain time playing that game, he lost most of his friends because he never wanted to come out and do anything. Then he started messing up in school. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I think his parents had to send him away to some kind of special school to help him catch up with real life. Well, what happened to Eddie Ingalls is what was happening on Veelox… times about eight billion.

The idea staggered me. My pulse started to race. We had lost Veelox before we had the chance to save it!

“Then Saint Dane was right,” I declared. “We’re too late. He has won!”

“Relax,” Aja said sternly. “I told you, I’ve got things under control.”

“Control? I’m seeing a lot of things here. Control isn’t one of them! This city is falling apart. How long until Lifelight itself crashes? That’s what’ll happen, you know. Is that why jumpers are dying? Is that the future of Veelox? Are all the jumpers going to die in the middle of their fantasies because nobody bothers to take care of reality? We’ve got to get them out of there! Maybe we can pull the plug and force them to wake up! It’s the only way they can-“

“Stop!” Aja shouted, and slammed on the brakes. I rocked forward, nearly launching out the front. Aja stared at me with such anger that I thought my brain would melt.

“I am trying to teach you about what’s happening here,” she said sternly. “We can’t just ‘pull the plug’ and tell everybody to go back to their normal lives, though I’m sure you wish it were that easy. Salvation here can be found in only one place: the imagination. If you can’t understand that, you might as well flume out right now.”

I had to calm down. Though common sense told me otherwise, I had to believe Aja knew what she was talking about. The technology on Veelox was totally alien to me. If she said things were under control, I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. At least for a while, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” I said, forcing myself to chill. “I’d like to stay and learn more about Veelox.”

Aja stared at me. I wasn’t sure if she was going to throw me out or take my head off again. Or both. Luckily she did neither. She started to pedal again. We didn’t say another word until we arrived at her home.

Aja lived in a beautiful building on a quiet, tree-lined street. Did I say “quiet”? Hah, everything here was quiet. Her building was three stories high and made of brick. It looked like a millionaire’s home. Completing the picture, the street was lined with huge, leafy trees that gave the neighborhood an inviting, parklike feel.

“Do all the phaders live in places this nice?” I asked as we walked up the marble steps to the entrance.

“They live pretty much anywhere they want” was her reply. “Most of the homes are abandoned. This place belongs to one of the directors. The prime director, actually. Dr. Kree Sever.”

“Nice of him to let you live here,” I said.

“It’s not a him, it’s a her,” Aja corrected me. “And Dr. Sever couldn’t care less. She’s been on a Lifelight jump for over a year.”

A year. Unbelievable.

She opened the heavy door and we entered the mansion. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and ran up the stairs to the second floor.

The mansion was beautiful inside, too. There was a large entryway with thick, ornate carpets. A stairway led up to the second floor with a fancy wooden banister that was polished and gleaming. A hallway led deeper into the house with rooms off to either side. A quick glance showed me that the rooms were big, with high ceilings. It stunned me to think that somebody who lived in such a beautiful place would abandon it to live in a fantasy world. But then again, maybe the mansion Dr. Sever had in her fantasy was twice as nice. Or maybe she had twelve mansions. If it was a fantasy, she could have whatever she wanted.