D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

“So what?” Aja shot back. “It’s a fantasy. Nobody gets hurt. They’re all lying safely inside the pyramid.”

“So when we come out,” I asked, “my nose won’t hurt anymore?”

“Exactly!”

I wanted to believe her, but something else was bugging me, so to speak. The Reality Bug was nothing more than a really advanced computer virus. And computer viruses were scary. You never knew where they’d turn up or what damage they’d do. I once got a virus on my computer at home that trashed my hard drive. If a virus could wreck my little PC, I’d hate to think what it might do to a system as complex as Lifelight.

“Tell you what,” Aja said. “I’ll prove it to you. Let’s do the final test. Right here, right now.” “Test?” I asked nervously.

“Your control bracelet,” she said. “Remember the middle button?”

I lifted my arm to see that the silver band with the three buttons had reappeared. “The middle button alters the jump, right?”

“Exactly. Press the button. Let’s see what happens.”

“Are you crazy?” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “What if things go wacky?”

“I hope they do,” Aja countered. “It’ll be the only way I can prove to you that no matter how wrong a jump goes, all we have to do is end it and everything will be fine.”

I shook my head and paced. This was getting scary.

“This is the final test, Pendragon. Pressing that button is the first thing the jumpers will do when their jumps go bad. They’re all going to try and change their fantasy. Let’s see what will happen when they do.”

“What do you think will happen?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It all depends on you.”

Truth be told, I was scared to death of what might happen. What if a fire broke out? Or an earthquake hit? I didn’t want to have to go through that kind of mayhem, even if it was just a fantasy. My nose hurt bad enough.

“C’mon, Pendragon,” she cajoled. “You’re the big brave Traveler who beat Saint Dane all those times. Be the hero again. Push the button. Let’s prove the Reality Bug works once and for all.”

“You promise we can end the jump right away? I mean, all I have to do is say ‘Stop!’ and you can make all of this go away?”

“You can end it yourself, remember?” she said, pointing to my control bracelet. “Just press the right button. That ends the jump. Everything should work exactly as normal, except the Reality Bug will alter the fantasy.”

Aja seemed to have found the solution to the turning point on Veelox. If her Reality Bug worked, it would force people to live in the real world again. The Travelers would have beaten Saint Dane and set the territory back on the right path. If all that was left to do was test the middle button, we had to do it.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

“You already asked me that,” she answered impatiently. “Haven’t I impressed you yet?”

Okay, she had. I took a deep breath, raised my arm, and put my finger over the middle button on the silver control bracelet.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Always,” she answered.

I pushed the button. It glowed red for a moment and then…

Nothing happened. The ground didn’t shake, the roof didn’t collapse. We stood there like a couple of dopes. “Nothing changed,” I said. “Maybe it didn’t-” Then it all hit the fan.

Aja lifted her arm with the large, silver control bracelet. “My controller,” she said with surprise. “It’s activating.” “What does that mean?”

A second later a beam of light shot out of the wrist controller and projected a holographic image. If the idea of the Reality Bug was to dig into my subconscious and pull out all my fears, it did a very good job. Because standing in front of us in that locker room was the one thing I feared most.

Saint Dane.

“Checkmate!” the demon laughed.

“Is this my fantasy?” I asked Aja, stunned.

“No!” Aja answered with a shaky voice. “Your jump isn’t tied into my controller. This is real. It’s a recording.”

“Aja, you sweet thing,” the image of Saint Dane said. “Did you really think I’d let you sabotage Lifelight? I worked too hard for too many years helping those programmers create Lifelight to allow you to destroy it with a simple computer virus.”

Aja shot me a look. This wasn’t my horror fantasy.

It was hers.

“Sweet, little Aja,” Saint Dane’s image said. “I’ve watched you from the day you were born.

I made sure the directors picked you for the phader program; I saw you grow into an arrogant little Traveler; and I even helped you program your nasty little bug. I’m sure Pendragon has told you I’m always around. I’ll bet you didn’t believe him.”

She didn’t. But she was beginning to.

“You see, dear girl,” Saint Dane continued, “you’re my back-up plan. If Veelox didn’t crumble from neglect, then I wanted to make sure your Reality Bug worked far better than you could imagine. And it will!”

Saint Dane laughed. It was chilling.

“Either way, I win,” he continued. “Thank you so much for all your help, Aja. You’ve made destroying Veelox such a pleasure! Give my regards to young Pendragon.”

The recorded image disappeared and Saint Dane was gone. Aja looked like she was about to faint. None of this made sense to her. Unfortunately it made a whole bunch of sense to me. Saint Dane knew exactly what was going on from the beginning. He was in total control. Just like always.

“He’s lying,” Aja said. “The Reality Bug won’t fail.” “I think that’s the problem,” I said. “He’s saying it’s going to work better than you planned.” “How could he know that?”

“I’ve been telling you from the start, Aja!” I shouted. “That’s what he does. He works people, pushing them toward answers they think they want, but it leads them to disaster. You don’t see him coming until it’s too late. You’re smart, Aja. But you made a huge mistake. You thought you were smarter than Saint Dane.”

Aja shot me a look full of hurt and anger. But it was the truth. Just when you think you’ve gotten the better of Saint Dane, he comes back to bite you in the butt. And right now, our butts were stinging.

“Aja? You in there?” came a voice from outside the locker room.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“It’s Alex,” Aja answered with surprise.

She ran for the locker room door. I was right after her. The door led to a short corridor that led to the gym. We stopped, still inside the locker room, when we saw that standing outside in the empty gym was Alex, our phader. We stood on either end of the short corridor, Aja and I in the locker room, Alex in the gym. He was nervously punching buttons on his wrist controller.

“Aja, what’s going on?” he called to us.

“What do you mean?” Aja shot back.

“I’m losing control of the jumps,” he whined. “A surge of data shot through the grid in my quadrant, and I traced the source to you!”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Aja answered, trying to stay in control. “It could mean the Reality Bug has activated.”

“I thought it was already activated?” I asked, rubbing my stinging nose.

“Not fully. I had it isolated to our jump,” Aja answered. “But it’s programmed to spread through the entire grid once I give the command.”

“I think that command was just given,” I said soberly. “Saint Dane took care of that.”

“Reality Bug?” Alex called to us. “What is that?”

“End the jump,” she ordered me. “We’ve got to get back to the core.”

I quickly hit the jump-ending button on my control bracelet.

Nothing happened.