D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

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

151 160 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 clicksignaled 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.”