Genesis
By Cybra
Switch Mini-Contest Update: Flying Star has won the 500-word gift fic for titling switch!Jeremy's back story. However, the 500-word gift fic for titling the Switch version of Season 2 is still open. See my profile for details.
A/N: Credit goes to Flying Star for providing the title. This is the back story of switch!Jeremy. Mrs. Hopper's name of "Elsie" I came up with since both it and "Franz" are German.
Disclaimer: Code Lyoko belongs to the French. All of the definitions here are taken from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
"Elsie, I want to show you something."
The pink-haired woman walked with her husband to the supercomputer. "Franz, I thought you were done toying with that thing. Carthage is safe with XANA and Lyoko hiding it."
"Ah, but I have a surprise for you, my dear."
Elsie brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes before looking at the middle screen and gasping. "Is…Is that…?"
Franz wrapped an arm around his wife's waist. "I programmed him myself. Though I wanted you to be here when I activated him." Her husband gazed softly at her. "After all, he needs to meet his mother."
She hugged him tightly around the neck. "Franz, you're absolutely wonderful! Thank you!"
A child of her own. The one thing her own body had denied Elsie was being given to her by her husband.
"Starting program…now."
She watched eagerly as the blond—a slightly darker shade than Franz's hair had been before it had turned dark grey—on the screen opened his eyes for the first time, revealing their bright blue color. The child pushed himself into a sitting position, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses on his face. "Oh my goodness…"
The boy gazed curiously at them through the screen before smiling a little. "Hello."
She reached out a hand and touched the screen, tears running down her face. "Oh, Franz, he's beautiful.
He didn't know what those two things on the screen were, but they seemed to like him. One of them had drops of some clear liquid running down their face.
His linkup to the network and the Internet provided him with the term "humans" for the beings and "tears" for the droplets. The one on the left was male like him while the one—What was that word? Oh there it was!—crying was female.
Slowly, he mimicked the—hm…oh, that's what humans called their females!—woman's gesture, placing his hand to the screen. What meaning did that have? And why did it seem to give her such pleasure?
"I'm Franz Hopper. And this is my wife Elsie," the man told him.
He gazed curiously at them. "Who am I? What's my name?"
The woman looked distressed for a moment. She asked her husband (more and more words were coming to him via the link), "You didn't give him a name?"
"I thought I give his mother that honor."
Mother? What was a mother? He focused on the link for a moment, hunting down the meaning of the word.
Mother. Noun. A female parent of a child or animal; a person who is acting as a mother to a child.
So she was his female parent? What did that mean?
He had no time to search for more information as Elsie Hopper smiled at him.
He liked her smile. He liked it a lot.
"Jeremy. Your name is 'Jeremy,'" she told him softly.
Jeremy smiled back at her.
"Virtualize me."
Franz stared at the back of his wife's head. "I'm sorry?"
"Just for a little while. I want to see him."
The scientist raised a bushy eyebrow. "You can see him right now. What's the problem?"
His younger wife turned to give him a look of annoyance. "It's not the same, Franz. I want to hold him. I want to see him face to face."
He saw the virtual boy gaze quizzically at his creator and his creator's wife as they argued.
"Elsie…"
"Please, Franz." She looked pitifully at him.
The scientist covered his eyes with his hand. He hated it when she gave him that face since he always had to give in. He uncovered his eyes as he sighed. "Very well. Head down to the scanners. I'll send you to the Polar Region."
The woman smiled and turned back to her gift. "I'll be there in just a moment, Jeremy." She turned back around to give Franz a kiss. "Thank you so much."
"I take it you like your present?"
"I love him." She jogged over to the elevator and pressed the button.
The scientist looked at his creation on the screen. Jeremy had won her over quite easily. Then again, it could simply be his wife's maternal instincts kicking in. She could finally have her child.
The best part was that this child would never have to leave her. And if something was wrong with the program's behavior, a few taps of the keyboard would fix it.
"Where did Mother go?"
"She's on her way to see you."
Jeremy tilted his head to one side. "She can come here to Lyoko?"
Franz blinked. He hadn't expected his program to learn so fast where it was. He'd expected some type of adjustment period which would lead him to having to explain. While Jeremy possessed had the ability learn, he hadn't anticipated that the AI would have the ambition to start trying to learn from the moment of activation. Curious.
"Yes, she can go to Lyoko."
He watched as his creation looked over its shoulder. "She'll be out there?"
"Yes."
"I'll go wait for her." With that, the AI trotted to the edge of the platform and leapt off of it.
Franz gave a squall of alarm. However, Jeremy's character card showed that he was all right.
"Franz, is something wrong?" Elsie asked, her voice sounding a bit tinny over the speakers.
"N-No. Nothing. Starting the virtualization process…"
Elsie dropped to the ground, landing easily on the glacier. Unlike her husband, she visited Lyoko quite often. Her trips had helped him make it look more like a game with some realistic qualities. That way if the men in black ever returned, all they would find would be a highly complex video game. Hopefully, that would frustrate them into looking for Carthage elsewhere.
She turned to a nearby tower as she heard an unfamiliar sound. If she'd had the ability for tears in this computerized world, she would've wept with joy.
Running towards her was a seemingly twelve year-old blond boy, clad in dark green pants and an even darker green tunic with a pair of dark brown moccasins.
She caught him as he ran to her, hugging him tightly. She wished she had the sensation of touch here. She would've loved to have felt his hair's softness as she ran her fingers through it.
"Welcome to Lyoko, Mother," he told her.
"Mom."
He gazed curiously at her.
"I'd like it if you called me 'Mom'. 'Mother's' a bit too formal for me," she told him, tapping a finger on his nose.
Jeremy laughed and hugged her again. "Okay…Mom."
Several weeks later, Elsie knelt down in the garden, a laptop at her side. She had hooked up a microphone and a camera to it so that her son could watch her work and give what assistance he could. Franz's experimental "wireless" signal was working perfectly, allowing her to keep her son close by without having to find (and fight with) an obscenely long telephone chord.
"According to the website, it says that you should only plant five tulip bulbs per square foot, separating them by five inches."
"How deep?" she asked him, picking up her trowel.
"Um…" A glance showed that he was skimming through something, most likely on another screen. "Six inches."
"Ah. All right then."
She worked in comfortable silence until Jeremy suddenly asked, "Mom, am I real?"
Elsie nearly dropped the trowel. "What?"
"Am I real?"
She sat on her knees and turned to look at him, abandoning her gardening. "What do you mean?"
"Well, Father acts like I'm just a program. The other day he wanted to do what he calls 'tweaking' but got really mad at me when I locked him out." Jeremy bowed his head guiltily.
'I'm going to have a thing or two to say to that man when he gets home!' Aloud, she said, "Of course you're real, sweetheart. Though next time, ask what your father's up to before you lock him out. It could be important."
"But I'm computer data," Jeremy insisted. "And I'm an artificial intelligence. Father said so himself. 'Artificial' means 'made or produced to copy something natural' or 'not real'." Jeremy looked down at where the floor of the tower must have been. "I'm just his…creation."
'Franz, you're horrible sometimes!' She reached out to touch the screen, knowing just how much her husband hated it when she did that since doing so smudged it and not caring one bit. "Jeremy, listen to me. A person is real when they can think and feel for themselves. If you were just a program, you would never have locked your father out."
"Really?"
"Really." She paused and looked more closely at him. "You changed your clothes."
Jeremy smiled a little. "I really don't like green. Blue's better."
"It looks good on you." She pulled her hand back. "Now, let's get the rest of those bulbs planted, shall we?"
Franz watched his wife cook in utter silence, only pausing long enough to greet him. "What have I done now?"
"At least you finally learned to recognize when you're in trouble," Elsie said, turning to look at him. "I had a talk with Jeremy today. It seems that you put the idea into his head that he isn't real."
"Jeremy is a computer program, Elsie. It isn't real."
"Yes, he is!" she insisted, waving a spatula at him. "Most of the things he does you never programmed into him. You said so yourself!"
The scientist backed up a little to get out of the way of the kitchen utensil. "Glitches in the program. But it was designed to learn. It just tries to accomplish that goal in unexpected ways."
"Have you ever sat down and just talked with him?"
"Elsie…"
"I mean it, Franz. When was the last time you actually tried being a father to him?"
The man winced. That was a low blow.
His wife nodded as if agreeing with herself. "Tonight, why don't you and Jeremy spend some quality time together?"
"I have papers to grade, and—"
"Just an hour. Please, Franz. For me?"
He sighed. "All right. An hour. But then I have to get some work done." He gave her a hopeful look. "Am I forgiven?"
"Mostly." She kissed his cheek. "The rest of it will be a little slow in coming."
Franz sighed. At least she was honest about it.
"Jeremy? Jeremy, where are you?"
A blond wolf lounged on a rock in the Mountain Region, meditating. At the sound of the man's voice, his ears pricked, and he sat up. "Father?"
"Yes." A pause. "Why is there a wolf on your character card?"
'Uh oh. I'm in trouble.' Jeremy tried stalling, "Um…well…"
"Jeremy…"
"I wanted to play around a little. That's all."
Another pause. "You modified your own program?"
He nodded before realizing that, at the moment, his father most likely couldn't see him. "Yes, sir."
"So you can change into a wolf now?" the man sounded impressed.
"I can change into all sorts of things now!" Jeremy told him, excited. "Watch!"
The virtual boy focused inward, switching forms to an eagle, then a lion. A tiger, a rabbit, a stag, a horse, a fox. Each form passed with easy swiftness, the child pausing just long enough for his father to see.
About thirty animals in, Franz told him, "That's enough, Jeremy."
He stopped shifting, switching back to his base human form first. "I can get rid of it if you want me to…"
"No, let's just leave it." A pause. "I'm very pleased with you."
The virtual boy grinned. "Really?"
"Yes, not many people could've done something that complex." There was warmth in the man's voice. "Though I thought you didn't want to change your program when you locked me out."
Jeremy toed the ground. "Well, I got kinda scared. I didn't know what you were going to do. I should've asked before I did that. I'm sorry."
"…You were scared?"
"Yes, sir."
The man muttered something that Jeremy couldn't quite hear. However, before the virtual boy could ask about it, his father said, "No, I'm the one who's sorry, Jeremy. I'll be more careful next time and tell you what I'm doing."
"Okay." A noise from a nearby plateau caught his attention. 'What was that?'
"I told you," Elsie admonished with a grin.
Franz frowned. "Jeremy's still a program. Apparently, it's become more advanced than I anticipated."
"Good grief, Franz. He's a boy. Don't call him an 'it!'"
"Father, did you add anything new to Lyoko recently?"
Husband and wife turned their attention to the laptop screen.
Elsie flicked her eyes to the scientist.
Franz frowned. "No, no, I didn't. Why?"
"There's something moving on the neighboring plateau."
The woman's eyes widened with fear. "What?!"
"Jeremy, what is it?" Franz demanded. "What do you see?"
"I'll have to get a closer look."
"Be careful."
"I will. I'll fly above it just in case."
The yellow triangle signaling Jeremy's position left the edge of the plateau, his character card shifting to a blond-feathered eagle with blue eyes.
Elsie chewed a nail before looking at Franz. "You swear you didn't add anything?"
"I swear, Elsie, that I haven't touched the Lyoko program for quite some time." She watched him rub his mustache. "This is very peculiar."
"You don't think it's a virus, do you?"
"No, I don't think so. Though that would explain where it came from…"
The pink-haired woman used her hand to turn her husband's head to look at her. "What would a virus do to Jeremy?"
He answered grimly, "It could do any number of things. It could warp his program or delete him altogether."
Before she could say anything, Jeremy said, "It's some kind of walking block."
Elsie looked at Franz before asking into the microphone, "A block?"
"Oh. I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't know you were there."
"Never mind that. What's this about a block?"
"Well, it's got these little legs and a cubed body. Though there are spherical parts on the sides. Not on the top though."
"I'm getting a new character card," Franz told his wife, looking at the screen.
Now they could see the strange creature's image. It looked harmless. It even had the symbol of XANA and Lyoko on it.
So why did it fill Elsie with sudden dread?
"Sweetie, stay away from that thing until we figure out what it is. Okay?"
"Yes, Mom. Do you want me to head to a tower?"
She checked her watch. "It might not be a bad idea. It's your bedtime anyway." She heard him sigh and smiled. "I know you don't need sleep, but you do need to replenish your energy. A little rest won't hurt you."
"Yes, ma'am" was the grudging response. The yellow triangle moved away from the new red circle. "Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Father."
"Goodnight, Jeremy," Franz said, a bit distracted since he was still studying the new character card.
"Goodnight, honey. Sweet dreams." Elsie clicked off the microphone and turned to her husband. "Well…?"
"If Jeremy hadn't acted as if he'd never seen it before, I would've thought he'd programmed himself a playmate. But now I don't think it's his doing."
"But where did it come from?"
Franz shook his head. "I don't know. It almost looks like XANA itself created it."
"Why would XANA do something like that?" the pink-haired woman asked, leaning her head over his shoulder for a better look.
"Hmm…I programmed XANA to look after Lyoko. Jeremy is a part of Lyoko, so it could simply be following its primary objective by providing something to amuse him. After all, Jeremy changed his own programming for amusement."
The woman gave Franz an ironic look. "I can't imagine why."
"Very funny, my dear. But in all seriousness, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this…block."
"Then why is its character card outlined in red?"
Over the next two weeks, Jeremy saw more of the blocks along with small machines that moved close to the ground (his father called them "kankrelots" for lack of a better name) along with a monstrous crab-like machine (which his mother had named "krabe"). For the first time the virtual boy could remember, there were flying things in the air (which, due to their shape, his father had named "hornets"). Mostly, he avoided them, but occasionally curiosity would get the better of him, making him sneak forward for a better view.
He'd even managed to engage one of the kankrelots in a game of tag one day as he tried to figure out what it could do. That was when he'd learned that these strange new beings were armed.
His mother had been horrified. His father, outraged.
"XANA introduced creatures armed with lasers?!" Franz had roared. "What is it trying to do?!"
But unless Jeremy tried playing with the new creatures, they generally left him alone.
At the moment, he sat in coyote form on a rock in the Desert Region, gazing out at a small group of blocks. His tail swished slowly as he watched them contemplatively.
"They're not like me," he mused aloud. "They don't think. They don't seem to feel anything. Are they just programs? If they are, what is their primary function?"
"Good afternoon, Jeremy," his father's voice greeted.
The tail wagged. "Hello, Father. How were your classes?"
"As I told your mother, both good and bad. You remember that I was giving a test today?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it was good that it was quiet for once. But bad in the sense that these grades are abysmal."
Ah, so his father was grading his students' work already.
"Hello, sweetie. I'm sorry I couldn't take you with me into town," his mother suddenly apologized, announcing her arrival. "I know you would've loved to have seen the sights."
"It's okay, Mom. It would've looked weird if you were talking to your laptop."
"Sadly true. So, what have you been up to all day?"
The coyote stood before stretching his front legs. "Just watching the blocks." He paused. "From a distance."
"He's getting good at knowing when you're worried," his father chuckled to his mother, his voice just loud enough to be picked up by the microphone.
Jeremy heard his mother make a disapproving noise before she addressed him, "Could you stop into a tower, Jeremy? Or can you meditate enough for us to see each other? We have something important to tell you."
"Just give me a second." The artificial intelligence switched to human form and sat cross-legged, closing his eyes and focusing completely on the link.
Now he could see his human family. His mother looked excited. His father looked pleased.
"What's going on?"
"Your father and I have decided that we'd like you to stay here. With us."
His eyes widened. "You mean, I can live there? On Earth?"
"Not just yet, unfortunately," Franz told him. "I'm still working on your materialization, but soon."
Elsie was beaming. "But you can come for visits. What do you say?"
What else was there to say? "You guys are the greatest! Thank you!"
His mother laughed as his father smiled. He smiled excitedly back at them.
Things were looking up.
"This isn't going to hurt him, is it?" Elsie asked for the fourth time in five minutes.
"I promise. He'll be fine. After all, you've never had any problems being de-virtualized." Franz's fingers danced over the keyboard. "Are you in position, Jeremy?"
"Yes, sir!" the boy eagerly replied.
"I'm starting the process…now."
Franz leaned his elbows on his chair and laced his fingers together, watching tensely as the supercomputer ran through its instructions. While he'd assured his wife that nothing would go wrong, he still had his fears.
He paused. He was actually afraid for Jeremy. And when was the last time he had thought of the boy as anything other than his own son?
'Once materialization is complete, he will be our son in flesh and blood. We'll have to forge adoption papers, but no matter.'
"Let's get down to the scanners," he said, rising from his seat and walking to the elevator, his wife following close behind.
The trip down felt excruciatingly long despite the fact that it took no longer than normal. They arrived in the scanner room just as one of the cylinders hissed open.
Elsie gave a cry of alarm, running towards the scanner. He was right behind her.
Their little boy sat limply at the bottom of it.
"Oh, no…Please no…!" his wife begged, leaning forward to take her son in her arms.
Franz kneeled next to her, hand shaking as he reached for the child's pulse.
What had gone wrong? Had he overlooked something in the program?
But he felt a steady heartbeat beneath his fingertips. "He's alive."
Jeremy twitched before opening his eyes to look at them. He blinked in the light. "Mom…Father…?"
His wife hugged their son tightly. "Welcome to Earth. Oh, you had me worried sick!"
"Both of us," Franz agreed. As Jeremy started to move more and more, what had "gone wrong" came to the scientist in a flash of insight. He placed a hand to his forehead, amazed at his own stupidity. "Of course…"
"What is it?" Elsie asked, releasing their child just a little.
"He's never had a real body of his own before. He'd need a moment to gain control over it. That's why he materialized like that." The man leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his wife and child. "But let's not dwell on that. For now, let's go celebrate."
Elsie watched her son gaze in wonder at all of the sights and sounds of the suburb the Hoppers lived apart from. Her lips couldn't stop smiling as he would ask about this and that, unable to simply hunt for the answers himself on the Internet.
Dinner had been a fascinating experience. Her little boy had been confused at first, watching his parents eat in order to figure out how to properly do so. He still made mistakes but had swiftly applied each gentle correction.
"You like it?" Franz asked their son, a content smile on his own face.
Jeremy gazed at his father. "It's wonderful! All of the colors and sounds. And I never got until now why you always wanted to touch me." He looked down at the hand he'd placed in hers. "It's great."
"You seem to enjoy taste and smell, too," Franz teased, making his son blush.
Elsie punched his arm, grinning. "You're horrible."
"So you keep telling me. If I'm so horrible, why'd you marry me?"
"Someone had to keep you in line," she said with mock seriousness.
The blond child laughed, which made her laugh as well.
They walked for about two hours before Jeremy sheepishly complained of soreness in his joints.
"Time for us to go home then," Franz said.
Elsie sighed. Of course. She'd forgotten in her joy that until Franz finished the program, her little boy still needed to return to Lyoko.
However, her son squeezed her hand. "It's okay, Mom. I can visit again, right, Father?"
"Yes," her husband agreed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
Watching her child step into the scanner was heartbreaking. Watching the doors slide shut as he waved to her was more so.
"Transfer Jeremy…" her husband's voice called over the intercom. "Scanner Jeremy…Virtualization."
The scanner whirred and hissed. Then it opened to an empty scanner.
Elsie bowed her head. Gone again. She looked at the hand her son had held.
He'd been right there. If only…
Her husband's arms wrapped around her. She turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye.
"I'll get it right, Elsie. I promise."
She reached up and took his hands in hers. "I know you will."
Something was happening.
Jeremy "woke" from his nightly meditation to bizarre pulsations. In the tower, they were faint, but they became stronger as he left to investigate.
The virtual boy looked around before running forward, launching himself off the edge of the glacier the tower stood on and switching to hawk form. All around him, the landscape crackled before returning to normal and then crackling again like images on a broken television.
The sky itself fizzled. He pumped his wings, trying to maintain altitude as the "air" seemed to thicken and thin out at odd intervals.
"Mom! Father!" he called, fearful.
Three shapes flew erratically towards him. He banked right just in time for the first off-kilter hornet to pass him by. He reduced his altitude, giving himself and the other two hornets some space to pass each other.
What was happening to his world?!
He dipped lower and lower, unable to keep up with the rapid changes in the sky. He landed on an ice bridge, switching to human.
With no choice, the virtual boy closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, waiting for the end. He could feel malevolence coming from everywhere, the true source unknown to him.
All he knew was that he had to get away but he had nowhere to run.
'Maybe I could materialize myself…just for a few hours. Until Lyoko stabilizes itself.'
He cast his mind towards the supercomputer, hurriedly inputting the necessary commands for materialization.
The next thing he knew, he was staring out the open doors of a scanner.
'Made it!'
Jeremy struggled to his feet, feeling weak without knowing the reason why. He stumbled into the elevator and rose a level to the lab.
Somehow he made it over to his father's usual seat. Collapsing into it, he looked at the screen.
INFECTION. DATA INTEGRITY UNSTABLE.
So his home had been hit by a virus. That explained why everything had started to turn strange. It might even account for his own weakness if he himself was infected.
He leaned forward and started typing, trying to see if he could aid XANA in its attempts to repel the virus. "C'mon…C'mon…"
VIRAL INFECTION CONTAINED.
Contained but not gone. Though where it had been contained, Jeremy couldn't figure out.
He leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes. He just needed to meditate for an hour to replenish himself. Just an hour…
"Jeremy! Jeremy!"
Elsie held her child, shaking him gently. Logging into Lyoko that morning had been terrifying when her little boy had been nowhere in sight. Even worse, the computer reported that it had been infected with a virus though what had happened to it was up for debate.
"He's not waking up!" she cried desperately to her husband.
"He might've been infected himself," Franz said grimly. "Get him down to the scanners. We'll send him to Lyoko."
"Is that wise? What about the virus?"
"If Jeremy's already been infected, it won't matter. In any case, he has to return to Lyoko."
She nodded, picking up her boy and running to the elevator with him. She cooed soft nonsense to him as the elevator descended.
'How could this have happened? My poor baby…'
"I'm placing him in the scanner," the woman told her husband, kneeling down by an open scanner and putting her child inside.
She gazed at his small body curled up inside the scanner, unaware of what was happening around him. It was as frightening as the first time he'd been materialized if not more so.
"Transfer Jeremy…"
The doors slid shut. She placed her palm to them.
'Please be all right.'
"Scanner Jeremy…Virtualization."
She pulled her hand away as the piece of machinery whirred and whined. Then the doors hissed open to reveal the empty interior.
"Send me, too!" she demanded.
"Elsie, it's not safe! I don't know what a computer virus will do to a virtualized human!"
"I don't care! Just send me, too! I have to make sure he's all right!" She stepped defiantly into the scanner.
"Elsie!"
"Franz, please. He's my little boy and he needs my help!"
"…Are you in position?"
She smiled gratefully even if he couldn't see it. "Yes. Thank you, Franz."
"Just cross your fingers that you don't end up infected as well.
"Transfer Elsie…Scanner Elsie…Virtualization."
The pink-haired woman dropped to the ground of the desert before kneeling beside her limp son. She would've sobbed if Lyoko permitted tears. "He's not moving…"
"Get him to a tower," her husband ordered. "The closest one is north of you."
She scooped him up and started running. As she ran, she saw blocks twisting their bodies as if watching her go.
'Why are XANA's creations still functioning? Shouldn't they have been affected like Jeremy?'
She passed through the wall of the tower and ran to the middle of the platform. A stream of data carried her and her burden to the upper platform. "We're here, Franz."
"Good. I'll start a bio scan of both of you."
She felt her feet leave the floor as a hoop of light swept over her and her son. She held him tightly, praying for good news.
"He received a minor infection, but I can purge it. If he hadn't materialized when he did, it could've been worse."
Elsie fell to her knees with relief. "Is there anything you want me to do?"
"Yes. Hold him still. This could be very painful for him." Franz didn't sound too happy about that.
She wasn't either but said, "Sometimes you have to hurt before you can heal."
"True. Beginning virus purge."
Jeremy screamed and writhed in her grip. She hugged him tightly, softly singing a lullaby, feeling utterly helpless. He didn't seem to notice as he continued trying to thrash his way out of her arms.
"Purge at ten percent…"
"Franz, hurry!"
"I'm doing the best I can! Fifteen…"
She bent her forehead near her son's, not caring that he was now screaming in her ear. "It'll be all right…Your father's trying to help you…"
"Twenty-five percent!"
Jeremy's form flickered for a moment, terrifying Elsie. "He's vanishing!"
"No, the virus started integrating itself into his code. It's just me removing the virus and reestablishing his old code…Forty percent!"
The woman watched her son flicker more. For a brief instant, she saw black and gray where the soft blues of his clothing should be. His skin turned ashen, and his hair turned dark gray. She saw his beautiful blue eyes glowing orange when he opened them just wide enough to squint at her.
She squeezed him, cooing into his ear, "You're going to be fine…"
"Sixty percent!...Seventy-five!...Ninety!"
"It's almost done, Jeremy. I promise it'll stop hurting in a moment…"
"Ninety-five!...Finished!"
Her son's screaming and thrashing stopped. She gazed at him worriedly.
A screen opened up, allowing Franz to watch them. She could see the worry in his eyes despite the thick lenses of his glasses. "Well…?"
Jeremy groaned and closed his eyes, reopening them to look at her. "Mom…what happened…?"
She hugged him even tighter than before, unable to say anything due to her relief.
"You were infected with the virus that attacked Lyoko," Franz told him. "I had to run a virus purge before even a small portion of it integrated itself into your code permanently."
Jeremy wrapped her arms around his mother, clearly not fully understanding why his mother was so desperate to hold him at that moment.
She'd explain it to him later. Once she could find her voice again.
"Jeremy…I…have bad news."
It was about a month after the virus incident that the virtual boy stood next to his father who sat in his command chair. His mother was nowhere in sight.
"Your mother…Your mother…"
He waited, not wanting to hear the words he thought Franz was going to say. He chewed his lower lip.
The scientist took a deep breath. "Your mother was in an accident."
"Is she okay?"
'Tell me she's all right. Tell me that you're just worried about her because she's in the hospital.'
The man shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "She's dead."
Jeremy froze.
He'd read up on the concept of death. He'd run across references to it multiple times, so he had investigated it.
To his horror, he'd learned that death was like deletion for humans. Only humans couldn't be backed up and restored.
Something wet slid down his cheeks, and there was a pain in his chest. He reached a hand up to touch the wetness.
'I'm crying…But why should I be? Mom's fine…She's fine! I saw her only two-point-four hours ago! She was just going to the store!'
He trembled, trying to fight off the devastating knowledge that Elsie was never coming back.
"But don't worry, Jeremy…"
He gazed at his father, sadness turning to fear as he saw the strange gleam in his father's eye.
"She'll be back. I'm not going to give her up without a fight."
Franz turned to the screen. "Get down to the scanner room. I'm going to virtualize you. I have work to do."
Meekly nodding, the virtual boy walked to the elevator, his feet feeling thousands of times heavier than they actually were. He pressed the button and glanced over his shoulder.
'Don't let me lose you, too,' he silently begged. 'Please…'
The doors closed, and the elevator slid down the shaft. He turned just as the doors opened and walked to one of the scanners, stepping inside.
"I'm here," he said quietly, voice cracking but knowing the intercom would still pick it up.
"Transfer Jeremy…"
The doors slid shut on the human world. The scanner whirred.
"Scanner Jeremy…Virtualization."
He dropped to the floor of the Forest Region, crouching upon landing. "I made it, Father."
But he received no reply, no acknowledgement that he'd spoken.
His voice had been soft but otherwise normal. His chest, however, still hurt. And Jeremy wished he could cry.
Franz became obsessed with time reversal. When not in class, he would go to the lab and work on the program, testing it with little jumps back in time. Never far enough to actually go back to a time before Elsie died but enough to add cubites to the supercomputer, increasing its power.
He hoped that if he increased its strength enough, he could reverse time far enough to stop Elsie from going to the store that day. Then that bastard wouldn't have hit her.
'If she'd only been driving, she would've stood a chance!'
Sleep and food were tossed to the back of his mind. He had more important matters to work on. His wife was at stake.
Finally, he had enough power to initiate the big jump.
"Return to the past…now."
White light swept over him. And then it was that morning again.
"Elsie!" he called, jogging back up the path to his house. "Elsie!"
She was supposed to be in the kitchen, washing dishes. (She never used the dishwasher if she could avoid it, saying that the activity relaxed her.)
"Elsie!" he yelled, running into the kitchen.
No one.
He ran about the house like a madman, shouting her name.
But Elsie wasn't there.
He had gone back in time, yes, but his wife was still buried in the ground. Perhaps the death date on her tombstone had changed (he would have to look and see), yet she remained dead.
Franz collapsed to his knees on the kitchen floor, weeping. Why?! Why couldn't he save her?! What had he overlooked all of those times?!
He heard the hum of the laptop he'd given her to communicate with Jeremy. He glanced up to see it resting on the counter, close to the sink but not close enough to get accidentally splashed.
Gripping the edge of the counter, he pulled himself to his feet and carried the device over to the table. With shaking fingers, he opened the window that allowed him to watch the AI.
Jeremy sat in a miserable hunch in a tower, gazing at something. Adjusting the "camera" allowed him to see that the boy had made a three-dimensional model of one of their photos.
He saw Elsie's image smiling, kneeling down with her arms around their son's image. His own image also kneeled, an arm reaching around his wife and a hand on Jeremy's shoulder. The virtual boy grinned widely, his hands grasping one hand from each of his parents.
He remembered taking that picture. He'd set the timer on the camera just so he could be included.
He watched the real Jeremy bow his head, taking deep breaths.
Franz realized that he hadn't spoken a word to Jeremy since sending him back to Lyoko. How agonized the child must've been: his mother gone and his father seeming to abandon him.
He fled the house and ran the entire way to the lab. He sat in his command chair and slid the headset on.
But he couldn't say anything. What could he say?
Taking a deep breath, he softly called, "Jeremy."
The boy on the screen jerked his head up. "Father…?"
He swallowed. "I'm going to materialize you."
The boy nodded and rose. Franz typed in the code before going to the elevator.
He arrived in the scanner room just as the doors of one scanner slid open. Father and son walked over to each other, neither knowing what to say.
The scientist kneeled and wrapped his arms around his son, crying. His son clung to him, sobbing as well.
It was time to stop dwelling on the past. If he had anything to say about it, he would keep his promise to his wife:
He would materialize Jeremy. Their son would be human.
He needed their son to be human.
About two months later, Jeremy biked towards his home in the woods. Or rather, what would be his permanent home once Franz perfected the materialization program. For now, he could spend only three days at a time outside of Lyoko.
So for the first time ever, Jeremy had gone to school.
He was, to the population of Kadic Academy, the adopted son of Franz Hopper. However, he was primarily home schooled, attending those classes that Franz could never hope to teach. (That had been an intriguing discussion between his father and the principal. Yet a threat to quit had swiftly changed the other man's mind.)
Due to his rather sporadic appearances at Kadic, he didn't have any friends. But that was all right for now. Soon he would be able to properly attend all of the various classes and get to know the students.
He left his bike in its usual place and ran towards the house, backpack slung over his shoulder.
"Father! I'm home!" he called, opening the front door.
Franz came to greet him, a small smile on his face. "You're home early. You're not skipping class, are you?"
Jeremy shook his head as he closed the door, automatically locking it. (Both his mother and his father had always insisted that he lock the front door.) "Mr. Belmont was sick, so gym class was cancelled."
"Ah…I thought Otto looked a bit under the weather when I saw him earlier."
Jeremy tilted his head to one side.
"It's a figure of speech," the man told his virtual son patiently. "It means that he looked sick."
"Then why not just say he looked sick?"
"Humans are very fond of their idioms," his father explained, reaching out to ruffle his son's blond locks. "It's a habit we're not liable to break any time soon."
"You mean like those words that Mom kept telling me never to use?"
"Exactly."
"So…is this one of those phrases that I shouldn't use?"
"No, 'under the weather' is fine." Franz led him into the living room. "As a general rule, if it's a four-letter word that you're not sure about, don't say it until you know what it means."
"Yes, sir."
"Now, are you ready for your piano lesson?"
Jeremy nodded eagerly. The piano was actually quite fun. It was math that created the most pleasant sounds…
…when he played it correctly. He wasn't going to be performing concerts any time soon, but at least he didn't sound like he was randomly slamming his fingers down on the keyboard anymore.
Franz sat at on the bench, fingers poised above the keys. "I'm going to play this piece" he nodded towards the sheet music "and you're going to read over the music and tell me where I went wrong when I'm done. It could be wrong notes or rhythm, so listen closely."
"Yes, sir."
He focused his eyes on the sheet music, mentally noting sections where his father had purposely played the wrong rhythms. Some of the notes he wasn't sure about, so he mentally highlighted them as well.
The sound of a car coming up the drive alerted Jeremy to visitors. He turned his head to look out the window.
His father sighed. "You're not paying attention…"
"I'm sorry, but I thought I heard something."
"Hmm?" Franz followed his gaze.
A black car came to a stop in front of the house. Three men in black suits and wearing dark sunglasses stepped out.
Jeremy gazed curiously at the men. "Should I go open the door for them?"
Franz paled as he saw the men in black.
At last, they'd come for him and Carthage.
He looked at his son after the boy's query.
It wouldn't take them long to figure out that the boy wasn't human. In fact, they probably already had suspicions about his rarely-seen "adopted son".
"We have to leave. Now."
Jeremy gazed at him in surprise. "Where?"
"To the lab! Hurry!"
He slid off of the piano bench and grabbed Jeremy's arm. Obediently, the boy rose to his feet and followed.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Crack! The door was forced open.
Franz felt Jeremy's arm slip from his grip as the boy paused to look back. He glanced back himself and saw the three men in black behind them. "Hurry!"
The terrified boy started running. Behind them, three pairs of feet pounded the wood floor.
Franz led the way to the door leading to the garden, opening it and exiting so fast that he nearly toppled over. Jeremy followed quickly after him. He slammed the door shut and placed the board he'd originally intended to use to fix a shelf beneath the doorknob.
"We don't have much time. Come on!"
He opened the door that seemed to lead to a shed. Instead, it led to the passageway leading to the sewers and, ultimately, the lab. The pair ran inside, Franz pausing only long enough to shut the door and lock it.
Their mad dash through the sewers only ended when they reached the ladder leading to the outside world and the factory. The child swiftly climbed it, his father right behind him.
Franz shut the entrance to the passage while his son waited for him. Then they continued their run, rushing to the elevator and taking it down to the lab.
"Father…what's wrong? Who…Who were those men?" Jeremy asked, panting and watching his father work.
"People that you'll never have to meet if I have anything to say about it," the scientist growled from where he stood at the supercomputer's keyboard, punching in the sequence for an automatic transfer. "Quickly. We have to get to the scanners."
Down another level. Each of them headed towards a scanner. Franz entered his scanner just as the doors slid shut. The supercomputer started the transfer sequence.
The scientist stumbled as he landed on the ground of the Mountain Region. Jeremy landed in an easy crouch.
The boy gazed at him, a silent question on his face.
"We're not going back, Jeremy. It's not safe." He reached out and brushed a stray lock of blond out of the boy's face, unnerved when he couldn't feel it. He was going to have to get used to that.
"Not safe?"
"Those men are after me. And now you."
"What about Mom's garden?"
"I'm afraid you won't be able to tend it for her anymore," he said softly.
Jeremy stared at his feet.
"But cheer up. We're together, and that's what's important."
The boy's face brightened as he lifted his head. However, he then stared in horror at something beyond the scientist.
"What's wrong?" Franz asked, worried that the men in black had somehow figured out a way to follow.
"Hornets! Father, watch out!"
The boy slammed into him, knocking him backwards, as five shots that would've struck his back harmlessly hit the ground behind where Jeremy had once stood. The scientist looked up in open-mouthed surprise at the five hornets, which were turning to make another pass.
XANA was attacking them. But why?
"Jeremy, run!"
The pair climbed to their feet and ran. All the while, Franz shouted, "XANA, stand down! I repeat: Stand down!"
But the hornets kept firing, not once pausing. Franz glanced back at them.
Somehow, XANA had managed to ignore his commands. He thought back over the past several months, trying to figure out what might've allowed it to do so.
'The virus! It was never actually purged from XANA! It was simply contained somewhere!'
He cursed his foolishness. He'd been arrogant, thinking that his program was perfect, that the virus had done nothing before it had been contained.
In truth, the virus had been contained in XANA's own code, XANA somehow absorbing it then using it to change its obedience parameters.
And if it could do that, what was to stop it from deactivating the de-virtualization protocol if the scientist was "killed"?
"Father! We're running out of plateaus!"
Franz looked to see the edge of the Mountain Region. Jeremy stopped just ahead of him before turning back around.
"Jeremy, fly away."
"I'm not going to leave you behind!"
"That's an order!" he barked.
The boy stubbornly stayed in human form. "I already lost Mom! I'm not gonna lose you, too!"
"This is no time to argue! Do as I say!"
"I'm not leaving!"
A strange sound greeted their ears, and they turned to see a white ball with a blue XANA symbol on it.
'The transporter? All this time, XANA was simply attempting to get us into the transporter? For what purpose?'
The orb swept over them, carrying them up and away from the hornets.
Jeremy looked around at the blue domed area, the room spinning about him. His father stood behind him, the scientist's back against his.
"Where are we?"
"I believe that XANA has brought us to Carthage." He could hear the frown in his father's voice.
"Carthage?"
"The fifth sector of Lyoko."
Jeremy turned around to face Franz. "There are five sectors?"
A nod. "Only I never wanted anyone to find this sector."
"Why?"
The room ceased spinning, and a white doorway slid down from the ceiling.
"I'll explain later. For now, we have to find the way out."
The virtual boy followed the human as Franz ran from the room into the mysterious sector. He heard growling from various hiding places but saw nothing when he turned his head to look.
It all led to an open room, a mechanism on the wall directly across from them.
"This is very strange. Very strange indeed," the man murmured.
Jeremy looked at the floor, gingerly tapping it with a foot. "It seems solid." He then gazed at the mechanism, pointing. "Maybe that opens the way out."
"Hmm…though I have to wonder why XANA brought us here only to let us go."
Jeremy shrugged. The AI controlling Lyoko never spoke to him.
"Let's go. Cautiously."
Stepping out onto the floor, the virtual boy saw that it wasn't a solid floor, more like overly-large tiles connected together. He kept walking, his father beside him.
Three tiles in, the tiles behind them collapsed. Then the tiles to the right, left, and before. Then the tile they stood on seemed to wobble.
"Hurry!"
Jeremy leapt to a tile that seemed stationary, grabbing his father's hand and pulling him on when the man almost missed.
"Thank you," Franz panted. He looked about. "We're trapped."
Jeremy turned around, gazing about before, by chance, glancing up. "What is that thing?!"
A squid-like creature dropped gracefully from the ceiling, landing next to them. It reached out clear spaghetti-like arms that wrapped around Franz, lifting the man off the ground. The human started to turn translucent as the tentacles glowed red.
"Father!" Jeremy shifted to tiger and swiped at one of the offending appendages.
"Jeremy…fly…!" And then the man disappeared.
"Father!"
The tentacles reached for him. He swiped, roaring in agony and rage. Yet no matter how many times he forced the tentacles to retreat, they kept trying to reach for him.
With no other choice, he turned and leapt off the edge, switching to eagle. But before he could soar up and away, a tentacle wrapped about him. He screamed in fright and tried to free himself, but another of the clear appendages wrapped about him, turning him around to gaze upon his father's murderer.
Three more tentacles came forward, arching towards his head. He struggled, shapeshifting to bear in an attempt to use its strength to break free. But as the tentacles glowed a darker shade of red, he was forced out of bear form and back to human.
"No! No!"
The three tentacles moved to hover above his temples and forehead. And then they began to glow.
Jeremy felt strange, dizzy. He tried to scream but couldn't will himself to produce a sound. All the while, red orbs of light flew up the three tentacles and towards the creature.
And then darkness.
Jeremy opened his eyes to see the interior of a tower. He blankly looked about as he sat up.
He reached out a hand to summon a screen to call…
…to call…
Who did he think he was going to call? He knew no one. He alone inhabited Lyoko.
There had always been nothing but Lyoko.