"Flight 13 to Chicago, boarding."

Dave's head perked as he heard the airport announcement. "Hey." he said, turning his head to his sister Rose, who was fast asleep on the bench to the left of him. Without a second thought, he crumpled one of the brochures he had laid out nearby and tossed the ball at her, which bounced right off her head.

Slowly Rose awoke and sat up, rubbing her eyes groggily. "What?" she asked with a grumpy tone in her voice. She was having a pretty nice nap until the annoying thud of paper made contact with her cranium.

"Our flight's coming up. We're 14 to Seattle, right?" Dave asked, having not bothered to examine their tickets after getting them the first time. Dragging his index finger across the trackpad of his laptop, he closed out his blog and closed his computer, stuffing it into a bag and standing.

Rose nodded, standing up as well. "Yeah, that's us. Let's get going then." Both of them swung their backpacks over their shoulders and headed to the section where their plane was boarding. It was going to be a long, straight-shot to Seattle lasting about 8 hours, most of which Dave planned to spend sleeping. However, just in case he ended up being struck by a sudden wave of insomnia, he had made sure to pack two fully charged media players. There was absolutely no way he was going to just sit there and watch a crappy in-flight Nicholas Cage movie or another episode of The Office.

The ticket receptionist examined the two of them closely, but Dave assured her that they were both 16 years old and not runaways. Soon enough they were able to board, and within the hour, they were in the air.

Dave was admittedly looking forward to living in Seattle. After all, it was where John and Jade lived, his two closest friends that he had never met in real life. Though he would never admit it, Dave felt rather lonely at home. In the small rural town that he and Rose lived in before, their High School was attended by no more than 300 students at most, and frankly, most of them were idiots. Going to a boarding school in one of the largest cities in the nation would be a definite improvement.

He glanced again at the other brochure he had in his possession, the one that he didn't crumble earlier. On the front, in bolded old-English style letters, was the name 'Sassacre Academy'. Co-ed, four-room apartment style dormitories, a good sized campus; it was basically like attending College, except with a dress code. Dave wasn't too worried with that detail though; the uniform didn't look that bad, and they had some freedom in how they wore it. Combine that with nice on-campus facilities and a great surrounding area, and it almost seemed too good to be true. Still, Dave didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Silently, as to not wake up a once-again sleeping Rose, Dave opened up his laptop after they got the clear to use electronic devices.

With no internet 30,000 feet in the air (which Dave saw as a travesty), Dave could only type up drafts for blog posts. He had a pretty large following for his webcomics of the ironic persuasion, and he figured that said following wouldn't mind if he posted something concerning his life. Maybe someone following him went to Sassacre as well.

Dave checked the clock on his laptop. 11:34 PM. Still about 7 hours to go. Dave flexed his fingers and began typing out his blog post draft.

turntechgodhead log number 1

en route to seattle

not even an hour in and the sis is already asleep

apparently sassacre academy place kicks some serious ass

and if theyve got vending machines with aj i will be in my own 100% natural paradise

flight is gonna suck though

no internet

only tunes

times like these when a mans will is tested in the face of unyielding boredom

only the strider can prev

Before he could finish that line, he felt a hand tap his shoulder. Resisting the urge to groan out of annoyance, Dave turned to whoever it was that tapped him from behind.

Sitting there was a boy that looked of similar age to Dave, who looked like he had just woken up. His pitch black hair seemed to be in a perpetual state of bedhead, and his bloodshot eyes had deep bags under them. He wore a black shirt with some odd purple symbol on it that Dave didn't recognize, and black pants with faint polka dots scattered on them. He sat alone in his two-seat row, with his various overstuffed bags taking up the seat next to him.

"Hey, bro." was the first thing the boy said, looking at Dave's laptop rather than Dave himself. "Nice rig ya got there."

Dave shrugged. "It's not terrible. Gets the job done." he replied, a little confused as to why the boy would just compliment his computer out of the blue. Maybe he was a computer enthusiast. Who would know?

"Tell ya what could make it a whole motherfuckin' load better though. You ever heard of the 'Gateway Code'?" asked the strange boy. Dave shook his head, so the boy continued; "It's a trick they use when they're building computers. Makes it real simple to get complete control over your system. They don't usually let people outside of manufacturing know, because people could violate their fuckin' warranty and shit. You should give it a shot, brother."

Dave lifted an eyebrow. "What, is it like a line of code or something?"

"Nah." replied the strange boy. "Just a few key presses, like control-alt-delete. It's a sequence, and you gotta do it real motherfuckin' fast or else it ain't gonna work. Like this; press 'home' to start it, type the word 'gateway', hold alt and press 'end'. Simple, right?"

Doubting the truth of what the boy said, Dave still had no reason to not try the silly trick. Besides, if he refused to, the boy probably wouldn't leave him alone about it. "Alright, 'home'..." Dave said, his fingers moving across the keyboard at a brisk pace as he followed the instructions and typed out the word 'gateway'.

A simple strike of the 'end' key with the alt key held down, and nothing happened. Just as Dave expected. Turning back to the seats behind him, Dave smugly announced that his guess was right. "See? Nothing happ-"

Dave's words fell on ears that weren't there. Where the boy had been sitting before with a mountain of bags, there were only empty seats. Dave turned back to his laptop, confused and rather weirded out.

"I must have not gotten enough sleep. Jeez." Dave said as he looked back to his screen. To his surprise, the screen had gone black. "Shit, don't tell me you died on me." he protested quietly, knowing that he had charged it at the airport while they were waiting. Frustrated and annoyed, he closed his laptop.

Click. The sound of his laptop closing shut was the last thing Dave heard before his vision went black and his head began pounding. He could no longer hear the plane engines, or the sound of Rose's deep breaths in her sleep. He had absolutely no sense of up and down or left and right, and he couldn't tell if he was floating or falling. "What the hell is this?" Dave called out to the surrounding darkness. To his surprise, a voice called back to him.

"I am thou." came a booming voice that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Dave looked around, but could see nothing but blackness.

"Thou art I." said the voice once more. Dave's vision was suddenly blidnded by a white flash, and when he was able to see again, a shining card floated downards and stopped in front of Dave's face. The card was incredibly detailed, and featured what appeared to be a sword in front of a clock with no numbers. The card was labeled with the letter 'X'; or was it the roman numeral for 10? Dave didn't have the ability to make the distinction at this point, as he was completely and utterly confounded. With nothing else to do, he reached out and took hold of the card.

The card immediately dissipated into a soft blue light, and Dave felt a warmth inside his body. Before he could think about what just happened, his vision suddenly faded to white.

When he came to, Dave's face was laid on the keyboard of his laptop, as if he had fallen asleep there. Sitting back up, he noticed that his computer was on once again, with his blog draft still open. Dave turned back and found no traces of the boy that was there earlier; perhaps he had imagined it all. That certainly made more sense than what he had just experienced. It had to have been a vivid dream. He hadn't been able to sleep for the entire wait at the airport, after all.

Dave's laptop clock read 12:34. Just a litle over 30 minutes after midnight. It was as he thought; he had simply fallen asleep. Taking the odd dream as a definite sign that sleep was needed, Dave saved his computer up into his bag and closed his eyes, slowly drifiting to sleep once again.

The voice of the pilot awoke him much later, informing the passengers that they would be landing shortly. Dave stretched and turned to Rose, who had recently awakened as well. "Mornin'." Dave said, stretching his arms.

"Morning." Rose replied, looking out of her window down at the large city below. "You think this will be better than living back at home?"

"Man, you kidding? It's gonna kick Texas' ass." Dave replied. "Just trust me. The year's gonna turn out great and we'll never want to go back."