The country of France was enjoying a beautiful late Saturday morning. The sun was overhead, birds chirped and a gentle breeze blew through the land. The city was alive with activity as every shop and restaurant was filled with customers eager to enjoy the day to its fullest and move the economy through the art of shopping. Those who chose not to shop were milling around the city either on foot or with a bicycle. All in all, a very normal weekend was underway.
In a small two-story house in the middle of the city, a Japanese family was going through their usual weekend routine. The mother, Akiko Ishiyama, was busy tending to a flower vase while the father, Takeo,was busy reading the business section of the daily newspaper. Their son, Hiroki, was sitting on the couch playing with his video game system. Their daughter, Yumi, had just emerged from her room and was heading for the front door.
"I'm going to be out with my friends," she announced as she stopped to fix her hair one last time.
Takeo folded the corner of the news paper to get a better view of his daughter. "Friends or just one friend?" he asked.
"Takeo!" his wife snapped back.
He looked at her with mock surprise. "I just want to know whether or not she's going to be with her boyfriend today," he reasoned.
Yumi sighed angrily. "Dad, Ulrich isn't my boyfriend. We're just going to hang out together and meet up with our other friends later."
"It's a date," Hiroki interjected, his gaze still on the TV screen. "I heard over the phone last night that she was going out with him to the movies."
Yumi gave her brother a glare of death. She figured he might eavesdrop on her phone conversations but she never figured he would tell their parents about them. "Hey, I don't go around telling mom and dad about your attempts to call Milly," she retorted.
Takeo's attention remained fixed on his daughter. "Well, you make sure he doesn't try anything funny with you. I'm already wary of him always coming over here for tutoring. No telling what he might do outside of this house."
"I told you, he's..." Yumi stopped herself. No matter how many times she explained to her parents that she and Ulrich were just friends, she felt she could never convince them that it was the truth. "Fine," she said, defeated. She put on her shoes and got out of the house.
"As for you, Hiroki," Akiko said, "who's Milly?"
Hiroki paused the game and sat on the couch with a dumbfounded look on his face. While he had never actually called Milly on the phone, Yumi did catch him a few times with the phone in his hand staring at it, trying to convince himself to make the call. He had a hard enough time trying to explain his crush on the school reporter to his sister, let alone trying to explain it to his parents. As Takeo folded the other side of the paper to get a good look at his son, Hiroki lay the controller down on the table, turned off the TV and game console and ran to his room.
Jeremie opened his closet and began to rummage through his box of miscellaneous parts. While people have often told him he was a pack rat, he felt that keeping around anything and everything he used in his life was beneficial, especially if he could use spare parts from old projects for new ones. As he dug through the box, he found something that caught his eye. A minute later he pulled out a small robot with a camera eye and wheels for legs. Jeremie remembered this robot very well. This was the robot that caused him to seek out advanced parts at the abandoned factory, which then led him to the discovery of the supercomputer and Lyoko. This was also one of the first robots that XANA had possessed to attack the boy genius. He dusted it off and placed it on a shelf next to Kiwi-2, his successful basketball playing dog that was later cloned by XANA to attack them. He sighed at the sight, memories of his adventures behind the computer terminal now flooding his mind. As he went back to his box of stuff, he heard a knocking at the door. He opened it to find Odd smiling on the other side.
"Hey, Einstein," he said. "Mind if I use your computer? I need to get some beats for my film's soundtrack."
"No problem," Jeremie said as he let his friend in. "You're already done with your movie?"
Odd shook his head. "No way! I only shot one scene but I figure I better find a score for it before I shoot the next scene."
Jeremie rolled his eyes. He had never heard of any filmmaker that worked this way. Then again, he knew better than to argue with an artist about how they worked. He went back to rummaging through his box while his friend hopped on the computer.
"By the way," Odd asked, "where's Aelita?"
"Practicing," he replied. "She wants to improve her mixing skills for the next Subdigitals concert she can perform at.."
Odd turned on the computer monitor and looked over the desktop. He noticed that the boy genius still had the Lyoko activity scanner and alert system still active, even though that virtual world died months ago. While he would have said something negative about Jeremie having those programs around in the open, he understood the nostalgia factor behind them since he also missed the virtual world. After reminiscing for a bit, he opened the web browser and saw a very interesting link. "Take a look at this," he said as he clicked on the link.
The computer aficionado got up and peered over his friend's shoulder. The headline on the site announced that the abandoned car factory that was near Kadic Academy was going to be demolished that day. As they read further, the boys discovered that the old factory was going to be imploded to make way for a new shopping mall to be completed eighteen months later. "End of an era," he said in a low tone. Odd nodded as they left the website and went back to their work.
Bernard was a heavy-set man that worked in the construction business. While his job was to create buildings, he also specialized in building demolitions, specifically explosives. He had taken down many buildings before and judging by the construction of the factory, this was going to be a tough job indeed. As he finished planting the dynamite charges on the support beams of the building, he took the freight elevator down to the basement to inspect it and see where he would need to place the next set of charges. The elevator stopped on the second basement floor. When it opened, Bernard saw something unexpected. The room that he encountered looked much cleaner than the rest of the building, as if it was used only a few months ago as opposed to a few years. One side of the room was lined with cables while all of the walls had a green metallic sheen to them. In the middle of the room was a computer that extended to the ceiling. The control panel, complete with several monitors, was placed on one side while a large switch was placed on the other. Surrounding the device was a track for the operator's chair. Bernard reached for his personal two-way radio and called for his supervisor.
"Hey, Boss," he said, "I found this weird looking computer here. Real fancy stuff. Looks brand new. What do you want me to do with it?"
There was a small chirp before his boss responded. "Try turning it on and see if it works. We might be able to sell it off for scrap or something."
Bernard did as he was told. He flipped the switch up and heard the roar of the fans as the machine came to life. A few moments later, the monitors turned on. Bernard went to see them and found something strange. Instead of a layout for the factory machinery or blueprints on automobiles that could be sent to the robots, the monitors showed several lines of code as well as a diagram of what looked like several cigarette towers sticking up from the ground. He called up his supervisor again.
"It works but it's showing something weird here. Didn't you say that this place used to be a car factory?" he asked.
"Yeah, it was," he answered. "You know what? Let's blow it up anyway. If there was something important in that thing, someone would have taken it with them already."
Bernard put his radio away and began to make preparations for the upcoming building demolition. As the conversation was taking place, a tiny spark jumped from the power switch to a nearby exposed wire. The wire, though seemingly dead for quite some time, came to life. It began writhing around wildly until it built up enough inertia to strike at Bernard with just enough electricity to knock him out before the wire lay lifeless again.
Bernard became conscious again a few moments later. While the rest of his body looked fine, his eyes told a different story. They were glazed over and pure white with the exception of the pupil, which now had a distinct branding on them that had not been seen for at least six months. The now possessed construction worker sat in front of the control panel and began typing away at a rapid pace. Despite not using the computer much in his daily life, Bernard was now able to navigate whole directories and command prompts on a computer completely alien to him. After hitting the Enter key, Bernard slouched down on the chair and closed his eyes. A white sphere of light began to emerge from the factory, completely engulfing the building before consuming the entire globe.
