Prologue Part 2

Finally, the rumbling stopped. Adam waited a few seconds before daring to move. He scooted out from underneath his bed, and took in the damage before him. The back wall (with the window) was completely nonexistant; or rather, it was existent, but existed all over the ground. He could see through the ceiling in various places to the floors above. In addition, the shelves he put up on the walls had dismounted and shattered on the floor.

All of his music equipment was now damaged beyond repair. "My songs!" he yelled to himself. He had just a few days previous finished recording the last of twelve songs for an album he had hoped to sell (and of course, to give his girlfriend Zoey). It was his first real album in all his eight years of production.

Adam frantically sorted through the debris looking for his hard drives. Getting cut while trying to wade across the room, he threw aside pounds and pounds of wood and equipment parts and brushed aside dust, finally finding the hard drives he was looking for. Unfortunately, they were hopelessly broken into shards. "No, not my songs...I just finished it!" he said, throwing the shards he had picked up back into the debris. He turned back to the missing wall. "What the hell just happened?" For a moment he wanted to turn on the TV for the news, but then remembered his entire room had just been decimated.

The missing wall led right out towards the middle of the campus (he lived on the first floor). He could see many other students struggling around, as if they too had been injured by the rumblings. The area outside his dorm room was open, probably meant to be a walkway for mass amounts of students, which meant that there wouldn't be much debris on the ground. Realizing this, Adam immediately waded across the broken room and triumphantly stepped outside; just as he did, more of the ceiling fell down. Looking back at the building, he thought to himself, "I hope everyone got out alright!" Since there was nothing worth looting left intact in what used to be his room, he decided to just run down to the Expo Site for some answers.

Adam arrived as close as the officials would allow him to get. The site had been completely leveled to the ground. The Expo Site building must have been built strongly, or stronger than his dorm, anyways, because most of the debris was relatively close to the site (but all inside the sectioned-off area). The buildings around it were badly damaged due to the vibrations, however. "What happened here?" he asked one of the officials.

"We can't comment yet." said the official.

"Look, an explosion here just destroyed my dorm room over at Central University. All due respect, sir, but I'd like some answers." He replied.

"I couldn't tell ya," said the official. "I really don't know. We're talking to the kids involved now, and we'll issue a press release when we're ready."

Adam waited around for a good half hour while the officials talked to Lan, Mayl, Yai, Dex, Chaud, Tab, and Mick; he didn't have anything better to do. Eventually, he noticed Mick finish speaking first and decided to take his chance to get answers. "Excuse me," he said, walking up to Mick in a deliberately nonthreatening way. "Hi, my name is Adam. Can you tell me what happened here?"

"Uh...I'd rather not talk about it. It's been kind of a long day." he said.

"Alright..." began Adam, with a sigh. "I didn't mean to bother you."

"It's just," Adam continued, almost without thinking, "I was in my dorm room when all this apparently happened, and the vibrations completely destroyed my dorm room over at Central University. Not to mention all of my audio equipment and the hard drives with the music I spent a year on which I was going try selling and giving to my girlfriend...and now it looks like I'm gonna have to redo all of it..."

"Whoops, sorry...you probably don't care...I was just hoping to get some answers."

"Well...that does suck...but it's nothing compared to what we went through!" Mick said. "Look, I just wanna get home."

"You're right, sorry. I'll just be going then..." started Adam, beginning to turn away.

Mick sighed. "Okay, well have you ever thought about getting a Navi to help you re-write the music? I hear the Navi and Internet Research department has some professors looking to make a few extra bucks programming Navis, you could always go there."

"A navi..." said Adam. Painful memories swirled through his head. "Yeah...Thanks..."

"...yeah, yeah. You're welcome." said Mick, walking away.

Adam strolled back towards Central U. As he approached the edge of campus, his phone rang. It was his girlfriend, Zoey. Her relatively high, sweet voice was always soothing to Adam. Adam answered: "Hello?"

"Adam! Oh my God, are you alright? Where are you?" she seemed almost hysterical. "I came to see you at your dorm and it was totally gone...I thought you had died under the wreckage! Why didn't you call me?"

"I'm sorry..." Adam said. "I wanted to find out what the hell happened."

"God, Adam...Why wouldn't you call me first?" she shot back.

"Look, Zoey. I'm sorry. I was thinking about the ear-splitting screeches and the fact that my dorm room just caved in on me."

"Well...alright. Just call me first next time!"

"Okay..."

"So..." Zoey began, "are you hurt?"

Adam paused. "No. I used my bed for protection from the falling ceiling. Where are you?"

"I'm at your dorm. Where are you?"

"Walking back to the campus. I visited the Expo Site. Seems that's where the explosion came from."

"Well come meet me. I have something I want to give you..."

Hanging up the phone, he went back to the site of his old dorm room, and saw Zoey standing there. She was a pretty girl, 5'6", about 130 pounds, and had medium-length reddish hair.

Zoey turned around and ran to Adam. "Zoey-" but before he could talk, she had already planted a kiss on him.

"I was so scared for you." she said.

"Listen Zoey." Adam started. "I was going to give you an album of songs I wrote...but my hard drives got destroyed in the wreck and the songs along with it."

"It's okay-" she started, but Adam cut her off.

"I'm going to get a navi to help me make it again."

She looked at him, shocked. "That's not funny."

"It's not a joke. I'm going to get a navi so I can remake the album and-"

Zoey slapped him. "Don't lie to me...You promised you wouldn't get another navi. You promised!"

Adam recoiled from the hit. "Damn it, Zoey. It's not going to be like that. I don't have the money to buy all that equipment again. I just need it for my music, so I can rewrite it...for you!"

"How can you tell me it won't be like last time? How can you tell me you won't go overboard with it again? Adam, do you even remember why you had give your last navi away? You couldn't STOP training it! You couldn't stop busting viruses, customizing forms, doing 'missions'. You didn't speak to your friends, your family, or me. It's not fair to anyone, INCLUDING whatever poor navi you create!"

Adam was holding back anger and shame. "I got through all that. I'm not the same any more. Don't you trust me?"

"It's not about trust...I want to protect you, even if it's from your own bad decisions. It's not WORTH the risk, Adam, especially not for one album!"

"I...am not a child," Adam said. "You don't have to protect me from anything."

"Adam...if you do this...I will leave you at the first sight of a problem. I'm telling you. I don't care if I'm right or not. If I see ANY evidence that you're battling or training again, I WILL leave. I love you, but I just can't go through that again. I can't. I'm sorry."

They looked at each other for what felt like hours, but was actually only about fifteen seconds. Adam was the first to speak. "Alright...so where do we go from here?"

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you want to stay at my house tonight?" she asked.

"Sure!" Adam said, perking up.

"Hey, don't even think about it..." she immediately replied. "You're giving me a headache..."

So he went to her house, and slept on the couch.