CHAPTER 3: Megaframe Revisited

Bob entered Dot's office and placed Herr Doktor's list on the desktop.

"That was fast," Dot said.

"Matrix is very persuasive," said Bob. He sat down and relaxed while Dot put on her reading glasses.

"There's a lot here," Dot said as she scrolled through the items listed on the vidpad. "Is this a comprehensive list?"

"The Doktor said Megabyte didn't include him in every project. We might find a few surprises."

"I'll tell the recovery teams to exercise caution," said Dot.

"Why not have Hack and Slash do it?" Bob asked. "If it is Megabyte's old weapons factory, they probably know the layout."

"I would, but they're too terrified to set foot inside," she said.

"Of course they are," Bob said.

Dot removed her glasses and pressed her fingers against her right temple, rubbing gently.

"Everything okay?" Bob asked.

"I just thought we'd finally put Megabyte behind us," Dot said.

Bob rose from his seat and stood behind Dot's chair. His fingers began to knead the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders, and Dot felt her body quickly turn to jelly under the Guardian's ministrations.

"Better?" asked Bob.

"Mmmmm."

"I'll take that as a yes." Bob found a particularly tight bundle and worked it out using greater pressure.

Dot half moaned, half sighed, "You're too good at this."

"Are you sleeping okay?" he asked. He pressed his thumbs into her neck, rubbing the spot just below where the spine met the skull. The command-dot-com was practically putty in his hands.

"You know I am," Dot breathed.

Bob grinned and leaned down to plant a kiss on Dot's temple. "Take the rest of the second off," Bob suggested. "Go have lunch with Capacitor. Mainframe can manage without its command-dot-com for a few milliseconds."

In the past, Dot would've brushed aside any suggestion of taking a breather, but much had changed in the last half-hour, the arrival of Kevin Sawyer notwithstanding. She had made a commitment after her breakdown to do a better job of living life rather than working through it, burning the data tape at both ends. Still, old habits died hard.

But that's why I have Bob and his magic fingers, she thought.

Dot stood up and rewarded her boyfriend's diligence with a kiss. "Thanks for the advice. I think I'll take it. Cover for me here?"

"Not a problem."

Dot smiled and whispered in his ear, "I'll make it up to you later." She planted another quick kiss on his jaw and they entered the War Room hand-in-hand.

"Specky," said Dot, "I'm stepping out for a little bit. Phong's in charge. Make sure the recovery team coordinates with him."

The lab technician nodded and snapped a quick salute. "Yes, sir-ma'am!"

"Have a good time with Capacitor," Bob said.

"I'll be back soon," seemingly hesitant to leave.

Phong tried to reassure the command-dot-com that she was not being negligent. "Worry not, my child," the old binome soothed. "The War Room is not going anywhere."

Dot took one last look around, waved goodbye, and left.

"Phong, sir?"

"Yes? What is it, Specky?"

"The recovery teams have lost track of Dr. Sawyer," the lab technician said, "and he's not responding to any vidwindow requests."

"That's odd," Bob said. "AndrAIa gave him an icon, didn't she?"

"Yes, sir," Specky replied.

"Glitch: system scan. Track and lock on Kevin Sawyer."

The keytool's cogwheel face spun and a square screen popped out of its rectangular base. After a few nanoseconds, Glitch returned a negative search result.

"That's odd," Bob said. "I'm not getting a signal."

"I added his PID code to the Registry myself," Phong said. "Either he is in a shielded location, or he's left the system."

Bob scratched his head, suddenly feeling worried. "I wonder where he could be."


Mainframe was nearly a ghost town. Kevin and Enzo wandered out of Ghetty Prime sector and hardly saw a soul with the exception of a few dirty, homeless-looking binomes. Then, near the border between Baudway and G-Prime, they came across a giant crater that seemed to reach all the way to the bottom level of the system. The edges were perfectly square, each side exactly half a mile in length. It was as though a whole section of Baudway had been surgically cut and amputated.

"Is this what a Game Cube does if you lose?" Kevin asked.

Enzo nodded. "Everything's nullified. But how could this have happened? We would've known. And where are the first responders?"

Kevin shook his head, having spotted some rusting metal scaffolding in the pit. "I don't think this happened recently, Enzo. It looks like it happened a long time ago."

"That doesn't make any sense," Enzo said.

"Think hard," Kevin said. "Has Mainframe ever lost a Game?"

"Well, yeah, but not for a long time," Enzo said. "Not since my program started running." As if he could read his mind, Enzo suddenly knew where Kevin was headed. "You don't think...aw, man. Time travel again?"

"If we have traveled through time then we need to get back as fast as we can," Kevin said. "The RAMM must have a recall function. See if you can find it on the main menu."

The shadow of an ABC passed over Enzo and Kevin. Whoever was piloting the flying tank must've spotted them because the vehicle whipped around and dropped to their altitude.

A tinny voice called to them through a loudspeaker. "You! This is a no fly zone!"

"Then why are you flying in it?" Enzo yelled back.

The turret-mounted cannons on the ABC wheeled around and took aim at them. "Land immediately and submit yourselves for processing and inspection," the pilot ordered.

"Do you always have to be so cocky?" Kevin asked.

He and Enzo broke for it, pushing their zip-boards as fast as they could go. The ABC opened fire, bursts of green energy zipping past them as they dove into the city.

"We can lose them on the ground!" Enzo said.

Enzo took the lead, guiding Kevin in between the skyscrapers of Baudway, through the nooks and crannies that only a native Mainframer could know and navigate by heart. The ABC was in hot pursuit, its mounted cannons firing away wildly. Enzo grabbed Kevin by the arm and yanked him into an alleyway narrow enough that the ABC could not follow.

But the virals kept shooting anyway.

The walls around them exploded as cannon fire chased them up the alley and out the other side. Kevin and Enzo made a hard vertical climb and they emerged near Dot's Diner. The scene they found was enough to make Kevin's blood run cold. Whole portions of the sector were cordoned off by chain link fences topped with razor wire, separating the population of Baudway into enclaves like some vast slave labor camp. Lines of binomes were being herded through security checkpoints guarded by armed viral troops.

"Let's land," Kevin said. "We're only going to draw attention to ourselves."

Enzo and Kevin decompressed their zip-boards and did their best to look inconspicuous while maintaining a respectable distance between themselves and security.

"Only the virals have icons," Enzo said. "Everyone else has a barcode. It must be some kind of ID tag."

"That'll make blending in difficult," Kevin replied. "Let's hope we don't have to be here long. We should find the diner. Maybe we can hide—"

Enzo and Kevin halted in their tracks, both laying eyes on the diner at the same moment. What should have been a symbol of refuge had been transformed, like everything else, into a rank bastardization. The restaurant was still where it was supposed to be, but it had seen better days. The outside was dingy, the windows and marquis coated in a fine layer of black soot, but showing plainly, as if it were the only thing that had been cleaned, was the name on the sign.

"'Nibbles' Diner'?" Kevin exclaimed.

"This is too weird," Enzo said.

The sounds of tolling bells rang throughout the system and a giant vidwindow opened in the sky. Megabyte's villainous countenance gazed down upon the citizens of Mainframe.

"Citizens of Megaframe," he said, his voice elegantly melodious, yet Kevin still felt his neck hairs prickle at the sound of it. "Your ruler would speak with you."

"It can't be," Enzo said. "Bob locked him up in the Supercomputer. He's gone."

In a single, unified voice the inhabitants of Mainframe called out to the image above, "All hail the Prince of Power."

Kevin grabbed Enzo by the arm and guided him toward the diner. "Everyone's looking up," he whispered. "Let's move."

As they crossed the strip, Megabyte continued his address, his accented voice dripping honey and cyanide. "The New Vial Dawn has reached an impasse. Under my benevolent hand, Megaframe has become a symbol of might and order, but forces from the Net seek to impose their own morality upon us. This will not be tolerated, and soon we will be forced to do battle. The stakes are nothing short of our survival."

Enzo and Kevin made it into the diner without being noticed, but the inside was hardly in better shape than the out. All eyes were on them the nano they stepped through the doors. It was hardly surprising. Everyone in the diner looked half-starved and dirty whereas Enzo and Kevin were obviously clean and well-fed. The diner itself was in a sorry state. The seats and stools were torn, the tables dented and shaky, the metal edging was rusting and chipped, and the black-and-white linoleum floors were covered in scratches.

"What kind of nightmare is this?" Kevin muttered. He and Enzo sat across from each other in a booth.

Enzo placed the RAMM on the table between them. "I don't think this is a time machine," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because this has always been Dot's Diner," Enzo said. "It was destroyed during the first Web invasion, and it wasn't rebuilt until the system restart. At no point was it ever called Nibbles' Diner."

"I guess that rules out time travel to the past," Kevin said.

"Could we be in the future?" Enzo asked.

"I don't see how," Kevin replied. "Like you said, Megabyte's locked up in the Supercomputer surrounded by Guardians. What are the odds he'd break out and come back to conquer Mainframe?"

"Pretty slim, I guess," Enzo reasoned, lapsing into silence.

"Didn't he look different to you?" Kevin asked.

"Who?"

"Megabyte," Kevin said, "outside just now. He looks different from what I remember."

Enzo tilted his head to the side as he thought about the image from the video feed. "Come to think of it, yeah. He looked normal. Like the way he was before the Web changed him. If this were the future, he'd look all messed up." Enzo frowned at his own realization. "So if we're not in the future, and we're not in the past, where are we?"

Kevin picked up the RAMM, turning it thoughtfully in his hands. "You're right," he mused. "It's not a time machine. We haven't moved forward or backwards in time. We've moved sideways."

Enzo took the RAMM device out of Kevin's hands and placed it back on the table. "Doc, I'm gonna need you to explain that last part. Slowly. And in plain DOS."

"Remember when the Gate Command malfunctioned and sent us back in time?" Kevin asked. "We created an alternate universe where Gigabyte never came to Mainframe. A whole new series of events unfolded from that point forward, creating a reality distinct from ours. The thing is, parallel universes might exist alongside ours, naturally, all on their own."

"You mean this thing," Enzo said, pointing to the RAMM, "took us to an alternate timeline?"

"I think so," Kevin said. "The menu let you pick from a list of Mainframes. Mainframe-Two, Mainframe-Three, Mainframe-Four, and so on."

"There was no Mainframe-One on the menu," Enzo said. He grabbed the RAMM and found the list of possible destinations. "But there is now. And Mainframe-Two is gone."

"That's where we are," Kevin said. "We must've transitioned from our Mainframe, where Megabyte built that secret base, to a different universe where he didn't. That's why we ended up outside."

"So is Mainframe-One supposed to be our version?" asked Enzo.

"Probably," said Kevin. "It makes sense to start numbering from the origin."

Enzo used the toggle to highlight the entry for Mainframe-One. "Should we…I dunno…hold hands or something?"

Kevin held out his hand, and Enzo took it, but before he could press the green button below the LED screen, a different hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"Hey you," a familiar voice growled.

Enzo slowly turned his head, his eyes first settling on the green hand grasping his shoulder then working their way up the arm and finally settling on the face of the sprite standing behind him. He wore a dark leather jumpsuit with faded orange pads on the shoulders, knees, and elbows and a dirty red baseball cap. Like Enzo, he had green skin and violet eyes, but the similarities ended there. Distinguishing the sprite was a vertical scar that ran from his brow, over his right eye, and down his cheek. A gold loop earring dangled from his left ear, and a dusting of facial hair lent his face an air of menace.

Tattooed on his forehead in black ink was a barcode.

The Enzo Matrix of Mainframe-Two scowled at his doppelganger. "Who the Dell are you supposed to be?" he demanded.


"Hello, m'lady," Capacitor cried out joyously. The Crimson Binome slipped off his stool and doffed his bicorn hat.

"I'm glad to see you Gavin," Dot said.

Capacitor planted a kiss on the back of Dot's hand, and she let him lead her to a booth where they sat down together. Cecil arrived to take their orders.

"Two energy shakes, Cecil," Dot said, "and an order of chips."

"At once, mademoiselle," replied the dedicated server.

"It's been too long, my girl," said Capacitor. "I've been worried about ye."

"I should've made more time, Gavin. I'm sorry. And it's sweet of you to worry, but really, I'm fine."

"So you've patched things up between you and your Guardian, have ye?" Capacitor probed.

"Yes. Well patched," Dot replied. "But don't expect to hear wedding bells just yet. We're taking things nice and easy this time."

She found it pleasing to hear Bob referred to as "her Guardian." It wasn't that she saw Bob as a trophy by any means, but...

Well, he is all mine now, she thought with an inward smile.

Against all odds, after all the false starts and mistakes, she finally had her Guardian. Suddenly, Dot regretted asking Bob to stay behind at the Principal Office. Things had been so busy lately, especially given her role in negotiating the new Intersystem Trade Agreement, and Dot could only recall a handful of times over the last minute where they had been together. Then again, they had packed a lot of memory into those brief moments.

"Enough about me," Dot said, quickly changing the subject. "I want to hear about you." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "And this new crew member of yours."

The Crimson Binome burst out laughing. "Very subtle, m'lady. Very subtle. I suppose you're referring to the lass who's caught your little brother's eye."

Cecil arrived carrying a tray of chips and their energy shakes.

"Enzo isn't so little anymore," Dot said, taking a sip of her shake.

"Aye," agreed Capacitor. "Time gets away from us all. But before I divulge anything, there's something I must know."

"What's that, Gavin?" asked Dot

"What in the Net do you feed that boy?"


Enzo slapped the hand away and got out of the booth to face his doppelgänger.

"I asked you a question, bits-for-brains," Enzo-Two said.

"I'm...I'm Enzo Matrix."

"No, I'm Enzo Matrix," Enzo-Two proclaimed.

"Wow, what an uncanny resemblance," Kevin said, rising from the booth. "You know, they say everyone has a twin out there somewhere."

"Zip it, clown," Enzo-Two said. "I'm not talkin' to you."

Enzo balled his fists, felt his case temperature rise. "Whatever you say to him, you say to me, too, clown."

Enzo-Two raised his hands in a mock gesture of truce. "No need to get your dander up. I just wanna know what the deal is. Are you a copy, or is that some kind of disguise?"

"Look," Enzo said. "My friend and I are just passing through. We don't want any trouble."

Enzo-Two scoffed at his counterpart's attempt to deflect. "Trouble is what you've already got if security's on your case."

He pointed out the window at something hovering outside. It's metal carapace had the flattened, thumbnail shape of a cockroach, and it was equipped with thin, jointed appendages on its left and right sides, but it's most prominent feature was a large, singular, unblinking eye. The mechanical drone peered at them though the grimy window of the diner, seemingly content to hover and observe.

"Friend of yours?" asked Kevin.

"The Manager is a friend to us all," Enzo-Two said.

"Funny name," Kevin replied. "What's it manage?"

"Disobedience," said Enzo-Two. "See my dilemma? I can't have any lookalikes running around causing trouble without causing me trouble, too. So, spill. I know you're not me, so who are you?"

Enzo couldn't help but feel offended. "I'm one-hundred-percent Enzo Matrix," he said. "All others are cheap imitations. Guess which category you fall in."

"Enzo," Kevin whispered, "take it down a notch."

"All right, punk," said Enzo-Two. "I tried being nice, but I guess I need to beat the answer outta ya."

Enzo-Two grabbed Enzo by the shirt and threw him against the bar. He tried to sock him with a right hook, but Enzo was ready. He blocked the attack and twisted his Mainframe-Two counterpart's arm into a shoulder lock.

"Ahhg," screamed Enzo-Two.

"Enzo, this is not conducive to our situation!" Kevin shouted.

"What happened here?" Enzo demanded. "How could you let Megabyte take control of Mainframe? Why aren't you fighting back?"

"If you can't beat 'em," Enzo-Two hissed through ragged breaths, "join 'em."

For the first time, Enzo noticed the green and black icon on his double's baseball cap. "You went viral!?"

The doors banged open and a team of viral binomes stormed the diner, the Manager hovering silently over them. Kevin grabbed the RAMM and then seized Enzo in a bear hug from behind, pulling him away from his Mainframe-Two double.

"No! Let me go!" Enzo protested.

The Manager was moving towards them, it's long, spindly appendages reaching out to grab them. With Enzo still struggling to free himself, Kevin felt for the green selector button on the RAMM and pressed it hard, hoping Mainframe-One was still selected on the menu.


Dot heard the satisfying sound of air being sucked through a straw as Capacitor finished his energy shake.

"Ahh. I dare say, Dot, you have the best energy shakes in the whole Net," Capacitor said.

"Maybe I should start a franchise," Dot mused. "So, tell me more about this Zoe girl."

"There's not much more to tell," Capacitor said. "She's got a good heart, and she works hard. Comes from a seafaring family, I understand. Grew up on her parents' freighter."

"You certainly seem to like her," Dot said. "That's good enough for me. It's just that Enzo may look like he's grown up, but he's still a little sprite on the inside…I think."

"Best to let the boy sort himself out," Capacitor said, tossing a chip into his mouth. "Childhood always ends, my girl. For some it ends sooner, others later. But it always ends."

A vidwindow appeared with a video feed from Bob. "Sorry to bother you, Dot," he said, "but I was wondering if you've seen Kevin recently."

"Last I checked, he was helping the recovery teams catalogue the tech in Megabyte's base," Dot replied.

"Nobody's seen him for almost a millisecond," Bob said, "and his PID signature isn't showing up on any of our scans."

A second, smaller vidwindow popped open next to Bob's, this one with a video feed from Matrix. "Dot," he said, "we can't find Enzo. Have you seen him?"

"Maybe he's with that girl?" Dot said.

"They were supposed to meet here," Capacitor said. "And m'crew hasn't finished downloading our cargo, yet."

"Kevin and Enzo are both missing?" Bob asked.

"That's not a good sign," Matrix said.

"Stay frosty, boys," Dot said. "I'm on my way back to the War Room." She closed the vidwindows and gave Gavin a weak smile. "Sorry, old friend. Duty calls."

There was a loud pop accompanied by a strong rush of air, and two figures suddenly appeared in the diner. They sank to their knees, breathing hard. One was Kevin Sawyer, the other was Enzo. Dot was on her feet immediately, rushing to her brother's side.

"What in the Net?" Dot exclaimed. "What happened to you two?"

Enzo moved into a sitting position on the floor, pulling his knees to his face and rubbing his eyes with his hand. Kevin remained on his knees, holding himself up by leaning on a barstool.

"Did we make it?" asked Enzo.

Kevin glanced at the RAMM and shook his head. He held it out, the screen facing towards Enzo. "What's it say?"

Enzo uncovered his eyes, turned his head sluggishly, and read the display. "It says 'Mainframe-One' next to Current Location."

Kevin breathed a sigh of relief. "We're back."

Dot looked from one to the other and threw up her hands. "Back from where? Kevin, you've been missing for almost a millisecond. Where did you go?"

Kevin looked at Enzo, who was staring into space. "A nightmare," he said.