Chapter 4
Actions
Greg and the General watched as the soldiers set up the computer equipment on a steel table in one of the nearly identical, nearly bare rooms of the underground facility. The network cable running from the wall socket to the back of the case had an unusual feature: An obviously-home-made cutoff switch.
"This man will watch what you're doing on a monitor that mirrors yours," the General told Greg. "If at any time he doesn't like what you're doing, he will pull the plug on you. If he suspects that you are attempting, in any way, to endanger or put at risk citizens of the United States, he has orders to shoot you through the head. Is that clear?"
"Understood," Greg said calmly. He didn't believe the General. He was too valuable to them to shoot. Not that he was going to do anything but try to stop the 'incursion.'
"Good. I'll leave you to it." Greenwaldt turned and left the room.
Greg sat down at the keyboard as the machine booted up. "You guys have cut the fiber optic lines to the house, right?"
"That's right, sir," the specialist who was assigned to monitor him said.
"You can just call me Greg."
"No sir," the soldier replied.
"Uh- whatever. Okay, the first thing I'm going to do is simply try to ping the simulation system."
"We already did that, sir."
"And?"
"You should do it yourself, sir. You won't believe it otherwise."
"Okaaay-" Greg brought up a DOS window and typed in 'PING', followed by the IP address of the computer in his house. It was a simple command, just meant to establish or confirm a connection and measure the travel time of data sent and received. The answer popped up in the window almost immediately. Greg stared at it for a long moment.
"Told you." the specialist said without the trace of a smirk.
"We're 'somewhere' in the Midwest, right?" Greg asked him. Nobody would tell him exactly where they were.
"Yes sir."
Greg stared at the screen again. They had told him that his home system was somehow still connected to the web without any known method of communication. But that wasn't the most surprising thing about the result. What amazed him was the recorded response time: Zero milliseconds. Even with a big margin of error- considering the minimum distance from somewhere East of the Rockies to California-
Greg looked up at the soldier who, by then, was smirking. "Yes sir. We confirmed it over and over again. It's sending packets faster than light."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
General Greenwaldt sat back in the chair behind his desk and flipped on a small monitor that let him observe what was happening in the room where Greg was working. He would have loved two fingers of Scotch right then but he'd sworn off liquor until the crisis was over. He hated not understanding the situation and the fact that all the computer experts in his command didn't understand either was no comfort. 'Understand your enemy' was a concept that had been hammered into him all during his early career until it was almost holy dogma for him.
He sat and watched the computer geek poke at the machine in the distant room while he thought the situation over. Finally he came to a decision. He stabbed a finger down on a button on the intercom and snapped, "Lieutenant, get in here."
The young soldier entered the room instantly and saluted. "Sir?"
The General eyed him briefly. Yes, the Lieutenant was somewhere near the same age as the computer geek. "Son, you ever watch a cartoon show called 'Digimon' when you were a kid?"
The Lieutenant remained at attention as he answered. "No sir. I've heard of it but I was a G.I. Joe fan."
The General didn't smile, even though he felt a slight urge to do so. "Did G.I. Joe ever kill and eat anyone?"
"Sir?"
"Never mind. I want you to find everyone in this facility who's watched the Digimon cartoon show and have them in Meeting Room #3 in half an hour. Dismissed."
The Lieutenant hadn't gotten this sweet assignment by questioning the orders of his superior officers, no matter how bizarre. He saluted smartly, executed a perfect about-face, and left to carry out his orders.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
Elecmon cowered as he approached Kyuubimon. The rest of the digimon had decided that he would be the one to ask her the questions that were plaguing all of them. Everything had changed. First she was telling them they had to beware of their own creator and then she was insisting that Greg was in danger and it was their duty to rescue him.
For the past several hours she had been pouring energy into a growing structure that had appeared in the original valley where most of them had been hatched. All that energy had to come from somewhere and, unfortunately, the handiest source of energy had been other digimon.
"Please don't kill me, Kyuubimon," he said as soon as he had approached to within speaking distance. The huge, nine-tailed fox turned to look at him and he cringed under her icy-blue gaze.
"Don't worry," Kyuubimon reassured him, "the reaction seems to be self-sustaining now. You're more useful to me alive."
"Th- that's good." Um-"
"Yes?"
Her tone of voice was neutral but Elecmon nearly fled anyway. "I- that is, we- wa- would like to know-"
"Get to the point."
"Whatisthatthing, anyway?" Elecmon gasped out. "What's it for? How did you make it?"
"How?" Kyuubimon frowned. "I'm not- not really sure. That's odd." She stood in silent puzzlement for a long while but Elecmon was too frightened to prompt her.
At last, Kyuubimon shook her head and looked around at him again. "As for what it is, that's simple: It's a gate."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Okay," Greg said to himself as much as to his guardian, "I'm going to try calling routines from the sim- build a little patch of the Digital Dimension here on this machine and then try to see how it interacts with the web. If I know what it's doing I'll have a chance to stop it." He completed the task in only minutes. A square of what appeared to be dirt blinked into existence on the monitor. Grass and a few small bushes grew up on the square in fast-forward speed.
"There," Greg said with satisfaction. "Now let's take a look at the traffic."
But before he could bring up a monitor window, a small yellow creature appeared in the tiny environment on the screen. "Greg!" Agumon shouted happily. "You're alive! Kyuubimon will be so relieved! She's been frantic-"
"KILL IT! KILL IT!" came a blaring voice from a hidden loudspeaker. The specialist instantly slammed his hand down on the network disconnect switch and then yelled in pain and jerked his hand back.
On the screen Agumon jumped in surprise. "Who? Me?" he asked. "What did I do?"
"Wait! Wait!" Greg shouted to the soldier who was drawing his sidearm. "Calm down! He's just-"
"DESTROY THAT MACHINE!" the General's voice commanded. Greg dove beneath the table as the specialist began firing.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
A few minutes later the black bag covering Greg's head was roughly pulled off, revealing another room, larger than any he had yet seen. He surveyed the soldiers seated in rows of chairs facing the slightly elevated stage he was standing on as his escort removed his handcuffs.
"Do you really have to do this every time you move me from one room to another?" he asked.
"Procedure." the man said.
"You know something? Fuck your procedure."
The man didn't answer but stood back and to one side of the stage.
"Sit." the General snapped at Greg.
"And you! You blew the best chance you had at controlling this thing just now. You know that don't you?"
"Sit or you will be tied to that chair."
Greg sat.
"There is no way I will allow you to communicate with anyone outside this facility."
"Damn it, General, it was just an AI!"
"I have no way of knowing that for certain. And, in any case, I have no intention of arguing the point with you. You will cooperate or you will go back in the cage. Am I clear?"
"Believe it or not, I'm just as eager as you are to fix this situation."
The General glared at him for a moment longer and then gestured to the audience. "These men have watched the Digimon show. Some of them were serious fans of it. Corporal Williams here, tells me he had the card game and several of the toys. I want you to describe exactly how you set up your simulation to them. They or I may interrupt from time to time with a question, which you will answer fully and completely. Am I clear?"
"Clear," Greg said. Clear but stupid, he thought. This is a complete waste of time.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"I found him! I found him!" Agumon cried as he came within sight of Kyuubimon. She turned to him with such an intense expression that he nearly tripped over himself as he skidded to a stop.
"Greg? You've found Greg?"
"Yes! He's still being held prisoner. I only talked to him for a second and then the soldiers made the land disappear somehow."
"Can you lead me there when we get to the Real World?" Kyuubimon asked him.
"The Real World? We're going to the Real World?"
"Yes," she answered, turning back to the now huge structure before her. "Very soon, now."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The General grew more frustrated by the minute. The soldiers knew what Greg was talking about but there didn't seem to be any practical information coming out of the discussion. It seemed the cartoon show changed the rules by which the made-up universe operated every season. Only two of the men had preferred the season that Greg had based his simulation on.
Then Corporal Williams asked a question that had Greg grasping for an answer. "How did trailmon get into your sim? They're from a different season."
Greg shrugged. "I really don't know. But since the sim was accessing the web, it could have pulled info and stats from some other source."
"So your sim could be creating anything digimon-related, right?"
The General didn't understand the ramifications of that conclusion but he knew the people in the room who did because they went silent all at the same time.
"Your digimon-" Corporal Williams continued, "-they're just electronic, right? They can't bioemerge- right?" His voice betrayed a definite amount of stress.
"Um-" Greg began.
"Explain 'bioemerge'," the General snapped.
"Physically manifest themselves in this world." Greg replied.
Greenwaldt snorted in derision. The idea was patently ridiculous.
"General, before today I would have agreed that the idea is ludicrous but now I'm not so sure. I've witnessed what appears to be faster than light information transfer, there's that thing that's growing inside my house- though it's obviously transforming the materials around it, not creating new matter- and there's the energy transfer I witnessed before your men kidnapped me. I can't see a scientific explanation for any of those things." Greg paused to let the idea sink in. "Bioemergence might be possible."
"I think that would be a blessing, mister," the General growled, "then we could shoot the damned things!"
Greg and Corporal Williams exchanged rueful glances. The General had never seen the D-Reaper in action.
"Speaking of the thing-" the General picked up a small remote and clicked it. The screen behind them came to life. "We're having a hard time keeping it concealed." The image on the screen stabilized and revealed what was left of Greg's house. The 'thing' had consumed almost all of it as it grew. The area seemed to be surrounded by screen-covered scaffolding.
"Hey," Williams said, "that looks familiar."
"That's what I thought but I-" Greg paused and frowned. The thing looked a lot more familiar now. "Check me on this, Williams, but doesn't that look a whole lot like Zhuqiaomon's palace?"
"Yeah, it does- not as big, though."
"Explain," came the inevitable demand from the General.
" Zhuqiaomon is one of the four sovereigns of the Digital Dimension. He's immensely powerful and- doesn't like humans very much. Hates them, in fact."
"You're telling me there's a real digimon inside of that thing?"
Greg sighed in exasperation. "I have no idea. But if there is, and if it's Zhuqiaomon, you'd better get ready for one hell of a fight."
"I don't take chances." the General said and clicked the remote again. The view on the screen changed and they could all see the half-dozen tanks surrounding the screened-off house. "Anything that comes out of that place is going to get blown to hell."