This chapter explains how Inez just...appeared...in the elevator, and what's she been up to in the neutramatter dimension.
7.
Not So Dead After All
Matt stared for a long moment at Inez, scarcely believing she was really there. But there she was, standing before, looking no worse for wear, smiling slightly at Matt's surprise and amazement. For a long moment, Matt didn't speak, thinking that Inez was likely to vanish again at any moment. But then when she didn't, he shook his head and stared at her.
"Inez?" he asked softly.
"It's really me, Matt." Inez assured him. "Good to see you again, by the way."
"But..." Matt said, "You can't be here, you're dead!"
"No." Inez said. "No, Matt, I'm not dead."
Matt blanked out for a moment. "Then you're a ghost?" he asked.
"No, I'm not a ghost." Inez said, shaking her head. "I really am here."
Matt gave her a skeptical look.
"Really." Inez said.
Without warning, Matt swung a punch at Inez's head. It didn't connect with anything, and instead passed right through Inez's head, like she was a mere illusion. Inez didn't even blink, and hung her head for a moment before she shrugged.
"Well," she amended. "In a sense."
Matt gave her a very skeptical look.
"Look, the important thing is that I'm not dead." Inez continued. "I'm very much alive, Matt."
Matt was silent for a moment. Then he grinned. "Now I get it." he said. "You're just a hallucination! Caused by...hunger, or....stress, or...maybe I hit my head on something and I'm just dreaming..."
"No, Matt, you're not hallucinating, or dreaming, or anything like that." Inez said. "You really are seeing me, and I really am alive."
"You're dead, Inez!" Matt said. "You didn't get off the Grim Wreaker before it exploded!"
"Technically it wasn't an explosion, but rather just a build up of neutramatter bursting out of it's container and washing over the Wreaker, tearing it apart in the process." Inez corrected.
"Whatever!" Matt said. "Doesn't change the fact that your dead, because you had no way to get off the Grim Wreaker!" He turned his back on her.
"Oh, but I did!" Inez said.
Matt froze.
"There was one way off that ship that you're not thinking of, Matt." Inez went on. "And I took it."
Slowly, Matt turned to look back at her. Inez grinned encouragingly before continuing.
"Remember Hacker's portal generator that led into the neutramatter dimension?" she asked.
Matt nodded, then blinked. "You're in the neutramatter dimension?" he asked.
Inez nodded anxiously, glad she was making some headway finally.
Matt frowned. "Wait!" he said, rubbing at his forehead. "If that's true, then how are you talking to me?"
Inez sighed. "It's very complicated, Matt." she said.
"Well, if you can't explain it, then how am I supposed to believe it?" Matt asked.
"True enough." Inez admitted. "How about I start explaining from the beginning, though? Where this mess all started..."
"Danger. Neutramatter overload imminent. System will self-destruct in one minute."
Inez gripped the parts creator tightly in one hand, then quickly attached the belt-like device to her waist. Quickly, she scanned the damaged control panel before her, searching for the right controls. Finally, she found the controls that opened and closed the portal, and worked to familiarize herself with them.
"Where's a instruction manual when you need one?" Inez muttered as she worked, brushing debris off of the keys.
Hoping she found the right keys, she quickly started pushing them in the most sensible order, hoping this would work. It did. Moments later, a brilliant, white, portal opened behind her in the portal generator, casting a brilliant light over everything, almost chasing away the feel gloom and destruction the ruined bridge had. Inez turned to face the portal, allowing herself to soak in the warm glow for a moment.
"Danger. Neutramatter overload imminent. System will self-destruct in thirty seconds."
Inez whirled around to glance back at the timer counting down on the screen, and saw that time was indeed running out. She could hear it too, something deep within the crippled ship was groaning, vainly straining to hold back the imminent flood of neutramatter. Inez looked around the ruined bridge of the Grim Wreaker, and back out the hole in the front of the room at the retreating fleet of cybercraft. They had moved pretty far from the craft. Inez realized they wouldn't know where she went.
She gulped, knowing that what she was about to do could very mean that she would be permanently stranded, with no hope of ever going home. Biting her lip, she glanced down at the parts creator strapped to her waist, debating with herself for one last time over her choices before she finally decided.
She'd rather be stranded that killed.
Without stopping to give herself another chance to hesitate, Inez stepped through the portal and into the sheer white world that was the neutramatter dimension. Behind her was the glowing portal, blending in with the dimension's whiteness. Surrounding it was the collecting machine Inez herself had helped to build under force. There was no sign of Hacker himself. The neutramatter had vaporized any trace of him as Inez had predicted.
Once safely inside the dimension, Inez turned around to look back at the portal, and did so just in time for it to flare suddenly. A bang rang out a burst of energy gushed out briefly, scattering debris all about. Inez yelped and ducked, covering her head. But as quickly as it started, it stopped, and the portal suddenly winked out of existence.
Silence fell. Inez sat up, and watched with mild interest as the debris knocked into the dimension disintegrated, unable to help but imagine such a thing happening to Hacker. Then, she was all alone. At first, all Inez did was curl up into a ball and mope, working to get her immediate emotions out of her system so she could focus on surviving.
That done, she turned her attention to the parts generator at her belt, to use it to produce what she needed to survive for her long stay in the neutramatter dimension. The device was all keyed up to produce parts to the collector that had been built, which Inez still had access to. This didn't do her any good, though, so she focused her attention on figuring out how Hacker imputed new plans for new parts and the such.
She knew there had to be one, otherwise Hacker would've had a heck of a time getting the designs for each individual part for the collector into the device. She was thinking it would be some kind of port for another device to connect to, and in that case she would have to come up with some kind of adaptor to it using only parts from the collector.
It turned out to be easier than she expected, though. The device had no port, but it did have a user interface, like a keyboard, that appeared on the screen of the device. It took Inez awhile to figure out why, but then she realized one had to type in the designs for each part by hand. The parts builder was very user friendly, as well. All one needed to do was describe what one wanted, and the device would fill in the blanks to the best of it's abilities. And after some trial and error, Inez was finally able to create a SKWAK pad made out of Real World materials.
She attempted to use it to contact home and call for help, but it didn't work. She wasn't surprised. But the SKWAK pad had other uses, none the least of which was it's drawing board attachments. Inez used it to plan out what else she would need. She settled for the basics for now. A cot, a change of clothes, a clock. After a little work, she was able to whip up a simple meal and a glass of water. Once she was done with this, Inez then called it a night, even though there was no perception of day or night here in this dimension.
The days passed. Inez spent her time building off of what she had. Very quickly she had built herself a small home, and a patch of physical land with a garden so she could produce food. She also experimented a little to try and create things to make this world seem more homely, and eventually created a little world that stretched several feet in all directions for Inez to live in. She also attempted to build a new portal generator, but ultimately failed. She didn't know enough about it to succeed.
But she did learn a great deal during her stay in the neutramatter dimension, all thanks to her experimentation. Pretty soon she was confident she was learning more about things than anyone in Cyberspace did. She used this new knowledge to build upon the SKWAK pad, trying to adapt it to communicate with dimensions outside the neutramatter dimension. She added more and more to it until it wasn't so much a SKWAK pad but a regular sized computer, like what one would find in the Real World.
It was then that she was able to get her first real breakthrough, and was able to get a video feed into Cyberspace. It showed a view of cyberspace, and not a very clear one at that. It appeared to be one way only, too, only allowing her to view that one view of Cyberspace, but no one could see her. She couldn't get any sound either.
But it gave her hope. It also proved that the video feed was unique in that it did not need a receiving device on the other side. It just showed any view of anyplace in Cyberspace she pleased, no matter if there was nothing there, given she adjusted things right. It was kind of like remote viewing.
Building off of this, Inez quickly refined the process and was able to get clear views of anything in Cyberspace, and later, sound. She used this to view what Cyberspace was doing without her, seeing them rebuild from Hacker's campaign of chaos, her friends moving on after her alleged "death", she even saw the dedication of the memorial built in her memory.
And then she made next breakthrough. A means of possibly communicating with someone in Cyberspace by a means of a holographic projection created directly in Cyberspace, portraying a wireless view of a person or object, in this case Inez. The process was very power consuming, and her first few attempts failed, only working for a second if not less. But finally, a month after she was stranded in the neutramatter dimension, Inez finally succeeded in producing a transmission to Cyberspace, and quickly set about using it to contact Matt...
Once Inez finished explaining things, silence fell in the elevator. Matt looked stunned. Inez worried it was too much information for him to handle all at once.
"Matt?" she asked after a moment. "Did you get all of that? Do you have any questions?"
Slowly, Matt shook his head. "I got it all." he said.
"And?"
Matt grinned. "Inez." he said, shaking his head in joy. "You're alive."
"I think I established that already, Matt." Inez remarked sternly
Matt laughed. He reached out as if to touch her, but as she was only a holographic projection, he couldn't. "If you were here, I'd hug you." he said.
"That parts all up to you." Inez said. "Despite my hardest, I can't seem to build a means to get back home. You guys are going to have to do that."
"And how are we going to do that?" Matt asked. "Sounds to me that you know more than we do."
"You guys have the plans to Project: Neutramatter, and in them are the plans for the portal generator." Inez said. "Use that to build a new generator."
"Well, in that case, we have a problem." Matt said. "Motherboard ordered the plans destroyed not long after the Wreaker was destroyed and you...died. It was agreed that neutramatter had far too much potential to being abused, so we worked to cut off any means to access it."
"Shoot!" Inez said. "Well, that definitely complicates things."
"Well, we'll think of something." Matt said, becoming hopeful. "I mean, if you can come back from the dead, then anything can happen!"
"I was never dead to begin with."
"You know what I mean! But the point is that we'll think of something eventually. But it's not like there's a rush, is there? I mean, you've been able to survive this long, and better still, now you have a way to communicate with others, so you won't be so lonely anymore."
"Actually, Matt, there might be the need to rush." Inez said, but before she could continue, her image suddenly wavered for a moment.
"Inez?" Matt asked urgently.
Inez's image refocused again. "Sorry about that, but I can only sustain this projection for so long before I have to shut it all done to let it recharge." she explained apologetically. "I'm almost out of time, so I've got to be quick. Remember how I said I used my device to see what was going on in Cyberspace?"
Matt nodded.
"Well, I saw something else, and it's not good." Inez said. "I've been tracking it's movements for sometime now. It should be arriving at Cyantis as we speak."
"Cyantis?" Matt repeated, puzzled.
"And there are people on it who are not of the good type." Inez continued, her image flickering constantly. "Despite what everyone will believe, they're enemies, Matt. Do not trust them, and get rid of them as soon as you can, or all of Cyberspace will be in serious trouble, more so than it was with Hacker! You go that?"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Matt said, perplexed. "Who are these people?"
"Oh, right!" Inez said, having forgotten. "They're..."
But she got no further. Her image erupted into a brief moment of static, and after a moment of this, vanished altogether. A moment of silence fell, then the lights flickered back on, and the elevator continued on upward, leaving Matt to wonder what Inez was getting at...