It's the regularly scheduled revision!
This is the last update before my school year starts, so they might go slightly slower. Still, I hope it's worth it, and that you still enjoy the story. I personally don't like this chapter much. It has very little dialogue.
Disclaimer: I still do not own Code Lyoko, despite the fact that I had forgotten the last disclaimer.
Chapter 9
Day Four: Jaded
Jeremie's eyes were only open for a second before he shut them again. He knew where he was. He didn't have to see it.
He should be relieved...the incident of the last revision was gone. Erased. Never happened. He'd never broken that girl's nose. He'd never run away. He'd never seen Chris holding Aelita with those shaking hands...okay, enough of what never happened. Now was now. Sooner or later, he'd have to get up...
He only opened his eyes for a few seconds before he shut them again. A new thought had struck. Maybe...maybe he didn't have to go back. Maybe nobody had to know he existed. Maybe he didn't have to be stuck in Kadic today. And why? Of course. If Franz was at the school, teaching his little Science class, he wasn't anywhere near the supercomputer, was he? The supercomputer that had the return to the past programs. Which he could reverse-engineer.
All without setting foot in the stupid school.
He jumped right up, a bit more enthused than he had been in the last few revisions, and nearly skipped past the gate to the road. He could see old Jim lumbering toward it, oblivious to Jeremie. He laughed out loud. Stupid, stupid Jimbo.
He was so happy to be away from Kadic's view of June 6 that he paid no attention to the road, pretty much walking with his eyes closed. He was confident he knew the way, anyway. He'd been to the factory a million and seven times. Would he go wrong on a million and eight?
He found himself thinking about what would happen when he got back. Should he direct himself to the second he had vanished...or should he give the others some time to attempt a tower deactivation? Or, even better...should he give himself time to be missed, give Aelita time to regret saying those things to him, give time to save the day himself by dropping in at the last second to make things right...
Just call me SuperJeremie. He laughed to himself, then quickly snapped back into reality, hiding behind a bush to avoid a police car that might question his presence. Once the street was free of cars once more, he kept walking, still thinking more than looking.
He wondered if, beyond activating the tower and sending him back, XANA did any other sort of attack. Something interesting, maybe. Like blowing up the planet. Or at the very least, a small country. Then again, he was more interested in the gang themselves than any other humans. He wouldn't kill loads of humans if at least one of the gang members didn't die in the process.
He stopped, and looked up. There were trees all around him. Wherever he was, he was nowhere near the factory- opening one's eyes did have its advantages sometimes. Yet, it was somehow familiar. Jeremie kept walking. He felt like he had walked here before, but more quickly. With more purpose.
One of those purposes being not to run into a fence.
Rubbing his forehead, Jeremie looked up. He had just walked smack onto someone's property- a fairly small, squat house, well-trimmed and neat. It sat in the middle of the woods, nowhere near any other houses at all. The fence surrounded quite a bit of land, more than you'd often see in this city. The section that Jeremie had run into was pretty unremarkable, except for the sign that hung on it.
Hermitage.
Ah. Of course. Without all the rubble and disrepair, the Hopper household was completely unrecognizable to Jeremie. That, and the fact that it was inhabited.
The gate was unlocked. Jeremie took several tentative steps inside. No insane security system, that he could tell. He kept walking. He didn't really know why- the Hermitage was private property, unlike in the present day, when it was only owned by the plants that grew over it. Soon, he was at the door. It was slightly ajar; Franz, in his senility, must have forgotten to close the door, let alone lock it.
Before he could stop himself or his curiosity, he was inside. No alarms here either. He looked around at his surroundings. They were even more different than the outside was- no grafitti, of course, no overturned furniture, no rubble. Just a nice, perfectly normal house. Kitchen that way. Living room another. At one end of the hall, an enormous wall of big, thick books. At the other end, a staircase, and a few more rooms.
Still, Jeremie was spellbound. He strode slowly over to the wall of books and brushed his hand over one shelf. The books were all old, with faded lettering spelling out titles such as "The Universe and its Properties", "Advanced Cellular Function", and "A History of Coffee Beans in Africa." His fingers caught on a thin, empty spot on the shelf- a book was missing. Huh.
Soon, he lost interest in the bookshelf. He wandered into one of the rooms, the living-room type place. Couch, fireplace...and a small piano. He walked towards it, intrigued. He wondered who in the household would be playing it...Aelita, most likely. He couldn't picture Franz at a piano.
A sheet of music sat over the keys, titled "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman". Jeremie didn't recognize the title at all. He took a long look at it...and then looked away. He didn't know how to read music.
Something on the mantle caught his eye. He turned away from the piano, fingers brushing across the keys, and walked closer. It was covered in photographs- most of them picturing old or middle-aged people in black-and-white. One consisted entirely of crusty old men, standing in three rows, obviously posing professionally. They were pretty boring.
But Jeremie was interested in none of these. What he saw was one of the few color photos, positioned right in the middle. It was more casual than the others, hardly posed at all. There were only three people, all smiling, close to the camera, sitting in a small field. One figure he picked out instantly- Franz Hopper. But he was younger, beardless, and, miraculously, smiling. He did not know the woman beside him- but he could only guess that it was Aelita's mother. It wasn't too hard to guess- she had pink hair as well. She was smiling even more widely than he was, a smile that echoed one to come in several years. She held a toddler, barely older than Sissi in this timeframe- a tiny clone of her parent.
Such a happy family. One had to wonder what tore them apart.
Jeremie knew he shouldn't pry into other people's business. Still, he found himself on the upper floor, peeking into rooms, propelled by curiosity. He'd be out in a few minutes, he told himself, as long as he touched nothing nobody would be any the wiser…
He didn't want to touch anything in Mr. Hopper's room anyway. Research materials, old computers, class papers, coffee spills, smelly underwear…the room was so cluttered you could hardly see the bed. If there was one, at least. He didn't stay there long.
One door stood slightly ajar. The faint pink glow from the inside did more than to hint that it was Aelita's room. Jeremie turned toward it…and hesitated. Here, his morals came back. It was Aelita's room, his best friend, the place where she once spent time, slept…undressed…he tried to force those thoughts out, and force his way into the room.
It was much neater than Hopper's, but a bit of clutter passed down the line. The bed was covered by a mound of stuffed animals, and books were piled on the floor. Only in Aelita Hopper's room would you see a history of Roman warfare beside a trashy teen romance novel. On a shelf, its headphones dangling off the side, was a Walkman. A Walkman. The room really was old.
Right next to the Walkman sat an awfully familiar face- Mr. Puck, the doll that had started all the commotion. He picked it up, studied it, laughed at its bemused simplicity. There was a hard, metallic spot near its thigh- the key to the safe-deposit box. He wondered if Aelita knew.
A small beep from his watch caught his attention. He looked over at it, and his heart nearly stopped. It was noon- he had wasted half the day! Not noticing where it landed, he threw Mr. Puck aside and ran out of the house.
This time, he didn't think about anything but the path. He couldn't afford to get distracted again. It actually worked- he was at the factory within five or ten minutes. He dashed inside, went down the elevator, and came out at the interface. It was deserted. Thankfully. He walked over to the interface chair, sat in it, and smiled. Humming happily, he started up the computer. He was gonna go home…la la la…
There was a password prompt. Huh. Now, what would someone like Franz Hopper use as his password? Jeremie rambled off everything Carthage-related he could think off of the top of his head. "Hannibal, Carthage, Scipio, Africa…Elephant…" None of them worked.
Absentmindedly, he typed in several more words at complete random. "Green. Shiny. XANA. Potato. Aelita. Aelita. Aelita. Wait…aw, dangit. Cow. Aelita. D'oh… Processor. Internet. Aelita. Home…"
At the last word, the computer jumped to life. All different windows jumped at him at once in a confusing babble. Just as he liked it.
Finding the RTTP program was easy- he knew those systems like the back of his hand. The endless lines of code didn't deter him. He was used to them. Prepared for a good slip back into his own reality, he got started.
…
…
…
Why'd he have to make it so damn hard?
Jeremie slammed his fist onto the keyboard. A mess of J's and Y's placed themselves in the middle of an unintelligible algorithm.
It wasn't like it was predestined to be easy. Tampering with time was never, ever going to be a simple thing to do- as far as he knew, only Franz had ever done it, and he probably had a good old helping of dumb luck on his side. For a little thirteen-year-old boy, however precocious, it was lunacy to think he could change even one letter without dire consequences to his own reality. (In fact, if he'd pressed go right then and there, at the point he was at, he would've turned us all to orange paperclips. Really.)
But Jeremie was as tenacious as he was small. In plain English, he had a pretty thick head. So however much he groaned and complained and laughed with lunacy, he still tried. That was going to be his downfall someday.
Perhaps it was the fact that he was exhausted, but Jeremie was hardly surprised when he looked up at his work again, and saw a sentence where a sentence shouldn't have been.
(Father, what are you doing?)
Jeremie's hand stopped. He hadn't remembered writing that. That, and it made no sense. He guessed he'd just written it subconsciously. Giving no more thought to it, he erased the line and kept on typing.
Two or three senseless lines later, he stopped. His hands were numb. He stared at the screen, panting. He wished he had some of Franz Hopper's coffee. Coffee was good.
A movement on the screen startled him. He watched in awe as a line, not a line of code, but another sentence, definitely typed itself.
(You are not Father. You are different from Father. Who are you, and why are you in my Father's house?)
"Ah…" Jeremie's fingers trembled over the keys. He wanted to respond, but he didn't know who the hell was talking to him. He sat motionless in his seat…and then typed, slowly, uncertainly.
(My…name…is…Je-) He thought again, and backspaced. (Chris. Chris…Stones.)
There was a heartbeat's pause. Then, the typing came again, faster, enthusiastic.
(Hello, Chris Stones. My name is XANA. Just for this moment, will you be my friend?)
Dun dun dun DUUUUN.
Cliffhanger.
If anyone's wondering what Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman is, according to various online sources, it's a French nursery rhyme that has the same tune as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Since the Hermitage is a French household...yeah.
Hope this is still up to par.
- Carth
