Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners, particularly the characters taken from the animated series, Code Lyoko. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Emily Moralés never realized just how much of life she took for granted, until she had to explain the simplest things to Adam. Evidently, on this Lyoko world he came from, they didn't have anything like fire, nor the need. So she had to painstakingly explain every little thing to Adam as she cooked the oatmeal. Then she had to show him how to eat it.

Adam nearly choked himself on the first attempt, and almost didn't try again. But his stomach overrode his fears, and he tried it again, successfully this time. As Emily watched, he would carefully scoop up some of the food in a spoon she had given him, then carefully place it in his mouth. When he swallowed, he had to consciously tell his throat to close the air passage way so the food would get to his stomach.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked him after he had stopped.

"This is a truly unique experience!" he exclaimed, "the sensations when the food entered my mouth just about overloaded my mind! And, I could feel it slide all the way into me, right to here!" He patted himself on the stomach to show her what she meant.

"Yeah. Now, your body is going to break the oatmeal down into its component parts, take what it needs and push the rest along."

"Along where?"

"Oh boy, I forgot about that." Emily was silent for a moment, then said, "you know you've got a mouth where food goes in? Well, there's another opening where the food comes out..."

The explanation of advanced biology was interrupted by a noise from the workstation display.

"Emily, are you there?" came Jeremie's voice as his image popped up on the display. Emily quickly got up and went over to the screen.

"Yeah, I'm here," she replied, "say, when were you going to teach Adam the facts of life? And I'm not talking about where babies come from!"

"I know where babies come from," Adam piped in, "they come from a tower. I have made three now. Why would that be different here?"

Emily just stood there in stunned silence.

"Emily, you have to understand," Jeremie said to the girl, "Adam comes from an entirely different place. It didn't naturally form over billions of years; and it wasn't created by an all powerful and all knowing being. It was created by a man who only wanted a place to be safe. Adam is working within the parameters and experience he has. But you are right, we've neglected to teach him anything about the new form he and his people will take when they finally come there. But that's a conversation for another time. You have a problem."

"I gathered that," Emily replied, "let me guess, you can't bring me back."

"That's what it looks like," Jeremie said, "what you stepped into was a scanner for a quantum teleporter. It scans the quantum particles of your body, duplicates them in another location, then destroys the original ones. How this happens is that during the deconstruction process, a data stream is created with the coordinates and type of all the particles contained in it. On the other end, the data stream is used to reconstruct you."

"Okay, I understood about one-tenth of what you just said," Emily said, "just get to the bad part."

"The bad part is," Jeremie went on, "is that matter in Lyoko is different from matter on Earth. Aelita and I found out a few years ago that matter from Lyoko is missing certain quantum particles needed to keep it intact on Earth. After about fourteen hours, it starts breaking down, totally disintegrating in forty-eight. Unfortunately, for a living being, after about eighteen hours, they begin to die."

"So, I was sent from Earth. Won't I get all my particles back when you bring me back?"

"That's the bad part. It looks like when you were transferred, the particles were stripped out with no mapping of where they were taken from. If we were to bring you back, you would be composed of Lyoko matter. You'd die."

Emily was silent for a long time. Then she softly said, "I really screwed up, didn't I?"

"No, you didn't," suddenly came Aelita's voice, "we screwed up! We should have allowed for the possibility that someone from Earth would get sent there! I should have checked the scanner before I transferred you! It's not your fault!"

"Nor have we given up," Jeremie added, "I swear to you, Emily, I will do everything I can to get you back."

With that, Emily closed the session. She stood there for a moment, then turned and ran from the shack.

"EmilyMoralés! Wait!" Adam called out to her. When she didn't stop, he ran after her.

She ran until she came back to the stream they had visited earlier. She stopped at the edge and down at her reflection in the water. She didn't look any different in the reflection than she would have on Earth. She sat down, heedless of the water at the edge getting her seat wet, and pulled her shoes off. She stuck her feet into the stream, letting the cool water flow across them. Water was familiar, it was a link to home, her home.

That was how Adam came upon her, sitting on the bank of the stream, every now and then putting her feet in the water and thinking. Something told him not to approach yet, that she wasn't ready for his company.

Emily looked out on the water, watching it flow by. Every now and then, she would dip a bare foot into its cool wetness, and concentrate on the feeling of it rushing over her foot and between her toes. It didn't feel any different than water on Earth, but she now knew it was.

I can just see it, she thought, I take a glass of this water back to Earth, and eighteen hours later it disappears, along with the glass it came in. Just like I will.

Suddenly, she felt a hand touch her shoulder.

"Are you ready to accept companionship now?" Adam asked her.

She turned and watched as the boy sat down beside her. "That water still terrifies me," he said, "on Lyoko, all of the lands we live on are surrounded by a great Digital Sea. If we fall into it, we are destroyed. Water looks just like the Digital Sea, but it does not destroy us. It helps keep us alive, here anyway."

"I can't go home," was all Emily said. Tears started to flow from her eyes and she threw herself in his arms and began crying softly into his chest. He didn't say a thing; he only wrapped his arms around her and held her close. This was a another new thing to him, and he didn't totally understand it. But he did understand that now was not the time to ask her what she was doing, now was the time to just let her do it.

After losing contact with Emily, Aelita and Jeremie went back upstairs. Aelita was still visibly upset over what had happened, and Jeremie was trying his best to soothe her.

"We need to tell Suzanne," she said, "she has a right to know."

"And what do we tell her," Jeremie said, "your daughter has been magically transported to another world that will break down in at most eighteen hours and, oh by the way, there's no way we can bring her back to Earth?"

"If that's the truth, yes," Aelita replied.

"We don't know that's the truth yet," he told her, "that's what I've been trying to tell you all along. It looks like she was converted to Lyoko matter, but I'm not entirely sure. I do know that I modified the original Lyoko virtualization program from the supercomputer when I wrote the one used downstairs. I remember adding the code to do the Earth to Lyoko matter conversion. But I don't remember removing the original conversion routine."

"Then that means..."

"Then that means that there is a distinct possibility that Emily was never converted to Lyoko matter, and we should be able to devirtualize her back here, or over at the factory, with no problems. I need to dig a little further into the code to confirm my suspicions, and I will probably have to scan her before I can make any final determination."

"Then why didn't you tell her that! Why didn't you tell me for that matter?!"

"Because I don't know. Also, Emily broke the connection before I could say anything more. The last thing I want to do is give her hope, then dash them if I'm wrong."

"Well, it's not going to matter a damn bit if she commits suicide because she thinks there's no other way out! She has to know there is some hope, Jeremie! Even if that means I have to go to New Lyoko to tell her!"

"You!"

"Yes, me," Aelita said, "it was my mistake. You know these programs better than I do, so you'll be better able to confirm the truth. I am going there to tell her, to be with her. And if that means I'm trapped on New Lyoko or Lyoko forever, then that's what it means."

She turned and went back to the scanner room in the basement.

"You can either send me, or I will send myself. Either way, I'm going."