The Hollow Sprite
by Joshua Falken

Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"

Thanks to Julia_Cat for the beta-reading and for the revision. Thank you! :-)

Chapter 5 - Anger Outbursts

The cycle following Dot's night out, early in the morning, Dr. Welman Matrix and Mouse examined the wreckage of Project Rainbow, searching for a clue about what had gone wrong and for a way to make Dot return to the normal.

While Mouse tried to recover some project files from the data recorders, the Director of Pentium Institute examined the place where Dr. Hewlett Iridium was at the moment of the doomed experiment. The platform was littered with wreckage. The electromagnets were totally twisted. He began to remove the debris to try to clean the area in order to examine the machines. After a few nanoseconds, he noticed a loose piece below the test platform.

This is random... This piece doesn't seem to fit anywhere! he thought, surprised.

"Dr. Matrix!"

"Yes, Mouse?" he asked, placing the piece distractedly into the pocket of his lab coat.

"Look at this." The hacker indicated a series of wave function graphics that she had managed to recover from the corrupted records. The mathematician examined the graphics with great interest, especially one with an extremely anomalous curve. "What are those?" she asked.

"They are wave function graphics of data with different levels of energy," he explained, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"Do they give any clues about what went wrong?" To be honest, Mouse wanted to ask, exasperated: What in the Web do you mean by that?! Why can't these academic types speak in plain DOS?

"At this point? No. But perhaps with more data..."

At that moment, a lab assistant informed them that CGI agents wanted to examine the place.

"Tell them that they can come in a little late," the Director of the Institute said.

"Should I leave this data in the system?" Mouse asked. She didn't think that a was good idea.

"Leave it. I don't believe that this data would make any sense to anyone without doctors Cisco and Iridium."

"I understand. When can we speak to him?"

The older sprite sighed. "No idea. He didn't recover enough to be interrogated." (In spite of Dot's courageous act, the binome had suffered a very strong blow to the head. Even after so much time, he had not still woken up; he was still in his hospital room being supervised by the CGI.)

After they copied the data, the hacker and the mathematician left the lab.

======

Meanwhile, Dot Matrix woke up, having rested from her night's walk. She saw that she had woken up before Enzo. She got out of bed, placed her mask over her invisible face, and went into the bathroom. Examining herself in the mirror, she thought: "My 'face' doesn't seem natural. It doesn't seem natural at all! Especially due to my hollow eyes. But perhaps with contact lenses and a better make-up... perhaps I could pass for normal..."

She was so lost in thought that she started when a voice called her: "Dot? Are you already up?" It was Enzo, still yawning. Waking up early was a thing that he never had been used to. For a moment, Dot wondered how AndrAIa and Matrix dealt with that detail while they are game-hopping...

"Yes, I did. You can take a shower."

She left and began to dress in her visible gear. She opened a vidwindow and the image of Dr. Welman Matrix appeared.

"Hi, Dot."

"Any luck with the files, dad?" She zeroed in on the point.

"Not much." He admitted.

She nodded slowly. She already was expecting that. "I understand. And those special lenses?"

"About that I have good news: they will be ready this evening."

They said good-bye. At that moment, Dot felt a very strong headache and a dizzy spell. Happily, that disappeared when Enzo appeared in his Cadet uniform.

"Let's go, Dot!"

"Ok." She thought that he didn't need to know about her indisposition. It wasn't important, she thought.

======

In his office, Dr. Welman Matrix examined the data of the Project with astonishment. He had already discovered that Iridium and Cisco had developed a totally different method from the MS-DOS/Neumann Equation - their method involved the manipulation of the quantum wave functions itself to phase-shift a sprite from the visible universe. The sprite would be undetectable by any means!

He sighed. Now he had to discover how they did that...

He placed his right hand in the pocket of his lab coat to catch a pen when he remembered that had kept the loose piece from the project. The mathematician placed the piece on the table and he scratched his chin. It didn't seem to be a conventional field inductor. He took a multimeter from a drawer and was about to examine the mystery piece when he heard a knock on the door.

"Dr. Matrix?"

"Yes?"

"Here are the lenses that you asked for," the binome explained.

"Thank you."

The Director of Pentium Institute immediately called Dot, forgetting completely about the mystery piece.

======

Later, Matrix was helping Mouse to repair a control panel in the Core Control Room, when Dot entered. She bit her lower lip, wondering if she should go ahead with her idea. Finally, she decided, touching her brother's shoulder:

"Can I talk to you for a nano?"

"Sure. What's the problem, Dot?"

"It's a personal matter."

"Well, sugah, I have to get a energy flow meter in the other room so you two can be alone." Mouse said, understanding what the Command.Com wanted. After the hacker left the room, Dot asked:

"Enzo, why didn't you propose to AndrAIa right away?"

Matrix couldn't have been more surprised. "What do you mean?!" he asked, his voice as close to squeaking as was possible. Dot used all her self-control to not laugh at his reaction.

"I know that you even bought the wedding rings. Why didn't you propose her?" she insisted.

"But.. but how do you know about that?!"

"I have my ways..." she said with a impish smile. She didn't think that she needed to explain how exactly she knew that. "And you didn't answer my question."

"I'm just waiting for the right moment, all right? And speaking about proposing, why haven't you and Bob gotten married by now, huh?"

Dot already had the answer for that ready. "We are dating on our own pace, Enzo. Besides, you and AndrAIa have been together much longer than Bob and I have been."

Matrix messed up his hair in frustration. She had a point, as always. In a certain point of view, he and AndrAIa had been together much more time that the Guardian and the Command.Com... In a murmur, he asked:

"Do you think that she... would say yes?"

Dot smiled, pressing Matrix's shoulder.

"I am sure that she will." She left her brother alone with his thoughts.

======

It was already late when Dot finished her make-up work. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was already using the new contact lenses. It's show time, she thought.

"Enzo, can you come here?"

Her little brother appeared in the door.

"Yes, Dot?"

"Do you notice anything strange about my face?" she asked, more casually than she had hoped.

The cadet looked well at his sister's face. He could see her brilliant violet eyes. Then it clicked. "Sis, did you become visible again?" He wanted to discard that hypothesis first. Dot answered by removing the glove from her right hand; her hand was not visible.

"By the User, Dot!" Enzo exclaimed, excited. "What did you do?"

"I improved my make-up a little." The Command.Com explained. "Did you notice anything strange?"

"No! I wouldn't even have guessed that anything happened to you at all!" Enzo said, looking at the sides of Dot's face carefully. That was exactly what Dot wanted to hear. "Wow! Pixelacious!" he murmured, stunned.

"Pixelacious..." she agreed in her thoughts. Well, now that she could pass for normal, no one would suspect her secret. "And now, I have to learn to control... this gift," she decided quietly.

======

It was late of the night, when a binome and its family came back in their car to their house thorugh the deserted streets of Mainframe. When he passed through a crossing, he heard a furious woman's voice scream:

"Hey, Burned Circuit!"

Surprised because there was no one the street, he stopped the car by pure instinct.

"What?"

It was in that moment that the windshield was broken, and in the following nanoseconds, the lateral glasses. It was as if an invisible force was trying to enter in an attack of fury.

"What is happening, Ian??" the driver's wife asked in a scared scream.

"I don't know!"

The invisible force broke the back glass with a metal lever, at the same time that broke the car's taillights. It was as if the car's rear was being kicked.

"Let's get out of here!" she screamed.

The driver stepped on the accelerator, getting away from there.

For a time the only thing that could be heard was somebody recovering her breath. Soon after, other sound accompanied. An inattentive listener would think that was a cry - actually it was something more frightening: it was gleeful laughter...

======

The following cycle, Dot was awoken by her brother. She found it strange that she felt so tired. After all, she had just left the building, gone to the Principal Office, from there to Baudway and... and...

She stopped for a nano.

She didn't remember.

"What's wrong, Dot?" Enzo asked, noticing his sister's concern.

"Nothing, Enzo." She calmed him, hiding her own nervousness. Why don't I remember what happened last night? she wondered, concerned, while she got up. After all, it is not like I did something wrong ... right?

======

Later, a worried Dot was submitted to a new medical exam. Unhappily, it was discovered that the hollow sprite was allergic to one of the reagents: she felt very ill and now she was vomiting in one of the stalls.

"Defrag it, you told me that a simple test!" she complained, as soon as she had recovered a little.

"Sorry, Dot, but I didn't know you'd be allergic to..." Dr. Matrix tried to explain, but it was interrupted by a more and more angry sprite.

"Dad, I was vomiting for 10 microseconds! And all that for a simple test! And in the..." In a gesture of fury, she threw a vidwindow against the wall of the laboratory, shattering it.

"DOT! Calm down! I understand that you are under tremendous pressure after what happened. But screaming won't solve the situation!" Her father exclaimed with all his paternal authority. In that, he was helped by his fright due to his daughter's explosion. All right, he admitted that she had inherited a little of his somewhat short temper, but that furious shine in her eye... that tone of voice... it was not normal for Dot... it was not...

The stunned silence that followed was interrupted by Enzo who had entered in laboratory, worried with the discussion that had heard. After they convinced him that it was not serious, Dot spoke to her father:

"Dad, excuse me..."

"All right, Dot." He calmed her, while she rebooted, to wear her black blouse again. "Tomorrow, we will continue the tests."

Dot rose from the exam table. Dr. Welman Matrix observed while she and Enzo walked down the corridor toward the elevator. The corridor's acoustics allowed him to hear the chat.

"Are you on-line?"

"I am, Enzo. Why you ask?"

"Well, I don't know. The way that you walk... you look weak." Enzo considered the situation for one moment. "Do you want an energy shake?"

After a short silence, Dot answered:

"I don't think so, Enzo."

The door of the elevator closed and Dr. Matrix shook his head.

"What a mess!" he murmured to himself.

======

The Command.Com extended her arms over her head, finishing the work of the cycle. Daemon had gotten to re-infect back some systems that they had freed. She punched the table in a gesture of frustration. "My User, it looks like that this will never end! Whenever we get a break..."

Dot sighed. She still had to read the cycle's CPU report and leaf through the Mainframe Data-Times and, unhappily, the Mainframe Tattler. After all, the Command.Com had to be informed about what happened in her system.

It was a routine report except for the last item: an attack against a car had been reported... by an invisible force in Baudway.

Dot stood up immediately. She didn't believe it. She could not believe it. "I.. I didn't do that! I couldn't have done that!" she implored quietly.
She immediately read Mainframe Data-Times. Nothing about that attack. She thought that she should have waited for that: after all the newspaper was too serious to publish news like that without evidence... Fearing for the worst, she read the Tattler. Surprisingly, there wasn't anything about the attack in there, either.

Dot breathed, alleviated, sitting down in her chair. Until then a thought insisted on reappearing in her neural interface: Why didn't she remember what she had done yesterday night? Her train of thought, to Dot's relief, was broken by a vidwindow. It was AndrAIa, and she was very excited – she was hardly able to speak for her excitement.

"What's going on, AndrAIa?"

The game sprite just lifted her hand so that Dot could see. She had an engagement ring on her finger.

"Then, Enzo finally proposed!" Dot thought, sharing her friend's happiness. "My congratulations, AndrAIa! Did you already set a date?"

"Well, we thought it better to wait until that Daemon is defeated. You understand."

"Yes, I understand. Did you already inform the others?"

"Not yet. We want to inform them this downtime."

"Well, congratulations!"

"Thank you!" AndrAIa exclaimed, radiant.

The two friends cut the connection. Dot's good mood changed as soon as her eyes fell on an article written by Roger Pagemaker. Unbelieving, she read the article that accused Dot of being, in simple terms, actually a virus at service of Daemon. In a normal situation, she would ignore it without losing any sleep - but in her current mental state, the malicious and sarcastic way the article was written made her furious.

======

It was late when Roger Pagemaker walked through Motorola Track, going back to his apartment. Before entering the building, he had the feeling that he was being fellowed. He looked around. No one was there.

He laughed and climbed the stairs to the ninth floor. The reporter didn't notice that the door of the building had opened slowly and quietly.

When arriving at the end of the corridor of his floor, Roger Pagemaker heard steps speeding up in the corridor. He only had time to turn around before an invisible force threw him through the corridor window. Outside of the building, a homeless binome saw the reporter's body fall and fade slowly. Only the victim's PID remained.

What nobody saw or noticed was the front door of the building opening and closing quietly some nanos later.

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 6 coming soon...