00010001

I awoke to the signal stream of Kink's rattling.

"I said it wouldn't work and I knew it wouldn't work, and you said it would but you didn't know it would, so why did they try it? I meant to tell them not to try it, but they went and tried it anyway because nobody listens to me…"

"Kink, please." Grace mused, her signal sounding sad. "You are not making it any better by droning on like that."

"But I didn't tell them did I? I meant to but I didn't. Is this my fault? They probably hate me now. When they wake up they're going to tell me they hate me and then I'll never be friends with them again and Copeland is the keytool for the Prime Guardian which means that Su will be in trouble even though I don't know where she is or if she's even alive anymore still infected by Daemon. I hope she's okay, I worry about her every nano! Do you worry about your guardian, Grace because I know I'm worried about mine, she might do something evil or stupid or vulgar or fatal while I'm gone!"

"YES! Kink, I worry about my guardian but I don't transmit continuously about it. We just have to make do." Grace ticked a little sorry. "As long as Glitch is still processing there's hope."

"I'm still processing." I spoke. It was the first time I'd said anything in cycles. Grace and Kink focused tightly on my signal. I loosely gathered my thoughts. Errol moved beside me. He was channeling a thin stream of energy into me.

It seemed unnaturally dark.

Grace's tone was almost motherly, she was a caring keytool and was always known for picking the compassionate and wise guardians of the collective. "Glitch, it is so good to receive input from you, we were afraid you were going to erase."

"I can't." I replied, trying to gain strength. "Bob would fall apart."

"Is that how it works?" Kink cried. "You and Bob are threaded together now so is like you both share the same body? I guess that's what a merger is isn't it? Boy am I basic I should have answered that question before I asked it. Silly me! Being random! Haha!"

"Martin!" Grace called. The keytool streamed up. "Get Kink out of here please."

"Get me out? But I'm helping! Its my turn on maintenance watch, you know that. Everyone's taken a turn, my turn's not up for another three micros I shouldn't leave yet!" Her signal strength lessened as she was removed from the immediate area, the input fading off into the depths of Bob's data. "Great now there's another thing Copeland will be mad about! He'll be mad at me and he'll hate me more and its all your fault but I guess I get what's coming to me when I try to help out! I only try to help out…..!"

Grace regarded me with a sigh. "That's better. Glitch, how are you processing? Do things seem any better?"

"I don't know." I replied. "I still feel weak and shaky."

"We've been pouring energy into you and Copeland for some time now. Our only hope is to get you back online. You both drained yourselves nearly to deletion trying to save Turbo. It was a noble effort."

I scanned for Copeland's signal but found nothing. Strengthening the field I noticed it very faintly. He was located beside a keytool called DeNure who was streaming energy into him. I focused back on Grace. "Did we do it?"

Grace's reply was sad. "I'm afraid not. You logged off before the transfer was complete."

I groaned. I felt useless. It seemed I could do nothing right.

"Glitch?" Grace asked. "What's wrong?"

"I'm broken, Grace." I replied. "If I were undamaged this merger would have gone smoothly and I would have been able to support Bob and heal Turbo. We could have destroyed Daemon a lifetime ago." I took a moment to parse the time. "What's happened since I logged off?"

"We don't know. There is no way to tell what is going on on the outside." Grace reported. "But what I can tell you is that Bob is getting weaker and weaker. We tried our best to feed him energy to use his powers, but I'm afraid we are unable to see what he is doing with them. And we are growing very weak, Glitch. The missing few have joined us but their excess is not enough to maintain us for very long. It is all we can do to keep you and Bob in one piece. Some of us are too low to contribute to the work anymore and are only trying to survive in here. I'm afraid we cannot last much longer.

If it wasn't for the brief lull recently we would surely have been depleted. Bob was at his worst not long ago but right now he seems to have recovered at least a little. I truly wish we knew what was going on."

"Don't worry, Grace, I'll find out." I turned to Errol. "Don't worry about the transfer, save your strength."

"You need me." He replied.

"I'll be fine." I reported. "Don't exhaust yourself."

"I will stop transferring to you, Glitch if that is what you want, but I am not as weak as many others. I will give some energy to Copeland, with hope that he might also regain his strength."

"Do that, Errol," I assured him, "its very brave of you."

I surfaced up to touch Bob's senses. The world seemed remarkably bright after all that time in the dark. He was standing on a ridge watching a game cube rippling on the horizon.

Bob had been unable to reboot in games since our merger. It made things difficult for both of us. It reminded me that I was failing him, and it kept him out of the cubes. I noticed the nearly bizarre lack of activity in the system. Could it be that I'd missed the entire end of the war? Cursors and Crashes I sleep through All the good stuff! Oh well, at least Bob and the others survived. Or at least Bob, little Enzo and AndrAIa, because those were all I could see.

The game cube rose from the ground into the sky, the system voice announcing its departure. I waited patiently for something to happen, an explosion, a summons to the PO… it was too calm. From what it sounded like on the inside we were still hard at work fighting viruses.

What I did finally see was unexpected to say the least. Up soared Matrix and… another Bob. I think I stopped processing for a moment. What was this new insanity? The second Bob coasted over.

"Hey guys."

I felt my Bob's heart twinge. There was something in essence very wrong with this situation. I signaled into his depths. "Errol… come back, I think I might need you after all."

AndrAIa noted Matrix's elevated mood. "How was the game Sparky?"

"A cinch." He said. "Played it before. Although we kinda cheated this time around."

"Cheated?" She cocked an eyebrow.

Matrix thumbed at his companion. "It was Bob's idea."

My guardian crossed his arms. "That was real responsible of you."

"Hey, you weren't there." The other Bob replied. "That game needed to end in a BAD way."

Errol crept his way up beside me. The bunch of us really were moving slowly. "What can I do for you, Glitch?"

"I need a little energy for a scan." I replied. "I don't think I can muster it by myself."

"Alright." Errol said. "But I don't have enough for such a function and my own duties in maintenance. I will have to call for aid." He signaled down to one of the newcomers, Gibson, who I'd run into last when Dixon was fresh out of the Academy. He came up a little more quickly and conferred with Errol while I waited watching the outside. I didn't really know what to make of the other Bob. I'd never truly seen Bob before the merger, and even then it was in mirrors. It wasn't until Gibson stepped up for the energy transfer that I got a clear idea of what was going on.

I set my scanner in motion and targeted the new sprite. Gibson bleeped in my ear. "What's going on out there?"

"Something's wrong."

"Has the fighting stopped?"

"I don't know." I replied. "Give me some room to parse." He backed up and I resumed my previous activity. On the surface the code looked like Bob, but only on the surface. I found a patch I could sneak under to get at the core of him; I knew Bob's data pretty much back to front at this point. Whatever it was it was definitely not Bob. It was a virus, a Trojan horse, but who and what its identity really was I couldn't be sure. Trojans were tricky viruses. They could fool most medical scanners and even some antivirus software, but a keytool knows his own. I'd never heard of a Trojan horse getting up the gall to impersonate a guardian before.

Errol and Gibson hovered close at hand, the latter still streaming to me. I closed down the scan and dropped from Bob's higher functions to conserve energy. Gibson was anxious. "What'd it say?"

"There's a virus in Mainframe." I reported.

Errol seemed to sink into sad resolve. "Daemon?"

"No," I said, I think Gibson sighed in relief, "there's no evidence of Daemon, Daemon's forces, or anything. This is a new virus, and he's masquerading as Bob."

"But Bob's still here." Errol replied. "How can the others mistake the virus for him if he is still processing before them?"

"Don't ask me." I replied. "But it's working anyway. They seem to trust him enough. Except Bob."

"Well I wouldn't." Gibson said, obviously. "If there were another me or another Ralston wandering around I think we'd both be skeptical."

"Speaking of which," Errol interrupted, "if there are signs that the fight is over, did you receive any input regarding our guardian partners? Can you sense them in the net? Are they alive?"

"You don't understand Sprite senses, Errol." I told him. "They are of a limited range, and I wont be strong enough for that wide a scan even with all of your help. We'd need to get access to a command console or other such transmitter to get that kind of information."

"Perhaps we can send out a scout." Errol suggested. "There are thirty of us in here, we can spare one to leave and integrate into a net-link long enough to try and get a lock on our guardians."

"I'm anxious to get back." Gibson admitted. "I miss Ralston… not to mention the rest of my code! I feel so broken in here without them."

"You don't know the first thing about broken." I reported.

"Well," he replied, "in any case, I'm going to go spread the word about the whole scout idea. If no one volunteers then I'll go. I'm ready to be done with this whole merger business, it's always kind of freaked me out."