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Ray and I thoroughly investigated the tear/storm but I was getting anxious. I wanted to get back home to my guardian, he must be worried sick about me seeing as that I left so abruptly with a live grenade and all…. At long last Surfr plopped down on his hovering surfboard to regard the storm from a relatively safe distance. "I can't figure out what caused it… its far to big to be a simple code anomaly."

I tried to speak in signal to him but he couldn't understand. He set me on the board next to him.

"Well, mate, whatever it was, I hope it had nothing to do with Bob. Something with major energy must have caused this rift and most likely didn't survive." He took a moment to study me, "I'm getting a little worried. Last I checked you and Bob were inseparable so to speak… if you're here alone…" he stared at me as if in time I could give him some kind of hint.

Hey, I would if I could man…

He gave up with a shrug. "I'm sure everyone's fine. No use in getting worked up over a 'maybe'. In any case, this storm is dangerous. I'd better put a warning out on it in case anyone's headed this direction. Then whaddaya say we get you home?"

I bleeped a positive reply and he actually laughed out loud.

"I'll take that as a yes then." He punched some buttons on the stern of his board then hopped back up, balancing expertly. I was stuck on his belt.

My scanners were still garbled thanks to the Megabyte storm, and we had to veer wide to get out of its range. Ray had to read the meta in the web and locate Mainframe's address, but I just needed to find a tear. If I could get a fix on one big enough I could reroute it into the proper portal and get home in an instant, but as it was all I could read was static and faint glimmers of web events. I was pretty much useless again.

The last time we'd hit the web, I was damaged and unenlightened. Now, after being upgraded and exposed to the wonders that were sprite senses, I could connect these strings of code and patterns of bits into visual cues and imagine what it looked like. The inside of a crystalline Bob basically… streaming light and dancing colors. I wondered if my keytool friends could parse these kind of things. They'd picked up some things in Bob I know, but sight… that was something I alone had ever experienced. I actually got distracted imagining what the arm-like spirals of the storm would look like through Bob's eyes.

I sure hope he's okay.