I had been home only seven days this entire month. Ever since being promoted, I had several new responsibilities that kept me at work much longer than before. It was bad enough that it kept me from my wife, but worse still was that it kept me from my one year old twin boys, Lan and Hub. Whenever I was home, I spent as much time as possible with them, but it was never enough.

Today, I felt particularly bad. I was stressed, tired, and far from finished with my work. It didn't help that my thoughts continuously wandered back to Dad.

I was zoning out at my desk, looking at the ceiling, when my computer beeped, signalling I had received a new e-mail. I opened the e-mail, and was stumped at what I read.

No, read is the wrong word. There was nothing to read. It was gibberish. Complete gibberish. Letters, symbols, numbers, even random pixels. It didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Maybe it was the culmination of my stress, lack of sleep and thoughts of Dad, but I thought--no, believed--that this was my father trying to contact me.

I grabbed my head, shaking it slowly, "Oh, Dad..." I whispered softly.

I looked back at my monitor and brought up all of the research I had gathered on Alpha, and that incident. Dad had used some sort of machine that allowed him to be transmitted onto the internet, but the process did irreversible damage to his body and brain. He, essentially, died.

But... was he really dead? He could have very well survived the transfer, and could have been living on the net.

The net, at the time, though, was Alpha, and Alpha was locked away, and its iteration of the internet deleted. Could they have deleted Dad as well?

I hoped, believed, that Dad had found some way to be locked away with Alpha, rather than be deleted with the net. I had absolutely no proof supporting nor denying either claim except for this e-mail, which had no proof that it came from my Dad. All in all, I was left with my hopes, beliefs, and wants.

I looked at the email again. It seemed to have come from a server within SciLab, apparently one of the backup servers-- the rational part of my mind told me that it was probably a server glitch, caused by some old backup data. Still, they shouldn't be doing that, should they?

I poked my head into the office next to mine. "Jeremy, did you get a funny email from the backup servers?" I asked.

A few clicks, and a long pause. "No. Why, did you?"

"Yeah..." I frowned, reading over the mismatched characters. Maybe this was an encoded file that they hadn't installed the coding for on our new network yet?

The old Internet still wasn't restored, wasn't likely to be for some time, if ever. A lot of its functionality was missing. Maybe someone had tried to send me a file and forgotten that it didn't email properly anymore?

I carefully saved the file and started loading it into some of my old viewer programs. Compression no, graphics no, application no, sound-- wait! The sound file player was loading it.

I heard a voice. "Yui..."

My breath stopped cold in my throat. It was my father's voice.

"Can't say much," the recording continued. "I'm alive. Backup server. Alpha. After hours. Keep quiet."

It cut out there, but what I'd heard was enough. My head was spinning. I'd been right after all! Some part of my father really did live on.

I thought about his words. It was difficult to understand, but one thing was clear: I had to get access to the backup server, without anyone else finding out.

I knew where the servers were kept, of course. The room under the Mother Computer room housed enough servers to probably store all the data in the world. Perhaps not that much, but close. I'd always wondered what they were used for now that the global Internet was no longer being run from SciLab... Alpha. Had they saved Alpha there? Did the enigmatic sentient network also live on?

I anxiously paced through the rest of the day, too distracted to do much work. I kept watching the clock, waiting for the workday to end. When it neared the end of the day, I went downstairs and quietly called home, telling Haruka that I'd be working late tonight.

Then I crept back to my office and waited.

I knew the janitors didn't come in here at night. They just looked in and moved on. I crouched under my desk, feeling guilty, as if I was doing something wrong. I probably was. What if I got caught? What would I tell them-- that I was here to talk to a dead man?

Other doubts occurred to me as I hid in the dark and waited. Alpha was sentient, after all, and not entirely benevolent. What if it really had killed Dad, as I had thought at first? What if this was some trick to get me to release it? Or to kill me too?

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the last sounds of activity in the building faded. The janitors had left, and the night guards were watching the doors. There was only the faint whir of machinery.

Quietly, holding my keys, I went to the server room.

Inside, there was an eerie stillness. The lights on the servers and router banks flashed in patterns I didn't have the time to make sense of, only a fraction of what they once were when this was the heart of the Internet. The room lights were off, and the only light came from the LEDs and the shifting shapes of the screensavers on the monitors. I took a seat at the backup server console and hesitantly touched the mouse.

The screen clicked and hummed to life, showing a simple desktop with some standard server program shortcuts on it.

What was I supposed to do now? Should I just open a chat window and type in "Hello?"

Well, my problem was solved, as a video player window opened. I gasped when the video started playing. It was Dad, looking and smiling at me, not a day older than the incident.

"Hello, son," he said.

"D... Dad...?" I choked. I was looking at my father. He was still alive, and he was right here.

He smiled wider, "It's good to see you, Yui," he continued. "I was afraid you wouldn't decode the e-mail. Looks like I had nothing to worry about."

"Dad... I... You're still... You're still alive..." I stammered. Tears were streaming down my face. I was so happy, my father was still alive! "Dad, what happened? Where have you been?"

"A lot of things have happened," Dad replied softly. I could swear his eyes were tearing up, as well. "Simply put, I escaped deletion by joining with Alpha in this server."

"So, Alpha didn't kill you," I said. "It was that transmission machine you used."

"No. In fact, Alpha saved me."

A long silence pervaded as we just stared at each other. It was hard to believe. He was alive, right here.

"Dad, I still can't..." I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Dad. I should have done something."

Dad looked away, frowning slightly. The silence continued for another minute before he looked back at me, the smile gone from his face.

"Yui, go home," he said, "See your family. We'll have many more opportunities to talk."

"But... okay, Dad. I love you, I'll talk to you the next chance I get."

I stood up, but refused to leave. It took almost five minutes before I could drag myself away, and out of SciLab. I didn't want the moment to end. I was worried that my next chance wouldn't be soon enough.