Chapter 1: Unexpected Guests

The newborn Absorber virus floated through the roiling chaos of the Web, seeking something to feed on. It had been released a few seconds ago, by a User with a mischievous mind, vast knowledge of computer programming and too much spare time.t But it didn't know any of these things. It knew only that it was hungry.

As yet, it had found no suitable prey. It was still hunting for a system to descend upon. Its attention was suddenly drawn to something nearby; a surge of energy. Moving quickly, it found the source of the surge — a Game about to be downloaded into a system. To the virus, it was an open door. Good.

Find food here, it concluded. It moved into the center of the coalescing Game, and went with it as it descended into an unsuspecting system…

"Warning: incoming Game. Warning: incoming Game." The alarm caught Bob by surprise. He jumped and banged his head on the underside of his car hood. It was the first time that he had worked on the engine since he got back home: before now, other issues had kept him too busy for old hobbies.

Rubbing his head at the site of impact, he withdrew from under the car's hood and dashed to the lift. As always, he feared that he was going to miss the cube — an irrational fear, but he couldn't help it.

As soon as the lift touched down and the doors opened, he ran outside and took a flying leap into the air — one of the perks of merging with Glitch was that he had no need for a zipboard. Bob continued to ascend as he flew towards the Game cube, which fortunately was just at the edge of Kits Sector. Matrix zipboarded up from below and pulled alongside Bob. A quick backward glance let him see that AndrAIa was not far behind.

"And I thought it was going to be a slow second," Matrix remarked just before the three sprites slipped beneath the Game cube.

They found themselves standing on a wide rock ledge in front of a cave. The ledge was scraped and scored — by what, Bob was not sure. Looking around, he discerned that they were on a lone mountain that stood in the middle of a forest. There were other mountains far in the distance.

"What's this Game?" Matrix asked. "I don't think I've seen it before."

"Hold on a nano." Bob closed his eyes for a few moments, using Glitch's senses to feel the flow of the Game code and find its stats. "This game is called 'Here There Be Dragons.' We're on the final level. The User has to get into this cave behind us," - he indicated it with a wave of his hand - "to retrieve a magical crown and win. Sounds pretty straightforward." Bob looked at the ground and tapped it with his foot. "Dragons," he muttered. "I guess that explains the claw marks."

"We'd better try and stay out of the cave, then," Matrix said as he reached for his icon. "Reboot!" There was a weak green flicker around him, but otherwise nothing happened. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "What's going on?"

"Try it again," AndrAIa suggested. Matrix did, with the same result. AndrAIa tried to reboot, without success.

"I'll try it," Bob said. He got the same results. He closed his eyes again, as he had when getting the Game stats, and tried to feel what was wrong. Now that he was examining more closely, he could find what was amiss.. He opened his eyes and addressed his companions. "The Game hasn't loaded properly," he announced, his voice grim. "We can't download anything from it, which means…"

"Shh!" AndrAIa interjected, a hand cupped around one of her pointed ears. "Someone's coming! I think it's the User!"

From the narrow path on their left, a golden-armored figure appeared. Bob instinctively checked to see where its icon was. It was high on the sprite's breastplate, a golden circle with some kind of long-necked bird engraved on it. AndrAIa had been right: only Users had icons like that.

The User was armed with a longsword and a kite-shaped golden shield. Since Bob, Matrix and AndrAIa hadn't rebooted, the User wouldn't register their presence. And the Game wouldn't either, which meant they were unable to defend themselves. If the built-in sprites failed to defeat the User — and Bob had yet to see any - they would be nullified.

As if this weren't bad enough, the ground began to shake. The User lost its balance and fell over, while Bob and his friends struggled to keep their feet. Bob wondered if this was part of the Game. AndrAIa put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes. "Something's gone very wrong!" she shouted. Tell me something I don't know, Bob thought. By now it was obvious to everyone that there was some kind of serious error - the User and the Game itself began to melt and stretch. Suddenly there was a noise like static, which steadily increased in volume, as the earthquake increased in intensity.

"This is bad," Bob shouted over the noise of static and earthquake. "Very bad…"

"Warning: Game runtime error. Warning: Game runtime error," the system voice said calmly. Oh, no. Runtime errors of any kind were almost always fatal.

The Game exploded in a mass of pixels, which resovled into the energy-crackling purple of a Game cube. A terrible, searing pain overwhelmed Bob. I wonder if this is what it's like to be nullified…

"Bob? Bob? Are you all right? Say something!" Dot's voice dragged him back into consciousness. He opened his eyes and groaned. Dot was leaning over him, a concerned expression on her face. "What happened in there? I got here just after the Game cube came down. There was some kind of an error, and the Game sort of disintegrated before it got back out of the system."

"I…I don't know," Bob said. He sat up, with Dot's help. He didn't hurt anymore, but he felt dizzy. Much to his distress, he saw several CPU craft and two ambulances nearby. "Is everyone all right?" He noticed that none of the lights in the nearby buildings were on — the Game error must have disrupted the energy flow to the sector. "It was a runtime error," he said.

"We're fine over here," he heard Matrix say behind him. He turned and saw that the big sprite was already on his feet, none the worse for wear. "And everything else seems to be okay, too. Whatever happened to that Game, it doesn't seem to have done any damage, other than this blackout. Seems we were lucky this time."

"Bob, there's something you should see," he heard AndrAIa call off to his left. Her voice was half fascination and half concern. Matrix went over to her: Bob stood up and, accompanied by Dot, went to see what the matter was.

Dot gasped in astonishment, and Bob rubbed his eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on him.

At their feet, lying facedown as it had fallen in the Game, was the User. Matrix bent down and carefully turned it over so that it was lying on its back. "Hey," he said. "Its icon is different."

Indeed it was — the golden circle of the User's icon was set in a triangle, like AndrAIa's Game sprite icon.

"We had better take its weapons before it wakes up," Matrix suggested. "There's no telling what it'll do." Bob agreed, and reached for its shield as Matrix took hold of the sword.

Suddenly, the User sat up with a jerk, nearly giving Bob a second knock on the head. It pulled its sword and shield away from the sprites and scrambled backwards before getting to its feet — an impressive maneuver, considering that it was weighed down with all that armor.

"I will not let you demons take my possessions," it said, its voice somewhat muffled and tinny due to the helmet. "And I strongly resent being referred to as 'it.'"

"We're in trouble," Bob said, straightening up and holding out his hands in preparation for an energy blast. Matrix pulled out Gun and prepared to fire as the User assumed a battle stance…

None of them noticed the shadowy mass hiding in an alley nearby. The virus watched the Sprites and the User, contemplating whether it should feed on one of them. It was not a very intelligent creature, but it wasn't stupid either. Too strong. Not fight them yet. Later. It slithered off into the shadows, looking for some weaker dataform to attack.