Chapter 4: Close Encounters

Since Hack and Slash wanted to help with the search, and had pleaded, insisted and cajoled him to no end, Phong had sent them to investigate level 31 — to keep them out from underfoot, if nothing else. The pair were glad to have an assignment of any kind, and had been patrolling around the dark and grimy streets for a few nanoseconds when something occurred to Hack.

"Slash?"

"Yes, Hack?"

"What exactly are we looking for?"

Slash stopped to think for a moment. Hack stopped to wait for an answer.

After a few cycles, Slash shrugged. "I don't know."

"You do not know and I do not know. So how can we find it if we do not know? Why did they not tell us what to look for?"

"Nobody knows for sure. It's not just us. They've never seen it either."

"Oh. I forgot that. I thought they just didn't tell us."

"They would have told us if they'd known."

"But they didn't."

"Because they couldn't. So they didn't."

"So then what do we look for?"

Slash paused to think again. It was hard to think when most of your circuitry was concerned with controlling weaponry (a lot of weaponry) and not with cognitive functions. "Anything suspicious, I think."

The two resumed their patrol and entered the alley behind Al's restaurant. If they had been able to smell, they would have felt vaguely nauseous — not because of the garbage dumpster, but because of the smell of Al's cooking. How he stayed in business at all was anybody's guess.

Slash, who was wondering exactly what qualified as "suspicious," didn't see the round, unconscious binome until he fell over it.

"Uh, Slash, I think you just tripped over something suspicious." Hack helped his companion to get up again.

"Oh, oh! Yeah, that looks pretty suspicious."

"Yes indeed it does."

"Very, very suspicious."

"Wait. Did you hear something?"

Suddenly a black mass leaped at the two robots. Although it was fast, Hack and Slash were faster. Both of them screamed and zipped to opposite ends of the alley. The black thing paused. Hack took the opportunity to wheel around and fire off a small rocket at the shadow. He missed, and the creature slithered off. His rocket left a smoking hole in the ground.

After listening for a few cycles, Slash spoke. "Are you still processing?"

"I'm still processing. Are you still processing?"

"Yes I am. How about you?"

"You asked me already."

"Oh, yeah. Uh, what was your answer?"

"I said yes."

"Oh."

Cautiously, the two floated up to the injured binome again. They stared at it for a few cycles, not quite sure what to do next.

"What happened here?" Hexadecimal's voice startled the two robots. Hack jumped into Slash's arms and they both shuddered so hard they nearly shook themselves to pieces.

Hexadecimal approached them, her gait catlike and fluid. "Did I scare you?" she asked sympathetically.

Hack jumped off out of Slash's arms as quickly as he had jumped in. "No ma'am. Not at all."

"Not a bit."

"Why should we be scared of you?"

"You didn't scare us."

"We do not scare that easily."

"No we don't."

There was a pause. "That's too bad," Hexadecimal said, disappointed. "It would have been funny." She giggled. Then she noticed the unfortunate binome, as if for the first time.

"Someone ought to tell Phong about him," she remarked.

Hack and Slash stumbled over each other's words in their haste to agree with her, but neither actually tried to contact Phong. Hexadecimal scowled at them and they shut up.

"I'll do it," she snapped. "You wait here until I get back." She uploaded herself into her mask and vanished, leaving the two frightened robots on their own with the unconscious binome and, possibly, their shadowy assailant.

"So…we're going to wait here?"

"That's what she said. Wait here."

Pause.

"Let's go."

"We can't."

"Why not?"

"Because we're waiting for Hexadecimal."

"Oh. Right."

They had been in the air for a while, and Galatea was getting used to the zipboard. They were not going very high up, or very fast, but it was thrilling to one who had previously considered such things impossible. Frisket ran along below them. The strange city, seen from this vantage point, was magnificent. She had only recently noticed that there was no sun here, although sky and clouds were present. But after all the other bizzare things she had seen here, this failed to surprise her as much as it should have.

"Oh, I know! We can go to Baudway first!" Enzo said. "I bet you'll like…oh no! Get down!" He halted his forward progress and began to descend and began to descend.

Almost without thinking, Galatea jerked her zipboard to a stop and crouched to make it float downwards. She looked up as her board went down, and saw what Enzo had been worried about.

There were two other sprites on zipboards some distance away, too far from them to make out properly but too close for comfort. Galatea stopped her board in mid-descent. She saw Enzo duck under an awning and followed him.

He pulled her back into the doorway as the two sprites passed overhead. She recognized them — Matrix and AndrAIa. After a few moments, Enzo floated out, slowly, from under the awning. Galatea joined him. Enzo scanned the sky.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, brushing an arm across his forehead. "That was close."

Frisket, on the opposite side of the doorway, started growling. Enzo turned to him. "What is it, boy?" he asked, concerned.

Suddenly a shadowy blob jumped out of a corner, and seized Enzo's zipboard by the connector in the middle. He cried out, and Galatea, acting quickly, grabbed his hand. The shadow was trying to pull him away now, and had started to slither part of itself over his shoe.

"Hold my hand!" Galatea ordered. Enzo brought his other hand up to grip hers. Galatea leaned back, trying to pull Enzo away from the living shadow. It enveloped his zipboard, and was curling around his ankle. Although she pulled with all her strength, Galatea could not get the shadow to release its grip. And she couldn't keep up this game of tug-of-war for much longer.

"Hold on," she said. She pulled her right hand from Enzo's grip — he held onto her left wrist — and drew her sword. She jabbed the point of it at the mass of shadow around Enzo's foot, managing to avoid sticking the point in the boy himself. The shadow took hold of the sword, too. But Galatea did not intend to give up her friend, or her weapon, to the creature. Closing her eyes, she directed the force of her will down her arm, and into the sword, activating its magical power.

The creature emitted a bubbling shriek. Enzo (minus his zipboard) and the sword both came free, unexpectedly, and both Galatea and Enzo shot away from the creature, since she was still leaning back on her zipboard. She barely kept her balance. The shadow came after them, so she straightened up to make her zipboard ascend. She shot up into the air, Enzo desperately gripping her left arm, and when she had gotten to what she judged to be a sufficient height, she flexed into a bring the board to a stop. But she misjudged how much she should move, and did so to quickly. The board came to a dead stop, while her body still had upward momentum.

Between that and Enzo's weight putting her off-balance, she was unable to stay on her feet, and fell over. For a terror-filled moment, she thought that she and Enzo would fall to the street below, but they didn't; her feet had not parted company with the board, so she was now floating upside-down in midair, with the boy clinging desperately to her left forearm. She let the sword go so that she could get a more secure grip on Enzo — the sword could survive the fall, and she could get it back, but Enzo was another matter. She held his arm with her right hand to keep him from slipping, unable to think of what she should do next, but she was saved the trouble.

AndrAIa appeared at the edge of her vision. She floated up to Enzo, gently, and took him in her arms. Galatea released her grip, as the relieved Enzo was transported to the top of a nearby building. Matrix floated up under Galatea, took her by the hands, and turned her back right side up. He held her hand and slowly guided her to a touchdown on the roof where Enzo and AndrAIa had landed. Enzo was panicked.

"Frisket! Where's Frisket?" he cried. Galatea noticed that one of his shoes was missing.

The sound of barking and snarling caught their attention from the street below. Frisket was obviously all right. Matrix peered over the edge of the roof, the (\/) in his false eye glowing as he scanned the area below. "It's gone now," he said.

"I feel like I stepped on a null," Enzo said, pointing to his left foot. He flexed his toes experimentally.

Matrix turned around to look at AndrAIa, then both of them looked at Enzo. AndrAIa folded her arms and pursed her lips. "Enzo," she said severely, "You have a lot of explaining to do."

The virus, foiled in its attempt to catch the sprites, slithered down a data drain just ahead of the dog's snapping jaws. It would try again as soon as it had the opportunity, but for now, it would stick to binomes. They were acceptable, if somewhat bland, prey. Right now it had to escape. It couldn't take on the big sprites who had just arrived, or the dog. The sound of the dog's barking faded as the virus slipped into the sewers.

Enzo did not actually explain himself until he was in the war room of the Principal office with Phong and the other search parties. Partly because it would be better if he only had to do so once, and also because he was too shocked right after the attack by the virus to be coherent. Galatea, still wearing the clothes Enzo had lent her (which, embarassingly enough, turned out to be some old things of Dot's), also had a lot of explaning to do. As did a certain other party.

"You knew they were running around when they weren't supposed to be and you didn't tell me?" Dot accused Hexadecimal.

The virus put on her best "innocent" face, which wasn't a very convincing one. "I told them I wouldn't. And she's such a nice girl. I didn't want to get her in trouble."

"Can I finish?" Enzo cut in. He was still missing his left shoe. Dot and Hexadecimal fell silent. "Thank you," Enzo said, exasperated.

"I gave her a quick course on how to use zipboards, while we were in the warehouse — you know, the one with the passage to the Principal Office in it — and when she was able to use the zipboard okay, we headed to Baudway. Then I saw Matrix and AndrAIa and pulled us down to hide, and after I did and we were about to go back up this black thing grabbed my board…"

"Ooh! Ooh! We saw a black thing too!"

"It was scary."

"It was nasty."

"I tried to get it. I missed."

"It tried to eat us."

"It was very mean."

Enzo cleared his throat at the robots and glared. They fell silent, and Enzo continued with his story.

"So anyway, I grabbed her hand, but she couldn't pull me away, and the thing was on my foot and it ate the zipboard, I mean totally end-filed it, so she took out her sword and poked it and then the sword lit up red." Here Enzo paused to grin. "It was totally pixelaciou!."

"I saw that part," Matrix said. "How did you do that, anyway?"

Galatea shrugged at him. "Tis an enchanted sword, and though I can only use a part of its power, it was sufficient to keep the boy from harm."

"You didn't tell us the sword was enchanted," Bob said. Then, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose, he added,"Don't say it: we never asked. Right."

"And the thing ate my shoe, too," Enzo said. "And my foot was numb. It was like I'd stepped on a big null or something."

"A big, unusually smart null," Matrix said. "And luckily Galatea was able to hurt it, or Enzo would have ended up like one of those binomes."

Galatea brightened to hear Matrix use her proper name, but her face fell when she saw how Phong was looking at her.

"Well," the old sprite said, "She did cause trouble by leaving, but if it were not for her, Enzo might have been deleted, or at least severely injured." At this, Dot cast a "you're-in-so-much-trouble" look at her younger brother, who bit his lower lip and looked scared. Phong adjusted his glasses.

"Considering your actions today, and that you hurt the virus, we shall not keep you confined any longer. You will help us look for the virus instead." Galatea smiled. But Phong wasn't finished. "We have another eager volunteer in need of a search partner. You will work with Hexadecimal." Galatea's resulting expression bore a resemblance to young Enzo's. Bob chuckled behind his hand. Matrix and Mouse smiled. The other sprites looked at each other, but did not say anything.

Hexadecimal put her hand on Galatea's shoulder, in a friendly way. "Ooh, this is just delightful. We'll get to know each other better." The virus smiled. "I just can't wait."

Galatea turned to face her newly assigned partner. Her face now bore a soft smile, with no trace of the anxiety that had been there before. Dot had to admire her composure. "I am sure we will get along well."

"In any case," Phong said, "The search is over for today — you all need rest, and the CPUs can take over for tonight. Bob, Dot, Mouse — I need to speak with you for a few nanoseconds. The rest of you should go."

The assembled sprites, robots and viruses began to file out. Hexadecimal was talking to Galatea, although Dot could not hear what she was saying. Dot managed to grab little Enzo by the shoulder before we could get out the door. She spoke to her little brother in her best disciplinarian voice. "Wait outside the door for me. We are going to have a long talk after I've spoken to Phong." She narrowed her eyes at him to underscore that grim declaration.

Enzo nodded vigorously. "Yes sis," he almost yelped. Then he dashed out the door.

When most of the sprites had gone, except for those whom Phong had held back, he spoke to Mouse. "Have you told Galatea how Games work?"

"Yeah," Mouse said. "Ah told her that we think she comes from one. She's convinced that she doesn't."

"As far as we know, she does. While in the Game, she was a User. But the Game malfunctioned, and it left her behind. When it did, she ceased to be a User. I am not sure what she is exactly, but she is not any kind of sprite I have encountered before. Although AndrAIa also left the Game she came from…well, it was under a different set of circumstances, and AndrAIa was also aware of her nature. Galatea is not."

"She thinks she's whoever she's supposed to be in her Game," Bob said.

"Youmight not have seen someone like her before," Mouse said,"But someone has. There's a file on it in the Supercomputer database…" She noticed the way Bob was looking at her. She frowned at him. "It's a public file." She met the Guardian's doubting look with a pout before Bob turned away, rolled his eyes and shook his head, as if resigned. Mouse continued. "Apparently this has happened once before, in another system. There was a Game error that made a copy of the User, which stayed behind when the Game left. That copy also thought that the Game was a real place."

"What did they do about her?" Dot asked.

"It was a him," Mouse corrected. "Well, he wanted to go back home. Apparently they tried to help him, by gettin' him back into the Game he had come from. They managed to register him with the system and make him capable of rebootin'."

"Oh. So AndrAIa wasn't the first sprite to have her icon modified like that after all," Dot said.

"A real bummer for yours truly," Mouse said, sighing. "Ah thought Ah was makin' history. But back to the story. So the system Guardian took him into the Games, hopin' they could find the one he had come from. And they did."

"What happened?" Dot asked.

"Well, he rebooted in the Game so it would register him, then changed his icon to the one he'd been created with," Mouse said. "And when the Game went, he went with it. He was re-integrated into it, or at least that's the theory. Nobody ever saw him again, far as Ah know."

Bob shook his head. "We can't do that. That might have seemed like the best solution to the Guardian of that system, but I don't think it was the right choice."

"Why not?" Dot asked. "He got to go home, back to where he belonged…"

"Because even benevolent, advanced Game sprites don't remember anything beyond the initialization of the Game they're in — except for the strategies of the User.

That's what they're programmed for. You can meet the same AI sprite over and over again every time their Game is played, and they won't remember you. I know from experience." Bob explained. He looked a little forlorn. "I think their memory files are reset every time the Game is restarted. If the User-copy we were talking about stayed in the Game…" He didn't continue.

"I see," Dot said. "He might as well have been deleted."

There were a few moments of silence while they all considered this. Bob was the first one to speak.

"We can't do that to her. I guess we'll have to tell her…that we can't send her home." The other sprites nodded.

"That means," Dot observed, "That she's going to be here for a while. So next second, before she and Hexadecimal set off on patrol, I want us to register her, the way we did AndrAIa."

"Okay," Mouse said. "Ah can do it. Ah just need to make some adjustments." She looked at Bob. "Just don't tell her that she can re-integrate herself into the Game. Ah kinda like her and it would be a real pity…"

"I won't," Bob assured her.

"Good," Phong concluded. "Now that we have figured that out, let us all get some rest. We will need it."

"G'night y'all," Mouse said and walked out the door. Phong rolled after her.

Dot and Bob were the only ones left in the room.

"So…want me to keep an eye on you and Enzo on your way home?" he asked.

Dot smiled. "That's sweet of you. I'm sorry, but I'll have to say no — I'm going to stay the night in my quarters here in case something else comes up. But can you please take Enzo home after I…talk with him?"

Bob looked a little disappointed, but nodded to her. "Okay. Just promise me you'll try to get some sleep?"

"I promise. I just want to be here in case I have to handle an emergency." She took his hands and kissed him, for a few moments. "But you should really go get some rest," she said afterwards.

"If you're going to stay, maybe I should too," he suggested quickly. "I could come back after bringing Enzo home…"

"No," she insisted. She wanted him to stay, but it wouldn't be a good idea. They both had work to do and that had to come first. "You more than anyone else will need to be well-rested for tomorrow. I can handle things just fine."

"If you say so," Bob assented. He went to the door, somewhat regretfully. It slid open, and he waved at Dot before departing. As he left, Dot changed her facial expression from a tender smile to a fearsome scowl, in preparation for giving her delinquent younger brother a good scolding. When the door shut behind Enzo, he looked absolutely petrified. And he was still without a left shoe.

"Are we…are we gonna have that talk now?" Enzo squeaked.

Although his offense was serious, at the sight of him it took almost all of Dot's willpower to keep from breaking into laughter. She kept her voice stern. "Yes we are," she said, trying to sound menacing and succeeding brilliantly. "Don't you ever do that again. Do you have any idea how much of a panic there was when we found out Galatea was missing? And another thing…"