Episode Eight : Communications Age
Soundtrack: The Police's "Contact" (Mostly for Jeremie)
Since I'm going to be away for the next week, I wanted to get the rest of this episode up, so I'm rushing my schedule a bit.
As an aside, you may note the heavy Michael Creighton influence in this chapter, especially Elyse's VR linkup if you've ever read Disclosure.
Taidine
Chapter Three: Keys
Ulrich brought his katana around in a whistling arc, grunting with the effort. It met the prison sphere with the chunk of metal on wood; the blade flared blue on contact, and a ripple of darker gold sped across the surface of the bubble, meeting itself again on the other side and vanishing without a trace into the filigreed surface.
Kloe was standing a few yards away. She had pulled a dart free from the bandolier hanging across her chest and was tossing it into the air, watching it flip so the point faced downward, and catching it. "Look, it didn't work this time either," she said caustically.
"So I'll try something else," Ulrich growled. "Triplicate!" Two identical characters appeared to either side of him. "On three. One, two, three." Three katanas slammed against the sphere. The only result was three identical ripples, meeting at the top and bottom of the sphere before vanishing. With a sigh, Ulrich reabsorbed his doppelgangers.
"I don't think weapons can harm something like that," Aelita said into her earpiece, bringing up a window full of numbers. "I'll have to – oh. Company." Five red dots had blinked into being on the map in quick succession. "Two… no, one tarantule and four krabes."
"We see them," said Kloe, snatching her dart out of the air and tucking it into its holster. "C'mon, gotta run."
Ulrich grabbed her arm to stop her. "What are you talking about? We have to fight them!"
"Why?" Kloe pulled away. A laser thwanged through the mist past her ear; Ulrich grabbed her again and yanked her behind a boulder. "They can't do any more to the sphere then we can. Meanwhile, we would be wasting our lifepoints before Aelita even got here."
"I'm coming now," said Aelita, bringing up her automatic virtualization program. "If one of you leads the monsters off…"
"I'm on it," Ulrich answered, slipping out from behind the boulder. "Hey, canheads!" He brandished his katana. Five lasers were trained directly on his chest. "Catch this. Supersprint!"
Five lasers fired, but there was only a fading afterimage; Ulrich could be seen several yards away, and rapidly widening the gap. The krabes and tarantule scuttled off after him.
Aelita, eyes never leaving the computer screen on which a countdown had begun, eased the earpiece out of her ear and slid out of Jeremie's chair. "Yumi, you take over. I have to go into Lyoko and deactivate the Tower."
"I'm not sure I understand the map-" admitted Yumi hesitantly.
"I do!" squeaked a third voice.
Aelita glanced away from the screen. Standing in front of the closing elevator doors, arms crossed over her chest, was a pink-shirted, black-haired girl with a supercilious expression. "Sissi?"
"Od- Ulrich wasn't in class," Sissi challenged, "I thought I might find you here."
Yumi glared daggers, but Aelita chose to ignore that. "Perfect." The pink haired girl even managed a tight smile. "Here." She pressed the earpiece into Sissi's hand.
The principal's daughter sat down in Jeremie's chair. Aelita stepped into the elevator.
- - - -
"I wonder what's going on out there," Odd said, surging to his feet once again. Jeremie, sitting cross-legged on the insubstantial ground, didn't even bother to look up. Odd paced restlessly, stopped standing in front of his friend. "Hey, I've got an idea. Maybe if we walk for long enough, we'll find a wall we can see out of!" He offered a gloveless hand to help Jeremie up.
"That's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard all day," Jeremie mumbled. He grabbed Odd's hand and pulled himself to his feet. "But you're right. We have to do something."
Odd lead the way in no particular direction. "I hope XANA shows up again. I've been waiting for an excuse to slug William ever since he – hey, what's that?"
A shadow stretched out on the ground not far ahead provided a break in the monotonous golden mist of the landscape. Horror flickered across Jeremie's face, and his lethargic walk sped to a run.
He stopped in front of the shape. It was a human, young enough to have been a student at Kadic, sprawled prone on the ground. Jeremie dropped to his knees. She was female, wearing jeans, a white, collared shirt, and a vest; she had brown, tightly curled hair, drawn back into a nearly spherical ponytail. There was something vaguely wrong with her virtual representation, though – it was sketchy, less detailed then Jeremie's or Odd's, almost colorless
Hesitantly, Jeremie touched her shoulder. She turned her head; the slight lag, the dreamy fluidity of virtual motion, was grossly exaggerated. Second rate software, was Jeremie's first thought. XANA, was his second.
"What's… what's going on?" The girl mumbled, trying to sit up. Her eyes were covered by a glass plate, like the visor of a helmet without the helmet attached. "What…?" She reached her hands towards her head. "I – who are you?"
Jeremie offered a hand to help her up. "My name's Jeremie – this is Odd."
"I'm Elyse," said the girl, taking it. Jeremie flinched involuntarily – although he saw his hand close around hers, he felt nothing but air. Her hidden eyes focused on the useless hand as well, and she laughed a little, even as Jeremie made a startled "huh?" noise. "Funny how we still think that should work," said Elyse wryly.
"But… it should," said Jeremie. Odd, standing behind him, nodded in agreement and poked his friend in the shoulder by way of demonstration.
"Why?" Elyse protested, "I'm standing-" she rose to her feet with a heavy exhalation "-on a walker pad filled with ball bearings. My appearance is being transmitted to you by a pair of cameras, and a laser matrix keeps track of motion. I can see this place through a helmet with a visor on the front, and if I took that helmet off, I would be in my basement in the real world. How does your gear work? And while we're at it, how did you get here? I didn't know the Xanadu scenario was networked."
Jeremie stared at Elyse, eyes slightly vacant, jaw slack. "What?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I… think you'd better take off that helmet," said Jeremie, "this could be dangerous."
"How?" Elyse tossed back, "My system can only receive visual input."
"Then why can't you feel your helmet?" Asked Odd, who, despite all evidence, had been paying attention.
Elyse touched one hand to her head again, frowned, and ran her fingers along her hairline until they encountered the visor in front of her eyes. With a satisfied sound, she flicked it off.
She looks like Aelita, was Jeremie's first thought. Obviously not the trademark pink hair, but the eyebrows, the cheekbones, and the general shape of her face was certainly reminiscent of their fellow warrior. "I'm still here," she said flatly, blinking in confusion. She didn't sound like Aelita – her voice was lighter, less mature, with a sarcastic undertone that reminded him unpleasantly of Kloe. "I'm still here. And you're obviously here with completely different hardware. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"
"You might want to sit down again," Odd suggested, tail curling into a question mark behind him, "This could take a while."
"No," said Jeremie, "We'll keep walking. First: have you ever heard of a program called XANA?"
- - - -
Kloe, huddled behind her rock, stared into space as Sissi's shrill voice read off the computer screen into the air of Lyoko. "The countdown disappeared. It says… mm… scanner, Aelita. There's that pink elf – oh, that's you. Now it says transfer." A long pause. Kloe, with some help from the rock, hoisted herself to her feet. "Virtualization," said Sissi at last.
Aelita dropped gracefully to the ground, mist swirling away from her lithe, pink-clad form. "Kloe?" she called, peering nervously about. The faint glow from the prison sphere outlined her face in a corona of light.
"Right here," said Kloe, shoving down a stab of envy and waving to indicate her position. "Let's get to that Tower. Elizabeth?"
"Sissi!" Corrected the principal's daughter irritably. "Walk forward so I can tell which way you're facing."
Kloe shrugged and took a few ambling steps towards the prison sphere. "Good?"
Sissi tapped a few keys. This was probably for psychological purposes, since there was no discernable effect on the screen. "Good. Turn a little bit to the right. The map goes into this silver cloud – I'm not sure what it is, but the Tower's out the other side."
Kloe and Aelita walked in the direction bid, booted feet making no sound as they met the purple-grey ground. There weren't any boulders to speak of in this direction, just flat, featureless turf and steadily thickening eddies of silver mist.
They had gone perhaps twenty seconds, visibility steadily worsening, before Kloe stopped. "I can't see anything," she said, staring out into the banks of fog. "If I hold my arm all the way out, my hand disappears." She demonstrated; the mist was thick enough that her arm faded nearly to the elbow, glaring red coat and all. "If we hit some kind of drop, I'd be over it before I saw it."
"I'll tell you if there's a drop," said Sissi, vexed, "and there isn't until you get out of the mist."
Aelita's virtual fingers closed around Kloe's outreached hand. "I can sense the landscape," the elf explained, "I won't go over the edge."
"Great. Now I've got a clairvoyant elf and a cheerleader on a computer between me and death," Kloe grumbled. "I feel so much safer. What about…"
There was a zing, and a laser carved a bright path through the mist. "Monsters!" Sissi squeaked.
- - - -
Ulrich deftly swung his katana, slicing through two of the krab's legs. As the monster stumbled and pitched forward, he dispatched it with a two-handed stab to the symbol of XANA in the center of its domed shell, then pulled his blade free as the monster dissolved to block a hail of laser bolts.
One krab remained, along with the tarantule; Ulrich moved backwards under their onslaught, blade weaving a complicated pattern before him. His own lifepoints were in a sorry state, he knew, although he wasn't about to disturb whoever was manning the computer for such a trivial detail as how close he was to being devirtualized. The more worrisome thing was that XANA's creatures seemed to be getting smarter.
Ulrich took another step back, and one foot met air. He lost a single precious moment glancing frantically backwards; the monsters had herded him to the edge of a cliff, and there was nothing behind him but a vertiginous drop into a deep, misty void.
He flung himself forward, felt the shock of a laser sting his chest, and slammed painfully into the doors of the scanner, which slid open, dropping him onto the floor of the Factory with a heartfelt "Oof."
- - - -
Kloe yanked a pair of darts out of her bandolier, dropping to the ground. Aelita was already down, although there was nothing in the flat landscape to provide cover. The lasers continued relentlessly; Kloe tossed her darts blindly in the general direction they were coming from, then rolled away, smacking into Aelita.
"Hold them off for a few seconds," the elf said murmured. Apparently heedless of her own safety, she rose up on her knees, palms pressed to the ground.
Kloe gritted her teeth and executed a reckless forward roll, thanking the Lyoko program for a strength and agility she never had in the real world. Her gymnastics were still sloppy; a laser stung her arm, raising blue sparks, but the monsters followed her with their weapons, leaving Aelita safe for the moment, so the maneuver was successful.
An unearthly note reverberated through the blank, white atmosphere. For a moment, green lines gridded the landscape, then the obscuring silver mist vanished. Kloe's foes were suddenly visible before her, a stolid pair of blocks firing steadily. Behind her, Aelita rose from a meditative pose, swaying slightly as though from effort.
The journalist plunged forward, gold embroidery on her coat glimmering in the liberated light. Four darts flew in quick succession, and both blocks dissolved into their component parts.
With a sigh, Kloe touched her side, where at least two further lasers had struck, and returned to Aelita. "Nice one," she offered grudgingly.
The elf gave a tight smile, then froze. From behind Kloe came the sound of applause. Sissi's voice went, "huh?" from no apparent source, as though she had spotted something surprising on the computer screen. Slowly, Kloe turned around.
William? The tall, black-clad student strolled closer, hands meeting in a slow clap, features arranged in a smile that made Kloe's breath hitch. Behind her, Aelita let out a slow exhalation that sounded like, "XANA."
"Bravo, Aelita," said William. I like intellectuals, he doesn't even wear glasses, Kloe thought, promptly followed by, What is he doing in Lyoko? "It's kind of a shame it won't do you any good."
"There's an orange dot on the screen," Sissi shrilled, "what's an orange dot?"
"XANA!" Aelita exclaimed again, louder this time, breaking her paralysis. She grabbed Kloe's wrist and began to run.
There was an explosion of golden light.
- - - -
"Maybe we're going in circles," Odd suggested.
"Well, if this is a closed programming loop that's trapped our base code in a continual repetitive pattern, that's exactly what we're doing," Jeremie responded.
Elyse glanced up. "Is that what this is?" I thought I was getting access errors because I didn't have clearance."
"No, that would have thrown us out by now," argued Jeremie, then glanced over at Elyse, interest piqued. "You do much programming?"
"Jeremie?" Aelita's breathy tones emerged from the golden limbo, "is that you?" Her voice was followed a moment later by the rest of her, pink hair to slipper-clad feet, and her taller, blonder escort.
"Aelita?"
The faint incredulity in Jeremie's voice was nothing compared to Elyse's blank disbelief. "Kloe?"
"You two know each other?" Odd asked.
"Yeah, she's the one who help me reprogram the back in time…" Kloe began, paused, and gathered her thoughts. "Cousin. She's my cousin, once removed. Elyse, these are Jeremie, Odd, and Aelita. They go to Kadic and occasionally save the world. Odd, Aelita, Jeremie: Elyse Hopper." Three pairs of eyes fixed on her uncomfortably. She looked up into three expressions of identical, acute shock. "What did I say?"
- - - -
"They're gone!" Sissi shrieked, shrill tones ringing through the computer room.
Yumi waited a moment before taking her hands off her ears, then leaned over, black hair tumbling forward, to peer at the screen. "They've been trapped in one of those… globe things," she said.
"How do we get them out?" Sissi demanded.
Yumi put a hand to her head. "If we deactivated the Tower… only Aelita can do that. Wait. Last time, Jeremie got Aelita out by creating a decoy – interrupting the programming loop."
"I can't do that!" Sissi whined.
Yumi spread her hands, twitching her fingers experimentally. "No," she agreed, "But I think I can."
The elevator doors hissed.
Ulrich stepped out into the computer room, shoulder still throbbing from his impact with the scanner doors. Sissi was standing behind Jeremie's usual chair, one hand on the back; she leaned slightly forward, the two ebony locks escaping her headband falling from behind her ears, apparently hypnotized by the computer screen. Yumi – Yumi! – was sitting in the computer chair, fingers dancing over the keyboard, conducting a complex creation of code.
As the elevator doors slid shut behind him, Ulrich asked his question: "What are you doing?"
"I'm making a key," said Yumi, voice so hoarse with intensity it sounded like a stranger's, "Sissi, go down to the scanners. You'll do the unlocking."
- - - -
The five prisoners had arranged themselves into a circle and sat down. You could imagine a campfire would have been at their center, had this been Earth; stories were certainly being exchanged.
"Franz Hopper was a distant uncle," Elyse said, "I never knew him. But my family inherited the house that belonged to him – just recently, there were some weird complications with the government. Anyway, that's why we moved to Italy."
"Italia? Che vera?" Asked Odd, easily switching languages.
"My – Franz Hopper lived in Italy?" Aelita questioned, right on top of him.
"Si, perche?" Elyse responded to Odd, then, "Parliamo dopo. I don't know if he lived there, worked there, or just sent his stuff there, but there was a lot of stuff – in the basement, mostly. I was always interested in programming, but his software really made my passion. Sometimes I'd be reading it and it was like the meaning was…"
"Flowing into your head from some outside source?" Kloe asked. Elyse nodded skeptically. "That's not natural talent, I'm afraid. Yumi and me were suffering from the same thing this morning… right after I opened an e-mail from you, strangely enough. Go on."
"Uh." Elyse looked like she wanted to ask questions, possibly including 'so what is it, possession?' but managed to refrain. "Well, there's some hardware down there – down here, I guess – too, but most of it's in pieces. This VR machine – I've been repairing it since Kloe sent me the Lyoko code, about a month ago. Because it was way too complicated to be a video game, but it might have been VR. My gear had some software called Xanadu, which I guess was part of this Lyoko network? I dunno, I wound up in some sort of forest-y place, then I ran into some cute Goth kid, and next thing I know I was here."
"Goth kid?" Odd ventured.
"Maybe punk. Wearing mostly black, anyway," Elyse explained.
"Yeah, that's my next question," Kloe put in, "why is William in Lyoko?"
"Good question," Jeremie agreed. "However, since in science the simplest answer is usually the correct one, we'll have to assume XANA possessed him using the active Tower.
But Aelita was shaking her head. "He didn't feel like a virtualized human. More like… almost part of Lyoko."
"More like you?" Jeremie suggested.
"I have a question too," Odd put in, glancing around the circle. "Why is everyone except Aelita in their clothes from the real world? It's way too late in the day to be wearing pajamas!"
- - - -
Sissi materialized in front of the golden prison sphere with a minimum of fuss. Aelita's clearing of the mist had even eliminated the wispy streamers out here; now this part of the sector was nothing more then flat, purple-grey ground and boulders, illuminated by the sourceless light of the virtual world and the faint amber glow of the bubble.
"Sissi?" said Yumi's voice, harsh with concentration. It hardly sounded like Yumi at all.
Sissi pirouetted, the trailing scarf bound to her neck and wrists fluttering behind her. "Yes?"
"I'm sending you the key," said Yumi. There was suddenly a weight in Sissi's hand. Lifting it, she saw her fingers were curled around the haft of an ornate silver key, long as her open palm and tipped with a pair of fractal prongs on one end, a twisting, eye-smartingly complex device on the other.
"Where's the lock?" Asked Sissi inanely.
"Anywhere on the sphere." That couldn't possibly be Yumi speaking, could it? It was too deep, too old, and almost completely uninflected, as though emotion had been subsumed by an absolute clarity of purpose. "It's a program to disrupt the loop. A key is just the closest analogy."
Sissi extended the key towards the prison sphere. Several inched from the pronged end, the glowing golden corona that surrounded the bubble began to bend in strange ways until, with the object fully extended in front of her, she appeared to be holding the key-shaped hilt of a short, silver blade, edged in gold. "Now what?" Sissi asked, eyeing the phenomena dubiously.
"Swipe it downward," said Yumi's disembodied voice firmly.
"Don't do it, Sissi," said William.
The principal's daughter whipped her head around. He was standing a few feet behind her, arms crossed casually over his chest, picture of tousled good looks.
"Why not?" She demanded.
"Think about it," said William, uncrossing his arms and spreading his hands. "You're doing all this for a group of people who rejected you, insulted you, and stole Ulrich from you. How do you even know it's the right thing? Ask yourself why they're so secretive if they're supposed to be the good guys."
"I don't know you, either," Sissi disagreed.
"Don't listen to him," said Yumi, "He's stalling for time because he doesn't have enough power to trap you…" her voice died in a crackle of static at a gesture from William.
"You do," William disagreed, sadly, "you just can't remember. You've lost a lot of memories to that return-to-the-past program. Does the name Theo mean anything to you, for instance?"
There was another crackle of static as Yumi tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible. Sissi shook her head slowly.
"I'm just trying to keep Aelita safe," William continued, taking a step forward, "You'd do the same for Ulrich."
There was a flaw in his argument, and it was dawning on Sissi what that was. She smiled, ever so slightly. "You forgot something."
"Sure," said William soothingly, "probably a lot of things. Which one?"
Sissi inclined her head towards the sphere, and her tight smile blossomed into a full, fakely sweet grin. "Odd's in there," she said brightly, and brought the blade of the key sweeping downwards. A streak of silver followed in its wake, a tear in the filigreed surface of the bubble. It widened rapidly, engulfing the gold.
There was a flash of white light.
Five human figures tumbled to the ground. Odd was first to his feet, glancing down at his hands to affirm his paw-gloves had returned. "Weapons ready and loaded, Captain!" He quipped.
"William's getting away!" squeaked Sissi.
"Laser arrow!" shouted Odd.
- - - -
Yumi slumped in Jeremie's chair, trembling, as exhausted as if she had just run a marathon. The code she had written blinked on the computer screen, but all that buzzed from her earpiece was static. What if she had gotten wrong? This morning, in the same kind of haze, she had written a virus - what if she had written it again, destroying Lyoko and her friends along with it?
She felt rather then saw Ulrich walk up behind her. He rested a warm hand on her shoulder. She lifted her own hand, resting it atop his and squeezing gently. "I don't think it worked," she said hoarsely, voice once more in her normal register.
"You did the best you could," replied Ulrich. The cliché offered less comfort then his fingers in hers.
"What if…" What if we're the only ones left? she thought, but couldn't say it.
The static died in her earpiece. She clenched her hand around Ulrich's, possibly tight enough to cause pain. "Wait!" Her free hand shoved the microphone closer to her mouth. "This is Yumi! What's going on there!"
"We're okay. We're all fine," said Aelita's voice.
"You might want to go down to the scanner room and see who we devirtualized, though," Odd added.
- - - -
Aelita stepped into the Tower, smooth wall rippling shut behind her. Jeremie laid a tentative hand on the wall as well, and when it gave under his fingers, stepped in after her, leaving Sissi, Odd, Kloe, and Elyse outside, standing silent guard.
"So, how do I get home?" Elyse asked, staring off into the virtual landscape. "I guess my mom will come down to the basement eventually and pull off this stupid helmet, but…"
"Oh, that's easy," said Odd, sighting along his wrist. "Laser arrow!"
Kloe leapt at the cat boy, knocking him to the ground, but the projectile had already been fired. It struck Elyse's under detailed virtual form dead center; she blurred, flickered, and vanished. "What was that? Are you trying to kill her?"
The next thing Kloe knew, she was on the ground with Odd standing over her. "Geeze, you run out of lifepoints, you devirtualize. Even you should know that by now."
"I don't, and neither do you! She's using totally different equipment!" Kloe shouted, struggling to her feet.
"Oh, leave him alone," Sissi shouted back.
"What if-" Kloe began, livid.
"Tower deactivated," said Aelita's voice, and all three warriors faded to white wireframes, then vanished.
"-she's in a coma or something?" Kloe demanded as she emerged from the scanner.
"Call her. I'm sure she's fine," said Odd.
"And we've got other things to worry about," Jeremie reminded them. He and Aelita were already standing in the elevator.
- - - -
William was in the computer room, stretched out on the ground – apparently unconscious and breathing shallowly. "Did you.. uh," Jeremie began, glancing at Yumi and Ulrich, "…have to fight with him?"
Yumi shook her head. "He was like that when he came out of the scanner."
"Should we get him to the infirmary?" Aelita asked, always compassionate.
After perhaps a minute of argument, it was decided they would, and Yumi and Ulrich had to carry him.
The elevator was a bit of a squeeze. Kloe found herself jammed in a corner next to Jeremie; she stood perhaps a touch closer then the crowd warranted but, biting her lip, stared straight ahead. Jeremie and Aelita. Odd and Sissi. Ulrich and Yumi. William is evil. That leaves me… She thought, rapidly followed by I get out of a life-or-death situation and my first response is to think about boys?
"I have to tell you something," Yumi said suddenly. "The code… the loop… well, the way to write it just came to me, right?"
"Oh, I have a theory about that," Jeremie volunteered. "I think Elyse must have found a program somewhere that managed to attach itself on her e-mail to Kloe – either some more benevolent version of the XANA program or a way for Franz Hopper himself to contact us!"
The elevator doors opened, and the gang piled out. Yumi's expression, if anything, became graver. "Well, whatever it is, it's gone now. But it was there, and I know something else, too. The virus Kloe and I were writing… it had to be written. XANA is almost ready to escape the supercomputer."
"But there's not other computer in the world with enough processing power," Jeremie contradicted her, "That's impossible."
"The internet," said Yumi solemnly as the group trooped out of the Factory. "Hundreds of linked servers – thousands. If XANA distributes its programming functions over that, most people wouldn't even notice the bit on their computer."
There was an appropriate pause. "I need a few more days to isolate Ulrich's antibody," Jeremie said at last.
They had reached the hatch. Odd reached down to pull it open.
"A few more days, Jeremie," said Aelita with a melancholic intensity, turning to face the computer operator. "We can't run the risk of XANA escaping. A few more days… then I'm turning off the supercomputer myself."
– Fin –
For all it's… unrealisticness? – this episode turned out remarkably prescient. I thought Aelita turning off the supercomputer herself was in keeping with her personality but too dark for the show, but she went and did just that at the end of season two. The idea of XANA escaping to the internet was my way of solving what I thought was an obvious gap in his plot to escape the supercomputer – where would he escape to? Imagine my surprise at the end of season two when it was, in fact, the internet. The idea of William being evil – well, sort of – had insinuated itself into my story after I had a dream to that effect (dreams can be a remarkable inspiration, can't they?). Again, imagine my surprise at the end of season three.
I don't think Odd's ever met anyone from Italy he could speak Italian to, though. And if Sissi ever uses a program written by Yumi while being possessed by Franz Hopper to open a Guardian Jeremie, Odd, and Aelita had been trapped in, I'll know something weird is going on.
Taidine